Wait a minute... isn't Terry the guy that stated on here that his grandfather who was a member of the KKK wasn't a bad guy or something?
i just want to gt this clear before I decide if he is being serious here in his assessment of Assad.
KURD is the word - and the word is KURD
by Terry 65 Replies latest jw friends
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Terry
Not so silentbuddha : here is what I wrote.
Have a field day.
shorturl.at/nIR07 -
Terry
Cofty (insert large rambling excuse)
Gosh. All those words and yet you just don't care and don't have the time to give one tiny quotation from an expert that sends me arse over end.
Why join a "Discussion" when you just don't care and don't have the time to back up your airy dismissals?
I'm afraid this is a case of Paper Tiger-ism.
Meow -
Terry
In a 2005 interview with President Assad of Syria (5 years BEFORE the so-called Arab Spring) CNN interviewer Christiane Amanpour spoke of the intentions of the U.S. relative to Assad's leadership.
___AMANPOUR: Mr. President, you know the rhetoric of regime change is headed towards you from the United States. They are actively looking for a new Syrian leader. They're granting visas and visits to Syrian opposition politicians. They're talking about isolating your diplomatically and, perhaps, a coup d'etat or your regime crumbling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GcP1Gb_1Jc
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The history of the C.I.A. in toppling regimes comes into play here.
The playbook is a matter of record how it has always been achieved.
A secret fund (black ops) is set up to funnel weapons to any indigenous groups who are against the targeted leader and "advisers" from the C.I.A. handle the training.
The Obama Administration gave the green light to a 1 billion dollar weapons funnel and suddenly ISIS and Al-Qaeda (U.S. enemy) were holding these weapons courtesy of the American taxpayers.
Obama had been pressured to give the okay and he caved.
.("a presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to covertly arm and train small groups of rebels at bases in Jordan. The president’s reversal came in part because of intense lobbying by foreign leaders, including King Abdullah II of Jordan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel...)
The New York Times reported (after this secret program was revealed and the embarrassment of supplying weapons to the 9-11 terrorist organization came to light):
"Once C.I.A.-trained fighters crossed into Syria, C.I.A. officers had difficulty controlling them. The fact that some of their C.I.A. weapons ended up with Nusra Front fighters — and that some of the rebels joined the group — confirmed the fears of many in the Obama administration when the program began. Although the Nusra Front was widely seen as an effective fighting force against Mr. Assad’s troops, its Qaeda affiliation made it impossible for the Obama administration to provide direct support for the group.American intelligence officials estimate that the Nusra Front now has as many as 20,000 fighters in Syria, making it Al Qaeda’s largest affiliate. Unlike other Qaeda affiliates such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Nusra Front has long focused on battling the Syrian government rather than plotting terrorist attacks against the United States and Europe."
shorturl.at/chvIN Link to NYTimes article.
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TIMELINE2007 April - US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets President Assad in Damascus. She is the highest-placed US politician to visit Syria in recent years. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets Foreign Minister Walid Muallem the following month in the first contact at this level for two years.
2007 September - Israel carries out an aerial strike against a nuclear facility under construction in northern Syria.
2008 July - President Assad meets French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris. The visit signals the end of the diplomatic isolation by the West that followed the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri in 2005.
2008 October - Syria establishes diplomatic relations with Lebanon for first time since both countries established independence in 1940s.
2009 March - Jeffrey Feltman, acting assistant US secretary of state for the Near East, visits Damascus with White House national security aide Daniel Shapiro in first high-level US diplomatic mission for nearly four years. Meets Foreign Minister Walid Muallem.
Trading launches on Syria's stock exchange in a gesture towards liberalizing the state-controlled economy.
2010 May - US renews sanctions against Syria, saying that it supports terrorist groups, seeks weapons of mass destruction and has provided Lebanon's Hezbollah with Scud missiles in violation of UN resolutions.
2011 March - Security forces shoot protesters dead in southern city of Deraa demanding release of political prisoners, triggering violent unrest that steadily spread nationwide over the following months.
___________________BBC link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14703995
Hypocritically, the U.S. was simultaneously supporting ("inadvertently") enemies and terrorists.That is a dilemma that concerned the US government even before the protests began. The author of an April 2009 cable expressed concern that some of the projects being funded by the US, if discovered by the Syrian government, would be perceived as "an attempt to undermine the Asad [sic] regime, as opposed to encouraging behavior reform."
The Post reported that much of the money – as much as $6 million since 2006 – has been funneled through a group of Syrian exiles in London, known as the Movement for Justice and Development. The group is connected to a London-based satellite television station that is broadcast in Syria, known as Barada TV, which has recently expanded its coverage to include the mass protests.
Several other civil society initiatives in Syria received secret US funding, but by 2009, US officials were concerned that the Syrian government had discovered the US funding.
Christian Science Monitor link: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2011/0418/Cables-reveal-covert-US-support-for-Syria-s-opposition
___The U.S. used the "Arab Spring" as pretext for engagement but
the C.I.A. had spent millions (at least a billion) setting up Assad for regime
change. -
Muddy Waters
Marking to read later, looks so interesting
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Simon
If your argument being "correct" relies on Assad and Erdogan being considered normal, decent, rational leaders, then I think you need to review your sources and thinking.
The middle east isn't so simple that simplistic boxes of "good guys" and "bad guys" works. It's a shit-hole of sectarian violence and centuries old grudges. Whoever is on top is going to be an evil asshole who got there by killing.
We should leave them all to their own devices, there is no purpose to be served by us being there, there is no success scenario, we're just being used by one side or the other.
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Terry
I agree we are dealing with monsters. No good guys in the lot of them.
What got me interested in this topic started with a BBC Documentary
on T.E.Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia).
I've read at least 30 books about Lawrence over the span of the last half century.
However, the Documentary's last half dealt with the blow back to the world at large in the Middle East, the aftermath and consequences of promises made seemingly in "good faith" to the Arabs that they'd have their independence.
Lawrence began with "good intentions".
His purpose was shaped toward giving his personal friend S.A. FREEDOM and enlarged to include the Arabs as a people.
In short, lying to people you are asking to die for a deception violated T.E.Lawrence's conscience. (It didn't stop him, however).
Britain and France's bad faith Sykes-Picot agreement destroyed any
plausible deniability of making good on assurances of independence.
Okay, so what?
So, I wondered how many repercussions have continued over all the in-between years (leading up to today) have been chiefly due to MORE LIES, deceptions, false flag operations, and broken promises of independence and such.
This led me to another documentary on the history of the C.I.A. with a view to specifics about many bungled "regime change" dirty tricks.
In other words, down the rabbit hole goeth I.
I am quite UN-interested in conspiracy theories, Bilderberg nonsense, illuminati naughty, or any of that tinfoil hat shtick.
The more documentary footage I watched the more my naive view of "good guys" and "bad guys" failed to match up to reality.
The secret operations of Intelligence operations are clearly illegal when they violate law. Presidents Nixon and Bush didn't seem to mind, to say the least.
But, unknown (perhaps) even to the bosses and Presidents are these blackOps that will do nothing short of "get er done by any means necessary" and cover the consequences with official lies, doctored documents, Top Secret camouflage, and stonewalling.
It is pretty clear (at least to me) Media outlets rely too heavily on carefully crafted Intelligence leaks/lies and talking points.
The public at large catch them at it and it stops nothing.
The corruption isn't really punished EXCEPT public show trials with fall guys and jaw-boning breast-beating, and pearl clutching by politicians.
To conclude:
Bush made very clear he wanted to go into IRAQ and the secret C.I.A. operatives provided pretexts and plausible deniability along the way.
WEAPONS of MASS DESTRUCTION was an empty pretext and
Media pumped life into it and fear mongering, table pounding Hawks pushed the debacle through a misled public relations push.
Eight wars under the Obama Administration. Arms sales to every awful, sociopath in the Usual Suspect list, playing off one ally against the other and continued Propaganda by Media, Congressmen, Academics, and our chances of hearing uncolored reports is growing thin.
WHY DO OUR KIDS have to die for all this? That's the bottom line.
Tulsi Gabbard is now being slimed for her anti-regime-change stance as a Democrat. The Queen of War, Hillary is at the helm of that smear.
War is not about helping the poor helpless Kurds. Sorry, the military ignores students dying in Chinese uprisings easily enough. The REAL reasons Syria is worth blood and treasure is the same it has always been in the Middle East and perfectly upstanding men (and women) like T.E.Lawrence are being torn apart by all the lies. -
Finkelstein
I think an important element to this story is what happened years ago to the Kurds by Saddam Husein when he dropped chemical bombs onto Kurdish villages killing unarmed civilians.
Since that event the US and countries around the world have taken a supporting heartfelt stance with the Kurds in their involving plight of creating their own sustainable territory.
Now that US has backed away from the Kurds in northern Syria, they are deemed weak and unable to defend themselves against the Turkish regime and Syria's .
Oil is another engaging factor to this story to who gets it and who wants it.
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LoveUniHateExams
the Documentary's last half dealt with the blow back to the world at large in the Middle East, the aftermath and consequences of promises made seemingly in "good faith" to the Arabs that they'd have their independence - but ... the Arabs have their independence.
Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Lebanon are all independent Arab countries.
If I've missed something, could someone explain it to me ...
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cofty
Keeping the oil flowing by playing off one 'ally' against another is actually not as immoral as men like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky and their followers make it seem.
It has kept the lights on and brought prosperity to millions of people for almost a century.
Long queues at petrol stations, planned power-cuts, three-day working weeks, mass unemployment and crippling inflation. That is what happens when Middle East policy fails as it did in the 70s.
It's so easy to stand in judgement of those who have to make the hard choices. Many of those decisions have indeed been idiotic and in a few cases catastrophic but remember that not taking action is also a choice.
Where would we be now if the UN led by the USA hadn't liberated Kuwait and allowed Saddam to threaten other oil producing countries? The second Iraq war also was not illegal. It was covered by UN resolution. It was the overthrow of a monster and the defense of Kurds and Marsh Arabs. It was the execution of the peace that was criminally incompetent. But the real blame must be placed at the feet of the succession of petty-minded, corrupt and incompetent ME leaders who care only for the enrichment of their family/clan/tribe/religious division.
The Saudi regime is indeed appalling. But what are you going to do if we piss them off and they turn off the oil, or Iran closes the Straits of Hormuz?
Criticising foreign policy is childsplay. Making better decisions (and not with the wisdom of hindsight) requires qualities all too often lacking in our leaders.
The title and OP of this thread are disconnected from your subsequent topic and do you a disservice if you stand by them. In your self-proclaimed skepticism you have displayed astonishing gullibility.
ETA - we are approaching the time when we will be able to turn our backs on the black gold and ME tyrants can go back to ruling over empty desert kingdoms. Worryingly many of them have spent their money on sophisticated weaponry. It will be quite a show.