When will this international embarrassment end?

5 Comments

1. wobblie
   Posted July 8, 2017 at 3:21 pm | Permalink

   Obama was a Kenyan Socialist. We are being played.
   http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/the-undeniable-pattern-of-russian-hacking.html#more

2. Anonymous
   Posted July 8, 2017 at 4:46 pm | Permalink

   Tillerson has since amended his comments, adding the following. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe him.

   “He raised the concerns of the American people [over Russian meddling] and pressed Putin [on that] more than once.”

3. Ilana Houten
   Posted July 8, 2017 at 6:21 pm | Permalink

   “Though the mills of God grind slowly; Yet they grind exceeding small;
   Though with patience He stands waiting, With exactness grinds He all.”

   -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

   It will happen.

4. Meta
   Posted July 8, 2017 at 6:31 pm | Permalink

   From the Weekly Standard.

   If Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s readout of Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin is a preview of the Trump administration’s approach to Russia, it’s going to be a rough three and a half years. In a diplomatic depantsing that will have repercussions far beyond Russia, Tillerson’s comments did more to further Russia’s interests than Russian propaganda outlets could have possibly hoped to accomplish themselves.

   Tillerson told reporters that Trump and Putin “acknowledged the challenges of cyber threats and interference in the democratic processes of the United States and other countries.” Well then.

   Vladimir Putin acknowledged generic “challenges” of unspecified “cyber threats” related to U.S. elections and those in other countries? Who cares? What Putin wouldn’t acknowledge was far more important: The Russians were the source of the cyber threats…

   Tillerson reported that after the two men had a “robust and lengthy exchange on the subject,” Putin “denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past.” Putin’s denials are false, of course, and the offenses are grave. Russia’s election meddling is part of a longer pattern of provocation largely ignored by the Obama administration and now tolerated by Trump. But the president apparently didn’t want to let reality intrude on his desire for better relations (he began his meeting by telling Putin that he was “honored” to meet him) and Tillerson didn’t seem to care. “So, more work to be done on that regard,” Tillerson said, dismissively.

   If that’s where the issue rested after today’s meeting, that’d be bad enough. But Tillerson made matters worse. He offered additional thoughts on what “more work” might be done. Trump and Putin, Tillerson announced, “agreed to explore creating a framework around which the two countries can work together to better understand how to deal with these cyber threats.”

   A framework for understanding? Not consequences? Not sanctions? Not even the threat of retaliation from the United States?

   There is no need for a framework of understanding. Vladimir Putin understands what this diplo-feculence means: The Trump administration will not punish him in any way for his aggressive attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. And we don’t need a framework for understanding to see what that’ll mean for future elections—here and elsewhere: It will happen again.

   The intelligence community predicted as much six months before Friday’s meeting. As the January 6 report said: “We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes.”

   In the unlikely event that there was any remaining confusion about U.S. capitulation, Tillerson used a response to a reporter’s question to end it. “I think what the two presidents, I think rightly, focused on is how do we move forward; how do we move forward from here.”

   The embarrassment wasn’t limited to interference in U.S. elections. There was Syria, too, where Tillerson claimed that American and Russian “objectives are exactly the same.”

   It is absurd to claim that our objectives in Syria—where the United States has called for the end of the Assad regime that Russia is supporting—are exactly the same. Forget being identical; in most cases, they aren’t even coincidental.

   Read more:
   http://www.weeklystandard.com/trump-caves-to-putin/article/2008751

5. Joe M.
   Posted July 10, 2017 at 7:23 am | Permalink

   Minor nitpicking, but the Russians have not hacked any nuclear sites.

   They are targeting the companies and executives involved in our nuclear power industry, but no one has come remotely close to hacking the sites themselves.