A News Aggregator That Covers The World's Major Wars And Conflicts. Military, Political, And Intelligence News Are Also Covered. Occasionally We Will Have Our Own Opinions Or Observations To Make.
Last week, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Devin Nunes, announced dozens of intelligence reports that inappropriately included details on President Donald Trump's transition. This week, he told me that his source for that information was an intelligence official, not a White House staffer.
It turns out, he misled me. The New York Times reported Thursday that Nunes had two sources, and both worked for the White House. This distinction is important because it raises questions about the independence of the congressional investigation Nunes is leading, which may lead to officials at the White House.
Nunes is leading a double investigation of sorts. His committee is probing ties between the Trump campaign and Russia's influence operation against the 2016 election. It's also looking into whether Barack Obama's White House inappropriately spied on Trump's transition.
WNU Editor: My must read commentary for today. Much of the political and media focus has been on the Trump campaign and Russia's "influence operation" against the 2016 election .... my focus has been on the reports and the growing body of evidence that President Obama's White House inappropriately spied on Trump during the campaign and during the transition. Eli Lake also believes that this is the bigger story .... and I share his frustration on how this has all tarnspired ....
.... Sadly, the merits of this case are undermined by how the White House and Nunes have made it. The chairman is better than this. By misrepresenting how he obtained information worthy of investigation he has handed his opposition the means to discredit it. That's rough justice for Nunes, and a tragedy for the country.
Iraqi forces are poised to retake the country’s second-largest city and finally expel the Islamic State group.
That’s when the trouble begins.
The Trump administration has indicated it plans to largely abdicate a U.S. role in Iraq's political future, despite the certainty that driving the Islamic State group from its remaining stronghold in Mosul – months, if not weeks, away – starts the clock on a dangerous new era for a country on the verge of fracturing along rival warring factions.
The United States' diplomatic policy on Syria for now is no longer focused on making the war-torn country's president, Bashar al-Assad, leave power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said on Thursday, in a departure from the Obama administration's initial and public stance on Assad's fate.
The view of the Trump administration is also at odds with European powers, who insist Assad must step down.
"You pick and choose your battles and when we're looking at this, it's about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out," U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley told a small group of reporters.
Park Geun-hye can be detained up to 20 days during investigation into accusations of bribery and abuse of power that led to impeachment
South Korea’s disgraced former president Park Geun-hye has been arrested and jailed over high-profile corruption allegations that already ended her tumultuous four-year rule and prompted an election to find her successor.
A convoy of vehicles, including a black sedan carrying Park, entered a detention facility near Seoul on Friday after the Seoul central district court granted prosecutors’ request to arrest her. Many Park supporters waved national flags and shouted “president” as Park’s car entered the facility.
(CNN)In a surprising move the Venezuelan opposition is calling a coup, the Venezuelan Supreme Court has stripped the country's National Assembly of its powers. The court ruled that all powers vested under the legislative body will be transferred to the Supreme Court, which is stacked with government loyalists.
The ruling effectively means the three branches of the Venezuelan government will be controlled by the ruling United Socialist Party. The opposition has been taken out of the picture.
Prominent opposition leaders are already calling the government of President Nicolás Maduro "a dictatorship."
The former Obama administration official who admitted earlier this month that her former colleagues tried to secretly gather intelligence on President Trump’s team was no low-level staffer.
Evelyn Farkas was once considered the most senior policy officer for Russia within the Pentagon, and she is now apparently defending the leaks that have been coming out of the Trump White House.
Now an MSNBC analyst and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, Farkas has "advised three secretaries of defense on Russia policy," according to a senior defense official quoted in Politico. She has served on the Council on Foreign Relations and the Senate Armed Services Committee, among others, and was executive director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism in 2008-2009.
As to what is my take .... she was not a minor official in the Obama administration .... and what she said is truly eye-opening. She is now backtracking on what she said (I am not surprised there) .... and some are saying that because she left in September 2015 .... she was not privy to this intelligence. But I am not sure .... once an intel person, you are always an intel person, and your friends who are still working will always keep you in the loop. She is definitely someone who knows a lot of intel stuff .... but I think this is the last that we will hear from her.
WASHINGTON — A pair of White House officials played a role in providing Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.
The revelation that White House officials assisted in the disclosure of the intelligence reports — which Mr. Nunes then discussed with President Trump — is likely to fuel criticism that the intelligence chairman has been too eager to do the bidding of the Trump administration while his committee is supposed to be conducting an independent investigation of Russia’s meddling in the last presidential election.
Mr. Nunes has also been faulted by his congressional colleagues for sharing the information with President Trump before consulting with other members of the intelligence committee.
WNU Editor: I said last week that Rep. Nunes made the mistake of running to the White House to disclose what was in these documents instead of first informing his colleagues on the committee on what he had found. It took the story away from what was in the documents .... and onto him. And while everyone knew that he had read these documents on White House grounds .... who specifically let him in was not known until this afternoon. Again ... the focus will be on who let him in .... and not on these documents and files .... which have be explosive for everyone to be reacting as they are. As for the White House .... it is clear to me that they are now going through every intel file and document that went through the Obama administration .... and they are not liking what they are finding. Upon reflection ... and this is pure speculation on my part .... on the day that President Trump tweeted that he found out that he was under surveillance .... I commented that it looks like an important official told him that morning that he was monitored/wiretappeded/etc. .... and that it was not the New York Times and Bret Baier that he learned this intel as he (President Trumo) had claimed. Today .... if my instincts were correct .... I am wondering if that official was either Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, or Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s office .... who we now know were the two men who briefed Rep. Nunes last week on what they found.
More News On The New York Times Revealing Who Provided The Intel Files To Rep. Nunes That President Trump Was Under Surveillance During The Obama Administration
'Any operation following this one will have a different name'
Turkey has ended the "Euphrates Shield" military operation it launched in Syria, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has said.
However, Mr Yildirim suggested there might be more cross-border campaigns to come.
Last August, Turkey sent troops, tanks and warplanes to support Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels, push Isis fighters away from its border and stop the advance of Kurdish militia fighters.
"Operation Euphrates Shield has been successful and is finished," Mr Yildirim said in an interview with broadcaster NTV. "Any operation following this one will have a different name."
(CNN)The president of the executive arm of the European Union had a message for US President Donald Trump on Thursday: mind your own business.
"The newly elected US president was happy that the Brexit was taking place and has asked other countries to do the same," European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said. However, he warned, "if he goes on like that I am going to promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas, in the United States of America."
Juncker, a Luxembourg politician who has been president of the European Commission since 2014, was speaking at the conference of the center-right European People's Party (EPP) in Malta.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will hold their first face-to-face talks next week, a highly anticipated meeting between leaders at odds over trade, China's strategic ambitions and how to deal with North Korea's weapons programs.
The White House said Trump would host Xi next Thursday and Friday at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida and "discuss global, regional, and bilateral issues of mutual concern."
Trump and his wife Melania will host Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan at a dinner next Thursday, a White House statement said.
I have been involved in numerous computer science projects since the 1980s, as well as developing numerous web projects since 1996.
These blogs are a summation of all the information that I read and catalog pertaining to the subjects that interest me.
