{"id":229827,"date":"2016-03-08T00:37:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T00:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=229827"},"modified":"2016-03-08T00:37:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T00:37:48","slug":"u-s-supplies-isis-through-turkey-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/u-s-supplies-isis-through-turkey-2\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Supplies ISIS through Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On Friday, March 4th, the leading opposition newspaper in Turkey, Zaman<\/i>, was taken over by the Government<\/span><\/a>; and, on March 5th, one of the other opposition newspapers, Cumhuriyet<\/i>, reported that Zaman<\/i>\u2019s separate news-service to other news-media, Cihan News Agency, was also disabled on the Internet. (It was soon restored, operating under new management.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The Turkish Government is trying to prevent the Turkish public from knowing that Turkey has been serving as the transit-route by which the U.S. government and its allied Arab oil monarchies (especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar) have been supplying foreign jihadists and weapons (largely U.S. but paid for with Saudi funds) into Syria to oust Bashar al-Assad from power.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zaman<\/i>\u2019s editor has been imprisoned for publishing such prohibited truths, but somehow his newspaper continued reporting on a court case in which Turkey\u2019s President Tayyip Erdo\u011fan is accused of breaking Turkish law by aiding terrorists. That continued resistance by the newspaper might be a reason why the Turkish Government shut it down and replaced management before continuing its operations.<\/span><\/p>\n

On March 1st, Cumhuriyet<\/i>, headlined,\u00a0\u201cFormer Justice Minister of Turkey: Erdo\u011fan Will Stand Trial,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that, “Former Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk, said that\u00a0Erdo\u011fan’s actions ‘do not comply with the decision of\u00a0the Constitutional Court.\u2019 He criticized [Erdo\u011fan] by saying \u2026 ‘One day this matter must be settled by\u00a0the judiciary\u2019.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Russian Television had first reported on the case, in English, back on 26 November 2015, headlining,\u00a0“Turkish newspaper\u00a0editor in court for\u00a0‘espionage’ after\u00a0revealing weapon\u00a0convoy to Syrian\u00a0militants.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0This news-report said that:<\/span><\/p>\n

In May, the outlet <\/i>[Cumhuriyet] published photos of weapons it\u00a0said were then transferred to Syria by Turkey\u2019s\u00a0intelligence agency. \u2026 The articles, published on Cumhuriyet’s front\u00a0page in May, claimed that Turkey\u2019s National\u00a0Intelligence Organization (M\u0130T) is smuggling\u00a0weapons in trucks into Syria and was caught\u00a0doing so twice in 2014. The trucks were\u00a0allegedly stopped and searched by police, with\u00a0photos and videos of their contents obtained by\u00a0Cumhuriyet.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

According to the paper, the trucks were carrying\u00a0six steel containers, with 1,000 artillery shells,\u00a050,000 machine gun rounds, 30,000 heavy\u00a0machine gun rounds and 1,000 mortar shells.\u00a0The arms were reportedly delivered to extremist\u00a0groups fighting against the Syrian government\u00a0of President Bashar Assad, whom Ankara\u00a0wants ousted from power.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

The Erdo\u011fan government alleged the weapons were “aid to Syrian ethnic Turkmen tribespeople and\u00a0labeled their interception by local police an act of\u00a0\u2018treason’\u00a0and \u2018espionage\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Turkey is a NATO member, and the famous investigative reporter\u00a0Seymour Hersh had revealed in the 6 April 2014\u00a0London Review of Books<\/i><\/span><\/a>, that on 20 June 2013 \u2014 just a few months prior to the sarin gas attack that Obama blamed on Assad and used as his excuse to invade Syria \u2014 the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reported that America\u2019s allies in overthrowing Bashar al-Assad were engaged in \u201cthe most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida\u2019s pre-9\/11 effort,\u201d but the U.S. Director of National Intelligence denied that it was true. One U.S. ally there was Al Qaeda in Syria, known in Syria as Al Nusra, (Nusra and Erdo\u011fan wanted this gas-attack to provide the excuse that Obama had set as his \u201cred line\u201d to overthrow Assad \u2014 a chemical-weapons attack in Syria<\/span><\/a>.) However, Hersh reported, “Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern\u00a0Turkey with what local police told the press\u00a0were two kilograms of sarin.\u201d All of that had occurred prior to the 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hersh went on:<\/span><\/p>\n

The officer ultimately responsible for the planning\u00a0and execution of the attack <\/i>[U.S. bombing of Syria] was General Martin\u00a0Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs. From the\u00a0beginning of the crisis, the former intelligence\u00a0official said, the joint chiefs had been sceptical of\u00a0the administration\u2019s argument that it had the facts\u00a0to back up its belief in Assad\u2019s guilt. They pressed\u00a0the DIA and other agencies for more substantial\u00a0evidence. \u2018There was no way they thought Syria\u00a0would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad\u00a0was winning the war,\u2019 the former intelligence\u00a0official said. Dempsey had irritated many in the\u00a0Obama administration by repeatedly warning\u00a0Congress over the summer of the danger of\u00a0American military involvement in Syria.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Hersh subsequently reported that, rather than go ahead with an operation that the Joint Chiefs considered fraudulent, they sabotaged Obama\u2019s policy. On 2 January 2016, Hersh headlined in the London Review of Books<\/i>, \u201cMilitary to Military,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he explained how and why they had done this:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama\u2019s policy would have \u2018had a zero chance of success.\u2019 So in the autumn of 2013 they decided to take steps against the extremists without going through political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. \u2026 General Dempsey and his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept their dissent out of bureaucratic channels, and survived in office. General Michael Flynn did not. \u2018Flynn incurred the wrath of the White House by insisting on telling the truth about Syria,\u2019 said Patrick Lang, a retired army colonel who served for nearly a decade as the chief Middle East civilian intelligence officer for the DIA. \u2018He thought truth was the best thing and they shoved him out. He wouldn\u2019t shut up.\u2019 <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Obama couldn\u2019t be swayed that the enemy were Al Qaeda and other jihadists instead of Assad \u2014 that overthrowing him was his top priority. However, Hersh said in his 6 April 2014 article, that Obama had to backtrack at the last moment anyway, because British intelligence reported to David Cameron that the sarin used in the attack didn\u2019t come from Syria \u2014 that it had been imported; this implied that it was a set-up job in order to \u2018justify\u2019 invading. Cameron didn\u2019t want to be just another Tony Blair. Obama couldn\u2019t get his necessary-for-appearances\u2019-sake public cover for an invasion, Britain, as his predecessor had done regarding Iraq. Hersh went on, in that 2014 article:<\/span><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s move for congressional approval quickly\u00a0became a dead end. \u2018Congress was not going to let\u00a0this go by,\u2019 the former intelligence official said.\u00a0\u2018Congress made it known that, unlike the\u00a0authorisation for the Iraq war, there would be\u00a0substantive hearings.\u2019 At this point, there was a\u00a0sense of desperation in the White House, the\u00a0former intelligence official said.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Obama, in other words, was now trapped. He couldn\u2019t fire all of his Joint Chiefs \u2014 at least not right away; it would be embarrassing, how could he explain it? And the Republicans were eager to expose his Administration\u2019s disarray on the matter. So: the story was passed around that Secretary of State John Kerry got Russia to get Assad to eliminate his sarin stocks. Russia\u2019s leader Vladimir Putin was happy to help Obama avoid invading his Syrian ally. That was how the \u2018news\u2019 organizations reported the backtrack \u2014 as a rare instance of U.S.-Russian cooperation: good news for everybody. But for Obama, it was actually the way out of a desperately embarrassing situation. And he never gave up his goal of switching Syria from the secular Assad to a failed state whose crucial oil-pipeline routes would be in \u2018friendly\u2019 (to Saudi Arabia and Qatar) jihadist Sunni-ruled areas of Syria, so that \u2018our\u2019 Arab \u2018allies\u2019 (the jihadist-financiing nations<\/span><\/a>, as even Kerry\u2019s predecessor Hillary Clinton had known them to be<\/span><\/a>) can grab the world\u2019s largest energy-market, Europe, away from Russia. <\/span><\/p>\n

Hersh, in his 2014 article, continued:<\/span><\/p>\n

The full\u00a0extent of US co-operation with Turkey,\u00a0Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel\u00a0opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The\u00a0Obama administration has never publicly admitted\u00a0to its role in creating what the CIA calls a \u2018rat line\u2019,\u00a0a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line,\u00a0authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel\u00a0weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern\u00a0Turkey and across the Syrian border to the\u00a0opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately\u00a0received the weapons were jihadists, some of them\u00a0affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson\u00a0said: \u2018The idea that the United States was providing\u00a0weapons from Libya to anyone is false.\u2019)<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

He closed:<\/span><\/p>\n

Barring a major change in policy by Obama,\u00a0Turkey\u2019s meddling in the Syrian civil war is likely\u00a0to go on. \u2018I asked my colleagues if there was any\u00a0way to stop Erdo\u011fan\u2019s continued support for the\u00a0rebels, especially now that it\u2019s going so wrong,\u2019 the\u00a0former intelligence official told me. \u2018The answer\u00a0was: \u201cWe\u2019re screwed.\u201d We could go public if it was\u00a0somebody other than Erdo\u011fan, but Turkey is a\u00a0special case. They\u2019re a Nato ally.\u2019\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

There is simply too much evidence proving that Erdo\u011fan is supporting ISIS and other terrorist groups in Syria<\/span><\/a>. This is the reality of NATO: conquering Russia, first by switching its allies (such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc.), is the assignment, regardless of the public\u2019s safety. Even if the U.S. weren\u2019t backing jihadists directly (which we are), we\u2019re backing them by having jihadist governments such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Qatar as allies \u2014 instead of as enemies. \u2018Our\u2019 oil companies and mega-banks are in bed with them, and their top stockholders and executives, and their lobbyists, control the people who control the U.S. Government. The U.S. Constitution\u2019s \u201cWe, the People \u2026\u201d has become only<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>those \u201cPeople.\u201d The rest are now just for extras in crowd-scenes, at political campaign events \u2014 and their mass-mind-control is done by their media, \u2018our\u2019 \u2018free press\u2019 (who don\u2019t report this reality), in \u2018our\u2019 \u2018democracy\u2019<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Erdo\u011fan is profoundly angry at the unsteady support he has been receiving from the U.S. government in their joint efforts to eliminate Bashar al-Assad. However, apparently, Obama doesn\u2019t feel that the U.S. is yet ready for a nuclear war to be sparked between NATO and Russia \u2014 Obama thinks that doing it now would be premature. \u2018Color revolutions\u2019 and \u2018Arab Spring\u2019 and \u2018Maidan demonstrations\u2019, and other populist covers for coups (taking advantage of the local political opposition, which exists in any country), are a far safer way to gradually strip Russia of its allies and turn them into yet-more enemies of Russia \u2014 and, only then, can the rip-cord finally be pulled, and Russia be forced to either submit or else die (even if the rest of the world might die also). The U.S. has been doing this boil-the-frog-slowly routine ever since U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush laid the foundation for it in 1990<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

As John Kerry recently said, when responding to aid workers at a donor conference for anti-Assad forces,\u00a0\u201cWhat do you want me to do? Go to war with Russia? Is that what you want?\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Clearly, Erdo\u011fan is lots more eager for that than Obama is. Perhaps Erdo\u011fan thinks that Putin would just back down. American Presidents, however, aren\u2019t so desperate that they feel they need to do it during their own Administration; they can afford to wait until the time is right, even if the plaudits will then go to some future President. Their paymasters will be duly appreciative of the contributions that each one of them has made toward the final \u2018U.S.\u2019 victory. (Victory for the paymasters<\/i>, of course.)<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the American government\u2019s charade<\/span><\/a> goes on. But already an MIT analysis \u2014 the Lloyd-Postal report<\/span><\/a> \u2014 on the sarin attack that occurred 21 August 2013, stated unequivocally that the Obama Administration was lying through its teeth about the matter. They provided excruciating detail showing why \u201cthe US Government\u2019s interpretation of the technical intelligence it gathered prior to and after the August 21 attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.\u201d (That\u2019s a tactful, yet passionate, way of saying: \u201cObama and his Administration were trying to lie this country into invading Syria.\u201d) Yet, Western news-media still simply ignore the evidence (they can do that in this dictatorship), and report that Assad\u2019s forces were behind the sarin attack. It\u2019s still\u00a0the official reason why<\/i>\u00a0 we\u2019re at war against Assad<\/span><\/a>. Was even George W. Bush worse than this?<\/span><\/p>\n

Seymour Hersh had tried to get his news-reports on these matters published by what had been his regular publisher, the New Yorker<\/i>, which turned them down; and he tried other U.S. outlets as well, but wasn\u2019t successful in finding any that would pay his regular charges \u2014 and he had already spent much in order to research these matters. Finally, he obtained a suitable outlet, in the LRB<\/i>. This is why his recent reports are being published abroad.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyone who wishes to know more about what motivates the U.S. government regarding Syria should read the astoundingly brilliant article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., published on an obscure environmental website, February 25th,\u00a0\u201cSyria: Another Pipeline War.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0He tells so much suppressed history there, it\u2019s flabbergasting to see it all brought together into one flowing historical narrative \u2014 and my checking of the few sources that I hadn\u2019t previously known of indicates that his standards for quality-of-evidence that he builds his narrative on are as rigorous and high as mine are \u2014 which is rare. I very much respect that. Every high school student should read his article in order to understand how corrupt the U.S. is at its highest levels. The article is a masterpiece of historical writing. But even a masterpiece can have a flaw: his article plays down the role that leading Democrats after Reagan have been playing in GHW Bush\u2019s long war to conquer Russia. We\u2019re still in the post-Reagan era, just as, between FDR and Reagan, we had been in the post-FDR era. Obama is as rabid a Russia-hater as practically anyone except John McCain would be. If a piece of historical writing is going to be partisan (as almost all are), at least this one is partisan on the less-unacceptable side.<\/span><\/p>\n

I might write RFK Jr.\u2019s name onto the Presidential line of my ballot in November. There\u2019s someone with favorable name-recognition, who clearly has the integrity and depth, and knowledge, to deal with the rot that has overtaken America, if anyone does<\/i>. Maybe he could win by acclamation, if he wouldn\u2019t be knocked-off first. But if the idea of writing in his name goes around like wildfire in the weeks before the November 8th general election, then who knows what would happen? Certainly, if Hillary is on the ballot as the \u2018Democratic\u2019 nominee, I won\u2019t vote for her, though I\u2019m a lifelong Democrat. And I don\u2019t want to be forced to vote for Trump (since he\u2019s almost totally unpredictable \u2014 which still isn\u2019t as bad as Hillary). (Besides: Hillary should be in prison for her destruction of crucial public records \u2014 State Department emails \u2014 to hide her crimes; and The Donald should be in prison for his fake Trump \u2018University\u2019 commercial fraud. But the corrupt Obama won\u2019t allow any such prosecutions.) And there\u2019s such beautiful irony here: \u201cTrump: If Elected, I\u2019ll Prosecute Hillary.\u201d<\/span><\/a> It\u2019s so much like Ukraine! (Cast Hillary as Tymoshenko, and Trump as Yanukovych \u2014 and I\u2019d vote then for Trump, so as to avoid the near-certainty of disaster<\/span><\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

But no intelligent American can be justified in simply not voting for President. That would be outrageously irresponsible. I won\u2019t ever do that. Every intelligent and caring person must vote for President \u2014 not leave that responsibility to others (which would be unpatriotic \u2014 plus wrong and callous \u2014 for any well-informed voter). The \u201canyone but ___\u201d non<\/i>-voters are mere fools and frauds. They simply don\u2019t care enough about the country to do their most-basic civic duty, which is to become informed and then to vote for someone on that basis (though never as a \u2018protest vote\u2019 \u2014 the nation is too important for any mere \u2018protest\u2019 \u2014 but only as a real<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>vote, for someone who has an authentic chance of winning<\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>the election). Any mere throw-away \u2018vote\u2019 is like a non<\/i>-vote. <\/span><\/p>\n

That article by Kennedy should be linked to by all of his supporters: it tells more about the man than any number of campaign speeches possibly could. It proves that he\u2019s fit for the job, if anyone is. That\u2019s one person who doesn\u2019t need to campaign for the job. He\u2019s an outsider whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is probably among the best there is, and whose heart is unquestionably in the right place \u2014 which would be a refreshing and radical change, a change that\u2019s of a kind needed now more than ever in the U.S.<\/span><\/p>\n

But anyway: RFK Jr.\u2019s article is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the horrendous war in Syria. My article here is just a warm-up to it \u2014 and, I hope, a totally non-<\/i>partisan one.<\/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 \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org On Friday, March 4th, the leading opposition newspaper in Turkey, Zaman, was taken over by the Government; and, on March 5th, one of the other opposition newspapers, Cumhuriyet, reported that Zaman\u2019s separate news-service to other news-media, Cihan News Agency, was also disabled on the Internet. (It was soon restored, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":229252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[115,30,535,907,522,524,1261,49,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-229827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-global-news","11":"tag-isis","12":"tag-obama","13":"tag-russia","14":"tag-turkey","15":"tag-usa-news","16":"tag-white-house","17":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}