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Gary Edwards

Revealed: Obama's Immense Shadow Army & Its Shocking Takeover Plan - 1 views

www.libertynews.com/...rmy-its-shocking-takeover-plan

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    Is the ObamaCare train wreck a wreck by design? Another notch in the Bankster belt marking another step in the bankrupting of America? Revealed: Obama's Immense Shadow Army & Its Shocking Takeover Plan October 26, 2013  //  By: Eric Odom  //   The ObamaCare train wreck - it's awful, possibly purposeful, certainly useful for team Obama and its growing army of community activists and organizers. In a previous report, we explored the question, "What if the ObamaCare debacle is really a diversion, using a military term a "feint" - a tactical distraction to draw our attention, our focus and our fire away from the real point of attack on liberty?" Remember that horrible train wreck in Spain not long ago, captured on video? As tragic as it was, watching the crash and its gruesome aftermath was almost irresistible, wasn't it? Well, what if the disastrous rollout of the President's signature legislative achievement - what if this spectacular slow motion ObamaCare train wreck has been and is being allowed to happen so that what's going on around the bend from the fiery crash site gets little attention, from the public, from the media or from Congressional investigators? Think about it, friends. How could Barack Obama and his celebrated team of incredibly proficient, plugged in techies - the team that twice got him elected - be behind the utterly disastrous launch of the ObamaCare online storefront, healthcare.gov - arguably the biggest website failure in history? How could so much money have been spent to produce such a problem-plagued site that apparently was doomed in its developmental confusion? And how to fix this monumental mess, well, there doesn't seem to be any clear plan…other than hope. And now we learn that many, if not most, of the people actually signing up for ObamaCare through the website are enrolling in Medicaid, not signing up for private insurance policies they pay for, but adding their names onto government roll
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    There is no doubt in my mind that corporations (and their Chamber of Commerce boot licking lackys) believe that employer provided healthcare benefits was a HUGE MISTAKE. The key feature of ObamaCare is that of ENDING the HMO-Employee Healthcare profit draining quagmire these corporations somehow stumbled into. (Hint: they traded healthcare benefits for wide open government assisted Globalization - the new world order Merchantilism). IMHO, the insurance companies know full well that the entire HMO-Employee Healthcare bandwagon is going to end. Not because of socialism; because of profit hungry out of control mercantilism. So they are trying to cut the best deal possible with the government. The merchantilist doesn't care that their employees are going to suffer. They only care that this cost and the blame for losing the benefit is moved from their books to the government. Nor does the merchantilist care about protecting our borders. They want cheap labor. Even if the social cost of that cheap labor lands on the government and destroys the nation. That's why the merchantilist and his Bankster financiers support Open Borders. The merchantilist could care less about the trade deficit and the massive transfer of American manufacturing jobs overseas. As long as they can sell their junk back into the USA market without a 33% import tax these bastardos are happy to destroy their country. I wonder whose army and navy will secure their investments when the USA no longer can? Are their private armies enough? Just wondering.
Paul Merrell

Blowback! U.S. trained ISIS at secret Jordan base - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...-isis-at-secret-base-in-jordan

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq Jordan ISIL training

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.
  • The officials said dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq.
  • Last March, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported Americans were training Syrian rebels in Jordan. Quoting what it said were training participants and organizers, Der Spiegel reported it was not clear whether the Americans worked for private firms or were with the U.S. Army, but the magazine said some organizers wore uniforms. The training in Jordan reportedly focused on use of anti-tank weaponry. The German magazine reported some 200 men received the training over the previous three months amid U.S. plans to train a total of 1,200 members of the Free Syrian Army in two camps in the south and the east of Jordan. Britain’s Guardian newspaper also reported last March that U.S. trainers were aiding Syrian rebels in Jordan along with British and French instructors.
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  • Reuters reported a spokesman for the U.S. Defense Department declined immediate comment on the German magazine’s report. The French foreign ministry and Britain’s foreign and defense ministries also would not comment to Reuters. The Jordanian officials spoke to WND amid concern the sectarian violence in Iraq will spill over into their own country as well as into Syria. ISIS previously posted a video on YouTube threatening to move on Jordan and “slaughter” King Abdullah, whom they view as an enemy of Islam. WND reported last week that, according to Jordanian and Syrian regime sources, Saudi Arabia has been arming the ISIS and that the Saudis are a driving force in supporting the al-Qaida-linked group.
  • WND further reported that, according to a Shiite source in contact with a high official in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Obama administration has been aware for two months that the al-Qaida-inspired group that has taken over two Iraqi cities and now is threatening Baghdad also was training fighters in Turkey. The source told WND that at least one of the training camps of the group Iraq of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria, the ISIS, is in the vicinity of Incirlik Air Base near Adana, Turkey, where American personnel and equipment are located. He called Obama “an accomplice” in the attacks that are threatening the Maliki government the U.S. helped establish through the Iraq war. The source said that after training in Turkey, thousands of ISIS fighters went to Iraq by way of Syria to join the effort to establish an Islamic caliphate subject to strict Islamic law, or Shariah.
Paul Merrell

Rebooted Pentagon program trained fewer than 100 Syrians | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...trained-fewer-than-100-syrians

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria moderate-vetting spotters

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • The Pentagon has trained fewer than 100 additional Syrian fighters to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), according to a new report.The initiative’s results come after a total reboot of the Obama administration’s strategy for boosting Syrian combatants last October, The Washington Post reported on Monday.ADVERTISEMENTThe Post said most of the fighters that U.S. military personnel have trained received their education outside of Syria.Military officials told the newspaper that those trained are specialized fighters known as “spotters,” rather than typical infantry troops.“What we’re looking at now is taking out key enabler personnel from certain units, training them and then reinserting them so they can provide information to the coalition to enable us to then target ISIL,” one official said, using an alternate acronym for ISIS.The Washington Post said the Pentagon fields about 300 Special Operations troops on the ground in Syria. Those personnel are tasked with instructing a variety of friendly Syrian factions across the war-torn nation.The groups include fighters from northwest and southern Syria trained in the Pentagon’s original program. It also entails Kurdish fighters in northern and eastern Syria, plus Arab tribal forces near ISIS’s de facto capital of Raqqa.
  • The Obama administration announced last October after the Pentagon’s struggles vetting and training individual fighters.Christine E. Wormuth, undersecretary of defense for policy, said on Oct. 9, 2015 the program was on “operational pause” but could resume in the future.“What we’re really trying to do here is build on what has worked for us and learn from some of the things that have been a lot more challenging,” Wormuth said.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Jun 16
     
    $300 million so far; less than 200 Syrian "moderates" trained and armed, over half of which defected to Al-Nusrah immediately after being reinserted in Syria. What a boondoggle.
Paul Merrell

Moon of Alabama - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy moderate-rebels military-defeat

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15 - Cached
  • Over the last year the U.S. bombed Jabhat al-Nusra personal and facilities in Syria some five or six times. The al-Qaeda subgroup also has a history of attacking U.S. paid "relative moderate" proxy forces in Syria. The Pentagon recently inserted another U.S. mercenary group into north Syria. This was accompanied by a media campaign in which the administration lauded itself for the operation. The newly inserted group is especially trained and equipped to direct U.S. air attacks like those that earlier hit al-Nusra fighters. Now that freshly inserted group was attacked by Jabhat al-Nusra. Some of its members were killed and others were abducted. The Obama administration is shocked, SHOCKED, ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED that Jabhat al-Nusra would do such a ghastly deed. "Why would they do that?" "Who could have known that they would attack U.S. proxy forces???"
  • There is no longer an Jihadist ISIS or ISIL in Syria and Iraq. The people leading that entity declared (pdf) today, at the highly symbolic beginning of Ramadan, themselves to be a new caliphate:
  • Could someone explain to the fucking dimwits in the Pentagon and the Obama administrations that people everywhere, and especially terrorists group, hate it when you bomb them and kill their leaders? That those people you bomb might want to take revenge against you and your proxies? That people you bombed will not like your targeting team moving in next door to them? That alQaeda is not an "ally"? These people are too pathetically clueless to even be embarrassed about it. The accumulated intelligence quotient of the administration and Pentagon officials running the anti-Syria operation must be below three digits. But aside from their lack of basic intelligence the utter lack of simple "street smarts" is the real problem here. These people have no idea how life works outside of their beltway cages.
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  • On more thought from me on why the dimwits did not foresee that Nusra would attack. The White House insisted on calling a part of Nusra the "Khorasan group" and explained that it was only bombing this groups of alQaeda veterans now part of Nusra because the "Khorasan group" planning to hit in "western" countries. No expert nor anyone on the ground in Syria thought that this differentiation was meaningful. Nusra is alQaeda and so are all of its members. But the White House and Pentagon probably thought that Nusra would accept the artificial separation they themselves had made up. That Nusra would understand that it is seen as an "ally" and only the "Khorasan group" is seen as an enemy. If that was the line of thinking, and the situation seems to point to that, then these people have fallen for their own propaganda stunt. They probably believed that the "Khorasan group" was an accepted narrative because they were telling that tale to themselves. Poor idiots.
  • UPDATE: The one sane guy at the Council of Foreign relations, Micah Zenko, foresaw this debacle and wrote on March 2: [The U.S. trained mercenaries] will immediately be an attractive target for attacks by the Islamic State, Assad’s ground and air forces, and perhaps Nusra and other forces. Killing or taking prisoner fighters (or the families of those fighters) who were trained by the U.S. military will offer propaganda value, as well as leverage, to bargain for those prisoners’ release. He compared the whole operation to the 1961 CIA invasion of Cuba: Last September, the White House and Congress agreed to authorize and fund a train-and-equip project similar to the Bay of Pigs, but this time in the Middle East, without any discussion about phase two. The Syrian project resembles 1961 in two ways: What happens when the fighting starts is undecided, and the intended strategic objective is wholly implausible.
  • The attack on Friday was mounted by the Nusra Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. It came a day after the Nusra Front captured two leaders and at least six fighters of Division 30, which supplied the first trainees to graduate from the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State training program. In Washington, several current and former senior administration officials acknowledged that the attack and the abductions by the Nusra Front took American officials by surprise and amounted to a significant intelligence failure. While American military trainers had gone to great lengths to protect the initial group of trainees from attacks by Islamic State or Syrian Army forces, they did not anticipate an assault from the Nusra Front. In fact, officials said on Friday, they expected the Nusra Front to welcome Division 30 as an ally in its fight against the Islamic State....A senior Defense Department official acknowledged that the threat to the trainees and their Syrian recruiters had been misjudged, and said that officials were trying to understand why the Nusra Front had turned on the trainees. Like other Obama administration operations this one did not fail because of "intelligence failure" but because an utter lack of common sense.
  • U.S. media can no agree with itself if Russia is giving ISIS an airforce or if Russia pounds ISIS with the biggest bomber raid in decades. Such confusion occurs when propaganda fantasies collide with the observable reality. To bridge such divide requires some fudging. So when the U.S. claims to act against the finances of the Islamic State while not doing much, the U.S Public Broadcasting Service has to use footage of Russian airstrikes against the Islamic State while reporting claimed U.S. airstrike successes. The U.S. military recently claimed to have hit Islamic State oil tankers in Syria. This only after Putin embarrassed Obama at the G-20 meeting in Turkey. Putin showed satellite pictures of ridiculous long tanker lines waiting for days and weeks to load oil from the Islamic State without any U.S. interference.
  • The U.S. then claimed to have hit 116 oil tankers while the Russian air force claims to have hit 500. But there is an important difference between these claims. The Russians provided videos showing how their airstrikes hit at least two different very large oil tanker assemblies with hundreds of tankers in each. They also provided video of several hits on oil storage sites and refinery infrastructure. I have found no video of U.S. hits on Islamic State oil tanker assemblies. The U.S. PBS NewsHour did not find any either. In their TV report yesterday about Islamic State financing and the claimed U.S. hits on oil trucks they used the videos Russia provided without revealing the source. You can see the Russian videos played within an interview with a U.S. military spokesperson at 2:22 min.
  • The U.S. military spokesperson speaks on camera about U.S. airforce hits against the Islamic State. The video cuts to footage taken by Russian airplanes hitting oil tanks and then trucks. The voice-over while showing the Russian video with the Russians blowing up trucks says: "For the first time the U.S. is attacking oil delivery trucks." The video then cuts back to the U.S. military spokesperson. At no point is the Russian campaign mentioned or the source of the footage revealed. Any average viewer of the PBS report will assume that the black and white explosions of oil trucks and tanks are from of U.S. airstrikes filmed by U.S. air force planes. The U.S. military itself admitted that its strikes on IS oil infrastructure over the last year were "minimally effective". One wonders then how effective the claimed strike against 116 trucks really was. But unless we have U.S. video of such strikes and not copies of Russian strike video fraudulently passed off as U.S. strikes we will not know if those strikes happened at all.
  • The wannabe Sultan Erdogan did not get his will in Syria where he had planned to capture and annex Aleppo. The Russians prevented that. He now goes for his secondary target, Mosul in Iraq, which many Turks see as historic part of their country
  • Mosul, Iraq's second biggest city with about a million inhabitants, is currently occupied by the Islamic State. On Friday a column of some 1,200 Turkish soldiers with some 20 tanks and heavy artillery moved into a camp near Mosul. The camp was one of four small training areas where Turkey was training Kurds and some Sunni-Arab Iraqis to fight the Islamic State. The small camps in the northern Kurdish area have been there since the 1990s. They were first established to fight the PKK. Later their Turkish presence was justified as ceasefire monitors after an agreement ended the inner Kurdish war between the KDP forces loyal to the Barzani clan and the PUK forces of the Talabani clan. The bases were actually used to monitor movement of the PKK forces which fight for Kurdish independence in Turkey. The base near Mosul is new and it was claimed to be just a small weapons training base. But tanks and artillery have a very different quality than some basic AK-47 training. Turkey says it will increase the numbers in these camps to over 2000 soldiers.
  • Should Mosul be cleared of the Islamic State the Turkish heavy weapons will make it possible for Turkey to claim the city unless the Iraqi government will use all its power to fight that claim. Should the city stay in the hands of the Islamic State Turkey will make a deal with it and act as its protector. It will benefit from the oil around Mosul which will be transferred through north Iraq to Turkey and from there sold on the world markets. In short: This is an effort to seize Iraq's northern oil fields. That is the plan but it is a risky one. Turkey did not ask for permission to invade Iraq and did not inform the Iraqi government. The Turks claim that they were invited by the Kurds: Turkey will have a permanent military base in the Bashiqa region of Mosul as the Turkish forces in the region training the Peshmerga forces have been reinforced, Hürriyet reported. The deal regarding the base was signed between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioğlu, during the latter’s visit to northern Iraq on Nov. 4. There are two problems with this. First: Massoud Barzani is no longer president of the KRG. His mandate ran out and the parliament refused to prolong it. Second: Mosul and its Bashiqa area are not part of the KRG. Barzani making a deal about it is like him making a deal about Paris.
  • The Iraqi government and all major Iraqi parties see the Turkish invasion as a hostile act against their country. Abadi demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Turkish forces but it is unlikely that Turkey will act on that. Some Iraqi politicians have called for the immediate dispatch of the Iraqi air force to bomb the Turks near Mosul. That would probably the best solution right now but the U.S. installed Premier Abadi is too timid to go for such strikes. The thinking in Baghdad is that Turkey can be kicked out after the Islamic State is defeated. But this thinking gives Turkey only more reason to keep the Islamic State alive and use it for its own purpose. The cancer should be routed now as it is still small. Barzani's Kurdistan is so broke that is has even confiscated foreign bank accounts to pay some bills. That may be the reason why Barzani agreed to the deal now. But the roots run deeper. Barzani is illegally selling oil that belongs to the Iraqi government to Turkey. The Barzani family occupies  not only the presidential office in the KRG but also the prime minister position and the local secret services. It is running the oil business and gets a big share of everything else. On the Turkish side the oil deal is handled within the family of President Erdogan. His son in law, now energy minister, had the exclusive right to transport the Kurdish oil through Turkey. Erdogan's son controls the shipping company that transports the oil over sea to the customer, most often Israel. The oil under the control of the Islamic State in Iraq passes the exactly same route. These are businesses that generate hundreds of millions per year.
  • It is unlikely that U.S., if it is not behinds Turkey new escapade, will do anything about it. The best Iraq could do now is to ask the Russians for their active military support. The Turks insisted on their sovereignty when they ambushed a Russian jet that brushed its border but had no intend of harming Turkey. Iraq should likewise insist on its sovereignty, ask Russia for help and immediately kick the Turks out. The longer it waits the bigger the risk that Turkey will eventually own Mosul.
  • Another fake news item currently circling is that Trump has given order to the military to create safe zones for Syria. The reality is still far from it: [H]is administration crafted a draft order that would direct the Pentagon and the State Department to submit plans for the safe zones within 90 days. The order hasn't yet been issued. The draft of the order, which will be endlessly revised, says that safe zones could be in Syria or in neighboring countries. The Pentagon has always argued against such zones in Syria and the plans it will submit, should such an order be issued at all, will reflect that. The safe zones in Syria ain't gonna happen
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Aug 15
     
    So the first group of U.S. trained "moderate" Syrian opposition fighters are an epic fail. Who'd of thunk? 
Paul Merrell

U.S. considers training Ukrainian army troops: general | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...isis-usa-idUSKCN0PN2GQ20150713

war & peace Ukraine U.S.-foreign-policy training mission-creep

shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • U.S. officials are considering expanding the American military training mission in Ukraine to include army and special operations troops, likely focusing on issues like tactics and combat medicine, a top U.S. Army general said on Monday.Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, the head of U.S. Army forces in Europe, said expanding the mission from training interior ministry guardsmen to training forces under the control of the defense ministry did not mean the administration would provide Ukraine with lethal arms."I think those are probably two completely different (things)," Hodges said. "The training we're doing right now is with them using their own equipment."The United States has provided Ukrainian forces with non-lethal aid to help them battle Russian-backed rebels, but the administration has resisted providing lethal arms.Hodges told Pentagon reporters the United States had given millions of dollars worth of equipment to Ukraine, including armored Humvee military vehicles, helmets, body armor, night-vision goggles and thousands of pounds of medical supplies.
  • Lightweight counter-mortar radar supplied by the United States had been particularly valuable for the Ukrainians, who have used the system in ways "I don't think we realized you could do," Hodges said.
  • About 310 members of the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, based in Vicenza, Italy, are currently training the second of three battalions of Ukrainian national guardsmen at the International Peacekeeping and Security Center at Yavoriv in western Ukraine near the Polish border. Training of the third battalion is expected to conclude by Nov. 15, after which the United States and other Western allies could begin training regular Ukrainian military forces, if they can agree on the details and a training program with Kiev. Hodges said Canada, Lithuania and Britain have helped train Ukrainian troops.He said no final decision had yet been made on training army forces, but the issue was under review and an answer was likely soon.
Paul Merrell

US-trained Syrian rebels refuse to fight ​al-Qaida group after kidnappings | ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...usra-front-al-qaida-kidnapping

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy flop Division30

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • A group of Syrian rebels that includes fighters trained by the United States have declared their refusal to fight al-Qaida’s affiliate in the country, the Nusra Front, following a series of kidnappings by the militant group. A source in Division 30, which has endured a campaign of kidnappings by the Nusra Front, said they also oppose the American air strikes carried out in the last few days against the al-Qaida-linked fighters. The statements complicate the American strategy in Syria, which has suffered a string of setbacks and delays, deploying just over 50 fighters dedicated to fighting the terror group Islamic State in the year since its programme to train and equip rebels began. “With all the immense military power the US has at its disposal, the start to the mission is nothing short of an embarrassment and if it has any hope of succeeding, it needs to show results fast,” said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and an expert on Syrian insurgent groups. The Nusra Front launched a campaign of kidnappings and attacks against Division 30 shortly after the arrival of the first contingent of 50 to 60 US-trained fighters from Turkey, accusing the group of seeking to spread American influence.
  • The Qaida affiliate, whose fighters have pledged allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, kidnapped Division 30’s overall commander last week along with six others as they planned an offensive against Isis positions in northern Aleppo. Nusra then attacked Division 30’s headquarters, killing five fighters and wounding 18 others, as the US-backed rebel group appealed for peace. The American-led coalition that has been assembled to fight Isis bombed Nusra positions in Syria in apparent retaliation. The US had previously targeted a Nusra-affiliated faction known as the Khorasan Group, which the Americans say is planning attacks against the west from inside Syria. Nusra’s leader has denied the group exists. Nusra’s campaign against the US-backed rebel unit continued this week, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring network with wide contacts inside Syria, saying Nusra kidnapped five more members of Division 30. A source in the US-backed group said those captured were actually families of the fighters.
  • “Division 30 was formed by the honorable sons of Syria to free their nation from Assad’s gangs and Daesh [Isis],” the statement said. “Division 30 pledges before the Syrian people to commit to the principles under which it was formed and to not be dragged into any side battle with any faction, and that it has not fought and will not fight the Nusra Front or any other faction regardless of name or ideology.” A source in Division 30 told the Guardian the group still has members training with the US and that they opposed American airstrikes against Nusra. “We have nothing to do with the coalition strikes, that is the truth and we are opposed to strikes against the Nusra Front’s facilities to this day,” the source said. “Our goal is clear – Daesh followed by the regime.” The latest declarations raise questions about the ability of the US to influence the rebels it has trained on the ground, and the viability of such an effort within Syria’s complex web of insurgent politics and alliances, where Isis and Nusra have emerged as two of the most powerful groups fighting on the ground.
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  • It is unclear how many of the rebels actually trained by the US have been incapacitated in the campaign, with conflicting reports from activists and the rebel group itself, which says only one of its US-trained fighters has “disappeared”. In a new statement after the latest spate of kidnappings, Division 30 pledged never to fight Nusra and said it was focused on fighting Isis and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
  • “The group almost certainly does not believe some of the things it has said lately, including protesting at US strikes on Nusra, but you can hardly blame them for such attempts at rescuing their credibility on the ground,” said Lister. “It’s quite telling in fact that a majority of the mainstream opposition now views Division 30 and the train and equip mission with intense suspicion – not only for the lack of regime focus, but for the disastrous start the 54 fighters have had.”
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Aug 15
     
    So the U.S. was planning on training 5,000 "moderate" Syrian rebels a year to first fight ISIL and then Assad. But after months of delay, they could only come up with 60 trainees. Now that "Division 60" is chewed up, leaderless, and refuses to fight. U.S. foreign poiicy seems to have issues in its implementation in the Mideast.
Paul Merrell

White House: racial slurs in NSA intelligence material 'unacceptable' | World news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...racial-slurs-training-material

surveillance state NSA NSA-targets Muslims NSA-blowback

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The White House has instructed US security agencies to review their training and policy materials for racial or religious bias after documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed training material for the intelligence agencies referring to "Mohammed Raghead".After an extensive investigation by the Intercept on Wednesday reported that the NSA and the FBI spied on the emails of five prominent US activists and attorneys with Muslim backgrounds, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said that the administration took accusations of the slurs "extremely seriously." "Upon learning of this matter, the White House immediately requested that the director of national intelligence undertake an assessment of intelligence community policies, training standards or directives that promote diversity and tolerance, and as necessary, make any recommendations changes or additional reforms," Hayden said.It is at least the second time the White House has ordered a review of agency training materials said to include offensive language.
  • Hayden declined to provide additional detail on the scope or duration of the investigation. But it is reminiscent of an earlier incident in which the White House ordered the government's vast counter-terrorism apparatus to find and purge inflammatory training material, particularly that which singled out Muslims for particular scrutiny. In 2011, this reporter published FBI training material instructing newer counter-terrorism agents that Islam itself was a threat to US national security and compared the prophet Muhammad to a cult leader. Initial FBI pushback gave way to an inquiry, at the instruction of the White House, that removed significant quantities of offensive or imprecise training material. That instruction came six years after the "Mohammed Raghead" material and stretched far beyond the FBI. Anti-Islam training material, including some urging "Hiroshima" tactics against Islamic nations, was found and removed from professional education courses for US military officers, at the behest of Army General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
  • The accusation is one of the gravest the US intelligence agencies have faced in the year since the Guardian and other news outlets began publishing material leaked by Snowden. A central aspect of the intelligence agency's public defense is that it cannot surveil US persons for constitutionally-protected activity and that its court-certified privacy protections are too robust to allow for privacy intrusions of the sort the Intercept reported.The allegation threatens to sever the tenuous relationship between US law enforcement and surveillance agencies and American Muslim communities, many of whom have long suspected that their government views them as an internal threat and not a population to be protected.The NSA, the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence sharply pushed back against the accusations that protected speech, unrelated to terrorism or espionage, turned American Muslims into counterterrorism targets.
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  • The Obama administration has strained to reconcile the vast counter-terrorism bureaucracy with its policy declarations that the US is not at war with Islam and has attempted, with mixed results, to cultivate a less militarized and security-focused relationship with US Muslims, often preferring the term "countering violent extremism" over "counter-terrorism".In some anti-Islam circles, the removal of the instructional material is infamous and considered evidence of an administration capitulation to Islam – the exact opposite of the concern raised by the Intercept on Wednesday. The Intercept report, by former Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, Murtaza Hussain and Josh Meyer, suggested a persistent counter-terrorism atmosphere in which the mixture of Muslim heritage or faith and political activism attracted the scrutiny of US security agencies, despite first amendment protections. It presented the cases of five American activists and attorneys of Muslim heritage who appear to have been targeted for surveillance, at least between 2002 and 2008. None have been charged with a crime.
  • US Muslim leaders and civil rights groups reacted with fury to the Intercept report.A coalition of 44 civil rights organizations wrote Obama on Wednesday to request a meeting with him, attorney general Eric Holder and FBI director James Comey. "In short, the government’s domestic counterterrorism policies treat entire minority communities as suspect, and American Muslims have borne the brunt of government suspicion, stigma and abuse," reads an open letter issued by a coalition that includes the ACLU, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Arab-American Institute, and dozens of others.In a statement, the law firm Muslim Advocates said the spying, apparently conducted between 2002 and 2008, "confirms the worst fears of American Muslims"."The federal government has targeted Americans, even those who have served their country in the military and government, simply because of their faith or religious heritage," the group said. "The report clearly documents how biased training by the FBI leads to biased surveillance."
  • Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, issued a statement comparing the surveillance of Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, named by the Intercept as one of the five surveillance targets, to the infamous surveillance of the Civil Rights Movement."The NSA’s surveillance of Nihad Awad and CAIR fits the same pattern as the FBI surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr, Ella Baker, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, and other leaders of the civil rights movement. Then it was based on manufactured suspicions of associations with the Communist party. Now it is seemingly based on unproven claims of tangential associations with Hamas," Warren said.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14
     
    Don't look for the American Muslim community to let go of this one anytime soon. They know they've been profiled since 9-11 but finally have proof.
Gary Edwards

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet' | World ne... - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...top-secret-program-online-data

Edward-Snowden Glenn-Greenwald NSA NSA-Patriot-Act-NDAA NSA-Whistleblower

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight.
  • The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10
  • "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".
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  • US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."
  • But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.
  • XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers "nearly everything a typical user does on the internet", including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.
  • Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity.
  • Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a 'US person', though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets.
  • But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.
  • One training slide illustrates the digital activity constantly being collected by XKeyscore and the analyst's ability to query the databases at any time.
  • The purpose of XKeyscore is to allow analysts to search the metadata as well as the content of emails and other internet activity, such as browser history, even when there is no known email account (a "selector" in NSA parlance) associated with the individual being targeted.
  • Analysts can also search by name, telephone number, IP address, keywords, the language in which the internet activity was conducted or the type of browser used.
  • One document notes that this is because "strong selection [search by email address] itself gives us only a very limited capability" because "a large amount of time spent on the web is performing actions that are anonymous."
  • Email monitoring
  • One top-secret document describes how the program "searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents", including the "To, From, CC, BCC lines" and the 'Contact Us' pages on websites".
  • To search for emails, an analyst using XKS enters the individual's email address into a simple online search form, along with the "justification" for the search and the time period for which the emails are sought.
  • One document, a top secret 2010 guide describing the training received by NSA analysts for general surveillance under the Fisa Amendments Act of 2008, explains that analysts can begin surveillance on anyone by clicking a few simple pull-down menus designed to provide both legal and targeting justifications.
  • Once options on the pull-down menus are selected, their target is marked for electronic surveillance and the analyst is able to review the content of their communications:
  • Chats, browsing history and other internet activity
  • Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.
  • An NSA tool called DNI Presenter, used to read the content of stored emails, also enables an analyst using XKeyscore to read the content of Facebook chats or private messages.
  • The XKeyscore program also allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies.
  • The quantity of communications accessible through programs such as XKeyscore is staggeringly large. One NSA report from 2007 estimated that there were 850bn "call events" collected and stored in the NSA databases, and close to 150bn internet records. Each day, the document says, 1-2bn records were added.
  • William Binney, a former NSA mathematician, said last year that the agency had "assembled on the order of 20tn transactions about US citizens with other US citizens", an estimate, he said, that "only was involving phone calls and emails". A 2010 Washington Post article reported that "every day, collection systems at the [NSA] intercept and store 1.7bn emails, phone calls and other type of communications."
  • The ACLU's deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, told the Guardian last month that national security officials expressly said that a primary purpose of the new law was to enable them to collect large amounts of Americans' communications without individualized warrants.
  • "The government doesn't need to 'target' Americans in order to collect huge volumes of their communications," said Jaffer. "The government inevitably sweeps up the communications of many Americans" when targeting foreign nationals for surveillance.
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Aug 13
     
    "One presentation claims the XKeyscore program covers 'nearly everything a typical user does on the internet' ................................................................. A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The NSA boasts in training materials that the program, called XKeyscore, is its "widest-reaching" system for developing intelligence from the internet. The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email". US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do." But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA's "widest reaching" system developing intelligence from computer networks - what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Aug 13
     
    "But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. " Note in that regard that Snowden said in an earlier interview that use of this system rarely was audited and that when audited, the most common request if changes were requested was to beef up the justification for the search. The XScore system puts the lie to just about everything the Administration has claimed about intense oversight by all three branches of federal government and about not reading emails or listening to (Skype) phone calls. The lies keep stacking up in an ever-deepening pile.
Paul Merrell

Saudi Arabia Hosting Training Camps For Syrian Rebels - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/-training-syrian-rebels-2014-9

war & peace ISIL Syria Saudis moderate-rebels training U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has agreed to host training camps for moderate Syrian rebels as part of President Barack Obama's broad strategy to combat Islamic State militants who have taken over parts of Syria and Iraq, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The agreement, outlined by Obama's aides on the night of his speech to the American people laying out his expanded campaign against the Islamist group, appeared to reflect the depth of Saudi concern about Islamic State's threat to the region. Obama announced he had authorized stepped-up U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and for the first time would extend the aerial assault into Syria, where he also vowed to beef up support for moderate rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. officials said a critical component of the plan to train and equip the Syrian insurgents, who have received only modest American backing so far and have failed to coalesce into a potent fighting force, was the Saudis' willingness to allow use of their territory for the U.S. training effort.
  • "Now what we have is a commitment from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia ... to be a full partner with us in that effort, including by hosting that training program," a senior U.S. official told reporters in a conference call. The Saudi decision came to light after Obama spoke by phone earlier in the day with Saudi King Abdullah. Saudi Arabia, the main Arab Sunni power in the region, was dismayed last September when Obama backed off air strikes against Assad's forces over the use of chemical weapons, and had pressed Washington to do more to strengthen the poorly organized moderate Syrian rebels. "Both leaders agreed that a stronger Syrian opposition is essential to confronting extremists like (Islamic State) as well as the Assad regime, which has lost all legitimacy," the White Housesaid. The Obama administration wants the Syrian rebels to play a role in the fight against the stronger Islamic State forces inside Syria. U.S. officials declined to specify where on Saudi territory the rebels would be trained. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, on a Middle East mission to drum up support for a coalition against Islamic State, is due to fly from Amman to Saudi Arabia on Thursday. He will have talks there with senior officials from Egypt, Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which comprises Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates,Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, is unnerved by the rapid advance of Islamic State this year and fears it could radicalize some of its own citizens. Arab League foreign ministers agreed on Sunday to take all necessary measures to confront Islamic State.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Sep 14
     
    "Moderate rebels" from Syria willing to travel to Saudi Arabia to be trained to fight both ISIL and Syria. Moderate, my a-s.  Obama decided that he did not need Congressional authorization because the post-9/11 authorization for use of military force was sufficient authority. Oh, really? Broad enough to encompass waging war against Syria? The 2001 AUMF authorized the Executive "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." Are we now to pretend that Syria played any such part? Or that ISIL, which has been specifically disavowed by Al Qaeda as too radical, had such a role? 
Paul Merrell

Syrian rebels: Turkey tipped al Qaida group to U.S.-trained fighters | McClatchy DC - 0 views

www.mcclatchydc.com/...article32206167.html

war & peace syria U.S.-foreign-policy Turkey Division30 betrayal

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • The kidnapping of a group of U.S.-trained moderate Syrians moments after they entered Syria last month to confront the Islamic State was orchestrated by Turkish intelligence, multiple rebel sources have told McClatchy.The rebels say that the tipoff to al Qaida’s Nusra Front enabled Nusra to snatch many of the 54 graduates of the $500 million program on July 29 as soon as they entered Syria, dealing a humiliating blow to the Obama administration’s plans for confronting the Islamic State. Rebels familiar with the events said they believe the arrival plans were leaked because Turkish officials were worried that while the group’s intended target was the Islamic State, the U.S.-trained Syrians would form a vanguard for attacking Islamist fighters that Turkey is close to, including Nusra and another major Islamist force, Ahrar al Sham.A senior official at the Turkish Foreign Ministry, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, declined to respond to questions about the incident, saying any discussion of Turkey’s relationship with Nusra was off limits.
  • Other Turkish officials acknowledged the likely accuracy of the claims, though none was willing to discuss the topic for attribution. One official from southern Turkey said the arrival plans for the graduates of the so-called train-and-equip program were leaked to Nusra in hopes the rapid disintegration of the program would push the Americans into expanding the training and arming of rebel groups focused on toppling the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said the U.S. military, which oversees the program, had seen “no indications that Turkish officials alerted the Nusra Front to the movements” of the U.S.-trained forces. “Turkey is a NATO ally, close friend of the United States and an important partner in the international coalition” against the Islamic State, he said in an email.The United States and Turkey have clashed for years over what U.S. officials characterize as Turkey’s willingness to work with Nusra, which the U.S. declared a foreign terrorist organization nearly three years ago. Turkey also has openly criticized the train-and-equip program for its insistence that participants agree to focus their efforts on defeating the Islamic State, not on battling Assad.The abductions opened the program to ridicule in the United States, where supporters of arming Syrian rebels quickly used it to make their case that Obama administration policy toward the Syrian conflict is inept.
  • “Only the Americans and the Turks knew” about the plans for the train-and-equip fighters to enter Syria, said an officer of Division 30, the rebel group with which the newly trained Syrians were to work. “We have sources who tell us the Turks warned Nusra that they would be targeted by this group.”
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 15
     
    The empire's Turkish branch is in a state of disorder.
Paul Merrell

1,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne headed to Iraq - U.S. - Stripes - 0 views

www.stripes.com/...rborne-headed-to-iraq-1.320194

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq boots-on-the-ground training™

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Approximately 1,000 paratroopers from the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne Division will deploy to Iraq early next year to help the Iraqi security forces take on the Islamic State, the Pentagon announced Friday. The soldiers from the 82nd’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., will begin to deploy in late January to train, advise and assist the ISF, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters. Their mission is part of the coalition effort to build up the Iraqi army and Kurdish peshmerga so that they can recapture territory from Islamic State militants.
  • The paratroopers are preparing for a nine-month deployment, according to a spokeswoman for the 82nd Airborne. Approximately 300 troops from other Army, Air Force and Marine Corps units will also deploy to provide “enabler” support in areas such as counterintelligence, logistics, and signals, Kirby said. Last month, President Barack Obama authorized an additional 1,500 troops to deploy to Iraq to participate in the train, advise and assist mission. The deployment of elements of the 82nd Airborne is part of that initiative. On Thursday, Lt. Gen. James Terry, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, told reporters that other countries in the coalition are expected to contribute to another 1,500-strong force for the capacity-building effort.
  • Terry said the training effort “takes some patience,” and it will take “a minimum of three years” to fully build the capabilities of Iraqi forces. U.S. troops already in Iraq are laying the groundwork for the training program. But on Tuesday, Kirby said it will be “several months” before the formal training effort gets under way. The plan is to train nine Iraqi army brigades and three peshmerga brigades at four training sites throughout Iraq. On Friday, Kirby declined to identify the location of the sites, saying that force protection measures are still being put in place. The additional advisers will be in Anbar province and areas north of Baghdad, according to Kirby. He said the training and advising will take place at bases and higher headquarters, not near the front lines of the fighting.
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

Media Blackout over Syria | Global Research - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5376861

war & peace Syria media-blackout

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • On April 6, The London Review of Books published in its online journal Seymour Hersh’s “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” Hersh continues to expose details surrounding the staged August 21 chemical attack incident in Syria, which apparently pretty much everyone in Washington’s intelligence bureaucracy suspected was carried out by the rebels as soon as it happened. Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist whose 40+ years career includes the exposing of the My Lai Massacre  and its cover-up, as well as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. His December 19 report, “Whose Sarin?” -was his first report to expose the Syria chemical attack hoax based on close contact with US Intelligence officials. While “Whose Sarin” was originally prepared for the Washington Post, the newspaper rejected it and a media blackout followed in American press. Currently, Hersh’s newest investigative findings are going unacknowledged in mainstream US media.
  • Hersh’s report confirms the following: Obama’s push for attack on Syria was halted last minute when evidence that the Syrian government had nothing to do with the August 21 chemical attack became too overwhelming It had been well known to US government officials throughout the summer of 2013 that Turkish PM Erdogan was supporting al-Nusra Front in attempts to manufacture Sarin US military knew of Turkish and Saudi program for bulk Sarin production inside Syria from the spring of 2013 UN inspectors knew the rebels were using chemical weapons on the battlefield since the spring of 2013 As a result of the staged chemical incident, the White House ordered readiness for a “monster strike” on Syria, which included “two B-22 air wings and two thousand pound bombs” -and a target list which included military and civilian infrastructure targets (note: most of these are in densely populated civilian areas)
  • Full military strike was set for September 2 UK defense officials relayed to their American counterparts in the lead up to planned attack: “We’re being set up here.” CIA, MI6, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey set up a “rat line” back in 2012 to run Libyan weapons into Syria via Turkey, including MANPADS; the Benghazi consulate was headquarters for the operation Obama OK’ed Turkish-Iranian gold export scam (that went from March 2012 to July 2013) which erupted in a Turkish scandal that nearly brought down the Erdogan government US Intelligence community had immediate doubts about Syrian regime responsibility for Aug. 21 attack, yet “reluctant to contradict the president” US government will not expose continued Turkey support of terrorism simply because “they’re a NATO ally”
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In addition, last Thursday freelance Middle East journalist Sara Elizabeth Williams broke the story of a CIA/US Military run training camp for Syrian rebels in the Jordanian desert. VICE UK ran her story, “I Learned to Fight Like an American at the FSA Training Camp in Jordan,” yet it too failed to make it across the Atlantic into American reporting. International Syria experts thought her story hugely significant, but it got little attention. Top Syria expert in the US, Joshua Landis, announced on his Twitter account Thursday: “Sara Williams gets the scoop on the top secret FSA Training Camp in Jordan.” This courageous young freelancer revealed, with photos, the ins and outs of this secretive facility -yet the mainstream carefully shielded Americans from knowledge of the explosive report. In email conversation with her this weekend, Williams told me: “The access was tough to get, but I think it was worth the effort: to my mind, it’s important that people know what their government is doing in their name, with their tax dollars.” According to her investigative report:
  • Confirmed: “US-run training camp” for Syrian rebels in Northern Jordan Rebel recruits go “off the grid” while in secretive training camp Rebel fighter: “The Americans who taught us wore military uniforms I did not recognize. We called them by their first names and they spoke English to us.” Camp awash with “American food and American dollars”: recruits eat Kentucky Fried Chicken and live in temporary “pre-fabricated housing” units Recruits sent through intense 40 day program, which includes exercise, training in anti-tank missiles, and boot camp style atmosphere with orders given by US military instructors Upon graduation, US trained insurgents slip back across Syria’s southern border Experts say there are more camps like this one American trained rebel insurgent says: “America is benefiting from the destruction and the killing in order to weaken both sides.”
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Apr 14
     
    It really says something about mainstream media when a story as explosive as Sy Hersh's new report on Obama's decision to postpone and then cancel military strikes on Syria is ignored by mainstream media. Hersh is one of the most respected of American war and intelligence journalists. 
Paul Merrell

Jordan 'cool to Syria rebel training plan' - Middle East - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...-plan-2014712151229669400.html

war & peace ISIL Jordan Syria Obama training-base appropriations legislation

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Jordan, where the US Central Intelligence Agency has been covertly training Syrian rebels for more than a year, is reluctant to host an expanded rebel instruction programme, US officials say. Jordan's reticence, confirmed by four US officials, is a potentially serious setback for President Barack Obama's proposed $500m initiative, announced in June, to train and arm moderate rebels fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and al-Qaeda-linked groups.  It could signal a larger challenge in finding suitable nations willing to host the US-led training at a time of heightened tensions across much of the Middle East. While US officials have not made a formal request to the Jordanian government, the country was widely considered a top choice to host the training due its close security relationship with the US, proximity to neighbouring Syria and a pool of more than 600,000 Syrian refugees.
  • US officials and analysts said Jordan fears violent retaliation from Syria if its territory is used for overt training conducted by US military units.  "Jordan told the US, 'No boots on the ground'," said one of the officials, who all requested anonymity because they were discussing sensitive US military arrangements. Other current and former US officials described the Jordanian position as less iron-clad, however, and said they still hoped to convince Jordan to participate in the programme, which must still be approved by the US Congress.
Paul Merrell

The Arab Spring: Made in the USA | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5484950

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Arab Spring NED Soros

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Arabesque$: Enquête sur le rôle des États-Unis dans les révoltes arabes (Investigation into the US Role in the Arab Uprisings) is an update of Ahmed Bensaada’s 2011 book L’Arabesque Américaine. It concerns the US government role in instigating, funding and coordinating the Arab Spring “revolutions.” Most of this history has been carefully suppressed by the western media.The new book devotes much more attention to the personalities leading the 2011 uprisings. Some openly admitted to receiving CIA funding. Others had no idea because it was deliberately concealed from them. A few (in Egypt and Syria) were officially charged with espionage. In Egypt, seven sought refuge in the US embassy in Cairo and had to be evacuated by the State Department.
  • According to Bensaada, the MENA Arab Spring revolutions have four unique features in common: None were spontaneous – all required careful and lengthy (5+ years) planning, by the State Department, CIA pass through foundations, George Soros, and the pro-Israel lobby.1 All focused exclusively on removing reviled despots without replacing the autocratic power structure that kept them in power. No Arab Spring protests made any reference whatsoever to powerful anti-US sentiment over Palestine and Iraq. All the instigators of Arab Spring uprisings were middle class, well educated youth who mysteriously vanished after 2011.
  • Follow the Money Relying mainly on Wikileaks cables and the websites of key CIA pass through foundations (which he reproduces in the appendix), Bensaada methodically lists every State Department conference and workshop the Arab Spring heroes attended, the dollar amounts spent on them by the State Department and key “democracy” promoting foundations3, the specific involvement of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Obama’s 2008 Internet campaign team in training Arab Spring cyperactivists in encryption technologies and social media skills, US embassy visits, and direct encounters with Hillary Clinton,  Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Barack Obama and Serbian trainers from CANVAS (the CIA-backed organization that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000). Bensaada focuses most heavily on the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt. TheWashington Post has estimated approximately 10,000 Egyptians took part in NED and USAID training in social media and nonviolent organizing techniques. For me the most astonishing information in this chapter concerned the role of an Egyptian exile (a former Egyptian policeman named Omar Afifi Suleiman) in coordinating the Tahrir Square protests from his office in Washington DC. According to Wikileaks, NED paid Suleiman a yearly stipend of $200,000+ between 2008-2011.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • When Nonviolence Fails Arabesques$ devotes far more attention to Libya, Syria and Yemen than Bensaada’s first book. In the section on Libya, Bensaada zeroes in on eleven key US assets who engineered the overthrow of Gaddafi. Some participated in the same State Department trainings as the Middle East opposition activists and instigated nonviolent Facebook and Twitter protests to coincide with the 2011 uprisings in Tunisian and Egypt. Others, in exile, underwent guerrilla training sponsored by the CIA, Mossad, Chad and Saudi Arabia. A few months after Gaddafi’s assassination, some of these same militants would lead Islamic militias attempting to overthrow Assad in Syria. Between 2005 and 2010, the State Department funneled $12 million to opposition groups opposed to Assad. The US also financed Syrian exiles in Britain to start an anti-government cable TV channel they beamed into Syria. In the section on Syria, Bensaada focuses on a handful of Syrian opposition activists who received free US training in cyberactivism and nonviolent resistance beginning in 2006. One, Ausama Monajed, is featured in the 2011 film How to Start a Revolution about a visit with Gene Sharp in 2006. Monajed and others worked closely with the US embassy, funded by the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). This is a State Department program that operates in countries (such as Libya and Syria) where USAID is banned. In February 2011, these groups posted a call on Twitter and Facebook for a Day of Rage. Nothing happened. When Sharpian techniques failed to produce a sizable nonviolent uprising, as in Libya, they and their allies (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan) were all set up to introduce Islamic mercenaries (many directly from Libya) to declare war on the Assad regime.
  • Dr. Bramhall is a retired American psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. She has published a free, downloadable non-fiction ebook 21st Century Revolution.
  • Paul Merrell on 29 Oct 15
     
    Alas, the book is apparently available only in French. 
Paul Merrell

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

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

war & peace ISIL moderate-rebels Obama Hillary

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

Pentagon plans to arm Sunni fighters vs. ISIS | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...vide-weapons-to-sunni-fighters

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq weapons-shipments arming-Sunnis

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 15 - No Cached
  • The Pentagon has plans to provide military equipment to Sunni tribal fighters, a Defense spokeswoman said on Wednesday, a shift from its current policy to provide the equipment only through the central government in Baghdad.The new plans come after Sunni tribal fighters faced an embarrassing defeat by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) last week in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. Fighters complained that they had not received payment or any U.S. military equipment from the central government.
  • ADVERTISEMENT"The Sunni Tribal units affiliated with the Iraqi government are currently trained by the [Iraqi Security Forces] and equipped by the [Government of Iraq] but there are plans to provide [Iraq Train and Equip Fund] equipment to tribal fighters in the future, with the approval and coordination of the GoI," said Pentagon spokeswoman Navy Cmdr. Elissa Smith in a statement. Pentagon officials also confirmed the Sunni tribal fighters in Ramadi had not received any training from the U.S.-led train and equip program, a linchpin of the Obama administration's strategy to allow Iraqi forces to take on ISIS fighters on the ground and supplant the need for U.S. troops. And although Congress approved a $1.6 billion Iraq Train and Equip Fund in December to provide weapons and equipment to the Iraqi Security Forces, including Sunni tribal fighters, it was unclear whether any of it had made it to Sunni forces who fought in Ramadi.
  • The U.S. has left the tasks of training and equipping Sunni forces up to the Shiite-dominated central government, in an effort to bolster the central government and get the two rival ethnic groups to overcome sectarian mistrust and tension. However, administration officials in recent days have expressed that training and weapons to the Sunni fighters need to move faster.Lawmakers have also called for the administration to equip Sunni fighters directly, and have threatened to withhold assistance from Baghdad unless it is distributed appropriately among the different minority groups in Iraq. The U.S. has already distributed $400 million of the $1.6 billion fund, and another $566 million is scheduled to be released soon. A total of $1.24 billion is slated to go to Iraqi security forces, $354 million is slated to go to Kurdish peshmerga forces, and $24 million is slated to go to Sunni tribal fighters. 
  • Paul Merrell on 28 May 15
     
    There goes the U.S. commitment to maintaining Iraq as a unified nation. Now the three-state solution is plainly above ground, just as Israeli leaders have planned for years. 
Paul Merrell

Mission Failure Admission: US Abandons Program To Train Syrian Rebels - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...210232

war & peace Syria DoD-arms-training

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. Pentagon is expected to announce Friday that it will end its oft-criticized $500 million program to train and equip Syrian rebels, offering further evidence of the Obama administration’s incoherent and failed strategy in Syria and beyond. According to the New York Times, which broke the news, Pentagon officials will officially announce the end of the program on Friday, as Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter leaves London after meetings with his British counterpart, Defense Minister Michael Fallon, about the continuing wars in Syria and Iraq. “A senior Defense Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that there would no longer be any more recruiting of so-called moderate Syrian rebels to go through training programs in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates,” the Times reports. “Instead, a much smaller training center would be set up in Turkey, where a small group of ‘enablers’— mostly leaders of opposition groups—would be taught operational maneuvers like how to call in airstrikes.” The program had been criticized from the beginning, with many charging that the strategy would merely lead to deeper chaos and regional instability—all while being based on mistaken assumptions.
  • “The proposition that there is a moderate Syrian opposition with enough military potential and—even more importantly—popular support inside Syria to overthrow the Assad government is a myth,” foreign policy experts Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett wrote for Consortium News one year ago. “To claim in addition that these mythical moderate oppositionists can take on and defeat the Islamic State is either blatantly dishonest or dangerously delusional.” And just last month, journalist Robert Parry described the program as “an embarrassing failure, producing only about 50 fighters who then were quickly killed or captured by Al Qaeda’s Nusra and other jihadist groups, leaving only ‘four or five’ trainees from the program, according to Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, head of the U.S. Central Command which has responsibility for the Middle East.”
  • As Common Dreams reported at the time, Central Command admitted in September that the U.S.-trained and armed rebels at the center of the policy had turned over at least a quarter of their American-issued equipment to the al Nusra Front, which is linked with al Qaeda.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Oct 15
     
    Congress, of course, just appropriated $600 million to expand the same program. 
Paul Merrell

M of A - U.S. Military Again Delays Training Of Jabhat al-Nusra Recruits - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...saudi-arabia-yemen-syria-.html

war & peace Syria U.S.-foreign-policy Al-Nusrah Turkey7 Saudis

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. had plans to train Syrian insurgents who are then supposed to fight the Islamic State. But Turkey, where the training is supposed to take place, wants those fighters to attack the Syrian government. The U.S. plans, unrealistic to begin with, have again been delayed: A U.S.-led program to train Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State militants will start in May, Turkey's Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu news agency on Tuesday. ... Details on the training - due to take place in Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia - have been scant, although it had previously been planned to start this month. This delay comes after Jabhat al-Nusra, the Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, captured the Syrian city of Idlib. The Syrian military accuses Turkey of directly supporting Jabhat al Nusra:
  • Echoing more general comments by President Bashar al-Assad, the military source accused both Turkey and Jordan of supporting the insurgents in their Idlib offensive, saying they were "leading operations and planning them". The insurgents were using advanced communication apparatus that had been supplied to them via Turkey, the source added. The Turkish foreign ministry declined to comment. The Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who is near to the centers of power in Saudi Arabia, confirms the Syrian allegations: Saudi Arabian and Turkish sponsors, [Mr. Khashoggi, the Saudi editor,] said, had backed the coalition of jihadist groups that recently captured the Syrian city of Idlib in the first major victory in months against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. One participant in the coalition was the Nusra Front, the Syrian arm of Al Qaeda, a terrorist group in the eyes of the West. But members of the jihadi coalition “are the ones who captured Idlib, it is an important development, and I think we are going to see more of that,” Mr. Khashoggi said. “Coordination between Turkish and Saudi intelligence has never been as good as now.”
  • Also this: Trita Parsi Western diplomat tells me Saudi has decided to provide al-Nusra (al-qaeda) in #Syria with whatever it needs. If the U.S. military would train those fighters in Turkey they would likely turn into Jihadis attached to Jabhat al-Nusra as soon as they re-enter Syrian land. The Pentagon does not like to be seen in direct support of Al-Qaeda. The CIA though ...
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 15
     
    A U.N. Security Council Resolution issued late last year forbids any form of support for Al Nusrah, ISIL, and Al Qaeda. The U.S. voted for it.
Paul Merrell

ANKARA, Turkey: U.S., Turkey agree to Syrian rebel training, but not whom they'll fight... - 0 views

www.bellinghamherald.com/...key-agree-to-syrian-rebel.html

war & peace Syria Turkey U.S.-foreign-policy opposition-training

shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The United States and Turkey have agreed tentatively to start joint training of Syrian rebel fighters in March but have put off the question of defining the enemy – the government of President Bashar Assad or Islamist extremists – the Turkish Foreign Ministry said Monday.Under a memorandum of understanding, the U.S. will send about 100 military trainers to the Kirsehir-Hirfanli base in central Anatolia to train and equip up to 2,000 rebels this year, a senior official told reporters.Altogether, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are to host training for 5,000 rebels this year and a total of 15,000 over three years, said the official, who declined to be named because this was not an official announcement.Turkey expects to conclude the deal by late January, but major questions remain open – not only about naming the ultimate foe but also how to choose the rebels and where to base them.Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have backed down from his demand that the U.S. support a no-fly zone over northern Syria, something the Obama administration adamantly opposed.
  • Other differences appeared to have been papered over. Turkey has been adamant that any force deployed in Syria must have as a goal defeating the Assad government, but the Obama administration has insisted it is interested only in battling the Islamic State. There is no need to define the ultimate target now, the Turkish official said, because rebel forces already are fighting a two-front war, against both the Syrian government and the Islamic State. Turkey had sought to select rebels from the anti-regime Free Syrian Army umbrella group who have been fighting inside Syria, but the Obama administration would not agree, the official said. Instead, the two sides agreed to select rebels through a joint commission.Also left up in the air is how the new force will be integrated with forces already fighting in Syria. Rebel officials estimate there are at least 30,000 fighters in southern Syria and 10,000 in the north, and of the total, at least 1,000 already have been trained in Qatar through a covert CIA-directed program.Top Pentagon aides favor recruiting unit-level commanders for the training and providing them weapons to defend Syrian civilians against the regime’s use of barrel bombs and other unguided munitions, but they have yet to win White House backing, according to an informed Capitol Hill official who spoke under the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.
  • Paul Merrell on 08 Jan 15
     
    The part, "Turkey has been adamant that any force deployed in Syria must have as a goal defeating the Assad government ...." may be outdated. Turkey recently indicated that it was open to ending its hostilities with the Assad government.
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