rigorousintuition.ca

Jerky » Tue Nov 01, 2016 11:15 pm wrote:Novem5er, these are all absolutely legitimate reasons to judge her as being a candidate you cannot, in good conscience, support.

However, I would argue that there are mitigating circumstances and situational factors surrounding each of the instances you mention above that make them far more complicated and nuanced than they might seem to be, at first blush.

For instance, in my opinion, the whole kerfuffle over Obama being the King of Drones is entirely overblown. OF COURSE Obama has "droned" more human beings than any previous President. The technology was only being perfected towards the end of the Bush administration! Blaming Obama for using drones is like blaming FDR for going on the radio more than all previous Presidents combined (radio only became popular as a mass medium during his Presidency).

To me, a more telling metric would be the number of people killed in conflicts in which Americans are participating, either as front line combatants or in an intel or State Dept "advisory" (CIA) capacity. And while stipulating that one civilian (or even military) death caused by American action is a sad and nasty business, the fact of the matter is that, since Bush's last day in office, that number has decreased exponentially. Fewer than 3000 civilians have been killed in ongoing actions across North Africa and the Middle East since Obama was inaugurated. That's probably close to 3000 too many, but it's a tiny fraction of the monstrous suffering that went on during the Bush II admin.

Now, when we take into account conflicts where America has flexed its power in a less direct manner (Libya being a prime example, particularly when taking into account the fact that the EU essentially made that conflict inevitable), the numbers increase, but they are still nothing compared to the Bush years... which, astonishingly, are themselves nothing when compared to the Cold War years, even post-Vietnam (i.e. Uncle Sam's first go-round with Afghanistan by luring the USSR into its own proxy quagmire, which in and of itself accounts for probably close to 2 million dead).

So when taken in context, while Clinton's record as SoS may seem nasty and brutal when compared to a blank slate, when you compare it to what came before... you get an altogether different impression.

That's my 2 cents anyway. As a student of history, and as a realist, if I could vote in the USA, I would cast my vote for Hillary, and I would do so gladly, without hesitation.

J

Her conviction would be critical in persuading Mr. Obama to join allies in bombing Colonel Qaddafi’s forces. In fact, Mr. Obama’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, would later say that in a “51-49” decision, it was Mrs. Clinton’s support that put the ambivalent president over the line.

Top Pentagon officials and a senior Democrat in Congress so distrusted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2011 march to war in Libya that they opened their own diplomatic channels with the Gadhafi regime in an effort to halt the escalating crisis, according to secret audio recordings recovered from Tripoli.
The tapes, reviewed by The Washington Times and authenticated by the participants, chronicle U.S. officials’ unfiltered conversations with Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s son and a top Libyan leader, including criticisms that Mrs. Clinton had developed tunnel vision and led the U.S. into an unnecessary war without adequately weighing the intelligence community’s concerns.

“You should see these internal State Department reports that are produced in the State Department that go out to the Congress. They’re just full of stupid, stupid facts,” an American intermediary specifically dispatched by the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Gadhafi regime in July 2011, saying the State Department was controlling what intelligence would be reported to U.S. officials.

Need get this asap to them although I'm sure cvc [Chelsea Clinton] won't believe it to be true bc she doesn't want to Even though the facts speak for themselves.

John, I would appreciate your feedback and any suggestions I'm also starting to worry that if this story gets out, we are screwed. Dk [Declan Kelly] and I built a business. 65 people work for us who have wives and husbands and kids, they all depend on us. Our business has almost nothing to do with the clintons, the foundation or cgi in any way. The chairman of ubs could care a less about cgi. Our fund clients who we do restructuring and m and a advising the same just as bhp nor tivo do. These are real companies who we provide real advice to through very serious people. Comm head for goldman, dep press secretary to bloomberg, former head of banking, and his team, from morgan stanley for asia and latin am.

I realize it is difficult to confront and reason with her but this could go to far and then we all will have a real serious set of other problems. I don't deserve this from her and deserve a tad more respect or at least a direct dialogue for me to explain these things. She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she's doing because she, as she has said, hasn't found her way and has a lack of focus in her life. I realize she will be off of this soon but if it doesn't come soon enough...

Iamwhomiam » Wed Nov 02, 2016 2:03 pm wrote:It is simply foolish to believe Gates. Clinton hasn't the miraculous powers too many here attribute to her, like her ability to go after Qaddafi, or that her word could overpower that of Gates, a lifer in intelligence and George Bush's Chief of the CIA, and his Secretary of Defense from 2006, pushing his and other more superior warhawk's agenda on into Obama's first term, ending that position only in 2011.

(snip)

I've been here for nearly ten years and I am shocked by learning only now that some do not understand what it is that the Secretary of State does, which is to diplomatically explain to other states the policies of the executive, as advised by intelligence and with the approval of Congress or their intelligence committees, and to persuade the state as to why it would be in their interest to be cooperative as the US exercises its, our policy of the moment.

Emails between U.S. diplomats in Islamabad and State Department officials in Washington about whether to challenge specific U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan are at the center of a criminal probe involving Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the “low side” -government slang for a computer system for unclassified matters - as part of a secret arrangement that gave the State Department more of a voice in whether a CIA drone strike went ahead, according to congressional and law enforcement officials briefed on the FBI probe, the Journal said.

But now Mrs. Clinton did not directly push Mr. Obama to intervene in Libya. Nor did she make an impassioned moral case, according to several people in the room.

Instead, she described Mr. Jibril, the opposition leader, as impressive and reasonable. She conveyed her surprise that Arab leaders not only supported military action but, in some cases, were willing to participate. Mostly, though, she warned that the French and British would go ahead with airstrikes on their own, potentially requiring the United States to step in later if things went badly.
. . .
Mrs. Clinton’s account of a unified European-Arab front powerfully influenced Mr. Obama. “Because the president would never have done this thing on our own,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser.

Jerky » Wed Nov 02, 2016 6:08 pm wrote:
Once again, we see that there IS NO THERE THERE.

Wombaticus Rex » 02 Nov 2016 23:23 wrote:

Jerky » Wed Nov 02, 2016 6:08 pm wrote:
Once again, we see that there IS NO THERE THERE.

All in all, that was every bit as persuasive as the original Zero Hedge article!

Jerky » Wed Nov 02, 2016 6:08 pm wrote:If the memos in question hadn't contained the words "we're screwed" (which in and of themselves prove nothing, and point to nothing), you would not have heard about them.

1. The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far and has been going on for more than a year.

2. The laptops of Clinton aides Cherryl Mills and Heather Samuelson have not been destroyed, and agents are currently combing through them. The investigation has interviewed several people twice, and plans to interview some for a third time.

3. Agents have found emails believed to have originated on Hillary Clinton's secret server on Anthony Weiner's laptop. They say the emails are not duplicates and could potentially be classified in nature.

4. Sources within the FBI have told him that an indictment is "likely" in the case of pay-for-play at the Clinton Foundation, "barring some obstruction in some way" from the Justice Department.

5. FBI sources say with 99% accuracy that Hillary Clinton's server has been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that information had been taken from it.