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Paul Merrell

M of A - Lack Of U.S. Air Support In Ramadi Points To Disguised Darker Aim - 0 views

www.moonofalabama.org/...s-to-disguised-darker-aim.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq Syria Turkey Saudis Qatar Al-Nusrah

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 May 15 - No Cached
  • Why were there so few U.S. air attacks on the Islamic State attackers when they took Ramadi? The first excuse put out by the U.S. military was "a sandstorm ate my lunch". That excuse was placed as news in the NYT: Islamic State fighters used a sandstorm to help seize a critical military advantage in the early hours of the terrorist group’s attack on the provincial Iraqi capital of Ramadi last week, helping to set in motion an assault that forced Iraqi security forces to flee, current and former American officials said Monday. The stenographer writing the piece did not bother to ask eyewitnesses or to check with some weather service. The myth of the "sandstorm" was thus born and repeated again and again. But people looking at the videos and pictures from the fighting could only see a bright blue sky. The military, though not the NYT, had to retract: Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters today that last weekend's sandstorm had not affected the coalition’s ability to launch airstrikes in Ramadi, though “weather was a factor on the ground early on.”
  • Now the U.S. military needs a new excuse to explain why it does not really bother to attack the Islamic State troops. Again it is the NYT that is willing to stenograph: American officials say they are not striking significant — and obvious — Islamic State targets out of fear that the attacks will accidentally kill civilians. Killing such innocents could hand the militants a major propaganda coup and alienate both the local Sunni tribesmen, whose support is critical to ousting the militants, and Sunni Arab countries that are part of the American-led coalition. The alleged restrain in in fear of killing civilians in bonkers. The few U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State targets, though not admitted, have already killed hundreds of civilians. This excuse for not helping the defenders of Ramadi is also nonsense as many occasions for potential attacks, like the Islamic State parade in this picture, are in areas with no or few civilians around. Why are Islamic State fighters free to travel the roads between Syria and Iraq in mass?
  • Nether the "sandstrom" excuse nor the "fear" of accidentally killing civilians seem to be an explanation for the decision to not support the Iraqi troops against the Islamic State attacks. A sound explanation can be found in the 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, recently revealed, that says that the U.S. and the Gulf monarchies do want an Islamic State covering east Syria and west Iraq: “… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” In a recent Sunday show the neocon and former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton put it on the record: I think our objective should be a new Sunni state out of the western part of Iraq, the eastern part of Syria run by moderates or at least authoritarians who are not radical Islamists. What's left of the state of Iraq, as of right now, is simply a satellite of the Ayatollahs in Tehran. It's not anything we should try to aid.
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  • Not unrelated the Associated Press is running a home story about a nice, Islamic State financed, honeymoon in Raqqa: The honeymoon was a brief moment for love, away from the front lines of Syria's war. In the capital of the Islamic State group's self-proclaimed "caliphate," Syrian fighter Abu Bilal al-Homsi was united with his Tunisian bride for the first time after months chatting online. They married, then passed the days dining on grilled meats in Raqqa's restaurants, strolling along the Euphrates River and eating ice cream. It was all made possible by the marriage bonus he received from the Islamic State group: $1,500 for him and his wife to get started on a new home, a family — and a honeymoon. "It has everything one would want for a wedding," al-Homsi said of Raqqa ... Who paid how much to AP for that  Islamic State recruiting advertisement?
  • The U.S. military in the Middle East is not helping the legitimate state of Iraq against the illegitimate Islamic State. It is shaping the environment so that it will allow for a delimited "Salafist Principality" in Syria and Iraq, mostly independent Kurdish areas and a rump state of Shia Iraq.
  • The only sound explanation for the very, very limited air support the U.S. is giving to Iraq is its aim of dismembering the Iraqi state and creating a new Sunni state entity under its tutelage. The Iraqi government should finally recognize this and should stay away from U.S. advice and dependency.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 May 15
     
    I'll be posting more bookmarks on the topic of the cover being blown from the U.S. strategy on behalf of Israel to carve up Syria and Iraq into Balkanized states, whilst blocking the Iran-Iraq-Syria Freedom Pipeline. This has been covered from the beginning by alternative press but never made it into mainstream media. Not even the release of the Defense Intelligence Agency document proving that goal could crack that media blackout.   
Paul Merrell

Britain's Trident nuclear program at stake in Scottish independence vote - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...b-9ae8-064533b143b0_story.html

war & peace nuclear-arms Scottish-independence

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • For decades, Britain’s contribution to the threat of global Armageddon has found a home on the tranquil shores of Gare Loch, where soaring green mountains plunge into murky gray waters plied by sporty kayakers, weekend yachtsmen — and nuclear-armed submarines.
  • But if Scotland votes “yes” in an independence referendum next month, the submarines could ­become nuclear-armed nomads, without a port to call home. Washington’s closest and most important ally could, in turn, be left without the ultimate deterrent, even as Europe’s borders are being rattled anew by a resurgent Russia. Former NATO secretary general George Robertson, a Scotsman, said in a speech in Washington earlier this year that a vote for independence would be “cataclysmic” for Western security, and that ejecting the nuclear submarines from Scotland would amount to “disarming the remainder of the United Kingdom.” The pro-independence campaign promptly accused Robertson of hyperbolic scaremongering. But the possibility that Britain could become the only permanent member of the U.N. Security Council without a nuclear deterrent underscores just how much is at stake far beyond these silent bays and verdant ridgelines when Scotland’s 5 million residents go to the polls Sept. 18.
  • Leaders of Scotland’s secessionist movement say their independent nation would be a nuclear-free zone within four years of breaking off from Great Britain. The vow is a popular one among the movement’s left-leaning voters, and the campaign has distributed fliers with instructions for “how to disarm a nuclear bomb” that begin and end with voting for independence. At the moment, that argument is losing out to those who advocate sticking with the United Kingdom — and with nuclear weapons. Polls show an approximate 10-point advantage for the unionist camp.
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  • But with a substantial share of voters undecided, U.K. officials remain nervous that Scotland could bolt — and that the nuclear program could be a casualty. The possibility provides an uncomfortable backdrop for the NATO summit that Britain will host in Wales on Sept. 4 and 5.
  • Building suitable bases to house the missiles and dock the subs in England would take at least a decade, experts say, and cost billions of dollars that the government doesn’t have. O’Brien said it’s likely that Britain would decide to scrap its nuclear program rather than make painful cuts elsewhere.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 14
     
    Interesting. Can't say that I'd shed any tears over British disarmament, or global disarmament for that matter.   But note that the article says UK has 255 warheads, with 160 of them deployed on Trident missiles. That makes it 95 warheads unaccounted for by the article. In storage somewhere, or deployable by aircraft?  According to Wikipedia, the Panavia Tornado fighter-bombers in the UK air force are cable of delivering air-dropped nuclear weapons. . 
Paul Merrell

Israel deploys a new weapons system in Gaza - Intellihub.com - 0 views

www.intellihub.com/eploys-new-weapons-system-gaza

war & peace Israel Gaza energy-beam war-crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Reports, including photographic evidence reveal that Israel is using an energy weapon to attack targets in Gaza. The destructive beam, thought to be a high energy laser, is emitted from a plane identified as a Boeing KC707 “Re’em,” originally configured for Electronic Warfare. Those observing the attacks cite a beam from a 4 engine jet hitting a target which immediately turns “white hot.” After these attacks, the target area is then hit with either bombs or artillery to destroy evidence of the use of an American designed and built energy weapon illegally given to Israel. BACKGROUND The weapon used is identified as part of the YAL 1 system, a COIL laser (chemical, oxygen/iodine laser), originally intended as an aircraft mounted system to shoot down ICBMs. Boeing approached the Department of Defense in 2002 and by 2004 had mounted its first system on a 747/400 previously flown by Air India. Boeing had convinced Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that this system, mounted on as many as 7 aircraft, could fly 24 hours a day around Iran and defend “the free world” against nuclear tipped ICBMs that Rumsfeld believed Iran was planning to use. Please note that it was Rumsfeld that told television audiences that Afghanistan was “peppered” with underground cities serviced by rail links that supported division sized Al Qaeda units that, after ten years, no one was able to locate.
  • Boeing tested the system in 2007. The Department of Defense claimed the system could shoot down low earth orbit satellites and that in tests conducted in 2010, destroyed multiple test missiles. There is no reliable confirmation of this other than a press release from then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. CANCELLATION AND MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE The Center for Strategic Studies, in an interview with then Defense Secretary Gates published the following: “I don’t know anybody at the Department of Defense who thinks that this program should, or would, ever be operationally deployed. The reality is that you would need a laser something like 20 to 30 times more powerful than the chemical laser in the plane right now to be able to get any distance from the launch site to fire.” So, right now the ABL would have to orbit inside the borders of Iran in order to be able to try and use its laser to shoot down that missile in the boost phase. And if you were to operationalize this you would be looking at 10 to 20 747s, at a billion and a half dollars apiece, and $100 million a year to operate. And there’s nobody in uniform that I know who believes that this is a workable concept.”
  • After $5 billion was spent, the functioning prototype only capable of being fired directly at nearby targets, a system very capable of acquisition and destruction of ground targets with no air defense protection only, was said to have been flown to a scrap yard. The plane itself is still there, at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, with other failed dreams and nightmares. However, the weapons system disappeared, only to reappear in Israel as a “missile defense” project, an adjunct to the “Iron Dome” system. Israel’s Rafael Defense had been trying to develop laser weapons on its own to intercept rockets being fired from Gaza. It was never able to neither deploy a laser powerful enough nor develop a radar system able to be effective.
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  • “Friends of Israel,” within the US defense community were convinced by Israel that the system could be finished and deployed to protect Israel against a purported “missile onslaught” from Tehran. In truth, there was no such intention. Instead, as in the film “Real Genius,” the laser system was always intended to be deployed against ground targets, for terrorism and assassinations. The “delivery system,” a Boeing airliner configured for AWAC, electronic warfare or refueling, could easily be modified to “clone” commercial air traffic and attack targets thousands of miles away or as close as Gaza, Lebanon, Syria or Iraq with total impunity.
  • McLeod and Rogers, in The Law of War, examine the history of prohibition of incendiary weapons. Israel’s use of white phosphorous, intended as a “smoke market” as a corrosive anti-personnel weapon against civilian populations in Lebanon and Gaza skirts initial language, as cited below, in the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868, but falls well short of evading later prohibition on the use of chemical agents. “The first treaty to deal with weapons was the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868. Here states were concerned about the development of explosive or incendiary bullets for use against the wagon trains of enemy forces. It was felt that these bullets might be used against enemy personnel15 and cause unnecessary injury. The Contracting Parties agreed ‘mutually to renounce, in case of war among themselves, the employment by their military or naval troops of any projectile of a weight below 400 grammes, which is either explosive or charged with fulminating or inflammable substances’.
  • The declaration does not seem to have affected the practice of states in using tracer for range finding, even mixed with normal ammunition, nor the use of small explosive projectiles for anti-aircraft and anti-material uses. It did not prevent states from using four pound, thermite-based incendiary bombs during the Second World War. These, obviously, were more than 400 grammes in weight. Furthermore it could be argued that they were not ‘projectiles’, a term that certainly would not include illuminating flares or smoke canisters.” The use of energy weapons for assassinations and terrorism had, prior to only a few short days ago, been subject of speculative fiction only. No one had imagined that a failed American weapons system would be pirated for deployment in acts of terrorism by a rogue state. A greater question arises, if this “failed system” costing many billions has been shipped off “in the dark of night” without public knowledge or official authorization for use in a criminal manner, what other systems may have been similarly pirated? There is conclusive evidence that W54/Davy Crocket nuclear weapons made their way to Israel after 1991 after an accident at Dimona is reputed to have made that facility useless for weapons development.
  • Similarly, when the Ukraine retired its “fleet” of SS21 tactical nuclear missiles, Israel took possession of the warheads, servicing their deuterium booster gas all these years to keep them ready for deployment. Intercepted communications between the Kiev junta and Israel now indicate that Israel is ready to “repatriate” some of these nuclear weapons to the Ukraine for use against pro-Russian separatists. Ukrainian leaders have spoken of the intent to deploy and use these nuclear weapons publicly on several recent occasions. From USA Today: “KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY. ‘We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement,’ said Rizanenko, a member of the Udar Party headed by Vitali Klitschko, a candidate for president. ‘Now there’s a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake.’”
  • With the recent bombing of a UN refugee facility in Gaza, with the use of chemical and now energy weapons, with Israel’s planned sale of nuclear warheads to Ukraine, there is little more that could be done to establish Israel, not only as a rogue state, but as a “clear and present danger” to not only regional but global security as well. As Jim W. Dean of Veterans Today recently stated, “Their fingerprints are at every crime scene.”
Gary Edwards

Generals conclude Obama backed al-Qaida - 0 views

www.wnd.com/...conclude-obama-backed-al-qaida

Benghazi

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 15
     
    Petrodollars. Obama has lost Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen to Al-Queda / Muslim Brotherhood extremists. He has nearly lost Egypt and Syria. They hang by a thread. We could see this as an Islamic revolution trying to overtake the despots that have ruled the middle East since the WWI break up of the Ottoman Empire, and shamelessly enriched themselves in petrodollars in the process. Or, we could look at this as religious war between Sunni and Shiite Islamic factions, with Iran leading the Shiites, and the Saudis leading the Sunnis. Except, that divide doesn't seem to gel with the idea of a Shiite Muslim Brotherhood alliance with a Sunni Al-Queda. For sure though, Iran has taken over the formerly Sunni led Iraq and is now executing any and all Sunni rebels. Including all of Saddam Hussein's Revolutionary Guard members now fighting in northern Irag and Syria as ISIL. With the help, air cover and weapons provided by Obama, the Muslim Brotherhood has taken over Libya, and nearly took Egypt. The only way of looking at this mess and making sense of it is through the lens of petrodollars and pipelines. Gadafi, Saddam Husein, the Shah of Iran, and Bashir in Syria all have one thing in common: they were selling oil and accepting payment in something other than petrodollars. They were building pipelines for the shipment of non petrodollar oil. I don't expect Iraq or Lybian oil to ever return to market. Civil war will keep that oil in the ground; making the petrodollar bankers and oligarchs very very wealthy, and the USA-NATO military industrial complex very busy profiting from the sale of war making machinery. ..................................... "The Obama White House and the State Department under the management of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "changed sides in the war on terror" in 2011 by implementing a policy of facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-dominated rebel militias in Libya attempting to oust Moammar Gadhafi from powe
Paul Merrell

ISIL Oil Smugglers Play Hide and Seek with Russian Bombers En Route to Turkey - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...ian-bombers-en-route-to-turkey

war & peace Syria Iraq Turkey oil-smuggling Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Terrorists in Syria, primarily ISIL are changing smuggling routes for oil from Syria to Turkey in an attempt to avoid Russian bombs. The Russian air forces in Syria have destroyed over 2,000 tanker trucks used for smuggling oil since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria. 
  • The Chief of Staff of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department Sergei Rudskoy said on Friday that terrorist linked smugglers are changing logistics and laying new routes for crude oil smuggling to avoid Russian air strikes. The smuggling route is running from Syria’s oil-rich Deir Ez-Zor, controlled by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS / ISIL Daesh) through the border settlements of Guna and Tell-Sfuk in Syria towards the communities of Mosul and Zaho in Iraq, he added. Convoys of tanker trucks reportedly follow the shortest route towards the Syrian-Iraqi border, which they cross in the area of the settlement of Tell-Sfuk. Rudskoy stressed that Turkey remains the final destination point of oil smuggling adding that oil is smuggled into Turkey through the checkpoint in the area of Zaho. Russian reconnaissance reportedly detects almost 12,000 fuel tanker trucks on the Turkey-Iraq border, especially in the area of the settlement of Zaho on the Turkey-Iraq border. The Zaho area is part of the eastern route used by the Islamic State terrorist organization for illegal oil trade, added Rudoski. The Chief od Staff of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department noted:
  • “As of the moment of surveillance in the Zaho area, there were 11,775 fuel tanker trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border. As many as 4,530 of them were on the territory of Turkey and 7,245 in Iraq.” Rudskoi presented enlarged photos of the area by grids, noting that specifically, there are 3,850 fuel tanker and large-duty trucks in Grid A on the Turkish side, with 200 of them moving towards the Iraqi border and the rest amassed in parking areas. Russia’s reconnaissance has also spotted 980 fuel tanker trucks in Iraq and 680 in Turkey in Gird B in close vicinity to the border, Rudskoi said. About another 4,900 fuel tanker trucks are amassed in Grid B and about 1,350 in Grid D, the chief of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Department said, adding that: “It is necessary to note that this checkpoint is used to transport oil extracted both in Iraq and Syria,” he added. Oil tank trucks continue moving from Syria to Turkey According to the official, heavy-load vehicles continue to move from Syrian territory to Turkey. “Oil tank trucks continue crossing the Syrian-Turkish border,”
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  • Rudskoy stressed that Russian air forces continued giving priority to undermining the sources of terrorists’ revenues in Syria, noting that: “We carefully analyzed foreign media reports, comments of experts and officials that appeared after the Russian Defense Ministry made public information on the routes of smuggling the oil illegally produced by ISIS This information on where and how oil is smuggled from the areas controlled by militants did not become a revelation for many. The photo and video footage that we provided just confirmed the existing guesses and versions about who covers up the sources of terrorists’ criminal revenues.” The Turkish government vehemently denies that it facilitates the oil smuggling despite a growing body of evidence to the contrary. It is noteworthy that some of the stolen and smuggled oil from Syria has ended up in European countries including Norway. Chemical analysis of oil has proven that the oil, coming from Turkey, is stolen Syrian oil. On April 22, 2013, the EU lifted its ban on the import of Syrian oil from what it designated as “rebel-held territories”.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Dec 15
     
    "As of the moment of surveillance in the Zaho area, there were 11,775 fuel tanker trucks on both sides of the Turkish-Iraqi border. As many as 4,530 of them were on the territory of Turkey and 7,245 in Iraq." So why isn't the U.S. taking out the tankers on the Iraqi side of the border? 
Paul Merrell

Baltimore Police Have Been Secretly Spying On Entire City From The Air - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...219806

surveillance state eye-in-the-sky Baltimore

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • Baltimore Police didn’t bother to inform the public (or anyone, for that matter) when they implemented a privately-funded mass surveillance program in January using a wide-angle camera-equipped plane flying above the city — which instantly uploaded and stored everything it recorded, just in case they needed it later. As Bloomberg’s Monte Reel reports, a small Cessna plane equipped with “a sophisticated array of cameras” capable of capturing “an area of roughly 30 square miles,” funded by an a private donor and provided by Dayton, Ohio-based Persistent Surveillance Systems, sometimes circled above the city for up to 10 hours per day recording and storing everything without anyone being privy to its presence. Since January, Reel noted, the Baltimore Police Department has been using this covert Big Brother’s eye-in-the-sky “to investigate all sorts of crimes, from property thefts to shootings.” Gone, apparently, are the days when the government’s surveillance state drew ire for attempting to ferret out potential terrorists — residents of Baltimore have been guinea pigs for an altogether more insidious spy dragnet. Persistent Surveillance Systems’ technology automatically stores all the footage on massive hard drives, making it available to law enforcement long afterward — but the idea police could access this information to solve a simple property crime is no less than alarming.
  • Particularly considering the company’s founder has an intense military background. Ross McNutt, Bloomberg reports, “is an Air Force Academy graduate, physicist, and MIT-trained astronautical engineer who in 2004 founded the Air Force’s Center for Rapid Product Development. The Pentagon asked him if he could develop something to figure out who was planting the roadside bombs that were killing and maiming American soldiers in Iraq. In 2006 he gave the military Angel Fire, a wide-area, live-feed surveillance system that could cast an unblinking eye on an entire city.” Though the technology had imperfections — even determining the gender of a person on the ground was impossible — its TiVo-like capabilities more than made up for any shortcomings. A person of interest could be followed by rewinding footage after, say, an IED exploded roadside, to track their movements — even if the cameras weren’t focused directly on the explosion at the moment it occurred. If the cameras were in the air at the time, anything that happened was fully trackable both back and forward in time. McNutt’s pitch for his technology concisely summarized, “Imagine Google Earth with TiVo capability.” Angel Fire truly evolved at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico after 2007, when upgrades allowed for “all-weather and nighttime capabilities and then was used as the basis for another system, called Blue Devil, which coupled wide-area cameras with narrow-focus zoom lenses in the same package.”
  • Over time, after McNutt retired from the military, he worked to further improve the camera array and attended security conferences in hopes of garnering clients. After a brief but effective test run over the skies of Ciudad Juárez, Los Angeles became the first U.S. city to employ Persistent Surveillance’ system — and just as covertly as what has been taking place in Baltimore for the last eight months.
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  • McNutt believes in the legitimacy of the services Persistent Surveillance can provide, and insists the technology isn’t as invasive as it might sound since individual identifying details, among other aspects, aren’t discernible, and because the every keystroke and action taken by analysts — like video footage — are logged and archived.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 16
     
    Just imagine what it will be like when the bugs in the focal system are gone, which undoubtedly is a goal. Couple it with facial recognition and what do we have?
Paul Merrell

How Cold War-Hungry Neocons Stage Managed RT Anchor Liz Wahl's Resignation - Truthdig - 0 views

www.truthdig.com/...liz_wahls_resignation_20140319

war & peace neocons propaganda Russia U.S.

shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • For her public act of protest against Russia Today’s coverage of the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory and supposedly advancing the agenda of Vladimir Putin in Washington, D.C., previously unknown news anchor Liz Wahl has suddenly become one of the most famous unemployed people in America. After her on-air resignation from the cable news channel, Wahl appeared on the three major American cable news outlets—CNN, Fox News, MSNBC—to denounce the heavy-handed editorial line she claims her bosses imposed on her and other staffers.
  • Behind the coverage of Wahl’s dramatic protest, a cadre of neoconservatives was celebrating a public relations coup. Desperate to revive the Cold War, head off further cuts to the defense budget and restore the legitimacy they lost in the ruins of Iraq, the tightknit group of neoconservative writers and stewards had opened up a new PR front through Wahl’s resignation. And they succeeded with no shortage of help from an ossified media establishment struggling to maintain credibility in an increasingly anarchic online news environment. With isolated skeptics branded as useful idiots for Putin, the scene has been kept clean of neoconservative fingerprints, obscuring their interest in Wahl’s resignation and the broader push to deepen tensions with Russia. Through interviews with six current RT employees—all Americans with no particular affection for Russian President Vladimir Putin or his policies—and an investigation into the political forces managing the spectacle, a story has emerged that stands in stark contrast to the one advanced by Wahl, her supporters and the mainstream American press.
  • It was a full 19 minutes before Wahl resigned. Inside the offices of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a neoconservative think tank in Washington D.C., a staffer logged on to the group’s Twitter account to announce the following: “#WordOnTheStreet says that something big might happen on RT in about 20-25 minutes.” Then, at 5:16, exactly 10 minutes before Wahl would quit on air, FPI tweeted: “#WordOnTheStreet says you’re really going to want to tune in to RT: http://rt.com/on-air/rt-america-air/ #SomethinBigMayBeGoingDown” Up until two minutes before Wahl’s resignation, FPI took to Twitter again to urge its followers to tune in to RT.  And finally, at 5:26 p.m., at the very moment Wahl quit, FPI’s Twitter account broke the news: “RT Anchor RESIGNS ON AIR. She ‘cannot be part of a network that whitewashes the actions of Putin.’ ” The tweets from FPI suggested a direct level of coordination between Wahl and the neoconservative think tank. Several calls to FPI for this story were not answered.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 14
     
    Very nice in-depth exposure of a neocon war-mongering publicity stunt.
Paul Merrell

Not alone: New radar data indicates other jets on MH17 course before crash - RT News - 0 views

rt.com/...05339-mh17-air-plane-malaysian

war & peace Ukraine MH17

shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • New radar data indicating that military aircraft were in the air near Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 when it crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17 has been released by a Russian air safety consultancy. The consultancy provided a snapshot representing the readings taken by a radar station located in Russia’s Rostov, near the Ukrainian border, shortly before and about 20 minutes after the MH17 crash. According to Sergey Melnichenko, CEO of Aviation Safety consultancy, there were one or two warplanes in the air close to the Malaysian airliner. The data casts doubt on the version of the tragedy favored by Western nations, which claims the plane was shot down from the ground by rebel forces with a sophisticated surface-to-air missile.
Gary Edwards

Political Editors: Dick Morris Corrects the Record on Hillary Clinton - The Patriot Post - 0 views

patriotpost.us/44049

Hillary Political-Corruption

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Jul 16 - No Cached
  • Then Bill discusses Hillary’s legal career at the Rose Law firm. He doesn’t mention that she made partner when he was elected governor and was only hired when he got elected as attorney general. "He makes as if it was a public service job — it wasn’t. Her main job was to get state business, and she got tens-of-millions of dollars of state business, then hid her participation and the fees by taking an extra share of non-state business to compensate for the fees on state business that she brought in. Her other job was to call the state banking commissioner any time one of her banks got into trouble to get them off.
  • "Bill speaks at length how Hillary was a mother, juggling career and family, taking Chelsea to soccer games and stuff — that’s non-sense. Hillary was a mother but Chelsea in the Arkansas governor’s mansion had a staff of nannies and agents to drive her around and people to be with her, and Hillary didn’t have to bother with any of that. All of that was paid for by the state. "He says she became the warrior in chief over the family finances and that was true, and the result is she learned how to steal. "She accepted a $100,000 bribe from the poultry industry in return for Bill going easy on regulating them, despite new standards. Jim Blair, the poultry lobbyist, gave her $1,000 to invest in the Futures Market and lined up seven to eight other investors and their winnings were all deposited into Hillary’s account. She made $100,000 in a year and she was out. That essentially was a bribe.
  • ”[She did] a phony real-estate deal for Jim McDougal and the Madison Bank to deceive the federal regulators by pretending someone else was buying the property. She was called before a grand jury in 1995 about that but, conveniently, the billing records were lost, couldn’t be found and there wasn’t proof that she worked on it.
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  • “Bill talks about her work on the health care task force but doesn’t say the reason it didn’t pass was the task force was discredited because the meetings were all held in secret. A federal judge forced them open and fined the task force several hundred thousand dollars because of their secrecy. "He says that after the health care bill failed in 1994, Hillary went to work on adopting each piece of it piecemeal — mainly health insurance for children. "That is completely the opposite of the truth. The fact is when that bill failed, I called Hillary and I suggested that she support a proposal by Republican Bob Dole that we cover children, and she said, ‘We can’t just cover one part of this. You have to change everything or change nothing.’ Then in 1997 when I repeated that advice to Bill Clinton, we worked together to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program. I found a lot of the money for that in the tobacco settlement that my friend Dick Scruggs was negotiating.
  • "Then Bill extols her record in the U.S. Senate. In fact, she did practically nothing. There were seven or eight bills that she introduced that passed; almost all of were symbolic — renaming a courthouse, congratulating a high school team on winning the championship. There was only one vaguely substantive bill, and that had a lot of co-sponsors of whom Hillary was just one.
  • "Then he goes to her record in the State Department and manages to tell that story without mentioning the word Benghazi, without mentioning her secret emails, without mentioning he was getting tens of millions — $220 million in speaking fees in return for favorable actions by the State Department.
  • "Also totally lacking in the speech was anything about the war on terror — terror is a word you don’t hear at the Democratic Convention. "Bill says that Hillary passed tough sanctions on Iran for their nuclear program. The opposite is true. "Every time a tough sanction bill was introduced by Senators Menendez or Kirk, Hillary would send Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman to Capital Hill to testify against it and urge it not to pass, and it was over Hillary’s objections that those sanctions were put into place.
  • ”[Liberal columnist] Maureen Dowd called the speech by Bill Clinton “air brushed.” “It was a hell of a lot more than that — it was fiction. (Also see Morris’s comments after Clinton’s DNC acceptance speech. "It’s strategy and message will be interdicted by reality at every turn. … She basically has no message. … Her entire campaign is, ‘I’m a woman and I am running against Donald Trump. … She bean her speech by saying let’s compromise and work together. Is there any woman in the world less likely to compromise?”)
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Jul 16
     
    "Dick Morris is a nationally recognized political campaign adviser, analyst and author. He was the senior political adviser to Bill Clinton before and after his occupation of the White House. He was campaign manager of Clinton's 1996 re-election, and the architect of his successful "triangulation" rhetorical ruse. Clinton's communications director George Stephanopoulos said of Morris, "No single person had more power over [Bill Clinton]." This week, in a message entitled "What Bill Left Out, Morris corrected the record regarding Clinton's glowing remarks about Hillary Clinton, her personal attributes and professional achievements. Morris's insights into the Clintons are priceless. What follows is a transcript of Morris's comments: "Bill Clinton talked at length about Hillary's idealistic work in college and law school, but he omits that she was defending the Black Panthers who killed security guards; they were on trial in New Haven. She monitored the trial while she was in law school to find evidence that could be grounds for reversal in the event they were convicted. "That summer she went to work for the True-Haft (SP) law firm in CA, headed by True Haft who is the head of the CA Communist Party and that's when she got involved with Saul Alinsky, who became something of a mentor for the rest of her life. "Then Bill says that she went off to Massachusetts and he went to Arkansas, and eventually Hillary followed her heart to join him in Arkansas. He omits that she went to work for the Watergate Committee and was fired from that job for taking home evidence and hiding documents that they needed in the impeachment inquiry. Then she took the DC Bar exam and flunked it, she went to Arkansas because that is the only bar exam she could pass. "He talked about how in the 1970's she took all kinds of pro-bono cases to defend women and children. In her memoirs, she cites one which was a custody case and that's it. In fact, in 1975 she represen
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu and Trump: A Shared Focus on Terrorism « LobeLog - 0 views

lobelog.com/mp-a-shared-focus-on-terrorism

terrorism™-history Israel Netanyahu

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Scholars of terrorism credit a specific 1979 symposium in Jerusalem as a turning point in the U.S. and international usage of “terrorism” as we understand it today. The Jonathan Institute, founded following the death of Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan during a raid to rescue hostages from a PLO hijacking, hosted a 1979 conference in Jerusalem— and a follow up in 1984 in Washington—on “International Terrorism.” Directed by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jonathan Institute maintained close ties to the Israeli government. Current and former Israeli officials across the political spectrum—including Golda Meir, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Ezer Weizman, Moshe Dayan, and Shimon Peres—dominated its administrative committee. Lisa Stampnitsky, in her 2013 book Disciplining Terror, discusses how the Jonathan Institute helped internationalize Israel’s use of the term to describe terrorist violence as both irrational and illegitimate in both means and ends, and as primarily targeting democracies and “the West.” Previously, she notes, terrorism referred largely to rational political violence, either state or individual, and was dealt with as an issue of criminality and law. The shift helped Israel delegitimize the political aims of certain groups, such as the Palestinian resistance to its colonization and territorial occupation. One cannot be a “freedom fighter” if one’s political aims are demonized as illegitimate or irrational. Stampnitsky argues that the shift to using terrorism to describe violence outside the law also set the stage for retaliatory strikes (such as the 1986 U.S. air strikes in Libya in response to a bombing at a Berlin disco that killed an American soldier) and eventually for the doctrine of preemptive force that has characterized the post-9/11 “War on Terror.”
  • Israel’s role in the development of a specifically anti-Muslim discourse of terrorism is deeply intertwined with the foreign policies of American politicians. As Deepa Kumar and others have pointed out, American neocons and Israel’s Likud party jointly developed a shared language around Islamic terrorism. The 1979 Jonathan Institute conference was attended by prominent American officials and political figures, including future President George H.W. Bush and representatives of the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Commentary magazine who brought the ideas, and later a follow-up conference, back to the U.S. Intended to serve as an intervention into the international discourse on terrorism, the explicit aim of the Jerusalem conference was to awaken the Western world to the problem of terrorism as defined by the conference organizers. It contributed to entrenching in the minds of American conservatives what was popularized a few years later as the “clash of civilizations,” firmly situating Israel in the category of Western democracies threatened by Soviets and Palestinians. The follow-up conference in the United States in 1984 went further by emphasizing the relationship between Islam and terror. As Netanyahu himself wrote in the book that came out of the conference: “the battle against terrorism was part of a much larger struggle, one between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism.” Then, as now, Netanyahu presented Israel as the bulwark against terrorism, a specific kind of illegitimate political violence that threatens not just Israel but all democracies and the Western world.
  • Echoes of this framing of the debate on terrorism can be found in how Western politicians, including Netanyahu and Trump, discuss the issue. Terrorism, which has no single agreed-upon definition in U.S. or international law, now serves as a moniker applied to all violence that established states deem illegitimate. Most often these days, Western democracies use “terrorism” to describe violence committed by Muslims. As journalist Glenn Greenwald writes, “In other words, any violence by Muslims against the West is inherently ‘terrorism,’ even if targeted only at soldiers at war and/or designed to resist invasion and occupation.” The term functions not as a descriptive tool but an ideological one. It doesn’t merely identify a particular kind of violence. It justifies and even requires a particular kind of forceful response by the state. Israel today presents itself as the world’s expert on counterterrorism. It maintains a profitable security industry predicated on selling expertise and technology tested in its interactions with Palestinians. American tax dollars have been funneled into this industry through U.S. military aid, over 25% of which Israel was allowed to spend domestically (the new military aid deal signed by the Obama White House will phase out this allowance over the next 10 years, sending the rest of the $3.8 billion per year to U.S. defense contractors). The United States and Israel collaborate on counterterrorism initiatives, including joint military exercises and police exchange programs. Here tactics and skills are developed and exchanged for surveillance and violent repression of protests that primarily impact Muslims and people of color in the U.S. and Palestinians and Black Jews in Israel.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • In this context, Trump’s framing of his anti-Muslim immigration policies as a national security priority to keep out terrorists is nothing new. What is new in this political moment is the extent to which the U.S. public is seeing straight through this discourse and rallying against discrimination and bigotry. Ahead of Trump and Netanyahu’s meeting this week, there’s an opportunity to pay attention to how these discourses have enabled Israel to justify decades of military occupation and human rights abuses with the discourse of national security and counterterrorism. As the Trump administration goes back to the drawing board to devise restrictive immigration policies that will hold up in court, Netanyahu and Israel’s example shouldn’t be far from mind.
Paul Merrell

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

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

war & peace Syria Obama war crimes Pipelinestan

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

Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Record of Unparalleled Failure | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...record_of_unparalleled_failure

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy military-failure

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • The United States has been at war -- major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, air strikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts, and covert actions -- nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began.  That’s more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to draw the obvious conclusions. Given the historical record, those conclusions should be staring us in the face.  They are, however, the words that can’t be said in a country committed to a military-first approach to the world, a continual build-up of its forces, an emphasis on pioneering work in the development and deployment of the latest destructive technology, and a repetitious cycling through styles of war from full-scale invasions and occupations to counterinsurgency, proxy wars, and back again. So here are five straightforward lessons -- none acceptable in what passes for discussion and debate in this country -- that could be drawn from that last half century of every kind of American warfare:
  • 1. No matter how you define American-style war or its goals, it doesn’t work. Ever. 2. No matter how you pose the problems of our world, it doesn’t solve them. Never. 3. No matter how often you cite the use of military force to “stabilize” or “protect” or “liberate” countries or regions, it is a destabilizing force. 4. No matter how regularly you praise the American way of war and its “warriors,” the U.S. military is incapable of winning its wars. 5. No matter how often American presidents claim that the U.S. military is “the finest fighting force in history,” the evidence is in: it isn’t.
  • And here’s a bonus lesson: if as a polity we were to take these five no-brainers to heart and stop fighting endless wars, which drain us of national treasure, we would also have a long-term solution to the Veterans Administration health-care crisis.  It’s not the sort of thing said in our world, but the VA is in a crisis of financing and caregiving that, in the present context, cannot be solved, no matter whom you hire or fire.  The only long-term solution would be to stop fighting losing wars that the American people will pay for decades into the future, as the cost in broken bodies and broken lives is translated into medical care and dumped on the VA.
Paul Merrell

Doctors Without Borders airstrike: US alters story for fourth time in four days | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...istan-us-account-changes-again

war & peace Kunduz Afghanistan Doctors-Without-Borders U.S.-foreign-policy war crimes

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • US special operations forces – not their Afghan allies – called in the deadly airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, the US commander has conceded. Shortly before General John Campbell, the commander of the US and Nato war in Afghanistan, testified to a Senate panel, the president of Doctors Without Borders – also known as Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) – said the US and Afghanistan had made an “admission of a war crime”. Shifting the US account of the Saturday morning airstrike for the fourth time in as many days, Campbell reiterated that Afghan forces had requested US air cover after being engaged in a “tenacious fight” to retake the northern city of Kunduz from the Taliban. But, modifying the account he gave at a press conference on Monday, Campbell said those Afghan forces had not directly communicated with the US pilots of an AC-130 gunship overhead. “Even though the Afghans request that support, it still has to go through a rigorous US procedure to enable fires to go on the ground. We had a special operations unit that was in close vicinity that was talking to the aircraft that delivered those fires,” Campbell told the Senate armed services committee on Tuesday morning.
Gary Edwards

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Superpower in Distress | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...lare%2C_superpower_in_distress

Iraq ISIS

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • In response, the Obama administration dispatched thousands of new advisers and trainers and began shipping in piles of new weaponry to re-equip the Iraqi army.  It also filled Iraqi skies with U.S. planes armed with their own munitions to destroy, among other things, some of that captured U.S. weaponry.  Then it set to work standing up a smaller version of the Iraqi army.  Now, skip nearly a year ahead and on a somewhat lesser scale the whole process has just happened again.  Less than two weeks ago, Islamic State militants took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province.  Iraqi army units, including the elite American-trained Golden Division, broke and fled, leaving behind -- you’ll undoubtedly be shocked to hear -- yet another huge cache of weaponry and equipment, including tanks, more than 100 Humvees and other vehicles, artillery, and so on. The Obama administration reacted in a thoroughly novel way: it immediately began shipping in new stocks of weaponry, starting with 1,000 antitank weapons, so that the reconstituted Iraqi military could take out future “massive suicide vehicle bombs” (some of which, assumedly, will be those captured vehicles from Ramadi).  Meanwhile, American planes began roaming the skies over that city, trying to destroy some of the equipment IS militants had captured.
  • Notice anything repetitive in all this -- other than another a bonanza for U.S. weapons makers?  Logically, it would prove less expensive for the Obama administration to simply arm the Islamic State directly before sending in the air strikes
  • In any case, what a microcosm of U.S. imperial hubris and folly in the twenty-first century all this training and equipping of the Iraqi military has proved to be.  Start with the post-invasion decision of the Bush administration to totally disband Saddam’s army and instantly eject hundreds of thousands of unemployed Sunni military men and a full officer corps into the chaos of the “new” Iraq and you have an instant formula for creating a Sunni resistance movement.  Then, add in a little extra “training” at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison in Iraq, for key unemployed officers, and -- Voilà! -- you’ve helped set up the petri dish in which the leadership of the Islamic State movement will grow.  Multiply such stunning tactical finesse many times over globally and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, you have what might be called the folly of the “sole superpower” writ large. Tom
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Delusionary Thinking in Washington The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower By Michael T. Klare
  • Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance? This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”
  • The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed “imperial overstretch.” As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which “the sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country’s power to defend all of them simultaneously.”
  • The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act.  It involves the constant juggling of America’s capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration.  Call it the Obama Doctrine.
  • In other words, whoever enters the Oval Office in January 2017 will be expected to wield a far bigger stick on a significantly less stable planet. As a result, despite the last decade and a half of interventionary disasters, we’re likely to see an even more interventionist foreign policy with an even greater impulse to use military force.
  • The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy.
  • Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention.
  • Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms. 
  • fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Jun 15
     
    Thanks Marbux! "Think of this as a little imperial folly update -- and here's the backstory.  In the years after invading Iraq and disbanding Saddam Hussein's military, the U.S. sunk about $25 billion into "standing up" a new Iraqi army.  By June 2014, however, that army, filled with at least 50,000 "ghost soldiers," was only standing in the imaginations of its generals and perhaps Washington.  When relatively small numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants swept into northern Iraq, it collapsed, abandoning four cities -- including Mosul, the country's second largest -- and leaving behind enormous stores of U.S. weaponry, ranging from tanks and Humvees to artillery and rifles.  In essence, the U.S. was now standing up its future enemy in a style to which it was unaccustomed and, unlike the imploded Iraqi military, the forces of the Islamic State proved quite capable of using that weaponry without a foreign trainer or adviser in sight."
Paul Merrell

If West cannot live with Islamic State it must do all that's needed to defeat it on the ground - Telegraph - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...o-defeat-it-on-the-ground.html

war & peace AEI boots-on-the-ground ISIL

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • The Islamic State is a determined, skilful, and lethal enemy. Defeating it again will require hard fighting and strong diplomacy. It will be a massive undertaking, both militarily and politically. It will certainly require a dramatic expansion of air strikes throughout Iraq and Syria. It will also require the deployment of thousands of American forces - primarily Special Forces - to engage directly with moderate Sunnis in both countries and train the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and the Syrian moderate opposition. Effective trainers must fight alongside those they are training in order to sustain their respect and trust. Americans must work directly with local tribes to help them survive against the lethal threat that the Islamic State poses. In Syria, the US must help moderate Sunnis fight Bashar al-Assad while strengthening them against other violent Islamist forces as well. In Iraq we must once again help rebuild trust between the central government and the tribes. None of these tasks can be accomplished from 30,000 feet.
  • Paul Merrell on 28 Aug 14
     
    American Enterprise Institute, a prominent neocon think tank, advocating for American boots on the ground in both Iraq and Syria. Why am I not surprised? 
Paul Merrell

Supreme Court Strikes Out KBR - 0 views

www.pogo.org/...eme-court-strikes-out-kbr.html

war & peace Iraq Afghanistan KBR Halliburton veterans litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • The U.S. Supreme Court came out in favor of contractor accountability this week, rejecting attempts by KBR and its former parent company, Halliburton, to dismiss three lawsuits accusing them of harming service members and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. (KBR, one of the largest reconstruction and logistics contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, was part of Halliburton until 2007.) The Supreme Court, which denied the companies’ petitions without comment, left intact lower court rulings allowing these lawsuits to proceed to trial:
  • Metzgar v. KBR Dozens of U.S. military personnel and civilian employees claim they suffered harm as a result of KBR’s waste disposal and water treatment practices on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. The case involves KBR’s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) III contract. The plaintiffs allege that the company burned large quantities of solid waste in toxin-spewing open-air burn pits and provided contaminated water. Harris v. KBR Cheryl Harris seeks to hold KBR and Halliburton accountable for the death of her son, Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth, who was electrocuted in 2008 while showering at his base in Iraq. KBR’s responsibility for maintaining the shower facilities was also part of the LOGCAP III contract.
  • McManaway v. KBR American and British soldiers allege KBR knowingly exposed them to the hazardous chemical sodium dichromate while they were posted at the Qarmat Ali water treatment facility in Iraq in 2003. The soldiers were protecting KBR employees who were restoring the facility. This case involves the Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) contract, which contained a provision requiring the government to indemnify KBR for any property damage, injury, or death occurring on the contract and all related legal expenses. The government is refusing to indemnify KBR for Qarmat Ali litigation, which has already resulted in an $81 million judgment against the company in a case filed in Oregon. Both the indemnification decision and the Oregon judgment are still mired in appeals, despite Congress urging the Pentagon last year to “take control of the litigation process” and hasten its conclusion. “With KBR’s immunity petitions rejected by the Supreme Court in three separate cases, the wait for the veterans’ cases to proceed to trial has finally ended,” attorney Michael Doyle, who represents the plaintiffs in in the Metzgar and McManaway cases, told the Project On Government Oversight. “There can’t be a place in American law for blanket immunity for military contractor misconduct harming our troops and others, and we look forward to the next trial soon.”
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The plaintiffs are suing the contractors because the government is generally immune from personal injury lawsuits. Contingency operation contractors like KBR and Halliburton argue they are also immune because they function essentially as an extension of the military. Ever since the first bombs fell on Afghanistan more than 13 years ago, contractor civil and criminal liability in war zones has been a hotly debated and litigated issue. However, recent decisions by the Supreme Court and the federal circuit courts give us hope that this area of law is becoming more settled and contractor accountability cases will have an easier time getting to trial.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Jan 15
     
    There's an error in the article where it states that "the government is generally immune from personal injury lawsuits." In fact the federal government generally can be sued for personal injury under the Federal Tort Claims Act, but there is an exception created by the Supreme Court in Feres v. United States: the federal government has no liabllity for personal injuries to members of the armed forces sustained while on active duty and not on furlough and resulting from the negligence of others in the armed forces. See for an overview, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feres_v._United_States However, veterans are entitled in such circumstances to Department of Veteran Affairs disability benefits and medical treatment. Military contractors are very fond of trying to piggy-back onto the Feres Doctrine but it rarely works. I've read a fair bit about KBR's conduct involved. KBR even had multi-million-dollar incinerators there for waste disposal that the government paid for (and their transport to the war zones) to safely dispose of wastes without endangering soldiers, but never set them up. That is pretty solid evidence that they knew of the hazard from using open burn pits. And it's also pretty strong proof that our military auditors in charge of checking contract compliance gave KBR a pass. Did money change hands between KBR and the auditors? War profiteering at its finest. "There is such a thirst for gain [among military suppliers]... that it is enough to make one curse their own Species, for possessing so little virtue and patriotism." George Washington.
Paul Merrell

Russia and Iran warn US they will 'respond with force' if red lines crossed in Syria again | The Independent - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...rikes-war-latest-a7675031.html

war & peace Syria Russia Iran red-lines

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • Russia and Iran have warned the US they will “respond with force” if their own “red lines” are crossed in Syria. Following Friday’s cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase, in retaliation for the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun earlier in the week, the alliance supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a joint statement threatening action in response to “any breach of red lines from whoever it is”. “What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well,” the group’s joint command centre said.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 17
     
    Thanks to Trump and the necon/liberal alliaance that pushed him into war, World War III is now set to ignite in Syria.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 17
     
    Thanks to Trump and the necon/liberal alliaance that pushed him into war, World War III is now set to ignite in Syria.
Paul Merrell

FBI Celebrates Duping Another Mentally Ill Man Into Fake Terror Plot - 0 views

thenewamerican.com/...-ill-man-into-fake-terror-plot

war on terror™ FBI terrorists™ entrapment sting-operations

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Following a series of similar widely ridiculed so-called “sting” operations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced last week that it had foiled yet another “terror plot” that, like virtually every supposed “terrorist” case in recent years, was created and managed from start to finish by the FBI itself. This time, the dupe was a 28-year-old California man, Matthew Aaron Llaneza, with a documented history of mental illness, who apparently believed his government handlers were helping him wage “jihad.” Critics, however, say the whole scheme smacks of entrapment and a waste of taxpayer money. Llaneza was arrested by federal agents on February 7 in Oakland after he supposedly tried to blow up a bogus bomb the FBI helped him create. According to authorities, the mentally ill San Jose suspect planned to detonate the fake explosives outside a Bank of America branch. The alleged plan, officials said, was to start a “civil war” by making it appear as if the attack had been carried out by “anti-government militias,” sparking a crackdown by the government on right-of-center dissidents.       “Unbeknownst to Llaneza, the explosive device that he allegedly attempted to use had been rendered inoperable by law enforcement and posed no threat to the public,” the FBI admitted in a press release celebrating the arrest of its mentally unstable stooge. The man was charged in a criminal complaint with “attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against property used in an activity that affects interstate or foreign commerce.” If convicted, he could face life in prison.
  • According to the government’s court filings, the mentally ill man met with an undercover FBI agent late last year under mysterious circumstances. The federal official somehow managed to convince the naïve dupe that he was connected to the “Taliban and the mujahidin in Afghanistan” — Islamist forces that were originally armed and trained by the U.S. government before becoming official enemies. From there, federal handlers worked with the man to develop the half-baked plot and the fake bomb to blow something up.  
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Feb 13
     
    The trend continues. Still no Terrorist™ criminal charges brought against anyone by the FBI other than alleged 9/11 participants that the FBI did not incite to commit an act of Terrorism™; i.e., no real Terrorist™ threat resulting in criminal charges. Hard to justify continuation of all that funding the FBI gets for chasing domestic Terrorists™ if there aren't any, so the FBI continues to manufacture them in sting operations. Not to mention that the whole War on Terror™ government propaganda campaign would fall apart and the TSA would have to stop forcing air passengers to choose between being groped or viewed naked in those nifty body scanners. Heaven forbid that we might begin restoring civil rights and spending those trillions of dollars on the War on Terror™. No! No! We must maintain Cold War military spending as a percentage of GDP or we'd be flooded with unemployed military veterans and former government contractor workers. We only start wars to defend the U.S., not to enrich military contractors, seize natural resources from those that own or control them, enable the banksters to siphon more from a bigger bucket, or  expand the Globalist Empire. We are America! We are the good guys. Our motives for waging the War on Terror™ are entirely altruistic. Ditto for our professional politicians.   Not.     
Paul Merrell

Afghanistan Exit Is Seen as Peril to C.I.A. Drone Mission - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...as-peril-to-drone-mission.html

war & peace Afghanistan drone attacks Pakistan Karzai Obama negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • The risk that President Obama may be forced to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year has set off concerns inside the American intelligence agencies that they could lose their air bases used for drone strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan and for responding to a nuclear crisis in the region. Until now, the debate here and in Kabul about the size and duration of an American-led allied force in Afghanistan after 2014 had focused on that country’s long-term security. But these new concerns also reflect how troop levels in Afghanistan directly affect long-term American security interests in neighboring Pakistan, according to administration, military and intelligence officials.
  • The concern has become serious enough that the Obama administration has organized a team of intelligence, military and policy specialists to devise alternatives to mitigate the damage if a final security deal cannot be struck with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has declined to enact an agreement that American officials thought was completed last year. If Mr. Obama ultimately withdrew all American troops from Afghanistan, the C.I.A.’s drone bases in the country would have to be closed, according to administration officials, because it could no longer be protected. Their concern is that the nearest alternative bases are too far away for drones to reach the mountainous territory in Pakistan where the remnants of Al Qaeda’s central command are hiding. Those bases would also be too distant to monitor and respond as quickly as American forces can today if there were a crisis in the region, such as missing nuclear material or weapons in Pakistan and India.
  • Their base inside Pakistan was closed after a shooting involving a C.I.A. security contractor, Raymond Davis, and the raid into Pakistani territory that killed Osama bin Laden, both in 2011. Crucial to the surveillance of Bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad was the use of an RQ-170 drone. Pakistani officials talked openly in the weeks after that raid about their fear that the unmanned aircraft was also being used to monitor their nuclear arsenal, now believed to be the fastest growing in the world. The raid, and those drones, came out of American facilities just over the Afghan border.
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  • The C.I.A.’s drone bases in Afghanistan, including one in the eastern part of the country, allow operators to respond quickly to fresh intelligence. The proximity to Pakistan’s tribal areas also allows the Predator drones and their larger, faster cousin, the Reaper, to fly longer missions without having to return to base.
  • The Reapers, the newest, largest and most capable of the unmanned armed vehicles, have a range of up to 1,100 miles. That puts Pakistan’s tribal areas within range of some bases the American military has flown from, especially in Kyrgyzstan, where for more than a decade the Pentagon has conducted air operations, include cargo and troop flights, out of a base at Manas. But the United States said last fall that it would pull out of that base in July. Other allied countries are within the Reaper’s range — in the Persian Gulf, for example. But the distances would be too great to carry out drone operations effectively, officials said, and it is very unlikely that any of those nations would approve launching the diplomatically sensitive strikes missions from their soil.“There’s no easy alternative to Afghanistan,” one former senior American counterterrorism official said.
Paul Merrell

Senate CIA torture report could throw Gitmo hearings into chaos | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...senate-cia-guantanamo.html

war & peace torture CIA Gitmo-detainees

shared by Paul Merrell on 03 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • The possible declassification and release of a Senate report into the CIA’s detention and interrogation program — begun in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — could have a huge impact on the controversial military tribunals happening at Guantánamo Bay, experts and lawyers believe. The proceedings have been moving at a snail’s pace at the U.S.-held military base on the island of Cuba, amid widespread condemnation that they are being held in a legal limbo and outside the U.S. criminal justice system. Details surrounding the CIA’s activities have been one of the most contentious issues concerning the commissions at Guantánamo, where the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and his co-defendants are on trial. Their alleged treatment while in CIA custody has been a key stumbling block in the hearings’ progress. The same goes for the man alleged to be behind the USS Cole bombing, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, another former CIA captive. In both cases, there have been dozens of delays — mainly due to the fact that the attorneys have been battling military prosecutors over access to classified information about the CIA interrogation program that the attorneys want to use as evidence. Both cases have been dragging on for two years and are still in the pretrial evidentiary phase.
  • But now that the Senate Intelligence Committee appears set to vote on releasing its long-awaited 6,300-page, $50 million study — or at least some portion of it — the defense attorneys will finally get the opportunity to talk openly at the military commissions about torture. That could prove disastrous for military prosecutors. According to defense attorneys and human rights observers who have been monitoring the proceedings, it might also derail the government’s attempts to convince a jury that the detainees, if convicted, deserve to be executed. “The U.S. government has gone to great lengths to classify evidence of crimes — crimes committed by U.S. actors,” said Army Maj. Jason Wright, one of Mohammed’s military defense attorneys. “Were this information in this Senate report to be revealed … it would completely gut the classification architecture currently in place before the commissions.” The panel is expected to vote April 3, and it is widely believed the panel will approve release of its 400-page executive summary. If that happens, Wright said, he anticipates petitioning the military court to amend the protective order that treats all information about the CIA torture program as classified.
  • The report is likely to contain reams of information that has not yet come to light. Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein has said the report “includes details of each detainee in CIA custody, the conditions under which they were detained, how they were interrogated, the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of CIA descriptions about the program to the White House, Department of Justice, Congress and others.” Wright said that in addition to seeking a change to the protective order, he would file discovery motions to gain access to the 6.2 million pages of documents the Senate had. Such a move would lead to further legal wrangling and delay the start of the trial, which the government hopes will get underway in September. “We have an absolute right to review that and have it produced in discovery,” Wright said.
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  • Richard Kammen, al-Nashiri’s civilian defense attorney, meanwhile, has already filed a motion with the military court to obtain a complete, unredacted copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report. The motion, submitted in September prior to the revelations that have surfaced about infighting between the CIA and Senate committee investigators, said the report “will be central to the accused’s defense on the merits, in impeaching the credibility of the evidence against him and in mitigation of the death sentence the government is seeking to impose.” If the entire report were declassified by the Intelligence Committee, it “would be huge because it would really eliminate the ‘need’ for military commissions, which are in my view mainly a vehicle to have what will look like trials but will keep whatever evidence of torture the judge ultimately allows secret from or sanitized to the public,” Kammen said.
  • But not everyone expects the report to be released in great detail. Air Force Capt. Michael Schwartz, the attorney for alleged 9/11 co-conspirator Walid bin Attash, doesn’t believe the Senate committee’s report will ever see the light of day. If it is released, he said it will be highly redacted, rendering it useless to the public and Attash’s defense team. “This whole military commissions system is designed to make sure this information is never known to the public,” Schwartz said. “No one in my office is naive enough to think this report will come out in any unredacted form. Certainly that report contains a lot of mitigating information that would be relevant to the defense of this case. But I don’t believe for a second that we will see anything in that report that actually sheds light on the crimes committed by the CIA against our clients between 2003 and 2006.” Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo and a staunch critic of the military commissions, doesn’t believe the Senate committee’s report “is legally relevant” to the military commission trial of Mohammed and the other high-value detainees. But he does believe it will force the hearings more into the public.
  • “Where I do think it will have an impact is in the assessment of whether those legal relevance proceedings take place in open court or in secret closed sessions,” he said. “The report is likely to officially reinforce and amplify what the public already knows about this regrettable chapter in our history. It should further undercut the government’s claim that all this absolutely must stay hidden behind closed doors or else cataclysmic things will happen.” Army. Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman who deals with detainee matters at Guantánamo, declined to discuss the Senate report or how its release may affect the commissions. "I can't imagine a world where competent counsel — be they from the government or defense — would announce in advance, any strategy they might pursue or make predictions on how any given issue might affect the progress of their case," Breasseale said.
  • Daphne Eviatar, a lawyer for Human Rights First who has closely observed and written about the military commission proceedings, said whether the Senate’s report is a game changer will ultimately depend on what is declassified. Perhaps details of the interrogations will be released, or they may be heavily redacted. “Either way, you can be sure the defense lawyers will try to reopen this issue, and the government will fight it, and the case will get bogged down once again in months of argument in pretrial hearings that are already taking forever,” she said.
  • Paul Merrell on 03 Apr 14
     
    A ray of sunlight ahead in the Gitmo detainee prosecutions?
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