NATO Dinosaur Plods On
 

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52663.htm[/URL]
Cunningham nails it on several issues related to the US lap dog.

[QUOTE]The splits and rancor at the NATO summit this week could not be concealed, even by strained calls for “unity”. The US-led military alliance is a dinosaur well past its extinction date.

Boris Johnson, the British prime minister, did his best to rally a sense of unity as the two-day summit hosted by Britain came to a close. The event was supposed to be a celebration, marking the 70th anniversary of NATO’s founding.

Far from being a “happy birthday” party, the NATO gathering descended into embarrassing farce with bickering and jibes. Video footage appeared to show the French, British and Canadian leaders making fun of American President Donald Trump over his rambling press conferences. Trump then hit back, accusing Canada’s Justin Trudeau of being “two-faced”.

There were other spats, between France and Turkey over Ankara’s military incursion into northern Syria against Kurdish militants, whom France and the US regard as allies. Turkey was also chided for buying the S-400 air defense system from Russia.

However, the biggest clash came between Trump and France’s Emmanuel Macron, who was taken to task by the American leader for his recent media remarks about NATO being “brain dead”. Trump said those comments were “very, very nasty” and “disrespectful”. Macron bridled at their joint press conference, saying he stood by his earlier critical comments.

It was toe-curling stuff, especially the lecture on politeness coming from Trump who himself has several times in the past disparaged NATO as “obsolete”.

Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian secretary-general, tried to smooth over the ruffled relations by claiming: “NATO is the most successful alliance in history because we’ve changed at the world has changed.” He went on to describe the 29-nation military bloc as “agile, active… adapting.”

That was after he pointed out that the combined NATO military spend was set for massive increases. An extra $400 billion will be forked out by the alliance by 2024, said Stoltenberg, on top of the current $1 trillion.

Already NATO’s total budget is 20 times that of Russia and five times that of China.[/QUOTE]

Someone Interfered In The UK Election, And It Wasn’t Russia
 

-Caitlin Johnstone
This might have been better placed in Establishment Media Wretch.


[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52704.htm[/URL]
[QUOTE]Ladies and gentlemen I have here at my fingertips indisputable proof that egregious election meddling took place in the United Kingdom on Thursday.

Before you get all excited, no, it wasn’t the Russians. It wasn’t the Chinese, the Iranians, Cobra Command or the Legion of Doom. I’m not going to get any Rachel Maddow-sized paychecks for revealing this evidence to you, nor am I going to draw in millions of credulous viewers waiting with bated breath for a bombshell revelation of an international conspiracy that will invalidate the results of the election.

In fact, hardly anyone will even care.

Hardly anyone will care because this election interference has been happening right out in the open, and was perfectly legal. And nobody will suffer any consequences for it.[INDENT] The centrists and mainstream media outlets are responsible for the right wing win in the UK. They spent all their time bashing and smearing Jeremy Corbyn bc they will always prioritize smashing the left, even if it means allying with the far right. Shameful.
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) December 13, 2019
[/INDENT]Nobody will suffer any consequences for interfering in the UK election because the ones doing the interfering were extremely powerful, and that’s who the system is built to serve.[/QUOTE]

[url=https://www.thenation.com/article/afghanistan-papers-forever-war/]We Have Just Been Handed the Pentagon Papers of Our Generation[/url] | Maj. Danny Sjursen, The Nation

[url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/afghanistan-wapo-us-defense-strategy-926897/]Washington Post’s Afghanistan Story Reveals Core Folly of American Defense Strategy[/url] | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

[url=https://nypost.com/2019/12/14/lying-by-bush-and-obama-over-afghanistan-is-this-eras-pentagon-papers/]Lying by Bush and Obama over Afghanistan is this era’s Pentagon Papers[/url] | NY Post

[url=https://fair.org/home/afghan-papers-inadvertently-document-wapos-role-in-spreading-official-lies/]Afghan Papers Inadvertently Document WaPo’s Role in Spreading Official Lies[/url] | FAIR

But no impeachable offenses in any of that, apparently, so how serious could it really be? /sarc

[QUOTE=ewmayer;533247][url=https://www.thenation.com/article/afghanistan-papers-forever-war/]We Have Just Been Handed the Pentagon Papers of Our Generation[/url] | Maj. Danny Sjursen, The Nation

[url=https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/afghanistan-wapo-us-defense-strategy-926897/]Washington Post’s Afghanistan Story Reveals Core Folly of American Defense Strategy[/url] | Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

[url=https://nypost.com/2019/12/14/lying-by-bush-and-obama-over-afghanistan-is-this-eras-pentagon-papers/]Lying by Bush and Obama over Afghanistan is this era’s Pentagon Papers[/url] | NY Post

[url=https://fair.org/home/afghan-papers-inadvertently-document-wapos-role-in-spreading-official-lies/]Afghan Papers Inadvertently Document WaPo’s Role in Spreading Official Lies[/url] | FAIR

But no impeachable offenses in any of that, apparently, so how serious could it really be? /sarc[/QUOTE]
I read about this a week and a half ago. I thought you'd be all over this, and was beginning to get worried.

You forgot to link to the original news story, [url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/]AT WAR WITH THE TRUTH[/url]. It took WAPO three years to gain access to the documents, pursuant to a FOIA request.

It's impossible, of course, to impeach presidents who are no longer in office. It is [i]not[/i] impossible to indict and prosecute them, if you can name any applicable charges.

I despaired of our having any achievable objectives in Afghanistan when Shrub decided to embark on [b][i]O[/i][/b]peration [b][i]I[/i][/b]raqi [b][i]L[/i][/b]iberation, er, Freedom. I still recall fondly his Admin's plan for a northern flank of the invasion. They seemed to take for granted that NATO ally Turkey would grant permission to use their territory to do it. And then, [i]with the troop ships already en route[/i], the Turks said "No."
:missingteeth:

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;533252]I read about this a week and a half ago. I thought you'd be all over this, and was beginning to get worried.[/quote]
Extremely busy with Christmas-prep activities in the past week, accumulated a bunch of links, only partway through the backlog as I type this.

[quote]It's impossible, of course, to impeach presidents who are no longer in office. It is [i]not[/i] impossible to indict and prosecute them, if you can name any applicable charges.[/QUOTE]

I was referring e.g. to Nancy Pelosi's recent admission that as a member of the House Intelligence Committee during the W. Bush years, said committee knew the WMDs-in-Iraq claims were false at the time they were made. Perhaps this is a case of the ensuing bipartisan charge into an illegal and highly destructive war making all the parties guilty. With Obama, there was also plenty of impeachable-at-the-time activity, to cite just two example, the mass domestic surveillance program (begun under W. Bush but ramped-up bigly under Obama) and the wanton destruction of Libya. But the truism "there is only one War party in Washington" is applicable. Same truism applies to the many war crimes charges which could be laid against more or less every US president in recent memory, with the possible exception of Carter (and even there it might simply be a case of not having "many" but only a few, such as those relating to arming and financing the mujahedin in Afghanistan - oh, look, and we're right back in that country! Funny, that.)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;533290]Extremely busy with Christmas-prep activities in the past week, accumulated a bunch of links, only partway through the backlog as I type this.



I was referring e.g. to Nancy Pelosi's recent admission that as a member of the House Intelligence Committee during the W. Bush years, said committee knew the WMDs-in-Iraq claims were false at the time they were made.
<snip>[/QUOTE]
Ah, Christmas prep! At least it isn't spending days without power
:-D

Yes, you mentioned that about the Intel Committee before, IIRC. I'm not sure what law that sort of thing might violate, but even if it isn't a violation of law it might be impeachable notwithstanding.

I wonder if members of the Intel Committee were legally bound not to disclose the information that informed them Shrub was lying. If it was classified, it might have made impeachment iffy.

OTOH they could have just said, "[i]Screw[/i] 'classified'. This is too important."

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;533293]Yes, you mentioned that about the Intel Committee before, IIRC. I'm not sure what law that sort of thing might violate, but even if it isn't a violation of law it might be impeachable notwithstanding.

I wonder if members of the Intel Committee were legally bound not to disclose the information that informed them Shrub was lying. If it was classified, it might have made impeachment iffy.

OTOH they could have just said, "[i]Screw[/i] 'classified'. This is too important."[/QUOTE]

To me the actual offense was not related to any public disclosure, i.e. whether they were bound by law to not disclose what they had heard in committee hearings is moot - rather, the offense lay in know what Pelosi admitted they knew at the time, and then voting to support the illegal (under international law) invasion anyway. That made them active aiders and abetters of war crimes.

And as you note, if ever there were a case where whistleblowing - with all the attendant legal cover for same - were warranted, this was it.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;533660]To me the actual offense was not related to any public disclosure, i.e. whether they were bound by law to not disclose what they had heard in committee hearings is moot - rather, the offense lay in know what Pelosi admitted they knew at the time, and then voting to support the illegal (under international law) invasion anyway. That made them active aiders and abetters of war crimes.

And as you note, if ever there were a case where whistleblowing - with all the attendant legal cover for same - were warranted, this was it.[/QUOTE]
Could you please be a bit more specific here? Which "international law" would this war be in violation of? What "war crimes?" And what court would the trial be held in? I had in mind violations of US law by the President as grounds for impeachment. I believe Congress critters are generally immune from prosecution for what they do in the course of discharging their official duties. Bad policy is not a crime.

As far as an "illegal" war goes -- what if Shrub Admin officials claimed they believed the intel was good, and they were acting in good faith?

IMO timely public disclosure of the intel being bad would have been the best remedy. It might well have prevented the Second Iraq War, and Shrub's second term also.

Remembering America’s First (& Longest) Forgotten War on Islamists
 

[URL]https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/23/remembering-americas-first-longest-forgotten-war-on-islamists/[/URL]
This is quite a long article, but it concerns US actions well over a century ago which have fallout continuing today.

[QUOTE]For a decade and a half, the U.S. Army waged war on fierce Muslims in a remote land. Sound familiar?

As it happens, that war unfolded half a world away from the Greater Middle East and more than a century ago in the southernmost islands of the Philippines. Back then, American soldiers fought not the Taliban, but the Moros, an intensely independent Islamic group with a similarly storied record of resisting foreign invaders. Precious few today have ever heard of America’s Moro War, fought from 1899 to 1913, but it was, until Afghanistan, one of America’s longest sustained military campaigns.

Popular thinking assumes that the U.S. wasn’t meaningfully entangled in the Islamic world until Washington became embroiled in the Islamist Iranian revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, both in the pivotal year of 1979. It simply isn’t so. How soon we forget that the Army, which had fought prolonged guerrilla wars against tribal Native Americans throughout the 19th century, went on — often led by veterans of those Indian Wars — to wage a counterinsurgency war on tribal Islamic Moros in the Philippine Islands at the start of the new century, a conflict that was an outgrowth of the Spanish-American War.

That campaign is all but lost to history and the collective American memory. A basic Amazon search for “Moro War,” for instance, yields just seven books (half of them published by U.S. military war colleges), while a similar search for “Vietnam War” lists no less than 10,000 titles. Which is curious. The war in the Southern Philippines wasn’t just six years longer than conventional American military operations in Vietnam, but also resulted in the awarding of 88 Congressional Medals of Honor and produced five future Army chiefs of staff. While the insurgency in the northern islands of the Philippines had fizzled out by 1902, the Moro rebels fought on for another decade. As Lieutenant Benny Foulois — later a general and the “father” of Army aviation — reflected, “The Filipino insurrection was mild compared to the difficulties we had with the Moros.”[/QUOTE]

What Upstanding Citizens Believe Vs. What Crazy Conspiracy Theorists Believe
 

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52791.htm[/URL]
By Caitlin Johnstone
[QUOTE]Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe a mature worldview requires skepticism toward power.

Smart upstanding citizens believe the government is your friend, and the media are its helpers.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that powerful people sometimes make immoral plans in secret.

Smart upstanding citizens believe the TV always tells the truth and the CIA exists for no reason.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe that extreme government secrecy makes it necessary to discuss possible theories about what might be going on behind that veil of opacity.

Smart upstanding citizens believe that just because a world-dominating government with the most powerful military in the history of civilization has no transparency and zero accountability to the public, that doesn’t mean you’ve got to get all paranoid about it.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe it’s okay to ask questions about important events that happen in the world, even if their government tells them they shouldn’t.

Smart upstanding citizens believe everything they need to know about reality comes out of Mike Pompeo’s angelic mouth.

Crazy, stupid conspiracy theorists believe the very rich sometimes engage in nefarious behavior to expand their wealth and power.

Smart upstanding citizens believe billionaires always conduct themselves with the same values that got them their billions in the first place: honesty, morality, and generosity.[/QUOTE]
And so it goes and goes and goes.

I found this to be a good summary on the US assassination of Iran's top military commander via airstrike in Iraq:

[url=https://fx.substack.com/p/well-that-escalated-quickly]Well, that escalated quickly[/url] | Foreign Exchanges
[quote]A story that began Thursday evening with sketchy reports about one or possibly two missile attacks outside Baghdad airport has developed into a confirmed report that the United States has killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. In the same (presumably drone) strike, the US also reportedly killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Committee, which is the body that oversees Iraq’s myriad militia factions. Although technically the deputy head of the PMC, Muhandis was also the leader of arguably Iraq’s most influential militia, Kataʾib Hezbollah, which made him arguably the most powerful figure within the Iraqi militia community. His death is a huge escalation in Iraq’s latest political crisis, which we’ll discuss presently. But obviously his death, and its repercussions, are totally overshadowed by Soleimani’s.

If you’ve been keeping up with the updates for the past couple of months, then you know that Iraq has been teetering on the edge of complete chaos, as protesters angry about corruption, government ineffectiveness, and foreign influence (mostly via Tehran) have been in the streets demanding wholesale political change. The Iraqi government’s violent response, most of it probably spearheaded by the Popular Mobilization militias, has left hundreds of people dead and ultimately forced the resignation of Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi. But Iraqi politics are so thoroughly broken that Abdul-Mahdi remains in office as caretaker PM because Iraqi political leaders have been unable to agree on a replacement. So that’s part of the context in which recent events have taken place.

In parallel with the collapse of Iraq politically, the country has experienced an escalation of violence involving the militias. That (probably) includes the killing of protesters, but it also includes sporadic rocket attacks on Iraqi military bases where US forces are stationed and it also also includes sporadic airstrikes, unattributed but probably carried out by Israel (and/or Saudi Arabia, but more likely Israel), targeting militia bases and weapons caches. Militia leaders have blamed the United States for either assisting or, at least, permitting these attacks. The final piece of context here is the escalating tension between the US and Iran since the Trump administration tore up the 2015 Iran nuclear deal last year, which has already led to several violent incidents in and around the Persian Gulf. It would be impossible to recap that whole saga here but the key thing to remember is that the instability that’s gripped that region over the past several months all stems from the administration’s decision to scrap an international agreement that a) was working and b) offered an easy path toward deescalating US-Iran tensions and stabilizing the Persian Gulf.

That brings us to December 27, when one of those sporadic rocket attacks hit an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk and killed a US civilian contractor while injuring several US and Iraqi personnel. “Civilian contractor” could cover anything from an office worker to a mercenary security officer who hadn’t engaged in combat, as far as I know, but regardless it was a US citizen killed, and the US determined that Kataʾib Hezbollah—which was founded in 2003 and became one of the principle militias resisting the postwar US occupation in Iraq, and which has sent fighters to aid Bashar al-Assad in Syria—was behind the attack. And so it retaliated, striking five Kataʾib Hezbollah targets in Iraq and Syria over the weekend. Kataʾib Hezbollah said that at least 24 of its personnel were killed in the strikes, and Muhandis vowed some kind of response.

The initial response came on Monday from the Iraqi government, which angrily condemned the US strikes as, first and foremost, a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Underpinning that condemnation is a deep and very understandable Iraqi fear that any war between the US and Iran (and its proxies) is likely to do more damage to Iraq than anywhere else. The US government dismissed the Iraqis’ complaints with a complaint of its own, accusing the Iraqi government of failing to protect its personnel. The bigger response came throughout the day Monday and then on Tuesday, when a mob of Kataʾib Hezbollah fighters and supporters stormed the US embassy in Baghdad. They set fires but were prevented from breaking into the compound by security. Perhaps more importantly, two major players in Iraqi politics—populist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, joined the crowd in condemning the US attack. Sadr called on the mob to stop attacking the embassy and said he would use political means to try to force the United States out of Iraq. Neither Sadr nor Sistani could conceivably be described as “pro-American,” but both had been much more concerned about Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs in recent months. Those US airstrikes appear to have changed that.

Now the US has killed Muhandis and Soleimani, one of the most powerful and popular figures in Iran, who has lost some of his sheen over the past couple of years but who is still one of maybe two or three people whose influence within Iran is eclipsed only by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It’s obviously far too early to know what the fallout will be, but it is inconceivable that the Iranian government will not retaliate somehow, and that retaliation doesn’t need to come in the form of a full-scale war. Its proxies throughout the region, from Pakistan to Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, can undertake plenty of retaliatory attacks against the interests of the United States and its allies. It’s also inconceivable that the Iraqi government will just allow this to stand. Leaving aside Baghdad’s political dependence on Tehran, this is the second time in a matter of days that the United States has treated Iraqi sovereignty as a punchline, and this time it’s resulted in the assassinations of a high-ranking Iraqi official and a high-ranking Iranian official who was under Iraqi security guarantees. There’s a very strong possibility that the Iraqi government will demand that the US military completely vacate the country, and if the safety of diplomatic personnel and their families in the US embassy in Baghdad was at risk before, that risk has just been magnified considerably.

It must also be stressed that whatever comes next will be the responsibility of a US president who claims to be anti-war, claims to understand what an incredibly stupid, vindictive thing the Iraq War was, and yet may have just provoked an even more catastrophic conflict. Everything he’s done since taking office has brought the United States closer to war with Iran, to the glee of a Washington foreign policy establishment that’s been after just such a thing for over 40 years now. It is undoubtedly true that, as the parade of “experts” on my TV this evening have been reiterating over and over, not very many people outside of Iran and a select few spots in the Middle East will mourn Soleimani’s passing. But his assassination is not, as Donald Trump will certainly claim in the next few hours, some spectacular feat of American military might. Soleimani wasn’t in hiding like Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Killing him was comparatively easy, but it was also extremely stupid. Soleimani now stands as a martyr to US bullying, and his killing will almost certainly make the Middle East less safe.[/quote]