libbyliberalnyc's Open Salon Blog

Libby’s Stew: A Serious Assessment of the Syrian War

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:05:07 -0400

Stephen M. Walt writes in “What is the U.S. REALLY Doing in Syria?”:

1. The Syrian conflict has become a proxy fight between the opposition and its various allies (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Turkey, etc.) and Bashar al-Assad's regime and its various outsider supporters (Iran, Russia, Hezbollah).

2. For Washington, this war has become a golden opportunity to inflict a strategic defeat on Iran and its various local allies and thus shift the regional balance of power in a pro-American direction.

3. ... a conflict that undermines Iran, further divides the Arab/Islamic world, and distracts people from the continued colonization of the West Bank is a net plus. So Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won't object if the United States gets more deeply engaged.

4. Barack Obama's administration does not want to play a visible role in the conflict. This is partly because Americans are rightly tired of trying to govern war-torn countries, but also because America isn't very popular in the region.... Instead, Washington can use Qatar and Saudi Arabia as its middlemen, roles they are all too happy to play for their own reasons.

5. Since taking office, Obama has shown a marked preference for covert actions that don't cost too much and don't attract much publicity, combined with energetic efforts to prosecute leakers. ....

6. In this scenario, the Obama administration may secretly welcome the repeated demands for direct U.S. involvement made by war hawks like Sen. John McCain. Rejecting the hawks' demands for airstrikes, "no-fly zones," or overt military aid makes it look like U.S. involvement is actually much smaller than it really is.

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If the United States is now orchestrating a lot of arms shipments, trying to pick winners among the opposition, sending intelligence information to various militias, and generally meddling in a very complicated and uncertain conflict, don't you think the president owes us a more complete account of what America's public servants are or are not doing, and why?

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Pat Buchanan in “Who Are the War Criminals in Syria?” asserts:

According to the Huffington Post poll, Americans oppose U.S. air strikes on Syria by 3-to-1. They oppose sending arms to the rebels by 4-to-1.

They oppose putting U.S. ground troops into Syria by 14-to-1. Democrats, Republicans and independents are all against getting involved in that civil war that has produced 1.2 million refugees and 70,000 dead.

A CBS/New York Times poll found that by 62-to-24 Americans want to stay out of the Syrian war. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that by 61-to-10 Americans oppose any U.S. intervention.

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The portrait of America that emerges is of a nation not overly interested in what is going on in Syria, but which overwhelmingly wants to stay out of the war.

Buchanan points out that despite the strong will against US intervention in Syria, our foreign policy “deciders” and supposed Washington “representatives” are not on the same page with us and don’t seem to care that they are not.

But it is also a nation whose foreign policy elites are far more interventionist and far more supportive of sending weapons to the rebels and using U.S. air power. From these polls, it is hard not to escape the conclusion that the Beltway elites who shape U.S. foreign policy no longer represent the manifest will of Middle America.

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But who is speaking up for that great silent majority? Who in the U.S. Senate is on national TV standing up to the interventionists?

Who in the Republican Party is calling out the McCainiacs?

Buchanan brings up the accusations of the use of chemical weapons:

"United Nations human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical workers indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said Sunday."

The U.N. commission has found no evidence that the Syrian army used chemical weapons. ....

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If the Syrian military did not use sarin, but the rebels did, who in the U.S. intelligence community blew this one? From whom did U.S. agencies get their evidence that sarin had been used by Damascus? Were we almost suckered by someone's latest lies about weapons of mass destruction into fighting yet another unnecessary war?

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Yifat Susskind in “How Not to End the War in Syria” maintains the US militarily intervening is a “false solution” worsening the situation. She writes:

Syrians are facing one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world as President Bashar al-Assad clings to power amidst an escalating civil war. More than one in three Syrians needs urgent assistance, according to the United Nations, and more than 1.4 million refugees have flooded into neighboring countries, a number that grows by the day. Women and girls have been targeted with sexual violence deliberately used to terrorize, a threat many cited as their primary reason for fleeing the country.

We are all witness to this suffering and the urge for action to alleviate it is a compassionate impulse that must guide US policy. But today’s growing call for military intervention is a false solution that would only intensify the conflict.

Susskind points out that Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham are insisting on a “no-fly zone” to disable the Syrian government’s air force. Such an action would kill and injure many more Syrians. Susskind points out that 10% of the casualties of the Assad regime have been from the air force, the major part of citizen brutalization has taken part on the ground.

Senator Robert Menendez is pressuring the administration to arm the Syrian rebels. The rebels are made up of foreign fighters sent by Saudi Arabia and other countries, all hostile to Iran, and “reactionary Islamist forces, including some allied with Al-Qaeda."

Susskind stresses the sea change in the situation in Syria from the citizen protests of two years ago:

The secular, democratic voices that were at the forefront of the uprising two years ago have been sidelined.

She further addresses the war-mongering willfulness going on in Washington and from Israel and NATO and Arab nations demanding U.S. military intervention.

Syria is already awash in weapons that will be circulating in the area for years to come. Funneling more arms to the opposition would fuel their brutal battle tactics, intensify the war, and further diminish chances of a democratic outcome for Syria.

Many of the politicians now calling on President Obama to “step up” and help topple Syria's Assad are those who invariably champion the use of force to project US power abroad. Among them are the architects of the Iraq War and the cheerleaders for a US/Israeli attack on Iran.

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Franklin Lamb in “UN General Assembly Vote Reflects Shift in Syrian Public Opinion” has some disclosures about the current Syrian scenario that are not making it to the US corporate media:

... [the] US-Qatari-Saudi drafted General Assembly Resolution that was designed to increase pressure on the Assad government stumbled badly and fell far short of what the Saudi Ambassador to the UN and other US allies predicted would be an overwhelming vote in favor.

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One reason the vote fell short of the 130 favorable votes that the basically same resolution garnered the past two times is that it is widely viewed as ignoring the crimes and atrocities committed by the armed jihadist groups in Syria and the flow of thousands of international terrorists backed by the West, the Gulf states and Turkey who provide them with weapons and money.

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Over the past four or five months it has become increasingly clear that public opinion in Syria is shifting ...

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... public service announcement and even text messages demonstrate that the government is aware of the degree of suffering among the population, accept partial blame, and are focusing on remedial measure and crucially, ending the crisis with its horrific bloodshed.

One observes here a definite trend of the pulling together of a high percentage of Syrians who share a very unique history and culture and who are deeply connected to their country and who are increasingly repelled by the continuing killing from all sides including the recent barbarisms of body mutilations and summary executions videotaped and broadcast on utube by jihadist elements. The latter who these days come from nearly three dozen countries, paid for and indoctrinated by enemies of Syria’s Arab nationalism and deep rooted pillar of resistance to the occupation of Palestine.

In addition, many among Syria’s 23 million citizens, who initially supported the uprising following government reaction to event in Deraa in March 2011, now have serious second thoughts about who exactly would replace the current government.

Events in Syria are also making plain that the army is still loyal to the Assad government, and according to Jane’s Defense Weekly, is actually gaining experience and strength as well as the well-known fact that as western diplomats are admitting, the “opposition militias” are hopelessly fractured, turning one another, many essential mafia outfits, and beginning to resemble their fellow jihadists from Libya, Chechnya and in between.

Opinion in Damascus and surrounding areas visited this past week, confirms this observers experience the past five months of a sharp and fairly rapid shift in opinion that now strongly favors letting the Syrian people themselves decide, without outside interference, whether the Assad regime will stay, and indeed, whether, the Baathist party will continue to represent majority opinion, not through wanton violence but rather via next June’s election. Many express confidence in the run up to this critical vote, noting that the election will be closely monitored by the international community to assure fairness.

Perhaps aided by the current glorious May weather, a certain optimism, that was more scarce in the past, pervades many neighborhoods.

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Alex Lantier in “Video shows US-backed opposition fighter cannibalizing Syrian soldier” writes:

A gruesome video posted on YouTube shows Khalid al-Hamad, the leader of the opposition Farouq Brigade, desecrating the corpse of a Syrian soldier, cutting out his internal organs and biting into one of them.

The video makes clear the barbaric character of the Sunni Islamist militias Washington has mobilized in its proxy war against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The video was made to terrorize Syria’s Shiite Alawite community, from which most of the Assad government is drawn, and to encourage donations from the Farouq Brigade’s financial backers in the Persian Gulf oil sheikhdoms.

While desecrating the Syrian soldier’s body, an action that legally is a war crime, Hamad screams: “I swear we will eat from your hearts and livers, you dogs of Bashar… Look at the heroes of Baba Amr, slaughtering the Alawites and eating their hearts.”

Founded as the Syrian war began in mid-2011, the Farouq Brigade has been active around the Baba Amr area of the city of Homs, an early center of armed Islamist opposition to Assad. There are varying reports of its strength, ranging from a few thousand to 20,000 men.

Hamad contacted Time magazine on Tuesday to confirm that he had indeed bitten one of the dead soldier’s organs, as shown in the video.

He then called for a sectarian genocide of Alawites, telling Time: “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them. I have another video clip that I will send to them. In the clip, I am sawing another shabiha [pro-Assad militiaman] with a saw, the saw we use to cut trees. I sawed him into small piece and large ones.”

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Significantly, Western officials speaking to the BBC described the Farouq Brigade as a “moderately Islamist” tendency inside the US-backed opposition, as compared to supposedly more extremist forces like the Al Nusra Front, which is affiliated to Al Qaeda.

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While Hamad’s video is particularly gruesome, numerous graphic videos posted by the US-backed opposition have made its bloody, sectarian character clear from early on. To name only a few, such videos include Sunni Sheikh Adnan al-Arour’s July 2011 threat to run Syrian Alawites through a “meat grinder,” and 2012 videos of opposition fighters beheading a prisoner and another forcing a child to do so.

The anti-Assad militias have all along enjoyed the support of governments, political parties and the media. The Obama administration has continued funding them to the tune of $500 million—as its Persian Gulf allies also poured money and thousands of tons of weapons into the opposition—even after Washington formally designated Al Nusra as a terrorist group last December.

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As part of this pro-war agitation, the media has largely sought to divorce Hamad’s video from the US-led war, or to present it as an isolated incident posing a vexing obstacle to attempts by Washington and its allies to escalate the war.

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John Hudson in “Rand Paul: My Colleagues Just Voted to Arm the Allies of al Qaeda” writes:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) blasted members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, which voted overwhelmingly to arm elements of the Syrian opposition in a bill co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN). "This is an important moment," Paul said, addressing his Senate colleagues. "You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda. It's an irony you cannot overcome."

The legislation, which would authorize the shipment of arms and military training to rebels "that have gone through a thorough vetting process," passed in a bipartisan 15-3 vote. Paul offered an amendment that would strike the bill's weapons provision, but it was rejected along with another Paul amendment ruling out the authorization of the use of military force in Syria. (Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy was the only senator to join Paul in support of the weapons amendment.)

Paul's two amendments constituted his first legislative act to soften the Menendez-Corker bill, which earned the support of powerful lawmakers from Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) to Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to Marco Rubio (R-FL) -- all of whom rejected Paul's allegations. "I don't think any member of this committee would vote for anything we thought was going to arm al Qaeda," said Rubio. "Al Qaeda, unfortunately, is well-armed," added Menendez. "That is the present reality in Syria."

The dispute centers on the issue of whether the United States could properly vet Syrian rebels so that weapons and body armor would not fall into the hands of extremist groups, such as the al Qaeda-aligned al-Nusra Front. The Pentagon's top brass has vacillated about whether it's logistically possible to keep track of weapons as they enter a conflict involving a complex mix of opposition groups, as the new bill would require.

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Johannes Stern in “European powers fund Al Qaeda looting of Syrian Oil” writes:

According to a report yesterday in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, the European Union (EU) is directly funding US-backed Sunni Islamist terrorist groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. These groups are looting oil in parts of eastern Syria that they control and then re-selling it to EU countries at rock-bottom prices.

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These events also expose the so-called “war on terror”—the claim that Washington and the EU are fighting Al Qaeda, which served as the justification for US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as a lie. Imperialism is arming and financing Al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups that commit terrible crimes against the Syrian population, handing over its wealth to the EU and Washington.

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Abu Saif, an Islamist fighter of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Ahrar Brigade, gives another account of how Islamists militias loot Syria: “Jabhat al-Nusra is investing in the Syrian economy to reinforce its position in Syria and Iraq. Al-Nusra fighters are selling everything that falls into their hands from wheat, archaeological relics, factory eq uipment, oil drilling and imaging machines, cars, spare parts and crude oil.”

To secure the oil, the terrorists murder everyone who gets in their way. In one widely reported case, Al Nusra fighters levelled the village of al-Musareb near Deir Ezzor, murdering 50 of its residents after a conflict with local tribesmen over an oil tanker. The mass killings through which terrorist groups control the territory needed to supply oil to European imperialism are documented in videos posted on YouTube.

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Bill Van Auken in “Behind Syria peace talks proposal, US prepares regional war” maintains that despite talking the talk of resolution U.S. officials are bent on military intervention:

While ostensibly touring the Middle East to discuss a joint US-Russian proposal for peace talks between the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and Western-backed “rebels,” Secretary of State John Kerry met with US allies to prepare for region-wide war.

Stopping first in Oman, Kerry held talks with the ruling Sultan, one of the string of monarchical dictators that constitute, together with Israel, the foundation of US influence in the Middle East. The secretary of state’s visit coincided with the signing of a $2.1 billion deal between the absolute monarchy and Raytheon Corp. for the sale of advanced weapons systems, including Avenger fire units, Stinger missiles, and Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, part of a ring of steel that Washington has sought to erect around Iran.

From there, he flew to Amman, Jordan for a meeting Wednesday of the “Friends of Syria,” a US-led “coalition of the willing” that is fomenting the war for regime change in Syria. It consists of Washington, its European NATO allies, led by Britain, Turkey, Egypt and the various sheikhdoms and sultanates of the Persian Gulf, including the major arms suppliers to the anti-Assad militias: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

As the conference was convening Wednesday, Syria’s ambassador to Jordan held a press conference to denounce it as “a meeting of Syria’s enemies”

“Those who want to end the tragedy in Syria need to stop arming and training terrorist gangs in Syria. The war on Syria is unprecedented,” said the ambassador, Bahjat Suleiman.

Representatives of the Syrian National Coalition, the anti-Assad front cobbled together by the US State Department, were invited to the meeting only at the last minute. It appears there was some doubt if an agreement could be reached on whom the “rebels” would accept as their representative.

Van Auken points out that the US has presumptuously selected for the Syrians a pro-Western replacement for Assad as the head of a transitional government:

The US has promoted Ghassan Hitto, a Texas-based businessman linked to the Muslim Brotherhood who has lived in the US for over 30 years, as the “premier” of a transitional government. There have been increasing reports, however, that his role is strongly opposed by the Sunni sectarian militias that are fighting in Syria. It was reported that the coalition’s “acting chief,” George Sabra, a former member of the Stalinist Syrian Communist Party, would stand in for the “rebels.”

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... it is evident that the real agenda occupying the US and its allies is how to salvage the war for regime change, under conditions in which the Syrian government is inflicting strategic reverses on the Western-backed forces.

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Dana El Baltaii in “Syria Rebels Threaten to Wipe Out Shiite, Alawite Towns” focuses on the religious divisiveness of the Syrian war:

The conflict in Syria, which began in March 2011, is increasingly dividing the country and the surrounding region along religious lines.

The Shiite Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Shiite-led Iran have been key allies of the Assad government, whose upper ranks come from the Alawite sect, derived from Shiite Islam. Leaders of the rebel army and political opposition are mostly Sunni, and they are backed by key Sunni powers including Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

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Matthias Gebauer in “Syrian Rebels in Trouble: German Intelligence Sees Assad Regaining Hold” writes of the strengthening of the Assad military position in Syria:

Not even a year ago, German intelligence predicted Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad's regime would soon collapse. Now, the agency instead believes the rebels are in trouble. Government troops are set to make significant advances, it predicts.

Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), has fundamentally changed its view of the ongoing civil war in Syria. SPIEGEL ONLINE has learned that the BND now believes the Syrian military of autocrat Bashar Assad is more stable than it has been in a long time and is capable of undertaking successful operations against rebel units at will. BND head Gerhard Schindler informed select politicians of the agency's new assessment in a secret meeting.

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Pepe Escobar in “Assad talks, Russia walks”:

Well, by now everyone following the Syrian tragedy knows who most of them are. One knows that the Un-Free Syrian Cannibals, sorry, Army (FSA) is a ragged collection of warlords, gangsters and opportunists of every possible brand, intersecting with hardcore jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra kind (but also other al-Qaeda-linked or inspired outfits).

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Syria is now Militia Hell; much like Iraq in the mid-2000s, much like the Western-imposed, "liberated" Libyan failed state. This Afghanization/Somalization is a direct consequence of NATO-GCC-Israel axis interference. So Assad is also right when he says the West is adding fuel to the fire, and is only interested in regime change, whatever the cost.

Assad is not exactly a brilliant politician - so he wasted a golden opportunity to explain to Western public opinion, even briefly, why GCC petro-monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, plus Turkey, have the hots for setting Syria on fire. He could have talked about Qatar wanting to hand over Syria to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia dreaming of a crypto-emirate colony. He could have talked about them both being terrified of Shi'ites in the Persian Gulf harboring legitimate Arab Spring ideals.

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He could have detailed how Britain and France inside NATO, not to mention the US, as well as their petro-monarch puppets are using the disintegration of Syria to hit at Iran - and how none of these actors supplying the weaponizing and plenty of cash give a damn about the suffering of the "Syrian people". The only thing that matters is strategic targets.

While Bashar al-Assad was talking, Russia was walking. President Vladimir Putin - well aware that the Geneva talks are being derailed by various actors even before they happen - moved Russian naval vessels to the Eastern Mediterranean; and offered Syria a batch of ultra-modern ground-to-sea Yakhont missiles plus a batch of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles - the Russian equivalent to the American Patriot. Not to mention that Syria already has Russian SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles.

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Assad could also have talked about - what else - Pipelineistan. It would have taken him two minutes to explain the meaning of the agreement for the US$10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline that was signed in July 2012. This crucial Pipelineistan node will export gas from the South Pars field in Iran (the largest in the world, shared with Qatar), through Iraq, towards Syria, with a possible extension to Lebanon, with certified customers in Western Europe. It's what the Chinese call a "win-win" situation.

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Make no mistake; Pipelineistan - once again tied up with bypassing both Russia and Iran - explains a great deal about why Syria is being destroyed.

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Nicholas Blanford in “Brinkmanship in Syria Boosts Risk of Regional War with Israel”:

In the past two weeks, Israel has confirmed its unprecedented policy of airstrikes against suspected Hezbollah arms caches in Syria with two more attacks in swift succession after the inaugural bombing in January. Syria has warned of an “automatic response” should Israel stage a fourth strike.

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Added to the mix is the strategic decision of Iran and Hezbollah to devote substantial resources to assist the Assad regime in crushing the rebellion. And the reported transfer of more Yakhont anti-ship missiles from Russia to Syria and the possibility of Russian S-300 air defense system also being delivered to Damascus in the coming weeks has merely added to the tensions.

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... Israel has sensed a window of opportunity opened by the war in Syria to attack Hezbollah arms supplies stockpiled in Syria, calculating that there will be no reaction while the Assad regime is fighting for its existence.

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So far, Israel’s calculation has paid off. But the tolerance threshold grows a little closer with each fresh airstrike.

The Syrian authorities have warned that orders have been given to the army to launch an “automatic” – if unspecified – retaliation should the Israelis launch another airstrike into Syria.

The question, however, is what form would such a retaliation take. Any response would have to be sufficiently powerful to make Israel think twice about mounting any future bombing operations inside Syria, but not to overreach to the extent that it could trigger an escalation leading to a war that neither the Assad regime, Iran, Hezbollah nor Israel want.

[cross-posted on correntewire]

Gen. Videla, Kissinger’s 'Operation Condor' Buddy, Dies

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:05:36 -0400

Bill Van Auken writes in “Argentina’s General Videla and the ‘war on terror’”:

Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla died May 17 at the age of 87 as the result of injuries suffered from a fall in a prison shower. He was remembered as the head of a savage military dictatorship that between 1976 and 1983 murdered and “disappeared” some 30,000 Argentine workers, socialist militants, teachers, students and others perceived as “subversives,” while torturing at least 100,000 others. In his own country, newspapers that once backed his rule condemned him as a dictator and practitioner of state terror.

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He was, after all, a pioneer in the “war on terrorism,” writing the textbook on methods of extra-constitutional rule, repression and state violence that have been largely embraced by ruling circles in Washington and elsewhere. Undoubtedly, there are those engaged in this line of work today who see him as something of a visionary.

Three days before his death the ex-dictator was a defendant in Argentine court testifying on charges relating to OPERATION CONDOR. According to Van Auken, Operation Condor was “a joint endeavor by Latin America’s ruling dictatorships of the 1970s to hunt down and murder one another’s opponents, wherever they might be found.” Van Auken reveals that Videla claimed “memory loss” while on the stand.

Van Auken:

Operation Condor involved the combined efforts of military regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, with indispensable logistical support and military aid from the Pentagon and the CIA.

It resulted in the abduction and murder of a number of individuals seen as opponents of the dictatorial regimes. This included the Washington, DC car bomb killing of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean foreign minister in the Allende government, the assassinations of former Bolivian president Juan José Torres and former Uruguayan deputies Héctor Gutiérrez and Zelmar Michelini in Buenos Aires, and the assassinations of former Brazilian presidents Joao Goulart and Juscelino Kubitschek, whose deaths were made to appear, respectively, as a heart attack and a car accident.

It is horrifying to grasp how enabled and supported his violent regime, as well as so many others, were and are by Washington. More and more evidence has come to light about U.S. political, economic and military support and training to dictatorships.

Van Auken:

All of the Condor regimes were staffed by senior military personnel who had been trained at the Army’s School of the Americas in Panama and other US military facilities, and all of them had US military advisers, received substantial US military aid, and hosted well-staffed CIA stations.

Previously secret State Department documents make it clear that Washington understood Videla’s intentions from the beginning and fully supported them. One of these documents records an exchange between then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and his assistant secretary of state for Latin America, William Rogers, two days after Videla seized power.

Rogers told Kissinger that Washington must “expect a fair amount of repression, probably a good deal of blood, in Argentina before too long. I think they’re going to have to come down not only on the terrorists but on the dissidents of trade unions and their parties.”

While Rogers suggested delaying official recognition of the junta out of public relations concerns, Kissinger ordered full US support. “Whatever chance they have,” he stressed, “they will need a little encouragement from us.”

Among those involved in implementing this policy in 1976 were Richard Cheney, then the White House chief of staff, and Donald Rumsfeld, who was defense secretary. Twenty five years later, both would reemerge as principal architects of the US “global war on terror.”

With Washington’s blessing, Videla and his fellow officers set about what they dubbed the “process of national reorganization,” or el proceso.

It is also important to keep in mind that the label “subversive” was applied to terrorized ordinary citizens fighting for their human, civil and working rights.

Van Auken:

Fully 40 percent of the junta’s victims were militant workers and union members. Torture centers were set up inside some of the country’s major factories, including a Ford auto plant. The Peronist union bureaucracy collaborated in this extermination campaign, helping to form death squads even before the military took power.

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A network of clandestine prisons was set up, including the notorious dungeons of ESMA (the Navy School of Mechanics), the army’s Campo de Mayo, and scores of others scattered across the country. There, detainees were subjected to vicious forms of torture, including beatings, electric shocks, prolonged submersion in foul water, forced denial of sleep, extreme temperature and noise, attacks by trained dogs, simulated executions and sexual torture and humiliation.

Virtually all of these methods came into common usage at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and CIA “black sites” across the globe a quarter of a century later.

After being subjected to torture, the great majority of the victims were murdered, many of them drugged, loaded onto military aircraft and dropped naked to drown in the Rio de la Plata or the Atlantic Ocean.

Reading Van Auken’s description of what Videla’s repression did to the Argentinian citizenry, especially regarding its early stages, one can’t help but relate it to what is happening to our own citizenry under our present and previous governance:

Van Auken:

Among its first steps was the suspension of basic democratic rights, including habeas corpus guarantees against imprisonment without charges or trials. The dictatorship outlawed unions and political parties and disbanded the legislature. Strikes and protests were turned into grave crimes against “national security.”

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“The repression had definite class and economic aims. The dictatorship managed to cut wages in half within its first year, reducing workers’ share of the national income from 48.5 percent to only 29 percent. Universal health care was abolished in favor of for-profit insurance companies, and other forms of social assistance were eliminated or drastically curtailed. In essence, the junta oversaw a vast transfer of social wealth from Argentine working people to the country’s ruling class, the transnational corporations and international finance capital.

Again, it would be profoundly naive of us ordinary Americans not to connect the dots between the erosion of our constitutional, economic and social rights in the United States under Bush and now Obama and what befell our Latin American citizen neighbors, so savagely repressed, tortured, imprisoned, executed, economically/physically terrorized, etc., by sadistic, sociopathic leaders such as Argentina’s General Videla who were and/or are so generously and pragmatically supported by the United States establishment.

Argentina’s General Videla, other similar global dictators and Washington were and/or are all so strongly cronied with and beholding to a sociopathic, profits-uber-people financial elite.

[cross-posted on correntewire]

MLK’s Inspiration Came From ‘Fee-dom’s’ Child!

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:05:18 -0400

Marian Wright Edelman just posted an inspiring article on Huffpo entitled, “How ChildrenTransformed America” about MLK and the ferocious courage of a huge group of children and youth freedom fighters from the early 60s who demonstrated in Birmingham, Alabama, faced down ruthless agents of segregation and won a very significant civil rights battle there.

Edelman, by the way, is president of the “Children’s Defense Fund”, an organization founded by her in 1973 which champions, researches, and “wholesomely” lobbies our government on behalf of the rights and needs of America’s children.

A bit more on the history of the also inspiring Ms. Edelman:

The Children's Defense Fund grew out of the Civil Rights Movement under the leadership of Marian Wright Edelman. The first Black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, Mrs. Edelman directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Miss.; worked with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as counsel for his Poor People's Campaign; and dedicated her early career to defending the civil liberties of people struggling to overcome poverty and discrimination. In 1969, Mrs. Edelman began the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm that monitored federal programs for low-income families and, out of that initiative, she founded the Children's Defense Fund in 1973.

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In 1967, Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York visited hungry children and families in the Mississippi Delta at the request of Mississippi attorney Marian Wright.

Kennedy was outraged by the depth of poverty in the Delta. He urged Miss Wright to tell Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to bring the poor to Washington to dramatize their plight.

At Miss Wright's urging, King worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to form the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. They planned a march on Washington, D.C. to call for an economic bill of rights for the poor while demonstrations took place around the country.

Tragically, both King and Kennedy were assassinated that year before the campaign could be launched, but the King family and the SCLC went ahead with the campaign in his honor.

Thousands of people from all over the country camped on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. They called their camp "Resurrection City." At its peak, the camp held approximately 7,000 people.

Ms. Edelman wants to celebrate the literally thousands of children and youth who put themselves on the line with Martin Luther King for freedom and justice. She writes:

They stood up to fire hoses and police dogs and went to jail by the hundreds and finally broke the back of Jim Crow in that city known as “Bombingham.” On this 50th anniversary of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade it is a time to remember, honor, and follow the example of the children who were frontline soldiers and transforming catalysts in America’s greatest moral movement of the 20th century – the movement for civil rights and equal justice.

The Children’s Crusade happened at a critical time in the civil rights struggle in Birmingham. In April 1963 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, together with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and its fearless leader Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, had started a direct action desegregation campaign in the city. There were mass meetings, lunch counter sit-ins, nonviolent marches, and boycotts of Birmingham’s segregated stores during the busy Easter shopping season.

Dr. King became one of several hundred people arrested in the first weeks of the campaign when he was jailed for violating an anti-protest injunction on April 12, Good Friday. Four days later he wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” As the days went on with little response from city leaders, a new tactic was raised: including more children and youths.

Ms. Edelman herself was a college student activist at that time. She explains that children and youth were an important, effective and vital dimension in the fight for civil rights. She points out that children don't exercise the caution that adults often do in choosing their civil rights battles, fearing the risk of losing their jobs for their and their families' physical survival. There was concern, she explains, about encouraging the children in protests that were physically dangerous.

She writes of the decision by the civil rights leaders and its profound consequences of the “children’s crusade” of that May 1963 in Birmingham:

Dr. King later described the decision this way: “Even though we realized that involving teenagers and high-school students would bring down upon us a heavy fire of criticism, we felt that we needed this dramatic new dimension. Our people were demonstrating daily and going to jail in numbers, but we were still beating our heads against the brick wall of the city officials’ stubborn resolve to maintain the status quo. Our fight, if won, would benefit people of all ages. But most of all we were inspired with a desire to give to our young a true sense of their own stake in freedom and justice. We believed they would have the courage to respond to our call.”

The children’s response “exceeded our fondest dreams.” James Bevel, Andrew Young, Bernard Lee, and Dorothy Cotton helped identify and train the students. For the children May 2 was “D-Day.” Black disc jockeys were key allies in encouraging and deploying their listeners. Class presidents, star athletes, and prom queens from local high schools led the way as hundreds of children skipped class, gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church, and marched into downtown Birmingham in groups of fifty, organized into lines two by two and singing freedom songs.

More than a thousand students marched the first day, and many hundreds were arrested. Segregationist police commissioner Bull Connor’s overwhelmed force started using school buses to take the children to jail. But that first wave of children was only the beginning.

When hundreds more returned the next day, Bull Connor directed the police and fire department to begin using force on the child marchers. The decision surprised even those used to his meanness and brutality but it was not enough to stop the determined young marchers.

The searing heartbreaking pictures of children being battered and tossed about by powerful fire hoses and attacked by police dogs appeared on front pages around the country and world and helped turned the tide of public opinion in support of Dr. King’s local and the national civil rights movement’s fight for justice.

Marches and protests continued in Birmingham with children leading the way. As some were arrested and attacked, more and more kept coming to take their place leaving Birmingham jails so overflowing that some child prisoners were held at the city’s fairground and others in an open-air stockade where they were pelted by rain.

On May 8 a temporary truce was called and on May 10 an agreement was reached that released the jailed children and others on bond and paved the way for desegregation of Birmingham’s public facilities. Hateful White segregationists in the city did not give in quietly. Within hours the Gaston Motel where Dr. King and other SCLC leaders stayed and Dr. King’s brother Reverend A.D. King’s home were firebombed.

Four months later, a bomb was placed under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church with a timer set to go off Sunday morning that exploded as children were in the church’s basement preparing to lead Youth Sunday services. Fourteen-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley and 11-year-old Denise McNair were killed and more than 20 others were injured.

Edelman describes how despairing Dr. King became after the bombing of the church basement in particular. Edelman writes of King’s discouragement: “... if men could be that bestial maybe there was no hope.” Edelman goes on:

... But, he said, time had eventually “buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over three thousand young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting—ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor’s police dogs, clubs, and fire hoses.”

... “I never will forget a moment in Birmingham when a white policeman accosted a little Negro girl, seven or eight years old, who was walking in a demonstration with her mother. ‘What do you want?’ the policeman asked her gruffly, and the little girl looked him straight in the eye and answered, ‘Fee-dom.’ She couldn’t even pronounce it, but she knew. It was beautiful! Many times when I have been in sorely trying situations, the memory of that little one has come into my mind, and has buoyed me.”

Edelman’s final message to us all, and particularly America’s youth:

We seek to honor on this fiftieth anniversary of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade the role of children and youth who were frontline soldiers in desegregating public schools and public accommodations. I hope they will inspire us to remind children and youth today that they are not citizens in waiting; they too can be transforming agents for change.

[cross-posted on correntewire]

Nader Calls Out US Global Corporations as Unpatriotic!

Sat, 18 May 2013 16:05:50 -0400

Ralph Nader believes it is time to put U.S. global corporations on the DEFENSIVE! He declares that would be “the first step for the resurgence of the people so that corporations become our servants and do not remain our masters.”

In “Patriotic Yardsticks for Unpatriotic Giant Corporations” he calls out US Global Corporations for BETRAYING America -- betraying the American citizen taxpayers that have enabled them to become so incredibly successful. Nader spells it out:

1) the American taxpayers have provided them with massive numbers of workers for massive production and massive profit-making;

2) the American taxpayers have bailed them out whenever they have been in financial crises;

3) The American taxpayers have protected their branches abroad by either funding military personnel or actually being a part of said military -- life-risking -- military personnel.

These have been and still are no slight contributions.

What do U.S. global corporations give us in return? Less and less and less and less!!!!! In fact, Nader regards them as being disgustingly UNPATRIOTIC in their indifference to the economic plight of American citizens! Nader explains:

1) Many US corporations pay less federal income taxes than you or I. General Electric hasn’t paid federal income taxes on its U.S. profits for years.

2) U.S. global corporations have turned their backs on U.S. workers with anti-American trade agreements that enable them easily “to ship jobs and whole industries to fascist and communist regimes abroad which keep their workers near serfdom.” (They are presently pushing for the Trans-Pacific Partnership that will negatively impact the American economy even further).

3) Corporate CEOs are “raiding and draining pension plans for millions of workers who are left without their expected and earned pension payments on retirement.”

4) U.S. corporations have frozen the federal minimum wage for all low income service jobs that they can’t export! $7.25 an hour leaves 30 million workers making less than low income service workers made, factoring in inflation, in 1968.

5) U.S. corporations provide massive amounts of campaign cash to politicians to “do their bidding” and hire “legions of lobbyists to weaken or abolish consumer, worker, environmental safety and health laws.” The citizens of other Western countries enjoy full Medicare for all. Mega corporations ensure that won’t happen in our country by bribing our politicians to keep us from government support for our basic physical welfare and survival.

Nader would like to see a CEO of a U.S. global corporation stand up and, “in the name of their company”, “pledge allegiance to the United States ... with liberty and justice for all” at an annual shareholders meeting. He discloses, in fact, that the CEO of General Motors was asked to do just that -- and refused!

Nader describes how munitions companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing put on tv and radio ads about how their weapons back up our troops. The big picture is that our troops are being put at risk to “expand the Empire” declares Nader. Nader:

“Of course, defense contractors never mention their huge profits, cost over-runs and their staffing the higher echelons of the Pentagon with their own appointees. Nor do these arms merchants ever raise a patriotic objection to the criminal wars of aggression conducted by Bush/Cheney against the defenseless people of Iraq, whose tottering dictator, formerly a U.S. ally, was not a threat to America.”

Nader takes on the “softer” promotions of Chevron that uses an “ordinary-looking” actor to explain its corporate philanthropy. Nader contends that “not one giant corporation exceeds one percent of their pre-tax profits, when the law allows them to give up to five percent deductible.” Comparatively speaking, what these mega corporations are making against what they are philanthropically giving is profoundly modest.

Nader cites a new paperback book by Robert A.G. Monks entitled Citizens Disunited: the Corporate Capture of the American Dream. Monks is a former corporate lawyer, corporate CEO, founder of companies, bank chairman, entrepreneurial investor, etc. Monks knows up close and personal the nature and degree of “corporate excesses.”

Monks in his book quotes an Apple executive who told The New York Times:

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries. We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.”

Monks’ response:

“This is what greed looks like in the global epoch of corporatism: plunder the Treasury, to be sure, but then deny all sense of responsibility to your country of domicile, outsource all obligations, and, like maggots, set to work destroying the host from inside by exporting its jobs and depleting its revenue sources.”

LIKE MAGGOTS DESTROYING THE HOST FROM INSIDE!

Monks also quotes Clyde Prestowitz, founder of the Economic Strategy Institute and “top U.S. government trade negotiator” who in the 1980s greatly helped open up the Japanese market for Apple:

“We did all we could and in doing so came to learn that virtually everything Apple had for sale, from the memory chips to the cute pointer mouse, had had its origins in some program wholly or partially supported by U.S. government money.”

IT WAS U.S. GOVERNMENT MONEY THAT ENABLED APPLE’S VITAL RESEARCH WHICH RESULTED IN ITS SUCCESS AND MASSIVE PROFIT-MAKING!!! Treat your American tax-paying mentors/investors as suckers/patsies by abandoning them?

Monks:

“Henry Ford’s great success was built in part on his decision to pay his workers a high enough wage so that they could afford the products they were producing. No more. The shrinking middle class, the widening gap between the rich and the poor – these are some of those American ‘problems’ that American-born-and-bred corporations like Apple really have no time for.”

Nader applauds former USAir counsel Lawrence Stentzel who calls out “reluctant” federal prosecutors who refuse “to hold corporate wrongdoers’ feet to the fire.” He is demanding that the Justice Department “create a user friendly database of corporate wrongdoing.”

Nader reminds us that U.S. corporations demanded a “legal personhood” status. They achieved it and the constitutional rights that accompanied it. Too bad the personality profile of that “legal personhood” is one of a psychopath. Ruthlessly self-interested. Reckless to and predatory on all others. Focused on its own privileges and driven to expand its immunities. No sense of “response-ability” for its rights and privileges and OPPORTUNITIES!

Time to reframe our thinking on these “maggoty” corporations. Time to demand they fulfill their civic and patriotic duties to America and Americans!

Even after that colossal Bangladesh garment factory tragedy some of our major U.S. global corporations are wriggling out of any responsibility -- response-ability -- to ensure there won’t be a repeat of such a massive tragedy for people working in their sweatshops for so very little already! They only seem capable of sociopathic taking. In America or globally!

NADER'S SO RIGHT!!! LONG OVERDUE FOR US TO DEMAND THEY GIVE BACK!!!

[cross-posted on correntewire]

The Elephant in the Benghazi Room is Al Qaeda as Frenemy

Fri, 17 May 2013 08:05:59 -0400

One of Obama’s damage control frontiers this week is the “cover up” after the tragic and deadly attack on the Benghazi consulate last September.

It is being roundly pooh-poohed as not scandal-label-worthy by Obama Team Dems. The one MSNBC anchor I am willing to watch, Chris Hayes, tonight led the pooh-poohers much to my frustration. He called it a “nothingburger”!

What the war-mongering and cynical Republicans are launching as the “scandal” seems mainly the consulate’s security understaffing on Obama’s watch and Susan Rice’s fudged talking points following the attack. This so misses the mark of what is most mind-numbingly OUTRAGEOUS about the reality of the attack in Benghazi and the real motivation for the brazen Obama administration cover up.

The Benghazi scenario with cover up is not a limited, partisan, political scandal. It is a scandal of massive and treasonous proportions. It reveals the serious and massive collusion of members and agencies of the Washington and military establishments in an “ends justifies the means” grotesquely anti-humanitarian, imperialist, regime change strategy by arming and using as shock troops Al-Qaeda-linked death squads in Libya and Syria.

WTF?

WTF??

WTF????

Why does this reality not bother a significant number of Americans from government reps to media people to citizens?

WHY IS THE MEDIA NOT SCREAMING ABOUT THE U.S. BEING IN BED MILITARILY WITH AL QAEDA??????

The Benghazi crisis back in September of last year was swept under the rug thanks to Dem cronyism and corporate media collusion so that Obama handily won the election in November 2012.

Basking in his post-assassination of bin Laden afterglow, Obama and his handlers and cronies stood by the lie of a successful US/NATO “humanitarian intervention” in Libya -- helping those “freedom fighting” rebels. The truth of the sponsorship of merciless Al-Qaeda-linked death squads was obscured.

Bill Van Auken in “Benghazi and the deepening crisis of the Obama administration” writes:

In the final analysis, the concerted efforts of the Obama administration, the State Department and the various intelligence agencies to avoid mention of Al Qaeda in the account of the Benghazi attacks were aimed at covering up the enduring covert relationship with this terrorist network and the fact that it is once again creating explosive crises in which the peoples of the Middle East and potentially the US itself are the innocent victims.

snip

The overriding motive for concealing the identity of those who laid siege to the US facilities in Benghazi has its source in the tangled relationship that Washington had established with the elements that carried it out. Neither the Democratic White House nor the Republican leadership in Congress has any interest in probing this essential question.

snip

These are ties that stretch back to the founding of Al Qaeda as an adjunct to the CIA’s efforts to foment and finance an Islamist insurgency against the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan beginning in the late 1970s. Before that, American intelligence had long viewed reactionary Islamist organizations in the Middle East, Iran, and Indonesia as useful assets in the struggle against socialist and left nationalist influences in these areas.

According to Van Auken the Al Qaeda-linked fighters in Libya were used as a powerful proxy ground force to topple Gaddafi while the U.S. and NATO provided a massive bombing campaign.

Van Auken:

Christopher Stevens was very much the point man in this relationship, having carefully studied the Islamist opponents of Gaddafi before the launching of the war for regime-change. He was deployed in April 2011 to Benghazi, where he coordinated the arming, funding and training of the so-called rebels, elements previously denounced by the US as terrorists and, in some cases, abducted, imprisoned and tortured by the CIA.

In October 2011, the imperialist intervention in Libya achieved its victory with the lynch-mob murder of Gaddafi, carried out by these US-backed forces.

One of the reasons that the Benghazi affair continues to roil political waters in Washington is that this same strategy is now being employed on an even larger scale in Syria, where once again even more dangerous Al Qaeda-connected militias are serving as the most important fighting force in the war to bring down Bashar al-Assad.

As in Libya, the aim is to solidify US hegemony over the region’s oil wealth at the expense of American capitalism’s rivals, particularly Russia and China. In addition, regime-change in Damascus is sought as a means of preparing an even wider war against Iran.

Van Auken speculates:

The most likely explanation for the bloody events in Benghazi last September is that the relationship forged with Al Qaeda of the Maghreb turned sour in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s overthrow, perhaps with the Islamists believing that American promises had gone unfulfilled and they had not been adequately compensated for their services. With the assassination of Stevens, who was the US envoy to the “Libyan revolution,” they were sending a definite message to Washington.

How reminiscent of what happened in Afghanistan, don’t you think? Afghanistan jihadists were “freedom fighters” when they were pointed at the Soviets. They became “terrorists” once they aimed themselves at the United States, of course. Apparently their short-term “frenemy” usefulness to destabilize imperialist targets for the US is irresistible to war gamesters despite continuing evidence of devastating blowback! 9/11 itself being a case in point.

Washingtonsblog (hat-tip to vzn) writes of the increasing numbers of acknowledgement of Al-Qaeda-linked involvement in the regime change of Libya and the regime change present attempt in Syria in “Its Dishonest to Talk About Benghazi without Talking About the Syrian War”:

... The fact that Democrats and Republicans alike have been using Benghazi as the center of U.S. efforts to arm the Al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebels.
Specifically, the U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.

According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi.

snip

Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya. Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled.

snip

In 2011, Ambassador Stevens was appointed to be the Obama administration’s liaison with the “budding Libyan opposition,” according to ABC News. Stevens and the State Department worked directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Belhadj has direct connections to al-Qaeda.

CNN, the Telegraph, the Washington Times, and many other mainstream sources confirm that Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have since flooded into Syria to fight the Assad regime.

Mainstream sources also confirm that the Syrian opposition is largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists. (Indeed, the New York Times reported last week that virtually all of the rebel fighters are Al Qaeda terrorists.)

snip

The Wall Street Journal, Telegraph and other sources confirm that the US consulate in Benghazi was mainly being used for a secret CIA operation.

snip

Retired Lt. General William Boykin said in January that Stevens was in Benghazi as part of an effort to arm the Syrian opposition:

snip

Boykin said Stevens was “given a directive to support the Syrian rebels” and the State Department’s Special Mission Compound in Benghazi “would be the hub of that activity.”

snip

In March 2011 Stevens became the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan opposition, working directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group—a group that has now disbanded, with some fighters reportedly participating in the attack that took Stevens’ life.

Back in May of 2011, Patrick O’Connor wrote “Death squads reportedly assassinating Libyan regime figures in Benghazi”:

Reports of death squad operations in Benghazi have emerged as even closer relations are being forged between the TNC [Transitional National Council] and the Obama administration and European powers. TNC chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil has spent the last two days in Europe and the US, campaigning for more money and military support.

snip

Jalil and Tarhouni also met with Senator John Kerry and other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kerry afterwards indicated that he would sponsor legislation facilitating the potential transfer of billions of dollars in frozen Libyan assets to the so-called rebels. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced on May 5, at the second “Contact Group” summit in Italy, that “some portion” of the more than $30 billion in frozen Libyan assets would be funneled to the TNC.

Kerry’s legislation is aimed at providing this brazenly unlawful theft of a country’s sovereign wealth with a pseudo-legal cover.

Glenn Greenwald in “Obama officials' spin on Benghazi attack mirrors Bin Laden raid untruths” in September of last year explored the motivation for Obama to lie BIG about what happened re the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

The Obama White House's interest in spreading this falsehood is multi-fold and obvious:

For one, the claim that this attack was just about anger over an anti-Muhammad video completely absolves the US government of any responsibility or even role in provoking the anti-American rage driving it. After all, if the violence that erupted in that region is driven only by anger over some independent film about Muhammad, then no rational person would blame the US government for it, and there could be no suggestion that its actions in the region – ... – had any role to play.

The White House capitalized on the strong desire to believe this falsehood: it's deeply satisfying to point over there at those Muslims and scorn their primitive religious violence, while ignoring the massive amounts of violence to which one's own country continuously subjects them. ...

snip

Then, there are the implications for the intervention in Libya, which Obama's defenders relentlessly tout as one of his great victories. But the fact that the Benghazi attack was likely premeditated and carried out by anti-American factions vindicates many of the criticisms of that intervention. Critics of the war in Libya warned that the US was siding with (and arming and empowering) violent extremists, including al-Qaida elements, that would eventually cause the US to claim it had to return to Libya to fight against them – just as its funding and arming of Saddam in Iraq and the mujahideen in Afghanistan subsequently justified new wars against those one-time allies.

War critics also argued that the intervention would bring massive instability and suffering to the people of Libya; ....

snip

When the White House succeeded in falsely blaming the consulate attacks on anger over this video, all of those facts were obscured. The truth, now that it is emerging, underscores how unstable, lawless and dangerous Libya has become – far from the grand success story war proponents like to tell. ....

snip

Then, there are the garden-variety political harms to the White House from the truth about these attacks. If the killing of the ambassador were premeditated and unrelated to the film, then it vests credibility in the criticism that the consulate should have been much better-protected, particularly on 9/11. And in general, the last thing a president running for re-election wants is an appearance that he is unable to protect America's diplomats from a terrorist group his supporters love to claim that he has heroically vanquished.

I have been sitting here way too long wanting to come up with an eloquent conclusion to this blog. I feel weary and just not up to it.

All I can come up with is: The US is allied with Al Qaeda in Libya and Syria. WTF?

WTF???????

Obama should have some serious explaining to do. Has he ever once provided that? Has that been demanded of him or even been asked out loud on our mainstream media -- I don’t mean yadda yadda yadda-ed over like NewsHour patter. I mean WAFM!!!! ... [wait a f*cking minute!!!!] ... let’s REALLY address this crazymaking scenario.

Aiding and abetting Al Qaeda, our official enemy in the GWOT, in Libya and Syria is scandalous. Obscene. In fact, according to the Patriot Act and the AUMF resolution it is treasonous.

Why is there such a profound lack of curiosity or sense of outrage on the part of us citizens and media? Expressed confusion would be a step in the right direction.

This is no nothingburger!

Don’t give Obama a pass on this.

[cross-posted on correntewire]