“…I think it [intervention] is a mistake in Syria, even if we had intervened more significantly a year or six months ago. We overestimate our ability to determine outcomes.” …former Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates
America sank down another foot this week into the Syrian quicksand. Israel is putting the next stage of the conflict’s tactics on display, not only to the world but to the Syrian military with its last two strikes.
As the rebel assault has ground to a halt, and the superior manpower of the Syrian army having shown it can conduct search and clear operations, the Free Syrian army is in a war of attrition it cannot win.
It is much easier to recruit when you are winning and casualties not too bad than when the tide turns to stalemate and losing ground.
The al-Nusra Front has been bleeding fighters away from the FSA. They are paying better and the AN brigades now have access to weapons the FSA does not. The al-Nusras had strategically focused on key infrastructure acquisition including some of the oil revenue prizes. Win or lose, Assad or no Assad, or even with a negotiated settlement, they aren’t leaving.
This email builds on the information in my 8 May email entitled, The Real Scare in Syria Is Not Chemical Weapons.” Attached below is a post from Joshua Landis’s Syria Comment blog. Landis is a professor at the University of Oklahoma and a specialist on Syria — his blog often provides useful, insightful information.
Particularly important, IMO, are Landis’ comments relating the conflict in this region to its spillover effects into Turkey (for more background see also: “Will Syria’s Revolt Disrupt the Turkish Borderlands?.”
Spillover is a very serious issue, because the Turkish province just north of the map below, Hatay Province, used to be part of Syria — it was in effect ceded to Turkey by France (and the UK and the League of Nation) in the late 1939s as part of a subtle deal to elicit Turkey’s neutral if they became involved in a war with Germany (WWII) — a promise Turkey kept.
The map herewith shows where Hatay is located:
Landis' comments, among other things, highlights some of the forces sucking Turkey may further into the Syrian quagmire. Note text marked in red below are my comments. The first half of this essay is a summary of Landis’ personal views on the situation in Levantine Syria, the second half is a series of essays outlining reasons why the US should not intervene militarily.
In a remarkably ignorant statement, the Swedish National Prosecutor has appealed a culture-sharing sentence to the Supreme Court with the motivation that sharing culture and knowledge “funds terrorism”. This follows a verdict from the Appeals Court that would have put an end to the witch-hunt of people sharing culture in Sweden, as it had handed out a sentence that was effectively too low to justify further persecution. In appealing to the Supreme Court, Kerstin Skarp of the Swedish National Prosecutor’s Office has shown every conceivable bit of ivory-tower ignorance.
“Does a compelling description of a terrorist attack, replete with ‘eyewitness accounts’ of the terrifying scene, and official pronouncements, constitute an actual event?” – Florida Atlantic University professor James Tracy.
By Sheila Casey (Special to Truth and Shadows)
The mainstream media story of the Boston Marathon bombing is of Chechen terrorists who unleashed weapons of mass destruction, killing four and wounding 264 in an unthinkable scene of “bodies flying into the street”, “so many people without legs” and “blood everywhere.”
For the vast majority of the American population, this is the truth and they feel no need to look further. Yet those who are willing to question the narrative we’ve been sold and take a hard look behind the curtain may be in for a surprise. Based on the video and photo record, it seems clear that the lead actor in this production—the most grievously wounded, as well as the man who fingered Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as the bomber—was faking his injuries, as were most of those allegedly hurt by the first bomb. We were told his name is Jeff Bauman, but since that can’t be verified and his survival is unbelievable to the point of being miraculous, we’ll simply call him Miracle Man.
It is amazing how an inexpensive technological development can render irrelevant billions of dollars of investment. In this case the security apparatus of Homeland Security. When I did the original 3-D printing story about three years ago the printers cost $50,000. Just a few weeks ago, when these printers hit the news big time the printers were $8,000. In this story the printer used was $2,600. I predict, within a year 3-D printers that can print guns will be less than $1000. Clearly dealing with terrorism requires new strategies, a different approach than asking people to surrender their civil liberties, and billions spent on building a huge intrusive security apparat. Click through to see the many pictures which will add to your understanding of what this issue involves.
Americans deserve to hear the dirty secrets of the CIA’s war on terror. We’ll all be better off with the truth.
In April 1975, Sen. Frank Church impaneled a special investigative committee to look into shocking accounts of CIA dirty tricks. The Church Committee ultimately published 14 reports over two years revealing a clandestine agency that was a law unto itself — plotting to assassinate heads of state (Castro, Diem, Lumumba, Trujillo), carrying out weird experiments with LSD, and suborning American journalists. As a result, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning the assassination of foreign leaders, the House and Senate established standing intelligence committees, and the United States set up the so-called FISA courts, which oversee request for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign agents.
But the war on terror unleashed the CIA once again to carry out dark deeds against America's enemies — torture, secret detention, and “rendition” to “black sites” across the world. How have Americans reckoned, this time, with the immoral and illegal acts carried out in their name? They have not: the CIA has retained control over the narrative. As the Constitution Project's Detainee Treatment report describes in great detail, the CIA falsely reported — to the White House as well as to the public — that torture “worked” in wresting crucial information from high-level detainees, and thus needed to be an instrument available to interrogators. Officials like Vice President Dick Cheney repeated ad nauseum that the CIA's dark arts had saved thousands of lives. Is it any wonder that a plurality of Americans think the United States should torture terrorists?
I wrote last month about the detainee treatment report, but I find it incredibly frustrating — and all too telling — that the findings were overwhelmed by the tidal wave of coverage of the Boston bombing. Because we fear terrorism far more viscerally than we feared communism — certainly by 1975 — we are all too susceptible to the view that America cannot afford to live by its own professed values. But of course that's what Chileans and Brazilians thought in the 1970s. That's why Sri Lankans have granted themselves the right to slaughter homegrown terrorists wholesale, and react furiously to any hint of criticism.
People give themselves a pass unless and until they are forced to face the truth, which is why a public airing of history is so important — and so politically fraught. There's always a compelling reason to avoid facing the ugly truth. In early 2009, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called for an independent commission to investigate allegations of torture. But President Barack Obama's spokesman said that the proposal would not be “workable.” We know what he meant: you can hardly blame the president for avoiding a colossal fight with Republicans over the past, especially, when he had so many fights he needed to wage over the future.
Obama probably thought that he could put the problem to rest by ending torture as well as the cult of secrecy surrounding CIA practices. He succeeded on the first count, but failed on the latter. In April 2009, he agreed to release the so-called “torture” memos written by President George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), as well as photos of prisoner abuse from Iraq and Afghanistan. But then, after a fierce debate inside the White House said to pit Obama's military commanders against his counselor, Gregory Craig, among others, the administration reversed itself. The president later signed legislation allowing him to withhold the pictures if he determined that the release would harm national security.
Once adopted, the logic of national security carries all before it.The release of the OLC memos, the detainee treatment report notes, was the high-water mark of Obama-era transparency on torture. CIA reports on the death of three prisoners in custody as well as on broad policy towards detainees remain classified; so do the results of inquiries by the armed forces criminal investigation division. The agency's ability to withhold information probably contributed to the Justice Department's decision not to pursue indictments on any of the 100 or so cases of CIA mistreatment which it investigated. Defense lawyers in the military trial of the “9/11 defendants” held at Guantanamo have had to work around a “protection order” which classifies entire subject areas — including anything related to the defendants' arrest or capture, the conditions in which they were held, or the interrogation techniques to which they were subjected. Whatever becomes of the defendants, Americans will learn nothing from the trials.
