President Obama Threatens Retaliatory Actions Against Russia Over Hacks (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times: [President Obama] said he was weighing a mix of public and covert actions against the Russians in his last 34 days in office, actions that would increase "the costs for them." Mr. Obama said he was committed to sending the Kremlin a message that "we can do stuff to you," but without setting off an escalating cyberconflict... "Some of it we will do in a way that they will know, but not everybody will," he said...

[T]he president was clearly wrestling with what he said the hacking affair and the reaction to it revealed about the state of American politics. Citing a recent poll that showed more than a third of Trump voters saying they approved of Mr. Putin...the president appealed to Americans not to allow partisan hatred and feuds to blind them to manipulation by foreign powers. "Unless that changes," Mr. Obama said, "we're going to continue to be vulnerable to foreign influence because we've lost track of what it is that we're about and what we stand for."
President Obama pulled Putin aside at a September meeting of the G20 to discuss Russian hacking, according to the article, telling Putin "to cut it out, there were going to be serious consequences if he did not."

Comments

Re: Way to waste every modicum of self-respect Oba

[smooth wombat]

the worst foreign policy strategy every implemented by the US.

Because lying about the need to invade and occupy Iraq, destroying the one bulwark which might have existed to stop the spread of ISIS, had nothing to do with any of this, right? That was a fantastic foreign policy issue, right?

Re:message from other hackers

[MightyMartian]

Well, I'm not bloody confused, and I think it's a reasonable assumption that Russia wanted to do what it could to prevent Clinton from winning the election, and at least initially has got what it wants; a president who is Russia-friendly and a Secretary of State with pretty deep ties to Russia. We can debate how much influence the Russians really did have, but I'd say the Wikileaks emails did Clinton tangible harm.

Re:Good luck

[HornWumpus]

Iraq was about keeping the muslim world busy the traditional way. By restarting the war between its two largest factions. Let them kick the fight out of each other for a century or two. It worked for Christianity. (100 years war, between the catholics and protestants. Only those remote to the fight, Irish/British, missed the point, they got it themselves, eventually.)

Iraq was an unintended consequence of 9/11

[SeattleLawGuy]

Were you alive, then? Because it was a 14-month march to war.

Wow are you confused. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The Taliban in Afghanistan admitted to hosting and supporting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

I know we're living in a post factual world where empirical truth doesn't exist. But the fact is that the U.S. led a coaliton of forces against the Taliban in Afghanistan beginning on October 7, 2001. Less than one month after the September 11 attacks.

Close, but not quite. Iraq was not a direct result of or a response to 9/11. 9/11 laid the groundwork for Iraq, though, focusing more resources including political will, attention, and covert focus on Iraq. More importantly, it put the American People on a war footing psychologically, in a way they had not been for decades. Without that, the ground war in Iraq would probably have been a political non-starter.