Saw report that Obama advisors talked with Syria about easing Bush sanctions before taking office...
...did anyone else catch that, and is it true?
I strongly suspect thsi sort of thing has been standard fair for a very long time, but because people are calling Trump treasonous because of Flynn's calls, I think it's important to know just how unusual this is.
It is also very unusual that a sitting president would impose sanctions so late in his presidency with just a few weeks to go before he leaves office so that the incoming president has to deal with the consequences.
Obama has been shown to have known about Russia's hacking of the DNC for about 8 months before he suddenly decides to take action in the very last weeks of his presidency when there is political pressure to do so. Thus, i think that it could be argued that Trump had even more reason to do this than Obama or any other president in my memory. Finally, proof of the exact discussions is also lacking from anything that I have seen.
Has anyone else seen this? I'm trying to vet the news.
Replies to: Saw report that Obama advisors talked with Syria about easing Bush sanctions before taking office...
and Carter transition team's secret 1976 contacts w/ USSR. It's a normal practice of elected POTUS
especially those POTUS who attempted to do something different from their predecessor on certain things.
Link: http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/02/when-a-democrat.html
Lest we forget Ted Kennedy's overtures to Russia, imploring them to get Mondale elected.
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What Flynn did may well have not been that bad
We've talked about this before. It is hardly unheard of for an incoming administration to make contacts with other countries before taking office. It's not right, you could argue, but it happens. The Reagan admin talked to the Iranians about the hostages. Easily the worst case was the Nixon admin, which told North Vietnam to hold off on making peace until they got there.
If all he did was talk about sanctions, that is not bad.
The question, then, becomes why he lied about it. At the very least, it raises suspicions that there is more to this.
As to the unprecedented nature of the sanctions, that is overblown. Presidents act during their lame-duck time...Pres Bush 41 sent US troops into Somalia in December 1992 and then handed it over to Clinton (which was the right thing to do, by the way). So there was nothing especially crazy about the sanctions and ejection of Russian spies.
Regarding Bush sending troops to Somalia...didn't he coordinate that with Clinton?
I thought Clinton approved of the move.
He did.
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Perhaps he did. I've never seen any discussion of that.
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Why'd they get rid of Flynn then?
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I believe Flynn was fired because the leaks made the story go public and embarrassed Pence...
...Preceding that were the rumors that under Flynn, National Security Council meetings were disorganized and dysfunctional and the Pence debacle was the last straw.
That's my guess.