U.S. intelligence thinks that Russian President Vladimir Putin feels misled by the Russian military, a U.S. official said in a statement Wednesday...

What do you mean, "thinks"? What the fuck do you mean? WAS HE MISLED OR NOT!
...

In the lead-up to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence emphasized that Putin was being misled by his close advisers about the feasibility of a multi-front invasion of Ukraine.

That information is part of what led U.S. officials to be so concerned about the possibility of an invasion, because the Biden administration came to believe that Putin was not receiving a full picture of how difficult such a broad military operation would be.

Okay now wait: One, we took this intel before THE FUCKING UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL! WE NEVER SAID at the U.N. that Putin was being misled about feasibility. Putin's U.N. representative DENIED an invasion was in the works. Two, my memory is not perfect but I don't remember any revelation in any forum then that Putin was being misled about feasibility. It was all "We think he's going to"; "He's going to." And feasibility? Blinken told Congress after the invasion began he expected Kyiv to fall "within days." It was damn feasible to Blinken then! Three, why didn't we tell the world AND THEREFORE PUTIN that the invasion was infeasible? THAT would have stopped him or at least paused his ass. "In the lead-up to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence emphasized that Putin was being misled by his close advisers about the feasibility of a multi-front invasion of Ukraine." We didn't fucking say that, not to anyone, anywhere, anytime BEFORE TODAY.

Okay now what about this: "That information [that Putin was being misled re feasibility] is part of what led U.S. officials to be so concerned about the possibility of an invasion."  Deconstruct: Putin didn't know the intended operation was not feasible. Therefore, we were even more concerned that he would invade. Okay. That makes some sense. Okay and we wouldn't have told him because we didn't want to give him a chance to recalibrate. But...that might have prevented the war! It might have prevented the destruction of so much of Ukraine, saved thousands and thousands of Ukrainian lives, prevented the rapes of Ukrainian women, prevented children from getting killed, prevented the danger of World War III. To me, this is the operative clause: "...the Biden administration came to believe..." They didn't believe that then; only later. Have we EVER told Putin, "You're getting your ass kicked, DO YOU KNOW THAT?" 

Finally, it is clear to me now that our sources inside the Kremlin are extremely high up, probably in the Defense Ministry, maybe the Defense chief himself who supposably had a "heart condition" and went MIA for two weeks, or his right-hand man. Thus, "tension" between him and Putin. But that raises another plausible scenario: that our source(s) are trying to protect themselves; that is, that this might not be true. A couple of weeks ago there was an article, I think in NYT, some American guy in a position to know told the Quasis that we were looking very closely for any cracks in Kremlin leadership and so far (at that time) were not seeing any. 

How to understand all this? I don't know but I am 50%+1 convinced that the New York Times did not remove their banner headline because of the press of other news.

“Putin didn’t even know his military was using and losing conscripts in Ukraine, showing a clear breakdown in the flow of accurate information to the Russian President,” the U.S. official said in the statement, speaking on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the Biden administration.

Okay, you know what, this is going to be in that Senior Defense Official transcript from today. I'm going to check that out and if so copy and paste the whole thing in another post. I want to know exactly what this motherfucker said.