READ TODAY; TOMORROW MAY BE TOO LATE!
By Scott Ritter, February 29, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-ritter/hillary-clinton-iraq-war-vote_b_9350340.html?1456781866
‘Obama must tell Turkey, Saudi Arabia & Israel enough is enough’ – former CIA officer
Transcript of RT interview (below); published Feb. 23
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/333343-ceasefire-turkey-agreement-syria/
U.S.-RUSSIA AGREEMENT ON SYRIA
Very soon after today’s announcement of the U.S.-Russia agreement on a partial cease fire in Syria, RT International conducted a Skype interview of Ray for comment.
It was not difficult: First, the situation on the ground has changed markedly, thanks to Russia’s military intervention starting in late September 2015, and Obama’s decision to cooperate with, rather than confront Moscow. What is new is the personal commitment of both President Obama and President Putin to make this detailed arrangement stick.
Ray suggested that Obama’s ability to exert the necessary influence on Washington’s “allies” – Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Israel – is less than Putin’s ability to influence Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Hezbollah. Ray further suggests that Obama was right the first time, when in early August 2014 he told Tom Friedman that the idea of arming “moderate” rebels in Syria has ”always been a fantasy.” And that is surely one reason they are so hard to find.
(12 and a half minutes)
Hillary Clinton’s Hypocrisy on Dissent
by Robert Parry
Parry provides background on the Feb. 18 statement by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (see item below) and what PCJF learned ferreting out then-Secretary Clinton’s personal emails from five years ago, when Ray got beaten up right in front of her while she speaking at George Washington University. The newly available emails were among those ordered released by a U.S. District Court. They were not turned over to PCFJ when it sought emails related to incident on Feb. 15, 2011; instead, they were kept out of public view. Ray’s offense was standing up silently and turning his back on Clinton as she spoke – for which he was brutalized, muscled out of the auditorium, arrested, and jailed by “the organs of state security.”
The embedded links in Parry’s article do much to fill out the story – on the chance you missed the Washington Post’s banner coverage of the incident (sorry for this “sick-joke” attempt at humor). Not even the striking irony of Ray’s violent removal directly before multiple TV cameras and many journalists, while Clinton spoke of the need to respect dissent, was deemed newsworthy – by the Post or anyone else in the Fawning Corporate Media.
The links in Parry’s article are worth clicking – particularly the one that takes you to an article by Ray, originally published on Feb. 23, 2011 and titled Standing Up To War and Hillary Clinton
This article discusses how:
-In 2010 then-Secretary of State Clinton sabotaged a promising nuclear deal with Iran that had been negotiated by the leaders of Turkey and Brazil at the President Barack Obama’s personal request;
-As secretary of state, Clinton shaped Washington’s dishonest “honest broker” role between Israel and the Palestinians;
-Clinton seemed never to have encountered a war that she didn’t immediately embrace on behalf of some geopolitical justification. As for the troops, her attitude seemed similar to her patron, Henry Kissinger, who has been quoted as saying that soldiers are “just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”
Missing from the “Standing Up To War and Hillary Clinton” article (because it hadn’t happened yet) was Clinton’s ill-conceived promotion of the idea of attacking Libya – the purpose of which, as she later inadvertently admitted, was to “regime-change” Gaddafi. This merits mention – if only because she is promoting the same hare-brained approach to Syria.
In short, against the advice of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Joint Chiefs, and many others, Secretary of State Clinton persuaded President Obama to impose a “no-fly zone” over Libya. In March 2011, U.S. and British warships and submarines fired over 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles at 20 integrated air and ground defense systems in Libya; U.S. stealth bombers flew non-stop from the US to drop forty bombs on a major Libyan airfield; and other US aircraft searched for Libyan ground forces to attack. But, alas: a la Iraq, the State Department lacked a workable post-hostilities plan. Libya is now in shambles.
Despite how the Libyan adventure turned out, Clinton now espouses a “no-fly zone” over Syria, much of which is already a shambles. Her oft-repeated precondition that “Assad must go” before substantive negotiations on Syria accounts largely for the unconscionable delay in launching the fledgling international talks now under way.
Statement by The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund on the Brutalization of Ray Directly in Front of Hillary Clinton
February 18, 2016
“Hillary Clinton says ‘supporting veterans is a sacred responsibility.’ So why, after five years, hasn’t she apologized to Ray McGovern? Newly released documents from Clinton’s private email server speak to his arrest.”
An email exactly five years ago (Feb. 18, 2011) to then-Secretary Clinton from confidant Sidney Blumenthal suggested an apology for what happened to Ray, “because it’s become a minor cause celebre on the Internet among lefties.” But his portrayal of Ray (“Whatever his views, he’s harmless”) may have helped Clinton conclude that no apology was really needed.
Blumenthal noted that Ray once gave the daily presidential briefing to George H. W. Bush, and “is pretty well known in the intelligence community.” But then comes what Blumenthal seems to think the ultimate put-down of Ray: “He’s become a Christian antiwar leftist who goes around bearing witness.”
Ray finds high irony in the fact that what one person considers the ultimate put-down is treasured by the other as the highest of compliments.
Recalling the Slaughter of Innocents
by Ray (updated from the original publication on Feb. 14, 2011)
The quarter-century anniversary of an early U.S. war crime in Iraq passed largely unnoticed this week, the bombing of a civilian air-raid shelter in Baghdad during President George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War, an atrocity that killed more than 400 women and children, as Ray McGovern recalled in 2011.
(Ray suggests that those of you, who may have missed the NYT article, not to forget to click on the first link embedded in the above intro:
As for the original article of Feb. 14, 2011, when Bob Parry emailed him this morning to let him know he was updating and reposting it, Ray added this comment at the consortiumnews.com site:
Thanks, Bob, for digging this article out of the archive. I had forgotten I wrote it, perhaps because the day after I wrote it I was moved to stand up and turn my back on then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ended up beaten, in jail, the ER, and then dealing with my wounds. I have also been a bit preoccupied dealing with my most recent arrest on Jan. 28 at Hancock Air Force Base in Syracuse, NY, giving witness with upstate Catholic Worker folks, “The Jerry Berrigan 12,” against the vaporizing of people – this time with drones.
Thanks, too, for reminding me how the White House blamed the incineration of people at Amiriyah on Saddam Hussein. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind would require that Bush and Cheney be brought to justice, rather than given a pass by their timid successors.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/ogc/apparatus/crafting.html
With respect to the key question regarding what the “intelligence” was/is worth – well, Gen. Glosson was, and still is, correct. Drones are now killing folks by using highly sophisticated NSA algorithms that, truth be told, are worth no more than the targeting “intelligence” of 25 years ago – their worth so aptly described by Glosson.
“Actually, Brigadier General Buster Glosson, who had overall responsibility for targeting, later commented that the ‘intelligence’ pointing to military use was not ‘worth a shit.’”
Sadly, the glib – actually, the unconscionable – attitude regarding the worth of the targeting “intelligence” also reflects the attitude of U.S. administrations (plural) re. the worth of those targeted. It is an unconscionable attitude tinged with racism and disdain for the “small people” of this world – people who can easily be dehumanized and diminished by White House “Strategic Communications” – with the full cooperation of the Fawning Corporate Media.
These are moral – one might even say theological – questions. I am indebted to the late Dean Brackley, S.J., a New Yorker who taught at Fordham and then quit to go down to San Salvador to replace one of the Jesuits slain there on Nov. 16, 1989. It was Dean who gave me concise words to my theology.
The words do not sound very profound, but they are solidly anchored not only in Hebrew and Christian scripture, but also in Islam and other faith traditions. Brackley: “It all depends on who you think God is, and how God feels when little people get pushed around.”
Brackley’s obituary can be found at: