Stephen Lendman

Longstanding ties remain firm. Both nations are imperial partners. Naked aggression is official policy. Regime change in Syria is planned. Daily events head inexorably toward full-scale intervention.

The latest incident ups the stakes. On May 4, The New York Times headlined "Israel Bombs Syria as the US Weighs Its Own Options," saying: An unnamed US official said "Israel bombed a target in Syria overnight Thursday. (Washington) consider(s its own) military options, including carrying out (its) own airstrikes."

According to Reuters, "(t)he attack took place on Friday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet approved it in a secret meeting on Thursday night…."

These type meetings often precede imminent action. They're held to approve them.

CNN's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr said "(t)he United States believes Israel has conducted an airstrike into Syria, two US officials tell CNN." "US and Western intelligence agencies are reviewing classified data showing Israel most likely conducted a strike in the Thursday-Friday time frame, according to both officials." "This is the same time frame that the US collected additional data showing Israel was flying a high number of warplanes over Lebanon." An unnamed Israeli military source said "(w)e will do whatever is necessary to stop the transfer of weapons from Syria to terrorist organizations. We have done it in the past and we will do it if necessary the future."

Pretexts are easy to create. Washington and Israel do so to justify crimes of war and against humanity.

Matthew J. Nasuti

"CIA could control forces in 'Stan after 2014." (Army Times)

Scattered throughout Afghanistan are secret CIA militias that may be functioning as death squads. Reports of their activities have surfaced for years in eastern Afghanistan, especially in Khost Province, but they have also been reported in Spin Boldak, Kandahar and the latest in Maidan Wardak Province, where residents are rising up in protest. For the past month newspapers around the world have been filled with headlines about villagers and students disappearing and being killed in Maidan Wardak by CIA and Special Forces personnel and their allies. The reports have blackened America’s image. The stories are disturbingly similar. Villagers are seized in their homes at night and are never heard from again. Bodies are dumped in the countryside with signs of torture. The Taliban are ousted from areas only to have the vacuum filled by criminal gangs with ties to the CIA. The idea seems to replace one terror group with another, as long as the second group pledges loyalty to the United States. This is what U.S. security agencies call “counter-terrorism.” The flaws in the program are:

1. These local warlords are committing war crimes;
2. Support for such terrorists conflicts with fundamental American values; and
3. The fear and violence they generate are fueling anti-Americanism and aiding Taliban recruitment.

Over the long term, security has worsened in every area that these private militias have operated. There is nothing positive that can be said of these militias.

Sherwood Ross

In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky said he never expected much of President Obama, adding, ”The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain.”

Maybe the reasons for Obama’s transformation from a Chicago law professor into a world-class totalitarian thug is that he is a creature of the Central Intelligence Agency; that both his parents were CIA payrollers; that the CIA financed his college education and gave him his first job afterwards—-so that we may well have a president beholden to this international criminal organization, an agency that has left a trail of blood, turmoil, and assassinations around the globe.

According to the May 6th The New Yorker, when General James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asked at an Obama Situation Room meeting why the U.S. was building a second air force in the form of a CIA drone attack fleet, Obama told him, “The CIA gets what it wants.” That Obama holds this view is reinforced by Cameron Munter, President Obama’s former ambassador to Pakistan. Munter questioned whether the drone strikes in Pakistan weren’t having a blowback effect on the Pakistani public. Writing in the magazine, Steve Coll says Munter learned under Obama: “It was what the CIA believed that really counted.”

Reporter Coll says America’s drone war is a major factor in why U.S. relations with Pakistan have “collapsed.” Today, he writes, “the U.S. has surpassed India as the most hated nation in Pakistan.” Coll adds, “Obama seems unwilling to confront the possibility that drone strikes may be creating more enemies than they’re eliminating.”