Sic Semper Tyrannis

“U.S. Patrolling Syrian Border to Stop Turk-Kurd Clashes” - TTG

Ilham Ahmed, a co-president of the Democratic Council of Syria, wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post on 28 April addressing the recent Turkish bombing of Kurdish forces.

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“On Tuesday, Turkey bombed the headquarters of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, killing 20 of our soldiers. Immediately after the strike, the leaders of our forces — known as the People’s Protection Groups, or YPG — rushed from their operations center near Raqqa, where they’ve been working with the U.S. military to push the Islamic State out of its Syrian stronghold, to view the site of the attack. The American colonel and other officers who accompanied the YPG leaders were met by tens of thousands of protesters, including the mothers of soldiers who have died fighting the Islamic State. They asked the Americans a simple question: “How is it possible that our soldiers are fighting with you against ISIS while your ally Turkey is attacking us here?”” (WaPo)

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Not long after this piece appeared, the twittersphere came alive with reports, photos and videos of US troops moving to the Turkish-Syrian border. Wladimir Van Wilgenburg, a freelance journalist reporting out of Erbil, said this. “According to Kurdish journalist Heybar Othman three US army groups will spread on the border. First group on Derbisiye Serikaniye area, second on Derbisiye-Tal Abyad area, and third on Kobani and Tal Abyad area.” 

Lizzie Phelan, an RT correspondent reporting from Syria, also noted the troop movements and offered some 140 character analysis. “US troops are patrolling Kurdish areas on border with Turkey and have set up base in Darbasiya that was attacked two days ago by Turkish army. So despite the apparent silence from Washington in the face of ongoing attacks on the YPG, this is a clear message. Three possible scenarios: 1. US confident their presence will stop Turkish attacks  2. They're US forces are at risk of being "collateral damage" from TSK attacks, or… 3. They have an agreement from Turkey about which YPG held areas they can attack.” 

Then things started getting truly interesting. Mete Sohtaoğlu, a journalist and researcher based in Istanbul, tweeted this. “Massive Turkish Armed Forces reinforcements have arrived in Sanliurfa near Syrian border opposite side of Tal Adyad.” Mutlu Civiroglu, a Syrian and Kurdish affairs analyst, tweeted along with a link to a YouTube video. “ANHA reports YPG responded to Turkish attacks on west of Tal Abyad by destroying a radar system and tank.”

Twitter is a good place to identify indicators, but it is also a damned good place to be bamboozled by wild rumors and deliberate propaganda. The presence of videos from sources who have established a reliable reputation helps. I also look for official statements from military spokesmen, but in this era of pervasive information operations, even that has to be examined carefully. In this case Colonel John Dorrian, the Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, confirms the presence of US troops along the border.  

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“WASHINGTON—American forces have started patrolling the Turkey-Syria border to prevent further clashes between Turkish troops and Kurdish fighters that have undermined the fight against Islamic State, U.S. officials said Friday.

The patrols are part of a far-reaching American effort to prevent the rival forces from targeting each other as the U.S. prepares to launch a major effort to drive Islamic State from its largest Syrian stronghold.

“U.S. forces are patrolling in Northern Syria to maintain stability in the area and prevent incidents that could divert efforts to defeat ISIS in Syria,” said Col. John Dorrian, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition against Islamic State, also known as ISIS.”  (WSJ)

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So what are we to make of this? I can’t tell what unit is at the border. There are unmarked Strykers prominently flying American flags. I’ve seen no distinctive markings on the troops either, although I do see some non-standard uniform items. My guess is that they are from one of the Ranger battalions feeling their special operations oats. (Everybody wants to be an operator.) It was Rangers in Strykers riding around Manbij a while back. They appear to be working side-by-side with YPG troops in their Toyota pickups. 

Are these US troops prepared to call in airstrikes on attacking Turkish forces or are are they just window dressing to assuage our Kurdish partners? We need them to continue the assault on Raqqa and can’t afford to have them abandon that offensive to face their Turkish enemies. We also need them to establish our “safe area” which we want as badly as the Saudis. I get the sneaking suspicion we will, once again, cruelly use and abandon the Kurds. The only difference is this time it is the Rojava Kurds who will feel our perfidy. Perhaps the Russians will take note of this and seek to insert themselves between the Rojava Kurds and their American “benefactors.”

I can only imagine what’s going through the minds of my Special Forces brethren who stood by the YPG since the lean days.

TTG

"CORRECTION TO: The French Intelligence Report of April 26, 2017 Contradicts the Allegations in the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017 by Professor Theodore A. Postol" by Publius Tacitus

NOTE FROM PUBLIUS TACITUS--Dr. Postol expressed his appreciation for those who noted his mis-reading of the French Intelligence Report. He is correcting the record and adding to the critique. I think you will find it worth your time to read and analyze.

French Intelligence Report of April 26, 2017 Is Based on False Citations To Evidence

by

THEODORE A. POSTOL

Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

In my effort to understand the exotic claims of the French Intelligence Report (FIR) I missed that the report was in fact focused on an event that occurred not on April 4, 2017 but instead on April 29, 2013. This completely negates my earlier finding that the FIR described the attack of April 4 as occurring at a different location from Khan Sheikhoun.

The French Intelligence Report can be found at http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country- files/syria/events/article/chemical-attack-in-syria-national-evaluation-presented-by-jean-marc-ayrault on a webpage titled French Diplomacy (France Diplomatie). The description of the intelligence report and its appendix is under the subject heading Chemical Attack in Syria - National Evaluation presented by Jean- Marc Ayrault following the Defense Council Meeting (26 April 2017)

The FIR attempts to make its case that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of a possible nerve agent attack on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun by citing evidence that is not supported by the known facts.

It does not report on the details of the attack on April 4 but instead focuses on past attacks which it alleges leads to a strong conclusion that the Syrian government was the perpetrator of the April 4 attack.

A short summary of the logic used in the FIR is that there is an unexplained attack, and without valid evidence the FIR concludes that a perpetrator who might have committed attacks in the past is with certainty the perpetrator of the unexplained attack.

WMD Mirage By Richard Sale

The sketchy information that justified launching U.S. cruise misses on Syria takes us back to an unpleasant episode in our past.

On May 29, 2003, President George Bush announced during a speech in Poland that, “We have found the WMD.” His tone was jubilant.

He pointed to two Iraqi mobile labs who allegedly were involved in producing chemical weapons, which had been named by a German intelligence source code named Curveball whom the CIA had never interviewed directly.

The mobile labs proved to be harmless.

The rational for the Iraq War of 2003 was mainly based on lies, but of all the fatuous and insulting lies told to the U.S. public, the ones regarding Iraq’s WMDs were the lowest. They would dishonor a sewer.

In May of 1991, under the cover of Operation Provide Comfort, the U.S-run military relief effort in Kurdistan, the CIA began an intensive program to debrief Iraqi defectors about Saddam’s WMD.  U.S. intelligence agencies were in a state of shock when, after the war, they found Saddam had progressed much farther in his WMD programs than they had thought.

One of the first things the United States did was to infiltrate the United Nation Special Commission, UNSCOM.  As early as May of 1991, a senior Iraqi scientist had defected to America, making his way through Kurdistan.  He was called, “Defector source DS-385.” At first, the U.S. refused to share the information with UNSCOM, but later it did and the CIA was soon holding daily briefings for UNSCOM officials. Soon the CIA teams, based in Bahrain, were invited to send reps from the U.K, Canada and Australia.

The CIA operations there were complex. There was a National Security Agency team in Bahrain tasked to review the agency’s findings. The NSA unit was a special unit under the NSA’s “B” group responsible for the Middle East. The intercepts were sent by satellite relay to Bahrain and forwarded to the NSA at Fort. Meade, Maryland. The CIA also had a Special Collections Unit, a five man team able to intercept not only the calls of senior Iraqi leadership but also their security detachments.

The surprise UN inspections were invaluable. The UNSCOM teams destroyed so much WMD equipment that in July of 1994, that the UN leader Rolf Ekeus had wanted to lift sanctions from Iraq.

But the problem was that no one knew what the exact status of Saddam’s WMD arsenal was. UNSCOM was constantly bedeviled by faulty information. One DIA analyst was always peddling the worst case scenarios, one allegation insisting that Iraq had squirreled away a large batch of Scud missiles. But on August 8, 1995, the obscuring murk vanished when Saddam’s son in law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, defected from Iraq and the whole landscape lit up. He was not a pleasant character-- he was a megalomaniac, delusional etc -- but he had unsurpassed access to Saddam’s WMD processes -- their inventory, the performance of individual weapons, knowledge not only about weapons but even where they had been made, by whom, and where they had been deployed. Ekeus, accompanied by two technical experts, were told that Iraq had “unilaterally destroyed” Saddam’s WMD in the summer of 1991. His questioners were stunned, and he expanded. “All weapons—biological, chemical, missile nuclear warheads were destroyed,” Kamel adding, “You have an important role in Iraq with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq.” Later I learned that this destruction had occurred in June of 1991.

Not only did Saddam not have any WMD, his intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, wanted Baghdad to display complete openness to the United Nations on strategic grounds.  The Mukhabarat did not want Saddam to hide any WMD or remnants of WMD programs or in any way hamper or impair the work of the inspectors. The Mukhabarat’s only concern was to keep the weapons inspectors under the closest possible scrutiny and to get them out of the country. Other Iraqi security organizations disagreed, among them the Special Security Organization which felt that anything related to Saddam’s security could never be discussed with the UN. Yet much of this resistance was not perverse willfulness, but based on Iraq’s own pride in its being a sovereign nation.

In Operation Desert Fox, a bombing campaign that involved 650 bomber and missile assaults during a 72-hour period, CENTCOM Commander, Gen. Anthony Zinni targeted, not Saddam’s WMD but Iraq’s air defense system, Saddam’s pillars of powers including palaces strongholds, units of secret police, guard, an transport organizations. Several barracks and units in and around Baghdad or outlying provinces were hit as well. The attacks were designed to shake the regime to its core and destabilize it if possible. But the attack did not drop one bomb on Iraq’s Army.

In 2009, I asked Zinni about Saddam’s WMD.  He said, “If Saddam had any WMD, it was only tactical stuff – old Soviet artillery rounds, and those things tend to degrade quickly.” He added that Iraq wasn’t storing or producing WMD at all.

But the aim was to weaken Iraq, not occupy it and Zinni was shocked by the Bush administrations claim of WMD.

We all were.

When It Comes to Iran, Trump & Company Ignore Facts by Publius Tacitus

If you placed your hopes that a President Donald Trump would bring some sanity back to U.S. foreign policy, especially with respect to U.S./Iran relations, you made a mistake. Trump’s Administration, using the voice of his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, is beating the drum denouncing Iran as the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the World.

The chutzpah award on this point goes to Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, who declared in October 2015:

. . .that Iran “is the biggest sponsor of terrorism in the world, and it is working on destabilizing the region. If it wants to build good relations with its neighbors, it ought to deal with them based on the good neighborliness principle and not to interfere in their affairs. We [would] welcome such a step.”

(Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2015/10/saudi-arabia-yemen-syria-crisis-relations-disputes-agreement.html#ixzz3yMmotxLV)

The Saudi Foreign Minister conveniently ignored the fact that 15 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked planes and attacked America on 11 September 2001 were Saudis not Iranians.

Iran is no innocent on the issue of terrorism. The Revolutionary Guard and their agents, following the ordres of the Mullahs, were responsbile for the deaths of thousands from hundreds of terrorist attacks since the early 1980s.

When Iran fell under the rule of the Ayatollah, it routinely relied on terrorism—bombings, hijackings and kidnapping—to pursue its goals. They were directly involved in the taking of U.S. hostages in Lebanon and the bombings of the US Embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks. But Iran’s actions were not just blind hatred. There was a strategic context to Tehran’s use of terrorism. Iran was at war with Iraq, which had the full support of the United States and other western countries. For Iran terrorism was a way to punch back against a more powerful military foe. The pragmatism on the part of Iran was further evidenced by the fact that it had a secret arrangement with Israel in acquiring weapons to use against Iraq.

The Great Game of Radical Narrative Change (and its Drawbacks) by Alastair Crooke

 It is clearer now: Trump seeks radical ‘narrative metamorphosis’. No more shall America be perceived as ‘weak'. America shall be ‘strong'. US rhetoric against North Korea, Russia and Iran, again is larded with ultimata - and is stridently bellicose. Plainly, the US rhetoric, per se, has done wonders for the US President’s domestic poll ratings, and may help unblock Congressional doors for his crucial domestic budgetary endeavours.  (It is not so certain however, whether these high favourability ratings would prove so durable should the ‘Tough America’ tactic lead to actual war).

How much the bellicosities are directed internally towards US public opinion - and are Trump’s demonstration of the merits of businessman-negotiator’s bluff at work - is not clear?  Neither is it clear how much the threats are intended to be militarily executed, should his ‘negotiator’s bluff’ be called.  Plainly, if the bluff is called, America will be perceived to be hollow – and will be weakened. Nor is it clear, how much ‘the threats’ will actually ‘give peace a chance’.  The threats may only paint the new Administration into rigid binary positions that otherwise the Trump Team would not wish to hold.  All that, remains to be seen.

The Middle East however, is more familiar than other regions with this old Israeli strategy: ‘The boss has gone nuts! Watch out: Anything may happen: For goodness sake, placate him quickly’.  Often, the Israeli version of the ‘boss has gone nuts’ was proved to be no more than theatrical bluff.  Certainly, Iran has seen through these ploys, and simply does not believe them now.  In a sense, Israel has already devalued this currency.

The Trumpist ‘narrative metamorphosis’ tack, as transient as it may prove to be, will however directly impact and shape the Middle East -- at least for the time being. But at last, we can, after a period of extended disorientation, try to draw some conclusions about what this may mean.  Of course, should the Trump ‘hard-nosed negotiator approach’ either bog down with North Korea (where it is quite possible that the Chinese do not share the US desire to see North Korea run up the ‘white flag’, and become disarmed, and wholly ‘docile’), or lead the US closer to real war with North Korea, it is possible that Trump may switch back to ‘peacemaker mode’.  That is to say, he may attempt to reverse (if not too many bridges have been burnt in the meantime).  Be sure, though, that if not entirely burned, the bridges are very badly fire-damaged – beyond, perhaps, that which is properly understood in Washington.

The first point – a simple statement of fact - is that if America does wish convincingly to project its image of strength globally, the Pentagon surely will insist on retaining its necklace of US military bases in the Gulf. The US will therefore, consequently, remain aligned to Saudi Arabia (and, of course, therefore, to Israel, with its own particular regional interests too).

The second point is that Saudi Arabia and its allies, naturally, will lever this US-Gulf-Israeli military and intelligence alignment against Iran - to the latter’s detriment: this will be exploited, further to deepen Irano-phobia within Washington, where both the Gulf and Israel command and fund extensive political ‘assets’.

The third sequela that flows from this Strong America ‘narrative’ is that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies will take advantage of their seemingly revived political status with the US Administration to fire-up (again) the Sunni rebellions in both Iraq and Syria, and to continue to pursue a humiliating defeat for the Houthis and AnsaAllah in Yemen. (They – the Houthis – must accept the solution as decreed by the United Nations, without equivocation, MbS reportedly told Mr Trump).  Political solutions in any of these states therefore, will not be available for the duration of this phase of politics: that is to say, until things, somehow change.

Finally, the Gulf partisan lobby in Europe and America, egged on by those John Brennan adherents who still lead the wholly politicised western intelligence services, will seek to re-instate regime-change as the policy for Syria (by fabricating further false allegations of Syrian government chemical weapon use). This campaign neatly combines the aims of the ‘Gulf partisans’ movement’ (and their Israeli allies) to weaken Iran - with those of the Cold War ‘contingent’ seeking to undermine President Putin, and to weaken Russia.  Iran and Russia will conclude that they have little alternative but to finish the war in Syria speedily, and to prevent America’s attempt to insert a Sunni-Wahhabi wedge between Iran and Syria (a wedge seen by western hawks as possessing additionally the merit of putting an end to any thoughts of an Iranian oil pipeline serving Europe, via Syria).

To repeat, all the above points simply flow, ipso facto, from the one single premise: that Trump wishes to project America as being ‘globally strong’ again – and the need therefore, to align with the Gulf. It is not clear that Team Trump thought through these sequellae, or that they had the intention to re-invigorate the neo-cons (which is what has been done). Rather, any thought of benefitting the neo-cons is unlikely. More probable is that the notion of ‘looking militarily strong’ seemed a natural enough concomitant to the President’s businessman-negotiator doctrine, and that the consequences were not thought through well enough.

Does this then portend a geo-strategic reversal in the Middle East, as the forces gather who seek President Assad’s head?  Probably not. In an interview with Adam Shatz of the London Review of Books (LRB), Professor Joshua Landis, inter alii, touched on the bigger reason why this will not happen:

LRB: … We haven’t spoken much about the Syrian people, except to say that, increasingly, Syrians see many of their co-nationals as no longer belonging to the same community, because the cleavages along sectarian lines have become so bitter and so lethal [Shatz is referring here to the jihadists in Syria being perceived by many Syrians, as absolute, irreconcilable enemies, and as ‘foreigners’]. And so, in a sense, one great question is: Who are the Syrian people? What will their future be? Will their future even be inside Syria…?

Landis: … That’s the million-dollar question. It’s very hard to see through this ... to see into the future. You know, on the one hand, one can look at this as a major tectonic shift in identity and power in the northern Middle East, on a par to what happened in the twelfth century, when Shi’ite lords dominated much of northern Syria, and were a powerful element supported by Persia. The Mamluks, and then, following them, the Ottomans, changed that: they pushed out the Shi’ites, marginalised them – they became very impotent; and the Arab world became a Sunni world, led by the Ottoman Empire. Today, you could see something like the twelfth century coming back, with Shi’ites predominating in the north… But, you know, political power can be very enduring, if Iran, Hezbollah, Iraq all secure their alliance; and that means that Sunnis in Syria could [have to] live under this kind of a regime – a regime that’s backed by Iran – for a long time. If that happens, identities are likely to shift once again, to be plastic, and to be reworked. I don’t know how that happens, but that’s a possibility...

... the thing that frightens me, because of my seeing this as a great ‘sorting-out’, is that, if Saudi Arabia, and the US and others, continue to fund rebellion by the Sunni populations of Iraq and Syria, they’re likely to get crushed, with the present disposition of power in the Middle East …”.

The French Intelligence Report of April 26, 2017 Contradicts the Allegations in the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017 by Dr. Theodore Postol

[NOTE FROM PUBLIUS TACITUS--Here is the latest from Dr. Postol. He correctly notes the discrepancy between the White House account of what happened at Khan Sheikhoun and that now offered by the Government of France. The key point is this--both the United States and the French are lying about what actually happened. The Government of Syria did not use a chemical weapon on April 4.]

Theodore A. Postol

Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Attached below are data derived from the French Intelligence Report published yesterday on April 26, 2017. A reading of the report instantaneously indicates that the French Intelligence Report of April 26, 2017 directly contradicts the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017. The discrepancies between these two reports essentially result in two completely different narratives alleging nerve agent attacks in Syria on April 11, 2017. The fact that these two intelligence reports allege totally different circumstances associated with the same alleged event raises very serious questions that need to be investigated and reported to the American public.

The White House Intelligence Report (WHR) of April 11 alleged that a crater in the Northeast corner of Khan Sheikhoun was the source of a sarin release that killed and injured a significant number of people. The WHR cited publicly available evidence showing the crater where the alleged sarin release occurred and the areas adjacent to it. Inspection of the crater shown on video cited by the WHR showed that there was no evidence to show that the crater had been created by an airdropped chemical dispersal munition. Also of concern is that none of the local Syrian journalistic reports from that location showed the populated area that was immediately (within tens of meters) downwind of the alleged aerosol dispersal that would have been filled with nerve agent casualties. Instead, the local Syrian journalists walked in the opposite direction from the alleged aerosol dispersal plume to show a dead goat that was well up wind of the alleged dispersal.

Now, more than two weeks after the dubious allegations published in the WHR, the French Government has released a report that totally contradicts the already dubious allegations in the WHR. 

The French Report instead claims that there were at least three munitions dropped from helicopters in the town of Saraqib, more than 30 miles north of the alleged sarin release crater identified by the WHR.

The WHR claims that a fixed wing aircraft was the originator of the airdropped munition at the alleged dispersal site. The French Intelligence Report alleges that a helicopter was used to drop sarin loaded grenades at three different locations in Saraqib.

Both reports cannot simultaneously be true.

Russian ground forces in Syria? - TTG

As Colonel Lang mentioned, there are rumors that Russia would “respond favorably to an expected SAG request for Russian ground troops.”  This is just a guess, but I think the Russians are concerned by the uptick in the US-led coalition efforts to destroy the Assad government and Syria. I'm convinced that the US and the Saudis are hell bent on creating their safe areas for anti-Assad forces both in SDF controlled areas and along the southern border with Jordan. Looks like Trump's first foreign visit will be with his Saudi friends. He’ll probably be discussing one of the few foreign policy points that our agonizingly inconsistent President has been consistent on -  safe areas in Syria in conjunction with the Saudis.

Elijah J. Magnier laid out his interpretation of this growing coalition strategy in his recent article, “America is trying to block the path of the “Shiite crescent” from Syria and is preparing the ground for a “new Middle East”.”

I think we let the Turks bomb the Kurds to further drive them into a dependence on increased US presence in "greater Rojava." I think Russia should do all it can to weaken the YPG/SDF dependence on U.S. support. If the Russians shot down a Turkish plane or two over Rojava, that could cause this US gambit to back fire. 

I also get the feeling there is nothing we would like more than for the IS jihadis to overrun Deir ez-Zor. That would leave the path open for a jihadi safe area extending from the entire Euphrates valley to the Iraqi border. The only thing standing in our way is that bull of a Druze General and his boys holding Deir ez-Zor. The offensive to relieve that pocket is damned important. In light of the developing coalition effort to carve out a safe area, I now think the relief and/or reinforcement of the Deir ez-Zor pocket is at least as important to the survival of Syria as the the reduction of the jihadis in Idlib.

Israel is getting more blatant about their support for anti-Assad jihadis. It's probably all part of the coalition plan. And I doubt we and the Turks have given up on that jihadi-filled festering sore around Idlib. As many of us know, the R+6 does not have the forces in place to address all these threats at once. The Russians need to tip the balance soon.

In addition to these real and looming threats to the SAG, perhaps old Vladimir Vladimirovich has also decided it is time to send his own message to the West. Our Mudak-in-Chief sent his garbled message of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Maybe it’s time for Vlad to send his own clear and unmistakable message. Something like the deployment of the 106th Guards Airborne Division and the 45th Spetsnaz Brigade along with a substantial Russian Aerospace Force support package to rapidly and decisively address some of the R+6’s most pressing military challenges. 

TTG

Grooming the Senate? For what or why?

All 100 senators are invited to the White House compound tomorrow for a briefing on North Korea.  This is an unusual event.  During the first Gulf War I was sent to the Congress every day to brief both houses. Notice that we went to them and not the other way 'round.  Tillerson, Mattis, McMaster, Coates are reported to be the hosts.  Some mighty skilled briefers will do the actual thing. 

Sounds to me that the senators are being prepared for a probable failure of Trumpian policy with regard to the Chinese and North Korea.   A declaration of war or an authorization for the use of military force would require a vote by both houses of congress.  So ... You can probably expect to see a lot of members of the House of Representatives visiting the White House soon if that has not already occurred. 

The Carl Vinson battle group will be in Korean waters in a few days.  USS Michigan, a cruise missile shooting submarine is in Busan, South Korea for R&R and re-vittling.  As I have written there is the availability of two additional carrier battle groups in early June.  This is all shaping up nicely if you are an armchair field marshal or fleet admiral. 

At the same time, pressure is building on the international scene for a real investigation of the 4 April, 2017 gas event at Khan Shaykun in southern Idlib Province, Syria.  There is so much now written about this that it seems inevitable that a high profile enquiry will be made.  It appears that the R+6 will re-capture Khan Shaykun soon.  That will create an interesting situation for the investigators whomever they will be.

The Turkish Air Force carried out intensive strikes on SDF Kurdish and Arab units over-night.  Unlike the Russians they do not inform USCENTCOM of such events.  USSF soldiers are in the field with the SDF and we could easily have lost men in this.  USCENTCOM is not pleased but their assets are often based at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and that presents a problem in deciding what to do about the Turks.

There are rumors about that Russia will respond favorably to an expected SAG request for Russian ground troops.  If this is true then a couple of things are probably correct; 1- The Russians have decided that they are dealing with an unstable commodity in the occupant of the White House and that they need to present DT with a fait accompli in Syria as soon as possible to reduce the chance of further misadventure resembling the apparently erratic decision to attack the Syrian air base at Shayrat in "reprisal."  2.  They may feel assured that introduction of their ground forces will not provoke another erratic response.  Are they expecting that the US will be too pre-occupied elsewhere (like Korea) to interfere?  That could be or it could be that the rumor of ground force intervention is simply press imagination or disinformatsya. pl

A French election is not like a US election.

 

SWMBO and I are suitable objects for mockery by Joe Scarborough.  We speak French, are proud of that and are correctly to be described as Francophile.  We subscribe to TV 5 Monde and watch it a lot.  IMO Mr. Jefferson was correct when he remarked that all civilized people have two languages, their own and French.

We were watching the election extravaganza on TV 5 on Sunday when the polls closed in France.  They all closed at the same time, 8 PM EDT.  Within 30 seconds the network announced the outcome and the victory of Emanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.  Evidently the French have the whole country wired together in such a way that reporting is instantaneous.  There were a few precincts/districts/whatever not reporting but only a few.  I presume these are the result of overseas voting or something similar.  It was a remarkable demonstration of highly effective electoral administration.  Turnout was reported at 78%.  This was also remarkable although the French media seemed to think it was low.

There were 11 candidates.  Some were a little silly when viewed from outside the system.  There was one man who ran from the Atlantic end of the Pyrenees Mountains.  This is a charming region but not likely to serve as a national political base.  And then there was Francois Fillon, a former prime minister and centrist who went down in a classic political mess caused by his own foolishness in hiring his wife and son for "no show" government jobs.  H probably would have won without that.

The two winners are fascinatingly un-American:

Marine Le Pen, the daughter of  an old combatant of the Algeria War.  He was a paratroop intelligence officer in the Battle of Algiers and evidently is not a "people person."  He founded a relentlessly nationalist, anti-Muslim, isolationist and xenophobic political party.  Le Pen received 37% of the working class vote.  Her support is concentrated in the economically devastated industrial north and in the sunny south where people are faced on a daily basis with what many see as a demographic and culture menace across the Mediterranean Sea.  Le Pen was raised in a privileged way with attendance at elite schools and residence in elite neighborhoods but that does not seem to lessen working class support for her.   She is a very considerable orator but the other candidates are rapidly closing ranks against her and telling their supporters to vote for Macron.

Emanuel Macron is 39 years old, a former investment banker, finance minister and a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA).  He is pro-EU, pro-immigrant and a movie star or shirt ad model type.  the most interesting thing about him is his marriage.  His wife is 24 years his senior.  She was his high school Latin and French literature teacher at a Jesuit school in Amiens.  He was 15 when they became "an item."  She divorced her first husband to marry Macron in 2007.  She has three children by her first marriage.  They live with the Macrons.    Interestingly the French are simply not interested in his private life.  I remember the case of a pretty blond teacher in the NW of the US who fell madly in love with a 14 year old boy in her class.  I seem to remember that she was a phys ed teacher.  She eventually went to prison as a child molester.   They married after she served her sentence. 

This illustration of the difference in attitude toward life between most Americans and the French is striking this matter.  Mme. Macron will probably e the first lady of France.  pl 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/24/europe/french-presidential-election/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Macron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_nationale_d%27administration

"THE URGENT NEED FOR BORIS JOHNSON TO CLARIFY ... " by Habakkuk

HABAKKUK ON THE URGENT NEED FOR BORIS JOHNSON TO CLARIFY WHAT HE IS CLAIMING ABOUT TESTS ON SAMPLES FROM KHAN SHEIKHUN. ARE THEY SUPPOSE TO MATCH THE SARIN USED AT GHOUTA, OR THAT DESTROYED ON THE M.V. ‘CAPE RAY’?

 

A letter to the Chairs of the Commons Defence and Foreign Affairs Committees, the Rt Hon Julian Lewis MP, and Crispin Blunt MP, and their colleagues, sent on 23 April.

 

Dear Dr Lewis, Mr Blunt and fellow members of the Defence and Foreign Affairs Committees:

 

Re: the Foreign Secretary’s claims on Khan Sheikhun

 

In the light of the article published by the Foreign Secretary in the ‘Sunday Telegraph’ last weekend, and his remarks on Tuesday in the House, I clearly need to add some brief further observations to those I sent to you last week.

 

In his 5 April article in the ‘Guardian’ Martin Chulov reported that:  ‘Rescue workers have gathered soil samples from the scene of a chemical weapons attack in northern Syria and sent them to western intelligence officials’. And he went on to explain that:

 

Samples taken from the scene in Khan Sheikhun, as well as biological specimens taken from survivors and casualties, will be compared with samples taken by intelligence officials from the Syrian military stockpile when it was withdrawn from the country in late 2013. Syria’s stores of sarin are known to have particular properties, which experts say can be forensically matched to samples taken in the field.

 

What the Foreign Secretary told the House on Tuesday was that ‘we know from shell fragments in the crater that sarin had not only been used, but that it was sarin carrying the specific chemical signature of sarin used by the Assad regime.’  Responding to the Khan Sheikhoun incident on 4 April, Mr Johnson asserted that ‘this bears all the hallmarks of an attack by the regime which has repeatedly used chemical weapons.’

 

So, what is the Foreign Secretary now suggesting? Is it that tests have shown that the ‘particular properties’ of the sarin found in the samples purporting to come from Khan Sheikhun have been shown to match those of the materials whose destruction on the U.S. vessel MV ‘Cape Ray’ was completed in August 2014? Or is it that they have been shown to match those identified by tests on samples from the incidents which have been adduced in support of the claim that the Syrian government ‘has repeatedly used chemical weapons’?

Earth Day Close to Home - TTG

“Saint Thérèse of Lisieux invites us to practice the little way of love, not to miss out on a kind word, a smile or any small gesture which sows peace and friendship. An integral ecology is also made up of simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness.” 

———————————

This is from Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si” (Paragraph 230). It’s not one of his most moving or controversial passages, but I find it to be a prescription that is eminently doable. I think it’s Papa Frank’s theological way of saying the little things count. It’s something we can all do. It’s something we should all do.

On this Earth Day, I celebrate the little things around me. I rejoice in the many Six-lined Racerunner lizards scampering around the front porch. They were our first neighbors when we moved into this house. They remind me of all those geckos in the townhouse in Mililani Town. The Racerunners were just the vanguard of a host of amazing insects, reptiles, birds and furry mammals in my yard. I’ve been pursuing a policy of no pesticides, abundant natural plantings and little fertilizer to bring on this abundance.

On a grander, but still local, scale, we have the success of our Crow’s Nest Natural Area Preserve. This is a gem in Virginia’s crown that I was able to see come to fruition. I was reminded of this by a column in my local paper this morning by Hal Wiggins. 

———————————

“The April 1 opening of Crow’s Nest Natural Area Preserve was a great event for the people of Stafford County and the world. The preservation of this 2,872-acre fragile ecosystem was an extraordinary effort that took over 15 years of negotiations.

Among the many important biological attributes contained within Crow’s Nest are 2,200 acres of mature hardwood forest, including two forest types that are recognized as globally rare by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Natural Heritage Program. There are 750 acres of tidal and non-tidal wetlands on the Crow’s Nest peninsula that account for 60 percent of all the marshes in Stafford County, and represent some of the best examples of diverse and intact wetland habitats in the Potomac River drainage, along with 21 miles of stream, riparian and wetland buffer.”

———————————

Read the rest of the column at the Free-Lance Star.

I already enjoy the area from my kayak. The canoe/kayak launch is less than thirty minutes from my house on our narrow country roads. What a joy it is.

TTG

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow%27s_Nest_Natural_Area_Preserve

http://savecrowsnest.com

https://www.facebook.com/CrowsNestNAP/

http://www.virginiaherpetologicalsociety.com/reptiles/lizards/eastern-six-lined-racerunner/eastern_six-lined_racerunner.php

 

How PPBS functioned (in my time)

 The "Planning, Programming and Budgeting System" (PPBS) is the future oriented financial planning system brought into the Department of Defense by Robert McNamara when he was Secretary of Defense in the 1960s.  He had been the boss at the Ford Motor Company and was offended by the lack of mathematically driven process and uniformity across the services at DoD.   McNamara had been Curtis Lemay's chief staff officer in WW2 and had scientifically planned the devastation of Japanese cities (other than Hiroshima and Nagasaki) by massed low level B-29 raids employing a lot of incendiary bombs.  All in all he was not a warm human being.  We belonged to the same club in Washington and every time I saw him there I remembered the Operations Research and Systems Analysis study that he had his staff do on the VN War in 1969.  It concluded that the North Vietnamese had surrendered to us in 1967.

In the PPBS system that he created for the Pentagon:

1.  Strategy comes first.  The USIC as a committee of the whole writes national intelligence papers normally called National Intelligence Estimates.  Exactly who picks the subjects of these studies is a little unclear to me although I worked on many as the DIA member.  These studies become the ground truth of the US government for the subject addressed; like "Russian General Purpose Forces in the next five years."  These studies go over to the NSC staff where they hopefully drive strategy formulation, but not always since the ideologues among the Borgists there sometimes try to drive US strategy in the direction they favor.  The opinions of institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations, RAND and the other Federally Funded Research institutions, Brookings, AEI, etc. are at least read before strategy documents are completed.

2.  The emergent strategy documents and the NIEs go over to the Pentagon where they become the basis of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR),  (every four years maybe?) .  This is a massive undertaking that goes on for months and is done by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD - civilians) and delegations from the armed forces.  In this process it is decided largely by negotiation among the parties what the forces should be composed of in the future period under discussion.  To say that these negotiations are a bit tense would be an understatement.  OSD referees.

3.  There exist financial entities called "Programs."  These are for general categories of expenditure;  General Purpose Forces, Strategic Forces, Medical, Retirement Pay (my favorite), Building things on bases (not a real one), Intelligence, etc.  OK, wait for it - in this next phase of PPBS the results of the QDR are stuffed into the boxes of the "Programs" with subdivisions thereto.  For example the DNI is the manager for the Intelligence Program and part of his money is hived off to the Defense Intelligence Agency and beneath them to the non-tactical intelligence assets of the Army, Air Force, etc.  I once was the manager (among other things) for funds distributed by DIA to the services for HUMINT.

4.  Next, comes "Budgeting".  In this drill the programmed funds are reduced to "line items" in the budget of their organization.   These budgets are then presented to Congress for approval. 

State congressional delegations are, of course, acutely concerned about the locations of the facilities at which goods and services will be purchased for the armed forces.  These expenditures represent jobs and money in their districts and states.  Under the influence of lobbyists these congressmen talk to the OSD and the services pressing for more money to be spent where it will do them the most good politically.  Sometimes this works.  Sometimes it does not. 

All in all, it can be said that this is a cumbersome system that impedes as much as it facilitates.  Thank you, Robert McNamara.  pl

Does history repeat itself? (FB Ali)

Does History repeat itself? Many thinkers, from ancient times to modern, from Polybius to Hegel and Santayana, have thought so. Karl Marx, alluding to Hegel’s formulation, sarcastically added the well-known bit about “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. Whether one believes in this theory or not, it is interesting to look at the many parallels that exist between Ancient Rome and the United States of America today.

Both were republics, governed by elected representatives. Their involvement in wars gradually changed this into rule by monarchs. Their early rulers, tempered by their wartime experiences, generally governed wisely – Octavius/Augustus on the one hand, Roosevelt/Truman/Eisenhower on the other. However, they were followed by others of a different type, the successors becoming increasingly warped as time passed, and more and more power seeped into their hands. As power accumulated with the monarchs, conspiracies and coups multiplied. Emperors were assassinated, presidents were forced from office.

As the powers of the monarchs increased, and their quality deteriorated, the weirdness of their antics manifested themselves more and more. There was Tiberius and his ‘minnows’ in the Blue Grotto; and Clinton sporting with Monica in the Oval Office. Caligula made his horse a Consul; Trump makes his son-in-law his policy chief. Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Trump tweets all the time. Clumsy Claudius was a figure of fun for many in Rome; George Bush Junior was (and is) the same for many in the USA (for example, see David Letterman). But the snickering of their people did not stop either of them from launching wars and bringing death and destruction to many lands.

Is Trump bluffing overseas?

Perhaps he is.  The number of his veiled or unveiled threats against foreign actors seems to multiply every day.

1.  The president said at his presser with the Italian that Iran has not lived up to the "spirit" of JCPOA.  What does that mean?  As I recall the agreement's finalization was immediately followed by cries from Congress that the Iranians should expect no lessening in hostility from the US.  Was that in the "spirit" of JCPOA?  This is ridiculous.  The bi-partisan warhawk nationalists in Washington want Iran on its knees begging for forgiveness,  The question asked should be - Or what?  US air strikes designed to fight a war that Israel wants but cannot accomplish?  A naval war in the Gulf?  Or what?

2.  The president has said that North Korea "should behave."  Or what?  Some military gesture to demonstrate US disapproval of their nuclear weapons/ballistic missile programs?  Or a full blown war to the death on the peninsula?  Really?  Does Trump or the evidently mad duo of Mattis/McMaster fully grasp the scale of the destruction and people losses that would ensue?  Some of the people of SST have suggested that maybe NOKO could actually be bargained with if we adopted a different attitude toward the little bastards.  Really?  What a thought!

3.  Tillerson went to Moscow to bring the Russians to heel on various matters and left with nothing to show for his trouble   NATO keeps moving assets into Eastern Europe to confront the Russian menace.  The prevailing idea in the Borgist foreign policy establishment in Washington and London seems to be that the US (with UK advice) must guide human events and any thought of national independence anywhere in the world must be stamped out.  Really?  How is that to be enforced?  With war? With yet more economic sanctions that drive Russia toward China?

4.  Mattis (without producing evidence) insists that Syria has retained some indeterminate number of tons of chemical weapon materials.  This is a transparent effort to justify further aggressive action against Syria.  At the same time AQ connected guerrillas, heavily armed with US TOW are attacking to re-capture the southern Syrian border city of Deraa from government forces.  these forces are heavily supplied with US material support from sources in Jordan just to the south of the city.    Will Mattis/McMaster justify direct US intervention there to create a "safe zone" in preparation for partition of the country or as a base for a drive on Damascus to unseat the government and install the jihadis?

All of this raises the question of why the Trump Administration is placing itself in position in which if we are defied we will have to fight a number of bloody wars simultaneously  Why?  pl

The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur by Ted Postol

COMMENT FROM PUBLIUS--HERE IS THE LATEST FROM PROFESSOR THEODORE POSTOL. HE IS RELENTLESS.

 

The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur:  Analysis of the Times and Locations of Critical Events in the Alleged Nerve Agent Attack

at 7 AM on April 4, 2017 in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria

Summary of Findings

This analysis contains a detailed description of the times and locations of critical events in the alleged nerve agent attack of April 4, 2017 in Khan Shaykhun, Syria – assuming that the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) issued on April 11, 2017 correctly identified the alleged sarin release site.

Analysis using weather data from the time of the attack shows that a small hamlet about 300 m to the east southeast of the crater could be the only location affected by the alleged nerve agent release.  Video data of suffocating and dead victims lying on the ground shows a different location from the predicted sarin dispersal site if it had been correctly identified by the White House.

The conclusion is that the nerve agent attack described in the White House Intelligence Report did not occur as claimed.  There may well have been mass casualties from some kind of poisoning event, but that event was not the one described by the WHR.

The findings of this expanded analysis can serve two important purposes:

1. It shows exactly what needs to be determined in an international investigation of this alleged atrocity.

In particular, if an international investigation can determine where casualties from the nerve agent attack lived, it will confirm that the findings reported by the White House Report are incompatible with its own cited data.

2. It also establishes that the White House Report did not utilize simple and widely agreed upon intelligence analysis procedures to determine its conclusions.

This raises troubling questions about how the US political and military leadership determined that the Syrian government was responsible for the alleged attack.  It is particularly of concern that the White House Report presented itself as a report with “high confidence” findings and that numerous high-level officials in the US government have confirmed their belief that the report was correct and executed to a standard of high confidence.

Theodore A. Postol

Professor Emeritus of Science,
Technology, and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Email: [email protected]

Follow this link to read the full thirteen page report (The Nerve Agent Attack that Did Not Occur).

My thoughts on Korea - Chapter 1 - 19 April, 2017

 

"It was supposed to be steaming towards North Korea more than a week ago, an “armada” signaling American resolve. Then it wasn’t.

Now, it seems the USS Carl Vinson may finally be heading north.

“Our deployment has been extended 30 days to provide a persistent presence in the waters off the Korean Peninsula,” Rear Admiral Jim Kilby, the commander of Carrier Strike Group One, said in a message posted on the Carl Vinson’s Facebook page addressed to “families and loved ones” of the personnel on board.

[Despite talk of a military strike, Trump’s ‘armada’ actually sailed away from Korea]

The Carl Vinson, accompanied by a carrier air wing, two guided-missile destroyers and a cruiser, was supposed to have been ordered to sail north after leaving Singapore on April 8. But a week later, the Navy published photos showing it was actually sailing the opposite direction through the Sunda Strait between the Indonesia islands of Sumatra and Java, more than 3,000 miles southwest of the Korean Peninsula — and more than 500 miles southeast of Singapore."  Washpost

---------------

What!  You mean the US Navy did not inform the Washpostian snowflakes of the correct location of the Carl Vinson battle group?  For shame Navy!  For shame!  The self-obsession and self-importance of the journos continues to spiral upward toward Olympos.  Ho hum.

On a more serious subject - what is it that the old turcopolier thinks is likely to be in the prospect for a new Korean War? 

Well, pilgrims, close observation of Trump and Pence leads me to believe that nothing that goes BOOM will happen very soon.  It seems to me that they are going to wait for a bit to see if China will solve the nuclear weapons/ballistic missile dilemma that will soon face the US.  How long will they wait?  Holding my finger in the air to catch the direction of the breeze I would say - at least until late May.  How's that for a SWAG? 

Why?  Well, they want to "give peace a chance," i.e., see if they can finesse this actual problem without having to fight.  If that does not prove possible, and I think it will not be possible, they will take military action.

Why won't a negotiated solution work?  !- China is not terrible interested in negotiating on our behalf .  The North Koreans under their fat kid boss are still Asian Communists.  Why would the Chinese relish the idea of helping us against the Koreans?  Why?  2 - The spoiled brat fat kid does not really understand just how much devastation the US can wreak upon his "honey bucket" of a country if it sets itself on that path.  3 - Neither do Trump and Pence.  Trump has watched a lot of movies and Pence has a son who is a USMC junior aviator.  Great military thinkers they probably are not.

So, what is the probable future (60% maybe?) IMO by the end of May we have the possibility of three aircraft carrier battle groups being in the Sea of Japan.  That would make available the carriers' three embarked air wings with all the various ordnance on board as well as on board replenishment ships.  There would also be the assets provided by the ships of the aircraft carriers' screens.  These would be some combination of cruisers, destroyers and frigates, all of whom would be missile shooters.  Further surrounding these surface ships would be a number of submarines.  This truly would be an "armada."  To this could be added the weight of US strategic assets, i.e. heavy bombers; B-52s, B-1s and B-2s.  These can fly from anywhere in the world directly to their targets.  Like the cherry on an ice cream sundae there would also be the artillery and tactical air assets of US/ROK forces in the peninsula.

On the other side of the DMZ we would face the forces of the PDRK.  These are considerable.  A million men under arms, indoctrinated with anti-ROK feeling, 6,000+ tanks of varying vintage, about the same number of artillery weapons including the fearsome 170 mm rifle nicknamed the Koksan gun.  Built in the PDRK, this descendant of the German 88 mm multi-purpose gun was specifically designed to range Seoul from present positions north of the DMZ. 

IMO, a general US/ROK onslaught by air and artillery would be unable to neutralize all the PDRK artillery that can range Seoul.  A bombardment of the ROK capital might well be accompanied by a general PDRK ground attack across the DMZ.

The result would be general war in and around the Korean peninsula.  The casualties and destruction ensuing would probably be the political end of Trumpismo.  pl  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/trumps-missing-armada-finally-heading-to-korea--and-may-stay-a-while/2017/04/19/734ac5e7-ad0c-4395-9cfe-43a9596dca7b_story.html?utm_term=.c90bd42ffe04

Ignorance is Strength by Publius Tacitus

This is must see. Not because it reveals anything new about the false narrative pushed by Donald Trump and his enablers (i.e. Mattis, Tillerson, McMaster and Haley)--i.e., that the Government of Syria used a chemical weapon against Islamic rebels last week. Nope. It is must see because it is clever and uses a bit of sophisticated humor to skewer Trump and those in the media who have cheered his lies.

 

 

Open Thread - 18 April 2017

pl

E-mail, baptism and money

1.  In response to popular demand I have restored the e-mail button to the blog.  If that develops into an occasion for troll attacks, I will remove it.

2.  I spent Saturday evening standing as godfather for our friend Harper.  A splendid occasion.

3.  The time has come for me to make another appeal for contributions.  There is a donation button on  SST.  pl

" ... the end of Turkey as we know it" The Guardian

"With the result of Sunday’s referendum on its constitution, Turkey as we know it is over; it is history.

The architecture of its governance designed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – Turkey’s founder – has, after a wobbly series of experiments with the military and a secular elite in charge, been dismantled by the leader of the Justice and Development party (AKP). The collapse of the rule of law that took place in slow motion after the Gezi Park protests has been followed by the erosion of the separation of powers and the annihilation of the independent media.

It’s hard not to notice the striking resemblance to the sequence of events in Germany from 1933: the Reichstag fire, the Night of the Long Knives, the infamous referendum in 1934. The similarities give one a powerful sense of history copy-and-pasting itself. No wonder those who once shrugged at such comparisons are now in shock – particularly when they heard the harsh rhetoric of President Erdoğan’s victory speech: he pledged to an ecstatic crowd that one of his highest priorities is to reintroduce capital punishment."  Guardian

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Once upon a time SWMBO and I lived in Izmir, Turkey.  We were there for two very pleasant years wedged in between two of my VN War tours of duty.  The weather was much like that in central, coastal, California.  We had a very nice, modern  and cheap apartment that looked out over Izmir Bay.  The restaurants were very good (and cheap).  Turkish cuisine is one of the world's great cooking and eating experiences.  I had a good job in the NATO headquarters in the city.  Life was splendid.

We traveled all over western Turkey in our blue '67 Mustang (great car) and I traveled throughout the country in the course of my duties.  It was evident then ('69 to '71) that the country was very much in transition from an Ottoman past in which the cities were glittering marvels of mixed European and Islamic culture and the rural areas were only slowly growing to accept the idea of a Westernized future.  Holding the process of change together were the institutions of Kemalist secularism and Turkish nationalism.  The national schools curriculum was probably the most potent weapon in the battle for modernism.  Conscription into the armed forces was yet another tool.  The Turkish Army was then the school of the citizen.

Somehow all that turned to ashes in the general rise of political Islamism across the Islamic culture continent.  Now we have the spectacle of a president of the Turkish Republic (a former semi-pro "jock" of some kind) who calls for a resumption of capital punishment while his wife stands at his side swaddled up like an infant.

The Turkish author of this Guardian article has it right.  Turkey as I knew it is dead and the notion that Erdogan's Turkey is anything like the old Turkey is folly.  We should stop pretending that this Turkey is an ally.  pl  

 

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/17/erdogan-referendum-victory-end-turkey

This evacuation was attacked by AQ terrorists, not ISIS

" The death toll from a bomb explosion targeting evacuees leaving besieged Syrian towns has gone up to 112, a monitoring group said Sunday.

The blast hit a convoy of buses Saturday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reported the higher death toll.

 

The blast struck buses of people leaving their towns as part of a rebel-regime swap. In addition to the deaths, it also injured 55 others in Rashidin, a suburb of Aleppo, according to Syria Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets."  CNN

 

-----------

 

 You won't see a lot about this in the MSM in the US.  The White Helmets were there to help after the blast?  Perhaps a head count of White Helmets before and after the explosion might be revealing  of the identity of the culprits.

 

There is a consistent effort in the US MSM to write and speak only of the ISIS enemy in Syria and Iraq.  I heard Bernie Sanders talk today on the execrable Tapper's newsie TV show of the ISIS enemy.  Trump does the same thing.   This is really evidence of success in the "slicky boy" technique of ignoring parts of reality that do not fit the image one wishes to project into the public mind.   In fact the AQ derived terrorist groups that now control Idlib Province are every bit as vicious and treacherous as the ISIS ones out to te east around Raqqa, Deir Az-Zor and Mosul.  The unfortunate truth that we and our coaltion allies like; the UK, France, Denmark, Saudi Arabia (what an embarrassment to be their allies!), Qatar, etc. have sponsored these creatures against the cause of multi-confessional government does not make groups like Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham any less the enemies of humanity.  But we are managing to delude ourselves into believing that a post-Assad government that includes these medievalist fanatics can be anything other than a theocracy based on Wahhabist principles of intolerance.

 

The Muslims who are members or readers of this committee know that a mutually agreed truce is a sacred thing in Islam.  Whoever the culpable swine were who did this are very special hominid garbage and should be dealt with as such.  pl  

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/15/middleeast/syria-evacuations-bombing/

He is Risen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI6dsMeABpU

pl

Video Evidence of False Claims Made in the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017 by Ted Postol - Publius Tacitus

Here is the third paper by Professor Emeritus Theodore "Ted" Postol on the alleged Syrian Government chemical weapons attack. To reiterate--there was no Syrian Government chemical weapon attack.

Video Evidence of False Claims Made in the White House Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017

Theodore A. Postol
Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This is my third report assessing the White House intelligence Report of April 11, 2017.  My first report was titled A Quick Turnaround Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report Issued on April 11, 2017 about the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria and my second report was an Addendum to the first report.

This report provides unambiguous evidence that the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) of April 11, 2017 contains false and misleading claims that could not possibly have been accepted in any professional review by impartial intelligence experts.  The WHR was produced by the National Security Council under the oversight of the National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster. 

This image was extracted from a video of a worker during midday (note shadows) on April 5, 2017 next to the crater where sarin was allegedly released according to the White House Intelligence Report (WHR) issued of April 11, 2017.  The WHR asserts that it reviewed commercial video evidence and concluded that sarin came from the crater next to a man.  Other video frames show unprotected workers in the crater showing no evidence of sarin poisoning at the same time the dead birds are being packaged.  The URLs to this and a related video are contained in this report.

"SENTENCE FIRST – VERDICT AFTERWARDS’?" a revision by David Habakkuk - 14 April 2017

 

(OR – ‘EXECUTION FIRST – EVIDENCE AFTERWARDS’?)

 

REVISITING THE STORY OF THE ‘FALSE FLAG’ AT GHOUTA ON 21 AUGUST 2013, HOW IT WAS EXPOSED, AND HOW IT WAS CREATED.[1]

 

The decision by President Trump to accept without further investigation claims that the Syrian government was responsible for the recent chemical weapons incident in Idlib province, and to respond by immediate cruise missile strikes, makes an ironic contrast with the behaviour of his predecessor.

Following the sarin atrocity in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on 21 August 2013, there was a similar rush to judgement by Western leaders and the mainstream Western media – hereafter MSM. However, in the end President Obama decided to follow the example of the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and seek the approval of Congress for air strikes.  As a result of the deal to eliminate the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal mediated by the Russians, the possibility of such strikes then quite rapidly became moot.

This history is clearly relevant to current events, and in particular to the apparent dramatic volte-face in President Trump’s approach to Syria, in a whole range of different ways. For one thing, Ghouta has repeatedly been presented, by advocates of ‘régime change’ in Syria, as a moment when a golden opportunity to topple Assad without empowering jihadists was missed, and the way cleared for a reemergence of Russia as a Middle Eastern, and some extent global, power.  (For a British statement along these lines, see a ‘Guardian’ report of an interview given to the BBC last October by Sir John Sawers, who headed MI6 at the time of Ghouta.)

Equally important, a central premise of the ‘rush to judgement’ over the recent incident is that the Syrian government was in bad faith when it professed to accept the destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal, held back significant capabilities, and has continued to use such weapons.

In what follows, I want to build on the work of two very different figures who have argued that Ghouta was a ‘false flag’ – the veteran American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, and a blogger using the name ‘sasa wawa’ who started a ‘crowdsourced’ investigation on the Who ‘Attacked Ghouta?’ site on 19 September 2013.

A critical point about Hersh’s accounts is that they point to a British angle to the story of how the Ghouta ‘false flag’ was exposed, and the attempt to use it to inveigle the United States and Britain into another disastrous war in the Middle East frustrated. Further exploration of this angle puts a whole range of matters in a new light.

Puzzles about Porton Down.

It is important, at the outset, to note the sheer strangeness of parts of the story Hersh is telling, as well as its radical implications. According to the article entitled ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’ he published in the ‘London Review of Books’ in April 2014, it was the opposition of the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, that was decisive in in preventing President Obama from launching air strikes in response to Ghouta.

What however made it possible for General Dempsey to stop the rush to war in its tracks, according to Hersh, was the fact that he was able to present Obama with incontrovertible forensic evidence demonstrating that the incident was a ‘false flag.’ This, supposedly, came from Britain, in the form of results of tests carried out on samples from the site at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down in Wiltshire. 

And – making an already remarkable story even more remarkable – it is suggested that the samples in question were supplied by Russian military intelligence. So already we have a puzzle.  For Hersh’s claims to be credible, it is necessary that one can see convincing reasons why not simply the scientists at Porton Down, but also General Dempsey, and indeed President Obama, could have been convinced, by 30 August 2013, of the reliability of tests carried out on samples provided by the GRU.

Unsurprisingly, this aspect of the ‘Red Line and Rat Line’ account has been used by MSM journalists as grounds for dismissing or simply ignoring it – one consequence of which is that interesting elaborations in subsequent interviews given by Hersh have also been generally ignored. However, as I hope to show, if one looks for possible reasons why tests on Russian samples should have been regarded as credible in the open record, they are not so difficult to find.

In so doing, the ‘Who Attacked Ghouta?’ material is an invaluable resource. As far as I can see, this also has been almost universally ignored by the MSM.  This is particularly unfortunate, given that at critical points its conclusions – which rest entirely on an analysis of ‘open source’ material – corroborate those of Hersh.  Again, there have been interesting recent developments – in particular evidence suggesting that ‘sasa wawa’ is likely to be a former employee of Unit 8200, the Israeli equivalent of the American NSA and the British GCHQ.

Further exploration of the British angle to the Ghouta story opened up by Hersh, I hope to show, is not only of importance for us here in the United Kingdom, but casts a great deal of light on what was happening in the United States.

At the outset, it is important to clarify some simple facts about tests on samples, which are fundamental to making sense of arguments about chemical weapons use. The extent to which they are not understood can be illustrated by two recent pieces from what was once a great liberal newspaper, the ‘Guardian’.

McMaster is pushing for US war in Syria - Cernovich

"McMaster is plotting how to sell a massive ground war in Syria to President Trump with the help of disgraced former CIA director and convicted criminal David Petraeus, who mishandled classified information by sharing documents with his mistress.

As NSA, McMaster’s job is to synthesize intellience reports from all other agencies. President Trump is being given an inaccurate picture of the situation in Syria, as McMaster is seeking to involve the U.S. in a full scale war in Syria.

The McMaster-Petraeus plan calls for 150,000 American ground troops in Syria.

Many special operations veterans including General Joseph Votel have raised serious concerns about McMaster’s plans for Syria.

Sources also suggest that McMaster is sharing classified information with Petraeus, whose security clearance was revoked."    Cernovich

********

 "Derek Harvey, the top Middle East adviser in the NSC, has close ties with Petraeus and is close with McMaster. (Harvey reportedly faces a massive EEO complaint from subordinates, although that investigation remains open.)

Harvey and McMaster have been trying to subvert Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford and Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Mattis and Dunford support working with our allies in the fight against ISIS. Harvey and McMaster are advocating for a massive American-only ground force.

Two men were standing in between another U.S.-led war in the Middle East — General Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon."  Cernovich

-----------

 Well, well.  I remember Harvey as a captain assigned to the current intelligence branch of DIA who frequented my offices in the Pentagon for no apparent reason.  His elevation to this position is somewhat unexpected.  I wonder what the EEO case is bout.  pl  

https://medium.com/@Cernovich/h-r-mcmaster-manipulating-intelligence-reports-to-trump-wants-150-000-ground-soldiers-in-syria-83346c433e99

HABAKKUK ON URGENT NEED TO RELEASE TEST RESULTS FROM PORTON DOWN ON SAMPLES FROM KHAN SHEIKHOUN, GHOUTA.

 

A letter to the Chair of the Commons Defence Committee, the Rt Hon Julian Lewis MP, and his colleagues on 13 April. A parallel letter was been sent to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Crispin Blunt MP, and his colleagues.

 

"Dear Dr Lewis,

 

Re: Evidence re Ghouta sarin atrocity on 21 August 2013

 

I am writing to you and your colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee with reference to a piece of mine on the Ghouta atrocity which was recently posted on his ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ blog by Colonel W. Patrick Lang. He is a distinguished American military Arabist, formerly in charge of the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the first Director of its ‘Humint’ service, and also the first Professor of Arabic at West Point.

 

My piece develops arguments made by the veteran American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in an article entitled ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’ published in the ‘London Review of Books’ in April 2014. If his arguments are correct, they have very significant, and disturbing, implications for us in Britain – implications particularly relevant in the light of the recent incident at Khan Sheikhoun and subsequent events. 

 

They may be even more disturbing, against the background of claims made yesterday by our Ambassador to the UN about that incident. Actually, these appear contradictory.  So the identification of ‘Sarin, or a Sarin like substance’ in samples from the incident by scientists from Porton Down provides, Matthew Rycroft told the Security Council, good grounds for believing the Syrian government to have been responsible.  But then, we were assured on ‘Twitter’ by Mr Rycroft that ‘Scientists in UK have analysed samples from #Khan Sheihoun. Tested positive for #Sarin.’

 

As sarin is a member of a group called ‘organophosphates’, which includes several other compounds which can be used as chemical weapons, the natural construction of his statement to the Security Council is that material of this kind was identified in the samples tested, but it was not established – yet at least – that it was sarin. But if this was so, it is difficult to see what grounds there could have been for the confidence expressed in the ‘Tweet’. 

 

It would be just possible, although it is not the obvious interpretation, that Mr Rycroft meant to suggest that both sarin and some other ‘organophosphate’ were identified. But, even if the claims can withstand critical analysis, which is not clear, this would also have quite different implications to the suggestion that only sarin was found.  It is far from obvious that it would make the Syrian government the likely suspect.

 

Particularly given the sorry history of accusations against the government of Saddam relating to WMD by American and British officials and politicians which turned out to be baseless, and had disastrous consequences, it would be helpful if Mr Rycroft could be more precise. And, hopefully, we will soon have clarification about exactly what the tests carried out at Porton Down are supposed to have established, and on what basis.

 

As it happens, it is precisely such clarification that we also need in relation to the Ghouta atrocity. And what makes this all the more relevant to the current situation is that Porton Down plays a central role in Hersh’s account of what was described in press coverage at the time as the ‘head-spinning reversal’ by President Obama. 

 

It was to almost universal surprise, and against the advice of most of his senior national security advisors, that on 30 August 2013 President Trump’s predecessor abandoned plans to respond to Ghouta with air strikes.

 

According to the ‘Red Line and Rat Line’ article, his change of mind resulted from an intervention by the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey. And this, Hersh claims, was successful because General Dempsey was able to support his case with the results of tests on samples from Ghouta carried out at Porton Down, which definitively exonerated the Syrian government. 

 

In subsequent interviews, Hersh has claimed that these tests showed that the toxin used at Ghouta was ‘kitchen sarin.’ The question of what tests carried out at Porton Down and elsewhere established about its precise composition is critical to assessing whether his case his credible.  The question of what parallel tests establish about the composition of toxins used at Khan Sheikhoun do or do not establish will be highly significant in assessing whether claims such as those made by Mr Rycroft are credible.

 

What makes the parallels particularly relevant is that, in support of his – unsuccessful – attempt on 29 August 2013 to secure the support of the Commons for British participation in air strikes in Syria, David Cameron was able to rely on an ‘assessment’ from the Joint Intelligence Committee.

 

Its then Chairman, Sir Jon Day, provided precisely the same kind of endorsement to claims made on the other side of the Atlantic as Mr Rycroft has just given, asserting that there were ‘no plausible alternative scenarios to regime responsibility’ for Ghouta. As Obama’s change of mind happened on the day following, if in fact test results from Porton Down account for it, these would have had to be in General Dempsey’s possession by that date at the latest.

Addendum to A Quick Turnaround Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report Issued on April 11, 2017 About the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria by Theodore A. Postol

Introduction by Publius Tacitus

Professor Emeritus Theodore A. Postol has produced an addendum to his original critique of the flawed and deceptive propaganda churned out by the Trump White House and presented as if it was intelligence. If you take time to read Professor Postol's thoughtful analysis, the fraud being perpetrated by the Trump team will become quite clear. Theodore Postol is Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is not some arm chair quarterback lacking in experience and judgment.

Let me give you the bottomline from his analysis--there is no credible evidence that the Government of Syria launched an aerial chemical weapons attack with Sarin on the people of Khan Shaykhun, Syria:

1. First, nobody from the United States or Western Europe has been at the scene to collect forensic evidence because the area is under the control of radical jihadists (and that is a point originally raised by Pat Lang).
2. Second, the photographic evidence the Trump White House has relied on to reach its conclusion that the Government of Syria was responsible for a sarin gas attack show clear signs of evidence tampering.
3. Third, the device the Trump Administration points to as the culprit for the release of the alleged sarin is an artillery rocket that is not dropped from a plane.

Professor Postol deserves your time and attention. He speaks with reason and logic. These are qualities that appear to be strangers to Donald Trump and his coterie of sychophants.

The White House Report - TTG

“We have confidence in our assessment because we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence, laboratory analysis of physiological samples collected from multiple victims, as well as a significant body of credible open source reporting, that tells a clear and consistent story. We cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods, but the following includes an unclassified summary of the U.S. Intelligence Community's analysis of this attack.”

Oh, that’s slick… and a real crock. This report gives the impression that the White House has more classified evidence that can’t be exposed to protect sources and methods. That’s a reasonable impression. The IC report on the Russian attack on the 2016 election process made the same claim and suffered widespread skepticism by doing so. This is as it should be. Given the primacy of information operations and the all consuming desire to control the narrative, it’s difficult to take anybody, especially a government, at their word. If we are serious about protecting intelligence sources and methods, we must accept this conundrum as a way of life. I only accept the premise of the IC Russia report because of my ten plus years of experience with the subject matter, not because the IC said so in a report lacking any convincing evidence. But I recognize this White House report on the Syrian chemical attack of 4 April as a steaming pile of manure for precisely the same reason.

While the IC Russia report stated its classified evidence simply would not be exposed, the White House Syria report states what it used for evidence… mostly jihadi produced social media evidence. That’s fortunate because we can examine all this open source information with a critical eye. It is  curious that this is a White House report and not an IC report. Is the IC on board? I doubt it. Phil Giraldi said “that military and IC personnel intimately familiar with the available intelligence say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a sham, instead endorsing the Russian narrative that Assad’s forces had bombed a storage facility.” There are few people I take at their word. Phil Giraldi is one of them. 

Of the sources cited by the White House report, only signals intelligence can be considered classified evidence. The bulk of its evidence is available for all to examine. Many have done so. I suggest we look at these and, if so inclined, do some digging ourselves.

The only new claim made by the White House report is that Syrian personnel formerly associated with SAA chemical weapons were present at Shayarat Airfield. Perhaps former SAA and SAAF chemical troops were at the airfield. These troops have undoubtedly been redeployed to other jobs throughout the Syrian forces after the Syrian chemical weapons and stores were destroyed. Was this the signals intelligence? Not too impressive. Recordings of the Syrian pilots over Khan Shaykhun would be a far more convincing piece of signals intelligence, but such evidence is not alluded to in the report.  

Geospatial intelligence is the fancy word for overhead photography and Google Maps/Google Earth. The lab analysis of blood, tissue and urine samples was provided by Turkey, the long time supporter of IS and the jihadis in Idlib. I consider that to be part of the jihadi information operation. Soil samples and debris from the suspected gas shell, which would provide much more definitive evidence, are mysteriously not available. 

Almost all other evidence is from local accounts, photos and videos provided by the Al Qaeda White Helmets and other jihadi sources. The report claims this local evidence can’t be faked. That’s a joke. A cursory review of videos and photos show unprotected “rescue workers” handling contaminated bodies with impunity, a dead child with a number on her forehead opening her eyes, an elderly man sitting on the ground having his keffiyah pulled off his head by what appears to be a film director. These are just little things that struck me. I was also struck by the many accounts of  a chlorine smell from the odorless sarin gas.

The White House report claims the rationale for a Syrian Air Force chemical attack is that Assad’s forces were in a dire military situation north of Homs. By the time of the Khan Shaykhun attack, the SAA already recaptured most of the territory lost to the jihadi Homs offensive and the Homs airport was no longer threatened. Any air attack on Khan Shaykhun, chemical or conventional, would have no military effect on the Homs front. This rationale attributed to the Syrian government by the White House is absolutely bogus. The White house report would be more believable if it claimed the gas attack was the result of a series of mistakes and miscalculations by Syrian personnel. 

The White House goes to great lengths to disparage the Russian explanation of a Syrian attack on a jihadi munitions manufacturing/storage facility. Much of this disparagement consists of dismissing the Russians as devious tricksters. Yes, the Russians are damned good at information warfare and active measures. I admire their skills and abilities at this craft. It is precisely because of this Russian expertise that I find the idea of a deliberate chemical attack perpetrated by their close ally to be ludicrous. What would be the devious objective of this attack? Surely these master tricksters would have a plan for this and would have implemented it by now. 

Perhaps the Russians will reveal some intelligence on the jihadi munitions storage/manufacturing facility at Khan Shaykhun. Maybe someone could do some geospatial intelligence analysis of this facility. I would find both, or either one, quite satisfying.

TTG

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/11/world/middleeast/document-Syria-Chemical-Weapons-Report-White-House.html

https://www.libertarianinstitute.org/scotthortonshow/4617-philip-giraldi-says-ic-military-doubt-assad-gas-narrative/

http://tass.com/world/939417

"About the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria." By Theodore A. Postol

This was brought to my attention today.  My primitive capability with IT stuff has lost the figures but you will find them somewhere.  pl

-----------

"Assessment of White House April 17, 2017

Intelligence Report of April 11, 2017 Page 1 of 14 Pages

April 11, 2017

A Quick Turnaround Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report

Issued on April 11, 2017

About the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria.

Theodore A. Postol

Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dear Larry:

I am responding to your distribution of what I understand is a White House statement claiming intelligence

findings about the nerve agent attack on April 4, 2017 in Khan Shaykhun, Syria. My understanding from

your note is that this White House intelligence summary was released to you sometime on April 11, 2017.

I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document

does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the

government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m.

on April 4, 2017.

In fact, a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by

individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4.

This conclusion is based on an assumption made by the White House when it cited the source of the sarin

release and the photographs of that source. My own assessment, is that the source was very likely

tampered with or staged, so no serious conclusion could be made from the photographs cited by the White

House.

However, if one assumes, as does the White House, that the source of the sarin was from this location and

that the location was not tampered with, the most plausible conclusion is that the sarin was dispensed by

an improvised dispersal device made from a 122 mm section of rocket tube filled with sarin and capped on

both sides.

The only undisputable facts stated in the White House report is the claim that a chemical attack using nerve

agent occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria on that morning. Although the White House statement repeats

this point in many places within its report, the report contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was

the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft. In fact, the report contains absolutely no evidence

that would indicate who was the perpetrator of this atrocity.

The report instead repeats observations of physical effects suffered by victims that with very little doubt

indicate nerve agent poisoning.

HARPER: FISA COURT DID AUTHORIZE SPYING AFTER ALL

Well, campers, it turns out that the FISA Court did actually authorize monitoring of some people close to the Trump Presidential campaign in the summer of 2016.  While Clapper and Comey were clearly very careful in their wording, when appearing before a public Congressional hearing, it is worth parsing their denials--in light of the fact that it is now publicly confirmed that the Obama Administration agencies were, indeed, monitoring some close Trump advisers.  Carter Page was listed by candidate Trump as part of his advisory team, but I understand that they never even met face-to-face. But let's wait for further drip by drip revelations.  If Page was tracked under a FISA-approved order, what about Paul Manafort and Roger Stone?  Both of them have said they are prepared to testify under oath, with no immunity, before any Congressional committee that wants to call them in for public grilling.  It seems that President Trump may have been on to something, in his tweets about Trump Tower being "wiretapped." Twentieth century terminology aside and dropping the nit-picking evasions, it seems that there is a growing pile of evidence that candidate Trump was targeted by the Obama White House, the FBI and the DOJ.  Let's not forget that Susan Rice has now admitted that she asked for the "unmasking" of General Michael Flynn and other Trump advisers.  And remember the March 1, 2017 New York Times report that, just prior to the Trump inauguration, in his final weeks in office, President Obama loosened regulations on circulation of classified material to make sure that the Trump-Russian probe was widely disseminated and could not be buried.  It doesn't matter if Susan Rice was actually telling the truth when she denied being the leaker to the media.  There were plenty of others with the means and motive.

McMaster and Russia by Willy B

 

    I'm one of those folks, probably just one among many, here, who was a great admirer of H.R. McMaster. I've been following his public career since about 2006 and had always been impressed with his intellectual power and his blunt rejection of the Revolution In Military Affairs--concepts "that lead to the idea that you have perfect knowledge and can apply military power perfectly.'' I have been forced, over the past few days, however, to come to the conclusion that McMaster is a big part of the problem in the mad rush to war on Syria that erupted, last week, war that could lead to a direct military confrontation with Russia. His appearance on Fox News Sunday was an indication of that but there were indications of this potential well beforehand, while he was still at US Army Training and Doctrine Command.  His pre-occupation for the past two years, before he went to the White House, was, after all, how to reshape the Army for future war against Russia. There were two public discussions he was involved in April-May of 2016, the first in Chicago on April 12, at the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, and the second one at CSIS in Washington, DC on May 4, 2016, in which he laid out his view that Russia is little more than an aggressive power that uses, among other things, criminal gangs to further its offensive intentions against American power.  (I'm going to focus, here, on McMaster's public remarks. There's been a great deal of reporting on the machinations and feuds going on inside the National Security Council, but I will leave comment on that to those with better insight into such things).
 
    In the Pritzker discussion, McMaster was asked about deterrence by denial, what would this look like in Eastern Europe. In response, he said that there are three aspects to deterrence by denial. The first is the right kind of capabilities "that could counter Russian aggression, right, and those are our capabilities, I think, like what we're seeing as landbased long-range precision fires capabilities, a tiered air defense capability, an answer to their long-range massed fires, for example, that they've employed in Ukraine. I think it's a significant enough conventional deterrent so that you can also address really what Russia has been advertising as this doctrine of escalation domination where they boast about going to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. So certainly there's a nuclear qualitative deterrent to that capability." the second aspect is quantity. "I mean you have to be--you have to have forces in sufficient scale to demonstrate your ability to deny the enemy those objectives.," he said. Thirdly is "the will of the alliance [NATO]," keeping it strong and united. On this, he was full of praise for ex-NATO commander Gen. Philip Breedlove for doing "a tremendous, tremendous job." It will be recalled that Breedlove, for his anti-Russia war propaganda, was getting much of his "intelligence" from Philip Karber, the head of the Potomac Institute, which McMaster praised as a good open source on the Russia New Generation Warfare Study that McMaster was heading up at TraDoc at the time.

    In the CSIS event, McMaster described the "invasion" of Ukraine and the "annexation" of Crimea has having "punctuated" the end of the post-Cold War period, but that thase were not new developments "in terms of Russian aggression." He pointed to the Georgia war in 2008 and the cyber atttacks on the Baltic states as earlier indicators.  Despite these earlier signs, Mcmaster lamented that the US response was to continue draw down forces in Europe. "And what we're seeing now is we've awakened to, obviously, this threat from Russia, who is waging limited war for limited objectives – annexing Crimea, invading Ukraine – at zero cost, consolidating gains over that territory, and portraying the reaction by us and allies and partners as escalatory, that what is required to deter a strong nation that is waging limited war for limited objectives on battlegrounds involving weaker states – or what Thomas – Mackinder called at the end of the 18th, early 19th century the shatter zones on the Eurasian landmass – what is required is forward deterrence, to be able to ratchet up the cost at the frontier, and to take an approach to deterrence that is consistent with deterrence by denial, convincing your enemy that your enemy is unable to accomplish his objectives at a reasonable cost rather than sort of an offshore balancing approach and the threat of punitive action at long distance later, which we know obviously from – recent experience confirms that that is inadequate," he said.

    "Of course, this is a sophisticated strategy, what Russia is employing – and we're doing a study of this now with a number of partners – that combines, really, conventional forces as cover for unconventional action, but a much more sophisticated campaign involving the use of criminality and organized crime, and really operating effectively on this battleground of perception and information, and in particular part of a broader effort to sow doubt and conspiracy theories across our alliance," McMaster went on. "And this effort, I believe, is aimed really not at defensive objectives, but at offensive objectives – to collapse the post-World War II, certainly the post-Cold War, security, economic, and political order in Europe, and replace that order with something that is more sympathetic to Russian interests."

    McMaster presents all of this as if it's happening in a vacuum, as if the actions of the Anglo-American-led West had nothing to do with anything, particularly in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. McMaster, the PhD historian, should know much better than that.  The collapse of the post-World War II system could be happening for reasons that have nothing to do with Russia. Perhaps, like the Soviet Union in the 1980's, it's collapsing for reasons of its own internal contradictions, but this possibility is not even admitted into the discussion.  McMaster knows that the U.S. invaded Iraq on the basis of lies, but dismisses any discussion of that to focus on decisions, both good and bad, that were made afterwards. Yet the events that followed were totally shaped by that decision to invade. So, McMaster appears to have abandoned the intellectual rigor that characterized his book on the Vietnam War and much of his work afterwards. At first glance, it appears that he is instead drawing his outlook from the neo-cons, particularly about the alleged threat to American power, but I have to do much more work to develop this before I can say anything definitively.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2017/04/09/exclusive-general-h-r-mcmaster-on-decision-to-strike-syria.html

https://www.pritzkermilitary.org/whats_on/pritzker-military-presents/lt-general-hr-mcmaster-harbingers-future-war/

https://www.csis.org/events/harbingers-future-war-implications-army-lieutenant-general-hr-mcmaster

 

Tax Time

 

Don't expect much attention from me for the next few days.  pl

Where Are the Heroes? by Publius Tacitus

The American media and many American political leaders, Republicans and Democrats, are a complete disgrace as they have cheered Donald Trump's illegal and unjustified order to launch cruise missiles against a backwater Syrian Air Force outpost.  The American public are being sold a profound and dangerous lie via a massive propaganda campaign that, without one shred of empirical evidence, insists that the Air Force of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dropped a chemical weapon for the express purpose of killing civilians. That did not happen. There is no intelligence supporting this claim by the Trump Administration. But it is not just Donald Trump who is lying. He is being enabled and facilitated by his National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, and the Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, and the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson.

Donald Trump has now out done George W. Bush and his cast of fools, who launched an unnecessary and costly war in Iraq in March of 2003. At least Bush had enough sense to get UN and Congressional approval for his insanity. Not Trump. The simpleton simply watched Fox News and then gave the order to launch TLAMs. We did not see a single senior officer resign and speak out in protest over this fraud. They simply saluted and then carried out an unlawful order. The United States had not been attacked by Syria and was not threatening to attack us. 

When the likes of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and John McCain think Trump is doing the right thing, you don't need any other evidence that the Trump Administration has gone off the rails. Trump persuaded many of the people that voted for him that he would not engage in the failed foreign nation building carried out by his predecessors--Bush and Obama. He has now betrayed that movement. And he is an utter fool if he thinks that this will placate the Democrats who oppose him and ease the pressure to block his agenda. 

What is really so disturbing about all of this is that the TLAM strike was meaningless and ineffective. It did not shut down the Syrian airfield. It did not destroy any significant Syrian Air assets. But it did create a real friction between the United States and Russia who, up to an hour before we launched the cruise missiles, were in regular contact to deconflict air missions that were going after terrorist targets. Let me repeat that--for at least the last 80 days, the United States and Russia military field commanders have been in regular contact, which has included exchanging intelligence and making sure that we do not fly into one another's air space.

Our unilateral action on Thursday has put that coordination in jeopardy. But that is not the only risk we are facing. If the Russians and the Syrians decide to start shooting down U.S. military and CIA drones operating over Syria there will be great political pressure to retaliate. Such an action, especially if done in the heat of the moment, carries the significant risk of escalating into a war between the United States and Russia. No one in the Trump Administration has given that scenario serious consideration. They still believe they are playing a video game.

For now, Russia and Syria appear content to continue their effort to wipe out the Islamists. As long as the United States does not interfere with that plan then the Russian and Syrian Generals appear willing to let Donald Trump enjoy his fantasy that he is being the tough guy. Let's be clear what Donald Trump is--he is an egotist of the first order. He loves being praised for being "strong and decisive." He is not ready to hear that he is a joke and that his action did not cower the the Syrians or Russians one little bit. Trump reminds me of the fat drunk sitting in a bar and indulging the Walter Mitty myth that he is a cage fighter. Rather than keep sipping his whiskey he decides to start throwing punches without first taking measure of who he is hitting. 

America is a bit of a paper tiger at the moment. Don't take my word for it. That is the message from our military leaders to Congress a few weeks back:

In testimony before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, the vice chiefs of staff of the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force articulated pressing concerns about the state of their branch’s readiness to respond to conflicts overseas or attacks on the homeland.

 

The hearing highlighted substantial readiness and capacity issues within each of the services: 

• Army: Of 58 total brigade combat teams (the Army’s main combat building block), only three are considered ready for combat.
• Navy: The Navy’s fleet is the smallest it has been in nearly 100 years. This makes ship repairs harder to complete, as those vessels are needed on the waterways
• Marine Corps: Eighty percent of Marine aviation units do not have even the minimum number of aircraft they need for training and basic operations.
• Air Force: The Air Force is the smallest and, in terms of many of its aircraft, oldest it has ever been. The service had 8,600 aircraft in 1991 while today it only has 5,500, and those aircraft are an average of 27 years old. Worse, fewer than half of those aircraft are prepared to take on and defeat our adversaries. 

These troubling findings by the services echo those laid out by The Heritage Foundation in its 2017 “Index of U.S. Military Strength,” which rated the Army as “Weak” and the other three branches as “Marginal” in terms of their ability to fight and win major conflicts.

If Russia decides to call our bluff and escalate things Trump will likely preside over a public humiliation that will explode America's military delusions of grandeur.

Donald Trump was correct to criticize the stupid decision of George W. Bush to start an unnecessary war in Iraq. That ill-fated decision may have initially bought Bush some political cheering at home, but he opened a serpent's nest that unleashed the chaos that is now ruling the region. Bush's failure to secure the peace and restore a stable government cost him his legacy. Most of America does not give one rat's ass about the Middle East. Let 'em burn is the general attitude. Trump has bought the equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge. How many days or weeks before he discovers that he bought a fraud?

 

The Great illusion By Walrus

The conclusion of Norman Angells 1909 book "The Great Illusion" was that since Western economies were so intertwined in trade, that war between major western powers was futile, in that the disruption of trade would be so ruinous that war could not lead to sustained economic advantage. Angells conclusion is frequently unfairly misquoted as stating that "war between European powers is impossible" - which World War I emphatically proved was mere wishful thinking. I wonder if the ghost of Angells' acolytes are walking the corridors of Washington at telling President Trump and lawmakers that a confrontation with Russia over Syria is impossible. I disagree with the wormtongues, this could end in general war.

Firstly, the uncritical, willing, acceptance by western governments of the truth of what was obviously a false flag gas attack suggests to me that the Borg is serious this time. Americas allies know it. No equivocation is going to go unpunished. I saw this attitude once before in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. We knew about two months in advance that the game was afoot, long before President Bush publicly announced his decision to invade. Then  there is President Trumps ominous suggestion that he isn't finished with Syria yet.

I think President Trump is under pressure to "maintain the momentum" for a resolution of the Syrian civil war that he is being told his airstrike last week created. I believe, without evidence, that this will be followed next week by the announcement of "a safe zone" in Idlib province that is going to be guaranteed almost immediately by the presence of a force of coalition troops and accompanied by a "no fly zone". I suspect this has already been decided. Turkey would have to be involved if only from a logistics perspective.

I do not believe Assad or Putin is going to accept what in effect is going to be a permanent partition of Syria. The fallout from such an event would be the weakening of the Syrian Governments ability to resist Israeli incursions along its souther borders as Israel attempts to outflank Hezbollah. From Putins perspective, an R2P based incursion into Syria would scuttle his hopes for a return to a world order based on existing international law. Russia would then have to accept her position as a vassal state - something Putin is not going to agree to, however the grand illusionists believe Putin is just another crummy politician who will back down in the face of a barrage of tomahawks.

The only alternative I can think of is the one Col.. Lang has been pleading for. for weeks - for Russia and Syria to get boots on the ground in Idlib right now and roll the Jihadis up. Next week is going to be too late. The race into Idlib has started. Is there a Russian air mobile brigade available? Whoever is first into Idlib is going to determine the course of history for some time to come. 

"Freedom of Expression Part Two" By Richard Sale

“The mark of a true democracy is a perfect toleration of all opinions,” said le Gustave LeBon.

Crowds

What occurred in Vermont was further evidence of the corrupt nature of a crowd. In this case, a crowd of students from a liberal arts college was the major actor that attacked a guest speaker, injured a teacher, and its flaws should be examined.

Multitudes are dangerous. The frenzied passions of a multitude can sweep away the scruples of the individuals in it because crowds are full of unconscious and intolerant elements. Crowds obliterate the differences between the collective and the individual. Common passions and sentiments, if provoked, are enough to form a crowd. An individual can lose his integrity when he gets submerged in a multitude.  The individual voice means little to the members of a crowd. If a member of a crowd doesn’t endorse what the crowd endorses, the dissenting opinion of the individual has little weight. It’s like trying to listen to the song a bird during an avalanche. You simply can’t hear it. In a crowd, the solitary voice is useless.

It is a sad truth that the mood of a crowd is both dictatorial and unstable. Its animosities are contagious. They spread through its members like a virus. To become a member of a crowd, a person has to give up a portion of his or her own idiosyncratic personality, its self-ownership, in order to belong to an ignorant collective, a multitude armed with false certitudes. The motive that often drives a crowd is a desire for self-glorification, to have your views be found superior to rival ones. They see rivals as low, gross and brutal.

The crowd is always right. Crowds are obvious, impatient, irrational, they believe in their righteousness. Because they think they are without flaw, a crowd will vilify opponents using undermining hearsay and unsound evidence. Certainty of a crowd is able to shut up any opposition. Thanks to the emotional conformity of a crowd, the avenues that act to question or reassess or compare are sealed shut. To be a member of a crowd demands that you give up a big piece of your self-ownership - your own emotional and intellectual independence. 

To shout someone down may give you the complacency you’re your views are the only ones that matter. But power in a crowd comes from knowing that you think just like everyone else in your group. Crowds think in unison, yet crowds are fickle. What the crowd cries up, the crowd will soon cry down. It is merely a matter of time. But for a moment, the crowd is invincible.

Unfortunately, that sense of self-satisfied complacency derived from the belief that you are always right works to rot the soul over time. It weakens the power of your mind and weakens the powers of detached and objective judgment. In a crowd, complacency is a sinister quality.

Another thing. Crowds are always illogical and aggressive. Reason seeks balance, but crowd demands unanimity of belief and feelings. Because of this, crowds are quick to take offense. Crowds are emotionally headlong. In any public discussion, there will always be some points on which the author and the crowd agree, even if only on minor matters, but a crowd will overlook them. Crowds are also touchy. If proved wrong on any point, the crowd can turn into a lynch mob.   I went to school in St. Louis and one of my teachers told me of how he walked alone one night when he heard a huge din up ahead. A crowd was about to hang a man (for what I offense I don’t recall,) but the teacher, who was a levelheaded, honest man suddenly found himself chanting, “Hang him! Hang him! Hang him!” and afterward, he found himself utterly bewildered by his conduct. Such is the power of a crowd. 

"Did Trump have clear authority under international law to attack Syria?" NY Times

"President Trump ordered the military on Thursday to carry out a missile attack on Syrian forces for using chemical weapons against civilians. The unilateral attack lacked authorization from Congress or from the United Nations Security Council, raising the question of whether he had legal authority to commit the act of war.

Mr. Trump and top members of his administration initially justified the operation as a punishment for Syria’s violating the ban on chemical weapons and an attempt at deterrence. But they did not make clear whether that was a legal argument or just a policy rationale.

The strike raises two sets of legal issues. One involves international law and when it is lawful for any nation to attack another. The other involves domestic law and who gets to decide — the president or Congress — whether the United States should attack another country.

Did Trump have clear authority under international law to attack Syria?

No. The United Nations Charter, a treaty the United States has ratified, recognizes two justifications for using force on another country’s soil without its consent: the permission of the Security Council or a self-defense claim. In the case of Syria, the United Nations did not approve the strike, and the Defense Department justified it as “intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again,” which is not self-defense. "  NY Times

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IMO it is very clear that the order for the strike on Shaykat air base in Syria was illegal in both international and US law.  The Democrats have been searching for grounds for impeachment.  Is commission of a criminal act using the powers of his office not an impeachable offense?  pl 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/us/politics/military-force-presidential-power.html?_r=0

"I told you so..." - Idlib Province - re-posted 7 april 2017

 

Need I say more?  Really?  The jihadi bastards were given enough time to consolidate their position in Idlib Province after the liberation of Aleppo City and you see the result.   The White Helmet film and TV production crew are on the scene.  Jihadi doctors with high production values on camera have been brought in to star in new shows (soon to be screened).  The SOHR hermit is processing thematic material.  The combined forces of AQ derivative "resistance" fighters were unleashed upon northern Hama.  Well, that didn't go too well ... But the forces of salafist jihad always have the internet and gullible reporters across the world.  Well, maybe not in Russia.  Israeli media today seem solidly behind the idea that the beast Assad must have personally ordered this massacre, this abomination against the children of Syria.  He MUST HAVE.  It is in the nature of the beast. 

Well, pilgrims, in 2013 we had Martin Dempsey who went to see Obama to tell him that the available intelligence did not support the idea that the SAA had attacked Ghouta with Sarin. Some of us know that US and UK government testing of the Sarin involved showed it not to be manufactured for military munitions.  But, alas, we have no Martin Dempsey, visible on the scene as yet.  The estimable Irishman has departed to a Carolina (?) university where he teaches a course on Yeats.  A far, far better thing he does ... Ah, that's Dickens, isn't it? 

Well, OK.  IMO the R+6 should learn the lesson of this propaganda debacle and OVERRUN Idlib Province!!  pl

HARPER: SYRIA ATTACK MORE EXECUTIVE OVER REACH

The overnight missile attack on  Shayrat air base near Homs was the latest instance of the Executive Branch taking military action without Congressional approval.  Senator Rand Paul has taken the lead in condemning this action, on the grounds that Article I, Section VIII of the US Constitution clearly gives Congress the sole authority to declare war.  As Senator Paul noted, the United States was not attacked by Syria.

Furthermore, while the satellite imagery clearly showed that the bombing of the Idlib town coincided with the unleashing of some form of chemical gas, there has been no conclusive investigation, and the Russian narrative--that the site held rebel chemical weapons--is plausible, if not yet confirmed.

The attack took place in the midst of President Trump's Mar-a-Lago summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, where one of the hot topics is what to do about North Korea's continuing long-range missile tests and work on completing a nuclear warhead.  Clearly there was an implicit message to both North Korea and Iran in the attack.

Russia's immediate response, in addition to condemning the strikes, was to withdraw from the deconfliction agreements with the US.  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson travels to Moscow early next week.  The Russian government officially confirmed that they were alerted in advance to the pending US strike.

A new and even more unpredictable strategic situation has now emerged in the last 24 hours.  The Constitution has been further eroded, and the global security environment has been set on a course that could lead to a much broader war.

Donald Trump Is An International Law Breaker by Publius Tacitus

Donald Trump's decision to launch cruise missile strikes on a Syrian Air Force Base was based on a lie.  In the coming days the American people will learn that the Intelligence Community knew that Syria did not drop a military chemical weapon on innocent civilians in Idlib. Here is what happened:

1. The Russians briefed the United States on the proposed target. This is a process that started more than two months ago. There is a dedicated phone line that is being used to coordinate and deconflict (i.e., prevent US and Russian air assets from shooting at each other) the upcoming operation.
2. The United States was fully briefed on the fact that there was a target in Idlib that the Russians believes was a weapons/explosives depot for Islamic rebels.
3. The Syrian Air Force hit the target with conventional weapons. All involved expected to see a massive secondary explosion. That did not happen. Instead, smoke, chemical smoke, began billowing from the site. It turns out that the Islamic rebels used that site to store chemicals, not sarin, that were deadly. The chemicals included organic phosphates and chlorine and they followed the wind and killed civilians.
4. There was a strong wind blowing that day and the cloud was driven to a nearby village and caused casualties.
5. We know it was not sarin. How? Very simple. The so-called "first responders" handled the victims without gloves. If this had been sarin they would have died. Sarin on the skin will kill you. How do I know? I went through "Live Agent" training at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

There are members of the U.S. military who were aware this strike would occur and it was recorded. There is a film record. At least the Defense Intelligence Agency knows that this was not a chemical weapon attack. In fact, Syrian military chemical weapons were destroyed with the help of Russia.

This is Gulf of Tonkin 2. How ironic. Donald Trump correctly castigated George W. Bush for launching an unprovoked, unjustified attack on Iraq in 2003. Now we have President Donald Trump doing the same damn thing. Worse in fact. Because the intelligence community had information showing that there was no chemical weapon launched by the Syrian Air Force. 

Here's the good news. The Russians and Syrians were informed, or at least were aware, that the attack was coming. They were able to remove a large number of their assets. The base the United States hit was something of a backwater. Donald Trump gets to pretend that he is a tough guy. He is not. He is a fool. 

This attack was violation of international law. Donald Trump authorized an unjustified attack on a sovereign country. What is even more disturbing is that people like Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and NSA Director General McMaster went along with this charade. Front line troops know the truth. These facts will eventually come out. Donald Trump will most likely not finish his term as President. He will be impeached, I believe, once Congress is presented with irrefutable proof that he ignored and rejected intelligence that did not support the myth that Syria attacked with chemical weapons.

It should also alarm American taxpayers that we launched $100 million dollars of missiles to blow up sand and camel shit. The Russians were aware that a strike was coming. I'm hoping that they and the Syrians withdrew their forces and aircraft from the base. Whatever hope I had that Donald Trump would be a new kind of President, that hope is extinguished. He is a child and a moron. He committed an act of war without justification. But the fault is not his alone. Those who sit atop the NSC, the DOD, the CIA, the Department of State should have resigned in protest. They did not. They are complicit in a war crime.

US Intervention in Syria is imminent.

 

Sheridan said at Cedar Creek "if you love your country come up to the front."

I urge you all to come up to the front and call your congressman or the White House to urge that the president not issue an execute order for what he is contemplating until the intelligence on what happened is clear.

The Borgist press is beating the drum for war and Trump evidently makes judgments based on 24/7 TV news.  pl

Smoke By Walrus

It is a dry autumn here at the farm and the air is full of smoke from controlled burns of the forests around us. From about 1830, Sea captains regularly reported thick smoke as they tried to close the Victorian coast in autumn. The Australian aborigines actively managed their tribal lands with fire – burning off the undergrowth to stimulate spring grasses that attract kangaroos and make it easier to hunt. The whole region was burnt out in a patchwork about every five years. These were “cool bushfires” because the fuel load on the ground was never allowed to accumulate too much. The Aboriginals sometimes even apologized to explorers for the state of the underbrush in unburned country, the way your neighbor today apologises for his unkempt lawn.

However, by the 1960’s we knew better. Green environmental activists backed by their academic supporters declared the Australian forests were “sensitive”, “pristine” "Threatened" and “fragile”. Burning was of course immediately stopped. Four wheel drives and horse touring banned, camping restricted and, cattle grazing of the high plains prohibited. The bush was to be a shrine to nature, ministered to by bushwalker acolytes whose tiny footprints left no marks. The great unwashed, campers, drivers, loggers, etc. were to be kept at a respectful distance.

One Hundred and Seventy Three people died in the bushfires that raged around Melbourne on 7th February 2009 as a direct result of the “no burn” policy of this “pristine” wilderness.. When blame was sheeted home to a lack of regular burning and a new policy announced, the greens announced that they would support it – provided the burning strategy was ‘sensitive” and “nuanced”. I almost threw up when I heard him. One Hundred and Seventy Three lives.

Today I hear about an alleged chemical attack in Syria. More smoke. No doubt President Trump is going to be pressured to apply a sensitive and nuanced no fly zone over Idlib province – for the children of course. The same type of useful idiots who corrupted our forest management policy are at work here – believers in the essential goodness of everyone, the same way they believed that nature is a weak virgin instead of a tough old bitch. They refuse to believe that human beings are not perfectible and that goes double for the jihadi inhabitants of Idlib. How many lives will be lost if the Russians, Syrians and Iranians refuse to accept our benevolent strictures?

Of course I am being charitable when I say “useful idiots”. Having worked in Academia, I know there is no cause that won’t be taken up, no point of view so extreme that an academic or two cannot be found to give it a gloss of scholarly imprimatur if sufficient money is offered. And that goes double again for think tanks. The net result of the last Thirty years of useful idiots work was summarized beautifully when Francis Fukuyama declared “the end of history” after the fall of the soviet union – meaning that market driven liberal democracy was the final highest state of humanity and we had just achieved it.

What has happened since should have had a salutary effect on the useful idiots beliefs; the abject failure of “responsibility to protect” wars, the fallout from globalization in terms of unemployment as evidenced by Brexit and the election of president Trump, the scandals over tax evasion by multinational corporations not to mention the mess that is illegal immigration in Europe and America, should have given the useful idiots pause for thought. Maybe not everyone wants to be an American. Maybe globalization has a downside and maybe, just maybe, humans are not perfectible? I am driven to compare the situation of todays useful idiots with their compatriots in Oxford and Cambridge around 1860. Up to then religious belief was taken as a given. It was an organizing principle behind philosophy economics and public policy. Academia was very happy with this situation. If you wanted to know what you ought to do, look no further than the bible for principles. Then Darwin published “On The Origin Of Species” and what followed was the removal of religion as an organizing principle and total collapse of established philosophical positions, culminating in the great war.

So where does that leave us today? The globalists / R2Pers are in disbelief at the election of President Trump, Brexit and perhaps the election in France of Marine le Pen. They are pushing back, generating lots of smoke, but will fail. It has become obvious that globalization has losers as well as winners and the losers can still perhaps vote against their destruction. The philosophical basis of globalization does not sufficiently allow for rampant corporate tax evasion nor the destabilizing effects it has had on national sovereignty to the point where the Westphalian principles are under attack. So much for “progress”.

Then of course there are the upcoming shocks to ordinary workers of Artificial Intelligence, robotics and other new technologies. I have just witnessed some of this first hand, the poor bastards who came to install my satellite internet service had to document and photograph every step of the process on their iPad – leading of course to a set of performance metrics. The latest from Sweden of all places is the injection of employees with RFID chips. Given the greed and short term focus of Wall Street and the aforesaid developing tools for micromanagement of staff, it is not too hard to speculate what life as an employee of a corporation is going to be like in say Five years time. We simply do not have the philosophical tools to construct a rational and humane set of philosophies and policies to manage this. The doctrine of “progress” has failed us. Clearly, at least to me, a major philosophical rethink of our existence is required. Even Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan has recently said “something is wrong”. To be clear, if there is not a rethink of the directions we are heading then Orwells prediction - a boot grinding the face of humanity, forever, will come true.

The doctrine of progress – the history of humanity as a journey to liberal democracy, as espoused by Fukuyama and even Hillary Clinton, is fatally flawed. The old world is dead, the new one is powerless to be born. We need a new debate over philosophical directions. Religion has failed us. The doctrine of “progress” leads to a dead end. Nationalism is a dangerous concept. We need to rethink ourselves before we are overtaken by events. I await the first academics and university to realise what has happened and start reappraising the situation, I think they will be richly rewarded 

Ghouta redux? Was this attack real?

The MSM is filled with "news" of a supposed Syrian Government chemical warfare attack in Idlib Province.  All of the reporting is sourced to SOHR (one rebel supporter in a basement office in Coventry, England) and rebel media in Idlib Province.  How do we know this really happened?  The rebels have proven themselves extremely capable of staging propaganda pageants and they do have chemical weapons.  They make them in Syria.  These are not ignorant people.  The "White Helmets" were a fraud.  This is probably another, but the Borg loves the noise, especially the hysterics on CNN and MSNBC.

These AQ connected rebels in Idlib have been conducting an offensive in northern Hama.  This has been turned back and the rebels are being driven out of Hama in the direction of Idlib having lost many men.  As someone observed here the standard rebel reaction to severe adversity is to claim a chemical attack.  pl

Susan Rice done it. Naughty. Naughty

 

Former Obama national security advisor Susan Rice asked “dozens” of times to unmask anonymous Trump allies mentioned in raw intel reports, a new report says.

The National Security Council notified the White House last month after its review turned up Rice’s multiple requests to un-redact the names of then-President-elect Trump’s transition staff from synopses of incidentally collected conversations, unnamed government officials told Bloomberg View’s Eli Lake.

The exchanges in question reportedly transpired mostly between foreign officials talking about the presidential transition, but also between foreign officials and Team Trump.

Top government officials can unmask incidentally collected names if the information meets the broad requirement of having “foreign intelligence value,” Lake noted — indicating the former national security advisor likely didn’t violate the law.  NY Dailynews

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Pilgrims!  Trumpistas!  Formez vos battaillons!  No, that was another movie.  Ah, yes, "Casablanca."  This looks bad for the narrative so painfully and carefully wrought by the Obamanites.  Nothing like this was supposed to turn up in the media.   Did Susan Rice break the law?  Probably not.  She was probably legally able to obtain the true identities of Americans in these intercepts (otherwise known as US Person 32, etc.).  Was that an abuse of power?  It was.  There will be more to come.  pl   

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/susan-rice-asked-unmask-trump-officials-intel-reports-article-1.3017581

"Carolina in the Mornin'" by the turcopolier

(Haywood County)

 "General Westgard’s plan was simple. He would have the 2/26 N.C. Infantry form in line with their armor support behind Hill 765 to the right of Black’s paratroopers, but behind the ridge line and out of harms way. At the last minute, he would switch the artillery fires from support of McClung to bombardment of Black’s clearing with a mixture of high explosive and smoke shells. At the same time, he would order the air support to do all they could against the same target. Parasiliti would come over the crest of Hill 765 and down the forward slope headed for the clearing. Peter Black and his 2/325 Airborne Infantry would climb out of their holes and move forward on the left as Parasiliti came abreast. Westgard made sure that Black’s attached tanks would come forward to join the assault. The two battalion teams would assault across the clearing to capture the entrances to the tunnels. After that, they would play it by ear. Westgard suspected that it would be necessary to go underground to dig the aliens out. It was not a thought he really wanted to face just yet." Pat Lang

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I wrote this a long time ago as an experiment in writing science fiction with a military theme.  I have published it a couple of times before on SST.  It illustrates well how a reinforced brigade tsk force would conduct a combined arms attack when supported by tactical air and artillery.  pl 

Download Carolina-in-the-mornindblspc

Bill Murray - Where are you, buddy?

All you new people are making life tedious.  I have been teaching this course for twelve years and one can always hope that some lessons are absorbed but then a new wave of you come on the scene, asking questions like "what part of the defense and intelligence establishment is worthwhile?"  If you want to ask me questions or anyone else at SST please look first in the archives of the blog and don't expect someone here to write you a summary course on government organization.   I have quit working but I used to collect a reasonably high fee for such a task.

There are a few mildly interesting things in the news today:

1.  The LA Times referred to Adam Schiff today as an "attack labradoodle."  This adequately conveys the impression of a person straining to be fierce when it just ain't in him.

2.  It seems that regime change in Syria is no longer the policy of the US.  Well, thank God.  Syria is infested with various kinds of jihadis and everyone needs to concentrate on exterminating them. 

3.  Fariid Zakariya had on his newsie today a pair of film makers who have generated a documentary that is clearly AQ propaganda,  These two, a man and a woman had jihadi written all over them.  If she had been any more covered up she would have been invisible and the man was glowering mass of beard and smoking eyes.  These two claimed that the Syrian government had never fought against jihadism.  They claimed that it is only against the freedom loving FSA that the dastardly bastards of the Tiger Forces, Syrian Marines, etc.  have been fighting all this time.  This was particularly funny given their clear visual representation of the jihadi ideal way of death.  BTW if you are a non-troll and don't know that the SAA and friends are fighting IS out along the dusty trail to Deir al-Zor , as well as AQ derivatives in northern Hama, then you are ill informed.  Ah, yes, there are also the SAA troops fighting their way eastward south of Lake Assad against IS.  One can only wonder if Zakariya believes this drivel himself.  I sure hope they had that woman searched before they let her on the set.  You could hide anything under all that loose cloth.

4.  And then there is the Gorsuch caper.  McConnell made it very clear on FNS today that Gorsuch will sit on SCOTUS by the end of the week.  He pointed out that it really only requires a majority for confirmation on SCOTUS.  The 60% thing is a recent requirement for cloture to shut off debate in order to have a floor vote.  OK Democratic Base!  Go for it! 

5.  We killed a lot of civilians in Mosul as the R+6 killed a lot civilians in East Aleppo?  Well, pilgrims, there is moral equivalence.  Civilians get killed in war.  Sometimes they are deliberately killed as in Hamburg, Tokyo and on 9/11.  Sometimes they are killed per misadventure.  War is a savage business.  Sherman, whom I detest, had it right.  It is not possible to avoid such horrors.  Only civilians think it is possible to fight wars that are not murderous affairs. 

pl

Think Outside the Swamp: If you build it they will not come.

By Fred

 

One can build up a fine building with the right foundation. Think of Trump Tower in NYC. The foundation goes right down to bedrock. You can't build something like that in a swamp. Now if you drain a swamp, you can build up a nice foundation, just like what was done in Washington, D.C. The  Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the reflecting pool. The later is a great place to reflect upon the foundations of our great nation. What we need to do in NYC now is to drain the swamp, build a new building. That is why I propose:

Trump Tower 2:     Mogadishu.

Yes, you read that correctly. Not NYC - that is the swamp that needs draining. Starting with the UN Headquarters. You can imagine just what kind of creatures inhabit that tired old edifice. Their walls walls proclaim their credentials: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Oxford University, Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement,  École Normale Supérieure.   Their bellies full, their pockets lined,  their iphones at the ready. They nobly sally forth from NYC to Washington, D.C., to Brussels to Bern and Geneva. There and back again. From the sanctuary of the UN Headquarters to the UNESCO and OECD, to Paris.

I love Paris. Especially in the springtime. The weather is fine, the women spectacular. The food, ah the food. So much better than say, Mogadishu. 

No one calls it Mogadishu there, simply "Mog." Well that's what they said in the Hollywood version anyway. None of the UN people I know have ever been there. Apparently the best place to reduce poverty, help refugees or work to end the spread of HIV is in one of the richest and most expensive cities in the world: NYC, or Geneva, or Paris. You get the idea. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Development_Programme

You sure don't expect the well credentialed to live and work amongst those they are bound and determined to help, do you, really? Yeah, me too. Why the one thing against the Mog that prevents it from being right up there with the great civilizations of the West: Lack of Diversity. Why you can't even get a good bagel in the Mog. That's important too, for that work life balance for those well, well paid UN employees out to help the people of the poorer nations of this Earth. We must have our priorities in order, mustn't we? 

Now some cynic might point out that there are fine capable people on the continent of Africa. They are right, too. They are also right to point out that the cost of living is one heck of a lot lower in Somalia than NYC, or Bern, or any other city where the UN elite live. Just think of how far the money will go. Then think of the jobs, jobs, jobs. In Africa, for Africans, that will be created when the UN builds Trump Tower 2 as a replacement for that aged and over priced real estate that currently houses the UN Development Programs. Think of the money to be saved by the UN when the staff is paid in the local prevailing wage. Even if they are over paid by local standards it's still the kind of high paying, high value jobs the Mog so desperately needs. And think of the benefits of .... Diversity.

This is truly a win-win proposal. To prevent any possible concern of impropriety, emoluments complaints or just plain concerns over graft (I'm sure that is a great concern to UN employees everywhere)  we should find a new name. Maybe the UN should call it the Obama Center. Now that is a name that inspires hope for change - and transparency - that we can all believe in. 

Trump Tower 2: Mogadishu. I'm sure Putin would approve. I wonder what Li Keqiang thinks of the idea? 

Open Thread - 2 April 2017

pl

Something Different - Thylacenes

 

"Despite their "tiger" sobriquet, thylacines are not members of the cat family. Nor should they be confused with the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), another carnivorous marsupial that is native to Australia and is still widespread in Tasmania.

Fossil evidence suggests that the modern thylacine — Thylacinus cynocephalus, whose name means "dog-headed pouched one" — emerged about 4 million years ago. Once widespread across Australia, the animal disappeared everywhere except Tasmania about 2,000 years ago, according to the National Museum of Australia (NMA)."  livescience.com

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Seems to me there was a movie a while back in which Willem Dafoe as a hunter stalks the last Tasmanian Tiger.  As a recovering hunter I could really identify with this character and understand his emotions when he finds one that is sick, old and alone and finishes her off.

I sure hope there are some left up there in Queensland hanging out with the box jellies, salt water crocs and all the rest.  pl

http://www.livescience.com/58483-search-for-extinct-tasmanian-tiger.html

Freedom of Expression? By Richard Sale

 

A Vermont college says it has initiated an independent investigation into a protest in which the author of a book discussing racial differences in intelligence was shouted down during a guest lecture and a professor was injured.

Middlebury College president Laurie Patton said in a letter to the school community on Monday that once that work is completed the college will follow a process of determining a course of action for each person understood to be involved in last week's events.

She says people have the right to make their voices heard in support of and in opposition to other people and ideas but the college's concern is acts of disruption and violence.

Author Charles Murray's talk was moved to a different location and was live-streamed to the original venue. But protesters drowned it out.

The college says some protesters became violent and one pulled a professor's hair, twisting her neck.

Hundreds of students chanted as Murray started to speak at an event Thursday, forcing the school to move the talk to an undisclosed location Charles Murray's new book argues that the economic problems of America's working class stem largely from their own character flaws, and that wealthier people should be less shy about teaching them how to live responsibly.

On to Mars?

 

"Musk has long said that he founded SpaceX back in 2002 chiefly to help make humanity a multiplanet species.

In September, the billionaire entrepreneur unveiled the broad outlines of SpaceX's plans to do just that. The company aims to establish a million-person city on Mars using a rocket-spaceship combo called the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which is in the early development stage.

Both the ITS rocket and the spaceship will be reusable. Indeed, the booster will be designed to launch at least 1,000 times, Musk said Thursday.

That level of reusability may sound like an outrageous leap from the status quo of one-and-done rocket launches, but SpaceX's work with the Falcon 9 going forward could help to the bridge the gap.

"The design intent is that the rocket can be re-flown with zero hardware changes — in other words, the only thing that changes is, you reload propellant — 10 times," Musk said Thursday, referring to the Falcon 9 first stage.

"And then, with moderate refurbishment that doesn’t have a significant effect on the cost, it can be reflown at least 100 times," Musk added. "Actually, really, we could make 1,000, but it probably isn't quite there. I'm being careful.""  space.com

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Edgar Rice Boroughs would be pleased as would Jules Verne.  Can it really be that in twenty years or so people will walk on Mars?  Babak will probably say no, but a discussion of that opinion would be worthwhile.  pl  

http://www.space.com/36300-spacex-rocket-reflight-elon-musk-mars-colony.html