Why I Believe Russia-gate is Overblown (Dangerous, Delusional Russian Hysteria!!!)

The U.S. "Intelligence" agencies do not have a good track record

• Mueller was part of the intelligence team making the case for the 2003 Iraq War:

Baghdad has the capability and, we presume, the will to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons against US domestic targets in the event of a US invasion. 

 This was on of the two largest blunders of my lifetime (along with Vietnam), resulting in about 1 million unnecessary deaths.

• John Brennan, former head of the CIA who has testified about Russian meddling, was a top aide to George Tenet at the CIA who infamously "assured Bush that the evidence that Iraq had WMDs amounted to a slam dunk case".

Mistakes were made; hundreds of thousands of lives lost; U.S. credibility destroyed.  

The intelligencies agencies have a job to do, and that's fine.  But we the people need to form our own political judgments considering more than just the few pieces of evidence released by the intelligence agencies.

The Impact of the Russian Interference is being Greatly Exaggerated 

• Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA as well as Secretary of Defense under President Obama, said yesterday that the Russian interference was equivalent to a physical bombing (can't find link, but I saw this on the NBC Nightly News).  His top assistant at the CIA, Jeremy Bash, described the episode as an event of "epic  proportions".  The mainstream media is unanimous in echoing the intelligence community's opinion that this is all as a very big deal.
• The fact is, however, that the Russian effort is trivial in the big picture.  The U.S. routinely seeks to influence public opinion in other countries, including Russia, and on a much bigger scale.  Also, the total Russian operation is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money spent by U.S. sources.  And some of the Russian money was spent on other things, including funding anit-Trump rallies after the election. 
• As Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein emphasized at a Friday news conference:
  
  There is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity.  There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election. 

Let's Not Overreact Once Again

In matters of "national security", the U.S. public has been repeatedly whipped into a bi-partisan frenzy of support for aggressive military behavior and more military/intelligence power and spending.   I do agree that we should discourage the Russians and others from meddling in our elections.  But's let keep the big picture in mind.

The U.S., as a global superpower, has squandered credibility and the moral high ground since 9/11, by applying laws and logic selectively.  Practically, this attitude has brought us domestic chaos (the Trump Administration) and international skepticism.  Let's quit digging this hole by trying to blame Russia for Trump.  We're only fooling ourselves.

Update #1 2/19/2018:  

Over the 2 days since I wrote this, I've been haunted by the degree it understates the case that the Russian meddling is overblown.

1. The same old media hacks (e.g. Jeffrey Goldberg) who joined with the intelligence agencies to hype the need or the 2003 war with Iraq are at it again.
2. A Consensus Emerges: Russia Committed an “Act of War” on Par With Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Should the U.S. Response be Similar?

     Senators from both parties, such as Republican John McCain and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, have long described Russian meddling in 2016 as an “act of war.” Hillary Clinton, while promoting her book last October, described Russia’s alleged hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email inbox as a “cyber 9/11.” And last February, the always-war-hungry Tom Friedman of the New York Times said on Morning Joe that Russian hacking “was a 9/11 scale event. They attacked the core of our democracy. That was a Pearl Harbor scale event.”
     But the last few days have ushered in an explosion of this rhetoric from politicians and journalists alike. On Friday night’s Chris Hayes show on MSNBC, two separate guests – Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler and long-time Clinton aide Philippe Reines – posited Pearl Harbor as the “equivalent” of Russian meddling...
     The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty, complaining about Trump’s inaction, asked readers to “imagine how history would have judged Franklin D. Roosevelt in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, if he had taken to the radio airwaves to declare that Tokyo was ‘laughing their asses off.’ Or if George W. Bush had stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center with a bullhorn and launched a name-calling tirade against the Democrats.”
David “Axis of Evil” Frum went back a century earlier to write thatTrump’s inaction amounts to “a dereliction of duty as grave as any since President Buchanan looked the other way as Southern state governments pillaged federal arsenals on the eve of the Civil War.” John Podesta, who served as Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff as well as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman, called Trump a “draft dodger” for failing to engage what he called this “war” with Russia.

Update #2 2/19/2018:

This article -- Russia’s Election Meddling: Worse Than a Crime; a Blunder -- documents the hypocrisies and absurdities.

Update #3 2/19/2018:

A column in the NY Times seems to agree:  Russian Meddling Was a Drop in an Ocean of American-Made Discord

     That these efforts might have actually made a difference, or at least were intended to, highlights a force that was already destabilizing American democracy far more than any Russian-made fake news post: partisan polarization... Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more damaging, is all American-made. The false information and political advertisements that the Russians are accused of spreading could ring true only to those already predisposed to suspect the worst.
     A recent study found that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media consumption.
     Americans, it said, sought out stories that reflected their already-formed partisan view of reality. This suggests that these Russians efforts are indicators — not drivers — of how widely Americans had polarized.
     That distinction matters for how the indictment is read: Though Americans have seen it as highlighting a foreign threat, it also illustrates the perhaps graver threats from within...
     It is a self-perpetuating cycle, one that Russian meddling may have only sped up a bit but that remains almost entirely American-driven.

Update #4 2/20/2018:

The Russian journalist who helped uncover election interference is confounded by the Mueller indictments

     A 37-page indictment issued by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team on Friday brings fresh American attention to one of the strangest elements of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election: The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a state-sponsored “troll factory” in St. Petersburg.
     But much of the information Mueller published on Friday about the agency’s efforts to influence the election had already been published last October — in an article by a Russian business magazine, RBC.
      In a 4,500-word report titled “How the 'troll factory' worked the U.S. elections,” journalists Polina Rusyaeva and Andrey Zakharov offered the fullest picture yet of how the “American department” of the IRA used Facebook, Twitter and other tactics to inflame tensions ahead of the 2016 vote. The article also looked at the staffing structure of the organization and revealed details about its budget and salaries....
      They are proud of their work. For them it was really fun: 90 people sitting in St. Petersburg, organizing groups with thousands and thousands of likes. It was a very successful social media marketing campaign.
      A lot of Russian conservatives were proud. They said: “Look at what Russians can do! Only 90 people with $2 million made America scared! We are strong!” And for conservative people here, they see that Americans have CNN, Radio Free Europe, etc., that cover Russia. They say, “Why can’t we establish groups in America and have our own influence?” That's how conservative people think here. They think this was normal.

Update #5 2/20/2018:

Here's a coherent point from someone saying we should take the Russian meddling seriously--
Do Russiagate Skeptics Go Too Far?  

     And the threats to U.S. democracy, by the way, are not, you know, specific to Russia. But I consider Russia a threat in large part because of what the current government of Vladimir Putin represents. Putin has not only authoritarian tendencies within Russia itself, that’s not my major concern here, my major concern is its support for far right-wing nationalist—and frankly, racist—movements around the world, including here in the United States.
     It’s not a surprise that neo-Nazi groups and white supremacy groups have identified Russia as one of their key allies, in part because Russia is home to so many white people, and that the Putin government has identified these movements of key allies as well.

Update #6 2/21/2018:

"Russian bots" - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News

I saw this on the NBC Nightly News last night -- ordinary right wing and altChan responses to Florida murders described as the work of Russians. Then, just at the end of the segment, the reporter mumbled that others besides Russians make these kinds of posts and deploy bots -- including other countries and groups within the U.S. 

In my opinion, this is an absurd propaganda movement, with the mainstream media passing along the message from the neo-cons (quite similar to Iraq), encouraging Americans to blame our problems on Russia.

Quotes from story linked above:

Despite that the NYT reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all of these accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably nefarious ...

"In recent weeks, I have been keeping a close eye on Hamilton 68. Every time a Dutch hashtag was shown on the website, I made a screenshot. Then I noted what was playing at that moment and I watched the Tweets with this hashtag. Again I could not find any Tweet that seemed to be from a Russian troll. 

In all cases, the hash tags that Hamilton 68 reported were trending topics in the Netherlands. In all cases there was much to do around the subject of the hashtag in the Netherlands. Many people were angry or shared their opinion on the subject on Twitter. And even if there were a few tweets with Russian connections between them, the effect is zero. Because they do not stand out among the many other, authentic Tweets." 

Van den Berg lists a dozen examples he analyzed in depth. 

The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with rather normal people from all over the world who's opinions they personally dislike. Those then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness...
But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.

Update #7 2/21/2018:

In my previous update, I said that "ordinary right wing and altChan responses to Florida murders are being described as the work of Russians" by the mainstream media. A few hours later, here are some of the headlines:

• Conservative Twitter is freaking out over a reported bot purge (TheVerge)
• Conservative Twitter Users Lose Thousands of Followers, Mass Purge of Bots Suspected [Updated] (gizmodo)
• Conservatives outraged by #TwitterLockout (CNET)
• Conservatives Furious After Twitter Purges Thousands Of Accounts (ZeroHedge)
• 'Twitter Lockout': Apparent bot purge sparks outrage from conservative users (Fox News)
• Conservative Twitter accounts complain of lost followers in apparent bot purge (NY Daily News)

There are hundreds of such reports today.  The mainstream media seem to be trying to ignore this, but I doubt they will be able to do so for long.