By ilana mercer
President-elect Donald Trump made another great stride for America—maybe even for mankind, given the CIA’s global reach. Mr. Trump slapped the Central Intelligence Agency down. And hard.
The flurry over the Russia-related misinformation released by the CIA is reminiscent of the ramp-up to war in Iraq, except that, in Bushspeak: “Fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … You can’t get fooled again!”
The CIA has been asserting, sans proof, that Vladimir Putin had, essentially, elected Donald Trump. This, the Russian ruler is alleged to have done by hacking the emails of the Democratic National Congress and those of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.
WikiLeaks, the source of October’s epic “data dump,” has denied Russian complicity in enlightening and educating the American people. Why enlightening and educating? Wonderful WikiLeaks provided definitive proof that the mass media are lapdogs, not watchdogs. Democratic lapdogs. The colluding quislings of the major networks and newspapers had actively worked to elect Mrs. Clinton. Thanks to WikiLeaks, Americans also learned of the contempt with which these Democrats hold them.
Distilled, the CIA’s position, shared by the rest of the foreign-policy priestly caste, is that the American people don’t have the right to know what WikiLeaks divulged. Better that Americans elect rotten representatives who hate their guts, than violate the privacy of rogues looking to live-off them.
Were it up to this writer, these mezzanine-level party operatives—Democrat and Republican—would have no privacy on the job. They’re auditioning to go on the people’s payroll! They’re looking to serve the people. As members of the degraded sphere of politics, make party apparatchiks as easy to monitor as parolees.
WikiLeaks’ proprietor has martyred himself in the cause of truth. Without fear or favor, Julian Assange has exposed the workings of business and government alike, Republican and Democrat—from Facebook, Google and Yahoo’s “built-in interfaces for US intelligence,” to the clandestine wheeling-and-dealing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to the neoconservatives’ war-crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As another unimpeachable source put it: “Do we believe Snowden and Assange, or John McCain and Lindsey Graham? I would add: Who’s likelier to destabilize his country by going to war? Putin or Graham?
So, too, does the Federal Bureau of Investigation disagree with the CIA’s intemperate charges against Russia. Not that the FBI is more trustworthy than the CIA. Still, the FBI at least is smarting because “Hillary Clinton was not criminally charged for mishandling classified information.”
Above all, the most powerful man in the world, President-elect Donald Trump, has now mainstreamed a truth for which some on the Right were ostracized, 14 years ago. Lest we forget, Mr. Trump ran on disavowing the lie that was Genghis Bush’s war on Iraq. And he continues to properly implicate the CIA in foul-play in that country: “President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team questioned the credibility of the CIA late Friday in response to a report the agency found Russia intervened in the election to boost his prospects. ‘These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,’ the Trump transition team said in a statement.”
Indeed, in the winter of 2002, this writer had perused publicly available CIA reports about Saddam Hussein. These, I reported, “offered no fresh incriminating evidence against Iraq, but a lot of equivocating, inventive bafflegab.” Used by the CIA were vague phrases that amounted to, “Saddam will probably”; “give him time and he will eventually”; “with sufficient weapons-grade fissile material, he’ll doubtless”; “he doesn’t have the capability to develop enriched uranium or plutonium to fuel a nuclear bomb, but hang in there …”
This was obviously not the letter of the CIA text, but it was close enough to its spirit. Unclear was how the CIA could claim to have cobbled evidence for weapons of mass destruction from an “interest in acquiring” or “an effort to procure,” considering its analysts offered no proof of such actions and purchases.
The same vague nomenclature deployed by CIA analysts to take Americans to war in Iraq is evident in the agency’s unsubstantiated claims against Russia. In trying to incriminate absent hard evidence, the CIA, as reported by the Washington Post, alludes to “a secret assessment,” nowhere apparent, identifying only “anonymous sources and individuals” in “closed-door briefing.”
Underpinning the Left’s delayed Russophobia—they’re about a century too late—is a logical fallacy: the argument from authority. Believe the CIA because its intelligence is derived “from multiple sources.” Be impressed since “the intelligence community [has] officially [not informally] accused Moscow.” Bow down because our CIA overlords’ non-specific intelligence makes it “quite clear” that the accusations against Moscow are justified. And if verbiage without evidence leaves you unconvinced, well then, “Democratic leaders in the room unanimously agreed …”
Onward to war.
As I see it, Trump’s daily intelligence briefings are tangentially related to the attempt to incriminate Russia in ridding us of Hillary. Said President-elect Trump to Fox News’ Chris Wallace: “I don’t need to be told the same thing every day, every morning, same words. ‘Sir, nothing has changed. Let’s go over it again.’ I don’t need that. … If something should change from this point, immediately call me. I’m available on one minute’s notice.”
The terminally stupid talking heads are outraged. Economizing always rattles the politicians and the presstitutes (with apologies to honest, hardworking prostitutes). They’re used to creating redundancies and duplication, which are lucrative. But in President-elect Trump, the establishment has a different animal—someone who’s looking to eliminate redundancies; who’s aware of the cost of a scare resource like time.
More crucially, the daily intelligence briefings likely comprise a good deal of “analysis,” and NOT original intelligence intercepts. Perhaps Mr. Trump is not wild about the quality of “analysis” America has been receiving from 17 highly politicized intelligence agencies. (Talk about redundancies!) I know I’d want to compare the original intelligence intercepts with the analysis rendered by the “experts,” before making life-and-death decisions.
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ILANA Mercer is a paleolibertarian writer and thinker based in the US. Her weekly column was begun in Canada in 1999. (Articles Archive.) Ilana is the author of The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed (June 2016), the first libertarian book of Trump, and of Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa (2011). Follow ilana on https://twitter.com/IlanaMercer, on https://www.facebook.com/PaleolibertarianAuthorILANAMercer/
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In response to Ilana Mercer’s thoughtful and correct ‘The Proof is No in the Putin’ article in the Libertarian Alliance Blog, I would like to express the hope that Trump sticks to his non interventionist stance abroad. We shouldn’t forget that this was also George W Bush’s original policy. And at the time of Bush’s first election, the policy was promoted every bit as prominently as Trump has with his.
Mr Bush however was blown off course by an over, and inappropriate reaction to 9/11 and the activities of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. But to be fair to Bush, if he had the CIA telling him in one ear that Saddam had Nuclear Weapons, and Dick Cheney and ex wrestler Donald Rumsfeld banging on about Neo Con ideas of how to secure ‘freedom’ in the other, it’s not surprising he was misled.
George W Bush could hardly have been expected to be an expert on the history and complicated politics of the Arab World, and he was reliant on the CIA and the military for intelligence. Following 9/11 Bush felt he had to do something, and he faced an enemy he had never thought about before. In retrospect he’d have been better off doing nothing, except to send the CIA to find Bin Laden.
Broadly speaking however, Bush did stick to his non intervention policy elsewhere, and it was largely successful. Obama’s policy however, has if anything, been even worse than Bush’s. He’s been an interventionist without actually doing much intervening. And where he has intervened, save for catching Osama Bin Laden, the interventions have been so cowardly and ineffective, that it’s made matters worse. Standing on the sidelines shouting abuse and throwing small stones, never works. It just makes you a target and provokes your potential assailants.
As for the CIA, ‘foul play’ is their stock in trade. It’s fine if that ‘foul play’ is for a practical purpose in pursuit of a specific Government directed objective, but when it arises in pursuit of the CIA’s own random targets it’s unacceptable.
In any case, who cares if Russia has a view on who should be President of the USA? Liberals in the USA have a view on who should be governing every other country, and endlessly intervene in the hope of getting their own way. Even Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish ‘First Minister’ (essentially the leader of the minority administration of a medium sized local authority), endlessly told he world that she wanted Hillary to win, and now keeps on saying she’s going to continue to ‘speak out’ about Trump. It’s ‘megaphone diplomacy’ without a megaphone. Obama, during his visit to the UK, was even threatening consequences to us, if we voted for Brexit. Look how well that turned out.
So unless Russia has actually physically interfered with the US voting machines, good luck to them. And if they have managed to hack into the machines, it doesn’t say much for the integrity and security of the US voting process. Use ballot papers like everyone else. But the chances of anytuing like this having actually happened, are even less than Saddam Hussein having possessed weapons of mass destruction.
[…] https://thelibertarianalliance.com/2016/12/18/the-proof-is-not-in-the-putin/ […]
[…] And so, in the words of a Kremlin spokesman, “Almost every level of dialogue with the United States is frozen.” This, as a spiteful Obama punishes Russia for infractions the American people, by-and-large, don’t believe the Russians committed. Differently put, “The proof is not in the Putin.” […]