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By Jingo, an 'Act of War!'

Tuesday April 4, 2017

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The latest Democratic Party shill to demonize Russia is, I am ashamed to say, my state of Virginia’s Senator Mark Warner, who, on Thursday said “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a deliberate campaign carefully constructed to undermine our election.” Last Thursday, Warner was the top Democrat on a Senate Intelligence Committee panel investigating Moscow’s alleged interference in last year’s presidential election. The panel inevitably included carefully selected expert witnesses who would agree with the proposition that Russia is and was guilty as charged. There was no one who provided an alternative view even though a little Googling would have surfaced some genuine experts who dispute the prevailing narrative.

Warner joined many of his esteemed colleagues in Congress who have completely accepted the allegations that Russia meddled in the election in spite of the failure of the Obama Administration to provide any indisputable evidence to that effect. Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland has called Moscow’s claimed interference an “attack” and labeled it a “political Pearl Harbor.” A number of other congressmen, to include Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey and Eric Swalwell of California have called it an act of war. And then there are echo chambers Senators John McCain and Mark Rubio on the Republican side of the aisle while former Vice President Dick Cheney was speaking at a business conference in New Delhi saying the same thing. Yes, that Dick Cheney. Why anyone in India would pay to hear him speak on any subject escapes me.

Democrat Adam Schiff of California is leading the charge for his party as he is the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He outlined his caseagainst Russia two weeks ago, providing a heap of minimally factual “information”, relying heavily instead on supposition and featuring mostly innuendo. And again, it was largely evidence-free. One assertion is almost comical: “In July 2016, Carter Page, one of Trump’s former national security advisers, traveled to Moscow after being approved to do so by the Trump campaign. While there, Page gave a speech in which he was critical of the US and its efforts to fight corruption and promote democracy.”
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Susan Rice Spy Scandal: Was Trump Right? And What It Means.

Tuesday April 4, 2017

In a surveillance state, no one is immune from the government's watchful eyes. Not even the government. It looks like the Obama Administration used the NSA to dig up dirt on the Trump people before and after the election. Possibly, the "Russia hacked the election" story was meant to cover-up for that real crime. But our concern is not the political implications of this potentially monumental scandal. Rather, we focus on the bigger picture: if we want to live in a surveillance state, this is the kind of society we will become. More in today's Liberty Report...
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Just Bring the Troops Home

Monday April 3, 2017

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One of the most amazing things about US foreign policy is how so many American remain mired in the interventionist paradigm. Case in point: the Middle East. No matter how much a failure US interventionism has been in that part of the world, people simply cannot bring themselves to break out of the interventionist box. They remain convinced that the United States has no choice but to remain mired in the ongoing failure, death, and destruction in that part of the world. And they keep hoping that maybe — just maybe — it will all work out over the long term.

Thus, it is very refreshing to me whenever I find others who recognize that there is really just one right course of action for the United States to take: pull out all troops and bring them home. That’s the message of an excellent op-ed in the Boston Globe today by Jeffrey D. Sachs, who teaches at Columbia University and who will be one of the speakers at FFF’s upcoming June 3 conference “The National Security State and JFK.”

The title of Sachs’s article says it all, clearly, succinctly, and directly: “US Military Should Get Out of the Middle East.” That is the only realistic, practical, and moral course of action, especially after several decades of failure, death, and destruction. I highly recommend that everyone read Sachs’s article and share it with friends.

Why can’t some people see a full pull-out from the Middle East is the only right course of action for the United States to take? Why can’t they finally bring themselves to break out of the interventionist box? Why can’t they see that no matter what the Pentagon and the CIA do in the Middle East, it’s only going to make the situation worse?
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Threatening China Over Korea: Grandstanding...Or Wise Diplomacy

Monday April 3, 2017

Just days before President Trump is set to meet Chinese Premier Xi Jinping he let loose with a threat: either China "solves" North Korea or the US will do it. One way would be good for China, the other would not, he added. But how much sway does China really have over Kim Jong-Un and his nuclear policy? Could Trump be miscalculating? What's at stake? We look at the possibilities in today's Liberty Report...
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Does it Matter Who Pulls the Trigger in the Drone Wars?

Monday April 3, 2017

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We’re allowing a mindset of “anything Trump does is wrong” coupled with lightening-speed historical revisionism for the Obama era to sustain the same mistakes in the war on terror that have fueled Islamic terrorism for the past 15 years. However, there may be a window of opportunity to turn the anti-Trump rhetoric into a review of the failed policies of the last decade and a half.

A recent example of “anything Trump does is wrong” has to do with his changing the rules for drone kill decision making. In May 2013 President Obama self-imposed a dual-standard (known as the “playbook”) for remote killing. The White House, including Obama himself reviewing a kill list at regular meetings, would decide which individuals outside of the “traditional war zones” of Iraq and Afghanistan would be targeted.

Meanwhile, in America’s post-9/11 traditional war zones, military commanders then made, and now make, the kill decisions without civilian review, with the threshold for “acceptable civilian casualties” supposedly less strict. Of course the idea that any of this functions under “rules” is based on the bedrock fallacy that anything militarily done by the last three presidents has been legal under the never-updated 2001 authorization for war in Afghanistan. For perspective, remember Islamic State never existed, and Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen had stable governments at the time Congress passed that authorization.
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Yes, Let’s Allow The Syrian People To Decide For Themselves

Monday April 3, 2017

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Is common sense beginning to creep into US policy in the Middle East? Last week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the longer-term status of Syrian President Assad would be “decided by the Syrian people.” The media reported this as a radical shift in US foreign policy, but isn’t this just stating what should be obvious? What gives any country the right to determine who rules someone else? Washington is currently paralyzed by evidence-free rumors that the Russians somehow influenced our elections, but no one blinks an eye when Washington declares that one or another foreign leader “must go.”
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The Sleazy Origins of Russia-Gate

Saturday April 1, 2017

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An irony of the escalating hysteria about the Trump camp’s contacts with Russians is that one presidential campaign in 2016 did exploit political dirt that supposedly came from the Kremlin and other Russian sources. Friends of that political campaign paid for this anonymous hearsay material, shared it with American journalists and urged them to publish it to gain an electoral advantage. But this campaign was not Donald Trump’s; it was Hillary Clinton’s.

And, awareness of this activity doesn’t require you to spin conspiracy theories about what may or may not have been said during some seemingly innocuous conversation. In this case, you have open admissions about how these Russian/Kremlin claims were used.
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Ron Paul Rewind (1999): 'Our Foolish Policy in Iraq Invites Terrorist Attacks Against US Territory'

Friday March 31, 2017

Ron Paul went to the House Floor in 1999 to blast President Clinton's claim that a 1991 UN resolution gave him authority to launch an air war against Iraq. It could have been 2017, the president could be Trump, the claim of authority could be the 2001 authorization to use military force, and the air war could be against Yemen, Syria, Iraq, etc. The circumstances are identical. Rep. Paul also predicted that, "our foolish policy in Iraq invites terrorist attacks against US territory and incites the Islamic fundamentalists against us. As a consequence, our efforts to develop long-term, peaceful relations with Russia is now ending." Administrations come and go, but US foreign policy keeps making the same mistakes over and over. As Ron Paul predicted.
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There Was No 'Russian Hacking' of the 2016 Election

Friday March 31, 2017

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The “cyber-security” firm that everyone is depending on to make the case for Russia’s alleged “hacking” of the 2016 presidential election, CrowdStrike, has just retracted a key component of its analysis – but the “mainstream” media continues to chug along, ignoring any facts that contradict their preferred narrative.

As Voice of America – hardly an instrument of Russian propaganda! – reports:
US cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year’s American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank.
This retraction pulls the rug out from under CrowdStrike’s identification of the hacking group that supposedly broke into the Democratic National Committee’s server.
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Mosul: Where Obama’s Last Gambit Could Ruin Trump

Friday March 31, 2017

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Here’s why the bombing has to stop and what US journalists are not telling you: hundreds are dying in Mosul, not at the hands of ISIS, but through a failed military strategy which no one, it seems, has the guts to tell President Trump cannot achieve its objectives.

Does Trump actually really know what he is doing in Mosul or is he wildly deluded? There is a military solution to killing ISIS there, but who will be the one to present it to him?

Hugh Hewitt is a card. The pro-Trump American radio host recently told the BBC a disturbing anecdote about the US president. Apparently, Hewitt interviewed him before the US elections, and Trump told him, “Obama created ISIS.” Hewitt tried to help the (then) Presidential candidate out with his messaging: “Surely you mean Obama allowed the vacuum to develop in the Middle East which created ISIS?” to which Trump defiantly replies: “No, I mean Obama actually created ISIS.”

This, perhaps, would have been disturbing enough. But immediately after the interview, days later, Hewitt amiably noted that Trump had told other US media that, “Obama had created the vacuum,” which allowed ISIS to flourish. Even as a staunch Trump supporter, Hewitt is stunned by how both misinformed the US president is, but more how easily his thoughts can be changed by just merely talking to anyone who has the nerve to challenge him.
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