Trump accidentally exposes location and identities to navy seal team 5

Yes I know he is allowed to do it. That doesn't stop it from being stupid.

Prior to November, Donald Trump seemed to have little interest in visiting troops stationed in combat zones, a routine occurrence in a normal presidency. Last month a senior White House official attributed this, partly, to Trump being scared: “He’s afraid of those situations. He’s afraid people are going to kill him.”

On December 26, on the fifth day of a partial government shutdown, days after he announced his intention to withdraw from Syria and Afghanistan, the president decided to cross a trip to visit the troops overseas off his list of presidential experiences. The surprise visit began with Trump in a bomber jacket, welcomed by a soundtrack of “USA! USA!” chants and the gushing patriotism of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” “Our presence in Syria was not open-ended and was never intended to be permanent,” Trump said. “We’re no longer the suckers folks.”

But Newsweek reports that we may, indeed, still suck. In the pool report of the trip — which was embargoed to help protect the Trumps’ safety in Iraq — the president asked the chaplain of Seal Team Five, Lieutenant Commander Kyu Lee, to take a picture with him, revealing the presence of the special ops team at the al-Asad Airbase in western Iraq. When Trump left Iraqi airspace, he posted a video in which he and the First Lady pause for photos with members of Seal Team Five, decked in full battle gear and night vision goggles.

As president, it is technically within Trump’s job description to declassify that sort of information, but it does violate protocol designed to keep secret locations of special forces secret. “The deployments of special operation forces, including Navy SEALs are almost classified events, as to protect those men and women that are on the front lines of every overt and covert conflict the United States is involved in,” a Defense Department official told Newsweek. “Even during special operation demonstrations for congressional delegations or for the president or vice president, personnel either have their faces covered or their face is digitally blurred prior to a release to the general public.”

Of course, this isn’t Trump’s first failure in operational security. In October, the New York Times reported that when Trump calls friends on his personal iPhone – a device he was supposed to ditch for security measures – Russian and Chinese spies eavesdrop to gauge the president’s mood and who might have his ear on policy matters. Other, low-tech security risks emerged in the report: last year, Trump left his cell behind in a golf cart at his course in New Jersey, causing “a scramble” to find it.

Nor is it Trump’s first impromptu revelation of national security interests: in April 2017 phone call, Trump told Rodrigo Duterte, the authoritarian president of the Philippines, that the U.S. had sent two nuclear submarines to the waters off the coast of North Korea. And, in May 2017, hours after the dismissal of James Comey, Trump revealed Israeli intelligence assets to the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, jeopardizing the Israeli-American intelligence link and leaving Mossad “boiling mad and demanding answers.”

Come on Trump. This could have been an easy win for you. So what are you guys thinking?

Source

Wow, that's really horrible. They would probably have to evacuate the base. I don't know the protocols but when a base is revealed they usually leave the base. Maybe they might even have abandon it and defund that place.

Showing once again this idiot shouldn't be trusted with secrets. I'd imagine the team left the area. But what an ass............

In before, "This is fine because it's legal and I see no problem with it unless we change the law."

LOL is jacunak here then..............

Ehm that's why I had the first line in my post. I got no intentions to discuss the laws surrounding this. Rather the ignorance and lack of tact from the President.

If he has not lost the serving military and veteran vote at this point, I don't know if he ever will.

I know there are some vets on here, and a lot of the military guys I know personally seem to be more libertarian than anything (they don't like Trump, and didn't like Clinton), would be nice to hear what they think.

It's a shame being a dumb asshole is not illegal or, at least, somehow punishable. Maybe fine him? lol

They do that with athletes.

@mrbojangles25: Hey I'm a vet and I posted what I think....:(

I'm sorry I either forgot or didn't know. Cheers, thanks for your service.

I figured it was going to happen anyways. :/

I would say it shows he is perhaps unfit for the role, but he was voted in.

You're probably right.

No, but it's been very interesting/disheartening to watch as he and other republicans have so easily slipped into the mindset of, "If it's not explicitely against the law (as long as it's Trump or other republicans who do it) then there's nothing wrong with it."

No personal convictions left, just whatever is written down on paper that says it's illegal is all that really matters.

Oh boy. Never use the law as a morale compass.

Then of course, that entire train of thought gets reversed when it comes to campaign finance laws, tax fraud, bank fraud, and Joe Arpaio's criminal conviction.

Then the law sucks and liberal judges are causing the Apocalypse or whatever.

Your source cites no objective evidence that could hold up in a court of law. You should be ashamed for peddling fake news.

This article refutes the fake news you're peddling: https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/27/trump-attacked-outing-covert-seal-team/

But what media outlets and critics got wrong about the situation is striking. Many, including SEAL Team 6 member Robert O’Neill, took to Twitter to point out why that probably wasn’t the case.

SEAL Team 6 member, Robert J Oneill: "If they are covert, @JimLaPorta do you really think they’d be at a photo op?"

He also argued that a sitting president would never even be brought into a forward area during a “kinetic operation” in progress, as that would unnecessarily endanger the operators, the president and everyone else in the vicinity.

The fact that the team was relaxed, clean-shaven and taking photographs, he said, suggested that there was no such operation in progress for Trump to endanger. “This is a hot, steaming bowl of nothing,” he concluded.

Task and Purpose reported a similar line of thinking, arguing that if the SEAL Team were, in fact, involved in a covert operation, no one would know they were even there.

A retired Navy SEAL told The Daily Caller on condition of anonymity that, based on the video alone, it was clear that those pictured were not currently involved in a covert operation. For one thing, they were too “clean-cut.”

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Basically Democrats, leftists & liberals do the OPPOSITE of Trump. No matter what Trump does, you guys take the opposite stance and try to make him look bad. It's unethical. You're making all the same mistakes in 2015-2016 that actually helped Trump win. You've learned nothing from your previous mistakes.

@luzarius: Your article was posted after I made this thread. At least I could not find anything to counter the article I originally found. I'm glad you did.

Thank you for being so open minded. I'll always reciprocate this open mindedness. I'll admit that Trump has been debunked a lot because he speculates too much instead of repeating clear & precise facts.

I wouldn't bother entering a discussion if I had no intention of learning another point of view.

When they said he was a security risk.........they were right.

@horgen: Another stab at Trump i see.

Also who says that is the permanent place, they could be passing by.

So I am sure that these photos have been passed at least a few aides and military specialists who found them to be fine.

Well he did something that at first looked quite idiotic.

Yup, he did, but Trump is not the brightest guy, so I don´t think anyone is surprised.

And for those soldiers sake, I hope that it was just a pass by and also that someone on Trump´s staff checks these photos or makes sure that events like this do not happen if there are major risks.

Hopefully they were checked and found to be OK before he posted them/that everyone in the photo was given a greenlight for it before the photoshoot. As in they had a blunder like this in mind.

Doesn't matter if they're just passing through. Now foreign intelligence knows who they are.

Shouldn't post pictures of special ops.

Well, that is your opinion.

I am sure that Trump´s action was vetted before hand.

Yep, posting identifiable pictures or videos with active, deployed special ops is very dangerous and very stupid. This is also not the first time Trump has done something like this.

Given other things he has said and done, I don't think that always happens.

No that is NOT opinion. It's protocol in the military. No way it was vetted and okayed.

Yes, that is your opinion.

Clearly, Trump got those pictures as an event, not as a "pass by" and Trump just grabbed them.

You can taker personal pictures. You don't publish them. Duh.

Well, this is not Joe Random

This is the president and how often do you see him run around and take photos, so again these photos were clearly part of a PR stunt and were meant to be published.

That's your opinion. There is ZERO proof of that. Especially since the locations of spec ops teams requires security clearances to know. You're wrong. they are CLASSIFIED. Period.

And there is zero proof that your opinion is anything than an opinion.

So good debate or something.

As stated in OP, Trump is well within his right to declassify such information.

I don't think it was a wise decision to do so. And I have my doubts if Trump could understand why someone shouldn't be in the picture.

Edit: Wise

No it wasn't a decision that was made. He's just stupid.