Speaking today at the Aspen Security Forum, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described the situation with Russia at present as “a version of war,” involving intelligence services, but insisted that it was much too soon to blame the Russian government for hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails.
Several Democrats have been overtly blaming Russia for the hack, and President Obama even said publicly he thought it was “possible” that the Russians had hacked the DNC emails and given them to WikiLeaks to try to help Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Clapper insisted that trying to “disrupt” the US presidential election would be in keeping with Soviet policies during the Cold War, saying the US is in “an operational mission” against Russia 24, 365. But he did concede that the government was not prepared to make an attribution of this particular hack, let alone the motives that underpin it.
The public evidence is well short of proving any real link to Russia in the hack, let alone that the Russian government was behind it. The interest, particularly among politicians effected by the leak, to jump the gun and blame Russia, seems to be an effort to portray Trump as Russia’s candidate in the election. Even amid Clapper’s admission that the evidence isn’t there, the talk of Russia trying to manipulate the election keeps that narrative alive.
I’ll take “Russia’s candidate” any day over the establishment scum’s candidate.
With such things (lacking any real evidence) it’s never too soon.
The first-flung dung sticks best.
Look at the bad situations in the world: Terrorism – ISIS does it all; MH17 – Putin did it, Ukraine – Putin’s still invading; NATO – Threat from Putin: East China Sea – China’s fault: Syria – Assad’s fault (attacking his own people): Korea – the ‘norks’ fault; Yemen – Iran’s fault; Iraq – Iran’s fault; the DNC – Puitin’s fault; the RNC/Trump – Putin’s fault; BLM movenent – Putin’s fault; the Rio olympics – Putin’s fault, Venezuela – Putin & Iran’s fault; Libya – self-inflicted, Afghanistan – self-inflicted; Sudan – self inflicted.
Like a broken clock. even a clown like Trump can be correct on something twice a day. To the extent he recognizes that the Russian government has done far less in Syria and elsewhere around the world than has our US Government to destabilize other governments and sow death and destruction for their peoples, Trump is right. However, this track record of causing chaos in other countries is certainly a bi-partisan record of both Democratic and Republican Administrations (and supporting Congresses), not something unique to Democrats (or Republicans). In my view the underlying problem is American “exceptionalism” (or simply arrogance) — a belief that we here in the USA have a God-given right to run the world. As a Korean War veteran and a person whose American ancestry happens to trace back through a Virginian named William Ball — George Washington’s maternal great-grandfather — I do not yield my claim to patriotism to anyone. But being a patriot does not prevent me from honestly examining what my Government has been actually doing here and around the world. And the fact is that my Government’s foreign policy has been stupid, counterproductive, immoral and shameful in many instances for the past many years of my long life (1931 to date). It is long past time for our Government to get out of the business of promoting (and in many cases participating in) the violent overthrow of other peoples’ governments. Syria is only the latest example of this noxious policy.