Daniel Lazare on Russiagate, Atlantic Council, Saudi interests

In the great recent essay by Alligator Ed, James Comey fired! Watch out Hillary!, there was a discussion that included the perspective of a person who appears to believe Russia hacked the DNC. I think the following article by Daniel Lazare at Consortiumnews.com lays out some of the reasons I don't believe Russia hacked the DNC and includes reasons why this hollow Russiagate scenario is loaded with the potential to destroy life on earth. I believe one of the reasons the war machine works so hard to demonize Russia is to revitalize the nuclear weapons industry and to promote their "limited use," thereby demonstrating their usefulness.

Regardless of nuclear war, the article shows a connection between the Russiagate hysteria and war interests. I strongly welcome people who believe the Russiagate hype to come this forum and discuss. If it comes to who has more credibility, the intelligence community or renegade generals like Michael Flynn, we can agree to disagree. But I think presenting the evidence is imperative and that arguing is how we will move toward truth. Here are some excerpts from Lazare's article. The bold type is my emphasis:

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/11/the-scandal-hidden-behind-russia-g...

The Scandal Hidden Behind Russia-gate
May 11, 2017

By Daniel Lazare

… Since the FBI has never conducted an independent investigation – for as-yet-unexplained reasons, the DNC refused to grant it access to its servers despite multiple requests – the only evidence that a break-in even occurred comes from a private cyber-security firm, CrowdStrike Inc. of Irvine, California, that the DNC hired to look into the breach.

Since when do the cops rely on a private eye to look into a murder rather than performing an investigation of their own? CrowdStrike, moreover, turns out to be highly suspect… Dmitri Alperovich, its chief technical officer… is also an associate of a virulently anti-Russian outfit known as the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank funded by the Saudis, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukrainian World Congress, the U.S. State Department and a variety of other individuals and groups that have an interest in isolating or discrediting Russia.

The Atlantic Council puts out a stream of anti-Kremlin articles and reports with scary headlines like “Distract Deceive Destroy: Putin at War in Syria” and “Six Immediate Steps to Stop Putin’s Aggression.”

Since the Atlantic Council is also a long-time supporter of Hillary Clinton, this means that the Clinton campaign relied on a friendly anti-Putin cyber-sleuth to tell it what everyone involved wanted to hear, i.e. that the Kremlin was at the bottom of it all. If this strikes you as fishy, it should.

Crowdstrike’s findings seemed weak in other respects as well. A few days after determining that Russian intelligence was responsible, Alperovich issued a memo praising the hackers to the skies. “Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none and the extensive usage of ‘living-off-the-land’ techniques enables them to easily bypass many security solutions they encounter,” he wrote. Since the hackers were brilliant, CrowdStrike had to be even more so to track them down and expose their perfidy for all to see.

But CrowdStrike then said it was able to pin it on the Russians because the hackers had made certain elementary mistakes, most notably uploading a document in a Russian-language format under the name “Felix Edmundovich,” an obvious reference to Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, as the Soviet political police were originally known. It was the equivalent of American intelligence agents uploading a Russian document under the name “J. Edgar.” Since this was obviously very careless of them, it raised an elementary question: how could the hackers be super-sophisticated yet at the same time guilty of an error that was unbearably dumb?

The skeptics promptly pounced. Referring to Russia’s two top intelligence agencies, a well-known cyber-security expert named Jeffrey Carr was unable to restrain his sarcasm: “OK. Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add Iron Felix’s name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released it to the world while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly had a wicked sense of humor.”

Since scattering such false leads is child’s play for even a novice hacker, it was left to John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates and developer of the first commercial anti-virus software, to draw the ultimate conclusion. “If it looks like the Russians did it,” he told TV interviewer Larry King, “then I can guarantee you: it was not the Russians.”

None of this proves that the Russians didn’t hack the DNC. All it proves is that evidence is lacking. If all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agree that the Kremlin did it, it is worth bearing in mind that the “intelligence community” was equally unanimous in 2002 that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. If they were wrong then, why should anyone believe that they are right now in the absence of clear and unequivocal evidence? (On Monday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper clarified that the repeated claim about the unanimous view of the 17 agencies was wrong; that the report, which he released on Jan. 6, was the work of hand-picked analysts from the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency.)

… Hours after Comey received his termination notice, Ken Gude, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, published an article calling on the Justice Department to “appoint a special counsel to lead the investigation into links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election.”

This was very neutral, objective, and high-minded of him. But the question to ask in this instance is cui bono – who benefits? The answer lies in what the Center for American Progress is and whom it represents.

The answer is that CAP is a major Clinton stronghold. Its founder is John Podesta, who was Clinton’s campaign chairman and whose brother, Tony, is a registered Saudi lobbyist. Its president is Neera Tanden, a long-time Clinton friend and adviser.

Major funders include George Soros and the United Arab Emirates, which, like Saudis, has long pushed for the U.S. to adopt a more militant posture vis-à-vis Iran, Syria’s Assad government, and Russia, which is allied with both. This means more sabre-rattling towards Moscow, more weapons and support for Saudi-funded jihadis in Syria, and more U.S. backup for the Saudi-UAE war against Yemen, in which more than 10,000 people have died, according to U.N. estimates, and much of the population is on the brink of mass starvation.

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I do believe there are corrupt business deals between Russia and Trump, the Clintons, and soon Obama. I'm sure the same can be said for Saudi Arabia and a whole fistful of other countries. If these deals aren't on behalf of the war industry, they are on behalf of oil and gas. The one thing I would bet my house on is that they aren't on behalf of our country, people, or planet.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

CB's picture

@dkmich

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@CB @CB
we would come up with the whole host of articles including some on the deals the Clintons did with the Saudis. I doubt W. Bush was holding the Prince's hand for no reason. Then there's Jared's meeting with China involving the Trump properties and a whole host of improprieties by the Trumps and his cabinet. Flynn isn't seeking immunity for no reason. There is always a story here or there about some crooked deal that reeks of quid pro quo that goes nowhere. Obama and the banks are another good examples. If walls had ears. In fact, I would be shocked if there was nothing illegal going on between the global elite and the governments they control. Wouldn't you?

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

CB's picture

@dkmich
But, nothing treasonous between Russian government and US businessmen/investors. I've yet to discover any untoward business between Trump and Russia itself. To be honest, I don't think they really trust the snake oil salesman.

Tillerson had legitimate dealings with Russia. Exxon has been working in Russia for 30 years. He got his medal from Putin for the Sakhalin Project. There is currently a tax dispute that is being resolved.

The worst cases of collusion was when Hillary was Secretary of State and her apparent "pay to play" scheming.

Bush and the Saudis traces back to the marriage of convenience between Saudi Arabia and the United States by King Abdulaziz and President Roosevelt in 1945 - protection/arms for oil/money and the birth of the Petrodollar (which gives the US an inordinate amount of control and power over global oil). A divorce would be one of the best things that could happen for the Middle East (and the world). As would secession of the 51st. state from the United States.

It's all more hype than substance.

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@dkmich
but I think General Flynn may be seeking immunity for having provided information to people like Seymour Hersh about the treason in our war policy. That's my guess.

https://geopolitics.co/2015/12/22/dempseys-pentagon-aided-assad-with-mil...

Military to Military: US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war
Seymour M. Hersh

(from https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-military#onepass
London Review of Books, Vol. 38 No. 1 · 7 January 2016)

… The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.’ The assessment was bleak: there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.’ The DIA’s reporting, he said, ‘got enormous pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.’

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Azazello's picture

@CB
wanted to tie Trump to Russia is that they were vulnerable to that very same charge.

But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.

At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

New York Times

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

Song of the lark's picture

@Azazello NEWS BRIEF Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew Monday from a post-Cold War agreement with the United States in which both countries agreed to get rid of plutonium that could be used in nuclear weapons.

Putin accused the U.S. for failing to stand by its side of the agreement, and for the heightened tension between the countries over the Syrian civil war.

The deal was originally signed in 2000 and renewed in 2009. Putin said he was now suspending cooperation because of “the emergence of a threat to strategic stability and as a result of unfriendly actions by the United States of America towards the Russian Federation.”

The 16-year-old agreement dealt with stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium both countries could use to arm future nuclear warheads. Each country had agreed to destroy 34 tons of plutonium, enough to make 17,000 nuclear weapons. The U.S. had pushed for the deal as a means to end proliferation, and, in later years, out of the fear some of the plutonium could fall into the hands of terrorists. Hillary Clinton, at the time the secretary of state, helped finalize the deal back in 2009. Monday’s news shows just how far U.S.-Russian relations have deteriorated.

Do you have any idea what 34 tons of plutonium is worth and what it represents in the real world? Instead of coming up with uranium , Clinton payola CT, tell me what the Russians want the uranium for. now that would be useful information.

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Azazello's picture

@Song of the lark
It has nothing to do with "the Russians" as in the government of the Russian Federation. It was a business deal with a mining company that happened to be owned by Russians. Furthermore, I didn't "come up" with a Clinton-payola CT. It was in the NYT. The Clintons are corrupt, deal with it.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

@Song of the lark
as a strategic asset by our government because it is part of the process of nuclear weapons production, and it is the Obama administration's second Secretary of Defense who decided we should modernize our nuclear weapons in order to make them more useful, instead of destroying them. We have therefore started a new nuclear arms race, and so we have made uranium a continuing strategic asset.

Because of the designation of strategic asset, the Secretary of State and other officials had to sign off on the deal, meaning Hillary Clinton was part of the decision. Her involvement and the payments to her Foundation are not conspiracy theory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-...

By JO BECKER and MIKE McINTIREAPRIL 23, 2015

… As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

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CB's picture

Increased conflict with Russia guaranteed to get American's minds off their domestic concerns. The worse the conditions get inside the country, the more Congress can hype the Russian threat. Did you notice the seamless manner in which the "Communist USSR threat to American capitalism" morphed into "Russian threat to American democracy"?

There's nothing like a threat from without to herd the sheeple and keep them dependent on the MIC to keep them safe from the wolves bears at the door. A half-century plus of almost daily propaganda has made the American people vulnerable to believe (and eat) any shiite fed to them about big bad scary Russia.

US Congress Bends over Backwards to Prevent Improvement of Relationship with Russia

Congress on May 4 authorized a new effort to counter «Russian influence and aggression» and to support civil society organizations in Europe and Eurasia. The lawmakers also backed a measure imposing new restrictions and oversight on Russian diplomats in the United States. The provisions are part of the $1.1 trillion budget to fund the federal government for 2017 backed by Senate. The bill is expected to head to the president’s desk soon.
...
It all brings to memory the days of McCarthyism – a shameful period of recent American history. This new body is to be modeled after its Cold War predecessor – the Active Measures Working Group, which operated at the height of the Cold War, when some mid-level officials in the US State Department sought a more robust effort to counter «aggressive Soviet propaganda».
...
Introduced in January, the Counteracting Russian Hostilities Act is still a bill to be considered by Congress. There is no evidence whatsoever of Russia interference into the US elections but the bill has already been submitted for consideration as a retaliatory measure against Moscow.

The Congress is obviously trying to prevent any improvement of the US relations with Russia - the country Henry Kissinger, the American foreign policy veteran, considers to be «an essential element of any new global equilibrium». The legislations voted for or under consideration pursue the goal of hindering any steps Donald Trump might take to normalize the relationship, despite the fact that this agenda was supported by American voters.

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@CB

to normalize America's relations with Russia, does he have any support whatsoever for this, from within the USG? It would seem he has very little from Congress, and none at all from msm. Quite the contrary in fact. The enirety of the US Deep State and MIC seem to be arrayed against any moves toward rapprochement, and to be instead pushing in the opposite direction.

Nonetheless progress is apparently being made in regard to US/Russian cooperation, in Syria at least, and possibly in Ukraine as well. And Tillerson seems able to communicate effectively with Lavrov... But is this a one-man Crusade on Trump's part, or does he have allies behind the scenes somewhere, who share his vision of closer US/Russian cooperation?

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native

Amanda Matthews's picture

Russia hacked the DNC and John Podesta's email accounts is this a national issue? The DNC is a private organisation who, in their own words, are a bunch of liars and cheats. And Podesta's is a private citizen (who also has had dealings with Russia) who has been proven as being less than honest and truthful himself. Our election wasn't tampered with, a private corrupt organisation and a crooked old man who can't pick out a password to save his black soul got hacked and their cheating outed.

And anyway, Assange said it wasn't the Russians. He oughta know. And (now I'm not sure what I think about this) Guccifer 2.0, the guy actually nailed for hacking, said he got the docs from someone named 'Seth'. That's one of those things that makes you go "hmmmm..."

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

gulfgal98's picture

@Amanda Matthews
1) According to Assange, the DNC emails were not "hacks" but were leaks provided by an insider. The Podesta emails were probably hacks due to the fact Podesta was clueless about cyber security and provided an open door than any ten year old could have used to access his account.
2) The DNC is a private organization. Any leaks or hacks of information from that private organization is NO basis for the United States government to escalate this nation into a cold or even hot war with Russia.
3) No one has disputed the validity of the contents of either the DNC leaks or the Podesta hacks.
4) The content of the leaks is far more damning than who leaked them. They showed just how far the Clinton campaign was willing to go in destroying the integrity of the electoral process simply to ensure her coronation.

I personally do not believe the Russian government was behind either the DNC leaks nor the Podesta hacks.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@gulfgal98 Well, handing out your password to a 'bot is a fairly good way of having your security compromised.

I don't understand why any of the elites still do business with the Podesta Group after that.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I found this in one of the viruses that the Russian's used to hack the election. It means "We did it, ha ha." in Russian.

Yeah, right. So far there is not a single piece of information that rises to the level of evidence. As Sergei Lavrov and Vladimir Putin keep responding to the Western media- "Where's the beef?" Just ask some question, any question, that has a single piece of evidence to respond to.

So I guess that the evidence is that 15 intelligence agencies are responding in synch to innuendo. Xa-xa! Вы дураки! К сожалению опасные дураки! (You are fools! Unfortunately dangerous fools!)

It makes no sense. Hillary Clinton was supposed to win by a large margin. Why would Russia want to alienate the incoming administration?

This is all the wailing of global war mongers and despondent Hillary Bots.

If interfering in a nation's election is an act of war then we should have 80 nations ready to invade the US. Yet we are ready to go to war resulting in total global annihilation with no proof whatsoever that our election was "hacked". Do you realize how stupid we look to the rest of the world?

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

@The Wizard matter, we should all know that by now. Who cares what they think? America is Great and we're going to show them all who's boss now, not that we haven't been trying to do just that but hey, even an Empire makes mistakes sometimes, right? Empires are People My Friend.

s/

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

@The Wizard
Я Спартак

They are a devious, crafty bunch, those Russians.

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CB's picture

@ChezJfrey
Вся ваша демократия принадлежит нам

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"the" russians hacked the DNC. ultimately, if they didn't, they weren't doing their job very well. pretending to be surprised/outraged that foreign intelligence agents are hacking into "our" systems, when "we" are of course doing exactly the same thing to theirs, is the rankest of hypocrisies.

It is simply an understanding amongst the sociopathic, yet infantile, elites of all major powers that their intelligence agencies will all be committing crimes against the governments and citizens of each other, including against putative allies, and even against themselves; and that some of these crimes are of a kind that, if viewed objectively, can be understood as nothing less than acts of war.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Song of the lark's picture

@UntimelyRippd even if it can't be proved. They are not our friends. Useful frenemies at best. The emails hardly showed much of use and are pretty much BAU in a high stakes election. How do you think the nomenklatura and the deep state work? And all this Saudi CT. The deal is simple. KSA royalty serves at the our behest. We print fiat currency ex nihilo (petrodollars) and they buy our weapons. We get the second most fungible and magical commodity oil on the planet. This US dollar the most fungible. Trump is now making the most bigly weapons deal ever. SO much for small potatoes Obama and Clinton. Oil and money never sleep. Saudis actually supply Europe and China with more oil than US. intention and action are more important than silly emails. Russia clearly has the intention to thwart us and has taken many actions to that end, going all the way back to Cuba, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Georgia, Ukraine, etc. Of course the US is culpable here also, that goes without saying. My point is that this is a multi decade low level WAR. Does it really matter who ate the last cookie?

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Song of the lark's picture

@Song of the lark Apologies to the Macbethian is there is confusion.

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@Song of the lark
in this sense. It matters whether or not the Russian government gave Assange the DNC emails, thereby causing Clinton's loss of the election, because the rushing of NATO troops, weaponry and threats of a nuclear first strike are part of the result, along with breaking the ceasefire in Syria. False premises are used by the industry of war and oppression to continue their aggression, which destroys progress toward peace and democracy. Lies of this kind have consequences that cost us big bucks and cost millions of people their lives.

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edg's picture

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

What a great article. Even talks about my favorite point--the one that made me stop treating this seriously--the stupid thing where the supposed Kremlin hacker uses the first Soviet chief of secret police as his handle. FFS.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

gulfgal98's picture

and the comments on it are very well worth reading. Thank you for sharing this with us.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy