How ‘Regime Change’ Wars Led to Korea Crisis
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | September 4, 2017
It is a popular meme in the U.S. media to say that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “crazy” as he undertakes to develop a nuclear bomb and a missile capacity to deliver it, but he is actually working from a cold logic dictated by the U.S. government’s aggressive wars and lack of integrity.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un
Indeed, the current North Korea crisis, which could end up killing millions of people, can be viewed as a follow-on disaster to President George W. Bush’s Iraq War and President Barack Obama’s Libyan intervention. Those wars came after the leaders of Iraq and Libya had dismantled their dangerous weapons programs, leaving their countries virtually powerless when the U.S. government chose to invade.
In both cases, the U.S. government also exploited its power over global information to spread lies about the targeted regimes as justification for the invasions — and the world community failed to do anything to block the U.S. aggressions.
And, on a grim personal note, the two leaders, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, were then brutally murdered, Hussein by hanging and Gaddafi by a mob that first sodomized him with a knife.
So, the neoconservatives who promoted the Iraq invasion supposedly to protect the world from Iraq’s alleged WMDs — and the liberal interventionists who pushed the Libya invasion based on false humanitarian claims — may now share in the horrific possibility that millions of people in North Korea, South Korea, Japan and maybe elsewhere could die from real WMDs launched by North Korea and/or by the United States.
Washington foreign policy “experts” who fault President Trump’s erratic and bellicose approach toward this crisis may want to look in the mirror and consider how they contributed to the mess by ignoring the predictable consequences from the Iraq and Libya invasions.
Yes, I know, at the time it was so exciting to celebrate the Bush Doctrine of preemptive wars even over a “one percent” suspicion that a “rogue state” like Iraq might share WMDs with terrorists — or the Clinton Doctrine hailed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s acolytes enamored by her application of “smart power” to achieve “regime change” in Libya.
However, as we now know, both wars were built upon lies. Iraq did not possess WMD stockpiles as the Bush administration claimed, and Libya was not engaged in mass murder of civilians in rebellious areas in the eastern part of the country as the Obama administration claimed.
Post-invasion investigations knocked down Bush’s WMD myth in Iraq, and a British parliamentary inquiry concluded that Western governments misrepresented the situation in eastern Libya where Gaddafi forces were targeting armed rebels but not indiscriminately killing civilians.
But those belated fact-finding missions were no comfort to either Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, nor to their countries, which have seen mass slaughters resulting from the U.S.-sponsored invasions and today amount to failed states.
There also has been virtually no accountability for the war crimes committed by the Bush and Obama administrations. Bush and Obama both ended up serving two terms as President. None of Bush’s senior advisers were punished – and Hillary Clinton received the 2016 Democratic Party’s nomination for President.
As for the U.S. mainstream media, which behaved as boosters for both invasions, pretty much all of the journalistic war advocates have continued on with their glorious careers. To excuse their unprofessional behavior, some even have pushed revisionist lies, such as the popular but false claim that Saddam Hussein was to blame because he pretended that he did have WMDs – when the truth is that his government submitted a detailed 12,000-page report to the United Nations in December 2002 describing how the WMDs had been destroyed (though that accurate account was widely mocked and ultimately ignored).
Pervasive Dishonesty
The dishonesty that now pervades the U.S. government and the U.S. mainstream media represents another contributing factor to the North Korean crisis. What sensible person anywhere on the planet would trust U.S. assurances? Who would believe what the U.S. government says, except, of course, the U.S. mainstream media?
Remember also that North Korea’s nuclear program had largely been mothballed before George W. Bush delivered his “axis of evil” speech in January 2002, which linked Iran and Iraq – then bitter enemies – with North Korea. After that, North Korea withdrew from earlier agreements on limiting its nuclear development and began serious work on a bomb.
Yet, while North Korea moved toward a form of mutual assured destruction, Iraq and Libya chose a different path.
In Iraq, to head off a threatened U.S.-led invasion, Hussein’s government sought to convince the international community that it had lived up to its commitments regarding the destruction of its WMD arsenal and programs. Besides the detailed declaration, Iraq gave U.N. weapons inspectors wide latitude to search on the ground.
But Bush cut short the inspection efforts in March 2003 and launched his “shock and awe” invasion, which led to the collapse of Hussein’s regime and the dictator’s eventual capture and hanging.
Gaddafi’s Gestures
In Libya, Gaddafi also sought to cooperate with international demands regarding WMDs. In late 2003, he announced that his country would eliminate its unconventional weapons programs, including a nascent nuclear project.
Gaddafi also sought to get Libya out from under economic sanctions by taking responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Scotland, although he and his government continued to deny carrying out the terror attack that killed 270 people.
But these efforts to normalize Libya’s relations with the West failed to protect him or his country. In 2011 when Islamic militants staged an uprising around Benghazi, Gaddafi moved to crush it, and Secretary of State Clinton eagerly joined with some European countries in seeking military intervention to destroy Gaddafi’s regime.
The United Nations Security Council approved a plan for the humanitarian protection of civilians in and around Benghazi, but the Obama administration and its European allies exploited that opening to mount a full-scale “regime change” war.
Prominent news personalities, such as MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, cheered on the war with the claim that Gaddafi had American “blood on his hands” over the Pan Am 103 case because he had accepted responsibility. The fact that his government continued to deny actual guilt – and the international conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a judicial travesty – was ignored. Almost no one in the West dared question the longtime groupthink of Libyan guilt.
By October 2011, Gaddafi had fled Tripoli and was captured by rebels in Sirte. He was tortured, sodomized with a knife and then executed. Clinton, whose aides felt she should claim credit for Gaddafi’s overthrow as part of a Clinton Doctrine, celebrated his murder with a laugh and a quip, “We came; we saw; he died.”
But Gaddafi’s warnings about Islamist terrorists in Benghazi came back to haunt Clinton when on Sept. 11, 2012, militants attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA station there, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The obsessive Republican investigation into the Benghazi attack failed to demonstrate many of the lurid claims about Clinton’s negligence, but it did surface the fact that she had used a private server for her official State Department emails, which, in turn, led to an FBI investigation which severely damaged her 2016 presidential run.
Lessons Learned
Meanwhile, back in North Korea, the young dictator Kim Jong Un was taking all this history in. According to numerous sources, he concluded that his and North Korea’s only safeguard would be a viable nuclear deterrent to stave off another U.S.-sponsored “regime change” war — with him meeting a similar fate as was dealt to Hussein and Gaddafi.
Since then, Kim and his advisers have made clear that the surrender of North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal is off the table. They make the understandable point that the United States has shown bad faith in other cases in which leaders have given up their WMDs in compliance with international demands and then saw their countries invaded and faced grisly executions themselves.
Now, the world faces a predicament in which an inexperienced and intemperate President Trump confronts a crisis that his two predecessors helped to create and make worse. Trump has threatened “fire and fury” like the world has never seen, suggesting a nuclear strike on North Korea, which, in turn, has vowed to retaliate.
Millions of people on the Korean peninsula and Japan – and possibly elsewhere – could die in such a conflagration. The world’s economy could be severely shaken, given Japan’s and South Korea’s industrial might and the size of their consumer markets.
If such a horror does come to pass, the U.S. government and the U.S. mainstream media will surely revert to their standard explanation that Kim was simply “crazy” and brought this destruction on himself. Trump’s liberal critics also might attack Trump for bungling the diplomacy.
But the truth is that many of Washington’s elite policymakers – both on the Republican and Democratic sides – will share in the blame. And so too should the U.S. mainstream media.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.
M1 Abrams tanks, heavy armor arrive in Georgian port for Agile Spirit drills
© Minisrty of Defence of Georgia
RT | September 3, 2017
The US military has sent a number of M1 Abrams tanks as well as heavy armored vehicles for a massive multinational exercise, Agile Spirit 2017, which is kicking off in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
Some 500 US troops along with M1 Abrams main battle tanks and LAV armored fighting vehicles have arrived in the former Soviet republic of Georgia for the Agile Spirit 2017 exercise.
Georgia’s Defense Ministry has released a video that showed the unloading of the tanks – painted in desert camouflage – at the port of Poti.
US heavy armor will then be transported by train to Vaziani, where the main stage of the war games will begin.
The war games are expected to take place at the Georgian military’s Vaziani training center, involving US soldiers as well as approximately 1,000 troops from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Latvia, Romania and Ukraine.
“This is the seventh [edition] of the annually scheduled multilateral exercise designed to enhance US, Georgian and regional partner interoperability and strengthen understanding of each nation’s tactics, techniques and procedures,” the Pentagon said in a press release.
Georgia, an active contributor to NATO deployments, has long planned to join the bloc, while Russia has long criticized the alliance for coming closer to its borders.
In a June interview with film director Oliver Stone, Russian President Vladimir Putin described NATO as an instrument of American foreign policy, and said the alliance’s members inevitably become US “vassals.”
“Once a country becomes a NATO member, it is hard to resist the pressures of the US. And all of a sudden, any weapons system can be placed in this country. An anti-ballistic missile system, new military bases and if need be, new offensive systems,” Putin said, adding that Russia was forced to take countermeasures over the ever-increasing NATO threat and armed military build-up on Russia’s borders.
Why North Korea’s Latest Missile Test Was a Humiliating Blow to US Missile Defense
Sputnik – 02.09.2017
Russian military observer Alexander Khrolenko explains how North Korea’s testing of more and more sophisticated missile systems is putting the US’s vast array of expensive missile defense systems to shame.
Last week, North Korea test launched its new Hwasong-12 intermediate range ballistic missile. The missile flew over Japan before falling into the Pacific Ocean, some 733 miles (1,180 km) east of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido.
Several days later, the Japanese Ministry of Defense requested a record defense budget for the 2018 fiscal year, asking for some 5.25 trillion yen ($48.6 billion) for new ground and ship-based anti-air missiles, fighters, patrol ships and a submarine. The Ministry’s request includes a major push for the modernization of the country’s air defense network, and its anti-land and anti-ship missile capabilities.
Commenting on the missile test, and Japan’s response, RIA Novosti military observer Alexander Khrolenko wrote that Pyongyang’s latest test has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that all the sophisticated US missile defense systems in and around the Asian country are next to useless.
“Today,” the analyst explained, “Japan’s missile defense is provided by ships equipped with the American Aegis system (which features the SM-3 missile for exoatmospheric interception). In addition, Japan has ground-based Patriot-3 (PAC-3) systems for the destruction of missiles within the atmosphere.”
“However, all these means proved useless on August 29, when the North Korean ballistic missile flew over Japanese territory and fell 1,180 km from Cape Erimo in Hokkaido. In 14 minutes, the missile flew a total of 2,700 km, reaching a maximum altitude of 500 km.”
Although Japan reported no damage to any ships or aircraft from the test, Khrolenko noted that it was highly curious that they didn’t even attempt to shoot the rogue missile down. “They could have at least attempted to shoot it down, if only for training purposes,” the analyst wrote. “The world community would not condemn such a move, and Washington would have certainly supported Tokyo. However, US and Japanese missile defense systems only ended up tracking Hwaseong-12’s trajectory.”
“What’s even more interesting, of course, is how Japan may have intended to shoot down the North Korean missile flying at an altitude of 550 km, when the longest-range US SM-3 guided missile has a 250 km flight ceiling. With a target lock radius of 500 km, the Aegis system would not have been able to reach the missile even during its descent, either. All the more so, given that the target separated into three parts (possibly three warheads).”
With these facts in mind, Khrolenko suggested that the “record request by the Japanese Defense Ministry [actually] reflects the degree of panic within the camp of US allies; after all, this wasn’t the first time that a reason to doubt the omnipotence of US weapons, and specifically its ABM systems, presented itself.”
Last month, for instance, following threats from Pyongyang that they were prepared to stage a massed missile strike against Guam, the Pentagon responded that any such missile launch would be detected in a matter of minutes, and would lead to the prospect of full-scale war.
It was interesting, however, according to Khrolenko, that the Pentagon “did not specify whether the North Korean missiles would be intercepted. And this is fundamentally important when it comes to predicting losses and the outcome of a war (which would not leave Japan unaffected, either).”
Moreover, according to the analyst, the North Korean missile launch proved particularly humiliating in light of the fact that the same day the launch took place, Japanese troops were conducting air defense drills at the Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, where they practiced the deployment of Patriot-3 interceptors.
“From a military perspective, the exercises coincided successfully with the test of North Korea’s new ballistic missile. Pyongyang ‘played ball’, but Washington did not accept the unexpected ‘pitch’. Servicemen looked on anxiously into the skies, and continued to practice the speedy deployment and setup of the PAC-3’s components, as if the motions were more important than the actual result.”
Factually, Khrolenko wrote, the true effectiveness of the US’s numerous and costly missile defense systems has yet to be proven in conditions resembling those on a battlefield.
“Only once, in February 2013, did an SM-3 interceptor, launched from the USS Lake Erie missile cruiser, destroy USA-193, a defective US satellite at an altitude of 247 km. The target simulated a medium-range ballistic missile (even though the latter do not fly along an orbit). The test was simplified as much as possible, the parameters of the flight were known in advance, as was the target sector. External target designation was provided from the STSS-D tracking satellite, which may not be handy in a real combat situation.”
“One more example: tests of the US missile defense system during NATO’s Maritime Theater Missile Defense drills in 2015 showed that… numerous alliance ships equipped with the Aegis combat information management system were capable of knocking out only a single, less than perfect short range ballistic missile – the Terrier Orion, and probably only at subsonic speed. The degree of effectiveness of such missile defenses in conditions of a mass strike remains unknown, but the degree of simplification involved for the testing suggests it’s rather low.”
In effect, Khrolenko noted that North Korea’s latest missile test has “created a paradoxical parity of forces in that country’s confrontation with the United States.” In these circumstances, he noted, Washington would be advised to avoid subjecting its regional allies to danger.
McCain’s Transmutation from Cautious Realist to Super-Hawk
By Stephen J. Sniegoski • Unz Review • September 1, 2017
For many years, John McCain has been one of the major war hawks in the Senate, but he was not that way for more than a decade after he was first elected to Congress. When he entered the House of Representatives in 1983, he was a cautious realist, holding the position that U.S. military power should only be used to protect vital national interests. He developed this view as a result of his experience in the Vietnam War and his post-Vietnam studying of the origins of that war at the National War College.[1] That view loomed large among military leaders at this time and was exemplified by General Colin Powell.
In his first year in Congress, McCain, although a strong supporter of then President Reagan, voted against the latter’s decision to continue the deployment of troops in Lebanon during that country’s civil war. The measure would pass in both Houses of Congress, with substantial support from Democrats, and with only a small minority of Republicans daring to oppose Reagan. In his floor speech on this issue, McCain stated:
“The fundamental question is: What is the United States’ interest in Lebanon? It is said we are there to keep the peace. I ask, what peace? It is said we are there to aid the government. I ask, what government? It is said we are there to stabilize the region. I ask, how can the U.S. presence stabilize the region? . . . . The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place.
“What can we expect if we withdraw from Lebanon? The same as will happen if we stay. I acknowledge that the level of fighting will increase if we leave. I regretfully acknowledge that many innocent civilians will be hurt. But I firmly believe this will happen in any event.”[2]
After a truck filled with explosives rammed into the Marine compound in Beirut, killing 241 service members, Reagan opted to remove the remaining troops a few months later. McCain was vindicated and he gained considerable attention from the mainstream media for his prescience and courage to take such a stand against a popular President from his party. This helped to develop his reputation as a “maverick.”
“The American people and Congress now appreciate that we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent,” McCain would later tell the Los Angeles Times, “and they are not prepared to commit U.S. troops to combat unless there is a clear U.S. national security interest involved. If we do become involved in combat, that involvement must be of relatively short duration and must be readily explained to the man in the street in one or two sentences.”[3]
In 1987, during the Iran-Iraq War, in which the United States was supporting Iraq, McCain, now a Senator, opposed President Reagan’s move to put American flags on Kuwaiti oil tankers and have the U.S. Navy protect them against possible Iranian attacks. In the Arizona Republican, he described Reagan’s action as a “dangerous overreaction in perhaps the most violent and unpredictable region in the world.” He continued: “American citizens are again being asked to place themselves between warring Middle East factions, with no tangible allied support and no real plan on how to respond if the situation escalates.”[4]
McCain did support the Gulf War in 1991, but even here he was something of a moderate. McCain biographer Matt Welch writes: “When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, McCain oscillated between hawkishness and reluctance, denouncing the Iraqi dictator and then the U.S. government for having cozied up too closely to Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, but at the same time warning against a protracted land battle.”[5] McCain stated: “If you get involved in a major ground war in the Saudi desert, I think support will erode significantly. Nor should it be supported. We cannot even contemplate, in my view, trading American blood for Iraqi blood.”[6]
Under Republican Presidents Reagan and the elder Bush, it must be acknowledged that McCain was not an actual non-interventionist since he supported the American opposition to the Soviet Union, and what he considered to be pro-Soviet forces in Central America. Moreover, he supported the removal of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega by the U.S. military in 1989. But this was still a far cry from the global interventionist that McCain would become.
Moreover, during Bill Clinton’s presidency, McCain would be even more non-interventionist until his radical change during the last years of Clinton’s term. In a commencement address he made to the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia in June 1994, McCain emphasized that his cautious approach to war resulted from his Vietnam experience. He solemnly orated that he had not forgotten “the friends who did not return with me to the country we loved so dearly. The memory of them, of what they bore for honor and country, causes me to look in every prospective conflict for the shadow of Vietnam.”[7]
In December 1992, after losing the November election to Bill Clinton, the elder George Bush dispatched American troops to Somalia, then embroiled in a many-sided civil war, to facilitate the provision of food to the starving civilian population. This was part of a United Nations effort. By the fall of 1993, this military mission morphed into one of arresting war lords and nation-building. In October 1993, a 15-hour battle took place in Mogadishu that left 18 Americans dead and 73 injured, with many of these casualties the result of two Black Hawk helicopters being shot down.[8]
Because of this loss of American lives, there was a Senate bill supported by President Clinton which planned to remove American troops from Somalia. Demanding a quicker troop exit, McCain stated: “Mr. President, can anyone seriously argue that another six months of United States forces in harm’s way means the difference between peace and prosperity in Somalia and war and starvation there? Is that very dim prospect worth one more American life? No, it is not.”
Drawing an analogy to what happened in Lebanon in 1983, McCain contended: “240 young Marines lost their lives, but we got out. Now is the time for us to get out of Somalia, as rapidly, and as promptly, and as safely as possible.”
“The longer we stay the more difficult it will be to leave,” McCain asserted. “The loss of American lives is not only tragic, it is needless.”[9] His proposed amendment for a quicker departure, however, was voted down.
McCain also opposed Clinton’s intervention in Haiti to bring back President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been elected in 1990 and then overthrown in a coup in 1991. After a UN resolution authorized the use of military force to return Aristide to power, the United States would ultimately do so on October 15, 1994. In late August 1994, McCain declared: “It is the post-invasion circumstances that I fear will bog down U.S. forces in a low-level, open-ended, ill-defined conflict which will require U.S. servicemen and women to serve as a virtual palace guard for President Aristide once he is returned to power.”[10]
The major international concern in the 1990s was the conflict in Yugoslavia—with the focus first on Bosnia and then Kosovo. After the downfall of Communism, Yugoslavia dissolved, with the secession, in 1992, of Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia. Bosnia also declared its independence despite the staunch opposition of Bosnian Serbs, who wanted to remain united with Serbia. Civil war broke out between the Bosnian Serbs, supported by Serbia, and the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government. Thousands of people were killed, raped, and expelled from their homes. The West generally looked upon the atrocities, real and imagined, as being primarily perpetrated by the Serbs. In the United States, this was especially the case among American liberals who would advocate “humanitarian” military intervention to protect the Muslims.
In 1992, the UN peacekeeping forces intervened for humanitarian reasons and set up several so-called safe areas for refugees, which often turned out to be not very safe. The UN forces were composed of non-American troops, while American ships and airplanes enforced an arms embargo.
The wars in Yugoslavia would ultimately lead to a sea change in McCain’s position on American military intervention, but this did not occur all at once. Initially, McCain was, like many Republicans, opposed to American involvement in the conflict. In fact, biographer Matt Welch describes McCain as having been “one of the Senate’s most stubborn opponents to US military intervention against Serbs.”[11] McCain contended that any American military “peace-keeping” effort in Bosnia would likely lead to a quagmire. “I think you can draw a parallel to the military challenge in Bosnia with what the Russians faced in Afghanistan,” McCain opined in May 1993. “Even with ground forces and with overwhelming air superiority, they were unable to defeat a motivated, very capable enemy.”[12]
In December 1994, McCain, whom the Los Angeles Times described as a “a leading opponent of greater American military involvement in the war,” stated: “I think we have a very full plate of a legislative agenda, which are the commitments we made to the American people–and Bosnia wasn’t one of those.”[13] In May 1995, McCain held that U.S. efforts in the Balkans were “doomed to failure from the beginning, when we believed that we could keep peace in a place where there was no peace.”[14] Neocon Robert Kagan bemoaned the fact that on Bosnia, Senator McCain led the Republican attack, warning that any use of military power there would result in “another failure like Vietnam or Lebanon.”[15]
Prospects for peace, however, improved in the summer of 1995 when NATO, led by the United States, launched airstrikes against Bosnian Serb targets, which combined with better-equipped Muslim and Croatian forces pressured the Bosnian Serbs into participating in peace negotiations. This led to the Dayton Accords in November 1995, which ended the war in Bosnia. NATO would provide peace-keeping troops, including 20,000 from the U.S.
After NATO’s success, McCain quickly dropped his staunch anti-interventionist position. McCain later claimed that his position had begun to change as a moral reaction to the Serbs’ massacre of thousands of unarmed Bosnian Muslims in July 1995.[16] While most Republican members of Congress were opposed to sending American troops to Bosnia, McCain joined Senator Robert Dole (Republican—Kansas) in putting forth the nonbinding Dole-McCain resolution which permitted Clinton to send troops, though limiting the deployment to one year–which was Clinton’s stated time period—and requiring the United States to lead an effort to arm and train Bosnian troops. The resolution passed in the Senate but was not taken up in the House.[17]
Showing that he had not completely dropped his previous cautious approach to intervention, McCain emphasized that the Dole-McCain resolution was not seeking support for President Clinton’s decision to deploy the troops. “It asks that you support the deployment after the decision has been made,” he said. “The decision has been made by the only American elected to make such decisions [i.e., the President].” However, McCain also expressed a firm interventionist conviction: “When we arrive at the moment when less is expected from our leadership by the rest of the world, then we will have arrived at the moment of our decline.” And he said, “We cannot withdraw from the world into our prosperity and comfort and hope to keep those blessings.”[18]
While a change from his previous strong opposition to American intervention abroad, supporting this peace effort in Bosnia did not portend McCain’s radical transmutation to the global super-hawk that he would become. That final step would require the involvement of the neoconservatives. This connection began when, in 1997, McCain and his advisers read an article in the Wall Street Journal editorial page by neoconservatives Bill Kristol and David Brooks who were promoting the idea of “national greatness” conservatism, which consisted of a more activist domestic agenda and a more interventionist global role.[19]
While this article may have fit in with the direction that McCain’s thinking was moving, it had political implications as well: McCain had been eyeing the presidency for a number of years. According to John Weaver, a major political adviser to McCain at this time: “I wouldn’t call it a ‘eureka’ moment, but there was a sense that this is where we are headed and this is what we are trying to articulate and they [Kristol and Brooks] have already done a lot of the work. . . . And, quite frankly, from a crass political point of view, we were in the making-friends business. The Weekly Standard represented a part of the primary electorate that we could get.”[20] And it should be emphasized that McCain’s change was not a gradual one but rather one that was quite radical and took place in a very short period of time.
After reading this article, McCain and staff were consulting regularly with leading neocons, including Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Randy Scheunemann[21], to, in the words of journalist David Kirkpatrick, “develop the senator’s foreign policy ideas and instincts into the broad themes of a presidential campaign.”[22] In short, McCain realized that he needed the neocons’ intellectual and political support if he were to achieve higher office. The neocons were already well-known and had played a significant role in the Reagan administration. And during the Clinton years, neocons promoted their views from a strong interlocking network of think tanks which have had a significant influence in shaping American foreign policy.
McCain would begin to support neocon positions. On January 26, 1998, the neocon-dominated Project for a New American Century (PNAC), created in 1997 and headed by Bill Kristol, sent a letter to President Clinton urging him to take unilateral military action against Iraq to overthrow Saddam and offered a plan to achieve that objective. After the Clinton administration failed to take action, another neocon-front group, the resurrected Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, which had promoted the 1991 Gulf War, sent another letter urging war. And, because of Clinton’s continued inaction, PNAC would send another such letter in May.
While President Clinton failed to take action, McCain pushed for military action against Saddam in 1998. McCain co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, committing the United States to support the overthrow of Saddam and funding opposition groups, most importantly the Iraqi National Congress. Headed by the notorious neocon-favorite Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi National Congress would provide much of the spurious information that generated support for the war on Iraq in 2003. The bill passed in both houses of Congress and on October 31, 1998, President Clinton signed it into law. Clinton, however, did not intend to implement this measure and George Bush made no mention of it during the 2000 campaign.[23] McCain, however, remained in lock-step with the neocons on Iraq and would be made Honorary Co-chair of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq when it was created in 2002.
McCain had been in line with the neocons as a strong supporter of Israel even during the time he adhered to a cautious realist position regarding U.S. military interventionism. He was the 1999 recipient of the Defender of Jerusalem award, given by the National Council of Young Israel. In his acceptance speech, McCain in effect told his pro-Zionist audience that the United States should be prepared to make war for Israel’s sake. “Certainly, no one would argue with the proposition that our armed forces exist first and foremost for the defense of the United States and its vital interests abroad,” McCain intoned. “We choose, as a nation, however, to intervene militarily abroad in defense of the moral values that are at the center of our national conscientiousness even when vital national interests are not necessarily at stake. I raise this point because it lies at the heart of this nation’s approach to Israel. The survival of Israel is one of this country’s most important moral commitments. . . . Like the United States, Israel is more than a nation; it is an ideal.”[24] Note that this was diametrically opposed to his former view that American intervention abroad should only take place to protect vital American interests.
However, it was not Iraq or any of Israel’s enemies that put McCain in the national limelight but rather the U.S.-led NATO war on Serbia over Kosovo in 1999. As Washington Post staff writer Dan Balz wrote in early April 1999, “no politician has been more visible on the issue of Kosovo the past two weeks than the former Vietnam prisoner of war, and a number of political analysts say his performance has given a boost to his presidential aspirations.”[25]
President Clinton orchestrated the NATO war on Serbia, because of the Serbs “ethnic cleansing” of Muslims in their territory of Kosovo. Since Serbia could not possibly threaten the United States, the war was presented as being largely for humanitarian reasons. At this time, there were all types of stories of Serb mass killings of Kosovars, with figures up to 100,000 Kosovar civilians being missing and conceivably murdered.[26] Physical evidence for these extreme claims was not found and former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was not even charged with crimes of such great magnitude at his trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). And according to German government documents no “ethnic cleansing” of Kosovar Albanians took place until after the NATO bombing.[27]
Unlike many Republicans, McCain supported Clinton’s decision for war. But while Clinton limited American actions to air strikes, McCain maintained that it was essential to win this military confrontation at all costs and called on the Clinton Administration to deploy ground troops if the reliance on air strikes alone appeared to be insufficient to achieve victory.[28]
McCain thus sponsored a resolution that would have given President Clinton congressional authorization to use all means necessary to win the military campaign in Kosovo. The leaders of both parties opposed this resolution and it was tabled. McCain complained: “The president doesn’t want the power he possesses by law because the risks inherent in its exercise have paralyzed him.”[29]
McCain’s hawkish position reflected the views of the neoconservatives. And obviously, his pro-intervention stance represented a sea change from his previous emphasis on caution and support of war only if it involved a vital American interest.
Members of the interventionist Balkan Action Committee, which advocated NATO ground troops for Kosovo, included such prominent neoconservative mainstays as Richard Perle, Max M. Kampelman, Morton Abramowitz, and Paul Wolfowitz. Other neoconservative proponents of a tougher war included Eliot Cohen, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, and Norman Podhoretz.[30]
Largely because of his bellicose position on Kosovo, McCain was the favorite presidential candidate for many leading neoconservatives in 2000. As Franklin Foer, editor of the liberal New Republic, put it: “Jewish neoconservatives have fallen hard for John McCain. It’s not just unabashed swooner William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard. McCain has also won over such leading neocon lights as David Brooks, the entire Podhoretz family, The Wall Street Journal‘s Dorothy Rabinowitz, and columnist Charles Krauthammer, who declared, in a most un-Semitic flourish, ‘He suffered for our sins.’”[31]
McCain was especially championed by Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and his associate David Brooks. They held that McCain would promote their idea of “national greatness,” as opposed to what they regarded as the standpatness of the conservative Republicans. The “national greatness” program would entail a greater role for the federal government and more extensive intervention throughout the world to promote American values.
Neoconservatives admired McCain for his support of the American war on Serbia, toward which many mainstream conservatives were decidedly cool. The attack on Serbia, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, provided the intellectual groundwork for the attack on Iraq, the neocons’ fundamental target, since it set the precedent of violating international law’s prohibition against initiating offensive wars. No longer would the United States have to be attacked, or even threatened, to engage in war. As Kristol and Brooks put it: “For all his conventional political views, McCain embodies a set of virtues that today are unconventional. The issue that gave the McCain campaign its initial boost was Kosovo. He argued that America as a great champion of democracy and decency could not fail to act. And he supported his commander in chief despite grave doubts about the conduct of the war–while George W. Bush sat out the debate and Republicans on the Hill flailed at Clinton.”[32]
But the neocons did not support McCain simply because of his defense of the Kosovars, but rather because of his broader interventionist position of “rogue state rollback,” which pointed directly at the enemies of Israel. While participating in a Republican debate moderated by CNN’s Larry King on February. 15, 2000, the candidates were asked: “What area of American international policy would you change immediately as president?” McCain replied: “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback.’ I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically-elected governments.” And he added: “As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, I am convinced that he will pose a threat to our security.”[33]
What caused McCain’s radical shift from cautious realist to super hawk? Biographer Matt Welch sees it as essentially a return to his basic world view, largely derived from the family’s military background, after the non-interventionist effect of the Vietnam Syndrome. Welch writes: “But much less understood is the extent to which interventionist hegemony has been literally seared into McCain’s skull and then reignited late in life after the long intellectual detour of Vietnam.”[34]
Justin Raimondo sees it otherwise: “It is impossible to know what is in McCain’s heart. There may be a purely ideological explanation for his changing viewpoint. But what seems to account for his evolution from realism to hopped-up interventionism is nothing more than sheer ambition.” He goes on: “He was positioning himself against his own party, while staking out a distinctive stance independent of the Democrats. It was, in short, an instance of a presidential candidate maneuvering himself to increase his appeal to the electorate—and, most importantly, the media.”[35]
In an article in Rolling Stone, Tim Dickerson expresses a view similar to that of Raimondo, describing McCain as “a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.” Dickerson continues: “Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness.”[36]
McCain has flip-flopped on domestic issues, sometimes supporting a conservative position and at other times a more liberal one which wins him the plaudits of the mainstream media—but once he moved into the neocon orbit regarding U.S. foreign policy, he has stayed there. It is obviously beneficial for a politician to have the broad neocon network of organizations on one’s side. And more than a few of these neocons—such as Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan, David Brooks, are featured regularly in the mainstream media. Moreover, the mainstream liberal media itself has adopted many neocon interventionist positions in foreign policy in regard to Russia and the Middle East, so McCain’s positions are held in esteem there, too.
So while McCain portrays himself as a “maverick” and “straight-talker” who is above politics– and this image is largely accepted by the mainstream media—it would seem most likely that his political positions have been adopted to advance his own political interests.[37] While this approach did not enable him to become President, it did serve to make him something of a public icon, which is a position few politicians attain. However, the war-oriented policies he has advocated have been disastrous for the United States. It is only fortunate that John McCain has not attained the power to have his positions adopted in their entirety.
Putin on N. Korea crisis: Tensions ‘balancing on brink of large-scale conflict’
RT | September 1, 2017
Attempts to pressure North Korea into stopping its nuclear missile program through sanctions are “misguided and futile,” Russian President Vladimir Putin warned, adding that threats and provocations would only add more fuel to the fire.
“The situation on the Korean Peninsula, where tensions have grown recently, is balancing on the brink of a large-scale conflict. Russia believes that the policy of putting pressure on Pyongyang to stop its nuclear missile program is misguided and futile,” Putin, who is due to attend a summit of the BRICS nations in China next week, wrote ahead of his trip.
“The region’s problems should only be settled through a direct dialogue of all the parties concerned without any preconditions. Provocations, pressure and militarist and insulting rhetoric are a dead-end road,” he noted.
Russia and China have created a roadmap for a settlement on the Korean Peninsula that is designed to promote the gradual easing of tensions and the creation of a mechanism for lasting peace and security, the Russian leader added.
The Russian-Chinese initiative of “double freezing,” put forward by the Russian and Chinese foreign ministers on July 4, is designed to cease any missile launches and nuclear tests by Pyongyang, as well as large-scale military exercises by Washington and Seoul.
Last month, the UN Security Council unanimously agreed to impose more restrictive measures on Pyongyang, banning exports of coal, iron, lead, and seafood. The move came in response to North Korea’s missile launches in July, which it, as well as South Korea and the US, claimed were intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests. Moscow has questioned the claim, arguing North Korea was testing intermediate range rockets.
China announced a full ban on imports of coal, iron, and seafood, among other goods from North Korea as of August 15, thus cutting key export revenues for Pyongyang.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday that all conceivable and unimaginable sanctions against North Korea have already been imposed, to no avail.
“All possible sanctions aimed at preventing North Korea from using a map of external relations for the development of missile and nuclear programs banned by the [UN] Security Council, all conceivable and even unimaginable sanctions, which have little to do directly with these areas of DPRK’s [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] activities, have already been adopted by the Security Council. In addition, unilateral sanctions have been adopted, which we consider illegitimate,” Lavrov said.
In a bid to ease tensions, Moscow will seek the resumption of six-party talks on the situation on the Korean Peninsula, the Russian Foreign Minister noted.
“We will still seek to resume these talks,” he said, adding that “we know that Americans are talking with representatives of Pyongyang via some semi-secret, semi-official, semi-academic channel.”
Moscow will be happy “if they agree on some de-escalation, so that all parties cool down, sit down at the negotiating table and start talking.”
“We have a common goal – denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, so that neither the North nor the South, the US and us [Russia] have nuclear weapons,” Lavrov said.
UK Secures ‘Permanent’ Naval Base ‘East of Suez’ in Oman
Sputnik – August 30, 2017
In the UK, parliament may still be in summer recess, but government ministers aren’t resting. Defense Minister Michael Fallon jetted to Oman August 28 to cement a number of military agreements with the Sultanate’s leaders. The inking represents a continuation of a longstanding and rarely examined “special relationship” between the two countries.
During his two day visit, Fallon met with Sayyid Badr bin Saud bin Harub Al Busaidi, Oman’s Minister Responsible for Defense Affairs, in Muscat. The pair signed a “Memorandum of Understanding and Services Agreement” that secures UK use of naval facilities at Duqm Port — a multi-million dollar joint venture between the two countries.
An official statement issued by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office said the “booming” Port complex would provide “significant opportunity” for the two countries’ “defense, security and prosperity agendas,” and serve as a home from home for the UK’s flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth.
“This agreement ensures British engineering expertise will be involved in developing Duqm as a strategic port for the Middle East, benefiting the Royal Navy and others. Oman is a longstanding British ally and we work closely across diplomatic, economic and security matters. Our commitment to the Duqm project highlights the strength of our relationship,” Fallon said.
The Defense Minister’s visit gained virtually no recognition in the UK media — while the traditional paucity of official government business to report on over the summer arguably makes the story a prime candidate for press coverage, radio silence on UK-Oman relations is a seemingly enduring mainstream editorial policy.
Declassified British government files reveal the oil-rich Gulf state’s leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said — one of the longest serving unelected rulers in the world — was brought to power in a 1970 palace coup planned by UK foreign intelligence service MI6, and sanctioned by then-Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The Sultan has absolute power in governance, and is also the country’s Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, with total authority over Oman’s judicial and legal systems.
Ever since the coup, Oman has proven a most faithful ally to the UK, hosting a number of major British intelligence and military operations.
For example, UK spying agency GCHQ has three separate bases in the country — codenamed Timpani Guitar and Clarinet — that feed off various undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz to the Arabian Gulf. In the process, the bases intercept and process a vast volume of emails, telephone calls and web traffic generated in the region, which is then shared with the US’ National Security Agency.
Moreover, UK troops have long trained Omani armed forces, and in May 2016 it was announced the UK would increase its number of training teams in Oman from 34 to 45 in 2017.
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Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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