Ray McGovern

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:​

Ray’s Interview With Burt Cohen, former New Hampshire State Senator

http://goo.gl/XpYuWR

“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:

http://goo.gl/XpYuWR

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)

Propaganda, Intelligence and MH-17

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/82215

Ray laments Official Washington’s blasé attitude toward getting into a firefight in Russia’s front yard (or is this perhaps what the neocons have in mind for Ukraine?). He refers to a WikiLeaks-divulged Feb. 1, 2008 cable from the U.S. embassy in Moscow in which Amb. William Burns reports Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s strong warning that “Nyet means Nyet” – Russia’s red line against NATO membership for Ukraine. Two months later, a NATO summit in Bucharest declared that Ukraine and Georgia “will be come members of NATO.” Last year, Putin reiterated what Lavrov said seven years ago, making clear with respect to Ukraine that Moscow will not allow it to become a member of NATO.

25 minutes (can skip commercials from minute 0:00 to 0:30 and from 10:00 to 10:40)

http://scotthorton.org

After 13 years there, Ba Odah, 36, is down to 74 pounds – 56 percent of his ideal body weight – and is said to be close to death. On Aug. 14, the Department of Justice filed an extremely rare secret challenge to his release, even though he had been cleared for release by a six-agency task force in 2009. Ray attributed the bizarre situation to a lack of courage on the part of President Obama, who limits himself to asking plaintively, “Is this who we are?” and then caves before the DoD thugs and DoJ faux-lawyers who theoretically work for him.

​(6 min.)

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) Appeal to Obama to Release the Intelligence on This Mass Murder, Whether It Supports the Propaganda Campaign Against Russia, Or Not.

Like Ol’ Man River, Obama must know something; but he don’t say nothing; he just keeps rolling out new contests to determine which of his young lieutenants can come up with the nastiest name for Putin. Meanwhile, like Bre’r Fox, those responsible for blowing plane and people (298 of them) out of the sky a year ago lie low. Obama looking forward again, not back

Obama Should Release MH-17 Intel

by Ray, Baltimore Sun, July 21, 2015

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-military-option-20150720-story.html

The “Investigation” Still Stagnant a Year Later

“Crosstalk:” with Alexander Mercouris, Patrick Henningsen, and Ray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqj3adOIwgOn