Now that the Durham Annex is out and we know that the Dems and the Intelligence Community were fumbling a pathetic play to stay in the game for one more quarter, I want to say that I don’t really care, cupcake, about bringing frightful vengeance upon the guilty.

In fact, I think it would be best if all the Obamas and Clintons and Comeys and Brennans and Wrays and Clappers get away with their incompetent betrayal of our great country Scott Free. Because then we can point forever to the utter corrupt incompetence of the ruling class that was, and how we should never allow such dumb bunnies into the catbird seat again.

Anyway, here’s Matt Taibbi’s post Durham Annex take:

Now, there’s no doubt. Hillary Clinton got in a jam, and the FBI, CIA, and the Obama White House got her out of it by setting Trump up. That’s it. It was a cover-up, plain and simple:

Just a ruling class covering up a cover-up and then covering up the cover-up of the cover-up. And we learn that the political class and the Intelligence Community aren’t even competent at covering up their cover-ups.

The Bigger Question is: what kind of a spy operation does the United States really need?

For instance, the experts agree that we needed a robust intelligence operation during the Cold War, from 1948 to 1989, when the U.S. went up against a Soviet Union determined to conquer the world.

But did we?

Did you know how the Cold War started? On June 20, 1948, the western allies allowed the Germans to combine the U.S., British, and French occupation zones into the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Four days later, on June 24, 1948, the Soviets began the Berlin Blockade.

Know what I think? I think that the Soviets were skeered by the establishment of a united Germany, and they were right, as the West Germans performed a world-changing Wirtschaftwunder and showed that socialism was a crock. But suppose that the Truman administration had taken care to keep the Soviets in the loop during the runup to the creation of West Germany? I wonder how it would have turned out. I wonder what the graduates of the OSS like Allen Dulles thought at the time.

Whatabout the Suez Crisis? Wikipedia:

Shortly after the invasion began, the three countries [Britain, France, Israel] came under heavy political pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as from the United Nations, eventually prompting their withdrawal from Egypt.

So, the Soviets and the U.S. were able to cooperate, in 1956. In the middle of the Cold War.

I wonder what Allen Dulles at the CIA had to say about all that?

I wonder if the assassination of President Kennedy in 1962 had any connection with the firing of CIA founder Allen Dulles in 1961?

I wonder if the Nixon/Kissinger opening to China announced in July 1971 had anything to do with former naval intelligence officer Bob Woodward getting hired at the Washington Post in September 1971? You think that maybe the Intelligence Community was horrified that the U.S. was making nice with China?

I wonder how much the Intelligence Community is responsible for the serial military cockups down the decades, from the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam to Kosovo to Iraq to Afghanistan and now Ukraine.

I wonder why the Intelligence Community wasn’t telling the political leaders for years prior to 1989 that the Soviet Union was a failed state and all we had to do was set up the bleachers and watch the Commies fail.

I wonder why the U.S. didn’t wind down NATO in the early 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union? You think maybe that the Intelligence Community didn’t like the idea of swingeing cuts to the Military Industrial Complex? Or do you think the presidents of the time just didn’t have the guts to go over the heads of the IC and sell peace to the American people?

At the American Spectator they are worried about cutting the intelligence agencies too far, because “the United States needs a serious intelligence capability… [since] America faces adversaries in places like Russia, China, North Korea, and in various hostile places in the Middle East.”

I say that, given the unseriousness of the Intelligence Community down the decades, why worry?  They say that if you prune rose bushes aggressively in the Fall, you don’t kill the roses off. Instead, the roses grow up stronger in the Spring. And if a few of the rose bushes die, maybe it was time.

But I’m sure we can all agree that Allen Dulles and OSS did some amazing stuff back in World War II. Hey Allen! How many spies did you have at the Wannsee Conference in 1942?

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill blogs at The Commoner Manifesto and runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: AT via Magic Studio