US STATE DEPARTMENT/ CIA...THE TRACK RECORD OF PAST BLUNDERS

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger     December 23, 2018

Western policy in the Middle East – from Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, through Jordan, Egypt and North Africa - has largely failed due to a multitude of erroneous assessments made by well-intentioned policy-makers, researchers, academicians and journalists.

The track record of past blunders

For example, the State Department “wise men” opposed the 1948 establishment of the Jewish State - which they viewed as a potential ally of the Soviet Bloc - contending that it was doomed militarily, demographically and economically. In 1977-79, the US foreign policy establishment courted Ayatollah Khomeini and deserted a critical strategic ally, the Shah of Iran, assuming that Khomeini was seeking human rights and peaceful-coexistence. In 1981, the US punished Israel – militarily, economically and diplomatically - for destroying Iraq’s nuclear reactor, which spared the US a potential nuclear confrontation in the 1991 Gulf War. Until Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the US showered the ruthless Iraqi dictator with intelligence-sharing and commercial agreements.  In 1993 and 2005 the US embraced the Israel-PLO Oslo Accord and Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, maintaining that they would advance peace, while in fact they fueled Palestinian hate-education and terrorism.

The 2010-11 eruption of the still-raging Arab Tsunami was greeted as an “Arab Spring,” “Facebook Revolution” and “Youth Revolution;” supposedly, leading Arab societies closer to democracy. During 2009-11, the US sacrificed pro-US Egyptian President Mubarak on the altar of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Sunni-Muslim terrorist conglomerate. In 2011, the US led the NATO toppling of Libya’s Qaddafi - who previously surrendered his infrastructure of weapons-of-mass-destruction to the US and systematically fought Islamic terrorism – contending that a post-Qaddafi Libya would be more democratic and pro-Western. In 2018, Libya is one of the largest platforms of Islamic terrorism. In 2015, the US led the JCPOA accord with Iran’s Ayatollahs, which provided the inherently anti-US rogue regime with an unprecedented tailwind to topple all pro-US Arab regimes, intensify terrorism in the Middle East and Africa, and try to push the US out of the Persian Gulf.

Notwithstanding the failure of all well-intentioned US initiatives to advance Israel-Arab peaceful-coexistence, the US may introduce another peace initiative, overlooking the face that the only successful peace initiatives were directly negotiated between Israel-Egypt and Israel-Jordan. And the list goes on….

Assessing the track record of past blunders

Such a track record provoked systematic criticism by “The Gang of Four,” who were the leading experts/authors on the Middle East: Prof. Elie Kedourie (London School of Economics & Political Science), Professor P.J. Vatikiotis (London School of Oriental and African Studies), Prof. Bernard Lewis (Princeton University) and Prof. J.B. Kelly (University of Wisconsin). Their criticism, which has been in publication since the 1960s, has been resoundingly vindicated by the Arab Tsunami, which has traumatized the Middle East, and threatened the West, since 2010.

The four luminaries highlighted the Western tendency to oversimplify the highly-complex, fragmented, unpredictable, unstable, intolerant, violent, frenzied and tenuous inter-Arab reality of the Middle East – irrespective of the Arab-Israeli conflict - which is dominated by ruthless minority-regimes, and is yet to experience inter-Arab peaceful coexistence.

For example, Prof. Elie Kedourie exposed the fumbled US policy which energized Iran’s Ayatollahs, stabbed the back of the Shah of Iran – the US Policeman in the Persian Gulf – dealt the US a game-changing setback, and placed a machete at the throat of each pro-US Arab regime in the Middle East: “An emergency was in the making, which involved the regime in Iran, a pillar of US and Western interests.  This emergency was the most serious foreign policy test… which President Carter and his leading officials failed…. The Carter Administration was willing to see [the Shah] go because it had persuaded itself that the alternative would institute democracy and human rights….  From Teheran, Ambassador Sullivan argued that Khomeini was anti-Communist, that the young officers were generally pro-Western, that economic ties with the West would subsist, that Khomeini would play a ‘grandpa like role’, and that election would be likely to produce a pro-Western Islamic republic. In Washington, there was a chorus of academic and official voices singing the praises of Khomeini and the National Front….”

According to Prof. P.J. Vatikiotis: “For the foreseeable future, inter-Arab differences and conflicts will continue…. Inter-Arab relations cannot be placed on a spectrum of linear development… Rather, their course is partly cyclical, partly jerkily spiral and always resting occasionally at some ‘grey’ area…. What the Arabs want is not always – if ever – what Americans desire; in fact, the two desires may be diametrically opposed…. Even without the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab Middle East would have been a conflict-ridden and conflict-generating area…. Arrangements or alliances made by foreign powers with [Arab] regimes are problematic, dangerous, transient and even meaningless….”

Moreover, “a political challenge to any of these [Arab] regimes can come only in the form of a violent confrontation. Opposition is subversion; political disagreement is treason.  The tolerance of opposition is scarce – in fact, nonexistent….  Power changes are therefore possible only via rebellion or revolution….”  

The litany of books and essays on the Middle East by Prof. Bernard Lewis have exposed a self-defeating Western policy, sacrificing realism on the altar of wishful-thinking and oversimplification. Many of them were authored before the 1979 toppling of the Shah, the bombing of the US Embassy and Marine Headquarters in Beirut in 1983, the 1998 bombing of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, the 2001 Twin Towers devastation and the current proliferation of Islamic terrorism in Europe.
Prof. Lewis highlighted features of Islam, which have not been fully-comprehended by Western policy-makers, who tend to sacrifice reality on the altar of rapprochement with Islam:  “[Non-Muslims] may receive the tolerance, even the benevolence, of the Muslim state, provided that they clearly recognize Muslim supremacy…. That Muslim should rule over non-Muslims is right and normal…. That non-Muslims should rule over Muslims is an offense against the laws of God and nature…. Islam was associated with power from the very beginning…. The world is divided basically into two. One is the community of the Muslims, the other that of the ‘unbelievers.’”

Western policy in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf was severely criticized by
Prof. J.B. Kelly: “While the Russians may have miscalculated at times, they have attempted to ground their policy upon reality, not upon wishful-thinking. Western policy, on the other hand, has been based upon illusions, self-deception and calculations of short-term advantage. Nowhere is this more evident than in the formulation and execution of American policy towards Arabia and the Gulf…. In Arabia and the Gulf, the US government allowed itself to be seduced into adoption and implementing ARAMCO’s plans and those of its Saudi Arabian clients…. The State Department lent its unobtrusive support…. Just how great a part-illusion, self-deception and willful-obtuseness have played in fostering [this policy] is clearly revealed in the transcripts of hearings on the subject of American relations with the Gulf states held by the Senate Foreign Relations and the House International Relations Committees from 1972 onward…. None of this [former Secretary of State Joseph Sisco’s Congressional testimony] bore the remotest resemblance to reality…. It was then, and remains still, a mirage….”

Prof. Fouad Ajami, who was the Director of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University, wrote: “Arabs and Israeli are ready for peace, it is said by many in the US and in the Middle East.  The missing ingredient, they argue, is the American role and American peace plan. The other side of this promise is a threat: dire consequences are predicted, for the region and for American interests, if the [US] Administration fails to embark on an activist policy.  In reality, the promise is a mirage, the dire consequences an empty threat…. The notion of [the US’] indispensability is a trap. We should not walk into that trap when others set it for us.  Certainly, at least, we should be able to avoid entrapping ourselves.”

Repeat or avoid past blunders?

Have Western policy-makers learned from precedents by avoiding – or repeating – costly mistakes? Are they aware that unrealistic policies tend to be self-defeating, yielding more injustice and casualties than that which they intend to cure?!

 

JIM MATTIS' RESIGNATION IS A TERRIBLE LOSS TO AMERICA AND OUR ALLIES

by Tom Rogan  | December 20, 2018 

You should greatly lament President Trump's announcement on Thursday that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is resigning.

A scholar and retired four-star Marine general with the extremely unsuited nickname, "Mad Dog," Mattis is universally respected by U.S. allies and universally feared by U.S. foes. In his resignation letter, Mattis noted that Trump deserves a defense secretary who is in closer alignment with his own views.

While Mattis' letter pointed out the importance of alliances, we must assume the president's premature withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria played a role. Mattis strongly opposed that choice in recognition of the damage it will do to U.S. interests. To be clear, pulling out of Syria now is an act of supreme strategic idiocy. Alongside rumors that Trump may imminently withdraw forces from Afghanistan, it is obvious that Mattis' advice was being ignored. In that sense it was likely inevitable that the lifelong public servant would step down.

Still, U.S. allies will be particularly alarmed that Mattis' resignation comes so soon after the Syria withdrawal announcement. They have relied on Mattis as a firm counsel at the president's side and a voice that kept the president attuned to the importance of institutions such as NATO. One senior official from a major U.S. ally told me on Thursday that "he would do anything for" Mattis. And the defense secretary's statesmanship was also instrumental in managing difficult partners such as Pakistan.

Then there was Mattis the leader. An incarnation of the Marine Corps hymn, Mattis was all about honor, country, and leadership. He was willing to break careers and make them in the better service of the Corps and the nation. And on the battlefield, Mattis commanded his men and women like Alexander the Great: from the front and always seizing initiative.

Mattis was also a reformer. He realigned the Pentagon toward the restraint of China's aggression and into a more efficient procurement process. It is crucial that Mattis' successor maintain these reforms. Mattis was also a necessary Trump administration outlier on Iran. Removed as Central Command's commanding officer by former President Barack Obama for his perceived hawkishness on Iran, Mattis was the more cautious voice on Iran in the Trump administration. In both scenarios, Mattis was simply a realist.

But perhaps the greatest loss here is that Mattis is by far the most versed Trump administration official when it comes to history and strategy. This gives him the ability to see threats as part of a continuum, rather than as single challenges in each moment. As I noted when Mattis was first appointed to lead the Pentagon, a 2014 paper by Major Michael Valenti recounts how Mattis mitigated problems with supply lines and terrain before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Mattis “studied National Geographic magazines to gain an appreciation for what would happen if the area between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flooded as it did in 1955.” Mattis "mandated that every major and above in the division read Russell Braddon’s The Siege, which tells the story of the British Expeditionary Force’s time in then-Mesopotamia during World War I, because it was one of the few books written about fighting in Iraq."

This matching of warrior spirit to supreme intellect is the crucial ingredient of what makes Mattis and the Marines so great. Now that greatness will lose its place at the heart of American security.

Trump must pick someone in Mattis' vein — not an ideologue who will stroke Trump's ego and feed him his favored delicacy: groupthink.

SECRET DEMOCRATIC PARTY  EXPERIMENT IN ALABAMA SENATE RACE [ TO DEFEAT JUDGE ROY MOORE] IMITATED RUSSIAN TACTICS

  NEW YORK TIMES   Dec. 19, 2018

 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html

As Russia’s online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results.

The secret project, carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race, in which the Democratic candidate it was designed to help, Doug Jones, edged out the Republican, Roy S. Moore. But it was a sign that American political operatives of both parties have paid close attention to the Russian methods, which some fear may come to taint elections in the United States.

One participant in the Alabama project, Jonathon Morgan, is the chief executive of New Knowledge, a small cyber security firm that wrote a scathing account of Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election that was released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

An internal report on the Alabama effort, obtained by The New York Times, says explicitly that it “experimented with many of the tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections.”

The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.

“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says.

Mr. Morgan said in an interview that the Russian botnet ruse “does not ring a bell,” adding that others had worked on the effort and had written the report. He said he saw the project as “a small experiment” designed to explore how certain online tactics worked, not to affect the election.

Mr. Morgan said he could not account for the claims in the report that the project sought to “enrage and energize Democrats” and “depress turnout” among Republicans, partly by emphasizing accusations that Mr. Moore had pursued teenage girls when he was a prosecutor in his 30s.

Workers hung a United States flag in preparation for a Roy Moore rally held in Midland City, Ala.Carlo Allegri/Reuters

“The research project was intended to help us understand how these kind of campaigns operated,” said Mr. Morgan. “We thought it was useful to work in the context of a real election but design it to have almost no impact.”

The project had a budget of just $100,000, in a race that cost approximately $51 million, including the primaries, according to Federal Election Commission records.

But however modest, the influence effort in Alabama may be a sign of things to come. Campaign veterans in both parties fear the Russian example may set off a race to the bottom, in which candidates choose social media manipulation because they fear their opponents will.

“Some will do whatever it takes to win,” said Dan Bayens, a Kentucky-based Republican consultant. “You’ve got Russia, which showed folks how to do it, you’ve got consultants willing to engage in this type of behavior and political leaders who apparently find it futile to stop it.”

There is no evidence that Mr. Jones sanctioned or was even aware of the social media project. Joe Trippi, a seasoned Democratic operative who served as a top advisor to the Jones campaign, said he had noticed the Russian bot swarm suddenly following Mr. Moore on Twitter. But he said it was impossible that a $100,000 operation had an impact on the race.

Mr. Trippi said he was nonetheless disturbed by the stealth operation. “I think the big danger is somebody in this cycle uses the dark arts of bots and social networks and it works,” he said. “Then we’re in real trouble.”

Despite its small size, the Alabama project brought together some prominent names in the world of political technology. The funding came from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who has sought to help Democrats catch up with Republicans in their use of online technology.

The money passed through American Engagement Technologies, run by Mikey Dickerson, the founding director of the United States Digital Service, which was created during the Obama administration to try to upgrade the federal government’s use of technology. Sara K. Hudson, a former Justice Department fellow now with Investing in Us, a tech finance company partly funded by Mr. Hoffman, worked on the project, along with Mr. Morgan.

Reid Hoffman at the LinkedIn offices in Sunnyvale, Calif., in 2017. He financed the experiment in the Alabama Senate race.Jason Henry for The New York Times

A close collaborator of Mr. Hoffman, Dmitri Mehlhorn, the founder of Investing in Us, said in a statement that “our purpose in investing in politics and civic engagement is to strengthen American democracy” and that while they do not “micromanage” the projects they fund, they are not aware of having financed projects that have used deception. Mr. Dickerson declined to comment and Ms. Hudson did not respond to queries.

The Alabama project got started as Democrats were coming to grips with the Russians’ weaponizing of social media to undermine the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and promote Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Morgan reached out at the time to Renée DiResta, who would later join New Knowledge and was lead author of the report on Russian social media operations released this week.

“I know there were people who believed the Democrats needed to fight fire with fire,” Ms. DiResta said, adding that she disagreed. “It was absolutely chatter going around the party.”

But she said Mr. Morgan simply asked her for suggestions of online tactics worth testing. “My understanding was that they were going to investigate to what extent they could grow audiences for Facebook pages using sensational news,” she said.

Mr. Morgan confirmed that the project created a generic page to draw conservative Alabamians — he said he couldn’t remember its name — and that Mac Watson, one of multiple write-in candidates, contacted the page. “But we didn’t do anything on his behalf,” he said.

The report, however, says the Facebook page agreed to “boost” Mr. Watson’s campaign and stayed in regular touch with him, and was “treated as an advisor and the go-to media contact for the write-in candidate.’’ The report claims the page got him interviews with The Montgomery Advertiser and The Washington Post.

Mr. Watson, who runs a patio supply company in Auburn, Ala., confirmed that he got some assistance from a Facebook page whose operators seemed determined to stay in the shadows.

Renee DiResta, director of research for New Knowledge, testified before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on foreign influence operations and their use of social media in August.Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press

Of dozens of conservative Alabamian-oriented pages on Facebook that he wrote to, only one replied. “You are in a particularly interesting position and from what we have read of your politics, we would be inclined to endorse you,” the unnamed operator of the page wrote. After Mr. Watson answered a single question about abortion rights as a sort of test, the page offered an endorsement, though no money.

“They never spent one red dime as far as I know on anything I did — they just kind of told their 400 followers, ‘Hey, vote for this guy,’” Mr. Watson said.

Mr. Watson never spoke with the page’s author or authors by phone, and they declined a request for meeting. But he did notice something unusual: his Twitter followers suddenly ballooned from about 100 to about 10,000. The Facebook page’s operators asked Mr. Watson whether he trusted anyone to set up a super PAC that could receive funding and offered advice on how to sharpen his appeal to disenchanted Republican voters.

Shortly before the election, the page sent him a message, wishing him luck.

The report does not say whether the project purchased the Russian bot Twitter accounts that suddenly began to follow Mr. Moore. But it takes credit for “radicalizing Democrats with a Russian bot scandal” and points to stories on the phenomenon in the mainstream media. “Roy Moore flooded with fake Russian Twitter followers,” reported The New York Post.

Inside the Moore campaign, officials began to worry about online interference.

“We did have suspicions that something odd was going on,” said Rich Hobson, Mr. Moore’s campaign manager. Mr. Hobson said that although he did not recall any hard evidence of interference, the campaign complained to Facebook about potential chicanery.

“Any and all of these things could make a difference,” Mr. Hobson said. “It’s definitely frustrating, and we still kick ourselves that Judge Moore didn’t win.”

When Election Day came, Mr. Jones became the first Alabama Democrat elected to the Senate in a quarter of a century, defeating Mr. Moore by 21,924 votes in a race that drew more than 22,800 write-in votes. More than 1.3 million ballots were cast over all.

Many of the write-in votes went to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Condoleezza Rice — an Alabama native and former secretary of state — certain popular football coaches and Jesus Christ. Mr. Watson drew just a few hundred votes.

Mr. Watson noticed one other oddity. The day after the vote, the Facebook page that had taken such an interest in him had vanished.

“It was a group that, like, honest to God, next day was gone,” said Mr. Watson.

“It was weird,” he said. “The whole thing was weird.”

Jonathan Martin and Rachel Shorey contributed reporting.

*******

Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html

1 hour ago - Dec. 19, 2018. As Russia's online election machinations came to light last year, .... He financed the experiment in the Alabama Senate race.

Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics ...

https://wuwei.today/secret-experiment-in-alabama-senate-race-imitated-russian-tactics/

1. Cached

20 mins ago - Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics · A project .... Vox. 19 People Who Are Having the Best Day of Their Life.

Researcher admits to questionable tactics in senate race - AL.com

https://www.al.com/.../2018/.../social-media-researcher-admits-to-questionable-tactics-i...Cached

Social media researcher admits to questionable tactics in 2017 Alabama Senate race. Posted December 18, 2018 at 10:10 PM. Roy Moore and Doug Jones ...

Missing: secret ‎imitated ‎19

'collusion with Russia' — but not Twitter - Google News - Overview

https://news.google.com/.../CAAqOQgKIjNDQklTSURvSmMzUnZjbmt0TXpZd1NoTUt...

Secret Experiment in Alabama Senate Race Imitated Russian Tactics. A project to help ... Russia's disinformation campaign wasn't just on Facebook and Twitter.

RUSSIA USED IDENTITY POLITICS AGAINST US

Abe Greenwald    Commentary Magazine   December 19, 2018

The long con.[See comment ***relating to representative Adam Schiff]

Here’s a newsflash for progressives who think the Russians undermined the 2016 election via social media: Your obsession with identity politics did a lot of the work.

Judging from new (and old) reports about Russia’s propaganda campaign, it seems that Moscow put the most effort into stoking discontent among identity-mad leftists in hopes that they would turn away from the political process and not vote. Progressives divided. Moscow conquered.

Kevin Roose writes in the New York Times, “Many of the Russian [Instagram] posts focused on developing audiences among specific American identity groups, which could then be used to target them with content and advertising later on.” He goes on: “Several of the I.R.A.’s [Russia’s Internet Research Agency] most popular Instagram accounts focused on African-American themes and interests.”

There’s reason to doubt that feeding more silly memes into the bottomless swamp of web-image activism had any real effect on the outcome of the election. But if you believe it did, that’s how it was done.

Yes, the Russian effort also targeted whites and Christians as groups, hoping presumably to corral them into the pro-Trump camp. But that’s not where the bulk of the investment was. As Scott Shane and Sheera Frenkel write about a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the matter:

The report says that while “other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively with dozens.” In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.

The Russians did the same thing with their Facebook ads, creating fake minority-group pages and posting catchy slogans about disenfranchisement and American injustice. The campaign targeted other demographics associated with the left, such as feminists and the LGBTQ community. One Russian Facebook creation “LGBT United,” put up posts with messages saying things like “One Struggle, Stick Together.” There was also Native Americans United, which rehearsed Native American charges against the U.S. government and “racist Americans.”

The Russians exploited progressives’ preoccupation with identity and weaponized it against the left. They played on the divisions inherent in the politics of race and gender to exacerbate feelings of hopelessness among potential Democratic voters. It makes sense that Russia homed in on the identity left. Progressives were the easiest, most willing marks they could find.

People like to call the Russian campaign an act of war, so think of it in terms of actual combat. If you march into enemy territory and find the opposing troops divided into warring tribes with no common purpose, you barely have to fight. The more the left focuses on differences and grudges and accidents of birth, the easier it is for America’s antagonists to get the better of us. This is part of what conservatives mean when they say that identity politics is bad for the country. It weakens us in every way.

Vladimir Putin isn’t alone in repurposing the left’s identity woes to attack us. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad now uses Twitter to parrot the slogans of Black Lives Matter. And there was a time when Osama Bin Laden would give interviews and repeat the anti-American claims made in Michael Moore propaganda films. The left can be a great source of opposition research for those who’d like to do our country harm.

Liberals often say that conservatives have been complicit in Vladimir Putin’s supposed attack on our democracy. But it’s those on the political left who’ve made themselves the fierce, if unwitting, frontline soldiers in Russia’s campaign against a united America. You might call them Putin’s puppets.***

***  IS ADAM SCHIFF THE RUSSIAN MOLE?

First, the Soviet Union and now the Russian government has sought to disrupt the American political process. Currently, they are succeeding beyond their wildest imagination thanks to representative Adam Schiff, a prominent leader of the let's lynch Trump movement. Now that" Russian collusion" is fading as a possible pretext, Mr. Schiff must dream up some other ways to justify his committee’s fishing in these waters. His new patter also has to shed a semi-credible back glow on his earlier role as chief flogger of now-defunct Russian conspiracy theories.

IS ADAM SCHIFF THE RUSSIAN MOLE?

First, the Soviet Union and now the Russian government has sought to disrupt the American political process. Currently, they are succeeding beyond their wildest imagination thanks to representative Adam Schiff, a prominent leader of the let's lynch Trump movement. Now that" Russian collusion" is fading as a possible pretext, Mr. Schiff must dream up some other ways to justify his committee’s fishing in these waters. His new patter also has to shed a semi-credible back glow on his earlier role as chief flogger of now-defunct Russian conspiracy theories.

Interpreting the Trump Meteor

 By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Wall Street Journal   12-18-18

His survival fight may at least buy time for a few important lessons to sink in.

Recall that we started down today’s investigatory whirlpool as a direct result of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats’ seizing on Russia as an excuse for their loss to a president whom many considered a joke. Now poor Adam Schiff, incoming head of the House Intelligence Committee, is trying to catch up with the new Democratic theme: Mr. Trump’s real sin is not Russian collusion after all. It’s his tawdry but well-known business and personal life.

Not only must Mr. Schiff dream up some way to justify his committee’s fishing in these waters. His new patter also has to shed a semi-credible backglow on his earlier role as chief flogger of now-defunct Russian conspiracy theories.

Sadly, he would have benefited from an aide whispering in his ear when he was making his pitch to a New Yorker writer. “What should concern us most,” he explained to the magazine, “is anything can have a continuing impact on the foreign policy and national-security policy of the United States, and, if the Russians were laundering money for the Trump Organization, that would be totally compromising.”

Huh? For the Russians to be laundering money for him, Mr. Trump would need a large source of under-the-table cash from somewhere (his NBC show?). What the confused Mr. Schiff presumably means is that Mr. Trump was laundering money for Russians—i.e., selling them condos. Never mind that the entire Western financial system also participated in this business opportunity. Now it will be one more legal jeopardy in the swirl of investigations around the White House.

Still, the media will have to work hard to flap away the odor of selective prosecution. Mr. Trump was already an unusually heavily scrutinized figure. Now he’s attracting the kind of subatomic legal scrutiny reserved only for presidents of the opposite party when the press is inveterately hostile too. Example: the New York Times re-auditing his family’s heavily audited tax returns to find a welter of abuses that somehow escaped the IRS and New York tax department.

You can argue whether this is fair or wise, but that’s our system, and a U.S. political party was poorly advised to nominate somebody with Mr. Trump’s baggage in the first place.

This column has long maintained that a high-level Russian criminal conspiracy is the one thing investigators won’t find when loosed on Mr. Trump’s colorful business and personal history. I especially have to laugh over the somber and knowing suggestions that the Russians have “dirt” on Mr. Trump. Every third-tier swimsuit model and ex-Playmate from here to Las Vegas probably has dirt on Mr. Trump.

Michael Cohen’s reported admission that the Trump Organization was pursuing Russian opportunities well into 2016 campaign is a smoking gun, all right, but not of Russian collusion. Why did Mr. Trump run for president in the first place? To become more famous, to add gaudy luster to his brand. He had no expectation of winning. Of course he used the campaign spotlight to market himself for deals in which others would pay to use his name.

Winning was his big mistake, a colossal if propitious miscalculation. Nobody would care about Stormy Daniels if he weren’t president. His decades-long pursuit of a Trump Tower in Moscow would be a non-story. Nobody would be raking him over the emoluments coals for owning a hotel in Washington.

Unfortunately, it will also occur to Mr. Trump now that his best move is to cling to the White House at all costs. That’s because under Justice Department guidelines he can expect not to be indicted as long as he remains in office. I wonder if his Torquemadas have taken this into account.

The moment is turning weird. Even President Obama stepped forward to tidy up the scene by claiming that the inconvenient Trump boom is really the Obama boom. By all lights, the media should have treated this as laughable. Had a Republican leg of lamb been victorious on election night 2016, markets would have priced upward on the news that the Obama agenda was finished. Investors aren’t clairvoyant but they respond to unexpected information. And seldom in history have circumstances conspired to give so clear a verdict on an outgoing administration.

When it’s all over, this will be one lesson worth holding on to. Mr. Trump’s personal fight for survival is likely to dominate our politics for the foreseeable future. And yet if anything justified his election in the first place, it was the wake-up call from 63 million voters to America’s leadership class. Alas, it’s hard to listen to people like James Comey and Mr. Obama himself and not see our political system trying hard to expel Mr. Trump so it can go back to doing exactly what it was doing before he was elected.

How significant is the indictment of the 13 Russians?

Howard Laitin  Wall Street Journal February 17, 2018

 The WSJ published an article  Russians Charged With Interfering in U.S. Election but they have a pay wall .  So I soggled to see who else wrote on the story. The Independant and the Guardian did but the headlines chosen in The Guardian ranked as fake news.

Robert Mueller charges 13 Russians with interfering in US election to help Trump
It is a total lie to say it was done to help Trump.

Howard Laitin (credentials are below the comment) commented on the WSJ article.

The Soviet Union and now Russia under Putin seeks to disrupt the American public’s faith in the US government. NOTHING IS NEW HERE AND WE CAN EXPECT THAT IT WILL GET WORSE IN THE FUTURE.


 Given the remarks and actions of Representative Adam Schiff , Putin has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in creating doubt and discord among the American public.

 I am much more concerned about the Russian capability to disrupt  Americans various essential grids such as electric  distribution, water distribution, transportation, communications etc.   United States is extremely vulnerable and the Russians are devoting considerable resources to identifying vulnerabilities and developing capabilities to  “blackout” much of the United States. If they do so ,extreme chaos will  result.

 Unfortunately, the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations  …although  aware of US vulnerabilities… have done very little to  protect the United States against such an  attack.    THIS IS THE TRUE CRIME.

  Now turning to the DOJ meddling indictments

 The most documented and most effective foreign  meddling in the US election 2016 was  implemented by Sidney Blumenthal [who was on the payroll of the Clinton foundation which had received foreign money ]; Jonathan Winer; Marc Elias [who laundered the funds and may be guilty of campaign-finance irregularities]; Glenn Simpson  [whose testimony was elusive and misleading];  Bruce Ohr ;  Nellie Ohr; Christopher Steele; and the unnamed Russians who Christopher Steele and Glenn Simpson claimed provided the information and most likely were, if such information was actually given, agents of the Kremlin.

 Another aspect is the numerical  analysis  data. Concerning budgets, the amount cited is extremely small. The amount of foreign funding intended to influence US policy coming into the Brookings Institution [an establishment that has treated me very kindly]  is far larger and so much more effective than is the funding that reputedly financed the Russian meddling. Tthe Saudi Arabian funding is even more extensive and much more troubling. [I was on the inside of  Saudi Arabian operations. They have infiltrated most of our research institution most of our foreign study departments.]

 When you look at the number of postings at the Washington Post and the New York Times in comments to articles, the numbers far exceed the total number attributed to all the efforts of the Russian trolls. When you look at the  number of viewers, etc. and relate them to the totals you determine that the totals  by any category of evaluation are less than one half of one  percent  of traffic. I URGE YOU TO CONDUCT SUCH AN IMPACT ANALYSIS.

 I also urge you to re-examine the Ben Rhodes echo chamber operation where  millions of dollars were expended to influence US organizations and thus influence the US media by the production  and planting of false information in order to create a public acceptance for the Obama Iranian nuclear deal and the furnishing  to Iran  of billions of dollars [to enable  Iran’s  support of Hezbollah,  Hamas ,their Syrian operations,  terror operations throughout Central and South America, Africa, etc. ] As some of your homework, you might want to review the materials furnished by Amir Hossein Motaghi.

Howard Laitin Torrance : California : United States

Harvard, Ph.D.(Economics; Public Health). National Defense University Graduate Program; U.S. Army Command and General Staff College;  Career Officer Course; Lt. Col. USA (Retired).

Chief Scientist, Hughes Aircraft Company & Raytheon  Corporation (Retired). Adjunct Professor of Engineering, USC. Clinical Associate Professor of Public Health, UCLA. Registered Professional Engineer (California).

US Military Advisory Groups to: Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia; Iranian Nuclear Program: Review of technology and sustainable development. Iraqi Intervention: Review of alternatives and probable outcomes.

Consultant/Advisor: Center for Strategic and International Studies; Hudson Institute; Institute for Defense Analyses; Rand Corporation. Policy Development and Evaluation: Government Accountability Office; Office of Management and Budget; Department of Defense; Department of Health and Human Services; Department of Transportation; US Treasury. Army Science Board, Member. National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration. National Science Foundation. US Customs Service. US Public Health Service.

Chairman Environmental Quality Programs: Governor Ronald Reagan, Governor Jerry Brown.

The man who single-handedly faked an army and brought about the end of the Nazi regime.

Juan Pujol Garcia.

Spanish double-agent, genius manipulator of humans, and one of the most brilliant liars to ever exist. He turned the tide of the war, and was one of the main reasons that D-Day was a success.

Let me take you back to 1944, in the weeks leading up to the famed D-Day.

The Allies were stone-faced. They saw no way out. The sheer amount of artillery and troops growing in England gave away their plan. Hitler knew an invasion was coming, and he was getting new details by the minute.

There was no way that D-Day could ever succeed, unless they could trick the Germans into believing that the biggest invasion in history at the time was just a bluff. A near-impossible task.

That is, for all except Pujol.

He was not an impressive man at the time. At age 24, he’d failed horrendously in every endeavor he’d committed to. He dropped out of school at 15, served 6 months of military service before being kicked out. He had bought two successive theaters, both of which flopped. He retreated to a remote, slowly failing chicken farm and settled down with a girl he didn’t love.

The Spanish Civil War then broke out, and he was imprisoned for showing sympathy for the monarch. He managed to escape jail, and he started work at an unclean, one-star hotel in Madrid, never to see his fiancee again.

His life was in ruins.

Then, fate would have it that the Duke of Torre walked into the hotel and requested a room. The Duke complained about the lack of scotch in the country after the Civil War, and Pujol quickly smooth-talked his way into a deal—if the Duke gave him a passport, Pujol would slip across the border to Portugal and procure some scotch for the Duke. The Duke agreed, and soon had obtained six bottles of alcohol. He happily gave the passport to Pujol.

Pujol, however, soon found the passport useless—there was nowhere to escape to. Furious, depressed, and emaciated, Pujol redirected his efforts to winning the war as soon as possible—through espionage.

The British were skeptical. Pujol barely spoke English, was poor, and was uneducated. How good of a spy could he be? They rejected him.

So he promptly called the German embassy and declared that he’d like to spy for the Nazis. They set him up with an agent named Federico, whose job was to detect double-agents.

And Pujol, the broke chicken farmer, proceeded to spin one of the most clever series of lies in history. He rambled on and on about his love for Hitler, and named all sorts of nonexistent diplomats that he claimed he had information on. Federico was blown away, and accepted Pujol right away.

Federico told Pujol that the Nazi regime needed spies who could snoop abroad. Pujol told him about the passport he’d obtained from the Duke, and Federico told him to go to Lisbon and charm the embassy into giving him an exit visa. When Pujol got there, the embassy promptly refused.

He would have to lie again.

At his hotel in Lisbon, he managed to befriend a Galician man named Jaime Souza. On a night out together, Souza accidentally let slip that he had a diplomatic visa.

A few days after, while playing roulette, Pujol feigned a stomach cramp, and retired back to their room. He quickly opened Souza’s suitcase, took the visa, and returned to the casino as if nothing had happened.

A day later, Pujol had successfully forged the document and had showed it to Federico. He was in, and had gained the Nazi’s trust. He was assigned a job as a spy in England, and was meant to send British intelligence back to Germany.

Of course, Pujol had no intention of being a Nazi spy. Instead, he rushed to Portugal, and showed his spy documents to every British embassy there. He was the perfect double-agent!

But, without fail, each embassy refused.

British intelligence was a mess at the time, and were coming up with bad idea after bad idea, one of which included faking a Second Coming of Jesus Christ. They had faith in this plan, and wanted to avoid bringing Spain into the war. So, they refused his requests.

He now had to convince the Nazi spies in Germany—the Abwehr (German military intelligence service for the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1945)—that he actually was gathering British intelligence, when he hadn’t ever been to Britain. Another near-impossible task.

But a day later, a brilliant idea struck him. Pujol informed the Abwehr that he’d recruited several (of course, imaginary) subagents, and he now had a fall-back. If something went wrong, he’d blame it on them. If something went right, he’d take the credit.

With that, Pujol started completely making up sources, spies, and stories. Using newspapers and telephone books as inspiration, Pujol wrote letters to the Abwehr that contained absolutely nothing of worth—they were just meant to waste their time.

It was a weak ruse, and he knew it’d come crashing down on him at any second. So he asked the British for help again—and for the fifth time, they refused.

But they wouldn’t be so reluctant after one of his fake reports struck a little too close to the truth. An intercepted message to Germany revealed a lie that, by chance, was the truth.

The British whisked him off to England and immediately hired him as a double-agent upon finding out his true intentions.

Pujol’s now-extensive imaginary network of spies was starting to gain traction with the Nazis. Some of them even were receiving real salaries from the Abwehr. By now, he’d invented almost 30 full-fledged personas, complete with backstories, personalities, and ambitions.

He and his “men” reported countless false invasion alerts, wasting thousands of Nazi manpower and money. He’d then pepper his reports with a few true tips from British intelligence, and the Abwehr’s trust in him grew exponentially.

He began to manipulate the Nazis more and more. When they wanted to bomb civilian trains in England, they asked Pujol for a train timetable. He sent an old, outdated one. When they wanted a book containing Royal Air Force secrets, he sent it in a cake with all important pages torn out. When Germans shot down a civilian plane between Portugal and London, he harshly berated the Abwehr, claiming one of his personas was onboard. The Nazis never attacked another civilian plane.

All of this resulted in Pujol being Germany’s biggest and most successful asset. He now had all the components needed to cook up the largest lie any man had ever told.

Pujol would need to convince the Abwehr that an invasion was going to occur, but he’d need them to believe that it was 200 miles to the north, in Calais, instead of in Normandy.

No one believed he could pull it off. To trick Hitler was to look him in the eye and make him believe a lie that a common civilian could see through—that a one-million man army was assembling in England.

The Allies put their all into the lie: inflatable tanks and boats, fake hospitals, airstrips, aircrafts, oil plants, construction sites, newspapers, carrier pigeons, tank tracks, letters, and rallies for the make-believe soldiers.

Meanwhile, Pujol was rapidly sending report after report from his imaginary spies to Germany, claiming that he was seeing thousands and thousands of troops, ready to absolutely destroy Germany and take no prisoners. He stationed fake bombings and attacks, and successfully convinced Hitler himself that an attack was coming to Calais, not Normandy.

At 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, the first Allied troops stormed the sands of Omaha Beach in Normandy.

D-day had begun.

The Nazis refused to send all their might to Normandy, believing that the one-million man army was coming to Calais at any moment. They dismissed the invasion as a fraud meant to distract them from the “real” one at Calais. Hitler’s personal staff were so sure of this that they didn’t even wake Hitler up and tell him the news.

Day after day passed. Tens of thousands of Allied troops attacked the beach, and German generals still failed to deploy reinforcements. After more and more casualties on the German side, the Panzers were finally sent in by Hitler.

But, at the last moment, Pujol halted the German counter-attack by sending a letter straight to Adolf Hitler. It contained dire information that the fake invasion was coming, and that deploying the Panzers would be exactly what the Allies wanted. The Abwehr confirmed his phony information, and Hitler halted the attack. All nine of Germany’s most feared assets turned to Calais.

The Allies continued to storm the beach and had successfully gained a hold on Germany before long.

It was over.

It was the beginning of the end for Germany.

Pujol’s lie had saved thousands upon thousands of Allied lives, and had completely turned the tide of the war.

Berlin was still so convinced of Pujol’s loyalty that they awarded him an Iron Cross—an award usually reserved for front-line troops. Meanwhile, Britain awarded him the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire—one of the country’s highest honors.

Germany soon fell and Hitler committed suicide April 30, 1945, and all the while the Nazi regime was still clueless that Pujol was a double-agent. Pujol then ended his career with a carefully constructed lie, claiming that he’d died of malaria. In the Germans’ eyes, he’d died a hero.

Pujol, then 36, moved to Venezuela where he got married, had two sons, and became a teacher. He lived off the radar until 1984, when the journalist Nigel West found him after a long and dedicated search. That year, a 72-year-old Pujol returned to London for a reunion with his old British colleagues. They were astounded.

“It can’t be you,” one of them exclaimed. “You’re dead!”

Pujol and West later visited Omaha Beach for D-day’s 40th anniversary. When the Spaniard saw the long rows of white, clean graves, he fell to his knees, weeping.

He felt responsible for the deaths of all those men.

Word began to spread that Pujol was there. Large groups of old, gray-haired men ran to his side, begging to shake his hand.

They celebrated Pujol as a hero and their savior—and a man among the most clever agents and liars in the world.

Have you ever heard about this outstanding man?