GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

A window into CIA interrogation; is it torture?

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Re: waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation” – whether they constitute torture – my own view has long been the following:

  • Under the law, “torture” is a matter of intent. For example, if a doctor is forced to operate on you without anesthetic, it probably isn’t torture. His intent is to save a life – yours – and he inflicts no more pain than is unavoidable for that goal.
  • By analogy, “enhanced interrogation” is not torture if it’s done in the right way and time, to save people’s lives. If it’s honestly thought necessary to save lives, and is done no more than needed to acquire key information, it isn’t torture.

That’s my opinion. The key words are “if”, and “honestly”. In other words, it’s a slippery slope. The interrogators had better be honest, right, and in control of themselves. They can go too far, very easily. When they do go too far, we have to be honest ourselves – and put them on trial for any crimes or torts under the law.

Which brings me to this press release: Two CIA psychologists will be sued for allegedly going too far.

The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman, who froze to death in a secret CIA prison. They were [interrogated] using methods developed by the CIA-contracted psychologists, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen…

…the case is scheduled to go to trial on September 5 and expected to last two to three weeks.

Mitchell and Jessen helped convince the CIA to adopt…methods…including slamming them into walls, stuffing them inside coffin-like boxes, exposing them to extreme temperatures, starving them, inflicting various kinds of water torture, and chaining them in stress positions designed to inflict pain and to keep them awake for days on end…

Sadly, the article is biased (it’s the ACLU after all) in repeatedly calling all that “torture” before the trial. The point of the trial is to decide. I tried to edit out the bits where it’s decided prematurely. To continue:

Mitchell and Jessen trained other CIA personnel in their methods. In 2005, they founded a company — Mitchell, Jessen & Associates — that the CIA contracted with to run its entire [enhanced interrogation] program, including supplying interrogators and security for black sites and rendition operations. Mitchell and Jessen admitted as part of this lawsuit that the government paid the company $81 million over several years. The CIA let Mitchell and Jessen themselves evaluate the effectiveness…and the agency has since admitted that this was a mistake.

According to Mitchell and Jessen’s theory, if humans were psychologically destroyed through…abuse, they would become totally unable to resist demands for information…

The CIA adopted Mitchell and Jessen’s proposals, and in August of 2002, the agency secured Justice Department authorization in the so-called “torture memos,” which were later rescinded by the Justice Department…

The plaintiffs are suing Mitchell and Jessen under the Alien Tort Statute — which allows federal lawsuits for gross human rights violations…

Mitchell and Jessen may go with a “Zyklon B” defense – the idea that they were merely fulfilling their contracts, and it is others (namely CIA officials) who decided how to apply their methods.

As always, say what you think in the comments; I won’t necessarily be persuaded to your view; but I’m still interested to hear it.

More Obama-NSA abuses

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Yet another story that should be all over the media, but I haven’t seen it much. (If you have, let me know.)

Why wouldn’t it be covered? I find that it reflects great discredit on the Establishment (both political parties, Deep State and Controlled Media). As I started to say yesterday, they have ways to decide what you’re going to hear about. For as long as they can, they will bury stories that don’t fit their agenda.

To review some background:

  • Under the 4th Amendment, the government isn’t supposed to spy on U.S. people without a court-ordered warrant.
  • “The FISA Court” is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 “to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.” (Wiki)
    Note, foreign.
  • But FISA Court hearings are secret and only the government and the court judge are present, like a kangaroo court. The adversarial system is abandoned.
  • As such, FISA tends to be very lenient to the government. Over time, they have created a secret body of law that gives the government sweeping powers to do domestic warrantless surveillance under an alleged “special needs exception” to the 4th Amendment.
    • One example – In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked a FISA order that requires phone companies to provide a daily, ongoing feed of everyone’s phone call data to the NSA. Super invasive!
  • Even so, FISA isn’t toothless and doesn’t approve everything – as you shall see. They need to preserve respectability, at least in their own eyes.
  • FISA judges are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States. In this regard, Establishment Republicans control the FISA court.

That’s just background. Now for the news, as reported by John Solomon and Sara Carter at Circa.com.

Under President Obama, the NSA secretly conducted years of surveillance and searches on Americans that not even the secret, super-lenient FISA Court would approve.

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community…

The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm…

The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.

The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans.

Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011.

Officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice have argued their activities were legal under the so-called minimization rule changes Obama made, and that the intelligence agencies were strictly monitored to avoid abuses.

The intelligence court and the NSA’s own internal watchdog found that not to be true…

The American Civil Liberties Union said the newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself…

RTWT. Naturally, the NSA is scrambling to reassure people that it has fixed the problem. Riiiiiiiight. And Susan Rice didn’t lie and none of the surveillance data was ever misused against Obama opponents or improperly unmasked. Riiiiiiiight.

To people who understand civil liberties and limited government, all this is a huge deal that shows how far out of control the U.S. “intelligence community” (Deep State) has gotten. Chris Farrell at Judicial Watch compares it to President Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus during the U.S. Civil War.

Where is the Special Counsel on this?

Or the media coverage? Bush’s NSA did some illegal surveillance in the 2000s – and in 2005, was duly slammed by The New York Times. A large kerfuffle. “But that was then.” It served the interests of someone powerful – someone in deep alliance with, or control of, The New York Times – to weaken Bush. Not so much with Obama, eh?

See the FISA Court’s declassified order spanking the Obama administration, here. By the way, note how large sections of the relevant law and dockets are blacked out, showing how the FISA system has created secret law that the citizens aren’t supposed to know about. That’s horrible.

Also from Circa: Comey’s FBI was neck deep in the abuses.

The FBI has illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections, according to newly declassified government documents that undercut the bureau’s public assurances…

How the Establishment uses “special counsels”

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The Obama administration used the IRS to target their domestic political opponents. AND they used the intelligence agencies as well (“unmasking”, “distributing” and leaking data from the U.S. surveillance apparatus) to target U.S. opponents.

Why has no special counsel ever been appointed, to investigate all that?

Or the Clinton Foundation corruption?

Or the innumerable classified-info leaks of recent months, many likely to be from Obama holdovers in the government?

Trump-Russia has been Fake News from minute one. My first reaction when a special counsel was appointed there was “Fine, let them spin their wheels on nothing”. That was too sanguine of me. It is indeed bad, for a couple of reasons.

First, as it is a witch hunt, they will keep looking until they entrap somebody in the Trump administration into a “process” crime. A la Scooter Libby, in the Plame affair. He ended up in jail, even though it was Richard Armitage who had illegally leaked Plame’s name.

Second and probably more important, it consumes DOJ and FBI resources that could and should be used to look elsewhere. And that’s the point of the thing. Democrats want to make sure no one will look at their horrific scandals.

Having a special counsel on the comparatively scandal-free President Trump, instead of themselves, is a huge coup. As in, coup d’etat against a lawfully elected President.

UPDATE: We could also talk about other types of investigation, such as complaints to the House Ethics Committee. Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch asks, “Why the double standard?” against Rep. Devin Nunes.

  • Rep. Devin Nunes chairs the House Intelligence Committee. He blew the whistle on the Obama administration’s illicit “unmasking” of surveillance data. Democrats responded by filing an ethics complaint on him.
  • Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat of the same committee, has been all over the media for months, possibly leaking classified information (or at least confirming leaked info, improperly). Judicial Watch filed an ethics complaint on him.
  • Guess Which the Ethics committee is acting on? And why?

I’ll say why: This is how the U.S. power structure works. By manufacturing (or at least spreading) one narrative; burying another. What you hear about, from investigations and the Controlled Media, is decided behind the scenes. Someone decides which thing you’ll hear about, and they decide because they have the hidden political power and it suits their agenda.

In this case, the House Ethics committee is run by Establishment Republicans. As such, they’re part of The Swamp; they are bedfellows to Democrats and the Deep State. Nunes sinned by bringing out a (true) story that strengthens Trump’s position. They would rather intimidate, mislead or weaken Trump into “playing ball”.

With every Deep State investigation and every Controlled Media “narrative”, you should ask: Why this one, not that other one? And why now?

(NB: Added and rewrote a lot, after first publication. Will stop now.)

Trump on terrorist Losers

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After expressing solidarity with the Manchester bombing victims, he said:

So many young, beautiful, innocent people, living and enjoying their lives, murdered by evil losers in life. I won’t call them monsters, because they would like that term. They would think that’s a great name. I will call them, from now on, losers, because that’s what they are, they’re losers. And we’ll have more of them. But they’re losers, just remember that.

This is what I’ve spent these last few days talking about in my trip overseas. Our society can have no tolerance for this continuation of bloodshed. We cannot stand a moment longer for the slaughter of innocent people. And, in today’s attack, it was mostly innocent children. The terrorists and extremists, and those who give them aid and comfort, must be driven out from our society forever. This wicked ideology must be obliterated, and I mean completely obliterated.

Emphasis in President Trump’s delivery. I find this interesting on several levels.

First, calling them “losers” is a Trumpism. He’s spent his life focused on the issue of winning vs. losing in business, and he speaks colloquially and from his heart. Translators (into other languages) may have to footnote the expression or come up with some local idiom that would strike us as odd (if we heard it translated back).

Second, it’s an Americanism. Trump is a throwback to a time when most Americans were focused on winning vs. losing. As General Patton said in a bygone era, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.” This was before the Left programmed us to look down on winners and give everyone a participation trophy.

Third, it’s true. These terrorists are losers. They can’t think of anything better to do with the wonderful gift of life, than to try to ruin it for others. In addition to being evil, vicious, nihilistic, malicious, etc., they’re indescribably stupid. As such, only the stupidest of women should want to have sexual intercourse with them. They lack evolutionary fitness.

Fourth, it’s something new. I mean, I’ve called these Islamist terrorists “losers” before – but to hear the President of the United States do it, seems new. (If President Obama did it, please let me know in the comments. A search for “obama calls terrorists losers” turns up only Trump doing it.) It expresses a (rightful) depth of contempt for the terrorists that Obama probably never had. I also doubt that Obama ever talked about “completely obliterating” them.

Fifth, it’s strangely persuasive. Killing terrorists in wars, policing and effective border control all do have a place in the War on Terror. But, to really end terrorism, we will need to thrust a moral and social frame upon the terrorists that makes them seem “obviously” contemptible, or even ridiculous. So that, even to an America-hating leftist or a Muslim who may feel oppressed, being a suicide bomber no longer carries any status or moral authority or cachet. “Ugh, what a bunch of losers” is such a frame – and has the virtue, again, of being true.

Sixth and not least: Trump is saying it in the Middle East, to the faces of Palestinians (and earlier, Saudis). Kudos, Mr. President!

Seventh, the Usual Suspects hate it – you know, Whoopi Goldberg, The View, the leftie newspapers saying it makes light of things and doesn’t show enough seriousness – so you know that Trump must be on the right track.

UPDATE: Scott Adams seems to agree.

What kinds of people join the Losers [terrorists]? Mostly young males. And you know what brand young males do not want on them? Right: Losers.

If you call them monsters, they like it. If you call them ISIS or ISIL they put it on a flag and wave it around. If you call them non-Muslim, it just rolls off their backs because they have Korans and stuff. Almost any other “brand” you can imagine is either inert or beneficial to Loser recruitment.

Loser is different. No one joins the Loser movement. Try at home, with your family or friends, to concoct a more effective brand poisoning than Loser. You probably can’t.

UPDATE: Just to give credit where it’s due: in 2015, there was a push from the Obama administration to refer to the ISIS as “Daesh”. That, too, was a brand-poisoning exercise. Maybe not a great one. In Arabic, the letters are an acronym of ISIS’ name and evoke the Arabic words for “one who crushes and tramples” others, and “one who sows discord”. Perhaps our words “sociopath” or “fascist” are dynamic equivalents? Daesh is derogatory enough to make ISIS want to cut your tongue out. So, it’s a good shot. But 1) it evokes nothing in English, 2) it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter: these jihadists are losers.

UPDATE: Sean L gets into the spirit of the thing:

Perhaps we need to start using phrases that carry the same level of contempt in the Arabic world as “loser” does over here. How about “pig penises”?

Comey’s dirty track record

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Former FBI Director James Comey once served the Bush administration and is supposed to be a “registered Republican”. But some gay guys marry women and are supposed to be straight. Sometimes, the declaration doesn’t matter – or is there for cover.

I’ll provide some highlights of Comey’s career, then details. First, the highlights. Or should I say lowlights? As I realized everything that Comey has been into and how political he is, my jaw dropped.

  • Comey helped the Clintons to escape justice over Bill’s pardon of Marc Rich.
  • Comey appointed Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Valerie Plame affair. (A bizarre mess that ended in the prosecution of Scooter Libby, and the political tar-and-feathering of the Bush administration.)
  • Comey prosecuted Martha Stewart. (This may be OK; but I will show that it sets up the irony/hypocrisy of his later saving Hillary from prosecution.)
  • Comey helped the Clintons in the Sandy Berger investigation, by limiting its scope.
  • Comey limited the government’s actions to punish a corrupt auditor, KPMG.
  • Comey obstructed the Bush administration’s post-9/11 efforts to do warrantless surveillance. That could be a great thing; except that
    1. his actions were surrounded by allegations of lying and usurpation of power; and
    2. he went on to happily serve an Obama presidency that did far worse things than Bush, in terms of warrantless surveillance.
  • Comey served as General Counsel of a scandal-ridden defense contractor, then a Director of a scandal-ridden bank. (I don’t have anything strong here; mentioned for completeness.)
  • And then as FBI Director, of course, Comey knew Hillary was guilty but usurped authority and blocked her prosecution, turning the statutes on their head in the process.

If I missed anything, please let us know in the comments. For example, did Comey play any part in Hillary’s Uranium One fiasco? (UPDATE: Yes, indirectly. It involved Clinton Foundation corruption. Charles Ortel points out that Comey has repeatedly been on-point to investigate that corruption and has refused to do so, giving it a pass.)

Some of Comey’s actions might be defensible. But looking at the overall pattern: I personally conclude that Comey is a longtime Democrat operative, as well as a liar-when-it-suits-him.

Now for details. [Read more…]

CIA vs. WikiLeaks: It’s Awn

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Of course the fight between them was already on; I’ll get to that in a moment.

President Trump’s CIA director, Mike Pompeo:

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, in his first speech since taking over the agency, lambasted WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange — calling the group a “non-state hostile intelligence service” that is often abetted by “state actors like Russia.”

Speaking Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Pompeo called Assange a “fraud,” someone with no “moral compass” and a “narcissist who has created nothing of value.”

He asserted that Assange and former National Security Agency staffer and famed leaker Edward Snowden “seek to use that information to make a name for themselves” and they “care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to national security.”

Asked why he would focus on WikiLeaks rather than other issues, Pompeo said he felt it was vital to inform the American people about the threat they pose.

There’s more. RTWT.

Some of Pompeo’s claims are absurd, and others are all too real. First, the absurd: That Snowden did it to make a name for himself.

The guy is almost a prisoner – in Russia, of all places. If he comes back to the U.S., he faces trial. Snowden agrees that he should face trial, and says that he will do so – when he is allowed to mount a public-interest defense (presenting his side of it, that he acted in the public interest when he revealed masses of NSA classified info). But I digress. The point is: Snowden has given up so much to reveal what he revealed, that saying he did it for the fame is ridiculous.

Similar thoughts would apply to Assange, who is almost a prisoner in Ecuador’s embassy in London. While no one is ever perfect, both of these men have acted from their ideals. In denying that so crudely, Pompeo counts on his audience to be stupid.

As to what’s real in Pompeo’s speech: There is no question that both Snowden’s revelations and WikiLeaks make the job of U.S. intelligence agencies much harder. That has to be a bad thing, in many respects. The question is whether, in some other respects, it might also be a good thing?

What has been revealed, first by Snowden and more recently by WikiLeaks Vault 7, is: massive surveillance programs whereby U.S. intelligence agencies spy not only on enemies, but on allies and on ordinary Americans. Really unconstitutional programs and capabilities. So unconstitutional and invasive that they destroy U.S. moral authority and make us understandably hated by the rest of the world.

Until recently, Pompeo’s boss, President Trump, was pro-WikiLeaks (see here – Trump literally said “I love WikiLeaks!”). And against excessive surveillance, such as the Obama administration’s surveillance on Trump before, during and after the 2016 election. Likewise with Pompeo himself. But their love for WikiLeaks was before the Vault 7 revelations and more to come, which could be ugly enough to destroy the CIA as an institution.

In the past, I’ve blogged on my ambivalence about Snowden (example, see here). But, in the last year, I’ve come more to his side; glad that he and Assange did what they do. The more so because of news headlines in the last 5 months: I believe that some leaders of the U.S. intelligence community have tried to damage (if not overthrow) a duly elected President, with a campaign of “intelligence leaks” that are so empty and misleading as to be lies-in-effect. That would be a separate issue. But one that proves the said leaders’ bad faith and anti-constitutional intentions.

In short, we’re at a sad juncture where several issues point to the same conclusion: the U.S. intelligence community is way out of control and in great need of investigation and cleanup.

As always, feel free to disagree or state your view, in the comments. (As always, I’m looking for “agreeable disagreement” and exchange; don’t expect me to come instantly to your viewpoint.)

The Tyranny of Fake News

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I was advised to google “Syria hoax footage” and see what comes up. A lot comes up. For one thing, here’s video from November 2016 of Syrian “White Helmets” (a pro-rebel group; thus pro-Islamist) carefully STAGING a scene of man whose legs were supposedly crushed in a government attack.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/9rOL7fYyRQo[/youtube]

They all scream on cue, at about 0:22. Afterward, the man – that is, the actor – looks cheerful and takes a photo with his fellow actors. Click here and scroll down to see.

CNN lately has been hitting the “Won’t somebody PLEEEZ think of the children??!” button extra hard, with its clips of Bana, an adorable, wide-eyed Syrian 7-year old who pleads for the freedom to play and go to school.

Here, CNN throws Bana into the face of a rather sensible Congressperson, starting around 1:50.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG3edHZCRh0&t=110[/youtube]

It turns out, of course, that each of Bana’s performances and Tweets are scripted and staged by her politically-motivated mother.

Note to CNN: A seven-year old isn’t a U.S. foreign policy expert. Her opinion, even if unscripted, would still be Fake News in the sense that it simply isn’t news. And oh yeah, if we did invade Syria (or bomb it further), it would become even harder for Bana to play or go to school. Tell her that.

The U.S. Intelligence and foreign policy bureaucrats (Deep State) wanted Hillary because, for some reason or other, they want a war in Syria at the least; if not a full-on war with Russia. Along with a few billionaires – like Carlos Slim (New York Times) and Jeff Bezos (Washington Post) and Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild (Economist magazine) and some others (Time-Warner / CNN) – the Deep State controls the proverbial Controlled Media, which spews War propaganda on command.

That’s reality. That is the world we live in: A tyranny in which relatively non-accountable, secretive bureaucrats manipulate the media – and have the media, in turn, manipulate us with FAKE NEWS.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that the recent Syria chemical attack was a hoax or a false flag. But it means that we’re right to wonder. We’re right to ask our leaders for caution. We’re right to question “the narrative.”

Guess what else? We just got a little more information on how it could have been the murdered DNC-insider Seth Rich, and not the Russians, who hacked/leaked the DNC emails in the 2016 election.

“The consensus of 17 intelligence agencies is that the Russians did it!!1!” was always a shaky story. For one thing, the DNC didn’t even allow the FBI in to look at the alleged crime scene for a couple of weeks after it happened.

Its investigation hampered, the FBI then relied mostly on a report of Russian hacking from CrowdStrike, a Democrat-funded company. And CrowdStrike’s report/story has been more or less debunked. The other 16 agencies then relied on the FBI. I say, phooey. This isn’t the first time the proverbial “17 intelligence agencies!” have gotten it wrong – or even tried to deceive us.

UPDATE: On further reflection, the GatewayPundit link above (after “Guess what else?”) is a NothingBurger. As such, I apologize for having brought up that link.

Nonetheless, Julian Assange of Wikileaks has strongly denied Russian involvement in the DNC leaks (try here) and implied that Seth Rich was his source (try here). That continues to be my hypothesis.

UPDATE: On the other side of the spectrum, Cernovich goes on a limb, claims that McMaster has been lying to Trump in an effort to get 150,000 boots on the ground in Syria. If true: it’s a bad moment for America. And if false: it’s a bad moment for Cernovich – who has been shaky on some things, and astoundingly right on some other things.

My evolution on the topic of “war”

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Just speaking for myself. After 9-11, I supported the war in Afghanistan because:

  • Killing al Qaeda terrorists seemed like a good idea, and the Taliban was harboring them.
  • It was only one war.
  • It was legal. (Congress authorized it. As did the United Nations, explicitly.)

A couple years later, I supported the Iraq war because:

  • Killing al Qaeda terrorists seemed like a good idea, and Saddam had begun to harbor some who had just fled from Afghanistan, like Zarqawi.
  • Whether or not Saddam Hussein had ready-to-go WMD, getting him and his thugs off the world stage seemed like a good idea.
  • It was only a second war.
  • It was legal. (Congress authorized it. As did the United Nations, more or less.)

By 2008, both wars seemed almost to be won. Their endings were in sight. But then a strange thing happened.

America elected a feckless socialist (Barack Obama) as President. He promised indeed to end the above two wars. But he didn’t. He messed up our winning positions; meaning the wars dragged on.

Even worse, he started more wars. All were illegal (not authorized beforehand by Congress). All were disastrous.

  • His (and Hillary’s) Libya war destabilized all of northern Africa and eventually drowned Europe in “migrants”.
  • His Ukraine coup (and the war/tensions that followed) was an unprecedented and deliberate rattling of the Russian bear’s cage, re-opening the Cold War that had been won in the 1980s and settled in the 1990s.
  • His Syria war fueled the rise of ISIS in Iraq. (Since ISIS and the Syrian rebels overlap quite a bit, aid to the Syrian rebels quickly becomes ‘de facto’ aid to ISIS.)
  • His Saudi friends’ war in Yemen is no help to anyone.

For the first time in U.S. history, we were at war every single day of someone’s 8-year presidency. And his preferred successor (Hillary Clinton) wanted to extend those wars. The U.S. has “achieved” an Orwellian state of Continuous War. That’s bad.

Ever read Thucydides? Athens – the progressive, open, commercial-democratic society of that era – failed. Basically, she over-extended herself in too many wars. She couldn’t afford them – whether financially, militarily, politically or morally. I don’t think we can, either.

Sometimes it’s better to retreat and retrench, and patriotic to advocate for it. If you catch me striking a different tone on our wars than I did 5-10 years ago, that’s why.

We should shore up our borders and defenses, our infrastructure, our industry, our national finances, our energy independence, and our commitment to liberty, here at home. We can probably still keep our commitments to Europe, Japan, Korea and Israel (which means I’m no isolationist). But, apart from the historical commitments just mentioned, we should accept a multi-polar world order and NOT look for wars to get into.

In my opinion. Please feel free to criticize or to state yours, in the comments.

Lindsey Graham is insane

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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMfYSWBRPxE[/youtube]

In the clip above: Senator Lindsey Graham (R – SC) takes the position that we should now fight ISIS plus every major faction in Syria at the same time plus the Russians if they should dare to oppose us, with ground troops and “advisers” to do nation-building in Syria, which somehow isn’t nation-building because it’s letting the “Syrians take care of Assad”, and all of which is directly needed to protect “the homeland” because it would have prevented 9-11 (a strike over here by Saudi terrorists) if only we had done it 16 years ago in Afghanistan. Also, it will save us money.

Even the intelligent Tucker Carlson can’t make sense of it.

Graham’s tone is so deadpan – so authentically uncaring about the lives involved, whether U.S. troops or Syrian locals or even U.S. taxpayers – that it gave me the creeps, once my head stopped spinning.

At the end of the clip, Carlson notes that articles in the Democrat-leaning New York Times and Washington Post have declared that anyone who would OPPOSE the U.S. bombing the brown people of Syria is somehow a “white nationalist”. Anyone who would oppose the Establishment’s new war plans is somehow – did you see this coming? – “racist, anti-Semitic and sexist”.

Do you need more evidence that, by now in 2017, America is in the grip of a war-mongering, out-of-control Deep State? Which opposed Trump fiercely – until a few days ago, when apparently he caved? And that what we have been calling “the mainstream/liberal media” and “the party Establishments” all this time are really the Deep State’s servants?

Syria smells like a hoax

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…or more precisely, like a False Flag attack to stampede President Trump into attacking Syria (and indirectly Russia) rather than ISIS. Here’s why. Please note:

  • I’m NOT claiming that it *is* a hoax or a false flag. Only saying why it might be, on present information. Why we should want everyone to take a deep breath and slow down.
  • For brevity, I’ll say Deep State to mean “the consensus of the U.S. intelligence agencies” or “the permanent bureaucracy of the U.S. intelligence community”.
  • For brevity, I’ll say Controlled Media to mean “the mainstream media, largely controlled by Deep State and certain billionaires”.

Now for the reasons.

  1. Syria’s dictator Assad has nothing to gain by chemical attacks on his own people. He gains no strategic territory. He does not intimidate his opponents, nor kill many of them, nor destroy much of their equipment. He only unites the world against him. It does not help him win.

    Even if Assad is the New Hitler testing the nerve of the West: History shows that megalomaniacs always test their opponents’ nerve by going for a worthwhile objective, a genuine win. For example: Hitler in 1936 re-militarized the Rhineland; Saddam in 1990 seized Kuwait and its rich oil fields. Nothing like that, here.

  2. Until recently, Deep State claimed that Assad had absolutely NO chemical weapons. Here’s a Rewind reel to refresh your memory.

    Of course the Deep State could have been wrong (whether mistaken or deceptive), when its politicians and Controlled Media said those things. The point is: They were said. The sudden reversal requires explanation and accounting. Which, so far, has not been given.

  3. ISIS and the Syrian rebels (they’re much the same people, on adjoining territory) do have chemical weapons. Even Foreign Policy magazine says so.
  4. ISIS and the Syrian rebels, and the Deep State factions which back them, do gain by a false-flag attack that gets President Trump to bomb Assad – instead of moving to “eliminate” ISIS, as he was promising.
  5. Suddenly, it’s The Children. Normally, the Controlled Media will avoid showing pictures of maimed children. The exception is when they’re out to whip people up toward some specific end – like, say, a war. This time, they’ve been showing the dead kids (whom we all pity) a great deal.

    Yesterday, I watched both Nikki Haley’s speech to the U.N., and President Trump’s statement to the nation. Both were high on emotion and very short on facts, evidence or logic. That’s a giant red flag.

  6. Deep State and Controlled Media have hoaxed us before. Some would bring up the Iraq War and WMD, as an example. I wouldn’t, but that’s a long story. It doesn’t matter, because we have other examples.

    Are you old enough to remember Nariyah? She got us into the first Gulf War with her tearful tale of Iraqi soldiers ripping babies from incubators – and it was fake, fake, fake.

  7. We’ve had reports in the not-too-distant past, that Deep State was planning false-flag chemical attacks in Syria. Click on this one, allegedly from the Daily Mail. So, the idea isn’t all that far-fetched.
  8. The wrong people are praising Trump’s response of bombing Syria.

    9. When known, Deep State-backed war-mongers like Hillary Clinton, John “Landslide” McCain, and the Saudis approve of your attack on some country, it’s a good time to think twice.

I’m open to solid evidence that Assad did the attack. But if it’s a hoax: then it’s a pity that it has worked; Trump is bombing Syria. After months of failed and ridiculous “Trump is a Russian spy!!1!” innuendo, have the Deep State and Controlled Media found a different way to manipulate him into doing their wars?

Trump’s emotional statement, yesterday, was all-too genuine and sincere. Pictures of dead kids are, it seems, a way to corner him into changing policy and doing your bidding.

I think we should still be going after ISIS. Given that ISIS is largely a creation of the Saudis and certain U.S. Deep State factions, it makes perfect sense to me that the latter – and their minions in the Controlled Media and both U.S. political parties – would be so determined to either knock Trump out of office, or yank him over to their preferred policy of war on Syria/Assad/Russia (largely ignoring ISIS).