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Paul Merrell

IPS - Obama's Case for Syria Didn't Reflect Intel Consensus | Inter Press Service - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/...-didnt-reflect-intel-consensus

war & peace Syria WMD Obama lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration Aug. 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former intelligence officials reveals. The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies and by the White House itself, but that the White House itself had the final say in the contents of the document. Leading members of Congress to believe that the document was an intelligence community assessment and thus represents a credible picture of the intelligence on the alleged chemical attack of Aug. 21 has been a central element in the Obama administration’s case for war in Syria. That part of the strategy, at least, has been successful. Despite strong opposition in Congress to the proposed military strike in Syria, no one in either chamber has yet challenged the administration’s characterisation of the intelligence. But the administration is vulnerable to the charge that it has put out an intelligence document that does not fully and accurately reflect the views of intelligence analysts. Former intelligence officials told IPS that that the paper does not represent a genuine intelligence community assessment but rather one reflecting a predominantly Obama administration influence.
  • In essence, the White House selected those elements of the intelligence community assessments that supported the administration’s policy of planning a strike against the Syrian government force and omitted those that didn’t. In a radical departure from normal practice involving summaries or excerpts of intelligence documents that are made public, the Syria chemical weapons intelligence summary document was not released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but by the White House Office of the Press Secretary. It was titled “Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013.” The first sentence begins, “The United States government assesses,” and the second sentence begins, “We assess”. The introductory paragraph refers to the main body of the text as a summary of “the intelligence community’s analysis” of the issue, rather than as an “intelligence community assessment”, which would have been used had the entire intelligence community endorsed the document.
  • A former senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified told IPS in an e-mail Friday that the language used by the White House “means that this is not an intelligence community document”. The former senior official, who held dozens of security classifications over a decades-long intelligence career, said he had “never seen a document about an international crisis at any classification described/slugged as a U.S. government assessment.” The document further indicates that the administration “decided on a position and cherry-picked the intelligence to fit it,” he said. “The result is not a balanced assessment of the intelligence.” Greg Thielmann, whose last position before retiring from the State Department was director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told IPS he has never seen a government document labeled “Government Assessment” either. “If it’s an intelligence assessment,” Thielmann said, “why didn’t they label it as such?”
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  • Former National Intelligence Officer Paul Pillar, who has participated in drafting national intelligence estimates, said the intelligence assessment summary released by the White House “is evidently an administration document, and the working master copy may have been in someone’s computer at the White House or National Security Council.” Pillar suggested that senior intelligence officials might have signed off on the administration paper, but that the White House may have drafted its own paper to “avoid attention to analytic differences within the intelligence community.” Comparable intelligence community assessments in the past, he observed – including the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate – include indications of differences in assessment among elements of the community. An unnamed “senior administration official” briefing the news media on the intelligence paper on Aug. 30 said that the paper was “fully vetted within the intelligence community,” and that, ”All members of the intelligence community participated in its development.”
  • But that statement fell far short of asserting that all the elements of the intelligence community had approved the paper in question, or even that it had gone through anything resembling consultations between the primary drafters and other analysts, and opportunities for agencies to register dissent that typically accompany intelligence community assessments. The same “senior administration official” indicated that DNI Clapper had “approved” submissions from various agencies for what the official called “the process”. The anonymous speaker did not explain further to journalists what that process preceding the issuance of the White House paper had involved. However, an Associated Press story on Aug. 29 referred to “a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence outlining the evidence against Syria”, citing two intelligence officials and two other administration officials as sources. That article suggests that the administration had originally planned for the report on intelligence to be issued by Clapper rather than the White House, apparently after reaching agreement with the White House on the contents of the paper. But Clapper’s name was not on the final document issued by the White House, and the document is nowhere to be found on the ODNI website. All previous intelligence community assessments were posted on that site.
  • The issuance of the document by the White House rather than by Clapper, as had been apparently planned, points to a refusal by Clapper to put his name on the document as revised by the White House. Clapper’s refusal to endorse it – presumably because it was too obviously an exercise in “cherry picking” intelligence to support a decision for war – would explain why the document had to be issued by the White House. Efforts by IPS to get a comment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence suggest strongly that Clapper is embarrassed by the way the Obama White House misrepresented the Aug. 30 document.
  • An e-mail query by IPS to the media relations staff of ODNI requesting clarification of the status of the Aug. 30 document in relation to the intelligence community was never answered. In follow-up phone calls, ODNI personnel said someone would respond to the query. After failing to respond for two days, despite promising that someone would call back, however, ODNI’s media relations office apparently decided to refuse any further contact with IPS on the subject. A clear indication that the White House, rather than Clapper, had the final say on the content of the document is that it includes a statement that a “preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children.” That figure, for which no source was indicated, was several times larger than the estimates given by British and French intelligence. The document issued by the White House cites intelligence that is either obviously ambiguous at best or is of doubtful authenticity, or both, as firm evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack. It claims that Syrian chemical weapons specialists were preparing for such an attack merely on the basis of signals intelligence indicating the presence of one or more individuals in a particular location. The same intelligence had been regarded prior to Aug. 21 as indicating nothing out of the ordinary, as was reported by CBS news Aug. 23.
  • he paper also cites a purported intercept by U.S intelligence of conversations between Syrian officials in which a “senior official” supposedly “confirmed” that the government had carried out the chemical weapons attack. But the evidence appears to indicate that the alleged intercept was actually passed on to the United States by Israeli intelligence. U.S. intelligence officials have long been doubtful about intelligence from Israeli sources that is clearly in line with Israeli interests. Opponents of the proposed U.S. strike against Syria could argue that the Obama administration’s presentation of the intelligence supporting war is far more politicised than the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate that the George W. Bush administration cited as part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 13
     
    If you vote for either a Democrat or Republican for President, you are in reality voting for the War Party and it will use the same dirty tricks to start the dirty wars. Bush Administration lied to make war against Iraq. Obama lies to get us into Syria. Maybe it's time to launch a "Peace Party" that calls Dems and Repubs out for what they really are, loyal servants of the War Party.  A single issue party aimed at peeling off the the Republican and Democrat disguises from the War Partiers.    Just daydreaming. Homo sapiens have been a vicious lot as far back as archaeology can take us.  We just enhance our destructiveness as the time line moves forward. 
Paul Merrell

US was so sure it was striking Syria it made 'warning calls' to Israel's leaders | The ... - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/rning-calls-to-israels-leaders

war & peace U.S. Syria crimes against humanity Syrian-missiles

shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration was so certain that its forces were about to attack Syria in the chemical weapons crisis at the end of August, that US officials telephoned Israel’s prime minister and defense minister to give them “advance warning” the attack was about to take place
  • The phone calls, Israel’s Channel 2 news revealed Friday, were made shortly after Secretary of State John Kerry on August 31 had accused Bashar Assad’s regime of an August 21 chemical weapons attack that killed 1,429 Syrians. Israel’s leaders were told explicitly that the US would be taking punitive military action against the Assad regime within 24-48 hours. The calls were made in accordance with the US promise to give Israel a warning ahead of such an attack, so that it could take steps to defend itself against any potential Syrian retaliation that might target the Jewish state.
  • In fact, however, President Barack Obama, a day later on September 1, surprisingly announced that he would seek Congressional authorization before a strike on Syria. (Israel was given advance warning of that change of tack as well, some four hours before the president’s announcement.)
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Oct 13
     
    Wouldn't it be interesting to look at a list of the people Obama talked to on August 31-September1 and the duration of each conversation? If this report is true, then there is a very big whiff that someone with bigger clout that Barack Obama possesses ordered him during that period to cancel the imminent missile strikes on Syria. I'd very much like to know who that person is.
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Oct 13
     
    Realized that I jumped too quickly to a conclusion there. Obama being ordered to reverse course is only one plausible reason. There are others. For example, Gen. Martin Dempsey was under considerable lobbying pressure to resign rather then carry out Obama's order to hit Syria with missile strikes because Congress had not authorized the war. Had Dempsey told Obama he would do so and go public, that conceivably would have been enough to back down Obama, particularly after the UK Parliament refused permission for UK forces to take part in the strikes. And still other scenarios leading to a reversal of the order can be imagined.
Paul Merrell

Spy Chief James Clapper Wins Rosemary Award - 0 views

www2.gwu.edu/...20140324

surveillance state NSA Rosemary-Award Obama Clapper Alexander

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has won the infamous Rosemary Award for worst open government performance in 2013, according to the citation published today by the National Security Archive at www.nsarchive.org. Despite heavy competition, Clapper's "No, sir" lie to Senator Ron Wyden's question: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" sealed his receipt of the dubious achievement award, which cites the vastly excessive secrecy of the entire U.S. surveillance establishment. The Rosemary Award citation leads with what Clapper later called the "least untruthful" answer possible to congressional questions about the secret bulk collection of Americans' phone call data. It further cites other Clapper claims later proved false, such as his 2012 statement that "we don't hold data on U.S. citizens." But the Award also recognizes Clapper's fellow secrecy fetishists and enablers, including:
  • Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, for multiple Rose Mary Woods-type stretches, such as (1) claiming that the secret bulk collection prevented 54 terrorist plots against the U.S. when the actual number, according to the congressionally-established Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) investigation (pp. 145-153), is zero; (2) his 2009 declaration to the wiretap court that multiple NSA violations of the court's orders arose from differences over "terminology," an explanation which the chief judge said "strains credulity;" and (3) public statements by the NSA about its programs that had to be taken down from its website for inaccuracies (see Documents 78, 85, 87 in The Snowden Affair), along with public statements by other top NSA officials now known to be untrue (see "Remarks of Rajesh De," NSA General Counsel, Document 53 in The Snowden Affair).
  • Robert Mueller, former FBI director, for suggesting (as have Gen. Alexander and many others) that the secret bulk collection program might have been able to prevent the 9/11 attacks, when the 9/11 Commission found explicitly the problem was not lack of data points, but failing to connect the many dots the intelligence community already had about the would-be hijackers living in San Diego. The National Security Division lawyers at the Justice Department, for misleading their own Solicitor General (Donald Verrilli) who then misled (inadvertently) the U.S. Supreme Court over whether Justice let defendants know that bulk collection had contributed to their prosecutions. The same National Security Division lawyers who swore under oath in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for a key wiretap court opinion that the entire text of the opinion was appropriately classified Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (release of which would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to U.S. national security). Only after the Edward Snowden leaks and the embarrassed governmental declassification of the opinion did we find that one key part of the opinion's text simply reproduced the actual language of the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the only "grave damage" was to the government's false claims.
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  • President Obama for his repeated misrepresentations about the bulk collection program (calling the wiretap court "transparent" and saying "all of Congress" knew "exactly how this program works") while in effect acknowledging the public value of the Edward Snowden leaks by ordering the long-overdue declassification of key documents about the NSA's activities, and investigations both by a special panel and by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The PCLOB directly contradicted the President, pointing out that "when the only means through which legislators can try to understand a prior interpretation of the law is to read a short description of an operational program, prepared by executive branch officials, made available only at certain times and locations, which cannot be discussed with others except in classified briefings conducted by those same executive branch officials, legislators are denied a meaningful opportunity to gauge the legitimacy and implications of the legal interpretation in question. Under such circumstances, it is not a legitimate method of statutory construction to presume that these legislators, when reenacting the statute, intended to adopt a prior interpretation that they had no fair means of evaluating." (p. 101)
  • Even an author of the Patriot Act, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), was broadsided by the revelation of the telephone metadata dragnet. After learning of the extent of spying on Americans that his Act unleashed, he wrote that the National Security Agency "ignored restrictions painstakingly crafted by lawmakers and assumed plenary authority never imagined by Congress" by cloaking its actions behind the "thick cloud of secrecy" that even our elected representatives could not breech. Clapper recently conceded to the Daily Beast, "I probably shouldn't say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this [phone metadata collection] from the outset … we wouldn't have had the problem we had." The NSA's former deputy director, John "Chris" Inglis, said the same when NPR asked him if he thought the metadata dragnet should have been disclosed before Snowden. "In hindsight, yes. In hindsight, yes." Speaking about potential (relatively minimal) changes to the National Security Agency even the president acknowledged, "And all too often new authorities were instituted without adequate public debate," and "Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us. We won't abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached." (Exhibit A, of course, is the NSA "watchlist" in the 1960's and 1970's that targeted not only antiwar and civil rights activists, but also journalists and even members of Congress.)
  • The Archive established the not-so-coveted Rosemary Award in 2005, named after President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who testified she had erased 18-and-a-half minutes of a crucial Watergate tape — stretching, as she showed photographers, to answer the phone with her foot still on the transcription pedal. Bestowed annually to highlight the lowlights of government secrecy, the Rosemary Award has recognized a rogue's gallery of open government scofflaws, including the CIA, the Treasury Department, the Air Force, the FBI, the Federal Chief Information Officers' Council, and the career Rosemary leader — the Justice Department — for the last two years. Rosemary-winner James Clapper has offered several explanations for his untruthful disavowal of the National Security Agency's phone metadata dragnet. After his lie was exposed by the Edward Snowden revelations, Clapper first complained to NBC's Andrea Mitchell that the question about the NSA's surveillance of Americans was unfair, a — in his words — "When are you going to stop beating your wife kind of question." So, he responded "in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no.'"
  • After continuing criticism for his lie, Clapper wrote a letter to Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Dianne Feinstein, now explaining that he misunderstood Wyden's question and thought it was about the PRISM program (under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) rather than the telephone metadata collection program (under Section 215 of the Patriot Act). Clapper wrote that his staff "acknowledged the error" to Senator Wyden soon after — yet he chose to reject Wyden's offer to amend his answer. Former NSA senior counsel Joel Brenner blamed Congress for even asking the question, claiming that Wyden "sandbagged" Clapper by the "vicious tactic" of asking "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Meanwhile, Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists countered that "it is of course wrong for officials to make false statements, as DNI Clapper did," and that in fact the Senate Intelligence Committee "became complicit in public deception" for failing to rebut or correct Clapper's statement, which they knew to be untruthful. Clapper described his unclassified testimony as a game of "stump the chump." But when it came to oversight of the National Security Agency, it appears that senators and representatives were the chumps being stumped. According to Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich), the House Intelligence Committee "decided it wasn't worthwhile to share this information" about telephone metadata surveillance with other members of Congress. Classified briefings open to the whole House were a "farce," Amash contended, often consisting of information found in newspapers and public statutes.
  • The Emmy and George Polk Award-winning National Security Archive, based at the George Washington University, has carried out thirteen government-wide audits of FOIA performance, filed more than 50,000 Freedom of Information Act requests over the past 28 years, opened historic government secrets ranging from the CIA's "Family Jewels" to documents about the testing of stealth aircraft at Area 51, and won a series of historic lawsuits that saved hundreds of millions of White House e-mails from the Reagan through Obama presidencies, among many other achievements.
  • Director Clapper joins an undistinguished list of previous Rosemary Award winners: 2012 - the Justice Department (in a repeat performance, for failure to update FOIA regulations for compliance with the law, undermining congressional intent, and hyping its open government statistics) 2011- the Justice Department (for doing more than any other agency to eviscerate President Obama's Day One transparency pledge, through pit-bull whistleblower prosecutions, recycled secrecy arguments in court cases, retrograde FOIA regulations, and mixed FOIA responsiveness) 2010 - the Federal Chief Information Officers' Council (for "lifetime failure" to address the crisis in government e-mail preservation) 2009 - the FBI (for having a record-setting rate of "no records" responses to FOIA requests) 2008 - the Treasury Department (for shredding FOIA requests and delaying responses for decades) 2007 - the Air Force (for disappearing its FOIA requests and having "failed miserably" to meet its FOIA obligations, according to a federal court ruling) 2006 - the Central Intelligence Agency (for the biggest one-year drop-off in responsiveness to FOIA requests yet recorded).   ALSO-RANS The Rosemary Award competition in 2013 was fierce, with a host of government contenders threatening to surpass the Clapper "least untruthful" standard. These secrecy over-achievers included the following FOI delinquents:
  • Admiral William McRaven, head of the Special Operations Command for the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, who purged his command's computers and file cabinets of all records on the raid, sent any remaining copies over to CIA where they would be effectively immune from the FOIA, and then masterminded a "no records" response to the Associated Press when the AP reporters filed FOIA requests for raid-related materials and photos. If not for a one-sentence mention in a leaked draft inspector general report — which the IG deleted for the final version — no one would have been the wiser about McRaven's shell game. Subsequently, a FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch uncovered the sole remaining e-mail from McRaven ordering the evidence destruction, in apparent violation of federal records laws, a felony for which the Admiral seems to have paid no price. Department of Defense classification reviewers who censored from a 1962 document on the Cuban Missile Crisis direct quotes from public statements by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The quotes referred to the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey that would ultimately (and secretly) be pulled out in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of its missiles in Cuba. The denials even occurred after an appeal by the National Security Archive, which provided as supporting material the text of the Khrushchev statements and multiple other officially declassified documents (and photographs!) describing the Jupiters in Turkey. Such absurd classification decisions call into question all of the standards used by the Pentagon and the National Declassification Center to review historical documents.
  • Admiral William McRaven memo from May 13, 2011, ordering the destruction of evidence relating to the Osama bin Laden raid. (From Judicial Watch)
  • The Department of Justice Office of Information Policy, which continues to misrepresent to Congress the government's FOIA performance, while enabling dramatic increases in the number of times government agencies invoke the purely discretionary "deliberative process" exemption. Five years after President Obama declared a "presumption of openness" for FOIA requests, Justice lawyers still cannot show a single case of FOIA litigation in which the purported new standards (including orders from their own boss, Attorney General Eric Holder) have caused the Department to change its position in favor of disclosure.
Gary Edwards

The Stunning Hypocrisy of the U.S. Government - BlackListedNews.com - 1 views

www.blacklistednews.com/...M.html

NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA Edward-Snowden hypocrisy

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Please read this rather good summary in this morning’s New York Times of the worldwide debate Snowden has enabled – how these disclosures have “set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance” and “opened an unprecedented window on the details of surveillance by the NSA, including its compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Skype” – and ask yourself: has Snowden actually does anything to bring “injury to the United States”, or has he performed an immense public service?
  • The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of “espionage”.
  • It seems clear that the people who are actually bringing “injury to the United States” are those who are waging war on basic tenets of transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens – and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they’re doing – rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done.
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  • The Obama administration leaks classified information continuously. They do it to glorify the President, or manipulate public opinion, or even to help produce a pre-election propaganda film about the Osama bin Laden raid.
  • The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone.
  • What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing.
  • The “enemy” they’re seeking to keep ignorant with selective and excessive leak prosecutions are not The Terrorists or The Chinese Communists.
  • It’s the American people.
  • The people who have learned things they didn’t already know are American citizens who have no connection to terrorism or foreign intelligence, as well as hundreds of millions of citizens around the world about whom the same is true.
  • What they have learned is that the vast bulk of this surveillance apparatus is directed not at the Chinese or Russian governments or the Terrorists, but at them.
  • And that is precisely why the US government is so furious and will bring its full weight to bear against these disclosures.
  • What has been “harmed” is not the national security of the US but the ability of its political leaders to work against their own citizens and citizens around the world in the dark, with zero transparency or real accountability.
  • If anything is a crime, it’s that secret, unaccountable and deceitful behavior: not the shining of light on it.
  • At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face. “These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”
  • “The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”
  • “Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy,” added the spokesman, apparently serious.
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Jun 13
     
    Extremely well linked story from "Washington's Blog" excerpt: "The Government's Hypocrisy Is the Core Problem Congress has exempted itself from the prohibition against trading on inside information … the law that got Martha Stewart and many other people thrown in jail. There are many other ways in which the hypocrisy of the politicians in D.C. are hurting our country. Washington politicians say we have to slash basic services, and yet waste hundreds of billions of dollars on counter-productive boondoggles.  If the politicos just stopped throwing money at corporate welfare queens, military and security boondoggles and pork, harmful quantitative easing, unnecessary nuclear subsidies,  the failed war on drugs, and other wasted and counter-productive expenses, we wouldn't need to impose austerity on the people. The D.C. politicians said that the giant failed banks couldn't be nationalized, because that would be socialism.  Instead of temporarily nationalizing them and then spinning them off to the private sector - or breaking them up - the politicians have bailed them out to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars each year, and created a system where all of the profits are privatized, and all of the losses socialized. Obama and Congress promised help for struggling homeowners, and passed numerous bills that they claimed would rescue the little guy.  But every single one of these bills actually bails out the banks … and doesn't really help the homeowner. The D.C. regulators pretend that they are being tough on the big banks, but are actually doing everything they can to help cover up their sins. Many have pointed out Obama's hypocrisy in slamming Bush's spying programs … and then expanding them  (millions more). And in slamming China's cyber-warfare … while doing the same thing. And - while the Obama administration is spying on everyone in the country - it is at the same time the most secretive administration ever (ba
Paul Merrell

Obama gives $1.9 billion in weapons as welcome gift to Israel's racist government | The... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...gift-israels-racist-government

war & peace Obama Israel weapons-shipments Netanyahu-cabinet

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 May 15 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration approved a $1.9 billion arms sale to Israel in recent days as “compensation” for the US nuclear deal with Iran, which the Israeli regime staunchly opposes.  Among the tens of thousands of bombs included in the weapons package are 3,000 Hellfire missiles, 12,000 general purpose bombs and 750 bunker buster bombs that can penetrate up to twenty feet, or six meters, of reinforced concrete. This generous weapons gift comes in the wake of Israel’s most ferocious attack on the Gaza Strip to date, in which the Israeli army deliberately targeted civilians, including children, as a matter of policy.
  • The degree of firepower Israel unleashed on Gaza was so extreme that senior US military officials who participated in the illegal invasion and criminal destruction of Iraq were left stunned.  Even the Pentagon and State Department were forced to acknowledge that Israel did not do enough to avoid civilian deaths. But this did not prevent the Obama administration from rushing to provide Israel with the means to carry out more atrocities. 
  • Meanwhile, Netanyahu has assembled the most racist government in Israel’s history, with unabashed genocide enthusiasts occupying the most senior level positions.  Israel’s new education minister is Naftali Bennett, leader of the religious ultra-nationalist Habeyit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party who famously bragged, “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life — and there’s no problem with that.” In response to international outrage at the Israeli massacre of four children playing soccer on the beach in Gaza last summer, Bennett accused Palestinian resistance fighters of “conducting massive self-genocide” to make Israel look bad.  Israel’s new justice minister is Ayelet Shaked, the lawmaker who last June endorsed a call to genocide, which declared “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy” and demanded the slaughter of Palestinian mothers to prevent them from birthing “little snakes.” 
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  • Israel’s new culture minister is Miri Regev, who in 2012 helped incite a violent anti-African riot when she stood before a racist mob and labeled non-Jewish African asylum seekers a “cancer”, a statement that 52 percent of Israeli Jews agreed with. Regev later apologized, not to Africans but to cancer survivors for likening them to Black people.  Israel’s new deputy defense minister is Eli Ben-Dahan, who proudly proclaimed, “[Palestinians] are beasts, they are not human,” and, “A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual.” Citing a combination of religious text and the writings of far rightwing Israeli figures, Israel’s new deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely asserted Jewish ownership over all of historic Palestine, declaring, “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologize for that.” 
  • Earlier this month, Moshe Yaalon, who will continue to serve as Israel’s defense minister in Netanyahu’s new governing coalition, threatened to nuke Iran and promised to kill civilians, including children, in any future conflict with Lebanon or Gaza.  Unlike Obama’s hollow threats, this is not empty rhetoric. We saw this incitement play out last summer, from the burning of Muhammad Abu Khudair by Jewish extremists and “death to Arabs” mobs hunting Palestinians in the streets of Jerusalem, to the sadistic conduct and eliminationist chauvinism exhibited by Israel’s military in Gaza. With Israeli Jewish society submerged in anti-Palestinian racism from the top down, the Obama administration has guaranteed Israel’s capacity to carry out its most destructive ambitions. 
  • Paul Merrell on 22 May 15
     
    Note that Obama also shipped munitions to Israel during Operation Protective Edge last year to resupply Israel's stocks depleted during the operation, which made him and the U.S. complicit in the then-ongoing Israeli war-crimes.    
Gary Edwards

Larry Summers and the Secret "Bankster End Game" Memo : http://goo.gl/wDhDhL - 1 views

news.google.com/?ar=1379450048

banksters Larry-Summers Federal-Reserve-Bankster-Cartel financial-collapse

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Sep 13
     
    Diigo is screwing up the URL AGAIN!!!!! WTF!!! The correct title is "Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo :: http://goo.gl/wDhDhL From the marbux treasure trove of truth we have financial expert Greg Palast describing how the Banksters engineered the 2008 World Financial Collapse. Greg names names, sighting an important 1997 memo signed by then Deputy Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. The memo describes the Banksters "end game", and authorizes pulling the trigger on a process of forcing the world's financial institutions to accept the game of derivative roulette where high risk financial schemes and casino bets had to be accepted as "financial assets". Good story and as from everything I know, the absolute truth. Read it carefully because these same Banksters control the Obama Administration and seek to continue the great shakedown. One item of note is the recent resignation of Larry Summers as Obama nominee to head the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Summers is one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse, but is seen be Wall Street as hesitant to continue with the current Bernake flooding of the money markets with $85 Billion per month in freshly minted paper. Even the hint of rolling back the Bankster bailout a bit is enough to do in Summers. alternative Fed Banster Czar Janette Yellin promises to up the $85 Billion monthly bailout, and Wall Street celebrated with a near doubling of trades. We're so screwed! We started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" Diigo group in September of 2008 as an effort to understand the financial collapse. In this short article, Greg Palast summarizes the story and places the important facts on the table for all to see. Pray with me for his health and safety. excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial ba
  • Paul Merrell on 18 Sep 13
     
    Related link: Summers Withdraws From Consideration for Fed Chairmanship, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-15/obama-said-he-accepted-summers-decision-to-withdraw-his-name.html
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Sep 13
     
    From the marbux treasure trove of truth we have financial expert Greg Palast describing how the Banksters engineered the 2008 World Financial Collapse. Greg names names, sighting an important 1997 memo signed by then Deputy Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers. The memo describes the Banksters "end game", and authorizes pulling the trigger on a process of forcing the world's financial institutions to accept the game of derivative roulette where high risk financial schemes and casino bets had to be accepted as "financial assets". Good story and as from everything I know, the absolute truth. Read it carefully because these same Banksters control the Obama Administration and seek to continue the great shakedown. One item of note is the recent resignation of Larry Summers as Obama nominee to head the Federal Reserve Bankster Cartel. Summers is one of the architects of the 2008 financial collapse, but is seen be Wall Street as hesitant to continue with the current Bernake flooding of the money markets with $85 Billion per month in freshly minted paper. Even the hint of rolling back the Bankster bailout a bit is enough to do in Summers. alternative Fed Banster Czar Janette Yellin promises to up the $85 Billion monthly bailout, and Wall Street celebrated with a near doubling of trades. We're so screwed! We started the "Socialism and the End of the American Dream" Diigo group in September of 2008 as an effort to understand the financial collapse. In this short article, Greg Palast summarizes the story and places the important facts on the table for all to see. Pray with me for his health and safety. excerpt: "The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels. Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  "d
Paul Merrell

AIPAC's Annus Horribilis? by Jim Lobe -- Antiwar.com - 0 views

original.antiwar.com/...aipacs-annus-horribilis

war & peace Israel AIPAC Israel-lobby Iran Iranian-nukes-myth negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The year of 2014 is starting well for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier organization of this country’s Israel lobby. Not only has it been clearly and increasingly decisively defeated – at least for now and the immediate future – in its bid to persuade a filibuster-proof, let alone a veto-proof, super-majority of senators to approve the Kirk-Menendez “Wag the Dog” Act that was designed to torpedo the Nov. 24 “Joint Plan of Action” (JPA) between Iran and the P5+1. It has also drawn a spate of remarkably unfavorable publicity, a particularly damaging development for an organization that, as one of its former top honchos, Steve Rosen, once put it, like “a night flower, … thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.”
  • The result: AIPAC and its supporters hit a brick wall at 59, unable even to muster the 60 needed to invoke cloture against a possible filibuster, let alone the 77 senators that AIPAC-friendly Congressional staff claimed at one point were either publicly or privately committed to vote for the bill if it reached the floor. By late this week, half a dozen of the 16 Democrats who had co-sponsored the bill were retreating from it as fast as their senatorial dignity would permit. And while none has yet disavowed their co-sponsorship, more than a handful now have (disingenuously, in my view) insisted that they either don’t believe that the bill should be voted on while negotiations are ongoing; that they had never intended to undercut the president’s negotiating authority; or, most originally, that they believed the mere introduction of the bill would provide additional leverage to Obama (Michael Bennet of Colorado) in the negotiations. Even the bill’s strongest proponents, such as Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe, conceded, as he did to the National Journal after Obama repeated his veto threat in his State of the Union Address Tuesday: “The question is, is there support to override a veto on that? I say, ‘No.’” The Democratic retreat is particularly worrisome for AIPAC precisely because its claim to “bipartisanship” is looking increasingly dubious, a point underlined by Peter Beinart in a Haaretz op-ed this week that urged Obama to boycott this year’s AIPAC policy conference that will take place a mere five weeks from now. (This is the nightmare scenario for Rosen who noted in an interview with the JTA’s Ron Kampeas last week that the group’s failure to procure a high-level administration speaker for its annual conference “would be devastating to AIPAC’s image of bipartisanship.”) According to Beinart:
  • Consider first what happened with the Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill, named for the two biggest beneficiaries of “pro-Israel” PACs closely associated with AIPAC in the Congressional campaigns of 2010 and 2012, respectively. Introduced on the eve of the Christmas recess, the bill then had 26 co-sponsors, equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, giving it an attractive bipartisan cast – the kind of bipartisanship that AIPAC has long sought to maintain despite the group’s increasingly Likudist orientation and the growing disconnect within the Democratic Party between its strongly pro-Israel elected leadership and more skeptical base, especially its younger activists, both Jewish and gentile. By the second week of January, it had accumulated an additional 33 co-sponsors, bringing the total to 59 and theoretically well within striking distance of the magic 67 needed to override a presidential veto. At that point, however, its momentum stalled as a result of White House pressure (including warnings that a veto would indeed be cast); the alignment behind Obama of ten Senate Committee chairs, including Carl Levin of the Armed Services Committee and Dianne Feinstein of the Intelligence Committee; public denunciation of the bill by key members of the foreign policy elite; and a remarkably strong grassroots campaign by several reputable national religious, peace, and human-rights groups (including, not insignificantly, J Street and Americans for Peace Now), whose phone calls and emails to Senate offices opposing the bill outnumbered those in favor by a factor of ten or more.
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  • Of course, none of this means that the battle over Iran policy is won, but it does suggest that AIPAC’s membership has some serious thinking to do about the group’s relationship to Democrats and to the broader Jewish community. Nor does it necessarily mean that we have finally reached a “tipping point” regarding the lobby’s hold over Congress and U.S. Middle East policy. But this is unquestionably a significant moment. (Rosenberg has a good analysis about AIPAC’s defeat out on HuffPo today that is well worth reading.)
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 14
     
    There's more detail not quoted, but AIPAC (and the War Party) are indeed having a horrible year, already.  Perhaps worst of all for AIPAC, even mainstream media is now willing to discuss AIPAC's blunder. See e.g.,  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mj-rosenberg/obama-state-of-the-union-iran_b_4702457.html ("AIPAC's hopes to override Obama's veto ended with a whimper, AIPAC's whimper.") When even mainstream pundits are willing to discuss AIPAC's blunder in public, that's a spotlight on an organism that can't stand the light. 
Paul Merrell

Tikkun Daily Blog » Blog Archive » Obama Suppressing 6,000-Page Report on CIA... - 0 views

www.tikkun.org/...-senate-intelligence-committee

tyranny CIA extraordinary rendition torture Senate-Intelligence-Committee

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Over a year ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to adopt a historic, 6,000-page report which contains “startling details” about CIA misdeeds related to its torture program. The report, which cost $40 million to produce and appears to pose no national security threats, has been set for release since December 13, 2012. However, it has yet to see the light of day. The reason: the Obama administration continues to suppress its release, apparently for no reason other than to protect the reputations of the guilty. Per The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf:
  • [Over a year ago], the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to adopt a 6,000-page report on the CIA rendition, detention, and interrogation program that led to torture. Its contents include details on each prisoner in CIA custody, the conditions of their confinement, whether they were tortured, the intelligence they provided, and the degree to which the CIA lied about its behavior to overseers. Senator Dianne Feinstein declared it one of the most significant oversight efforts in American history, noting that it contains “startling details” and raises “critical questions.” But all these months later, the report is still being suppressed. The Obama Administration has no valid reason to suppress the report. Its contents do not threaten national security, as evidenced by the fact that numerous figures who normally defer to the national-security state want it released with minor redactions. The most prominent of all is Vice President Joe Biden. The Center for Victims of Torture, in advocating for the public’s right to fully understand the CIA’s lawless torture program during the Bush administration, has procured the signatures of 58 national security experts and officials. These signatures include U.S. senators, former Obama administration officials and retired military leaders. President Obama once promised that his White House would be the most transparent in history, and went so far in February to claim that such is indeed the case. This most-transparent-ever administration is now
  • marking the CIA report as classified, determined “to keep secret the most thorough accounting we have of the agency’s lawless, immoral behavior.” Is President Obama bowing to factions within the CIA? Shielding the powerful from rebuke during his own illegal drone program? Protecting past criminals as a down payment on future investigations? To answer those questions would be to speculate. However, what is known is this: if we don’t fully understand those CIA abuses perpetrated in the name of the State and national security, we are more likely to allow those abuses to happen again.
Paul Merrell

John Kerry admits: some US surveillance has gone too far | World news | theguardian.com - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...some-surveillance-gone-too-far

surveillance state NSA NSA-blowback Obama Kerry Snowden Germany

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • John Kerry, the US secretary of state, conceded on Thursday that some of the country's surveillance activities had gone too far, saying that certain practices had occurred "on autopilot" without the knowledge of senior officials in the Obama administration.In the most stark comments yet by a senior administration official, Kerry promised that a previously announced review of surveillance practices would be thorough and that some activities would end altogether."The president and I have learned of some things that have been happening in many ways on an automatic pilot, because the technology is there and the ability is there," he told a conference in London via video link."In some cases, some of these actions have reached too far and we are going to try to make sure it doesn't happen in the future."
  • In recent days, the Obama administration has put some distance between it and the National Security Agency (NSA). Kerry's comments are a reflection in particular of a concern about the diplomatic fallout from the revelation that the US monitored the cellphone of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.The tactic has irritated senior intelligence officials. On Thursday evening, the director of the NSA, General Keith Alexander, blamed US diplomats for requests to place foreign leaders under surveillance.During a pointed exchange with a former US ambassador to Romania, James Carew Rosapepe, Alexander said: "We, the intelligence agencies, don't come up with the requirements. The policy-makers come up with the requirements."He added: "One of those groups would have been, let me think, hold on, oh: ambassadors."
  • Alexander said that the NSA collected information when it was asked by policy officials to discover the "leadership intentions" of foreign countries. "If you want to know leadership intentions, these are the issues," he said at a discussion hosted by the Baltimore Council on Foreign Relations.Earlier in Washington, the debate continued about whether further legal constraints should be placed on the NSA. The Senate intelligence committee approved a bill that placed largely cosmetic restrictions on the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance programme.The bill, sponsored by committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, allows the NSA continue to collect phone metadata of millions of Americans for renewable 90-day periods, but orders it to be more transparent about the practice.
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  • The bill, which is competing with more restrictive measures from other committees, now moves forward to a full Senate vote. The stage is now set for a showdown with the USA Freedom Act, a bipartisan bill that would prohibit bulk collection of Americans' telephone records.Senator Mark Udall, a Democratic member of the Senate intelligence committee and a supporter of NSA reform, said it did not go far enough."The NSA's invasive surveillance of Americans' private information does not respect our constitutional values and needs fundamental reform, not incidental changes," he said.
  • In a separate development on Thursday, a group of technology giants called for substantial reforms to the US government's surveillance programmes. The companies were furious about revelations this week – the latest to emerge from documents leaked by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden – that the agency had intercepted the cables that link the worldwide data centres belonging to Google and Yahoo.It was also reported that Obama had ordered the NSA to stop eavesdropping on the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Reuters cited a US official as saying the president had ordered the halt in the past few weeks.The NSA's surveillance of the IMF and World Bank has not previously been disclosed.
  • In response to Reuters inquiries, a senior Obama administration official said, "The United States is not conducting electronic surveillance targeting the headquarters of the World Bank or IMF in Washington." The Obama administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did not address whether the NSA had eavesdropped on the two entities in the past.Kerry, in his comments to a conference organised by the Open Government Partnership, acknowledged that trust needed to be restored. "There is an effort to try to gather information, yes, in same cases inappropriately, and the president is now doing a thorough review, in order that nobody will have a sense of abuse," he said.Despte the cracks between the administration and the spy community, Kerry was careful to defended the motives of US intelligence agencies, insisting no "innocent people" were being abused and saying surveillance by several countries had prevented many terrorist plots.
  • A German MP said he met Snowden in Moscow on Thursday, and said the NSA whistelblower was prepared in principle to help Germany investigate allegations of surveillance by US intelligence.Hans-Christian Stroebele, a lawmaker with Germany's opposition Greens and a prominent critic of the NSA's alleged actions, told ARD television that Snowden "made clear he knows a great deal."He said Snowden would be prepared to travel to Germany and testify, "but the circumstances would have to be cleared up".
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 13
     
    Looks like maybe Snowden is now a hero in Germany and may be allowed to travel there. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration rats continue to desert the sinking NSA ship, but Diane Feinstein fights on to preserve mass surveillance. 
Paul Merrell

In a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-us-role-in-afghan-combat.html

war & peace Afghanistan Obama U.S.-combat-role

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year.Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.
  • In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”The decision to change that mission was the result of a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.
  • Mr. Obama’s decision, made during a White House meeting in recent weeks with his senior national security advisers, came over the objection of some of his top civilian aides, who argued that American lives should not be put at risk next year in any operations against the Taliban — and that they should have only a narrow counterterrorism mission against Al Qaeda.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Nov 14
     
    So the U.S. bases in Afghanistan that straddle the planned oil pipeline route will continue to protect Big Energy's interests and prepare to break Russia and Iran's regional monopoly on oil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghanistan_Oil_Pipeline
Gary Edwards

Neil Barofsky, Matt Stoller, and Your Humble Blogger on Why the Mortgage Sett... - 0 views

www.nakedcapitalism.com/...mortgage-settlement-sucks.html

Banksters Obammunism Obama-foreclosures

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Mar 12
     
    Two interview videos explaining the Obama Bankster Mortgage Settlement:  the first is with Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism.  The second is a Bloomberg interview with Neil Barofsky and Matt Stoller providing a nice high-level overview of why the mortgage settlement is terrible. It's particularly useful if you are looking for a few key issues to present to someone who has bought the Obama administration PR or is late to the topic.  Don't miss the property rights comments at the end of the Bloomberg interview.  Or should i say, former property rights?   the repercussions of the Obama Mortgage and Foreclosure assistance settlement promise to be far reaching and lasting.  And you thought the 14th Amendment changed the legal definition of property rights?  Watch out for this Marxist prize.
Paul Merrell

Obama Promises Disappear from Web - Sunlight Foundation Blog - 1 views

sunlightfoundation.com/...ma-promises-disappear-from-web

Obama transparency whistle-blowers campaign promises

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Change.gov, the website created by the Obama transition team in 2008, has effectively disappeared sometime over the last month. While the front splash page for Change.gov has linked to the main White House website for years, until recently, you could still continue on to see the materials and agenda laid out by the administration. This was a particularly helpful resource for those looking to compare Obama's performance in office against his vision for reform, laid out in detail on Change.gov. According to the Internet Archive, the last time that content (beyond the splash page) was available was June 8th -- last month.
  • Here's one possibility, from the administration's ethics agenda: Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
Paul Merrell

16 times Obama said there would be no boots on the ground in Syria - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...74869884

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria boots-on-the-ground Obama quotes

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Since 2013, President Obama has repeatedly vowed that there would be no "boots on the ground" in Syria.But White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the president's decision Friday to send up to 50 special forces troops to Syria doesn't change the fundamental strategy: "This is an important thing for the American people to understand. These forces do not have a combat mission."Earnest said the promises of "no boots on the ground" first came in the context of removing Syrian President Bashar Assad because of his use of chemical weapons. Since then, Syria has become a haven for Islamic State fighters.Here's a recap of Obama's no-boots pledge:
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Nov 15
     
    Ten broken Obama promises. And the far more bellicose Hillary Clinton waiting in the wings. 
Paul Merrell

"Everyone is corrupt, I've come to learn" - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...upt_ive_come_to_learn%e2%80%9d

tyranny Obama Kiriakou

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Jul 13
     
    Barack Obama came to office promising to have the most transparent administration in U.S. history. This article is mandatory reading for anyone who believes Obama delivered on that promise. 
Paul Merrell

Report: ISIS, Syrian rebels reach ceasefire | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...s-agree-to-non-aggression-pact

war & peace ISIL moderate-rebels Obama Hillary

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Moderate Syrian rebels and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) reportedly struck a cease-fire deal on Friday, according to a group that has monitored Syria's civil war. The groups agreed to a non-aggression pact in which they promised not to attack each other.The development could influence members of Congress to vote “no” on an authorization to train and equip moderate rebel groups as early as next week. The White House has requested the authorization, but some lawmakers have already been skeptical the opposition groups can be trusted. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in the United Kingdom, said the groups reached the agreement in a suburb of Damascus, Syria’s capital.ADVERTISEMENTUnder the deal, "the two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy to be the Nussayri regime,” Agence France-Presse reported.Nussayri is a negative term for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite regime.
  • Moderate Syrian rebels and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) reportedly struck a cease-fire deal on Friday, according to a group that has monitored Syria's civil war. The groups agreed to a non-aggression pact in which they promised not to attack each other.The development could influence members of Congress to vote “no” on an authorization to train and equip moderate rebel groups as early as next week. The White House has requested the authorization, but some lawmakers have already been skeptical the opposition groups can be trusted. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in the United Kingdom, said the groups reached the agreement in a suburb of Damascus, Syria’s capital.ADVERTISEMENTUnder the deal, "the two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy to be the Nussayri regime,” Agence France-Presse reported.Nussayri is a negative term for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite regime.This comes as House lawmakers mull over the option to provide Obama with the authorization to train and arm the Syrian rebels. A vote on a short-term spending bill was delayed this week after the White House asked House Republicans to attach the authorization to the bill.
  • Moderate Syrian rebels and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) reportedly struck a cease-fire deal on Friday, according to a group that has monitored Syria's civil war. The groups agreed to a non-aggression pact in which they promised not to attack each other.The development could influence members of Congress to vote “no” on an authorization to train and equip moderate rebel groups as early as next week. The White House has requested the authorization, but some lawmakers have already been skeptical the opposition groups can be trusted. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in the United Kingdom, said the groups reached the agreement in a suburb of Damascus, Syria’s capital.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Under the deal, "the two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy to be the Nussayri regime,” Agence France-Presse reported.Nussayri is a negative term for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite regime.This comes as House lawmakers mull over the option to provide Obama with the authorization to train and arm the Syrian rebels. A vote on a short-term spending bill was delayed this week after the White House asked House Republicans to attach the authorization to the bill.It’s possible GOP leaders might decide to hold a separate vote on the authorization to equip the rebels.  Some Republicans and Democrats have long called on the administration arm the rebels, but other lawmakers in both parties are afraid the weapons could wind up in the wrong hands. 
  • A spokesman for the family of slain journalist Steven Sotloff told CNN this week that Sotloff was captured by “so-called moderate rebels” in Syria and was sold to ISIS.ISIS militants released videos in the last month showing them beheading Sotloff and U.S. journalist James Foley. 
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Sep 14
     
    There go the rest of the "moderate" Syrian Opposition that Barack and Hillary want to train and arm to fight ISIL.
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu: Peace talks require at least another year | The Times of Israel - 0 views

www.timesofisrael.com/-require-at-least-another-year

war & peace Israel U.S. foreign policy Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • etting to a peace agreement with the Palestinians would take at least another year of negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in remarks aired Sunday, while promising that Jerusalem will not give up its “security and national needs” in any deal
  • Netanyahu said a framework deal being drafted by the Americans, which he recently said will only represent Washington’s positions, could offer “a possible path to advance the talks.” But a final status deal would still be a long way off. “It will take at least a year to see the talks through to their conclusion,” he said, adding that the Palestinians may reject the American framework plan.
  • A sign of the pressure Netanyahu is under to show his commitment to the talks came in a rebuke-filled interview US President Barack Obama gave to Bloomberg, in which he denounced continued settlement construction, warned that the US might no longer be able to protect Israel in the international arena, and predicted that “the window is closing for a peace deal.” According to the interviewer, columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama was prepared to tell Netanyahu at the White House meeting on Monday last week that if the Israeli prime minister failed to endorse the framework document for the peace talks, Israel “could face a bleak future — one of international isolation and demographic disaster.” Netanyahu downplayed the significance of the US president’s remarks. “I don’t get disappointed or insulted. If I did I wouldn’t be able to function, and I’m already serving my ninth year [as PM],” he said. He also pointed to distinctly more upbeat rhetoric from the US president during their White House meeting.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • “The things President Obama said at the beginning of our meeting in the White House, and then during the meeting, were remarkably different. So the question is what’s preferable: To have a critical interview and a positive meeting, or the other way around? I prefer the positive meeting,” he said. Asked if the politics of Israel’s ruling coalition, which includes parties vocally opposed to any deal that sees an Israeli withdrawal from any part of the West Bank, would be an obstacle to accepting the American framework proposal, Netanyahu rejected the idea. “I don’t think so. People understand that when entering the negotiations, Israel is holding to its positions. [The framework proposal] is a document, not a signed agreement, but will be an American document with American positions. The Americans are saying, ‘Look, this is a platform over which you can start to debate.’” The current nine-month round of talks agreed to by both sides is slated to end by late April. US Secretary of State John Kerry has called for the talks to continue after that deadline.
  • During the interview, Netanyahu refused to reject outright a new settlement construction freeze or unilateral withdrawal, though he noted these measures were unsuccessful in the past. Regarding the freeze, he noted “we’ve already done a freeze” in 2010. “Did it deliver anything? I don’t see the point. “I haven’t agreed or committed to pass a decision on a freeze,” he said. “I don’t think it serves a purpose.” Speaking to Channel 2 in remarks aired Friday, Netanyahu said Israel would have to give up some settlements in a future peace deal. “Of course some of the settlements won’t be part of the deal, everyone understands that,” Netanyahu said. “I will make sure that [number] is as limited as possible, if we get there.” He pledged that no Israeli would be “abandoned.” He also argued against – but refused to outright reject, despite prodding from interviewer Chico Menashe – a unilateral withdrawal similar to the 2005 Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip. “I prefer not to reach such possibilities, but to advance in negotiations. So far, unilateralism hasn’t proven itself. It didn’t create stability and security, but rather [brought about] Iran’s capture of every tract we left. We haven’t gotten anything good from this, only a lot of rockets.”
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Mar 14
     
    According to Bibi, Obama did not deliver the message he said he would the day before his meeting with Bibi. But with two liars involved in a secret conversation, who knows what was said?
Paul Merrell

Review & Outlook: Loose Lips on Syria - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4591204579039011328308776.html

war & peace Syria Obama war crimes Pipelinestan

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • An American military attack on Syria could begin as early as Thursday and will involve three days of missile strikes, according to "senior U.S. officials" talking to NBC News. The Washington Post has the bombing at "no more than two days," though long-range bombers could "possibly" join the missiles. "Factors weighing into the timing of any action include a desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week," reports CNN, citing a "senior administration official." The New York Times, quoting a Pentagon official, adds that "the initial target list has fewer than 50 sites, including air bases where Syria's Russian-made attack helicopters are deployed." The Times adds that "like several other military officials contacted for this report, the official agreed to discuss planning options only on condition of anonymity." Thus do the legal and moral requirements of secret military operations lose out in this Administration to the imperatives of in-the-know spin and political gestures.
  • It's always possible that all of this leaking about when, how and for how long the U.S. will attack Syria is an elaborate head-fake, like Patton's ghost army on the eve of D-Day, poised for the assault on Calais. But based on this Administration's past behavior, such as the leaked bin Laden raid details, chances are most of this really is the war plan. Which makes us wonder why the Administration even bothers to pursue the likes of Edward Snowden when it is giving away its plan of attack to anyone in Damascus with an Internet connection. The answer, it seems, is that the attack in Syria isn't really about damaging the Bashar Assad regime's capacity to murder its own people, much less about ending the Assad regime for good. "I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are not about regime change," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. Translation: We're not coming for you, Bashar, so don't worry. And by the way, you might want to fly those attack choppers off base, at least until next week.
  • So what is the purpose of a U.S. attack? Mr. Carney elaborated that it's "about responding to [a] clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons." He added that the U.S. had a national security interest that Assad's use of chemical weapons "not go unanswered." This is another way of saying that the attacks are primarily about making a political statement, and vindicating President Obama's ill-considered promise of "consequences," rather than materially degrading Assad's ability to continue to wage war against his own people. It should go without saying that the principal purpose of a military strike is to have a military effect. Political statements can always be delivered politically, and U.S. airmen should not be put in harm's way to deliver what amounts to an extremely loud diplomatic demarche. That's especially so with a "do something" strike that is, in fact, deliberately calibrated to do very little. We wrote Tuesday that there is likely to be no good outcome in Syria until Assad and his regime are gone. Military strikes that advance that goal—either by targeting Assad directly or crippling his army's ability to fight—deserve the support of the American people and our international partners. That's not what this Administration seems to have in mind.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 13
     
    This typically pompous Wall Street Journal editorial gets part of it right but ignores several elephants in the room. -- No way this goes down without Russia having agreed to it. Russia's only foreign military base is a naval port in Syria. Russia has deployed anti-aircraft missile batteries in Syria. Russia has supplied the Syrian government with state-of-the-art antiaircraft shoulder-held missiles. Several months ago, the Russians moved a fleet of warships into the Mediterranean for the first time, to protect Syria from foreign attack, including at least one submarine equipped with anti-ship missiles.  The U.S. and Russia have been engaged in building up their forces positioned around for over a year, in an escalating fashion. Russia has a huge economic incentive to keep Assad in power because he is blocking the natural gas pipeline that western interests want to run through Syria Russia has also built up its forces within Syria, a pipeline that would break Russia's near-monopoly on supplying natural gas to the European Union. A direct military intervention in Syria doesn't go down without Russia's approval, notwithstanding what their later statements might be. Obama is an accomplished liar but he's politically timid. Touching off World War III is not on his agenda. 2. Iran also has to acquiesce in advance. Syria and Iran have a mutual defense treaty, the first announced in 2005, a later treaty announced in 2008. http://tinyurl.com/oez2dq7 (.) Thousands of crack Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops are already stationed in Syria. As the only other Shia-majority state in the region, Syria is critical to Iran's own defense. Iran has the ability to close the Straits of Hormuz, thereby toppling the western world economy as petroleum supplies suddenly dry up. The U.S. Navy lacks the ability to quickly clear the Straits of mines, as was proved in embarrassingly bad tests the U.S. Navy did last year. Iran is not a world power but its military might is nothing to sneez
Paul Merrell

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

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-9372-92606241ae9c_print.html

war & peace Syria U.S. foreign policy Russia Geneva SNAFU

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • BEIRUT — American hopes of winning more influence over Syria’s fractious rebel movement faded Wednesday after 11 of the biggest armed factions repudiated the Western-backed opposition coalition and announced the formation of a new alliance dedicated to creating an Islamic state. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, is the lead signatory of the new group, which will further complicate fledgling U.S. efforts to provide lethal aid to “moderate” rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
  • Gen. Salim Idriss, the head of the moderate Supreme Military Council and the chief conduit for U.S. aid to the rebels, cut short a visit to Paris after the announcement of the alliance overnight Tuesday and will head to Syria on Thursday to attempt to persuade the factions to reconsider, according to the council’s spokesman, Louay al-Mokdad.The new alliance stressed that it was not abandoning Idriss’s council, only the exiled political opposition coalition, which, it said in a statement, “does not represent us.”The creation of the bloc nonetheless leaves Idriss’s council directly responsible for just a handful of small units, calling into question the utility of extending aid to “moderate” rebels, according to Charles Lister of the London-based defense consultancy IHS Jane’s. If the development holds, he said, “it will likely prove the most significant turning point in the evolution of Syria’s anti-government insurgency to date.”“The scope for Western influence over the Syrian opposition has now been diminished considerably,” he added.
  • Mokdad acknowledged that by aligning themselves with Jabhat al-Nusra, the other rebel factions could jeopardize hopes of receiving outside military help, just as the Obama administration says it is starting to step up its support after more than a year of hesitation.But, he said, the United States and its allies are to blame, for failing repeatedly to deliver on promises to provide assistance as the death toll in Syria, now well over 100,000, steadily mounted. The development appeared to take the Obama administration by surprise. A senior State Department official, briefing reporters Tuesday night on a meeting at the United Nations between Secretary of State John F. Kerry and Syrian Opposition Coalition Chairman Ahmad al-Jarba, was unaware of the rebel announcement that had been made several hours earlier.In a statement Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that officials had “seen the reports” and were “discussing with the moderate opposition what impact this will have going forward.”“A divided opposition benefits the Assad regime and opportunists who are using the conflict to further their own extreme agenda,” Psaki said. U.S. aid would continue, she said, “taking into account that alliances and associations often change on the ground based on resources and needs of the moment.”
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  • At a time when the United States and Russia are accelerating efforts to hold a peace conference in Geneva that would bring together the government and the opposition, the defection of some of the most significant rebel factions comes as a reminder that any negotiated settlement will also have to take into account the wishes of those who wield power on the ground, said Amr al-Azm, a history professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio who is Syrian and supports the opposition.
  • Mokdad said that Idriss had called some of the rebel leaders Wednesday, “and they told us they signed this because they lost all hope in the international community.”“They said: ‘We are really tired, Bashar al-Assad is killing us, all the West is betraying us, and they want to negotiate with the regime over our blood.’ ”Abu Hassan, a spokesman for the Tawheed Brigade in Aleppo, echoed those sentiments, citing rebel disappointment with the Obama administration’s failure to go ahead with threatened airstrikes to punish Assad for using chemical weapons in the suburbs of Damascus last month, as well as its decision to strike a deal with Russia over ways to negotiate a solution. “Jabhat al-Nusra is a Syrian military formation that fought the regime and played an active role in liberating many locations,” he said. “So we don’t care about the stand of those who don’t care about our interests.”
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Sep 13
     
    And Hillary's Syrian Opposition Coalition, on the eve of the Geneva peace talks, suddenly finds itself without any military forces left, virtually all defected to the "non-moderate" wing of the Syrian government's opposition on the ground. So what will you do next, Mr. Obama? According to the State Dept., you are going to continue to supply weapons to the opposition even though it's now united with Al Nusrah, an official U.S. government "terrorist organization. Does Obama have any option left other than a military strike on the Syrian government to try to bring *some* of the opposition back into an uneasy Alliance with the U.S., et ilk?  A "damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead" Hail Mary pass?  
Paul Merrell

What America will offer Israel after the nuclear deal | Jewish Telegraphic Agency - 0 views

www.jta.org/...-israel-after-the-nuclear-deal

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth deal American-Foreign-Policy Israel-reward

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • The moment the Iran nuclear deal becomes law, as seems increasingly likely given growing congressional support for the agreement, the focus of the U.S.-Israel conversation will shift to the question of what’s next. What more will Washington do to mitigate the Iranian threat and reassure Israel and other regional allies? For starters, President Barack Obama seems ready to offer an array of security enhancements. Among them are accelerating and increasing defense assistance to Israel over the next decade; increasing the U.S. military presence in the Middle East; stepping up the enforcement of non-nuclear related Iran sanctions; enhancing U.S. interdiction against disruptive Iranian activity in the region; and increasing cooperation on missile defense.
  • Obama in an interview Monday with the Forward attached urgency to confronting Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies. Speaking of Israel, he said, “We can do even more to enhance the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation that we have with them, and to see, are there additional capabilities that Israel may be able to use to prevent Hezbollah, for example, from getting missiles.” The emphasis on Hezbollah was appropriate, said Uzi Arad, Netanyahu’s national security adviser from 2009 to 2011. “The president on sensing a degree of urgency with Hezbollah sooner rather than later is absolutely right,” Arad said, noting the group’s role as an Iranian proxy in helping prop up the Assad regime in Syria. “It relates to the need to uproot and to neutralize the violent and anti-American and anti-Israel radical group. It is a matter of urgent joint concern.” Arad outlined a number of areas that would enhance Israel’s sense of security in a post-deal environment, including:
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not wanting to be seen as endorsing the deal while there’s still a chance Congress could scuttle it, has directed Israeli officials not to engage with U.S. officials on what could be done after the deal is in place. The Israeli envoy to Washington, Ron Dermer, has said that Israel would be ready for discussions only after options to kill the agreement formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are exhausted.
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  • Congress has until Sept. 17 to decide whether to allow the deal to proceed. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is leading the opposition to the deal, argued in a memo distributed Monday that U.S. pledges of post-deal security enhancements are inadequate.
  • There also will be an emphasis on keeping any of the tens of billions of dollars to which Iran will gain unfettered access through the sanctions relief from reaching Iran’s proxies.
  • * Maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region, even as the United States enhances the military capabilities of Arab Persian Gulf allies that, similar to Israel, will be seeking reassurances in the wake of the Iran deal; * Enhancing joint missile defense programs; * Extending the defense assistance memorandum of understanding, which since 2008 has provided Israel with an average of $3 billion in defense assistance per year, for another 10 years (it’s set to expire in 2018), and delivering promised F-35 advanced fighter aircraft to Israel; * Enhancing joint civilian scientific research and development; * Delivering advanced bunker-buster bombs to maintain Israel’s deterrent edge should Iran cheat on or abandon the deal. “Israel should be given this special kind of ordnance so it could have a more effective military option in case of Iranian violations of the agreement,” Arad said, arguing that this would strengthen the agreement by creating a disincentive for Iran to cheat. *A “declaratory” component emphasizing U.S. longstanding commitments to Israel.
  • * Making clear that the U.S. effort to stop the expansion of Islamist terrorism and extremism targets Iranian activities as well as those associated with the Islamic State terrorist group.
  • Obama touched on many of these issues in a letter he sent to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., on Aug. 19. “It is imperative that, even as we effectively cut off Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon through the implementation of the JCPOA, we take steps to ensure that we and our allies and our partners are more capable than ever to deal with Iran’s destabilizing activities and support for terrorism,” Obama said in the letter, which was first obtained by The New York Times. The president specified four areas where cooperation would be enhanced: extending defense assistance for a decade, joint missile defense research, joint efforts to improve tunnel detection (following the advances made by Hamas in its 2014 war with Israel), and “strengthening our efforts to confront conventional and asymmetric threats.” The letter persuaded Nadler to back the deal and should be a salve to Israeli security officials, said Dan Arbell, a former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Washington.
  • Persian Gulf allies would want the reassurances that Israel is receiving as well as specific assurances of assistance in keeping Iran from meddling in Arab affairs, said Michael Eisenstadt, a longtime officer in the U.S. Army Reserve who served in the Middle East. Even with such assurances, Eisenstadt said, Gulf allies would remain concerned that the deal enhances Iran’s stature. “Weapons are Band-Aids on a hemorrhage,” said Eisenstadt, now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “From the point of view of our allies in the region, we’ve contributed to a lot of the problem” by advancing the Iran deal.
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu agreed to ceasefire after Obama promised US troops in Sinai next week? - RT - 0 views

rt.com/...ceasefire-us-sinai-israel-435

war & peace Obama war crimes U.S. foreign policy Israel Egypt Palestine Gaza

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Israel and Palestine are momentarily at a ceasefire, but the potential reasoning behind the recess could have some real international implications. Israel’s Debka reports that the pause in fighting comes after the US promised to send troops to Sinai. According to Debka, US troops will soon be en route to the Sinai peninsula, Egyptian territory in North Africa that’s framed by the Suez Canal on the West and Israel on the East. In its northeast most point, Sinai is but a stone’s throw from Palestinian-controlled Gaza, and according to Debka, Hamas fighters there have been relying on Iranian arms smugglers to supply them with weaponry by way of Egypt.Debka reports this week that Sinai will soon be occupied by US troops, who were promised by President Barack Obama to Israel’s leaders as a condition that a ceasefire be called. Once deployed, the Americans will intervene with the rumored arms trade orchestrated by Iranians, ideally cutting off supplies for Hamas while at the same time serving as a thorn in the side of Iran.
  • The decision to send US troops to Sinai in exchange for a ceasefire was reportedly arranged early Wednesday morning after Pres. Obama made a deal over the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the days prior, Israel was relentless in targeting Gaza, killing more than 100 persons — including civilians — during a renewed assault on Hamas. A ceasefire has since been called after a week of fight, but more military action could soon occur, claims Israel, if the flow of weapons to Gaza is not stopped. Netanyahu has been adamant with his pleas for the United States to strike Iran in an effort to disrupt its nuclear enrichment facilities, a demand which up until now has been brushed aside by Pres. Obama. The White House has up until now insisted on diplomatic measures in order to make an impact on any Iranian output, but Debka’s sources suggest that US troops may now have to intervene in Sinai if any smugglers should attempt to move weapons into Gaza.
  • “By opening the Sinai door to an American troop deployment for Israel’s defense, recognizes that the US force also insures Israel against Cairo revoking or failing to honor the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979,” adds Debka.According to their sources, US troops are expected in Egypt early next week. Meanwhile, American forces have all but surrounded Iran and are stationed in countless bases across the Middle East.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 12
     
    This isn't really about arms smuggling. Israel has the Palestinians so out-gunned So if the Egyptians will no longer block shipment of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, the U.S. will invade Egypt to keep the Israeli blockade of Gaza in force. Never mind that its a violation of the Geneva Conventions on war. Never mind that the budget really doesn't need another major troop deployment or that there is a bill pending in the House declaring the deployment of U.S. combat troops on foreign soil without prior Congressional authorization an impeachable offense.     
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