If it's Thursday, it must be MOAB. That's "mother of all bombs" for those who missed the background briefing. The bomb was dropped in Afghanistan today on an ISIS target, making good on Trump's promise to "bomb the sh*t out of them." Boom boom boom, here we go again.
The big bad mother was as much a psychological as a physical message, and was likely also intended to show Kim Jong Crazy and Bashar-al Assad (or"Basaad" as Sean Spicer would say) that Trump means business. When the ratings are in the tank and your supporters are wavering -- bomb the sh*t out of something. Works like a charm (see: George W Bush).
The recent Syria bombing met mixed reviews, but did put an end to the Putin/Trump bromance. The proxy war is alive and kicking and it seems the cold war is heating up again. All this as the multiple investigations into Trump's Russian liaisons continue under the surface. The fallout of the MOAB attack failed to prevent The Guardian from releasing it's latest breaking news, that British spies have "concrete" evidence that Russian intel operatives were communicating with Trump campaign officials as early as 2015:
The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow ahead of the US election. This was in part due to US law that prohibits US agencies from examining the private communications of American citizens without warrants. "They are trained not to do this," the source stressed.
"It looks like the [US] agencies were asleep," the source added. "They [the European agencies] were saying: 'There are contacts going on between people close to Mr Trump and people we believe are Russian intelligence agents. You should be wary of this.'
"The message was: 'Watch out. There's something not right here.'"
According to one account, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, passed material in summer 2016 to the CIA chief, John Brennan. The matter was deemed so sensitive it was handled at "director level". After an initially slow start, Brennan used GCHQ information and intelligence from other partners to launch a major inter-agency investigation.
In late August and September Brennan gave a series of classified briefings to the Gang of Eight, the top-ranking Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. He told them the agency had evidence the Kremlin might be trying to help Trump to win the presidency, the New York Times reported.
Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House committee, has expressed an interest in hearing from Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer whose dossier accuses the president of long-term cooperation with Vladimir Putin's Moscow. Trump and Putin have both dismissed the dossier as fake.
One source suggested the official investigation was making progress. "They now have specific concrete and corroborative evidence of collusion," the source said. "This is between people in the Trump campaign and agents of [Russian] influence relating to the use of hacked material."
This is just the beginning. Wait until the Carter Page wiretap and Michael Flynn testimony hit the headlines. What is the protocol when a presidential election is nullified? Do they have an automatic do-over? Is there a Constitutional provision for such a thing?
Yeah, but it's all fake news anyway"
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