James Comey once described his position in the Clinton investigation as being the victim of a “500-year flood.” The point of the analogy was that he was unwittingly carried away by events rather than directly causing much of the damage to the FBI. His “500-year flood” just collided with the 500-page report of the Justice Department inspector general (IG) Michael Horowitz. The IG sinks Comey’s narrative with a finding that he “deviated” from Justice Department rules and acted in open insubordination.
Rather than portraying Comey as carried away by his biblical flood, the report finds that he was the destructive force behind the controversy. The import of the report can be summed up in Comeyesque terms as the distinction between flotsam and jetsam. Comey portrayed the broken rules as mere flotsam, or debris that floats away after a shipwreck. The IG report suggests that this was really a case of jetsam, or rules intentionally tossed over the side by Comey to lighten his load. Comey’s jetsam included rules protecting the integrity and professionalism of his agency, as represented by his public comments on the Clinton investigation.
The IG report concludes, “While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice.”The report will leave many unsatisfied and undeterred. Comey went from a persona non grata to a patron saint for many Clinton supporters. Comey, who has made millions of dollars with a tell-all book portraying himself as the paragon of “ethical leadership,” continues to maintain that he would take precisely the same actions again.
Ironically, Comey, fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, former FBI agent Peter Strzok and others, by their actions, just made it more difficult for special counsel Robert Mueller to prosecute Trump for obstruction. There is now a comprehensive conclusion by career investigators that Comey violated core agency rules and undermined the integrity of the FBI. In other words, there was ample reason to fire James Comey.
What do they say? The fish rots from the head?
I think we're seeing the effects Barack Obama had on the FBI. I think we're going to see a lot worse.
Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Monday, June 18, 2018. The Iraq War continues, Hayder al-Abadi thinks
he's still relevant and, in the US, Brianna Wu thinks she's going to
save us.
Oh, how cute, Hayder al-Abadi still thinks he's relevant.
Oh, how cute, Hayder al-Abadi still thinks he's relevant.
#Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi invites politicians to meet after #Eid
holiday
.
#Iraq #EidulFitr
holiday
.
#Iraq #EidulFitr
After Eid? Meet me down by the railway station, I've been waiting . . . Or as Stevie Nicks said in another song:
Sometimes
The most beautiful things
The most innocent things
And many of those dreams
Pass us by
Keep passing us by
-- "Angel," written by Stevie Nicks, first appears on Fleetwood Mac's TUSK
Hayder, you are the ghost in the fog and the country is passing you by.
Iraqi PM calls for post-Eid meetings between all parties to discuss political situation
ERBIL -. – Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, on Thursday called upon all political entities in the country to hold a “high level” ...
KURDDAILY
Though not as desperate -- nakedly desperate -- as Nouri al-Maliki, Hayder's still coming off pretty desperate.
He's been desperate for some time and that desperation was evident in his campaign. As Kirk Sowell (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) noted in April ahead of the May 12th elections:
Hampered by the earlier mishandling of his coalition launch in
January, he appeared to sell out his nationalist credentials to
guarantee his reelection thorough a deal with Iran-backed factions of
the Fatah Alliance, led by the Badr Organization, only to see this deal
fall through. The impression of inauthenticity was reinforced in
February when one of his closest allies in the Dawa Party, MP Ali
al-Allaq, revealed in an interview that
Abadi and Maliki had agreed in writing to merge their coalitions after
the election despite each regularly blaming the other for Iraq’s current
woes. Allaq’s comments set off a media firestorm about the apparent “secret agreement,” and as a result, the party reportedly hauled him before a disciplinary committee.
This disclosure reinforced the
impression that Abadi’s nationalist credentials were for sale, as with
the near-alliance with the Iran-backed Fatah. And it meant that Dawa
was violating electoral rules,
since the electoral commission’s ruling in January that a party could
not run on more than one alliance meant that Dawa had to publicly claim
that its leaders were running as independents on separate lists.
Adding to Abadi’s campaign troubles, there was increased media coverage of an apparent terrorist resurgence following a spate of lethal attacks by
IS against security personnel in parts of Kirkuk governorate where
militant groups have long flourished. These operations undermined
Abadi’s security narrative and war leadership. Populist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr even
went as far to say that, “given the government’s clear failure in this
regard, we are ready to save Kirkuk from the hand of terrorism,”
referring to the possible remobilization of Sadr’s own militia.
Abadi might as well be singing the song of Stevie's lazy and less talented ex, "I'm just second hand news." That's all Hayder is at this point.
After weeks of analysis and expectations, Muqtada al-Sadr leader of Saeroon Coalition & Hadi al-Amiri leader of Fatah Coalition announced their alliance tonight...
More than a year ago, H.E. Sayid Muqtada Al-Sadr in a proposal addressed to the Iraqi Parliament called for a nationalist, proficient, non-partisan mechanism to choose IHEC; the very same leaders who accuse this commission today rejected that proposal.
Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr won the elections. And when the US government attempted to (again) circumvent the electoral process, Moqtada out-gamed them by teaming up with Hadi al-Ameri.
Of the election, Iraq War veteran Michael D. Sullivan (FOREIGN POLICY) notes:
[. . .] 2018 split the spoils across Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish lines. In such an atmosphere, Sadrists, who received roughly 30 to 40 seats in previous elections, were poised to make a much stronger showing. As the election results came in, it became clear his list would win a plurality of the 329 seats in the Council of Representatives. That’s when the angst, bordering on panic, began in Washington, London, and in the minds of hundreds of thousands of Iraq War veterans who only knew the Sadr who’d tried to kill them during past deployments in Iraq.
After all, Sadr doesn’t like the United States. He never has and most likely never will. Sadr and his militias fought numerous battles against U.S. forces whom he viewed as occupiers. Even the government of Iraq launched Operation Charge of the Knights against Sadr and his militias in Basra in 2008 with massive help from coalition forces, an operation that prompted Sadr to flee to Iran. Following the 2008 cease-fire, Sadr shifted the Mahdi Army’s focus away from military operations to the provision of social services, establishing a nonmilitary wing called the Mumahidoon and reassigning most of the Mahdi Army’s members to it. Attacks against the Iraqi military and citizens were halted, although a small number of Mahdi militia members were assigned to the Promised Day Brigade and continued their attacks on U.S. forces until the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011.
The Sadr who returned to Iraq in 2011 from his exile in Iran was different. He disbanded the Mahdi Army, ordered his militias not to attack U.S. forces, and, in 2014, instructed them instead to defend Iraq against the Islamic State. The rise of the Islamic State coupled with the fall of Mosul resulted in an odd coalition: Iraqi Shiite militias, Iranian-backed forces, Iraqi counterterrorism forces, and U.S.-led coalition forces all fought against the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. Sadr’s forces, unlike other Shiite militias, cooperated with Iraqi government forces in that fight. More important, after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced in December 2017 that the Islamic State had been defeated in Iraq, Sadr ordered his militias to disband and continued to follow the instructions of the Iraqi government.
In America? Maybe things will be better? Brianna Wu does not reassure but the reaction to her idiotic comment does.
You cannot say often enough, Trump directly happened because Bush taught the Republican party that truth didn’t ultimately matter.
Media never asked Americans to reflect on the Bush years. Never thought about rushing to war in Iraq, or Katrina, or really anything from 2000-2008.
Now do the Clinton years. Now that Hillary is irrelevant many Ds and media cronies are finally coming out and condemning his graft and womanizing. This whitewashing has normalized this behavior with both parties. That is why we have Trump you partisan hack.
No, we have Trump b/c "Amurrica" is full of racists and xenophobes who are so afraid that if anyone the slightest bit "different" manages to have a decent life that it will throw the world off its axis. Fear and wilful ignorance. THAT'S why we have Trump.
Yes. EVERYONE who voted for him was racist and xenophobic. Thanks for simplifying things. Didn’t realize all those union voters who supported the Obama presidency (twice) were secretly racists.
Trump openly campaigned on racism, hate and xenophobia, @johnfrendo.
Not every Trump voter was actively racist themselves.
But every single Trump voter - without exception - decided that racism and bigotry isn't a dealbreaker.
You can continue to rest on that misguided theory and lose to Trump in 2020, or you can support policies that appeal to rust belt working class voters. Russian collusion and these other things that froth up voters like you, do nothing to get a Trump voter to defect it only 1/
- ties them to him more. But go ahead and Russia all you want. The blue wave that was realistic a year ago has been squandered. The only blue gains you’ll see now are the usual midterm losses a first term POTUS gets. And Congress will still stay red.
Sorry, Brianna, go back to gaming if you think it's the media's job to ask people to reflect. That's not their role and it's never been defiend as it's role. Also true, the media did a lot more (after the war started -- the war that's still going on) than the Democratic Party did.
They promised they would end the Iraq War, ran on that in 2006, give us one house and . . . And they didn't. They did what craven politicians always do when they find an issue, refuse to resolve it so they can instead use in numerous election cycles.
It's not going to work, Brianna.
You're an idiot, an out of touch idiot.
I knew Donald Trump was going to win because I wasn't hidden away in a gated community. I'm out there. I'm college campuses and I'm school campuses, I'm speaking to women's groups and labor groups and veterans. And I know the mood that people like you missed completely.
The Iraq War continues. In 2018, thus far, 11 American troops have been killed in the Iraq War.
That would be the Iraq War the Dems promised to end in 2006 if they had one house of Congress and We The People gave them both houses of Congress. But they didn't end it. Then in 2008, Barack said he'd end it if we elected him president. (Samantha Power left his campaign because in March of 2008, she told the BBC that it wasn't really a promise, this promise to end the Iraq War. We covered it. THE WASHINGTON POST covered it. That was about it. John Nichols flat out lied to avoid covering it -- yet again inventing some b.s. story that was face free.)
Barack left the White House in January of 2017, after two terms as president and US troops were still in Iraq and the Iraq War was still going on.
People's disgust over the Iraq War remains high. Especially those who would vote.
Yet every four years the Democrats place another I-voted-for-the-Iraq-War on the ticket -- apparently never learning from their failures.
And people like Brianna Wu thinks Americans are stupid enough not to notice the failure of the Democrats on the Iraq War?
Not only did so many of them vote for it, but they refused to end it and they refused to do serious hearings on it after they were in power. Brianna thinks the nation should have reflected? That's not the media's role, that's what Congressional hearings are for.
If Brianna doesn't grasp that, why is she running for Congress?
Let's close with this on the Hobby Lobby of journalists Rukmini Callimachi of THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Search results
Hey @nytimes if you could return those like 16,000 documents you stole from Iraq in 2016, that would be awesome. Stop saying you're going to make them accessible when that's not your g**damn job, your job is to return archival documents to the country you stole them from
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