Glen Greenwald/The Intercept Play-out The Dark Deep-State Drama

Mil2Mil or Military-to-Military kinetic and covert operations have been the strategies for decades, domestically and internationally. This has been 'an open-secret'
"That the U.S. has a shadowy, secretive world of intelligence and military operatives who exercise great power outside of elections and democratic accountability is not some exotic, alt-right conspiracy theory; it’s utterly elemental to understanding anything about how Washington works. It’s hard to believe that anyone on this side of a 6th Grade civics class would seek to deny that. . . "

What’s Worse: Trump’s Campaign Agenda or Empowering Generals and CIA Operatives to Subvert it?

05.08.2017 08:41 a.m.

". . . Although it is now common to assert – as a form of in-the-know mockery – that the notion of a “Deep State” in the U.S. was invented by Trump supporters only in the last year, the reality is that the U.S. Deep State has been reported on and openly discussed in numerous circles long before Trump. . . "
Blogger Note: and way before what Greenwald mentions in this article from yesterday.

Greenwald continues writing: ". . . Whatever else is true, there is now simply no question that there is open warfare between adherents to the worldview Trump advocated in order to win, and the permanent national security power faction in Washington that – sometimes for good, and sometimes for evil – despises that agenda. The New Republic’s Brian Beutler described the situation perfectly on Friday:
"Where the generals haven’t been empowered to run the show, they have asserted themselves nonetheless. “In the earliest weeks of Trump’s presidency,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday, Mattis and Kelly agreed “that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House.”

It would be sensationalizing things to call this a soft coup, but it is impossible to deny that real presidential powers have been diluted or usurped.

" . . . the military triumvirate of Kelly, Mattis and McMaster has been cast as the noble defenders of American democracy, pitted against those who were actually elected to lead the government.
No matter how much of a threat one regards Trump as being, there really are other major threats to U.S. democracy and important political values. It’s hard, for instance, to imagine any group that has done more harm, and ushered in more evil, than the Bush-era neocons with whom Democrats are now openly aligning. And who has brought more death, and suffering, and tyranny to the world over the last six decades than the U.S. National Security State? 
Concluding Paragraph:
"In terms of some of the popular terms that are often thrown around these days – such as “authoritarianism” and “democratic norms” and “U.S. traditions” – it’s hard to imagine many things that would pose a greater threat to all of that than empowering the National Security State (what, before Trump, has long been called the Deep State) to exert precisely the power that is supposed to be reserved exclusively for elected officials. In sum, Trump opponents should be careful of what they wish for, as it might come true."

Link > https://theintercept.com/2017/08/05/whats-worse-trumps-campaign-agenda-or-empowering-generals-and-cia-operatives-to-subvert-it/