Hawkish Clinton Speech 'Giving Hypocrisy a Bad Name' - CIA Analyst

Former CIA analyst and activist Ray McGovern told Radio Sputnik's Brian Becker that Hillary Clinton's speech is very similar to one given by Dick Cheney 14 years ago, at a similar venue, in which he attempted to justify the attack on Iraq, only now it is Russia that is being blamed.

During her speech Clinton reasserted claims that Russia was behind the hack on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), although there was no evidence provided, adding that Moscow's purported involvement should be regarded as a "direct military strike against the United States."

"This reminds me of before Iraq, when she sang the same tune," McGovern said during Becker's Loud & Clear broadcast. "It's really giving hypocrisy a bad name."

In emails posted by Wikileaks, Clinton, with the complicity of the DNC, was shown to have influenced her own nomination by smearing Sanders' campaign. But the former US Secretary of State quickly blamed the hack on Russia, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted Trump to become president.

​"That worked like a charm." McGovern admitted, referring to her accusations. "There was not another word about how Hillary stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders."

The US mainstream media has since consistently claimed, without evidence, that not only is Russia behind the hacks, but that Julian Assange benefited because WikiLeaks is a tool for Russian intelligence.

"If this weren't so serious," McGovern remarked, "it would be the stuff of late night comedy."

Many mainstream media op-eds have offered that Clinton's sabre-rattling toward Russia is mere campaign electioneering, but McGovern is concerned that US military belligerence may increase if Clinton becomes president. Her rhetoric resembles former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, he suggested, who once asked the US Chief of Staff, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

A section of Clinton's speech was devoted to so-called American exceptionalism, an us-against-them position considered arrogant and dangerous internationally. According to McGovern, Clinton's goal is to blacken Trump, who criticized the notion of US exceptionalism.

"This bothers me greatly," McGovern said. "It's bad enough to talk about being the exceptional nation, but ‘indispensable nation'? What's the opposite of ‘indispensable'? I think, it's ‘dispensable,' and so, by definition, all other countries are dispensable. It means that we don't have to really obey international laws…Ten days ago Turkey invaded Syria, now that used to be against international law. People used to frown on people invading other countries. Not anymore."