Bob78164 wrote:Donny
posted a Twitter video identifying Seal Team Five while they were (and as far as I know still are) deployed in Afghanistan and showing their uncovered faces without digital blurring.
Liar. The tweet said, "@FLOTUS Melania and I were honored to visit our incredible troops at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. GOD BLESS THE U.S.A.!" The video has no captioning and Lee Greenwood didn't ID anyone. The identification of what may or may not be SEAL Team Five was done by Newsweek and other news outlets outraged by the "breach." If the video should have been edited (pixellated), that should have been done by whoever provided it to Trump. He didn't film it nor edit it. Who doesn't know that he's a Twitter-happy knucklehead? If this were such top secret information, why pass it on to him unedited? Why even let the soldiers be filmed in the first place?
Bob78164 wrote:That is a terrible breach of operational security.
Please enlighten us as to where you got your knowledge of SEAL Team protocol. The "expert" in your article stated, "The special warfare operators are dressed in full battle gear and wearing night vision goggles." Really? I'm pretty sure that "full battle gear" would include some type of weapon.
Bob78164 wrote:These are special forces and their faces are now known, so they can no longer confidently act covertly. Moreover, if any of them are ever captured, they'll be completely unable to deny that they are in fact special forces.
SEALs are Special Operations Forces, not Special Forces.
Moreover, the right-wing propaganda site NBC disagrees with you.
However, the Office of the Secretary of Defense said in a statement that no rules were violated.
"The special operators voluntarily participated in this open press event," the secretary's public affairs arm stated. "There was no security violation."
A retired San Diego-area SEAL officer, who did not want his name used because he still consults with the Department of Defense and is not authorized to speak, said the episode was "much ado about nothing."
"It’s no secret that SEAL Team 5 is in Iraq," he said. "You can ask anybody in Coronado" — one of the SEALs' bases, in San Diego County.
"There’s plenty of things to get upset about with Trump," he said, "and this was not one of them."
So, all in all, this outrage is all over NOTHING. Unlike Hillary's private server.
Bob78164 wrote:If anyone tries to defend this grievous lapse, I don't ever want to hear another word from them about Secretary Clinton's e-mails.
A grievous lapse would be when "the most experienced candidate in history," with some, what, 30 years in politics implements a private server on which to conduct her government business.
Right-wing propaganda site USA Today summarizes the story
Right-wing propaganda site Factcheck.org provides "A Guide to Clinton's Emails"
Notable Excerpts:
Was she allowed to use a private server?
No. As we wrote, the IG report said that it has been department policy since 2005 — four years before Clinton took office — that “normal day-to-day operations” be conducted on government servers.
Did Clinton seek government approval to use a private server for her personal email account?
No. The IG report said Clinton “had an obligation” to discuss her email system with the department, but it could find “no evidence” that Clinton sought approval for her unusual email arrangement. If she did, the report says her request would have been denied by the bureaus of Diplomatic Security and Information Resource Management. Brian Fallon, a Clinton campaign spokesman, has told us: “It did not occur to her that having it on a personal server could be so distinct that it would be unapproved.”
No other secretary of state maintained a private server that was used for government business.
Did Clinton use any of the iPads to send and receive emails?
Yes. Clinton told the FBI that she set up her private server for convenience — “to avoid carrying multiple devices” — for personal and official business. However, as we reported, she used an iPad to at least occasionally send and receive emails, in addition to her Blackberry — a fact confirmed by Clinton and her former deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin.
When did Clinton delete her 31,830 private emails?
The FBI on Sept. 2 released a two-part summary of its investigation of Clinton that said the former secretary of state’s emails were deleted
“sometime between March 25-31, 2015.″ That was
about three weeks after the House Select Committee on Benghazi served Clinton with a subpoena on March 4, 2015, to produce any emails related to its investigation into the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi in 2012.
Did Clinton’s emails contain classified information?
Yes. More than 2,000 of the 30,490 emails Clinton turned over to the State Department in December 2014 contained classified information, including 110 emails in 52 email chains that contained classified information at the time they were sent or received, Comey said. The FBI director said “a very small number” of the emails containing classified information “bore markings indicating the presence of classified information,” contrary to Clinton’s claims that none was marked classified.
To summarize, Hillary instructed her people to set up her own illegal server so that she could control what e-mails could be viewed and/or preserved. Had it simply been a "private e-mail account" with GMail, for example, it would have been more secure and all e-mails would have been subpoenable (from back-ups, if necessary). Hillary didn't want that, as it did not allow her to hide her dirty secrets. This is borne out by the fact that she not only deleted, but used bleachbit to do so, rendering 30,000 e-mails unrecoverable. She also had her people smash 8 to 13 cell phones with hammers, rendering them useless in investigating her doings. Of course, she was on the up and up as SoS and there was no pay-for-play in place. I wonder why, then, donations to the Clinton Foundation plummeted once she lost the election. Surely people understood she would now have MORE time to do her good works around the world. Why would the flow of money stop?