By UK Ambassador Craig Murray
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/
Ambssador Murray, who from his experiences during various postings abroad, can speak with authority about torture, concludes that Julian is indeed being tortured. U.S. vassal UK is running kangaroo court proceedings with the undisguised participation of U.S. officials on the scene in Court. Murray fears for Julian’s mental as well as physical health.
By Ray McGovern
Recall how the charge that “Saddam gassed his own people” greased the skids for war on Iraq. It may be a bit unfair to expect Rep. Ro Khanna, D, California to remember. He was cramming for the bar exam when the gassing accusations began to pile up to support “regime change” in Iraq. Now, though, Ro Khanna has no excuse for not doing his homework before buying into the propaganda line that “Assad gassed his own people.”
“Saddam’s gassing his own people” was such an effective rhetorical and emotional flourish against “the evil Iraqi dictator” that, a decade later, neocons (with nary a dent in their teflon armor from the fiasco in Iraq) tried it again, with “the evil Syrian dictator,” Bashar al-Assad, the target this time. Again, the rhetoric was very effective, but in the end President Barack Obama was smart enough to figure out a way to avoid an open attack on Syria. Instead, and against his better judgment, he did acquiesce to the National Security State by authorizing CIA arming of “moderate” rebels. Less than a year later, in a moment of unusual candor, Obama admitted that the notion of “moderate” rebels in Syria was a “fantasy.” ( See: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/09/opinion/president-obama-thomas-l-friedman-iraq-and-world-affairs.html?_r=0 .)
Sadly, “progressives” like Amy Goodman still parrot the official canard about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “gassing his own people” in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August 21, 2013. Ro Khanna is simply taking his cue from the rhetoric of Obama, for whom he ended up working — and from Amy, the kind of “progressive” he learns from … or doesn’t.
I recently tweeted:
Note to: @RoKhanna: Your recent words on @democracynow re Syria are oddly damning: You said: “We called for regime change,” “helped arm” rebels, have “moral responsibility” to not “walk away.” Even added the canard re Assad’s “chemical attacks against his own people.” See: https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/11/the-syrian-sarin-false-flag-lesson/
A Rare Moment When Obama Faced the Neocons Down
At first, President Barack Obama was hardly a profile in courage, doing nothing to restrain John Kerry’s disingenuous, evidence-free charge that Assad was responsible for the chemical attack at Ghouta. We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity saw the sarin attack as a false-flag operation and told Obama so. (See: https://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/06/obama-warned-on-syrian-intel/ .) We also appealed to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey to warn the President, and it is clear that he did so (he probably needed little urging from us). ( See: https://consortiumnews.com/2013/08/30/an-appeal-to-gen-dempsey-on-syria/ .)
in any event, to Obama’s credit and against the advice of virtually all his aides, he came up with an artful way to fend off strong pressure to attack Syria on what he had been warned were almost certainly false pretenses. Obama surprised almost everyone by publicly conceding that Congress should have some say before the U.S. started an open war on Syria. That delaying tactic allowed enough time for Russian President Vladimir Putin to help Obama avoid getting involved in another overt regime-change war. Putin played deus ex machina in helping lift Obama out of the corner into which he had let himself be painted.
President Putin told Obama that the Russians had persuaded Assad to give up his vestigial chemical weapons to be destroyed, under UN inspection, on a U.S. ship specifically outfitted for such tasks. Just two weeks later, Obama still found it politic to read from the neocon teleprompter about Syrian culpability for the chemical attack in Ghouta. In his address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2013, he declared, “It’s an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the [Syrian] regime carried out this attack.” He knew better.
Not a “Slam Dunk”
Typically, Obama waited a few years until he considered it safe to tell the “rest of the story” — presumably for posterity. He told his unofficial biographer, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic (see the April 2016 issue), that National Intelligence Director James Clapper had warned him in late August 2013 (a week before he went to St. Petersburg to meet with Putin and a month before his U.N. speech) that the evidence pinning blame on Damascus for the sarin attack was far from airtight.
Buried in Goldberg’s fulsome article was Obama’s revelation that Clapper had interrupted the President’s morning intelligence briefing “to make clear that the intelligence on Syria’s use of sarin gas, while robust, was not a ‘slam dunk.’” Clapper chose his words carefully, echoing the language that CIA Director George Tenet used to assure President George W. Bush that a case could be made to convince the American people that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
This time around, intelligence community analysts on Syria saw no persuasive evidence that Assad had authorized a sarin attack in Ghouta, and the honest ones wanted to avoid responsibility for another fiasco like the attack on Iraq, which was “justified” by fraudulent intelligence. Clapper may have feared he had a burgeoning revolt on his hands. There is even some chance that Clapper himself was trying to avoid repeating his unconscionable, consequentially deceitful performance before the war on Iraq.
We Found What Wasn’t Really There
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put Clapper in charge of imagery analysis before the war on Iraq. From Rumsfeld’s point of view, it was a smart move. Clapper, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, actually admits in his memoir that blame for the “failure” to find the (non-existent) WMD rests “where it belongs — squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.” [emphasis added].
Thus far the words of the hapless Clapper on Iraq before that war. On Syria, Obama continued to dissemble in blaming the chemical event in Ghouta on Assad. And, in turn, Obama’s rhetoric was, of course, regurgitated by mainstream U.S. news media, including erstwhile “progressive” outlets like democracynow.org (which was already morphing into the “mainstream” on such issues). The Establishment, including now Ro Khanna and other Obama acolytes, have continued to treat Syria’s “guilt” for the sarin attack in Ghouta as “flat fact.”
Fortunately, in the end the neocons did not get their war on Syria in 2013. I described an unusually up-front-and-personal experience of their jaw-dropping chagrin under the subtitle Morose at CNN in “How War on Syria Lost Its Way.” (See: https://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/14/how-war-on-syria-lost-its-way/. ) That said, there appears to be nothing as resilient as neocons. It would be a mistake to count them down and out, even now, on Syria.
By Ray McGovern, October 18, 2019
Pepe Escobar has written a very good piece on Syria. Ray sent this kudo:
Pepe,
Kudos on your Syria exclusive to Consortium News: https://consortiumnews.com/2019/10/18/pepe-escobar-the-road-to-damascus-how-the-syria-war-was-won/ . A true chef-d’oeuvre!
I can just see tall, white, hubris-full patrician John Kerry — a regular reader of yours, I hope :)) — shaking his head at this point, and whining “Why didn’t anyone tell me!”
Speak for your self, John. Why did you never ask?
This particular animal species amounts to a noxious blend of “US-indispensable” arrogance and naiveté. It is not a vanishing species; it is still far from slithering out of the Swamp.
Here, for example, is Kerry, toward the end of his tenure at State, aping W in explaining how it is such “hard work” TO ALIGN FORCES in such a complicated situation. He was interviewed by Steve Clemons, then with The Atlantic, shortly after Ash Carter had the USAF bomb/kill a bunch of Syrian troops, ending the ceasefire in Syria that Kerry and Lavrov had just spent 11 “complicated” months trying to work out — and had succeeded in working out with the explicit blessings of Obama and Putin. (Note: Kerry doesn’t even mention the Pentagon “complication.”)
++++++++++++++++++
Sept. 29, 2016
“SECRETARY KERRY: — but Syria is as complicated as anything I’ve ever seen in public life, in the sense that there are probably about six wars or so going on at the same time – Kurd against Kurd, Kurd against Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sunni, Shia, everybody against ISIL, people against Assad, Nusrah. This is as mixed-up sectarian and civil war and strategic and proxies, so it’s very, very difficult to be able to align forces. So it’s —
“MR CLEMONS: So in the middle of that, why did you think you could get a ceasefire?”
++++++++++++++
I know only too well that it is impossible to include all salient factors even in a piece the length of yours. But, as I imagine you will agree, Israel was/is even more a factor than hubris and/or naiveté. Granted, it was six years ago, but even the NY Times ran a highly revealing lead story (on Sept. 6, 2013) on this aspect after NYT Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren asked senior Israeli officials what Israel’s preferred outcome in Syria was. The answer? “No Outcome.” ( See: https://raymcgovern.com/2019/09/06/obama-was-almost-mousetrapped-into-another-open-war-in-syria-will-trump-be-able-to-resist-similar-mounting-pressure/. )
So there IS a big loser if current trends continue, and this remains a huge chunk of the story.
All the same, your piece is a terrific contribution. Adelante! … or as we say in the Brazilian part of the Bronx, “You da man, man.”
Ray
By Stephen Kinzer – Boston Globe – October 17, 2019
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/10/17/condemning-trump-syria-buffet-outrage/6tb62A8186pWIIVKSY5HHP/story.html
A Must-Read: Whether arming Kurds & “moderate” rebels in Syria, or devising ways to ensure a Hillary win, Obama’s tragic flaw was he thought John Brennan “Clever like Kissinger.” Kudos to the Boston Globe and Stephen Kinder for exposing how it went down in Syria.
Several years ago, the United States hired Kurdish fighters to be our mercenaries in Syria. This month we decided we don’t need them anymore, and abandoned them to their fate. Turkey, which considers Kurdish militancy a mortal threat, quickly began bombing them. This set off a veritable orgy of indignation in Washington. It is a classic example of “buffet outrage,” in which one picks and chooses which horrors to condemn.
Among those shedding crocodile tears, often accompanied by vivid threats against Turkey, are politicians and pundits who have never uttered a peep about American bombs laying waste to Yemen or American sanctions devastating lives in Iran. The United States deserves condemnation for abandoning its promise to the Kurds. Much of it, however, is a hypocritical blend of anti-Trump fanaticism and frustration over the emerging reality that we have lost the Syrian war.
Abandoning the Kurds is not a policy that materialized out of thin air. It is the product of two long chains of American error, one dating to the beginning of the Syrian war and the other even further back. The deeper history of our Middle East tragedy begins in 1980, when President Carter declared that any challenge to American power in the Persian Gulf region would be repelled “by any means necessary, including military force.”
A generation later, President George W. Bush recklessly ordered the invasion of Iraq, which set the region afire and led to the creation of ISIS.
The more recent set of causes for our Kurdish misadventure began in 2011, when President Obama ordered President Bashar Assad of Syria to “step aside.” Beyond the arrogance that leads American presidents to think they can and should decide who may rule other countries lay the utter impossibility of achieving that goal.
The head-chopping death cults that fought alongside our partners in Syria, including Jabhat al-Nusra, the local al-Qaeda franchise, and Ahrar al-Sham, which seeks to “build an Islamic State” based on “Allah’s Almighty Sharia,” have as part of their agenda the murder of every Shia Muslim. Since the population of nearby Iran is 90 percent Shia, it should have been obvious from the beginning that Iran would use every ounce of its considerable power to assure Assad’s survival. If Obama had looked at Syria realistically rather then succumbing to fantasy, he would have understood that Assad and his Iranian backers would do whatever necessary to defeat the American project. Instead he plunged ignorantly into a conflict that we had no prospect of winning.
Following the example his predecessor set when invading Afghanistan, Obama looked for “partners” who would fight the anti-Assad war for us. Many of the militias we hired and armed were connected to jihadist terror gangs. That made sense, because the Assad government is resolutely secular and those fanatics hate secularism. We also hired Syrian Kurds. They agreed to fight not because they wanted to commit genocide against Shia Muslims and other infidels, but for a completely different reason. They had watched their Kurdish cousins in northern Iraq establish a mini-state, and dreamed of doing the same in northern Syria. If they supported the American war against Assad, they reasoned, the United States might reward them by helping them turn their piece of Syria into an autonomous region or quasi-independent state.
This was never a realistic possibility. The country that Syrian Kurds wanted to carve out for themselves, which they called “Rojava,” did not have nearly the size, population, or military strength to survive in the unforgiving Middle East. Kurdish leaders understood this, but believed they would thrive anyway because their American friends would defend them. That was a pitifully naive miscalculation. The United States has repeatedly made lavish promises to the Kurds and then betrayed them — most notably in the 1970s, when we encouraged Iraqi Kurds to rebel against Saddam Hussein’s government and then abandoned them when Saddam made an accommodation with our ally, the Shah of Iran.
Yet Kurds never seem to learn. Their childlike trust in American promises brings to mind the cartoon character Charlie Brown, whose so-called friend Lucy pulls the football away at the last moment every time he tries to kick, but who nonetheless keeps believing this time will be different.
Although the Kurds did not foresee this betrayal, Assad did. “We say to those groups who are betting on the Americans, the Americans will not protect you,” he warned in a speech nine months ago. The Kurds should have listened. In fact, seeking Assad’s protection was always their Plan B. Now, very late in the game and after taking thousands of casualties fighting for their alluring but unfaithful American “friends,” they are doing it. They have effectively surrendered to the Syrian army and asked for its help in defense against Turkey, which thought it had a chance to crush them and establish itself as the de facto ruler of “Rojava.” The Kurds’ alliance with the United States was doomed from the start. Alliance with Assad makes more sense. He may not be the world’s most reliable ally, but he is more trustworthy than the feckless United States.
Although the Kurds’ decision to ask pardon from Assad and join him in rebuilding a secular state is years overdue, it is welcome and wise. It brings Syrians a step closer to the only solution that can end their suffering: reunification. This war will only end when the government re-establishes its authority over all of Syrian territory and hostile foreign forces withdraw. Syria Kurds have belatedly recognized this truth. We should do the same.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
By Ray McGovern
Toward the top of her democracynow.org program yesterday, Amy Goodman featured the following summary from a par-for-the-course Russia “expose” just published by the New York Times:
“A New York Times investigation has revealed how Russian warplanes have repeatedly bombed hospitals in Syria — including four hospitals in a 12-hour period on May 5 and 6. It is a war crime to recklessly or intentionally bomb a hospital. From April to September, more than 50 hospitals and clinics in opposition-held Idlib province were attacked. Russia has backed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in his brutal effort to recapture territory from opposition groups.”
( Not to miss the clever graphics, see: https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/14/headlines/nyt_russian_warplanes_bomb_4_hospitals_in_syria_over_12_hours .)
I decided to tweet ( https://twitter.com/raymcgovern/status/1183952740977913856 ):
Note to Amy @democracynow: There you go again, uncritically parroting NYT anti-Russian drivel re bombing hospitals in Syria & the White Helmets, no less! You took the NYT story hook, line & sinker. For once drop your line in RT waters; you’ll catch this: https://www.rt.com/news/470909-idlib-hopital-bombings-russia/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email
Will Amy dare fish out — and perhaps even report the RT version — if only to provide some “balance?” In this case at least, RT promptly put out “the other side of the story.”
Clearly, the HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won) virus is still making the rounds in erstwhile progressive media that, earlier, were not obsessed with demonizing Russia.
Quick, someone tell Amy that Mrs. Clinton gave her tacit permission to tune in to RT. (And surely, a wider sampling of news and views might stem the well deserved loss in democracynow.org’s credibility on things Russian.)
Several years ago (on March 2, 2011) when she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton surprised everyone by noting publicly: “The Russians have opened up an English language network. I’ve seen it in a couple of countries and it’s quite instructive.” She added: “We are in an information war and are losing that war.”
You can’t win by telling only one side of the story — and that goes in spades when it’s a NY Times “investigation” of Russian “war crimes.”
By Ray, October 13, 2019
“James Comey Would Like to Help [get rid of Trump]”. This may not seem newsworthy, yet it is the title atop an instructive article today by Matt Flegenheimer of the NY Times. His article makes it clear that, for its part, the Times remains determined to support former FBI Director James Comey and sustain the discredited Russia-gate narrative they share — to the point of helping Comey and his partners-in-crime avoid prison. (See: https://nytimes.com/2019/10/12/us/politics/james-comey-trump.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_191013?campaign_id=2&instance_id=12939&segment_id=17841&user_id=e69a6cb2bbba5cd47ffe27ec9fb45fbe®i_id=695407011013 .)
In late August, the Department of Justice decided to let Comey off with a slap on the wrist for leaking to the NY Times, through an intermediary, highly sensitive information from his talks with President Donald Trump. At that juncture, it was already a no-brainer to warn that the victory lap Comey chose to run was clearly premature. (See, for example: https://www.wsj.com/articles/jim-comeys-higher-virtue-11567121926?shareToken=st5be6bf7326284ff38bf74cdc8a6e9c13&reflink=article_email_share .)
Consequential leaks to the media by a former FBI director are serious enough. Now, however, we are talking about felonies. And this time Comey is standing in such deep kimchi that he may drown, despite how tall he is, and despite NYT preemptive puff pieces protesting purity of the caliber of Caesar’s wife. This time, even with the Establishment media and Comey’s accomplices offering fulsome praise for him, there is some serious doubt as to whether or not he will be able to wangle a Stay-Out-Of-Jail Card. Why are they running scared?
In Horror of Horowitz
Over the last year and a half, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been investigating how Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, and three Deputy Attorneys General (Rod Rosenstein, Sally Yates, and Dana Boente) thought they could get away with signing applications for surveillance of former Trump associate Carter Page without disclosing that, as McCabe later testified, the application was based largely on a the shabby, unverified “Steele dossier” paid for by the Democrats. Providing incomplete, misleading information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a felony.
No problem, these top law enforcement officials thought at the time. Who would find out about their misconduct after Mrs. Clinton — the odds-on favorite — became president? There would be encomia and promotions for help rendered, not indictments.
Oops. Now all of the above are squirming, and there is a paper trail. Only one of the FISA application signers is still in a key position to help from the inside — Dana Boente. No, he was not demoted to working in the file room. He is the FBI General Counsel.
Is It About to Hit the Proverbial Fan?
According to Inspector General Horowitz, Attorney General William Barr has had his draft IG report for over a month. Horowitz has said that his team “reviewed over one million records and conducted over 100 interviews, including several of witnesses who only recently agreed to be interviewed.” The team is “finalizing” the report prior to releasing it publicly. ( See: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-inspector-general-submits-report-on-alleged-fisa-abuses-to-attorney-general .)
Some pundits are now suggesting that the DOJ IG report may be published as early as next Friday.
Hold onto your hats.
By Ray McGovern
Below is a tweet Ray sent off the other morning:
https://theduran.com/barr-durham-travel-to-rome-as-walls-close-in-on-mysterious-professor-mifsud-video/
October 8, 2019 (25 minutes; but worth it)
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss the highly unusual trip to Rome, Italy, taken by U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Russiagate-origin-Investigator, John Durham. Their ostensible purpose was to listen to a secret tape of Maltese Professor Joseph Mifsud, the man many believe is the contracted spy who kicked off the Mueller investigation. They did more, of course, than simply listen to a tape.
The origins of Russiagate are about to unravel. The trip to Rome, plus the expected results of the investigation of those who approved the FISA warrants for surveillance of Carter Page, which is led by Justice Department IG Michael Horowitz, have seriously rattled the Democrats, corporate media, and other aficionados of the Russia-gate caper. The best defense being an aggressive offense, they came up not only with “Ukraine-gate,” but also with an “impeachment inquiry!” The “inquiry” appears to be on shaky legal/constitutional grounds and Trump’s lawyers today explained why he refuses to cooperate. Hold onto your hats.
https://www.periscope.tv/stranahan/1djxXRkkbdkGZ
From Fault Lines, live at 8:30 AM ET, Oct. 8, 2019
(30 minutes; starting after first min.)
Are “Ukraine-gate” and impeachment a “magnificent diversion” of attention from the imminent findings by Attorney General Barr and his investigators of FISA and other felonies by the most senior former officials of FBI, CIA, and the Department of Justice itself?
After a year and a half of investigation, DOJ Inspector Michael Horowitz gave his findings on FISA violations to Barr four weeks ago. Trump gave Barr authority to declassify as necessary. So what’s going on?
Ray includes a critique of hapless former DNI James Clapper. Inter alia, Clapper actally wrote in his memoir that, while he was head of imagery analysis before the attack on Iraq, “intelligence officers, including me, were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there [WMD].” Ray also observes that Clapper seems to be, so to speak, a summa cum laude graduate of the the “Curtis E. LeMay Air Force School of Russian Studies.”
By Ray McGovern, October 5, 2019
With Justice Dept. IG Horowitz & Prosecutor Durham breathing down their necks, die-hard Russia-gate aficionados have launched a coordinated, pre-emptive “debunk” of what they fear most. In the words of veteran pundit Frank Rich, the “crackpot conspiracy theory” that needs to be discredited first and foremost is he notion that Russia did not hack DNC, after all.
On no! First, no Trump-Putin collusion; now no Russian hack? Oh no! Something quite different afoot? So how did it all start? The miscreants may be senior, but the evidence is clear. With some Trump/Barr/Durham/Horowitz courage, we may get close to the truth. The miscreants did not take th trouble to hide their tracks, because, as Comey wrote in his book, Hillary Clinton was sure to win.
Vestigial Russia-gaters are allergic — understandably — to any mention of the cyber-fraud firm CrowdStrike, the weak sister in the claim of Russian hacking. CrowdStrike was supposed to do the forensics on the alleged “hack” of the DNC, but never gave the FBI a final report. For some reason that was okay with then-FBI Director Comey; he paid them anyway for services performed, or not. And he later admitted under oath that he did not follow “best practices.”
This past week, NBC won the laurels as worst offender. See: https://nbcnews.com/tech/internet/trump-seized-conspiracy-theory-called-insurance-policy-now-it-s-n1062096. For an incredibly well informed, comprehensive critique, see: http://g-2.space/nbc/.
The proverbial “fat lady” is rehearsing her song; she may be ready to sing soon.