Here are the most-informative of Anadolu\u2019s war-maps:<\/p>\n
The first presents the effort by many countries to eliminate ISIS control over the large Iraqi city of Mosul. A remarkably frank remark made in this map is “An escape corridor into Syria will be left for Daesh [ISIS] so they can vacate Mosul” — an admission that the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari team want the ISIS jihadists who are in Mosul to relocate into Syria to assist the U.S.-Saudi-Qatari effort there to overthrow and replace the Assad government:<\/p>\n
![\"screen-shot-2016-10-18-at-9-10-32-pm\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screen-Shot-2016-10-18-at-9.10.32-PM-790x578.png\")
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The second is about the Egyptian government’s trying to assist the Syrian government’s defense against the Saudi-U.S.-Qatari invasion of Syria, at Aleppo, where Syria’s Al Qaeda branch is trying to retain its current control over part of that large city. The Saud family are punishing the Egyptian government for that:<\/p>\n
![\"screen-shot-2016-10-18-at-9-09-14-pm\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screen-Shot-2016-10-18-at-9.09.14-PM-790x637.png\")
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Here is Russia’s proposed gas-pipeline, which would enable Russia to reduce its dependence upon Ukraine (through which Russia\u00a0currently pipelines its gas into Europe). Obama\u00a0conquered and took over Ukraine in February 2014 via his coup that overthrew the\u00a0democratically elected neutralist Ukrainian President there<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n In addition, there is the following map from\u00a0oil-price.com<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n That map shows the competing Shia (Russia-backed) and Sunni (U.S.-backed) gas-pipelines into Europe \u2014 the central issue in the\u00a0invasion and defense of Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n On 21 September 2016, Gareth Porter headlined \u201cThe War Against the Assad Regime Is Not a \u2018Pipeline War\u2019,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he pointed out some errors in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s account that had been published under the headline \u201cSyria: Another Pipeline War\u201d<\/span><\/a>. Porter argued: \u201cIt’s easy to understand why that explanation would be accepted by many anti-war activists: it is in line with the widely accepted theory that all the US wars in the Middle East have been \u2018oil wars\u2019 \u2014 about getting control of the petroleum resources of the region and denying them to America’s enemies. But the \u2018pipeline war\u2019 theory is based on false history and it represents a distraction from the real problem of US policy in the Middle East \u2014 the US war state’s determination to hold onto its military posture in the region.\u201d Porter ignored the key question there, as to why \u201cthe US war state\u201d has a \u201cdetermination to hold onto its military posture in the region.\u201d Opening and protecting potential oil-gas-pipeline routes are important reasons why. Clearly, Kennedy\u2019s documentation that the CIA was trying as early as 1949 to overthrow Syria\u2019s secular government so as to allow to the Sauds a means of cheaply transporting their oil through Syria into Europe, remains unaffected by any of the objections that Porter raised to Kennedy\u2019s article. The recent portion of Kennedy\u2019s timeline is affected, but not his basic argument.<\/span><\/p>\n Furthermore, any military strategist knows that \u201cthe US war state\u201d is intimately connected to the U.S. oil-and-gas industries, including pipelines (\u201coilfield services\u201d) as well as marketing (Exxon etc.). And Porter got entirely wrong what that connection (which he ignored) actually consists of: it consists of U.S. government taxpayer-funded killers for those U.S. international corporations. Here is how Barack Obama put it<\/span><\/a>, when addressing graduating cadets at West Point, America\u2019s premier military-training institution:<\/span><\/p>\n Russia\u2019s aggression toward former Soviet states unnerves capitals in Europe, while China\u2019s economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors.\u00a0 <\/span>From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums.\u00a0 <\/span>And even as developing nations embrace democracy and market economies, 24-hour news and social media makes it impossible to ignore the continuation of sectarian conflicts and failing states and popular uprisings that might have received only passing notice a generation ago.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n It will be your generation\u2019s task to respond to this new world.\u00a0 <\/span>The question we face, the question each of you will face, is not whether America will lead, but how we will lead — not just to secure our peace and prosperity, but also extend peace and prosperity around the globe.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n He was saying there that America\u2019s military is in service to U.S.-based international corporations in their competition against those of Russia, Brazil, China, India, and anywhere else in which \u201crising middle classes compete with us.\u201d Those places are what Gareth Porter referred to as \u201cAmerica’s enemies.\u201d Economic competitors are \u201cenemies.\u201d Obama thinks that way, and even a progressive journalist such as Porter doesn\u2019t place into a skeptical single-quotation-mark-surround, the phrase \u2018America\u2019s enemies\u2019 when that phrase is used in this equational context. On both the right (Obama) and the left (Porter), the equation of a government and of the international corporations that headquarter in its nation \u2014 the treatment of the military as being an enforcement-arm for the nation\u2019s international corporations \u2014 is simply taken for granted, not questioned, not challenged.<\/span><\/p>\n RFK Jr. was correct, notwithstanding some recent timeline-errors. Syria is \u201cAnother Pipeline War,\u201d and Obama is merely intensifying it. (On 9 November 2015, I offered a different account<\/span><\/a> than RFK Jr. provided of the recent history \u2014 the Obama portion \u2014 of the longstanding U.S. aggression against Syria; and it links back to Jonathan Marshall\u2019s excellent articles on that, and to other well-sourced articles, in addition to primary sources, none of which contradict RFK Jr.\u2019s basic view, \u201cSyria: Another Pipeline War.\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n Another portion of Porter\u2019s commentary is, however, quite accurate: America\u2019s \u2018Defense\u2019 (or mass-killing-abroad) industries (such as Lockheed Martin) are not merely servants of the U.S. government, but are also served by the U.S. government: \u201cthe US war state’s determination to hold onto its military posture in the region\u201d is protection of the major market \u2014 the Middle Eastern market \u2014 for U.S. \u2018Defense\u2019 products and services. It\u2019s not only America\u2019s firms in the oil, gas, and pipelines, industries, which benefit from America\u2019s military; it is also America\u2019s firms in the mass-killing industries, that do.<\/span><\/p>\n To the extent that the public (here including Barack Obama and Gareth Porter) do not condemn the presumption that \u201cthe business of America is business,\u201d or that a valid function of U.S.-taxpayer-funded military and other foreign-affairs operations is to serve the stockholders of U.S. international corporations, the hell (such as in Syria) will continue. Gareth Porter got lost among the trees because he failed to see (and to point to) that forest.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse Turkey\u2019s Anadolu News Agency, though government-run, is providing remarkably clear and reliable diagrammatic descriptions of the current status of the U.S-and-fundamentalist-Sunni, versus Russia-and-Shia-and-NON-fundamentalist-Sunni, sides, in the current oil-and-gas war in the Middle East, for control over territory in Syria, for construction of oil-and-gas pipelines through Syria supplying fuel into the world\u2019s largest energy-market: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":277560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[30,535,524,754,1092,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-277559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-big-brother","9":"tag-global-news","10":"tag-russia","11":"tag-syria","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-white-house","14":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"screen-shot-2016-10-18-at-9-15-23-pm\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screen-Shot-2016-10-18-at-9.15.23-PM-790x613.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"screen-shot-2016-10-18-at-9-47-16-pm\"](\"http:\/\/www.washingtonsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Screen-Shot-2016-10-18-at-9.47.16-PM.png\")
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