War Council Pawns meet in Israel

By BILL van AUKEN | GLOBAL RESEARCH | MARCH 21, 2013

Starting a two-day visit to Israel on Wednesday, US President Barack Obama issued bellicose threats against both Syria and Iran. The visit, which plainly has the character of a US-Israeli war council, makes clear that ten years after the US invasion of Iraq, US imperialism is preparing even greater crimes in the Middle East.

The Democratic president threatened the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad that it would “be held accountable for the use of chemical weapons or their transfer to terrorists,” adding that if evidence showed that such a weapon had been used it would be a “game-changer.”

On Iran, Obama repeated his vow “to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon” and that “all options are on the table,” while recognizing Israel’s “right” to take unilateral action against Iran. There “is not a lot of daylight” between the US and Israel on Iran, he said.

Obama’s remarks came one day after the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. No speeches or ceremonies were organized by the Obama administration or the US Congress Tuesday to mark the onset of a war to which 1.5 million Americans were sent, and where nearly 4,500 died and hundreds of thousands suffered either physical or psychological wounds.

Silence, in this case, denotes guilt. Both political parties, every branch of government, the media and the US corporations were directly complicit in what unquestionably stands as the greatest war crime of the 21st century: an unprovoked war, launched on the basis of lies, against a virtually defenseless nation, claiming some one million lives and leaving an entire society in ruins.

America’s ruling elite is now pressing for even greater and more destructive conflicts, in the face of mass public opposition to war. In Orwellian fashion, familiar and discredited pretexts of “weapons of mass destruction,” terrorism and the promotion of “democracy” are being recycled, this time to justify war against Syria.

On Capitol Hill there was a drumbeat of calls for new Middle East wars. Adm. James Stavridis, the chief of the Pentagon’s European Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday on extensive planning by NATO for intervention in Syria. “We are looking at a wide range of operations, and we are prepared if called upon to be engaged as we were in Libya,” he said.

Under serious consideration, according to Stavridis, is the establishment of a “no-fly zone.” Calls for such a no-fly zone in Libya, approved by the United Nations Security Council in March 2011, led to a US-NATO bombing campaign and war for regime change.

The committee’s chairman, Senator Carl Levin, (Democrat, Michigan) led the questioning. The day before, he had spoken at the Council on Foreign Relations, calling for the establishment of “a protected zone along the Turkish-Syrian border” and the use of military force to “go after some Syrian air defenses and after some of the Syrian air power.”

Resolutions were introduced in both the House and the Senate calling for stepped-up arming and training of Western-backed “rebels” fighting to overthrow Assad.

Meanwhile, the apparent use of a chemical weapon that claimed the lives of over 30 Syrians Tuesday prompted renewed demands for direct US intervention on Capitol Hill.

The Syrian government charged that the Western-backed fighters fired the rocket carrying the chemical warhead. By all accounts, the device hit a government-controlled village outside of Aleppo. Opposition sources said that most of the victims were Syrian government soldiers, while sources in Syria described them as Alawite civilians, a population that largely supports Assad.

Lawmakers invoked Obama’s earlier threats that the use of chemical weapons in Syria represented a “red line” that would prompt US intervention. “If today’s reports are substantiated, the President’s red line has been crossed, and we would urge him to take immediate action to impose the consequences he has promised,” Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain said in a joint statement.

Graham went further in an interview, calling for sending US ground troops into Syria to secure its chemical weapons, an operation that the Pentagon estimated would require 75,000 soldiers and Marines.

The twisted logic of this campaign is that the two-year-old sectarian civil war that the US and its allies in Europe, Turkey and the Persian Gulf monarchies have fomented, funded and armed has weakened the Assad regime to such an extent that its chemical weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists.

However, these terrorists, such as the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadist militias, are the principal shock troops of the Western-backed war for regime change.

As for the claim that Washington is promoting “democracy” in Syria, there could be no more telling refutation than the “election” Monday of the prime minister for a new “interim government” to be installed on Syrian territory seized by the so-called rebels. The winner, chosen by barely 35 members of a Syrian National Council formed under the tutelage of the US State Department, was Ghassan Hitto. A US citizen and Texas-based IT executive, he left Syria as a 17-year-old over 30 years ago.

The ideological pretexts for a US war in Syria are even less coherent than the ones used to carry out the war in Iraq a decade ago. The real driving forces are the same. What is involved is a predatory war aimed at redrawing the map of the Middle East to suit the interests of US imperialism and assure its hegemony over the region’s energy resources. War for regime change in Syria is part of a broader campaign for war with Iran and carries with it the threat of drawing in Russia and China, as well.

While the American ruling establishment may want to bury the memory of the Iraq war, working people have drawn their own conclusions, with poll after poll showing the overwhelming view that it should never have been fought.

The attempt to foist a new war on the American people, using the same warmed-over lies, comes together with a deepening assault on jobs and living standards and continuous revelations of the criminality of the financial aristocracy, in whose interests these wars are fought. Such a volatile mixture is a recipe for social explosions within the United States and the development of a mass political movement against imperialist wars in Iraq, Syria and beyond.

 

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Bradley Manning says United States is ‘obsessed with killing’

“I felt I accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience.”

By DANIEL HALPER | WEEKLY STANDARD | MARCH 1, 2013

Bradley Manning pleaded guilty today to leaking classified material. “Army Pfc. Bradley Edward Manning pleaded guilty Thursday to 10 charges that he illegally acquired and transferred U.S. government secrets, agreeing to serve 20 years in prison for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks that described U.S. military and diplomatic efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the globe,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

… He also admitted that he leaked confidential file assessments of detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and five classified records from a U.S. bombing in the Farah Province of Afghanistan, which killed up to 30 civilians.

In all, the 5-1/2-year veteran once assigned to Operation Station Hammer near Baghdad in Iraq pleaded guilty to 10 counts, each drawing two years in prison.

Manning, however, pleaded not guilty to the more serious charges. “The 25-year-old soldier, however, pleaded not guilty to 12 more serious charges, including  espionage for aiding the enemy, meaning that his criminal case will go forward at a general court-martial in June. If convicted at trial, he risks a sentence of life in prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.”

Though he ultimately gave the documents to WikiLeaks, he tried first to send them to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Politico.

“Bradley Manning has revealed to his court-martial at Fort Meade, Maryland, that he tried to leak US state secrets to the Washington Post, New York Times and Politico before he turned in frustration to the new anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks,” reports the Guardian.

The Devil came to the U.S. as a man of Peace

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | DECEMBER 20, 2012

While the United States rightfully mourns the death of 20 innocent children who were murdered last week in Newtown, Connecticut, few people realize that as awful as those murders were, the man who has been given the Peace Prize for his supposed work to bring about peace on this planet, is also the same man who knowingly ordered and continues to order the assassination of innocent men, women and children in the Middle East, but for whom he drops no tear.

The death of innocent people in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria due to attacks conducted by American troops, NATO armed forces, rebel and terrorist groups supported by the United States is hypocritically understood as collateral damage as supposed to be observed and rejected as the murder to human beings of the same kind than those of us who live in the western hemisphere.

Leaving race, politics, ideology and religion aside, the murder of innocent men, women and children must always be identified as murder; not only when it is convenient to call it so. Only an immoral society can justify the murder of some people and condemn the death of others because of their skin color or the geographical area where they live.

Unfortunately, ours is an immoral society, so war and the casualties that war produces are labeled by western leaders as “humanitarian aid” while condemning it as murder when they happen in the United States, France, the United Kingdom or Canada.

The devil has arrived, and it has done so while disguising himself as a man of peace. He has even been awarded a Peace Prize for ordering and conducting the murder of thousands of people in the Middle East, while calling such murders peace actions. This man, who from a comfortable air-conditioned room in the White House, cowardly directs his armed forces to use drones to kill people who pose no threat to him, his country or his people names himself and is named by his supporters in the media and on the streets as the reincarnation of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi. Others who are even more ignorant call him our Savior.

After the watching the following video you will discover, if you haven’t done so yet, that the savior is nothing more than soulless murderer, who deserves no prize other than being identified as the most deceitful sack of garbage that has even occupied the White House. Why him? Haven’t previous presidents committed similar crimes as well? Yes, but they were confessed war mongers. The most disgusting aspect about Barack Hussein Obama is that, both in public and in private, he uses a double standard to carry out his murderous agenda while dragging a bunch of imbeciles who have been captivated by the tenderness of his voice, his fake tears and the color of his skin.

Barack Obama is not a disgusting creature because he is black, or because he has Arab roots, or because he is from Chicago or for any other reason anyone can think of or associated him with. He is a disgusting creature because he is a wolf in sheep’s wool and he uses such disguise to confuse, swindle and murder. I dare you to watch the following video from beginning to end so you can realize the kind of creature that this man is and how he is not out there to help or comfort anyone, but to carry out an agenda of murder and conquest.

Viewer discretion is advised.

 

For every child that was murdered at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, for every person that was killed during the Colorado mass shooting, for every victim of the Oregon shooting, there are hundreds of people who are murdered by the president of the United States, Barack H. Obama. How about we start mourning their deaths as well? Perhaps that mourning will bring back some sensitivity to all of us, so that we can recognize murder when we see it.

Thanks to Infowars.com for putting together irrefutable evidence that instead of being praised for murdering people, Barack H. Obama should be tried for the murder of innocent people who have died by his sword as well as for treason for wanting to use the death of innocent children in the United States to end the constitutional right of the people to keep and bear arms while he kills men, women and children across the world.

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Conflict in Syria is an example of War 2.0

Another case of Slam Dunk, Yellow Cake, WMDs.

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | DECEMBER 7, 2012

Nothing makes a better case for war than fear. There is not a better way to create fear than with allegories and hyperbole that remind people about past painful events, even though such events have nothing to do with the present. But during the George W. Bush administration, both fear and hyperbole came in handy as fuel to ‘justify’ another war in Iraq.

Now, in 2012, the same deceivers who swindled the international community into believing that Iraq posed a nuclear threat are out at their best game generating fear about chemical weapons in Syria. No one is arguing that Bashar al-Assad possesses or not chemical weapons just as no one argues that the U.S. possesses them, too. Nobody is questioning whether Assad is a tyrant who might decide to use chemical weapons just as nobody questions that the U.S. has used them and continues to use them in every conflict it intervenes.

The question is, why is the military industrial complex, aided by its minions resorting to the same rhetoric it used a few years ago to carry out another war? Well, first, because war is very profitable. Second, because it may the only possible way to destroy Assad aside from massively invading Syria with foreign troops both through air and land.

The war in Syria has been built around character assassination techniques to a point where people may buy the argument that Assad intends to use chemical weapons on his own people. Recent events resemble similar attacks; for example when the U.S. government said that Saddam Hussein was roasting babies in microwave ovens, or that Al-Qaeda was operating out of Iraq.

Now, after seeing the strong build up to war, with American battleships off the coast of Syria for no apparent reason, the Assad government has, for the thousandth time, publicly said that it has no intention of using chemicals weapons in any way, shape or form, despite the scaremongering from Western oppressors.

Since their indirect attacks on Syria have not worked as expected, the globalist who seek to control Syria — after invading and controlling Egypt and Libya — are using the tool of last resort, which is to create a fake threat to justify their invasion of yet another country in what is perhaps the most volatile region in the planet.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister, Faisal Maqdad, said that the controversy about the possible use of chemical weapons by the regime of Bashar al-Assad is a “pretext for international intervention” in Syria.

In an interview with Lebanese television station Al Manar, Maqdad insisted that the Syrian regime “would not use chemical weapons against its people” if it had any. In his opinion, the latest allegations about the possible use of these weapons by the Syrian regime “are part of a psychological warfare and a pretext for intervention” in the country, which would imply a “regional catastrophe.”

The U.S. network NBC released yesterday accusations by U.S. officials against Damascus, which include statements suggesting that Assad is preparing to use such weapons, and that the it is only a matter of receiving a final order from the president.

This week, the UN expressed concern over the possible presence of chemical weapons in the country, while the United States warned the Assad regime that the use of such weapons would have consequences. The U.S. knows very well what it is talking about as it has a long history of using chemical and biological weapons in almost every country it has invaded as well as against its own citizens.

“We fear that the U.S. and European countries could provide such weapons to terrorist organizations to say later that it was Syria who used them,” the deputy minister said, He added that he saw the controversy as a “theater to increase pressure” on Syrian authorities.

Maqdad also warned that the results of a possible intervention in Syria “will be catastrophic for the region” while implying that the Lebanese opposition was  collaborating with the rebels Syrians.

Violence has intensified in Syria amid political paralysis and mediating efforts that have failed to end a conflict that has resulted in an open civil war. The rebels have been fully advised, financed and armed by Western forces from NATO countries. Turkey, the Western puppet in the region has facilitated the air and land invasion of Syria by rebel groups and foreign military and paramilitary forces, who have been perpetrating attacks on cities all over the country.

It is estimated that since March 2011 at least 30,000 people have died in Syria as a direct result of the war between the rebels and the Syrian army. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have left the country and turned into refugees in neighboring countries. The United Nations estimates that at least 200,000 have fled the country since the conflict began 9 months ago.

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U.S. judge denies two Americans the chance to sue Donald Rumsfeld

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | NOVEMBER 9, 2012

A federal appeals court rejected Wednesday that two American citizens have the right to sue former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the torture that they allegedly suffered in Iraq by members of the U.S. Army.

Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel claim that Rumsfeld and others people who are identified in the case, developed, authorized and used violent interrogation techniques against them in Iraq.

However, the court has determined that they have no right to sue Rumsfeld or any other member of the chain of command, reversing the previous decisions of other courts.

Vance and Ertel were working for a private company in Iraq at the time. They suspected that the company was involved in corruption schemes, so such schemes were reported to the U.S. authorities.

Soon after, the two were arrested by U.S. forces in Iraq and immediately taken to Camp Cropper, where they say they were subjected to physical and emotional abuse, as well as harsh interrogations.

According to their statements, months after being released without any charges being laid against them, they filed a lawsuit for unspecified damages, alleging that his constitutional rights had been violated and that those responsible for the detention and abuse knew they were innocent.

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