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The Iraq War’s Known Unknowns

By Ray McGovern | Consortium News | January 26, 2016

There is a lot more than meets the eye in the newly revealed Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence briefing of Sept. 5, 2002, which showed there was a lack of evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) – just as President George W. Bush’s administration was launching its sales job for the Iraq War.

The briefing report and its quick demise amount to an indictment not only of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld but also of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Richard Myers, who is exposed once again as a Rumsfeld patsy who put politics ahead of his responsibility to American soldiers and to the nation as a whole.

In a Jan. 24 report at Politico entitled “What Donald Rumsfeld Knew We Didn’t Know About Iraq,” journalist John Walcott presents a wealth of detail about the JCS intelligence report of Sept. 5, 2002, offering additional corroboration that the Bush administration lied to the American people about the evidence of WMD in Iraq.

The JCS briefing noted, for example: “Our knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear) weapons program is based largely – perhaps 90% – on analysis of imprecise intelligence.”

Small wonder that the briefing report was dead on arrival in Rumsfeld’s in-box. After all, it proved that the intelligence evidence justifying war was, in Rumsfeldian terms, a “known unknown.” When he received it on Sept. 5 or 6, the Defense Secretary deep-sixed it – but not before sending it on Sept. 9 to Gen. Richard Myers (who he already knew had a copy) with a transparently disingenuous CYA note: “Please take a look at this material as to what we don’t know about WMD. It is big. Thanks.”

Absent was any notation such as “I guess we should tell the White House to call off its pro-war sales campaign based on Iraq possessing WMD since we don’t got the goods.” Without such a direct instruction, Rumsfeld could be sure that Gen. Myers would not take the matter further.

Myers had already proven his “company man” mettle by scotching a legal inquiry that he had just authorized to provide the armed forces with guidance on permitted interrogation techniques. All that it took to ensure a hasty Myers retreat was a verbal slap-down from Rumsfeld’s general counsel, William James Haynes II, as soon as Haynes got wind of the inquiry in November 2002. (More on that below.)

The more interesting story, in my view, is not that Rumsfeld was corrupt (yawn, yawn), but that so was his patsy, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the country’s top uniformed military officer at the time. Myers has sported a well-worn coat of blue Teflon up until now.

Even John Walcott, a member of the Knight-Ridder team that did the most responsible pre-Iraq-War reporting, lets the hapless Myers too easily off the hook in writing: “Myers, who knew as well as anyone the significance of the report, did not distribute it beyond his immediate military colleagues and civilian boss, which a former aide said was consistent with the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”

Principal Military Adviser to the President

That “former aide” is dead wrong on the last point, and this is key. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs works directly for two bosses: the President of the United States, whom he serves as the principal military adviser, and the Secretary of Defense. The JCS Chairman has the statutory authority – indeed, the duty – to seek direct access to the President to advise him in such circumstances, bearing on war or peace.

Indeed, in his 2009 memoir, Eyes on the Horizon, Gen. Myers himself writes, “I was legally obligated to provide the President my best military advice — not the best advice as approved by the Secretary of Defense.”

But in reality, Myers wouldn’t and he didn’t. And that – quite simply – is why Rumsfeld picked him and others like him for leading supporting roles in the Pentagon. And so the Iraq War came – and, with it, catastrophe for the Middle East (with related disorder now spreading into Europe).

Could Gen. Myers have headed off the war had he had the courage to assert his prerogative to go directly to President Bush and tell him the truth? Sad to say, with Bush onboard as an eager “war president” and with Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld intimidating the timid Secretary of State Colin Powell and with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet fully compliant, it is not likely that Myers could have put the brakes on the rush to invade Iraq simply by appealing to the President.

After all, the JCS briefing coincided with the start of the big sales pitch for the Iraq War based on alarming claims about Iraq possessing WMD and possibly developing a nuclear bomb. As White House chief of staff Andrew Card explained the September timing of the ad campaign, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Just three days after the date of the JCS intelligence report depicting the shallowness of the intelligence on the issue of WMD in Iraq, the White House, with the help of The New York Times and other “mainstream media,” launched a major propaganda offensive.

On Sept. 8, 2002, a New York Times front-pager – headlined “US Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts” by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon – got the juggernaut rolling downhill to war. Their piece featured some aluminum tubes that they mistakenly thought could be used only for nuclear centrifuges (when they were actually for conventional artillery). Iraq’s provocative behavior, wrote the Times, has “brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.”

Or as NSC Advisor Rice summed it up on the Sunday talk shows later that day, “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

But it was clear the fix was in even earlier. The British “Downing Street Minutes” of July 23, 2002, show that Tenet told his British counterpart, Richard Dearlove, that – as Dearlove described the message to Prime Minister Tony Blair – that “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

However, despite the obstacles, Richard Myers, like so many of us, took a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. For many of us who wore the uniform and took “duty, honor, country” seriously, it is hard to give Myers a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to blame for the Iraq War.

No matter the odds against success, his duty was to go directly to the President and make the case. If he was rebuffed, he should have quit and gone public, in my view. (How long has it been since anyone of high rank has quit on principle?)

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs quitting over plans for an unnecessary war? Not even The New York Times and The Washington Post – as fully in the tank as they were for the Iraq War – would have been able to suppress that story in 2002. And, had Myers gone public he might have succeeded in injecting slippery grease under the rollout of Card’s “new product.”

Imagine what might have happened had Myers gone public at that point. It is all too easy to assume that Bush and Cheney would have gotten their war anyway. But who can tell for sure? Sometimes it takes just one senior official with integrity to spark a hemorrhage of honesty. However the outcome would have turned out at least Myers would been spared the pain of looking into the mirror every morning – and thinking back on what might have been.

A Modern Rumsfeld General

This was not the first time that Myers, who served as JCS chairman from 2001 to 2005, was derelict in duty by playing the toady. He had acquiesced in Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s approval of torture in February 2002, even before going along with a gross violation of international law – launching the attack on Iraq absent any imminent threat and without the required approval by the UN Security Council.

On torture, the seldom mentioned smoking gun was a two-page executive memorandum signed by George W. Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, in which the President declared that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. Instead, they would be treated “humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva,” the memo said, using vague and permissive language that, in effect, opened the door to torture and other abuses. Gen. Myers was one of eight addressees.

On May 11, 2009 Myers was in Washington peddling his memoir Eyes on the Horizon and spoke at a Harvard Business School Alumni dinner. I seldom go to such affairs, but in this case I was glad I had paid my dues, for here was a unique opportunity to quiz Myers. I began by thanking him for acknowledging in his book “the Geneva Conventions were a fundamental part of our military culture.” Then I asked what he had done when he received Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002 memorandum unilaterally creating exceptions to Geneva.

“Just read my book,” Myers said. I told him I had, and cited a couple of sentences from my copy: “You write that you told a senior Pentagon official, Douglas Feith, ‘I feel very strongly about this. And if Rumsfeld doesn’t defend the Geneva Conventions, I’ll contradict him in front of the President.’ Did you?”

Myers claimed that he had fought the good fight before the President decided. But there was no tinge of regret. The sense the general left with us was this: if the President wanted to bend Geneva out of shape, what was a mere Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to do?

Pushing my luck, I noted that a Senate Armed Services Committee report, “Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody,” had been issued just two weeks earlier (on April 23, 2009). It found that Myers had abruptly aborted an in-depth legal review of interrogation techniques that all four armed services had urgently requested and that he authorized in the fall of 2002. They were eager to get an authoritative ruling on the lawfulness of various interrogation techniques – some of which were already being used at Guantanamo.

Accordingly, Myers’s legal counsel, Navy Captain Jane Dalton, had directed her staff to initiate a thorough legal and policy review of interrogation techniques. It had just gotten under way in November 2002 when Rumsfeld’s general counsel, William James Haynes II, ordered Myers to stop the review.

Haynes “wanted to keep it much more close-hold,” Dalton told the Senate committee, so she ordered her staff to stop the legal analysis. She testified that this was the only time in her career that she had been asked to stop working on a request that came to her for review.

I asked Gen. Myers why he halted the in-depth legal review. “I stopped the broad review,” Myers replied, “but I asked Dalton to do her personal review and keep me advised.” When Senate committee members asked him about stopping the review, Myers could not remember.

On Nov. 27, 2002, shortly after Haynes told Myers to stop Dalton’s review despite persisting legal concerns in the military services – Haynes sent Rumsfeld a one-page memo recommending that he approve all but three of 18 techniques requested by the interrogators in Guantanamo.

Techniques like stress positions, nudity, exploitation of phobias (like fear of dogs), deprivation of light, and auditory stimuli were all recommended for approval. On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld signed Haynes’s recommendation, adding a handwritten note referring to the use of stress positions: “I stand for 8-10 hours a day.  Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”

A Different JCS Chairman

Other JCS chairmen have not been as compliant as Myers was. For instance, a decade after Myers acceded to Bush’s rush to war in Iraq, JSC Chairman Martin Dempsey smelled a rat when Secretary of State John Kerry – along with neocons, liberal hawks and the mainstream media – rushed toward full-scale war on Syria by pinning the blame on President Bashar al-Assad for the fatal sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.

Comparisons can be invidious, but Dempsey is bright, principled, and no one’s patsy. It did not take him long to realize that another “regime change” scheme was in play with plans to get the U.S. directly involved in a shooting war with Syria. As more intelligence came in, the sarin attack increasingly looked like a false-flag attack carried out by radical jihadists to draw the U.S. military in on their side.

This new war could have started by syllogism: (a) get President Barack Obama to draw a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons in Syria; (b) stage a chemical attack that would be quickly blamed on Assad for violating the red line; and (c) mousetrapping Obama into making good on his threat of “enormous consequences.”

That Obama pulled back at the last minute was a shock to those who felt sure they had found a way to destroy the Syrian army and clear the way for Assad’s violent removal – even if the result would have been a likely victory for Al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State. After all, neocon/liberal-hawk thinking has long favored “regime change” whatever the consequences, as the wars in Iraq and Libya have demonstrated.

But Gen. Dempsey became a fly in the regime-changers’ ointment. In contrast to Myers, Dempsey apparently saw the need to go directly to the President to head off another unnecessary war. The evidence suggests that this is precisely what he did and that he probably bypassed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in the process since time was of the essence.

Dempsey had already told Congress that a major attack on Syria should require congressional authorization and he was aware that the “evidence” adduced to implicate the Syrian government was shaky at best. Besides, according to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, British intelligence told the JCS that they had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the Aug. 21 attack and it did not match the sarin known to be in Syrian army stocks.

Actually, it is no secret that Dempsey helped change President Obama’s mind between when Kerry spoke on the afternoon of Aug. 30, accusing Damascus of responsibility and all but promising an imminent U.S. attack on Syria, and when Obama announced less than a day later that he would not attack but rather would seek authorization from Congress.

On the early afternoon of Aug. 31, Obama was unusually explicit in citing Dempsey as indicating why there was no need to rush into another war. Obama said, “the [JCS] Chairman has indicated to me that our capacity to execute this mission is not time-sensitive: it will be effective tomorrow, next week, or one month from now.”

The failure to stampede Obama and the U.S. military into a bombing campaign against Syria was a major defeat for those who wanted another shot at a Mideast “regime change,” primarily the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” allies who still hold sway inside the State Department as well as Washington’s top think tanks and the mainstream U.S. news media – not to mention the Israelis, Saudis, Turks and others who insist that “Assad must go.”

Not surprisingly, on Sept. 1, 2013, as the plans to bomb, bomb, bomb Syria were shoved into a drawer at the Pentagon, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham were in high dudgeon – particularly at Dempsey’s audacity in putting the kibosh on their clearly expressed desire to attack Syria post-haste.

(By happenstance, I was given a personal window into the widespread distress over the outbreak of peace, when I found myself sharing a “green room” with some of the most senior neocons at CNN’s main studio in Washington. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How War on Syria Lost Its Way.”]

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing ministry of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army infantry/intelligence officer in the Sixties and then for 27 years as a CIA analyst. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

January 26, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Visas for Al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World

By Nikolai Gorshkov – Sputnik – 26.01.2016

The New York Times has exposed a long-standing CIA partnership with Saudi Arabia, whose latest endeavor is a program to arm Syrian rebels authorized by President Obama in early 2013. Under the “Timber Sycamore” program the Saudis provide funding and purchase weapons for Syrian rebels, while the CIA trains them in secret camps in Jordan.

The Saudi-CIA partnership dates back many years, and involves the British secret service. During the years when Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, the Saudis poured money into the Afghan mujahedeen as it fought Soviet forces, matching U.S. funding dollar for dollar. The mujahedeen funding was run through CIA-managed bank accounts in Switzerland. Those accounts were said to be part of the “Al Yamamah” program, dating to 1985, in which the British and the Saudis used an oil-for-arms barter deal to create massive offshore “black” accounts, including in the Cayman Islands, to bankroll and arm a wide array of global insurgencies. These accounts provided a major source of funds in the Afghan war against the Soviets.

This revelation by NYT adds additional weight to the allegations made in a book by Mike Springmann, former head of the US visa section in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from1987-1989. In Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts that Rocked the World, Springmann details how, “during the 1980s, the CIA recruited and trained Muslim operatives to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Later, the CIA would move those operatives from Afghanistan to the Balkans, and then to Iraq, Libya, and Syria, traveling on illegal US visas. These US-backed and trained fighters would morph into an organization that is synonymous with jihadist terrorism: al-Qaeda.”

In an exclusive interview with Sputnik News, Springmann shared his first-hand experience of issuing US visas to would-be terrorists, a flagrant violation of US law.

“I know. I was there. I issued the visas,” Springmann told Sputnik News.

Upon his arrival at Jeddah, Springmann found that, as a visa officer, he was expected to winnow over a hundred applications a day, separating them into “issuances,” “refusals,” and what he later termed, “free passes for CIA agents.”

“One day,” Springmann recalls, “Eric Qualkenbush, the [then] CIA Base Chief, stopped me while I was walking on the consulate’s huge compound. He had a request. Could I issue a visa to one of his agents, an Iranian whose family owned an Oriental rug store? Eric said, ‘Mike, make it look good (wink, wink). We want him in Washington for consultations.’”

Springmann told Sputnik News he had almost daily battles with Jay Freres, the Consul General, along with several other CIA officials, who would consistently demand visas for people that law and regulation would ordinarily require him to refuse. He also had running fights with applicants who told him to approve their visas or they would complain to Freres, and have him overruled.

Most of these that Springmann now considers ‘unsavory types’ did, in fact, receive visas to go to the USA for training, debriefing, and other purposes. In enabling their passage, American government officials violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as many regulations codified in the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, says Springmann. As a purported guardian of US immigration principles, he objected to the blatant violations of law and regulation. His objections fell on deaf ears.

Springmann details that eventually he came to realize that his Consular Section job duty in Jeddah was primarily to secure visas for CIA agents, i.e., foreigners recruited by American case officers.

“As I later learned to my dismay, the visa applicants were recruits for the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union’s armed forces. Further, as time went by, the fighters, trained in the United States, went on to other battlefields: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.”

But why would the CIA rely on a “genuine” state department visa employee when they could have easily planted one of their own into the Consular Section? According to Springmann, “at Jeddah, to the best of my knowledge, out of some twenty US citizens assigned to the consulate, only three people, including myself, worked for the Department of State. The rest were CIA or NSA officials or their spouses.”

Ignorant Pawns

The explanation to the above question was simple if cynical, Springmann told Sputnik News : it had to be an arms-length operation, to avoid exposure of the CIA program and to blame visa violations, if they became known, on “incompetent” office clerks, including himself.

The Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency collaborated in sending innocent workers like Springmann to Jeddah, a location that handled some forty-five-thousand visa applications annually. If a visa officer processed the paperwork and didn’t ask awkward questions about the applicants, that officer would keep his job. If the visa officer strictly followed the law, resisting illegal pressure to overlook those who did not have a legitimate reason for traveling to the United States, that employee “wasn’t with the program” and could be exposed to dismissal as an incompetent, an occurrence that eventually happened to the author.

“My name was on the visa plate that stamped applications to enter the United States, making me personally responsible for my actions,” he said. “In our spook-ridden Jeddah consulate, I sometimes found it was a daily battle to do my job,” he remarked, offering examples of two such battles.

“Two Pakistanis came to me for a visa. According to their story, they were traveling on a Commerce Department– organized trade mission to an automotive parts exhibition in the United States. However, they couldn’t name the trade show or identify the city in which it would be held. I denied their visa request. Within sixty minutes, Paul Arvid Tveit called and demanded visas for these same Pakistanis. I explained the reasons for my refusal, citing § 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Foreign Affairs Manual. Ignoring the law and regulation, Tveit went to Justice Stevens and the visas were issued.”

“Then, a political officer demanded a visa for a Sudanese who was a refugee from his own country and unemployed in Saudi Arabia. Following the letter and the spirit of the law, I refused. She immediately went to Justice, and a visa was issued. When I later asked Justice why he authorized a visa to someone with no ties to the Sudan or the kingdom, he replied simply ‘national security,’ a phrase without legal definition.”

The dubious games played by the CIA in the name of “national security” are common in many Foreign Service posts, Springmann contends. “In a subsequent conversation with Celerino Castillo, a former Drug Enforcement Agency official, I learned that the CIA’s involvement in the visa process was a successful program of long-standing in Latin America, he stated, adding that, it was also “I presume, a model for Saudi Arabia. South of the border the Agency would slip passports and applications from its contacts into packages sent to the local US consulate or embassy by travel agents. Sandwiched between legitimate applications, ‘Agency assets’ would not be carefully examined by consular officers and would thus get a free ride to the United States.”

A Visa for the Blind Sheikh

Likewise, Springmann says, it was a CIA “consular officer” at Khartoum in Sudan who issued a tourist visa to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, later linked to the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. The “blind” Sheikh had been on a State Department terrorist watch list when he was issued the visa, entering the United States by way of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Sudan in 1990.

Springmann believes the sheikh attempted to obtain a US visa from him via a proxy. The author states that he turned the application down.

The former state department employee pointed out to his superiors that, according to US law, passport and visa crimes are federal offenses, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The maximum prison sentence is increased to 15 years if the offense is connected to drug trafficking, and to 20 years if connected to terrorism.

In a chance meeting, Joe Trento, a journalist at the Public Education Center in Washington, DC, put into perspective for Sprigmann what had been really going on with the CIA in Jeddah.

“It wasn’t a garden variety visa fraud as I had once thought, but something much more serious: it was a ‘visas for terrorists program,’ set up to recruit and train (in the United States) murderers, war criminals, and human rights violators for combat in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. These men became the founding members of al-Qaeda, the Arab-Afghan Legion.”

“Former President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, began the campaign to assemble these goons to engage in blowing things up and shooting things down, preferably with Soviet soldiers inside.”

But the Saudis and other regional players in the “jihad” did not want those “saddle-tramps” on their soil, fearing that they would eventually use their newly acquired skills to promote “regime change” at home. That explains the reason many of these recruits were sent to the US, Springmann says, where there were up to 52 induction and training centers, the primary one in Brooklyn, New York City.

During his two years in Jeddah, Springmann says, he wrangled daily with intelligence officers who staffed and ran the US consulate.

“These were the people who arranged for recruiting and training what were then the mujahedeen, who later became al-Qaeda, who then transformed themselves into ISIS. I saw, but didn’t recognize, their start at Jeddah. We’ve all seen their later development and what happens when the intelligence services control foreign policy and diplomacy: the people they assembled aided the breakup of Yugoslavia, the destruction of Iraq, the collapse of Libya, and the savaging of Syria.”

Springmann attempted to protest the illegal visa practices at the highest levels of government for over 20 years, but was repeatedly stonewalled. During that time, he says, the Arab-Afghan Legion, created by the CIA to undermine the Soviet Union, has been marching from strength to strength.

January 26, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Peace talks between Damascus & opposition to start January 29 – UN Syria envoy

RT | January 25, 2016

Talks between Damascus and the Syrian opposition will begin on January 29, the UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura has told journalists in Geneva. The negotiations will focus on a broad ceasefire, stopping Islamic State militants and increasing aid, he added.

De Mistura said the process of finalizing the list of participants “is still ongoing,” particularly regarding clarification of the opposition groups which will not be considered “terrorist.”

He added that the UN will start sending invitations on Tuesday. “I’m going to send the invitations given by the mandate of the UN Security Council,” he said.

The peace talks were originally due to start on Monday, but were postponed.

“We want to make sure that when and if we start, to start at least on the right foot. It will be uphill anyway,” de Mistura said.

He added that the “proximity talks” between the two sides are expected to last six months. According to the UN official, “this will not be Geneva-3.”

The Geneva II peace conference which took place in 2014 focused on bringing the two sides – the government and opposition – to the negotiation table to agree on forming a transitional government.

De Mistura told reporters that the sides will not talk directly to each other and will be mediated by negotiators.

The first part of the talks will last from two to three weeks, the envoy said, adding that the focus will be on negotiating a ceasefire, stopping Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and increasing humanitarian aid.

“The condition is it should be a real ceasefire and not just local,” de Mistura said. “Suspension of fighting regarding ISIL and al Nusra is not on the table. However (there are) plenty of other suspensions of fighting that can take place.”

Among the priorities will also be the issues of governance, a constitutional review and future UN-backed election.

“The participation will be as inclusive as possible, including women, civil society and other marginalized groups,” said Mistura, answering a question concerning the composition of the delegations.

The Syrian government has said that Damascus’s delegation will be headed by the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari.

The disagreement over which opposition groups will take part in the peace talks and who will represent them has been impeding the start of negotiations.

On Wednesday, a Syrian opposition coalition, the so-called ‘High Negotiations Committee,’ named an Islamist chief as their top negotiator. The decision to appoint Mohammed Alloush, the leader of Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam), a powerful jihadist group operating in the suburbs of Damascus, as one of the negotiators drew criticism, even from among other members of the Syrian opposition.

January 25, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey Drifts Towards Israel

By Stanislav Ivanov – New Eastern Outlook – 25.01.2016

As is well known, the current foreign policy of the Turkish leadership in the region widely known as “zero problems with neighbours” has failed completely and in fact become “zero relations with neighbours.” The sharp deterioration in the Russian–Turkish relations after the launch of the Turkish missiles on the Russian military aircraft has completed the process of Turkey’s political isolation across its borders. Today, almost all states bordering with Turkey are among its enemies or competitors (Syria, Iraq, Iran, Greece, Cyprus, Armenia). The only exception are the good-neighbourly and mutually beneficial relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan as an entity of the Federation of Iraq. Yet, relations between Ankara and Baghdad have significantly deteriorated and even become aggravated after the Turkish authorities flagrantly violated the sovereignty of the country by bringing military units with artillery and armoured vehicles to Nineveh province without the permission of the central authorities. Ankara has made it clear that it is dissatisfied with the pro-Iranian Shiite government in Baghdad, which, to make the matters worse, supports the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. […]

On the eve of the new year of 2016, Recep Erdogan visited Riyadh and tried to strengthen the existing partnership with the leadership of Saudi Arabia. The main points of contact between Ankara and Riyadh are a common hatred of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, their desire to limit the influence of Iran and Shiite communities in the region by all means, as well as their alliance with Washington. The same reasons can explain the expected renewal of relations between Turkey and Israel. It is no coincidence that during a visit to Saudi Arabia, Erdogan stressed, that “Israel needs an ally such as Turkey. And we must admit that we also need Israel.”

The restoration of diplomatic relations and the reopening of the Turkish-Israeli cooperation under the auspices of the United States in the current circumstances satisfy many parties. In December 2015, the Turkish authorities confirmed that they had reached a preliminary agreement with Israel during negotiations in Switzerland to normalize bilateral relations. According to the agreements reached, Israel is to create a fund worth 20 million dollars to pay compensation to the victims of Israeli commandos, while Turkey is waiving all the claims against Israel in this matter. In addition, Israel is obliged to ease the blockade of the Gaza Strip. The latter is obviously mentioned to “save face” of Mr. Erdogan before his supporters; in fact, nothing is likely to change in the maritime border of Gaza. One should not forget that the other ally of Israel – Egypt – absolutely opposes the lifting of the blockade. Representatives of Turkey allegedly promised the Israelis that they would stop the activities of Hamas on its territory should the blockade be lifted in the Gaza Strip.

Amid the strengthening of Iran’s positions in Syria and the region and the revitalization of the Lebanese political-military group Hezbollah, Israel is extremely interested in finding new allies and partners in the Arab and Muslim world. Recently, Jerusalem has managed to establish links and contacts with Saudi Arabia, and strengthen relations with the new Egyptian regime by way of secret diplomacy behind the scenes. Turkey may become yet another important link in the system of regional security of Israel. Today, Turkey and Israel have many more common interests and points of contact than grounds for confrontation. In addition, their mutual trade and economic benefit from this cooperation is evident. Turkey is considered the most important investor in the development programs of the Israeli military industrial sector, as well as of the long-term project on the development of Leviathan gas deposit and construction of the underwater pipeline, through which Israeli gas will be supplied to Turkey. According to Turkish media, Ankara intends to restore military cooperation with Israel and purchase its advanced observation and surveillance systems and modern unmanned devices.

Stanislav Ivanov, leading research fellow of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations and the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Full article

January 25, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Congress is Writing the President a Blank Check for War

By Ron Paul | January 24, 2016

While the Washington snowstorm dominated news coverage this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was operating behind the scenes to rush through the Senate what may be the most massive transfer of power from the Legislative to the Executive branch in our history. The senior Senator from Kentucky is scheming, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham, to bypass normal Senate procedure to fast-track legislation to grant the president the authority to wage unlimited war for as long as he or his successors may wish.

The legislation makes the unconstitutional Iraq War authorization of 2002 look like a walk in the park. It will allow this president and future presidents to wage war against ISIS without restrictions on time, geographic scope, or the use of ground troops. It is a completely open-ended authorization for the president to use the military as he wishes for as long as he (or she) wishes. Even President Obama has expressed concern over how willing Congress is to hand him unlimited power to wage war.

President Obama has already far surpassed even his predecessor, George W. Bush, in taking the country to war without even the fig leaf of an authorization. In 2011 the president invaded Libya, overthrew its government, and oversaw the assassination of its leader, without even bothering to ask for Congressional approval. Instead of impeachment, which he deserved for the disastrous Libya invasion, Congress said nothing. House Republicans only managed to bring the subject up when they thought they might gain political points exploiting the killing of US Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.

It is becoming more clear that Washington plans to expand its war in the Middle East. Last week the media reported that the US military had taken over an air base in eastern Syria, and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that the US would send in the 101st Airborne Division to retake Mosul in Iraq and to attack ISIS headquarters in Raqqa, Syria. Then on Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden said that if the upcoming peace talks in Geneva are not successful, the US is prepared for a massive military intervention in Syria. Such an action would likely place the US military face to face with the Russian military, whose assistance was requested by the Syrian government. In contrast, we must remember that the US military is operating in Syria in violation of international law.

The prospects of such an escalation are not all that far-fetched. At the insistence of Saudi Arabia and with US backing, the representatives of the Syrian opposition at the Geneva peace talks will include members of the Army of Islam, which has fought with al-Qaeda in Syria. Does anyone expect these kinds of people to compromise? Isn’t al-Qaeda supposed to be our enemy?

The purpose of the Legislative branch of our government is to restrict the Executive branch’s power. The Founders understood that an all-powerful king who could wage war at will was the greatest threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why they created a people’s branch, the Congress, to prevent the emergence of an all-powerful autocrat to drag the country to endless war. Sadly, Congress is surrendering its power to declare war.

Let’s be clear: If Senate Majority Leader McConnell succeeds in passing this open-ended war authorization, the US Constitution will be all but a dead letter.

January 25, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Turkish PM Tries to Frame Syrian Kurds for Istanbul Bombing

By Joris Leverink | teleSUR | January 23, 2016

On Tuesday, Jan. 12 a big explosion took place in the heart of Istanbul’s tourist district of Sultanahmet. The explosion was caused by a suicide bomber who blew himself up next to a group of mainly German tourists, instantly killing ten and injuring 15 others. Soon, the bomber was identified as a Saudi born Syrian man who had recently entered Turkey and had registered himself as a refugee only days prior to his suicide mission.

According to the Turkish authorities the man was linked to the Islamic State group (IS, or ISIS/ISIL), making this the terrorist group’s fourth deadly suicide bombing in Turkey in one year. Previous attacks that have been ascribed to – but haven’t been claimed by – IS occurred in Diyarbakir in June, Suruc in July and Ankara in October, with a total death toll of around 140.

What set this latest attack apart from the others, however, is the explicit targeting of foreign nationals holidaying in Turkey. Previous attacks were all directed against Kurdish groups and their supporters, indicating a spillover from the wars in Syria and Iraq where Kurdish forces are seen as some of the most effective and reliable opponents of IS.

The Kurdish groups and organizations targeted by the Islamic State group were at the same time actively opposing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). This sparked rumors of the terror group being in cahoots with the Turkish government. Accusations ranged from the two parties actively cooperating with each other to the government’s willful neglect of the safety of its Kurdish citizens.

That the Turkish government considers the Kurds at home and abroad as a bigger threat to the national security than IS has never been a secret. Moreover, the fact that IS is fighting against two of Turkey’s key enemies in Syria – the Assad government and local Kurdish forces – means that Turkey has always been hesitant about seriously and directly confronting the jihadists.

Questions and irregularities

It is in this context that the attack in Istanbul seems out of place. Why would the Islamic State group risk antagonizing one of the few parties in the region with which it has at least some shared goals? What is there to be gained from dealing a blow to Turkey’s already hampered tourist industry and forcing the country’s hand in taking a firm stance against the terrorist group?

There are a number of questions and irregularities that come up when looking at the facts that have thus far come out.

The first matter is the timing of the attack. If the aim of the attack is to hit Turkey by targeting its US$30 billion tourist industry, the bomber couldn’t possibly have chosen a worse time than a cold Tuesday morning in mid-January. The site of the attack is the exact location where during the holiday season thousands of tourists line up every day to visit the Blue Mosque. The number of victims would undoubtedly have been many times higher if the attack would have taken place a few months later, with an absolutely devastating effect on Turkey’s tourist industry.

Then there is the matter of the bomber’s identity. Mere hours after the attack the identity of the man who blew himself to pieces was already known and released. Nabil Fadli was a 28-year-old, Saudi-born Syrian man who had joined IS’ ranks after the terror group had occupied his hometown of Manbij, north of Aleppo.

According to unnamed Turkish officials Fadli had been part of a plot to attack the New Year’s celebrations in Ankara, but this mission had to be aborted after two of his collaborators were exposed and arrested. Fadli moved to Istanbul where he registered himself as a refugee, in the process giving away his fingerprints that would eventually lead to his identification as the bomber one week later.

The curious thing is, why would a member of the Islamic State group who has come to Turkey with the intention of committing a suicide bomb attack make himself known to the authorities – especially after two of his companions have just been arrested? Why have your picture and fingerprints taken and give away the address where you’re staying – which he did, according to the official reports – instead of laying low for a few days before executing the plan for the attack?

Finally, there is the curious issue of IS never actually having claimed responsibility for the attack. Nor for any of the other attacks mentioned above, which all have been attributed to the terrorist group by the Turkish government. The past year has seen a sting of terror attacks committed by the Islamic State group outside of the territories that are under its control – from Jakarta to Paris, Tunis to Beirut – and each and everyone of them has been claimed by the terror group. Oddly enough, not a single attack in Turkey that has been ascribed to IS has actually been claimed by them.

Raising these questions and irregularities is not done for the purpose of pointing fingers at one party or another. They simply serve as a mental exercise to remind one that, especially when entering the realm of terror and counterterrorism, the reality is rarely how it is presented to the public.

Shifting the blame

The day after the attack, Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggested that “certain powers could be using Daesh,” while referring to the Islamic State group by its Arab acronym. Which“certain powers” he had in mind became clear when anonymous government sources told Reuters that Fadli might have been “coerced by the PYD or by Syrian intelligence into the Istanbul bombing.”

These baseless allegations serve no other purpose but to frame the party of the Syrian Kurds, the Democratic Unions Party, or PYD, as the terrorist organization Turkish authorities claim it to be. Immediately after the Ankara bombings in October, similar attempts at spreading false propaganda were made. Prime minister Davutoglu coined the term “cocktail terrorism” and claimed on national television that the attack was the work of a coalition between the PYD, the Islamic State group, Syrian secret services and the PKK.

The Istanbul attack, regardless of who did it, will be used as propaganda by all the parties involved. For Turkey, which had come under increasing international pressure for failing to step up against IS, the attack firmly places them once again at the heart of the anti-terror coalition dominated by the US and Europe. Reports about retaliation attacks against IS in which supposedly 200 terrorists were killed in cross border artillery fire – an incredible (literally) high number – are meant to erase all doubts that Turkey is now seriously confronting IS.

The attack has also provided Turkey with the necessary pretext to launch attacks further into Syria, at the town of Manbij – the bomber’s hometown – to be precise. This is a highly strategic target because it’s location in the heart of the proposed “security zone” Turkey has wanted to establish for a long time. Coincidentally, Manbij is also the next stop for a coalition of Kurdish forces and their allies who have been gaining significant ground at the cost of the Islamic State group after a recent string of important victories.

Judging from the news, the Istanbul attack has certainly led to renewed efforts by the Turkish government to confront and attack IS. Targets in Syria have been hit, and dozens of alleged IS members have been arrested in the country. However, the fact that part of the blame has been tried to be placed on the Syrian Kurds shows that, besides a deeply tragic event, the suicide attack is at the same time a good opportunity to frame the public perception and pursue a very specific political agenda.

Joris Leverink is an Istanbul-based political analyst and writer with an MSc in Political Economy. He is an editor for ROAR Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter via @Le_Frique.

January 24, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin: More Regime Change, Please!

jennifer-rubin2

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | January 21, 2016

Most normal people look at the smoldering cemetery that is post-“liberation” Libya, the gruesome graveyard of an almost-“liberated” Syria, the 14 year slow-motion failed regime change in Afghanistan, blood-drenched Iraq, and they are horrified. Washington Post’s neocon nag Jennifer Rubin looks across that bloody landscape and sees a beautiful work in progress.

She writes today in the online edition of the Post that despite what we might be hearing from some “libertarian/populist pols masquerading as conservatives,” the interventionist enterprise is chugging along just fine. Democracy promotion at the barrel of a gun is every American’s “white man’s burden” whether he likes it or not.

Never mind that Syria has been nearly leveled by almost five years of an Islamist insurgency that was but a few weeks from success when Russia stopped it in its tracks. The real villain is the secular Bashar al-Assad, writes Rubin. After all, he “is partnered with Iran and spurs support for Islamist rebels…”

Assad “spur[s] support for Islamist rebels” by waging war on them for six years? Or does she somehow deny that Assad is fighting the insurgents who seek to drive him from power? Both cannot be true.

And on Planet Rubin, funding, training, and arming Islamist rebels, as the US and its allies have done, can in no way be seen as spurring them on.

“It has become fashionable in some circles to pooh-pooh support for democracy,” Rubin moans. Not so fast, she says. This is not a failed project. Her evidence? From all the countries destabilized by US democracy promotion schemes there is “one encouraging success story” — Tunisia!

Yes, after the destruction and killing in places like Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and the rest, it is the great success in little Tunisia that makes it all worthwhile!

Unfortunately for Rubin, even her little Tunisian success story looks to have an unhappy ending. As reported by BBC News, unrest is spreading throughout Tunisia as demonstrators are clashing with police. Tunisians are in far worse economic shape now than before the US-backed “Arab Spring” brought them their “liberation.” One-third of young people are unemployed in post-liberation Tunisia and 62 percent of recent college graduates cannot find work.

“We have been waiting for things to get better for five years and nothing has happened,” Yassine Kahlaoui, a 30-year-old jobseeker, told the AP as reported by the BBC.

Here is the ugly truth that regime change enthusiasts like Rubin will never admit: it is very easy to destabilize and destroy a country from abroad in the name of “promoting democracy,” but those recipients of America’s largesse in this area soon find that it is all but impossible to return a country to even pre-“liberation” economic levels. They are left missing their “dictator.”

What does Rubin care: she doesn’t have to live in these hellholes she helps create.

January 24, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia, US agree to have 2 rebel delegations at Syria peace talks – reports

RT | January 24, 2016

Moscow and Washington are close to reaching a compromise on the participants of the Syria peace talks set to start next week. Two separate Syrian opposition delegations are expected to be invited to the negotiations in Geneva, according to media reports.

United Nations-sponsored negotiations between the Syrian government and the opposition have already been postponed over disagreements between the US and Russia, which could not reach agreement on which opposition groups should be represented. The talks are being arranged to try to bring an end to Syria’s five-year civil war.

Washington supports the participation of the Saudi-backed Islamist militia Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam) – something Moscow has strongly objected to. Russia insists that political figures it deems more moderate, such as Qadri Jamil, a former Syrian deputy prime minister, and Saleh Muslim, co-head of the Syrian Kurdish group PYD, should join the negotiations, Kommersant daily reported Saturday.

A compromise has allegedly now been reached, however, with Moscow agreeing to the presence of Jaysh al-Islam at the talks. In return, Washington will not object to a separate Syrian opposition delegation being invited, Bloomberg reports, citing three Western and UN diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The ‘main’ opposition delegation was rubber-stamped in the Saudi capital Riyadh in December, and represents opposition groups sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the West.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, is now likely to send invitations to two opposition groups – one proposed by Washington, another recommended by Moscow.

“We are confident that with good initiative in the next day or so, those talks can get going,” US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Saturday in Riyadh, where he has been seeking a deal on the Syria talks.

De Mistura is expected to elaborate on the latest details of the peace process at a press-briefing in Geneva on Monday, his spokeswoman Jessy Chahine said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova made no comments in a press conference on Friday regarding which opposition groups will attend the talks in Geneva.

The nations assisting the Syria peace talks have reached an agreement to form a transitional government in Syria by mid-2016, with an aim to hold elections in 2017. According to Russian and Western diplomats, Moscow has managed to shutter Washington’s previously indispensable prerequisite that Bashar Assad must leave his presidential post before the transition process can start.

Moscow has always insisted that it is up to the Syrian people to decide whether President Assad should stay or go, and the participation of the acting president in the next elections remains on the table.

At the moment there are two anti-Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) coalitions operating in Syria – one headed by the US, the other by Russia.

The Russian military’s air operation against IS in Syria began four months ago, and has significantly disrupted terrorist communications and supply routes. Islamic State’s illegal trafficking of stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil has been crippled to such an extent that the terrorists have been forced to compensate the shortfall in profits by increasing taxes, cutting salaries to militants and attempting to take drug production in Afghanistan under its control.

The Syrian Army loyal to President Assad is also conducting an offensive on terrorist positions, and has liberated a number of settlements. The spearhead of the assault is directed against the borders with Turkey and Jordan, in order to cut terrorist supply routes and prevent reinforcements from abroad from infiltrating Syria.

January 24, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey ‘threatens to withdraw’ from Syria talks over Syrian Kurds

RT | January 23, 2016

Ankara may boycott the upcoming Syria talks in Switzerland if Syrian Kurds are invited, media reports said, citing UN sources. Earlier, Turkey said their support for the peace process can only be ensured if there is no “representation of terrorist groups around the table.”

Turkey has privately warned that it might pull out from the Geneva talks now scheduled for January 25 if Saudi-backed Kurds and related parties are present, Foreign Policy reported Saturday citing UN-based officials.

Ankara is unwilling to cooperate with Syria’s Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its affiliate People’s Protection Units (YPG) since these leftist movements are allegedly linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey.

The conflict between the Turkish government and Kurdish insurgent groups demanding greater autonomy for the large ethnic group has been going on for decades. With several failed ceasefires between the sides, Ankara has been blamed for putting civilians lives in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast at risk by a number of international human rights groups.

Earlier this week, President Erdogan reaffirmed his unwillingness to search for a peaceful solution to the conflict, saying that “those with guns in their hands and those who support them will pay the price of treason,” meaning the Kurdish militants who are considered terrorists by the government.

Apart from Turkey, the historical Kurdistan region also includes territories in Iran, Iraq and northern Syria, where Kurdish fighters have proved to be some of the most effective forces in helping to combat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). Still Ankara believes that struggling against IS “does not grant them legitimacy,” according to the Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Turkey has carried out several attacks on Kurdish forces in northern Syria.

Moreover, Davutoglu accused Russia of as much as compromising Geneva talks by inviting the representatives of YPG – Syrian Kurdish forces – to join the peace process.

“Some circles, including Russia, want to spoil the opposition side, putting some other elements in the opposition side like the YPG, which has been collaborating with the regime and attacking the moderate opposition,” the PM said earlier this week.

“There should not be any representation of terrorist groups around the table,” he insisted.

Geneva talks on the Syrian crisis have recently become a bone of contention between international negotiators: the key issue is who would attend.

A resolution providing for the beginning of talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups was adopted by the UN Security Council in December. Scheduled to take place in Switzerland in January, the talks became known as Geneva III (Geneva II happened in January 2014), and are aimed at finding a solution to end the Syrian civil war, which has been ongoing in the country since 2011, with IS gaining strength in the region. While a number of countries, including Russia, the US, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey are backing the peace talks, there is no apparent agreement on who should represent the Syrian opposition, and which fighting groups should be excluded for being proclaimed “terrorists.”

Turkey wouldn’t welcome a Kurdish presence at the talks. However, the US government still believes there is hope of changing Ankara’s opinion on the subject, according to Foreign Policy. Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Istanbul to discuss national security questions with the Turkish leaders on Saturday.

At the same time, US State Secretary John Kerry traveled to Riyadh in order to press Saudi officials to reconsider on a similar matter. Saudi Arabia previously threatened to boycott Geneva talks if certain pro-regime Syrian groups allegedly backed by Russia and Egypt were invited. In their turn, the opposition representatives urged UN special envoy Staffan de Mistura in a letter to disqualify Riyadh from peace talks as it was picking delegates for its own delegation talks “under obscure conditions,” Russia’s Sputnik agency reported.

As a result, de Mistura, responsible for issuing the invitations to the talks, accused a few states of jeopardizing the peace process by insisting that their opposing faction is more important than others.

“I would expect all sides to recognize my mandated responsibility to finalize a list of invitees to the process, to include all those I deem appropriate,” de Mistura reportedly said at a private UN briefing on January 18.

Russia and the US still hope that the talks will eventually take place on January 25. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and State Secretary John Kerry had a phone talk on Saturday to discuss arrangements for the Geneva meeting, Russian foreign authority said. Both officials agreed that the International Syria Support Group format might be useful for holding further peace talks on Syria.

January 23, 2016 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey vs ISIS: Where’s the new caliphate now? Part II

By Eric Walberg | American Herald Tribune | January 22, 2016

In Part I, Erdogan’s mounting dilemmas—ISIS terrorism, Kurdish resistance, Assad’s Syria alive and well—showed how his bid for regional hegemony has gone awry. His pact with the ISIS devil, as long as they target Kurds, just made things worse. Davutoglu’s dream of a “common history and a common future” for the Middle East under Turkish guidance is now in history’s dustbin. The Turkish plan for a “global, political, economic and cultural new order” in the Middle East remains in the hands of the US and, of course, Israel.

Israeli rationale

Israel has been noncommittal about Syria since the uprising in 2011, not joining the western chorus for Assad’s head. Israeli indifference to the outcome can be explained easily enough. First, Israeli public support for anyone would be a kiss of death for the beloved. On the other hand, the Assads have been the biggest thorn in Israel’s side since 1971 when Hafiz Assad consolidated power, and Israel would be delighted to see the last of Bashar. But Israel was worried about what might emerge from a post-Assad Islamic state.

With Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s bold call for an independent Kurdish state, a radical new claim for regional hegemony is unfolding, not by a neo-Ottoman Turkey, but by the Jewish state. “We must openly call for the establishment of a Kurdish state that separates Iran from Turkey, one which will be friendly towards Israel,” Shaked told the Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv. This sounds novel, but it really only reflects age-old plans for a Jewish state to control the Middle East which have been on the drawing board since Lord Shaftesbury first made it a British imperial objective in 1839. 1948 got the project off to a savage start, 1967 added the entire Holy Land to the map, and let the settler state move into high gear.

The Yinon Doctrine of 1980 set out how to consolidate Israel’s theft, by playing various ethnic and religious forces among its Arab neighbors against each other—Maronite and Orthodox Christian, Sunni and Shia Muslim, Druze, etc—in order to undermine Arab nationalism, and keep the Middle East weak and unstable. In Syria, that even meant quietly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood during its ill-fated uprising in 1981, not because Israel wanted an Islamist Syria, but to keep the Syrian government off-balance.

Syria and Egypt fought a war with Israel in 1967. These secular nationalist governments were the big threat, and it was only natural to try and cripple them, even if that meant working with Islamists. After Egypt made peace with Israel in 1978, it had only Iraq, Syria and Iran as its main enemies—the Arab nationalism of the first two and the Persian nationalism in Iran had proved immune to Israeli intrigues.

Israeli ‘friendship’ with the Kurds is merely the ethnic variable in the Yinon formula. There have always been contacts with Iraqi Kurds, which went into high gear in 1991 when northern Iraq was made a ‘no-fly’ zone, allowing Israeli agents relative freedom. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 fit the bill, though bungled by the dismantling of the Iraqi army, creating a bit too much Yinon for comfort.

Middle East borders, as reimagined by Lt. Col. (ret.) Ralph Peters (2006).

Middle East borders, as reimagined by Lt. Col. (ret.) Ralph Peters (2006)

US-Israeli Plan B

When Israeli fears about what a post-Assad Syria might look like were proven justified, it was ready with plan B: a new, improved Yinon Doctrine, featuring the creation of a pro-Israeli Kurdish state, keeping Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and—what the hell—Iran off-base?

This has been plan B for US-Israel since at least 2006, when a plan for restructuring the Middle East published in the Armed Forces Journal in 2006 stated, “Iraq should have been divided into three smaller states immediately” creating a “Free Kurdistan” carved out of Turkey, Iran and Iraq, which “would be the most pro-western state between Bulgaria and Japan.” The Saban Center for Middle East Policy issued a similar policy recommendation in 2007, and in 2008, Joseph Biden, Obama’s future vice president, also called for the partition of Iraq into three autonomous regions.

Israel gets it right (for the wrong reasons)

ISIS and Turkey came to the rescue with their own wild schemes, leaving the Kurds as “the only ones fighting ISIS as their highest priority,” as Yadlin told the Israeli security conference. “We Kurds and Jews have a long history. The 20 million Kurds who didn’t get a state [at the Treaty of Versailles], and nobody takes care about them. They are the only ones fighting ISIS as their highest priority.”

Every one of Erdogan’s moves has backfired. He flip-flopped on Libya and Syria. He turned a blind eye on ISIS. He stubbornly continues a policy of oppression against the Kurds. He abruptly broke relations with Israel in 2011 over Israel’s killing of nine Turkish peace activists. But it’s better to at least speak with your enemy. Israel wouldn’t have been quite so bold about advocating a Kurdish state if it realized that it would forfeit a working relationship with Turkey. But there is nothing to lose now.

Like Turkey these days, Israel is also running out of friends, and this call for an independent Kurdistan is really a rather far-fetched plan to establish at least one Muslim ally for the Jews. The travail of Turkish Kurds (20 million, 20% of the population) is well known. They are not allowed to speak Kurdish or have Kurdish names, let alone Kurdish language education.

In comparison, Iraqi Kurds (7 million, 20%) live a privileged life, with the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in the autonomous government tilting towards Saudi Arabia, and its key rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), supporting the Iranian-led camp.

Kurds are culturally and linguistically so closely related to the Iranians, they are sometimes classified as an Iranian people. Of the more than 6 million Iranian Kurds (9% of the population), a significant portion are Shia. There are tensions in Iran, as the majority of Kurds are Sunni, but the strong Iranian roots of Kurds culturally and linguistically, and the lack of the suppression of their culture, language and political rights, mean there is no strong movement for independence.

There is a silver lining in the Israeli chutzpah in reviving Plan B. No major Kurdish faction calls for the Yinon plan for independence, even among Iraqi Kurds. Why bother when you already have virtual independence now? Syrian Kurds also have de facto autonomy as a result of western bungling. They won’t be stuffed back into a one-size-fits-all Syria. Iranian Kurds are just getting on with life. Turkish Kurds would love to just have basic human rights in their Turkish state. Erdogan could undercut Israel’s latest wild plan easily by using his still robust political power to push for a genuine peace deal with his Kurds.

January 23, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US & Turkey eyeing military operation in Syria against ISIS if peace talks fail

RT | January 23, 2016

US Vice President Joe Biden says the US and Turkey are prepared for military solutions in Syria if a political settlement cannot be found. He added that Washington recognizes the Kurdistan Workers’ Party is as much of a threat to Ankara as Islamic State.

“We do know it would better if we can reach a political solution but we are prepared …, if that’s not possible, to have a military solution to this operation and taking out Daesh,” Biden said at a news conference after a meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, as cited by Reuters. ‘Daesh’ is an Arabic term for Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS/ISIL).

A US official later clarified that Biden was talking about a military solution to IS, not Syria as a whole.

Biden added that he discussed with Davutoglu how the two allies could try and work together to support Syrian rebel groups who oppose President Bashar Assad. The US vice president backed Ankara in its battle with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), saying it was as much of a threat to Ankara as Islamic State, and that Turkey must do everything necessary to protect its citizens.

However, the pair disagreed about the status of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in northern Syria, with Biden saying there is a difference between the PYD and PKK.

“To say that these [groups] are separate, one should be unaware that those [PKK] guns are coming to [Turkey] from Syria,” Davutoglu said, according to Reuters.

Ankara believes the Syrian Kurds are looking to create a corridor along the northern border with Turkey, which would cut off Turkey from sharing a boundary with Syria.

“The PYD is a terrorist organization that cooperates with the Syrian regime. Struggling against Daesh does not grant them legitimacy,” the Turkish prime minister said.

Turkey has carried out attacks on Kurdish forces in northern Syria. In late July, the Kurds said they had been bombed at least four times, with civilians being among the casualties. Ankara maintained its airstrikes were aimed at members of the PKK.

Kurdish fighters have proved to be some of the most effective forces in helping to combat Islamic State in northern Syria, while borders in territories under its control have been sealed to stop the flow of foreign IS militants into Syria.

On Friday, Biden said Turkey’s intimidation of the media, curtailing of internet freedom and accusations of treason made against academics was not setting a good example in the Middle East.

“The more Turkey succeeds, the stronger the message sent to the entire Middle East and parts of the world who are only beginning to grapple with the notion of freedom,” Biden mentioned.

“But when the media are intimidated or imprisoned for critical reporting, when internet freedom is curtailed and social media sites like YouTube or Twitter are shut down and more than 1,000 academics are accused of treason simply by signing a petition, that’s not the kind of example that needs to be set,” he said.

January 23, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Red lines and dollar signs: the business of the Syrian War

The Rant Foundry | January 23, 2016

A damning report on the conflict of interests in the Syrian Crisis debate identified numerous corporate and defense industry ties of experts and think tanks who commented on potential military intervention. Much of the debate over Syria got underway in 2013, when not only were the conflicts-of-interest and military-industrial complex ties of these “consultants” and “experts” rarely disclosed, but the ideas they expressed were mere permutations of an ideologically narrow spectrum of U.S. and Western neo-conservative interventionism.

As US official sources are now claiming that ISIS is developing chemical weapons those same experts and think tanks are back with a vengeance.

The conflict-of-interest report by the Public Accountability Initiative (http://public-accountability.org) offers a new look at an issue raised by David Barstow’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series on the role military analysts played in promoting the Bush Administration’s narrative on Iraq. In addition to exposing coordination with the Pentagon, Barstow found that many cable news analysts had industry ties that were not disclosed on air.

During the public debate around the question of whether to attack Syria, Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, made a series of high-profile media appearances. Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined “To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad.” The phrase “red line” has been used numerous times in reference to Syria and its President Bashar al-Assad, particularly in attempt to establish the legal intervention of Russian forces in Syria as a crossing of those lines. It was also used in 2014 by those in favor of forcible ‘regime change’ in Syria when rockets with sarin filled warheads landed in rebel-held residential areas in Ghouta, Syria, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.  Each side naturally blamed the other, with western intelligence agencies providing evidence supporting the opposition, and Russian intelligence supporting the regime. Both sides issued biased reports with cherry-picked evidence, only adding to the confusion.  An analysis of all evidence relating to the August 21st chemical attack indicate it was carried out by opposition forces. According to the most likely scenario, they used looted incendiary rockets, refilled them with sarin they manufactured themselves, and launched them from a rebel-held territory 2 km north of Zamalka.

Stephen Hadley’s television audiences were never informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley’s share’s worth $891,189). Despite this critically important financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert.

Though Hadley’s undisclosed conflict is particularly egregious, it is not unique. The following report documents the industry ties of Hadley, 21 other media commentators, and seven think tanks that participated in the media debate around Syria. Like Hadley, these individuals and organizations have strong ties to defense contractors and other defense- and foreign policy-focused firms with a vested interest in the Syria debate, but they were presented to their audiences with a veneer of expertise and independence, as former military officials, retired diplomats, and independent think tanks.

think-tank-map

A pentagonal network: think tank-defense industry ties [image via public-accountability.org]

If the recent debate around Syria is any guide, media outlets have done very little to address the gaps in disclosure and abuses of the public trust that Barstow exposed. Some analysts have stayed the same, others are new, and the issues and range of opinion are different. But the media continues to present former military and government officials as venerated experts without informing the public of their industry ties – the personal financial interests that may be shaping their opinions of what is in the national interest. This report details these ties, in addition to documenting the industry backing of think tanks that played a prominent role in the Syria debate. It reveals the extent to which the public discourse around Syria was corrupted by the pervasive influence of the defense industry, to the point where many of the so-called experts appearing on American television screens were actually representatives of companies that profit from heightened US military activity abroad. The threat of war with Syria may or may not have passed, but the threat that these conflicts of interest pose to public discourse – and democracy – is still very real.

January 23, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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