“I’m concerned that it happened,” said President Joe Biden on Thursday of a massive leak of top-secret intelligence, but “there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”
What an obscene dodge.
The leak of these ultra-sensitive Pentagon documents is of huge consequence.
The documents reveal crucial strategic information, including concrete and minutely detailed assessments of Ukraine’s troop and armament capacities, as well as plans for the coming offensive that Kyiv has now had to change.
That’s the reverse of the unconditional support that Biden has pledged (if not delivered) for the invaded nation.
The docs also make public claims that are hugely destabilizing to our most trusted ally in the Middle East, i.e. statements that Israel’s supposedly apolitical Mossad supported the recent protests against a judicial reform law.
Perhaps worst of all, they show that Uncle Sam can’t be bothered to keep secrets safe — even when they concern US clandestine surveillance of allies.
And the now-reportedly-identified leaker, Jack Teixeira, is a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, who apparently shared the info to impress a bunch of teen videogamers.
It’s astonishing that such a figure had access to the info, and could walk the docs home simply folded in a pocket. It’s as if our national-security system learned nothing from the case of Reality Winner.
The feds’ response has been pathetic, too.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was apparently caught on the back foot, getting briefed on the catastrophe only when The New York Times published a story on it — despite the fact that the docs have been out in the wild since February.
And it seems the media did the main sleuthing to track down Teixeira, as The Washington Post interviewed some of his teen acolytes who said the authorities had yet to come knocking.
Meanwhile, new reporting suggests that there are three times as many photographed documents circulating as previously estimated.
All of which makes it absurd for the prez to just brush the whole thing off.
Then again, this is a commander-in-chief who’s still insisting the Afghan bugout was a great “success” (when he’s not blaming the disaster on Donald Trump).
Now his blithe denial of any “great consequence” can only tear at the last shreds of US credibility on the world stage.
Nor can Americans trust their president to face the facts of an increasingly perilous world.
How can anyone take his rhetoric on Ukraine seriously?
(Not that he’s made any effort to build domestic support for US aid to Ukraine.)
Joe Biden treats everything as politics: He won’t admit a disaster for fear it’ll harm his re-election hopes.
Everything he says is said insincerely, clearly including his oath-of-office vow to protect and defend the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic.