Parry writes: "The alleged ties between Turkish President Erdogan and
Islamist terrorists in Syria is an embarrassment for the Obama
administration and the U.S. news media, which would prefer to look the other
way rather than face up to the danger created by an out-of-control NATO
'ally.'"
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (photo: Reuters)
A Blind Eye Toward Turkey's Crimes
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
18 December 15
The alleged ties between Turkish President Erdogan and Islamist terrorists
in Syria is an embarrassment for the Obama administration and the U.S. news
media, which would prefer to look the other way rather than face up to the
danger created by an out-of-control NATO "ally," writes Robert Parry.
Theoretically, it would be a great story for the American press: an autocrat
so obsessed with overthrowing the leader of a neighboring country that he
authorizes his intelligence services to collaborate with terrorists in
staging a lethal sarin attack to be blamed on his enemy and thus trick major
powers to launch punishing bombing raids against the enemy's military.
And, after that scheme failed to achieve the desired intervention, the
autocrat continues to have his intelligence services aid terrorists inside
the neighboring country by providing weapons and safe transit for truck
convoys carrying the terrorists' oil to market. The story gets juicier
because the autocrat's son allegedly shares in the oil profits.
To make the story even more compelling, an opposition leader braves the
wrath of the autocrat by seeking to expose these intelligence schemes,
including the cover-up of key evidence. The autocrat's government then seeks
to prosecute the critic for "treason."
But the problem with this story, as far as the American government and press
are concerned, is that the autocratic leader, President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, is in charge of Turkey, a NATO ally and his hated neighbor is the
much demonized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Major U.S. news outlets and
political leaders also bought into the sarin deception and simply can't
afford to admit that they once again misled the American people on a matter
of war.
The Official Story of the sarin attack - as presented by Secretary of State
John Kerry, Human Rights Watch and other "respectable" sources - firmly laid
the blame for the Aug. 21, 2013 atrocity killing hundreds of civilians
outside Damascus on Assad. That became a powerful "group think" across
Official Washington.
Though a few independent media outlets, including Consortiumnews.com,
challenged the rush to judgment and noted the lack of evidence regarding
Assad's guilt, those doubts were brushed aside. (In an article on Aug. 30,
2013, I described the administration's "Government Assessment" blaming Assad
as a "dodgy dossier," which offered not a single piece of verifiable proof.)
However, as with the "certainty" about Iraq's WMD a decade earlier, Every
Important Person shared the Assad-did-it "group think." That meant - as far
as Official Washington was concerned - that Assad had crossed President
Barack Obama's "red line" against using chemical weapons. A massive U.S.
retaliatory bombing strike was considered just days away.
But Obama - at the last minute - veered away from launching those military
attacks, with Official Washington concluding that Obama had shown "weakness"
by not following through. What was virtually unreported was that U.S.
intelligence analysts had doubts about Assad's guilt and suspected a trap
being laid by extremists.
Despite those internal questions, the U.S. government and the compliant
mainstream media publicly continued to push the Assad-did-it propaganda
line. In a formal address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept.
24, 2013, Obama declared, "It's an insult to human reason and to the
legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime
carried out this attack."
Later, a senior State Department official tried to steer me toward the
Assad-is-guilty assessment of a British blogger then known as Moses Brown, a
pseudonym for Eliot Higgins, who now runs an outfit called Bellingcat which
follows an effective business model by reinforcing whatever the U.S.
propaganda machine is churning out on a topic, except having greater
credibility by posing as a "citizen blogger." [For more on Higgins, see
Consortiumnews.com's "'MH-17 Case: 'Old Journalism' vs. 'New'."]
The supposedly conclusive proof against Assad came in a "vector analysis"
developed by Human Rights Watch and The New York Times - tracing the flight
paths of two rockets back to a Syrian military base northwest of Damascus.
But that analysis collapsed when it became clear that only one of the
rockets carried sarin and its range was less than one-third the distance
between the army base and the point of impact. That meant the rocket
carrying the sarin appeared to have originated in rebel territory.
But the "group think" was resistant to all empirical evidence. It was so
powerful that even when the Turkish plot was uncovered by legendary
investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, his usual publication, The New
Yorker, refused to print it. Rebuffed in the United States - the land of
freedom of the press - Hersh had to take the story to the London Review of
Books to get it out in April 2014. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Was Turkey
Behind Syria Sarin Attack?"]
The Easier Route
It remained easier for The New York Times, The Washington Post and other
premier news outlets to simply ignore the compelling tale of possible
Turkish complicity in a serious war crime. After all, what would the
American people think if - after the mainstream media had failed to protect
the country against the lies that led to the disastrous Iraq War - the same
star news sources had done something similar on Syria by failing to ask
tough questions?
It's also now obvious that if Obama had ordered a retaliatory bombing
campaign against Assad in 2013, the likely winners would have been the
Islamic State and Al Qaeda's Nusra Front, which would have had the path
cleared for their conquest of Damascus, creating a humanitarian catastrophe
even worse than the current one.
To confess to such incompetence or dishonesty clearly had a big down-side.
So, the "smart" play was to simply let the old Assad-did-it narrative sit
there as something that could still be cited obliquely from time to time
under the phrase "Assad gassed his own people" and thus continue to justify
the slogan: "Assad must go!"
But that imperative - not to admit another major mistake - means that the
major U.S. news media also must ignore the courageous statements from Eren
Erdem, a deputy of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP),
who has publicly accused the Erdogan government of blocking an investigation
into Turkey's role in procuring the sarin allegedly delivered to Al
Qaeda-connected terrorists for use inside Syria.
In statements before parliament and to journalists, Erdem cited a derailed
indictment that was begun by the General Prosecutor's Office in the southern
Turkish city of Adana, with the criminal case number 2013/120.
Erdem said the prosecutor's office, using technical surveillance, discovered
that an Al Qaeda jihadist named Hayyam Kasap acquired the sarin.
At the press conference, Erdem said, "Wiretapped phone conversations reveal
the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the
process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the
toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in
the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the
investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is
fighting terrorism."
Erdem said the released operatives were allowed to cross the border into
Syria and the criminal investigation was halted.
Another CHP deputy, Ali Şeker, added that the Turkish government misled the
public by claiming Russia provided the sarin and that "Assad killed his
people with sarin and that requires a U.S. military intervention in Syria."
Erdem's disclosures, which he repeated in a recent interview with RT, the
Russian network, prompted the Ankara Prosecutor's Office to open an
investigation into Erdem for treason. Erdem defended himself, saying the
government's actions regarding the sarin case besmirched Turkey's
international reputation. He added that he also has been receiving death
threats.
"The paramilitary organization Ottoman Hearths is sharing my address [on
Twitter] and plans a raid [on my house]. I am being targeted with death
threats because I am patriotically opposed to something that tramples on my
country's prestige," Erdem said.
ISIS Oil Smuggling
Meanwhile, President Erdogan faces growing allegations that he tolerated the
Islamic State's lucrative smuggling of oil from wells in Syria through
border crossings in Turkey. Those oil convoys were bombed only last month
when Russian President Vladimir Putin essentially shamed President Obama
into taking action against this important source of Islamic State revenues.
Though Obama began his bombing campaign against Islamic State targets in
Iraq and Syria in summer 2014, the illicit oil smuggling was spared
interdiction for over a year as the U.S. government sought cooperation from
Erdogan, who recently acknowledged that the Islamic State and other jihadist
groups are using nearly 100 kilometers of Turkey's border to bring in
recruits and supplies.
Earlier this month, Obama said he has had "repeated conversations with
President Erdogan about the need to close the border between Turkey and
Syria," adding that "there's about 98 kilometers that are still used as a
transit point for foreign fighters, ISIL [Islamic State] shipping out fuel
for sale that helps finance their terrorist activities."
Russian officials expressed shock that the Islamic State was allowed to
continue operating an industrial-style delivery system involving hundreds of
trucks carrying oil into Turkey. Moscow also accused Erdogan's 34-year-old
son, Bilal Erdogan, of profiting off the Islamic State's oil trade, an
allegation that he denied.
The Russians say Bilal Erdogan is one of three partners in the BMZ Group, a
Turkish oil and shipping company that has purchased oil from the Islamic
State. The Malta Independent reported that BMZ purchased two oil tanker
ships from the Malta-based Oil Transportation & Shipping Services Co Ltd,
which is owned by Azerbaijani billionaire Mubariz Mansimov.
Another three oil tankers purchased by BMZ were acquired from Palmali
Shipping and Transportation Agency, which is also owned by Mansimov and
which shares the same Istanbul address with Oil Transportation & Shipping
Services, which is owned by Mansimov's Palmali Group, along with dozens of
other companies set up in Malta.
The Russians further assert that Turkey's shoot-down of a Russian Su-24
bomber along the Syrian-Turkish border on Nov. 24 - which led to the murder
of the pilot, by Turkish-backed rebels, as he parachuted to the ground and
to the death of a Russian marine on a rescue operation - was motivated by
Erdogan's fury over the destruction of his son's Islamic State oil
operation.
Erdogan has denied that charge, claiming the shoot-down was simply a case of
defending Turkish territory, although, according to the Turkish account, the
Russian plane strayed over a slice of Turkish territory for only 17 seconds.
The Russians dispute even that, calling the attack a premeditated ambush.
President Obama and the mainstream U.S. press sided with Turkey, displaying
almost relish at the deaths of Russians in Syria and also showing no
sympathy for the Russian victims of an earlier terrorist bombing of a
tourist flight over Sinai in Egypt. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Obama Ignores
Russian Terror Victims."]
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman expressed the prevailing
attitude of Official Washington by ridiculing anyone who had praised Putin's
military intervention in Syria or who thought the Russian president was
"crazy like a fox," Friedman wrote: "Some of us thought he was just crazy.
"Well, two months later, let's do the math: So far, Putin's Syrian adventure
has resulted in a Russian civilian airliner carrying 224 people being blown
up, apparently by pro-ISIS militants in Sinai. Turkey shot down a Russian
bomber after it strayed into Turkish territory. And then Syrian rebels
killed one of the pilots as he parachuted to earth and one of the Russian
marines sent to rescue him."
Taking Sides
The smug contempt that the mainstream U.S. media routinely shows toward
anything involving Russia or Putin may help explain the cavalier disinterest
in NATO member Turkey's reckless behavior. Though Turkey's willful
shoot-down of a Russian plane that was not threatening Turkey could have
precipitated a nuclear showdown between Russia and NATO, criticism of
Erdogan was muted at most.
Similarly, neither the Obama administration nor the mainstream media wants
to address the overwhelming evidence that Turkey - along with other U.S.
"allies" such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar - have been aiding and abetting
Sunni jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda and Islamic State, for years.
Instead, Official Washington plays along with the fiction that Saudi Arabia,
Turkey and others are getting serious about combating terrorism.
The contrary reality is occasionally blurted out by a U.S. official or
revealed when a U.S. intelligence report gets leaked or declassified. For
instance, in 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted in a
confidential diplomatic memo, disclosed by Wikileaks, that "donors in Saudi
Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist
groups worldwide."
According to a Defense Intelligence Agency report from August 2012, "AQI [Al
Qaeda in Iraq, which later morphed into the Islamic State] supported the
Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the
media. . AQI declared its opposition of Assad's government because it
considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis."
The DIA report added, "The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the
major forces driving the insurgency in Syria. . The West, Gulf countries,
and Turkey support the opposition."
The DIA analysts already understood the risks that AQI presented both to
Syria and Iraq. The report included a stark warning about the expansion of
AQI, which was changing into the Islamic State. The brutal armed movement
was seeing its ranks swelled by the arrival of global jihadists rallying to
the black banner of Sunni militancy, intolerant of both Westerners and
"heretics" from Shiite and other non-Sunni branches of Islam.
The goal was to establish a "Salafist principality in eastern Syria" where
Islamic State's caliphate is now located, and that this is "exactly what the
supporting powers to the opposition" - i.e. the West, Gulf states, and
Turkey - "want in order to isolate the Syrian regime," the DIA report said.
In October 2014, Vice President Joe Biden told students at Harvard's Kennedy
School that "the Saudis, the emirates, etc. . were so determined to take
down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war . [that] they poured
hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military
weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except the people who were
being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda."
Despite these occasional bursts of honesty, the U.S. government and the
mainstream media have put their goal of having another "regime change" -
this time in Syria - and their contempt for Putin ahead of any meaningful
cooperation toward defeating the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
This ordering of priorities further means there is no practical reason to
revisit who was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack. If
Assad's government was innocent and Ergogan's government shared in the
guilt, that would present a problem for NATO, which would have to decide if
Turkey had crossed a "red line" and deserved being expelled from the
military alliance.
But perhaps even more so, an admission that the U.S. government and the U.S.
news media had rushed to another incorrect judgment in the Middle East - and
that another war policy was driven by propaganda rather than facts - could
destroy what trust the American people have left in those institutions. On a
personal level, it might mean that the pundits and the politicians who were
wrong about Iraq's WMD would have to acknowledge that they had learned
nothing from that disaster.
It might even renew calls for some of them - the likes of The New York
Times' Friedman and The Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt -
to finally be held accountable for consistently misinforming and misleading
the American people.
So, at least for now - from a perspective of self-interest - it makes more
sense for the Obama administration and major news outlets to ignore the
developing story of a NATO ally's ties to terrorism, including an alleged
connection to a grave war crime, the sarin attack outside Damascus.
________________________________________
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on
the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (photo: Reuters)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/16/a-blind-eye-toward-turkeys-crimes/http
s://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/16/a-blind-eye-toward-turkeys-crimes/
A Blind Eye Toward Turkey's Crimes
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
18 December 15
The alleged ties between Turkish President Erdogan and Islamist terrorists
in Syria is an embarrassment for the Obama administration and the U.S. news
media, which would prefer to look the other way rather than face up to the
danger created by an out-of-control NATO "ally," writes Robert Parry.
heoretically, it would be a great story for the American press: an autocrat
so obsessed with overthrowing the leader of a neighboring country that he
authorizes his intelligence services to collaborate with terrorists in
staging a lethal sarin attack to be blamed on his enemy and thus trick major
powers to launch punishing bombing raids against the enemy's military.
And, after that scheme failed to achieve the desired intervention, the
autocrat continues to have his intelligence services aid terrorists inside
the neighboring country by providing weapons and safe transit for truck
convoys carrying the terrorists' oil to market. The story gets juicier
because the autocrat's son allegedly shares in the oil profits.
To make the story even more compelling, an opposition leader braves the
wrath of the autocrat by seeking to expose these intelligence schemes,
including the cover-up of key evidence. The autocrat's government then seeks
to prosecute the critic for "treason."
But the problem with this story, as far as the American government and press
are concerned, is that the autocratic leader, President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, is in charge of Turkey, a NATO ally and his hated neighbor is the
much demonized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Major U.S. news outlets and
political leaders also bought into the sarin deception and simply can't
afford to admit that they once again misled the American people on a matter
of war.
The Official Story of the sarin attack - as presented by Secretary of State
John Kerry, Human Rights Watch and other "respectable" sources - firmly laid
the blame for the Aug. 21, 2013 atrocity killing hundreds of civilians
outside Damascus on Assad. That became a powerful "group think" across
Official Washington.
Though a few independent media outlets, including Consortiumnews.com,
challenged the rush to judgment and noted the lack of evidence regarding
Assad's guilt, those doubts were brushed aside. (In an article on Aug. 30,
2013, I described the administration's "Government Assessment" blaming Assad
as a "dodgy dossier," which offered not a single piece of verifiable proof.)
However, as with the "certainty" about Iraq's WMD a decade earlier, Every
Important Person shared the Assad-did-it "group think." That meant - as far
as Official Washington was concerned - that Assad had crossed President
Barack Obama's "red line" against using chemical weapons. A massive U.S.
retaliatory bombing strike was considered just days away.
But Obama - at the last minute - veered away from launching those military
attacks, with Official Washington concluding that Obama had shown "weakness"
by not following through. What was virtually unreported was that U.S.
intelligence analysts had doubts about Assad's guilt and suspected a trap
being laid by extremists.
Despite those internal questions, the U.S. government and the compliant
mainstream media publicly continued to push the Assad-did-it propaganda
line. In a formal address to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept.
24, 2013, Obama declared, "It's an insult to human reason and to the
legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the regime
carried out this attack."
Later, a senior State Department official tried to steer me toward the
Assad-is-guilty assessment of a British blogger then known as Moses Brown, a
pseudonym for Eliot Higgins, who now runs an outfit called Bellingcat which
follows an effective business model by reinforcing whatever the U.S.
propaganda machine is churning out on a topic, except having greater
credibility by posing as a "citizen blogger." [For more on Higgins, see
Consortiumnews.com's "'MH-17 Case: 'Old Journalism' vs. 'New'."]
The supposedly conclusive proof against Assad came in a "vector analysis"
developed by Human Rights Watch and The New York Times - tracing the flight
paths of two rockets back to a Syrian military base northwest of Damascus.
But that analysis collapsed when it became clear that only one of the
rockets carried sarin and its range was less than one-third the distance
between the army base and the point of impact. That meant the rocket
carrying the sarin appeared to have originated in rebel territory.
But the "group think" was resistant to all empirical evidence. It was so
powerful that even when the Turkish plot was uncovered by legendary
investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, his usual publication, The New
Yorker, refused to print it. Rebuffed in the United States - the land of
freedom of the press - Hersh had to take the story to the London Review of
Books to get it out in April 2014. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Was Turkey
Behind Syria Sarin Attack?"]
The Easier Route
It remained easier for The New York Times, The Washington Post and other
premier news outlets to simply ignore the compelling tale of possible
Turkish complicity in a serious war crime. After all, what would the
American people think if - after the mainstream media had failed to protect
the country against the lies that led to the disastrous Iraq War - the same
star news sources had done something similar on Syria by failing to ask
tough questions?
It's also now obvious that if Obama had ordered a retaliatory bombing
campaign against Assad in 2013, the likely winners would have been the
Islamic State and Al Qaeda's Nusra Front, which would have had the path
cleared for their conquest of Damascus, creating a humanitarian catastrophe
even worse than the current one.
To confess to such incompetence or dishonesty clearly had a big down-side.
So, the "smart" play was to simply let the old Assad-did-it narrative sit
there as something that could still be cited obliquely from time to time
under the phrase "Assad gassed his own people" and thus continue to justify
the slogan: "Assad must go!"
But that imperative - not to admit another major mistake - means that the
major U.S. news media also must ignore the courageous statements from Eren
Erdem, a deputy of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP),
who has publicly accused the Erdogan government of blocking an investigation
into Turkey's role in procuring the sarin allegedly delivered to Al
Qaeda-connected terrorists for use inside Syria.
In statements before parliament and to journalists, Erdem cited a derailed
indictment that was begun by the General Prosecutor's Office in the southern
Turkish city of Adana, with the criminal case number 2013/120.
Erdem said the prosecutor's office, using technical surveillance, discovered
that an Al Qaeda jihadist named Hayyam Kasap acquired the sarin.
At the press conference, Erdem said, "Wiretapped phone conversations reveal
the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the
process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the
toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in
the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the
investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is
fighting terrorism."
Erdem said the released operatives were allowed to cross the border into
Syria and the criminal investigation was halted.
Another CHP deputy, Ali Şeker, added that the Turkish government misled the
public by claiming Russia provided the sarin and that "Assad killed his
people with sarin and that requires a U.S. military intervention in Syria."
Erdem's disclosures, which he repeated in a recent interview with RT, the
Russian network, prompted the Ankara Prosecutor's Office to open an
investigation into Erdem for treason. Erdem defended himself, saying the
government's actions regarding the sarin case besmirched Turkey's
international reputation. He added that he also has been receiving death
threats.
"The paramilitary organization Ottoman Hearths is sharing my address [on
Twitter] and plans a raid [on my house]. I am being targeted with death
threats because I am patriotically opposed to something that tramples on my
country's prestige," Erdem said.
ISIS Oil Smuggling
Meanwhile, President Erdogan faces growing allegations that he tolerated the
Islamic State's lucrative smuggling of oil from wells in Syria through
border crossings in Turkey. Those oil convoys were bombed only last month
when Russian President Vladimir Putin essentially shamed President Obama
into taking action against this important source of Islamic State revenues.
Though Obama began his bombing campaign against Islamic State targets in
Iraq and Syria in summer 2014, the illicit oil smuggling was spared
interdiction for over a year as the U.S. government sought cooperation from
Erdogan, who recently acknowledged that the Islamic State and other jihadist
groups are using nearly 100 kilometers of Turkey's border to bring in
recruits and supplies.
Earlier this month, Obama said he has had "repeated conversations with
President Erdogan about the need to close the border between Turkey and
Syria," adding that "there's about 98 kilometers that are still used as a
transit point for foreign fighters, ISIL [Islamic State] shipping out fuel
for sale that helps finance their terrorist activities."
Russian officials expressed shock that the Islamic State was allowed to
continue operating an industrial-style delivery system involving hundreds of
trucks carrying oil into Turkey. Moscow also accused Erdogan's 34-year-old
son, Bilal Erdogan, of profiting off the Islamic State's oil trade, an
allegation that he denied.
The Russians say Bilal Erdogan is one of three partners in the BMZ Group, a
Turkish oil and shipping company that has purchased oil from the Islamic
State. The Malta Independent reported that BMZ purchased two oil tanker
ships from the Malta-based Oil Transportation & Shipping Services Co Ltd,
which is owned by Azerbaijani billionaire Mubariz Mansimov.
Another three oil tankers purchased by BMZ were acquired from Palmali
Shipping and Transportation Agency, which is also owned by Mansimov and
which shares the same Istanbul address with Oil Transportation & Shipping
Services, which is owned by Mansimov's Palmali Group, along with dozens of
other companies set up in Malta.
The Russians further assert that Turkey's shoot-down of a Russian Su-24
bomber along the Syrian-Turkish border on Nov. 24 - which led to the murder
of the pilot, by Turkish-backed rebels, as he parachuted to the ground and
to the death of a Russian marine on a rescue operation - was motivated by
Erdogan's fury over the destruction of his son's Islamic State oil
operation.
Erdogan has denied that charge, claiming the shoot-down was simply a case of
defending Turkish territory, although, according to the Turkish account, the
Russian plane strayed over a slice of Turkish territory for only 17 seconds.
The Russians dispute even that, calling the attack a premeditated ambush.
President Obama and the mainstream U.S. press sided with Turkey, displaying
almost relish at the deaths of Russians in Syria and also showing no
sympathy for the Russian victims of an earlier terrorist bombing of a
tourist flight over Sinai in Egypt. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Obama Ignores
Russian Terror Victims."]
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman expressed the prevailing
attitude of Official Washington by ridiculing anyone who had praised Putin's
military intervention in Syria or who thought the Russian president was
"crazy like a fox," Friedman wrote: "Some of us thought he was just crazy.
"Well, two months later, let's do the math: So far, Putin's Syrian adventure
has resulted in a Russian civilian airliner carrying 224 people being blown
up, apparently by pro-ISIS militants in Sinai. Turkey shot down a Russian
bomber after it strayed into Turkish territory. And then Syrian rebels
killed one of the pilots as he parachuted to earth and one of the Russian
marines sent to rescue him."
Taking Sides
The smug contempt that the mainstream U.S. media routinely shows toward
anything involving Russia or Putin may help explain the cavalier disinterest
in NATO member Turkey's reckless behavior. Though Turkey's willful
shoot-down of a Russian plane that was not threatening Turkey could have
precipitated a nuclear showdown between Russia and NATO, criticism of
Erdogan was muted at most.
Similarly, neither the Obama administration nor the mainstream media wants
to address the overwhelming evidence that Turkey - along with other U.S.
"allies" such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar - have been aiding and abetting
Sunni jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda and Islamic State, for years.
Instead, Official Washington plays along with the fiction that Saudi Arabia,
Turkey and others are getting serious about combating terrorism.
The contrary reality is occasionally blurted out by a U.S. official or
revealed when a U.S. intelligence report gets leaked or declassified. For
instance, in 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted in a
confidential diplomatic memo, disclosed by Wikileaks, that "donors in Saudi
Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist
groups worldwide."
According to a Defense Intelligence Agency report from August 2012, "AQI [Al
Qaeda in Iraq, which later morphed into the Islamic State] supported the
Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the
media. . AQI declared its opposition of Assad's government because it
considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis."
The DIA report added, "The salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the
major forces driving the insurgency in Syria. . The West, Gulf countries,
and Turkey support the opposition."
The DIA analysts already understood the risks that AQI presented both to
Syria and Iraq. The report included a stark warning about the expansion of
AQI, which was changing into the Islamic State. The brutal armed movement
was seeing its ranks swelled by the arrival of global jihadists rallying to
the black banner of Sunni militancy, intolerant of both Westerners and
"heretics" from Shiite and other non-Sunni branches of Islam.
The goal was to establish a "Salafist principality in eastern Syria" where
Islamic State's caliphate is now located, and that this is "exactly what the
supporting powers to the opposition" - i.e. the West, Gulf states, and
Turkey - "want in order to isolate the Syrian regime," the DIA report said.
In October 2014, Vice President Joe Biden told students at Harvard's Kennedy
School that "the Saudis, the emirates, etc. . were so determined to take
down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war . [that] they poured
hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military
weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except the people who were
being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda."
Despite these occasional bursts of honesty, the U.S. government and the
mainstream media have put their goal of having another "regime change" -
this time in Syria - and their contempt for Putin ahead of any meaningful
cooperation toward defeating the Islamic State and Al Qaeda.
This ordering of priorities further means there is no practical reason to
revisit who was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack. If
Assad's government was innocent and Ergogan's government shared in the
guilt, that would present a problem for NATO, which would have to decide if
Turkey had crossed a "red line" and deserved being expelled from the
military alliance.
But perhaps even more so, an admission that the U.S. government and the U.S.
news media had rushed to another incorrect judgment in the Middle East - and
that another war policy was driven by propaganda rather than facts - could
destroy what trust the American people have left in those institutions. On a
personal level, it might mean that the pundits and the politicians who were
wrong about Iraq's WMD would have to acknowledge that they had learned
nothing from that disaster.
It might even renew calls for some of them - the likes of The New York
Times' Friedman and The Washington Post's editorial page editor Fred Hiatt -
to finally be held accountable for consistently misinforming and misleading
the American people.
So, at least for now - from a perspective of self-interest - it makes more
sense for the Obama administration and major news outlets to ignore the
developing story of a NATO ally's ties to terrorism, including an alleged
connection to a grave war crime, the sarin attack outside Damascus.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories
for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from
Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on
the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for
only $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on
this offer, click here.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
