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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump DIDN'T DECLASSIFY! He passed secrets on to a foreign adversary!!!
Had he really been attempting to desclassify the intel he gave the Russians - it would all be available to us now - and it isn't!
If Trump continues to pass our most sensitive intelligence to the Russians, will the GOP continue to defend the practice as just something a President is allowed to do??
Imagine if FDR had been caught passing on locations of American forces to the Japanese or the Germans, do you think there would have been a defense made for him that "the President can declassify anything he wants to" - and that would have been an end to it?
Not in a million years! The outrage would have been deafening, and he would have been universally declared what Trump clearly is...
A DESPICABLE FUCKING TRAITOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)...and the security of America's allies.
Deplorable.
* Comrade Casino (R)
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)physioex
(6,890 posts)Doesn't declassification occur well past the end of an operations shelf life, to serve a greater purpose, and after consulting the original source?
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)Because that wasn't what he was doing.
L. Coyote
(51,129 posts)Which Trump DID NOT do and likely has no notion about it as a rank amateur at government and at following pesky rules in general.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)mr_lebowski
(33,643 posts)It's highly unusual (and dare i say, highly improper) for a POTUS to 'declassify' highly sensitive material by means of blurting it out to officials from freakin' Russia, visiting the Oval Office, with the US media kept out, and only Russian media present ... ESPECIALLY without getting permission from the ally that provided said Top Secret info.
I'd go so far as to say it's 'unprecedented', because as the poster you're responding to said, there's normally a declassification 'process', one which is not done when the intel involves still-active concerns like ISIS.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)Like all things Trump.
Madam45for2923
(7,178 posts)He undermined and endangered our own intelligence community. They rely on other countries trusts.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)It's just that we're constantly hit by a barrage of Trump scandals - any one of which could bring any administration down... But this is one that if tolerated - truly means the end of this republic.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)thoughtless, careless republican shirker & russian-bankrolled, casino sharpie that he is...
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)And he could give a shit!!
onenote
(42,694 posts)I doubt that the administration would argue that Trump declassified the information. What he did he share classified information with a foreign government -- something that happens regularly. indeed, the information he shared was provided to us by a foreign government and I doubt anyone would argue that when a country, such as Israel, shares information with the US (or vice versa), that information is automatically available to the public in either or both country.
The issue with Trump's loose lips isn't whether it was illegal, it is whether it was a bad decision that harmed our interests.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)was that the President can declassify anything he wants. Which isn't what really happened here. Further - it's going to be the court of public opinion which is ultimately going to decide these things.
Akamai
(1,779 posts)Igel
(35,300 posts)The US and Russia have an exchange of information system set up in Syria and Afghanistan to keep from attacking each other's forces.
Is the operational information--when missions are going to be conducted, where they'll be conducted, what their purposes and extent are--classified or not?
If not, then publishing what the sorties the US will fly over the next week and where their operatives on the ground will be should be published in the NYT, in the interest of the public's right to know.
If it is classified, how dare we share this information with Russia?
Publishing the information is contrary to US interests; it would get US citizens killed. Not sharing the information is contrary to US interests; it would get US citizens killed. Those are apparently the only two moral choices, and both end in ideologically straitjacketed deaths. You may consider this an example of "reduction to the absurd." The classification system and the loopholes in it are old, very old, and both the system and loopholes exist for good reasons.
Now, this particular op-sharing system isn't Trump's. It was set up under President Obama's tenure. Which really means, Do we think that Obama set up a routine system to commit treason or not? Those, again, are the two choices you have, boiling down to, "Obama should have let US soldiers die or he's a traitor." More silliness.
We'll leave aside that there are different levels of classification and that all executive power originates, for good or for bad, with the president (at least until we change the Constitution or redefine "president" in some way that momentarily suits us).
As for passing info to the Russians, it's something FDR did. Routinely. In spite of the fact that Stalin's attitude to the US really hadn't changed. It suited FDR and his goals for US policy to cooperate with the Soviets who, even as the war was being conducted in Europe, had spies in the US to steal secrets, information that FDR didn't authorize sharing with them, and possibly be a position to resume hostilities against us after the Nazis had been defeated.
Now, Trump's bragging was unseemly. It's a sucky reason, if it's really the reason, for sharing information. Yet it's what he is.
And as for Russia's being our adversary, sorry. I rued the day Putin was elected, and did so on the very day he was elected. That was a long, long time ago, and the only time DU didn't allow near admiration for Putin was when Bush II said favorable things about him. DUers' attitudes to Putin are, overall, more based on who's in the White House than anything outside the US, which is sad. I also thought it ridiculous when Romney was ridiculed for calling Russia a "foe" and DU was in an uproar because President Obama was still busy trying his "reset". It was a stupid, idiotic strategy at the time but to say so was not proper politics. The only thing that's changed between then and now is that a lot of there are a lot of johnny-come-lately folk who are anti-Putin not because of new information but because what Russia did finally hurt them domestically. And the only real action they can come up with is to sow dissent and contempt for the US political process and play with discrediting domestic politics (which as the security agencies themselves said in the report whose first page is regularly reported as "...", is their first goal).
Twain said it's easier to trick people than to convince them they've been tricked. Russia's been successful enough that the rumor is they're even concerned about the chaos in US politics. They want to win, but they also value stability. "Win" means "have the US be isolationist and leave Russia to do what they want where they want it." They want to be #1 in a stable world, not #1 in a chaotic world, so it's not a completely implausible rumor. (And, yes, attributing our definition to them is foolishness; in psychology, a reward isn't what the experimenter or boss or teacher says it is, it's what the subject says it is. "I offered them a reward and they turned it down" means "I offered them something they didn't value but I did, why can't they be like me!?"
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)For allegedly passing on secrets to the Soviet Union (and of course war was never declared during the cold war time period). A peace treaty was never signed between the U.S. and Russia, after the Soviet Union was reduced to today's Russia. But as almost all of our nuclear weapons are still aimed at them - and there's at us, there is no question that they remain an adversary of ours - and I would suggest they are even more dangerous as a fascist government then they were as a communist one. Lastly, time and time again, U.S. public officials still refer to Russia and Putin as adversaries (admittedly, this the weakest part of the argument).
But thanks for sharing.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)has not been, to my knowledge, revoked.
RUSSIA IS NOT AN ALLY. SHE* IS AN ADVERSARY.
*Common parlance.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)It was just an analogy.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,994 posts)ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)Dictator Netan-yahoo may still love him - but the people and many intelligence officials despise him!!
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)Rather than go into that, I'll correct myself for you.
Netanyahu is not a dictator, (he's just a war mongering asshole). IMO, of course.
SunSeeker
(51,550 posts)So it was at all times and still is highly classified.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)Rhetorical question.
bluedigger
(17,086 posts)You and I don't have a need to know.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)What an ugly, fascist clown!
BSdetect
(8,998 posts)It was another felony. Imprison this moron.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)Him. Up.
kentuck
(111,079 posts)If he "de-classified" information, we should have access to that information immediately. He can't "de-classify" the info for the Russians and keep it secret from the American people. It is still top secret.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)Guess they thought we wouldn't notice.
triron
(21,999 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)If it is declassified the. We can all see it
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)Hmm. Declassified for Russian viewing only. WTF?
Traitor. Fucking traitor.
BSdetect
(8,998 posts)Towlie
(5,324 posts).. makes sense, right?
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)it's the War Room.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)But we can't let this be perceived to be acceptable - or all is truly lost (which I don't for a moment believe that it is!).
dchill
(38,472 posts)Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)after he gave them to the Russians. So, that's OK--probably even smart, to his supporters and enablers.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)And what would stop him from continually doing this - until he's essentially handed over to the Russians ALL sensitive U.S. intelligence?
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)there is nothing that would stop him from continuously handing sensitive intelligence to the Russians or anyone else. The only legal remedy is his impeachment. That is a nonstarter because of the GOP majorities in Congress.
At some point, Trump might go to far, even for them.
tiptonic
(765 posts)So true. Hence the term 'Benedict donald'.
ElementaryPenguin
(7,800 posts)By God - that's a perfect name for him. I don't know how I've avoided hearing it - others must be using it. Just perfect!