By Coleen Rowley & Ray McGovern
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
Dubuque Telegraph Herald, Sept. 20, 2015
http://www.thonline.com/news/opinion/article_76c9b4f2-f86c-566c-a8cb-481d28c48722.html
Video appeals to drone pilots to REFUSE TO FLY
For 15-second video, please scroll down to bottom of
Retired and Former U.S. Military Personnel
Urge Drone Operators to Refuse to Fly Missions
(The following paid advertisement appeared in the “Air Force Times” on Sept. 14.)
As retired and former members of the U.S. military, we urge U.S. drone pilots, sensor operators and support teams to refuse to play any role in drone surveillance/assassination missions. These missions profoundly violate domestic and international laws intended to protect individuals’ rights to life, privacy and due process.
According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as of September 1, 2015, up to 6,069 lives have been taken by U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. This figure does not include uncounted lives lost to U.S. drone attacks in Afghanistan before 2015, or in Iraq, Libya, the Philippines and Syria. All were killed without due process.
These attacks, which are also terrorizing thousands, are undermining principles of international law and human rights such as those enumerated in the U.N. International Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1948 with the blood of the atrocities of World War II freshly in mind. The United States is a signatory to this declaration.
Those involved in U.S. drone operations who refuse to participate in drone missions will be acting in accordance with Principle IV of the Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Judgment of the Tribunal, The United Nations 1950:
“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him of responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible.”
So, yes, you do have a choice — and liability under the law. Choose the moral one. Choose the legal one.
US Intel Vets Decry CIA’s Use of Torture
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Sept. 19, 2015
In Berlin on Sept. 16, ex-CIA analysts Elizabeth Murray and Ray McGovern gave a presentation to an overflow crowd, drawing on their own experiences with the “Deep State.”
Die beiden ehemaligen hochrangigen US-Geheimdienst-Mitarbeiter Ray McGovern und Elizabeth Murray besuchten gestern Berlin und referierten zu dem Thema „Wie werden Kriege gemacht?“. Doch der Vortrag könne genauso gut „Wie werden Flüchtlinge gemacht?“ heißen, so McGovern. Das müsste eigentlich jeden in Deutschland interessieren. Doch die deutsche Mainstream-Presse ignorierte, wie miteinander abgesprochen, die Veranstaltung – was wohl vor allem an den Antworten lag, die McGovern und Murray gaben.
On Sept. 8, RT International interviewed Ray on Julian Assange’s new book, “The WikiLeaks Files: The Way the World Sees the US Empire.”
The book relies largely on U.S. diplomatic cables shedding light on U.S. policy and actions in the Middle East, including Syria. So far, the book has been published only in Australia and the UK.
Ray hazarded a (pretty safe) guess with respect to what this new light that WikiLeaks shines on U.S. policy in Syria might reveal. He pointed to a NYT article of Sept. 6, 2013 in which bureau chief Jodi Rudoren, apparently inadvertently, gave the game away.
Asking prominent Israelis what Israel’s preferred outcome in Syria is, Rudoren was somewhat take aback to hear that, for the Israelis, the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, is no outcome. Rudoren quoted Alon Pinkas, former Israeli consul general in New York:
“This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie … Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.”
Rudoren commented that, for Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.
Getting the neocons of Establishment Washington to go along with that? No problem. Did no one think there might be a mass exodus of refugees?
Here’s the YouTube link to the (taped) 12-min. interview of Ray on Tuesday.
What Julian Assange said the following day, speaking to RT’s ‘Going Underground’ host Afshin Rattansi, supports (happily) Ray’s guess. Assange, basing his comments on U.S. diplomatic cables, indicated that the U.S. planned to:
“…foster tensions between Shiites and Sunnis. In particular, to take rumors that are known to be false… or exaggerations and promote them – that Iran is trying to convert poor Sunnis, and to work with Saudi and Egypt to foster that perception in order to make it harder for Iran to have influence, and also harder for the government to have influence in the population.”
Assange stressed that this particular cable was “quite concerning,” adding that while you often have to read between the lines in cables, “its all hanging out” in that one. See: http://www.rt.com/news/314852-assange-wikileaks-us-syria/
Ray was asked by RT International on September 2 to comment on the latest hare-brained suggestion by David Petraeus on defeating the Islamic State.
Petraeus is no foreigner to the issue, having played, eight years ago, an important role in facilitating the emergence of the Islamic State by his overly clever – actually naïve, or worse – policy of co-opting the Sunni with promises of shared power in Baghdad, and then simply looking away as the U.S.-installed Shia government in Baghdad ditched those promises.
The pervasive bedlam in Iraq shows, inter alia, that you can earn a Princeton PhD, writing erudite nonsense about
“counter-insurgency,” and still flunk war. To be fair, the continuing carnage Petraeus left in his wake was probably more a function of the myopia that attends overweening careerism and political ambition, rather than a deliberate attempt to enflame the area for continued, wider war. (He had already gotten his fourth star.)
Are there moderate terrorists in Syria? Ray says no – not the first time Ray disagreed with the be-medaled former general or, for that matter, with Obama and Kerry, who each make a cameo appearance trying their best to look like they know what they are talking about. Only 2 minutes long:
Blaming Russia: But the Reality Is; Whoever Lies First, Wins
Ray’s Interview With Burt Cohen, former New Hampshire State Senator
“The key is to lie first.” Thus far the words of Alvin A. Snyder. He was head of the U.S. Information Agency’s TV and Film Division in 1983 and helped prepare fraudulent testimony for use at the UN to blame Russia for a cold-blooded, barbaric act in deliberately downing an aircraft with full knowledge it was a passenger plane – KAL007 shot down over Siberia on September 1, 1983 killing all 269 aboard.
Snyder had been given a doctored tape “fixed” to blacken the Soviets by “indicating” they knew it was a passenger plane. When he learned a decade later that the Soviets did NOT know the intruding plane was a civilian airliner, Snyder wrote a book he called Warriors of Disinformation. This is the lesson he drew in his own words: “The moral of the story is that all governments, including our own, lie when it suits their purposes. The key is to lie first.”
So, whoever lies first, wins. Ray suggests that the same kind of “diplomacy” may be behind John Kerry’s attempt to demonize Putin and the Russians by accusing them of downing Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 and killing all 298 aboard. The highly dubious “evidence” adduced by Kerry brings quickly to mind the disingenuous but highly effective campaign 32 years ago to blame the Soviets for downing KAL007, “fixing” the evidence to “prove” they knew it was a passenger plane and shot it down anyway.
In a very relaxed and at times funny, 57-minute conversation with Burt Cohen, Ray explores the evidence, such as it is, and the highly consequential nature of the charges against Russia – on the strength of which the U.S. was able to put pressure on European countries to impose mutually harmful economic sanctions against Russia. Still more worrying is the blasé attitude of the sophomore policy makers in the White House toward escalating tensions and the possibility of a hot war involving the two main nuclear powers. Nothing could be more consequential, but there is little sign they realize this.
The interviewer, Burt Cohen, won election to New Hampshire’s State Senate in 1990 and was elected to seven terms, including time as Democratic Senate Majority Leader. He calls The Burt Cohen Show “Keeping Democracy Alive.” You may wish to tune in:
Brad Friedman quizzes Ray on Ukraine, MH17, and increasing tension with Russia during interview on August 20, 2015
Brad usually does his homework, and this was no exception. He asked good questions and raised additional, salient issues. This made it easy for Ray to go deeper into what the evidence suggests – especially about the shoot-down of the Malaysian airliner on July 17, 2014 – the consequences already, and further implications for relations with Russia.
http://sputniknews.com/radio_the_bradcast/20150821/1026022586.html
(minutes 15:42 to 43:00)