Antiwar.com Blog

An NSA document purporting to show Russian military hacker attempts to access a Florida company which makes voter registration software is sent anonymously to The Intercept. A low-level NSA contractor, Reality Winner, above, is arrested almost immediately. What’s wrong with this picture? A lot.

Who Benefits?

Start with the question of who benefits – cui bono – same as detectives do when assessing a crime.

• Trump looks bad as another trickle of information comes out connecting something Russian to something 2016 election. Intelligence community (IC) looks like they are onto something, a day or so before ousted FBI Director James Comey testifies before Congress on related matters.
• The Intercept looks like it contributed to burning a source. Which potential leaker is going to them in the future? If potential leakers are made to think twice, another win for the IC.
• The FBI made an arrest right away, nearly simultaneous to the publication, with the formal charges coming barely an hour after The Intercept published. The bust is sure thing according to the very publicly released information. No Ed Snowden hiding out in Russia this time. IC looks good here.
• More evidence is now in the public domain that the Russians are after our election process. Seems as if the IC has been right all along.

What Happened is… Curious and Curiouser…

Now let’s look at what we know so far about how this happened.

Continue reading “Hey Intercept, Something Is Very Wrong With Reality Winner and the NSA Leak”

Rep. Walter Jones, Jr. (R-NC) has looked at war from both sides. As he has readily shared with us, he was hoodwinked by the US intelligence community in the run-up to the Iraq war. He attended the briefings and he trusted the "professionals." As the neocon promised "cakewalk" turned out to be a slaughterhouse, he began to think hard about what he had been told about Iraq and terrorism and 9/11.

He soon realized it was all a fake. He became one of the most important conservative opponents of the wars for the US empire. How many conservatives did his passionate commitment to truth turn against the war? Scores.

Rep. Jones now is convinced that we must end the 16 year US war on Afghanistan. In a recent interview with PJ Media, he pulled no punches in outlining his opposition to the expected Trump Administration military escalation – "surge 3.0" – in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “Rep. Walter Jones to Congress: Stop Funding Afghan War!”

The Trump administration has already done enormous harm to the United States and the planet. Along the way, Trump has also caused many prominent progressives to degrade their own political discourse. It’s up to us to challenge the corrosive effects of routine hyperbole and outright demagoguery.

Consider the rhetoric from one of the most promising new House members, Democrat Jamie Raskin, at a rally near the Washington Monument over the weekend. Reading from a prepared text, Raskin warmed up by declaring that “Donald Trump is the hoax perpetrated on the Americans by the Russians.” Soon the congressman named such varied countries as Hungary, the Philippines, Syria and Venezuela, and immediately proclaimed: “All the despots, dictators and kleptocrats have found each other, and Vladimir Putin is the ringleader of the unfree world.”

Later, asked about factual errors in his speech, Raskin floundered during a filmed interview with The Real News. What is now boilerplate Democratic Party bombast about Russia has little to do with confirmed facts and much to do with partisan talking points.

Continue reading “Dangerous Discourse: When Progressives Sound Like Demagogues”

UK Prime Minister Theresa May wants to blame YouTube for yesterday’s deadly London attack. She thinks terrorism can be stopped by pushing the “superiority” of British values…and more bombs on the Middle East. President Trump wants to ban people from seven countries – even though no one from those countries has killed Americans on US soil since the 1970s. Why is it that when they talk about terrorism, politicians can never admit the role our foreign policy plays?

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

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News Release from office of Rep. Justin Amash

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A bipartisan group of six representatives, led by Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), today introduced a joint resolution of disapproval, H.J. Res. 102, to block proposed sales of precision-guided munitions and other offensive weapons to the Government of Saudi Arabia. The joint resolution is cosponsored by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).

Congress was notified of the proposed sales, which are part of a larger arms deal with Saudi Arabia reportedly worth $110 billion, on May 19.

Continue reading “House Members Seek To Block Proposed Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia”