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Review of PBS Frontline’s The War Behind Closed Doors

By Hadding Scott | Occidental Quarterly | November 8, 2015

While I was in the midst of trying to publicize the Jewish instigation and the folly of invading Iraq in early 2003 as an occasional writer of scripts for American Dissident Voices,  PBS Frontline presented a rather helpful documentary called The War Behind Closed Doors, written by Michael Kirk, and coproduced by Michael Kirk and Jim Gilmore.

The introduction to The War Behind Closed Doors is quite promising, with Frontline’s narrator stating: “Over two decades, they had served three presidents, and argued for one big idea, that the United States must project its power and influence throughout the world. This is the story of how they set out to change American foreign policy in the days immediately after the tragedy of September 11th.” Then, to be more specific about what that means, the intro includes a clip of former CIA analyst Kenneth Pollack saying: “And it does seem very clear that this group seized upon the events of September 11th to resurrect their policy of trying to go after Saddam Hussein and a regime-change in Iraq.” This was a documentary that would clarify who was responsible for the drive for war against Iraq: Neoconservatives — which meant that that the war was not fundamentally about oil.

The documentary describes the path to invasion of Iraq (which seemed imminent but had not yet occurred when the program aired on 20 February 2003) as a struggle between Neoconservatives (also calling themselves “Neo-Reaganites” or “hawks”) led by Paul Wolfowitz, and “pragmatists” or “realists” ostensibly led by Colin Powell. The Neoconservative position was that Saddam Hussein’s government must be destroyed, while the pragmatists, without disputing the Neoconservatives’ provocative claims about Saddam Hussein, advocated containment as the appropriate response.

Brent Scowcroft (a pragmatist who had been an advisor to George H.W. Bush) is shown explaining to an interviewer that George H.W. Bush had deliberately left Saddam Hussein in power in 1991, contrary to what the Neoconservatives had wanted, because it was desirable to preserve a balance of power between Iraq and Iran, and because overthrowing Saddam Hussein might lead to various negative consequences — reasons that in hindsight make excellent sense.

The interviewer, and some other Jewish commentators in the documentary — Kenneth Pollack and Richard Perle — speak as if the goal of the 1991 war had been to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but Scowcroft is adamant that it was not.

LOWELL BERGMAN: I thought we had two interests. One was to evict the Iraqi army from Kuwait, but the other really was to get Saddam out—

BRENT SCOWCROFT: No.

LOWELL BERGMAN: —of power.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: No, it wasn’t.

LOWELL BERGMAN: Well, either covertly or overtly.

BRENT SCOWCROFT: No. No, it wasn’t. That was never — you can’t find that anywhere as an objective, either in the U.N. mandate for what we did or in our declarations, that our goal was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. [PBS Frontline transcript]

The widespread belief that the goal of the 1991 war had been to eliminate Saddam Hussein was supported by the hyperbolic propaganda that had been used. The comparisons of Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler started in the mass-media. In late 1990 President Bush joined the trend by comparing Saddam Hussein (unfavorably) to Hitler, because of the supposed brutality of the Iraqi troops in Kuwait (AP, 2 November 1990).  There was a tendency to see everything in terms of this Hitler comparison, from “He gassed his own people!” to  supposedly unprovoked invasions of neighboring states. Given that President George H.W. Bush had engaged in and never repudiated that kind of crazed propaganda, the first Bush Administration would necessarily be seen as having failed to fulfill a moral imperative when, ultimately, they did the practical thing by leaving Saddam Hussein in power.

In fact, George H. W. Bush did call for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and then refrained from supporting such an effort, as the Neocons have charged. This can be seen either as disingenuous war-rhetoric or as vacillation between the influences of the pragmatists (Scowcroft) and the Neoconservatives (Wolfowitz), or as a combination of the two.

Immediately after the 1991 war, Paul Wolfowitz (as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy) authored a set of military guidelines that would justify preventive war — in other words, war against a state that had not attacked and was not threatening to attack, but might attack someday if not attacked first. Recall that in 1981 the State of Israel had been condemned by the UN Security Council for “preventive war” in its attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor, with the Reagan Administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick,  also voting to condemn. The President of the Security Council, Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, explained:

The reasons on which the Government of Israel bases its contention are as unacceptable as the act of aggression it committed. It is inadmissible to invoke the right to self-defense when no armed attack has taken place. The concept of preventive war, which for many years served as justification for the abuses of powerful States, since it left it to their discretion to define what constituted a threat to them, was definitively abolished by the Charter of the United Nations. [Security Council Official Records, S/PV.2288 19 June 1981]

Wolfowitz was now advocating that the government of the United States adopt the uninhibited belligerence of the State of Israel, using military strikes to maintain hegemony against merely suspected (or perhaps imagined) threats.

Information about the Wolfowitz Doctrine was leaked to the news media by people within the administration who opposed it, and it became a source of embarrassment. Dick Cheney was ordered to rewrite Wolfowitz’s guidelines in a way that eliminated the option of unilateral preventive war.

Neoconservative William Kristol however commends the Wolfowitz Doctrine, declaring that Wolfowitz was “ahead of his time.” The narrator explains: “One day there would be a more receptive president, and another opportunity.”

That more receptive president was not Bill Clinton.

The narrator implies that George W. Bush was chosen as the likely successor to Bill Clinton as early as 1998, and that a group of “foreign-policy wisemen” including Wolfowitz on one hand and Colin Powell on the other, attempted to groom him for that position.

This period, when the struggle for the mind of George W. Bush occurred, shows most clearly that invading Iraq was not the idea of George W. Bush. William Kristol states that Bush was not immediately supportive of the Neoconservatives’ aggressive foreign policy: “I wouldn’t say that if you read Wolfowitz’s defense policy guidelines from 1992 and read most of Bush’s campaign speeches and his statements in the debates, you would say, ‘Hey, Bush has really adopted Wolfowitz’s worldview.’” Thus the pragmatists initially prevailed over the Neoconservatives, so that George W. Bush, in the period before the election, was advocating a reduced role for American military forces in the world.

The narrator says that Bush’s foreign policy during the first few months of his administration was “stalled between the two competing forces” — stalled between the Neocons and the pragmatists. Kristol indicates that this continued until the 9-11 attacks: “I think you could make a case that on September 10th, 2001, that it’s not clear that George W. Bush was in any fundamental way going in our direction on foreign policy.”

A pivotal moment, following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, came when Bush delivered a speech that evening that included the line: “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

The War Behind Closed Doors treats this as a highly important utterance. Obviously it is important, since rumors that some government harbors or supports terrorists are easy to generate, and were in fact generated. The narrator says: “The hawks welcomed the president’s phrase, ‘those who harbor’ terrorism.” Richard Perle is quoted praising the speech.

David Frum, Bush’s Canadian-born Jewish speechwriter, also praises the speech:

Within 48 hours, he had made the two key decisions that have defined the war on terror. First, this is a war, not a crime. And second, this war is not going to be limited to just the authors of the 9/11 attack but to anyone who assisted them and helped them and made their work possible, including states. And that is a dramatic, dramatic event. And that defines everything.

What Frontline fails to mention is that it was Frum who insisted on that crucial line in Bush’s speech. One week before PBS Frontline aired its documentary, The Nation magazine had already revealed that detail:

It was not, alas, “a war speech.” It did, though, contain the line about making “no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” And Frum cannot resist informing us he had been the one to insert that thought into every draft of the speech. [David Corn, “Who’s in Charge?” The Nation, 13 February 2003; emphasis added]

This casts a very interesting light on another comment from Frum about the speech: “When he laid down those principles, I don’t know whether he foresaw all of their implications, how far they would take him. I don’t know if he understood fully and foresaw fully the true radicalism of what he had just said.”

Who was really making the big decisions for which Frum liked to give Bush so much credit? Frum had put words into Bush’s mouth and then said that he was not sure that Bush had understood the implications. The picture that we get, by adding just a bit of information that Frontline had omitted, is that George W. Bush was pushed into belligerent posturing by his Jewish advisors.

The pragmatists continued to push the idea of going after terrorists rather than governments; Powell for example spoke of “persuading” governments that might be harboring terrorists. But the fact that the President had already talked about going after governments had created an expectation that was difficult to oppose.

Meanwhile the false notion that Iraq was unfinished business was revived. (Obviously such an evil man must be doing evil things.) The notion that Iraq was somehow a “state sponsor of terrorism” (having been taken off the list of state sponsors of terrorism by the Reagan Administration in 1982, but reinstated amid the war-propaganda of 1990) was bandied about.

Dick Cheney is a favorite target for leftist critics of the War on Terror, and for the John Birch Society, who want a scapegoat that allows them to avoid saying anything critical of Jews. Very often, Cheney is represented as a key “Neocon.” In fact Cheney had worked with the Neoconservatives at various times since the days of “Team B” during the Ford Administration. But William Kristol described Cheney’s position at the beginning of George W. Bush’s presidency thus: “Cheney is a complicated figure and, obviously, a very cautious and reticent figure, so hard to know what he thinks in his heart of hearts. I think he had feet in both camps, so to speak.” In other words, Cheney was not initially committed to the Neoconservative position on Iraq.

George W. Bush adopted the doctrine of preventive war that had been advocated by “the brains” of the Neoconservative outfit, Paul Wolfowitz (see here, p. 41ff, for a portrait of Wolfowitz’s Jewish identity and connections). From this, given 15 years of demonization-propaganda against Saddam Hussein and a little nudging from Jews like David Frum who were positioned to influence George W. Bush, the invasion of Iraq followed.

At the time when The War Behind Closed Doors aired, the Neoconservatives were getting their way and enjoying practically unanimous support for their project, and perhaps it was overconfidence that motivated William Kristol to claim for his Neoconservative movement such unequivocal responsibility for the imminent war. There was always obfuscation about who had agitated for war, with many habitually blaming the oil industry or other economic interests, because such explanations fit their leftist theory about how the world works. It was extremely useful that PBS Frontline documented that it was in fact Neoconservatives who spent more than a decade agitating for that war, and also, if it did not explain exactly who these Neoconservatives were, at least gave some indications about who they were not.

There are however some negative aspects to The War Behind Closed Doors, the worst of them being the propaganda spouted by Jewish television-host Ted Koppel’s Jewish son-in-law, Kenneth Pollack, who also happened to be a former CIA analyst, a sometime member of the National Security Council and various think-tanks, and author of a pro-war book, The Threatening Storm, that was especially influential with liberals. (Pollack had excellent liberal credentials, having served in the Clinton administration; he was also indicted for spying on behalf of Israel, but the indictment was dropped under less than convincing circumstances.) Although supposedly giving an expert outsider’s perspective on the Neoconservatives’ agitation for war, and seeming to criticize the Neoconservatives in some ways, the most important part of what Pollack said really supported the Neoconservatives’ project. I suspected that Pollack was Jewish when I first saw the program in 2003 because of the general thrust of what he was saying, but now it is confirmed.

In the section of PBS Frontline’s The War Behind Closed Doors about Bill Clinton, Pollack promotes the idea that Saddam Hussein really was developing WMDs behind the backs of the UN’s weapons-inspectors, and tries to portray the clashes in the 1990s between Iraqi officials and the UN’s inspectors as the expression of some kind of psychological strategy on Saddam Hussein’s part for undermining “containment.” Frontline should have pointed out that there was no direct evidence for any ongoing WMD-program. It was all speculation, based, as Pollack says, on the fact that the Iraqis gave the inspectors trouble. But the friction between inspectors and Iraqi authorities was easily explained with the fact that the inspection-team, infiltrated by agents of the CIA, appeared to have been used to try to orchestrate a coup:

But one of the problems is, is that you have a situation, in June of 1996, where the United States is fomenting a coup against Saddam Hussein, a coup based upon Special Republican Guard units. At the same time, you have an UNSCOM inspection, UNSCOM 150, which is in Iraq, creating a confrontation by inspecting Special Republican Guard sites.  [Scott Ritter, PBS Frontline: Spying on Saddam, 27 April 1999].

These known facts should have been brought to bear on Pollack’s statements.

The Newsweek of 24 February 2003, four days after this documentary aired, quoted Saddam Hussein’s son, General Hussein Kamel, as telling an interrogator in 1995: “All weapons — biological, chemical, missile, nuclear — were destroyed.” Pollack, with his positions in government as a supposed expert on Iraq, should have known about this.

It is the major fault of The War Behind Closed Doors that it allows Pollack’s claims in support of the WMD accusation to go undisputed.  Pollack admitted after the invasion that he had been wrong (“I made a mistake based on faulty intelligence.”  New York Times Magazine, 24 October 2004), but it is worse than being wrong: he was either a liar or incompetent. The failure to challenge Pollack’s statements is a crucial omission in PBS Frontline’s presentation, because the proposition that Saddam Hussein had been 100% successful in circumventing weapons-inspections was essential to the argument for war. Add the claim that weapons-inspections were not working (and probably could not work) to the premise that Saddam Hussein is “another Hitler,” and it becomes self-evident that one must go to war.

November 9, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia, Iran ‘sign S-300 delivery deal’

Press TV – November 9, 2015

A Russian official says Tehran and Moscow have signed a contract for the long-overdue delivery by Russia of 300 missile defense systems to Iran.

Sergei Chemezov, the chief executive of Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, was quoted by Ria Novosti as saying that the deal had been signed.

Russia committed to delivering the systems to Iran under a USD-800-million deal in 2007.

Moscow, however, refused to deliver the systems to Tehran in 2010 under the pretext that the agreement was covered by the fourth round of the United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. The resolution bars hi-tech weapons sales to Tehran.

Following Moscow’s refusal to deliver the systems, Iran filed a complaint against the relevant Russian arms firm with the International Court of Arbitration in Geneva.

In April this year, President Vladimir Putin lifted a previous ban on the delivery of S-300 to Iran.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said in mid-August that “all changes” that have been made to the S-300 system by the Russians over the years will be implemented on the battalions that are going to be delivered to Iran.

November 9, 2015 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘US-led coalition disjointed in fighting ISIS as some members have own plans’ – Iraq’s ex-PM

RT | November 8, 2015

The US-led coalition has been “unbelievably” inefficient in fighting the terror group Islamic State, possibly because some members have their plans for the terrorists, Iraq’s former PM told RT.

Nouri al-Maliki, who stepped down as the head of the Iraqi government last year and remains a vice-president, believes that Iraq was targeted by a “regional conspiracy” and is at risk of breaking up. He also said inviting Russia to target Islamic State targets in Iraq could play a positive part in the debacle.

Describing the effort of the international coalition led by the US to cripple ISIS fighters in Iraq, Maliki said it was “inefficient”.

“It’s unbelievable and unacceptable that more than 60 nations comprising this coalition that have the most modern aircraft and weapons at their disposal have been conducting their campaign in Iraq for 14 months and IS still remains in the country,” he told RT’s Arabic-language sister-channel Rusiya Al-Yaum.

Maliki cited the loss of the city of Ramadi and the major oil refining center Baiji to ISIS, both of which happened after the coalition started bombing the terrorists, as proof that not enough is being done by the coalition.

“Some members of the coalition have their own strategies that account for ISIS either continuing to exist or being destroyed. They also consider what would happen after ISIS’s destruction. I believe they are indecisive, trying to calculate what happens. What will be the situation in Iraq, in the region, will the map look the same? Or maybe ISIS is a key instrument for changing the situation in Iraq and the region?” he asked.

Maliki says Russia helped Iraq in the aftermath of the fall of Mosul to the Islamic State by providing weapons and may help more by expanding to Iraq its bombing campaign in Syria. He said the Russian effort had proven to be efficient.

“The Russian involvement in Syria and the intensive bombings have stopped the offensive of many terrorist groups. This involvement hurt the terrorists a lot and inspired the Syrian troops. Russia’s actions also stunned the international coalition. In just days and weeks Russia delivered strikes against major terrorist positions in Syria. And where is the international coalition of more than 60 nations that had achieved nothing in 14 months in Iraq?” he said.

Maliki said the Iraq government is dragging its feet on inviting Russia, partially due to pressure from the US.

“If somebody has a strong position in the region and then another nation starts using its capabilities the former party is naturally concerned. It was believed that Russia’s presence in the region was over. But now Russia has a comeback to fight terrorism alongside Iraq and Syria. And a situation where decision, which could be previously taken unilaterally, should now be taken in partnership, causes concern,” Maliki said.

November 8, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Clinton vows to strengthen relations with Israel

MEMO | November 6, 2015

Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, vowed to strengthen ties with Israel if she is elected president.

In an op-ed published by the American-Jewish newspaper The Forward, Clinton wrote: “The alliance between our two nations transcends politics.”

The piece was published before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, where President Barack Obama will receive him.

This will be the first meeting between Obama and Netanyahu after the Iranian nuclear agreement was reached in July between Tehran and the P5+1, which Netanyahu described as a “historic mistake.”

Clinton also added: “I will do everything I can to enhance our strategic partnership and strengthen America’s security commitment to Israel, ensuring that it always has the qualitative military edge to defend itself.”

“I would also invite the Israeli prime minister to the White House in my first month in office,” she wrote.

The former US Secretary of State wrote that she believed Netanyahu’s visit to Washington “is an opportunity to reaffirm the unbreakable bonds of friendship and unity between the people and governments of the United States and Israel.”

She stressed that she has always supported Israel and she mentioned that she had first visited Israel in 1981. She wrote: “As president I will never stop working to advance the goal of two states for two peoples living in peace, security and dignity.”

With regards to the Iranian issue, Clinton reaffirmed her commitment not to allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

November 7, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu aide: Obama is an anti-semite

By Jonathon Cook | The Blog From Nazareth | November 5, 2015

Picture the scene. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is off to Washington to see Barack Obama next week for the first time in more than a year. Their last major dealings were in March, when Netanyahu travelled to the US to speak to Congress in a bid to undermine a key plank of the US president’s foreign policy – reaching a nuclear deal with Iran.

This time Netanyahu wants a favour. He hopes to squeeze from Obama billions more of US taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars in “aid” so that he can buy yet more weapons to use against the Palestinians.

How is Netanyahu preparing for this important visit? He has appointed a new head of public diplomacy, Ran Baratz.

And how will Baratz help Netanyahu repair relations with Obama? It seems he won’t. Last March, as Netanyahu went behind Obama’s back to try to stymie the Iran deal in Congress, Baratz posted his views of Obama on Facebook. He called the US president an “anti-semite” for criticising Netanyahu’s behaviour.

Here’s what he wrote:

Obama’s reference to Netanyahu’s speech – this is what modern anti-Semitism looks like in Western and liberal countries. And it comes, of course, alongside much tolerance and understanding toward Islamic anti-Semitism.

By the way, to give you a flavour of quite how unhinged Netanyahu has become in appointing someone like Baratz as his new spokesman, Baratz has also argued that the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem should be replaced by a third Jewish temple and Muslims denied the right to pray at the site unless they recognise its holiness to Jews. Almost as crazy as accusing the Palestinians of persuading Hitler to carry out the Holocaust.

Will this cause Netanyahu any harm in Washington or prompt Obama to refuse to subsidise Israel’s belligerent and illegal occupation? Don’t hold your breath. It seems there is no insult Obama and the US political elites won’t swallow when it comes from their “ally” Israel.

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.684417

November 6, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who Will Blink in Syria? Russia? Or the US?

By Paul Larudee | Dissident Voice | November 5, 2015

The first to die will be US troops. Russians will be made to appear as the killers, but the agents will probably be ISIS, Al-Qaeda (aka al-Nusra), Turks, or the Americans themselves. I’m not ruling out that the Russians might actually do the job, especially if the Americans order their 50 soldiers to the most likely Russian bombing targets and then dare the Russians to hit them. But most likely, the US will do the job itself and not take a chance that the Russians might miss.

Those dead American soldiers are needed as bargaining chips so as to up the ante. Next, Russians have to die, with or without a mutual secret agreement to that effect.

The strategy is based upon the assumption that if the stakes become high enough, the other side will back down. It is called brinkmanship, and its best known example was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. One or both sides may believe that they are bluffing, but if their bluff is called are they really going to back down? Or are they going to up the ante so much that they end up in a real war, where they are required to respond to the other’s actions with ever-escalating effect?

I do not think the Russians will blink. They have had enough of American encroachment. They will not stand for further NATO poaching of their erstwhile Warsaw Pact allies, and certainly not in Ukraine, which is to Russia roughly as Canada is to the US. Similarly, the port of Tartus in Syria is Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base, and Syria is currently its only ally in the Arab world. Russia has much more at stake than the US, and is therefore much less likely to back down. In fact, Russia has clearly made a major commitment to the preservation of Syria, and waited a long time before doing so, which is another sign that they will not shrink soon from their decision to stay the course.

On the American side, the stakes are much less well defined. Syria is part of the post-USSR assertion of US global dominance, as advocated mainly by the neoconservative strategic movement, closely allied with Israeli and Zionist interests, which benefits from the Israel Lobby clout in the US. From its base in the Congress and the National Security Agency, this movement has made inroads into the intelligence services, the State Department and the Department of Defense, mainly at the top echelons. (Elected and appointed positions are the most vulnerable to lobbyist penetration.)

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the neocons argued that the US should use its military might to mold the world into US-controlled fiefdoms. Plans for such domination have been variously described in the “Clean Break” proposal, the “Project for a New American Century”, and the “New Middle East”. They begin with the destruction (aka “regime change”) of seven Middle Eastern countries, of which Iraq and Libya are considered successfully catastrophic outcomes, and a model for what is to be done to Syria.

Part of the purpose is to remove “bad examples” of nations that refuse to open their economies to U.S. exploitation and to accept US direction of their foreign policy, regardless of their own national interests. Iran and Syria are current examples of such countries, as were Libya and Iraq prior to their destruction. If these objectives happen to coincide with the Israeli policy of destroying the countries in its neighborhood, we may be forgiven for thinking that this is not mere coincidence.

Also on the American side, the stakes are ruled to a greater extent by domestic politics. Having championed the cause of regime change in Syria, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are loathe to appear weak or indecisive, and thus vulnerable to Republican criticism. In any case, they rely heavily on the Israel Lobby, which appears willing to sacrifice America’s fortune and youth on the altar of Israeli interests.

Despite these considerations, the American motives are not as strong as those of Russia. The problem is, neither is American leadership. There is a clear way out of this confrontation, with a face-saving agreement, if only the US will allow it to happen. It is for Russia and the US to cooperate in eliminating ISIS, al-Qaeda and their allies, cutting off US support for these terrorist organizations, forcing US allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others to do the same, and jointly convening a peace conference that brings indigenous Syrian groups together to negotiate an agreement that allows all sides to claim victory (even if it is something of a charade, as are most such agreements).

Brinkmanship is unnecessary. It is dangerous, and it is not a solution. Vladimir Putin is ready to achieve a negotiated outcome that protects Russia’s interests and ends US encroachment. Assad has never been an enemy of the US, and he is the current choice of the vast majority of the Syrian people, whether enthusiastically or reluctantly (as in most countries). The United States will be able to claim victory over its terrorist enemies as well as a compromise over the form of government in Syria, and a new positive working relationship with Russia. The Israelis will be upset that we have not done enough killing for them, but they will get over it, in the same way that they are reluctantly learning to live with the US-Iran settlement on nuclear development.

It shouldn’t be a question of who blinks first, but of having the option to continue blinking at all.

Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement.

November 6, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel seeks 60 percent increase in US military aid: US officials

Press TV – November 5, 2015

Israel is seeking a large increase in annual military assistance from the United States and has held preliminary talks with the Obama administration on a 10-year financial package that would provide up to $50 billion, American congressional sources say.

During unofficial talks in recent weeks, Israel has asked the US to increase its annual military assistance by 60 percent to an average of $5 billion a year over the 2018-2028 period, the congressional aides said on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

Under the existing agreement that was signed in 2007 and expires in 2017, annual military aid to Israel grew to about $3 billion a year. That deal was negotiated during the George W. Bush administration.

Israel says that it wants more money to counter threats that will arise as a result of the recent Iran nuclear agreement, which the Zionist regime has fiercely opposed.

US officials said that negotiations on the new aid package deal were still in the early stages and the proposal has not yet been formally presented to Congress, which must approve the funding.

“First they have to negotiate with the White House,” one senior congressional aide said of the Israeli regime.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Washington next week and hold talks with President Barack Obama on the aid package. Netanyahu and Obama are expected to reach an agreement on the aid deal’s broad outlines.
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel hold a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, Sept. 30, 2013.

Obama had reportedly agreed in principle with Netanyahu in a previous meeting to increase the aid package to between $4.2 billion and $4.5 billion.

The money is separate from the nearly $500 million in annual US funding for Israel’s missile system programs in recent years. It is also on top of the US warfighting material held in Israel, which is valued at $1.2 billion.

US annual aid to Israel has held steady despite cuts to a wide range of domestic and military programs in the United States, including reducing the size of the US Army to its lowest level since before World War Two.

The US government is pressured to serve Israel’s interests due to the influence of the powerful Zionist lobby in the United States. The pro-Israel pressure groups actively work to steer US foreign policy in favor of Israel.

November 5, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Deutsche Bank to pay $258mn in settlement

Press TV – November 4, 2015

Deutsche Bank will pay $258 million and fire six employees to resolve investigations by state and federal banking regulators into its dealings with countries like Iran and Syria in violation of United States sanctions laws.

Deutsche Bank, a German banking giant that has a big presence on Wall Street, will pay $200 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services and another $58 million to the Federal Reserve. It also agreed to appoint an independent monitor, the New York Times has reported.

It is the latest in a string of settlements over sanctions violations as regulators take aim at banks for doing business with blacklisted countries. Still, a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney and the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan are continuing, people briefed on the matter said.

In a statement, Deutsche Bank said: “We are pleased to have reached a resolution with the New York Department of Financial Services and the Federal Reserve. The conduct ceased several years ago, and since then we have terminated all business with parties from the countries involved.”

The activity under investigation occurred from 1999 to 2006, according to regulators. Deutsche Bank handled 27,200 dollar-clearing transactions valued at over $10.86 billion, for customers in Iran, Libya, Syria, Myanmar and Sudan.

Regulators said bank employees developed ways to hide the nature of the transactions from internal controls intended to flag problematic payments.

Several of the employees involved in the conduct have already left Deutsche Bank, regulators said Wednesday, but an additional six will be fired and three others will be banned from duties involving Deutsche Bank’s American operations.

Investigations and settlements of cases involving violations of United States sanctions are nearing their end just as Washington is easing its stance toward some foreign countries like Iran and Cuba.

November 5, 2015 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Rubio Follows the Big Money

By Jonathan Marshall | Consortium News | November 1, 2015

On the morning of Halloween, the New York Times broke the scary news that Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio had won a big jackpot: the endorsement of billionaire hedge fund investor Paul Singer. But aside from citing Singer’s praise for Rubio’s “message of optimism” and “work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” the story offered little explanation of what could prove to be a decisive turning point in the GOP primary race.

On the policy front, Rubio clearly meets Singer’s requirement for a candidate who favors lower taxes on the rich and, even more important, a blank check for Israel’s right-wing government. With his hawkish stands on the Middle East, including fervent opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, Rubio had already won over another leading Republican “bundler,” New York attorney Phil Rosen, former chairman of American Friends of Likud and a believer that Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians “was, and will always be, a holy war.”

Rubio is a protégé of Florida billionaire Norman Braman, who has contributed at least six figures to support the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Rubio reportedly leads the all-important “Adelson primary,” the race to tap the virtually unlimited cash box of gambling billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the single most prominent U.S. supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

All that is music to Singer’s ears, but Rubio’s “work on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee” is about something else altogether: his political support for Singer’s efforts to drain more than $1.5 billion dollars from Argentina in payments on old bonds that lost most of their value after the country defaulted in 2001.

Singer’s Elliott Management bought that debt several years ago for less than $50 million, and then successfully sued in U.S. court to demand full recovery of the face amount — in the face of opposition from the Obama administration, most other bondholders, and, above all, Argentina’s government, led by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Singer, who is famous for his bare-knuckles tactics against foreign governments, has gone after Kirchner’s government on all fronts. Most strategically, he supported the highly questionable claims by an Argentine prosecutor that the Kirchner government tried to cover up the involvement of the Iranian government in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.

The issue was perfect for a smear campaign: targeting alleged Iranian terrorism and government anti-Semitism, Singer could undercut the legitimacy of the one entity standing between him and huge profits on his speculative bond purchases.

Singer’s Elliot Management is a major backer of American Task Force Argentina, which advocates for full repayment of the Argentine bonds and has spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress. It also spends big bucks to blacken Argentina’s reputation.

As Huffington Post reported in 2013, the group “has launched a broad attack on Argentina in its PR campaign. … Politico ad, paid for by ATFA, slammed the country as a safe haven for narcotics traffickers. Another ATFA ad accuses Argentine President Cristina Kirchner of making a ‘pact with the Devil,’ pointing to a legal memo between her country and Iran involving Argentina’s effort to prosecute Iranian defendants in a terrorism case.”

As one of its lobbyists told Huffington Post, “We do whatever we can to get our government and media’s attention focused on what a bad actor Argentina is.”

An investigation by Charles Davis for Inter Press Service showed that employees of Singer’s Elliott Management contributed more than $95,000 to Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Illinois, who wrote a letter denouncing President Kirchner’s agreement with Iran to investigate the 1994 bombing.

Rep. Michael Grimm, R-NY, who received $38,000 from Elliott Management employees, co-sponsored legislation demanding that Argentina’s bondholders receive full compensation, and called for an investigation of Argentina’s ties with Iran. Other recipients of Singer’s largesse — including AIPAC, The Israel Project and the American Enterprise Institute — also hammered the Kirchner government, virtually accusing it of anti-Semitism.

Last year, another member of Congress got in on the act: Sen. Marco Rubio. While grilling President Obama’s nominee as U.S. ambassador to Argentina, Rubio complained that Buenos Aires “doesn’t pay bondholders, doesn’t work with our security operations. . . .  These aren’t the actions of an ally.”

Adding a dig at President Kirchner, he added, “We have this trend in Latin America of people who get elected but then don’t govern democratically. Argentina is an example of this.” His speech triggered an angry response from Kirchner’s Foreign Minister Hector Timerman — an Argentine Jew — calling Rubio an “extremist.”

This May, Rubio introduced a resolution in the Senate suggesting that Kirchner conspired to “cover up Iranian involvement in the 1994 terrorist bombing.” Rubio declared that the issues in the case “extend well beyond Argentina and involve the international community, and more importantly, U.S. national security.”

As Eli Clifton noted, “It turns out that Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, was Rubio’s second largest source of campaign contributions between 2009 and 2014, providing the presidential hopeful with $122,620, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.”

When Kirchner herself had the temerity this spring to link Singer to various neoconservative attacks on her policies, citing a “global modus operandi” to coerce foreign states, the reliably neoconservative editorial page of the Washington Post published an editorial reply titled, “Argentina’s President Resorts to Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories.”

To which Jim Lobe and Charles Davis, citing a long list of Singer connections to Kirchner’s critics, replied, “follow the money.” That advice, made famous in the movie version of Watergate’s Deep Throat, remains the best guide to understanding billionaire funding of candidates in the 2016 election.

November 1, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

We Must Oppose Obama’s Escalation in Syria and Iraq!

By Ron Paul | October 27, 2015

Today Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee to outline a new US military strategy for the Middle East. The Secretary admitted the failure of the US “train and equip” program for rebels in Syria, but instead of taking the appropriate lessons from that failure and get out of the “regime change” business, he announced the opposite. The US would not only escalate its “train and equip” program by removing the requirement that fighters be vetted for extremist ideology, but according to the Secretary the US military would for the first time become directly and overtly involved in combat in Syria and Iraq.

As Secretary Carter put it, the US would begin “supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL (ISIS), or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground.”

“Direct action on the ground” means US boots on the ground, even though President Obama supposedly ruled out that possibility when he launched air strikes against Iraq and Syria last year. Did anyone think he would keep his word?

President Obama claims his current authority to conduct war in Iraq and Syria comes from the 2001 authorization for the use of force against those who attacked the US on 9/11, or from the 2002 authorization for the use of force against Saddam Hussein. Neither of these claims makes any sense. The 2002 authorization said nothing about ISIS because at the time there was no ISIS, and likewise the 2001 authorization pertained to an al-Qaeda that did not exist in Iraq or Syria at the time.

Additionally, the president’s year-long bombing campaign against Syrian territory is a violation of that country’s sovereignty and is illegal according to international law.

Congress is not even consulted these days when the president decides to start another war or to send US ground troops into an air war that is not going as planned. There might be notice given after the fact, as in Secretary Carter’s testimony today, but the president has (correctly) concluded that Congress has allowed itself to become completely irrelevant when it comes to such grave matters as war and peace.

I cannot condemn in strong enough terms this ill-advised US military escalation in the Middle East. Whoever concluded that it is a good idea to send US troops into an area already being bombed by Russian military forces should really be relieved of duty.

The fact is, the neocons who run US foreign policy are so determined to pull off their regime change in Syria that they will risk the lives of untold US soldiers and even risk a major war in the region — or even beyond – to escalate a failed policy. Russian strikes against ISIS and al-Qaeda must be resisted, they claim, because they are seen as helping the Assad government remain in power, and the US administration is determined that “Assad must go.”

This is not our war. US interventionism has already done enough damage in Iraq and Syria, not to mention Libya. It is time to come home. It is time for the American people to rise up and demand that the Obama Administration bring our military home from this increasingly dangerous no-win confrontation. We must speak out now, before it is too late!

October 29, 2015 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

ISIL Rose as Puppet ‘Terrorist Battering Ram’ of World Powers – FSB

Sputnik – October 28, 2015

syriaThe Islamic State project has grown out of the Arab Spring and has gained momentum under the double standards of certain world powers trying to reach their own goals in Asia and Africa, Russian Federal Security Service head Alexander Bortnikov said Wednesday.

“The international community has now hit a new geopolitical challenge, an international criminal group in the name of the Islamic State. This project, which grew out of the ‘Arab Spring,’ has gained momentum thanks to the double [political] standards of certain world regional powers by using ‘a terrorist battering ram’ to reach their own strategic goals in Asia and Africa,” Bortnikov said during a security session with the special services from the Commonwealth of Independent States.

In late 2010, a revolutionary wave of anti-government protests began in the Arab world, which later evolved into the so-called Arab Spring, leading to political fragmentation and longtime rulers being forced from power in a number of countries, including Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

The most drastic consequences of the Arab Spring can be seen in Syria, where opposition factions tried to oust the country’s president, Bashar Assad. As the opposition failed to overthrow Assad immediately, mass anti-government protests escalated into an open armed confrontation between government troops and allied militias on the one hand, and the Syrian opposition on the other.

The conflict is ongoing, and apart from fighting the opposition, Assad has also had to counter extremist groups, including the notorious Islamic State, which has occupied large swathes of land in Syria in recent years.

In 2014, the militants expanded into Iraq which was trying to recover from the Iraq War caused by a US-led invasion and occupation of the country that lasted for over eight years.

“As a result, these states [global powers] have put the world on the brink of global religious and civilization conflict with extremely destructive consequences.”

Fighters From 100 Countries in Islamic State Ranks, Recruits Constitute 40% of Forces

“According to our estimates, citizens from more than 100 countries are currently fighting in the ranks of terrorist structures and the recruits constitute up to 40 percent of their forces,” Bortnikov said.

Afghan militants joining the Islamic State terrorist group has led to a sharp rise in threats and their invasion of Central Asia, Bortnikov said.

“The escalation in tensions in Afghanistan has brought on serious dangers. There are numerous criminal groups included in the Taliban movement on the northern borders of this country right now. Some of them have also [began operating] under the Islamic State flag, which has led to a sharp rise in the threat of terrorists invading Central Asia.”

Islamic State is a Sunni militant group, which seized large territories in Syria and Iraq, in 2012 and 2014, respectively. The group is known for its excessive brutality as well as for recruiting young people from all over the world, primarily via social media.

Some 20,000 to 30,000 foreign fighters are fighting alongside extremists against government forces in Syria and Iraq, according to various estimates. Up from last year’s estimates of no more than 15,000.

In August, the Russian Civic Chamber launched a hot-line to counter radicalization and protect young people from ISIL recruitment.

The following month, Russia, Syria, Iraq and Iran created the Baghdad Information Center to coordinate joint military action against ISIL. The four countries are represented by officers of the national armed forces, whose primary task is to collect and analyze data related to militant operations in the region.

On September 30, Moscow began pinpoint airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Syria following a request from President Bashar Assad.

October 28, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Strategic depopulation’ of Syria likely cause of EU refugee crisis – Assange

RT | October 27, 2015

The flooding of Europe by countless waves of refugees may be the result of the “strategic depopulation” of Syria carried out by opponents of the country’s government, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has suggested.

Transparency organization WikiLeaks has looked through its diplomatic cables and unearthed “an interesting speculation about the refugee movement,” Assange said in an interview with Geek news site, ThePressProject.

“So, the speculation was this: Occasionally opponents of a country would engage in strategic depopulation, which is to decrease the fighting capacity of a government,” he explained.

The whistleblower pointed out that “it’s predominantly the middle class that is fleeing” Syria on account of having “language skills, money, some connections.” Engineers, managers and civil servants are “precisely, the classes that …[are] needed to keep the government functioning,” he said.

Syrian people are encouraged to flee their country “by Germany saying they’ll accept many-many refugees, and by Turkey taking nearly three million refugees, thus significantly weakening the Syrian government,” Assange stressed.

Syria isn’t the only case of migration being used as a weapon in recent history; during the Iraq War, Sweden told the US that “the acceptance of Iraqi refugees was part of its contribution,” according to cables.

The WikiLeaks founder said that it’s a “disgrace” that the US refuses to take in Syrian refuges because it’s Washington who should be held accountable for the hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Europe and making EU states close its borders with one other.

“The situation comes about as a result of the US, UK and French policy in the Middle East together with the behavior of US regional allies in the Middle East – Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Israel… and Saudi Arabia,” he said.

The intercepted documents, already published by WikiLeaks, revealed that the US had been plotting to overthrow the Syrian government since around 2006, Assange stressed.

“It was trying to make the Syrian government ‘paranoid’ trying to get it to ‘overreact’ by instilling that fear and paranoia; trying to make it worried about coups; trying to stir up sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias … trying to stop foreign investment in Syria and secretly funding a variety of NGOs in Syria also to make trouble, using the Saudis and Egypt to help push that along,” he said.

Meanwhile any of Assad’s attempts to battle terrorism and the expansion of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) strength were presented as a demonstration of weakness and “an example of [the] Syrian government not having full control over its territory to encourage the government overthrow,” the whistleblower added.

Assange stressed that the people in America have nothing to gain from the Syrian conflict, but “only particular factions that pushed for it” might believe that they will benefit in the end.

“Of course, the CIA perceives they have a benefit. They create a problem and then they’re given a greater budget to clean the problem up. Similarly, with the contractors, arms dealers and arms manufacturers. If there’s no problem then their budgets are cut. So they create problems,” Assange explained.

By meddling with Syria, Washington also pursued “a grand area strategy to weaken Hezbollah, to allow Israel greater control of Golan Heights, maybe a buffer zone as well; to knockout (Syria) a regional ally of Iran; to knockout the last Russian base that’s left outside the former Soviet Union in Tartus; to create a path for a gas pipe that is proposed pass is from Qatar to Saudi and up through Syria to Europe, which will compete with Russian gas,” added Assange.

US interference has led to Syria being ensnared in a bloody conflict since 2011. Over 220,000 people have been killed, according to UN estimates. Government forces have fought various militant groups throughout the conflict, including the so-called moderate opposition backed by the West as well as the jihadist IS and Jabhat al-Nusra terror groups.

In late September, Russia began airstrikes against the terrorists in Syria at the request of President Bashar Assad, allowing government forces to launch a large-scale offensive and recognize a turning point in the conflict.

October 27, 2015 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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