Perhaps Bookshare.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of abdulah aga
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2015 6:47 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case?
Hi list,
I have question,
is any one have this 2 books?
from Robert Parry America's Stolen Narrative and
-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Vieni
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2015 8:02 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case?
Parry writes: "As with the dubious naval clash off the coast of North
Vietnam in 1964, which helped launch the Vietnam War, U.S. officials quickly
seized on the MH-17 crash for its emotional and propaganda appeal - and used
it to ratchet up tensions against Russia.
The MH-17 crash site. (photo: Russia Insider)
MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case?
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
19 July 15
In 1964, the Tonkin Gulf incident was used to justify the Vietnam War
although U.S. intelligence quickly knew the facts were not what the U.S.
government claimed. Now, the MH-17 case is being exploited to justify a new
Cold War as U.S. intelligence again is silent about what it knows, writes
Robert Parry.
One year ago, the world experienced what could become the Tonkin Gulf
incident of World War III, the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
over eastern Ukraine. As with the dubious naval clash off the coast of North
Vietnam in 1964, which helped launch the Vietnam War, U.S. officials quickly
seized on the MH-17 crash for its emotional and propaganda appeal - and used
it to ratchet up tensions against Russia.
Shocked at the thought of 298 innocent people plunging to their deaths from
33,000 feet last July 17, the world recoiled in horror, a fury that was then
focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin. With Putin's face emblazoned on
magazine covers, the European Union got in line behind the U.S.-backed coup
regime in Ukraine and endorsed economic sanctions to punish Russia.
In the year that has followed, the U.S. government has continued to escalate
tensions with Russia, supporting the Ukrainian regime in its brutal
"anti-terrorism operation" that has slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians
in eastern Ukraine. The authorities in Kiev have even dispatched neo-Nazi
and ultranationalist militias, supported by jihadists called "brothers" of
the Islamic State, to act as the tip of the spear. [See Consortiumnews.com's
"Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists."]
Raising world tensions even further, the Russians have made clear that they
will not allow the ethnic Russian resistance to be annihilated, setting the
stage for a potential escalation of hostilities and even a possible nuclear
showdown between the United States and Russia.
But the propaganda linchpin to the West's extreme anger toward Russia
remains the MH-17 shoot-down, which the United States and the West continue
to pin on the Russian rebels - and by extension - Russia and Putin. The
latest examples are media reports about the Dutch crash investigation
suggesting that an anti-aircraft missile, allegedly involved in destroying
MH-17, was fired from rebel-controlled territory.
Yet, the U.S. mainstream media remains stunningly disinterested in the
"dog-not-barking" question of why the U.S. intelligence community has been
so quiet about its MH-17 analysis since it released a sketchy report relying
mostly on "social media" on July 22, 2014, just five days after the
shoot-down. A source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the
reason for the intelligence community's silence is that more definitive
analysis pointed to a rogue Ukrainian operation implicating one of the
pro-regime oligarchs.
The source said that if this U.S. analysis were to see the light of day, the
Ukrainian "narrative" that has supplied the international pressure on Russia
would collapse. In other words, the Obama administration is giving a higher
priority to keeping Putin on the defensive than to bringing the MH-17
killers to justice.
Like the Tonkin Gulf case, the evidence on the MH-17 case was shaky and
contradictory from the start. But, in both cases, U.S. officials confidently
pointed fingers at the "enemy." President Lyndon Johnson blamed North
Vietnam in 1964 and Secretary of State John Kerry implicated ethnic Russian
rebels and their backers in Moscow in 2014. In both cases, analysts in the
U.S. intelligence community were less certain and even reached contrary
conclusions once more evidence was available.
In both cases, those divergent assessments appear to have been suppressed so
as not to interfere with what was regarded as a national security priority -
confronting "North Vietnamese aggression" in 1964 and "Russian aggression"
in 2014. To put out the contrary information would have undermined the
government's policy and damaged "credibility." So the facts - or at least
the conflicting judgments - were hidden.
The Price of Silence
In the case of the Tonkin Gulf, it took years for the truth to finally
emerge and - in the meantime - tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and
millions of Vietnamese had lost their lives. Yet, much of the reality was
known soon after the Tonkin Gulf incident on Aug. 4, 1964.
Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1964 was a young Defense Department official,
recounts - in his 2002 book Secrets - how the Tonkin Gulf falsehoods took
shape, first with the panicked cables from a U.S. Navy captain relaying
confused sonar readings and then with that false storyline presented to the
American people.
As Ellsberg describes, President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara announced retaliatory airstrikes on Aug. 4, 1964, telling "the
American public that the North Vietnamese, for the second time in two days,
had attacked U.S. warships on 'routine patrol in international waters'; that
this was clearly a 'deliberate' pattern of 'naked aggression'; that the
evidence for the second attack, like the first, was 'unequivocal'; that the
attack had been 'unprovoked'; and that the United States, by responding in
order to deter any repetition, intended no wider war."
Ellsberg wrote: "By midnight on the fourth, or within a day or two, I knew
that each one of those assurances was false." Yet, the White House made no
effort to clarify the false or misleading statements. The falsehoods were
left standing for several years while Johnson sharply escalated the war by
dispatching a half million soldiers to Vietnam.
In the MH-17 case, we saw something similar. Within three days of the July
17, 2014 crash, Secretary Kerry rushed onto all five Sunday talk shows with
his rush to judgment, citing evidence provided by the Ukrainian government
through social media. On NBC's "Meet the Press," David Gregory asked, "Are
you bottom-lining here that Russia provided the weapon?"
Kerry: "There's a story today confirming that, but we have not within the
Administration made a determination. But it's pretty clear when - there's a
build-up of extraordinary circumstantial evidence. I'm a former prosecutor.
I've tried cases on circumstantial evidence; it's powerful here." [See
Consortiumnews.com's "Kerry's Latest Reckless Rush to Judgment."]
Two days later, on July 22, the Director of National Intelligence authorized
the release of a brief report essentially repeating Kerry's allegations. The
DNI's report also cited "social media" as implicating the ethnic Russian
rebels, but the report stopped short of claiming that the Russians gave the
rebels the sophisticated Buk (or SA-11) surface-to-air missile that the
report indicated was used to bring down the plane.
Instead, the report cited "an increasing amount of heavy weaponry crossing
the border from Russia to separatist fighters in Ukraine"; it claimed that
Russia "continues to provide training - including on air defense systems to
separatist fighters at a facility in southwest Russia"; and its noted the
rebels "have demonstrated proficiency with surface-to-air missile systems,
downing more than a dozen aircraft in the months prior to the MH17 tragedy,
including two large transport aircraft."
Yet, despite the insinuation of Russian guilt, what the public report didn't
say - which is often more significant than what is said in these white
papers - was that the rebels had previously only used short-range
shoulder-fired missiles to bring down low-flying military planes, whereas
MH-17 was flying at around 33,000 feet, far beyond the range of those
weapons.
The assessment also didn't say that U.S. intelligence, which had been
concentrating its attention on eastern Ukraine during those months, detected
the delivery of a Buk missile battery from Russia, despite the fact that a
battery consists of four 16-foot-long missiles that are hauled around by
trucks or other large vehicles.
Rising Doubts
I was told that the absence of evidence of such a delivery injected the
first doubts among U.S. analysts who also couldn't say for certain that the
missile battery that was suspected of firing the fateful missile was manned
by rebels. An early glimpse of that doubt was revealed in the DNI briefing
for several mainstream news organizations when the July 22 assessment was
released.
The Los Angeles Times reported, "U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been
unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that
launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 was
launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use
similar missile systems." [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Mystery of a
Ukrainian 'Defector.'"]
The Russians also challenged the rush to judgment against them, although the
U.S. mainstream media largely ignored - or ridiculed - their presentation.
But the Russians at least provided what appeared to be substantive data,
including alleged radar readings showing the presence of a Ukrainian
jetfighter "gaining height" as it closed to within three to five kilometers
of MH-17.
Russian Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov also called on the Ukrainian government
to explain the movements of its Buk systems to sites in eastern Ukraine and
why Kiev's Kupol-M19S18 radars, which coordinate the flight of Buk missiles,
showed increased activity leading up to the July 17 shoot-down.
The Ukrainian government countered by asserting that it had "evidence that
the missile which struck the plane was fired by terrorists, who received
arms and specialists from the Russian Federation," according to Andrey
Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's Security Council, using Kiev's preferred
term for the rebels.
On July 29, amid this escalating rhetoric, the Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity, a group of mostly retired U.S. intelligence
officials, called on President Barack Obama to release what evidence the
U.S. government had, including satellite imagery.
"As intelligence professionals we are embarrassed by the unprofessional use
of partial intelligence information," the group wrote. "As Americans, we
find ourselves hoping that, if you indeed have more conclusive evidence, you
will find a way to make it public without further delay. In charging Russia
with being directly or indirectly responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry
has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence."
But the Obama administration failed to make public any intelligence
information that would back up its earlier suppositions.
Then, in early August, I was told that some U.S. intelligence analysts had
begun shifting away from the original scenario blaming the rebels and Russia
to one focused more on the possibility that extremist elements of the
Ukrainian government were responsible, funded by one of Ukraine's rabidly
anti-Russian oligarchs. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Flight 17 Shoot-down
Scenario Shifts"and "Was Putin Targeted for Mid-air Assassination?"]
Last October, Der Spiegel reported that the German intelligence service, the
BND, also had concluded that Russia was not the source of the missile
battery - that it had been captured from a Ukrainian military base - but the
BND still blamed the rebels for firing it. The BND also concluded that
photos supplied by the Ukrainian government about the MH-17 tragedy "have
been manipulated," Der Spiegel reported.
And, the BND disputed Russian government claims that a Ukrainian fighter jet
had been flying close to MH-17, the magazine said, reporting on the BND's
briefing to a parliamentary committee on Oct. 8, 2014. But none of the BND's
evidence was made public - and I was subsequently told by a European
official that the evidence was not as conclusive as the magazine article
depicted. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case."]
Dog Still Doesn't Bark
When the Dutch Safety Board investigating the crash issued an interim report
in mid-October, it answered few questions, beyond confirming that MH-17
apparently was destroyed by "high-velocity objects that penetrated the
aircraft from outside." The 34-page Dutch report was silent on the
"dog-not-barking" issue of whether the U.S. government had satellite
surveillance that revealed exactly where the supposed ground-to-air missile
was launched and who fired it.
In January, when I re-contacted the source who had been briefed by the U.S.
analysts, the source said their thinking had not changed, except that they
believed the missile may have been less sophisticated than a Buk, possibly
an SA-6, and that the attack may have also involved a Ukrainian jetfighter
firing on MH-17.
Since then there have been occasional news accounts about witnesses
reporting that they did see a Ukrainian fighter plane in the sky and others
saying they saw a missile possibly fired from territory then supposedly
controlled by the rebels (although the borders of the conflict zone at that
time were very fluid and the Ukrainian military was known to have mobile
anti-aircraft missile batteries only a few miles away).
But the larger dog-not-barking question is why the U.S. intelligence
community has clammed up for nearly one year, even after I reported that I
was being told that U.S. analysts had veered off in a different direction -
from the initial blame-the-Russians approach - toward one focusing on a
rogue Ukrainian attack.
For its part, the DNI's office has cited the need for secrecy even as it
continues to refer to its July 22 report. But didn't DNI James Clapper waive
any secrecy privilege when he rushed out a report five days after the MH-17
shoot-down? Why was secrecy asserted only after the U.S. intelligence
community had time to thoroughly review its photographic and electronic
intelligence?
Over the past 11 months, the DNI's office has offered no updates on the
initial assessment, with a DNI spokeswoman even making the absurd claim that
U.S. intelligence has made no refinements of its understanding about the
tragedy since July 22, 2014.
If what I've been told is true, the reason for this silence would likely be
that a reversal of the initial rush to judgment would be both embarrassing
for the Obama administration and detrimental to an "information warfare"
strategy designed to keep the Russians on the defensive.
But if that's the case, President Barack Obama may be acting even more
recklessly than President Johnson did in 1964. As horrific as the Vietnam
War was, a nuclear showdown with Russia could be even worse.
________________________________________
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.
The MH-17 crash site. (photo: Russia Insider)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/17/mh-17-mystery-a-new-tonkin-gulf-case/h
ttps://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/17/mh-17-mystery-a-new-tonkin-gulf-case/
MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case?
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
19 July 15
In 1964, the Tonkin Gulf incident was used to justify the Vietnam War
although U.S. intelligence quickly knew the facts were not what the U.S.
government claimed. Now, the MH-17 case is being exploited to justify a new
Cold War as U.S. intelligence again is silent about what it knows, writes
Robert Parry.
ne year ago, the world experienced what could become the Tonkin Gulf
incident of World War III, the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
over eastern Ukraine. As with the dubious naval clash off the coast of North
Vietnam in 1964, which helped launch the Vietnam War, U.S. officials quickly
seized on the MH-17 crash for its emotional and propaganda appeal - and used
it to ratchet up tensions against Russia.
Shocked at the thought of 298 innocent people plunging to their deaths from
33,000 feet last July 17, the world recoiled in horror, a fury that was then
focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin. With Putin's face emblazoned on
magazine covers, the European Union got in line behind the U.S.-backed coup
regime in Ukraine and endorsed economic sanctions to punish Russia.
In the year that has followed, the U.S. government has continued to escalate
tensions with Russia, supporting the Ukrainian regime in its brutal
"anti-terrorism operation" that has slaughtered thousands of ethnic Russians
in eastern Ukraine. The authorities in Kiev have even dispatched neo-Nazi
and ultranationalist militias, supported by jihadists called "brothers" of
the Islamic State, to act as the tip of the spear. [See Consortiumnews.com's
"Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists."]
Raising world tensions even further, the Russians have made clear that they
will not allow the ethnic Russian resistance to be annihilated, setting the
stage for a potential escalation of hostilities and even a possible nuclear
showdown between the United States and Russia.
But the propaganda linchpin to the West's extreme anger toward Russia
remains the MH-17 shoot-down, which the United States and the West continue
to pin on the Russian rebels - and by extension - Russia and Putin. The
latest examples are media reports about the Dutch crash investigation
suggesting that an anti-aircraft missile, allegedly involved in destroying
MH-17, was fired from rebel-controlled territory.
Yet, the U.S. mainstream media remains stunningly disinterested in the
"dog-not-barking" question of why the U.S. intelligence community has been
so quiet about its MH-17 analysis since it released a sketchy report relying
mostly on "social media" on July 22, 2014, just five days after the
shoot-down. A source briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the
reason for the intelligence community's silence is that more definitive
analysis pointed to a rogue Ukrainian operation implicating one of the
pro-regime oligarchs.
The source said that if this U.S. analysis were to see the light of day, the
Ukrainian "narrative" that has supplied the international pressure on Russia
would collapse. In other words, the Obama administration is giving a higher
priority to keeping Putin on the defensive than to bringing the MH-17
killers to justice.
Like the Tonkin Gulf case, the evidence on the MH-17 case was shaky and
contradictory from the start. But, in both cases, U.S. officials confidently
pointed fingers at the "enemy." President Lyndon Johnson blamed North
Vietnam in 1964 and Secretary of State John Kerry implicated ethnic Russian
rebels and their backers in Moscow in 2014. In both cases, analysts in the
U.S. intelligence community were less certain and even reached contrary
conclusions once more evidence was available.
In both cases, those divergent assessments appear to have been suppressed so
as not to interfere with what was regarded as a national security priority -
confronting "North Vietnamese aggression" in 1964 and "Russian aggression"
in 2014. To put out the contrary information would have undermined the
government's policy and damaged "credibility." So the facts - or at least
the conflicting judgments - were hidden.
The Price of Silence
In the case of the Tonkin Gulf, it took years for the truth to finally
emerge and - in the meantime - tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and
millions of Vietnamese had lost their lives. Yet, much of the reality was
known soon after the Tonkin Gulf incident on Aug. 4, 1964.
Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1964 was a young Defense Department official,
recounts - in his 2002 book Secrets - how the Tonkin Gulf falsehoods took
shape, first with the panicked cables from a U.S. Navy captain relaying
confused sonar readings and then with that false storyline presented to the
American people.
As Ellsberg describes, President Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara announced retaliatory airstrikes on Aug. 4, 1964, telling "the
American public that the North Vietnamese, for the second time in two days,
had attacked U.S. warships on 'routine patrol in international waters'; that
this was clearly a 'deliberate' pattern of 'naked aggression'; that the
evidence for the second attack, like the first, was 'unequivocal'; that the
attack had been 'unprovoked'; and that the United States, by responding in
order to deter any repetition, intended no wider war."
Ellsberg wrote: "By midnight on the fourth, or within a day or two, I knew
that each one of those assurances was false." Yet, the White House made no
effort to clarify the false or misleading statements. The falsehoods were
left standing for several years while Johnson sharply escalated the war by
dispatching a half million soldiers to Vietnam.
In the MH-17 case, we saw something similar. Within three days of the July
17, 2014 crash, Secretary Kerry rushed onto all five Sunday talk shows with
his rush to judgment, citing evidence provided by the Ukrainian government
through social media. On NBC's "Meet the Press," David Gregory asked, "Are
you bottom-lining here that Russia provided the weapon?"
Kerry: "There's a story today confirming that, but we have not within the
Administration made a determination. But it's pretty clear when - there's a
build-up of extraordinary circumstantial evidence. I'm a former prosecutor.
I've tried cases on circumstantial evidence; it's powerful here." [See
Consortiumnews.com's "Kerry's Latest Reckless Rush to Judgment."]
Two days later, on July 22, the Director of National Intelligence authorized
the release of a brief report essentially repeating Kerry's allegations. The
DNI's report also cited "social media" as implicating the ethnic Russian
rebels, but the report stopped short of claiming that the Russians gave the
rebels the sophisticated Buk (or SA-11) surface-to-air missile that the
report indicated was used to bring down the plane.
Instead, the report cited "an increasing amount of heavy weaponry crossing
the border from Russia to separatist fighters in Ukraine"; it claimed that
Russia "continues to provide training - including on air defense systems to
separatist fighters at a facility in southwest Russia"; and its noted the
rebels "have demonstrated proficiency with surface-to-air missile systems,
downing more than a dozen aircraft in the months prior to the MH17 tragedy,
including two large transport aircraft."
Yet, despite the insinuation of Russian guilt, what the public report didn't
say - which is often more significant than what is said in these white
papers - was that the rebels had previously only used short-range
shoulder-fired missiles to bring down low-flying military planes, whereas
MH-17 was flying at around 33,000 feet, far beyond the range of those
weapons.
The assessment also didn't say that U.S. intelligence, which had been
concentrating its attention on eastern Ukraine during those months, detected
the delivery of a Buk missile battery from Russia, despite the fact that a
battery consists of four 16-foot-long missiles that are hauled around by
trucks or other large vehicles.
Rising Doubts
I was told that the absence of evidence of such a delivery injected the
first doubts among U.S. analysts who also couldn't say for certain that the
missile battery that was suspected of firing the fateful missile was manned
by rebels. An early glimpse of that doubt was revealed in the DNI briefing
for several mainstream news organizations when the July 22 assessment was
released.
The Los Angeles Times reported, "U.S. intelligence agencies have so far been
unable to determine the nationalities or identities of the crew that
launched the missile. U.S. officials said it was possible the SA-11 was
launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use
similar missile systems." [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Mystery of a
Ukrainian 'Defector.'"]
The Russians also challenged the rush to judgment against them, although the
U.S. mainstream media largely ignored - or ridiculed - their presentation.
But the Russians at least provided what appeared to be substantive data,
including alleged radar readings showing the presence of a Ukrainian
jetfighter "gaining height" as it closed to within three to five kilometers
of MH-17.
Russian Lt. Gen. Andrey Kartopolov also called on the Ukrainian government
to explain the movements of its Buk systems to sites in eastern Ukraine and
why Kiev's Kupol-M19S18 radars, which coordinate the flight of Buk missiles,
showed increased activity leading up to the July 17 shoot-down.
The Ukrainian government countered by asserting that it had "evidence that
the missile which struck the plane was fired by terrorists, who received
arms and specialists from the Russian Federation," according to Andrey
Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's Security Council, using Kiev's preferred
term for the rebels.
On July 29, amid this escalating rhetoric, the Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity, a group of mostly retired U.S. intelligence
officials, called on President Barack Obama to release what evidence the
U.S. government had, including satellite imagery.
"As intelligence professionals we are embarrassed by the unprofessional use
of partial intelligence information," the group wrote. "As Americans, we
find ourselves hoping that, if you indeed have more conclusive evidence, you
will find a way to make it public without further delay. In charging Russia
with being directly or indirectly responsible, Secretary of State John Kerry
has been particularly definitive. Not so the evidence."
But the Obama administration failed to make public any intelligence
information that would back up its earlier suppositions.
Then, in early August, I was told that some U.S. intelligence analysts had
begun shifting away from the original scenario blaming the rebels and Russia
to one focused more on the possibility that extremist elements of the
Ukrainian government were responsible, funded by one of Ukraine's rabidly
anti-Russian oligarchs. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Flight 17 Shoot-down
Scenario Shifts"and "Was Putin Targeted for Mid-air Assassination?"]
Last October, Der Spiegel reported that the German intelligence service, the
BND, also had concluded that Russia was not the source of the missile
battery - that it had been captured from a Ukrainian military base - but the
BND still blamed the rebels for firing it. The BND also concluded that
photos supplied by the Ukrainian government about the MH-17 tragedy "have
been manipulated," Der Spiegel reported.
And, the BND disputed Russian government claims that a Ukrainian fighter jet
had been flying close to MH-17, the magazine said, reporting on the BND's
briefing to a parliamentary committee on Oct. 8, 2014. But none of the BND's
evidence was made public - and I was subsequently told by a European
official that the evidence was not as conclusive as the magazine article
depicted. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Germans Clear Russia in MH-17 Case."]
Dog Still Doesn't Bark
When the Dutch Safety Board investigating the crash issued an interim report
in mid-October, it answered few questions, beyond confirming that MH-17
apparently was destroyed by "high-velocity objects that penetrated the
aircraft from outside." The 34-page Dutch report was silent on the
"dog-not-barking" issue of whether the U.S. government had satellite
surveillance that revealed exactly where the supposed ground-to-air missile
was launched and who fired it.
In January, when I re-contacted the source who had been briefed by the U.S.
analysts, the source said their thinking had not changed, except that they
believed the missile may have been less sophisticated than a Buk, possibly
an SA-6, and that the attack may have also involved a Ukrainian jetfighter
firing on MH-17.
Since then there have been occasional news accounts about witnesses
reporting that they did see a Ukrainian fighter plane in the sky and others
saying they saw a missile possibly fired from territory then supposedly
controlled by the rebels (although the borders of the conflict zone at that
time were very fluid and the Ukrainian military was known to have mobile
anti-aircraft missile batteries only a few miles away).
But the larger dog-not-barking question is why the U.S. intelligence
community has clammed up for nearly one year, even after I reported that I
was being told that U.S. analysts had veered off in a different direction -
from the initial blame-the-Russians approach - toward one focusing on a
rogue Ukrainian attack.
For its part, the DNI's office has cited the need for secrecy even as it
continues to refer to its July 22 report. But didn't DNI James Clapper waive
any secrecy privilege when he rushed out a report five days after the MH-17
shoot-down? Why was secrecy asserted only after the U.S. intelligence
community had time to thoroughly review its photographic and electronic
intelligence?
Over the past 11 months, the DNI's office has offered no updates on the
initial assessment, with a DNI spokeswoman even making the absurd claim that
U.S. intelligence has made no refinements of its understanding about the
tragedy since July 22, 2014.
If what I've been told is true, the reason for this silence would likely be
that a reversal of the initial rush to judgment would be both embarrassing
for the Obama administration and detrimental to an "information warfare"
strategy designed to keep the Russians on the defensive.
But if that's the case, President Barack Obama may be acting even more
recklessly than President Johnson did in 1964. As horrific as the Vietnam
War was, a nuclear showdown with Russia could be even worse.
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
