US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8166

On July 24 2017 19:36 Wegandi wrote:


Lol? Really. Some of it is definitely intentional, but a lot is "unintentional" (we're talking about MIC here). Let's just take one example - the CIA armed and trained the Mujahadeen (basically the Taliban), to fight the Russians. This is a boon to the crony defense industry. Come few years later, we're now fighting them. This has been the MO in a number of regions of the world. The US arms and trains - then we fight the people we've armed and trained years later. The most notorious is probably Saddam Hussein.

As for historically. You should give consideration to reading Marine Corps General and one of the most highly decorated military officers in our nations history - Smedley Butler. His book War is a Racket demonstrates as fact that there are concerted efforts in various industries to use the military as a spearhead. Eisenhower knew this - hence his speech. If you won't listen to history or generals like Eisenhower or Butler, what will it take?

There is also the fact that large standing armies are almost always used for offensive aggression. History is crystal clear on this. When this happens, the people lose their liberties at home. We've seen how much power the CIA, NSA, security State, etc. has eroded our rights in the name of "safety" and "terrorism". Our wars and meddling abroad has only caused numerous harms to our own people. Madison wrote elegantly about how going in search of foreign boogeyman will be disaster for own peoples liberties at home. It's the reason they had citizen militia's and wrote passionately and at great length about the dangers of a standing army. We've ignored all of this.

If you think that's some conspiracy, you fit in with the Perl's and Zbignew's of the world.

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, plans to detail four meetings he had with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign and transition period — including one with a Russian lawyer set up by Donald Trump Jr. — but deny any improper contacts or collusion in testimony to Congress on Monday.

Kushner defends his interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and other Russian officials as typical contacts in his role as the Trump campaign’s liaison to foreign governments, according to an 11-page prepared statement he plans to submit for the record, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.

Kushner is scheduled to testify in closed-door sessions, first before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday and then before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, as part of the congressional probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election and contacts between Russia and Trump campaign officials and associates.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russian government orchestrated a far-reaching campaign to meddle with last year’s presidential campaign and influence the outcome in Trump’s favor.

In his testimony, which will be submitted to the congressional committees before he answers questions from lawmakers, Kushner says he has had only “limited contacts” with Russian representatives and denies any wrongdoing.

“I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government,” Kushner writes. “I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.”

Kushner portrays himself as a goal-oriented task master new to presidential politics who assumed increasingly important responsibilities on a fast-paced campaign in which decisions were made “on the fly,” including serving as the main point of contact for foreign government officials...