The Parade Goes On

The US and the world have been sucked into this parade of incompetence, grifting and shit for quite sometime.  The idea of Trump having intelligence was always scary---no, not that he might not be dim (he is dim and incurious)--that he might spill some secrets.  Did I imagine it would be directly to the Russians in the oval office?  Probably not. This stuff is very serious.

Last night, I tweeted my 9/11 story, focusing on how the officers I was with were determined to put the classified documents we were carrying to the State Department (there are rules for how they are carried--in a bag with a lock) back into a SCIF (Sensitive, compartmented info facility).   Which turned out to be a burning Pentagon.  Yes, we went back into the building.  Why?  Because taking care of classified docs is serious business and they didn't want to do the massive paperwork to explain why they took the docs home.

To be clear, these docs were all confidential or secret, certainly nothing at the code-world level.  I had a Top Secret clearance, which meant I got booted from the room whenever anything that was code-word classified--need to know--was being discussed.  As far as I could guess, this meant missing out on some signals stuff (NSA gathered intel was apparently classified at higher levels) or involving active Special Operations.  This all became more relevant a week and a day into my time at the Pentagon as counter-terrorism replaced peacekeeping as the US priority in the Balkans.

This is all to say FFS!!!  Telling the Russians anything like this is bad for anyone but for a president whose campaign/government is under investigation for its relationship with ... the Russians?  There was plenty of concern that Trump would be reckless and casual with the intel stuff.  I had kind of hoped that his lack of interest in the daily intel brief might serve to protect us all, but nope.  I had wondered whether American allies would share intel with us--one of the key ways the US gains from its alliances that Trump criticizes is getting intel from them--with Trump being so implicated.  Pretty sure that question is now being answered differently today than a couple of months ago.

Oh, and who is the ally who got screwed? No idea but the first call this morning is to Jordan, so:

Yes, a clue.

What we didn't need a clue about?  That Trump is profoundly unqualified to be President.  We knew that before November 8th, and pretty much everything that has happened since then proves it even more so.  Will the GOP do anything about it?  No.  Craven, they are.  So, buckle up as the ride is not going to get any less bumpy as we mix metaphors.