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US/UN Fears Assad Win in Free Syrian Election? – LewRockwell.com

February 13, 2014 12:28 pm / Leave a comment

US/UN Fears Assad Win in Free Syrian Election? – LewRockwell.com.

Every now and then we have a chance to peek through a tiny window to see how “diplomacy” is done behind closed doors. Last week the leaked conversation between US diplomatsplotting the overthrow of Ukraine’s government was one such dramatic moment.

Another came Tuesday, in an interview with Iran’s Ambassador to Lebanon, Ghazanfar Roknabadi, which appeared in the respected Lebanese Daily Star newspaper. In a sweeping interview, the Ambassador discussed the recent bombing of the Iranian embassy in Beirut and the regional threat of the growing number of jihadist groups in Syria.

Then he let loose with this bombshell. Roknabadi told the Daily Star that the Iranian government had been under pressure to convince Syrian president Bashar al-Assad not to run again for president. As Syria’s only regional ally, Iran presumably has a good deal of influence with the Assad government.

Ambassador Roknabadi:

[U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey] Feltman, during a visit to Iran last summer, asked officials to convince Assad not to run in the elections. The Iranian officials asked him: ‘What’s the problem if he runs,’ to which Feltman responded: ‘If he runs, he will win the elections.’

Feltman is not just any UN bureaucrat. In the revolving door between the UN and US government, he previously served as US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from August 2009 to June 2012 and as United States Ambassador to Lebanon from July 2004 to January 2008. Before that he served in post-”liberation” Iraq.

More recently, Feltman was an important cast member in the above-mentioned “Ukraine-gate” phone call between US undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. In the Ukraine drama, his former State Department colleagues agreed that Feltman could be trusted to appoint a UN official to “glue” together the deal they were cooking up.

If Ambassador Roknabadi is accurate in his account, this confirms much about the US government’s cynical regime-change ploy in Syria. Not that it is any surprise to those paying attention. It is in keeping with US ambivalence toward actual electoral democracy in those places which it purports to democratize. From Gaza to Egypt to Afghanistan to Libya to Iraq, it seems what US democratization efforts fear most is actual democracy.

No wonder Secretary Kerry keeps desperately clinging to the US misread of the “Geneva I” communiqué, claiming without evidence that it is a regime-change agreement among signatories. Assad must be kept out of the picture, because the US is terrified of his popularityin Syria.

I am on RPI,  Facebook, and Twitter.

11:09 pm on February 12, 2014Email Daniel McAdams

Syria: Enough Is Enough | James Zogby

January 27, 2014 8:27 pm / 1 Comment on Syria: Enough Is Enough | James Zogby

Syria: Enough Is Enough | James Zogby.

I wish I could be optimistic about Geneva II, but I cannot. That it happened at all is good. But “good for what” remains unclear. Listening to the speeches at the opening session established quite convincingly that none of the participants were ready to deal with the reality of what has become the most horrific tragedy of this new century.

During the past three years, the Syrian people have been victimized by a cruel and unrelenting war. While the competing sides may argue over who is at fault and what should now be done, what remains indisputable are the cold hard numbers of those who have been killed or forced to flee from their homes. Less quantifiable, but still real, is the physical destruction of once beautiful neighborhoods and world heritage treasures, and the emotional destruction visited upon a generation of Syrian children who will bear the scars of this war for a generation.

Despite all of this, the fighting continues without letup with neither side willing or able to accept the responsibility of contributing to ending it. The people may be exhausted, but the regime and the opposition are not.

We are three years into this bloody mess and what should have been clear from the outset has now become certain. This conflict will not end with one side claiming a decisive victory. Neither the regime and its international sponsors, nor the opposition and the countries that support them will be able to win. That this simple fact is not, and maybe cannot be, accepted by either side is what keeps the conflict going.

While it is easy find fault with the combatants, equally at fault are those who have funded them, armed them, and provided them with political support without control or conditions. Continuing the fight and continuing to fuel the fight is worse than a fool’s errand, it is a crime.

Delusions abound. The fragmented and deeply divided opposition, represented at Geneva by a rump delegation, still claims to speak for the Syrian people. The reality on the ground speaks otherwise. They blame the U.S. for not supporting them and refuse to accept responsibility for their own disarray. Some of their elements continue to maintain that their revolution is democratic and pluralistic, but the main forces doing the fighting — even those who are now termed as “moderates” — are anything but. Among the main rebel forces are disciplined extremist groups that have committed deplorable acts against civilians. Even now the opposition coalition insists on the precondition that the regime must step aside, as if they would be in a position to govern in its stead.

For its part, the regime continues to speak of its “legitimacy”, but its behavior has, if anything, cost it the right to claim that mantle. It was a brutal dictatorship before the war began and its conduct during the conflict has rightly earned it the epitaph of “war criminal”.

In this context, it was especially galling to listen to the Syrian Foreign Minister in his opening address speak of the “will of the Syrian people,” lecturing the U.S. Secretary of State saying “No one, Mr. Kerry, has the right to withdraw legitimacy of the [Syrian] president other than the Syrians themselves.” He said this, I presume, with a straight face, ignoring the tens of thousands killed, the millions who have been forced to flee, and the cities that have been devastated — all supposedly in the vain effort to establish this claim of “legitimacy”.

Surely this regime has run its course. Just as surely, this opposition, such as it is, is not in a position to lead. Therein lies the core of the Syrian tragedy. It is not just that neither side can win, but that neither side deserves to win — nor can they, in any event, govern the country.

Syria and the Syrian people deserve better. Those who maintain that the culture of the Syrian people is open, tolerant, and progressive are right. But those qualities are fast fading. Three years of conflict have ushered in a new reality of fanaticism, violence, and the evil of sectarian hostility. Out of all this, it will hard to build the new Syria. But Syrians still deserve the chance.

I have never supported a war and find it difficult to do so now, but I find myself increasingly convinced that the U.S. and international community have a responsibility to act and may need to use force to help end this conflict. If Geneva II fails to make progress toward any meaningful compromise, then I believe action must be taken.

There are firm demands that should be presented to all sides. The regime must stop its aggressive assault on “rebel-held positions” in populated areas. The destruction created by attacks on neighborhoods and the suffering that has been inflicted on innocent civilians is unacceptable. The opposition must be pressed to consolidate its ranks by becoming more inclusive and adopting a non-sectarian agenda for change. And they must purge their ranks of sectarian extremists. Both sides must agree to begin serious negotiations, without preconditions, to implement the transitional authority envisioned in the Geneva I formula.

Establishing a power-sharing transitional government will not be easy. It will take time. But both sides must be disabused of the notion that they can govern alone. The opposition has its base, as does the regime. If they want to be part of Syria’s future and if their funders and supporters want to be seen as making a constructive contribution to a resolution to this conflict, then they must agree to such a power-sharing arrangement. There is no other way.

If this does not occur within a defined period of time, then the U.S. may find it necessary to mobilize international support to launch strikes in Syria against both the regime and positions held by extremist groups. The strikes would in all likelihood need to be significant and sustained enough to change the calculations of the combatants. The Russians may choose to be part of this solution or not. But we are long past the time when the fate of Syria should be decided by a Russian veto.

Simultaneously, the U.S. would also need to lead an effort to mobilize a post-agreement peace-keeping force and a reconstruction and resettlement fund for Syria and its millions of refugees and internally displaced persons. Even after a power-sharing arrangement is reached, international support will be important to give the Syrians the time they need to make it work.

This degree of U.S. involvement may not be welcomed by many Americans and it will likely be rejected in many parts of the Arab World. But enough is enough. Something must be done to help end this Syrian nightmare.

Activist Post: Wolf Blitzer Gets SCHOOLED on Syria: ‘Do you think there’s real democracy in the US?’

January 25, 2014 6:35 pm / Leave a comment

Activist Post: Wolf Blitzer Gets SCHOOLED on Syria: ‘Do you think there’s real democracy in the US?’.

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Media Spin Machine in High Gear: Top Three Media Lies About the Syrian Peace Talks | Global Research

January 24, 2014 11:35 am / Leave a comment

Media Spin Machine in High Gear: Top Three Media Lies About the Syrian Peace Talks | Global Research.

The media spin machine is again kicking into high gear, perfectly timed to accompany the “Geneva II” Syria peace talks. The lies are necessary to give the Obama administration an upper hand in the peace negotiations, which are not being used to pursue peace, but instead, to accomplish the Obama administration’s longstanding goal of Syrian regime change. Here are the top three Western media lies about the Syrian peace talks. 

 1) The removal of Syrian Bashar al-Assad was an agreed upon “precondition” for the Geneva II peace talks. 

This lie has been repeated over and over by government and media alike. It has zero basis. The Obama administration claims that this precondition was expressed in the “Geneva communiqué,” which was a road map agreement meant to guide the Geneva II peace talks, agreed upon by some of the major parties of the negotiations, including Russia.

The communiqué does indeed call for a negotiated political transition, but nowhere does it state that such a transition cannot include President Assad. Such a condition would have been outright rejected by Russia.

In fact, the Geneva communiqué includes this crucial statement:

“[a transition government] could include members of the present [Syrian] government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.” Nowhere does it specifically mention or imply President Assad.

The Los Angeles Times recently stepped out of line and exposed this lie:

“[John] Kerry regularly cites the “Geneva communiqué,” a kind of peace road map hammered out in June 2012 during a United Nations-organized summit. But the document does not explicitly call for Assad’s ouster.”

The Obama administration’s constant repeating of this lie only causes divisions in the peace process, undermining the chances that the peace process will succeed.

The Obama administration is especially adamant about this “Assad must go” pre-condition because it knows that, if free and fair elections were held tomorrow in Syria — as part of a UN-backed “transitional process”— President Assad would likely win. This is the result of the ethnic and religious minorities in Syria that have rallied behind President Assad, since they’ve witnessed the consistent religious sectarian atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed rebels (which the U.S. media loves to ignore or minimize).

Assad would probably win an election since there is also simply no one else on the government side or the opposition side with his name recognition or popularity. The U.S.-backed rebel war in Syria has vastly strengthened Assad’s political hand, but you wouldn’t know it from the Western, anti-Syrian media.

Demanding Assad’s ouster also does not reflect the situation on the ground.  The U.S.-backed rebels have never controlled more than one Syrian city, namely Raqaa, which is dominated by al-Qaeda and is governed under a Taliban-style interpretation of Islamic law, which includes a strict ban on music. Thus, the rebels don’t have the ground power that would even enable them to make the demand that “Assad must go”.

2) The U.S.-backed rebel militias are “moderate” Islamic groups.

The fact that this lie can even be uttered publicly without encountering ridicule is a major success of Western media propaganda. The media narrative paints the U.S.-backed “good” rebels fighting both the Syrian government and the “bad” al-Qaeda linked rebels.

But the “good” rebels in the U.S.-backed Islamic Front share the same vision for Syria’s future as the al-Qaeda rebels: a fundamentalist version of Sharia law, where women live in virtual house arrest and where religious minorities are second class citizens (non-Sunni Muslims would simply be butchered, as they are on a regular basis in Syria, which is again minimized or ignored in the Western media.)

The “moderate rebel” lie was further exposed recently when a top leader in the most powerful militia, Ahrar al Sham, within the Islamic Front declared Ahrar al Sham to be the “real” representative of al-Qaeda in Syria, as opposed to the rival al-Qaeda faction that the Islamic Front had recently begun fighting.

Ahrar al Sham has long been known to be an al-Qaeda type Islamist extremist group; the Western media simply chose to ignore it. But when it was recently made official, the U.S. media chose to continue its ignoring stance, since actually reporting on it would destroy their “moderate rebel” lie. The Western media also continues to ignore the fact that the “moderate” U.S.-backed Islamic Front issued a joint statement that aligned itself to the extremist views of Ahrar al Sham, the “real” al-Qaeda.

3) New Evidence of Syrian government “industrial scale” torture.   

The Western media recently blasted the “breaking news” of brand new evidence showing massive “NAZI-like” torture and murder by the Syrian government, released at the beginning of the Syrian peace talks. This may or may not be true, but the lie here is that the Western media promoted the “evidence” as being unquestionably true, when the story doesn’t reach first base when it comes to evidence-based journalism.

All we really know is that there are hundreds of pictures of dead people that a “trusted source” says were killed by the Syrian government. The trusted source was designated as such by pro-Western intellectuals, who have earned professional “credibility” by helping convict war criminals in the International Criminal Court [ICC]. But as author Diane Johnstone pointed out in her excellent book “Fools Crusade,” about the war against Yugoslavia — as well as in other articles — the ICC has long been used by western powers as a tool to create a pretext for war, or a tool to justify a war after the fact.

The evidence of the “NAZI-like” atrocities was written in a study paid for by the government of Qatar, which has long funneled cash, guns, and Jihadis to Syria in aid of the anti-government rebels.

Again, we don’t know if the story is true or not. But such an important investigation should be conducted by the UN or another more objective institution. The same biased dynamic occurred in relation to the infamous chemical weapons attack, where no real evidence was provided, though an unending string of “experts” were quoted in the Western media, testifying to the guilt of the Syrian Government. But when Pulitzer prizewinning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the Obama administration lied about the rebels not having the capacity to perform such an attack, the Western media simply ignored the legend of journalism. The wrench in the propaganda machine was simply dislodged.

How do these lies become such permanent fixtures in the Western media? An excellent article in the Guardian newspaper recently discussed in depth the principal sources the Western media has used to understand the Syrian conflict.

The article exposed the incredible bias of some of the most important Western media sources on Syria, which is why they were handpicked in the first place to be “expert” sources: they had political agendas that were aligned with the U.S. government’s foreign policy decisions. The other side of the conflict was completely ignored, except when it was targeted for ridicule. Thus, Americans and Europeans have a completely one-sided, if not fantasy-based perspective of what is happening in Syria. This has been systematic since the beginning of the conflict, as happened with the Yugoslav, Afghan, Iraq, and Libya wars.

The result of this media-led ignorance could result in yet more unnecessary deaths in a country that now has millions of refugees and over a 100,000 dead. Obama seems like he intends to exploit these peace talks with the intention of blaming the Syrian government for their failure. Having failed to defeat Assad on the battlefield in a proxy war, the Obama administration is trying to win the propaganda war. And once peace talks have failed, talk of war will resume, since “all other options have failed.”

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org). He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com

Notes

http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Syria/FinalCommuniqueActionGroupforSyria.pdf

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-syria-talks-20140123,0,992030.story

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2014/01/isis-raqq-ban-music-smoking-impose-veil.html

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/01/17/4620554/key-anti-assad-rebel-leader-acknowledges.html#.Uts02BAo7RY

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByBt2sGl4U4hU2lrZGFoeUtkV1k/edit

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/20/world/syria-torture-photos-amanpour/

http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Crusade-Yugoslavia-Western-Delusions/dp/158367084X

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/05/06/do-we-really-need-an-international-criminal-court-2/

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n24/seymour-m-hersh/whose-sarin

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/12/syrian-opposition-doing-the-talking

Activist Post: 5 Reasons The Latest Report On Syria War Crimes Might Not Be True

January 22, 2014 2:49 pm / Leave a comment

Activist Post: 5 Reasons The Latest Report On Syria War Crimes Might Not Be True.

Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

In a recently released and conveniently timed report, complete with references to Nazi Germany and concentration camps, efforts to ramp up support for a “tough line” against Syria at the upcoming Geneva II conference and even possible military intervention, are once again moving into high gear. The report, compiled by three British war crime prosecutors and three “forensic experts” claims that it has demonstrable proof that the Assad government is guilty of torturing and killing over ten thousand people.

The report (accessed here) claims to show evidence of physical torture, murder, and starvation.
Of course, the Syrian government denies the veracity of the claims of the report and Western media outlets repeat the claims as incontrovertible proof.

As Reuters reports,

A Syrian military police photographer has supplied “clear evidence” showing the systematic torture and killing of about 11,000 detainees in circumstances that evoked Nazi death camps, former war crimes prosecutors said.

Syrian officials could face war crimes charges as a result of the evidence provided by the photographer, who has defected, the three prosecutors said.

One of the prosecutors said the evidence documented “industrial scale killing” that was reminiscent of the World War II concentration camps of Belsen and Auschwitz.

The trove of harrowing photographs ratchets up the pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who the United States and its Western allies say has committed war crimes against his own people during the civil war.

[…]

55,000 images provided by the photographer, who fled Syria after passing the pictures to Assad’s opponents, show emaciated and mutilated corpses.

Bearing signs of torture, some of the corpses had no eyes. Others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution.

“There is clear evidence, capable of being believed by a tribunal of fact in a court of law, of systematic torture and killing of detained persons by the agents of the Syrian government,” the three prosecutors said in the 31-page report.

“Such evidence would support findings of crimes against humanity against the current Syrian regime. Such evidence could also support findings of war crimes against the current Syrian regime,” they said.

However, while the final determination of whether or not these claims are accurate is yet to be made, there exist ample reasons to question the assertions made in the report.

1. The Gulf State Feudal Monarchy Qatar is the sponsor of the report. Qatar is, of course, one of the major sponsors of the Syrian invasion (aka the Syrian “rebels”) and has played a massively important role in financing, training, arming, and directing the death squads currently being mopped up by the Assad government.

2. The source of the report. One would be justified in questioning the nature of the report since the sole source of the material comes by virtue of an allegedly “defected Syrian military police officer” who was apparently fine with photographing thousands of dead victims for over a year until now. Regardless of the possibility for such a “moral” conversion, taking information from a “defected” member of government forces once again returns us to the realm of the “activists say” school of journalism – a notorious method used by Western media outlets to promote the side of the death squads and only the side of the death squads as fact in popular reports.

3. Past claims of Assad’s “Crimes Against Humanity.” It is important to remember past experiences with Western claims against Assad for alleged “crimes against humanity,” all of which turned out to have been committed by the death squads, not the Syrian government. From theHoula massacre to the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks, the Syrian government has been exonerated by all credible evidence. The death squads, however, have been proven guilty by virtue of their own video tapes and Youtube accounts, guilty of some of the most horrific acts imaginable. While many innocent people have no doubt been killed in the crossfire between the military and the death squads, the Western media has done everything in its power to place the blood of each and every death inside Syria in the hands of the government.

Let us also not forget the other famous Codename, “Curveball,” that played a major role in the initiation of a previous and still ongoing conflict that was later admitted to be a fabrication. Being fooled by the same type of propaganda twice in ten years is indeed a humiliation too great for a country to bear.

4.) Possibility that the death squads could have killed the victims shown in the report. The victims shown in the report have clearly been abused and starved. However, before jumping to conclusions about just how these unfortunate individuals met their fate, perhaps it would be a good idea to look back at the context of the victims. As mentioned earlier, the death squads operating in Syria are no strangers to crimes against humanity, murder, and torture. In fact, they have been both the initiators of such depravity and overwhelmingly the largest proprietors of it.

Furthermore, the fact that the victims were starved does not necessarily mean that they were starved by the government. Indeed, it is important to remember that, due to the siege of a number of cities by both the military and the death squads as well as due to death squad cruelty and attempted cordoning off of specific areas, food shortage has been a serious concern in some areas for some time. There is also plentiful evidence of death squad groups killing innocent people and shipping their bodies to the places where cameras are set up, waiting for the recording of the propaganda piece. The Ghouta chemical attack is just one instance in which innocent civilians were captured and killed by the death squads and used as stage props for propaganda purposes.

Indeed, it is also important to remember that the death squads themselves are quite adept at keeping prisoners in atrocious conditions. Only a few months back, it was reported that the Syrian military was able to free a number of captive Syrian women from the hands of the death squads who had kept them in captivity in underground tunnels for months on end for the purposes of using them as sex slaves.

5.) The report was conveniently released just two days before the Geneva II Peace Conference meeting on Syria. After the retraction of an invitation to Iran to attend the peace conference, the Qatari-funded report was released just two days before the peace conference was scheduled to take place. With such evidence being studied and analyzed and a report being compiled, to believe that it was only a coincidence that the information was released two days before the conference is absurd. If this evidence was real and of such grave importance why are world leaders only learning of it now? If world leaders knew, why are we only learning of it now?

Considering all of the information provided in this article, taken in conjunction with the “convenient” timing of the release of the reports (convenient, at least, for the enemies of Syria), such reports should be taken with a large grain of salt.

The Western media has not only been wrong, but has lied on so many occasions in the past, that it cannot be expected to tell the truth now.

Recently from Brandon Turbeville:

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1and volume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 275 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

Peace Talks In Chaos As Greeks Refuse To Refuel Syrian Flight | Zero Hedge

January 21, 2014 10:03 am / Leave a comment

Peace Talks In Chaos As Greeks Refuse To Refuel Syrian Flight | Zero Hedge.

The Syrian peace talks – much heralded by investors and politicians worldwide as a brave step towards a better future – are on the ropes this morning. Following the UN acquiescence to the US demand that they rescind Iran’s invite to the so-called Geneva II conference,and yet another suicide bombing in Lebanon, this morning’s incredible SNAFU is thanks to the Greeks:

  • GREECE REFUSES TO REFUEL SYRIAN GENEVA TEAM AIRCRAFT: SYRIA TV
  • SYRIAN AIRCRAFT DELAY CANCELS MEETING WITH UN’S BAN: STATE TV

The peace accord set to begin tomorrow will be delayed and are in further jeopardy as CNN reports further evidence of Syrian President al-Assad systematically killing and torturng around 11,000 people.

Via Reuters,

…

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s unexpected, last-minute decision on Sunday to invite President Assad’s main foreign backer Iran – only to withdraw the invitation a day later – proved a diplomatic fiasco, undermining talks that are already given little chance of success.

…

The peace conference set to begin on Wednesday will include the first talks between Assad and his opponents. But hopes of a breakthrough are negligible at a time when fighting has escalated and neither side shows any sign of retreating from its demands or being able to end the war with a victory.

…

It has been 18 months since a previous international peace conference in Geneva ended in failure, and all other diplomatic initiatives have also proven fruitless.

“At best, Geneva 2 will reconfirm agreements made during the first Geneva conference, call for ceasefires, maybe prisoners swap and so on,” said one Western diplomat.

“At the same time, those taking part in the talks are de facto giving legitimization to Damascus. They are talking to Assad’s government on the other side of the table

“And so the show would go on while Assad stays in power.”

Via The Times of India,

Former international prosecutors said Tuesday they have evidence from a defector proving that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has systematically killed and tortured around 11,000 people.

A report by three top investigators commissioned by Qatar, which backs the Syrian rebels, examined thousands of pictures said to have been smuggled out by a former military police photographer.

The report, which was first released in Guardian and on CNN, shows evidence of starvation, strangulation and beatings, and features pictures of emaciated corpses with livid wounds.

So amid all of this one has to wonder if those warships that the US moved into position to “rescue stranded US citizen if a Sochi even happened” is nothing more than cover for a build up in front of Syria.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Iraq: The ‘Liberation’ Neocons Would Rather Forget

January 6, 2014 8:23 am / Leave a comment

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Iraq: The ‘Liberation’ Neocons Would Rather Forget.

Ronpaul Tst
Remember Fallujah? Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military fired on unarmed protestors, killing as many as 20 and wounding dozens. In retaliation, local Iraqis attacked a convoy of US military contractors, killing four. The US then launched a full attack on Fallujah to regain control, which left perhaps 700 Iraqis dead and the city virtually destroyed.According to press reports last weekend, Fallujah is now under the control of al-Qaeda affiliates. The Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, is under siege by al-Qaeda. During the 2007 “surge,” more than 1,000 US troops were killed “pacifying” the Anbar province.  Although al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before the US invasion, it is now conducting its own surge in Anbar.

For Iraq, the US “liberation” is proving far worse than the authoritarianism of Saddam Hussein, and it keeps getting worse. Last year was Iraq’s deadliest in five years. In 2013, fighting and bomb blasts claimed the lives of 7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces. In December alone nearly a thousand people were killed.

I remember sitting through many hearings in the House International Relations Committee praising the “surge,” which we were told secured a US victory in Iraq. They also praised the so-called “Awakening,” which was really an agreement by insurgents to stop fighting in exchange for US dollars. I always wondered what would happen when those dollars stopped coming.

Where are the surge and awakening cheerleaders now?

One of them, Richard Perle, was interviewed last year on NPR and asked whether the Iraq invasion that he pushed was worth it. He replied:

I’ve got to say I think that is not a reasonable question. What we did at the time was done in the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation. You can’t a decade later go back and say, well, we shouldn’t have done that.

Many of us were saying all along that we shouldn’t have done that – before we did it. Unfortunately the Bush Administration took the advice of the neocons pushing for war and promising it would be a “cakewalk.” We continue to see the results of that terrible mistake, and it is only getting worse.

Last month the US shipped nearly a hundred air-to-ground missiles to the Iraqi air force to help combat the surging al-Qaeda. Ironically, the same al-Qaeda groups the US is helping the Iraqis combat are benefiting from the US covert and overt war to overthrow Assad next door in Syria. Why can’t the US government learn from its mistakes?

The neocons may be on the run from their earlier positions on Iraq, but that does not mean they have given up. They were the ones pushing for an attack on Syria this summer. Thankfully they were not successful. They are now making every effort to derail President Obama’s efforts to negotiate with the Iranians. Just last week William Kristol urged Israel to attack Iran with the hope we would then get involved. Neoconservative Senators from both parties recently introduced the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, which would also bring us back on war-footing with Iran.

Next time the neocons tell us we must attack, just think “Iraq.”

Syria: first shipment of Russian S-300 missiles has arrived, says Assad – live updates | World news | guardian.co.uk

May 30, 2013 7:34 am / Leave a comment

Syria: first shipment of Russian S-300 missiles has arrived, says Assad – live updates | World news | guardian.co.uk.

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Assad vows response to Israeli attack – Middle East – Al Jazeera English

May 30, 2013 7:23 am / Leave a comment

Assad vows response to Israeli attack – Middle East – Al Jazeera English.

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