Can the British Establishment Expose One of Their Own … Like Blair?
Not likely, says Ray; seems more likely that Godot will arrive before Chilcot report.
Syria: Will the Saudis buy fewer arms if we twist their arms to stop arming ISIS? One large elephant in the room has been Israel with a marked preference for “no outcome” in Syria.
Russia: were seeds of cooperation sown at the UN on Sept. 28, when Obama and Putin spent 90 minutes behind closed doors?
These and other issues discussed by Ray via Skype, live on Richie Allen Show, London, Oct. 29 (28 min.)
Syria: Crosstalk Speakers Struggle to Interpret the Most Recent Russian, U.S., and Iranian Moves
As Yogi Berra put it, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” The Russians are in Syria big-time and Obama has surprised almost everyone by choosing, while taking care to include de rigueur bashing of Moscow, to welcome the Russian move as an opportunity to turn primary attention to stopping the Islamic State and the flood of Syrian refugees into Europe.
Some of the earlier preconditions to talks have been waived, and negotiations began on Friday in Vienna. Moreover, the key powers seem agreed that, as Defense Secretary Ashton Carter conceded on Tuesday, “The structures of the Syrian state are going to be important in the future, and we don’t want them to dissolve entirely. … The U.S. approach to removing Assad has been mostly a political effort.” (Could it be the Smart People in Washington have learned something from the debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya?)
From Ray’s perspective, those are the key pieces of the news this week – not the familiar attempts by Secretary Carter to flex his muscles, announcing token military reinforcement, to show that the Pentagon means to stay in the game, somehow, in Syria.
Washington Post lead story on Tuesday, Oct. 27, reports Pentagon proposals to “put U.S. troops closer to front lines” in Syria and Iraq
Early Tues. morning, PressTV asked Ray for preliminary reaction; he replied with 4 minutes of commentary over the phone:
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/10/28/435276/us-isis-takfiri-daesh-obama-syria-iraq
Later Tues. morning, the Senate hearing on the same issue prompted Ray to don his old President’s Daily Brief hat, impersonate today’s Russian intelligence analysts, and prepare a notional PDB item — for President Putin to appear the following morning:
After presenting to a SRO crowd in Berlin on evening of Sept. 16, Elizabeth Murray and Ray were interviewed by KontextTV.
The video is in English (after the 45-second introduction) and runs up to minute 18:30. Text also included in following link: http://www.kontext-tv.de/node/496
Issues discussed include:
-How does it happen that intelligence analysts become activists?
-Why so many refugees from Syria? Implications for Europe.
-Is there “no daylight” between U.S. and Israeli behavior on Syria?
-Germany and the drone war; the critical role of U.S. base in Ramstein.
-Why not assemble stakeholders on Syria around a table, and figure out how to stop the carnage? Need to get the Saudis, in particular, to stop supporting ISIS.
Coleen Rowley & Ray on top Iowa TV show, “The Steele Report”
Had time to explain purpose behind their Veterans for Peace-sponsored lecture tour of Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Davenport, Parnell, Iowa City, Ames, Des Moines, and places in between – mostly at universities. At the University of Iowa, Ed Snowden was live-streamed into an overflow crowd of 850.
In early 2015, three Iowa chapters of Veterans For Peace decided, “If we build it, they will come.” Coleen and Ray came in September; more important, hundreds and hundreds of Iowans also came – and learned things that are very hard to learn from “mainstream media.”
(2 segments: the first is 11 min; the second is 7 min.)
Fox News: Giving the Nod to a Wannabe CIA Con Man
Ray takes a lighter – but still instructive – approach to the latest Foxy howler, L’Affaire Wayne Shelby Simmons. Our man Simmons convinced Fox News and defense contractors that he was part of CIA’s “outside paramilitary special operations group,” and had led “Deep Cover Intel Ops.”
Alas, the “credentials” Simmons claimed proved as hard to verify as claims of WMD in Iraq. On Thursday he was accused of making false statements and major fraud against the United States, arrested, and jailed. Ray was in downtown Washington on the 16th, when RT International called for a 5-minute interview. Fun.
Those who click the above link will learn that, by happy coincidence, a day earlier Ray had his own personal encounter with Fox. That experience offered some rich material pointing to how carefully some Fox personalities, like Sean Hannity, vet their guests, while other Foxy folks – well, not so much.
According to the Washington Post (see link below), Senior Fox News War-on-Terrorism promoter/commentator, retired Army Gen. Paul Vallely, has spoken highly of colleague Simmons, describing him as “very knowledgeable,” and “able to talk in depth about CIA operations, covert operations especially.” Vallely added that Simmons “came off to me as a very honest, down-to-the-earth guy.”
As for other endorsements of Simmons, none other than former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld commended him for a spy thriller Simmons wrote: “He doesn’t just write it. He’s lived it, and that’s why he … can tell this spy thriller in such an engrossing way.” Rumsfeld, of course, is second to none in spinning a yarn. Indeed, his fulsome memoir (726 pages) titled “Known and Unknown” belongs in the “fiction” section of bookstores. In fairness here, it is an unknown known how known Simmons actually was to Rumsfeld.
L’Affaire Wayne Shelby Simmons is a helpful reminder of the kind of things CIA con men can get away with (ask Nancy Pelosi or Dianne Feinstein). And this guy was just a wannabe. For further amusement, click below on the link to a report by Matt Zapotosky, that was front-paged in the Washington Post on Oct. 16. His tongue must have been buried deeply in his teeth, but for the most part he succeeds in writing it with a straight face.
Holly Sterling, wife of imprisoned whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling, spoke at the National Press Club on October 15, together with Jesselyn Radack, Tom Drake, Delphine Halgand, U.S. Director of Reporters Without Borders, and Ray.
Norman Solomon of ExposeFacts coordinated the press conference and moderated the discussion, during which Holly described a letter she wrote to President Obama, asking that Jeffrey be pardoned.
(Ray’s 8-min. comments start at minute 42:00.)
Counting Civilian Casualties from Drone Strikes — or Not
The Institute for Public Accuracy has just put Jesselyn Radack and Ray on a press release focusing on today’s revelations by The Intercept re the use of drones, in particular:
Assassination Complex
by Jeremy Scahill, et al.
https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/
The press release cites a piece Ray wrote three years ago:
Silence of the Drones
Ray McGovern, Oct. 1, 2012
Here’s an excerpt from the article, which is interesting in retrospect:
Tight Leash?
Just four months later, a May 29 New York Times article on Obama’s secret “Kill List” revealed how the President rationalized his claim that the number of civilians killed was “not huge.” Far from “a very tight leash,” it was a numbering gimmick.
The Times report quoted several Obama administration officials admitting that all military-age males in a strike zone are counted as combatants, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent. (Yes, you read that right – posthumously.)
Small wonder that counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan could claim in June 2011 that there had been zero civilians killed in Pakistan for almost a year. And small wonder that another senior administration official could tell the Times several months later that the number of civilians killed by drone strikes in Pakistan was in the “single digits.”
In April 2012, Brennan was still at it, describing civilian casualties from drone strikes as “exceedingly rare” – as if saying something often enough can make it true.
One former senior intelligence officer did express serious misgivings. “It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the former officer told the Times. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”
So much for posthumous exoneration.
For people with a conscience this is a lot to take in; to reflect on; and to take responsibility for as an American citizen. Serious though these issues are, there are times when a satirical touch can cut to the chase – not to trivialize this sadder-than-sad reality, but rather to render it easier to understand and to drive home its full import.
Stephen Colbert performed a useful service with his commentary on the New York Times report on Obama’s “Kill List.”
As for Congressional oversight:
Lest anyone lose sight of how closely Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein was riding herd on the use of drones, here’s more:
Intel Chair: Civilian Drone Casualties in Single Digits Year-to-Year
NYT February 7, 2013
by Lee Ferran
“The chairman of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee said today that the number of civilians killed in America’s drone strikes each year ‘has typically been in the single digits.’
“The chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), made the claim in her opening remarks at the Senate’s confirmation hearing for CIA Director nominee John Brennan. Brennan, currently President Obama’s counter-terrorism advisor, is widely described as the architect of the administration’s counter-terrorism policy, including its increased reliance on targeted drone strikes.
“’I’ve… been attempting to speak publicly about the very low number of civilian casualties that result from such strikes, [but] I’ve been limited in my ability to do so,’ Feinstein said. ‘But for the past several years, this committee has done significant oversight of the government’s conduct of targeted strikes and the figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from such strikes has typically been in the single digits.’
“Feinstein’s assertion appears to challenge data compiled by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism from media [now apparently including The Intercept], human rights and purported eye-witness reports, which say that American drones have killed hundreds of civilians since 2008 from Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia. …