Usual suspects inciting anti-Russian hysteria

The main culprits repeating claims that Russia hacked the Democratic party, are James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, as well as Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain.

Clapper might have been instrumental in facilitating the fraudulent intelligence about Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put Clapper in charge of the analysis of satellite imagery, the best source for pinpointing the location of weapons of mass destruction.

As Newsweek reported in 2010:

“President Obama’s nomination of Pentagon intelligence chief James Clapper as intelligence czar could reignite the Bush-era debate over how and why agencies overstated Saddam Hussein’s weapons-of-mass-destruction arsenal before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Clapper played an important role in that estimate; from 2001 to 2006 he headed the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon unit responsible for interpreting spy-satellite photos and other technically gathered intelligence like air particles and soil samples.”

But Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller concluded that, “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even nonexistent.”

Former general Colin Powell too concluded that his 2003 speech to the United Nations, advancing the rationale for war in Iraq, was a “blot” on his record. The speech set out to detail Iraq’s weapons program, but as the intelligence would later confirm, that program was nonexistent.

By the time it was clear there were no WMD’s in Iraq, and Clapper was asked to explain, he opined that they probably were moved into Syria.

Clapper is no stranger to false statements. On March 12, 2013, Clapper admitted to giving Congress false testimony regarding the extent of NSA collection of data on Americans. Four months later, after the Edward Snowden revelations, he apologized to the Senate for testimony he admitted was “clearly erroneous”.

Similarly, Newsweek called Lindsey Graham: “One of the biggest cheerleaders for the Iraq War ….” Graham is now calling for throwing “rocks, not pebbles” at Russia.

In the 2003 lead-up to the Iraq War, John McCain and Graham made appearances on Sunday talks shows such as Meet the Press, Fox News Sunday, and Face the Nation where they made the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction

McCain, in a Feb. 16, 2003, appearance on Face the Nation, also made the case for the war based on intelligence showing weapons of mass destruction. Now McCain is alleging that Russia hacked the US and that it constitutes an act of war.