The attack on the Syrian airfield has sent the polls for President Donald Trump into a sharp rise and he has been praised by various Democrats. Others have called for the commitment of thousands of troops. No one seems interested in speaking of the absence of congressional authorization. Indeed, when Sen. Rand Paul objected to the lack of congressional consent, Sen John McCain denounced him as a non-entity in the Senate who does not listens. Below is my column on the mounting attacks on Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D, HI) from Democrats after she called for the release of evidence on the culpability of the Syrian government in the recent gas attack on a village. Even though some (including a recent MIT professor) have questioned the evidence, Gabbard’s desire to see the evidence was viewed as inexcusable. It appears that war, like Saturn, devours its young.
Washington is back to business as usual this week with both parties pounding war drums over Syria and some demanding thousands of troops be sent to expand our latest undeclared war. What is most notable is how fast top Democrats dropped their post-Sanders rhetoric over war powers and have again adopted the pro-interventionist stance embodied by Hillary Clinton.
Before the attack, Clinton was back in public chiding President Trump on how she would have long ago bombed every airfield and started a major campaign against the Syrian military. Not one air field, mind you, all airfields. She received rapturous applause for the comments at the Women in the World Summit in New York.
Indeed, Democrats have turned on a congressional member who had the audacity to ask for proof as a precursor for war. The Democrats have shown once again that a party hell-bent on war will like Saturn devour even its own. However, even if our own history with the Vietnam war or weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is not instructive enough, they might consider Greek mythology before they start to nosh on the kinder.
The fact is that Washington loves wars and neither party wants to be on the wrong side of a popular war. Even for Washington, however, the shift of Democrats is notable from the recent election where everyone — even Clinton, albeit awkwardly — tried to show liberals that they were not the hair-trigger warmongers that Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters claimed during the campaign.
Yet, now, leaders are denouncing Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbardafter she had the audacity to ask for proof of Syrian responsibility in the recent gas attack. Gabbard seemed to want more than a pedestrian role in war powers, while her colleagues prefer the safety of the sidelines. Playing the witness to wars avoids responsibility while reserving the right to be shocked and angry if the war goes badly.
The attacks on Gabbard “doth protest too much.” Gabbard has previously angered the establishment in Washington for the right and wrong reasons. She was legitimately criticized in January for meeting with President Bashar al-Assad. It was propaganda victory for this murderous dictator and undermined United States foreign policy.
Gabbard’s real sin however may be more political. Many Democrats are still upset with Gabbard for publicly charging (as was later supported by the Wikileaks material) that the Democratic establishment was actively engineering the primary for Hillary Clinton. She then supported Sanders against the establishment. Now, she has the audacity to demand proof before going to a war when House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Hillary Clinton are all in support of a new expanded war.
However, her cited statements were surprisingly modest. She objected that the missile strikes were “short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a possible nuclear war between the United States and Russia.”
She also called for the administration to release more evidence of Syrian guilt before pouring more troops or missiles into the conflict, adding that “if President Assad is found to be responsible after an independent investigation for these horrific chemical weapons attacks, I’ll be the first one to call for his prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court.”
The response from Howard Dean and others was shock and disgust. In a Trump-esque tweet, Dean declared, “This is a disgrace. Gabbard should not be in Congress.” Democratic leaders were outraged that a member would be “skeptical” about the action of the United States. Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden called on Hawaiians to dump Gabbard and asked, “People of Hawaii’s second district, was it not enough for you that your rep met with a murderous dictator? Will this move you?”
The Washington Post expressed shock that Gabbard’s statements “reveal her striking departure from the consensus that Assad’s government launched the attack.” However, at least in the initial days, that “consensus” was based largely on the conclusory statements of named and unnamed sources in the government.
The reaction to Gabbard’s call for evidence brings back troubling memories of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. On Aug. 10, 1964, the Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to give President Lyndon Johnson full authority to go to war in Vietnam without a formal declaration of war. It was based on the Gulf of Tonkin incident involving an alleged attack on the destroyer USS Maddox.
The government reported two attacks that are now considered highly questionable. The government claimed that on Aug. 2, 1964, three North Vietnamese torpedo boats harassed the destroyer. When the Maddox fired three warning shots, the government claimed that the boats attacked with torpedoes and machine guns. The Maddox showed only a single bullet hole.
The government then claimed a second attack on Aug. 4, 1964. Historians have questioned these accounts and most notably former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara admitted that there was actually no response to the Aug. 2 attack and thus no “sea battle” as claimed at the time. He further admitted that the second attack never occurred. None of that mattered of course because few members wanted to hear at the time that these “sea battles” were hokum.
There is every indication that the evidence will support the United States, which has been releasing more information in the last week. It is notable that, while Russia and Syria have called for investigations of responsibility for the gas attack, Russia just blocked a United Nations resolution demanding Syrian cooperation with just such an investigation.
Russia has claimed that a bombing raid hit ISIS chemical weapons and that this is a pretext for the expansion of the war. Yet, Syria has previously used chemical weapons and Russia is now hindering efforts for such an investigation.
In the end, Gabbard is right about the need for the release of evidence before we expand this undeclared war. The administration may indeed be moving in that direction with the leaking of intercepted communications from the field.
Which brings us back to Saturn. Saturn, or Cronus to the Greeks, was obsessed with a prophecy that he would be overthrown by his children — a sense of panic not unlike the Democratic establishment with the rise of Sanders and his young supporters. As a result, Cronus, a Titan, devoured each child when born including Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon.
His son, Zeus, however, was hidden (Rhea, his mother, gave Cronus the “Omphalos Stone” wrapped in swaddling clothes to trick him). Later, Cronus was given an emetic as a trick and he threw up the children. Zeus and his siblings then rose up and overthrew the Titans, including Cronus. For his part, according to Homer, Cronus was left to languish in the Tartarus, or a deep abyss of pain and torment.
For most politicians, the Tartarus is the abyss called life out of public office. However, before the Democrats start to swallow members like Gabbard whole, they might want to consider how the youth can reappear with a vengeance.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
I just think it’s suspicious that professor turley has yet to provide ANY evidence that he hasn’t been compromised by the aliens from Area 51. Speaking of entities who consume their own, how can we be sure he’s NOT a pod person at this point, given his oft hyped
involvement in that arena. Many people are questioning whether he is still, in fact, a human. But professor turley wants us to fall in lock-step with the media and simply believe he isn’t now, essentially, a Grey. The question is, why should we believe anything ‘he’ says? Would an entity who was in so onto the Greys that nefarious federal agents cordoned off his office and confiscated his relevant files not have an incentive to obfuscate the nature of his…nature? Admittedly I, personally, believe that once the full evidence is released, it will confirm that professor turley is simply kind of full of himself, prone to hyperbole, and over reliant on literary license
. But until we see the receipts, it only seems reasonable to be skeptical as to why we should trust this ‘man,’ his ‘facts,’ and the conclusions he draws from them.
Res. Ipsa. Loquitor.
A loquitor, fwiw, is a Grey who speaks for the sake of hearing itself speak.
Brad Mantz – you are not among the few that are allowed to define terms for themselves. Stick to the original plot.
Brad Mantz – do you have pictures to support your claim? He looks a little too pink to be a Grey.
@Jill, April 18, 2017 at 7:17 pm
“Hi Ken,
“Thank you for posting this. I think the speaker [Senator Richard Black] has a too rosy view of Assad (who was so good at torture that we (sic) rendered people from the US to there) and for the freedoms of the people of Syria. However, he makes many good points. He is willing to bring up the very real consequences of Assad’s otherthrow.”
I quite agree, obviously, that there’s no excuse to be made for Assad’s allowing anyone to be renditioned and tortured under the CIA’s (or that of anyone else) program, but that or anything else, short of a military attack on the US, hardly gives the USG the right to depose the elected leader of a sovereign nation. It’s symptomatic of the pervasive acceptance of the horrific business-as-usual history of USG interventionism that I even have to say that explicitly.
Thank you for your many sane and insightful comments and for the many links to informative essays and articles.
@Horuss, April 21, 2017 at 4:36 pm
“Nothing Gabbard has done has been improper including meeting with Assad who is, after all, a legitimate, elected leader of a sovereign government we recognize. Our efforts to topple Assad have absolutely nothing to do with how he treats his people but rather whose gas pipeline he supports running through his territory.”
Thanks for pointing this out, Horuss, and it was true when Gabbard met with him, but now Assad is no longer a legitimate, elected leader of a sovereign government, because President Trump saw a picture:
“Ann CoulterVerified account @AnnCoulter
“Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies & creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV.”
Or as someone else put it, “It took about three months for Trump to become a neocon poodle.”
@Autumn, April 21, 2017 at 4:33 pm
“do you ever listen to the Tim Black show on YouTube? Lots of thoughtful callers from all over the country – I have learned a great deal from the majority of them. Tonite is Freedom Friday where every caller get 3 minutes. Generally begins around 9:30 EST.”
I’ve watched/heard the segments that you and/or someone else has posted links to here in JT’s comments section, but that’s all.
Thanks for the recommendation___I’ll try to work it in this evening.
Democratic sellouts and warmongers hate Tulsi Gabbard for actually being on the side of peace and de-escalating out pointless, unwinnable imperial wars in the Muslim world. Her integrity stands in sharp contrast to the hypocrisy of people like Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton”s minions at the Center for American Progress. Nothing Gabbard has done has been improper including meeting with Assad who is, after all, a legitimate, elected leader of a sovereign government we recognize. Our efforts to topple Assad have absolutely nothing to do with how he treats his people but rather whose gas pipeline he supports running through his territory. Gabbard is a gutsy young leader with actual principals unlike almost everyone else in Congress. There aren’t 20 other members of either house of Congress with as much integrity or courage as she has.
Ken, As a good friend sez “I see what you’re sayin’ I hear what you mean” =) I have tried to get friends to wake up – ironically most of my Repub and Libertarian friends get it – it’s the Dems who firmly dig their heads into the sand.
do you ever listen to the Tim Black show on YouTube? Lots of thoughtful callers from all over the country – I have learned a great deal from the majority of them. Tonite is Freedom Friday where every caller get 3 minutes. Generally begins around 9:30 EST.
@Autumn, April 21, 2017 at 2:25 pm
“Love Matt Taibbi – he is scathing yet so damn hilarious And I need all the laughs I can get because I see no way of extricating ourselves from corporate influence.”
Autumn, I can’t thank you enough for the introduction to Caitlin Johnstone, above. What a resource and what an ally in the effort to awaken people from their state of dupefaction* by the Deep State and its propganda apparatus, the Corporate Media.
Regarding your seeing no way of extricating ourselves from corporate influence, I recommend taking the advice that Johnstone herself offers:
“How to do this? It’s actually easier than it sounds. The entire system is held in place by corporate media propaganda. Without being fed a steady diet of media that normalizes a situation where the American people are crushed to death under the weight of the Walmart economy while hundreds of billions of dollars a year are spent on corporatist wars, the whole illusion of freedom falls apart.
“The ruling elites figured out long ago that it’s much easier to convince the masses that they are free than to try and force them into cages, but that’s getting harder and harder for them to do as internet access grows and people get better at networking and sharing information. Last year they lost control of the narrative for a brief moment as WikiLeaks, social media and alternative media cost the deep state’s prefered candidate the election; we just have to create more and more of those moments.
“In short, this is a media war. Every false flag the deep state creates, every bogus narrative the corporate media promulgates, every leak drop, every scandal, every plot hole, is an opportunity to draw more and more attention to what these people are doing and wake people up to what’s happening. [My emphasis] The reason anti-establishment voices on Facebook and Youtube have been experiencing censorship campaigns and demonetizing epidemics is because the new media presents a very real and present threat to the illusion the ruling powers have put so much effort into maintaining.
“So speak out. Have conversations, blog, Youtube, tweet, push out into any area where good ideas can find fertile ground. It might sound like a wimpy first-world feel-good solution, but circulating information and breaking the spell of normalcy is probably the single most revolutionary thing that an ordinary American can do right now.
“You might think your energy is better spent putting on a mask and punching Trump supporters or going to some march or protest, but circulating anti-establishment ideas and information far and wide wherever you can is far, far more destructive to the oppression machine. [Emphasis added]
“There is a reason so much frantic effort has gone into making progressives look everywhere except at the smouldering rubble of the DNC scandal, for example; the gaping plot hole that the DNC Leaks exposed in the official narrative threatens the deep state’s one-party scheme to this very day, and if public discourse about it reignites the manipulators will be forced to overextend and expose themselves to try and pull it back into the shadows.
“So let’s come together. Unlike the omnicidal sociopaths at America’s steering wheel who only know how to wedge and divide, we truth-tellers are united by the same authentic morality, by something real and tangible. So while they grow ever more fragmented as they wedge themselves into obsolescence, our numbers will keep growing as more and more eyes open to what’s been happening in this world. Let’s help them open.”
* My suggested neologism for the stupified state of consciousness that results from being duped by the Deep State’s incessant propaganda via the Corporate Media, e.g., all too many Americans are currently in a state of deep “dupefaction.”
@tnash80hotmailcom, April 20, 2017 at 11:08 pm
“OK…that one posted.
“Bill Moyer probably has a sense of nostalgia about the first half of the LBJ administration.
“He (as press secretary) and LBJ played the press like a violin.
“Moyers may feign a newfound sense of integrity with respect to limits of the power of government…Deep State or not
“..but as one of LBJ’s chief flunkies, he was enthusiastic about manipulating and pressuring the media.”
Moyers seems to be a pretty slow study, but he does seem to have evolved a great deal in his thinking since the Johnson poison salad days.
I see no point in taxing anybody with their past failings if they evidence a sincere change of heart/mind, as Moyers seems to have done.
Ken Rodgers….
That’s where we differ ” if they evidence a SINCERE change of heart/ mind”.
My take on Bill Moyers is that he’s still an opportunistic, blindly partisan political hack.
@Autumn, April 20, 2017 at 9:35 pm
“Ken, most people say ‘we’ as in Americans and I too find that annoying. What the USGinc does and what the citizens really support is very different. Remember that Princeton study which showed that the voices from the serf vote doesn’t affect policy decisions.”
Here’s what bothers me about it, Autumn. It’s like, say, a small town somehere in rural America in which someone is being murdered every other week. The death toll reaches 20, and the police chief laconically observes to his barber while he’s getting a haircut, “Boy, Floyd, we sure have been killing a lot of people this year. You have to wonder if it’s ever gonna stop.” “Yeah,” says Floyd, ” and it sure ain’t been good for business. Seven of them victims used to be regular customers of mine.”
“Say, Chief, you don’t suppose we might have a serial killer on our hands, do ya?” Oh, I don’t know, Floyd, anything’s posssible, but after the election, if we get a new mayor, maybe things’ll ease up. Seems like we’re always havin’ to deal with one thing or another around here. Hunh. Makes me think of what that preacher who passed through here said about the importance of havin’ town spirit and a positive attitude. Any rate, I guess things’ll work out, one way or another, if we just stick together and do the best we know how. We’ve made it together this far, so I guess we’ll quit killin’ folks soon enough.”
“We” aren’t the serial killer(s) and “we” didn’t create the economic agencies that are like “great vampire squids wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming their blood funnels into anything that smells like money”* and that are ginning up wars around the globe for personal power and enrichment.
And the real we aren’t going to change anything unless and until we recognize that currently, we don’t really have a damned thing to say about it, as the Princeton study makes clear. Madness is in the saddle, and we’re just being dragged along behind, for the ride.
I suggest that it’s time to make the attempt, by shaking off the false identities of left-right politics, to recognize who and what are actually responsible for the extremely dire situation in which we find ourselves.**
* See Matt Taibbi on Goldman Sachs.
** See Nader’s Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State (2014)
Love Matt Taibbi – he is scathing yet so damn hilarious And I need all the laughs I can get because I see no way of extricating ourselves from corporate influence. Nader’s “An Unreasonable Man” should be required viewing in high school civics classes – oh wait – civics is no longer being taught. A or B, Coke or Pepsi…
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/left-vs-right-is-a-nonsensical-debate-as-long-as-theres-a-deep-state-in-america-1120ffcf6a56
@Autumn, April 20, 2017 at 7:51 pm
Wow! That episode of “Redacted Tonight” is a real barn-burner!
Thanks very much for posting it.
My only quibble is with what the host said about the “economic system we’ve created.”
“We” have had about as much to do with creating the international economic system as we have with creating the moon.
Ken, most people say “we” as in Americans and I too find that annoying. What the USGinc does and what the citizens really support is very different. Remember that Princeton study which showed that the voices from the serf vote doesn’t affect policy decisions.
https://ivn.us/2015/05/07/voice-really-doesnt-matter-princeton-study-confirms/
@Autumn, April 20, 2017 at 7:11 pm
“Ken, hmmm, you make a good case for Maddow! =) Her book “Tilt” was an excellent read I thought – somewhere along the line though she lost her way – money and power?”
Shortly after she got her own gig on MSNBC, I began to see her as an apologist for the GNSSIH, and simply couldn’t stomach her act.
And the crudity and apparent ignorance with which she went about it occasioned my saying to some friends that it must be a lot easier to get a doctorate from Oxford than I’d realized. Becoming acquainted with the political thinking of Neil Gorsuch, by the way, did nothing to modify that particular assessment.
I haven’t read her book, and frankly don’t intend to, but I’m glad that you found it worthwhile reading and that it reflects some kind of awareness that she’s lost or sold out on.
Ken, I’ve never watched MSM – until last year during the primaries and what I saw made me sick. The utter contempt for truth and the viewers – and that was the “Left” MSM!!. Fox of course is an entirely different entity. Unreal that millions of people consider that contrived crap real news!
The book is worth reading if you are interested in the many military mishaps and $$ wasted. Some of it is so awful it’s hilarious in a dark sort of way.
Honestly, after watching Maddow take down Bernie and promote the TPP all the while demeaning people who were against it turned me off forever.
@ Autumn
“Ken, I agree with Jimmy Dore – Rachel Maddow is seriously threatening our national security via all of her unsubstaniated Russia ‘newz’ which all the Dem cult eagerly lap up. Never mind that architect of containment George Kennan was horrified when NATO bases were moved closer to Russia’s borders, or Gorbechev’s warnings.”
Well, I think Rachel’s argument would be (and with a PhD in politcal science from Oxford, she knows a lot more than Kennan ever did) that if the Russians really didn’t want war with the US and its Satraps, then why did they put their country so provocatively close to those NATO bases?
Ken, hmmm, you make a good case for Maddow! =) Her book “Tilt” was an excellent read I thought – somewhere along the line though she lost her way – money and power?
Ken, I agree with Jimmy Dore – Rachel Maddow is seriously threatening our national security via all of her unsubstaniated Russia “newz” which all the Dem cult eagerly lap up. Never mind that architect of containment George Kennan was horrified when NATO bases were moved closer to Russia’s borders, or Gorbechev’s warnings…
DSS: “There is no Empire, there is no hit list, there are no ‘puppet governments’ planned,”
I inadvertently omitted to add in my last post that in addition to your psychic revelations, the historical evidence fully supports you contra General Clark, in that The GUSNSSIH has so far, at least, left in peace to resolve their internal issues on their own terms, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Somalia.
May the K-NF continue to uninform you.
@desperatelyseekingsusan/sasquatch, April 20, 2017 at 12:52 pm
KR: “As you probably recall, Somalia is one of the 7 countries (Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon) on the Empire’s hit list for installing puppet governments, as pointed out by General Wesley Clark:” [see video above]
DSS: “There is no Empire, there is no hit list, there are no ‘puppet governments’ planned,”
———————————————————————————————————————–
Again, as the spokesperson for Sasquatch-Seeking La-La Land, it goes without saying that you obviously enjoy enormously more credibility than the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark, interviewed in the video above.
Moreover, you’re to be congratulated on your admirable efforts to resurrect the American Know-Nothing Party in order to combat the many libelous myths that have been concocted by enemies of the Greatest US National Security State in History.
May I suggest that you start by deconstructing the slanderous myth that the GUSNSSIH has some 800 military bases around the world with the role of influencing events in those and/or neighboring countries, rather than their being there simply to afford opportunities for US military personnel to see the world while being paid?
here’s one iteration of the myth:
“While there are no freestanding foreign bases permanently located in the United States, there are now around 800 US bases in foreign countries. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the Korean War, there are still 174 US ‘base sites’ in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea, according to the Pentagon. Hundreds more dot the planet in around 80 countries, including Aruba and Australia, Bahrain and Bulgaria, Colombia, Kenya, and Qatar, among many other places. Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”
Once you’ve dispatched that mythical fantasy, I suggest that you then employ your formidable anti-analytic skills in disabusing the world of the ridiculous notion that there were any such things as Roman and British Empires, let alone that there is any evidence for the existence of an American one, especially one that would have intervened (per the myth), frequently quite violently, in the internal affairs of other countries:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/provincialelitist/us-military-and-cia-interventions-since-world?utm_term=.igA3Oqml5#.aa4e0NkE7
May the Know-Nothing Force continue to be with you.
Indeed! Whenever I am about to get caught up in the presstitudes’ fake news frenzy, I return to that video and this other one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeyRwFHR8WY , and everything becomes clear again.
They have tried to dismiss Clarke as crazy, yet no one ever, to my knowledge, directly countered his assertions, and it so happens that reality is proving him right.
@Autumn, April 19, 2017 at 6:27 pm
“Bombings and boots on the ground in Somalia”
As you probably recall, Somalia is one of the 7 countries (Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon) on the Empire’s hit list for installing puppet governments, as pointed out by General Wesley Clark:
As you probably recall, Somalia is one of the 7 countries (Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Iran, and Lebanon) on the Empire’s hit list for installing puppet governments, as pointed out by General Wesley Clark:
There is no Empire, there is no hit list, there are no ‘puppet governments’ planned,
Spot on Ken, This video cannot be aired enough as most folks seem to have limited memories =)
They love war so much, it’s only fair they and their children should be sent first…
Draft the cretins..
@tnash80hotmailcom, April 19, 2017 at 8:38 pm
“Ken Rodgers…
“– You said that the U.S. Deep State is invisible.
“And that you refer to ‘concrete, verifiable phenomena in the real world’.
“I’m not saying it can’t be done, but what how is a perceived ‘Invisible Deep State’ also subject to verification with concrete evidence?”
Here’s a good introduction to the subject by Mike Lofgren, who wrote the book The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (2016):
“How did I come to write an analysis of the Deep State, and why am I equipped to write it? As a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance, I was at least on the fringes of the world I am describing, if neither totally in it by virtue of full membership nor of it by psychological disposition. But, like virtually every employed person, I became, to some extent, assimilated into the culture of the institution I worked for, and only by slow degrees, starting before the invasion of Iraq, did I begin fundamentally to question the reasons of state that motivate the people who are, to quote George W. Bush, ‘the deciders.’ ”
“Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an ‘establishment.’
“All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.”
http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/
See also The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy(2015) by Peter Dale Scott, and
Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World (2014) by Tom Englehardt.
Read the whole essay at the link and if you have any questions, let me know.
Ken Rogers,..
– I just tried to post a reply to your comment here, but it would not post….I don’t have time now to retype and try posting again…will touch bases later.
Ken Rodgers…
I’ll try to summarize what I wrote this morning ( but it would not post).
And in segments, so I don’t lose several paragraphs that won’t post.
There’s an interesting article in Smithsonian Magazine, “The Century long history of tapping Wall Street to run the government”-Feb 13, 2017
OK…that one posted.
Bill Moyer probably has a sense of nostalgia about the first half of the LBJ administration.
He (as press secretary) and LBJ played the press like a violin.
Moyers may feign a newfound sense of integrity with respect to limits of the power of government…Deep State or not
..but as one of LBJ’s chief flunkies, he was enthusiastic about manipulating and pressuring the media.
Ken Rogers ( continued)..
I haven’t read much of Mike Lofgren’s view of the Deep State.
If he’s tied in the CIA and other federal agencies with plots related to 9-11, Sandy Hook “conspiracy”, Boston Marathon bombing, etc., I haven’t seen him do it.
Paul Craig Roberts, on the other hand, seems to view all of those events and more as evidence of deep state conspiracy.
IMO, Roberts lost his marbles long ago.
Lofgren’s deep state scenario seems to focus on the increasing influence of lobbyists, entrench government bureaucrats, massive campaign spending, etc.
The phrase “Deep State” may have been popularized by Lofgren, but the idea of low-visibilty lobbyists, bureaucrats etc. influencing government has been around for a long time.
I think it’s relatively new to see the Deep State accusations weaponized and as freely used by political opponents.
E.G., Steve Bannon is a representative of the deep state puppet master theme by Trump opponents, and Obama holdovers and other long-term bureaucrats are a key component of the Deep State operating against Trump, according to his supporters.