Posted on 02/01/2019 9:30:49 AM PST by SeekAndFind
To manifest his opposition to President Donald Trump's decision to pull all 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, and half of the 14,000 in Afghanistan, Gen. James Mattis went public and resigned as secretary of defense.
Now Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, in public testimony to Congress, has contradicted Trump about the threats that face the nation.
Contrary to what the president believes, Coats says, North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons. ISIS remains a serious threat, even if the caliphate has been rolled up. And there is no evidence that Iran, though hostile and aggressive, is acquiring nuclear weapons.
CIA Director Gina Haspel agreed: Iran remains in compliance with the nuclear treaty that Trump has trashed and abandoned. The treaty is still doing what it was designed to do.
At this perceived public defiance, Trump exploded:
"The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong! ... They [the Iranians] are testing Rockets (last week), and more, and are coming very close to the edge. ... Be careful of Iran."
Trump added: "Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!"
Trump then brought up the epochal blunder of U.S. intelligence in backing the Bush II claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (a "slam dunk"), and was a grave threat to the USA.
Born of incompetence and mendacity, that counsel led to the greatest strategic blunder of the 21st century, if not of U.S. history -- the second Iraq War. Launched by George W. Bush, this invasion plunged us into the Middle East's forever war and got the Republican Party ejected from power in 2006 and 2008.
While it's not unusual for a president and the intel community to diverge on the gravity of threats, what is astonishing is that the intel leaders would declare a president to be flat-out wrong.
Yet the confrontation is not unhealthy, for it reflects reality. On foreign policy, we are divided not only on means but ends.
And the division calls to mind Walter Lippmann's words, after U.S. political clashes and unpreparedness in FDR's New Deal decade led to the early disasters at Pearl Harbor, Bataan and Corregidor.
"For nearly fifty years," wrote the dean of American columnists, "the nation had not had a settled and generally accepted foreign policy. This is a danger to the Republic. For when a people is divided ... about the conduct of its foreign relations, it is unable to agree on the determination of its true interest. It is unable to prepare adequately for war or to safeguard successfully its peace."
We seem to be in just such a situation today.
Indeed, Trump is president because of the foreign policy disasters produced by his predecessors, who leaned on the U.S. intel community, and because Trump, in 2016, appeared to read the nation right.
Yet there is common ground between Trump and the spy chiefs.
Coats and Haspel are correct that the U.S. faces a Russia and China that are closer and more collaborative than they have been since the 1950s, before the Cuban missile crisis, which Mao saw as a Moscow capitulation.
And as we have more in common with Russia, with its historic ties to the West, and Russia appears by far the lesser long-term threat, how do we split Russia off from China? Here, Trump's instincts are right and the Beltway Russophobes are wrong.
As for Iran, the intelligence community is consistent.
In 2007 and 2011, the CIA declared "with high confidence" that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. Now, with U.N. inspectors crawling all over Tehran's nuclear facilities under the treaty, the CIA and DNI are still saying the same thing.
What of the contention that Iran is seeking hegemony in the Middle East?
Really? How? Would a nuclear-armed Israel, which has launched 200 strikes on Iran's allies in Syria, accept that? What would Turkey, with the second-largest army in NATO, Egypt, the largest Arab nation, and Saudi Arabia have to say about that?
How could Shiite Iran, whose Persian majority is nearly matched by its Arab, Azeri, Baloch and Kurdish minorities, gain dominance over a Middle East where the vast majority is Sunni Arab? How is Iran a threat to us over here, compared to the threat we pose to Iran over there?
Iran broke out of its isolation for two reasons. First, George W. Bush came in and overthrew its Taliban enemies on its eastern border, and then he overthrew Saddam Hussein, the enemy on its western border.
As Trump contends, ISIS has been defeated and driven from its twin capitals -- Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. But it is also true that ISIS and al-Qaida still have tens of thousands of jihadists living among the peoples of the Middle East.
And the great question remains:
Are U.S. troops necessary over there -- to prevent terrorists from coming over here? Or are they over here -- because we are over there?
I trust the CIA as much as I trust the FBI.
None.
In the meantime....anyone who thinks they're not forging ahead on their capabilities is a fool.
Don't be surprised if they're "buying" from NK.
President Trump is correct.
Next question.
RE: Next question.
Why is he correct and the Spy Chiefs Wrong?
Who’s in charge and who’s the employees? Trump needs to fire them if they want to cross him, our elected president.
FBI = CIA = State = DoJ = IRS = Deep State
I cannot come up with anything these folks could possibly say that I would take at face value and believe is true.
Despite the palace intrigue, I suspect the whole “Iran is not a Nuclear Threat” meme stems from the effect that butt-hurt Barry’s leftovers in the IC have from Trump nuking the Iran treaty + anti-Israel NeoCons! They all need to go work for Newsweek!
The evaluation of “threats” is based on conclusions drawn from available facts and personal opinions. Differences in conclusions are most often based on different opinions. President Trump’s opinions are just as valid as anyone elses.
So uh, what do the “spy chiefs” think about the continuing invasion from Mexico and now Central America?
They’ve known about this in detail for 40 years. They have massive assets to tell them who and what is coming across our border for at least that long. The notion that truckloads of people and drugs could escape their detection is absurd. The risk that it could also be weapons or nukes is too great to avert their view.
So that means this jerks have tolerated the invasion. They think it’s normal stuff. No problem, Mexico can have the Southwest — long as we gots our Big Jobs in DC, that’s all that matters!
Lemme know when these guys pay attention to something that has dramatically changed my life for the worse: the Third World takeover of the Southwest, leading to illegitimate Leftist governments in all the Southwestern states.
Invasion and takeover is a lot more important then whether Sunni or Shiite Muslims control some run down town in Eastern Syria.
Really. We are divided on means? Of course the peons can haul a few more blocks up the tramp so I can have a bigger pyramid.
We are done broke. Our military is tapped out, stretched thin, and the patience of the American people has snapped. Trump gets it and was elected.
And then let's talk about ends. Other than flying pigs and rainbow excreting unicorns, what end do these "chiefs" think we are aiming for? What? Staying in the long struggle because we enjoy the long struggle? That's a fools errand. The Athenian Naval Empire over the Aegean was brought crashing down around their ears over strategic over-reach. They just had to go and wage a campaign in Syracuse. It was their manifest destiny. Their Navy was destroyed and their empire collapsed.
As long as President Tump follows the old maxim Trust but verify he’ll be alright.
It seems these directors fail to realize they work for the President and the People.
RE: It seems these directors fail to realize they work for the President and the People.
This is NOT the issue the article is trying to address.
The issue is this -— WHOSE ESTIMATION MOST CONFORM TO REALITY?
The spy chiefs are the very worst elements of the Swamp. Not merely domestic, but international reactionary agents, they have been feeding information to the Chief Executives for years that has negatively impacted the US influence in the world, by failing to adequately report growing threats, and by wrongly supporting those movements that have been much more conducive to world disorder.
It's a lot worse than that. We in DC love our JCPOA. We put our best process forward, engaged and we got it. You can't call it a worthless piece of paper. The whole deepstate empire put it's life and soul into that deal. You can't demand a better deal. There is no better deal. We followed our diplomatic process to the letter and got the best deal that the deep state can get.
You certainly can't have deals renogotiated by an insane amateur like Trump who is innocent of all of the nuance of diplomatic protocol that deep-staters have spent their lives mastering.
War is a very profitable business. There are those who would do anything and everything it takes to initiate or maintain a state of War. Their very livelihood depends on it.
1) Who works for whom?
2) would ANY of this still be an issue if at some time in the last 250 years, someone had destroyed medina, then told the rest of the moslem world “fix your 5h17 or mecca goes too?”
Play nice or ya don’t get to play.
Hard to trust an intel organization that was in the tank for the hildabeast....
KYPD
given the CIC is correct, and that he is
regularly attacked and backstabbed
by some of these usual suspects,
one wonders to whom the usual suspects actually report.
Russia
Russia
Russia
It isn’t a question of who is right and who is wrong. It’s who is President and who is not. Trump makes the decisions, and if he wants to go against the recommendations of the Pentagon and the Intelligence community then it’s his prerogative to do so.
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