My Takeaway From the “Key Witness”, Lt. Col. Vindman

It’s been my experience that walking on eggshells doesn’t get you very far. 

So,  I won’t be walking on eggshells regarding the House impeachment testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman.

Today, you hear that he’s very credible and powerful as a witness, because he is a decorated Army officer.

Really? Remember “General Betrayus”? The ads antiwar and pro-Democratic party groups like MoveOn.org ran all over the web and in major papers, after David Petraeus testified before Congress about the “Iraq surge”? I can think of numerous other occasions when wearing the uniform hardly meant “handle with care”. Ollie North, anybody?

And I won’t get into the wholesale smearing of our troops in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq as “war criminals”, “Nazi thugs” and the like, by these same political types who today obsequiously thanked Colonel Vindman for his service.  Respecting the uniform is a sometimes thing in D.C.

DrudgeReport.com even had a story about how he might be moved to a secure location. Wow, it’s not like Maxine Waters called for people to go after him…

Now, for me, there were two salient moments in his testimony.

One was his assertion that he informed two people, who were not on the call, about the call. One, we know, was George Kent, he of the bowties. When you think about it, the other could be the “whistleblower”. Adam Schiff stuck his nose right in then, again revealing his lie that he doesn’t know the name of the whistleblower. He obviously does. Can’t protect it if you don’t know it.

Second was Lt. Col. Vindman’s statement that he is the principal person on policy toward Ukraine. I’m sure he knows a lot more about it than I do, but these permanent-state folks just cannot handle that we didn’t elect them and they don’t get to make foreign policy.

Their rendering of something as “inappropriate” or “unusual” is meaningless.

Our history is replete with commanders-in-chief striking out in wildly unprecedented directions: Lend-Lease, although authorized broadly by Congress, was run secretively and solely out of the White House by FDR aide Harry Hopkins, with no oversight or “transparency”. It was the single most important foreign policy instrument Roosevelt had until we declared war in December ’41. Yet it cut out department heads, top brass and congressional committees.

Nixon to China was also top-secret, including aide Henry Kissinger sneaking across the border after faking intestinal illness on a 1971 state visit to Pakistan, so he could secretly visit the Chicoms. I can imagine Schiff’s line of questioning about gas, bloating, diarrhea…

The Schiffs and Vindmans of the world are not the architects of such bold strokes. Often, they have (or would’ve) counseled against them. Presidents cut them out, to be blunt, because they only can be sure of the confidentiality of the Kissingers and Hopkinses.

No evidence of bribery.

Lots of evidence of leaking, hidden agendas and hurt feelings.