Yeah There Was a Leak - To Russia

Yeah, there was a leak…. to Russia!

        House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday called on the White House to brief lawmakers on the raid that targeted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, noting that President Trump had informed Russia of the military operation before telling congressional leadership. Of course, if he had, his decision to golf during the raid would have been far more difficult to obfuscate, especially if he had briefed any Republicans who might have been concerned enough to follow the operation in real time from the situation room, where Trump’s absence might have troubled even them.

       The statement from Pelosi came after Trump told reporters at a lengthy, and mainly self-aggrandizing news conference that he didn’t inform the House speaker of the raid because he “wanted to make sure this kept secret.” This rings hollow, because presidents typically follow the protocol of contacting congressional leaders, regardless of their political party, when a high-level military operation is conducted.

       The leaders of both Houses are sometimes referred to as the “gang of eight,” the common colloquial term for the bi-partisan group of eight legislators, four Democrats and four Republicans—who wrote the first draft of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. They were briefed by President Barack Obama prior to the Bin Laden raid in 2011.

        This continued and blatant shunning of bipartisanship, documented and verified by Trump himself, is amazing in that he has, personally, divulged sensitive intelligence material numerous times to the chagrin of the intelligence community, many of which now loathe him. His implication, of course, is predicated on his belief that Ms. Pelosi would act as he (Trump) might well have done. The "leaks" he refers to have come, not from Democratic leadership, but primarily from disaffected Trump former (and perhaps still in place) staffers who realize the emperor's nudity. This is more Trump slander.

        That Trump effectively accused Democratic leaders of being willing to put partisanship before country over something as serious as a special forces attack on America’s top national security target is a sign of how wide the gulf has become under his presidency.

        As previously mentioned, Trump’s griping about the extent of leaking is entirely understandable – his administration has, for years, been as leaky as a sieve. In (again documented) fact, most of the big stories to emerge from inside the White House have come not from Democrats but from his own inner circle of senior aides, or from the whistleblower within the intelligence community who sounded the alarm over Ukraine.

        An example of  Trump’s apparent lack of discernment may be sensed by the fact that he did brief Senator Lindsey Graham, not a member of the Gang of Eight, and someone who would not normally be in the loop, while there is serious doubt that Mitch McConnell knew of the raid beforehand. Yet, Graham, who Trump apparently thinks is a “righteous dude” said this, just weeks earlier, when asked about the removal at Trump’s whim of US forces from Syria: "My statement to you is this is worse than what Obama did. When Obama left Iraq all hell broke loose and if you think, Mr. President (he’s addressing Trump, here), ISIS is only a threat to Europe you really don't understand ISIS," Graham them added that “U.S. allies should be "unnerved" by Trump's decision. Asked if this was Trump's Vietnam, Graham said, "No — this is worse."  The previous statements by Senator Graham almost make the Al Baghdadi raid seem like an attempt by Donnie to appease his buddy Lindsey, huh?

       In a final commentary on the above Graham statement, one must realize that blaming Obama for reducing US troop strength in Iraq, and by that measure for the rise of ISIS, is, more than anything else, an attempt to deflect accountability for the destabilization of Iraq from The Bush 43 regime where it rightfully rests. The Bush decision to remove the government of Iraq, in response to an attack masterminded in Afghanistan and funded in Saudi Arabia must surely rate as one of the worst gaffes in geopolitical history since the Gulf of Tonkin myth was perpetrated by LBJ at the urging of Robert McNamara. And yes, Bob McNamara admitted and regretted that hoax and self-flagellated over it until his death, not that that regret brought back any of the 2 million who died in a needless conflict. Sadly, Neither Donald Rumsfeld nor Dick Cheney, unhampered by any semblance of conscience, will ever accept any equivalent responsibility for urging a compliant and malleable George W. Bush into attacking and destabilizing the entire civil structure of Iraq, which led to the influx of ISIS to fill the gap.

         ISIS, contrary to what Senator Graham apparently believes, was established in 1999. The group was founded by Jordanian Salafi jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In a letter published by his growing Coalition in February 2004, Zarqawi wrote that jihadis should use bombings to start an open sectarian war so that Sunnis from the Islamic world would mobilize against assassinations carried out by Shia, specifically the Badr Brigade, against Ba'athists and Sunnis.

        And where were they to find disaffected Sunnis without secular leadership or government? How about the newly acquired US dependency of Iraq, where after the deposition of Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration, at Rumsfeld’s insistence, ordered all former police and military (both secular organizations) to be barred from active roles in rebuilding Iraq. This became an open invitation to ISIS, as newly “freed” Iraqis were also newly impoverished Iraqis. “Hello, we’re from ISIS and we’re here to help!”  

  

      Comparisons of Obama in Iraq And Trump in Syria have been lambasted by one individual who actually, unlike Trump, knows a bit about the issue.  The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in 2011, Jim Jeffrey (now Trump’s special envoy for Syria and who also served as Bush’s deputy national security adviser) well understands the complexity of Iraq and disputed that notion at the time (2014): “The argument that U.S. troops could have produced different Iraqi political outcomes is hogwash. The Iraqi sectarian divides, which ISIS exploited, run deep and were not susceptible to permanent remedy by our troops at their height, let alone by 5,000 trainers under Iraqi restraints.”  

       Jeffrey, an acknowledged Mid-East expert, maybe even the US Mid-East expert, is far from singular in that opinion. In fact, he acknowledged to a Senate committee that he had been neither consulted or notified prior to the apparently unilateral and spur of the moment Trump decision to pull troops from Syria.

        Compare all US efforts in the region with Trump’s abandonment of the local forces – the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — who expelled ISIS from eastern Syria. The SDF enlisted in the fight not only to take back their towns, but with reliance, based on assurances provided during both the Obama and Trump administrations that U.S. support would continue after the war. Part of that commitment was a promise to give them some input into the political future of Syria, but that pledge is now in question, especially now that Russia has hurried to fill the gap and, possibly, the political focus. Founded in October 2015, the SDF states its mission as fighting to create a secular, democratic and decentralized Syria. These seem like fairly American values, yet those are the folks we abandoned.

        Now vulnerable to decidedly hostile Turkish forces, the SDF, in particular its Kurdish element, will likely need to cut a deal with the Assad regime. In short, our small military force provided political and military benefits with scope far greater than just the numbers of boots on the ground might indicate to the uninformed. The cost to U.S. credibility will resonate for years in the region, and perhaps beyond.  

        Saddam Hussein was the devil we knew. For the majority of Iraqis, life became far more difficult due to the “weapons of mass destruction” fraud and subsequent creation of a power void we would neither fill nor allow to be filled because of Bush  administration insistence in barring competent, experienced and, generally secular officials from a new Iraqi regime. US credibility, already suspect in some quarters, has taken another hit in the Trump abandonment of the SDF. In course, if one views Putin as an honorable man….!