Fifteen years ago, I backed the war with Iraq. Moreover, even after no weapons of mass destruction were found, I agreed wholeheartedly with the neocon argument that we should stay the course because the spread of democracy would transform the Middle East. Oops. On both accounts I was dead wrong, and over the years have said so many times. Neocons and left-wing progressives share one very important characteristic: beyond any question, reality has proven the failure of both ideologies.
Another lesson I learned, a healthy lesson I was sure we had all learned, is that the American intelligence community (IC) is, at best, fallible. At worst — and the illegal leaks against Trump of late only back this up — the IC is agenda-driven, willing to lie and break the law in order to run our country from its Deep State lair. Regardless, when it comes to Big Decisions, when it comes to pulling a trigger against another country, skepticism of any conclusions made by the IC is a must.
Right?
Right!?!?
Apparently not. If you take a long, slow look around, if you gaze at Republicans, Democrats and the mainstream media, no one appears to have learned the lessons of Iraq … except for President Trump.
On his Sunday show, CNN anchor Jake Tapper did more than just exaggerate his “hood” credentials, he also disturbingly summed up the near-religious hysteria we are seeing from all corners with respect to Russia. And in this particular case, I am not even talking about the phony Russian-collusion conspiracy theory being waged against Trump. I’m talking about something even more serious — the zeal to pull the trigger on Russia based on intelligence from the very same IC that took us into a costly war based on something that proved to be not even close to true.
For at least five minutes, speaking for many more than just himself, Tapper browbeat Trump’s incoming communications director Anthony Scaramucci over Trump’s sin of being the last man standing when it comes to blindly buying into the consensus of the IC. Here are some highlights:
TAPPER: We have experts, the U.S. intelligence agencies, unanimous, both Obama appointees and Trump appointees, the director of national intelligence, the head of the National Security Agency, the head of the FBI, I mean, all of these intelligence experts saying Russia hacked the intelligence — Russia hacked the election, they tried to interfere in the election. …
[H]ere you have a bill, legislation that was passed 98-2 in the U.S. Senate. The House is about to pass it. It will probably also be an overwhelming vote to sanction Russia. …
And President Trump told you that he still doesn’t believe that Russia was trying to interfere in the election, even though the overwhelming body of the U.S. Senate, which is controlled by Republicans, and his own intelligence experts are telling him the opposite. …
But it’s almost irrelevant whether you think it’s true and what President Trump says, because it’s the unanimous consensus of the intelligence community — community that this happened.
Anyone else suffering a 2002 flashback?
This is madness.
And as much as I would like it to not be the case, I am not here to single out Tapper. Unfortunately, the mindless zealotry you just read above is everywhere in the media, and worse, in the Republican Party.
What makes the Dogma of the Intelligence Community even more frightening is the fact that all kinds of unanswered questions revolve around this Holy Consensus. Nevertheless, like a cult the DC-MSM-Complex is moving full-speed ahead to punish Russia for “hacking the election,” even though the vaunted IC does not have all the facts with a key part of this conspiracy, the issue involving the so-called hack of the Democrat National Committee.
Why do Democrats refuse to allow the FBI to look into their computer system? Why did the DNC smash their hard drives rather than turn them over?
Wouldn’t you like to have a few more of these issues resolved before we move up another notch on the Defcon charts?
And so, in the middle of this unthinking, anti-science frenzy that makes the McCarthy-era look like a Sunday picnic, one man is keeping his cool, one man is retaining his healthy skepticism, one man is actually taking the time to aim before he pulls a trigger … and thankfully that man just happens to be the President of the United States.
Even a year ago, did anyone imagine that it would be Donald J. Trump and Donald J. Trump alone who would be the last man to remember the terrible lessons of Iraq?
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http://www.dailywire.com/news/18908/russia-hysteria-only-trump-has-learned-terrible-john-nolte