(08-17-2018 08:33 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote: (08-16-2018 06:03 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: Let's say your goal was not to help Trump, but merely to sow dissent and discord. Hillary is odds-on to win, and by a wide margin. So what do you do? Whom do you back? Why Trump, of course, since the opposition will come from the loser's side. Only he didn't lose.
But you've still achieved discord and dissent on a massive scale.
As OO said, perfectly logical. I also think, at a minimum, they knew the Trump campaign was likely to be more open to advances, thus creating kompromat.
Based upon what? That's my problem with all of this. There are assertions like that which we are supposed to accept, with nothing to back them up.
Quote:But it's also perfectly logical that Russia had multiple goals, which is what our intelligence agencies have said. One goal, in particular, was to hurt Hillary because of Putin's personal vendetta against her due to her comments on Putin's election victories, and how he viewed her as being the culprit behind some of the political uprisings during her tenure as SofS. Another was that Clinton was also likely to be very hawkish against Russia, should she have won.
Why? Obama wasn't, not even when Hillary was SecState. And remember the stupid "reset" button? That was Hillary, remember? The whole argument against Trump hangs on this idea that Trump was somehow easily manipulated by "the Russians." So far, I see nothing to support this allegation--except allegations.
Let's talk Crimea. Or during the GWB administration, Georgia. Exactly what do you think would be a reasonable hawkish response? Sanctions have never, ever proved to be truly effective, as long as someone is willing to look the other way. And as long as Europe is heavily dependent on Russia for oil and gas, there are going to be people willing to look the other way. Trump has actually tried to address that a bit, by pushing LNG exports from US to Europe as an alternative for them. And his insistence that Europe spend more for its own defense is not "destroying NATO" but recognizing what is reality. Any kind of military response to either Crimea or Georgia would have been extremely difficult to mount. We can't take carriers into the Black Sea under international law, and that severely limits our options.
Quote:I don't see why you need to diminish this aspect of the Russian interference, it doesn't itself mean that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign.
I have never diminished any aspect of Russian interference. They have been interfering for years. The greatest diminishment that I have seen came from those who insisted that Russia could not have hacked Hillary's unsecure server, because we never saw the information on Wikileaks. Believe me, there's about a 99.9% chance that they hacked her, and did so repeatedly, and about a 0% chance that they would ever have put anything they got from hacking her on Wikileaks or revealed it publicly in any way. That would have alerted us that there was a problem, and we would presumably have taken corrective action that would have cut off a source of intel for them.
I think we need to do everything we can to defend against Russian (and other foreign) interference, and frankly I don't think we've ever done enough. I am all for finding and implementing stronger data security processes and procedures. So far, I've seen nothing that the Mueller investigation has done, or even attempted to do, in that regard.
Quote:But getting to a bigger issue I've been thinking about and that I don't understand. Why does it seem like there is always a dismissal of the actions of many people within the Trump administration for how they have handled themselves?
First of all, multiple officials within the campaign lied about their interactions with officials of the Russian government MULTIPLE times, why are some so eager to dismiss those lies? Especially when, in one example, Trump Jr himself finally admitted what his meeting was about after lying about the reasoning behind the meeting numerous times. That alone is troubling behavior and can't fit the narrative some like to use that he just forgot about the meeting. Trump Jr and Trump intentionally tried to cover up that meeting, and that's OK?
Second, why not be critical of an entire campaign that, when confronted with a situation where a representative with the Russian government is trying to provide information to their campaign, did not turn that information over to authorities? Had the Trump campaign been forthright from the beginning, there would be no doubt that no one within the campaign was conspiring with Russia.
It seems to me that it's easy for some to quickly flip the script and try and chastise people like me for not being even-handed, when they themselves are forgetting to even consider the implications and ethics of the actions that many people in the Trump campaign took, regardless of whether they were part of a broader collusion narrative.
And I'd appreciate it if the responses to these didn't turn into an immediate deflection to the Steele dossier, because that doesn't actually answer the questions.
To respond to your last point, your "flipping the script" reminds me to ask the question, Why aren't you even-handed? We've got better documentation of similar, if not worse, transgressions by Hillary and her minions on repeated occasions. The genesis of this whole conversation, the appearance in the public forum of what should have been confidential internal communications among Podesta and other members of the DNC, occurred because those parties did not take adequate security measures. That's the same thing that was alleged about Hillary and her server. The Clinton organization has repeatedly shown a blatant disregard for information security, going back to Sandy Berger stealing classified information in his socks.
I don't know whether Donald Trump is guilty of any crime or not. If he were accused of any crime that I can imagine, and I were sitting on the jury, based on everything that has been disclosed to date, I would be compelled to vote not guilty. No crime has been proved. If Hillary Clinton were accused of hazarding national security information or perjury or obstruction of justice, and I were sitting on the jury, based upon everything that I know to date, I would be compelled to vote guilty. Comey recited every element of each of those crimes, and multiple counts in most cases.
If either, or anyone else, is guilty of a crime, he or she should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I don't know whether Donald Trump is guilty or not. I know that the facts are there to support prosecution and conviction or Hillary Clinton for multiple crimes. I don't know that I support prosecuting either one. That is what banana republics do. Prosecute your enemies to eliminate them.
So why are you not even-handed?
To respond to your other points, I don't know that anybody is dismissing anything. I would characterize it more as the things just don't amount to anything. What we have from best evidence at this point is that Donald Jr. met with someone who was Russian, and walked out of the meeting with no agreement to do anything, and nothing further was done as a result of the meeting. That's a major nothing burger. Do I like that it happened? No. Do I think it's okay that it happened? Probably not. Does that mean it is legally actionable in any way, civil or criminal? Nope.
Do I like lying about interactions with "the Russians"? No. But what if such interactions are meaningless? Right now, there is no indication that anything meaningful occurred. If that changes, then my position toward them changes. They MIGHT have talked about a lot of things. Hell, they MIGHT have talked about planting a hidden nuclear device under Wall Street--or under the Kremlin, for that matter. But there is no indication that they DID talk about such things. That's where we move from allegation to evidence. And that's where I draw the line.
