What was wrong with Trump’s statement?
What was wrong with it is that he just insulted everyone (“the people that have been doing it for our country”) working in the intelligence community. These people include those working in both military and non-military agencies. FWIW over the years, I’ve known some people who work or have worked for some of those agencies and I find Trump’s comments insulting to those good people.
If Trump had said something along the lines of “we need to improve our intelligence gathering, improve our ability to share and interpret gathered by and across multiple agencies, perhaps consolidate intelligence gathering to fewer agencies in order to get a clearer picture and make better decisions based on that intelligence”, I would not necessarily disagree.
But no. Instead he implies, and makes his statement even before having received his first intelligence briefing or ever having gotten one, that the intelligence community as a whole has been wrong – “It’s been catastrophic.”
He misplaces blame on the intelligence community as a whole when it should be placed on those who have made bad political decisions regardless of what the intel said.
And as to Trump’s statement “Very easy to use them, but I won't use them, because they’ve made such bad decisions,” that begs the question as to just who Trump will use? He may certainly make appointments and his own appointments to the President's Intelligence Advisory Board (PIAB) but to make such a broad statement as to him disregarding security briefings because he doesn’t trust them shows both a (and as previously documented) contempt for anyone that Trump perceives as being “smarter” than he is and a very dangerous mindset.
It isn't so much up to the agencies to make the decisions, but to provide the intel, assess its reliability, weight it, and when called for, interpret it. The 'decisions' are made at a different pay grade.
Remember that this is the man who said; “I know more about ISIS than the generals”, who accused U.S. troops of stealing money in Iraq, said that avoiding STD’s in the late 70’s and early 80’s was like his own personal Viet Nam, that he always wanted to get a Purple Heart, said with respect to POW’s “I like people who were not captured”, and that attending a toney military school for rich kids was just like going to West Point or having served in the military. But he loves him some the “veterans” and wants to build up our military and use our military to wipe out ISIS and based on some previous comments, use them to confiscate oil and other assets from nations or territories we defeat, use torcher and seek out and kill all the families of terrorists …..
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It wasn't that Clinton and Obama didn't know what was going on, it's that we don't. I am convinced there was something going on behind Benghazi that got FUBAR'd and that Americans, including an Ambassador were killed as a result. That they did not act to bring in air and other assets to rescue our people on the ground speaks volumes, but also says there is much more to this than the well polished BS the American people have been presented.
That, however, was not the fault of the people gathering information, but the fault of the people acting on it.
