![\"Alan](\"http:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/CNNDershowitz-e1495222991776.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAlan Dershowitz (Anderson Cooper 360<\/strong>, 5\/17\/17) denounces Trump whistleblower as “a felon [and] a criminal.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pro-torture<\/a> legal scholar Alan Dershowitz was on CNN<\/b> the other night (Anderson Cooper 360<\/strong>, 5\/17\/17<\/a>) arguing that the person who told the Washington Post<\/b> that Donald Trump had disclosed classified information about ISIS to Russian visitors in the Oval Office was \u201ca felon, a criminal and should go to jail.\u201d After former Obama strategist demurred that publishing leaks was sometimes in the public interest, Dershowitz replied:<\/p>\n I have no problem with the Washington Post<\/b> publishing it or the [New York<\/b>] Times<\/b> publishing it. I do have problems with the people who work for the national security agencies leaking confidential information that may cost lives, may make it much more difficult to detect laptops. Remember, the only way ISIS got this information is through the leak.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Anderson Cooper suggested that Russia would give secret intelligence to ISIS, which boasted of blowing up a Russian civilian airliner<\/a> in 2015, killing 224 people.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n CNN<\/b>\u2019s Anderson Cooper took issue with this last claim. \u201cYou can’t say definitively what Russia would have done with the information,\u201d he insisted. To which Dershowitz replied, accurately enough<\/a>: \u201cThey’re not giving it to ISIS. They’re not on talking terms.\u201d<\/p>\n Axelrod chimed in: \u201cWhat about Iran? Professor, what about Iran?\u201d Cooper attempted to back up this claim:<\/p>\n Bashar al-Assad has certainly done things which are actually helpful to ISIS in Syria. It’s not as if Bashar al-Assad is fighting a war against ISIS.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin attempted to clarify: \u201cDavid is saying he’s allied with Iran\u201d\u2014though it\u2019s not clear whether the \u201che\u201d in question was Syrian President Assad or Russian President Vladimir Putin. Leading to this finale of the discussion:<\/p>\n DERSHOWITZ:<\/b> That’s very speculative.<\/p>\n COOPER:<\/b> Oh, we just don’t know.<\/p>\n DERSHOWITZ:<\/b> We know the first public disclosure of it came from the leaks from within the National Security Agencies and those leaks should be plugged.<\/p>\n Mass videotaped executions of Syrian soldiers by ISIS (Reuters<\/strong>, 8\/28\/14<\/a>) did not persuade Anderson Cooper that ISIS and the Syrian government were really at war.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Well, we do know, contrary to Cooper\u2019s assertion, that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is<\/i> fighting a war against ISIS, along with a variety of other rebel factions. As Newsweek<\/b> (5\/5\/17<\/a>) reported earlier this month:<\/p>\n With support from Russia, Iran and pro-government militias, the Syrian military has secured most of the country’s population centers taken over by insurgents and ISIS earlier throughout the nation’s six-year war. After retaking the former rebel bastion of Aleppo in December, Syrian troops and their allies ousted ISIS from the historic city of Palmyra earlier this year. Representing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the forces pushed further Thursday, capturing four areas from the jihadists in Palmyra’s southeastern countryside, according to pro-government Al Masdar News<\/b><\/a>. The Syrian military is aiming to relieve an enclave of fellow soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians under ISIS siege in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour since 2014.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Furthermore, Axelrod\u2019s suggestion that Iran might be sharing intelligence with ISIS is absurd. ISIS\u2019s stance toward Shia Islam, the kind practiced by most Iranians, is openly genocidal<\/a>: \u201cShia have no medicine but the sword,\u201d an ISIS video proclaimed, showcasing Shiites decapitated by ISIS\u2019s militants (Independent<\/b>, 3\/20\/14<\/a>).<\/p>\n The Iranian government is predictably hostile toward a movement that would exterminate 90 percent of its citizens. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran\u2019s Quds special forces unit, called ISIS \u201ca plague and a grave catastrophe in the world\u201d in explaining why Iran was supporting the government in Syria\u2019s civil war (Al-Monitor<\/b>, 3\/8\/15<\/a>): \u201cWe need to quarantine our borders and aid our neighbors so this cancer does not spread to our country.\u201d<\/p>\n Donald Trump was rightly scorned when he gave a foreign policy speech which seemed to not understand the Shia\/Sunni division in the Muslim world. The New York Times<\/b> editorial board (8\/16\/16<\/a>) lectured him:<\/p>\n Lumping Iran, which is a Shiite nation, with the Sunni militants of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda makes no sense. In fact, Iran and the Sunni groups are enemies.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Indeed, it\u2019s the kind of thing you\u2019d want a presidential candidate to know. But it\u2019s also something you\u2019d hope that hosts and leading analysts on national cable news networks would understand as well. Dershowitz\u2019s proposal to put journalists\u2019 sources in prison<\/a> deserves a better retort than this geopolitical nonsense.<\/p>\n h\/t Sam Husseini<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Messages to CNN<\/strong> can be sent to\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0(or via Twitter<\/strong>\u00a0@CNN<\/a>). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span> Alan Dershowitz (Anderson Cooper 360, 5\/17\/17) denounces Trump whistleblower as “a felon [and] a criminal.” Pro-torture legal scholar Alan Dershowitz was on CNN the other night (Anderson Cooper 360, 5\/17\/17) arguing that the person who told the Washington Post that Donald Trump had disclosed classified information about ISIS to Russian visitors in the Oval Office […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-308963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308963","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\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nThis piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"