Official Narrative on Chinese Surveillance Balloon Changed Again - This Time the Pentagon's Claim Is Even More Questionable
A lot of people have been asking whether the Biden Administration is full of idiots or if they have a hidden agenda. There’s no way to tell for sure, but it’s probably a mixture of both.
Take the Chinese spy balloon debacle for example. When first spotted back in February, the Pentagon was pretty sure it was collecting sensitive information as it drifted unheeded over the country. That makes sense. That’s what spy balloons do.
Now, the Pentagon claims the balloon was not collecting information — as if anyone is going to believe that.
People no longer know what to believe — if they ever did — when it comes to the Biden administration.
Pentagon press secretary Air Force Brigadier General Pat Ryder held a media briefing on Thursday. When asked about the Chinese spy balloon, Ryder told reporters the Chinese spy balloon was not collecting information.
Wait a minute — the U.S. tracked the suspected surveillance balloon for days back in February, but the Pentagon opted not to shoot it down because the debris might hurt people on the ground, according to the Associated Press. At the time, a senior defense official told reporters they had “very high confidence” the balloon was collecting sensitive information from particular sites.
NBC News reported in April that the Chinese spy balloon had gathered intelligence from U.S. military sites and U.S. efforts to block it from doing so were not successful. The report, citing two current senior U.S. official and one former official, claimed the Biden administration’s efforts to keep the balloon from compromising U.S. sites had at least partially failed.
At Thursday’s briefing, a reporter asked Ryder, “Can you respond to reports that suggest that onboard the Chinese spy balloon, were found off-the-shelf American equipment? Was there any sensitive American equipment onboard? How do you think that American equipment was obtained? Were there any laws broken? And what was it capable of doing? What can you tell us?”
Ryder responded with, “I don’t have any specifics to provide as it pertains to the PRC high altitude balloon and any potential U.S. components. That said, I will say that, you know, we are aware, in previous cases, for example, things like drones and — and other capabilities, what have you, where off-the-shelf, commercial U.S. components have been used in capabilities. So that, in and of itself, is not surprising.”
Ryder continued, “In terms of … the balloon and … the capabilities that it has, as you heard at the time, we were aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities, but it … has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or over-flying the United States. And as we said at the time, we also took steps — steps to mitigate the potential collection efforts of that balloon.”
The reporter followed Ryder’s garbled response with another question, “So you believe your efforts stopped it from collecting and transmitting or was it able to collect but just not able to transmit?”
Ryder responded, “We believe that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or flying over the United States, and certainly the efforts that we made contributed, I’m sure.”
It doesn’t sound to me like Ryder — or the Biden Administration — is sure about anything. That doesn’t inspire a lot of public confidence in the federal government.
In February, a Fox News report quoted a “senior administration official” as saying that other Chinese spy balloons had entered the U.S. while President Donald Trump was in office, but “they went undetected.”
Huh? How do they know it happened if the so-called spy balloons went undetected? How can you detect something later that wasn’t detected at the time? I’m confused.
“Two things can be true at once: this happened and it wasn’t detected,” the official said.
Doesn’t that violate Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction where two contrary claims can’t be true at once? It’s like saying the balloons existed but they didn’t. Of course, Democrats are fond of acting like they are above the law, even when it comes to the law of logic.
The Biden administration had to back off the “Spy Balloons Under Trump Narrative,” primarily because it couldn’t stand up to reason. The former Acting Director of National Intelligence under Trump tweeted that Biden’s Department of Defense was lying.
Biden’s DoD is shamelessly using an anonymous source to say that Chinese balloons flew over the US under Trump – and the Trump team allowed it.
It is a lie. We never heard this – ever.
Congress should demand @SecDef tell the truth. Shame on @JakeSullivan46.
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 5, 2023
Is it lying if you really have no idea what is going on? I’ve heard of lying by omission, but is there lying by confusion?
Somebody knows whether the Chinese spy balloon collected and transmitted sensitive U.S. military information on its leisurely drift over the continental U.S. but they aren’t telling. What else is the Biden administration confused about? What else are they hiding?
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