Asking questions and being skeptical is not spreading lies and bullshit, especially given the timing and contentious nature of the allegations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/us/politics/russian-bounties-warnings-trump.html
United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan alerted their superiors as early as January to a suspected Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan, according to officials briefed on the matter. They believed at least one U.S. troop death was the result of the bounties, two of the officials said.
The sources that leaked the details to the NY Times are
anonymous intelligence officials. The media uncritically report the allegations as being confirmed facts, mumbling the usual "if true" disclaimer, and then we see the usual opinion pieces which basically assume their veracity, along with hawkish spin from Democrats and neocons.
The crucial information that led the spies and commandos to focus on the bounties included the recovery of a large amount of American cash from a raid on a Taliban outpost that prompted suspicions. Interrogations of captured militants and criminals played a central role in making the intelligence community confident in its assessment that the Russians had offered and paid bounties in 2019
The Taliban has been fighting US and allied forces for almost 20 years without needing cash bounties as motivation.
Interrogations of captured militants and criminals - is this your idea of a reliable source of information?
There's also this:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/nsa-differed-from-cia-others-on-russia-bounty-intelligence-11593534220
The National Security Agency strongly dissented from other intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia paid bounties for the killing of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, according to people familiar with the matter.
But OK, let's assume these reports are eventually backed up with hard evidence. Back to the NYT article...
Revenge is also a factor in Russia’s support for the Taliban, the official said. Russia has been keen to even the scales after a bloody confrontation in 2018 in Syria, when a massive U.S. counterattack killed hundreds of Syrian forces along with Russian mercenaries nominally supported by the Kremlin.
The US and Russia have a long history of fighting proxy wars, providing financial support, weapons, and training to strategic allies which occasionally results in the deaths of US and Russian personnel. The Soviet-Afghan war is a historical example. The Syrian civil war is a current example. Are bounties really all that different from writing a blank check when the end result is the same death and destruction?
If the people crying about this were serious about protecting the lives of American servicemen and women, they would have ended all these wars years ago.
