Guest post by Larry C. Johnson
Admiral Bill McRaven
Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I’m calling a so-called military hero a clown. He is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. He is a sampling of McRaven’s stupidity:
Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration — all trying to do something — all trying to do their best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the acting director of national intelligence. . . .
But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don’t last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs.As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.
Bill, you are wrong as you can be. Are you too damn lazy to do some simple reading and research?
Maguire’s role as DNI was a temporary appointment. It was not permanent and was not submitted to the Senate as part of a confirmation process. He was a mere place holder. Yet McRaven and others in the anti-Trump crowd display their profound ignorance and insist, wrongly, that Trump fired Maguire.
Here is the dishonest NY Times spin:
On Wednesday, the president announced that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and an aggressively vocal Trump supporter. And though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing might have played a role in that move, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.
Donald Trump did not fire Maguire. He followed the law. The specious claim that Trump fired Maguire exposes McRaven and his ilk as either liars or ignoramuses. The statute governing temporary appointments (i.e., the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998) is quite clear:
Once a vacancy occurs, the position is eligible to be filled by an acting officer for 210 days from the date of the vacancy, as well as any time when a nomination is pending before the Senate.
Guess what? Maguire’s resignation coincides with the 210 day limit.
Facts do not matter to the anti-Trumpers. Remember all of the hysteria surround Attorney General Barr’s legitimate and proper submission of a RECOMMENDATION for reduced sentencing in the case of Roger Stone. The media and punditry reacted as if Barr was calling for the mass extermination of physically handicapped children. Hardly any took time to note that Barr’s “RECOMMENDATION” was just that–a recommendation. Nothing Barr said or wrote could compel or coerce Judge Berman to act according to Barr’s wishes. And guess what? Judge Berman decided that Barr was right. The key point being that, SHE DECIDED. Not Barr.
Donald Trump is now on the offensive against a corrupt, dishonest intelligence and law enforcement community as well as their enablers in festering establishment and that whole crowd is panicked.
The faux outrage over Trump replacing Maguire is just one indicator of this fear. Another is the fact that are once again being bombarded with the recycled propaganda that Russia meddled in our 2016 election and is at poised to do the same in 2020. What next? Resurrect Jussie Smollet and hire a group of rednecks to stage another faux attack on him during the night on the wintry streets of Chicago?
The most recent installment in Putin on the prowl comes courtesy of The NY Times, doing its damndest to masquerade as Pravda.
Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.
During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.
Just another damned lie. Pure propaganda being spun for the sole purpose of smearing Trump and tainting his election. The real truth is that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is doing less “meddling” in our elections than did his predecessors. We meddled in their elections and domestic politics going back to the end of World War II. Meddling is a natural consequence of having professional intelligence services like the CIA, the FSB, the GRU, the DIA, etc. Another uncomfortable fact is that social media makes it more difficult for the traditional intelligence actors to interfere in politics. Michael Bloomberg’s spending in the 2020 Democrat primary dwarfs all efforts to control the social media message. Yet, there are limits to the effectiveness of such “meddling.”
If there really was intelligence that Russia had embarked on a new, more expansive round of meddling then that intelligence should have been briefed to the President as part of Presidential Daily Briefing. But that has not taken place. Trump’s National Security Advisor, Robert O’Brien says pointedly that he has seen no intelligence to substantiate The NY Times report. NONE:
“I haven’t seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected,” Robert O’Brien, who was appointed by Trump to the post in September, said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
“I have not seen that, and I get pretty good access,” he said, according to excerpts released on Saturday.
Another meme in the latest propaganda push by deranged Democrats and discredited media is to portray Maguire’s temporary replacement, Ambassador Richard Grenell, as some sort of ignorant, unqualified political hack.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia offers up an excellent example of this kind of malicious stupidity:
“The President has selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as the leader of the nation’s intelligence community in an acting capacity. This is the second acting director the President has named to the role since the resignation of Dan Coats, apparently in an effort to sidestep the Senate’s constitutional authority to advise and consent on such critical national security positions, and flouting the clear intent of Congress when it established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004.
“The intelligence community deserves stability and an experienced individual to lead them in a time of massive national and global security challenges. And at a time when the integrity and independence of the Department of Justice has been called into grave question, now more than ever our country needs a Senate-confirmed intelligence director who will provide the best intelligence and analysis, regardless of whether or not it’s expedient for the President who has appointed him.
Warner conveniently forgets that Trump named Dan Coats as DNI and the Senate, along with Warner’s vote, approved him. Coats had trouble spelling CIA and DNI. He was completely unqualified for the position, yet the Senate rolled over for him with barely a whimper. How about the first DNI? Ambassador John Negroponte.
Ambassador Grenell has a comparable level of experience to Negroponte. He has dealt with all elements of the intelligence community during his tenure working within the realm of the U.S. foreign service. The good news is that Grenell is now on the job as DNI and is starting to clean house. This should have been done four years ago. The DNI, like many other parts of the bureaucracy, is infested with anti-Trump haters doing their best to sabotage his Presidency.
Robert O’Brien has cleaned out the DNC. There are a lot of empty desks there now. And persons through out the National Security bureacracy, including DOD and CIA, are being emptied. This is a prelude. When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments expect the screaming to intensify.
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