The Political Insider

Here we are, left with yet another news cycle that provides us only a drip of revelations similar to the docudramas plaguing the current and past administrations. However, this time the tidbits of valuable information are coming from our Department of Defense regarding alleged past Chinese spy balloon incursions.

Unfortunately, the information we have been getting merely raises more questions than provides any answers. In some ways, it appears that delaying the takedown of the spy balloon was a sound decision, allowing our government to glean valuable intelligence on our near-peer adversary.

But can we believe what our DOD is telling us? And if what they say is true, can we trust that they are competent enough to extract all the possible intelligence they can and do anything of value with it?

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Talk About Biffing it

The latest incursion of our airspace by a floating Chinese eye in the sky does not seem to be the first time this has happened. We are just now learning that it happened three times during the Trump administration. The Commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), General Glen VanHerck, owned up to his past failures.

“I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out,” Gen. VanHerck admitted. 

That’s an understatement; what is Gen. VanHerck’s job?

According to the General, “As the NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America.”

What a bang-up job you’re doing! Not much accountability at NORAD, it would appear. Perhaps they are spending too much time on their yearly mission to track Santa as he delivers gifts to all the boys and girls. So how were the previous balloons discovered?

“The intel community, after the fact, made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transited North America,” said Gen. VanHerck.

Ah, yes, the same intelligence community so well known for being transparent and honest.

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Fake News?

Someday I hope to be an ‘unnamed’ source since I feel a bit left out given that there seem to be so many running around the beltway. An unnamed U.S. official claimed that once we realized the unidentified previous sightings were Chinese spy balloons, they chose to keep it a secret to keep China from knowing how we figured it out.

How clever, how is that working for us now? I would argue we look pretty unprepared and ridiculous. 

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, “I can’t speak to the information flow in the previous administration. I can tell you that we have reached out to key officials from the previous administration and offered them briefings on the forensics that we did. And we expressed our willingness to walk them through what we learned.”

How generous of you; how about walking the American people through it? The former President isn’t buying this narrative, and I don’t think we should be either.

Popping onto Truth Social, former President Trump posted “Now they are putting out that a balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to take the ‘heat’ off the slow moving Biden fools.”

He further claimed that all of these rumors of three other balloons are ‘disinformation.’ So is the Biden administration fabricating this entire bogus balloon brouhaha?

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Five-Sided Drama

Yesterday, former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, appeared on Fox News and dropped some serious truth bombs. First, Mr. Gingrich highlighted that the timeline of this recent balloon blunder seems a bit off.

“When the military learned about it, apparently there’s a three or four-day period where they don’t tell the president,” said Gingrich.

That seems odd; you’d think that would be something you’d tell the president unless the president has the mental acuity of a five-year-old. Then you might not want to upset him over a balloon.

There have been some whispers that when Uncle Joe was finally notified of the spy balloon, he had told the military to shoot it down but was dismissed, causing Mr. Gingrich to give him the moniker last night of ‘Suggester in Chief’ versus Commander in Chief. 

“This is just one more example of a bloated Pentagon bureaucracy that’s more worried about being dealing with social issues than it is about defending the United States,” he said.

Now he’s speaking my language. Gingrich goes on to go through the Pentagon’s recent highlight reel, stating “From Afghanistan on, we have seen failure after failure, and the Pentagon needs a deep, thorough shake up.”

Do I dare say Newt insinuates that our beloved Department of Defense might have some deep rot within it?

RELATED: China Balloon – A Layered Scandal

Questions That will Remain Unanswered

Let’s take a spell to lay out some of these paradoxes with this balloon buffoonery:

• President Biden wasn’t notified right away
• the DOD alleges they ‘missed’ 3 prior balloons
• no one in the Trump administration was informed of previously missed balloons
• China launched this massive balloon that would obviously be seen with the naked eye
• China can spy on us in a much more covert manner

So let’s dissect this idea that, as Mr. Trump alleges and some of his former appointees, the previous three balloons narrative is disinformation or, simply, a lie. That would entail that not only is the Biden administration in on this supposed lie but the military and intelligence community.

Now if that’s not enough to make you feel like you live in a simulated democracy, let’s dissect the idea that the three balloons did happen. I think that the below questions are essential and not all-inclusive:

• Why are we just now learning about this failure?
• Why didn’t the Trump administration know of the failure?
• Why did we fail to detect the spy balloons?
• What has been done to mitigate this massive failure?

Will we ever get these answers? Doubtful. 

My final thought for you – at best, our government is lying about a near peer’s espionage efforts. At worst, our government is incompetent and hiding it from the American people and the individuals we elected into office. So chew on that for a bit and attempt to sleep well tonight. 

Who is in charge? I can tell you it’s pretty clear it’s not the President, either past or present, but those military and defense bureaucrats who think they know better and prefer to advance their own agendas than serving and protecting.