The point of such a dossier isn’t really whether or not it is strictly factual. Intelligence almost never is. Its a bit like the “People are saying” model for Faux News. Even if what they are saying isn’t true, it may be useful to know what it is.
Agent Badanov reports to this handlers that there are rumors that Hillary owns a sex farm for immigrant children, that Bernie was a Maoist in college days, and that Minnie Mouse is fucking Goofy. His handlers read and file. Comrade Badenov’s call for the assassination of moose and squirrel is duly noted. Another agent reports that people are saying that Hillary wants to give African American voters a “bonus” vote as reparations, California is going to make gay marriage mandatory, and Minnie is fucking Goofy. Eyebrows raise, perhaps some more attention should be on the question of Minnie Mouse’s “doggy style” inclinations.
They are all just rumors, not facts, not relentlessly documented, not nailed down Mueller style, just air, smoke and mirrors. Which is intelligence of a sort, there is a value to it. Mr Steele collected a metric buttload of rumors and maybes, and delivered them. Its what he was supposed to do, that was his job.
And, of course, every once in a while, it turns out that Minnie was fucking Goofy.
I thought the point you were making here was that this revelation makes it plain that Devin Nunes and his colleagues were lying through their teeth about the Page wiretap being (supposedly) outrageous because (supposedly) it was based on the Steele dossier—and the FBI had (supposedly) concealed from the FISA court the fact that Steele was paid by a partisan entity for his work.
Obviously Nunes et all knew that their allegation was total bullpucky, but they figured the FISA application would never been seen by the public, so they’d get away with their Big Lie.
Cite?
No, not a cite that this has already been brought up at Twitter or Yahoo, a cite that Mexico actually interferes 1000 more times than Russia could dream of.
Why should we believe Steele? He’s just a trained and experienced intelligence agent. We’ve got contrary opinions from people who follow @realDonaldTrump on Twitter.
One thing that I’ll note, from having recently re-read the Steele dossier is that Trump was purported to be used by Russia mainly as a source of information on Russians living in the US.
Knowing that Trump was regularly purchasing stories from the Enquirer, it becomes a point of interest whether he was only buying stories related to himself, or if he had a list of Russian names that he also paid for information on.
Next up, of course: “Colluding with the Russians was the patriotic thing to do! Be grateful Trump had the courage to do it! MAGA!”
…and as with most of the Trumpist double-think, they are careful to avoid even thinking of the question ‘how, exactly, does Trump being Putin’s stooge make America great again, anyway?…’
Nixon always believed that everyone else was dirty, too. Is there some sort of term for it, where one assumes that everyone else is as criminal as you are, so it’s just being stupid to not act faster and firmer in criminal ways to keep ahead of them?
I believe the technical term for believing that other people think the same way you do, is “being human.”
It’s a failure of our species. We may say we realize that others think differently, but in fact we don’t really believe it.
So criminals do assume that everyone has the same exploitative impulses they do. Sociopaths assume that everyone else wants to commit mayhem in the most sadistic way possible. And decent people believe that everyone, deep down, is good.
The Republicans don’t assume that Democrats are just as bad as they are; they know that they aren’t quite that bad, and they see that as their advantage. For years, the Republicans have been willing to do anything to win an election, because they don’t believe in democracy.
Why should we believe Steele? He’s just a trained and experienced intelligence agent. We’ve got contrary opinions from people who follow