China, target of Trump tweets, could in turn target Ford or GM.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ch...idUSKBN143014#
Printable View
China, target of Trump tweets, could in turn target Ford or GM.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ch...idUSKBN143014#
The Hill
✔
@thehill
McMullin: "I know for a fact" GOP knew about Russian election meddling and ignored it
http://hill.cm/7D5YUng
The perception of being legitimate is an interesting one...notice I place the emphasis on the single word.....perception.......
Winning the Electoral College by 100K votes but losing the popular vote by 2.8M and still climbing when 46% of the electorate did not even vote does not bestow either a mandate to govern nor "make major changes" that impacts those 2.8M more general votes.....and those 46% that did not vote...
In some aspects Trump is what some in Europe would call a minority President....and needs to fully understand that....
If the indications of the Office for Government Ethnics is correct all those business types and Generals have to submit an extensive amount of documentation that many of them will find intrusive....to say the least and even though nominated just getting that information to the Office before they can go in front of Congress for approval can in fact take literally months.....if that is they get past any conflicts of interest the OGE finds .........
The NYTs had a great Editorial on this today....
*Please, less ellipsis!
Oh really? Then who is the “real” inheritor of the Soviet Union?Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Most UNGA members are not fully free or full democracies (54%), and 56 are members of the OIC (29%). Only 32 or 17% of the UNGA’s members are Western liberal democracies. I am not sure that a non-democratic and non-Western bloc of the UN should be able to impose its will upon the West or compel Western military activity.Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
History is replete with pronouncements by American presidents that are meaningless because of opposition in Congress, particularly the Senate (e.g. Wilson and collective security). Bill Clinton had the freest hand in the developing world of any president, and did nothing in Rwanda, Sudan, Congo, North Korea or Pakistan. I suggest you take it up with Bubba…Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
As for the Budapest Agreement, its text only provided for consultation in the event of violation, and referral to the UNSC if that violation involved the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. Did you think that Yeltsin was going to handicap himself? Did you think that Bubba would commit to military action in defense of Ukraine? Did you think that Ukraine signed because of ironclad guarantees, or because Russia threatened invasion?
Budapest was the best agreement that Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan were going to get at the time; securing nuclear warheads in the 1990s and averting a violent dissolution of the USSR (ongoing) were the main priorities for NATO and Russia.
The world is shades of gray. Americans prefer that every conflict suit the mythology of the Civil War and World War II, when they fought for a “higher object”, but until the next one occurs, there are plenty of dirty, gray and selfish ones to fight.Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Had Obama been painting in grays, he would have done the following:
- Supported the Arab Spring in Tunisia
- Supported Mubarak in Egypt (against the Muslim Brotherhood)
- Refused to help the Libyan rebels (nuclear non-proliferation)
- Supported the Arab Spring in Syria (against Iran)
- Signed the JCPOA with Iran (at least there is a verification mechanism)
- Supported Saudi efforts in Yemen (against Iran)
- Not confronted China (to prevent a Sino-Russian condominium)
- Confronted Russia in Ukraine (lethal aid)
- Encouraged Chinese penetration of Central Asia (against Russia)
- Deployed peacekeepers to South Sudan (against Sudan)
- Partnered with China to effect regime change and unification in Korea
- Allowed China to bully the Philippines and Vietnam, but not Taiwan and Japan
Prior to the Financial Crisis and Great Recession, many American Neo-Conservatives were referring to Germany as the “sick man” of Europe. How ironic…Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Yet Schroeder did not erode Germany's manufacturing sector as a share of GDP, the current account went from -$5 billion to +$12 billion during his tenure, and economic growth had begun to slow during Kohl's tenure.
Yet if Germany had retained the DM, it would be far more expensive vis-à-vis the USD than the Euro. What you described is the free market acting against arbitrage, which was far easier with a single currency.Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
You do realize that Obama used Breedlove as he uses Harris: to talk tough on Russia and China, respectively, while the White House takes a more conciliatory tone?Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Yawn. Hillary deliberately put classified materials at risk for her personal convenience, whereas Flynn unknowingly shared classified materials with US allies that did not cause any real or potential damage. It is unknown if Hillary’s violation caused damage.Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Azor....ABSOLUTELY no US military intelligence officer ACCIDENTLY and or UNKNOWINGLY shares any level of classified materials outside his or her intel chain of command ....simply does not happen.....you saw what happen to Pateraus and nothing happened to Flynn?????
Costing him a promotion to the next General level for a year depicts the quality of the damage done....and the penalty he received....and it caused him in the end to be fired for cause from the DIA....
Revealing a TS/SCI special ops HUMINT program to Pakistan is not what you want in a so called natsec advisor....
You do notice you distract from Trump who is the focal point in this thread.....
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump 36m
36 minutes ago
If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House waite so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?
BUT WAIT....the MSM did carry articles on top of countless social media accounts before the election...Trump did dismiss the Russian hacking as it could have been a 400lb person on his bed doing it was his comment DURING the second first debate......
The WH and the IC did in fact allude to it before the election..........
MATTER OF FACT the WH issued a rare public warning to Russia and Putin to not get involved in the election BEFORE the election and the Putin response is no we will not....
BUT WAIT we now have a President elect claiming what exactly in the face of the above.....
SO who is now lying again Trump with this tweet or the entire 17 IC agencies who have all agreed Russian hacking did in fact occur NOT the Trump 400lb excuse.....
OR is Trump simply deflecting again and lying again??????
Actually, all 17 US intelligence agencies said Russia was behind the hacks back in October
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/...ctor-national#
Trump Disciples Suddenly Showing Up In #Russia
(seriously, it can't really be considered "sudden" anymore)
http://www.npr.org/2016/12/14/505581...campaign=news#
Carter Page is currently being investigated by the FBI for his Russian contact shortly before the election as a "foreign agent" which he never registered as.....
Cater Page made the announcement concerning Tillerson as SoS BEFORE Trump did in Moscow of all places and Moscow media kept calling his a close advisor to Trump when Trump stated he no longer worked for the campaign....just as Manafort and the Trump campaign stated he was no longer working for them when his Russian and Ukrainian connections came out ONLY to find out later he was still being paid the entire time....
The Trump cabinet wants to stop Iran. So what do they propose to do about Aleppo, which Iran just conquered?
http://thebea.st/2h2XQx5
Azor...you ask what the Russians benefit from being in Syria in combat conditions just as in eastern Ukraine.....
Ukraine – a proving ground for modern and application of prohibited russian weapons
http://bit.ly/2hz9gJH
Donald Trump's "entire career was built on breaking the law," Gingrich says on a regulatory panel
http://at.law.com/r9etmp
Business Insider
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@businessinsider
Trump keeps falsely claiming allegations of Russian hacking only came after he won election
http://read.bi/2h4eNal
Michael McFaul
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@McFaul
Explosion of Russia trolling mockery on my twitter feed today suggest that people in Moscow might be getting worried about hacking stories
McFaul was the former US Ambassador to Russia and speaks fluent Russian.....
Azor.......
http://observer.com/2016/11/the-krem...ary-obama-did/
The Kremlin Didn’t Sink Hillary—Obama Did
Democratic panic about Russian disinformation neglects to mention that it was the White House that refused to stop it
By John R. Schindler • 11/26/16 11:07am
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing." - Trump, July 27, 2016.Quote:
The liberal conniption about alleged Russian “hacking” of our election has reached a boiling point. A politically dangerous Democratic narrative is emerging which posits that it was aggressive Kremlin propaganda that undermined Hillary Clinton’s presidential run—not that she ran a terrible campaign which alienated the white working class to Donald Trump’s benefit.
Like so many half-truths, this narrative contains its fair share of accurate claims. I know, because I was warning the public about Kremlin espionage and disinformation long before Democrats suddenly became passionately interested in the subject because it was hurting their candidate. After Vladimir Putin seized Crimea in early 2014 and began a war of aggression against Ukraine, Russian propaganda efforts aimed at the West went into overdrive.
To anybody acquainted with well-honed Moscow agitprop techniques, this was no more than old-style KGB Active Measures sped up for the Internet age. That said, the threat posed by this online disinformation offensive is real, as I and other experts counseled years ago (in my case, beginning with the defection of Edward Snowden to Moscow in June 2013).
However, it was frankly difficult to get the mainstream media interested in this rising problem—at least until the Kremlin’s disinformation machine went after Hillary, as it did in 2016 with gusto.
The Washington Post reported this week that Kremlin-backed websites pushed “fake news” regularly portraying Hillary and the Democrats in a negative light.
There’s really nothing new here for anybody who’s followed Russian propaganda for any length of time. Kremlin agitprop aimed at the West—properly termed disinformation—contains an amalgam of fact and fiction, plus lots of gray information somewhere in between which can be difficult and time-consuming to refute.
Back in the 1980s, when the KGB was pumping all kinds of outlandish conspiracy theories into Western media outlets to smear the Reagan administration, Washington got proficient at countering this sort of nasty deception (the Pentagon created AIDS, for instance).
The Active Measures Working Group, an interagency entity stood up expressly to debunk Kremlin lies, became effective at its job, drawing on expertise from various government departments and agencies. With Cold War victory, however, it folded along with the Soviet Union.
By mid-2014, it was apparent that Moscow was up to its old disinformation tricks again, and it was obvious to anybody acquainted with the Kremlin that Washington needed to react to the torrents of lies filtering into Western media thanks to Russian intelligence and its friends in the West. Putin, that wily KGB veteran, is familiar with Active Measures, and his Kremlin has become more aggressive about employing it abroad than the Politburo ever was.
There were hardly any veterans of the Active Measures Working Group still on active service by 2014, however, so Washington quietly cobbled together a shoestring effort—no more than handful of experts—to start debunking Kremlin disinformation. Its mission was clear: track Russian lies aimed at the West, particularly falsehoods designed to harm the United States and its allies, then show how they are false.
However, that worthy effort never got off the ground and its website was shut before it went live. The counterpropaganda baby was strangled in the crib—by the White House. As I explained in a column titled “Obama Failed to Fight Putin’s Propaganda Machine,” which appeared almost exactly one year before our election:
Nearly a year ago, the State Department created a Counter-Disinformation Team, inside its Bureau of International Information Programs, as a small, start-up effort to resist Russian disinformation. Consisting of only a handful of staffers, it was supposed to expose the most laughable Moscow lies about America and the West that are disseminated regularly via RT and other outlets. They created a beta website and prepared to wage the struggle for truth online.
Alas, their website never went live. Recently the State Department shut down the tiny Counter-Disinformation Team and any efforts by the Obama administration to resist Putin’s propaganda can now be considered dead before birth. Intelligence Community sources tell me that it was closed out of a deep desire inside the White House “not to upset the Russians.”
Yet again, President Obama’s unwillingness to confront Putin and his regime about anything—Syria, Ukraine, deploying nuclear missiles next to Poland—only encouraged the honey badger in the Kremlin to grow more adventurous and aggressive. By refusing to debunk noxious Russian lies, Obama encouraged Putin to tell more of them—including about Hillary Clinton.
This culminated in the Russian intelligence operation which employed Wikileaks as a front to disseminate Democratic emails which had been intercepted by Moscow—as I told you months ago, and which the National Security Agency has recently admitted.
A year ago, knowing that killing our counterpropaganda effort in Washington was certain to beget more Kremlin lies aimed at our country and its institutions, I asked several pertinent questions about why the White House acted as it did:
Who killed the Counter-Disinformation Team and why? What did the team produce during the time it existed? What has become of this product? How many people were on it? Does the State Department not consider countering Kremlin disinformation to be in its remit? Does the White House agree? What about the National Security Council? Is anybody in the U.S. government authorized to debunk Putin’s lies—if so, who? If not, why not?
To this day, nobody has answered any of those questions. Democrats are clamoring for a Congressional investigation of clandestine Russian operations which influenced our election this year, and that’s a great idea. At the outset, they should demand that the White House answer the questions I asked a year ago—they are the logical place to start any inquiry into what went wrong in Washington, and why.
It’s past time to ditch wishful thinking and embrace clarity, what spies term “ground truth.” Russian intelligence interfered with American democracy this year. The extent of its impact on our election is debatable, and may not be fully understood for years.
However, the blame for Russian disinformation damaging Hillary Clinton and her party—in particular, the lack of any pushback from Washington, which allowed the Kremlin’s deception machine to go into overdrive—lies not with Donald Trump or the Republicans, but with Barack Obama himself.
CBS Poll:
60% say necessary for Trump to release tax returns
59% say Trump biz a conflict
70% say putting family in charge still a conflict
Democratic House Candidates Were Also Targets of Russian Hacking
http://nyti.ms/2hCOgEY
http://observer.com/2016/12/understa...-our-election/
Understanding Russia’s SpyWar Against Our Election
By John R. Schindler • 12/15/16 pm
Quote:
In the latest twist in the evolving story of how Moscow and its spies interfered with America’s 2016 election cycle, U.S. intelligence has determined that RVladimir Putin himself was deeply involved in the secret operation to discredit the Democrats and Hillary Clinton.
According to NBC News, our Intelligence Community has “a high level of confidence” that Russia’s president#”personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used.” Putin’s#motivation was revenge, according to unnamed senior IC officials, since he#despises Clinton, plus the Kremlin sought to create confusion in the United States to make us appear an unreliable ally and an ailing global power.
To anybody acquainted with Putin and his Russia, this is entirely unsurprising. The Russian president grew up in the KGB and long worked in counterintelligence. To his core, Putin is a secret policeman, what Russians call a Chekist—a term worn with pride in the Kremlin. It’s an easy bet that Putin was briefed on this most special intelligence operation daily; it was very likely the first item in his morning briefing from Russia’s spy services, a quotidian event that Putin—unlike our president-elect—takes seriously.
For a former KGB officer, humiliating the hated Americans by disseminating the embarrassing emails of our top politicians is the summit of glee. The takedown of Clinton, Inc.—and no matter the reality, this is unquestionably how it’s being sold, with smiles all around, by Putin’s inner circle—was by any standard a very successful operation. A century hence, it seems likely that Moscow’s spies will rank this achievement among their “greats” like the TRUST operation and the Rosenbergs.
However, some salient facts about this secret Kremlin operation need to be understood. In the first place, there wasn’t much “hacking” going on here. Instead, most of the purloining of emails from top Democrats fell under normal 21st century signals intelligence operations of the kind done by Russia, the United States, and pretty much every technically advanced country on earth. Everybody spies—among adults this isn’t a controversial statement.
What set this year’s election games apart, however, was how the Kremlin weaponized what its spies in the ether had systematically purloined, disseminating it through its#Wikileaks front to harm the Democrats. Russians intelligence has countless emails from American politicians of every stripe—if you’re a Washington macher of any variety who uses email, it’s a safe bet Moscow reads#them—but this year it only wanted to expose the ones from Democrats.
Russians call this kind of nasty covert action scheme Active Measures, and Moscow’s spies have been doing it a long time. The only novelty here is that the Internet makes it devilishly easy to disseminate such disinformation, to use the proper term, quickly and anonymously. As the Internet has sped up our news cycle dramatically, it’s made spreading disinformation faster and easier, too.
Our biggest problem resides in the Russian moles in Washington who haven’t been caught.
The Kremlin has done this sort of thing many times to countries it dislikes or fears, indeed it’s old hat to a seasoned Chekist like Putin. But the Russians have never done anything quite this brazen to their “Main Adversary”—as they called America during the Cold War and today do again. To be clear, Putin ordered his spies to execute strategic Active Measures against the United States and top Democrats in 2016 because Moscow possessed enough stolen information to do so. He#didn’t fear retribution.
Here we need to see this from the Russian point of view, briefly. Putin has a very different way of looking at espionage than American spies do. Russian intelligence culture is its own breed of cat—cagey, conspiracy-minded and dangerous when cornered. They play the long game and take risks that no Western spy service would. For Chekists, the crown jewel in the SpyWar—the never-ending clandestine conflict between states, seldom seen by the public—is offensive counterintelligence, that is gaining control of the enemy’s intelligence apparatus to deceive him.
Russian intelligence aims to create what counterspies term the “wilderness of mirrors,”#and over the last century the Kremlin has gotten very adept at this cunning game.
Viewed in this manner, several important spy stories in recent years come into focus and can be understood for what they really are. American counterintelligence, which has never been a high priority in Washington, suffered complete collapse during President Obama’s two terms. In matters of basic security, Obama’s inattention and escapism amount to presidential dereliction of duty. Pretty much all our Federal agencies have been hacked by Russia and/or China, including the White House itself, while the pillaging of the Office of Personnel Management ranks as a security debacle without parallel in espionage history.
Then there’s the case of Edward Snowden, who, contrary to vast media myth-making, did enormous damage to Western intelligence by stealing and leaking 1.5 million classified documents, many of them relating to enormously sensitive intelligence programs. Snowden has been working for the Kremlin since he landed in Moscow in late June 2013—and perhaps before. It’s no coincidence that he was shipped to Moscow by Wikileaks, since that vaunted “privacy organization” has been doing Putin’s bidding for years, long before Julian Assange went on a crusade to take out Hillary Clinton.
Our biggest problem, however, resides in the Russian moles in Washington who haven’t been caught. There was one clear counterintelligence success on Obama’s watch, the roll-up of 10 deep-cover Russians spies in the United States in the summer of 2010. That operation, called Ghost Stories by U.S. counterintelligence, was a genuine coup, although it had been in the works for years, long before Obama moved into the White House. Putin was furious at our unmasking of his network of “Illegals” (to use the Chekist term) in America and he wanted revenge—which he got in 2016.
The most important aspect to Ghost Stories, however, was the dog that didn’t bark. In the course of the extended IC investigation of Russia’s Illegals network, it became obvious that Moscow had several moles in Washington, including inside our intelligence agencies—with one or more burrowed into the National Security Agency, our most important spy service—and Snowden wasn’t one of them.
The evidence for their existence going back at least to 2007—and perhaps even earlier—is overwhelming to anyone who understands Russian spy tradecraft, what the Kremlin calls konspiratsiya (yes, conspiracy). Since no Russian moles in our nation’s capital have been unmasked over the last six years, it’s safe to assume they’re still active.
In this light, the events of 2016 come into proper focus. Putin confidently executed a strategic spy operation against our election, specifically to harm the Democrats and their presidential nominee. Russia’s president didn’t fear retribution, as he correctly assessed that Obama was too timid and eager to win Russian favor to respond in any meaningful way. After all, the White House in 2015 quashed a tiny State Department effort to counter Kremlin disinformation, which was taken in Moscow as a green light to put their spies-telling-lies machine into overdrive.
Moreover, Putin knew what the Obama administration would (and would not) do about this massive and aggressive jump in the SpyWar thanks to his moles in Washington. It seems highly likely, based on available evidence, that Russian intelligence has been reading secret U.S. communications for years—that’s what moles inside NSA are for—which would give Putin the ability to beat American spies every step of the way, not to mention deep insights into top-level decision-making in Washington.
This all resembles the famous XX Committee of World War Two fame, after which my Twitter feed and my blog are named. That was the remarkable British counterintelligence program which first caught all the German spies in the UK, then turned them into double agents without Berlin noticing. They became a channel for disinformation with war-altering impact. Patiently, British counterspies fed bogus intelligence to the turned German agents, fooling the Nazis time and again. Most importantly, they provided Berlin with wrong information about the time, size, and location of the Allied invasion of France in June 1944.
The key part of the XX Committee was the fact that British spies could read secret German communications, unbeknownst to the Wehrmacht. This was the famous ULTRA secret. Cracking the Enigma code machine, thanks to the Poles, gave London the ability to see that their disinformation was believed by the enemy. They knew that turned German agents were really working for Britain, not their original masters, and they could see that their lies were accepted as truth. This made the XX Committee one of the great successes in the annals of espionage.
Looking at the available evidence with the eye of a counterintelligencer, it’s alarmingly plausible that Russia has done something similar to us in recent years. Putin acted so brazenly in 2016, subverting our election, because he knew he could get away with it. Moreover, as someone who’s been critical of President Obama’s many foreign policy missteps, particularly regarding the Russians, it bears pondering that some of his underperformance may be attributable to the serious possibility that the Kremlin has been reading his mail.
Continued.......
So you’re arguing that Flynn got off lightly (an “informal reprimand”) and that his dismissal from the DIA was due to the classified materials issue and not the other reasons given by Powell and others? You seem to be trying to make more of the issue than there is…Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
You brought up Hillary Clinton and the Server Scandal in the context of Flynn, and I responded…
Yet the CIA only supposedly concluded that the WikiLeaks release in July was part of a Russian intelligence operation to support Trump’s candidacy in December. How can that not be construed as part of a wider effort to render illegitimate Trump’s victory?Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Yet the ODNI and FBI do not agree with the CIA's "conclusion" that it was to benefit Trump.Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
So Iran is the main beneficiary as I said previously.Quote:
Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
We all know - hopefully - that engagement in small wars invariably leads to friction and far worse in the realm of civil-military relations. As President how will he fare? Not his Cabinet and advisers.
'Telling truth to power' already appears to be one (I assume for the moment the hacking intelligence is correct).
Then there is his lack of experience. Even if surrounded by those who know better (we assume and hope; let alone that he accepts their advice). A property and media empire is hardly similar IMHO. He faces a rather steep learning curve in January, however good his transition team and others try to prepare him.
Personally and from "across the water" I do wonder if President Trump will concentrate on domestic matters and devolve responsibility for much of foreign policy to others.
Throughout the election campaign, Trump has vocally opposed humanitarian intervention and regime change (e.g. Iraq and Libya), while calling for stronger action against Daesh* and threatening to respond with force to threatening or dangerous maneuvers in international airspace and waters**.
Hindsight may always be 20/20, but the military adventures of Clinton, Bush and Obama (first term), were disasters in the main. Not only were there errors of commission (Iraq, Libya, Kosovo), but also omission (Pakistan, North Korea, Africa).
Unfortunately, due to Putin's long personal rule and the CPC's bureaucratic inertia, Moscow and Beijing see American foreign policy as less at mercy of party politics and the various election cycles, and more as a bid for global mastery disguised as chaos. Note that Stalin believed that all Western leaders were as capricious as him.
Trump's reaction was not measured, but was a reasonable response to the Democratic/Clinton insinuation that Trump was effectively a Russian agent. Or perhaps Trump understood that Americans would not grasp the nuance of acknowledging probable Russian responsibility for the hack, but denying any benefit from it. The Russian hacking issue is toxic because of the narrative that the DNC and Clinton built around it...Quote:
Originally Posted by davidbfpo
Certainly, the ODNI and FBI have disagreed with the alleged CIA conclusion that Putin was supporting Trump as opposed to casting doubt on US democracy.
Moreover, the damage done by WikiLeaks was in July (and less than Comey's public release), and overcome by Clinton winning the nomination, the Access Hollywood tape and Trump's performance during the first debate (in estimated electoral votes as counted by FiveThirtyEight.com). What did Hillary in was her remark about "deplorables" in October, followed by Comey's letters in November and December.
It does seem that the Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, especially with ties to the Intelligence Community, are contesting Trump's legitimacy. Clinton, through her surrogates, is blaming Comey, Obama, Russia, the Electoral College, etc.
I partly agree. I think that he will focus on domestic policy, but be a showman overseas (not unlike Putin).Quote:
Originally Posted by davidbfpo
*Looser ROEs? More air assets? Greater support to anti-Daesh fighters?
**He threatened Iran, but China has acted similarly and Russia is the worst provocateur. Obama has not responded to these provocations
Ah...."the smell of napalm in the morning".....WikiLeaks trying to put distance between himself and the Russians and the coming hacking hit on him as he was part and parcel of the Russian hacking adventure into the US and the CIA determined him to be part and parcel of the Russian FSB/SVR/GRU.....disinformation/hacking operation.
Assange: Some leaks may have been Russian
http://www.unian.info/world/1682321-...-russian.html#
Sorry...he knows exactly who provides what to him.....
BUT WAIT..we are talking about the Russian hacking event that Trump stated was not done by the Russians...and that the US government should have done something about...and why did they not say something WHEN in fact his own tweet was a falsehood to begin with....and the government had said something long before the election....
We are talking about the same Trump here right??? Or are we talking about the Twitter Trump....????
Trump appoints @MonicaCrowley as senior director strategic communications at NSC. A woman who didn't understand what the Berlin Wall was......
THIS refers to her tweet of here standing in front of the Berlin Wall stating "see Walls do work"...forgetting there was an entire killing machine behind that Wall....which the US does not have nor wants to have the last time I checked on the border to Mexico.....
She is taking the place of Rhodes.....what a next 4 years.....
There was a time when abject stupidity was something to be embarrassed about.
Nowadays it's a ride to the top.
FIRST Trump disputes the Russian hacking actually occurred.......THEN he blames the Obama WH for not talking about until after the election ALTHOUGH he knew about also before the election......AND this.........
IS this President elect of sound mind......STATING now the Russian hack that he denied was a "public service"....???????
Trump suggests Russian hacking was a public service - For the president-elect, the ends justify the means
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/...cking-twitter#
CNN is reporting that Trump's refusal to acknowledge Russia interference has made White House decide orderly transition isn't main priority
Trump has to service a 365M USD debt load on his business empire......AND this is exactly why he is Russian friendly since 1987....when he first went to Russia...BEFORE the Wall days....and when the true KGB existed.......
BREAKING: #Trump's soft spot for #Russia: wealthy Russian oligarch condo buyers @usatoday WHICH in the UK experience with rich Russian oligarchs..means "black money"......ie money laundering as simple as that
Flynn has a big role in Trump's White House -- and business deals with defense contractors
http://bloom.bg/2h6q9dS
REMEMBER the Trump drumbeat......."drain the swamp"...does not appear to appear to apply to him or his staff.....
BREAKING: China's navy has seized an unmanned, underwater U.S. Navy vehicle in international waters of South China Sea.
Thanks, Don. Well played. Beijing wants to fight us and you're not even POTUS yet.
ALL because you and the idiots of your staff decided to challenge the "One China" policy since Nixon with that stupid so called "congratulation call" you personally played down from Taiwan...
AND REMEMBER the Chinese just flew their nuclear bomber the entire length of the boundary that they call their's....
REMEMBER they called you a "child with no knowledge" in their MSM after your Taiwan call.....
Azor...being fired "for cause" is a serve term in the civil service world for a total failure in your position.....
HERE is what you are absolutely missing which is normal for not having ever worked in the intel world especially the HUMINT world....
The 17 intel agencies and the ODNI AND the FBI did not disagree in a single line of the CIA report that in fact the Russian hacking had occurred and who it was against....
IF you had spent time in such intel major meetings then you will have realized that each of the 17 agencies approach their analysis from their own "charter" meaning what they were created for....
In the case of the FBI...they will never fully agree with what the CIA ever states as the FBI collects in order to prove solid evidence for a conviction in a court of law......
CIA...and DIA are in the business of "indicators"...and when the "indicators" get tighter and tighter then they attempt to fathom the WHY....
THESE "indicators" are funneled into an Indications and Warning Team that then briefs the National Command Authority that means Trump on potential critical events he needs to especially be aware of since he will have to make decisions on those 'indicators".....
ODNI...BTW the ODNI does not have a true analysis function of "indicators"...his job and Clapper over stepped that ODNI charter....his job is to manage the movement of analysis work towards a conclusion and to ensure all 17 agencies are supporting that end goal...
WHAT bothers me intensively is the simple fact that the FBI pulled literally all manpower off the hacking issue in order to go through 30,000 emails which in the end were duplicates and or private....TAKING critical analysis personnel away from the FBI investigation of those Trump individuals who had blatant contacts to Russians and the Russian hacking....
LASTLY and again I repeat all 17 agencies agreed that there was an active measures Russian hacking operation underway in the US directed against the DNC....Clinton personally....and the Democratic Congress candidates....AND nothing directed against Trump.....
WHERE they differ is in the Russian intent....
WHAT you have not heard and are seen written in the US MSM is the simple fact that the CIA stated "with near certainly that Putin was personally involved"....WHY did they go out on that limb??????
BECAUSE UK and German intel services provided input from their field agents or as some would call them "spies" who provided concrete evidence...in the form of electronic data and or personal accessment.
In this business one cannot get more concrete than that......
AND then we have an idiot calling out the CIA whose field agents as well as the field agents of allied countries who put their lives on the line and at great risk to provide information necessary for decisions....
REMEMBER this is the same Trump we are talking about that avoided the VN war draft FOUR TIMES by claiming a "bone spur" but when asked about it during the campaign he stated...QUOTE..."I am not sure which foot" and my "hardest battle was fighting off the women"....
WHILE others fought and died........so "he could fight off the women"......
BUT WAIT...........this firms things up even more......
Federal agency in charge of certifying voting machines hacked by Russian-speaking hacker: report
http://hill.cm/3diHIVV
Russian hackers seized control of the Pentagon's unclassified email system in 2015
http://read.bi/2gSr5ql
Azor.....you will see me beating up on Obama about this hacking event as much as I do on his Ukrainian and Syrian lack of actions.......
I have always asked WHY is he basically avoiding anything to upset Russia in the face of Putin challenges and actions......
We have little ability to stop Russian SIGINT ops.
We can easily counter RU disinformation.
But Obama refused to.
It is just not the US right now...
Ukraine: #hackers downed websites of #infrastructure ministry & state #aviation service
#cyberwarfare
http://rus.newsru.ua/ukraine/16dec2016/hakersa.html#
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