Iran's secret giveaway?

More bad news about the Iran nuclear deal landed Monday — a dangerous secret President Obama has been keeping from the American people.
The Associated Press reports that the unpublished side deal is even more disastrous than the rest of the accord. It relaxes key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in just over a decade, rather than the 15 years Team Obama has been touting.

As of January 2027, Iran can start replacing its mainstay centrifuges with thousands of advanced machines up to five times as efficient as what it now has.

Bottom line: The time Iran needs to produce a nuclear bomb would be cut in half, or worse. If Obama’s correct that the current rules leave Tehran a year from sprinting to the bomb, it’ll become at most six months.

And because the secret deal doesn’t spell out what happens after year 13, it could mean an end to all restrictions on centrifuges.

The head of the Institute for Science and International Security, a go-to agency on Iran’s nuclear program, says the side deal “will create a great deal of instability and possibly even lead to war.”

Yet just last week, the president boasted that his deal — which provides the mullahs with tens of billions in sanctions relief for use on terrorism — is “avoiding further conflict and making us safer.” Really?

All this proves that Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netanyahu, whom Obama openly mocked as a scare-monger for warning that Iran’s “breakout time” was six months or less, was anything but.

Since agreeing to the deal, Iran has kept on testing ballistic missiles that can deliver nuclear warheads. It’s also been caught in clandestine efforts to illicitly acquire high-level nuclear technology and equipment.

It’s becoming alarmingly clear that Team Obama played the American people — and the congressional Democrats who supported the deal— for fools.

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Why Obama’s support for the E.U. is driving some Brits mad

By Adam Taylor, Washington Post, April 21, 2016 with comments by Dennis Edwards

President Obama arrives Thursday in London, where he may find himself at the center of a very British controversy. The U.S. president has become an unlikely player in Britain’s passionate “Brexit” debate–with his views even earning him the title “most anti-British American president there has ever been,” coined by a well-known politician.

For the uninitiated, “Brexit” is the catchy portmanteau used to refer to Britain’s potential exit from the European Union. After years of growing public dissent over the country’s E.U. membership, Britain is set to have a referendum this summer on whether to remain part of the E.U. If a majority of Brits vote to “leave” the E.U., Britain will exit the bloc.

Exactly what happens after that isn’t clear, but Obama evidently doesn’t want to see it happen.

Last year, he told the BBC that he supports Prime Minister David Cameron’s campaign for Britain to remain in the E.U., adding that the membership gave Washington greater confidence in the transatlantic alliance and helped make the world “safer and more prosperous.” During this week’s visit, Obama is widely expected to repeat his calls to vote against a Brexit.

Obama has faced a serious backlash from Brits who are part of the “leave” campaign. But why are they so mad? There seem to be three common arguments against Obama’s Brexit intervention:

1. Foreign leaders shouldn’t comment on another country’s domestic affairs.

In a letter signed by 100 members of Parliament, former Conservative cabinet minister Liam Fox argued that Obama should not interfere in the Brexit debate as it has “long been the established practice not to interfere in the domestic political affairs of our allies and we hope that this will continue.”

2. The United States would never agree to be a part of the E.U., they argue, so why should Britain?

The chief proponent of this argument is Boris Johnson, the mayor of London and a leading figure in Cameron’s Conservative Party. In March, Johnson accused the United States of “exorbitant hypocrisy,” saying it was in no position to preach because it defended its own sovereignty with “hysterical vigilance.” He doubled down on this statement recently, saying it was “bizarre” to be lectured by the Americans when they “won’t even sign up to the international convention on the law of the seas, let alone the International Criminal Court.”

Other prominent figures within the Conservative Party have supported this view: Former cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith recently said that voting to leave the E.U. would make Britain “look a little more like the U.S.” Duncan Smith also suggested that if Washington liked the E.U. so much, perhaps it should join the bloc.

3. Obama hates the British.

It was Nigel Farage, the eccentric leader of the anti-E.U. U.K. Independence Party, who said that Obama is the “most anti-British American president there has ever been.” This is almost certainly untrue, but it taps into a wider belief that maybe Obama just doesn’t really like Britain that much.

This belief dates to at least 2009, when the British media criticized the new president for apparently sending a bust of Winston Churchill back to Britain (as The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column recently explained, the reality of this situation was a lot more complicated). Adding fuel to the fire, Obama recently appeared to criticize Cameron, reigniting debate over the U.S. president’s apparently cold view of Britain and what that says about the future of the “special relationship” between the two countries.

The logic here seems to go that Obama’s hatred for Britain makes him want to keep the country in the E.U., where it will suffer forever more. Or, perhaps more mundanely, Obama could just be acting out of self-interest and be indifferent to what happens to Brits.

It’s pretty easy to chip some holes in these arguments, however.

For one thing, a Brexit vote isn’t just a domestic affair. It really does affect Americans, too. London has long served as a voice for Washington in Europe, sharing not only a language but also perhaps an ethos bred by the close ties between the countries. If a Brexit actually happens, the United States will lose its top E.U. ally–and perhaps have to find another one. Where this would leave London is unclear: The United States is not keen to pursue new bilateral free-trade agreements, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said recently, and instead favors multilateral free-trade platforms.

More broadly, the United States is concerned about the potential effects a Brexit could have on the world economy–the International Monetary Fund has warned that there would be “severe regional and global damage” if Britain leaves the E.U.

Second, it’s certainly true that the United States has shied away from a lot of international legislation. “All countries try to guard their sovereignty and maintain their freedom of action, but the United States is the world’s only superpower, so it has more go-it-alone power than any other country,” Michael Beckley, an assistant professor of political science at Tufts University, said in an email.

Finally, Obama’s supposed hatred of the Brits is a little hard to see in action. He doesn’t seem to have made any substantive changes to the special relationship in the seven years he has been in office, other than some not-so-thinly veiled criticism about Britain not pulling its weight on the world stage. Perhaps more important, polls have shown that he is widely respected and liked by Brits–in particular, the younger generations expected to turn out in droves for the Brexit vote.

Ultimately, that might be the real reason that Obama’s thoughts on Brexit are proving so controversial in Britain: They may well carry more weight than the opinions of Britain’s own leaders.

Editor: I have just finished reading Vernon Coleman's The Truth They Won't Tell You (And Don't Want You To Know) About The EU. 

If he is right, every country in Europe should do their best to get out of the EU. He sees it as a Federal state forcing its opinion and will on its members, raping them of their sovereignty and cultural heritage, and taxing them to the hilt to support a bestial bureaucracy in Brussels. Reading his book, you feel you are witnessing the creation of the New World Order's governmental base. That government is reminiscent  of the Antichrist government found in Bible prophecy. 

Some Bible scholars believe Europe will be the base of the Antichrist's final government. Europeans seem to be passively agreeing to its mandates even though their economies end up brutalized and destroyed by the global corporations who gain free access to local economies through their friendship with the EU commissioners. Laws are made to hinder the small local businesses and support the large international corporate ones. 

It continues to be a sad day for the poor man, the independent and free. If Coleman is right, Europe is headed for a new slavery similar to what has been formed in America, without the help of the American dollar to hold up the economy superficially. After reading the book, the only sensible vote would seem to be to get out now, while you still have the chance.

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Putin vs. Obama and the other main storylines at the U.N. General Assembly

By Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post, September 28, 2015

Autumn in Manhattan: The leaves are turning, there’s a chill in the breeze, the traffic is once again snarled on the east side, and convoys of black SUVs flank the entrances of the city’s toniest hotels. Yes, the United Nations’ General Assembly is in session. Here are the key narratives to track.

Putin’s power play. President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin were set to meet on the sidelines of the General Assembly on Monday. Well before the two addressed the chamber filled with world leaders and dignitaries, the contours of their disagreements were clear.

In his Monday morning speech, Obama denounced Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, a Black Sea territory that most governments recognize as part of Ukraine. He also signaled his concern with Russia’s recent military escalation in Syria in defense of the embattled regime of President Bashar al-Assad and warned that there “cannot be … a return to the pre-war status quo”–that is, as the United States has insisted in the past, Assad must go.

Putin didn’t equivocate on the matter, either. Russia is a staunch and longtime ally of the Syrian government. In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” he said that the aid provided by the United States and a number of other countries to rebel factions fighting the Assad regime “contravenes the principles of international law and the U.N. Charter.”

Putin, whose government is widely seen as the main actor behind a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, said Russia backs “only legal government entities.”

Obama’s speech was framed around sober, liberal themes: the need for multilateralism when addressing global challenges, the limits of military power, the importance of strengthening inclusive, democratic institutions in every country and the perfidy of domineering strongmen. These were all, in some sense, direct or indirect jabs at Putin’s authoritarian politics.

Putin responded in kind later in the day. He gestured at the U.S. track record of intervention in the Middle East, and the anarchy unleashed following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. He framed the 2011 upheavals of the Arab Spring–which were celebrated as a democratic awakening by the White House–as a threat to Middle Eastern stability. He asked “those responsible” (presumably the U.S.): “Do you know what you’ve done?”

Putin also said Russia was eager to take more of a lead role in coordinating a response to the terrorist threat in Iraq and Syria, a cause in which it has backing from Iran.

Iran’s moment. This is the first General Assembly session following the July announcement of a proposed nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, including all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. Obama hailed the agreement at the U.N. as a victory for the prevailing international order that makes “our world safer.”

The deal faced a heated backlash in Washington, with many congressional Republicans and neo-conservatives decrying what they considered appeasement to a regime long at odds with the United States. They failed to rally enough support against the deal in the U.S. Senate and its passage now appears to be a fait accompli.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has pinned his political fate on the deal, which will eventually see the loosening of sanctions on the Iranian economy in return for Tehran complying with measures aimed at curbing its ability to produce a nuclear weapon.

In an interview with CNN, Rouhani mocked the opponents of diplomacy. “Some of them wouldn’t even know where Tehran was in relation to Iran,” he said. “Some of them didn’t know where Iran was geographically, not distinguishing that one is the capital of the other.”

On Monday, Rouhani said the deal was a “victory over war,” championed Iran’s future economic prospects and launched his own barb at Israel, singling out the “Zionist regime” as the Middle East’s only nuclear power while calling for regional non-proliferation.

Who sounds most like the pope? Pope Francis left the United States before a blood moon rose in the night sky, but his whirlwind visit still casts a shadow on the meetings at the U.N. The pontiff spoke passionately about a number of key international crises: the threat of climate change; the perils of growing global economic inequity; the imperative to welcome immigrants and refugees.

Expect quite a few of these themes to be echoed in the speeches of the General Assembly, particularly regarding the refugee crisis facing Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, perhaps the most outspoken world leader on the need to provide for Syrian refugees, is scheduled to speak Thursday.

The question of Palestine. On Wednesday, the flag of Palestine will be raised among the other 193 member states of the United Nations. Hundreds of world leaders have been invited by the Palestinians to attend the ceremony; the United States, Israel and a handful of other nations will be sure to boycott the event.

Palestine, like the Holy See, has non-member observer status at the U.N., but a recent General Assembly resolution permitted its flag to be flown outside the organization. The raising of the flag will mark a “glorious day,” according to the Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour.

Like much of the enfeebled Palestinian efforts to force the matter of Palestinian statehood on the international stage, it is a purely symbolic gesture. On the ground, a separate, viable Palestinian state is nowhere in sight. And its potential existence is rejected by senior members of the current right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Among many governments in the West, there is deepening frustration with the current status quo, and a host of European countries took steps to recognize Palestine as an independent state in recent years. But there is also a creeping apathy. Obama, in his remarks Monday, made no mention whatsoever of Israel and the Palestinians–a conspicuous absence for any U.S. president addressing the U.N.

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The men behind Barack Obama part 1

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Obama Can't Win

By Rosa Brooks, Foreign Policy, September 4, 2013

My late grandfather, a dedicated communist until Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest in 1956, was fond of quoting Marxist aphorisms (an enthusiasm that long outlasted his admiration for the Communist Party). Among his favorites was the much-cited opening passage of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, published in 1852:

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

It’s a great line, with the double virtue of being eminently quotable and giving Hegel—that’s Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, not to be confused with Chuck—a nice little backhand smack on the nose. But it’s also much too pat. Sure, history repeats itself, and sure, sometimes things get farcical. Mostly, though, the second go-round brings only more tragedy.

So it is with President Barack Obama and Syria.

Because you’ve heard this one before, right? An American president tells the world that brief, decisive military action is necessary to keep a murderous Middle Eastern despot from using weapons of mass destruction. The world is skeptical (as is the U.S. public). Declassified U.S. intelligence reports are bandied about. Foreign leaders remain unconvinced, urging patience and diplomacy as U.N. inspectors prepare a report of their own. The American president insists he’ll use force unilaterally if necessary, and dares Congress to disagree. Congress caves.

The first time—that would be Iraq, for those of you who are new around here—things ended badly. You’ll recall that the intelligence turned out to have been cooked (if not cooked through, it was at least half-baked). The U.N. secretary-general declared the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq illegal. And despite early Bush administration promises that the use of U.S. military force would be limited in scope and duration, the United States soon found itself embroiled in a multi-sided conflict that lasted eight years, cost more than a trillion dollars and killed nearly 4,500 American service members (not to mention untold thousands of Iraqis).

You may also recall a young senator named Barack Obama, whose principled opposition to the Iraq War brought him national fame. In October 2002, Obama had this to say about the Bush administration’s case for war in Iraq:

I don’t oppose all wars … What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war … I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity … But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors … I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda.

It was a good speech. The kind of speech—full of passion and honesty and good sense—that eventually propelled Obama into the White House.

Ten years later, of course, it’s President Obama who finds himself trying to sell a U.S. military intervention to a reluctant world. The ironies are staggering, and sad.

It’s painful to see this president—the man who once spoke so eloquently against “rash wars” driven by “cynicism” and “politics”—going to war to solely because he’s boxed himself into a rhetorical corner.

Oddly, many in the media seem convinced that Obama’s pledge to seek congressional authorization for a Syria intervention was a clever gamble. It wasn’t. It was, to paraphrase Obama, a dumb gamble. That’s because there is now no good outcome for Obama, only a range of painfully ironic outcomes. Consider the possibilities:

One: Congress votes against authorizing military action in Syria, so Obama decides not to move ahead with military action. But wait: Obama already informed the nation that as commander-in-chief, he has “decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets … based on what I am convinced is our national security interests.” If that’s true—and if Obama also believes he has the authority to act without congressional authorization—how can he possibly refrain from military action merely because he can’t get enough votes in a famously dysfunctional, do-nothing Congress?

Two: Congress votes against authorizing military action in Syria, and Obama—the one-time constitutional law professor—goes ahead with airstrikes anyway, ignoring the clearly expressed will of Congress.

Three: Congress votes in favor of authorizing military action in Syria, leaving Obama permanently beholden to congressional Republicans. This means the White House can kiss its domestic legislative agenda goodbye.

These are all rotten outcomes for Obama. And, lest I forget, U.S. military action in Syria is also a tragic outcome. The president proposed limited “punitive” air strikes aimed merely at destroying the Assad regime’s chemical weapons capabilities, but these are probably pointless: They won’t change the balance of power in Syria. If we want to change the balance of power—which Obama says doesn’t interest him—we’ll need more extensive strikes aimed at degrading the Assad regime’s military capabilities more broadly. But this, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey warned last week, could easily “escalate and … commit us decisively to the conflict.” (See: Iraq, 2003.)

Humanitarian intervention can have as many unintended and terrible consequences as any other kind of military intervention.

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The Lies Behind This War

By Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, September 5, 2013

The American people are “war-weary,” we are told, and that’s the only reason they’re overwhelmingly opposed to bombing Syria: this bit of conventional wisdom is invoked by warmongers and peaceniks alike, but is it true? Well, to some degree, no doubt, but not in any tangible sense: after all, there is no conscription, we have a professional army, and most people are not aware of how war impacts their lives. So if they’re “war weary” it must mean they’re tired of hearing about these faraway conflicts in places they probably can’t find on a map. So yes, the public is indeed weary, but not in the sense the pundits mean. What they are weary of are the lies.

The US government lied us into war in Iraq with some of the most egregious fables this side of the Brothers Grimm. There was the Niger “yellowcake” fabrication—an outright forgery cited in the State of the Union address by George W. Bush. This crude concatenation of documents which took a team of UN specialists less than an hour to debunk was supposed to “prove” the existence of Iraq’s ongoing (and fast-developing) nuclear weapons program. Oh well, back to the drawing board!

There was the Iraqi-intelligence-agent-meets-Mohammed-Atta-in-Prague narrative, a tall tale from beginning to end, which was “leaked” to the neoconservative media and trumpeted as proof positive that Saddam and Al Qaeda were in on the 9/11 attacks together. That turned out to be a hoax. Oh, and don’t forget the Al Qaeda “training camp” that was supposed to have been sheltered and succored by Saddam Hussein—which, along with those famous “weapons of mass destruction,” turned out to be nonexistent. I could go on—but I’m not in the mood to catalogue and describe the complete works of Laurie Mylroie. If you are, please be my guest….

In short, we were lied into war once before with slapped-together bogus “intelligence,” and so the public is wary—and so is Congress, and much of the media, albeit not for the same reasons.

Congress is wary because of the polls—no one wants to own this one. As for the media: they, too, are taking it slow, writing articles about how everyone has “learned the lesson of Iraq.” But their version of that “lesson” has little to do with the “intelligence” we’re being given that’s supposed to justify this latest Crusade for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. For the most part, they’ve swallowed the administration’s account of what supposedly happened at Ghouta, and in earlier incidents of alleged poison gas attacks, which is that Assad “is gassing his own people.”

The blind acceptance of this “fact” is one of the stranger elements of the current war hysteria—because if we truly have learned “the lesson of Iraq” then why is everyone repeating the US government’s war propaganda as if it’s beyond dispute?

One fact is indeed beyond dispute—someone used some kind of chemical warfare agent in the village of Ghouta on Aug. 31. The question is: who did it? John Kerry keeps telling us the rebels couldn’t possibly be responsible because they don’t have that “capability.” But a new report issued by the Russian government claims the sarin gas mixture deployed at a previous and very similar incident in the town of Khan al Assal—the incident the UN team was in Syria to investigate when the Ghouta atrocity occurred—was not military grade. It also purports to show that the rocket delivering the substance was makeshift, not at all like those regularly utilized by the Syrian military.

We’re also being told by the Obama administration the rebels have no access to sarin or other chemical weapons, but you don’t need access to classified information to know this isn’t necessarily true: since various rebel factions now control big swathes of Syrian territory, it’s quite possible they’ve “liberated” chemical weapons caches once controlled by the Syrian government. As the Washington Post reported back in December:

"U.S. officials are increasingly worried that Syria’s weapons of mass destruction could fall into the hands of Islamist extremists, rogue generals or other uncontrollable factions.

"Last week, fighters from a group that the Obama administration has branded a terrorist organization were among rebels who seized the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo, where research on chemical weapons had been conducted. Rebels are also closing in on another base near Aleppo, known as Safirah, which has served as a major production center for such munitions, according to US officials and analysts."

According to a Syrian general who defected this summer, Assad’s chemical weapons sites “are not secure. Probably anyone from the Free Syrian Army or any Islamic extremist group could take them over.”

No chemical warfare capability? Not so fast: the Libyan jihadists who overthrew Qaddafi were among the first foreign fighters to land in Syria, and they certainly had access to the former Libyan dictator’s chemical arsenal. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported on “a massive, unguarded weapons depot that is being pillaged daily by anti-Gadhafi military units, hired work crews and any enterprising individual who has the right vehicle and chooses to make the trip.” Included among the goodies: “Artillery rounds designed to carry chemical weapons” which that reporter saw “stashed in the back of” a warehouse.”

During Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearings, Senator Rand Paul asked her about “rumors” that the Benghazi attack on our embassy was somehow involved with an attempt by the Libyan rebels to ship arms looted from Qaddafi’s arsenal to the Syrian jihadists. Hillary tut-tutted that she’d “never heard” any such thing. Really? Given what’s happening in Syria today, the question arises: were chemical weapons transported from Libya to Syria?

Ha’aretz reported in March that the rebels were definitely behind a chemical weapons attack outside Aleppo, with the chemical of choice apparently chlorine:

"The explosion claimed the lives of Syrian Armed Forces soldiers who are apparently loyal to Assad, and the Syrian government was quick to demand an international investigation of the incident. These two facts would indicate that Assad’s forces were not behind the attack….

"It appears that the target of the attack was a checkpoint manned by Syrian Armed Forces, which reinforces the theory that rebel forces, probably jihadists known to be operating around Aleppo, were behind it. A report by Britain’s Channel Four, based on Syrian military sources, claims that the weapon used in the attack may have been a missile carrying a warhead filled with chlorine mixed into a saline solution. The Syrian source also said that a factory that manufactures chlorine is located nearby."

The last time the Syrian “opposition” raised a hue and cry over alleged chemical attacks by the Assad regime, Carla del Ponte said she had evidence from UN inspectors that the real culprits were … the rebels. She wasn’t listened to. Why is that?

Oh, those cuddly “rebels” would never do anything like use chemical weapons banned internationally: why they’re mostly “moderates,” according to Kerry. Only “fifteen to twenty percent” are Al Qaeda type radicals, he avers. As Vladimir Putin put it the other day, “he is lying and he knows that he is lying.” Jihadists are pouring in from all over the world—including from places like New Zealand, and even the US—to take part in the battle to create an Islamic state in Syria. The armed wing of the “opposition,” as Kerry dubs them, is dominated by radical Islamists formally affiliated with Al Qaeda.

Reuters cites a European expert on terrorism in the region as saying:

"Extremist rebel factions were so strong and well-organized in the north and west of Syria that they were setting up their own public services and trying to create an Islamic ministate along the Iraqi border.

"By contrast, the official said, more moderate rebel factions predominate in the east of Syria and along its southern border with Jordan but have largely devolved into ‘gangs’ whose leaders are more interested in operating local rackets and enriching themselves than in forming a larger alliance that could more effectively oppose Assad’s government."

It makes sense the Obama administration would latch on to “moderates” with a modus operandi similar to their own, but it looks like Syria’s Mod Squad is on the way out as al Nusra and other jihadist groups take the lead.

The lies proliferate like flies on a corpse: Kerry has spent the last week or so telling members of Congress and the American people “no boots on the ground,” and yet it turns out this really means “no combat boots on the ground.” “Noncombat” troops (like the thousands we still have in Iraq) are just fine.

"This isn’t Iraq"—we keep hearing it from the President and his underlings, but that’s a barefaced lie, too. The original authorization for the use of military force proffered by Kerry was so blatantly broad that you could drive a whole regime change operation through it. The only difference in the revised "watered-down" version is that the loopholes aren’t quite so obvious to the untrained un-lawyerly eye. You’ll recall that, up until this point, all aid to the rebels was supposed to have been "non-lethal." John McCain succeeded in slipping in a clause that allows Washington to "upgrade" our "lethal and nonlethal" aid to the rebels in order to "change the momentum" on the battlefield.

Another lie in the form of a half-truth: the often stated factoid that “over 100,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war.” This is true as far as it goes, but it raises the question: who is being killed and who are the killers? If you listen to the war-screamers, you get the definite impression that the Assad regime killed them all. The reality is that around 45,000 of the fallen were Syrian army and police: anywhere from 25,000 to 45,000 were jihadists and their “moderate” front men, including foreign fighters. The rest were civilians caught in the crossfire, including a Catholic priest beheaded by the rebels. (Gee, I hope they weren’t from the “moderate” faction!)

Yes, the American people are weary all right—we’re damned comatose with the effects of war propaganda coming at us from all directions, 24/7. We’re sick unto death of being lied to—and wondering why our “free” media feels obliged to regurgitate government press releases as if they were the gospel truth.

This government lies about everything—James “least untruthful” Clapper is the poster boy for the distinct style this gang has brought to the White House. Kerry is fast catching up to him, however, as the whoppers come thick and fast.

These folks are no different from their neocon predecessors—except that the neocons were better liars. The lies they told were bigger, more imaginative, and far more elaborate, although the Obamaites are doing some pretty quick catching up. Perhaps the administration ought to call in veterans of the Bush regime’s old Office of Special Plans for some pointers.

Although, on second thought, maybe the administration is indeed already taking lessons in Advanced Deception from the pros. The alleged “smoking gun” in the US government’s classified account of what happened at Ghouta is an intercepted communication between Unit 8200 of the Syrian army and the Syrian high command, which—we’re told—definitively proved the Syrians’ guilt. The Daily Caller, however, has unearthed the truth: the Obama administration’s report on the interceptions was “doctored,” writes Kenneth Timmerman, according to “former military officers with access to the original intelligence reports.” Timmerman writes:

"The original communication intercepted by Unit 8200 between a major in command of the rocket troops assigned to the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division, and the general staff, shows just the opposite.

"The general staff officer asked the major if he was responsible for the chemical weapons attack. From the tone of the conversation, it was clear that ‘the Syrian general staff were out of their minds with panic that an unauthorized strike had been launched by the 155th Brigade in express defiance of their instructions,’ the former officers say.

"According to the transcript of the original Unit 8200 report, the major ‘hotly denied firing any of his missiles" and invited the general staff to come and verify that all his weapons were present.’"

There’s a note at the end of the report saying the Syrian officer was recalled to headquarters, interrogated for three days, and returned to his unit. “All of his weapons were accounted for,” the report stated.

We’re being lied into war once again—with the complicity of the “mainstream” media, which is ignoring any and all evidence that contradicts the Obama party line.

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Obama's Empathy Deficit in Palestine

By Uri Avnery, Counterpunch, April 5, 2013
Obama in Israel: Every word right. Every gesture genuine. Every detail in its place. Perfect.

Obama in Palestine: Every word wrong. Every gesture inappropriate. Every single detail misplaced. Perfect.

It started from the first moment. The President of the United States came to Ramallah. He visited the Mukata’a, the “compound” which serves as the office of the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. One cannot enter the Mukata’a without noticing the grave of Yasser Arafat, just a few paces from the entrance.

It is quite impossible to ignore this landmark while passing it. However, Obama succeeded in doing just that.

It was like spitting in the face of the entire Palestinian people. Imagine a foreign dignitary coming to France and not laying a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Or coming to Israel and not visiting Yad Vashem. It is more than insulting. It is stupid.

Yasser Arafat is for the Palestinians what Gorge Washington is for Americans, Mahatma Gandhi for Indians, David Ben-Gurion for Israelis. The Father of the Nation. Even his domestic opponents on the left and on the right revere his memory. He is the supreme symbol of the modern Palestinian national movement. His picture hangs in every Palestinian office and school.

So why not honor him? Why not lay a wreath on his grave, as foreign leaders have done before?

Because Arafat has been demonized and vilified in Israel like no other human being since Hitler. And still is.

Obama was simply afraid of the Israeli reaction. After his huge success in Israel, he feared that such a gesture would undo the effect of his address to the Israeli people.

This consideration guided Obama throughout his short visit to the West Bank. His feet were in Palestine, his head was in Israel.

He walked in Palestine. He talked to Palestine. But his thoughts were about the Israelis.

Even when he said good things, his tone was wrong. He just could not hit the right note. Somehow he missed the cue.

Why? Because of a complete lack of empathy.

Empathy is something hard to define. I am spoiled in this respect, because I had the good fortune to live for many years near a person who had it in abundance. Rachel, my wife, hit the right tone with everyone, high or low, local or foreign, the old and the very young.

Obama did so in Israel. It was really amazing. He must have studied us thoroughly. He knew our strengths and our weaknesses, our paranoias and our idiosyncrasies, our historical memories and dreams about the future.

And no wonder. He is surrounded by Zionist Jews. They are his closest advisors, his friends and his experts on the Middle East. Even from mere contact with them, he obviously absorbed much of our sensitivities.

As far as I know, there is not a single Arab, not to mention Palestinian, in the White House and its surroundings.

I assume that he does receive occasional briefings about Arab affairs from the State Department. But such dry memoranda are not the stuff empathy is made of. The more so as clever diplomats must have learned by now not to write anything that may offend Israelis.

So how could the poor man have possibly picked up empathy towards the Palestinians?

The conflict between Israel and Palestine has very solid factual causes. But it has also been rightly described as a “clash between traumas”: the Holocaust trauma of the Jews and the Naqba trauma of the Palestinians (without suggesting equivalence between the two calamities.)

Many years ago in New York I met a very good friend of mine. He was an Arab citizen of Israel, a young poet who had left Israel and joined the PLO. He invited me to meet some Palestinians at his home in a suburb of New York. His family name, by the way, was the same as Obama’s middle name.

When I entered the apartment, it was crammed full with Palestinians—Palestinians of all stripes, from Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, the refugee camps and the Diaspora. We had a very emotional debate, full of heated arguments and counter-arguments. When we left I asked Rachel what, to her mind, was the most outstanding common sentiment of all these people. “The sense of injustice!” she replied without hesitation.

That was exactly what I felt. “If Israel could just apologize for what we have done to the Palestinian people, a huge obstacle would have been removed from the road to peace,” I answered her.

It would have been a good beginning for Obama in Ramallah if he had addressed this point. It was not the Palestinians who killed six million Jews. It was the European countries and—yes—the USA which callously closed their doors to the Jews, who were desperately trying to escape the lot awaiting them. And it was the Muslim world which welcomed hundreds of thousands of Jews fleeing from Catholic Spain and the inquisition some 500 years ago.

Out conflict is tragic, more than most. One of its tragedies is that neither side can be entirely blamed. There is not one narrative, but two. Each side is convinced of the absolute justice of its cause. Each side nurses its overwhelming sense of victimhood. Though there can be no symmetry between settlers and natives, occupier and occupied, in this respect they are the same.

The trouble with Obama is that he has completely, entirely, totally embraced one narrative, while being almost completely oblivious to the other. Every word he uttered in Israel gave testimony to his deeply-rooted Zionist convictions. Not just the words he said, but the tone, the body language, all bore the marks of honesty. Evidently, he had internalized the Zionist version of every single detail of the conflict.

Nothing like this was in evidence in Ramallah. Some dry formulas, yes. Some honest efforts to break the ice, indeed. But nothing that touched the hearts of the Palestinians.

He told his Israeli audience to “put yourselves in the shoes of the Palestinians”. But did he do so himself? Can he imagine what it means to wait every night for the brutal banging on the door? To be woken by the noise of bulldozers approaching, wondering whether they are coming to destroy your home? To see a settlement growing on your land and waiting for the settlers to come and carry out a pogrom in your village? Being unable to move on your roads? To see your father humiliated at the road blocks? To throw stones at armed soldiers and brave tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets and sometimes live ammunition?

Can he even imagine having a brother, a cousin, a loved one in prison for many, many years because of his patriotic actions or beliefs, after facing the arbitrariness of a military “court”, or even without a “trial” at all?

This week, a prisoner called Maisara Abu-Hamdiyeh died in prison, and the West Bank exploded in rage. Israeli journalists ridiculed the protest, stating that the man died from a fatal disease, so Israel could not be blamed.

Did any of them imagine for a moment what it means for a human being to suffer from cancer, with the disease slowly spreading through his body, deprived of adequate treatment, cut off from family and friends, seeing death approaching? What if it had been their father?

The occupation is not an abstract matter. It is a daily reality for two and a half million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—not to mention the restrictions on Gaza.

It does not concern only the individuals practically denied all human rights. It primarily concerns the Palestinians as a nation.

We Israelis, perhaps more than anyone else, should know that belonging to one’s nation, in one’s own state, under one’s own flag, is a basic right of every human being. In the present epoch, it is an essential element of human dignity. No people will settle for less.

The Israeli government insists that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as the “Nation-State of the Jewish People”. It adamantly refuses to recognize Palestine as the “Nation-State of the Palestinian People”. What is Obama’s position on that?

Following the visit, Secretary of State John Kerry is now working hard to “prepare the ground” for a “resumption” of the “peace talks” between Israel and the PLO. Many quotation marks for something so flimsy.

Diplomats can string together hollow phrases to conjure up the illusion of progress. That is one of their main talents. But after a historic conflict lasting some 130 years, no progress towards peace between the two peoples can be real, if there is no equal respect for their national history, rights, feelings and aspirations.

As long as the US leadership cannot bring itself to that point, the chance of its contributing to peace in this tormented country is close to nil.

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