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Colin Powell's Private Email Account Has Been Hacked (theverge.com)

According to The New York Times, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has been hacked and a password-protected archive of his personal emails has been published by DC Leaks. The Verge reports: DC Leaks is the same site that first published emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, which many took as an explicit effort to influence the U.S. election process. Many experts in the U.S. intelligence apparatus have attributed that attack to the Russian government, although no public attribution has been made. Thus far, there's no evidence tying Powell's hack to Russia, and similar hacks have been carried out by mischievous teens without government affiliation. The immediate result of the hack has been political fallout for Powell himself. Last night, BuzzFeed News reported on an email in which Powell called Republican nominee Donald Trump a "national disgrace," and another in which he said the candidate was "in the process of destroying himself."

16 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. Powell can't bring himself to vote for Hillary by Spy+Handler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Even though he was an enthusiastic supporter of Obama.

    This does not bode well.

    1. Re:Powell can't bring himself to vote for Hillary by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They are two completely different people. The things that made people want to vote for Obama aren't necessarily present in Hillary, and the reasons why people don't want to vote for Hillary weren't necessarily a factor for Obama. Hillary has a lot more baggage than Obama ever did.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    2. Re:Powell can't bring himself to vote for Hillary by AJWM · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Nonsense, you've got all kinds of choice: Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Darrell Castle, write in somebody else, or just leave that space on the ballot blank.

      People who insist on holding their nose and voting for whichever of the two major party candidates they dislike least because they don't want to "waste their vote" are part of the problem -- and are wasting their votes.

      --
      -- Alastair
    3. Re:Powell can't bring himself to vote for Hillary by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Given her track record: An increase in corporate power, more wars, and a big step up in the deployment of the surveillance state, coupled with a greater deduction in credibility for the left making it even harder to undo.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Re:They're boring in a good way by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 5, Informative

    He refers to Hillary as "unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home." That didn't bore me at all!

  3. Summary Incomplete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The summary totally ignores Powell's extremely critical remarks about Hillary, her lies, manipulation, and the public exploitation of his name against his wishes.

    A lie of omission is still a lie, and that you choose to ignore these facts makes them all the more critical to examine.

  4. The guy who.... by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The immediate result of the hack has been political fallout for Powell himself.

    The guy who has no political aspirations? Nah, he's untouchable politically because he has no ambition. He is like the Buddha of US politics: having no desires, he feels no pain at loss.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  5. Re: They're boring in a good way by amicusNYCL · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would be comfortable with Powell in charge. He always preferred diplomacy over a military solution, and he was not in favor of any military action that didn't serve the interests of the US. We could do a lot worse than that.

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  6. Re:They're boring in a good way by dbreeze · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's more than just tabloid material. It's indicative of the type of characters making decisions and taking actions on behalf of you and me. Guess who gets to pay the bill and clean up the mess when these types are done feeding their egos and wallets?

    --
    When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
  7. Re: They're boring in a good way by unixisc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, it was wrong intelligence. Or else, why did UK, run by a Left wing government run by Tony Blair, back that? They could easily have told the US that Iraq had nothing, and that would have worked, but everybody's intelligence agencies seemed to suggest that Saddam had chemical and/or biological weapons

  8. Re:Saddam and WMDs by Boronx · · Score: 5, Informative

    They did produce evidence. The UN inspectors had free run of the country for several months prior to the war. In their own words, the US evidence was "shit". Of course they found no evidence of an ongoing weapons program, because there was none.

    In any case, the US never has produced any real evidence, before or after for their WMD claims.

    They had cryptic radio intercepts.
    They had satellite pictures of trucks leaving buildings.
    They had unknown chemical processing trucks (turned out to be hydrogen production. The design was known, but not by Powell.).
    They had aluminum tubes.

    For hard evidence, that's all they had.

  9. Re: They're boring in a good way by MobyDisk · · Score: 4, Informative

    You asked "why?"

    why did UK, run by a Left wing government run by Tony Blair, back that?

    1. Because warhawks are warhawks, and allies are allies, regardless of party affiliation. After 9/11, Europe sympathized with the US.

    everybody's intelligence agencies seemed to suggest that Saddam had chemical and/or biological weapons

    2. Actually, the intelligence agencies didn't suggest this. The politicians claimed that the intelligence agencies said this, but they really didn't. The agencies don't really speak publicly, they speak through the elected officials that they report to. We now know that what they told the president and prime minister isn't the same as what the president and prime minister said publicly.

    For example: We now know that for example, at the time that George W. Bush gave a speech about the supposed "yellow cake uranium," that he knew it was falsified evidence but proceeded with the speech anyway. The UK did the same thing, leading up to the invasion, asking BBC reporters to basically make-up phony facts.

    If you look back at the evidence, it was clear that the evidence was being used to justify an already decided-upon conclusion. For example: The UK and US cited a shipment of aluminum tubes as evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons. It turns out that the tubes were used for the much more mundane purpose of rockets. If you saw an aluminum tube that could be used for rockets or nuclear weapons, and you knew the country was developing rockets, why would you assert that these tubes are evidence of nuclear weapons? Certainly, it is possible. But they didn't present it as "well, it was probably used for rockets, but maybe it is for nukes (shrug)." It was presented as "OMG This is proof that they are developing nukes!" A lie of omission is still a lie.

    You asked "Why?" It is important to understand why. It is because well-intentioned people can sometimes lie to support what they believe is right. The populus and the media in particular, must be vigilant against such things. The New York times, has since, apologized for being the white house's mouthpiece.

  10. Re: They're boring in a good way by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, it was wrong intelligence. Or else, why did UK, run by a Left wing government run by Tony Blair, back that? They could easily have told the US that Iraq had nothing, and that would have worked, but everybody's intelligence agencies seemed to suggest that Saddam had chemical and/or biological weapons

    Read the damned Downing Street Memos
    The policy is to invade, and the intel is being fixed around the policy
    That's 2002. Seriously, brownnosing Bush won't help change the war crimes committed in our name.

  11. Re:Lifting candidates by amiga3D · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I haven't found many people that really like Hilliary although I have heard from a lot of people that say they will vote for her. I've heard more people that like Trump but there are still more that don't but say they will vote for him. So far it seems to me the one thing going for Trump is that he's not Hilliary. The number one thing going for Hilliary is that she's a Democrat. I know tons of people that would vote for Satan himself if he ran on the Democratic ticket.

  12. Re:Saddam and WMDs by dbIII · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why didn't they produce evidence that Iraq did not have WMDs

    Many did.
    One from Australia quit his intelligence job (preparing reports on Iraq) and ran for the Senate with the argument that Iraq did not have WMDs and the war was based on a lie. He was not just some Snowden but had served for twenty years reached the rank of lieutenant colonel and had also worked for Raytheon.
    He was in the Australian Senate for a few years and is in now Member of the Australian Parliament for Denison and his name is Andrew Wilkie.

  13. Re:Lifting candidates by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well he's not wrong, about a month and a half ago Reuters changed their polling method because it was showing 3rd party candidates taking more from Hillary than Trump.

    The problem with polling in general is it is often used to influence the way people think rather than report on how they think. Many of the polling firms are marketing groups, not political scientists.

    The problem with polling this election is that every poll I've seen relies on the assumption that the turnout demographics in 2016 will be the same as they were in 2012 or 2008, but no one justifies this assumption. I find it hard to believe that blacks will come out for Hillary the way they came out for Obama. On the other hand the white working class hasn't had anyone speak to them about trade and immigration like Trump has in pretty much forever.

    I don't know what the turnout will be in November, so I can't "unskew" the polls. But since the pollsters never justify the fundamental premise of the polls, I can't trust them either. I would just take any poll numbers you see with a massive grain of salt.

    --
    We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.