pipelines

Read this before the US government uses the Orlando shooting to start another war

Posted by

0

By Claire Bernish
Global Research, June 19, 2016
Antimedia 17 June 2016

Late Thursday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported, 51 State Department officials signed a statement condemning U.S. policy in Syria in which they repeatedly call for “targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat the Islamic State.”

“In other words,” as Zero Hedge summarized,

“over 50 top ‘diplomats’ are urging to eliminate [Syrian Pres. Bashar al] Assad in order to ‘defeat ISIS’, the same ISIS which top US ‘diplomats’ had unleashed previously in order to … eliminate Assad.”

This gordian knot created by United States foreign policy — and intensified by that same policy — means not only could war with Syria be on the horizon, but if that happens, the U.S. could be facing a far more serious threat.

While discontented officials used what’s known as the “Dissent Channel” — “an official forum that allows employees to express opposing views,” State Department spokesman John Kirby explained in the WSJ — Saudi government officials employed more direct means to press their interests with the U.S. in Syria.

In a meeting with President Obama on Friday, Saudi foreign minister Adel al Jubair asserted, “Saudi Arabia supports a more aggressive military approach in Syria to get Assad to agree to a political solution,” as CBS’ Mark Knoller tweeted.

Of course, this meeting and the push for increased military force couldn’t be more timely to drum up public support, as a heated national debate has ensued following the deadly attack on an Orlando nightclub purportedly carried out by Omar Mateen — who pledged loyalty to ISIS as he killed 49 people and wounded over 50 others.

Despite the CIA’s report acknowledging it found no tangible connectionsbetween Mateen and the so-called Islamic state — also released on Friday — the narrative concerning his ISIS ties saturated mainstream headlinesfor days, almost certainly cementing the link in the public’s mind.

Disgruntled politicians eager to overthrow Assad — thus also carrying out Saudi goals — can now facilely flip the script to assert deposing the Syrian government is necessary in the fight against everyone’s enemy, the Islamic State.

“Failure to stem Assad’s flagrant abuses will only bolster the ideological appeal of groups such as Daesh [ISIS, etc.], even as they endure tactical setbacks on the battlefield,” the WSJ reported the dissenting cable stated.

But concerns about bloating ISIS’ following borders on comical, except for the potential waterfall of repercussions from carrying out targeted strikes on the Syrian government, considering the U.S. government, itself, once expressed the desire for the rise of an Islamic State to aid in the overthrow of — you guessed it — Assad.

According to declassified documents obtained by Judicial Watch last year:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

Former Director of National Intelligence and retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, however, spoke to Al Jazeera about this ill-fated, notorious strategical blunder.

“You’re on record as saying that the handling of Syria by this administration has been a mistake. Many people would argue that the U.S. actually saw the rise of ISIL coming and turned a blind eye, or even encouraged as a counterpoint to Assad,” journalist Mehdi Hasan prefaced his query, adding,“The U.S. saw the ISIL caliphate coming and did nothing.”

Flynn responded, “Yeah, I think that we — where we missed the point. I mean, where we totally blew it, I think, was in the very beginning.”

Besides backing and blessings from the Saudi government for aggression on the Syrian front, dissent among U.S. officials couldn’t be more imperative in their eyes, because, as the WSJ reported:

The internal cable may be an attempt to shape the foreign policy outlook for the next administration, the official familiar with the document said. President Barack Obama has balked at taking military action against Mr. Assad, while the Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton has promised a more hawkish stance against the Syrian leader. Republican candidate Donald Trump has said he would hit Islamic State hard but has also said he would be prepared to work with Russia and Syria.

In fact, as Zero Hedge also noted, an albeit contested report from earlier this week claimed Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made comments including “a claim that Riyadh has provided 20 percent of the total funding to” Clinton’s campaign.

Politicians and officials, in other words, are fast aligning a narrative touting the need to wage war with Syria in order to have it carried out by the candidate they assume will next take the White House.

And despite being a risky move in its own right — not to mention a potentially superficial, if not muddying, solution to an almost solely U.S.-created problem — ramping up military airstrikes in Syria could quite literally spark war with Russia.

“The Russian Air Force bombed U.S.-trained rebels in southern Syria not once, but twice Thursday, and the second wave of attacks came after the U.S. military called Russia on an emergency hotline to demand that it stop,” an unnamed defense official with knowledge of the situation told Fox News.

Russia has repeatedly warned against U.S. moves to oust Assad, which President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, reiterated following the tense situation Thursday and the report calling for increased military targeting of the Syrian government saying, it “wouldn’t help a successful fight against terrorism and could plunge the region into total chaos.”

As recently as February, Saudi Arabia proposed sending its own troops to join the fight against ISIS — which Russia wholly condemned. As head of the State Duma committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov, warned, “Syria has to give official consent, to invite, otherwise it will be a war.”

Now, it appears, that war might be closer than ever.

Syria doesn’t constitute the only arena of contention between the U.S. and Russia. As Anti-Media reported this week, continued buildup of NATO forces along the old Cold War foe’s borders in the Balkans and Poland — and particularly also in the Black Sea — has provoked Russia sufficiently enough for officials to caution the move might amount to aggression.

“This is not NATO’s maritime space and it has no relation to the alliance,”Russia’s director of European affairs told Interfax.

Nonetheless, the U.S. and E.U. have proffered a policy whereby defense of its installations on foreign soil is being carried out under the cloak of the NATO alliance — possibly with the intent of posturing dominance in the region to create a buffer zone for operations in Syria.

Pipelines through Syria would specifically allow oil and natural gas to flow to the European Union, which currently sources that fuel primarily from Russia. In other words, if Russia wants to defend its profitable relationship with the E.U., it must defend against the U.S.-led, Saudi-supported overthrow of its Syrian ally, Assad.

Meanwhile, civilians in Syria have been treated like cannon fodder and are fleeing for their lives — but the intensifying geopolitical maneuvers appear more likely than ever to have brought us all to the brink of a third world war.

Empire, Energy and Al-Qaeda: The Anglo-American Terror Network

Posted by

0

This report provides valuable historical background for current events. Brilliant and detailed article to distribute widely.

By Andrew Gavin Marshall
Global Research, September 08, 2010
8 September 2010

This is Part 2 of the series, “The Imperial Anatomy of Al-Qaeda.“

Part 1: The CIA’s Drug-Running Terrorists and the “Arc of Crisis”

The End of the Cold War and Strategy for the New World Order

Empire, Energy and Al-Qaeda: The Anglo-American Terror Network

With the end of the Cold War a new strategy had to be determined to manage the global system. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, declarations of a “New World Order” sprang forward, focusing on the United States as the single world superpower. This presented a great many challenges as well as opportunities for the worlds most powerful hegemon.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, a number of new Central Asian and Eastern European nations were formed and became independent, and with that, their immense deposits of natural gas and energy became available for exploitation. Afghanistan itself was considered “a major strategic pivot,” as it was “the primary gateway to Central Asia and the immense energy deposits therein.”[1] Western oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Texaco, Unocal, BP Amoco, Shell, and Enron begin pouring billions of dollars into the countries of Central Asia in the early 1990s.[2]

In 1992, a Pentagon document titled “Defense Planning Guidance” was leaked to the press, in which it described a strategy for the United States in the “new world order,” and it was drafted by George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. It stated that, “America’s political and military mission in the post-cold-war era will be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia or the territories of the former Soviet Union,” and that, “The classified document makes the case for a world dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.”[3]

Further, “the new draft sketches a world in which there is one dominant military power whose leaders ‘must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role’.” Among the necessary challenges to American supremacy, the document “postulated regional wars against Iraq and North Korea,” and identified China and Russia as its major threats. It further “suggests that the United States could also consider extending to Eastern and Central European nations security commitments similar to those extended to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab states along the Persian Gulf.”[4]

Similarly, in 1992, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, one of the most influential think tanks in the United States, had established a commission to determine a new foreign policy for the United States in the wake of the Cold War. Participants included Madeleine Albright, Henry Cisneros, John Deutch, Richard Holbrooke, Alice Rivlin, David Gergen and Admiral William Crowe. In the summer of 1992, the final report, “Changing Our Ways: America and the New World,” was published. The report urged “a new principle of international relations: the destruction or displacement of groups of people within states can justify international intervention.” It suggested that the US “realign NATO and OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] to deal with new security problems in Europe,” and “urged military intervention under humanitarian guises.” This report subsequently “planted the policy seedlings for the Kosovo war” as it “provided both the rationale for U.S. interventionism and a policy recommendation about the best means–NATO–for waging that war.”[5]

Another Carnegie publication in the same year, “Self-Determination in the New World Order,” furthered imperialist goals for America, as it “set criteria for officials to use in deciding when to support separatist ethnic groups seeking independence, and advocated military force for that purpose.” It recommended that “international military coalitions, preferably U.N.-led, could send armed force not as peacekeepers but peacemakers–to prevent conflict from breaking out and stay in place indefinitely.” It further stated that, “the use of military force to create a new state would require conduct by the parent government so egregious that it has forfeited any right to govern the minority claiming self-determination.”[6]

The United States and its NATO allies soon undertook a new strategy, seeking to maintain dominance over the world, expand their hegemony over regions previously under the influence of the Soviet Union (such as in Eastern Europe and Central Asia), and prevent the rise of a resurgent Russia or China. One of the key facets of this strategy was the notion of “humanitarian intervention.”

Yugoslavia Dismantled by Design

In the 1990s, the United States and its NATO allies, in particular Germany and the UK, undertook a strategy of destabilization in Yugoslavia, seeking to dismantle and ultimately fracture the country. To do this, the imperial strategy of divide and conquer was employed, manipulating various ethnic tensions and arming and training various militias and terrorist organizations. Throughout this strategy, the “database”, or Al-Qaeda was used to promote the agenda of the destabilization and dismantling of Yugoslavia.

In 1989, Yugoslavia had to seek financial aid from the World Bank and IMF, which implemented a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), which resulted in the dismantling of the public state, exacerbating social issues and fueling secessionist tendencies, leading to Croatia and Slovenia seceding from the republic in 1991.[7] In 1990, the US intelligence community had released a report predicting that Yugoslavia would break apart and erupt in civil war, and it blamed Milosevic for the impending disaster.[8]

As far back as 1988, the leader of Croatia met with the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to create “a joint policy to break up Yugoslavia,” and bring Slovenia and Croatia into the “German economic zone.” So, US Army officers were dispatched to Croatia, Bosnia, Albania, and Macedonia as “advisers” and brought in US Special Forces to help.[9]

Fighting broke out between Yugoslavia and Croatia when the latter declared independence in 1991. The fighting subsequently lasted until 1995, and merged in part with the Bosnian war. The US supported the operation and the CIA actively provided intelligence to Croat forces, leading to the displacement of between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs, largely through means of murder, plundering, burning villages and ethnic cleansing.[10] The Croatian Army was trained by U.S. advisers and a general later put on trial at the Hague for war crimes was personally supported by the CIA.[11] So we see the double standard of ethnic cleansing and genocide: when the US does it or supports it, it’s “humanitarian intervention,” politically justified, or it is simply unacknowledged; when an enemy state does it, (or is accused of doing it), the “international community” demands action and any means is deemed necessary to “prevent genocide”, including committing genocide.

The Clinton administration gave the “green light” to Iran to arm the Bosnian Muslims and “from 1992 to January 1996, there was an influx of Iranian weapons and advisers into Bosnia.” Further, “Iran, and other Muslim states, helped to bring Mujahideen fighters into Bosnia to fight with the Muslims against the Serbs, ‘holy warriors’ from Afghanistan, Chechnya, Yemen and Algeria, some of whom had suspected links with Osama bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan.”[12]

During the war in Bosnia, there “was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah.” Further, “the secret services of Ukraine, Greece and Israel were busy arming the Bosnian Serbs.”[13] Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, also ran arms shipments to the Bosnian Muslims and Croatia to fight against the Serbs.[14] Thus, every side was being funded and armed by outside powers seeking to foment conflict and ultimately break up Yugoslavia to serve their own imperial objectives in the region.

In 1992, the al-Kifah Center in Brooklyn, the recruiting center for al-Qaeda, made Bosnia its chief target. By 1993, it opened a branch in Croatia. The recruitment operation for Bosnian Muslims “was a covert action project sponsored not only by Saudi Arabia but also in part by the US government.”[15]

In 1996, the Albanian Mafia, in collaboration with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a militant guerilla organization, took control over the enormous Balkan heroin trafficking routes. The KLA was linked to former Afghan Mujaheddin fighters in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden.[16]

In 1997, the KLA began fighting against Serbian forces,[17] and in 1998, the US State Department removed the KLA from its list of terrorist organizations.[18] Before and after 1998, the KLA was receiving arms, training and support from the US and NATO, and Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, was close with KLA leader Hashim Thaci.[19]

Both the CIA and German intelligence, the BND, supported the KLA terrorists in Yugoslavia prior to and after the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The BND had KLA contacts since the early 1990s, the same period that the KLA was establishing its Al-Qaeda contacts.[20] KLA members were trained by Osama bin Laden at training camps in Afghanistan. Even the UN stated that much of the violence at the time came from KLA members, “especially those allied with Hashim Thaci.”[21]

The March 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo was justified on the pretense of putting an end to Serbian oppression of Kosovo Albanians, which was termed genocide. The Clinton Administration made claims that at least 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were missing and “may have been killed” by the Serbs. Bill Clinton personally compared events in Kosovo to the Holocaust. The US State Department had stated that up to 500,000 Albanians were feared dead. Eventually, the official estimate was reduced to 10,000, however, after exhaustive investigations, it was revealed that the death of less than 2,500 Albanians could be attributed to the Serbs. During the NATO bombing campaign, between 400 and 1,500 Serb civilians were killed, and NATO committed war crimes, including the bombing of a Serb TV station and a hospital.[22]

Ultimately the strategy of the destabilization of Yugoslavia served various imperial objectives. The war in Yugoslavia was waged in order to enlarge NATO, Serbia was to be excluded permanently from European development to justify a US military presence in the region, and expansion was ultimately designed to contain Russia.[23]

An op-ed in the New York Times in 1996 stated that, “instead of seeing Bosnia as the eastern frontier of NATO, we should view the Balkans as the western frontier of America’s rapidly expanding sphere of influence in the Middle East.” Further:

The fact that the United States is more enthusiastic than its European allies about a Bosnian Muslim state reflects, among other things, the new American role as the leader of an informal collection of Muslim nations from the Persian Gulf to the Balkans. The regions once ruled by the Ottoman Turks show signs of becoming the heart of a third American empire.

[ . . . ] Now, in the years after the cold war, the United States is again establishing suzerainty over the empire of a former foe. The disintegration of the Soviet Union has prompted the United States to expand its zone of military hegemony into Eastern Europe (through NATO) and into formerly neutral Yugoslavia. And — most important of all — the end of the cold war has permitted America to deepen its involvement the Middle East.[24]

Further, with the dismantling of the former Yugoslavia, a passageway for the transport of oil and natural gas from the Caspian region was to be facilitated through the construction of the Trans-Balkan pipeline, which will “run from the Black sea port of Burgas to the Adriatic at Vlore, passing through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. It is likely to become the main route to the west for the oil and gas now being extracted in central Asia. It will carry 750,000 barrels a day: a throughput, at current prices, of some $600m a month.” As the Guardian reported:

The project is necessary, according to a paper published by the US Trade and Development Agency last May, because the oil coming from the Caspian Sea “will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the Bosphorus as a shipping lane”. The scheme, the agency notes, will “provide a consistent source of crude oil to American refineries”, “provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor”, “advance the privatisation aspirations of the US government in the region” and “facilitate rapid integration” of the Balkans “with western Europe”.

In November 1998, Bill Richardson, then US energy secretary, spelt out his policy on the extraction and transport of Caspian oil. “This is about America’s energy security,” he explained. “It’s also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don’t share our values. We’re trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west. [Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico, was a Presidential candidate in 2007.]

Continue reading →