Balloon Juice | Adam L Silverman, Author at Balloon Juice

Adam L. Silverman is a consulting national security subject matter expert specializing in low intensity warfare (asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare, revolution, insurgency, terrorism), civil affairs, psychological operations, and cultural considerations for strategy and policy.

He routinely provides operational support to a number of US Army, DOD, and other US Government elements. Dr. Silverman holds a doctorate in political science and criminology from the University of Florida, as well as masters' degrees in comparative religion and international security. Full professional bio available here: https://www.balloon-juice.com/adam-silverman-bio/

Adam Silverman has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2015.

Black PSYOP, l’Affaire Ukraine, AG Barr’s Investigation, and the Impeachment Inquiry of the President

by Adam L Silverman| October 25, 20191:30 pm| 130 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Russia, Silverman on Security

The short definition of Psychological Operations, popularly known as PSYOP, is the weaponization of information for effect. The effect being to influence the targeted population, whether a group, an organization, a society, an element within a society, or a government, to either undertake an action or to prevent an action from being taken. Black PSYOP refers to the attempts to launder the influence operation through a legitimate third party that is not connected to those conducting the influence operation. Former FBI Special Agent and Counterintelligence Officer Asha Rangappa provided an excellent run down with one of the classic historical examples in a tweet thread on Tuesday.

It’s called legitimizing propaganda. You place the information you want people to believe in what appears to be an independent source unconnected to you. Then you can cite it as further “evidence” of your own claims, making them appear more credible. 1/
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) October 23, 2019

Yesterday, Julian Sanchez’s tweeted an analysis of the leaks indicating that the DOJ (read AG Barr) had opened a criminal investigation into how the counterintelligence investigation into the President’s campaigns contacts and connections with both formal and informal Russian state actors, as well as Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was started and undertaken. I think his assessment is plausible. You can find that thread here:

On a second read, this absolutely reeks of a strategic leak. Two sources say Durham’s review has spawned a criminal inquiry, but not when it happened or what the crime is. That’s awfully suggestive. https://t.co/ljN2DVXo8n
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) October 25, 2019

With one exception. Specifically that Sanchez doesn’t tie what he’s describing in to the larger influence operation. That larger operation, which is a domestically focused Black PSYOP, has three lines of effort, each with multiple parts, and they all are now interconnected.

1) The Ukrainian deliverable.
A) The real deliverable wasn’t manufactured dirt on the Bidens. Rather, it was getting Zelensky to go on CNN to announce the opening of an investigation into the Bidens, because CNN is a mainstream news outlet and is in opposition to the President in its reporting. As soon as that happened, the President’s team would have campaign ads running 24/7 with this. They’d be pushing the reporters they often use, or who are primed for this type of cheap high like Ken Vogel, at mainstream outlets to get all over Zelensky’s announcement, thereby further laundering it and disseminating it through mainstream and legitimate outlets.
B) The fallback, when Zelensky wouldn’t play ball, was to have Hannity interview Shokin – the disgraced, corrupt prosecutor who was forced out under pressure from the US, EU, the IMF, and others. From the reporting over the past two or three days, Parnas and Fruman and Giuliani were all going to Vienna to arrange for this to happen the next night, which would be the night after Parnas and Fruman were arrested. It was also the night after Barr both returned to the US from his “fact finding trip”, met with the SDNY, and then had dinner with Rupert Murdoch.
C) The Romania and China gambits are also fallbacks. The President’s senior advisor for trade issues, Peter Navarro refused to answer CNN’s Jim Sciutto’s questions yesterday about whether the PRC had been told that in order to get a trade deal they had to manufacture dirt on Hunter Biden. I think it is reasonable to conclude that his refusal to answer should be taken as a yes. NBC/MSNBC had new reporting on Hunter Biden and Romania earlier this evening.
D) Barr’s criminal investigation is another fallback here. In this case it turns the DOJ into the propaganda laundry.

2) The Firtash initiative. Firtash wants off house arrest in Vienna and out from under the extradition order to send him to the US to face the Federal crimes he’s been indicted for. The reason Firtash wants this done is because he’s Putin’s man in Ukraine’s natural gas industry. If Firtash can get back to Kyiv he can then once again try to take over Ukraine’s natural gas sector, suck it dry of profits, and fuck up its operations, which will force the Ukrainians to buy natural gas from Russia while removing Ukrainian natural gas as an alternative to Russian natural gas for the rest of the EU market. This all benefits Putin, who is Firtash’s krysha (roof/ceiling) in the Russian mob. Just as he is for every other one of these oligarchs aligned with him.
A) Firtash’s efforts weren’t going very far, so he fired his US attorneys and hired Toensing and DiGenova. They then hired Parnas to do their translation work despite it being reported that Firtash and most of his staff speaking fluent and/or functional English.
B) Firtash was laundering manufactured dirt and conspiracy theories about the Bidens, about the Democrats working with Ukraine to steal the 2016 election, etc through Parnas and Fruman and Toensing and DiGenova to Giuliani. Giuliana who was being paid/worked for Parnas, but also somehow also Parnas’s boss.
C) Toensing and DiGenova are also working for free to assist Giuliani with manufacturing dirt on the Bidens.

3) The lift Russian sanctions initiative. Here’s where it all ties together, by laundering these conspiracy theories, especially that the Democrats and the Ukrainians, in conjunction with DNI, CIA, FBI, NSA, and DOJ, conspired to steal the 2016 election by running a false flag (maskirovka) operation to make it look like Russia was actually conspiring with Trump, his campaign, Republicans, and major conservative movement organizations to steal the 2016 election, it provides a fig leaf for Trump to order the lifting of US sanctions against Russia that went on after the seizure of Crimea and the invasion of Donbass and were expanded as a result of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A) Manafort, through his attorney, was feeding Giuliani this conspiracy theory from jail and then prison.
B) This provides cover to pardon Manafort and Flynn and several others.
C) It was reported today that DiGenova and Toensing are the attorneys representing the conspiracist masquerading as an investigative journalist John Solomon who was (finally) just fired from The Hill. And here is where #3 wraps back into #1. Solomon was laundering all of these conspiracy theories, from Uranium 1 to the Democrats conspired with the Ukrainians, the DNI, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and the DOJ to frame the Russians for trying to steal the 2016 election in order to steal the 2016 election for the Democrats to the Biden bullshit.

A couple of final points. Both Giuliani and Toensing and DiGenova are now claiming that Parnas, Fruman, and now, I suppose, Solomon cannot be deposed, questioned, etc by investigators since they were either working for Giuliani and/or Toensing and DiGenova or are represented by them and therefore everything they know is either attorney-client privilege or attorney work product. So you can’t ask Giuliani about what Toensing or DiGenova are doing. Or what Parnas or Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Toensing and DiGenova about what Giuliani, Parnas, and/or Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Parnas and Fruman what Giuliani or Toensing or DiGenova are doing. You can’t ask Toensing and DiGenova what Solomon is doing. You can’t ask Soloman what DiGenova and Toensing are doing. You can’t ask Firtash what Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenova, and/or Parnas and Fruman are doing. You can’t ask Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenova, and/or Firtash is doing. And because Giuliani claims all of this is on behalf of his client, the President, you also can’t, because of executive privilege, ask Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman who are working for him and who he is working for, and/or Toensing and DiGenova who are assisting him pro bono and employing Parnas anything because they are all covered from having to divulge anything or answering any questions under executive privilege.

If this sounds familiar, it is similar to how Roy Cohn handled his legal representation of the organized crime families he represented in New York. They’d hold all their business/decision making meetings in his dining room with him present or with him on the phone in case of an emergency, so it was all covered under attorney-client privilege. Nobody, from any angle of inquiry, can say nothing about nothing and no one because everything is privileged.

Finally, I guarantee that there is an equivalent of the Black PSYOP delineated in #1 queued up for Warren, Sanders, Harris, and Buttigieg as the front runners. And if a new front runner emerges from the primary field, one will be cooked up for them too.

Open thread!

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The Gaetz Maneuver or Why Forcing Entry Into a Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) Is a Really Bad Idea

by Adam L Silverman| October 23, 20198:23 pm| 83 Comments

This post is in: America, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, All Too Normal

While Tamara and John covered Congressman Gaetz’s and his colleagues’ stupidity earlier today, I wanted to focus a little more on just why exactly this wasn’t just a stupid stunt, but was very, very, very bad in terms of Information Security (INFOSEC). It has now been reported that Congressman Gaetz gave the House Minority Leader, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), a heads up about what he had planned.

NEW — House Minority Leader McCarthy’s office was told in advance that its rebel members would storm the SCIF today. They support it. https://t.co/hthVNifnAG
W/ @sambrodey
— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 23, 2019

We don’t know if this was done verbally face to face, by text, or by phone call. My guess is either verbally face to face or phone call. But these chuckleheads seem to be enamored of WhatsApp, which is notoriously insecure despite claiming to be a secure method of texting and calling, so they may have used that.

We also now know that this was coordinated with the President.

NEW: Trump had advance knowledge and supported a protest by Republicans who told him they planned to barge into a secure hearing room on Capitol Hill where Democrats are holding impeachment testimonies, according to four people familiar with the matter.https://t.co/FD93uj4HNW
— Kevin Whitelaw (@KevinWhitelaw1) October 23, 2019

In this case, because it was reported, we know it was done by face to face communication.

And this is where the Information Security issues really come into play. If you recall from my posts from May 2018 and September 2019 we know from reporting in Wired and Politico that the President calls, texts, and tweets from a pair of unsecured smart phones and that allied, peer competitor, and hostile foreign countries have set up mobile wireless interception devices near the White House to intercept these electronic communications. Congressman Gaetz has publicly bragged of his relationship with the President. Congressman McCarthy’s has been reported on as well, especially involving red and pink Starbursts candies. If you were an allied, partnered, peer competitor, or hostile foreign power and wanted to try to gain access to the President’s communications, one way to do it would be to try to hack either Gaetz’s or McCarthy’s cell phones. Or those of any number of the other 30 Republican members of Congress and their staffers who pulled this stupid stunt today.

These morons, in an attempt to create a spectacle that will take over the news cycle about impeachment so that the majority of the public that isn’t paying close attention at all times just throws its hands up in disgust, didn’t just force entry into the House of Representatives’ Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), they brought their unsecured cell phones with them. Moreover, they then took imagery with those phones – pictures and/or videos – of classified spaces and, potentially, any classified information that had been taken out in advance of the deposition and was in public view for those members of the House, Republicans and Democrats alike, who actually had the need to know to access it today. And then they started texting and tweeting and emailing that out. On unsecured devices and unsecured and non-governmental networks! This required, as was reported, the SCIF to be closed once they finished their pizza, Chick Fil-A, their stunt and finally gave up and left, so it could be swept and resecured before the delayed deposition could finally take place. What Congressman Gaetz, Congressman Scalise who is the #2 Republican in the House/Republican House Caucus, and their 28 or so colleagues did wasn’t just a stupid stunt, it was a major security violation.

How major? Off the top of my head the number of Federal felonies committed by Gaetz and his colleagues is:

Forced entry into a SCIF
Criminal trespass in a SCIF
Bringing unsecured electronic devices into a SCIF
Taking imagery – pictures and video – of classified spaces and materials on unsecured devices
Transmitting imagery – pictures and video – of classified spaces and materials on unsecured devices to unsecured devices through a variety of unsecured platforms (texting, tweeting, emailing, etc)

It has now been reported that Congressman Thompson (D-MS), the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee has asked the House Sergeant of Arms to take action agains Gaetz and his colleagues.

JUST IN: House Homeland Security Committee Chairman asks sergeant at arms to “take action” against Republicans who charged into the SCIF. Doesn’t explain what action he wants: pic.twitter.com/nBT5qgUOsF
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 23, 2019

I don’t know what exactly Congressman Thompson has in mind, as he doesn’t specify in his letter, but here’s what should happen at a minimum.

Each of the cell phones, smart phones, tablets, and/or any other electronic devices that these 30 Republican members of the House and their staffers brought with them into the House SCIF need to be confiscated by the House’s Special Security Officer (SSO).
Each of these devices then needs to be forensically checked for any hacking and/or malware and the results of those checks passed to the appropriate counterintelligence officials for follow up.
Each of these devices should, at a minimum, be completely wiped before being returned to their owners. The appropriate action is to actually destroy them.
The staffers who accompanied these House Republicans should have their access immediately terminated, their clearances suspended pending a completed counterintelligence investigation, and they should be suspended from duties and barred from returning to work until that investigation is completed. While I won’t prejudge the outcomes of such an investigation, frankly, they should be terminated and their files flagged at the Defense Security and Counterintelligence Agency (DSCA), which is now in charge of overseeing all clearances, to prevent them from every obtaining a clearance again.
While I doubt it will happen because they are Constitutional Officers of the United States, because they are elected members of the House of Representatives and will claim their actions today are covered under the Speech and Debate Clause, the 30 or so Republican members of the House should also have their access immediately terminated, their clearances suspended pending a completed counterintelligence investigation, and they should be suspended from duties and barred from returning to work until that investigation is completed. Here too their files should be flagged at the Defense Security and Counterintelligence Agency (DSCA) to prevent them from every obtaining a clearance again.

I expect that while Congressman Gaetz and the 29 or so other Republican members of the House that committed multiple felonies with him this morning are unlikely to face any really serious repercussions, that their staffers will not be so lucky. Those men and women, who based on the video being televised all appeared to be in their 20s and 30s, are likely to have their professional lives ruined by this as they don’t have the same protections that members of the House do. Especially, since Congressman Gaetz has already thrown the staffer that accompanied him to the wolves.

**Tweet from Staff**
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 23, 2019

Lest Congressman Gaetz get away with that, here’s the picture of him taking video on his unsecured smart phone when he illegally entered the House’s SCIF. Kind of hard to miss the sign!

I would like to think that Speaker Pelosi has had a long, serious talk with Congressman McCarthy about the behavior of his caucus members, what is and is not appropriate behavior, and what will and will not be tolerated going forward. If she is as good as reported and as many of us believe she is, then nuts will be cut over this, even if public examples are not made.

Regardless, if you were a foreign actor – allied, partner, peer competitor, or hostile – and you’ve been trying to collect Signals Intelligence on what the US is doing, what Congressman Gaetz and his Republican colleagues and their staffers did today was unearned profit.

Open thread!

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The New York Times Botched Their Reporting on Secretary Clinton’s Remarks About a Democratic Primary Candidate Being Groomed

by Adam L Silverman| October 22, 201910:16 pm| 105 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Politics, Russia, Silverman on Security

If you can remember back to last week, The New York Times ran a story that Secretary Clinton had stated that the Russians were grooming one of the female Democratic primary candidates for a third party run as a spoiler to ensure the President’s reelection. She also took a justified and accurate swipe at Jill Stein. It turns out that The New York Times made an error in their reporting. And they’ve corrected it. But, as appears to be standard operating procedure for The New York Times, they didn’t announce the correction. The now corrected article doesn’t actually make logical sense anymore as it includes Congresswoman Gabbard’s initial response to the assumption that Secretary Clinton was referring to her. Congresswoman Gabbard’s initial response was based on the misquote/misreporting that Secretary Clinton stated that the Russians were grooming this unnamed female Democratic candidate.

On Friday, the NYT did a piece about a podcast Secretary Clinton did with David Plouffe. They incorrectly quoted her saying that the “Russians” were “grooming” a candidate running in the Democratic primary. They rightfully fixed it to reflect that she was taking about the GOP. pic.twitter.com/iFCphQhZcU
— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) October 22, 2019

This really significant error set off days of commentary slamming Secretary Clinton, which included the President weighing in both on Twitter and in remarks to one of the press gaggles he has every day. It also allowed Congresswoman Gabbard who was not named by Secretary Clinton to use this for fundraising. And Congresswoman Gabbard did so using terminology and verbal imagery that is usually only directed at Secretary Clinton by Republicans, conservatives, and Russian bots and trolls! Secretary Clinton is, of course, correct in her analysis, especially as now properly and correctly reported. Some of Congresswoman Gabbard’s biggest promoters, especially on and through social media, are the various neo-nationalists, neo-fasicsts, neo-NAZIs , and white supremacists that are collectively labeled the alt-right and conservative media figures, as well as a host of Russian backed and funded bots and trolls.

And yes, she said that certain fringe members of the Democratic and Green parties are assets to the Russians. Well guess what folks? That’s true. She didn’t call anyone a spy, as some are wrongly asserting for their own political gain.
— Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) October 22, 2019

This also led to a number of people, including several other Democratic primary candidates, coming to Congresswoman Gabbard’s defense because she’s a veteran. As if current or former US military personnel haven’t unintentionally aided foreign actors from allies to peer competitors to hostile foreign actors, as well as deliberately selling out the US. And the same goes for civilian, non-uniform US personnel. Names like Arnold, Pollard, Manning, Snowden, Hansen, and Ames come right to mind. Just because one has served the US, in uniform or out, in a war zone or in much more permissive environments, doesn’t automatically confer some sort of special protection from doing the wrong thing, intentionally or unintentionally, at a later date.

While Congresswoman Gabbard pledged several months ago that she wouldn’t run as a third party so as not to spoil the election for the Democratic nominee and throw it to the President by allowing him to once again lose the popular vote while eking out a narrow Electoral College victory, this has been a concern for almost 10 months. I delineated this concern last January in a discussion of whether Senator Sanders might be pushed to run third party by his key advisors, supporters, and surrogates if he didn’t get the nomination (emphasis mine)!

Sanders, no matter what he does, has the potential to function as a super spoiler for the Democrats in 2020. Think Jill Stein’s effect on the electoral college on steroids. And if he decides he’s going to be a team player and not do so, his trusted agents won’t play ball and you’ll have the same problem regardless. And we can now add Congresswoman Gabbard to the potential spoilers category emanating from Sanders orbit.

Regardless of what Congresswoman Gabbard may or may not do next year, The New York Times made a huge error here. They misreported what Secretary Clinton said, which sparked several days of controversy and negative reporting, and then, when they realized they’d inaccurately transcribed the quote, they corrected it without announcing they’d made the mistake and the correction. This isn’t responsible. We are currently living in the fifth or sixth year, depending on when you want to date its start, of an unconventional Russian war against the US that uses information warfare to influence Americans to destroy ourselves. The US is not doing a particularly good job of fighting Russia as the US government and most Americans don’t seem to have figured out that we are at war. One of the major effects the Russians are trying to achieve is to influence Americans through the weaponization of information, misinformation, disinformation, and information for provocation in order to enflame American political; ethnic, racial, and religious; rural, urban, and suburban; sexuality/gender; and economic differences so that Americans destroy ourselves. In order to do this they have to use weaponized information for effect. And the effect they are trying to achieve is to make it impossible for Americans to both agree on what is true, factual, and accurate and, in many cases, even know what is true, factual, and accurate. The objective is to make it so that for Americans nothing is true and, therefore, anything and everything is possible. The New York Times needs to stop doing this. Not least of which because they do it over and over and over again and that pattern leads to an ugly conclusion: that as an organization they’re doing it on purpose. But even if they aren’t doing it on purpose, what they’re doing only assists the Russian’s information war against the US.

Open thread!

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Ambassador Taylor’s Opening Statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

by Adam L Silverman| October 22, 20194:18 pm| 157 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, The Whistleblower Saga

The Washington Post has obtained and published Ambassador Taylor’s opening statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The link to it is here. And the pdf can be directly accessed from Balloon Juice below.

Ambassador_Taylor_Opening_Statment

Open thread!

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The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With It

by Adam L Silverman| October 17, 20193:41 pm| 184 Comments

This post is in: America, Crimes against humanity, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Military, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, War

Earlier this afternoon, the Vice President, with the Secretary of State behind him, announced a ceasefire he had gotten Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan to agree to. The President then did an impromptu press gaggle on the tarmac of the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport where he ran with this news. The President spun the Vice President’s announcement of what Turkey supposedly agreed to as great for the Kurds, the Turks, the US, and civilization itself.

There's no apparent basis for Trump's claim just now that "everybody" has been trying to get this Turkey deal for "10 years," unless he means Turkey's government. (He habitually claims that previous administrations couldn't have achieved deals they never tried to achieve.)
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

Trump now says it was "more than" 15 years people have tried to get this deal. This is some of the fastest lieflation in recent memory. https://t.co/04GFSKQYaR
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

Trump concludes of his deal with Turkey: "Civilization is very happy."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 17, 2019

This comment about “having to have it cleaned out” is an excuse and rationalization for ethnic cleansing!

Referring to Kurds living along Turkish border in Syria, Trump says of Turkey, "they had to have it cleaned out." pic.twitter.com/W8J7IFctO3
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

TRUMP: "What Turkey is getting now is they are not going to have to kill millions of people." ? pic.twitter.com/JXKfam96hv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

The Turks, however, have their own understanding of what was agreed to and it is not a cease fire.

#BREAKING 'Pause of Turkey's operation in Syria is not cease-fire, cease-fire can only happen between two legitimate sides': Turkish foreign minister
— ANADOLU AGENCY (ENG) (@anadoluagency) October 17, 2019

Cavusoglu added that a “safe zone” would need to be established at 32 kilometer (roughly 20 miles) depth from east of Euphrates to the Iraqi border. (Which is what Turkey wanted initially.)
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 17, 2019

The ceasefire that the Vice President announced at his press conference in Turkey is not one. Moreover, it doesn’t actually bind the proxy extremist groups that Turkey has turned loose in the area and who have been committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in their fight with the Kurds. I’m honestly not even sure this binds the Kurds. And, as a result, we can predict what will happen.

As the Kurds move through this now supposedly temporarily pacified battlespace, to both collect the dead, the wounded, those trapped behind their enemy’s lines and to make it to the new lines 20 miles from the Turkish border, they will come into contact with the Syrian extremist groups that the Turks are using as proxies and a force multiplier. Those Syrian extremists, not bound by the agreement, will initiate hostilities with the Syrian Kurds and Arabs that make up the Syrian Democratic Forces because part of this Turkish operation was to colonize the buffer area they have just been granted by the President via the Vice President and Secretary of State. And the Syrian extremists that Erdogan is using as a proxy force are not going to want to have to let the Syrian Kurds and Arabs trying to get clear of the new buffer area take their property and possessions with them. Those are spoils of war that belong to those extremists who are going to set up shop in the buffer zone with whomever else Erdogan relocates there.

That’s right, you’re not crazy, you’re not hallucinating Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo, on orders from the President, just ceded 20 miles of Syria to Turkey. Land that Syria’s Kurds have long claimed as a homeland where they deserve self determination and recognition as a nation-state. This was done unilaterally. Without consulting with the Syrians. Or the UN. Or Congress. Or seemingly anyone else. I’m sure Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs got asked for their opinions though. The President definitely knows how to get a real estate deal done!

Once the Kurds and Arabs of the SDF come into contact with the Syrian extremists that Erdogan is using as a proxy force and force multiplier, those extremists will attack. And the Syrian Democratic Forces will defend themselves. And once they do that, the Turks will claim that the temporary cessation of hostilities was violated by the Kurds and the SDF, and the Turkish military will restart offensive operations. I give it 12 hours, tops, before we’re back to where we were before the Vice President’s press conference today.

But civilization is happy, so good job everyone!

Mr. President, please help yourself to a Nobel Peace Prize. Take it out of petty cash.

Open thread!

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President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last Week

by Adam L Silverman| October 16, 20197:14 pm| 88 Comments

This post is in: Absent Friends, America, Domestic Politics, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Military, RIP, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, War

(Figure 1: Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve Campaign Design)

Since the President’s horrendous decision to pull US Special Forces, as well as the US Marine Corps artillery batteries supporting them out of Syria, a cottage industry has sprung up among the President’s supporters and defenders that this is really the fault of President Obama because President Obama and his administration either had no Syria strategy or they had a bad one. And that this is the ultimate driver of the President’s betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish and Arab partners in the Syrian Democratic Forces that has enabled Erdogan to begin a campaign that will likely include an attempted ethnocide of Syria’s Kurds.

Some of these defenders would not know, let alone understand, low intensity warfare and/or strategy and policy if it walked up and bit them. Some actually know better. But all of them are actually grappling with a strawman. President Obama and his administration had two different, but related strategies regarding Syria. The first was to quite simply not get sucked into the Syrian Civil War. Humanitarian assistance would be provided to refugees seeking shelter in adjacent states, internally displaced Syrians that made it to where the US was operating along the Syrian-Iraqi border or within Syria would be provided for and protected, but the US would not get pulled into the Syrian Civil War, and the underlying proxy wars by regional powers that had been partially driving it, and risk escalating that conflict as it would have regional consequences. Frankly, from a semi-informed observer as this was playing out, this drove a number of President Obama’s actual advisors and senior national security officials nuts as several of them wanted the US to intervene because of the humanitarian crisis being created by the Syrian Civil War. Instead President Obama opted for what was, essentially, a containment strategy of trying to keep the Syrian Civil War and the proxy wars being fought by Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran under its cover contained within Syria so as not to destabilize the rest of the region.

This strategy was really an assumption of risk strategy in order to buy time. The US, as the leader and largest and most militarily powerful member of the multinational coalition operating in the area, would assume the risk that the Syrian Civil War and the proxy wars for regional hegemony subsumed within it, would and could be kept within Syria. That they would not spill out and over its borders and negatively impact Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel. And that they wouldn’t negatively effect the two sets of high level diplomatic negotiations being undertaken in the region: the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative of 2014 and what we now know were the JCPOA+5 negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear energy and weapons programs. President Obama had decided to play for time. To assume the risk that either the Syrian Civil War, the proxy wars for regional hegemony taking place within it, or both wouldn’t blow up into a larger conflagration, spill over Syria’s borders, and engulf the entire region.

It is also important to remember that in 2013, when Bashar Assad’s chemical attack on his own citizenry crossed the red line that President Obama had unequivocally stated, there were calls for both a retaliatory strike to punish and deter Assad and for Congress to weigh in before any action was taken, President Obama did, in fact, seek Congressional approval for such a strike. The majority Republican House of Representatives refused to provide President Obama with the authorization to make that strike and enforce the red line he had set. Congressman Paul Ryan, the chair of House Budget Committee at the time, went so far as to assert that the called for strikes would not achieve US strategic objectives and that they would be “feckless show of force” that would “only damage our credibility”. A New York real estate developer and reality TV star named Donald Trump tweeted that “The only reason President Obama wants to attack Syria is to save face over his very dumb RED LINE statement. Do NOT attack Syria, fix U.S.A.” As a result of Congress denying him explicit military authorization to engage Syrian military targets outside of the Authorization for Military Force for the global war on terror, President Obama did not order a strike.

The Obama administrations’s second Syria strategy was for pursuing the campaign against ISIS. Specifically to apply low intensity and unconventional warfare doctrine to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate that spanned Iraq and Syria’s shared border, and, ultimately, to reduce ISIS. This is the “by, with, and through” strategy that I’ve referenced here before and that you may have seen mentioned or referred to in news reports and other analyses. Simply put the “by, with, and through” strategy focuses on finding reliable host country partners who are willing to fight on their own behalf and then sending the US’s unconventional warfare specialists, the Green Berets (Special Forces) to embed with them in a train, advise, and assist mission. This is a very, very light footprint strategy. Small teams of US Special Forces known as Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs), with specific enablers from other elements of US Special Operations Forces and, most likely some of the CIA’s paramilitary operators at the outset, as well as a small support element were sent into Syria to identify, recruit, and vet local Syrians that would then be trained, advised, and assisted with operations against ISIS. Eventually a small contingent of US Marine artillery were also moved into the US led Coalition’s theater of operations in Syria to provide fire support for the ODAs and their host country partners they were embedded with.

Train, advise, and assist has a very specific meaning here. Training means that the Soldiers on the ODAs would teach the Syrian Kurds and Arabs that are known as the Syrian Democratic Forces how to fight more effectively against ISIS. These host country fighters didn’t need to be taught how to fight, both the Syrian Kurds and Arabs have their own ways of war. What the Special Forces Soldiers on the ODAs did do was to teach them to fight more effectively at the tactical and operational levels against the specific type of enemy that is ISIS within the theater strategy that was established based on the US’s national strategy against ISIS. Training blends into advising and assisting, especially in regard to logistics and planning. As the Syrian Democratic Forces became a more effective host country fighting force, especially within the context of the type of campaign that had been designed to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate, defeat them, and then retard their ability to continue to terrorize and destabilize the region*, the US Special Forces would do less assisting in the actual combat operations. Part of the assistance was also air support. The US led Coalition flew sorties day and night as necessary to degrade ISIS targets on the ground. Here is the link to the continually updated list of these sorties and strikes.

The US and its coalition partners had been trying to successfully adapt and implement a “by, with, and through” strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan since GEN (ret) Petraues’s revised Counterinsurgency Manual, FM 3-24: Counterinsurgency, arrived to great fanfare in the mid aughts. The key idea behind a “by, with, and through” strategy is to empower the lowest societal level you can work with, ie the population layer/element, work from that level up (work from the bottom up), and then reconcile the tactical and operations gains made with the state to state strategic efforts, such as diplomatic initiatives and the use of economic and information power, being made at the top end. This never really worked during Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom (OIF and OEF) because we didn’t actually institute a true “by, with, and through” strategy. Rather, we had US Conventional Forces and our Coalition partners, also usually Conventional Forces, trying to implement and realize something that is the specialty of US Special Forces. I’m not knocking the efforts put in or the actual tactical and operational successes achieved, as there were and are many, just that the size of Iraq and Afghanistan and the need to have Conventional Forces work outside their expertise by undertaking an unconventional warfare strategy, did not lead to theater strategic success. Often because of failures at the national and theater strategic levels and despite the tactical and operational successes.

The size, scope, and scale of OIF and OEF made it impossible to let Special Forces take the lead as we simply do not have enough Green Berets to work one entire theater the size of Iraq, let alone two with the second theater being the size of Afghanistan. Even if we pulled in all the other US Special Operations Forces – SEALs, Operational Detachment Delta/Delta Force, Rangers, Air Commandos, Recon Marines, the Intelligence Support Activity (Gray Fox/Field Operating Group), Civil Affairs, and PSYOPers – and had them pick up the slack while ignoring their own missions and mission specialty areas, we still wouldn’t have had enough Special Operations Forces to do the job. There is a reason that Marines and Special Operations Forces fight battles and conventional Armies fight campaigns and wars in the Land Domain; because the former do not have the capacity to scale to the latter.

The campaign against ISIS in Syria, however, was different. The theater of operations was limited in size. We had been able to identify, recruit, vet, and then train reliable host country partners that we and our Coalition allies could work “by, with, and through”. A limited number of Operational Detachment Alphas, plussed up with personnel from other SOF elements, with a small support element and a small amount of Marine artillery batteries for fire support were tremendously successful! Perhaps beyond anyone’s legitimate expectations based on the mixed results from trying to apply the “by, with, and through” strategy during the latter portions of Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. And that success carried over to maintaining the peace in the area of operations once ISIS’s physical caliphate had been reduced. About 1,000 US Special Forces and Special Operating Forces, working with the SDF, had been able to reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate to nothing because the SDF, as the host country partners, did the hard, dangerous, and deadly work. Which is why the SDF suffered over 10,000 killed in action and the US Special Forces partnering with them suffered zero KIA in this campaign.

What the President has thrown away with his rash and ill considered pull out and betrayal of our Syrian Kurdish and Arab allies, and what his defenders and supporters don’t understand in their rush to defend him by blaming all of this on President Obama and his administration, is just how successful this campaign against ISIS has been. How much reward we reaped in exchange for the amount of blood and treasure wagered and risk assumed. And how well it was working to maintain the peace in this area of Syria by preventing ISIS from reestablishing a stable physical ground base of operations from which to try to reestablish the physical caliphate.

There wasn’t one single Obama administration strategy for Syria, there were two distinct and specific strategies. The first was to assume risk by not intervening in the Syrian Civil War in order to buy time for what were considered to be other regional priorities – the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and the JCPOA+5 negotiations and the reduction of ISIS. The second was an unconventional warfare strategy to degrade and reduce ISIS’s physical caliphate and reduce ISIS’s capacity to continue to terrorize and destabilize the region. While the first strategy’s efficacy is debatable, the second strategy to counter ISIS has been successful beyond all possible expectations. And the President has thrown away all of that success and by doing so betrayed our Syrian Kurdish and Arab partners, weakened and diminished the United States power and ability to project power, and degraded our moral standing. He has further destabilized the region. He has handed the Russians, the Syrians, the Iranians, and the Turks a victory without them having to actually contest for it. And he has most likely set the conditions for Erdogan to try to finally solve his Kurdish problem.

Open thread!

This post is dedicated to the late Sergeant First Class (ret) Terry Caldwell. Terry was my Area Specialty Officer (ASO) and taught me everything I know about small team operations and the practical realities of asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare. Rest well Old Man!

* Interestingly enough the chart at the previous link is based on the four phases of conventional warfare, not the seven phases of unconventional warfare used by US Special Forces, which is the result of the commend element of CJTF-OIR being a conventional 3 star Corps headquarters. There is also a full description of the campaign at that link.

Disclosure: In May 2015 I was on site to present the kickoff and keynote briefing of XVIII Airborne Corps’ strategic assessment week and was on site throughout the week as the cultural subject matter expert/cultural advisor as their preparation for assuming command of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. The briefing focused on the regional strategic and geo-strategic considerations of the Levantine problem set and the campaign against ISIS. It was specifically prepared for the Commanding General, Command Group, senior staff, as much of their staff as could be jammed into the auditorium, and a variety of attendees by secure videoteleconference at a number of outstations. Also in attendance were several senior leaders (general officers) from our Coalition partners who were on the Coalition senior staff. In the weeks after the briefing I prepared a strategic assessment on how to leverage the campaign against ISIS to set the conditions in the theater of operations to secure the peace after the termination of military operations. My work for XVIII Airborne Corps was as a private consultant being paid on contract. I was asked to do this work by the then Corps’ G5 (Officer in Charge of Plans), who I’d both previously worked with at III Corps and who was a student at USAWC when I was the cultural advisor at both. My civilian mobilization/appointment as a senior civil servant at both USAWC and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue assigned to US Army Europe were not political appointments. I was not then, nor have a I ever been, part of President Obama’s appointed foreign policy, national security, and/or defense policy team, though I did provide significant support to a number of those appointees during my civilian mobilization from 2010 through 2014.

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last WeekPost + Comments (88)

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia Mess

by Adam L Silverman| October 14, 201910:36 pm| 170 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Mueller Report, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine

On Friday I wrote the following in an email explaining what is actually going on with the Ukraine mess that the President has made:

I amazed that all of this current brouhaha is just a really bad Russian mob shakedown. The play here is to get Parnas’s and Fruman’s boss in the Russian mob, Dmitri Firtash, off of house arrest and out from under the extradition warrant to the US so he can go back to Kyiv and take over the Ukrainian natural gas industry, strip it of every last penny, then crash it on behalf of Putin and the Russian mob. This then forces Ukraine to buy natural gas from Russia, which allows Putin to then further knuckle Ukraine by sucking resources out of Ukraine to create leverage to force Ukraine back into his orbit. As was reported last night, Giuliani is on Parnas’s payroll and has been for a while. Parnas is on DiGenova’s and Toensing’s payroll, who are working pro bono with Giuliani on behalf of the President, though they’re using him as their translator for their legal work for Firtash. Parnas and Fruman report to Firtash in regard to Russian organized crime activities. Firtash works for the Kyiv born Semion Mogilevich, who is the titular head of the Bratva. Mogolivech works for Putin who is the functional krysha/roof/protector of the Bratva. The Biden stuff is simply disinformation recycled from the Russians from 2014 as part of the maskirovka.

Earlier this evening, Andrew Weiss, who is the Vice President for Studies of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is in their Russia and Eurasia Program, tweeted the following explainer that really delineates all the parts of the network I was describing in my email from last Friday. (I’m going to put the first half above the jump and the second half below it).

Bear with me as I lay out some facts. They exceed the unreality of a Gary @Shteyngart novel. Yet based on my reading of these facts, several questions readily jump out. I don’t have all of the answers to these questions but think it’s worth asking them. 2/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

The other point of comparison that immediately comes to mind is an ongoing Federal criminal investigation of Elliot Broidy, a former top Trump fundraiser and the former vice chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign. More on him in a second. 4/ pic.twitter.com/DWADspZ8sI
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

That’s a curiously menial role for Parnas who presented himself as a high roller and whose campaign contributions gave him access to Trump and other GOP leaders. (Lawyer John Dowd says they had a similar role for Giuliani on behalf of President Trump) https://t.co/3MYZlQcVc3 6/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

In reality ties betw Parnas/Fruman and Firtash run much deeper. They were “working for Firtash" before "Parnas joined [Firtash’s] legal team…Firtash has paid their expenses in the past [including] private jet charters..& foreign travel to Vienna.” https://t.co/1PYZ6oj9eN
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Arguably the single biggest set of toes belongs to Firtash. He was arrested immediately after the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine and has been stuck in Vienna fighting extradition to the U.S. after being charged by the Feds with FCPA violations. 10/ pic.twitter.com/gNAOcwdo8F
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

It’s also good to think of the gas trade as Exhibit #1 for the comingling of the Russian govt/organized crime. Firtash served as the top gas trade intermediary for the Kremlin & a Russian mob figure Semyon Mogilevich who’s on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List & helped control it 12/ pic.twitter.com/LdTWKGpc2h
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

It’s been all too easy to get a chuckle out of Parnas and Fruman’s bumbling hijinks after they joined the ranks of top GOP/Trump donors, despite having such a long trail of bad debts, evictions, and sketchy relationships back in Ukraine. https://t.co/vYeGu25kYf 14/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

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A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia MessPost + Comments (170)

What then to make of the revelation that Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles last Thursday while en route to Vienna? Or that Giuliani planned to leave for Vienna, Firtash’s home base, the following day? https://t.co/TmhXrjmhNn @elainaplott 16/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Bloomberg's @nwadhams broke a story about Trump and Giuliani seeking special favors from DOJ/State Dept for one of the latter’s clients, a convicted Turkish gold trader who had violated Iran sanctions. Rex Tillerson thought these requests were illegal https://t.co/OFJn5fWC1m 18/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

That brings us back to where I started. Does this scandal echo the circumstances that led to the naming of Robert Mueller? Was Giuliani ever involved in seeking special favors for Firtash? Did he or anyone else ( DiGenova? Toensing?) raise this case with Trump or others? 20/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

What is AG William Barr’s involvement in the search for dirt on the Bidens and conspiracy theories about the 2016 election? Remember: Trump told Zelenskyy to contact Barr. Does Barr have a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of one? Does he need to recuse himself? 22/ pic.twitter.com/3nYNsF64B4
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

ADDENDUM The Reuters team which broke the story about Firtash’s ties to Giuliani’s associates deserves a major shoutout @AramRoston @karen_freifeld @polinaivanovva
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019

Weiss’s thread, however, goes beyond just making explicitly clear the different key nodes in the network behind this poorly executed mob shakedown. Weiss’s thread makes it very clear that the Republican Party has been bought by Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs and incorporated into their influence network, including the Russian mob. And as was the case with the cost of Putin’s information warfare and active measures campaign against the US, they did it for pennies on the dollar.

Open thread!

Some Good News to End This Week!

by Adam L Silverman| October 11, 201910:55 pm| 121 Comments

This post is in: Activist Judges!, America, Civil Rights, Crimes against humanity, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Immigration, Open Threads, Politics

The Federal courts have worked diligently to make America great again and provided us with three items of good news to end this most infrastructure of weeks.

President Trump lost his appeal to stop a House subpoena of his tax documents: "In a 2-1 ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a lower court ruling saying the firm must turn over eight years of accounting records."https://t.co/P2yzusbtsV
— andrew kaczynski? (@KFILE) October 11, 2019

"Repugnant to the American Dream"
Judge excoriates the "public charge" immigration rule change in a fiery ruling issuing a nationwide injunction.
NYAG and civil rights groups holding press conference soon.
First updates on my story below. ? https://t.co/NCZQubJq5E
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) October 11, 2019

#BREAKING – U.S. District Judge David Briones in El Paso rules @realDonaldTrump #borderwall emergency proclamation is "unlawful," rules El Paso County has standing due to $20m redirected from Ft. Bliss construction project for wall @CourthouseNews
— David Lee (@CNSDallas) October 11, 2019

The judge ruled that Trump's proclamation declaring a national emergency for purposes of using military funds to build a border wall violates the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which Trump claimed gave him authority to spend money against the wishes of Congress. https://t.co/bwjMq12jAM
— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) October 11, 2019

Let’s all hope that next Infrastructure Week is as productive as this one.

Open thread!

Some Good News to End This Week!Post + Comments (121)

Good Work President “I Don’t Know Them”! Lev Parnas’s Dinner Reservations at the White House Edition

by Adam L Silverman| October 10, 20198:27 pm| 115 Comments

This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Election 2018, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Politics, All Too Normal

The President did his usual Mariah Carey impression earlier today when asked about his relationship with the now indicted Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.

Asked about two men with ties to Rudy Giuliani arrested earlier today, Pres. Trump says, "I don't know those gentlemen. Now, it's possible I have a picture with them, because I have a picture with everybody."
"Maybe they were clients of Rudy," he adds. "You'd have to ask Rudy." pic.twitter.com/EzCIEA6QMz
— ABC News (@ABC) October 10, 2019

Unfortunately for President Good Brain, Lev Parnas documented his dinner with the President on May 1st at the White House on Instagram!

On the menu were a wedge salad and a “Presidential cheeseburger”. Because when you have someone over for dinner at the White House the worst possible salad option from a 1950s steak house and a cheeseburger really scream elegance. Also, do they play Hail to the Beef when they serve it?

Obligatory!

https://giphy.com/gifs/new-meghan-trainor-CsyFeRxyH0um4

Also, if you’re going to go on MSNBC as a contributor because you were a Republican member of Congress to opine on how bad this is and how much jeopardy this creates for your former Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives, maybe you shouldn’t have this bouncing around on social media!

I’m talking to you Curbelo!

Open thread!

Good Work President “I Don’t Know Them”! Lev Parnas’s Dinner Reservations at the White House EditionPost + Comments (115)

A Few Thoughts On the Betrayal of the Kurds: I’m Ashamed and We Should All Be Ashamed

by Adam L Silverman| October 9, 20199:47 pm| 117 Comments

This post is in: America, Foreign Affairs, Military, Silverman on Security, War

In 2008 the Georgian battalion that was part of the Coalition Forces of Operation Iraqi Freedom was attached to the brigade combat team that I and my teammates were assigned to. When Putin invaded the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia under the excuse of a border dispute and protecting ethnic Russians, the Georgian battalion was immediately ordered to return home and fight. The Georgians had only been part of the coalition because the Bush 43 administration had intimated that if the Georgians helped us in Iraq, then the US would support them joining NATO. The Georgians wanted to join NATO as protection from Putin’s interests in reestablishing what he believes is Russia’s rightful sphere of interest and historic near abroad. In reality, the Bush 43 administration wasn’t really going to push for them to join NATO and didn’t.

The brigade’s job was to help facilitate the Georgians’ movement home. To ensure they got from the combat outpost they had been operating from through the command forward operating base and on to one of the two large US bases adjacent to Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) from which they’d fly home. As they transited through many of us thanked them for working with us, wished them well, told them we’d be thinking of them. Some were stoic. Some wanted one last group picture with my female analyst – a former student of mine (frankly one of the best students I’d ever had undergrad or grad) who I’d recruited to my team and who was also an olympic class athlete who also did fitness competitions, which explains the enthusiasm for the pictures. And some asked us the question that will haunt me forever:

You’re coming, right? We came to help you, you’re coming to help us? Right?

I’d never before been embarrassed to be an American. And even though my service at that time was as a supervisory contractor, because all the civilians in the experimental Army program that had sent my teammates and I to Iraq had to be contractors by regulation because it was an experiment not a program of record, I have never been so embarrassed and so ashamed to be both an American and in service to America as I was that day. Because I knew, we all knew, that we weren’t coming. That these men, from a battalion that had suffered more KIA’s in our operational environment/area of responsibility than we had, were on their own. We weren’t coming. No one from US Army Europe or the South European Task Force or EUCOM or NATO was coming. We’d, or rather our national command authority both elected and appointed, had asked them to fight and die with us and we would not return the courtesy or repay the debt.

Today I read a Twitter thread by a reporter with a source from the Syrian Democratic Forces on the ground in Syria who is in harm’s way. That thread reported what her source was telling her, which was that the SDF in Kobani, as well as the civilians there, were not going to stand and fight this time as they had previously against ISIS. Instead they were all pulling out and heading to an American military base in the area in the hope that the Americans were both still there and that the US commander at that base would allow them to seek shelter and sanctuary there from the Turkish assault that the President’s rash decision has made possible. And when I read that thread I had two reactions. The first was that same sense of shame I had on that August day in 2008 as all I could do was wish Georgian Soldiers the best as they went back home to fight falsely hoping we would soon arrive like the cavalry coming over the hill in the nick of time in an old western.

The other feeling was amazement. Amazement that even though they knew that the President of the United States had betrayed them, had given approval for Erdogan to try to obliterate them in his ongoing ethnocidal and genocidal campaign against the Kurds under the cover of a counterterrorism operation, they still believed that if they could get to where the American flag was flying they would be safe. It is stunningly mind and emotion boggling, to the point that I am actually having trouble typing it out, that knowing that they had been betrayed by the President of the United States, the belief of these men and women is that if they could get to territory held by the United States, in this case a military base, that if they packed up what they could, grabbed their families, and drove hard through an hours and miles long traffic jam of their friends and neighbors and fellow SDF in the middle of what is now a very hot war zone, that at the end of that exodus was hope. At the end of that exodus was safety. Because at the end of that flight from danger, through danger, was a berm and hescos and a gate with a guard tower where the American flag would be flying. In the face of this cruelest, most pointless betrayal their thoughts were to run to those wearing uniforms that bear the American flag – the flag of their betrayers. Because that flag, despite the betrayal, symbolized to them their last best hope for safety.

I have no idea if the base they are trying to reach is still there. I haven’t seen any follow on and follow up reporting, but I would like to believe that the commander of that base would open the gate and provide refuge to our erstwhile allies to lessen the betrayal and pay the moral debt that the President has now created for all of us Americans. And I’d like to believe that most will make it. But belief and hope are not strategies.

I don’t know yet, and I’m not sure we ever will know, how to properly assess the damage that will happen as a result of the President’s decision to betray the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurds and Arabs, Muslims and Syriac Christian alike, who had been decisively instrumental in successfully achieving our and our other allies’ strategic objectives of reducing ISIS’s physical caliphate. The SDF suffered over 10,000 Killed in Action and I’m not even sure the total number of wounded in action as the host country component to the by, with, and through strategy we’ve been using against ISIS since 2015. I know that as many ISIS detainees that can go into the wind will. And that they’ll scatter throughout the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, and Europe, which will increase both discreet acts of terrorism and instability in all of the states and societies in those regions. We’ll also see increased refugee flows as both SDF and non SDF from the areas now or soon to be under attack by Turkey flee looking for safety. This will increase instability in adjoining states like Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. It will also create even more problems for our EU and NATO allies as many will try to flee there because the neo-nationalist and neo-fascist parties and movements in the EU member states, all funded overtly or covertly by Putin, leverage refugee flows from the Levant as part of their anti-governmental and anti-EU political activities. I don’t know how many US and Coalition military personnel, let alone civilians, will be hurt or killed because of the President’s rash actions, and I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to directly tie those injuries or deaths back to this decision to betray the SDF in specific and the Kurds in general, but they will occur nevertheless. And I have no way to quantify or qualify what this will do to our ability to find partners and allies in the future, but I’m sure, despite the President’s glib assurances this afternoon that “alliances are easy”, that it will make it much, much, much harder for the US to partner and ally with other state and non-state actors to achieve our national interests in the future.

The events of the past three days may likely be the worst national security and foreign policy decision ever made by a US president. Which, given the long rich history of bad national security and foreign policy decisions made by US presidents, is saying something. Based on the reporting it was made without any formal or even informal decision making process. Without any input or recommendations by the senior military advisors on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the senior leadership of our Intelligence Services, by either the Geographic Combatant Commander or the Coalition Commanding General in the theater of operations, or by any of our allies in the Coalition. It is a rash, short sighted, stupid, self defeating, self harming decision. It is a decision that betrayed our host country allies; allies who have fought valiantly and suffered significant casualties as a result because they were willing to fight for their own chance for self determination. And it is a decision that shames all of us who are Americans, even those unable to recognize that they should be ashamed because the slavishly support anything and everything the President does.

Today, for the second time, I am ashamed to be an American. And I am also amazed that those we’ve betrayed still flee from danger through danger in the attempt to reach a base where the American flag may still fly because they believe, despite the betrayal, that at the end of that dangerous journey is hope and safety. And from that, in my shame, I take a small amount of hope.

Open thread.

Full disclosure: I served from October 2007 through November 2008 as the Cultural Advisor to the Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team/1st Armored Division and was deployed with the brigade in Iraq in 2008. I have also served as the Cultural Advisor to the Commandant of the US Army War College (2010-2014), the Cultural Advisor (Temporary Assigned Control) to the Commanding General of III Corps (January – October 2012), the Cultural Advisor (Temporary Assigned Control) to the Civil Affairs Branch Chief (October 2012 – November 2013), the Cultural Advisor (Temporary Assigned Control) to the Director of the Institute for NCO Professional Development and the Commandant of the US Sergeants Major Academy (November 2013 through June 2014), the Cultural Advisor (Temporary Assigned Control) to the Commanding General of US Army Europe (December 2013 – June 2014), and a senior subject matter expert at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue in the Middle East assigned as the Cultural Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe (July – August 2014). I served briefly as a Senior Special Operations Fellow at the Joint Special Operations University Center for Special Operations Studies and Research at US Special Operations Command (May – August 2015). In May 2016 I provided the keynote and kickoff briefing on the regional and geo-strategic considerations of the Levant problem set for the Commanding General, Command Group, and senior staff of XVIII Airborne Corps prior to their deployment as the command element of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. In November 2018 I delivered the keynote address at the US Army Psychological Operations Regiment’s 100th anniversary regimental dinner. I currently work as a national-security consultant. The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect those of any of the commands, elements, or offices that I have ever advised and/or are currently supporting.

A Few Thoughts On the Betrayal of the Kurds: I’m Ashamed and We Should All Be AshamedPost + Comments (117)

Fire Fighting, Fire Management, and Emergency Management: A Guest Post From Balloon Juice’s Very Own Lurking Fire Chief.

by Adam L Silverman| October 7, 20199:17 pm| 46 Comments

This post is in: Guest Posts

Balloon Juice has its very own lurker fire chief. And he has done a guest post for us on fire fighting and emergency management. Specifically in regard to oil train fires. His post below is adapted from a paper he is presenting this week at a professional conference and he should be around in the comments to answer any on topic questions you might have. Without further ado, I give you Fire Chief Jim Appleton.

I was the fire chief in the 2016 oil train derailment and fire in Mosier, Oregon.

I’ve been a Balloon Juice lurker and sparse commenter for over fifteen years, whenever The Poorman sent a bunch of us here to laugh at John. FSM, I miss The Poorman. And Ken.

I’ll be speaking in Chicago on Thursday and Friday later this week on a couple of panels about oil trains. Links below. Any big-shouldered BJers interested are encouraged to attend and/or spread the word. Please meet and greet! My schedule is not conducive for a separate meet up.

The panel organizer invited me based on a couple of my public statements during the emergency. My position then and now has been a call for banning oil trains, from the perspective of an emergency manager.

But my understanding of the issues has evolved considerably.

Like many, when I first saw what I was dealing with that hot Friday afternoon, I knew the monster as a “bomb train.”

Having been through the response and a lot of training and contacts, I now say that calling them bomb trains is an effective rallying cry, but it’s wrong for technical reasons and problematic because the term is dangerously and erroneously alarming, and because it misses the real threats, which are toxic release and fire. The concentration of risk in trains consisting entirely of oil is what makes them so insanely dangerous.

The activists who speak about “blast zones” and explosions are scaring a lot of people who need to know that those potential hazards are not likely to kill them. And that the real threats are potentially more insidious and more common than most people know.

They justify that focus by pointing to one source — the federally approved hazardous materials response guide which all agencies are required to use.

That guide groups oil fires with other flammable liquids into a one-size-fits-all set of steps to ensure public safety during the first thirty minutes of any incident involving those materials.

The guideline sets a half-mile evacuation distance. Again, assuming a worst case for a whole class of hazards. Based on that, a common misconception of a half-mile “blast zone” has become a defining characteristic of oil train activism.

But, as we learned in Mosier, oil trains seldom explode. When they do, it’s from a high-energy accident in which huge amounts of oil are released.

And even then, oil tanker explosions are not as violent as portrayed.

There is no supersonic shock wave, just a lot of heat and a spectacular mushroom cloud of burning vapor. The image is terrifying. And oil tanker explosions have killed people. But only from heat, not from violent detonation.

In Mosier, we knew in the first hour that there was no risk of explosion. There just wasn’t enough heat to cause them.

That’s far more typical of oil train accidents. The exceptions are few and well known — Lac Megantic, Casselton.

Reliable statistics on oil train accidents are hard to come by.

Suffice it to say, there are a lot more than you probably think. They are not widely known because they tend to be in the middle of nowhere and consequences are seldom newsworthy.

Mosier was exceptional only because it happened in a populated area close to a major media market.

Sooner or later, there will be another oil train accident which will top the news cycle because it harms critical infrastructure, a metropolitan center, or an irreplaceable natural resource.

It’s a matter of time.

And the damage done will not be from violent explosions.

It will be from toxic liquid oil, or fire.

The Mosier incident was a fairy tale as oil train accidents go. The amount of oil released, less than 50,000 gallons, is near the low end of the scale. No one was hurt. Even during the cleanup with all kinds of hazards and heavy equipment, not one person even requested a bandaid. And there was no property damage, other than in the railroad right of way, and relatively minimal damage to the municipal wastewater treatment plant, which was quickly repaired at the railroad’s expense.

If the next one happens, say, on the Burlington Northern line along the Flathead River by Glacier National Park, crews could take days just to reach the site because of terrain and lack of roads. During that time, pristine river and wilderness would be left alone with whatever the accident spawns.

Same goes for one which burns up part of downtown Spokane or Seattle.

Call them “very incredibly toxic napalm trains,” I’m OK.

Finally, the regulatory logjam and Trumpist dick-swinging which has actually rolled back oil train safety measures as well as obstructing cheap, common sense enhancements is one of, sadly, many priorities which are likely to be secondary to more important changes requiring expensive political effort in coming years. And that assumes Trump goes, one way or another.

***

PANELS:

https://oil_trains.eventbrite.com/

https://chi_oil_trains.eventbrite.com/

Fire Fighting, Fire Management, and Emergency Management: A Guest Post From Balloon Juice’s Very Own Lurking Fire Chief.Post + Comments (46)

The Potential Outcomes of the President Prematurely Pulling Back in Syria

by Adam L Silverman| October 7, 20192:39 pm| 115 Comments

This post is in: America, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Silverman on Security

Here are what I think are the three most likely, and also most deadly, potential outcomes of the President’s premature pull back in Syria so that Erdogan can go after the Kurds and establish his buffer zone/expand his border into Syria. There are not in any specific order, but all of them are bad.

Erdogan gets himself bogged down in Syria trying to set up his 30 mile buffer zone. Putin then decides he’s going to tighten the screws and both actual Russia military personnel and Wagner mercenaries come into conflict with Turkish forces and, as a result, Erdogan needs help and decides to invoke Article 5 of the NATO Charter. This places the US and the rest of NATO in the position of either responding to the Article 5 invocation or fracturing NATO because no one wants to support an increasingly erratic and authoritarian Erdogan. Also, no one really knows how competent the Turkish military is right now given that Erdogan has purged the military of his perceived opponents.
The ISIS detainees currently held by the SDF are cut loose by the SDF because they can’t detain them and fight for survival at the same time. They go into the wind, which exponentially increases the ISIS threat through the Middle East, Central Asia, Europe, and Africa.
It sets off a new wave of refugees. This has the ability to destabilize Lebanon and Jordan. And it will further increase the neo-nationalist and neo-fascist pressures in Europe that are built around an anti-immigrant and anti-refugee attitudes, which will increase the pressure on most of our NATO allies, as well as on the European Union.

Open thread!

Full disclosure: In May 2016 I prepared and gave the keynote strategic assessment of the regional and geo-strategic problem set in the Levant for the commanding general, command group, senior staff, and as much as the rest of the staff they could shoe horn into the auditorium of XVIII Airborne Corps as they were preparing to take over as the commend element of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve. And I have provided ongoing strategic advice as needed/requested to senior US military personnel at echelons above brigade deployed to Operation Inherent Resolve.

The Potential Outcomes of the President Prematurely Pulling Back in SyriaPost + Comments (115)

Speaking of Watching the Disinformation Being Made: The Stupid Edition

by Adam L Silverman| October 2, 201910:16 pm| 281 Comments

This post is in: America, An Unexamined Scandal, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, Election Year, Open Threads, Politics, Assholes, Clown car, Clown Shoes, Not Normal, Sociopaths, Somewhere a Village is Missing its Idiot

Absolute morons Jacob “I’m Really Going to Commit a Big Boy Crime Any Day Now” Wohl and his unzipped co-conspirator Jack Burckman, fresh off failing to actually dox the Intelligence Community Whistleblower yesterday and today, have reverted to their usual modus operandi of creating sex scandals out of nothing. Having failed to actually bring down Special Counsel Mueller and Mayor Buttigieg with bogus allegations of sexual assault and impropriety have have announced their latest masterpiece. Behold:

The stupid, it burns!

The Warax asked the important question:

jack why do you do this to yourself?
— The Warax. ?? (@iAmTheWarax) October 2, 2019

It is important to remember that Jacob Wohl is the twenty-something aspiring career petty criminal who is currently facing actual real felony charges in California state court. He is also the son of one of the President’s key Jewish-American surrogates. I have been authorized on behalf of the Elders and our revered and venerated leader, the Supreme Babka, to apologize on behalf of the rest of the tribe. We are tremendously sorry about the Wohl mess.

And our own Food Goddess had the best take when I texted Burkman’s tweet too her:

If at 72 Elizabeth Warren is having a fling with a young Marine I say more power to her

Is everyone still enjoying this extra special Jewish New Year and Day’s of Awe Infrastructure Week?

Open thread!

Speaking of Watching the Disinformation Being Made: The Stupid EditionPost + Comments (281)

Watching the Disinformation Being Made in Real Time: The New York Times Reported Some New Information On How the Whistleblower Filed His Complaint and Fox’s John Roberts Teed It Up as a Conspiracy for the President to Swing at During His Press Conference

by Adam L Silverman| October 2, 20193:35 pm| 222 Comments

This post is in: America, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment Inquiry, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine, The Whistleblower Saga

The New York Times has reported greater detail of how the Intelligence Community whistleblower went about bringing his complaint. We already knew, from previous reporting, that he or she first tried to go through the anonymous internal whistleblower complaint hotline at their own, home agency. This then triggered that agency’s counsel to coordinate with the White House Counsel’s Office, the National Security Council Counsel’s Office, and the Department of Justice. When the whistleblower learned of this, he or she decided they needed to find a way to get the concerns before Congress as soon as possible and this is where today’s New York Times‘ reporting starts off:

The Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint, according to a spokesman and current and former American officials.
The early account by the future whistle-blower shows how determined he was to make known his allegations that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s government to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election. It also explains how Mr. Schiff knew to press for the complaint when the Trump administration initially blocked lawmakers from seeing it.
The C.I.A. officer approached a House Intelligence Committee aide with his concerns about Mr. Trump only after he had had a colleague first convey them to the C.I.A.’s top lawyer. Concerned about how that initial avenue for airing his allegations through the C.I.A. was unfolding, the officer then approached the House aide. In both cases, the original accusation was vague.
The House staff member, following the committee’s procedures, suggested the officer find a lawyer to advise him and file a whistle-blower complaint. The aide shared some of what the officer conveyed to Mr. Schiff. The aide did not share the whistle-blower’s identity with Mr. Schiff, an official said.
A spotlight on the people reshaping our politics. A conversation with voters across the country. And a guiding hand through the endless news cycle, telling you what you really need to know.
“Like other whistle-blowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistle-blower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community,” said Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Mr. Schiff.
Mr. Schiff’s aides followed procedures involving the C.I.A. officer’s accusations, Mr. Boland said. They referred the C.I.A. officer to an inspector general and advised him to seek legal counsel.
Mr. Schiff never saw any part of the complaint or knew precisely what the whistle-blower would deliver, Mr. Boland said.
“At no point did the committee review or receive the complaint in advance,” he said. He said the committee received the complaint the night before releasing it publicly last week and noted that came three weeks after the administration was legally mandated to turn it over to Congress. The director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, acting on the advice of his top lawyer and the Justice Department, had blocked the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, from turning over the complaint sooner.

Much more at the link, some of it previously reported.

There’s nothing actually shocking here. The whistleblower, concerned he needed to get the information to Congress ASAP, approached a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to seek guidance on how to do so. That staffer told the whistleblower to make a formal complaint under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA) to the appropriate inspector general – either the IG at their own agency or the Intelligence Community Inspector General. This is what the whistleblower did. He or she filed the complaint with Mark Atkinson, the Intelligence Community Inspector general.

Brad Moss, a national security lawyer who works with Mark Zaid, who is currently of counsel for the whistleblower’s attorney Andrew Bakaj, and who is walled off from the case so he can publicly comment, provides the Office of the Director of National Intelligence guidance for bringing a whistleblower complaint.

For everyone reviewing that NYT piece and screaming "oh my lord, the WBer went to the HPSCI initially before the IG!?!", here is the relevant DNI guidance on "protected disclosures".
See something familiar in terms of which entities can be approached? pic.twitter.com/Tvc1EOBgr3
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) October 2, 2019

Here’s the link to the guidance at the ODNI website.

So while The New York Times‘ reporting is interesting, as it fleshes out the timeline and presents more context for all of us, there’s nothing irregular, strange, unprofessional, unethical, and/or illegal here. Enter Fox News’ John Roberts. Roberts had the first two questions at the President’s 2 PM EDT press conference. His second question teed the President up by framing this new reporting as a conspiracy between Congressman Schiff and the whistleblower, intimating that Congressman Schiff actually directed the complaint, fabricated the key accusations, and basically created his own need for oversight to drive impeachment. The President, as I’m sure you’re shocked to learn, took Roberts’ line of bullshit and ran with it.

Fox News gets the first question and Trump immediately goes on a lengthy rant. He ultimately accuses Adam Schiff of "a criminal act" and "treason." pic.twitter.com/97fJSFs6SQ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 2, 2019

Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, is already pushing the President’s and John Robert’s take on The New York Times‘ reporting.

BREAKING –> Chairman Adam Schiff just got caught orchestrating with the whistleblower before the complaint was ever filed. Democrats have rigged this process from the start.https://t.co/oMdSGByYtf
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) October 2, 2019

As has RNC Chair Ronna ~~Romney~~ McDaniel.

This is a stunning indictment of this impeachment charade.
Schiff got a heads up on all this.
His team then advised the “whistleblower” how to proceed, like getting a Clinton/Schumer lawyer who donated to Biden.
Who’s colluding now?https://t.co/qLDM3AYHmO
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) October 2, 2019

If I had to make a professional estimate, as soon as The New York Times‘ story was reported, a set of disinformation talking points was prepared and quickly circulated throughout the Republican, movement conservative, and conservative news and digital information media ecosystems framing the reporting this way. This is why Roberts’ framed the reporting in the way he did, in line with the disinformation now being pushed, which was done to tee up the President’s response at the press conference.

We’ve just watched the disinformation process in real time.

And Congressman Schiff has decided to push back directly on the disinformation.

When a whistleblower seeks guidance, staff advises them to get counsel and go to an IG.
That’s what they’re supposed to do.
Unlike a president pressing a foreign leader to dig up dirt on a political opponent.
That’s not what a president is supposed to do.
And we all know it. https://t.co/dzVAFGpMen
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) October 2, 2019

Open thread!

Watching the Disinformation Being Made in Real Time: The New York Times Reported Some New Information On How the Whistleblower Filed His Complaint and Fox’s John Roberts Teed It Up as a Conspiracy for the President to Swing at During His Press ConferencePost + Comments (222)

Apparently Secretary Pompeo’s Swagger Has Waddled Off Without Him

by Adam L Silverman| October 1, 20198:30 pm| 154 Comments

This post is in: America, Election 2016, Election Year, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security

Secretary Pompeo appears to be scheduled to have a very, very bad Wednesday, Earlier today he released a letter he sent to Congressman Engel, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he made it very clear that the State Department was not going to comply with his and Congressman Schiff’s requests for information regarding the mess that President, his senior staff and appointees, and his private attorneys have made around Ukraine and the mishandling of US government information by misclassification.

I’m concerned with aspects of the Committee’s request that can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, & treat improperly the distinguished professionals of the Department of State, including several career FSOs. pic.twitter.com/QRtMaXlhQM
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) October 1, 2019

Unfortunately for Secretary Pompeo the Department of State’s Inspector General has other ideas:

The inspector general's office obtained the Ukraine-related documents "from the acting legal advisor of the Department of State,” the letter said. A lot of anticipation about what the goods are https://t.co/UpVVs8UJnu
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) October 1, 2019

What the State Department IG wants to brief Congress on isn’t exactly clear yet, but, apparently, the leaks have begun.

This, I’m told, is PART of the IG’s urgent request to Congress.
— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) October 1, 2019

State Department staffers were truly shocked by the directive, which the IG denied. It appears that Pompeo is threatening his officers if they comply with Congressional inquiries.
— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) October 1, 2019

For when this is confirmed please credit me as the founder of @forensicnewsnet
— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) October 1, 2019

I’m told that @OversightDems received a report on this from a government employee in the last hour.
— Scott Stedman (@ScottMStedman) October 1, 2019

Ruh Roh!

And, apparently, what little support Secretary Pompeo had left in the State Department is gone. He has lost the building!

Since the memo detailing Trump’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart was released, dozens of Foreign Service officers have joined a private Facebook group for those considering quitting their jobs, a member of the group told POLITICO. https://t.co/eWblGclr8s via @politico
— Nahal Toosi (@nahaltoosi) October 1, 2019

From Nahal Toosi at Politico:

When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday accused House Democrats of trying to “intimidate, bully, and treat improperly” State Department employees in their impeachment inquiry, his words rang hollow to more than a few staffers in Foggy Bottom.
If anything, critics inside and outside the department say, Pompeo has done little to protect U.S. diplomats from a virtual war waged on them by President Donald Trump’s administration. His abrupt withdrawal earlier this year of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine – whom Trump disparaged in a call at the heart of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry – also has raised questions about Pompeo’s willingness to stand up for staffers facing political attacks.
That ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch , is due to to be deposed later this month by House staffers, according to a committee aide. Her case, meanwhile, has already rattled career government staffers. Many of them believe Yovanovitch, a veteran diplomat, is one of the most prominent victims of what they say is the contempt and paranoia with which Trump and his aides view the Foreign and Civil Service.
“What the administration appears to want are political operatives who are loyal not to the United States but to the president in furthering his personal, political and financial goals,” said Philip Gordon, a former senior official in the Obama administration who co-authored a recent op-ed defending Yovanovitch. “That’s where it’s demoralizing for the career diplomats.”
A current State Department staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his job, described the Pompeo letter as “the height of irony.”
Pompeo’s letter also drew derisive comments from people who remember his time as a congressman, when he loudly pressured the Clinton-led State Department to release information about the 2012 attack that killed four Americans, including an ambassador, in Benghazi, Libya.
“It is a bit rich,” said Gordon, who reported to Clinton during her time in Foggy Bottom.
Some veteran government employees fear the revelations from the impeachment inquiry will further demoralize the Foreign Service and others who work for the State Department.
One sign of that? Since the memo detailing Trump’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart was released, dozens of Foreign Service officers have joined a private Facebook group for those considering quitting their jobs, a member of the group told POLITICO.

Much more at the link!

So much for the Department of Swagger.

I hope everyone is enjoying this special Jewish New Year and Days of Awe edition of Infrastructure Week!

Open thread!

Apparently Secretary Pompeo’s Swagger Has Waddled Off Without HimPost + Comments (154)

Ruckus on January Sneak Peek (Jan 20, 2020 @ 10:41pm)

HeleninEire on January Sneak Peek (Jan 20, 2020 @ 10:41pm)

JanieM on WhitePeoplePalooza 2020 Has Ended (Jan 20, 2020 @ 10:40pm)

Matt McIrvin on WhitePeoplePalooza 2020 Has Ended (Jan 20, 2020 @ 10:38pm)

WaterGirl on January Sneak Peek (Jan 20, 2020 @ 10:35pm)

Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail.

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Yes we did.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

This blog is Obama’s Katrina.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

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Verified, but limited!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

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The Math Demands It!

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How has Obama failed you today?

Hot Air and Ill Informed Banter

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Black PSYOP, l’Affaire Ukraine, AG Barr’s Investigation, and the Impeachment Inquiry of the President

The Gaetz Maneuver or Why Forcing Entry Into a Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) Is a Really Bad Idea

The New York Times Botched Their Reporting on Secretary Clinton’s Remarks About a Democratic Primary Candidate Being Groomed

Ambassador Taylor’s Opening Statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

The Vice President Announces a Ceasefire That Is Not a Ceasefire & the President Announces That Everyone is Happy With It

President Obama & His Administration Did Indeed Have a Strategy for Syria: It is Not President Obama’s Fault if You Don’t Understand It and It is Not an Excuse for What the President Did Last Week

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia Mess

Some Good News to End This Week!

Good Work President “I Don’t Know Them”! Lev Parnas’s Dinner Reservations at the White House Edition

A Few Thoughts On the Betrayal of the Kurds: I’m Ashamed and We Should All Be Ashamed

Fire Fighting, Fire Management, and Emergency Management: A Guest Post From Balloon Juice’s Very Own Lurking Fire Chief.

The Potential Outcomes of the President Prematurely Pulling Back in Syria

Speaking of Watching the Disinformation Being Made: The Stupid Edition

Watching the Disinformation Being Made in Real Time: The New York Times Reported Some New Information On How the Whistleblower Filed His Complaint and Fox’s John Roberts Teed It Up as a Conspiracy for the President to Swing at During His Press Conference

Apparently Secretary Pompeo’s Swagger Has Waddled Off Without Him