Pirate's Cove

It would probably be a whole lot better if people stopped treating the Epstein thing as a political football so that the victims could get justice

U.S. strikes ISIS targets in Syria, after killing of 2 soldiers and interpreter

The U.S. is conducting airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria in retaliation for the attack that killed two American soldiers and a U.S. interpreter on Saturday, officials said. Multiple sources told CBS News earlier Friday that the strikes were being conducted.

One of the officials said the U.S. began striking dozens of targets at multiple locations across central Syria using fighter aircraft, attack helicopters and artillery. More than 70 targets were struck, a U.S. official said.

F-15 fighter jets, A-10 Thunderbolts — known as “Warthogs” — and Apache attack helicopters were used to target ISIS positions in Syria on Friday, U.S. officials told CBS News. F-16 fighter jets from Jordan were also involved in the operation.

Good. But

US Epstein files release highlights Clinton, makes scant reference to Trump

The U.S. Justice Department released thousands of heavily redacted documents related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on Friday that made scant reference to President Donald Trump but extensively featured Democratic former President Bill Clinton.

The absence of references to Trump was notable given that pictures and documents related to him have trickled out ?of previous Epstein releases for years. Trump’s name appeared in flight manifests listing passengers on Epstein’s private plane that were part of a first batch of Epstein material the Justice Department released in February, for instance.

Perhaps there really isn’t much on Trump. Did anyone consider that?

The partial release ?was intended to comply with a law overwhelmingly passed by Congress in November that mandated the disclosure of all Epstein files, despite the Republican president’s months-long effort to keep them sealed. The scandal surrounding Epstein has become a self-inflicted political wound for Trump, who for years had promoted conspiracy theories about Epstein to ?his supporters.

It was not immediately clear how substantive the new materials were, given that many Epstein-related documents have previously been made public since his 2019 death in jail, which was ruled a suicide. Many of the files were heavily redacted – several documents with 100 pages or more were entirely blacked out – and the Justice Department acknowledged it was still reviewing hundreds of thousands of additional pages for possible release.

Shortly after the release, the U.S. military launched airstrikes against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria on Friday in retaliation for an attack on U.S. personnel.

See? The airstrikes were deflections.

This whole “question the timing” thing is more of a Media Matters wonkers than something that should be in Reuters, but, the MSM have been infested with those early century Bush hating bloggers and those who worked for outlets like Think Progress, the Huffington Post, etc.