If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck....
I am reminded of a couple of quotes, one, from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stuart, “I know it when I see it” when he was he was reviewing a hard-core pornography obscenity case. The other quote was from Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”, she says she isn’t but she is.
Well, that lady is Donald Trump. The more our President protests that there is no evidence that the Russians and his campaign had contact with one another, that Russian hacking had no effect on the outcome of the election, and the Presidential staff’s campaign of denial about the Russians, the more I am inclined to believe he and his minions are hiding something.
This thing with the Russians has been going on a long time. You could say that it goes back to Seward’s Folly in the 19th century when the US bought Alaska for a song. It was the diplomatic equivalent of when the Red Sox traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees for 100 grand so the Red Sox owners could buy into a production of a Broadway musical. The Sox were cursed for nearly a 100 years and the Russian empire began to crumble after Alaska became part of the USA.
The Russian policy elites have always had a jaundiced eye looking at us. They have always viewed us as an existential threat. They may have had some cause or they may have misread the tea leaves. From the beginning of the Twentieth Century, the US has had a meddling hand in Russian affairs, diplomatically and militarily. You want some facts, ok - TR’s negotiation of the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, we sent troops to fight the Reds in the Russian Civil War in the late teens and early twenties after WW1, the Russians believed the Allies let the Nazis bleed them in WWII, the Cold War/NATO, Nixon in China, the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Consequently, like a weed that won’t go away, the Russian intelligence community has deep roots in the West and very much in the good ole US of A. Those roots go back to the 1920s maybe earlier. To what purpose? To gather information (industrial, political, scientific) and destabilize our nation by disinformation and compromising targeted institutions and people (like, uh, maybe Trump). It's a long game played over generations. BTW, we do the same thing, it’s how nations exercise power without going to war (Read Sun Tzu, the Art of War).
The Russians don’t like us, especially Putin. We have been telling them they suck (and they do) for over 100 years. Putin has been a part of the Russian intelligence apparatus his whole career. A career that has seen the Soviet Afghanistan debacle and the political/economic collapse of his nation. He is well versed in the trade craft of spying. He is in charge, a de facto dictator of a country with enormous resources. And he has a history settling scores with enemies. He is in the process of settling a score with us (US) now.
Fact, over a dozen US intelligence agencies confirmed to Trump the Russian meddling in the 2016 election in January. His distilled response, if they did, it had no effect. This tidbit is just one tip in a sea of icebergs. Some we see, some we don’t. They are dangerous to us all the same.
Now, I am going take a play out of Donald’s own playbook, use of the possibility. Like Ms. Huckabee Sanders said, on behalf of the President concerning the unsubstantiated Trump Obama wiretapping tweets:
(From ABC News 3/5/17) SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Look, I think he's going off of information that he's seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential. And if it is, this is the greatest overreach and the greatest abuse of power that, I think, we have ever seen and a huge attack on democracy itself. And the American people have a right to know if this took place.
Exactly. So, to that, there should be an independent prosecutor appointed like the Watergate and Whitewater investigations. Also, Congress should convene a bipartisan select committee, made up of ranking members of both parties, from both houses to investigate. Here is my recommended scope of these needed investigations (but not limited to):
- Did, as President Trump alleges, President Obama order wiretapping of Trump campaign
- the complete release of the President Trumps tax returns going back 25 year
- Full disclosure of contacts between the Trump campaign, his family, Trump Companies and Russian political, economic and military and their surrogates over the last 10 years
- Full and comprehensive investigation of the Steele Trump Dossier
In an interview with Joe Scarborough last December, Trump seemed to defend Putin’s killing of dissident journalists, stating, “at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.” He went on to say that “our country does plenty of killing, too, Joe.” Trump concluded that he’s “always felt fine about Putin. He’s a strong leader. He’s a powerful leader.” (Daily Beast)
Quack Quack
