Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle East?

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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jun 26, 2014 11:19 am

thanks MinM :lovehearts:


Redrawing of the map begins with destruction of Iraq
By Larry Chin
Posted on June 23, 2014 by Larry Chin
Is Iraq being suddenly invaded by waves of “terrorists”? Or has Iraq been deliberately sabotaged, sacrificed, and destroyed?

The mainstream corporate media portrays it as a “terrorist insurgency” of Sunni “extremists” that has, seemingly overnight, overtaken the country. The Obama administration is depicted as having been “caught off guard.” If Iraq is lost, according to these narratives, then all of America’s “gains” will be “squandered.”

In fact, what is engulfing the region is a massive CIA operation, a geostrategic plan long in the making: drown the region in sectarian war, a gigantic regional bloodbath, with multiple destabilizations and deliberate stoking of sectarian violence across multiple borders, to completely redraw the map of the Middle East and Central Asia, and beyond.

The US is playing all sides of this exploding conflict, towards larger US/NATO objectives.

The invading force, ISIS, is a creation of the US CIA and oil-soaked US allies Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. It is an Al-Qaeda front. Al-Qaeda has been the military-intelligence arm of the CIA since the Cold War. ISIS is the Anglo-American empire’s leading military-intelligence army in its ongoing war against Syria.

Evidence strongly points to a deliberate retreat by US and Iraqi forces that allowed the ISIS to take Mosul, Tikrit, Fallujah, and furthermore allowed them to take American weapons and equipment that were “magically” left for them in large supply. ISIS has now taken control of the Baji oil refinery north of Baghdad, giving them a source of fuel and a potentially lucrative source of income. The Sunnis, including Saddam Hussein loyalists, are “back.”

In horrifically surreal fashion, the coming military spectacle could pit US military forces using drones and air strikes on behalf of the al-Malaki Shi’ite regime against the CIA’s own ISIS Sunni forces possessing US weapons and equipment. Destruction and lies will leave millions of Iraqis dead, the country devastated.

For what purpose?

Iraq is being re-invaded and re-destroyed, to be transformed into something along the lines of the original Bush/Cheney plan, which called for it to be partitioned along sectarian lines, leaving key oil and gas production in the South in the hands of Western-allied corporations. The plan has never been for a stable Iraq, but a malleable one. Merely a step towards something bigger.

Having previously failed at toppling Damascus with an Al-Qaeda “freedom fighting” insurgency, the CIA’s is redirecting and redeploying its proxies. The ISIS is now greatly strengthened and better armed. It enjoys logistical advantages from bases in both Syria and newly captured Iraqi territory. It is now situated to surround and exert pressure on both Syria and Iran.

Regional destabilization

The goal is to set off sectarian violence across the region on such a scale that it will be difficult to contain, impossible to ignore. Stage these horrific atrocities on the doorstep of targeted nations, and those governments are drawn into quagmires that they cannot hope to avoid. And then these governments weaken and fall. The model is well known and has been used in virtually every imperial conquest in recent decades, from the Balkans to the Middle East to Africa. And Ukraine. The goal is to set off violence (sectarian, racial, between political factions, etc.) on such a scale that it will be difficult to contain, impossible to ignore; drawn into quagmires that they cannot hope to avoid.

The familiar pattern: The “restoration of order” in newly opened territory comes next, either militarily or under the guise of humanitarian assistance. Puppet regimes are installed. Corporations, under the guise of “rebuilding” and “investment,” taking control of, among other things, oil and gas, and more importantly geography used for bases—from which to launch future military-intelligence operations.

Events in Iraq could mark the beginning of a much wider apocalypse. According to Michel Chossudovsky, the longstanding US agenda is to carve up both Iraq and Syria into three separate territories: a Sunni Islamist Caliphate, an Arab Shia Republic, and a Republic of Kurdistan. Iraq will be eliminated as a country entirely. The entire region is threatened.

Lies and ambivalence

Within US borders, brain-dead disinterest reigns. The vast majority of Americans do not know, and do not care what is unfolding. The average citizen may react to social issues such as marriage equality or racism in sports (which the powers that be consider minor and unimportant), but remains oblivious about larger threats to all of humanity, including them, and war that continues to use American lives as cannon fodder. The American masses have not awakened, no matter what facts have been amply exposed. The propaganda narrative of the 9/11 false flag operation is firmly implanted, perhaps eternally: America is at war against “the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11” and “we have to defend freedom.”

The political left (co-opted in large part by COINTELPRO-style activities) chases its own tail, accepting the consensus narratives out of Washington, occasionally fretting about limited views such as “blowback,” eager to believe in Washington’s “bumbling innocence,” swallowing virtually all of the red herrings easily.

In corrupt Washington, the scene is beyond Orwellian. Propaganda and lies are the order of the day. The inner circle is aware of what is transpiring, but partisan bickering and grandstanding persist. The corporate media refuses to report facts, and repeats tired propaganda. The “war on terrorism” is alive and well.

Senator Dianne Feinstein is warning of “devastating consequences” of “Sunni forces on the march” without mentioning the fact that the US is behind it. She is calling for “both sides (Democrats and Republicans) to come together.”

It is no coincidence that John McCain, a leading figure who openly supports Al-Qaeda terrorists and clandestine atrocities, is front and center once again. He is now spewing blasts of spitting anger over the administration’s “bungling” of Iraq: “Everybody in his [Obama’s] national security team, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ought to be replaced. It’s a colossal failure.” McCain is calling for immediate military attacks (while probably applauding the Obama administration’s actual activities). This is the same McCain who is directly involved in arming Al-Qaeda terrorists in Libya and Syria. There is little doubt that McCain, who cannot get enough of the CIA’s Al-Qaeda “freedom fighters,” also approves of ISIS.

McCain’s good friend and fellow war monger, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), also wants immediate air strikes and is pushing the idea that the “next 9/11 is in the making.”

Is Obama “failing”?

What of Obama? Now that he is a lame duck president, with no more re-election politics and image fakery to worry about, Obama and his national security apparatus seems to be moving on two fronts, one real, the other propaganda. The administration is pushing Ukraine/Syria/Iraq/Iran aggression on a new scale, going for broke to meet long-held goals (the realpolitik), while sacrificing itself politically (the propaganda narrative).

Politically, is Obama “falling on the sword”? In appearance, like every president before him, Obama is being ushered out as a foreign policy failure in his final years, in order to pave the way for his successor. If he fails to “restore order,” Obama will go out as the man who “lost Iraq,” “left Iraq too soon,” failed to stop terrorists, failed to get rid of Assad, failed to get Iran, etc. Obama is being blamed for the “political paralysis” of the Malaki government. The administration, and the likely Democratic nominee for the presidency, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have already been tainted and compromised as the “ones who lost Benghazi” and covered it up.

Regardless of the fact that Obama has improved upon the murderous Anglo-American geostrategy that Bush/Cheney began (Obama has exponentially ratcheted up aggression while still maintaining a broadly appealing political cover), a rightward shift—back towards Bush/Cheney—in America may be next; the same kind of “disaffection-fueled” right-wing fascism that is sweeping Europe, and exemplified by neo-Nazi Ukraine.

A more openly brutal White House occupant will be needed for the next stage of world war, and control over dissent within US borders.

Someone like Jeb Bush, with a cabinet of former Bush/Cheney Republican war criminals crawling back out of the woodwork.

Threat to the future of humanity

The American empire continues to wage total war, using all means necessary, to take and control the Eurasian subcontinent, all the way to Russia and China.

This holocaust is of a scope and scale beyond comprehension. Events in Iraq, Syria and Iran go hand in hand with events in Ukraine, towards a single desperate global agenda. At stake is control of the world’s remaining oil and gas, pipelines and energy transport routes as the planet lurches towards depletion in a few decades.

The world hurtles towards the brink of nuclear holocaust.

Unfolding events in Iraq are not the result of “intelligence failures” but, like 9/11 and other atrocities, another planned intelligence operation that appears to be succeeding in horrific fashion.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby Sounder » Wed Jul 02, 2014 10:14 pm

conniption posted this 'Fern' writing on another thread. It is re-posted here because it seems relevant.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37655&start=195


Fern says:
June 12, 2014 at 7:17 pm

This is slightly off-topic but vaguely related. The events is Mosul seem, at least to me, to have the appearance of a black op to arm the Syrian rebels. The official story just seems too convenient. ISIS stormed a prison thereby freeing hundreds if not thousands of their comrades, the Iraqi army ran away, the jihadists then went on a bank robbing spree more-or-less literally striking gold and then, best of all, armed with the stolen loot, they equipped themselves with military hardware helpfully supplied by the US, ostensibly destined for the Iraqi army. Meanwhile the government forces couldn’t get one plane in the air to bomb the equipment to prevent it falling into jihadi hands. So, what’s the effect of all of this? In the wake of the Syrian elections, we have the US determined to up the ante and arm the rebels with serious munitions and now we have a group that’s a leading player in Syria having all the heavy weaponry and the money it needs to wage war and the US administration hasn’t had to bother getting anything through Congress or any face any other pesky constitutional controls. Lucky eh?

Turning on the TV this morning and there was Jen Psaki bashfully reading out a list of the hardware now in the hands of ISIS – nice that they had it to hand – and there was not a trace of concern in her manner that this equipment – including weapons which, sooner or later, will be used to down a civilian airliner – was in the hands of such dangerous individuals. Similarly, note the reaction or, rather, the lack of it from NATO with Rasmussen simply saying there was no role for NATO in Iraq whereas you might expect him to say ‘hey, we’ve got a big f**king problem here’. Compare the muted response from Washington with the screams of outrage that greeted the Crimean referendum.
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby coffin_dodger » Sat Jul 12, 2014 10:03 am

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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby zangtang » Sat Jul 12, 2014 10:42 am

wondered what that had to do with Cheney, whilst thinking - shit me, I have never read so many bald-faced lies in what looks lika newspaper before

- then i saw that he wrote it !

just got to ask what is that guys motivation ?
perhaps by the the time you are THAT comitted (possible eternal damnation notwithstanding), you HAVE to believe what it would appear to be in your interests to believe?

bit like lying in your deathbed confession....................
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby 82_28 » Sat Jul 12, 2014 12:12 pm

zangtang » Sat Jul 12, 2014 6:42 am wrote:wondered what that had to do with Cheney, whilst thinking - shit me, I have never read so many bald-faced lies in what looks lika newspaper before

- then i saw that he wrote it !

just got to ask what is that guys motivation ?
perhaps by the the time you are THAT comitted (possible eternal damnation notwithstanding), you HAVE to believe what it would appear to be in your interests to believe?

bit like lying in your deathbed confession....................


Exactly my question! What could possibly be his motivation? To be so evil and reviled in his own country and yet he is still right about the slaughter of innocents and blathering on about "liberating Iraq". I see he didn't mention the use of depleted uranium. That guy was born to do the most evil possible in his "lifetime". It became a "partisan" thing by pointing out how motherfucking evil this guy was and how stoopit dubya was. Rumsfeld, let's not go there quite yet because he's another fish to fry. What stirs these people to famously inflict such evil and destruction on innocent others and then call it liberation?

I just don't know.

Here's what I worry about though, is that there is some other waiting in the wings to be even more evil. The scales will come off after Obama and someone will "prove" to us all how "how to do it the right way". And I can't stand Obama either. Never voted for him. In fact, quit voting because of him because my arguments against him were identical to what a racist would say. I just basically gave up in mindspace. You can't go from a Bush to holy shit! It's our first black president! And all of the wrongs of the right are suddenly rectified by a grand leftist takeover by at long last electing someone who has African genetics in him. There is no "left".

Something evil this way comes. It's already here. Stay alert and keep us posted. Thanks for that link coffindodger.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby coffin_dodger » Sat Jul 12, 2014 12:21 pm

I maintain that one should always look to the last line of an op-ed piece to glean the intention of the entire piece - and Cheney delivers.

"We will only defeat our enemies if we are clear-eyed about the threat and have the will to do what it takes for as long as it takes—until the war is won."

That sound like a war of extermination, to me.
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby 82_28 » Sat Jul 12, 2014 6:23 pm

It's "fun" going over shit you wrote. I happened to have this opened in a tab. I wrote this in 2004:

WWII Blog

How to create a more predictable existence? Shall we forever wallow somewhere in between the realm of conspiracy and the memory squandering lair of Father Time? An era, a collective mentality, a place of pure sloppy suckling on our palliating feeding apparatus. An "I'm Okay, You're Okay" for the lazy of intellect. The disaster that looms before us isn't all that bad when taken in this context. Indeed, if it can be said that there is no future that one can personally affect themselves, then the only other alternative is a future that will be molded by cynics, opportunists and snake-oil salesmen. A false dilemma? Perhaps. But not because of any other factor than, at this point, in all truth, we only have one of two selections to make. The selection we take this year will either usher in an era of new choices (hope) or we shall see those choices taken away from us (despair).

Are we going to allow this administration to have the last laugh? Will we let them take our Constitution, our middle class, our language, our contexts, our ability to inform ourselves and explore the world in peace and freedom? Or will we take back what now is being threatened, namely, a world free from threat and coercion, safe for exposition and hostile to mythological disinformation?

I often wonder what the state of mind is of people who support Bush, his handlers, sycophants and all important puppeteers. I cannot discern what that must be. I cannot fathom a willful ignorance. Therefore, I am frequently stumped. What planet are these people living on anyways? How diferent must their upbringing have been from mine that words and concepts have such antithetical meanings, that some deaths, some lies, some form of totalitarian "discourse" can be acceptable? Where is their line that once crossed is too far? Somehow, "sheep to slaughter" comes to mind. Except the sheep are in butcher's clothing and the opposition, no matter how pacifist or not, are always the butchers. Have you stopped beating your wife yet anyone?

Today, Dear Leader Our Visionary, informed the American public that the war on terrorism (cynically conflated with Iraq yet again) is akin to the sacrifice made by the Greatest Generation&trade during the heady days of European fascism and Japanese aggression.

"Like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless surprise attack on the United States," Bush said. "Like the murderous ideologies of the 20th century, the ideology of terrorism reaches across borders and seeks recruits in every country. So we're fighting these enemies wherever they hide acrossthe Earth."

"Our goal -- the goal of this generation -- is the same. We will secure our nation and defend the peace through the forward march of freedom."

If Americans still have their druthers about them, they will recognize this for the pure, unadulterated, assdripping, bullshit that it is. I think I may just begin referring to my IKEA sofa as a WWII sofa. My Korean car as a WWII car. Then I'll go slam a few sloegin fizzes with the missus. Hey look, I found another WWII analogy! My ass itches -- like totally Dubya Dubye Eye Eye style.

Well, I guess they've got nothing else to run with anymore. They must be consulting the magical justification machine like crazy. I just hope it has a good heat sink and cooling mechanism. Cos they sure seem close to declaring Dear Leader god and being done with the whole thing.

Is there an aneyurism watch for any of the Bushies? Just curious. . .


It's crazy how long I've been going at it and singing the same tune. Like most of us here, propaganda doesn't work on us. This is why I remain a dedicated RI friend. And Jeff, where the hell are you? We all flocked here for a reason. Now we're lost in the wilderness.

In this day and age I would have totally omitted the "word" "assdripping". I was in my 20s and had a largely ignored anti-war blog.

Let me end with, I am sick of this shit. But saying that won't make it end.

EDIT to note how naive I was there because it dawned on me that I was referring to john kerry as being the choice. I wrote that a long time ago and just happened upon it during early clues history and how we came to be (we were all antiwar bloggers with a little occult knowledge thrown in). Like myself, EC wouldn't exist without the Iraq "war" and nor would I without the Vietnam "war" because my mom and dad would have never met. So whatever. Bummer that it goes this way. . .
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Jul 17, 2014 5:56 pm

JULY 17, 2014


Is the Goal of Israel the Total Dispossession of the Palestinians?
The U.S., Israel and Oil Geopolitics
by ROB URIE
The standard line coming from political scientists, reporters and politicians is of Western governments acting in national ‘interests’ to protect ‘their’ citizens from military threats posed by other nations / peoples. This is certainly the frame U.S. President Barack Obama used in his recent editorial in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz to explain his, and U.S., support for the attack by Israel on the captive, immiserated civilian population of Gaza. Left out of Mr. Obama’s condolences to parents of the slain children alleged to be in part the motivation for the latest Israeli atrocities in Gaza is his own record of callously murdering between dozens and hundreds of women, children and innocent men throughout the Middle East and Africa in illegal drone ‘strikes’ in recent years. Also left unsaid is the miraculous overlap of the nations and peoples subjected to U.S. wars of ‘liberation / self-defense’ and proven oil reserves.

urieisrael1

Graph (1) above: U.S. benevolence in bestowing our ‘special’ care upon oil rich nations is a function of ‘our’ national interest? Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez was a ‘madman’ bent on bringing political and economic democracy to the people of Venezuela. Iran had a parliamentary democracy until the CIA and MI5 decided that the British predecessor to BP (British Petroleum) needed Iranian oil more than the Iranians did. Iraq’s ‘madman’ Saddam Hussein was installed by the CIA and was toppled by former oil company executives in the (George W) Bush administration to ‘democratize’ one million Iraqi people from their mortal coils. And President Barack Obama dispatched Libya’s ‘madman’ Muammar Gaddafi in order to ‘liberate’ the Libyan people from a ‘ruthless tyrant’ and Libya’s oil from Libyan control. Units are billions of barrels of oil. Source: EIA.

The current Israeli attack on the citizens of Gaza, and more broadly the Palestinian people, is an emergency that needs to be ended immediately. At this point in history the people of Israel are fully culpable for the actions of the Israeli government just as the citizens of the U.S. are culpable for the U.S. role in supporting Israel’s ongoing occupation and repression of the Palestinian people and for the current attack. Mr. Obama’s framing of the U.S. role in the attack as honest broker for peace ignores existing fact of joint U.S. – Israeli military infrastructure, the U.S. role in arming Israel and the fact that the U.S. has all of the lever’s needed to force an end to the attack but is not using them. Mr. Obama’s posturing as thoughtful outsider ignores decades of the U.S. acting in bad faith in concert with the Israeli government against the Palestinian people as Israel has pursued a strategy of ‘inevitability’ through expanded settlements and the systematic dispossession of the Palestinian people.


Image
Graph (2) above: typically missing in the U.S. from discussion of Israel and the Middle East is any mention of political geography. With clearer understanding of where oil reserves lie (Graph (1) above) it is difficult to overcome the suspicion that oil geopolitics has something to do with the U.S.’s ‘special’ relationship with Israel. The U.S. was arming Iran much as it has armed Israel up until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. And in fact the Western storyline of ‘the Islamic threat’ evolved in some measure from the Iranian Revolution. Many of the antique neo-cons in the U.S. never ‘forgave’ the people of Iran from asserting their independence from the U.S. This left the high overlap of U.S. and Israeli neo-cons as an unexplained accident of history, only they are explained by history.

The human catastrophe of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation and repression resembles quite closely the callous way that the U.S. has acted around the globe. This isn’t to take away from the particular culpability of the state of Israel and the Israeli people for these crimes, but it is to once again broaden this culpability to the U.S. and the American people. The central theoretical flaw in the ‘Israeli Lobby’ storyline of nations acting in ‘the national interest’ is that there is any such thing. Leaving for another day the World Wars of the twentieth century, none of America’s modern wars have been defensive, in a clear national interest. Likewise, the Israeli claim of self-defense in attacking the Palestinian people requires distinguishing explicitly military actions such as aerial bombardment from everyday attacks through the deprivations and repression of the occupation. Resistance against the Israeli occupation more closely resembles the civil rights movement in the U.S. or the struggle against apartheid in South Africa than the military hostilities being claimed by the Israeli government. In other words, was Israel’s goal other than annexation of everything of value through dispossession of the Palestinian people then the Israeli national interest would be in reconciliation and a just division of land and resources. Given that total dispossession is the clear goal, residual ignorance of recent and past events cannot continue to mitigate moral and political culpability for Israeli and U.S. actions against the Palestinian people.

urieisrael3

Graph (3) above: without public expression of irony the U.S. strategic interest in oil is the U.S. strategic interest in oil. The U.S. is by far the largest total and per capita consumer of petroleum products. But the U.S. military is one of the largest domestic consumers of oil as well. When tied to U.S. wars of aggression against the oil rich states of Iraq and Libya wars for oil become a perpetual murder machine— wars for oil to fight wars for oil. Israel’s role as America’s strategic ally in the Middle East makes it a partner in crime and the Palestinian people pawns in oil geopolitics. Because Americans are by far the largest consumers of oil we all participate in repressing the Palestinian people every time we fill up our cars with gasoline. Source: EIA.

The reason why the unified national interest storyline behind the ‘Israeli Lobby’ thesis is so insidious is that it poses radically divergent interests as singularities. U.S. arms manufacturers and U.S. based multi-national oil companies have their economic interests tied to permanent chaos, war and destruction. And America’s dispossessed have interests more closely aligned with those of the Palestinian people in overthrowing the social mechanisms of repression like mass incarceration, coerced, exploitative economic participation, racist and classist strategies of dispossession and a legal system designed to serve some at the expense of ‘others.’ The hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops lied to by the (George W) Bush administration into invading and occupying Iraq were used as pawns in a cynical game of oil geopolitics. Mr. Bush could have left out the serial lies of weapons of mass destruction, ‘democratization’ and overthrowing a tyrant to provide an honest rationale, like oil geopolitics, and let the chips fall where they may. His choice to lie instead, as with Mr. Obama’s practice of murdering innocents, including American children, without providing evidence or recourse, demonstrates which side of the ‘unified interests’ line we stand on. And U.S. – Israeli ties are nowhere closer than in developing technologies of domestic surveillance and strategies of internal social control.

By changing the subject through Israel’s (renewed) attack on Gaza the Obama administration is temporarily spared the ‘embarrassment’ of explaining the devolving U.S. circumstance in Iraq in an election year. For better or worse Iraq was a developed secular state before the (latest) U.S. war and occupation. While the chaos and destruction unleashed by the war undoubtedly help fuel arms sales in the region the faux partisan bickering in the U.S. over who is ‘to blame’ for the broadening regional chaos can’t mask that America’s war on Iraq was a bi-partisan affair. With neo-con hack Hillary Clinton waiting in the wings for her turn to destroy some portion of the world in 2016, understanding the U.S. role in causing death and destruction across the Middle East is as important now as it was before the catastrophic war on Iraq was launched.

Israel’s attack on Gaza is a war crime among an ongoing series of war crimes. Even though not currently plausible, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be regularly reminded that he faces prison or worse if he is ever convicted of his crimes. Whatever the broad American – Israeli propaganda machine is able to accomplish, most Americans have interests more closely aligned with the Palestinian people than with the American and Israeli political establishments. Finally, with the apparent goal of Israel being the total dispossession of the Palestinian people permanent peace will never be possible. But that is the fault of Israel and the U.S., not the Palestinians. The side of justice is with the Palestinian people.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jul 18, 2014 11:49 am

The U.S. and Israel Plan the Destruction of the Nation State of Iraq
And History and Legality be Damned!
by Felicity Arbuthnot / July 18th, 2014

The concept of a “Greater Israel”, according to the founding father of Zionism Theodore Herzl, is a Jewish State stretching: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.” Rabbi Fischmann, of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, stated to the UN Special Committee on 9th July 1947 that: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon”, wrote Michel Chossudovsky. Thus “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” Herzl’s detailed thesis was written in 1904.

Quoted in the same article is Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya on The Yinon Plan (1982) “ … a continuation of Britain’s colonial design in the Middle East:

(The Yinon plan) is an Israeli strategic plan to ensure Israeli regional superiority. It insists and stipulates that Israel must reconfigure its geo-political environment through the balkanization of the surrounding Arab states into smaller and weaker states.

Israeli strategists viewed Iraq as their biggest strategic challenge from an Arab state. This is why Iraq was outlined as the centerpiece to the balkanization of the Middle East and the Arab World. In Iraq, on the basis of the concepts of the Yinon Plan, Israeli strategists have called for the division of Iraq into a Kurdish state and two Arab states, one for Shiite Muslims and the other for Sunni Muslims. The first step towards establishing this was a war between Iraq and Iran, which the Yinon Plan discusses.

At the time Yinon wrote, the eight year, Western driven Iran-Iraq war was in to its second year – with another six grinding years of loss, tragedy and heartbreak, valleys of widows, orphans, maimed, on both sides of their common border. The toll on life and health was compared to World War 1. Iraq, of course, in a historic error, had virtually been fighting a proxy war for an American regime, even then obsessed with Islam, which, in Iran, they had decided was the wrong sort of Islam. What the faith of a nation thousands of miles away had to do with Capitol Hill remains a mystery.

The day after that devastating war ended, the US replaced Iraq over the then USSR as the country which was the biggest threat to America, a devastated, war torn nation of, at the time, just under seventeen million people.

Then came the dispute with Kuwait over alleged oil theft and Dinar destabilizing with the then US Ambassador April Glaspie personally giving Saddam Hussein the green light to invade should he choose. The subsequent nation paralyzing UN embargo followed, then the 2003 decimation and occupation – another orchestrated downward spiral – and tragedy and now open talk of what has been planned for decades, the break up of Iraq.

“Mission accomplished” for both the US with its long planned redrawing of the Middle East and North Africa – and Israel, through whose friendship with the Iraqi Kurdish autocracy, was set to become pretty well a partner in an autonomous, independent Iraqi Kurdistan. Dream come true, from “the Nile to the Euphrates”, the final fruition of near seventy years of manipulation and aggression for domination of the entire region.

The all is also the vision of the super hawk, dreamer of destruction of nations, Lt Colonel Ralph Peters, since the early 1990s. Here is his 2006 version. Peters is a man whose vision of eternal war is seemingly an eternal wet dream. Here, again, for anyone unaware of the Colonel, is a repeat of that dream (US Army War College Quarterly, Summer 1997):

There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts … around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. (US armed forces will keep) the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing. We have entered an age of constant conflict.

Peters would make some of history’s most megalomaniacal expansionists look like gift offering peaceniks. His cartographic monument to arrogance: “The New Map of the Middle East Project”, of geographical restructure in far away places of which he gave less than a damn, was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006.

It was surely no coincidence that on 1st May 2006 Joe Biden, long time Member of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations – now, of course, US Vice President — and Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus of the Committee, authored a joint New York Times piece urging the break up of Iraq, dividing the country on ethnic lines: “ … giving each ethno-religious group – Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab …” their own ethnic and political ghettos. Ignorance on wide inter-marriage, inter-relations, until 2003, inter-communities at every level for millennia, mixed neighbourhoods, shared celebrations, religious festivals, joys and heartaches, boggle the imagination. The deluded article is entitled: “Unity through autonomy in Iraq.” Think non-sequeta, think mixed marriages, does the husband live in a “Sunni” ghetto and the wife a “Shia” one, for example?

“The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security.” A “five point plan” of ghettoisation, destruction, delusion and wickedness, the US-Israeli game plan for Iraq, with the UK as ever, tagging along dreaming of days of empire when, with France, Iraq and the region’s borders were imperially tinkered with just short of a hundred years ago.

Aside from the shaming arrogance and illegality of the plan, ignorance is total. Clearly there is no knowledge in the great annals of the US State Department, Department of Foreign Affairs or the CIA of Iraq’s religious and ethnic minorities, also co-existing for centuries: Christians, Mandaeans, Yazidis, Turkmen, Jews, Zoroastrians, Bahai, Kakai’s, Shabaks – and indeed those who regard themselves as non-religious.

By October 2007 Joe Biden had “attempted to create a reality when an overwhelming majority of the US Senate voted for his non-binding Resolution to divide Iraq into three parts … (with) the Washington Post reporting that the 75-23 Senate vote was a ‘significant milestone’” in the severing of Iraq into three, wrote Tom Engelhardt.

Engelhardt is seemingly the only eagle eye to have picked up that: “The (tripartite) structure is spelled out in Iraq’s Constitution, but Biden would initiate local and regional diplomatic efforts to hasten its evolution.”

The Constitution, written under US imposed “Viceroy” Paul Bremer, is, of course, entirely invalid, since it is illegal to re-write a Constitution under an occupation.

“Only the Kurds, eager for an independent State, welcomed the plan.”

What, ponders Engelhardt, with forensic reality, would be the reaction if Iraq, or Iran for example: “passed a non-binding Resolution to divide the United States in to semi-autonomous bio-regions?”

He concludes that: “such acts would, of course, be considered not just outrageous and insulting, but quite mad.” In Iraq, however: “at best it would put an American stamp of approval on the continuing ethnic cleansing of Iraq.”

However, the US Administration’s commitment is clear. Joe Biden, a self confessed Zionist, stated at the annual J Street Conference in September 2013: “If there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one to make sure our interests were preserved.” Think oil, gas, strategic aims.

Biden assured his audience that: “America’s support for Israel is unshakable, period. Period, period.” (sic) He stressed a number of times the commitment that President Obama had to Israel. His own long and deep connections, he related, stretched back to a meeting with then Prime Minister Golda Meir when he was a freshman Senator and latterly his hours spent with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The latest meeting was in January this year when he traveled to Israel to pay his respects to the late Ariel Sharon and subsequently spent two hours alone in discussion with Netanyahu.

It is surely coincidence that subsequently the rhetoric for the division of Iraq accelerated. Israel has had “military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s” viewing them as “a shared buffer between Arab adversaries.”

In June Netanyahu told Tel Aviv University’s INSS think tank: “We should … support the Kurdish aspiration for independence”, after “outlining what he described as the collapse of Iraq and other Middle East regions …” Iraq’s internal affairs being none of Israel’s business obviously does not occur (apart from their outrageous historic aspirations for the region in spite of being the newly arriving regional guest.) The howls of Israeli fury when even basic human rights for Palestinians in their eroded and stolen lands are suggested for the last sixty six years, however, metaphorically deafen the world.

Of course, Kurdistan has now laid claim to Kirkuk, with its vast oil deposits. The plan for the Northern Iraq-Haifa pipeline, an Israeli aspiration from the time of that country’s establishment, can surely also not have been far from Netanyahu’s mind. An independent Kurdistan, which indeed it has enjoyed almost entirely within Iraq, since 1992 – and immediately betrayed the Iraqi State by inviting in Israel and the CIA – would herald the planned dismemberment of Iraq.

It is darkly ironic, that whether relating to the break up of their lands or ghettoisation of those of Iraqis and Palestinians, this mirrors the plan of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of ethnic cleansing, who, after the outbreak of Word War 11 “arranged for Jews to be concentrated into ghettos in major cities …” he also devised plans for Jewish “reservations.”

Additionally he was an architect of forcible expulsion, one of the charges brought against him after he was captured by Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet in Argentina in 1960. He was tried in Israel, found guilty of war crimes and hanged in 1962. Ironically his pre-Nazi employment had been as an oil salesman.

Can Israel and the “international community” really be planning to mirror Eichmann by repatriating and ethnic cleansing? Will nations never look into history’s mirror?
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Jul 19, 2014 9:21 am

WEEKEND EDITION JULY 18-20, 2014

An Unholy Alliance Between the Military-Security-Industrial Complex and the Israel Lobby
Planned Chaos in the Middle East—and Beyond
by ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH
Geopolitical observers of the Middle East turbulence tend to blame the raging chaos in the area on the presumed failure of the “incoherent,” “illogical” or “contradictory” policies of the United States. Irrefutable evidence (some of which presented in this study) suggests, however, that in fact the chaos represents the success, not failure, of those policies—policies that are designed by the beneficiaries of war and military adventures in the region, and beyond. While U.S. policies in the region are certainly irrational and conflicting from the standpoint of international peace, or even from the standpoint of the U.S. national interests as a whole, they are quite logical from the viewpoint of economic and geopolitical beneficiaries of war and international hostilities, that is, from the viewpoint of (a) the military-industrial complex, and (b) the militant Zionist proponents of “greater Israel.”

The seeds of the chaos were planted some 25 years ago, when the Berlin Wall Collapsed. Since the rationale for the large and growing military apparatus during the Cold War years was the “threat of communism,” U.S. citizens celebrated the collapse of the Wall as the end of militarism and the dawn of “peace dividends”—a reference to the benefits that, it was hoped, many would enjoy in the United States as a result of a reorientation of part of the Pentagon’s budget toward non-military social needs.

But while the majority of the U.S. citizens celebrated the prospects of what appeared to be imminent “peace dividends,” the powerful interests vested in the expansion of military/security spending felt threatened. Not surprisingly, these influential forces moved swiftly to safeguard their interests in the face of the “threat of peace.”

To stifle the voices that demanded peace dividends, beneficiaries of war and militarism began to methodically redefine the post-Cold War “sources of threat” in the broader framework of the new multi-polar world, which goes way beyond the traditional “Soviet threat” of the bipolar world of the Cold War era. Instead of the “communist threat” of the Soviet era, the “menace” of “rogue states,” of radical Islam and of “global terrorism” would have to do as new enemies.

Publicly, most of the reassessment of the post-Cold War world was presented by the top military brass. For example, General Carl Vuno, Chief of Staff of the US Army, told a House Committee in May 1989: “Much more complex [than any peril posed by the Soviet Union] is the threat situation developing in the rest of the world. . . . In this increasingly multipolar world, we face the potential of multiple threats from countries and factors which are becoming more sophisticated militarily and more aggressive politically” [2].

General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, likewise argued before a Senate Committee that despite the collapse of the Soviet Union the United States needed to continue its military buildup because of numerous other obligations: “With all these challenges and opportunities confronting our nation, it is impossible for me to believe that demobilizing or hollowing out the American military is a feasible course of action for the future. The true ‘peace dividend’ is peace itself. . . . Peace comes about through the maintenance of strength” [3].

While the military brass, often donned in nifty and flamboyant uniforms, publicly took the center stage in the fight against the downsizing of the military-industrial complex, civilian militarists, working in and around the Pentagon and the associated hawkish think-tanks, schemed from behind the scenes. These included the then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, his Undersecretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, then a Wolfowitz aide, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy. This group of men and their co-thinkers and collaborators (such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Michael Ladeen, Elliott Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, John Bolton, and others) worked diligently together on averting post-Cold War cutbacks. “What we were afraid of was people who would say, ‘Let’s bring all of the troops home, and let’s abandon our position in Europe’,” recalled Wolfowitz in an interview [4].

While these military planners were officially affiliated with the Pentagon and/or the Bush (Sr.) administration, they also closely collaborated with a number of jingoistic lobbying think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs that were set up to serve either as the armaments lobby or the Israel lobby or both. Even a cursory look at the records of these militaristic think tanks—their membership, their financial sources, their institutional structures, and the like—shows that they are created to essentially serve as institutional fronts to camouflage the incestuous business and/or political relationship between the Pentagon, its major contractors, the top military brass, the Israel lobby, and other similarly hawkish bodies in and around the government [5].

In a carefully calculated effort to redefine the post-Cold War world as a “more dangerous” world, and accordingly craft a new “National Security Strategy” for the United States, this team of military planners and militaristic think-tanks produced a new military-geopolitical document in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union which came to be known as “Defense Planning Guidance,” or “Defense Strategy for the 1990s.” The document, unveiled by the White House in the early 1990s before the Congress, focused on “unpredictable turbulent spots in the Third World” as new sources of attention for the U.S. military power in the post-Cold War era: “In the new era, we foresee that our military power will remain an essential underpinning of the global balance . . . that the more likely demands for the use of our military forces may not involve the Soviet Union and may be in the Third World, where new capabilities and approaches may be required” [6].

To respond to “turbulences in the most vital regions,” the new situation called for a strategy of “discriminate deterrence”—a military strategy that “would contain and quell regional or local conflicts in the Third World with lightning speed and sweeping effectiveness before they get out of hand.” In the post-Cold War world of “multiple sources of threats” the United States would also need to be prepared to fight “low-intensity” and “mid-intensity” wars. Low or mid-intensity does not refer to the level of firepower and violence employed but to the geographic scale compared to an all-out war on a global or regional war that could disrupt international trade and paralyze global markets.

The “Defense Strategy for the 1990s” also spoke about maintaining and expanding America’s “strategic depth”—a term coined by the then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. “Strategic depth” had a geopolitical connotation, meaning that, in the aftermath of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the United States must extend its global presence—in terms of military bases, listening and/or intelligence stations, and military technology—to areas previously neutral or under the influence of the Soviet Union.

Policy prescriptions of these self-fulfilling prophecies were unmistakable: having thus portrayed (and subsequently created) the post-Cold War world as a place fraught with “multiple sources of threats to U.S. national interest,” powerful beneficiaries of the Pentagon budget succeeded in maintaining military spending at essentially the Cold War levels. Proponents of continued militarism “moved with remarkable speed to ensure that the collapse [of the Soviet Union] would not affect the Pentagon’s budget or our ‘strategic position’ on the globe we had garrisoned in the name of anti-communism” [7].

To carry out the thus-outlined “National Security Strategy” of the post-Cold War world, militaristic U.S. planners need pretexts, which often means inventing or manufacturing enemies. Beneficiaries of war dividends sometimes find “external enemies and threats” by definition, “by deciding unilaterally what actions around the world constitute terrorism,” or by arbitrarily classifying certain countries as “supporters of terrorism,” as Bill Christison, retired CIA advisor, put it [8].

They also create international frictions by insidious policies of provoking anger and violence, thereby justifying war and destruction, which will trigger further acts of terror and violence in the fashion of a vicious cycle. Of course, the nefarious driving force behind this self-fulfilling strategy of war and terrorism is to maintain the high dividends of the business of war. The late Gore Vidal has satirically characterized this wicked need of the beneficiaries of war and militarism to constantly come up with new threats and enemies as an “enemy of the month club: each month we are confronted by a new horrendous enemy at whom we must strike before he destroys us” [9].

A small war here, a small war there, a “low-intensity” war in country x, and a “mid-intensity” war in country y—cynically scripted as “controlled wars”—are strategies that would keep military appropriations flowing into the coffers of the military-industrial complex without causing a major or worldwide conflict that could cripple world markets altogether.

Against this backdrop—the collapse of the Soviet Union, the “threat of peace dividends” to the interests of the military-industrial complex, and the consequent need of the beneficiaries of war dividends for substitutes for the “communist threat” of the Cold War era—the U.S. government’s approach to the heinous attacks of 9/11 as an opportunity for war and aggression should not have come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the vicious needs of militarism. The monstrous attacks were treated not as crimes but as “war on America.” Once it was thus established that the United States was “at war,” military buildup and imperialist aggressions followed accordingly. As the late Chalmers Johnson put it, the 9/11 tragedy “served as manna from heaven to an administration determined to ramp up military budgets” [10].

Champions of the U.S. wars of choice had already labeled “unfriendly” governments such as those ruling in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and North Korea as rogue and/or supporter of terrorism, which required “regime change.” Before the 9/11 attacks, however, such demonizing labels were apparently not enough to convince the American people to support U.S. wars of preemption. The 9/11 tragedy served as the militarists’ coveted pretext for such wars—hence, the regime change in Iraq, to be followed by similar changes of “unfriendly” regimes in many other countries in the region and around the world.

Just as the beneficiaries of war dividends, the military-security-industrial complex, view international peace and stability inimical to their interests, so too the militant Zionist proponents of “greater Israel” perceive peace between Israel and its Palestinian/Arab neighbors perilous to their goal of gaining control over the “promised land.” The reason for this fear of peace is that, according to a number of the United Nations’ resolutions, peace would mean Israel’s return to its pre-1967 borders, that is, withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But because proponents of “greater Israel” are unwilling to withdraw from these occupied territories, they are therefore afraid of peace—hence, their continued attempts at sabotaging peace efforts/negotiations.

By the same token, these proponents view war and convulsion (or, as David Ben-Gurion, one of the key founders of the State of Israel, put it, “revolutionary atmosphere”) as opportunities that are conducive to the expulsion of Palestinians, to the geographic recasting of the region, and to the expansion of Israel’s territory. “What is inconceivable in normal times,” Ben-Gurion pointed out, “is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out—a whole world is lost” [11].

Echoing a similarly evil sentiment that the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings is possible only under conditions of war and sociopolitical convulsion, the notoriously hawkish Ariel Sharon likewise pointed out on March 24, 1988, “that if the Palestinian uprising continued, Israel would have to make war on her Arab neighbors. The war, he stated, would provide ‘the circumstances’ for the removal of the entire Palestinian population from the West Bank and Gaza and even from inside Israel proper” [12].

The view that war would “provide the circumstances” for the removal of Palestinians from the occupied territories is premised on the expectation that the United States would go along with the notion and would, therefore, support Israeli expansionism in the event of the contemplated war. The expectation is by no means outlandish or unusual, as the beneficiaries of war and military spending in the U.S. do, indeed, gladly oblige, not so much for the sake of Israel or the Jewish people as for their own nefarious purposes—hence, the de facto alliance between the military-industrial complex and the Israel lobby.

Because the interests of these two powerful interest groups converge over fomenting war and political convulsion in the Middle East, an ominously potent alliance has been forged between them—ominous, because the mighty U.S. war machine is now supplemented by the almost unrivaled public relations capabilities of the hardline pro-Israel lobby in the United States. The convergence and/or interdependence of the interests of the military-industrial complex and those of militant Zionism on war and political convulsion in the Middle East is at the heart of the perpetual cycle of violence in the region.

The alliance between the military-industrial complex and the Israel lobby is unofficial and de facto; it is subtlely forged through an elaborate network of powerful militaristic think tanks such as The American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century, America Israel Public Affairs Committee, Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, National Institute for Public Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and Center for Security Policy.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, these militaristic think tanks and their hawkish operatives in and around the government published a number of policy papers that clearly and forcefully advocated plans for border change, for demographic change, and for regime change in the Middle East. For example, in 1996 an influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, sponsored and published a policy document titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which argued that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “should ‘make a clean break’ with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel’s claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It presented a plan whereby Israel would ‘shape its strategic environment,’ beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, to serve as a first step toward eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran” [13].

In an “Open Letter to the President” (Clinton), dated 19 February1998, a number of hawkish think tanks and individuals, representing the military-industrial complex and the Israel lobby, recommended “a comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime.” Among the letter’s signers were the following: Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser, Dov Zakheim, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, Joshua Muravchik, Leon Wieseltier, and former Congressman Stephen Solarz [14].

In September 2000, another militaristic think tank, called Project for the New American Century (PNAC), issued a report, titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,” which explicitly projected an imperial role for the United States the world over. It stated, for example, “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in [Persian] Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” The sponsors of the report included Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, and William Kristol, who was also a co-author of the report [15].

The influential Jewish Institute for the National Security Affairs (JINSA) also occasionally issued statements and policy papers that strongly advocated “regime changes” in the Middle East. Its advisor Michael Ladeen, who also unofficially advised the Bush administration on Middle Eastern issues, openly talked about the coming era of “total war,” indicating that the United States should expand its policy of “regime change” in Iraq to other countries in the region such as Iran and Syria. “In its fervent support for the hardline, pro-settlement, anti-Palestinian Likud-style policies in Israel, JINSA has essentially recommended that ‘regime change’ in Iraq should be just the beginning of a cascade of toppling dominoes in the Middle East” [16].

In brief, the evidence is overwhelming (and irrefutable) that the raging chaos in the Middle East, North Africa and Eastern Europe/Ukraine is not because of the “misguided” policies of the United States and its allies, as many critics and commentators tend to maintain. It is, rather, because of premeditated and carefully-crafted policies that have been pursued by an unholy alliance of the military-security-industrial complex and the Israel lobby in the post-Cold War world.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jul 20, 2014 12:28 am

Israel Escalates Open-Ended Gaza Invasion: 343 Killed

No Exit Strategy in Place as War Continues to Grow
by Jason Ditz, July 19, 2014

Israeli ground troops continued to push deeper into the Gaza Strip today as forces shelled the northern part of the tiny Palestinian enclave, and officials continued to speak of further escalation in the days to come.

A shell is falling on Beit Lahiya every 30 seconds, according to reports, and over 50,000 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes, a number which would be much higher if there was some safer part of Gaza to which people could realistically flee.

The death toll continues to mount, with 343 now reported dead, including 47 new deaths on Saturday. Two Israeli soldiers were also killed by Hamas fighters who reportedly got under the border fence. A rocket also hit an Israeli Bedouin’s home, killing him and wounding four family members.

The toll will continue to mount throughout the invasion, which seems at this point to be totally open-ended, with officials conceding there is no real exit strategy and any number of new war goals might conceivably be added in the days and weeks to come.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his latest address, insisted Israel only chose the invasion “after we had exhausted the other possibilities,” suggesting very little planning has been involved in working out how it will unfold, and the nation simply invaded for lack of any better ideas.

Some are saying the war could last months, which would be not only a humanitarian catastrophe for Gazans, but an unusually long invasion given Israel’s recent history of brief wars with high death tolls and internationally imposed ceasefire. The longest of Israel’s 7 conflicts with Gaza in the past 7+ years so far lasted only 22 days, and it is hard to imagine that they won’t simply tire themselves out in bombarding Gaza long before weeks turns into months.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 11, 2014 10:41 am

NOVEMBER 11, 2014
We Shouldn't Be Surprised
Turkey Is Supporting ISIS
by BEN NORTON
In one of the most contemptible of recent political developments, we now know that the great secular, democratic nation of Turkey is directly aiding ISIS fascists in order to crush the secular, left-wing Kurdish resistance.

This proud member of NATO sat on its hands for weeks, watching across the Syrian border as Daesh fascists tried to take over the town of Kobane, a Kurdish stronghold under-equipped resistance forces have valiantly defended with their lives. Many Western pundits were perplexed by Turkish inaction, going to great lengths to craft risible theories. Clear-eyed analysts, on the other hand, understood what Turkey’s modus operandi was all along: “The enemy of the enemy is my friend.” Secular, leftist Kurdish opposition forces are a threat to Turkish hegemony. President Erdoğan would clearly prefer brutally violent Sunni ethnoreligious supremacist extremists over secular, leftist, autonomous Kurds.

As of 10 November, 363 brave Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighters have been martyred. 609 ISIS fascists have been taken down with them.

Until recently, it was speculated that Turkey had provided indirect support to Daesh; there did not appear to be evidence showing direct Turkish assistance to ISIS fascists. New evidence leads to the latter conclusion.

On 7 November, Newsweek published “’ISIS Sees Turkey as Its Ally’: Former Islamic State Member Reveals Turkish Army Cooperation.” The piece is based on testimonies by a former ISIS communications technician who goes by the pseudonym Sherko Omer. Omer traveled to Syria to fight against the bloody Assad regime — a regime with brutal state terrorist campaigns of mass bombing, torture, starvation, and rape of civilians, including children — yet soon “found himself caught up in a horrifying sectarian war, unable to escape.” He never planned on joining ISIS; he was not a Salafi extremist. Omer was trapped in a terrifying snare — a sectarian, international proxy war — and feared for his life, knowing full well that Daesh murders defectors.

Omer managed to escape by surrendering to Kurdish forces (ISIS extremists would not have spared his life after such a surrender), and subsequently detailed to Newsweek what he saw in his time working for the fascist group.

He notes that Turkey allowed trucks from the Daesh stronghold in Raqqa to cross the “border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.” He later adds that, not only did they travel “through Turkey in a convoy of trucks,” they even stayed “at safehouses along the way.”

As a communication technician, Omer recalls “connect[ing] ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” reporting that he “rarely heard them speak in Arabic, and that was only when they talked to their own recruiters, otherwise, they mostly spoke in Turkish because the people they talked to were Turkish officials.”

“ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks,” Omer says.

Newsweek indicates that, until October, “NATO member Turkey had blocked Kurdish fighters from crossing the border into Syria to aid their Syrian counterparts in defending the border town of Kobane,” and “that people attempting to carry supplies across the border were often shot at.”

YPG spokesman Polat Can claimed:

There is more than enough evidence with us now proving that the Turkish army gives ISIS terrorists weapons, ammunitions and allows them to cross the Turkish official border crossings in order for ISIS terrorists to initiate inhumane attacks against the Kurdish people in Rojava [north-eastern Syria].

We now know that he was indeed correct.

“ISIS and Turkey cooperate together on the ground on the basis that they have a common enemy to destroy, the Kurds,” Omer divulged.

Not a New Policy

Newsweek states that it could not independently verify Omer’s testimony, but “anecdotal evidence of Turkish forces turning a blind eye to ISIS activity has been mounting over the past month.” There have even been reports of the Turkish military shooting Kurdish civilians who are trying to flee into Turkey for safety.

Turkish journalist Fehim Taştekin has been writing for months about how “armed groups like al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front cross the [Turkish] border freely.” In just one horrific example, in May 2014, he tells of an incident in which the Turkish military killed a Syrian Kurdish mother, in front of her own children, as they fled from Daesh fascists. (On the same day, the Turkish military shot 14-year-old Ali Ozdemir in the face, causing him to lose both of his eyes. He had crossed the border to visit his grandmother.)

Syrian journalist Bazran Halil explained in May 2014, months before the ISIS siege on Kobani:

The canton of Kobani is surrounded by ISIS. There is no electricity, no water. People drink water from wells. We are threatened by cholera. Turkey is the only place where people can meet their needs. Think, we don’t even have chickens. For Turkey to close the border means, ‘Go surrender to ISIS.’ In the border segments under control of Islamist organizations, everything is allowed to cross. Factories looted in Aleppo are carried across in trucks, and nobody says anything.

The Turkish policy, nevertheless, is to shoot, and to shoot to kill. The chairman of the Bar Association in Diyarbakir, a large southeastern Turkish city, insists that execution is the proper punishment to mete out to refugees “illegally” crossing the border. The chief of Diyarbakir’s Human Rights Association explains that soldiers on the border are ordered to shoot to kill. This is Turkey’s “Rojava policy” — that is to say, its plan to quash the resistance and kill the Kurds.

In fact, while Daesh was carving out huge swaths of Syrian territory in which to impose a fascist “caliphate” (that is recognized by approximately zero of the world’s prominent Muslim scholars, leaders, and institutions), Turkish fighter jets bombed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)  — a secular, leftist organization affiliated with the YPG — for the first time since their 2012 ceasefire. Turkey insisted the bombs were not meant to defend ISIS (there is certainly no way attacking resistance groups as they courageously battle against ethnoreligious supremacist terrorists fighting desperately to take over their land could possibly be construed as implicitly supporting that fascist menace).

Given the long and egregious history of anti-Kurdish racism in Turkey, institutionalized under Atatürk, we should not be surprised. Yet Erdoğan’s regime is doing much more than crushing YPG/PKK freedom fighters — something much, much more perilous. Turkey is fanning the flames of a bloody and mushrooming sectarian conflagration that has already engulfed much of the Middle East and may very well extend further, consuming all in its wake.


Turkish minister to Israel: Leave al-Aqsa or we’ll send you packing

EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkır addresses a meeting of AK Party in Burdur on Sunday. (Photo: DHA)
November 10, 2014, Monday/ 14:01:20/ TODAYSZAMAN.COM

Turkey's European Union Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkır slammed Israel for an incursion into al-Aqsa Mosque, telling the Israeli soldiers to leave the sacred site at once.

“I am sending this message to those soldiers who enter [al-Aqsa Mosque] with their boots: If you don't leave it immediately, we will hand you your boots and watch you run away,” Bozkır was quoted by private Doğan news agency as telling a meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in the southwestern province of Burdur on Sunday.

Israeli police clashed with Palestinians on Wednesday at the entrance to the 8th-century mosque, Islam's third most sacred place, after what Palestinians call an illegal storming of the mosque by Israeli extremists protected by some 300 Israeli security forces. Palestinian officials said Israeli forces had crossed the threshold of the mosque for the first time since 1967, while Israeli police denied going into the house of worship.

Palestinian officials say that Israeli police went far inside the mosque wearing their shoes in a sign of disrespect for Muslims, who leave their shoes outside.

Bozkır,a former diplomat, said Turkey will protect peace in Palestine. “Turkey will not allow [people to] disrupt peaceful orders that we established in Palestine or anywhere else in the world,” he said.

Since capturing east Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967, Israel has maintained a ban on Jews praying at a sacred compound that houses the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.

In recent weeks, however, a campaign by far-right Jewish nationalists, including ministers in the Israeli government, to be allowed to pray at the site has gathered momentum, which led to clashes at the compound between Israeli security forces and Muslim worshippers angry at what they see as an assault on a shrine that is administered by Islamic authorities.

The area is run by Muslim authorities under Jordanian custody.

Turkey lashed out at Israel for the incursion into al-Aqsa Mosque, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu calling it “barbaric.” Davutoğlu also said it was a “divine duty” for Turkey to protect al-Aqsa Mosque.



Turkey sets new rules of engagement in Mediterranean showdown with Israel, Cyprus

ANKARA — Turkey has been preparing for a naval confrontation with Greece and Israel in the Mediterranean Sea.
Officials said the Turkish Navy has been authorized to stop foreign energy exploration and development in the eastern Mediterranean. They said the navy would operate under new rules of engagement that would protect Ankara’s controversial exploration program near the coast of Cyprus.

“The Prime Ministry handed over the rules of engagement to the chief of General Staff and the chief of staff handed them over to the Naval Forces Command,” Turkish Navy commander Adm. Bulent Bostanoglu said. “We will act in line with these rules of engagement in the event we face a situation over this issue.”
In a briefing on Nov. 9, Bostanoglu stressed that the navy would support Turkey’s claims in the eastern Mediterranean amid energy exploration and development by Israel and the Republic of Cyprus. The commander said warships would secure operations of a Turkish seismic vessel that was conducting an offshore energy survey meant to last until the end of 2014.
Bostanoglu, who attended the Blue Whale-2014 exercise, did not dismiss the prospect of a confrontation with either the Greek or Israeli navy. Both Greece and Israel were said to have intensified operations to protect offshore energy programs.
“Our naval forces elements will continue their mission of situational awareness in the region,” Bostanoglu said.
Bostanoglu said the Turkish Navy was protecting the Barbaros Hayrettin Pasa research vessel near the coast of Cyprus, 38 percent of which is under Ankara’s control. The commander said the navy was also monitoring a Cypriot-commissioned drilling ship at a distance of nine kilometers.
“The order given to us for the moment is not to enter into this nine-kilometer area,” Bostanoglu said. “That’s why no incident of harassment or disturbance has occurred.”
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 11, 2014 6:49 pm

The Neocon Plan for War and More War
November 11, 2014

Exclusive: A major test for President Obama is whether he will – in the face of the Republican midterm victories – submit to neocon demands for more wars in the Middle East and a costly Cold War with Russia or finally earn the Nobel Peace Prize that he got at the start of his presidency, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

Buoyed by the Republican electoral victories, America’s neocons hope to collect their share of the winnings by pushing President Barack Obama into escalating conflicts around the world, from a new Cold War with Russia to hot wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and maybe Iran.

The new menu of neocon delights was listed by influential neocon theorist Max Boot in a blog post for Commentary magazine, an important outlet for neocon thinking. Boot argued that the Republicans – and thus the neocons – have earned a mandate on national security policy from the electoral repudiation of Obama’s Democratic Party.

“I am convinced [national security policy] was as important a factor in this election as it was in the 2006 midterm when, in the midst of Iraq War debacles, the Republicans lost control of the Senate,” wrote Boot, who then blamed Obama for pretty much everything that has gone wrong:

“The president did himself incalculable damage when he set a ‘red line’ for Syria last year but failed to enforce it. That created an image of weakness and indecision which has only gotten worse with the rise of ISIS and Putin’s expansionism in Ukraine.”

Boot’s recounting of that history is, of course, wrongheaded in several ways. It may have been foolish for Obama to set a “red line” against chemical weapons use in Syria, but there is growing evidence that the Syrian government was not behind the lethal sarin attack of Aug. 21, 2013, and that it was instead a provocation by rebel extremists. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.”]

Further, Putin’s approach to the Ukraine crisis in February 2014 was reactive, not provocative or expansionistic. It was the European Union and the United States (led by neocons such as Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and Sen. John McCain) that set out to overturn the Ukrainian status quo.

Neocon support for political disturbances in Kiev, including Nuland plotting how to “glue this thing,” contributed to the putsch that ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych and touched off a bloody civil war. Putin was supporting the status quo, i.e., maintaining the elected government, not instigating its overthrow. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Powerful Group Think on Ukraine” and “Treating Putin Like a Lunatic.”]

And, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria arose not from Obama’s timidity but from the neocon-inspired invasion of Iraq last decade. ISIS emerged from the hyper-violent Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which didn’t exist until President George W. Bush followed neocon advice to invade and occupy Iraq. The terrorist group, rebranding itself as the Islamic State, moved on to Syria where the neocons were seeking another “regime change” in the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons Revive Syrian ‘Regime Change’ Plan.”]

If Obama had bombed the Syrian military in summer 2013, as Boot and other neocons wanted, not only might Obama have been attacking the wrong people for the sarin attack, he might well have precipitated the collapse of the Syrian government and a victory for either ISIS or al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, the only two effective fighting forces among the anti-government rebels. There would have been a good chance that jihadist banners would be flying over Damascus, creating a terrorist state in the heart of the Middle East.

In other words, Boot is working not only from a false narrative but a dangerous fantasy. Nevertheless, it is a narrative that is widely accepted inside Official Washington where one of the favorite sayings is “perception is reality.” So, although Boot’s perception is factually unhinged, it is regarded as “reality” by many “smart people” in the world’s most powerful capital.

Dangerous Prescription

After laying out his false diagnosis – that Obama’s supposed failure to destroy the Syrian military in 2013 led to the crises of Ukraine and ISIS in 2014 – Boot then prescribes what needs to be done.

First, he wants the Republican-controlled Congress to pour more money into the U.S. military or, as he puts it, “Save the defense budget from the mindless cuts of sequestration, which are already hurting readiness and, if left unabated, risk another ‘hollow’ military.”

Second, launch a full-scale economic war against Russia while dispatching the U.S. military to defend the Ukrainian regime now in control of Kiev and to other nations on Russia’s borders. Or, as Boot says: “Impose tougher sanctions on Russia, freezing Russian companies entirely out of dollar-denominated transactions, while sending arms and trainers to Kiev and putting at least a Brigade Combat Team into each of the Baltic republics and Poland to signal that no more aggression from Putin will be tolerated.”

Third, keep the U.S. military fighting in Afghanistan indefinitely. Or, as Boot says, “Repeal the 2016 deadline for pulling troops out of Afghanistan and announce that any drawdown will be conditions based.”

Fourth, recommit a larger U.S. military force to aid the Iraqi military and to invade Syria. Or, as Boot says, “Increase the tempo of airstrikes against ISIS, and send a lot more troops to Iraq and Syria to work with indigenous groups – we need at least 15,000 personnel, not the 1,400 sent so far.” [Emphasis added to point out that sending U.S. troops into Syria would amount to an invasion.]

Though the Syrian government has tolerated U.S. airstrikes against ISIS, the idea of sending U.S. soldiers into Syria would be a game-changer and underscores how casually neocons call for committing the U.S. military to war and how disdainful they are of international law. If Boot’s intentions on Syria aren’t already obvious, he further recommends “launching airstrikes on Iran’s proxy, [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad.”

Despite the breathtaking quality of this recommendation, Boot tries to tamp down any alarm by adding: “This isn’t a call for U.S. ground combat troops, but we do need a lot more trainers, Special Operators, and support personnel, and they need to be free to work with forces in the field rather than being limited to working with brigade and division staffs in large bases far from the front lines.”

Apparently Boot foresees a Libya-style operation in which the U.S. military and its allies destroy a government’s armed forces from the air while rebels on the ground ultimately take power. In 2011, the Libya strategy led to the ouster and murder of Muammar Gaddafi followed by the country collapsing into violence and chaos, including the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Benghazi and the decision by Western governments to abandon their embassies in Tripoli.

In Syria, such a scenario would likely lead to a victory by Islamic extremists, but it would fit with the Israeli strategy of favoring the ouster of Assad, an Iranian ally, even if the conflict ended with al-Qaeda-related radicals in power.

Boot’s recommendations match closely the strategic interests expressed by Israel’s Likud leadership. As the Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post in September 2013, “The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc. …

“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” Oren added that this was the case even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.

Bomb, Bomb Iran

And, if instigating a new Cold War with Russia and expanding wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria aren’t enough for you, Boot also advocates what would amount to a military ultimatum to Iran, saying:. “Make clear that any deal with Iran will require the dismantlement of its nuclear facilities – not just a freeze that will leave it just short of nuclear weapons status.”

And what if Iran refuses to dismantle its nuclear facilities or throws out international inspectors? Then, presumably Obama would have to enforce this new “red line” with yet another war, this one against Iran, just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and neocons have long favored. Remember Sen. McCain breaking into a Beach Boy tune to extol the idea to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”

Boot makes it clear that what is important for Obama is to realign U.S. foreign policy with the desires of Israel and the Sunni states against Shiite-ruled Iran. He says: “End the rapprochement with Iran that has scared our closest allies in the Middle East, and make clear that the U.S. will continue its traditional, post-1979 role of containing Iranian power and siding with the likes of Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE over Tehran.”

In case you’re wondering, Boot is not just some lonely neocon voice in the wilderness. He is a senior fellow at the powerful Council on Foreign Relations and a close associate of the Kagan family of neocon royalty, which includes Robert Kagan’s wife, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

Boot is also a friend of retired four-star General and former CIA Director David Petraeus. It was Boot who was moderating a speech by Petraeus on Oct. 30 at New York’s 92nd Street Y when former CIA analyst Ray McGovern was denied entrance and arrested. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Petraeus Spared Ray McGovern’s Question.”]

So, the neocon thinking is now out in the open. Boot has explained how the neocons view the national security implications of the Republican electoral victory and how Obama should bend to this supposed mandate. But Boot also has left little doubt what will follow if Obama does submit to the neocon agenda – a future of endless warfare across the Middle East and even nuclear brinksmanship with Russia.

There has long been a madness to neocon thinking, matching what the most extreme elements of the Israeli government seem determine to create, a roiling chaos across the Middle East amid fantasies of “regime change” somehow producing Arab leaders compliant with Israeli interests.

Yet, to carry out these schemes, which far exceed the capabilities of even Israel’s highly capable military, the American neocons and Israeli hardliners need the U.S. taxpayers’ money to pay for the wars as well as young American soldiers coming from small towns and large cities across the United States to be dispatched halfway around the world to kill and die.

As President Obama heads into the final quarter of his presidency, he must decide whether he will be led down that bloody path or finally stand up to the neocons (and their allies in Congress and within his own administration) and seek reasonable accommodations for peace with the countries on Max Boot’s hit list.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 17, 2014 12:06 pm

How Many Islamic State Fighters Are There?
November 16, 2014

Exclusive: As the United States slides back into war in the Middle East, the specter of Vietnam hovers over the endeavor with some observers wondering if wishful thinking will again replace hardheaded analysis about the risks and the costs, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.


By Ray McGovern

Why was I reminded of Vietnam on Saturday when Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Iraq to “get a firsthand look at the situation in Iraq, receive briefings, and get better sense of how the campaign is progressing” against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL?

For years as the Vietnam quagmire deepened, U.S. political and military leaders flew off to Vietnam and were treated to a snow job by Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander there. Many would come back glowing about how the war was “progressing.”


Dempsey might have been better served if someone had shown him Patrick Cockburn’s article in the Independent entitled “War with Isis: Islamic militants have an army of 200,000, claims senior Kurdish leader.”

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, told Cockburn that “I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilize Arab young men in the territory they have taken.”

Hussein estimated that Isis rules about one-third of Iraq and one-third of Syria with a population from 10 million to 12 million over an area of 250,000 square kilometers, roughly the size Great Britain, giving the jihadists a large pool of potential fighters to recruit.

While the Kurdish estimate may be high – it certainly exceeds “the tens of thousands,” maybe 20,000 to 30,000 that many Western analysts have claimed – the possibility that the Islamic State’s insurgency is bigger than believed could explain its startling success in overrunning the Iraqi Army around Mosul last summer and achieving surprising success against the well-regarded Kurdish pesh merga forces, too.

So, on his flight back to Washington, Dempsey will have time to ponder whether he has the courage to pass on this discouraging word to President Barack Obama about ISIS or whether he will put on the rose-colored glasses like an earlier generation of commanders did about Vietnam, where Westmoreland insisted that the number of enemy Vietnamese in South Vietnam could not go above 299,000.

Unfortunately, those obstinate Vietnamese Communists would not observe that artificial, politically inspired limit. Westmoreland was aware of the troubling reality but knew that acknowledging it would have undesired consequences in the United States where many Americans were souring on the war.

The inconvenient truth finally became abundantly clear during the Tet offensive in late January and early February 1968, but still the misbegotten war went on, and on, ultimately claiming some 58,000 U.S. lives and millions of Vietnamese.

Westmoreland’s gamesmanship with the numbers was known to some CIA officials – first and foremost, a very bright and courageous analyst named Sam Adams – but CIA Director Richard Helms silenced them out of fear of political retribution. “My responsibility is to protect the Agency,” Helms told them, “and I cannot do that if we get into a pissing match with a U.S. Army at war.”

Today’s CIA Director John Brennan is similarly at pains to protect the Agency on a number of fronts. Is he likely to tell the truth about ISIS if it means the prospects for a renewed war in Iraq and a new war in Syria are especially grim? If not, are there no Sam Adamses left at the CIA?

Honest Analysts?

Honest intelligence analysts played a key role in the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” which helped thwart Bush/Cheney plans to apply Iraqi-type “shock and awe” to Iran during their last year in office. The NIE concluded, unanimously and “with high confidence,” that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in late 2003.

In his memoir, Decision Points, President George W. Bush called the NIE’s findings “eye-popping.” He openly bemoaned how the estimate deprived him of the military option, writing “How could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

The NIE on Iran was issued seven years ago. One has to hope that a few honest analysts on the Near East have survived the CIA directorships of Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, David Petraeus and John Brennan and have the courage to tell the truth about ISIS – including how U.S. military intervention now is swelling ISIS’s ranks, much as the Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq in 2003 created the conditions for the group’s birth, then called “Al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

If honest intelligence analysts are silenced, as Sam Adams was 47 years ago, they need to plumb their consciences and see if they have the guts to make public both the undercounting of enemy forces AND the fillip given to their multiplication by further U.S. military involvement.

Though having worked within the system to get the real enemy troop estimates to senior U.S. officials, Sam Adams went to an early, remorse-filled death, unable to overcome the thought of what might well have happened to shorten the war if he had broken with the CIA’s demands for secrecy and made the actual enemy numbers public.

Possibly, the armed conflict might have ended in 1968. Or, to put it another way, the Vietnam Memorial in Washington would have no need for a western wall since there would be no names to chisel into the granite.

If Gen. Dempsey decides to ape Westmoreland and dissemble about the realistic obstacles to military success against the Islamic State fighters and about the counterproductive effects of U.S. intervention, well, our country will need a new Sam Adams willing, this time, to blast the truth into the open.

Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence

Sam Adams’s memory is invoked each year as Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence make their annual award for integrity. SAAII is a movement of former CIA colleagues of former intelligence analyst Sam Adams, together with others who hold up his example as a model for those in intelligence who would aspire to the courage to speak truth to power.

SAAII confers an award each year to a member of the intelligence community or related professions who exemplifies Sam Adam’s courage, persistence and devotion to truth — no matter the consequences.

It was Adams who discovered in 1967 that there were more than a half-million Vietnamese Communists under arms — roughly twice the number that the U.S. command in Saigon would admit to, lest Americans learn that claims of “progress” were bogus.

Gen. Westmoreland had put an artificial limit on the number Army intelligence was allowed to carry on its books. And his deputy, Gen. Creighton Abrams, specifically warned Washington that the press would have a field day if Adam’s numbers were released, and that this would weaken the war effort.

A SECRET/EYES ONLY cable from Abrams on Aug. 20, 1967, stated: “We have been projecting an image of success over recent months,” and cautioned that if the higher figures became public, “all available caveats and explanations will not prevent the press from drawing an erroneous and gloomy conclusion.”

The Communist countrywide offensive during Tet made it clear that the generals had been lying and that Sam Adams’s “higher figures” were correct. Senior intelligence officials were aware of the deception, but lacked the courage to stand up to Westmoreland. Sadly, Sam Adams remained reluctant to go “outside channels.”

A few weeks after Tet, however, former Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg rose to the occasion. Ellsberg learned that Westmoreland was asking for 206,000 more troops to widen the war into Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam — right up to the border with China, and perhaps beyond.

Someone else promptly leaked to the New York Times Westmoreland’s troop request, emboldening Ellsberg to do likewise with Sam Adams’ story. Ellsberg had come to the view that leaking truth about a deceitful war would be “a patriotic and constructive act.” It was his first unauthorized disclosure. On March 19, 1968, the Times published a stinging story based on Adams’s figures.

On March 25, President Lyndon Johnson complained to a small gathering, “The leaks to the New York Times hurt us. … We have no support for the war. This is caused by the 206,000 troop request [by Westmoreland] and the leaks. … I would have given Westy the 206,000 men.”

On March 31, 1968, Johnson introduced a bombing pause, opted for negotiations, and announced that he would not run for another term in November.

Sam Adams continued to press for honesty and accountability but stayed “inside channels” — and failed. He died at 55 of a heart attack, nagged by the thought that, had he not let himself be diddled, many lives might have been saved. His story is told in War of Numbers, published posthumously.



War with Isis: Islamic militants have army of 200,000, claims senior Kurdish leader

Exclusive: CIA has hugely underestimated the number of jihadis, who now rule an area the size of Britain

PATRICK COCKBURN Author Biography IRBIL Sunday 16 November 2014
The Islamic State (Isis) has recruited an army hundreds of thousands strong, far larger than previous estimates by the CIA, according to a senior Kurdish leader. He said the ability of Isis to attack on many widely separated fronts in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that the number of militant fighters is at least 200,000, seven or eight times bigger than foreign in intelligence estimates of up to 31,500 men.

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani said in an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday that "I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilise Arab young men in the territory they have taken."

He estimates that Isis rules a third of Iraq and a third of Syria with a population of between 10 and 12 million living in an area of 250,000 square kilometres, the same size as Great Britain. This gives the jihadis a large pool of potential recruits.

Proof that Isis has created a large field army at great speed is that it has been launching attacks against the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Iraqi army close to Baghdad at the same time as it is fighting in Syria. "They are fighting in Kobani," said Mr Hussein. "In Kurdistan last month they were attacking in seven different places as well as in Ramadi [capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad] and Jalawla [an Arab-Kurdish town close to Iranian border]. It is impossible to talk of 20,000 men or so."

The high figure for Isis's combat strength is important because it underlines how difficult it will be eliminate Isis even with US air strikes. In September, the CIA produced an estimate of Isis numbers which calculated that the movement had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters. The underestimate of the size of the force that Isis can deploy may explain why the US and other foreign governments have been repeatedly caught by surprise over the past five months as IS inflicted successive defeats on the Iraqi army, Syrian army, Syrian rebels and Kurdish peshmerga.

In pictures: Fighting between Kurds and Isis intensifies in Kobani

The US and its allies are beginning to take on board the obstacles to fulfilling President Obama's pledge to degrade and destroy Isis. General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Baghdad on Friday in a surprise visit. He said he wanted "to get a sense from our side about how our contribution is going". Earlier in the week, he told Congress that to defeat Isis an efficient army of 80,000 men would be necessary. Few in Iraq believe that the regular army is up to the task, despite winning a success last week by retaking the refinery town of Baiji and lifting the siege of the refinery, the largest in Iraq.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Hussein spelled out the new balance of power in Iraq in the wake of the Islamic militants' summer offensive and the military re-engagement of the US. The Kurdistan Regional Government now faces Isis units along a 650-mile front line cutting across northern Iraq between Iran and Syria. Mr Hussein said that the US air intervention had enabled the Kurds to hold out when the unexpected Isis assault in August defeated the peshmerga and came close to capturing the Kurdish capital Irbil: "They were fighting with a strategy of fear that affected the morale of everybody, including the peshmerga."

As well as terrifying its opponents by publicising its own atrocities, Isis had developed an effective cocktail of tactics that includes suicide bombers, mines, snipers and use of US equipment captured from the Iraqi army such as Humvees, artillery and tanks. To combat them, Mr Hussein says the Kurds need Apache helicopters and heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery.

The Kurdish leaders are now much more relaxed about Isis because they have a US guarantee of their security. The grim experience of the US in seeing the collapse of the government and army in Baghdad, which the Americans had fostered at vast expense, also works in favour of the Kurds.

Holding on: Kurdish chief of staff Fuad Hussein with John Kerry in June Holding on: Kurdish chief of staff Fuad Hussein with John Kerry in June AFP/Getty
Mr Hussein does not like to talk about it today, but the Kurdistan Regional Government got a nasty surprise in August when it asked the Turkish government for help in stopping Isis only to be told Ankara planned no immediate assistance. It was only then that the Kurds turned to Iran and the US, both of which immediately acted to prevent a complete victory by the Islamic militants. Iran sent some officers, military units and artillery while the US started air strikes on 8 August.

Mr Hussein speculates that the CIA and US intelligence agencies may only have been speaking about "core" fighters in claiming that the jihadis had at most 31,500 men under arms. But the fighting over the past five months has shown that Isis has become a formidable military force. "We are talking about a state that has a military and ideological basis," said Mr Hussein, "so that means they want everyone to learn how to use a rifle, but they also want everybody to have training in their ideology, in other words brainwashing."

A sign of the military professionalism of Isis is the speed with which they learned to use captured US tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment captured after the fall of Mosul on 10 June. The same thing happened in Syria where Isis captured Russian-made arms which it rapidly started using. The most likely explanation for this is that IS's ranks contain many former Iraqi and Syrian soldiers whose skills Isis has identified. Mr Hussein says that the peshmerga has been impressed during the fighting by Isis's training and discipline.

"They will fight until death, and are dangerous because they are so well-trained," said Mr Hussein. "For instance, they have the best snipers, but to be a good sniper you need not only training on how to shoot, but discipline in staying put for up to five hours so you can hit your target."

There is supporting evidence for Mr Hussein's high estimate for Isis numbers. A study by the National Security Adviser's office in Baghdad before the Isis offensive showed that, when 100 jihadis entered a district, they would soon recruit between five and 10 times their original number. There are reports of many young men volunteering to fight for Isis when they were in the full flood of success in the summer. This enthusiasm may have ebbed since the US started air strikes and the Isis run of victories ended with their failure to capture Kobani in northern Syria despite a long siege.

In an impoverished region with few jobs, Isis pay of $400 (£250) a month is also attractive. Moreover, Mr Hussein says that in the places they have conquered Isis is remodelling society in its own image, aiming to educate people into accepting Isis ideology.

A fighter jet takes off from a US war ship A fighter jet takes off from a US war ship Reuters
The Kurds have recovered their military self-confidence in the knowledge that they are backed by the US and Iran. The peshmerga have taken back some towns lost in August, notably Zumar close to the Syrian border, but not Tal Afar and Sinjar where 8,500 Yazidis are still besieged on their mountain top. But there are limits to how far the Kurds are willing to advance even if they succeed in doing so. Mr Hussein says that the Kurds can help an Iraqi army, supposing a non-sectarian one is created, but "the Kurds cannot liberate the Sunni Arab areas".

This is the great problem facing a counter offensive against Isis by Baghdad or the Kurds: it will be seen by the five or six million Sunni Arabs in Iraq as directed against their whole community. Hitherto, the US has been hoping to repeat its success between 2006 and 2008 in turning many Sunni against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Mr Hussein ticks off the reasons why repeating this will be very difficult: the Americans then had 150,000 soldiers in Iraq to back up anti-al-Qaeda tribal leaders. Isis will savagely punish anybody who opposes it. "We have seen what happened in Anbar to the Albu Nimr tribe [that rose up against Isis]. They stood bravely against the terrorist but 500 were killed. It was a disaster."

Overall, Mr Hussein says he does not see any convincing sign of resistance from the Sunni Arabs. Many of them may be unhappy, particularly in Mosul, but this is not translating into effective opposition. Nor is it clear what outside force could organise resistance. The Iraqi army might be acceptable in Sunni areas but only if it is reconstituted so that is not dominated by the Shia.

At the moment, the Kurds see little sign of its presence. They have been asking for regular troops to defend the Mosul Dam on the Euphrates so they can use up to 3,000 peshmerga stationed there, but no Iraqi troops have turned up. "Those who are now defending Baghdad are the army of the [Shia] parties. To re-establish a professional army needs time."

Mr Hussein did not say so, but it may be too late to establish a competent cross-confessional regular army in Iraq. The counter-offensive by Baghdad is led by the three main Shia militias which have almost the same ideological fervour and sectarian hatred as Isis. Any advance on the battlefield leads to the population deemed loyal to the losing side taking flight so the whole of northern Iraq has become a land of refugees.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
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Re: Is Open-Ended Chaos Desired US-Israeli Aim in Middle Eas

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Jan 25, 2015 10:26 am

Netanyahu Imported by GOP to ensure Iran War
By Juan Cole | Jan. 22, 2015 |

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) —
Republican House Majority leader John Boehner secretly invited Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Washington to address Congress and then once it was set up he let Barack Obama know about it.
The reason for bringing Netanyahu is that Boehner wants to craft a super-majority in Congress that can over-ride Obama’s veto of new sanctions on Iran. He doesn’t have enough Republican votes to do so, but if he can get Democrats beholden to the Israel lobbies of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to join the veto over-ride effort, he might succeed.
Obama has spent a great deal of time and effort trying to negotiate with Iran over its civilian nuclear enrichment program, intended to allow Iran to replicate the success of France and South Korea in supplying electicity. (That would allow Iran to save gas and oil exports for earning foreign exchange).
Because nowadays producing enriched uranium for fuel via centrifuges is always potentially double use, this program has alarmed the US, Europe, and Israel. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given several fatwas (akin to encyclicals) orally in which he forbids making, storing or using nuclear weapons as incompatible with Islamic law (a position also taken by his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini). So maintaining that Iran is committed to making a nuclear bomb is sort of like holding that the Pope has a huge condom factory in the basement of the Vatican.
But, there are no doubt Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders and maybe some engineers and scientists who really wish Khamenei would change his mind (he won’t).
So if you wanted a compromise between Iranian nuclear doves (the hard line leadership) and Iranian nuclear hawks (the subordinates who have to take orders from the doves), what would you do? You’d keep options open. And keeping options open also has a deterrent effect, so it is almost as good as having a nuclear bomb. That is, if Iran has all the infrastructure that would be needed for a nuclear weapons program but didn’t actually initiate such a program, you’d put enemies on notice that if they try to get up a war on you the way Bush-Cheney got one up on Iraq, they could force you into going for broke and abruptly making a bomb for self-defense. This posture is called in the security literature “nuclear latency” or colloquially “the Japan Option” (we all know Tokyo could produce a bomb in short order if they felt sufficiently threatened).
I started arguing that this policy was what Iran was up to some 7 or 8 years ago, and I think it is now widely accepted in policy circles.
So the point of the UNSC plus Germany negotiations with Iran is really about how long Iran would take to break out and produce a bomb. Will it be 3 months or one year? Iran wants a shorter timeline (for maximum deterrence, since they already saw what happened to Baghdad). The P5 + 1 want a much longer timeline. They would also like to spike the centrifuges and make sure there is no heavy water reactor (plutonium builds up on the rods).
If the two sides can reach an acceptable compromise, sanctions would be lifted, Iran would run its Russian-built reactors to produce electricity (though likely within a decade they will be undercut in price by solar panels; still, solar doesn’t have deterrent properties ), and there would be thorough frequent UN inspections of its enrichment facilities (plutonium leaves a signature). It isn’t really possible to have a big nuclear facility hidden from US satellites; the US spotted Fordo immediately. You need a lot of water, truck traffic, etc.
But Iran would have latency and therefore deterrence and I suppose might be emboldened that Israel wouldn’t dare nuke it because it might well be able to nuke back some months later.
US hawks in both parties and the Israeli political right wing want to prevent Iran from having any nuclear enrichment program at all, so as to prevent Iran from having the security that comes from the deterrence Lite produced by latency.
The US Joint Chiefs of Staff looked at this issue and have decided that only an Iraq-style invasion, occupation and regime change could hope to abolish the nuclear enrichment program.
If that is what it takes, the US and Israeli hawks are perfectly all right with it. It would be good times for the military-industrial complex, and Israel’s last major conventional enemy (though a toothless one) would be destroyed. An irritant to US policy and a threat to Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, our big volatile Gasoline Station in the Sky, would also be removed.
Iran is three times as populous and three times as large as Iraq. So I figure this enterprise would cost at least 15,000 troops dead, 90,000 seriously wounded, and altogether $15- 24 trillion dollars over time (including health care for the 90,000 wounded vets). Given the size of the country and the nationalism of the population, it could be much more like the US war in Vietnam than Iraq was, i.e. it could end in absolute defeat. Russia and China would almost certainly aid insurgencies to weaken the US.
And that is what the right wing psychopaths in Washington DC and Tel Aviv have planned for us. If they can over-ride Obama’s veto and scuttle the negotiations, they set us up for a war down the line, as Obama warned in the SOTU.
In contrast, professional Israeli intelligence analysts are warning against new sanctions and any torpedoing of the Iran talks. Because they deal in the coin of pragmatism and the real world.
Readers should please let their congressional representatives know they would prefer not to be subjected to this disaster.
That Netanyahu is an unreliable narrator should be obvious by now:
I wrote in 2012 :
Israeli PM Binyamin “Chicken Little” Netanyahu tried to scaremonger about Iraq in 2002, as his contribution to the Anglo-American war of aggression on that country. “there is no question whatsoever,” Netanyahu said, “that Saddam” was seeking nuclear weapons. He said that Israeli intelligence reported to him that Russian scientists and North Korea were on site and actively aiding this phantom nuclear weapons program.
There was no Iraqi nuclear weapons program in 2002; it was dismantled in the early 1990s by United Nations inspectors. There were none of the chemical or biological weapons Netanyahu spoke of. No Russians. No North Koreans. Bupkes.

h/t Washington’s blog
Netanyahu also warned that Iraq would give nuclear warheads (which it did not have) to “terrorist groups.”
He also argued that no inspections could possibly find “mobile weapons sites” (which are impossible), implying that invasion and occupation was the only course open.
Netanyahu proved that neither he nor the Israeli intelligence organization, Mossad, had the slightest actual intelligence on Iraq, and that neither should be trusted to provide such intelligence to the US. Clearly, some right wing Israeli leaders always want the US entangled in regional wars in the Middle East, insofar as they are seeking US support in a hostile region. They therefore habitually exaggerate the dangers, and are little more than bullshit artists.
Netanyahu’s comments on Iraq are almost verbatim what he is now saying about Iran.
The Mainstream Media never calls Netanyahu on his bull crap.
—–
Related video:
AP: “Boehner Invites Netanyahu to Address Congress”
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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