Donald Trump turns out to be a pretty good liar, even if he frequently has no idea what he’s talking about, says Phil Giraldi in this commentary. But the prize for lying has to go to the British.
By Phil Giraldi
At least since the time of Marcus Tullius Cicero in the late Roman Republic everyone has certainly understood that politicians lie all the time. To be sure, President Donald Trump has been exceptional in that he has followed through on some of the promises he made in his campaign, insisting periodically that he has to do what he said he would do.
Unfortunately, those choices he has made to demonstrate his accountability to his supporters have been terrible, including moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, threatening to end the Iran nuclear agreement and building a wall along the Mexican border. Following through on some other pledges has been less consistent. He has increased U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan and turned the war over to the generals while also faltering in his promise to improve relations with Russia.
The potential breakthrough offered by promising exchanges during phone calls to Vladimir Putin have been negated by subsequent threats, sanctions and expulsions to satisfy hysterical congressmen and the media.
Concerning Syria, Trump last Tuesday said “I want to get out,” promising to pull U.S. troops out very soon, but was quickly brought to heel by pressure from Congress and a phone call from Israeli Prime Minister
Netanyahu: Has Congress to do his bidding. Here addressing a joint session, May 24, 2011 (Photo by Avi Ohayun/GPO)
Benjamin Netanyahu that compelled him to change his mind within 24 hours. Israel wants chaos in Syria and its instrument of choice is the American military. Netanyahu has Congress to do his bidding and, for whatever reason, appears to also have Trump under his thumb.
A Pretty Good Liar
So Donald Trump turns out to be a pretty good liar, even if one has to take into account the fact that he frequently has no idea what he is talking about. But the prize for lying at a high level has to go to the British as related to what has been going on both in the Middle East, with Russia, and also in Britain itself.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was the first master at dissimulation in 2002 when his intelligence chief Sir Richard Dearlove told him that the Bush White House had decided on war and “the intelligence and facts were being around the policy” regarding Iraq, meaning that it was ignoring the information that did not support its desire to create a pretext for invading the country and removing Saddam Hussein.
Blair presumably could have derailed the ill-fated invasion by refusing to go along with the venture, which was a war crime, but instead he fully supported George W. Bush in the attack. He thereby had a hand in America’s worst foreign policy disaster ever. In 2016 an official British government inquiry determined that Bush and Blair had indeed rushed to war together. The Global Establishment has nevertheless rewarded Tony Blair for his loyalty with Clintonesque generosity. He has enjoyed a number of well-paid sinecures and is now worth in excess of $100 million.
Creating a Foreign Crisis
Moving along to the present, we have Prime Minister Theresa May. May has been in serious trouble, politically speaking. After losses suffered in the recent parliamentary elections, she is clinging to power and is increasingly unpopular even within her own Conservative Party. So what do you do when you are in trouble at home? You create a foreign crisis that you have to deal with.
May: Little to smile about now.
If you are someone as venal as former American President and bottom feeder Bill Clinton you accomplish that end by firing off a few cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and at some mud huts in Afghanistan. If you are May, you up the ante considerably, coming up with a powerful enemy who is threatening you, enabling you to appear both resolute and strong in confronting a formidable foe. That is precisely what we have been seeing over the past month relating to the alleged poisoning of former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
There is quite a bit that is odd about the Skripal case. Even the increasingly neoconnish Guardian newspaper has conceded that “the British case [against Russia] has so far relied more heavily in public on circumstantial evidence and secret intelligence.” And secret intelligence, so called, has all too often been the last refuge of a scoundrel whenever a government is selling snake oil to the public. In this case, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rushed to judgement on Russia less than forty-eight hours after the Skripals were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, England, too soon for any chemical analysis of the alleged poisoning to have taken place.
Blaming the Kremlin, Again
May addressed Parliament shortly thereafter to blame the Kremlin and demand a Russian official response to the event in 36 hours, even though she had to prevaricate significantly, saying that the apparent poisoning was “very likely” caused by a made-in-Russia nerve agent referred to by its generic name Novichok. She nevertheless rallied the backbenchers in Parliament, who responded with a lot of hearty “Hear! Hear!” endorsements.
When Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn attempted to slow the express train down by suggesting that it might be wise to wait and see what the police investigation uncovered, he was hooted down. The British media was soon on board with a vengeance, spreading the government line that such a highly sensitive operation would require the approval of President Vladimir Putin himself. The expulsion of Russian diplomats soon followed.
One of the strangest aspects of the Skripal case is that daughter Yulia was released from hospital on Tuesday. She has been held incommunicado and is being “protected” in a secret location by the British government. It is
Corbyn: Trying to apply the brakes to a runaway train.
impossible to know if she wants to return to her life in Russia and is being held against her will, not so much to protect her as to silence her.
Sergei is no longer in critical condition. A cousin Viktoria Skripal has offered to fly in from Moscow to provide support for her family, but was denied a British visa. Russian television aired a recording of a phone call between the two cousins in which Yulia said that she was disoriented but improving and that neither she nor her father had suffered permanent damage from the poisoning. The call ended abruptly and Viktoria Skripal believes that it was scripted by the British government on a controlled phone line.
Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing have been rejected by the British government in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within 100 yards. As the latest British account of the location of the alleged poison places it on the door handle of the Skripals’ residence, the timetable element is also unconvincing. That means that the two would have spent three hours, including a stop at a pub and lunch, before succumbing on a park bench. Military grade nerve agents kill instantly and this one is said to be 8 times more powerful than VX.
A request to have the testing done by the politically neutral Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is in progress, but there is little enthusiasm from the British side, which does not want a Russian observer to participate in the process. The May government has already established its own narrative and certainly would have plenty to lose if the whole affair turns out to be fabricated. And fabricated it might have been as the nerve agent, if it actually exists, could have been manufactured almost anywhere.
The head of Britain’s own chemical weapons facility Porton Down has contradicted claims made by May, Johnson, and British Ambassador in Moscow Laurie Bristow. The lab’s chief executive, Gary Aitkenhead, has testified that he does not know if the nerve agent was actually produced in Russia, a not surprising observation as the chemical formula was revealed to the public in a scientific paper in 1992 and there are an estimated twenty countries capable of producing it. There are also possible stocks of Novichok remaining in independent countries that once were part of the Soviet Union, to include Russia’s enemy du jour Ukraine, while a false flag operation by the British themselves, the CIA or Mossad, is not unthinkable.
Orwellian Govspeak
The resort to official Orwellian govspeak by the British is remarkable throughout the process, but is particularly painful reading regarding the treatment of the Skripals’ pets, two guinea pigs and a cat. A spokesman for the Department of the Environment reported that “The property in Wiltshire was sealed as part of the police investigation. When a vet was able to access the property, two guinea pigs had sadly died. A cat was also found in a distressed state and a decision was taken by a veterinary surgeon to euthanize the animal to alleviate its suffering. This decision was taken in the best interests of the animal and its welfare.”
So the presence of squadrons of technicians and cops in the residence did not permit anyone to take a minute to feed the cat and guinea pigs. And the cat was killed as a purely humanitarian gesture – it’s “best interest” was apparently to die. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Finally, the best argument against the British government’s evasions about what took place in Salisbury on March 4 remains the question of motive.
The British would have one believe that Putin personally ordered the killing of a former British double agent who had been released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap and who was no longer capable of doing any damage to Russia. He did that in spite of the fact that he had an election coming up and would be the host of the World Cup in the summer, an event that he would want to go smoothly. So he deliberately shot himself in the foot on both counts, allegedly because he wanted to send a message to traitors and also because he just can’t help himself since he is a vindictive KGB type whose impulses are pure evil. Does that make sense to the reader? It doesn’t to me.
An earlier version of this article was published on the Unz Review.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
https://www.salon.com/2018/04/16/the-donald-trump-2020-fundraising-cycle-some-money-goes-to-himself-and-his-lawyers/
Did the BBC commit a war crime? The 20 min presentation, which will change your world view forever …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvjTeuSKTW0
I think it would be statistically impossible for anyone other than Putin to be responsible for all of the attacks that have been directed toward his enemies. Too many people who Putin thought might be detrimental to himself have been assaulted, including murdered, and all fingers point right back to him. He’s a damn thug, and twice as smart as Trump.
Just adding that blair tony came out rallying in cheerleader support for u.k. to follow trump in attack just as was puppy dog to george w bush in invading iraq and blair tony now has 100 million estimate including an advisor presently or past to j. p. morgan at 1 million year salary—both blair tony and clinton reaganized their parties and the payout to their banking accounts are huge–giving appearance oft true turn coats and anti-christ pigs
In response to your last question – It makes perfect sense. Putin’s popularity is as a strongman. His base eats up s#!t luke that. Get a clue.
IF I ACCEPTED ANYTHING YOU ARE IMPLYING..I WOULD BURN MY BRITISH PASSPORT…GIRALDI?-CHANGE YOUR NAME TO INNUENDO—IT POETICALLY MATCHES -MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO-CIA AGENTS ARE ALSO FAMOUS FOR MENDACITY…..
The first thing that came to mind when the Skripal story appeared was that, as it was reported, it didn’t sound at all like a nerve agent. Everything further I’ve been able to learn since about such agents only reinforces that. You’re not going to fall gently into a coma three hours after exposure and remain in that state for a month. That’s not the way it works, there is no such plausible scenario.
And yet, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons declared that it was indeed Novichok. They aren’t going to lie — God, at least I hope not.
But unless OPCW was the first at the scene and unless OPCW were the ones who first scraped the doorknob, then whatever they got to test they were given by the British government. And if the British government gave them Novichok then either a) the story of the events is a total lie, which is probably not the case because there were apparently some witnesses to the Skripals sprawled out on the bench, or b) the British government had some Novichok on hand, and one would suspect that it was homebrew, perhaps concocted right at Porton Downs.
But the thing is, this is one case where there was so thoroughly an attempt to manipulate the public, and so much confusion, that the only way one could form an opinion as to what may have actually happened is to go by one’s knowledge of the world and one’s logic and good sense, and all of that points to the official account as being something completely permeated by falsehood.
The substance used on Sergei Skripal was an agent called BZ, according to Swiss state Spiez lab, the Russian foreign minister said
If I were in front of president Trump, I would remind him that article 1, section 8, clause 11, that it is the legislative branch vested by the framers with the power to declare war. Indeed, “The framers of the Constitution—reluctant to concentrate too much influence in the hands of too few—denied the office of the President the authority to go to war unilaterally. If America was going to survive as a republic, they reasoned, declarations of war required careful debate in open forums among the public’s representatives.” Clearer to assert is impossible. Whether Trump would heed this article of the constitution is unknowable.
The politicians are compromised by zionist dough,that is the problem.
I’m surprised at the almost incoherent nature of these kabuki shows. They need people with actual technical knowledge to formulate and conduct them.
WWIII is coming. Are you ready?
As I heard NPR dutifully repeating lie after lie about this affair in March, I wondered why the “journalists” were so incurious. Just a little bit of Internet sleuthing would have turned up the testimony of the Porton Down scientists about the uncertainty regarding what the heck this was. Or they might have stumbled across the 1999 NYTimes article that said the US paid 6 million dollars to destroy the Novichok site in Uzbekistan and you can be sure the good ol’ USA got something when the scientist who made the stuff settled in New Jersey. Then there was the New Scientist article about the many locations around the world where this could have been made. But there seem to never be any repercussions for any “journalists” for willful ignorance.
Hi Ann, just to embellish on your comment on the “scientist who made the stuff” I’ll just add what seems a little known fact. He did not make ‘the stuff. He was head of the chromatographic group, and was involved in environmental controls. He did not make it. The chemists who made these concoctions were Vladimir Uglev (retired) and Piotr Kirpichev and the substances were so unstable they could not be used for military purposes at the time. A fellow by the name of Professor Leonid Rink tried to make them stable enough for transport but he failed. This dates back to the mid ‘70s. Both Rink and Uglev have said if they had blood samples from this incident in the UK they could tell where the specific dose was made and by whom, since there are differences at the molecular level. They were not given the chance of course, and for the man at Pordon Down to say one can’t tell where it is manufactured is false.
Both these men have been interviewed by Deutsche Welle and RT. A new article in New Scientists also confirms this fact. Vil Mirzanyanov is an opportunist, and not the inventor, but he had a book of course.
The word ‘Novichok’ was added later by the West to make it sound Russian, instead of the Soviet alphanumeric codes given to these substances (2:234, for example)
What is a good read in your follow up research is why the Clinton State Dept put the hush on this material more than two years ago and people were forbidden to talk about it. Do you find this interesting tha tit traces back to Clinton? This is just food for thought.
‘Novichok’ sounds like something thee’d serve at Korova Milk Bar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caOaQXdbFdg
Thank you for the enlightenment.
The British government (sic) are routinely breaking Common law, British law, International law and Treaties and are holding the Skripals against their will ie taken them hostage – there is no evidence of a ‘poisoning plot’ , there is no evidence that the Skripal’s are dead or alive – what is going on here and why isn’t the United Nations holding Britain to account? If war breaks out as the Americans and British want I hope the Russians blow the uk out of the water first because the propaganda poisoning by the british government and media is killing us all anyway
Does anyone have a link showing that ” the Skripals were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, England, ” ?
Your analysis looks good to me.
Something awful’s befallen the Skripals. The headlines confused all the sheeples.
Mother May wears a frown and BoJo the Clown- Effluviates frustrated wheeples!
Something seems plainly amiss. There are facts that they’d rather dismiss.
It was nerve gas we read, but they didn’t stay dead! Now Corbyn will shame them with this!
The Russians demanded a sample. Just a minuscule drop in an ampul.
With an OPCW offer in front of you, Why not set a quite British example?
The story has changed several times. But they all illustrate Russian crimes.
The doorknob was painted, the park bench was tainted, The dessert that they ate carried slimes!
There is talk now of nuclear war, Pompeo and Bolton aren’t sure.
It’s Allen and Foster they wish to imposter, So containment is what they’ll insure!
Amber Rudd seems a might apoplectic. Karen Pierce has confirmed she’s dyslectic.
The gasbag contends Karl Marx it offends, When Putin sprays gas neuroleptic!
Netanyahoo is piling on. He’s expecting some action from Don.
Cruise missile potshots from those DoD hotshots- Would camouflage “mowing the lawn”!
Meanwhile Mueller has raided Don’s lawyer. That’s a fine way to treat his employer!
Maxine says let’s ‘peach’ him, Stormy Daniels will teach him, Mad Dog Mattis will send a destroyer!
But there’s money that’s laundered by Chabad. Dirty tricks have been fostered in Riyadh.
Campaign contributions insure absolutions, “The Lobby” won’t let down their comrade!
So don’t fret about disintegration. Atom bombs won’t produce conflagration.
A token response from a Tomahawk ponce- Will provide a face-saving gyration!
Just listen to Alex Mercouris. He’s prolix, but never to bore us.
They may be all kooks, but they won’t shoot the nukes, They are cowards at heart just like us.
Now what really deserves execration, Isn’t Stormy or Russian flirtation.
They killed that damn cat, and there’s evil in that, It’s a crime that should merit castration!
Bravo!
The guinea pigs went down, not the talk about town?, but certainly deserving some mention!
My, F.G.S. – U R on quite a roll!!! & G.H – nice tag-line.
A well done bit of poignant poesy, for which thanks.
Fantastic F.G.!! Good to hear from you as always.
Brilliant ?
Cancel question mark :)
Smelly cat’s back with its bell, “Open source information can tell.
“Once again, we assess with our very best guess: Go ahead! Bomb Damascus to hell!”
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018/04/11/open-source-survey-alleged-chemical-attacks-douma-7th-april-2018/
No friend to those with noses, fake “citizen investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins is back Tweeting up a storm.
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/984816499889197056
The latest Tweet from Higgins features a link to his 13 February 2018 article in Newsweek, “What Is the Truth About the Chemical Attacks on Syrian Civilians?”
Higgins condemns “denialists” and “fringe sites” that exercise any shred of basic journalistic skepticism (conspicuously absent from Bellingcat and Higgins’ “First Draft” coalition propaganda “partners” in the mainstream media).
Higgins loudly moans that anyone not immediately buying the claims of the Al Qaeda-allied White Helmets in Syria (whose videos and claims Higgins and Bellingcat launder for mainstream media dissemination and public consumption) is:
“promoting the idea that facts are no longer sacred; truth is a matter of opinion; official bodies set up to investigate these incidents are compromised; victims are performers; and rescuers are belligerents.
“This is dangerous, Orwellian inversion of reality.”
Eliot Higgins and fake “chemical weapons expert” Dan Kaszeta keep on singing their signature song for adoring “Friends”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee3ezPgbm2c
Bellingcat, Bellingcat
Lies you keep feeding us
Bellingcat, Bellingcat:
It’s not their fault.
Regime changers’ latest bet
You’re obviously their favorite pet
You claim you’re a bed of roses
You’re not friend to those with noses
Bellingcat, Bellingcat
Lies you keep feeding us
Bellingcat, Bellingcat
Truth you assault
Great poem and great to see you back, F.G. Sanford!!! It has been too long!!!
OPCW deployed a fact finding mission in Syrian, their report will be available and discussed in the UN Security Council (UNSC) closed door meeting tomorrow. The UNSC will decide, if the report is accepted, if further investigation necessary and the report can be published. Any of the five permanent members can use their veto for preventing the report to be accepted and/or released to the public.
The US seems to know the content of the OPCW report in advance, based on their preparation for the military strike on Syria. The UNSC meeting may just be a formality and the military strike could commence as early as this Friday…
Why do people lie? To hide the truth. Why do they do that? Because the truth convicts them of crimes they wish to hide. Liars are essentially criminals. To deny or alter the truth is the most basic crime. Those who fearlessly live in the light of truth are not criminals, they have nothing to hide.
deep thoughts …
The United States has become sickeningly predictable. If it wants to deal with an inconvenient critic, it trumps up sex charges like they did with Scott Ritter and Julian Assange. If we want to, as the ever lovable Nikki Haley puts it, slap Russia down, we create a false flag with chemical weapons which are virtually untracable and blame Russia with usually little or no evidence to back up our claims. Liventko, Skripal, and several gas attacks in Syria. When one asks the ancient question, cui bono? The answer is always the Americans and never the Russians. This is great for the Americans as the US always gets the benefit and Russia always gets the blame. One wonders if the Americans think they can get away with that forever.
“Forever” is a long time and it’s hard to say. While past performance is no guarantee, the US have been getting away with false flags since, well, North Korea or even earlier?
mossad is behind it all.
The cretin paradox:
Boris Johnson says, “Everything I say about Russia is a lie.”
The resolution? Just throw him out of government. I mean actually throw him … at a tortoise, and then we can worry about another classic paradox.
Liars like Boris believe their bullshit is the truth. So he is being true to his bullshit, which is a lie. Try that one on Achilles and the Cretan! And BTW the tortoise always wins, because it’s turtles all the way down!
Sorry, you lost me at “So Donald Trump turns out to be a pretty good liar”
Do you really get lost that easily?
I think that was meant to be sarcasm,Mike K. Although it’s closer to straight up fact: Trumpkin is a terrible liar in that it’s always easy to detect his lies.
“That is precisely what we have been seeing over the past month relating to the alleged poisoning of former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia”
Alleged poisoning? Get yourself together with the facts. May or may not have been poisoned by Russian state actors, but there’s little doubt they were poisoned.
Being published in the UNZ REVIEW does nothing for your credibility. And being so brave to label Trump as “a pretty good liar”? Laughable. Just because you’re an ex CIA agent does not mean you have any meaningful grasp on political reality beyond any other yahoo. Sure, you’re right…there are many politicians and behind the scenes actors who will massage truths into outright lies. Unfortunately, that skill set can often be applied to “pundits”.
What FACTS? The world was presented with NO FACTS, only empty unfounded allegations. We were never even shown images of the supposed patients in hospital–and apparently we will never get to see them or interview them if they are whisked away into a putative American “witness protection program” as promised by those now implementing the cover-up. How do you know that either of these people suffered any real malady whatsoever? You don’t. You simply peddle the thoroughly implausible narrative fed to you by Downing Street and Washington. Clearly you were born yesterday and assume that everyone else is as naive as yourself. You embarrass your parents.
Facts? What facts?
And what about your credibility?
I think you found a troll – yourself.
Still trying to stick it to the truth tellers, Shiv? Your troll knife wouldn’t cut butter.
Certainly the “poisoning” is alleged. NO evidence has been forthcoming that a poisoning actually took place. There are too many unanswered questions for any intelligent person to believe that this British Government tale is anything other than fable intended to put more on Russia.pressure. You apparently think otherwise. My advice – go with the evidence or lack thereof.
For me the indicator that the british have finally become unmitigated monsters is that they closed the house and let Sergei’s pets die. Such a thing would never have happened in the animal-loving Britain that I respected many years ago. But it is all too believeable in a Post-Blair UK whose moral compass is non-existent.
Mort aux vaches!!
sorry “pressure on Russia” not “on Russia.pressure” – for those of you unable to figure this error out yourselves.
Hasbara propaganda troll and adoring Bellingcat fanboy li’l “Shiv” crawls back out of the hole.
John Bolton gets a desk job and suddenly it’s all trolls on deck.
The Hasbara troll army is really scraping the bottom of the barrel with this clown. CN readers are quite familiar with li’l “Shiv”s standard got-nuthin’-but-insults troll shtick. A recent example in the CN comments at
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/11/russia-gates-litany-of-corrections/
In a September 2017 article titled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars”, Philip Giraldi noted the loud clamor for war with Iran arising from Jewish American exponents of the pro-Israel Lobby:
“To be sure, the urging to strike Iran comes from many quarters, to include generals in the Administration who always think first in terms of settling problems through force, from a Saudi government obsessed with fear over Iranian hegemony, and, of course, from Israel itself. But what makes the war engine run is provided by American Jews who have taken upon themselves the onerous task of starting a war with a country that does not conceivably threaten the United States. They have been very successful at faking the Iranian threat, so much so that nearly all Republican and most Democratic congressmen as well as much of the media seem to be convinced that Iran needs to be dealt with firmly, most definitely by using the U.S. military, and the sooner the better.”
Giraldi acknowledges the Americans who “rose into prominence when they obtained a number of national security positions during the Reagan Administration and their ascendancy was completed when they staffed senior positions in the Pentagon and White House under George W. Bush” who were “all Jewish and all conduits for the false information that led to a war that has spread and effectively destroyed much of the Middle East. Except for Israel, of course.”
Pro-Israel Lobby war hawks, “regime change” think tanks and policy institutes all clamoring for military action against Iran:
The Atlantic – David Frum
Weekly Standard – Bill Kristol
New York Times – Bret Stephens
Brookings Institution – Robert Kagan, Martin S. Indyk, Kenneth M. Pollack
Council on Foreign Relations – Max Boot, Elliot Abrams
Foundation for Defense of Democracies – Mark Dubowitz, Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht
Middle East Forum – Daniel Pipes
Commentary magazine – John Podhoretz
Middle East Media Research Institute – Meyrav Wurmser
Institute for the Study of War – Kimberly Kagan
American Enterprise Institute – Frederick Kagan, Danielle Pletka and David Wurmser
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)
Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA)
Hudson Institute
You are a pathetic troll. Get lost.
Obviously all of these purported chemical poisonings and gas attacks are so far fetched and completely unsupported by any concrete evidence (note to American media: unsubstantiated allegations are NOT evidence, go back to journalism school, you cretins) that the powers within the deep state and its European stooges promulgating these false narratives clearly don’t care one bit that their baseless accusations and plans for world war are built on a fabric of pure, quite conspicuous lies. They will have their war regardless of what the world may think because no one can stop them, or is even willing to try.
It is so curious that everyday Americans can rage about a million perceived offenses by everyone under the sun, including their own government and their own fellow citizens (the American media feeds off this animus), but they fatalistically won’t raise a finger to stop, delay or even protest the Armageddon planned for them by a growing list of presidents and their handlers who have reneged on every campaign promise ever made. That goes for the most recent “peace candidate” Donald Trump who is now taunting the Russians with his tweeted remarks on “smart” bombs and missiles. Remind anyone of Dumbya calling for the Iraqi’s to “bring it on?”
Since social media, people do no longer organize themselves in groups to protest against injustice. Giving a ‘like’ individually is the new way to buy off responsibility.
An uncomfortable truth Pecto…this extends to posting learned paragraphs in the Consortium News comments section.
I can remember when the instructions went the other direction.
“Wag the dog….”
You refer to President Eisenhower’s instructions to the Israelis, Brits, and French to cut it out in, I think it was, 1957 when Egypt took over the Suez Canal and the three opponents thought they could reverse that decision. But Israel is and was full of smart people and they were in it for the long haul. The whole sordid story of how Israel took control of US foreign policy in the ME is found in John Mearsheimer’s and Stephen Walt’s book of roughly ten years ago. Perhaps some historian has written or will write about how US foreign policy toward the USSR was devised according to Churchill’s instructions to Harry Truman at Potsdam in 1945 and after
No US president in recent times has paid any attention to Washington’s Farewell Address in which he warned against foreign entanglements. Truman/Trump and inbetween there was Carter/Brzezinski and Clinton/Albright (born in Czechoslovakia with a Czech name and naturally hostile to Russia, like the Pole Bzezinski). Our ignorant presidents don’t know how to play the game and need to be tutored.
Here is an interesting look at what Donald Trump had to say about a war in Syria before he was elected President and became the Commander in Chief:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2018/04/citizen-trump-on-syria-following-tweets.html
While they can’t be classified as lies, it is apparent that his stance on issues when he was Citizen Trump are far different than his stance as boss of the Armed Forces.
Sally, as much as it pains me to defend Trump, and it does. We must not forget that all presidents, since Nov. 1963 are blackmailed into doing what the Deep State wants. This is not the first issue he has done a 180 on, has he done these things because of enlightenment, I doubt it.
Lo and behold! Prosecutors raid President Trump’s lawyer’s office and he is back on board with the TPP, mirabile dictu.
Just goes to show you cannot vote against Goldman Sachs! Now “investors” can sue governments for the profits they could have made, except for those pesky health and safety regulations.
Speaking of liars lying about nearly everything:
Disinformation produced by fake “citizen investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins and fake “chemical weapons expert” Dan Kaszeta of the Atlantic Council’s UK-based Bellingcat blog made its way into the 11 April 2017 Trump White House’s “assessment” of the Khan Shakhun incident.
Kaszeta is an enthusiastic backer of any and all evidence-free “Israeli intelligence” claims about Syria.
A 19 April 2017 Israeli “assessment” presented by anonymous military officials included evidence free claims that Syrian military commanders has ordered the Khan Shaukun attack with President Assad’s knowledge and “estimates” that Syria still has “between one and three tons” of chemical weapons.
The Associated Press report on the Israeli military briefing included an interview with Kaszeta, who said the Israeli estimate appeared to be “conservative”. Kaszeta claimed that “One ton of sarin could easily be used to perpetrate an attack on the scale of the 2013 attack. It could also be used for roughly 10 attacks of a similar size to the recent Khan Sheikhoun attack”.
Back in 2013, Kaszeta peddled similar evidence-free claims by Israeli defense officials.
Now peddling policy recommendations, fake “expert” Kaszeta predictably urges direct U.S. military attacks. and attempts to make a case for “depriving the Assad regime of its air force in its entirety”
http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2018/04/10/how-to-dismantle-assad-s-chemical-weapons
The “presence of Russian aircraft complicates this issue immensely”, mentions Kaszeta in an aside.