In my view, they are all self-serving career politicians and none have shown any particular reason they should be trusted or respected. They were the ones who urged the knee-jerk reaction in Iraq which has cost trillions of dollars and many lives, among many other bad decisions that they all agree on.

So it's not nearly as low of a bar as you think. It's like you're claiming we must trust pharmaceutical representatives from competing companies when they both agree that we all need more pills.

Why is there urgency to rush to judgment about alleged Russian election meddling?

If it happened, then unless anyone thinks the outcome of the election should be reversed, we have four years to get to the bottom of it, take action, and prevent it from happening again.

It's very much reminiscent of the blind urgency to invade Iraq on shaky evidence. Note that one tactic used to get people to act is to create urgency. The simplest example is "this offer expires in 5 minutes..."

It's not so much that I give no credit to any officials as having authority, it's that they all agree on the knee-jerk urgency when there is no apparent need to do so, and none feel obligated to offer a point by point probability assessment of whatever information, inference, or intelligence has them 100% convinced, since the information disclosed so far paints a vague, circumstantial picture.

This sort of elitist disregard for the basic rationality of the public is not something I can stomach, so I simply can't take their assurances at face value.

This likely transcends party lines in the same way that support for wall street or the oil industry transcends party lines.

But my impression is that [Trump vs. Clinton] is way more powerful than any other bias right now.

I think this is correct, and largely why the Russia meddling has become more an article of faith than a highly concerning possibility.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intel...

> The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.

This is an official joint statement from the USIC, which is an official body composed of 16 different intelligence organizations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...

Also, not sure how the agency count helps anything. Exactly what did agencies like the NRO and Coast Guard contribute here?