It’s in the parsing. Trump revealed, apparently that it was specific ISIS intel that caused the US to put that ban on international flights on laptops. Which…tells the Russians, apparently, exactly where that intel came from with some great specificity.
So…
Indeed. One of the sticky things about intel (see Coventr, Churchill, and Enigma, for example) is that the better it is, the harder it is to use if its use will be visible in some way to the enemy. This applies across the board from HUMINT to the arcana of SIGINT like wartime reserve modes and the like. You can lose access (bad), prompt the bad guys to change codes or procedures (maybe worse), and lose assets, including people (really bad). Sometimes you have to do it, but that sort of decision is difficult, often agonizing, and, historically, made only after careful and often difficult, informed discussions and even soul-searching.
But then, “difficult, informed discussions” and “soul-searching” are not, generally, things associated with Donald J. Trump.
And today in tweets, Trump essentially admits that the Washington Post story was correct, about 12 hours after turning McMaster into a dignity wraith by categorically denying it.
Reading Trump’s tweets, he basically went full Colonel Jessup this morning: “I ORDERED THE CODE RED! IT WAS MY GODDAMNED RIGHT TO DO IT!”
It’s obvious that we just can’t handle the truth.
I would trade Jessup and his flaws for Trump. Hell, I’d trade crazy Tom Cruise jumping on the couch for Trump.
Jane, get us off this crazy thing.
Good.
Fox’s bias existed previously, but Trump has driven it into a new realm. He’s forced them to not only twist their reporting, but actually take up positions which are obviously false. Trump himself just constantly lies… and they’re like the lies of a 6 year old.
Fox, along with tons of Republicans, have made the grave error of abandoning reality to try and support this idiocy. But such support is impossible. They’ve committed themselves to a fool’s errand.
I mean it got them the White House, both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, the majority of state Governorships and legilsatures. . .
And three-quarters of the way to Jesus!
Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.
…and nukes. Can’t forget nukes these days.
Yeah, the CEP of a nuke is pretty damn huge.
Why it probably won’t work
All of that sounds great, in theory. But there are some major flaws that basically make the plan dead on arrival.
First, the entire reason the Syrian opposition is involved in the war in the first place is to fight and topple the Assad regime. That’s who the opposition is, you know, opposing. And one of the most effective fighting forces among the opposition groups is the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front — one of the groups the Russian proposal explicitly calls on rebel groups to fight as part of the deal.
The second big question is whether, even if they were to agree to sign on to the Russian proposal, the opposition groups would really be safe from bombing by pro-Assad forces.
Damascus says it supports the Russian plan, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA, but it hasn’t yet signed on to the proposal. And while an early draft of the proposal included language banning Assad’s air force from operating inside the deescalation zones, that language was stripped from later drafts. It was removed, people involved told the New York Times, because of Syrian government objections.
All of that means there’s no guarantee that Assad would actually stop bombing the groups trying to overthrow him, temporary truce or no.
I think we may need a new thread (or edited thread title) soon.
This is why the Secretary of Defense should be a civilian.
-Tom
I’d much rather trust Mattis than whoever paid Trump for the job.
Mattis has a clue what is required and gives a fuck about the people on the ground.
You can disagree with troops still being there, but if they’re going to be there they need enough support.
The human ballsack makes a decent argument for decision makers having a military background:
This is the problem with civilians wanting to go to war. Once you’ve been there, once you’ve seen it, you never want to go again unless you absolutely fucking have to. It’s like France.
Not necessarily relevant to your point, but i cannot let any chance to quote this film pass me by.
Actually, that’s a fair point. I should have said “In a normal government, this is why the Secretary of Defense should be a civilian”. But I still don’t want a Marine general making decisions about troop deployment overseas. It’s been a cornerstone of our government that the military is ultimately subject to civilian oversight, which is why the President is the Commander in Chief. But since the current President isn’t really much of anything at all, I’m uncomfortable reading that he’s just deferring to whatever Mattis wants to do, which turns out to be testing the waters for a larger troop commitment in Afghanistan.
This is a noble sentiment, but I don’t agree with the implication that civilian oversight is more likely to lead to war. Yeah, sure, the men and women in the military have unique insight into how terrible war is. But a neurosurgeon doesn’t have to have suffered brain damage to be good at treating someone with brain damage.
-Tom