April 14, 2018
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY?
Friends,
Last
night, in conjunction with Great Britain and France, President Donald Trump
ordered an attack on Syria. And the unleashed war hawks were elated. Just to
cite one example, Sebastian Gorka (who had been in the administration last year
during the first Syrian “false flag” operation) literally proclaimed the coming
of the Eschaton and America’s “divine role” to set right everything that is
wrong in the world. Like an Abolitionist preacher of old, Gorka demanded a
“moral cleansing” and, sounding like Osawatomie John Brown, proclaimed
America’s destiny to go round the world, impose equality, and stamp out evil.
We
must ask: Is this the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency? Is the tiny
door ajar, that very small and always endangered opportunity that millions of
Americans believed might possibly lead us back as a nation from the precipice
of total domination by the Deep State and its panoply of global political,
economic and cultural destruction of our Western Christian civilization—is it now
closing?
Those
feverish and frenzied evangelical partisans, those diehard enemies of
everything that Donald Trump professed throughout 2016 campaign, have now
apparently triumphed, at least in foreign policy. Despite their scarcely-hidden
disdain for “that interloper from Manhattan” and their hatred for—and fear
of—his America First agenda, they managed early on to ingratiate themselves
into his inner circle.
First
came the iniquitous Nikki Haley who had, during 2016, likened our future
president to a KKK fellow traveler, a racist and a bigot:
I know what that rhetoric
can do. I saw it happen [ and] I will not stop until we fight a man that
chooses not to disavow the KKK. That is not a part of our party, that is not
who we want as president. We will not allow that in our country. [http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/271177-nikki-haley-knocks-trump-over-kkk]
Yet,
largely through the counsel of his Republican advisers Trump named the former
Waffle House waitress to be our ambassador to the UN (and the voice not of
Trump, but of the unbridled war hawk Neoconservative Lindsey Graham).
Then
came the possible selection of ultra-Neocon globalist, Never Trumper Elliott
Abrams to be Deputy Secretary of State under Rex Tillerson. Again, the GOP
advisers and Establishment types who had immediately surrounded Trump after his
election pressed for Abrams to fill the post, and only last minute lobbying and
critical information passed to the president about Abrams’ virulent attacks on him
prevented his naming.
Here
is how The New York Times reported
Abrams’ Never Trumpism in February 2017:
“Do not allow the
Republican convention to be a coronation wherein Trump and Trumpism are
unchallenged,” Abrams wrote in a piece for the conservative Weekly Standard.
“The party needs to be reminded that there are deep divisions, and Trump needs
to be reminded of how many in the party oppose and even fear his nomination.” [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-rejects-veteran-gop-foreign-policy-aide-elliott-abrams-for-state-department-job/2017/02/10/52e53ce6-efbd-11e6-9973-c5efb7ccfb0d_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ed21ba360a71]
Abrams’
selection was knocked down. But the resilient and persistent Neocon foreign
policy establishment—which had been so violently anti-Trump, almost to the
point of paroxysm during the campaign—now had a toehold, indeed, increasingly a
stranglehold within the president’s foreign policy team, and they were not
about to give it up—even if it meant swallowing their pride and denying all the
critical and malicious things that they had said about the president, all the
acerbic and hysterical criticisms they had launched against him, during the
previous campaign.
This
attitudinal “change” became readily apparent in watching the prominent Neocons
on Fox or in reading the pages of The
Wall Street Journal, or The Weekly
Standard and other mouthpieces of Neocon globalist zealotry.
John
Bolton, another fierce globalist opponent of the president’s America First
agenda, was the latest conquest by the Establishment internationalists. And
once again Donald Trump was convinced that Bolton—whose history of vigorous
support for unsuccessful foreign interventions is noteworthy—was the right man
for the right job.
There
is, needless to say, a lesson here: in 2016 Americans wanted an outsider, a man
not stained by the grimy and infectious politics of the Deep State and the
contagion that rages continually along the Potomac, to come in and clean house,
to, as it were, “drain the swamp,” to restore America to its citizens: in
short, to Make America Great Again.
But
just as there are major advantages to an outsider, a self-made billionaire not
beholden to anyone or any faction, entering the fray, there are also major
disadvantages and pitfalls. And perhaps the biggest is not knowing, not fully
understanding the philosophical and political intricacies of Washington, and the
simple fact that a smile and promise of loyalty and support in our nation’s
capital is worth about as much as former Vice-President John Nance Garner’s
“bucket of warm spit” (I think ole’ John used another term!).
Promises
along the Potomac are made to be broken—allegiances exist to further overall
policy aims. And in the case of the Neocon ideologues, to quote King Henry of
Navarre, a Protestant who wanted to become king of Catholic France, “Paris is
worth a Mass.”
Call
it naivete’—call it trust in a man’s word—call it what you may, but Donald
Trump’s worst enemies, those who wish to undo his America First agenda
enunciated during the 2016 campaign, are now in charge of American foreign
policy, and they apparently have convinced the president not only that they are
on his side, but that he is actually following through on his promises when in fact he is being used as a stalking horse, a
vehicle, for their agenda, which is inimical to his.
And
the result may well mean the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency, or,
at the very least, the fact that the Washington elites, the managerial state,
those globalists who have always opposed the program announced by the
president, have regained the momentum. And it may also mean that the slight
door ajar, the small opportunity that millions of Americans hoped and prayed
for back in November 2016, has now closed.
And if that be the case, then we as a
nation are just one more step on the seemingly inevitable road to something
that will make George Orwell’s dystopian novel, Nineteen-Eighty-Four, seem like a church picnic on a sunny spring
afternoon.
*****
Although the following research
articles may now seem superfluous to some degree, given the attacks now
launched, still they demand reading and consideration. I pass them on without
further comment, just deep regret and sadness for our nation, once more engaged
in deception supposedly based on the highest ideals.
Pentagon admitted NO concrete evidence of chemical attack
in Syria by government, relying on ‘social media’
The US is
“still assessing the intelligence” needed to prove the Assad regime conducted a
recent alleged chemical attack in Syria, Defense Secretary James Mattis said
Wednesday.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis told
lawmakers in the US Thursday that the Pentagon does
not have any evidence that chlorine or sarin were used in the
Syrian city of Douma.
Mattis went on to say that the majority
of the claims were coming from mainstream media reports and social media posts
– in other words, the rising tensions between nuclear superpowers over an
alleged chemical attack in Syria, inching closer towards World War 3, has been
all based on ZERO evidence, only fake media
reports.
Via Sputnik:
“There have been a number of these
attacks. In many cases, you know we don’t have troops, we’re not engaged
on the ground there, so I cannot tell you that we had evidence, even
though we had a lot of media and social media indicators that either
chlorine or sarin were used,” Mattis said, speaking to members of the
House Armed Services Committee on Thursday.
The defense secretary said that he did believe
that a chemical attack did take place, but that the US was still “looking for the actual evidence.”
“We’re still assessing the intelligence,
ourselves and our allies. We’re still working on this,” he reiterated.
Warning that he was concerned that a US strike
might lead to an “out of control” escalation in the Syrian war,
Mattis said that Washington was “committed to ending that war
through the Geneva process through the UN orchestrated effort.”
“On a strategic level, [the issue is] how do
we keep this from escalating
out of control, if you get my drift on that,” he said, likely
alluding to the prospects of a confrontation between Russian and
US forces deployed in the Middle Eastern country.
Mattis promised to keep Congressional
leaders informed if the Pentagon did decide to strike in Syria. Asked
if the US was ready for an attack, Mattis replied that “We stand ready
to provide military options if they’re appropriate, as the president
determined.”
Emphasizing that
the use of chemical weapons was “simply inexcusable,” the defense
secretary also accused Moscow of complicity in Syria’s alleged
retention of a chemical weapons stockpile.
Syrian opposition
media reports last week of an attack by government forces involving
chemical weapons prompted the US and its allies to blame Damascus and
begin preparations for a possible military response. The Syrian government
denied responsibility. The Russian Center for Reconciliation sent
inspectors to Douma, finding no trace of chemical weapons use. Moscow
has called for an independent investigation into the matter.
Syria destroyed its
chemical weapons stockpile in 2013 in a deal brokered by Russia
and the United States in exchange for the latter’s agreement not
to attack the Middle Eastern country. In 2014, the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW] confirmed that Syria’s chemical
weapons arsenal had been eliminated.
Townhall.com elaborates on
the complexity of the information coming out of Syria:
For the moment, Western governments attributing blame for the chemical
attack on Assad’s government are, based on mainstream reports from
outlets like the BBC, relying almost
entirely on Islamist rebel groups and the activists and NGOs that operate
within their territory for information:
Syrian opposition activists, rescue workers
and medics say
more than 40 people were killed on Saturday in a suspected chemical attack on
Douma, the last rebel-held town in the
Eastern Ghouta region.
They allege that bombs filled with toxic
chemicals were dropped by Syrian government forces. The government says the
attack was fabricated.
(…)
In March, troops split the region into three
pockets – the largest of which was around Douma, home to between 80,000 and 150,000
people. Facing defeat, rebel groups in the other two pockets agreed to be
evacuated to northern Syria.
But the group controlling Douma,
Jaysh al-Islam, continued to hold out.
(…)
Activists from the Violations Documentation
Center (VDC),
which records alleged violations of international law in Syria, reported two
separate incidents of bombs believed to contain toxic substances being dropped
by the Syrian Air Force.
(…)
At 19:45, more than 500 patients – most of
them women and children – were brought to medical facilities with symptoms
indicative of exposure to a chemical agent, according to the Syria Civil
Defence and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), a relief organisation
that supports hospitals.
(…)
The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations
(UOSSM), which supports hospitals in rebel-held Syria, also said it
received reports of two incidents [of chemical attacks].
Jaysh al-Islam (JAI, “Army of Islam”), the group that controls the
area alleged to have been attacked by Assad, is an Islamist group that has
acted as a rival of both ISIS and the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, according to Middle East Eye [emphasis mine]:
JAI formed after a merger involving around 60
groups, including Liwa al-Islam, and is itself one of the main components of
the Islamic Front – a group of Gulf-backed fighting groups – and are thought to
be second only to Ahrar al-Sham in terms of power and numbers.
The Islamic Front issued a charter in 2013
(prior to Jaish al-Islam’s joining) that laid its principles for the creation
of an Islamic-rooted society in which Islam would be the “religion of the
state, and it is the principal and only source of legislation.”
(…)
“O mujihideen brothers! We will leave these
fields in which we finished our course and preparation and we will continue
with preparing to wage jihad,” says the group’s leader, Zahran Alloush,
speaking to the recruits from a podium.
“Today the world is conspiring against us.
And we have no one but Allah, an excellent protector and helper is he!”
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump We should stay the hell out of
Syria, the "rebels" are just as bad as the current regime. WHAT WILL
WE GET FOR OUR LIVES AND $ BILLIONS? ZERO 8:33 PM - Jun 15, 2013
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump
Remember, all these ‘freedom
fighters’ in Syria want to fly planes into our buildings. 2:57 PM - Aug 28, 2013
Donald J. Trump ✔@realDonaldTrump Many of the Syrian rebels are
radical jihadi Islamists who are murdering Christians. Why would we ever fight
with them? 2:44 PM - Sep 6, 2013
That skepticism sure appears to be gone
now.
=================================================================== NOW MATTIS ADMITS THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE ASSAD USED POISON GAS ON HIS PEOPLE
Lost in the hyper-politicized
hullabaloo surrounding the Nunes Memorandum and the Steele Dossier was the
striking statement by Secretary of Defense James Mattis that the U.S. has “no
evidence” that the Syrian government used the
banned nerve agent Sarin against its own people last year. This assertion flies
in the face of the White House (NSC) Memorandum which was rapidly produced and
declassified to justify an American Tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat
airbase in Syria.
Mattis offered no temporal
qualifications, which means that both the 2017 event in Khan Sheikhoun and the
2013 tragedy in Ghouta are unsolved cases in the eyes of the Defense Department
and Defense Intelligence Agency. Mattis went on to acknowledge that “aid groups
and others” had provided evidence and reports but stopped short of naming
President Assad as the culprit.
There were casualties from organophosphate poisoning in both
cases; that much is certain. But America has accused Assad of direct
responsibility for Sarin attacks and even blamed Russia for culpability in the
Khan Sheikhoun tragedy.
Now its own military boss has said on the record that we have no
evidence to support this conclusion. In so doing, Mattis tacitly impugned the
interventionists who were responsible for pushing the “Assad is guilty”
narrative twice without sufficient supporting evidence, at least in the eyes of
the Pentagon.
This dissonance between the White House and the Department of
Defense is especially troubling when viewed against the chorus of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) experts who have been questioning the (Obama and Trump)
White House narratives concerning chemical weapons in Syria since practically
the moment these “Assad-ordered events” occurred.
Serious, experienced chemical weapons experts and investigators
such as Hans Blix, Scott Ritter, Gareth Porter and Theodore Postol have all
cast doubt on “official” American narratives regarding President Assad
employing Sarin.
These analysts have all focused on the technical aspects of the
two attacks and found them not to be consistent with the use of nation-state
quality Sarin munitions.
The 2013 Ghouta event, for example, employed home-made rockets
of the type favored by insurgents. The White House Memorandum on Khan Sheikhoun
seemed to rely heavily on testimony from the Syrian White Helmets who were
filmed at the scene having contact with supposed Sarin-tainted casualties and
not suffering any ill effects.
Likewise, these same actors were filmed wearing chemical weapons
training suits around the supposed “point of impact” in Khan Sheikhoun,
something which makes their testimony (and samples) highly suspect. A training
suit offers no protection at all, and these people would all be dead if they
had come into contact with real military-grade Sarin.
Chemical weapons are abhorrent and illegal, and no one knows
this more than Carla Del Ponte. She, however, was unable to fulfill her U.N.
Joint Investigative Mechanism mandate in Syria and withdrew in protest over the
United States refusing to fully investigate allegations of chemical weapons use
by “rebels” (jihadis) allied with the American effort to oust President Assad
(including the use of Sarin by anti-Assad rebels).
The fact that U.N. investigators were in Syria when the chemical
weapon event in Khan Sheikhoun occurred in April 2017 makes it highly dubious
that Assad would have given the order to use Sarin at that time. Common sense
suggests that Assad would have chosen any other time than that to use a banned
weapon that he had agreed to destroy and never employ.
Furthermore, he would be placing at risk his patronage from
Russia if they turned on him as a war criminal and withdrew their support for
him.
Tactically, as a former soldier, it makes no sense to me that
anyone would intentionally target civilians and children as the White Helmet
reports suggest he did.
There is compelling analysis from Gareth Porter suggesting that
phosphine could have been released by an airborne munition striking a chemical
depot, since the clouds and casualties (while organophosphate-appearing in some
respects) do not appear to be similar to MilSpec Sarin, particularly the
high-test Russian bomb-carried Sarin which independent groups like “bellingcat”
insist was deployed.
America’s credibility was damaged by Colin Powell at the United
Nations in 2003 falsely accusing Saddam Hussein of having mobile anthrax
laboratories. Fast forward to 2017 and we encounter Nikki Haley in an
uncomfortably similar situation at the U.N. Security Council calling for action
against yet another non-Western head-of-state based on weak, unsubstantiated
evidence.
Now Secretary Mattis has added fuel to the WMD propaganda
doubters’ fire by retroactively calling into question the rationale for an
American cruise missile strike.
While in no way detracting from the horror of what took place
against innocent civilians in Syria, it is time for America to stop shooting
first and asking questions later.
Ian Wilkie is an international
lawyer, U.S. Army veteran and former intelligence community contractor.
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