This essay was posted on 5/23/2025.
With decimated welfare programs, mass deportations, illegal impoundments, cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and the intimidation of private businesses over political differences, there seems to be enough problems in the Trump administration to keep a lot of people awake at night. In fact, close to 80% of the people oppose cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Even dictators need to know their limits.
Donald Trump has been receiving an increasing number of orders from the courts to stop deportations and to return some deportees to the US for proper, legal due process. So far, Trump has ignored these orders, but he may be succumbing to the pressure.
Trump’s deportation scheme relies on an old law that requires us to be at war, so Trump claims we are at war with Venezuela. Trump claims that Venezuelan gangs are invading the US to create terror on orders from the Venezuelan government. The problem: US Intelligence Reports indicate otherwise. The solution: Change the reports. The US has been here before, and it wasn’t pretty.
The Iraq War was justified with intelligence that turned out to be flawed. Purposeful falsification of intel about weapons of mass destruction has not been proven, though many believe today that politics ruled over logic. The impact of the false intel was huge. In addition to getting the US into a needless war, our credibility in the world was greatly diminished and probably added unnecessary years to the Middle East conflicts.
The current example of letting politics drive Intel Reports is a pattern that should not be allowed to continue, because falsified intelligence historically makes things worse.
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