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Paul Merrell

U.S. deploys troops along Turkish - Syrian border as buffer between Kurds and Turkey - ... - 0 views

  • The United States is deploying armored vehicles and a small number of troops along the Syrian – Turkish border after recent airstrikes killed about 20 Syrian – Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Unit (YPG). The YPG is a key member organization of the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
  • The troops and armored vehicles were deployed on Friday amidst increased tensions between the YPG and Turkey, as well as increased tensions between Turkey and Turkey’s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Footage posted by Syrian activists online showed a convoy of U.S. armored vehicles driving on a rural road in the village of Darbasiyah in the Kurdish region of northern Syria, a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. Clashes in the area were reported Wednesday a day after the Turkish airstrike which also destroyed a Kurdish command headquarters. The YPG reported that a series of air strikes and attacks between April 25 and April 28 resulted in the death of at least 20 of their fighters. Both Russia, Syria and the United States expressed grave concerns about Turkey’s military actions against the YPG. All three stressed that Turkey should rather focus on fighting the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh). The Turkish AKP government, for its part, considers the YPG as a terrorist organization on par and allied with the PKK. Moreover, Turkey strongly opposes the creation of a Kurdish state construct or a federal, predominantly Kurdish construct in northern Syria, fearing it would strengthen the PKK. Turkey is therefore counting on its cooperation with Islamist insurgents, often with links to Al-Qaeda affiliates, under the euphemism Free Syrian Army (FSA).
  • Pentagon Spokesman, U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, did not dispute that U.S. troops are operating with elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) along the Turkish border, but he would not get into specifics. The SDF is a Kurdish-dominated alliance fighting IS that includes Kurdish and Arab fighters as well as fighters from other local ethnic and other militia. Deserted Free Syrian Army officers and fighters are also part of the SDF. Davis commented “We have U.S. forces that are there throughout the entirety of northern Syria that operate with our Syrian Democratic Force partners,” Davis said. “The border is among the areas where they operate.” He said the U.S. wants the SDF to focus on liberating the IS-held town of Tabqa and the extremist group’s de facto capital, Raqqa, “and not be drawn into conflicts elsewhere.” In March 2016, about 200 Marines were deployed to Syrian Kurdistan backed with howitzers, significantly widening the U.S. support for the SDF, especially in the highly complex battlefield around Raqqa.
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  • The United States and Turkey have been openly at loggerheads over the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wings, the YPG, and the all-female YPJ since October 2016. The government of the Syrian Arab Republic recognizes the YPG and SDF for their roles in fighting ISIS. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, earlier this year, also recognized the United States role in supporting the YPG and SDF. In mid-April 2017, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said the Syrian government supports and will cooperate with anyone who liberates the city of Raqqa from the self-proclaimed Islamic State, the United States included. Assad stressed however, that help in fighting terrorism must not be confused with an attempt by the U.S. to occupy the country.
Paul Merrell

Ending Syria's Nightmare will Take Pressure From Below  - 0 views

  • On Wednesday, the US airlifted hundreds of mainly-Kurdish fighters to an area behind ISIS lines where they were dropped near the town of al-Tabqa. The troops– who are part of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF– were accompanied by an undisclosed number of US Marines serving as advisors. Ostensibly, the deployment was intended to encircle ISIS positions and retake the area around the strategic Tabqa Dam. But the operation had the added effect of blocking the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) from advancing  along the main road towards Raqqa, the so called Capital of ISIS.  While the blocking move might have been coincidental, there’s a strong possibility that Washington is in the opening phase of a broader strategy to splinter the war-torn country and prevent the reemergence of a united secular Syria. According to Almasdar News: “The Coalition supported the offensive with air movement and logistical support, precision airstrikes, Apache helicopters in close air support, Marine artillery, and special operations advice and assistance to SDF leadership,” the US-led coalition said in a statement.” (AMN News) In a matter of weeks, Washington’s approach to the war in Syria has changed dramatically. While the US has reportedly ended its support for the Sunni militias that have torn the country apart and killed over 400,000 people, the US has increased its aid to the SDF that is making impressive territorial gains across the eastern corridor. The ultimate goal for the SDF fighters is an autonomous Kurdish homeland carved out of West Iraq and East Syria, while US objectives focus primarily on the breakup of the Syrian state, the removal of the elected government, the control over critical pipelines routes, and the redrawing of national borders to better serve the interests of the US and Israel.
  • The most recent adaptation of Yinon’s plan was articulated by Brookings Institute analyst Michael O’ Hanlon in a piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal titled “A Trump Strategy to End Syria’s Nightmare”.  In the article, O’ Hanlon states bluntly: “To achieve peace, Syria will need self-governance within a number of autonomous zones. One option is a confederal system by which the whole country is divided into such zones. A less desirable but minimally acceptable alternative could be several autonomous zones within an otherwise still-centralized state—similar to how Iraqi Kurdistan has functioned for a quarter-century…. Security in the Sunni Arab and Kurdish autonomous zones would be provided by local police and perhaps paramilitary forces raised, trained and equipped with the direct support of the international community. …(“A Trump Strategy to End Syria’s Nightmare”, Wall Street Journal) In an earlier piece, O’ Hanlon referred to his scheme as “Deconstructing Syria” a plan that “would produce autonomous zones that would never again have to face the prospect of rule by either Assad or ISIL.” Many of the details in O’ Hanlon’s piece are identical to those in Trump’s plan which was announced by Secretary of State Tillerson just last week. The Brookings strategy appears to be the script from which the administration is operating.
  • In his presentation, Tillerson announced that US troops would not leave Iraq after the siege of Mosul was concluded which has led many to speculate that the same policy will be used in Syria. Here’s an excerpt from an article at the WSWS that explains this point: “US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared Washington’s intention to keep troops deployed more or less indefinitely in the territories now occupied by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in remarks delivered at the beginning of a two-day meeting of the US-organized anti-ISIS coalition in Washington. “The military power of the coalition will remain where this fraudulent caliphate has existed in order to set the conditions for a full recovery from the tyranny of ISIS,” he told an audience that included Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. He gave no indication of when, if ever, US troops could be withdrawn from a war zone extending across Iraq and Syria, where there has been fighting of greater or lesser intensity throughout the 14 years since the US first invaded Iraq.” (Tillerson pledges long-term US military role in Iraq and Syria, World Socialist web Site) US Defense Secretary James “Mad Dog” Mattis reinforced Tillerson’s comments adding that the US plans a indefinite occupation of Iraq (and, possibly, Syria) stating that it was in America’s “national interest.”
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  • “We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past…We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments…. Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States] …In our dealings with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will.” There won’t be any peace under Mattis or McMaster, that’s for sure. Both men are anti-Moscow hardliners who think Russia is an emerging rival that must be confronted and defeated. Even more worrisome is the fact that uber-hawk John McCain recently stated that he talks with both men “almost daily” (even though he has avoided talking to Trump since he was elected in November.) According to German Marshall Fund’s Derek Chollet, a former Obama Pentagon official. “(McCain) is trying to run U.S. defense policy through Mattis and effectively ignore Trump.” (Kimberly Dozier, Daily Beast contributing editor)  Chollet’s comments square with our belief that Trump has relinquished his control over foreign policy to placate his critics.
  • In response to Mattis’s comments, Syrian President Bashar al Assad said: “Any military operation in Syria without the approval of the Syrian government is illegal, and  any troops on the Syrian soil,  is an invasion, whether to liberate Raqqa or any other place. …The (US-led) coalition has never been serious about fighting ISIS or the terrorists.” Clearly, Washington is using the fight against ISIS as a pretext for capturing and holding territory in a critical, energy-rich area of the world. The plan to seize parts of East Syria for military bases and pipeline corridors fits neatly within this same basic strategy.   But it also throws a wrench in Moscow’s plan to restore the country’s borders and put an end to the six year-long conflict. And what does Tillerson mean when he talks about “interim zones of stability” a moniker that the Trump administration carefully crafted to avoid the more portentous-sounding “safe zones”. (Readers will recall that Hillary Clinton was the biggest proponent of safe zones in Syria, even though they would require a huge commitment of US troops as well as the costly imposition of a no-fly zone.) Tillerson’s comments suggest that the Trump administration is deepening its involvement in Syria despite the risks of a catastrophic clash with Moscow. Ever since General Michael Flynn was forced to step down from his position as National Security Advisor, (Flynn wanted to “normalize” relations with Russia), Trump has filled his foreign policy team with Russophobic hawks who see Moscow as “hostile revisionist power” that “annex(es) territory, intimidates our allies, develops nuclear weapons, and uses proxies under the cover of modernized conventional militaries.” Those are the words of  the man who replaced Flynn as NSA,  Lt. General HR McMaster. While the media applauded the McMaster appointment as an “outstanding choice”, his critics think it signals a departure from Trump’s campaign promise:
  • Washington’s Syria policy is now in the hands of a small group of right-wing extremists who think Russia is the biggest threat the nation has faced since WW2. That’s why there’s been a sharp uptick in the number of troops deployed to the region. 
Paul Merrell

Google will 'de-rank' RT articles to make them harder to find - Eric Schmidt - RT World... - 0 views

  • Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, says the company will “engineer” specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine’s news delivery services. “We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites – it’s basically RT and Sputnik,” Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates “Russian propaganda.”
  • “We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don’t want to ban the sites – that’s not how we operate.”The discussion focused on the company’s popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications.
  • The Alphabet chief, who has been referred to by Hillary Clinton as a “longtime friend,” added that the experience of “the last year” showed that audiences could not be trusted to distinguish fake and real news for themselves.“We started with the default American view that ‘bad’ speech would be replaced with ‘good’ speech, but the problem found in the last year is that this may not be true in certain situations, especially when you have a well-funded opponent who is trying to actively spread this information,” he told the audience.
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  • RT America registered under FARA earlier this month, after being threatened by the US Department of Justice with arrests and confiscations of property if it failed to comply. The broadcaster is fighting the order in court.
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    " HomeWorld News Google will 'de-rank' RT articles to make them harder to find - Eric Schmidt Published time: 20 Nov, 2017 19:58 Edited time: 21 Nov, 2017 03:41 Get short URL   © Global Look Press Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, says the company will "engineer" specific algorithms for RT and Sputnik to make their articles less prominent on the search engine's news delivery services. "We are working on detecting and de-ranking those kinds of sites - it's basically RT and Sputnik," Schmidt said during a Q & A session at the Halifax International Security Forum in Canada on Saturday, when asked about whether Google facilitates "Russian propaganda." Schmidt appearance begins at 1:07:00 mark, relevant question at 1:33:00 "We are well of aware of it, and we are trying to engineer the systems to prevent that [the content being delivered to wide audiences]. But we don't want to ban the sites - that's not how we operate." The discussion focused on the company's popular Google News service, which clusters the news by stories, then ranks the various media outlets depending on their reach, article length and veracity, and Google Alerts, which proactively informs subscribers of new publications. Read more 'Slap at the First Amendment' - RT America forced to register as foreign agent RT has criticized the proposed move - whose timescale has not been publicized - as arbitrary and a form of censorship. "Good to have Google on record as defying all logic and reason: facts aren't allowed if they come from RT, 'because Russia' - even if we have Google on Congressional record saying they've found no manipulation of their platform or policy violations by RT," Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said in a statement. During the discussion, Schmidt claimed that he was "very strongly not in favor of censorship," but said that he has faith in "ranking" without ackno
Paul Merrell

House puts squeeze on military's 'musical arsenal' - Checkpoint Washington - The Washin... - 0 views

  • The House, for a second year in a row, has approved a measure limiting Pentagon spending on military bands next year to only $200 million. An amendment by Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, was approved as part of the fiscal 2013 Defense Authorization Bill and could save $188 million if it makes it through Congress. A similar amendment passed by the House last year, however, was dropped by the House-Senate conference. In a statement placed in the Congressional Record, McCollum said: “Over the past four years, taxpayers have spent $1.55 billion for the Pentagon’s 150 military bands and more than 5,000 full-time, professional military musicians.... At a time of fiscal crisis the Pentagon will have to get by spending only $200 million for their musical arsenal.”
  • But, when it comes to reining in spending, only the Air Force had plans to do so, dropping eight of its 23 bands next year. The other services are increasing funding.
  • The Army, Navy and Marine Corps, which also face personnel reductions, are keeping their current 125 bands for 2013 and actually increasing their spending on them by $6.4 million, according to the Defense Department.
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  • McCollum scored another victory on Thursday. Her amendment, put forward with Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), to eliminate all Pentagon spending to sponsor professional or semi-professional sports, including auto racing, was attached to the fiscal Defense Appropriations Bill. Some $80 million was spent on sports sponsorship this year, including $26 million by the National Guard to place its logo on Dale Earnhardt Jr’s NASCAR vehicle, as well as on his uniform and those of his racing team.
Paul Merrell

Russian warships enter Mediterranean to form permanent task force - RT News - 0 views

  • Warships from Russia’s Pacific Fleet have entered the Mediterranean for the first time in decades. Russia’s Navy Chief says the task force may be reinforced with nuclear submarines, as the country starts building up a permanent fleet in the region.
  • The Mediterranean has recently become a hotspot of military muscle flexing as global powers seemingly vie for influence. NATO has been staging major naval war games involving several countries, last October holding an exercise code-named Noble Mariner 12. Russia held its largest naval exercises in the region this January, with drills spanning both the Black and Mediterranean Seas. The media quickly linked both the NATO and Russian war games to the situation in Syria. Another recent naval display, seen as provocative by Israel, was the deployment of the Iranian Navy’s 24th Fleet to patrol the Mediterranean and convey a “message of peace.” Since then, Israel has acquired its fifth Dolphin-class submarine allegedly capable of launching cruise missiles with nuclear warheads. China has also been increasing its involvement in the area, with the country’s warships sailing through the Suez Canal, and several key ports of the region becoming partially China-owned.
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    On top of this, Israel has just launched its fifth submarine capable of firing nuclear missiles. 
Paul Merrell

PressTV - US planning for a post-Israel Middle East - 0 views

  • So what is all the fuss about? It’s a paper entitled: Preparing for a Post-Israel Middle East, an 82-page analysis that concludes that the American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors conclude that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations with Arab and Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community. The study was commissioned by the US Intelligence Community comprising 16 American intelligence agencies with an annual budget in excess of $ 70 billion. The IC includes the departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Defense Intelligence Agency, Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasury, Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned the study.
  • srael, given its current brutal occupation and belligerence cannot be salvaged any more than apartheid South Africa could be when as late as 1987 Israel was the only “Western” nation that upheld diplomatic ties with South Africa and was the last country to join the international boycott campaign before the regime collapsed;
  • Simultaneous with, but predating, rapidly expanding Arab and Muslim power in the region as evidenced by the Arab Spring, Islamic Awakening and the ascendancy of Iran, as American power and influence recedes, the US commitment to belligerent oppressive Israel is becoming impossible to defend or execute consistent given paramount US national interests which include normalizing relations with the 57 Islamic countries; · Gross Israeli interference in the internal affairs of the United States through spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and approximately 7,500 US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate the media and agencies of the US government which should no longer be condoned;
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  • The international opposition to the increasingly apartheid regime can no longer be synchronized with American claimed humanitarian values or US expectations in its bilateral relations with the 193 member United Nations. The Draft ends with language about the need to avoid entangling alliances that alienate much of the World and condemn American citizens to endure the consequences.
  • Franklin Lamb, former Assistant Counsel, US House Judiciary Committee and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil., and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Following three years at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Lamb was visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Center.
Paul Merrell

Saudi Press Just Accuses US Govt Of Carrying Out 9/11 Attacks - 0 views

  • In response to the U.S. Senate’s unanimous vote to allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia in federal court, a report published in the London-based Al-Hayat daily, by Saudi legal expert Katib al-Shammari, claims that the U.S. masterminded the terror attacks as a means of creating a nebulous “enemy” in order garner public support for a global war on terror. The report by al-Shammari, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), claims that long-standing American policy is “built upon the principle of advance planning and future probabilities,” which the U.S. has now turned toward the Saudi regime after being successfully employed against first the Taliban and al-Qaeda, then Saddam Hussein and his secular Baathist controlled Iraq. Al-Shammari claims the recent U.S. threats to “expose” documents implicating the Saudi government are simply the continuation of a U.S. policy, which he refers to as “victory by means of archive.” He highlights that during the initial invasion of Iraq, under George H.W. Bush, Saddam Hussein was left alive and in power to be used as “a bargaining chip,” but upon deciding that he was “no longer an ace up their sleeve” Washington moved to topple his government and install a U.S.-backed ruling party.
  • The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are now the “ace up the sleeve” of the U.S. government, according to al-Shammari. “September 11 is one of winning cards in the American archives, because all the wise people in the world who are experts on American policy and who analyze the images and the videos [of 9/11] agree unanimously that what happened in the [Twin] Towers was a purely American action, planned and carried out within the U.S. Proof of this is the sequence of continuous explosions that dramatically ripped through both buildings… Expert structural engineers demolished them with explosives, while the planes crashing [into them] only gave the green light for the detonation – they were not the reason for the collapse. But the U.S. still spreads blame in all directions. [This policy] can be dubbed ‘victory by means of archives.” The impetus behind the attacks, writes al-Shammari, was to create “an obscure enemy – terrorism – which became what American presidents blamed for all their mistakes” and that would provide justification for any “dirty operation” in any nation. According to al-Shammari’s report in Al-Hayat: “On September 11, the U.S. attained several victories at the same time, that [even] the hawks [who were at that time] in the White House could not have imagined. Some of them can be enumerated as follows:
  • 1. The U.S. created, in public opinion, an obscure enemy – terrorism – which became what American presidents blamed for all their mistakes, and also became the sole motivation for any dirty operation that American politicians and military figures desire to carry out in any country. [The] terrorism [label] was applied to Muslims, and specifically to Saudi Arabia. 2. Utilizing this incident [9/11], the U.S. launched a new age of global armament. Everyone wanted to acquire all kinds of weapons to defend themselves and at the same time battle the obscure enemy, terrorism – [even though] up to this very moment we do not know the essence of this terrorism of which the U.S. speaks, except [to say that] that it is Islamic… 3. The U.S. made the American people choose from two bad options: either live peacefully [but] remain exposed to the danger of death [by terrorism] at any moment, or starve in safety, because [the country’s budget will be spent on sending] the Marines even as far as Mars to defend you.” The Saudi press has been in a frenzy since the unanimous Senate vote to allow for the House of Saud to be held liable in U.S. federal court for the 9/11 attacks, with the U.S. being accused of being in alliance with Iran – to press warnings that passage of the “Satanic” bill would “open the gates of hell,” as reported by Breitbart.
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  • Al-Shammari makes extremely clear that he views the problem as the U.S. imperial machine itself, stating, “the nature of the U.S. is that it cannot exist without an enemy.” The nature of the U.S. is that it cannot exist without an enemy… [For example,] after a period during which it did not fight anyone [i.e. following World War II], the U.S. created a new kind of war – the Cold War… Then, when the Soviet era ended, after we Muslims helped the religions and fought Communism on their [the Americans’] behalf, they began to see Muslims as their new enemy! The U.S. saw a need for creating a new enemy – and planned, organized, and carried this out [i.e. blamed Muslims for terrorism]. This will never end until it [the U.S.] accomplishes the goals it has set for itself. While it seems fighting Islamic terrorism is great for increasing fear and State propaganda meant to elicit compliant civilian populations that passively accept loss of liberty for promises of greater security, the military-industrial complex needs a bigger enemy to justify their $600 billion dollar-a-year budgets, thus beginning the transition to labeling Russia/China as “aggressive Russia/China,” in an effort to begin to pivot away from one bogeyman to other, more profitable, ones.
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    Has the ring of plausability to it although it seems to ignore the Israeli role. 
Paul Merrell

State: US concerned about missile defense system at Iranian uranium facility | TheHill - 0 views

  • The State Department said Monday it is concerned about Iranian state media reports that the country has deployed an advanced missile defense system around its Fordow underground uranium facility.  The S-300 surface-to-air missile system was sold to Iran by Russia over U.S. objections, after an international accord was reached last July that lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for limits to its nuclear program. 
  • Russia had canceled a contract to deliver the systems to Iran in 2010, under pressure from the West, but announced it was reviving the contract in April 2015, as reaching a final nuclear deal appeared imminent. On Sunday, Iranian state TV reported that the S-300 was deployed at the Fordow facility, about 60 miles south of Tehran, according to Reuters. Since the signing of the deal in January, Iran has stopped enriching uranium there.  But U.S. officials and allies are concerned that the deployment of the S-300, which intercepts missiles, would limit potential future military options. Last August, the Pentagon expressed objections to the sale, but said it was "confident" the president would "have all the options he needs" to counteract the system.  
  • In October, former Marine Corps commandant retired Gen. James Conway warned the S-300's deployment "would be a game changer in the region." Iranian officials characterized the deployment of the system as defensive. "Our main priority is to protect Iran's nuclear facilities under any circumstances," said Brig. Gen. Farzad Esmaili, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' air defense force. "Today, Iran's sky is one of the most secure in the Middle East." "The S-300 system is a defense system, not an assault one, but the Americans did their utmost to prevent Iran from getting it," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said. Sen. Tom CottonTom CottonState: US concerned about missile defense system at Iranian uranium facility GOP senators argue DOJ pressured Aetna on ObamaCare Trump, GOP see gold in Clinton Foundation attacks MORE (R-Ark.), member of the Senate Armed Service Committee, on Monday blasted the administration's Iran policy, saying it emboldened the "ayatollahs in Tehran" and led to the deal going through. "Had the Obama Administration not rushed to dismantle the international sanctions restraining Iran’s belligerence in the Middle East in pursuit of a legacy, Iran would not have been able to acquire and deploy such destabilizing weapons," he said.  
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    The S-300 is not state of the art, like Russia's S-500, but it's still a formidable deterrent to attack by air, particularly by the nation most likely to do so, Israel. The U.S. might conceivably do a saturation missile strike that could overcome the S-300. But Iran is correct: it's a defensive weapon. And the Iranian Nukes Myth is still a myth.
Paul Merrell

America, the Election, and the Dismal Tide « LobeLog - 0 views

  • I thought about that March night as the election results rolled in, as the New York Times forecast showed Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the presidency plummet from about 80% to less than 5%, while Trump’s fortunes skyrocketed by the minute. As Clinton’s future in the Oval Office evaporated, leaving only a whiff of her stale dreams, I saw all the foreign-policy certainties, all the hawkish policies and military interventions, all the would-be bin Laden raids and drone strikes she’d preside over as commander-in-chief similarly vanish into the ether. With her failed candidacy went the no-fly escalation in Syria that she was sure to pursue as president with the vigor she had applied to the disastrous Libyan intervention of 2011 while secretary of state.  So, too, went her continued pursuit of the now-nameless war on terror, the attendant “gray-zone” conflicts — marked by small contingents of U.S. troops, drone strikes, and bombing campaigns — and all those munitions she would ship to Saudi Arabia for its war in Yemen. As the life drained from Clinton’s candidacy, I saw her rabid pursuit of a new Cold War start to wither and Russo-phobic comparisons of Putin’s rickety Russian petro-state to Stalin’s Soviet Union begin to die.  I saw the end, too, of her Iron Curtain-clouded vision of NATO, of her blind faith in an alliance more in line with 1957 than 2017. As Clinton’s political fortunes collapsed, so did her Israel-Palestine policy — rooted in the fiction that American and Israeli security interests overlap — and her commitment to what was clearly an unworkable “peace process.”  Just as, for domestic considerations, she would blindly support that Middle Eastern nuclear power, so was she likely to follow President Obama’s trillion-dollarpath to modernizing America’s nuclear arsenal.  All that, along with her sure-to-be-gargantuan military budget requests, were scattered to the winds by her ringing defeat.
  • Clinton’s foreign policy future had been a certainty.  Trump’s was another story entirely.  He had, for instance, called for a raft of military spending: growing the Army and Marines to a ridiculous size, building a Navy to reach a seemingly arbitrary and budget-busting number of ships, creating a mammoth air armada of fighter jets, pouring money into a missile defense boondoggle, and recruiting a legion of (presumably overweight) hackers to wage cyber war.  All of it to be paid for by cutting unnamed waste, ending unspecified “federal programs,” or somehow conjuring up dollars from hither and yon.  But was any of it serious?  Was any of it true?  Would President Trump actually make good on the promises of candidate Trump?  Or would he simply bark “Wrong!” when somebody accused him of pledging to field an army of 540,000 active duty soldiers or build a Navy of 350 ships. Would Trump actually attempt to implement his plan to defeat ISIS — that is, “bomb the shit out of them” and then “take the oil” of Iraq?  Or was that just the bellicose bluster of the campaign trail?  Would he be the reckless hawk Clinton promised to be, waging wars like the Libyan intervention?  Or would he follow the dictum of candidate Trump who said, “The current strategy of toppling regimes, with no plan for what to do the day after, only produces power vacuums that are filled by terrorists.” Outgoing representative Randy Forbes of Virginia, a contender to be secretary of the Navy in the new administration, recently said that the president elect would employ “an international defense strategy that is driven by the Pentagon and not by the political National Security Council… Because if you look around the globe, over the last eight years, the National Security Council has been writing that. And find one country anywhere that we are better off than we were eight years [ago], you cannot find it.”
  • Such a plan might actually blunt armed adventurism, since it was war-weary military officials who reportedly pushed back against President Obama’s plans to escalate Iraq War 3.0.  According to some Pentagon-watchers, a potentially hostile bureaucracy might also put the brakes on even fielding a national security team in a timely fashion. While Wall Street investors seemed convinced that the president elect would be good for defense industry giants like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, whose stocks surged in the wake of Trump’s win, it’s unclear whether that indicates a belief in more armed conflicts or simply more bloated military spending. Under President Obama, the U.S. has waged war in or carried out attacks on at least eight nations — Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, and Syria.  A Clinton presidency promised more, perhaps markedly more, of the same — an attitude summed up in her infamous comment about the late Libyan autocrat Muammar Gaddafi: “We came, we saw, he died.”  Trump advisor Senator Jeff Sessions said, “Trump does not believe in war. He sees war as bad, destructive, death and a wealth destruction.”  Of course, Trump himself said he favors committing war crimes like torture and murder.  He’s also suggested that he would risk war over the sort of naval provocations — like Iranian ships sailing close to U.S. vessels — that are currently met with nothing graver than warning shots. So there’s good reason to assume Trump will be a Clintonesque hawk or even worse, but some reason to believe — due to his propensity for lies, bluster, and backing down — that he could also turn out to be less bellicose.
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  • Given his penchant for running businesses into the ground and for economic proposals expected to rack up trillions of dollars in debt, it’s possible that, in the end, Trump will inadvertently cripple the U.S. military.  And given that the government is, in many ways, a national security state bonded with a mass of money and orbited by satellite departments and agencies of far lesser import, Trump could even kneecap the entire government.  If so, what could be catastrophic for Americans — a battered, bankrupt United States — might, ironically, bode well for the wider world.
  • At the time, I told my questioner just what I thought a Hillary Clinton presidency might mean for America and the world: more saber-rattling, more drone strikes, more military interventions, among other things.  Our just-ended election aborted those would-be wars, though Clinton’s legacy can still be seen, among other places, in the rubble of Iraq, the battered remains of Libya, and the faces of South Sudan’s child soldiers.  Donald Trump has the opportunity to forge a new path, one that could be marked by bombast instead of bombs.  If ever there was a politician with the ability to simply declare victory and go home — regardless of the facts on the ground — it’s him.  Why go to war when you can simply say that you did, big league, and you won? The odds, of course, are against this.  The United States has been embroiled in foreign military actions, almost continuously, since its birth and in 64 conflicts, large and small, according to the military, in the last century alone.  It’s a country that, since 9/11, has been remarkably content to wage winless, endless wars with little debate or popular outcry.  It’s a country in which Barack Obama won election, in large measure, due to dissatisfaction with the prior commander-in-chief’s signature war and then, after winning a Nobel Peace Prize and overseeing the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, reengaged in an updated version of that very same war — bequeathing it now to Donald J. Trump. “This Trump.  He’s a crazy man!” the African aid worker insisted to me that March night.  “He says some things and you wonder: Are you going to be president?  Really?”  It turns out the answer is yes. “It can’t happen, can it?” That question still echoes in my mind.
  • I know all the things that now can’t happen, Clinton’s wars among them. The Trump era looms ahead like a dark mystery, cold and hard.  We may well be witnessing the rebirth of a bitter nation, the fruit of a land poisoned at its root by evils too fundamental to overcome; a country exceptional for its squandered gifts and forsaken providence, its shattered promises and moral squalor. “It can’t happen, can it?” Indeed, my friend, it just did.
Paul Merrell

Russia, terrorists & China threaten world order, US 'ready to engage' - Mattis - RT Ame... - 0 views

  • Retired Marine General James Mattis, picked by President-elect Donald Trump to take over the Department of Defense, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, defending NATO, the F-35, and continued confrontation with Russia.
Paul Merrell

PressTV-Iran sues US at ICJ over assets: Rouhani - 0 views

  • Iran has filed a lawsuit against the United States at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) demanding compensation over the seizure of USD 2 billion worth of the country's assets by a top American court.President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that Iran had filed the lawsuit with the ICJ a day earlier, vowing that his administration will pursue the case to its end.On April 20, the US Supreme Court ruled that about USD 2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be turned over to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a US Marine Corps barracks in the Lebanese capital of Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran. Tehran has long rejected allegations of involvement in the 1983 Beirut bombing. The money confiscated under the US court ruling belongs to the Central Bank of Iran (CBI). The assets were blocked under US sanctions.
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    The lawsuit in the U.S. was brought by Shurat-Hadin, an Israeli Mossad front organization. Because Iran has sovereign immunity under interntional law, it did not participate in the U.S. lawsuit, enabled by an act of Congress that ignored international law and U.S. treaty obligtgations.
Paul Merrell

U.S. Military and Intelligence Officials to Obama: "Assad NOT Responsible for Chemical ... - 1 views

  • MEMORANDUM FOR: The President FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap? Precedence: IMMEDIATE We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.” We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandumimmediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.
  • The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond …  the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today. Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you. We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.
  • That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.” This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”
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  • There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war. According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured. We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons. In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.
  • Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria. At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.
  • We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”
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    This report by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity is almost certainly the most credible report contradicting the White House's "intelligence summary" that included zero evidence supporting the claim that Syrian government forces had unleashed the August 21, 2013 chemical attack in Ghoutu, near Damascus and less than five miles away from the just-arrived UN investigative team.  Spread it far and wide. 
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    Wow!! The cover-up of this false flag operation designed to get us into another civil war is incredible. Yet the truth continues to leak out. The ruling elites must be so pissed right now. The Internet is changing the world balance of power - in real time no less. And we are witness. Awesome stuff Paul.
Paul Merrell

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

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

Israel Supports US plan to Arm Syria Al Qaeda Rebels. Financing Terrorists To Wage the ... - 0 views

  • The president of the Israeli regime has supported the United States plans to provide foreign-backed militants in Syria with weapons. Washington announced last week that it would send arms to foreign-sponsored terrorists in Syria to oust President Bashar al-Assad from power after more than two years of uncertainty over the unrest in the Arab country. In an interview with Reuters, Shimon Peres described the plan as “wise,” saying that the US government had no other choice but to supply arms to Syria militants.
  • On June 14, Obama ordered his administration to provide the militants with weapons, a day after the US claimed that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the militants and thus crossed Washington’s “red line.” This comes while Damascus has rejected the allegation as “lies.” The delivery of the weapons, which include assault rifles, shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades and antitank missiles, would be carried out through the CIA, reports say. On June 15, Pentagon said that the US will keep its F-16 jets and patriot missile batteries in Jordan after the joint military exercises with the kingdom this month. This is while reports say that the US government has been preparing to impose a no-fly zone over Syria. Last week, a US defense official stated that Washington would keep a unit of US Marines on amphibious ships off the Red Sea coast after consultations with Jordan. The US-based Wall Street Journal had earlier reported that the no-fly zone could be implemented from Jordan.
Gary Edwards

Welcome to Post-Constitution America - Peter Van Buren - 0 views

  • On July 30, 1778, the Continental Congress created the first whistleblower protection law, stating “that it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed by any officers or persons in the service of these states.”
  • Two hundred thirty-five years later, on July 30, 2013, Bradley Manning was found guilty on 20 of the 22 charges for which he was prosecuted, specifically for “espionage” and for videos of war atrocities he released, but not for “aiding the enemy.”
  • Days after the verdict, with sentencing hearings in which Manning could receive 136 years of prison time ongoing, the pundits have had their say. The problem is that they missed the most chilling aspect of the Manning case: the way it ushered us, almost unnoticed, into post-Constitutional America.
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  • As at Guantanamo, rules of evidence reaching back to early
  • During the months of the trial, the U.S. military refused to release official transcripts of the proceedings. Even a private courtroom sketch artist was barred from the room. Independent journalist and activist Alexa O’Brien then took it upon herself to attend the trial daily, defy the Army, and make an unofficial record of the proceedings by hand. Later in the trial, armed military police were stationed behind reporters listening to testimony. Above all, the feeling that Manning’s fate was predetermined could hardly be avoided. After all, President Obama, the former Constitutional law professor, essentially proclaimed him guilty back in 2011 and the Department of Defense didn’t hesitate to state more generally that “leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States.”
  • And so to Bradley Manning. As the weaponry and technology of war came home, so did a new, increasingly Guantanamo-ized definition of justice. This is one thing the Manning case has made clear. As a start, Manning was treated no differently than America’s war-on-terror prisoners at Guantanamo and the black sites that the Bush administration set up around the world. Picked up on the “battlefield,” Manning was first kept incommunicado in a cage in Kuwait for two months with no access to a lawyer. Then, despite being an active duty member of the Army, he was handed over to the Marines, who also guard Guantanamo, to be held in a military prison in Quantico, Virginia. What followed were three years of cruel detainment, where, as might well have happened at Gitmo, Manning, kept in isolation, was deprived of clothing, communications, legal advice, and sleep. The sleep deprivation regime imposed on him certainly met any standard, other than Washington’s and possibly Pyongyang’s, for torture. In return for such abuse, even after a judge had formally ruled that he was subjected to excessively harsh treatment, Manning will only get a 112-day reduction in his eventual sentence. Eventually the Obama administration decided Manning was to be tried as a soldier before a military court. In the courtroom, itself inside a military facility that also houses NSA headquarters, there was a strikingly gulag-like atmosphere.  His trial was built around secret witnesses and secret evidence; severe restrictions were put on the press -- the Army denied press passes to 270 of the 350 media organizations that applied; and there was a clear appearance of injustice. Among other things, the judge ruled against nearly every defense motion.
  • “What constitutes due process in this case is a due process in war.”
  • Given all this, it is small comfort to know that Manning, nailed on the Espionage Act after multiple failures in other cases by the Obama administration, was not convicted of the extreme charge of “aiding the enemy.”
  • Obama administration lawyers went on to claim the legal right to execute U.S. citizens without trial or due process and have admitted to killing four Americans. Attorney General Eric Holder declared that “United States citizenship alone does not make such individuals immune from being targeted.”
  • As if competing for an Orwellian prize, an unnamed Obama administration official told the Washington Post,
  • English common law were turned upside down. In Manning’s case, he was convicted of espionage, even though the prosecution did not have to prove either his intent to help another government or that harm was caused; a civilian court had already paved the way for such a ruling in another whistleblower case. In addition, the government was allowed to label Manning a “traitor” and an “anarchist” in open court, though he was on trial for neither treason nor anarchy.
  • Similarly, full-spectrum spying is not considered to violate the Fourth Amendment and does not even require probable cause.
  • Justice can be twisted and tangled into an almost unrecognizable form and then used to send a young man to prison for decades.
  • Government officials concerned over possible wrongdoing in their departments or agencies who “go through proper channels” are fired or prosecuted.
  • Government whistleblowers are commanded to return to face justice, while law-breakers in the service of the government are allowed to flee justice. CIA officers who destroy evidence of torture go free, while a CIA agent who blew the whistle on torture is locked up.
  • Thanks to the PATRIOT Act, citizens, even librarians, can be served by the FBI with a National Security Letter (not requiring a court order) demanding records and other information, and gagging them from revealing to anyone that such information has been demanded or such a letter delivered.
  • Citizens may be held without trial, and denied their Constitutional rights as soon as they are designated “terrorists.” Lawyers and habeas corpus are available only when the government allows.
  • The war on whistleblowers is metastasizing into a war on the First Amendment.
  • People may now be convicted based on secret testimony by unnamed persons.
  • Military courts and jails can replace civilian ones.
  • An Obama administration Insider Threat Program requires federal employees (including the Peace Corps) to report on the suspicious behavior of coworkers.
  • Claiming its actions lawful while shielding the “legal” opinions cited, often even from Congress, the government can send its drones to assassinate its own citizens.
  • One by one, the tools and attitudes of the war on terror, of a world in which the “gloves” are eternally off, have come home.
  • The comic strip character Pogo’s classic warning -- “We have met the enemy and he is us” -- seems ever less like a metaphor.
  • According to the government, increasingly we are now indeed their enemy.
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    Well written and researched article describing what it means to live in a post-Constitutional America.  Chilling facts with a cold but obvious conclusion.
Paul Merrell

The Day - U.S. alerts foreign services about Snowden documents | News from southeastern... - 0 views

  • U.S. officials are alerting some foreign intelligence services that documents detailing their secret cooperation with the United States have been obtained by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, according to government officials.Snowden, U.S. officials said, took tens of thousands of documents, some of which contain sensitive material about collection programs against adversaries such as Iran, Russia and China. Some refer to operations that in some cases involve countries not publicly allied with the United States.The process of informing officials in capital after capital about the risk of disclosure is delicate. In some cases, one part of the cooperating government may know about the collaboration while others may not, the officials said. The documents, if disclosed, could compromise operations, officials said.
  • The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is handling the job of informing the other intelligence services, the officials said. ODNI declined to comment.
  • Snowden lifted the documents from a top secret network run by the Defense Intelligence Agency and used by intelligence arms of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines, according to sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.Snowden took 30,000 documents that involve the intelligence work of one of the services, the official said. He gained access to the documents through the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, or JWICS, for top secret/sensitive compartmented information, the sources said.The material in question does not deal with NSA surveillance but primarily with standard intelligence about other countries' military capabilities, including weapons systems-missiles, ships and jets, the officials say.
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  • Nonetheless, the military intelligence agencies remain fearful, officials said. The NSA in recent months has provided them with an accounting of the documents it believes Snowden obtained.Intelligence officials said they could discern no pattern to the military intelligence documents taken and said Snowden appeared to harvest them at random. "It didn't seem like he was targeting something specific," the U.S. official said.
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    A bit of comedy here. Our spy agencies will warn collaborating nations but when it comes to Congress or the American public, no warning. 
Paul Merrell

Hillary Still Doesn't Get It on Iraq | The Nation - 0 views

  • The unfortunate re-eruption of warfare in Iraq will lead to many more questions for Hillary Clinton about her past support for the war—a rather unfortunate thing from her point of view, given the issue was a key reason for her 2008 Democratic presidential primary loss.
  • One of the central animating concerns of the anti-war movement—from the Cindy Sheehan encampment to a young Senator named Barack Obama’s describing soldiers from Illinois who had been badly maimed by battle—was for the thousands of US troops dying, and the thousands more being injured, in what was ultimately a needless war. When George W. Bush would bash war opponents as people who didn’t “support the troops,” the anti-war refrain was: that’s exactly what we’re doing. Hillary perhaps does not accept that argument—or if she does, it’s hard to tell. When Terry Gross went after Clinton last week on NPR on gay marriage, she was trying to get at a basic question: Did Hillary always support gay marriage but withhold her public support for political reasons? What about all the people being denied rights, how might they have been helped sooner if she spoke out? Here, Hillary seems to be pre-answering that same question as it applies to Iraq, and giving a pretty terrible answer for why she didn’t speak her mind on the war.
  • UPDATE: There is now video of Hillary’s full response to this question, which are hardly exculpatory. Transcript of the response where it begins in earnest (at 1:01) below the video.
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  • CLINTON: I kept trying to say “Well if we knew then what we know now it would not have ever come for a vote,” all of which was true, but just sort of avoided the fact of my saying “You know I just got it wrong, plain and simple. I made a mistake.” I thought a lot about that, because people said well—“You’re not saying you made a mistake for political reasons.” Well in fact, in the Democratic Party at that time, the smart political decision, as so many of my colleagues did, was to come out and say “Terrible mistake, shouldn’t have done it,” and you know blame the Bush administration. I had this sense that I had voted for it, and we had all these young men and women over there, and it was a terrible battle environment. I knew some of the young people who were there and I was very close to one Marine lieutenant who lead a mixed platoon of Americans and Iraqis in the first battle for Fallujah. So I felt like I couldn’t break faith with them. Maybe that doesn’t make sense to anybody else but me, but that’s how I felt about it. So I kept temporizing and I kept avoiding saying it because I didn’t want there to be any feeling that I was backing off or undercutting my support for this very difficult mission in Iraq.
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    Further proof that Hillary is unfit to become Commander in Chief. In her own words, she says that she concealed her opposition to the Iraq War because she wanted to support the troops! In other words, the troops are over there fighting and dying but to come out and say that the war should end and they should be brought home would somehow be a failure to support the troops. No, Hillary, "that doesn't make sense to anybody else but" you. Kill some more troops for your political cowardice? 
Paul Merrell

Encouraging Words of Regret From Dean Baquet and Weasel Words From James Clapper - The ... - 0 views

  • One should not expect any change to come from the U.S. government itself (which includes Congress), whose strategy in such cases is to enact the pretext of “reform” so as to placate public anger, protect the system from any serious weakening, and allow President Obama to go before the country and the world and give a pretty speech about how the U.S. heard their anger and re-calibrated the balance between privacy and security. Any new law that comes from the radically corrupted political class in DC will either be largely empty, or worse. The purpose will be to shield the NSA from real reform. There are, though, numerous other avenues with the real potential to engender serious limits on the NSA’s surveillance powers, including the self-interested though genuine panic of the U.S. tech industry over how surveillance will impede their future business prospects, the efforts of other countries to undermine U.S. hegemony over the internet, the newfound emphasis on privacy protections from internet companies worldwide, and, most of all, the increasing use of encryption technology by users around the world that poses genuine obstacles to state surveillance. Those are all far, far more promising avenues than any bill Barack Obama, Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss will let Congress cough up.
  • That national security state officials routinely mislead and deceive the public should never have even been in serious doubt in the first place – certainly not for journalists, and especially now after the experience of the Iraq War. That fact — that official pronouncements merit great skepticism rather than reverence — should be (but plainly is not) fundamental to how journalists view the world. More evidence for that is provided by a Washington Post column today by one of the national security state’s favorite outlets, David Ignatius. Ignatius interviewed the chronic deceiver, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who now “says it appears the impact [of Snowden's leaking] may be less than once feared because ‘it doesn’t look like he [Snowden] took as much’ as first thought.” Clapper specifically casts serious doubt on the U.S. government’s prior claim that Snowden ”had compromised the communications networks that make up the military’s command and control system”; instead, “officials now think that dire forecast may have been too extreme.” Ignatius — citing an anonymous “senior intelligence official” (who may or may not be Clapper) — also announces that the government has yet again revised its rank speculation about how many documents Snowden took: “This batch of probably downloaded material is about 1.5 million documents, the senior official said. That’s below an earlier estimate of 1.77 million documents.”
  • Most notable is Ignatius’ summary of the government’s attempt to claim Snowden seriously compromised the security of the U.S.: Pressed to explain what damage Snowden’s revelations had done, the official was guarded, saying that there was “damage in foreign relations” and that the leaks had “poisoned [NSA’s] relations with commercial providers.” He also said that terrorist groups had carefully studied the disclosures, turning more to anonymizers, encryption and use of couriers to shield communications. The senior official wouldn’t respond to repeated questions about whether the intelligence community has noted any changes in behavior by either the Russian or Chinese governments, in possible response to information they may have gleaned from Snowden’s revelations. In other words, the only specific damage they can point to is from the anger that other people around the world have about what the U.S. government has done and the fact that people will not want to buy U.S. tech products if they fear (for good reason) that those companies collaborate with the NSA. But, as usual, there is zero evidence provided (as opposed to bald, self-serving assertions) of any harm to genuine national security concerns (i.e., the ability to monitor anyone planning actual violent attacks).
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  • As is always the case, the stream of fear-mongering and alarmist warnings issued by the government to demonize a whistleblower proves to be false and without any basis, and the same is true for accusations made about the revelations themselves (“In January, [Mike] Rogers said that the report concluded that most of the documents Snowden had access to concerned ‘vital operations of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force’” – AP: Lawmakers: Snowden’s Leaks May Endanger US Troops“). But none of that has stopped countless U.S. journalists from mindlessly citing each one of the latest evidence-free official claims as sacred fact.
Gary Edwards

The Qatari Deal To Hold The Taliban - The Qataris Have Been Used Before By President Ob... - 1 views

  • Three months, a naval fleet, 3,000 marines, one Billion dollars, and 450 cruise missiles later, it’s May 2011 and Obama had yet to ask for permission to engage in his offensive war from anyone but himself and the previously noted ‘club of the traveling pantsuits’. Despite the Office of Legal Council (the golfers own legal team) telling him approval is needed, he chose to violate the War Powers Act and more importantly the Constitution. It is critical to remember the political battle being waged at the time over whether President Obama had the authority to take “offensive military action”, without congressional approval,  when the threat was not against the United States. It’s critical because from that initial impetus you find the reason why arming the Libyan rebels had to be done by another method – because President Obama never consulted congress, nor sought permission.
  • Normally, in order to send arms to the rebels lawfully, President Obama would have to request approval from Congress. He did not want to do that.   Partly because he was arrogant, and partly because he did not want the politically charged fight that such a request would engage.  It would hamper his ability to take unilateral action in Libya.
  • So an alternate method of arming the rebels needed to be structured.    Enter the State Department, Hillary Clinton, and CIA David Petraeus. Weapons, specifically MANPADS or shoulder fired missiles, would be funneled to the Benghazi rebels by the State Dept, through the CIA under the auspices of ongoing NATO operations.   May, June, July, August, Sept, 2011 this covert process was taking place. It was this covert missile delivery process which later became an issue after Gaddafi was killed.    It was during the recovery of these missiles , and the redeployment/transfer to the now uprising “Syrian Rebels” when Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed on Sept. 11th 2012.
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  • [O]n July 25, 2012, Taliban fighters in Kunar province successfully targeted a US Army CH-47 helicopter with a new generation Stinger missile. They thought they had a surefire kill. But instead of bursting into flames, the Chinook just disappeared into the darkness as the American pilot recovered control of the aircraft and brought it to the ground in a hard landing. The assault team jumped out the open doors and ran clear in case it exploded. Less than 30 seconds later, the Taliban gunner and his comrade erupted into flames as an American gunship overhead locked onto their position and opened fire. The next day, an explosive ordnance disposal team arrived to pick through the wreckage and found unexploded pieces of a missile casing that could only belong to a Stinger missile. Lodged in the right nacelle, they found one fragment that contained an entire serial number. The investigation took time. Arms were twisted, noses put out of joint. But when the results came back, they were stunning: The Stinger tracked back to a lot that had been signed out by the CIA recently, not during the anti-Soviet ­jihad. Reports of the Stinger reached the highest echelons of the US command in Afghanistan and became a source of intense speculation, but no action. Everyone knew the war was winding down. Revealing that the Taliban had US-made Stingers risked demoralizing coalition troops. Because there were no coalition casualties, government officials made no public announcement of the attack. My sources in the US Special Operations community believe the Stinger fired against the Chinook was part of the same lot the CIA turned over to the ­Qataris in early 2011, weapons Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department intended for anti-Khadafy forces in Libya. They believe the Qataris delivered between 50 and 60 of those same Stingers to the Taliban in early 2012, and an additional 200 SA-24 Igla-S surface-to-air missiles.  (link)
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    The pieces of the puzzle are slowly coming together, and it isn't pretty. This article connects Qatar, Afghanistan and hero of Benghazi, to the fabulous five terrorist dream team Obama let out of the gitmo prison. Incredible story. excerpt: "How Our Stinger Missiles Wound Up In Afghanistan Being Used Against Our Own Troops: On February 15th 2011 a civil war erupted inside Libya.   Egyptian Islamists previously  freed from jail by the Muslim Brotherhood flooded into Eastern Libya and joined with their ideological counterparts.  al-Qaeda operatives hell bent on using the cover of the Arab Spring to finally rid themselves of their nemesis, Muammar Gaddafi. President Obama chose to ignore an outbreak of violence in Libya for 19 days.  Perhaps Obama was tentative from the criticism he and Hillary received over the mixed messaging in Egypt.  Regardless, eventually Obama was begged to engage himself by leaders from France, The United Kingdom, and Italy. The White House advisors (Emanuel, McDonough, Donolin, Jarrett, Axelrod, Plouffe) were more cautious this time.  Initially Obama ignored the EU requests and later chose to dispatch the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to Europe to address their concerns. "Look, enough with the jokes shorty; you got us into this mess, now the turban heads are laughing at us"… "ah, bot of course, zeah av bullets, no? Vee ave to shoot" For the following 11 days American citizens, including State Dept. embassy officials, were trying to evacuate the country as vast swathes of the country erupted in bloodshed and violence, they became trapped in Tripoli.   A bloody national revolution was underway. The United Nations Security Council held urgent immediate emergency meetings to try to determine what to do.    However, the United States Ambassador to those meetings, Susan Rice, was not present.    She was attending a global warming summit in Africa. Without the U.S. present the United  Natio
Paul Merrell

CURIA - Documents - 0 views

  • 37      It must be stated that the interference caused by Directive 2006/24 with the fundamental rights laid down in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter is, as the Advocate General has also pointed out, in particular, in paragraphs 77 and 80 of his Opinion, wide-ranging, and it must be considered to be particularly serious. Furthermore, as the Advocate General has pointed out in paragraphs 52 and 72 of his Opinion, the fact that data are retained and subsequently used without the subscriber or registered user being informed is likely to generate in the minds of the persons concerned the feeling that their private lives are the subject of constant surveillance.
  • 43      In this respect, it is apparent from recital 7 in the preamble to Directive 2006/24 that, because of the significant growth in the possibilities afforded by electronic communications, the Justice and Home Affairs Council of 19 December 2002 concluded that data relating to the use of electronic communications are particularly important and therefore a valuable tool in the prevention of offences and the fight against crime, in particular organised crime. 44      It must therefore be held that the retention of data for the purpose of allowing the competent national authorities to have possible access to those data, as required by Directive 2006/24, genuinely satisfies an objective of general interest.45      In those circumstances, it is necessary to verify the proportionality of the interference found to exist.46      In that regard, according to the settled case-law of the Court, the principle of proportionality requires that acts of the EU institutions be appropriate for attaining the legitimate objectives pursued by the legislation at issue and do not exceed the limits of what is appropriate and necessary in order to achieve those objectives (see, to that effect, Case C‑343/09 Afton Chemical EU:C:2010:419, paragraph 45; Volker und Markus Schecke and Eifert EU:C:2010:662, paragraph 74; Cases C‑581/10 and C‑629/10 Nelson and Others EU:C:2012:657, paragraph 71; Case C‑283/11 Sky Österreich EU:C:2013:28, paragraph 50; and Case C‑101/12 Schaible EU:C:2013:661, paragraph 29).
  • 67      Article 7 of Directive 2006/24, read in conjunction with Article 4(1) of Directive 2002/58 and the second subparagraph of Article 17(1) of Directive 95/46, does not ensure that a particularly high level of protection and security is applied by those providers by means of technical and organisational measures, but permits those providers in particular to have regard to economic considerations when determining the level of security which they apply, as regards the costs of implementing security measures. In particular, Directive 2006/24 does not ensure the irreversible destruction of the data at the end of the data retention period.68      In the second place, it should be added that that directive does not require the data in question to be retained within the European Union, with the result that it cannot be held that the control, explicitly required by Article 8(3) of the Charter, by an independent authority of compliance with the requirements of protection and security, as referred to in the two previous paragraphs, is fully ensured. Such a control, carried out on the basis of EU law, is an essential component of the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data (see, to that effect, Case C‑614/10 Commission v Austria EU:C:2012:631, paragraph 37).69      Having regard to all the foregoing considerations, it must be held that, by adopting Directive 2006/24, the EU legislature has exceeded the limits imposed by compliance with the principle of proportionality in the light of Articles 7, 8 and 52(1) of the Charter.
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  • 58      Directive 2006/24 affects, in a comprehensive manner, all persons using electronic communications services, but without the persons whose data are retained being, even indirectly, in a situation which is liable to give rise to criminal prosecutions. It therefore applies even to persons for whom there is no evidence capable of suggesting that their conduct might have a link, even an indirect or remote one, with serious crime. Furthermore, it does not provide for any exception, with the result that it applies even to persons whose communications are subject, according to rules of national law, to the obligation of professional secrecy. 59      Moreover, whilst seeking to contribute to the fight against serious crime, Directive 2006/24 does not require any relationship between the data whose retention is provided for and a threat to public security and, in particular, it is not restricted to a retention in relation (i) to data pertaining to a particular time period and/or a particular geographical zone and/or to a circle of particular persons likely to be involved, in one way or another, in a serious crime, or (ii) to persons who could, for other reasons, contribute, by the retention of their data, to the prevention, detection or prosecution of serious offences.
  • 1        These requests for a preliminary ruling concern the validity of Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC (OJ 2006 L 105, p. 54).
  • Digital Rights Ireland Ltd (C‑293/12)vMinister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources,Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform,Commissioner of the Garda Síochána,Ireland,The Attorney General,intervener:Irish Human Rights Commission, andKärntner Landesregierung (C‑594/12),Michael Seitlinger,Christof Tschohl and others,
  • JUDGMENT OF THE COURT (Grand Chamber)8 April 2014 (*)(Electronic communications — Directive 2006/24/EC — Publicly available electronic communications services or public communications networks services — Retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of such services — Validity — Articles 7, 8 and 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union)In Joined Cases C‑293/12 and C‑594/12,
  • 34      As a result, the obligation imposed by Articles 3 and 6 of Directive 2006/24 on providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks to retain, for a certain period, data relating to a person’s private life and to his communications, such as those referred to in Article 5 of the directive, constitutes in itself an interference with the rights guaranteed by Article 7 of the Charter. 35      Furthermore, the access of the competent national authorities to the data constitutes a further interference with that fundamental right (see, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, Eur. Court H.R., Leander v. Sweden, 26 March 1987, § 48, Series A no 116; Rotaru v. Romania [GC], no. 28341/95, § 46, ECHR 2000-V; and Weber and Saravia v. Germany (dec.), no. 54934/00, § 79, ECHR 2006-XI). Accordingly, Articles 4 and 8 of Directive 2006/24 laying down rules relating to the access of the competent national authorities to the data also constitute an interference with the rights guaranteed by Article 7 of the Charter. 36      Likewise, Directive 2006/24 constitutes an interference with the fundamental right to the protection of personal data guaranteed by Article 8 of the Charter because it provides for the processing of personal data.
  • 65      It follows from the above that Directive 2006/24 does not lay down clear and precise rules governing the extent of the interference with the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter. It must therefore be held that Directive 2006/24 entails a wide-ranging and particularly serious interference with those fundamental rights in the legal order of the EU, without such an interference being precisely circumscribed by provisions to ensure that it is actually limited to what is strictly necessary.66      Moreover, as far as concerns the rules relating to the security and protection of data retained by providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks, it must be held that Directive 2006/24 does not provide for sufficient safeguards, as required by Article 8 of the Charter, to ensure effective protection of the data retained against the risk of abuse and against any unlawful access and use of that data. In the first place, Article 7 of Directive 2006/24 does not lay down rules which are specific and adapted to (i) the vast quantity of data whose retention is required by that directive, (ii) the sensitive nature of that data and (iii) the risk of unlawful access to that data, rules which would serve, in particular, to govern the protection and security of the data in question in a clear and strict manner in order to ensure their full integrity and confidentiality. Furthermore, a specific obligation on Member States to establish such rules has also not been laid down.
  • 60      Secondly, not only is there a general absence of limits in Directive 2006/24 but Directive 2006/24 also fails to lay down any objective criterion by which to determine the limits of the access of the competent national authorities to the data and their subsequent use for the purposes of prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions concerning offences that, in view of the extent and seriousness of the interference with the fundamental rights enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter, may be considered to be sufficiently serious to justify such an interference. On the contrary, Directive 2006/24 simply refers, in Article 1(1), in a general manner to serious crime, as defined by each Member State in its national law.61      Furthermore, Directive 2006/24 does not contain substantive and procedural conditions relating to the access of the competent national authorities to the data and to their subsequent use. Article 4 of the directive, which governs the access of those authorities to the data retained, does not expressly provide that that access and the subsequent use of the data in question must be strictly restricted to the purpose of preventing and detecting precisely defined serious offences or of conducting criminal prosecutions relating thereto; it merely provides that each Member State is to define the procedures to be followed and the conditions to be fulfilled in order to gain access to the retained data in accordance with necessity and proportionality requirements.
  • 55      The need for such safeguards is all the greater where, as laid down in Directive 2006/24, personal data are subjected to automatic processing and where there is a significant risk of unlawful access to those data (see, by analogy, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, S. and Marper v. the United Kingdom, § 103, and M. K. v. France, 18 April 2013, no. 19522/09, § 35).56      As for the question of whether the interference caused by Directive 2006/24 is limited to what is strictly necessary, it should be observed that, in accordance with Article 3 read in conjunction with Article 5(1) of that directive, the directive requires the retention of all traffic data concerning fixed telephony, mobile telephony, Internet access, Internet e-mail and Internet telephony. It therefore applies to all means of electronic communication, the use of which is very widespread and of growing importance in people’s everyday lives. Furthermore, in accordance with Article 3 of Directive 2006/24, the directive covers all subscribers and registered users. It therefore entails an interference with the fundamental rights of practically the entire European population. 57      In this respect, it must be noted, first, that Directive 2006/24 covers, in a generalised manner, all persons and all means of electronic communication as well as all traffic data without any differentiation, limitation or exception being made in the light of the objective of fighting against serious crime.
  • 62      In particular, Directive 2006/24 does not lay down any objective criterion by which the number of persons authorised to access and subsequently use the data retained is limited to what is strictly necessary in the light of the objective pursued. Above all, the access by the competent national authorities to the data retained is not made dependent on a prior review carried out by a court or by an independent administrative body whose decision seeks to limit access to the data and their use to what is strictly necessary for the purpose of attaining the objective pursued and which intervenes following a reasoned request of those authorities submitted within the framework of procedures of prevention, detection or criminal prosecutions. Nor does it lay down a specific obligation on Member States designed to establish such limits. 63      Thirdly, so far as concerns the data retention period, Article 6 of Directive 2006/24 requires that those data be retained for a period of at least six months, without any distinction being made between the categories of data set out in Article 5 of that directive on the basis of their possible usefulness for the purposes of the objective pursued or according to the persons concerned.64      Furthermore, that period is set at between a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of 24 months, but it is not stated that the determination of the period of retention must be based on objective criteria in order to ensure that it is limited to what is strictly necessary.
  • 52      So far as concerns the right to respect for private life, the protection of that fundamental right requires, according to the Court’s settled case-law, in any event, that derogations and limitations in relation to the protection of personal data must apply only in so far as is strictly necessary (Case C‑473/12 IPI EU:C:2013:715, paragraph 39 and the case-law cited).53      In that regard, it should be noted that the protection of personal data resulting from the explicit obligation laid down in Article 8(1) of the Charter is especially important for the right to respect for private life enshrined in Article 7 of the Charter.54      Consequently, the EU legislation in question must lay down clear and precise rules governing the scope and application of the measure in question and imposing minimum safeguards so that the persons whose data have been retained have sufficient guarantees to effectively protect their personal data against the risk of abuse and against any unlawful access and use of that data (see, by analogy, as regards Article 8 of the ECHR, Eur. Court H.R., Liberty and Others v. the United Kingdom, 1 July 2008, no. 58243/00, § 62 and 63; Rotaru v. Romania, § 57 to 59, and S. and Marper v. the United Kingdom, § 99).
  • 26      In that regard, it should be observed that the data which providers of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks must retain, pursuant to Articles 3 and 5 of Directive 2006/24, include data necessary to trace and identify the source of a communication and its destination, to identify the date, time, duration and type of a communication, to identify users’ communication equipment, and to identify the location of mobile communication equipment, data which consist, inter alia, of the name and address of the subscriber or registered user, the calling telephone number, the number called and an IP address for Internet services. Those data make it possible, in particular, to know the identity of the person with whom a subscriber or registered user has communicated and by what means, and to identify the time of the communication as well as the place from which that communication took place. They also make it possible to know the frequency of the communications of the subscriber or registered user with certain persons during a given period. 27      Those data, taken as a whole, may allow very precise conclusions to be drawn concerning the private lives of the persons whose data has been retained, such as the habits of everyday life, permanent or temporary places of residence, daily or other movements, the activities carried out, the social relationships of those persons and the social environments frequented by them.
  • 32      By requiring the retention of the data listed in Article 5(1) of Directive 2006/24 and by allowing the competent national authorities to access those data, Directive 2006/24, as the Advocate General has pointed out, in particular, in paragraphs 39 and 40 of his Opinion, derogates from the system of protection of the right to privacy established by Directives 95/46 and 2002/58 with regard to the processing of personal data in the electronic communications sector, directives which provided for the confidentiality of communications and of traffic data as well as the obligation to erase or make those data anonymous where they are no longer needed for the purpose of the transmission of a communication, unless they are necessary for billing purposes and only for as long as so necessary.
  • On those grounds, the Court (Grand Chamber) hereby rules:Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC is invalid.
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    EU Court of Justice decision in regard to a Directive that required communications data retention by telcos/ISPs, finding the Directive invalid as a violation of the right of privacy in communications. Fairly read, paragraph 59 outlaws bulk collection of such records, i.e., it requires the equivalent of a judge-issued search warrant in the U.S. based on probable cause to believe that the particular individual's communications are a legitimate object of a search.  Note also that paragraph 67 effectively forbids transfer of any retained data outside the E.U. So a barrier for NSA sharing of data with GCHQ derived from communications NSA collects from EU communications traffic. Bye-bye, Big Data for GCHQ in the E.U. 
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