Scot Dutchy wrote: ↑Wed Jul 25, 2018 10:51 am
Nothing new or surprising. The whole purpose of the CIA. It still runs Central and South America.
Indeed, the CIA and the "intelligence community" was sure there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The CIA and the intelligence community said the North Vietnamese attacked the US in the Gulf of Tonkin. The CIA and the intelligence community deposed Allende in Chili. The CIA and the intelligence community ran Abscam, and "guns for hostages" etc.
As for this being "Trump's CIA" - the Russia issue came up in 2016, before Trump was elected. Guys like Brennan and Crapper were not Trump appointees.
Nobody would deny that Russia has taken action relative to American elections. The 2017 "intelligence report" that we've discussed before noted that it was a decades long practice of Russia to do so. Most of what they did was buy advertisements and conduct propaganda activities. There isn't an allegation that they "hacked the election." There were allegations of attempts to breach state voting systems, but there has never been any suggestion that they succeeded.
What is it that we're supposed to believe from the "intelligence community?" That Russia spies on us? That they try to hack computer systems? That they publish propaganda to "sow discord"? Fine. So what? China does that too. The US does that all over the world.
So, Trump said he doesn't know why it would be Russia? Big deal. He should never have "corrected" that. The cries of "treason" for him daring to question the conclusions of "the intelligence community" (given its record of being wrong, and outright lying) are laughable.
For me, the intelligence community has dragged us into too many wars already. They publish these vague reports, hiding behind secrecy so they don't have to show us the evidence, and politicians wash their hands of responsibility by saying "well, the intelligence community says they had WMD, or the intelligence community said they were going to massacre people in Libya, or the intelligence community said they attacked our ships in Vietnam, or the intelligence community said whatever..." -- then we get into a big mess, and it's found out later that the intelligence community was full of shit, and we're stuck. We're committed to the course of action whether the grounds originally advanced were true or not.
Starting with Vietnam, or earlier, the intelligence community has done hardly anything other than drag us into quagmire after quagmire. The intelligence community is who blocked communications from Ho Chi Minh to Harry Truman, which could have averted 20 years of bloodshed. It was the intelligence community which dragged us into that war. It was the intelligence community that was behind Grenada in the 1980s. It was the intelligence community that was behind Nicaragua and arms for hostages. It was the intelligence community that dragged us into Kosovo. It was the intelligence community that dragged us into Somalia. It was the intelligence community that failed it's job to protect the the US in 1993 and 2001. It was the intelligence community which was behind WMD in Iraq. It was the intelligence community that was behind the Chili operations and Allende, the Mossadegh operation in Iran, etc. It was the intelligence community that was behind the false allegations about Libya causing that country to be destroyed.
Now we're supposed to take their word that Russia is now, once again, like the Soviet Union - and we're supposed to enter a new cold war with them, or worse, a hot war. Sue me if I wouldn't mind seeing what - exactly - they have proof of.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar