Some LQ members of this thread might like this article on Why Politicians Are Always Trying to Hustle You by Pierre Lemieux!

https://fee.org/articles/why-politic...to-hustle-you/

H.A. Goodman - WIKILEAKS EXPOSES U.S. PLAN TO OVERTHROW SEVEN NATIONS: Gen. Wesley Clark Is The Whistleblower
H.A. Goodman - TRUMP NOT GOING INTO SYRIA. Trump Promises to Stay Out

RT America - ‘Media always likes wars, it makes for good news’ – fmr CIA officer

What we see in USA is pretty much par for the course for "imperialism." After WW2, America was the big man on campus in the western world, and industrialists were making stupendous amounts of money on war. These men didn't want "war" to end – ever.

But, the decisions are being made in boardrooms, or in "situation rooms," where slick-talking salesmen speak of "battlefield management systems," using any colloquial phrase other than, say, "death." Certainly, the word, "defeat," is also never uttered. War is painless if you just throw enough military hardware at it. Everything will go according to plan.

When you get boots on the ground, however, you find a determined opponent who's willing to use "unconventional means" to protect his homeland. Booby-traps, for instance. A perfectly ordinary "road construction crew" repaved a section of highway. Little did the Americans know that they planted thousands of pounds of explosives under it. When an American convoy came along the road, the bombs were set off. An "improvised explosive device" makes a great booby-trap. This is guerrilla warfare. This sort of thing is not in the salesman's pitch.

A century before, Pax Brittanica was the big-man, and the English similarly found themselves embroiled in conflicts in places where they eventually concluded they just didn't need to be. However, it is also significant to note that all of these divisions of the Middle East into the countries that we know today came from settlements (at British hands) following World War 1. Many of America's moves in the region are trying to maintain these very-artificial divisions of a much larger land once called, Persia. (Centuries later, "the Ottoman Empire.") Originally, the British carved out the most oil-rich slice of the area, named it Saudi Arabia, and put a puppet government in control of it that was aligned with the British. They did that to secure control of ... the oil.

Some battles were fought, not because of the Germans, but to facilitate future control of the riches of the Middle East. Tens of thousands of dead soldiers never knew for what "cause" they really died.

America has been fighting in Afghanistan for three reasons that you don't hear on the news: opium, lithium, and a pipeline to the Caspian Sea oil fields, intended to bypass Russia and specifically to benefit companies owned by Messrs. Cheney and Bush. Can private interests "co-opt" use of the American military to suit their business profits? Absolutely yes.

Some LQ members of this thread might like this article about war on the horizon!!

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017...horizon/print/

Unfortunately it's so full of slant that it's hard to read. I have to keep striking-out words like "Zionist" and "presstitute," and often, when I do, two-thirds of the sentence is now gone.

I think that the odds are zero that "nuclear holocaust" will precipitate from a brand-new Secretary of State and/or a brand-new American President who shoot off their mouths. Russia is a very old country and its leaders have seen American officials come and go. They know as well as anyone that nuclear weapons are both strategically and tactically useless: they would poison the planet, because the winds and the waters travel around the globe.

No matter how accusatory our Secretary of State might be, he will be received cordially and listened-to politely. IF(!) he then shows any willingness to listen, he will be talked to. And then, he will go back home.

There is nothing in Syria, nor anywhere else on Earth, to justify the global conflagration that some war-locks in Washington seem to covet. And, I daresay that there's really nothing that America can do to sufficiently piss-off Russia to cause it to lose its composure. The war-locks want war for their own reasons, all of which have to do with money. They also don't mind throwing sh*t at a President whom they obviously despise, and hoping that some of it will somehow stick.

And authors like this are obviously "war-locks," too. For instance, a statement by Russia that wars will never again be fought on its own soil should not be considered strange when said by any country. It doesn't mean, "we'll come to you!" In fact, it doesn't contain a threat, veiled or otherwise, to do anything at all.

The war-locks most of all want to deflect attention away from the President's decidedly domestic focus: on infrastructure, renegotiating lousy trade agreements, and rebuilding the industrial productive capacity of a nation which once was "the manufacturer for the world." We shouldn't be spending money on repairing our crumbling Interstate highway bridges when that money could be spent on warplanes that cost ##CLASSIFIED## million dollars a pop. To heck with what "Ike" said about "fine, well-equipped hospitals." (He was just a Five-Star General. What could he know about war?) We've already booked $3 trillion dollars in pure corporate profit from Afghanistan, and we want more, more, more, more, more ...

We're talking about making more money every six seconds than most Americans will see in their entire lives. The entire power-structure that we have today in Washington, DC is derived from this perversion, not from anything that is of interest to the ordinary citizens of the country. And, to the war-locks, nothing is more important.

Not even the United States of America. The entire country is just a means to an end.

So wasn't the White Helmets given all out praise or something by movie stars; or win some kind of award? *claps slowly*

It also bears repeating that anyone can say that anyone (say, "Swedish Medical Associations") said anything ... and, if only they point to a web-site somewhere, there are people who will automatically assume that it is true.

Face it: "anyone has a bully pulpit," and it's just as hard as ever before to "objectively verify" anything.

You should also be aware of the tactic of "an appeal to fear." For instance: we've got "Deep State" (whatever that is), "CIA," "Al Queda," and "Britain's intelligence services" to inject fear-of-authority into the story and undoubtedly transform it into truth. The "White Helmets" is not much removed from "Black Shirts." Another vacuous, but no doubt scary, throwback to some unstoppable police-state force somewhere. Yeah, everybody's been "playing us all," and we're just now catching-on thanks to some web site.

And finally, "hell, yeah, this Trump fellow is going to put is all at war with 'Syria, Iran, and even Russia!'" I guess we should all Duck and Cover, 2. (P.S.: a hilarious parody video.)

Yeah, Syria has a despotic leader in charge of it right now, and someone gave the idiot nerve gas. When they tried to take it all away from him, he was idiot enough to lie about it and keep some. And then, he was idiot enough to use it. So, we launched more than 50 cruise missiles (about $2 million each) to ... uhh ... disable the airfield for a few hours. (Planes were taking off again the next day.)

Yeah, maybe Russia has been supplying the idiot – but the USA supplies plenty of other idiots in the same neck of the woods. So, what do we do? Start "global thermonuclear war?" It's not that easy, folks.

H.A. Goodman - WIKILEAKS JUST RELEASED CLINTON SYRIA EMAIL: Hillary Clinton Knew AQ on U.S. Side in Syria

Mouthy Buddha - THE SYRIAN CHEMICAL ATTACK VIDEO WAS A HOAX

Still, Trump's actual comments are apropos: "This man is an evil man! This man is a beast! Why are you supporting him?"

Of course, USA is doing the same thing in other parts of the same region.

And, maybe, this is what both parties are doing wrong: trying to prop-up dictators, ostensibly for their "alliance" with business interests.

Anyone who would use nerve gas is a psychopath. And, so is anyone who would give such things to psychopaths. (For instance, who the fsck gave missiles to North Korea?)

I have not been convinced even the slightest that it was Bashar Al-Assad. Again, this guy could appear before me and say kick me in the shins and I would still defend him at this point. Not because I like him, because as I will reiterate my point from previous posts - what do you think is going to happen to Syria when he goes the way of Qaddafi and Saddam? Just what do you think will happen to the non-Sunni Muslims, the Shia and their offshoot Alawites, the Kurds, Druz, Yezidi and Christians at the hands of these rebels? Why am I defending Assad? Because I am being forced to at this point, because I have seen and heard this argument before; haven't you? And I already know the outcome. Why should Syria be any different?

As for the DPRK - nobody gave DPRK anything. All of their technology is mainly Soviet era equipment. I am more inclined to believe that they took whatever they have and attempted to extend it - and what - you do not think that even the North Koreans cannot try to reverse engineer what they still had from the Soviet days, and try to improve upon it some how? Why is that so hard to believe?

Ooopsie.......


At this point I am inclined to believe him even more.

The Soviets certainly did, and since then no one – especially not the Chinese, who are right next door – have never gone back into that country and said to them, "you've been a bad boy, you can't have these toys anymore, turn 'em over to us right now." Of course, North Korea only exists because of an "interrupted war" that, we all can be sure, is not yet finished.

Every tin-pot in the Middle East knows that he can get the attention of the rest of the world, and this might not stop happening unless and until the "lines in the sand" that were drawn after World War 1 are erased. (Don't hold your breath on that one.) Russia holds up one tin-pot, America another, England a third, and so on. None of them actually have compelling national interests in the outcome. We should have learned from Korea or from Vietnam. The one and only thing we've done differently, in all these wars that we have fought and lost since those two, is to stop drafting kids to fight in them.

Correct it is an ongoing war, and why the Chinese have ordered a significant amount of troops on the DPRK border is rather curious. Also they have rejected coal shipments from the DPRK, very odd behavior for a country that is known to be historical allies with the DPRK. It looks like even China is losing patience with the antics of the DPRK.

I do not presume to know how to solve the issues in the Middle East, but I can at least offer my in stating that recent US actions have not been helpful at all. It has devolved to a point that I would rather just let the Russians have at it. It would be a win-win anyways wouldn't it? Syria would stabilise at the expense of Russia instead of the US. Yes Assad would still be in power, but considering the alternative I would rather have that outcome than the alternative. How can the US help the situation in the Middle East? By stop trying to help.