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Seymour Hersh Bombshell: US Military Shared Intelligence With Assad In Defiance Of Obama, CIA
Back in May, Seymour Hersh upended the “official” narrative surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden and in the process created a media firestorm prompting a response from the White House.
The explosive revelations about the events that ultimately led to bin Laden’s demise came a year-and-a-half after Hersh accused the Obama administration of not telling the whole story with regard to an infamous sarin gas attack that nearly served as an excuse for airstrikes against the Assad regime in 2013.
In the six months since Hersh’s bin Laden story made international headlines, the war in Syria has escalated meaningfully. Indeed, the country is now the theatre for what amounts to World War III with the US, France, Britain, Russia, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Iraq all involved either directly or indirectly.
As we noted just three days ago, we're beginning to see the formation of three alliances in the Mid-East: 1) Russia, Iran, Syria, and Iraq; 2) Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar; 3) Britain, France, and Germany. Here’s how we described the situation:
The first alliance is pro-Assad, anti-terror. The second is anti-Assad, pro-Sunni extremist. The third is anti-Assad (although less vehemently so), anti-terror (conspiracy theories aside). Note that we've left the US out. Why? Because Washington is now stuck. The US wants desperately to maintain coordination with Ankara, Riyadh, and Doha, but between stepped up media coverage of Saudi Arabia's role in underwriting extremism (via the promotion of Wahhabism) and hightened scrutiny on Erdogan's role in financing terrorists, the position is becoming increasingly untenable. But aligning solely with the UK, France, and Germany entails adopting a more conciliatory approach to Assad - just ask Berlin which, as we reported on Friday, is now working with Assad's intelligence police and may soon establish a base in Damascus.
Well, if you believe Seymour Hersh’s latest expose, we were even more right than we knew because as it turns out, some elements within the US military began tacitly cooperating with Assad two years ago after becoming concerned with Turkey and Saudi Arabia's support for Sunni extremists.
In a new 6,600 word piece, Hersh details what he says was a covert plot by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to undercut the “Assad must go” line promoted and pursued by the Obama administration and the CIA on the way to sharing valuable intelligence with the Assad government. The report also verifies the role of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and especially Turkey in arming and financing al-Nusra and ISIS.
Hersh begins by recounting a secret assessment of the security situation in Syria that dates from 2013 :
The military’s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.
He then moves immediately to indict Ankara:
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.
And here, according to Hersh, is how the plan was hatched:
‘Our policy of arming the opposition to Assad was unsuccessful and actually having a negative impact,’ the former JCS adviser said. ‘The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists. The administration’s policy was contradictory. They wanted Assad to go but the opposition was dominated by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say Assad’s got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better. It’s the “anybody else is better” issue that the JCS had with Obama’s policy.’ The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would have ‘had a zero chance of success’. So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.
Germany, Israel and Russia were in contact with the Syrian army, and able to exercise some influence over Assad’s decisions – it was through them that US intelligence would be shared.
Once the flow of US intelligence began, Germany, Israel and Russia started passing on information about the whereabouts and intent of radical jihadist groups to the Syrian army; in return, Syria provided information about its own capabilities and intentions. There was no direct contact between the US and the Syrian military; instead, the adviser said, ‘we provided the information – including long-range analyses on Syria’s future put together by contractors or one of our war colleges – and these countries could do with it what they chose, including sharing it with Assad. We were saying to the Germans and the others: “Here’s some information that’s pretty interesting and our interest is mutual.” End of conversation.
But the intelligence didn't come without conditions:
The Joint Chiefs let it be known that in return the US would require four things: Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included.
The Joint Chiefs then allegedly pulled a fast one on the CIA:
By the late summer of 2013, the DIA’s assessment had been circulated widely, but although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming, presenting a continuing problem for Assad’s army. Gaddafi’s stockpile had created an international arms bazaar, though prices were high. ‘There was no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorised by the president,’ the JCS adviser said. ‘The solution involved an appeal to the pocketbook. The CIA was approached by a representative from the Joint Chiefs with a suggestion: there were far less costly weapons available in Turkish arsenals that could reach the Syrian rebels within days, and without a boat ride.’ But it wasn’t only the CIA that benefited. ‘We worked with Turks we trusted who were not loyal to Erdo?an,’ the adviser said, ‘and got them to ship the jihadists in Syria all the obsolete weapons in the arsenal, including M1 carbines that hadn’t been seen since the Korean War and lots of Soviet arms. It was a message Assad could understand: “We have the power to diminish a presidential policy in its tracks.”’
Then comes yet another damning indictment of the Erdogan government:
But the Saudis were far from the only problem: American intelligence had accumulated intercept and human intelligence demonstrating that the Erdogan government had been supporting Jabhat al-Nusra for years, and was now doing the same for Islamic State. ‘We can handle the Saudis,’ the adviser said. ‘We can handle the Muslim Brotherhood. You can argue that the whole balance in the Middle East is based on a form of mutually assured destruction between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and Turkey can disrupt the balance – which is Erdogan’s dream. We told him we wanted him to shut down the pipeline of foreign jihadists flowing into Turkey. But he is dreaming big – of restoring the Ottoman Empire – and he did not realise the extent to which he could be successful in this.’
Hersh even spoke to firebrand Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (profiled here and here):
Gabbard later told me that many of her colleagues in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, have thanked her privately for speaking out. ‘There are a lot of people in the general public, and even in the Congress, who need to have things clearly explained to them,’ Gabbard said. ‘But it’s hard when there’s so much deception about what is going on. The truth is not out.’
Ultimately, Hersh says the effort to assist Assad died with Dempsey's retirement:
The military’s indirect pathway to Assad disappeared with Dempsey’s retirement in September. His replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, two months before assuming office. ‘If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia,’ Dunford said. ‘If you look at their behaviour, it’s nothing short of alarming.’ In October, as chairman, Dunford dismissed the Russian bombing efforts in Syria, telling the same committee that Russia ‘is not fighting’ IS. He added that America must ‘work with Turkish partners to secure the northern border of Syria’ and ‘do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition forces’ – i.e. the ‘moderates’ – to fight the extremists.
Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon. There will be no more indirect challenges from the military leadership to his policy of disdain for Assad and support for Erdogan. Dempsey and his associates remain mystified by Obama’s continued public defence of Erdogan, given the American intelligence community’s strong case against him – and the evidence that Obama, in private, accepts that case. ‘We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria,’ the president told Erdogan’s intelligence chief at a tense meeting at the White House (as I reported in the LRB of 17 April 2014). The Joint Chiefs and the DIA were constantly telling Washington’s leadership of the jihadist threat in Syria, and of Turkey’s support for it. The message was never listened to. Why not?
Read the full report below.
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“Military to Military”, Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war courtesy of the London Review of Books
Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.
The military’s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria policy. The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group stationed at an airbase in Turkey.’ The assessment was bleak: there was no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad, and the US was arming extremists.
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of the Islamic State inside Syria.’ The DIA’s reporting, he said, ‘got enormous pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did not want to hear the truth.’
‘Our policy of arming the opposition to Assad was unsuccessful and actually having a negative impact,’ the former JCS adviser said. ‘The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should not be replaced by fundamentalists. The administration’s policy was contradictory. They wanted Assad to go but the opposition was dominated by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say Assad’s got to go is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better. It’s the “anybody else is better” issue that the JCS had with Obama’s policy.’ The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would have ‘had a zero chance of success’. So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.
Germany, Israel and Russia were in contact with the Syrian army, and able to exercise some influence over Assad’s decisions – it was through them that US intelligence would be shared. Each had its reasons for co-operating with Assad: Germany feared what might happen among its own population of six million Muslims if Islamic State expanded; Israel was concerned with border security; Russia had an alliance of very long standing with Syria, and was worried by the threat to its only naval base on the Mediterranean, at Tartus. ‘We weren’t intent on deviating from Obama’s stated policies,’ the adviser said. ‘But sharing our assessments via the military-to-military relationships with other countries could prove productive. It was clear that Assad needed better tactical intelligence and operational advice. The JCS concluded that if those needs were met, the overall fight against Islamist terrorism would be enhanced. Obama didn’t know, but Obama doesn’t know what the JCS does in every circumstance and that’s true of all presidents.’
Once the flow of US intelligence began, Germany, Israel and Russia started passing on information about the whereabouts and intent of radical jihadist groups to the Syrian army; in return, Syria provided information about its own capabilities and intentions. There was no direct contact between the US and the Syrian military; instead, the adviser said, ‘we provided the information – including long-range analyses on Syria’s future put together by contractors or one of our war colleges – and these countries could do with it what they chose, including sharing it with Assad. We were saying to the Germans and the others: “Here’s some information that’s pretty interesting and our interest is mutual.” End of conversation. The JCS could conclude that something beneficial would arise from it – but it was a military to military thing, and not some sort of a sinister Joint Chiefs’ plot to go around Obama and support Assad. It was a lot cleverer than that. If Assad remains in power, it will not be because we did it. It’s because he was smart enough to use the intelligence and sound tactical advice we provided to others.’
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The public history of relations between the US and Syria over the past few decades has been one of enmity. Assad condemned the 9/11 attacks, but opposed the Iraq War. George W. Bush repeatedly linked Syria to the three members of his ‘axis of evil’ – Iraq, Iran and North Korea – throughout his presidency. State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks show that the Bush administration tried to destabilise Syria and that these efforts continued into the Obama years. In December 2006, William Roebuck, then in charge of the US embassy in Damascus, filed an analysis of the ‘vulnerabilities’ of the Assad government and listed methods ‘that will improve the likelihood’ of opportunities for destabilisation. He recommended that Washington work with Saudi Arabia and Egypt to increase sectarian tension and focus on publicising ‘Syrian efforts against extremist groups’ – dissident Kurds and radical Sunni factions – ‘in a way that suggests weakness, signs of instability, and uncontrolled blowback’; and that the ‘isolation of Syria’ should be encouraged through US support of the National Salvation Front, led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian vice president whose government-in-exile in Riyadh was sponsored by the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood. Another 2006 cable showed that the embassy had spent $5 million financing dissidents who ran as independent candidates for the People’s Assembly; the payments were kept up even after it became clear that Syrian intelligence knew what was going on. A 2010 cable warned that funding for a London-based television network run by a Syrian opposition group would be viewed by the Syrian government ‘as a covert and hostile gesture toward the regime’.
But there is also a parallel history of shadowy co-operation between Syria and the US during the same period. The two countries collaborated against al-Qaida, their common enemy. A longtime consultant to America’s intelligence community said that, after 9/11, ‘Bashar was, for years, extremely helpful to us while, in my view, we were churlish in return, and clumsy in our use of the gold he gave us. That quiet co-operation continued among some elements, even after the [Bush administration’s] decision to vilify him.’ In 2002 Assad authorised Syrian intelligence to turn over hundreds of internal files on the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria and Germany. Later that year, Syrian intelligence foiled an attack by al-Qaida on the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and Assad agreed to provide the CIA with the name of a vital al-Qaida informant. In violation of this agreement, the CIA contacted the informant directly; he rejected the approach, and broke off relations with his Syrian handlers. Assad also secretly turned over to the US relatives of Saddam Hussein who had sought refuge in Syria, and – like America’s allies in Jordan, Egypt, Thailand and elsewhere – tortured suspected terrorists for the CIA in a Damascus prison.
It was this history of co-operation that made it seem possible in 2013 that Damascus would agree to the new indirect intelligence-sharing arrangement with the US. The Joint Chiefs let it be known that in return the US would require four things: Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included. ‘We had positive feedback from the Israelis, who were willing to entertain the idea, but they needed to know what the reaction would be from Iran and Syria,’ the JCS adviser told me. ‘The Syrians told us that Assad would not make a decision unilaterally – he needed to have support from his military and Alawite allies. Assad’s worry was that Israel would say yes and then not uphold its end of the bargain.’ A senior adviser to the Kremlin on Middle East affairs told me that in late 2012, after suffering a series of battlefield setbacks and military defections, Assad had approached Israel via a contact in Moscow and offered to reopen the talks on the Golan Heights. The Israelis had rejected the offer. ‘They said, “Assad is finished,”’ the Russian official told me. ‘“He’s close to the end.”’ He said the Turks had told Moscow the same thing. By mid-2013, however, the Syrians believed the worst was behind them, and wanted assurances that the Americans and others were serious about their offers of help.
In the early stages of the talks, the adviser said, the Joint Chiefs tried to establish what Assad needed as a sign of their good intentions. The answer was sent through one of Assad’s friends: ‘Bring him the head of Prince Bandar.’ The Joint Chiefs did not oblige. Bandar bin Sultan had served Saudi Arabia for decades in intelligence and national security affairs, and spent more than twenty years as ambassador in Washington. In recent years, he has been known as an advocate for Assad’s removal from office by any means. Reportedly in poor health, he resigned last year as director of the Saudi National Security Council, but Saudi Arabia continues to be a major provider of funds to the Syrian opposition, estimated by US intelligence last year at $700 million.
In July 2013, the Joint Chiefs found a more direct way of demonstrating to Assad how serious they were about helping him. By then the CIA-sponsored secret flow of arms from Libya to the Syrian opposition, via Turkey, had been underway for more than a year (it started sometime after Gaddafi’s death on 20 October 2011).?? The operation was largely run out of a covert CIA annex in Benghazi, with State Department acquiescence. On 11 September 2012 the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed during an anti-American demonstration that led to the burning down of the US consulate in Benghazi; reporters for the Washington Postfound copies of the ambassador’s schedule in the building’s ruins. It showed that on 10 September Stevens had met with the chief of the CIA’s annex operation. The next day, shortly before he died, he met a representative from Al-Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services, a Tripoli-based company which, the JCS adviser said, was known by the Joint Staff to be handling the weapons shipments.
By the late summer of 2013, the DIA’s assessment had been circulated widely, but although many in the American intelligence community were aware that the Syrian opposition was dominated by extremists the CIA-sponsored weapons kept coming, presenting a continuing problem for Assad’s army. Gaddafi’s stockpile had created an international arms bazaar, though prices were high. ‘There was no way to stop the arms shipments that had been authorised by the president,’ the JCS adviser said. ‘The solution involved an appeal to the pocketbook. The CIA was approached by a representative from the Joint Chiefs with a suggestion: there were far less costly weapons available in Turkish arsenals that could reach the Syrian rebels within days, and without a boat ride.’ But it wasn’t only the CIA that benefited. ‘We worked with Turks we trusted who were not loyal to Erdo?an,’ the adviser said, ‘and got them to ship the jihadists in Syria all the obsolete weapons in the arsenal, including M1 carbines that hadn’t been seen since the Korean War and lots of Soviet arms. It was a message Assad could understand: “We have the power to diminish a presidential policy in its tracks.”’
The flow of US intelligence to the Syrian army, and the downgrading of the quality of the arms being supplied to the rebels, came at a critical juncture. The Syrian army had suffered heavy losses in the spring of 2013 in fighting against Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist groups as it failed to hold the provincial capital of Raqqa. Sporadic Syrian army and air-force raids continued in the area for months, with little success, until it was decided to withdraw from Raqqa and other hard to defend, lightly populated areas in the north and west and focus instead on consolidating the government’s hold on Damascus and the heavily populated areas linking the capital to Latakia in the north-east. But as the army gained in strength with the Joint Chiefs’ support, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey escalated their financing and arming of Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State, which by the end of 2013 had made enormous gains on both sides of the Syria/Iraq border. The remaining non-fundamentalist rebels found themselves fighting – and losing – pitched battles against the extremists. In January 2014, IS took complete control of Raqqa and the tribal areas around it from al-Nusra and established the city as its base. Assad still controlled 80 per cent of the Syrian population, but he had lost a vast amount of territory.
CIA efforts to train the moderate rebel forces were also failing badly. ‘The CIA’s training camp was in Jordan and was controlled by a Syrian tribal group,’ the JCS adviser said. There was a suspicion that some of those who signed up for training were actually Syrian army regulars minus their uniforms. This had happened before, at the height of the Iraqi war, when hundreds of Shia militia members showed up at American training camps for new uniforms, weapons and a few days of training, and then disappeared into the desert. A separate training programme, set up by the Pentagon in Turkey, fared no better. The Pentagon acknowledged in September that only ‘four or five’ of its recruits were still battling Islamic State; a few days later 70 of them defected to Jabhat al-Nusra immediately after crossing the border into Syria.
In January 2014, despairing at the lack of progress, John Brennan, the director of the CIA, summoned American and Sunni Arab intelligence chiefs from throughout the Middle East to a secret meeting in Washington, with the aim of persuading Saudi Arabia to stop supporting extremist fighters in Syria. ‘The Saudis told us they were happy to listen,’ the JCS adviser said, ‘so everyone sat around in Washington to hear Brennan tell them that they had to get on board with the so-called moderates. His message was that if everyone in the region stopped supporting al-Nusra and Isis their ammunition and weapons would dry up, and the moderates would win out.’ Brennan’s message was ignored by the Saudis, the adviser said, who ‘went back home and increased their efforts with the extremists and asked us for more technical support. And we say OK, and so it turns out that we end up reinforcing the extremists.’
But the Saudis were far from the only problem: American intelligence had accumulated intercept and human intelligence demonstrating that the Erdo?an government had been supporting Jabhat al-Nusra for years, and was now doing the same for Islamic State. ‘We can handle the Saudis,’ the adviser said. ‘We can handle the Muslim Brotherhood. You can argue that the whole balance in the Middle East is based on a form of mutually assured destruction between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, and Turkey can disrupt the balance – which is Erdo?an’s dream. We told him we wanted him to shut down the pipeline of foreign jihadists flowing into Turkey. But he is dreaming big – of restoring the Ottoman Empire – and he did not realise the extent to which he could be successful in this.’
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One of the constants in US affairs since the fall of the Soviet Union has been a military-to-military relationship with Russia. After 1991 the US spent billions of dollars to help Russia secure its nuclear weapons complex, including a highly secret joint operation to remove weapons-grade uranium from unsecured storage depots in Kazakhstan. Joint programmes to monitor the security of weapons-grade materials continued for the next two decades. During the American war on Afghanistan, Russia provided overflight rights for US cargo carriers and tankers, as well as access for the flow of weapons, ammunition, food and water the US war machine needed daily. Russia’s military provided intelligence on Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts and helped the US negotiate rights to use an airbase in Kyrgyzstan. The Joint Chiefs have been in communication with their Russian counterparts throughout the Syrian war, and the ties between the two militaries start at the top. In August, a few weeks before his retirement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Dempsey made a farewell visit to the headquarters of the Irish Defence Forces in Dublin and told his audience there that he had made a point while in office to keep in touch with the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov. ‘I’ve actually suggested to him that we not end our careers as we began them,’ Dempsey said – one a tank commander in West Germany, the other in the east.
When it comes to tackling Islamic State, Russia and the US have much to offer each other. Many in the IS leadership and rank and file fought for more than a decade against Russia in the two Chechen wars that began in 1994, and the Putin government is heavily invested in combating Islamist terrorism. ‘Russia knows the Isis leadership,’ the JCS adviser said, ‘and has insights into its operational techniques, and has much intelligence to share.’ In return, he said, ‘we’ve got excellent trainers with years of experience in training foreign fighters – experience that Russia does not have.’ The adviser would not discuss what American intelligence is also believed to have: an ability to obtain targeting data, often by paying huge sums of cash, from sources within rebel militias.
A former White House adviser on Russian affairs told me that before 9/11 Putin ‘used to say to us: “We have the same nightmares about different places.” He was referring to his problems with the caliphate in Chechnya and our early issues with al-Qaida. These days, after the Metrojet bombing over Sinai and the massacres in Paris and elsewhere, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we actually have the same nightmares about the same places.’
Yet the Obama administration continues to condemn Russia for its support of Assad. A retired senior diplomat who served at the US embassy in Moscow expressed sympathy for Obama’s dilemma as the leader of the Western coalition opposed to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine: ‘Ukraine is a serious issue and Obama has been handling it firmly with sanctions. But our policy vis-à-vis Russia is too often unfocused. But it’s not about us in Syria. It’s about making sure Bashar does not lose. The reality is that Putin does not want to see the chaos in Syria spread to Jordan or Lebanon, as it has to Iraq, and he does not want to see Syria end up in the hands of Isis. The most counterproductive thing Obama has done, and it has hurt our efforts to end the fighting a lot, was to say: “Assad must go as a premise for negotiation.”’ He also echoed a view held by some in the Pentagon when he alluded to a collateral factor behind Russia’s decision to launch airstrikes in support of the Syrian army on 30 September: Putin’s desire to prevent Assad from suffering the same fate as Gaddafi. He had been told that Putin had watched a video of Gaddafi’s savage death three times, a video that shows him being sodomised with a bayonet. The JCS adviser also told me of a US intelligence assessment which concluded that Putin had been appalled by Gaddafi’s fate: ‘Putin blamed himself for letting Gaddafi go, for not playing a strong role behind the scenes’ at the UN when the Western coalition was lobbying to be allowed to undertake the airstrikes that destroyed the regime. ‘Putin believed that unless he got engaged Bashar would suffer the same fate – mutilated – and he’d see the destruction of his allies in Syria.’
In a speech on 22 November, Obama declared that the ‘principal targets’ of the Russian airstrikes ‘have been the moderate opposition’. It’s a line that the administration – along with most of the mainstream American media – has rarely strayed from. The Russians insist that they are targeting all rebel groups that threaten Syria’s stability – including Islamic State. The Kremlin adviser on the Middle East explained in an interview that the first round of Russian airstrikes was aimed at bolstering security around a Russian airbase in Latakia, an Alawite stronghold. The strategic goal, he said, has been to establish a jihadist-free corridor from Damascus to Latakia and the Russian naval base at Tartus and then to shift the focus of bombing gradually to the south and east, with a greater concentration of bombing missions over IS-held territory. Russian strikes on IS targets in and near Raqqa were reported as early as the beginning of October; in November there were further strikes on IS positions near the historic city of Palmyra and in Idlib province, a bitterly contested stronghold on the Turkish border.
Russian incursions into Turkish airspace began soon after Putin authorised the bombings, and the Russian air force deployed electronic jamming systems that interfered with Turkish radar. The message being sent to the Turkish air force, the JCS adviser said, was: ‘We’re going to fly our fighter planes where we want and when we want and jam your radar. Do not fuck with us. Putin was letting the Turks know what they were up against.’ Russia’s aggression led to Turkish complaints and Russian denials, along with more aggressive border patrolling by the Turkish air force. There were no significant incidents until 24 November, when two Turkish F-16 fighters, apparently acting under more aggressive rules of engagement, shot down a Russian Su-24M jet that had crossed into Turkish airspace for no more than 17 seconds. In the days after the fighter was shot down, Obama expressed support for Erdo?an, and after they met in private on 1 December he told a press conference that his administration remained ‘very much committed to Turkey’s security and its sovereignty’. He said that as long as Russia remained allied with Assad, ‘a lot of Russian resources are still going to be targeted at opposition groups … that we support … So I don’t think we should be under any illusions that somehow Russia starts hitting only Isil targets. That’s not happening now. It was never happening. It’s not going to be happening in the next several weeks.’
The Kremlin adviser on the Middle East, like the Joint Chiefs and the DIA, dismisses the ‘moderates’ who have Obama’s support, seeing them as extremist Islamist groups that fight alongside Jabhat al-Nusra and IS (‘There’s no need to play with words and split terrorists into moderate and not moderate,’ Putin said in a speech on 22 October). The American generals see them as exhausted militias that have been forced to make an accommodation with Jabhat al-Nusra or IS in order to survive. At the end of 2014, Jürgen Todenhöfer, a German journalist who was allowed to spend ten days touring IS-held territory in Iraq and Syria, told CNN that the IS leadership ‘are all laughing about the Free Syrian Army. They don’t take them for serious. They say: “The best arms sellers we have are the FSA. If they get a good weapon, they sell it to us.” They didn’t take them for serious. They take for serious Assad. They take for serious, of course, the bombs. But they fear nothing, and FSA doesn’t play a role.’
*
Putin’s bombing campaign provoked a series of anti-Russia articles in the American press. On 25 October, the New York Times reported, citing Obama administration officials, that Russian submarines and spy ships were ‘aggressively’ operating near the undersea cables that carry much of the world’s internet traffic – although, as the article went on to acknowledge, there was ‘no evidence yet’ of any Russian attempt actually to interfere with that traffic. Ten days earlier the Times published a summary of Russian intrusions into its former Soviet satellite republics, and described the Russian bombing in Syria as being ‘in some respects a return to the ambitious military moves of the Soviet past’. The report did not note that the Assad administration had invited Russia to intervene, nor did it mention the US bombing raids inside Syria that had been underway since the previous September, without Syria’s approval. An October op-ed in the same paper by Michael McFaul, Obama’s ambassador to Russia between 2012 and 2014, declared that the Russian air campaign was attacking ‘everyone except the Islamic State’. The anti-Russia stories did not abate after the Metrojet disaster, for which Islamic State claimed credit. Few in the US government and media questioned why IS would target a Russian airliner, along with its 224 passengers and crew, if Moscow’s air force was attacking only the Syrian ‘moderates’.
Economic sanctions, meanwhile, are still in effect against Russia for what a large number of Americans consider Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine, as are US Treasury Department sanctions against Syria and against those Americans who do business there. The New York Times, in a report on sanctions in late November, revived an old and groundless assertion, saying that the Treasury’s actions ‘emphasise an argument that the administration has increasingly been making about Mr Assad as it seeks to press Russia to abandon its backing for him: that although he professes to be at war with Islamist terrorists, he has a symbiotic relationship with the Islamic State that has allowed it to thrive while he has clung to power.’
*
The four core elements of Obama’s Syria policy remain intact today: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support. The Paris attacks on 13 November that killed 130 people did not change the White House’s public stance, although many European leaders, including François Hollande, advocated greater co-operation with Russia and agreed to co-ordinate more closely with its air force; there was also talk of the need to be more flexible about the timing of Assad’s exit from power. On 24 November, Hollande flew to Washington to discuss how France and the US could collaborate more closely in the fight against Islamic State. At a joint press conference at the White House, Obama said he and Hollande had agreed that ‘Russia’s strikes against the moderate opposition only bolster the Assad regime, whose brutality has helped to fuel the rise’ of IS. Hollande didn’t go that far but he said that the diplomatic process in Vienna would ‘lead to Bashar al-Assad’s departure … a government of unity is required.’ The press conference failed to deal with the far more urgent impasse between the two men on the matter of Erdo?an. Obama defended Turkey’s right to defend its borders; Hollande said it was ‘a matter of urgency’ for Turkey to take action against terrorists. The JCS adviser told me that one of Hollande’s main goals in flying to Washington had been to try to persuade Obama to join the EU in a mutual declaration of war against Islamic State. Obama said no. The Europeans had pointedly not gone to Nato, to which Turkey belongs, for such a declaration. ‘Turkey is the problem,’ the JCS adviser said.
Assad, naturally, doesn’t accept that a group of foreign leaders should be deciding on his future. Imad Moustapha, now Syria’s ambassador to China, was dean of the IT faculty at the University of Damascus, and a close aide of Assad’s, when he was appointed in 2004 as the Syrian ambassador to the US, a post he held for seven years. Moustapha is known still to be close to Assad, and can be trusted to reflect what he thinks. He told me that for Assad to surrender power would mean capitulating to ‘armed terrorist groups’ and that ministers in a national unity government – such as was being proposed by the Europeans – would be seen to be beholden to the foreign powers that appointed them. These powers could remind the new president ‘that they could easily replace him as they did before to the predecessor … Assad owes it to his people: he could not leave because the historic enemies of Syria are demanding his departure.’
*
Moustapha also brought up China, an ally of Assad that has allegedly committed more than $30 billion to postwar reconstruction in Syria. China, too, is worried about Islamic State. ‘China regards the Syrian crisis from three perspectives,’ he said: international law and legitimacy; global strategic positioning; and the activities of jihadist Uighurs, from Xinjiang province in China’s far west. Xinjiang borders eight nations – Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India – and, in China’s view, serves as a funnel for terrorism around the world and within China. Many Uighur fighters now in Syria are known to be members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement – an often violent separatist organisation that seeks to establish an Islamist Uighur state in Xinjiang. ‘The fact that they have been aided by Turkish intelligence to move from China into Syria through Turkey has caused a tremendous amount of tension between the Chinese and Turkish intelligence,’ Moustapha said. ‘China is concerned that the Turkish role of supporting the Uighur fighters in Syria may be extended in the future to support Turkey’s agenda in Xinjiang. We are already providing the Chinese intelligence service with information regarding these terrorists and the routes they crossed from on travelling into Syria.’
Moustapha’s concerns were echoed by a Washington foreign affairs analyst who has closely followed the passage of jihadists through Turkey and into Syria. The analyst, whose views are routinely sought by senior government officials, told me that ‘Erdo?an has been bringing Uighurs into Syria by special transport while his government has been agitating in favour of their struggle in China. Uighur and Burmese Muslim terrorists who escape into Thailand somehow get Turkish passports and are then flown to Turkey for transit into Syria.’ He added that there was also what amounted to another ‘rat line’ that was funnelling Uighurs – estimates range from a few hundred to many thousands over the years – from China into Kazakhstan for eventual relay to Turkey, and then to IS territory in Syria. ‘US intelligence,’ he said, ‘is not getting good information about these activities because those insiders who are unhappy with the policy are not talking to them.’ He also said it was ‘not clear’ that the officials responsible for Syrian policy in the State Department and White House ‘get it’. IHS-Jane’s Defence Weekly estimated in October that as many as five thousand Uighur would-be fighters have arrived in Turkey since 2013, with perhaps two thousand moving on to Syria. Moustapha said he has information that ‘up to 860 Uighur fighters are currently in Syria.’
China’s growing concern about the Uighur problem and its link to Syria and Islamic State have preoccupied Christina Lin, a scholar who dealt with Chinese issues a decade ago while serving in the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld. ‘I grew up in Taiwan and came to the Pentagon as a critic of China,’ Lin told me. ‘I used to demonise the Chinese as ideologues, and they are not perfect. But over the years as I see them opening up and evolving, I have begun to change my perspective. I see China as a potential partner for various global challenges especially in the Middle East. There are many places – Syria for one – where the United States and China must co-operate in regional security and counterterrorism.’ A few weeks earlier, she said, China and India, Cold War enemies that ‘hated each other more than China and the United States hated each other, conducted a series of joint counterterrorism exercises. And today China and Russia both want to co-operate on terrorism issues with the United States.’ As China sees it, Lin suggests, Uighur militants who have made their way to Syria are being trained by Islamic State in survival techniques intended to aid them on covert return trips to the Chinese mainland, for future terrorist attacks there. ‘If Assad fails,’ Lin wrote in a paper published in September, ‘jihadi fighters from Russia’s Chechnya, China’s Xinjiang and India’s Kashmir will then turn their eyes towards the home front to continue jihad, supported by a new and well-sourced Syrian operating base in the heart of the Middle East.’
*
General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept their dissent out of bureaucratic channels, and survived in office. General Michael Flynn did not. ‘Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria,’ said Patrick Lang, a retired army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the DIA. ‘He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out. He wouldn’t shut up.’ Flynn told me his problems went beyond Syria. ‘I was shaking things up at the DIA – and not just moving deckchairs on the Titanic. It was radical reform. I felt that the civilian leadership did not want to hear the truth. I suffered for it, but I’m OK with that.’ In a recent interview in Der Spiegel, Flynn was blunt about Russia’s entry into the Syrian war: ‘We have to work constructively with Russia. Whether we like it or not, Russia made a decision to be there and to act militarily. They are there, and this has dramatically changed the dynamic. So you can’t say Russia is bad; they have to go home. It’s not going to happen. Get real.’
Few in the US Congress share this view. One exception is Tulsi Gabbard, a Democrat from Hawaii and member of the House Armed Services Committee who, as a major in the Army National Guard, served two tours in the Middle East. In an interview on CNN in October she said: ‘The US and the CIA should stop this illegal and counterproductive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad and should stay focused on fighting against … the Islamic extremist groups.’
‘Does it not concern you,’ the interviewer asked, ‘that Assad’s regime has been brutal, killing at least 200,000 and maybe 300,000 of his own people?’
‘The things that are being said about Assad right now,’ Gabbard responded, ‘are the same that were said about Gaddafi, they are the same things that were said about Saddam Hussein by those who were advocating for the US to … overthrow those regimes … If it happens here in Syria … we will end up in a situation with far greater suffering, with far greater persecution of religious minorities and Christians in Syria, and our enemy will be far stronger.’
‘So what you are saying,’ the interviewer asked, ‘is that the Russian military involvement in the air and on-the-ground Iranian involvement – they are actually doing the US a favour?’
‘They are working toward defeating our common enemy,’ Gabbard replied.
Gabbard later told me that many of her colleagues in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, have thanked her privately for speaking out. ‘There are a lot of people in the general public, and even in the Congress, who need to have things clearly explained to them,’ Gabbard said. ‘But it’s hard when there’s so much deception about what is going on. The truth is not out.’ It’s unusual for a politician to challenge her party’s foreign policy directly and on the record. For someone on the inside, with access to the most secret intelligence, speaking openly and critically can be a career-ender. Informed dissent can be transmitted by means of a trust relationship between a reporter and those on the inside, but it almost invariably includes no signature. The dissent exists, however. The longtime consultant to the Joint Special Operations Command could not hide his contempt when I asked him for his view of the US’s Syria policy. ‘The solution in Syria is right before our nose,’ he said. ‘Our primary threat is Isis and all of us – the United States, Russia and China – need to work together. Bashar will remain in office and, after the country is stabilised there will be an election. There is no other option.’
The military’s indirect pathway to Assad disappeared with Dempsey’s retirement in September. His replacement as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July, two months before assuming office. ‘If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia,’ Dunford said. ‘If you look at their behaviour, it’s nothing short of alarming.’ In October, as chairman, Dunford dismissed the Russian bombing efforts in Syria, telling the same committee that Russia ‘is not fighting’ IS. He added that America must ‘work with Turkish partners to secure the northern border of Syria’ and ‘do all we can to enable vetted Syrian opposition forces’ – i.e. the ‘moderates’ – to fight the extremists.
Obama now has a more compliant Pentagon. There will be no more indirect challenges from the military leadership to his policy of disdain for Assad and support for Erdo?an. Dempsey and his associates remain mystified by Obama’s continued public defence of Erdo?an, given the American intelligence community’s strong case against him – and the evidence that Obama, in private, accepts that case. ‘We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria,’ the president told Erdo?an’s intelligence chief at a tense meeting at the White House (as I reported in the LRB of 17 April 2014). The Joint Chiefs and the DIA were constantly telling Washington’s leadership of the jihadist threat in Syria, and of Turkey’s support for it. The message was never listened to. Why not?
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Arrest the Userpers USM! Defend against domestic threats, uphold the oath!
RIPS
well, the U.S. public has seen a severe lack of intelligence...in the half-white house...and they are going ballistic, in a Trumpish kinda way #TRUMP2016
0
Everything a government touches, turns to crap - Ringo Star
So the sociopaths in DC are fighting among themselves? Maybe they will start killing each other?
They'll only start with that once they're done killing everyone else.
The military is not stupid. They know about the Joo World Order and they are not down.
Glad ZH picked up on this as a top article. This is important for everyone to know about even thoug the media and gov-scum will do their best to either cover it up or twist it in order to make obama look good (or like a "victim").
I posted about Sy Hersh's article in a previous article earlier today which was about the Saudi's, so I'm glad the story wasn't past up by Tyler:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-22/us-ally-saudi-arabias-phony-war...
Very amusing to me that Israel got itself included in the 'good guys' alliance of Russia and Germany, when its actually the kingpin, the connection between the Saudi/Qatar alliance, and France/UK alliance...
"A boss will typically put up layers of insulation between himself and his men in order to defeat law enforcement efforts to arrest him. Whenever he issues orders, he does so either to his underboss, consigliere or capos. The orders are then passed down the line to the soldiers. This makes it difficult under most circumstances to directly implicate a boss in a crime, since he almost never directly gives orders to the soldiers"
Plausible deniability (for the Zionists). That is Jordan and Turkey's role in Syria.
Yes, yes, lets talk about the Erdogan attempt to recreate the Ottoman (which was dual Slavic Orthodox and Turkish Islamic btw) Empire, but not Bibi's attempts to create Eretz Israel...
If what Hersch asserts is actually true then we have a boat load of problems. To start with we know its nothing new with respect to the duplicitous role of the Saudi's. We need to end that relationship and our dependency on their oil. Second, Erdogan is a dirty player, as dirty as we think Assad is. Nato needs to understand this and not be part of his greasy dealings if called into action to defend Turkey from Russian agression (of defense).
With respect to our military, if they were really doing this without the approval from POTUS it is a huge problem. Even if I agree with their ultimate reasons and actions, this is the kind of shit that can end upcausing a war. If our military was involved in anything like this they need to be held to account.
And now to the most concerning aspect of this situation. If POTUS was so far removed from his military staff that he did not listen and act (to some degree) on their recommendations then he is derelict in his duty to protect our country. If he was bent on his potlitical agenda over common sense solutions then we have a real problem. If Hillary as SecState was involved in the Obama doctrine for the region then she too is a huge disaster. The far reaching implications of this article is that the people in charge of our mideast foreign policy had no fucking clue what they were doing AND they had no idea what was really going on. This type of thing will reflect poorly on Hillary and her run for office. (Thank goodness).
This is a shit sandwich for all participants however you look at it.
"Germany, Israel and Russia were in contact with the Syrian army, and able to exercise some influence over Assad’s decisions – it was through them that US intelligence would be shared"
Is this before or after the bombing of Assad's armories? Guess they learned never to trust the snake.
Seymore, always making headlines with some of the truth. Note this is a form of damage control. If it were the complete truth, this guy would have been nail-gunned long ago.
The timing of this "report" is rather suspect to say the least.
So there's been a division between the pentagram and langley for two years and we are just now hearing about it after their narrative completely fell apart and the BS is hanging out for all to see?
Yeah... Mmmhmmm...
I do believe there's a division between the pentagram and langley, but only recently... it's a competition to throw the other under the bus and pass blame.
The man with one red shoe - been happening since the inception of all these intelligence apparatuses.
The good news is that we actually have some military personnel that realize that this communist raghead won't be in charge much longer (we hope).
The in-fighting becoming more visible and serious in nature
Hopefully this helps the acceleration to chaos more quickly
So the sociopaths in DC are fighting among themselves? Maybe they will start killing each other?
Only when they run out of serfs
“The message was never listened to.. Why not?”
Because the terrorist –in- chief identifies with al-Nusra and IS and has the same basic objectives in regards to damaging the US.
The new war mongers in the Pentagon are just happy and content as they continue to be richly funded and get to continue buying weapons, fighting and securing their highly compensated post-military careers.
The bankers and defense contractors are all happy to enjoy the booming and profitable war racket.
Either that or they are all complete blithering idiots.
In any case, it ain’t good for America.
no it's not.
israel comes off way too well in this piece. it may have been in contact with the assad regime to see what israel could find out and to confuse syria. it is at war with iran, iraq, syria and hezbollah. it currently gives medical help to daesh (is) and admits it.
what more does it do that it doesn't admit?
the explanation for most of the inexplicable actions of the u.s. government in the world is that israel wants to be surrounded by failed states and has said so many times. such states are felt to be less dangerous to israel (if more dangerous to the u.s. via sympathizers) and it is from fragmenting states that greater land and wealth can be obtained for eretz israel
And this is why the military is going to the crapper starting with cuts to the experienced ranks both in the admirals and generals and the ranks of seasoned veterans. MIC selling over-priced crap that doesn't work. But it seems to go back to the likes of General Paul Van Ripper in Millenium Challange 2002.
Implying that Israel was helping Assad? BULLSHIT!
I like the line about Russian intelligence helped the US find Osama bin Laden. Right. Pull the other one. I'm sure Russia knew, like Benazir Bhutto knew, that Osama was dead long before Abbottabad. Like most / everything Hersh does, this is damage control, using some truth and some well placed lies and distortions to spin the shit sandwich as best he can for the Zino-mob.
SEYMORE HERSH = JEW.
Move along. Nothing to see here. For real.
Yes, I too find the story that the military helped Assad fight ISIS via Israel difficult to swallow. I think it's a way to throw Obama under the bus and having Israel coming out looking like an angel, when all should be held responsible for supporting terrorism.
My take is they are nervous that the public opinion is shifting pro-Russia and questioning the alliance's covert support for ISIS, especially Israel's purchase of ISIS oil. Along comes Seemore-BS to try rescue the devil.
+1
Something stinks very badly when they kept saying Assad must go because "continues to barrel-bomb his own people"; now, on the conditions of his staying in power, instead of stating he must stop using barrel bombs on his people:
"The Joint Chiefs let it be known that in return the US would require four things: Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included. "
Where is the connecting logic in that???
It's the Zino-wishlist.
Somewhere out there former ZH member, ekm, is having kittens right about now.
Actually you have a shitload of problems and good patriots in the Army know it
ADMIRAL LYONS reveals Obama's Anti-US, Pro-Islam Agendahttps://youtu.be/cLiYxi89QMw
Nice that the SOTU Address is a target-rich environment and the JCOS have a standing res. Go Get "Em Boys!
For the cock & asshole suckers downvoters - we know reality sucks but you still have to leave with it, enjoy your nightmare!
Uh, did anyone take note of the disclosure concerning good old Cap Weinberger during Adminral Lyons explanation of U.S. policy in the middle east? Kinda changes how we view the whole Lebanon thing from now on. Oh and I didn't know that a cabinet secretary had more power than a sitting president. (... chugs at the whiskey, like a good little Irishman )
"Even if I agree with their ultimate reasons and actions, this is the kind of shit that can end upcausing a war. If our military was involved in anything like this they need to be held to account."
I dunno man...I say vote "Trumpary" in and just let this shitshow commence
I must apologize in advance: I've had a few beers...
I challenge you to a duel you mother fucking Obama-
supporting traitor.
Russian aggression? Uncle Sam would be strangling puppies if Russia sponsored and then created a presence for itself in Canada. More Yanks need to speak with actual Ukranians (I talk with Ukranian trades every week and have for nearly a decade now) and see how they percieve the colour revolutions as American politics and just as corrupt.
<-- jew neocons in the MIC/espionage/Pentagon/Langley complex
<-- jew marxists in the American journalistic press corps
WHO's the winner? It's so hard to figure these things out these days!
Zionists control both.
well if I had worded it that way, I would have only received downvotes
Fuckin Joomanji antics
You realize Zionism was created by Satanic Globalists as a scapegoat to deflect attention from them right?
Is everyone blinded to the fact that the Jesuits are the wizard behind the curtain?
I've seen very convincing stuff that agrees with what both you and SMG propose. They aren't mutually exclusive either. I definitely think SMG is on the right track.
Links please.
I'm not doubting, I just hear both those accusations thrown around a lot, and never seem to get any documentation.
Zionists (not jews necessarily) control both. Many jews are brainwashed pawns complicit only in their silence.
Sorry for double post. Could not edit first post.
it's mighty easy to become brainwashed when the 'control nodes' (banking, MSM, political activism, jurisprudence) favor, (or, on the other side, actively engage in assfucking) your ethnicity.
The US Ruling Oligarchy is divided. Some would like to destroy the USA promoting NWO and the other would like to have the strong USA in charge of NWO. Naturally Zionist belong to the first group. The second group understands that, by weakening/destroying the USA, China instead of Zionist Banking Mafia & Israel will run the world with the USA looking more like today Ukraine.
It is very obvious that Israel has been behind "Assad must step down" campaign and the chaos that ensued when the four preconditions of his remaining in power revolve much more around Israel's interests than those of Syrian people's:
"Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included. "
The third and last conditions are what Assad is doing or would likely have done anyway.
++
Yes, a shame the American public will never be exposed to these truths. I havn't read the document yet but if the real source of the sarin attack is identified and tied to Washington, this crime against humanity will bring down the Presidency. And then, President Biden (unless he was involved too). There's NO WAY to minimize the Sarin attack. The videos are horrendus and breathtaking.
listen to Mr Hersh on today's Democracy Now. Interview begins at approx. :15, after news headlines.
www.democracynow.org
democracy now kind of pissed me off
they used to be pro free syrian army and anti-assad...
haven't really tuned into them for a couple years now so not sure where they stand now.
Not true at all. There is no need to minimize.
In other news, Tom Brady this, Kim Bigassian that, Bieber blobs, and Beyonce' boobs.
Just ignore. See?
Let's just hope there are enough true patriots left in Americas mercenary military.
Yep. This story MAKES MY YEAR. The only hope for America is honorable soldiers who throw out the traitorous government and restore the constitution.
Dear generals: your friends and families have lost their freedoms, same as everyone else. You swore an oath to the constitution, not to any man. Arrest the traitors and throw out all foreign invaders.
This is a possibility that frightens me. It may be that the military is our last best hope of restoring the constitution and rule of law as set forth in the constitution and bill of rights. It is also possible it would lead to a military coup and junta style military dictatorship. Dark times indeed that this is even a possibility, let us pray it never becomes necessary for that might be the final nail in the coffin of the Republic just as it might be the defibrillator restoring vitals. Such a sad state of affairs. All I want is our Republic under rule of law back. Is that so much to ask?
Yes, it is too much to "ask". The only way for it to happen is for honest men to "take" the Republic back from the criminals. Foolish to expect them to give it up. Sorry.
They will only do that when they can no longer get anyone to do the killing for them
Can those cunts really swing a purse that hard?
No. they will just enslave half the population to kill the other half.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhy_EjmvQ0I
@ SW,
It appears the Pure Evil Psychopaths cannot decide on what False Narrative / PsyOp / Propanda Script to go with.
Actually, they are going with many, in order to suck everyone in to at least one of them.
It's a damn shame the Holiday season will be enough of a distraction to keep the Sheep asleep.
"So the sociopaths in DC are fighting among themselves? Maybe they will start killing each other?"
Now that would be a Christmas miracle!
Just read `bout dis in the Military to Military book review published in the UK. The Zionogresses' K-Street kiddies and the slut MILFS in the pixeled pot of puss semen slow steaming on the lame stream's break-room hotplates must be keeping the criminals off their talking points.
What's going on? There is a war between the good guys, the US ARMY, the uniformed military admins at DoD, a group of CIA guys we employ and the criminals in the DIA and their lap zogs, not aligned with CIA good guy CIA dudes and dudettes, and NAVY.
USAF Pilots been shouting and a carrying signs saying "I will not be in AL KADA's airforce!
Someone must have seen the big O's secret hidden executive orders (he has signed about 5 of them)
Question, when was the last time anybody saw an aircraft carrier or submarine sailing through the rocky mountains.
Gee, just heard Sen L Graham, a navy girl, just pulled out of the GOP primaries. I don't vote, and, if you knew what I know, you wouldn't waste the petrol either. I guess he learned his boyfriend, a classic enduring naval tratition to cure "lonely boner" or "empty bunghole despair" while sailing the high seas, has "nasties" where de sun don't shine (aka log cabin republican fever). Rumor has it that Dubby's closet cased DOD hefe brought the house down at the LGBT Log Cabin Repugs rally!
USAF pilots are posting images with signs saying "I am not AL KADA's air force"
Gay's we employee in the higher nodes of OUR government employees are easy to coerce if it is known they like pre adolescent buns up and kneeling during a (do you need another viagra, Mr Secretary) roust joust of find the quarter.
We need a plan or they'll enslave our children.
So now its the the commons, USAF, US Army, some CIA good guys (that fee sure got all the evidence with pictures and little arrows and circles with words on the back, ie,; evidence to burn the kiddie lovers on the wrong side of the constitution!) against the limp dick kiddie fondler's.
Things are looking up. Heuy kiddie fondlers, it could be easy, it can be not so easy. Up to you.
And that's why I don't do two shows a night. Hopefully I won't need to put my Eagle Scout credentials to use.
@InjectTheVenom Hey, hey. Nobody trumps da Trump !
Stop the press : "America is dishonest"
Fuck, is there no one you can trust?
Exactly,If you really want to impress us!!!!!March on Washington and remove all Traitors!
This times a 1000. No sympathy for any military personnel fighting today.
The same thing is happening in Europe because it is being controlled by the 'Nazis'.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is ‘Hitler’s Daughter’......
http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2015/12/the-fix-is-in-franc...
Thatcher's stuff is finally going up for auction NOW. Somebody knows where the wind is blowing: If money talks, it's looking like Merkel, Hillary, et al. and all their baggage are going DOWN big time.
BTW we could use a few Argentinian generals.
Ask the Pope...I am sure he could name some that he has previously worked with.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-pope-who-is-francis-i-cardinal-...
so let me see if i've got this right---israel was directing obama to its bidding as well as directing the DIA to oversee its interests---all covertly. playing both sides.
Who exactly are the usurpers? The army which is tasked with assessing war and the dangers of war? Or the president who has usurped his office as no one has previously done? Or the neocons who seem to owe their allegience to a foreign government, not the United States? Or to the CIA which is the antithesis of republican government?
The Oath demands that the oath taker "defend against enemies foreign and domestic." Pay close attention to that word "domestic." If the republic has been usurped by the office of the president and by the CIA (since at least 1947), what's the military to do, murder people (foreign and domestic) just to help the president pretend that he has balls or a dick, just to aid the CIA in it's superannuated Yale graduates' lethal intramural pranks or to take arms against that sea of troubles?
Maybe the DIA aka US Military and The Pentragram will grow a pair of balls and defend The Constitution and take down the evil See Eye Aye and the usurper and his zio pals.
The USA is a corrupt joke. Totally corrupt and evil.
I have huge respect for the Syrian people and military fighting for the Syrian people. The USA and European militaries are cowards who allowed wide open ZWO borders and invasions.
"Maybe the DIA aka US Military and The Pentragram will grow a pair of balls and defend The Constitution and take down the evil See Eye Aye and the usurper and his zio pals."
Don't count on it. The top military brass selection/appointment vetting process is designed to have super loyal and reliable people in charge of military. No military bureaucrat would endanger their careers and wellbeingfor the sake of the country.
I stand with all of you.
Enough is enough.
Interesting article , although it feels a bit , post hoc. I quote an insider who has been in those rooms many times. It's much , much worse than you even can begin to imagine...
The Butcher?
Military needs to boycott these ceaseless wars for the rich cocksuckers who profit at the expense of the rest of us.
How to build a career that way?
Military isn't a career; It's a service you perform.
" It's a service you perform."
yeah, like 'last rites' for democracies/republics...
....or exorcism.
You don't become a general that way.
Some in the military pay the highest price. If they understand, there are some who cannot and will not stand down.
I just hope they understand that war is a bad thing. Not all military understand that.
I disagree Atthelake. All in the military from the highest general to the sailor scraping barnacles off the side of a ship know war is bad because they have to put their asses on the line to go and fight the damn wars.
A soldier, sailor, and marine are the first ones to want peace.
Complete BS and always will be. Generals and admirals get promoted when they have wars to fight and are flush with cash to buy new toys.
That's actually what happened here. The brass/intelligence in the DoD disagreed strongly with the Administrations position, enough to undermine a President of the United States.
Frankly, good on the DoD on this one. They knew they were being asked to start a bullshit mess in the middle east, and they warned Obama not to, Obama did it anyway, so they used what influence they had to make sure Obama's legacy would be tainted.
to clarify, Obama 'dindu nuffin'
I've still never heard a good political reason why Assad "has to go"... Why is Assad a leader that is unacceptable? Why must be go?
They never give a good reason, I suspect they never had one and hoped to god they could create one.
I suspect they were attempting to provoke Assad to actually use his chemical weapons in desperation against his opposition, and Assad did not...
Go back to Sept 2013 when the US Navy had 4 missile destroyers or frigates with Tomahawks off the coast of Syria.
The Russians had 5 to 6 ships off the coast of Syria. The US Navy would have to fire over the Russian navy ships. The ocean was filled with subs from lots of countries. The Chinese also supposedly had a cruiser there too.
General Martin Dempsey was JCRS chairman. Obola wanted Tomahawks on Syria. Dempsey went to White House on a Saturday morning and probably told Obola that is was a very bad idea. The missiles were never launched....however....some sights said two missiles were launched:
1. Version 1 was the US launched them and Russia quickly shot them down.
2. Version 2 was two missiles were launched near Cypruse probably from a sub and were Israeli and the US Navy quickly shot them down.
I would bet the Russian military has a back channel with the US Military and the Russians said this is a very bad idea. Obola and his zios are evil fools, we do not want a war but we will NOT back down.
So was Dempsey a hero? We sure know that ConGrezz-io is total shit with the exception of Sen. Jeff Sessions and one or two others like Grassley and a handful in the House. The rest are traitors who deserve what Mussolini got.
While I agree with the one or two thing, Grassley ain't one of them; he is through and through a "vote for me and I'll bring the ag money" guy. The ag money that funds the GMOs, nitrogen pollution wiping out sections of the Gulf of Mexico, and so on.
They deserve what Gahdahffi got.
Buckwheats for everybody.
Seymour needs to blow the lid off his fellow tribesman and reveal the role greater israhell has played in all these atrocities.
Never. It's a fantasy of yours that you can get out of the clutches of the Khazars.
His name is CIAmore Hersh.
Don't really trust him and he is a democrat partisan -- note how quickly he went silent about the wars after Obummer was elected only to reemerge lately for God knows what real reasons.
Do NOT trust any of them, demoncrat, repubican or otherwise -- including and especially media. "Follow" no-one but yourself, but listen to everyone without exception. Take whatever useful info you can glean and use your discernment as to what is reliable or false and render your own decisions.
(Note I may not be directing all of these suggestions at you personally. For all I know you are already awake and aware)
Same sentiments.
all you need to do is to scroll down the comment section and see what's happening...
Any 'joo' or 'Khazar' comment has collected a half dozen JUNKS so far... Here's a sheckel for your 'unbiased' participation Shylock!
You've been here 12 whole weeks so I really appreciate your telling me how to read ZH, asshat.
"You've been here 12 whole weeks so I really appreciate your telling me how to read ZH, asshat."
You have zero fucking idea who you're talking to, or what my comment was with regards to.
You don't see that your comment, at a minimum, lacks clarity?
What I see is that you don't have a fucking clue.
Yes, I'm confused from this side of your eyeballs and can't imagine what it must be like on your side looking out. Apparently your immune from just making a simple declarative and clarifying statement of your beliefs?
Gentlemen the infighting ought to stop. You're both saying the same thing. Mr. Pope, please take a look before you swing and you are being overly dramatic. Anti-Zionist posts get a lot of support. More all the time as more and more people see the common enemy.
Absolutely.
I sped through most of the second part of this, but he seems to be 100% in favor of the way we destabilized Ukraine and quick to condemn Russia for their "aggression" there. Also seems to be giving Israel more favorable treatment than I would expect. On the other hand, in the ME things are so twisted and perverted, who really knows who is really in bed with whom?
Well, it is in Hersh"s words a "limited hangout." Skullduggery I might add as well.
Yes. And Buggery, too.
Damnable skullbuggery, I'd venture a farthing!
I understand it is actually damnable porcine skullfuckery on the Brit side of the pond.
I'll buy that for a dollar!
His reasons for this being released now are a good question.
But even from the article:
The Joint Chiefs let it be known that in return the US would require four things: Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included.
Sounds to me that Assad (and Russia) betrayed Hezbollah. More recently one of their convoys was bombed and then the building housing a key leader (who had struck Israel in the past) was killed when it was bombed by Israli jets. Clearly Assad and Putin gave the info to Israel.
And the US wanted Russian military advisors for a reason. Another deal was struck with Russia where Russia must betray Assad, protect Israel and control Assad for something. There are reasons Putin sat and allowed Syria to be destroyed, its fighting men expended and its society ruined before acting. And a reason Putin never honored the 2007 contract to supply Assad with the S300.
Make no mistake, the jew mafia in the US, Russia and Israel contolled the actions of the US and Russia.
Just lost my respect for Assad.
Hezbollah was stupid to trust Russia (and now we find Assad also betrayed them), now Russia and Assad have collected a lot of intelligence on them. Hezbollah was lured into the open by Putin and Assad, they better slip back home or they risk being devestated while Putin allows them to be attacked.
Your reasoning is solid. However, there are many unknowns in the equation.
Putin may be in league with the money changers, but there is also evidence against it. His war against the Russian oligarchs is one of them.
It appears that the Russians are aware of the western corruption reaching critical mass. The house of cards is crumbling, and that the western nations will turn on themselves when the collapse occur. Putin might just be smart enough to play several chess-boards at ones.
His reasoning is retarded. Hezbulah is on the battlefield helping Russia fight their common enemy. Just because Seymore wishes it was different in his Zionist dream world doesn't make it so.
conscious being, as i understood it the Quds are assisting hezbulah. iran & russia seem to be allies, it's certainly in their best interests to be, as well as shia iraq...so why would russia curry favour with israel? i agree with many that we need to keep open & view all possibilities but russia 'stabbing' iran, the Quds, the syrians for israel---to what end? russia was patient, it didn't enter syria without consideration, which leads me to suspect russia has a longer range in mind. joined, iran, iraq, syria with the golan's oil & water, & yemen reconfigure the ME. feeding israel's greater plan in no way contributes to iran's future, or russia's or syria's. what's in it for russia? possibly russia likes to read everyone's mail, particularily israel's. nuttyhatesgoys is obviously playing as many sides as he can but i presume putin can also manage several chessboards.
Putin walks and talks a sincere effort to stop the destabilization of the ME.
By defanging the radical zionists, he is much more likely to succeed.
There is a difference between attacking Israel, and stopping its schemes to decimate the surrounding powers.
Stuff I am reading says you get killed that way, or your children. I haven't tracked down support for Bollyn's claims, I should buy his books, I guess, haven't even read reviews yet.
Anyway, when you look at the big picture, there aren't many people talking about 9/11 FF. Lots have been fired for doing so, but Atkinson, etc. Where are the big names in America making their reputations and political careers on 9/11 Truth? It isn't as if there is a lack of convincing evidence, nor lack of people to support them, indeed I would laud them to the skies.
And every time I have the throught "You could become President on a 9/11 Truth platform" I also realize "If you lived". Nobody can have illusions of a free press or a free political process, beginning from selection of candidates through your being able to vote, your vote properly tabulated, and any legal processes being honest.
Watching Bollyn's talk in Dallas, I think it was, convinced me to think about personal safety of me and mine, and I know I am far below their radar, who would learn anything from my death, it would have far more effect than me alive via a minute chance of me becoming a symbol of gov criminality, and there are 1000s like me.
Remember how we were told that Communism was bad because people lived in fear from their government or JRandom Bureaucrat looking for a payoff?
(Convnced myself, buy the books. Support the Truth tellers. And now that I think of it, no it isn't an advertisment for my web site, I am not that sophisticated in that kind of propaganda yet. Maybe next year, will keep you informed.)
At this point I've read Another Nineteen by Ryan and Bollyn's book Solving 9/11 and found them both worthwhile and there are others. It's a really big topic that has no simple answer or thread, other than that 9/11 was contrived and has little to do with complicity of Islam, the religion.
PNAC,
Arrest, Tri, Convict & Execute in public to deter future Psychopaths from commiting the same attrocities.
Do not know if this website or the info it provides on Bollyn is legit:
http://www.takeourworldback.com/short/bollyn.htm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Hersh who first wrote about Israel's "Samson option" insanity?
Just when you think that the Syrian clusterfuck cannot get any worse, it gets much worse.
Who is actually running US policy? CIA? Obama? Joint Chiefs? Or someone else?
Likud?
Psssst. There are jews under your bed you know. They are everywhere! Car won't start? Power failure? TV on the blink? Yep, it's them jews again. Never mind all that racket about the MIC or the CIA and/or the US military. It's the jews. I would suggest the best way to deal with this is to become jewish yourself, then they might leave you alone, maybe.
No, it's Turkey.
As usual playing both sides again.
It's sad to see how the few Zionists have succeeded in making Jews look bad by pretending and making the world believe they are for the interests of all Jews... Sigh.
Yes.
Obama has made some moves to stop the Syrian invasion, to calm things down ih the ME. Those moves are all very anti-Israeli interests, and I think it is the source of the new book on Obama's gay life.
Israeli-Neocons play for keeps. 9/11 was a very big bet that took 30 years to prepare, was implemented by a 2nd team : lousy operational security, the "Dancing Israelis" should have been court-martialed, if they really meant to hide it.
As a measure of Israeli power within the US of A, MSM's long silence on 9/11 seems correct.
Why have we had so few insiders talking? It is only partly the fact that we don't hear them via MSM.
Oppose AIPAC, they run people in your primary against you and fund them well. AIPAC owns Congress. I think it conservatively cautions to conclude that the world has an interlocking criminal-political conspiracy deep state running things, court politics based on greed and fear in equal measure, and that every country in the world is affected in one way or another.
There is no other enemy worthy of notice, the Likud and Neocon allies are our enemy. If you want to go looking for evil, you certainly do not need to go abroad for dragons.
If there are any old-oine Bolshevicks from the USSR days still in politics, they will have such an advantage in the political games. The Scots have the only continuous line of descent, they will rule us all, extrapolating slightly.
Just wondering aloud...is OBoy being set up to be removed by military coup? Seems a relatively bloodless way to implement martial law, getting him and the banksters, 'real' positive change - while embracing Russia and the BRICS. If so, then Hersh is a 'limited hangout' presser who won't be Hasting'd any time soon...
I'm not sure about a military coup because there is no way the public would accept it unless they have access to this type of info that you can be sure wont be on the MSM, but I have read rumblings about Obomber cancelling the upcoming US elections by starting an all out war against Russia (all the pieces are in place) and keeping his presidency....of course it could all be rubbish, but somethhing is definately going on world-wide.
Most anyone who is anything follows alternative media nowadays, and people like Alex Jones, Paul Craig Roberts, Dave Hodges, Mike Adams, Gerald Celente etc. have been clamoring for - well, insurrection, basically. There's also been rumors of the military hating OBoy, especially after he purged 260 officers. So if it happens it won't be totally out of the blue for most 'aware' people, which is who those in power really want to cater to because we are the ones who they most fear.
Hersh is 100% disinfo so it still looks like every thing is going according to plan to me. Spot the globalist's unusual condition for "assistance" to Assad...
"The Joint Chiefs let it be known that in return the US would require four things: Assad must restrain Hizbullah from attacking Israel; he must renew the stalled negotiations with Israel to reach a settlement on the Golan Heights; he must agree to accept Russian and other outside military advisers; and he must commit to holding open elections after the war with a wide range of factions included. "
Et tu, Vlad?... (someones going to be getting a new set of steak knives)
Globalism is obviously still the end-game. I am wondering though if there really is a movement to stop the all-out war before it gets going, like there is some kind of real schism between the psychopaths who want us all dead and the 'sane' oligarchs who want to keep the status quo? I'm seeing more and more evidence that this might happen. We'd still be screwed, but we'd at least still be alive. If we do make it to the other side and the BRICS win, we may yet be able to at least make SURE things stay on the up-and-up this time, as there are quite a few of us now who know the real deal. That's what I hope for, anyway.
Globalism has been the clearly defined end game since the 1782 Conference of Wilhelmsbad
There is no real movement to stop the war... only a movement to awaken the planetary muttonheads to the threat of the fake war that is ostensibly being engineered by the ZioFucknuts but is really being run by the globalist bankers as usual.
There is a real awakening back at the Pentagon however... but I doubt the NSA or CIA is going to let any insurrections happen unless the script calls for it.
P.S. There will be NO nuclear war since the threat is all that they will need to usher in the NWO. When PCR, Seymour, Snowden and Assange all appear on the MSM and everyone "knows" it was the Zionistas... the globalists will have finally succeeded.
ZeroHead, this is a false dichotomy. The ZioFucknuts are the banksters. Rothchild brought the entity into existance. Crimminal banksters from around the world run there to hide out and avoid extradition. For example - The Economist "Welcome to the Promised Land"
The whole Jewish/Israel thing was set up from the beginning - over a hundred years ago, if not much longer - to be the 'bogey man' that was used to terrorize the world and accomplish the goals of the globalists, and once their goal is in sight they will sacrifice them to 'appease' the people that the 'bad guys' are really gone...while those at the top of the pyramid gloat in their piles of SDR's.
It is no coincidence that so many joos were heads of the FED or are in so many banking establishments. It is also no coincidence that Isreal was created to be such a hotbed of contention since its inception. Yes, the Joos used that country and those banks to create the current situation - but they will be sacrificed. Just as they were sacrificed in Germany so Israel could be created, so will the Joos be sacrificed so that the very top of the chain will finally realize their wettest globalist dream.
Yup
More precisely the ZioFucknuts are owned by the banksters...
Former CIA Robert Steele says the US has like seven foreign policies conducted by various powerful factions.
That would explain a few things.
And this begs the question of where Trump lines up. Is it possible that he is the Military's choice? Which faction does he support, or which faction supports him? Trump's Military School background likely left him with a strong set of principles planted deeply in a young mind. He understands and appreciates Military discipline, and his work ethic & organizational skills in defining and overtaking an objective illustrate that influence. Trump is most likely to be for the Generals....most likely to take their advice in their fields of expertise.
The Obama Legacy: Sow confusion and division at all levels of american government, culture, and society. Undermine order; foster chaos; invert reality; loot the taxpayer; reward the indolent; attack the whites; destabilize western civilization; abuse the military; and promote Islam.
Did I miss anything?
well yes, we do need to again mention the flaming faggot aspect
As an example of the total information control exerted against us by TPTB, an excellent point.
Both the ignorance they kept us in about all attributes of our current President and the recent revelation which comes suspiciously AFTER Obama is slightly effective at deflecting Israeli interests.
Yeah, and 3:10 tee time.
Tweedle something.
If this is true, and it seems like it is, we're fucked. When you have various branches within the government working towards different goals and objectives, that's when things start to spiral out of control. Bizarro world...
This is all uncomfortably close to what one finds in a banana republic, but not entirely surprising. Just wait until the dollar bites the dust. That's when the mask really comes off and all the factions start fighting each other out in the open.
Dollar dies and it's AK's and assless chaps.
pods
Sounds like I'm already prepared.