ROBERT STEELE: There is only one person who is both totally committed to President Donald Trump and who has the brains and the balls to be the next Director of National Intelligence. His name is Mike Flynn. The time has come for him to come back into the fight.
Here are the five reforms he can implement in service to the President with results well in time to impact on the 2020 election:
Today Wikileaks released what is, by far, the most devastating leak of the entire campaign. This makes Trump’s dirty talk video looks like an episode of Barney and Friends. Even though when Trump called Hillary the ‘founder’ of ISIS he was telling the truth and 100% accurate, the media has never stopped ripping him apart over it. Today the media is forced to eat their hats because the newest batch of leaked emails show Hillary, in her own words, admitting to doing just that, funding and running ISIS.
We have grouped the documents in rough thematic fashion and, within each theme, by publication date where possible. (Many of the declassified items do not reflect a date or have dates and other information redacted.) Our five broad subject areas are: Intelligence Agency Leadership and Governance; Operations and Counterintelligence; Law and Oversight; Analysis; and Science and Technology. For ease of reference, each entry within each subject is accompanied by a brief summary of the document’s contents.
Sigh. I was not going to comment on David Patraeus gross dereliction of duty but several colleagues are totally pissed off and they are correct to be angry. Here are a mix of supposition and fact along with my conclusions on this sorry disgrace to the Republic. HOWEVER, I conclude this is not about Patraeus — many others should be indicted along with him and many others have committed high crimes and misdemeanors that exhonerate him in relative terms.
UPDATED to integrate specific observations from IDENS A-C.
UPDATED to add key paragraphs from Marcy Wheeler at SALON and Ray McGovern.
As Esam Al-Amin explained here, Mohamad Morsi made some colossal blunders during his one year rule of Egypt, as its democratically elected president. He was elected in what most observers regard as a reasonably fair election.
But the exclusive report by Al Jazeera (also attached below) reveals that the United States — which claims to support democracy in the Middle East and elsewhere — has been actively involved in bankrolling Morsi's opposition, and in so doing has continued its long policy of subverting Islamist democratic victories when they win fair elections (Hamas in 2006) or threaten to win fair elections (Algeria 1991).
Al Jazeera reveals how stark contradictions continue to rip through the three legs of the moral triangle that is US foreign policy — i.e., the contradictions between (1) the values we profess to to the world that we uphold, (2) the values we actually hold as demonstrated by our actions abroad as well as at home (don't forget the neo-fascist, non-accountable, hidden hand the emerging American deep state exemplified by the NSA scandal) and (3) the world we have to deal with deal with (in this case epitomized by the changing conditions of the Arab Spring).
Every dying Empire has its truth telling prophet and America had its own with Chalmers Johnson. Johnson correctly compared the decay of the American empire, with its well over 600 overseas military bases, with the fall of the Roman Empire whereas the Senate becomes a wealthy corporate club and irrelevant compared to the ruling Military Industrial Congressional Complex
Chalmers Johnson was a truth teller and prophet in a political environment where few would stand up to the interests and secrecy of the Pentagon and the intelligence community ~ and since his passing in November of 2010, many of his prophetic fears have been realized in the Obama administration.
Johnson, author of Blowback, Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis,The Last Days of the American Republic, talks in this video interview about the similarities in the decline of the Roman and Soviet empires and the signs that the U.S. empire is exhibiting the very same symptoms ~ overextension, corruption and the inability to reform. (Watch at least the first 20 minutes and also the very end where he predicts an economic collapse)
Johnson’ s main points were; The United States is treading the same three steps as the former Soviet Union;
Inability to deal with corporate corruption.
Imperial over-stretch is leading to fiscal insolvency ( 600 plus bases throughout the world )
Inability to reform, thus accelerating the inevitable fall.
This offers a brilliant analysis, a “connecting of the dots,” of why Petreaus was set up to leave CIA. But that's not the main story. The general's affair was cover used by Obama for getting rid of Petraeus to install Brennan for a special purpose:
“If Brennan were to succeed Petraeus at the C.I.A., the White House would not only install Obama's first choice in that office, no small matter in itself. Of far greater importance is the fact that, aside from Obama himself — and in certain respects, probably more than Obama — Brennan is the single most critical person in the design and implementation of the government's Murder Program, as I recently discussed. If Brennan does finally head the C.I.A., do you think that would be a coincidence? I do not for a moment believe in coincidences of that kind, especially not with an administration as determined in its lethality as this one. Think of it: John Brennan, who now is Obama's chief adviser on domestic security and counterterrorism goes to head the C.I.A.
I'll tell you what that means to me: Obama and his fellow murderers are absolutely determined to bring the Murder Program home to America, and probably even more quickly than I had previously thought. I described the steps by which that might happen in the second half of the preceding post. The unfolding nightmare that I described might very well lie in your future, America — and in the not too distant future at that. Do you care? To be sure, the administration could achieve the same end with another candidate if it wished, Vickers for example. But to be able to unleash the Murder Program on an even greater scale with the man who knows everything about it, and from his lofty perch at the C.I.A. … it's a dream come true for these bastards. And that may well be the reason they decided to get rid of Petraeus.”
And Congress's approving Brennan will enable Obama to say Congress approves of using drones what this writer calls the “Murder Program”: