31 posts from Wednesday, March 20, 2024

So in the 1960s Americans got a look behind the curtain of Washington. Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's plan to bait journalists with hoaxes disguised as scoops, got exposed. Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to a major circulation American Journal? We do have people who submit pieces to other two American journals. Langley was laundering narratives to the press and into the public's veins. The most trusted names in news were working wittingly or unwittingly as deep state conduits of disinformation. At least 22 American news organizations, from the New York Times to Life magazine to CBS, had journalists on the CIA payroll. At CBS we had been contacted by the CIA as a matter of fact by the time I became the head of the whole news and public affairs operation in 1954. Ships had been established and I was told about them and asked if I'd carry on with them. And the cover-up continues. Although the lies are more blatant now. There is no deep state. There's no deep state. There's no great spy network who takes down presidents here. There is no deep state and we need to stop talking about it. The deep state doesn't exist. Okay, spoiler alert, there is no deep state. But today my staff opened the New York Times and saw this. It turns out the deep state is actually kind of awesome. Not only does the deep state exist, but the deep state is filled with people just like you and me. To prove it, the New York Times took a road trip. First stop, they visited a Star Trek lover. First stop, Huntsville, Alabama. Sure looks like some nefarious government activity happens around here. Meet Scott Bellamy. I am a mission manager in the Planetary Missions Program Office. He drives a Nissan Titan 4x4. He's loved Star Trek since he was a kid. Of course I have a favorite character. It's either Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock. And he may have quite literally saved the planet from annihilation. They knocked an asteroid off its course, proving something that had previously only been done in movies. Saving the world from an Armageddon scenario. And then the New York Times visited a water administrator. Next, we traveled deep into the swamp itself, Washington, D.C. I am the assistant administrator for water at the Environmental Protection Agency. She loves pilates, making salads. Oh, and she led an operation to make our drinking water lead-free in 10 years. That's the dream. You want to replace your own water pipes? You got the skills to launch an asteroid deflecting spacecraft? No. That's why your tax dollars pay experts like Radhika and Scott. Yep, the deep state is hard at work, making America great. Just because we don't know about it doesn't make it suspicious. Oh, and then there's the wage official at the Department of Labor. I am the acting director of enforcement for the Wage and Hour Division for the Midwest Regional Office for the U.S. Department of Labor. I had to take a breath, yes. She still eats Lucky Charms for breakfast, trains for marathons, and loves Latin dancing. Boombia, bachata, cha-cha-cha, you name it, I did it. And she uses your tax dollars to get kids out of working in dangerous slaughterhouses. So the Times says when we hear deep state, instead of recoiling, we should rally around the everyday heroes who wake up ready to dedicate their careers and their lives to serving us. The New York Times is telling you the deep state isn't an intelligence cabal interfering in elections. It's merely civil servants who enjoy dancing Lucky Charms and Star Trek, just like you. The deep state kills asteroids and does pilates. They don't illegally sabotage politicians they can't control. They're too busy making salads and keeping your water clean. As a matter of fact, thank you, deep state. Funny how the New York Times didn't take a road trip to Langley, or the Bureau, or the Pentagon, or the Justice Department. Russia collusion, the laptop, the letter, the lab leak were probably cooked up at NASA. But this man's not a NASA official. He's a former CIA officer declaring America's greatest threat is Donald Trump. The greatest threat to the United States right now is from within. Donald Trump has broken all norms. You can't say those things, or in the past you could not, without being condemned across the political spectrum, including from your own parties. So the fact that this is now the norm is deeply troubling. And look, we're going into uncharted territory here. So what happens if there is, again, a contested election? So what do we know about this guy? This CIA official was the chief recruiter to get 50 other spooks to sign onto that letter, claiming Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. He's the guy. And now he's back for the bloodbath hoax. And publicly announcing Trump, not Russia, not China, not terrorism, is America's top threat. The deep state's telegraphing what they're going to do. Run a PR campaign saying we should rally around the deep state, because there are good old American public servants who eat cereal and exercise just like you. And on the same day, send a guy behind the CIA letter to put a big fat target on Trump's back. Because when you're the CIA and you say something's a threat, what do you think the CIA is trained to do about threats? Just getting started. Not only is Trump a security threat, he's an unstable psychopath, they say. He uses this apocalyptic language, this violent language, consistently, almost on any topic. And the reason, fundamentally, is true context. And the true context is his state of mind, his mental abilities and his personality disorders. He is a narcissistic psychopath. I mean, if you look at the definitions in the DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, he is clearly a sociopath. Okay, so Biden's cognitive abilities are fine, but Trump's a sociopath. The deep state uses these propaganda techniques on our most dangerous enemies, like ISIS, like North Korean dictators, like the Russians. These are the same forces that are targeting the Republican nominee for president, a former president, because of his populist agenda and his inability to be manipulated. And so if someone's a domestic threat, and they're an unpredictable sociopath, how do you bring in a counterintelligence operation to neutralize them? You link them to foreign powers, like the Russia hoax, and you use money to do it. Now, Trump has got to put up a half a billion dollars cash bond just to appeal his excessive fine in New York, so Latisha James doesn't seize his properties. The real problem that we as Americans need to be watching is where the money, if at all, comes from. Is it going to come from Qatar? Is it going to come from Saudi Arabia? Could it come through some back channel oligarch from Russia? If, in fact, that happens, just think about the danger that Donald Trump is putting America and our national security at risk. He will now be indebted to a foreign entity. And as a potential president of the United States, imagine if, God forbid, a million times that he wins. Imagine the indebtedness that he will have to a foreign entity over the benefit and the needs of America. So now they've established a national security threat, foreign blackmail and mental instability. And to make the Trump presidency even more dangerous, they warn of an impending American genocide if he isn't stopped. He's going to come after immigrants. He's going to come after people of color. He was locking babies in cages as a matter of formal policy. He banned Muslim folks in this country as his first act as president. He will do that and he will do even more. This is a man who likes words like poison, like American carnage, like bloodbath. Those are not metaphors. That is the intellectual and ideological universe in which he lives. One of violence, one of decay, one of death. And that is what he hopes to produce. We're witnessing the beginning of another coup, a dark and dangerous chapter in America's here. They're combining the dictator on day one hoax with the bloodbath hoax to justify stopping Trump by any means necessary. The deep state's preparing for war. Limbaugh warned us. What is going on in the deep state, the embedded bureaucracy where the Obama shadow government is doing everything it can to overthrow the Trump presidency and make no mistake. That is what's happening. The media is now doing the bidding of the Obama shadow government. All these people leaking made up things, non-factual things that allow the media to continue to run stories that are nothing but speculation that fall under the rubric of the seriousness of the charge.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

So far, in just over three years as president, Biden has already presided over a record-breaking 11 partial and full embassy evacuations. And earlier today, his failure and weakness on the world stage, they're on full display during the House hearing on his botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Take a look at some of these highlights or for Joe, low lights. On 11 April 2021, I received orders from President Biden through the secretary of defense to execute a full military withdrawal by 11 September 2021, a date which was subsequently modified to the end of August. This decision did not include the withdrawal of our embassy, our citizens, and at-risk Afghans. It's important to understand that we had a complete plan to execute that task as well, but we're not ordered to do so. The president's decision was to maintain an embassy, to not require our citizens to leave, and of course, to not expedite the extraction of at-risk Afghans. This was not a military decision. As you are aware, the decision to begin a NEO rests with the Department of State, not the Department of Defense. Despite this, we had begun positioning forces in the region as early as 9 July, but we could do nothing, nothing to commence the operation, the evacuation, until a NEO was declared. I think some were killed. Afghans, I don't know about the Americans, I don't think the Americans were, but I think some of the Afghans were tracked down, that worked with us, and I think some of them were killed, and I'm pretty certain some of them in pretty brutal ways. And still, Americans sadly trapped behind enemy lines, billions of dollars of our military equipment left in the hands of the Taliban. Anyway, here with reaction, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Victor Davis Hanson, and House Armed Services Committee member, Florida Congressman Michael Waltz. Congressman, start with you. You know, the idea that the Taliban, they were allowed to march all the way straight to Karzai International Airport. They knew it was happening. The Biden administration knew it. They did nothing to stop their march. And then this, this, this, hey, I don't think you could have had a worse withdrawal than what happened here, leaving, abandoning Americans behind enemy lines, abandoning our allies. We promised we wouldn't do that. They were abandoned behind enemy lines, and the billions of military equipment just left in the hands of the Taliban. I don't think you can screw anything up worse than that. Yeah, Sean, the generals today weren't pulling their punches when it came to the State Department, led by Blinken, or the lack of leadership in this White House. And as a result, you had three things. You had number one, you had three four-star generals ignored by President Biden, who did not do as President Trump did, which was leave the base and leave some special operators to keep a lid on terrorism. Biden ignored that, yanked everybody out, except for the fact that they didn't have a plan to pull our embassy to get American citizens, nor did they have, did he give the order to rescue our allies. The military was very clear, as you heard. They had a plan to do it. Biden and the State Department were living in this fantasy land that you had the good terrorists, the Taliban, that they could work with. And as a result, that incompetence, that lack of planning, that lack of leadership, you've got 13 Americans dead. The Gold Star families were there today. You've got our allies on the, I mean, our enemies on the march all over the world because our allies were abandoned and the entire world got the message that America was incompetent and in decline. And we will live with that for the rest of my lifetime and just in this last couple of years, you've now got our 11th embassy. Haiti is going to be next, unfortunately, that has been drastically downgraded or completely withdrawn. And Victor Davis Hanson, I read in the last week and a half that Al Qaeda training camps are back up and running in Afghanistan. Oh, that can't be good for the world. That can't be good for the free world. And you look at Joe Biden, we'd have a new axis of evil, evil, China, Russia, Iran. Iran is allowed to get rich because Joe Biden turns a blind eye to the sanctions they should be enforcing. Then they're even allowing Venezuela to get rich again after they allowed the most in Iran to get rich again. And I'm looking at the world situation. I don't think anybody really cares what Joe Biden thinks or does because they don't have any respect for him. Your take. Yeah, I agree on Afghanistan. Remember, he arbitrarily picked a date and that was supposed to be an iconic celebration of September 11th, the 20th anniversary. He said we would be out. And so he made that date fit the circumstances rather than the circumstances fit the date. I was empathetic to the generals today, Sean, but I wish one of them had resigned when this decision making was going taking place. If just one of them had said, this is strategically impossible. I cannot follow this order. I do not want to attack the commander in chief, but I resigned. I will not be a part of this. It might have been prevented. But now we get the truth, not only after the fact, but after the generals are retired in private life, I think they could have done something better for the country if they'd resigned when this was going on. We've lost deterrence, Sean. It's whether you've defined it as the telling the Ukrainians we'd help them if it was a depending on it was a major or minor offensive, the Chinese balloon, you name it, we've lost deterrence. What we're seeing is the global counterpart of defunding the police in our cities. When we defunded the police, people came out of the woodwork to take advantage of that. And that's what's happening now globally as we withdraw from the world stage. It's a more dangerous world. We definitely need the reemergence of America as the world leader of the free world to counter this. And Sean, thank you. Big difference between responsibility and accountability. People are taking responsibility, still zero accountability, zero, none. It's unacceptable.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

Ready, set, don't fire. That's the focus of tonight's angle. Thanks to House Republicans and Gold Star families who refused to take silence for an answer, former Biden officials were forced to sit and answer questions today on that disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. Now, without naming names, the generals denied they were at fault. - If there is culpability in this attack, it lies in policy decisions that created the environment of August 2021 in Kabul. - Do you believe that if State and DOD were on the same page that Bagram could have remained a viable option? - Once you go below 2.5K for US forces, you can't hold Bagram. At 2.5, I was enthusiastic about holding Bagram. - Presidents make decisions, and once that decision's made, we execute. - The refusal to abide by the recommendations that both of you made would have preserved the option to maintain Bagram. Would Bagram have been a preferable strategic exit? - All things being equal, you'd prefer to have Bagram at 2.5K. - What the generals are saying is that the resources and troop levels were not sufficient for a safe withdrawal from both Abigail and Bagram. How strenuously, though, did they argue that point? Did they warn of the potential for a significant number of US casualties? Now, some of this is just common sense. You don't announce your withdrawing your military presence as Biden did in a hostile country, only to then drag your feet on the actual removal of personnel and equipment. The term sitting ducks come into mind? Again, Milley blamed Blinken and Biden without using their names. - On 14 April '21, President Biden made the formal announcement of his decision to honor the Doha Agreement with a military withdrawal while maintaining a continued diplomatic presence. The Department of Defense understood that our mission was to conduct a retrograde of the remaining US military forces and equipment while leaving a small contingent to defend the American embassy while diplomatic outcomes were negotiated. On 14 August, the non-combatant evacuation operation decision was made by the Department of State and the US military alerted, marshaled, mobilized, and rapidly deployed faster than any military in the world could ever do. It is my assessment that that decision came too late. - Well, the Department of State is not a person, of course. And, of course, this all begs the question. Why on earth did we stay in Afghanistan for 20 years? The money wasted, the wonderful, incredible brave people we lost, for what? - At the end of 20 years, we, the military, helped build an army, a state, but we could not forge a nation. The enemy occupied Kabul, the overthrow of the government occurred, and the military we supported for two decades faded away. That is a strategic failure. - Well, don't forget, we spent billions upon billions training Afghan troops. We were told it was gonna work. Yet the military, the Afghan military, so it's called, as soon as the Taliban began making resurgence, it dissolved. It's a tribal society, and always will be. We had no business being there, and despite our spending $800 billion annually on defense, you can't buy pragmatic thinking. The generals, heck, even low-level enlisted men stationed there, knew full well what a ragtag group the Afghan security forces were. Without American money and our own military propping them up, they couldn't stand on their own. What role did the sudden, just almost instantaneous, collapse of the Afghan government play in the events following the continuing evacuation and withdrawal? - They melted away, and that was probably the most significant, immediate operational effect of the collapse of the Afghan government. We thought, so it is a possibility, but that's why we had to put in almost 6,000 US forces to replace those Afghans that had melted away. We would have been able to hold HKEA with a far smaller number of US forces had the Afghans remain. But when the government collapsed, they went away. So that had a profound and immediate effect on everything else that followed. - Right, right. But aren't our generals generals because they have the ability to game out scenarios better than anyone else? They knew that President Afghanistan was a puppet with no real support among the people. Thus, they should have known that he and all his top staff would plan to save themselves first by bugging out of the country. But they admitted their projections were off. - We estimated that the earliest time of complete collapse could be in the fall, maybe around Thanksgiving, something like that. Nothing indicated August, per se. President Ghani's entire cabinet, less one, one went up into the Panjure Valley. The rest of them got on airplanes and took off out of their country. As soon as the ANSF saw that, they literally took their uniforms off, put their weapons down and it collapsed. - But no kidding, I mean, this is obvious stuff. And this was predicted by people who were critics of this conflict from almost the beginning. And at one point today, General Milley seemed to indicate that real accountability may be long, long off. Lots of documents need to be produced and other military personnel need to testify. - If you're gonna get an accurate picture, there's lots of people along the line that will need to be discussed. There is a lot of documents. The vast majority of them are classified and many very highly classified. And how that would work between say the Department of Defense, Department of State, CIA, et cetera, and the various committees, but to get a full comprehensive holistic picture, you're gonna have to get documents and all that. That's gonna take a long time. And there's rules that govern all that. - Okay, of course, some key questions do remain that only the commanding officers on the ground know the answers to. - When the team on the ground was seeking authority to take out the prospective bomber and they saw somebody that matched the description, they were told, quote, "Leadership did not have engagement authority for us. Do not engage." Did we ever figure out what happened in the chain of command there? - I don't have personal knowledge of that set of asks or denials. - Wait, wait, wait, he doesn't have knowledge about that set of asks or denies? That's kind of strange, as that's a pretty important thing for him to have inquired about in the aftermath of Americans dying, don't you think? Now, right after that exchange, Chairman McCall said that the committee has asked DOD for documents to be produced and for the testimony of the commanding officers who were on the ground. But no luck so far getting any of that information. So the obvious question after years have gone by, what is the Biden administration hiding and why? If such a do not engage order had been in effect, it was insane and that individual should be fired. But then again, no one's ever fired in this administration for anything. Secretary Austin wasn't fired after being missing for three days and failing to disclose his hospitalization. Janet Yellen wasn't fired despite spectacularly missing inflation. Mayor Pete kept his job after East Palestine, Ohio, that derailment and various FAA screw-ups. Alejandro Mayorkas, he wasn't fired when the border situation exploded, but then again, he is executing his orders perfectly, flood the country with as many illegals as possible and who knows how many of them could actually end up voting for their benefactors. But in Biden world, firing Blinken or Austin would just mean admitting to failure. And remember, to them, everything is a PR problem. The economy, the border, crime, Ukraine, all of it. They will never, ever change their policies. They'll just rebrand the old policies. And the same refusal to cut your losses and change course infects our Pentagon. No matter how much and for how long American voters wanted to see an end to the Afghanistan war, the Pentagon never wanted to take its fingers out of the dike. No matter how unpopular the war became. And now, all these years later, we still see no one take responsibility for major policy failures that resulted in an incalculable destruction to our country and the loss of life. And at the same time, we see our government unfairly target President Trump, the chief political rival of Joe Biden. They're gonna hold Trump accountable for no wrongdoing and let real wrongdoers skate, including in Biden's own family. In November, voters finally have their chance to do something the president refused to do, fire the idiots responsible for the mess we're in. And that's the angle.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.