Catholic Worker Brian Terrell returned to the scene of the prophetic “crime” for which he spent 6 months in jail. Ray had privilege of joining Brian, intrepid justice and peace advocates from Missouri and elsewhere, and having the opportunity to reflect and speak on the metaphorical irony of “Whiteman.”
http://warisacrime.org/content/talks-tears-highlight-rally-vs-drones-whiteman-afb-april-7
Ray has time to describe the play-by-play last August/September, when neocons were within hours of getting Obama to attack Syria, but were thwarted this time by senior officials with integrity – first and foremost, JCS Chairman Martin Dempsey. The interview was occasioned by Sy Hersh’s disclosures that morning in his explosive “The Red Line & The Rat Line” (see below) about how the sarin gas attacks near Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013 actually went down. The Fawning Corporate Media has missed this story so far (surprise, surprise).
25 min (from minute 1:00 to 26:00)
http://scotthorton.org/interviews/2014/04/07/040714-ray-mcgovern/
by Seymour Hersh, London Review of Books, April 6, 2014
http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
Hersh shows how the neocons and the Turks very nearly mousetrapped Obama into a major war with Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry was not telling the truth on Aug. 30, 2013 when he declared, 35 times, “we know” that the Syrian regime was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 chemical event near Damascus. He did NOT know; he adduced no evidence. Hersh presents a convincing case that the perpetrators were NOT the Syrian government but the “rebels.”
While the neocon-dominated media beat the drums for what Kerry called an “unbelievably small war,” Hersh writes that the “small war” was also a fiction. Rather, it was to be Shock and Awe Number 2.
Integrity thwarted it. Honest British and US military and intelligence officers, led by gutsy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, nipped war in the bud. Dempsey told Obama the truth, leaving Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham fulminating as they complained at White House the following day. The neocons would not get their war with Syria.
Worse still from the neocons’ point of view, Vladimir Putin moved quickly to pull Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by getting the Syrians to agree to give their chemical weapons over to be destroyed.
No wonder the neocons hate Putin so much. I’m reminded of why those “Indian savages” kept hating Gene Autry. They hated him yet from an earlier movie!
by Robert Parry, August 8, 2014
(The usual suspects are dredging up already discredited “evidence” to support John Kerry claims that the Syrian government was responsible for the Sarin attacks.)
http://www.lrb.co.uk/2013/12/08/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin
This is what Ray wrote at the time: “It is extremely telling that Sy could not find anyone in this country to publish this investigative piece so embarrassing to the powers that be (as well as to lazy journalists). Like Mearsheimer and Walt when they did their major piece on the Israel Lobby, Sy had to go to the London Review of Books.”
Let’s face it: Investigative journalists – the fewof them still left – are an endangered species. Look for the media to do their best to ignore Hersh’s story, as they did with Part One on Dec. 8.
In vivid contrast, Robert Parry of consortiumnews posted this story within an hour or two of when the Hersh article appeared online.
by Robert Parry, April 6, 2014
At the very outset, when John Kerry said, in effect, “Trust me,” rather than adduce any convincing evidence that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the Aug. 21 chemical attack, Robert Parry smelled a rat. In a relentless string of 15 or so articles, he pursued this story in a way no other journalist did. Do a quick search for “Parry and Syria” on the consortiumnews.com website and peruse this remarkable record.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, too, has a not-too-shabby record. Here are links to three corporate memos warning Gen. Dempsey and President Obama himself. Links to three other relevant articles penned by Ray at the time are also included.
An Appeal to Gen. Dempsey on Syria
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
August 30, 2013, 1330 EDT
Obama Warned on Syria Intel
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
September 6, 2013, 1615 EDT
Time For Proof on Syrian Attack
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
October 1, 2013
* * *
Should We Fall Again For ‘Trust Me’
By Ray McGovern, September 3, 2013
Time to Reveal US Intel on Syria
By Ray McGovern, September 9, 2013
How War on Syria Lost Its Way
By Ray McGovern, September 14, 2013
From The Joplin Globe, April 4, 2014
http://www.joplinglobe.com/local/x1095870459/Former-CIA-analyst-praises-Edward-Snowden
(Ray has mastered saying Russian, vice “Soviets;” is now learning to say EU rather than “EC.”)
One need not be a rocket scientist, or a super-analyst, to piece together why current CIA director John Brennan has been delaying release of the comprehensive Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA torture. It is a no-brainer: the report implicates Brennan and some of his closest co-conspirators, including his patron, former CIA director George Tenet – all of whom have gotten away with murder, literally, until now.
Ray comments on one purpose for which torture “works like a charm,” namely, extracting the kind of false information needed to start a war – read Iraq.
After Ray lectured at the University of Missouri in Columbia on the evening of April 1, he was interviewed by phone by Radio New Zealand. (5 min.)