{"id":344846,"date":"2018-01-21T21:46:04","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T20:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=344846"},"modified":"2018-01-21T21:46:04","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T20:46:04","slug":"americas-deceitful-secret-support-al-qaeda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/americas-deceitful-secret-support-al-qaeda\/","title":{"rendered":"America’s Deceitful Secret Support of Al Qaeda"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In a recent article, I documented that \u201cU.S. Again Supports Al Qaeda in Syria\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a prior article<\/span><\/a>, I had documented that since 2012 the U.S. Government has cooperated with the Sauds\u2019 plan to install in Syria a fundamentalist-Sunni government to replace Syria\u2019s existing secular Government, and that the fundamentalist-Sunni organization Al Qaeda has been the U.S. Government\u2019s chief organization on the ground in Syria providing the leadership to that Saudi-U.S. effort. Part One of that report is especially important in order to understand the continuity between the policies of the current U.S. President Donald Trump and the prior U.S. President Barack Obama, in Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n

The present article will provide the broader historical documentation behind this, starting in 1949, when the U.S. CIA, under President Harry S. Truman, did its second coup d\u2019etat<\/span><\/a>, overthrowing a democratically elected progressive Government (the first having been Thailand 1948, where the CIA had installed an extremely barbaric dictator<\/span><\/a> replacing the democratically elected government<\/span><\/a> that had been headed by a staunch anti-fascist<\/span><\/a>, and simultaneously set up the CIA\u2019s off-the-books supplementary funding mechanism from the international narcotics-trade \u2014 a CIA practice which has continued till perhaps the present<\/span><\/a>; and, furthermore, the infamous Nugan-Hand affair<\/span><\/a>, which involved Thailand<\/span><\/a>, definitely involved the CIA\u2019s Michael Hand and William Colby<\/span><\/a>; so, clearly, the CIA is funded off-the-books from the narcotics business, and America\u2019s anti-narcotics laws thus are actually keeping drug-prices and resultant burglaries and CIA profits artificially high, funneling that illicit money into CIA coffers; and any method to defund the CIA down to its core intelligence-gathering function and to eliminate its coup<\/i>-function, which is the function that took control in Thailand and Syria and then Iran and many more, would need to regulate \u2014 instead of to continue outlawing \u2014 drugs, which might be the main reason why it hasn\u2019t yet been done: illegal drugs provide wealth to the CIA and other gang-lords<\/span><\/a>, including some U.S. Government officials<\/span><\/a>). <\/span><\/p>\n

The 1949 coup in Syria overthrew the democratically elected Syrian Government, which had blocked construction of a U.S.-Saudi oil pipeline through Syria into Europe. The CIA imposed upon Syrians a military dictatorship which was so bad, Syria\u2019s military decided that their being stooges of the U.S. wouldn\u2019t really work for them, after all; so, the generals allowed the democratically elected President<\/span><\/a> to run again in 1955, and he won again. In 1957, the CIA tried to overthrow him yet a second time, but failed. The generals wouldn\u2019t cooperate this second time around. In 1958, that democratic Syrian President merged Syria into Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser\u2019s United Arab Republic, which ended in 1960. Thereafter, a series of frequently replaced Syrian leaders ended in 1970, when the popular head of the institutionally secular Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party \u2013 Syria Region<\/span><\/a>, Hafez al-Assad, came to power, and he included, in his Government, leaders from the Sunni, Shiite, and Christian, communities, in order to achieve a national Government that would be acceptable to all three of those communities, as well as to Syria\u2019s many seculars. The CIA\u2019s consistent plan has been to break Syria into religiously warring sub-states so that the Sunni one would allow the Sauds\u2019 pipeline; and this plan became placed on-hold until the CIA\u2019s plan for the \u201cArab Spring\u201d rebellions succeeded in 2011 and seemed to make possible the U.S. regime\u2019s \u2019democracy\u2019 in Syria, this time meaning a breakup of Syria into Kurdish, versus fundamentalist-Sunni (Saudi-controlled), versus Shiite (pro-Iranian) nations. This also would please another U.S. and Saud ally, Israel<\/span><\/a>, because then the Golan Heights<\/span><\/a> part of Syria which Israel stole in 1967 would be able to become legally Israeli territory.<\/span><\/p>\n

That 1949 coup in Syria was to enable America\u2019s Bechtel Corporation to construct through Syria the proposed Trans-Arabian Pipeline<\/span><\/a> for the Sauds\u2019 and Rockefellers\u2019 oil from Saudi Arabia to supply European countries and thus to crowd out oil from Russia. The EU is the world\u2019s biggest energy-importer<\/span><\/a>, and by far the largest energy-supplier to the EU is Russia<\/span><\/a>. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently headlined, regarding all of the Saudi-U.S. aristocracies\u2019 grabs for Syria, \u201cSyria: Another Pipeline War\u201d<\/span><\/a>. Syria has important (to the oil and gas industries) real estate. And the destruction of Syria by these foreign thugs has unfortunately resulted from this fact. <\/span><\/p>\n

Syria is the most secular of all governments in the Middle East, and is the only government that\u2019s committed, both in philosophy and in practice, to separation between church (or clergy) and state (government). I documented in that previous article<\/span><\/a> America\u2019s determination to overthrow the decidedly secular Ba\u2019athist-Party Syrian Government, which is headed by Bashar al-Assad, whom both Riyadh and Washington demand to become \u201cregime-changed\u201d \u2014 replaced by a regime that\u2019s acceptable to the rulers of Saudi Arabia (the royal Saud family) and of those rulers\u2019 vassal-nation, the United States<\/span><\/a>. In the present article I shall document that the Sauds have even been allowed by the U.S. regime to select the people who supposedly represent the Syrian public at the U.N.-sponsored Syrian peace talks \u2014 those are actually \u2018peace\u2019 talks not between the Syrian people and the Syrian Government (to settle a civil war, like the U.S. and its allies claim it is), but instead between the Saud family and the Syrian Government (to stop a foreign invasion, which it really is); this is what the U.S. regime actually supports: the Sauds, against Syria \u2014 the invader and its allies, against the victim and its allies<\/b>. It\u2019s the reality, even if all the \u2018news\u2019media are portraying it to be anything but<\/i> a foreign invasion of the sovereign nation of Syria (which they, of course, are).<\/span><\/p>\n

Europe \u2014 the EU \u2014 gets the refugees from America\u2019s invasions and coups (including not only from the Middle East but also from America\u2019s 2014 coup in Ukraine<\/span><\/a>), but still allies itself with the U.S. Government, which nominally represents the American people, though actually representing<\/i> only the billionaires in three countries: Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States. (What\u2019s especially key to understanding U.S. foreign policies is that whereas the U.S. aristocracy is primarily focused<\/span><\/a> against Russia, the Saudi-Israeli alliance<\/span><\/a> is primarily focused against Iran.) Europe subordinates itself to that group of billionaires, but especially<\/i> to the American ones, since the American ones control the NATO alliance and basically created the EU. (Whether America ever wears-out its welcome amongst European publics will be shown by the extent to which those publics repudiate both NATO and the existing EU, since those two organizations are the immediate agencies of U.S. control there; and the IMF and other U.S.-created entities are global, not merely<\/i> European entities of these billionaires\u2019 empire.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Also documented in the prior article was an important part of the back-story to the present one, that:<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S., and the royal family of Saudi Arabia, had created Al Qaeda back in 1979, to be their “boots on the ground” against the Soviet Union, and used them not only in Afghanistan but also in Russia’s own Chechnya region, to weaken, first the Soviet Union itself, helping to break it up, and then, after the Cold War ended on the Russian side in 1991 when the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance all ended, America and the Sauds continued arming and funding Al Qaeda, so as to create terror in Russia, and to overthrow Russia’s allies abroad, such as Assad.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

This U.S.-Saudi support of jihadists, in order to topple allies of Russia\u2019s Government, and ultimately even to overthrow Russia\u2019s Government itself, continues till the present day, under U.S. President Donald Trump. <\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s most important to make clear up-front, in order to show that America is waging the Sauds\u2019 war against Syria<\/b> \u2014 that the Sauds aren\u2019t waging America\u2019s war there \u2014 is that the U.S.-supported U.N.-managed peace talks in Geneva on the Syrian war are between the Syrian Government and the Saud family; the U.S. ceded to the Sauds the right to select the individuals who represent \u201cthe Syrian opposition\u201d at those ongoing \u2018peace talks\u2019:<\/span><\/p>\n

On 9 December 2015, as was reported to Europeans by AFP, the Saud family held an international conference<\/span><\/a> in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, which AFP said was \u201cSaudi-organized talks.\u201d AFP said that these \u201ctalks\u201d aimed \u201cto go some way towards establishing an opposition negotiating team\u201d against the Syrian Government. The Saud family had selected this conference’s invitees, in order to consider their applications to become the leaders, or even merely members, of this negotiating team under U.N. auspices, which would be called by the U.N. the \u201cHigh Negotiations Committee\u201d or \u201cHNC\u201d supposedly representing the people of Syria. However, no one was invited to this two-day Riyadh conference who \u201cargues that Assad\u2019s fate should be decided by the Syrian people.\u201d The U.S. Government and the royal Saud family who own Saudi Arabia, and the royal Thani family who own Qatar, had previously established something they had called the \u201cNational Coalition.\u201d Its deputy head was Hisham Marwa, who utterly rejected the idea that \u201cAssad\u2019s fate should be decided by the Syrian people.\u201d AFP\u2019s report said that Marwa was delighted at being surrounded at this conference by “the presence of military and political figures. This is the real opposition.\u201d To him, the Syrian people were not. He was pleased that the Syrian people \u201cwill not affect the equation.\u201d And they didn\u2019t \u2014 but the royal Saud family did: they actually ran the HNC. Assad\u2019s Government has been \u2018negotiating\u2019 against King Saud. That\u2019s the reality, in the U.N.\u2019s \u2018peace talks.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

On 20 January 2016, the BBC headlined “Syria conflict: Islamist rebel named opposition chief negotiator\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported that \u201cA Syrian opposition committee has named an Islamist rebel as its chief negotiator at peace talks that the UN hopes to convene in Geneva on Monday. Mohammed Alloush is the political leader of the powerful, Saudi-backed group Jaysh al-Islam (Army of Islam).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On 3 February 2016, the Saud-affiliated UAE\u2019s The National<\/i> newspaper bannered, “Why Jaish Al Islam and Ahrar Al Sham are at the heart of Geneva squabbles:<\/span><\/a> While the groups both oppose ISIL [otherwise called ISIS], they are allies of Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra,\u201d and reported that \u201cJaish Al Islam … already has a central role in the discussions, with its leader Mohammed Alloush acting as chief negotiator for the opposition’s High Negotiations Committee team in Geneva. \u2026 Jaish Al Islam’s former leader Zahran Alloush spoke of Alawites and Shiites in derogatory terms and at times advocated that they be cleansed from parts of Syria.\u201d The Alloushes, who had always been jihadists and pro-Saud Syrians, hated Shia just like the Sauds have hated Shia for hundreds of years (since 1744)<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

So: that\u2019s how the U.S. Government ended up supporting, as constituting the supposed \u2018representatives of the Syrian people\u2019 \u2018negotiating\u2019 against Syria\u2019s Government, in these U.N.-sponsored \u2018peace\u2019 talks, a team consisting of, and even being led by, agents who had been selected by the Saud family, who were determined to impose Sharia Law upon Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n

It continues a lengthy U.S.-and-Saudi history of trying to replace Syria\u2019s secular Government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are key passages from historian Douglas Little\u2019s excellent \u201c1949-1958, Syria: Early Experiments in Covert Action\u201d<\/span><\/a>: <\/span><\/p>\n

Declassified records confirm that beginning in November 1948, <\/i>[CIA operative Stephen] Meade met secretly with Syrian Army Chief of Staff Col. Husni Zaim at least six times to discuss the \u201cpossibility [of an] army supported dictatorship.\u201d U.S. officials realized that Zaim was a \u201c\u2018Banana Republic\u2019 dictator type\u201d with a \u201cstrong anti-Soviet attitude.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Building the Arabian American Oil Company’s Trans-Arabian Pipe Line from Saudi Arabia to Syria.<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Meade and Zaim completed plans for the coup in early 1949. On 14 March, Zaim \u201crequested U.S. agents [to] provoke and abet internal disturbances \u2018essential for coup d\u2019 etat\u2019 or that U.S. funds be given him [for] this purpose.\u201d Nine days later, Zaim \u201cpromised a \u2018surprise\u2019 within several days\u201d if Meade could secure U.S. help. As rumors of a military coup grew stronger, Assistant Secretary of State George McGhee arrived in Damascus, ostensibly to discuss resettling Palestinian refugees but possibly to authorize U.S. support for Zaim. Shortly thereafter, \u2026 Meade reported on 15 April that \u201cover 400 Commies [in] all parts of Syria have been arrested. \u2026 On 16 May, Zaim approved ARAMCO\u2019s TAPLINE. \u2026 However, on 14 August, Zaim was overthrown and executed by Col. Sami Hinnawi. \u2026 On December 19, 1949, Col. Adib Shishakli ousted Hinnawi in Syria\u2019s third coup in nine months. \u2026 Shishakli had a \u201ccordial 2 hour discussion\u201d with the CIA\u2019s Miles Copeland and others at the U.S. embassy on November 23, 195l. When Ma\u2019aruf Dawalibi, long regarded by U.S. observers as pro-Soviet, announced a week later that he would head Syria\u2019s eighth cabinet in less than two years, Shishakli dissolved parliament and set up a military dictatorship. <\/i>[This was the CIA\u2019s 2nd Syrian coup; and it, too, established a dictatorship there.] \u2026 In short order, Syria initiated mutual defense talks with Turkey and renewed the TAPLINE concession. Shishakli was willing to consider a peace treaty with Israel and the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Syria provided substantial U.S. financial and military aid was forthcoming. In 1952, the Truman administration pressed the World Bank to expedite Syria\u2019s request for a $200 million loan. \u2026 CIA director Allen Dulles agreed that \u201cthe situation in that country is the worst of all the countries in that area.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>\u2026 U.S. Ambassador Moose suggested on 8 January <\/i>[1955] that \u201cthought be given to other methods,\u201d including an \u201canti-Communist coup\u201d engineered by the SSNP. In March, Allen Dulles and CIA Middle East chief Kermit Roosevelt flew to London, where they worked out the details for the<\/i> [third CIA Syrian] coup with Britain\u2019s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). …<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

During an unprecedented New Year\u2019s <\/i> [1957] Day meeting with key legislative leaders, Eisenhower requested congressional authorization to use U.S. troops to counter Soviet subversion in the Middle East. He \u201ccited Syrian developments as evidence of Russian intent.\u201d The House approved, 355 to 61 on January 30, 1957, and the Eisenhower Doctrine went into effect.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In August, Washington apparently gave authorization for Operation Wappen, the code name for the new U.S. covert operation against Syria. Howard Stone, a CIA political action specialist with experience in Iran and Sudan, had been planning a coup with dissidents inside the Syrian army for three months. Meanwhile, Shishakli assured Kermit Roosevelt<\/i> [author of the CIA\u2019s plan] that he was ready to reassume power in Syria. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Syrian counterintelligence chief Sarraj reacted swiftly on August 12, expelling Stone and other CIA agents, arresting their accomplices and placing the U.S. embassy under surveillance. Left-wing Colonel Bizri used the fiasco as an excuse to wrest control of the army from his moderate rivals.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. encouraged Turkey and Iraq to mass troops along their borders with Syria. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Eisenhower gradually edged away from the provocative scheme but the Turks refused to demobilize the 50,000 troops they had massed along the Syrian frontier. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

On July 15, Eisenhower pondered U.S. problems in the Arab world. \u201cThe trouble is we have a campaign of hatred against us, not by the governments but by the people.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. regime\u2019s enemies here were not any government, but instead \u201cthe people.\u201d These people had good reason for hating America\u2019s Government. Syrians didn\u2019t want American thugs to control their lives. Already, the U.S. had become a dictatorship; and not only was it that: it became a dictatorship which is determined to be dictators to the entire world. The U.S. aristocracy demanded this, and still does.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. gang (the U.S. Government) weren\u2019t dealing with a sufficiently psychopathic military in Syria; so, America\u2019s rule over that country didn\u2019t last long. But, finally, the born CIA asset Barack Obama<\/span><\/a> tried his best to conquer Syria, and he too failed; and, now, the businessman Trump is settling for controlling merely portions of Syria, which the Sauds and the billionaires in Israel and in the U.S. still are demanding. <\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, Syria hasn\u2019t been sufficiently corrupt to satisfy the U.S.-Israeli-Saudi gang. Syria\u2019s Government still represents the Syrian people<\/span><\/a>. (Even Western polls of Syrians confirm it<\/span><\/a>. And 72% of Syrians are opposed to the U.S. regime\u2019s demand that Assad be removed from power prior to the next Syrian election and not be allowed to run again for the Presidency<\/span><\/a>. And yet the U.S. says it supports democracy \u2014 even while trying to block it in Syria<\/span><\/a>.) America\u2019s aristocrats have tried mightily in Syria, many times, but have failed, each time.<\/span><\/p>\n

What brought down the Soviet Union \u2014 Al Qaeda, supported by the aristocracies of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia \u2014 has consistently failed to bring down Syria, except to destroy it \u2014 and the perpetrators of that destruction (not only America\u2019s dictators, but the Sauds, plus the Thanis who own Qatar, plus Turkey\u2019s Erdogan) even have the gall now to blame their victims, for that $250-billion-plus reconstruction expense<\/span><\/a>. That\u2019s the perfection of conservatism: it\u2019s the epitomization of the blame-the-victim ideology. It is fascism.<\/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 In a recent article, I documented that \u201cU.S. Again Supports Al Qaeda in Syria\u201d. In a prior article, I had documented that since 2012 the U.S. Government has cooperated with the Sauds\u2019 plan to install in Syria a fundamentalist-Sunni government to replace Syria\u2019s existing secular Government, and that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":344848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[115,30,32,96,3604,535,907,1009,524,754,6257,523],"class_list":{"0":"post-344846","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-global-news","14":"tag-isis","15":"tag-islamic-state","16":"tag-russia","17":"tag-syria","18":"tag-trump","19":"tag-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344846","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=344846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}