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Posts tonen met het label S. Hersh. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label S. Hersh. Alle posts tonen

donderdag 18 januari 2018

CIA en 70 jaar desinformatie in Europese opiniebladen............

Het Ron Paul Institute (for Peace and Prosperity) publiceerde afgelopen dinsdag een artikel van Philip Giraldi, waarin deze uitlegt hoe de CIA al 70 jaar lang de vinger in de internationale 'opinepap' houdt......

Als een geheime dienst 'fake news' verspreidt, noemt men dit 'desinformatie', wat in het geval van landen buiten de VS onder geheime acties valt. Geheime acties om de publieke opinie te beïnvloeden, of 'vijandige' regeringen te destabiliseren en uiteindelijk ten val te brengen (neem Venezuela, Honduras, Libie, Syrië en Oekraïne)

Lees dit uitgebreide artikel over de smerige acties die de VS en dan m.n. haar geheime diensten speelden en spelen in onze wereld....... Russiagate is gebleken een FBI/Clinton leugen te zijn geweest, terwijl de CIA, FBI en Clinton aangaven dat Rusland de boel had gemanipuleerd en gehackt, precies zoals de CIA dat al 70 jaar lang doet*, samen met economische oorlogsvoering, beproefde VS methoden om haar macht te vestigen of te verstevigen.......

Als je de ongebreidelde agressie van de VS ziet de laatste 70 jaar, waarbij 'maar liefst' meer dan 22 miljoen mensen werden vermoord**, snap je werkelijk niet waarom men in het westen en dan m.n politici, de reguliere media en de financiële maffia, nog steeds achter deze grootste terreurentiteit op aarde aanlopen........

Lees het zoveelste ontluisterden artikel (met een aantal nieuwe feiten) over terreurorganisatie CIA:

70 Years of Disinformation: How the CIA Funded Opinion Magazines in Europe


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written by philip giraldi tuesday january 16, 2018

When an intelligence agency arranges to disseminated fake news it is called “disinformation” and it is a subset of what is referred to as covert action, basically secret operations run in a foreign country to influence opinion or to disrupt the functioning of a government or group that is considered to be hostile.


During the Cold War, disinformation operations were run by many of the leading players in both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and in the opposition Warsaw Pact. Sometimes the activity and the sponsorship were clearly visible, as when Radio Free Europe and Radio Moscow would exchange barbs about just how bad daily life was in the opposition alliance. Sometimes, however, it took the form of clandestinely placing stories in the media that were clearly untrue but designed to shift public perceptions of what was taking place in the world. The Vietnam War provided a perfect proxy playing field, with stories emanating from the US government and its supporters presenting a narrative of a fight for democracy against totalitarianism while the Communist bloc promoted a contrary tale of colonial and capitalist oppression of a people striving to be free.


The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) inherited the mantle of covert action operations as a legacy from its OSS predecessor, which had had considerable success in conducting disinformation operations during World War 2. But there was from the start considerable opposition to continuing such programs as they were both expensive and subject to devastating blowback when they were identified and exposed. In Western Europe, powerful domestic communist parties were quick to publicize US intelligence missteps, but nevertheless the ability to manipulate the news and information media to place stories critical of the Soviets and their allies led to major programs that funded magazines and books while also seeking to acquire a cadre of journalists that would produce pieces on demand proved too tempting to ignore.


There has been considerable ex post facto examination of the CIA’s use of covert funding mechanisms including the Congress of Cultural Freedom to fund writers and magazines in Europe, the best known of which were The Paris Review and Encounter out of London. As there was a low intensity war going on against communism, a conflict which many patriotic writers supported, funding magazines and finding contributors to write appropriate material was relatively easy and hardly challenged. Some senior editors knew or strongly suspected where their funding was coming from while some did not, but most didn’t ask any questions because then as now patrons of literary magazines were in short supply. Many of the writers were in the dark about the funding, but wrote what they did because of their own personal political convictions. The CIA, seeking value for money, would urge certain editorial lines but was not always very aggressive in doing so as it sought to allow the process to play out without too much interference.


Opinion magazines were one thing, but penetrating the newspaper world was quite a different story. It was easy to find a low or mid-level journalist and pay him to write certain pieces, but the pathway to actual publication was and is more complicated than that, going as it does through several editorial levels before appearing in print. A recent book cites the belief that CIA had “an agent at a newspaper in every world capital at least since 1977” who could be directed to post or kill stories. While it is true that US Embassies and intelligence services had considerable ability to place stories in capitals in Latin America and parts of Asia, the record in Europe, where I worked, was somewhat mixed. I knew of only one senior editor of a major European newspaper who was considered to be an Agency resource, and even he could not place fake news as he was answerable both to his editorial board and the conglomerate that owned the paper. He also refused to take a salary from CIA, which meant that his cooperation was voluntary and he could not be directed.

CIA did indeed have a considerable number of journalist “assets” in Europe but they were generally stringers or mid-level and had only limited capability to actually shape the news. They frequently wrote for publications that had little or no impact. Indeed, one might reasonably ask whether the support of literary magazines in the fifties and sixties which morphed into more direct operations seeking journalist agents had any significant impact at all in geopolitical terms or on the Cold War itself.

More insidious was so-called Operation Mockingbird, which began in the early 1950s and which more-or-less openly obtained the cooperation of major American publications and news outlets to help fight communist “subversion.” The activity was exposed by Seymour Hersh in 1975 and was further described by the Church Commission in 1976, after which point CIA operations to influence opinion in the United States became illegal and the use of American journalists as agents was also generally prohibited. It was also learned that the Agency had been working outside its founding charter to infiltrate student groups and antiwar organizations under Operation Chaos, run by the CIA’s controversial if not completely crazy counterintelligence 
Czar James Jesus Angleton.

As the wheel of government frequently ends up turning full circle, we appear to be back in the age of disinformation, where the national security agencies of the US government, including CIA, are now suspected of peddling stories that are intended to influence opinion in the United States and produce a political response. 
The Steele Dossier on Donald Trump is a perfect example, a report that surfaced through a deliberate series of actions by then CIA Director John Brennan, and which was filled with unverifiable innuendo intended to destroy the president-elect’s reputation before he took office. It is undeniably a positive development for all Americans who care about good governance that Congress is now intending to investigate the dossier to determine who ordered it, paid for it, and what it was intended to achieve.

Reprinted with permission from the American Herald Tribune.


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*  Uiteraard voor het digitale tijdperk niet middels hacken, zoals je begrijpt, maar o.a. met 'false flag' operaties, of zoals in het besproken artikel middels het beïnvloeden van de media, om zo onrust en en uiteindelijk opstanden te creëren, die moeten leiden tot een staatsgreep, waar de VS wat betreft de opstanden en staatsgrepen, niet schroomt om de regie op zich te nemen (CIA).......

** Zie: 'VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen..........'

Zie ook: ''VS 'ministerie van propaganda' had supervisie over meer dan 800 films en minstens duizend tv series........'

'Iran: moderne oorlogspropaganda ingezet door VS tegen 'ongehoorzaam land...'

'VS en GB brengen propaganda die moet verdoezelen wat er echt gebeurt in Syrië........ Door VS gebombardeerde 'gifgasfabriek' niet bestaand....'

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

'Russiagate, of: hoe de media u belazeren met verhalen over Russische bemoeienis met de VS presidentsverkiezingen........

'Publicly Available Evidence Doesn’t Support Russian Gov Hacking of 2016 Election'


'CIA chef Pompeo waarschuwt voor complot van WikiLeaks om de VS op alle mogelijke manieren neer te halen....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

''Russiagate' een verhaal van a t/m z westers 'fake news.....''

'FBI, de spin in het Russiagate web........'


'CIA deed zich voor als het Russische Kaspersky Lab, aldus Wikileaks Vault 8.....' (zie ook de andere links onder dat bericht)

'RT America één van de eerste slachtoffers in een heksenjacht op westerse alternatieve media en nadenkend links......'

'Rusland heeft niets van doen met manipulaties van de VS presidentsverkiezingen via Facebook, wel maakt Facebook meer kapot dan je lief is.......'

'De Russiagate samenzweringstheorie dient de machthebbers.........'

'False flag terror' bestaat wel degelijk: bekentenissen en feiten over heel smerige zaken..........

'Massamedia VS vergeven van CIA 'veteranen', alsof die media nog niet genoeg 'fake news' ofwel leugens brengen........'

'Bang voor Amerika'

woensdag 6 december 2017

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

Seriemoordenaar en psychopaat Pompeo heeft afgelopen zaterdag toegegeven dat Israël en Saoedi-Arabië nauw 'samenwerken in de strijd tegen terreur......' Let wel terreur die op poten werd gezet door diezelfde landen in samenwerking met de grootste terreurentiteit op aarde, de VS, waarvan zoals je begrijpt, Pompeo een vertegenwoordiger is.......

Pompeo herhaalde uiteraard alle leugens die door de CIA en NSA zijn gefabriceerd, zoals die over 'het gevaarlijke Iran....' Iran valt geen andere landen aan, omdat ze daar niet sjiitisch zijn, Iran valt geen landen aan zoals de VS om de oliebelangen veilig te stellen....... Iran valt geen landen aan om daar de regering tot afdwingen te dwingen...... Noch organiseert Iran opstanden in andere landen, om via die weg een staatsgreep te plegen (onder regie en financiering van de VS).......

Al die zaken zijn wel van toepassing op de VS en dat op een enorme schaal...... Ook zijn die zaken wel van toepassing op Saoedi-Arabië, nu bezig met een genocide op de sjiieten in Jemen, hetzelfde S-A dat zelfs in Europa de jihad laat preken (al is dat niet nodig, gezien de barbaarse terreur die de VS, veelal met hulp van NAVO landen, her en der breng, plus dezelfde terreur-inzet van Israël, dat creëert op zich al een heel leger 'terroristen...')

Dat Israël enorme terreur uitoefent op de Palestijnen, mag intussen als algemeen bekend worden geacht, hoe de reguliere westerse media ook hun best doen dit keer op keer te ontkennen........ Ook de aanvallen van Israël tegen Syrië zijn zonder meer enorme terreurdaden, die volgens het verdrag van Genève worden aangemerkt als oorlogsmisdaden........ Dezelfde reguliere westerse (massa-) media komen zelfs niet met één letter van kritiek op deze smerige oorlogsmisdaden, terwijl elke scheet die Putin en Assad laten, breed worden uitgemeten door die media en dat in een dikke brij van (aantoonbare) leugens.......

Je zou bijna zeggen, dat het een zegen is dat Trump Jeruzalem als hoofdstad ziet van Israël, later vandaag zal hij dan ook bekend maken dat de VS haar ambassade van Tel Aviv zal verhuizen naar Jeruzalem. Immers deze zet zal een fikse wig drijven in deze coalitie van psychopathische moordenaars en pathologische leugenaars.......

Hier een artikel over de uitlatingen van Pompeo met daaronder een al wat ouder artikel van Jonas E. Alexis, over het organiseren van IS terreur door Israël, Saoedi-Arabië en de VS:

CIA Director Admits Saudi Arabia Is Working Directly With Israel to ‘Fight Terror’

December 5, 2017 at 7:36 am

(MEMO) — Israel is working directly with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in the fight against terrorism, CIA Director Mike Pompeo said on Saturday, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The comments were made at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California, where Pompeo cited the danger Iran posed not just to the US, but to other states in the region, as a unifying factor.

We’ve seen them [Saudi Arabia] work with the Israelis to push back against terrorism throughout the Middle East, to the extent we can continue to develop those relationships and work alongside them – the Gulf states and broader Middle East will likely be more secure,” Pompeo told the audience.

Former CIA Director and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was also a speaker at the event and took his speech as an opportunity to call on Arab countries to form a coalition with Israel, the US and Turkey, and even to run a joint military operations center.

It is incredibly important that in the Middle East, where we have failed states, where you have ISIS [Daesh], where you have Iran, that we have got to develop a stronger coalition of countries that are willing to work together to confront these challenges,” he said.

I think with a joint military headquarters, that can… target the terrorists in that region, that can basically work together to try to provide stability where is necessary in these countries,” Panetta concluded.

Rumors of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel were brought to the fore once again last month after Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz confessed that Tel Aviv had covert contacts with Riyadh amid common concerns over Iran.

Just days before, Saudi news agency Elaph, which is close to the decision-making circles in Riyadh, published an interview with the Israeli army chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot; a step described by Israeli sources as a move to bring Saudi and Israeli relations into the public sphere.

The reports reignited the controversy in September when whistleblower Mujtahidd leaked reports stating the alleged desire of the Kingdom to accept Israel “as a brotherly state.”

The Saudi public have strongly rejected any attempts at normalizing relations with Israel in the past, and such reports prompted concern among many.

Saudi officials have maintained that any relations with Israel hinge on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war, territory Palestinians seek for a future state. However, rumors of existing cooperation persist, including alleged Saudi backing for the US proposed Israel-Palestine peace plan to be released next year.



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The United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia Created and Funded ISIS


November 4, 2017

Western-backed militants are in retreat, Bashar al-Assad remains president, Hezbollah has stretched its wings regionally, Israeli power is in decline, and Iran is on the rise. Not a pretty result for Washington’s multi-billion dollar investment in the Syrian conflict, especially if it was intended to change the map of the region to favor U.S. interests.”


Mark Dankof nailed it again. In his recent interview with Press TV, he said unflinchingly:

The CIA needs to spend more time investigating terrorists and a lot less time recruiting them and financing them. The United States and Israel, and secondarily Saudi Arabia, have created the very monsters that they are decrying.”

This is just brute facts, and no reputable or serious scholar would put his credibility on the line denying this. (I am excluding the Neoconservative ideologues and New World Order agents here because I don’t think they are serious about truth.)

One can call the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia “the axis of evil” when it comes to perpetual wars, creating terrorist organs in the Middle East, and torturing civilians.[1]And if you want concrete evidence, consider the fact that George W. Bush himself trained MEK right in the United States!

Noted journalist Seymour Hersh was one of the first individuals to document that the Bush administration trained terrorist organizations such as the MEK in America, most specifically in Nevada.[2]

A few years ago, Hersh went even deeper. He declared that American journalism has been captured by a powerful force, one which seeks to destroy serious reporting. Hersh has actually gone deep into the dark thoughts and psychology that permeate the Zionist subconscious and came back with a glooming result: “Fire 90% of the editors and promote ones you can’t control.”[3]

By making this stunning statement, Hersh has literally tarnished the reputation of the Zionist media, New World Order agents and ethnic cleansers like Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg. He moved on to argue that news outlets like the New York Times have been sheltering the powers that be for a long time.

Hersh blew the whistle back in 2004 when he declared that children were literally sodomized in front of women at Abu Ghraib—and the Pentagon had the tape!

This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we’re dealing with an enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will.”[4]

The evidence seemed to suggest that the “women who witnessed these young boys being raped were actually their mothers… Other stories at the London Guardian also talked of young Iraqi detainees getting violently raped by US soldiers.”[5]

Sodomy at Abu Ghraib notwithstanding, the Israelis and the United States continue to support diabolical activities in the Middle East. Hersh wrote a long article in the London Review of Books arguing that the United States knew very well that they were arming ISIS in Syria. That’s not all. Hersh moved on to say that the United States knew perfectly well that if Assad were removed from power, then terrorist cells would have invaded the region, like vampires ready to strike innocent preys.

Hersh quoted one individual who said that the administration “did not want to hear the truth.”[6] Well, the administration did not want to hear the truth because they embraced the Israeli ideology which basically says that truth is what they can perpetuate and get away with. Hersh did not help Satanists and New World Order agents when he said that the Israelis fabricated the so-called evidence that Assad was using chemical weapons on his own people.[7]

As we have pointed out in the past, the Israelis wanted to overthrow the Assad government since the beginning of time,[8] and any dumb excuse will do, including supporting terrorist cells in the region. That’s why even the Wall Street Journal itself reluctantly pointed out that Israel has been supporting the bad guys in Syria.[9]



Dankof was correct: the United States needs to stop supporting “Wahhabi-inspired extremist groups” in the Middle East. Dankof said:

The Unites States that can essentially pull the rug out of the extremist groups and stopping the supporting for them logistically, militarily and financially supporting stable governments in the Middle East, getting out of the regime change business, getting out of the arms-selling business and first and foremost insisting that Netanyahu has to come to a legitimate agreement with the Palestinians as a prelude to any significant peace.

Until Trump does those things, and leads the American government and the American people in that direction, there is going to be nothing but death and destruction ahead keeping in mind once again that the United States has created the very monster of now claims to be destroyed.”

The Israelis obviously fear that much of the world is no longer taking orders from them, despite the fact that they continue to exert an enormously powerful influence on the West. As Middle East analyst Sharmine Narwani has pointed out,

Western-backed militants are in retreat, Bashar al-Assad remains president, Hezbollah has stretched its wings regionally, Israeli power is in decline, and Iran is on the rise. Not a pretty result for Washington’s multi-billion dollar investment in the Syrian conflict, especially if it was intended to change the map of the region to favor U.S. interests.”

  • [1] For scholarly studies on similar issues, see Rebecca Gordon, Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014); Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Douglas Valentine, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2016); David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (New York: Harper Perennial, 2015).
  • [2] Seymour Hersh, “Our Men in Iran?,” New Yorker, April 5, 2012.
  • [3] “Seymour Hersh on Obama, NSA and the ‘Pathetic’ American Media,” Guardian, September 27, 2013.
  • [4] Geraldine Sealey, “Hersh: Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib, on tape,” Salon, July 16, 2004.
  • [5] See Julian Borger, “US general linked to Abu Ghraib abuse,” Guardian, May 22, 2004.
  • [6] Seymour M. Hersh, “Military to Military,” London Review of Books, January 2016, Vol. 38, NO 1.
  • [7] Seymour M. Hersh, “Whose Sarin?,” London Review of Books, December 8, 2013.
  • [8] Herb Keinon, “Israel wanted Assad gone since start of Syria civil war,” Jerusalem Post, September 17, 2013.
  • [9] “Israel Gives Secret Aid to Syrian Rebels,” Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2017.


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Zie ook: 'Israël laat alweer haar ware terreur gezicht zien: IS kan tijdelijke 'geallieerde worden' in de strijd tegen Iran en Hezbollah.........'

'VS: openlijke militaire oefening met terreurgroep in Syrië......'

Bauer (commandant strijdkrachten): IS is wel verslagen maar we moeten wel in Irak blijven met onze F-16's...... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'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.........'

'The United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia Created and Funded ISIS'

 'Rex Tillerson (VS BuZA) geeft toe dat de VS een staatsgreep wil uitvoeren in Iran........ Het is nog 'iets te rustig' in dat gebied........'

'VS steunt terreurgroepen als ISIS in Syrië...........'

'Iraanse milities die samen met de Koerden ISIS bestreden, moeten Irak verlaten, zo stelt Tillerson (VS BuZa)........'

'Rutte en Koenders verantwoordelijk voor wapenleveranties aan IS!!'

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

'IS verklaart Hamas de oorlog, opvallend kort nadat een Israëlische veiligheidsdienst IS als eventuele bondgenoot tegen Iran aanwees........'

'Israël ondersteunt IS, aldus de Israëlische ex-minister van Defensie Ya'alon.............'

US weapons supplied to Syrian rebels ended up with Islamic State: report


'Al Qaida de bondgenoot van de VS in de strijd tegen...... terrorisme! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!' (intussen heeft de VS 'Al Qaida Syrië' van de zwarte lijst met terreurorganisaties gehaald!!)

'US TRAINED REBELS GIVE WEAPONS TO TERROR GROUP'

'Made in America: US-Trained 'Moderate' Rebels, With Blessing Of Americans, Selling US Weapons to ISIS'

'Exactly how the US trained and armed ISIS'



dinsdag 27 juni 2017

VS ziet nu zelfs een gefantaseerde 'gifgasaanval van Assad' in de toekomst, nadat het zelf witte fosfor inzette tegen de bevolking van Mosul en Raqqa......

Met de dag wordt het gekker, de berichten uit de VS en dan m.n. die uit Washington. Zo meldden Radio1 en BNR vanmorgen, dat de VS heeft gezien, dat Syrië bezig is met de voorbereiding van een gifgasaanval, te vergelijken met die op Khan Sheikhoun in april dit jaar........

Die aanval met gifgas is niet door Syrië gedaan, dat is intussen overduidelijk, toevallig bracht Anti-Media daar gisteren weer een artikel over, een artikel dat u verderop terugvindt en dat uit en te na wijst op de belachelijkheid van de VS aanname dat Syrië dit zou hebben gedaan, er bestaat zelfs grote twijfel of er wel een gifgasaanval plaatsvond (zie het artikel....).....

Wel is intussen duidelijk dat de VS (deels toegegeven door de VS) witte fosfor heeft gebruikt bij bombardementen van dichtbevolkt stedelijk gebied namelijk in Mosul en Raqqa, respectievelijk in Irak en Syrië...... Ongelofelijk trouwens, dat de reguliere 'onafhankelijke' mediaorganen hier amper of geen aandacht aan hebben besteed, terwijl ze op de kop stonden door de zogenaamde Syrische gifgasaanval op Khan Sheikhoun.....

De laatste leugen van de VS, dat Syrië bezig is een gifgasaanval voor te bereiden, is een teken dat de VS weer bezig is een enorme oorlogsmisdaad te begaan, tegen het reguliere Syrische leger en daarmee zal testen of Rusland nu wel in zal grijpen (iets dat de VS op de plek van Rusland al lang had gedaan.....)....

Hoe is het mogelijk dat het westen de VS laat begaan, zeker in de EU zou men keihard aan de VS bel moeten trekken, immers wij zijn het eerste doel van Rusland, als er een kernoorlog uitbreekt tussen de VS en Rusland. Logisch daar wij zo ongelofelijk dom zijn, dat we de VS hebben toegestaan hier kernraketten/bommen op te slaan en zelfs lanceerinstallaties hebben laten inrichten.......... Uiteraard is de houding van de reguliere westerse (massa-) media helemaal een onbegrijpelijke, het lijkt godverdomme wel of men daar blij zal zijn, als er morgen een kernoorlog uitbreekt.......

Seymour Hersh: US Lied About Syrian Chemical Attack Then Bombed Them Anyway






June 26, 2017 at 11:12 am


(ANTIMEDIA) — Never one to accept the U.S. government’s official explanation of events without question, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has investigated Donald Trump’s decision to strike the al-Shayat Airbase in Syria in April of this year, which the president launched amid widespread allegations that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack.

In a report entitled “Trump’s Red Line,” published Sunday in the daily German newspaper Die Welt, Hersh asserts that President Donald Trump ignored important intelligence reports when he made the decision to attack Syria after pictures emerged of dying children in the war-torn country.

For those of us without goldfish memories, Hersh’s recent investigation is reminiscent of his previous examination of the alleged chemical weapons attacks in 2013, detailed in an article entitled “Whose Sarin?” That article was published in the London Review of Books.

The official White House explanation for the events in April of this year was that Donald Trump was moved by the suffering of “beautiful” Syrian babies – the same Syrian babies he doesn’t want to set foot in the United States – and decided to punish the Syrian government for the attack two days after it allegedly occurred. This punishment came in the form of an airstrike despite the lack of a thorough investigation regarding what took place that fateful day in April and who was ultimately culpable (though the Trump administration insisted they were certain that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to blame).

In that context, it should come as no surprise that Trump acted rashly without consideration of the facts on the ground. However, what is most disturbing about Hersh’s account is the fact that, according to his source, Trump was well aware that the U.S. had no solid intelligence linking the Syrian government to a chemical weapons attack — and that’s because, according to Hersh’s article, it’s doubtful a chemical weapons attack occurred at all.

Hersh reports:

The available intelligence made clear that the Syrians had targeted a jihadist meeting site on April 4 using a Russian-supplied guided bomb equipped with conventional explosives. Details of the attack, including information on its so-called high-value targets, had been provided by the Russians days in advance to American and allied military officials in Doha, whose mission is to coordinate all U.S., allied, Syrian and Russian Air Force operations in the region.”

None of this makes any sense,” one officer reportedly told colleagues upon learning of the decision to bomb Syria, according to Hersh. “We KNOW that there was no chemical attack … the Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real intel and know the truth … I guess it didn’t matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump.”

According to Hersh, Trump “could not be swayed” by 48 hours worth of intense briefings and decision-making following the initial reports of the alleged chemical weapons attack. Hersh, who reportedly reviewed transcripts of real-time communications, explains that there is a “total disconnect” between the president and his military advisers and intelligence officials.

As is the case with Syrian military operations, Russia gave the U.S. details of the carefully planned attack on a meeting in Khan Sheikhoun, according to Hersh’s  admittedly anonymous sources. The Russians had employed a drone to the area days before the attack to develop the intelligence necessary to coordinate it.

According to Hersh’s sources, the United States and its Russian counterpart routinely share information regarding planned attacks in order to avoid collisions. However, they also permit “coordination,”  a practice that involves giving the other side a “hot tip about a command and control facility,” which then helps the other side carry out their attack.

Therefore, there was no surprise chemical weapons attack, as the Trump administration alleged. In fact, Russia had actually warned its American counterpart on the off-chance that there were any CIA assets on the ground who should have been forewarned of an impending attack.
They [the Russians] were playing the game right,” a senior adviser told Hersh.

Hersh continues:

Russian and Syrian intelligence officials, who coordinate operations closely with the American command posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was special because of the high-value target. ‘It was a red-hot change. The mission was out of the ordinary – scrub the sked,’ the senior adviser told me. ‘Every operations officer in the region’ – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – ‘had to know there was something going on. The Russians gave the Syrian Air Force a guided bomb and that was a rarity. They’re skimpy with their guided bombs and rarely share them with the Syrian Air Force. And the Syrians assigned their best pilot to the mission, with the best wingman.’ The advance intelligence on the target, as supplied by the Russians, was given the highest possible score inside the American community.

Hersh confirms Russia’s account of the incident, in which Russian authorities alleged that the Syrian Air Force bombed a “terrorist warehouse,” and that secondary bombings dispersed dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere. Strangely, if Hersh’s reporting is accurate, it is not clear why Russia didn’t give the detailed account at the time — and why the Russians didn’t emphasize that they had shared information with the U.S. military well in advance of the attack, as this would have cast further doubt on the official U.S. narrative. In that context, Russia could have provided proof of any prior communications that took place within the so-called deconfliction channel. It also doesn’t explain why Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, appeared to endorse two competing theories behind the events at Khan Sheikhoun.

However, Hersh continues:

A team from Médecins Sans Frontières, treating victims from Khan Sheikhoun at a clinic 60 miles to the north, reported that ‘eight patients showed symptoms – including constricted pupils, muscle spasms and involuntary defecation – which are consistent with exposure to a neurotoxic agent such as sarin gas or similar compounds.’ MSF also visited other hospitals that had received victims and found that patients there ‘smelled of bleach, suggesting that they had been exposed to chlorine.’ In other words, evidence suggested that there was more than one chemical responsible for the symptoms observed, which would not have been the case if the Syrian Air Force – as opposition activists insisted – had dropped a sarin bomb, which has no percussive or ignition power to trigger secondary explosions. The range of symptoms is, however, consistent with the release of a mixture of chemicals, including chlorine and the organophosphates used in many fertilizers, which can cause neurotoxic effects similar to those of sarin.

Hersh is not the first high-profile investigator to cast major doubts on the Trump administration’s official narrative regarding the events at Khan Sheikhoun. MIT professor emeritus Theodore Postol, who previously worked as a former scientific advisor to the U.S. military’s Chief of Naval Operations, poked major holes in the claims that the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons attack at Khan Sheikhoun, noting the “politicization” of intelligence findings (you can access all of his reports here).

Postol argued that there was no possible way U.S. government officials could have been sure Assad was behind the attack before they launched their strike, even though they claimed to be certain. Postol took the conversation even further, asserting that the available evidence pointed to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter had similar concerns regarding the White House’s conclusions, as did former U.K. ambassador to Syria Peter Ford. The mainstream media paid almost zero attention to these reports, a slight that exposes the media’s complicity in allowing these acts of war to go ahead unquestioned.

According to Hersh’s source, within hours of viewing the footage of the ‘attack’ and its aftermath, Trump ordered his national defense apparatus to plan for retaliation against the Syrian government. Hersh explains that despite the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) having no evidence that Syria even had sarin, let alone that they used it on the battlefield, Trump was not easily persuaded once he had made up his mind.

Everyone close to him knows his proclivity for acting precipitously when he does not know the facts,” the adviser told Hersh. “He doesn’t read anything and has no real historical knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can accept the consequences of a bad decision in the business world; he will just lose money. But in our world, lives will be lost and there will be long-term damage to our national security if he guesses wrong. He was told we did not have evidence of Syrian involvement and yet Trump says: ‘Do it.”’ [emphasis added]

At a meeting on April 6, 2017, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Trump spoke with his national security officials regarding the best way to move forward. The meeting was not to decide what to do, Hersh explains, but how best to do it (and how to keep Trump as happy as possible).

Trump was given four options. The first one was dismissed at the outset because it involved doing nothing. The second one was the one that was decided upon: a minimal show of force (with advance warning to Russia). The third option was the strike package that Obama was unable to implement in 2013 in the face of mounting public opposition and Russia’s threats of intervention. This plan was Hillary Clinton’s ultimate fantasy considering she was encouraging it moments before Trump’s lone strike actually took place. However, this would have involved extensive air strikes on Assad’s airfields and would have drawn in the Russian military to a point of no return.

The fourth option involved the direct assassination of the Syrian president by bombing his palaces, as well as his underground bunkers. This was not considered, either.

As we all witnessed in April, the second option was adopted, and the airbase Trump struck was up and running again in less than 24 hours, making it a very symbolic and empty show of force.

Hersh’s insight into the way Trump is conducting his foreign policy does not bode well for the future of the Syrian conflict (or anywhere else in the world, for that matter). Trump was not interested in the intelligence or the facts on the ground — if he had been, he would have waited until an investigation had determined culpability before ordering a strike.

Missing from Hersh’s account, however, is the fact that it was newly appointed national security advisor General H.R. McMaster who laid out the military strike proposals to the president at his resort on April 6. McMaster replaced former national security advisor Michael Flynn after the latter was forced to resign due to leaks from within the intelligence community. Due to Flynn’s alleged ties to Russia, it seems unlikely he would have proposed such a strike on Russia’s close ally to begin with.

It is unclear whether McMaster proposed the strikes in order to appease Trump or because McMaster ultimately wants Trump to adopt a tougher stance against Syria and Russia; McMaster has a history of pro-interventionism and anti-Russian sentiment.

Those commentators who can review these startling revelations but still condone Trump’s actions with a lazy ‘Assad is still a bad guy and must be overthrown’ mindset argument are being intellectually dishonest, with themselves and others. As was the case in 2013, there is still very little evidence that Assad has ever used chemical weapons — particularly in the attacks that the U.S. has tried to pin on him — yet this is the standard by which the corporate media and our respective governments have instructed us to judge Assad. Even without this conclusive evidence, shortly after the April events, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley stated Assad will fall from power.

Hersh’s investigation bolsters many claims that the U.S. acted rashly without first conducting or ordering an impartial inquiry regarding what happened in April of this year. Hersh’s report also serves as a reminder to the world of the warpath we are continuing down, spearheaded by an impulsive and reckless megalomaniac who has no interest in ascertaining fact from fiction.

Remember that Donald J. Trump has the nuclear codes; it is hard to think of a worse candidate to be entrusted with the fate of humanity.