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Sure, you go with that.
Tell me, how many daily briefings does Sarah Palin get from our intelligence services?
Unintelligent hypocrite that thinks ST popularity polls are important
Sure, you go with that.
Tell me, how many daily briefings does Sarah Palin get from our intelligence services?
Can you provide evidence that they have been moved?
Given that rebels control quite a few areas of the country, it would seem that there is a vanishingly small number of places they can move such things *to*.
"Putin is a great leader".
My gut says that is dumb, but hey, I'll go for it:
Why/how would you justify that?
There is more than adequate evidence to the contrary. The average Russian is getting poorer, sicker, and less educated, despite their economic growth.
Good place to start on that viewpoint, and the data supporting it:
http://dyingrussia.wordpress.com/201...ssian-poverty/
I think you need to reexamine the definition of "leader" and consider how I am applying it.
You don't have any ing arguments, you have reposts of op-eds.
From this we can conclude several possibilities:
You are too dumb to have your own opinion, in your own words.
You are smart enough to post your own opinion, but don't because you know that you are not as smart as the people who disagree with you.
You are too lazy to have your own opinion.
Maybe a mixture of the above. I think mostly the first and the last.
I haven't finished sifting through the thread yet. Argh... so little time these days.
'sup RG?
Syrian terrorist rebels caught using chemicals on August 21:
The Military-Industrial-Pundit Complex
New research shows many so-called experts who appeared on television making the case for U.S. strikes on Syria had undisclosed ties to military contractors. A new report by the Public Accountability Initiative identifies 22 commentators with industry ties. While they appeared on television or were quoted as experts 111 times, their links to military firms were disclosed only 13 of those times. The report focuses largely on Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser to President George W. Bush. During the debate on Syria, he appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Bloomberg TV. None of these stations informed viewers that Hadley currently serves as a director of the weapons manufacturer Raytheon that makes Tomahawk cruise missiles widely touted as the weapon of choice for bombing Syria. He also owns over 11,000 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate. We speak to Kevin Connor of the Public Accountability Initiative, a co-author of the report.
Let’s take a look at how some of those pundits were identified during recent television appearances.
JAKE TAPPER: For insight into this high-stakes diplomatic mission, I’m joined by former secretary of state to the Clinton administration, Madeleine Albright.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, let’s analyze all this now with our panel of experts. Former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General James Cartwright.
GREGG JARRETT: General Jack Keane joins us, Fox News military analyst, served as four-star general and Army vice chief of staff. General, good to see you, as always.
JAKE TAPPER: I want to bring in two former generals to talk about this. Anthony Zinni is the former commander-in-chief of CENTCOM, and Michael Hayden is the former CIAdirector. He’s now
a principal with the Chertoff Group, a risk management firm.
FOLLY BAH THIBAULT: Well, joining me now, live from Washington, D.C., is former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen. Secretary Cohen, thank you for being on Al Jazeera.
GRETA VAN SUSTEREN: Joining us is Ambassador John Negroponte. He served as the first U.S. director of national intelligence, as well as U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations, and many more posts, I should add. Nice to see you, sir.http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/...s_conflicts_of
With $1.5T/year from DOD and State Dept, the MIC has plenty of money for propaganda.
Sy Hersh claims the US Embassy at Benghazi was a front for clandestine gun running into Syria:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seym...d-the-rat-lineThe full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.’)
In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The report’s criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area, received front-page coverage and revived animosities in Washington, with Republicans accusing Obama and Hillary Clinton of a cover-up. A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian en ies. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)
The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written do ent, known as a ‘finding’, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly cons uted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive.
The annex didn’t tell the whole story of what happened in Benghazi before the attack, nor did it explain why the American consulate was attacked. ‘The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’
Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels. On 28 November 2012, Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reported that the previous day rebels near Aleppo had used what was almost certainly a manpad to shoot down a Syrian transport helicopter. ‘The Obama administration,’ Warrick wrote, ‘has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft.’ Two Middle Eastern intelligence officials fingered Qatar as the source, and a former US intelligence analyst speculated that the manpads could have been obtained from Syrian military outposts overrun by the rebels. There was no indication that the rebels’ possession of manpads was likely the unintended consequence of a covert US programme that was no longer under US control.
Long article, lots of moving parts. If his account is anywhere close to correct, we were much closer to war in Syria last year than we knew. In short, Porton Down convinced us in the 11th hour that our intelligence about Assad's use of chemical arms -- and hence, Obama's crossed red line -- was doubtful.
So has gone HAM yet ?
never got that. is HAM short for hammer or is it an acronym?
sameBy the end of 2012, it was believed throughout the American intelligence community that the rebels were losing the war. ‘Erdoğan was pissed,’ the former intelligence official said, ‘and felt he was left hanging on the vine. It was his money and the cut-off was seen as a betrayal.’ In spring 2013 US intelligence learned that the Turkish government – through elements of the MIT, its national intelligence agency, and the Gendarmerie, a militarised law-enforcement organisation – was working directly with al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability. ‘The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training – including training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Stepping up Turkey’s role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its problems there. Erdoğan knew that if he stopped his support of the jihadists it would be all over. The Saudis could not support the war because of logistics – the distances involved and the difficulty of moving weapons and supplies. Erdoğan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond in March and April.’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5105080.htmlThe United Nations has been forced to cut the size of food parcels for those left hungry by Syria's civil war by a fifth because of a shortage of funds from donors, a senior official said on Monday.
Nevertheless, the United Nations' World Food Program managed to get food to a record 4.1 million people inside Syria last month, WFP deputy executive director Amir Abdulla told a news conference, just short of its target of 4.2 million.
As the humanitarian crisis within Syria intensifies, its neighbors are also groaning under the strain of an exodus of refugees that now totals around 3 million, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.
"We know that this tragedy, together with the tragedy of the people displaced inside the country, 6.5 million, now shows that almost half of the Syrian population is displaced."
Donor countries pledged $2.3 billion for aid agencies helping Syria at a conference in Kuwait in January, but only $1.1 billion has been received so far, including $250 million handed over by Kuwait on Monday, U.N. officials said.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seym...d-the-rat-line
Looks like I got fooled by by our country and a number of our allies.
Its not the first time I have been lied to effectively.
please catch up, pgardn.
see #486, slightly upstream.
are you a reader, or just trolling with intent to reply, not understand? it's hard to tell sometimes.
As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its su ions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’ Much of the support for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. ‘Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and back-slapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.’ Erdoğan’s problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.
Erdoğan was caught red handed trying to manipulate Obama's red-line...let's be glad we have an administration which isn't afraid to back down from the initial false claims that Syria was behind the attacks by the corrupt M$M
Obama almost pressed it too far, like his predecessor. in a stunning reversal. it would seem Obama has England to thank for not doing that.
Dear Winehole:
I read the article. I was convinced the rebels did not have the capability of carrying out the August gas attack. This article brings to light the very intrusive behavior of Turkey and Saudi Arabia playing a very important role that was shoved under the rug during the investigation into who carried out the attack.
I was very sure Assad, or some rogue General had ordered this.
So I could have been very wrong.
Not used to posters admitting they jumped the gun?
To self, why am I even admitting this...? It's not proper procedure in this setting.
Further, why did I even post...
So what did I miss? The implications of how our administration handled this knowledge... Was not replying on this.
Last edited by pgardn; 04-08-2014 at 10:00 AM.
thanks for the fuller reply. what you meant wasn't clear at first.
Typical corrupt media...
Media blacks out Seymour Hersh exposé
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014.../hrsh-a08.htmlHersh has been unable to get his reports published by major American media outlets. Both of his Syrian exposés appeared in the online edition of the London Review of Books, not in the New Yorker, where he was published for many years, or any daily newspaper.
Since the new article was posted early Sunday morning, there has been total silence in the mainstream US press. The New York Times and Washington Post, the two leading dailies, said nothing. The Times published a long account Monday of fighting in Syria with no mention of Hersh’s report.
The main British dailies have also been silent. The Guardian, in addition to censoring Hersh, published a long account of a self-justifying interview on BBC Radio 4 by the notorious liar and war criminal Tony Blair, the former prime minister, defending the Iraq war and advocating military action in Syria.
The article, written by the newspaper’s chief political correspondent Nicholas Watt, goes so far as to note Blair’s argument that the use of sarin gas at Ghouta was sufficient reason to attack Syria, without referencing Hersh’s exposure of this attack as a provocation, published just 24 hours earlier. The cover-up is conscious and deliberate.
The Turkish media has commented on the Hersh report with a blizzard of vituperation and attempts to defend the Erdogan government. This comes despite the fact that the government recently shut off access to YouTube after someone posted a video of a secret meeting of government officials at which the head of Turkish intelligence discussed staging another provocation inside Syria, such as an attack on a mosque, to provide a pretext for military intervention.
The left-liberal magazine Nation commented briefly on Hersh’s first article on the Ghouta attack last December. The article by Greg Mitc took a noncommittal position, declaring, “Hersh’s edgy investigative reporting is usually proven right, of course, but in recent years, one must admit, sometimes wrong. For myself, I’ve never claimed a belief that rebels, not the Assad forces, launched the attacks …” The Nation has not commented on the latest Hersh report.
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.
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