Trump Treads Dangerously By Dissing National Security State

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

Of course GeeDumbya BUSH Was Responsible for 9/11

Whether, in fact, Donald Trump, aka "The Donna", could have prevented 9/11 as he claimed in a recent interview, is open to debate - given it's purely a hypothetical. The fact is irrespective of what he may have wanted or legislated, lesser officials may have dropped the ball, including in the intelligence agencies.

However, anyone who really knows anything about the background to 9/11 knows Gee Dumbya Bush, Jeb's illustrious brother, was responsible.

In 2011,  in a CBS interview, NY Times investigative reporter Kurt Eichenwald  noted that Bush's White House received numerous ominous warnings as early as May, 2001. These continued to ramp up over the months following, and the Bushies' response was to do nothing.

As Eichenwald put it:

"What I've been able to see are the presidential daily briefs before August 6 of 2001. And they're horrific, and they are - our reports are 'an attack is coming,' 'there are going to be mass casualties.' The worst of them, the Pentagon, the neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, as the CIA was coming in saying, 'al-Qaeda's going to attack,' said, 'Oh, this is just a false flag operation. Bin laden is trying to take our attention off of the real threat, Iraq.' Andso there are presidential daily briefs that are literally saying, 'No they're wrong, this isn't fake, it's real.'

I decided to check some of these claims by going to the official 9/11 Commission Report. I found the following, under the section: ‘The System was Blinking Red’

Page 254:

"Each PDB (President's Daily Brief) consists of a series of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics; CIA staff decides which subjects are the most important on any given day. There were more than 40 intelligence articles in the PDBs from January 20 to September 10, 2001, that related to Bin Ladin. "

On page 255:

"In the spring of 2001, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks increased dramatically to its highest level since the millennium alert. At the end of March, the intelligence community disseminated a terrorist threat advisory, indicating a heightened threat of Sunni extremist terrorist attacks against U.S. facilities, personnel, and other interests."

And further (ibid.):

"On March 23, in connection with discussions about possibly reopening Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, Clarke warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that domestic or foreign terrorists might use a truck bomb—their “weapon of choice”—on Pennsylvania Avenue.That would result, he said, in the destruction of the West Wing and parts of the residence. He also told her that he thought there were terrorist cells within the United States, including al Qaeda."

Note: Such cells were indeed already in the U.S. doing training runs with mock -simulated aircraft. As for the Saudi 9/11 hijackers themselves, all had been issued temporary visas by the Bushie State Dept. One had a student visa, fourteen had tourist visas, and four had business visas. None of them "snuck" into the country. Further at least six violated their visas.

Further (ibid.):

"In May 2001, the drumbeat of reporting grew louder with reports to top officials that “Bin Ladin public profile may presage attack” and “Bin Ladin network’s plans advancing.” In early May, a walk-in to the FBI claimed there was a plan to launch attacks on London, Boston, and New York.Attorney General John Ashcroft was briefed by the CIA on May 15 regarding al Qaeda generally and the current threat reporting specifically. The next day brought a report that a phone call to a U.S. embassy had warned that Bin Ladin supporters were planning an attack in the United States using “high explosives.”

Thus, Eichenwald's basis for blaming the Bushies was fully confirmed. Despite that, Nora O' Donnell, forever playing misplaced "Devil's Advocate" - even when it's obvious there no real reason for it, blabbed:

"Then when a lot of people hear this, aren't they going to say, 'This is another example of where, not just the Bush administration, but our intelligence community dropped the ball. They failed to heed the warnings that were in a number of these (documents) that went all the way up to the president of the United States.'"

Eichenwald promptly replied:

"Actually, the counterterrorist center of the CIA did a spectacular job, and that's what really comes down. You know, in the aftermath, the White House and others said, 'Well they didn't tell us enough.' No, they told them everything they needed to know to go on a full alert and the White House didn't do it."

Of course, 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.) And 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 (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."

I also found it interesting to read through the communication exchanges as the hijackings became apparent, especially for American Flt. 11. According to the transcripts in the Report (page 20):

FAA: Hi. Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.

NEADS: Is this real-world or exercise?

FAA: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

The reaction of NEADS (National Emergency Air Defense System), i.e. asking “Is this real world or exercise?” is instructional. Evidently, as came out later, no less than five different military “exercises” were planned and underway, including:

‘Operation Vigilant Guardian’ which simulated hijacked planes in the northeast sector-corridor. This definitely contributed to the confused response on the given day, as evidenced after NORAD received a phone call from Boston Center about a hijacking and Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins responded “It must be part of the exercise”.

Thus delaying critical response to the REAL attacks in NYC.

Then there was ‘Operation Northern Vigilance’ – planned months in advance of 9/11 (tracking to when the peak of terror warning were being issued in May, as reported by the 9/11 Report and Eichenwald) and for which jet fighters were removed from the east coast and sent to Alaska and Canada. Thereby, leaving a security hole at the precise date and region which would be most directly affected

As I learned more about these exercises, and the withdrawal of needed air security, the similarity to what transpired in the days before the Kennedy assassination was striking. Researchers learned only in the wake of that executive action that: 1) The Secret Service detail had been changed in the days leading up to the Dallas motorcade, with an inexperienced agent in Kennedy’s car, while the more experienced guy (Cliff Hill) protected LBJ, and 2) The usual Army security detail from Ft. Sam Houston, TX was removed so their presence was nowhere on Dallas’ streets on Nov. 22, 1963. Ordinarily they’d have had building oversight, ensuring no open windows and have had snipers posted themselves as a counter measure.

Were the 9/11 military exercises, planned in advance as a cover or distraction to make effective air defense response more unlikely? The basic answer is we don’t know, although the extent of withdrawn protection makes one suspicious.

Again, no one is saying the Bushies committed the attacks on the day, but they had to know the security bonanza that would fall their way if such attacks could be made to appear by “surprise”. Especially given Bush’s popularity was at an all time low before 9/11. Barely 36%. It shot up to past 90% afterwards as he donned the mantle of "national protector."

Thus, like it or not, Jeb needs to admit his bro was responsible for 9/11.

Reform the 'Patriot Act'? Of course!

Now that the federal appeals court ruling has come down that the main NSA surveillance program - based on the Patriot Act  - has been illegal, what should be the reaction of our congress critters? Well, total reform! But instead we see the usual lunatics on the Right saying it must be sustained. Mitch McConnell, not known for being the sharpest knife in the drawer, actually said that had the current  dragnet, mass surveillance program existed back in Sept. 2001 the attacks never would have occurred.

Of course, this is out and out blatant balderdash. But, as usual the 'pukes play on Americans' short term memories of events to exploit new fears. The facts? There was a surfeit of data available at the time that - had the Bushies paid the slightest attention - could have thwarted the attacks.

Nowhere do reepos like Marco Rubio or McConnell mention how FBI agent Coleen Rowley  and her Minneapolis FBI field office  nabbed "20th hijacker" Zaccharias Moussaou  just before 9/11- and detained him.  The Minneapolis FBI office immediately sought a criminal warrant to search his belongings  but were prevented from doing so. Management at the FBI dealing with the request threw up numerous obstacles to the agents, and even withheld information from them, including the now-infamous Phoenix Memo written by an agent in Arizona warning of terrorists training in flight schools for a possible upcoming attack. The request was denied and agents were prevented from searching Moussaoui's laptop, which contained information that would have tipped the FBI off to the 9/11 plot.

So the information was right there, suspect at hand and a critical search in the offing, but it was ignored!  Bush himself stands accused of the most blatant carelessness in not responding proactively  to the President's Daily Briefs (PDBs)  that came his way that August. If one goes to the official 9/11 Commission Report he will find the following, under the section: ‘The System was Blinking Red’

Page 254:

"Each PDB (President's Daily Brief) consists of a series of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics; CIA staff decides which subjects are the most important on any given day. There were more than 40 intelligence articles in the PDBs from January 20 to September 10, 2001, that related to Bin Ladin. "

On page 255:

"In the spring of 2001, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks increased dramatically to its highest level since the millennium alert. At the end of March, the intelligence community disseminated a terrorist threat advisory, indicating a heightened threat of Sunni extremist terrorist attacks against U.S. facilities, personnel, and other interests."

And further (ibid.):

"On March 23, in connection with discussions about possibly reopening Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, Clarke warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that domestic or foreign terrorists might use a truck bomb—their “weapon of choice”—on Pennsylvania Avenue. That would result, he said, in the destruction of the West Wing and parts of the residence. He also told her that he thought there were terrorist cells within the United States, including al Qaeda."

Further (ibid.):

"In May 2001, the drumbeat of reporting grew louder with reports to top officials that “Bin Ladin public profile may presage attack” and “Bin Ladin network’s plans advancing.” In early May, a walk-in to the FBI claimed there was a plan to launch attacks on London, Boston, and New York.

Attorney General John Ashcroft was briefed by the CIA on May 15 regarding al Qaeda generally and the current threat reporting specifically. The next day brought a report that a phone call to a U.S. embassy had warned that Bin Ladin supporters were planning an attack in the United States using “high explosives.”

Of course, 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.) And 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 (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."

I also found it interesting to read through the communication exchanges as the hijackings became apparent, especially for American Flt. 11. According to the transcripts in the Report (page 20):

FAA: Hi. Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here.We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to,we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.

NEADS: Is this real-world or exercise?

FAA: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

The reaction of NEADS (National Emergency Air Defense System), i.e. asking “Is this real world or exercise?” is instructional. Evidently, as came out later, no less than five different military “exercises” were planned and underway, including:

‘Operation Vigilant Guardian’ which simulated hijacked planes in the northeast sector-corridor. This definitely contributed to the confused response on the given day, as evidenced after NORAD received a phone call from Boston Center about a hijacking and Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins responded “It must be part of the exercise”.

Thus delaying critical response to the REAL attacks in NYC.

Then there was ‘Operation Northern Vigilance’ – planned months in advance of 9/11 (tracked to when the peak of terror warnings were being issued in May, as reported by the 9/11 Report) and for which jet fighters were removed from the east coast and sent to Alaska and Canada. Thereby, leaving a security hole at the precise date and region which would be most directly affected

As I learned more about these exercises, and the withdrawal of needed air security, the similarity to what transpired in the days before the Kennedy assassination was striking. Researchers learned only in the wake of that executive action that: 1) The Secret Service detail had been changed in the days leading up to the Dallas motorcade, with an inexperienced agent in Kennedy’s car, while the more experienced guy (Cliff Hill) protected LBJ, and 2) The usual Army security detail from Ft. Sam Houston, TX was removed so their presence was nowhere on Dallas’ streets on Nov. 22, 1963. Ordinarily they’d have had building oversight, ensuring no open windows and have had snipers posted themselves as a counter measure.

Were the 9/11 military exercises, planned in advance as a cover or distraction to make effective air defense response more unlikely? The basic answer is we don’t know, although the extent of withdrawn protection makes one suspicious.

Without wading into the morass of 9/11 conspiracy theories  - most of which I deem improbable - the main  point in context here (re: renewing of full Patriot Act) is there was: a) ample surveillance data present at the time to have stopped the attacks if proper response from authorities was forthcoming, and b) there were likely ample military resources to prevent the attacks had these not been displaced to a location where they became useless.

In effect, if a surfeit of data available then didn't stop the  9/11  attacks it is  logical to assert that vacuuming up massive amounts of data now won't make us any safer either. It will merely increase the 'haystack' in which the critical 'needle' must be found. Hence, we don't need the Patriot Act as it stands and it merely serves as an excuse to undermine civil liberties, nothing more.

As Sen. Ron Wyden put it this morning on MSNBC, citing the President's own Advisory Group  - (made up of "very conservative people with strong national security credentials") said on page 104 of their report:

"Collecting all of these phone records from law-abiding Americans with no connection to wrongdoing does not really advance the cause of fighting terror. That information can be obtained by  conventional means."

To his credit, Sen. Wyden made clear that if the fear mongers seek to go with a "short term extension" he plans to filibuster - unless there are reforms to the bulk collection program. Wyden stated he's "tired of extending a bad law".

Let's also recall that one of the original authors of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, has asserted that Section 215 was never intended to go as far as Bush and Obama have driven it. Writing in the Summer, 2014 issue of the ACLU Stand:

"Section 215 was intended to give the government the ability to secure 'any tangible thing' connected to specific terrorism investigations. As is now common knowledge, the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue. If we had known during any subsequent re-authorizations what we now know about Section 215's blatant misinterpretation, Congress would have allowed it to sunset.  And if it's not fixed by the 2015 re-authorization, Congress will.

The basic idea behind the American search and seizure law is that you can't investigate unless you can first provide at least some articulable reason to do so. Investigations just can't be arbitrary. The government's definition, on the other hand, is the very definition of arbitrary. "

Let us hope Congress processes that carefully, before taking any reckless action to approve this egregious law's extension or reinstatement.

Cheney Calls Snowden a Traitor? HAHAHAHAHA!

It was a hoot and a holler this morning seeing the frothing, outraged mug of Dick Cheney on network television calling Edward Snowden a “traitor”. I was so struck with the irony of it: the putative biggest traitor since Benedict Arnold calling "the kettle black", that I doubled over with laughter, even incepting another bronchitis -coughing spasm. Let’s recall here that it was Cheney who had a plan underfoot to bogusly attack Iraq from 1992  (under the banner of the 'Project for the New American Century') operating under the presumption that Poppy Bush (George the First) would be re-elected. Well, he wasn’t, Clinton took the election thanks to Ross Perot splitting the ‘puke vote. This meant Cheney’s plan had to be put on hold until another Bush could get in, and that wasn’t until 2000 – when five treasonous Supreme Court justices interrupted a Florida recount to hand the election to Junior.

Even then it wasn’t a done deal, a pretext still had to be found for invasion and occupation. The gift fell into the laps of Bush, Cheney and their Neocon warmonger cohort with the devastating 9/11 attacks. People will argue over 9/11’s real origins until their dying day but one thing we do know: the Bush Criminals profited handsomely in the wake, with Bush’’s approval rating shooting up into the 90s (from below 35%) even as the national security state and military –industrial complex got the go ahead for the biggest spending in 60 years. At the very least, while many of us don’t believe these vermin deliberately blew up the Twin Towers, we do think it highly probable they KNEW what was coming and sat back and did nothing. In other words they let it happen.  It was simply too great a benefit ‘plum’ to do otherwise. See also: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-responsible-was-bush-for-911.html

It also finally enabled the original Cheney Iraq invasion-occupation plan to be put into motion. All the Neocon memos surfacing from just after 9/11 (many from Paul Wolfowitz & Cheney) showed repeated underscored emphases like: “TIE SADDAM TO 9/11! HOW?” Indeed, how? Since Saddam was a resolute secularist who had no tolerance for religious extremists of either the Sunni or Shi’ite Muslim stripe. But the traitor Cheney and his Neocon ilk were determined to make the connection and have the corporate U.S. media coopted to assist in the PR blitz that lasted from October, 2002 until March, 2003 when the Cheney-bred dogs of war were unleashed. To that end, the Cheney-directed Neocons employed every sort of ruse - from 'yellowcake' to aluminum tubes and alleged claims of WMD (from an Iraqi traitor rat named 'curve ball') - to pump up a bogus case for invasion just like Hitler and the Nazis did (using faked imagery of German fraus being raped by Poles) to justify an invasion of Poland in 1939. Once he had the U.S. corporate media on his side it was merely a matter of drum beating a sheep-like American public into giving him the poll numbers he desired to launch an invasion in March, 2003.


The end results were absolutely disastrous, for both the Iraqi people and the U.S.: a wasteful occupation that in the end cost us over $3 trillion and more than 4400 American lives as well as 600,000 innocent Iraqi lives (according to WHO, the World Health Organization). Meanwhile, the bloody Nazified takeover as well as hyped rhetoric (“Axis of Evil”) drove the other two members of that defined “axis”, Iran and North Korea, to develop their own nuclear weapons – realizing this would likely be the only deterrent to the crazed Amerikkan pre-emptive warmongers. So, if Iran and North Korea do have ‘x’ atomic bombs today, you can lay the blame on Dick Cheney’s lap as well as his accomplices, aka the Neocon rats like Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Richard Perle et al.


Make no mistake that Cheney is the real traitor, whose costly pre-emptive war will cost us well into the future, including the brain-damaged vets needing aid, and benefits. To call a real hero like Snowden a traitor is not only to miss the mark on the meaning of the word, but how far our own country has gone down the sewer of decline and mental damage in the last twelve years. The fact the media would put a turd like Cheney on to bloviate and cast aspersions on Snowden also reveals the extent to which the media itself have devolved into total state propaganda whores. (Evidenced even now as most pile onto Snowden, decrying everything from his lack of education, to going to Hong Kong for his revelations and being a "narcissist". Many other people I once respected have disclosed themselves to be shills, including Bob Schieffer and Debbie Wasserman-Schulz)


As for Cheney's claim that the current NSA dragnet surveillance would have stopped 9/11, don't make me freakin' laugh! The actual problem was that the Bushies ignored reams of key information, such as the August, 2001 President's Daily Brief highlighting "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."  Bush received this while at his Crawford, TX retreat. (He took more vacations than any other president in his first year alone.) And 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, 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."



Then there was the monumental intelligence failure documented by former FBI agent Coleen Rowley who  testified in front of the Senate and for the 9/11 Commission about the FBI's internal organization and mishandling of information related to the September 11, 2001, attacks. She noted how  the FBI failed to take action on information provided by the Minneapolis, Minnesota Field Office regarding its investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.

In contrast to Cheney's bullshit claims, the fact is that there was a surfeit of information and data - so much that the Bushie brats either chose to ignore it, or be over selective in what they'd attend to. But again, that's being generous, Those of us who are deep politics citizens and standard politics cynics can't leave out the conviction the Bushies allowed 9/11 to occur on their watch, to reap massive political gain. The past twelve years' growth of the military and super spy complex more than validates that, not to mention how Bush's history has now been so reconstructed at his Dallas' library that only Americans paying attention would know how much of it is bull crap.

See also:  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1544.htm

---------------
Footnote: In a live Q & A on The Guardian website, Snowden fired back at Cheney, lambasting him as the one who engineered the warrantless wiretaps - before the FISA law was revised to make the illegal, legal. See Snowden take down the lying mutt Cheney in the Q&A published at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-us-fair-trial?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20aux-1%20Mini-bento:Bento%20box%208%20col:Position1

In the course of the Q&A Snowden also gives much more background into the NSA surveillance program including the use of  "weasel words" by the spy masters to try to squirm out of what they're really up to. I guaran-damn tee you this is the only place you will see these things revealed.
Snowden also pointedly observed that to be called a "traitor" by the likes of Cheney was actually an honor, given, of course, Cheney is the real traitor!