He is getting things right, both large and small. And, as always, CNN can be expected to mis-report the news. Here is the title, Trump Pentagon names the enemy: It’s ISIS, not ISIL, and this is not what it’s really about.
ISIL has been vanquished — at least as an acronym in the administration of President Donald Trump.
The Pentagon has issued a directive that officials now use the more common term ISIS to refer to the terror group.
ISIL, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, was the preferred acronym of the Obama administration. Some senior State Department officials and military commanders in the field preferred to use the Arabic acronym Daesh, but ISIL appeared in all official documents and statements.
This is not a pot-ah-toe/pot-ay-toe moment. This has surprisingly genuine implications. CNN goes on with this:
Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said the military “views ISIS, ISIL and Daesh as interchangeable terms for the same thing.”
But he added: “ISIS is the term most known and understood by the American public, and it is what our leadership uses. This memo simply aligns our terminology.”
Here’s the deal. The IL stands for Iraq and the Levant. The latter IS in ISIS stands for Iraq and Syria. The first, therefore, claims to represent the entire Middle East. The second is only Iraq and Syria. The group itself prefers ISIL which is why, no doubt, Obama preferred it himself. The switch actually does make a difference in how America’s intentions are viewed where it really matters.
This is number five in an article on H.R. McMaster: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know. McMaster is being nominated for National Security Advisor and as the article notes, is a student of military history. Economists, on the other hand, think history is bunk, which explains a lot about what’s wrong with economics. This, for me, is quite reassuring.
In a 2012 interview with McKinsey & Company, McMaster said that his interest in military history has been an influence on his career. Even though part of his current job is about looking to the future, there are factors of war that never change.
McMaster said in 2012 that one of the failures of the Iraq and Afghanistan policies was planning for “a sustainable political outcome that would be consistent with our vital interests, and it complicated both of those wars.”
He also noted that war is “an inherently human endeavor,” and that no matter how technologically advanced the U.S. is, there is still a human factor.
“We assumed that advances in information, surveillance technology, technical-intelligence collection, automated decision-making tools, and so on were going to make war fast, cheap, efficient, and relatively risk free—that technology would lift the fog of war and make warfare essentially a targeting exercise, in which we gain visibility on enemy organizations and strike those organizations from a safe distance. But that’s not true, of course,” McMaster explained to McKinsey & Company.
During an interview with TBO.com in April 2015, McMaster stressed the importance of knowing how people act and interact when predicting the future of war.
“What we have to do is really develop the ability to think clearly about future war,” McMaster explained in 2015. “And what we have to do is identify changes in the so-called human domain and understand what is fundamentally driving conflict, which is human in nature.”
Of course, you should now read the other four as well
Here’s the real story – the intelligence community under the Obama administration was obviously eavesdropping on Trump’s campaign in violation of practically every law ever written. Whether it was direct tapping of phones and emails, or illegally accessing the communications swooped up by the NSA in its nets, it’s clear that Obama’s people were spying on Obama’s political opponents. The transcript excerpts of Flynn’s phone call with the Russian diplomat leaked because it could be played off as targeting the Russian, though this was still an outrageous disclosure of American spying capabilities. What these criminals can’t do is release the communications between Americans that they possess because doing that confirms what we all know – that Obama’s people spied on his political opponents like his IRS persecuted them. The only question really is what did Obama know, and when did he know it – interestingly, on his way out the door, Obama made it easy to hide the source of the leaks by opening up access to the information across a bunch of agencies. There’s your story, a scandal that makes Watergate seem microscopic, and the mainstream media will not touch it because it would destroy the media’s political allies.
That is true, and everyone understands it perfectly well, with the true measure of the story’s significance in that the media still decides what is and what is not news and is able to enforce what it decides.
“We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden. Who would believe this?”
The real point is not these examples, which can be multiplied many times over, but the refusal of the left side of the political spectrum to treat these as genuine problems that need to be dealt with.
But more generally, does the left seriously not think that Sweden ought to be an example to the rest of us on which path not to follow?
#NEVERTRUMP COMMENT It’s not just the left, it seems. What do you do with nitwits like this, supposedly on our side: Trump Mocked Mercilessly for Claiming Imaginary Terror Attack in Sweden. Insufferable, but corrected in the comments thread. The following dozen are selected from among the Top Comments:
1)Those who mock Trump on this topic only demonstrate their ignorance. Check out Paul Joseph Watson’s interview of “The Angry Immigrant” – a Bosnian blogger living in Sweden. Sweeden’s media and gov’t are colluding to quash info on horrific crime in that nation. Just another case of Trump being more informed than the Fakestream media.
2)I’d suggest that before these clowns bash the “uninformed” Trump, they actually check what he said, along with his follow-up. Powerline covers it nicely ( http://www.powerlineblog.com/a… ). I saw an article today that started (and I paraphrase) – Now that Trump’s MAGA dream is going down in flames and his administration continues to be wracked with scandals …. Dream on folks, while Trump continues to get things done in spite of all your efforts.
3) Rick Moran officially becomes a member of the Fake News Media.
4) 1) Malmo has no go areas.
2) Jews are leaving Sweden.
3) Firemen are asking for bulletproof vest in Stockholm.
4) The Turks rightly pointed out that Sweden is a rape capital.
The Swedes are lucky in that ISIS is under sever pressure and Jihadis would rather go for France, Britain, Germany before Sweden. With ISIS gone from Iraq and Syria in 2 years, it does not mean that people in Europe will be safe from jihadi attacks, sexual violence of ‘ordinary’ crime going up or sharia law zones.
5) “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.” – Trump on Sweden. He did not mention a terrorist attack in Sweden. Big problems would be a large upticks in rapes and sexual assaults. There is that in Sweden. . . .Sweden has 49% increase in sexual violence. Are you pro-sexual assault?
6) Trump never said “terror attack” with regard to Sweden, Moran, you stupid piece of dung. YOU and the Fake Media have conflated Trump’s comments to signify terror attacks purely to ridicule Trump. Not one week ago, a native Swedish woman was abducted and gang raped by 3 muslim “refugees” that was LIVESTREAMED ON FACEBOOK. I am sure that poor lady considers her ordeal to have been a terrorist attack. Have you not seen the official reports that shows Sweden to be the Rape Capital of the WORLD? Did you not see the TV crew that set out to prove there were no muslim “no-go” neighborhoods in Malmo, only to be attacked by muslims? This picayune fake fact checking of Trump to ridicule him has got to stop! Show me where you ridiculed Obama for saying there are 57 states, that islam helped build the US, that Austrians speak Austrian language, or when he said his “Islam religion.”
7) I would consider the multiple gang rapes a form of terror attack. I don’t know if that was what Trump was referring to or if someone else has already mentioned it, but that’s my take.
8) I’m sorry—this reads like a criticism of an ER surgeon doing triage and getting criticized for his cheap cologne. Sweden is turning into a hell hole and everyone knows it but the MSM, apparently.
9) Well Rick Moran, we in the real world know what Pres. Trump is referring to. It’s too bad your intelligence overwhelms your common sense, or you would know also.
10) Um, maybe you should go to your friend at Instapundit – where you could see that the Friday night “event” Trump was referring to was an interview Tucker Carlson did on the rape and crime problem in Sweden. . . . And Google “immigration problems Sweden” and you’ll see that yes there are all kinds of problems in Sweden. Seriously Mr Moran – time for an update or retraction.
11) “Sweden’s Muslim problem: Half a million women sex attacked in a year. This now puts Sweden in the top position for sex crimes in the world. Put this into perspective to see how horrific these figures truly are: The total Swedish population is only 9.6 million people. In 2009 a US report stated that there are 450,000 to 500,000 Muslims in Sweden, around 5% of the total population. Out of the 500,000 Muslim migrants in Sweden, half or less are men. In other words, there is roughly an equivalent to two sex attacks to every Muslim male in Sweden. These sex attacks are not committed by the natives”. “Sweden’s interior minister, Anders Ygeman, visited Malmö on Monday, just a day after another man was shot dead in the southern Swedish city”. A 23-year-old man died in hospital after being shot outside a restaurant on the central Möllevången square at 6.40pm on Sunday. The man was known to police, with a series of previous convictions. He is the latest person killed in a spate of gun violence in Malmö this year. On January 3rd a 22-year-old man was shot dead in the Fosie district, just a week before a 16-year-old boy was killed in Rosengård”. “Jews have been abandoning the city over the past few decades as it becomes more unwelcoming and anti-Semitic. Italian journalist wrote in a piece earlier this year for Israel National News: In the seventies, the community had more than 2,000 members: today there are less than 500. The others left for Stockholm or for Israel. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a warning to all Jews who visit Malmo, “Hide public religious signs and do not speak Hebrew.”
12) We don’t have to guess what Trump was talking about. He tweeted to say he was referring to a Fox news report from the previous night regarding the problems Sweden is having with immigrants. Of course the pro immigrant Swedes are upset if someone notes they’re destroying their own country with uncontrolled immigration of muslims. PC is rather more important than the women of Sweden enduring a few thousand rapes and the occasional murder.
And will finish with the picture that may put the case as clearly as it can be put.
It’s only an election. Even when Barack Obama won the White House, it was still only an election. Even though Obama was a far left Alinskyite loon, when all was said and done, it was just an election. Even though four more years along the same lines under Hillary would have put the finishing touches to the US and much of what had been Western Civilisation, it was still only just an election. Whatever the outcome, we would have gotten on with our lives as best we could. But that is us on the right, whose mental health is not seriously disturbed by a mere election.
These people really are crazy. For the life of me, I cannot think what will happen to the US with Trump as President that terrifies them to such an extent. There will be some illegal aliens expelled who might otherwise have remained. There will be some refugees who are not allowed to settle in the US who otherwise might have. It may become marginally more difficult to have an abortion, specially a late-term abortion. People will be permitted to practise their religions without interference from the State. Bathrooms will be segregated according to one’s sex at birth. If there’s more to add to the list, I cannot think what it is.
The left have become unhinged, seriously disturbed. If they can watch Trump’s press conference and see a “meltdown”, they are, if you ask me, screwed up in the head. They already make me sick with the policies they pursue, but what cure there is for such insanity I do not know. These are people who now lack a purpose in life – indeed, see there never has been much purpose in all the psychological investments they have made – and as a result are mentally falling apart at the seams.
Being the media that is, in a quote taken from Thomas Jefferson by Donald Trump in his presentation today. This is picked up at Ann Althouse.
To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
And just for completeness, here is the quote directly from Jefferson. For the rest, a couple of historic quotes on the media from the comments section of Ann Althouse.
1) Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.
2)“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
There was a time you needed the media to get your message out. That time is now past, and soon it will be long past. First Melania (beginning with the Lord’s Prayer) and then as good a speech from Trump as you are likely to hear. And I don’t do this so that you don’t have to. I do this to suggest you watch it for yourself. Here is the write up from the UK’s Daily Mail.
Let me give you two different takes on the rise and fall of General Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor. He was nominated and then had his nomination withdrawn because of a phone call to the Russian ambassador. This is Andrew McCarthy discussing Why Was the FBI Investigating General Flynn? He goes through the issue point by point to demonstrate that it had been absolutely illegal for the investigation into Flynn to have taken place, and then that it was equally illegal for any of the news media to have published the details of this conversation when it was leaked to them. Here’s how it ends:
There appears to have been no foreign-intelligence or criminal-investigative purpose served by the FBI’s interrogation of General Flynn. It is easy to see why Democrats would want to portray Flynn’s contact with the Russian ambassador as worthy of an FBI investigation. But why did the FBI and the Justice Department investigate Flynn — and why did “officials” make sure the press found out about it?
And why were the media allowed to print what they were given? To answer that, there is this second article that is worth thinking about. This is an article with the title, Leakers Beware. Read it all if you are interested in spycraft – as I have been for the whole of my life – but also read it as a plausible possibility from a very sophisticated White House that knows what it’s doing. Here’s the start”
President Trump has defeated Democrats in the intelligence community (IC) who were leaking classified information to the press. Such leaks have been a problem for many presidents, but Trump is the first who took a proactive approach and set up a sting operation that identified the leakers. It’s highly illegal to leak classified information. It’s also illegal to PUBLISH this information, but Trump is too smart to try and prosecute reporters.
I thought that Trump would fire members of the IC until the leaks stopped, but the president solved the problem with a much more imaginative and deadly approach: He fed the IC false information. When this information was published, Trump was able to identify individual leakers.
How?
Each group or individual who leaked was given a different version of events. This is CLASSIC spycraft. If nine individuals are told nine different stories, and then each of those stories is published, you know the identity of each person who talked to the press.
It’s called a “barium meal,” after the medical test used to detect problems in the gastrointestinal tract. Soft tissues don’t show up on X-rays. Barium salts are “radio-opaque,” meaning that they show up in a radiograph or X-ray.
Author Tom Clancy called it a “canary trap.” You give multiple sources multiple versions of events. When the sources repeat their version word for word, you can identify each leaker individually.
All is explained in detail in the story. Essentially, though, you give out stories A, B, C, D and E, to individuals V, W, X, Y and Z and when you find A, C and E in the papers the next day, you have identified V, X and Z as those you cannot trust. Who knows? The story has been difficult to follow from the start since nothing particularly heinous seems to have happened. Here’s the conclusion which seems to fit the facts as well as anything else:
Flynn was not fired against his will. For some reason people don’t understand that. I’m very surprised. Do you not grasp that Flynn CREATED this operation? The position of National Security Adviser is almost ceremonial. When the leaks began in September of 2016, it was FLYNN who crafted this sting. He hasn’t been sacrificed. Instead, he’s working behind the scenes to root out corruption in the IC.
Today at his press conference, Donald Trump said he thinks the leaks will stop. This is because the leakers are looking at very long prison sentences. Like Tom Cruise in The Firm, Donald Trump now knows everything.
It’s up to the IC whether or not Trump unloads his cargo of information or keeps it at sea forever.
Is Trump that smart? We shall certainly know something if the leaks now really do come to a stop.
I watched the press conference this morning but had things to do so didn’t get around to posting my thoughts till now. It is compelling for the whole one hour and seventeen minutes. If anything, he might well turn out to be better than I hoped. But the media remain the problem they have been from the start, and what is astonishing is that they are so lacking in insight that they are bewildered by what is being said to them by the president. Chuck Todd: Donald Trump’s Delegitimization of Press ‘Un-American,’ ‘Not a Laughing Matter’.
In a tweet sent during President Donald Trump‘s Thursday press conference, MSNBC host Chuck Todd indicated he didn’t find the bizarre hour-long back-and-forth with reporters all that humorous.
The Meet the Press host live tweeted the spectacle, at times sending tweets that indicated he didn’t believe the president was telling the truth, and that the rambling press conference would damage his relationship with Congress.
He knows few of us will ever locate the video of the press conference and then spend the hour and a quarter to watch it. For me, it was a Trump master class. For him, it was an unendurable rant from someone out of touch with the socialist screwballs who write most of the news stories we read.
Amid feverish reports of chaos on his team and with Democrats fantasizing that Russia-gate is another Watergate, Trump took center stage to declare that reports of his demise are just more fake news.
Far from dead, he was positively exuberant. His performance at a marathon press conference was a must-see-tv spectacle as he mixed serious policy talk with stand-up comedy and took repeated pleasure in whacking his favorite pinata, the “dishonest media.”
You will see this for yourself if you watch the press conference for yourself. For a similar view, there is also this from Rush Limbaugh: Trump Triumphs Over Press. This is mostly a transcript of the press conference, with the occasional aside from Rush, such as this:
RUSH: Just what the doctor ordered. This is Donald Trump going over the head of the media right to the American people, advancing his domestic agenda and being totally transparent with these people. They don’t know how to get on the same stage that he’s on. The American people are gonna eat this up when they see it.
The media remain in the same ideological mode as their mentor Walter Duranty. The Big Lie remains the media’s most enduring modus operandi.
Law of Markets 