WarSclerotic

August 2, 2017 by Baron Bodissey

Source: Rep. Steve King on Obama’s Interference in Foreign Elections | Gates of Vienna

North Korea test-launched on Friday its first ballistic missile potentially capable of hitting America’s East Coast. It thereby proved the failure of 25 years of U.S. nonproliferation policy. A single-minded rogue state can pocket diplomatic concessions

Source: The Military Options for North Korea

North Korea test-launched on Friday its first ballistic missile potentially capable of hitting America’s East Coast. It thereby proved the failure of 25 years of U.S. nonproliferation policy. A single-minded rogue state can pocket diplomatic concessions and withstand sustained economic sanctions to build deliverable nuclear weapons. It is past time for Washington to bury this ineffective “carrots and sticks” approach.

America’s policy makers, especially those who still support the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, should take careful note. If Tehran’s long collusion with Pyongyang on ballistic missiles is even partly mirrored in the nuclear field, the Iranian threat is nearly as imminent as North Korea’s. Whatever the extent of their collaboration thus far, Iran could undoubtedly use its now-unfrozen assets and cash from oil-investment deals to buy nuclear hardware from North Korea, one of the world’s poorest nations.

One lesson from Pyongyang’s steady nuclear ascent is to avoid making the same mistake with other proliferators, who are carefully studying its successes. Statecraft should mean grasping the implications of incipient threats and resolving them before they become manifest. With North Korea and Iran, the U.S. has effectively done the opposite. Proliferators happily exploit America’s weakness and its short attention span. They exploit negotiations to gain the most precious asset: time to resolve the complex scientific and technological hurdles to making deliverable nuclear weapons.

Now that North Korea possesses them, the U.S. has few realistic options. More talks and sanctions will fail as they have for 25 years. I have argued previously that the only durable diplomatic solution is to persuade China that reunifying the two Koreas is in its national interest as well as America’s, thus ending the nuclear threat by ending the bizarre North Korean regime. Although the negotiations would be arduous and should have commenced years ago, American determination could still yield results.

Absent a successful diplomatic play, what’s left is unpalatable military options. But many say, even while admitting America’s vulnerability to North Korean missiles, that using force to neutralize the threat would be too dangerous. The only option, this argument goes, is to accept a nuclear North Korea and attempt to contain and deter it.

The people saying this are largely the same ones who argued that “carrots and sticks” would prevent Pyongyang from getting nuclear weapons. They are prepared to leave Americans as nuclear hostages of the Kim family dictatorship. This is unacceptable. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has it right. “What’s unimaginable to me,” he said last month at the Aspen Security Forum, “is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver.” So what are the military options, knowing that the U.S. must plan for the worst?

First, Washington could pre-emptively strike at Pyongyang’s known nuclear facilities, ballistic-missile factories and launch sites, and submarine bases. There are innumerable variations, starting at the low end with sabotage, cyberattacks and general disruption. The high end could involve using air- and sea-based power to eliminate the entire program as American analysts understand it.

Second, the U.S. could wait until a missile is poised for launch toward America, and then destroy it. This would provide more time but at the cost of increased risk. Intelligence is never perfect. A North Korean missile could be in flight to a city near you before the military can respond.

Third, the U.S. could use airstrikes or special forces to decapitate North Korea’s national command authority, sowing chaos, and then sweep in on the ground from South Korea to seize Pyongyang, nuclear assets, key military sites and other territory.

All these scenarios pose dangers for South Korea, especially civilians in Seoul, which is within the range of North Korean artillery near the Demilitarized Zone. Any military attack must therefore neutralize as much of the North’s retaliatory capability as possible together with the larger strike. The U.S. should obviously seek South Korea’s agreement (and Japan’s) before using force, but no foreign government, even a close ally, can veto an action to protect Americans from Kim Jong Un’s nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and South Korean militaries fire missiles into the East Sea during a South Korea-U.S. joint missile drill aimed to counter North Korea’s ICBM test on July 29, 2017. (Photo by South Korean Defense Ministry)

China clearly has enormous interests at stake, not least its fear that masses of North Korean refugees will flow across the Yalu and Tumen rivers into its territory. Neither the U.S. nor China wants conflict between their respective forces, so immediate consultations with Beijing would be imperative once military action began. Both considerations underline why urgent diplomacy with China now to press the benefits of peaceful reunification is vital.

The Pentagon’s military planners already should be poring through the operational aspects of a potential military strike. But politicians and policy makers also ought to begin debating the military options—for North Korea and beyond, since similar issues will arise regarding Iran and other nuclear proliferators.

For decades the U.S. has opposed attempts by any state without nuclear weapons to develop them. Washington has consistently failed to achieve that objective, and the world has become increasingly nuclearized. Stopping North Korea and Iran may be the last chance to act before nuclear weapons become a global commonplace.

John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad”.

This article first appeared in The Wall Street Journal and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.

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BY: Adam Kredo
August 3, 2017 9:10 am

McMaster has list of senior officials he plans to fire

Source: McMaster, On ‘Warpath,’ Purges Key Trump Allies From White House NSC

An ongoing staffing purge being conducted by White House National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has thrown the West Wing into chaos, according to more than half a dozen Trump administration insiders who told the Washington Free Beacon that McMaster has been targeting long-time Trump loyalists who were clashing with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration.

The purge is part of a larger drama unfolding inside the administration, between veteran Trump staffers committed to the president’s campaign vision of “draining the swamp”‘ in Washington and entrenched bureaucracies seeking to maintain control over policy decision-making, according to these sources, who said that many of these actions against his supporters are being conducted without Trump’s knowledge.

The Trump staffers fired by McMaster had repeatedly clashed with career government staffers and holdovers from the Obama administration on issues as diverse as military strategies for Syria and Afghanistan, whether to tear up Obama’s landmark Iran deal, the controversial détente with Cuba, the U.S. role in confronting Islamic radicalism, and the Paris Climate Accord, according to these sources.

More purges are said to be on the way, according to multiple insiders who described a list of at least four other senior NSC officials McMaster intends to target. Other sources confirmed the likelihood of more purges, but disputed some details on that list.

“McMaster basically has this list and over the next two weeks he’s going to phase out” more senior officials loyal to Trump, said one administration insider intimately familiar with the upheaval occurring at the White House National Security Council. “They’re taking out people who were chosen to best implement the president’s policy that he articulated during the campaign.”

The latest victim of this purge is Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a senior NSC official originally hired by ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The White House acknowledged in a statement late Wednesday evening on Cohen-Watnick’s departure that McMaster viewed him as in conflict with his vision for the NSC.

A second senior official, Rich Higgins, who worked in the NSC’s strategic-planning office as a director for strategic planning, was fired last month. The president was not informed of the move until after Higgins was fired, according to one source who is in regular contact with senior NSC figures.

Published reports described Higgins’ firing as a “lasting victory” for McMaster over longtime Trump officials who helped get the president into office.

A third senior official, then-NSC senior Middle East director Derek Harvey, was removed from his post roughly a week ago. He had also been a Flynn hire and a vocal opponent of the Iran deal.

Victoria Coates, another Flynn hire who served as a senior NSC member up until this week, has been reassigned to the administration’s Middle East peace team.

“McMaster’s agenda is different than the president’s,” said one administration source with knowledge of the situation.

The moves have sparked outrage inside and outside of the administration, with multiple sources telling the Free Beacon that Trump is being pushed in a direction antithetical to the campaign promises that brought him into office.

One of the central flashpoints in this internal battle has been Iran and the future of the nuclear accord, multiple sources independently confirmed to the Free Beacon.

NSC officials such as Cohen-Watnick, Harvey, and others had been making the case that Trump should scrap the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal over increasingly aggressive Iranian ballistic missile activity and mounting evidence Tehran is breaching the accord. McMaster, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top Obama-era State Department officials who worked on the deal, have aggressively urged maintaining it.

“That’s why they took him out,” explained one source, referring to Harvey, who is said to have constructed a comprehensive plan on how to scrap the nuclear deal.

Another source described the Trump administration’s Iran policy as “completely gutted” in the aftermath of these firings.

“These were people who fought for Trump’s election since he was nominated,” said one of the multiple sources in close contact with the NSC. “Many of these people were in Trump Tower during the period between the election and inauguration. These are people who gave up everything to support him against Hillary [Clinton], and these are the people being purged by McMaster.”

“This is not how you treat people who do that,” the source said.

Another point of contention at the NSC was a Wednesday story by the Atlantic‘s Rosie Gray detailing the firing of Higgins.

The story described a memo written by Higgins outlining how the Trump administration should wrest control of policy-making from career staffers hostile to Trump. McMaster is said to have gone on the “warpath” over the disclosure of that memo, according to one source.

Another source told the Free Beacon McMaster looked for evidence in the NSC’s email system to determine the name of the memo’s author “and then fired him.”

One veteran GOP foreign policy hand who has been in constant contact with the administration since its transition to the White House told the Free Beacon that McMaster has sought to downplay outstanding issues with Obama-era holdovers believed to be undermining the administration.

“One of the first things H.R. McMaster did when he took over the NSC was order all the staffers who came in with Trump to stop talking about Obama ‘holdovers.’ It was an actual, literal, explicit instruction,” the source said. “He didn’t want anyone pointing out how Obama loyalists were still in place, undermining President Trump, and leaking against him.”

These loyalists are said to include many Obama holdovers, including key NSC personnel who work directly for senior Obama aide Ben Rhodes, who has become a central suspect in the leaks of damaging classified information to the press.

The Republican expert confirmed that more firings are likely on the way.

“After he was done protecting the entrenched bureaucracy McMaster went on offense, which is what you’re seeing now,” the source said. “He’s purging the people who came up with Trump and are genuinely loyal to him.”

H/T BB

Source: Seymour Hersh: “RussiaGate Is A CIA-Planted Lie, Revenge Against Trump” | Zero Hedge

Submitted by Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

During the latter portion of a phone-call by investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, Hersh has now presented “a narrative [from his investigation] of how that whole fucking thing began,” including who actually is behind the ‘RussiaGate’ lies, and why they are spreading these lies.

In a youtube video upload-dated August 1st, he reveals from his inside FBI and Washington DC Police Department sources — now, long before the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be presenting his official ‘findings’ to the nation — that the charges that Russia had anything to do with the leaks from the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to Wikileaks, that those charges spread by the press, were a CIA-planted lie, and that what Wikileaks had gotten was only leaks (including at least from the murdered DNC-staffer Seth Rich), and were not from any outsider (including ’the Russians’), but that Rich didn’t get killed for that, but was instead shot in the back during a brutal robbery, which occurred in the high-crime DC neighborhood where he lived. Here is the video…

and here is the transcript :

About the kid, I’ll tell you what I know. What I know comes off an FBI report. Don’t ask me how. You can figure it out, I’ve been around a long time. The kid, just, I don’t think he was murdered, I, I don’t think he was murdered because of what he knew. The kids a nice boy, 27, he was not IT expert, but he learned stuff. He was a data programmer, but he learned stuff. And so he’s living on one street, someone, in my eyes,- he’s living in a ruff neighborhood and in the exact where he’d been living, as I’m sure you know, there have been about 8 or 9 or 10 violent, uh not robberies, most of them with somebody brandishing a gun and it’s the kids hands, I’m telling you look, I’m sure you know what, his hands are marked up, the cops concluded he fought off the people, tried to run they shot him twice in the back with a 22 small caliper. And then, they, the kids that did it ran, they got scared, they didn’t take his wallet.

 

Ok. So what the cops do is this: And this is where nobody knows, what I’m telling you, and maybe you know something about it. When you have a death like that DC cops, if you’re dead, you don’t just generally go yep I know (unintelligible) you have to get in to the kids apartment and see what you can find. If he’s dead you don’t need a warrant but most cops get a warrant because they don’t know if they’ve guys has, has a, a roommate. You need a warrant. So they get a warrant. I’m just telling you, there is such a thing. They go in the house and they can’t do much with this computer. It’s (unintelligible) the cops don’t know much about it. So the DC cops they have a cyber unit in DC and they’re more sophisticated. They come and look at it. The idea is maybe he’s a series of exchanges with somebody who says I’m going to kill you motherfucker over a girl or… and they can’t get in. The cyber guys do a little better but they can’t make sense of it so they call the, they call the FBI cyber unit, the DC unit.

 

The Washington field office is a hot shit unit. The guy running the Washington field office he’s like, he’s like, you know, he’s like a three star at an army base he’s already looking for four, you know what I mean? He’s gonna go in a top job. There’s a cyber unit there that’s excellent, given. What you get in a warrant is, the public information you get in a warrant doesn’t include, uh, it does not include the affidavit underlying what, why you are you going in, what the reasons are that.. That’s almost never available, um, I, I can tell you that the existence of a warrant is a public document 99% of the time. So, um, on the same warrant, they call in the feds. The feds get through, and this is what they find. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is he makes cont- first of all this is what you have to know, you have to know some basic facts, one of the basic factors, in that there’s no DNC or Podesta emails that exist beyond May 22nd. May 21st, May 22nd is the last email from either one of those groups. And so what the reports says is that sometime in late spring, we’re talking June you know summers in June 21st, late spring would be after, I presume, I don’t know, I’d just say late spring, early summer and he makes contact with Wikileaks. That’s in his computer and he makes contact.

 

Now, I have to be careful because I, I’ve know, I, met Julian 10 or 12 years (ago?) I stay the fuck away from people like that, you know. He’s invited me, and when I’m in London I always get a message “Come see me at the Ecuadorian” but I say fuck no I’m not going there I’ve got enough trouble without getting photographed. And he’s under total surveillance by everybody but anyways. So, they found what he’d done. He had submitted a series of documents, of emails. Some juicy emails from the DNC, and you know, by the way all this shit about the DNC, um, you know, whether it was hacked or wasn’t hacked, whatever happened, the democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean? All I know is that he (Seth) offered a sample, an extensive sample, you know I’m sure dozens of email and said “I want money”. Then later Wikileaks did get the password, he had a Dropbox, a protected Dropbox, which isn’t hard to do, I mean you don’t have to be a wizard IT, you know, he was certainly not a dumb kid. They got access to the Dropbox. He also, and this is also in the FBI report, he also let people know, with whom he was dealing, and I don’t know how he dealt, I’ll tell you about Wikileaks in a second. I don’t know how he dealt with the Wikileaks and the mechanism but he also, the word was passed according to the NSA report, “I’ve also shared this box with a couple of friends so if anything happens to me it’s not going to solve your problem”. Ok. I don’t know what that means.

 

I don’t know whether you- Anyways, Wikileaks got access, and before he was killed- I can tell you right now Brennan is an asshole. Uh, I’ve known all these people for years. Clapper is sort of a better guy but not rocket scientist, the NSA guy’s a fucking moron, and they don’t- you know the trouble with all of those guys is that the only way they’re going to make it to a board or two and get hired by (?) and get some fat cat contracts is if Hillary stayed in. With Trump they’re gone, they’re done, they’re going to live on their pension, they’re not going to make it. And I gotta tell you guys, they don’t want to live on their pension, they want to be on boards.

 

I have somebody on the inside, you know I’ve been around a long time, and I write a lot of stuff. I have somebody on the inside who will go and read a file for me. This person is unbelievably accurate and careful, he’s a very high-level guy and he’ll do a favor. You’re just going to have to trust me. I have what they call in my business a long-form journalism, I have a narrative of how that whole fucking thing began, it’s a Brennan operation, it was an American disinformation and fucking the fucking President, at one point when they, they even started telling the press, they were back briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press, fucking cock-sucker Rogers, was telling the press that we even know who in the GRU, the Russian Military Intelligence Service, who leaked it. I mean all bullshit. They were telling the studp- I worked at the New York Times for fucking years, and the trouble with the fucking New York Times is they have smart guys, but they’re totally beholden on sources. If the president or the head of the (???) to actually believe it. I was actually hired at the time to write, to go after the war in Vietnam War in 72 because they were just locked in. So that’s what the Times did. These guys run the fucking Times, and Trump’s not wrong. But I mean I wish he would calm down and had a better a better press secretary, I mean you don’t have to be so. Trump’s not wrong to think they all fucking lie about him.

The media-coverage of this matter is focusing on allegations that Seth Rich was murdered in order to silence him. All such media-coverage ignores much of what Hersh said on the phone (where Hersh makes clear that Rich was, indeed, murdered in a regular robbery), and therefore should be viewed as an example of what the Washington Post and others in the mainstream press call ‘fake news’, but which actually applies to themselves, on both the left and right, above all.

The purpose of those distorting ‘news’ stories might be a desire, on the part of both the Democratic Party aristocrats and the Republican Party aristocrats, to distract the public’s attention away from the far deeper understanding that drives the “narrative” that Hersh, in that clip, is describing: rot by the U.S. aristocracy, which controls both of America’s political Parties, to deceive the American public. The objective is to protect the aristocracy. That’s not publishable; it is American samizdat. Corruption rules America. The public do not. This fact is what Hersh is describing in his “narrative.”