Group items tagged

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.

U.S. officials seeking to resolve a tense standoff with Afghan President Hamid Karzai were exploring on Tuesday whether they could bypass him and get other senior officials to sign a security deal authorizing American troops to remain in the country after 2014. A day after Karzai abruptly said he would not sign unless Washington agreed to additional conditions, the Obama administration was pushing for Foreign Minister Zarar Ahmad Osmani or another official to endorse the agreement on behalf of the government in Kabul, Afghanistan, several U.S. officials said. The Pentagon has been saying for months that it needs the security pact in place by the end of the year to give planners time to draft deployment schedules and secure funding for post-2014 operations. Without a signed agreement, U.S. officials say, they will begin planning a complete withdrawal of the remaining 47,000 American troops next year. That means Afghanistan could be left to face a still-potent Taliban insurgency without substantial foreign military assistance.

Susan Rice, Obama's national security advisor, told Afghanistan's Tolo television station that it was not possible for the United States to postpone signing the deal until the spring, as Karzai has called for. She brushed aside Karzai's call for the release of all Afghans held at the naval prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other demands. "We've concluded the negotiations of the agreement," Rice said at the end of a three-day visit to Kabul. "We're getting the text ready, and we'll sign it at a high level," an apparent acknowledgment that someone other than Karzai could sign for the Afghans. But U.S. officials concede that the notion of bypassing Karzai poses enormous difficulties and is probably not a viable solution to the standoff unless Karzai himself accepts the idea. "The heads of state wouldn't have to sign the document, but they would have to delegate that authority," said a senior U.S. official in Kabul familiar with the discussions. "So I don't think it's clear here if it could be put into effect without (Karzai's) approval."

Al Qaeda's violent resurgence in Iraq and expansion into Syria now represents a "transnational threat network" that could possibly reach from the Mideast to the United States, according to the White House. The teaming of al Qaeda's Iraqi cell and affiliated Islamic militant groups in Syria into the new Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has developed into "a major emerging threat to Iraqi stability . . . and to us," a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday. "It is a fact now that al Qaeda has a presence in Western Iraq" extending into Syria, "that Iraqi forces are unable to target," the official said. That growing presence "that has accelerated in the past six to eight months" has been accompanied by waves of bombings and attacks that threaten to throw Iraq into a full-blown civil war. 

Keeping ISIS from destabilizing the Iraqi government and expanding into other areas in the region is a "major focus" of this week's visit by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to Washington. The Iraqi delegation met with Vice President Joe Biden Wednesday morning, and will meet with congressional leaders later in the day. Top defense lawmakers are already sounding the alarm on ISIS growth in the region and the threat posed by the al Qaeda faction to Iraq, Syria and ultimately the United States. "As the situation in both countries grows worse . . . we are deeply concerned that Al-Qaeda could use its new safe haven in Iraq and Syria to launch attacks against U.S. interests and those of our friends and allies," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) along with Senate Armed Services Committee chief Carl Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote in a letter to President Obama. Senate Foreign Relations heads Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) also co-signed the letter, sent to the White House on Tuesday. 

"We urge you to press [al-Maliki] to formulate a comprehensive political and security strategy that can stabilize the country, enable Iraq to realize its vast potential, and help to safeguard our nation’s enduring national security interests in Iraq," they wrote. One area lawmakers are pressing the White House and Iraqi government on is increased U.S. assistance for counterterrorism operations in the country, backed by supplies of American military weapons and intelligence. 

Iraqi government forces, US-led coalition air forces, Iranian-backed Iraqi militia, Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and Turkish troops are engaged in a major battle against ISIL in Mosul.  The offensives against ISIL have the potential to result in a major conflagration between several of the forces involved in the operations while ISIL fighters are allowed to flee to Deir Ez-Zor, Syria, without being attacked by the US-led coalition.

Turkish President R. Tayyip Erdogan, on Saturday rebuffed once demands by Iraqi Prime Minister Abadi to withdraw the about 2,000 Turkish troops, allegedly “military advisers” from a base 20 kilometers from Mosul, where they have been training local Sunni fighters in a militia called Hashd al-Watani. Erdogan insists that Mosul should be controlled by Sunni Muslims.

Erdogan also directly warned Iranian-backed Iraqi Shi’ite militia to stay clear of Mosul. Erdogan also warned against any involvement of Turkish – Kurdish PKK fighters in the campaign.

This past week the mainstream coverage of the Ukrainian civil war has focused on Kiev's move to encircle Donetsk. However there are reports coming out of the east right now that indicate that the Ukrainian troops may have just walked into a trap. Specifically the separatists claim to have encircled western troops and have completely stalled their advance.

Note that this report is coming from those who openly support the separatists, and the claim that Kiev's forces have been encircled has yet to be confirmed by any major outlets, however Reuters does confirm that the Ukrainian troops have suffered heavy casualties in the past 24 hours, and there are separate reports that the separatists have managed to gain control of a new town on the Russian border within that same time period. The big picture here is that Kiev's forces may have overextended their forces and supply lines after being lulled into a false sense of momentum by the withdrawal of separatist forces from Slavyansk. There are some who are even speculating that the retreat was a trap. It's too early to know for sure if this assessment is accurate, but it is plausible. This is a common pattern in armed confrontation (The writings of Erwin Rommel regarding modern military tactics are very educational in this regard). The response from Washington, to lay the blame on Putin and to impose a new round of sanctions against Russia, was so predictable you may have the impression that you're watching a rerun from this Spring. Russia of course, reiterated their previous response: that these economic bully tactics will just have a boomerang effect. All par for the course. This phase in the crisis, however, is far more dangerous than the previous ones for a number of reasons.

Reason five: If this situation continues to go south, Washington may double down and push the envelope even farther in terms of covert operations. Indeed we're seeing think tanks like The Stratfor Institute call for an all out thrust to counter Russia (specifically on the issue of Moldova) which they are very clear that covert means should be employed. Anyone who has watched the U.S. State Department at their work, knows that there are very few limits to what this may entail.

Humanitarian truce brokered by Egypt holds in Palestinian enclave as both sides agree to take part in indirect talks.

The wannabe Sultan Erdogan did not get his will in Syria where he had planned to capture and annex Aleppo. The Russians prevented that. He now goes for his secondary target, Mosul in Iraq, which many Turks see as historic part of their country

Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city with about a million inhabitants, is currently occupied by the Islamic State. On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey. The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.

Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields. That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government. The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds: Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported. The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4.

The U.S. military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost taxpayers nearly $5 trillion and counting, according to a new report released to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the attacks. Dr. Neta Crawford, professor of political science at Brown University, released the figures in an independent analysis (pdf) of U.S. Departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Veteran Affairs spending, as well as their base and projected future spending. Crawford is also a director at Brown’s Costs of War Project, which works to draw attention to the human, economic, and political toll of the military response to 9/11. In total, the wars already boast a price tag of $4.79 trillion, she found. And the cost is still climbing. Crawford’s estimate includes budget requests for the 2017 operations in Afghanistan—which are poised to continue despite President Barack Obama’s vow to withdraw troops from the country by then—as well as in Iraq and Syria. The Pentagon requested $66 billion for those fights just for that year. However, even if the U.S. stopped spending on war at the end of this fiscal year, the interest costs, such as debt for borrowed funds, would continue to rise. Post-9/11 military spending was financed almost entirely by borrowing, which in turn has driven debt and interest rates, the project has previously noted.

Separate reporting late last month by the U.K.-based watchdog Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) found that the Pentagon could only account for 48 percent of small arms shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11—meaning more than half of the approximately 700,000 guns it sent overseas in the past 15 years are missing. What’s more, a recent Inspector General audit report found a “jaw-dropping” $6.5 trillion could not be accounted for in Defense spending. The results of Crawford’s report, released last week, follow previous estimates by prominent economists like Nobel Prize-winning Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, whose 2008 book The Three Trillion Dollar War made similar claims. Crawford’s report continues: “Interest costs for overseas contingency operations spending alone are projected to add more than $1 trillion dollars to the national debt by 2023. By 2053, interest costs will be at least $7.9 trillion unless the U.S. changes the way it pays for the war.” And, Crawford notes, that’s a conservative estimate. “No set of numbers can convey the human toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or how they have spilled into the neighboring states of Syria and Pakistan, and come home to the U.S. and its allies in the form of wounded veterans and contractors,” the report states. “Yet, the expenditures noted on government ledgers are necessary to apprehend, even as they are so large as to be almost incomprehensible.”

This in the New York Times reads like an early announcement of a democratic pro-U.S. coup in Afghanistan: A coterie of powerful Afghan government ministers and officials with strong ties to the security forces are threatening to seize power if an election impasse that has paralyzed the country is not resolved soon. ... After weeks of quietly discussing the prospect of imposing a temporary government, officials within the Karzai government said the best way out of a crisis that had emboldened the Taliban, weakened an already struggling economy and left many here deeply pessimistic about the country’s democratic future, might well be some form of interim government, most likely run by a committee. ... It often happens that when power is seized during a political crisis, as in Thailand or Egypt, those taking charge argue that the step is essential to restore order and protect democracy in the long run. That is also the case here, where such a move is being advertised as a last resort to save democracy. It could also effectively discard the results of a presidential runoff election that, until it was derailed by allegations of fraud, had been promoted as a historic event in a country that never had a democratic transfer of power. Both presidential candidates in Afghanistan, the northern alliance affiliated Abdullah Abdullah and the Pashtu candidate Ashraf Ghani had bribed whoever they could to win the election. But in the end they can not decided who had bribed more and thereby won. The length of the impasse does not matter as long as the country's bureaucracy keeps functioning, but there is one deadline that is threatened by it. This deadline may very well be the reason why this coup is intended. The question is again cui bono?

The officials said they believed they would have the backing of Afghanistan’s army, police and intelligence corps. ... A new government is needed soon if there is to be any chance of securing deals to keep American and European troops here after the end of the year, some Afghan officials said. ... Three senior Afghan officials said they needed a government in place by mid-September to ensure security agreements needed to keep some United States and NATO forces in Afghanistan beyond the end of the year.

Secretary of State Kerry tried twice to arrange for some badly defined national unity government in Kabul. Such a government is the cure-all solution introduced wherever the U.S. wants to stay in control. But the two candidates and the interests they represent can not agree on the terms. The security forces, depending on U.S. largess, will try their best to secure their future pay by getting the Status of Force Agreement with the U.S. signed. As President Karzai does not want such an agreement and no new government is in sight the security forces are tempted to install their own new government. As such is the only possibility for the U.S. to keep its foothold in Afghanistan we will likely see any coup and the resulting government, like in Egypt, be recognized as "restoring democracy". But such an arrangement will only encourage more resistance from the Taliban and other anti-government forces. The new "take no prisoners" policy of the corrupt government security forces will also increase the Taliban's support. As long as the interests of the people represented by the Taliban - and their demand for all foreign forces to leave - are not met, there will be no peace for the country.

Ukraine accused Russia on Saturday of having staged a “military invasion” of the country, saying Russian troops had seized one village outside Crimea and briefly landed at another.In a statement posted to its website, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said 80 Russian soldiers – supported by four helicopter gunships supported by four helicopter gunships and three “armoured combat machines” – seized the town of Strilkove on Saturday. Strilkove, which is home to 1,300 people, is about 16 kilometres outside of Crimea, on a thin peninsula in adjacent Kherson oblast.

Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian Defence Ministry said it had “repelled” – apparently without any shots being fired – another landing by dozens of Russian paratroopers 28 kilometres further into Kherson oblast, at Arbatskaya Strelka. The Ukrainian military said its air force had been used in forcing the Russians to withdraw.The alleged incursions come one day before a referendum in Crimea, a predominantly Russian-speaking region on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, asking its two million residents whether they wish to join the Russian Federation.The Kherson region supplies Crimea with most of its electricity, water and natural gas. The paratrooper landing at Arbatskaya Strelka appeared aimed at capturing a natural gas distribution facility there.

There was no immediate confirmation or denial from the Russian Foreign Ministry of the military moves outside Crimea. On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at a meeting in London that Moscow “has no, and cannot have, any plans to invade the southeast region of Ukraine.”If the Ukrainian accusations are correct, the incursions would mark a serious escalation of the crisis here, which began last month when pro-Western protesters in Kiev ousted the Moscow-backed government of Viktor Yanukovych.

The Western Press doesn’t have much to say about the military operations in Syria, except to affirm, without the slightest proof, that the Coalition is successfully bombing Daesh jihadists while the Russians continue to kill innocent civilians. It is in fact difficult to form a reasonable idea of the current situation, particularly since each side is readying its weapons in preparation for a wider conflict. Thierry Meyssan describes what is going on. The silence surrounding the military operations in Iraq and Syria does not mean that the war has ground to a halt, but that the different protagonists are preparing for a new round of hostilities.

The Coalition forces On the imperial side, there reigns a state of total confusion. With regard to the contradictory declarations by US leaders, it is impossible to understand Washington’s objectives, if indeed there are any. At the very best, it would seem that the United States are allowing France to take certain initiatives at the head of one part of the Coalition, but even there, we do not know their real objectives. Of course, France declares that it wants to destroy Daesh in retaliation for the attacks of the 13th November in Paris, but it was already saying so before these attacks took place. Their earlier declarations were the stuff of public relations, not reality. For example, the Mecid Aslanov, property of Necmettin Bilal Erdoğan’s BMZ Group, left the French port of Fos-sur-Mer on the 9th November 2015, having just delivered, in total impunity, a cargo of oil which it claimed had been extracted in Israël, but which in reality had been stolen by Daesh in Syria. There is nothing to indicate that the situation is any different today, or that we should begin taking the official declarations seriously. French President François Hollande and his Minister of Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian visited the aircraft-carrier Charles-De-Gaulle, off the coast of Syria, on the 4th December. They announced a change of mission, but gave no explanation. As Army Chief of Staff General Pierre de Villiers had previously stated, the ship was diverted to the Persian Gulf.

The aeronaval Group constituted around the Charles-De-Gaulle is composed of its on-board aerial Group (eighteenRafale Marine, eight modernised Super Etendard, two Hawkeye, two Dauphin and one Alouette III), the aerial defence frigateChevalier Paul, the anti-submarine frigate La Motte-Picquet, the command flagship Marne, the Belgian frigate Léopold Ier and the German frigate Augsburg, and also, although the Minister of Defence denies it, a nuclear attack submarine. Attached to this group, the stealth light frigate Courbet remained in the western Mediterranean. The European forces have been integrated into Task Force 50 of the USNavCent, in other words the US Central Command fleet. This unit now comprises about sixty ships. The French authorities have announced that rear-admiral René-Jean Crignola has taken command of this international force, without mentioning that he is placed under the authority of the commander of the 5th Fleet, rear-admiral Kevin Donegan, who is himself under the authority of General Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of CentCom. It is in truth an absolute rule of the Empire that the command of operations always falls to US officers, and that the Allies only occupy auxiliary positions. In fact, apart from the relative promotion of the French rear-admiral, we find ourselves in the same position as last February. We have an international Coalition which is supposed to be fighting Daesh, and which – for an entire year – has certainly multiplied its reconnaissance flights and destroyed Chinese oil installations, but without having the slightest effect on its official objective, Daesh. Here too, there is no indication that anything will change.

REUTERS - Pro-Moscow rebels fighting in Ukraine said on Friday they would comply with a request from the Kremlin and open up a 'humanitarian corridor' to allow the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops they have encircled. But it was not clear if the government in Kiev would accept the offer. It has accused Russian troops of illegally entering eastern Ukraine and, backed by its U.S. and European allies, has said it will fight to defend its soil.

"It is clear that the rebellion has achieved some serious successes in stopping the armed operation by Kiev," Putin was quoted as saying in the statement. "I call on the militia forces to open a humanitarian corridor for encircled Ukraine servicemen in order to avoid pointless victims, to allow them to leave the fighting area without impediment, join their families..., to provide urgent medical aid to those wounded as a result of the military operation."

Russia's defense ministry again denied the presence of its soldiers in Ukraine, using language redolent of the Cold War. "We have noticed the launch of this informational 'canard' and are obliged to disappoint its overseas authors and their few apologists in Russia," a ministry official, General-Major Igor Konashenkov, told Interfax news agency. "The information contained in this material bears no relation to reality."

Since first seizing Iraqi territory in June 2014, the Islamic State (IS) has carefully selected targets based on a strategic vision of the regional conflict and global repercussions, often broadcasting its intentions in videos released online. Chief among the messages related to its vision and battlefield goals is a call for direct confrontation with the United States on the territory of Muslim countries, directly challenging President Barack Obama and emphasizing points that draw attention to the American presence in Iraq.

IS appears to be planning, or hoping, to challenge the United States in a ground fight in the vast areas of Iraq and Syria. IS believes that no matter how strong and numerous US regular forces are, they will not be able to win against its trained irregular fighters who have been confronting Iraqi forces in northwestern Iraq. The organization wants a repeat of the battle of Fallujah in 2004, when the United States failed to overwhelm the militia fighters in the city and lost a number of Marines before retreating. With the quantitative and qualitative progress it has made, IS envisions causing even greater losses among US troops. Direct participation by US forces in a war against IS would be used to provide legitimacy to IS propaganda portraying the fighting as evidence of the ongoing Western crusade against Islam. This could help the group mobilize more supporters in majority Muslim countries and among Muslim communities in the West. It could also help expand the combat zone by activating IS cells to carry out attacks in the West and eventually lead Western states to withdraw from the region, enabling IS to impose its will. Additional US troops might also result in confrontations with pro-Iranian Shiite militias, as Iraqis allied with Iran oppose the presence of US ground forces in the country. Some Iraqi parties have been spreading conspiracy theories about US planes airdropping food aid and gear to IS forces based on one incident of a delivery of supplies to Kurdish peshmerga inadvertently ending up in IS hands. The Hezbollah Brigades, a Shiite militia, even went so far as to announce “its intention to target US helicopters providing IS elements with weapons, gear and food by using advanced anti-helicopter missiles across the military fronts facing IS.”

The United States continues to fund and support a network of abusive Afghan strongmen in the name of security. It's time to stop.

n October 2013, police in Kandahar — the Afghan province that is the birthplace of the Taliban and home to some of the fiercest fighting in the war — picked up “Tariq” for alleged ties to the insurgents. Whether those allegations were true will remain unknown. Tariq, whose name has been changed for security purposes, died in custody days later from wounds inflicted on his skull with an electrical drill. His case is not unique. Over the past two years, dozens of Kandahari residents have been tortured to death by the province’s police — one of a range of forces in Afghanistan that the United States supports and equips. As the Obama administration continues its ongoing troop withdrawal, one area of support remains steadfast: material, training, and billions of dollars in financial assistance to Afghanistan’s security infrastructure. Local officials and their U.S. mentors have tasked these forces — which include police units, intelligence services, and the paramilitary Afghan Local Police (ALP), among others — with rooting out the Taliban insurgency. But these groups, who are often led by or linked to former warlords, have also exhibited a pattern of violence for which Afghan victims have obtained no official redress. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented systematic, gross human rights violations by some of these forces that has included numerous cases of torture, extrajudicial executions of civilians, and forced disappearance of detainees. The findings raise concerns about Afghan government and U.S. efforts to arm, train, vet, and hold accountable the country’s security apparatus — run by a network of strongmen, many of whom attained official authority as allies of the United States in the fight against the Taliban.

According to media, the US and Saudi Arabia have agreed to provide Islamic State (IS) terrorists and members of their families with a safe exit from Iraqi province of Anbar and city of Mosul prior to its assault by the international coalition forces. Evacuated terrorists will be sent to Syria to conduct an offensive on cities, controlled by the Syrian government forces.

The special services of the US and Saudi Arabia have reached an agreement, according to which members of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group can safely leave Anbar province and the Iraqi city of Mosul before start of the assault on it by the international coalition forces, pro-Russian and pro-Iranian media reported on Wednesday. As the Fars news agency reported, citing a senior commander of the Iraqi volunteer forces (the Hashd al-Shaabi), Nazem al-Jaqifi, the western part of Anbar province have already been left by IS emirs and commanders at the order of the US. “The IS commanders and their families have fled Raveh, Ana, al-Qaem, al-Rataba and other areas under their control in western Anbar province,” Fars quoted al-Jaqifi’s words. “The IS commander have fled Anbar province after disguising in Shepherd’s clothes,” he added. Al-Jaqifi also stressed that the evacuation of IS members from the province of Anbar has been held upon an order of Washington. Meanwhile, the RIA Novosti news agency also reported about withdrawal of IS terrorists from the province, citing an unnamed military-diplomatic source in Moscow.

According to the source, US President Barack Obama has already decided to carry out the operation to liberate Mosul in October. During the assault, the coalition’s air power would carry out strikes only on detached empty buildings, pre-agreed with terrorists, the source said. According to him, the plan of Washington and Riyadh also provides that terrorists would move from Mosul to Syria in order to conduct an offensive on cities, controlled by the government forces. “More than 9,000 IS terrorists will be transported from Mosul to the eastern regions of Syria for conducting a following major offensive operation, which involves the capture of Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra,” the source added. RIA Novosti does not have any comments of the US or Saudi sides, as well as any official information on this matter. Earlier, it was reported that about 120,000 people will take part in the operation to liberate the Iraqi city of Mosul from IS terrorists.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas signed the application for Palestine’s accession to the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Abbas signed the application on Wednesday, in response to the UN Security Council’s rejection of a Jordanian sponsored draft resolution on Tuesday. The resolution called for a fixed timeline for the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The rejected resolution called for a 12-months timeline for a final peace accord between Israel and Palestine and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian territories by the end of 2017.

The rejected draft resolution was harshly criticized by imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, other progressive Fatah members as well as by the PFLP and others. One of the major points of contention was that the proposed draft resolution, according to its Palestinian opponents, risked waving the right of return of displaced Palestinians.

The downing of Russia’s Su-24 bomber by the Turkish Air Force is “one of the nightmare scenarios that military planners had envisaged as a result of Moscow’s decision to enter the conflict,” reports The Financial Times.

In turn, The Washington Post believes that “NATO faced being thrust into a new Middle Eastern crisis… The incident marked a serious escalation in the Syrian conflict that is likely to further strain relations between Russia and the NATO alliance.” The Guardian argues that we’ve witnessed “a nerve-jangling event, that raised the spectre of a direct confrontation between two large powers: one a Nato member, the other nuclear-armed”. While it’s clear that neither Russia nor NATO wants to go to war against each other, each side is trying to deal with the situation and identify the reasons that provoked the recent crisis and, what’s even more important, to establish who’s at fault.

However, to resolve the difficult crisis that followed the destruction of the Russian Su-24 quickly, the West is now searching for those “guilty” of this blatant attack, which is, without a doubt, the Turkish leader – Tayyip Erdogan. It seems that NATO states are not afraid to criticize Turkey for its actions against Russia. Vice-Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) Sigmar Gabriel expressed harsh criticism of Turkey after the downing of Russia’s Su-24 bombers by labeling it an “unpredictable player”, reports the German Die Welt. The members of NATO fear that the “impulsive actions” of Turkey’s President will force them into a new major conflict, and NATO is not prepared to fight it yet. These “impulsive actions” may trigger the response that is required by Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. No wonder Hollande, while declaring war against ISIL, made no reference of Article 5, by quoting the EU Lisbon Treaty instead.

Following a 13 year rampage that has reduced large swathes of Central Asia and the Middle East to anarchy and ruin, the US military juggernaut has finally met its match on a small peninsula in southeastern Ukraine that serves as the primary operating base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Crimea is the door through which Washington must pass if it intends to extend its forward-operating bases throughout Eurasia, seize control of vital pipeline corridors and resources, and establish itself as the dominant military/economic power-player in the new century. Unfortunately, for Washington, Moscow has no intention of withdrawing from the Crimea or relinquishing control of its critical military outpost in Sevastopol. That means that the Crimea–which has been invaded by the Cimmerians, Bulgars, Greeks, Scythians, Goths, Huns, Khazars, Ottomans, Turks, Mongols, and Germans–could see another conflagration in the months ahead, perhaps, triggering a Third World War, the collapse of the existing global security structure, and a new world order, albeit quite different from the one imagined by the fantasists at the Council on Foreign Relations and the other far-right think tanks that guide US foreign policy and who are responsible for the present crisis.

How Washington conducts itself in this new conflict will tell us whether the authors of the War on Terror–that public relations hoax that concealed the goals of eviscerated civil liberties and one world government–were really serious about actualizing their NWO vision or if it was merely the collective pipedream of corporate CEOs and bored bankers with too much time on their hands. In the Crimea, the empire faces a real adversary, not a disparate group of Kalashinov-waving jihadis in flip-flops. This is the Russian Army; they know how to defend themselves and they are prepared to do so. That puts the ball in Obama’s court. It’s up to him and his crackpot “Grand Chessboard” advisors to decide how far they want to push this. Do they want to intensify the rhetoric and ratchet up the sanctions until blows are exchanged, or pick up their chips and walk away before things get out of hand? Do they want to risk it all on one daredevil roll of the dice or move on to Plan B? That’s the question. Whatever US policymakers decide, one thing is certain, Moscow is not going to budge. Their back is already against the wall. Besides, they know that a lunatic with a knife is on the loose, and they’re ready to do whatever is required to protect their people. If Washington decides to cross that line and provoke a fight, then there’s going to trouble. It’s as simple as that. Perma-hawk, John McCain thinks that Obama should take off the gloves and show Putin who’s boss. In an interview with TIME magazine McCain said “This is a chess match reminiscent of the Cold War and we need to realize that and act accordingly…We need to take certain measures that would convince Putin that there is a very high cost to actions that he is taking now.” “High cost” says McCain, but high cost for who?

What McCain fails to realize is that this is not Afghanistan and Obama is not in a spitting match with puppet Karzai. Leveling sanctions against Moscow will have significant consequences, the likes of which could cause real harm to US interests. Did we mention that “ExxonMobil’s biggest non-US oil project is a collaboration with Russia’s Rosneft in the Arctic, where it has billions of dollars of investments at stake.” What if Putin decides that it’s no longer in Moscow’s interest to honor contracts that were made with US corporations? What do you think the reaction of shareholders will be to that news? And that’s just one example. There are many more. Any confrontation with Russia will result in asymmetrical attacks on the dollar, the bond market, and oil supplies. Maybe the US could defeat Russian forces in the Crimea. Maybe they could sink the fleet and rout the troops, but there’ll be a heavy price to pay and no one will be happy with the outcome.

Zahran Alloush, the commander of the Jaysh al-Islam alliance was killed in a Damascus suburb. August 21, 2013 the Saudi intelligence asset Alloush was commanding Liwa-al-Islam when he gave the order to launch the chemical weapons attack against the East Ghouta suburb of Damascus. Zahran Alloush has been on the payroll of Saudi intelligence since the 1980s.

The Central Command of the Syrian Arab Army confirmed that it successfully launched an air strike in the Damascus suburb of Otaya, targeting and killing several Jihadist commanders. Among them the leader of Jaysh al-Islam, Zahran Alloush. Jaysh al-Islam is an alliance of several Jihadist militia, including Liwa-al-Islam. Jaysh al-Islam is allied with the Syrian Al-Qaeda Franchise Jabhat Al-Nusrah. An in-depth investigation by nsnbc international, in 2013, concluded that Zahran Alloush was the commander who gave the direct order to launch the chemical weapons attack in East Ghouta on August 21, 2013.

The investigation also concluded that command responsibility for Alloush’s decision led directly to the U.S.’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the White House, and to the Saudi government. Alloush would also be in control over choosing the “security guards” UN inspectors had to submit to while gathering evidence after the chemical weapons attack in East Ghouta. (see details and names in the report). Zahran Alloush, Liwa-al-Islam and Saudi intelligence also played central roles in the attempt to obstruct Syria’s decommissioning of chemical weapons by launching attacks against chemical weapons transports. The information about these transports was highly classified, leading the Syrian government to the conclusion that Saudi intelligence provided information to Liwa-al-Islam. Zahran Alloush was since the 1990s involved in the Salafist – Wahabbist terrorist networks in Syria which led to his arrest by Syrian intelligence. He was released in early of 2011, when the Assad administration granted a general amnesty. Immediately after his March 2011 release from prison, Zahran Alloush began receiving substantial funds and weapons from Saudi intelligence, which enabled him to establish Liwa-al-Islam as a de facto Saudi Arabia sponsored mercenary brigade under the auspices of the Saudi Interior Ministry.