Posted on 03/27/2019 5:23:12 AM PDT by billorites
What, then, was it all about? I think I know. It was all about General Flynn. I think it began on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, when Flynn changed the way we did intelligence against the likes of Zarqawi, bin Laden, the Taliban, and their allies.
General Flynn saw that our battlefield intelligence was too slow. We collected information from the Middle East and sent it back to Washington, where men with stars on their shoulders and others at the civilian intel agencies chewed it over, decided what to do, and sent instructions back to the war zone. By the time all that happened, the battlefield had changed. Flynn short-circuited this cumbersome bureaucratic procedure and moved the whole enterprise to the war itself. The new methods were light years faster. Intel went to local analysts, new actions were ordered from men on the battlefield (Flynn famously didn’t care about rank or status) and the war shifted in our favor.
This earned him a following among some who worked for or with him, but it also gained him the enmity of those who had been cut out of “the chain of command.” By the time he was made head of DIA, Flynn had a real problem with the intelligence community, first because he had marginalized them, and for another reason: Flynn was determined to do a full-scale analysis of the (many) secret missions that had not been carried out over the years, and he wanted an accounting of the considerable funds allocated for them.
So there were many high-ranking intelligence officials who were out to get Flynn. You can see them at work long before there was a hint of Russiagate, when the target was not yet Donald Trump. But then things got worse for the IC, when Flynn was named to head DIA. By then, the FBI was fully engaged in the anti-Flynn campaign, paying people like Stefan Halper to surveil Flynn’s behavior in Great Britain. This produced the fanciful accusation (impossible, for anyone who knew the general) that Flynn had flirted with a good-looking Russian historian. This may have been the start of the “collusion” allegations.
After Flynn was driven out of his post at DIA, things got even more threatening to the intelligence officials, as he became a prime advisor to candidate Trump and, early in the campaign, other Republicans. After the 2016 elections, the IC officials went all-out to keep him out of the White House, sometimes resorting to spreading ridiculous stories. President Obama warned Trump not to appoint Flynn as national security advisor, and Susan Rice actually warned the president-elect that Flynn might be in violation of the Logan Act, for which nobody has ever been prosecuted, and hence blackmailable by the Russians. Meanwhile, the Bureau had opened a counterintelligence investigation of Flynn’s activities. His digital communications were monitored, “unmasked” at the request of Obama officials, and leaked to friendly journalists.
The operation against Flynn provided the model for the anti-Trump assault. When the “collusion with Russia” allegations drove Flynn out of office, the intel officials realized the same methods could prevail against the president. That effort has apparently ended with Mueller’s rejection of the “collusion” allegations.
The accusations against Flynn were fanciful from the outset, and need to be undone. If justice is to prevail for this distinguished officer, he should be pardoned at once, and then the president has the opportunity for a positive step: create a high-powered commission to investigate the many sins of the intelligence community. Flynn’s plan to audit their budgets—no such appraisal has been carried out since World War II—was worthy and important. The president should make General Flynn the chair of that committee, to restore his good name and give intelligence the kind of serious evaluation we badly need.
It was about HATRED for Trump and Flynn!
+1
Flynn has suffered. He deserves to be made whole. A true patriot.
Amen!
One can only imagine the level of graft and corruption going on under the pretense of national secrecy.
Spot on about Flynn. The Obama Intel community did not want him as National Security Advisor nor did the Establishment. They considered Flynn a loose cannon. His endorsement of Trump was the last straw.
It was a COVERUP and coup attempt! STALL Trump while we cover our tracks of the real scandal....using FISA courts to infiltrate and spy on Trump’s campaign, then the insurance plan was to remove him from office. Watergate X 10,000.
This author, Michael Ledeen, has a history of deception & misinformation. I’m surprised he’s still around.
Make no mistake, this was all about Obama/Hillary. Obama allowed this unprecedented corruption of dozens of agencies, he allowed it and thus he is responsible for it.
Yes, this goes right to the top, as Trump alluded to yesterday.
I think a lot of vengeance settling happened. Trump and Flynn had the same enemies.
Seems a go fund me is in order for this ruined man.
Flynn? Maybe somewhat, but I see this as 99% anti President Trump.
The collusion excuse for the phony investigation was the nose under the tent. They(conspirators) thought they would surely find all sorts of salacious stuff on Trump and everyone would have forgotten the phony reason for starting the investigation in the first place. THEY WERE WRONG.
Spot on. Bump for later.
Nellie Ohr was pretty obviously one of those Pentagon contractors who was illegally mining the NSA database at will, which Adm. Rogers discovered and shut all contractors down in May 2016.
Flynn would probably see all this illegal activity without any problem, and the Left's best approach to muzzle him was to put a torpedo in his side and put him on the defensive ASAP, which they effectively, unethically, and illegally did.
“It was a COVERUP and coup attempt! “
I agree with you. I believe the special counsel was appointed to be a clearing house of all information relating to Hillary Clinton. Eighteen Hillary supporters had the task of taking all the information that could lead to the prosecution of Clinton or Obama and their mission to destroy the President was washed.
My bet is if a Special Counsel was appointed by Barr to oversee an investigation into Clinton and Obama, they won’t find much. I’ll go even farther and say that if they wanted to bring Hillary up on charges of her email server, there won’t be anything to corroborate it.
I believe Flynn to be an honorable soldier..., but, what the hell was he doing lobbying for Turkey? Was it an intelligence gathering effort disguised as ... or what?
There are plenty of Flynn haters here. What say they now?
They aren't.
Mueller and the others behind this such as Weissman, Rosenstein, Comey, Brennan, McCabe, Carlin, et al, were all counting on the short attention spane of the American public, much as they did with Obamacare when Jonathan Gruber (the architect) said: "...“The lack of transparency is a huge political advantage” and that “the stupidity of the American voter . . . was really, really critical for the thing to pass...”
This thinking is endemic to the Left, and the Clinton and Obama spheres in particular.
Critical to their thinking (IMO) was that this Republican administration would be just like all the others...they would wring their hands, trip over their feet, mumble responses not wanting to seem intemperate, the thing would drag out and be obfuscated, and in the end, the Left would win as it became "Old News".
The difference here belongs to two main people: President Donald J. Trump who refused to back down and calmly laid out a strategy to navigate it, and Rep. Devin Nunes, who time after time kept this issue in the forefront.
It was a disciplined master stroke of Trump not to fire Mueller and to let the investigation take its course, and an extremely savvy move not to fire Rosenstein. Why? Rosenstein's signature appears in some key (and diametrically opposed) places in this whole pile of crap.
Rosenstein's signature is on the letter firing Comey...the ILLEGAL FISA warrants, and...the letter exonerating Trump and ending the investigation.
Now, look at what is happening...see the change in the behavior of both the Democrats main players and Republicans? Look at people like both Brennan and Clapper...both of them are starting to swing wildly, because they have been running their mouths, Clapper and Brennan have both lied under oath...and all of this is going to become clear moving forward.
They are, as their spineless, cowardly selves always revert to, beginning to throw each other both inadvertently and deliberately under the bus to save their own skins.
Collusion hoax / Flynn bump for later.....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.