Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Burger and fries, hold the spies.

Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned the arrests of 10 alleged Russian spies in the United States, calling them baseless Tuesday, and senior lawmakers suggested they had stemmed from a conspiracy in the U.S. government to undermine President Obama's efforts to improve relations with Moscow. Washington Post
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I find this case of the Russian spies extremely strange and the timing of their arrests especially disturbing and suspicious, coming, as they do, so soon after the feel good "Hamburger summit".

This incident makes the president of the United States look ridiculous at a moment when Russian cooperation is essential in a multitude of sensitive areas, not the least of which is Afghanistan.

I really cannot believe this is a coincidence, as it seems perfectly timed to embarrass the president and perhaps derail to some extent the "reset" in US-Russian relations.

Since these suspected spies gave no indication that they planning to flee, nor do they seem to have penetrated into any sensitive, sanctum sanctorum of America's secret life, which would require them to be immediately neutralized, then the question has to be: why were their arrests timed to coincide with an elaborately staged thaw in US/Russian relations?

So, lets go over this again.

If the spies had not come into the possession of America's family jewels, then the questions  have to be in the line of:
  • Did the president of the United States know that the arrests were going to be made when he invited Medvedev out for hamburgers
  • If he didn't, why not?
  • Who should have told him that didn't tell him?
  • Who, would benefit by cooling off American/Russian relations?
  • Are they in the administration itself?
  • Is this a "one off" job of specific US/Russian relations sabotage, or are there "factions" within the government who are trying to weaken the president?
These are the truly important questions that should be asked and answered and as I write this, I don't see them even being asked. DS

2 comments:

oldfatherwilliam said...

Hoping to see another resignation soon over exactly this. You don't think Obama"s asking questions?

Anonymous said...

Whenever something like this happens, I cannot help but remember all those eager young republican operatives that Bush "transferred" from the political appointment wing of the administration into the civil service wing of the administration before he left office. I believe I heard that Cheney did the same. The political appointments leave when the appointing president does. The civil service cadre is much, much more difficult to get rid of and I'm sure there are many within the bowels of the administration's offices doing who knows what skullduggery. Since Dickens, authors have been writing about civil servants dragging their feet to slow things down.

In addition, we all know about the infighting and other problems within the entire national security forces. Again, we can thank Cheney who inserted many of his own operatives. If I were Obama, I wouldn't trust any of them from the FBI to the CIA.
Cactus