Russiagate Exposed: It’s a Fraud The Truth that’s Being Hidden from the Public
On July 9th, was published at Disobedient Media a report that not only disproves the ‘news’ reports that the Russian government (or anyone else in Russia) ‘hacked the election’ — disproves the very core of the Russiagate story — but that proves the ‘hacks’ were instead actually leaks, to Wikileaks, by someone who had physical access to the computers at the Democratic National Committee, and who, in any case, was clearly and incontrovertibly operating only within the time-zone of America’s east coast — not at all in Russia, nor anywhere else outside that time zone. • The .rar files and plain files that eventually end up in the “NGP VAN” 7zip file disclosed by Guccifer 2.0 on 9/13/2016 were likely first copied to a USB flash drive, which served as the source data for the final 7zip file. There is no information to determine when or where the final 7zip file was built. [premium_newsticker id=”155282″] They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. [premium_newsticker id=”154171″]
Russiagate isn’t merely a fraud and a smear by the Democratic Party; it is a fraud and a smear by NATO. NATO represents the entire U.S. aristocracy — not merely that aristocracy’s Democratic Party contingent, but both contingents (and certainly not just one billionaire, such as Soros).
Police rampage against G20 protestors in Hamburg
By James Cogan, wsws.org
Just after 7.20 p.m. on Thursday, German authorities ordered a brutal police assault on a demonstration against the G20 leaders’ summit, which formally begins today in Hamburg. Hours after the clashes, figures still had not been released on how many people were injured or arrested.
Up to 120,000 people from across Germany and other parts of Europe are expected to travel to Hamburg to voice their opposition to the austerity, anti-refugee measures, nationalism and militarism that characterise the policies of all the governments and ruling elites of the world’s 20 largest economies.
Thursday’s protest, one of the first of dozens planned during the G20, was entitled “Welcome to Hell.” It was organised to coincide with a sideline meeting at the nearby Hotel Atlantic between US President Donald Trump—a reviled figure in Europe—and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The violence at the event was provoked by the police.
As some 10,000 demonstrators were assembling in Hamburg’s harbour district around 6.00 p.m., Deutsche Welle reported that its correspondent, Max Hofmann, “says the feeling at the ‘Welcome to Hell’ protest is that of a large family gathering.” Hofmann commented: “If you’re looking for a common denominator here it’s anti-capitalism, anti-globalisation and, of course, anti-Donald Trump.” The gathering was peaceful and, if anything, had a festive character.
Police nevertheless used the presence at the protest of some 800 to 1,000 anarchist Black Block members, some of whom were wearing masks, to prevent the demonstrators from marching through the city as planned. After they had barely moved 300 metres, dozens of vehicles and lines of riot police blocked their path and issued demands that the anarchist element remove their masks. When some refused, and allegedly threw rocks and bottles at journalists and police, the state rampage was initiated.
Scenes of confusion and panic followed. One protestor who declined to be named told Bloomberg correspondents: “We were standing there and the police suddenly blocked the march. At some point, we heard a loud bang and everybody started running. It’s really a shame.”
Video footage posted by participants shows sections of the demonstration being assaulted with water cannon and tear gas and then “kettled”—or surrounded—by shielded and baton-wielding riot squads.
One of the 100 volunteer lawyers on hand, Matthias Wisbar, told Der Spiegel that the emergency legal service established to assist the G20 demonstrations received “hundreds” of calls from injured or arrested people. Local residents with young families complained that the violence forced them to leave their homes out of fear.
While small groups of anarchists engaged in running battles with police, set some vehicles ablaze and carried out acts of vandalism, the bulk of the protestors retreated and reassembled several hours later and held an entirely peaceful demonstration at another location.
The police actions appear to have been a test of their riot tactics, ahead of possible attacks on the larger protests due to take place today and on Saturday, as well as a calculated attempt to intimidate people into not joining them.
The pretext for both last night’s attack, and future police operations, had been given well in advance. Some five hours before blocking the demonstration, Hamburg police spokesperson Timo Zill told journalists: “Militant protestors who exercise violence are not protected by Article 8”—the nominal “freedom of assembly” clause in Germany’s basic law. Zill included in the definition of “violence” any demonstrators who “disguise themselves.”
Protest organisers followed these statements with an explicit appeal to the police not to provoke an incident. One told Der Spiegel that if “the police don’t exploit the advantage of every masked [protester] and a firecracker here and there to escalate the situation, then the protest will end peacefully.”
The police proceeded to do the exact opposite.
Protestors denounced the assault on their right to demonstrate. Mark Meyer, another volunteer lawyer, told CNN: “The police wanted to crash and smash this demo from the beginning.” Julia, a 27-year-old from Frankfurt, said: “If this is all we can do… just showing our opinion and giving a statement, and if the state forces are just shutting us up ... I mean what kind of state do we live in?”
The G20 summit as a whole has been utilised by the German state to rehearse placing a major urban area under what can only be described as a police occupation. An estimated 20,000 police and some 3,000 vehicles, assembled from across the country, have been deployed to Hamburg—Germany’s second largest city with a population of some 1.7 million.
Heavily-armed paramilitary special units, such as sniper squads, are deployed at key locations in and around the venues where G20 events are scheduled to take place. All access to such areas has been proscribed, except for local residents. Helicopters are almost continuously in the air, conducting aerial surveillance.
The occupation of the city has involved the wholesale monitoring of peoples’ movements in combined police and intelligence operations across Europe. Hamburg police have admitted that demonstrators were tracked as they travelled to the city from at least Scandinavia, Switzerland and Italy.
The turn to ever-more authoritarian forms of rule is a universal process in what were once lauded as the “Western democracies.”
Similar police-state mobilisations have accompanied G20 summits over the past decade in cities such as London, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Seoul, Cannes and Brisbane. The suppression of protests has resulted in hundreds of people being injured and arrested and, in London in 2009, a demonstrator being killed at the hands of the police.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
Excerpt
Unmasking the Empire: The Syrian Criminal Mess Explained by Stephen Lendman.
The following dispatches on the Syrian war and related subjects merit careful attention.
US-Supported Terrorists Plan More CW Attacks in Syria
Deplorable NYT Denigration of Syria’s Assad
Times reporting and commentaries mock legitimate journalism.
Instead of denouncing Washington’s imperial war on humanity, its editorial policy supports it – blaming victims for high crimes committed against them. It serves as a virtual Pentagon press agent in all US wars of aggression. Its drumbeat of disinformation, Big Lies and fake news on Syria is especially appalling – cheerleading mass slaughter and destruction, denigrating overwhelmingly popular Bashar al-Assad.
On July 7, a commentary no responsible editor would publish headlined “What Assad Has Won,” saying:
“(T)he first lesson to be drawn from the Syrian case is obvious: One can’t always win the revolution, or at least not as fast as one would like...So far Assad has come out of the conflict alive, even strengthened -at the cost of the slaughter of half his people. His longevity goes to show that being wrong and facing fierce opposition from dissidents, an army and a large swath of the international community aren’t enough to unseat a dictator.”
Fact: What despicable rubbish. It’s hard reading it without feeling revulsion and contempt for the writer and Times editors for publishing his trash.
Fact: Assad is overwhelmingly supported by millions of Syrians. Washington bears full responsibility for raping and destroying large parts of the country, for industrial-scale mass murder, using ISIS and other hired killers to do its dirty work, supported by US terror-bombing, massacring civilians, demolishing vital infrastructure.
Fact: Assad was overwhelmingly reelected president in June 2014 with an 89% majority – a process independent international monitors called open, free and fair.
Fact: He’s no dictator. He shames deplorable US governance, one party with two right wings running things, gangsters in charge, not democrats.
The Times: “Assad, by killing so many Syrians, has also killed the dream of democracy for many other Syrians, as well as for plenty of people elsewhere in the Arab world.”
Fact: In a region infested with US-supported despots and fantasy democracies like Israel, Assad’s Syria and Iran stand out as exceptions to the deplorable rule – why Washington wants their governments toppled, replaced by subservient pro-Western puppet regimes.
The Times: “It’s a typical pitfall…to think that colonization is always Western, never Russian or Iranian. When Moscow or Tehran is involved, one prefers to speak instead of support or assistance.”
“President Vladimir Putin is anti-Western, therefore he must be something of a liberator, or at least an ally, the wishful thinking goes.”
Fact: Putin isn’t anti-Western, far from it. Russia hasn’t attacked another country throughout its post-Soviet history. Iran hasn’t for over 200 years. America does it all the time, allied with NATO, Israel, and other rogue partners.
Fact: Putin is arguably the preeminent world leader – a peace champion. Trump, Obama, Bush/Cheney and the Clintons are unindicted war criminals, neocon-infested America a gangster state, threatening humanity’s survival.
The Times: “Assad has managed to sell, not only to Westerners but also to local elites and the public, the notion that dictatorship is a rampart against radicalism and a guardian against horror. The scenario in Syria is an extreme illustration of this…”
Fact: Calling Assad despotic or dictatorial is part of vicious US propaganda waged against him, his government, and by extension the Syria people – trying to justify US aggression, responsible for raping them and their country, one of history’s great crimes.
The Times: “Assad has won, but he has only won time…(W)hen he does fall, he will leave Syria with no alternative.”
Assad, Syria and its people are a long way from achieving liberation from US aggression.
Washington’s rage to dominate threatens all sovereign independent nations with mass slaughter and destruction. If Putin or Assad ran America, instead of bipartisan criminals in charge, world peace and stability would replace endless wars of aggression.
Putin/Trump talks in Hamburg and ahead if more take place won’t change a thing. The agendas of both countries are world’s apart. Russia champions world peace and stability. America wants unchallenged global dominance, aggressive wars its main strategy of choice - Russia and China on its target list for regime change. US war on either country would be madness. With lunatics running the Washington asylum, the risk is too great to ignore.
CONFIRMED: US backs down as Russia targets US aircraft in Syria
THE DURAN
Back in April, in the immediate aftermath of the US cruise missile attack on Syria’s Al-Shayrat air base, Russia retaliated by switching off the ‘de-confliction’ hotline between the US and Russian militaries in Syria, which enables these militaries to avoid accidental clashes with each other.
That this was the case was confirmed by an article in The New York Times dated 8th April 2017, which said the following
The American-led task force that is battling the Islamic State has sharply reduced airstrikes against the militants in Syria as commanders assess whether Syrian government forces or their Russian allies plan to respond to the United States’ cruise missile strike on a Syrian airfield this past week, American officials said.
The precautionary move, revealed in statistics made public by the command on Saturday, was taken as Russian officials have threatened to suspend the communication line the American and Russian militaries use to notify each other about air operations in Syria.So far, the Russian military does not appear to have taken any threatening actions, such as directing its battlefield radar or air defense systems to confront the Americans, or carrying out aggressive actions in the skies, United States officials said.
But officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning said the commanders needed time to determine whether the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the Russian military would treat the American cruise missile strike as a one-time operation that they would not respond to militarily. As a precaution, the Pentagon is flying patrols in Syrian skies with F-22 jets, the Air Force’s most advanced air-to-air fighter……
Some American and other Western counterterrorism officials have said the missile strike could………make the fight against the Islamic State in Syria more difficult.
“It seems clear that the strikes will complicate our efforts to pursue our counter-ISIS campaign in Syria,” said Matthew Olsen, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “In particular, the ability to carry out U.S. airstrikes in Syria in support of the coalition against ISIS requires some degree of cooperation with Russia, which is now in serious jeopardy.”
Other security experts said that much depended on the Trump administration’s next steps, and how the Assad government and its Russian patrons responded.
“U.S. aircraft operating over Al-Tabqah are already ostensibly in range of the Russian S-400 system at the Humaymin Air Base, and we might see Russia deploy more air defense assets to Syria,” Jeremy Binnie, the Middle East editor of Jane’s Defense Weekly, said in an email. “But if the U.S. makes no moves to threaten Assad’s position, then they may well accept the punishment and move on.”
William McCants, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse,” offered a similar assessment.
(bold italics added)
The words I have highlighted in this article from 8th April 2017 make clear the difference with the situation today.
After weeks of frantic diplomatic activity the US finally managed to persuade the Russians a few weeks ago to switch the ‘de-confliction’ hotline back on. In response to yesterday’s US shooting down of the SU-22 the Russians have however now once again switched it off.
However this time the Russians have not only once more switched off the ‘de-confliction’ hotline. They have also done what they did not do in April by saying that this time they will take “threatening action by directing their battlefield radar or air defense systems to confront the Americans”.
That this is so is explicitly confirmed in the statement made public yesterday by the Russian Defence Ministry
As of June 19 this year, the Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation has ended its interaction with the US side under a memorandum for preventing incidents and providing for safe flights during operations in Syria and demands that the US command carry out a careful investigation and report about its results and the measures taken.
The shooting down of a Syrian Air Force jet in Syria’s airspace is a cynical violation of Syria’s sovereignty. The US’ repeated combat operations under the guise of ‘combating terrorism’ against the legitimate armed forces of a UN member-state are a flagrant violation of international law, in addition to being actual military aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic,” the ministry said.
Russia will regard any flights within the area of its air force group’s operation in Syria as legitimate targets, the ministry stressed.
Any aircraft, including planes and drones of the international coalition, detected in the operation areas west of the Euphrates River by the Russian air forces will be followed by Russian ground-based air defense and air defense aircraft as air targets.…….the coalition command did not use the existing communication line between the air commands of Al Udeid Air Base (Qatar) and Khmeimim Air Base to prevent incidents in Syria’s airspace. We consider the actions of the US command as a deliberate default on their obligations under the memorandum on on preventing incidents and providing for safe flights during operations in Syria signed on October 20, 2015.
(bold italics added)
In other words, the Russian response to the shooting down of the Syrian SU-22 fighter near Taqbah has been much stronger than was the Russian response to the US cruise missile attack on Syria’s Al-Shayrat air base.
This is so even though the attack on Al-Shayrat air base attracted massive international media attention, whilst the US shooting down of the SU-22 has attracted very little.
This time however the Russians have announced that they will do precisely the thing which they did not do in April following the US attack on Al-Shayrat air base – and which the New York Times says is very threatening – which is track US aircraft, treating them as targets if they fly west of the Euphrates.
Why have the Russians taken this extraordinary step?
The US claims yesterday justifying the shooting down of the SU-22 aircraft have unravelled. Even the strongly anti-Assad British based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights has confirmed that the SU-22 was not bombing Kurdish forces as the US claims but was bombing ISIS fighters as the Syrians say.
A regime warplane was targeted and dropped in the skies of the al-Resafa area […] the warplane was shot down over Al-Resafa area of which the regime forces have reached to its frontiers today, and sources suggested to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that warplanes of the International Coalition targeted it during its flight in close proximity to the airspace of the International Coalition’s warplanes, which caused its debris to fall over Resafa city amid an unknown fate of its pilot, the sources confirmed that the warplane did not target the Syria Democratic Forces in their controlled areas located at the contact line with regime forces’ controlled areas in the western countryside of Al-Tabaqa to the road of Al-Raqqah – Resafa.
(bold italics added)
Another thing that may have provoked the Russians is that the US has tried to pass off the downing of the SU-22 as caused by Syrian encroachment of an agreed ‘de-confliction area’.
Ja’Din sits approximately two kilometers north of an established East-West SDF-Syrian Regime de-confliction area.
This uses a term – ‘de-confliction area’ – used to describe certain regions of Syria covered by an international agreement reached by Russia, Iran and Turkey in May.
The area where the SU-22 was shot down is not within any of these regions. Al-Jazeera has provided details of where these four ‘de-confliction areas’, and none of them is close to the territory where the SU-22 was shot down
Zone 1 : Idlib province, as well as northeastern areas of Latakia province, western areas of Aleppo province and northern areas of Hama province. There are more than one million civilians in this zone and its rebel factions are dominated by an al-Qaeda -linked alliance.
– Zone 2: The Rastan and Talbiseh enclave in northern Homs province. There are approximately 180,000 civilians in this zone and its network of rebel groups includes al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
– Zone 3 : Eastern Ghouta in the northern Damascus countryside. Controlled by Jaish al-Islam, a powerful rebel faction that is participating in the Astana talks. It is home to about 690,000 civilians. This zone does not include the adjacent, government-besieged area of Qaboun.
– Zone 4 : The rebel-controlled south along the border with Jordan that includes parts of Deraa and Quneitra provinces. Up to 800,000 civilians live there.
Whilst it is possible that the term “established East-West SDF-Syrian Regime de-confliction area” refers to a term used in some informal agreement between the US and Russia, it seems more likely that the US is trying to establish unilaterally ‘no-go’ areas for the Syrian army, and is using the term ‘de-escalation areas’ to conceal the fact.
If so the Russians will want to put a stop to this practice and this may partly explain the strength of the Russian reaction.
However the single most important reason for the strong Russian reaction is what caused the US to shoot down the SU-22 down in the first place.
As the report from the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights shows, the real reason the SU-22 was shot down was because it was supporting a Syrian army offensive to capture the strategically important town of Rusafa from ISIS.
Rusafa lies south east of Tabqah – the main base of the US backed Kurdish militia in this area – and within striking distance of the main highway between Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, the eastern desert city currently besieged by ISIS.
By capturing Rusafa the Syrian army is now in a position to intercept columns of ISIS fighters who might try to flee Raqqa for Deir Ezzor.
The Syrians and the Russians have in recent weeks complained that the US and the Kurds have been doing nothing to prevent ISIS fighters fleeing Raqqa for Deir Ezzor, and in recent days there have even been reports of movements by Kurdish militia to try to block the Syrian army’s offensive to relieve Deir Ezzor.
The shooting down of the Syrian SU-22 fighter appears to have been intended as a warning to stop the Syrian army from capturing Rusafa, so as to block the Syrian army’s attempt to relieve the pressure on Deir Ezzor.
The Russian warning to the US looks in turn to have been intended to make clear to the US that this sort of interference in the Syrian army’s operations to relieve Deir Ezzor is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
The US has heeded the Russian warning. The various statements made by the US and by various US officials today, though full of the usual bluster about the US defending itself and its allies anywhere and everywhere, in fact clearly signal that the US is backing off.
The key words – as my colleague Adam Garrie has said – are those of Colonel Ryan Dillon, chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
As a result of recent encounters involving pro-Syrian regime and Russian forces, we have taken prudent measures to reposition aircraft over Syria so as to continue targeting ISIS forces while ensuring the safety of our aircrews given known threats in the battle space.
(bold italics added)
“Prudent measures to reposition aircraft over Syria to ensure the safety of aircrews given known threats in the battle space” is code for withdrawal of aircraft from air space where they are at risk of being shot down.
That is what is taking place. Note that Colonel Dillon is careful not to say where the “known threats in the battle space” that are forcing the redeployment of the aircraft are coming from.
The US has no choice. If the Russian decision to switch off the ‘de-confliction’ hotline in April was enough to force the US to reduce sharply its air activity in Syria, the Russian decision to switch off the ‘de-confliction’ hotline and to threaten to treat as aerial targets US aircraft flying west of the Euphrates is a threat the US cannot afford to disregard.
Not surprisingly, shortly before the Russian warning was made public, but probably after it was communicated to the US, the Syrian army captured Rusafa with no further hindrance from the US. Latest reports speak of Syrian army reinforcements flooding into the area,
In the meantime the US is frantically signalling to the Russians its urgent wish to de-escalate the situation. Note for example the markedly conciliatory language of White House spokesman Sean Spicer, and how he repeatedly passed up opportunities to utter words of defiance against Russia or to threaten the Russians with counter-measures during the latest White House press briefing
Q Thanks, Sean. How are you responding to this Russian threat to shoot down American planes over Syria?
MR. SPICER: Well, obviously, we’re going to do what we can to protect our interests. And this is something that we’re going to continue to work with — keep the lines of communication open. And ISIS represents a threat to all nations, and so we’ve got to do what we can to work with partners. And we’re going to continue to keep an open mind of communication with the Russians.
Q So will the U.S. change its flight patterns or behavior in Syria?
MR. SPICER: I’m going to refer — I mean, I think this is a question more for DOD to answer. But I think, obviously, it’s important and crucial that we keep lines of communication open to de-conflict potential issues.
Zeke.
Q Thanks, Sean. Following up on that — and a second one for you, as well — what would the U.S. government’s response be? Is the White House going to issue a warning to the Russian government if they were to follow through on this threat? It seems that your statement — would that be a provocation or something worse, potentially?
MR. SPICER: I mean, I think that the escalation of hostilities among the many factions that are operating in this region doesn’t help anybody. And the Syrian regime and others in the regime need to understand that we will retain the right of self-defense, of coalition forces aligned against ISIS.
Ultimately the situation in Syria is the same as it has been since the US-Russian confrontation in October.
The fact that the Russians have installed a powerful air defence system in Syria incorporating advanced S-400 and S-300VM Antey 2500 missiles means that the US is unable to confront the Russians directly unless it is prepared to risk possibly very serious casualties.
That is an option neither the US military nor the civilian officials of the Obama and Trump administrations are prepared to face. This is because they know the extraordinary dangers such a clash with the armed forces of a nuclear superpower would risk. They also know US public opinion is strongly opposed to the US becoming drawn into such a clash.
What that means is that though the Russians must act carefully so as not to provoke the US into an unnecessary confrontation which would serve no-one’s interests, ultimately it is the Russians who in Syria have the whip hand.
The chess game in Syria is far from over. The game of move and counter-move continues. With the capture of Rusafa the Syrians and the Russians have however just won another important piece. In the meantime Russia’s warning limits the range of US moves across the Syrian chessboard.
The net result of all these recent moves is that end of the Syrian war may have drawn a little closer.
The US has no choice. If the Russian decision to switch off the ‘de-confliction’ hotline in April was enough to force the US to reduce sharply its air activity in Syria, the Russian decision to switch off the ‘de-confliction’ hotline and to threaten to treat as aerial targets US aircraft flying west of the Euphrates is a threat the US cannot afford to disregard.
US shoots down Syrian government aircraft
By Peter Symonds, wsws.org
19 June 2017
In a marked escalation of the war in Syria, a US F-18 fighter jet yesterday shot down a Syrian government fighter bomber for the first time, claiming that it had been attacking pro-US rebel forces on the ground near Raqqa. While nominally fighting Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forces, the US shoot-down makes clear that the real target of American-led operations is the ousting of the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The US military justified the provocative act by claiming that the Syrian SU-22 had been bombing near so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) troops. It cited fighting that had taken place hours earlier between the Syrian military and SDF forces holding the town of Ja’Din as showing “hostile intent” and declared that attacks on “legitimate counter-ISIS operations will not be tolerated.” The statement absurdly declared that it was not seeking “to fight Syrian government, Russian or pro-government forces partnered with them.”
There is nothing legitimate about the military activities of the US and its allies inside Syria, which, under the guise of the “war on terror,” are seeking to carve out areas that can be used to mount operations against the Assad government and its Russian and Iranian backers. As ISIS militias in both Syria and Iraq are in retreat, the US preparations to move against Assad are coming increasingly into the open.
The Syrian army issued a statement saying that its aircraft had been on a mission against ISIS when it came under fire, accused the US of “coordinating” with ISIS and warned that the incident would have “dangerous repercussions.” The pilot has not been found and is presumed dead.
The US attack follows its shooting down of an unmanned pro-Syrian government drone earlier in June after it allegedly fired on US-backed troops in southern Syria near the border with Iraq. The US military has unilaterally declared “a deconfliction zone” with a radius of 55 kilometres around a training base at al-Tanf—a key border crossing between the two countries.
In effect, Washington has carved out an area of Syria where US and British special forces train so-called rebels—supposedly to fight ISIS, but in reality for its proxy war against the Assad government. The US has already conducted air strikes against pro-Syrian government forces that have sought to regain control of the vital border area.
Last week Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov phoned US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and demanded that the US stop attacking Syrian government forces as they seek to drive ISIS militias out of the border areas. “Lavrov expressed his categorical disagreement with the US strikes on pro-government forces and called on him to take concrete measures to prevent similar incidents in the future,” the Russian foreign ministry reported.
The situation throughout Syria remains extremely fraught with the Assad government accusing the US-led forces besieging Raqqa of allowing ISIS fighters to escape to the south where government troops are battling ISIS for control of the city of Deir es-Zor.
Over the weekend, Iran’s military fired ground-to-ground missiles for the first time from Iranian territory against ISIS positions inside Syria. While claiming that they were in retaliation for the June 7 ISIS attacks in Tehran, the missile attacks into the Deir es-Zor area were clearly aimed at bolstering the Syrian government forces.
The US proxy war in Syria is part of a broader confrontation which is not just aimed at the Assad government but more broadly against its backers—Iran and Russia. Trump’s trip to the Middle East last month was above all aimed at forging an alliance with Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Gulf States against Iran and its allies in the region.
The immediate outcome was the imposition of an all-out, Saudi-led economic blockade against Qatar—itself an act of war. Riyadh accused Qatar of sponsoring terrorism, but the real reason lies in Qatar’s relations with Iran and its reluctance to join Saudi Arabia in its anti-Iranian war drive.
The Saudi monarchy, which has long regarded Iran as its chief regional rival, is deeply hostile to the Assad government in Damascus, which it regards as part of a Shiite crescent that includes Shiite parties and militias in Iraq and Lebanon. Backed to the hilt by the US, Saudi Arabia is waging its own war in Yemen against Houthi rebels, who, it claims, are being supported by Iran and who ousted the US-Saudi puppet government in 2014.
The Trump government signalled its determination to ramp up the war in Syria in April when it launched a barrage of cruise missile strikes against a Syrian government air base on the pretext of unsubstantiated claims the government had carried out a gas attack. The US military is determined to rebuild anti-Assad forces after the devastating blow suffered by these pro-US militias in being driven out of Aleppo.
The shooting down of the Syrian SU-22 is another demonstration that the US is prepared to resort to the most reckless means to defend its footholds in Syria and lay the basis for the broader war that is being prepared.
While proclaiming its own “deconfliction zones” or no-go areas, the US military reiterated last month that it will operate at will throughout Syria. “We don’t recognise any specific zone in itself that we preclude ourselves from operating in,” Lieutenant General Jeffrey Harrigan, commander of the US air forces in the region, declared.
As a result the stage is set for a dramatic escalation of the Middle East conflict where a relatively minor incident or clash involving US forces and their Syrian, Iranian or Russian counterparts could erupt into a war that draws in major regional and world powers.
APPENDIX
A look at the US (McDonnell-Douglas) F-18 Hornet, the imperialist tool used to down the Syrian plane.It is mainly used by the Navy as a carrier-based fighter and light bomber weapon.
There is nothing legitimate about the military activities of the US and its allies inside Syria, which, under the guise of the “war on terror,” are seeking to carve out areas that can be used to mount operations against the Assad government and its Russian and Iranian backers. As ISIS militias in both Syria and Iraq are in retreat, the US preparations to move against Assad are coming increasingly into the open.