The Hill: Obama under pressure to prove Russian interference in election
The Obama administration is under intense pressure to release evidence confirming Russian interference in the presidential election before leaving office.
The administration up until now has provided little documentation to back up its official October assessment that the Russian government was attempting to interfere in the U.S. election.
Nor has it corroborated subsequent leaks from anonymous officials contending that the CIA believes the campaign was an attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to ensure Donald Trump’s victory.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: I will be surprised if any "evidence" will be released. The focus is to impose sanctions and other penalties .... and that is what is going to happen.
6 comments:
There is no evidence. Obama just wants to blow up the world before he leaves office.
Carl
Moron. Obama is staid, mild, and hardly Trumpian, and silly remarks like yours make unproven accusations. If he wanted to do the damage you claim, he would invade like Bush did, a country that had no WMD but was invaded by lies about them. Evidence would require revealing intel that perhaps best not revealed. But you prefer to drop middle school venom and imagine that is smart. it is not.
Fred,
What Carl states is certainly how it looks from my end as well. Now as for the Iraqi WMD claim, the intel did turn out to be flawed as the WMD were not "there" as in where we and our coalition partners who took enormous risks to assist us thought they'd be.
I've long known US "Intelligence" is staffed and led by a combination of incompetent boobs and political hacks. Post 9/11 and post Iraq I had offered suggestions on how to fix it. Essentially US "Intelligence" would be completely disbanded and we would work with allies such as Israel, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France to assist us in constructing capable Intelligence services. As such, given their massive failures in the past which are not limited to just 9/11 and Iraq they have a massive credibility problem. As such, they are not to be trusted without solid proof.
While I can understand your position that revealing the evidence may mean revealing methods that shouldn't be revealed, however, given the massive failures of US Intelligence in the past the evidence needs to be revealed and the chips fall where they may. The stakes are simply to high to allow team Obama to take us into a new Cold War, a war we may not be able to win without knowing exactly why we are doing this and any action needs to be carefully thought through rather than rushed through in the 22 days.
The "staid" and "mild" and has recklessly stoked conflict with Russia because his and HRC's feelings were hate and their egos bruised at losing. Since it obviously is a concern about revealing methods with intelligence gathering and you may not want to release things that undermine your ability to gather such intelligence AND any actions such as disinformation, hacking, or supporting Wikileaks assuming they did at maximum made about .000001% difference. In other words, Russian influence here did not alter the outcome.
Clearly we can't have people meddling in our electoral process. Any actions by the Russians did not change the outcome. they were caught. The part about no effect on the outcome is factual unless we choose to believe in things such as the tooth fairy. 1.)There's no upside to Russia in such interference. 2.)There is huge potential downside to such an action. 3.)Russia has huge challenges right now. The US election is not important enough for them to waste time on.
If the other parts happened such as Russian interference, a "staid" and "mild" mannered person would have confronted the Russians privately by stating to them. "We know what you did, we know how you did it, and we don't appreciate it." This way the point is made, intelligence methods don't have to be revealed, and the incoming POTUS isn't put in a more difficult position than he is already in.
When HRC lost, I had reason to suspect based upon prior actions that these are the kinds of people who behave like petty thugs when they can't have something they destroy it for the rest of us much like the thug when confronted with a nice car owned by someone else, he can't have it, so he keys the car's paint job or takes a sledge hammer to it. Little boy Barack and little girl Hillary are like such people. Very respectfully these actions confirm it unfortunately.
In the meantime, hopefully team Trump officials can use their contacts with top Russian officials to try and calm things down. For example, see if they can convince the Russians to hold off on responding until new leadership takes charge as things will change at this point. At this point, the adults can work together to defuse the crisis.
fred says Carl makes "unproven accusations". fred misses the irony of his own remarks, or more likely, simply shows his spots are the same as the current executive and his administration.
I have for years distrusted our and other governments in what they say and claim to know etc. But as much as I distrust ours I am hardly keen to trust Russia's intel and statements. to call names, as above, about little boy and little girl is silly. Contacting Russia in private? And they will say: go screw yourself both in public and in private.
I do not believe for a moment that Hillary lost the election because of this. She was and is a flawed candidate, with much baggage, but it remains true that she won the popular vote by 3 million votes, with or without a foreign govt involved, the FBI last minute public notice of investigation, the private server, the laptop investigation etc etc.
I hardly consider Trump the adult, noted above, based on his tweets, self applauding, hidden accounts in Panama Papers, tantrums, etc. I hope I am wrong but I have yet to see evidence of a serious adult.
Fred,
Perhaps the terms little boy and little girl could be chosen better, however, this is what little boys and girls do. They act rashly without thinking through the consequences and they throw tantrums when they don't get their way.
I think we can agree at this point might not be the best time to approach the Russians in private. It takes many months and sometimes years to conduct a proper investigation. Once all the facts are gathered and it can be shown, who, how, what, when, and where at this point addressing this with them in private would be a better option. At this point, you may even be able to get a UN Tribunal. This would send quite a message. Of course at this point no such tribunal would side with America on pretty much anything no matter what the evidence.
When sensitive issues are involved, it is routine to handle things privately. This has been done for decades and probably centuries. Instead BHO recklessly went public, imposed sanctions, all of this without any evidence that any prosecutor would consider of any value, and undercut months of careful diplomacy by DJT and his team. This recklessness has placed us all in grave danger.
Since we are in agreement that this did not impact the election, there was no reason to rush to go public with this or impose sanctions. Take our time, do the investigation properly, and go from there. I think there was really nothing to investigate. What we have here is a whiny spoiled brat. Little Baracky couldn't get his way and little Hillary got shunned. Their little egos just cant take such things.
A bit off topic but all sanctions are going to accomplish is drive the Russians further into the arms of Putin, make Russians and their leaders furious, reinforce the America as foreign devil argument, speed up the disintegration of US "alliances" as saner people want to distance themselves from such stupidity which is already happening in parts of Europe, and hasten the demise of the US dollar as world reserve currency.
As for the tweets, you may be mistaking bluntness for lack of maturity. With that said he has made some statements that are questionable. He was NOT my first choice.
As for the Panama Papers, no one is asking the right questions. When ever greedy government thieves are trying to steal hard earned money, why shouldn't we expect citizens to take steps to protect their hard earned wealth from such voracious criminals? Unless these governments of the "west" start engaging in some self reflection, they haven't seen anything yet. Things such as BREXIT and Trump are just the tip of the iceberg of what is going to befall them.
As for HRC winning the popular vote, she takes the big cities in CA, NY, and Chicago essentially running the table there by capturing the vote of the super wealthy and the government freeloaders who are largely insulated from the damages wrought by team Obama of which HRC was the glove to his hand. The electoral college was genius in that was designed to prevent such flawed people as HRC from becoming POTUS.
Unfortunately I don't think the founders ever thought someone would stoop to the levels Obama has. In Administration fraught by reckless moves this one pretty much tops it. The fact that his party and even many Republicans have done NOTHING to curtail this most disturbing. God help us all.
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