Today’s paragraphs come to us from a (typically) excellent, intuitive commentary by Caroline Glick, writing for the Jerusalem Post.
Ms. Glick focuses on the meeting between President Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergie Lavrov, in which Mr. Trump is accuses of imparting highly classified information that put one or more sources for that information at risk.
What doe Ms. Glick have to say about this? Here’s a key segment – one which, I hope, causes you to use the link I’ve provided and read all the rest:
There are two problems with this narrative.
First, Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster insisted that there was no way that Trump could have exposed sources and methods, because he didn’t know where the information on the ISIS plot that he discussed with Lavrov originated.
Second, if McMaster’s version is true – and it’s hard to imagine that McMaster would effectively say that his boss is an ignoramus if it weren’t true – then the people who harmed Israel’s security were the leakers, not Trump.
Now who are these leakers? According to the Washington Post, the leakers are members of the US intelligence community and former members of the US intelligence community, (the latter, presumably were political appointees in senior intelligence positions during the Obama administration who resigned when Trump came into office).
Israel is no stranger to this sort of operation. Throughout the Obama administration, US officials illegally leaked top secret information about Israeli operations to the media.
In 2010, a senior defense source exposed the Stuxnet computer worm to the New York Times. Stuxnet was reportedly a cyber weapon developed jointly by the US and Israel. It was infiltrated into the computer system at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor. It reportedly sabotaged a large quantity of centrifuges at the installation.
The revelation of Stuxnet’s existence and purpose ended the operation. Moreover, much of Iran’s significant cyber capabilities were reportedly developed by reverse engineering the Stuxnet.
Obama made his support for the leak clear three days before he left office. On January 17, 2017, Obama pardoned Marine Gen. James Cartwright for his role in illegally divulging the Stuxnet program to the Times.
What does this tell you about the value of these allegations against Mr. Trump?
What does it tell you about former President Barack Obama – especially his “special relationship” with Israel (you bet your butt it was “special” – but not in any good way)?
What does it tell you about mainstream media, which are so willing to jump, with both feet, on every possible means of taking down the elected President of the United States, no matter how asinine the rationale for it is?
And what does it tell you about the New York Times – which cries crocodile tears over the possible dissemination of classified information, but has no problem whatsoever in publishing far more important classified information — if it might sell a few extra newspapers that day.
Even in the Trump/Lavrov non-incident, who published the fact that this intelligence was gained from an Israeli source – itself sensitive, classified information? The same smug, self-impressed hypocrites at the New York Times.
I award Caroline Glick Paragraphs Of The Day honors for bringing this home so well.
Every time I read one of her commentaries, no matter how long, I wish it were longer.
