What incentive would the US government have to lie about this though? They were funding research at that lab, I don't understand why they would want people to think lab leak is correct all of a sudden - if that's what you're claiming?
> What incentive would the US government have to lie about this though?
It's not the US government here, it's some unnamed official that we don't actually know, and if they work for the government, are a contractor, a former CIA employee, could be anything. Could be someone like Rand Paul or Tom Cotton who is politically motivated to both implicate China and embarrass their own government, as long as they can blame "the other side".
The US probably isn't lying, the foreign source they got the info from might be. We won't know more unless the matter is further declassified or investigated.
Read the original report carefully. The wording is important, and as usual, it's not making any direct assertions. Someone says "we have intelligence suggesting.." or "there are reports from sources...". Both of those statements can be 100% true: someone does have a report that says such and such thing. But nowhere does anyone make hard claims about the veracity of those reports, or even the reliability of unnamed source.
It's a leak, purposely calculated to suggest something is true without every committing to making it verifiable.
> What incentive would the US government have to lie about this though?
The US government hasn't even made any statement.
> They were funding research at that lab, I don't understand why they would want people to think lab leak is correct all of a sudden - if that's what you're claiming?
No they weren't? You need to either get off the internet until you turn 18 or learn some serious critical thinking skills. The fact you're even considering the theory that the US is covertly funding virology research in it's biggest geopolitical enemy territory is completely unhinged and is classic schizophrenic type delusion.
It went through a non-profit, but trust me there is careful accounting of where money goes with NIH grants, there is no way the government was not aware that some of it's money was funding research at WIV. Especially because they suspended the funding once COVID blew up, per that article.
The commenter was implying the info didn't come from real intelligence but is actually a fabricated leak. I saw the other reply about Iraq and thought the implication was the US wanted to mislead about this, but it indeed could be another country.
Note that the NIH funding was cancelled under the Trump administration. That administration also attacked its own public health officials, denied the science, catastrophically failed in its response, and was generally incompetent. There's no reason to believe the cancellation was anything other than posturing for political reasons, coming from an Oval Office that never stopped referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese Virus" while pushing hydroxychloroquine and suggesting that a cure was as simple as shoving a flashlight up your butt while drinking bleach.
I never made a comment one way or the other about whether the cancellation was logical, I was just responding to the claim that there was no funding to begin with.
China says nobody was sick.
It's quite simple, the US should release the names of those who were sick.