President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a visit to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., on Saturday. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Paul R. Pillar, Business Insider/Responsible Statecraft: The intelligence community is intimidated by Trump
* The relationship between President Donald Trump and the officials leading US intelligence agencies has grown increasingly strained during Trump's time in office.
* Trump has pressured the agencies to describe events in a way that fits his worldview, and agency officials have gone along or ceded their role altogether, writes former intelligence analyst and security expert Paul R. Pillar.
The relationship between US intelligence agencies and policymakers has long had built-in tension. The agencies' very reason for existence entails a commitment to objectivity and to describing reality accurately whether or not that description suits the wishes of whoever is making policy at the moment.
But the agencies are part of the executive branch, headed by the president. When the agencies' output clashes with whatever message a president may be pushing publicly in support of his policies, it can be a bad day at the office for intelligence officers.
Bad days at the office come with the territory for intelligence officers, but what is bad for the country is when intelligence agencies start succumbing to the pressure from above and no longer speak truth to power, or at least no longer do so clearly, directly, and unhesitatingly.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: Another post from someone who worked for the intel community for almost 3 decades, and who is unhappy that the power and influence that this community has had on U.S. government policy is now being questioned and (in some cases) ignored.
"The National Interest (TNI) is an American bimonthly conservative international affairs magazine published by the Center for the National Interest. It is associated with the realist school of foreign policy thought. It was founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol"
ReplyDeleteI am not sure Krystolois a conservative anymore.
Bill Kristol Isn't a 'Renegade Jew.' Just a Sore Loser Throwing a Tantrum
Bye-Bye Neocons (via Tablet Magazine)
An Apology to David Horowitz: He Was Right about Bill Kristol
Pillar write extensively for The National Interest. I read The National Interest quite a bit and have been more and more disgruntled with Pillar's histrionic columns for the past 2 months. Pillar writing in the Responsible Statecraft just seals the deal.
Pillar is a non-entity, a pip squeak. Soon his name will be a punchline in puppet shows.
Paul Pillar's writings betray him as highly partisan with his politics. Take whatever he says with a large dose of skepticism.
ReplyDeleteassume all are partisan. next: read a few books by former intel people and what they say about connections to a president. Then you will no longer pit a president against intel agencies
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteIntel guru parrot doth caw.
Learning the tricks of the intel trade entails picking up dead goats.
Such wisdom
Trump said Monday's stock market dive was because investors fear there's a "real chance" that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will win the presidency.
ReplyDeleteBut the 1,000 point loss in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was not Sanders' fault at all, according to experts.
MarketWatch attributed the drop to investors concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on the global economy, fearing that the spreading virus could disrupt economic growth.
"Markets were betting that the coronavirus was going to be contained in China, and that we would see some V-shaped recovery. But as headlines on the virus spread have come out, there's uncertainty how far this will go," Keith Lerner, chief market strategist for SunTrust Advisory Services, told MarketWatch.
On COVID-19
Trump also lied about how widespread the virus is within the United States.
"We're really down to probably about 10," Trump said, referring to the number of cases of the virus in the country.
Kudlow Urges Calm After CDC Virus Warning (1:40 p.m. NY)
ReplyDeleteWhite House economic adviser Larry Kudlow called for calm after U.S. health officials said that an outbreak inside the U.S. could cause significant disruptions to daily life if emergency plans were put into place.
“I think people should be as calm as possible in assessing this,” Kudlow said at the White House. “Emergency plans don’t necessarily mean they’ll have to be put into place.
What makes an autocrat? In the most narrow sense, it is a ruler who governs with absolute power. Though neither Trump nor Modi can lay claim to exercising that kind of influence (both India and the U.S. have robust, albeit strained, democratic institutions), their illiberal tendencies offer some insight into what a democracy in autocratic transition might look like. As the leaders of the world’s two largest democracies, their shared disregard for norms, disdain for dissent (from the media and elsewhere), and dedication to strengthening their own executive power at the expense of state institutions designed to curb it have made them emblematic of the democratic deterioration that has been taking place in recent years.
ReplyDeleteSo spake Joe Hill
Delete
ReplyDelete& the parrot cawed 4 times.
Caw, Caw, Caw, Caw!
It is not amazing that parrot does not understand the economics much less the stock market.
ReplyDeleteWhat is parrot's usually rejoinder, when you ask him to learn it?
It is "Fuck you"
You would think parrot has never seen a a stock market graph before.
And then there is this. Parrot sees a 1,000 point drop and he starts chittering excitedly. Parrot need to go back to 4th grade or before and learn fractions and decimals.
Can Democrats even learn the concepts of decimals?