Word is bond. pic.twitter.com/sjxcko9lry
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) August 19, 2016
Trump says he doesn't trust US intelligence agencies and won't use them if elected: https://t.co/MExmu5mHZj pic.twitter.com/jxRywXWF3W
— The Hill (@thehill) August 17, 2016
If Trump doesn’t lose, and resoundingly, we won’t be able to say he didn’t warn us exactly what to expect.
Phillip Bump, in the Washington Post, “After dismissing intelligence experts, Donald Trump heads in for his classified briefing”:
… In an interview with “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday, Trump expressed skepticism of his own: about prominent members of the intelligence community. Asked if he “trusted intelligence,” Trump replied, “Not so much from the people that have been doing it for our country.”
“I mean, look what’s happened over the last 10 years,” he said, referring to the war in Iraq. “Look what’s happened over the years. I mean, it’s been catastrophic. In fact, I won’t use some of the people that are standards — you know, just use them, use them, use them, very easy to use them, but I won’t use them because they’ve made such bad decisions.”
This is probably mostly a reference to a letter released earlier this month in which 50 members of the Republican national security establishment warned of a Trump presidency. Many of them were involved in the decision-making process before the Iraq War…
Politico, “Trump makes intel community queasy”:
… Asked about Trump’s criticisms, the CIA deferred comment to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which in turn declined to comment. Such reticence is in line with the agencies’ traditional mandate to stay out of the political realm. And in many ways, most people in the intelligence community’s rank and file will follow that mandate no matter what happens in the campaign or on Election Day, analysts said.
“It’s probably, within the agency, extremely apolitical,” said Soufan Group analyst Patrick Skinner of the CIA, where he used to be a case officer. “You really just don’t talk about it.”
Skinner, added, however, that people at senior levels in the agencies “might be wondering about priorities.” He and others also said a Trump win in November won’t necessarily repel future recruits nor lead to mass retirements, at least not immediately.
“If there is a President Trump — that’s kind of a funny sentence to say — then there will probably be a lot of hope that the directors — all the top appointees — would be very diligent in their duties,” Skinner said. “There has to be some kind of faith that the system works, but he’s running on a no-faith-in-the-system campaign.”…
Within the broader intelligence industry — which includes companies that produce the technology and weaponry used by the various agencies — people are “incredulous,” according to a consultant with extensive contacts in that field. “People can hardly believe that it’s happening.”
“What people like is predictable outcomes,” the consultant said, pointing to Trump’s mercurial policy shifts as especially problematic for an industry that craves certainty. That being said, he added, “If the public indicates or seems to show that they’re going to vote for Trump, I would think that businessmen would revert to their typical behavior and figure out how they can get their share.”…
RYAN: You understand you can't share this stuff–
TRUMP: Unless doing so would help me–
RYAN: –for any reason.
TRUMP: –or I'm bored. Yes.— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) August 16, 2016
RedDirtGirl
Holy shitcakes!
Also, too, I want some advice. I want to try to volunteer in a swing state in October/November for a few days and I have sent an email to that effect to the Clinton campaign. I’m not sure I’ll hear back, and wonder what other avenues I can explore. OKTXBIE
Emma
@srv: Nice try. Really. But I can tell your heart’s not in it.
Omnes Omnibus
@RedDirtGirl: If the Clinton campaign doesn’t contact you, call the Dems in some of the swing states. I am sure they will be happy to hear from you.
Viva BrisVegas
To be fair to the pre-Iraq War intelligence services, it was not so much that they were wrong as that the White House told them to be wrong.
Cheney had the intel community running around in circles desperately trying to find intelligence that agreed with Curveball. No surprise that eventually they did, even if it was complete crap.
Adam L Silverman
@RedDirtGirl: You’ll hear back.
RedDirtGirl
@srv:
I’d see that movie!
RedDirtGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: @Adam L Silverman:
Thanks!
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
It may be entirely irrelevant, but the ad appearing, at least for me, at the top of this post is for a brand of men’s underwear, captioned “You’ve never felt anything like this before”
I can’t decide if that’s uncannily appropriate to the topic or if I’m just suffering from Trump fatigue.
My Rockefeller Republican brother-in-law (cheerfully voting for Hillary, because she can not only pour piss out of a boot without needing to read the instructions written on the sole but is alert enough not to get any on her feet) was in a conversation with another, less resigned, Republican, who could not figure out just what the hell had happened to his party: “I swear, it’s like getting to the bottom of the basement stairs and the last step is missing!” My brother-in-law told him he knew the feeling: “It feels like some time around 1992 I went to lunch, and when I left the restaurant my Buick had been stolen and replaced by a clown car” He got a deer in the headlights look in response.
slag
@RedDirtGirl: Did you try the volunteer form? Your best bet is to try as best you can to conform to whatever system they already have in place. The last thing you want to do when trying to help is to make them do a bunch of extra work to get your volunteer hours.
Adam L Silverman
@Viva BrisVegas: It wasn’t just that. There were two competing problems that Cheney’s team, and his allies on Rumsfeld’s at DOD, created. The first was the Vice President’s Office, and the Vice President himself, interfering in the Intel cycle, specifically the analytical portions. At one point, based on the news reporting, he actually went over to meet with the analysts themselves because he wanted to see the raw intel they were seeing and then talk to them about it. The Intel Cycle is always fragile and easily warped, not least because everyone knows the policy preferences of the actual decision makers. So its the project and team leads, senior analytical officers, section heads, and deputy directors jobs to insulate the analysts from the policy makers and their deputies to protect the integrity of the process. Vice President Cheney’s activities compromised this. He basically browbeat these guys and gals until someone basically said something along the lines of “sure, its possible” and at that point VP Cheney stopped listening because he’d gotten what he wanted.
The second problem was created by the special policy, strategy, and analytical shop that Secretary Rumsfeld allowed Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz to set up at the Pentagon. This was Douglas Feith and the Wurmsers and a number of other problematic ideologues. They basically got their hands on intel, produced their own analyses, and stovepiped them up to the SecDef and across to the Vice President. At one point they decided they needed a biography of Bin Laden. Instead of going to the bookstore at the mall and buying a copy of Peter Bergen’s book, they hired conspiracist loon Laura Mylroie as a consultant to write one. One of Mylroie’s good friends is named Judith Miller. Mylroie would feed the crap they cooked up to Miller, Miller would launder it through the NY Times, the VP’s office – specifically Addison (Cheney’s Cheney) would then highlight it for the VP to take to the President, VP Cheney who always made sure to be the last person with President Bush before a decision was made (thereby cutting then National Security Advisor Rice and Chief of Staff Card out of their historic roles) would pitch it to the President. Then they’d push it across to Congress as justification for what they wanted approval for citing the NY Times as the source (not the real source, which was the Administration).
ETA: And remember they originally intended to force Tenet out at CIA immediately upon taking office and replace him with Wolfowitz. Until they realized they couldn’t get Wolfowitz confirmed through the Senate because of his chronic zipper problem. Never looks good to have the female student assistants working off their tuition assistance in the Dean’s Office (Wolfowitz’s) at the School for Advanced International Studies testify at your confirmation hearing about being chased around the photo copier. Nor about trying to knuckle your wife on the Jewish part of the divorce (she’s observant and she was threatened that if she didn’t keep her mouth shut, Wolfowitz wouldn’t issue a get – meaning she couldn’t remarry according to Jewish tradition). So he got Deputy Secretary of Defense, which didn’t require a Senate confirmation.
sukabi
Where’s a black widow or preying antis when you need them?
So it was 100° today, had a preying mantis come to visit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: To me, Team B was the biggest problem. No matter what the pros said, Team B was going to come up with an analysis that backed invasion. And for the Bush folks, that was the fig leaf they needed.
piratedan
@Adam L Silverman: and don’t forget their outing of Ms. Palme just because… well, because they didn’t like having their narrative disrupted. True American Patriots that they were…
Dmbeaster
@RedDirtGirl: Obviously the more bodies in swing states for GOTV, the better, but you can phone bank from your home state into swing states too. Its all good if you cant afford the time and expense to travel.
Dmbeaster
@srv: I thought you were hoping for him to play Bannon in the remake of The Manchurian Trump Candidate.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@srv:
You mean Captain America: Winter Soldier?
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: They actually started the invasion planning in NOV 2001. According the Rumsfeld files section at the National Security Archives, Rummy tasked several people with coming up with an invasion plan in mid November 2001. Additionally, in October 2000 – a month before the election – Cheney made it clear that it would be necessary to invade Iraq.
These guys were wrong in their estimation of Soviet nuclear strength in the early 70s because they started their assessment with a normative assumption: the Soviet Union and its leadership is evil, therefore we can’t believe anything about them. They made a similar assumption in regard to Saddam Hussein. When you start with this kind of normative assertion as a hypothesis, you are never going to get your assessment right.
Adam L Silverman
@piratedan: I have not forgotten. Also, the Maine, the Marne, and the Battleship Potemkin (for some reason…).
Adam L Silverman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: shhhh! You’ll wake redshirt!
RedDirtGirl
@slag: I did, but thanks. I’ll see what happens in the next few weeks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I get that. I also think that W had some I’ll show my daddy shit going on. No evidence to support it, but I think it is true.
gene108
@RedDirtGirl:
I registered to volunteer. They sent me an app that has a list of people to phone bank from my home.
It took a few days, maybe close to a week, before getting the app.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Without a doubt. One of my two day shift research managers, a retired Chief Warrant Officer who, among other things, had done personal security detail work (he was one of the CID guys), had been on Cheney’s personal security detail during his stint as Secretary of Defense. He often remarked that Vice President Cheney was not the same man that he’d been detailed to protect – that he’d significantly changed in terms of worldview and ideology. And that when President Bush talked, he heard Cheney speaking.
gene108
@Adam L Silverman:
Bush & Co got sworn in on January 2001. By Novemver 2001 wouldn’t Rumsfeld be Sec of Defense?
Adam L Silverman
@gene108: Typo, I juxtaposed the sentence with the latter bit from 2000, thanks, I’ll go fix it. Then going to sleep…
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: got a question for you… so from my recollections shortly after Sept. 11, 2001 probably just about the time the offensive in Afghanistan had started Tony Blair was firmly against going along with invading Iraq, then over the next several weeks there was the whole ridiculous Powell presentation to the UN… BLAIR still not convinced. January rolls around and FBI has a big international child p0®n bust, Operation Candyman.
Suddenly Everyone is on board with the invasion.
Do you think the Wrecking Crew was above using “leverage” of any kind to accomplish their goals?
RealityBites
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): The ad I’m seeing is for “budgie smuggler” swimwear?
gene108
@Adam L Silverman:
Kind figured it was a typo, but I wanted to be sure.
That timeline matches what Bush, Jr’s first Sec of Treasury stated about the administration’s obsession with Iraq.
Redshift
@RedDirtGirl: They’re definitely recruiting people to host out of town volunteers here in VA, so hopefully you’ll hear before too long.
Adam L Silverman
@sukabi: As in they were blackmailing Blair for child porn? No, I don’t think that’s the case. While I’ve only had a bit of time to poke around in the Chilcot Report, its pretty clear that the same cooked and stovepiped analysis used to snow Secretary Powell and Congress and the news media in the US was fed to the Brits. While there was some pushback by the Brits, in the end Blair went along because of the long standing Anglo-American alliance. Whether he really knew he was being fed garbage and decided to hold his nose and chew because of that alliance or he actually got conned, I can’t say.
Omnes Omnibus
@sukabi: Me, I think that Blair signed on to maintain partner status with the US. I don’t think that we need to assign more nefarious motives. Also too, “everyone” was never on board. France, one of the most war-like nations ever, said no. If that ain’t a hint, what is?
Adam L Silverman
@gene108: there was reporting at one time, but I haven’t been able to find a link to it in a long time – so it may have been scrubbed because it was refuted when the material was released to the National Security Archives, that Rumsfeld actually began the planning in October 2000 when Cheney was telling the press it might be necessary to do this. I remember seeing reporting about an internal campaign memo from Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz or Feith about thinking about what it would take for an invasion. Since I can’t link to anything about it anymore, it’s just informed speculation based on what we know in hindsight, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Cheney hadn’t strategically leaked what the campaign’s senior advisors were actually talking about – almost a month before the actual election.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: Coming into the Oval Office one morning and on the walls, in freshly dripping blood, is the sentence: “DO NOT INVADE IRAQ!!!!!”.
sukabi
@Adam L Silverman: at the time the timing struck me as more than coincidental… not that he was necessarily involved in kiddie stuff, but that he had closeted tendencies. Lots of rumors about that flying at that time.
Miss Bianca
@Adam L Silverman: that’s your idea of a “hint”?
sukabi
@Omnes Omnibus: ok, “everyone” Wrecking Crew needed to make it appear like a legitimate operation…easier to sell to the public that way.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: And yet….
danielx
@Adam L Silverman:
All true, although Saddam really was an evil sonofabitch. But before 2002 he was contained, and so was Iraq. Not like he was the first evil sonofabitch we’ve held our noses and dealt with, anyway…..
danielx
@Miss Bianca:
Well, you have to admit that subtlety was entirely lost on W, as with many other things.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I was working as a judicial clerk during that election. I voted. I was not allowed to advocate.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: You forgot Poland.
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Gosh. I am sorry about that.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: Um, you’ve seen Captain America: Winter Soldier I trust?
inventor
@Adam L Silverman: I was in the U.K. during the run-up and beginning of the war in Iraq and they were fed the same bullshit stovepiped intel the American public was. They were, at least in London, much more skeptical however. I remember seeing a huge anti-war demonstration in London about a week before the bombs started to drop, it barely got mentioned on the BBC.
otmar
So what would happen if one applies the laws under which Milosevics was convicted in The Hague to the Bush crew?
Major Major Major Major
@otmar: I believe you’ve stumbled upon one of the reasons Cheney doesn’t visit Europe.
Villago Delenda Est
@Major Major Major Major: DING DING DING DING DING
SgrAstar
@RedDirtGirl: RedDirtGirl, I was a field organizer in CO for the Obama campaign. We had tons of volunteers coming in for the last weeks and days of the campaign. I’m sure the Clinton campaign will organize the same thing in swing states, this time around. Stay in touch with your state campaign staff and they’ll fill you in. Have fun!
Major Major Major Major
@SgrAstar: Ooh, where? I was in Denver.
M. Bouffant
“But even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked” (behind his podium).
ThresherK (GPad)
@Adam L Silverman: Cheney reading the raw I tel? Is he that well-versed, or is it like KimJong Un going to a pickle factory and making an offhand remark that increases pickle production in NKorea by 5%?*
(*By which I mean, bullshit.)
Villago Delenda Est
@ThresherK (GPad): He was not. He was cherry picking what he wanted to hear, to justify his utterly illegal and immoral war of aggression against Iraq.
He’s a war criminal.
Taylor
@inventor:
That was where the big fracture in British politics started. You can draw a line from that to the Brexit vote, with Blair’s resignation somewhere along that line.
Blair is a tragic character here. The wife of one his advisors, who is also a playwright, draws a vivid image of Blair on the telephone to W trying to talk him into going back to the UN for another resolution, and left isolated and trapped at the end of the call (There is an issue of her being able to listen in on a secure telephone line that we will gloss over here). The rest of Europe has always hated Britain, their relationship with US is all they have left, and Chilcot’s main criticism of Blair was that he should have been more willing to stand up to the US.
Doug R
@srv: You’re thinking of Captain America 2.
sosuume
@RedDirtGirl: You can make calls from your own home using this tool. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/calls/
If you want to go and volunteer in person — Pretty sure you will hear from them.
RedDirtGirl
@sosuume: Thank you!