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Paul Merrell

Putin calls Saudi king to discuss Syria conflict - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/-syria-conflict-051802039.html

war & peace Russia Saudis consultation Syrian war

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Saudi Arabia's King Salman about finding a solution to the Syria crisis on Saturday, just two days before he is due to address the UN on the issue, the Kremlin said. In a telephone conversation at Russia's behest, the two men "exchanged views on regional security matters, first and foremost, in the context of finding ways to settle the conflict in Syria", a statement posted to the Kremlin's website said.They also discussed "building more effective international cooperation in the fight against the so-called Islamic State and other terrorist groups", it said.A decades-long backer of the Damascus regime, Moscow has steadfastly supported President Bashar al-Assad throughout four-and-a-half years of war which have killed more than 240,000 people.Saudi Arabia is part of a US-led coalition that began an air campaign against IS in Syria last September, and insists it will never cooperate with the Assad regime.
  • Moscow's military build-up comes with Washington's own policy for fighting IS in Syria in increasing disarray.The US has a $500-million programme to train and equip vetted moderates recruited from among the rebels fighting Assad, but it has faced repeated setbacks.Washington and its allies have up until now insisted that Assad has no future in Syria, but there have been recent signs of a change, perhaps allowing him an interim role until a new government is formed.On Friday, a Russian diplomat raised the possibility of Moscow joining the Washington-led coalition against IS provided the UN Security Council gave a legal framework for its action."It is in theory possible that all those involved join the coalition if it receives the approval of the UN Security Council," Ilya Rogatchev, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department for New Challenges and Threats, told AFP.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Oct 15
     
    But did Putin present Salman with an offer he couldn't refuse? How tough will Russia be with the Saudis, the major source of mercenary forces in Syria and their funding?
Paul Merrell

Saudi Increases Arms Supplies to 3 Syrian Terrorist Fronts - 0 views

en.alalam.ir/...1747047

war & peace Syria Russia U.S.-foreign-policy UK France Germany turkey Qatar Saudis

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Saudi Arabia is ramping up its supplies of lethal weaponry to three different rebel groups in Syria in response to the Russian airstrikes on Syrian rebels, British media reported, citing a Saudi government official in Riyadh. The official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, said supplies of modern, high-powered weaponry including guided anti-tank weapons would be increased to the Arab-and Western-backed rebel groups fighting the forces of Syria's President Bashar Assad, the BBC reported on Friday. He did not rule out supplying surface-to-air missiles to the rebels, a move resisted by many in the West for fear that they would fall into the hands of ISIL and end up being used to shoot down warplanes of the US-led coalition or even civilian airliners. He said the weapons would go to three rebel alliances — Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest), the so-caled Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Southern Front.
  • On October 2 the United States and its allies — Britain, France, Germany, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — urged Russia to end its airstrikes against the forces of the so-called “moderate opposition” in Syria, warning this would further escalate the conflict and lead to a new weave of extremism and radicalism in the war-torn country.
Paul Merrell

Doctors Without Borders airstrike: MSF says 33 people still missing | World news | The ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...g-us-airstrike-afghan-hospital

war & peace Afghanistan Kunduz U.S.-foreign-policy war-crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Death toll of 22 could rise, with 24 staff and nine patients still unaccounted for five days after US strike on Médecins sans Frontières trauma centre in Kunduz
  • Thirty-three people are still missing five days after a US air strike on an Afghan hospital, Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) warned on Thursday, sparking fears the death toll could rise significantly. Saturday’s bombing in the disputed town of Kunduz killed 12 staff and 10 patients, prompting the medical aid agency to close the trauma centre.
  • President Barack Obama has apologised to MSF but three investigations – by the US military, by Nato and by Afghan officials – are underway and the general would not be drawn on their progress.
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  • MSF, which has condemned the attack as a war crime, is stressing the need for an international investigation, saying the raid contravened the Geneva Conventions.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15
     
    The Obamas Administration has rejected calls for an investigation by a duly-constituted international body, saying that it has three investigations under way and an unblemished record of investigating and prosecuting misconduct by U.S. forces. This, from the President who refused to investigate and prosecute officials of the Bush2 administration for war crimes in invading Iraq and Afghanistan and refused to prosecute CIA torturers, insisting on legislation to retroactively immunize them. 
Paul Merrell

Free Syrian Army a Phantom: Lavrov | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...e-syrian-army-a-phantom-lavrov

war & peace Russia Free-Syrian-Army

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded to vague U.S. statements about the Free Syrian Army and “moderate rebels” and that Russia may target moderates, saying that the Free Syrian Army is a phantom group. In depth investigations show that the Free Syrian Army largely ceased to exist in 2012 -13.
  • The Russian Foreign Minister rebuked accusations that the Russian Air Force in Syria targets the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or so-called “moderate rebels” saying: “No one has told us where the Free Syrian Army operates or where and how the other units of the moderate opposition act. . … We will even be ready to establish contact with it, if these are indeed efficient armed groups of the patriotic opposition that consist of Syrians. … So far, the Free Syrian Army remains a “phantom group … Nothing is known about it.” Lavrov called on the United States Secretary of State John Kerry to explain what the Free Syrian Army is and where it is based. Last week Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made a similar comment, saying “There is absolutely controversial information about this so-called army. … What is Free Syrian Army? Is this an official term? Are they official armed forces or what is it”. 
  • nsnbc investigations and other reports have shown that the Free Syrian Army (FSA), prior to June and July 2012 consisted of some Syrian Muslim Brotherhood associated fighters, some few former Syrian Arab Army soldiers, and a large number of mercenaries from Libya and other countries. This foreign-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) suffered two decisive defeats in June and July 2012, a little more than a year after the eruption of the conflict. The decline of the FSA and the increased presence of Salafist / Wahhabi fighters in 2012 was, among others documented by the International Crisis Group, in their comprehensive report entitled “Tentative Jihad”. By December 2013 the remainders of the FSA began to break up and more western, Turkish and Gulf Arab support was channeled to the Al-Qaeda associated Jabhat Al-Nusrah, ISIL and other mercenary or semi-mercenary insurgencies.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Oct 15
     
    Russia wants the U.S. to tell them who the Free Syrian Army is and where it is. Good one! Cluestick: it never existed except in Hillary Clinton's fantasies. 
Paul Merrell

The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is -- The CIA | War Is A Crime .org - 0 views

warisacrime.org/...only-thing-we-have-fear-cia

conspiracies JFK Obama CIA Senate-Intelligence_Committee-Report CIA-stonewalling

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.” It sounded like the intro to a bleat from some liberal professor or journalist. Not so. The writer was former President Harry S. Truman, who spearheaded the establishment of the CIA 66 years ago, right after World War II, to better coordinate U.S. intelligence gathering. But the spy agency had lurched off in what Truman thought were troubling directions.
  • Is this why the President feels he cannot fire his clumsily devious Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who had to apologize to Congress for giving “clearly erroneous” testimony in March? Is this why he allows National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander and counterparts in the FBI to continue to mislead the American people, even though the intermittent snow showers from Snowden show our senior national security officials to have lied — and to have been out of control? This may be small solace to President Obama, but there is no sign that the NSA documents that Snowden’s has released include the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,300-page report on CIA torture. Rather, that report, at least, seems sure to be under Obama’s and Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein’s tight control.
  • But Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak. He fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion, and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.” The outrage was very obviously mutual.
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  • Truman concluded the op-ed with an admonition that was as clear as the syntax was clumsy: “I would like to see the CIA restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field – and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” The importance and prescient nature of that admonition are even clearer today, a half-century later.
  • After Kennedy was murdered in Dallas, the patrician, well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination. Documents in the Truman Library show that Dulles also mounted a small domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’s warnings about covert action.
  • As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to protect himself and his associates, were any commissioners or investigators — or journalists — tempted to question whether Dulles and the CIA played a role in killing Kennedy. And so, the question: Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger” CIA operatives have a hand in John Kennedy’s assassination and in then covering it up? In my view, the best dissection of the evidence pertaining to the murder appeared in James Douglass’s 2008 book, JFK and the Unspeakable. After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes that the answer is Yes.
  • The mainstream media had an allergic reaction to Douglass’s book and gave it almost no reviews. It is, nevertheless, still selling well. And, more important, it seems a safe bet that President Barack Obama knows what it says and maybe has even read it. This may go some way toward explaining why Obama has been so deferential to the CIA, NSA, FBI and the Pentagon. Could this be at least part of the reason he felt he had to leave the Cheney/Bush-anointed torturers, kidnappers and black-prison wardens in place, instructing his first CIA chief Leon Panetta to become, in effect, the agency’s lawyer rather than leader.
  • Sadly, those concerns that Truman expressed in that op-ed — that he had inadvertently helped create a Frankenstein monster — are as valid today as they were 50 years ago, if not more so.
  • But the timorous President has a big problem. He is acutely aware that, if released, the Senate committee report would create a firestorm – almost certainly implicating Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and many other heavy-hitters of whom he appears to be afraid. And so Obama has allowed Brennan to play bureaucratic games, delaying release of the report for more than a year, even though its conclusions are said to closely resemble earlier findings of the CIA’s own Inspector General and the Constitution Project (see below).
  • Hat tip to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who took the trouble to read the play-by-play of testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee by former CIA General Counsel (2009-2013) Stephen W. Preston, nominated (and now confirmed) to be general counsel at the Department of Defense. Under questioning by Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, Preston admitted outright that, contrary to the CIA’s insistence that it did not actively impede congressional oversight of its detention and interrogation program, “briefings to the committee included inaccurate information related to aspects of the program of express interest to Members.”
  • That “inaccurate information” apparently is thoroughly documented in the Senate Intelligence Committee report which, largely because of the CIA’s imaginative foot-dragging, cost taxpayers $40 million. Udall has revealed that the report (which includes 35,000 footnotes) contains a very long section titled “C.I.A. Representations on the C.I.A. Interrogation Program and the Effectiveness of the C.I.A.’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques to Congress.” Preston also acknowledged that the CIA inadequately informed the Justice Department on interrogation and detention. He said, “CIA’s efforts fell well short of our current practices when it comes to providing information relevant to [the Office of Legal Counsel]’s legal analysis.”
  • As Katherine Hawkins, the senior investigator for last April’s bipartisan, independent report by the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment, noted in an Oct. 18, 2013 posting, the memos from acting OLC chief, Steven Bradbury, relied very heavily on now-discredited CIA claims that “enhanced interrogation” saved lives, and that the sessions were carefully monitored by medical and psychological personnel to ensure that detainees’ suffering would not rise to the level of torture. According to Hawkins, Udall complained – and Preston admitted – that, in providing the materials requested by the committee, “the CIA removed several thousand CIA documents that the agency thought could be subjected to executive privilege claims by the President, without any decision by Obama to invoke the privilege.”
  • Worse still for the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee report apparently destroys the agency’s argument justifying torture on the grounds that there was no other way to acquire the needed information save through brutalization. In his answers to Udall, Preston concedes that, contrary to what the agency has argued, it can and has been established that legal methods of interrogation would have yielded the same intelligence. Is anyone still wondering why our timid President is likely to sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee report for as long as he can? Or why he will let John Brennan redact it to a fare-thee-well, if he is eventually forced to release some of it by pressure from folks who care about things like torture?
  • It does appear that the newly taciturn CIA Director Brennan has inordinate influence over the President in such matters – not unlike the influence that both DNI Clapper and NSA Director Alexander seem able to exert. In this respect, Brennan joins the dubious company of the majority of his predecessor CIA directors, as they made abundantly clear when they went to inordinate lengths to prevent their torturer colleagues from being held accountable. (Also, see “CIA Torturers Running Scared,” Sept. 20, 2009; or “Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?” Dec. 29, 2009)
Paul Merrell

Lindsey Graham Says Congress Will "Follow [Bibi's] Lead" « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/ongress-will-follow-bibis-lead

war & peace Israel Iran U.N. U.S.-foreign-policy Graham War-Party

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Lindsey Graham, who is not a stupid person, can be so embarrassing. Speaking at a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem Saturday, Graham said the following in response to Bibi’s call for “more sanctions, and stronger sanctions” against Iran. But you, above all others, have said that sanctions are what got Iran to the table, and it will be the only thing that brings them to a deal that we can all live with. I’m here to tell you, Mr. Prime Minister, that the Congress will follow your lead. [Emphasis added.]
  • But that’s not all he said. He implied that people in the US intelligence community, which has insisted for more than seven years now that Iran has not made a decision to build a nuclear weapon, should have their driver’s licenses revoked whenever they return from overseas assignments, meetings or vacations. To those who believe the Iranians have not been trying to develop a nuclear weapon, if you come to America, you should not be allowed to drive on our highways. Clearly, this regime for years has been deceiving the international community, has been trying to pursuit [sic], in my view, a nuclear weapon.
  • And then there’s this little gem offered to a leader who, as prime minister or the leader of the opposition, has steadfastly opposed the peace-making efforts of three US presidents, including George W. Bush, and who enthusiastically encouraged the United States to invade and occupy Iraq, among other incredibly stupid moves. And what brings me here so many times, is common and shared values and common and shared enemies. The fate of one country determines the fate of the other. God bless the people of Israel, and you can count on the United States Congress, Republican and Democrat, to be there for you when you need us the most. [Emphasis added.]
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  • But then last June, Graham, while on the rounds of the Sunday talk shows and apparently freaked out about Islamic State’s sweep in northern and western Iraq, called for Washington to work with Iran (and presumably with the hated Revolutionary Guard) to protect Baghdad. The US has to “have to have some dialogue with the Iranians that says, ‘let’s coordinate our efforts,’ but has some red lines,” he said on one show. “The Iranians can provide some assets to make sure Baghdad doesn’t fall,” he said on yet another. “We need to coordinate with the Iranians. To ignore Iran and not tell them, ‘Don’t take advantage of this situation,’ would be a mistake.”
  • Now, to be fair to Graham, he did not explicitly endorse Netanyahu’s call for “more sanctions, and stronger sanctions” despite his promise that Congress will follow Bibi’s “lead” in dealing with Iran. Instead, he promised that Congress will vote on the Kirk-Menendez bill, or what I originally called the “Wag the Dog Act of 2014,” next month, the approval of which, according to virtually all knowledgeable observers, will result in the collapse not only of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, but also of the international sanctions regime. (For a more specific analysis, you can examine Ed Levine’s assessment of the bill after it was introduced last year.) Graham, like Netanyahu himself, also insisted that he supports the administration’s efforts to negotiate a deal. “I would love nothing better than a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear ambitions,” he said. “I support the Administration’s effort to try to bring this to a peaceful conclusion.” But then he went on to insist that any final agreement must include the abandonment by Tehran of its uranium enrichment capabilities—a demand that all of the P5+1 (US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) consider totally unrealistic.
  • Now, Graham often has had a problem with getting a little carried away in his public rhetoric. Reacting to President Obama’s State of the Union Address last January, and particularly his remarks about imposing sanctions against Iran, the South Carolina senator warned that “the world is literally about to blow up.” At the 2010 Halifax International Security Forum, Graham reportedly stunned the audience—and apparently embarrassed his hosts—by calling for a full-scale attack on Iran beyond its nuclear facilities. So my view of military force would be not to just neutralize their nuclear program, which are probably dispersed and hardened, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard. In other words, neuter that regime.
  • It’s pretty clear that Graham can sometimes get excitable, especially when the TV cameras are rolling. Assuming that the Kirk-Menendez bill does come to the floor next month, however, the big question is whether it will attract enough Senate Democrats to render its passage veto-proof (because there’s no doubt whatsoever that Obama will veto it). That will take 33 Democrats and/or independents and/or Republicans. At this point, I think the president should not have too much trouble getting those votes, and the fact that Graham has now taken the lead on this while on foreign soil will likely make it easier for Obama to get the Democratic support he needs. But Graham’s assurance that a Republican-led Congress will “follow [Netanyahu’s] lead” (against a US president, if necessary) should prompt a few of his fellow-Republicans to reflect just a little on the implications of such deference by a powerful US senator to a foreign leader.
  • Graham also had a lot to say about Hamas and withholding funding for the United Nations if it becomes more involved in seeking an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. You can read the whole transcript of his appearance with Netanyahu here and judge for yourself.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Dec 14
     
    [Sigh]
Paul Merrell

Lavrov: West may use ISIS as pretext to bomb Syrian govt forces - RT News - 0 views

rt.com/...6356-lavrov-syria-bombing-west

war & peace ISIL Syria U.S.-foreign-policy bombing

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • If the West bombs Islamic State militants in Syria without consulting Damascus, the anti-ISIS alliance may use the occasion to launch airstrikes against President Bashar Assad’s forces, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. “There are reasons to suspect that air strikes on Syrian territory may target not only areas controlled by Islamic State militants, but the government troops may also be attacked on the quiet to weaken the positions of Bashar Assad’s army,” Lavrov said Tuesday. Such a development would lead to a huge escalation of conflict in the Middle East and North Africa, Lavrov told reporters in Moscow after a meeting with the foreign minister of Mali. Moscow is urging the West to respect international law and undertake such acts only with the approval of the legitimate government of a state, Lavrov said. “Not a single country should have its own plans on such issues. There can be only combined, collective, univocal actions. Only this way can a result be achieved,” he said.
  • His comments came shortly after Washington announced plans to go on the offensive against the Islamic State jihadist group. The US military has already launched over 100 airstrikes against militant targets in Iraq, including a new series that the military said killed an unusually large number of Islamic State fighters, AP reported.
  • Moscow has repeatedly voiced its readiness to cooperate with Washington in countering terrorism, Lavrov said. Secretary of State John Kerry, in response, has proposed that the US, Russia and countries in the region cooperate to work out “a balance of interests so that they could eliminate terrorism threat,” he added. “However, this hasn’t got beyond words,” Lavrov said.
Paul Merrell

Missing Libyan Jetliners Raise Fears of Suicide Airliner Attacks on 9/11 | Washington F... - 0 views

freebeacon.com/...uicide-airliner-attacks-on-911

war & peace 11-Libyan-airliners war-propaganda

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Islamist militias in Libya took control of nearly a dozen commercial jetliners last month, and western intelligence agencies recently issued a warning that the jets could be used in terrorist attacks across North Africa. Intelligence reports of the stolen jetliners were distributed within the U.S. government over the past two weeks and included a warning that one or more of the aircraft could be used in an attack later this month on the date marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports. “There are a number of commercial airliners in Libya that are missing,” said one official. “We found out on September 11 what can happen with hijacked planes.”
  • A senior State Department counterterrorism official declined to comment on reports of the stolen jetliners.  A second State department official sought to downplay the reports. “We can’t confirm that,” he said.
  • The officials said U.S. intelligence agencies have not confirmed the aircraft theft following the takeover of Tripoli International Airport in late August, and are attempting to locate all aircraft owned by two Libyan state-owned airline companies, as security in the country continued to deteriorate amid fighting between Islamists and anti-Islamist militias.
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  • The aircraft were reportedly taken in late August following the takeover of Tripoli International Airport, located about 20 miles south of the capital, by Libyan Dawn. Al Jazeera television reported in late August that western intelligence reports had warned of terror threats to the region from 11 stolen commercial jets. In response, Tunisia stopped flights from other Libyan airports at Tripoli, Sirte, and Misrata over concerns that jets from those airports could be on suicide missions.
  • Ansar al Sharia, which is based in Benghazi, recently publicized on social media that it has obtained large numbers of more sophisticated weapons, including SA-6 surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft guns, rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, assault rifles, and armored vehicles. The group is closely aligned with al Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Sep 14
     
    "We found out on September 11 what can happen with hijacked planes." Wrong. Make that, "We found out on September 11 what can happen with controlled demolition." Please notice that no one in U.S. government will confirm that the aircraft were actually taken or ever existed. Just in time for the anniversary of 9/11 and Congress convening to consider new authorizations for use of military force anytime and anywhere he pleases.  Stamp this one as "War Party propaganda until proved otherwise."
Paul Merrell

BERLIN: Europe, U.S. at odds over size of Russia's intrusion in Ukraine | Europe | McCl... - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...e-us-at-odds-over-size-of.html

war & peace Ukraine Russia U.S.-foreign-policy U.S.-propaganda Nuland

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • German officials, including some in Merkel’s office, have recently referred to U.S. statements of Russian involvement in the Ukraine fighting as “dangerous propaganda,” and the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel went so far as to ask: “Do the Americans want to sabotage the European mediation attempts in Ukraine led by Chancellor Merkel?”That was a reference to Merkel’s and French President Francois Hollande’s meetings last month in Minsk, Belarus, with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin to hash out a cease-fire. While the separatists completed their takeover of the Ukrainian city of Debaltseve after the cease-fire went into effect, it’s generally considered to be holding.All sides agree that Russia is supporting the separatists, something a NATO official stressed in responding to German frustrations, saying that there’s “broad agreement on the overall situation.”But Germans and other Europeans are concerned that U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove – the NATO supreme allied commander, Europe – and Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for Europe, have been exaggerating the extent of Russian involvement in the conflict.Of particular concern are Breedlove’s figures on the numbers of troops and tanks Russia reportedly has transferred to Ukraine. The numbers Breedlove offers are routinely higher than those of other intelligence agencies, and Europeans fear he’s playing to an American audience, which they think doesn’t advance peace efforts.
  • Der Spiegel reported that the first example came early in the conflict, when Breedlove announced that Russia had massed 40,000 troops at the Ukrainian border, and he called the situation “incredibly alarming.” Other NATO nations detected far fewer troops – some said fewer than 20,000 – and ruled out an invasion, saying the “composition and equipment” of the forces were “not appropriate for an invasion or attack,” according to Der Spiegel.Numerous German news reports also have noted a vast difference between the number of Russian troops that European NATO members have estimated are in Ukraine’s conflicted Donbas region and what American NATO commanders have announced. It’s 600, according to the Europeans, versus the 12,000 to 20,000 estimated by U.S. commanders.Last month, Ukrainian military officials said the Russians had moved 50 tanks and dozens of rocket launchers across the border near Luhansk, and a U.S. general said Russian troops had directly interfered in the battles. But German intelligence could verify only that a few armored vehicles had been moved.According to German media reports, a top-level German government official worried that “partly incorrect claims or exaggerated claims could gamble away trust for the entire West.”
  • Paul Merrell on 15 Mar 15
     
    McClatchy MSM, no less, reporting accusations that neocon State Dept. official Victoria Nuland USAF General Philip Breedlove --- NATO Supreme Commander --- are issuing "dangerous propaganda" about Russian involvement in the Ukraine War.   
Paul Merrell

Israeli ambassador to U.S. says IDF deserves Nobel Peace Prize for "unimaginable restra... - 0 views

www.salon.com/...ize_for_unimaginable_restraint

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza ambassador chutzpah

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Speaking at this year’s Christians United for Israel gala, Israeli ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer claimed that, contrary to what human rights groups and the United Nations have claimed, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has conducted its assault on Hamas in Gaza with such caution and care for civilian lives that it deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for “unimaginable restraint.”“Some are shamelessly accusing Israel of genocide and would put us in the dock for war crimes,” Dermer said during a speech that was repeatedly interrupted by protestors. “But the truth is that the Israeli Defense Forces should be given the Nobel Peace Prize … for fighting with unimaginable restraint.”
  • “[N]o one should accept criticism of Israel for acting with restraint that has not been shown and would not be shown by any nation on Earth,” Dermer continued. “I especially will not tolerate criticism of my country at a time when Israeli soldiers are dying so that innocent Palestinians can live.”After claiming that the IDF was risking Israeli lives in order to protect “innocent Palestinians,” Dermer noted that Israel “did not have to send its soldiers into many of the places they are fighting today” and could have instead “bombed from the air all the buildings that were being used by fighters to store and fire weapons” (after giving civilians living in the area a warning).Dermer went on to rail against human rights organizations and other international bodies that have criticized Israel for its attack on Gaza. “They attack the good. They attack Israel for its legitimate actions of self-defense,” Dermer said, before arguing that these groups and those like them are objectively aiding Hamas by criticizing Israel.
Paul Merrell

Public Offers Support for Obama's Iraq Intervention « LobeLog.com - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/t-for-obamas-iraq-intervention

war & peace Iraq U.S.-reinvasion polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Despite rising criticism of his foreign policy — even from his former secretary of state — President Barack Obama’s decision last week to carry out airstrikes against Islamic State militants in northern Iraq enjoys relatively strong public support, at least so far. Over half (54 percent) of respondents in a poll released here Monday by the Pew Research Center and USA Today said they approved of the airstrikes, which appear to have helped reverse some of the gains made by Islamic State fighters against Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces earlier this month.
  • Thirty-one percent said they disapproved of the strikes, while 15 percent of the 1,000 randomly selected respondents who took part in the survey, which was carried out between Thursday and Sunday, declined to give an opinion. The poll found major partisan differences, with self-described Republicans markedly more hawkish than Democrats or independents, although a majority of Democratic respondents said they also supported the airstrikes. However, a majority (57 percent) of Republicans said they were concerned that Obama was not prepared to go “far enough to stop” the Islamic State, while majorities of Democrats (62 percent) and independents (56 percent) said they worried that he may go too far in re-inserting the military into Iraq three years after the last US combat troops were withdrawn. Overall, 51 percent of respondents expressed the latter fear. That concern was felt particularly strongly by younger respondents, members of the so-called “millennial” generation, whose foreign policy views have tended to be far more skeptical of the effectiveness of military force than those of other generational groups, according to a number of polls that have been released over the past two years.
  • The initial success of the US air campaign — 68 airstrikes have been carried out to date, according to Washington’s Central Command (CentCom) — follows Thursday’s resignation of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a critical step, in the administration’s view, toward establishing a less-sectarian government capable of reaching out to disaffected Sunnis who have joined or cooperated with the Islamic State without necessarily sharing the group’s extreme and violent ideology.
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  • Thus, while respondents over the age of 65 were roughly equally split between those who expressed concern about Obama doing too little or going too far, more than two-thirds of millennials said they were worried about the US becoming too involved in Iraq, while only 21 percent voiced the opposing view.
  • Even some in his own party, including, most recently, his former secretary of state and the presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, have complained that he should have provided more support to “moderate” factions in Syria’s insurgency earlier in that country’s civil war and that he was too passive for too long in responding to the Islamic State’s advances in al-Anbar province earlier this year. But the latest survey, as most others released over the past year, suggest that Obama’s caution reflects the public mood, and especially the sentiments of younger voters, as well as the Democratic Party’s core constituencies.
  • In addition to asking whether they feared Obama would either do too much or too little in countering the Islamic State in Iraq, the pollsters asked respondents whether they thought the “U.S. has a responsibility to do something about the violence in Iraq.” Overall, 44 percent answered affirmatively, while 41 percent said no, and 15 percent said they didn’t know. Those results marked a major change from when the same question was posed in July. At that time 39 percent said yes, but a 55-percent majority answered in the negative, and six percent said they didn’t know. While the change may be attributed to the sense of increased threat posed by the Islamic State to the US itself, much of the news media coverage since the beginning of August focused on the plight of minority communities, especially Christians and Yazidis, threatened by the Islamic State’s latest campaign. The percentage of respondents who believe the US has a responsibility to take action in Iraq is significantly higher than the percentages that took the same position when the US intervened in Libya and when Obama said he was prepared to conduct military action against Syria after the chemical attacks. Detailed surveys about foreign policy attitudes conducted over the past decade have suggested that US respondents are most likely to favor unilateral military action in cases where it could prevent genocide or mass killings.
Paul Merrell

Goldberg Sees Crisis in US-Israel Ties, Blames Bibi « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/-in-us-israel-ties-blames-bibi

U.S.-foreign-policy Mideast Israel-divorce

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • While everyone ritually insists that the bonds between Israel and the United States are “unbreakable,” yesterday’s analysis by Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here,” argues that they’re currently under unprecedented strain and that the fault lies mainly with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The analysis argues further that, post-November, the Obama administration may no longer be inclined to protect Israel (at least to the same pathetic extent) at the UN Security Council and may even be willing to go a step further by presenting “a public full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu’s horror, would based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.” I’m not a big fan of Goldberg, but this analysis is definitely worth a read if for no other reason than his voice is a very important one in the US Jewish community, including among the right-wing leadership of its major national organizations. And he essentially gives over most of the article—in a way that suggests he shares their views—to anonymous administration officials who have clearly grown entirely contemptuous of the Israeli leader, calling him, among other names, “chickenshit.” Goldberg himself describes the Netanyahu government’s policy toward Palestinians as being “disconnected from reality” and stresses what he calls the “unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior.” It seems that his chief envoy and confidante here, Ron Dermer, is not doing a good job.
  • Of particular interest to readers of this blog, however, are Goldberg’s observations about how the administration views Bibi’s bluster about Iran: The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.” This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.
  • Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. This is a significant passage. It suggests that the administration has decided to essentially ignore Netanyahu and his threats to take unilateral action, including when they are conveyed by members of Congress close to the Israel lobby. It also suggests strongly that the administration will not back up Israel if it should indeed undertake a strike of its own in hopes that Washington would be dragged into to finishing the job.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Goldberg’s analysis about the state of the relationship is, in some ways, mirrored by Bret Stephens’s weekly “Global View” column in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, “Bibi and Barack on the Rocks,” although he, entirely predictably given his pro-settler worldview, sees Bibi as the wronged party. And, unlike Goldberg, he doesn’t see the US as the more powerful. Noting how Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon was snubbed by senior administration officials with whom he requested to meet, Stephens, a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, writes: The administration also seems to have forgotten that two can play the game. Two days after the Yaalon snub, the Israeli government announced the construction of 1,000 new housing units in so-called East Jerusalem, including 600 new units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood that was the subject of a 2010 row with Joe Biden. Happy now, Mr. Vice President? Stephens calls for a “trial separation” by the two countries in which Israel will give up its $3 billion dollar/year US aid package to free itself from US interference
  • The administration likes to make much of the $3 billion a year it provides Israel (or, at least, U.S. defense contractors) in military aid, but that’s now less than 1% of Israeli GDP. Like some boorish husband of yore fond of boasting that he brings home the bacon, the administration thinks it’s the senior partner in the marriage. Except this wife can now pay her own bills. And she never ate bacon to begin with. It’s time for some time away. Israel needs to look after its own immediate interests without the incessant interventions of an overbearing partner. The administration needs to learn that it had better act like a friend if it wants to keep a friend. It isn’t as if it has many friends left. This is precisely where Goldberg believes current Israeli policy is leading it.
  • Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: “The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.” …But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.”
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Oct 14
     
    If Goldberg and Stephens have it right, a U.S./Israel divorce might just spell the end of the appartheid state of Israel. It is only the U.S. veto on the U.N. Security Council that has enabled Israel to continue to treat Palestinians with impunity and to retain control of and colonize the territory it seized in the 1967 war that it launched. (The right to acquire territory by conquest was abolished by the U.N. Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention in the late 1940s.)  Israel is now a pariah state internationally, with only the U.S., Canada, and a few minor island nations dependent on the U.S. still voting for Israel even in the U.N. General Council. Moreover, the U.S. public is fed up with the foreign wars the U.S. has been waging in the Mideast in aid of Israel's empirical goal of destabilizing and Balkanizing Israel's Arab neighbors. A U.S./Israel divorce would almost certainly bring down Netanyahu's government. On the other hand, the Obama Administration's relationship with Israel has been a departure from the historical norm in the U.S. and Obama's likely successor, Hillary Clinton, has long been much more friendly with the Israel Lobby than Obama.  Many close observers believe that Netanyahu's strategy with Obama has been to wait until Obama is out of office, betting that his successor will be much more amenable to Bibi's desires. But with Bernie Sanders hat in the ring for Auction 2016 and possibly Elizabeth Warren as well, it's conceivable that issues they raise might push Hillary to adopt a less Israel-friendly stance. But on yet another hand, Obama's stance on ISIL is entirely consistent with Israel's longstanding goal of regime change in Syria and Balkanization of Iraq into three nations along ethnic/religious lines, an independent  Kurdistan in the north, a Shia-stan in the South, and a Sunni state in the middle. Note in this regard Obama's strategy of arming "moderate" Syrians only to defend territory ISIL has not yet seized, then to bring down t
Paul Merrell

Secret program at secret Guantánamo prison hears everything | Miami Herald - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...article44541324.html

surveillance state GITMO-detainees military-tribunal fair-trial

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • A secret Defense Department program provides unfettered eavesdropping on the accused terrorists imprisoned at Guantánamo’s clandestine Camp 7 lockup, recently released war court documents show.Army Col. James L. Pohl, the judge in 9/11 trial, discovered the existence of the secret surveillance program during a recent war court hearing. Little is publicly known about the program, not even its unclassified two-word nickname.
  • The disclosure of pervasive eavesdropping at Guantánamo’s lockup for 14 former CIA prisoners comes in before-and-after documents released by the court from the recent Oct. 19-30 pretrial hearings in the death-penalty case of five men accused of orchestrating the hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.At issue was accused 9/11 plotter Walid bin Attash’s request for guidance on how he could function as his own attorney. Bin Attash is a Yemeni in his mid-30s who is accused of training some of the hijackers. “You must assume anything you say in Camp 7 is not confidential and will be disclosed to the U.S. Government,” warns an Oct. 23 draft of the advisory, crafted after the judge was informed of the covert program. “Only when you are in Echo 2 will anything you say be covered by the attorney-client privilege.”An Oct. 20 draft of the advisory omits those lines.
  • This is not the first time in the proceedings that a surveillance program caught Pohl by surprise. In January 2013, he ordered the CIA to unplug a button that allowed an unseen observer to cut the court’s audio feed to the public. Perhaps ironically, the lone site the judge considers safe for consultative trial preparation — the Camp Echo compound of wooden huts, each containing a cell — at one time had covert recording devices that looked like smoke detectors. The judge ordered them disabled in February 2013.Attorney Dror Ladin of the American Civil Liberties Union, who was an observer at the Guantánamo hearings last month, said the apparent disclosure of “pervasive surveillance at Camp 7” is the latest issue to challenge the possibility of a fair trial.“It is shocking that for years neither defense counsel nor the judge were made aware that the government was capturing everything said aloud by the detainees there,” he said Thursday. It also adds to mounting questions of “how these military commissions can produce a fair result,” said Ladin, especially if one of the men represents himself. “These are detainees who really can’t see the evidence against them and simultaneously have been provided no rehabilitation services for the torture they suffered for years. It would be astonishing if any of them could craft a fair defense for capital charges.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A defense attorney in another case said the prosecution wants to use a surreptitiously recorded conversation between two Camp 7 captives against an alleged al-Qaida commander. And in 2012 the journalist Daniel Klaidman wrote in his book “Kill or Capture” that the U.S. government had recordings made in a Guantánamo prison recreation yard of the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed talking about evidence that could be used against him.The latest disclosure comes at a time of decreasing transparency at the war court.On Oct. 29, the judge held a 13-minute secret session without advanced notice to the public. A day later the judge wrote in a three-page ruling that he closed the court at the request of “the Government” — war-court-speak for the prosecution — to protect state secrets whose disclosure “could result in grave danger to national security.”Pohl also ordered the court to issue a censored transcript of the parts the excluded public and accused would be allowed to see. No transcript has been released.Then the next day, Oct. 30, the judge held a daylong, open hearing on a restraining order he issued forbidding female guards from touching the 9/11 accused when they are being taken to court or legal meetings. The judge’s order has outraged members of Congress and the Pentagon brass.
  • In that public court hearing, soldiers called as witnesses from the prison discussed staffing patterns at Camp 7. Normally the Pentagon releases transcripts of open hearings the same day. Unusually, the court has not yet released the Oct. 30 transcript. A Pentagon spokesman suggested Thursday — 13 days after the open court hearing — that somebody was scrubbing the transcript of information already made public. “The security review of the Oct. 30 transcript remains ongoing,” said Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross. “We will provide an update once additional information becomes available.”Much of the October session focused on bin Attash’s question about how he’d act as his own lawyer in a system that does not let the accused terrorist see classified information in the case. The judge and attorneys devoted days to designing a script Pohl would read to any accused 9/11 terrorist who tries to take charge of his defense — and spent a full afternoon huddling in a closed meeting on the secret program.
  • In it, Pohl made clear that he never intended to let bin Attash dismiss his Pentagon-paid defense attorneys — Chicago criminal defense attorney Cheryl Bormann and Air Force Maj. Michael Schwartz. Instead, the script shows Pohl planned to appoint Bormann and Schwartz as “standby counsel” the judge could activate to carry out cross-examination of certain witnesses who might have “particular sensitivities” to being questioned by the alleged terrorist.“If you are represented by lawyers, then it is the lawyers, and not you, who will conduct the defense,” the warning says. “Correspondingly, if you represent yourself, you will be able to perform the lawyer’s core functions, but you will not necessarily be allowed to direct special appearances by counsel when it is convenient to you.”The language suggests a far more limited role by the American lawyers than those carried out in an aborted attempt to hold the Sept. 11 trial during the Bush administration. In those proceedings, alleged 9/11 terrorists serving as their own lawyer regularly had standby counsel write and argue motions in court.The script also envisions a scenario in which an accused 9/11 plotter serving as his own lawyer becomes unruly, disruptive or disobedient rather than respect “the dignity of the courtroom.” In such a case, the judge said he could deal with “obstructionist misconduct” by putting “physical restraints” on bin Attash or ejecting him from the court.Bin Attash, for his part, has not been noticeably disruptive across years of pretrial proceedings. An amputee, he was brought to his May 5, 2012 arraignment in a Guantánamo prison restraint chair routinely used for forced-feeding of hunger strikers — with guards carrying his prosthetic leg separately.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15
     
    It's long past time to recognize that the military cannot provide a fair trial for GITMOI detainees, transfer them to the U.S., and try them in a civilian Article II court. If this kind of crap were going down before an Article II judge, those conducting the surveillance would be sitting in jail. 
Paul Merrell

Russia dramatically increases her anti-Daesh operations | The Vineyard of the Saker - 1 views

thesaker.is/ases-her-anti-daesh-operations

war & peace Syria Russia air-support ISIL

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Just has I had been predicting for a couple of weeks, Russia did dramatically increase the pace of her anti-Daesh operations. First, Russia has used all her most powerful long-range aviation bombers (Tu-22M3, Tu-95MC and even Tu-160) to strike Daesh targets with cruise missiles and gravity bombs. 
  • Second, Russia has announced that 25 long range bombers will be fully allocated to the anti-Daesh campaign. Third, the Russian military has announced that another 37 aircraft will be send to reinforce the Russian contingent in Syria (including the most advanced aircraft in the Russian inventory, the SU-34). The combination of these long-range bombers from Russia and additional 37 aircraft in Syria will more than double the strike potential of the Russian military against Daesh.  Thus, this is a major expansion of Russian operations against Daesh. Finally, Putin has declared that he has ordered the Russian naval task force to ‘cooperate’ with the French naval task force lead by the aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle.  What better way to make sure that he French don’t “accidentally” strike the “wrong” targets than to fully “cooperate” with them?
Paul Merrell

Putin orders military to take tough action against threats in Syria - MIDEAST - 0 views

www.hurriyetdailynews.com/against-threats-in-syria-.aspx

war & peace Syria Russia Putin hardball

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Sub Categories: » HOMEPAGE / WORLD/ MIDEASTSaturday,December 12 2015, Your time is 1:49:10 AMMIDEAST >Putin orders military to take tough action against threats in Syria MOSCOW - Agence France-PressePrint Page Send to friend » Share on FacebookRussian President Vladimir Putin addresses the audience during an annual meeting at the Defence Ministry in Moscow, Russia, December 11, 2015. REUTERS PhotoPresident Vladimir Putin on Dec. 11 ordered his forces in Syria to take tough action against any threats, speaking two weeks after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane in the war-torn country."I order you to act as tough as possible," he told a defence meeting in televised remarks.     "Any targets threatening the Russian grouping or our land infrastructure should be immediately destroyed."   "I would like to warn those who would once again try to organise some sort of provocations against our servicemen," he said in a thinly veiled threat to Ankara.
  • Putin's call for a tougher military response is also likely to cause concern among monitors who have repeatedly accused Russia of conducting an indiscriminate bombing campaign and killing civilians in Syria.   Russia has been carrying out air strikes in the war-ravaged nation at the request of President Bashar al-Assad since the end of September, while a US-led coalition is conducting its own campaign targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).      Earlier this week Russia said it hit IS targets with missiles fired from a submarine in the Mediterranean for the first time since launching the campaign on September 30.     Putin rejected claims that Russia is using the Syrian campaign, which also saw the military fire off cruise missiles from warships in the Caspean Sea, to showcase its top weapons to the West.   "Our actions there are not guided by some unclear abstract geopolitical interests, nor are they guided by a desire to practice and test new weapons systems which is of course important in itself," Putin said at the defence meeting.   "The most important thing is not this. The most important thing is to prevent the threat to Russia itself."   Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, for his part, said ISIL jihadists now control 70 percent of Syrian territory, putting their number at 60,000.
Paul Merrell

Turkey Invaded Syria, Captured Tal Ziyab - 0 views

southfront.org/vaded-syria-captured-tal-ziyab

war & peace Turkey Syria invasion

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The Turkish army invaded the Syrian territory and took control of the hill Tal Ziyab. Troops crossed the border accompanied by bulldozers. After occupying the high ground (50 meters), the Turkish force built fortifications. Also, 3 battle tanks, 2 armored infantry fighting vehicles and several SUVs were deployed there. Considering the location of Tal Ziyab, Turkey wants to cover the smuggling route of the Syrian oil which is taken out of the ISIS-controlled Raqqa.
  • It seems that Ankara has decided to act much more aggresively after the Ministry of Defense of Russia were released pictures and videos of oil delivery convoys at the border between Syria and Turkey. We remember, on Nov. 24, the Turkish Air Force shot down Russian Su-24 in Syria. Discussing the incident Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the Su-24 was shot down by Turkey to protect oil deliveries of the ISIS terrorist group.
Paul Merrell

Canada withdrawing fighter jets from Iraq, Syria, Trudeau tells Obama - 0 views

www.msn.com/...ar-BBmgrZg

war & peace ISIL Canada Iraq Syria air-force-withdrawal

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Canada's prime minister-elect Justin Trudeau said Tuesday he told US President Barack Obama that Canadian fighter jets would withdraw from fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.But he gave no timeline."About an hour ago I spoke with President Obama," Trudeau told a press conference.
  • While Canada remains "a strong member of the coalition against ISIL," Trudeau said he made clear to the US leader "the commitments I have made around ending the combat mission."Canada last year deployed CF-18 fighter jets to the region until March 2016, as well as about 70 special forces troops to train Kurds in northern Iraq.During the campaign, Trudeau pledged to bring home the fighter jets and end its combat mission. But he vowed to keep military trainers in place.His new Liberal government will be "moving forward with our campaign commitments in a responsible fashion," Trudeau said. "We want to ensure that the transition is done in an orderly fashion."
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15
     
    Canada's new prime minister is wasting no time in winding down Canadian involvement in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq and Syria. 
Paul Merrell

Lawsuit for 2010 Gaza Flotilla Deaths Filed in US Court Against former Israeli Prime Mi... - 0 views

warisacrime.org/...r-israeli-prime-minister-ehud-

war & peace Israel Mavi-Marmara litigation Barak war crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A lawsuit in the United States has been filed against former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak for his role in the 2010 Israeli commando attack upon the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which 8 Turkish citizens and one American citizen were executed by Israeli forces and over fifty Turkish passengers were wounded.  The trial will be the first time a former Israeli Prime Minister will be put on trial for reasons of international terrorism. The family of Furkan Doğan, the American citizen who was assassinated in the attack, filed the lawsuit in the Central District Court of California and notice of the trial was handed to Barak last night, October 20, in Los Angeles when he spoke in the Distinguished Speaker series of Southern California  (http://speakersla.com/speakers/ehud-barak/).  According to a press release (http://mavi-marmara.ihh.org.tr/en/main/news/0/case-opened-against-former-israeli-pm-ehud-ba/2969) from the Turkish International Humanitarian organization that sponsored the Mavi Marmara ship,  charges against Barak include his planning and leadership in the murder of Furkan Doğan and others in international waters, Willful killing, attempted willful killing, intentionally causing serious injury to body or health, international terrorism, plundering, intentionally causing damage to property, restriction of people's freedom and instigating violent crimes. 
  • American attorneys Hydee Dijsktal and Dan Stormer, the British law firm, Stoke & White, British Professor Dr. Geoffrey Nice and UK attorney Rodney Dixon are the legal team for the Dogan family. Ehud Barak was almost arrested in France in 2010 when he went to a weapons expo. by hopping off the plane last minute with the trial opened against him by the wives of martyrs in France. Other legal proceedings against Barak and other senior members of the Israeli government are in the works.  In 2010 in France, the widows of Cevdet Kılıçlar and Necdet Yıldırım, two others executed by Israeli commandos, brought a lawsuit against Barak which he evaded when he was informed of the French lawsuit as he was about to deplane in Paris to attend a weapons expo in France. In the case brought in the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICC prosecutor has ruled that the attack by Israeli commandos upon the Mavi Marmara in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a war crime. Additionally, the 7th High Criminal Court in Istanbul, Turkey has issued a “red notice” for the arrest of four senior Israeli government officials in a lawsuit filed in Turkey http://www.incanews.net/en/turkey/313/turkish-court-orders-arrest-of-4-israeli-officials . The Israeli officials named by the court are Israel's former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former navy chief Eliezer Marom, former military intelligence head Amos Yadlin and former air force intelligence chief Avishai Levy.
  • Due to political considerations dealing with the State of Israel, the Ministry of Justice of Turkey has delayed sending to Interpol the “red notice” much to the consternation of those seeking justice.
Paul Merrell

The Anthrax Files: US Forces Conducted Multiple Secret Anthrax Experiments in South Kor... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...rax-experiments-in-south-korea

war & peace U.S.-military WMD anthrax bubonic-plague

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The initial admission by the Department of Defense that one sample of  live anthrax was inadvertently sent to  Osan Air Base in South Korea has now been revealed  to be grossly inaccurate.
  • According to a recent report by a US/South Korea joint working group, a US military defense laboratory at Dugway Proving Grounds mailed anthrax to South Korea at least fifteen times prior to the previously acknowledged March, 2015 delivery. These other anthrax samples were delivered to Yongsan Garrison, in central South Korea, between 2009 and 2014.  In addition, a 1-milliliter sample of the Yersinia pestis bacterium (which can cause the bubonic plague) was sent along with the anthrax to Osan.
  • It has recently come to light that the Pentagon FedExed live anthrax to all fifty states and to nine foreign countries. The Department of Defense has declared that errors in the process of inactivating the anthrax resulted in the inadvertence wherein live anthrax was FedExed to foreign and domestic laboratories. 
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • A former member of the military disagrees with the purported “inadvertence” of the live anthrax mailing. Speaking under terms of confidentiality, a source with former military connections had this to say about the US’s biological weapons program:  “…weaponizing bio & chem materials is in full swing at government research labs (Dugway & Tooele being one of the biggest – as I witnessed back in the late 1980’s). The obvious thing is that they could not have shipped out such quantities with the level of relevant ease if they were not in full swing.”
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Dec 15
     
    The U.S. is a party to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction. http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/bwc But the U.S. "bugs and gas boys" have a long history of ignoring the Convention, which unfortunately has no enforcement provisions. 
Paul Merrell

US plans to use fake chemical weapons attack to strike Syria - Russian MoD - RT World News - 0 views

www.rt.com/...436933-us-fake-attack-syria

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy WMD Syria false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 18 - No Cached
  • The US may have plans to use a fake chemical attack in Syria to hit government forces with airstrikes, the Russian Defense Ministry has said. Washington is already building up strike capability in the Middle East, it said. The warning comes a day after the Russian military said it had information about a looming provocation in Syria’s Idlib governorate, which would involve a staged chemical weapons attack. The US earlier warned it would respond to a chemical weapons attack by Syrian government forces with retaliatory strikes, which would be stronger than those conducted by the US, the UK and France in April.
  • In a statement published on Monday, the Russian MoD said it noted the deployment to the Mediterranean last weekend of the missile destroyer USS Ross carrying 28 Tomahawk cruise missiles on board. It came after a similar move of the USS The Sullivans to the Persian Gulf and the rebasing of a B-1B Lancer strategic bomber to an air base in Qatar. The Russian ministry said the “preparations are the latest evidence of the US intention to use the” expected provocation.The statement reiterated that the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham militant group, previously known as Al-Nusra Front, was preparing a staged chlorine attack in a city in Idlib. It alleged that a group of jihadists, trained in the handling of chemical weapons by the British private military contractor Olive Group, has already arrived in Jisr al-Shughur. The group will “stage decontamination of victims of a staged chemical weapons attack posing as members of the notorious White Helmets group,” the ministry claimed.“The implementation of this provocation, which is being conducted with the assistance of the British intelligence services, is meant to serve as the latest pretext for the US, Britain and France to deliver a missile strike against state and economic facilities in Syria,” said General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry.On August 22, US National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that “if the Syrian regime uses chemical weapons, we will respond very strongly and they really ought to think about this a long time.”
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