Trump intel files

To put it bluntly: What a mountain out of a molehill.

I am going to make this short and sweet. If I was in either President Obama’s shoes or President-Elect Trump’s, and the heads of the US intelligence agencies came to me and said that the Russians had a built a dossier on either leader, my reaction would be: What’s in it? And if you don’t know, you guys are not doing your jobs. Oh, and you do have similar dossiers on Putin, and all his key personnel, as well as the leaders of every other country in the world and their personnel? If you don’t, then you are fired and I need someone who can do your stupid jobs.

Then I would say to the FBI, I hope no foreign intelligence service surprises you with something out of their dossiers that you already haven’t already uncovered (and told the subject about) on any one who has undergone a full background investigation as part of their security clearances … and that means everybody. You will guard this information with your lives, but if you also will review the file with the subject should anything come up, derogatory or not. Do you understand? … if you have to react to this stuff, then you are not doing your flipping job. You are fired and I need to get someone who knows what your flipping counter-intelligence job is.

If it upsets you that Putin may have such a file, grow up and get over it.

There is an axiom in diplomacy and war that goes something like: Know your enemy. And if you are not keeping every tidbit about your opponents (and friends) in the Great Game, then you are going to get burned, and probably badly.

I know, it isn’t a very progressive attitude, but the object here is not to lose or get killed.

That is why the whole freaking thing being hyped by CNN and other news outlets really is making a silly mountain out of a freaking molehill.

Nuff said.

How soon we forget

Okay, I will be bad with this one … I ain’t gonna provide you with the relevant links, because – Hades, I going to assume that you follow the news. If that distresses you or diminishes my remarks here, so be it.

 

BANNER HEADLINES

RUSSIANS HAVE THE GOODS ON TRUMP AND ARE BLACKMAILING HIM

What bullshit. First of all, they may have something on the new president, but I find that dubious.

Second, the stories – as so far as I can ascertain – are based on an anonymous memo or memos from an alleged agent for British intelligence that make a number of non-specific allegations against Trump and that the Russians have enough dirt on him to blackmail him that have been neither validated or substantiated by either US or British intelligence agencies.

In other words, we are talking about rumors that have had no substance to them.

When I was an editor, I would toss the offending reporter out of my office and tell him that A) we don’t do anonymous sources, B) especially without some documentation, especially not documentation attributed to someone no one can identify. C) Go back and come back with a story you can verify and is substantiated by some recognized official who is willing to go on the record and provide facts that can be independently validated. Until then, this story is spiked.

The irony in this, to me, is for the last 15 years these same people have been trashing George Bush for allegedly lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, the capabilities to make more and the resources on hand to do it.

Unfortunately, even the New York Times has had to recant that canard. Still these people who bashed Bush, however, continue to perpetuate their mythology.

Now, it can be said that the intel people had a whole lot more physical and verifiable evidence that Saddam and his minions had WMDs than there seems to be the case with this story about Trump. Strange, we are supposed to think that the intel folks led us astray in Iraq, but are impeccably correct in this hogwash.

Now if it is a crime to seek ways not to get provoked into a war with Russia … or China … or any other country like North Korea, then lock me up for I am all for it. Not to say that if such a war needs to be fought, I wouldn’t volunteer for active service (but I am too old and wrecked for it), but it damn well had better be for a damn good reason. American lives are too valuable to me.

Yet is seems that Democrats (liberals and progressives) have been trying to provoke a war with the Russians. Please guys, unless you are willing to take up arms yourselves and fix your bayonets …. then take some advice from those who have and would do so again: Shut The Fuck Up. (apologies for my bad language here and there).

I doubt very seriously my progressive and left leaning brethren are or would be willing to put their lives on the line here.

Remember, there is no evidence of the Russians tampering with the election … only evidence (which is disputed) they wanted to influence American voters … Hell, I think ALL the heads of state in Europe were trying to do that as well as in Latin America, Africa, and all of Asia. Why single out the Russians? Missing the old Cold War tensions?

I am sorry, folks, but as my Pappy used to say the rumors about Trump really are a tempest in a teapot.