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Former FBI Director Predicts Russian Hackers Will Interfere With More Elections (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
James B. Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., testified that the Russians had not only intervened in last year's election, but would try to do it again... Russian hackers did not just breach Democratic email accounts; according to Mr. Comey, they orchestrated a "massive effort" targeting hundreds of -- and possibly more than 1,000 -- American government and private organizations since 2015... As F.B.I. director, he supervised counterintelligence investigations into computer break-ins that harvested emails from the State Department and the White House, and that penetrated deep into the computer systems of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Yet President Barack Obama's administration did not want to publicize those intrusions, choosing to handle them diplomatically -- perhaps because at the time they looked more like classic espionage than an effort to manipulate American politics...
Graham Allison, a longtime Russia scholar at Harvard, said, "Russia's cyberintrusion into the recent presidential election signals the beginning of what is almost sure to be an intensified cyberwar in which both they -- and we -- seek to participate in picking the leaders of an adversary." The difference, he added, is that American elections are generally fair, so "we are much more vulnerable to such manipulation than is Russia," where results are often preordained... Similar warnings have been issued by others in the intelligence community, led by James R. Clapper Jr., who has sounded the alarm since retiring in January as director of national intelligence. "I don't think people have their head around the scope of what the Russians are doing," he said recently.
Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who oversaw sanctions imposed on Russia before retiring this year, told the Times that Comey "was spot-on right that Russia is coming after us, but not just the U.S., but the free world in general. And we need to take this seriously."
Graham Allison, a longtime Russia scholar at Harvard, said, "Russia's cyberintrusion into the recent presidential election signals the beginning of what is almost sure to be an intensified cyberwar in which both they -- and we -- seek to participate in picking the leaders of an adversary." The difference, he added, is that American elections are generally fair, so "we are much more vulnerable to such manipulation than is Russia," where results are often preordained... Similar warnings have been issued by others in the intelligence community, led by James R. Clapper Jr., who has sounded the alarm since retiring in January as director of national intelligence. "I don't think people have their head around the scope of what the Russians are doing," he said recently.
Daniel Fried, a career diplomat who oversaw sanctions imposed on Russia before retiring this year, told the Times that Comey "was spot-on right that Russia is coming after us, but not just the U.S., but the free world in general. And we need to take this seriously."
Of course they will. Did anyone think otherwise?
I guess if you really bought into the "Trump works with Russia" DNC story, then you would expect it to end.
But any rational person would realize that Russia, like the USA, will attempt to interfere in any election where they think they can get away with it and get an advantage.
The Soviet Union used propaganda and dirty tricks to try to interfere with EVERY US election they existed, and Russia just continues the tradition. They didn't call it fake news back then, it was just journalism with an agenda. Walter Duranty wasn't an accident, ya' know.
The only difference is that instead of stealing letters and publishing them, they're hacking email accounts and publishing them. Still no hacking of voting machines, still no manipulation of vote counts. In other words, still no 'hacking the election'.
Yup. Just like Bush had months of daily warnings of an impending attack but chose to do nothing. Which led to the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history. Then Bush lied to the American people about the need to invade and occupy a foreign country which had nothing to do with the attacks, which led to the deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers, over 250,000 Iraqi civilians and a $3 trillion+ price tag foisted on the American people.
Very Bush.
So the free world will fall apart if everyone in it knows the truth about their government? I find it interesting how US government justifies spying on their own citizens with "if you're doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide" and yet calls anyone who informs the people they serve with what the government does an enemy of the state. It's not like they hacked the personal sex videos of the Clinton, or some embarrassing comments made off-the-record; what they allegedly exposed were facts that have to do with her profession and potential corruption. I get that exposing those possibly affected the outcome of the election, but shouldn't the voters be entitled to know what the politicians they vote for actually do?
Dear Globalist elite, I expect Russia, China, Israel, UK, etc to snoop just like we do. If "interference" is their exposing your crimes, so be it. If you can't do the time (or handle the slime), don't do the crime. I do think all the noise today is to ignore the Seth Rich murder case, to marginalize or overthrow a legitimately elected president, and to avoid accountability for many crimes including treason.
If you are alleging vote frauds, very simple. Liberals, Democrats and Rinos have pushed insecure voting and counting methods for years. I would welcome traceable, simple paper based systems with voter ID.
Given any honest efforts, the Russians don't worry me. But you do.
With the massive surveillance in place, if you can't immediately produce hard evidence, SHUT THE F*** UP and go away!
Bush had months of daily warnings of an impending attack but chose to do nothing.
The intelligence provided the president is shared with congressional leaders, and as I recall was not what the intelligence community refers to as 'actionable intelligence' - there was nothing specific to act on.
You want to play the blame game, what about Clinton's siloing of the intelligence bureaus that prevented the field reports of the middle-eastern flight school students that had no interest in learning to take off or land, but only in controlling a plane once airborne from ever being investigated?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fb...
Ken
As usual the media noise machine has managed to deflect everyone from the real issue. Of course the Russians will interfere if they can. This last time around they probably didn't think when they started that it would work out so well but it did. It was a low cost, low risk enterprise probably intended to a) test the weapons and b) trim Hillary's wings rather than win Trump the White House.
Had Comey not done his political stunt with the Weiner's e-mails it wouldn't have flipped the election and I doubt they expected it to. Yet Nate Silver's numbers are pretty clear: Hillary had 6%+ lead until Comey did that and down 3%+ points after, close enough for the EC to do its thing. Had it not been for Comey the election would not have even been close.
As it turned out if Trump can manage it he will end the Russian sanctions which have been crippling to the Russian economy. Hillary would not have. She would have continued Obama policies. That is not a bad payoff for what this cyber op probably cost.
Back to the point at hand is Trump is most likely innocent in the part about the election. What has him worried is that he knows that if they keep digging on the investigation what will come to light is his deep financial dependents on Russian money interests, all of whom are either pals of Putin if not outright operatives of his office.
A month or so ago Trump had one of his lawyers write up a letter that declared that "nobody in Russia owes Trump money." While the Trump supporters view that (as intended) as some sort of vindication/valdiation the reality-based world realizes nobody ever thought he did. What the real problem is that Trump owes Russians (i.e. Putin money big time.)
For the last two decades no American based bank would loan Trump money due to his shady business practices and so the money he has been using comes from either Russia. Or China (a whole new issue.) So I would bet that a lot of Trump businesses are heavily leveraged in Russian debt and possibly in default. In other words Putin probably has the power to ruin Trump -- the U.S. President! -- and family financially with just a phone call.
That is what Trump doesn't want you to know and why he has been so eager to stop any investigation regarding Russia. It will come up eventually and the only real question is how far Trump will hang on and how far the Republicans in the house will go to protect him. Based on what has gone on so far is pretty damn far.
I think China is a hundred times more of a threat than Russia. Russia grandstands. They want attention. China doesn't want attention. ... Because they're an actual threat. They manipulate information, they manipulate currencies, they have tons of spies and the largest group of hackers on the planet. 27% OF ALL ATTACKS come from China, and as much as 47% can be tracked back to China. This is not a fucking joke. This is the calm before the storm. China has the largest standing military (over a MILLION MORE than the USA). For all the "military-industrial-complex" people harp on the USA (and it's warranted) 99% of the public has no idea how big a threat China is becoming.
And manipulating the election? China does that too in both the US and the UN. Google it.
We've also had tons of ACTUAL state secrets "leaked" and straight up SOLD to China. Not this "war in iraq"/"poor civilians got shot" shit that's just a PR blunder. ACTUAL secrets that represent tens of BILLIONS of dollars and decades of US research that ends up overseas. Like ultra-high resolution modern radar systems. We're paying for it, and they're benefiting from it.
Here's a report from 2017 that China is reaching "near parity with the West's military." That should horrify you. China does not give two shits about your civil liberties or peace among nations. They've been the sole reason North Korea hasn't been bombed into dust. Why? Because it's in their best interests.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Russia is a freaking distraction. An underdog. China is a resting giant quietly growing a military capable of conquering new territory.
I don't think I've ever seen someone argue the morality of any particular country that they didn't live in. It seems like you may be conflating people's desire to avoid war and the involvement of foreign nations in wars.
I also don't think we should be fighting Russia but we should be defending ourselves from all forces that seek to mislead the public, both foreign and domestic.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Some of you seem like you don't even read the news you comment on. Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats when he found out, closed the embassies they were housed in and accused them of using the premises the conduct espionage.
As an outsider i'm quite shocked that this isn't a bigger scandal than it is in the US. I think the only reason is a group of people are in flat-out denial when it comes to anything that might tarnish Trump's image.
This is Cold War shit all over again.
SO far they claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election ...
Really? The only ones I have seen make that claim are pundits on Fox News and Breitbart trying to defend their 'Dear Leader', the greatest negotiator of all time. Most of the rest of the media claims the Russians hacked the DNC and used carefully timed leaks of that information in an attempt to influence the voting behaviour of the US electorate.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Republicans who were communicating with Russians who were being monitored had their conversations picked up. There was no "active wire tapping and spying on a republic candidate for president". None. Zero. Claiming that is like getting busted at a sweep of a whorehouse and then whining that "they" are out to get you.
On the other hand -- Russia is immune here, as they don't even know the concept of a fair election. They did not have a single one during their whole history -- not by the tsars, not by the soviets, almost had one by Yeltsin, then back to the usual. They don't even bother with any semblance of propriety: Chechnya voted 99.5% for One Russia (Putin's party) with 99.4% turnout; just 11 years after a second war against them led by said Putin.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
it's almost as if times can change, or that hindsight is 20/20. See, this is the trouble with the Right. Zero ability to adapt to change. If Russia was an Ally yesterday they're always gonna be an ally, right? Oh, and no shades of grey. Russia's either balls to the walls evil and needs to be exterminated or our ardent friend.
As for Iran, they were well on their way to modernizing before we put a bunch of religious nuts in power. There's pictures of girls in Iran wearing the sorts of skirts that wouldn't have been out of place in 1960s America before we screwed with 'em. And don't get me started on the shit we do and did in South America so Code can sell cheap sugar water.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The biggest threat in the world is actually USA, they are the only country that has troops all over the world.
I'm not sure whether you're going for "funny" or "insightful"; perhaps you're going for "funny" but getting modded "insightful". So for the benefit of the irony impaired:
SO far they claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election but yet not 1 piece of proof has shown that to be true, only so called "hack" that happened on elections was by the DNC
Gee, how do we know about the so-called DNC "hacking" exactly [note 1]?
as well as in states like California letting people vote that don't even hold US citizenship.
California did no such thing. What California did was pass two separate laws, one of which enabled American citizens to register to vote when they obtain a driver's license, another of which provided a separate registration process that allows undocumented immigrants to obtain licenses. That process does not include voter registration, for obvious reasons.
note 1: the DNC did not "hack" the election. It just worked for HRC and against Sanders, which pissed of some Sanders voters, but in fact was legal both by US law and the party bylaws (you *have* read your party's bylaws, haven't you?)
The DNC, like the RNC, is not an impartial, non-partisan organization. Both national committees are power centers which, by design (those bylaws again) serve the party insiders. The way you deal with people using the national committees in ways you don't like is you put your own people on them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Jesus, who keeps modding this guy up?
/. that they noticed an increase in pro-Russia/Putin/Russian agenda type posts over the past couple of years. My first thought was, "That's a cute conspiracy theory." But now I'm seriously wondering if it's true.
The other day, someone posted on
I've always wondered, if the Iraqi people had the choice to go back in time and keep Saddam and his progeny instead of what they have now, would they? At the time they seemed very happy when he was removed.
If they had such an option they would probably want to return to a point in time to prevent Bremer from disbanding the Iraqi army and delaying Iraqi's from taking control of the government. These two decisions by Bremer, a career diplomat who served numerous administrations, essentially started the insurgency and created an opportunity for al-Queda in Iraq.
The generals and the White House had originally planned on using the Iraqi army to maintain security and law and order; and getting elections going as soon as possible to create a new constitution and government.
The problem with Iraq wasn't really the invasion, it was the occupation that followed.
Intervened? I missed that, but wikileaks reported on US espionage on the French elections.
However , here is an article "The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere". Is Washington Post MSM enough for you?
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Perhaps it would help if the US admitted past CIA corruption of democracy and apologised.
The job of an Intelligence Agency is to gather the data, process it to gain intelligence, and present it to those who need to know. When you gather too much you bury the agencies so they can't process it to generate useful intelligence. America is spending too much effort on spying (data) and not enough on intelligence gathering. You have all the pieces but can't do anything with it.
Nutsign detected: vague non-specific claims with "Google it" instead of providing links to corroborating evidence.
No. Some of us are old enough to remember and its only the "kiddies" who need to Google things. Some of the top links for Clinton and Chinese donations.
... According to congressional investigators, Ng laundered the illegal campaign donations through a close Clinton associate in Arkansas named Charlie Trie during the 1996 election."
"The 1996 United States campaign finance controversy was an alleged effort by the People's Republic of China to influence domestic American politics prior to and during the Clinton administration and also involved the fund-raising practices of the administration itself.
While questions regarding the U.S. Democratic Party's fund-raising activities first arose over a Los Angeles Times article published on September 21, 1996, China's alleged role in the affair first gained public attention when Bob Woodward and Brian Duffy of The Washington Post published a story stating that a United States Department of Justice investigation into the fund-raising activities had uncovered evidence that agents of China sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) before the 1996 presidential campaign. The journalists wrote that intelligence information had shown the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. was used for coordinating contributions to the DNC in violation of United States law forbidding non-American citizens or non-permanent residents from giving monetary donations to United States politicians and political parties. A Republican investigator of the controversy stated the Chinese plan targeted both presidential and congressional United States elections, while Democratic Senators said the evidence showed the Chinese targeted only congressional elections. The government of the People's Republic of China denied all accusations."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe invited the Chinese businessman whose donations to him have been named as a focus of Justice Department investigators to a 2013 fundraiser at Hillary Clinton's personal Washington, D.C., residence. Wang Wenliang, a Chinese national with U.S. permanent residency, briefly shook Clinton’s hand at the Sept. 30 event, a representative for Wang told TIME. An American company controlled by Wang made a $60,000 contribution to McAuliffe’s campaign three weeks before the fundraiser. Less than a month later, a separate Wang company pledged $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the first of several donations that eventually totaled $2 million."
http://time.com/4348675/terry-...
"Ng, a Macau businessman with ties to the Chinese government, was accused of funneling over $1 million in illegal foreign donations to support Bill Clinton's reelection campaign in 1996. "Ng, a Macau businessman with ties to the Chinese government, was accused of funneling over $1 million in illegal foreign donations to support Bill Clinton's reelection campaign in 1996
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
Countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, much of the EU, and many others, have generally been strong supporters of freedom, democracy, and human rights. Together, they are powerful to defend those values.
Wait, what? When? In this century? That hasn't been true for a long time.
There is no reason to 'push back' against Russia. Whatever they did there is no evidence and even if they really did say buy some electoral votes or something you know what? It doesn't matter. Use that knowledge to improve the system so it isn't so vulnerable to corrupt electors. Although the electoral system does seem inherently vulnerable to bribery it has always been that way. Maybe it's time to dump it, but our insecure outdated election system is no reason to go to war with Russia, something that is always a bad idea. This isn't even worth saber rattling about. It's nothing. Not a big deal. Even if it's true and so far there is zero evidence that it is. At best some Russian hackers hacked some emails and set some information free. If certain people were not tech illiterate their emails would have been strongly encrypted and not stored for any length of time, especially not in an insecure location. But I'm happy with email leaks because it gets the information out there. I'd be just as happy to see Trump's emails. The more information the world has about our leaders the better.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
There is no reason to think his replacement would be better. The US Government has a long history of overthrowing other countries governments, and it never turns out better. Ex. Iran led to islamic extremists ruling Iran, Iraq led to ISIS.
And that's all they talk about, to distract from the heart of the matter. It's nothing but a 'shoot the messenger' campaign. The DNC and Clinton were behaving in an unethical manner, and the Russians leaked the evidence of it. The underlying unethical behavior should be the focus. And yes, the retort is that they only leaked information on one party, but a) that doesn't absolve the DNC and HRC of what they did, b) What they did pales in comparison to what Trump openly did anyway, and c) They almost certainly alienated even more voters who realized a) and b) and watched them try to scream about Russians stealing the election anyway. And no, I'm not a Trump supporter, because Clinton was still the lesser evil by miles. Thinking that anyone who says anyone other than Russia was at fault is automatically a Trump supporter is another thing that's just alienating even more people so that they stay home and cost the Dems the midterms and next presidency too.
I agree, the Democrats behaved unethically but quite frankly, having taken a look at Donald Trump's extensive record of unethical behaviour (excluding the hullabaloo about Russia), the Democrats look like a bunch of Eagle Scouts by comparison.
China is only a scary boogieman if you ignore all of the serious internal issues they have. They're undergoing a socioeconomic change the pace and scale of of which the world has never seen before. That can't continue if they need to divert resources to a war. It's not clear if it can continue anyway, given the serious raw material and energy shortages they have.
A million plus man army is indeed staggering, but china has 1.3 billion people that are increasingly exposed to and embracing the standards of living in the west. Hundreds of thousands, now perhaps millions of young people educated in the west, and who saw the freedom the west has. While I don't discount that China has stolen vast amounts of tech from the west, and is using this to make dramatic leaps forward, their current struggle is to take care of themselves. More and more goods are not being shipped to the west, and are instead kept for their own populace.
The major issue is this rapid pace is slowing down, and a half billion Chinese still live in abject poverty. Large swathes of China still aren't electrified. China's rapid growth is not impacting half of the country, and that's causing a lot of unrest. As China's manufacturing growth slows and exports continue to drop off, that's going to really impact their economy. None of this is conducive to them being a world military power. Regional? Sure. But definitely not one that's going to go out and conquest. That's just a fever dream.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
You're right, the Republicans 'hacked' the election and cost Hillary the Presidency - when will the Democrats start their investigation into those pesky Republicans and their 'better than thou' candidate that WASN'T under an FBI investigation?!?!
Ken
SO far they claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election ...
Really? The only ones I have seen make that claim are pundits on Fox News and Breitbart trying to defend their 'Dear Leader', the greatest negotiator of all time. Most of the rest of the media claims the Russians hacked the DNC and used carefully timed leaks of that information in an attempt to influence the voting behaviour of the US electorate.
How about Rolling Stone? Are they an alt-right media outlet, too?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Russian interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation? Really? Let's compare that to the king of manipulators- the USA. Ask any insider in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East or Germany or Russia ... The USA is there, with the carrot and the stick, arranging weapons contracts, CIA connections, generous bribes, commercial alliances, and assuring that the 'right' people win elections. Maybe the US has achieved a level of subtlety and control over the press that makes these activities seem less significant, but you can bet that they are well supported with our tax dollars.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Right, because Americans would never have trolled Hillary. And the Democrats would never have trolled Trump. Sorry, if you lose an election to Trump or you lose an election due to trolling, then you are truly a pathetic candidate. If you lose to Trump and its because of trolling you must be the most pathetic political candidate ever, which leads to you never having had a chance to begin with, so there was no outcome that the Russians could possibly have changed.
I just said this here last week: The Russians post comments on Finnish news sites and forums in Finnish. If they have the time and the resources to do propaganda on sites with readerships that are a tiny tiny fraction of /.'s, there's absolutely no doubt that they're actively posting and moderating here as well.
The way they operate in the social media is by having vast amounts of bots/fake accounts, usually with western names. Then they push out articles through their own media corps directly (RT etc,) or via 3rd parties like different conspiracy sites and communities that then share these on FB & al. Then they use the bots to 'moderate' these post for high visibility with likes and shares. In here, probably some of their people just gather mod points and then other write posts which the modders then vote up.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
While all you are saying is true, China does not show any ambitions of building an empire. It especially lacks any capability to project its military power. Last I checked, they had two aircraft carriers. (for comparison, the USA operates 10, half of the world-wide fleet).
China does understand the power of economics. Their economic activities around the world, especially their long game in Africa and South America, should worry anyone who looks beyond two election periods much, much more. This country is used to thinking in terms of centuries. They plant seeds now (of economic cooperation) that will blossom in 50 or 100 years.
The same is true for hacking. I don't think they care much about elections. In chinese terms, a US president is a temporary event. There'll be another one soon. But military secrets, technological advances, scientific progress - those are things worth stealing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The thing is - China isn't going to invade America
Neither is Russia.
What, exactly, are you americans all so afraid about? Not being able to be the bully on the playground anymore, that's what?
Nobody is threatening you. Some countries are just tired of being threatened.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
So the Russians went about looking for dirt by hacking the DNC. I feel it is pretty safe to say it was not altruism that prompted the Russian hacks and therefore, while they did uncover shady practices (although everything was perfectly legal) that it was indeed an effort to change out election results in their favor.
Honestly, how can you rationalize it in any other manner? Do you really think Russia was hacking the DNC to save America? If you're a sane American and the answer is "no" then maybe you should feel uncomfortable about the candidate that did benefit. On the other hand, maybe you're Ivan.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Your thinking is what is so bizarre about today's political climate. A variety of US intelligence services, in the course of monitoring Russian agents who often are part of recruiting US citizens, noticed a high level of contact between high level trump campaign people and these agents. It's become clear that there was an intense effort by the Russians to get trump elected, and that's part of an ongoing effort to influence and ultimately control US elections.
Let that sink in. A hostile foreign power wants to decide who is running the US government. However bad you think the USA is today, it would be a crap ton worse with Putin running it, and elections being utterly meaningless.
And with all that, with the fate of our democracy at stake, people are worried that some of trump's buddies who were busy talking to these Russian had their names revealed... again, NOT because THEY were being monitored, but because the RUSSIAN AGENTS they were talking to were monitored.
Congratulations, you've managed to focus on the mote, and ignore the tidal wave bearing down on you. People like you are why our democracy is in such trouble right now.
I've always wondered, if the Iraqi people had the choice to go back in time and keep Saddam and his progeny instead of what they have now, would they? At the time they seemed very happy when he was removed.
How is this even a question?
“...I am one of the political prisoners who was arrested in 1988, but life was better in Saddam’s days, compared with now.”...
If they had such an option they would probably want to return to a point in time to prevent Bremer from disbanding the Iraqi army and delaying Iraqi's from taking control of the government.
The problem with Iraq wasn't really the invasion, it was the occupation that followed.
No, the biggest problem was the invasion. I'm not saying you're completely wrong. But to pick out one mistake out of so many is misleading. To begin with the war was based on a lie. So if not WMD, what were the real reasons for going to war? If Jack shoots himself with a gun, then doesn't dress the wound properly, the reason Jack died was because he shot himself.
But anyway, after the invasion, Col. Ted Spain was the guy in charge of law & order, he seems like a great resource to list all the mistakes:
If they had such an option they would probably want to return to a point in time to prevent Bremer from disbanding the Iraqi army and delaying Iraqi's from taking control of the government. These two decisions by Bremer, a career diplomat who served numerous administrations, essentially started the insurgency and created an opportunity for al-Queda in Iraq.
Bremer says those weren't his decisions. He says he was ordered to do so, that order came from Rumsfield's office but Rumsfield also says he was ordered to do so but won't say by whom. It seem likely that the order originated from Cheney's office and was made on the recommendation of Chalabi, who wanted to install his own army and government in Iraq. If that's the case, then it wasn't a mistake, as much as it was a deliberate betrayal of America and Iraq's common interests to profit an ally of Dick Cheney.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I just said this here last week: The Russians post comments on Finnish news sites and forums in Finnish. If they have the time and the resources to do propaganda on sites with readerships that are a tiny tiny fraction of /.'s, there's absolutely no doubt that they're actively posting and moderating here as well.
There was absolutely no doubt of that during the election. The moderation of politicial stories took a sudden and drastic turn. What was even more obvious was that even more than pro-trump posts, what was getting +5 mods was ridicule of the meer idea that Putin or Russians might be involved. You tell me what group of people would be flooding a US political forum with their #1 priority being promoting Russia and Russian politicians and only their #2 priority being promoting their favorite US politician?
I had to quit posting on the stories, simply because it got to be such a drag reading page after page of upvoted Russian propaganda. They basically removed /. as a useful forum for the last 3 months of the election.