I’m relieved and modestly reassured that at least some important quarters in the CIA look back at Team B as a case study in how not to do intelligence analysis.
Also, too, Douglas Fucking Feith.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Do not believe anything that any avowed members of the CIA say, even if there seems some sort of possibility that they are telling the truth. Neither believe so-called “ex”-members unless they have thoroughly proven their ex-ness over decades…proven by being hounded by their ex-colleagues on every level possible.
I read your link from Gleeson in The Atlantic. Among many other questionable statements…in a lawyerly sense if in no other…this one comes early on. (Emphasis mine)
This contains deniability to at least the third degree:
“Most” analysts…who are the ones who do not receive this training or are retrained as they move higher?
“Analysts”…who are what percentage of the whole CIA apparatus, and occupy what positions of real power?
Receive “and” what???
Just an Atlantic typo?
Maybe, maybe not. Sloppy editing? By whom and where along the line? Did he submit this to CIA approval? If so, was the edit there?
I had someone who is kind of an alt. businessman…just this side of criminality, I think…complain to me yesterday that his “processor” was out of town on a family emergency and thus he had to spend hours on his cell phone. I slowly realized that he was talking about his secretary. Are CIA “analysts” much more than just collators of information brought to them (or foisted upon them as part of their job), information about which they have no clue whatsoever regarding its objective accuracy or source? Analyst? Just another fancy job title?
In the CIA hierarchy, they’re just fucking secretaries, Booman!!!
Whatever.
I gotta go to work now.
Later…
AG
Perez got 435 on second round (after 1st round they figured out how many proxy votes were required to get him safely over the top). Ellison got 200 on both round 1 and round 2.
Correx to above – Perez got 235 on second round (after getting 213.5 on first round).
yawn.
Democratic Party establishment / money brokers (that bought and paid for Perez’ appointment, where have we seen this playbook before) didn’t think it was nap-time. Why do you?
(I know the answer — both candidates are the same, who’s behind them doesn’t mean anything, it was a foregone conclusion, power is power, Clinton and their moneyed friends have it and you don’t, what can you do…blah, blah, blah.)
Ellison was named Deputy, so your #PoutParty has a lot of potato salad but no picnickers.
Heck, Perez and Ellison as a team could unify the party, if given half a chance.
Right … if given half a chance.
The bigger battle is containing the damage that SCROTUS and his cronies are doing and likely to continue to do. That means winning back some state legislatures and coming out swinging in 2018 nationwide rather than ceding vast territories to the GOP. The impression I got from both Ellison and Perez was that there were committed to coming out swinging. So yeah, I’ll give them a chance. Either way, both men were many levels above DWS and Donna Brazile. As far as I’m concerned, I’m good with the outcome. Onward.
The concern for me was that most of the people backing Perez are the ones who have ceded those areas. The people who think nothing needs changing and look no farther than Comey.
I hope Perez can do it. Will be thrilled if he can.
For now, I am not convinced. In the meantime, I suppose we need to do our respective things in our localities while we see what changes occur at the national party level. I too hope Perez does well.
Well, mostly what we’ve got, you know, is not so many Democrats elected anywhere anymore, since Clintonites started losing Dem seats en masse 24 years ago, and Obama completed the rout for Republicans over the past 8 years.
Ellison will have relatively little to say about how anything is run–just as the big money establishment wanted it.
And yes, I am sad about it. Still, after all these years of seeing how far gone we are. Honestly don’t know how else to feel. Haven’t met anyone in a long time that’s genuinely happy about ‘politics in America.’ So make fun of me, of it, if you like. Doesn’t help any, of course, but it doesn’t make anything worse either.
I’m so tired of you lightweights.
You know what you don’t see Keith Ellison doing? Whining on the internet. You don’t see that Keith is next in line to take over… that he won ~45% of the votes? In one word, myopia.
Changing an institution full of dead weight like the DNC isn’t going to happen overnight. I will gladly make fun of you because you’re not in this to win. Quit acting so defeated and weak.
The folks with some balls are going to be getting rid of establishment Democrats and bring new life to the party. But it’s going to take hard work and there will be setbacks. Try being useful in this fight.
They don’t want any power because then there’s no responsibility.
Call me a whiner and make fun all you like; but, ships sink, I think you know. And the Democratic Party has been taking on water for a long, long time now. You say it won’t happen overnight. Today’s vote proves that’s true. What timetable do you think is good for “getting rid of the dead weights” dragging the rest of us under?
I’d hoped we might begin today–since I do want to win and to anyone paying attention there’s no time to lose. What’s your schedule? By the next DNC chair election in 2020 it could be too late–for all of us.
That’s exactly what I’m doing because you require a boot in your ass.
There are people still living in the US who have been physically beaten trying to bring positive social change to this country. What the hell have you sacrificed?
One person loses a contested race and you want to take your ball and go home.
Us? You’re in it for yourself… otherwise you would be fighting for progress and not spreading your vacuous we’re all screwed bullshit. You need to grow up.
Sorry. Didn’t mean to discourage you. You, and your friends, you get out there and do your best. I’ll be rooting for you. (Thanks for the uplifting pep talk.)
My preference was for Ellison to get the job. Keith’s strong run puts him in a strong position to leverage a real leadership role as Vice Chair. That said, Tom Perez is not dead weight. Far from it.
I preferred Keith Ellison but don’t have any issue with Tom Perez. His mistake is that he endorsed Hillary.. that’s what it comes down to for those people who decided to make the DNC chair contest a stand-in for the Clinton-Sanders primary. These people also believe that the DNC somehow rigged the nomination for HRC.
Otherwise these are both establishment Democrats whose politics are largely similar. My desire to get rid of dead weight has to do with a lot of the Dem leadership being out of touch with current realities and that the party will be better off getting out of the way of the next generation of progressive leaders.
This…isn’t entirely true. You’ve got the timeline backwards. Obama and his people didn’t want Ellison elevated because of his proximity to Sanders and fear of scaring away donors (and therefore power). They specifically recruited Perez for these reasons. That’s politics. We lost. We will try more.
Yes, the outcome is simply Obama imposing his will (along with the Clintons, et al.).
You’re likely correct regarding the motivation for Perez’ run and yet I find it mostly irrelevant. Change is not going to come from the DNC with regards to big-money donors or re-allocating power.
If you want to scare the Democrats into action on these issues then you need to primary a few of them. I don’t think that will be popular here but it will have a greater effect than putting your hopes into capturing control of Democratic institutions from the top rather than driving change from the grassroots.
The mistake I’ve seen from many is that the primary wars have elevated the DNC and given it far more symbolic power than it actually has. The true power is in state Democratic parties and local grassroots. Organize and reform the local parties and machines.
In doing so you will permanently change the composition and ideological purpose of the DNC.
I agree with you. I just don’t think a lot of Perez defenders are being honest about it, and I don’t see why they feel threatened by these truths for the same reasons you argue “who cares?” And because they can’t be honest about this, it makes me suspicious of other motives. For the same reason all of these WATB’s like Neal here make Perez defenders feel.
Congressmember Ellison after the DNC Chair vote and his acceptance of the Deputy Chair position:
“If you came here supporting me, wearing a Keith T-shirt, or any T-shirt, I’m asking you to give everything you’ve got to support Chairman Perez. You love this country, you love all the people in it, you care about each and every one of them, urban, rural, suburban, all cultures, all faiths, everybody, and they are in need of your help. And if we waste even a moment going at it over who supported who, we are not going to be standing up for those people. We don’t have the luxurey, folks, to walk out of this room divided.”
Deputy? It’s a meaningless position.
I have a feeling that’s about to change.
You may be right. The devil is in the details, and I don’t think we know the details. At least I don’t.
As a staunch supporter of Ellison from the get-go (because I knew what was at stake), I do see the possibility that this result might be, in essence, a face-saving device for the Establishment, and a unification device for the party.
Ellison & Perez themselves get along well and their viewpoints are probably very similar.
Ellison had very strong and broad support.
It’s all about whether the establishment has just conceded significant power or not.
We shall see soon enough.
so is chair, so maybe we focus on moving forward now
Clearly, “chair” is not meaningless. Were it meaningless the Party would have thrown the rest of us a bone. Were it meaningless, Obama would not have appointed DWS four years ago to coerce Hillary’s losing candidacy for president last year, while ignoring the massive wipeout in legislative races nationwide. Were it meaningless, Dean wouldn’t have been elected in 2005 and led the party to taking back Congress in 2006, and adding to those totals in 2008 (as well as providing the 50-state support that won Obama his presidency).
Nonsense. What the elected chair represents is fraught with meaning. And what Perez’s appointment by the Democratic establishment represents is a sad reminder of how far up its own ass the Democratic establishment is and how impossible it will be for the party to recover from its repeated failures to win elections over the past quarter century.
You know I basically want to run 90% of the Dem establishment out of town on a rail. But you can’t ignore that too many democrats trust their leadership (in defiance if facts but thats not new). We have to change that to actually get rid of them.
Now that they’re working together, does this mean Ellison is a neoliberal sellout?
Just means that the party came together to avoid another opportunity.
TPM: Ellison told voting members he had signatures from 750,000 rank-and-file Democrats who support his chairmanship bid. He promised to “convert them from demonstration energy to electoral energy.”
Personally I find all that energy distressing and unserious, and think if I mock people’s ‘poutrage’ that will lead to better outcomes.
My favorite is from the no-longer-readable Balloon Juice: “That won’t stop the manic progressives who decided to turn this DNC chair election into a proxy Clinton/Sanders primary, so just ignore them, mock them, or tell them to fuck off. If Trump isn’t enough to unite Democrats, these fucking people are worthless and we deserve him. I swear to god these Bernie bots read the Charge of the Light Brigade and learned all the fucking wrong lessons.”
Yeah, those manic progressives. I don’t know where they get these crazy ideas!
Weil put, the Dems ‘avoided another opportunity’. In fact they outright rejected it in favor of ceding ground to Donald Trump.
In the end, you’re right. The wrong choice was made, but it doesn’t change what I need to do at all in my local area.
great he can finally get doing what the DNC chair does, raise money for candidates
Team B was the forerunner of Cheney’s “Office of Special Plans”, which was in the Defense Department and entirely distinct from the CIA. The OSP were the ones that cooked up the WMD “evidence” in Iraq (based on bogus stories from Ahmad Chalabi, cultivated by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle), and then pressured the CIA to endorse the fake WMD evidence (because the CIA had found no evidence of WMD on their own). And this false evidence is what the great Trumpster, trying to bury the Russian hacking story, lambasted the CIA for during the campaign.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/13/1610607/-Trump-s-False-Claims-About-CIA
Dean made it meaningful. Obama made it meaningless.
Wikileaks is in official alliance with James O’Keefe now:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/834540074968678401
WikiLeaks
@wikileaks
Retweeted James O’Keefe
US journalist @JamesOKeefeIII says he will start publishing (“WikiLeaks style”) CNN leaked tapes tomorrow
3:07 PM – 22 Feb 2017
The rest of WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed is what you would expect from an organization which aims to help Trump and his domestic and international allies.
My favorite tweets are the litany of tweets which “revealed” that Tom Perez supported Hillary Clinton in the primary. Instead of sensationalizing benign emails, WikiLeaks might have chosen to “reveal” the TOP SECRET video of many television appearances Perez made as a Clinton campaign surrogate.
Brave, brave WikiLeaks.
Anyone want to place a bet on how long it will take a certain group of people around here to defend wikileaks and start the ‘rehabilitation’ of James O’Keefe?
…
Yeah mean neither. It’s a sucker’s bet.