By David Swanson<\/p>\n
When the U.S. public was told that Spain had blown up the Maine, <\/em>or Vietnam had returned fire, or Iraq had stockpiled weapons, or Libya was planning a massacre, the claims were straightforward and disprovable.<\/p>\n CIA Director John Brennan addresses officials at the Agency\u2019s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. (Photo credit: CIA)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Before people began referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, somebody had to lie that it had happened, and there had to be an understanding of what had supposedly happened. No investigation into whether anything had happened could have taken as its starting point the certainty that a Vietnamese attack or attacks had happened. And no investigation into whether a Vietnamese attack had happened could have focused its efforts on unrelated matters, such as whether anyone in Vietnam had ever done business with any relatives or colleagues of Robert McNamara.<\/p>\n All of this is otherwise with the idea that the Russian government determined the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. U.S. corporate media reports often claim that Russia did decide the election or tried to do that or wanted to try to do that. But they also often admit to not knowing whether any such thing is the case.<\/p>\n There is no established account, with or without evidence to support it, of exactly what Russia supposedly did. And yet there are countless articles casually referring, as if to established fact to the . . .<\/p>\n \u201cRussian influence in the 2016 presidential election\u201d (Yahoo<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cRussian attempts to disrupt the election\u201d (New York Times<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cRussian \u2026 interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election\u201d (ABC<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cRussian influence over the 2016 presidential election\u201d (The Intercept<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201ca multi-pronged investigation to uncover the full extent of Russia\u2019s election-meddling\u201d (Time<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cRussian interference in the US election\u201d (CNN<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cRussia\u2019s interference in the 2016 presidential election\u201d (American Constitution Society<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cRussian hacking in US Election\u201d (Business Standard<\/em><\/a>).\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cObama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking\u201d we\u2019re told by the New York Times<\/em><\/a>, but what is \u201celection hacking\u201d? Its definition seems to vary widely. And what evidence is there of Russia having done it?<\/p>\n The \u201cRussian interference in the 2016 United States elections\u201d even exists as a factual event in Wikipedia<\/a>, not as an allegation or a theory. But the factual nature of it is not so much asserted as brushed aside.<\/p>\n Former CIA Director John Brennan, in the same Congressional testimony in which he took the principled stand \u201cI don\u2019t do evidence,\u201d testified that \u201cthe fact that the Russians tried to influence resources and authority and power, and the fact that the Russians tried to influence that election so that the will of the American people was not going to be realized by that election, I find outrageous and something that we need to, with every last ounce of devotion to this country, resist and try to act to prevent further instances of that.\u201d He provided no evidence.<\/p>\n Activists have even planned \u201cdemonstrations to call for urgent investigations into Russian interference in the US election.\u201d They declare that \u201cevery day we learn more about the role Russian state-led hacking and information warfare played in the 2016 election.\u201d (March for Truth<\/a>.)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/dcia-brennan.jpg\")
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