Photo by DonkeyHotey | CC BY 2.0
Is Russiagate an investigation of foreign meddling into US elections or retaliation for Washington’s stunning defeat in Syria?
The opening of the Russiagate investigation closely coincides with the Battle of Aleppo, which was the turning point in the 6 year-long Syrian War. In July 2016 –the same month the FBI reportedly began its Russia hacking investigation — Russian-led forces launched their long-awaited Aleppo military offensive. Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah fighters surrounded the city cutting off critical supplylines to the Sunni militants who remained inside a rapidly shrinking cauldron. In a bitterly-contested, winner-take-all slugfest, loyalist troops flushed the terrorists out of their hideouts and spiderholes, corralled them into smaller, isolated pockets, and forced them to either surrender or retreat. After months of aerial bombardment and door-to-door urban warfare, the opposition collapsed, the Syrian Army regained control of the city, and the broken jihadist militias fled eastward towards Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and beyond.
The CIA’s defeat was a humiliating blow to Director John Brennan whose support for mostly foreign-born extremists was supposed to achieve Washington’s regime change aspirations with less fallout than a full-blown ground war like Iraq. But the plan failed miserably casting serious doubt on Washington’s ability to maintain its regional hegemony or global…