America’s Descent into Deception and Tyranny: Agenda Prevails Over Truth

In the Western world truth no longer has any meaning. It its place stands agenda. 
Agenda is all important, because it is the way Washington achieves hegemony over the world and the American people. 9/11 was the “new Pearl Harbor” that the neoconservatives declared to be necessary for their planned wars against Muslim countries. For the neoconservatives to go forward with their agenda, it was necessary for Americans to be connected to the agenda.

President George W. Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neil, said that prior to 9/11 the first cabinet meeting was about the need to invade Iraq.

9/11 was initially blamed on Afghanistan, and the blame was later shifted to Iraq. Washington’s mobilization against Afghanistan was in place prior to 9/11. The George W. Bush regime’s invasion of Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom) occurred on October 7, 2001, less than a month after 9/11. Every military person knows that it is not possible to have mobilization for invading a country half way around the world ready in three weeks.

The Orwellian “PATRIOT Act” is another example of planning prior to the event.  This vast police state measure could not possibly have been written in the short time between 9/11 and its introduction in Congress. The bill was already written, sitting on the shelf waiting its opportunity. Why? Who wrote it? Why has there been no media investigation of the advanced preparation of this police state legislation?

Evidence that responses to an event were planned prior to what the government said was a surprise event does suggest that the event was engineered to drive an agenda that was already on the books.
Many on the left-wing are immune to evidence that is contrary to the official 9/11 story, because for them 9/11 is refreshing blowback from the oppressed. That the oppressed struck back is more important to the left-wing than the facts.

The right-wing can’t let go of the fantasy either. America in all its purity and wonderfulness was attacked because evil Muslims cannot stand our goodness. “They hate us for our freedom and democracy.” The right-wing vision of a great and good America wronged is essential to the right-wing’s sustaining ideology, an ideology that is prepared to commit violence in order to prove its righteousness.

Implausible stories can be useful to other agendas and thus be sustained by their use in other arguments. For example, the Obama regime’s story of the killing of Osama bin Laden is central to Charles Pierson’s story in the November 16-30, 2012, CounterPunch in which Pierson writes about the growing strains on the US-Pakistan alliance. Pierson writes that bin Laden resided next to Pakistan’s largest military academy and that bin Laden “did go next door every Wednesday to use the pool. If the Pakistani government was unaware of bin Laden’s presence this would mark an intelligence failure of heroic proportions.”

America’s Hype over WMD: Five Invasion Plots, Three Continents, Identical Lies

Global Research
Felicity Arbuthnot

 “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare…. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” (Winston S. Churchill, 1874-1965, from War Office  minute, 12th May 1919.)

As the sabre rattling against Syria gets ever louder, the allegations ever wilder and double standards, stirring, plotting and terrorist financing (sorry: “aiding the legitimate opposition”) neon lit, it is instructive to look at the justifications presented by US Administrations for a few other murderous incursions in recent history.

This month is the twenty third anniversary of the US invasion of Panama on 20th December 1989, as Panamanians prepared their Christmas celebrations. A quick check reminds the late Philip Agee recalling President George H.W. Bush telling the American people that the threat from Panama (pop: 3,571,185 – 2011) was such that: “our way of life is at stake.” Agee referred to this in his aptly named talk “Producing the Proper Crisis.”(i) Apt then as now. Nothing changes.

The aim of the invasion was to capture the country’s leader General Manuel Noriega and, of course, to: “establish a democratic government.” Regime change.
With the approaching transfer of control of the Panama Canal to Panama (originally scheduled for 1st January  1990) after a century of US colonial stewardship, America wanted to ensure it was in the hands of malleable allies.

Noriega a CIA asset, since 1967 (ii) who had also attended the notorious School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia, came to power with US backing, but seemingly his support for the US was cooling. To encapsulate a long story, the US kidnapped him and sentenced him to forty years in jail.
Plans to invade were called: “Operation Prayer Book.” It was later re-named “Operation Just Cause”, with General Colin Powell commenting that it was a moniker of which he approved as: ”Even our severest critics would have to utter ‘Just Cause’ whilst denouncing us.” (Colin Powell, with Jospeh E. Persico: “My American Journey”, 1995.)

All military marauding should simply be called: “Operation Silly Name 1, then 2,3,4” etc., until the numbers finally run out.
Twenty seven thousand US troops backed by Apache helicopters decimated much of the small country, with a defence force of just three thousand. George Bush Snr., said he was removing an evil dictator who was brutalizing his own people  (sound familiar?) and that the action was needed to:” protect American lives.” It was also to: “defend democracy and human rights in Panama” – and to “protect the Canal.” Surprise, eh?

Manuel Noriega was released from US jail in 2007, extradited to France which had awarded him the country’s highest honour, The Legion d’honneur in 1987. He remained in jail in France until December 2011, when he was returned to Panama, where he is still imprisoned.

In the near forgotten Panama decimation (unless you are Panamanian) the densely populated, poverty stricken neighbourhood of El Chorillo was incinerated by American actions to such an extent that it became named “Little Hiroshima.”

One woman charged that: “The North Americans began burning down El Chorillo at about 6.30 in the morning. They would throw a small device in to a house and it would catch on fire – then they would move to another, they burned from one street to the next, coordinating the burning on walkie-talkies.”
A US soldier was recorded stating: “We ask you to surrender … if you do not, we are prepared to level each and every building.”
“Everything that moved they shot”, said a city resident.

The dead were consigned to mass graves with witnesses stating that US troops used flame throwers on the dead, noting the bodies shriveling as they burned. Others were bulldozed in to piles.(iii)

There was worse. As the current self righteous, if contradictory statements flow from Washington and Whitehall about Syria’s unproven chemical weapons, proven facts relate to America’s.

“From the 1940s to the 1990s the United States used various parts of Panama as a testing ground for chemical weapons, including mustard gas, VX, sarin, hydrogen cyanide and other nerve agents in … mines, rockets and shells; perhaps tens of thousands of chemical munitions.” (William Blum: Rogue State, 2002.)

Further, on departing Panama at the end of 1999 they left: “many sites containing chemical weapons. They had also: “conducted secret tests of Agent Orange in Panama …” In the 1989 invasion, the village of Pacora, near Panama City: “was bombed with (chemicals) by helicopters and aircraft from US Southern Command, with substances that burned skin, caused intense pain and diarrhea.”
Many analysts felt that Panama was the testing ground for Iraq.

Nine months after the poisoning of Panama, on Hiroshima Day 1990, the strangulating US-driven embargo on Iraq was enforced by the UN, after the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie had given the green light for Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait, after Kuwait’s considerable provocation and financial and geographical destabilization.(iv.)

The Israeli Nightmare

Land Destroyer

Peace in Israel is the establishment's worst nightmare. 
an editorial by Tony Cartalucci

November 10, 2012 - Israel is an excuse, a mandate, a perpetual casus belli, and both an ideological as well as literal beachhead in the Middle East. Created and propped up by the West, in particular the US and United Kingdom, it has served as the medium through which Western foreign policy flows in and out of the Arab, and to a greater extent, the Muslim World.

It is through a carefully cultivated strategy of tension that this perpetual casus belli is maintained. Without the constant perceived fear of Israel's demise and the "moral imperative" to prevent it, real or imagined, it would be difficult to justify Western involvement in nations that otherwise pose no perceivable threat to America or Europe. A "clash of civilizations" is likewise being created within the West itself to augment this paradigm, but it has yet to "come of age," and still depends heavily on Israeli-Arab tensions to sustain itself.

Image: Israel does not bulldoze homes because it thinks it will eventually eliminate its enemies by doing so. To maintain a perpetual strategy of tension to justify perpetual meddling by neo-colonialists in the Middle East, Israel bulldozes homes specifically to create more enemies. To think otherwise, would be to falsely assume Israel's current leadership is actually invested in the self-preservation of the nation-state. They are not. 

....

It is clearly in the best interests of Western corporate-financiers seeking to remain involved in the Middle East and reassert hegemony over the region, to keep this strategy of tension viable and as heated as possible. The policies of Israel are so ham-handedly provocative, it is surprising that more people do not see the truth behind them - that Israel's heavy-handed belligerence is a calculated decision to keep the tension ratcheted up as high as possible. For what other reason could a nation-state want to deliberately, slowly, and systematically bulldoze the homes of impoverished men, women, and children? Self-preservation by eliminating it enemies? Or the perpetual creation of new enemies?

It is not just a theory that the West and Israel purposefully cultivate and exploit the hatred incurred by their calculated, blatantly provocative policies.

Like a dam straddling a river, the force of tension against the dam produces energy from which those who constructed it, benefit. The hatred, fear, and violence perpetuated between the Jewish people and their perceived enemies has been a prominent driving force behind Wall Street and London's century-long campaign of invasion, occupation, subversion, and exploitation across the Muslim World.

A recent example of this was using regional hatred toward Israel to implement the opening phases of the US-engineered "Arab Spring." Because any regime Israel feigned support for would be instantly poisoned by a political "touch of death," Israel openly and oafishly feigned support for Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, claiming it had sent weapons and riot control gear to assist his government in suppressing "anti-American/anti-Israeli" protesters. In reality, the protests in Egypt's streets were planned years in advance, beginning as early as 2008 in New York City by confabs organized by the US State Department.

Hillary Clinton’s “Democracy” for Syria

Global Research
Bill Van Auken

US imperialism has a long and sordid record of bloody military interventions and interference in the affairs of other countries for the purpose of securing the interests of Wall Street and corporate America.

Ever since William Howard Taft declared that “our little brown brothers” of the Philippines would need “50 to 100 years of close supervision” to develop functioning self-government, these interventions have been justified with assertions of Washington’s unique role in bringing democracy to less fortunate peoples of the world, generally at the point of a gun.

Seldom, however, has this pretense been proclaimed so shamelessly as in the announcement last week by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Washington had decided to appoint a new leadership for the “Syrian revolution.”

Clinton unceremoniously dismissed the former leadership, the Syrian National Council, a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated outfit that Washington had proclaimed little more than a year ago as the “legitimate representative” of the Syrian people. Now she says they are just a bunch of out-of-touch exiles who haven’t set foot in Syria for decades.

The problem is, Clinton declared, the SNC is insufficiently representative of the Syrian people. So the US State Department has handpicked a new group of individuals and organizations that is to form the basis of a transitional government. “We have recommended names and organizations that we believe should be included in any leadership structure,” Clinton told a press conference in Zagreb, Croatia on October 31.

Here one has a text-book example of democracy “made in the USA,” or, more precisely, neocolonialism.

To qualify for inclusion in Washington’s handpicked roster of “representative” leaders, one must “be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution,” Clinton decreed.

The aim is clear. The State Department wants a “respectable” face for the grisly conflict that Washington has fomented in Syria, elevating the pro-US businessman Riad Seif and similar figures as a government in waiting, even as the fighting is being carried out more and more by Al Qaeda-linked Islamist militias receiving covert US backing.

When it comes to hijacking dissent, however, no one can compete with Washington. This is precisely what it has done in Syria, just as it did earlier in Libya.

Having seen two of its longest-standing and most trusted stooges in the region—Tunisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak—toppled by uprisings of the working masses, Washington decided to seize the initiative by using the “Arab Spring” as a cover for promoting regime-change.

First in Libya, it exploited popular protests and a trumped-up claim that the population of Benghazi was in imminent danger of annihilation as the pretext for launching a US-NATO war to topple Muammar Gaddafi. Now, in Syria, it has helped turn similar protests into a vicious sectarian civil war through which it seeks the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

In Syria, US imperialism has relied more heavily on proxy forces, including Islamist foreign fighters, which have been aided and armed by US allies in the region, principally Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with the CIA orchestrating the operation from a newly created station in southern Turkey.

US defeat in Syria Would End US Hegemony in Middle East

Iran vs the Empire: Fighting dollarization

PressTV
Eric Walberg

The West's attempts to destroy the Iranian economy through heightened sanctions-including most imports, oil exports and use of banks for trade operations-is having its affect. According to Johns Hopkins University Professor Steve Hanke, Iran is facing hyperinflation, with a monthly inflation rate of nearly 70% per month and its national currency, the rial, plummeting in value against western currencies. Iran is the latest casualty to be placed on his Hanke-Krus Hyperinflation Index, which includes France (1795), Germany (1922), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1986), Argentina (1990), Russia (1992), Ecuador (1999) and Zimbabwe (2007), countries which experienced price-level increases of at least 50% per month.

Hanke, relishing his role as the world’s expert on this nightmarish phenomenon, has "played a significant role in stopping more hyperinflations than any living economist, including 10 of the 57 episodes" on his Index. He writes that Iran has three options: spontaneous dollarization (people unloading rials on the black-market for dollars, as happened in Zimbabwe), official dollarization (the government withdrawing the currency in favor of dollars, as in Ecuador), or a currency board issuing a new domestic currency backed 100% by-you guessed it-dollars. Hanke insists that the foreign currency does not have to be US dollars. Pitcairn Island, for instance, uses New Zealand dollars.

The inflation doctor admits vaguely that there are "foreign factors," without a hint of criticism of not only the sanctions, but the active subversion of Iran through everything from support of Iranian terrorists, assassinations of leading scientists, right up to war (the US encouraged Iraq to invade Iran in 1980). He emphasizes "Iran's complex system of subsidies, capital controls, and multiple exchange rates," but most of all "massive overprinting of money," though he complains that "the Central Bank of The Islamic Republic of Iran has not reported any such statistics for some time." As if a country living through a state of emergency is likely to divulge such sensitive information.

He coolly dismisses consumers' expectations influencing prices, since "fear surrounding military tensions is nothing new for Iranians". Indeed, the US has been targeting Iran for destruction ever since it threw off its colonial chains in 1979-a dangerous example for other, especially Muslim countries. It is miraculous that Iran has done so well economically since the revolution, given the unremitting victimization it has experienced. One can only marvel at the stubborn courage it has shown to build an Islamic society in the teeth of opposition by the world empire and even by other Muslim nations allied to the empire.

We indeed may ask why Iran's inflation rate has jumped so dramatically precisely in recent times. Of course, it is because of the sanctions. And why the sanctions? Is it really fears that Iran will develop a nuclear bomb, despite professions to the contrary and membership in the IAEA? No. Besides Iran’s role in inspiring the current 'Islamic Reawakening' in the Middle East, there is another very important reason, one which flies in the face of Hanke's 'three options' for Iran.

Those ‘options’ all amount to one: accept US-dollar dictatorship. Iran has been trying to trade oil in non-US dollar currencies since 2008, when it opened its Oil Bourse. Iraq did this in 2000, and the US reaction was invasion-dollarization at gunpoint. The point of the sanctions today is a last-ditch attempt by the US to force Iran to comply with the US world order, as epitomized by continued acceptance of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Hanke insists it is not necessary for Iran to use US dollars as its substitute currency, which in any case would be ridiculous under the circumstances. However, the alternative of using, say, New Zealand dollars finesses the reality that all currencies are tied to the US dollar, as the de facto international reserve currency. This has been the case in reality since the 1930s, when the world abandoned the gold standard. Acknowledging this fact, over 20 countries call their legal tender 'dollars'.

Whether the government moves quickly to raise the white flag, as in Ecuador, or belatedly, as in Zimbabwe, or insists on printing pretty new paper scrip tied 100% to the US dollar through an exchange board, as did Argentina, merely confirms the obvious. In past cases, such as Chile, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe, the message was, ‘your socialist policies are unacceptable.’ In Iran's case, the message is, ‘take dollars for your oil.’

Hanke's monetarist credo-printing money causes inflation-ignores the underlying causes of inflation. As he admits, Iranians have faced war fears for over three decades. The exchange controls and subsidies, "government monopolies, price controls, and Soviet-style economic planning," which Hanke calls "wrong-headed," are not the cause of inflation, but a way for the government to keep it under control. However, at a certain point, the "foreign factors" become so egregious that even such measures fail. That is what has happened now, as sanctions have created extreme pain for the average Iranian. Bare shelves and panic in the face of invasion threats means that the currency will devalue, however many rials the government prints.

This is what happened in Germany in 1922, when it was forced to export everything to buy the gold to pay the extortionate reparations. It ended by resorting to Hanke’s currency board and marks issued against gold, but the underlying cause-the extortion practiced by Britain and France-only ended when Hitler took power and canceled the reparations. The devastation cause by "foreign factors" led in that instance to the rise of fascism.

UN to investigate civilian deaths from US drone strikes

Guardian
Owen Bowcott

Special rapporteur on counter-terror operations condemns Barack Obama's failure to establish effective monitoring process

Ben Emmerson QC called for effective investigations into US drone attacks.

The United Nations is to set up a dedicated investigations unit in Geneva early next year to examine the legality of drone attacks in cases where civilians are killed in so-called "targeted" counter-terrorism operations.

The announcement was made by Ben Emmerson QC, a UN special rapporteur, in a speech to Harvard law school in which he condemned secret rendition and waterboarding as crimes under international law. His forthright comments, directed at both US presidential candidates, will be seen as an explicit challenge to the prevailing US ideology of the global war on terror.

Earlier this summer, Emmerson, who monitors counter-terrorism for the UN, called for effective investigations into drone attacks. Some US drone strikes in Pakistan may amount to war crimes, Emmerson warned.

In his Harvard speech, he said: "If the relevant states are not willing to establish effective independent monitoring mechanisms … then it may in the last resort be necessary for the UN to act.

"Together with my colleague Christof Heyns, [the UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings], I will be launching an investigation unit within the special procedures of the [UN] Human Rights Council to inquire into individual drone attacks."

The investigation unit will also look at "other forms of targeted killing conducted in counter-terrorism operations, in which it is alleged that civilian casualties have been inflicted". Emmerson maintained that the US stance that it can conduct counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaida or other groups anywhere in the world because it is deemed to be an international conflict was indefensible.

"The global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international human rights law and international humanitarian law," he said. "It has also given a spurious justification to a range of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.

"The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of the US. The first-term Obama administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone programme of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia …

"[It is] alleged that since President Obama took office at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims and more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. Christof Heyns … has described such attacks, if they prove to have happened, as war crimes. I would endorse that view."

Emmerson singled out both President Obama and the Republican challenger Mitt Romney for criticism. "It is perhaps surprising that the position of the two candidates on this issue has not even featured during their presidential elections campaigns, and got no mention at all in Monday night's foreign policy debate.

"We now know that the two candidates are in agreement on the use of drones. But the issue of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques is an one which, according to the record, continues to divide them.

"I should make it absolutely clear that my mandate does not see to eye to eye with the Obama administration on a range of issues – not least the lack of transparency over the drone programme. But on this issue the president has been clear since he took office that water-boarding is torture that it is contrary to American values and that it would stop.

"... But Governor Romney has said that he does not believe that waterboarding is torture. He has said that he would allow enhanced interrogation techniques that go beyond those now permitted by the army field manual, and his security advisers have recommended that he rescind the existing restrictions."

The Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, he pointed out, used the technique. "Anyone who is in doubt about whether waterboarding is torture should visit Tuol Sleng, the infamous S-21 detention facility operated by the Khymer Rouge in Phnom Penh.

"Over a period of four years 14,000 people were systematically tortured and killed there. It is now a genocide museum. And right there, in the middle of the central torturing room, is the apparatus used by Pol Pot's security officials for waterboarding."

The Afghan War: Just the Facts

Daily Bell

Afghanistan mosque suicide bomb attack kills at least 41 ... A suicide bomber targeted worshippers who had gathered at a mosque in north Afghanistan for prayers to mark Eid al-Adha, killing at least 41 people. More than 50 people were wounded in the attack, which happened as people were leaving the Eid Gah mosque in Maymana, capital of Faryab province. Senior provincial government and police officials attended the prayers, but appeared to escape serious injury. The victims were mainly police officers and civilians. This attack in Maymana, the provincial capital of Faryab, exposes a number of serious concerns about the security situation there. There is a widespread perception that Faryab is a very peaceful province, but recent developments are telling. There have been a number of assassinations of tribal elders recently in Maymana. Nato forces have also conducted frequent night raids targeting the Taliban and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan militant group (IMU). – BBC

Dominant Social Theme: The war is being won.

Free-Market Analysis: The deaths in Afghanistan, after more than a decade of war, keep climbing. Our paradigm proves itself out daily.

The West is not in Afghanistan to help its women. The West is not in Afghanistan because of its mineral wealth. The West is not in Afghanistan to create peaceful democracy.

The West is there to eradicate one of the last pockets of resistance to globalism. The Pashtuns and the Punjabis are ancient, independent tribes. This war is between the bankers and the tribes.

The stakes are high. And the West, it seems, has already lost. It is impossible to pacify 250 million people who want nothing to do with your culture, who are willing to die and who can fight from mountain caves.

We follow the war because we know you don't want to. NATO has introduced guns that shoot around corners. It sends out helicopters and soldiers in "armor." US Marines regularly conduct night raids now, rousting and killing innocents.

The Taliban is drawn from Pashtuns and trained by Punjabis. The Pashtuns and Punjabis hate each other. But they dislike invaders even more. Both cultures are true to their roots. The Punjabis are sly and non-confrontational. The Pashtuns are overt warriors. Both tribes have been there for about 2,000 years or more, apparently. Neither tribe is going anywhere.

There about 40 million Pashtuns and 190 million Punjabis. They live in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in mountainous country that provides plenty of cover. These are big countries and it is impossible to track everyone down, even if you wanted to invade mountain ranges, which is an impossibility.

These are stiff-necked tribes. They have been in one place for a long time. The resistance has little if anything to do with Islam directly. The Pashtuns are not overly Islamic, in any case. But they resist invaders.

The Pashtuns resisted the British last time they invaded ... 100 years ago. They fought the British to a draw. They have done it again, this time with the help of the Punjabis.

The power elite behind these wars is winning most of them. But not this one. The elites buggered Muammer Gaddafiand then broadcast it. They caused Hosni Mubarak to appear prone in a cage in court. They are now attacking Syria and targeting Iran and even Jordan.

All the bloody, erstwhile allies are being deposed. A new chapter is being created – resurgent Islam utilizing the CIA-controlled Muslim Brotherhood as a proxy.

There is no Great Game. There is no women's liberation. There is no democratization to be had. It is only a group of banking families, apparently ... lashing out that they cannot control the last patch of land that they need to dominate in order to impose global governance. So long as there is somewhere to run and resist the ongoing internationalization, the global elites will not feel safe.

And so we fight ...

We fight to ensure our own slavery. We fight to feel the boot on our collective necks. We fight for the privilege of having that boot smash down on our face over and over again – as George Orwell once wrote.

Those who are fighting are poisoning themselves with the depleted uranium of their own armaments. They are further poisoned by vaccines supposed to bolster their "health." Often these soldiers come home with grave wounds and missing limbs. More soldiers have killed themselves than have been killed in war.

They say only a few thousand US soldiers have died. The statistics lie. They undercount fatalities by defining soldiers in a certain way. And they don't count all the hideous wounded.

But the elites are running out of time and good will of their own subject populations. Bombs keep going off in Afghanistan. Infiltrators are rendering the Afghan "army" and "police" unworkable. The regime of Hamid Karzai is only strong so long as US and NATO soldiers provide him protection. When they go, so does he.

Eventually, he will go. The war is not infinitely sustainable. And when the US and NATO goes, they will leave behind a civil war between the Pashtuns, Punjabis and the other ethnicities in the area.

This will be the legacy of the war in Afghanistan. A further, bloody civil war. It will come courtesy of power elite hubris. The Pashtun farmers and their families will be the ones to suffer, as always.

Conclusion: This is the truth of the war. It has been fought to expand empire. It is failing for the same reason.

Blood is Their Argument: The Real Campaign Trail

Empire Burlesque
Chris Floyd

Drone victim in North Waziristan

"...for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument?" -- Shakespeare, Henry V

Even as the presidential candidates meet in ersatz agon to spew their self-serving lies and scripted zingers in a "debate" on foreign policy, the real campaign -- the campaign of blood and bone, of death and terror, being waged in Pakistan by the American government -- goes on it all its horror.

This week, the Mail on Sunday -- one of Britain's most conservative newspapers -- published a story outlining, in horrific detail, the true nature of the drone killing campaign begun by George W. Bush and vastly expanded by Barack Obama. Coming on the heels of a recent report ("Living Under Drones") by teams at Stanford and New York universities on this ongoing war crime, the Mail on Sunday story brings the humanity of the victims -- and the inhumanity of perpetrators -- to the fore. The story concerns legal action being taken in Pakistan on behalf of families of drone-murder victims by Pakistani lawyer and activist Shahzad Akbar and the UK-based human rights group, Reprieve. As the MoS reports, two court cases have been filed that could "trigger a formal murder investigation into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes."

The MoS quotes the Living With Drones report to set the context:

…Between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed since the strikes in Pakistan began in 2004. The report said of those, up to 881 were civilians, including 176 children. Only 41 people who had died had been confirmed as ‘high-value’ terrorist targets.

As the paper notes, full figures on the killings are hard to come by, due to the convenient fact that "the tribal regions along the frontier are closed to journalists." The true death count of civilians is almost certainly far higher.

So who are the thousands of people being slain by brave American warriors sitting at computer consoles on a military bases on the other side of the world? From the MoS:

The plaintiff in the Islamabad case is Karim Khan, 45, a journalist and translator with two masters’ degrees, whose family comes from the village of Machi Khel in the tribal region of North Waziristan. His eldest son, Zahinullah, 18, and his brother, Asif Iqbal, 35, were killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone that struck the family’s guest dining room at about 9.30pm on New Year’s Eve, 2009.

Mr Khan said: ‘We are an educated family. My uncle is a hospital doctor in Islamabad, and we all work in professions such as teaching. We have never had anything to do with militants or terrorists, and for that reason I always assumed we would be safe. Zahinullah, who had been studying in Islamabad, had returned to the village to work his way through college, taking a part-time job as a school caretaker. ‘He was a quiet boy and studious – always in the top group of his class.’ Zahinullah also liked football, cricket and hunting partridges. Asif, he added, was an English teacher and had spent several years taking further courses to improve his qualifications while already in work. Asif had changed his surname because he loved to recite Iqbal, Pakistan's national poet.

Well, that's what they claim, right? No doubt the button-pushing drone "pilot" parked safely in his cushy padded chair back in Nevada could ascertain through the computer screen that the quiet student and the poetry-loving teacher were actually "active terrorists, who are trying to go in and harm America," to quote the Nobel Peace Laureate in the White House, in his only public acknowledgement of the drone campaign. Such miscreants, said the Laureate, are the only people ever killed by this "targeted, focused effort."

Mr Khan, who had been working in Islamabad at the time, hurried back to the village when he got the news. This is what he found:

He got home soon after dawn and describes his return ‘like entering a village of the dead – it was so quiet. There was a crowd gathered outside the compound but nowhere for them to sit because the guest rooms had been destroyed’.

Zahinullah, Mr Khan discovered, had been killed instantly, but despite his horrific injuries, Asif had survived long enough to be taken to a nearby hospital. However, he died during the night.

‘We always bury people quickly in our culture. The funeral was at three o’clock that afternoon, and more than 1,000 people came,’ Mr Khan said. ‘Zahinullah had a wound on the side of his face and his body was crushed and charred. I am told the people who push the buttons to fire the missiles call these strikes “bug-splats”.

‘It is beyond my imagination how they can lack all mercy and compassion, and carry on doing this for years. They are not human beings.’

In this, however, Mr Khan is wrong, and therein lies the tragedy: the people who killed his brother and thousands of other innocents, and have carried on doing it for years, are indeed human beings -- all too human. The lack of mercy and compassion they exhibit is one of our endemic human traits -- and one that has been assiduously, relentlessly, deliberately -- and profitably -- cultivated for years by our bipartisan elites, who sow fear and hatred and dehumanization to advance their agenda of domination, playing upon -- and rewarding -- what is worst in our common human nature, while mocking, denigrating and punishing what is best.

One of the officials targeted in the lawsuit is former CIA general counsel John Rizzo. As the paper notes:

Mr Rizzo is named because of an interview he gave to a US reporter after he retired as CIA General Counsel last year. In it, he boasted that he had personally authorised every drone strike in which America’s enemies were ‘hunted down and blown to bits’.

He added: ‘It’s basically a hit-list. The Predator is the weapon of choice, but it could also be someone putting a bullet in your head.’

That's nice, isn't it? Noble, worthy, honorable, isn't it? Again, these are the mafia thug values being embraced, lauded, supported and reinforced at every turn by the most respectable figures throughout American politics and media, including of course the popular media, where TV shows and movies abound with tough guys "doing whatever it takes" to kill the dehumanized "enemy" and "keep us safe."

Texas attorney general threatens to arrest monitors observing US election

Guardian
Chris McGreat

State attorney general calls international group's plan to watch for fairness at the polls 'legally irrelevant in the United States'

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has monitored
several previous elections in the US.

The Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, has threatened to arrest international election monitors invited by liberal groups to observe the conduct of next month's presidential vote in states accused of attempting to disenfranchise minorities.

Abbott has written to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe warning that its monitors have no right to monitor the vote even though they have observed previous US elections.

"The OSCE's representatives are not authorized by Texas law to enter a polling place. It may be a criminal offence for OSCE's representatives to maintain a presence within 100 feet of a polling place's entrance," he said. "Failure to comply with these requirements could subject the OSCE's representatives to criminal prosecution for violating state law."

The OSCE is sending 44 observers to voting stations across the US at the request of various groups, including the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union, because of "an unprecedented and sophisticated level of coordination to restrict voting rights in our nation". These include attempts by several states, including Texas, to introduce voter identification laws and other measures blocked by federal courts which have ruled they were motivated by racial discrimination.

In his letter, Abbott glossed over the recent judgements striking down the Texas identification law and pointed to a supreme court ruling in a case involving another state.

"The OSCE may be entitled to its opinions about voter ID laws, but your opinion is legally irrelevant in the United States, where the supreme court has already determined that voter ID laws are constitutional," Abbott said.

The US routinely sends poll watchers to elections in foreign countries, particularly those where there are concerns about the fairness of the vote. In television interviews, Abbott denounced the OSCE as an interfering foreign body even though the US is a founding member and it was invited by President George Bush's administration to monitor the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections in the US.

"If OSCE members want to learn more about our election processes so they can improve their own democratic systems, we welcome the opportunity to discuss the measures Texas has implemented to protect the integrity of elections," Abbott wrote. "However, groups and individuals from outside the United States are not allowed to influence or interfere with the election process in Texas. This state has robust election laws that were carefully crafted to protect the integrity of our election system. All persons – including persons connected with OSCE – are required to comply with these laws."

The OSCE responded later on Wednesday in a letter to the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, calling Abbott's threat "unacceptable" and noting that the organisation's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has an agreement with the US permitting it to monitor elections.

"The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections," it said. "The threat of criminal sanctions against OSCE/ODIHR observers is unacceptable."

A Florida congressman running for the Senate, Connie Mack, also waded into the debate, saying that reports the United Nations wants to send election monitors was an outrage. The OSCE was founded under the UN charter.

"The very idea that the United Nations - the world body dedicated to diminishing America's role in the world - would be allowed, if not encouraged, to install foreigners sympathetic to the likes of Castro, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and Putin to oversee our elections is nothing short of disgusting," he told the Orlando Sentinal.

"The United Nations should be kicked off of American soil once and for all. And the American people should demand that the United Nations be stopped from 'monitoring' American elections. The only ones who should ever oversee American elections are Americans."

US deploys troops to Turkey amid Syria unrest: US General

PressTV

Lieutenant General Mark Phillip Hertling

The commanding general of the US Army Europe (USAREUR) says the Pentagon has recently sent a number of American soldiers to Turkey in a bid to assist Ankara in handling the spillover of the Syrian crisis.

"We have had a relatively few number of US Army Europe personnel in Turkey recently," Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper quoted Lieutenant General Mark Phillip Hertling as saying.

The general added, "Some of that has been sharing intelligence."

Hertling noted that Turkey is concerned about how to handle the humanitarian crisis on its border with Syria.

"It's October. What [Turkey is] very concerned about is the approach of winter, and the way they can address the humanitarian crisis on the border," he pointed out.

If Turkey asks for corporation, American soldiers could be used in evacuation operations, Hertling said. “However, no request has been made yet by Turkey.”

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011.

Damascus says outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorists are the driving factor behind the unrest and deadly violence while the opposition accuses the security forces of being behind the killings.

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country and accuses Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey of arming the opposition.

Joe Klein's sociopathic defense of drone killings of children

Guardian
Glenn Greenwald

Reflecting the Obama legacy and US culture, the Time columnist says: "the bottom line is: 'whose 4-year-olds get killed?'"

On MSNBC's Morning Joe program this morning, which focused onMonday's night presidential debate, the former right-wing Congressman and current host Joe Scarborough voiced an eloquent and impassioned critique of President Obama's ongoing killing of innocent people in the Muslim world using drones. In response, Time Magazine's Joe Klein, a stalwart Obama supporter, offered one of the most nakedly sociopathic defenses yet heard of these killings. This exchange, which begins at roughly the 7:00 minute mark on the video embedded below, is quite revealing in several respects.

Here are the relevant portions of the exchange, which was triggered when regular guest Mike Barnicle announced how amazing he found it that so little public attention and debate is paid to the fact that Obama simply kills whomever he wants "without any kind of due process":

SCARBOROUGH: "What we're doing with drones is remarkable: the fact that over the past eight years during the Bush years - when a lot of people brought up some legitimate questions about international law - my God, those lines have been completely eradicated by a drone policy that says: if you're between 17 and 30, and within a half-mile of a suspect, we can blow you up, and that's exactly what's happening . . . . They are focused on killing the bad guys, but it is indiscriminate as to other people who are around them at the same time . . . . it is something that will cause us problems in the coming years" . . . .

KLEIN: "I completely disagree with you. . . . It has been remarkably successful" --

SCARBOROUGH: "at killing people" --

KLEIN: "At decimating bad people, taking out a lot of bad people - and saving Americans lives as well, because our troops don't have to do this . . . You don't need pilots any more because you do it with a joystick in California."

SCARBOROUGH: "This is offensive to me, though. Because you do it with a joystick in California - and it seems so antiseptic - it seems so clean - and yet you have 4-year-old girls being blown to bits because we have a policy that now says: 'you know what? Instead of trying to go in and take the risk and get the terrorists out of hiding in a Karachi suburb, we're just going to blow up everyone around them.'

"This is what bothers me. . . . We don't detain people any more: we kill them, and we kill everyone around them. . . . I hate to sound like a Code Pink guy here. I'm telling you this quote 'collateral damage' - it seems so clean with a joystick from California - this is going to cause the US problems in the future."

KLEIN: "If it is misused, and there is a really major possibility of abuse if you have the wrong people running the government. But: the bottom line in the end is - whose 4-year-old get killed? What we're doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror."

There are several points worth noting about this exchange:

(1) Klein's justification - we have to kill their children in order to protect our children - is the exact mentality of every person deemed in US discourse to be a "terrorist". Almost every single person arrested and prosecuted over the last decade on terrorism charges, when asked why they were willing to kill innocent Americans including children, offered some version of Joe Klein's mindset.

Here, for instance, is what the Pakistani-American Faisal Shazad said after he pled guilty to attempting to detonate a bomb in Times Square, in response to an angry question from the presiding US federal judge as to how he could possibly be willing to kill innocent children:

"Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It's a war, and in war, they kill people. They're killing all Muslims. . . .

"I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. And, on behalf of that, I'm avenging the attack. Living in the United States, Americans only care about their own people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."

The mentality of Faisal Shazad and Joe Klein are completely identical and indistinguishable: it is justified for us indiscriminately to kill even your innocent children because doing so will help stop you from killing ours.

And here's what Osama bin Laden had to say on the same topic:

"The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target. . . .

"Besides, terrorism can be commendable and it can be reprehensible. Terrifying an innocent person and terrorizing him is objectionable and unjust, also unjustly terrorizing people is not right. Whereas, terrorizing oppressors and criminals and thieves and robbers is necessary for the safety of people and for the protection of their property. . . .

"The terrorism we practice is of the commendable kind for it is directed at the tyrants and the aggressors and the enemies of Allah, the tyrants, the traitors who commit acts of treason against their own countries and their own faith and their own prophet and their own nation. Terrorizing those and punishing them are necessary measures to straighten things and to make them right. . . .

"It is not enough for their people to show pain when they see our children being killed in Israeli raids launched by American planes, nor does this serve the purpose. What they ought to do is change their governments which attack our countries. The hostility that America continues to express against the Muslim people has given rise to feelings of animosity on the part of Muslims against America and against the West in general. Those feelings of animosity have produced a change in the behavior of some crushed and subdued groups who, instead of fighting the Americans inside the Muslim countries, went on to fight them inside the United States of America itself."

When it comes to justifying the killing of civilians, the only difference between the Joe Kleins of the world and Osama bin Laden is that they're on different sides. To the extent one wanted to distinguish them, one could say that the violence and aggression brought by the US to the Muslim world vastly exceeds - vastly - the violence and aggression brought by the Muslim world to the US. That's just a fact.

UK spies implicated in CIA war crimes in Pakistan

Examiner
Robert Tilford

The High Court in Britain has been told that the UK intelligence officials could be “encouraging or assisting murder” and the commission of war crimes by providing assistance for then Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone strikes in Pakistani tribal areas.

The report confirms the fact that these CIA drone strikes are illegal under international law and constitutes a “war crime.”

War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict (also known as international humanitarian law) giving rise to individual criminal responsibility.

Examples of such conduct include "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war", the killing of prisoners, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devastation not justified by military, or civilian necessity.”

Article 22 of The Hague IV ("Laws of War: Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907") states that "The right of belligerents to adopt means of injuring the enemy is not unlimited” (source: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp).

“It is believed that the UK intelligence services provide intelligence to support the CIA’s clandestine program of drone strikes, which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and has had little impact on targeting militants” (see article: Court told UK spies ‘assisting’ CIA to murder Pakistanis http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-2-139290-Court-told-UK-spies-assisting-CIA-to-murder-Pakistanis).

See video:

'US violates intl. law on Pakistan drone strikes'

Crimes against Humanity: Iraq’s Mass Graves

Global Research
Dirk Adriaensens

* US Occupation authorities: guilty. They created, trained and armed the National Police and controlled the Ministry of Interior, responsible for death squad policies.

* Maliki government: guilty. They acted as local US stooges. They carried out the US counterinsurgency strategy, protected the kidnappers and prevented an investigation.

* UN Human Rights Bodies: guilty by negligence. They refused to nominate a special Human Rights rapporteur for Iraq. They refused toinvestigate thiscrime against humanity.

On 22 October 2012, Shafaq, an Iraqi News Agency, reports: “An official security source revealed on Monday that a mass grave was found in Sada area on the outskirts of Sadr City, belonging to the staff of the Department of missions of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research who disappeared in 2006.”

“A security force found 16 bodies buried in a mass grave in Sadr City in Baghdad belonging according to the confessions of one of the detainees of the staff members of the Department of Missions of the Ministry of Higher Education. The available intelligence reports that the bodies belong to employees of the Department of Missions who were abducted in 2006 and buried in a mass grave. The competent authorities are conducting DNA tests on the bodies to make sure of their identities and inform their families”.

Summary of Events

On Tuesday 14 November 2006 paramilitary gunmen in the uniforms of Iraqi National Police commandos raided a building belonging to the Ministry of Education in Baghdad’s Karrada district and arrested around 100 members of staff from two departments and around 50 visitors, according to lists compiled by the Minister of Education.

The raid took place in broad daylight, 1km from the Green Zone, in an area that contained several high-security compounds, including the department where passports are issued. According to a BBC correspondent the Karrada area, occupying an isthmus in the River Tigris, is ‘well protected with a heavy presence of Iraqi troops and several checkpoints’. The paramilitary force estimated at between at least 50 and 100 arrived in a fleet of some 20-30 camouflage pickup trucks of the kind employed by the Interior Ministry and rapidly established a cordon of the area. They stated that they were from an anti-corruption unit and were carrying out arrests ahead of a visit by the US ambassador. The paramilitaries made their arrests according to lists, confirming the identities of those present by their ID cards, then handcuffed and blindfolded the detainees and put them into the backs of pickups and into two larger vehicles.

The paramilitaries then made their exit through heavy traffic without opposition, despite the reported presence of a regular police vehicle. According to some witnesses, the paramilitaries made off in the direction of Sadr City.

The Iraqi government quickly declared that the number of detainees was far lower (18 guards, 16 members of staff and five visitors) and by Wednesday claimed that all of the detainees had been released after a series of dramatic police raids. A number of senior policemen, including the district police chief and the commander of a National Police paramilitary commando brigade and three other officers were reportedly detained for questioning over possible complicity. According to one report, an Interior Ministry spokesman claimed the senior police commanders ‘should be held responsible’.

Prime Minister Maliki declared that this was not a case of terrorism, but a dispute between ‘militias’.

The Education Ministry insisted that both Sunnis and Shiites were among those illegally detained.

US commanders stated that they would support all efforts to free the detainees.

By Thursday the Education Minister stated that around 70 of 150 detainees had been released and reported that some of those released had been tortured (some legs and hands had been broken) and that there were allegations that others had been killed.

US forces blow up Afghan civilian dead bodies: protesters

PressTV

Anti-US protesters in southern Afghanistan say US-led forces have blown up the dead bodies of three civilians, who were recently arrested and killed by the foreign forces in the country.

Hundreds of angry protesters blocked the Kandahar-Kabul highway in the city of Qalat on Monday, in response to the killings.

Foreign forces have reportedly refused to return the bodies of the victims to their families.

Protesters say the victims were all civilians and they had no connections with the Taliban militants.

This is while over Sunday and Monday, at least eight people were killed in US-led airstrikes in the Wardak and Kandahar provinces respectively situated in central and southern Afghanistan.

The loss of civilian lives at the hands of US-led foreign forces is a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan, which has dramatically increased anti-American sentiment and triggered anti-US protests across the war-torn country.

The issue is also a major source of friction between Kabul and Washington.

The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 under the pretext of combating terrorism.

The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but insecurity continues to rise across Afghanistan, despite the presence of thousands of US-led troopers in the violence-scarred country.

Lebanon Bombing: Impetus for US-NATO Planned Sectarian War

Global Research
Tony Catalucci

It was, starting at least in 2007, the goal of the US, Saudis, and Israelis to trigger a region wide sectarian war with which to overrun the governments of Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. This was documented in detail in Seymour Hersh’s 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection” which was covered in depth in, “Syrian War: The Prequel.

A recent bombing in Beirut, Lebanon left high ranking security chief Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan dead. Al-Hassan is described as “anti-Syrian.” Before Al-Hassan’s death was announced, and literally as bodies were still being pulled from the wreckage caused by the bombing, politicians from Saad Hariri’s faction began immediately blaming Syria for the attacks. Hariri himself also laid the blame on Syria, offering no other details or supporting evidence.

Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran have all condemned the bombing and cite it as a provocation to start a greater sectarian war, from which none will benefit. Each in turn suspect Israel and the West, as greater sectarian tension is expected to result, playing into long documented attempts by US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia to trigger a sectarian war they hope will be the downfall of Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran.

Suspicious op-eds in pro-Western “Lebanon Now” insist that Syria is responsible, and again without evidence, concludes that blaming Israel is inappropriate, and that the Wall Street-London militant beachhead is by far a lesser threat to Lebanon than what it calls “the most deadly virus” of President Bashar al-Assad’s Syria.

The blast has given impetus to Hariri’s mobs to flood into the streets, who will no doubt portray themselves to be as “spontaneous” and “independent” as US-engineered mobs were throughout the equally premeditated “Arab Spring.”

Hariri in 2007 was, according to US journalist Seymour Hersh, building an armed militant front in northern Lebanon, across the boarder from Homs, Syria. Many of these militants admittedly had direct ties to Al Qaeda, and with US, Israeli, and Saudi support, they were continuously armed, funded, and prepared for the sectarian bloodbath now unfolding. Homs to this day remains as one of the strongholds for terrorist militants operating in Syria.

While the Western media claims it is a shocking revelation that Al Qaeda is “amongst” the fighters attempting to overthrow the Syrian government, it is well documented that it was Al Qaeda from the very beginning who began armed operations against Syria, using Lebanon and Turkey as a base of operations, with explicit support from the West. The operations were carried out under the tenuous cover of “pro-democracy” protests and with a constant torrent of disinformation provided by the Western media.

While the current story in Lebanon develops, it will be useful to understand the role Hariri has so far played. The republished article below, originally posted in May, 2012, is by no means an exhaustive expose of Hariri and his role in executing the foreign agenda driven by Wall Street, London, Tel Aviv, Doha, and Riyadh, which starts well before 2007.

....
Originally posted May 21, 2012 -The United Nations has been inexplicably silent over revelations that the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other Persian Gulf states, are arming militants in Syria in direct violation of a UN brokered ceasefire. Additionally, the US has openly threatened to arm Kurd militants in Syria to “rise up” against the government. While in reality this constitutes a greater threat to neighboring Turkey, and perhaps an attempt to motivate Ankara to take a more aggressive stance against Syria, the threat of purposefully inciting more violence in a conflict that has allegedly claimed “10,000? lives, seems not only grossly irresponsible, but a violation of international peace.


Image: A bomb detonates in Syria, May 19, 2012, killing and maiming scores. This is the latest manifestation of overt US and Gulf State military support for terrorists attempting to destabilize and overthrow the Syrian government. The West has planned and prepared years in advance for implementing bloody regime change in Syria and Iran.

....
The West’s meddling in Syria does not end there. Recently, clashes have broken out in Lebanon, revealing a large base of operations supporting the destabilization in neighboring Syria, located along the Lebanese-Syrian border. The significance of this discovery, and extremist groups in Lebanon being directly involved, highlights the veracity of a 2007 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh titled, “The Redirection,” which exposed a joint US-Israeli-Saudi operation to create a violent extremist front and direct it at Hezbollah in Lebanon, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and at the Iranian government.

In the article, the fact that these extremist forces had direct ties to Al Qaeda was noted, including the fact that many of these militants either participated in fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, or were affiliated with groups that did:

“In 2005, according to a report by the U.S.-based International Crisis Group, Saad Hariri, the Sunni majority leader of the Lebanese parliament and the son of the slain former Prime Minister—Saad inherited more than four billion dollars after his father’s assassination—paid forty-eight thousand dollars in bail for four members of an Islamic militant group from Dinniyeh. The men had been arrested while trying to establish an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon. The Crisis Group noted that many of the militants “had trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.”

According to the Crisis Group report, Saad Hariri later used his parliamentary majority to obtain amnesty for twenty-two of the Dinniyeh Islamists, as well as for seven militants suspected of plotting to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies in Beirut, the previous year. (He also arranged a pardon for Samir Geagea, a Maronite Christian militia leader, who had been convicted of four political murders, including the assassination, in 1987, of Prime Minister Rashid Karami.) Hariri described his actions to reporters as humanitarian.

In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict.”" -”The Redirection,” Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker 2007

The report also made mention of extensive US funding behind Hariri’s faction, led then by Fouad Siniora, augmenting the creation of this militant force:

“The United States has also given clandestine support to the Siniora government, according to the former senior intelligence official and the U.S. government consultant. “We are in a program to enhance the Sunni capability to resist Shiite influence, and we’re spreading the money around as much as we can,” the former senior intelligence official said. The problem was that such money “always gets in more pockets than you think it will,” he said. “In this process, we’re financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. We don’t have the ability to determine and get pay vouchers signed by the people we like and avoid the people we don’t like. It’s a very high-risk venture.”

American, European, and Arab officials I spoke to told me that the Siniora government and its allies had allowed some aid to end up in the hands of emerging Sunni radical groups in northern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and around Palestinian refugee camps in the south. These groups, though small, are seen as a buffer to Hezbollah; at the same time, their ideological ties are with Al Qaeda.” -”The Redirection,” Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker 2007

It becomes clear then that Lebanon’s recent unrest is a result of a greater gambit targeting not just Syria, but the Hezbollah-Syrian-Iranian sphere of power, following the US-engineered “Arab Spring” installing proxy leaders across the Arab World to specifically support this last leg of geopolitical reordering. Such support has manifested itself as political support from US-proxy president Moncef Marzouki of Tunisia, and similar support from US-installed Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib, who’s nation has also committed not only arms and cash to Syrian terrorists, but fighters as well.


Image: Saad Hariri, former prime minister of Lebanon, is admittedly a co-conspirator in US-Israeli-Saudi designs to destabilize with militant extremists and violently overthrow the Syrian government. While Hariri feigns anti-Israeli sentiment and makes public calls for Lebanese to refrain from sectarian violence, he is the primary facilitator of both extremists crossing over into Syria, and their creating of chaos in the streets of Lebanon. A 2010 Fortune 500-funded International Crisis Group report describes in detail Hariri’s deep ties, and indeed dependence, on the West.

....
Now, it is reported that “anti-Assad clerics” have been shot by Lebanese soldiers – and just as was seen during the assassination of Rafic Hariri, demagogues are attempting to draw Sunni Muslims into a conflict with Shi’ias. A strategy of tension is being used to divide the Lebanese people into a deadly conflict mirroring the sectarian, not “democracy,” driven unrest ravaging Syria. With Saad Hariri, the US, and Saudi Arabia overtly working to undermine Syrian stability, it appears that all of the characters described by Hersh in 2007 are now openly implementing their plans.

The purposefully nebulous coverage by the Western media over violence in Lebanon so far, and a disingenuous depiction of it being “spill over” from Syria is meant to portray a general sense of chaos consuming the region. In reality, it is a premeditated destabilization dependent on fostering violence between Sunni and Shi’ia Muslims, just as was purposefully done in Iraq to balk an effective Sunni-Shi’ia alliance that achieved initial success fighting a foreign occupation led by the US starting in 2003.

While exposing the premeditated nature of the destabilization consuming Lebanon and Syria is essential, as well as calling for international condemnation of the US for openly attempting to escalate violence in the middle of a mediated ceasefire, calling on people across the Islamic World to refrain from falling into this sectarian trap, and being used as tools of their own division and subjugation by the West is equally important.

Saad Hariri portends that his alliance with the US, Israel, and the Saudis is simply an attempt to protect “Sunnis” from a “Shi’ia threat.” In reality, as empires have done all throughout history, Hariri’s invitation to the West to meddle in his own nation’s affairs will open the door to the destruction and dismemberment of not only his enemies, but inevitably his own movement as well. A faction too weak to fight its rivals is certainly too weak to fight an invited foreign imperial power that decides to overstay its welcome. A strategy of tension is at play in the Islamic World, the trap set, hatred for Israel and rival ideologies the bait. Time will answer the question, “have the people of the world learned enough collectively to avoid it?”