Obama beambten hebben gelogen over het verblijf van Edward Snowden in Rusland

Uit het boek van Ben Rhodes, de belangrijkste nationale veiligheidsadviseur onder Obama, blijkt dat men keihard heeft gelogen over het verblijf van klokkenluider Edward Snowden in Rusland, waarbij men hem zelfs afschilderde als spion van Moskou en als verrader.

Ben Rhodes is er trots op dat hij de weg van Snowden, via Moskou en Havanna naar Ecuador of Bolivia heeft kunnen blokkeren. Als eerste heeft hij het paspoort van Snowden ingetrokken toen deze op weg was van Hongkong naar Moskou, zodat Snowden niet kon doorreizen en vast kwam te zitten op het vliegveld van Moskou….. 

Ten tweede heeft Rhodes Cuba onder druk gezet Snowden de toegang tot het land te ontzeggen, met de dreiging dat de VS de besprekingen over een betere relatie met Cuba zou afbreken, mocht men Snowden doorgang bieden….. Cuba dat maar al te graag van de VS sancties af wilde, sancties die door Kennedy administratie werden genomen in februari 1962, dus ruim na de machtsovername van Fidel Castro en zijn kameraden, het land bukt onder deze illegale sancties van de VS, illegaal daar hiervoor geen VN resolutie bestond noch bestaat….*) De sancties werden verzwaard onder Trump en Biden weigert zelfs deze verzwaring terug te draaien……

Rhodes en anderen hebben sindsdien Snowden zoals gezegd beschuldigd van spionage en verraad daar hij zijn toevlucht tot Rusland zou hebben gezocht…..

Terecht stelt Glenn Greenwald in het hieronder opgenomen artikel dat ook gezien deze zaak de sociopathie van de VS geen grenzen kent (waar ik liever het woord psychopathie zou willen gebruiken)

Lees het artikel van Greenwald en zegt het voort, je kan er op wachten dat de reguliere westerse media, die volop hebben meegewerkt aan de demonisering van Snowden, geen aandacht aan de bewuste passage in het boek van Rhodes zullen besteden, daarmee ze hiermee zichzelf te kijk zullen zetten als onkundig en partijdig…… Onkundig daar men niet heeft gezocht naar de redenen waarom Snowden in Rusland is gebleven en partijdig daar men hem inderdaad heeft beticht van spionage en verraad en ook dat zonder enig onderzoek…….

Rhodes is nogal trots op wat hij heeft bereikt in zijn leven, echter met zijn handelen heeft hij voorkomen dat Snowden al vast zou zitten in de VS, daar Ecuador hem op zeker zou hebben uitgeleverd en dat geldt ook voor Bolivia, waar de hysterische reli-fascistische juntaleider Jeanine Añez**, die door ingrijpen van de CIA en de Organisatie van Amerikaanse Staten (OAS) aan de macht kwam in dat land, Snowden ook zou hebben uitgeleverd……

Ben
Rhodes’ Book Proves Obama Officials’ Lies, and His Own, About Edward
Snowden and Russia

It
is hard to overstate the sociopathy of US national security officials:
their casual willingness to blatantly lie about the gravest matters is
limitless.

 

Ben
Rhodes, then-Deputy National Security Advisor to US President Barack
Obama, speaks about the President’s upcoming trip to Cuba during a daily
press briefing at the White House February 18, 2016 in Washington, DC.
(Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Ever since Edward Snowden received asylum from
Russia in 2013, Obama officials have repeatedly maligned his motives
and patriotism by citing his “choice” to take up residence there. It has
long been clear that this narrative was a lie: Snowden, after meeting
with journalists in Hong Kong, intended only to transit through Moscow
and then Havana on his way to seek asylum in Latin America. He was
purposely prevented from leaving Russia — trapped in the Moscow airport —
by the very Obama officials who then cynically weaponized his presence
there to imply he was a civil-liberties hypocrite for “choosing” to live
in such a repressive country or, even worse, a Kremlin agent or Russian
spy.

But
now we have absolute, definitive proof that Snowden never intended to
stay in Russia but was deliberately prevented from leaving by the same
Obama officials who exploited the predicament which they created.
The proof was supplied unintentionally in the memoir of one of Obama’s
senior national security advisers, Ben Rhodes, entitled The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House. It is hard to overstate how dispositively Rhodes’ own book proves that Obama officials generally, and Rhodes specifically,
lied blatantly and cavalierly to the public about what happened: a
level of sustained and conscious lying that can be explained only by
sociopathy.

                

The
memoir of Rhodes, now appropriately an MSNBC contributor, is an
incredibly self-serving homage to himself that repeatedly attempts to
demonstrate his own importance and accomplishments. The passage about
Rhodes’ conduct regarding Snowden is very much aligned with those goals.
While repeatedly emphasizing how traumatic the Snowden revelations were
for the Obama administrations, Rhodes boasts of the crucial role he played in preventing Snowden from leaving Russia as the NSA whistleblower was desperately attempting to do so — exactly the opposite of what people like Rhodes and Hillary Clinton were telling the public about Snowden.

It
is really beyond words how willing these people are to lie. One chapter
of Rhodes’ book is devoted to the Obama administration’s efforts to
normalize relations with Cuba. Rhodes explains that the deep distrust
between the countries that had endured for decades began to subside due
to two events which he helped engineer. The first was the two countries’
agreement to improve the prison conditions for two prisoners: an
American imprisoned by Cuba, the other a Cuban imprisoned by the U.S.
The second even “more important signal” sent by Cuba showing its genuine
desire to improve relations was their capitulation to Rhodes’ threats
that they had better withdraw the permission they had granted Snowden to
allow him to pass through Havana once he left the Moscow airport as
planned, on his way to Latin America where he intended to seek asylum.

In
other words, Rhodes — who has spent years insinuating that Snowden is a
Russian spy and traitor given his “choice” to flee to Russia — knew in
real time that Snowden never planned to stay even one day in Russia. He
had only flown to Moscow from Hong Kong with the intent to immediately
fly from Moscow to Havana, and then on to either Ecuador or Bolivia to
obtain asylum. Prior to landing in Moscow, Snowden and his
representatives had secured a commitment from the Cuban government to
allow him safe passage through Havana on his way to South America.

The only reason
Snowden is in Russia is because of the actions of Rhodes and his fellow
Obama officials to deliberately trap him there: first by invalidating his passport
so that he could not board any international flights, and then by
threatening the Cuban government that any chance for normalization with
the U.S. would be permanently destroyed unless they withdrew their
guarantee to Snowden of safe passage through Havana, which they then
did. Here’s Rhodes in his own words, boasting about what he regards as
his success:

There was one other, more important signal. Around the time of our second meeting, Edward Snowden was stuck in the Moscow airport, trying to find someone who would take him in.
Reportedly, he wanted to go to Venezuela, transiting through Havana,
but I knew that if the Cubans aided Snowden, any rapprochement between
our countries would prove impossible. I pulled Alejandro Castro
aside and said I had a message that came from President Obama. I
reminded him that the Cubans had said they wanted to give Obama
“political space” so that he could take steps to improve relations. “If
you take in Snowden,” I said, “that political space will be gone.”
I
never spoke to the Cubans about this issue again. A few days later,
back in Washington, I woke up to a news report: “Former U.S. spy agency
contractor Edward Snowden got stuck in the transit zone of a
Moscow airport because Havana said it would not let him fly from Russia
to Cuba, a Russian newspaper reported.”
I took it as a message: The Cubans were serious about improving relations.

Could this admission be any clearer? From the very beginning, Obama officials including Rhodes knew
that Snowden had not traveled to Russia with the intention of staying
there, but instead was — in Rhodes’ own words — “stuck in the Moscow
airport” and was “trying to find someone who would take him in.” (Leave
aside Rhodes’ other lie that Snowden intended to “go to Venezuela”; the
NSA whistleblower’s plan was to travel from Moscow through Havana to
Bolivia or Ecuador, but Rhodes, knowing how Americans view Caracas,
purposely replaced Venezuela as the intended destination to further
impugn Snowden’s motives). Rhodes then tells us how proud he is of
himself for having successfully bullied Cuba out of allowing Snowden to
fly through Havana as he intended, thus — in Rhodes’ own words — causing
“Snowden [to] get stuck in the transit zone of a Moscow airport.”

And
yet, countless Obama officials — including, most amazingly, Rhodes
himself — have spent years lying to the public by claiming exactly the
opposite. Over and over, they impugned Snowden’s patriotism and strongly
implied he was a Russian spy and a traitor as evidenced by his “choice”
to go to Russia. As but one example, listen to the player embedded
below to hear what Rhodes told his fellow former Obama national security
official Tommy Vietor in February of 2017, on Vietor’s Pod Save America
program (where Rhodes is now also a co-host). For a full hour, Rhodes
impugned Snowden’s patriotism and motives, repeatedly citing his choice
to flee to Russia as his primary proof (along with the fact that Snowden
went to meet with journalists in “China” — by which Rhodes means Hong
Kong):

Cause
again like, a whistleblower doesn’t conspicuously pass through China to
Russia, you know, reporters are always saying ‘Are you telling me that
you know that he was working for the Russians?’, or what have you, I’m
like, I’m not, I’m telling you what I see, which is this guy
went to China and Russia, the two most adversarial intelligence
competitors to the United States; he could’ve gone to some very liberal
European country
that probably would’ve taken him in, or he could have faced the music here; the choice of those destinations speaks volumes.

Does
lying get any more flagrant or deliberate than this? Rhodes knows for
certain that what he’s saying here about Snowden is an absolute lie. He
knows that Snowden did not “choose” Russia as his “destination.” He
knows that Snowden did exactly what Rhodes said he should have done:
sought refuge in other countries. He knows that the only reason Snowden
is in Russia is because Rhodes himself trapped him there by preventing him from leaving.
We know that Rhodes knows all of this because he boasted about all of
it in his book, in the above-quoted passage. And yet, over and over,
Rhodes told the public the exact opposite of what he knew to be the
truth.

As
indicated, Rhodes was far from alone in knowingly disseminating this
lie to the American public. In 2014, Hillary Clinton, in a Guardian interview,
condemned Snowden by falsely claiming that he flew from Hong Kong to
Russia with the intention of seeking asylum from Putin. Listen to her
flagrantly lie:

From
the perspective of the twenty-four-hour news cycle, this may not be the
timeliest revelation. But it is only within the last several days that I
read Rhodes’ book and could barely believe how clearly he laid out his
own lies and those of his Obama administration colleagues. This level of
conscious lying — spending years implying that Snowden was a traitor or
Russian spy because he fled to Russia when you know that he wanted to
leave and did everything possible to do so but it was your actions that
trapped him there against his wishes — requires an unlimited willingness
to lie the moment one’s interests are served by doing so.

We
do not usually have a case where the evidence of lying is this
conclusive — where it is offered by the liars in the first place — but
this behavior is far from uncommon. This is what the National Security
State of the U.S. breeds, and it is vital always to remember that when
listening to these people speak.

(Our
request to Rhodes for comment and an attempt to reconcile with public
claims with this passage in his book was not answered at the time of
publication; it will be added if one is supplied.)


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===================================== 

*  Nu
wordt er vooral in de massamedia in de VS en de politiek daar, een
anti-Cubaanse campagne gevoerd als zou de socialistsche regering van
Cuba verantwoordelijk zijn voor de deplorabele economische situatie
in het land, terwijl deze één op één is te danken aan de illegale
sancties van de VS, de smerige brutaliteit!!
(zeker als je bedenkt dat deze sancties aan heel veel Cubanen het leven moet hebben gekost…..)

** De arrestatie van Jeanine Añez, die zwaar geweld liet gebruiken tegen de oorspronkelijke bevolking van Boliva, heeft in het westen verontwaardiging gewekt en men deed net alsof het grootste deel van het land achter deze waanzinnige psychopaat zou staan, met berichten als zouden vele duizenden hebben geprotesteerd tegen haar arrestatie (RTL Nieuws sprak zelfs van tienduizenden demonstranten…..)…. De grote meerderheid van de bevolking behoort tot de oorspronkelijke bewoners van Bolivia, die voor het eerst sinds de katholieke kolonisatie van het land werd bestuurd door een president die tot hun bevolkingsgroep behoorde, t.w. Evo Morales en dat stak het andere deel van het volk, plus de VS daar Morales een socialist is……. Uiteraard staat de oorspronkelijke bevolking achter Morales en Luis Arce diens opvolger ook behorend tot MAS, de partij van Morales, de partij die na de verbanning van Morales de verkiezingen in 2020 won. Zie wat dat betreft ook: ‘Bolivia: een jaar na de coup wint de socialistische partij alsnog de verkiezingen‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht!!)

———————————–

Zie ook: ‘Dag van de Klokkenluiders, niet bekend in Nederland en geen aandacht in de reguliere pers‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)

Zaak van VS tegen Assange gestrand op de belangrijkste getuige, westerse media aandacht: nul komma nada

Snowden vindt het ongelofelijk dat de media VS politici niet aanspreken op totaal verschillende reacties n.a.v. ‘klokkenluiden’‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht, veel ook over Julian Assange die de openbaringen van Snowden opnam in Wikileaks)

Edward Snowden over Silicon Valley censuur en andere zaken die de persvrijheid en de vrijheid in het algemeen in gevaar brengen‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht)

Deep State stuurt VS presidenten bij >> uitleg van Edward Snowden

Obama wist van bewapenen en ondersteunen terroristen in Syrië…….‘ (ook het trainen en bewapenen van ISIS, ook hierover heeft Rhodes e.e.a. toegegeven…..) (de video’s in dat bericht zijn intussen gecensureerd……)

Obama wist van bewapenen en ondersteunen terroristen in Syrië…….

Ben
Rhodes, adviseur van Obama tijdens diens presidentschap, gaf in een
interview schoorvoetend toe dat Obama en hijzelf wisten dat
terreurgroepen als IS door de VS werden bewapend en ondersteund en
zelfs vochten onder leiding van de VS……

Niets
nieuws zou je zeggen, immers dat de VS de zogenaamde gematigde
rebellen (psychopathische moordenaars, verkrachters en martelbeulen)
steunden met o.a. wapens en transportmiddelen was al lang geen geheim
meer, althans voor mensen die verder kijken dan wat de reguliere westerse
(massa-) media aan ‘nieuws’ brengen.

Het
nieuwe is wel het toegegeven van deze zaken door de rechterhand van
Obama, ten tijde van diens presidentschap, al moet daar onmiddellijk
aan toegevoegd worden dat zoals gezegd een aantal zaken al lang bekend waren,
zoals het onder leiding van de VS vechten van het Vrije Syrische Leger (FSA) in combinatie met IS…. Zaken die door de reguliere westerse
media en het grootste deel van de westerse politici worden afgedaan
als samenzweringstheorieën en ‘fake news….’ (nogmaals dit wordt gezegd over feitelijke berichtgeving in de sociale media en Wikileaks, terwijl wat betreft op de laatste site, die van Wikileaks, officiële documenten van de VS overheid zijn te vinden die e.e.a. bevestigen….)

In
2013 werkte VS ambassadeur in Syrië, Robert Ford, nauw samen met een
bekende IS commandant, zo heeft Ford zelf toegegeven……

Lees
het volgende ontluisterende artikel van Tyler Durden over deze zaak
(eerder gepubliceerd op Zero Hedge), het steunen door de VS van
jihadistische terreurgroepen, die liefkozend ‘gematigde rebellen’
worden genoemd en waartoe, zoals nogmaals blijkt, zelfs een tijdlang IS
behoorde…… Het lullige is wel dat gezien de feiten je niet
anders kan dan de volgende conclusie trekken: de VS heeft zelfs aan
‘de wieg van IS’ gestaan…….. (en ook dat is al veel langer bekend >> zie de links onder dit bericht…..)

Oh ja, mocht je het vergeten zijn: Obama kreeg de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede…. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Obama
Adviser: We Knew We Were Arming and Funding Terrorists in Syria

June
24, 2018 at 10:00 pm

Written by Tyler
Durden

(ZHE Op-ed) — Someone
finally asked Obama administration officials to own up to 
the
rise of ISIS
 and
arming jihadists in Syria.

In
a wide ranging interview titled 
“Confronting
the Consequences of Obama’s Foreign Policy”
 The
Intercept’s
 Mehdi
Hasan put the question to Ben Rhodes
,
who served as longtime deputy national security adviser at the White
House under Obama and is now promoting his newly published book, 
The
World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House
.

Rhodes
has been described as being so trusted and close to Obama 
that
he was
 in
the room” for almost every foreign policy decision of
significance
 that
Obama made during his eight years in office. 
While
the 
Intercept interview
is worth listening to in full, it’s the segment on Syria that
caught our attention.

In
spite of Rhodes trying to dance around the issue, he sheepishly
answers in the affirmative when Mehdi Hasan asks 
the
following question about supporting jihadists in Syria
:

Did
you intervene too much in Syria? 
Because
the CIA spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding and arming
anti-Assad rebels
, a
lot of those arms, as you know, ended up in the hands of jihadist
groups, some even in the hands of ISIS.

Your
critics would say you exacerbated that proxy war in Syria; you
prolonged the conflict in Syria; 
you
ended up bolstering jihadists.

Rhodes
initially rambles about his book and “second guessing” Syria
policy in avoidance of the question. But Hasan pulls him back with
the following: “
Oh,
come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms.” 

The
two spar over Hasan’s charge of “bolstering jihadists” in the
following 
key
section of the interview
,
at the end of which Rhodes reluctantly answers 
yeah…” — but
while trying to pass ultimate blame onto US allies Turkey, Qatar, and
Saudi Arabia (similar to what Vice President Biden did 
in
a 2014 speech
):

MH: Oh,
come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms.
 You
know, the U.S. was heavily involved in that war with the Saudis and
the Qataris and the Turks.

BR: Well,
I was going to say:Turkey, Qatar, Saudi.

MH: You
were in there as well.

BR: Yeah,
but, the fact of the matter is
 that
once it kind of devolved into kind of a sectarian-based civil war
with different sides fighting for their perceived survival, I think
we, the ability to bring that type of situation to close, and part of
what I wrestled with in the book is the limits of our ability to pull
a lever and make killing like that stop once it’s underway.

Deputy
National Security adviser Ben Rhodes and President Obama. Image
source: AP via Commentary Magazine

To
our knowledge this is 
the
only time a major media organization has directly asked
 a
high ranking foreign policy adviser from the Obama administration to
own up to the years long 
White
House support to jihadists in Syria
.

Though
the interview was published Friday, its significance went without
notice or comment in the mainstream media over the weekend (perhaps
predictably). Instead, what did circulate was a 
Newsweek article
mocking “conspiracy theories” surrounding the rapid rise of
ISIS, 
including
the following
:

President
Donald Trump has done little to dispel the myth of direct American
support for ISIS since he took office. On the campaign trail in
2016, 
Trump
claimed
—without
providing any evidence—that President Obama and then-Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton co-founded the group and that ISIS “honors”
the former president.

Of
course, 
the
truth is a bit more nuanced than that
,
as Trump himself elsewhere seemed to acknowledge, and which
ultimately led to the president reportedly shutting down the CIA’s
covert Syrian regime change program in the summer of 2017
while 
complaining
to aides about the shocking brutality of the CIA-trained “rebels”.

Meanwhile,
mainstream media has been content to float the falsehood that
President Obama’s legacy is that he 
“stayed
out” of Syria
,
instead merely approving some negligible level of aid to
so-called “moderate” rebels who were fighting both Assad 
and
(supposedly)
the Islamic State. 
Rhodes
has himself in prior interviews attempted to portray Obama as wisely
staying 
“on
the sidelines” in Syria
.

But
as we’ve 
pointed
out
 many
times over the years, this narrative ignores and seeks to
whitewash 
possibly the
largest CIA covert program in history
,
started by Obama, which armed and funded a jihadist insurgency bent
of overthrowing Assad to the tune of 
$1 billion
a year
 (one-fifteenth
of the CIA’s 
publicly
known
 budget according
to leaked Edward Snowden documents 
revealed
by the 
Washington
Post
).

It
also ignores the well established fact, documented in both 
US
intelligence reports
 and authenticated
battlefield footage
,
that 
ISIS
and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) jointly fought under 
a
single US-backed command structure
 during
the early years of the war in Syria, even as late as throughout
2013 
— something
confirmed by University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis, widely
considered to be 
the
world’s foremost expert on Syria
.

Joshua Landis

@joshua_landis

Important “Islamic State Leader Omar al-Shishani Fought Under U.S. Umbrella as Late as 2013” by @BradRHoff https://medium.com/@BradRHoff/islamic-state-leader-omar-al-shishani-fought-under-u-s-umbrella-as-late-as-2013-147354ea1b7f#.ijw5mms9t 


Islamic State Leader Omar al-Shishani Fought Under U.S. Umbrella as Late as 2013

Omar the Chechen fought under U.S. command structure in Syria.

medium.com

Syria
experts, as well as 
a
New York Times report
 which
largely passed without notice, verified the below footage from
2013 
showing
then US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford working closely with a
“rebel” leader who exercised operational command over known ISIS
terrorists
 (Ambassador
Ford has since 
acknowledged
the relationship to McClatchy News
): 

This
latest 
Ben
Rhodes 
non-denial-cum-sheepish-affirmation on
the Obama White House’s arming jihadists in Syria 
follows
previous bombshell reporting by Mehdi Hasan from 2015.

As
host of Al Jazeera’s 
Head
to Head
,
Hasan asked the former head of Pentagon intelligence under Obama,
General Michael Flynn, 
who
is to blame for the rise of ISIS
(the
August 2015 interview was significantly prior to Flynn joining
Trump’s campaign).

Hasan
presented Flynn with the 
2012
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) declassified memo
 revealing
Washington support to al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists in Syria in order
to counter both Assad and Iran. Flynn affirmed Hasan’s charge
that it was 
a willful
decision
 to
support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim
Brotherhood…”.


Soon
after, 
The
Intercept’s 
Glenn
Greenwald appeared on 
Democracy
Now 
to
discuss the shocking contents of the Flynn interview:

It
will be interesting to see years from now which “narrative”
concerning Obama’s legacy in the Syrian conflict future historians
choose to emphasize.

Obama
the president who “stayed out” and “on the sidelines” in
Syria? …Or Obama the president whose decisions 
fueled
the rise of the most brutal terrorist organization the world has ever
seen?

Below
is the relevant excerpt covering Syria from the 26-minute Intercept
interview
 with
Obama deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes [bold emphasis
ours].

The
audio is available here — Mehdi Hasan begins questioning
Rhodes about Syria and ISIS at the 19-minute mark.

Mehdi
Hasan:
 My
guest today was at President Obama’s side every step of the way
over the course of those two terms in office. Ben Rhodes joined the
Obama election campaign in 2007 as a foreign-policy speechwriter,
when he was just 29, and rose to become a deputy national-security
adviser at the White House, who was so intellectually and
ideologically close to his boss that he was often described as having
a mind-meld with Obama.

Ben,
who currently works at the Obama Foundation, has written a new book,
“The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House.” And
earlier this week I interviewed him about Obama’s rather
contentious foreign policy record…

MH: But
Ben, here’s what I don’t get, if you’re saying this about
Afghanistan and prolonged conflict, all of which I don’t disagree
with what you’re saying.
 How
do you, then, explain Syria?
 Because
you’ve been criticized a lot. I’ve been listening to your
interviews on the book tour; you talk about in the book about how you
were criticized for not doing enough on Syria. I remember being an
event in D.C. a couple years ago where Syrian opposition members were
berating you for not doing enough at an event, and you often were the
public face who came out and defended Obama. 
I
want to come to the other direction and say: Did you intervene too
much in Syria? Because the CIA spent hundreds of millions of dollars
funding and arming anti-Assad rebels
, a
lot of those arms, as you know, ended up in the hands of jihadist
groups, some even in the hands of ISIS.
 Your
critics would say you exacerbated that proxy war in Syria; you
prolonged the conflict in Syria; 
you
ended up bolstering jihadists.

Ben
Rhodes:
 Well,
what I try to do in the book is, you know, essentially raise — all
the second guessing on Syria tends to be not what you expressed,
Mehdi, but the notion that we should’ve taken military action.

MH: Yes.

BR: What
I do in the book is I try to look back at 2011 and 2012, was there a
diplomatic window that we missed or that we, in some ways, escalated
its closure by pivoting to the call for Assad to go — which
obviously I believe should happen, I believe Assad has been a
terrible leader for Syria and has brutalized his people — but,
you know, was there a diplomatic initiative that could have been
taken to try to avert or at least minimize the extent of the civil
war. Because, you know, what ended up happening essentially there is,
you know, we were probably too optimistic that, you know, after
Mubarak went and Ben Ali and eventually Saleh and Gaddafi, that you
would have a situation where Assad would go. And, you know, not
factoring in enough the assistance he was going to get from Russia
and Iran, combined with his own nihilism, and how that could lead him
to survive. So I do look back at that potentially missed diplomatic
opportunity.

On
the support of the opposition, you know, I don’t know that I would
give us that much agency.

There
are a lot of people putting arms into Syria, funding all sorts of —

MHOh,
come on, but you were coordinating a lot of their arms.
 You
know, 
the
U.S. was heavily involved in that war
with
the Saudis and the Qataris and the Turks.

BR: Well,
I was going to say: 
Turkey,
Qatar, Saudi.

MH: You
were in there as well.

BR: Yeah,
but, the fact of the matter is that once it kind of devolved into
kind of a sectarian-based civil war with different sides fighting for
their perceived survival, I think we, the ability to bring that type
of situation to close, and part of what I wrestled with in the book
is the limits of our ability to pull a lever and make killing like
that stop once it’s underway.

So
that’s why I still look to that initial opening window. I also
describe, there was a slight absurdity in the fact that we were
debating options to provide military support to the opposition at the
same time that we were deciding to designate al-Nusra, a big chunk of
that opposition, as a terrorist organization. 
So
there was kind of a schizophrenia that’s inherent in a lot of U.S.
foreign policy that came to a head in Syria.



MH: That’s
a very good word, especially to describ
Syria
policy…

Op-ed
by 
Tyler
Durden
 /
Republished with permission / 
Zero
Hedge
 / Report
a typo

============================

Zie ook:

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

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

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

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

Tracing ISIS’ Weapons Supply Chain—Back to the US


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


ISIL weapons traced to US and Saudi Arabia

U.S Caught Red Handed Selling Arms to ISIS/AL-Qaeda (Part 1 of 2)

US TRAINED REBELS GIVE WEAPONS TO TERROR GROUP

Made in America: US-Trained ‘Moderate’ Rebels, With Blessing Of Americans, Seling US Weapons to ISIS

Exactly how the US trained and armed ISIS

Lt. General McInerney says Obama helped build ISIS with Weapons from Benghazi

Syrië, de prijs van westerse terreur (die onmiddellijk gestopt moet worden >> tijd voor actie!)……

Syrië: verslaggever Bartlett prikt leugens reguliere media door

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

Syrian ‘Rebels’ Used Sarin Nerve Gas Sold By Britain

‘False flag terror’ bestaat wel degelijk: bekentenissen en feiten over heel smerige zaken……….

Syrië: Vlaamse pater roept op niet langer de westerse anti-Syrië propaganda te geloven!

Syrië: nieuwe gifgasaanval als ‘false flag’ operatie tegen Syrisch bewind in voorbereiding……..

Assad heeft geen gifgas gebruikt tegen de Syrische bevolking!

VS geeft toe dat er geen bewijs is voor het gebruik van gifgas ‘door Assad’, ofwel: alweer ‘fake news’ van de massamedia doorgeprikt!

Syrische nonnen spreken zich uit tegen de oorlogspropaganda van westerse mogendheden en de reguliere westerse (massa-) media

Israël bewapent minstens 7 terreurgroepen in Syrië…….

VS trainingsnetwerk voor terroristen in Syrië…….

Mijn excuus voor de belabberde vormgeving, krijg het niet op orde.