What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[CountDeMoney]

Maybe, I think it's at least fair to say Obama was dragged kicking and screaming by NATO allies in to the Libyan intervention,

IIRC they had help from Hillary Clinton, Samantha Powers, and Susan Rice.

So does that make it an actual coven, or just a gaggle of whores?

[Ed Anger]

Maybe, I think it's at least fair to say Obama was dragged kicking and screaming by NATO allies in to the Libyan intervention,

IIRC they had help from Hillary Clinton, Samantha Powers, and Susan Rice.

So does that make it an actual coven, or just a gaggle of whores?

A posse of cunts

[CountDeMoney]

  Der Furor is in Louisville, Kentucky right now, reliving his election victory.
 
Yes, the same election that was discussed on the Hill today that the Director of the FBI said the Russians openly interfered with.

Sigh.

[Admiral Yi]

Russia interfering is old news and not all that relevant.  Until and unless they say Trump et al colluded and conspired and coordinated nothing changes.

[jimmy olsen]

So how much did Comey say? I read this yesterday and thought it was an interesting prediction.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-listen-jim-comeys-testimony-monday

From the LAWFARE BLOG

How to Listen to Jim Comey's Testimony on Monday

By Benjamin Wittes

Saturday, March 18, 2017, 1:40 PM

Let me start by saying that I have absolutely no inside information about the testimony FBI Director Jim Comey is going to give Monday morning before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I have not discussed what Comey might say with Comey himself or with anyone else who is in the know, and I'll thus be watching the hearing with the same level of uncertainty as everyone else will. If this were not the case, I almost certainly would not be writing this piece.

But free as I am from the shackles of any actual knowledge, let me offer readers the following user's guide to Comey's testimony, which can be summed up in one simple sentence: Comey's communicativeness with the committee—and through it with the public—will almost certainly be inversely proportional to the seriousness of the Russia investigation.

That is, if Comey says a lot, makes a lot of news on Russia matters, and cheers a lot of anti-Trump hearts by maximally embarassing the President for his outrageous comments on Obama's alleged wiretapping of Trump Tower, that will very likely be a sign that Comey has relatively little to protect in terms of investigative equities in the Russia matter and is thus free to vent. Conversely, a quiet, reserved Comey—one whose contrast with the relatively loquatious FBI director who talked at length about the Clinton email matters will infuriate a lot of liberals and frustrate those who want to know what's going on with Russia—may well spell trouble for the President.

To understand this perhaps paradoxical-sounding read, consider three possible scenarios.

In the first, the Russia investigation is either mostly complete, does not implicate the President in any significant way, or is a bust altogether. In this scenario, maybe General Flynn and Paul Manafort and Carter Page have problems, and maybe there's some ongoing counter-intelligence activity, but there's nothing big that Comey believes he has to protect save the sources and methods behind all such investigations. Comey is reportedly irate about Trump's wiretapping allegations, which don't merely defame the prior president but implicate the FBI in illegal activity. In this scenario, there's no particular reason for Comey not to tell his whole story and give vent to his anger. If this scenario is the reality, the template for Comey's testimomy will be his famous interaction with Sen. Schumer in 2007 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he spilled the beans on the 2004 hospital room confrontation over the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

When Comey has nothing to lose and he has a story to tell, here's what he sounds like:

SCHUMER: There have been media reports describing a dramatic visit by Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft in March 2004, after you, as acting attorney general, decided not to authorize a classified program. First, can you confirm that a night-time hospital visit took place?

COMEY: Yes, I can.

SCHUMER: OK. Can you remember the date and the day?

COMEY: Yes, sir, very well. It was Wednesday, March the 10th, 2004.

SCHUMER: And how do you remember that date so well?

COMEY: This was a very memorable period in my life; probably the most difficult time in my entire professional life. And that night was probably the most difficult night of my professional life. So it's not something I'd forget.

SCHUMER: Were you present when Alberto Gonzales visited Attorney General Ashcroft's bedside?

COMEY: Yes.

SCHUMER: And am I correct that the conduct of Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card on that evening troubled you greatly?

COMEY: Yes.

SCHUMER: OK. Let me go back and take it from the top. You rushed to the hospital that evening. Why?

COMEY: I'm only hesitating because I need to explain why.

SCHUMER: Please. I'll give you all the time you need, sir.

COMEY: I've actually thought quite a bit over the last three years about how I would answer that question if it was ever asked, because I assumed that at some point I would have to testify about it.

The rest of the exchange is the stuff of legend.

If you see Comey behaving like this, I think it's safe to make two assumptions: First, that he has decided that he doesn't mind being fired and that it's more important to tell the truth than to keep his job, and second and relatedly, that he has decided that his continued presence at FBI isn't necessary to preserve a crucially important investigation that is ongoing. This scenario may be the most embarrassing for Trump, but it almost surely means he is safest from seeing his presidency overwhelmed by Russia matters.

In the second scenario, there are still threads of the Russia investigation to protect but Comey does not necessarily expect them to lead anywhere. If this is the case, expect him to be tight-lipped about Russia but relatively communicative about the wiretapping allegations. In this scenario, I would expect him to answer committee questions about Trump's wiretapping allegations but not in a fashion that is especially provocative vis a vis the President. In other words, expect Comey to answer direct questions but in a just-the-facts kind of fashion that doesn't involve a lot of narrative storytelling. And expect him not to give information that would compromise the aspects of the investigation that may still be ongoing.

A sure sign that the Russia Connection is not that big a deal is if Comey talks about it.

In the third scenario, Russia is a very big deal. Comey, in other words, has significant investigative equities to protect and he believes that he needs to be there in order to protect them—in other words, that he has a responsibility to not get himself fired because of his anger about the Trump tweets (or anything else) because he has to make sure the investigation can proceed unimpeded. In this situation, I would expect him to be minimally verbal. He may have to answer yes or no questions in certain instances, including about the truth of the wiretapping allegations, but he will refuse to answer a lot of questions. He will make as little news as humanly possible. He will be exceptionally spare with his opinions. He will make a point of not antagonizing the President. Lots of people will leave disappointed.

If I were advising Trump, this is the scenario that would scare me most. We know, both from the hospital room testimony and from the Clinton email testimony, how Comey behaves when he feels at liberty to speak. We also know he's angry right now and would presumably love a chance to defend the integrity of his agency and his agents. If he passes up that opportunity, I will read that as a sign that he is biting his lip very hard because there's something more important at stake.

[/quote]

[viper37]

Pretty sure Donald doesn't post on Languish Timmy.

Even Ed is more coherent than Trump.

I imagine that if Trump posted on languish during the runup to the election, he would have bombarded us with posts rife with misspellings about how he was destined to win. Intelligent analysis would be absent from all of his many many posts. Basically, he would have been just like Tim, except that Tim of course was convinced Trump was doomed to lose.

Trump, like Tim, would have been completely insufferable, but in the end, at least he would have been right about the winner of the election. And because of that, he would have been an improvement.

stop it with the Tim bashing guys.  He's done nothing to deserve it.

[Ed Anger]

Yes he has. Reposting slate articles are a crime against humanity.

[jimmy olsen]

Hoping this guy is right, but as they say in WH40k "Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."

https://www.lawfareblog.com/how-read-what-comey-said-today

FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Intelligence Committee / CSPAN

Today was a bad day for President Trump. Really bad.

Over the weekend, I wrote a short piece about how to understand the testimony FBI Director James Comey was to give today. The bottom line was that: "Comey's communicativeness with the committee—and through it with the public—will almost certainly be inversely proportional to the seriousness of the Russia investigation." That is,

if Comey says a lot, makes a lot of news on Russia matters, and cheers a lot of anti-Trump hearts by maximally embarassing the President for his outrageous comments on Obama's alleged wiretapping of Trump Tower, that will very likely be a sign that Comey has relatively little to protect in terms of investigative equities in the Russia matter and is thus free to vent. Conversely, a quiet, reserved Comey—one whose contrast with the relatively loquatious FBI director who talked at length about the Clinton email matters will infuriate a lot of liberals and frustrate those who want to know what's going on with Russia—may well spell trouble for the President.

The article spelled out three possible scenarios: In the first, Comey does not have much in the way of investigative equities to protect and he thus feels very free to give vent to his anger about the President's tweets, which imputed illegal conduct to the FBI. This scenario means "that [Comey] has decided that he doesn't mind being fired and that it's more important to tell the truth than to keep his job, and second and relatedly, that he has decided that his continued presence at FBI isn't necessary to preserve a crucially important investigation that is ongoing."


In the second scenario, "there are still threads of the Russia investigation to protect but Comey does not necessarily expect them to lead anywhere. If this is the case, expect him to be tight-lipped about Russia but relatively communicative about the wiretapping allegations."

In the third scenario,

Russia is a very big deal. Comey, in other words, has significant investigative equities to protect and he believes that he needs to be there in order to protect them—in other words, that he has a responsibility to not get himself fired because of his anger about the Trump tweets (or anything else) because he has to make sure the investigation can proceed unimpeded. In this situation, I would expect him to be minimally verbal. He may have to answer yes or no questions in certain instances, including about the truth of the wiretapping allegations, but he will refuse to answer a lot of questions. He will make as little news as humanly possible. He will be exceptionally spare with his opinions. He will make a point of not antagonizing the President. Lots of people will leave disappointed.

So which Comey showed up today?

Let's start with the obvious point: It certainly wasn't the Jim Comey of scenario number one. Yes, Comey contradicted the President on the accuracy of the tweets, but he did not do so in his opening statement. He only did it only in response to specific questioning from Adam Schiff, and he did it relatively minimally, gently even. Here's what he said:

SCHIFF: Director Comey, I want to attempt to put to rest several claims made by the president about the predecessor, namely that President Obama wiretapped his phone. so that we can be precise, i want to refer you to exactly what the president said, and ask you if there is any truth to it. First, the president claimed, quote, Terrible. Just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism, unquote. Director Comey, was the president's statement that Obama had his wires tapped in Trump Tower true?

COMEY: With respect to the president's tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him from the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside of the FBI. The Department of Justice has said that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The Department has no information that supports those tweets.

SCHIFF: The president accused Mr. Obama, and presumably the FBI, of engaging in McCarthyism. As you understand the term McCarthyism, do you think that President Obama or the FBI was engaged in such conduct?

COMEY: I am not going to try to characterize the tweets themselves. All I can tell you is that we have no information that supports them.

SCHIFF: Were you engaged in McCarthyism, Director Comey?

COMEY: I try very hard not to engage in any isms of any kind, including McCarthyism.

SCHIFF: The president second stated, quote, is it legal for a sitting president to be wiretapping a race for president prior to an election. Turned down by court earlier. A new low, end quote. Can you answer the President's question, would it have been legal for President Obama to have ordered a wiretap of Donald Trump?

COMEY: I won't characterize or respond to the tweets themselves, but I can tell you that in general, as Admiral Rogers and I were saying, there is a statutory framework in the united states under which courts grant permission for electronic surveillance either in a criminal case or the national security case based on the showing of probable cause carefully overseen. It is a rigorous, rigorous process involving all three branches of government and it's one that we have lived with since the late 1970s. That is how it works. No individual in the United States can direct electronic surveillance of anyone, and it has to go through the application process, and ask a judge. The judge can then make a order.

SCHIFF: So President Obama could not unilaterally order a wiretap of anyone?

COMEY: No president could.

SCHIFF: Mr. Trump also asserted in the tweet that the application was turned down by a court. Was there any request made by the FBI or the Justice Department to wiretap Donald Trump turned down by a court?

COMEY: That is one of the subjects that I can't comment on one way or another, and please don't interpret that, but I cannot respond to anything that relates to the FISA process in an open setting.

SCHIFF: Third, the president said, I  bet that a good lawyer could make a case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October just prior to the election. Director Comey, you are a good lawyer. Can  you make a great case that President Obama wiretapped President Trump's phones just prior to the election, in light of the fact that you've said you have no evidence of that

COMEY: All I can say is what I've said before, that we don't have any information that supports those tweets.

If Comey is, indeed, irate about the tweets, you don't see that here. And he certainly wasn't acting like someone who feels free to give voice to his anger because he's decided he's got nothing to protect in terms of his ongoing investigation. Indeed, his words here actually seem careful to spare the President embarrassment. He could, after all, quite truthfully have said something far more indignant and accusatory—something like, say, "there is no truth to that whatsoever" or even "that was a lie and an insult to the men and women of the FBI who conduct electronic surveillance only under the rule of law." He didn't do anything like that. He even put a little distance between himself and the factual correction of his boss by describing the tweets merely as reflecting a conclusion his investigation does not support. This is, I think, close to the most generous way Comey could possibly have responded to Trump. And it suggests to me that the investigative equities at stake here are non-trivial.

We don't need to speculate on that point because Comey announced it very clearly. Here's what he said about the Russia investigation:

As you know our practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters. But, in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so, as Justice Department policies recognize. This is one of those circumstances. I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating, the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.

Because it is an open, ongoing investigation, and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing, and who's conduct we are examining. At the request of congressional leaders, we have taken the extraordinary step, in coordination with the Department of Justice, of briefing this Congress's leaders, including the leaders of this committee, in a classified setting in detail about the investigation. But I can't go into those details here. I know that is extremely frustrating to some folks. I hope you and the American people can understand, the FBI is very careful in how we handle information about our cases, and about the people we are investigating. We are also very careful about how we handle information that may be of interest to our foreign adversaries. Both of those interests are at issue in a counterintelligence investigation.

Please don't draw any conclusions from the fact that I may not be able to comment on certain topics. I know speculating is part of human nature. But it really isn't fair to draw conclusions simply because I say "I can't comment." Some folks may want to make comparisons to past instances where the Department of Justice and the FBI have spoken about the details of some investigations. But please keep in mind that those involved the details of completed investigations. Our ability to share details with the Congress and with the American people is limited when those investigations are still open. Which I hope makes sense. We need to protect people's privacy. We need to make sure we don't give other people clues as to where we're going. We need to make sure we don't give information to our foreign adversaries about what we know or don't know. We just cannot do our work well or fairly if we start talking about it while we're doing it. So we will try very, very hard to avoid that, as we always do. This work is very complex, and there is no way for me to give you a timetable as to when it will be done.

We approach this work in an open-minded and independent way, and our expert investigators will conclude that work as quickly as they can, but they will always do it well no matter how long that takes (emphasis added).

Comey very politely requested that people not to draw any conclusions from his refusal to comment on certain topics. I cannot oblige him. I think there are important inferences to draw here both from what he said and also from what he didn't say.

First off, the scope of the investigation explcitly includes not merely the Russian government's hacking and attempts to interfere in the U.S. election. It also includes both "the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government" and "whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts." These are framed as active investigative questions, not—as White House and Republican officials have repeatedly suggested in recent weeks—matters of investigative conclusion. Comey offered the White House no solace of any time of time frame for resolution. Indeed, he announced that there was no time frame.

Second, Comey specifically included the fact that the investigation "will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed." This is an interesting point for him to include, and it may (or may not) be a signal.

One of the only good pieces of news for Trump in this testimony is Comey's formulation of the investigation he announced as a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation. This little-understood distinction is actually important. A criminal investigation is designed to suss out whether a crime was committed and needs to be prosecuted, who is guilty of it, and whether the evidence would support a conviction. A counterintelligence investigation, by contrast, is designed to respond to foreign espionage against the United States. The goal is not necessarily to prosecute but to figure out what kind of steps may need to be taken to prevent whatever harm is threatened. Most counterintelligence investigations don't result in criminal charges; they might result instead in long-term monitoring of foreign actors, cyberdefense activities, or even diplomatic moves. So when Comey says this is a counterintelligence investigation, not a criminal investigation, he is flagging that prosecuting anyone, let alone the President, may not be his top priority.

All of which makes his apparently gratuitous inclusion of a criminal element in describing the investigation curious. As Comey notes, the criminal component of this investigation is actually always there: "As with any counterintelligence investigation," he said, "this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed." The criminal element is always there there because criminal process is an inherent feature of any investigation that involves activities—like hacking and spying—that implicate federal criminal laws.

But if a criminal element is always a feature of a counterintelligence probe, why mention it specifically? The answer, I suspect, is that Comey is flagging for the committee, and the public, the possibility that this matter could become criminal at any time. That is, it's not a criminal investigation, Comey is saying . . . yet.

Third, Comey then declared that he wasn't going to discuss specific aspects of the investigation, and he spent much of the rest of the hearing declining just about everyone's invitations to explore the contours of the probe. He resisted all questions about specific individuals, from refusing to discuss the Flynn leaks with Republicans to refusing any efforts by Democrats to ask whether his investigation included specific Russia-Trump matters they thought important.

In this sense, except for the announcement at the outset that the investigation existed at all, his behavior most resembles the third scenario I outlined. With this one big exception, this was a very reticent Jim Comey. And while he asked us not to read anything into that, I read one big thing into it anyway: there's a significant investigation going on, and Comey doesn't want either Congress or presidential tweets to impede his conduct of it.

If there's anything mitigating the bad news for the White House here, it is that Comey may have also sent subtle signals that the matters under investigation are not principally about the personal conduct of Trump himself. While this is speculation, I do not believe that if Comey had, say, validated large swaths of the Steele dossier or found significant Trump-Russia financial entanglements of a compromising variety, he would have said even as much as he said today. I also don't think he would have announced the scope of the investigation as about the relationship "between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government" or "coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts"; these words suggest one step of removal from investigating the President himself. If the latter were the case, I suspect Comey wouldn't have used words suggestive of the Flynn-Manafort-Page cabal.

But that's reading a lot into a relatively small number of tea leaves. What is clear is that this was a very bad day for the President. In it, we learned that there is an open-ended Russia investigation with no timetable for completion, one that's going hang over Trump's head for a long time, and one to which the FBI director is entirely committed.

[CountDeMoney]

For fuck's sake, people...enough already.

Reuters
World News | Mon Mar 20, 2017 | 9:53pm EDT
Exclusive: Tillerson plans to skip NATO meeting, visit Russia in April - sources
By Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott | WASHINGTON

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to skip an April 5-6 meeting of NATO foreign ministers for a U.S. visit by the Chinese president and will travel to Russia later in the month, U.S. officials said on Monday, a step allies may see as putting Moscow's concerns ahead of theirs.

Tillerson intends to miss what would be his first meeting in Brussels with the 28 NATO members to attend President Donald Trump's expected April 6-7 talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, four current and former U.S. officials said.

The decisions to skip the NATO meeting and to visit Moscow risked feeding a perception that Trump may be putting U.S. dealings with big powers before those of smaller nations that depend on Washington for their security, said two former U.S. officials.

Trump has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Tillerson worked with Russia's government for years as a top executive at Exxon Mobil Corp, and has questioned the wisdom of sanctions against Russia that he said could harm U.S. businesses.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner had no immediate comment on whether Tillerson would skip the NATO meeting or visit Russia. Two U.S. officials said Tillerson planned to visit Moscow on April 12.

"It feeds this narrative that somehow the Trump administration is playing footsy with Russia," said one former U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"You don't want to do your early business with the world's great autocrats. You want to start with the great democracies, and NATO is the security instrument of the transatlantic group of great democracies," he added.

Any visit to Russia by a senior Trump administration official will be carefully scrutinized after the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Monday publicly confirmed his agency was investigating any collusion between the Russian government and Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign.

Trump has already antagonized and worried NATO allies by referring to the Western security alliance as "obsolete" and by pressing other members to meet their commitments to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.

Last week, he dismayed British officials by shrugging off a media report, forcefully denied by Britain, that the administration of former President Barack Obama tapped his phones during the 2016 White House race with the aid of Britain's GCHQ spy agency.

A former NATO diplomat said he hoped there might be a way for Tillerson to attend both meetings, for example by changing the date of the NATO talks.

The former diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was vital to present a united front toward Moscow. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949 to serve as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.

"Given the challenge that Russia poses, not just to the United States but to Europe, it's critical to engage on the basis of a united front if at all possible," the diplomat said.

[sbr]

Wasn't Tillerson one of the guys that wasn't going to deal with Trump's bullshit?

[CountDeMoney]

Wasn't Tillerson one of the guys that wasn't going to deal with Trump's bullshit?

I totally blew the call on that one, I'll admit that;  but he seems to still be wearing his Exxon-Mobil hard hat, and NATO's not much for securing oil field rights.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I would argue in the modern era, with no Cold War, no serious military threat to NATO member states from Russia--and to be frank, no I don't think the threat to the Baltics is significant, and the threat to non-NATO members like Georgia/Ukraine/Moldova is outside NATO's mandate--NATO's primary function is operating as a tool for Western military intervention. That's how it was used in Afghanistan and how it's been used in interventions in North Africa and the Levant in recent years. I'll note that after the attacks in Paris, Francois Hollande publicly called on the United States to increase its efforts against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. That was a concerning moment for me, because you had a NATO member who hasn't hit the agreed upon 2% GDP defense spending in some time whining to the United States to commit itself more to a military intervention against a country not attacking another NATO member, when the U.S. was already significantly more involved than France itself was.

Yes, it was concerting, if you look at it this way.
If you look at it from another point of view though, the US did fuck up really bad in Iraq.  They destabilized an entire region to create anarchy and chaos and were never able or never willing to transform Iraq into a stable, functionning democracy.  In fact, the US administration had no plans for post-invasion, aside prayers, I guess.  It was obvious in the first 6 months after the invasion, there was basically no government, no coordination to establish any kind of civilian authority there.  Only after the resistance started to increase did the US tried to rush some kind of civilian authority there and coordinate rebuilding operations.

From this point of view, ISIS developped from the chaos inherent to a badly managed invasion by the US.  Without an invasion, it is doubtful that ISIS could have survived long enough under a Saddam like regime to mount an army and destabilize both Syria and Iraq.  This is the French point of view.

Also, there is the fact that the US took the lead in Afghanistan, asked for NATO's help after 9/11, the French and the other Euro-wheenies did make some effort to send troops over there, but it quickly  became abandonned by the US when the eye of Sauron turned itself toward Iraq.  Although 20 000 Air force soldiers stayed there (yes, the biggest number of troops were american), the vast majority of the intelligence network shifted elsewhere, and relations between NATO soldiers and the local populace was really strained due to repeated mistakes by the US soldiers due to insufficiant training in calling airstrikes as soon as they were shot at.  Not even counting the fact that fighting on the same battlefield as US soldiers puts you under risk or receiving US bombs just as much as dying from an ennemy bullet.

I mean I don't disagree that Iraq II was a clusterfuck and directly lead to ISIS, which has primarily an Iraqi origin. But that's different from the Syria conflict, I don't believe Iraq II caused the Arab spring, I think angry Arabs who had been misgoverned for a century boiling over caused that. Particularly more religious-government minded Arabs ruled by more secular dictators who have had varying levels of backing from the West over the decades. I don't think Syria would be all that different today if Iraq II hadn't happened. It's possible that Iraq would be in a Syria state right now as Saddam fought an insurgency of his own, that he likely would be at least somewhat constrained (by international powers and a much decayed military) in his ability to shut it down like he did the major uprising after Iraq I in the early 90s. There's a lot of insurgent groups active in Syria and ISIS's largely just cannibalized al-Nusra front.

The instability in Syria and Iraq at the same time was a big aid to ISIS as it was able to move freely between both countries and executes its nefarious plans, but I think we'd still have a massive Syrian refugee crisis right now even if we had never gone into Iraq a second time in 2003.

But even if I'm wrong, none of that changes the fact that even if what you say is 100% true that America is to blame for the refugee crisis and the new wave of terrorism throughout Europe, that that means France is correct that we should be bombing Syria to...vague ends. FWIW our bombing of Syria largely accomplished little but to make sure Assad stays in power, and Assad's forces are by far the ones who have committed the most humanitarian harm in Syria, even moreso than ISIS or any other terrorist group. Right or wrong, the American President viewed escalation in Syria as misguided, and was basically being pressured by a more activist NATO ally to "do more."

To my mind if you're thinking like that, and you have a multi-trillion dollar economy like France, you probably can go ahead and work on funding your own ability to act in such scenarios instead of utilizing the NATO relationship as a vehicle to apply pressure to the United States.

[Grinning_Colossus]

If Trump posted here, he'd be banned within a week for being obnoxious and pro-Trump.

[Syt]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/us/politics/republicans-leaks-defend-trump.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

What Investigation? G.O.P. Responds to F.B.I. Inquiry by Changing Subject

WASHINGTON — The headline from Capitol Hill on Monday was bracing: confirmation of a criminal investigation into connections between associates of a sitting president and Russian operatives during a presidential election.

But the response from Republicans was almost as striking: During hours of testimony in which James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, acknowledged the inquiry, they shrugged off its implications and instead offered a coordinated effort to defend President Trump by demanding a focus on leaks to news organizations.

Throughout the 5½-hour hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, as Democrats tried to highlight the criminal investigation, Republicans demanded a renewed focus on how its existence was revealed in news reports months ago.

When Democrats raised the issue of Mr. Trump's Twitter posts accusing former President Barack Obama of wiretapping him — and Mr. Comey said the F.B.I. had "no information that supports those tweets" — Republicans railed against leaks.

When Democrats pressed Mr. Comey on evidence of coordination between Mr. Trump's associates and Russian operatives, Republicans questioned the F.B.I. director about how the names of those associates became public in news reports.

The political strategy appears clear: Republicans are betting that they can deflect attention from the investigation into the president's campaign advisers by insisting that more needs to be done to prevent the leaking of classified material.

Again and again on Monday, the president's allies urged Mr. Comey and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, to answer for the illegal dissemination of information to reporters.

In one remarkable back and forth, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, insinuated that several top Obama administration officials — including John O. Brennan, the former C.I.A. director, and Benjamin J. Rhodes, the former deputy national security adviser — might have been the source of leaks to news organizations.

"One thing you and I agree on is the felonious dissemination of classified material most definitely is a crime," Mr. Gowdy, whose own Benghazi investigation was known as a porous source of information to reporters, told Mr. Comey, who repeatedly refused to say that he was even investigating the release of classified information.

"I can't say because I don't want to confirm that that was classified information," Mr. Comey said.

Whether the Republican approach works may depend on the outcome of the investigation itself, which remains shrouded in secrecy and is unlikely to be fully resolved within months or even years. That may lead to more leaks, and to a continuing effort by the president's defenders to demand that they stop.

At one point in the hearing, Mr. Comey noted that leaks of sensitive government information have bedeviled the nation's leaders since George Washington's time, though he conceded that leakers have been "unusually active" in recent months.

"It does strike me there's been a lot of people talking or at least reporters saying people are talking to them," Mr. Comey said.

Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, nodded toward the importance of plugging leaks, saying that Republicans "will get no argument from this side on the importance of investigating, prosecuting leaks."

But Democrats are determined to try to keep the focus on Mr. Trump, his campaign aides and Russia's meddling in the election. Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the panel, offered a long, detailed description of the publicly available reports of Russian activity and contacts with members of Mr. Trump's campaign.

"Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence?" Mr. Schiff asked. "Yes, it is possible. But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental."

Republicans seemed much less interested in the answer.

The effort to change the subject began with Mr. Trump, who said on Twitter early Monday that the "real story" is the "leaking of Classified information." Later, he asked: "What about all of the contact with the Clinton campaign and the Russians?"

At the White House, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, returned to the subject of leaks again and again during his daily briefing for reporters, echoing the Republican lawmakers from the presidential podium.

Mr. Spicer railed against the "illegal leak" of the names of some of Mr. Trump's associates under investigation. And he insisted that news organizations are refusing to cover the real story from Monday's hearing: the need for the federal government to stop national security leaks.

Mr. Spicer also evaded questions about Mr. Trump's associates by repeatedly returning to what he said were Hillary Clinton's ties to Russia, even though Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign was hurt by Russian operatives' hacking.

Mr. Spicer accused journalists of ignoring stories alleging that the Democratic National Committee had not provided the F.B.I. access to its hacked servers, a claim Democratic officials deny. Mr. Comey said Monday that the investigators got the information they needed to investigate the hack.

"Why? What were they hiding? What were they concerned of?" Mr. Spicer said. In confusing, rapid-fire fashion, Mr. Spicer noted accusations about "donations that the Clintons received from Russians" and decisions by Mrs. Clinton to sell "tremendous amounts of uranium" to Russia.

"Where's the concern about their efforts on the Hillary Clinton thing?" Mr. Spicer said.

Demands for leak investigations are nothing new in Washington, where the targets of critical stories — regardless of party — are often quick to try to expose the sources of those reports. Mr. Obama's White House was particularly aggressive in seeking the source of leaks, prosecuting more whistle-blowers than all his predecessors combined.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, appears to have had a significant change of heart regarding leaks since he won the presidential election. During the campaign, Mr. Trump frequently praised WikiLeaks, the website that investigators believe was used by Russian operatives to leak emails from the D.N.C. and Mrs. Clinton's campaign chairman. At one rally in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump declared, "I love WikiLeaks!"

Now, faced with leaks about the Russia investigation and the dissemination of other information from inside his administration, Mr. Trump appears increasingly frustrated that information is finding its way to reporters.

"Must find leaker now!" he said in a Twitter message Monday morning.

That, in a nutshell, was the message of the day for Republicans. But the strategy of deflection required many more words, repeated over and over for the cameras.

[Syt]

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