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Paul Merrell

Colombia worries as troops join Arab mercenary force - UPI.com - 0 views

www.upi.com/...UPI-90811370626017

war & peace mercenaries Erik Prince

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, June 7 (UPI) -- Colombia's defense ministry is alarmed about an exodus of top soldiers to the United Arab Emirates to join a highly paid U.S.-led mercenary force organized by Erik Prince, billionaire founder of the security firm Blackwater. Prince, who sold Blackwater in 2010 after it was involved in killings and scandals in Iraq, went to Abu Dhabi, capital of the Persian Gulf federation, in 2011. He signed on to form an 800-man battalion of mercenaries for what emirati officials termed "anti-terrorism operations" inside and outside the country. But it's widely believed in Gulf security circles the force, being assembled under considerable secrecy by Prince's Reflex Responses registered in the emirates, will be used for undisclosed special operations for the seven desert emirates that make up the federation.
  • That's expected to include putting down "internal unrest" that might challenge the ruling families, as happened in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, and which is growing in Kuwait and Bahrain. The Reflex Responses force, which is officially described in a contract leaked to the New York Times in 2011 as "independent of formal command and support structures throughout the United Arab Emirates," will have its own air wing, with fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, plus its own private navy. The naval wing's tasks will primarily be "small boat operations ... maritime interdiction operations and securing oil delivery platforms." The mercenaries have a custom-built high-security base in the desert where troops live and train.
  • But the over-riding security threat is widely perceived to be Iran, 100 miles across the gulf and which occupies several islands claimed by the Emirates. Prince's mercenary force is made up largely of Colombian soldiers, including senior officers and men with a Special Forces background There are also many veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African security firm that became notorious in the 1990s for suppressing rebellions in mineral-rich African dictatorships and staging coups to gain control of such assets. EO personnel included many veterans of Britain's Special Air Service and special operations units in South Africa's apartheid-era military.
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  • Prince, an ex-U.S. Navy SEAL, is setting up his new force under a reputed $529 million contract with the royal family of oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the emirates' leader and economic powerhouse. The contract expires in 2015. Analysts say soldiers from Colombia's 450,000-strong U.S.-trained military are held in high regard in the emirates and other gulf states because of their combat experience fighting leftist guerrillas and because they're not as expensive as Western veterans. Colombian officials estimate 500 soldiers, including pilots of Black Hawk helicopters widely used in special operations, have gone to join Prince's force, where they earn $3,000 a month against $600 back home.
Paul Merrell

US Operating on Both Sides of Syrian-Iraqi Border - Providing Cover for Terrorists in S... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5396788

war & peace iraq ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy false-flag Syrian war must-read

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • US may attempt to arm and provide air cover for terrorists in Syria after claiming success in fighting ISIS in Iraq using Kurds.
  • To further justify expanding across the border and into Syria already ongoing US military operations in Iraq, the Western media has begun claiming that ISIS leadership, “fearing” US airstrikes, are fleeing to safety in neighboring Syria. The Wall Street Journal in its article, “Iraqis Say Some Commanders of Insurgency in Iraq Retreat to Syria,” claimed: According to the Iraqis, the commanders went to eastern Syria, where Islamic State has built an operational base amid the chaos of civil war over the past few years. The insurgents are able to dash across the border into Syria, where that base continues to offer the space to recruit and reorganize largely unchallenged. “They’ve got much better cover in Syria than they do in Iraq,” said Will McCants, an expert on militant Islam at the Brookings Institution and a former State Department adviser. “When they have that kind of strategic depth, they’re just allowed to live another day.”
  • Image: Clearly, ISIS’ path into Iraq began not in Syria, but in NATO member Turkey’s territory. ISIS is nothing more than an extension of the US-backed terrorist forces assembled for the explicit purpose of overthrowing the Syrian government. 
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  • Clearly, the answer, left for readers to arrive at on their own, is that these “successful” US airstrikes in Iraq must be carried over into Syria – where mission creep can do the rest, finally dislodging the Syrian government from power after an ongoing proxy war has failed to do so since 2011. After arming and aiding the Kurds in fighting ISIS in Iraq, the US will attempt to make a similar argument regarding the arming of terrorists in Syria and providing them direct US air support to defeat ISIS – and of course – Damascus. It should be remembered that ISIS itself is a creation of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, and has been harbored and provided material assistance by NATO-member Turkey for years. Portrayed by various names by the Western media – ISIS, al-Nusra, the “Free Syrian Army” – in reality it is a conglomerate of Western-backed mercenary forces raised as early as 2007 to overthrow the government in Damascus  and confront Iranian influence across the entire region, including in Lebanon and in Iraq.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Aug 14
     
    Cartalucci is on a roll. The false flag sarin gas attack in Ghouta, Syria, didn't work because John Kerry stuck his foot in his mouth about Syria getting rid of all his chemical warfare agents and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Syrian President Assad offered to do just that. Trapped by Kerry's loose lips, Obama had to call off the U.S. missile strikes and bombing on Syria to rescue the miniscule "Free Syrian Army," Al Nusrah, and other jihadi mercenaries being paid for by the House of Saud and Qattar, So the Syrian government forces got to keep the mercenaries on the run. Flip to plan B: a new excuse for U.S. war against Syria. ISIL is created, including a cover story that it got its hundreds of millions of dollars by robbing banks. Then, it's arranged for the commanders of four Iraq Army divisions to depart when only 1,000 or so ISIL troops attacked Mosul. Left without commanders and softened up by massive psychological warfare operations broadcasting how ISIL was beheading Iraqi troops that they caught, and the four divisions of troops fled south, leaving even their heavy weapons behind.   Out of nowhere, a new Islamic menace is manufactured, spanning about a third each of Syria and Iraq. But Barack Obama to the rescue with the combined  propaganda power of the War Party and Israel Lobby, the U.S. bombers and drones are sent in on their humanitarian mission to rescue about 40,000 Yahidzi (sp?) trapped by ISIL (now the Islamic Caliphate) on a mountaintop.   Then the U.S. expands its bombing to win back the Mosul Dam because it's such a threat to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad if the dam breaks. Terrorized by the U.S. bombing, ISIL commanders are now said by the NYT and Wall St. J. to be retreating into Syria. Voila! Now the U.S. can send bombs and missiles to Syria ostensibly to kill ISIL leadership and troops, but in reality to bomb the heck out of the Syrian government forces. The road to Tehran still runs through Damascus, as a neocon would say.
Paul Merrell

Finian CUNNINGHAM - Russia Vindicated by Terrorist Surrenders in Syria - Strategic Cult... - 0 views

www.strategic-culture.org/...errorist-surrenders-syria.html

war & peace Syria Russia mercenary-surrenders mercenary-evacuations

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • As Syrians gather in their capital Damascus to celebrate, there is a sense that the New Year will bring a measure of peace – the first time such hope has been felt over the past five years of war in the country. Russia’s military intervention to help its Arab ally at the end of September has been the seminal event of the year. After three months of sustained Russian aerial operations in support of the Syrian Arab Army against an array of foreign-backed mercenaries, there is an unmistakable sense that the «terrorist backbone has been broken», as Russian President Vladimir Putin recently put it.
  • What is interesting is how the Western news media are reporting all this. Their reportage of the truces and evacuations are straining to minimize the context of these developments. This BBC report is typical, headlined: «Syria fighters’ evacuation from Zabadani ‘under way’». The British state-owned broadcaster tells of hundreds of «fighters» being relocated from the town of Zabadani as if the development just magically materialized like a present donated by Santa Claus. What the BBC fails to inform is that that truce, as with several others around Damascus, has come about because of Russia’s strategic military intervention in Syria dealing crushing blows against the militant networks. The Western media have preoccupied themselves instead with claims from the US State Department that Russia’s military operations have either been propping up the «Assad regime» or allegedly targeting «moderate rebels» and civilians. The disingenuous Western narrative, or more prosaically «propaganda», then, in turn, creates a conundrum when widespread truces and evacuations are being implemented. That obviously positive development signaling an end to conflict thanks to Russia’s military intervention has to be left unexplained or unacknowledged by the Western media because it negates all their previous pejorative narrative towards Russia and the Assad government.
  • Furthermore, the Western media are obliged to be coy about the exact identity of the «fighters» being evacuated. As noted already, the militants are variously described by the Western media in sanitized terms as «fighters» or «rebels». But more informative regional and local sources, such as Lebanon’s Al Manar, identify the brigades as belonging to the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State group and al-Nusra Front. These are terror groups, as even defined by Washington and the European Union. So, the Western media has to, by necessity, censor itself from telling the truth by peddling half-truths and sly omissions. The Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), whose commander was killed, is also integrated with the al-Qaeda terror network. Jaish al-Islam is funded and armed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and serves as a conduit for American CIA weapons to the more known terrorist outlets. Notably, Voice of America referred to the terror commander Zahran Alloush with the euphemistic cleansing term as a «rebel leader». What the Russian-precipitated truces and termination of sieges is demonstrating is that the western side of Syria, from Daraa in the south, through Damascus and up to the northern Mediterranean Sea coast around Aleppo and Latakia, are infested with the terror brigades of IS and Al-Nusra and their myriad offshoots.
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  • Western media have repeatedly accused Russia of conducting air strikes against «moderate rebels» and not the IS brigades, which they claim, were concentrated in the east of Syria. It is true that the IS is strongly based in eastern cities of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, from where its oil smuggling operations are mounted. Russia has stepped up its air strikes on IS smuggling routes in eastern Syria with devastating results. But also integral to the air operations is the cutting off of weapons routes in the northwest to fuel the insurgents along the entire western flank, including around Damascus. The surrender of the various mercenary brigades and the breaking of sieges around Damascus is vindication of Russia’s military tactics; and also its narrative about the nature of the whole conflict in Syria. The Western notion of «moderate rebels» and «extremists» is being exposed as the nonsense that it is. And so Western media are compelled to evacuate any meaningful context from their coverage of recent events in Syria. Riad Haddad, Syria’s ambassador to Russia, spoke the plain truth in recent days when he said: «We are at a turning point in the Syrian army operations against terrorists – namely the transition from defense to attack… [because of] the effective work of the Russian air force in Syria». But the ambassador’s comments were scarcely, if at all, reported in the Western media. Simply because those words vindicate Russia’s military intervention and its general policy towards Syria.
  • Also missing or downplayed in the Western media coverage of the truces across Syria is the question of where the surrendering mercenaries are being evacuated to. They are not being bussed to other places inside Syria. That shows that there is no popular support for these insurgents. Despite copious Western media coverage contriving that the Syrian conflict is some kind of «civil war» between a despotic regime and a popular pro-democracy uprising, the fact that surrendering militants have no where to go inside Syria patently shows that these insurgents have no popular base. In other words, this is a foreign-backed war on Syria; a covert war of aggression on a sovereign country utilizing terrorist proxy armies. So where are the terrorist remnants being shipped to? According to several reports, the extremists are being given safe passage into Turkey, where they will receive repair and sanctuary from the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – and no doubt subsidized by the European Union with its $3.5 billion in aid to Ankara to «take care of refugees».
  • Again, this is another indictment of the state-terrorist links of NATO-member Turkey, which the EU is recently giving special attention to for accession to the bloc. Russia is not only vindicated in Syria. The Western governments, their media and their regional client regimes are being flushed out like the bandits on the ground in Syria.
  • Paul Merrell on 31 Dec 15
     
    I don't normally bookmark ariticles by the author of this one.  He's too inclined to hyperbolic overstatement. But I think he struck true in this instance, albeit I'm less than certain that U.S. and allies don't have a major counter-attack in store and ISIL is still firmly ensconsced in Iraq. But the tide has definitely turned in Syria. 
Paul Merrell

Mystery Sponsor Of Weapons And Money To Syrian Mercenary "Rebels" Revealed | Zero Hedge - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...d-money-syrian-rebels-revealed

war & peace Syria Qatar Saudis Russia China Pipelinestan

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 May 13 - No Cached
  • Previously, when looking at the real underlying national interests responsible for the deteriorating situation in Syria, which eventually may and/or will devolve into all out war with hundreds of thousands killed, we made it very clear that it was always and only about the gas, or gas pipelines to be exact, and specifically those involving the tiny but uber-wealthy state of Qatar. Needless to say, the official spin on events has no mention of this ulterior motive, and the popular, propaganda machine, especially from those powers supporting the Syrian "rebels" which include Israel, the US and the Arabian states tries to generate public and democratic support by portraying Assad as a brutal, chemical weapons-using dictator, in line with the tried and true script used once already in Iraq. On the other hand, there is Russia (and to a lesser extent China: for China's strategic interests in mid-east pipelines, read here), which has been portrayed as the main supporter of the "evil" Assad regime, and thus eager to preserve the status quo without a military intervention
  • However, one question that has so far remained unanswered, and a very sensitive one now that the US is on the verge of voting to arm the Syrian rebels, is who was arming said group of Al-Qaeda supported militants up until now. Now, finally, courtesy of the FT we have the (less than surprising) answer, which goes back to our original thesis, and proves that, as so often happens in the middle east, it is once again all about the natural resources. From the FT: The tiny gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.
  • Why would Qatar want to become involved in Syria where they have little invested?  A map reveals that the kingdom is a geographic prisoner in a small enclave on the Persian Gulf coast.   It relies upon the export of LNG, because it is restricted by Saudi Arabia from building pipelines to distant markets.  In 2009, the proposal of a pipeline to Europe through Saudi Arabia and Turkey to the Nabucco pipeline was considered, but Saudi Arabia that is angered by its smaller and much louder brother has blocked any overland expansion.   Already the largest LNG producer, Qatar will not increase the production of LNG.  The market is becoming glutted with eight new facilities in Australia coming online between 2014 and 2020.   A saturated North American gas market and a far more competitive Asian market leaves only Europe.  The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income.  Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas.  Only Al-Assad is in the way.
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  • Qatar has proposed a gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey in a sign the emirate is considering a further expansion of exports from the world's biggest gasfield after it finishes an ambitious programme to more than double its capacity to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).   "We are eager to have a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey," Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, said last week, following talks with the Turkish president Abdullah Gul and the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the western Turkish resort town of Bodrum. "We discussed this matter in the framework of co-operation in the field of energy. In this regard, a working group will be set up that will come up with concrete results in the shortest possible time," he said, according to Turkey's Anatolia news agency.   Other reports in the Turkish press said the two states were exploring the possibility of Qatar supplying gas to the strategic Nabucco pipeline project, which would transport Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, bypassing Russia. A Qatar-to-Turkey pipeline might hook up with Nabucco at its proposed starting point in eastern Turkey. Last month, Mr Erdogan and the prime ministers of four European countries signed a transit agreement for Nabucco, clearing the way for a final investment decision next year on the EU-backed project to reduce European dependence on Russian gas.
  • Specifically, the issue at hand is the green part of the proposed pipeline: as explained above, it simply can't happen as long as Russia is alligned with Assad.
  • So there you have it: Qatar doing everything it can to promote bloodshed, death and destruction by using not Syrian rebels, but mercenaries: professional citizens who are paid handsomely to fight and kill members of the elected regime (unpopular as it may be), for what? So that the unimaginably rich emirs of Qatar can get even richer. Although it is not as if Russia is blameless: all it wants is to preserve its own strategic leverage over Europe by being the biggest external provider of natgas to the continent through its own pipelines. Should Nabucco come into existence, Gazpromia would be very, very angry and make far less money! As for the Syrian "rebels", who else is helping them? Why the US and Israel of course. And with the Muslim Brotherhood "takeover" paradigm already tested out in Egypt, it is only a matter of time.
  • Perhaps it is Putin's turn to tell John Kerry he prefer if Qatar was not "supplying assistance to Syrian mercenaries"? What is worse, and what is already known is that implicitly the US - that ever-vigilant crusader against Al Qaeda - is effectively also supporting the terrorist organization: The relegation of Qatar to second place in providing weapons follows increasing concern in the West and among other Arab states that weapons it supplies could fall into the hands of an al-Qaeda-linked group, Jabhat al-Nusrah. Yet Qatar may have bitten off more than it can chew, even with the explicit military Israeli support, and implicit from the US. Because the closer Qatar gets to establishing its own puppet state in Syria, the closer Saudi Arabia is to getting marginalized:
  • What Saudi Arabia wants is not to leave the Syrian people alone, but to install its own puppet regime so it has full liberty to dictate LNG terms to Qatar, and subsequently to Europe.
  • Sadly, when it comes to the US (and of course Israel), it does have a very hidden agenda: one that involves lying to its people about what any future intervention is all about, and the fabrication of narrative about chemical weapons and a bloody regime hell bent on massacring every man, woman and child from the "brave resistance." What they all fail to mention is that all such "rebels" are merely paid for mercenaries of the Qatari emir, whose sole interest is to accrue even more wealth even if it means the deaths of thousands of Syrians in the process. A bigger read through of the events in Syria reveals an even more complicated web: one that has Qatar facing off against Syria, with both using Syria as a pawn in a great natural resource chess game, and with Israel and the US both on the side of the petrodollars, while Russia and to a lesser extent China, form the counterbalancing axis and refuse to permit a wholesale overthrow of the local government which would unlock even more geopolitical leverage for the gulf states. Up until today, we would have thought that when push comes to shove, Russia would relent. However, with the arrival of a whole lot of submarines in Cyprus, the games just got very serious. After all the vital interests of Gazprom - perhaps the most important "company" in the world - are suddenly at stake.
Paul Merrell

Turkey's Erdogan Gets Taste of His Own Medicine? « LewRockwell.com Blog - 0 views

www.lewrockwell.com/...138449.html

war & peace Syria Turkey Iran Russia Arab Spring Pipelinestan false flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • After nearly a week of increasing public protests in Turkey, ostensibly over government plans to turn a last bit of green space in Istanbul into another shopping mall, matters became far more serious on Friday. Riot police descended on the protestors with various forms of tear gas (and possibly worse chemical and biological agents -- raw sewage?) and water cannon, blasting everyone and everything in sight including non-participants. When they caught protestors, they beat them violently and brutally, as can be seen in this video. Photographs show that police fired tear gas into crowded underground metro stations, leading to panic and worse. Istanbul looks like a war zone. Today indications are that protests have only increased in number and fury in response to the violence with which they were met yesterday.
  • Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has come under increased criticism at home over his enthusiastic support for those fighting to overthrow the government in neighboring Syria. Turkish government support for the rebels came early and has included providing safe havens for the Islamist insurgents and safe passage into Syria from Libya, Yemen, and other countries of the insurgents' origin. Erdogan's stated policy of "zero problems with neighbors" has been turned on its head by his support for the rebels fighting next door. Public dissatisfaction with the Turkish government's policy of encouraging an Islamist insurgency next door has steadily increased. The insurgents fighting the Syrian government were still unsatisfied by the level of support they received from their Turkish hosts and they took to false flag attacks in places like Reyhanli and a planned false-flag sarin gas attack on southern Turkey in Adana in attempt to provoke a Turkish (and NATO) military response against Syria.
  • Suddenly the tables are turned at home. Faced with a nascent but growing protest movement of his own, Erdogan expresses a very different view toward the people in the street. The Prime Minister strongly supported the "Arab Spring" overthrow in Egypt and supports the overthrow of Assad next door because he said the leaders of these countries did not listen to their people. Just last week he met with President Obama and agreed that "Assad must go." Now with protesters in Turkey chanting "Erdogan must go" he is singing a different tune. Now "the people" he claimed to speak for -- on the streets in Egypt and Syria, at least -- were, in Turkey, "with terror, have dark ties," in his words. Suddenly "the people" are not so noble when they are calling for his ouster. With the tables turned on Erdogan, he can only demand order! "I call on the protesters to stop their demonstrations immediately," he thundered yesterday. Erdogan caught the tiger by the tail and thought he would become a new Ottoman Sultan. Reality bites back hard on the streets of Istanbul and elsewhere. This is far from over.
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Jun 13
     
    The U.S. Pipelinestan war-by-proxy against Syria as a proxy for war against Iran as a proxy for war against Russia's lock on the natural gas market for the E.U. continues to run up against a rock wall of unanticipated consequences. With U.S. Patriot missile batteries stationed along Turkey's border with Syria through which Qatar's mercenary Al Qaeda forces are infiltrated and supplied, Turkey's autocratic government suddenly faces its own Arab Spring uprising.  With Obama trumpeting that Syrian use of chemical weapons would "cross a red line" justifying direct U.S. intervention, a mercenary false flag chemical attack in Turkey is unmasked. 
Paul Merrell

Egypt - Russia mediate in Syria War | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...pt-russia-mediate-in-syria-war

war & peace Syria peace-talks Russia Egypt

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, on Saturday, met with the president of the foreign-sponsored Syrian National Coalition, Hadi al-Bahra in an attempt to help facilitate a peaceful resolution to the war in Syria. The meeting followed previous statements by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that Moscow is ready to host talks between the Syrian government and the opposition.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Dec 14
     
    Presumably, the U.S. led Islamic mercenaries would have no part of such talks. But a negotiated settlement between the Assad government and the true Syrian moderate opposition could be a knife-blow to the heart of the mercenaries' perceived public legitimacy and to U.S. Congressional funding of weapons for the "moderate Syrian opposition."  
Paul Merrell

John McCain, Conductor of the "Arab Spring" and the Caliph , by Thierry Meyssan - 0 views

www.voltairenet.org/article185085.html

war & peace Iraq Syria U.S.-foreign-policy ISIL McCain NED Benghazi Arab Spring

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Everyone has noticed the contradiction of those who recently characterized the Islamic Emirate as "freedom fighters" in Syria and who are indignant today faced with its abuses in Iraq. But if that speech is incoherent in itself, it makes perfect sense in the strategic plan: the same individuals were to be presented as allies yesterday and must be as enemies today, even if they are still on orders from Washington. Thierry Meyssan reveals below US policy through the particular case of Senator John McCain, conductor of the "Arab Spring" and longtime partner of Caliph Ibrahim.
  • ohn McCain is known as the leader of the Republicans and unhappy 2008 US presidential candidate. This is, we will see, only the real part of his biography, which serves as a cover to conduct covert actions on behalf of his government. When I was in Libya during the "Western"attack, I was able to view a report of the foreign intelligence services. It stated that, on February 4, 2011 in Cairo, NATO organized a meeting to launch the "Arab Spring" in Libya and Syria. According to this document, the meeting was chaired by John McCain. The report detailed the list of Libyan participants, whose delegation was led by the No. 2 man of the government of the day, Mahmoud Jibril, who abruptly switched sides at the entrance of the meeting to become the opposition leader in exile. I remember that, among the French delegates present, the report quoted Bernard-Henry Lévy, although officially he had never exercised functions within the French government. Many other personalities attended the symposium, including a large delegation of Syrians living abroad.
  • Emerging from the meeting, the mysterious Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook account called for demonstrations outside the People’s Council (National Assembly) in Damascus on February 11. Although this Facebook account at the time claimed to have more than 40,000 followers, only a dozen people responded to its call before the flashes of photographers and hundreds of police. The demonstration dispersed peacefully and clashes only began more than a month later in Deraa. [1] On February 16, 2011, a demonstration underway in Benghazi, in memory of members of the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya [2] massacred in 1996 in the Abu Selim prison, degenerated into shooting. The next day, a second event, this time in memory of those who died by attacking the Danish consulate during the Muhammad cartoons affair, also degenerated into shooting. At the same time, members of the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya ,coming from Egypt and coordinated by unidentified, hooded individuals, simultaneously attacked four military bases in four different cities. After three days of fighting and atrocities, the rebels launched the uprising of Cyrenaica against Tripolitania [3]; a terrorist attack that the western press falsely presented as a "democratic revolution" against "the regime" of Muammar el-Qaddafi.
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  • On February 22nd, John McCain was in Lebanon. He met members of the Future Movement (the party of Saad Hariri) whom he charged to oversee the transfer of arms to Syria around the MP Okab Sakr [4]. Then, leaving Beirut, he inspected the Syrian border and the selected villages including Ersal, which were used as a basis to back mercenaries in the war to come. The meetings chaired by John McCain were clearly the trigger point for a long-prepared Washington plan; the plan that would have the UK and France attack Libya and Syria simultaneously, following the doctrine of "leadership from behind" and the annex of the Treaty of Lancaster House of November 2010. [5]
  • In May 2013, Senator John McCain made his way illegally to near Idleb in Syria via Turkey to meet with leaders of the "armed opposition". His trip was not made public until his return to Washington. [6] This movement was organized by the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which, contrary to its title, is a Zionist Organization led by a Palestinian employee of AIPAC [7]
  • John McCain in Syria. In the foreground at right is the director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. In the doorway, center, Mohammad Nour.
  • In photographs released at that time, one noticed the presence of Mohammad Nour, a spokesman for the Northern Storm Brigade (of the Al-Nosra Front, that is to say, al-Qaeda in Syria), who kidnapped and held 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in Azaz. [8] Asked about his proximity to al-Qaeda kidnappers, the Senator claimed not to know Mohammad Nour who would have invited himself into this photo. The affair made a great noise and the families of the abducted pilgrims lodged a complaint before the Lebanese judiciary against Senator McCain for complicity in kidnapping. Ultimately, an agreement was reached and the pilgrims were released. Let’s suppose that Senator McCain had told the truth and that he was abused by Mohammad Nour. The object of his illegal trip to Syria was to meet the chiefs of staff of the Free Syrian Army. According to him, the organization was composed "exclusively of Syrians" fighting for "their freedom" against the "Alouite dictatorship” (sic). The tour organizers published this photograph to attest to the meeting.
  • John McCain and the heads of the Free Syrian Army. In the left foreground, Ibrahim al-Badri, with which the Senator is talking. Next, Brigadier General Salim Idris (with glasses).
  • If we can see Brigadier General Idriss Salem, head of the Free Syrian Army, one can also see Ibrahim al-Badri (foreground on the left) with whom the senator is talking. Back from the surprise trip, John McCain claimed that all those responsible for the Free Syrian Army were "moderates who can be trusted" (sic).
  • he list of interventions by John McCain on behalf of the State Department is impressive. He participated in all the color revolutions of the last twenty years.
  • For my part, I have always said that there was no difference on the ground between the Free Syrian Army, Al-Nosra Front, the Islamic Emirate etc ... All these organizations are composed of the same individuals who continuously change flag. When they pose as the Free Syrian Army, they fly the flag of French colonization and speak only of overthrowing the "dog Bashar." When they say they belong to Al-Nosra Front, they carry the flag of al Qaeda and declare their intention to spread Islam in the world. Finally when they say they are the Islamic Emirate, they brandish the flag of the Caliphate and announce that they will clean the area of all infidels. But whatever the label, they proceed to the same abuses: rape, torture, beheadings, crucifixions. Yet neither Senator McCain nor his companions of the Syrian Emergency Task Force provided the information in their possession on Ibrahim al-Badri to the State Department, nor have they asked for the reward. Nor have they informed the anti-terrorism Committee of the UN.
  • But John McCain is not just the leader of the political opposition to President Obama, he is also one of his senior officials! He is in fact President of the International Republican Institute (IRI), the republican branch of NED / CIA [12], since January 1993. This so-called "NGO" was officially established by President Ronald Reagan to extend certain activities of the CIA, in connection with the British, Canadian and Australian secret services. Contrary to its claims, it is indeed an inter-governmental agency. Its budget is approved by Congress in a budget line dependent of the Secretary of State. It is also because it is a joint agency of the Anglo-Saxon secret services that several states in the world prohibit it from any activity on their territory.
  • However, since October 4, 2011, Ibrahim al-Badri (also known as Abu Du’a) was on the list of the five terrorists most wanted by the United States (Rewards for Justice). A premium of up to $ 10 million was offered to anyone who would assist in his capture. [9] The next day, October 5, 2011, Ibrahim al-Badri was included in the list of the Sanctions Committee of the UN as a member of Al Qaeda. [10] In addition, a month before receiving Senator McCain, Ibrahim al-Badri, known under his nom de guerre as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, created the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ÉIIL) – all the while still belonging to the staff of the very "moderate" Free Syrian Army. He claimed as his own the attack on the Taj and Abu Ghraib prisons in Iraq, from which he helped between 500 and 1,000 jihadists escape who then joined his organization. This attack was coordinated with other almost simultaneous operations in eight other countries. Each time, the escapees joined the jihadist organizations fighting in Syria. This case is so strange that Interpol issued a note and requested the assistance of the 190 member countries. [11]
  • And an agent that has the best coverage imaginable: he is the official opponent of Barack Obama. As such, he can travel anywhere in the world (he is the most traveled US senator) and meet whoever he wants without fear. If his interlocutors approve Washington policy, he promised them to continue it, if they fight it, he hands over the responsibility to President Obama.
  • In 2003, France’s opposition was not enough to offset the influence of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. The United States attacked the country again and this time overthrew President Hussein. Of course, John McCain was a major contributor to the Committee. After handing to a private company the care of plundering the country for a year [17], they tried to partition Iraq into three separate states, but had to give it up due to the resistance of the population. They tried again in 2007, around the Biden-Brownback resolution, but again failed. [18] Hence the current strategy that attempts to achieve this by means of a non-state actor: the Islamic Emirate.
  • The operation was planned well in advance, even before the meeting between John McCain and Ibrahim al-Badri. For example, internal correspondence from the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published by my friends James and Joanne Moriarty [19], shows that 5,000 jihadis were trained at the expense of Qatar in NATO’s Libya in 2012, and 2,5 million dollars was paid at the same time to the future Caliph. In January of 2014, the Congress of the United States held a secret meeting at which it voted, in violation of international law, to approve funding for the Al-Nosra Front (Al-Qaeda) and the Islamic emirate in Iraq and the Levant until September 2014. [20] Although it is unclear precisely what was really agreed to during this meeting revealed by the British Reuters news agency [21], and no media US media dared bypass censorship, it is highly probable that the law includes a section on arming and training jihadists.
  • Proud of this US funding, Saudi Arabia has claimed on its public television channel, Al-Arabiya, that the Islamic Emirate was headed by Prince Abdul Rahman al-Faisal, brother of Prince Saud al Faisal (Foreign Minister) and Prince Turki al-Faisal (Saudi ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom) [22]. The Islamic Emirate represents a new step in the world of mercenaries. Unlike jihadi groups who fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chechnya around Osama bin Laden, it does not constitute a residual force but actually an army in itself. Unlike previous groups in Iraq, Libya and Syria, around Prince Bandar bin Sultan, they have sophisticated communication services at their disposal for recruitment and civilian officials trained in large western schools capable of instantly taking over the administration of a territory.
  • Brand new Ukrainian weapons were purchased by Saudi Arabia and conveyed by the Turkish secret services who gave them to the Islamic Emirate. Final details were coordinated with the Barzani family at a meeting of jihadist groups in Amman on 1 June 2014. [23] The joint attack on Iraq by the Islamic Emirate and the Kurdistan Regional Government began four days later. The Islamic Emirate seized the Sunni part of the country, while the Kurdistan Regional Government increased its territory by over 40%. Fleeing the atrocities of jihadists, religious minorities left the Sunni area, paving the way for the three-way partition of the country. Violating the Iraqi-US Defense agreement, the Pentagon did not intervene and allowed the Islamic Emirate to continue its conquest and massacres. A month later, while the Kurdish Peshmerga Regional Government had retreated without a fight, and when the emotions of world public opinion became too strong, President Obama gave the order to bomb some positions of the Islamic Emirate. However, according to General William Mayville, director of operations at the headquarters, "These bombings are unlikely to affect the overall capacity of the Islamic Emirate and its activities in other areas of Iraq or Syria ". [24] Obviously, they are not meant to destroy the jihadist army, but only to ensure that each player does not overlap the territory that has been assigned. Moreover, for the moment, they are symbolic and have destroyed only a handful of vehicles. It was ultimately the intervention of the Kurds of the Turkish and Syrian Kurdish PKK which halted the progress of the Islamic Emirate and opened a corridor to allow civilians to escape the massacre.
  • In the latest issue of its magazine, the Islamic Emirate devoted two pages to denounce Senator John McCain as "the enemy" and "double-crosser", recalling his support for the US invasion of Iraq. Lest this accusation remain unknown in the United States, Senator immediately issued a statement calling the Emirate the "most dangerous Islamist terrorist group in the world" [26]. This controversy is there only to distract the gallery. One would like to believe it ... if it were’t for this photograph from May 2013.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 14
     
    Thierry Meysann makes the case that Sen. John McCain, working with  was the guiding force behind the Arab Spring, the overthrow of Qadaffi in Libya, and the invasion of Syria by mercenary Islamists, working with a Zionist but deliberately misnomered front group. Thierry goes on to show that McCain played a key role in the creation and deployment of ISIL.  
Paul Merrell

ISIS Mercenary Admits Getting Funds from US | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

journal-neo.org/...y-admits-getting-funds-from-us

war & peace ISIL U.S.-funding Pakistan

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The Express Tribune, an affiliate of the New York Times, recently reported in an article titled, “Startling revelations: IS operative confesses to getting funds via US,” that another “coincidence” appears to be contributing to the so-called “Islamic State’s” (ISIS) resilience and vast resources. A recent investigation being conducted by Pakistani security forces involving a captured ISIS fighter has revealed that he and many fighters alongside him, received funds that were routed through the US. “During the investigations, Yousaf al Salafi revealed that he was getting funding – routed through America – to run the organisation in Pakistan and recruit young people to fight in Syria,” a source privy to the investigations revealed to Daily Express on the condition of anonymity. Al Salafi is a Pakistani-Syrian, who entered Pakistan through Turkey five months ago. Earlier, it was reported that he crossed into Turkey from Syria and was caught there. However, he managed to escape from Turkey and reached Pakistan to establish IS in the region.First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/30/isis-mercenary-admits-getting-funds-from-us/
Paul Merrell

US-Saudi Blitz into Yemen: Naked Aggression, Absolute Desperation | Global Research - C... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5439141

war & peace Yemen Houthi Saudis invasion U.S.-foreign-policy terrorists™

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The “proxy war” model the US has been employing throughout the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and even in parts of Asia appears to have failed yet again, this time in the Persian Gulf state of Yemen. Overcoming the US-Saudi backed regime in Yemen, and a coalition of sectarian extremists including Al Qaeda and its rebrand, the “Islamic State,” pro-Iranian Yemeni Houthi militias have turned the tide against American “soft power” and has necessitated a more direct military intervention. While US military forces themselves are not involved allegedly, Saudi warplanes and a possible ground force are. Though Saudi Arabia claims “10 countries” have joined its coalition to intervene in Yemen, like the US invasion and occupation of Iraq hid behind a “coalition,” it is overwhelmingly a Saudi operation with “coalition partners” added in a vain attempt to generate diplomatic legitimacy. The New York Times, even in the title of its report, “Saudi Arabia Begins Air Assault in Yemen,” seems not to notice these “10” other countries. It reports:
  • Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday night that it had launched a military campaign in Yemen, the beginning of what a Saudi official said was an offensive to restore a Yemeni government that had collapsed after rebel forces took control of large swaths of the country.  The air campaign began as the internal conflict in Yemen showed signs of degenerating into a proxy war between regional powers. The Saudi announcement came during a rare news conference in Washington by Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.
  • Indeed, the conflict in Yemen is a proxy war. Not between Iran and Saudi Arabia per say, but between Iran and the United States, with the United States electing Saudi Arabia as its unfortunate stand-in. Iran’s interest in Yemen serves as a direct result of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” and attempts to overturn the political order of North Africa and the Middle East to create a unified sectarian front against Iran for the purpose of a direct conflict with Tehran. The war raging in Syria is one part of this greater geopolitical conspiracy, aimed at overturning one of Iran’s most important regional allies, cutting the bridge between it and another important ally, Hezbollah in Lebanon. And while Iran’s interest in Yemen is currently portrayed as yet another example of Iranian aggression, indicative of its inability to live in peace with its neighbors, US policymakers themselves have long ago already noted that Iran’s influence throughout the region, including backing armed groups, serves a solely defensive purpose, acknowledging the West and its regional allies’ attempts to encircle, subvert, and overturn Iran’s current political order.
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  • The unelected hereditary regime ruling over Saudi Arabia, a nation notorious for egregious human rights abuses, and a land utterly devoid of even a semblance of what is referred to as “human rights,” is now posing as arbiter of which government in neighboring Yemen is “legitimate” and which is not, to the extent of which it is prepared to use military force to restore the former over the latter. The United States providing support for the Saudi regime is designed to lend legitimacy to what would otherwise be a difficult narrative to sell. However, the United States itself has suffered from an increasing deficit in its own legitimacy and moral authority. Most ironic of all, US and Saudi-backed sectarian extremists, including Al Qaeda in Yemen, had served as proxy forces meant to keep Houthi militias in check by proxy so the need for a direct military intervention such as the one now unfolding would not be necessary. This means that Saudi Arabia and the US are intervening in Yemen only after the terrorists they were supporting were overwhelmed and the regime they were propping up collapsed. In reality, Saudi Arabia’s and the United States’ rhetoric aside, a brutal regional regime meddled in Yemen and lost, and now the aspiring global hemegon sponsoring it from abroad has ordered it to intervene directly and clean up its mess.
  • The aerial assault on Yemen is meant to impress upon onlookers Saudi military might. A ground contingent might also attempt to quickly sweep in and panic Houthi fighters into folding. Barring a quick victory built on psychologically overwhelming Houthi fighters, Saudi Arabia risks enveloping itself in a conflict that could easily escape out from under the military machine the US has built for it. It is too early to tell how the military operation will play out and how far the Saudis and their US sponsors will go to reassert themselves over Yemen. However, that the Houthis have outmatched combined US-Saudi proxy forces right on Riyadh’s doorstep indicates an operational capacity that may not only survive the current Saudi assault, but be strengthened by it. Reports that Houthi fighters have employed captured Yemeni warplanes further bolsters this notion – revealing tactical, operational, and strategic sophistication that may well know how to weather whatever the Saudis have to throw at it, and come back stronger.
  • What may result is a conflict that spills over Yemen’s borders and into Saudi Arabia proper. Whatever dark secrets the Western media’s decades of self-censorship regarding the true sociopolitical nature of Saudi Arabia will become apparent when the people of the Arabian peninsula must choose to risk their lives fighting for a Western client regime, or take a piece of the peninsula for themselves. Additionally, a transfer of resources and fighters arrayed under the flag of the so-called “Islamic State” and Al Qaeda from Syria to the Arabian Peninsula will further indicate that the US and its regional allies have been behind the chaos and atrocities carried out in the Levant for the past 4 years. Such revelations will only further undermine the moral imperative of the West and its regional allies, which in turn will further sabotage their efforts to rally support for an increasingly desperate battle they themselves conspired to start.
  • the Yemeni people are not being allowed to determine their own affairs. Everything up to and including military invasion has been reserved specifically to ensure that the people of Yemen do not determine things for themselves, clearly, because it does not suit US interests. Such naked hypocrisy will be duly noted by the global public and across diplomatic circles. The West’s inability to maintain a cohesive narrative is a growing sign of weakness. Shareholders in the global enterprise the West is engaged in may see such weakness as a cause to divest – or at the very least – a cause to diversify toward other enterprises. Such enterprises may include Russia and China’s mulipolar world. The vanishing of Western global hegemony will be done in destructive conflict waged in desperation and spite. Today, that desperation and spite befalls Yemen.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Mar 15
     
    Usually I agree with Tony Cartalucci, but I think it's too early to pick winners and losers in Yemen. At least a couple of other nations allied with the Saudis are flying aerial missions and there's a commitment of troops and air support by Egypt, although it isn't clear that these would enter Yemen, but may just deploy to "protect" the waters approaching the Suez Canal from the Yemenis. The Saudis have a surfeit of U.S. weaponry but their military is inexperienced. The House of Saud has preferred proxy wars conducted by Salafist mercenaries over direct military intervention. How effective its military will be is a very big unknown at this point. But I like Cartalucci's point that if the House of Saud has to send in its ISIL mercenaries, it will go a long way toward unmasking the U.S. excuse for invading Syria and resuming boots on the ground in Iraq.
Paul Merrell

Clinton Email Hints that Oil and Gold Were Behind Regime Change In Libya Washington's Blog - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...ehind-regime-change-libya.html

war & peace Libya Hillary Gadafi gold-dinar petrodollar banksters

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • On New Year’s Eve, 3,000 emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server were released. One of them confirms – an email dated April 2, 2011 to Clinton from her close confidante Sidney Blumenthal – that: Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. *** This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French. franc (CFA).
  • (Source Comment [This is in the original declassified email, and is not a comment added by us]: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues: A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production, Increase French influence in North Africa, Improve his internal political situation in France, Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world, Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi’s long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa) This may confirm what some of us have been saying for years.
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jan 16
     
    Time to check in again with that first link in the last sentence, then recall: [i] that series in the Washington Times on Hillary ignoring the intelligence reports saying that Libyan government forces were not in fact massacring civilians; [ii] the interview with the guy who was the source of the "massacre" reports admitting that his only source of information on the massacres he claimed were taking place had been provided by the Libyan "rebels;" [iii] the reported role of the French government, the CIA, and future Dept. of State Ambassador Stevens (killed in Benghazi post-coup) in launching the rebellion with mercenaries provided by Qatar; [iv] Hillary suckering the Russians into not vetoing the Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone over Libya; [v] the U.S. and allies promptly exceeding that authority to serve as the mercenaries' air force in accomplishing regime change; [vi] Gadafi's death after being repeatedly sodomized with a knife; and [vii] Hillary's cackling, "we came, we saw, he died" video. That's what happens if you try to establish gold as Africa's currency. The western banksters don't like that. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest each of their armpits.   
Paul Merrell

400 Blackwater Mercs Deployed In Ukraine Against Separatists, German Press Reports | Ze... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...paratists-german-press-reports

war & peace Ukraine mercenaries Academi Germany U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 May 14 - No Cached
  • In what is becoming a weekly ritual, the German press continues to demolish the US case of "idealistic humaniatrian" Ukraine intervention. Recall, that it was a week ago that German tabloid Bild am Sonntag, hardly the most reputable source but certainly one which reaches the broadest audience, reported that dozens of CIA and FBI agents were "advising the Ukraine government." This conclusion is hardly a stretch and certainly based on facts considering the recent semi-secret jaunt by CIA head Brennan to Kiev. Fast forward one week when overnight the same Bild reported that about 400 elite mercenary commandos of the private US security firm, Academi, f/k/a Xe Services, f/k/a Blackwater "are involved in a punitive operation mounted by Ukraine's new government" against east Ukraine separatists.
  • Bild cites sources who report that on April 29, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) informed the Angela Merkel government about Academi commandos' involvement in Kiev's military operations in eastern Ukraine. Spiegel adds that "the information originates from U.S. intelligence services and was presented during a meeting chaired by the Chancellor's Office chief Peter Altmaier (CDU). At the meeting were present the president of the intelligence agencies and the Federal Criminal Office, as well as the intelligence coordinator of the Chancellor's Office and senior Ministry officials." Bild am Sontag did not have information about who was paying the Blackwater commandos: it is well-known they do not come cheap.
  • Of course, since no western entity, and certainly not the company itself, would ever admit its involvement in the Ukraine as it would promptly crash the official US foreign policy track claiming US non-involvement in Ukraine, none of this is surprising.
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  • Finally, in this proxy war between west and east, to believe that the US won't throw everything it can at Putin is naive, and as such the involvement of trained US mercenaries in Ukraine is beyond debate. However what is certainly surprising and far more interesting, is the persistent attempts by the German press to discredit none other than their biggest "Developed world" ally, the US. It is almost as if someone (a quite wealthy and powerful someone) has material interests that diverge with those of the Obama administration, and hence converge with those of Putin. Alongside the emerging China-Russia axis, keeping tabs on just how close to Russia Germany is willing to get, is easily the most notable story in the entire Ukraine conflict.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 May 14
     
    Don't miss the last paragraph. Tyler has a whiff of big money driving Germany toward maintenance of the Russo-Germanic energy alliance. The U.S. has no natural gas to deliver to Europe in the next few years and even when it does, it will be very spendy to liquify and transport it by ship. It's the U.S. government that wants to block emergence of a unified Eurasian market, not the E.U. And the U.S. is a declining market, as China's economy eclipses that of the U.S. I'm not predicting that Germany will defect from NATO in the foreseeable future, but Obama is definitely riding roughshod over the E.U. in his Ukraine strategy during the Great Recession with no resurrection of the dollar's value in sight. The ties that bind NATO together are mightily stretched at this point.   
Paul Merrell

Pentagon pays Syrians $400 per month to fight ISIL - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...29113251

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy mercenaries

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • The Pentagon has begun paying modest stipends to the Syrian moderates it hopes to field in the fight against Islamic State militants, the military confirmed Monday.Training of the first group of about 90 fighters began last month. They will be paid stipends of $250 to $400 per month, depending on their skills, performance and leadership, said Navy Cmdr. Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman. Preparing the recruits for battle is expected to take several months.The Pentagon expects to have 3,000 fighters trained by year's end, Smith said. The goal for 12 months is 5,400. She declined to say how many are currently being trained."For operational security, we will not announce when coalition-trained Syrian opposition forces enter into Syria," she said.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Jul 15
     
    That should polish off the last argument that the U.S. has not committed the crime of a war of aggression against Syria. Paying mercenaries to do the dirty work is no different legally from sending in the Marines. 
Paul Merrell

Free Syrian Army a Phantom: Lavrov | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...e-syrian-army-a-phantom-lavrov

war & peace Russia Free-Syrian-Army

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov responded to vague U.S. statements about the Free Syrian Army and “moderate rebels” and that Russia may target moderates, saying that the Free Syrian Army is a phantom group. In depth investigations show that the Free Syrian Army largely ceased to exist in 2012 -13.
  • The Russian Foreign Minister rebuked accusations that the Russian Air Force in Syria targets the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or so-called “moderate rebels” saying: “No one has told us where the Free Syrian Army operates or where and how the other units of the moderate opposition act. . … We will even be ready to establish contact with it, if these are indeed efficient armed groups of the patriotic opposition that consist of Syrians. … So far, the Free Syrian Army remains a “phantom group … Nothing is known about it.” Lavrov called on the United States Secretary of State John Kerry to explain what the Free Syrian Army is and where it is based. Last week Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made a similar comment, saying “There is absolutely controversial information about this so-called army. … What is Free Syrian Army? Is this an official term? Are they official armed forces or what is it”. 
  • nsnbc investigations and other reports have shown that the Free Syrian Army (FSA), prior to June and July 2012 consisted of some Syrian Muslim Brotherhood associated fighters, some few former Syrian Arab Army soldiers, and a large number of mercenaries from Libya and other countries. This foreign-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) suffered two decisive defeats in June and July 2012, a little more than a year after the eruption of the conflict. The decline of the FSA and the increased presence of Salafist / Wahhabi fighters in 2012 was, among others documented by the International Crisis Group, in their comprehensive report entitled “Tentative Jihad”. By December 2013 the remainders of the FSA began to break up and more western, Turkish and Gulf Arab support was channeled to the Al-Qaeda associated Jabhat Al-Nusrah, ISIL and other mercenary or semi-mercenary insurgencies.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Oct 15
     
    Russia wants the U.S. to tell them who the Free Syrian Army is and where it is. Good one! Cluestick: it never existed except in Hillary Clinton's fantasies. 
Paul Merrell

The US's Vicious Colonial War - LewRockwell.com - 0 views

www.lewrockwell.com/...the-uss-vicious-colonial-war

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Afghanistan war-on-drugs™

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The last British soldiers were airlifted out of Afghanistan last week, marking the sorry end of Britain’s fourth failed invasion of Afghanistan. With them went the last detachment of US Marines in Helmand. Well has Afghanistan earned its title, “Graveyard of Empires.” To be more precise, this honor belongs to Afghanistan’s Pashtun (or Pathan) mountain tribes, who bend their knees for no man and take pride in war.
  • The US garrison in Kabul will continue to make Afghanistan safe for opium, which is the base for heroin. Americans have simply turned a blind eye to their ownership if the world’s top producer of heroin. As Washington orates about the so-called War on Drugs, Afghan opium production rose in 2013 from $2 billion to $3 billion. The UN says over 500,000 acres of land in Afghanistan are now devoted to the opium poppy – right under the eyes of the US garrison. While US-installed rulers in Kabul pay lip service to opium eradication, the rural warlords who support them, and receive stipends from CIA, continue to grow rich on the opium trade. Trying to blame Taliban for the scourge of opium is dishonest: when Taliban was in power it eradicated almost all of the nation’s opium production, reported he UN Drug Agency, except in the region controlled by the Communist Northern Alliance – which today shares power in Kabul. When the full history of the Afghan war is finally written, CIA’s involvement in that nation’s drug trade will become a notorious episode. French intelligence became deeply involved in the Laotian opium trade to pay its Lao mercenaries. The US was up to its ears with its Contra allies in the Central American cocaine trade.
  • Any native “disturbance” would be bombed and strafed by the RAF. In the 1920’s, Winston Churchill authorized RAF to use poison gas bombs against restive Pashtun and Kurdish tribesmen. Ironically, seven decades later I discovered British scientists who had been sent by HM government to Iraq to build germ weapons for Saddam Hussein to use against Iran. Similarly, the “Pax Americana” will be enforced by US airpower based at Bagram. US warplanes flying from Bagram, Qatar, and aircraft carriers on 24 hour call have been the only force keeping the Pashtun movement Taliban at bay. Without intense employment of US air power, western occupation forces, like the Imperial British armies before them, would have been driven from Afghanistan. Without US air power, garrison troops and large numbers of “civilian contractors” and old-fashioned mercenaries the Kabul puppet regime would soon be swept away. Afghanistan’s government army is likely to collapse as quickly as Iraq’s did before ISIS. Most of southern Afghanistan would declare for Taliban which, however harsh, is the nation’s only authentic political movement apart from the Tajik and Uzbek Communists in the north.
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  • The old imperialists are gone, but the occupation of Afghanistan continues. The new regime in Kabul just installed by Washington to replace uncooperative former ally Hamid Karzai, rushed to sign an “agreement” allowing the United States to keep some 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for years. This garrison will be exempt from all Afghan laws. However, there’s much more to this arrangement. The US combat troops, tactfully labeled “trainers” or “counter-terrorist forces,” are too few in number to dominate all Afghanistan. Their task is to defend Kabul’s sock puppet government from its own people and to defend the all-important US Bagram airbase. Washington clearly plans to continue ruling Afghanistan and Iraq the same way that the British Empire did. Small numbers of British troops garrisoned the capital; white officers led the native mercenary army. But Britain’s real power was exercised by RAF units based in Iraq and Northwest Frontier Province.
  • Now, US intelligence has besmirched its name once again aiding and abetting Afghan drug lords so as to supposedly wage war on “terrorists.” In dirt-poor Afghanistan, there are only two sources of income: money from Washington, and from narcotics. The collusion of senior members of government, military and police is necessary to export tons of opium to either Pakistan, Central Asia or Russia – where morphine addiction is now a major epidemic. Adding to this shameful record, the US Congressional auditor for Special Reconstruction of Afghanistan just reported that much of the $104 billion appropriated for Afghan “reconstruction” has to no surprise been wasted or stolen. Some of it has been used to irrigate opium poppy fields. Spare parts are unavailable for Russian helicopters bought by the US for use in battling Taliban and supposed opium fighting. Why? Because the US-imposed trade sanctions on Russia bars the US from buying the spare part. Catch-22.
  • By now, the longest war in US history has cost some $1 trillion, maybe more. No one can properly account for the billions and billions of US dollars flown into Afghanistan and Iraq and dished out to the natives – or the numbers of Afghans killed. For Washington’s allies, like Canada and Britain, the war has been a total waste of lives and treasure. For Canada, 158 dead for nothing; for Britain 453. Forget all the phony claims about “mission” and “nation building.” This has been yet another dirty little colonial war that is better forgotten – and never repeated. So this war will simmer on, at least until Washington finds some face-saving way out of the mess in the Hindu Kush. If the US was wise, it would simply quit Afghanistan. But power, like opium, is highly addictive. So America’s longest war will drag on and on.
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: BREAKING: Germany's DW Reports ISIS Supply Lines Originate in NATO's Tu... - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.com/...-germanys-dw-reports-isis.html

war & peace ISIL-supplies U.S.-foreign-policy Turkey NATO false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published a video report of immense implications - possibly the first national broadcaster in the West to admit that the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) is supplied not by "black market oil" or "hostage ransoms" but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey's borders via hundreds of trucks a day. The report titled, "'IS' supply channels through Turkey," confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 - that NATO member Turkey has allowed a torrent in supplies, fighters, and weapons to cross its borders unopposed to resupply ISIS positions inside of Syria.
  • Local residents and merchants interviewed by Germany's DW admitted that commerce with Syria benefiting them had ended since the conflict began and that the supplies trucks carry as they stream across the border originates from "western Turkey." The DW report does not elaborate on what "western Turkey" means, but it most likely refers to Ankara, various ports used by NATO, and of course NATO's Incirlik Air Base. While DW's report claims no one knows who is arranging the shipments, it does reveal that the very torrent of trucks its film crew documented was officially denied by the Turkish government in Ankara. It is a certainty that Turkey is not only aware of this, but directly complicit, as is NATO who has feigned a desire to defeat ISIS but has failed to expose and uproot ISIS' multinational sponsorship and more importantly, has refused to cut its supply lines - an elementary prerequisite of any military strategy. 
  • SIS supply lines leading from NATO territory should be of no surprise. As reported since as early as 2007, the US and its regional accomplices conspired to use Al Qaeda and other armed extremists in a bid to reorder North Africa and the Middle East. It would be Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" that explicitly stated (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 
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  • Of course, these "extremist groups" who "espouse a militant vision of Islam" and are "sympathetic to Al Qaeda," describe the "Islamic State" verbatim. ISIS constitutes NATO's mercenary expeditionary force, ravaging its enemies by proxy from Libya in North Africa to Lebanon and Syria in the Levant, to Iraq and even to the borders of Iran. Its seemingly inexhaustible supply of weapons, cash, and fighters can only be explained by multinational state sponsorship and safe havens provided by NATO ISIS' enemies - primarily Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, and Iraq - cannot strike. DW's report specifically notes how ISIS terrorists regularly flee certain demise in Syria by seeking safe haven in Turkey.  One of NATO's primary goals since as early as 2012, was to use various pretexts to expand such safe havens, or "buffer zones," into Syrian territory itself, protected by NATO military forces from which "rebels" could operate. Had they succeeded, DW camera crews would probably be filming convoys staging in cities like Idlib and Allepo instead of along Turkey's border with Syria. 
  • With the documented conspiracy of the US and its allies to create a sectarian mercenary force aligned to Al Qaeda, the so-called "moderate rebels" the US has openly backed in Syria now fully revealed as sectarian extremists, and now with DW documenting a torrent of supplies originating in Turkey, it is clear that the ISIS menace NATO poses as the solution to, was in fact NATO all along. What is  revealed is a foreign policy so staggeringly insidious, few are able to believe it, even with international broadcasters like DW showing ISIS' supply lines leading from NATO territory itself.  
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 14
     
    There is a second NATO supply line running from Saudi Arabia, across Iraq into Jordan, and from there to ISIL-Al-Nusrah in southern Syria. Also, Israel is flying combat missions for ISIL and running a resupply/medical services base for them on the Golan Heights. 
Paul Merrell

Paris Shooters Just Returned from NATO's Proxy War in Syria | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...-from-natos-proxy-war-in-syria

war & peace France false-flag terrorists™ Charlie-Hedbo

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • In an all too familiar pattern and as predicted, the shooters involved in the attack in Paris Wednesday, January 7, 2015, were French citizens, radicalized in Europe and exported to Syria to fight in NATO’s proxy war against the government in Damascus, then brought back where they have now carried out a domestic attack. Additionally, as have been many other domestic attacks, the suspects were long under the watch of Western intelligence services, with at least one suspect having already been arrested on terrorism charges.
  • USA Today would report in an article titled, “Manhunt continues for two French terror suspects,” that: The suspects are two brothers — Said, 34, and Cherif Kouachi, 32, both French nationals — and Hamyd Mourad, 18, whose nationality wasn’t known, a Paris police official told the Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. USA Today would also report (emphasis added): The brothers were born in Paris of Algerian descent. Cherif was sentenced to three years in prison on terrorism charges in May 2008. Both brothers returned from Syria this summer.
  • As with any false flag attack engineered by a government for the purpose of manipulating public perception and pushing through otherwise unjustifiable policy both foreign and domestic, a series of canards are erected to distract the public from the true nature of the attack. In the recent attack in Paris, France, the canards of “free speech,” “condemning radical Islam,” “tolerance,” and “extremism” have all taken center stage, displacing the fact that the terrorists who carried out the attack were long on the leash not of “Islamic extremists” but Western intelligence agencies, fighting in a Western proxy war, as a member of a well-funded, armed, and trained mercenary force that has, on record since as early as 2007, been an essential component of Western foreign policy. Indeed, Al Qaeda and its various rebrandings are not the creation of “Islamic extremism,” but rather Western foreign policy using “extremism” as part of indoctrinating the rank and file, but directed by and solely for the purpose of serving an entirely Western agenda.
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  • The implications of yet another case of Western-radicalized terrorists, first exported to fight NATO’s proxy war in Syria, then imported and well-known to Western intelligence agencies, being able to carry out a highly organized, well-executed attack, is that the attack itself was sanctioned and engineered by Western intelligence agencies themselves,. This mirrors almost verbatim the type of operations NATO intelligence carried out during the Cold War with similar networks of radicalized militants used both as foreign mercenaries and domestic provocateurs. Toward the end of the Cold War, one of these militant groups was literally Al Qaeda – a proxy mercenary front armed, funded, and employed by the West to this very day. Additionally, in all likelihood, the brothers who took part in the attack in Paris may have been fighting in Syria with weapons provided to them by the French government itself.  France 24 would report last year in an article titled, “France delivered arms to Syrian rebels, Hollande confirms,” that: President Francois Hollande said on Thursday that France had delivered weapons to rebels battling the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad “a few months ago.” Deflecting blame for the current attack on “radical Islam” is but a canard obscuring the truth that these terrorists were created intentionally by the West, to fight the West’s enemies abroad, and to intimidate and terrorize their populations at home.
  • As exposed by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 article,  “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” it was stated explicitly that (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.  To this day, the US, its NATO partners including Turkey, and regional partners including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are arming, funding, harboring, training, and otherwise perpetuating these “Islamic extremists” within and along both Syria and now Iraq’s borders.
  • In reality, without Western backing, “laundered” through the Persian Gulf autocracies and manifesting themselves in a global network of mosques jointly run by Persian Gulf and Western intelligence agencies, there would be no “Islamic extremism” to speak of. To focus on “extremism” as a cause, rather than as a means used by the true perpetrators of this global-spanning campaign of Western-sanctioned terrorism, is not only to perpetuate such canards, but to invite the perpetuation of this very terrorism we are shocked and horrified by.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Jan 15
     
    Cartalucci appears to be stretching the evidence a bit here. The possibility remains that the Paris attack was "blowback" not approved by western covert action agency. But in that event, the involved agency's monitoring of the monsters it creates was certainly deficient. 
Paul Merrell

Isis gains in Syria put pressure on west to deliver more robust response | World news |... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ins-syria-pressure-west-robust

war & peace ISIL Syria U.S.-foreign-policy Free-Syrian-Army training impeachment Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • As US aircraft continued to pound the Islamist militants in northern Iraq, the Obama administration was studying a range of options for pressuring Isis in Syria, primarily through training "moderate" Syrian rebels as a proxy force, with air strikes as a possible backup.
  • The favoured option, according to two administration officials, is to press forward with a training mission, led by elite special operations forces, aimed at making non-jihadist Syrians an effective proxy force. But the rebels are outgunned and outnumbered by Isis and the administration still has not received $500m from Congress for its rebel training plans. Pentagon officials said they had yet to work out what the training program would actually look like, where it will be hosted, or if air strikes on Isis targets in Syria will support it. For all the internal administration focus on propping up moderate Syrian rebels, the US military would not be able to begin training them until October, the earliest that Congressional approval could be obtained for the required funding and authorisation. Kirby said he was unaware of any "plan to accelerate it". Nor have critical details for the training program been worked out, despite it being effectively the lynchpin of what the administration considers a long-term plan to defeat Isis. "I can't tell you where it would take place, or how many people would be trained, and there's still a vetting process that needs to be fully developed here," Kirby conceded.
  • the White House went further than before in its condemnation of Isis, describing the killing of Foley as an act of terrorism. "When we see somebody killed in such a horrific way, that represents a terrorist attack against our country and against an American citizen, Rhodes said, saying the US would do whatever necessary to protect Americans in future."We are actively considering what is necessary to deal with that threat and we are not going to be restricted by borders," said Rhodes, briefing reporters at Martha's Vineyard, where the president is on vacation.
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 14
     
    That is not a winning strategy. The Free Syrian Army has been a joke from the beginning, a largely fictional entity composed of "moderates" used as political cover for the U.S. to smuggle weapons to mercenaries paid by Saudi Arabia that operated under the "Al Nusrah" flag. Most of Al Nusrah and the FSF joined ISIS after the U.S. attack on Syria was called off last year. The real "moderates" in Syria are fighting for the Syrian government. So I view this "strategy" as mere window dressing so the Obama Administration can claim that it has one. 
  • Paul Merrell on 30 Aug 14
     
    That is not a winning strategy. The Free Syrian Army has been a joke from the beginning, a largely fictional entity composed of "moderates" used as political cover for the U.S. to smuggle weapons to mercenaries paid by Saudi Arabia that operated under the "Al Nusrah" flag. Most of Al Nusrah and the FSF joined ISIS after the U.S. attack on Syria was called off last year. The real "moderates" in Syria are fighting for the Syrian government. So I view this "strategy" as mere window dressing so the Obama Administration can claim that it has one. 
Paul Merrell

AL tabled UNSC Resolution on the Middle East likely to fail absent a US-U-Turn | nsnbc ... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ely-to-fail-absent-a-us-u-turn

Arab-League Palestine Gholan-Heights Sheba-Farms UNSC-Resolution

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • The Arab League announced that it would re-table a draft resolution at the UN Security Council on Monday, calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories including the occupied Syrian Golan and the Lebanese Sheba Farms. The Arab League’s draft resolution calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from all of the territories Israel occupied during the 1967 war. That is, Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem, the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan as well as the Israeli occupied, Lebanese Sheba Farms area in southeastern Lebanon.
  • The Arab League perceives the draft resolution as part of a policy based on the notion that a resolution of the Israel – Palestinian conflict only can be found within the framework of a comprehensive resolution that includes other issues which arose as a consequence to the 1967 war. In December 2014 the UN Security Council rejected a similar, Jordanian-sponsored draft resolution that called for a full Israeli withdrawal within two years. The resolution was endorsed by eight concurrent votes, falling one vote short of the minimum of nine votes. Had the resolution received the necessary nine votes, stated the U.S. State Department, the United States would have made use of its veto right at the Security Council. It were the victors of WWII who “endowed themselves” with the veto right, practically subjugating all other UN member States to the political will of the permanent UN Security Council members.
  • The rejection of the draft resolution, in December, prompted the President of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to accede to some 20 international treaties, including the Rome Statute. On April 1, Palestine will become a member to the United Nations’s International Criminal Court (ICC). Neither the U.S., Russia, China or Israel have made their citizens subject to prosecution by the ICC.
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  • Al-Khadoumi points out that Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in 2013, stated that “Israel and the Golan are part and parcel” and that the “international community” should settle the question about sovereignty over the Golan within the framework of an Israel – Palestinian agreement. Besides open announcements about plans to permanently annex the Syrian Golan, Israel has been supporting Jabhat al-Nusrah and other al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood(FSA and co.) brigades via the Golan since 2012. In 2013 Israel’s covert support of the insurgents was leaked to the press by an Austrian UNDOF officer. By February 2014 the administration of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu launched a PR campaign to sell the support of the Islamist mercenary brigades under “humanitarian cover”. (see video)
  • By October 2014 Israel’s direct cooperation and State sponsorship of Jabhat al-Nusrah, the so-called Free Syrian Army and other mercenary brigades resulted in the withdrawal of UNDOF troops from a 12 – 16 km wide corridor in the buffer zone. (see UNDOF map above) The withdrawal has since then facilitated the direct interaction between Israeli military and intelligence and the foreign-backed mercenaries, using the Golan Heights as well as the Israeli occupied, Lebanese Sheba Farms area as launching pads for transgressions against Syria and Lebanon. Absent a U-turn in U.S. policy with regard to Israel and Syria, notes Al-Khadoumi, it is highly implausible that the re-drafted Security Council resolution will pass, or that it won’t be vetoed by the United States.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15
     
    There is a possibility that the U.S. may abstain from voting and allow the resolution to pass. The Obama Administration was considering such a move even before the flap over Netanyahu's speech to Congress because of Israel's refusal to negotiate in good faith for a 2-state solution. And if ever there was a situation crying out for a smackdown of Israeli government, it was Netanyahu's speech.   
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: CNN: Libyan "Rebels" Are Now ISIS - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.dk/...ibyan-rebels-are-now-isis.html

war & peace Syria Libya ISIL U.S.-foreign-policy false-flag

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The United States has attempted to claim that the only way to stop the so-called "Islamic State" in Syria and Iraq is to first remove the government in Syria. Complicating this plan are developments in Libya, benefactor of NATO's last successful regime change campaign. In 2011, NATO armed, funded, and backed with a sweeping air campaign militants in Libya centered around the eastern Libyan cities of Tobruk, Derna, and Benghazi. By October 2011, NATO successfully destroyed the Libyan government, effectively handing the nation over to these militants. 
  • What ensued was a campaign of barbarism, genocide, and sectarian extremism as brutal in reality as what NATO claimed in fiction was perpetrated by the Libyan government ahead of its intervention. The so-called "rebels" NATO had backed were revealed to be terrorists led by Al Qaeda factions including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The so-called "pro-democracy protesters" Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was poised to attack in what NATO claimed was pending "genocide" were in fact heavily armed terrorists that have festered for decades in eastern Libya. Almost immediately after NATO successfully destroyed Libya's government, its terrorist proxies were mobilized to take part in NATO's next campaign against Syria. Libyan terrorists were sent first to NATO-member Turkey were they were staged, armed, trained, and equipped, before crossing the Turkish-Syrian border to take part in the fighting. 
  • CNN in an article titled, "ISIS comes to Libya," claims: The black flag of ISIS flies over government buildings. Police cars carry the group's insignia. The local football stadium is used for public executions. A town in Syria or Iraq? No. A city on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Libya.  Fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are now in complete control of the city of Derna, population of about 100,000, not far from the Egyptian border and just about 200 miles from the southern shores of the European Union.  The fighters are taking advantage of political chaos to rapidly expand their presence westwards along the coast, Libyan sources tell CNN. Only the black flag of Al Qaeda/ISIS has already long been flying over Libya - even at the height of NATO's intervention there in 2011.  ISIS didn't "come to" Libya, it was always there in the form of Al Qaeda's local franchises LIFG and AQIM - long-term, bitter enemies of the now deposed and assassinated Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi.
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  • CNN's latest article is merely the veneer finally peeling away from the alleged "revolution" it had attempted to convince readers had taken place in 2011.
  • Even amid CNN's own spin, it admits ISIS' presence in Libya is not a new phenomenon but rather the above mentioned sectarian extremists who left Libya to fight in Syria simply returning and reasserting themselves in the eastern Cyrenaica region. CNN also admits that these terrorists have existed in Libya for decades and were kept in check primarily by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. With Qaddafi eliminated and all semblance of national unity destroyed by NATO's intervention in 2011, Al Qaeda has been able to not only prosper in Libya but use the decimated nation as a spingboard for invading and destroying other nations. Worst of all, Al Qaeda's rise in Libya was not merely the unintended consequence of a poorly conceived plan by NATO for military intervention, but a premeditated regional campaign to first build up then use Al Qaeda as a mercenary force to overthrow and destroy a series of nations, beginning with Libya, moving across North Africa and into nations like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and eventually Iran. From there, NATO's mercenary force would be on the borders of Russia and China ready to augment already Western-backed extremists in the Caucasus and Xinjiang regions. In 2011, geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley in his article, "The CIA’s Libya Rebels: The Same Terrorists who Killed US, NATO Troops in Iraq," noted that the US strategy was to:
  • Not even mentioning the fact that Al Qaeda's very inception was to serve as a joint US-Saudi mercenary force to fight a proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, the terrorist organization has since played a central role in the Balkans to justify NATO intervention there, and as a divisive force in Iraq during the US occupation to blunt what began as a formidable joint Sunni-Shia'a resistance movement. In 2007, it was revealed by Pulitzer Prize-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh that the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia were conspiring to use Al Qaeda once again, this time to undermine, destabilize, and destroy the governments of Syria and Iran in what would be a regional sectarian bloodbath. Hersh would report (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 
  • ...use Al Qaeda to overthrow independent governments, and then either Balkanize and partition the countries in question, or else use them as kamikaze puppets against larger enemies like Russia, China, or Iran. Dr. Tarpley would also note in 2011 that: One of the fatal contradictions in the current State Department and CIA policy is that it aims at a cordial alliance with Al Qaeda killers in northeast Libya, at the very moment when the United States and NATO are mercilessly bombing the civilian northwest Pakistan in the name of a total war against Al Qaeda, and US and NATO forces are being killed by Al Qaeda guerrillas in that same Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of war. The force of this glaring contradiction causes the entire edifice of US war propaganda to collapse. The US has long since lost any basis in morality for military force.  In fact, terrorist fighters from northeast Libya may be killing US and NATO troops in Afghanistan right now, even as the US and NATO protect their home base from the Qaddafi government. Indeed, the very terrorists NATO handed the entire nation of Libya over to, are now allegedly prime targets in Syria and Iraq. The "pro-democracy rebels" of 2011 are now revealed to be "ISIS terrorists" with long-standing ties to Al Qaeda.
  • Hersh would note that Iran was perceived to be the greater threat and therefore, despite a constant barrage of propaganda claiming otherwise, Al Qaeda and its various affiliates were "lesser enemies." Even in 2007, Hersh's report would predict almost verbatim the cataclysmic regional sectarian bloodbath that would take place, with the West's extremists waging war not only on Shia'a populations but also on other religious minorities including Christians. His report would note: Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites.  And this is precisely what is happening, word for word, page by page - everything warned about in Hersh's report has come to pass. In 2011, geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley and others would also reiterate the insidious regional campaign Western policymakers were carrying out with Al Qaeda terrorists disguised as "rebels," "activists," and "moderate fighters" for the purpose of arming, funding, and even militarily intervening on their behalf in attempts to effect regime change and tilt the balance in the Middle East and North Africa region against Iran, Russia, and China. CNN's attempt to explain why ISIS is "suddenly" in Libya is one of many attempts to explain the regional rise of this organization in every way possible besides in terms of the truth - that ISIS is the result of multinational state sponsored terrorism including the US, UK, EU, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel as its chief backers.
  • Inexplicably, amid allegedly fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the United States now claims it must first overthrow the Syrian government, despite it being the only viable, secular force in the region capable of keeping ISIS and its affiliates in check. CNN, in an article titled, "Sources: Obama seeks new Syria strategy review to deal with ISIS, al-Assad," would report: President Barack Obama has asked his national security team for another review of the U.S. policy toward Syria after realizing that ISIS may not be defeated without a political transition in Syria and the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, senior U.S. officials and diplomats tell CNN. Neither CNN, nor the politicians it cited in its article were able to articulate just why removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power would somehow diminish the fighting capacity of ISIS. With CNN's recent article on ISIS' gains in Libya despite US-led NATO regime change there, after decades of Libyan leader Qaddafi keeping extremists in check, it would appear that NATO is once again attempting not to stop Al Qaeda/ISIS, but rather hand them yet another country to use as a base of operations. The goal is not to stop ISIS or even effect regime change in Syria alone - but rather hand Syria over as a failed, divided state to terrorists to use as a springboard against Iran, then Russia and China.
  • Clearly, ISIS' appearance in Libya negates entirely the already incomprehensible strategy the US has proposed of needing to first depose the Syrian government, then fight ISIS. The Syrian government, like that of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, is the only effective force currently fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda's many other franchises operating in the region. Deposing the government in Damascus would compound the fight against sectarian terrorists - and the West is fully aware of that. Therefore, attempts to topple the secular government in Damascus is in every way the intentional aiding and abetting of ISIS and the sharing in complicity of all the horrific daily atrocities ISIS and its affiliates are carrying out. The morally bankrupt, insidious, dangerous, and very genocidal plans hatched in 2007 and executed in earnest in 2011 illustrate that ISIS alone is not the greatest threat to global peace and stability, but also those that constitute its multinational state sponsors. The very West purportedly defending civilization is the chief protagonist destroying it worldwide.  
Paul Merrell

Blackwater Founder Remains Free and Rich While His Former Employees Go Down on Murder C... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...blackwater-guilty-verdicts

war & peace Iraq Blackwater criminal-prosecution convictions

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. The company, founded by secretive right-wing Christian supremacist Erik Prince, pictured above, had deep ties to the Bush Administration and served as a sort of neoconservative Praetorian Guard for a borderless war launched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. While Barack Obama pledged to reign in mercenary forces when he was a senator, once he became president he continued to employ a massive shadow army of private contractors. Blackwater — despite numerous scandals, congressional investigations, FBI probes and documented killings of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan — remained a central part of the Obama administration’s global war machine throughout his first term in office.
  • Just as with the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, it is only the low level foot-soldiers of Blackwater that are being held accountable. Prince and other top Blackwater executives continue to reap profits from the mercenary and private intelligence industries. Prince now has a new company, Frontier Services Group, which he founded with substantial investment from Chinese enterprises and which focuses on opportunities in Africa. Prince recently suggested that his forces at Blackwater could have confronted Ebola and ISIS. “If the administration cannot rally the political nerve or funding to send adequate active duty ground forces to answer the call, let the private sector finish the job,” he wrote. None of the U.S. officials from the Bush and Obama administrations who unleashed Blackwater and other mercenary forces across the globe are being forced to answer for their role in creating the conditions for the Nisour Square shootings and other deadly incidents involving private contractors. Just as the main architect of the CIA interrogation program, Jose Rodriguez, is on a book tour for his propagandistic love letter to torture, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, so too is Erik Prince pushing his own revisionist memoir, Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.
  • While the Blackwater verdict is an important and rare moment of accountability in an overwhelmingly unaccountable private war industry, it does not erase the fact that those in power—the CEOs, the senior officials, the war profiteers—walk freely and will likely do so for the rest of their lives.
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  • Filmmaker Richard Rowley and I produced a 30 minute documentary on the Nisour Square massacre and the story of Ali Kinani for Democracy Now! and The Nation magazine:
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