Washington’s Iraq “Victory”

Paul Craig Roberts

Iraq-War-640x350

The citizens of the United States still do not know why their government destroyed Iraq. “National Security” will prevent them from ever knowing. “National Security” is the cloak behind which hides the crimes of the US government.

George Herbert Walker Bush, a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency who became President courtesy of being picked as Ronald Reagan’s Vice President, was the last restrained US President. When Bush the First attacked Iraq it was a limited operation, the goal of which was to evict Saddam Hussein from his annexation of Kuwait.

Kuwait was once a part of Iraq, but a Western colonial power created new political boundaries, as the Soviet Communist Party did in Ukraine. Kuwait emerged from Iraq as a small, independent oil kingdom. http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/iraqkuwait.html

According to reports, Kuwait was drilling at an angle across the Iraq/Kuwait border into Iraqi oil fields. On July 25, 1990, Saddam Hussein, with Iraqi troops massed on the border with Kuwait, asked President George H. W. Bush’s ambassador, April Glaspie, if the Bush administration had an opinion on the situation. Here is Ambassador Glaspie’s reply:

“We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

According to this transcript, Saddam Hussein is further assured by high US government officials that Washington does not stand in his way in reunifying Iraq and putting a halt to a gangster family’s theft of Iraqi oil:

“At a Washington press conference called the next day, State Department spokesperson Margaret Tutweiler was asked by journalists:

‘Has the United States sent any type of diplomatic message to the Iraqis about putting 30,000 troops on the border with Kuwait? Has there been any type of protest communicated from the United States government?’

“to which she responded: ‘I’m entirely unaware of any such protest.’

“On July 31st, two days before the Iraqi invasion [of Kuwait], John Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs, testified to Congress that the ‘United States has no commitment to defend Kuwait and the U.S. has no intention of defending Kuwait if it is attacked by Iraq’.”

(See here among other sources: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1102395/posts )

Was this an intentional set-up of Saddam Hussein, or did the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait produce frantic calls from the Bush family’s Middle Eastern business associates?

Whatever explains the dramatic, sudden, total change of position of the US government, the result produced military action that fell short of war on Iraq itself.

From 1990 until 2003 Iraq was acceptable to the US government.

Suddenly, in 2003 Iraq was no longer acceptable. We don’t know why. We were told a passel of lies: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to America. The spectre of a “mushroom cloud over an American city” was raised by the National Security Advisor. The Secretary of State was sent to the UN with a collection of lies with which to build acceptance of US naked aggression against Iraq. The icing on the cake was the claim that Saddam Hussein’s secular government “had al Qaeda connections,” al Qaeda bearing the blame for 9/11.

As neither Congress nor the US media have any interest to know the reason for Washington’s about face on Iraq, the “Iraq Threat” will remain a mystery for Americans.

But the consequences of Washington’s destruction of the secular government of Saddam Hussein, a government that managed to hold Iraq together without the American-induced violence that has made the country a permanent war zone, has been ongoing years of violence on a level equal to, or in excess of, the violence associated with the US occupation of Iraq.

Washington is devoid of humanitarian concerns. Hegemony is Washington’s only concern. As in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, Washington brings only death, and death is ongoing in Iraq.

On June 12, 500,000 residents of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, benefactors of Washington’s “freedom and democracy” liberation, fled the city as the American trained army collapsed and fled under al Qaeda attack. The Washington-installed government, fearing Baghdad is next, has asked Washington for air strikes against the al Qaeda troops. Tikrit and Kirkuk have also fallen. Iran has sent two battalions of Revolutionary Guards to protect the Washington-installed government in Baghdad.

(After this article was published, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani dismissed the widespread news reports–Wall Street Journal, World Tribune, The Guardian, Telegraph, CNBC, Daily Mail, Times of Israel, etc.–that Iran has sent troops to help the Iraqi government. Once again the Western media has created a false reality with false reports.)

Does anyone remember the propaganda that Washington had to overthrow Saddam Hussein in order to bring “freedom and democracy and women’s rights to Iraqis”? We had to defeat al Qaeda, which at the time was not present in Iraq, “over there before they came over here.”

Do you remember the neoconservative promises of a “cakewalk war” lasting only a few weeks, of the war only costing $70 billion to be paid out of Iraqi oil revenues, of George W. Bush’s economic advisor being fired for saying that the war would cost $200 billion? The true cost of the war was calculated by economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard University budget expert Linda Bilmes who showed that the Iraqi war cost US taxpayers $3 trillion dollars, an expenditure that threatens the US social safety net.

Do you remember Washington’s promises that Iraq would be put on its feet by America as a democracy in which everyone would be safe and women would have rights?

What is the situation today?

Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, has just been overrun by al Qaeda forces. These are the forces that Washington has claimed a number of times to have completely defeated.

These “defeated” forces now control Iraq’s second largest city and a number of provinces. The person Washington left in charge of Iraq is on his knees begging Washington for military help and air support against the Jihadist forces that the incompetent Bush regime unleashed in the Muslim world.

What Washington has done in Iraq and Libya, and is trying to do in Syria, is to destroy governments that kept Jihadists under control. Washington faces the prospect of a Jihadist government encompassing Iraq and Syria. The Neoconservative conquest of the Middle East is becoming an al Qaeda conquest.

Washington has opened Pandora’s Box. This is Washington’s accomplishment in the Middle East.

Even as Iraq falls to al Qaeda , Washington is supplying the al Qaeda forces attacking Syria with heavy weapons. It is demonized Iran that has sent troops to defend the Washington-installed regime in Baghdad! Is it possible for a country to look more foolish than Washington looks?

One conclusion that we can reach is that the arrogance and hubris that defines the US government has rendered Washington incapable of making a rational, logical decision. Megalomania rules in Washington.

This article is published jointly with the Strategic Culture Foundation http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/06/14/washington-iraq-victory.html

America to Watch Entanglement in Iraq’s Bloody Saga

Fraternalsite

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, Cyrano’s Journal Today

“We are waging war on terrorism even as we embody terrorism. No wonder we seem sometimes to be at war with ourselves, and have been for most of the 21st century….. No American under 12 Has Lived in a Country at Peace… whatever the U.S. government knows, or thinks it knows, is not widely shared with most of its citizens….. The American Enemies List Is Decided Anonymously and Secretly.” (William Boardman “Is America a country at war with an Illusion,” Information Clearing House: 8/19/2013.)

Late Dr. Ali Shariati (the persuasive intellectual force of Iran’s Islamic revolution), once noted: “when people live in darkness, they lose sense of direction.” The 21st century knowledge-based information age tells a lot about how some of the global politicians and sadistic leaders tend to ignore the lessons of history. The darkness is returning to Baghdad. In March 2003, America waged a bloody war against Iraq under a false pretext of having ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction.’ All impartial accounts of the decade-long war point out to the American-led insanity to have murdered approximately 3 million innocent people in Iraq and destroyed countless human habitats and the hub of one of the ancient human civilizations. American occupation and war strategy built sectarian divides and barriers to maintain law and order. It helped the US military strategists to ensure the operational capability of US contractors to manage the constant flow of precious oil exports without Iraqi presence and control.

George W. Bush was keen to see Iraq remaking the dollar as the only exchange currency for oil exports and that all the major oil businesses were taken over by the US contractors including of his own family and the reconstruction work by Halliburton under Dick Cheney-the VP. According to the Project for the New American Century – PNAC, it is clear that George W. Bush administration had no other interests to propagate human rights, freedom or democracy in that part of the troubled world. It was a ‘mission accomplished’ by occupation. Iraq continued to be a place of bloody sectarian encounters, political and economic instability and missing legitimate political governance since that invasion of the few monsters of history. Iraq’s one-sided Shiite governance by Nour Al-Malki regime is under threat of being replaced by a new popular movement of the ISIS groups led by Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi after their sudden success in capturing several major towns in Iraq.

Again this weekend, American psyche for war is gearing up to review all the possibilities to reclaim insanity and discard rationality. President Obama faces multiple problems both at home and abroad. American politics is a game of pretensions, money, big talks and people who act fist and think later. This is how an estimated of 5,000 American soldiers were killed in Iraq and more than 30,000 wounded. The real figures could be many times more. Nobody can explain to justify if all the human lives were lost for any rational cause to preserve human dignity, freedom, democracy and justice in Iraq. Recently, an international tribunal has indicted George W. Bush and Tony Blair (PM of Britain) with war crimes committed in Iraq. The ICC at The Hague is currently pursuing an investigation against Britain of war crimes in Iraq. This could well involve the US crimes against the people of Iraq too.

Post 9/11, the American Congress authorized the President to use military force against those who perpetrated the 9/11 attack and those countries who harbored those individuals. That’s it, that’s the only legal authorization to use of military force available to the US President. Saddam Hussain or Iraq was not listed in the US charge sheet of the 9/11 attacks. At the outset, it was a PNAC’s per-planned scheme of things to wage wars and to occupy the Middle East oil enriched region for the future strategic priorities and security of the US. The then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called the US invasion as “illegal war.”

Glenn Greenwald (IS Obama Fulfilling the Neocon Dream of Mass Regime Change in Muslim World?, Democracy Now: 11/28/2011.), the constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger (Salon.com) points out the rationale of crossing over the firing lines:

“What we’re doing in essence is not only going way beyond what we were supposed to be doing when the Congress authorized military force, but what we’re really doing is we’re constantly manufacturing the causes of our war. Everywhere we go, every time we kill Pakistani troops or kill children in Yemen or in Afghanistan, we’re generating more and more anti-American sentiment and violence, and therefore, guaranteeing we will always have more people to fight.”

Glen Greenwald recalls having heard General Wesley Clark (speech he gave in 2007 to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco):

“in which he recounted meetings that he had at the Pentagon with people with whom he had close relationships in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and he talked about how, as he had done before, that he was told within a week or two after 9/11 that the Pentagon intended to attack Iraq, even though no one thought that they were involved in the 9/11 attack.”

This week, Iraq appears to be on the brink of political disintegration. The ISIS groups have seized control of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, Tikrit – former dictator Saddam Hussein’s hometown, and Dhuliya which is about 60 miles northwest of Baghdad. The ISIS fighters are pushing forward to Baghdad. Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds have seized control of the northern oil city of Kirkuk. The ISIS groups now control the area that stretches from the eastern edge of Aleppo, Syria, to Fallujah in western Iraq and the northern city of Mosul. The sudden advance and military success of the ISIS attacks has surprised the military experts across the globe. The ISIS advance has caused an unthinkable humanitarian catastrophe. Reportedly, five hundred thousand people have left Mosul to go into Kurdistan. Save the Children reports that, “We are witnessing one of the largest and swiftest mass movements of people in the world in recent memory.” The political and humanitarian dimensions of the crisis must be analyzed in a non-partisan manner without prejudice and to ensure the best interests, restoration of peace and safety of the people of Iraq as whole.

What happened across Iraq preceding to the 2003 American invasion is no coincident but reactionary outbursts of vengeful killings and sectarian atrocities watched indifferently by all the global war players. Iraq needs people of new ideas to cope with multiple scopes of the political and humanitarian crises to seek workable solutions away from the entrenched political box of the few Shiite egoistic administrators. This has not happened and will not come about as long Nour Al-Mallki is heading the secluded government of self-appointed cronies. President Obama has hinted out too in yesterday’s statement that Iraq must make progress in finding political solutions and work on building trust of the Sunni component of the Iraqi political landscape. American leadership jumping into a prevalent chaotic and strategically volatile situation will not sound a rational decision. Most of the US sponsored oil contractors have already fled and taken planes out of Iraq and there are no American troops stationed in Iraq to fight against the ISIS. Supposedly, if there were US marines in Iraq, how could they have rescued the endangered Al-Maliki regime from total collapse?

While media reports indicate that Iran’s spiritual leaders are talking of the “Quds Guards” to be dispatched to help the Iraqi Shiite regime, it will not be in the interest of Iran or the Muslim world to intervene based on any sectarian consideration. Whether Sunni and Shiite followers of Islam, they are Muslim, and there is no religious basis to fight or to kill one another. What would they be fighting for except to protect an illegitimate political regime? Shrines at Karbala and Najf are historically respectable places to both Shiite and Sunni sects. There should be no foreign interference from any corner to enflame the already worst human catastrophic situations affecting the public life across Iraq. Surely, Iraq does not another influx of unwelcome American warriors to reignite the old wounds, fear and hatred. The moral is, be it America, Iran, Brits, Saudis or Kuwaitis or any outside nations, they must refrain from jumping into fire and inflicting more cruel pains and anguish to the Iraqi masses.

If President Obama decides to order air strikes and other secretive security forces measures to support the PM Nour-Al-Maliki failing client regime, it could raise multiple reactionary problems to deal with the Muslim world. At this stage, President Obama needs to analyze critically his weakness and strength as a leader in coping with the global issues. America is not in a moral and political strength to impose its hegemony on others. He has already flunked in dealing with Syrian war problem, normalization with Iran and restoration of sovereignty of Ukraine. Robert Pape, Professor, University of Chicago’s, and author of the Dying to Win: the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism(2005) points out the alarmingly failing record of the US war strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan:

“America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today’s world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as the death knell of American hegemony.”

One major factor encouraging the global powers to go freely for warmongering and being unchallenged out of their own hemisphere to far fetched lands and commit massacres and destroy human habitats, is the obvious corrupt system of global peace and security operated by the UNO. It is nothing more than a debating club overwhelmed by the few – the five obsolete global powers at the UN Security Council to claim legitimacy to rule the nations of the world. If the UNO could be reformed and made responsible to the people of the globe, it could certainly play an effective role in global peace and security.

What is the cure to raging indifference and cruelty to the interests of the people of the Iraq, United States and for that matter to the whole of the humanity?

The 21st century new-age complex political, economic, social and strategic challenges and the encompassing opportunities warrant new thinking, new leaders and NEW Visions for change, conflict management and participatory peaceful future-making. But change and conflict resolution and new visions will not grow out of the obsolete, redundant and failed authoritarianism of the few insane and egoistic leaders [issuing from and embedded in the carapace of world capitalism). Be it the Obama, Bush, Blair or Nour Al-Maliki, none have the understanding of contemporary societal peace or understanding of human interests seeking peaceful co-existence in a God-given splendid and living Universe. Once in power, they engage to assert one-way self-serving polices and practices in complete disregard of the interests of the people and their sense of peace, solidarity and happiness. To challenge the deafening silence of the US, Europeans, Russian, and of the authoritarian rulers of the Arab Middle East for global peace and security, the humanity must find ways and means to look beyond the obvious and troublesome horizons dominated by the few warlords and continued to be plagued with massacres, barbarity against human culture and civilizations, destruction of the habitats and natural environment as if there were no rational being and people of reason populating the God’s created splendid and living Universe. The informed and mature global community looks towards to those thinkers, educated and honest proactive leaders enriched with coherent unity of moral, spiritual, intellectual and physical visions and abilities to be instrumental to rescue the mankind from the planned encroachment of the few global warlords.

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution, and comparative Western-Islamic cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest one: Global Peace and Conflict Management: Man and Humanity in Search of New Thinking. Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany, May 2012.

Mass Executions Push Iraq Towards Sectarian War

US Lines Up Iran Talks to Halt ISIS

This image posted on a militant website on Saturday, June 14, 2014, which was provided by AP and has not been verified by NBC News, appears to show militants from the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) leading captured Iraqi soldiers wearing plain clothes to an open field moments before shooting them in Tikrit, Iraq. The caption on this image, in Arabic, said, "They walking to death by their foot."

By PATRICK COCKBURN, Counterpunch

Iraq is close to all-out sectarian war as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) massacres dozens of Iraqi soldiers in revenge for the loss of one of its commanders, and government supporters in Baghdad warn that the spread of fighting to the capital could provoke mass killings of the Sunni minority there.

One unverified statement from Isis militants on Twitter says that it has executed 1,700 prisoners. Pictures show killings at half a dozen places. Isis has posted pictures that appear to show prisoners being loaded on to flatbed trucks by masked gunmen and later forced to lie face down in a shallow ditch with their arms tied behind their backs.

In the midst of all this pandemonium it should not be forgotten that it was the United States in tacit alliance with the Saudis and other regional despots that stirred up the hornet’s nest in the Middle East, and all this horrible suffering should be laid at Washington’s door as inevitable fruit of its imperialism.

Final pictures show the blood-covered bodies of captive soldiers, probably Shia, who make up much of the rank-and-file of the Iraqi army. Captions say the massacre was in revenge for the death of an Isis commander, Abdul-Rahman al-Beilawy, whose killing was reported just before Isis’s surprise offensive last week that swept through northern Iraq, capturing the Sunni strongholds of Mosul and Tikrit.

Meanwhile, the US government was considering direct talks with Iran to discuss options for halting the Isis advance, an official from the Obama administration said.

This image posted on a militant website on Saturday, June 14, 2014, which was provided by AP and has not been verified by NBC News, appears to show militants from the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) leading away captured Iraqi soldiers dressed in plain clothes after taking over a base in Tikrit, Iraq.

The two countries were already scheduled to meet with other world powers to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme in Vienna this week, and the US deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns will now travel to take part in those talks.

President Barack Obama continues to weigh up options for international intervention in Iraq, and has now deployed three warships to the Persian Gulf, but on Sunday the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said: “We are probably going to need [Iran’s] help to hold Baghdad.”

Early on Monday the mayor of the northern town of Tal Afar said it had become the latest landmark settlement to fall to Sunni militants.

Abdulal Abdoul told reporters his town of some 200,000 people, 260 miles (420 kilometres) northwest of Baghdad, was taken just before dawn.

Shia militiamen are pouring out of Baghdad to establish a new battle line 60 or 70 miles north of the capital. Demography is beginning to count against Isis as its fighters enter mixed provinces such as Diyala, where there are Shia and Kurds as well as Sunni.

In Mosul, from where 500,000 refugees first fled, the Sunni are returning to the city. Isis ordered traders to cut the price of fuel and foodstuffs, but religious and ethnic minorities are too terrified to return.

Sectarian strife looms as Shia join up to fight Isis to go home. “People in Baghdad are frightened about what the coming days will bring,” said one resident, but added that they were “used to being frightened by coming events”.

Baghdadis have been stocking up on food and fuel in case the capital is besieged. There is no sound of shooting in the city, though searches at checkpoints are more intense than previously and three out of four of the entrances to the Green Zone are closed.

Isis may be the shock troops in the fighting but their swift military success and the disintegration of four Iraqi army divisions have provoked a general Sunni uprising. At least seven or eight militant Sunni factions are involved, many led by former Baathists and officers from Saddam Hussein’s security services. But the most important factor working in favour of Isis is the sense among Iraq’s five or six million Sunni that the end of their oppression is at hand.

“The Shia in Iraq see what is happening not as the Sunni reacting justifiably against the government oppressing them but as an attempt to re-establish the old Sunni-dominated-type government,” said one observer in the capital. On both the Shia and Sunni sides the factors are accumulating for a full-scale bloody sectarian confrontation.

The surge of young Shia men into militias was touched off by the appeal of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the revered Shia cleric, for people to join militias. “The street is boiling,” said the observer.

Some 1,000 volunteers have left the holy city of Kerbala for Samarra which is on the front line, being the site of the al-Askari mosque, one of the holiest Shia shrines in a city where the majority is Sunni.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a Shia militia force close to the Iranians, is said to have recaptured the town of Muqdadiyah in Diyala and Dulu’iyah further west towards Samarra.

A problem in Iraq is that the country’s sectarian divisions are at their worst in areas where there are mixed populations: the country could not be partitioned without a great deal of bloodshed, as occurred in India at the time of independence.

The Sunni-Shia civil war of 2006-07 was centred on Baghdad and eliminated most mixed neighbourhoods, leaving those Sunni who had not already fled holding out in enclaves mostly in the west of the capital.

A cadre of advisers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is believed to be putting together a new military force drawn from the army and militias. The regular army command has been discredited by the spectacular failure of the last 10 days.

The involvement of Shia militia fighters at the front increases the likelihood of mass killings of Sunni. This had started to happen even before the present offensive in Diyala province and at Iskandariya, south-east of Baghdad, where militants were said to be building car and truck bombs and where the Shia militiamen are said by witnesses to have adopted a “scorched-earth policy”.

Iraq has effectively broken up as the Kurds take advantage of the collapse of the regular army in the north to take over Kirkuk, northern Diyala and the Nineveh plateau.

The Kurds have long claimed these territories, saying they had been ethnically cleansed from there under Saddam Hussein. Many of these areas are rich in oil.

The government in Baghdad, though vowing to return to Mosul, has a weakened hand to play. Its military assets have turned out to be much less effective than even its most severe critics imagined.

If there is going to be a counter-attack it will have to come soon but there is no sign of it yet.

Isis has taken some of the tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment to Syria which might indicate that it doesn’t want to use it in Iraq.

But as a military force, it has recently depended on quick probing attacks and forays using guerrilla tactics, so its need for heavy weaponry may not be high.

PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq.

World War II: The Unknown War

Children take shelter drawing an air raid, near Minsk, 1941, part of a largely unseen Russian archive. The Russian people paid—by far—the heaviest price of WW2, with more than 26 million dead, comparable to the entire population of California and Texas combined, at the time.

Paul Craig Roberts

In my June 6 column, “The Lies Grow More Audacious,” I mentioned that Obama and the British prime minister, who Obama has as a lap dog, just as George Bush had Tony Blair as lap dog, had managed to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany at the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion without mentioning the Russians.

I pointed out the fact, well known to historians and educated people, that the Red Army
defeated Nazi Germany long before the US was able to get geared up to participate in the war. The Normandy invasion most certainly did not defeat Nazi Germany. What the Normandy invasion did was to prevent the Red Army from overrunning all of Europe.

As I have reported in a number of columns, many, if not most, Americans have beliefs that are notfact-based, but instead are emotion-based. So I knew that at least one person would go berserk, and he did. JD from Texas wrote to set me straight. No one but “our American boys” won that war. JD didn’t know that the Russians were even in the war.

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Editor’s Note: We have often made the same point as Dr Roberts so brilliantly advances here, that in truth and fairness it should be widely recognized that the Russian people broke the back of the Nazi military machine, and that without their enormous sacrifice the war could have cost immeasurably more in allied lives or even been lost. This simple and irrefutable fact has been effectively obfuscated by constant Anglo-American propaganda, disseminated by their media, cinema, and other instruments of opinion manipulation See for example, D-Day obscures another great battle, probably of greater importance to the outcome of WW2—P. Greanville
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JD had the option of consulting an encyclopedia or a history book or going online and consulting Wikipedia prior to making a fool of himself. But he chose instead to unload on me. JD epitomizes US foreign policy: rush into every fight that you know nothing about and start new ones hand over fist that someone else will win.

It occurred to me that World War II was so long ago that few are alive who remember it, and by now even these few probably remember the propaganda version that they have heard at every Memorial Day and July 4th occasion since 1945. Little wonder that neither Obama nor Cameron or their pitiful speech writers knew nothing about the war that they were commemorating.

Propaganda has always been with us. The difference is that in the 21st century Americans have nothing but propaganda. Nothing else at all. Just lies. Lies are the American experience. The actual world as it exists is foreign to most Americans.

Leningrad—Despite the siege there must be some light hearted moments. Here, sailors of the Baltic Fleet play with two year old Lucy, who had recently lost her parents in a bombardment. If Lucy is still alive she will be seventy years old.

In 1973 a British television documentary series was released that chronicled WW II. Of the 28 episodes, only 3 and a part of a 4th acknowledge Russian participation in the war. From the British standpoint, victory was an Anglo-American victory.

This did not sit well with the Soviet government. The Soviets offered their film archives to the West. In 1978 a 20 part series of 48 minutes per episode was released in an American documentary television series narrated by Burt Lancaster. The documentary was titled: “The Unknown War.”

Certainly, it was a war unknown to most Americans, raised as they are on propaganda.

The Unknown War was a revelation to Americans because it demonstrated beyond all doubt that Nazi Germany lost World War II on the Russian front. Of the 20 episodes, “The Allies,” that is, the Anglo-Americans and free French, feature only in number 17. One out of twenty is about the correct proportion of the West’s participation in the defeat of Nazi Germany.

If you google The Unknown War you will find an entry on Wikipedia. The series might still be available on YouTube. It was taken off the air when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a folly repeated by dumbshit Washington. It was more important to Washington that Russia be demonized than any truths should be presented, so the truth revealed in The Unknown War was removed from US TV. Later the documentary reappeared on the History Chanel.

In my June 6 article, I said, following the consensus of historians, that Nazi Germany lost the war at Stalingrad. In this article: http://www.globalresearch.ca/70-years-ago-december-1941-turning-point-of-world-war-ii/28059 historian Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels says that Germany lost the war 14 months earlier at the Battle of Moscow in December 1941. He makes a good case. Whether one agrees or not, the facts he presents are eye openers for the “exceptional, indispensable Americans” who believe nothing happens without them.

Normandy, June 1944, is 2.5 years after Germany lost the war in the Battle of Moscow. As historians have made clear, by June 1944 Germany had little left with which to fight. Whatever was left of the German military was on the Eastern Front.

At the 70th annual Normandy landing celebration in France, Obama informed his French vassal, President Hollande, that he, Obama, the ruler of the Exceptional Country, would not sit down to dinner with the Russian Putin. Americans are too good to eat dinner with Russians. So Hollande had to have two dinners. One for Obama, and then one for Putin. As food is still good in France thanks to the banning of GMOs, probably Holland didn’t mind. I myself would have enjoyed being at both dinners for the food alone.

The Ukraine was hit exceptionally hard by the German onslaught. Here, in 1941, a bewildered old man sits in the ruins of his village – attacked and destroyed by the German army.

Like all news that is important, the dinner for Putin, and its meaning, escaped the attention of the American presstitute media, the world’s greatest collection of whores. If memory serves, normally the Russians are left out of the Normandy commemoration celebrations. If the war was won in the West, what did the Russians have to do with it? Nothing, of course. “Our boys” did it all, just as JD informed me. Russians? What Russians?

But this time France invited Putin to the Normandy celebration, and Putin was not too proud to come. Putin spoke with European politicians in the off moments, and these politicians saw a real person, unlike Obama, a total fake.

The superiority of Russian diplomacy over Washington’s is clear to all. Putin’s position is: “we are here for you, we can work things out.” Washington’s position is: “do as we say or we will bomb you into the stone age.”

Russia is accommodating to its client states. Washington is not. Putin says that he is willing to work things out with the billionaire corrupt Oligarch imposed on Ukraine by Washington, but Washington has forced the Bulgarians to stop work on the South Stream Pipeline. This natural gas pipeline bypasses Ukraine by going under the Black Sea to Bulgaria. As Washington’s new puppet state in Ukraine has not paid its multi-billion dollar natural gas bill to Russia and threatens to disrupt the pipeline to Europe and to steal gas from it, Russia, despite Western sanctions, made preparations for a new pipeline route in order that Europeans do not suffer from winter cold and have their industries shut down and economies collapse from lack of energy.

Washington sees Putin’s commitment to Europe as a threat and has gone to work to prevent any Russian energy flows to Europe.

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The author calls the American media, “the world’s greatest collection of whores,” and we share his sentiment without reservation.
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In contrast with Putin’s position, Washington’s position is: We don’t give a hoot what happens to our European puppets. Like the rest of humanity, European puppets don’t count and are dispensable, mere collateral damage, in the Indispensable Country’s war for world hegemony.

All that is important to Washington is that Russia is damaged regardless of the damage done to the puppet regimes in Western and Eastern Europe, including the moronic Polish government, possibly the only government on earth more foolish than Obama’s.

Washington is trying to break off Europe’s economic relations with Russia. Washington is promising to supply Europe with US natural gas obtained by fracking. This promise is a lie, like everything else Washington says.

On May 20 the Los Angeles Times reported that “federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the recoverable oil buried in California’s vast Monterey Shale deposits.” The Monterey Shale formation contains about two-thirds of the nation’s shale oil reserves, and only 4% are recoverable.http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-oil-20140521-story.html

William Engdahl has reported that at best the US has 20 years of natural gas from fracking, and that the price of the gas will be the despoiling of US surface and ground waters. Experts have pointed out that the infrastructure for transporting US natural gas to Europe does not exist and that it would take three years to build the infrastructure. What will Europe do for three years while it waits for US energy to replace the cut-off Russian energy? Will Europe still be there?

Washington’s European vassals should take note: Washington is prepared to destroy the economies of its vassals in order to score a one up on Russia.

How is it possible that by now Europe doesn’t understand how Washington thinks? Those bag full of money must be very large.

As I have reported several times, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security affairs told me years ago that Washington purchases European politicians with bags full of money. It remains to be seen if European “leaders” are willing to sacrifice their peoples and their own reputations in order to be complicit in the war that Washington is planning with Russia, a war that could mean the end of life on earth.

It is Europe’s call. If leaders emerge who tell Washington, “no dice,” the world is saved.
If instead European politicians want the money, the world is doomed.,

Europe would be the first to go.

About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
•••
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

On big politics, Western media spews propaganda – war correspondent John Pilger

https://www.greanvillepost.com/videos/johnPilgersc1306_480p.flv

An Interview with Sophie Shevardnadze, RT

The Ukraine government has stepped up its assault in the eastern part of the country. Tensions are running high between the NATO bloc and Russia, as both sides carry out military exercises. Journalists are being arrested and deported from the battlefields in Ukraine. The media war goes full speed. What will the conflict bring in the future? Will the civil war in Ukraine spill over the borders? Today we ask these questions to a veteran journalist and war correspondent. John Pilger is on Sophie&Co.

Follow @SophieCo_RT

Sophie Shevardnadze: John Pilger, veteran journalist, war correspondent, author, director – welcome, its really great to have you on our show today. Now, we’re just going to go ahead and start with Ukraine. Not a week goes by without journalists detained and assaulted in Ukraine – so why aren’t we hearing any condemnation of these incidents from the West?

John Pilger: I think in your part of the world you must be used to a pretty one-sided view coming from here. Over here in the West we don’t believe we’re biased at all – in fact, we believe we’re the essence of objectivity and impartiality, but of course when it comes to great power politics, that simply is not true. Ukraine has been presented here generally as an act of Russian manipulation and aggression. There has been some better reporting than that, but that generally is the view.

SS: Do you think we’re getting reliable information from the conflict zone in Ukraine? I mean, apart from Western media, the world media is involved in covering this conflict. You worked as a war reporter in Africa – is there such thing as one truth?

JP: No, it’s impossible to get an informed cover of pretty well anywhere [in] the world, unless you navigate your way through, these days, through the internet. If you don’t navigate, and you sit in front of your television set, then you’re likely to be given propaganda. It’s always been that way – it’s probably now more intense, but we do have alternatives now. We do have the internet, but as I say, it requires that research. Otherwise, we sit in front of the TV, or we pick up a newspaper, and we’re not so much informed as when we’re monitoring it or deconstructing it – that’s what I do as a journalist. We live in an age of intense propaganda.

SS: You have also said that the US is threatening to take the world to war over Ukraine – but there is already a civil war going on in Ukraine. Do you think it could get any more serious?

JP: Yeah. Well, we’ve just seen recently these nuclear strategic bombers arriving here at an Air Force base from the US. I mean, clearly, there’s a lot of news about that, and that’s clearly a statement – you know, it used to be called “saber rattling.” We used to have it year after year, during the Cold War, and yes, the civil war has been triggered in Ukraine, and that civil war could spill over into Russia. Those are the real problems, but behind this is an old American design – and that is the control of resources and trade and strategic areas right across the European and Asian landmass. That is not a secret, that has been going on pretty well since the US discovered itself as a great world power, right around the time of the Korean War.

SS: Now President Obama has approved $23 million worth of military aid to Ukraine since March. He has recently announced that the US is sending advisors and gear to the country, while the newly elected Ukrainian president wants more military aid from the US – what more can he expect?

JP: Well, what you can…I mean, it’s all an aggressive provocation. It seems almost incredulous that they should be doing this, to be on Russia’s border and provoking in the way they’re doing. It is almost as if NATO, Obama and the rest are trying to set a trap for Vladimir Putin. It’s an incredibly difficult time for Russia. As we all know we’re about to celebrate, we are about to commemorate the centenary of the First World War that began, yes, partly by design, but it also was triggered by a number of incidents. And any war can happen that way, that’s my experience as a war correspondent, although there may be a policy, a design, an aim, a strategy, but there can be incidents that can start the war without people wanting it to start. Now, when you have military exercises being conducted in Ukraine, which is essentially and always has been a buffer state, next to the Russian Federation, that is very, very dangerous.

SS: You know, since March, there also have been reports that US mercenaries are involved in operations in eastern Ukraine. Are you inclined to think that’s true?

JP: Well, I have no evidence of that, but I would think it’s almost certainly true. Ukraine has become a kind of awful theme park for those agencies which we know so well – CIA, FBI…The director of the CIA has dropped in, along with Vice President Biden…And the mercenaries – the successors of the infamous Blackwater organization – are said to be there. As I said, I don’t know, I don’t have evidence if they are, but this is an extraordinarily important operation and I repeat – operation – for the US. They finally gained access to the buffer state, to Ukraine. That almost is the last hurdle, if you like, before Russia.

SS: So you’re saying that Washington had foreseen a military standoff when it was supporting the opposition on Maidan? It was something that was planned, in your opinion?

JP: Well, yeah. Of course it was planned. We had the tapes of Victoria Nuland, boasting of the US spending several billion dollars to get rid of the regime that it didn’t like in Kiev, and install another regime. This is a US-installed regime.

SS: You’ve also written that Washington actually had plans to seize Russia’s naval base in Crimea, and the plans have failed – why do you think so? Do you have evidence of that?

JP: What is there in Ukraine for the US? Above all, there is strategic position, there is a toehold, more than a toehold, in a part of the world where it has only recently, relatively recently, been able to gain access. And the most important prize in that was undoubtedly Crimea. This was the home of the Russian Fleet. This was Russia’s access. This is where we now see US ships exercising within sight of the Russian base. I think, certainly, getting hold of that would have been…If the Kiev regime would have gotten hold of that, that would have meant the US would have got hold of that – there is no question about that. It was all part of, as I’ve said, a provocation. It’s a very intriguing mix – all the reasons why the US has behaved the way it has in Ukraine. Partly it is about strategic influence, partly it is about business, partly it is about provocation. They’re all different ingredients. This administration in Washington has been doing some very strange things. Also, it may have been, and I’m only guessing here, an attempt by the Obama administration to reassert itself, having really been trumped by Russia over Syria.

SS: You’ve also said that Obama is currently seeking a budget for nuclear weapons greater than during the Cold War – but where are you getting this information from, and what do you need it for?

JP: You just look it up! It’s all there, there’s no secret, the rising of the manufacture of warheads and of nuclear strategic materials has been steadily increasing over recent years. In many ways, that’s whether or not it is academic, because the US has many, many nuclear warheads, just as Russia still has nuclear warheads. That means when a so-called superpower and regional power, like Russia, finds themselves looking down each other’s gun barrels, and that’s a situation that we’ve got at the moment.

SS: So you think Obama is reinforcing its nuclear budget to confront Russia, is that it?

JP: There always is a chance. You know the nuclear clock has been at five minutes to midnight for many years now. There has always been a chance of nuclear war, there always will be while there is this kind of dangerous situation. I’m of course not going to predict there will or won’t be one, but the dangers are obvious. You only have to look or read what general Butler, the former head of the US Strategic Air Command, said – and I’ll paraphrase him. He said “the dangers are there every day.” But when you have a flashpoint with two nuclear powers engaged, even indirectly engaged – they are not directly engaged at the moment, but they are indirectly engaged – that’s extremely dangerous.

SS: But remember when there was a lot of talk about whether America should strike Syria with local strikes? The prospect of action in Syria got a very cold response from both Congress and the public – so what makes you think that Americans are as gung-ho over Ukraine as the military is?

JP: Well, I didn’t quite hear the beginning of the question, but I’ve heard the last bit. It’s very simple – American foreign policy is run pretty well in the straight line, since about 1950 – and you only have to consult the documentary record to answer that question. There is always a danger, but something else has happened recently. Certainly during the Bush years the military – the Pentagon in the US now is in the ascendancy – it has much greater power than it used to have. It has influence in the State Department, it has influence right throughout all the institutions of government in Washington. There is a military sense all the time about American foreign policy at a higher level than it used to be.

SS: The first part of my question which you didn’t hear was precisely about the American foreign policy that failed in terms of striking Syria. Because remember when there was talk about whether America would bomb Syria or not, it didn’t get any support from Congress or the general public…

JP: In many ways this is an administration that contradicts itself, which makes it even more dangerous. Syria seemed to be almost the design of the intelligence agencies of the US, the support for a lot of the radical groups came from the intelligence and what is called a “deep state” in the US. Whether or not the White House agreed with that, I have no idea. I mean that is one of the great contradictions – in Washington there is always a great deal of competition, and as a result, the White House was made to look rather foolish over Syria. It staked a lot on the allegation that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. Well, according to Seymour Hersh, they didn’t use chemical weapons, and there is not a great deal of evidence to suggest that they did use chemical weapons. There is evidence to suggest that those whom the Americans were supporting used chemical weapons. So, into this contradictory and confusing and rather tumultuous situation, the almost “black and white” of the US foreign policy doesn’t work. Doesn’t work in their own terms.

SS: Since we’ve started talking about Syria. The issue of Syria has been completely eclipsed by Ukraine lately. No one seems to mention it anymore. Meanwhile, the American administration is still providing arms to the opposition…

JP: Unless you are Syrian!

SS: …Yeah. Could it be that the US is getting free reign there while Russia is busy?

JP: Possibly, possibly. I read the other day that there was going to be non-lethal and lethal aid to some of the opponents, the jihadists opposing the Assad regime. Yes, the world looks the other way, and things happen. I think that’s very possible. Where that is heading – it’s almost impossible to know, because my understanding is that the US actually would like to have a settlement with Iran. That seemed to be the way it was heading, and that would mean kind of settlement with Syria. And then it could concentrate on what is really close to this administration’s heart – and that is confronting China, and perhaps also confronting Russia – certainly, dealing with its grand design on the Eurasian continent. Now, if for example, as I understand it, two-thirds of the US naval forces are going to be transferred to the Asia-Pacific region by the year 2020, that will mean the US will have to tidy up all these unfortunate problems that it has: Syria, Iran and so on. All I’m saying is that the US policy as it has acted out in Syria, is very, very confusing, because they don’t seem to be wanting to resolve matters there. They seem to want to stroke it instead of play some kind of broker role, calm it, and deal with it.

SS: I want to get back a little bit to NATO and war games that just took place in Eastern Europe, like the most recent ones in Latvia. So, do you think those are aimed at intimidating Russia? Is that their sole goal?

JP: I’ve thought about why this intimidation of Russia is going on, and I think it is partly historical. The Soviet Union was deeply resented just for existing, because it was getting in the way of an enormous part of the world that the US and its western allies had previously had a great deal to do with and they exploited it, and wanted to do that again. I think there is almost a historical sense of unfinished business. There is no question that US foreign policy finds its opponents or enemies in those governments that effect any form of independence. That is a rule that runs right through it. Now, the Russian government is independent – it’s a very powerful and very important independent government. And there is a history between Russia and the US – you can never underestimate this history.

SS: Where do you think the US’ European allies’ interests are in all of this? In the whole US vs. China, US vs. Russia? Can Europe act independently, or are they completely under US influence?

JP: Well, that’s a very good question. What are their interests? I don’t know! I mean, you know, the interests of trading peacefully with Russia and with China are demonstrable! Gas from Russia and every manufactured good we could think of from China! What is the problem, you might ask. And for Europeans to go along with this kind of Wild West kind of foreign policy is absurd. But Europe is divided. Europe in terms of foreign policy, often reluctantly, but it does – it falls in with the US. You only have to read the German press to see this. There is a kind of ambivalence, almost – what do we do? Oh, well, we’d better go with the US. Europe has never spoken with one voice that has been entirely representative or reflecting its own interests.

SS: Alright, Mr. Pilger, thank you so much for this interview. We were talking to John Pilger – author, journalist, war correspondent. We were talking about America’s interests in Ukraine, and also what NATO is going to do next. Thank you very much, that’s it for this edition of SophieCo, and we’ll see you next time.

Comments (10)

james greer 14.06.2014 17:50

Brad 14.06.2014 11:19

Kayo 14.06.2014 05:44

Congratulations Sophie on getting a veteran like John Pliger on your show. I admire your intelligence and competence, but you need to spruce up your body language. You often look disinterested in your subjects and the response of your guests. You need to show more engagement.

Washington’s hands are tied when European allies don’t want to act – Russian policy expert 9