You have ZERO proof she was hired quid pro quo. Absolutely zero. Do you honestly think Clinton would risk any bad optics whatsoever if she thought DWS wouldn't help her win? That was the Rodman analogy. Clinton hired her to help win the election, not to regulate elections to be fair.

And even Sanders supporters said the nomination wasn't stolen. He lost. He lost mainly because he didn't appeal enough to minority voters. You have to take a massive leap of cynicism to make that claim.

You're making it sound like Clinton hired Alan Grayson. That's my point.

Then you magically transfer DWS's guilt directly to Clinton. Did Clinton do that, or did DWS? I'm pretty sure it was DWS. I hated George W. Bush as president. That didn't make me magically transfer guilt about the Valerie Plame incident directly to him because there's no evidence he was responsible for outing her as a CIA operative.

And again, you're also talking about the leader of the Democratic Party favoring a lifelong Democrat over a dude who just decided to join for a Presidential run. When I think of a candidate who is personally corrupt, I think of Nixon. He broke a law. Clinton didn't break any laws whatsoever. NONE! She didn't even do anything. DWS didn't break any laws for that matter. She shouldn't have done what she did, but good lord, you're blowing this way out of proportion.

How exactly am I helping Trump win? Because I'm gonna vote for Clinton over Trump, Stein, and Johnson?! You're gonna have to explain to me how I should help Trump lose. Do I vote for Trump?! Do I vote for some other candidate who has absolutely zero chance of winning?

And all evidence does not argue against Clinton being the most qualified candidate out of the remaining candidates. She is BY FAR the most experienced candidate in government. You can sit there and rail about the hiring of DWS to help campaign all you want, but there is no possible way you can possibly make the claim that she isn't the most experienced out of the remaining candidates. She was the most experienced candidate among all primary candidates, too. That's an undeniable fact. All evidence at the very least doesn't say she isn't the most qualified. None of the 2016 primary candidates came remotely close to her experience in foreign policy. None of them came close to her experience in domestic policy.

This isn't to say experience is everything. But you're making a very flimsy argument about her being personally corrupt, and then claiming the ridiculous assertion that all evidence says she's not the most qualified candidate, even though she's clearly the most experienced.

And yes, we don't know how good or bad a President she would be. You also can't know if a specific Honda Accord will be more reliable than a specific Chevy Corvette either. That doesn't stop me from buying the Honda Accord without batting an eye if I want the most reliable car.

Only in this case, it's more like a Honda Accord vs. a lit on fire dumpster on wheels.

Its not about the complexity of the explanation. Its the fewest assumptions required that matter. Frankly I dont have enough info about Turkey to be an expert.

However what Erdogan and Yldirim say publicly is enough to make your head spin.

Historically the military in Turkey knows how to coup, and does so regularly to support a secular state. Erdogan is a danger to secularism, so a coup would kind of be expected, however an anti-Erdogan religious leader is blamed officially.

All the violence was for TV only, few casualties, no VIP casualties, not much infrastructure damage, but a big hole in the Parliament building. A few thousand people took part, mostly military, taking orders from a small group of commanders. Disproportionately large scale repressions result against tens of thousands of people who might have done no more than made a facebook comment against Erdogan.

Yldirims "dont ask for proof, when 9/11 happened no-one asked for proof either" line of reasoning was a clincher for me.

Looks staged from here. Incompetence would have to have been legendary and suicidal. CIA/Putin is conspiracy theory.
Are the generals now in Greece the stagers? That would be funny (except for the hundreds dead and injured, thousands in jail and tens of thousands out of jobs and careers).

You might be right about the coup being a deception, but I also think that that's the opposite of Occam's razor. Saying that Erdogan ordered / incited / allowed the coup in order to facilitate greater dictatorial authority for himself is a more complex explanation than saying it's a poorly executed military coup. The world has seen failed coups before, so it's not an impossibility.

The least complex explanation would be that it was a poorly executed, earnest coup attempt. The second least complex explanation would be that it was a poorly executed coup attempt that Erdogan allowed to happen because he was confident that it would play into his hands. The third least complex explanation is that it was a poorly executed coup attempt funded by the CIA to undermine a potential Putin ally? http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21702337-turkish-media-and-even-government-officials-accuse-america-being-plot-after

I love the fact that Pokemon Go was literally created by Niantic whose CEO (John Hanke) is a CIA agent, whose funding comes from CIA's venture capital arm (In-Q-Tel), and is linked to the CIA-funded Keyhole program (now Google Earth) which dealt with mass satellite surveillance, and which accidentally turned on all kinds of surveillance permissions in its app.

I don't believe that this is any kind of surveillance conspiracy, but it's a beautiful conspiracy theory foundation. So much better than chemtrails.

"Can [They] be so insanely sheltered that they think her 'answers' help her?"

If you piece together all of her statements on a plethora of different topics, it is inescapably obvious that they (!) truly have no connection to anyone or anything outside their bubble. Surrounded by sycophants as the Clintons are, people have wondered, and justifiably so, whether she cares or even knows that she's lying on a regular basis. One might make the case that the entire concept of an objective "truth", connected to reality, has no meaning for them.

Additionally, she really does suck at campaigning. But that's not punishable by extended prison sentences, unlike, I don't know, sending Special Access Program (SAP) info through your own bloody email server.

Lastly, Joe mentions Powell (6:16 onwards). When Colin Powell was SoS, his office was connected to the internal system, but had no connection to the internet or the outside world in general. You can't get shit done that way, not in this day and age. That's why he had additional gear set up to at least send and receive emails. This was done separate from the internal network and, if I remember correctly, his entire staff was not only open about it every step of the way, they applied for and received special permissions before they touched anything.

Clinton didn't give a jar of cold piss about the rules that are meant to safeguard access to sensitive information. It was inconvenient to her, and since the rules and laws only apply to plebs, she and her posse set up their own system.

A whole lot of people have to adhere to tedious rules and procedures, with severe punishment looming just around the corner. One guy was in the press for receiving three years of prison after he placed a document on the wrong desk. So, if the FBI drags out the investigation or even buries it, you can bet your ass that a lot of people at different agencies are going to be fuming. And between the FBI, the NSA and CIA, a lot of people have access to the remaining emails from Clinton's server. That opens Clinton up to blackmail, a lot of it. Can't have a compromised president. Not to mention that someone's going to take the data and just drop it over at WikiLeaks or the Intercept.

Yes.
"Story of God" with Morgan Freeman is NGTV's big production this month.
Right now, it's border wars, followed by 4 episodes of rocky mountain law, then drain the Bermuda triangle (at least a little bit about nature), then area 51:the CIA's secret, then bigfoot:the new evidence. It's all low quality 'reality TV' and conspiracy theory these days. So sad.

Right wingers have a lower IQ and want a simplified world. They get frustrated when the simpleton they elected, surrounded by Nixons CIA team (including the simpleton's daddy) treat them like the fools they are.
Then they make an even dumber decision. Eventually they will elect a Hitler or such. If that doesn't make them idiots I don't know what would.

As an entertaining sidenote, when Bush lost to Obama, right wing voters (those that were being monitored and expresseed political preference) had a DROP IN TESTOSTERONE.
For them politics is an emotional, tribal event like a pack of apes fighting over power. Idiot is too kind.

@newtboy and @Dragen_Jager

My main point is just in agreement with Hayden, that given a grossly illegal and unpalatable order like targeting women and children just because of who they are related to is something that America's current top brass would say no to.

That said, in existential wars there is no such things as a war crime any more. Or at the least, the definition will be written by the victors(Fire bombing Dresden and Tokyo, or nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki).

Furthermore, what is approved in a 'black ops' sense has IMO always been something that America and every other nation has done, and again with the only meaningful rule being that it be effective and secret and/or deniable. Hence my ask the CIA quip,

I think Hayden meant at higher levels of command. Realistically, if an officer tells the soldier directly under them to blow up that building, they follow orders. Whether that building is full of terrorists, or just the school their kids attend wouldn't change that much, as you say.

I think Hayden means that if a President ordered the military to start targeting women and children, the very top generals he gave those orders to would themselves refuse. If the situation were private enough they'd remind the President that it's not their job to do those kind of things and he should probably go talk to the CIA instead...

I had the same thought.

And.

This is something else again. They'll do what they think is right, when it is their idea.

But a blowhard who insults the military and destroys the mission with his mouth? And gives the order to target the families of terrorists?

I think they will draw the line happily there.

Military folks can be pretty black and white -- and the bad guys "deserve it" and collateral damage, as distasteful as the concept is, is a historical reality of war.

Targeting the children of our enemies for assassination? The military won't go there wholesale. (The CIA? Probably already has....)

Where's the line?

On the shelf to the left of my screen rests a copy of Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill. Excuse the hyperbole, but every single page of that book details actions by the US military/intelligence agencies that were in violation of both international and domestic law. Individuals may refuse to obey unlawful orders, but the organisations will commit every atrocity in the book without much thought.

How many laws did the CIA break during those three years when Hayden was in charge? How many torture camps did it run? How many "black sites"? How many extrajudicial renditions took place?

Let's not even bother with all the shenanigans of the NSA under Hayden's command.

GOP goes down = fine.
Trump compromises the US and forces the shadow government (NSA CIA Pentagon etc) to quietly change the rules to maintain order = end of the US as we know it.

No and yes. Its the violent and warmongering western policy in that region. We have always destabilized it, yet have learned nothing from it. We just keep going and then wonder why its getting worse. Its a neocon policy. Easy to stop, many people have already said what the solution would be, yet there are always the powerful neocons who live from fear mongering, suffering and wars. And of course from blind following people like you who support them.

2003 was just another puzzle piece. The support of extremists in Syria too, the support of them in Libya aswell. The support of Saudi Arabia is a very big puzzle piece. The CIA operations in that region just as much.
The support of Saddam Hussein also is another small puzzle piece, just as much as we made him think that he can attack Kuwait and we wont interfere. He thought that because we allowed him and instigated him to attack Iran, then supported both sides, because we wanted to destabilize that region once again. Did I mention the coup detat in Iran yet?
And its not that we werent warned about it. Lots of smart people said that giving the Jews Israel would end in disaster. The signs were easy to spot. Lots of people warned about an Iraq war in 2003. Even the neocons own people warned about the IS in documents, yet they ignored it and kept going, strengthening it even more. People warned about what would happen to Libya after Ghaddafi was gone. Again they did not care. Lots of people warned about what was going on in Syria, that Assad was confronted with an extremists group long before the "revolution" that is now known as Al Nusra, a branch of Al Kaida. What did they do? They weakened Assad. Lots of people warned about the refugee crisis and extremists flooding into Europe among those refugees. What do they do? They open the borders and let everyone in without any checks at all, even inviting the whole world to come, ignoring actual laws.

You see, good knowledge of history is mandatory to understand cause and effect. You dont have that knowledge, as you have proved already, because you try to marginalize it by including things from centuries ago and try to solve those with the same solutions from centuries ago. But I dont blame you, since youre probably American. American history teaching is as messed up as their foreign policy.
You cant see coherences in all that. Lots of people dont. Thats why we are doomed to repeat history.

I mean just look at the policy since 9/11. It was meant to bring us all more security from terrorist attacks like that. Yet it has only become worse. Extremists are stronger than ever before and keep getting stronger with everything we do to "weaken" them. And yet people like you dont ask themselves why, actually attack people like me who have realized whats wrong.
Intelligent species my ass.

@Asmo

On your comment:

The CIA's role in the 1953 Iran ouster is generally exaggerated. Several things - (1) by 1953, the Islamic clergy supported Mossadeq's ouster, something they have been suppressing ever since in inflating their anti-US stance (2) by the time of his ouster he also lacked the support of either his parliament or the people, (3) prior to it that year, he deposed his disapproving parliament with a clearly fraudulent 99% of the vote in a national referendum, (4) strictly speaking Iran was still a monarchy and the shah deposed his PM legally under the constitution, something that Mossadeq refused to abide by.

Did the UK put economic pressure on Iran when it threatened to nationalize its oil and usurp its remnants of imperialism? Sure. Did the UK then convince Eisenhower to mount a political and propaganda campaign against Mossadeq? Sure. Was that instrumental in fomenting a popular uprising of the parliament, the clergy and large portions of the 20m general population against him? Probably not.

Also I listened to it. Really, it's a meandering, probably scripted (the parts where he feigns surprise at the questioning is particularly humorous) that tries to generalize US actions, some of which were obviously harmful and support his argument. Putting Stalin in a positive light relative to the willingness of the US to use the bomb is, amusing? I'm not sure what to call it.

That the US needs a common threat to unite against holds some grains of truth in the present day but is really part of a wider narrative by Putin to construct the US as imperalist and domineering when by all accounts since the end of the Cold War, excluding GWB's term, it has been pulling back. It hardly needed to invent Iran's covert nuclear ambitions in the early 2000s, NK's saber rattling or China's stakes on the South China Sea islands.

Modern US foreign policy largely relies on reciprocation. The US provides a military alliance and counterweight to China's military for small SE Asian nations at a hefty cost to itself, and presumably gets various trade concession and voting support in various international agencies. The key word being reciprocation, something that Russia could learn a fair bit from in its own foreign policy.

...this is one of the most boring interviews i've ever seen..

And I'm the sorta person who watches hours long lectures about politics, science & social issues for fun..

Nothin' like posh, straight-laced, long-winded, anecdotes about how mildly vexing it is when people mispronounce your ridiculously "quirky" Welsh name, ad nauseam. T_T

Longest three minutes EVAR.
Must be a CIA agent testing new torture techniques.. @_@