Silencing Assange: Hillary Clinton’s 1000 points of darkness

Assange's Fate - Antiwar.com Original

The left turns on him, the right embraces him

The saga of Julian Assange seems to be drawing to a climax – one that will decide the fate of this historic whistleblower who, for years, has been a giant thorn in the side of governments everywhere. 

His role in exposing the machinations of the US government over the years earned him the plaudits of liberals – until the Bush era ended, and he started exposing the crimes of the Obama administration and – most pointedly – the hypocrisy and venality of Hillary Clinton and her journalistic camarilla. Now we see right-wing figures like Sean Hannity and – yes! – Donald Trump praising and defending him, while the ostensible liberals take up the cry of the Clinton campaign that he’s a “pawn of the Kremlin” and a “rapist.” Even Glenn Greenwald, formerly a comrade-in-arms, who together with Assange helped Edward Snowden evade the not-so-loving arms of Uncle Sam, has lately sought to distance himself from the founder of WikiLeaks (over the value of “curation”). Nice timing, Glenn!

Funny how that works.

Now we see that the Ecuadorian government, which has provided sanctuary for Assange ever since the frame-up “rape” charges by the Swedes were brought, is succumbing to pressure from Washington to silence him. As Assange released the now famous Podesta emails, that – among other things – exposed the collusion of the media and the Clinton campaign in delicious detail, John Kerry demanded that the Ecuadorians cut off Assange’s Internet access – and they meekly complied. Of course, since leftist Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has openly endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and openly abhors Trump, this is hardly surprising: this is how the left operates internationally, as well as in this country – if you stray from the party line it doesn’t take long before the knives come out, aimed directly at one’s back.

In any case, Correa’s betrayal seems to have been short-circuited by the ever-resourceful Assange, who is still releasing incriminating emails. This is someone with a Plan!

Coincident with all this is the culmination of the long “legal” process initiated by the Swedish government, which is falsely accusing Assange of “rape.” He was supposed to have met with Swedish prosecutors on Monday, but has put off the meeting until November 14 – after the US elections. 

Given Sweden’s bizarre laws on the subject, and the provenance of his accusers, the smear campaign aimed at Assange has zero credibility. No one believes these charges (and remember, he has never been formally charged) aren’t motivated by Washington’s stated desire to get him extradited to the US on “espionage” charges – and there isn’t anyone who thinks that the British government (which has spent millions making sure he stays holed up in Ecuador’s embassy) wouldn’t do so given half a chance.

Is it a coincidence that the way the Establishment tries to destroy those who oppose it is by hurling sex charges at them? They did the same thing to Dan Ellsberg: it’s the oldest trick in the book. 

Equally ridiculous are the accusations that Assange is a “Russian agent.” To begin with, despite the US government’s propaganda, there isn’t a lick of real evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC emails, or any of the other emails published by WikiLeaks It could just as easily have been an insider. The fact of the matter is that, although they try to project the illusion of their own omniscience , they just don’t know.

What’s instructive is that the liberal media, which is not even bothering to hide its support for Hillary Clinton, is echoing Washington’s campaign to discredit Assange as a Kremlin tool. And of course the neoconservatives, who are solidly in Clinton’s camp, have always hated Assange, and are glad to join the chorus.

Assange has done more than any single figure to expose the machinations of governments worldwide to murder and plunder the rest of us: as the declared enemy of the powerful, he is their principal target – and it behooves those of us who defend liberty and transparency to rally around the banner of Wikileaks. 

Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since August of 2012, with governments all over the world – and especially our government – determined to get him, smear him, and discredit him by any means necessary. Yet he continues to expose them, even in these straitened circumstances, without regard for his own health, happiness, or ultimate fate. He is a hero for our times – in an age when the heroic seems entirely absent. And he is now in more danger than ever before: what with the leftist Ecuadorian government, eager to curry favor with Hillary Clinton, wavering in his defense, and with Mrs. Clinton herself wondering “Can’t we just drone this guy?” 

Assange’s fate, whatever it turns out to be, limns our own: if he goes down, then, in a sense, so do we all. Because what that means is that there’s no room for truth-tellers in our world, and no tolerance for heroes. And that’s not the kind of world I care to live in.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richertand David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.

Read more by Justin Raimondo

• Trumped! – October 16th, 2016
• A Note to My Readers – October 13th, 2016
• The Second Debate: Oh, Those Dastardly Russians! – October 11th, 2016
• The Saudis, Hillary, and the Destruction of Yemen – October 9th, 2016
• Gary Johnson and ‘Moral Equivalence’ – October 6th, 2016

Obama Decides US Public Can’t Handle the Truth

The Cyber-War on Wikileaks

Srećko Horvat COUNTERPUNCH

Srećko Horvat & Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London – Sunshine Press Publications.

When the ruling class is in panic, their first reaction is to hide the panic.

They react out of cynicism: when their masks are revealed, instead of running around naked, they usually point the finger at the mask they wear. These days the whole world could witness a postmodern version of the infamous quote “Let them eat cake”, attributed to Marie-Antoinette, queen of France during the French Revolution.

As a reaction to WikiLeaks publishing his emails, John Pedestal, the man behind Hillary Clinton’s campaign, posted a photo of a dinner preparation, saying “I bet the lobster risotto is better than the food at the Ecuadorian Embassy”.

A similar version of vulgar cynicism emerged earlier this month when Hillary Clinton reacted to the claim that she reportedly wanted to “drone” WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (“Can’t we just drone this guy?”) when she was the US Secretary of State. Instead of denying her comments, Clinton said that she doesn’t recall any such joke, “It would have been a joke if it had been said, but I don’t recall that”.

One doesn’t have to read between the lines to understand that if Hillary Clinton had said that, she would have considered it a joke. But when emperors joke, it usually has dire consequences for those who are the objects of their “humor.”

Cyber-war Not with Russia…but WikiLeaks

During the last few months I have visited Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London several times and each time I came out of the Embassy, where he is spending his fifth year in political asylum under legitimate fear he might be extradited to the US, my thought was the following one: although he lives, without his family, in a postmodern version of solitary confinement (even prisoners are allowed to walk for up to one hour a day), although he has no access to fresh air or sunlight for more than 2000 days, although the UK government recently denied him safe passage to a hospital for an MRI scan, if his access to the internet would be cut off this would be the most severe attack on his physical and mental freedom.

The last time I saw him, which was only two weeks ago, he expressed the fear that, because he had already published leaks concerning US elections and with more to come, the US might find various ways to silence him, including pressuring Ecuador or even shutting down the internet.

What seemed a distant possibility only two weeks ago, soon became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When the Obama administration recently announced that it is, as John Biden said, planing an “unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia”, the first victim was not Putin, but precisely Julian Assange whose internet was cut off just a day after Biden’s self-contradictory proclamation.

No wonder Edward Snowden reacted immediately by saying that “nobody told Joen Biden what ‘covert operation’ means.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, a covert operation is “an operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor.”

It is no secret anymore that the Ecuadorian government has come under extreme pressure since Assange leaked the Democratic National Committee email database. We don’t know yet whether the US pressured Ecuador to shut down the internet, but it is clear that the present US government and the government to come is fighting a war with WikiLeaks which is all but “covert”. Is it really a coincidence that Julian Assange’s internet access was cut off shortly after publication of Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches?

If at the beginning we still had a “soft” version of postmodern McCarthyism, with Hillary calling everyone opposed to her campaign a Russian spy (not only Assange, but also Donald Trump and Jill Stein), then with Obama’s recent intervention it became more serious.

With Obama’s threat of a cyber-war, the “soft” McCarthyism didn’t only acquire geopolitical significance, but at the same time a new mask was revealed: Obama is obviously trying to cement the public debate and make the Russian threat “real”, or at least to use it as a weapon in order to help Clinton to get elected. Moreover, this new twist in something that has already become much more than only US elections (US elections are never only US elections!), shows not only how Obama is ready to strengthen Hillary’s campaign, but it also reveals that a cyber war is already in the making.

It is not a cyber war with Russia, but with WikiLeaks.

And it is not the first time.

What would Clausewitz say?

In 2010, when the Collateral Murder video was published, the Afghan and Iraq war logs were released, and we witnessed one of the most sinister attacks on freedom of speech in recent history. VISA, Mastercard, Diners, American Express and Paypal imposed a banking blockade on WikiLeaks, although WikiLeaks had not been charged with any crime at either state, federal or international level. So if the US government successfully convinced payment companies representing more than 97% of the global market to shut down an independent publisher, why wouldn’t they pressure Ecuador or any other state or company to cut off the internet?

The US is not only rhetorically trying to “get” Assange (it is worth to check out the Assassinate Assange video for evidence of the verbal masturbation of US officials), he poses a serious threat to the major elite factions in the US to remain in power. No wonder panic is rising in the US, which is now going even so far that a 16-year-old boy in Britain has been arrested on criminal charges related to the alleged hacking of email accounts used by CIA director John Brennan, which WikiLeaks published in October 2016.

What WikiLeaks obviously successfully challenged–and maybe one day (“history is written by the victors”, remember?) it will be learned in military strategy– is what the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz would call the “centre of gravity” (Schwerpunkt), which is the “central feature of the enemy’s power”.

Instead of speaking about the Russians, we should start speaking about the Schwerpunkt of the actual leaks, their real essence. Just take the following quotes by Hillary Clinton exposed by WikiLeaks, which reveal her true nature and the politics behind her campaign: “We are going to ring China with missile defense”, “I want to defend fracking” and climate change environmentalists “should get a life”, “you need both a public and a private position”, “my dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders”.

What WikiLeaks has shown is not only that Hillary is a hawkish war-monger, first it was Libya (over 1,700 of the 33,000 Clinton emails published by WikiLeaks reference Libya), then it was Syria (at a Goldman Sachs conference she explicitly stated she would like to intervene in Syria), tomorrow it will be another war.

It is now clear – and this is the real “centre of gravity” where we should focus our attention – that the future Clinton cabinet may already been filled with Wall Street people like Obama’s was. No wonder WikiLeaks revelations create utter panic not only in the Democratic Party itself but also the Obama administration.

One question remains, isn’t WikiLeaks, by leaking all these dirty secrets, influencing the US elections? Yes, it certainly is, but the current criticism misses its point: isn’t the very point of organizations such as WikiLeaks to publish the material they have and to influence public opinion?

The question should finally be turned around: isn’t the US mainstream media the one influencing the US elections? And isn’t Obama, by announcing a cyber-war with Russia, influencing the elections?

WikiLeaks is not only influencing the US elections, but transforming the US elections – as they should have been from the very beginning – into a global debate with serious geopolitical consequences at stake. What WikiLeaks is doing is revealing this brutal fight for power, but, as the old saying goes, “when a wise man points at the Moon, the idiot looks at the finger”. Instead of looking at the finger pointing to Russia, we should take a look at the leaks themselves.

If democracy and transparency means anything today, we should say: let them leak!

Srećko Horvat is a philosopher and activist. He is co-author, with Slavoj Žižek, of What Does Europe Want? (Columbia University Press, 2014) and author of The Radicality of Love (Polity Press, 2015). Together with Yanis Varoufakis he co-created the movement DiEM 25. https://diem25.org/

Hey Donald, Call for a Million or Two to Roll Into Washington !

Is the system rigged? You betcha

Pat Buchanan: 'Big Media is the power that sustains the forces of globalism'

Published: 3 hours ago BUCHANAN

ELECTION 2016

WASHINGTON – “Remember, it’s a rigged system. It’s a rigged election,” said Donald Trump in New Hampshire on Saturday.

The stunned recoil in this city suggests this bunker buster went right down the chimney. As the French put it, “Il n’y a que la verite qui blesse.” It is only the truth that hurts.

In what sense is the system rigged?

Consider Big Media – the elite columnists and commentators, the dominant national press, and the national and cable networks, save Fox. Not in this writer’s lifetime has there been such blanket hatred and hostility of a presidential candidate of a major party.

“So what?” They reply. “We have a free press!”

But in this election, Big Media have burst out of the closet as an adjunct of the regime and the attack arm of the Clinton campaign, aiming to bring Trump down.

Half a century ago, Theodore White wrote of the power and bias of the “adversary press” that sought to bring down Richard Nixon.

“The power of the press in America,” wrote Teddy, “is a primordial one. It sets the agenda of public discussion; and this sweeping power is unrestrained by any law. It determines what people will talk about and think about – an authority that in other nations is reserved for tyrants, priests, parties and mandarins.”

On ABC’s “This Week,” Newt Gingrich volunteered on Sunday that, “without the unending one-sided assault of the news media, Trump would be beating Hillary by 15 points.”

On this one, Newt is right.

With all due respect, as adversaries, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are not terribly formidable. Big Media is the power that sustains the forces of globalism against those of Americanism.

Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.

IS THE SYSTEM RIGGED? ASK YOURSELF.

For half a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has systematically de-Christianized and paganize American society and declared abortion and homosexual marriage constitutional rights.

Where did these unelected jurists get the right to impose their views and values upon us, and remake America in their own secularist image? Was that really the court’s role in the Constitution?

How did we wind up with an all-powerful judicial tyranny in a nation the Founding Fathers created as a democratic republic?

There are more than 11 million illegal immigrants here, with millions more coming. Yet the government consistently refuses to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.

Why should those Americans whose ancestors created, fought, bled and died to preserve America not believe they and their children are being dispossessed of a country that was their patrimony – and without their consent?

When did the country vote to convert the America we grew up in into the Third World country our descendants will inherit in 2042?

In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a congressional majority voted to end discrimination against black folks.

When did we vote to institute pervasive discrimination against white folks, especially white males, with affirmative action, quotas and racial set-asides? Even in blue states like California, affirmative action is routinely rejected in statewide ballots.

Yet it remains regime policy, embedded in the bureaucracy.

Sign the precedent-setting petition supporting Trump’s call for an independent prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton!

In 2015, in the Democratic primaries, the big enthusiastic crowds were all for 75-year-old socialist senator Bernie Sanders.

We now know, thanks to leaked emails, that not only the super delegates and the Obama White House but a collaborationist press and the DNC were colluding to deny Sanders any chance at the nomination.

The fix was in. Ask Sanders if he thinks the system is rigged.

If there is an issue upon which Americans agree, it is that they want secure borders and an end to trade policies that have shipped abroad the jobs, and arrested the wages, of working Americans.

Yet in a private speech that netted her $225,000 from Brazilian bankers, Hillary Clinton confided that she dreams of a “common market, with open trade and open borders” from Nome, Alaska, to Patagonia.

That would mean the end of the USA as a unique, sovereign and independent nation. But the American press, whose survival depends upon the big ad dollars of transnational corporations, is more interested in old tapes of the Donald on “The Howard Stern Show.”

As present, it appears that in 2017, we may get a government headed by Hillary Clinton, and an opposition headed by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

Is that what the people were hoping for, working for, voting for in the primaries of 2016? Or is this what they were voting against?

Big money and the media power of the establishment elites and the transnationals may well prevail.

And if they do, Middle America – those who cling to their Bibles, bigotries and guns in Barack Obama’s depiction, those “deplorable” who are “racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic,” who are “not America” and are “irredeemable” in Hillary Clinton’s depiction – will have to accept the new regime.

But that does not mean they must love it, like it or respect it.

Because, in the last analysis, yes, Virginia, the system is rigged.

What do YOU think? Irrespective of your preference, who will be next president? Sound off right now in the WND Poll!

ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS AND NOW SOME STATE ACTOR CUTS OFF HIS INTERNET

BACKGROUND

Julian Assange’s Internet ‘Intentionally Severed By A State Party,’ Wikileaks Says

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s internet link was severed by a state party, the organization claimed in a tweet early Monday morning. Wikileaks claims to have activated “appropriate contingency plans.”

The announcement came hours after Wikileaks published three cryptic tweets Sunday afternoon referencing Ecuador, US Secretary of State John Kerry and the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Each tweet was accompanied by a string of jumbled numbers and letters.

Assange is currently residing in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, England, where he has remained since seeking political asylum in June 2012. (RELATED: Leaked Emails Show Clinton Campaign Struggling Over Gay Marriage Position)

Kerry is currently in London as well for meetings with British, French and German foreign ministers regarding peace brokering attempts in Syria.

Earlier this month, Assange claimed he was going to make a major announcement regarding Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on the balcony of the embassy, but canceled due to “security concerns.”

Over the last week and a half, Wikileaks has steadily released thousands of emails from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s Gmail account.

Wikileaks previously released hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee that showed party officials colluding against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. (RELATED: Wikileaks Cancels Major Clinton Revelation Amid ‘Security Concerns’)

Critics of Wikileaks say the organization is acting as a front for Russian hackers, a charge Assange has denied. U.S. intelligence officials believe Russian hackers have been the source of the hacks.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson

Department of State, Clinton Campaign and FBI were discussing altering classification status of Clinton emails in exchange for...

Were they missiles fired at a US navy ship off Yemen or were they digital shadows?

US Again Attacks Yemen Coast, Despite Growing Doubts Over ‘Missiles’

Pentagon Now Says 'Attack' Could've Been a Radar Malfunction

by Jason Ditz, October 16, 2016

Print This | Share This

US warships have once again attacked Yemen’s Red Sea coast after reporting for the third time in a week that they came under fire from the area by anti-ship missiles, a large number of which were fired but none of which actually hit anything. At least, that was the story initially.

After once again attacking Houthi targets along the coast, in spite of any evidence that the Houthis fired the missiles at them, officials are now saying they’re not even sure about the missiles, and are looking into the possibility that the USS Mason, which has claimed all the attacks, has a radar malfunction which is generating ghost signals.

This raises the possibility that the US warships are not only retaliating against the wrong people, but that there was nothing to retaliate against in the first place. Though there was some speculation that remnants of the Yemeni military were involved in firing missiles, by way of explaining why the Houthis were denying it, this must inevitably raise questions if anything happened at all other than the heavy-handed US reaction.

The Pentagon has been desperate to portray their attacks on Houthi radar installations as distinct from the ongoing Saudi war against the Houthis, which the US is already participating in. With the possibility that the attacks were a colossal error, however, it’s only going to add to its association to the blunder-ridden Saudi war.

The Clinton - Bush - Obama - Clinton Wars Against Vaginas and the Human Bodies Connected to Them

Ah yes, The US Media, the always-offended-all-the-time. and our rulers and masters in  the US Government are in a real twisted knicker mode, enough to squeeze sexual genitalia of all persuasions and some who are not persuaded, a real tight twister I tell you about Donald Trump. (Trump indeed must indeed have them concerned at this time.)

Michelle Obama, mentored by the late great vagina killer (with a real woman attached to it) himself, Ted Kennedy, is simply thong twisted herself over it. 

American liberal woman horrified, shocked and awed that they are over the simultaneous eruptions from some hereto fore silent women that Donald Trump, patted and more than likely tapped, a few vaginas.

There were no reports before and none at all that Trump hurt, attacked or killed any of the women attached to those precious folds. In fact, there were no reports about anything blatantly offensive. Nothing, except civilian Trump's uber male ego. 

The real offenders to the human vagina and the atrocities attached to them are out there.

There is not a peep about the other candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has more than a few pussy scalps on her own belt. The difference is Clinton, her husband, Obama and the Bush aristocrats are responsible for the harm, deaths, rapes and violent injuries of hundreds of thousands if not millions female vaginas and the unfortunate formerly living human beings attached to them.

Do these ignorant scum understand what happens to women and young girls when they wreck and destroy human civil society? When civil society is broken and the hoards of young military who actually do the dirty killing, hell brakes loose.  

Killing men break every decent social human value.

Since the Korean war, the US Government and our armies have been on a social wrecking and killing spree, a horror not just to the vaginas and attached victims but to men young and old.

Not much moral indignation there.

Thank you for your service, pussies.

The people of Serbia, Kosovo, the Sudan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were not the only or most obvious victims of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky. In 1998 on the day before the House impeachment vote, Clinton bombed Iraq, delaying the impeachment vote. He continued the bombing throughout all the days of the impeachment vote. Only an hour or two after the House impeachment vote ended, Clinton ended the bombing, saying, "We have achieved our objectives." Of course, because the objective was to delay and distract from the impeachment vote! In all other respects, the bombing hurt U.S. and international interests.(SOURCE)

US military deaths under Clinton and Bush:

While calculating civilian deaths is very difficult, getting numbers for US soldiers killed is easier. However, these numbers are total active duty deaths, including deaths from illness, so they might not be a good reflection of combat related deaths.

Clinton: 7500 (total military active duty military deaths from 1993-2000)

Bush: 8792 (total military active duty deaths from 2001-2006)

Source: Department of Defense report (PDF). Note: This doesn’t include this year or next year. Bush isn’t done yet.

Civilian deaths under Clinton:

Because there were several different small military actions ordered by Clinton, tallying everything is rather difficult. If I’ve forgotten anything here, or if you have sources with different numbers, let me know.

Battle of Mogadishu: “More than one thousand.”. I could only find info for this one particular battle, I don’t know how many more died during the Somalia missions.

Kosovo War – Yugoslavia claimed that NATO attacks caused between 1,200 and 5,700 civilian casualties. NATO acknowledged killing at most 1,500 civilians. Human Rights Watch counted a minimum of 488 civilian deaths.

So here are some approximations:

Somalia: 1500
Haiti: 10
Iraq (Desert Fox): 2000
Iraq (Ongoing bombing): 1296
Afghanistan: 21
Sudan: 50
Yugoslavia: 5700

Total: 10,577

Civilian deaths under George W. Bush:

Afghanistan: 7,300-14,000.

Iraq:  74,689 – 81,394.

Total: 81,989 – 95,394

It would certainly take a lot of civilians deaths under Clinton’s bombing campaigns in Iraq to come close to Bush’s numbers.(SOURCE)

----------

A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States' Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan:
A Comprehensive Accounting [revised]

"What causes the documented high level of civilian casualties -- 3,000 - 3,400 [October 7, 2001 thru March 2002] civilian deaths -- in the U.S. air war upon Afghanistan? The explanation is the apparent willingness of U.S. military strategists to fire missiles into and drop bombs upon, heavily populated areas of Afghanistan."

Professor Marc W. Herold
Ph.D., M.B.A., B.Sc.

(source)

------------

"When asked on US television if she [Madeline Albright, US Secretary of State] thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children [from sanctions in Iraq] was a price worth paying, Albright replied: "This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.""

— John Pilger, Squeezed to Death, Guardian, March 4, 2000

---------

Civilian cost of NATO victory in Libya

Published time: 20 Oct, 2011 18:56 

(The death of Gaddafi has finally concluded his eight- month stand-off with NATO. But as the alliance and the new Libyan government celebrate the war’s end, the untold numbers killed in the intervention cast a dark shadow over their victory.

TrendsLibyan conflictTagsConflict, Military, NATO, Libya, Gaddafi, War

As Libyans poured out onto the streets of Tripoli and Benghazi to celebrate the death of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the cost of the war will weigh heavily on their nation for some time to come.

While there are no exact figures on casualties, speaking back in September, the health minister in the new Libyan government estimated that at least 30,000 people had been killed and 50,000 wounded during the first six months of war. (SOURCE)

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Dear Barack, Russia is not some aspirin factory in East Africa - Trump Really Must Have Them Scared - Threatening Russia With War

CIA Prepping for Possible Cyber Strike Against Russia

by William M. Arkin, Ken Dilanian  and Robert Windrem

The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News. 

Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging “clandestine" cyber operation designed to harass and "embarrass" the Kremlin leadership. 

The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation. Former intelligence officers told NBC News that the agency had gathered reams of documents that could expose unsavory tactics by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vice President Joe Biden told "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd on Friday that "we're sending a message" to Putin and that "it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact." 

When asked if the American public will know a message was sent, the vice president replied, “Hope not." 

Retired Admiral James Stavridis told NBC News' Cynthia McFadden that the U.S. should attack Russia's ability to censor its internal internet traffic and expose the financial dealings of Putin and his associates. 

"Probe with bayonets. When you hit much, proceed. When you hit steel withdraw."

"It's well known that there's great deal of offshore money moved outside of Russia from oligarchs," he said. “It would be very embarrassing if that was revealed, and that would be a proportional response to what we've seen" in Russia's alleged hacks and leaks targeting U.S. public opinion. 

Sean Kanuck, who was until this spring the senior U.S. intelligence official responsible for analyzing Russian cyber capabilities, said not mounting a response would carry a cost. 

“If you publicly accuse someone," he said, "and don't follow it up with a responsive action, that may weaken the credible threat of your response capability." 

President Obama will ultimately have to decide whether he will authorize a CIA operation. Officials told NBC News that for now there are divisions at the top of the administration about whether to proceed. 

Two former CIA officers who worked on Russia told NBC News that there is a long history of the White House asking the CIA to come up with options for covert action against Russia, including cyber options — only to abandon the idea. 

"We've always hesitated to use a lot of stuff we've had, but that's a political decision," one former officer said. "If someone has decided, `We've had enough of the Russians,' there is a lot we can do. Step one is to remind them that two can play at this game and we have a lot of stuff. Step two, if you are looking to mess with their networks, we can do that, but then the issue becomes, they can do worse things to us in other places.” 

A second former officer, who helped run intelligence operations against Russia, said he was asked several times in recent years to work on covert action plans, but “none of the options were particularly good, nor did we think that any of them would be particularly effective," he said. 

Putin is almost beyond embarrassing, he said, and anything the U.S. can do against, for example, Russian bank accounts, the Russian can do in response. 

"Do you want to have Barack Obama bouncing checks?" he asked. 

Former CIA deputy director Michael Morell expressed skepticism that the U.S. would go so far as to attack Russian networks. 

"Physical attacks on networks is not something the U.S. wants to do because we don't want to set a precedent for other countries to do it as well, including against us," he said. “My own view is that our response shouldn't be covert -- it should overt, for everybody to see." 

The Obama administration is debating just that question, officials say — whether to respond to Russia via cyber means, or with traditional measures such as sanctions. 

The CIA's cyber operation is being prepared by a team within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, documents indicate. According to officials, the team has a staff of hundreds and a budget in the hundreds of millions, they say. 

The covert action plan is designed to protect the U.S. election system and insure that Russian hackers can't interfere with the November vote, officials say. Another goal is to send a message to Russia that it has crossed a line, officials say. 

While the National Security Agency is the center for American digital spying, the CIA is the lead agency for covert action and has its own cyber capabilities. It sometimes brings in the NSA and the Pentagon to help, officials say. 

In earlier days, the CIA was behind efforts to use the internet to put pressure on Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 1999, and to pressure Iraqi leadership in 2003 to split off from Saddam Hussein. 

According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the CIA requested $685.4 million for computer network operations in 2013, compared to $1 billion by the NSA. 

Retired Gen. Mike Hayden, who ran the CIA after leading the NSA, wrote this year: "We even had our own cyber force, the Information Operations Center (IOC), that former CIA director George Tenet launched and which had grown steadily under the next spy chief, Porter Goss, and me. The CIA didn’t try to replicate or try to compete with NSA… the IOC was a lot like Marine Corps aviation while NSA was an awful lot like America's Air Force." 

"I would quote a Russian proverb," said Adm. Stavridis, "which is, 'Probe with bayonets. When you hit mush, proceed. When you hit steel withdraw.' I think unless we stand up to this kind of cyber attack from Russia, we'll only see more and more of it in the future."