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Paul Merrell

Eurasian emporium or nuclear war?: Pepe Escobar | Asia Times - 0 views

  • A high-level European diplomatic source has confirmed to Asia Times that German chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has vigorously approached Beijing in an effort to disrupt its multi-front strategic partnership with Russia. Beijing won’t necessarily listen to this political gesture from Berlin, as China is tuning the strings on its pan-Eurasian New Silk Road project, which implies close trade/commerce/business ties with both Germany and Russia. The German gambit reveals yet more pressure by hawkish sectors of the U.S. government who are intent on targeting and encircling Russia. For all the talk about Merkel’s outrage over the U.S. National Security Agency’s tapping shenanigans, the chancellor walks Washington’s walk.  Real “outrage” means nothing unless she unilaterally ends sanctions on Russia. In the absence of such a response by Merkel, we’re in the realm of good guy-bad guy negotiating tactics.
  • The bottom line is that Washington cannot possibly tolerate a close Germany-Russia trade/political relationship, as it directly threatens its hegemony in the Empire of Chaos. Thus, the whole Ukraine tragedy has absolutely nothing to do with human rights or the sanctity of borders. NATO ripped Kosovo away from Yugoslavia-Serbia without even bothering to hold a vote, such as the one that took place in Crimea.
  • In parallel, another fascinating gambit is developing. Some sectors of U.S. Think Tankland – with their cozy CIA ties – are now hedging their bets about Cold War 2.0, out of fear that they have misjudged what really happens on the geopolitical chessboard. I’ve just returned from Moscow, and there’s a feeling the Federal Security Bureau and Russian military intelligence are increasingly fed up with the endless stream of Washington/NATO provocations – from the Baltics to Central Asia, from Poland to Romania, from Azerbaijan to Turkey. This is an extensive but still only partial summary of what’s seen all across Russia as an existential threat: Washington/NATO’s intent to block Russia’s Eurasian trade and development; destroy its defense perimeter; and entice it into a shooting war. A shooting war is not exactly a brilliant idea. Russia’s S-500 anti-missile missiles and anti-aircraft missiles can intercept any existing ICBM, cruise missile or aircraft. S-500s travel at 15,480 miles an hour; reach an altitude of 115 miles; travel horizontally 2,174 miles; and can intercept up to ten incoming missiles. They simply cannot be stopped by any American anti-missile system.
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  • Some on the U.S. side say  the  S-500 system is being rolled out in a crash program, as an American intel source told Asia Times. There’s been no Russian confirmation. Officially, Moscow says the system is slated to be rolled out in 2017. End result, now or later: it will seal Russian airspace. It’s easy to draw the necessary conclusions. That makes the Obama administration’s “policy” of promoting war hysteria, coupled with unleashing a sanction, ruble and oil war against Russia, the work of a bunch of sub-zoology specimens. Some adults in the EU have already seen the writing on the (nuclear) wall. NATO’s conventional defenses are a joke. Any military buildup – as it’s happening now – is also a joke, as it could be demolished by the 5,000 tactical nuclear weapons Moscow would be able to use.
  • Of course it takes time to turn the current Cold War 2.0 mindset around, but there are indications the Masters of the Universe are listening – as this essay shows. Call it the first (public) break in the ice. Let’s assume Russia decided to mobilize five million troops, and switch to military production. The “West” would back down to an entente cordiale in a flash. And let’s assume Moscow decided to confiscate what remains of dodgy oligarch wealth. Vladimir Putin’s approval rate – which is not exactly shabby as it stands – would soar to at least 98%. Putin has been quite restrained so far. And still his childishly hysterical demonization persists. It’s a non-stop escalation scenario. Color revolutions. The Maidan coup. Sanctions; “evil” Hitler/Putin; Ukraine to enter NATO; NATO bases all over. And yet reality – as in the Crimean counter coup, and the battlefield victories by the armies of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk – has derailed the most elaborate U.S. State Department/NATO plans. On top of it Merkel and France’s Francois Hollande were forced into an entente cordiale with Russia – on Minsk 2 – because they knew that would be the only way to stop Washington from further weaponizing Kiev.
  • Putin is essentially committed to a very complex preservation/flowering process of Russia’s history and culture, with overtones of pan-Slavism and Eurasianism. Comparing him to Hitler does not even qualify as a kindergarten prank. Yet don’t expect Washington neo-cons to understand Russian history or culture. Most of them would not even survive a Q&A on their beloved heroes Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt. Moreover, their anti-intellectualism and exceptionalist arrogance creates only a privileged space for undiluted bullying. A U.S. academic, one of my sources, sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi copied to a notorious neo-con, the husband of Victoria, the Queen of Nulandistan. Here’s the neo-con’s response, via his Brookings Institution email: “Why don’t you go (expletive deleted)  yourself?” Yet another graphic case of husband and wife deserving each other.
  • At least there seem to be sound IQs in the Beltway driven to combat the neo-con cell inside the State Department, the neo-con infested editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, an array of think tanks, and of course NATO, whose current military leader, Gen. Breedlove/Breedhate, is working hard on his post-mod impersonation of Dr. Strangelove. Russian “aggression” is a myth. Moscow’s strategy, so far, has been pure self-defense. Moscow in a flash will strongly advance a strategic cooperation with the West if the West understands Russia’s security interests. If those are violated – as in provoking the bear – the bear will respond. A minimum understanding of history reveals that the bear knows one or two things about enduring suffering. It simply won’t collapse – or melt away.
  • Meanwhile, another myth has also been debunked: That sanctions would badly hurt Russia’s exports and trade surpluses. Of course there was hurt, but bearable. Russia enjoys a wealth of raw materials and massive internal production capability – enough to meet the bulk of internal demand. So we’re back to the EU, Russia and China, and everyone in between, all joining the greatest trade emporium in history across the whole of Eurasia. That’s what Putin proposed in Germany a few years ago, and that’s what the Chinese are already doing. And what do the neo-cons propose? A nuclear war on European soil.
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    Merkel is in a poor position to break up Russia-China relations, having blown up the South Stream Pipeline project and playing the U.S. lapdog role on sanctions against Russia, which drove Russia into China's arms. China has been happily switching from Gulf Coast oil supply lines to Russian, given that the U.S. is busily blowing up the Middle East. Moreover, neither Merkel nor the Saudis bring anything to the China de-dollarization play while Russia does.   Follow the link from "This" to see what has Pepe Escobar so freaked out. The U.S. War Party is going nuts with their Cold War 2.0. 
Paul Merrell

Bowe Bergdahl to Face Court-Martial on Desertion Charges - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A top Army commander on Monday ordered that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion and endangering troops stemming from his decision to leave his outpost in 2009, a move that prompted a huge manhunt in the wilds of eastern Afghanistan and landed him in nearly five years of harsh Taliban captivity. The decision by Gen. Robert B. Abrams, head of Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., means that Sergeant Bergdahl, 29, faces a possible life sentence. That is a far more serious penalty than had been recommended by the Army’s investigating officer, who testified at the sergeant’s preliminary hearing in September that prison would be “inappropriate.”
  • According to Sergeant Bergdahl’s defense lawyers, the Army lawyer who presided over the preliminary hearing also recommended that he face neither jail time nor a punitive discharge and that he go before an intermediate tribunal known as a “special court-martial,” where the most severe penalty possible would be a year of confinement.
  • Monday’s decision rejecting that recommendation means that Sergeant Bergdahl now faces a maximum five-year penalty if ultimately convicted by a military jury of desertion, as well as potential life imprisonment on the more serious charge of misbehavior before the enemy, which in this case means endangering the troops who were sent to search for him after he disappeared.Sergeant Bergdahl has been the focus of attacks by Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign, and it is far from clear that General Abrams’s decision will temper their criticisms.Donald J. Trump, for one, has called the sergeant a “traitor” who should be executed, while Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has vowed to hold hearings if the sergeant is not punished.
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  • Last week, House Republicans issued a report portraying as reckless and illegal Mr. Obama’s decision in May 2014 to swap Sergeant Bergdahl for five Taliban detainees who were being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
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    A shame. There's a strong appearance that politics is playing a strong role in the military decision to prosecute Bergdahl. But 5 years in captivity would seem to be punishment enough to me.
Paul Merrell

US Commander: 'US Troops Prepared to Die for Israel' in War Against Syria, Hezbollah | ... - 0 views

  • Last Sunday, the largest joint military exercise between the United States and Israel began with little fanfare. The war game, dubbed “Operation Juniper Cobra,” has been a regular occurrence for years, though it has consistently grown in size and scope. Now, however, this year’s 12-day exercise brings a portent of conflict unlike those of its predecessors.
  • Israel has also been preparing for a conflict on the embattled Gaza strip, which – owing to the effects of Israel’s illegal blockade and the devastation wrought by past wars – is set to be entirely uninhabitable by 2020. Reports have quoted officials of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which governs the Gaza strip, as saying that they place the chances of a new war with Israel in 2018 “at 95 percent” and that war games, like Operation Juniper Cobra, were likely to be used to plan or even initiate such a conflict. This concern was echoed by IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot, who stated that another Israeli invasion of Gaza, home to 1.8 million people, was “likely” to occur this year. Eizenkot ironically framed the imminent invasion as a way to “prevent a humanitarian collapse” in Gaza.
  • However, this year’s “Juniper Cobra” is unique for several reasons. The Post reported on Thursday that the drill, set to end on March 15, was not only the largest joint U.S.-Israeli air defense exercise to ever happen but it was also simulating a battle “on three fronts.” In other words, Israel and the U.S. are jointly simulating a war with Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine – namely, the Gaza strip – simultaneously. What makes this last part so concerning are Israel’s recent statements and other preparations for war with all three nations, making “Juniper Cobra” anything but a “routine” drill. It is instead yet another preparation for a massive regional conflict, suggesting that such a conflict could be only a matter of months away.
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  • Beyond the fact that Israel is preparing to go to war with several countries simultaneously is the fact that U.S. ground troops are now “prepared to die for the Jewish state,” according to U.S. Third Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Richard Clark. “We are ready to commit to the defense of Israel and anytime we get involved in a kinetic fight there is always the risk that there will be casualties. But we accept that, as in every conflict we train for and enter, there is always that possibility,” Clark told the Post. However, more troubling than the fact that U.S. troops stand ready to die at Israel’s behest was Clark’s assertion that Haimovitch would “probably” have the last word as to whether U.S. forces would join the IDF during war time. In other words, the IDF will decide whether or not U.S. troops become embroiled in the regional war for which Israel is preparing, not the United States. Indeed, Haimovitch buoyed Clark’s words, stating that: “I am sure once the order comes we will find here U.S. troops on the ground to be part of our deployment and team to defend the state of Israel.” Operation Juniper Cobra is not a routine exercise; it is a portent of a potentially devastating war for which Israel is actively preparing, a war likely to erupt within the coming months. In addition to overtly targeting civilians, these preparations for war — as Juniper Cobra shows — directly involve the United States military and give the war-bent Israeli government the power to decide whether or not American troops will be involved and to what extent.
Paul Merrell

Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA | Threat Level | Wired... - 0 views

  • In addition to constructing the Stellar Wind center, and then running the operation, secretive contractors with questionable histories and little oversight were also used to do the actual bugging of the entire U.S. telecommunications network. According to a former Verizon employee briefed on the program, Verint, owned by Comverse Technology, taps the communication lines at Verizon, which I first reported in my book The Shadow Factory in 2008. Verint did not return a call seeking comment, while Verizon said it does not comment on such matters. At AT&T the wiretapping rooms are powered by software and hardware from Narus, now owned by Boeing, a discovery made by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein in 2004. Narus did not return a call seeking comment. What is especially troubling is that both companies have had extensive ties to Israel, as well as links to that country’s intelligence service, a country with a long and aggressive history of spying on the U.S.
  • In fact, according to Binney, the advanced analytical and data mining software the NSA had developed for both its worldwide and international eavesdropping operations was secretly passed to Israel by a mid-level employee, apparently with close connections to the country. The employee, a technical director in the Operations Directorate, “who was a very strong supporter of Israel,” said Binney, “gave, unbeknownst to us, he gave the software that we had, doing these fast rates, to the Israelis.” Because of his position, it was something Binney should have been alerted to, but wasn’t. “In addition to being the technical director,” he said, “I was the chair of the TAP, it’s the Technical Advisory Panel, the foreign relations council. We’re supposed to know what all these foreign countries, technically what they’re doing…. They didn’t do this that way, it was under the table.” After discovering the secret transfer of the technology, Binney argued that the agency simply pass it to them officially, and in that way get something in return, such as access to communications terminals. “So we gave it to them for switches,” he said. “For access.”
  • But Binney now suspects that Israeli intelligence in turn passed the technology on to Israeli companies who operate in countries around the world, including the U.S. In return, the companies could act as extensions of Israeli intelligence and pass critical military, economic and diplomatic information back to them. “And then five years later, four or five years later, you see a Narus device,” he said. “I think there’s a connection there, we don’t know for sure.” Narus was formed in Israel in November 1997 by six Israelis with much of its money coming from Walden Israel, an Israeli venture capital company. Its founder and former chairman, Ori Cohen, once told Israel’s Fortune Magazine that his partners have done technology work for Israeli intelligence. And among the five founders was Stanislav Khirman, a husky, bearded Russian who had previously worked for Elta Systems, Inc. A division of Israel Aerospace Industries, Ltd., Elta specializes in developing advanced eavesdropping systems for Israeli defense and intelligence organizations. At Narus, Khirman became the chief technology officer.
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  • A few years ago, Narus boasted that it is “known for its ability to capture and collect data from the largest networks around the world.” The company says its equipment is capable of “providing unparalleled monitoring and intercept capabilities to service providers and government organizations around the world” and that “Anything that comes through [an Internet protocol network], we can record. We can reconstruct all of their e-mails, along with attachments, see what Web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their [Voice over Internet Protocol] calls.” Like Narus, Verint was founded by in Israel by Israelis, including Jacob “Kobi” Alexander, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Some 800 employees work for Verint, including 350 who are based in Israel, primarily working in research and development and operations, according to the Jerusalem Post. Among its products is STAR-GATE, which according to the company’s sales literature, lets “service providers … access communications on virtually any type of network, retain communication data for as long as required, and query and deliver content and data …” and was “[d]esigned to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent sessions, call data records, and communications.”
  • In a rare and candid admission to Forbes, Retired Brig. Gen. Hanan Gefen, a former commander of the highly secret Unit 8200, Israel’s NSA, noted his former organization’s influence on Comverse, which owns Verint, as well as other Israeli companies that dominate the U.S. eavesdropping and surveillance market. “Take NICE, Comverse and Check Point for example, three of the largest high-tech companies, which were all directly influenced by 8200 technology,” said Gefen. “Check Point was founded by Unit alumni. Comverse’s main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology.”
  • According to a former chief of Unit 8200, both the veterans of the group and much of the high-tech intelligence equipment they developed are now employed in high-tech firms around the world. “Cautious estimates indicate that in the past few years,” he told a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Ha’artez in 2000, “Unit 8200 veterans have set up some 30 to 40 high-tech companies, including 5 to 10 that were floated on Wall Street.” Referred to only as “Brigadier General B,” he added, “This correlation between serving in the intelligence Unit 8200 and starting successful high-tech companies is not coincidental: Many of the technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by Unit veterans.
  • Equally troubling is the issue of corruption. Kobi Alexander, the founder and former chairman of Verint, is now a fugitive, wanted by the FBI on nearly three dozen charges of fraud, theft, lying, bribery, money laundering and other crimes. And two of his top associates at Comverse, Chief Financial Officer David Kreinberg and former General Counsel William F. Sorin, were also indicted in the scheme and later pleaded guilty, with both serving time in prison and paying millions of dollars in fines and penalties. When asked about these contractors, the NSA declined to “verify the allegations made.”
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    So, allegedly a Zionist working in NSA passed NSA's telecommunications data mining software to Israel, was identified, but was never prosecuted. And the Verint CEO is now a fugitive from justice on charges of "fraud, theft, lying, money laundering, and other crimes." What's not to like in having this company processing all of our telephone metadata?
Paul Merrell

Hacked Emails Reveal NATO General Plotting Against Obama on Russia Policy - 0 views

  • Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, until recently the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, plotted in private to overcome President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate military tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine in 2014, according to apparently hacked emails from Breedlove’s Gmail account that were posted on a new website called DC Leaks. Obama defied political pressure from hawks in Congress and the military to provide lethal assistance to the Ukrainian government, fearing that doing so would increase the bloodshed and provide Russian President Vladimir Putin with the justification for deeper incursions into the country. Breedlove, during briefings to Congress, notably contradicted the Obama administration regarding the situation in Ukraine, leading to news stories about conflict between the general and Obama. But the leaked emails provide an even more dramatic picture of the intense back-channel lobbying for the Obama administration to begin a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. In a series of messages in 2014, Breedlove sought meetings with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, asking for advice on how to pressure the Obama administration to take a more aggressive posture toward Russia.
  • Breedlove attempted to influence the administration through several channels, emailing academics and retired military officials, including former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark, for assistance in building his case for supplying military assistance to Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed separatists.
  • Breedlove did not respond to a request for comment. He stepped down from his NATO leadership position in May and retired from service on Friday, July 1. Breedlove was a four-star Air Force general and served as the 17th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe starting on May 10, 2013. Phillip Karber, an academic who corresponded regularly with Breedlove — providing him with advice and intelligence on the Ukrainian crisis —  verified the authenticity of several of the emails in the leaked cache. He also told The Intercept that Breedlove confirmed to him that the general’s Gmail account was hacked and that the incident had been reported to the government.
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  • Der Spiegel reported that Breedlove “stunned” German leaders with a surprise announcement in 2015 claiming that pro-Russian separatists had “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of the most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” sent to Donbass, a center of the conflict. Breedlove’s numbers were “significantly higher” than the figures known to NATO intelligence agencies and seemed exaggerated to German officials. The announcement appeared to be a provocation designed to disrupt mediation efforts led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. In previous instances, German officials believed Breedlove overestimated Russian forces along the border with Ukraine by as many as 20,000 troops and found that the general had falsely claimed that several Russian military assets near the Ukrainian border were part of a special build-up in preparation for a large-scale invasion of the country. In fact, much of the Russian military equipment identified by Breedlove, the Germans said, had been stored there well before the revolution in Ukraine.
  • The emails, however, depict a desperate search by Breedlove to build his case for escalating the conflict, contacting colleagues and friends for intelligence to illustrate the Russian threat. Karber, who visited Ukrainian politicians and officials in Kiev on several occasions, sent frequent messages to Breedlove — “per your request,” he noted — regarding information he had received about separatist military forces and Russian troop movements. In several updates, Breedlove received military data sourced from Twitter and social media. Karber, the president of the Potomac Foundation, became the center of a related scandal last year when it was discovered that he had facilitated a meeting during which images of purported Russian forces in Ukraine were distributed to the office of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and were published by a neoconservative blog. The pictures turned out to be a deception; one supposed picture of Russian tanks in Ukraine was, in fact, an old photograph of Russian tanks in Ossetia during the war with Georgia.
  • The emails were released by D.C. Leaks, a database run by self-described “hacktivists” who are collecting the communications of elite stakeholders such as political parties, major politicians, political campaigns, and the military. The website currently has documents revealing some internal communications of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, among others.
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    Four-star general commanding NATO uses Gmail? He must have wanted his emails to be publicized.
Paul Merrell

Israel Carries Out Two Strikes Against Assad Regime, Hezbollah Targets in Syria | FDD's... - 0 views

  • In the wake of threats by Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, the Israel Air Force (IAF) carried out two strikes against Assad regime and Hezbollah targets in Syria on Sunday and early Monday morning. These latest airstrikes come only two days after an IAF raid on Hezbollah weapons shipments in Palmyra, and seemingly as a response to an attempt by the Syrian Air Defense Forces (SADF) to shoot down the attacking Israeli jets. At approximately 3 PM local time, pro-regime news sources reported that the SADF’s Golan Regiment was engaging an Israeli UAV over the town of Khan Arnabeh, in the Syrian Golan’s Quneitra Governorate. Shortly after, Syrian army reports emerged claiming the Israelis targeted a vehicle traveling from the town on the road to Damascus, destroying the car and killing its driver, Yasser Hussein al-Sayyed, a SADF Golan Regiment commander. The second air strike reportedly occurred past midnight on Monday morning, with local sources claiming the Israelis targeted Hezbollah and SADF targets in the Qalamoun mountains, near the Syrian-Lebanese border. However, pro-regime sources were quick to deny that the strikes had occurred. The strikes came mere hours after Liberman threatened to destroy Syria’s air defenses “without any hesitation” the next time they fired on Israeli planes. He stressed that Israel was “neither for nor against [Syrian president Bashar] al-Assad,” and had no desire for friction with the Russians in Syria. Israel’s “main problem” he said, “is the transfer of game-changing weapons from Syria to Lebanon,” which would reach Hezbollah. “Therefore, every time we identify a such a transfer, we will act to destroy these equilibrium-breaking weapons. There will be no compromise.” Liberman’s comments were echoed by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, with similar threats against the government of Lebanon.
  • Liberman’s threats, reinforced by the two strikes, were a response to the outcomes of the IAF’s Friday attack on Palmyra. The SADF’s attempt to down Israeli jets was an unprecedented escalation by the Assad regime. For Israel, this was an unacceptable interference with its now-routine attempts to deny the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, threatening to change the rules of the game between Jerusalem and Damascus. The Russian Foreign Ministry demanding an explanation of the strike from Israel’s ambassador also indicated a possible shift in Moscow’s policies on Israeli offensives in Syria. These developments likely left Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons confident that their weapons transfers would now be safe from Israeli strikes, as indicated by Hassan Nasrallah’s subsequent belligerent speech and Tehran’s threats against continued IAF assaults in Syria. Israel’s red lines in Syria were blurred by these changes, and Jerusalem felt they needed to be forcefully redrawn.
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    Israel's airstrikes in Syria are beyond question war crimes.
Paul Merrell

U.S. military officers have deep doubts about impact, wisdom of a U.S. strike on Syria ... - 0 views

  • The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers. Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.
  • The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers. Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.
  • Former and current officers, many with the painful lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan on their minds, said the main reservations concern the potential unintended consequences of launching cruise missiles against Syria.Some questioned the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggested that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to fundamentalist rebels, they said, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous. “There’s a broad naivete in the political class about America’s obligations in foreign policy issues, and scary simplicity about the effects that employing American military power can achieve,” said retired Lt. Gen. Gregory S. Newbold, who served as director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the run-up to the Iraq war, noting that many of his contemporaries are alarmed by the plan.
Paul Merrell

Obama acknowledges divisions at home and abroad over Syria attack, plans address Tuesda... - 0 views

  • President Barack Obama acknowledged deep divisions at home and abroad on Friday over his call for military action in Syria — and conceded the possibility he’ll fail to sway the American public. He refused to say whether he would act without passage of congressional authorization for a strike in response to chemical weapons use. Setting the stage for an intense week of lobbying in Washington over the strike resolution, Obama said he planned to make his case to the American people in an address Tuesday night.
  • Obama laid out in new detail his reasoning for seeking congressional approval, saying it was because the use of chemical weapons in Syria didn’t pose an imminent threat to the United States or its allies — situations in which he said he would have responded immediately. But he said the use of weapons of mass destruction is a long-term threat to the United States and the world, and the U.S. has the ability to respond with air strikes without the risk of putting troops on the ground. “It’s conceivable at the end of the day I don’t persuade a majority of the American people that it’s the right thing to do,” Obama acknowledged. “And then each member of Congress is going to have to decide.”
  • Seeking to rally support back in Washington, the administration planned another classified briefing for all lawmakers next Monday evening with Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Marin Dempsey and White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice. And White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough planned to attend the closed-door Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday morning, according to a congressional aide.
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    Sounds like Obama is no longer confident of winning Congressional authorization for war against Syria.
Paul Merrell

Michael Hayden talks to CNN about XKEYSCORE program. - 0 views

  • Does the NSA really operate a vast database that allows its analysts to sift through millions of records showing nearly everything a user does on the Internet, as was recently reported? Yes, and people should stop worrying and learn to love it, according former NSA chief Gen. Michael Hayden. Last week, the Guardian published a series of leaked documents revealing new details about an NSA surveillance program called XKEYSCORE. The newspaper said that the program enabled the agency to “search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals,” and secret slides dated 2008 showed how people could be deemed a target for searching the Web for “suspicious stuff” or by using encryption. Following the disclosures, Hayden appeared on CNN to discuss the agency’s surveillance programs. The general, who directed the NSA from 1999 through 2005, was remarkably candid in his responses to Erin Burnett’s questions about the Guardian’s XKEYSCORE report. Was there any truth to claims that the NSA is sifting through millions of browsing histories and able to collect virtually everything users do on the Internet? “Yeah,” Hayden said. “And it's really good news.”
  • Not only that, Hayden went further. He revealed that the XKEYSCORE was “a tool that's been developed over the years, and lord knows we were trying to develop similar tools when I was at the National Security Agency.” The XKEYSCORE system, Hayden said, allows analysts to enter a “straight-forward question” into a computer and sift through the “oceans of data” that have been collected as part of foreign intelligence gathering efforts. How this process works was illustrated in the Guardian’s report. Analysts can enter search terms to sift through data and select from a drop-down menu a target’s “foreignness factor,” which is intended to minimize the warrantless surveillance of Americans. However, operating a vast electronic dragnet such as this is far from an exact science, and the NSA’s system of sifting data from the backbone of international Internet networks likely sometimes involves gobbling up information on Americans’ communications and online activity—whether it is done wittingly or not. Indeed, the NSA reportedly only needs to have 51 percent certainty that it is targeting a foreigner. And as leaked secret rules for the surveillance have shown, even if the NSA does “inadvertently” gather Americans’ communications, it can hold on to them if they are deemed valuable for vague “foreign intelligence” purposes or if the communications show evidence of a crime that has occurred or may occur in the future.
  • In the CNN interview, Hayden described XKEYSCORE as “really quite an achievement” and said that it enabled NSA spies to find the needle in the haystack. But his ardent defense of the system is unlikely to reassure civil liberties advocates. Having Hayden’s support is a rather dubious stamp of approval, particularly because he was responsible for leading the NSA’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program, which was initiated post-9/11 and exposed by the New York Times in 2005. Hayden later went on to lead the CIA from 2006 through 2009, where he oversaw the use of the waterboarding torture technique and the operation of a controversial black-site prison program that was eventually dismantled by President Obama. The former NSA chief retired in 2009, but he has since become a regular media commentator, using a recent column at CNN to blast Snowden for leaking the secret NSA documents and implying that he’d like to see the Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald prosecuted as a “co-conspirator” for his role reporting the surveillance scoops.
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    Let's see, the entire U.S. military has been forbidden from reading The Guardian because the documents Edward Snowden leaked are still classified. But a former NSA chief can confirm their accuracy on CNN?  Surely, even as I write a grand jury is busy indicting him on Espionage Act charges? No? Smells like hypocrisy to me. 
Paul Merrell

Largest Syrian rebel groups form Islamic alliance, in possible blow to U.S. influence -... - 0 views

  • BEIRUT — American hopes of winning more influence over Syria’s fractious rebel movement faded Wednesday after 11 of the biggest armed factions repudiated the Western-backed opposition coalition and announced the formation of a new alliance dedicated to creating an Islamic state. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, is the lead signatory of the new group, which will further complicate fledgling U.S. efforts to provide lethal aid to “moderate” rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
  • Gen. Salim Idriss, the head of the moderate Supreme Military Council and the chief conduit for U.S. aid to the rebels, cut short a visit to Paris after the announcement of the alliance overnight Tuesday and will head to Syria on Thursday to attempt to persuade the factions to reconsider, according to the council’s spokesman, Louay al-Mokdad.The new alliance stressed that it was not abandoning Idriss’s council, only the exiled political opposition coalition, which, it said in a statement, “does not represent us.”The creation of the bloc nonetheless leaves Idriss’s council directly responsible for just a handful of small units, calling into question the utility of extending aid to “moderate” rebels, according to Charles Lister of the London-based defense consultancy IHS Jane’s. If the development holds, he said, “it will likely prove the most significant turning point in the evolution of Syria’s anti-government insurgency to date.”“The scope for Western influence over the Syrian opposition has now been diminished considerably,” he added.
  • Mokdad acknowledged that by aligning themselves with Jabhat al-Nusra, the other rebel factions could jeopardize hopes of receiving outside military help, just as the Obama administration says it is starting to step up its support after more than a year of hesitation.But, he said, the United States and its allies are to blame, for failing repeatedly to deliver on promises to provide assistance as the death toll in Syria, now well over 100,000, steadily mounted. The development appeared to take the Obama administration by surprise. A senior State Department official, briefing reporters Tuesday night on a meeting at the United Nations between Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Syrian Opposition Coalition Chairman Ahmad al-Jarba, was unaware of the rebel announcement that had been made several hours earlier.In a statement Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that officials had “seen the reports” and were “discussing with the moderate opposition what impact this will have going forward.”“A divided opposition benefits the Assad regime and opportunists who are using the conflict to further their own extreme agenda,” Psaki said. U.S. aid would continue, she said, “taking into account that alliances and associations often change on the ground based on resources and needs of the moment.”
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  • At a time when the United States and Russia are accelerating efforts to hold a peace conference in Geneva that would bring together the government and the opposition, the defection of some of the most significant rebel factions comes as a reminder that any negotiated settlement will also have to take into account the wishes of those who wield power on the ground, said Amr al-Azm, a history professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio who is Syrian and supports the opposition.
  • Mokdad said that Idriss had called some of the rebel leaders Wednesday, “and they told us they signed this because they lost all hope in the international community.”“They said: ‘We are really tired, Bashar al-Assad is killing us, all the West is betraying us, and they want to negotiate with the regime over our blood.’ ”Abu Hassan, a spokesman for the Tawheed Brigade in Aleppo, echoed those sentiments, citing rebel disappointment with the Obama administration’s failure to go ahead with threatened airstrikes to punish Assad for using chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus last month, as well as its decision to strike a deal with Russia over ways to negotiate a solution. “Jabhat al-Nusra is a Syrian military formation that fought the regime and played an active role in liberating many locations,” he said. “So we don’t care about the stand of those who don’t care about our interests.”
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    And Hillary's Syrian Opposition Coalition, on the eve of the Geneva peace talks, suddenly finds itself without any military forces left, virtually all defected to the "non-moderate" wing of the Syrian government's opposition on the ground. So what will you do next, Mr. Obama? According to the State Dept., you are going to continue to supply weapons to the opposition even though it's now united with Al Nusrah, an official U.S. government "terrorist organization. Does Obama have any option left other than a military strike on the Syrian government to try to bring *some* of the opposition back into an uneasy Alliance with the U.S., et ilk?  A "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead" Hail Mary pass?  
Paul Merrell

Revealed: NSA pushed 9/11 as key 'sound bite' to justify surveillance | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

  • The National Security Agency advised its officials to cite the 9/11 attacks as justification for its mass surveillance activities, according to a master list of NSA talking points. The document, obtained by Al Jazeera through a Freedom of Information Act request, contains talking points and suggested statements for NSA officials (PDF) responding to the fallout from media revelations that originated with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Invoking the events of 9/11 to justify the controversial NSA programs, which have caused major diplomatic fallout around the world, was the top item on the talking points that agency officials were encouraged to use. Under the subheading “Sound Bites That Resonate,” the document suggests the statement “I much prefer to be here today explaining these programs, than explaining another 9/11 event that we were not able to prevent.”
  • NSA head Gen. Keith Alexander used a slightly different version of that statement when he testified before Congress on June 18 in defense of the agency’s surveillance programs. Asked to comment on the document, NSA media representative Vanee M. Vines pointed Al Jazeera to Alexander’s congressional testimony on Tuesday, and said the agency had no further comment. In keeping with the themes listed in the talking points, the NSA head told legislators that “it is much more important for this country that we defend this nation and take the beatings than it is to give up a program that would result in this nation being attacked.” Critics have long noted the tendency of senior U.S. politicians and security officials to use the fear of attacks like the one that killed almost 3,000 Americans to justify policies ranging from increased defense spending to the invasion of Iraq.
  • Al Jazeera obtained the 27 pages of talking points from the NSA this week in response to a FOIA request filed June 13. The statements had been prepared for agency officials facing questions from Congress or the media over the revelations contained in classified documents that Snowden leaked to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Barton Gellman and others. A letter accompanying the documents notes that the talking points “are prepared and approved for a speaker to use and do not necessarily represent what the speaker actually said at the event.” The NSA has not yet turned over to Al Jazeera the documents the agency used to prepare the talking points, saying those materials require additional review before they can be released.  The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon also appear at the top of another talking-points document titled “Media Leaks One Card,” which contains 13 bullet points to explain the rationale behind the surveillance programs. Those points include “First responsibility is to defend the nation” and “NSA and its partners must make sure we connect the dots so that the nation is never attacked again like it was on 9/11.”
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  • The master talking points list goes on to explain, under a subheading titled “We Needed to Connect the Dots,” that “post-9/11 we made several changes and added a number of capabilities to enable us to connect the dots.” Continuing revelations from the Snowden documents reveal surveillance on a scale that appears to go far beyond the scope of monitoring potential attackers, however. The agency’s “head of state collection” program, for example, reportedly included the monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone. The talking points document advises officials to emphasize the word “lawful” when discussing NSA surveillance programs, and to state that “our allies have benefited … just as we have.” “We believe that over 100 nations are capable of collecting signals intelligence or operating a lawful intercept capability that enable them to monitor communications,” the document continued.
  • Critics have called into question the veracity of the claim that NSA surveillance has thwarted more than 50 “potential” attacks. They claim evidence to support such assertions is lacking. NSA officials are advised to respond to questions about any potential civil liberties violations by citing talking points that say there have not been any “willful violations” and that the NSA is committed to “upholding the privacy and civil liberties of the American people.”
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    27 pages of talking points appended to the article, plus a two-page cover letter. It's the scripts for just about everything official that's been coming out of NSA and the Administration. Interesting reading; they cover some things that haven't yet come up.   
Paul Merrell

Scrapping equipment key to Afghan drawdown - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • Facing a tight withdrawal deadline and tough terrain, the U.S. military has destroyed more than 170 million pounds worth of vehicles and other military equipment as it rushes to wind down its role in the Afghanistan war by the end of 2014. The massive disposal effort, which U.S. military officials call unprecedented, has unfolded largely out of sight amid an ongoing debate inside the Pentagon about what to do with the heaps of equipment that won’t be returning home. Military planners have determined that they will not ship back more than $7 billion worth of equipment — about 20 percent of what the U.S. military has in Afghanistan — because it is no longer needed or would be too costly to ship back home.
  • “We’re making history doing what we’re doing here,” said Maj. Gen. Kurt J. Stein, head of the 1st Sustainment Command, who is overseeing the drawdown in Afghanistan. “This is the largest retrograde mission in history.”
Paul Merrell

Russian Soldiers Join Syria Fight - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Ratcheting up the confrontation over the Syria war, Russia said Monday that its “volunteer” ground forces would join the fight,
  • The Russian air and ground deployments in Syria challenge the regional policies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Obama and NATO.
  • A Russian ground force could fundamentally alter the conflict, which has left 250,000 people dead and displaced half the country’s population since it started in 2011.Although President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he would not put troops in Syria, the plan for so-called volunteers was disclosed Monday by his top military liaison to the Parliament, Adm. Vladimir Komoyedov. It seemed similar to Russia’s stealth tactic in using soldiers to seize Crimea from Ukraine in March of 2014 and to aid pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine.Moreover, American military officials said they believed that more than 600 Russian military personnel were already on the ground in Syria, not counting aircrews, and that tents for nearly 2,000 people had been seen at Russia’s air base near Latakia, in northwest Syria near the Turkish border.
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  • The Russian disclosure that so-called volunteer forces might soon be in Syria fueled speculation of an impending ground offensive against insurgents, one that would involve unprecedented coordination among Mr. Assad’s allies.It could include Syria’s army fortified by forces from Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which has deployed fighters in Syria for years to help Mr. Assad. Likely targets are Army of Conquest insurgents who threaten Mr. Assad’s coastal strongholds from territory they have seized in Idlib Province, in the north.
  • A spokesman for the Russian operation, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said at a briefing in Moscow that a pair of Su-25 fighter bombers had attacked Islamic State armored vehicles near Tadmur, destroying 20 tanks, three rocket launchers and an ammunition depot. The strike was among the 15 daytime sorties he said Russian pilots had flown.The potential combination of Russian ground forces and aerial attacks particularly threatens to undermine Turkey’s Syria policy, which aims for the establishment of a “safe zone” along the Turkish border where some Syrian refugees could return in the future.
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    Russian boots on the ground too? With Iran moving in more ground troops too, this could get interesting very soon.  There is a nice graphic image embedded in this article showing the difference between U.S. and Russian targeting with airstrikes. Too bad it doesn't also show targeting for Turkish attacks, which have been aimed solely at Kurdish forces that are fighting ISIL.  
Paul Merrell

Tomgram: Gregoire Chamayou, Hunting Humans by Remote Control | TomDispatch - 0 views

  • It was during the Vietnam War that the U.S. Air Force, to counteract the Soviet surface-to-air missiles that had inflicted heavy casualties on it, invested in reconnaissance drones nicknamed “Lightning Bugs,” produced by Ryan Aeronautical. An American official explained that “these RPVs [remotely piloted vehicles] could help prevent aircrews from becoming casualties or prisoners… With RPVs, survival is not the driving factor.” Once the war was over, those machines were scrapped. By the late 1970s, the development of military drones had been practically abandoned in the United States. However, it continued elsewhere. Israel, which had inherited a few of these machines, recognized their potential tactical advantages. In 1973, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), facing off against Egypt, ran up against the tactical problem of surface-to-air missiles. After losing around 30 planes in the first hours of the Yom Kippur War, Israeli aviation changed its tactics. They decided to send out a wave of drones in order to mislead enemy defenses: “After the Egyptians fired their initial salvo at the drones, the manned strikes were able to attack while the Egyptians were reloading.” This ruse enabled Israel to assume mastery of the skies. In 1982, similar tactics were employed against the Syrians in the Bekaa Valley. Having first deployed their fleet of Mastiff and Scout drones, the Israelis then sent out decoy planes that were picked up by enemy radar. The Syrians activated their surface-to-air missiles, to no effect whatsoever. The drones, which had been observing the scene from the sky, easily detected the positions of the antiaircraft batteries and relayed them to the Israeli fighter planes, which then proceeded to annihilate them.
  • The drones were used for other purposes as well: “Two days after a terrorist bomb destroyed the [U.S.] Marine Barracks in Beirut in October 1983, Marine Commandant Gen. P.X. Kelley secretly flew to the scene. No word of his arrival was leaked. Yet, across the border, Israeli intelligence officers watched live television images of Kelley arriving and inspecting the barracks. They even zoomed the picture in tight, placing cross hairs directly on his head. Hours later, in Tel Aviv, the Israelis played back the tape for the shocked Marine general. The scene, they explained, was transmitted by a Mastiff RPV circling out of sight above the barracks.” This was just one of a series of minor events that combined to encourage the relaunch of American drone production in the 1980s. “All I did,” confessed Al Ellis, the father of the Israeli drones, “was take a model airplane, put a camera in it, and take the pictures… But that started an industry.”
  • But it would take a “‘different kind of war’ to make the Predator into a predator.” No more than a few months before September 11, 2001, officers who had seen the Predator at work in Kosovo had the idea of experimentally equipping it with an antitank missile. Writes Bill Yenne in his history of the drone, “On February 16, 2001, during tests at Nellis Air Force Base, a Predator successfully fired a Hellfire AGM114C into a target. The notion of turning the Predator into a predator had been realized. No one could imagine that, before the year was out, the Predator would be preying upon live targets in Afghanistan.” Barely two months after the outbreak of hostilities in Afghanistan, George Bush was in a position to declare: “The conflict in Afghanistan has taught us more about the future of our military than a decade of blue ribbon panels and think-tank symposiums. The Predator is a good example… Now it is clear the military does not have enough unmanned vehicles.”
Paul Merrell

Israel Joins Chinese Bank, Defies U.S.  « LobeLog - 0 views

  • Updating the post I wrote a couple of weeks ago on how the U.S. failed to persuade some of its closest allies not to join the new Chinese-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), it’s worth noting that Israel has also abandoned Washington by signing up for membership. The Israeli foreign ministry announced on March 31–the deadline for applying to join the new bank–that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had signed “a letter of application to join the [AIIB], a result of the initiative of the President of China.”
  • The process of joining the bank was led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in recognition of the importance of joining major Asian organizations on the continent. Israel’s membership in the Bank will open opportunities for integration of Israeli companies in various infrastructure projects, which will be financed by the bank. …It should be noted that the establishment of the bank is a Chinese diplomatic achievement. China initially intended that 35 countries should join, and to date 50 countries have joined. The establishment of AIIB is one of the most important initiatives in terms of Chinese foreign policy and in particular for President Xi Jinping, as this is his personal initiative.
  • Needless to say, Israel’s decision, which is perfectly defensible on the grounds of national interest, constitutes another slap at the Obama administration, which in the view of many experts stupidly lobbied U.S. allies against membership. (Of Washington’s closest allies, only Canada and Japan did not apply.) Israel has substantial commercial interests in China, particularly in the hi-tech and defense sectors. In fact, the Pentagon has long complained about Israeli transfers of sensitive U.S. military technology to China. In 2004, the Bush administration even sent then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Greater Israel advocate Douglas Feith to Jerusalem to demand the resignation of the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, Amos Yaron, for allegedly concealing details of the sale and upgrade of an Israel-made Harpy attack drone to China.
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  • Of course, one of the reasons Obama lobbied allies against joining the bank is that he knew that a Republican Congress would itself reject Washington’s accession. The same Republican Congress has steadfastly refused to ratify a long-pending governance reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank that would give Beijing and some other middle-income countries a somewhat bigger voice in the two western-dominated Bretton-Woods institutions (even without diluting the U.S. voting power on their boards). And, yes, this is the same Republican Congress that invited Netanyahu to speak to it, that approves virtually any appropriation desired by Israel, and that is trying its utmost to derail a multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran largely at Bibi’s behest.
  • Like most small countries, Israel practices realpolitik. Despite claims by AIPAC, neoconservatives, and many Christian Zionists that Israel is our “closest ally” in the Middle East, if not the world, and that its “values” are identical to our own, in fact, it pursues its own interests abroad with little regard for Republican (or anyone else’s) sensibilities. As we have reported before, it is also providing support to al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, but no Republican that I know of has raised the slightest objection. Indeed, in their devotion to Netanyahu and his Likud Party, no doubt well lubricated by the millions of dollars in campaign and other political contributions offered by Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer, and other Republican Jewish Coalition donors, most Republican lawmakers appear perfectly comfortable with Israel’s Middle East policies, including continued settlement-building and expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the de facto blockade against Gaza, and demands that Israel be recognized as a Jewish State. These actions and others serve not only to radicalize the Palestinians and other Arabs but also make it more difficult for the United States and its military to gain goodwill and operate effectively throughout the region, as then-CentCom Commander Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee shortly after Netanyahu became prime minister. Indeed, no one has undermined U.S. credibility in the region and beyond over the past six years as much as Bibi himself.
Paul Merrell

Libyan General With U.S. Passport Wages War On Islamist Extremists | TIME - 0 views

  • Into the chaos of post-revolution Libya rides Gen. Khalifa Hifter, a former confidant of Muammar Gaddafi with a U.S. passport and a reputed history with the CIA. A resident of northern Virginia until the 2011 revolution that deposed his old boss, Hifter, 71, returned to his homeland and, after a couple of embarrassing personal setbacks, recently persuaded elements of the military forces to join him in battling the most extreme of the many armed militias operating in Libya today.
Paul Merrell

General says U.S. will 'consider' saving Iraqi antiquities being destroyed by the Islam... - 0 views

  • The Islamic State's destruction of cultural antiquities in Iraq has stepped up a notch recently, with members of the extremist group both bulldozing the 3,000-year-old Nimrud archaeological site near Mosul and ransacking the similarly ancient ruins of Hatra in the past few days. Now, the United States' top military officer has said the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State would "consider" intervening to protect such sites. But Gen. Martin Dempsey stopped far short of any promises – and added that any action would have to "fit into the priority of all the other things we're being asked to do on behalf of Iraq." Dempsey – who was on a day-long visit to Baghdad, Iraq, during which he was joined by reporters including The Post's Missy Ryan – made his remarks after Iraq's antiquities ministry acknowledged reports of a third attack, on the ancient city of Dur Sharrukin, and called on the international community to intervene to stop the Islamic State from  “erasing the history of humanity.”
  • “We have warned previously and warn now that these gangs with their sick, takfiri ideology will continue to destroy and steal artifacts as long as there is no strong deterrent, and we still await a strong international stand to stop the crimes of Daesh that are targeting the memory of humanity," the ministry said in a statement published by the Guardian, using the Arabic acronym for the group. Separately, Iraqi Tourism and Antiquities Minister Adel Shirshab told reporters that only the U.S.-led coalition had the power to protect these sites. "Our airspace is not in our hands. It's in their hands," Shirshab said on Sunday, according to Reuters, alleging that coalition aircraft could have monitored attacks on archaeological sites and prevented them.
  • The U.S. government is well aware of the threat to antiquities posed by ongoing violence in Iraq and Syria – last year, the U.S. Department of State and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) signed a deal to document that damage caused to Syria's cultural heritage sites. There have also been a number of internal attempts in Iraq and Syria to defend sites that might be at risk, including the covert work of a group of preservationists dubbed modern-day "Monuments Men."
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    The U.S. excuse to ramp up operations in Iraq and Syria?
Paul Merrell

SANTIAGO, Chile: Chilean accused of murder, torture taught 13 years for Pentagon | Nati... - 0 views

  • A member of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s brutal secret police who’s been accused of murder taught for more than a decade at the Pentagon’s premier university, despite repeated complaints by his colleagues about his past. Jaime Garcia Covarrubias is charged in criminal court in Santiago with being the mastermind in the execution-style slayings of seven people in 1973, according to court documents. McClatchy also interviewed an accuser who identified Garcia Covarrubias as the person who sexually tortured him.Despite knowing of the allegations, State and Defense department officials allowed Garcia Covarrubias to retain his visa and continue working at a school affiliated with the National Defense University until last year .Human rights groups also question the school’s selection of a second professor, Colombia’s former top military commander.
  • Some Latin America experts said the hirings by the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies reflected a continuing inclination by the U.S government to overlook human rights violations in Latin America, especially in countries where it funded efforts to quash leftists. But those experts were especially troubled by Garcia Covarrubias’ long tenure at one of the nation’s most renowned defense institutions. “His hiring undermines our moral authority on both human rights and in the war on terror,” said Chris Simmons, a former Defense Intelligence Agency and Army intelligence officer from 1982 to 2010 who specializes in Latin America. “If he is in fact guilty of what he is accused of, he is a terrorist. Then who are we to tell other countries how they should be fighting terrorism?” To his supporters, Garcia Covarrubias is a brilliant thinker with a Ph.D. and purveyor of leadership skills. To his alleged victims, he’s a sadistic torturer with a penchant for horsewhips and perversity.
  • A 2008 Chilean military document reviewed by McClatchy identified Garcia Covarrubias as a member of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, the feared spy agency known by its acronym DINA.“DINA was simply the most sinister agency in Latin America,” said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst with the National Security Archive, which secured the release of U.S. government classified documents underscoring the complicit relationship between the U.S. and Pinochet. “Anyone associated with that agency should never have been allowed into this country, let alone given this job.”Officials with the Pentagon, the State Department and the school refused to comment. Garcia Covarrubias is now back in Chile, ordered by an investigative judge in January 2014 to remain in the country while an inquiry continues into his alleged role in the deaths of seven people in Temuco weeks after the U.S.-backed Pinochet coup on Sept. 11, 1973. His case is one of 108 involving tortured, disappeared or murdered supporters of the deposed elected president, Salvador Allende. More than 3,000 people died at the hands of the regime, and in 2003, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell offered regrets for U.S. involvement in the coup, calling it “not a part of American history that we're proud of.”
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  • The center’s officials who hired and renewed Garcia Covarrubias’ contracts say he was a highly qualified professor and minimize the allegations against him. “We made inquiries with people in the region, in Chile and so forth, and were never given anything negative about Jaime,” said Margaret Daly Hayes, the center’s first director. “He was vetted by the U.S. government, by the (U.S.) Embassy. They obviously didn’t have anything either or he wouldn’t have been hired.”McClatchy, however, located one of his alleged victims, who described being brutalized by him. “They submitted us to torture, twice a day. We were submerged in feces,” Herman Carrasco, who’s now a real estate agent, told McClatchy in Chile. “They stuck rifle barrels in our anuses.”According to Carrasco, the torture unfolded in October and November 1973 – lorded over by the horsewhip-wielding Garcia Covarrubias – and included electric shock administered to eyelids, genitals and other sensitive areas of the body.“He was the person who tortured us, with his face shown,” said Carrasco, who added that he’d known Garcia Covarrubias from social events before the coup. “He forced us into sexual acts, which shows that besides ferocious cruelty there was a level of psychopathic behavior.”
  • Despite very graphic torture accusations against Garcia Covarrubias, U.S. officials are rallying behind him.
  • As the center supported Garcia Covarrubias, it pushed out Andersen in retaliation, the former communications chief said.Last September, Andersen filed a complaint with the Pentagon’s inspector general, with the support of then-Sen. Carl Levin. D-Mich. An inspector general spokeswoman declined to comment. “It’s shameful that at a time the U.S. prestige as a democracy is under attack, that the National Defense University could be playing footsie with a former state terrorism agent,” Andersen said. The details uncovered about Garcia Covarrubias have prompted demands from several members of Congress for a Pentagon accounting of how he was hired and retained his job.“The American people deserve to know that adequate vetting of such individuals would be routine,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., author of the “ Leahy Law,” which restricts U.S. assistance to foreign security forces that violate human rights.
  • While most of the concerns focused on Garcia Covarrubias, the center also took heat in 2006 for hiring Colombian Gen. Carlos Ospina Ovalle. As army commander, he turned the tables in a decades-old guerrilla war while simultaneously crushing drug cartels. Ospina Ovalle left the center last year and took a post at another National Defense University school.He was hired at the request of the Colombian government and was popular with U.S. military leaders, recalls Downie, the center’s director at the time. “The Colombians wanted, for his own safety, to get him out of Colombia,” said Downie. “This is a guy we certainly wanted to have as a professor.”Human rights groups, however, criticized the general’s hiring and continued employment at the National Defense University. They point to his earlier command in Antioquia province, where right-wing paramilitaries ran roughshod and were linked to the military.“Antioquia in the late 1990s . . . is less than one degree of separation from working with the paramilitaries,” said Adam Isacson, a senior associate specializing in military matters for the Washington Office on Latin America. “If he has not, it’s some miracle that he managed to be the one clean officer.”“Having officers like that, the implicit message is that human rights takes a backseat,” said Isacson.
Paul Merrell

Turkey Goes to War - 0 views

  • More important, Erdogan intends to use his landslide victory to persuade the Military High Command that he has a popular mandate for his foreign policy, a policy that has amassed thousands of Turkish troops, armored vehicles and tanks on the Syrian border for a possible invasion. Up to now, the military has resisted Erdogan on this matter, but now that Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel, has been replaced as head of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) by the more compliant General Hulusi Akar, the plan to invade Syria and secure a so called “safety zone” along the Syrian side of the Turkish border, becomes much more probable. The plan to annex sovereign Syrian territory and use it to launch attacks on the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad dates back to 2012.  In 2015, however, the strategy was expanded upon by Brookings analyst Michael E. O’Hanlon in a piece  titled “Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war”. Here’s an excerpt:
  • “…the only realistic path forward may be a plan that in effect deconstructs Syria….the international community should work to create pockets with more viable security and governance within Syria over time… The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would act in support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via special forces. … Western forces themselves would remain in more secure positions in general—within the safe zones but back from the front lines—at least until the reliability of such defenses, and also local allied forces, made it practical to deploy and live in more forward locations. Creation of these sanctuaries would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad ….The interim goal might be a confederal Syria, with several highly autonomous zones… The confederation would likely require support from an international peacekeeping force….to make these zones defensible and governable,….and to train and equip more recruits so that the zones could be stabilized and then gradually expanded.”  (Deconstructing Syria: A new strategy for America’s most hopeless war, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Brookings Institute)
  • This is the Obama administration’s basic blueprint for toppling Assad and reducing Syria into an ungovernable failed state run by regional warlords, renegade militias and Islamic extremists. US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed our worst suspicions about this sinister plan in a speech he delivered to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace just last week.  Here’s part of what he said: “In northern Syria, the coalition and its partners have pushed Daesh (ISIS) out of more than 17,000 square kilometers of territory, and we have secured the Turkish-Syrian border east of the Euphrates River. That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest……. We’re also enhancing our air campaign in order to help drive Daesh, which once dominated the Syria-Turkey border, out of the last 70-mile stretch that it controls.” (U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the Future of U.S. Policy in the Middle East, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) Repeat: “That’s about 85 percent of the Turkish border, and the President is authorizing further activities to secure the rest.”
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  • Why has Obama “authorized further activities to secure the rest”? Because no one in Washington believes that the US-backed jihadis will beat the combined forces of the Russian-led coalition which is gradually annihilating the terrorist militias across Syria. So now, Obama is moving on to Plan B, the creation of a terrorist sanctuary on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border where the US and its partners can continue to arm, train and deploy their jihadi maniacs back into Syria whenever they choose to do so. Undoubtedly, Obama’s Special Forces will be used to oversee this operation and to make sure that everything goes according to plan. There is, of course, a question about the Kurdish militias role in this strategy. Recently, the US has air-dropped pallet-loads of weapons and ammo to the Democratic Union Party (PYD)  hoping the group could help the US secure the last stretch of land along the border west of the Euphrates thus keeping vital supplylines open for the jihadis while establishing a safe haven on Syrian territory. Erdogan violently opposes any operation that will create a contiguous Kurdish state on the Syrian side of the border. So how will this situation be resolved? Will Obama stick with the Kurds or realign with Erdogan in exchange for Turkish boots on the ground?
Paul Merrell

U.S. officials: Russian airstrikes have changed 'calculus completely' in Syria - The Wa... - 0 views

  • Russian military intervention in Syria has turned the course of that country’s civil war against U.S.-backed rebel groups, increasing the likelihood that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his loyalists will remain in power, U.S. intelligence officials testified Tuesday. The assessment amounts to an acknowledgment by U.S. spy agencies that Russian airstrikes have derailed the Obama administration’s aims of pushing Assad aside as part of a political settlement to the nearly five-year old conflict. “The Russian reinforcement has changed the calculus completely,” Lt. Gen. Vincent R. Stewart, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in Senate testimony. Assad is “in a much stronger negotiating position than he was just six months ago,” Stewart said. “I’m more inclined to believe that he is a player on the stage longer term than he was six months to a year ago.” As recently as last summer, U.S. intelligence officials were openly talking about an “endgame” for the Syrian leader, who is also supported by Iran.
  • Stewart’s remarks came during a pair of Senate hearings on Tuesday that served as a grim survey of the security problems — including cyberattacks, terror threats and failing states — that seem certain to confront the next occupant of the White House. Among those testifying were Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., FBI Director James B. Comey and CIA Director John Brennan, who was making his first public appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee since the panel issued a scathing 2014 report on the agency’s use of brutal interrogation methods on terrorism suspects. The lingering tensions behind that Senate probe erupted during a heated exchange Tuesday between Brennan and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who demanded an admission from the CIA chief that his staff had improperly accessed files of Senate investigators combing through agency records. As Wyden made his case, Brennan bristled, saying, “This is the annual threat assessment, is it not.”
  • Brennan seemed to be chiding Wyden for raising the computer intrusion issue during a hearing that is annually devoted to examining security threats. But the confrontation only continued, with both men raising their voices. Ultimately, Brennan admitted “very limited inappropriate actions” by CIA staff but accused Senate investigators of comparable transgressions and came close to shouting at Wyden: “Do not say that we spied on Senate computers or your files! Do not say that!”
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  • Despite nearly 15 years of U.S. counterterrorism operations after the Sept. 11 attacks, Clapper said, “there are now more Sunni violent extremist groups, members and safe havens than at any time in history.” At one point, Clapper described his grim presentation, only half jokingly, as a “litany of doom.”
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