GOP candidates slam Trump over Putin praise (Trump really scaring me-OK with killing journalists?)

Fox News ^ | Dec. 18, 2015 | Barnini Chakraborty

[mtrott]

What started as a seemingly mild admiration between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin took an uncomfortable turn Friday when the GOP White House hopeful seemed to defend the Russian president’s strong-arm tactics – and dismiss his alleged killing of journalists and others who cross him.

[tsowellfan]

Problem is the new Obama American culture has shamed us for waving our own flag and now some feel that all nations should be ashamed of waving their flags too.

Don't hold your breath. That's not normal. Everybody loves their home, their city, state or province, their nation.

By the way...

pResident Obama threatened Greta for reporting on the jihadist attack in Benghazi

and that's only one of many true stories and how many other similar incidents never came to light?

[WilliamIII]

Here’s the link to the previous article”
http://articles.latimes.com/1987-08-14/news/mn-775_1_cheka

[WilliamIII]

“Today’s killing journalists”

Where is your proof that this accusation against Putin is true? I asking that seriously. Do you know anything other than what the mainstream media anchors tell you? And they’re just “reporting” accusations. Where’s the proof? I’m not saying it might not exist, but that’s not what the media is giving us - they give us accusations and treat them as conclusive.

[usconservative]

What’s more, Hillary has killed a lot of people too.

Certainly at least four that we know about in Benghazi.

There names are Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, an information management officer and two security officers who were former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty who attempted to rescue Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith when our Embassay was under attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Let us not forget their names.

[libbylu]

Gotta remind you, hardcore trumpees do not care what Trump, says, does, has said or done.
Just in case you hadn’t noticed.
Cruz I trust more than all other politicians.

[trisham]

What is your point?

[mtrott]

Wow, I guess you agree with those Yale students who signed the petition to repeal the First Amendment.

[FourPeas]

It’s the flippant nature with which people comment that it’s not a big deal.

[Georgia Girl 2]

LOL!

[1rudeboy]

I'm afraid to ask what will be acceptable tomorrow.

You are watching, in a front row seat, Orwell's Animal Farm, Kafka's The Trial (sadly unfinished), Raspail's The Camp of the Saints, and Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all simultaneously play themselves out.

And I damn the day I decided to get a degree in literature.

[usconservative]

Here is the actual clip: the answer is given in less than a minute. What Trump Actually Said But you Cruz zealots care nothing of the truth, period.

[trisham]

Not true. I began as a Cruz supporter. I continue to support him, while also supporting Trump, despite posts such as yours.

[mkjessup]

I think you must be missing my point. There are plenty of suspicious circumstances in the deaths of Russian journalists. And my point, precisely, is why should I give Putin a pass when I'm asked to give Obama strict scrutiny?

We're actually on the same page here. I agree with you. Putin may indeed have some sort of involvement in the deaths of Russian journalists (although personally I think that being the KGB type he is, he would choose to delegate and compartmentalize that sort of data and awareness so far as "who knows, and who doesn't" just to give him even semi-plausible deniability).

However even IF Putin is the founder of the "Kill-A-Journalist-A-Month Club", which we should rightly condemn, that doesn't mean he isn't right on other unrelated issues, i.e., going after Islamic terrorists and sending them on to their 72 Helen Thomas' in the hereafter.

We didn't approve or condone of how Stalin abused and mistreated the Russian people during World War II, but we made him our ally because it just so happened that the Red Army was the only thing standing between stopping Hitler and watching the Nazi's march on to Vladivostok. Churchill (and I presume FDR) considered Stalin to be a thug, but if a thug is the only one who can help you win the day, you do what you have to do.

[ironman]

Why did the article leave this out?

Scarborough: “So I mean, you obviously condemn Vladimir Putin killing journalists and political opponents, right?”

Trump: “Oh sure, absolutely.”

[tsowellfan]

Conservatism defined is simple: responsibility, family values, patriotism, traditionalism

Protecting our nation from illegal border crossers that could flood this nation and change our culture and traditions is very patriotic.

Deporting the illegal alien fathers so they can reunite with their children still in Mexico (or whatever country) is very PRO-FAMILY.

[Mariner]

We have a few journalists in the US that would benefit greatly from some fear.

[McGruff]

Boy Scarborough is showing his true colors. First the go to commercial incident, now this. What did they focus group that gotcha question? If I was Trump it would be the last time Scarborough spoke to me. Mika ok, but Scarborough, forget about it.

[DesertRhino]

“The average Russian hates America and Americans, I’ve been there and seen it.”

Ever think it might have been you they disliked? I have visited there along with much of eastern Europe and was treated warmly. It was pretty amazing. I got more snark in Germany than I did in Russia.
And universally was treated according to the respect I showed.

It was you.

[ETL]

Putin: Defender of Christian Faith and Morality?

September 2014

(excerpt from a long, detailed article)

First and foremost, in any review of the basics regarding Putin, the most outstanding fact is that he is a creature of the Soviet KGB, a truly diabolical organization nonpareil, which stood for murder, terror, and grand deception.

It was the Soviet Communist Party's tool for the brutal suppression of religion, including the persecution of Christians: denying them jobs and education; spying on and entrapping them; arresting and imprisoning them; torturing them in unspeakable ways; desecrating and demolishing their church buildings; infiltrating their agents into churches to subvert them. The KGB destroyed thousands of Christian churches, monasteries, convents, and schools, and slaughtered millions of Christians.

But it did not destroy the churches utterly. There remained an underground church, whose members were always at risk of discovery, arrest, torture, and martyrdom. Above ground, the KGB took control of the Russian Orthodox Church, which became a very useful organ of the Soviet atheist state.

In January 2009, Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, better known as Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, was elected, from a short list of three candidates, to be the 16th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, the highest position of authority in the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). The election was called to fill the post that had been left vacant by the death of Patriarch Alexy II, who had headed the ROC since 1990.

Documents from the KGB archives have confirmed what sensible observers had long ago deduced from his actions: that Patriarch Alexy II (also spelled Alexi or Alexei) was a long-serving KGB agent (code-named Drozdov, "Blackbird"), in other words, a traitor to his Christian brethren and the God he claimed to serve. Putin's KGB/FSB was taking no chances with his replacement. All three candidates - Metropolitan Kliment of Kaluga and Borovsk (code-named Topaz), Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk and Slutsk (code-named Ostrovskii), and Metropolitan Kirill (code-named Mikhailov) - also have been reliably identified as agents of the KGB/FSB.

Russia expert David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times (of London) and the Wall Street Journal, wrote of the election in 2009 for Forbes:

According to material from the Soviet archives, Kirill was a KGB agent (as was Alexei). This means he was more than just an informer, of whom there were millions in the Soviet Union. He was an active officer of the organization. Neither Kirill nor Alexei ever acknowledged or apologized for their ties with the security agencies.

Because Patriarch Kirill is of central importance to the myth of Putin as the Saul-to-Paul, Christian persecutor-to-Christian champion, it behooves us to more closely examine the man. He has publicly presided over, and provided official benedictions and exhortations for, Putin's cynical and Stalinesque exploitation of Russian nationalism and Russian Orthodoxy. Josef Stalin, who had very nearly consummated the annihilation of the Russian Orthodox Church begun by Vladimir Lenin, reversed course in 1941. The reason? His erstwhile partner in crime, Adolf Hitler, had turned on him and had invaded Russia.

Stalin, needing all the help he could get, cut a deal with ROC Metropolitans Sergius, Nikolay, and Alexy. In exchange for their support in rallying the Russian people, he would cease (temporarily) the persecution and allow the reopening of churches and theological schools. In fact, Stalin's Soviet government paid for the rebuilding of many of the churches. The ROC was thus placed even more firmly under the control of the NKVD, which was later to be reorganized and renamed as the KGB. ..."

much more at link

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/19162-putin-defender-of-christian-faith-and-morality

***********************************************************

"For 16 years Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991.

He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election, despite widespread accusations of vote-rigging,[3] and was reelected in 2004."

"On 25 July 1998, Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. He became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation on 1 October 1998 and its Secretary on 29 March 1999."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

[ETL]

From a 2007 article titled "Putin's Russia"...

"KGB influence 'soars under Putin,' " blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany's largest news magazines: "Putin's Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents."

In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel's article, readers are informed that: "Four out of five members of Russia's political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin."

The study, which looked at 1,061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that "78 percent of the Russian elite" are what are known in Russia as "siloviki," which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. The author of the study, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, expressed shock at her own findings. "I was very shocked when I looked at the boards of major companies and realized there were lots of people who had completely unknown names, people who were not public but who were definitely, obvious siloviki," she told Reuters.

Other supposed experts - in Russia and the West - have also expressed surprise and alarm at the apparent resurrection of the dreaded Soviet secret police. After all, for the past decade and a half these same experts have been pointing to the alleged demise of the KGB as the primary evidence supporting their claim that communism is dead.

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian security apparatus Cheka (and its later permutations: OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB) had been the "sword and shield" of the communist world revolution.

"We stand for organized terror," declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka for Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, Dzerzhinsky launched the campaign of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Krasnaya Gazeta, the Bolshevik newspaper, expressed the Chekist credo when it reported approvingly in 1918 of the terror campaign: "We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood."

Unflinching cruelty and merciless, bloody terror have been the trademark of the communist secret police, from the Cheka to the KGB. Obviously, the demise of such an organization would be cause for much rejoicing. Hence, when the KGB was ordered dissolved and its chairman, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, was arrested in 1991 after attempting to overthrow "liberal reformer" Mikhail Gorbachev in the failed "August Coup," many people in the West were only too willing to pop the champagne corks and start celebrating our supposed victory over the Evil Empire.

But, as Mikhail Leontiyev, commentator for Russia's state-controlled Channel One television, recently noted, repeating a phrase popular among the siloviki: "Americans got so drunk at the USSR's funeral that they're still hung over." And stumbling around in their post-inebriation haze, many of these Americans have only recently begun noticing that they had prematurely written the KGB's epitaph, even as it was arising vampire-like from the coffin.

However, there is really no excuse for Olga Kryshtanovskaya or any of her American counterparts to be stunned by the current siloviki dominance in Putin's Russia. For nearly a decade, even before he became Russia's "president," THE NEW AMERICAN has been reporting on Putin's KGB pedigree and his steady implementation of a long-range Soviet deception strategy, including the public rehabilitation and refortifying of the KGB-FSB. ..."

(continues at link)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia