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  #11  
Old 03-07-2017, 01:47 PM
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whell whell is offline
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Originally Posted by finnbow View Post
It seems to me that Moyers' piece states the obvious (and reflects what I posted above that everybody below the top political levels at Federal agencies are there before a new President arrives and remain after he leaves (by design, might I add)). In other words, without the experience and institutional knowledge of career professionals, there would be nobody left to run the agencies because the political appointees are largely figureheads (do you really believe that Ben Carson and Rick Perry know the slightest thing about their respective agencies?)

Trump's take on it, however, are the ramblings of a paranoid, uniformed lunatic.
So you're suggesting that Moyers agrees with you? That the "deep State" really is, as you put it, nothing more that the "career professionals" inside government agencies?

I'm pretty sure that NOT what Moyers is saying here, for example:

[I]We are faced with two disagreeable implications. First, that the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change. Second, that just as in so many previous empires, the Deep State is populated with those whose instinctive reaction to the failure of their policies is to double down on those very policies in the future. Iraq was a failure briefly camouflaged by the wholly propagandistic success of the so-called surge; this legerdemain allowed for the surge in Afghanistan, which equally came to naught. Undeterred by that failure, the functionaries of the Deep State plunged into Libya; the smoking rubble of the Benghazi consulate, rather than discouraging further misadventure, seemed merely to incite the itch to bomb Syria. [/I

EDIT: the essay is by Mike Lofgren, not Moyers, but appears on Moyer's web site.

Last edited by whell; 03-07-2017 at 02:10 PM.
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  #12  
Old 03-07-2017, 02:07 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by whell View Post
So you're suggesting that Moyers agrees with you? That the "deep State" really is, as you put it, nothing more that the "career professionals" inside government agencies?

I'm pretty sure that NOT what Moyers is saying here, for example:

We are faced with two disagreeable implications. First, that the Deep State is so heavily entrenched, so well protected by surveillance, firepower, money and its ability to co-opt resistance that it is almost impervious to change. Second, that just as in so many previous empires, the Deep State is populated with those whose instinctive reaction to the failure of their policies is to double down on those very policies in the future. Iraq was a failure briefly camouflaged by the wholly propagandistic success of the so-called surge; this legerdemain allowed for the surge in Afghanistan, which equally came to naught. Undeterred by that failure, the functionaries of the Deep State plunged into Libya; the smoking rubble of the Benghazi consulate, rather than discouraging further misadventure, seemed merely to incite the itch to bomb Syria.
I'm not a Moyers fan, a person I find to be a far left alarmist for the most part. I'll watch some of his feature shows on PBS, knowing full well the POV he has.

I disagree with his point above. Those screw-ups he notes were not the fault of the "Deep State." They were the fault of the political leaders in power at the time. Blaming the Iraq War or our Libya misadventures on the Deep State is a cop-out for those who held political power.
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  #13  
Old 03-07-2017, 02:37 PM
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Originally Posted by finnbow View Post
I'm not a Moyers fan, a person I find to be a far left alarmist for the most part. I'll watch some of his feature shows on PBS, knowing full well the POV he has.

I disagree with his point above. Those screw-ups he notes were not the fault of the "Deep State." They were the fault of the political leaders in power at the time. Blaming the Iraq War or our Libya misadventures on the Deep State is a cop-out for those who held political power.
So you agreed with him until you disagreed with him???

By the way, it was the "deep state" folks - at least the article defines them - that assured Bush that the intel on Iraq was "a slam dunk".

Not to get off track here, but it was my point - in opposition to the OP - that the term "deep state" was not somehow an invention of the current admin or its flack catchers. It has been around a while, and likely comes from the Turk expression "derin devlet", so it's likely not a term that even has its origin in the US.

Last edited by whell; 03-07-2017 at 02:42 PM.
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  #14  
Old 03-07-2017, 02:48 PM
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So you agreed with him until you disagreed with him???

By the way, it was the "deep state" folks - at least the article defines them - that assured Bush that the intel on Iraq was "a slam dunk".
No, it wasn't. It was CIA Director George Tenet, a political appointee, along with a cabal of other political appointees (e.g., Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz). The career analysts in the CIA was highly skeptical of Dubya's claims, but were overridden by the Dubya administration (refer to Downing St. memo and the Valerie Plame affair).
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  #15  
Old 03-07-2017, 03:24 PM
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Originally Posted by finnbow View Post
No, it wasn't. It was CIA Director George Tenet, a political appointee, along with a cabal of other political appointees (e.g., Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz). The career analysts in the CIA was highly skeptical of Dubya's claims, but were overridden by the Dubya administration (refer to Downing St. memo and the Valerie Plame affair).
Nope.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.1559ad888c15
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  #16  
Old 03-07-2017, 03:34 PM
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So you agreed with him until you disagreed with him???
In a way you forced him to disagree with himself.
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  #17  
Old 03-07-2017, 03:36 PM
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Typical CYA (or CIA) revisionism. Any assertion that the Bush administration was dragged, kicking and screaming, by low level CIA analysts into the Iraq War is pure ahistorical bullshit.
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Last edited by finnbow; 03-07-2017 at 03:40 PM.
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  #18  
Old 03-07-2017, 04:30 PM
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I remember Bush mentioning the possibility of going to war, people cheering and Bush grinning like a Cheshire Cat. He enjoyed it. Sending thousands of American soldiers to their deaths brought him joy. If that isn't evil, what is?
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  #19  
Old 03-07-2017, 04:33 PM
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You obviously have no understanding of what the "Deep State" is.
What were you expecting?
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  #20  
Old 03-07-2017, 04:38 PM
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I understand what Finn is saying when explained the"Deep State" as it exists. What these idiots at Fartbreight peddling is something entirely different. More bullshit Republican fear mongering.
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