Westerse media vallen critici van de White Helmets aan

Rick Sterling schreef een artikel op 'Oriental Review' over de aanvallen van de reguliere (massa-) media op critici van de White Helmets, kritiek die de wel nadenkende alternatieve media ook in Nederland voor de kiezen kreeg.....

Sterling wijst op een artikel van Janine di Giovani op de NY Reviews of Books getiteld: 'Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets'. Het artikel is een voorbeeld van hoe de westerse media propaganda maken voor de White Helmets en degenen aanvallen die de o.a. door die media geplugde mythe van de White Helmets bekritiseren.........

Zo heeft di Giovanni een grote bek over de echte oorlogscorrespondent Vanessa Beeley, één van de weinigen die wel regelmatig in het strijdgebied van Syrië te vinden was en die uitentreuren heeft geschreven over wat er werkelijk gebeurde in Syrië en zich niet verliet op de rapporten van het Syrische Observatorium voor Mensenrechten (SOHR), geleid door een gewezen misdadiger die zijn terechte straf ontliep door te vluchten en te stellen dat hij een politieke vluchteling was. De informatie van het SOHR kwam en komt voor het overgrote deel van de 'gematigde rebellen', die o.a. door Nederland werden gesteund.....

'Gematigde rebellen' ofwel moordenaars, verkrachters en martelbeulen, die bovendien met medeweten van de westerse landen in het bezit zijn van de gifgassen die door hen werden gebruikt om vervolgens de schuld in de schoenen van het reguliere Syrische leger werden geschoven......

Je snapt werkelijk niet waar di Giovanni het gore lef vandaan haalt om een uitstekend journalist als Beeley aan te vallen...... (hoewel, dat is onzin, immers di Giovanni huilt gewoon mee in het koor van de 'massamedia-terreurwolven...')

Een andere uitstekende journalist moet het ook al ontgelden bij di Giovanni, t.w.: Eva Bartlett, die zelf jaren in het Midden-Oosten heeft gewoond en goed is ingevoerd over de situatie in o.a. Syrië (en niet op grond van leugens die terreurgroepen verspreiden).....

Niet één keer gaat di Giovanni in op artikelen die deze twee journalisten schreven, nee zonder enige steekhoudende kritiek op geschreven artikelen, stelt di Giovanni domweg dat de 2 desinformatie verspreiden, waar ze Beeley zelfs durft af te schilderen als 'hogepriesters van Syrische propaganda', ofwel di Giovani draait de zaak volkomen om, immer zij maakt met dergelijke uitlatingen propaganda voor terreurgroepen, die voor het overgrote deel bestaan uit 'mannen' die niet eens Syriërs zijn......

Lees het uitstekende artikel van Sterling en geeft het door!

CHAOSISTAN, HYBRID WARS, INFORMATION WARFARE, ISRAEL, MIDDLE EAST, PHENOMENON 

OF TERRORISM, SYRIA, UNITED KINGDOM, UNITED STATES 

Western Media Attacks Critics of the White Helmets

Written by Rick STERLING on 24/10/2018

The October 16 issue of NY Review of Books has an article by Janine di Giovanni titled “Why Assad and Russia Target the White Helmets”. The article exemplifies how western media promotes the White Helmets uncritically and attacks those who challenge the myth.

Crude & Disingenuous Attack

Giovanni’s article attacks several journalists by name. She singles out Vanessa Beeley and echoes the Guardian’s characterization of Beeley as the “high priestess of Syria propaganda”. She does this without challenging a single article or claim by the journalist. She might have acknowledged that Vanessa Beeley has some familiarity with the Middle East; she is the daughter of one of the foremost British Arabists and diplomats including British Ambassador to Egypt. Giovanni might have explored Beeley’s research in Syria that revealed the White Helmets founder (British military contractor James Le Mesurier) assigned the name Syria Civil Defence despite the fact there is a real Syrian organization by that name that has existed since the 1950’s. For the past several years, Beeley has done many on-the-ground reports and investigations in Syria. None of these are challenged by Giovanni. Just days ago Beeley published a report on her visit to the White Helmets headquarters in Deraa.

Giovanni similarly dismisses another alternative journalist, Eva Bartlett. Again, Giovanni ignores the fact that Bartlett has substantial Middle East experience including having lived in Gaza for years. Instead of objectively evaluating the journalistic work of these independent journalists, Giovanni smears their work as “disinformation”. Presumably that is because their work is published at alternative sites such as 21st Century Wire and Russian media such as RT and Sputnik. Beeley and Bartlett surely would have been happy to have their reports published at the New York Review of Books, Newsweek or other mainstream outlets. But it’s evident that such reporting is not welcome there. Even Seymour Hersh had to go abroad to have his investigations on Syria published.

The New McCarthyism

Max Blumenthal is another journalist singled out by Giovanni. Blumenthal is the author of three books, including a NY Times bestseller and the highly acclaimed “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel”. Giovanni describes his transition from “anti-Assad” to “pro-Assad” and suggests his change of perspective was due to Russian influence. She says, “Blumenthal went to Moscow on a junket to celebrate RT’s tenth anniversary. We don’t know what happened during that visit, but afterwards, Blumenthal’s views completely flipped.” Instead of examining the facts presented by Blumenthal in articles such as “Inside the Shadowy PR Firm that’s Lobyying for Regime Change in Syria”, Giovanni engages in fact-free McCarthyism. Blumenthal explained the transition in his thinking in a public interview. He also described the threats he experienced when he started to criticize the White Helmets and their public relations firm, but this is ignored by Giovanni.

Contrary to Giovanni’s assumptions, some western journalists and activists were exposing the White Helmets long before the story was publicized on Russian media. In spring 2015 the basic facts about the White Helmets including their origins, funding and role in the information war on Syria were exposed in my article “Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators”. The article showed how the White Helmets were a key component in a campaign pushing for a “No Fly Zone” in Syria. It confirmed that the White Helmets is a political lobby force.

In spring 2016, Vanessa Beeley launched a petition “Do NOT give the Nobel Peace Prize to the White Helmets”. That petition garnered more support than a contrary petition urging the Nobel Prize committee to give the award to the White Helmets. Perhaps because of that, the petition was abruptly removed without explanation from the Change.org website. It was only at this time, with publicity around the heavily promoted nomination of the White Helmets for a Nobel Peace Prize that RT and other Russian media started to publicize and expose the White Helmets. That is one and a half years after they were first exposed in western alternative media.

White Helmets and Chemical Weapons Accusations 

Giovanni ignores the investigations and conclusions of some of the most esteemed American journalists regarding the White Helmets and chemical weapons incidents in Syria.

The late Robert Parry published many articles exposing the White Helmets, for example The White Helmets Controversy and Syria War Propaganda at the Oscars. Parry wrote and published numerous investigations of the August 2013 chemical weapons attack and concluded the attacks were carried out by an opposition faction with the goal of pressuring the US to intervene militarily. Parry also challenged western conclusions regarding incidents such as April 4, 2017 at Khan Shaykhun. Giovanni breathlessly opens her article with this story while Parry revealed the impossibility of it being as described.

“Buried deep inside a new U.N. report is evidence that could exonerate the Syrian government in the April 4 sarin atrocity and make President Trump look like an Al-Qaeda dupe.”

Legendary American journalist, Seymour Hersh, researched and refuted the assumptions of Giovanni and the media establishment regarding the August 2013 chemical weapons attacks near Damascus. Hersh’s investigation, titled The Red Line and Rat Line, provided evidence the atrocity was carried out by an armed opposition group with active support from Turkey. A Turkish member of parliament provided additional evidence. The fact that Hersh had to go across the Atlantic to have his investigation published suggests American not Russian disinformation and censorship.

In addition to ignoring the findings of widely esteemed journalists with proven track records, Giovanni plays loose with the truth. In her article she implies that a UN investigation blamed the Syrian government for the August 2013 attack. On the contrary, the head of the UN investigation team, Ake Sellstrom, said they did not determine who was responsible. “We do not have the evidence to say who did what ….The conflict in Syria is surrounded by a lot of rumors and a lot of propaganda, particularly when comes to the sensitive issue of chemical weapons.”

First Responders or Western Funded Propagandists?

Giovanni says, “But the White Helmets’ financial backing is not the real reason why the pro-Assad camp is so bent on defaming them. Since 2015, the year the Russians began fighting in Syria, the White Helmets have been filming attacks on opposition-held areas with GoPro cameras affixed to their helmets.”

In reality, the ‘White Helmets” have a sophisticated media production and distribution operation. They have much more than GoPro cameras. In many of their movie segments one can see numerous people with video and still cameras. Sometimes the same incident will be shown with one segment with an Al-Qaeda logo blending into the same scene with a White Helmets logo.

Giovanni claims “The Assad regime and the Russians are trying to neutralize the White Helmets because they   are potential witnesses to war crimes.” However the claims of White Helmet “witnesses” have little credibility. The White Helmet “volunteers” are paid three times as much as Syrian soldiers. They are trained, supplied and promoted by the same western states which have sought to regime change in Syria since 2011. An example of misleading and false claims by a White Helmets leader is exposed in Gareth Porter’s investigation titled “How a Syrian White Helmets Leader Played Western Media” . His conclusion could be directed to Giovanni and the NYReview of Books:

“The uncritical reliance on claims by the White Helmets without any effort to investigate their credibility is yet another telling example of journalistic malpractice by media outlets with a long record of skewing coverage of conflicts toward an interventionist narrative.”

When the militants (mostly Nusra / Al-Qaeda) were expelled from East Aleppo, civilians reported that the White Helmets were mostly concerned with saving their own and performing publicity stunts. For example the photo of the little boy in east Aleppo looking dazed and confused in the back of a brand new White Helmet ambulance was essentially a White Helmet media stunt eagerly promoted in the West. It was later revealed the boy was not injured, he was grabbed without his parent’s consent. Eva Bartlett interviewed and photographed the father and family for her story “Mintpress Meets the Father of Iconic Aleppo Boy and says Media Lied About his Son”.

A Brilliant Marketing Success

The media and political impact of the White Helmets shows what money and marketing can do. An organization that was founded by a military contractor with funding from a western governments was awarded the Rights Livelihood Award. The organization was seriously considered to received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize just three years after its formation.

The Netflix infomercial “The White Helmets” is an example of the propaganda. The scripted propaganda piece, where the producers did not set foot in Syria, won the Oscar award for best short documentary. It’s clear that lots of money and professional marketing can fool a lot of people. At $30 million per year, the White Helmets budget for one year is more than a decade of funding for the real Syrian Civil Defence which covers all of Syria not just pockets controlled by armed insurgents.

Unsurprisingly, it has been announced that White Helmets will receive the 2019 “Elie Wiesel” award from the heavily politicized and pro-Israel Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. This, plus the recent “rescue” of White Helmets by the Israeli government, is more proof of the true colors of the White Helmets. Vanessa Beeley’s recent interview with a White Helmet leader in Deraa revealed that ISIS and Nusra terrorists were part of the group “rescued” through Israel.

The Collapsing White Helmets Fraud

Giovanni is outraged that some journalists have successfully challenged and put a big dent in the White Helmets  aura. She complains, “The damage the bloggers do is immense.”

Giovanni and western propagandists are upset because the myth is deflating. Increasing numbers of people – from a famous rock musician to a former UK Ambassador – see and acknowledge the reality.

As described in Blumenthal’s article, “How the White Helmets Tried to Recruit Roger Waters with Saudi Money”, rock legend Roger Waters says, “If we were to listen to the propaganda of the White Helmets and others, we would encourage our governments to start dropping bombs on people in Syria. This would be a mistake of monumental proportions…”

Peter Ford, the former UK Ambassador to Syria, sums it up like this: “The White Helmets are jihadi auxiliaries… They are not, as claimed by themselves and by their supporters… simple rescuers. They are not volunteers. They are paid professionals of disinformation.”

Giovanni claims her article is a “forensic take down of the Russian disinformation campaign to distort the truth in Syria.” In reality, Giovanni’s article is an example of western disinformation using subjective attacks on critics and evidence-free assertions aligned with the regime change goals of the West.

Reposts are welcomed with the reference to ORIENTAL REVIEW.

Zie ook:
'White Helmets: naast gebruik van terreur ook schuldig aan orgaanhandel, vernietigende VN video presentatie'

Syria: The White Helmets Are Terrorist Auxiliaries

'White Helmets is een terreurorganisatie, zie de bewijzen op Facebook: foto's van de W.H. leden'

'White Helmets terreurgroep wordt vandaag met open armen ontvangen in Tweede Kamer.....'

'Nederland financiert terrorisme in Syrië........'

EXPOSED: Syria’s White Helmets are Al Qaeda’s ‘Civil Defence’'

'WHO ARE THE ‘WHITE HELMETS?’ DO WE REALLY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING IN SYRIA?'

 'SYRIA: The White Helmet Propaganda Heist – Vanessa Beeley Speaks to Rhymes Media Group'

'EXPOSED: The White Helmets – Al Qaeda with US funding'

'Westerse media vallen critici van de White Helmets aan'

'Gifgasaanval Idlib: de komende 'kindslachtoffers' worden getraind door terreurgroep White Helmets.........'

'Voorbeeld BBC en AD propaganda inzake Idlib (Syrië)'

'Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) laat weten hoe White Helmets vips rekruteren met Saoedisch geld....'

'Gifgasaanval vooropgezet spel om VS actie te rechtvaardigen, waarbij GB de spelers opdracht gaf dit toneelspel snel uit te voeren........ 'False flag gelukt': Syrië gebombardeerd zonder enig bewijs voor schuld.....'

'Van Helvert (CDA Tweede Kamer): wil dat er een tribunaal komt voor Syriëgangers, terwijl hij de terroristen in Ghouta wil beschermen.......'

'White Helmets nogmaals ontmaskert als terreurorganisatie: de oprichter is een Britse ex-huurling.......'

'White Helmets oorlogsporno geweerd van Oscarceremonie'

'White Helmets >> terreurorganisatie, opgezet door Brits ex-officier en o.a. betaald door Nederland...........'

Voor meer berichten over/met de White Helmets, Vanessa Beeley of Eva Bartlett, klik op het betreffende label, direct onder dit bericht.

Al Qaida de bondgenoot van de VS in de strijd tegen...... terrorisme! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Met het schaamrood op de kaken moet is vaststellen een belangrijk artikel aangaande de bewapening van terreurgroepen door de VS te hebben laten liggen.

In dit artikel van Whitney Webb o.a. aandacht voor het enorme aantal wapens, inclusief chemische wapens (als Sarin gas), dat de VS in Syrië leverde aan de door haar gesteunde terreurgroepen (in het westen aangeduid als 'gematigde rebellen)...... Daarnaast stopte de VS honderden miljoenen dollars in deze terreurgroepen........ Militaire training was eveneens een manier van hulpverlening aan psychopathische moordenaars en verkrachters................

Lees hoe de VS willens en wetens enorme terreur tegen het Syrische volk heeft gesteund, zelf heeft uitgeoefend en uitoefent op dit volk, zogenaamd in het belang van de strijd tegen terreur.......

Ook vind je hier een uitleg over de terreurgroepen in Syrië en hoe die in feite allen gelieerd zijn aan Al Qaida Syrië of ook wel al-Nusra genaamd....... Jammer dat Webb geen kritiek levert op het Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR), een propagandaorgaan van de zogenaamde gematigde rebellen, dat ook door de reguliere afhankelijke (massa-) media wordt geciteerd......

How Al-Qaeda Became an American Ally in the ‘War on Terror’

July 3, 2017 at 9:30 am

Written by Whitney Webb

Nearly 16 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States is inexplicably finding itself in bed with al-Qaeda, its alleged sworn enemy. The group’s efforts to terrorize the population of Syria have been rewarded with U.S. arms, training and other military aid.

(MPN) — Despite ostensibly being the United States’ “Public Enemy No. 1” following the 9/11 attacks, the international terror group al-Qaeda has instead been a beneficiary of U.S. military aid in the post-9/11 world, particularly in Syria. With the Syrian conflict well into its sixth year, al-Qaeda’s active branch in that war, widely known as Jabhat al-Nusra or the al-Nusra Front, has continually received arms and military protection from the United States, an outcome that is clearly counterproductive to the U.S.’ global “War on Terror.”

Yet, while the arming and propping up of al-Qaeda in Syria may not serve the U.S.' fundamental goal of eradicating terrorism, it certainly has helped the U.S. political establishment pursue a decades-old goal of regime change in regionally strategic Syria.

Gareth Porter, an award-winning independent investigative journalist, and historian told MintPress News that such tactics are part of the U.S. government’s long-standing “bureaucratic habit of mind that really privileges short-term advantages against state adversaries over the long term, fundamental interests of the American people.”

In this case, U.S. counter-terrorism efforts have been usurped by the government’s broader geopolitical interests in reshaping the Middle East. While Washington politicians and bureaucrats may be content with having helped extend Syria’s “civil war” to their benefit and the benefit of their allies, this reality has had the ugly consequence of the U.S. willfully sponsoring terrorists who torture civilians to death, regularly conduct mass executions, kidnap children and mutilate the bodies of their victims.

U.S. funneled Libyan arms, chemical weapons to “rebels”

The U.S.’ arming of al-Nusra began when the conflict in Syria was in its infancy. In September 2011, the Obama administration began providing logistical assistance to anti-Assad forces – namely the Free Syrian Army, Syrian Revolutionaries Front, the Democratic Forces of Syria and related groups – who were then supported by U.S. allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. These groups received an estimated $1 billion from the CIA every year from 2012 until the program was scaled back in 2015. In addition, the U.S. government gave another $500 million to the “rebels” in 2014 which was intended to train thousands of opposition fighters – an operation that turned out to be remarkably ineffective.

A year later, the CIA initiated weapon shipments to these foreign-funded “rebels” by funneling weapons that once belonged to the fallen Gaddafi regime in Libya to anti-government militias in Syria.

As Gareth Porter details in his recent piece “How America Armed Terrorists in Syria,” the CIA continued to connect U.S. regional allies directly arming the opposition with weapons from Libya and former Soviet bloc countries, resulting in an estimated 8,000 tons of weapons being poured into Syria in less than four months, from December 2012 to mid-March 2013. The quantity of weapons that flooded into Syria from 2011 until that time undoubtedly dwarfs this figure.

In addition, the U.S. secured more than just conventional arms being shipped to Syria. For instance, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh exposed how the Gaddafi regime’s chemical weapon stores were also sent to foreign-backed opposition forces in Syria, including sarin gas. Hersh has suggested that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved the chemical weapon transfers.

While the U.S. was not directly arming al-Nusra specifically at this time, the terror group’s effectiveness at combating the Syrian government, along with their ruthlessness, quickly made them the darlings of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who were funding the “rebels” with their own money and with U.S. assistance.

By late 2012, the U.S. was well-aware that most of the arms it was sending into the country were going to Syria’s al-Qaeda offshoot. As the New York Times reported in October 2012, U.S. officials acknowledged off the record that “most” of the arms shipped to Syrian “rebels” with U.S. support had ended up in the hands of “hardline Islamic jihadists.”

However, internal government communications reveal that the government knew that such “jihadists” were al-Nusra. A now-declassified U.S. government internal report from 2012 stated that the “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.” However, no efforts were taken to halt the U.S.-supported flow of arms to such groups, which continued years after this surprisingly frank admission.

Other evidence from that same year has suggested that this “oversight” was intentional. For instance, a 2012 email written by Jacob Sullivan and sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that “AQ [al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria,” implying a tacit alliance of sorts between the U.S. government and known terrorist elements that dominated the Syrian armed opposition.

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Despite the true nature of the foreign-funded opposition being well-known to U.S. officials, the arming of these so-called “rebel” groups only became more rampant in the years that followed, with the U.S. supplying them with heavy weaponry, such as anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft weapons, while also providing themwith training.

The advantage of such substantial support from the U.S. and its regional allies has only led to the rapid growth and strengthening of al-Nusra, enabling them to out-compete and eventually absorb nearly all groups belonging to the U.S.-backed “moderate rebels” active within Syria.

As al-Nusra’s influence grew, many “moderate” groups who shared similar ideas began to work alongside the terror group and eventually became part of it or directly allied with it. Among the first to do so were U.S.-supported groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam, whose cooperation and close relationship with al-Nusra has been documented by the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

But the U.S. had no complaints when Jaysh al-Islam led the Syrian opposition at peace talks in Geneva in 2016. In addition, the U.S. has consistently refused to add al-Nusra collaborators to the UN terrorist list, prompting some journalists to call such a refusal an “unwitting U.S. admission” regarding who really leads the “rebellion” in Syria.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the vast majority of Syrian opposition groups supported by the U.S. form “an integral part” of al-Nusra front. Even the mainstream press in the United States has admitted that most “rebel” groups have been overtaken by al-Nusra. For instance, in February, the Washington Postquoted an official with the U.S.-backed Fastaqim rebel group as saying “Al-Qaeda is eating us” and that al-Qaeda’s influence and power led his group chose to join the al-Nusra affiliated group Ahrar al-Sham.

As University of Oklahoma Center for Middle East Studies Director Joshua Landis told Sputnik last year:

“The United States has placed itself in a very difficult situation because many of the rebel groups that it wants to become principal holders of state power in Syria work hand and glove with Al-Qaeda.”

Supporting al-Qaeda from the shadows

While the arming of Syrian “rebels” that are either members of or affiliated with al-Nusra should be controversial enough, the U.S. government has also managed to aid the terror group in other ways, offering them protection and covert tools to bolster their ranks.

The U.S. State Department and the U.S. military have long justified the presence of U.S. military personnel and assets within Syria as being directly aimed at fighting terrorists within that nation, namely Daesh (ISIS). However, on repeated occasions, the U.S. has worked to protect al-Nusra by asking the Russian military and Syrian government to avoid targeting the terror group.

Such requests have led Russia to call the U.S.’ commitment to fighting al-Nusra into question, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stating in October last year that the Russian government “doesn’t see any facts that the U.S. is seriously battling al-Nusra.”

However, the words of al-Nusra members themselves paint an even more disturbing picture of direct U.S. involvement in aiding the group. In an interview with German newspaper Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger, an al-Nusra unit commander named Abu Al Ezz stated that when al-Nusra was under siege from the Syrian and Russian governments that “we had officers from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Israel and America here…Experts in the use of satellites, rockets, reconnaissance, and thermal security cameras.”

When asked to confirm the presence of U.S. instructors within its ranks, Al Ezz replied “the Americans are on our side,” echoing a 2012 email exchange between Hillary Clinton and her advisor Jacob Sullivan regarding al-Qaeda in Syria.

Perhaps this explains why the “Stop Arming Terrorists Act” introduced by Hawaiian Democratic Senator Tulsi Gabbard, which would bar federal agencies from using taxpayer-backed funds to provide weapons, training or any other type of support to terrorist cells such as al-Qaeda, Daesh or any other group associated with them,was only supported by 2 percent of U.S. congressmen.

U.S.’ history of flirting with terrorist groups for geopolitical gain

While the strategy of arming al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists and extremists in Syria may seem bizarre, it is actually part of a long-standing U.S. government practice that led to the terror group’s founding in the first place. Indeed, al-Qaeda is the textbook example of the U.S. creating and arming a terror group for political purposes.

Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. government sent billions of dollars in military aid to the mujahideen in Afghanistan as part of a U.S.-supported “jihad” against the Soviet Union. These extremist fighters, led by Osama bin Laden, would soon become known as al-Qaeda. Gareth Porter told MintPress that the creation of al-Qaeda under the Reagan administration “set the precedent for the U.S. to support jihadi forces where and when it is deemed to serve broader U.S. political and diplomatic aims.”

Years later, al-Qaeda’s relationship with the U.S. is best described as a love-hate affair. As Garikai Chengu wrote in Counterpunch in 2014: “Depending on whether a particular al-Qaeda terrorist group in a given region furthers American interests or not, the U.S. State Department either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group. Even as American foreign policy makers claim to oppose Muslim extremism, they knowingly foment it as a weapon of foreign policy.”

However, al-Qaeda is just one example of the U.S.’ aiding and abetting of terror groups in order to realize broader geopolitical aims targeting “enemies” of the U.S. political establishment. Latin America, for instance, is rife with examples of how the U.S. trained and funded terror groups to destabilize or topple leftist governments, particularly in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s.

Colombia is another example that bares an uncanny resemblance to the U.S.’ policy in the Syrian conflict. Colombia, the U.S.’ closest ally in South America, has received over $4 billion in U.S. military assistance since 2000. Much of that assistance has gone to elements of the military – including right-wing paramilitary groups – that the U.S. State Department had “vetted” and “determined had complied with human rights requirements.”

While that vetting was taking place, Colombia reported a surge in the Colombian military murdering civilians in cold blood, resulting in 329 civilians killed in 2007. The Los Angeles Times reported that 47 percent of those murders had been conducted by the very army units previously “vetted” by the State Department.

Iraq is another example where, for civilians, the line between “rebel” terrorist and “army” terrorist is becoming increasingly thin. There, the U.S. recently doubled down, promising to continue sending aid to elements of the Iraqi Security Forces that have documented carrying out human rights violations and war crimes. Many of the more notorious units within the Iraqi Security Forces were trained by former U.S. special forces operative James Steele, who first made a name for himself training U.S.-backed paramilitary forces that terrorized El Salvador in the 1980s.

The U.S.’ well-documented history of supporting and using terror groups to fulfill geopolitical goals is so convincing that even Lt. General William Odom, director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, has noted that “By any measure, the U.S. has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”

Today, little has changed, especially given the true nature of U.S. involvement with the “moderate” opposition in Syria. Now, the Trump administration has taken to inventing chemical attacks to blame on the Syrian government before they even happen, again hoping to justify Western intervention in Syria.

The timing couldn’t be better, as only Western intervention is guaranteed to save Syria’s struggling al-Qaeda “rebels” and create the next failed state in the Middle East.

By Whitney Webb / Republished with permission / MintPress News / Report a typo

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Toevoeging op 16 december 2017: intussen heeft de VS 'Al Qaida Syrië' van de zwarte lijst met terreurorganisaties gehaald!! 

Plus de volgende links:

Zie ook: 'CIA erkent dat Israël samen met Saoedi-Arabië 'vecht tegen terreur', die ze NB zelf hebben georganiseerd........'

'VS centraal commando werkt in Syrië samen met IS en verklaarde Rusland de oorlog.........'

'CIA 70 jaar: 70 jaar moorden, martelen, coups plegen, nazi's beschermen, media manipulatie enz. enz.........'

 

'Van Baalen (VVD EU topgraaier) het is moeilijk te zien wie je moet steunen: Al Qaida, Al Qaida of Al Qaida....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

 

'CIA valt nogmaals door de mand als wapenleverancier van IS.......'