Hersh on the Squalor that is Obama's Antinomial Syria Policy

Every six months to a year Seymour Hersh publishes a story in The London Review of Books that confirms for those of us who try to stay abreast of the daily news what we already know.

In his latest story, "Military to Military," Hersh relies on his longtime anonymous source within the Pentagon to inform us that following an exhaustive Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analysis completed in the summer of 2013 (prior to the false-flag Ghouta sarin attack), which concluded that regime change in Syria would lead to another Libya, a failed state rife with rival Salafi jihadists committing a series of escalating atrocities, the Joint Chiefs under General Martin Dempsey decided to undercut the Obama administration's covert regime-change program. Dempsey accomplished this by feeding intelligence to Russia, Israel and Germany, knowing full well that it would be passed along to Syria.

Why this is being considered a "bombshell" I don't know. It is reported in the mainstream press if not daily at least on a regular basis, and has been for years, that the Obama administration is pursuing a contradictory policy in relation to Syria. On the one hand Obama says "Assad must go"; while on the other hand, he makes sure not to grease the skids to Assad's exit. For instance, the U.S. does not supply antiaircraft weapons to the mythical "moderates" who are battling the Baathists, nor does it enforce a no-fly/no-go zone the type of which the U.S. implemented in Saddam Hussein's Iraq (what Hillary has in Strangelovian fashion been calling for from her lectern in the Democratic debates despite the presence of the Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile system). The one obvious fact for a news consumer about the U.S. policy towards Syria is that it is a contradiction.

Hersh gives us a plain-spoken insider's perspective how this contradiction has played out in the corridors of power over the last several years. In his opening paragraph, Hersh situates the U.S. contradiction on Syria within Obama's reboot of the Cold War with Russia and China, something which I believe will mark Obama in the annals as one of the worst leaders in U.S. history.

Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.

Hersh is merciless when it comes to Obama's favorite fiction, that of a decent non-jihadist opposition that is bravely fighting the bloodthirsty Syrian state; it doesn't exist, something that the DIA figured out and which, according to Hersh, motivated the Pentagon to undercut the CIA's funneling of weapons from Libya into Syria via Turkey. Once across the border, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) would promptly unload their Western-&-GCC supplied arms to the jihadists. This has all been reported before, as has been Turkey's active and nefarious role, but it is always helpful to read it again, and in such clean, clear prose.

One of the aspects of the disinformation campaign in the mainstream press that I have been interested in is the shifting explanations of how ISIS funds itself. The whopper told right from the get-go during the dark days of the collapse of the Iraqi Army and the capture of Mosul was that ISIS funded itself by stealing the hard currency in banks in territory under its control. Never mind the absurdity of claiming the outcome of an event, the capture of Mosul, as the source of its funding. There you have it. It was regularly repeated in the mainstream press when ISIS went on its blitzkrieg in June 2014.

The next ISIS funding source du jour became black market oil. No doubt there was some truth to this, but the revenue numbers thrown around seemed ludicrously inflated to me. It made no sense that with oil prices depressed globally the caliphate jihadists could be raking in $100 a barrel.

Then suddenly, after the Friday the 13th Paris massacre, when it became inconvenient to acknowledge any connection between the West, its allies and the Islamic State, the black market oil trade had to be erased as the explanation of how the caliphate generated funds to pay the wages for its tens of thousands of fighters and to provide all the weapons and munitions in their possession. The next funding source presented by the press was extortion and ad hoc taxation. The ISIS jihadists are shakedown artists raising money by fining women for an inappropriate hijab or bakers for baking bread.

All these excuses are thrown out there to obscure the obvious: The jihadists get their principal funding from the Gulf sheikhdoms. Saudi Arabia funds the Syrian opposition. And we know that there are precious few "moderates" who remain among the opposition. So the obvious inference is that the Gulf sheikhs must fund ISIS as well. As Hersh notes,

In the early stages of the talks, the adviser said, the Joint Chiefs tried to establish what Assad needed as a sign of their good intentions. The answer was sent through one of Assad’s friends: ‘Bring him the head of Prince Bandar.’ The Joint Chiefs did not oblige. Bandar bin Sultan had served Saudi Arabia for decades in intelligence and national security affairs, and spent more than twenty years as ambassador in Washington. In recent years, he has been known as an advocate for Assad’s removal from office by any means. Reportedly in poor health, he resigned last year as director of the Saudi National Security Council, but Saudi Arabia continues to be a major provider of funds to the Syrian opposition, estimated by US intelligence last year at $700 million.

More proof along these lines is Monday's lengthy story, "Behind the Black Flag: The Recruitment of an ISIS Killer," about front-line jihadist commander Hassan Aboud. Aboud started his own local brigade after the Arab Spring uprising, the Dawood Brigade, but in 2013 he was offered $2 million by ISIS to join them:

People who know Mr. Aboud describe a series of meetings with Islamic State leaders from Iraq, including with Abu Ali al-Anbari, a former Iraqi military officer who moved outside the city of Aleppo with a security contingent and a mission to recruit local commanders. 

Abu Ameen described a “secret operational phase” by ISIS in 2013 that targeted rebel and activist networks. Its timing aligned with Mr. Aboud’s disputes, he said, “and Dawood Brigade is one of the groups that was infiltrated.” 

At one point, activists said, Abu Ali called a meeting of rebel leaders in Idlib Province to discuss relationships with ISIS. He also sent ISIS agents to Sarmin to woo Mr. Aboud, who had begun to noticeably fall under the Islamic State’s sway. 

Mr. Dugheim said he mediated between Abu Issa and Mr. Aboud at the time. ISIS, he said, was flattering the brigade with attention and gifts. 

“ISIS offered Hassan Aboud a big amount of money — $2 million — when Hassan Aboud actually had nothing in hand,” Mr. Dugheim said. “They gave him weapons and money and food.” 

This sum could not be independently confirmed.

What jumped out at me was not only the amount, $2 million for a mid-level commander, but the year, 2013. ISIS didn't claim control of Fallujah until the beginning of 2014. That much money tossed around for someone like Aboud reeks of Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

In the end, Hersh provides a lucid picture of the squalor of the Obama administration's Syria policy, which he summarizes as follows:

The four core elements of Obama’s Syria policy remain intact today: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support.

One silver lining  is the Nobel Peace Prize winning POTUS will hasten the collapse of the radical neoliberal center. European leaders are already moving to embrace Hungary's Orbanism, as the radical left finds an electoral footing. We are seeing the sunset of the EU as NATO lackey and lickspittle to U.S. hegemony. Only good can come of this.

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I'm out of town for the holiday. The next post should be this weekend.

Russia Attempts to Save P5+1 Talks: S-300 Missile Batteries to Iran

Russia did its part to support the nuclear deal with Iran by announcing the sale of a S-300 antiaircraft missile system to the Islamic Republic (Neil MacFarquhar, "Putin Lifts Ban on Russian Missile Sales to Iran"). Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted as saying that supplying the missile system to Iran is meant as a spur the to the nuclear talks:

“It was done in the spirit of good will in order to encourage progress in the talks,” Mr. Lavrov said in a televised statement. “We believe that the need for this kind of embargo, indeed a separate, voluntary Russian embargo, has completely disappeared.” 

The missile deal does not pose a threat to Israel, Mr. Lavrov said, emphasizing that the S-300 is a defensive weapon.

This move is directed at the Saudis, who along with ten other nations (including the the U.S.) are bombing impoverished Yemen into rubble, the Israelis, who immediately cried foul, and the U.S. Senate as it sets about hijacking the P5+1 talks ("Senate Leaders and White House Make Their Cases on Iran Deal Legislation" by Jonathan Weisman and Michael Shear). The message is clear. The costs for scuttling the nuclear agreement have just gone up:

The five S-300 squadrons cannot shield all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, said Simon Saradzhyan, an expert on arms control and Russia at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, while noting that Russia just sold China the more sophisticated S-400 system. The official Tass news agency reported that in February Moscow offered Tehran an air defense system more modern than the S-300, but that no decision had been made. 

Still, military experts said the highly capable S-300 system would make it much harder for the United States or Israel to stage airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The question is whether Russia will actually deliver the missile battery. As was the case with delivery of the S-300 to Syria, often these announcements are used as bargaining chips, with Moscow suspending or delaying shipment; hence, the qualified support from an Iranian official:

“If Russia fulfills its commitment to deliver the S-300 missile system to Iran, it will be a step towards boosting the relations and collaborations between the two countries,” Iran’s deputy defense minister, Reza Talaei-Nik, told the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency on Monday. “It will be a step forward.”

But I do think a marker has been laid down by Russia, and it is not just the threat of increased costs for a future attack on Iran. The bigger message that Russia is broadcasting is that absent a broad, international understanding with Iran, sanctions, cobbled together over years, will be undermined:

Although the full details have not been disclosed, the Russian news media reported that Moscow had negotiated an oil-for-goods exchange with Iran that would involve acquiring some 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day in exchange for Russian equipment and goods. Iran has long been one of the main buyers of Russian wheat, for example.

As Obama beseeches Jewish lobbyists and wealthy donors in the White House to support the tentative nuclear agreement, the Senate is trying to comb out the poison pills from whatever bill Congress passes, poison pills that will prevent an override of an Obama veto. Right now the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is wrestling with two provisions: 1) White House certification every 90 days that Iran is not engaged in terrorism, and 2) a 60-day review period by Congress before the president can waive any sanctions.

My sense is that Congress will deliver a bill, and that Obama will be forced to veto it. Congress will deliver because wealthy, powerful interests -- Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel and her supporters -- demand it.

Obama -- never having challenged the false narrative of Iranian aggression; in fact, he has actively promoted it -- has no one to blame but himself. He is not operating from a position of strength. His point of view, that of a reasonable hawk, the realpolitik of a Zbigniew Brzezinski, does not have the broad public support of say the know-nothing, hard right "bomb, bomb Iran" or the well-read, anti-war progressive.

So Obama is sunk, as is the Democratic Party. The Democrat Party is hopelessly split. The activist base is antiwar, but the party apparatus actively supports the warfare state.

Whether Congress can override Obama's veto is almost beside the point. Obama is a lame duck, his antiwar stance never anything much more than a campaign promise. More war is coming.

Kerry's Bilious Bosspeak

If you are looking for a bilious dose of "Bosspeak," check out Secretary of State John Kerry's statement to the press yesterday:

Israel's right to terrorize nations in the Middle East must not be challenged. The Russian S-300 missile defense system would allow Syria some protection from Israeli acts of aggression. Therefore, because of the West's sacred concern for Israeli "security" (a.k.a., aggression), Syria cannot be allowed to possess this missile battery.

Things are not going well for the West. The Syrian Coalition bickers in Istanbul hotel conference rooms while the rebels continue to lose ground throughout Syria. A reliable signal that things are not going the rebels' way is the rocket barrages from Syria falling on Hezbollah turf in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley. Also, Steven Lee Myers and Michael Gordon report this morning in "Kerry Castigates Russia Over Syria-Bound Missiles" that the Al Nusra Front has been added to the UN blacklist:

Al Nusra Front, a Qaeda affiliate that is one of the most successful Syrian insurgent groups, was added on Friday to a global sanctions blacklist by the United Nations Security Council. The classification means the group is subject to an arms embargo and a freeze on its assets.

Beware. Rebel claims of government atrocities will begin to multiply as Syrian forces take full control of Qusayr. The goal of such claims being the rebel holy grail -- Western military intervention.

S-300 Missile Batteries Months Away

Yesterday's big story -- that Syria had accepted delivery of S-300 missile batteries from Mother Russia -- turned out to be Hezbollah TV puffery. This from an informative story this morning from Anne Barnard and Neil MacFarquhar, "Assad Warns Israel, Claiming a Stockpile of Russian Weapons":

Mr. Assad spoke in an interview broadcast on Al-Manar television, which is owned by his ally Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite militant group, further punctuating his message of growing confidence that he could prevail over an insurgency that is now more than two years old and has claimed more than 80,000 lives. 

Asked about Russian weapons deliveries, Mr. Assad said: “Russia is committed with Syria in implementing these contracts. What we agreed upon with Russia will be implemented, and part of it has been implemented over the recent period, and we are continuing to implement it.” 

He was vague on whether Russia’s deliveries had included a sophisticated S-300 air missile system — of particular concern to Israel because it could compromise its ability to strike Syria from the air and because those missiles can hit deep inside Israeli territory. The Israelis have said they would not abide a Syrian deployment of S-300s, suggesting they would use force to destroy them. 

Before the broadcast, Al-Manar sent out text messages that paraphrased Mr. Assad as saying Syria had already received a first shipment of the S-300 missiles. 

It was unclear why Al-Manar said before the broadcast that Mr. Assad had spoken about the missile system when it was not directly mentioned in the televised interview. Al-Manar later said it mischaracterized what Mr. Assad had said. But American and Israeli officials have been pressing Russia to defer the S-300 system delivery to Syria, and there were other indications that the paraphrased comments may have been a premature boast or bluff.

Reuters is reporting this morning that delivery of the missile batteries is months away.

The particularly interesting part of the Barnard and MacFarquhar piece is its description of the implosion of the Syrian Coalition:

All week, the 63-member Syrian Coalition, the main rebel group, has been entangled anew in petty disputes over how many seats to add. Its leadership announced Thursday that it would boycott the peace conference. It attributed the boycott to Iranian and Hezbollah interference in Syria, but analysts saw it as a position born of weakness and the inability to forge a strong, united bargaining front. 

“This is a low point,” said Amr al-Azm, a Syrian-born history professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio who tracks the opposition. “Unlike earlier screaming matches, you have a bad military situation on the ground and Geneva is looming and the opposition has nothing to play. This is as bad as it gets.”

None of this should be surprising. The Syrian Coalition has always been an artificial, slapdash construct of the Gulf monarchies and the West with little organic connection to the people fighting day to day on the ground in Syria. As Barnard and MacFarquhar note,

For the United States and its allies, the first challenge is creating a united delegation from an opposition that has always been anything but united. 

The Syrian Coalition has been plagued by internal turmoil since its inception in late 2011. 

The group has failed to deliver on most of its promises, ranging from distributing humanitarian aid to areas outside government control, to creating a unified military command, to becoming a serious government-in-exile. 

Instead the uneasy, distrustful members — dominated by long-exiled members of the Muslim Brotherhood, academics living abroad for decades and political activists fleeing Syria — have spent most of their time in luxury hotels arguing over which faction should claim what responsibility. 

The coalition’s problems have not been lost on Mr. Assad, who spoke contemptuously of his political adversaries in the Al-Manar television interview, describing them as exiles and paid stooges of hostile foreign governments — another indication that prospects for the Geneva conference are dim. 

“We will attend this conference as the official delegation and legitimate representatives of the Syrian people,” he said. “But, whom do they represent? When this conference is over, we return to Syria, we return home to our people. But when the conference is over, whom do they return to — five-star hotels?”

Al-Assad Says Syria Has S-300 Missile Batteries

The big story this morning being reported by Anne Barnard from Beirut, "Assad Says Syria Has Received Advanced Missiles From Russia," was widely predicted to be the outcome of the European Union's decision to lift its arms embargo on Syria. -- Russia would respond by shipping the S-300 air defense missiles. And so it has come to pass, though Israel denies that any shipment has been made. Here's what "Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of strategic and intelligence affairs, told an audience of reporters and diplomats in Jerusalem on Tuesday":

He said that the Russian S-300 systems were not just defensive weapons but could also be used offensively. With a range of around 125 to 185 miles, he said, they could threaten civilian and military aircraft deep inside Israeli territory.

The question now is whether Israel will make another bombing run, adding to the three it has made so far this year. Israel says it will. If so, how will Syria and Hezbollah respond?

These are the questions the West and the Gulf monarchies want us to be asking ourselves. They prefer people to be transfixed by the fear of force rather than making an accurate assessment of the situation. An accurate assessment would surely take note that news of equal weight to delivery of the S-300s is the shift in positions by the Syrian opposition meeting since last week in Istanbul. In Bernard's story she says that Assad's departure is now an opposition prerequisite for peace talks. Just yesterday Hala Droubi and Rick Gladstone reported in "Chances of U.N. Peace Talks on Syria Appear Dim as Both Sides Dig In" that

The Syrian Coalition, the main umbrella opposition group, said that it welcomed the idea of negotiations but that Mr. Assad and his security and military subordinates must “step down and be excluded from the political process.” 

While the Syrian Coalition statement did not call those demands preconditions to negotiations, it did not commit to attending an international conference under United Nations auspices in Geneva, which both the Americans and the Russians have been pressing to hold as early as next month.

The story by Droubi and Gladstone is worth reading to get a sense of the bloated gravy train that the Syrian Coalition is. It has many masters, many funders. The West is trying to garnish the group with moderates. At this point the opposition has less to do with the democratic aspirations of working people than an upscale brothel in Doha:

A bloc of four leading anti-Assad activist organizations issued a statement strongly criticizing the Syrian Coalition, asserting that it had “failed to fulfill its responsibility to represent the great Syrian people’s revolution at the organizational, political and humanitarian levels.” 

Samir Nachar, a member of the Syrian Coalition, said in a telephone interview that the opposition was under pressure by supportive foreign governments to add new liberal members “to bring internal balance to the group.” Others said that of 23 new names suggested, participants in the Istanbul meeting had agreed on only eight of them.

The resolution passed yesterday in Geneva by the U.N. Human Rights Council calling for an end to the fighting in Qusayr and criticizing the intervention of foreign fighters on behalf of the Assad government is an absurdity. Everyone knows that foreign fighters and arms are what makes the rebellion possible at this point. Without foreign fighters and arms the Syrian uprising would have gone the way of Bahrain long ago.

This is statecraft on full display. And what does one see? Not to be too Blakean here, but one sees the operation of dark Satanic Mills. Great Powers thrive on war. With peace talks scuttled by the demands of a farcical opposition -- an opposition fed and clothed by the West and its monarchical allies in the Persian Gulf -- it is clear the West desires more war.

Twelve years after 9/11 and with war winding down in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- or so Obama assured us last week -- great diplomatic effort is being spent ginning up the next war. The Arab Spring seems a distant memory.

Europe to End Arms Embargo on Syria + Wars Spreads in Lebanon

This morning Steven Erlanger has a good summary, "Europe Seeks to Press Russia and Syria on Arms," of the ongoing diplomatic struggles in the Syrian civil war. Earlier in the week, the EU, due to British and French insistence, lifted the arms embargo on Syria:

Britain and France were the prime movers in strong-arming other European Union countries to let the arms embargo on Syria lapse, while other of the union’s sanctions, aimed more specifically at the Assad government, were renewed. 

Part of the debate in a long meeting was to promise that neither Britain nor France would begin to deliver any arms, if they chose to do so, until the beginning of August, to allow the Geneva peace process to get traction, the officials explained.

The lifting of the arms embargo is widely interpreted as a Western ploy to gain leverage prior to the peace conference being planned to take place in Geneva in June. As Colum Lynch points out in his Turtle Bay blog that appears on Foreign Policy's web site:

But the decision to end the embargo in two months hasn't resulted in any immediate calls or plans for arming the opposition. Instead, Russia cited the decision today in defending its own move to deliver S-300 air defense missiles, claiming it would deter foreign intervention. "We consider that such steps will restrain some hotheads from the possibility of giving this conflict, or from considering a scenario that would give this conflict, an international character with the participation of external forces," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters, according to Interfax news agency. 

Jean Marie Guéhenno, a former French official and under secretary-general for peacekeeping who served as a top advisor to former U.N.-Arab League Syria envoy Kofi Annan, said that the decision to block the maintenance of the European arms embargo has merely provided political cover to Russia and other regime supporters to continue its arms sales. Meanwhile, there's little fresh hope that Western powers will enter the conflict on behalf of the rebels. 

"I think it backfired and exposed the weakness of the West, in general," Guéhenno told Turtle Bay. "This issue of arming or not arming is more a bluff than anything else. It's more about doing something to show you're doing something than actually doing something. It will be seen by the Russians, who are not fools, as a sign of weakness rather than strength."

The Israelis are making thinly-veiled threats of additional bombing runs should Russia make delivery of the S-300s.

Meanwhile on the ground the war spreads. There were more rockets launched on Tuesday against the pro-Hezbollah village of Hermel on the Lebanese border. The source of the rockets was likely the Lebanese town of Arsal, which is mainly Sunni. Arsal was also the source of a border checkpoint attack that left three Lebanese soldiers dead. This from today's story, "Rocket and Gun Attacks Add to Fears That Syria’s Strife Is Reaching Lebanon," by Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada:

Arsal, which is near a porous border that has been used as a conduit for weapons, has in recent months become a hub for Syrian rebels and their supporters, as well as a temporary home for thousands of Syrian refugees. The clash Tuesday was the second in the area this year. In February, gunmen ambushed a Lebanese Army convoy near the town, killing a captain and a sergeant.

General Salim Idris, the head of the West's confected Free Syrian Army, threatened Lebanese president Michel Suleiman with more attacks inside his country if Hezbollah was not prevented from crossing into Syria. This wanton, profligate bellicosity -- you're either with us or against us -- is thoroughly Western. There should be no doubt, and I don't think there is among those who are paying attention, who is responsible for the increase in suffering as the war widens from a civil conflict to a regional conflagration.

West Trying to Make War Worse

"Diplomatic Stirrings on Syria," an unsigned editorial that appears in today's New York Times, is interesting in what it reveals about the confused and contradictory positions that the paper has staked out on the Syrian civil war. Calls for escalation (Bill Keller's embarrassingly superficial Monday column) are combined with warnings about those "who would lead the country unwisely into war"; Assad is accused of using chemical weapons without a word about Carla Del Ponte's Sunday bombshell that evidence of the use of nerve gas exists but it points to the rebels; Russia is blamed exclusively for the continuation of the conflict because of its support for Assad but not a word about the gulf states acting as quartermaster for Wahhabi jihadists threatening a region-wide Sunni-Shiite sectarian war.

As John Kerry makes phone calls in Rome in an attempt to organize his peace conference, Russia is planning a sale to Syria of advanced S-300 missile batteries, an obvious response to Israel's multiple unanswered bombing runs and warhawk agitation in the West for a no-fly zone. On the ground, Hezbollah fighters are proving superior to the rebels. All in all it's not going the Empire's way. What is cause for concern is that the West, unable and unwilling to acknowledge its limitations, will continue to pursue its confused and contradictory positions and make the war worse.