Reply #14: Having looked over the arguments... [View All]

[punpirate]

... in both those threads, I'm not convinced that there's anything more here than Weldon's attempt to push blame elsewhere.

Here's why I say that. There had to have been more than just one or two people involved with Able Danger, and yet, Weldon continues to champion just two people, best as I can see, as the whistleblowers, and both of them have some shit smeared on them (I'm not presuming to know the whys of that, just that they are compromised sources). Beyond that, the two sources have provided allegations, but not evidence that can be corroborated. An administrative error which provides a few copies of classified information to a discharged person is evidence of administrative laxity, not of a cover-up. For a particularly engaging series of articles on precisely this point, see Robert Parry's X-Files articles.

Second, it's entirely possible that the cover-ups suggested may have more to do with illegality of the Able Danger effort itself than with a Pentagon or an adminstration who dropped the ball. After all, there's ample existing evidence that the administration did drop the ball, without the need to have the Able Danger evidence to prove that. The supposed Able Danger info is therefore just so much additional fodder.

What I would need to see for it to be impressive, and don't see in those posts, is the clear chain of evidence that Able Danger changes the calculus, that Able Danger adds new information to the arguments made already and elsewhere. Otherwise, I'm just persuaded that there's a political agenda at work here. That possibility cannot be discounted, and the ways of that agenda may not yet be known. What is known is that Weldon himself is an untrustworthy presenter of evidence, and a rabid and not particularly discriminating defender of military spending. For those reasons, my first inclination is to think Weldon expects to gain something from this. What that is, I don't yet know.

Cheers.