Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Candidates and Ambassadors

A former US ambassador to Russia (under George H.W. Bush) says that Presidential candidates and their advisors should talk with foreign ambassadors.  He felt it was his job to cultivate friendly relations with both Gorbachev, whom the US supported  and Yelsin, the opposition candidate.*  And that is especially important wrt the US and Russia because we must do everything possible to prevent nuclear war.

I completely agree with Ambassador Matlock on this.

(*I've always believed GHWB secretly supported Yelsin as part of the plan to collapse the Soviet Union.  So then it was especially important for the Ambassador to cultivate relationships with both candidates, for the appearance of fairness if nothing else.)

Investigative Reporter Robert Parry compares the current "madness" in Washington (now with Trump making unfounded accusations of his own in response) with previous episodes of documented wrongdoing, such as when Kissinger foiled the end of the Vietnam War under Johnson, and when Reagan aides foiled an early settlement of the Iranian Hostage Crisis.  In these and similar instances, substantive evidence of actual wrongdoing (and not merely conversations) was found and reported before official inquiries were demanded.  He says that unless some evidence is presented, people are calling for a politically motivated witch hunt or fishing expedition.  Parry also defends the known actions of both Flynn and Sessions.  I agree Flynn did nothing improper and simply failed to remember all the details of an earlier conversation, whereas Sessions denied even having conversations he had actually had, which does not look good for the chief US law enforcer, though it is not grounds for an investigation as such, because there is no other evidence he did something improper.

Parry also quotes from an interview with James Clapper, the US intelligence director under Obama, that there is no evidence of collusion between the Russians and Trump to win the election.








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