John Bolton: Proof That Prostituting Oneself to a Narcissistic is a Bad Idea

I have never been a fan of now former National Security Adviser John Bolton.   I have always seen him as dangerous and a threat to the international alliances that has served the USA well. Indeed, I'd even call Bolton a war monger.  But compared to Donald Trump, Bolton is sane and rational and my have restrained some of Trump's more insane and dangerous impulses. With Bolton gone, many worry who will replace him and what further damage can Trump inflict on the nation and world given his disturbing mental state. Meanwhile, the lesson to be learned from Bolton's demise is that endeavoring to prostitute oneself to a malignant narcissist is a dangerous game and the likely loser will be one's reputation and place in history.  A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican looks at the troubling situation we face.  Here are excerpts:

John Bolton should never have joined an administration in which the president was overtly corrupt, sympathetic to dictators, weirdly beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a pathological liar. Like so many others, Bolton will go down as someone driven by unquenchable thirst for relevance and power with the hubris to think he could bend President Trump to his will. Instead, Bolton became an enabler for a president who allowed himself to be snowed by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and revealed he never had a game plan for Iran . . . .
 Rather than quit on principle at dozens of junctures, Bolton clung to his job, only to be rudely fired. Bolton, to put it mildly, never played well with others and therefore was uniquely unqualified for the job of national security adviser, who is supposed to be the honest broker in government. It would be an understatement to say both anti-Trump conservatives and Democrats are positively giddy seeing the blusterous, aggressive adviser end his career in semi-disgrace. Quite apart from the double scoop of schadenfreude, many in the foreign policy community are genuinely relieved. “I’m just thankful we got through Bolton’s tenure without him starting a war,” said Max Bergmann of the Center for American Progress and a former State Department official. “He no doubt tried, but was boxed in by the administration’s own incompetence and his inability to convince others to go along.” Others, however, are more worried now. Former ambassador to Turkey, Eric S. Edelman, told me, “For his flaws, I think John was one of the few forces really holding Trump back from doing some crazy things. This is is just one more indication that we are now facing Trump unplugged. He is really thrashing around. It is very worrisome.” Veteran diplomat Aaron David Miller notes, “You can only play Dr. No so many times. Bolton was out of sync with Trump on Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan and Venezuela." He added, “[Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo played the game of Trump whisperer better than Bolton.” Precisely because Bolton differed with Trump on all these topics, sycophantic Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and other uber-hawks who thought they, too, could bend Trump toward their view should wise up. Trump is not a valiant defender of the West and protector of our allies. He’s a dangerous and corrupt patsy in the hands of strongmen. Likewise, Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), who served in the Obama administration, said, “No glee [here]. I’ve obviously never been a Bolton fan, . . . . However, he said, Bolton “was fired for something he was right about — his opposition to capitulating to the Taliban — and because Trump doesn’t like being laughed at and needed to lash out at someone. I worry about who and what comes next.” This is also a dicey move for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sacrificed bipartisan friendship with the United States to gain favor in the eyes of Trump. Netanyahu kids himself if he thinks Trump would let Israel stand in the way of the historic deal he is itching to sign. Former Israeli ambassador Daniel Shapiro tells me, “Trump fired Bolton over disagreements they had. Chief among them was Bolton’s support for ever-escalating pressure on Iran versus Trump’s desire for talks on a new nuclear deal.” He adds, "Israel and the Gulf states have to wonder if this move presages not just a meeting between Trump and [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani, but a real move by Trump toward a modestly upgraded Iran nuclear deal. It sure looks like it.” In fact any deal is likely to be worse, given that the Iranians know Trump is the worst negotiator on the planet. Other allies should be equally nervous since when unrestrained, even from questionable advice, Trump does things such as invite the Taliban to Camp David, side with Putin over our intelligence community, try to pullout abruptly from Syria, attack allies (even Denmark), involve us in a no-win trade war and make the United States a laughingstock on the international stage. If Bolton wants to save his reputation, he can render one final service: Collect up all the former national security officials and tell the American people just how unfit is this president. It’s time for the sycophancy and careerism to end and the patriotism to start.

Saudi Arabia Brutality and Trump's Love of Autocrats

Last week I wrote about the latest Saudi Arabia brutality and that autocratic theocracy's latest spat with Canada because of Canadian condemnation of Saudi human rights abuses.  In his weekly column, Andrew Sullivan expands on coverage and notes distressingly how Saudi brutality and human rights abuses has not disturbed the Trump/Pence regime and Trump has remained silent on Saudi misdeeds.  Indeed, Sullivan suggests - correctly in my view - that Trump admires autocratic regimes and, in my view, longs to rule America in a similar manner.  Frighteningly, I suspect such brutal authoritarian rule would be applauded by much of Trump's base so long as the brutality was targeted at blacks, Hispanics, gays and non-right wing Christians. Despite its ugly history - genocide of Native Americans, slavery, Jim Crow, the overthrow of the Hawaiian government, etc. - America had achieved moral authority in the world.  Now, that moral authority has been thrown away by Trump/Pence and that regime's evangelical Christian and white supremacist base.  Here are column highlights:

It wasn’t so long ago that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman o[“MBS”] of Saudi Arabia was doing the rounds of various American muckety-mucks in business, politics, and pop culture. On his world tour, the fawning was extraordinary. He met Oprah and the Rock, Bloomberg and the Clintons, Bush after Bush, Gates and Bezos, Hollywood moguls and Wall Street machers, as well as his plutocratic wing man, Jared Kushner. . . . . the general tenor of the public-relations campaign was that of a Saudi spring, especially for women, and a thawing of some of the most repressive theocratic tendencies of the regime.

So it must come as a surprise to all of MBS’s friends in the American elite that this youthful reformer returned from his Western tour and soon launched a new campaign against the very women who had most fervently resisted the theocracy’s misogyny. On May 19, “the Saudi Arabian authorities and government-aligned media launched a public smear campaign to try to discredit six prominent detained women’s rights defenders as ‘traitors’ following their arrest. 

This campaign was completed last week with the detention of the last two prominent women’s rights activists, Nassima al-Sada and Samar Badawi. Badawi is the sister of a Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who set up an open forum website and was therefore lashed a thousand times in public and is currently serving a prison term of ten years. Both women have been persecuted for years.  In response to the latest crackdown, the Canadian government tweeted its concern: “Canada is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and women’s rights advocates in #SaudiArabia, including Samar Badawi. We urge the Saudi authorities to immediately release them and all other peaceful human rights activists.” Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign affairs minister, spoke out in part because Raif Badawi’s wife and three kids now live in Canada, and have been citizens since July.

In response, MBS has thrown a hissy fit of Trumpian proportions. The Canadian ambassador was given 24 hours to leave; 15,000 Saudi students in Canada were recalled home; trade with Canada was suspended; an order to sell all Saudi central bank and state pension fund shares in Canadian interests was proclaimed, according to the Financial Times. Saudi subjects receiving medical treatment in Canada are being transferred out of care, and about 800 Saudi medical residents and fellows in Canada have been ordered home.

As a kind of coda to the entire affair, the Saudis decided to, yes, crucify a criminal this week, a rare but gruesome spectacle, in which someone’s executed corpse is hung out in the open as a warning to others. You may remember such scenes from Game of Thrones. But this kind of barbarism still exists — and the regime that behaves this way has [Trump's] our president’s full support, and billions in arms sales.

Then, of course, there is the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. The crown prince has been waging a brutal war on the Shi’a of Yemen, the Houthis, in coalition with the U.S. and the U.K. The relentless bombing campaigns — including indiscriminate attacks on civilians — have killed thousands, uprooted more, and generated famine and disease. This week in the horror show saw the Saudi coalition forces bomb a bus of schoolkids, many under the age of 10. A little under 30 children were killed, . . . And this record of regional mayhem doesn’t even count the time when MBS decided it would be a great idea to invade Qatar, another U.S. ally.

It’s at this point that you begin to absorb quite how indifferent the Trump administration is to any concept of human rights. Trump’s initial response to the Saudi attacks on Qatar was to endorse them enthusiastically (even as what was left of the State Department tried to keep the peace). And his administration’s response to the Saudi assault on Canada is to take no side in the dispute. Between a barbaric absolute monarchy that jails and tortures dissidents, obliterates women’s opportunity, and crucifies criminals in the streets … and Canada, for Pete’s sake, Trump cannot pick a side. 

Despite no official relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, MBS and Netanyahu are now joined at the hip with Trump because they all want a war against Iran (and are having considerable success laying the groundwork). The Saudis are also useful to the Israelis as a way to delegitimize any genuine form of Palestinian self-determination — because the Saudis have been prepared to throw their Arab neighbors under the bus in order to fight a regime in Tehran that MBS has said “makes Hitler look good.” Trump’s hatred of Iran and Kushner’s hopes for Israel’s expansion keep this unholy trinity together. The idea that either Trump or his mute dauphin give a hoot about human rights is preposterous. The more brutal a regime’s human rights abuses are, the more likely it is that Trump admires it.

Canada will survive, of course, despite the intense international bullying from the Saudis, and America’s and Britain’s abandonment of their ally. Canada will even survive Trump (though whether America does is another matter). But to watch the West disintegrate as a moral force, even on a purely rhetorical level, is beyond depressing. And yet it appears to be our future. It’s also a much darker one for every dissident in every political prison across the planet.

Be very afraid.

GOP/Christofascist Apocalyptic Fantasies Unleashed in Israel

One of the 1,500+ injured Palestinians. 

At times the only segment of the American population that Donald Trump seems to strive to please are the evangelical Christofascists (since many of them are racists, perhaps Trump seeks to please white supremacists).  A case in point is the lunatic decision to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem which was seized by Israeli force of arms without international law blessing.  As any sane person would have expected, Palestinians are not happy and, as seems to be always the case, the protests turned bloody and one-sided with Palestinian deaths and injuries while Israelis remained unharmed.  The Washington Post noted the casualties:

Israeli forces killed 58 Palestinians at the boundary fence with Gaza on Monday . . . No Israeli soldiers were injured, though, and Israel drew widespread condemnation for an excessive use of force.  More than 2,700 people were injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, including 1,359 from live ammunition. The dead included six children under the age of 18, among them a 15-year-old girl, and a medic, the ministry said.

Adding to the ugliness of the event was the presence and speeches of two Christofascist extremist preachers who, like their unwashed co-religionists, back the embassy move because in their delusional minds, it is helping to set the stage for the Apocalypse - when all but an small number of Jews survive and countless millions of humans perish.  A column in Esquire puts the idiocy in perspective:

More than 20 people in Gaza were dead on Monday before anyone in Washington had had their breakfast. This was pitched to the awakening nation as a series of “deadly clashes,” even though the deadly part only applied to one side. It was a great start to a day in which the president*, who doesn’t know anything about anything, prepared to toss a lighted match into a lagoon of gasoline in the Middle East.

The decision to move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem is more unnecessary than it is stupid and dangerous, and it’s pretty stupid and dangerous. There was no overwhelming political support—and certainly no overwhelming political pressure—in this country for such a provocative development. It was solely the desire of that odd mixture of highly conservative Judaism and American splinter Protestantism, of the prolonged slow-dance between the apocalyptic factions of two major monotheisms that very likely will incite the apocalyptic faction of the third. It is religious extremism disguised as international diplomacy.

How do I know this? Well, Jared and Ivanka Trump already have met with a conservative rabbi who thinks black people are monkeys. The United States of America will be represented at the ceremony by Robert Jeffress and John Hagee, two completely batshit-insane TV preachers with long histories of supporting Israel because it allegedly will be largely set-decoration for the end times. . . . . From CNN:

Hagee, whose group is dedicated to organizing pro-Israel Christians in the United States into a unified voice, has had relationships with Israeli prime ministers dating back years. But he came under the national political spotlight in 2008 for comments that prompted then-Republican presidential candidate John McCain to reject his endorsement. During the campaign, audio from one of Hagee's sermons in the 1990s was leaked that seemed to suggest that Adolf Hitler had been fulfilling God's will by aiding the desire of Jews to return to Israel in accordance with biblical prophecy.

As for Jeffress, well, he’s been the chaplain on the Trump Train for a while now, and he also has a long record of interesting pronouncements on world religions.

Some might remember Jeffress for his frequent condemnations of Mormonism as a "cult" during the 2012 presidential campaign and his urging of Christians not to vote for Mitt Romney, a Mormon, during the Republican primary. But Jeffress has also called Islam and Mormonism heresies "from the pit of hell," suggested that the Catholic church was led astray by Satan, accused then-President Barack Obama of "paving the way" for the Antichrist, and spread false statistics about the prevalence of HIV among gays, who he said live a "miserable" and "filthy" lifestyle.
 Every American of every faith—to say nothing of Americans who have no religious faith at all—should be embarrassed to be represented by this collection of crackpots and thooleramawns, gone off to Israel to bless an unnecessary and perilous politico-religious gambit that owes more to fringe religion and domestic Israeli politics than to any American national interest. For the first time in its history, the United States has entered into what is at least partly an ancient religious war. This is exactly why our Constitution is as godless as it is.

The Palestinians, of course, are not the only ones outraged by Trump's move.  Countless millions will now be much more receptive to a message that America is their enemy.  Don't be surprised if more terror attacks take place on American soil.  Trump has just about guaranteed that they will through this self-prostitution to Christofascists.

Trump’s Takes America Closer to War in Middle East

Apologists for Donald Trump's reckless action in announcing that that America will withdraw from the nuclear deal struck with Iran three years ago are engaging in all kinds of untruths and gyrations to avoid the obvious.  Namely, that Trump's action in trying to abrogate the agreement - an agreement that every other member of the UN security council signed - will (i) serve to further isolate America diplomatically (one of Vladimir Putin's dreams/goals) and (ii) open the way to potential war which will delight the Christofascists who yearn to start armageddon and the neocons who learned absolutely nothing from the Iraq War disaster where America threw away more than a trillion dollars and thousands of military members' lives.  Equally delighted will be military contractors like Halliburton - Dick Cheney must be salivating - and  oil company interest who foolishly believe they might get their hands on Iran's oil reserves.  I am very happy that my son-in-law left the military after his severe injuries in Afghanistan.   While he may be safe, other men and women will likely end up dead or maimed before Trump's misrule is over.  A main editorial in the Washington Post looks at the dangers Trump's actions pose to America and the world.  Here are excerpts:

THE NUCLEAR deal struck with Iran three years ago was far from perfect, but President Trump’s decision to abrogate it over the opposition of our European allies and without a clear strategy for replacing it is reckless and, most likely, self-defeating. Mr. Trump has opened a rift with Britain, Germany and France, who were partners to the pact along with Russia and China, and he has handed Iran’s Islamic regime some unfortunate opportunities.

What he [Trump] did not acknowledge is that international inspectors as well as senior members of his own administration have confirmed that Iran has complied with the accord, which has vastly reduced its stock of enriched uranium and made it extremely difficult for the regime to develop nuclear weapons in the next decade. The president held out the prospect of “a new and lasting deal” that would cover not just nukes but also Iran’s development of missiles and interventions in Middle Eastern wars. But he offered no road map for achieving that ambitious goal.

The first consequence of Mr. Trump’s decision could be conflict with the Europeans. . . . . European governments, which have said they will not renounce the nuclear deal, may fight any U.S. attempt to enforce the restrictions, including with their own sanctions. Having tried and failed to satisfy Mr. Trump’s objections to the agreement without breaking it, they are unlikely to willingly collaborate in a new U.S. attempt to crush the Iranian economy.

Iran and European governments could agree to continue the pact in defiance of Washington. But Iran’s hard-line military and security apparatus, which has always opposed the accord, will press to resume uranium enrichment, restrict inspections or perhaps even race for a bomb. How would Mr. Trump stop such a breakout, short of war? One reason the nuclear deal was struck was a conclusion by the administrations of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama that military action was a risky and uncertain means to prevent an Iranian bomb.

Mr. Trump was pushed to exit the deal by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, whose countries are already engaged in low-level wars with Iran. But the chief of staff of Israel’s own army has said that the nuclear deal is “working and putting off realization of the Iranian nuclear vision by 10 to 15 years.” Mr. Trump’s decision could eliminate that grace period . . . .

[Trump] has frequently said that he has no wish for further Mideast wars; his decision has made one more likely.

Let's be clear on something else: neither Netanyahu nor Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman are true friends of America.   Netanyahu suffers from his own form of megalomania and the Saudis, not Iran, remain the main financiers of Islamic extremism across the globe.  Neither cares about the damage done to America and the squandered monies and American lives that Trump may yet cost the nation.

Is Prince Jared in Robert Mueller's Sights?

As a previous post noted, Jared Kushner has been called out by the  bipartisan leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee for failing to turn over numerous emails between himself and Wikileaks and Russian contacts. Obviously, if the Senate Committee is aware of Kushner's  attempts to hide information, it is a safe bet that Robert Mueller and his team are likewise on the trail.  This, combined with Kushner's failure to disclose foreign contacts,  add to the overall impression that Trump et al, are lying and seeking to cover up information.  Basically, obstructing justice.  Further adding to Kushner's angst is the fact that he has been removed from many of his assignments at the White House even as he may be facing the bankruptcy of one of his company's properties in New York City.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at Jared Kushner's situation.  Here are highlights:

When Donald Trump appointed John Kelly as chief of staff in July, the four-star Marine general arrived with a mandate to bring order to a freewheeling West Wing. . . . The aide who has ceded the most influence in the Kelly era, these people said, is Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. “Kelly has clipped his wings,” one high-level Republican in frequent contact with the White House told me.

It’s perhaps hard to remember now, but it wasn’t long ago when Trump handed Kushner a comically broad portfolio that included plans to reinvent government, reform the V.A., end the opioid epidemic, run point on China, and solve Middle East peace. But since his appointment, according to sources, Kelly has tried to shrink Kushner’s responsibilities to focus primarily on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And even that brief appears to be creating tensions between Kushner and Kelly.

Where this all leaves Kushner in Trump’s ever-changing orbit is a topic that’s being discussed by Republicans close to the White House.

As Kushner’s Russia troubles mount—last Friday the Senate disclosed that he had not turned over e-mails about WikiLeaks, a claim his attorney, Abbe Lowell, denied—insiders are again speculating, as my colleague Emily Jane Fox reported last month, about how long Kushner and Ivanka Trump will remain in Washington. Despite Kushner’s efforts to project confidence about Robert Mueller’s probe, he expressed worry after the indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates about how far the investigation could go. “Do you think they’ll get the president?” Kushner asked a friend, according to a person briefed on the conversation.

According to two Republicans who have spoken with Trump, the president has also been frustrated with Kushner’s political advice, including his encouragement to back losing Alabama G.O.P. candidate Luther Strange and to fire F.B.I. Director James Comey, which Kushner denies. (For what it’s worth, Kushner’s choice of Strange prevented Trump from the embarrassment of inadvertently supporting Roy Moore.) Trump, according to three people who’ve spoken to him, has advocated for Jared and Ivanka to return to New York in part because they are being damaged by negative press.

“He keeps pressuring them to go,” one source close to Kushner told me. But as bad as the Russia investigation may be, it’s not clear a New York homecoming would be much better for Kushner, given that his family’s debt-ridden office tower at 666 Fifth Avenue could be headed for bankruptcy.

Adding to the travails of the Trump/Pence regime is another Vanity Fair story that looks at what really happened during Trump's meeting with Russian Ambassador at the White House and the possible consequences:  

In the secretive corridors of the American espionage community, the Israeli mission was praised by knowledgeable officials as a casebook example of a valued ally’s hard-won field intelligence being put to good, arguably even lifesaving, use.

Yet this triumph would be overshadowed by an astonishing conversation in the Oval Office in May, when an intemperate President Trump revealed details about the classified mission to Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, and Sergey I. Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Along with the tempest of far-reaching geopolitical consequences that raged as a result of the president’s disclosure, fresh blood was spilled in his long-running combative relationship with the nation’s clandestine services. Israel—as well as America’s other allies—would rethink its willingness to share raw intelligence, and pretty much the entire Free World was left shaking its collective head in bewilderment as it wondered, not for the first time, what was going on with Trump and Russia. (In fact, Trump’s disturbing choice to hand over highly sensitive intelligence to the Russians is now a focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s relationship with Russia, both before and after the election.)

Trump seemed not to notice, or feel restrained by, the unfortunate timing of his conversation with Russian officials who were quite possibly co-conspirators in a plot to undermine the U.S. electoral process. Instead, full of a chummy candor, the president turned to his Russian guests and blithely acknowledged the elephant lurking in the room. “I just fired the head of the F.B.I.,” he said, according to a record of the meeting shared with The New York Times. “He was crazy, a real nut job.” With the sort of gruff pragmatism a Mafia don would use to justify the necessity of a hit, he further explained, “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” Yet that was only the morning’s perplexing prelude. What had been an unseemly conversation between the president and two high-ranking Russian officials soon turned into something more dangerous.

“I get great intel,” the president suddenly boasted, as prideful as if he were bragging about the amenities at one of his company’s hotels. “I have people brief me on great intel every day.”  He quickly went on to share with representatives of a foreign adversary not only the broad outlines of the plot to turn laptop computers into airborne bombs but also at least one highly classified operational detail—the sort of sensitive, locked-in-the-vault intel that was not shared with even Congress or friendly governments.

So why? Why did a president who has time after volatile time railed against leakers, who has attacked Hillary Clinton for playing fast and loose with classified information, cozy up to a couple of Russian bigwigs in the Oval Office and breezily offer government secrets?

Any answer is at best conjecture. Yet in the search for an important truth, consider these hypotheses, each of which has its own supporters among past and current members of the U.S. intelligence community. . . . . there is also a more sinister way to connect all the dots. There are some petulant voices in official Washington who insist that the president’s treachery was deliberate, part of his longtime collaboration with the Russians. It is a true believer’s orthodoxy, one which predicts that the meeting will wind up being one more damning count in an indictment that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, will ultimately nail to the White House door.

“Trump betrayed us,” said a senior Israeli military official bluntly, his voice stern with reproach. “And if we can’t trust him, then we’re going to have to do what is necessary on our own if our back is up against the wall with Iran.” Yet while appalled governments are now forced to rethink their tactics in future dealings with a wayward president, there is also the dismaying possibility that a more tangible, and more lethal, consequence has already occurred.

What, then, was the fate of Israel’s agent in Syria? Was the operative exfiltrated to safety? Has he gone to ground in enemy territory? Or was he hunted down and killed? One former Mossad officer with knowledge of the operation and its aftermath will not say. Except to add pointedly, “Whatever happened to him, it’s a hell of price to pay for a president’s mistake.”

Personally, I agree with the Israelis - Trump betrayed them.  As to why, count me as one of the "true believers" noted in the article.

National Review Slams Trump on Intelligence Leak to Russia

Perhaps Republicans and the conservative news media - save, of, course Fox News and Breitbart - are finally waking up to the incompetent, poisonous and possibly treasonous nature of the Trump/Pence regime.  Indeed, on Facebook I saw one comment that read as follows "Have you noticed lately that "The Hill" sounds like the Daily Kos, Fox sounds like CNN, and the National Review sounds like the New Republic? It's an amazing seismic shift towards reality, and we can thank Orange Julius! Lock him up."  The conservative National Review seems to be joining the media outlets that are belatedly putting the interests of the nation ahead of partisanship and prostituting themselves to Donald Trump's base.  Here are highlights from the National Review's commentary on Trump's disingenuous excuses for leaking top secret information to the Russians:

Let’s begin with this proposition — there is a proper and defensible mechanism for disclosing classified information, even to a geopolitical rival. If the president determines that such disclosure advances the national interests of the United States, and if the president solicits the advice and counsel of the intelligence community and his national-security advisers to minimize the possibility of revealing sources and methods, betraying the trust of allies, or causing any other damage to national security, then it can even be prudent and proper to disclose secret information. In other words, disclosure should be the result of a deliberative process, not a momentary impulse.

Now, let’s contrast this appropriate process with the charges against President Trump and, crucially, with his defense.

The charge is serious. The Washington Post and numerous other media outlets reported that Trump impulsively shared highly classified information with visiting Russian officials — information that “jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.” According the Post, the information “had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government.” The New York Times has identified the partner in question as Israel.

Trump’s disclosure was allegedly dangerous enough to trigger a scramble within the government to “contain the damage” by, among other measures, “placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency.” Officials asked the Post not to publish the full details of the leak. Earlier today, The Resurgent’s Erick Erickson wrote that he knows one of the sources for the media’s stories and that the reality is even worse than the reports:

I am told that what the President did is actually far worse than what is being reported. The President does not seem to realize or appreciate that his bragging can undermine relationships with our allies and with human intelligence sources. He also does not seem to appreciate that his loose lips can get valuable assets in the field killed.

It doesn’t take a 3,000-word explainer to describe how this allegation is alarming. But let’s note this — Hillary Clinton lost the presidency in part because her own mishandling of classified information meant that Russia could have had access to American secrets. According to this report, Trump gave Russia dangerous secrets, impulsively, perhaps as part of an effort to impress his guests.

And what is Trump’s defense? Yesterday one of the most respected members of his administration, national-security adviser H. R. McMaster, issued a terse statement claiming that the Washington Post story, “as reported,” was false. After denying that “sources and methods” were compromised, he said, “I was in the room. It didn’t happen.” The statement was carefully crafted to create the impression of a blanket denial while still giving the administration some wiggle room on the details. Then, this morning, Trump not only refused to deny giving Russia classified information but, in two tweets . . . . undercut the blanket denial.

McMaster is perhaps Trump’s best spokesperson, presenting Trump’s best case, and it’s still unsatisfactory. There is no such thing as “no harm, no foul” in this context. This is not the way we want presidents handling classified information — especially during conversations with a hostile foreign power. While I can imagine a context in which an experienced and knowledgeable president could make a disclosure decision on the fly, the key here is “knowledgeable.”

Disclosing information without knowing the source is a throw of the dice. And remember, this is the administration’s defense. The original allegations are still hanging out there, and the reporters are standing by their stories. Defenses and denials are not the same thing as refutations.

The allegations are too serious to be left to the realm of charges and countercharges. The White House should share available records of the conversation with the relevant congressional oversight committees, and those committees should do their job, examine the evidence, and issue a public report of their findings. The American people should be troubled by what we know. But until we know all the facts, we don’t yet know how troubled we should be.

World Spy Agencies Are Digging Into Trump’s Moscow Ties

MI-6 headquarters

As noted in previous posts, I do not have high faith in American intelligence agencies in digging out the truth about Donald Trump's ties to Moscow and his collusion in the Russian efforts to throw him the election on November 8, 2016, especially after Der Fuhrer is inaugurated on Friday.  While some Congressional Republicans are alarmed and want answers, the majority I fear put their own power and partisanship over the interests of the nation and the protection of democracy itself.  Many resemble members of the Roman Senate that voted Octavian Caesar (later called Emperor Augustus) powers with the failed belief that they could control him.  Thus, it will likely fall to allied intelligence agencies to find out the truth of Trump's Moscow ties and possible treasonous actions.  BuzzFeed, which Trump has attacked for publishing the raw memos complied by a former MI-6 Russian specialist, follows up on what foreign intelligence agencies are up to.  Here are excerpts:

The dossier alleging that the Russian government has compromised President-elect Donald Trump has not only been circulating at the highest levels of the US government, but also among the intelligence agencies of other countries, two Israeli intelligence officers told BuzzFeed News. And while the dossier’s claims haven’t been verified, the officers said that intelligence services from other countries have been doing their own digging into Trump’s connections to Moscow.

“You can trust me that many intelligence agencies are trying to evaluate the extent to which Trump might have ties, or a weakness of some type, to Russia,” one of the intelligence officers said.

Part of Israel’s interest, he said, came from wanting to know how much of the intelligence it routinely shares with the Unites States might be fed to Russia.

Besides the Steele dossier, several unconfirmed reports of ties between Moscow and Trump are being circulated among Western intelligence agencies, said one of the Israeli officials familiar with the reports.

“There have been various reports about Trump’s ties to Russia,” the officer said in reference to other unpublished reports. “The dossier is one of them, but there are others, they make other allegations. Some are more specific, and some are less. You can trust me that many intelligence agencies are trying to evaluate the extent to which Trump might have ties, or a weakness of some type, to Russia.”

The officer said Israel had received the dossier via a Western European ally, though he would not specify the country, arguing it was “not appropriate.” The BBC also reported that the US had received the dossier via a “Baltic State,” though it did not specify which one, and that there were video tapes and audio that could be used to blackmail Trump.

The officer said intelligence officials from various countries were privy to other reports, some compiled by intelligence officers, which detailed prior ties Trump might have to Russia, as well as various global business interests held by the Trump family.

“According to the Israelis who were present in the meeting, the Americans recommended that until it is made clear that Trump is not inappropriately connected to Russia and is not being extorted – Israel should avoid revealing sensitive sources to administration officials for fear the information would reach the Iranians,” the Yediot Ahronot reported.

Needless to say, if allies are afraid to share intelligence reports with America, it puts this nation and its citizens at risk.  I hope these other nations get the goods on Trump and take him down.  

GOP Bellicosity is a Threat to the World

America still has not extricated itself or the Middle East from the instability and chaos triggered by the Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq and an utter mishandling of Afghanistan (assuming, of course, anyone can fix the mess that has been Afghanistan for centuries).  Now, Republicans are quick to condemn the Iran nuclear arms agreement and seem ready to rush America into another ground war in the Middle East that America cannot win, squandering American lives and billions, if not trillions, of dollars in the process.  Part of the GOP's bellicosity stems from the Christofascist base of the party that has near orgasms at the thought of killing Muslims and non-Christians.  Another part comes from GOP ties to the so-called defense industry that needs unending war to maximize profits - think Halliburton and Dick Cheney.  The last part comes from today's GOP and its detachment from objective reality and the fantasy world in which it exists.  A piece in Salon looks at the danger the GOP poses to the world:

Throughout the world there is great relief and optimism about the nuclear deal reached in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 nations, the five veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. Most of the world apparently shares the assessment of the U.S. Arms Control Association that “the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action establishes a strong and effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could acquire material for nuclear weapons for more than a generation and a verification system to promptly detect and deter possible efforts by Iran to covertly pursue nuclear weapons that will last indefinitely.”

There are, however, striking exceptions to the general enthusiasm: the United States and its closest regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. . . . Prominent sectors of U.S. power and opinion share the stand of the two regional allies and so are in a state of virtual hysteria over “the Iranian threat.” Sober commentary in the United States, pretty much across the spectrum, declares that country to be “the gravest threat to world peace.”

The current Republican primaries illustrate the proclaimed reasons. Senator Ted Cruz, considered one of the intellectuals among the crowded field of presidential candidates, warns that Iran may still be able to produce nuclear weapons and could someday use one to set off an Electro Magnetic Pulse that “would take down the electrical grid of the entire eastern seaboard” of the United States, killing “tens of millions of Americans.”

The two most likely winners, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, are battling over whether to bomb Iran immediately after being elected or after the first Cabinet meeting.  The one candidate with some foreign policy experience, Lindsey Graham, describes the deal as “a death sentence for the state of Israel,” which will certainly come as a surprise to Israeli intelligence and strategic analysts — and which Graham knows to be utter nonsense, raising immediate questions about actual motives.

Keep in mind that the Republicans long ago abandoned the pretense of functioning as a normal congressional party.  They have, . . . become a “radical insurgency” that scarcely seeks to participate in normal congressional politics.

Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, the party leadership has plunged so far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they can attract votes only by mobilizing parts of the population that have not previously been an organized political force.  Among them are extremist evangelical Christians, now probably a majority of Republican voters; remnants of the former slave-holding states; nativists who are terrified that “they” are taking our white Christian Anglo-Saxon country away from us; . . .

Israel, of course, is one of the three nuclear powers, along with India and Pakistan, whose weapons programs have been abetted by the United States and that refuse to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). . . . .  The NPT, in turn, is the most important arms control treaty of all.  If it were adhered to, it could end the scourge of nuclear weapons.

Repeatedly, implementation of the resolution has been blocked by the U.S., most recently by President Obama in 2010 and again in 2015, as Dhanapala and Duarte point out, “on behalf of a state that is not a party to the NPT and is widely believed to be the only one in the region possessing nuclear weapons” — a polite and understated reference to Israel. 

A nuclear-weapons-free Middle East would be a straightforward way to address whatever threat Iran allegedly poses, but a great deal more is at stake in Washington’s continuing sabotage of the effort in order to protect its Israeli client.  After all, this is not the only case in which opportunities to end the alleged Iranian threat have been undermined by Washington, raising further questions about just what is actually at stake.

There is also a world outside the U.S. and although its views are not reported in the mainstream here, perhaps they are of some interest.  According to the leading western polling agencies (WIN/Gallup International), the prize for “greatest threat” is won by the United States.  The rest of the world regards it as the gravest threat to world peace by a large margin.  In second place, far below, is Pakistan, its ranking probably inflated by the Indian vote.  Iran is ranked below those two, along with China, Israel, North Korea, and Afghanistan.

The authoritative SIPRI review of global armaments ranks the U.S., as usual, way in the lead in military expenditures.  China comes in second with about one-third of U.S. expenditures.  Far below are Russia and Saudi Arabia, which are nonetheless well above any western European state.  Iran isscarcely mentioned. . . . . the Gulf Cooperation Council states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — outspend Iran on arms by a factor of eight, an imbalance that goes back decades. . . . When it comes to Israel, of course, the imbalance is even greater.

The United States, as is well known, holds the world championship title in regime change and Israel is no laggard either.  The most destructive of its invasions of Lebanon in 1982 was explicitly aimed at regime change, as well as at securing its hold on the occupied territories.  The pretexts offered were thin indeed and collapsed at once.  That, too, is not unusual and pretty much independent of the nature of the society — from the laments in the Declaration of Independence about the “merciless Indian savages” to Hitler’s defense of Germany from the “wild terror” of the Poles.

Who, then, would be concerned by an Iranian deterrent?  The answer is plain: the rogue states that rampage in the region and do not want to tolerate any impediment to their reliance on aggression and violence.  In the lead in this regard are the U.S. and Israel, with Saudi Arabia trying its best to join the club with its invasion of Bahrain (to support the crushing of a reform movement there) and now its murderous assault on Yemen, accelerating a growing humanitarian catastrophe in that country.

For the United States, the characterization is familiar.  Fifteen years ago, the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington, professor of the science of government at Harvard, warned in the establishment journal Foreign Affairsthat for much of the world the U.S. was “becoming the rogue superpower… the single greatest external threat to their societies.”
“In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States.” As we have seen, global opinion supports this judgment by a substantial margin.

Furthermore, the mantle is worn with pride.  That is the clear meaning of the insistence of the political class that the U.S. reserves the right to resort to force if it unilaterally determines that Iran is violating some commitment. 

These are among the critical matters that should be the focus of attention in analyzing the nuclear deal at Vienna, whether it stands or is sabotaged by Congress, as it may well be.

Israeli Leadership Targets "Jewish Terrorism"

In the wake of the tragedy at the Jerusalem Pride event that left a young woman dead and others wounded, Israeli authorities are belatedly saying that they will focus on halting "Jewish terrorism" perpetrated by orthodox extremists.  It's a move America needs to emulate even if it means targeting a significant portion of the GOP base.  For far too long authorities in both countries have turned a blind eye towards the evil of far right religious fundamentalists.  The reality is that both the Jewish extremists and American Christofascists see themselves as above the law. The Washington Post looks at the long overdue development.  Here are highlights:

Israeli leaders proposed harsh new measures Sunday to curb “Jewish terrorism,” following a wave of extremist violence that left Israeli and Palestinian children dead in knife and arson attacks.

An Israeli teenager, described by her parents as a sweet and magical child, succumbed to her wounds Sunday after being stabbed by a Jewish extremist at a gay pride parade last week.

Hours earlier, thousands of Israelis held anti-violence rallies across the country protesting attacks by Israeli assailants against gays and Palestinians.

Israelis were reeling from the fast-moving violence of recent days that included Jewish settlers clashing with government forces at a West Bank settlement, the knife attack at the gay pride parade in Jerusalem, and a lethal arson attack in a Palestinian village that resulted in a toddler being burned to death.

Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Sunday that Israeli authorities should be allowed to employ the same heavy-handed measures against Israeli terrorism suspects as the state uses against Palestinian suspects in the occupied West Bank, freeing the military to seek “administrative detention” against suspects, which would enable them to hold detainees for months, and sometimes years, in prison without presenting charges.

After speaking out against attacks by Jewish extremists and saying he felt shame that the violence had come “from my own people,” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was deluged with threats on social media, leading his security detail to file a complaint with Israeli police because of fears that the leader’s life was in danger.

During a period of similar tumult two decades ago, a right-wing Jewish extremist shot and killed Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 as he departed a Tel Aviv peace rally attended by more than 100,000.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the government will have “zero tolerance” for Jewish extremists, vowing that Israel is committed to fight “hate, fanaticism and terrorism from whatever side.”

The spiral of violence began Wednesday when Israeli soldiers and police clashed with Jewish settlers at the West Bank community of Beit El.

The Israeli authorities were attempting to demolish two illegal structures at the Jewish settlement on the outskirts of Ramallah that were built without permits on private Palestinian land.

On Thursday, Israel’s gay community came under attack as a Jewish extremist stabbed six people at the annual gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

On Friday, arsonists set fire to two homes in the Palestinian village of Duma in the West Bank, burning a toddler alive and injuring three others. The investigation is under a gag order but it appeared that no arrests had been made.

 Again and again we see hate and violence as the chief fruits of religion.

Huckabee’s "Oven" Attack On Obama Masks His Own Anti-Semitism

So far I have held back on commenting on Mike Huckabee's horrific claim the Barack Obama's Iran nuclear agreement "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven."   But, given his refusal to apologize and walk back the statement - which seems aimed at cynically whipping up the Christofascist voters in the GOP base - a comment and condemnation seem in order.  As regular readers know, I believe that Huckabee is a despicable individual.  Hypocrite also needs to be added as a descriptive term of the man.  Like most of the far right Christofascists, when push comes to shove, Huckabee cares about Israel for one reason and one reason only: Israel is key in setting the stage for Armageddon and the supposed return of Christ.  

Of course, when Armageddon comes, most Jews will perish if one believes the allegedly inerrant Bible.   Thus, Huckabee actually doesn't care about the Israeli people.  He merely sees them as a means to bring about Armageddon.  With "friends" like Huckabee, Israel truly needs no enemies.   And as blogger friend Karen Ocamb points out, Huckabee supports a form of far right Christians who continue to support a view of Jews as "Christ-killers."  Here are excerpts from Karen's post on the issue:

While many are engaged in a reasoned debate over the deal, others are using it as an excuse for political grandstanding. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, for instance, seems to have torn a page from publicity hound Donald Trump’s poll-spiking, over-the-top playbook and commented on the deal—to almost universal condemnation.

“This president’s foreign policy is the most feckless in American history,” Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Fox News contributor, told Breitbart on Saturday. “It is so naive that he would trust the Iranians. By doing so, he will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”

Fred Karger, the openly gay, Jewish, former 2012 Republican presidential candidate, also reacted strongly.  “No matter what you think of the nuclear deal with Iran, Mike Huckabee crossed the line by comparing it to the Holocaust. Huckabee will say anything to try and stay relevant while he also tries to divert attention away from the host of problems he faces in his campaign for president,” Karger said in an email. Karger has created a SuperPAC to look into Huckabee’s campaign and character.

Huckabee [self-appointed] entitlement to co-opt the Holocaust comes from his many years as a tour guide to Israel with the “Israel Experience With Mike Huckabee”—a favorite with evangelical Christians awaiting Armageddon.

Baptist minister Mike Huckabee is pledging to listen to God and not the “false prophets” if he is elected president—which begs the question of what he might do militarily to hasten Armageddon. But Huckabee’s Christian warrior message can be confusing. 

But in light of his comments about having been to Auschwitz as a tourist—I have stood at that oven door. I know exactly what it looks like.”—it is perhaps useful to consider Huckabee’s support for Mel Gibson, whom Huckabee thinks should be forgiven for what many perceived as anti-Semitic comments and attitudes, which Gibson may have inherited from his father, a religious zealot who said the Holocaust never happened.

[I]t is Huckabee—the presidential candidate who has seen “the door of the oven”—who fails to understand that Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ is controversial precisely for its dangerous depiction of Jews. Here’s an excerpt from one Jewish review:

“For Jews who have used this movie to confirm their conviction that Christians will always hate Jews, Gibson has perpetrated an unforgivable crime that negates one of the most remarkable acts of communal religious repentance in history. The Second Vatican Council acknowledged the sin of the Church for almost 2000 years in blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus. Neither the Jews of that generation or of those to come, they decreed, bear any guilt for deicide. In 1988, the Vatican published Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion, with a list of nine points that any future depictions of Passion Plays are to use as guides. Gibson’s movie ignores every one of them.

This is the true offense about the “door of the oven” comment: Christian extremist Mike Huckabee believes he has the right to talk about the Holocaust while passionately loving a film that portrayed Jews as Hitler and his Nazi Party saw them. 

The GOP's War Mongering

Having apparently learned absolutely nothing from the fiascoes in Afghanistan and Iraq launched by a similar detachment from reality and insane belief that America can impose its will on other nations, the Republicans are lamenting the agreement negotiated with Iran and condemning it as appeasement and all sorts of other negative descriptions.  Their alternative?  There is none other that ultimately war.  A war that anyone sane ought to know America cannot win based on the examples of the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.   Is the Iran deal perfect?  Of course not, but again, what is the alternative?   A column in the New York Times looks at the GOP's insane war mongering.  Here are excerpts:

So what do the critics, from Republican presidential hopefuls to the Israeli government, seek in place of the deal with Iran that verifiably blocks Tehran’s path to a nuclear weapon for at least the next 10 to 15 years? Presumably, they want what would have happened if negotiations had collapsed. That would be renewed war talk as an unconstrained Iran installs sophisticated centrifuges, its stockpile of enriched uranium grows, Russia and China abandon the sanctions regime, moderates in Iran like Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are sidelined, and a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic draws closer.

To favor such peril, when a constructive alternative exists that engages one of the most highly educated societies in the Middle East, amounts to foolishness dressed up as machismo.

The Iran nuclear deal is not perfect, nor was it ever intended to address the long list of American-Iranian grievances, which will persist. It must be judged on what it set out to do — stop Iran going nuclear — not on whether Iran has a likeable regime (it does not) or does bad things (it does). President Obama did not set out to change Iran but he has created a framework that, over a decade, might.

If implemented, the agreement constitutes the most remarkable American diplomatic achievement since the Dayton Accords put an end to the Bosnian war two decades ago. It increases the distance between Iran and a bomb as it reduces the distance between Iran and the world. It makes the Middle East less dangerous by forestalling proliferation. In a cacophonous age of short-termism, it offers a lesson of stubborn leadership in pursuit of a long-term goal.

Iran had been increasing its operating centrifuges and the size and enrichment level of its uranium stockpile. Now, the number of centrifuges is to be slashed by two-thirds to 5,060; the stockpile is to be all but eliminated; enrichment levels are capped at 3.7 percent, a long way from bomb grade; the potential route to weapons-grade plutonium at Arak is disabled; international inspection is redoubled and, in Obama’s words, will extend “where necessary,” “when necessary.” In return, Iran gets the phased elimination of most sanctions, the end to its pariah status, and a windfall that will alleviate its economic crisis.

And this is “one of the darkest days in world history”? No, it is a moment for guarded hope.

Iran is finely poised between a tough old guard forged in revolution and its aspirational, Westward-looking youth. A decade is a long time in societies in transition. It is far better to have deep American-Iranian differences — over Hezbollah, over Syria, over regional Shiite irredentism, over Iran’s vile anti-Israel outbursts — addressed through dialogue rather than have Iran do its worst as pariah.

This accord has the merit of condemning the United States and Tehran to a relationship — however hostile — over the next 15 years. The Middle East, several of its states irremediably fractured, needs a new security framework. This will take years. But to imagine it could ever be fashioned without Iran’s involvement is fantasy. Meanwhile, the West and Iran have a common enemy: the medieval slaughterers of Islamic State.

Strict verification is imperative. But Congress should think twice before the feel-good, reckless adoption of a resolution condemning a deal that advances American interests. Obama would veto it, and almost certainly has the votes to resist an override, but this would be a regrettable way for the nation to assume such a ground-shifting agreement. 

Israel, too, should ask the hard questions rather than dismiss a deal that puts Iran much further from a bomb, empowers Iranian reformists, locks in American-Iranian dialogue and will be leveraged by Netanyahu to secure more advanced American weapons systems. The darkest days in history for the Jewish people were of an altogether different order. They should never be trivialized.

The Republicans ranting against the Iran agreement need to study some history and demographic facts.  Unlike Iraq which was a made up nation thanks to the French and British in the aftermath of World War I, Iran is an ancient nation/culture that had a glorious past many centuries before America was even discovered.  It has more than twice the population of Afghanistan and Iraq combined.  Moreover, much of the population is well educated.  These aren't the ignorant "rag heads" that the Christofascists like to see slaughtered. Short of decades of war and a full blown occupation - and we've seen how well that worked in Iraq - with trillions of dollars spent and god knows how many American lives lost, America cannot impose its will on Iran.  We need to realize that there are very real limits to what our military power can do.  This agreement deserves a chance to succeed.  The GOP's embrace of ignorance and military fantasies need to be rejected.