Ah, more false equivalencies; more noise and FUD. All information that isn't public is the same! All situations involving it are the same! Truth and lies are the same and there is no way to tell the difference ... except that they are not and there is.
And you are in a privileged position to discern these? As citizens, our role is not to trust our leaders, it is to be harshly skeptical of them and demand that they present evidence for endeavors that are costly (in terms of lives or dollars).
I dispute your claim that I make equivalences, and I would say that in this case there is far more likely to actually be evidence of wrongdoing (if any occurred). In the case of Saddam, we had very little HUMINT or SIGINT presence in Iraq with which to scrutinize Bush's claims, so intel analysts arguably erred on the side of caution.
In this case, we have unprecedented intel leaks (and surveillance capabilities), yet mysteriously no actual evidence, which, if it exists, would seemingly implicate Trump and members of his team in very clear treason.
What patriot would withhold these critical details? Our mental model of the leaker's motivations cannot both maintain that there is smoking gun evidence of significant wrongdoing AND that the leaker was concerned, but content to just stoke a rumor rather than reveal the biggest treason in the history of the modern world.
At this point, the story has so many tentacles that providing evidence about even one thing would do wonders to root it in reality. Yet we're seeing the opposite. More vague, evidence-free, sensational leaks, more promotion of rumor to truth by propagandists, etc.
> And you are in a privileged position to discern these?
Yes, as privileged as everyone else. We can and must make judgments - open-mindedness is important, but to withhold judgment indefinitely is foolishness and reckless endangerment of our responsibilities. That includes judging against absurd and evil ideas and not allowing them unlimited leeway to delay or distract us (again, that would be aiding in their propaganda strategy) from acting against them. And while my judgment isn't perfect, I'm pretty confident in this one.
Fair response. I agree that we all must make judgments. I might be overly biased by my post-hoc analysis of the reasoning behind the Iraq war fiasco and my notion that the broader, geopolitical themes provide most of the inertia for US/Russian dynamics.
In light of your comment I'm curious how you assess the campaign that we've been discussing in this thread. I posed the question in a different sub-thread but I'd be very interested to read your response to it as well:
