“I don’t care. I believe Putin.” Those six words could be the focus of serious congressional oversight in the coming weeks. Former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe stated that President Donald Trump refused to accept intelligence on North Korea’s missile program and instead that he would rely on what Putin told him. It is a shocking claim, but what makes this claim so notable is that McCabe is suggesting that it was made before witnesses other than himself. That means that it should be capable to confirmation or refutation. However, this could have the makings of a massive privilege fight between the legislative and executive branches.
McCabe says that in the meeting discussing U.S. intelligence “The president launched into several unrelated diatribes. One of those was commenting on the recent missile launches by the government of North Korea. And, essentially, the president said he did not believe that the North Koreans had the capability to hit us here with ballistic missiles in the United States. And he did not believe that because President Putin had told him they did not. President Putin had told him that the North Koreans don’t actually have those missiles. Intelligence officials in the briefing responded that that was not consistent with any of the intelligence our government possesses. To which the president replied, ‘I don’t care. I believe Putin.'”
As alarming and outrageous as it would be, there is nothing unlawful about a president taking the work of a hostile dictator over that of our own intelligence professionals. A president is allowed to have bad judgment and not to listen to his own government. So what is the oversight claim? Congress cannot allege a crime on this allegation and oversight is not designed for probing the judgment of presidents. However, it would be so bizarre and dangerous that it would be worthy of congressional inquiry. That is likely where this will be heading.
Frankly, I have been highly critical of McCabe — as was the internal investigation into his conduct.
COMMENTOR ESTOVIR GOES ON RECORD:
“PUTIN IS NO THREAT TO ME OR AMERICA”
Estovir says: February 19, 2019 at 11:11 AM:
“I believe Putin over Wapooh, NYT, CNN and McCabe combined. Then again Putin is no threat to me or America but WaPo et al are a threat to all of us
Meanwhile the US Congress is milking Americans monies, the MSM is manipulating the gullible while increasing their revenues and our families are far more important than the aforementioned though Americans have shown they dont value their own, blood and otherwise.
If you dont have a family then thats on you”.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Estovir’s statement here illustrates how he views this thread as a comfort zone. Estovir is so certain our conservative regulars feel the same, that he thinks nothing of publicly coming out as a Putin admirer; claiming the latter is “no threat to America”.
Estovir goes on to say that the ‘real threat’ to America comes from The Washington Post. Here he makes it clear: America’s ‘real enemy’ are American-born liberals. Like genuine Americans are actually a greater danger to the nation than Russian nationalists!
Estovir’s response here is an immaculate example of how Donald Trump has dumbed-down America to an appealing extent. Eisenhower and Reagan would have been shocked that conservatives would ever come to this.
Estovir, what country were you born in????
Don’t be so sure that Reagan would think any such thing.
Also dont forget that Russia was America’s strategic military ally during World War II when Ike was the top General.
Patrick Buchanan who was reasonably close to Reagan has made the case for decades that Russia is not any natural threat to US strategic interests. from wiki:
Russia
Buchanan believes the United States should consider post-Communist Russia a strong ally and make attempts to bring that country closer to the West. He says, “Just as Russians have to put the Cold War behind them, so do we. America’s quarrel was never with the Russian people, it was with the Bolsheviks who terrorized Russia and said to Americans when I was young, ‘We will bury you!'” He has called Vladimir Putin a “patriot and a nationalist who puts Russia first, and who is a resolute guardian of Russian national interests.”[121] He said Putin is probably “being set up” for the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, and that Litvinenko’s death was likely either a suicide or the work of one of Putin’s enemies trying to “put a cloud of suspicion over Putin and a chill over Russian relations with the West.”[122] He has also accused the Bush Administration of harming American interests and endangering America’s potential friendship with Russia by needlessly antagonizing the Russian president[123] “Our vital interest was always in maintaining strong US–Russian ties,” he writes, “which have been ravaged by the meddling of neoconservatives mired in Russophobia.”[124] In Buchanan’s view, both Russia and the United States have a vital interest in resisting Islamic terrorism and the possibility of Chinese expansionism, and that “Of this generation of leaders, it may be said in epitaph: They were too small to see the larger world. They frittered away in a decade what others had won in a half-century of perseverance in the Cold War.”[125] He also opposed the US position in the South Ossetian war of 2008, asking “Can any sane man believe the United States should go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia over Stalin’s birthplace, Georgia?”
Buchanan states in the article Can Uncle Sam let go?[citation needed]:
After the Russia-Georgia clash last August, Bush declared, “It’s important for the people of Lithuania to know that when the United States makes a commitment – we mean it.” But “mean” what? That a Russian move on Vilnius will be met by U.S. strikes on Mother Russia? Are we insane? Let us thank Divine Providence Russia has not tested the pledge. For can anyone believe that, to keep Moscow from re-establishing its hegemony over a tiny Baltic republic, we would sink Russian ships, blockade Russian ports, bomb Russian airfields, attack Russian troop concentrations? That would risk having some Russian general respond with atomic weapons on US air, sea and ground forces. Great powers do not go to war against other great powers unless vital interests are imperiled. Throughout the Cold War, that was true of both America and Russia.
Pat Buchanan strongly supports Vladimir Putin. In a pro-Putin essay posted to a conservative website, he wrote that “Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity” and that “Russia’s annexation of Crimea is part of Putin’s master plan to fight the moral war against the west. Further adding that “Russia is the ‘third Rome’ and the West ‘is Gomorrah'”.[126][127]
IMO, historically the Russian people seem very nationalistic and like strong leaders. They are used to being provided for and many become uncomfortable in a market system.
Not at all clear that they “like” strong leaders, but have been saddled with them repeatedly.
Jay S. I am not a Russian Historian, but from what I garner from Russian Historians it seems strong leaders are what the Russian people are used to and they gravitate in that direction.
On another item when discussing the Warren tax you asked a question and I provided an answer, not what I surmise you wanted, but an answer so your question could be answered. I posted it again and hope you will avail yourself in answering the question.
The current incumbent has high approval ratings.
Per the World Bank’s revised calculations, Russia suffered a 42% decline in real GDP per capita over the period running from 1990-98. (The decline in this metric suffered by the United States during the years running from 1929-33 was about 35%). The post-Soviet republics suffered far more violent contractions during those years than did the non-Soviet post-Commnist countries, as a rule. Leaving aside the warring Yugoslav states, Roumania was the only post-Communist country outside the old USSR which suffered a contraction larger than about 12%.
Coincident with the foregoing was a public health crisis which shaved several year off the country’s life expectancy and a wretched erosion in the efficacy of law enforcement, which left Russia with the occidental world’s highest homicide rate.
This sort of thing tended to discredit the regnant corps of politicians. Their liberal-democratic initiatives ceased with their departure in 1999.
There’s a large portfolio of state-owned enterprises in Russia and there are services provided by state agencies which could readily be provided by private enterprise, but goods and services are now vended (and commonly produced) by private enterprise making use of market prices.
Yes, Putin is using the marketplace but too much goes to his military and the bureacracy along with a lot of the money initially stolen going into the hands of a few very rich people. The infrastructure is poor and though Russia has rivers they all run in opposite directions so they have to rely on land transportation which isn’t the greatest. The people are not used to marketplaces. Russia should be a much stronger economic power but hasn’t progressed in an optimal way. The reliance on mineral wealth for foreign currency is too high.
The ruble was devalued not that long ago and confidence in the Ruble is low. Russian military spending, I believe, has fallen.
Russia should be a much stronger economic power
No clue what is the basis of your shoulds.
The people are not used to marketplaces
They’ve been using marketplaces and vendor pricing for a generation, Allen. They’re plenty used to them.
The reliance on mineral wealth for foreign currency is too high.
The ratio of natural resource rents to domestic product in Russia has been halved in 20 years and extractive industries now account for around 18% of gdp, no more. They dominate the export trade, and that causes some problems. Recall, however, that farm products, fuels, and ores dominate Australia’s export mix. Australia does all right.
a lot of the money initially stolen going into the hands of a few very rich people.
The World Bank has published several estimates of the share of personal income in Russia which adheres to the most affluent 10%. The share has been bouncing around 31%. That for the United States has been bouncing around…30%.
The Maddison Project reports that in 1913, Russia’s GDP per capita was 35% that of the United States. They report that in 2018, it is 43% of that of the United States. If you bracket out the oil and mineral exports and offer a correction for their income distribution being more skewed than that of a typical occidental country, you could calculate a synthetic value for Russia’s per capita product that’s about 25% lower than its conventionally calculated value and perhaps better representing Russia’s standard of living. Russia’s been gaining on the United States and other affluent countries quite rapidly, and even with that correction incorporated into your assessment, could reach a per capita product half that of the United States within 15 years or so. (The per capita product of the United States in real terms was about 1/2 what it is today in 1975).
That’s sufficient to be called a 1st tier economy (and equivalent to the position countries like the Czech Republic and Slovenia occupy today). NB, and economic geographer once offered me a summary of research on labor migration absent administrative controls. When the personal income per capita in country A rises to 1/2 the level in country B, the motivation to cross cultural and linguistic boundaries to find work largely evaporates. That boundary is one of social significance, and it’s a reasonable wager Russia will reach it ‘ere long.
DSS, Russia went through a bad period so when you use your numbers you are starting from a low where things invariably get better if any reasonable management style is used You have a different view of Russia than I do. Your view seems to be based on numbers occurring after the GDP or Russia fell precipitously.
All humans have experience in the marketplace but it is a matter of extent. The bureaucracy of Russia and the military have one style of life. The rest of the people outside the oligarchs have another. Much of their life was socialized with government provided healthcare; housing and food prices controlled. No, the people are really not used to a real free market and when they enter their stores for the few products the stores are frequently out of them.
I’ll let you live with your fantassy that there is a Costco on every corner and people have to circle the block in their cars to find a parking space.
“extractive industries now account for around 18% of gdp, no more. They dominate the export trade, and that causes some problems.” AT least you see some problems with their ability to to obtain foreign currency. Of course you realize that these type of exports provide the Russian government with a substantial amount of its revenues and that government helps prop up the economy.
Some of the recent increase in revenue was based on one time events. 2019 looks like it won’t be as good as 2018 where real income fell and consumption may have increased due to family borrowing.
In sum I am not saying that Russia can’t do well. One of the reasons I thought it was a good idea for Trump to quietly deal with Russia is because of a faltering economy in Russia and our impact on their economy. With appropriate deals both the US and Russia could have benefited.
TL; dr
OK, DSS, I’ll shorten it for you: “I’ll let you live with your fantasy that there is a Costco on every corner and people have to circle the block in their cars to find a parking space.”
Kurtz, I dont care what Pat Buchanan says. No sensible American with any knowledge of the world admires Vladimir Putin. Only an idiot would think Putin embraces western values.
OK, now they are protecting Putin and Pat Buchanan? Whats next, Hitler and Stalin weren’t bad after all? But..but… Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Trump just said that he has “the absolute right to declare a national emergency.” Trump did not say that he has the “power” to declare a national emergency. Trump did not say that he has the “authority” to declare a national emergency.
Trump said that he has “the absolute right to declare a national emergency.”
“Absolute right” means “absolute monarchy”–as in “The Divine Right of Kings”–which is “absolutely” antithetical to The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution of the United States of America.
educate yourself even just a bit on this and it’s fairly clear he is on firm ground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emergencies_Act
Rights belong to individuals. Powers belong to offices. The POTUS is an office–not a person. The Office of The POTUS had “powers” and “authority.” The Office of The POTUS does not have “rights”–least of all “absolute rights.”
BTW, the “powers” and the “authority” of The Office of the POTUS are not “absolute powers” nor “absolute authority.”
Now you go educate yourself before the next time you arrogate to yourself the unwarranted privilege of telling anybody else to get out your way and stay out your way–you insolent knave, you.
L4B “The POTUS is an office–not a person”
Tell Hillary that. She will listen to you, right?
Why werent you people such Executive Office loving Amurikuns circa Nixon, Ford, Reagan, HW Bush, GW Bush? What could have possibly changed to now make you as American as a Transgendered Betsy Ross?
Howard Schultz 2020
Bernie Sanders 2020
Woo hoo!
am I the knave? Who are you King John? lol.
listen up. the statute gives him a right to declare the emergency. deal with it. in this context the word right is just fine.
pure sophistry. your legal reasoning is about on level now with the cranks who say the income tax is unconstitutional, even though there is an amendment that says it isnt.
“Absolute right” means “absolute monarchy”–as in “The Divine Right of Kings”
Diane, your fantassies disagree with Webster: an absolute right is “a legally enforceable right to take some action”
Why is it you guys know so little that you have to make things up?
Rights belong to individuals. Rights do not belong to public offices nor to public officials committing official acts in their capacity as public officials.
Why are you Trump cult worshippers the biggest boatload of stinking hypocrites who have run aground and washed ashore on The United States of America?
You sound like you went to law school less and less all the time.
Yes public officials do have rights within the lawful scope of their authority. Duh.
“Rights belong to individuals.”
Diane: As an individual Trump could not “declare a national emergency” but as President the law and the Constitution say he can. You are a very confused individual that distorts almost everything you touch.
Trump did not say that he has the “power” to declare a national emergency. Trump did not say that he has the “authority” to declare a national emergency.
Trump said that he has “the absolute right to declare a national emergency.”
Therefore, in Sluggo’s own estimation,Trump is a very confused individual who distorts almost everything he touches.
“Trump said that he has “the absolute right to declare a national emergency.””
Diane, Trump has that absolute right based on the Constitution and our laws. You are hung up on the words “absolute right” so I provide the definition of absolute right from Merrian-Webster. Whenever you are wrong you start to play wordgames or do other silly things because you don’t have the intellectual integrity to admit when you are wrong. You are emotionally frail.
Merrian-Webster: ” a legally enforceable right to take some action or to refrain from acting “
you should be embarassed by your sophistry. it’s just trolling. i believe you are not quit that foolish as you sound.
Late, do not speak of “boats,” My most recent ancestor only came on a “boat” over a century ago. And the rest were here going back mostly 2 centuries more before. I had an ancestor at Valley Forge and one of my patrilineal line lost 4/5 sons in the Union meat grinder infantry. Trump supporters generally did not “wash ashore” we were BORN HERE. We are the NATIVES.
You want to talk about boatloads? look to the illegal immigrant patronage you schlep for all the time. there’s the boatloads washing ashore. what an inapt metaphor.
Are you now going on record as a believer in natural and unalienable rights?
Are you going on record as someone who believes that The POTUS, Trump, has a “natural” and “inalienable” “right” to declare a national emergency? Does The Office of The POTUS exist in the State of Nature? Do “national emergencies” occur in the State of Nature? Was The National Emergency Act of 1976 a natural act? Or worse, an Act of God?
Nope. It is a right or power or authority provided by law. Therefore it is alienable. This is not that difficult if you understood the difference; more importantly, if you respected the difference.
” It is a right or power or authority provided by law. Therefore it is alienable. ”
Olly, Diane is having an an angry emotional tantrum that prevents her from recognizing the difference between and alienable right and an inalienable right.
Neither of you two “gentlemen” are dealing with the issue of “what Trump said.” The both of you two “gentlemen” are trying to make the issue about “what L4D said.”
Please allow me to remind you that Trump said that he has “an absolute right to declare a national emergency.” Please be further advised that L4D is saying that “Trump does not have an absolute right to declare a national emergency; instead, Trump has only the power and the authority to thus and so.”
Now the both of you two “gentlemen” go explain to Trump the difference between alienable versus inalienable rights. While you’re at it, explain to Trump the difference between powers versus rights. And, if you have any patience left after explaining those distinctions to Trump, see if you can explain to Trump the difference between an “inalienable right” versus “an absolute right.” Assuming, of course, that either of you two “gentlemen” are willing to recognize and acknowledge such a distinction based upon something other than the mere differences in spelling and pronunciation between the words “inalienable” versus “absolute.”
“they” are not doing anything. i was just conversing. and I like a lot of things Patrick Buchanan has written and I make no apology to you for that.
As for Mussolini, he is underrated as a domestic politician. That is no surprise considering the outcome of his disastrous foreign policies and the war. But it’s also a function of Marxists of one share or another dominating western universities for a long time. They don’t like him.
I like to think of Mussolini as something like James Hoffa. He had an amazing ability to organize large numbers of people for mutual purpose, and accomplished a lot for the national economy through his works. But the good works are not remembered, on the sensational bad things.
The only things I find worth reading about Mussolini or his fascism now are written by Roger D. Griffin. Look it up if you are really interested.
Or that reminds me of another good book. When it comes to social systems, culture, and “social justice” not in the Democrat sense but in the Catholic sense, here’ s a good book some people might like
https://www.amazon.com/Catholicism-Protestantism-Capitalism-Amintore-Fanfani/dp/0971489475
“As for Mussolini, he is underrated as a domestic politician.”
That is interesting. Who underrated him as a domestic polician? He was actually looked up to by many western politicians of the time. You used the word domestic so that doesn’t include foreign affairs and the military.
I would say the question is more who like, who does NOT not underrate Mussolini as a politician? And the answer to that is Roger Griffin. Who unlike many of my favorites is actually a respected mainstream academic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Griffin
He has a lot of essays and books on fascism which are very good, descriptive works of political science if you will, and not grandstanding polemics.
His foreign policy was foolish and Italy’s performance in the Axis alliance was a continuous disaster. Those things are clear. It was in his domestic actions that he showed a genius for leadership.
“I would say the question is more who like, who does NOT not underrate Mussolini as a politician? ”
That is not the question. The question was “Who underrated him as a domestic polician?”
So far you are telling me a historian didn’t underrate him as a politician. I told you a bunch of others that didn’t underrate him. Can you answer the question:
“Who underrated him as a domestic polician?”
Minor correction: “Donald Trump has dumbed-down America to an appalling extent.”
Thank, you, Diane. My eyes don’t catch fine print the way they used to.
“Donald Trump has dumbed-down America to an appalling extent.”
Peter: In a way he has. The left wing media sounds as stupid as sin. Hollywood has a bunch of lunatics threatening to leave the US. Academia can’t even control its students and people from the left like you can’t even make cogent arguments.
Allan:
“Donald Trump has dumbed-down America to an appalling extent.”
***
“Peter: In a way he has.”
********************************
They were always that stupid. Holly-weird is run by robber barons who let the under-educated actors off the reservation long enough to showcase their liberal bona fides (pay no attention to the mogul behind the curtain) all the while cashing those evil capitalist checks. Since the rise of Netflx, the dinosaurs in power are waning and hence the death throes of the newest creatures to run afoul of the La Brea Tarpits.
Mespo, don’t you think the replacements (to Hellywood) come from the same political persuasion?
I hust had a spat with Spotify mentioned earlier on this blog. I cancelled my paid subscription because they will not permit PragerU from paying money to advertise on their site. I have been encouraging others to do the same sending out the letters between Spotify and PragerU (excellent place to learn things relavant to both sides of the aisle especially the young) hoping people will recognize that they should not provide financial support to organizations that restrict our freedoms of speech. As a private entity they may have that right but the public shouldn’t permit it. I think Spotify has 200 million customers, add that to Facebook, youtube and some other large companies and we end up restricting voices based on the fantassies of a few that presently have control over hellywood, academia and the press.
I have discussed this problem with people that run organizations that have faced these problems. I know some that use aliases because they otherwise would be blacklisted in the entertainment world. I even spoke to James Damore who is not a political animal or at least he wasn’t before he was fired. Any thoughts?
You don’t have to thank me for anything ever. But you’ll always be perfectly welcome to if you simply must.
L4B: Major correction
The Democrats circa 1960 screwed America, and it continues today without any Crisco.
The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed how there’s a limit to how much bad behavior can saturate a society before society lowers standards for everybody. He called it “defining deviancy down.” “When you begin to think that it’s not really that bad,” he said, “pretty soon you become accustomed to very destructive behavior.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/27/defining-deviancy-down/
Estovir, what does your link have to do with anything we have discussed today??? NOTHING!!! It has NOTHING to do with Professor Turley’s column or any recent debate.
This is par for the course with you. Several times per day you seek to change the discussion with completely irrelevant topics. Topics that aren’t even trending in conservative or mainstream medias. Topics you simply pull out of your crotch just for the sake of disrupting our discussions.
Obviously you know most conservatives here don’t like my politics. And I don’t like their’s. But even my most bitter opponents here are capable of sticking with one topic until the argument plays out.
But ‘not you’, Estovir. To the contrary, you are ‘only’ capable of changing topics. That seems to be your self-appointed role on this blog.
No sensible American with any knowledge of the world admires Vladimir Putin
Another piece of evidence that Peter Shill knows nothing. Putin has presided over a rapid improvement in Russia’s economic well-being, public health, and level of public order. There’s a reason pollsters find that over 80% of the Russian public is congenial to him. He’s a stone-cold Machiavellian, but he’s gotten results.
Thanks, Tabby. I won’t even argue with this comment. If you can’t see how incriminating it looks (for Trump supporters) that’s all the better.
I just hope the Professor looks at these comments. He really needs to see ‘who’ he’s pandering to.
It doesn’t look incriminating to anyone outside your addled head, Peter. Statistics on Russia’s economic performance, life expectancy, total fertility rates, and homicide rates are readily available. Putin’s base of support is readily explained by reference to that data.
Russia’s level of political pluralism and electoral competition has been since 2004 lower than it was earlier. However, if you look over the sweep of Russian history since 1789, you find but two periods where public life was more liberal-democratic: 1905-17 and 1988-2004. The Putin regime is about at the 85th percentile of historical Russian regimes in that regard. The Russian public is satisfied with that for the time being. The political opposition in Russia is about equally divided between three segments: Soviet nostalgiacs, Russian nationalists, and the occidental spectrum. The last might encompass 15% of the Russian public, and is represented by one party that is anti-Putin and one that is ambivalent about Putin.
excellent appraisal
Peter finds your insight, “Incriminating!”
Tabby, we don’t know how many Russians really support Putin. They haven’t had a truly free election in many years, if ever. For you to imply that Putin is truly popular and loved by the Russian masses is just an empty assertion.
But even ‘if’ Putin is truly popular at home, his clear goal is to break up the traditional western alliances. And Trump seems eager to assist Putin in that regard.
No American with any knowledge of world affairs wants to see Putin succeed at that goal. Only deranged Trump supporters, under the influence of right-wing media, would chose Putin over NATO.
But even ‘if’ Putin is truly popular at home, his clear goal is to break up the traditional western alliances.
Huh? All of his aggressive activities of note have been on Russia’s borders or in loci outside the ambo of Western alliances.
The most salient disputes among occidental countries have concerned refugee admissions and the terms of association with Britain. The blame for that rests with Frau Merkel and the Brussels apparat. Nothing Putin has done or could do has caused such discord.
“Only deranged Trump supporters, under the influence of right-wing media, would chose Putin over NATO.”
Trump clearly chose NATO. Peter, try remembering the story of the emperor who wore no clothes. Everyone was afraid to open the question of clothes with regard to the emperor and question Eurpean participation with regard to NATO. Essentially NATO was gradually becoming naked and all Trump did was to tell NATO to put some clothes on and support it. Trump doesn’t believe in paper tigers.
there is polling done in russia. surely you are aware of that. recent ones show a slight erosion in his popularity. elections are not the only gauge of approval ya know.
Oh, our wonderful NATO allies. How well does Turkey treat its neighbor and ally Greece? About the only thing the Greeks and Turks have in common now besides NATO is they probably like Putin just fine. Albeit for different reasons.
NATO has some problems, EU has more. “Putin” the bogeyman of incompetent Western leaders, naturally takes advantage of weakness in his adversaries.
It is not necessary to always demonize the adversary. I remember the good old days when many Democrats accused Republicans of demonizing Russia! Lol how times have changed
TIA x 2:
“If you can’t see how incriminating it looks (for Trump supporters) that’s all the better.”
********************************
How the Hell does Peter get out of bed and make his way out of his front door every day? A MAGA hat at a Warren rally has a better chance of survival!
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lloyd-putin-commentary/commentary-why-putin-is-still-genuinely-popular-in-russia-idUSKBN1GV25D.
“Tabby”, you can rely on international reporting to gauge Putin’s support among the Russian people, of you can rely on the opinion of our resident Hollywood jackass.
Explain why you question the ja kass’ version.
” The noted political commentator Andrei Kolesnikov added that Stalin has, for some years, stood as a symbol of order: people were not interested in large-scale protests, let alone revolution. Stability is all.”
— a quote from your article. And the point is what?
Russia is a different and sovereign country.
Not all peoples must be the same– isn’t diversity a good thing?
Should all countries be a carbon copy of liberal America, which constantly rebels against all tradition authority and… order?
Order is not necessarily bad. Nor is chaos, rebellion, revolution, necessarily a good thing— unless you are from Hollywood.
Compared to the collapse of the 90’s any stability in Russia is welcome and an improvement. However, Russia’s economy is flat or riding gas prices. The dumber Russians like the jingoism – sound familiar? – while Putin’s corrupt cronies like the low freight charges on shipping their money out of the country. In any case, one can “admire” any number of traits a leader may exhibit, but forgive some of us for demurring on the aptly named “absurd”‘s excitement over Putin.
PS “Reply” did not appear under absurd’s post below, but hey, that horse is well beaten and he hasn’t offered anything new for a few rounds.I’ll take the personal insults for the surrender they represent.
However, Russia’s economy is flat or riding gas prices.
No, fuel and mineral exports have accounted for a median 18% of nominal gross domestic product.over the last 10 years, and around 13-14% in the last four. Real gdp per capita (PPP) doubled over the period running from 1998 to 2017. China’s been the most dynamic of the world’s larges economies over that time, followed by India. Russia ranks third.
No, now averaging under 2% and the future doesn’t look much better.
How’s the weather at the bot farm?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=RU
https://www.statista.com/statistics/263621/gross-domestic-product-gdp-growth-rate-in-russia/
“… Russia is the world’s largest producer of oil (14 percent of world output), natural gas (18 percent) and nickel (12 percent). The energy sector is the most important, it contributes 20-25 percent of GDP, 65 percent of total exports and 30 percent of government budget revenue…’
tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-growth
Dumb Russians like jingoism? Arrogance!
How do you tell the difference in another country’s sense of patriotism versus jingoism? Who are you to judge?
The quality of Russia as a national entity is profoundly different than the US in the first place and we as Americans might not have a good sense of what it means to be a Russian or a Chinese or a Serb or a Turk. Some of these peoples have a social identity that is a lot more substantial and precisely defined that whatever makes an “American.”
I notice liberals who champion the notion that ‘anybody can be an American” always have the hardest time understanding this.
And this gives the lie to all the phony talk of multiculturalism and diversity. Under the propaganda is a strong intolerance of any nation that refuses the norms of liberal capitalist ideology.
Tolerance of foreigners invading america, good!
Tolerance of foreigners who are sovereign and act it in their own nations– bad!
Insane leftist nonsense reveals itself daily
I personally admire him but you have been too polite to call me insensible.
Putin is a nationalist. I admire nationalists. I admire a patriot. I am not a globalist and I don’t like globalist mentalities.
As for Western values, they are not my concern. But there is a lot of room in “the West” for values that people do not agree upon. For example, a lot of Americans do not think “Christianity” is a Western value, Maybe some do. I suspect that Mr Putin thinks Orthodoxy is a key cultural component of Russian culture; but he is known to be kind and hospitable to legitimate Jewish and Muslim authorities too, and is consistently respectful of the traditional religious minorities found in the Russian sphere.
Putin is better for Russia than the drunk Yeltsin was. Russians genuinely like Putin. I am not Russian but I can understand them.
Putin is a judoka. I studied it too but my club is defunct, sadly. I wish I could take a lesson from Putin. He is older than me but in better shape by far. I admire him alright.
Sorry, Kurtz. If I’m supposed to think Vladimir Putin is cool but misunderstood, you are beating-off. ..Seriously..!
No real American, in ‘my’ United States, thinks Vladimir Putin is anything but a ruthless adversary with hostile intentions towards the west.
Over And Out.
Since the middle of the 18th c., the average full tenure of a Russian ruler has been just shy of 20 years. He’s been in office 19 years. . So far, the worst of it has been his harassment of the Ukraine.
Well Peter I have some relatives in California who like to demonize Putin too. I realize there is a geographic dynamic here. Reporting from flyover, out here, there are a lot of Americans who like him fine. Some may also have ancestry which is Russian, Serb, Greek. A lot of regular white guys like Putin just fine too. Some of these people may be Americans who are Orthodox Christians and appreciate Putin’s fair treatment of Orthodoxy. Are they not entitled to an opinion?
Also there may be more than a few Arabs in the US and while many may not care about him, some of them, do not have any kind of hot dislike of Putin.
Are ethese diverse Americans are free to have a different opinion than you and some of us do! Vive la difference, eh?
About the only people I know outside Democrat activists and federal government employees who toe the party line, who are habitually negative and vocal about Putin, are the Polish. I can totally understand how they feel. If one were Polish or Ukrainian or Chechen one I could understand an intense dislike of Putin. But for the average Putin hating Democratic activist, I think he’s just an authoritarian bogeyman for you.
it’s kind of like Assads. Boy he was the bete noire for a while. Hafez and then his son. But, if you talk to some Syrians, some of them like him and appreciate how the family kept a lid on the religious whackos in that part of the world.
Did you know a lot of Christians from surrounding countries fled over generations, into Syria, so they could be safe? Yes, and a lot have had to flee the gallant NATO ally Turkey.
Here, let me inform you on some history. You can see that the Kurds were happy killers of Syrians alongside the Turkish butchers, not too long ago! 100 years is a short duration in the middle east you know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_genocide
See, a lot of people are not all wrapped up in ideological labels and so forth like your average liberal. They are more tribal. Our people were that way once, and they are becoming that way again. Why? It’s a natural evolved form of social organization that helps the group and person survive.
At the end of the day a lot of political “ideas” are just slogans and a whole lot of nonsense. A lot of all this comes down to tribal and tribal alignments. The people who get this will go faster farther and the people stuck on ideology will remain under the influence of some clever salesman.
Peter, back in Chicago, long time ago, i used to “roll” with the aikidoists at the MAC which at the time was on north ashland. But, then, I took up Judo. How could I not admire Putin?
Anyhow even if he is an adversary: and is it wrong to admire an adversary? As a lawyer I tell you there are many lawyers I deeply dislike, do not want to socialize with, some I do not even consider ethical, but i nonetheless admire.
consider the difference between the words adversary and enemy. Putin and Russia may be a rival or even an adversary but there is no need to make out of Russia or Putin, an enemy.
But the current Democrat leadership has elected to make out of Putin an Enemy, and to associate Trump with him, to make an Enemy out of him too. That is a political tactic. I understand why they are doing it but I do not allow myself to get sucked into that.
https://books.google.com/books?id=tqPFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136&dq=enemy+adversary+distinction&source=bl&ots=EzsdkZzBAA&sig=ACfU3U0mZpMPJChsIb4Wj80djPWXerIwAg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwis1OTGgc7gAhXpsVQKHcUZBr0Q6AEwDnoECAEQAQ#v=onepage&q=enemy%20adversary%20distinction&f=false
TRUMP SIDED WITH PUTIN IN HELSINKI
THEREFORE MCCABE’S ALLEGATION IS PERFECTLY CREDIBLE
It was less than a year ago, July 16, 2018, at conference in Helsinki Finland, that Donald Trump stood at a podium beside Vladimir Putin and sided with the latter against U.S. Intelligence agencies. The scene played-out in a venue that was almost literally a world stage. The moment was so shocking that even right-wing media blinked.
Trump detractors like myself expected that moment to be a turning point. We presumed that even right-wing media would start to view Trump through a more sober lens. Never before had a U.S. President sided with an adversary in such a public setting. But before the week was over, right-wing media had snapped right back to its role of uncritical Trump cheerleader.
One had the feeling a text had gone out to every editor in right-wing media. The message could have been, “Forget Helsinki. Stand by Trump. Pretend it never happened”. And right-wing media has pretended ever since. Even Professor Turley above makes no mention of Helsinki. In reality the reference would have been essential in putting McCabe’s allegation in perspective.
Trump’s quote was “President Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be,”
There is an adage, ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’. Though politically it might have been better for Trump to yell and scream in public which would alienate Putin, that is not a good way to strike a deal. Obama was a sap when dealing with Putin but Trump has actually fought back. Had the political hatchetmen not been around Trump may have made more progress towards peace with Putin but we will never know. The politics of the left is severely hurting American policy.
Wrong! McCabe is insubordinate bureaucratic plotter against the civilian elected leader.
The people of the US do not want the kind of Cold War 2.0 that military and intelligence bureacrats would love.
McCabe is a seditionist. But we thank him for his confession~!
😉
Yes, what a scandal, and what clever and evil operatives these Deep State moles are.
First they announce an FBI investigation of Trump’s opponent 2 weeks before the election but keep hidden another investigation of his campaign.
Now, they are speaking about the 25th Amendment which they have absolutely no power to encourage or enact!
What depths are too low for them to probe, what backstabbing too evil for them to attempt! We must maintain our guard at all times against such cut throat opponents.
Too bad he didn’t get it on tape via wire.
sO…..the president has to take as gospel information from the same people who said that Saddam’s WMDs was a “slam dunk.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/08/03/russian-us-election-interference-donald-trump/878910002/
Of course not, but as a President he has an obligation to look at factual evidence before glibly jumping in bed with a foreign power that was more self-serving than ‘friendly’….
Becky: “Of course not, but as a President he has an obligation to look at factual evidence before glibly jumping in bed with a foreign power that was more self-serving than ‘friendly’….
It has been entertaining to see the Left (e.g. Woodward and Berstein, anti Reagan, anti HW Bush, anti W, etc) morph from being haters of the Feds to now being in bed with old white men in their 70s running the Feds who lack the access to high grade Vodka that Ruskies do
But hey! You do you!
NB: Russians seem a whole lot more fun than John Brennan.
RSA, Saddam had fooled his own generals. ‘They’ even thought Saddam had WMD’s. Saddam bluffed everyone. He expelled U.N. Inspectors as part of said bluff.
Few, if ‘any’ conservatives were questioning our Intelligence Agencies in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Bush still won reelection with strong support from conservatives. And those same conservatives became passionate haters of Obama the very second Obama entered the Oval Office.
But now those conservatives are ‘deep skeptics’ of U.S. Intelligence. What a sham! Their hindsight is 20-20 now that Trump is in the White House.
Peter, your rhetoric proves you to be an ill tempered ideologue. Reagan said it right “Trust but verify” and that goes for our intelligence service as well. You reckon my friends and I to be conservatives. When Obama came into office we were not happy but thought he could make a positive difference especially in race relations and some of his stated policies. His attitude caused harm to race relations and that was one of the first big problems we had with Obama. There was no call to impeach him, kill him and no desire that he wouldn’t have a successful presidency though on certain issues we would all fight him like we were supposed to.
Our intelligence services are lacking in many regards. Look at what happened with the Church comittee and the Democrats. We don’t have the needed manpower on the ground of our enemies. We have to think about a policy we can commit to and skip all the rhetoric and screaming to make things look like we are doing something. Wasn’t it TR who said “speak softly, and carry a big stick”? That is pretty much what Trump has done.
Alan, if we have no faith in American intelligence agencies, we should liquidate those bureaucracies and save billions of dollars.
But conservatives like you want to cherry pick intelligence; rejecting any that contradicts Donald Trump.
Logically, it would be easier and saner to reject Donald Trump.
i can hardly believe a guy who poses as a liberal is such a blissful sycophant of “intelligence agencies.”
But, then again, most Hillary boosters are the same.
Let me ask you, did you vote for Hillary against Obama in the 2008 primary?
Most Democrat party war mongers did.
“Alan, if we have no faith in American intelligence agencies, we should liquidate those bureaucracies and save billions of dollars.”
As usual, you are bipolar… all or none. There is a lot of stuff inbetween.
“But conservatives like you want to cherry pick intelligence; rejecting any that contradicts Donald Trump.”
Peter: Foreign policy is up to the President that was voted in by the people not by a bureaucrat who has no standing other than as an advisor. AS we have seen members of the intelligence organizations have been acting very stupidly in recent times so yes one should take everything they say with a grain of salt. That is normal for executives. They create plans and the bigger picture seeing how the specifics fit into their plan not visa versa. [For business I have to use attorney’s but for the most part they are there to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” though a good attorney can be quite helpful. I don’t expect my attornies to fully understand my intentions. I am experienced in what I do and they are similarly experienced in what they do. AS a low level employee or government worker you might not understand what I am saying.]
“Logically, it would be easier and saner to reject Donald Trump.”
Logically, based on the fantastic things Trump has done it is saner to trust Trump’s gut and ability to parse information.
Paid troll Peter is High “ if we have no faith in American intelligence agencies.”
Now that is rich. LBJ would have appreciated your unwavering support but why suddenly be consistent in your mongrel thinking?
Russians were our friends post Cold War, until Hillary twice lost the Presdiential election and now, her pee brain mutant mongrels follow her every whimper….russians, Russians, RUSSIANS!!!
News flash: Your loser leaders (e.g. Obama, Hillary, Biden, Kamala.,Sen Pocahontas, Booker, et al) dont stand a chance in Hades in winning the White House ever given they are without any cogent message other than “Kill Trump and his followers” from behind your computers
Two word for you:
Howard Schultz
good luck with that
You are quite historically wrong. Weapons inspections were thorough and it was known the that the WMD thing was bogus. Scott Ritter:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trump-is-right-the-intelligence-community-needs-to-go-back-to-school/
Rare is the politician who is well enough versed in the minutia of history and foreign affairs to generate original thinking—or bold enough to challenge the status quo on the grounds that it isn’t working. Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush were among the original thinkers, leaders who opened relations with communist China and oversaw the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union, respectively. Among those who challenge the status quo is Donald Trump, a political maverick who, rightly or wrongly, has sought to challenge the conventional dogma in ways no previous politician ever has.
There is no better illustration of the intellectual corruption of the intelligence community than its performance in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The current dean of the intelligence establishment, the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, illustrates perfectly the slavish impulse to conform. In his book Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, Clapper writes, “We heard that Vice President Cheney was pushing the Pentagon for intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and then the order came down to NIMA [the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, which Clapper headed at the time] to find the WMD sites [original emphasis]. We set to work, analyzing imagery to eventually identify, with varying degrees of confidence, more than 950 sites where we assessed there might be WMDs or a WMD connection. We drew on all of NIMA’s skill sets…and it was all wrong.”
One of the most damning indictments of the intellectual vacuum within the intelligence community comes from the Senate Intelligence Committee’s examination of the failures that led to the erroneous conclusions over Iraq’s WMDs. That report found that not once did the intelligence community question the underlying assumption that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction, despite no hard intelligence sustaining that assumption. Instead, every assessment started by assuming that Iraq possessed those weapons.
The same mindset permeates the intelligence community’s analysis today. To understand why, consider the current crop of intelligence community leaders.
The Conservative Case Against Gina Haspel
Peter Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 Election
Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, served as U.S. ambassador to Germany during the build-up to the Iraq war, and was the point man for selling the war to the Germans. Gina Haspel, director of the CIA, is a career operations officer who served as the deputy group chief of the Counterterrorism Center from 2001 to 2003, a time when that organization was promoting fictitious ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
While serving as associate assistant deputy U.S. attorney, FBI Director Christopher Wray helped oversee the Department of Justice’s response to the 2001 terror attacks on the United States, and as such was involved in the effort that falsely linked al-Qaeda to Iraq.
In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the current director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Robert Ashley, commanded the Intelligence Squadron of the Army Office of Military Support, the unclassified title of the top-secret Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA. ISA played a critical role in helping build the database used by American commandos and the CIA in their futile search for WMD in Iraq.
In the critical years before the 2003 invasion, the current director of the NSA, Lieutenant General Paul Nakasone, served as an intelligence planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he would have been ideally positioned to question many of the premises that were used to justify the war.
In the time between the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and their joint testimony before Congress, the leadership of the intelligence community participated in virtually every intelligence-based operation and activity undertaken by the United States, including torture, illegal eavesdropping, and supporting the failed military interventions in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. They also played an important role in building the current analysis used to shape threat estimates regarding North Korea, Iran, China, and Russia. The president has lambasted this group and he is right to do so.
On Iran, the president calls the intelligence community leaders “passive and naïve.” While they rightly point out that Iran is today operating in conformity with the nuclear deal, they are silent on earlier intelligence estimates that maintained that Iran had an active nuclear weapons program up until 2003, and that aspects of this program were continued until at least 2007. Under President Barack Obama, the United States entered into the Iran nuclear agreement without adequately addressing these estimates, especially in the face of continued Iranian denials that such a program ever existed.
Trump has picked up on this contradictory analysis. He’s noted logically that if Iran had a nuclear weapons program that it’s refused to acknowledge, then it must be holding this capability in reserve until it can act on it—which would be once the sunset clauses of the nuclear agreement expire and Tehran is free to enrich uranium without constraint. Trump is wrong—there never was a nuclear weapons program in Iran—but he is right in pointing out the inconsistencies in the intelligence community’s position.
The same holds true on the other policy issues where the intelligence community took issue with Trump’s actions. The exaggeration of the ISIS threat in Syria and Iraq today is little more than a smokescreen to justify continued military deployment there. The assessment of North Korea’s nuclear intent seems to mirror past analytical errors regarding Iraq by failing to consider that the North Koreans might be serious about denuclearization. And the collective fixation on Moscow’s bad intentions seems premised on notions of Russian global ascendency that ignore American provocations of Russia, including massive interference in its domestic political affairs and the expansion of NATO despite assurances to the contrary.
When it comes to foreign policy, Donald Trump is no Richard Nixon or George H.W. Bush. But neither is he a Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama, caught in a series of foreign policy traps thanks to a lack of vision and their collective willingness to accept at face value a picture painted by an intelligence community conditioned only to see threats. Trump is right to call them out. They should be informing him on foreign policy and national security matters, not dictating or critiquing his policies. The track record of these so-called professionals is not impressive. They would do well to heed the president’s exhortation that they “go back to school.”
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq
that’s to peter, grinding away at the list of anti-Russian mccarthyite talking points
Yes of course like none other than Lying Robert Meuller
I think Gorbachov was right about some things. Does that make me a collusionist? Is a collusion person a communist? The mud slinging of the Joe McCarthy period is back at us. Same strokes, different folks, same lamebrain.
Trump will resign and be off his role on March 4th, Pence will build a fence.
Why March 4th?
The problem is the President repeatedly and – except for the instance McCabe brought up – publicly agreeing with Putin while slapping down his own intelligence agencies. People risk their lives to get some of this information and, unlike Putin, they are not self-serving corrupt murderers who benefit from US mistakes or inaction.
Jan, you conflate ordinary members of the IC with the IC’s top members. IC top members risk nothing except getting a promotion for lying, cheating and the commission of war crimes. We actually know that these top level people have lied directly to the American public causing the death’s of our people, the deaths and torture of civilians in other nations and the destruction of whole societies. The only harm they face is being at the wrong cocktail party. Otherwise, for their lies, they get cycled through the system up to the top, over to defense businesses where they make millions of dollars, then perhaps to a lobby firm where they make millions more, then possibly over to a contract with various newz organizations for even more millions. Oh, how they do suffer!!!!
These people are corrupt murderers and torturers. Putin is also that. Trump is also that. As I said earlier, if we had a real system of govt. and a thinking president, that person would consider all evidence, including evidence outside of either the IC or Putin, then make their decision. That isn’t what is happening. This is a thoroughly corrupt, evil system filled w/corrupt, evil actors who couldn’t care less about the people of this or any other nation’s well being.
We have a real system of government, but unfortunately the voting public hasn’t read the owner’s manual.
You have correctly named one current person as a credible war criminal – one too many, but she didn’t seize the position at the point of a gun, nor does that tar everyone else involved.
To quote myself – out of laziness – I’ll continue to defend the necessity of intelligence agencies, our obligation to use them wisely, and the sacrifice and/or risk many in those agencies take with not much in it for them personally.
There is reason to consider what Putin says and there is reason to consider what the IC says. The uncritical stance of automatic belief in anything the IC says is not a reasoned stance. You may have noticed that these are professional liars who have helped propagandize and concoct outright lies which have resulted in the deaths of millions of people? Did you forget all the times high ranking IC officials have lied before Congress? Why you now feel they are owed “belief” is unclear to me.
Trump is crazy and I don’t think that can be denied. However, automatic “belief” in the IC is also crazy. What is with all this worship of these liars, murderers and torturers? It’s dangerous. The IC cult worship has got to go.
If we had a sane president they would most certainly examine the evidence that Putin presented and they would most certainly examine the evidence the IC presented. Then they would go to experts in N. Korea and speak with them. After gaining good information and hearing multiple viewpoints, they would make a decision.
You are offended that Trump didn’t obey war criminals other than himself. I hardly recognize what you are writing any longer.
Who are the war criminals? Be specific please.
Keep in mind that FBI and CIA agents often do dangerous work without a net and with little personal fame or money as a reward. Decisions about torture and other criminal actions are made at a higher level and approved – or not – by our elected leaders.
Hi Jan,
Of course, Gina Haspel comes to mind immediately! Elliott Abrams is a known war criminal. Most of the past US presidents going back to Regan have committed wars of aggression (considered the ultimate war crime) and, as you point out, have approved torture even though it is illegal under our laws as well as international laws.
The CiA has worked many times to concoct false evidence leading to wars. I actually agree with you that there are, even now, women and men of honor that work for these agencies. Many of these people have blown the whistle on the illegal behavior of their agencies, an action for which they have paid dearly.
Both Hayden and Clapper are known to have lied before Congress. The CiA fixed the “intelligence”, knowing full well it was BS to start a war w/Iraq.
That is just a start, the rest you will need to look up for yourself.
If you choose to be an agent, you know what you are doing. This isn’t an excuse for war crimes!
Jill, thanks for your response.
Haspel has personally been involved in waterboarding, Abrams isn’t a member of the Intelligence community though he is a war criminal, Hayden and Clapper are retired, and Clapper’s supposed lie was arguable at worst. While Haspel proves your point, the fact that neither she or the others were rogues operating outside of policy which we as voters have some control over proves mine – I think. Further, intelligence – like the police – is a necessary component of a secure nation and should not – like the police – be denigrated as a group.
As to the CIA and the Iraq war, it is true that Tenet kept his public comments conveniently short – and not challenging – of the President’s disinformation campaign, but – correct me if I’m wrong – he did not purposefully twist what was the CIA’s best information. Keep in mind that WMD’s included ancient mustard gas as well as nuclear war heads, an imprecision which the W administration used to their public relations advantage by equating the two. Also, as an example of Tenet’s playing close – too close – to his vest, see his letter to Senate Intelligence Comm Chair Senator Bob Graham, which Graham read on the Senate floor the night of the vote for the war resolution, which Graham opposed.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/caa-production/attachments/360/Tenet_Letter_-_Annex.pdf?1366918926
Jan, You are moving goal posts in your response to me. You asked me, “who are the war criminals?” I gave you examples of who those people are. You didn’t even bother to argue the point that in fact, they are war criminals. You agreed with me.
I strongly object to is the current cult of IC worship. This includes both past and present members. There is no reason to believe people who have consistently lied, concocted evidence to get us into wars of aggression or committed war crimes. There is no harm in listening to what they say, but taking it on faith is an unreasoning act of a cult member, not the action of a thinking person.
There is no group of people who are above the law. This includes police, and any other kind of law enforcement and it includes clandestine agencies. Once you decide there is a group of people whose actions are above the law, you have a dictatorship.
I think our positions are clear and apparently not likely to change. To correct you however, only one of the 4 you mentioned is in the intelligence establishment and also credibly guilty of war crimes, another of the 4 is not, and the last 2 either were not or are not in intelligence or the government. None of them can be described as rogues operating out of the directives of constitutional officers we elected. I also threw into question your implication that the CIA led us into the Iraq war. If they did, they almost led us out of it through Tenet’s letter to Graham.
I’ll continue to defend the necessity of intelligence agencies, our obligation to use them wisely, and the sacrifice and/or risk many in those agencies take with not much in it for them personally. They don’t go to DC cocktail parties.
Elliott Abrams is a known war criminal.
He’s nothing of the kind. Every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/ilhan-omar-elliott-abrams-and-el-mozote-massacre/582889/
“…In El Salvador, the Reagan administration, with Abrams as point man, routinely defended the Salvadoran government in the face of evidence that its regular army, and allied right-wing death squads, were operating with impunity, killing peasants, students, union leaders, and anyone considered anti-government or pro-guerrilla. Abrams went so far as to defend one of the death squads’ most notorious leaders, Roberto D’Aubuisson, who was responsible for the murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero while he was saying Mass, in March 1980…
…More than 900 peasants were murdered in and around several villages in the eastern province of Morazán. Most were old men, women, and children. At the Roman Catholic church in El Mozote, soldiers separated men from their families, took them away, and shot them. They herded mothers and children into the convent. Putting their American-supplied M-16 rifles on automatic, the soldiers opened fire. Then they burned the convent. Some 140 children were killed, including toddlers. Average age: 6….”
Is this supposed to be probative?
Elliot Abrams has never been in uniform in his life, and never issued orders to any troops or security officials. He was a second-echelon official of the Department of State. He received diplomatic cables from the ambassador, attended meetings, and gave congressional testimony.
El Salvador was for 13 years in a hideous civil war which claimed 70,000 lives. I have news for you: there were multiple sets of combatants. Neither Eliott Abrams nor anyone else could wave a magic wand and make it go away. You can attempt, incrementally, to ameliorate matters, but that’s all you can do.
This isn’t that difficult to understand, but here you are libeling people and striking attitudes and the two of you think quite well of yourselves for so doing. In fact, you are contemptible, and this world would be better of if neither one of you ever uttered another word about public affairs.
El Salvador was for 13 years in a hideous civil war which claimed 70,000 lives. I have news for you: there were multiple sets of combatants. Neither Eliott Abrams nor anyone else could wave a magic wand and make it go away. You can attempt, incrementally, to ameliorate matters, but that’s all you can do.
WELL SAID. EXACTLY CORRECT!
but you wouldn’t expect the coffee-shop commies who used to rah rah for the FMLN to exercise verbal restraint now, decades later, would you?
Yes to 1st question.
2nd para. – No, one does not need to be in uniform to commit war crimes – see Speer, Albert.
3rd para. – “Everyone was slaughtering women and children! What’s the big deal?’
The author of the Atlantic article was a reporter on the ground in El Salvador when these atrocities occurred. Elliot Abrams was a significant part of our effort to fund, make excuses for, and otherwise prop up those massacring women and children by the hundreds and without any noteworthy push back against these atrocities. He was a political appointee, not life long staff, and so one assumes he was in sync with the program, not a dispassionate clog.
2nd para. – No, one does not need to be in uniform to commit war crimes – see Speer, Albert.
Oh yes you do. Abrams was a diplomatic functionary.
Elliot Abrams was a significant part of our effort to fund, make excuses for
So, what? What were the alternative policies you’d have him pursue? Neither Abrams nor anyone who is a serious and influential policy-maker can sit around striking poses the way you do, the way Jill does and the way some nosepicker published by The Atlantic does. They have to choose between actual alternatives. The alternative to counter-insurgency was letting the reds win. Abrams and others had a pretty good idea how that would work out.
What’s amazing about this is that anyone the least bit familiar with the course of events in El Salvador is aware that it took more than eight years of warfare for the FMLN to consent to negotiations over a ceasefire and another three years of back-and-forth before one could be effected. El Salvador is a country with many problems, foremost among them wretched levels of street crime. However, it’s political life follows a certain legal order it certainly did not prior to 1982. Abrams was a consequential figure in promoting the reconstruction of El Salvador’s political system on much more salutary lines, and now he gets attacked as a war criminal by lying insects like you.
Again, you’re not in a position to give moral instruction to anyone.
War crimes are not only matters subject to “moral instructions” but also of international law which we are parties to and Abrams aided in their clear violation. Murdering women and children by the hundreds – this is a fact, not hyperbole – was not a necessary component of the civil war and our aiding and abetting those acts are culpable.
As to the reporter who wrote the Atlantic article, perhaps he did pick his nose while personally witnessing the horrors Abrams was party to from the comforts of DC, but you’d be in no position to judge him if he did.
As to my moral qualifications, you don’t know me. However your statements in this discussion by themselves are clearly disqualifying as regards your ability to offer an opinion on moral instructions, much as your ignorance of history and war crimes – Nazi’s who wore suits.were not therefore excused from Nuremburg – disqualifies you from legal comments.
Jan F. be careful how far you extend your logic for if you extend it as far as you seem to be going you too are a war criminal.
War crimes are not only matters subject to “moral instructions” but also of international law which we are parties to and Abrams aided in their clear violation.
No, he did not. He was a diplomatic official who had to contend with facts on the ground. The facts were that you had three sets of warring parties and the most salient of them had entrenched institutional cultures you had to contend with and attempt to alter. You have no appreciation of what actual policy-makers were confronting, particularly Abrams, who had to contend with cretins in the Democratic Party who had no constructive objects.
As to my moral qualifications, you don’t know me.
So what? Margaret Mead once said, “Just remember you’re unique… just like everyone else”. You’re a common type and haven’t manifested an ounce of originality in this discussion. Political discussion in this country at that time was shot through with posturing jack-wagons who were advocates of Soviet interests during the Cold War or who had not one practical idea about how to ameliorate problems in real-world situations.
clearly disqualifying as regards your ability to offer an opinion on moral instructions,
Dunning-Kruger alert.
much as your ignorance of history and war crimes – Nazi’s who wore suits.were not therefore excused from Nuremburg – disqualifies you from legal comments.
More Dunning-Kruger. You find it a valid argument that since the Nuremberg prosecutors put on trial a mid-level propaganda ministry official, a quondam finance minister that Hitler had tossed into a concentration camp, and a skeevy Weimar politician who spent the war running an embassy in a neutral country, you get to lie about any Reagan administration official you care to. Other people have had to instruct you in history in this thread, and you have the audacity to call them ignorant. I don’t need to know you, because I’ve encountered your kind more times than I can count.
Nuremberg is not an act of Holy God Himself. For starters.
Secondly, it had some troubling and major legal flaws. Let me just go for one. One that is enshrined in the US constitution. “no ex post facto laws.” Well, a few of the charges of Nuremberg were laws before the war,
here, let a commentator from 46 explain
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/04/nuremberg-a-fair-trial-a-dangerous-precedent/306492/
I’m not going to offer a complaint in re certain defendants, but some of the charges were humbug. See the entire case against defendants Fritsche, Schacht, von Papen, Doenitz, Funk, Raeder,
This ‘Jan” person brings up Albert Speer without noting that Speer was a cabinet minister supervising munitions production and chastised for making use of slave labor. The only people Elliot Abrams was supervising were Foreign Service Officers and Specialists working in the Latin American bureau, none of whom were shot if they walked off the job.
There seem to be several views here that I will try to summarize:
1) The collective opinion of the hundreds if not thousands of US intelligence agents and analysts and all the data underlying that opinion — are wrong. (why?)
2) No matter how ominous Trump’s statements and actions appear to be, it is the duty of the agents and analysts to just say “Yes, boss” no matter what.
3) To even wonder about the provisions of the 25th Amendment, without actually organizing any activity under it, is a crime.
I suppose Trump could make his life a lot easier if he would simply disband and eliminate the FBI, CIA, NRO etc. Think of all the payroll money that would save ! And he would achieve the goal of “smaller government.”
Intelligence agencies are well known to put out false self serving opinions. Throughout history. That does not mean they are useless. They are like lawyers in a way who do analyze but also advocate, and, unfortunately, sometimes succumb to paranoia and the temptation to perpetuate conflicts needlessly.
It’s up to a wise client in this case the POTUS, to glean useful information but make policy decisions in the interests of the people and with a modicum of consistency with his own electoral positions.
and of course it is the operational methodology of the CIA to use agents who are under a cover (a lie) and they pay their targets to lie cheat steal and break their nations laws, necessarily so, but likewise that also becomes a factor in their institutional culture, which is one of deception. This is not just my opinion. Here is a very well informed opinion about the CIA and its culture of prevarication and dissimulation:
“I now no longer believe anything the Agency [CIA] told the committee any further than I can obtain substantial corroboration for it from outside the Agency for its veracity…. “
— G. Robert Blakey, former Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, in an addendum to the web page for the Frontline episode “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?”.
Blakey wrote this after learning that CIA liaison George Joannides had been case officer for an anti-Castro group whose members had contact with accused assassin Lee Oswald in 1963.
Blakey explained:
“We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency. Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in that camp.”
Robert Blakey is a Democrat.
https://jfkfacts.org/former-hsca-chief-counsel-on-cia-obstruction/
“Shocking”, oh come on now. Trump on national television said he believed Putin when Putin assured him that Russia hadn’t interfered in our elections, contradicting all of our own intelligence assessments. It’s “Shocking” that you find this shocking. Time to take off your tin foil hats fellas; the president is either an absolute moron or he’s in the bag for Putin.
Trump is trying to string Putin along until after the 2020 US election. During the 2020 US election Trump’s previous campaign theme song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” will be replaced with a remix version of Steely Dan’s classic “You Go Back, Vlad, Do It Again.” If Trump loses in 2020, then Trump will be off Putin’s hook. If Trump wins in 2020, then Putin will reel Trump in according to yet another Steely Dan classic:
Throw back the little ones and pan fry the big ones.
Use tact, poise and reason
And gently squeeze them.
1. During the Iran-Contra investigation, it was reported in the media that Oliver North, employed on the White House staff and three steps from the President in the organization chart, attended meetings during which the President was in attendance about once a month. (IIRC, there weren’t any one-on-one meetings).
2. Jane Alexander during her four years as director of the National Endowment for the Arts never had a private meeting with the President. She kept asking for one and was given the brush off. Notionally, she was a direct report to the President.
3. Douglas Shulman’s predecessor as Commissioner of Internal Revenue hardly ever visited the White House (making Shulman’s frequent attendance at White House meetings rather arresting).
4. McCabe is a government lifer 3 or 4 steps distant in the organization chart whose office was located two miles away in a separate building. He wasn’t a federal bureau chief, either. Somehow I’m skeptical he ever had much face time with POTUS.
Are you claiming the meeting never happened?
I believe Putin over Wapooh, NYT, CNN and McCabe combined.
Then again Putin is no threat to me or America but WaPo et al are a threat to all of us
Meanwhile the US Congress is milking Americans monies, the MSM is manipulating the gullible while increasing their revenues and our families are far more important than the aforementioned though Americans have shown they dont value their own, blood and otherwise.
If you dont have a family then thats on you.
Get busy
Here Russian Troll Estovir actually goes right on record as saying “Putin is no threat to me or America”.
No, I’m telling you that I’m not going to believe he had a face-to-face meeting with the president unless the logs are published with his name listed. This isn’t that difficult.
Here, Tabby, AKA Absurd, implies that the FBI would be better run by amateurs. Like we really don’t want experienced investigators running an investigative agency. Like ‘businessmen’ might do a better job.
And ‘why’ should Jane Alexander have expected a sit-down with the president..??
It is an essential characteristic of Trumpworld to discount expertise or data. I suppose that if Trump needed a delicate operation, he would hire some ordinary character he heard about on Fox, and not use a board-certified surgeon ….. Likewise, to keep Air Force One in the air, Trump would no doubt dismiss all those high-priced Air Force technicians, and get some guys who have posted YouTube mechanic videos.
FBI has tons of excellent agents and plenty of good managers.
Unfortunately it like a lot of other government bureaucracies, tends to elevate to the highest level sycophants and toadies. Like McCabe or ratface Rosenstein
implies that the FBI would be better run by amateurs. Like we really don’t want experienced investigators running an investigative agency. Like ‘businessmen’ might do a better job.
I implied nothing of the sort. I referred to just one issue: the plausibility of his account given how infrequently someone in his position can expect to attend a meeting with the President. I cannot help you with your reading comprehension problems.
MBITRW, most of the people who’ve run the FBI since 1973 have been lawyers, not police officers. The exceptions were Clarence Kelley and Louis Freeh, (and Freeh had a law degree in addition to his years as a field agent). Freeh, by the way, acted to shield FBI agents guilty of gross misconduct, so was an unfortunate choice to run the agency.
And you’re too stupid to notice the problem here, which is that a public agency was in business for itself in the service of the political views of the deputy director and his camarilla.
When Comey did his book promotion publicity tour and interviews there were areas where he raised questions about McCabe’s version of events, and he also mentioned unspecified “conflicts” he felt AG Lynch had.
He seemed to be referring to something other than her tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton, but I never saw him expand on the comment about Lynch. Or anyone press him for clarification in numerous interviews.
It was clear that Comey was attempting to justify his “front and center” role in unilaterally making decisions and announcements that would normally be done by the DOJ, not the FBI.
Now, with McCabe’s book PR promotion, Rosenstein, Comey, and others can either agree or disagree with McCabe’s version of events, or elements of McCabe’s version.
He’s already at odds with Comey’s statements and testimony re authorization to disclose information to the press.
McCabe and Strzok, and maybe other former FBI officials, could still face criminal charges. If that happens, there’s a better chance that there’ll be more detailed public information about discrepancies in these different versions of events.
IG Horiwitz’s investigation into these issues is said to be ongoing, and Senate Committees, esp. the Judiciary Committee, seem to have a strong interest in hearing more from McCabe and others. I’ve seen no recent coverage at all on what U.S. Attorney Huber is investigating…..after the spring 2018 flurry of coverage on his selection by DOJ to investigate matters related to the 2016 election (that the OSC is unlikely to look in to), there seems to be no coverage of Huber’s activities.
So there may yet be an actual set of key questions for and testimony from these key FBI officials, but I think that’ll have to be the task of Senate JC, and possibly Horowitz/ Huber.
there seems to be no coverage of Huber’s activities.
The smart money says there are no such activities. Sessions assigned him work to do and he and his staff did nothing.
Absurd,..
Who knows what Huber’s doing? ( or not doing).
There seems to be absolutely no media interest in finding out.
Either way, the Huber story is newsworthy. If he’s actually doing something, that’s newsworthy….if he’s doing zip, that’s newsworthy.
This reminds me of the media “coverage” of the Awan family’s activities in that the media seems to be blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to stories they’d “rather not get involved with”.
However, it would be so bizarre and dangerous that it would be worthy of congressional inquiry.
After 2 1/2 years, we’ve discovered a concerted effort to prevent his election and failing that, to conjure up everything imaginable to delegitimize his presidency. This past Sunday night, McCabe claims their was an effort to oust our President under the 25th amendment. We now have 14 states trying to block the President from spending money to secure our southern border. Time and again this administration has had to fight their way through the courts to implement policies intended to make our nation more secure from foreign threats. Sanctuary cities, sanctuary states, boys are girls and girls are boys, fines for not baking a cake, guilty until proven innocent. False hate crime allegations. Green New Deal. Socialism good, capitalism bad. And on and on and on.
And now we have this latest from McCabe. One thing is absolutely true, bizarre and dangerous began with the previous administration’s effort to fundamentally transform this country and was put on steroids with the opposition to President Trump. Out of all the shite that has occurred in the past couple of decades, this claim by McCabe doesn’t even crack the surface of bizarre and dangerous.
“…their [sic] was an effort to oust our President under the 25th amendment.” An “effort”? What actual concrete steps were taken to accomplish this ousting?
In 2016 there was certainly a “concerted effort to prevent [Hillary’s] election and failing that, to conjure up everything imaginable to delegitimize [her] presidency “
“In 2016 there was certainly a “concerted effort to prevent [Hillary’s] election and failing that, to conjure up everything imaginable to delegitimize [her] presidency“
She failed twice to win the votes necessary as dictated in US Constituion Article II and the XII Amendment thus she had no presidency…twice
Bernie Sanders lost because of her and Debbie’s machinations though that doesnt concern you
Then again Hillary alienated, as a Presidential candidate, millions upon millions of Americans by calling them insulting words and also for failing to visit their states.
Hillary sure is a dumb beach.
Bernie Sanders lost because of her and Debbie’s machinations though that doesnt concern you
The DNC scamming around was an impediment, to be sure, but he didn’t have the votes, and wouldn’t have had them even if there were no superdelegates at all. Hillary rolled up 3-1 margins among Southern blacks. Bernie’s handicap with that bloc proved decisive. (He was competitive with northern blacks under 45, but got shellacked in every other subset of the black population).
a key observation and it will lead to why they can’t field a candidate that will win the general election in the upcoming cycle other. because they have to win their base. just look at the field now, wait and watch.
the republicans are not in such a bad spot. Donald Trump is a big hit with the white working class and a bigger hit with the nonwhite working class than the mass media will admit. mostly the cocktail party type of people and ivory tower academics and the social agency desk jockeys hate him. they are a distinct minority of the electorate.
“After 2 1/2 years, we’ve discovered a concerted effort to prevent his election…”
Yes, starting with announcing a continued FBI investigation of his opponent 2 weeks before the election while keeping an investigation of his campaign secret.
BRILLIANT! These Deep State guys are both sinister and clever.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/fbi-russia-election-donald-trump.html
Jan F.,
It wasn’t exactly a secret that the Trump campaign was being investigated by the FBI.
Note the date of the linked New York Times article, published about 10 days before the 2016 election.
There were also attempts by Christopher Steele to get the accusations from the Russian Dossier “out there” in the media prior to the election.
Steele has testified that Simpson of Fusion GPS was encouraging him to have those media contacts.
No reputable established publication was willing to go with spectacular and unsubstantiated allegations right before the election.
( Steele’s actions led to the FBI’s split with Steele, at least officially. Bruce Ohr was at least one of the DOJ/ FBI officials who acted as a conduit between Steele and individuals within the FBI).
Ohr’s wife was working for Fusion GPS, and that made Ohr’s activities even more problematic.
No it actually is very dangerous and a new territory. 25th amendment is for disabled presidents not ones you don’t like. i am amazed McCabe admitted the coup plot. He should be arrested along with the other plotters and punished according to law.
This is a very dangerous moment of bureaucratic insubordination to the elected president.
Worse than Watergate to be sure.
Please explain how the 25th Amendment is dangerous and could have been used as a coup plot by McCabe. Walk us through that.
This should be amusing.
So I do wonder who those “witnesses” are McCabe speaks of
Perhaps
Comey
Rosenstein
Mueller?
Hocuspocus,..
I would add Sessions to that list; while Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, he was still the Attorney General and as head of a cabinet had a right to participate in a discussion about removing a president.
He should have stopped it right there, if he knew anything about it.
The 25th amendment has nothing to do with any of this. Pure sedition.
https://www.mediaite.com/online/alan-dershowitz-on-mccabes-claim-doj-looked-at-ousting-trump-via-25th-amendment-clearly-an-attempt-at-a-coup-detat/
there is a lack of sufficient outrage by Democrats now, who may foolishly think that this may not come back to bite a Democrat president one day.
Praetorianism!
Mr. Kurtz,…
– I haven’t heard either James Comey’s or Jeff Sessions’ version of what they knew, or didn’t know, about the McCabe/ Rosenstein “25th Amendment” discussions.
This might have been a situation where McCabe, Rosenstein, and Strzok did an end run around the both the Attorney General and the FBI Director.
It looks like the Senate Judiciary Committee will subpoena McCabe; whether he actually testifies, or pulls a Cohen and ducks testimony, remains to be seen.
Comey and Sessions both need to give testimony as well. I doubt very much that Mueller has an interest in pressing anyone connected with the FBI or DOJ for answers about their internal deliberations and proposals, so questioning of the principal figures involved will have to be conducted outside of the OSC.
Unlike Jeff Sessions, Barr may actually be in charge of the DOJ. He and Congressional committees might get answers to a whole range of currently unanswered questions.
Let’s hope so Tom. Let’s hope so. The authority of the POTUS itself is in danger here, from unelected bureaucrats and would be praetorians who would pervert the 25th amendment to remove someone they disliked.
I’m shocked that this is so controversial. Putin is from KGB roots, has total control of his country which is situated closer to North Korea. So if I believe his intelligence services assessment, I’m a traitor? Since when? U.S. intelligence has not exactly been foolproof, so what’s the big deal? Now, if his intelligence officers have evidence that Putin is allied with North Korea . . . But I’m sure the North Koreans want the U.S. to believe they already have this capability. So what if Trump thinks the Russian intelligence is better than ours on this issue?
Deb, If you think Russia and the DPRK are just the same you are totally clueless. Totally, abjectly uninformed. Not even close.
Not believe the CIA about weapons of mass destruction in the possession of a third-worked dictator? Holy Yellow Cake, Batman!
Bush regime cherry picked intel to push their scheme. We were told by U.N.’s Hans B that there were no WMDs, I believed him.
That isn’t what Hans Blix said in the run-up to Gulf War II.
He said that even at that late, crucial stage, Saddam didn’t seem to realize that he had to fully cooperate with inspectors.
There were key people involved in the decisions and inspections prior to Gulf War II who are on record for what they said AT THE TIME.
There are people on record as saying that Bill Clinton was “wagging the dog” when he lobbed all of those cruise missiles into the Syrian Desert during his impeachment trial. Oddly enough, those same people turned right around and claimed that those cruise missiles had failed to degrade Saddam’s WMD program that they had previously said didn’t exist when they accused Clinton of “wagging the dog.”
P. S. There’s still an outside chance that, one of these days, a few of your ilk might come to the realization that fooling yourselves is just not the same thing as fooling anybody else. Till then, “Ha-ha!”
There were very few people who said that Saddm WMD program didn’t exist.
There was a near-universal belief that he would “cheat and retreat”; by the late 1990s, the U.N. inspectors pulled out, citing lack of cooperation and harassment.
I’d like to know who “those same people” were who “claimed that those cruise missles had failed to degrade Saddam’s WMD program they had previously said didn’t exist”.
This sounds like more translation from what “those same people” actually said from English into Dianese.
One advantage of these particular translations is that the translator can invent what others have said instead of accurately representing what was said.
This is why we have L4B telling us “what Turley really means”, or what Turley is really saying” when she rewrites his columns.
It’s also the reason why any exchange with people like her who pull that stunt will not go anywhere.
It can take 10 times as long to untangle her lies about what was actually written in a comment vs. the Dianese version she presents.
https://www.reuters.com/article/ozatp-usa-sudan-lawsuit-20100609-idAFJOE65805A20100609
I’m not sure what the purpose was in failing to distinguish the 1998 cruise missle strikes in the Sudan and against Al Queda in Afghanistan from the WMD program Saddam was believed to have.
In conflating those separate issues, “it’s highly probable” that Lies4 Breakfast is trying to create the illusion that controversy and skepticism expressed over the Sudanese strike was instead applied to Saddam’s WMD threat.
All you have to do is to “move” the criuse missles fired during the 1998 impeachment period from Sudan and Afghanistan and pretend that they were fired at Iraq.
My apologies for getting the year wrong. It does effect the “wag the dog” part of the complaint. However, the remainder of the complaint is still valid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_cruise_missile_strikes_on_Iraq
The 1996 cruise missile strikes on Iraq, codenamed Operation Desert Strike, were joint United States Navy-Air Force strikes conducted on 3 September against …
As the Wikipedia article states, the 1996 strikes against Saddam were launched in support of the Kurds, and in retaliation for the Iraqi missles fired at U.S. planes enforcing the no-fly zone.
I think Clinton had strong Congressional and public support for the action that he took, and those cruise missle strikes were not primarily targeting suspected WMD sites.
There may have been other cruise missle attacks that did target those suspected WMD sites during the Clinton Administration ……the lack of cooperation on the part of the Iraqis, more than any other factor, convinced both the U.N. inspectors and political leaders in the West that Saddam was concealing and developing WMDs.
The consensus now is that Saddam was bluffing Iran into believing that he had a substantial WMD capability.
I’m not certain that Saddam was stupid enough to virtually guarantee a U.S. invasion in order to keep Iran at bay.
He had a lot more to fear from a U.S. attack than he did from an Iranian attack.
Then again, as ruthless and as skilled and as clever as he was in navigating and surviving Iraqi power struggles for decades, he miscalculated badly in invading Iran in the early 1980s, then Kuwait in the early 1990s.
Iraq was devasted by both wars, and it seemed that Saddam didn’t have the same skills he had to survive domestically when he tried to be a regional power.
“A president is allowed to have bad judgment and not to listen to his own government. ”
That may be but this President has taken that stance beyond anything that could be related to a ‘judgement’ call. In fact, the calls from Mental Health Professionals went unheeded but his behavior seems more akin to a 3 year old going through a ‘normal’ development phase or a teenager with Oppositional Defiant Disorder constantly acting out. While he is clearly dismantling the checks and balances the Constitution afforded there are also a few checks and balances that need to be discussed regarding Rogue Power holders. And the nepotism is beyond obvious. I think he would be much happier to be a King so why don’t we ship him to Europe…….please!
Right the POTUS should engage in slavish acceptance of everything his antagonistic intelligence agencies (who unlawfully wiretapped him) tell him! Look what it did for Colin Powell! They’re all such good spooks.
https://youtu.be/YHSQM1vmzNE
No truth to the wire-tapping smear, try better. And Powell is no hero, he is either the dumbest Chief or a toady. I bet toady.
C’mon now…we can do better than Europe.
Send Drumpf to Saturn, along with some other NPDs, and let’s make a reality show called the “Ring of Fire,” because they’re all liar, liars, and their pants are all on fire.
OT: Loved the RR video. 🙂
I would like to emphasize that some Dems would have to be on the reality show too. Because you cannot have the Rep (Overts) without the Dems (Coverts).
#DontTowTheLine
#IndependentsUnite
#CRUSHTHECOUP
#HANGTRAITORS
Becka, you do have a vivid imagination and make up some good stories in your rants.
While he is clearly dismantling the checks and balances the Constitution afforded…
Becka G.,
If it is as clear as you claim, then it should be rather easy for you to list them. Give it a go and we can discuss the list. Thanks.
And the shizzy social worker commends to us all the wisdom of people in her line of work. Big f@#*ing surprise.
DSS, I thought Becka was a nurses aid.
No, she claims to be some sort of junior grade clinician, like an LCSW.
DSS, isn’t a nurses aid considered at some level sort of a junior grade clinician?
I’m a Registered Nurse, thank you for asking, with a nice long clinical career in a number of teaching and university Hospitals before changing to home care and care management. You do know that it is both ok and considered polite to simply ask for information if you need to clarify? As far as information in the public domain, do your own research.
Becka, I don’t care what you do but I note when legislation sticks it to you, you become concerned. When it sticks it to your neighbor you don’t seem to care. I base what I say on your answers which may or may not be accurate. I didn’t bother to ask because I don’t need to know and if I did there would be no way to verify the truth. I judge a person based on what they write and their consistency to principle.
Let me add that I put you in the nurse category in my last posting because I thought that DSS might have confused you with a social worker that was on the blog some time ago.
Ha ha ha. She’s the odd nurse who isn’t irritated by social workers.
Natacha has claimed to be a nurse-practitioner and a lawyer.
All this started in November of 2016 when Donald Trump won the election. He is not a Washington insider nor an establishment member. If Hilary won the election there would be no investigations. Everything would be just hunky-dory. We have a ruling class in this country( both parties) that doesn’t like it when some outsider shows up and wants to challenge their standing in this country.
I don’t believe you I-Bob. I’m pretty sure that Peter Schweitzer and Steve Bannon of Breitbart News as well as their benefactor, Rebekkah Mercer, had The Impeachment of Hillary Rodham Clinton on standby and ready to ramp up and roll out. Perhaps you’ve read it. “Clinton Cash,” it was titled. It was the inspiration for the FBI investigation of The Clinton Foundation details of which Giuliani and New York Office of the FBI kept leaking to The Wall Street Journal during the 2016 election campaign season. Your fellow Trump supporters have been bitterly blatherskiting about it ever since.
I don’t see why this is not believable. Trump has often disparaged the Intelligence in Iraq war situation and publicly in Helsinki. Along with his personal ego of being smarter than everyone and enjoying making people look foolish. I totally believe this happened
Martha:
And of course the oxymoronic intelligence agencies deserved every bit of that criticism and a lot more for the fraudulent debacle in Iraq. But the truth makes only slight inroads in your commentary.
I am pretty sure you weren’t calling it a “fraudulent debacle” during its heyday. You were a firm Bush backer but the narrative has changed and your lack of integrity hasn’t.
YNOT:
Yep, sure did. Never bought into the attacking the cow for the harm done to the chickens by the fox.
Turley wrote the following aporia, “A president is allowed to have bad judgment and not to listen to his own government. So what is the oversight claim? Congress cannot allege a crime on this allegation and oversight is not designed for probing the judgment of presidents.”
Turley cannot possibly be THAT naïve. Trump and his loyal cult worshippers are all over Turley’s very own blawg, Res Ipsa Loquitur, proclaiming Rosenstein and McCabe to be traitors for having supposedly attempted a coup d’état against Trump by means of conducting a review of The 25th Amendment to see if there were any provisions therein that could be applied to a President who was suspected of being the agent of a foreign power; namely, Russia and Putin. There are no such provisions in The 25th Amendment. Nor is there any such thing as security-clearance background-check on The President of the United States. But there’s no harm in checking The 25th Amendment just to make sure that it does not apply to the unprecedented circumstances surrounding Trump’s behavior in Office.
As such, McCabe’s leak about Trump taking Putin’s word over the reports from his own intelligence chiefs about North Korea’s missile capabilities is almost certainly intended to cover Rosenstein and McCabe’s “rear echelon” with respect to the review that they had conducted of The 25th Amendment to see if it contained provisions that could be applied to a President who was suspected of being the agent of a foreign power.
Chances are that McCabe has a few more shoes to drop.
What is the aporia in the Turley comment?
The rest of your statement Diane rambles far too much for one to even criticize or agree with. It’s a waste of time to figure out your focus when one has to deal with facts and the Constitution.
Aporia is a figure of speech in which one pretends that there is no answer to the question one poses, or in which one poses exactly the wrong question as though it were supposed to be unanswerable.
Turley posed the question, “What is the oversight claim?”
That is exactly the wrong question to pose. Had Turley posed the correct question, he could have readily answered it himself. I presume that Turley knows what Turley is doing when he poses exactly the wrong question. Whether Sluggo knows what Turley was up to with that ludicrous question has already been answered in the negative.
“Turley posed the question, “What is the oversight claim?””
Turley didn’t seem to have any doubt in what he was saying so I still don’t see why you used the word aporia. Moreover, his questioning their oversight claim seems to be appropriate. You just don’t like the results created by the actions of Congress even though those actions were misused by Obama.
I see 50-100 word sentences, Allan, and I no longer bother to translate them from Dianese into English.
So, did Don Coyote violate Rule 10b-5 as president of the Acme Corporation? Or was it Section 16(b)?
Honestly, I don’t see how The Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 applies to Trump taking Putin’s word over his own intelligence chiefs nor to McCabe’s attempt to cover both his own and Rosenstein’s keisters, as it were. As for the prospective dropping of more Acme rocket roller skates, I suppose you may have a point.
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/03/01/section-16b-if-at-first-you-dont-succeed/
Mar 1, 2017 … If the corporation fails to act, Section 16(b) authorizes any of its security … in Section 28(a) seem to have involved a violation of Rule 10b-5.
The velveteen rabbit is taking this one to the bank.
Please excuse the macabre illustration, por favor.
No problema. (Meep Meep)
OH BOY I AM SO IMPRESSED by you armchair plotters bandying about citations.
do you have a job as a lawyer where you go to court? oh no i didnt think so.
ha ha Rosenstein offering to wear a wire to entrap his boss was not “checking to see if the 25th amendment applied,” It did not apply even if he was totally in league with Putin. It only applies if he was mentally or physically incapacitated from doing the job.
You are a big league fake. This is a no brainer.
https://www.mediaite.com/online/alan-dershowitz-on-mccabes-claim-doj-looked-at-ousting-trump-via-25th-amendment-clearly-an-attempt-at-a-coup-detat/
It’s ok. Your apologies are now laying the foundation for a future coup d’etat against some kind of future as yet unknown but inevitable, feckless POTUS who is a looney tune leftist.
You will eventually rue the day you failed to condemn this plot against the lawful civilian president.
McCabe stepped in it again yesterday, revealing what he supposedly said to the Gang of 8 and they supposedly did or did not say in return. Which conversations would be classified by law.
McCabe should be arrested immediately before he harms our nation even more. What a rogue!
I observe that you are keen to defend the law breaking rogue liar McCabe Ms. Late. Duly noted
I have never met a group of supposed liberals so keen to defend overweening persecution by law enforcement against .I guess you need to be a black kid shot by some knuckleheaded beat cop for that sort of concern to apply.
““I don’t care. I believe Putin.” ”
Obama believed Iran. GWB believed intelligence reports of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Foreign policy is the job of the President not of the FBI head. Congress is there to watch the President and is able to pass all sorts of laws along with denying funding. That Congress doesn’t do its job doesn’t mean an unelected person is given the right to make policy for the nation.
As far as the President is concerned with regard to North Korea’s (or anyone elses) ability to launch an attack on the US, Trump has been very proactive while the prior administrations did nothing. He is creating a space force and hardening our grid system. Korea has the potential ability today with its satellite and nuclear know how to potentially launch a nuclear weapon and use EMP to attack us. Such explosions at a certain height could put us back to the stone age. While we can target missiles that are launched from the earth because of an ability to track their trajectory that is not possible with an EMP attack from a sattelite that today requires a tracking system out in space.
What Trump believes North Korea’s actual abilities are, I don’t know but let us not forget that for decades no one has done anything to limit North Koreas nuclear and satellite ambitions so when one wants to complain about the President not recognizing risks (which he has) one should be blaming each prior administration for not doing something while feeding Korea so they were given the time and resources to develop to their present extent.
Stop with all the history, Allan. It destroys the narrative. Don’t you love the implicit assumption that your intelligence agencies are always right, free from their own agendas, in the best position to know and and your adversaries never are?
My fault Mespo. We should forget history and forget common sense. All we have to know is the party of the President. If a Democrat it’s ok to break any law or even infringe on the Bill of Rights. If it is a Republcan then what he is doing has to be wrong by definition. That is what happens when we deal with a bunch automatons where the thinking process isn’t performed.
You are right that the President is the decider. That is our system and the subordinate agencies MUST respect this chain of command or we have nothing more than praetorianism.
In my opinion, the threat of Iran is exaggerated.
http://raymcgovern.com/2018/02/26/growing-risk-of-u-s-iran-hostilities-based-on-false-pretexts-intel-vets-warn/
these are the same group of even keeled “intel vets” who consistently have not fallen for other phony stories like the bogus notion that the DNC lost emails were due to an impossible “hack” as opposed to a possible leak
Kurtz, sometimes when your enemy speaks you should listen closely to him. How many neglected to read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf? It is not the people of Iran that one should worry over rather it is their leaders that follow a pattern that should not be neglected. This leader is the leader of the biggest state sponsor of terrorism. He and the extremism he leads wishes you to be dead.
Learn the word Taqiya and recognize that Sharia Law in the Islamists mind is the law standing higher than the Constitution.