01/11/17

Obama’s Legacy of Endless Wars and Transgender Soldiers

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

Left-wing Democrat Norman Solomon says fellow Democrats are “more interested in playing to the press gallery than speaking directly to the economic distress of voters in the Rust Belt and elsewhere who handed the presidency” to Donald J. Trump. Democrats should spend some time learning “how they’ve lost touch with working-class voters,” he says.

He is referring to how Democrats are saying what the media want to hear—that Trump was elected because of Vladimir Putin and the Russians. This was the claim first advanced by President Obama’s CIA in leaks to The Washington Post and The New York Times.

But this is not just a political dispute involving Democrats failing to understand why they lost to Trump. Solomon says “the emerging incendiary rhetoric against Russia is extremely dangerous” and “could lead to a military confrontation between two countries that each has thousands of nuclear weapons,” and which could trigger a “nuclear holocaust.”

Solomon, a former Democratic congressional candidate, says that Democrats, by “teaming up with the likes of Republican Senators John McCain (AZ) and Lindsey Graham (SC) to exert bipartisan pressure for escalation,” could help “stampede the Trump administration in reckless directions” and provoke Russia into a war.

There is no evidence that the Trump administration could be “stampeded” in that way. Trump has said repeatedly that he is not interested in a confrontation with Russia. What seems to be consuming the attention of the incoming Trump administration are the no-win wars with ISIS and al-Qaeda that Obama will leave behind, and the corruption in the Intelligence Community that has been responsible for claims that the U.S. is winning the war against radical Islam.

Trump’s new CIA director, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), is a member of the House Intelligence Committee and participated in a congressional joint task force that documented in a report how U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) manipulated intelligence to downplay the threat from ISIS. Three months after Pompeo and his colleagues issued their report, he said that those responsible for downplaying the threat from ISIS had not yet been held accountable.

Pompeo said the manipulation of intelligence resulted from “an administration-wide understanding that bad news from Iraq and Syria was not welcomed.” He added, “Claims that ISIS was the ‘JV team’ and that al-Qaeda was ‘on the run’ were both a result—and a cause—of the politicization of intelligence at CENTCOM. This intelligence manipulation provided space for both ISIS and al-Qaeda to grow and it put America at risk.”

Obama, of course, was responsible for the claims that ISIS was the “JV team” and that al-Qaeda was “on the run.” He lied to the American people about progress in the war on terror.

Obama’s Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on December 15 that ISIS was “failing” and that “the campaign to defeat the terror group in Iraq and Syria is on track.” Five days earlier, Carter had announced that 200 additional American special operations troops would be heading to Syria to liberate Raqqa, ISIS’ de facto capital in Syria. That will bring the total number of U.S. troops in Syria to 500.

Obama’s war in Syria has never been authorized by Congress.

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs magazine has published an article demonstrating that, after a defeat and a loss of territory, “ISIS members don’t simply give up their cause or switch their allegiance; they merely change their tactics,” reforming into small units conducting insurgency campaigns.

According to the article, these terrorists operate under different flags. The authors cite the case of an ex-Iraqi policeman who fought for al-Qaeda and later emerged under the ISIS banner. It is possible, the authors say, that “insurgent group numbers will only continue to increase, as will their power.” The authors say there is little room for optimism that the Baghdad regime being supported by the U.S. will address the sectarian grievances that fuel the conflict.

ISIS has expanded into Afghanistan, where a counterterrorism official says the terrorist group is “present in at least 11 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.”

Reflecting the deteriorating situation, Obama’s decision that the U.S. would draw down to 5,500 troops in the country has been changed. Now, approximately 8,400 military personnel will remain at the time that Trump takes office.

Fighting terrorists isn’t the only item on the agenda. American sailors deployed in Afghanistan underwent Transgender Policy Training in Kabul on November 24. According to an official press release, sailors were told about the policy that took effect on October 1, whereby they could “begin the process to officially change their gender in the Navy administrative systems following DoD policy and in accordance to the standards delineated.”

A website reflecting the views of Christian military officers described the training this way: “The US Navy began teaching its Sailors about women thinking they’re men, and vice versa, even as they’re deployed in Afghanistan—a nation, incidentally, in which transgenders would probably be tossed in jail or executed.”

Not to worry. The official Pentagon spokesman says the Afghanistan mission also remains “on track.”


Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected]. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

01/11/17

The Top Ten Misreported and Underreported Stories of 2016

By: Roger Aronoff | Accuracy in Media

As we look back on 2016, we would like to highlight some of the American media’s worst abuses that occurred during the past year, including coverage of the very divisive election campaign. We have picked ten stories in which the media were either derelict in their duty to report the truth, or sold a false or biased narrative to the public that furthered the left’s agenda. In other cases, the media missed the story altogether or made excuses for their own biased reporting. We could easily have picked additional stories that meet those criteria, but arbitrarily chose to look at ten, in no particular order.

  1.    Presidential Election Coverage
  2.    Hillary Clinton Email / National Security Scandal
  3.    Clinton Foundation / Pay for Play
  4.    Rigged FBI Investigation
  5.    Obama’s Legacy Failures
  6.    Iran Nuclear Deal
  7.    Obamacare
  8.    The Economy
  9.    Terror Attacks in the United States (Islamic Terror)
  10.    Benghazi 
  1. Presidential Election Coverage

Erroneous Election Predictions

The mainstream media repeatedly predicted that Hillary Clinton would win the presidential election—and by a wide margin. The New York Times, in particular, gave Clinton an 85 percent chance of winning on election night. “Hillary Clinton today is more likely to win in a landslide that would not only have an impact on this race but realign the country politically to some extent, than Trump is to win at all,” argued Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin. Similarly, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said that “This could be tight, or it could be a landslide for Hillary.” The media pundits were all, very, very wrong.

Now that Clinton has lost, postmortems of the election abound: media pundits blame fake news, FBI Director James Comey’s FBI investigation, WikiLeaks, and the alleged Russian interference in the election. Hillary apparently had nothing to do with her own defeat. The fact that she won by more than 2.5 million votes means that the Russians failed, if their goal was to help Trump win the most votes. Surely they didn’t expect that Trump would be the winner if he lost the popular vote by such a margin. The mainstream media have become “election results deniers.” This fuels their anti-Trump bias and demonstrates why they called the election for Clinton, who was a very flawed candidate, even in the eyes of most Democrats.

“The inescapable fact is that most of the mainstream media got it wrong because they simply couldn’t believe that Americans would elect someone like Donald Trump,” wrote Mathew Ingram for Fortune. “Denial can be a powerful drug.” Yet even Ingram blames fake news for the outcome.

Many in the mainstream media have also been guilty of reporting their own fake or misleading stories. Their fascination with exposing fake news writers revolves around the desire to prove that their own reporting is above reproach, and should be trusted. That is especially true now when their credibility is in short supply after their flawed election predictions.

The so-called mainstream media have no corner on the truth, and it’s clear that when someone challenges their left-wing agenda, their first reaction is to try to destroy the challenger at any cost. The name-calling, caterwauling, crying and disgust will continue on the left, as they figure out how to pick up the pieces and move forward.

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01/11/17

Political Witch Hunt: Intelligence Report Surfaces On Trump… Why You Should Doubt It

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | Right Wing News

Intelligence allegations have surfaced against Donald Trump involving the Russians. My readers know that I consider Russia to be a stone cold enemy and I have been very concerned on how chummy Trump is with Putin, but just let me state for the record, I think all of this is bullcrap. I am linking the actual report here, so you can read it for yourself. It is 35 pages long. There are inconsistencies and downright errors in this. There are also allegations of Trump and prostitutes in Russia defiling a bedroom where the Obama’s stayed. I don’t believe a bit of it. The report is in the Russian style of mixing facts and fallacies, but it does not ring true. And I don’t believe that Donald Trump would ever be this stupid. This is a hatchet job from the left, not only against Donald Trump, but to make our intelligence agencies look like fools.

Russia is denying all of this completely and Donald Trump is saying it’s an outright lie. I believe them and considering how I feel about Russia, that should mean something. The media and the intelligence agencies have had this information since August. So, why wouldn’t they release it until now? I know Harry Reid wanted to air it, but they sat on it. Now, the left wants to use it to destroy Trump as he comes into the Presidency. Very convenient, don’t you think? And I have much more for you on this.

From the Daily Mail:

Russia has denied ‘completely fake’ allegations that it has a blackmail file on Donald Trump containing footage of him watching prostitutes in a Moscow hotel bed.

U.S. officials allegedly included a two-page synopsis of ‘kompromat’ – Russian for compromising material – as part of their security briefing of Trump on Friday.

The material, described by Trump as ‘fake’ and a ‘political witch hunt’, was based on memos compiled by a British intelligence operative who was considered ‘credible’ by the U.S. intelligence community, CNN reported.

The document claims Russian sources told the operative that they had extensive material on the now president-elect – including a secret film of him in the suite where President Obama stayed in Moscow, watching prostitutes committing degrading sex acts on the bed where the president slept.

But Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin , dismissed the reports as a ‘complete fabrication and utter nonsense’.

What is believed to be the 35-page document itself was published by Buzzfeed, which pointed out that it contained errors. Little of its contents can be independently verified, while there has been no official confirmation of the details of the briefing.

Denying even the existence of a ‘kompromat’ on Trump, Peskov said this morning: ‘This information does not correspond to reality and is no more than fiction.’

A so-called anonymous retired MI6 British intelligence officer gave this damning evidence to John McCain, who then provided it to the FBI. The left is now screaming that Comey should be lynched because he went after Weiner and did not go after this. There is a good reason he didn’t go after this… it smells of being a political witch hunt. Don’t get me wrong… Russia does blackmail, extort and murder… but it would not be done this way. There is no credible evidence out there that Trump is controlled by Russia. I’ve looked… hard and I have not found it. So, until I see real credible and verifiable evidence, I’m not going to defame the man.

Donald Trump won this election fairly and Russia had nothing to do with Clinton losing. She sucked… period. According to CNN, the briefings, which included the documents of incendiary material, were presented by the country’s most senior intelligence chiefs – Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. But they are all yet to comment on the matter. They are all going to wind up looking like utter fools over this, although they didn’t present it as facts, just evidence Russia was meddling.

Tell me what you think this sounds like – it is repulsive and frankly, not credible:

The document states that Trump had declined ‘sweetener’ real estate deals in Russia that the Kremlin lined up in order to cultivate him. The business proposals were said to be ‘in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament’.

Russian authorities tried to ‘exploit Trump’s personal obsessions and sexual perversion’ in order to compromise him.

The document also referenced Trump’s ‘(perverted) conduct’ at the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Moscow, where the President and First Lady Michelle Obama ‘whom he hated’ had stayed.

It cited ‘Source D’ as saying Trump’s conduct included hiring prostitutes ‘to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.’ It says the hotel was known to be under the control of Russia’s FSB, with hidden cameras and microphones.

Now, here is where the CIA, FBI and every other alphabet agency may have been rick-trolled by the left. A post on 4Chan now claims that the infamous “golden showers” scene in the unverified 35-page dossier, allegedly compiled by a British intelligence officer, was a hoax and fabricated by a member of the chatboard as “fanfiction,” then sent to Rick Wilson, who proceeded to send it to the CIA, which then put it in their official classified intelligence report on the election. They didn’t source it, they just included it. Unbelievable.

Now, I don’t know if that is true… just as I don’t know if the whole thing is a made up smear job against Trump. But, it has the feel of being true. You’ll have to judge for yourself. Here’s a summary of what may have gone down:

On january 10, Buzzfeed posted a story under the byline of Ken Bensinger, Mark Schoofs and Miriam elder titled “these reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia” and posted a link to a document alleging, among other things, that russia has been cultivating trump for 5+ years, that trump has been in constant contact with the kremlin for information on his opponents, and perhaps most inflammatory, that there are many recorded instances of blackmail of trump in sexual misconduct. A prominent claim is that trump rented the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in moscow, where he knew that the Obamas had slept in; he them hired a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden shower’ (pissplay) on the bed and in the room. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-dee…
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984/Trump-Intelligence-Al…

Noted #nevertrump voice Rick Wilson later commented on twitter, stating that the report “gave a new meaning to Wikileaks” (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818982395202379777) and that the report was the reason everybody was fighting so hard against the election of Trump. (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818983514335047680)

The remarkable thing? It’s all fake. And not only fake; it’s a prank perpetuated by 4chan, on Rick Wilson himself. A post on 4chan on october 26 stated “mfw managed to convince CTR and certain (((journalists))) on Twitter there’ll be an October surprise on Trump this Friday” along with a picture of a smug face with a hash name. http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/94704894/#94705224

on november 1, a person without a picture but is assumed to be the same person posted “So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it. They still believe it. Guys, they’re truly fucking desperate – there’s no remaining Trump scandal that’s credible.” https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/95568919/#95571329

on january 10, moments after the story broke and began to gain traction on social media, a person with the same smug grin face, and the same hash title for the picture, stated “I didn’t think they’d take it so far.” http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/106514445#p106520376

This story has taken on something of a life of it’s own. Going through Rick Wilson’s twitter, you can find many different stories from the time that he had shown the story to a wide number of anti-trump news sources, trying to find a news organization that would actually publish the story. During that time period, he referred to it often as ‘the thing’, and often playing coy with followers on the content with the story with anybody who was not also a #Nevertrumper. Unconfirmed sources has people as high up as John McCain giving the story to FBI Director James Comey to attempt to verify the story. Given that Rick Wilson runs in Establishment circles, it is not an impossible scenario that long-serving senators are falling for what amounts to a 4chan troll trump supporter creating an ironic October Surprise out of wholecloth to punk a GOPe pundit who derogatorily referred to them as single men who masturbate to anime.

This whole thing is a horrid joke and what is worse, it takes fake news to a new level and it makes anything coming from the intelligence agencies questionable. Just what Barack Obama and the left wanted all along. It will also follow Trump and hound him throughout his presidency even though it is a lie and a smear campaign. As for CNN and BuzzFeed… doesn’t anyone source their stories for real facts anymore? Just asking.