It doesn’t help when their expertise is either being ignored or abused in order to justify boneheaded decisions.
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Really? Because I knew it before many of the US commentators here and I was following British media.
In other leaks, yeah sure. But this one is beyond, it won’t significantly impact Trump but it will royally piss off everyone at all levels in the UK. Coupled with a French minister also blabbering, to me this sounds like a big “we told you so” from intelligence partners to the UK. I mean, it’s clear by now that the bomber and his family had well-known links to jihadist groups, which the British didn’t clean up for some reason; his movements back and forth were known. This might be a bit of schadenfreude, a way of signalling that the Brits should stop thinking they know best. Rudd saying they knew the bomber “up to a point” might indicate that they really didn’t, but they had been told by partners and sorta underestimated it. The intelligence craft is a constant trade of information; maybe someone showed up “at the market” trying to sell this, going I make you a cheap price because this is in your backyard, and the Brits didn’t want to play ball.
This is all speculation, of course, but it makes more sense than just leaking to piss off a bunch of trumpites that are not even in the picture.
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I wonder if there is also a cultural difference as well. US police and media seem to publish body-cam, surveillance and chopper video, even death on camera - much more than UK or Australian media do. USA services seem to have a more open approach - we have this video, you should be able to see for yourself.
UK and Australia almost never release body-camera, surveillance video or crime scene images, unless heavily edited or freeze frames for identification purposes.
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It seemed bizarre to me too, but yes, the folks I know in, like, Yorkshire and Cambridge were completely clueless. It was so weird.
Certain UK publications seem to have deliberately suppressed the Britain first agenda of the attacker - quotes from witnesses were in the BBC and Grauniad feed about what he shouted when he killed her. There was discussion here at the time on the thread that he may have been mentally ill (as that was the first thing the right wing media came up with as a smokescreen) I pointed out that he may well have been, but we did actually know he was motivated by racism. Or at least he claimed to have been himself and was allied with the Brexit agitators.
Obviously the Mail (which is unwaveringly fascist no matter who is editing but the current shitstain in chief is a particularly odious example of the posh English fascist) downplayed the fact that he was one of them, supporting the same causes they did, and spouting the same violent rhetoric as they do. It was barely mentioned in the murder conviction for example. Posh people like them don’t get their own hands bloody though so that they can continue to look down on their dupes.
You make a very interesting and plausible case here. It certainly makes sense in this instance.
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