Ten Days Before The End Of The World. Do you believe it? Do you even think about it? Well, I do. The people who are pushing this are in the U.S. (particularly Trump and his insane warmongering govement). I hope that the Russians handel it well to save the world.

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Ten Days Before The End Of The World

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April 12, 2018 | Categories: Articles & Columns | 
 

Ten Days Before The End Of The World

Paul Craig Roberts

The criminally insane governments of the US, UK, and France are sending a flotilla of missile ships, submarines, and an aircraft carrier to attack Syria in the face of Russian warnings. What is the likely outcome of this outrageous act of aggression based entirely on an orchestrated and transparent lie, an act of reckless aggression that is more irresponsible and more dangerous than anything done by the demonized Nazi regime in Germany?

There are no protests from European governments. There are no protesters in the streets of European and US cities. Congress has not reminded Trump that he has been given no authority by Congress to launch a military attack on a soverign country that is likely to ignite a war, possibly World War 3. Everyone seems content with the prospect of the end of the world. The moronic American presstitutes are egging it on.

Here are possible outcomes:

(1) The Russians, trapped in the deluded belief that facts and evidence matter to the West and that common sense will prevail, accept the attacks. This outcome is the most dangerous of all, because this outcome will encourage more attacks until Russia is backed into a corner and has no alternative to a direct nuclear attack on the US.

(2) Russia takes the initiative in the brewing conflict and escorts the US missile ship, USS Donald Cook, out of attack range of Syria before the attack flotilla arrives and declares a perimeter line beyond which the Western flotilla becomes target for attack. This should force a showdown between Trump’s warmonger government and the US Congress that would challenge Trump’s ability to unilaterally commit the US to war.

(3) Russia escorts the Donald Cook away from the scene and simultaneously wipes out the military capabilities of Saudi Arabia and Israel, removing Washington’s ground-based allies in its attack on Syria, thus loading the odds in Russia’s favor, and making it clear that Russia is going to pre-empt attack, not respond to one.

(4) Russia, in the deluded belief that it must prove itself in the right, accepts the attack and its unpredictable damage before responding. This outcome is almost as bad as the first, as this lets the war start in contrast to options (2) and (3) which have some possibility of preventing a US/Russian confrontation by forcing common sense on the Americans.

(5) Senior German politicians inform Merkel that Britain and France’s support of the US strike on Syria could commit NATO to a war with Russia. Germany has had one devastating experience with the Russian military and does not need another. They could pressure Merkel to withdraw Germany from NATO. The resulting consternation/confusion would likely halt the US attack on Syria/Russia.

(6) The US Joint Chiefs of Staff could easily and honestly conclude that in the event of a Russian response to an attack on Syria, the entire flotilla could be lost, carrier included, inflicting a humiliating defeat on US arms, and that in view of this possbility, the Joint Chiefs recommend against the announced attack. Possibly this has occurred and explains Trump’s latest tweets, which suggest that doubts might have entered Trump’s mind.

Even if a hopeful outcome such as (5) and (6) occurs, we are left with the dangerous situation that some elements in the US and UK governments were able to orchestrate two events—the alleged Skripal poisoning and the alleged Assad chemical attack—and use the events to leverage unsupported accusations against Russia and Syria as justifications for an illegal military attack on a sovereign country. That such an outrageous orchestration is possible proves that there is no democracy or constraint on government in the US and UK.

The idiocy of Trump, French president Macron, and UK prime minister May may be bringing the end of the world.

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Idiocy Is Bringing The End Of The World

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April 11, 2018 | Categories: Articles & Columns |
 

Idiocy Is Bringing The End Of The World

Paul Craig Roberts

Here is Jason Ditz on the coming end of the world:
https://news.antiwar.com/2018/04/10/trump-builds-coalition-for-war-against-syrian-government/ 

Vladimir Soloviev explains the failure of Putin’s policy of appeasement:
https://russia-insider.com/en/breaking-defining-moment-putin-stand-usisrael-empire-chaos-or-fold/ri23052 

If you were the president of France or the prime minister of the UK, would you permit criminally insane Washington to drag you into military conflict with Russia?  
https://www.infowars.com/get-ready-russia-trump-takes-to-twitter-to-threaten-strike-on-syria/
I didn’t think so. I wouldn’t either. So what’s with Macron and May? What’s with the French and British governments? What’s with the French and British media? I read recently that former UK Labour prime minister Tony Blair is now worth $100 million, his payoff for lying to the UK government and people in order to support the George W. Bush regime’s invasion of Iraq. Have Macron and May been promised the same?

It makes no sense for the UK and French governments to make themselves targets of a military power against which they have no possibility of defense. It makes no sense that their peoples and media sit silently while one French president and one British prime minister endanger not only France and the UK but the entirety of Europe. What’s with the European Union? There is only silence as Europe, and the world with it, are taken to the brink of annihiliation. This makes no sense. https://www.globalresearch.ca/taking-the-world-to-the-brink-of-annihilation/5635456 

People in Ghouta, doctors in Ghouta, and Russian experts who have arrived on the scene report that there is no sign of any chemical attack. Not only did Syria not use chemical weapons against the civilians that it liberated, there was no chemical attack, not even a false flag one staged by the US supported mercenaries who have been driven out of Ghouta by the Syrian Army. In other words, the chemical attack is entirely a hoax.

To keep the hoax from being confirmed by independent investigation, Washington vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to send in neutral experts to evaluate the claim of chemical attack. Why would Washington prevent an investigation that would prove Washington’s allegation? Clearly, Washington would only prevent an investigation that would disprove the false allegation. There is no doubt whatsoever that Washington’s allegation is false and is being used as an excuse to force Russia to fight or to accept Washington’s hegemony in the Middle East.

What if there was a chemical attack? Why does it matter to people who are killed whether it was by bullets, bombs, missiles, or chemicals? Why is it so bad to use chemicals instead of Hellfire missiles? Why is it OK for Washington and Israel to blow up schools, hospitals, weddings, funerals, market places, and homes full of women and children with missiles, but not OK to kill people with chemicals? Why is it worth starting World War 3 over a hoax chemical weapons attack or a real one?

Americans, for the most part a clueless people, have no awareness of the risk that the criminally insane government in Washington is taking with their lives. What if the Russians mean what they say and do not again turn the other cheek and back down? What happens if Russia replies to force with force? 

Why is it that only a few Internet sites are asking this question?

A good question Paul. And, yes, from my point of view, the US Goverment is indeed Criminally Insane! How about you?

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Is the US Government Criminally Insane?

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March 21, 2018 | Categories: Guest Contributions |

Is the US Government Criminally Insane? Read these articles and make up your mind:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49037.htm 

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/03/21/russian-military-warns-major-war-in-syria-imminent.html 

https://www.uawire.org/lavrov-us-british-french-and-other-number-of-other-countries-have-special-forces-working-in-syria 

https://www.rt.com/news/421919-chemical-weapons-militants-syria/ 

https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/03/escalation-us-assumes-naval-attack-posture/






 

Not only Americans, but much of the world accepts any statement out of Washington as the truth despite the evidence. For example, Obama arranged for a chemical weapon to be exploded in Syria and blamed it on Assad. Thus, the Red Line had been crossed and America would now invade. However, the Russians removed all chemical weapons from Syria, forcing the American armada to return to base. More recently Washington rolled out this hoax a second time by alleging that Assad had used “Sarin gas against his own people.” However, the photograpic evidence showed that the dead children were attended by persons without protective clothing and thus they too would have been dead had Sarin killed the kids.

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Trump Now a Captive of the Deep State

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April 26, 2017

Trump Now A Captive Of The Deep State

Paul Craig Roberts

When the gullible and insouciant American public and the  who participate in the deceptions permitted the Deep State to get away with the fairy tale that a few Saudi Arabians under the direction of Osama bin Laden, but without the support of any government or intelligence agency, were able to outwit the entirety of the Western Alliance and Israel’s Mossad and deliver the greatest humiliation in history to “the world’s only superpower” by making the entirety of the US government dysfunctional on September 11, 2001, Washington learned that it could get away with anything, any illegal and treasonous act, any lie. The gullible Western populations would believe anything that they were told.

Not only insouciant Americans, but much of the world accepts any statement out of Washington as the truth despite the evidence. If Washington said it, Washington’s vassals in Germany, France, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Belgium, and Japan assent to the obvious lie as if it were the obvious truth. So do the CIA purchased media of these vassal states, a collection of whores who prefer CIA subsidies to truth.

When Obama inherited the Deep State’s agenda from George W. Bush, he set up Syria’s Assad for regime change by repeating for many months that if Assad used chemical weapons in the “civil war” that Washington had sent ISIS to conduct, Assad would have crossed the “Red Line” that Obama had drawn and would, as the consequence, face an invasion by the US military, just as Iraq had been invaded based on Washington’s lie about “weapons of mass destruction.”

Having burnt this idea into the feeble minds of the Western populations, Obama then arranged for a chemical weapon to be exploded in Syria and blamed it on Assad. Thus, the Red Line had been crossed, the insouciant West was told, and America would now invade.

The UK prime minister, the usual piece of Washington-owned garbage, rushed to the support of the American invasion, promising British support. But the British Parliament voted NO. The MPs said that the UK was not going to support another American war crime justified by obvious lies. Only in Britain does democracy still have any teeth, as we saw a second time with the Brexit vote. All the rest of the West lives in vassalage and slavery. 

The Russian government also took a firm stand, admitting that Russia stupidly trusted America in Libya, but no more. We, said the Russians, will ourselves remove any and all chemical weapons from Syria and turn them over to Western “civilization” to be destroyed, which the Russians did.

What did Western “civilization” do with the weapons? They gave some of them to ISIS. This gave Washington a second chance to accuse Assad of using chemical weapons “against his own people.” 

And so Washington has rolled out this hoax a second time. During a Syrian air force attack on an ISIS position, a chemical weapon exploded, or so it is alleged. Instantly Washington said that Assad had used “Sarin gas against his own people.” Trump was shown photos of dead babies and stupidly ordered a US military strike against Syria.

This was the first time that Washington had engaged in an unambigious war crime without any cover. Trump had no UN resolution, not even one that could be stood on its head as in Libya. Trump had no NATO participation, no George W. Bush “coalition of the willing” to give cover to the war crime with the support of other governments.

There are no skirts for Trump to hid behind. He stupidly let himself be pushed into commiting an unambigious war crime.

Now all his opponents—the Deep State, the military/security complex, the CIA, the Hillary Democrats, the warmonger Republicans—have the New White House Fool under their control. If Trump doesn’t do as they want, they will impeach him for his war crime.

Meanwhile the risk of war with the Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Syrian alliance grows closer. The US shows every intention of provoking this war. Washington has imposed sanctions on 271 employees of Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center for, in Washington’s lying words, responsibility “for developing and producing non-conventional weapons and the means to deliver them.”

In order to make this false charge stick, Washington prevented any investigation whatsoever into the facts of the alleged chemical weapon associated by Western propaganda, not by any known fact, with a Syrian air attack on ISIS. If Washington is so certain that Syria is responsible, why does Washington block an investigation? If Washington is right, an investigation would prove Washington’s case. But as Washington is again lying through its teeth, an investigation would prove the contrary. And that is what Washington fears and is the reason Washington blocked an investigation.

Why do Western peoples believe the US government, a well proven liar, who blocks an investigation and asserts that everyone must believe Washington or else be put on a list of Russian agents?

Here is the lie, the raw propaganda, that the US government has no qualms about issuing: https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/sm0056.aspx It comes from the US Department of the Treasury in which I once served honorably. But honor no longer exists in the US Treasury.

Are Western populations intelligent enough to understand that the only reason for Washington to block an investigation of the alleged use by Syria of a chemical weapon is that the facts clearly do not support Washington’s lie? No, they are not.

Theodore Postol, a scientist at MIT, has concluded from his investigation that the chemical weapon was not dropped from the air but was set off on the ground and that it was not Sarin gas as Sarin lingers and the alleged aid workers who were immediately on the scene were unprotected by gloves or masks or by anything. If the gas were Sarin, they would be dead also.

The Russian explanation is that the Syrian air force attack hit a storage facility, conveniently arranged by Washington, that contained chemical weapons. I have seen reports that Washington, or Washington’s vassals such as Saudi Arabia, have provided ISIS with chemical weapons. President Putin of Russia says the reason Washington has delivered chemical weapons to ISIS is that there can be more orchestrated instances of their use that can be blamed on Assad.

I think I can say in complete confidence that this is what is happening: Washington intends to wear Russia down with orchestrated chemical attack after chemical attack, portraying Russia as an inhuman defender of Assad’s alleged chemical attacks, in order to more thoroughly isolate Russia and in order to provoke opposition to Putin’s government, especially among the US and German financed NGOs that Russia stupidly permits to operate in Russia and in the Russian media. Washington’s goal is to force by the weight of world opinion Putin to abandon Assad to Washington.

US Secretary of State Tillerson, another gigantic disappointment to those who hoped for peaceful relations between the US and Russia/China/Iran/Syria, has said that the US still intends regime change in Syria. Tillerson has advised Russia to get out of Washington’s way and to “consider carefully their support for Bashar al-Assad.” 

Russia cannot abandon Assad, because if Syria falls to Washington, Iran will be next, and then the Washington-financed jihadists will be set upon the Muslim populations of the Russian Federation and China.

This is Washington’s game plan. I am certain Putin is aware of it, and I think the Chinese are, despite their inordinate focus on making money.

The questions before us could not be any clearer: Will Russia and China break and give in to Washington? If not, will Washington become a good world citizen for the first time in America’s history, or will Washington issue more threats, thereby convincing Russia and China that their alternative is to wait for Washington’s preemptive nuclear strike or deliver one themselves?

This is the only question that the world faces that is worth our attention. I spent a quarter century in Washington. The evil that is in control there at the present time is unprecedented. I have never seen anything like it.

Can the world survive the evil that is concentrated in Washington, evil that has the support of the governments of the Western world?

Paul Craig Roberts: "The reckless and irresponsible war talk in the US government and presstitute media and among NATO and Washington’s vassals must stop immediately. Life is in the balance." "Putin has shown amazing patience with Washington’s lies and provocations, but he cannot risk Russia by trusting Washington, whom no one can trust. Not the American people, not the Russian people, not any people."

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Is That Armageddon Over The Horizon?

April 12 2017

Is That Armageddon Over The Horizon?

Paul Craig Roberts

The insouciance of the Western world is extraordinary. It is not only Americans who permit themselves to be brainwashed by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times and Washington Post, but also their counterparts in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, who rely on the war propaganda machine that poses as a media. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39573526
 
The Western “leaders,” that is, the puppets on the end of the strings pulled by the powerful private interest groups and the Deep State, are just as insouciant. Trump and his counterparts in the American Empire must be unaware that they are provoking war with Russia and China, or else they are psychopaths.

A new White House Fool has replaced the old fool. The New Fool has sent his Secretary of State to Russia. For what? To deliver an ultimatum? To make more false accusations? To apologize for the lies?

Consider the audacity of Secretary of State Tillerson. He has spent the week prior to his visit to Moscow supporting incredible lies and false allegations that Assad of Syria used chemical weapons with Russia’s permission, which justified Washington’s unambigious war crime of a military attack on a country with which the US has not declared war. Less than 100 days in office, and Trump is already a war criminal along with the rest of his warmonger government.

The entire world knows this, but no one says it. Instead, Tillerson, who has been heavy with lies and threats has the confidence to go to Moscow to tell the Russians that they have to hand over Assad to the American Uni-Power.

Tillerson’s mission demonstrates the complete, total unreality of the world in which Washington lives. Try to imagine Tillerson’s arrogance. If you had been bad-mouthing and threatening strong, important people, would you feel comfortable going over to their house to have dinner with them? Does Tillerson think that now that Russia has largely freed Syria of US-supported ISIS, Russia is going to turn Syria over to Washington?

Is he going to tell Lavrov that he didn’t really mean all those nasty lies he told about Russia, but the zionist neoconservatives made him do it? That he is not really in charge, just a tool of the Anglo-Zionist Empire?

Is Tillerson going to apologize for White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s statement that Assad, Russia’s ally, is more evil than Hitler? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39573063 

Maybe Tillerson is going to ask for asylum and get on the winning side.

Stephen Cohen, one of the few remaining Americans knowledgeable about Russia, told the two CNN presstitutes and the warmonger Col. Leighton, one of the “experts” that the presstitutes roll out to pronounce the propaganda against Russia, that Russia was preparing for hot war. It seems to have gone over the heads of the CNN presstitutes and colonel. Whose payroll are they on? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46838.htm 

The Russian leaders, who, unlike the Western liars, speak the truth, have said clearly that Russia will never again fight a war on her own territory. The Russians couldn’t put it more clearly. Provoke a war, and we will destroy you on your own territory.

When you watch the president and government in Washington, the European governments, especially the idiots in London, the Canadian and Australian governments, you can only marvel at the total stupidity of “Western leadership.” They are begging for the end of the world.

And the presstitutes are at work driving toward the end of life. Huge numbers of Western peoples are being prepared for their demise, and they are protected from the realization by their insouciance.
 
Washington is so arrogant and lost in its own hubris, that Washington does not understand that the years of clear-as-crystal lies about Russia and Russian intentions and deeds have convinced Russia that Washington is preparing the populations of the United States and Washington’s captive peoples in West and East Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan for a US pre-emptive nuclear strike against Russia. Published US war plans against China have convinced China of the same.

If not for war, what else is the change in US war doctrine for? George W. Bush abandoned the stabilizing role of nuclear weapons by moving them from a retaliatory function to a nuclear first strike. Then he pulled out of the anti-ballistic missile treaty concluded by President Richard Nixon. Now we have US missile sites positioned on Russia’s borders. We tell the Russians the lie that the missiles are to prevent an Iranian nuclear ICBM strike against Europe. This lie is told, and accepted by the puppets in Europe, despite the known, incontestable fact that Iran has neither nukes nor ICBMs. But the Russians do not accept it. They know it is another Washington lie.

When Russia hears these flagrant, blatant, obvious lies, Russia understands that Washington intends a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia.

China has reached the same conclusion.

So, here is the situation. Two countries with nuclear forces expect that the insane fools who rule the West are going to attack them with nuclear weapons. What are Russia and China doing? Are they begging for mercy?

No. They are preparing to destroy the evil West, a collection of liars and war criminals, the like of which the world has never previously experienced.

It is the US, the washed-up joke of a “uni-power” that after 16 years is still unable to defeat a few thousand lightly armed Taliban in Afghanistan, that needs to ask for mercy.

The reckless and irresponsible war talk in the US government and presstitute media and among NATO and Washington’s vassals must stop immediately. Life is in the balance.

Putin has shown amazing patience with Washington’s lies and provocations, but he cannot risk Russia by trusting Washington, whom no one can trust. Not the American people, not the Russian people, not any people.

By jumping on the Deep State’s propaganda wagon the liberal/progressive/left is complicit in the march toward Armageddon. 

I would have put this up first, had I seen it first. So please read my header on the one below. Both of today's posts bear on the deadly reversal of Trump's view of Syria and Russia.

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https://youtu.be/miLyF9C-zEo

Because I have a relatively small readership, I have sometimes separated my posts by as much as two weeks so that more of you will find my important ones. But this weekend is different. It has to do with the sudden cry that Syria must be bombed to ground in order to save its people. Of course, that is absurd, but thanks to the military-industrial-security complex and the lies of the despicable mainstream media, this is where the U.S. is now headed. So please read my last two posts before tackling this very important, but long, essay by Glenn Greenwald. Wake up America!

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Trump In Freefall Collapse

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April 9, 2017

Trump In Freefall Collapse

Glenn Greenwald explains the hypocrisy of the US political class and the removal of constitutional restraint on the power of the presidency. What he misses, perhaps, is the power of the Deep State. It required less than 100 days for Deep State propaganda to completely reverse President Trump’s announced policy of normalizing relations with Russia and removing the US from the Syrian conflict that Washington initiated. It is a far-fetched notion that the US has an accountable government. 

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/07/the-spoils-of-war-trump-lavished-with-media-and-bipartisan-praise-for-bombing-syria/

Given that my readers visit infrequently, I have been trying to leave up important posts a week or two before putting up the next. This is true even if both are the work of Paul Crairg Roberts. However, this one is extremely important, and so the one I selected was short enough to allow the reader to also take a quick look at my two preceding posts. But for those who wish more about Trump's criminal attack on Syria, PCR has provided two longer articles spelling out all of the background you may wish to know.

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Washington Has Crossed Russia’s Red Line

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April 7 2017

Washington Has Crossed Russia’s Red Line

Paul Craig Roberts

Washington’s military attack on Syria is unambigiously a war crime. It occurred without any UN authorization or even the fake cover of a “coalition of the willing.” Washington’s attack on Syria occurred in advance of an investigation of the alleged event that Washington is trying to use as its justification. Indeed, Washington’s story of Syrian use of chemical weapons is totally implausible. All chemical weapons were removed from Syria by Russia and turned over to the US and its European allies. Syria has no such weapons and has no reason to use them and every reason not to. Moreover, it is none of Washington’s business whatsoever what weapons Syria uses against terrorist forces seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

Governments in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan have not condemned this war crime. Indeed, the UK Foreign Minister has declared the UK’s support. Thus does the West reveal once again its hypocrisy.

As Russia has made clear, the alleged chemical weapons attack has every hallmark of a Washington orchestrated event in order to launch a US military attack on Syria. As the Russian Defense Ministry explained, the US air attack had to have been planned in advance of the alleged chemical weapon event. The US air strike on Syria requires advanced planning, but followed immediately the event used as the excuse: http://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12117678%40egNews
 
In other words, it was an orchestrated event.

Gilbert Doctorow says that the idiot Americans drowning in their own hubris have now crossed a Russian red line with consquences to follow. http://russia-insider.com/en/us-missile-strikes-syria-have-crossed-russian-red-lines-and-risk-serious-escalation/ri19479
 
Insane Washington is driving the world to thermo-nuclear war. And where are the protests.

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Americans who would like to know what is behind the "iron curtain" created by the so-called mainstream media must turn to the stories of the few Americans who had the guts to take themselves behind the US-created media curtain. Here below, US Representative (and retired US soldier) Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) tells you what she has found in Syria. Hint, you won't hear it in the "prestitute" US media.

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To help refugees, stop arming terrorists – Rep. Tulsi Gabbard

Published time: 1 Mar, 2017 23:05 
Edited time: 2 Mar, 2017 11:06

Representative Tulsi Gabbard called again for the US to stop aiding terrorists like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, while her guest at the presidential address to Congress, a Kurdish refugee activist, called for an end to the US policy of “regime change in Syria.”  

While many Democrats invited immigrants as their guests for President Donald Trump’s speech to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii, hosted Tima Kurdi, whose 3-year-old nephew drowned on the shores of Turkey in September 2015. Photos of Alan Kurdi’s body quickly became the symbol of Syrian refugees’ plight – and led the US to step up efforts to overthrow the Syrian government, actually magnifying their suffering.

On Wednesday, Tima Kurdi joined Gabbard at a press conference on Capitol Hill and called on Trump “to end the regime change in Syria.”

“The most important question is, how do we address the cause of these people fleeing their homes,” said Gabbard, pointing to the bill she submitted in this session of Congress. Her “Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” or HR 608, would ban the use of US taxpayers’ funds to aid terrorist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

“For years, our government has been providing both direct and indirect support to these armed militant groups, who are working directly with or under the command of terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, all in their effort and fight to overthrow the Syrian government,” Gabbard told RT.

https://youtu.be/GbhQyfYhu6M

Gabbard traveled to Syria in January on a fact-finding mission, meeting with President Bashar Assad. She also visited Aleppo, liberated in December from Islamist rebels led by Jabhat Fatah Al-Sham, a re-branded Al-Qaeda affiliate formerly known as Jabhat Al-Nusra.

The Pentagon’s $500 million effort to train and equip “moderate” Syrian rebels to fight against IS and Damascus met with disaster in 2015, as the majority of the fighters either surrendered or defected to Al-Nusra, with all of their US-funded weaponry. In the end, the program produced only “five or six” trainees, to the consternation of Congress.

With that fiasco in mind, Gabbard propose the first draft of her bill in December 2016. Her subsequent trip to Syria was met with outrage from the US foreign policy establishment and in the mainstream media, who denounced her as “Assad’s mouthpiece.”

Representative Tom Garrett (R-Virginia), a US Army veteran, spoke out in support of HR 608 and said that the goal of US policy in Syria should be peace.

“Tulsi understands that arming the so-called ‘rebels’ in Syria has only led to more bloodshed, more suffering, and created more refugees,” Tima Kurdi said in a statement on Tuesday. “A military solution in Syria is not the answer. I hope that President Trump will stop arming terrorists and commit to a political solution in Syria—it is the only way to restore peace.”

Truth in advertising: (1) Some of my best friends are Jewish. (2) The United Nations have a rule that any nation that attacks a peaceful nation is guilty of war crimes. But (3) the UN looks away when the attacker is the U.S. Therefore, 9 sovran nations have been destroyed by the U.S. and NATO in the last decade, killing thousands. This blog begins with an interview with Four-star General Wesley Clark, the finest top U.S. general since Dwight Eisenhower. Yet even Eisenhower could not have succeded at his landing in Normandy beach were it for the Russians destroying the Third Reich in the east at the expense of 20 million Russian casualties (by far the most for any one country in WW II). Yet, all of these facts are lost to Americans who believe their country's propaganda, spread by the despicable "mainstream media" who repeat their lies. Now we are heading toward a nuclear war with Russia, whose president Vladimir Putin tries hard to avoid, despite having superior weapons. Yet the insane U.S. neocons seem to want such a war, and they were making progress ...until Trump. Wake up America!

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By Alison Weir
 
President Trump has issued an executive order suspending entry to the U.S for people from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, and Yemen (the order is called “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States”). These same countries were the focus of the “Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015” under President Obama.

While reports on Trump’s ban emphasize that these are Muslim majority countries, analysts seem to have ignored another significant characteristic that these countries share.

With just a single exception, all of these countries were targeted for attack by certain top U.S. officials in 2001. In fact, that policy had roots that went back to 1996, 1991, 1980, and even the 1950s. Below, we will trace this policy back in time and examine its goals and proponents.

The fact is that Trump’s action continues policies influenced by people working on behalf of a foreign country, whose goal has been to destabilize and reshape an entire region. This kind of aggressive interventionism focused on “regime change” launches cascading effects that include escalating violence.

Already we’ve seen devastating wars, massive refugee movement that is uprooting entire peoples and reshaping parts of Europe, desperate and horrific terrorism, and now the horror that is ISIS. If this decades-long effort is not halted, it will be increasingly devastating for the region, our country, and the entire world.

2001 Policy Coup

Four-star general Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander, has described what he called a 2001 “policy coup” by a small group of people intent on destabilizing and taking over the Middle East, targeting six of the seven countries mentioned by Obama and Trump.

Clark gave the details in 2007 in an interview broadcast by Democracy Now and in a lecture at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.

Clark described a chance meeting in the Pentagon in 2001 ten days after 911 in which he learned about the plan to take down these countries.

After meeting with then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Clark went downstairs to say hello to people on the Joint Staff who had worked for him in the past. One of the generals called him in.

‘Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” He told Clark, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.”

Clark was shocked. He said, “We’re going to war against Iraq? Why?” The officer said he didn’t know. Clark asked if they had found information connecting Saddam to Al-Qaeda. The man said, “No, no, there’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.”

A few weeks later, Clark went back to the Pentagon and spoke to the general again. He asked whether the U.S. was still planning to go to war against Iraq.

The general replied: “Oh, it’s worse than that.” Clark says that the general picked up a piece of paper and said, “I just got this down from upstairs today. 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.”

Clark asked, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.”

Clark said he was stunned: “I couldn’t believe it would really be true. But that’s actually what happened. These people took control of the policy of the United States.”

1991

Clark says he then remembered a 1991 meeting he had with Paul Wolfowitz. In 2001 Wolfowitz was Deputy Secretary of Defense, and in 1991 he was Under Secretary of Defense of Policy, the number three position at the Pentagon.

Wolfowitz is a pro-Israel neoconservative who an associate has called “over the top when it comes to Israel.”

Clark describes going to Wolfowitz’s office in March of 1991. Clark said to Wolfowitz, “You must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm.” Clark says Wolfowitz replied, “Not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t.”

Wolfowitz declared the U.S. had an opportunity to clean up “Syria, Iran, Iraq, before the next super power came on to challenge us.”

Clark says he was shocked at Wolfowitz’s proposal that the military should initiate wars and change governments, and that Wolfowitz believed that the U.S. should invade countries whose governments it disliked. “My mind was spinning.”

Clark says Scooter Libby was at that meeting. Libby is another pro-Israel neoconservative. In 2001 He was Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, and worked closely with the Office of Special Plans, which manufactured anti-Iraq talking points.

“This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup,” Clark said in his 2007 lecture. “Wolfowitz, Rumsfield, Cheney, and you could name a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for a New American Century. They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.”

(The Project for a New American Century was a think tank that operated from 1997-2006, and was replaced by the Foreign Policy Initiative.)

Clark continued: “Did they ever tell you this? Was there a national dialogue on this? Did Senators and Congressmen stand up and denounce this plan? Was there a full-fledged American debate on it? Absolutely not. And there still isn’t.”

Clark noted that Iran and Syria know about the plan. “All you have to do is read the Weekly Standard and listen to Bill Kristol, and he blabbermouths it all over the world – Richard Perle is the same way. They could hardly wait to finish Iraq so they could move into Syria.”

Clark says that Americans did not vote George Bush into office to do this. Bush, Clark pointed out, had campaigned on “a humble foreign policy, no ‘peace keeping,’ no ‘nation building.’”

Others have described this group, their responsibility for pushing the invasion of Iraq, and their pro-Israel motivation.

Neoconservatives, Israel, and Iraq

A 2003 article in Ha’aretz, one of Israel’s main newspapers, reported bluntly: “The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish, who are pushing President Bush to change the course of history.” (Ha’aretz often highlights the Jewish affiliation of important players due to its role as a top newspaper of the self-declared “Jewish State.”)

It gave what it termed “a partial list” of these neoconservatives: U.S. government officials Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Eliot Abrams, and journalists William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer. The article described them as “mutual friends who cultivate one another.”

The article included an interview with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who was quoted as saying:

 
“It’s the war the neoconservatives wanted. It’s the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite.”

The article continued:

“Friedman laughs: ‘I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened.’”

Another Ha’aretz article described how some of these individuals, high American officials, gave Israeli leaders tips on how to manage American actions and influence US Congressmen, concluding: “Perle, Feith, and their fellow strategists are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments and Israeli interests.”

Ha’aretz reported that the goal was far more than just an invasion of Iraq: “at a deeper level it is a greater war, for the shaping of a new Middle East.” The article said that the war “was being fought to consolidate a new world order.”

“The Iraq war is really the beginning of a gigantic historical experiment…”

We’re now seeing the tragic and violent result of that regime-change experiment.

American author, peace activist, and former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison discussed the neoconservatives who promoted war against Iraq in a 2002 article. She wrote: “Although much has been written about the neo-cons who dot the Bush administration, their ties to Israel have generally been treated very gingerly.”

The Bush administration, she wrote, was “peppered with people who have long records of activism on behalf of Israel in the United States, of policy advocacy in Israel, and of promoting an agenda for Israel often at odds with existing U.S. policy.”

“These people,” she wrote, “who can fairly be called Israeli loyalists, are now at all levels of government, from desk officers at the Defense Department to the deputy secretary level at both State and Defense, as well as on the National Security Council staff and in the vice president’s office.”

Author Stephen Green wrote a meticulously researched 2004 expose describing how some of these individuals, including Perle and Wolfowitz, had been investigated through the years by U.S. intelligence agencies for security “lapses” benefiting Israel.

Yet, despite a pattern of highly questionable actions suggestive of treason, they continued to procure top security clearances for themselves and cronies. The neocon agenda also became influential in Britain.

(During the recent U.S. presidential election, neoconservatives were extremely hostile to Trump, and have been perturbed to have less influence in his administration they they expected to have with Hillary Clinton. They may be relieved to see him targeting their pet punching bags in the Middle East. It’s unclear whether neoconservatives will remain outside the White House’s inner circle for long: neocon Michael Ledeen is quite close to Trump’s recently named White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. And there is talk that Trump may appoint Elliott Abrams as Deputy Secretary of State.)

1996 plan against Iraq and Syria

The neocon regime-change strategy had been laid out in a 1996 document called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” It was written for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a study group led by Richard Perle. Although Perle and the other authors were American citizens, the “realm” in question was Israel.

Perle was chairman of the United States Defense Policy Board at that time. He had previously been U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy.

The report stated that in the past, Israel’s strategy was to get the U.S. to use its money and weaponry to “lure Arabs” to negotiate. This strategy, the plan stated, “required funneling American money to repressive and aggressive regimes.”

The report recommended, however, that Israel go beyond a strategy just focused on Israel-Palestine, and address the larger region – that it “shape its strategic environment.”

It called for “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria” and “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” The paper also listed Iran and Lebanon as countries to be dealt with (and Turkey and Jordan as nations to be used in the strategy).

The plan stressed that it was necessary to obtain U.S. support for the strategy, and advised that Israel use “language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the cold war … .”

Perle, Douglas Feith (who would be Deputy Under Secretary of Defense by 2001) and the other signatories of the report framed their proposal as a new concept, but the idea for Israel to reshape the political landscape of the Middle East had been discussed for years. (Lest we be unclear, “reshape the political landscape” means to change governments, something that has never been accomplished without massive loss of life and far-reaching repercussions.)

In 1992 Israeli leaders were already working to indoctrinate the public about an alleged need to attack Iran. Israeli analyst Israel Shahak wrote in his book Open Secrets that the goal would be “to bring about Iran’s total military and political defeat.”

Shahak reported: “In one version, Israel would attack Iran alone, in another it would ‘persuade’ the West to do the job. The indoctrination campaign to this effect is gaining in intensity. It is accompanied by what could be called semi-official horror scenarios purporting to detail what Iran could do to Israel, the West and the entire world when it acquires nuclear weapons as it is expected to a few years hence.”

1982 & 1950s Israeli plans to fragment the Middle East

A document called “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,” proposed by Israeli analyst Oded Yinon, was published by the World Zionist Organization in 1982.

The document, translated by Israel Shahak, called for the dissolution of existing Arab states into smaller states which would, in effect, become Israel’s satellites.

In an analysis of the plan, Shahak pointed out: “[W]hile lip service is paid to the idea of the ‘defense of the West’ from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power.”

Shahak noted that Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon planned “to deceive the Americans after he has deceived all the rest.”

Shahak wrote that reshaping the Middle East on behalf of Israel had been discussed since the 1950s: “This is not a new idea, nor does it surface for the first time in Zionist strategic thinking. Indeed, fragmenting all Arab states into smaller units has been a recurrent theme.”

As Shahak pointed out, this strategy was documented in a book called Israel’s Sacred Terrorism (1980), by Livia Rokach. Drawing on the memoirs of the second Prime Minister of Israel, Rokach’s book described, among other things, a 1954 proposal to execute regime change in Lebanon.

The result

Returning to the present, let’s examine the situation the in the “countries of concern” named by President Trump last week, by President Obama in 2015, and targeted by Wolfowitz et al in 2001.

Several years ago, journalist Glenn Greenwald commented on General Clark’s statement about the 2001 policy coup: “If you go down that list of seven countries that he said the neocons had planned to basically change the governments of, you pretty much see that vision… being fulfilled.”

Greenwald noted that the governments of Iraq, Libya, and Lebanon had been changed; the U.S. had escalated its proxy fighting and drone attacks in Somalia; U.S. troops were deployed in Sudan; “and the most important countries on that list, Iran and Syria, are clearly the target of all sorts of covert regime change efforts on the part of the United States and Israel.”

Below are sketches of what’s happened:

Iraq was invaded and the country destroyed. According to a 2015 NGO report, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq had led to the deaths of approximately 1 million Iraqis – 5 percent of the total population of the country – by 2011. More than three million Iraqis are internally displaced, and the carnage continues. The destruction of Iraq and impoverishment of its people is at the root of much of today’s extremism and it’s been demonstrated that it led to the rise of ISIS, as admitted by former British Prime Minister and Iraq war co-perpetrator Tony Blair.

Libya was invaded in 2011 and its leader violently overthrown; in the post-Gaddafi power vacuum, a 2011 UN report revealed torture, lynchings and abuse. Five years on, the country was still torn by civil war and ISIS is reportedly expanding into the chaos. A 2016 Human Rights Watch report stated: “Libya’s political and security crisis deepened … the country edged towards a humanitarian crisis, with almost 400,000 people internally displaced.” Warring forces “continued with impunity to arbitrarily detain, torture, unlawfully kill, indiscriminately attack, abduct and disappear, and forcefully displace people from their homes. The domestic criminal justice system collapsed in most parts of the country, exacerbating the human rights crisis.” [Photos here]

Sudan: The U.S. engaged in so-called “nation-building” in Sudan, advanced the claim in 2005 that the government was perpetrating a genocide, and some U.S. players ultimately organized the secession of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011. (Neocon Israel partisan Elliott Abrams was one of these players.) One journalist reported the result: “[A]n abyss of unspeakable misery and bloodshed … . Tens of thousands have been killed, 1.5 million have been displaced, and 5 million are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.”

Somalia: There have been a number of U.S. interventions in Somalia, most recently a clandestine war under Obama using Special Operations troops, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies; Somali extremists, like others, repeatedly cite Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, enabled by the U.S., as motivators of their violent extremism.

Iran: Iran has long been targeted by Israel, and Israel partisans have driven the anti-Iran campaign in the U.S. Most recently there has been a public relations effort claiming that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, despite the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies and other experts do not support these accusations. Israel and the U.S. deployed a computer virus against Iran in what has been called the world’s first digital weapon.  Young Iranian nuclear physicists have been assassinated by U.S. ally Israel, and the U.S. instituted a blockade against Iran that caused food insecurity and mass suffering among the country’s civilians. (Such a blockade can be seen as an act of war.) Democratic Congressman and Israel partisan Brad Sherman admitted the objective of the Iran sanctions: “Critics of sanctions argue that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”

Yemen: The US has launched drone strikes against Yemen for years, killing numerous Yemeni civilians and even some Americans. In 2010, a few weeks after Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, he had the military use cluster bombs that killed 35 Yemeni women and children. The Obama administration killed a 16-year-old American in 2011, and a few days ago U.S. forces under Trump killed the boy’s sister. In 2014 American forces attacked a wedding procession, and in 2015 the Obama administration admitted it was making war on Yemen. Today over two million Yemeni children suffer from malnutrition. The Yemeni regime that we’re attacking became politically active in 2003 as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Syria: In an email revealed by Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton wrote that the “best way to help Israel” was to overthrow the Syrian regime.

Syria seems to be a poster child for the destruction recommended by Israeli strategists. As the UK Guardian reported in 2002: “Disorder and chaos sweeping through the region would not be an unfortunate side-effect of war with Iraq, but a sign that everything is going according to plan.”

Half the Syrian population is displaced – 5 million have fled the country and another 6 million are internally displaced – and over 300,000 are dead from the violence. Major cities and ancient sites are in ruins and the countryside devastated. Amnesty International calls it “the worst humanitarian crisis of our time.”

While the uprising against a ruthless dictator was no doubt begun by authentic Syrian rebels, others with questionable agendas flowed in, some supported by the U.S. and Israel. Israel’s military intelligence chief said Israel does not want ISIS defeated. Israel’s defense minister has admitted that Israel has provided aid to ISIS fighters.

ISIS

A major factor in Syria’s chaos and the rise of ISIS was the destruction of Iraq, as revealed by in-depth interviews with ISIS fighters by researchers for Artis International, a consortium for scientific study in the service of conflict resolution:

“Many assume that these fighters are motivated by a belief in the Islamic State… but this just doesn’t hold for the prisoners we are interviewing. They are woefully ignorant about Islam and have difficulty answering questions about Sharia law, militant jihad, and the caliphate.”

“More pertinent than Islamic theology is that there are other, much more convincing, explanations as to why they’ve fought for the side they did.”

One interviewee said: “The Americans came. They took away Saddam, but they also took away our security. I didn’t like Saddam, we were starving then, but at least we didn’t have war. When you came here, the civil war started.”

The report noted that the fighters “came of age under the disastrous American occupation after 2003.”

“They are children of the occupation, many with missing fathers at crucial periods (through jail, death from execution, or fighting in the insurgency), filled with rage against America and their own government. They are not fueled by the idea of an Islamic caliphate without borders; rather, ISIS is the first group since the crushed Al Qaeda to offer these humiliated and enraged young men a way to defend their dignity, family, and tribe.”

The leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was imprisoned for eight months in the infamous Abu Ghraib, a U.S.-run Iraqi prison known for grotesque torture of prisoners. Photos published at that time show U.S. soldiers smiling next to piles of naked prisoners and a hooded detainee standing on a narrow box with electrical wires attached to his outstretched hands.

An Abu Ghraib interrogator later revealed that Israelis trained them in the use of techniques used against Palestinians. General Janis Karpinski (in charge of the unit that ran the prison) and others say that Israelis were involved in interrogations. It was reported that the head of the defense contracting firm implicated in the torture at Abu Ghraib prison had close ties to Israel and had visited an Israeli training camp in the West Bank.

Another major factor in the rise of anti-Western extremism is the largely unconditional support for Israel’s violent oppression of Palestinians. As a UN report documented, “The scale of human loss and destruction in Gaza during the 2014 conflict was catastrophic and has … shocked and shamed the world.”

Professor John Mearsheimer of and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard have written that U.S. policies promoted by the Israel lobby have given “extremists a powerful recruiting tool, increases the pool of potential terrorists and sympathizers, and contributes to Islamic radicalism around the world.” Osama Bin Laden cited U.S. support for Israeli crimes against Palestinians among his reasons for fighting the U.S. The U.S. gives Israel over $10 million per day.

Reaction to the Trump executive order

 

Thousands of people across the U.S. have opposed Trump’s order for the extreme hardship it imposes on multitudes of refugees. The focus on Muslims (Trump has said that Christians might be exempted) has caused outrage at such religious discrimination and unfair profiling (the large majority of Muslims strongly oppose extremism).

Individuals across the political spectrum from Code Pink to the Koch brothers have decried the order. The Kochs issued a strong statement against it:

“We believe it is possible to keep Americans safe without excluding people who wish to come here to contribute and pursue a better life for their families. The travel ban is the wrong approach and will likely be counterproductive. Our country has benefited tremendously from a history of welcoming people from all cultures and backgrounds. This is a hallmark of free and open societies.”

New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, who supported the Iraq War and suggests God sent him to guard Israel, choked back tears at a press conference and called the order “mean-spirited and un-American.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), known for its fervent pro-Israel advocacy (and history of smearing criticism of Israeli policy as “anti-Semitism”), has vowed a “relentless fight” against the ban.

Some are concerned that Trump’s action will stoke terrorism, rather than defend against it. Many others support the order in the belief it makes them safer from extremist violence. (As mentioned above, the Obama administration undertook a similar, though milder, action for a similar reason.)

I suggest that everyone – both those who deplore the order for humanitarian reasons, and those who defend it out of concern for Americans’ safety – examine the historic context outlined above and the U.S. policies that led to this order.

For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations have enacted largely parallel policies regarding the Middle East and Israel-Palestine. We are seeing the results, and most of us are deeply displeased.

I would submit that both for humanitarian obligations and for security necessities, it is urgent that we find a different way forward.

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Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel. 

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