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Paul Merrell

US Policymakers Propose Working Closer with the State Sponsors of the Islamic State (IS... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5560813

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Saudis Turkey state-sponsors-of-terrorism Brookings

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • US-based corporate-financier funded policy think tank, the Brookings Institution, published a particularly incoherent piece titled, “Should we work with the devil we know against the Islamic State?” The piece’s author, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, Daniel Byman, claims (emphasis added): Saudi Arabia has proven a major source of terrorist recruits and financing, while the Syria-Turkey border was a major crossing point for Islamic State recruits. Both countries [Saudi Arabia and Turkey] still have much to do, but that’s the point—if the Trump administration alienates them, the Islamic State problem will get much worse. With the United States on the other side in Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia might send anti-aircraft weapons to Syrian rebels and otherwise escalate the fighting in ways dangerous for international terrorism—actions that, so far, the United States has helped reduce. In essence, Byman is admitting what the rest of the world already long ago concluded – the vast fighting capacity the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) possesses is not only a result of immense state sponsorship, it is sponsored by two of America’s closest allies in the region – Saudi Arabia and NATO-member Turkey.
  • Byman’s other ‘moral metrics’ for opposing Syria include “supporting terrorism against Israel” and being otherwise opposed to “U.S. interests,” but neither accusation is qualified. In reality, Byman is admitting that the US is aligned with two of the largest regional sponsors of terrorism, including sponsors aiding and abetting ISIS itself, and seeks to depose the Syrian government because it otherwise opposes US interests. Byman then claims: Assad’s regime is the primary culprit in a war that has killed roughly half a million Syrians and driven millions more into long-term exile. Byman also laments that an Assad victory would create more refugees still – apparently oblivious to the “successful” regime change the US carried out in Libya in 2011, leaving the nation a failed state and the epicenter of the current and still ongoing regional refugee crisis. In his eagerness to blame the Syrian government for the ongoing war, Byman strategically omits his own direct role and those of other US policymakers who, for years before the war began, advocated and plotted for its fruition.
  • As early as 2007, US journalists like Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh warned of US policymakers plotting with Saudi Arabia to use militants aligned with Al Qaeda to overthrow the governments of both Syria and Iran. In his article, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?,” Hersh prophetically reported (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. Byman himself, in 2009, would sign his name to a Brookings policy paper titled, “Which Path to Persia?: Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran” (PDF), in which he and other US policymakers would advocate the use of terrorism, color revolutions, staged provocations, sanctions and a vast array of other methods to provoke war with and overthrow the government of Iran. As a prerequisite for war with Iran, the paper noted that Syria would need to be dealt with. In 2011, it became clear that many of the methods described in minute detail in the Brookings policy paper were put into practice, targeting the government in Damascus, not Tehran.
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  • Byman’s latest piece promoted by Brookings all but admits the US maintains an alliance of convenience with the state sponsors of ISIS – not to defend any sort of value, principle, or moral imperative, but instead to achieve a self-serving geopolitical objective at the cost of such values, principles, and moral imperatives. Byman concludes by claiming the Syrian government is too weak to consolidate control over Syria, omitting that there exists no alternative more unified or capable than the Syrian government. He then claims that the US should continue backing the “Syrian opposition,” either oblivious of or indifferent to the fact that no such thing exists aside from ISIS and other foreign sponsored terrorist organizations. Aside from Raqqa and Idlib run by ISIS and Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise – Al Nusra respectively, the Syrian government has already indeed consolidated control over the country’s main urban centers, including Aleppo. For Byman and other policymakers like him, they find themselves moving imaginary armies across the battlefield that simply do not exist. In the end, the US will have to either abandon its enterprise in Syria, or pledge increasingly open support for ISIS and Al Nusra.
Paul Merrell

'Iraqi forces not driven from Ramadi, they drove out of Ramadi' | The Long War Journal - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...i-they-drove-out-of-ramadi.php

war & peace Iraq ISIL Iraqi-military retreat

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 May 15 - No Cached
  • The US Department of Defense continues its bizarre stream of statements concerning the collapse of Iraqi security forces in Ramadi in the face of the Islamic State offensive. Last week, as Ramadi was under assault and the government center was overrun, General Thomas D. Weidley, the chief of staff for Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, talked about how the strategy to defeat the Islamic State was working and Ramadi was “contested.” Two days later, Ramadi collapsed, and today, Palmyra in Syria also fell to the jihadist group. Today, General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military leader in the country, said that Iraqi forces weren’t driven out of Ramadi, they drove out on their own. From DoD News:
  • Iraqi security forces weren’t “driven from” Ramadi, they “drove out of Ramadi,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said here today… After-action Review U.S. commanders in Iraq are working with their Iraqi counterparts to work out exactly what happened, Dempsey said. Reports indicate that Iraqi security forces drove out of Ramadi — an important provincial capital — during a sandstorm May 16. “This group of [Iraqi security forces] had been forward-deployed in al Anbar [province] — arguably the most dangerous part of Iraq,” he said. “They believed they were less well-supported. The tribes had begun to come together, but had not … allied themselves with the [security forces].” The sandstorm precluded U.S. air support against ISIL and the Iraqi commander on the ground made “what appears to be a unilateral decision to move to what he perceived to be a more defensible position,” the general said.
  • So, according to Dempsey, the Islamic State didn’t launch a multitude of suicide assaults on the Ramadi government center, Anbar Operations Command, Camp Ar Ramadi, the Justice Palace, and other locations between May 15 and May 17. Instead, we are told, a sandstorm, which inhibited US air power, caused an Iraqi general to order his military and police forces to just drive out of two military bases and a government center, and a multitude of police stations and checkpoints, to a “a more defensible position,” presumably in Habbaniyah, about 15 miles away. The US military command is in complete denial about what is happening in both Iraq and Syria. Military officials are continuing to tell us that the strategy to defeat the Islamic State is working, even as major cities fall under the control of the jihadist group (see this DoD News article, Centcom Officials ‘Confident’ Iraqi Security Forces Will Recover Ramadi from today).
  • Paul Merrell on 21 May 15
     
    Ah, all that U.S. money spent retraining, re-equipping, and re-arming the Iraqi military after they fled from Mosul, leavinng their weapons behind for ISIL, instead of fighting, all for naught. A heads-up for Obama and Gen. Dempsey: Peace with Honor has never worked for the U.S. as a strategy for disengagement. Fess up thqt we lost the Iraq War and bring the troops home. Training the indigenous troops did not work in Viet Nam but over half of the 3 million plus deaths caused by that war happend during the Peace wqith Honor phase, when everyone there knew that the South Vietnamese Army would never be able to stand against the other side after we left. Obama's big mistake was going back in after once withdrawing. This is a situation the folks who live in the Mideast are going to have to work out without the U.S. 
Gary Edwards

Did Money Seal Israeli-Saudi Alliance? | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...ey-seal-israeli-saudi-alliance

Sunni-Shiite-War

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Exclusive: The odd-couple relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel may have been sealed with more than a mutual desire to kiss-off Iran. According to an intelligence source, there was a dowry involved, too, with the Saudis reportedly giving Israel some $16 billion, writes Robert Parry.By Robert Parry
  • For more than half a century, Saudi Arabia has tried to use its vast oil wealth to build a lobby in the United States that could rival the imposing Israel Lobby. At top dollar, the Saudis hired law firms and PR specialists – and exploited personal connections to powerful families like the Bushes – but the Saudis never could build the kind of grassroots political organization that has given Israel and its American backers such extraordinary clout.Indeed, Americans who did take Saudi money – including academic institutions and non-governmental organizations – were often pilloried as tools of the Arabs, with the Israel Lobby and its propagandists raising the political cost of accepting Saudi largesse so high that many people and institutions shied away.
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 15
     
    Thanks to Marbux we have this stunning summary explaining how Israel and Saudi Arabia are working together to stop Iran and the Shiite Crescent from taking over the Middle East and establishing an oil rich Shiite Caliphate. ........... "New Terrorist Gains Saudi Arabia and its Persian Gulf allies, along with Turkey, are also ramping up support in Syria for Al-Qaeda's Nusra Front and the Islamic State. Flush with jihadist reinforcements, the two terrorist organizations have seized new territory in recent weeks, including the Islamic State creating a humanitarian crisis by attacking a Palestinian refugee camp south of Damascus. All of these Saudi actions have drawn minimal criticism from mainstream U.S. media and political circles, in part, because the Saudis now have the protection of the Israel Lobby, which has kept American attention on the supposed threat from Iran, including allegedly controversial statements from Iranian leaders about their insistence that economic sanctions be lifted once the nuclear agreement is signed and/or implemented. Neocon warmongers have even been granted space in major U.S. newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, to openly advocate for the bombing of Iran despite the risk that destroying Iran's nuclear reactors could inflict both human and environmental devastation. That might serve the Saudi-Israeli interests by forcing Iran to focus exclusively on a domestic crisis but it would amount to a major war crime. [See Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Publishes Call to Bomb Iran."] The strategic benefit for Israel and Saudi Arabia would be that with Iran unable to assist the Iraqis and the Syrians in their desperate struggles against Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, the Sunni jihadists might well be hoisting the black flag of their dystopian philosophy over Damascus, if not Baghdad. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Secret Saudi Ties to Terrorism."] Beyond the slaughter of innocents that would follow
Paul Merrell

The Forever War on Creators.com - 0 views

www.creators.com/...the-forever-war.html

war & peace Syria ISIL Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The strategy that President Obama laid out Wednesday night to "degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL," is incoherent, inconsistent and, ultimately, non-credible. A year ago, Obama and John Kerry were straining at the leash to launch air strikes on Syrian President Bashar Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in "killing his own people." But when Americans rose as one to demand that we stay out of Syria, Obama hastily erased his "red line" and announced a new policy of not getting involved in "somebody else's civil war." Now, after videos of the beheadings of two U.S. journalists have set the nation on fire, the president, reading the polls, has flipped again. Now Obama wants to lead the West and the Arab world straight into Syria's civil war. Only this time we bomb ISIL, not Assad.
  • Who will provide the legions Obama will deploy to crush ISIL in Syria? The Free Syrian Army, the same rebels who have been routed again and again and whose chances of ousting Assad were derided by Obama himself in August as a "fantasy"? The FSA, the president mocked, is a force of "former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth." Now Obama wants Congress to appropriate $500 million to train and arm those doctors and pharmacists and send them into battle against an army of jihadist terrorists who just bit off one-third of Iraq. Before Congress votes a dime, it should get some answers. Whom will this Free Syrian Army fight? ISIL alone? The al-Nusra Front? Hezbollah in Syria? Assad's army? How many years will it take to train, equip and build the FSA into a force that can crush both Assad and ISIL?
  • "Tell me how this thing ends," said Gen. David Petraeus on the road up to Baghdad in 2003. The president did not tell us how this new war ends. If Assad falls, do the Alawites and Christians survive? Does Syria disintegrate? Who will rule in Damascus? The United States spent seven years building an army to hold Iraq together. Yet when a few thousand ISIL fighters stormed in from Syria, that army broke and fled all the way to Baghdad. Even the Kurdish peshmerga broke and ran. What makes us think we can succeed in Syria where we failed in Iraq. If ISIL is our mortal enemy and Syria its sanctuary, there are two armies capable of crushing it together — the Syrian and Turkish armies. <a onClick="return adgo(5541,10783,this.href);" href="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adlink/3.0/5235/1297475/0/170/ADTECH;cookie=info;loc=300;key=key1+key2+key3+key4;grp=13579" target="_blank"><img src="http://adserver.adtechus.com/adserv/3.0/5235/1297475/0/170/ADTECH;cookie=info;loc=300;key=key1+key2+key3+key4;grp=13579" border="0" width="300" height="250"></a> But Turkey, a NATO ally, was not even mentioned in Obama's speech. Why? Because the Turks have been allowing jihadists to cross into Syria, as they have long sought the fall of Assad.
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  • Now, with the Islamic State holding hostage 49 Turkish diplomats and their families in Mosul, Ankara is even more reluctant to intervene. Nor is there any indication Turkey will let the United States use its air base at Incirlik to attack ISIS. In Iraq, too, thousands of ground troops will be needed to dig the Islamic State out of the Sunni cities and towns. Where will these soldiers come from? We are told the Iraqi army, Shia militia, Kurds and Sunni tribesmen will join forces to defeat and drive out the Islamic State. But these Shia militia were, not long ago, killing U.S. soldiers. And, like the Iraqi army, they are feared and hated in Sunni villages, which is why many Sunni welcomed ISIL. A number of NATO allies have indicated a willingness to join the U.S. in air strikes on the Islamic State in Iraq. None has offered to send troops. Similar responses have come from the Arab League.
  • But if this is truly a mortal threat, why the reluctance to send troops? Some of our Arab allies, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Gulf Arabs, have reportedly been providing aid to ISIL in Syria. Why would they aid these terrorists? Because ISIL looked like the best bet to bring down Assad, whom many Sunni loathe as an Arab and Alawite ally of Iran in the heart of the "Shia Crescent" of Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus and Hezbollah. For many Sunni Arabs, the greater fear is of Shia hegemony in the Gulf and a new Persian empire in the Middle East. Among all the nations involved here, the least threatened is the United States. Our intelligence agencies, Obama, says, have discovered no evidence of any planned or imminent attack from ISIL. As the threat is not primarily ours, the urgency to go to war is not ours. And upon the basis of what we heard Wednesday night, either this war has not been thought through by the president, or he is inhibited from telling us the whole truth about what victory will look like and what destroying the Islamic State will require in blood, treasure and years.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    Pat Buchanan wants to hear from Congress before Obama starts another war. 
Gary Edwards

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Superpower in Distress | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...lare%2C_superpower_in_distress

Iraq ISIS

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • In response, the Obama administration dispatched thousands of new advisers and trainers and began shipping in piles of new weaponry to re-equip the Iraqi army.  It also filled Iraqi skies with U.S. planes armed with their own munitions to destroy, among other things, some of that captured U.S. weaponry.  Then it set to work standing up a smaller version of the Iraqi army.  Now, skip nearly a year ahead and on a somewhat lesser scale the whole process has just happened again.  Less than two weeks ago, Islamic State militants took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province.  Iraqi army units, including the elite American-trained Golden Division, broke and fled, leaving behind -- you’ll undoubtedly be shocked to hear -- yet another huge cache of weaponry and equipment, including tanks, more than 100 Humvees and other vehicles, artillery, and so on. The Obama administration reacted in a thoroughly novel way: it immediately began shipping in new stocks of weaponry, starting with 1,000 antitank weapons, so that the reconstituted Iraqi military could take out future “massive suicide vehicle bombs” (some of which, assumedly, will be those captured vehicles from Ramadi).  Meanwhile, American planes began roaming the skies over that city, trying to destroy some of the equipment IS militants had captured.
  • Notice anything repetitive in all this -- other than another a bonanza for U.S. weapons makers?  Logically, it would prove less expensive for the Obama administration to simply arm the Islamic State directly before sending in the air strikes
  • In any case, what a microcosm of U.S. imperial hubris and folly in the twenty-first century all this training and equipping of the Iraqi military has proved to be.  Start with the post-invasion decision of the Bush administration to totally disband Saddam’s army and instantly eject hundreds of thousands of unemployed Sunni military men and a full officer corps into the chaos of the “new” Iraq and you have an instant formula for creating a Sunni resistance movement.  Then, add in a little extra “training” at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison in Iraq, for key unemployed officers, and -- Voilà! -- you’ve helped set up the petri dish in which the leadership of the Islamic State movement will grow.  Multiply such stunning tactical finesse many times over globally and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, you have what might be called the folly of the “sole superpower” writ large. Tom
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Delusionary Thinking in Washington The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower By Michael T. Klare
  • Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance? This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”
  • The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed “imperial overstretch.” As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which “the sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country’s power to defend all of them simultaneously.”
  • The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act.  It involves the constant juggling of America’s capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration.  Call it the Obama Doctrine.
  • In other words, whoever enters the Oval Office in January 2017 will be expected to wield a far bigger stick on a significantly less stable planet. As a result, despite the last decade and a half of interventionary disasters, we’re likely to see an even more interventionist foreign policy with an even greater impulse to use military force.
  • The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy.
  • Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention.
  • Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms. 
  • fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Jun 15
     
    Thanks Marbux! "Think of this as a little imperial folly update -- and here's the backstory.  In the years after invading Iraq and disbanding Saddam Hussein's military, the U.S. sunk about $25 billion into "standing up" a new Iraqi army.  By June 2014, however, that army, filled with at least 50,000 "ghost soldiers," was only standing in the imaginations of its generals and perhaps Washington.  When relatively small numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants swept into northern Iraq, it collapsed, abandoning four cities -- including Mosul, the country's second largest -- and leaving behind enormous stores of U.S. weaponry, ranging from tanks and Humvees to artillery and rifles.  In essence, the U.S. was now standing up its future enemy in a style to which it was unaccustomed and, unlike the imploded Iraqi military, the forces of the Islamic State proved quite capable of using that weaponry without a foreign trainer or adviser in sight."
Paul Merrell

New Authorization for Use of Military Force?, and More from CRS - 0 views

fas.org/...new-aumf-crs

war & peace ISIL legislation U.S.-foreign-policy Syria Iraq

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • New publications from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public disclosure include the following. A New Authorization for Use of Military Force Against the Islamic State: Comparison of Current Proposals in Brief, October 21, 2014
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 14
     
    Overview of pending legislation (multiple bills) to authorize use of U.S. military force against ISIL. Table of contents: The IS Crisis and the U.S. Response ............................................................................................... 1 Presidential Authority to Use Military Force Against the Islamic State .......................................... 1 2001 Post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force ........................................................... 1 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq ...................................................... 2 Presidential Authority Under Article II of the Constitution ....................................................... 2 Calls for a New AUMF Targeting the Islamic State ........................................................................ 3 Current IS AUMF Proposals ............................................................................................................ 3 Scope of Force and Military Activities Authorized ................................................................... 4 Targeted Entities .................................................................................................................. 5 Purpose of Authorization ..................................................................................................... 5 Conditions on Use of Military Force ................................................................................... 6 Limitations on Use of Military Force .................................................................................. 6 Repeal of Previous AUMFs ................................................................................................. 7 Reporting and Certification Requirements .......................................................................... 8 War Powers Resolution and Expedited Consideration Provisions ...................................... 8 Tables  Table 1. Proposed Authorizations
Paul Merrell

Smoking gun emails reveal 'deal in blood' George Bush and Tony Blair made as they secre... - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...ors-YEAR-invasion-started.html

war & peace Blair Bush2 Powell Iraq Hillary-emails

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by George Bush and Tony Blair over the Iraq War.The damning memo, from secretary of state Colin Powell to president George Bush, was written on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s famous summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas.The Powell document, headed ‘Secret... Memorandum for the President’, lifts the lid on how Blair and Bush secretly plotted the war behind closed doors at Crawford. In it, Powell tells Bush that Blair ‘will be with us’ on military action. Powell assures the president: ‘The UK will follow our lead’.The classified document also discloses that Blair agreed to act as a glorified spin doctor for the president by presenting ‘public affairs lines’ to convince a skeptical public that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction - when none existed.In return, the president would flatter Blair’s ego and give the impression that Britain was not America’s poodle but an equal partner in the ‘special relationship’. 
  • The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started.It flies in the face of the UK Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ - in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals. 
  • The disclosure is certain to lead for calls for Sir John Chilcot to reopen his inquiry into the Iraq War if, as is believed, he has not seen the Powell memo.A second explosive memo from the same cache also reveals how Bush used ‘spies’ in the Labour Party to help him to manipulate British public opinion in favor of the war.The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal.Former UK Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis said: ‘The memos prove in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a frontman for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • ‘He was happy to launder George Bush’s policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country without having the remotest ability to have any real influence over it. And in return for what?'For George Bush pretending Blair was a player on the world stage to impress voters in the UK when the Americans didn’t even believe it themselves’.Davis was backed by a senior diplomat with close knowledge of Blair-Bush relations who said: ‘This memo shows beyond doubt for the first time Blair was committed to the Iraq War before he even set foot in Crawford.'And it shows how the Americans planned to make Blair look an equal partner in the special relationship to bolster his position in the UK.’Blair’s spokesman insisted last night that Powell’s memo was ‘consistent with what he was saying publicly at the time’.The former Prime Minister has always hotly denied the claim that the two men signed a deal ‘in blood’ at Crawford to embark on the war, which started on March 20, 2003. Powell says to Bush: ‘He will present to you the strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause,’ adding that Blair has the presentational skills to ‘make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace’.Five months after the summit, Downing Street produced the notorious ‘45 minutes from doom’ dossier on Saddam Hussein’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction. After Saddam was toppled, the dossier’s claims were exposed as bogus.Nowhere in the memo is a diplomatic route suggested as the preferred option.
  • Instead, Powell says that Blair will also advise on how to ‘handle calls’ for the ‘blessing’ of the United Nations Security Council, and to ‘demonstrate that we have thought through “the day after” ’ – in other words, made adequate provision for a post-Saddam Iraq.Critics of the war say that the lack of post-conflict planning has contributed to the loss of more than 100,000 lives since the invasion – and a power vacuum which has contributed to the rise of Islamic State terrorism.Significantly, Powell warns Bush that Blair has hit ‘domestic turbulence’ for being ‘too pro-U.S. in foreign and security policy, too arrogant and “presidential” ’, which Powell points out is ‘not a compliment in the British context’.Powell also reveals that the splits in Blair’s Cabinet were deeper than was realized: he says that apart from Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, ‘Blair’s Cabinet shows signs of division, and the British public are unconvinced that military action is warranted now’.Powell says that although Blair will ‘stick with us on the big issues’, he wants to minimisze the ‘political price’ he would have to pay: ‘His voters will look for signs that Britain and America are truly equity partners in the special relationship.’The president certainly did his best to flatter Blair’s ego during the Crawford summit, where he was the first world leader to be invited into Bush’s sanctuary for two nights.
  • Mystery has long surrounded what was discussed at Crawford as advisers were kept out of a key meeting between the two men.Sir Christopher Meyer, who was present in Crawford as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., told Chilcot that his exclusion meant he was ‘not entirely clear to this day... what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch’.But in public comments during his time at Crawford, Blair denied that Britain was on an unstoppable path to war.‘This is a matter for considering all the options’, he said. ‘We’re not proposing military action at this point in time’.
  • During his appearance before the Chilcot inquiry in January 2010, Blair denied that he had struck a secret deal with Bush at Crawford to overthrow Saddam. Blair said the two men had agreed on the need to confront the Iraqi dictator, but insisted they did not get into ‘specifics’.‘The one thing I was not doing was dissembling in that position,’ he told Chilcot.‘The position was not a covert position, it was an open position. This isn’t about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception. It’s a decision. What I was saying... was “We are going to be with you in confronting and dealing with this threat.” ’Pressed on what he thought Bush took from their meeting, he said the president had realized Britain would support military action if the diplomatic route had been exhausted.In his memoirs, Blair again said it was ‘a myth’ he had signed a promise ‘in blood’ to go to war, insisting: ‘I made no such commitment’.Critics who claimed that Blair acted as the ‘poodle’ of the US will point to a reference in Mr Powell’s memo to the fact Mr Blair ‘readily committed to deploy 1,700 commandos’ to Afghanistan ‘even though his experts warn that British forces are overstretched’.The decision made the previous October in the wake of the September 11 attacks led to widespread concern that the UK was entering an open-ended commitment to a bloody conflict in Afghanistan – a concern many critics now say was well-founded.
  • Mr Powell’s memo goes on to say that a recent move by the U.S. to protect its steel industry with tariffs, which had damaged UK exports, was a ‘bitter blow’ for Blair, but he was prepared to ‘insulate our broader relationship from this and other trade disputes’.The memo was included in a batch of 30,000 emails which were received by Mrs Clinton on her private server when she was US Secretary of State between 2009 and 2013.Another document included in the email batch is a confidential briefing for Powell prepared by the U.S. Embassy in London, shortly before the Crawford summit.The memo, dated ‘April 02’, includes a detailed assessment of the effect on Blair’s domestic position if he backs US military action.The document says: ‘A sizeable number of his [Blair’s] MPs remain at present opposed to military action against Iraq... some would favor shifting from a policy of containment of Iraq if they had recent (and publicly usable) proof that Iraq is developing WMD/missiles... most seem to want some sort of UN endorsement for military action.‘Blair’s challenge now is to judge the timing and evolution of America’s Iraq policy and to bring his party and the British people on board.'There have been a few speculative pieces in the more feverish press about Labor [sic] unease re Iraq policy… which have gone on to identify the beginnings of a challenge to Blair’s leadership of the party.
  • 'Former Cabinet member Peter Mandelson, still an insider, called it all "froth". Nonetheless, this is the first time since the 1997 election that such a story is even being printed’.The paper draws on information given to it by Labour ‘spies’, whose identities have been hidden.It states: ‘[name redacted] told us the intention of those feeding the story is not to bring down Blair but to influence him on the Iraq issue’.‘Some MPs would endorse action if they had proof that Iraq has continued to develop WMD since UN inspectors left.‘More would follow if convinced that Iraq has succeeded in developing significant WMD capability and the missiles to deliver it.'Many more would follow if they see compelling evidence that Iraq intends and plans to use such weapons. A clear majority would support military action if Saddam is implicated in the 9/11 attacks or other egregious acts of terrorism’.‘Blair has proved an excellent judge of political timing, and he will need to be especially careful about when to launch a ramped-up campaign to build support for action against Iraq.'He will want neither to be too far in front or behind US policy... if he waits too long, then the keystone of any coalition we wish to build may not be firmly in place. No doubt these are the calculations that Blair hopes to firm up when he meets the President’.A spokesperson for Blair said: ‘This is consistent with what Blair was saying publicly at the time and with Blair’s evidence given to the Chilcot Inquiry’.
  • Stunning memo proves Blair signed up for Iraq even before Americans - comment by former shadow home secretary David DavisThis is one of the most astonishing documents I have ever read.It proves in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a front man for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet.He was happy to launder George Bush’s policy on Iraq and sub-contract British foreign policy to another country without having the remotest ability to have any real influence over it.And in return for what? For George Bush pretending Blair was a player on the world stage to impress voters in the UK when the Americans didn’t even believe it themselves.Blair was content to cynically use Britain’s international reputation for honest dealing in diplomacy, built up over many years, as a shield against worldwide opprobrium for Bush’s ill-considered policy.Judging from this memorandum, Blair signed up for the Iraq War even before the Americans themselves did. It beggars belief.
  • Blair was telling MPs and voters back home that he was still pursuing a diplomatic solution while Colin Powell was telling President Bush: ‘Don’t worry, George, Tony is signed up for the war come what may – he’ll handle the PR for you, just make him look big in return.’It should never be forgotten that a minimum of 120,000 people died as a direct result of the Iraq War.What is truly shocking is the casualness of it all, such as the reference in the memo to ‘the day after’ – meaning the day after Saddam would be toppled.The offhand tone gives the game away: it is patently obvious nobody thought about ‘the day after’ when Bush and Blair met in Crawford.And they gave it no more thought right through to the moment ‘the day after’ came about a year later when Saddam’s statue fell to the ground.We saw the catastrophic so-called ‘de-Baathification’ of Iraq, with the country’s entire civil and military structure dismantled, leading to years of bloodshed and chaos. It has infected surrounding countries to this day and created the vacuum into which Islamic State has stepped.This may well be the Iraq ‘smoking gun’ we have all been looking for.
Paul Merrell

Americans Now Fear ISIS Sleeper Cells Are Living in the U.S., Overwhelmingly Support Mi... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...son-americans-refuse-learn-war

war & peace ISIL war-propaganda war-fever

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Gallup, 2000: “A new Gallup poll conducted November 13-15, 2000 finds that nearly seven out of 10 Americans (69%) believe that sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake.” Gallup, 2013: “Ten years have passed since the United States and its allies invaded Iraq, and it appears the majority of Americans consider this a regrettable anniversary. Fifty-three percent of Americans believe their country ‘made a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq’ and 42% say it was not a mistake.” Gallup, 2014: “For the first time since the U.S. initially became involved in Afghanistan in 2001, Americans are as likely to say U.S. military involvement there was a mistake as to say it was not.” New York Times, today: “The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that may take three years to complete, requiring a sustained effort that could last until after President Obama has left office, according to senior administration officials.”
  • CNN, today: “Americans are increasingly concerned that ISIS represents a direct terror threat, fearful that ISIS agents are living in the United States, according to a new CNN/ORC International poll. Most now support military action against the terrorist group.” A few points: (1) I’ve long considered this September, 2003 Washington Post poll to be one the most extraordinary facts about the post-9/11 era. It found that – almost 2 years after 9/11, and six months after the invasion of Iraq – “nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks . . . .  A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents believe it’s likely Saddam was involved.”
  • Is it even possible to imagine more potent evidence of systemic media failure than that (or systemic success, depending on what you think the media’s goal is)? But in terms of crazed irrationality, how far away from that false belief is the current fear on the part of Americans that there are ISIS sleeper cells “living in the United States”? (2) If the goal of terrorist groups is to sow irrational terror, has anything since the 9/11 attack been more successful than those two journalist beheading videos? It’s almost certainly the case that as recently as six months ago, only a minute percentage of the American public (and probably the U.S. media) had even heard of ISIS. Now, two brutal beheadings later, they are convinced that they are lurking in their neighborhoods, that they are a Grave and Unprecedented Threat (worse than al Qaeda!), and that military action against them is needed.
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  • It’s as though ISIS and the U.S. media and political class worked in perfect unison to achieve the same goal here when it comes to American public opinion: fully terrorize them. (3) Although Americans favor military action against ISIS, today’s above-cited CNN poll finds that – at least of now – most do not want ground troops in Iraq or Syria (“61%-38%, oppose placing U.S. soldiers on the ground in Iraq and Syria to combat the terrorist group”). But almost every credible expert has said that airstrikes, without troops, is woefully inadequate to achieve any of the stated goals. Other than further inflaming anti-American sentiment in the region and strengthening ISIS, what possible purpose can such airstrikes have? The answer given by much of the U.S. media, as FAIR documented, seems clear: to “flex muscles” and show “toughness”:
  • What kind of country goes around bombing people with no strategic purpose and with little motive other than to “flex muscles” and “show toughness”? This answer also seems clear: one that is deeply insecure about its ongoing ability to project strength (and one whose elites benefit in terms of power and profit from endless war). (4) For those who favor air strikes: if, as most regional and military experts predict, it turns out that airstrikes are insufficient to seriously degrade ISIS, would you then favor a ground invasion? If you really believe that ISIS is a serious threat to the “homeland” and other weighty interests, how could you justify opposing anything needed to defeat them up to and including ground troops? And if you wouldn’t support that, isn’t that a compelling sign that you don’t really see them as the profound threat that one should have to see them as before advocating military action against them?
  • (5) For those who keep running around beating their chests talking about the imperative to “destroy ISIS”: will that take more or less time than it’s taken to “destroy the Taliban”? Does it ever occur to such flamboyant warriors to ask why those sorts of groups enjoy so much support, and whether yet more bombing of predominantly Muslim countries – and/or flooding the region with more weapons – will bolster rather than subvert their strength? Just consider how a one-day attack in the U.S., 13 years ago, united most of the American population around the country’s most extreme militarists and unleashed an orgy of collective violence that is still not close to ending. Why does anyone think that constantly bringing violence to that part of the world will have a different effect there?
  • 6) When I began writing about politics in 2005, it was very common to hear the “chickenhawk” slur cast about: all as a means of arguing that able-bodied people who advocate war have the obligation to fight in those wars rather than risking other people’s lives to do so. Since January, 2009, I’ve almost never heard that phrase. How come? Does the obligation-to-fight apply now to those wishing to deploy military force to “destroy ISIS”? (7) It’s easy to understand why beheading videos provoke such intense emotion: they’re savage and horrific to watch, by design. But are they more brutal than the constant, ongoing killing of civilians, including children, that the U.S. and its closest allies have been continuously perpetrating? In 2012, for instance, Pakistani teenager Tariq Kahn attended an anti-drone meeting, and then days later, was “decapitated” by a U.S. missile - the high-tech version of beheading – and his 12-year-old cousin was also killed by that drone. Whether “intent” is one difference is quite debatable (see point 3), but the brutality is no less. It’s true that we usually don’t see that carnage, but the fact that it’s kept from the U.S. population doesn’t mean it disappears or becomes more palatable or less savage.
  • (8) Here’s how you know you live in an empire devoted to endless militarism: when a new 3-year war is announced and very few people seem to think the president needs anyone’s permission to start it (including Congress) and, more so, when the announcement - of a new multiple-year war - seems quite run-of-the-mill and normal. (9) How long will we have to wait for the poll finding that most Americans “regret” having supported this new war in Iraq and Syria and view it as a “mistake”, as they prepare, in a frenzy of manufactured fear, to support the next proposed war?   UPDATE [Tues.]: In case you’re wondering how so many Americans have been led to embrace such fear-mongering tripe, consider the statement last week of Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida:
  • “This is a terrorist group the likes of which we haven’t seen before, and we better stop them now. It ought to be pretty clear when they start cutting off the heads of journalists and say they’re going to fly the black flag of ISIS over the White House that ISIS is a clear and present danger.” They’re a “clear and present danger” because they threatened to “fly the black flag of ISIS over the White House.” It’s hard to believe the fear-mongering is anything but deliberate.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 14
     
    Amen, Brother Greenwald. Amen!
Paul Merrell

Libya Coming Full Circle. When A Deemed "Conspiracy Theory" Becomes Reality | Global Re... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5387468

U.S.-foreign-policy neocons War-Party Libya failed-state Benghazi

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • In the duration of the “revolutionary frenzy” that categorized western media coverage of the Libyan Civil War in 2011, public audiences were captivated with both tales of rebels aspiring for “democracy” and with complimenting stories of unabated brutality by Gaddafi forces. Without any serious mainstream criticism, an imperialist mythology centered on the interventionist doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” was cemented in public consciousness with even usually non-mainstream and “anti-imperialist” figures such as Juan Cole deliberately misrepresenting the situation in Libya. In Cole’s perspective, no reference to armed militants from the start of the conflict or the role of extremism and western premeditation found its way into the narrative and he predicted a simplistic narrative where the overthrow of Gaddafi would lead the region into an era of unity, prosperity and freedom. Libya Today How is Libya today? If one denied the existence of hell, they need not look further than Libya to observe a case of hell on Earth. Libya as a functioning, cohesive state has virtually ceased to exist, having been replaced by a myriad of conflicting factions divided on tribal and religious lines. While mainstream media tends to obscure the identity of these factions and their connection to western imperialists, Eric Draitser in his analysis, “Benghazi, the CIA, and the War in Libya” shows the beyond the fractious infighting, both primary factions engaging in direct combat have been beneficiaries of the NATO imperialist powers in their systematic aggression against the Libyan state.
  • “Confirmed: U.S. Armed Al Qaeda to Topple Libya’s Gaddaffi” with a very astonishing admission by “top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers” confirming the obvious truth that “conspiracy theorists” have been saying since 2011. The US backed Al Qaeda in Libya and that the Benghazi attack was a byproduct of this. Washington’s Blog notes that in 2012, it documented that: The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists. According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi: The Hindustan Times reported last year: “There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times. It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi. Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya.  Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled. What was once deemed conspiracy theory became confirmed reality when the Daily Mail reported as Washington’s Blog subsequently pointed out:
  • A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier. ‘The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,’ Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline. She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants. ‘Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,’ Lopez claimed. ‘They were permitted to come in. … [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed.. ‘The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the United States, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.’
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  • ‘The White House and senior Congressional members,’ the group wrote in an interim report released Tuesday, ‘deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to topple a ruler [Muammar Gaddafi] who had been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qaeda.’ ‘Some look at it as treason,’ said Wayne Simmons, a former CIA officer who participated in the commission’s research. While Wayne Simmons’ characterization of such actions by the globalist, imperialist establishment in the United States as “treason” is correct in the sense that it was a clear violation of not only the Constitution, but the public interest of America, there is a rather disingenuous factor involved when some people, especially on the Neo-Con right, attempt to play the “treason card.”
  • Clearly the Neo-Con agenda has been coming full circle since the first Gulf War in the 1990s. The US “gun-walking” to jihadis in Syria from Libya, noted by the Washington Times and New York Times (albeit with partisan spin and distortion), was actually planned under Bush in 2007 as noted by Seymour Hersh in “The Redirection.” It has continued under Obama, influenced by Council on Foreign Relations figures throughout both administrations from Dick Cheney to Hillary Clinton. Consider the following points from “The Redirection”: To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
  • To dispel critics’ notions that this is passive, uncontrollable, and indirect support, consider: [Saudi Arabia's] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran. Neo-Conservative writer Gary Gambill would ride on this wave of terrorist aggression and pen an article for the Neo-Con “Middle East Forum” titled “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists.” As noted in the analysis of the piece by Tony Cartalucci titled “Globalist Rag Gives ‘Two Cheers’ for Terrorism”, one can see how terrorism is a useful piece of capital of globalist imperialism that is easy to hide in the sight of inattentive masses with easy ploys of political spin and plausible deniability.
  • Libyan terrorists are invading Syria. They have been doing so since the influx of jihadis began, enabled by outside powers. These are not simply rogue networks operating independently but rather include state-sponsorship, especially of NATO-member Turkey and NATO’s criminal proxy government in Tripoli, Libya. We are told by the media that the regime in Tripoli under the auspice of the National Transitional Council, and populated with puppets like Mustapha Abdul Jalil, is a moderate regime distinct from the “marginal Islamist forces.” However, even in mainstream accounts, one can note that these “official, moderate” groups are involved with funding terrorism themselves as many geopolitical analysts have noted. Tony Cartalucci notes that, “In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group,” would report”: Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Jun 14
     
    Lots of documentation on the tawdry moves by the War Party in Libya and Benghazi, now blowing up in their faces. 
Paul Merrell

Qassem Soleimani: Islamic State was created to fight Iran | The Long War Journal - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...-was-created-to-fight-iran.php

war & peace Iran ISIL-reason

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • The top commander and clerical representative of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) external operations wing, the Qods Force, recently delivered speeches in Tehran and Damascus commemorating the first anniversary of the death of Brigadier General Hossein Hamedani, the most senior IRGC commander killed in the Syrian civil war. IRGC-QF commander Major General Qassem Soleimani delivered a speech on Oct. 5 in Tehran. Senior IRGC commanders and Iranian government officials were in attendance. “The problem of the enemies is the centrality of Syria in the resistance front and relations with the Islamic Republic,” Soleimani said. “We do not only defend Syria in this country, but we defend Islam and the Islamic Republic of Iran, as well, because DAESH [pejorative for the Islamic State] and takfiri groups were not formed for Syria, these were formed for Iran.” Soleimani’s statement underscores the strategic importance of Syria to Tehran. He and other senior officials justify their involvement in Syria by claiming that the fight there keeps Iran safe from threats like the Islamic State and Sunni extremists.
  • “The takfiris have been or are being defeated in all fronts today,” Soleimani said. “I believe that the Syrian people are undefeatable with the support of their government. Europe today pays a heavy security price, and the reason is their support of these terrorist groups.
Paul Merrell

AP News : Both sides prepare for new Gaza war crimes probe - 0 views

m.apnews.com/...contentdetail.htm

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza ICC war crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • In a replay of the last major Gaza conflict, human rights defenders are again accusing Israel and Hamas of violating the rules of war, pointing to what they say appear to be indiscriminate or deliberate attacks on civilians.In 2009, such war crimes allegations leveled by U.N. investigators - and denied by both sides at the time - never came close to reaching the International Criminal Court.Some Palestinians hope the outcome will be different this time, in part because President Mahmoud Abbas, as head of a U.N.-recognized state of Palestine, has since earned the right to turn directly to the court.Still, the road to the ICC, set up in 2002 to prosecute war crimes, is filled with formidable political obstacles.
  • Israel and the United States strongly oppose bringing any possible charges stemming from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before the court, arguing such proceedings could poison the atmosphere and make future peace talks impossible.If Abbas seeks a war crimes investigation of Israel, he could lose Western support and expose Hamas - a major Palestinian player - to the same charges.
  • Unlike in 2009, Abbas has the option of turning to the court directly because of the upgrade in legal standing awarded by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012. At the time, the assembly recognized "Palestine" in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem as a non-member observer state, meeting the ICC requirement of accepting requests for jurisdiction from states over crimes committed in their territory.After 20 years of failed negotiations with Israel, many Palestinians believe the ICC offers the only opportunity to hold Israel accountable, not only for Gaza military operations, but for continued expansion of settlement-building on occupied lands. With daily scenes of Gaza carnage, the West Bank-based Abbas is under growing pressure to join the court.He still hesitates, because going after Israel at the ICC would signal a fundamental policy shift, instantly turning his tense relationship with Israel into a hostile one and creating a rift with the United States.
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  • He also has Hamas to consider, since action against Israel would likely trigger a war crimes investigation of Hamas as well. The Islamic militant group seized Gaza from Abbas in 2007, and relations between the two rivals remain tense. However, they reached a power-sharing agreement in the spring and Abbas does not want to return to confrontations with Hamas.Last week, Abbas told leaders of PLO factions in the West Bank that he would only turn to the ICC if Hamas agrees, in writing. Abbas aide Saeb Erekat told The Associated Press on Monday that he put the request to the top Hamas leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal, in a meeting in Doha last week. Erekat said he was told that Hamas needs time to decide.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Aug 14
     
    Some conflicting reports on Palestine taking Israel to the International Criminal Court charging war crimes. The conflict may be because of the different times they were published This article published yesterday says that Abbas said last week that he would only do so if Hamas agrees and said he was awaiting a decision by Hamas. But the Haaretz live blog on Gaza says that "Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki says after meeting prosecutors at the International Criminal Court [today] that there was "clear evidence" that Israel committed war crimes in  Gaza." http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.608928 So it sounds like Palestine has initiated the process at the ICC and that Hamas leadership has decided to accept the risk that they will face war crime charges themselves. If so, that's a strong sign that some nation has agreed to bankroll the Palestine government if the U.S. ends its aid to Palestine. Most likely Qatar from what I've read. The U.N. Human Rights Council has already launched its own investigation of potential war crimes committed during Israel's latest invasion of Gaza. An article passed by me sometime during the last 48 hours that quoted the Chief Prosecutor at the ICC to the effect that she would act if Palestine filed charges but said that "the ball is in Palestine's court." The ICC has been widely criticized for its preference of convicting the leaders of African nations rather than of caucasian nations. Given that circumstance, the Court of 15 judges may welcome the Palestinian opportunity to prove that it is willing to convict leaders of a non-African nation. Certainly, Israel's occupation and colonization of Palestine since hostilities ceased in 1967 offers more than fertile ground for such a case. I have to admit that I enjoy my mental picture of Benjamin Netanyahu in chains standing in the Court's dock in The Hague. 
Paul Merrell

Foiled Plot by Alleged Islamic Terrorists to Kill Queen Elizabeth. It was not a False F... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ill-queen-elizabeth-false-flag

war & peace ISIL false-flag UK Queen pro-war-propanda

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • An alleged  plot to kill Her Majesty the Queen was uncovered barely 2 days before the Remembrance Day celebrations. Four suspected Islamic terrorists were arrested by police for having put together a carefully designed plot to kill Queen Elizabeth II. A scanty yet authoritative police report was made public in a timely fashion on Friday, two days before the Remembrance Day celebrations.
  • The British media is rife with fabrications and innuendoes. The police reports were distorted by the media. This carefully designed plot to stab Her Majesty with a knife hit the headlines of  the weekend editions of London’s major tabloids, coinciding with the Remembrance Day Event.
  • According to Scotland Yard, the arrests were related  to “Islamist related terrorism”. Confirmed by the police reports, the alleged terrorists were supporters of the Islamic State (ISIL)  and had been called upon to extend the holy jihad to Western Europe.  Lest we forget the Islamic State (ISIS) is a creation of US intelligence, supported and financed out of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Since the outset of the war in Syria in March 2011, US-NATO and their allies have been supporting the terror brigades.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Nov 14
     
    Prof. Michael Chossudovsky, Canadian publisher of Global Research, debunks wild rumors ricocheting through the UK press about four alleged "terrorists" arrested by Scotland Yard supposedly under the control of ISIL. The media have grafted onto that arrest, without confirmation by the police, that they plotted to kill the Queen, then the entire royal family, and then the "British" in general.  Chossudovsky ponts out that since ISIL is "a creation of US intelligence, supported and financed out of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Since the outset of the war in Syria in March 2011, US-NATO and their allies have been supporting the terror brigades."  The House of Commons has been adamant that the UK shall not participate in the Syrian War. It appears that an effort is being made to change MP minds using pro-war propagaqnda.
Paul Merrell

Islamic State militants allegedly used chlorine gas against Iraqi security forces - The... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...0-a7ed-033218f15cbb_story.html

war & peace ISIL al-Qaeda WMD chlorine

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Dizzy, vomiting and struggling to breathe, 11 Iraqi police officers were rushed to a government hospital 50 miles north of the capital last month. The diagnosis: poisoning by chlorine gas. The perpetrators, according to the officers: Islamic State extremists. The chlorine attack appears to be the first confirmed use of chemical weapons by the Islamic State on the battlefield. An Iraqi Defense Ministry official corroborated the events, and doctors said survivors’ symptoms were consistent with chlorine poisoning. Iraqi forces say two other crude chlorine attacks have occurred since the extremists seized vast tracts of Iraqi territory this summer, but details on those incidents remain sketchy. The reported assaults all raise concerns that the militants are attempting to hone their chemical weapons capabilities as they push to control more ground
  • Chlorine, a common component in industry, is sold legally, but its use as a weapon violates the Chemical Weapons Convention. It was widely employed in trench warfare during World War I, including infamously at Ypres in Belgium, where German forces dispersed more than 160 tons of chlorine into the breeze, killing thousands of French and Allied soldiers.
  • One physician on the team, Hassanain Mohammed, had treated similar cases­ before. In 2006 and 2007, al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group that later morphed into the Islamic State, carried out a string of chlorine bombings in the country.
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  • An Iraqi Defense Ministry official confirmed this week that a bomb rigged with chlorine canisters was used in the Duluiyah attack. “They use it just to create terror,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide the information publicly. “But of course we are very concerned.” In a statement, the Defense Ministry confirmed that the Islamic State has used the gas in a “primitive and ineffective way” near water-treatment plants where it has gained access to chlorine, as well as in roadside bomb attacks. It did not specify the locations of the attacks, but there are several water plants near Duluiyah on territory controlled by the Islamic State.
  • Chlorine bombs are an easy-to-create but inexact weapon, experts say. All that is needed is a small explosive charge to rupture containers filled with the substance. “It’s difficult to deliver on target in combat situations,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, an independent researcher who specializes in chemical and biological weapons and disarmament. “Chlorine dissipates fast unless someone is able to concentrate it in a confined area.” Fighters in Duluiyah say it was not the only time chlorine has been used against them. Another attack this month caused minor injuries, and the fighters were treated locally, police officials said.
  • Soldiers who escaped an Islamic State rout of a besieged army base in Saqlawiyah, where hundreds of soldiers were killed last month, also said chlorine gas was used there — though reports of where and how the gas was delivered varied and could not be confirmed. While some officers said they believed artillery- or mortar-launched canisters fired by the attackers fell short of the base, others, who claimed to have remained in the installation for a longer period, said the canisters fell within its perimeter. Another claimed that the militants detonated chlorine-filled containers.
Paul Merrell

Busted Stuff: America's Disastrous Iran Policy | The National Interest - 0 views

nationalinterest.org/...s-disastrous-iran-policy-12500

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Obama U.S.-foreign-policy Leveretts must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Stakes in the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 couldn’t be higher for the countries involved—especially for the United States. After nearly a decade and a half of disastrously self-damaging wars, “counter-terrorism campaigns,” and military occupations in the Middle East, the dysfunction and incoherence of U.S. policy is now on full display, from Iraq to Libya, Syria, and now Yemen. To recover, Washington must accept on-the-ground realities: U.S. efforts to dominate the region have failed and the Islamic Republic of Iran is now a rising power with which America must come to terms.              But President Obama has yet to explain why the United States—for its own interests, not as a favor to Iran, or simply because Americans are war-weary—needs rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. Absent such advocacy, his administration may still reach a nuclear deal with Iran. But it will lose the political fight at home over a new Iran policy, squandering the chance for a broader strategic opening with Tehran and locking the United States into increasingly steep strategic decline in the Middle East and globally.   
  • Today, America cannot achieve any of its high-priority goals in the Middle East—e.g., combatting the Islamic State, forestalling another violent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and resolving conflicts in Syria and Yemen—without better ties with Iran. Under any political order, Iran is a pivotal country, given its demographic and territorial size, its geostrategic location, its identity as a civilizational state with a history as long as China’s, and its hydrocarbon resources. But, under the Islamic Republic—which, since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, has worked to forge an indigenously-designed political system combining participatory politics and elections with elements of Islamic governance, and to pursue foreign policy independence—Iran enjoys a powerful legitimacy that bolsters its regional impact.
  • For too many Americans, thirty-five years of demonizing caricature mask an essential fact:  the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the Middle East’s only successful participatory Islamist order, has been able to pursue an independent foreign policy that has steadily bolstered its influence in critical arenas across the Middle East. If America is to recover its strategic position, it must devise a fundamentally different relationship with this rising power. It must do so not only because of Iran’s unique importance, but also as a first step toward coming to terms with Middle Eastern Muslims’ manifest desire—reflected in polls and in electoral outcomes whenever they get to vote in a reasonably open way—to define their political futures in terms of participatory Islamism and foreign policy independence.      Ignoring these realities, the Obama administration treats a nuclear deal as, at most, a “nice to have” option. Obama rarely identifies potential U.S. gains from realigning relations with Iran; instead, he stresses how Washington is providing Tehran with an “opportunity” to “benefit from rejoining the international community.”  
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  • Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett are co-authors of Going to Tehran: Why America Must Accept the Islamic Republic of Iran; both served as Middle East experts in the U.S. government under Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Flynt is professor of international affairs at Penn State.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15
     
    A must-read.
Paul Merrell

Putin Throws Down the Gauntlet - 0 views

www.counterpunch.org/...ce-to-pull-back-from-the-brink

war & peace Syria Assad Russia U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Would you be willing to defend your country against a foreign invasion? That’s all Putin is doing in Syria. He’s just preempting the tidal wave of jihadis that’ll be coming his way once the current fracas is over.  He figures it’s better to exterminate these US-backed maniacs in Syria now than face them in Chechnya, St Petersburg and Moscow sometime in the future.  Can you blame him? After all, if Washington’s strategy works in Syria, then you can bet they’ll try the same thing in Beirut, Tehran and Moscow. So what choice does Putin have? None. He has no choice.  His back is against the wall. He has to fight.  No one in Washington seems to get this. They think Putin can throw in the towel and call it “quits” at the first sign of getting bogged down. But he can’t throw in the towel because Russia’s facing an existential crisis.  If he loses, then Russia’s going to wind up on the same scrap heap as Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya. You can bet on it. So the only thing he can do is win. Period. Victory isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.
  • Of course they’ve noticed. Everyone’s noticed. Everyone knows Washington is on the warpath and its leaders have gone stark raving mad. How could they not notice? But all that’s done is focus the mind on the task at hand, and the task at hand is to whoop the tar out of the terrorists, put an end to Washington’s sick little jihadi game, and go home. That’s Russia’s plan in a nutshell.  No one is trying to cobble together the long-lost Soviet empire. That’s pure bunkum.  Russia just wants to clean up this nest of vipers and call it a day. There’s nothing more to it than that. But what if the going gets tough and Syria becomes a quagmire? That doesn’t change anything, because Russia still has to win. If that means sending ground troops to Syria, then that’s what Putin will do. If that means asymmetrical warfare, like arming the Kurds or the Yemenis, or the Taliban or even disparate anti-regime Shiites in Saudi Arabia, then he’ll do that too. Whatever it takes. This isn’t a game, it’s a fight for survival; Russia’s survival as a sovereign country. That’s what the stakes are. That’s not something Putin takes lightly.
  • The reason I ask this now is because, on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to attend an emergency meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to discuss issues that are too sensitive to reveal to the public. There’s a lot of speculation about what the two men will talk about, but the urgency and the secrecy of the meeting suggests that the topic will be one of great importance. So allow me to make a guess about what the topic will be. When Kerry arrives in Moscow tomorrow he’ll be rushed to meeting room at the Kremlin where he’ll be joined by Lavrov, Putin, Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu and high-ranking members from military intelligence. Then, following the initial introductions, Kerry will be shown the evidence Russian intelligence has gathered on last Sunday’s attack on a Syrian military base east of Raqqa that killed three Syrian soldiers and wounded thirteen others. The Syrian government immediately condemned the attack and accused US warplanes of conducting the operation. Later in the day,  Putin delivered an uncharacteristically-harsh and threatening statement that left no doubt that he thought the attack was a grave violation of the accepted rules of engagement and, perhaps, a declaration of war.
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  • Why would an incident in the village of Ayyash in far-flung Deir Ezzor Province be so important that it would bring the two nuclear-armed adversaries to the brink of war? I’ll tell you why: It’s because there were other incidents prior to the bombing in Ayyash that laid the groundwork for the current clash. There was the ISIS downing of the Russian airliner that killed 224 Russian civilians. Two weeks after that tragedy, Putin announced at the G-20 meetings that he had gathered intelligence proving that 40 countries –including some in the G-20 itself–were involved in the funding and supporting of ISIS. This story was completely blacked out in the western media and, so far, Russia has not revealed the names of any of the countries involved. So, I ask you, dear reader, do you think the United States is on that list of ISIS supporters?
  • Then there was the downing of the Russian Su-24, a Russian bomber that was shot down by Turkish F-16s while it was carrying out its mission to exterminate terrorists in Syria. Many analysts do not believe that the   Su-24 could have been destroyed without surveillance and logistical support provided by US AWACs or US satellites. Many others scoff at the idea that Turkey would engage in such a risky plan without the go-ahead from Washington. Either way, the belief that Washington was directly involved in the downing of a Russian warplane is widespread. So, I ask you, dear reader, do you think Washington gave Turkey the greenlight? Finally, we have the aerial attack on the Syrian military base in Deir Ezzor, an attack that was either executed by US warplanes or US-coalition warplanes. Not only does the attack constitute a direct assault on the Russian-led coalition (an act of war) but the bombing raid was also carried out in tandem  with a “a full-scale ISIS offensive on the villages of Ayyash and Bgelia.”  The coordination suggests that either the US or US allies were providing  air-cover for ISIS terrorists to carry out their ground operations.  Author Alexander Mercouris– who is certainly no conspiracy nut–expands on this idea in a recent piece at Russia Insider which provides more detail on the incident. The article begins like this:
  • “Did Members of the US-Led Coalition Carry Out an Air Strike to Help ISIS? Russia Implies They Did. Russian statement appears to implicate aircraft from two member states of the US led coalition in the air strike on the Syrian military base in Deir az-Zor….This information – if it is true – begs a host of questions. Firstly, the Syrian military base that was hit by the air strike was apparently the scene of a bitter battle between the Syrian military and the Islamic State.  It seems that shortly after the air strike – and most probably as a result of it – the Islamic State’s fighters were able to storm it. Inevitably, that begs the question of whether the aircraft that carried out the air strike were providing air support to the fighters of the Islamic State. On the face of it, it looks like they were. After all, if what happened was simply a mistake, it might have been expected that the US and its allies would say as much.  If so, it is an extremely serious and worrying development, suggesting that some members of the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition are actually in league with the Islamic State.  (“Did Members of the US-Led Coalition Carry Out an Air Strike to Help ISIS?” Alexander Mercouris, Russia Insider)
  • So there it is in black and white. The Russians think someone in the US-led coalition is teaming up with ISIS. That should make for some interesting conversation when Kerry sashays into the Kremlin today. Does Kerry have any clue that Putin and his lieutenants are probably going to produce evidence that coalition warplanes were involved in the bombing of the Syrian military base?  How do you think he’ll respond to that news? Will he apologize or just stand there dumbstruck? And how will he react when Putin tells him that if a similar incident takes place in the future, Russian warplanes and anti-aircraft units are going to shoot the perpetrator down? If I am not mistaken, Kerry is in for a big surprise on Tuesday. He’s about to learn that Putin takes war very seriously and is not going to let Washington sabotage his plans for success. If Kerry’s smart, he’ll pass along that message to Obama and tell him he needs to dial it down a notch if he wants to avoid a war with Russia.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 15
     
    Article published just before Kerry's meeting with Lavrov, et al, after which Kerry announced that Assad stepping down is no longer a U.S. pre-condition of negotiating peace in Syria. It's important to keep in mind here that non-interference in the internal affairs of foreign nations is a fundamental tenet of international law, one that the U.S. regime change position on Syria openly flouted, as it did in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. So what is behind Kerry's suddenly-acquired respect for the right of the people of Syria to choose their own leader? Mike Whitney offers us a smorgasbord of reasons in this article, all of which boil down to Russian blackmail, a threat to go public with incredibly damning information on what the U.S. and allies have been up to in Syria. This may be a turning point in the Syrian War, since the positions of the Gulf Coast Council (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, etc.) and the salafist jihadis they have supplied to take down Assad has been unequivocal insistence that Assad agree to step down as a precondition of negotiation.  I.e., the U.S. is forking away from the Gulf Coast Council/jihadi position. How will they react? 
Paul Merrell

What Should We Do if the Islamic State Wins? | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...islamic-state-wins-containment

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL containment

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • It’s time to ponder a troubling possibility: What should we do if the Islamic State wins? By “wins,” I don’t mean it spreads like wildfire throughout the Muslim world, eventually establishing a caliphate from Baghdad to Rabat and beyond. That’s what its leaders say they are going to do, but revolutionary ambitions are not reality and that possibility is particularly far-fetched. Rather, an Islamic State victory would mean that the group retained power in the areas it now controls and successfully defied outside efforts to “degrade and destroy” it. So the question is: What do we do if the Islamic State becomes a real state and demonstrates real staying power? That possibility is looking more likely these days, given Baghdad’s inability to mount a successful counteroffensive. If MIT’s Barry Posen is correct (and he usually is), the Iraqi Army no longer exists as a meaningful fighting force. Not only does this reveal the bankruptcy of the U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces (and the collective failure of all the commanders who led this effort and kept offering upbeat assessments of progress), but it also means that only a large-scale foreign intervention is likely to roll back and ultimately eliminate the Islamic State. This will not happen unless a coalition of Arab states agrees to commit thousands of their own troops to the battle, because the United States will not and should not do the fighting for states whose stake in the outcome exceeds its own.
  • Don’t get me wrong — I’d be as pleased as anyone if the Islamic State were decisively defeated and its violent message utterly discredited. But one needs to plan not just for what one would like to see happen, but also for the very real possibility that we can’t actually achieve what we want — or at least not at a cost that we consider acceptable. So what do we do if the Islamic State succeeds in holding on to its territory and becoming a real state? Posen says that the United States (as well as others) should deal with the Islamic State the same way it has dealt with other revolutionary state-building movements: with a policy of containment. I agree.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jun 15
     
    The legitimazation process begins for ISIL wiyh a Foreign Policy article penned by influential Harvard Prof. Stephen M. Walt.
Paul Merrell

Did Members of the US-Led Coalition Carry Out an Air Strike to Help ISIS? Russia Implie... - 0 views

russia-insider.com/...ri11749

war & peace Syria Russia U.S.-coalition ISIL-collaboration

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The argument over the air strike on the Syrian military base in Deir az-Zor has taken a strange and worrying turn.The US has categorically denied that any of its aircraft were involved. It has admitted that its aircraft were in the area, but says that they carried out an air strike 55 km away.The Russians say that is true. However, they also say that it is not the whole truth.The Russians say that in addition to the US aircraft, two pairs of aircraft - in other words four aircraft in total - from two other countries that are also members of the US led coalition were also flying at the time of the air strike over Deir az-Zor.The Russians have not actually said it was these aircraft that carried out the air strike. However, they have pointed out that the US has failed to admit to the presence of these aircraft. They are asking why?
  • It is the broadest of hints, and it is difficult to believe that the Russians do not think that it was these aircraft that carried out the air strike.This information - if it is true - begs a host of questions.Firstly, the Syrian military base that was hit by the air strike was apparently the scene of a bitter battle between the Syrian military and the Islamic State.  It seems that shortly after the air strike - and most probably as a result of it - the Islamic State’s fighters were able to storm it.Inevitably, that begs the question of whether the aircraft that carried out the air strike were providing air support to the fighters of the Islamic State.  On the face of it, it looks like they were. After all, if what happened was simply a mistake, it might have been expected that the US and its allies would say as much.If so, it is an extremely serious and worrying development, suggesting that some members of the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition are actually in league with the Islamic State.
  • Secondly, Deir az-Zor is the area of Syria from which the Islamic State exports most of its oil. Again, this inevitably begs the question of whether the Islamic State attack on the base - and the air strike seemingly carried out in support of it - was in some way connected to the illegal oil trade, and might have been intended to protect it.Thirdly, there is the obvious question of which countries’ aircraft were involved. The Russians are not identifying these countries - at least for the moment - though they obviously know or think they know which they are.  The one thing however that the Russians are saying is that the aircraft of more than one country was involved.The Russians are also drawing attention to the US’ failure to admit to the presence of the aircraft of these countries, which strongly suggests that the US is protecting them, whichever countries they are.Lastly, it is interesting that the Russians seem to be so well informed about this incident.  If the Russians do indeed know how many aircraft from the US-led coalition were flying at any one time over Der az-Zor, and can identify the countries they belong to, then the inescapable conclusion is that their surveillance and intelligence operation in Syria is very effective indeed.
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  • This raises the interesting possibility that this sort of thing has not only happened before, but that it has been going on unreported for some time, and that the reason why the Russians made so much of this particular incident was so as to warn the US that with the Russian surveillance and intelligence operation in Syria now so good the US cannot get away with doing this sort of thing any longer. If Russian reporting of this incident is intended as a warning to the US, then that might explain why the Russians have held back information about the identity of the countries whose aircraft were involved in this incident.  With the warning made, the Russians may feel that there is no reason to inflame the situation further by making public accusations against particular countries, whose governments would have no option but to dispute them.As is now happening continuously with news coming out of Syria, Western governments and the Western media have pulled down a curtain of silence over this story.This is scarcely surprising since any hint that any Western ally is in league with the Islamic State - even in the most informal sense - would after the Paris attacks be politically explosive.
  • In the case of Britain - if it was its aircraft that were involved - an attack on a Syrian military base would be in open defiance of the will of the British parliament.The attempt to suppress information about this incident however in no way diminishes its importance.  The two coalitions supposedly fighting the Islamic State - the US-led coalition and the Russian-led coalition - have in the space of just two weeks twice fought each other - once when the SU24 was shot down, and now with the attack on the Syrian base.  On both occasions it was members of the US-led coalition that acted as the aggressors.That makes it doubly important that as many people as possible are informed about this incident.In the meantime it is a certainty that all sorts of angry conversations are going on about it at various levels between Moscow and Washington.
Paul Merrell

Analysis: PA 'balking' at war crimes probe - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...israel-201491273525819720.html

war & peace Israel Palestine Gaza ICC war crimes Abbas

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • After a document obtained by Al Jazeera revealed the Palestinian Authority (PA) has stalled the launch of a formal investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza, Palestinian legal and human rights experts remain dubious that the PA ever truly intended to join the International Criminal Court (ICC). In a confidential letter obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit, the ICC's top prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said she "did not receive a positive confirmation" from PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki that the request submitted for an international investigation had the Palestinian government's approval. Palestinian officials have, on numerous occasions, threatened to head to the ICC to hold Israel accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity. But their efforts so far, have proved fruitless. In July, a French lawyer filed a complaint with the court on behalf of the Palestinian minister of justice, accusing Israel of carrying out war crimes in the Gaza Strip. This came after a 2009 call for an ICC investigation into Israel's three-week military offensive in Gaza that was later dropped when the prosecutor said Palestine was not a court member. In August, Malki met with ICC officials to discuss the implications of ratifying the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the criminal court. "Everything that has happened...is clear evidence of war crimes committed by Israel, amounting to crimes against humanity," he told reporters in The Hague, referring to the recent 51-day Israeli military offensive on Gaza, which left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead. Six Israeli civilians were killed, along with 66 Israeli soldiers.
  • Two years ago, Palestine became recognised as a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly. This made it eligible to join the ICC; however, to date, Palestinian officials have not signed the Rome Statute, even though almost 80 percent of Palestinians support going to the court. Senior Fatah official Mohammad Shtayyeh didn't say when the Palestinians would apply to the ICC, but said it would probably happen in another few months. "The indictment against Israel at the ICC and all the accompanying documents are ready," Shtayyeh told Al Jazeera. One of the remaining hurdles, Shtayyeh said, is getting one remaining Palestinian faction - Islamic Jihad - to sign an accession document before the Palestinians can present it. Hamas signed onto the proposal at the behest of the PA in August. "We're not in a situation of setting a deadline or making an ultimatum," he said. "We're following developments in the region and the world, and therefore, we'll wait for answers from the international community. But I believe that by November-December, the picture should be clearer."
  • In response to Al Jazeera's claims, the Palestinian Justice Minister Salim al-Saqqa said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was serious about going to the ICC and was "awaiting national dialogue" to pursue it. "This issue is our number-one priority," he said. "It is still on the table awaiting a few legal and technical procedures. We have not missed our opportunity to head to the court." So far, the Palestinians have struggled to use the court to pursue their claims, with some attributing this to the PA's use of an ICC investigation as a political bargaining chip. "The PA can go to the ICC in one day," said Shawan Jabarin, the director of Ramallah-based human rights group al-Haq. "Abbas, who has been turned this into a political issue, is balking." Many factors are working against setting off a war crimes investigation at the ICC, not least the international community's apparent opposition to the move. "It is the PA's trump card because the Israelis and the Americans have said it is a red line," said Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
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  • "When this red line is crossed, then the US said it won't give money to the PA. That's what we call blackmail. But at what point will Abu Mazen [Abbas] say this is a trump card but we will use it?"
  • During US-mediated peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Washington ensured that the PA would freeze all moves to turn to international organisations until April 2014. "The Palestinian Authority has been consistently pressured by the USA, Israel, Canada, the UK and other EU Member States not to take steps to grant the ICC jurisdiction," Amnesty International said. "Such pressure has included threats to withdraw financial assistance on which the Palestinian Authority depends."
  • But when Israel reneged on its pledge to free a total of 104 veteran Palestinian prisoners in four tranches, the PA responded by joining 15 international treaties and conventions. Israel said this spelled the end of their negotiations with the Palestinians, while the US said that the PA's moves negatively affected attempts to engage both parties in talks. "The PA's hesitancy can be attributed to several factors: The need to preserve it as a trump card, and also a fear of the US and some European countries' reaction," Jabarin said. "The problem is the method being used by Abbas; he has subjected the issue to political bargaining and to the whims of negotiations." Another reason the PA may be hesitant to set a war crimes investigation in motion is the ramifications it may have on some Palestinian factions. The ICC would likely look into Hamas and Islamic Jihad's rocket-firing o
  • In the past week, Israel said it would open a criminal investigation into several instances of what it is calling "military misconduct" in the Gaza war. Israel's swift call for a probe appears to be an attempt to pre-empt any independent investigations into allegations that its military committed war crimes in Gaza. "The PA gave the Israelis enough time to come up with a trick to prevent the court from opening any investigation," said Saad Djebbar, a London-based lawyer. Generally, the ICC launches probes in instances where the country involved is unable or unwilling to launch an investigation itself, Djebbar told Al Jazeera. "If the court tries to open an inquiry, the Israelis can claim they have jurisdiction [to do it themselves] because the ICC's jurisdiction is complementary," he explained. "The ICC is legally bound to allow an Israeli [probe] to continue."
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    Which helps explain why, in a recent poll of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, the Hamas leader outpolled Abbas by something on the order of 70-30 on the question of who Palestinians would vote for as President if elections were held at that time. 
Paul Merrell

How Many Islamic State Fighters Are There? | Consortiumnews - 0 views

consortiumnews.com/...lamic-state-fighters-are-there

war & peace ISIL Dempsey Vietnam-War

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • As the United States slides back into war in the Middle East, the specter of Vietnam hovers over the endeavor with some observers wondering if wishful thinking will again replace hardheaded analysis about the risks and the costs, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
  • Why was I reminded of Vietnam on Saturday when Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Iraq to “get a firsthand look at the situation in Iraq, receive briefings, and get better sense of how the campaign is progressing” against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL? For years as the Vietnam quagmire deepened, U.S. political and military leaders flew off to Vietnam and were treated to a snow job by Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander there. Many would come back glowing about how the war was “progressing.”
  • Dempsey might have been better served if someone had shown him Patrick Cockburn’s article in the Independent entitled “War with Isis: Islamic militants have an army of 200,000, claims senior Kurdish leader.” Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, told Cockburn that “I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilize Arab young men in the territory they have taken.”
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  • While the Kurdish estimate may be high – it certainly exceeds “the tens of thousands,” maybe 20,000 to 30,000 that many Western analysts have claimed – the possibility that the Islamic State’s insurgency is bigger than believed could explain its startling success in overrunning the Iraqi Army around Mosul last summer and achieving surprising success against the well-regarded Kurdish pesh merga forces, too. So, on his flight back to Washington, Dempsey will have time to ponder whether he has the courage to pass on this discouraging word to President Barack Obama about ISIS or whether he will put on the rose-colored glasses like an earlier generation of commanders did about Vietnam, where Westmoreland insisted that the number of enemy Vietnamese in South Vietnam could not go above 299,000.
Paul Merrell

Discord dissolves Pakistani Taliban coalition - The Long War Journal - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...discord_dissolves_pa.php

war & peace Taliban ISIL Pakistan

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Ever since the head of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakeemullah Mehsud, was killed in a US drone strike in late 2013, the al Qaeda-linked group has been plagued by leadership disputes, infighting, and defections. Mullah Fazlullah, Mehsud's successor, has proven to be incapable of holding the coalition of jihadists together. The latest members to leave the group are its spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, and five regional emirs: Hafiz Dolat Khan from Kurram, Hafiz Saeed Khan from Arakzai, Maulana Gul Zaman from Khyber, Mufti Hassan Swati from Peshawar, and Khalid Mansoor from Hangu. Shahid announced their defection in a video (seen above) that was released online earlier this week. The Pakistani Taliban figures are now loyal to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State, which has been attempting to woo al Qaeda and Taliban leaders for months.
  • "I pledge allegiance to the Commander of the Faithful and the Caliph of Muslims Abu Bakr al Baghdadi al Qurashi al Husayni, to obey him when we are enthusiastic and when we are halfhearted, as well as in difficulty and relief," Shahid says in the video, according to a translation obtained by The Long War Journal. Shahid stresses that his pledge of allegiance (bayat) is not on behalf of the "entire movement," nor has Mullah Fazlullah himself sworn an oath of fealty to Baghdadi. Instead, Shahid says, the oath is "pledged by myself as well as five other Pakistani Taliban emirs, who are the emirs of Orakzai, Kuram, Khaybar, Hangu, and Peshawar regions." Shahid goes on to claim that this is the fourth time he has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. His claim is curious, to say the least. The video above was disseminated online on Oct. 13. But less just one week earlier, on Oct. 6, Shahid was quoted as denying that the Pakistani Taliban had sworn allegiance to Baghdadi's group. Shahid was quoted in an account by Reuters, and there is nothing in that report about Shahid or the five other Pakistani Taliban leaders switching their allegiance to Baghdadi. On the contrary, Shahid was quoted as saying, "We are not supporting any specific group in Syria or Iraq; all groups there are noble and they are our brothers." Shahid continued, "Mullah Omar is our head and we are following him."
  • In just one week, therefore, the Pakistani Taliban spokesman went from claiming that the group was entirely loyal to Mullah Omar to announcing that he and five commanders now counted themselves among the Islamic State's ranks. Interestingly, Shahid claims in his defection notice that on a prior occasion in early July he privately swore his allegiance to Baghdadi through Abu Huda al Sudani. This has a ring of truth to it, as al Sudani is a disgruntled al Qaeda veteran who leads a faction in Afghanistan that has sided with the Islamic State. Al Sudani leads a faction that is now loyal to Baghdadi. It is not clear how many former Pakistani Taliban fighters the defectors command. The emirs of the five regions did have forces under their direction, but it is not publicly known how many jihadists they direct, or if all of their fighters have followed suit. In reality, Shahid's announced defection to the Islamic State is just the latest blow to Fazlullah's group. It is clear that Fazlullah has not been able to fill Hakeemullah Mehsud's shoes. Indeed, well before the six Pakistani Taliban leaders announced their decision to side with Baghdadi this past week most of the group had already defected. The majority of the Pakistani Taliban's leaders and fighters had already left its ranks, forming new groups. And the most prominent of these organizations are still loyal to Mullah Omar.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 14
     
    This is still a highly murky situation. Read the rest of the article for more detail and caveats.
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