Syrië 311

The Khorasans: As Fake As the Kardashians

New Boogeyman Has Already Been Debunked

By Moon Of Alabama

September 26, 2014 "ICH" - "MOA" - - Obama is now – after the fact – scrambling to justify bombing the sovereign nation of Syria without the permission of either the Syrian government or even the United States Congress by saying that we were going after the super-evil Khorasans, who were about to attack us.
My God!  That sounds terrifying … like a cross between Genghis Khan, Klingons and the Kardashians!
The U.S. is saying that they’re even more dangerous than ISIS.
There’s just one wee little problem … the Khorasan threat is as as fake as the Kardashians’ physiques. (Admittedly, it’s confusing, given that the Kardashians have also inserted themselvesright in the middle of the Syrian conflict.)
Agence France-Presse reports:

The US says it has hit a little-known group called “Khorasan” in Syria, but experts and activists argue it actually struck Al-Qaeda’s affiliate Al-Nusra Front, which fights alongside Syrian rebels.
In announcing its raids in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday, Washington described the group it targeted as Khorasan, a cell of Al-Qaeda veterans planning attacks against the West.
But experts and activists cast doubt on the distinction between Khorasan and Al-Nusra Front, which is Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch.
“In Syria, no one had ever heard talk of Khorasan until the US media brought it up,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Rebels, activists and the whole world knows that these positions (hit Tuesday) were Al-Nusra positions, and the fighters killed were Al-Nusra fighters,” added Abdel Rahman, who has tracked the Syrian conflict since it erupted in 2011.
Experts were similarly dubious about the distinction.
“The name refers to Al-Qaeda fighters previously based in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran who have travelled to Syria to fight with… Al-Nusra,” said Matthew Henman, head of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre.
“They… should not be considered a new or distinct group as such.”
Aron Lund, editor of the Syria in Crisis website run by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, raised similar doubts.
“The fact that news about this Al-Qaeda-run, anti-Western cell linked to Al-Nusra emerged just over a week ago, through US intelligence leaks — well, it’s certainly an interesting coincidence,” he told AFP.
***
Claims of a distinction are lost of many of Syria’s rebels, who have also often rejected the world community’s designation of Al-Nusra as a “terrorist” group.
When Washington added Al-Nusra to its list of “terrorist” organisations, even the internationally-backed Syrian opposition National Coalition criticised the decision.
***
On the ground, almost all rebel groups have been willing to cooperate with Al-Nusra, seeing them as distinct from the Islamic State group (IS), which espouses transnational goals and includes many non-Syrians among its ranks.
***
[The] history of cooperation [between the various crazies in Syria] has left some rebels and activists on the ground suspicious and even angry about the strikes on Al-Qaeda.
***
Some key members are believed to maintain channels of communication with Al-Nusra, including Qatar, which has helped negotiate the release of prisoners held by the group.

McClatchy adds:

Raad Alawi, the commander of a smaller group of fighters, the Squadrons of Al Haq, told McClatchy he was very angry.
“Starting the war with the bombing of Nusra is an indication that this is a war against the revolution and not [ISIS] … “Maybe next they will bomb the bases of the Free Syrian Army.”

Well, okay … experts and Syrian Islamic jihadis think there’s no distinction between the Khorasans and plain vanilla Al Nusra/Al Qaeda/Free Syrian Army fighters.
But surely America and our allies treat the moderate Syrian rebels … I mean Al Nusra …  er, I mean the Khorasans … with a consistent iron fist?
Well, no … we’ve been – directly or indirectly – backing them.  And – as we’ve been warning for some time – the boys we’re arming are threatening to attack us.
So – while I’d like to believe that I’m being shown the real deal as a justification for long-term, direct involvement – I’m just not buying it …

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39779.htm

Syrië 310

What Arab Partners Will Get in Return for Strikes on Syria 
By Lars Berger

September 26, 2014 "ICH" - "The Conversation" - The decision by President Obama to launchmissile and air strikes against Islamic State (IS) and the al-Qaeda affiliate “Khorasan” in Syria draws the United States ever closer to yet another prolonged military confrontation in the region.

But there’s a difference this time: the participation of a coalition of Arab states, variously offering diplomatic, intelligence and military support. So far, the partner states have been named as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and Jordan.

From Washington’s perspective, the importance of Arab participation is obvious: a synchronised display of high-level multinational cooperation is clearly meant to head off the usual criticism of the often unilateral nature of US foreign policies.

This is of particular importance for President Obama, who has invested considerable capital over the years in distancing himself from the Bush administration’s war in Iraq.

As he put it in his brief statement announcing the strikes: “The strength of this coalition makes it clear to the world that this is not America’s fight alone.”

The White House clearly hopes that the participation of Arab partners will undermine that radical Islamist narrative of “the West versus Islam”, and instead reframe the conflict as another chapter in the decades-old struggle between the vast moderate Muslim majority and a tiny minority of radicals.

But aside from these explicit American goals, Obama’s new Arab partners have interests of their own.

Regional rivals: Saudi and Qatar

Both Qatar and Saudi Arabia can hope to shift attention away from the criticism for their attitude to Islamist extremism. Over the years, they have been charged not only with supporting radical Islamists in Syria, but also with allowing their religious elites to propagate a version of Islam that is open to easy manipulation at the hands of radical jihadist recruiters.

You scratch my back … EPA/Arnd Wiegmann/Pool

Both countries will also hope that weakening the radical Islamists of IS will help moderate elements of the Syrian opposition regain the initiative against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Some among the elites of Riyadh and Doha might even be hoping Washington will realise the threat of IS will never be extinguished while Bashar al-Assad’s regime remains in place – and that Obama will see the job is finished.

Finally, Saudi Arabia in particular clearly has to be concerned with preventing the success of an organisation which aims to establish the perfect “Islamic state”.

IS’s claim to ultimate leadership of the world’s Muslim community as put forward by its leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, is a direct challenge to the Saudi claim for global religious leadership based on King Abdullah’s role as “custodian of the two holy places” in Mecca and Medina.

Saudi authorities are fully aware that al-Baghdadi’s radical Islamist fringe project has attracted followers from Saudi Arabia, with recent estimates putting the number at up to one thousand.

As Nawaf Obaid and Saud al-Sarhan have pointed out, Saudi Arabia is the ultimate target for any “serious” radical Islamist organisation, whether IS now or al-Qaeda in years past.

Al-Qaeda on the Arab Peninsula (which consists not just of Yemeni Islamists, but also Saudi Islamists), driven out by Saudi counterterrorism measures over the last decade, is now beginning to mutter words of approval and support toward IS, and Riyadh will be deeply concerned about the spectre of being engulfed in an arc of Islamist instability to its south and north.

Trouble at home: Bahrain and the UAE

Like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain can also use their involvement in the campaign against IS to demonstrate their value as strategic assets to the United States.

Often belittled as “security importers” for relying on American protection to counter the threat posed by Iran, governments in these countries can now prove that they can make their own contributions to regional security.

But their involvement in the anti-IS coalition feeds into a broader narrative of tackling a general Islamist threat – one that has long threatened to destabilise them at home.

Bahrainis mark the third anniversary of the Arab Spring protests. EPA/Mazen Mahdi

For their part, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been very outspoken critics of what they saw as a lack of US stamina in supporting authoritarian allies such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt during the early days Arab Spring. They have also both raised the alarm over the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they see a direct threat to their own domestic integrity.

Irrespective of the exact nature of the ideological linkages between moderate and radical Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood’s politicised version of Islam sees the Gulf monarchies as antithetical to the notion of a just Islamic society.

By joining forces against IS, then, the ruling families in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Dubai are clearly hoping to drive home their vision of a monolithic Islamist threat to both protective Western governments and their own restive populations.

Don’t forget us: Jordan

Meanwhile, often-overlooked Jordan can use its participation in the anti-IS alliance to once again prove its relevance as a strategic regional partner for the US.

Jordanians are not just dealing with a refugee crisis created by the meltdown in Syria and Iraq; they also have first-hand experience of the disastrous human costs of the radical ideology which drives IS: in late 2005, supporters of Abu Musab az-Zarqawi, leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq (a splinter from which later formed the backbone of IS), attacked a number of hotels in Jordan’s capital Amman, killing 60.

Vision: Barack Obama and King Abdullah II of Jordan. EPA/Chris Kleponis

Just recently, Jordanian authorities arrested a number of individuals suspected of involvement with IS. The Jordanian security services also enjoy one of the best track records of any regional intelligence agency in infiltrating radical Islamist groups, such as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

This expertise, plus the training facilities where Western special forces can train members of the moderate Syrian opposition, might well prove crucial for international efforts to deal with both IS and the Assad regime.

Trade-offs

In the end, the Arab partners in general will still expect concrete returns for offering their Western allies not just diplomatic cover, but also serious military and intelligence support.

Most pressingly, it’s very likely that these governments will expect Washington to take their views on board when it negotiates a more permanent deal with Tehran over Iran’s nuclear programme. Ever since the announcement of a preliminary deal between the two sides, the Gulf monarchies have made clear their displeasure at the US’s apparent eagerness to bring Iran back in from the cold without sufficient heed to Arab concerns.

Washington’s Arab allies will hope that the Arab states' participation in strikes against IS will make Western audiences more willing to tolerate or even support “wars on terror” at home in the Middle East – in which, all too often, moderate Islamists and secular liberals get caught up.

But the endurance of authoritarian rule is a major root cause of the Middle East’s chronic instability. It it would be all too easy for the West to let it continue unmolested in return for help with the crisis at hand – however badly that help is needed. Washington must not fall into that trap.

Lars Berger - Associate Professor in International Security at University of Leeds

Copyright © 2010–2014, The Conversation Trust (UK)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39785.htm

ISIS 34

Air Strikes Will Not Beat Isis On the ground it’s hard to tell friend from foe By Patrick Cockburn September 26, 2014 "ICH" - " The Independent" - - What is military common sense may not make political sense. The US plan to weaken and ultimately destroy Isis has several political and military weaknesses undermining its long-term success. Air campaigns not supported by ground forces can damage the other side but they do not win wars on their own. Isis has already faced bombardment by US planes in Iraq since 8 August, but it is still fighting the Iraqi army around Baghdad. Some of the weaknesses of the air war are already apparent since Isis had evacuated its leaders, fighters and heavy equipment from buildings that were targeted. Its fighters avoid large gatherings and mix with the civilian population. The shock effect of being bombed will be the less because the Syrian air force has long been bombing rebel-held cities and towns.Isis expertise is in guerrilla warfare and it is only recently that it has used columns of vehicles packed with gunmen and heavy infantry weapons. Air superiority over the fruit groves of Diyala province or the palm trees of northern Hilla is difficult to use effectively. Of course, in Syria and Iraq there are ground troops capable of taking advantage of the air strikes, but they mostly belong to armies and militias with whom the US is not meant to be co-operating. In Syria, the most powerful armed group opposing Isis is the Syrian army, followed by Hezbollah and the Syrian Kurds. In Iraq, three months after the fall of Mosul, the Iraqi army still does not seem able to hold its own against Isis as recent fighting around Fallujah demonstrated. Advances that have taken place have generally been by Shia militiamen under the direction of Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers and Kurdish Peshmerga, though these did not distinguish themselves when Isis attacked Sinjar in August. In Iraq, the US task is a little easier because at least it is allied to the elected government in Baghdad. But in Syria Isis is somehow to be attacked without aiding the Syrian government or groups that the US and Europeans have previously demonised, such as Hezbollah, from Lebanon, which has acted as shock troops for the Syrian government. Of course this detachment from military realities is not possible, but what is military common sense may be politically embarrassing. The main Isis offensive at the moment is directed at the Syrian Kurdish enclave centred on the town of Kobane where half-a-million people had taken refuge. Some 200,000 Kurds have now fled across the border into Syria while their militia, the YPG, is fighting it out with Isis. Air strikes hit eight villages captured by Isis early today, but here the Americans face a political problem. The YPG is the Syrian branch of the Turkish Kurd PKK whom the US labels as “terrorists” and does not want to be associated with. But what does the US do if Isis responds to the air campaign against it by strengthening its forces trying to capture Kobane. It may want to send a message that it remains an enemy to be feared whatever the US does. Air power can be made more effective at a tactical level by having forward air observers on the ground calling in air strikes. This worked in Afghanistan in 2001 and in northern Iraq in 2003. But use of these today in Iraq and Syria means the US getting further involved in somebody else’s civil war. There are other complications. Turkey now says that it is joining the anti-Isis coalition, but it does not want to strengthen the Syrian Kurds and the YPG or help to keep the Assad government in power. It would be interesting to know what the US has said to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about their future plans for Syria. Isis is strong because of its military expertise and religious fanaticism but there are more general reasons why it will be difficult to defeat. Many Sunnis in the areas controlled by Isis do not like it, but they are terrified of the return of the Syrian or Iraqi armies and accompanying sectarian militias. Isis has been more successful than it ought to have been because of two vacuums which it has been able to fill. One is the vacuum left by the dysfunctional and corrupt Iraqi army and state. The other is the political vacuum created by the absence of leadership in the Sunni communities in Iraq and Syria which is capable of offering an alternative to Isis. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39783.htm

U.S. Terror 2

National Security, Patriotism, and Treason
By Jacob G. HornbergerSeptember 24, 2014 "ICH" - Ever since the post-World War II grafting of the national-security apparatus onto America’s governmental structure, the assumption of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA has been that Americans who oppose national-security state policies and practices are “subversives” or even traitors.

We experienced this phenomenon throughout the Cold War. U.S. officials were spying on Americans who believed in communism or socialism, tapping their telephones, keeping secret files on them, infiltrating their organizations, and doing whatever they could to destroy, humiliate, or ruin them.

Why were they doing such things? Because they believed that Americans who believed in communism or socialism were subversives and even traitors.

It was the same mindset during the Vietnam War, when U.S. officials secretly monitored the activities of American citizens who were protesting the war. Anyone who wasn’t “supporting the troops” was considered a subversive, a bad guy, a traitor. Anyone who refused a conscription order to go fight in Vietnam was criminally prosecuted as a draft resister.

It’s really no different today with the so-called war on terrorism. Oh sure, they’re not putting critics of what they’re doing in the Middle East and Afghanistan in jail, but there is no doubt about how national-security state officials look on Americans who oppose what they’re doing in the world. They look at critics and people who refuse to “support the troops” as lacking patriotism — as being part of “the left.”

The national-security mindset today is no different today than it was during the Cold War: You’re either with us or against us, and if you’re not with us, you’re on the other side—the side of the communists or the terrorists.

One big problem, however, is that the national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and the NSA — has it all wrong when it comes to patriotism and treason.

Let’s step back and take a look at where we are as a nation.

The U.S. government leads the world in assassinations. No other regime can come close in this remarkable achievement. Every month, there are new assassinations. The process never stops. People are being assassinated on a regular basis by national-security state officials. The assassinations include American citizens. State-sponsored assassinations have become an ordinary part of American governmental life.

The U.S. government also leads the world in bombings. Every day, new bombs are dropped on people. We don’t even know how many people are being killed by the bombs. We don’t know who the victims are. It doesn’t really matter. As long as there is a terrorist in the vicinity of the bombs, why should anyone care who else happens to be killed? The notion is that if the national security state isn’t bombing people over there, the American people won’t be safe over here.

Guantanamo Bay continues to stand as monument to the adoption of a communist-like judicial system, one in which people are jailed for life without trial and where any trial would be a mockery of justice anyway. No jury trials. No due process. No speedy trials. Torture and other cruel and unusual punishments. No right to confront witnesses. No right to a presumption of innocence. Let’s face it: there is as much justice at Gitmo as there is in the rest of Cuba.

Why should this surprise us? At the very inception of Gitmo, the Pentagon announced that the area would be a Constitution-free zone. That meant that the Bill of Rights wouldn’t apply there. What better evidence of how national-security state officials view the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than that?

Invasions, occupations, coups, partnerships with criminal organizations (e.g., the Mafia) and brutal dictatorial regimes (e.g., Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Chile), destruction of democratic systems (e.g., Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and Egypt), and foreign aid to dictatorships.

Did I mention torture? The U.S. government is the clear-cut winner when it comes to the number of people tortured in the 21st century. Maybe the communist regimes in Red China, North Korea, and Vietnam are also in contention for #1 in torture, but would it really change things if the U.S. government was relegated to #2 or #3?

Now, ask yourself these simple questions: Is this the type of government that our American ancestors intended to bring into existence after they successfully seceded from the British Empire? Is this the type of government that the Founding Fathers had in mind after the Revolution? Is this the type of government the Framers intended when they proposed the Constitution to the American people?

The answers are not difficult: No one can honestly maintain that our ancestors, the Founding Fathers, and the Framers intended the type of government under which we live today.

So, who are the patriots and who are the traitors in all this? Those of us who defend the founding principles of America and the Constitution or those who have taken our nation to the dark side, with assassinations, torture, denial of due process, invasions, coups, destruction of democratic systems, support of dictatorships, foreign wars, foreign interventions, foreign entanglements, and foreign aid?

The fact is that it was a horrible mistake for Americans to have abandoned the philosophy of anti-militarism and anti-imperialism that guided our ancestors. They fiercely opposed standing armies for the precise reason that massive permanent military establishments inevitably lead to perpetual war, loss of liberty, dark-side practices, and national bankruptcy.

Consider just the current brouhaha regarding ISIS. More bombs. More death. More destruction. But what was it that gave rise to ISIS? You guessed it: The post-9/11 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which destroyed the country, killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people, and produced perpetual crisis and a permanent stream of people who hate the United States.

And what gave rise to the 9/11 attacks? You guessed it: the Persian Gulf intervention against Saddam Hussein, the brutal sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were worth it, the unconditional foreign aid to the Israeli government, and more.

And who was it that was partnering with the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980s? You guessed it: The U.S. national-security state apparatus that was grafted onto our federal system after World War II.

It’s time for Americans to go beyond getting the “right” president into office. After all, for many President Obama was the “right” president and he turned out to be no different from President Bush. As long as the national-security apparatus remains grafted onto our governmental system, America will continue to be enmeshed in the dark side of life.

It’s time for Americans to break out of the national-security box into which they have been trapped ever since World War II. It’s time to dismantle, not reform, the entire Cold War national-security state establishment, including the Pentagon and its foreign empire of military bases, the NSA, and the CIA. It’s time to restore America’s founding principles of anti-militarism and anti-imperialism.

Nothing less will restore peace, prosperity, and harmony to our land.

It’s the patriotic thing to do.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. http://fff.org

U.S. Terror

Senate Torture Report Vanishes
David Copperfield is a CIA Contractor?

By Philip GiraldiSeptember 24, 2014 "ICH" - "UNZ" - - The crisis involving the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a Godsend to politicians, which is probably why the threat actually posed by the group is being hyped as it is while the White House and Pentagon continue to change the meaning of commonly used English expressions to enable the attacking of just about anyone anywhere. We are told that the United States will have a free hand in bombing Syria, an independent nation with which Washington is not at war. The Administration has warned that if Damascus attempts to defend itself from the air armada there will be consequences in the form of “retaliation,” suggesting that the US would be striking back after being attacked. Oddly enough, my dictionary suggests that it would be the Syrians who would be retaliating, but one supposes that in the Emerald City everything is not as it seems and certain words have little or no meaning.
The welcome distraction afforded by ISIS means that the issue of Gaza, which was recently devastated by the Israelis, has largely disappeared from the mainstream media, enabling Benjamin Netanyahu to steal still more land on the West Bank for new settlements. And remember MH-17? Still a whodunit and nobody cares anymore.
Back here at home, the dispute over the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture, a hot button issue earlier this year, has also benefited, largely disappearing from sight. The meticulously researched Senate report, covering 6000 pages and including 35,000 footnotes, apparently concluded that torturing terrorist suspects was not only illegal under the United Nations Convention on Torture, to which Washington is a signatory, it was also ineffective, producing no intelligence that was otherwise unobtainable.
Since a “forgive and forget” forward-looking White House has already indicated that no one will ever be punished for illegal actions undertaken in the wake of 9/11, why is the torture issue important beyond the prima facie case that a war crime that was authorized by the highest levels of the federal government? It is important because of its constitutional implications and its impact on rule of law in the United States, which is again being flouted by the Administration in its rush to “destroy” ISIS, which is little more than a terrorist group du jour being exploited to terrify the American public. The constitutional issue, in its simplest terms, is that the CIA works for the president and when it operates without legally mandated oversight by the legislative branch and judiciary it does so in defiance of separation of powers, making the Agency little better than a secret army run by POTUS.
The inability of the Senate Committee to compel the Agency and White House to come up with an acceptable draft of its report and agreement over what parts of it can be made public is also important because it reveals that the best the US Congress can do to oversee the country’s intelligence agencies is not very good at all. The past 22 months of delay in the report’s release have demonstrated that the intel community, with the support of the White House, can stonewall any issue until the cows come home.
The latest account of the head butting between the Agency and Congress reveals a bad working relationship between the Senate and CIA while also suggesting that Langley is again closing ranks against its critics. At a top secret behind closed doors meeting on September 9 ^th Agency Director John Brennan refused to divulge who at CIA authorized the actual intrusion into the computers being used by Senate staffers to compile their report. Brennan would also not address what the presumed legal authority to do so was. A shouting match with several Senators, all Democrats, ensued with several Senators demanding to know how Brennan could refuse to answer their questions.
The Agency had initially contended in its defense that the computer search was motivated by the alleged accessing and removal of restricted CIA reports by the Senate staffers, but it is no longer making that claim. Brennan reportedly refused to answer the two questions posed by the Senators because he did not want to “compromise” the ongoing investigations by the Justice Department and the CIA Inspector General into the computer hacking, but the committee felt he was stonewalling over questions that invited a relatively simple response. If he did not know the answers he could have said so. It might also be noted in passing that the two investigations are hardly independent, one being conducted in house by CIA and the other by a highly politicized Attorney General who will be inclined to protect the president.
CIA has also been working on its own rebuttal of the Senate report which is intended to demonstrate that torture actually worked and that no one at the Agency broke any laws. It is also reportedly seeking to redact major sections of the sixty page summary, which is the part most likely to see the light of day, an effort, which, if successful, will likely make the end product largely unreadable. It would probably also avoid including any blame or suggestion of “mission failure” which would be damaging to broader Agency political interests.
There also has been some speculation that the CIA would like to drag out the process in hopes that the Republicans will take control of the Senate in November, making any release of any part of the report unlikely. The White House has been brokering the review process between the intelligence community and Senate but has been largely mum about its preferences. It would likely want the report to remain classified or in limbo as its release might increase pressure on President Barack Obama to do something about criminal activity that might be revealed, which would be politically dangerous ground.
CIA has also welcomed back former Director George Tenet to help in crafting its own rebuttal report that it hopes will exonerate it from any blame, or at least point the finger elsewhere. Tenet was in charge of the Agency when the torture took place, so on one hand he would be a logical choice to craft a defense though on the other hand he would be keen to conceal any direct role on the part of himself and his accomplices, if only to preserve what remains of their reputations since there is no chance that any of them will be going to jail.
Let’s review who George Tenet is. He is a Greek American from Queens who never was an actual spy or analyst but made his way upwards in the intelligence community through a series of staff positions in Congress. As senior staffer for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence he got to know many important politicians. George could talk the talk in an affable way with Bill Clinton, who eventually named him Director of Central Intelligence in 1997, and then went on to discuss baseball minutiae with George W Bush, cementing his tenure with the new Republican administration. Tenet also presided over 9/11, which was a bit of an embarrassment for the Agency. He later utterly destroyed his own credibility when he declared that making a case for war with Iraq was a “slam dunk” before misleading both the United Nations and Secretary of State Colin Powell about the threat posed by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Tenet later retired into some well remunerated directorships before writing a book called At the Center of the Storm which reportedly earned him an advance of $4 million while demonstrating clearly that he is a great American hero.
So George will be reviewing what George did when he was good ol’ George DCI. When I was with the government I once served in a foreign city where a new United States Consul General’s residence was being built. It was so poorly constructed that there were holes in the ceilings and water running down inside the walls but the State Department Admin officer who was responsible left post before the project was completed. He came back a year later, after complaints, as the inspector to review the project. He determined that everything was just fine. That is sort of like putting George in charge of investigating George, but if the ISIS thing continues to pick up steam everyone in the media and among the public will in any event forget that there was ever a Senate torture report. In intelligence slang, it will “be disappeared.”

Phil Giraldi is a former CIA Case Officer and Army Intelligence Officer who spent twenty years overseas in Europe and the Middle East working terrorism cases. He holds a BA with honors from the University of Chicago and an MA and PhD in Modern History from the University of London.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39770.htm

Robert Fisk 74

US Attacks on Isis May Help Bashar al-Assad Keep his Regime Alive

But the Syrian leader will be watching with concern as the US's use of air power spreads to include more targets outside its original stated aim

By Robert Fisk
 

The moment America expanded its anti-Isis war into Syria, President Bashar al-Assad gained more military and political support than any other Arab leader can boast. With US bombs and missiles exploding across eastern and northern Syria, Assad can now count on America, Russia, China, Iran, the Hezbollah militia, Jordan and a host of wealthy Gulf countries to keep his regime alive. If ever that creaking old Arab proverb – that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” – contained any wisdom, Assad has proved it true.

In his Damascus home, the Syrian leader can reflect that the most powerful nation on earth – which only last year wished to bomb him into oblivion – is now trying to bomb his most ferocious enemies into the very same oblivion. Sunni Saudis whose “charity” donations have funded the equally Sunni “Islamic State” now find their government supposedly helping the US to destroy it. As Shia Iran and its Hezbollah protégés battle the Sunni executioners and throat-slashers on the ground, US bombs and missiles rain down to destroy the enemies in front of them.Not since Churchill found himself an ally of Nazi Germany’s erstwhile friend Stalin in 1941 can a president have found a fearsome antagonist transformed so swiftly into a brother-in-arms. But – and it’s a very big “but” – the Baathist Syrian regime is not so stupid as to take the word “friend” at face value. Neither should we. Obama is the last person with whom Assad would want to associate himself – as Vladimir Putin doesn’t need to remind him – and the Syrian regime will be watching with the deepest concern as America’s promiscuous use of air power spreads inexorably to include more and more targets outside its original stated aim.
Quite apart from the civilian casualties in Idlib province, America’s targeting of the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra suggests that the Pentagon has more than Isis in its sights. How soon, for example, before a missile explodes in a Syrian regime weapons depot – by “mistake”, of course – or other government facilities? Since the US has decided to fund and train the so-called “moderate opposition” to fight Isis and the Syrian regime, why should it not bomb both sets of enemies? And how will Syrians who support whatever is left of these “moderates” react to the American bombs in Idlib which killed their fellow civilians rather than Assad’s forces – bombs, indeed, which appear to have been just as lethal as the munitions dropped on them by Assad’s aircraft?
As for the Gulf Arabs, not one has so far shown evidence that it has physically bombed any targets in Syria. Only Jordan has claimed to have attacked Isis; the rest of King Abdullah’s allies in the Arab “coalition of the willing” – how quickly we have forgotten that this was George W Bush’s expression for those nations which supported his 2003 Iraq invasion – appear to have limited their co-operation to providing airstrips, refuelling planes and perhaps patrolling the peaceful waters of the Gulf. In his hearings on Capitol Hill last week, the Secretary of State John Kerry was given an impatient grilling from Congressmen over just how many Arab aircraft would be dropping ordnance on Isis. Kerry fluffed his answers.

The Gulf Arabs, after all, have been here before. They remember clearly the exaggerated claims of military success in the air – of smart bombs that did not slaughter civilians, of cruise missiles that destroyed bunkers and training camps and “command and control centres” in 1991 and 2003. It all proved to be a very dodgy war menu. Yet now the Americans are re-cooking these old snacks for the Isis conflict.

Were these Islamist “warriors” really sitting around – drinking tea, perhaps – at “training camps” so that the Americans could kill them? Does Isis boast anything like a “command and control centre” – a bunker of computers and blinking target indicators – rather than just a clutch of mobile phones? Yet a “command-and-control centre”, no less, was said to have been destroyed.

And, as so often amid the excitement of yet another conflict escalation, the “experts” and decrepit ex-ambassadors on our screens need to leaf through a history book or two before explaining “our” actions. The “Islamic State” was created out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which absorbed the anti-American resistance to American occupation, which in turn followed the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. If Messrs Bush and Blair had not embarked on their Iraqi adventure, does anyone think the US would be helping Assad to destroy his enemies today?

“Irony” doesn’t measure up to the words of the Middle-East’s “peace envoy” who this week transformed himself into a war envoy by holding out the prospect of more Western troops in the Muslim world. Is the Syrian regime supposed to laugh or cry?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39776.htm

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