I really don't want to defend Hillary Clinton, BUT...

As readers know, I'm angry at Hillary Clinton. I consider her to be a key enabler of the disastrous neocon policy of regime change in Syria.

But that doesn't mean I will stand by while modern-day Ken Starrs and Linda Tripps lob false charges at the Clintons.

Unfortunately, most Americans are creatures of the Id who view politics as a game of shirts-vs-skins: If you ain't with Our Team, you must be playing for Their team. If you don't like Politician A, then you must never defend Politician A against any charge, even if the charge is false or silly.

Stalin was a monster -- therefore, it is acceptable to claim that Stalin raped his daughter. If you dare to point out the lack of evidence for that claim, you must be a Stalin apologist and a filthy commie.

Most Americans really do think that way. Most Americans are just fucking dumb.

Let us presume that you, dear reader, are not one of the dummies. If so, you'll have no trouble seeing through this article by one Brad Hoff: "New Hillary Emails Reveal Propaganda, Executions, Coveting Libyan Oil and Gold." Sub-heads: "New Emails Expose Hillary’s Dirty War in Libya" and "Hillary’s Death Squads."

Wow. An email reveals that Hillary Clinton was running death squads in Libya?

Sorry, but...no.

The big problem here is the simple fact that the email itself reveals no such thing. Hoff, smarmy propagandist that he is, hopes that no-one will click on the link -- or that the reader will be so blinded by inchoate Clinton-hate that the actual words in the pdf won't register on his or her brain.

Before going any further, let's remind ourselves of the basics: Longtime Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal (father of the courageous Max Blumenthal) and Tyler Drumheller (formerly of the CIA) were in Libya trying to seek business opportunities. There weren't any to be had. But Blumenthal and Drumheller got a lot of info as to what was happening in the country, and they passed the data on to the Secretary of State.

Drumheller, you will recall, was axed from the intelligence community after he exposed the Iraqi defector "Curveball" as a fake; he also helped to reveal the "yellowcake" fraud. He is, in short, one of the few heroes of the Iraq war period.

There's an easy way to identify whether any given piece on the Blumenthal/Clinton correspondence is the work of a legitimate reporter or a hack propagandist: Does the article mention Drumheller? Propagandists don't like to mention that man's name, because they know that they will have a difficult time trying to convince the audience to dislike him. How can anyone hate the guy who unmasked Curveball?

But you can't honestly leave Drumheller out of this. As we've seen in previous posts, most of the juicy items relayed by Sid Blumenthal to Hillary actually came from Tyler Drumheller. Thus, this Blumenthal email is, in large measure, a Drumheller email.

So what does the email actually state? Spoiler alert: There is nothing -- NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING -- about Hillary Clinton running death squads! Brad Hoff is simply lying his ass off.

At one point, Blumenthal does tell Hillary the following: "Source Comment: Speaking in strict confidence, one rebel commander stated that his troops continue to summarily execute all foreign mercenaries captured in the fighting." This confirms what we already knew: The rebels were brutal and merciless. But how can any sane person construe these words as an admission that Hillary Clinton ran death squads?

This email -- when read objectively -- conveys reports about events in Libya during the revolution. Some of the reports came from people connected to the Khaddafy government, some came from rebel sources. Many of the reports were not first-hand; much of what Blumenthal had to say remained on the level of rumor. In a chaotic situation, even rumors may have intelligence value.

And that's it.

As a moment's thought will tell you, just because Hillary received reports about a situation does not necessarily mean that she engineered it.

Let's put it this way: I live in Baltimore, and in April of last year, I gave my personal, subjective report of what the city "felt" like during the anti-police uprising. A smarm-meister like Brad Hoff might read those old posts and then pretend that I was somehow the master fiend who set those events into motion: "Cannon CAUSED the Baltimore riots!" Or: "Cannon CAUSED the police to fire tear gas!"

Jeez, what's next? Is Hoff going to blame the Battle of Gettysburg on Matthew Brady? Would Hoff hold Seutonius responsible for the crimes of the Julio-Claudian dynasty? Will Hoff blame the Crucifixion on St. Luke, on the grounds that Luke's description of the event means he did it?

I look forward to Hoff's forthcoming disquisition on the way William Shirer created Nazi Germany.

We may say something similar about another Blumenthal/Drumheller memo to Hillary, referenced in this Reddit entry by someone calling himself "OfficerDarrenWilson." (Apparently, the author of these words thinks that that cop who shot Michael Brown is some sort of hero.)

Bombshell Clinton email: The thin veneer of humanitarian intervention falls off NATO, as the truth of the Libya intervention is revealed. It was all about regional supremacy, and particularly about preventing Gaddafi's efforts to establish a gold-backed pan-Afro currency. Please spread.

The actual email is here. Although it is quite interesting in its own right -- the jibe at Bernard Henri-Levy made me smile -- it does not tell us anything about Hillary Clinton, despite the barkings of the Clintonphobes who visit Reddit. The email discusses the motives of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, not the motives of Hillary Clinton or of any other American. (The claim about the Libyan Dinar appeared in the open press in April of 2011, around the time Blumenthal wrote his email: See here and here. Thus, the "bombshell" revelation in this email is really nothing new.)

Again: I'm mad at Hillary myself, and will soon return to my usual critiques of her damnable Syria policies. I was also mad at Bill Clinton throughout much of the 1990s. The right-wing smear machine turned me around: Any president with those kinds of enemies had to be doing something right. I became a reluctant Hillary supporter in 2008 for one reason: The Democratic blogs suddenly overflowed with recycled right-wing nonsense about Whitewater, Vince Foster, "Travelgate" and similar horseshittiness.

Moral: Smears tend to backfire.

(I've somewhat expanded this post since original publication.)