{"id":342491,"date":"2018-01-05T15:56:49","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T14:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=342491"},"modified":"2018-01-05T15:56:49","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T14:56:49","slug":"will-pay-250-billion-reconstruction-cost-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/will-pay-250-billion-reconstruction-cost-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Who will pay the $250+ billion reconstruction cost in Syria?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The United States Government says that Syria\u2019s Government caused the U.N.-estimated “at least $250 billion” cost<\/span><\/a> to restore Syria from the destruction that Syria\u2019s war produced, and so Syria\u2019s Government should pay those reconstruction costs. That link is to a New York Times<\/i> article, which explicitly blames Syrian \u201cPresident Bashar al-Assad\u2019s ruthless triumph\u201d \u2014 which was won against all of the jihadist groups (which the U.S. and its allies had brought into Syria to overthrow and replace Assad’s Government)<\/span><\/a> \u2014 for having caused the devastation in Syria; the U.S. and its allies say they aren\u2019t to blame for it, at all, by their having organized and armed and trained and manned that 6-year invasion of Syria<\/span><\/a>; and, so (they say, and the NYT<\/i> article implicitly assumes it to be true), if the invaders-occupiers of Syria might ultimately agree to pay some portion of these $250B+ reconstruction costs, then this would be sheer generosity by the U.S. and its allies \u2014 nothing that these governments are obligated<\/i> to pay to the surviving residents in Syria. It would be charity \u2014 not restitution \u2014 according to them. The way that this NYT<\/i> news-report presents this case is, first, to ask rhetorically, regarding the U.S. and its allies in the invasion of Syria, \u201cCan they afford to pour money into a regime that has starved, bombed and occasionally gassed its own people?\u201d and then promptly to proceed by ignoring this very question that they have asked, and instead to provide a case (relying heavily on innuendos) for the immorality of the U.S. and its allies to provide restitution to Syria\u2019s Government to restore Syria. That\u2019s how this Times<\/i>\u2019s news-report argues for the U.S. Government, against Syria\u2019s Government, regarding Syria\u2019s postwar reconstruction: The Times<\/i> news-report repeatedly simply assumes that Syria\u2019s Government is evil and corrupt, and is to blame for the destruction of Syria, and thus shouldn\u2019t receive any money from good and honest governments such as ours. It implicitly accepts the viewpoint of the U.S. Government \u2014 a viewpoint which blatantly contradicts the actual history of the case, as will here be documented by the facts: <\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s Government (including its press, such as the NYT<\/i>) simply refuses to recognize the legitimacy of Syria\u2019s Government (even after the first internationally monitored democratic election in all of Syria\u2019s history, which was held in 2014, and which the incumbent candidate Bashar al-Assad (whom the U.S. alliance has been trying to overthrow) won, by 89%<\/span><\/a>), and the U.S. Government has, itself, evilly been trying to conquer Syria (a country that never threatened the U.S.<\/i>), ever since at least 1949, when the CIA perpetrated a coup there<\/span><\/a> (the new CIA\u2019s 2nd coup, the first one having been 1948 in Thailand<\/span><\/a> \u2014 and here is the rest of that<\/i> shocking history<\/span><\/a>) and ousted Syria\u2019s democratically elected President<\/span><\/a>; but, then, in 1955, Syria\u2019s army threw out the U.S.-imposed dictator, and restored to power that democratically elected Syrian President, who in 1958 accepted Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser\u2019s offer to unify the two countries (Syria and Egypt) into the United Arab Republic (UAR), in order to protect Syria against a then-imminent invasion and attempted take-over by NATO member Turkey (which has traditionally been hostile toward Syria). It was a peaceful and voluntary transfer of power, to Nasser. However, Nasser became an unpopular President in Syria, as the nation\u2019s economy performed poorly during the UAR; and, so, on 28 September 1961, Syria\u2019s army declared Syria’s secession from the UAR; and it then installed-and-replaced seven Presidents over the next decade<\/span><\/a>, until 22 February 1971, when General Hafez al-Assad resigned from Syria\u2019s military and was promptly endorsed by the Army for the Presidency; and, soon thereafter, on 12 March 1971, a yes-no national referendum on whether Assad should become President won a 99.2%”Yes” vote of the Syrian people<\/span><\/a>. President Assad initiated today\u2019s Syria, by assigning a majority of political posts to secular Sunnis, and a majority of military posts to secular Shiites. All of the Sunnis that he allowed into the Government were seculars, so as to prevent fundamentalist-Sunni foreign governments \u2014 mainly the Sauds<\/span><\/a> \u2014 from being able to work successfully with America\u2019s CIA to again take over Syria\u2019s Government. Assad\u2019s Ba\u2019athist democratic socialist Party chose his son Bashar, to succeed Hafez as President, upon Hafez\u2019s death on 10 June 2000; and, when Barack Obama became U.S. President in 2009, Obama carried forward the CIA\u2019s plan to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and to install a Saud-allied fundamentalist-Sunni Syrian government<\/span><\/a> to replace the existing non-secular, but Iran<\/span><\/a>-allied, Ba\u2019athist Government. However, since Bashar had built upon Hafez\u2019s secular, non-sectarian, governmental system, the old CIA plan, to apply fundamentalist Sunnis to destroy the basically non-sectarian state (which is the basis of the Assads\u2019 political support), ultimately failed; and, so, America\u2019s Government and media are trying to deal with the consequences of their own evil, as best they can, so as to have only Syria and its allies suffer the Syrian war\u2019s aftermath. U.S. President Donald Trump has been continuing President Obama\u2019s policy, and he loaded his Administration with rabidly anti-Syrian and anti-Iranian people<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the American Government\u2019s view, the least that Syria\u2019s Government should now do is to pay all the costs for the consequences of America\u2019s lengthiest-ever effort against Syria \u2014 or, if Syria\u2019s Government won\u2019t do that, then the U.S. Government will continue its occupation of Syria<\/span><\/a>, and won\u2019t help the Syrian people at all, to recover from the devastation, which they blame entirely on Assad (who never threatened the U.S.).<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the Syrian Government says that the countries which invaded it with their weapons and their jihadists and their organization \u2014 not only the United States and its weapons-supplies to the jihadists, but also Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Turkey, UK, France, and other U.S. allies, the entire U.S. coalition who organized and supplied the six-year international jihadist invasion against Syria<\/span><\/a> \u2014 are to blame for the destruction of Syria; and, \u201cIf you break it, you own it, and need to replace it.\u201d<\/span><\/a> So, Syrians think that the invaders \u2014 and not<\/i> the people of Syria \u2014 must pay the reconstruction cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. Government blames Syrian President Bashar Assad for everything. That charge is, however, quite problematic, given the facts in the case. The U.S. CIA was behind the \u201cArab Spring\u201d movements to overthrow and replace Assad and other Arab leaders who dissatisfied the U.S. regime<\/span><\/a>, and it then fed into Syria the \u2018rebels\u2019<\/span><\/a> until now. Few of them are still remaining under U.S. protection \u2014 which is mostly east of the Euphrates River, where America\u2019s Kurdish proxy-forces are in control, after having finally defeated, with American air power, Syria\u2019s ISIS.<\/span><\/p>\n

That NYT<\/i> article used the word \u201crebel\u201d six times to refer to the jihadists who were fighting against Syria\u2019s Government, and didn\u2019t even once use the word \u201cjihadist\u201d or \u201cterrorist\u201d or anything like that, to refer to even a single one of them. However, almost all of the anti-Assad fighters were, in fact, jihadists (or, some people call them, instead, \u201cradical Islamic terrorists\u201d)<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Western-sponsored opinion polls have been taken of the residents of Syria, throughout the war, and they have consistently shown that Bashar al-Assad would easily win re-election there in any free and internationally monitored election, and that the Syrian people overwhelmingly (by 82%)<\/span><\/a> blame the United States for having brought the tens of thousands of foreign fighters into Syria to overthrow and replace their nation’s Government.<\/span><\/a> Consequently, if Syrians will end up bearing the estimated $250B+ reconstruction cost of a war that 82% of them blame on the U.S., then the Syrian people will become even angrier against the U.S. Government than they are now. But, of course, the U.S. Government doesn\u2019t care about the people of Syria, and won\u2019t even allow in any of them as refugees to America; so, Syrians know whom their friends and enemies are. America\u2019s absconding on its $250+B reparations-debt to them wouldn\u2019t surprise them, at all. It\u2019s probably what they\u2019re expecting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some U.S. propaganda-media, such as Britain\u2019s Financial Times<\/i>, have field-tested an alternative, a blame-Russia approach, in case the U.S. team can\u2019t get the blame-Syria story-line to gain sufficient international acceptance. For example, that newspaper\u2019s Roula Khalaf headlined on 1 March 2017, <\/span> \u201cThe west to Russia: you broke Syria, now you fix it\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span>, but most of the reader-comments were extremely hostile to that designation of villain in the case. Here were the most-popular comments:<\/span><\/p>\n

COMMENTS, Most recommended:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Newest | Oldest | Most recommended <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Nomad_X Mar 1, 2017 What dreadful ‘analysis’ …. Russia finished the Syrian war because they had to. Syria was an artificial proxy war instigated by the USA, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – the Iranians and Russians joined in after the west tried to remove Assad, and failed. The UN also said publicly that Syria was not a civil war – it was a war of foreign mercenary groups trying to overthrow the Assad regime. Russia had no choice but to be there – Putin said publicly there was over 500 Russian nationals involved, and they would be going home once they were finished in Syria. Syria is another US foreign policy disaster which someone else had no choice but to clean up – it essentially created and legitimatized ISIS and now we ALL have to pay for it …. ReportShare54Recommend<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Reply Airman48 Mar 1, 2017 The usual Bogus Russian troll perspective that is devoid of the truth. Syria has been a Russian client state in the 1960s when Hafez al Assad invited the Soviets in. Russia took ownership of the Syrian Civil War the minute it intervened and deployed Military forces to that country and after waging a brutal campaign of indiscriminate bombing that killed many hundreds of innocent Syria Non combatants it now expects the West to pay to reconstruct Syria. Read the title of the article again “The West to Russia. You broke it, you FIX it\u201d ReportShare35Recommend<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Reply Nomad_X Mar 1, 2017 @Airman48 Some facts for your viewing pleasure – 1. Syria being a client state is not new news – just because they bought their weapons does not mean they wanted a war. 2. Russia cleaned up and finished the war – they did not initiate it – the USA did. 3. The title is a misnomer – the USA, Saudi Arabia and Turkey broke Syria. ReportShare27Recommend <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Although some readers, such as \u201cAirman48,\u201d seemed eager to blame anything on Russia, most of the readers, even at that rabidly anti-Russian, neoconservative-neoliberal (or, to use old terminology, pro-imperialist) publication, seemed to be somehow uncomfortable with that view. Perhaps that view would have been popular in 1900 (America and UK were proudly imperialistic at that time), but it seems to be unpopular today. It\u2019s not as easy to fool the American and British people into an invasion as it was, for example, when we invaded and destroyed Iraq on the basis of lies<\/span><\/a>, in 2003. Barack Obama managed to win public support for a repeat of that performance in Libya in 2011, and, of course, for the anti-Syria campaign, and also for a very bloody coup overthrowing Ukraine\u2019s democratically elected government in 2014<\/span><\/a> \u2014 a trifecta of U.S. invasions on the basis of lies (and all of which were invasions of countries that never endangered U.S. national security) \u2014 but the bipartisanship of that U.S. hyper-aggressiveness (first with the Republican Bush, and then with the Democratic Obama) has made clear to many Americans, that the U.S. Government itself is the problem, that this is not a partisan problem; it is a problem with the Government itself, by both Parties<\/span><\/a>, which is evil in what it is bipartisan about (such as supporting invasions by lies, against countries that never threatened us).<\/span><\/p>\n

Voice of America is no more propagandistic than all of America\u2019s major media are, even though it\u2019s openly a U.S. Government medium; and it headlined on 30 December 2017, \u201cPentagon Preparing for Shift in Syrian Strategy\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported the latest variant of the U.S. regime\u2019s plan to dump all the costs of the invasion of Syria, onto the Syrian people. Secretary of \u2018Defense\u2019 James Mattis said, \u201cWhat we will be doing is shifting from what I call an offensive, terrain-seizing approach. \u2026 You’ll see more U.S. diplomats on the ground.\u201d The article continued, \u201c\u2018When you bring in more diplomats, they\u2019re working that initial restoration of services. They bring in the contractors. That sort of thing,\u2019 the defense secretary said. \u2018There\u2019s international money that\u2019s got to be administered so it actually does something and doesn\u2019t go into the wrong people\u2019s [the Syrian Government\u2019s] pockets.\u2019\u201d He wants U.S. international corporations to be placed into position to skim off some of that reconstruction-money. (Some of this cash might then become recycled into Republican political campaign donations, which would please the Republican U.S. President, and Republicans in Congress. But the Democrats in Congress are \u2018patriotic\u2019, and so will not resist Republicans\u2019 effort to continue crushing Syria.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Mattis was threatening Syrians with America\u2019s absconding with all the damages it left behind, unless Syria\u2019s Government will give America\u2019s Government at least some of what it wants (but never earned). This VOA article said, \u201cThere are questions about how the initial recovery efforts will work, given that much of Syria is now under the control of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.\u201d The implication there is that America has a right to overthrow Syria\u2019s Government; and, that, unless Syria\u2019s Government will bend at least part-way in recognizing this right, the U.S. Government will abscond totally from this matter. The U.S. regime is blaming everything on Assad, and expects him to be grateful for any financial assistance that the U.S. Government, in its kindness and generosity, provides, to his land, which it has destroyed<\/span><\/a>. (Of course, Syria\u2019s Government has also bombed targets in Syria, but the only alternative that was available for President Assad would have been to surrender Syria to the jihadists whom the U.S. team had brought into and armed<\/span><\/a> there.) However, VOA\u2019s presumption that Syria\u2019s Government is to blame and that the invading jihadists aren\u2019t, isn\u2019t likely to be accepted by any nations except some of America\u2019s allies. For example, Poland might back it, in order to retain the U.S. regime\u2019s support, which is especially important to the Polish regime, because their support from some of the other European regimes has been fraying recently, and because beggars (such as Poland is, when it becomes widely criticized by the rest of the EU) can\u2019t be choosers. Apparently, the Trump regime believes it can assemble a sufficient number of such regimes, so as to win its way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump has the support of the entire U.S. aristocracy on this. A leading voice of the U.S. aristocracy (and funder of its agents \u2014 such as U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner<\/span><\/a> \u2014 when they are in the revolving door between government-service and Wall Street or other private agencies of the aristocracy) is America\u2019s Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes Foreign Affairs<\/i> magazine, which is perhaps the chief public voice of America\u2019s billionaires, concerning international relations. On 4 October 2017, it published an article, \u201cDon\u2019t Fund Syria’s Reconstruction:<\/span><\/a> The West Has Little Leverage and Little to Gain\u201d, which presumed that \u201cThe West\u201d is democratic and its governments represent their publics, and that Syria\u2019s Government isn\u2019t and doesn\u2019t; so, \u201cThe West\u201d has a supposed right to ignore the plight it caused in Syria (and which \u201cThe West\u201d constantly lies to deny that it caused, and to blame Syria\u2019s Government for the devastation that \u201cThe West\u201ds hirees actually produced there). <\/span><\/p>\n

Here are key excerpts from this CFR Foreign Affairs<\/i> article, showing the position that America\u2019s billionaires collectively argue for, on this matter \u2014 displaying their guidance on this issue, for their vassal aristocracies, in America\u2019s allied countries:<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has successfully defeated or neutralized much of the insurgency in his country, domestic and international attention has begun to turn toward stabilization and reconstruction. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Yet large sections of the international community \u2014 including, critically, key donor countries \u2014 continue to reject the legitimacy of Assad and his regime. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

There is a less complicated solution: Do not fund the reconstruction of Assad\u2019s Syria. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Syria\u2019s reconstruction cannot be dictated or meaningfully shaped by Western donors \u2014 at least not to any satisfactory political ends. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The cost of Syria\u2019s reconstruction will be immense \u2014 between $200 billion and $350 billion, depending on the estimate. These sums are far beyond the capacity of Syria, or the willingness of its Iranian and Russian allies, to pay. The burden of reconstruction, then, is expected to fall on the United States, members of the EU, and Japan, as well as on multilateral institutions that are likely to take cues from their major Western donors, such as the World Bank. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

On September 21, a meeting of \u201clike-minded\u201d actors (including Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the EU) announced that \u201crecovery and reconstruction support for Syria hinges on a credible political process leading to a genuine political transition that can be supported by a majority of the Syrian people.\u201d Reconstruction funding is \u201cthe biggest lever\u201d the United States and its allies have to push for a credible political process, said David Satterfield, a U.S. State Department official, after the meeting. And according to British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, \u201cWe have one big card left to play in a pretty poor hand and that is the cash we can provide for the reconstruction of Syria.\u201d. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The country, in other words, cannot be put back together by working around the regime that tore it apart. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Some analysts believe that the West can use funding to win concessions short of regime change. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The regime will end up trading away \u201cthings that don\u2019t matter,\u201d said one European diplomat. \u201cBut it will hold out for so long, they\u2019ll seem like concessions when you get them. If there\u2019s something that Damascus has that most others don\u2019t, it\u2019s time.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Donors will not be permitted to do an end run around Assad. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Westerners who want to drive a hard bargain will find that they have less leverage than they thought. To begin with, the international community \u2014 and the universe of possible donors and investors \u2014 is not limited to the West. Syrian officials are keen to advertise the country\u2019s nascent economic recovery and attract investment, but they have also said that they will give priority to investors from countries that stood by Damascus. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Western donors should not finance the regime-led reconstruction effort. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The West does not get unlimited tries to remove Assad or to dictate Syria\u2019s politics. Thinking otherwise will be an expensive delusion.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Or, in short: America\u2019s billionaires view the entire question as a business deal between themselves and the \u2018regime\u2019 that they have hired the U.S. Government since 1949<\/span><\/a> to overthrow and control; and the advice that they are giving to their vassal aristocracies is: \u201cThe West does not get unlimited tries to remove Assad or to dictate Syria\u2019s politics\u201d; and, so, \u201cThe West\u201d should just walk away from the matter: there shouldn\u2019t be any deal \u2014 Syria should just become a failed state, such as Libya, or Afghanistan. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another prominent institutional voice of America\u2019s billionaires is the similarly solidly neoconservative-neoliberal (or pro-imperialistic<\/span><\/a>) Brookings Institution, whose Steven Heydemann headlined on 24 August 2017, \u201cRules for reconstruction in Syria\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and he wrote: <\/span><\/p>\n

For the Assad regime, however, reconstruction is not seen as a means for economic recovery and social repair, but as an opportunity for self-enrichment, a way to reward loyalists and punish opponents, and as central to its efforts to fix in place the social and demographic shifts caused by six years of violent conflict. Assad himself affirmed this intent in a speech he delivered to mark the inauguration of the Damascus Exhibition. Thanking Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, Assad said that Syria had \u201clost its best youth and its infrastructure,\u201d but had \u201cwon a healthier and more homogenous society.\u201d The prominent Arab <\/i>[Qatari-Palestinian-Israeli<\/span><\/a>] political analyst Azmi Bishara described Assad\u2019s claim as <\/i>“Hitlerian”<\/i><\/span><\/a> and as confirmation of the \u201cgenocidal\u201d intent of the regime\u2019s policies of displacement.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, a statement by Assad expressing satisfaction that Syria has even a smaller percentage of its citizens who support jihadists today than it had prior to the U.S.-Saudi-UAE-Qatari-Turkish importation of the world\u2019s jihadists into Syria, was there being called \u201cHitlerian.\u201d America\u2019s billionaires (or at least their policy-propagandists) view Assad\u2019s loathing of jihadists as bigotry, just like Hitler\u2019s loathing of Jews was.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, Bishara, who was being cited there by Brookings as an authority about Assad, was a big supporter of the U.S. coalition against Syria: for example, he said about Assad\u2019s Government, at 2:17 in this 20 May 2013 telecast<\/span><\/a> on Syria\u2019s enemy Qatar\u2019s Al Jazeera television in Arabic (Al Jazeera is pro-jihadist in its Arabic broadcasts, but anti-jihadist in its English ones), \u201cNow, it\u2019s shelling its own people, ferociously, an ongoing massacre, and yet the people resist. They haven\u2019t stopped.\u201d He didn\u2019t mention \u201cjihadists\u201d or \u201cterrorists\u201d at all (because he represents their backers). There is no available evidence as to whether Bishara is being paid by the CIA, or perhaps by the Thani family who own Qatar, but Brookings\u2019s failure to disclose information like that (Bishara\u2019s statement\u2019s falsely implying that Assad is anti-Syrian instead of anti-jihadist), in such a context as this passage by Heydemann, indicates the extent to which Brookings should be presumed to be merely an extension of the same international aristocratic group that ultimately controls the CIA, CFR, etc. (Bishara then went on there to use the phrase \u201cwe, the Israelis\u201d; so, maybe he instead represents Israel\u2019s Mossad. But that\u2019s just as bad, and maybe even the same thing as the rest of them.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The argument by America\u2019s billionaires (via their agents), regarding restitution to the Syrian people, for the catastrophe that those billionaires (via their political contributions) spearheaded against Syrians, is: If anyone should pay it, then Syria\u2019s Government should. <\/span><\/p>\n

Apparently, \u201cThe West\u201d intends simply to keep on destroying nations and leaving behind more and more failed states. <\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, that long war to get rid of Russia\u2019s allies<\/span><\/a> might be a profitable policy for the owners of corporations such as Lockheed Martin<\/span><\/a>, but there are big downsides to this policy, for the billions of people whom \u201cThe West\u201d seems to care nothing about, such as in Syria, and in Libya, and in Ukraine<\/span><\/a>. And this evil policy is also bad even for the American people, who are increasingly coming to loathe<\/span><\/a> the Government that America\u2019s billionaires have increasingly bought and impose<\/span><\/a> upon us.<\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s corruption<\/span><\/a> deserves a Nobel Prize, like was won by Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama; but, this one should be called the \u201cHypocrisy Prize\u201d and awarded directly to the U.S. Government \u2014 an invoice, \u201camount due,\u201d totaling the damages done by this Government to all of the governments that had posed no threat to U.S. national security but that the U.S. Government nonetheless overthrew, starting with Thailand in 1948. Of course, the rogue U.S. Government would not pay it, but the bill should still be presented, because that bill would be<\/i> the first Hypocrisy Prize, and it would show what hypocrisy can amount to.<\/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, originally posted at strategic-culture.org The United States Government says that Syria\u2019s Government caused the U.N.-estimated “at least $250 billion” cost to restore Syria from the destruction that Syria\u2019s war produced, and so Syria\u2019s Government should pay those reconstruction costs. That link is to a New York Times article, which explicitly blames Syrian \u201cPresident […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":342492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[115,30,32,96,3604,524,754,92,6257,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-342491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-syria","15":"tag-terrorism","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-warfare","18":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342491","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=342491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}