I wonder what evidence, if any, will arise about more contemporary presidents-elect making deals with heads of state with interests opposed to the American people's.
Would it surprise anyone to find direct communication and collusion?
Nothing would surprise me anymore. And I quite literally mean nothing. The utter disdain shown for rule of law, principles, heck, basic human decency in the last few months has me fantasizing about DC floating off into the ocean and sinking.
A friend suggested something similar about Trump & his relationship with Russia. Whatever happens there, he's positioning himself as the strongest candidate in 2020 to deal with the aftermath.
I keep seeing people speculating about Trump and his supposed relationship with Russia, and yet Hillary's proven relationship with Saudi Arabia was barely discussed during the election.
15 of the 19 attackers on 9/11 were Saudi. The rest were from UAE (2), Egypt, and Lebanon.
The Saudis are largely responsible for the spread of Wahhabism, which in turn has fueled extremist islamic ideology.
Both the left and the right have ties to KSA. And they've been major donors to both parties, but especially the democrats. Sad that the MSM willfully ignores this topic.
And the usa buys oil from them and yet they have a cuban embargo. It's a conspiracy I tell you. I think things are a bit more complicated then your smear campaign. Go and join your brothers at breitbart.
I think geopolitics gets in the way: Saudi Arabia is an ally to the United States- not the GOP or the Democrats. This arrangement is probably seen as best for American Interests, at least by several administrations regardless of party - I have read theories about the petro-dollar but I'm not familiar enough with Economics to weigh in.
Not too long ago, the Republicans pushed a law allowing families of 9/11 victims to sue the KSA. Obama vetoed the bill and the GOP overrode the veto. Not long afterwards, the GOP whip[1] was regretting the law and blaming Obama for not pushing back enough(!). Now, I don't think there's a conspiracy going on, it's just realpolitik/ nation-state equivalent of having a friend who is a dick but lets you play with his nice toys.
1. Might have been "senate majority leader" I'm on mobile and haven't looked it up the correct title.
Edit:
I am assuming that the Saudi government wasn't involved in 9/11 and that it was the actions of religious extremists. Publicly blaming the Saudi government might not be the most prudent thing to do, just as Uganda shouldn't blame the US government for the actions of American Christian evangelicals stoking homophobia in Uganda. I know it's comparing Apples to ghost pepper
> I am assuming that the Saudi government wasn't involved in 9/11 and that it was the actions of religious extremists.
You should read about Bandar bin Sultan, AKA "Bandar Bush", Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States for 20+ years [1]. Zacarias Moussaoui stated under oath that Bandar bin Sultan and the Saudi government financed 9/11, and the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 Comission Report detail how two of the 9/11 hijackers received $130,000 in payment from Bandar's checking account. His nickname comes from his close affiliation with the Bush family. Bob Woodward claims that W. Bush told Bandar about the invasion of Iraq before Colin Powell.
It is very likely that the Saudi government was involved in 9/11, and it is worth investigating whether Bush and / or Cheney had foreknowledge of the attacks [2].
Bin Laden and his crew were Saudi dissidents who were trying to overthrow the Saudi government. Their grievance with us was that we are allied to/stationed troops within/prop up the kingdom they were trying to overthrow. Blaming "the Saudis" for 9/11 is like blaming the Queen for IRA bombings.
Are you referring to their donation to the Clinton Foundation? That wasn't proven, it was revealed by the Foundation. All donations have been made public.
If Trump wants to end speculation, just release his tax returns.
> Are you referring to their donation to the Clinton Foundation? That wasn't proven, it was revealed by the Foundation. All donations have been made public.
Huh? It's been widely reported that the Saudi government has made large donations to the Clinton Foundation. See:
Large donations, whether for a charity or otherwise, are far less of a problem of influence than on-going unknown liabilities and assets ultimately controlled by foreign governments.
If you want to directly give any amount of money directly to Trump not subject to any kind of campaign donation limitations, just buy a hotel room for some duration.
If you want someone in U.S. custody released, take the principle operating officers of the president's hotels into custody without trial.
And I also wonder whether Trump owned/named buildings are possible targets in the same way American embassies can be targets; and then who pays for the ensuing security evaluations, monitoring, and reinforcement of all of those buildings. Is an attack on any of those buildings an attack on merely the Trump organization, or is it an attack on the president, and indirectly on the U.S.?
The differences in liability and unknowns between the incoming president and all previous presidents is qualitatively extremely different, and likely in unpredictable ways.
And Trump bragged about donating to the Clintons in exchange for favor. Not sure what Trump thinks that makes him, above the fray? Smarter than everyone else? Not the way I'd characterize it.
The Saudi Arabian government is one of the closest allies of the United States, and has been for nearly 50 years.
A US presidential candidate who was the wife of a former President, an influential Senator and Secretary of State would be expected to have a significant relationship with the Saudis.
That's not to say that HRC didn't ride or cross the ethical line. But that is much different than what Trump is implied to be doing.
That's because Saudi Arabia isn't an adversary of the United States that seeks to undermine our democracy. It's not an issue to people who grasp the fact that not all Arabs and Muslims are our enemies.
A counter-point or counter-perspective, would be the ongoing disabuse of those of us who were raised and... well, "indoctrinated", to believe in the paramountcy of e.g. "the rule of law".
During the course of my adult life, I've tried to hold true to that and other principles, only to have life show me with increasing discomfort and personal loss that, no, really, that's not the way the world works.
It has not worked that way and it does not today work that way. Nor does it even appear to be a realistic ideal towards which the world is striving.
Much of moral sentiment (as opposed to actual, demonstrated moral behavior) appears -- increasingly apparently, to me -- to be used to dupe the willing into sacrificing their own best interests.
Sad story is, perhaps, that in the long run this may also create or at least exacerbate larger conflagrations. Because people have not been taking care of their own affairs and their own neighborhoods.
At least, that's the approach I now, belatedly, consider. Nothing else is going to work for me, if my own life is not in some sort of reasonable state. Regardless of what some law, educator, or religious authority has to say.
I agree that the world unfortunately does work that way. On the other hand, I do believe in the basic goodness of people. [For every bad cop there are probably a 1000 really good ones.] The "trick" to happiness is to surround yourself with nice people and maintain a "good world" bubble around yourself.
It has been said elsewhere more persuasively, but there are good police departments and bad police departments. One can't be a good cop and let bad cops get away with what they do. If one stands by, they are then a bad cop. Active of passive, one is still a bad cop.
Vagueness makes it easier to discuss things in terms of abstract principles, whereas direct accusations establish an adversarial frame that often results in conflict. If one hopes to prevail through reason rather than force it behooves one to focus on principles rather than personalities.
You do know that we know Reagan held off the hostage release, right?
Other than that, it seems contextually unlikely that Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, Obama have been up to much. The USS cole is a small possibility; but Bush ran on a policy on a policy of less war / entangling alliances.
Reagan was a shit but not at the Nixon level. I've never heard of any hard proof of the October Surprise theory and I'd be all over it if it were there.
Since you say "interests opposed to American people's" the evidence now is lacking although there is suspicion. Regarding Trump's own self-interest, well that is out in the open.
Not to mention Nixon's manipulating the US dollar and economy in a way that was most disadvantageous to the greatest number of US citizens possible.
On a scale that could never have been achieved by a foreign power from outside.
To the degree that major ripples are still being felt today.
Unfortunately Nixon's crookedness & destructiveness was not widely recognized by the majority of the public until after it was growing out of control and undeniable, so once he was gone the damage continued and the momentum was big.
All of this is ancient history, but so many young people are not even aware.
After US citizens were paid less than $21/oz in paper currency when their gold was federally confiscated in 1933, then had that currency devalued less than a year later to $35/oz, for almost the next 40 years it was then illegal for US citizens to own or trade in gold. IOW, until those who were devastated at the time had passed on or were no longer a powerful voting constituency.
Daddy "Warbucks" had been a recurring character in the popular comic strip "Little Orphan Annie" over those decades.
By the time Nixon got there, the dollar had been at that stable $35/oz for decades and huge amounts of the US economy depended on that stability, especially to survive through unprofitable quarters or years.
When Nixon outlawed free enterprise temporarily in 1971 at the same time the dollar was allowed to float against gold ever since, it turned inflation from an annoyance into a huge sucking sound.
It wouldn't have been such a strong nail in the middle-class coffin except there were statistically "no" citizens who had any gold whatsoever to legally participate in any appreciation in the dollar value of gold. And it would not be made legal to participate until years later, after the "Arab Oil Embargo" had been piled on, when few citizens had any remaining wherewithal, and gold had already skyrocketed after all that new oil money had been funneled overseas and driven up prices beforehand.
Time was slipping away, to save what was left of "the accumulated wealth of working people since incomes had been taxed" required until Nixon's direct involvement in the Watergate crimes became provable. By then the less-devastated near-half of the general population began to finally find themselves in the same boat as the more-devastated near-half. At that point it became universally realized that Nixon could not be removed fast enough.
After that, denial was universal too.
Even though Nixon had been popularly re-elected, overnight nobody even talked about him any more. It was such a relief. For years. The millions who knew he was compromised from the beginning were not saying I-told-you-so any more to the millions who had been duped. No disgrace was socially required from those who had supported Nixon to the end. But you could find "nobody" who would admit to having voted for Nixon the second time. This was avoided by no one talking about it.
Eventually, a more rosy collective retrospective developed over the years after millions of people had spent the time trying to find some element of Nixon's regime which could be respected in a way somewhat comparable to what you would expect from a good President. An instinctive response to try and salvage respect for an institution which was fully disgraced while they watched.
There was only thing that rose to the surface and could be widely accepted as positive, since it hadn't yet had any discernable effect;
"Nixon opened up China".
Turns out that if Nixon had not done it then, it would have likely taken almost 20 more years to have been set in motion by someone else, giving the middle-class about another two decades which might have been enough to allow their survival to this day.
Anyway, it's been 40 more years.
The value of middle-class dollars has now been almost fully confiscated as the federal government continues to build its war chest.
As far as I can tell, Nixon was a complete nutjob. Here he is on the possibility of nuking Vietnam (via Alex Wellerstein):
> But my favorite quotes are from Nixon about Vietnam. During a spring offensive by the North Vietnamese in 1972, Nixon told Kissinger:
>> We’re going to do it. I’m going to destroy the goddamn country, believe me, I mean destroy it if necessary. And let me say, even the nuclear weapons if necessary. It isn’t necessary. But, you know, what I mean is, what shows you the extent to which I’m willing to go. By a nuclear weapon, I mean that we will bomb the living bejeezus out of North Vietnam and then if anybody interferes we will threaten the nuclear weapons.
> A week later, he continued to a somewhat horrified Kissinger:
>> Nixon: I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?
>> Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
>> Nixon: A nuclear bomb, does that bother you?… I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sake! The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about civilians, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.
>> Kissinger: I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.
Don't forget the whole "when the president does it that means that it is not illegal". One of the most guano-crazy things he ever said. Any leader who claims that being in that position of leadership exempts them for moral or legal standards is plain delusional.
I don't agree; he was just stating a fact about power. When you get down to it, moral and legal codes aren't real, they're just arbitrary concepts people agree to abide by. Classical Greeks thought it was pointless to attempt to legislate for all situations and had a notion of 'virtue ethics' - that what a sufficiently virtuous person does must of necessity be virtuous/ In our own time, it's plain that sufficient power does in fact put people above the law and that's a reality we have to deal with whether we want to or not. Rule of law is only as good as the amount of respect people have for the law, and law as an institution has been on a decline in the west and in the US in particular, because so much of it is so obviously for sale to the highest bidder.
The line is from the Nixon/Frost interviews, you can look up the context. Nixon is definitely not musing about the nature of power or making a philosophical point about the reality of the rule of law.
“The law’s totally on my side," the president-elect told the Times. "The president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Translation: When this president does it, that means it is not illegal. Unlike Nixon, however, I'm starting to worry that Trump's going to get away with this.
Trump's claim is not that anything the president does is legal; but much more specifically, that none of it is a conflict of interest.
Since that is clearly an absurd statement, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant that nothing the president does is legally considered a conflict of interest. In otherwords, the specific laws against conflicts of interest do not apply to the president.
This turns out to be a suprisingly true statement. The only conflict of interest law I could find (after an admitadly brief search) is [0].
I have not thourally reviewed it, but found the following snippet in the definitions section:
"Except as otherwise provided in such sections, the terms “officer” and “employee” in sections 203, 205, 207 through 209, and 218 of this title shall not include the President, the Vice President, a Member of Congress, or a Federal judge." [1].
“The law’s totally on my side," the president-elect told the Times. "The president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Translation: When this president does it, that means it is not illegal. Unlike Nixon, however, I'm starting to worry that Trump's going to get away with this.
It wouldn't surprise me. As a result of seeing some pretty horrible animal torture on YouTube, I was convinced for a few months that summary executions was the only appropriate way to deal with people capable of that behaviour. I was convinced that if you can harm a defenseless animal, you were sub-human and not worth our time to try and fix.
There were a number of emails that alluded to "let's say no more and discus important stuff on other more secure channels". If I'm not mistaken. They were savvy enough not to put anything damming down in writing.
That's one of the reasons they were motivated to use private email. Because they were fully aware it was one FOIA away from being a public forum. But at the same time, all of the important stuff was via other channels. There was hardly any direct work stuff at all in those emails. Mostly just her foundation and campaign conversations.
That's a feature of modern American life. I would guess that easily 60% of large company CEOs, Mayors, Governors, etc either don't use email or at all or limit its use to trivial matters.
Since 2006 when the courts changed their rules, any email sent for official or business purposes, with the except of client-attorney email is potentially postcard. Nothing important to a company should be in there.
There is one email in that blog post that mentions FOIA requests, and there is no response to it from Clinton saying that it's why she won't use her state.gov email address.
We already know why she used her own private email server — to use her Blackberry. This has been repeatedly established by the inquiries and the FBI investigation. We even have an email to Powell in 2009, well before any of the emails in that blog post, that shows her reason. https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/30324
Yet the state dept was willing to issue her an approved Blackberry which she declined.
Evidence exists to support this was intentional to hide information. Evidence doesn't equal proven. Granted it is not proven, but saying there exists no evidence doesn't seem to be accurate.
>No such evidence exists, which is why all inquiries and investigations came to the conclusion I stated above.
That doesn't mean there was no evidence. It only suggests that evidence wasn't proven. You can not draw the conclusion there was none.
The FBI also came to the conclusion that Clinton wasn't intelligent enough to understand confidential markings. Then the stunt the FBI pulled just before the election I would say the FBI has shown itself to be incompetent.
Mull was the Executive Secretary of the State Department at the time he sent that email (two years after the NSA had denied Clinton's request). He was in no position to overrule the NSA and make that offer. At no point during Clinton's tenure were Blackberry devices authorized to access state.gov email servers. He was very likely referring to http://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-wanted-hillary-clinton-to-u..., which was the only authorized device up to 2015 and was the device that the NSA offered (but not supported by State department infrastructure) http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/nsa-re....
> That doesn't mean there was no evidence.
Then where is it?
Aside: citing the Moonie Times and the Daily Caller projects know-nothingism. Here are the three top articles on the Daily Caller right now:
1. Charlie Sheen Offers America The Most Insane Ticket To Take Down Trump
2. TPM’s Josh Marshall Reduced To Tweeting Porno Link Of ‘Teasing, Licking’ ‘Angela & Strawberry’TPM’s Josh Marshall Reduced To Tweeting Porno Link Of ‘Teasing, Licking’ ‘Angela & Strawberry’
3. ‘FK YOU. GO TO HELL’: Georgetown Prof Loses It On Muslim Trump Voter‘FK YOU. GO TO HELL’: Georgetown Prof Loses It On Muslim Trump Voter
Again, your original assertion is not defensible that there was no evidence. Again evidence does not equal proven. Simply there was information that suggests a rationale.
It's not that I didn't like the source. It's that the evidence didn't hold up to the most basic scrutiny. Mull simply did not have the ability to give Clinton a Blackberry.
Aside: you are aware of what Judicial Watch is, right? They're the conservative group that led the prosecution against Clinton on this issue and repeatedly failed. Of course they are going to ask questions about FOIA, the Espionage Act, and anything else they can try to stick on her. You're being misled by listening to only the prosecution and not the judge or the defense that totally dismantled their case.
>It's that the evidence didn't hold up to the most basic scrutiny
So there was evidence?
>Mull simply did not have the ability to give Clinton a Blackberry.
That is irrelevant to establishing a motive. The emails don't suggest that Clinton was aware of that fact and they do suggest that Mull for some reason thought this information that would be important to Clinton's decision.
>you are aware of what Judicial Watch is, right
Yes, but this is to be expected. When the right is in power, I expect left leaning groups to lead the charge to accountability and vice versa. It is rare that a group ever holds itself accountable.
>judge or the defense that totally dismantled their case.
I'm not sure what you mean by dismantled. They requested a deposition and was granted. Clinton did not answer all questions and they have requested through federal court that she answer all questions. I have not seen an update on that request.
Don't be facetious. That's like saying that there is evidence that the Sun revolves around the Earth because we see it pass overhead every day. That evidence doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny either.
> That is irrelevant to establishing a motive. The emails don't suggest that Clinton was aware of that fact and they do suggest that Mull for some reason thought this information that would be important to Clinton's decision.
The emails don't even suggest that Clinton saw Mull's offer, and they don't suggest that either Abedin or Clinton thought Mull's offer was viable after their experience with the NSA. Why should they waste their time with it if it wasn't going to go anywhere?
> Yes, but this is to be expected.
Exactly. Then why do you use them as your sole source? The Daily Caller article lifts its entire story from Judicial Watch's arguments. If you wanted to learn why those arguments didn't work the first n times, the other side's arguments are out there for you to see.
> They thought it was good enough to proceed with questioning.
He threw them a bone. He denied their motion to depose Clinton and instead sent her a written questionnaire. She returned her answers on October 13, containing exactly the same reasons she gave before for using the Blackberry.
>The emails don't even suggest that Clinton saw Mull's offer, and they don't suggest that either Abedin or Clinton thought Mull's offer was viable after their experience with the NSA. Why should they waste their time with it if it wasn't going to go anywhere?
You are making assumptions for which we don't know the answers. Which is exactly why such questions are asked to begin with.
>Then why do you use them as your sole source? The Daily Caller article lifts its entire story from Judicial Watch's arguments. If you wanted to learn why those arguments didn't work the first n times, the other side's arguments are out there for you to see.
Likewise then why do you suggest I simply dismiss claims by taking the other side's argument?
We can also assume it would be a defensive position. Evidence doesn't become no evidence based only on the other side's account. It might be determined to be weak, irrelevant to claims etc based on investigation.
Stating there was no evidence suggests there was 0 basis to make the claim prior to investigation. We don't in hindsight do the investigation and then look back and say the evidence isn't evidence. We can say the evidence wasn't conclusive or didn't support said claims strong enough to investigate further etc.
> You are making assumptions for which we don't know the answers.
You are making the claim that Clinton used her private server to skirt FOIA, and your evidence is that the Executive Secretary once sent an email about using a device approved by the State Department. Nowhere in the response does Clinton or anybody on Clinton's team say that they won't use this non-existent device because they want to skirt FOIA, yet somehow this constitutes (the sole) evidence to support your claim. Meanwhile, we have her entire email chain with the NSA and mountains of testimony under oath supporting the other conclusion that she used her personal server simply because she wanted to use her Blackberry.
> Likewise then why do you suggest I simply dismiss claims by taking the other side's argument?
I don't. I'm simply suggesting that you discard arguments that have already been discarded. The side that has been attacking Clinton for 20 years isn't going to tell you which of their arguments didn't hold water.
Edit: This chain has reached maximum depth, and I can't reply any further. Can we agree that there is no reasonable evidence that Clinton used her personal email server in order to skirt FOIA?
We already know why she used her own private email server — to use her Blackberry
Her stated reason for the request was that she didn't want to have to carry multiple devices. Apparently, she (and her "expert" staff) couldn't figure out that you can access multiple accounts (and servers) from not only one device but even within one app.
You're being intentionally dense. The reason she would have to carry multiple devices is that she wanted to use her Blackberry, but the Blackberry was not allowed to access state.gov email. She would have continued to use her Blackberry to access her personal email, which would have meant she would need another device to access her state.gov email.
The State Dept IT tech was wrong about FOIA. Whether an email is subject to FOIA disclosure depends on the content and recipients, not the infrastructure. Clinton's personal emails would not have be FOIA-able even if it did go through State servers. There are also exceptions for some work emails.
The question of what is subject to FOIA is complicated.
Well at least one US president actually did nuke civilians, on purpose, twice, instead of merely talking about it. Another fire bombed them. And that's even before Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, or drone assassinations where any civilian can just be labeled as non-civilian by the government without much proof or oversight.
By what legal standard was it a crime? Keep in mind, that it has to be a standard that was at force at the time of the attack; and that the nuclear bombings were not even the deadliest air raids during the war.
"[Chief US prosecutor] Jackson is away conducting his high-grade lynching party in Nuremberg. I don't mind what he does to the Nazis, but I hate to see the pretense that he is running a court and proceeding according to common law. This is a little too sanctimonious a fraud to meet my old-fashioned ideas." - US Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone [0]
"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." - US Constitution Article 1 Section 9 [1]
"No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed." - United Nations Universal Declaration of human rights. Article 11 [2]
Is that a rhetorical question? Of course yes! More seriously, international tribunals always present a difficulty from the law standpoint. "Presidents" always arrange their country to not sign international treaties and dodge international penalties (e.g. Singapore has never signed treaties against torture). Of course Nuremberg and Tokyo trials could be viewed as a farce by exaggerating the doubts, but they're extremely widely legitimate. Legality without legitimacy also happens: The Hague tribunal is legal but its legitimacy is criticized because it only attacks African presidents. Being legal is the bonus that brings a mathematical proof to a decision, but being legitimate is even more important.
In a parallel fashion, WWII's Prisoners Of War (POWs) were renamed DEF by the US ("Disarmed Enemy Forces"), to dodge the Geneva convention about POWs, and some were badly treated (The Wikipedia page has a discussion on the numbers – see "Other Losses").
Yes. My point was that if atrocities against civilians in Hiroshima or Dresden were not crimes by gizmo686's logic above, then neither were Nazi atrocities, and Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were nothing but a fancy lynching.
That's ridiculous. The nazis eradicated a peaceful civilian population. The USA nuked cities where literally everyone was somehow engaged in a war against them, and who had started it in the first place.
Not quite. If the Allies prosecuted German pilots and their commanders for, say, strategic bombing of London - including civilian targets - then yes, it would have been a sham. But they weren't, precisely because the Allies did it too. So the atrocities people were prosecuted for at Nuremberg was stuff like shooting surrendered prisoners, or deliberately executing civilians in controlled areas.
Yes. However, I was merely applying gizmo686's criterion of a crime, "it has to be a standard that was at force at the time of the attack", to Nazis in similar fashion as (s)he applied it to Allies.
The way they did it was by claiming that the crimes didn't stem from any written law, but rather from an unwritten universal (for Europe, at least) custom. This is not actually all that far fetched - the notion of "customs of war" long predated any formal conventions etc.
Are you going to pretend that no civilians were killed during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
If you don't, you have your crime. Killing civilians was pretty damn widely agreed upon on that it's not acceptable.
The US committed a war crime, and a crime against humanity. Accept it. It's not the first, and there are plenty others to follow.
How do we meaningfully say that something is internationally illegal? Or how do we say that a nation commits crimes? There is no international legislative body. The International Criminal Court isn't respected. When the ICC is disrespected, an international police force doesn't come to enforce the court's will. And by what basis is the ICC even the legitimate court of the international?
The notion that there are some "norms of civilized behavior" that go beyond states and their written laws is very old, dating back centuries and even millenia:
>Why would you assume that? Nuclear bombing and not caring about civilians is not normal behavior.
Did not say, or imply that they were normal behavior. I said that other presidents (not all other, some other) have probably said similarly disturbing things.
>The Clinton emails were supposed to be private, yet never had anything close to that type of behavior.
Clinton wasn't who I had in mind, but I suspect private, verbal conversations would be more revealing than emails.
Until 1968 the US had a completely batshit insane standing order to launch a full scale nuclear attack on the USSR and China in response to a conventional attack on the USA, even if the attack was an accident, and even if the USSR and China were not responsible for it.
Then we have JFK, who was prepared to start WWIII over a tiff in Cuba, Eisenhower who threatened nukes over Korea, and Reagan, who thought it was hilarious to joke about signing a law to bomb Russia.
And let's not forget Dick Cheney, who wanted to nuke Iraq, a decade before 9/11.
I dunno, maybe nuking people is less of a big deal for some American leaders, having already done it twice.
I suspect the threat of a full-on nuke response to USSR or China, in all eventualities, was sensible ie don't even entertain the thought of any, even deniable or covert actions against us, although we all know we do it to you. Daily.
Cuba wasn't a 'tiff'. Deploying Soviet nukes to Cuba was an attempt to subvert MAD, which would have made WWIII more likely.
Not getting your Cheney thing. If he said it, was probably a joke. But I doubt it, since Iraq was an Ally at the time.
Nuking Japan likely saved millions of US/UK/AUS/NZ/CAD etc lives, so I don't think you've worked through the numbers, curiously, despite your moralistic, high-brow typing.
as defense secretary for the elder Mr. Bush,
Mr. Cheney commissioned a study of how many
tactical nuclear weapons would be needed to
take out an Iraqi Republican Guard division,
if necessary.
(The answer: 17.)
> The US and Iraq were most decidedly not allies then.
Actually, the US and Iraq were allies until Iraq invaded Kuwait. Ambassador April Glaspie.
We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as
your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me
to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the
1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with
America.
The Iraqis even sent an Exocet missile into the USS Stark and other than bombing one of their oil platforms, Reagan turned the other cheek.
Until after the Kuwait invasion and until after Thatcher lent H some of her testicles, yeah, Reagan and Bush were Iraqi allies.
If you actually read both links I provided, you might find them interesting. Also, why shouldn't I quote r/AskHistorians when discussing historical events?
r/AskHistorians has some of the highest quality research you're going to find on the internet, at least if you're not a history major yourself. The mods there are amazing, and the posts usually have sources you can look into yourself.
If you haven't browsed it before, I highly recommend looking into it.
I've seen people make this sort of argument all the time.
First of all, the United Nations did warn Japan to surrender. The Potsdam declaration promised that if the Japanese didn't surrender, "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction." The Japanese prime minister told a press conference on July 28th 1945 that his response to the declaration was "mokusatsu" which apparently has several different translations (either something like "no comment" or something like "to ignore with contempt"). There is some controversy about how that was intended, but Suzuki's next sentence to the reporters was "The only alternative for us is to be determined to continue our fight to the end" which in my mind signals that ignoring was the correct way to interpret it. No matter how you translate it, however, it wasn't the immediate surrender that was the only answer to the Declaration that the United Nations would accept.
There was no mention of nuclear weapons in the Declaration, but remember that in 1945 nuclear weapons weren't a scary thing- it's largely because of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki that they become taboo, but up to that point they weren't particularly scary to the public at large. The MIT Radiation Laboratory had chosen that name to suggest that it was harmless nuclear physics research, not it's actual highly classified military radar work, as a point at how nuclear physics was viewed in the first half of the 1940's even by physicists, leave alone the public at large.
But I think your plan is a heck of lot riskier than the historical approach, for two reasons.
A) Your plan seems to assume that time is on your side. That simply isn't true. While the numbers are uncertain, I've seen esimates between 20,000 and 50,000 Chinese dying each week the war continued. China was a US ally. If plan AOEUASDF1 takes more than three weeks (or two months if the lower estimates are correct), congratulations, your plan ends up with more total people dead than what happened historically- and the people you've killed are your allies, not your enemies. Great work there, statesman.
B) The effect of the bomb was largely psychological, on one single man (who mattered) and a more leisurely approach could well have lessened the psychological impact- and given that there was still a bit of skepticism on the effectiveness of the bomb (running all the way up to Truman) making a big deal of it and then having it turn out to be a flop would vastly reduce those all-important psychological effects.
Recall that after both atomic bombings, the intervention of the Soviets into the war, and the deadliest air raid in history (Operation Meetinghouse, the firebombing of Tokyo back in March actually killed more than either atomic bomb) the key Japanese decision makers, the Big Six, were tied 3-3 on whether to try and negotiate a peace. They'd actually been deadlocked that way since April 1945 when the Suzuki cabinet had been formed. Nothing changed anyone on the Council's minds until very early in the morning of the 10th, many hours after receiving news of the second atomic bombing, Suzuki took the unprecedented step of asking the Emperor what he wanted. He said that he wanted peace. Only at that point did the hardliners give way- both atomic bombs were not sufficient. And even so, it took several more days of discussions with senior military leaders- and an attempt at a coup by junior military leaders- before the Japanese finally surrendered. Given all of that hindsight knowledge (which Truman had no idea about), it seems clear to me that the Japanese surrender was a really near-run thing. Again, none of the three hard-liners in the Big Six changed their mind after two atomic bombs actually destroyed real Japanese cities, killing something like 150,000 people. It does seem to have changed Hirohito's mind, but it's hard to predict what impetus was enough to do that. Given that the earlier firebombing...
I always wondered why the US didn't nuke Japanese military bases instead of major cities. Would have made the same impression on the Japanese government with far fewer civilian casualties.
The primary target for Fat Man was Kokura; Nagasaki was an alternate. As for its military importance, to quote Wikipedia:
"The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest seaports in southern Japan, and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The four largest companies in the city were Mitsubishi Shipyards, Electrical Shipyards, Arms Plant, and Steel and Arms Works, which employed about 90% of the city's labor force, and accounted for 90% of the city's industry."
I understand that you mean in qualified in regards to that special moment, but I can't help myself:
According to Christopher Hitchens "The trial of Henry Kissinger", Kissinger was very much a part of the private diplomacy that crashed the vietnam peace deal.
He later negotiated more or less the same peace deal, only 4 (?) years later and with about a million more dead people. If 10% of that book is true Kissinger is a war criminal that shoud be tried in the Hague.
Ha Ha conservatives thought their vote for Nixon was a great decision. I wonder if they will ever digest that that, or their choice in the 2016 election
Trump wasn't voted in for his competence or statesmanship, because he obviously lacks any credible political experience. He was voted in on the basis of his incompetence and political incorrectness by people who wanted to see the system burned to the ground, and the mainstream ridiculed.
I can't imagine there is anything Trump could do to upset his base other than be good at his job. Given the number of blunders and gaffes he's already accomplished before even being sworn in, they must be thrilled to be getting what they wanted.
I can't speak for the original poster, but as it's fairly unlikely Trump's ego would permit him to step down voluntarily, it's reasonable to assume that any attempt to remove him from office by other means would (i) result in massive unrest from the Trump base and (ii) succeed only if Trump had done something sufficiently bad to convince the Republican-dominated legislature that inaction was the less dangerous course of action, or if something much more drastic happened.
He is may be vulnerable to manipulation due to his wide ranging financial interests. Then, some more toxic stuff may emerge from his past. I would guess that the chase is on by Russia, China, etc... for compromising material.
58.000 americans died ,after Tokin incident that never happend.
create an unwinnable war, globalist bankers invested and made money from both sides.
Rules of engagement not to win a war:
U.S. aircraft were prohibited from attacking North Vietnamese
airfields, even in hot pursuit of North Vietnamese aircraft;
-- "Extreme caution" was to be exercised in conducting air strikes so as
not to endanger foreign shipping; in the Haiphong area, "every feasible
precaution" was to be taken in conducting air strikes, including SAM
suppression, to avoid endangering foreign shipping and to minimize civilian
casualties and collateral damage
-- Attacks on populated areas, locks and dams, and hydroelectric plants were prohibited;
-- A thirty mile restricted area around Hanoi, with a ten mile prohibited
area, and a ten mile restricted area around Haiphong;
When Rolling Thunder began,
North Vietnam’s air defense system did not amount to much and could have been destroyed easily.
US policy, however, gave the North Vietnamese the time, free from attack, to
build a formidable air defense.
The system consisted of anti-aircraft
artillery, SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, MiG fighters, and radars, all of
Soviet design, some supplied by the Soviet Union and some by China.
The first SAM site in North Vietnam
was detected April 5, 1965, but
US airmen were not permitted to
strike it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Lavelle
"In 1965, we observed the construction of the first surface-to-air (SAM) sites in North Vietnam, and the military sought permission to attack them before they were completed to save American casualties. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs John McNaughton ridiculed the idea. "We won't bomb the SAM sites, which signals to North Vietnam not to use them."
The real war was against South Vietnam, against the NLF, later only the north and then the whole region - Laos and Cambodia too. Millions died, not just 58000 troops.
vietnam war was started with fake Tonkin incident, planned to continue for as long as possible, globalist bankers invested in Soviet Union, China weapon industry, and US weapon industry to make money from both sides,
USA lost vietnamwar not because they were defeated in vietnam, but because of Watergate Scandal, mass-protests in US etc,
the war on terror, 9/11, Middle East war are the same,
starting it with false flags, and let it continue to make money, selling weapons, get cheap oil etc..
follow the money and find out, worldwar 1 and 2 are no different.
A statistic that is almost unreal -- there are still an estimated 80 million unexploded US bombs in Laos. What a deep, deep atrocity.
Cambodia got it almost as badly. Like Laos, more tons of bombs were dropped on tiny Cambodia than were dropped by the Allied forces in the entirety of World War II. I've told this story on HN before but I talked to some Cambodian men in Kompung Thom a few months ago who said they would salvage unexploded bombs as children and sell off the valuable parts. Up until recently 1000+ people were dying every year from land mines too, which were of course supplied by the Chinese and US governments. Cambodia has more land mine victims than any other country on earth, and you see them in the streets of Phnom Penh every day. It is sick that the United States is still selling off its stockpile of land mines.
Terry Gross interviewed Nixon biographer Tim Weiner on her show Fresh Air. It's worth listening to. From prolonging the war, to starting the drug war for political gain, Nixon was a real jerk.
Check out "The Untold History of the United States" on Netflix (Oliver Stone). In it, Stone says that Kennedy was ready to pull out of Vietnam before he was killed, but Johnson never agreed with that decision. So when Johnson became president to replace Kennedy, he doubled down on the war. I don't know how much of this documentary is true, and it has obvious biases, but it makes a lot of interesting points. Starts from WWII and goes on from there, in many parts.
161 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 204 ms ] threadWould it surprise anyone to find direct communication and collusion?
The Saudis are largely responsible for the spread of Wahhabism, which in turn has fueled extremist islamic ideology.
Both the left and the right have ties to KSA. And they've been major donors to both parties, but especially the democrats. Sad that the MSM willfully ignores this topic.
Not too long ago, the Republicans pushed a law allowing families of 9/11 victims to sue the KSA. Obama vetoed the bill and the GOP overrode the veto. Not long afterwards, the GOP whip[1] was regretting the law and blaming Obama for not pushing back enough(!). Now, I don't think there's a conspiracy going on, it's just realpolitik/ nation-state equivalent of having a friend who is a dick but lets you play with his nice toys.
1. Might have been "senate majority leader" I'm on mobile and haven't looked it up the correct title.
Edit: I am assuming that the Saudi government wasn't involved in 9/11 and that it was the actions of religious extremists. Publicly blaming the Saudi government might not be the most prudent thing to do, just as Uganda shouldn't blame the US government for the actions of American Christian evangelicals stoking homophobia in Uganda. I know it's comparing Apples to ghost pepper
You should read about Bandar bin Sultan, AKA "Bandar Bush", Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States for 20+ years [1]. Zacarias Moussaoui stated under oath that Bandar bin Sultan and the Saudi government financed 9/11, and the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 Comission Report detail how two of the 9/11 hijackers received $130,000 in payment from Bandar's checking account. His nickname comes from his close affiliation with the Bush family. Bob Woodward claims that W. Bush told Bandar about the invasion of Iraq before Colin Powell.
It is very likely that the Saudi government was involved in 9/11, and it is worth investigating whether Bush and / or Cheney had foreknowledge of the attacks [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandar_bin_Sultan
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger
If Trump wants to end speculation, just release his tax returns.
Huh? It's been widely reported that the Saudi government has made large donations to the Clinton Foundation. See:
[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/feb/...
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/politics/hillary-clinto...
So I stand by my statement that it wasn't "proven". That implies that it took an investigation to reveal.
If you want to directly give any amount of money directly to Trump not subject to any kind of campaign donation limitations, just buy a hotel room for some duration.
If you want someone in U.S. custody released, take the principle operating officers of the president's hotels into custody without trial.
And I also wonder whether Trump owned/named buildings are possible targets in the same way American embassies can be targets; and then who pays for the ensuing security evaluations, monitoring, and reinforcement of all of those buildings. Is an attack on any of those buildings an attack on merely the Trump organization, or is it an attack on the president, and indirectly on the U.S.?
The differences in liability and unknowns between the incoming president and all previous presidents is qualitatively extremely different, and likely in unpredictable ways.
edit: It looks like it's not a legal requirement, just a tradition. I suppose time will tell.
A US presidential candidate who was the wife of a former President, an influential Senator and Secretary of State would be expected to have a significant relationship with the Saudis.
That's not to say that HRC didn't ride or cross the ethical line. But that is much different than what Trump is implied to be doing.
During the course of my adult life, I've tried to hold true to that and other principles, only to have life show me with increasing discomfort and personal loss that, no, really, that's not the way the world works.
It has not worked that way and it does not today work that way. Nor does it even appear to be a realistic ideal towards which the world is striving.
Much of moral sentiment (as opposed to actual, demonstrated moral behavior) appears -- increasingly apparently, to me -- to be used to dupe the willing into sacrificing their own best interests.
Sad story is, perhaps, that in the long run this may also create or at least exacerbate larger conflagrations. Because people have not been taking care of their own affairs and their own neighborhoods.
At least, that's the approach I now, belatedly, consider. Nothing else is going to work for me, if my own life is not in some sort of reasonable state. Regardless of what some law, educator, or religious authority has to say.
I agree that the world unfortunately does work that way. On the other hand, I do believe in the basic goodness of people. [For every bad cop there are probably a 1000 really good ones.] The "trick" to happiness is to surround yourself with nice people and maintain a "good world" bubble around yourself.
;-)
The implicit deal was that South Vietnam would leave the peace talks, and then Nixon would give them a better deal.
I'll bet they regretted that decision later.
If that's what you meant, I didn't conceal anything. I have no special evidence so couldn't present anything that most readers don't already know.
Do you consider the interests of the Saudi heads of state to be in line with the American people's interests?
Or is what you were trying to say American geostrategic interests?
Other than that, it seems contextually unlikely that Bush Sr., Bill Clinton, Obama have been up to much. The USS cole is a small possibility; but Bush ran on a policy on a policy of less war / entangling alliances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Surprise_conspiracy_th...
The Casolaro death does look suspicious though.
On a scale that could never have been achieved by a foreign power from outside.
To the degree that major ripples are still being felt today.
Unfortunately Nixon's crookedness & destructiveness was not widely recognized by the majority of the public until after it was growing out of control and undeniable, so once he was gone the damage continued and the momentum was big.
All of this is ancient history, but so many young people are not even aware.
After US citizens were paid less than $21/oz in paper currency when their gold was federally confiscated in 1933, then had that currency devalued less than a year later to $35/oz, for almost the next 40 years it was then illegal for US citizens to own or trade in gold. IOW, until those who were devastated at the time had passed on or were no longer a powerful voting constituency.
Daddy "Warbucks" had been a recurring character in the popular comic strip "Little Orphan Annie" over those decades.
By the time Nixon got there, the dollar had been at that stable $35/oz for decades and huge amounts of the US economy depended on that stability, especially to survive through unprofitable quarters or years.
When Nixon outlawed free enterprise temporarily in 1971 at the same time the dollar was allowed to float against gold ever since, it turned inflation from an annoyance into a huge sucking sound. It wouldn't have been such a strong nail in the middle-class coffin except there were statistically "no" citizens who had any gold whatsoever to legally participate in any appreciation in the dollar value of gold. And it would not be made legal to participate until years later, after the "Arab Oil Embargo" had been piled on, when few citizens had any remaining wherewithal, and gold had already skyrocketed after all that new oil money had been funneled overseas and driven up prices beforehand.
Time was slipping away, to save what was left of "the accumulated wealth of working people since incomes had been taxed" required until Nixon's direct involvement in the Watergate crimes became provable. By then the less-devastated near-half of the general population began to finally find themselves in the same boat as the more-devastated near-half. At that point it became universally realized that Nixon could not be removed fast enough.
After that, denial was universal too.
Even though Nixon had been popularly re-elected, overnight nobody even talked about him any more. It was such a relief. For years. The millions who knew he was compromised from the beginning were not saying I-told-you-so any more to the millions who had been duped. No disgrace was socially required from those who had supported Nixon to the end. But you could find "nobody" who would admit to having voted for Nixon the second time. This was avoided by no one talking about it.
Eventually, a more rosy collective retrospective developed over the years after millions of people had spent the time trying to find some element of Nixon's regime which could be respected in a way somewhat comparable to what you would expect from a good President. An instinctive response to try and salvage respect for an institution which was fully disgraced while they watched.
There was only thing that rose to the surface and could be widely accepted as positive, since it hadn't yet had any discernable effect;
"Nixon opened up China".
Turns out that if Nixon had not done it then, it would have likely taken almost 20 more years to have been set in motion by someone else, giving the middle-class about another two decades which might have been enough to allow their survival to this day.
Anyway, it's been 40 more years.
The value of middle-class dollars has now been almost fully confiscated as the federal government continues to build its war chest.
...
> But my favorite quotes are from Nixon about Vietnam. During a spring offensive by the North Vietnamese in 1972, Nixon told Kissinger:
>> We’re going to do it. I’m going to destroy the goddamn country, believe me, I mean destroy it if necessary. And let me say, even the nuclear weapons if necessary. It isn’t necessary. But, you know, what I mean is, what shows you the extent to which I’m willing to go. By a nuclear weapon, I mean that we will bomb the living bejeezus out of North Vietnam and then if anybody interferes we will threaten the nuclear weapons.
> A week later, he continued to a somewhat horrified Kissinger:
>> Nixon: I’d rather use the nuclear bomb. Have you got that ready?
>> Kissinger: That, I think, would just be too much.
>> Nixon: A nuclear bomb, does that bother you?… I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christ’s sake! The only place where you and I disagree is with regard to the bombing. You’re so goddamned concerned about civilians, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t care.
>> Kissinger: I’m concerned about the civilians because I don’t want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.
http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/10/25/nixon-and-the-bomb...
Sounds like you already know this, but the current president-elect just said the same thing:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/When-the-preside...
“The law’s totally on my side," the president-elect told the Times. "The president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Translation: When this president does it, that means it is not illegal. Unlike Nixon, however, I'm starting to worry that Trump's going to get away with this.
Since that is clearly an absurd statement, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant that nothing the president does is legally considered a conflict of interest. In otherwords, the specific laws against conflicts of interest do not apply to the president.
This turns out to be a suprisingly true statement. The only conflict of interest law I could find (after an admitadly brief search) is [0].
I have not thourally reviewed it, but found the following snippet in the definitions section:
"Except as otherwise provided in such sections, the terms “officer” and “employee” in sections 203, 205, 207 through 209, and 218 of this title shall not include the President, the Vice President, a Member of Congress, or a Federal judge." [1].
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/202
Sounds like you already know this, but the current president-elect just said the same thing:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/When-the-preside...
“The law’s totally on my side," the president-elect told the Times. "The president can’t have a conflict of interest.” Translation: When this president does it, that means it is not illegal. Unlike Nixon, however, I'm starting to worry that Trump's going to get away with this.
I agree, though, he has the disadvantage that a bunch of taped archives he never intended to leak...leaked.
I assume you would hear similarly disturbing quotes from other presidents if their private conversations got out.
There is no question you'd hear the same or worse. The stress alone in that position makes people say insane shit, I'd be willing to bet.
Amazing what anger can bring you to.
Starting to wonder whether this whole Internet thing was a bad idea.
The Clinton emails were supposed to be private, yet never had anything close to that type of behavior.
That's one of the reasons they were motivated to use private email. Because they were fully aware it was one FOIA away from being a public forum. But at the same time, all of the important stuff was via other channels. There was hardly any direct work stuff at all in those emails. Mostly just her foundation and campaign conversations.
Since 2006 when the courts changed their rules, any email sent for official or business purposes, with the except of client-attorney email is potentially postcard. Nothing important to a company should be in there.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160623/09170034795/email...
We already know why she used her own private email server — to use her Blackberry. This has been repeatedly established by the inquiries and the FBI investigation. We even have an email to Powell in 2009, well before any of the emails in that blog post, that shows her reason. https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/30324
Evidence exists to support this was intentional to hide information. Evidence doesn't equal proven. Granted it is not proven, but saying there exists no evidence doesn't seem to be accurate.
That is exactly backwards. She requested a Blackberry-like device similar to the one given to Obama but was denied. https://www.google.com/amp/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/emails-s...
> Evidence exists to support this was intentional to hide information.
No such evidence exists, which is why all inquiries and investigations came to the conclusion I stated above.
>No such evidence exists, which is why all inquiries and investigations came to the conclusion I stated above.
That doesn't mean there was no evidence. It only suggests that evidence wasn't proven. You can not draw the conclusion there was none.
The FBI also came to the conclusion that Clinton wasn't intelligent enough to understand confidential markings. Then the stunt the FBI pulled just before the election I would say the FBI has shown itself to be incompetent.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/7/fbis-comey-hi...
Mull was the Executive Secretary of the State Department at the time he sent that email (two years after the NSA had denied Clinton's request). He was in no position to overrule the NSA and make that offer. At no point during Clinton's tenure were Blackberry devices authorized to access state.gov email servers. He was very likely referring to http://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-wanted-hillary-clinton-to-u..., which was the only authorized device up to 2015 and was the device that the NSA offered (but not supported by State department infrastructure) http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/nsa-re....
> That doesn't mean there was no evidence.
Then where is it?
Aside: citing the Moonie Times and the Daily Caller projects know-nothingism. Here are the three top articles on the Daily Caller right now:
1. Charlie Sheen Offers America The Most Insane Ticket To Take Down Trump
2. TPM’s Josh Marshall Reduced To Tweeting Porno Link Of ‘Teasing, Licking’ ‘Angela & Strawberry’TPM’s Josh Marshall Reduced To Tweeting Porno Link Of ‘Teasing, Licking’ ‘Angela & Strawberry’
3. ‘FK YOU. GO TO HELL’: Georgetown Prof Loses It On Muslim Trump Voter‘FK YOU. GO TO HELL’: Georgetown Prof Loses It On Muslim Trump Voter
None of this is news.
It was given. Apparently you don't like the source. Here's another. http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/JW-v...
Also, there were a lot of questions being asked about FOIA considering there was no evidence. http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judic...
Again, your original assertion is not defensible that there was no evidence. Again evidence does not equal proven. Simply there was information that suggests a rationale.
Aside: you are aware of what Judicial Watch is, right? They're the conservative group that led the prosecution against Clinton on this issue and repeatedly failed. Of course they are going to ask questions about FOIA, the Espionage Act, and anything else they can try to stick on her. You're being misled by listening to only the prosecution and not the judge or the defense that totally dismantled their case.
So there was evidence?
>Mull simply did not have the ability to give Clinton a Blackberry.
That is irrelevant to establishing a motive. The emails don't suggest that Clinton was aware of that fact and they do suggest that Mull for some reason thought this information that would be important to Clinton's decision.
>you are aware of what Judicial Watch is, right
Yes, but this is to be expected. When the right is in power, I expect left leaning groups to lead the charge to accountability and vice versa. It is rare that a group ever holds itself accountable.
>judge or the defense that totally dismantled their case.
They thought it was good enough to proceed with questioning. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judge-orders-clinton-answer-w...
I'm not sure what you mean by dismantled. They requested a deposition and was granted. Clinton did not answer all questions and they have requested through federal court that she answer all questions. I have not seen an update on that request.
Don't be facetious. That's like saying that there is evidence that the Sun revolves around the Earth because we see it pass overhead every day. That evidence doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny either.
> That is irrelevant to establishing a motive. The emails don't suggest that Clinton was aware of that fact and they do suggest that Mull for some reason thought this information that would be important to Clinton's decision.
The emails don't even suggest that Clinton saw Mull's offer, and they don't suggest that either Abedin or Clinton thought Mull's offer was viable after their experience with the NSA. Why should they waste their time with it if it wasn't going to go anywhere?
> Yes, but this is to be expected.
Exactly. Then why do you use them as your sole source? The Daily Caller article lifts its entire story from Judicial Watch's arguments. If you wanted to learn why those arguments didn't work the first n times, the other side's arguments are out there for you to see.
> They thought it was good enough to proceed with questioning.
He threw them a bone. He denied their motion to depose Clinton and instead sent her a written questionnaire. She returned her answers on October 13, containing exactly the same reasons she gave before for using the Blackberry.
You are making assumptions for which we don't know the answers. Which is exactly why such questions are asked to begin with.
>Then why do you use them as your sole source? The Daily Caller article lifts its entire story from Judicial Watch's arguments. If you wanted to learn why those arguments didn't work the first n times, the other side's arguments are out there for you to see.
Likewise then why do you suggest I simply dismiss claims by taking the other side's argument?
We can also assume it would be a defensive position. Evidence doesn't become no evidence based only on the other side's account. It might be determined to be weak, irrelevant to claims etc based on investigation.
Stating there was no evidence suggests there was 0 basis to make the claim prior to investigation. We don't in hindsight do the investigation and then look back and say the evidence isn't evidence. We can say the evidence wasn't conclusive or didn't support said claims strong enough to investigate further etc.
You are making the claim that Clinton used her private server to skirt FOIA, and your evidence is that the Executive Secretary once sent an email about using a device approved by the State Department. Nowhere in the response does Clinton or anybody on Clinton's team say that they won't use this non-existent device because they want to skirt FOIA, yet somehow this constitutes (the sole) evidence to support your claim. Meanwhile, we have her entire email chain with the NSA and mountains of testimony under oath supporting the other conclusion that she used her personal server simply because she wanted to use her Blackberry.
> Likewise then why do you suggest I simply dismiss claims by taking the other side's argument?
I don't. I'm simply suggesting that you discard arguments that have already been discarded. The side that has been attacking Clinton for 20 years isn't going to tell you which of their arguments didn't hold water.
Edit: This chain has reached maximum depth, and I can't reply any further. Can we agree that there is no reasonable evidence that Clinton used her personal email server in order to skirt FOIA?
I am not making that claim. I am asserting that evidence existed to suggest that is a possibility. I am not trying to prove the claim.
>mountains of testimony under oath
Yes, and this testimony occurred due to evidence that was being investigated.
It seems you are trying to prove to me the outcome or conclusions instead of whether or not any evidence existed.
The question of what is subject to FOIA is complicated.
Does that mean that Nuremberg and Tokyo trials were just a farce?
"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." - US Constitution Article 1 Section 9 [1]
"No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed." - United Nations Universal Declaration of human rights. Article 11 [2]
[0] http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_webera.html
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section9
[2] http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
In a parallel fashion, WWII's Prisoners Of War (POWs) were renamed DEF by the US ("Disarmed Enemy Forces"), to dodge the Geneva convention about POWs, and some were badly treated (The Wikipedia page has a discussion on the numbers – see "Other Losses").
There is no such thing as black and white.
And Nuremberg trials was famous for doing precisely what gizmo686 described -- charging defendants with "crimes" that were defined as crimes after the fact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials#Criticism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_gentium
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostis_humani_generis
It works in the same manner as unwritten common law does - set by custom and precedent.
Did not say, or imply that they were normal behavior. I said that other presidents (not all other, some other) have probably said similarly disturbing things.
>The Clinton emails were supposed to be private, yet never had anything close to that type of behavior.
Clinton wasn't who I had in mind, but I suspect private, verbal conversations would be more revealing than emails.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR_myjOr0OU
Then we have JFK, who was prepared to start WWIII over a tiff in Cuba, Eisenhower who threatened nukes over Korea, and Reagan, who thought it was hilarious to joke about signing a law to bomb Russia.
And let's not forget Dick Cheney, who wanted to nuke Iraq, a decade before 9/11.
I dunno, maybe nuking people is less of a big deal for some American leaders, having already done it twice.
Cuba wasn't a 'tiff'. Deploying Soviet nukes to Cuba was an attempt to subvert MAD, which would have made WWIII more likely.
Not getting your Cheney thing. If he said it, was probably a joke. But I doubt it, since Iraq was an Ally at the time.
Nuking Japan likely saved millions of US/UK/AUS/NZ/CAD etc lives, so I don't think you've worked through the numbers, curiously, despite your moralistic, high-brow typing.
"A decade before 9/11" was 1991, which saw the Persian Gulf War. The US and Iraq were most decidedly not allies then.
Actually, the US and Iraq were allies until Iraq invaded Kuwait. Ambassador April Glaspie.
The Iraqis even sent an Exocet missile into the USS Stark and other than bombing one of their oil platforms, Reagan turned the other cheek.Until after the Kuwait invasion and until after Thatcher lent H some of her testicles, yeah, Reagan and Bush were Iraqi allies.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Saddam_r...
1. Warn them we have nukes
2. Nuke off the coast of a major city so everyone can see what's going on
3. Demand their surrender.
4. Nuke a city if they don't surrender. Wait for them to surrender before continuing...
Uhm, that would still expose so many people to radiation. I'm not sure if there's any way it could've been done sanely.
1. Nuke city A
2. Demand unconditional surrender
3. Nuke city B
...
Seems Imperial Japan was prepared to go to vol 11 on this, so I don't think your approach would have worked, unfortunately.
Japan had four conditions for surrender.
1: The imperial government stays in power.
2: The imperial government handles disarmament and demobilizing the military.
3: No occupation of Japan or it's territories.
4: The imperial government handles trial and punishment of their war criminals.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1lw9lg/seeki...
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/22/books/l-gore-vidal-s-ameri...
We may never know.
[Please don't quote Reddit as a ref]
If you haven't browsed it before, I highly recommend looking into it.
First of all, the United Nations did warn Japan to surrender. The Potsdam declaration promised that if the Japanese didn't surrender, "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction." The Japanese prime minister told a press conference on July 28th 1945 that his response to the declaration was "mokusatsu" which apparently has several different translations (either something like "no comment" or something like "to ignore with contempt"). There is some controversy about how that was intended, but Suzuki's next sentence to the reporters was "The only alternative for us is to be determined to continue our fight to the end" which in my mind signals that ignoring was the correct way to interpret it. No matter how you translate it, however, it wasn't the immediate surrender that was the only answer to the Declaration that the United Nations would accept.
There was no mention of nuclear weapons in the Declaration, but remember that in 1945 nuclear weapons weren't a scary thing- it's largely because of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki that they become taboo, but up to that point they weren't particularly scary to the public at large. The MIT Radiation Laboratory had chosen that name to suggest that it was harmless nuclear physics research, not it's actual highly classified military radar work, as a point at how nuclear physics was viewed in the first half of the 1940's even by physicists, leave alone the public at large.
But I think your plan is a heck of lot riskier than the historical approach, for two reasons.
A) Your plan seems to assume that time is on your side. That simply isn't true. While the numbers are uncertain, I've seen esimates between 20,000 and 50,000 Chinese dying each week the war continued. China was a US ally. If plan AOEUASDF1 takes more than three weeks (or two months if the lower estimates are correct), congratulations, your plan ends up with more total people dead than what happened historically- and the people you've killed are your allies, not your enemies. Great work there, statesman. B) The effect of the bomb was largely psychological, on one single man (who mattered) and a more leisurely approach could well have lessened the psychological impact- and given that there was still a bit of skepticism on the effectiveness of the bomb (running all the way up to Truman) making a big deal of it and then having it turn out to be a flop would vastly reduce those all-important psychological effects.
Recall that after both atomic bombings, the intervention of the Soviets into the war, and the deadliest air raid in history (Operation Meetinghouse, the firebombing of Tokyo back in March actually killed more than either atomic bomb) the key Japanese decision makers, the Big Six, were tied 3-3 on whether to try and negotiate a peace. They'd actually been deadlocked that way since April 1945 when the Suzuki cabinet had been formed. Nothing changed anyone on the Council's minds until very early in the morning of the 10th, many hours after receiving news of the second atomic bombing, Suzuki took the unprecedented step of asking the Emperor what he wanted. He said that he wanted peace. Only at that point did the hardliners give way- both atomic bombs were not sufficient. And even so, it took several more days of discussions with senior military leaders- and an attempt at a coup by junior military leaders- before the Japanese finally surrendered. Given all of that hindsight knowledge (which Truman had no idea about), it seems clear to me that the Japanese surrender was a really near-run thing. Again, none of the three hard-liners in the Big Six changed their mind after two atomic bombs actually destroyed real Japanese cities, killing something like 150,000 people. It does seem to have changed Hirohito's mind, but it's hard to predict what impetus was enough to do that. Given that the earlier firebombing...
"The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest seaports in southern Japan, and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The four largest companies in the city were Mitsubishi Shipyards, Electrical Shipyards, Arms Plant, and Steel and Arms Works, which employed about 90% of the city's labor force, and accounted for 90% of the city's industry."
2. And what were US nukes in Turkey? (You know, the ones the US removed because the Soviets put nukes in Cuba.)
3. Answered below.
4. The numbers you've carefully "worked through" there are simply an absurd exaggeration of a long discredited myth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory
According to Christopher Hitchens "The trial of Henry Kissinger", Kissinger was very much a part of the private diplomacy that crashed the vietnam peace deal.
He later negotiated more or less the same peace deal, only 4 (?) years later and with about a million more dead people. If 10% of that book is true Kissinger is a war criminal that shoud be tried in the Hague.
You read that in a mainstream journal? You were played. You typed it yourself? You've been played. You dreamt it? You're a bard.
How's the circlejerk growing? By the post, I see.
No worries, I'm sure your research on basic income are super popular with your fellow peers.
Too bad it will never happen. :D
I wonder how many decades it will take the to digest the 2016 elections...
I can't imagine there is anything Trump could do to upset his base other than be good at his job. Given the number of blunders and gaffes he's already accomplished before even being sworn in, they must be thrilled to be getting what they wanted.
create an unwinnable war, globalist bankers invested and made money from both sides.
Rules of engagement not to win a war:
U.S. aircraft were prohibited from attacking North Vietnamese airfields, even in hot pursuit of North Vietnamese aircraft;
-- "Extreme caution" was to be exercised in conducting air strikes so as not to endanger foreign shipping; in the Haiphong area, "every feasible precaution" was to be taken in conducting air strikes, including SAM suppression, to avoid endangering foreign shipping and to minimize civilian casualties and collateral damage
-- Attacks on populated areas, locks and dams, and hydroelectric plants were prohibited;
-- A thirty mile restricted area around Hanoi, with a ten mile prohibited area, and a ten mile restricted area around Haiphong;
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a283132.pdf
When Rolling Thunder began, North Vietnam’s air defense system did not amount to much and could have been destroyed easily. US policy, however, gave the North Vietnamese the time, free from attack, to build a formidable air defense.
The system consisted of anti-aircraft artillery, SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, MiG fighters, and radars, all of Soviet design, some supplied by the Soviet Union and some by China. The first SAM site in North Vietnam was detected April 5, 1965, but US airmen were not permitted to strike it.
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Documents/2005/Ma...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Lavelle "In 1965, we observed the construction of the first surface-to-air (SAM) sites in North Vietnam, and the military sought permission to attack them before they were completed to save American casualties. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Affairs John McNaughton ridiculed the idea. "We won't bomb the SAM sites, which signals to North Vietnam not to use them."
the war on terror, 9/11, Middle East war are the same, starting it with false flags, and let it continue to make money, selling weapons, get cheap oil etc..
follow the money and find out, worldwar 1 and 2 are no different.
Cambodia got it almost as badly. Like Laos, more tons of bombs were dropped on tiny Cambodia than were dropped by the Allied forces in the entirety of World War II. I've told this story on HN before but I talked to some Cambodian men in Kompung Thom a few months ago who said they would salvage unexploded bombs as children and sell off the valuable parts. Up until recently 1000+ people were dying every year from land mines too, which were of course supplied by the Chinese and US governments. Cambodia has more land mine victims than any other country on earth, and you see them in the streets of Phnom Penh every day. It is sick that the United States is still selling off its stockpile of land mines.
http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/15/414615...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Chennault