BP - Will Republican Treason Take Down Obama?

DN - Glenn Greenwald: U.S. Spying on Allies Shows "Institutional Obsession" With Surveillance

Not a Particularly Good Argument

Trey Smith

The US National Security Agency was forced on Sunday to deny that its director ever discussed a surveillance operation against the German chancellor with President Barack Obama, as the White House tried to contain a full-scale diplomatic crisis over espionage directed at allied countries.
~ from NSA Denies Discussing Merkel Phone Surveillance with Obama by Paul Lewis ~

Oh, the tangled webs they've weaved!

The Obama administration finds itself between a rock and a hard place. Germany and much of the EU -- as well as quite a few other nations -- are incensed that it has been revealed that the NSA routinely has been spying on the leaders of our allies. Obama can't very well say that either he ordered this spying or, at least, was apprised of it because that would create a serious diplomatic rift with some of our staunchest allies. But the above contention is just as bad, if not worse.

If the NSA has been conducting this sort of spying and the president is not in the loop, then this buttresses the argument that US spy agencies are out of control and must be reined in -- something the Obama administration is strongly opposed to. It says that they are behaving like outlaws in the wild west.

One or the other and neither leaves the US government in a very good light!

Somebody's Grandmother, Somebody's Mother

Trey Smith

I offer the following two snippets without comment (because they speak for themselves).

An eight-year-old girl provided Amnesty International with the quote that leads its latest report on targeted killing in Pakistan's tribal regions. A drone strike killed the girl's 68-year-old grandmother as the old woman gathered vegetables last autumn. "I wasn't scared of drones before," the little girl said, "but now when they fly overhead I wonder, will I be next?"

Her uncertainty is understandable. An elderly matriarch's death is inevitably tragic for her grandchild. Her survivors are made to bear an even greater burden when the death is cloaked in mystery. Was the strike a murder? A terrible mistake? Did the grandmother inadvertently do something to make the drone pilot suspicious? How can other innocents avoid her fate? The U.S. doesn't just refuse to explain its actions (or to compensate the families of innocent people it wrongfully kills). Our government cloaks the killings in extreme secrecy, refusing even to acknowledge its role. Of course little eight-year-old girls wonder if they're next. What would you think if a Hellfire missile arbitrarily blew up your grandma? I wonder if an eight-year-old girl is next too. It would make no more or less sense.
~ from 8-Year-Old Girl on Drones: 'When They Fly Overhead I Wonder, Will I Be Next?' by Conor Friedersdorf ~

The last time I saw my mother, Momina Bibi, was the evening before Eid al-Adha. She was preparing my children's clothing and showing them how to make sewaiyaan, a traditional sweet made of milk. She always used to say: the joy of Eid is the excitement it brings to the children.

Last year, she never had that experience. The next day, 24 October 2012, she was dead, killed by a US drone that rained fire down upon her as she tended her garden.

Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day. The media reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 67-year-old grandmother of nine.

My three children – 13-year-old Zubair, nine-year-old Nabila and five-year-old Asma – were playing nearby when their grandmother was killed. All of them were injured and rushed to hospitals. Were these children the "militants" the news reports spoke of? Or perhaps, it was my brother's children? They, too, were there. They are aged three, seven, 12, 14, 15 and 17 years old. The eldest four had just returned from a day at school, not long before the missile struck.

But the United States and its citizens probably do not know this. No one ever asked us who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own government. Nobody has come to investigate nor has anyone been held accountable. Quite simply, nobody seems to care.

I care, though. And so does my family and my community. We want to understand why a 67-year-old grandmother posed a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world. We want to understand how nine children, some playing in the field, some just returned from school, could possibly have threatened the safety of those living a continent and an ocean away.

Most importantly, we want to understand why President Obama, when asked whom drones are killing, says they are killing terrorists. My mother was not a terrorist. My children are not terrorists. Nobody in our family is a terrorist.
~ from Please Tell Me, Mr. President, Why a US Drone Assassinated My Mother by Rafiq ur Rehman ~

TYT - Civilian Deaths in Drone Strikes - Devastating Report

A Matter of Trust

Trey Smith

Germany and France are to spearhead a drive to try to force the Americans to agree new transatlantic rules on intelligence and security service behavior in the wake of the Snowden revelations and allegations of mass US spying in France and tapping of the German chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.

At an EU summit in Brussels that was hijacked by the furore over the activities of the National Security Agency in the US and Britain's GCHQ, the French president, François Hollande, also called for a new code of conduct agreed between national intelligence services in the EU, raising the question of whether Britain would opt to join in.

Shaken by this week's revelations of NSA operations in France and Germany, EU leaders and Merkel in particular warned that the international fight against terrorism was being jeopardized by the perception that mass US surveillance was out of control.

The leaders "stressed that intelligence-gathering is a vital element in the fight against terrorism", a summit statement said. "A lack of trust could prejudice the necessary co-operation in the field of intelligence-gathering."

Merkel drove the point home: "We need trust among allies and partners. Such trust now has to be built anew … The United States of America and Europe face common challenges. We are allies. But such an alliance can only be built on trust."
~ from Germany and France Warn NSA Spying Fallout Jeopardizes Fight Against Terror by Ian Traynor ~

Folks in the EU have reason to be upset. Their supposed allies -- the USA and UK -- have been caught spying on them. EU leaders weren't all that concerned when the spying concerned average citizens -- they became outraged when they learned that they too were being targeted. Understandably, they are demanding change.

But how can one trust agencies with the capabilities of the NSA and GCHQ? Diplomats can say all the right things and our own president can promise not to spy on "our friends" anymore. New rules and regulations can be negotiated. Heck, they can even be ratified. All the things one would expect can be done to "mend the fences", but, at the end of the day, will it mean actual change?

Once the genie is out of the bottle, it becomes very difficult to put it back. If you have the capacity to spy on anyone of your choosing, who is to say you won't continue the practice? Let the politicos hammer out new rules of engagement, while you work behind the scenes to make your spying operations ever more difficult to detect.

The point here is that the NSA and GCHQ repeatedly have shown that they are not to be trusted to follow even their own rules and their nation's laws. By their very nature, they are entities that should be distrusted at all turns. When they say, we won't spy on you anymore, why should anyone believe them? Therein lies the vexing problem (of their own making).

That Didn't Take Long At All!

Trey Smith

In this morning's post, I mentioned that it wouldn't be surprising to learn that the NSA has spied on numerous world leaders, including allies. Well...only a few minutes after reading the article about German outrage re the alleged NSA spying on Chancellor Merkel, I read this from the Guardian:

The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The confidential memo reveals that the NSA encourages senior officials in its "customer" departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems.

The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately "tasked" for monitoring by the NSA.

The revelation is set to add to mounting diplomatic tensions between the US and its allies, after the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday accused the US of tapping her mobile phone.

After Merkel's allegations became public, White House press secretary Jay Carney issued a statement that said the US "is not monitoring and will not monitor" the German chancellor's communications. But that failed to quell the row, as officials in Berlin quickly pointed out that the US did not deny monitoring the phone in the past.

This is the problem with ubiquitous spying. Everybody and their uncle gets caught up in the dragnet. Friend or foe doesn't matter! When you have the capability to tap into all forms of electronic communications, you probably will do so indiscriminately. What's to stop you?

If you really think about it, the NSA is like a Peeping Tom. I bet they get their jollies off of the fact that they can "look in" on a-n-y-b-o-d-y they damn well want to whenever they want to. They can watch all of us as we undress, figuratively speaking.

Hold On a Second...You're Even Spying On Me?

Trey Smith

When the revelations first broke about the NSA's widespread spying apparatus, German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't get all that excited. Following cues from Washington, her reaction was quite muted. In fact, only a few months in, she viewed the information as much ado about nothing. All major nations conduct spying and, besides, America and Germany are strong allies.

That was then and this is now. Merkel, who viewed the spying on innocent Germans as not that big of a deal, is now steamed. Why the big change? According to recent reports, the German intelligence service has discovered that the NSA was targeting Merkel too! It seems that the US has been collecting data and who knows what else from Merkel's cell phone.

This new revelation shouldn't be all that surprising. In recent weeks, it has been reported that the leaders in Mexico and Brazil -- again, two allied nations -- were targeted. Given time and more investigative reporting, we may soon learn that more leaders of allied nations are being monitored.

As long as the chief targets of this ubiquitous spying are faceless nobodies of the unwashed masses, the elite truly don't give a damn. Peons should have no expectation to a right of privacy. The powers that be need to know what we are up to at all times. But when members of the elite figure out that they too have been swept up in this ever growing web of surveillance, only then will heads start to roll. It is when it begins to dawn on them that federal contractors are listening in to their backroom deals and quasi-legal wheeling and dealing that these programs stand a chance of being pared back.

Adolf, Thanks For the Memories

Trey Smith

Without Hitler, the U.S. military would collapse.

For 68 years, wars on poor countries have been justified by the pretended discovery of Hitler’s reincarnation. Each time it has turned out to be a false alarm. Every post-WWII war looks disastrous or at least dubious in retrospect to most people. And yet, the justification of the next war is always ready to hand, because the real, original Hitler remains alive in our memories, and he just might come back — who’s to say?

Actually, I think anyone vaguely aware of basic facts about the current world ought to be able to say that Hitler is gone for good.

How do I justify not going to war with Hitler, beyond explaining that Assad isn’t Hitler, Gadaffi isn’t Hitler, Hussein isn’t Hitler, and so on?

Increasingly, I believe we must start with the fact that we live in a different world. Colonization is gone. Empires of the old model are gone. No powerful nation is plotting that sort of global conquest. In fact, no powerful nation is seriously considering war with other powerful nations.

During these past 68 years of misidentifying new Hitler after new Hitler, there has in fact been no World War III. We haven’t just made it 25 years. We’ll hit the 75-year mark during the next U.S. presidency. Nuclear weapons, awareness of the costs, understanding of the lack of benefits, established norms against the seizure of territory, the utter unacceptability of colonialism, and the vast increase in understanding of the power of nonviolent action all work against the waging of wars among the wealthy, armed nations. Instead, we have proxy wars, wars of exploitation, and poor-on-poor warfare. And even those wars fail miserably on their own terms. Occupations collapse. Puppets grow legs and wander off.
~ from If Hitler Didn't Exist by David Swanson ~

In order for the leader of any nation to convince the people that a war is justified, a bogeyman needs to be created. It has been this way since the dawn of human civilization. As Swanson so aptly points out, the default bogeyman for the US is Adolf Hitler. Since World War II, almost any time the US Commander-in-Chief wants to sell the American public on a rationale to invade another country, the ghost of Adolf Hitler is dragged out of mothballs.

It was the same thing several weeks ago. Before the Russians pressed for a diplomatic solution, we were told by Team Obama and the war hawks in Congress that Assad was this generation's Hitler and that the US simply couldn't stand by and do nothing. We had a moral duty to bomb Syria to save the Syrians from their own brand of the Third Reich.

~

The other point made by Swanson above should cause you to take pause. The major powers don't fight each other militarily anymore. No, the major powers find weaker nations to attack. This allows the major powers to exercise their bloodlust without incurring very much damage or injuries to themselves. Of the major powers, the biggest bully of all is the US. These days we only pick fights (invade) nations that have no hope of adequately defending themselves.

That fact -- in and of itself -- is sad. It shows that, no matter how our leaders try to spin it, we are about as far away from the moral high ground as a nation could be!

Interventions That Only a Mugger Could Love

Trey Smith

Libya marks the second anniversary of the death of Muammar Gaddafi with the country on the brink of a new civil war and fighting raging in the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of its Arab spring revolution.

Violence between radical militias and regular forces broke out on Friday night and continued yesterday, while the capital Tripoli is braced for fallout from the kidnapping earlier this month of prime minister Ali Zaidan. Federalists in Cyrenaica, home to most of Libya's oil, open their own independent parliament in Benghazi this week, in a step that may herald the breakup of the country.

For months, radical militias and regular forces in Benghazi have fought a tit-for-tat war. Last week two soldiers had their throats slit as they slept in an army base. But Friday's killing of Libya's military police commander, Ahmed al-Barghathi, shot as he left a mosque, has became the trigger for wider violence. Hours after an assassination branded a "heinous act" by US ambassador Deborah Jones, armed units stormed the Benghazi home of a prominent militia commander, Wissam Ben Hamid, with guns and rockets.
~ from Assassination Pushes Libya Toward Civil War Two Years After Gaddafi Death by Chris Stephen ~

Hmm. The US doesn't seem to be building a very good track record when it comes to interventions in predominantly Muslim countries. We attacked Iraq to bring democracy, freedom and peace -- that hasn't turned out so well. Ever since the US intervention, Iraq has been on the precipice of a civil war. According to the above news report, the very same thing is happening in Libya. Owing to this track record, one should anticipate about the same result when we pull out of Afghanistan.

This is not an argument to stay in Afghanistan. Far from it. It is just to point out that when a US Commander-in-Chief -- be it a Republican OR a Democrat -- tells the world that the US must intervene for humanitarian reasons, it is a lie. Is it humanitarian to bat at a hornet's nest, then leave when the hornets come swarming out?

Defenders of these so-called humanitarian interventions will say, It's not our fault. Our aims were pure. You can't blame us if the people we liberate mess up the peace and democracy we so graciously provided them.

Even in that deluded reality, the US still is to blame. It shows that we are very poor teachers who, utilizing the corporate model of education, should be fired because our "students" perform so abysmally.

GRTV - Staging the Chemical Weapons Attack in Syria

Driving People Insane

Trey Smith

In an angry speech before the United Nations General Assembly, a democratically-elected president had this to say.

In the absence of the right to privacy, there can be no true freedom of expression and opinion, and therefore no effective democracy. In the absence of the respect for sovereignty, there is no basis for the relationship among nations.

In year's past, if you were to guess that these words were spoken by the sitting US President, no one would fault you. US Presidents are known to say lots of noble things. But these words were spoken by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and they were directed AT the United States! Her words were targeting the massive surveillance of world citizens by the NSA.

What she said should be a no-brainer: A lack of privacy is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime. Dictators, despots and demagogs do not want their citizens to think for themselves. No, they want the unwashed masses uncritically to toe the party line. They want people always to be looking over their shoulder and to be too frightened to utter any degree of dissent.

In a manner of speaking, mass surveillance is a form of terrorism. It is not the kind of terrorism that directly can end life in a split second -- though, at times, it can lead to death -- but it IS the kind of terrorism that can lead to indiscriminate intimidation, imprisonment and torture. Mass surveillance terrorizes people from writing, saying or even thinking things that the government does not approve of. It is so terrorizing that real democracy becomes near too impossible.

Not only is mass surveillance a form of terrorism, but it also leads to wide scale mental health problems. If you know that you are always being watched, you are more apt to become paranoid. You may start to have delusions that may or may not be all that delusional. It would not be uncommon for people to develop trust issues and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

Humanitarian Intervention and Exceptionalism

Trey Smith

Last week, Starbucks asked its American customers to please not bring their guns into the coffee shop. This is part of the company's concern about customer safety and follows a ban in the summer on smoking within 25 feet of a coffee shop entrance and an earlier ruling about scalding hot coffee. After the celebrated Liebeck v McDonald's case in 1994, involving a woman who suffered third-degree burns to her thighs, Starbucks complies with the Specialty Coffee Association of America's recommendation that drinks should be served at a maximum temperature of 82C.

Although it was brave of Howard Schultz, the company's chief executive, to go even this far in a country where people are better armed and only slightly less nervy than rebel fighters in Syria, we should note that dealing with the risks of scalding and secondary smoke came well before addressing the problem of people who go armed to buy a latte. There can be no weirder order of priorities on this planet.

That's America, we say, as news of the latest massacre breaks – last week it was the slaughter of 12 people by Aaron Alexis at Washington DC's navy yard – and move on. But what if we no longer thought of this as just a problem for America and, instead, viewed it as an international humanitarian crisis – a quasi civil war, if you like, that calls for outside intervention? As citizens of the world, perhaps we should demand an end to the unimaginable suffering of victims and their families – the maiming and killing of children – just as America does in every new civil conflict around the globe.
~ from American Gun Use Is Out of Control: Shouldn't the World Intervene? by Henry Porter ~

Can you imagine the outrage and contempt of most Americans if the United Nations seriously entertained a resolution to intercede in this American civil war? Any nation that had the temerity to suggest that the UN needed to send peacekeepers to our shores would be denounced -- threatened even -- in the strongest terms possible. This would be one of those rare situations in which Americans of almost all political persuasions would unite together to say that the UN has no business telling us -- the exceptional Americans -- what is right and what is wrong.

And yet, this is what the US does all the time. We constantly stick our noses into other people's business. If something is going on in some nation and we don't like it -- it somehow threatens our overly broad national interests or national security -- we easily can come up with a host of reasons why it is our supreme role to step in to discipline recalcitrant leaders or factions and/or to aid the downtrodden. We often package it as a humanitarian effort, but these actions too often terrorize, kill and maim the innocent.

If the shoe was on the other foot -- the world joined together to try to end the humanitarian crisis of American gun violence (one that we refuse to address on our own) -- do you think our leaders and most of the public would welcome the aid with open arms?

For Barack Obama, the Politics of Death Trumps the Politics of Life

Trey Smith

Short of an ongoing hot war, the imbroglio over the proposed bombing of Syria has occupied the precious time of President Obama, and therefore the mass media, unlike anything else on his plate. Moreover, it portends absorbing much more of his time and political capital in the coming weeks.

Our country’s misguided foreign policy has caused our president to spend enormous time and influence enlisting allies, members of Congress, and figuring out the many risks of another protracted unlawful war-quagmire in the Middle East. Imagine how much time our president could spend on our country’s many domestic problems.

Let’s take the easy ones first. Mr. Obama was scheduled to fly to California to address the largest annual convention of the AFL-CIO and its member unions. Chief Labor Leader Richard Trumka – an Obama loyalist – was unveiling a bold new plan to expand labor’s big tent to include groups such as Working America (representing non-union workers), the Sierra Club, the NAACP, La Raza and student groups. Keynoter Barack Obama had to cancel his appearance. Reason: Absorption with Syria.

After waiting for months for a meeting with their President, the Congressional Black Caucus finally got their White House Invitation. Did their political hero engage them over the domestic issues Caucus members wanted to discuss?

As noted by a disappointed Rep. André Carson (D-Indiana), Black Caucus members wanted to focus on programs targeted for the African-American community – “summer jobs,” “helping to empower small business, women-owned businesses,” helping to “improve the health of our public school systems,” along with the civil rights and voting issues in the news. Sorry. Barack Obama spent his hour trying to persuade them to support bombing Syria!

Taking Mr. Obama at his often repeated words that “the safety of the American people” is his top priority, the trajectory of that commitment is strangely skewed. Drone attacks or other techniques of wiping out stateless terrorists overseas, alleged suspects, and an occasional American citizen, produce blowback and in the long run force our country to spend more on “guns than butter.”

But whether campaigning or presiding, candidate and President Barack Obama seems to seriously undervalue policies that would prevent over 300,000 American lives lost each year, and many more injuries and illnesses, from having a prominent place on his timetable.
~ from Obama's Perverse Priorities by Ralph Nader ~

One of the hallmarks of the presidency of Barack Obama -- the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize of all things -- is that, when it comes to military aggression, he has all the time in the world, but, when it comes to talking about ways to promote life, he never has the time to do it justice. War means big profits for his corporate benefactors. Alleviating poverty, promoting education, and dealing with climate change, not so much.

If only working to better people's lives -- not kill them -- was more lucrative for Wall Street! If that were the case, I'm guessing Obama would clear the table and talk about it until the cows came home.

An Interesting Historical Tidbit About Syria and Chemical Weapons

Trey Smith

Journalists are trained to write utilizing the pyramid style (e.g., the most important info at the top). The reason for this is that studies show that most readers rarely make it past the 3rd or 4th paragraph! If a reporter does not include the critical who/what/when/where at the top of the article, most readers will walk away not knowing this pertinent information.

One reason why I like to read or, at least, scan the entirety of an article is that you can often find critical tidbits of information below the fold or in the continued story on page 6. It is sad to say -- in today's modern mainstream journalism -- that often some of the most critical facts and observations are near or at the end of an article, not the beginning. This tack tends to expose the reporter's, editor's and/or publication's biases.

~

One thing I have been wondering about lately is: Why does Syria possess chemical weapons in the first place? I found the answer in an article at CounterPunch written by an Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery.

It should be remembered why [Assad's] father produced this gas in the first place. He believed that Israel was developing nuclear weapons. Not being able to aspire to such expensive and technically advanced devices himself, he settled for much cheaper chemical and biological weapons as a deterrent. According to a secret 1982 CIA report, Israel was producing such weapons itself.

It turns out that the previous Syrian leader's suspicions were correct. Israel -- with the aid of the US -- indeed possesses nuclear weapons. So, in a manner of speaking, Israel and the US are responsible for the chemical weapons we now say must be destroyed! Had Israel not gotten into the nuclear weapons biz, then, maybe, the current situation in Syria might never have occurred. There would have been no need to speak about a "red line."

It is the omission by the US government and the mainstream media of this particular chain of events that amounts to a disservice to the American people. While the vast majority of Americans opposed US missile strikes on Syria, their opposition was based on other concerns. Had they known that one of the primary reasons that Syria possesses chemical weapons in the first place leads back to this nation, they may have opposed military aggression on that basis alone.

At least, I hope a significant number of Americans would have the capability of connecting the obvious dots!

Somebody Is Not Happy

Trey Smith

As it always happens whenever there is a ceasefire or an agreement to avert war/military aggression, somebody is not happy. In the case of Syria, it seems that two somebodies are not very pleased. The war hawks in the US aren't enthralled with the agreement brokered by their own government and Russia because war -- even if you don't call it that -- is good for business! When the bottom line is ALL that matters, you don't take kindly to anyone who seeks to take money that was earmarked for your pocketbook.

There is another group that is none too pleased: various factions of the Syrian rebels. They were counting on a US aerial assault to shift the tide in their ongoing civil war -- one they are losing -- and so now they face the prospect of a long stalemate, at best, or a defeat, at worst. The current agreement with the Assad government re their chemical weapons is the last thing in the world they wanted.

If you don't think so, one rebel commander made his thoughts well known when he said, "Let the Kerry-Lavrov plan go to hell. We reject it and we will not protect the inspectors."

While understandable in the context of war, his statement is troublesome, nonetheless. It should make one wonder if the rebels will undermine the agreement in order to coax the US war hawks to act. The worst possible outcome for the people of Syria is, if the Assad government tries to live up to the agreement, but the rebels themselves make it impossible for Syria's chemical weapons to be placed under foreign control and subsequently destroyed. It begs the question: If Assad complies, but the rebels don't, will the US take the unilateral action to "punish" Syria with missile strikes?

If that option is on the table, then logic dictates that is precisely what the rebels will do. They will mess up the agreement and then blame the Assad regime for their own sins. The military-industrial complex and the lapdog mainstream media will play along. Before we know it, the "war" that few want will be given a green light.

No one will be happy...except for the war hawks and the Syrian rebels.

Putin Had At Least One Thing Right

Trey Smith

In his Wednesday op-ed in the New York Times, I think one of the points Russian President Vladimir Putin made was right on target: "It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation."

He's right! People who view themselves as exceptional tend to equate this to mean superior. People who believe they are superior to others tend to be arrogant and dismissive. Even worse, those who view themselves as exceptional and superior often act as if the rules of life don't apply to them. And so, when leaders urge their citizens to view the nation and themselves as superior to others, it is an invitation to become abusers.

If we take a look at the US in the last century or so, I think it is very apparent that we are an abusive nation. We talk at length about the rule of law, international agreements and general human mores, but we only pay heed to any of these when it's convenient to our so-called national interests. When it is not convenient, we thumb our nose at everybody else! We break the rules all the time and become indigent if anyone points it out.

And why do we consistently break the rules? Because we view ourselves as exceptional and exceptional people are above the rules.

~

If truth be known, though American leaders say it all the time, the elites in this country actually do not view most Americans as exceptional. When they use the word, we, they mean themselves, not the rest of us. Sure, they make it sound like they are being all inclusive -- it serves a rhetorical purpose -- but their actions prove that they view the unwashed masses as anything BUT exceptional.

If our leaders genuinely viewed each of us as exceptional/superior, then they would go out of their way to insure that all of our needs were met and that our dreams would be attainable. 

They wouldn't fight the notion of a living wage because they would want exceptional people like us to be paid well.

They wouldn't fight against the notion of universal healthcare because they would want exceptional people like us to be healthy.

They wouldn't fight against the notion of well-funded education because they would want exceptional people like us to learn as much as possible.

They wouldn't try to spend all their time spying on us because they would want exceptional people like us to enjoy our right to privacy.

And they wouldn't try to erect as many barriers as possible to the exercise of democracy because they would want exceptional people like us to participate fully in running the nation.

But they don't do ANY of these things because they do NOT view the vast majority of us as exceptional in any way, shape or form. No, they are the exceptional ones and our job is to serve them.

I Am Completely Befuddled

Trey Smith

Today it was announced that Russia and the US had brokered an agreement on the chemical weapons in Syria.

The United States and Russia on Saturday reached agreement on a plan that would end Syria’s ability to produce chemical weapons by November and would destroy all materials that could be used to make such weapons in the future by the middle of next year.

The milestone agreement, laid out in four pages released after two days of talks, calls for President Bashar Assad to detail the location and nature of his country’s weapons within a week, “including names, types, and quantities of its chemical weapons agents, types of munitions, and location and form of storage, production, and research and development facilities.”

While I applaud this plan, I am completely befuddled by the time frame. In an article I shared in a post on Wednesday, Handing Over Chemical Weapons: What Does This Really Mean?, it is reported that the US houses 523 metric tons of chemical weapons at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky -- Syria is believed to have 1,000 metric tons -- and current plans call for these weapons to be destroyed by 2023. We have been working for years to build the facilities to accomplish this mission and said facility won't be operational until 2020.

This is where my confusion comes in. If it will take the US nearly another decade to be in the position to destroy our chemical weapons cache at this one location -- there is, at least, one other location in the US that still holds chemical weapons too -- how is it that we can say that the Syrian tonnage can be safely destroyed in only one year's time? Put a different way, why will it take the US 6.5 time longer to dispose of one-half of the amount?

If the technology exists to get the job done within one year, why don't we employ that same technology here? Our pledge was to have the job done by 2012 and we are still a decade off from meeting our obligation.

If somebody understands how and why the Syrian time frame makes any sense, I would appreciate an explanation. Would you also explain to me why the time frame works for Syria and not the US?

Handing Over Chemical Weapons: What Does This Really Mean?

Trey Smith

By now, I'm sure most of you know about how Secretary of State John Kerry's rhetorical comment at a London press conference -- Jonathan Freedland termed it a gaffe -- has changed the calculus on Syria. Kerry said rather flippantly that, if Syria would turn over control of their nuclear weapons, then maybe war wouldn't be in the offing. Russia seized on this idea and, before you knew it, Syria agreed to the idea.

Look, I'm all for ANY strategy put forth to avoid US military intervention, but this whole concept begs a question or two. For starters, how exactly would the UN and/or other nations take control of chemical weapons inside of Syria? This is a nation involved in a civil war, you know. Does France, Australia, the US or Ghana want to send personnel to babysit these arsenals while Syrians and associated forces are shooting and bombing each other? I can tell you that I have no interest whatsoever in signing up for such an assignment!

Another aspect of this preliminary agreement is that Syria's chemical weapons will be destroyed. How soon? Who will do it? How will it be done?

These aren't nitpicking questions, particularly when we take a look at how difficult it has been for the US to get rid of our share of sarin, VX and mustard gas.  As reported by Greg Kocher of the Lexington Herald-Leader,

The alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria thrusts the international spotlight onto the same deadly "nerve agents" stored at Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County [Kentucky].

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Both sarin and VX are internationally banned, both are stored in Madison County and both are scheduled to be destroyed there by a massive plant that is 72 percent complete. The plant is supposed to be finished in 2015, but it will take until 2020 for it to become operational. Then, according to the current timeline, it will take from 2020 to 2023 to destroy the weapons, said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Berea-based citizens group that monitors the remaining weapons in Kentucky and Pueblo, Colo.

You see, a lot of people may have the idea that turning over these chemical weapons to outside countries would mean moving them out of Syria. Most likely, that would neither be prudent nor safe. Here, in the US, we aren't moving our stores of chemical weapons; we are building facilities where these weapons are currently housed.

As you can see from the timeline above, it will be 10 fricking years -- IF we keep to the schedule -- before our tonnage of chemical weapons are destroyed completely. I don't know how much chemical weapons are in Syria, but since they haven't even drawn up plans to begin building facilities to destroy them, their arsenals probably will still be there 15 years from now.

If the US demands that Syria's weapons be destroyed sooner AND if the technology to accomplish that exists, then why don't we avail ourselves of it as well? It would certainly go a long way toward being a good faith gesture since our destruction of these vile weapons has been preceding along at as snail's pace.

A(n) Ironclad, Water-Tight Case

Trey Smith

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry say they have the evidence that President Assad of Syria is responsible for a chemical weapons attack on his own people. The Prime Minister of the UK agrees. So do the French. I think I read that the Australian government agrees to. So, it must be an ironclad, water-tight case, right?

Not so fast.

According to a report in the German Press,

President Bashar al-Assad did not personally order last month's chemical weapons attack near Damascus that has triggered calls for US military intervention, and blocked numerous requests from his military commanders to use chemical weapons against regime opponents in recent months, a German newspaper has reported, citing unidentified, high-level national security sources.

The intelligence findings were based on phone calls intercepted by a German surveillance ship operated by the BND, the German intelligence service, and deployed off the Syrian coast, Bild am Sonntag said. The intercepted communications suggested Assad, who is accused of war crimes by the west, including [British] foreign secretary William Hague, was not himself involved in last month's attack or in other instances when government forces have allegedly used chemical weapons.

Okay, so the Germans disagree. But who pays that much attention to the Germans anyway?

As we see with the American mainstream media, intelligence people in this country unanimously accept the notion that Assad is personally responsible. Well, it turns out that's not really true either. In an open letter to President Obama, 12 members of the Steering Committee for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) are saying they don't have all that much confidence in the US government's assessment.

We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”

We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandum immediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.

The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond … the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today.

Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you.

As with previous posts of this nature, I am not saying that these two reports mean that the US assessment is categorically wrong. What they do suggest, however, is that it should make you wonder if the "high confidence" level of the current assessment is more driven by politics than facts. If nothing else, with different people arriving at different conclusions, you should ask if that is enough to go charging off into another war.