CIA & State Dept fund, train & arm Syria terrorists from 2006; Neocon coup reverses Brzezinski policy

You can download this newsletter as a WORD file, with bold emphasis highlighting the headlines and important points: www.mailstar.net/bulletins/151018-b2618-Syria-CIA.doc

(1) Brzezinski opposed Iraq & Syria Wars, but Neocons backed both; their rise is a Zionist coup(2) Zbigniew Brzezinski calls Iraq War an Historic, Strategic and Moral Calamity (Feb 2007)(3) Zbigniew Brzezinski condemns Syria war plan (June 2014)(4) Cheney (Defense Sec 1989) puts Netanyahu's Neocons in charge of US foreign policy(5) Next Stop, Iraq - Richard Perle (Nov 2001)(6) Pentagon cannot account for $2.3 trillion - Rumfeld (Jan 2002)(7) Israel encourages US to attack Iraq (Aug 2002)(8) Bush adopts Neocon plan for destabilisation of "despotic regimes" (Sept 2002)(9) Sharon says U.S. should also attack Iran, Libya and Syria (Feb 2003)(10) The Israel Factor: Neocons' dual loyalty & Jacobin streak - Pat Buchanan (Mar 2003)(11) U.S. nurturing Syrian activists, intervening in Syrian election - TIME (Dec 2006)(12) "We're going to take out 7 countries" - Wesley Clark interview Democracy Now (Mar 2, 2007)(13) Bush backed Al Qaeda Sunni Islamists, to undermine Iran - Seymour Hersh (Mar 5, 2007)(14) Wesley Clark reveals "policy coup after 9/11" - Fora TV (Youtube, Nov 5, 2007)(15) Wesley Clark reveals Neocon coup (1991), plan to overthrow "old Soviet regimes" (2007)(16) WikiLeaks cables prompt State Dept to admit funding Syrian opposition (Apr 2011)(17) State Dept admits funding Syrian opposition, after Wikileaks releases cables (Apr 2011)(18) Senators Joseph Lieberman & John McCain call for US to intervene in Syria as it did in Libya (July 2012)(19) Saudis supply Croatian Arms to Rebels in Syria, with CIA support (NYT Feb 2013)(20) CIA training Syrian rebels in Jordan; State Dept covert aid (NYT Feb 2013)(21) Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels expands, with Aid from C.I.A. - NYT (Mar 2013)(22) CIA training Chechen terrorists to fight Assad; snipers in Maidan Sq were also Chechen (Oct 2014)(23) Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut - Washington Post (June 2015)(24) NYT erases CIA's Efforts to Overthrow Assad (Sept 2015)(25) US behind Syria civil war - Christopher Hill, former US Ambassador (Sept 2015)(26) Putin blames US for ISIS (Sept 2015)(27) Putin to UN: Export of so-called democratic revolutions continues globally(28) 'West's main target in Syria is Assad, not ISIS' - Kadyrov (Sept 2015)(29) The Rothschild line: Economist editorial taunts Obama, insists Assad must go (Oct 2015)(30) The Economist - Rothschild-owned(31) Iran troops to join Syria war, Russia bombs group trained by CIA (Oct 2015)(32) Brother Nathanael for President?

(1) Brzezinski opposes Iraq & Syria Wars, but Neocons backed both; their rise is a Zionist coup - by Peter Myers, October 18, 2015

Brzezinski's opposition to the Iraq and Syria wars, and to a clash with Islam (item 2), shows that a new force is pulling the strings. That force is the Neocons, mostly Jews affiliated to Likud.

Wesley Clark warned of their "policy coup", and their use of 9/11 to wage wars in Islamic countries. What Clark omitted was that those wars were Israel's wars, against Israel's enemies.

Brzezinski pointed out that they involved America acting as a colonial master, undermining its credibility and legitimacy. The cost is the loss of Goodwill, that intangible but priceless quality. But the Neocons only think of what's good for Israel.

Obama vacillates between Brzezinski and the Neocons.

(2) Zbigniew Brzezinski calls Iraq War an Historic, Strategic and Moral Calamity (Feb 2007)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/zbigniew-brzezinski-calls_b_40115.html

Zbigniew Brzezinski Calls Iraq War an Historic, Strategic and Moral Calamity & Says Stop the Trappings of Colonial Tutelage

Posted: 01/02/2007 07:19 AEST Updated: 26/05/2011 02:00 AEST

SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITEE TESTIMONY -- ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

Huffington Post, February 1, 2007

Mr. Chairman:

Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice in Iraq, and I commend you and Senator Lugar for scheduling them.

It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. [...]

A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran--though gaining in regional influence--is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Deplorably, the Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about "a new strategic context" which is based on "clarity" and which prompts "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world.

(3) Zbigniew Brzezinski condemns Syria war plan (June 2014)

Zbig: Obama Syria plan is 'chaos, baffling, a mess, tragedy'

BY PAUL BEDARD | JUNE 14, 2013 AT 11:25 AM

http://washingtonexaminer.com/zbig-obama-syria-plan-is-chaos-baffling-a-mess-tragedy/article/2531924

The president's abrupt decision to arm Syrian rebels is a huge mistake, one driven by emotion and propaganda not they kind of strategic White House plan that has marked past successful interventions in civil wars, according to former Carter-era national security chief Zbigniew Brzezinski.

In a broad attack on President Obama's vague interventionist policy, the highly-respected international affairs analyst warned that by jumping in to Syria's civil war with no plan is likely to lead to another costly and extended military action that could eventually draw U.S. forces into a clash with Syria's top ally Iran.

"I think our posture is baffling, there no strategic design, we're using slogans," slammed Brzezinski on MSNBC's Morning Joe Friday. "It's a tragedy and it's a mess in the making," he said. "I do not see what the United States right now is trying to accomplish."

The administration Thursday changed its wait-and-see policy, sparked by Syrian admissions it had used chemical weapons in the civil war. The new policy of arming rebels was announced by deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes.

"It all seems to me rather sporadic, chaotic, unstructured, undirected," said Brzezinski. "I think we need a serious policy review with the top people involved, not just an announcement from the deputy head of the NSC that an important event has taken place and we will be reacted to it."

Several lawmakers have been pressing Obama to arm rebels and create a no-fly zone, two things the president is finally willing to do. The effectiveness of a go-it-alone policy, however, has been questioned in the military, especially plans for a no-fly zone.

Brzezinski said, "we are running the risk of getting into another war in the region which may last for years and I don't see any real strategic guidance to what we are doing. I see a lot of rhetoric, a lot emotion, a lot of propaganda in fact."

Instead, he advised that the administration build a coalition that includes Russia, Japan, China and India to put pressure on Syria's ruling regime to give up.

"That is the kind of response that might have some effect. Instead we are essentially engaging mass propaganda, portraying this as a democratic war," said Brzezinski

(4) Cheney (Defense Sec 1989) puts Netanyahu's Neocons in charge of US foreign policy

http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrian-war-islamic-state-isis-creation-timeline/5472680

Syrian War-Islamic State (ISIS) Creation Timeline

By Kevin Borge

Global Research, August 29, 2015

SYRIAN WAR-ISIS CREATION TIMELINE:

History Commons, Autumn 1992:

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=aautumn92rethinking

1965: Former RAND Analyst Gathers Young, Nascent Neoconservatives

Albert Wohlstetter, a professor at the University of Chicago, gathers a cadre of fiery young intellectuals around him, many of whom are working and associating with the magazine publisher Irving Kristol (see 1965). Wohlstetter’s group includes Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Paul Wolfowitz. Wohlstetter, himself a protege of the Machiavellian academic Leo Strauss, is often considered the "intellectual godfather" of modern neoconservatism. Formerly an analyst at the RAND Corporation, Wohlstetter wielded a powerful influence on the US’s foreign policy during the heyday of the Cold War.

Late March 1989 and After: Defense Secretary Cheney Advocates Enforced Regime Change in Soviet Union

When Dick Cheney becomes defense secretary (see March 20, 1989 and After), he brings into the Pentagon a core group of young, ideological staffers with largely academic (not military) backgrounds. Many of these staffers are neoconservatives who once congregated around Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (see Early 1970s). Cheney places them in the Pentagon’s policy directorate, under the supervision of Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, himself one of Jackson’s cadre. [...] In 1991, Wolfowitz will describe his relationship to Cheney: "Intellectually, we’re very much on similar wavelengths."

A Different View of the Soviet Union - Cheney pairs with Wolfowitz and his neoconservatives to battle one issue in particular: the US’s dealings with the Soviet Union. Premier Mikhail Gorbachev has been in office for four years, and has built a strong reputation for himself in the West as a charismatic reformer. But Cheney, Wolfowitz, and the others see something far darker. Cheney opposes any dealings with the Soviets except on the most adversarial level (see 1983), and publicly discusses his skepticism of perestroika, Gorbachev’s restructing of the Soviet economy away from a communist paradigm. In April, Cheney tells a CNN news anchor that Gorbachev will "ultimately fail" and a leader "far more hostile" to the West will follow in his footsteps. Some of President Bush’s more "realistic" aides, including James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, and Condoleezza Rice, as well as Bush himself, have cast their lot with Gorbachev and reform; they have no use for Cheney’s public advocacy of using the USSR’s period of transitional turmoil to dismember the nation once and for all.

Cheney's Alternative Policy - Cheney turns to the neoconservatives under Wolfowitz for an alternative strategy. They meet on Saturday mornings in the Pentagon’s E ring, where they have one maverick Sovietologist after another propound his or her views. Almost all of these Sovietologists echo Cheney and Wolfowitz’s view—the USSR is on the brink of collapse, and the US should do what it can to hasten the process and destroy its enemy for good. They assert that what the Soviet Union needs is not a reformer guiding the country back into a papered-over totalitarianism, to emerge (with the US’s help) stronger and more dangerous than before. Instead, Cheney and his cadre advocate enforced regime change in the Soviet Union. Supporting the rebellious Ukraine will undermine the legitimacy of the central Soviet government, and supporting Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian Republic, will strike at the heart of the Gorbachev regime. Bush and his core advisers worry about instability, but Cheney says that the destruction of the Soviet Union is worth a little short-term disruption.

Failure - Bush will not adopt the position of his defense secretary, and will continue supporting Gorbachev through the Soviet Union’s painful transition and eventual dissolution. After Cheney goes public one time too

many about his feelings about Gorbachev, Baker tells Scowcroft to "[d]ump on Dick" with all deliberate speed. During the final days of the Soviet Union, Cheney will find himself alone against Bush’s senior advisers and Cabinet members in their policy discussions. [NEW REPUBLIC, 11/20/2003]

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_74

February 1982: Article in Israeli Journal Says Israel Should Exploit Internal Tensions of Arab States

The winter issue of Kivunim, a "A Journal for Judaism and Zionism," publishes "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" by Oded Yinon. The paper, published in Hebrew, rejects the idea that Israel should carry through with the Camp David accords and seek peace. Instead, Yinon suggests that the Arab States should be destroyed from within by exploiting their internal religious and ethnic tensions: "Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon." [KIVUNIM, 2/1982]

Autumn 1992: Influential Neoconservative Academic Advocates Breaking Up Middle Eastern Countries, Including Iraq

Princeton University professor Bernard Lewis publishes an article in the influential journal Foreign Affairs called "Rethinking the Middle East." In it, he advocates a policy he calls "Lebanonization." He says, "[A] possibility, which could even be precipitated by [Islamic] fundamentalism, is what has late been fashionable to call 'Lebanonization.'"… Lewis, a British Jew, is well known as a longtime supporter of the Israeli right wing. Since the 1950s, he has argued that the West and Islam have been engaged in a titanic "clash of civilizations" and that the US should take a hard line against all Arab countries. Lewis is considered a highly influential figure to the neoconservative movement, and some neoconservatives such as Richard Perle (right) and Harold Rhode consider him a mentor. In 1996, Perle and others influenced by Lewis will write a paper for right wing Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu entitled "A Clean Break" that advocates the "Lebanonization"  of countries like Iraq and Syria."… "Lewis will remain influential after 9/11. For instance, he will have dinner with Vice President Cheney shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Some will later suspect that Cheney and others were actually implementing Lewis's idea by invading Iraq. Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will say in May 2003, just after the invasion, "The neoconservatives' intention in Iraq was never to truly build democracy there. Their intention was to flatten it, to remove Iraq as a regional threat to Israel."

July 8, 1996: Neoconservative Think Tank Advocates Aggressive Israeli Foreign Policy

The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank, publishes a paper titled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." The paper, whose lead author is neoconservative Richard Perle, is meant to advise the new, right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. … It advocates making a complete break with past policies by adopting a strategy "based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism.…" [GUARDIAN, 9/3/2002]

Much along the lines of an earlier paper by Israeli Oded Yinon the document urges the Israelis to aggressively seek the downfall of their Arab neighbors—especially Syria and Iraq—by exploiting the inherent tensions within and among the Arab States. The first step is to be the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. A war with Iraq will destabilize the entire Middle East, allowing governments in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and other countries to be replaced. "Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them," the paper says."

Late Summer 1996: Neoconservatives Push for War with Iraq, Reshaping of Middle East to Favor Israel

After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States (see July 8-10, 1996), US neoconservatives mount an orchestrated push for war against Iraq and an overall reshaping of the Middle East (see July 8, 1996). At first, the offensive takes place in the pages of US newspapers and magazines. William Kristol and Robert Kagan write articles for the magazines Foreign Policy and the Weekly Standard; syndicated columnists Charles Krauthammer and A. M. Rosenthal use their columns to push the idea; Zalmay Khalilzad and Paul Wolfowitz pen op-eds for the Washington Post; "Clean Break" co-author David Wurmser writes op-eds for the Wall Street Journal and publishes a book, Tyranny’s Ally, in which he proposes that the US use its military to literally redraw the map of the Middle East (see Late Summer 1996). Neoconservatives are transforming Christian evangelicals’ argument that Americans are God’s "chosen people" into secular terms, and argue in their op-eds and articles that it is, in author Craig Unger’s words, the US’s "moral duty to project that greatness throughout the world—using American military power, if necessary." [UNGER, 2007, PP. 148-149]

(5) Next Stop, Iraq - Richard Perle (Nov 2001)

http://www.fpri.org/articles/2001/11/next-stop-iraq -

Next Stop, Iraq

Richard Perle

FPRI, November 2001

{Address delivered at 2001 Annual Dinner of Foreign Policy Research Institute}

[...] After September 11 the first words of President Bush included the statement that "we will not distinguish between terrorists and the states that harbor them."

[...] So now we are taking the war to the first state on the list of active supporters of terrorism, Afghanistan.

[...] There’s going to be a Phase 2. If there is no Phase 2, there can be no victory in the war against terrorism. The war against terrorism is not the war against al-Qaeda or the Taliban, worthy though they may be. They're only one of the sources of terror in the United States. You cannot end this war and lay any claim to victory if the other sources of terror are left intact.

[...] At the top of the list for Phase 2 is Iraq, and there are several reasons for that. I’m going to offer a couple of them.

[...] Those who think Iraq should not be next may want to think about Syria or Iran or Sudan or Yemen or Somalia or North Korea or Lebanon or the Palestinian Authority. These are all institutions, governments for the most part, that permit acts of terror to take place, that sponsor terrorists, that give them refuge, give them sanctuary, and very often much more help than that. [...] If we destroy the Taliban in Afghanistan, and I’m confident we will, and we then go on to destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein, and we certainly could if we chose to do so, I think we would have an impressive case to make to the Syrians, the Somalis and others. We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: "You're next. You're next unless you stop the practice of supporting terrorism." [...]

(6) Pentagon cannot account for $2.3 trillion - Rumfeld (Jan 2002)

CBS News, January 29, 2002:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-war-on-waste/

- ""According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted. $2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million."…

Christian Science Monitor, August 30, 2002:

(7) Israel encourages US to attack Iraq (Aug 2002)

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0830/p08s01-wome.html

Israel sees opportunity in possible US strike on Iraq

Israel promised support and assistance this week for a US war against Iraq.

By Ben Lynfield, Special to The Christian Science Monitor    August 30, 2002

JERUSALEM — It echoes the hawks in the Bush administration, but Israel has its own agenda in backing a US attack on Iraq. As Egypt and other Arab allies issue vehement warnings to dissuade Washington, Israel's fear is that the US will back off.

"If the Americans do not do this now," said Israeli Deputy Defense Minister and Labor Party member Weizman Shiry on Wednesday, "it will be harder to do it in the future. In a year or two, Saddam Hussein will be further along in developing weapons of mass destruction. It is a world interest, but especially an American interest to attack Iraq."

"And as deputy defense minister, I can tell you that the United States will receive any assistance it needs from Israel," he added.

Viewed through the eyes of Israel's hawkish leaders, however, a US strike is not about Iraq only. Decisionmakers believe it will strengthen Israel's hand on the Palestinian front and throughout the region. Deputy Interior Minister Gideon Ezra suggested this week that a US attack on Iraq will help Israel impose a new order, sans Arafat, in the Palestinian territories.

"The more aggressive the attack is, the more it will help Israel against the Palestinians. The understanding would be that what is good to do in Iraq, is also good for here," said Ezra. He said a US strike would "undoubtedly deal a psychological blow" to the Palestinians. [...]

Yuval Steinitz, a Likud party member of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, says he sees another advantage for Israel. The installation of a pro-American government in Iraq would help Israel vis-à-vis another enemy: Syria.

"After Iraq is taken by US troops and we see a new regime installed as in Afghanistan, and Iraqi bases become American bases, it will be very easy to pressure Syria to stop supporting terrorist organizations like Hizbullah and Islamic Jihad, to allow the Lebanese army to dismantle Hizbullah, and maybe to put an end to the Syrian occupation in Lebanon," he says. "If this happens we will really see a new Middle East." [...]

(8) Bush adopts Neocon plan for destabilisation of "despotic regimes" (Sept 2002)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/sep/03/worlddispatch.iraq

Playing skittles with Saddam

The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to reshape the Middle East along US-Israeli lines, writes Brian Whitaker

Brian Whitaker

The Guardian, September 3, 2002; updated Wednesday 4 September 2002 00.10 AEST

In a televised speech last week, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt predicted devastating consequences for the Middle East if Iraq is attacked.

"We fear a state of disorder and chaos may prevail in the region," he said. Mr Mubarak is an old-fashioned kind of Arab leader and, in the brave new post-September-11 world, he doesn't quite get the point. [...]

The hawks claim that President Bush has already accepted their plan and made destabilisation of "despotic regimes" a central goal of his foreign policy. They cite passages from his recent speeches as proof of this, though whether Mr Bush really knows what he has accepted is unclear. The "skittles theory" of the Middle East - that one ball aimed at Iraq can knock down several regimes - has been around for some time on the wilder fringes of politics but has come to the fore in the United States on the back of the "war against terrorism".

Its roots can be traced, at least in part, to a paper published in 1996 by an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. Entitled "A clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm", it was intended as a political blueprint for the incoming government of Binyamin Netanyahu. As the title indicates, it advised the right-wing Mr Netanyahu to make a complete break with the past by adopting a strategy "based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism ..."

Among other things, it suggested that the recently-signed Oslo accords might be dispensed with - "Israel has no obligations under the Oslo agreements if the PLO does not fulfil its obligations" - and that "alternatives to [Yasser] Arafat's base of power" could be cultivated. "Jordan has ideas on this," it added.

It also urged Israel to abandon any thought of trading land for peace with the Arabs, which it described as "cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military retreat".

"Our claim to the land - to which we have clung for hope for 2,000 years - is legitimate and noble," it continued. "Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, 'peace for peace', is a solid basis for the future."

The paper set out a plan by which Israel would "shape its strategic environment", beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad.

With Saddam out of the way and Iraq thus brought under Jordanian Hashemite influence, Jordan and Turkey would form an axis along with Israel to weaken and "roll back" Syria. Jordan, it suggested, could also sort out Lebanon by "weaning" the Shia Muslim population away from Syria and Iran, and re-establishing their former ties with the Shia in the new Hashemite kingdom of Iraq. "Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them", the paper concluded.

To succeed, the paper stressed, Israel would have to win broad American support for these new policies - and it advised Mr Netanyahu to formulate them "in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the cold war which apply well to Israel".

At first glance, there's not much to distinguish the 1996 "Clean Break" paper from the outpourings of other right-wing and ultra-Zionist thinktanks ... except for the names of its authors.

The leader of the "prominent opinion makers" who wrote it was Richard Perle - now chairman of the Defence Policy Board at the Pentagon.

Also among the eight-person team was Douglas Feith, a neo-conservative lawyer, who now holds one of the top four posts at the Pentagon as under-secretary of policy.

Mr Feith has objected to most of the peace deals made by Israel over the years, and views the Middle East in the same good-versus-evil terms that he previously viewed the cold war. He regarded the Oslo peace process as nothing more than a unilateral withdrawal which "raises life-and-death issues for the Jewish state".

Two other opinion-makers in the team were David Wurmser and his wife, Meyrav (see US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy, August 19). Mrs Wurmser was co-founder of Memri, a Washington-based charity that distributes articles translated from Arabic newspapers portraying Arabs in a bad light. After working with Mr Perle at the American Enterprise Institute, David Wurmser is now at the State Department, as a special assistant to John Bolton, the under-secretary for arms control and international security.

A fifth member of the team was James Colbert, of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) - a bastion of neo-conservative hawkery whose advisory board was previously graced by Dick Cheney (now US vice-president), John Bolton and Douglas Feith.

One of Jinsa's stated aims is "to inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". In practice, a lot of its effort goes into sending retired American military brass on jaunts to Israel - after which many of them write suitably hawkish newspaper articles or letters to the editor.

Jinsa's activities are examined in detail by Jason Vest in the September 2 issue of The Nation. The article notes some interesting business relationships between retired US military officers on Jinsa's board and American companies supplying weapons to Israel.

With several of the "Clean Break" paper's authors now holding key positions in Washington, the plan for Israel to "transcend" its foes by reshaping the Middle East looks a good deal more achievable today than it did in 1996. Americans may even be persuaded to give up their lives to achieve it.

The six-year-old plan for Israel's "strategic environment" remains more or less intact, though two extra skittles - Saudi Arabia and Iran - have joined Iraq, Syria and Lebanon on the hit list.

Whatever members of the Iraqi opposition may think, the plan to replace Saddam Hussein with a Hashemite monarch - descendants of the Prophet Muhammad who rule Jordan - is also very much alive. Evidence of this was strengthened by the surprise arrival of Prince Hassan, former heir to the Jordanian throne, at a meeting of exiled Iraqi officers in London last July.

The task of promoting Prince Hassan as Iraq's future king has fallen to Michael Rubin, who currently works at the American Enterprise Institute but will shortly take up a new job at the Pentagon, dealing with post-Saddam Iraq.

One of the curious aspects of this neo-conservative intrigue is that so few people outside the United States and Israel take it seriously. Perhaps, like President Mubarak, they can't imagine that anyone who holds a powerful position in the United States could be quite so reckless.

But nobody can accuse the neo-conservatives of concealing their intentions: they write about them constantly in American newspapers. Just two weeks ago, an article in the Washington Times by Tom Neumann, executive director of Jinsa, spelled out the plan in clear, cold terms:

"Jordan will likely survive the coming war with US assistance, so will some of the sheikhdoms. The current Saudi regime will likely not.

"The Iran dissident movement would be helped enormously by the demise of Saddam, and the Palestinians would have to know that the future lies with the West. Syria's Ba'athist dictatorship will likely fall unmourned, liberating Lebanon as well.

"Israel and Turkey, the only current democracies in the region, will find themselves in a far better neighbourhood." Would anyone like to bet on that?

(9) Sharon says U.S. should also attack Iran, Libya and Syria (Feb 2003)

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/sharon-says-u-s-should-also-disarm-iran-libya-and-syria-1.18707

Says U.S. Should Also Disarm Iran, Libya and Syria

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq.

Aluf Benn

Haaretz, February 18, 2003:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq. "These are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve," Sharon said to a visiting delegation of American congressmen.

Sharon told the congressmen that Israel was not involved in the war with Iraq "but the American action is of vital importance."

In a meeting with U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton yesterday, Sharon said that Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq.

Bolton said in meetings with Israeli officials that he had no doubt America would attack Iraq, and that it would be necessary thereafter to deal with threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Bolton, who is undersecretary for arms control and international security, is in Israel for meetings on preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. [...]

(10) The Israel Factor: Neocons' dual loyalty & Jacobin streak - Pat Buchanan (Mar 2003)

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/whose-war/

Whose War?

A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interest.

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

The American Conservative, March 24, 2003:

The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged. In a rare moment in U.S. journalism, Tim Russert put this question directly to Richard Perle: "Can you assure American viewers … that we're in this situation against Saddam Hussein and his removal for American security interests? And what would be the link in terms of Israel?"

Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group. People who claim to be writing the foreign policy of the world superpower, one would think, would be a little more manly in the schoolyard of politics. Not so.

Former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot kicked off the campaign. When these "Buchananites toss around 'neoconservative'—and cite names like Wolfowitz and Cohen—it sometimes sounds as if what they really mean is 'Jewish conservative.'" Yet Boot readily concedes that a passionate attachment to Israel is a "key tenet of neoconservatism." He also claims that the National Security Strategy of President Bush "sounds as if it could have come straight out from the pages of Commentary magazine, the neocon bible." (For the uninitiated, Commentary, the bible in which Boot seeks divine guidance, is the monthly of the American Jewish Committee.)

David Brooks of the Weekly Standard wails that attacks based on the Israel tie have put him through personal hell: "Now I get a steady stream of anti-Semitic screeds in my e-mail, my voicemail and in my mailbox. … Anti-Semitism is alive and thriving. It's just that its epicenter is no longer on the Buchananite Right, but on the peace-movement left."

Washington Post columnist Robert Kagan endures his own purgatory abroad: "In London … one finds Britain's finest minds propounding, in sophisticated language and melodious Oxbridge accents, the conspiracy theories of Pat Buchanan concerning the 'neoconservative' (read: Jewish) hijacking of American foreign policy."

Lawrence Kaplan of the New Republic charges that our little magazine "has been transformed into a forum for those who contend that President Bush has become a client of … Ariel Sharon and the 'neoconservative war party.'"

Referencing Charles Lindbergh, he accuses Paul Schroeder, Chris Matthews, Robert Novak, Georgie Anne Geyer, Jason Vest of the Nation, and Gary Hart of implying that "members of the Bush team have been doing Israel's bidding and, by extension, exhibiting 'dual loyalties.'" Kaplan thunders:

The real problem with such claims is not just that they are untrue. The problem is that they are toxic. Invoking the specter of dual loyalty to mute criticism and debate amounts to more than the everyday pollution of public discourse. It is the nullification of public discourse, for how can one refute accusations grounded in ethnicity? The charges are, ipso facto, impossible to disprove. And so they are meant to be. [...]

This is a time for truth. For America is about to make a momentous decision: whether to launch a series of wars in the Middle East that could ignite the Clash of Civilizations against which Harvard professor Samuel Huntington has warned, a war we believe would be a tragedy and a disaster for this Republic. [...]

We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. [...]

They charge us with anti-Semitism—i.e., a hatred of Jews for their faith, heritage, or ancestry. [...]

Who are the neoconservatives? The first generation were ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyites, boat-people from the McGovern revolution who rafted over to the GOP at the end of conservatism's long march to power with Ronald Reagan in 1980.

A neoconservative, wrote Kevin Phillips back then, is more likely to be a magazine editor than a bricklayer. Today, he or she is more likely to be a resident scholar at a public policy institute such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) or one of its clones like the Center for Security Policy or the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). As one wag writes, a neocon is more familiar with the inside of a think tank than an Abrams tank. [...]

When the Cold War ended, these neoconservatives began casting about for a new crusade to give meaning to their lives. On Sept. 11, their time came. They seized on that horrific atrocity to steer America's rage into all-out war to destroy their despised enemies, the Arab and Islamic "rogue states" that have resisted U.S. hegemony and loathe Israel.

The War Party's plan, however, had been in preparation far in advance of 9/11. And when President Bush, after defeating the Taliban, was looking for a new front in the war on terror, they put their precooked meal in front of him. Bush dug into it.

Before introducing the script-writers of America's future wars, consider the rapid and synchronized reaction of the neocons to what happened after that fateful day.

On Sept. 12, Americans were still in shock when Bill Bennett told CNN that we were in "a struggle between good and evil," that the Congress must declare war on "militant Islam," and that "overwhelming force" must be used. Bennett cited Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and China as targets for attack. Not, however, Afghanistan, the sanctuary of Osama's terrorists. How did Bennett know which nations must be smashed before he had any idea who attacked us?

The Wall Street Journal immediately offered up a specific target list, calling for U.S. air strikes on "terrorist camps in Syria, Sudan, Libya, and Algeria, and perhaps even in parts of Egypt." Yet, not one of Bennett's six countries, nor one of these five, had anything to do with 9/11.

On Sept. 15, according to Bob Woodward's Bush at War, "Paul Wolfowitz put forth military arguments to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan." Why Iraq? Because, Wolfowitz argued in the War Cabinet, while "attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain … Iraq was a brittle oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable."

On Sept. 20, forty neoconservatives sent an open letter to the White House instructing President Bush on how the war on terror must be conducted. Signed by Bennett, Podhoretz, Kirkpatrick, Perle, Kristol, and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, the letter was an ultimatum. To retain the signers' support, the president was told, he must target Hezbollah for destruction, retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to sever ties to Hezbollah, and overthrow Saddam. Any failure to attack Iraq, the signers warned Bush, "will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."

Here was a cabal of intellectuals telling the Commander-in-Chief, nine days after an attack on America, that if he did not follow their war plans, he would be charged with surrendering to terror. Yet, Hezbollah had nothing to do with 9/11. What had Hezbollah done? Hezbollah had humiliated Israel by driving its army out of Lebanon.

President Bush had been warned. He was to exploit the attack of 9/11 to launch a series of wars on Arab regimes, none of which had attacked us. All, however, were enemies of Israel. "Bibi" Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister of Israel, like some latter-day Citizen Genet, was ubiquitous on American television, calling for

us to crush the "Empire of Terror." The "Empire," it turns out, consisted of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and "the Palestinian enclave."

Nasty as some of these regimes and groups might be, what had they done to the United States?

The War Party seemed desperate to get a Middle East war going before America had second thoughts. Tom Donnelly of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) called for an immediate invasion of Iraq. "Nor need the attack await the deployment of half a million troops. … [T]he larger challenge will be occupying Iraq after the fighting is over," he wrote.

Donnelly was echoed by Jonah Goldberg of National Review: "The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense."

Goldberg endorsed "the Ledeen Doctrine" of ex-Pentagon official Michael Ledeen, which Goldberg described thus: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." (When the French ambassador in London, at a dinner party, asked why we should risk World War III over some "shitty little country"—meaning Israel—Goldberg's magazine was not amused.)

Ledeen, however, is less frivolous. In The War Against the Terror Masters, he identifies the exact regimes America must destroy:

First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the Big Three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And then we have to come to grips with Saudi Arabia. … Once the tyrants in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have been brought down, we will remain engaged. …We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution. … Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.

Rejecting stability as "an unworthy American mission," Ledeen goes on to define America's authentic "historic mission":

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. … [W]e must destroy them to advance our historic mission.

Passages like this owe more to Leon Trotsky than to Robert Taft and betray a Jacobin streak in neoconservatism that cannot be reconciled with any concept of true conservatism.

To the Weekly Standard, Ledeen's enemies list was too restrictive. We must not only declare war on terror networks and states that harbor terrorists, said the Standard, we should launch wars on "any group or government inclined to support or sustain others like them in the future."

Robert Kagan and William Kristol were giddy with excitement at the prospect of Armageddon. The coming war "is going to spread and engulf a number of countries. … It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid. … [I]t is possible that the demise of some 'moderate' Arab regimes may be just round the corner."

Norman Podhoretz in Commentary even outdid Kristol's Standard, rhapsodizing that we should embrace a war of civilizations, as it is George W. Bush's mission "to fight World War IV—the war against militant Islam." By his count, the regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil (Iraq, Iran, North Korea). At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as '"friends" of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority. Bush must reject the "timorous counsels" of the "incorrigibly cautious Colin Powell," wrote Podhoretz, and "find the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated" Islamic world. As the war against al-Qaeda required that we destroy the Taliban, Podhoretz wrote,

We may willy-nilly find ourselves forced … to topple five or six or seven more tyrannies in the Islamic world (including that other sponsor of terrorism, Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority). I can even [imagine] the turmoil of this war leading to some new species of an imperial mission for America, whose purpose would be to oversee the emergence of successor governments in the region more amenable to reform and modernization than the despotisms now in place. … I can also envisage the establishment of some kind of American protectorate over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, as we more and more come to wonder why 7,000 princes should go on being permitted to exert so much leverage over us and everyone else.

Podhoretz credits Eliot Cohen with the phrase "World War IV." Bush was shortly thereafter seen carrying about a gift copy of Cohen's book that celebrates civilian mastery of the military in times of war, as exhibited by such leaders as Winston Churchill and David Ben Gurion.

A list of the Middle East regimes that Podhoretz, Bennett, Ledeen, Netanyahu, and the Wall Street Journal regard as targets for destruction thus includes Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and "militant Islam."

Cui Bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam?

Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.

Indeed, Sharon has been everywhere the echo of his acolytes in America. In February 2003, Sharon told a delegation of Congressmen that, after Saddam's regime is destroyed, it is of "vital importance" that the United States disarm Iran, Syria, and Libya.

"We have a great interest in shaping the Middle East the day after" the war on Iraq, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the Conference of Major American Jewish Organizations. After U.S. troops enter Baghdad, the United States must generate "political, economic, diplomatic pressure" on Tehran, Mofaz admonished the American Jews.

Are the neoconservatives concerned about a war on Iraq bringing down friendly Arab governments? Not at all. They would welcome it.

"Mubarak is no great shakes," says Richard Perle of the President of Egypt. "Surely we can do better than Mubarak." Asked about the possibility that a war on Iraq—which he predicted would be a "cakewalk"—might upend governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, former UN ambassador Ken Adelman told Joshua Micah Marshall of Washington Monthly, "All the better if you ask me."

On July 10, 2002, Perle invited a former aide to Lyndon LaRouche named Laurent Murawiec to address the Defense Policy Board. In a briefing that startled Henry Kissinger, Murawiec named Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" of the United States.

Washington should give Riyadh an ultimatum, he said. Either you Saudis "prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including the Saudi intelligence services," and end all propaganda against Israel, or we invade your country, seize your oil fields, and occupy Mecca.

In closing his PowerPoint presentation, Murawiec offered a "Grand Strategy for the Middle East." "Iraq is the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot, Egypt the prize." Leaked reports of Murawiec's briefing did not indicate if anyone raised the question of how the Islamic world might respond to U.S. troops tramping around the grounds of the Great Mosque.

What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it. [...]

(11) U.S. nurturing Syrian activists, intervening in Syrian election - TIME (Dec 2006)

http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1571751,00.html

Syria in Bush's Cross Hairs

By Adam Zagorin/Washington Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006

The Bush Administration has been quietly nurturing individuals and parties opposed to the Syrian government in an effort to undermine the regime of President Bashar Assad. Parts of the scheme are outlined in a classified, two-page document that says that the U.S. already is "supporting regular meetings of internal and diaspora Syrian activists" in Europe. The document bluntly expresses the hope that "these meetings will facilitate a more coherent strategy and plan of actions for all anti-Assad activists."

The document says that Syria's legislative elections, scheduled for March 2007, "provide a potentially galvanizing issue for... critics of the Assad regime." To capitalize on that opportunity, the document proposes a secret "election monitoring" scheme, in which "internet accessible materials will be available for printing and dissemination by activists inside the country [Syria] and neighboring countries." The proposal also calls for surreptitiously giving money to at least one Syrian politician who, according to the document, intends to run in the election. The effort would also include "voter education campaigns" and public opinion polling, with the first poll "tentatively scheduled in early 2007."

American officials say the U.S. government has had extensive contacts with a range of anti-Assad groups in Washington, Europe and inside Syria. To give momemtum to that opposition, the U.S. is giving serious consideration to the election-monitoring scheme proposed in the document, according to several officials. The proposal has not yet been approved, in part because of questions over whether the Syrian elections will be delayed or even cancelled. But one U.S. official familiar with the proposal said: "You are forced to wonder whether we are now trying to destabilize the Syrian government."

Some critics in Congress and the Administration say that such a plan, meant to secretly influence a foreign government, should be legally deemed a "covert action," which by law would then require that the White House inform the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill. Some in Congress would undoubtedly raise objections to this secret use of publicly appropriated funds to promote democracy.

The proposal says part of the effort would be run through a foundation operated by Amar Abdulhamid, a Washington-based member of a Syrian umbrella opposition group known as the National Salvation Front (NSF). The Front includes the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization that for decades supported the violent overthrow of the Syrian government, but now says it seeks peaceful, democratic reform. (In Syria, however, membership in the Brotherhood is still punishable by death.) Another member of the NSF is Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former high-ranking Syrian official and Assad family loyalist who recently went into exile after a political clash with the regime. Representatives of the National Salvation Front, including Abdulhamid, were accorded at least two meetings earlier this year at the White House, which described the sessions as exploratory. Since then, the National Salvation Front has said it intends to open an office in Washington in the near future.

"Democracy promotion" has been a focus of both Democratic and Republican administrations, but the Bush White House has been a particular booster since 9/11. Iran contra figure Elliott Abrams was put in charge of the effort at the National Security Council. Until recently, Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the Vice President, oversaw such work at the State Department. In the past, the U.S. has used support for "democracy building" to topple unfriendly dictators, including Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and Ukraine's Vladimir Kuchma.

However, in order to make the "election monitoring" plan for Syria effective, the proposal makes clear that the U.S. effort will have to be concealed: "Any information regarding funding for domestic [Syrian] politicians for elections monitoring would have to be protected from public dissemination," the document says. But American experts on "democracy promotion" consulted by TIME say it would be unwise to give financial support to a specific candidate in the election, because of the perceived conflict of interest. More ominously, an official familiar with the document explained that secrecy is necessary in part because Syria's government might retaliate against anyone inside the country who was seen as supporting the U.S.-backed election effort. The official added that because the Syrian government fields a broad network of internal spies, it would almost certainly find out about the U.S. effort, if it hasn't already. That could lead to the imprisonment of still more opposition figures. [...]

Money for the election-monitoring proposal would be channeled through a State Department program known as the Middle East Partnership Initiative, or MEPI. According to MEPI's website, the program passes out funds ranging between $100,000 and $1 million to promote education and women's empowerment, as well as economic and political reform, part of a total allocation of $5 million for Syria that Congress supported earlier this year.

MEPI helps funnel millions of dollars every year to groups around the Middle East intent on promoting reforms. In the vast majority of cases, beneficiaries are publicly identified, as financial support is distributed through channels including the National Democratic Institute, a non-profit affiliated with the Democratic Party, and the International Republican Institute (IRI), which is linked to the G.O.P. In the Syrian case, the election-monitoring proposal identifies IRI as a "partner" — although the IRI website, replete with information about its democracy promotion elsewhere in the world, does not mention Syria. A spokesperson for IRI had no comment on what the organization might have planned or under way in Syria, describing the subject as "sensitive."

U.S. foreign policy experts familiar with the proposal say it was developed by a "democracy and public diplomacy" working group that meets weekly at the State department to discuss Iran and Syria. Along with related working groups, it prepares proposals for the higher-level Iran Syria Operations Group, or ISOG, an inter-agency body that, several officials said, has had input from Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, deputy National Security Council advisor Elliott Abrams and representatives from the Pentagon, Treasury and U.S. intelligence. The State Department's deputy spokesman, Thomas Casey, said the election-monitoring proposal had already been through several classified drafts, but that "the basic concept is very much still valid."

(12) "We're going to take out 7 countries" - Wesley Clark interview Democracy Now (Mar 2, 2007)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-Iraq-Syria-lebanon-Libya-somalia-Sudan-Iran/5166

Global Research, July 12, 2014

Video Interview with General Wesley Clark

Democracy Now 2 March 2007

"We're going to take out 7 countries in 5 years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan & Iran."

"We're going to take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran" –

General Wesley Clark. Retired 4-star U.S. Army general, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the 1999 War on Yugoslavia.

Short version of video interview on U-Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXS3vW47mOE

Complete Transcript of Program, Democracy Now.

AMY GOODMAN: Today, an exclusive hour with General Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general. He was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2004, he unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He recently edited a series of books about famous US generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses Grant, both of whom became president after their military careers ended.

On Tuesday, I interviewed Wesley Clark at the 92nd Street Y Cultural Center here in New York City before a live audience and asked him about his presidential ambitions.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for the rest of the hour, we'll hear General Wesley Clark in his own words on the possibility of a US attack on Iran; the impeachment of President Bush; the use of cluster bombs; the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War under his command; and much more. I interviewed General Clark on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, let's talk about Iran. You have a whole website devoted to stopping war.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Www.stopIranwar.com.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq — the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn't repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn't be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.

I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" — meaning the Secretary of Defense's office — "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"

AMY GOODMAN: I'm sorry. What did you say his name was?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I'm not going to give you his name.

AMY GOODMAN: So, go through the countries again.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran. So when you look at Iran, you say, "Is it a replay?" It's not exactly a replay. But here's the truth: that Iran, from the beginning, has seen that the presence of the United States in Iraq was a threat — a blessing, because we took out Saddam Hussein and the Baathists. They couldn't handle them. We took care of it for them. But also a threat, because they knew that they were next on the hit list. And so, of course, they got engaged. They lost a million people during the war with Iraq, and they've got a long and unprotectable, unsecurable border. So it was in their vital interest to be deeply involved inside Iraq. They tolerated our attacks on the Baathists. They were happy we captured Saddam Hussein.

But they're building up their own network of influence, and to cement it, they occasionally give some military assistance and training and advice, either directly or indirectly, to both the insurgents and to the militias. And in that sense, it's not exactly parallel, because there has been, I believe, continuous Iranian engagement, some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate. I mean, you can hardly fault Iran because they're offering to do eye operations for Iraqis who need medical attention. That's not an offense that you can go to war over, perhaps. But it is an effort to gain influence.

And the administration has stubbornly refused to talk with Iran about their perception, in part because they don't want to pay the price with their domestic — our US domestic political base, the rightwing base, but also because they don't want to legitimate a government that they've been trying to overthrow. If you were Iran, you'd probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we've asserted that their government needs regime change, and we've asked congress to appropriate $75 million to do it, and we are supporting terrorist groups, apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iraq — Iran. And if we're not doing it, let's put it this way: we're probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So it's not surprising that we're moving to a point of confrontation and crisis with Iran.

My point on this is not that the Iranians are good guys — they're not — but that you shouldn't use force, except as a last, last, last resort. There is a military option, but it's a bad one.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to Seymour Hersh's piece in The New Yorker to two key points this week, reporting the Pentagon's established a special planning group within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a bombing attack on Iran, that this is coming as the Bush administration and Saudi Arabia are pumping money for covert operations into many areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, in an effort to strengthen Saudi-supported Sunni Islam groups and weaken Iranian-backed Shias — some of the covert money has been given to jihadist groups in Lebanon with ties to al-Qaeda — fighting the Shias by funding with Prince Bandar and then with US money not approved by Congress, funding the Sunnis connected to al-Qaeda.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don't have any direct information to confirm it or deny it. It's certainly plausible. The Saudis have taken a more active role. You know, the Saudis have –

AMY GOODMAN: You were just in Saudi Arabia.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Hmm?

AMY GOODMAN: You just came back from Saudi Arabia.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. Well, the Saudis have basically recognized that they have an enormous stake in the outcome in Iraq, and they don't particularly trust the judgment of the United States in this area. We haven't exactly proved our competence in Iraq. So they're trying to take matters into their own hands.

The real danger is, and one of the reasons this is so complicated is because — let's say we did follow the desires of some people who say, "Just pull out, and pull out now." Well, yeah. We could mechanically do that. It would be ugly, and it might take three or four months, but you could line up the battalions on the road one by one, and you could put the gunners in the Humvees and load and cock their weapons and shoot their way out of Iraq. You'd have a few roadside bombs. But if you line everybody up there won't be any roadside bombs. Maybe some sniping. You can fly helicopters over, do your air cover. You'd probably get safely out of there. But when you leave, the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the Shias. Who are they going to find? Al-Qaeda, because the groups of Sunnis who would be extremists and willing to fight would probably be the groups connected to al-Qaeda. So one of the weird inconsistencies in this is that were we to get out early, we'd be intensifying the threat against us of a super powerful Sunni extremist group, which was now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in an effort to hang onto a toehold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.

AMY GOODMAN: And interestingly, today, John Negroponte has just become the number two man, resigning his post as National Intelligence Director to go to the State Department, Seymour Hersh says, because of his discomfort that the administration's covert actions in the Middle East so closely echo the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, and Negroponte was involved with that. [...]

AMY GOODMAN: What about the soldiers who are saying no to going to Iraq right now? [...]

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It's wrong to fight in Iraq? Well, I think it's a mistake. I think it's a bad strategy. I think it's brought us a lot of grief, and it will bring us a lot more grief. I think it's been a tremendous distraction from the war on terror, a diversion of resources, and it's reinforced our enemies. [...]

AMY GOODMAN: 1953 was also a seminal date for today, and that was when Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, went to Iran and led a coup against Mohammed Mossadegh under Eisenhower.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people's governments, especially in the Middle East. I don't know why we felt that — you can understand Latin America, because Latin America was always an area in which people would come to the United States, say, "You've got to help us down there. These

are banditos, and they don't know anything. And, you know, they don't have a government. Just intervene and save our property." And the United States did it a lot in the '20s. Of course, Eisenhower was part of that culture. He had seen it.

But in the Middle East, we had never been there. We established a relationship during World War II, of course, to keep the Germans out of Iran. And so, the Soviets and the Brits put an Allied mission together. At the end of World War II, the Soviets didn't want to withdraw, and Truman called their bluff in the United Nations. And Eisenhower knew all of this. And Iran somehow became incorporated into the American defense perimeter. And so, his view would have been, we couldn't allow a communist to take over.

AMY GOODMAN: But wasn't it more about British Petroleum?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh, it's always — there are always interests. The truth is, about the Middle East is, had there been no oil there, it would be like Africa. Nobody is threatening to intervene in Africa. The problem is the opposite. We keep asking for people to intervene and stop it. There's no question that the presence of petroleum throughout the region has sparked great power involvement. Whether that was the specific motivation for the coup or not, I can't tell you. [...]

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what you think of the response to Jimmy Carter's book, Peace, Not Apartheid.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't read the book. [...]

Jimmy Carter has taken a lot of heat from people. I don't know exactly what he said in the book. But people are very sensitive about Israel in this country. And I understand that. A lot of my friends have explained it to me and have explained to me the psychology of people who were in this country and saw what was happening in World War II, and maybe they didn't feel like they spoke out strongly enough, soon enough, to stop it. And it's not going to happen again. [...]

(13) Bush backed Al Qaeda Sunni Islamists, to undermine Iran - Seymour Hersh (Mar 5, 2007)

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection

The Redirection

Is the Administration's new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?

BY SEYMOUR M. HERSH

The New Yorker, MARCH 5, 2007

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The "redirection," as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has co-perated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration's perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country's right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that "realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region."

After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq's Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now,

to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is "a new strategic alignment in the Middle East," separating "reformers" and "extremists"; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were "on the other side of that divide." (Syria's Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, "have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize."

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. "We haven't got any of this," he said. "We ask for anything going on, and they say there's nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We're going to get back to you.' It's so frustrating."

The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney's office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, "The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.")

The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The new strategy "is a major shift in American policy—it's a sea change," a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states "were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq," he said. "We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it."

"It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what's the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals," Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. "The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line."

Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that "the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War." Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. "The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq," he said. "It's doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down."

The Administration's new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. [...]

(14) Wesley Clark reveals "policy coup after 9/11" - Fora TV (Youtube, Nov 5, 2007)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8

October 3, 2007, Clark spoke at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. He said America underwent a post-9/11 transformation. A "policy coup" occurred. With no public debate or acknowledgement, hardliners usurped power.

Clark, Fora TV, Uploaded on 5 Nov 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8

(15) Wesley Clark reveals Neocon coup (1991), plan to overthrow "old Soviet regimes" (2007)

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/26/wes_clark_and_the_neocon_dream/

Saturday, Nov 26, 2011 10:45 PM EST (updated)

Wes Clark and the neocon dream

In 2007, the retired General described a necon "policy coup" aimed at toppling the governments of 7 countries VIDEO

Glenn Greenwald

In October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (seven-minute excerpt in the video below) in which he denounced what he called “a policy coup” engineered by neocons in the wake of 9/11. After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon’s plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the “coup” being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called “a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century”:

Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: “Why haven’t we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?”

He said: “Sir, it’s worse than that. He said – he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk – he said: “I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense’s office. It says we’re going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years – we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”

Clark said the aim of this plot was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq — before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”

The current turmoil in the Middle East is driven largely by popular revolts, not by neocon shenanigans. Still, in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya (the latter leading to this and this), with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six — count ’em: six — different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it’s worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam’s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!). As Jonathan Schwarz (or, as he would be called by establishment newspapers: “a person familiar with Jon Schwarz’s thinking on the subject who asked not to be identified”) put it about the supposedly contentious national security factions: advertisement

As far as I can tell, there’s barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars.

(16) WikiLeaks cables prompt State Dept to admit funding Syrian opposition (Apr 2011)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-admits-funding-syrian-opposition-1.987112

U.S. admits funding Syrian opposition (2011)

Thousands staging sit-in vow not to leave until Assad's ouster

CBC News Posted: Apr 18, 2011 3:15 AM ET Last Updated: Apr 18, 2011 10:22 PM ET

The U.S. State Department acknowledged Monday it has been funding opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, following the release of secret diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks that document the funding.

The files show that up to $6.3 million US was funnelled to the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based dissident organization that operates the Barada TV satellite channel, which broadcasts anti-government news into Syria. Another $6 million went to support a variety of initiatives, including training for journalists and activists, between 2006 and 2010.

Asked point-blank by reporters whether the United States is funding Syrian opposition groups, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a news conference Monday, "We are — we're working with a variety of civil society actors in Syria with the goal here of strengthening freedom of expression."

Then pressed to specify whether the U.S. provides satellite bandwidth for Barada TV's broadcasts, Toner said: "I'd have to get details of what exactly technical assistance we're providing them."

Toner insisted the financing is not aimed at overthrowing Assad's rule. "We are not working to undermine that government."

However, an April 2009 diplomatic cable from the U.S. mission in Damascus recognizes the risky optics of the funding.

"Some programs may be perceived, were they made public, as an attempt to undermine the Assad regime.… The Syrian Arab Republic government would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change."

(17) State Dept admits funding Syrian opposition, after Wikileaks releases cables (Apr 2011)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/u-s-admits-funding-syrian-opposition-1.987112

U.S. admits funding Syrian opposition

Thousands staging sit-in vow not to leave until Assad's ouster

CBC News  Posted: Apr 18, 2011 3:15 AM ET |  Last Updated: Apr 18, 2011 10:22 PM ET

Updated * Syrian government blames radical 'armed Salafi groups' for demonstrations.

The U.S. State Department acknowledged Monday it has been funding opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, following the release of secret diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks that document the funding.

The files show that up to $6.3 million US was funnelled to the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based dissident organization that operates the Barada TV satellite channel, which broadcasts anti-government news into Syria. Another $6 million went to support a variety of initiatives, including training for journalists and activists, between 2006 and 2010.

Asked point-blank by reporters whether the United States is funding Syrian opposition groups, State Department spokesman Mark Toner told a news conference Monday, "We are — we're working with a variety of civil society actors in Syria with the goal here of strengthening freedom of expression."

Then pressed to specify whether the U.S. provides satellite bandwidth for Barada TV's broadcasts, Toner said: "I'd have to get details of what exactly technical assistance we're providing them."

Toner insisted the financing is not aimed at overthrowing Assad's rule. "We are not working to undermine that government."

However, an April 2009 diplomatic cable from the U.S. mission in Damascus recognizes the risky optics of the funding.

"Some programs may be perceived, were they made public, as an attempt to undermine the Assad regime.É The Syrian Arab Republic government would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change."

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks provided the cables to the Washington Post newspaper, which first reported on them. The files are part of a haul of 251,000 secret U.S. diplomatic documents the website says it has obtained. It began disclosing them in November through partner media outlets and so far has released nearly 7,000.

On Monday, more than 5,000 anti-government protesters in Syria took over the main square of the country's third-largest city, vowing to occupy the site until Assad is ousted and defying authorities who warn they will not be forced into reforms.

However, the government blamed the weeks of anti-government unrest in the country on ultraconservative Muslims seeking to establish a fundamentalist state and terrorize the people, in the latest official effort to portray the reform movement as populated by extremists.

In the past month, Syrian security forces in uniforms and plainclothes have launched a deadly crackdown on demonstrations, killing at least 200 people, according to human rights groups. Many Syrians also say pro-government thugs — known as Shabiha — have terrorized neighbourhoods with tactics such as opening fire into the air.

'Armed gangs' blamed for unrest

The government has in the past blamed "armed gangs" seeking to stir up unrest for many of the killings, such as the ones who fatally shot seven people, including three army officers, on Sunday in Homs.

On Monday, the Interior Ministry identified the gangs as "armed Salafi groups," referring to an ultraconservative form of Islam that has its roots in Saudi Arabia and can be found all over the region. The statement carried by the state news agency said they were seeking to establish "emirates" and were "abusing the freedoms and reforms launched in the comprehensive program with a timetable by President Bashar Assad."

Assad has been playing on fears of sectarian warfare as he works to quell any popular support for the uprising and has blamed the unrest on a foreign plot to sow sectarian strife — echoing pronouncements from almost every other besieged leader in the region.

The Egypt-style standoff in the central city of Homs followed funeral processions by more than 10,000 mourners for some of those killed in clashes Sunday that a rights group said left at least 12 people dead. It also brought a high-stakes challenge to security forces over whether to risk more bloodshed — and international backlash — by trying to clear the square.

With files from The Associated Press

(18) Senators Joseph Lieberman & John McCain call for US to intervene in Syria as it did in Libya (July 2012)

http://www.lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/news-events/news/2012/7/statement-by-senators-lieberman-mccain-and-graham-on-syria/

STATEMENT BY SENATORS LIEBERMAN, McCAIN, AND GRAHAM ON SYRIA

07.27.12

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT), John McCain (R-AZ), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following joint statement regarding the situation in Syria:

"Last March, as Moammar Qaddafi's tanks were approaching the gates of Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, the United States and our allies intervened, averting a massacre and helping the Libyan people to win their freedom and liberate their country.

"Today, armored columns are advancing on Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, with the clear intention of unleashing indiscriminate violence against civilians. Helicopter gunships, heavy artillery, and fixed wing aircraft are already pounding Aleppo and other Syrian cities. The State Department spokesperson has expressed "concern that we will see a massacre in Aleppo" – and for good reason. And yet, the United States is failing to take any of the steps that are within our power to stop Bashar al Assad's killing machine.

"It is not too late for the United States to make the difference in Syria, as we did in Libya. We can and should be providing weapons, intelligence, and training directly to the rebels – not sitting on the sidelines and outsourcing this job to others. Even more urgently, as 62 foreign policy experts recently urged, the United States and our allies should work with the Syrian opposition to establish safe havens in liberated parts of Syria and do what is necessary to guarantee their protection, including consideration of a no fly zone, given Assad's use of helicopters and aircraft. In none of this, moreover, does the U.S. need to act alone. Our allies in the region are ready and eager to work together with us – indeed, some of them are already much more engaged in this fight than we are – but American leadership is necessary. Right now, it is woefully absent.

"Years from now, the Syrian people will remember that – in their hour of desperation, when they looked to the world for help – the United States stood idly by as brave Syrians struggled and died for their freedom in a grossly unfair fight. If we continue on this path of inaction, a mass atrocity will surely unfold in Aleppo, or elsewhere in Syria. We have the power to prevent this needless death and advance our strategic interests in the Middle East at the same time. If we do not, it will be a shameful failure of leadership that will haunt us for a long time to come."

(19) Saudis supply Croatian Arms to Rebels in Syria, with CIA support (NYT Feb 2013)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/world/middleeast/in-shift-saudis-are-said-to-arm-rebels-in-syria.html

Saudis Step Up Help for Rebels in Syria With Croatian Arms (2013)

By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT

FEB. 25, 2013

Saudi Arabia has financed a large purchase of infantry weapons from Croatia and quietly funneled them to antigovernment fighters in Syria in a drive to break the bloody stalemate that has allowed President Bashar al-Assad to cling to power, according to American and Western officials familiar with the purchases.

The weapons began reaching rebels in December via shipments shuttled through Jordan, officials said, and have been a factor in the rebels' small tactical gains this winter against the army and militias loyal to Mr. Assad.

The arms transfers appeared to signal a shift among several governments to a more activist approach to assisting Syria's armed opposition, in part as an effort to counter shipments of weapons from Iran to Mr. Assad's forces. The weapons' distribution has been principally to armed groups viewed as nationalist and secular, and appears to have been intended to bypass the jihadist groups whose roles in the war have alarmed Western and regional powers.

For months regional and Western capitals have held back on arming the rebels, in part out of fear that the weapons would fall into the hands of terrorists. But officials said the decision to send in more weapons is aimed at another fear in the West about the role of jihadist groups in the opposition. Such groups have been seen as better equipped than many nationalist fighters and potentially more influential.

The action also signals the recognition among the rebels' Arab and Western backers that the opposition's success in pushing Mr. Assad's military from much of Syria's northern countryside by the middle of last year gave way to a slow, grinding campaign in which the opposition remains outgunned and the human costs continue to climb.

Washington's role in the shipments, if any, is not clear. Officials in Europe and the United States, including those at the Central Intelligence Agency, cited the sensitivity of the shipments and declined to comment publicly. [...] [...]

A version of this article appears in print on February 26, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Shift, Saudis Are Said to Arm Rebels in Syria.

(20) CIA training Syrian rebels in Jordan; State Dept covert aid (NYT Feb 2013)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/01/world/middleeast/us-pledges-60-million-to-syrian-opposition.html

U.S. Steps Up Aid to Syrian Opposition, Pledging $60 Million

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Published: February 28, 2013

ROME — The food rations and medical supplies that Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday would be provided to the Free Syrian Army mark the first time that the United States has publicly committed itself to sending nonlethal aid to the armed factions that are battling President Bashar al-Assad. [...]

The nonlethal aid was just one element of the American program of assistance that Mr. Kerry unveiled Thursday.

The United States is also providing $60 million to help the political wing of the Syrian anti-Assad coalition improve the delivery of basic services like sanitation and education in areas it has already wrested from the government’s control.

A covert program to train rebel fighters, which State Department officials here were not prepared to discuss, has also been under way. According to an official in Washington, who asked not to be identified, the C.I.A. since last year has been training groups of Syrian rebels in Jordan.

The official did not provide details about the training or what difference it may have made on the battlefield, but said the C.I.A. had not given weapons or ammunition to the rebels. An agency spokesman declined to comment.

Defending the limited program to provide medical supplies and military rations known as Meals Ready to Eat, or M.R.E.’s, to the military wing of the Syrian resistance, Mr. Kerry said that other countries would also provide help. He said that the "totality" of the effort would make an impression on Mr. Assad. [...]

The $60 million is on top of more than $50 million in assistance, including communications equipment, that the United States has already provided to local councils and civil activists. The new funds need to be approved by Congress, which is caught up in politics over how to cut the American budget deficit. But Mr. Kerry said that he expected Congressional approval soon.

Reporting was contributed by Mark Mazzetti from Washington; Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; and Christine Hauser from New York.

(21) Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels expands, with Aid from C.I.A. - NYT (Mar 2013)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html

Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels expands, with Aid from C.I.A. (2013)

By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT

MARCH 24, 2013

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria's opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

As it evolved, the airlift correlated with shifts in the war within Syria, as rebels drove Syria's army from territory by the middle of last year. And even as the Obama administration has publicly refused to give more than "nonlethal" aid to the rebels, the involvement of the C.I.A. in the arms shipments — albeit mostly in a consultative role, American officials say — has shown that the United States is more willing to help its Arab allies support the lethal side of the civil war.

From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large procurement from Croatia, and have vetted rebel commanders and groups to determine who should receive the weapons as they arrive, according to American officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. The C.I.A. declined to comment on the shipments or its role in them. [...]

The Turkish government has had oversight over much of the program, down to affixing transponders to trucks ferrying the military goods through Turkey so it might monitor shipments as they move by land into Syria, officials said. The scale of shipments was very large, according to officials familiar with the pipeline and to an arms-trafficking investigator who assembled data on the cargo planes involved.

"A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500 tons of military equipment," said Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who monitors illicit arms transfers.

"The intensity and frequency of these flights," he added, are "suggestive of a well-planned and coordinated clandestine military logistics operation."

Although rebel commanders and the data indicate that Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey to the opposition since early and late 2012, respectively, a major hurdle was removed late last fall after the Turkish government agreed to allow the pace of air shipments to accelerate, officials said.

Simultaneously, arms and equipment were being purchased by Saudi Arabia in Croatia and flown to Jordan on Jordanian cargo planes for rebels working in southern Syria and for retransfer to Turkey for rebels groups operating from there, several officials said. [...]

Reporting was contributed by Robert F. Worth from Washington and Istanbul; Dan Bilefsky from Paris; and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey.

A version of this article appears in print on March 25, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Airlift To Rebels In Syria Expands With C.I.A.'S Help.

(22) CIA training Chechen terrorists to fight Assad; snipers in Maidan Sq were also Chechen (Oct 2014)

Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 05:44:50 +0900 Subject: America’s Chechen Proxy Fighters: The Big Picture Everyone Has Missed | New Eastern Outlook From: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com>

http://journal-neo.org/2014/10/19/america-s-Chechen-proxy-fighters-the-big-picture-everyone-has-missed/

The snipers in Maidan Square, who shot at everyone indiscriminately and were also described as Chechens

by Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for “New Eastern Outlook”

19.10.2014

[...] On September 1 Iraqi News reported that “Iraq’s counter-terrorism office announced the killing of 23 fighters of Chechen nationality who belong to the organization of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, in Sulaiman Bek district, east of Tikrit.”

Whether these people were really Chechens has not been established, as “Chechen” has been equated with “terrorist” for a long time, so if you don’t know where a dead terrorist comes from he is called a Chechen. But there is a reason this state of affairs came to be, and it does not derive from Russian propaganda, as sources such as Arab News try and make out.

On June 23 The Barefoot Strategist drew attention to the fact that “While most of the world is focused on the battle between Assad and the Syrian rebels, Chechens are becoming known as some of the best fighters in Syria. Their prominence is growing, and it is alarming.”

This article detailed how the Chechens had split into different groups, some pro- and some anti-ISIL, based on their original allegiances. However it did not say why these Chechens were interested in Syria and how they got there, or how they became such good fighters.

On July 22 Cristina Maza, writing in The Balkanist, stated that “according to Murad Batal al-Shishani, a London-based expert on Islamic groups and a specialist on Islamic movements in Chechnya, the majority of the Chechen fighters in Syria right now are from the Pankisi Gorge.”

The article also pointed out that “the number of residents in the region [Pankisi] has doubled over the past decade due to an influx of refugees from Chechnya.” It described how they are “volunteering” to fight in Syria, encouraged by “radicals” and lack of opportunity in the Gorge. Once again however the article failed to mention why the Chechens and [even some Saudi nationals] suddenly took such an interest in this part of Georgia, if there are so few opportunities there.

The point everyone is missing is that what Henry Kamens has been saying for more than 10 years is being proven true every day. The Chechens being recruited in the Pankisi Gorge did not end up there by accident, they were inserted by the CIA and funded and trained in terrorist warfare by the CIA in order to destabilise other countries the US was interested in. Those same Chechens are not volunteering for service but are being sent there by the US, as part of a co-ordinated plan, to serve US interests, and being moved around to wherever they are needed.

Roddy Scott, a young British journalist and filmmaker, was killed for knowing and saying this, and that was no accident either. He was following the money and weapons, the NGO mechanism used to fund the freedom fighters and provide fake passports to people who, based on the American definition, were terrorists. So let us consider the facts.

Safe haven for chosen terrorists

From 2001 onwards an extensive media campaign was conducted by international outlets which claimed that Pankisi, which none of those reporters had previously seen, was a “terrorist haven”. No actual evidence was provided to support this, but it made people feel better to think all the terrorists came from one place and it had been identified.

These reports were used as the justification for sending US military advisers to the Gorge in April 2002, purportedly on a mission to contain al-Qaeda loyalists who might have been operating there. It is only after this, however, that most of the Chechens later branded as terrorists actually moved to this isolated valley, as Cristina Maza’s article implies.

The US intervention there would therefore seem to have been an utter failure, which would cause heads to roll. However, the sudden influx of terrorists was used as the excuse for the establishment of the 64 million dollar Train and Equip Program. This provided precious few weapons to the Georgian Armed Forces and their “training” was exposed for what it was during the 2008 Russia-Georgia war. It has, however, led to a succession of fearsome Chechen warriors, highly-trained, well-armed and successful, emerging from the Gorge and appearing in US –backed wars all over the region, as the articles cited state.

This activity was not hidden. Within weeks reports about what was really going on there, dismissed as rumour at the time, started appearing. Nikolaus von Twickel of the Moscow Times soon reported that Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officials had confirmed that Ramzan Turkoshvili, 34, a Russian citizen born in Georgia, had been co-ordinating the activities of illegal armed groups in the Northern Caucasus by order of Tbilisi.

He told Itar-Tass that the Pankisi Gorge, “despite repeated statements of the Georgian leadership and their Western allies, is still used as a base of terrorists acting in the North Caucasus and by various terrorist and extremist organisations. Ringleaders of terrorist groups from the Georgian territory provide financial support to bandit groups, coordinate activities for the preparation of terrorist acts, as well as recruiting Muslim youth of the Akhmed districts of Georgia and involving them in extremist activities.”

One of the Chechens who appeared in Pankisi Gorge at that time was Imran Akhmadov. When journalists such as Jeffrey Silverman, who was then working as an editor-and-chief of the Georgian Times, followed up on his Chechen and intelligence connections they were told that he had been killed by the FSB. Not only is Akhmadov still alive, he is one of the leaders of ISIL.

He had in fact been provided with a fake Georgian passport, in the name Kavtarashvili, and shipped to Turkey by the US Embassy when people started enquiring about him. The snipers in Maidan Square, who shot at everyone indiscriminately and were also described as Chechens, were similarly removed from the scene, and sent to Syria, on fake Georgian passports when it was reported that they were neither protestors nor Ukrainian security services personnel.

Akhmadov’s brother was also reported killed by the FSB, as if to provide support for the claim that Imran had died. He too is still alive, and is a senior Georgian intelligence operative. As official investigations are now revealing, he was involved in the planning of the prospective murder of tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, obviously not a matter for low level operatives.

Knowing too much

It was in October 2002 that Roddy Scott accompanied the Chechens as they crossed from Georgia into the Russian republic of Ingushetia, whilst making a documentary. The 31-year-old journalist was killed filming a firefight between Chechen fighters and the Russian army in the village of Galashka in the Ingush region of the Russian Federation. Roddy worked for Frontline TV, a British TV company, was no stranger to hotspots and knew how to protect himself.

Scott had made no secret of the fact that he felt the wrong information about Pankisi was being reported in the West. He had written to a friend shortly before he left:

“I personally think it’s a great story, it’s about the first time I have ever seen the possibility for someone to really lift the lid on everything, rather than the usual ‘journo-grasping-at-straws-with-no-good-sources’ which seems to emanate from the region. And what really gives it the boost is that it is tied into US policy, which gives it the international rather than local/parochial flavour. As you saw, there are plenty of boyeviks [terrorists/fighters] in Pankisi, and pretty much they operate openly; but the story has never really come out because most journals don’t have access. And there is a real danger of kidnapping if you are there too long without the protection of a Chechen commander. Equally, the Chechens have a vested interest in making sure the full story never comes out (in print, photos or TV). It’s the kind of thing that might just provoke the Russians to do something, (or give them excuse, I guess).”

After the rebels were driven back Russian Federal Forces found Scott’s body. Any such death is generally investigated. When Jeffrey Silverman, who had been one of his sources in Georgia, started asking deep questions he was warned by a former employee of the BBC (and possibly MI6, the British intelligence service) [...]

I have been to Pankisi Gorge and lived with the locals for weeks on end. I have seen the Georgian military supposedly cracking down on terrorists patrolling with no bullets in their weapons. I have seen the newcomers, the Chechen terrorists, Arab nationals, the cars they drive, their clothes, their flats in Tbilisi. None of them work, and they do not live like that on remittances from relatives abroad or herding sheep.

I have also investigated the Akhmadov brothers further. They were involved in the kidnapping of two Polish journalists who might have stumbled on the story, Zofis Fischer and Ewa Marchwinska-Wyrwal, two Spanish businessmen and the faked abduction of British banker Peter Shaw, who staged it himself. The murder of Anthony Russo, an Italian journalist, also remains unresolved, and has never been properly investigated, like all the other cases linked with the Akhmadov brothers.

None of this is coincidence. The appearance of Chechens from the Pankisi Gorge, who moved there after the US sent people to root out terrorists, in all the wars the US is involved in is not coincidence. The US has put those people in those places to conduct whatever terrorist operations serve its interests, even if it means sacrificing those same terrorists.

All we are seeing now is part of a long lasting, co-ordinated programme of state-sponsored terrorism conducted by the guardians of freedom and democracy, using people it labels as terrorists who it has armed and trained to do all these things. Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, all the conflicts we are seeing are part of the same programme.

I’ve been saying all this for a very long time. A lot of people have a vested interest in proving me wrong, and will give anyone trying to do so all possible assistance; go ahead, the world is waiting, make my day!

(23) Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut - Washington Post (June 2015)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/lawmakers-move-to-curb-1-billion-cia-program-to-train-syrian-rebels/2015/06/12/b0f45a9e-1114-11e5-adec-e82f8395c032_story.html

Secret CIA effort in Syria faces large funding cut

By Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung

June 12 2015

Key lawmakers have moved to slash funding of a secret CIA operation to train and arm rebels in Syria, a move that U.S. officials said reflects rising skepticism of the effectiveness of the agency program and the Obama administration's strategy in the Middle East.

The House Intelligence Committee recently voted unanimously to cut as much as 20 percent of the classified funds flowing into a CIA program that U.S. officials said has become one the agency's largest covert operations, with a budget approaching $1 billion a year.

"There is a great deal of concern on a very bipartisan basis with our strategy in Syria," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the intelligence panel. He declined to comment on specific provisions of the committee's bill but cited growing pessimism that the United States will be in a position "to help shape the aftermath" of Syria's civil war.

The cuts to the CIA program are included in a preliminary intelligence spending bill that is expected to be voted on in the House next week. The measure has provoked concern among CIA and White House officials, who warned that pulling money out of the CIA effort could weaken U.S.-backed insurgents just as they have begun to emerge as effective fighters. The White House declined to comment.

Recent CIA assessments have warned that the war is approaching a critical stage in which Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is losing territory and strength, and might soon be forced to relinquish all but a narrow corridor of the country to rebel groups — some of them dominated by Islamist militants. [...]

But the sudden contraction of Assad's sphere of control has focused renewed attention on Syria and the CIA program set up in 2013 to bolster moderate forces that still represent the United States' most direct involvement on the ground in Syria's civil war.

The cost of that CIA program has not previously been disclosed, and the figure provides the clearest indication to date of the extent to which the agency's attention and resources have shifted to Syria.

At $1 billion, Syria-related operations account for about $1 of every $15 in the CIA's overall budget, judging by spending levels revealed in documents The Washington Post obtained from former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

U.S. officials said the CIA has trained and equipped nearly 10,000 fighters sent into Syria over the past several years — meaning that the agency is spending roughly $100,000 per year for every anti-Assad rebel who has gone through the program.

The CIA declined to comment on the program or its budget. But U.S. officials defended the scale of the expenditures, saying the money goes toward much more than salaries and weapons and is part of a broader, multibillion-dollar effort involving Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey to bolster a coalition of militias known as the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army.

Much of the CIA's money goes toward running secret training camps in Jordan, gathering intelligence to help guide the operations of agency-backed militias and managing a sprawling logistics network used to move fighters, ammunition and weapons into the country.

The move by the House intelligence panel to cut the program's funds is not mentioned in the unclassified version of the spending bill. But statements released by lawmakers alluded to some of their underlying concerns, including a line calling for an "effort to enhance the metrics involved in a critically important [intelligence community] program."

That language, officials said, was a veiled reference to members' mounting frustration with the program and a perceived inability by the agency to show that its forces have gained territory, won battles or achieved other measurable results.

"Assad is increasingly in danger, and people may be taking bets on how long he can last, but it's largely not as a result of action by so-called moderates on the ground," said a senior Republican aide in Congress, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject.

In the past two years, the goal of the CIA's mission in Syria has shifted from ousting Assad to countering the rise of extremist groups including al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS and ISIL.

"Unfortunately, I think that ISIS, al-Nusra and some of the other radical Islamic factions are the best positioned to capitalize on the chaos that might accompany a rapid decline of the regime," Schiff said.

Even defenders of the CIA program acknowledge that moderate factions in Syria have often performed poorly and are likely to be overwhelmed in any direct showdown with the Islamic State. [...]

(24) NYT erases CIA's Efforts to Overthrow Assad (Sept 2015)

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/09/21/down-memory-hole-nyt-erases-cias-efforts-overthrow-syrias-government

Down the Memory Hole: NYT Erases CIA's Efforts to Overthrow Syria's Government (2015)

by Adam Johnson

Monday, September 21, 2015 by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)

FAIR has noted before how America's well-documented clandestine activities in Syria have been routinely ignored when the corporate media discuss the Obama administration's "hands-off" approach to the four-and-a-half-year-long conflict. This past week, two pieces—one in the New York Times detailing the "finger pointing" over Obama's "failed" Syria policy, and a Vox "explainer" of the Syrian civil war—did one better: They didn't just omit the fact that the CIA has been arming, training and funding rebels since 2012, they heavily implied they had never done so.

First, let's establish what we do know. Based on multiple reports over the past three-and-a-half years, we know that the Central Intelligence Agency set up a secret program of arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces. This has been reported by major outlets, including the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and, most recently, the Washington Post, which—partly thanks to the Snowden revelations—detailed a program that trained approximately 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year, or roughly 1/15th of the CIA's official annual budget.

In addition to the CIA's efforts, there is a much more scrutinized and far more publicized program by the Department of Defense to train "moderate rebels," of which only a few dozen actually saw battle. The Pentagon program, which began earlier this year and is charged with fighting ISIS (rather than Syrian government forces), is separate from the covert CIA operation. It has, by all accounts, been an abysmal failure.

One thing the DoD's rebel training program hasn't been a failure at, however, is helping credulous reporters rewrite history by treating the Pentagon program as the only US effort to train Syrian rebels–now or in the past. As the US's strategy in Syria is publicly debated, the CIA's years-long program has vanished from many popular accounts, giving the average reader the impression the US has sat idly by while foreign actors, Iranian and Russian, have interfered in the internal matters of Syria. While the White House, Congress and the Pentagon can't legally acknowledge the CIA training program, because it's still technically classified, there's little reason why our media need to entertain a similar charade.

Let's start with Peter Baker's New York Times piece from September 17 and some of its improbable claims:

{quote} Finger-Pointing, but Few Answers, After a Syria Solution Fails

By any measure, President Obama's effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure. The military acknowledged this week that just four or five American-trained fighters are actually fighting. {endquote}

Notice the sleight-of-hand. There may only be "four or five American-trained fighters…fighting" expressly against ISIS, but there is no doubt thousands more American-trained fighters are fighting in Syria. The DoD's statement is manifestly false, but because the New York Times is simply quoting "the military"—which, again, cannot not legally acknowledge the CIA program—it is left entirely unchallenged. This is the worst type of "officials say" journalism. The premise, while ostensibly critical of US foreign policy, is actually helping advance its larger goal of rewriting US involvement in the Syrian civil war. A four-year-long deliberate strategy of backing anti-Assad forces–which has helped fuel the bloody civil war and paved the way for the rise of ISIS–is reduced to a cheesy "bumbling bureaucrat" narrative.

Baker went on:

{quote} But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place — a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

At briefings this week after the disclosure of the paltry results, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, repeatedly noted that Mr. Obama always had been a skeptic of training Syrian rebels. The military was correct in concluding that "this was a more difficult endeavor than we assumed and that we need to make some changes to that program," Mr. Earnest said. "But I think it's also time for our critics to 'fess up in this regard as well. They were wrong."

In effect, Mr. Obama is arguing that he reluctantly went along with those who said it was the way to combat the Islamic State, but that he never wanted to do it and has now has been vindicated in his original judgment. The I-told-you-so argument, of course, assumes that the idea of training rebels itself was flawed and not that it was started too late and executed ineffectively, as critics maintain. {endquote}

The sleight-of-hand continues: The article presents the training of rebels as a "way to combat the Islamic State," but repeatedly speaks in general of training Syrian rebels as something "Obama always had been a skeptic of"–which flies in the face of the fact that he did so, to the tune of $1 billion a year over four years, with 10,000 rebels trained.

But the piece goes on to make clear that when it's talking about "training Syrian rebels," it's referring not only to the anti-ISIS program but to efforts to overthrow Syria's government as well:

{quote} The idea of bolstering Syrian rebels was debated from the early days of the civil war, which started in 2011. Mrs. Clinton, along with David H. Petraeus, then the CIA director, and Leon E. Panetta, then the Defense secretary, supported arming opposition forces, but the president worried about deep entanglement in someone else's war after the bloody experience in Iraq.

In 2014, however, after the Islamic State had swept through parts of Syria and Iraq, Mr. Obama reversed course and initiated a $500 million program to train and arm rebels who had been vetted and were told to fight the Islamic State, not Mr. Assad's government. {endquote}

This is outright false. These two paragraphs, while cleverly parsed, give the reader the impression Obama parted with the CIA and Mrs. Clinton on arming opposition forces, only to "reverse course" in 2014. But the president never "reversed course," because he did exactly what Panetta, Petraeus and Clinton urged him to do: He armed the opposition. Once again, the Pentagon's Keystone Kop plan is being passed off by journalists who should know better as the beginning and end of American involvement in the Syrian rebellion. Nowhere in this report is the CIA's plan mentioned at all.

The whitewashing would get even worse:

{quote} Some Syrian rebels who asked for American arms in 2011 and 2012 eventually gave up and allied themselves with more radical groups, analysts said, leaving fewer fighters who were friendly to the United States. {endquote}

But the US did get arms to Syrian rebels in 2012. In fact, Baker's own publication reported this fact in 2012 (6/21/12):

{quote} CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition {endquote}

Indeed, according to a rather detailed New York Times infographic from 2013 (3/23/13), shipments began, at the latest, in January 2012 {http://fair.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/SyrianRebelArms.png}:

Note that this map accompanied an article headlined "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From CIA."

The CIA's program, when discussing a fraught foreign policy issue like Syria, is simply thrown down the memory hole. How can the public have an honest conversation about what the US should or shouldn't do in Syria next when the most respected newspaper in the US can't honestly acknowledge what we have done thus far?

The New York Times wouldn't be alone. Comcast-funded Vox would also ignore the CIA rebel training program in its almost 4,000-word overview of the Syrian civil war. Again, the Pentagon's program would be the sole focus in regards to funding rebels, along with reports of Gulf states doing so as well. But the CIA funding, training and arming thousands of rebels since at least 2012? Nowhere to be found. Not mentioned or alluded to once.

Reuters and the Washington Post's reports on the US's Syrian strategy revamp, while they didn't fudge history as bad as the Times and Vox, also ignored any attempts by the CIA to back Syrian opposition rebels. This crucial piece of history is routinely omitted from mainstream public discourse.

As the military build-up and posturing in Syria between Russia and the United States escalates, policy makers and influencers on this side of the Atlantic are urgently trying to portray the West's involvement in Syria as either nonexistent or marked by good-faith incompetence. By whitewashing the West's clandestine involvement in Syria, the media not only portrays Russia as the sole contributor to hostilities, it absolves Europe and the United States of their own guilt in helping create a refugee crisis and fuel a civil war that has devastated so many for so long.

(25) US behind Syria civil war - Christopher Hill, former US Ambassador (Sept 2015)

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/who-caused-the-refugee-crisis-by-christopher-r-hill-2015-09

Who Caused the Refugee Crisis?

Christopher R. Hill

Christopher R. Hill, former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009.

SEP 23, 2015

In the Middle East, there is always plenty of blame to go around, and those who blame the US for renewing sectarianism in the region fail to recognize its antecedents and its cyclical nature. Still, the US did play a major role in the Syrian drama. In July 2011, the US and France sent their ambassadors to Hama, the site of so much bloodshed and enmity toward Syria’s government, in order to urge the “opposition” there – that is, a then-peaceful Muslim Brotherhood – to unite against the regime.

Following that visit – the culmination of an effort to bring about regime change in Syria – any prospect of dialogue or negotiation with Assad (whose family, for better or worse, had controlled Syria for decades) was destroyed. Neither ambassador ever had a consequential meeting in Damascus again. [...]

(26) Putin blames US for ISIS (Sept 2015)

http://www.dw.com/en/obama-denounces-assad-in-speech-to-un/a-18746688

Obama denounces Assad in speech to UN

Deutsche Welle 28.09.2015

Author Richard Connor

[...] Putin's made his first speech before the General Assembly in a decade.

Putin effectively put the blame for IS at the door of the US, noting that many members of the group had been members of the Iraqi military who were "thrown out into the street" after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.

Others came from Libya, the statehood of which had been destroyed because of Western powers, Putin said, while some had defected from the "so-called moderate" rebels, who had been supported by the West.

Putin was strongly critical of the US, saying it was a "grave mistake" not to cooperate with the Syrian government in the fight against IS. He urged the creation of a broad anti-terror coalition. [...]

(27) Putin to UN: Export of so-called democratic revolutions continues globally

http://www.rt.com/news/316804-putin-russia-unga-speech/

Published time: 28 Sep, 2015 16:16 Edited time: 28 Sep, 2015 18:45

The export of the so-called democratic revolutions continues, as the international community fails to learn from mistakes, which have already been made, Russian President Vladimir Putin said addressing the UNGA.

He cited the example of the revolutions in the Middle East, when people wished for change, “but how did that turn out?”

He said that instead of triumph of democracy “we have violence and social disaster,” where no one cares about human rights, including the right to life.

Actions carried out without a UN mandate could destroy the system of international relations, Putin said in his address. [...]

(28) 'West's main target in Syria is Assad, not ISIS' - Kadyrov (Sept 2015)

http://www.rt.com/politics/316932-wests-main-target-in-syria/

Published time: 29 Sep, 2015 14:55 Edited time: 29 Sep, 2015 16:05

The US and the EU cannot bring peace to the Mideast because instead of real action against Islamic State terrorists they prefer to talk about their desire to displace Syrian President Assad, the head of the Chechen Republic has told reporters.

"Today there are no more doubts that the main target of the West is Assad and not the 'Iblis State' terrorist organization," Ramzan Kadyrov told reporters on Tuesday, using wording suggested by Russian Muslim scholars to describe the group that calls itself Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). [...]

(29) The Rothschild line: Economist editorial taunts Obama, insists Assad must go (Oct 2015)

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21669950-danger-russias-intervention-syria-and-americas-timidity-afghanistan-putin-dares

Putin dares, Obama dithers

The danger of Russia's intervention in Syria, and America's timidity in Afghanistan

Oct 3rd 2015 | From the print edition: Leaders

TO HEAR Vladimir Putin, Russia has become the leader of a new global war on terrorism. By contrast Barack Obama seems wearier by the day with the wars in the Muslim world that America has been fighting for more than a decade. On September 30th Russian jets went into action to support Bashar al-Assad's beleaguered troops. It is setting up an intelligence-sharing network with Iraq and Iran. The Russian Orthodox church talks of holy war. Mr Putin's claim to be fighting Islamic State (IS) is questionable at best. The evidence of Russia's first day of bombing is that it attacked other Sunni rebels, including some supported by America. Even if this is little more than political theatre, Russia is making its biggest move in the Middle East, hitherto America's domain, since the Soviet Union was evicted in the 1970s.

In Afghanistan, meanwhile, America's campaign against the Taliban has suffered a blow. On September 28th Taliban rebels captured the northern town of Kunduz—the first provincial capital to fall to them since they were evicted from power in 2001. Afghan troops retook the centre three days later. But even if they establish full control, the attack was a humiliation.

Both Kunduz and Russia's bombing are symptoms of the same phenomenon: the vacuum created by Barack Obama's attempt to stand back from the wars of the Muslim world. America's president told the UN General Assembly this week that his country had learned it "cannot by itself impose stability on a foreign land"; others, Iran and Russia included, should help in Syria. Mr Obama is not entirely wrong. But his proposition hides many dangers: that America throws up its hands; that regional powers, sensing American disengagement, will be sucked into a free-for-all; and that Russia's intervention will make a bloody war bloodier still. Unless Mr Obama changes course, expect more deaths, refugees and extremism.

Having seen the mess that George W. Bush made of his "war on terror", especially in Iraq, Mr Obama is understandably wary. American intervention can indeed make a bad situation worse, as odious leaders are replaced by chaos and endless war saps America's strength and standing. But America's absence can make things even more grim. At some point, extremism will fester and force the superpower to intervene anyway.

That is the story in the Middle East. In Iraq Mr Obama withdrew troops in 2011. In Syria he did not act to stop Mr Assad from wholesale killing, even after he used poison gas. But when IS jihadists emerged from the chaos, declared a caliphate in swathes of Iraq and Syria, and began to cut off the heads of their Western prisoners, Mr Obama felt obliged to step back in—desultorily. In Afghanistan Mr Obama is making the same mistake of premature withdrawal. As NATO's combat operations wound down into a mission to "train, advise and assist", Mr Obama promised that the last American troops would leave Afghanistan by the end of 2016. The date had no bearing on conditions in Afghanistan but everything to do with when Mr Obama leaves the White House.

What can Mr Obama do? In Afghanistan, rather than pull out the 9,800 remaining American troops, he should reinforce them and make clear that he puts no date on their withdrawal. The rules of engagement must expand so that NATO forces can back Afghan ones. Attack aircraft should support them as needed, not just in extremis. He needs to knock heads together in Kabul, where the "unity" government forged last year between President Ashraf Ghani and his rival, Abdullah Abdullah, is dysfunctional enough to lack a defence minister. This was Mr Obama's "good war": he risks losing it.

In Syria Mr Obama's dithering means his options continually grow harder and riskier. Mr Putin is unabashedly defending a tyrant and deepening the region's Sunni-Shia divide. America must hold the line that Mr Assad will not remain in power, and set out a vision for what should follow. It needs to do more to protect the mainly Sunni population: create protected havens; impose no-fly zones to stop Mr Assad's barrel-bombs; and promote a moderate Sunni force. That may well mean staring down Russian jets.

As a judoka, Mr Putin knows the art of exploiting an opponent's weakness: when America steps back, he pushes forward. Yet being an opportunist does not equip him to fix Syria. And the more he tries to save Mr Assad the more damage he will cause in Syria and the region—and the greater the risk that his moment of bravado will turn to hubris. Given the enduring strength of America, there is much that it can still do to contain the spreading disorder—if only Mr Obama had a bit more of Mr Putin's taste for daring. ==

(30) The Economist - Rothschild-owned

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group

The Economist Newspaper Limited, trading as The Economist Group, is a British multinational media company headquartered in London and best known as publisher of The Economist. The Economist Group specializes in international business and world affairs information. Its principal activities are magazines, newspapers, conferences and market intelligence.

The Economist Group is owned by the Cadbury, Rothschild, Schroder, Agnelli and other family interests as well as a number of staff and former staff shareholders.

This page was last modified on 14 September 2015, at 09:13.

(31) Iran troops to join Syria war, Russia bombs group trained by CIA (Oct 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/02/us-mideast-crisis-russia-syria-idUSKCN0RV41O20151002

Business | Fri Oct 2, 2015 5:59am EDT

BEIRUT/MOSCOW

By Laila Bassam and Andrew Osborn

Hundreds of Iranian troops have arrived in Syria to join a major ground offensive in support of President Bashar al-Assad's government, Lebanese sources said on Thursday, a sign the civil war is turning still more regional and global in scope.

Russian warplanes, in a second day of strikes, bombed a camp run by rebels trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the group's commander said, putting Moscow and Washington on opposing sides in a Middle East conflict for the first time since the Cold War.

Senior U.S. and Russian officials spoke for just over an hour by secure video conference on Thursday, focusing on ways to keep air crews safe, the Pentagon said, as the two militaries carry out parallel campaigns with competing objectives.

"We made crystal clear that, at a minimum, the priority here should be the safe operation of the air crews over Syria," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said.

Two Lebanese sources told Reuters hundreds of Iranian troops had reached Syria in the past 10 days with weapons to mount a major ground offensive. They would also be backed by Assad's Lebanese Hezbollah allies and by Shi'ite militia fighters from Iraq, while Russia would provide air support.

"The vanguard of Iranian ground forces began arriving in Syria -soldiers and officers specifically to participate in this battle. They are not advisers ... we mean hundreds with equipment and weapons. They will be followed by more," one of the sources said.

So far, direct Iranian military support for Assad has come mostly in the form of military advisers. Iran has also mobilized Shi'ite militia fighters, including Iraqis and some Afghans, to fight alongside Syrian government forces.

Moscow said it had hit Islamic State positions, but the areas it struck near the cities of Hama and Homs are mostly held by a rival insurgent alliance, which unlike Islamic State is supported by U.S. allies including Arab states and Turkey.

Hassan Haj Ali, head of the Liwa Suqour al-Jabal rebel group that is part of the Free Syrian Army, told Reuters one of the targets was his group's base in Idlib province, struck by about 20 missiles in two separate raids. His fighters had been trained by the CIA in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, part of a program Washington says is aimed at supporting groups that oppose both Islamic State and Assad.

"Russia is challenging everyone and saying there is no alternative to Bashar," Haj Ali said. He said the Russian jets had been identified by members of his group who once served as Syrian air force pilots.

The group is one of at least three foreign-backed FSA rebel factions to say they had been hit by the Russians in the last two days. [...]

(32) Brother Nathanael for President?

http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1058

If I Were President

Brother Nathanael

September 1, 2015 @ 7:22 pm

The very first thing I’d do as President is set up a new 9/11 Commission and trash the old one.

Richard Gage of Architects & Engineers For 9/11 Truth would head it up and after proving the attack was an “Inside Job,” the stuff will hit the fan.

Israel’s Mossad will be indicted for installing Interior Demolition Devices in the Towers and Silverstein’s ‘doctor’ alibi will be debunked.

Americans will then brand Israel as an enemy and the Jewish Lobby as infiltrators.

US foreign policy will finally be freed up, and leaders–hated by Jews–like Syria’s Assad, who protects Christians, and Iran’s Rouhani, who battles ISIS, will become our allies.

We’re now on our way to ‘making America great again.’

Two. I’ll end the Fed.

Instead of gouging taxpayers with interest on the Fed’s loans to the government and killing the purchasing power of the dollar, I’ll give Congress its Constitutional right to coin our own money and put the Jewish banksters out of business.

Three. I’ll slap term limits on Supreme Court judges.

Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor–all Jews–and the lapsed Catholic, Kennedy, who all made sodomy the law of the land, will be sent packing.

I’ll sign an Executive Order challenging their homosexual law as a breach of judicial boundaries since only Congress has the right to make laws.

A smart Congress will follow and annul their ruling.

Four. I will nationalize the media.

CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and FOX will no longer be pouring out Jewish positions…but instead, voices from all directions will be sanctioned.

I’ll appoint to each channel Directors from all sides of the political spectrum and have the government sign a “non-interference” agreement with them.

We’ll be on our way to a nation where the Jewish agenda no longer holds sway.

Will my actions as President break Jewish power in America?

You bet they will. Trump can’t even come close.