{"id":332230,"date":"2017-10-26T21:02:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T20:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=332230"},"modified":"2017-10-26T21:13:44","modified_gmt":"2017-10-26T20:13:44","slug":"trumps-hate-iran-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-hate-iran-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s Hate-Iran Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

On October 19th, the far-right Foundation for Defense of Democracy (FDD) held a \u201cNational Security Summit\u201d<\/span><\/a> which featured as speakers both Donald Trump\u2019s CIA chief Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump\u2019s National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, both of them (as will be shown here by extensive excerpts from their speeches) whipping up hatred against Shia Iran and against Shia Muslims generally. <\/span><\/p>\n

They presented Shia Iran \u2014 not Sunni Saudi Arabia \u2014 as being the most dangerous source of radical Islamic terrorism. Donald Trump during his Presidential campaign had spoken frequently against \u2018radical Islamic terrorism\u2019, but everybody thought it pertained to the people who had perpetrated the 9\/11 attacks, and those individuals were all fundamentalist Sunnis, not any Shias, and no one from Iran. But now, nine months into his Presidency, it\u2019s clear that he was referring instead to Shia Muslims (and to Iran most of all), which Muslim category the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia hate, and call an \u201cexistential threat\u201d to themselves, and so they even bomb Shia parts of their own country<\/span><\/a>. Actually, the royal family who own Saudi Arabia \u2014 the fundamentalist Saud family \u2014 were said by Osama bin Laden\u2019s financial bagman to have been the main donors to Al Qaeda<\/span><\/a>; and, furthermore, Al Qaeda itself is also fundamentalist Sunni, and doesn\u2019t even allow Shiite members.<\/span><\/p>\n

15 of the 19 jihadists who did 9\/11 were fundamentalist Sunnis from Saudi Arabia. The other four were likewise fundamentalist Sunnis. None of them were from Shia Iran, nor were there any Shia from anywhere. Al Qaeda was, and is, exclusively a fundamentalist-Sunni operation \u2014 no Christians, no Jews, no Shia, no atheists, but only fundamentalist Sunnis, such as are the royal families of the Arabic countries, all of whom are Sunnis, and most of whom are fundamentalist<\/i> Sunnis, like Al Qaeda itself is. <\/span><\/p>\n

The fundamentalist-Sunni aristocrats in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Pakistan, fund Al Qaeda and the other anti-Western jihadist organizations. And, like that former bagman for Al Qaeda said,<\/span> “Without the money of the \u2014 of the Saudi, you will have nothing”<\/span><\/a> of Al Qaeda, because the members weren\u2019t merely jihadists but they were paid \u201csalaries\u201d and were supporting their families from their pay. The bag-man was asked \u201cTo clarify, you\u2019re saying that the al-Qaeda members received salaries?\u201d and he answered, \u201cThey do, absolutely.\u201d That\u2019s why<\/i>, \u201cWithout the money of the \u2014 of the Saudi, you will have nothing\u201d of Al Qaeda. Furthermore, the FBI traced who paid the apartment costs and the flight training for at least two of the 19 terrorists and found that the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, and his wife, were paying those costs directly out of their personal accounts<\/span><\/a>. Bandar was so close a friend of George W. Bush and of the senior Bush, that his nickname in Washington was \u201cBandar Bush.\u201d But G.W. Bush needed deniability that he was personally involved in any way in the 9\/11 attacks; and, so, when his CIA chief George Tenet finally absolutely demanded private access to the President to tell him, with no one else present in the room, details of the plan that was being prepared by Al Qaeda, the President\u2019s gatekeeper and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said no; she told Tenet, on 10 July 2001, \u201cWe\u2019re not quite ready to consider\u00a0this. We don\u2019t want the clock to\u00a0start ticking\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and the stunned Tenet walked out of Rice\u2019s office, furious, but still a member of Bush\u2019s team. Bush had no friends in Tehran, but he had some very close friends in Riyadh. While his buddy Bandar was intimately involved in the plan\u2019s details even to the point of his paying for those flying-lessons, Bush himself didn\u2019t want to know until the event itself had actually occurred.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran had nothing to do with 9\/11, but because the U.S. Government is controlled not only by U.S. billionaires but also largely by the fundamentalist-Sunni Saud family, which hate Shia, and by the equally highly ethnocentric Jewish billionaires (both in the U.S. and in Israel), who likewise hate Shia and especially hate Iran, and who are as intensely tribal against Shia Muslims as the Arab oil-monarchs are, the U.S. Government fined Iran $10.5 billion for having perpetrated 9\/11 which they didn\u2019t<\/span><\/a>, and refused even to prosecute the Sauds and the other Arab aristocrats who had actually funded the 9\/11 attacks, and without whose funding those attacks couldn\u2019t have happened. (Of course, Bush, Cheney, and their friends who also were on the operation\u2019s inside, have likewise never been investigated, much less prosecuted.) As is normally the case for aristocrats, their \u2018blood-line\u2019 is at least as important to these individuals as is their formal religious affiliation; but since the top 0.01% routinely know each other from doing business together, they can bond with one-another, even on opposite sides of a blood-feud, at least enough to serve each other as reliable negotiating-partners together, against whatever they mutually consider to constitute their shared enemies \u2014 in their cases (of the billionaires in both Israel and Saudi Arabia): Iran specifically, and Shia generally.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, as I previously documented under the headline \u201cAll Islamic Terrorism Is Perpetrated by Fundamentalist Sunnis<\/span><\/a>, Except Terrorism Against Israel,\u201d what the Jewish billionaires and their agents are urging as U.S. \u2018defense\u2019 policy in the Middle East, is that the U.S. and its citizens and its taxpayers and its military, will be waging Israel\u2019s wars, at U.S. expense in regards to all of those sovereign U.S. assets and responsibilities. It\u2019s not enough for these billionaires, that the U.S. Government is donating $3.8 billion each and every year to the Israeli Government. They demand yet more \u2014 lots more \u2014 and this event at FDD, where those two high Trump officials addressed these agents for mainly Jewish billionaires, offered promises of the red meat, dripping with Iranian and Shiite blood, that they all craved to feast upon. <\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s important background to understanding what McMaster and Pompeo said at the neoconservative FDD, because what they said there was oblivious to all of this reality, as if they didn\u2019t even know about it (and even though they actually do<\/i> know about it; they know everything that\u2019s being reported here, which is why they\u2019d never respond to the charges that are being leveled here). Trump thus is now clearly an agent of the Sauds and of Israel \u2014 just like his five immediate predecessors in the White House, had been.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a long time now, U.S. policies regarding the Middle East have been controlled by the Saudi-Israeli alliance<\/span><\/a>: Whereas both the Saud family and the billionaires who run Israel, want to destroy Iran and would be delighted if the U.S. Government did that job for them, the case in the U.S. for this policy is publicly being made only<\/i> by Israel and its lobbies in Washington, of which the FDD is one. The American populace think that it\u2019s okay for the U.S. Government \u2014 U.S. taxpayers \u2014 to be paying $3.8 billion as an annual donation to the apartheid Government of Israel, having this money extracted from U.S. taxpayers each and every year, but Americans know that the Sauds, who own Saudi Arabia, are head-choppers, which looks far worse on television than do Israel\u2019s very public urgings against \u201cthe threat from Iran\u201d; and, so, the Israel lobby carries the Sauds\u2019 water in Washington; and the FDD is a part of that<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s thus a hate-Iran operation, which could just as well have been established by fundamentalist-Sunni billionaires, as it was, in fact, established by ethnocentric Jewish billionaires (with help from the world\u2019s wealthiest family, the Sauds<\/span><\/a>) funding outfits such as FDD. <\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, for the American group, there is the hate-Russia operation, but that hate-operation is entirely from the U.S. aristocracy, authentically a domestic U.S.-aristocratic one, not from any foreign aristocracy (except to the extent that those other aristocracies participate<\/i> in it). Whereas Israel and the Sauds want to destroy Iran, the U.S. aristocrats simply want to conquer Russia<\/span><\/a>. However, Pompeo, at the end of his excerpts that will be cited here, makes clear that what he actually wants is regime-change in Russia: to replace Russia\u2019s leader, Vladimir Putin. Prior to Putin, until 2000, when the drunkard Boris Yeltsin, and, before him, the well-intentioned but naive Mikhail Gorbachev, had led the newly independent nation of Russia, the U.S. aristocracy had their tentacles sunk deep into the new Russian economy<\/span><\/a> and they were satisfied, even though the Russian people were now suffering poverty far more even than they had been suffering it under communism. Putin got Russia\u2019s economy humming<\/span><\/a>, but in order to do it, he needed to kick out the people that Harvard had brought in. If the U.S. aristocracy can\u2019t run Russia as a colony, the U.S. Government will be determined to overthrow and replace Putin or any other Russian leader who blocks them from controlling Russia\u2019s economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

FDD, therefore, is basically an Israeli operation, but it also represents the aristocracies of Saudi Arabia<\/span><\/a> and of the U.S. itself. But, the Sauds lead the other Arabic royal families also; and, so, outfits such as FDD are, for example, also fronts for the six royal families who own UAE<\/span><\/a> \u2014 and, of course, those too are fundamentalist Sunni families. And, all of those families too are major funders of Al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadist groups<\/span><\/a>. But the U.S. regime blames Iran and Shia instead, because the U.S. regime serves the Sunni royals and Israel\u2019s billionaires, even while calling itself \u2018Christian\u2019 (which is especially hypcritical because the U.S. Government that our Founders created was entirely non-sectarian, and our Constitution doesn\u2019t mention any god at all \u2014 but that Government is now gone<\/span><\/a>; it doesn\u2019t exist anymore).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

MCMASTER:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

I want to thank FDD for the work it’s done over the years on so many critical issues, including the early work on the threat posed by radical Islamist ideology. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia and Iran aid, abet, and sustain the murderous Assad regime in Syria. That axis perpetuates a sectarian civil war that strengthens Islamist terrorists, who portray themselves as patrons and protectors of parties in that conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran, in turn, uses that same conflict, and conflicts in Iraq and Yemen to pursue hegemonic aims, and threaten Israel and Saudi Arabia and others with their terrorist and militia proxies. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The president’s new strategy toward Iran is a good example. Instead of focusing almost exclusively on JCPOA [Obama\u2019s Iran deal], the new strategy considers the full range of Iran’s destabilizing behavior and malign activities, including its material and financial support for terrorism and extremism; its complicity in the Assad regime’s atrocities against the Syrian people; its unrelenting hostility to Israel; its repeated threats to freedom of navigation, especially strategically, in the Persian Gulf; its cyberattacks against the U.S., Israel, and America’s allies and partners in the Gulf; its grievous human rights abuses; and its arbitrary detention of foreigners, including U.S. citizens, on specious and false grounds.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the president made clear in his speech on October 13, our strategy integrates all elements of national power, and is oriented on neutralizing the government of Iran’s destabilizing influence, and constraining its aggression, particularly its support for terrorism and militants.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, revitalizing our traditional alliances and regional partnerships as bulwarks against Iranian subversion, and to restore a more stable balance of power in the region, and this is an area where the president’s leadership has paid off tremendously, as you’ve seen, with the growing together, of a mutual understanding, much closer relationships and common understanding of problems and common action with our traditional allies and partners in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

They are denying the Iranian regime, and especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps funding towards malign activities \u2014 this is where Juan’s work is extremely important \u2014 and opposing IRGC [Iranian Republican Guard] activities that extort the wealth of the Iranian people [like taxes do in America]; and countering threats to the United States and our allies from ballistic missiles, and other asymmetric weapons.<\/span><\/p>\n

What we must do is we must rally the international community to condemn the IRGC’s gross violations of human rights [but not those by the U.S. Government], and its unjust detention of American citizens and other foreigners. And last, we must deny Iran all paths to a nuclear weapon.<\/span><\/p>\n

So this is the strategic direction that the president has given us. Our next challenge is to execute, and as I mentioned, rally all of our friends to the cause. As the Secretary of State said at the CSIS yesterday, states that use terror as an instrument of policy will only see their international reputation and standing diminish.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is the obligation, not choice of every civilized nation to combat the scourge of terrorism. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

What we would like to see in Iraq is a stable Iraq that is not aligned with Iran. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The United States has a strong interest in a strong Iraq. I would say that others who are operating within Iraq who were subverting Iraq, Iran in particular, are attempting to keep Iraq perpetually weak and are applying to Iraq what you might call a Hezbollah model where you have a weak government, a government that is deliberately weakened and a government that is reliant on Iran for support while Iran grows malicious and in the illegal arm groups that lie outside of that government\u2019s control.<\/span><\/p>\n

And malicious and terrorist groups that can be turned against that government if that government takes action against Iranian interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, this is a model you see sadly in the beautiful country of Lebanon, it is a model I think you see in Syria where about 80 percent of those that are fighting on behalf of the brutal and murderous Assad regime or Iranian proxies.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a model you see attempted to be applied in Iraq and it\u2019s something you can see maybe trying to play out in Yemen as well, they\u2019re trying to apply there. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Iran is very good at pitting communities against each other. This is something they share with groups like ISIS, with Al Qaeda you know, they pit communities against each other because they use tribal and ethnic and sectarian conflicts to gain influence by portraying themselves as a patron or protector of one of the parties in the conflict and then they use that invitation to come in and to help to advance their agenda and in Iran\u2019s case I think it\u2019s a hegemonic design.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s based on improving and increasing their ability to threaten Israel, to threaten the United States and Saudi Arabia and so forth. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

If you think about one of the greatest sources of strength for ISIS and groups like ISIS it is again their ability to portray themselves as protectors of, in this case, mainly the Sunni Arab community and one of the drivers of that conflict is Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean Iran has perpetuated these conflicts in a way that has created a humanitarian and a political catastrophe across the region mainly in Syria but also in Iraq, the challenges inside of Iraq.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, the message has to be that none of us, the Iraqis, the United States, our partners in the region, our European allies can tolerate this degree of subversion and support for terrorist and militia \u2014 terrorism and militias. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

What has to happen and Secretary Tillerson and everyone\u2019s been very clear on this, there has to be a political settlement in Syria that allows for all Syrian people to have a say in the nature of their government.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the Assad regime rather than moving towards anything like that, it can only perpetuate the conflict. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

About $200 billion of infrastructure in Syria destroyed.<\/span><\/p>\n

We should ensure that not a dollar, not a dollar goes to reconstruct anything that is under the control of this brutal regime.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, we need to use the leverage we have to incentivize the \u2014 a political solution in Syria that protects all Syrian people. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

DUBOWITZ [South African, Israeli, American, who is Exec. Dir. of FDD<\/span><\/a>]: So you don\u2019t buy into this argument that somehow Russia which as you said has been primarily responsible with Iran for the Assad regime\u2019s brutal destruction of that country and the murder of half a million people, that somehow the Russians \u2014 as long as the international community helps reconstructs Syria, pours in hundreds of millions of dollars into territories that are under Assad\u2019s control, that the Russians can deliver the Iranians?<\/span><\/p>\n

MCMASTER: Well, I don\u2019t know if anybody can deliver the Iranians. I think what the Iranians have to understand that they are going to pay a price, they\u2019re going to pay a price in terms of isolation, diplomatic, financial isolation, if they continue on the path that they are on.<\/span><\/p>\n

In terms of Russia, this is you know, you could imagine this is one of our national security challenges and the president has given us very clear guidance on our relationship with Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

He has as you\u2019ve seen taking a very strong stand in the Middle East and in Ukraine for example, in confronting Russia\u2019s destabilizing behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what he wants us to do as well is to make sure we deter any kind of a conflict with Russia. We don\u2019t think this would be in anybody\u2019s interest. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

DUBOWITZ: And I know my colleague at FDD John Hannah wrote a piece on this on sort of an interesting observation that his UNGA speech, his U.N. General Assembly speech, that there were I think 11 out of the 17 sentences on Iran were actually very much focused on the Iranian people, on human rights issues, on the growing gap between the rulers and the ruled and you know, these speeches as I imagine are \u2014 they go through a vigorous process of review and it\u2019s \u2014 I assume that it\u2019s not accidental that there were 11 sentences devoted to the Iranian people themselves and the brutal repression \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

MCMASTER: Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n

DUBOWITZ: \u2014 that they suffered for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

MCMASTER: Well, you know, these are the President\u2019s speeches and you can tell you can hear his voice in all of these.<\/span><\/p>\n

And if I could just \u2014 if you want to look at I think his speeches to understand his foreign policy, he has made some \u2014 just really, I think are truly landmark speeches.<\/span><\/p>\n

One was in Saudi Arabia in front of \u2014 in front of 55 or so Muslim majority \u2014 leaders of Muslim majority nations, very, very important speech. \u2026 The Iran speech, I\u2019d say is part of this \u2014 of this group of speeches that explain to the American people how the President is prioritizing their interests and their security. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

DUBOWITZ: And we talked about the [Iranian Republican] Guard Corps again as a transnational criminal organization, the severe threat to our allies, to the Iranian people, to U.S. national security. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

MCMASTER: So, as you know, Hezbollah really relies on its legitimacy through its ability to portray itself as an advocate for the disadvantaged Shia Lebanese population but its actions in recent years especially since you know, you say really picking up since 2012 with the onset of the Syrian civil war, has been to act as a proxy for the Iranian\u2019s and the IRGC.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I think a lot of what can be done about Hezbollah is to expose it for what it is. You know, to write about its behavior, to catalog its behavior, to show what it\u2019s doing to its own people, to \u2014 in Lebanon but then to the world broadly.<\/span><\/p>\n

DUBOWITZ: What\u2019s interesting on that point, one of our friends Congressman Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin actually has introduced legislation that essentially would target Iran and Hezbollah for using Lebanese civilians as human shields.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean as we all know, Hezbollah has been using civilians, putting armaments and heavy weaponry on the hospitals and kindergartens and homes. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

MCMASTER: When you see the kind of violence, the heartbreaking humanitarian catastrophe in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere, what you see is that violence creates conditions where nobody is really being educated, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Where are the children? They\u2019re not going to schools. It\u2019s heartbreaking. They are just \u2014 they are in refugee camps and we are providing a lot of this since obviously we and partners.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean, gosh, I mean Jordan is doing so much, so much to alleviate this; Lebanon is as well; others in the region; Turkey has borne the brunt of a lot of this.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so we have to do everything we can to support those who are providing relief in this catastrophe.<\/span><\/p>\n

But what Iran relies on and what groups like ISIS, these attack-fearing groups, rely on is, they rely on ignorance. Because you need a certain degree of ignorance to foment hatred. And then use that hatred to perpetuate violence against innocent people. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

DUBOWITZ: So General McMaster, a real direct question. I mean, so what is wrong [with] the Iran nuclear deal [JCPOA]? \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

MCMASTER: Part of it was the payment up-front [releasing back to Iran the billions the U.S. had frozen since 1979<\/span><\/a>, but which Trump lies describing as if it were a gift \u2014 \u201ca massive cash settlement of $1.7 billion from the United States\u201d<\/span><\/a> to Iran \u2014 but which is actually only a return to Iran of Iran\u2019s frozen funds; and the U.S. aristocracy backs Trump in opposing<\/span><\/a> the entire JCPOA even while maintaining the pretense that they\u2019re divided along partisan, Democratic versus Republican, lines, over the entire JCPOA matter, which isn\u2019t actually true: they opposed Obama on this matter]. And so some people said, “Hey, you know, it\u2019s \u2014 they got all the money up-front. They get all the money up-front. This is a gift that gives over time, right?”<\/span><\/p>\n

And so if you \u2014 if Iran was pumping what, one billion \u2014 I mean, no, million barrels a day. Now it’s, like, getting up close to 2.5 million barrels a day. What are they doing with that money? You know, what is \u2014 what are they doing with their defense budget? What are they doing to foment violence across the region and beyond, with that money? With their missile program. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a fundamentally flawed deal that the president has decided to do his best to try to rectify in the interest of the security of the American people. And to work with allies and partners who now should see this as an opportunity, now\u2014and they do\u2014as an opportunity to work together on the broad range of Iran’s destabilizing behavior, to address the flaws in this deal while we work on rigorous monitoring and enforcement. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

What was the Iran strategy? The Iran strategy was JCPOA, right? I mean, that was it. That was the strategy. And the myopic pursuit of that enabled Iran in its designs across the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

POMPEO:<\/b> <\/span><\/p>\n

The president has come to view the threat from Iran as at the center of so much of the turmoil that bogs us down in lots of places in the Middle East \u2014 right? Whether it’s Lebanese Hezbollah, the threat that it presents to both Lebanon and to Israel; whether it’s the Shia militias \u2014 you can see the impact that they’re having today, even in northern Iraq; the threat that they pose to U.S. forces \u2014 we had an incident last week.<\/span><\/p>\n

The list of Iranian transgressions \u2014 the missile program, their cyber efforts. The list of Iranian transgressions is long. And from an intelligence perspective, we shared that with the president. I think he concluded that we needed to reconfigure our relationships, not only with Iran but with the Gulf states and with Israel, to ensure that we are addressing what he views as the real threat to the United States in a comprehensive way. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The mission set that the president laid out with respect to the deal was to ensure that there were no pathways for the Iranians to achieve a nuclear capability, to not put a president in the future in the same place this administration is with respect to North Korea, to close down all the various avenues.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so, there are many pieces to that. From an intelligence perspective, we need even more intrusive inspection. The deal put us in a marginally better place with respect to inspection, but the Iranians have on multiple occasions been capable of presenting a continued threat through covert efforts to develop their nuclear program along multiple dimensions, right? The missile dimension, the weaponization effort, the nuclear component itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

So we need to make sure from an intelligence perspective that we’re enabled to do that. And the president has given us the resources to go achieve that and all the various tools that we have, the various legal authorities. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Their desire to put guided rocketry in the hands of Hezbollah, the efforts with the Houthis in Yemen, launching missiles into the \u2014 or attempting to launch missiles to the Emirates and into Saudi. These are new and aggressive. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

It has been far too inexpensive for the Iranians to conduct this adventurism. We should raise the cost of that. The Agency has an incredibly important role there, providing the intelligence basis for us to help, not only the United States, but our partners in the region, which is the second piece of this.<\/span><\/p>\n

We need all of our partners. Sometimes I hear folks talk about the JCPOA and our partners, and nary a mention of the Saudis, the Emirates, the Israelis, but lots of talk about Germans, and Brits and French, and that’s great. They’re important partners, too. We need them all working against the continued expansion of the Iranians.<\/span><\/p>\n

Treasury, too, has an important role. Juan, you lived this in your roles at Treasury. Secretary Mnuchin is keenly aware of the tools that are in his arsenal as well. I mean, think about this today imagine you’re a \u2014 the Iranians have complained a great deal that they haven’t seen the benefits, the economic benefits they had expected. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

There have been times the Iranians have worked alongside Al Qaeda.<\/span><\/p>\n

We actually, the CIA is going to release, here, in the next handful of days, a series of documents related to the Abbottabad raids that may prove interesting to those who are looking to take at this issue \u2014 take a look at this issue a little bit further.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there have been connections where, at the very least, they have cuts deals so as not to come after each other. That is, they view the West as a greater threat than the fight is between them two along their ideological lines. And we, the intelligence community, has reported on this for an awfully long time. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

We have some disadvantages there, we operate a democracy. That is \u2014 it is far easier for ISIS or for the Russians or for other nefarious actors that don’t operate in a democratic environment to exercise these active measures. We have rules, deep rules, important rules, appropriate rules about how we ought to use them. And we need to make sure that they’re current, we need to make sure they fit the model that exists today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your point, Juan, is an important one. It’s not just the Russian info-ops. I talked about these non-state actors. It is not just WikiLeaks. Indeed, I may have overemphasized them. They are an enormous threat. We are working to take down that threat to the United States, as well to reduce the threat from all of it, but Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, none of them sit at the U.N.<\/span><\/p>\n

These are all non-state actors, each of which has not only cyber capacity, but they look and feel like very good intelligence organizations. They run assets, they run counterintelligence program, they lure dangles. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

My first significant experience with this was the event in Syria, where the president chose to take out a target in Syria as a result of the Syrian use of chemical weapons \u2014 Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his own citizens. The Russians, I think to this day, deny it. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

In about 70 hours, we had in our hands solid evidence that, not only were they chemical weapons \u2014 although at that point, we did not know exactly which chemical had been used, but we knew where they had been delivered. We were on firm footing with respect to who had delivered them and we were able to deliver truth to the president of the United States about what had taken place.<\/span><\/p>\n

In spite of all the Twitter accounts and all the stories and all the denials from Lavrov and his team, we knew. Truth matters. Our obligation is to deliver that to the Secretary of Defense, Secretary Tillerson and the president, each and every day. And we have to make sure that we have the capacity to do that every place in the world. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

So we’ve now laid out a strategy for how we’re going to execute our strategy with incredible vigor. We’re going to become a much more vicious agency in ensuring that we are delivering this work. We are going to go to the hardest places with some of the hardest people and of our organization to crush it.<\/span><\/p>\n

And when we do that, the President has promised that he will have our backs and that he will resource us. Resource isn’t just money. It is the authorities that we need to go execute that, so an understanding of the policy process that delivers this work.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so the President has put an enormous burden on us to deliver for him. And I am confident that he’s going to give us everything we need to do, and our team will in fact execute that mission in the finest tradition of the Central Intelligence Agency. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

SALAMA: Oh, I\u2019m Vivian Salama from NBC News. \u2026 We have a broad intelligence assessment that Russia most likely interfered in this election. There’s really not been a lot of doubt about that. But, in the past month, we’ve learned about some extraordinary actions taken by Russia in terms of ad buys for it on Facebook, Twitter. \u2026 Can you say, with absolute certainty, that the election results were not skewed as a result of Russian interference? Especially given what we’ve learned just in the last few weeks. \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

POMPEO: We conducted an election that had integrity. Yes. The intelligence community’s assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election. \u2026 This was a threat in 2016, it will be a threat in the midterm elections in 2018. It will be a threat in 2020. Until there is a new leader in Russia, I suspect it will be a threat to the United States for an awfully long time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php\/Talk:Foundation_for_the_Defense_of_Democracies<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

https:\/\/web-beta.archive.org\/web\/20171025123142\/https:\/\/www.sourcewatch.org\/index.php\/Talk:Foundation_for_the_Defense_of_Democracies<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Funding Sources<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Eli Clifton reports that the following billionaires\/[centi-]millionaires are the principal source of FDD funding[5]<\/sup><\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Edgar M. Bronfman<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Charles Bronfman<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Michael Steinhardt<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Haim Saban<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Bernard Marcus<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Dalck Feith<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Abramson Family Foundation<\/span><\/a><\/span> Leonard Abramson<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Lewis Ranieri<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Roland Arnall<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Jennifer Mizrahi<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2022 Clifford May<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

On 12 September 2002, Israel\u2019s past-and-future Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, testified to the U.S. House Government Reform Committee, about Iraq, and said (at 3:00<\/span><\/a>) \u201cif you take out Saddam\u2019s regime, then I guarantee you, it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,\u201d and he also said<\/span><\/a> \u201cThere is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, and is working, and is advancing towards the development of, nuclear weapons.\u201d Of course, his friends George W. Bush and Dick Cheney said the same in different words. And some of their Administration subsequently ended up at FDD. And Trump\u2019s team continues that type of U.S. leadership, for the billionaires who control Israel and the fundamentalist-Sunni Arab nations, and the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, as I headlined on April 26th, \u201cPOLL: Americans Support Military-Industrial Complex Above All Else\u201d<\/span><\/a> \u2014 that admiration for the MIC isn\u2019t unique to Trump. And, it\u2019s so despite the \u201cTrillions of Dollars in U.S. Military Spending Unaccounted For\u201d<\/span><\/a>. And, the first three links here<\/span><\/a> show the blowing-up of three U.S. arms-warehouses that had been filled with U.S.-made weapons for the Ukrainian military, but nobody really knows precisely where all of those trillions of untraced U.S. \u2018defense\u2019 dollars actually went, nor how much of it went up in flames there in Ukraine. Maybe some of the expenditures went into a \u201cblack budget”<\/span><\/a>, and the profits from that, went offshore. <\/span><\/p>\n

Like Pompeo said, on October 19th, \u201cWe’re going to become a much more vicious agency in ensuring that we are delivering this work. We are going to go to the hardest places with some of the hardest people,\u201d to serve their masters, who will then be deciding which corporations\u2019 and foundations\u2019 boards they\u2019ll be \u2018serving\u2019 on, during their retirements from \u2018public\u2019 office \u2014 the other side of Washington\u2019s revolving door, off into their sunset years, the pure-rewards side, of the system.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like America\u2019s last (and much-maligned) honest President, Jimmy Carter, has said<\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. … At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s Founders were able to beat and dispossess the British<\/i> aristocracy, and take control of America, away from those British aristocrats. But today\u2019s Americans are apparently helpless to beat and dispossess America\u2019s<\/i> aristocracy, and to take control of America \u2014 take it forward to something better than our Founders made it, not backward, to merely an American dictatorship replacing the old British one, such as it now is<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014<\/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>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse On October 19th, the far-right Foundation for Defense of Democracy (FDD) held a \u201cNational Security Summit\u201d which featured as speakers both Donald Trump\u2019s CIA chief Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump\u2019s National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, both of them (as will be shown here by extensive excerpts from their speeches) whipping up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":183864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[34,67,20344,2954,980,754,6257],"class_list":{"0":"post-332230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-iran","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sauds","11":"tag-shia","12":"tag-sunni","13":"tag-syria","14":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332230","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=332230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}