Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[SeattleLionsFan]

What do they look like??

They are darker than Bannon but lighter than the cheeto in chief (if less orange). Maybe if they pretend they are Greeks??

Query, I think I saw somewhere that Rick Perry is joining the NSC. Was that satire or real life?

[froot loops]

Perry joining it is part of McMaster's restoration of the NSC to something more traditional. Perry is the head of the Department of Energy. Trump had demoted it.

[Dr. Strangelove]

On Bannon ...... Trumpsters in DC are spinning this as Bannon's assignment is over. He did Trump's bidding - keeping an eye on the NSC as he moved into the Presidency.

There's possibly a little bit of truth in that.

Right. I've heard Bannon had two tasks

1) "De-operationalize" the NSC

2) Keep an eye on Michael Flynn

I have no idea what the first is supposed to mean but it sounds like a meaningless business school buzzword. Second, why would hire someone for the NSC that will need "someone to keep an eye on him"??

[Wild Hoss]

Query, I think I saw somewhere that Rick Perry is joining the NSC. Was that satire or real life?

Somebody has to bring the cupcakes.

[entropy]

Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

Ent, being at ground zero of any North Korean ICBM, I am more than a little concerned about it.

Re: Syria, does this change anyone's thoughts on refugees?

Sorry.. I forgot where you currently reside. I can imagine It would give you a different perspective than my own.


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[entropy]

Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

I know I promised to say more later... but seat, is it better to accept refugees who can get out (and letting others die) or preventing the need for refugees to begin with? What is our moral obligation? I think that is a key point in these discussions.



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[Jeff Buchanan]

Right. I've heard Bannon had two tasks

1) "De-operationalize" the NSC

2) Keep an eye on Michael Flynn

I have no idea what the first is supposed to mean but it sounds like a meaningless business school buzzword. Second, why would hire someone for the NSC that will need "someone to keep an eye on him"??

I may be able to shed some light on what De-Operationalization is in that I have some knowledge of how the NSC works. This can get confusing because it is complicated. Read on.

I have intimate knowledge about the NSA (National Security Agency). This office conducts Signals Intelligence and this includes a whole lot of stuff these days including Cybersecurity. The NSA Director simultaneously serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and as Chief of the Central Security Service. Guess who owns this agency? That would be the Secretary of Defense who sits on the NSC.

There is a shit ton of SIGINT that gets directly to the NSC. In fact, it could be as high as 50% of the important Intell stuff and that's a WAG. In my time in the 80s (yeah, a long time ago but .....) the NSA was a powerful agency that operated out of sight of the prying eyes of the press and, for that matter, political enemies of whatever administration was on deck. Generally SIGINT, in all its various forms, is fantastic stuff. Those in possession of it had the President's ear.

Pretty sure Trump had no idea of what the NSA was or how much power people who could harness and use SIGINT had ...... the knowledge is power thing in DC. He might have had an inkling of this and was fearful of not being in control of it and operational planning that springs forth from it.

In steps Bannon.

The NSA is prohibited in law from acting on any thing it gathers (see above about how important what they do gather is). I've been told that the reorganization that occurred after 911 and that connected the NSC to SECDEF and ultimately to the NSC was to "operationaliize" the NSA if not indirectly.

It may be giving the Trumpster too much credit but I'm thinking he feared various Intel and Law Enforcement agencies and with good reason. The CIA and FBI have, at times and historically, run counter to and sometimes completely independently from the President. In other words, done their own thing.

Putting Bannon at the table with NSC members that include SECDEF who have a huge amount of knowledge based on Intell from the different agencies that collect it (see my WAG above), was likely to keep the president in the loop on these guy's thoughts regarding what kind of operational planning should or actually might be happening.

If you're not in the loop on this shit, don't get in on the ground floor, you face the possibility of getting rolled on something with potentially major consequences.

In this context, you should be able to see what Trump might have been thinking when he and his surrogates used the term "De-operationalize."

[Da Geezer]

I am surely glad that John Kerry arranged with Russia to take Syria's weaponized sarin gas. Good old John kept Iran from getting a nuclear weapon too. He should get the Nobel Peace Prize.

[The Oracle]

Trump said he was going to stabilize the middle East in his first 100 days. This is all on him.

[Da Geezer]

Entropy:

I know I promised to say more later... but seat, is it better to accept refugees who can get out (and letting others die) or preventing the need for refugees to begin with? What is our moral obligation? I think that is a key point in these discussions.

An interesting point. I wonder how one would have predicted what has now transpired at a time period when it would have been possible to "prevent the need for refugees...", say 3-4 years ago. What would we have thought 3-4 years ago if someone tried to make a moral case to topple Assad? That, in retrospect, might have been best, but I know of no one here who would have favored that 3-4 years ago.

[CGVT]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/us/politics/fact-check-trump-syria-obama.html

Fact Check: Trump, Faulting Obama on Syria, Contradicts Himself
By LINDA QIUAPRIL 4, 2017

In a statement condemning Tuesday’s chemical attack in Syria, President Trump faulted the administration of former President Barack Obama for not intervening more aggressively in that country’s civil war — contradicting his own, earlier advice.

“Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world,” Mr. Trump said in the statement released by the White House. “These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution.”

“President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a ‘red line’ against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing,” Mr. Trump continued, referring to Mr. Obama’s first direct threat of force. “The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this intolerable attack.”

But Mr. Trump has repeatedly advocated doing “nothing” in Syria, insisting it is not America’s “problem.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Obama to ‘not attack.’

In 2013, the Obama administration concluded that the government of Syria’s president, Mr. Assad, had used chemical weapons in an attack that killed hundreds of people on the outskirts of Damascus. At the time, critics noted that Mr. Obama was stepping back from his own “red line” threat to punish Mr. Assad for deploying chemical weapons.

Mr. Trump also mentioned the red line threat, but to counsel restraint.

Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria,fix U.S.A.
6:13 AM - 5 Sep 2013
1,025 1,025 Retweets 590 590 likes
In more than a dozen messages on Twitter in 2013 and 2014, Mr. Trump repeated his advice, emphatically stating that “Syria is NOT our problem,” appealing directly to Mr. Obama to “not attack Syria” as “there is no upside and tremendous downside” and telling him to “stay out of Syria.”


Mr. Trump had a noninterventionist stance during the 2016 election.

Mr. Trump shrugged at calls to use force against Mr. Assad’s government and endorsed Russia’s support of the Syrian leader.

“You have Russia that’s now there. Russia’s on the side of Assad, and Russia wants to get rid of ISIS as much as we do, if not more, because they don’t want them coming into Russia,” Mr. Trump said in a September 2015 interview with CNN. “Let Syria and ISIS fight. Why do we care?”

In a May 2016 interview on MSNBC, Mr. Trump said the United States had “bigger problems than Assad.” He added, “I would have stayed out of Syria and wouldn’t have fought so much for Assad, against Assad.”

So emphatic was Mr. Trump’s stance on Syria that he disavowed the stance of his own running mate. After the October 2016 vice-presidential debate, when Mike Pence, then governor of Indiana, backed strikes against Mr. Assad, Mr. Trump stated, “I disagree.”

In the general election, Mr. Trump repeatedly criticized Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama for pushing for “immediate regime change in Syria.” Yet as even Mr. Trump noted in his statement on Tuesday, Mr. Obama did little to remove Mr. Assad.

Mr. Trump also disparaged Mrs. Clinton’s campaign stances on Syria — she had denounced Russia’s intervention in the war and called for a no-fly zone — and Mr. Trump said numerous times that her policies would “lead to World War III.”

After his election, Mr. Trump questioned the incentive for ‘attacking.’

“I think going in was a terrible, terrible mistake. Syria, we have to solve that problem because we are going to just keep fighting, fighting forever. I have a different view on Syria than everybody else,” he said during an interview with The New York Times.

Referring to Senator Lindsey Graham’s call to support rebels in Syria fighting Mr. Assad, Mr. Trump said: “Give me a break. I had to listen to Lindsey Graham talk about, you know, attacking Syria and attacking, you know, and it’s like you’re now attacking Russia, you’re attacking Iran, you’re attacking. And what are we getting? We’re getting — and what are we getting?”

[Wild Hoss]

What an unbelievable jackass.

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[hodgkal]

Re the Sarin gas attack in Syria yesterday: What was Assad thinking? He has been winning this conflict against the Isis forces so why provoke the real western powers that so far have been on the sidelines? Now Trump signals his thinking has changed on this conflict. What country would be most delighted if we plow into this conflict. It is pretty obvious for those that are really paying attention.

It reminds me of false flag attacks in the past, esp. the Lavon affair in the Suez crisis in 1954. There have been many others.

[Da Geezer]

I know this is off the current topic, but this is the best exposition I've read yet trying to explain what is happening on campus:

from the article:
The Berkeley episode Mr. Haidt mentions illustrates the Orwellian aspect of campus orthodoxy. A scheduled February appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos prompted masked agitators to throw Molotov cocktails, smash windows, hurl rocks at police, and ultimately cause $100,000 worth of damage. The student newspaper ran an op-ed justifying the rioting under the headline “Violence helped ensure safety of students.” Read that twice.

Mr. Haidt can explain.....

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jonathan-haidt-on-the-cultural-roots-of-campus-rage-1491000676

[Dr. Strangelove]

I don't approve of the rioting but the real shame here is that Milo wasn't able to speak and deliver his thoughts on pederasty being a force for good. You know, the straw that broke even Breitbart's back.