Monday, December 12, 2016

Trump Treads Dangerously By Dissing National Security State

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Trump's explosive personality disorder - in many ways similar to Adolf Hitler's -  has now antagonized the entire intelligence community to our nation's detriment.

Yet another alarm bell has sounded for those state electors still debating whether to allow the Trump extravaganza and circus to continue on to inauguration on January 20th. The latest alarm bell has been a comprehensive report signed by 17 intelligence agencies - basically the national security state if you will - indicting Russian operatives as interfering in the 2016 general election. As The Washington Post reported on Friday, the CIA (among other agencies) had determined these operatives interfered not just to make mischief but to toss the election to Trump.

The core as well as ancillary documentation is still to be released in special report authorized by President Obama before January 20th  The investigation itself will be led by Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, and the objective will be to arrive at a definitive judgment about the Russian role in the election including its extent. But all 17 networked intel agencies have already signed on to the initial findings and pledged their further cooperation.

Whether the actual released report (Obama aides pledge as much as possible will be released) turns out to be a 'slam dunk'  is now not so much the issue as Trump's reaction to the intelligence agencies behind the report. That is, he has essentially mocked it as untrue, eliciting a gasp even from former NSA Director Michael Hayden who marveled how this ignorant twit could put his own unsupported assumptions above what 17 agencies have validated to their satisfaction.

Trying to turn the issue around to make the CIA the scapegoat, Trump's transition team actually put the new report in the same league as the claim Saddam had WMD.    However, we now know then CIA Director George Tenet was played by an Iraqi expatriate and defector  who went by the name "curve ball". He invented the whole WMD baloney in order to trigger regime change. You can read more about this imp (Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi)  here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/curveball-man-who-lied-about-wmds-comes-clean/2012/04/03/gIQAUdditS_blog.html?utm_term=.98430badaeb5


Trump, going on the record actually discredited himself as any commander-in-chief when he said in an interview that CIA had discredited itself over the Iraqi WMD over a decade ago.  Meanwhile, his current attack on the agency's credibility is unique in our history, as the WSJ has noted:

"Mr. Trump’s attack on the CIA’s credibility appears to be a unique historical event, according to scholars. Some presidents have come into office suspicious of the intelligence community and even hostile to it. Richard Nixon knew that the intelligence agencies had collected information about his campaign’s contacts with the government of South Vietnam, declassified documents later showed."


To say the agency-  particularly the men and women who work tirelessly in it -  are upset, would be to put it mildly. To say the national security state is treating this episode casually is not to understand that state and how its power now ought to make any would -be president tremble. For if anyone can find out anything - dig anything up - from Trump's checkered background, the CIA, NSA and DIA  can.  Hell, they can now dig so much up they don't even have to resort to an executive action, say if it they desired to remove an especially obstreperous and dangerous figurehead leader regarded as a foremost national security threat.

According to a WaPo account published Saturday:

"U.S. intelligence officials described mounting concern and confusion about how to proceed in an administration so openly hostile to their function and role."

Paul Pillar, former deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, quoted in the piece, said:

"Given his proclivity for revenge combined with his notorious thin skin, this threatens to result in a lasting relationship of distrust and ill will between the president and the intelligence community.

He added:

"Everything Trump has indicated with regard to his character and tendencies for vindictiveness might be worse than that displayed by Richard Nixon."

An even more head scratching and appalling ongoing farce is Trump's unwillingness to read and process the PDBs or President's Daily Briefs, now being delivered to him as a courtesy. In addition, as the WaPo piece notes, "Trump has attended only a limited number of intelligence briefings - and he appointed as his national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn"

That was the clown  - who with his goofy son, Michael G. - invented all the idiotic fake news stories to do with "Pizzagate". Is this a clown who can even be trusted with delivering pizza?

More to the point, if Trump is prepared to display such a cavalier attitude to national security issues, how the hell can he even be trusted to defend and protect the nation in case of a possible terror attack? He refuses to read the PDBs and he is clashing nonstop with the whole intelligence community to the extent he doesn't even trust them.

To jog memories, recall that good old George W. Bush was also cavalier with the PDBs. The most sensational Daily Brief of all was that dated August 6, 2001 and headed: Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US . Bush received this while at his Crawford, TX retreat. (He took more vacations than any other president in his first year alone.) How did Bush respond to this? He gave a quick glance then went to clear some ....bush. But what ought to have made his eyeballs pop out was the short paragraph reading (9/11 Commission Report,  The System was Blinking Red’, p. 255-56):

"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [—] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike."


Of course, hindsight is always 20-20 as they say, but one is left to wonder how less devastating those 9/11 attacks might have been had Bushie boy paid more attention to the PDBs.

Now, however, we have a clown who is of such intellectual ineptitude and emotional regression he can't even be bothered to read them.  Trump's transition team - according to the Post - insists his "unwillingness to make time for intelligence briefings is a consequence of his busy schedule"  Yeah, right! Going on 'victory tours' to brag to his voter dopes: "I don't even need your votes any more!"

See e,g.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHYaN_Jq3w0

 Or appointing former female wrestlers and other dunderheads to agency positions, meanwhile conducting "Apprentice" style hours long dinners with Mitt Romney and the like - to discern more appointment picks.  All this reckoned as more critical than intelligence briefings that could hold clues to a future attack.

What will it be like if he actually becomes commander-in-chief? Some naïve folks might  may well say: "Well, once he gets into office he will read them!"  But I'm not sure. If past is prologue why on earth should we expect anything different in his behavior than we behold now?

After all, a man with Trump's severe character deficits, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/10/narcissism-pre-moral-mind-and-donald-j.html

doesn't suddenly acquire stable temperament or moral character he never possessed in the first place. It simply doesn't happen.  To believe so is to reject all the fundamental tenets of modern neuroscience and psychology.

That means there is no basis to expect a President Trump will do anything different from the President Elect version.  In addition, we can expect - from all that's been revealed thus far-  the contretemps with the intelligence agencies will continue and metastasize like a cancer, reaching a point that our collective security is in peril. (And if an attack should occur in Trump's 1st term,  he is not below placing the blame on Muslims, or liberals, analogous to Hitler blaming the Jews for the Reichstag fire.)

The very fact this character is at odds with the national security state charged to protect the country tells me in no uncertain terms he has no business holding the highest office in the land.

This is yet one more reason for the Electoral College electors to send this unhinged dolt packing on December 19th. Let him have free, unencumbered reign to run his business empire without having to divest it, since this is what he truly wants. But at least he won't be running our nation....into the ground.

See also:

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/12/did-russia-hack-the-election-trump-doesnt-care-and-the-peril-grows/

And:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/harvey-wasserman/70225/electoral-college-must-not-vote-until-russian-hacks-of-our-election-are-fully-investigated

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