Tag Archives: foreign policy

What Really Happened?

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Regarding the cell phones used by Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, both aides to Hillary Clinton during the latter’s stint as Secretary of State, and other devices,

[T]he State Department said in a court filing that BlackBerry devices used by two former Clinton aides during her time as secretary of state have most likely been destroyed or sold off by the agency.

The devices, used by Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, have not been located by the agency, State Department Executive Secretary Joseph Macmanus wrote in a filing submitted in DC Federal Court, adding that the agency’s “standard procedure upon return of such devices is to perform a factory reset (which removes any user settings or configurations) and then to re-issue the device to another employee, to destroy it, or to excess it.”

“Because the devices issued to Ms Mills and Ms Abedin would have been outdated models, in accordance with standard operating procedures those devices would have been destroyed or excessed,” Macmanus wrote.

And

[Macmanus] also said that Clinton did not have a BlackBerry from the State Department or any other device. That means she did not have a department-issued device certified as secure, raising new security questions as the devices she carried would not have been government-encrypted.

The guy who currently sits in the SecState chair, John Kerry, chimed in through his State Spokesperson John Kirby:

…it is “standard practice” that when employees leave, their personal devices undergo a “factory reset,” as they’re often given to other employees.

“And it’s our understanding that that’s what happened in this case. It’s also likely that because this was a while, ago and that those devices were probably—may have been destroyed,”

“Most likely,” “standard procedure,” “standard practice,” “not State issued,” “often given,” “may have been….”

Yes, yes. We fully understand the speculations. Now stop stonewalling and evading: say what actually happened to the devices. Say, also, what device Clinton actually used and where it is, since you’ve known all along her device(s) weren’t government issued.

Another Clinton Lie

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Hillary Clinton’s campaign said Wednesday that emails on the private server she used when she was secretary of state contained material that is now classified, the clearest explanation thus far of an issue that has roiled her bid for the presidency.

At the same time, the campaign sought to play down the disclosure by saying the material had been retroactively classified out of an abundance of caution by US intelligence agencies.

“She was at worst a passive recipient of unwitting information that subsequently became deemed as classified,” said Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Mrs Clinton’s campaign.

This, of course is…nonsense. The material was classified at its inception, and the documents carrying the material was thereby classified at the documents’ creation. They were only marked classified after the fact, and after the material had been recognized—by others—as having been mishandled.

That the material had been being mishandled was well known to Clinton. She has said before that she understands the rules and requirements of handling classified material. That’s what makes her claims above, through her campaign, outright lies.

It’s Not a Mystery

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Except to Steve Chapman, writing in Real Clear Politics.

It’s a mystery why, after allegedly tricking us into giving them everything they wanted, the Iranians would be so eager to evade these easy terms.

Iran’s leadership wants nuclear weapons, and they’ll do what they need to do to get them: talk interminably about a “deal” that purports to restrict their access, for a time, and then disregard the terms of the deal in order to continue their development and building efforts apace. This just isn’t that hard to understand.

Let’s consider the threat of cheating. One complaint is that the accord allows Iran to delay inspections of some sites for up to 24 days or more, making it easy to clean them up before the inspectors arrive. In fact, it wouldn’t be easy, because nuclear materials linger—not for weeks, but for centuries.

Back in 2003, when it was suspected of conducting forbidden nuclear experiments at one facility, Iran blocked International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors for more than six months. But when inspectors finally got in, they were able to detect telltale residues.

Couple things about this. In no particular order, the materials linger when they’re not cleaned up. Apparently Chapman thinks the Iranians are so stupid they learned nothing over the last dozen years from their less-than-effective cleanup efforts and being caught out.

From that incident those dozen years ago, no consequences ensued from the IAEA’s discovery. There’s little reason to believe a different outcome to any cheating today.

And, what Chapman carefully elided: the Iranians cheated then. Along those lines:

We don’t have to prove guilt. Iran has to prove innocence.

No, they don’t. They don’t have to do anything; they can continue their activities unaltered by any discovery of cheating. Never mind that no consequence can ensue from the cheating until it has been demonstrated that Iran has failed its proof.

But take the worst-case scenario. Suppose Iran commits a violation and our partners devise some ingenious way to block sanctions. Then what? The US would still have the ultimate recourse: military action.

Indeed. But what Chapman ignored is that the longer the delay on taking that ultimate recourse, the more expensive and the more chancy of success it will get.

Russian Disingenuosity

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed the Ukrainian government Monday for an uptick in violence in eastern Ukraine, saying Kiev’s forces were apparently preparing for a fresh offensive, as Ukraine blamed Russia-backed separatists for the escalation.

Never mind that, were it true that Ukraine is readying an offensive, it would only be true because the Ukrainian government has a right—a duty—to drive the Russian troops from Ukrainian soil and to bring the “separatists” to justice.

Politics

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Here’s Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s view of “politics:”

I won’t pretend that this [homemade email server/classified email scandal] is anything other than what it is—the same old partisan games we’ve seen so many times before.

It’s not about Benghazi. And you know what? It’s not about emails or servers, either. It’s about politics. I will do my part to provide transparency to Americans[.]

Because it’s only politics that a Clinton, or any other politician, should be held to account for her misbehaviors regarding using homemade email servers to conduct State Department official business.

It’s only politics that a Clinton, or any other politician, should be held to account for her misbehaviors involving her handling of classified information via those servers.

It’s only politics that a Clinton, or any other politician, should be held to account for her misbehaviors involving her disingenuousness in claiming no emails passed through her servers that had classified markings on it, knowing that’s not the problem: having classified information, regardless of markings, is.

It’s only politics that a Clinton, or any other politician, should be held to account for her misbehaviors involving withholding such official records from State and from the National Archives in contravention of the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

It’s only politics.

This is the level of integrity and moral judgment that wants to be President of the United States. We already will have had eight years of that sewage by the time our next President is inaugurated. We can’t afford any more; our nation and our society have been damaged badly enough.