Obama Bout To HAM On Syria - Where My War Mongers At?

[boutons_deux]

under Obama, official secrets prosecution has reached an all time high. persecution of whistleblowers has been relentless, their lives wrecked by the legal process. the effect is chilling.

yep, and I don't think regime-changing to another flavor of administration will change that.

The Orwellian surveillance/militarized police state will persist.

It's overriding objective is self-preservation, where that paranoid "self" is not the country, but the govt of the country.

It's paranoia and obsession with persecuting its enemies is even worse now that national hero Snowden has exposed it brutally.

Clapper LIED to Congress, and (intimidated) Congress did nothing, which emboldens the Clappers to carry on and INCREASE their surveillance.

[Winehole23]

Clapper LIED to Congress, and (intimidated) Congress did nothing, which emboldens the Clappers to carry on and INCREASE their surveillance.actually, a few Congressmen have asked Eric Holder to investigate Clapper for lying to Congress.


NSA used PRISM to spy on US citizens (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/james-clapper-finally-admitted-the-nsa-used-prism-to-spy-on-us-citizens). Today, members of Congress again called on the Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute Clapper for lying to Congress about it.

When he was originally called before Congress to talk about PRISM a year ago, Clapper was asked by Sen. Ron Wyden if the National Security Agency gathers “any type of data at all on millions of Americans.” At the time, Clapper said that “there are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but not wittingly.”


When that turned out to not be the case at all (http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-nsa-lied-about-collecting-hundreds-of-millions-of-texts-a-day-and-everything-else), Clapper told reporters that he had given “the least untruthful answer (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/james-clapper-nsa-surveillance_n_3424620.html).”


That admission, some lawmakers say (http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=364892), make him guilty of perjury. Tuesday, Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner asked the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute Clapper for lying to Congress, and Holder didn’t rule out the possibility.
“Is there any circumstance in which you would prosecute a member of the administration?” Sensenbrenner asked.


“Sure,” Holder said. “If the person lied and the determination was made that all the legal requirements of the perjury statute was met.”


Sensenbrenner, who originally called for an investigation into Clapper’s statements back in October (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/nsa-surveillance-patriot-act-author-bill), said that the case is a slam dunk and again urged Holder to prosecute Clapper. At least five other Congressmen have also called for an investigation (http://sensenbrenner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=364892).


“The statements were made under oath, it was knowingly false, which Director Clapper admitted and it was also material to a government investigation, which I would also assume it also relates to an investigation by Congress,” Sensenbrenner told Holder during a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. “Clapper has admitted he’s lied … if you want to delay this or sweep this under the carpet, wouldn’t it be pointless for Congress to pass new laws limiting data collection if the justice department and other officials are at liberty to lie about enforcing them? What more do you need than an admission?”

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/congressmen-say-james-clapper-should-be-arrested-for-lying-about-nsa-spying

[lefty]

actually, a few Congressmen have asked Eric Holder to investigate Clapper for lying to Congress.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/congressmen-say-james-clapper-should-be-arrested-for-lying-about-nsa-spying
http://indyfromaz.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/trust-me-hydra-obama.jpg

[boutons_deux]

actually, a few Congressmen have asked Eric Holder to investigate Clapper for lying to Congress.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/congressmen-say-james-clapper-should-be-arrested-for-lying-about-nsa-spying

One legal problem aiding Clapper's defense would be that the govt obtained evidence ILLEGALLY, aka inadmissable, that proved Clapper lied ....

... evidence from the US govt's hated criminal/traitor Snowden.

[Winehole23]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2014/07/syrian-diary?fsrc=rss

[Winehole23]

The regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad is holding 150,000 civilians in custody, all of whom are at risk of being tortured or killed by the state, the Syrian defector known as “Caesar” told Congress on Thursday.

According to a senior State Department official, his department initially asked to keep this hearing—in which Caesar displayed new photos (http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2014/%2007/31/caesar-at-briefing-on-assad-s-killing-machine-exposed.html) from his trove of 55,000 images showing the torture, starvation, and death of over 11,000 civilians—closed to the public, out of concerns for the safety of the defector and his family. Caesar smuggled the pictures out of Syria when he fled last year in fear for his life. Caesar’s trip had been in the works for months.
- See more at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/31/syrian-defector-assad-poised-to-torture-and-murder-150-000-more.html (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/31/syrian-defector-assad-poised-to-torture-and-murder-150-000-more.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28T he+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29#sthash.18rkW80H.1XvXqMYv.dpuf)

[boutons_deux]

Iran’s support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas has diminished significantly in the past three years, limiting Tehran’s influence over talks to end the war in the Gaza Strip, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

But the longer the war between Israel and Hamas drags on, these officials said, there’s growing concern that Tehran could try to increase arms shipments to Hamas.

On Tuesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for the replenishing of Hamas’s military arsenal. “The Muslim world has a duty to arm the Palestinian nation by all means,” he said in a speech ending the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Iran’s security services have historically been the largest supplier of arms and cash to Hamas, the Islamist group that gained control of Gaza in 2007 following an internal military conflict with the secular Palestinian party Fatah.

Tehran is also the major backer of a second Palestinian militia, Islamic Jihad, which has joined Hamas in firing rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip over the past three weeks.

Iran, however, has significantly scaled back its support for Hamas since 2011, due to both economic and political considerations, according to Israeli and American officials.

Iran and Hamas split over their support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad following the breakout of a civil war in Syria that year. Shiite-dominate Iran has since stepped-up its backing of the Syrian regime, while Hamas, a Sunni organization, pulled its leadership from its Damascus headquarters nearly three years ago after Mr. Assad began a violent crackdown on his largely Sunni opponents.

“Hamas has lost friends, particularly military supplies and training” that Iran provided to the organization through Syria, said a senior Israeli defense official. “And Iranian funds were diverted to PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] from Hamas.”

U.S. officials believe pervasive international sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program have also limited Tehran’s ability to fund its proxies in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Syria.

Some Iranian arms have continued to flow to Hamas in recent months, said U.S. and Israeli officials, through the Egyptian Sinai region. And Hamas’s weapons trade with Libya has flourished.

Qatar and Turkey, however, have supplanted Iran as the biggest financial backers of Hamas in recent years, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

Qatar alone has pledged to fund the salaries of the Gaza Strip’s local, Hamas-dominated government.

U.S. officials said this shift in Hamas’s support base explains why Qatari capital Doha and Turkish Capital Ankara have emerged as Secretary of State John Kerry‘s primary intermediaries with the Palestinian organization (http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-push-for-gaza-truce-yields-a-few-hours-of-calm-1406504882) in recent days.

Last week, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiya and Turkey’s chief diplomat, Ahmet Davutoglu, were regularly ferrying messages to Hamas’s political chief, Khaled Meshaal, at his base in Qatar’s capital during frantic cease-fire talks.

“You barely hear Iran mentioned in relation to the talks,” said a senior U.S. official.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/07/30/u-s-israel-fear-pickup-in-iranian-support-of-hamas/

[Winehole23]

hence, perhaps, the recent Obama/Rouhani phone call.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/28/us-un-assembly-iran-idUSBRE98Q16S20130928

[Cry Havoc]

I don't see any way this turns out positive for the Syrian people. Devastating.

[boutons_deux]

I don't see any way this turns out positive for the Syrian people. Devastating.

Assad/his team don't GAF about the Syrian people, much like the power structure in any country, including USA, doesn't GAF about its people.

[Cry Havoc]

Assad/his team don't GAF about the Syrian people, much like the power structure in any country, including USA, doesn't GAF about its people.

The difference is that here our leaders have to at least give the illusion they care.

[Winehole23]

BBC, reading the tea leaves:


Some military analysts believe the regime, crippled by manpower shortages too severe for Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed Shia forces to compensate, is already preparing to shorten its defence lines by pulling out of the south and other areas deemed non-core, which could even include the government-controlled half of Aleppo in the north.http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32703945

[boutons_deux]

Inspectors in Syria Find Traces of Banned Military Chemicals

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2015/05/13/world/13SYRIA/13SYRIA-master675.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/world/middleeast/inspectors-in-syria-find-traces-of-banned-military-chemicals.html?partner=rss&emc=rss (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/world/middleeast/inspectors-in-syria-find-traces-of-banned-military-chemicals.html?partner=rss&emc=rss)

[Winehole23]

wimpy!

http://news.yahoo.com/us-forces-setting-airbase-northeast-syria-sources-141606092.html

[Winehole23]

According to the Pentagon (http://www.defense.gov/News/Special-Reports/0814_Inherent-Resolve), as of December 15, the US has spent $5.5 billion fighting the Islamic State since August 2014, the month the unofficial war began. That's an average cost of $11 million per day.In statements last week, Army spokesman Colonel Steve Warren gave some details on where the money's gone.

"So far in the air campaign, we have flown 65,492 sorties, and we have conducted 9,782 airstrikes," the colonel said of the American-led coalition, including 6,516 strikes in Iraq and 3,266 in Syria. A Pentagon press release (http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/643727/clearing-ramadi-progresses-despite-obstacles-inherent-resolve-official-says) adds that "coalition strikes have killed about 95 senior and mid-level ISIL leaders since the beginning of May," and says that, aside from the cost of the air war, the coalition has "provided basic combat training for 16,715 personnel and put thousands more through various specialized training programs."http://www.vice.com/read/why-airstrikes-wont-destroy-the-islamic-state

[Winehole23]

US at war continuously since 2003. So much for isolationism.


The Obama administration now has special forces on the ground in four Middle Eastern countries: Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. All of these units are engaged in what amount to civil wars. These wars are carried out under the "authority" of a 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that was aimed at the Taliban in Afghanistan.



Our entire political class speaks as if it's a bizarro world. Republicans castigate the president for inaction in Syria, when they know that we have been acting in Syria and that, when given the chance, they voted against him taking action. Obama claims to be a man who pulled America back from the abyss of Middle East violence, even as he constantly increases the number of countries in which we are deployed. The same weird kabuki took place in the endless Benghazi hearings. Forgoing any real questions about what the CIA's mission was in that annex in Benghazi, Republican investigators tried to catch Clinton and Obama in impolitic lies. The more important and substantive lies surrounding Libya were, somehow, off limits.http://theweek.com/articles/633095/weird-kabuki-democrats-republicans-lying-about-middle-east

[Winehole23]

Turkey wades in:


Every actor in the Jarablus operation is fighting for its own reasons. Turkey certainly sought to weaken the Islamic State, which has shelled Turkish territory and carried out a series of terrorist attacks — including a suicide bombing in the southern city of Gaziantep just last weekend, which killed 54 people at a wedding. More importantly, Ankara is responding rather belatedly to territorial acquisitions in northern Syria by the PYD-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which aims to connect different “cantons” to form a contiguous Kurdish territory along the Turkish border. As Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said (http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-pm-idUKKCN10Z1QT) Wednesday, Turkey will not accept a Kurdish entity on its border.http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/24/why-turkey-finally-went-to-war-in-syria-jarablus-invasion-kurds/

[boutons_deux]

Turkey wades in:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/24/why-turkey-finally-went-to-war-in-syria-jarablus-invasion-kurds/

Thanks, Repugs!

[Winehole23]

that's a joke, right?

[Winehole23]

tangent, related to chemical arms:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/08/26/exclusive-cia-files-prove-america-helped-saddam-as-he-gassed-iran/

[Winehole23]

Patrick Cockburn on the demise of the recent cease fire:


Airstrikes that hit the wrong target have always been justified or denied by the perpetrators with a rich blend of hypocrisy and lies. It was interesting to see this tradition of deliberate mendacity being not only maintained, but outdone in Syria over the last week. The US was seeking to explain how it had come to kill at least 62 Syrian soldiers fighting Isis in the besieged government-held city of Deir Ezzor a week ago and the Russians evading responsibility for an air attack on a UN aid convoy killing 20 people outside Aleppo five days later.

The explanation of US military officials was splendidly ingenious. As dutifully retailed by CNN, they said they believed a likely scenario was that the personnel hit were prisoners of the regime, perhaps military personnel being detained, although that is not certain.


The initial signs indicated that they were dressed in civilian clothing. They may not have had the typical weapons of a Syrian military unit but rather trucks with weapons mounted on top of them. It is also not known if they were deliberately placed there to potentially deceive the coalition.


For students of war propaganda this is a wonderful piece of obfuscation. No evidence is produced for “the likely scenario” in which supposition is heaped on supposition. Its purpose is instead to mask, or throw in doubt over, the obvious fact that someone had committed a blunder and ordered an attack on a long established Syrian Army position near Deir Ezzor airport. This sort of smoke screen is not designed to last very long, but to blunt criticism during the first crucial few days when the story is still at the top of the news agenda. Then a few weeks or even months down the road, there can be a grudging admission of the truth, or part of it, when it will barely get a mention at the end of newscasts or be relegated to page 24 of the newspapers. An old PR adage says that the best way for the perpetrator of some disaster to limit the damage to himself or herself is to “first say no story and then say old story.” It still works.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/23/airstrikes-obfuscation-and-propaganda-in-syria/print/

[Winehole23]

The Russian explanation of the attack on the UN aid convoy on 19 September is also well worth studying as an example of the propagandist’s art. It is important to make your explanation detailed and interesting because it will be competing with a reality which, in the nature of war, will be murky and confusing. The Russian news agency Tass quoted a senior Russian official as saying that “analysis of video records from drones of yesterday’s movement of the humanitarian convoy across Aleppo territories controlled by militants has revealed new details. It is clearly seen in the video that a terrorists’ pickup truck with a towed large-calibre mortar is moving along with the convoy.”


This was good stuff. Suggesting that there was an understandable reason to imagine they were attacking a legitimate target – though it had to be admitted that “the large calibre mortar” had somehow disappeared by the time of the attack. But the Russians made the mistake of producing too many exculpatory stories at the same time, claiming there were no Russian or Syrian planes in the area – in which case why suggest the legitimate target scenario? Other Russian explanations were that there had been no attack at all and, if there had been, it had been carried out by jihadis and, in any case, all the damage was done from the ground and not from the air.


The crucial point is never to leave a vacuum of information when a story is at the top of the news agenda because that vacuum will be filled by your enemies (if it has now got wide media attention it may be better to ignore it because a rebuttal may serve only to give the story legs). It does not matter if what you are spouting is nonsense because it only has to hold up for two or three days and probably less (the UN aid convoy attack was swiftly overtaken as a news story by the riots in Charlotte, North Carolina). An advantage for the propagandist is that it is easy to make up a lie, but it can take much more time and effort to convincingly refute it.

[Winehole23]

background:


For Americans to really understand what’s going on, it’s important to review some details about this sordid but little-remembered history. During the 1950s, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers — CIA Director Allen Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles — rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a neutral zone in the Cold War and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab nationalism — which Allen Dulles equated with communism — particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies that they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA’s director of plans, Frank Wisner, and John Foster Dulles, in September 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the ‘holy war’ aspect,” according to a memo recorded by his staff secretary, Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster.


The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949 — barely a year after the agency’s creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers and crafted a fragile secularist democracy based on the American model. But in March 1949, Syria’s democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Quwatli, hesitated to approve the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. In his book, Legacy of Ashes, CIA historian Tim Weiner recounts that in retaliation for Al-Quwatli’s lack of enthusiasm for the U.S. pipeline, the CIA engineered a coup replacing al-Quwatli with the CIA’s handpicked dictator, a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za’im. Al-Za’im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him, four and a half months into his regime.


Following several counter-coups in the newly destabilized country, the Syrian people again tried democracy in 1955, re-electing al-Quwatli and his National Party. Al-Quwatli was still a Cold War neutralist, but, stung by American involvement in his ouster, he now leaned toward the Soviet camp. That posture caused CIA Director Dulles to declare that “Syria is ripe for a coup” and send his two coup wizards, Kim Roosevelt and Rocky Stone, to Damascus.


Two years earlier, Roosevelt and Stone had orchestrated a coup in Iran against the democratically elected President Mohammed Mosaddegh, after Mosaddegh tried to renegotiate the terms of Iran’s lopsided contracts with the British oil giant Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP). Mosaddegh was the first elected leader in Iran’s 4,000-year history and a popular champion for democracy across the developing world. Mosaddegh expelled all British diplomats after uncovering a coup attempt by U.K. intelligence officers working in cahoots with BP. Mosaddegh, however, made the fatal mistake of resisting his advisers’ pleas to also expel the CIA, which, they correctly suspected, was complicit in the British plot. Mosaddegh idealized the U.S. as a role model for Iran’s new democracy and incapable of such perfidies. Despite Dulles’ needling, President Harry Truman had forbidden the CIA from actively joining the British caper to topple Mosaddegh. When Eisenhower took office in January 1953, he immediately unleashed Dulles. After ousting Mosaddegh in “Operation Ajax,” Stone and Roosevelt installed Shah Reza Pahlavi, who favored U.S. oil companies but whose two decades of CIA sponsored savagery toward his own people from the Peacock throne would finally ignite the 1979 Islamic revolution that has bedeviled our foreign policy for 35 years.


http://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/GettyImages-461761702-380x485.jpgMohammed Mosaddegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran from 1951-1953, pictured left in 1951, the same year he was named TIME Person of the Year, right. His tenure was cut short by a United States-led coup in 1953, which installed Shah Reza Pahlavi



Flush from his Operation Ajax “success” in Iran, Stone arrived in Damascus in April 1957 with $3 million to arm and incite Islamic militants and to bribe Syrian military officers and politicians to overthrow al-Quwatli’s democratically elected secularist regime, according to Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA, by John Prados. Working with the Muslim Brotherhood and millions of dollars, Rocky Stone schemed to assassinate Syria’s chief of intelligence, the chief of its General Staff and the chief of the Communist Party, and to engineer “national conspiracies and various strong arm” provocations in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan that could be blamed on the Syrian Ba’athists. Tim Weiner describes in Legacy of Ashes how the CIA’s plan was to destabilize the Syrian government and create a pretext for an invasion by Iraq and Jordan, whose governments were already under CIA control. Kim Roosevelt forecast that the CIA’s newly installed puppet government would “rely first upon repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power,” according to declassified CIA documents reported in The Guardian newspaper.

http://www.politico.eu/article/why-the-arabs-dont-want-us-in-syria-mideast-conflict-oil-intervention/

[Winehole23]

But all that CIA money failed to corrupt the Syrian military officers. The soldiers reported the CIA’s bribery attempts to the Ba’athist regime. In response, the Syrian army invaded the American Embassy, taking Stone prisoner. After harsh interrogation, Stone made a televised confession of his roles in the Iranian coup and the CIA’s aborted attempt to overthrow Syria’s legitimate government. The Syrians ejected Stone and two U.S. Embassy staffers—the first time any American State Department diplomat was barred from an Arab country. The Eisenhower White House hollowly dismissed Stone’s confession as “fabrications” and “slanders,” a denial swallowed whole by the American press, led by the New York Times and believed by the American people, who shared Mosaddegh’s idealistic view of their government. Syria purged all politicians sympathetic to the U.S. and executed for treason all military officers associated with the coup. In retaliation, the U.S. moved the Sixth Fleet to the Mediterranean, threatened war and goaded Turkey to invade Syria. The Turks assembled 50,000 troops on Syria’s borders and backed down only in the face of unified opposition from the Arab League whose leaders were furious at the U.S. intervention. Even after its expulsion, the CIA continued its secret efforts to topple Syria’s democratically elected Ba’athist government. The CIA plotted with Britain’s MI6 to form a “Free Syria Committee” and armed the Muslim Brotherhood to assassinate three Syrian government officials, who had helped expose “the American plot,” according to Matthew Jones in “The ‘Preferred Plan’: The Anglo-American Working Group Report on Covert Action in Syria, 1957.” The CIA’s mischief pushed Syria even further away from the U.S. and into prolonged alliances with Russia and Egypt.

[Winehole23]

Following the second Syrian coup attempt, anti-American riots rocked the Mideast from Lebanon to Algeria. Among the reverberations was the July 14, 1958 coup, led by the new wave of anti-American Army officers who overthrew Iraq’s pro-American monarch, Nuri al-Said. The coup leaders published secret government documents, exposing Nuri al-Said as a highly paid CIA puppet. In response to American treachery, the new Iraqi government invited Soviet diplomats and economic advisers to Iraq and turned its back on the West.


Having alienated Iraq and Syria, Kim Roosevelt fled the Mideast to work as an executive for the oil industry that he had served so well during his public service career at the CIA. Roosevelt’s replacement as CIA station chief, James Critchfield, attempted a failed assassination plot against the new Iraqi president using a toxic handkerchief, according to Weiner. Five years later, the CIA finally succeeded in deposing the Iraqi president and installing the Ba’ath Party in power in Iraq. A charismatic young murderer named Saddam Hussein was one of the distinguished leaders of the CIA’s Ba’athist team. The Ba’ath Party’s Secretary, Ali Saleh Sa’adi, who took office alongside Saddam Hussein, would later say, “We came to power on a CIA train,” according to A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite, by Said Aburish, a journalist and author. Aburish recounted that the CIA supplied Saddam and his cronies a murder list of people who “had to be eliminated immediately in order to ensure success.”

[Winehole23]

In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating the CIA’s clandestine mischief in the Mideast. The so called “Bruce-Lovett Report,” to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government’s denials. The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today.” The Bruce-Lovett Report pointed out that such interventions were antithetical to American values and had compromised America’s international leadership and moral authority without the knowledge of the American people. The report also said that the CIA never considered how we would treat such interventions if some foreign government were to engineer them in our country.

This is the bloody history that modern interventionists like George W. Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio miss when they recite their narcissistic trope that Mideast nationalists “hate us for our freedoms.” For the most part they don’t; instead they hate us for the way we betrayed those freedoms — our own ideals — within their borders.

[Winehole23]

Y'all knew this stuff already? I didn't.

[Winehole23]

So, who still thinks Syrians will welcome a US solution?

[Winehole23]

While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Syrians see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective.



In their view, our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000 when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

[Winehole23]

The idea of fomenting a Sunni-Shia civil war to weaken the Syrian and Iranian regimes so as to maintain control of the region's petro-chemical supplies was not a novel notion in the Pentagon's lexicon. A damning 2008 Pentagon funded Rand report (http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG738.pdf) proposed a precise blueprint for what was about to happen. That report observes that control of the Persian Gulf oil and gas deposits will remain, for the U.S., “a strategic priority" that “will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war."


Rand recommends using “covert action, information operations, unconventional warfare" to enforce a “divide and rule" strategy. “The United States and its local allies could use the nationalist jihadists to launch a proxy campaign" and “U.S. leaders could also choose to capitalize on the sustained Shia-Sunni conflict trajectory by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes against Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world ... possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran."


WikiLeaks cables from as early as 2006 show the U.S. State Department, at the urging of the Israeli government, proposing to partner with Turkey, Qatar and Egypt to foment Sunni civil war in Syria to weaken Iran. The stated purpose, according to the secret cable, was to incite Assad into a brutal crackdown of Syria's Sunni population.

http://www.ecowatch.com/syria-another-pipeline-war-1882180532.html

[Winehole23]

the election of Trump brings a shift in US policy we'll now target Al Nusra front, reports the WaPo:



While Obama met Trump in the oval office, new policies, prepared beforehand, were launched. The policies were held back until after the election and would likely not have been revealed or implemented if Clinton had won.



The U.S. declared that from now on it will fight (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-directs-pentagon-to-target-al-qaeda-affiliate-in-syria-one-of-the-most-formidable-forces-fighting-assad/2016/11/10/cf69839a-a51b-11e6-8042-f4d111c862d1_story.html?tid=sm_tw) against al-Qaeda in Syria:



President Obama has ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of an al-Qaeda-linked group in Syriathat the administration had largely ignored until now and that has been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government, U.S. officials said.

That shift is likely to accelerate once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. ... possibly in direct cooperation with Moscow.

...
U.S. officials who opposed the decision to go after al-Nusra’s wider leadership warned that the United States would effectively be doing the Assad government's bidding by weakening a group on the front line of the counter-Assad fight.

...
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and other Pentagon leaders initially resisted the idea of devoting more Pentagon surveillance aircraft and armed drones against al-Nusra.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/11/nusra-on-the-run-trump-induces-first-major-policy-change-on-syria.html

[hater]

If Trump really finally goes after al qAeda and tells Saudi and Qatar to fall in line of be fucked. I think his presidency will
Be a success

[baseline bum]

If Trump really finally goes after al qAeda and tells Saudi and Qatar to fall in line of be fucked. I think his presidency will
Be a success

I wonder what's going to happen with gas prices after this Syrian war is over though. You have to imagine Saudi Arabia will slash production once they'd no longer have any reason to be in an economic war with Russia.

[TDMVPDPOY]

I wonder what's going to happen with gas prices after this Syrian war is over though. You have to imagine Saudi Arabia will slash production once they'd no longer have any reason to be in an economic war with Russia.

go direct to the source supplier and wage war on them...seriously what is stopping usa or any foreign country from invading those oil rich countries?

[hater]

go direct to the source supplier and wage war on them...seriously what is stopping usa or any foreign country from invading those oil rich countries?

1.7 trillion dollars and 5,000 coffins

[angrydude]

I wonder what's going to happen with gas prices after this Syrian war is over though. You have to imagine Saudi Arabia will slash production once they'd no longer have any reason to be in an economic war with Russia.

Texas' economy will take off from all the oil and gas production.

[ElNono]

Texas' economy will take off from all the oil and gas production.

Exactly my thinking... North Dakota too. If the US can ramp production back up, that's not a bad position to be in.

The actual concern is lack of competition from oil co's though. Saudis dumping oil is what's keeping the price so low right now.

[baseline bum]

Texas' economy will take off from all the oil and gas production.

I'd rather have the cheaper gas and cheaper groceries. I don't remember the economy being so great when gas was a dollar more per gallon.

[TeyshaBlue]

I'd rather have the cheaper gas and cheaper groceries. I don't remember the economy being so great when gas was a dollar more per gallon.

I certainly do.

[Winehole23]

Syria is much more diverse a country than it might seem from cold social statistics. Hard line Salafis never had any chance of attracting enough support to take over the whole country, and even just very conservative Sunnis did not, either. The strategic thinkers in Ankara and Riyadh completely misread the situation.


That is why the East Aleppo pocket is falling to the regime. Not because aerial bombardment or brute force work magic in and of themselves. But because the Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood were unable to cumulate resources from other groups and attract broad support.

http://www.juancole.com/2016/12/defeated-alienated-syrians.html

[rmt]

Texas' economy will take off from all the oil and gas production.

I'd rather have this - more jobs, more energy independence.

[Winehole23]

US sidelined in negotiations:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/12/how-the-military-excluded-the-us-from-international-syria-negotiations.html

[boutons_deux]

Obama murdered with drones?

Trash just fave CIA permission to drone strike w/o military involvement