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Obama requests $500 million to aid Syrian rebels

RT | June 26, 2014

The White House on Thursday asked Congress for half-a-billion dollars in aid to go towards opposition fighters in Syria at war with the regime of recently re-elected President Bashar Al-Assad.

In a report sent to lawmakers at the Capitol on Thursday, the White House requested $500 million in aid to “help defend the Syrian people, stabilize areas under opposition control and facilitate the provision of essential services, counter terrorist threats and promote conditions for a negotiated settlement.”

The Associated Press reported that the multimillion dollar request makes up just a fraction of a larger, $65.8 billion overseas operations request sent to Congress that, if approved, would fund a number of Pentagon and State Department programs, as well as $1 billion in assistance to nations adjacent to Syria.

This latest request by the administration for aid comes merely weeks after the president outlined his foreign policy objectives during a speech last month at the West Point Military Academy graduation ceremony.

“As president, I made a decision that we should not put American troops into the middle of this increasingly sectarian civil war, and I believe that is the right decision. But that does not mean we shouldn’t help the Syrian people stand up against a dictator who bombs and starves his own people,” Obama said. “And in helping those who fight for the right of all Syrians to choose their own future, we are also pushing back against the growing number of extremists who find safe haven in the chaos.”

“So with the additional resources I’m announcing today, we will step up our efforts to support Syria’s neighbors — Jordan and Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq — as they contend with refugees and confront terrorists working across Syria’s borders.”

At the time, Obama added that he would “work with Congress to ramp up support for those in the Syrian opposition who offer the best alternative to terrorists and brutal dictators.” Now only weeks later, he appears to have taken the first steps to securing such funding.

Since nearly the start of the Syrian civil war more than three years ago, hawkish Republicans in Congress have urged the White House to take action against Assad, with Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) going as far as to travel abroad to meet with rebel fighters overseas. Others have condemned any response from Washington altogether, though, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who this week attributed the arming of fighters in Iraq as the impetus for a “jihadist wonderland” there created on Uncle Sam’s watch and dime.

According to the AP’s Julie Pace, White House officials said the Obama administration would work with members of Congress and regional player to come to terms with what sort of training and assistance in particular would be provided to opposition fighters by the US.

“One potential option,” Pace wrote, “would be to base US personnel in Jordan and conduct the training exercise there.”

Also last month, the Pentagon deployed more than 6,000 Marines to Jordan to conduct drills alongside military officials there.

June 26, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Iraq intervention, redux?: The folly of ‘humanitarian imperialism’

By Roqayah Chamseddine | Al-Akhbar | June 26, 2014

Jean Bricmont’s powerful book Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War , written during the occupation of Iraq, is a timely historical critique of Western interventionism, one worth examining as the United States of America moves once more in the direction of military entanglement in Iraq. Bricmont, a Belgian theoretical physicist and professor at The Université catholique de Louvain, discusses the ideological factors which legitimize military action in response to humanitarian abuses and “in defense of democracy” (p. 7). — “This is the discourse and the representation that must be challenged in order to build a radical and self-confident opposition to current and future wars.” The humanitarian rationales offered under the banner of there being “a responsibility to protect” have only increased since the end of World War II, and methods to reinforce such motivations have grown progressively coercive.

Bricmont introduces a formula which will come to define “humanitarian imperialism:” when A exercises power over B, he does so for B’s “own good” (p. 11). This is the creed of philanthropic power — which peddles and rationalizes war as a column maintaining international order — and which continues to define the very nature of international conflict post-World War II. Interventionism is no longer argued as being warranted in the name of Christianity, Bricmont argues, but what he calls ideological reinforcements: democracy and human rights. For example, despite former US President George W. Bush’s frequent use of religious imagery, the call to invade Iraq was not only drenched in chilling white saviourism but an overwhelming exceptionalism which contends that only military efforts led by the United States of America would bring about a just liberation and lasting stability for the people of Iraq. “[T]he dangers to our country and the world will be overcome. We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace,” George W. Bush stated in 2003. “We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others and we will prevail.”

The horrors inflicted upon the people of Iraq are still understated, and since 2003 the bloodshed has not stopped. When Obama delivered his speech in 2011 celebrating the US military withdrawal, there were bombings and shootings in Baghdad, in Mosul, in Kirkuk and in Tal Afer. While the Iraqi people were preparing burial shrouds Obama was reaffirming the previous administration’s claims that the US left for the Iraqi people a stable country, had forged a lasting peace and made the world more secure. Amongst the congratulatory frill and repugnant nationalism Obama did make one salient point — that the US legacy in Iraq will endure and that it shall be remembered. The legacy of this tragic and implacable war will live on in the wombs of Iraqi women who bear children with congenital birth defects as a result of depleted uranium; the riddled bodies of those now suffering from cancer due to the toxic munitions used by the US military and finally in the land of Iraq, which has been devoured and polluted by the chemical weapons the US unleashed during its occupation.

Bricmont does not neglect to stress the deliberation and mercilessly skillful care taken by the US in the implementation of sanctions against Iraq, quoting Marc Bossuyt on this “silent genocide” (p. 24), former Belgian Constitutional Court judge and current member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague:

The sanctions against Iraq has as its clear purpose the deliberate infliction on the Iraqi people of conditions of life (lack of adequate food,medicines, etc.) calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. It does not matter that this deliberate physical destruction has as its ostensible objective the security of the region.

Bossuyt further explained that not only were the sanctioning bodies responsible but that they could not be acquitted from the charge of having the “intent to destroy the Iraqi people.” The callousness of the sanctions were most illustrated by the words of then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who defended the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi children in 1996 during an interview with Lesley Stahl for 60 Minutes. When she was confronted with a question by Stahl, who cited the half a million dead children, Albright smoothly responded: “I think this is a very hard choice but the price-we think the price is worth it.”

The practice of humanitarian imperialism is not confined to the Middle East and North Africa and Bricmont’s analysis covers much of its breadth. The US involvement in the 1954 coup d’état in Guatemala for example is one of many historical events covered which “is an exemplary illustration of the real existing “defense of democracy” as it has been practiced by the United States” writes Bricmont (p. 26). The characterization of this “defense of democracy” is what is one of the most valuable components of this text as it applies to much of how the US military industrial complex functions, and it includes the following points, as developed by Bricmont:

  • A paranoid attitude on the part of the superpower toward the slightest challenge.
  • Demonization of adversaries. In those days, it was enough to call the victim a “communist.” Later, the label became “terrorist.” In any case, demonization prevents their side of the story from being taken into consideration.
  • Media conformism: U.S. media relay the official U.S. government version of events without serious investigation; opposing views are dismissed as absurd.
  • Total disregard for international law.

What transpires after the arguments for war are challenged and when claims, like in the case of Iraq, that there exist “weapons of mass destruction,” one of the reasons for the military invasion, are disproven? Bricmont provides us with the argument that is then posed to anti-interventionists who ask why the US cannot then simply “pull out:”

Because, we are told, it is now necessary to “stabilize” Iraq, to “construct democracy” there, etc. As a result, even if it is true that many organizations and intellectuals who defend human rights were initially opposed to the war, they have found themselves more or less obliged to support the ongoing war of occupation until the situation is “stabilized.”

Stabilization takes priority and defence of human rights begins to dwindle once the foreign military occupation ebbs and, above all else, once interests are met. Even now as whispers calling for more US involvement in Iraq grow into shouts the Obama administration has managed to receive immunity for security forces, a “necessary assurance” which protects the US from prosecution in Iraqi courts, denying the people of Iraq even the opportunity to seek justice. And yet the US left a sovereign and capable nation, is that not what we are told? And if so, what does the Obama administration fear, that US war crimes may face the judge’s gavel?

The US has been the direct cause of much of the calamities that have ravaged Iraq — the pangs of the US sanctions, which lasted from 1990 until 2003, continue to torment and fragment the land between the two rivers. The hurdle of immunity in Iraq is one that has been faced by the Obama administration before. When the US abandoned plans to keep “several thousand” troops in Iraq it came after Iraqi leaders refused to grant them immunity from Iraqi courts, and Commander in Chief Obama would rather the US military be shielded from prosecution and withdraw than face Iraq’s judicial system for crimes against the Iraqi people. This is the manner in which intervention devastates — it reintroduces former disparities and attempts to destroy for those under occupation and in the sight of imperial powers any existing components of their self-determination, which includes their right to bring their tormentors to justice. The Obama administration had promised “no troops on the ground” in Iraq and has sent 300 “military advisors” and 275 soldiers to protect the US embassy in Baghdad, despite there already being “a few hundred” troops working as “uniformed personnel” with the same legal protections provided to embassy workers. These troops, even if they range in the hundreds, are but a paltry issue in comparison to the formidable presence of the US aircraft carrier, cruiser and destroyer which have made their way into the Persian Gulf, and the US army installations, comprised of 4 active US bases, in neighboring Kuwait. Further US involvement in Iraq is not a troubling possibility, it is horrifying reality. This is where, once again, the “guilt factor” creeps into the discourse. We are told that “we must support X against Y” and that the only way to do so is militarily and that only our superior military outfits are capable of dressing the open wounds (that our previous military interventions caused).

The US is arguing for the use of airstrikes — The Obama administration is seeking to quiet the bloodshed with arms and pundits are once again nodding in approval. If we are to follow this flawed contention then where does this interventionism end? Will there be annual interventions until Iraq is “stable” enough and will the cycle of pin-the-blame-on-the-dictator (and not our humanitarian intervention) continue? How is the US authorized to intervene when it has already proven itself incapable of exiting the international stage without trails of blood being left behind? What Iraq needs now, and what Iraq has always needed, is unity and reconciliation, not a permanent cycle of war facilitated by foreign bodies. Those who make war profitable and who otherize human life itself cannot lecture the world on stability and freedom, nor can they implement “democracy” by way of the bullet or “precision” airstrikes.

This brings us to Libya, and though this book was written well before the military offensive in Libya, Bricmont has discussed the subject in relation to his book both before and after the killing of Gaddafi. The sole purpose of an army, writes Bricmont (p. 31), is to defend its own country — or to attack another — And even if the latter is deemed legitimate it can never be humanitarian as everything about an army is to serve these aims. In an interview with Belgian writer Michele Collon, before the killing of Gaddafi, Bricmont is asked about the intervention in Libya, specifically as to whether or not the leftist parties who defended the no-fly zone are mistaken in supporting military involvement.

His response cut to the bone of the matter — An intervention would strengthen what he calls the “barricade effect” wherein countries that are within the reach of the US will begin to feel threatened and will then as a result “seek to increase their armaments.” Along with the barricade effect such interventions also open up the doors for others, and so what is to stop any other nation to interfere elsewhere? And once there is intervention then the likelihood of a civil war becomes more probable. In Libya there was the ethnic cleansing of Black Libyans and now many are arguing that the state is on the verge of a civil war as the chaos, much like in Iraq, has not paused.

It is often asked “if military intervention is not the answer, then what is? The answer? Peaceful solutions such as negotiations and cooperative diplomatic efforts, much of which the US and its allies have intentionally circumvented time and time again, should be the primary focus (p. 66):

There is a world of difference between intervention and cooperation. Unlike intervention, cooperation is carried out with the agreement of the host government. Few governments in the Third World reject cooperation if it is sincere. With so much misery in the world it is hard to imagine a situation in which, for a given expenditure of money and effort, cooperation would not save more human lives than intervention.

Bricmont’s book ends with a confident and almost poetic closing, despite the heart-wrenching subject on which the entire text is based:

All those who prefer peace to power, and happiness to glory, should thank the colonized peoples for their civilizing mission. By liberating themselves, they made Europeans more modest, less racist, and more human. Let us hope that the process continues and that the Americans are obliged to follow the same course. When one’s own cause is unjust, defeat can be liberating.

The struggle against neocolonialism shall define the 21 century according to Bricmont, but what we build after the chaos shall define us and shall become our legacy. And so as time moves forward and the bloodshed continues in much of the world, and as the US once again has Iraq in its sights, let us aim for peaceful resolutions rather than military interventions.

~

Roqayah Chamseddine is a Sydney based Lebanese-American journalist and commentator. She tweets @roqchams and writes ‘Letters From the Underground.’

June 26, 2014 Posted by | Book Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Enough Secret Law: Newly Released DOJ Drone Killing Justification Memo… Points To Another Secret Drone Memo

By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | June 25, 2014

We already reported on the finally released DOJ legal drone memo that supposedly “justifies” the extrajudicial killing of Americans via drones. However, as we noted, much of it was actually redacted, leaving many of the details and reasons totally secret. Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who helped get this heavily redacted memo released in the first place has written up an analysis which notes how ridiculous the redactions are and the fact that the memo actually points to another secret memo that reveals more details:

In one instance, the long sought-after drone memo references another legal memo that concluded that al-Awlaki’s American citizenship did not “preclude the contemplated lethal action.” From this reference, we can deduce that the OLC authored a separate drone memo assessing – and dispensing with – the proposition that an American citizen had the right not to be deprived of his life without some form of judicial process. But that earlier memo, treated by the executive branch as binding law, is still secret.

This kind of thing is all too common, but tremendously problematic. For folks actually trying to understand what the law actually is the fact that people have to play this bizarre game of 20 questions, seeking secret laws and interpretations, only to get breadcrumbs pointing to other secret interpretations of the law is just ridiculous. We’ve complained in the past about the dangers of a secret law, but just the fact that the American public needs to play this stupid game, and the DOJ appears to have broken up the secret interpretations of the law into different sections, making it that much harder to track it all down, raises serious questions about what sort of government we have, and how Americans can be expected to respect, let alone obey, the law when we can’t even be told what it is.

June 26, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

So That’s Why They Kept the Drone Kill Memo Secret

By David Swanson | War is a Crime | June 23,2014

Now that the U.S. government has released parts of its We-Can-Kill-People-With-Drones memo, it’s hard to miss why it was kept secret until now.

Liberal professors and human rights groups and the United Nations were claiming an inability to know whether drone murders were legal or not because they hadn’t seen the memo that the White House said legalized them. Some may continue to claim that the redactions in the memo make judgment impossible.

I expect most, however, will now be willing to drop the pretense that ANY memo could possibly legalize murder.

Oh, and yall can stop telling me not to use the impolite term “murder” to describe the, you know, murders — since “murder” is precisely the term used by the no-longer secret memo.

The memo considers a section of the U.S. code dealing with the murder of a U.S. citizen by another U.S. citizen abroad, drawing on another section that defines murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.”

David Barron, the memo’s author, needed a loophole to make murder-by-missile a lawful killing rather than an unlawful killing, so he pulls out the “public authority justification” under which the government gets to use force to enforce a law.  It’s a novel twist, though, for the government to get to use force to violate the law, claiming the violation is legal on the Nixonian basis that it is the government doing it.

Alternatively, Barron suggests, a government gets to use force if doing so is part of a war. This, of course, ignores the U.N. Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact and the illegality of wars, as well as the novelty of claiming that a war exists everywhere on earth forever and ever. (None of Barron’s arguments justify governmental murder on U.S. soil any less than off U.S. soil.)

In essence, Barron seems to argue, the people who wrote the laws were thinking about private citizens and terrorists, not the government (which, somehow, cannot be a terrorist), and therefore it’s OK for the government to violate the laws.

Then there’s the problem of Congressional authorization of war, or lack thereof, which Barron gets around by pretending that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force was as broad as the White House pretends rather than worded to allow targeting only those responsible for the 911 attacks.

Then there are the facts of the matter in the case of Anwar al Awlaki, who was targeted for murder prior in time to the actions that President Obama has claimed justified that targeting.

Then there are the facts in the other cases of U.S. killings of U.S. citizens, which aren’t even redacted, as they’re never considered.

Then there are the vastly more numerous killings of non-U.S. citizens, which the memo does not even attempt to excuse.

In the end, the memo admits that calling something a war isn’t good enough; the targeted victim has to have been an imminent threat to the United States. But who gets to decide whether he or she was that? Why, whoever does the killing of course.  And what happens if nobody ever even makes an unsupported assertion to that effect? Nothing, of course.

This is not the rule of law. This is savage brute force in minimal disguise.  I don’t want to see any more of these memos. I want to see the video footage of the drone murders on a television. I want to see law professors and revolving-door State Department / human rights group hacks argue that dead children fall under the public authority justification.

June 24, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Five Takeaways from the Newly Released Drone Memo

By Brett Max Kaufman – ACLU – 06/23/2014

This morning, a federal appeals court released a government memorandum, dated July 16, 2010, authorizing both the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S. citizen, in Yemen.

The publication of the Office of Legal Counsel memo comes, as the court noted, after a lengthy delay. The ACLU (along with the New York Times) has been fighting for this memo since we first asked for it in a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in October 2011.

Today’s release by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is an important victory for transparency. But while the memo advances the public record in significant ways, it still does not answer many key questions about the government’s claimed authority to kill U.S. citizens outside of active battlefields. Here are several important takeaways from today’s release.

  1. Rather than more fully explain the government’s theory of “imminence,” the newly released memo fails to address it at all.

1. High-level government officials have concluded, on the basis of al-Aulaqi's activities in Yemen, that al-Aulaqi is a leader of AQAP whose activities in Yemen pose a 'continued and imminent threat' of violence to United States persons and interests.

The previously disclosed “White Paper” on the targeted killing of U.S. citizens explained the government’s view that “the condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” But rather than give further explanation and clarity to that extraordinary and novel reading of “imminence,” the newly released memo — at least as presently redacted — fails to address that requirement in any detail whatsoever.

The memo, signed by David Barron, then–acting chief of the OLC (and now a newly confirmed First Circuit judge), tells us that “[h]igh-level government officials” determined that al-Aulaqi constituted an “imminent” threat to the United States. But the memo does not explain how the government interprets that requirement, nor does the memo explain the evidentiary standard the officials must meet in order to satisfy it.

  1. Likewise, the memo does not address the circumstances that would make “capture infeasible,” and killing therefore permissible:

2. In addition to the nature of the threat posed by ai-Aulaqi's activities, both agencies here have represented that they intend to capture rather than target al-Aulaqi if feasible; yet we also understand that an operation by either agency to capture al-Aulaqi in Yemen would be infeasible at this time.

Again, the White Paper summarized the government’s theory about the infeasibility of capture, but the newly released memo adds nothing of substance to that analysis. Importantly, though, the new memo does seem to indicate that its authorization for the targeted killing of al-Aulaqi was intended to be indefinite in duration, requiring only that the CIA and DOD continue to evaluate (without returning to the OLC) “whether changed circumstances” would make capture more feasible.

  1. “Under the facts represented to us . . .” & why judicial review matters

3. As we explained in our earlier memorandum, Barron Memorandum at 5-7, we do not believe al-Aulaqi' s U.S. citizenship imposes constitutional limitations that would preclude the contemplated lethal action under the facts represented to us by DoD, the CIA and the Intelligence Community.

Throughout the memo, Barron conditions important legal conclusions on “the facts represented to” the OLC by other departments of the executive branch. The memo’s discussion of these facts is redacted, making it impossible for the public to evaluate whether the killing of al-Aulaqi meets even the government’s professed legal standard. Beyond that absence, however, the memo’s repeated conditioning of its conclusions on the version of facts presented by the executive branch makes clear why the government’s rejection of any judicial review in this context — either before or after the fact — is so fundamentally dangerous.

  1. The CIA — officially — has an operational role in the targeted killing program. From the court opinion released with the memo:

4. The other fact within the legal reasoning portion of the OLC-DOD Memorandum that the Government contends merits secrecy is the identity of the agency, in addition to DOD, that had an operational role in the drone strike that killed al-Awlaki. Both facts were deleted from the April 21 public opinion, but have been restored in this opinion. Apparently not disputing that this fact has been common knowledge for some time, the Government asserts the importance of concealing any official recognition of the agency’s identity. The argument comes too late.

(See the opinion in full, with previously redacted passages highlighted, here.)

Until today, the government had argued that the CIA’s operational involvement in the targeted killing program was an official secret. In this case and in another ACLU FOIA case seeking documents about the program, the official unveiling of this fact should open the door to further disclosures about the CIA’s role in the program and about factual information, like numbers of civilian casualties caused by the program, that the government continues to maintain cannot be disclosed to the public.

  1. There are additional OLC memos addressing the lawfulness and constitutionality of the targeted killing of U.S. citizens — and the government will likely have to release portions of those as well.

5. The other OLC legal memoranda have not been submitted to this Court for in camera inspection, and we are therefore unable to adjudicate the waiver issue as to these memoranda, nor determine, if waiver has occurred, what portions of these documents must be redacted. It is possible that waiver of any claimed privileges applies to the legal reasoning in these documents for the same reasons applicable to the OLC-DOD Memorandum. On remand, these memoranda must be produced to the District Court for in camera examination and determination of waiver and appropriate redaction, in light of our rulings with respect to disclosure and redaction of the legal reasoning in the OLC-DOD Memorandum.

Together, today’s release and the Second Circuit’s opinion make clear that the public is only just starting to understand the legal and factual basis for the government’s targeted killing program, as a great deal of information crucial to the public debate remains secret. While we will continue to press for additional disclosures in court, the government need not and should not wait for yet another court order before it discloses additional information to which the public is entitled. In the meantime, stay tuned for further analysis from the ACLU about the meaning of today’s release as well as what comes next.

June 23, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

DOJ Drone Memo: AUMF Trumps All And Rights Are Subject To Arbitrary Revocation In Times Of ‘War’

By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | June 23, 2014

The long-awaited “drone memo” has now been released, and it details the DOJ’s justifications for the extra-judicial killing of American citizens. While the government runs through various permutations of its arguments for “justified” killings, the short version can be boiled down to four letters: AUMF.

The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists was passed three days after the 9/11 attacks and is every bit the sort of kneejerk legislation every lawmaker should approach warily, but seldom do. This kicked off America’s “War on Terror,” a “slippery slope battlefield” that has been used to justify everything from domestic surveillance by the NSA to the purchase of cell phone tower spoofers and discarded military vehicles by local police departments.

The memo (which starts at page 67 of the embedded document below — the legal decision ordering the release is above it) starts out with the DOJ doing Congress’ thinking for it. This part discusses the “authority” behind the killings, aligning it roughly with the deadly use of force by law enforcement, something that makes certain killings lawful under certain circumstances.

The justifications listed below constantly cite 18 USC 1119(b), a law that simply states that it’s illegal for a US citizen to kill another US citizen residing outside US borders, making them subject to the United States’ laws on murder and manslaughter. But what looks simple and solid on the law books is apparently filled with loopholes and things Congress meant to make clear but apparently didn’t.

But the recognition that a federal criminal statute may incorporate the public authority justification reflects the fact that it would not make sense to attribute to Congress the intent with respect to each of its criminal statutes to prohibit all covered activities undertaken by public officials in the legitimate exercise of their otherwise lawful authorities, even if Congress has clearly intended to make those same actions a crime when committed by persons who are not acting pursuant to such public authority. In some instances, therefore, the better view of a criminal prohibition may well be that Congress meant to distinguish those persons who are acting pursuant to public authority, at least in some circumstances, from those who are not, even if the statute by terms does not make that distinction express.

What the DOJ basically argues here is that it would be perfectly fine for an NYPD officer to use justified, deadly force to shoot another American overseas. This would seem to be an unlikely event, but the NYPD has sent its officers all over the world in recent years, much to the dismay and irritation of local law enforcement and security agencies.

The DOJ further presses its point by comparing extrajudicial killings to speeding tickets (from the same paragraph as above).

Cf. Nardone v. United States, 302 U.S. 379, 384 (1937) (federal criminal statutes should be construed to exclude authorized conduct of public officers where such a reading “would work obvious absurdity as, for example, the application of a speed law to a policeman pursuing a criminal or the driver of a fire engine responding to an alarm”)

On page 73, the DOJ notes that there’s actually no federal statute that grants the government the same “rights” (in terms of justified use of deadly force) local law enforcement agencies enjoy, but that doesn’t slow down the rationalizing. […]

It goes from there to twisting words around until its convinced they read differently than they actually read. The following argument can best be summed up as: “the killing is justified because the killing is justified.” Because we say its lawful, it must be lawful. (Hence the intense leaning on the AUMF later.)

It is true that here the target of the contemplated operations would be a U.S. citizen. But we do not believe al-Aulaqi ‘s citizenship provides a basis for concluding that section 1119 would fail to incorporate the established public authority justification for a killing in this case. As we have explained, section 119 incorporates the federal murder and manslaughter statutes, and thus its prohibition extends only to “unlawful” killings, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1111, 1112, a category that was intended to include, from all of the evidence of legislative intent we can find, only those killings that may not be permissible in light of traditional justifications for such action. At the time the predecessor versions of sections 1111 and 1112 were enacted, it was understood that killings undertaken in accord with the public authority justification were not “unlawful” because they were justified. There is no indication that, because section 1119(b) proscribes the unlawful killing abroad of U.S. nationals by U.S. nationals, it silently incorporated all justifications for killings except that public authority justification.

Now that the DOJ has established a “right” to conduct extrajudicial killings based mainly on public authority justifications granted to law enforcement, it then discussed whether this can be stretched to cover DoD and CIA operations. Here’s where the DOJ begins wading into the “War on Terror” justifications.

In light of the combination of circumstances that we understand would be present, and which we describe below, we conclude that the justification would be available because the operation would constitute the “lawful conduct of war”-a well-established variant of the public authority justification.

Technically, we’re not “at war” anywhere in the world. There’s no declared war, other than the one on terrorism, which the DOJ terms (using the AUMF wording) a “non-international armed conflict.” If this is the justification, terming anything a “war on…” would justify extrajudicial killing, because no one expects murder charges to be brought against them during normal acts of war (i.e., combatants killing other combatants).

Because the AUMF says we can detain a US citizen who is assisting our enemies, it also means we can kill a US citizen who does the same.

And thus, just as the AUMF authorizes the military detention of a U.S. citizen captured abroad who is part of an armed force within the scope of the AUMF, it also authorizes the use of “necessary and appropriate” lethal force against a U.S. citizen who has joined such an armed force.

The DOJ also discusses the justifications for the CIA’s involvement, but much of that will still remain a mystery. Large portions of this have been redacted, but the discussion does start out with this unintentionally hilarious assertion.

[redacted] — the CIA — [redacted] would conduct the operation in a manner that accords with the rules of international humanitarian law governing this armed conflict…

Maybe in light of its still-unreleased “Torture Report,” the DOJ might want to retract that statement. But the CIA’s justifications apparently aren’t that far off from the DoD’s, and they include the same willingness to put words in Congress’ mouth.

Thus, we conclude that just as Congress did not intend section 1119 to bar the particular attack that DoD contemplates, neither did it intend to prohibit a virtually identical attack on the same target, in the same authorized conflict and in similar compliance with the laws of war, that the CIA would carry out in accord with [redacted].

Finally, the DOJ discusses the rights completely ignored by extrajudicial killing. First, the Fifth Amendment is dismissed because the AUMF trumps all.

In Hamdi, a plurality of the Supreme Court used the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test to analyze the Fifth Amendment due process rights of a U.S. citizen captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and detained in the United States who wished to challenge the government’s assertion that he was a part of enemy forces, explaining that “the process due in any given instance is determined by weighing ‘the private interest that will be affected by the official action’ against the Government’s asserted interest, ‘including the function involved’ and the burdens the Government would face in providing greater process.”

“Constitutionality,” in the DOJ’s hands, is mostly about what rights people don’t have.

We believe similar reasoning supports the constitutionality of the contemplated operations here. As explained above, on the facts represented to us, a decision-maker could reasonably decide that the threat posed by al-Aulaqi’s activities to United States persons is “continued” and “imminent…”

The explanation “above” is, of course, redacted.

The DOJ continues on to wave away the Fourth, again using the AUMF as justification.

The Fourth Amendment “reasonableness” test is situation-dependent. Cf Scott, 550 U.S. at 382 (Garner “did not establish a magical on/off switch that triggers rigid preconditions whenever an officer’s actions constitute ‘deadly force'”). What would constitute a reasonable use of lethal force for purposes of domestic law enforcement operations will be very different from what would be reasonable in a situation like such as that at issue here. In the present circumstances, as we understand the facts, the U.S. citizen in question has gone overseas and become part of the forces of an enemy with which the United States is engaged in an armed conflict; that person is engaged in continual planning and direction of attacks upon U.S. persons from one of the enemy’s overseas bases of operations; the U.S. government does not know precisely when such attacks will occur; and a capture operation would be infeasible.

[redacted] at least where high-level government officials have determined that a capture operation overseas is infeasible and that the targeted person is part of a dangerous enemy force and is engaged in activities that pose a continued and imminent threat to U.S. persons or interests the use of lethal force would not violate the Fourth Amendment. [redacted ] and thus that the intrusion on any Fourth Amendment interests would be outweighed by “the importance of the governmental interests [that] justify the intrusion…”

If it’s difficult, don’t try. At least that much agrees with law enforcement rationale. Why get a warrant when exigent circumstances can be abused? Why respect rights when you can claim there’s a “continued” and/or “imminent threat?”

Click here for full article with embedded document below

June 23, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Washington’s Rats are Abandoning Maliki

sewer rat.preview

The rats in Foggy Bottom and the White House will have to become increasingly adaptive
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening | June 20, 2014

The rat, among mammals, is one of the most successful animals on the planet. Cunning, ruthless, competitive and above all adaptable — it is able to change its habits quickly as needed to accommodate the situation it finds itself in.

When it comes to foreign policy, the US government is swarming with rats.

Just look at the situation in Iraq. The US invaded the country in 2003, claiming it was a rogue nation that had, or was trying to develop, “weapons of mass destruction.” When it became clear that this was a lie, or at best, simply not true, the stated motive for the invasion was changed to “regime change,” and the goal became “bringing democracy to Iraq.”

The US and the key US corporate news organizations loved Maliki when his party won the largest block of seats in the first parliamentary election in 2006 and he became prime minister. As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius crowed at the time, after the votes were in, “The most important fact about Maliki’s election is that it’s a modest declaration of independence from Iran.” Ignatius quickly went to the US ambassador at the time, Zalmay Khalilzad, for a comment, and Khalilzad, a neoconservative linked to the National Endowment for Democracy, obligingly told him, “His reputation is as someone who is independent of Iran.”

Khalilzad had worked assiduously (almost rat-like, one might say) behind the scenes to build a coalition of Kurds, Sunnis and Shia politicians opposed to the incumbent prime minister Ibrahim al-Jafari (who was seen as Iran’s man), in order to back Maliki’s ascendancy.

In 2010, the US again backed Maliki, supporting him for a second term even though the initial results of the voting gave a plurality to his challenger Ayad Allawi. Using heavy-handed tactics and his control of the judiciary, Maliki essentially stole that election. He did this with the approval of the US Embassy which, in 2010, was still, if not controlling the country, a major player.

Shift to the present Iraq national elections. The US, during the campaign, was clearly backing Maliki’s virtually assured re-election as prime minister. Indeed, an April 30 article in the New York Times — a steadfast voice for the Washington foreign policy establishment, hailed the parliamentary voting underway as a triumph. As reporters Tim Arango and Duraid Adnan wrote:

“Millions of Iraqis voted for a new Parliament on Wednesday, defying threats from Islamist extremists, in an election that was carried out, by Iraq’s brutal standards, in remarkable peace…

“The election, the first nationwide vote since the departure of American troops more than two years ago, was seen as a referendum on Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s eight years as prime minister as he seeks his third term amid a growing Sunni insurgency that has brought the country to the edge of a new civil war.”

On May 19, after the votes were all counted (at least those in Shia regions), the Washington Post, another stalwart backer of the US foreign policy establishment, reported on the victory of Maliki’s party in the elections saying:

“The US Embassy in the capital welcomed the result, calling it ‘another milestone in the democratic development of Iraq.’”

But along the way to Maliki’s re-election plurality, something happened: a lightning-fast military campaign by Sunni insurgents, backed by a population that was furious over several years of violent attacks and repression by Maliki’s police and military, and an opportunistic separatist move by Kurds in the north, suddenly put even Baghdad at risk.

Suddenly the rats in Washington, seeing their “man in Baghdad” as vulnerable, and their rickety construct in Iraq as facing collapse, aren’t so committed to democracy in the place, and are “adapting” to a new political environment.

As the Wall Street Journal reported this week:

“WASHINGTON—The Obama administration is signaling that it wants a new government in Iraq without Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, convinced the Shiite leader is unable to reconcile with the nation’s Sunni minority and stabilize a volatile political landscape. The U.S. administration is indicating it wants Iraq’s political parties to form a new government without Mr. Maliki as he tries to assemble a ruling coalition following elections…”

Democracy for Iraq? Oh that was so yesterday. Today the issue is combating the Sunni insurgency, and keeping Iran from gaining further influence over Baghdad.

Whatever one’s opinion of Maliki — and the truth is he has been a fairly typical Middle East strongman, brutally surpressing the Sunni minority on behalf of his Shia backers, and also playing hard-ball even against those Shia politicians who would be his rivals, including having them arrested — betrayal of allies noble and vile has of course been a long tradition in Washington. So has dropping any pretense of supporting democratic elections. The US backed elections in the Palestinian territories until Hamas won handily in Gaza, at which point Washington just stopped talking about democracy there, and backed Israel’s policy of turning the place into the world’s biggest concentration camp, starved of water, fuel and food.

In Ukraine, the US backed so-called “orange revolutions” and democratic elections until it decided to back a right-wing coup that drove the elected prime minister out of the country.

As the US continues to find itself increasingly challenged around the globe by countries that feel less and less intimidated by an overstretched US military, and as the dollar keeps losing ground as a reserve currency, making economic sanctions less and less potent as a tool of coercion, the rats in Foggy Bottom and the White House will have to become increasingly adaptive if they hope to continue to infest the globe as they have since the days of the Cold War.

June 21, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

No Iran-US talks over Iraq crisis: Diplomat

Press TV – June 16, 2014

A senior Iranian diplomat has rejected reports about negotiations between Iran and the US over the ongoing crisis in Iraq.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has had no negotiations with the Americans over mutual cooperation in Iraq,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Monday.

We believe that the Iraqi people and armed forces are capable of handling the crisis in their country on their own, he added.

The Iranian diplomat also dismissed the likelihood of the spillover of the crisis into Iran, saying, “There is no threat against the geographical borders of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but necessary precautions have been taken in this regard.”

Commenting on the quality of Iran’s cooperation with Iraq in fighting terrorism, Amir-Abdollahian rejected any direct military intervention, but noted that the Islamic Republic will assist Iraq through consultations or any other measures which can enable the Iraqi army in its counter-terrorism campaign.

On Sunday, a senior US official said the administration of President Barack Obama is considering the situation to hold talks with Iran over the Iraqi crisis.

Takfiri militants from the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have recently been carrying out acts of terror in Iraq, taking over a number of cities and committing atrocities against the people.

June 16, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

IRS Claims Two Years Of Emails Were Destroyed In A ‘Computer Crash;’ Congressman Asks The NSA To Supply ‘Missing’ Email Metadata

By Tim Cushing | Techdirt | June 16, 2014

The IRS is currently being investigated by Congress for some possibly politically-motivated “attention” it directed towards “Tea Party” and other conservative groups that operated as tax-exempt entities. Along the way, IRS official Lois Lerner, who was the first to publicly disclose the inappropriate targeting, was also one of the first government officials to plead the Fifth (twice) in government hearings.

The Congressional investigation demanded copies of Lois Lerner’s emails from the IRS. Some were turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee, but not everything it sought. Now, the IRS is telling the committee that it’s not going to get everything it asked for.

The IRS has told Congress that it lost more than two years’ worth of emails involving former IRS official Lois Lerner, due to a computer crash.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) on Friday said it was “unacceptable” that he was just learning of this problem now, after a lengthy investigation into Lerner’s involvement in the IRS targeting scandal.

Camp points out that the IRS withheld these emails for over a year before suddenly “discovering” they were unavailable. The IRS says it can find everything Lerner sent to and received from other IRS employees but nothing containing correspondence with those outside the agency.

Obviously, this convenient “computer crash” has generated a lot of skepticism. For one thing, a “computer crash” doesn’t really have the power to destroy electronic communications. Email is almost always stored somewhere else other than the local user’s computer. And even if the IRS meant a “server crash” instead of a “computer crash,” any decent server system contains multiple levels of redundancy.

The Blaze sought input from Norman Cillo, a former Microsoft project manager, who presented six reasons why he believes the IRS is lying about its inability to recover these emails. Number one on the list seems to be the most applicable.

I believe the government uses Microsoft Exchange for their email servers. They have built-in exchange mail database redundancy. So, unless they did not follow Microsoft’s recommendations they are telling a falsehood.

The IRS’s own policies on email state that its employees use both Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, which means it should have some form of backup available.

Secure Messaging enrollment is an automated process for all LAN accounts with an Exchange mailbox in IRS. You can find the instructions for configuring the Outlook client to use the certificates at the Secure Enterprise Messaging Systems (SEMS) web site: http://documentation.sems.enterprise.irs.gov/.

According to Cillo, the only other explanation for the IRS’s inability to recover these emails is that the agency is “totally mismanaged and has the worst IT department ever.” Unfortunately, the government seems to have a lot of mismanaged and terrible IT departments, so this may be closer to the truth than anyone would really like to admit. Perhaps the general ineptitude of large government agencies is behind the Treasury Department’s policy that all email sent to or from IRS employees be “archived” via hard copy printouts.

If you create or receive email messages during the course of your daily work, you are responsible for ensuring that you manage them properly. The Treasury Department’s current email policy requires emails and attachments that meet the definition of a federal record be added to the organization’s files by printing them (including the essential transmission data) and filing them with related paper records. If transmission and receipt data are not printed by the email system, annotate the paper copy.

There’s more information here, citing the IRS’s own internal guidelines on tape backups, etc., that suggest further levels of redundancy, as well as the commissioner of the IRS testifying that the agency stores its emails on servers.

Critics believe the IRS has simply “vanished” the crucial emails in order to cut Lerner adrift and make it appear she acted alone. Any evidence that would tie outside government agencies (including the administration itself) into this situation has been deemed unrecoverable. Supposedly, there should be paper copies of the missing emails, but no one in Congress has requested these and the IRS certainly isn’t offering to look.

But one Congressman thinks he has a solution to the missing email dilemma. Steve Stockman (last seen here threatening to bring a defamation lawsuit against someone who uttered true facts about his criminal past) knows some people who have a whole lot of email data just laying around.

“I have asked NSA Director Rogers to send me all metadata his agency has collected on Lois Lerner’s email accounts for the period which the House sought records,” said Stockman. “The metadata will establish who Lerner contacted and when, which helps investigators determine the extent of illegal activity by the IRS.”

Yeah, let me know how that works out for you, Steve. The NSA can’t even confirm or deny its monthly water usage at its Utah data site, much less that it has metadata pertaining to Americans’ communications.

[Sidebar: I do really love the fact that this sort of thing is becoming increasingly common — the use of the NSA as the backup-of-last-resort for phone/email/internet communications data. If anyone claims it can’t find email X or phone record Y, someone’s going to say, “Hey, I’ll bet the NSA has a copy!” Hilarious. The NSA will never again be allowed to pretend it doesn’t harvest data on American citizens.]

The whole letter, which begins with some light ass-kissing of new NSA director Michael Rogers (“thank you for your 33 years of, and continued service to, our country...”) and closes with a bit of grandstanding, surreally asking “the Agency” to send all relevant metadata on the missing Lerner emails to “Donny@mail.house.gov.” All in all, probably one of the most incongruous demands the NSA has ever received, a letter which conjures up the image of a late-night meeting in an underground parking garage, with sunglassed NSA liaisons handing over a briefcase full of metadata to a 19-year-old intern dressed in his dad’s suit.

It’s pretty hard to shake the impression that this is a coverup. As always, the specter of pure ineptitude lurks in the background, as it often does when large bureaucracies tangle with technology. But until the IRS presents further evidence detailing how exactly these emails went missing, it’s safe to assume there’s been an active effort made to cover up government impropriety.

June 16, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

GAO Audit Accuses Obama Administration of Lowballing Cost of Maintaining Nuclear Arsenal

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | June 13, 2014

For the second time this year, government auditors have issued a report critical of the Obama administration’s projections for preserving the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.

In both instances, the cost estimates put forth by the departments of Defense and Energy have been described as far too low, in part because key expenses were not budgeted. The latest audit, performed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), supported some of the findings of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which concluded six months ago that the administration was off—by hundreds of billions of dollars—in estimating the future needs of maintaining the arsenal.

The Pentagon has claimed outlays will be about $264 billion. But the CBO put the figure closer to $570 billion and perhaps as much as $1 trillion over the next 30 years.

The GAO did not offer its own estimate for maintaining the weapons. But it did question the Defense Department’s claim that modernizing all ballistic missiles and bombers would require only $64 billion over the next 10 years.

In the case of the Minuteman III missile, which has served as the backbone of the nation’s land-based nuclear deterrent since the 1970s, GAO auditors found the administration left out all future funding for replacing these weapons, saying the program was “not yet defined.” As for a new bomber, the Air Force said those costs were “too sensitive” to include in the report.

At the Energy Department (DOE), which oversees all nuclear weapons research, the GAO found that officials had low-balled the cost of modernizing certain warheads for ballistic and cruise missiles.

The agency also reported that DOE had assumed billions of dollars in cost savings from efficiency efforts without determining where the savings would come from, and that Energy officials had left out the cost of revamping or replacing several nuclear-weapons laboratories.

To Learn More:

Federal Auditors Say Obama Administration Underestimates Nuclear Weapons Costs (by R. Jeffrey Smith, Center for Public Integrity)

Ten-Year Budget Estimates for Modernization Omit Key Efforts, and Assumptions and Limitations Are Not Fully Transparent (Government Accountability Office)

Obama Administration Underestimated Cost of Maintaining Nuclear Weapons by $140 Billion (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)

June 13, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Behind the smoke: Gareth Porter and the Iranian nuclear story

By Yazan al-Saadi | Al-Akhbar | June 11, 2014

Iran’s nuclear program has been a subject of obsession for Western governments and media agencies for decades, as far back as the final years of Western-backed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s reign. But over the course of the last decade, the subject has reached new hysterical heights, propelled by mainstream media coverage mired with distortion and misinformation. Enter: Gareth Porter.

Porter, 71 years old, is a man of many trades. He is a historian, an author, a policy analyst, and of late, has made a name for himself as a successful investigative journalist.

He began his career in journalism during the US war on Vietnam, serving as the Saigon Bureau Chief for the Dispatch News Service International from 1970-71. He then decided to leave journalism for decades, working in a variety of jobs as an anti-war activist, a university teacher, and sustainable development environment work.

It was after another American war at the dawn of the 21st century, this time against Afghanistan and Iraq, that Porter found himself back into the journalistic fold, mainly writing for the InterPress Service.

“It was only from the year 2000 I started writing this book on Vietnam, how the Americans went to war there. It was such an eye-opener. I realized that the problem of America’s wanton wars was not the problem of a president gone wrong or starting from the wrong values or ideas. It was a systemic problem that the war state was the real problem. That has shaped my political consciousness and my scholarship in journalism ever since then,” Porter told Al-Akhbar.

While working on the book, titled “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, which was eventually published in 2005, Porter started to write investigative journalistic articles, the first of which was on how Iraqi Kurdish groups were stealing and forging parliamentary elections at the time.

“That’s what started me on the road of becoming an investigative journalist. I never imagined it would happen but it just developed really quickly,” he said with a light laugh.

Porter started covering the Iranian nuclear issue in 2006; at first, he said, he had believed the overall narrative produced by various agencies.

One key evidence used in the allegations by the West of Iran’s attempts to militarize its nuclear program is the more than one thousand pages of documents that were supposedly acquired from the laptop of an Iranian nuclear scientist by intelligence agencies. They are known informally as the “Laptop Documents.”

But when Porter decided to examine the evidence presented against Iran, he began to discover certain anomalies.

“I went back to look at the recent history of the Iran nuclear issue, and that is when I came across a Wall Street Journal article quoting a German foreign office official, Karsten Voigt, saying this very intriguing thing: ‘Don’t rely on these documents because they came from an Iranian dissident group’ – meaning Mujihedin-E-Khalq (MEK).”

“It pushed me in the direction of questioning the narrative. As time went by I saw more and more of the pieces that didn’t fit the puzzle, particularly about these Laptop Documents,” he added.

In late 2007, Porter met with a German source in Washington DC, and asked him about the Wall Street Journal article. The German source confirmed Voigt’s statement, and thus cemented Porter’s belief that there was more to the story. He began working full-time examining the various evidence and raging debates over Iran’s nuclear program.

Many of his articles, however, have never garnered the attention of the mainstream press and traditional policy institutions within the US.

“The feedback was very weak. The biggest problem, of course, is that the news media and political elite in the US are very powerful, don’t need to respond to information and analysis that contradicts their narratives,” Porter said in regards to the reasons behind this general disinterest in his reports.

Nevertheless, his work in uncovering propaganda and unveiling uncomfortable truths about the problematic narratives regarding Iran’s nuclear program earned him the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, an annual award given by the London-based Frontline Club that celebrates courageous and ground-breaking journalism.

“The single biggest factor driving the elite’s obsession over Iran as a threat and as an enemy is that the basic premise was laid down early at the end of the Cold War,” Porter explained in terms of the reasons behind the American and European honing in on the Islamic republic.

“That the US must take a hand in constraining and preventing Iran from extending its power. It became a fundamental premise of post-Cold War US policy. It fit the interests of the national security state and the Israeli lobby together. Once that happened, and pretty quickly during the Clinton Administration, successive governments naturally followed the general lines set down.”

“Even Obama, just in the early days of office, had the NSA and Israelis come in and tell him about their plans for a cyberwar against Iran. Here he is, a guy who is allegedly planning to enter serious diplomatic engagement with Iran, was essentially conspiring with the Israelis to carry out cyberwarfare. He was going to be the first president to wage cyberwar against another country. That’s very serious,” Porter further remarked.

Overall, Porter mused, the biggest obstacles to any attempt to work out a deal with Iran and end a consideration of military action comes down to Israel.

“Even if there was a settlement of the issue that led to détente between the US and Iran, both of which I’m skeptical about, that would not change the Israeli point of view – which is they have to possess nuclear weapons to maintain superiority over every other country in the Middle East,” he said.

Porter has authored a new book entitled “Manufactured Crisis: The Secret History of the Iranian Nuclear Scare,” which recounts his journalistic work on the allegations about Iran’s nuclear program by the Americans and Israelis since 2006, and discusses in greater detail the numerous evidences and counter-evidences at play.

He recently presented a round table discussion on the topic and his book at the Issam Fares Institute (IFI) building within the American University of Beirut campus on June 9.

Below is the video of the entire talk, and subsequent discussion between Porter and the audience, posted on YouTube by IFI:

June 11, 2014 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

Ukraine President Once Agent for U.S. State Department

By Michael Collins | The People’s Voice | June 9, 2014

Is he still working for his former masters in Washington, DC?

ukraineourinsider

Two diplomatic messages from the WikiLeaks Public Library on U.S. Diplomacy indicate that newly elected President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko was an agent for United States State Department. A confidential message from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev on April 29, 2006 mentions the newly elected Ukraine president twice.

“During an April 28 meeting with Ambassador, Our Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko emphatically denied he was using his influence with the Prosecutor General to put pressure on Tymoshenko lieutenant Oleksandr.”

“During an April 28 meeting with Ambassador, Our Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko denied that he was behind Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko’s recent decision to issue an arrest warrant for Tymoshenko lieutenant Oleksandr Turchynov. … [to] question him about the alleged destruction of SBU [Ukraine intel] files on organized crime figure Seymon Mogilievich.” [Russian Mafia Boss of Bosses] WikiLeaks Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy

The motivation for alleged destruction of files appeared in an embassy message from April 14, 2006.

“– The files contained information about Tymoshenko’s cooperation with Mogilievich when she ran United Energy Systems in the mid-late 1990s.” WikiLeaks

Yulia Tymoshenko, an aspiring oligarch, is the darling of the both the Bush and Obama administrations for her role in the 2004 Orange Revolution that brought the first modern anti-Russian Ukraine government to power. She helped negotiate the natural gas deals between Ukraine and Russia.

Another mention of Poroshenko made it clear that the State Department saw the future value of Poroshenko’s insider role.

“OU-insider Petro Poroshenko was in the running for the PM job.” WikiLeaks

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the current president in 2009 when he served as Ukraine Foreign Minister. The content of the meeting was described in a confidential message from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev on December 18, 2009:

[Speaking to Ukraine Foreign Minister Petro Poroshenko] “She [Secretary of State Clinton] emphasized that the United States envisioned multiple pathways to NATO membership.” WikiLeaks

Since he was doing his work in secret, and he was “our insider,” it follows that Poroshenko played the role of agent: ” someone hired or recruited by an intelligence agency to do its bidding. The person to whom the agent reports — the actual agency employee–is known as an operative.” Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security

Poroshenko is a Ukrainian oligarch, one of the fifty or so wealthiest citizens who run the country. It is unlikely the president got cash for his services but highly likely that he extracted financial advantage as a result.

Amidst the chaos and ruin visited upon Ukraine, Poroshenko’s recent election may mean a full synchronization of U.S. – Ukraine policies regarding the eastern regions where citizens of Ukraine are subject to bombardment by land an air in their towns and cities.

False Hope at D-Day Gathering?

At the recent D-Day commemoration in France, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Holland arranged a fifteen-minute meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the newly elected Ukrainian president. Both leaders agreed that military actions must stop and set up a date for meetings to accomplish that goal. Putin went beyond military settlement by offering Ukraine its former discounts on Russian gas.

According to the Guardian, “Putin said he welcomed Poroshenko’s call for an end to the bloodshed and liked his approach to settling the crisis but wanted to wait until the Ukrainian leader could deliver it in detail to the nation.” (Authors emphasis) Poroshenko delivered some detail to the nation but it wasn’t what Putin wanted to hear in order to move forward. The inauguration speech in Kiev included the new president’s desire to sign the European Union (EU) association agreement and seek full integration into the EU, which implies NATO membership.

“Dear friends, my pen is already in my hands. I am ready now. As soon as the EU takes a relevant decision, the signature of the Ukrainian president will immediately appear under this document. We see the association agreement as only the first step towards Ukraine’s fully-fledged membership in the European Union ” Petro Poroshenko, June 7

As Poroshenko spoke, “Residents [of Slavyansk, eastern Ukraine] said the sounds of shelling reverberated around the city on Friday.” ABC, June 7

Which Poroshenko can we believe? The president who worked for the U.S. as “Our Ukraine insider” or the elected head of a sovereign state engaged in honest diplomacy?

Right now, it’s safe to stick with the bellicose rhetoric of the inaugural speech. In a heavily documented report, RT showed the handiwork of President Poroshenko’s troops in Slavyansk – eight dead yesterday from aerial bombardment of the separatist occupied city administrative building.

“Death and destruction is reported in eastern Ukraine as Kiev’s artillery has resumed shelling the rebellious city of Slavyansk. Locals tell RT they have been without running water and power for days, and that hope is fading.” RT, June 8

The $5 billion spent to get a U.S. friendly government in the Ukraine worked. “Our Ukraine insider,” Petro Poroshenko is president. He was informed five years ago that the U.S. wanted Ukraine in NATO, and he no doubt heard Vice President Joseph Biden’s speech in Kiev. Without a vote by Congress or a valid treaty, Biden assured the then coup-run government that our government would be there to help.

U.S. will stand by Ukraine in face of Russian aggression, Biden says

“I came here to Kiev to let you know, Mr. Prime Minister, and every Ukrainian know that the United States stands with you and is working to support all Ukrainians seeking a better future. You should know that you will not walk this road alone. We will walk it with you.” Vice President Joseph Biden, April 22

The players and plans have been in place for years and it’s all paid off. The White House and their masters finally have their insider in place in charge of Ukraine. It’s worth listening to the assessment of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John E. Herbst and his Deputy around the time they handled Poroshenko. The ambassador saw him as a “disgraced oligarch” and his deputy pointed out that “Poroshenko was tainted by credible corruption allegations.”

Spreading brand democracy around the world is a tough job. Somebody’s got to do it.

(Image: Global Panorama)

June 9, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 3 Comments

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