My sisters and I received proper upbringing. That is, Ivory soap
waited to wash any dirty words out of our cherubic little mouths.
Therefor I am unable to say just what the Post can do with their
paper. But if I were less of a gentleman, I would say they might just
shove it up their...Darn! I just can't say it. Thanks for nothing,
Mom.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/29/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Parry writes: "The Washington Post's editorial board is livid that
President
Barack Obama appears to have accepted the Russian position that the Syrian
people should decide for themselves who their future leaders should be."
Syrians shout slogans against Bashar Assad during a rally. (photo: Wael
Hamzeh/EPA)
Neocons Object to Syrian Democracy
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
29 December 15
President Obama has infuriated Official Washington’s neocons by accepting
the Russian stance that the Syrian people should select their own future
leaders through free elections, rather than the neocon insistence on a
foreign-imposed “regime change,” reports Robert Parry.
The Washington Post’s editorial board is livid that President Barack Obama
appears to have accepted the Russian position that the Syrian people should
decide for themselves who their future leaders should be – when the Post
seems to prefer that the choice be made by neoconservative think tanks in
Washington or other outsiders.
So, in a furious editorial on Friday, the Post castigated Secretary of
State
John Kerry for saying – after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin in Moscow – that the Obama administration and Russia see the
political
solution to Syria “in fundamentally the same way,” meaning that Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad could stand for election in the future.
The Post wrote: “Unfortunately, that increasingly appears to be the case —
and not because Mr. Putin has altered his position. For four years,
President Obama demanded the departure of Mr. Assad, who has killed
hundreds
of thousands of his own people with chemical weapons, ‘barrel bombs,’
torture and other hideous acts. Yet in its zeal to come to terms with Mr.
Putin, the Obama administration has been slowly retreating from that
position.”
The Russian position, which Obama finally seems to be accepting, is that
the
Syrian people should be allowed to choose their own leaders through fair,
internationally organized elections, rather than have outside powers
dictate
who can and who can’t compete in a democratic process. Obama’s previous
stance was that Assad must be prevented from running in an election.
But that meant the Syrian bloodshed and resulting chaos – now spreading
across Europe and into the U.S. political process – would continue
indefinitely as the United States took the curious position of opposing
democracy in favor of an insistence that “Assad must go,” a demand favored
by U.S. neocons and liberal interventionists, Israel and regional Sunni
“allies,” such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
To the chagrin of the Post’s editors, Obama finally ceded to the more
democratically defensible position that the Syrian people should pick their
own leaders. After all, if Obama is right about how much the Syrian people
hate Assad, elections would empower them to implement their own “regime
change” through the ballot box. But that uncertain outcome is not what the
Post’s editors want. They want a predetermined result — Assad’s ouster —
regardless of the Syrian people’s wishes.
And regarding the editorial, you also should note the reference to Assad
killing “his own people with chemical weapons,” an apparent allusion to the
now-discredited – but still widely accepted (inside Official Washington at
least) – claim that Assad was behind a lethal sarin gas attack outside
Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.
To this day, the U.S. government (or, for that matter, the Washington Post)
has not presented any verifiable evidence to support the Assad-did-it
allegation, but it nevertheless has become an Everyone-Knows-It-To-Be-True
“group think” based on endless repetition, much as Official Washington
concluded that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had WMD stockpiles, based on the fact
that it was stated as flat fact by lots of Important People, including the
Post’s editorial writers.
Official Washington’s epistemology seems to be that if enough Important
People say something is true, then it becomes true – regardless of where
the
actual evidence leads. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing
Syria-Sarin
Case.”]
Hypocritical Outrage
Other parts of the Post’s attacks are equally dubious in that the Post’s
editors — who were all-in for the “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq and
wouldn’t think of sharing blame for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
killed as a result of President George W. Bush’s Washington Post-endorsed
invasion — are now outraged over Syria’s homemade “barrel bombs” and blame
Assad for all the deaths, even though many of the dead were Syrian soldiers
killed by Islamic jihadists, armed and financed by U.S. “allies,” Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others.
And, by the way, some torture blamed on Syria was carried out in
coordination with the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition”
program as part of the “global war on terror.” For instance, Canadian
citizen Maher Arar, who was seized by the U.S. government at New York’s
Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 while on his way home to
Canada, was shipped to Syria as a suspected Al Qaeda member. Arar was
tortured in Syria before being cleared of suspicions by both Syria and
Canada, according to a later Canadian investigation.
But, hey, you don’t expect The Washington Post’s neocon editors to give you
any honest context, do you?
The more immediate issue is the Post’s fury over the prospect that the
Syrian people would be allowed to vote on Assad’s future rather than have
it
dictated by neocon think tanks, Islamic jihadist rebels and their
Turkish-Saudi-Qatari-Israeli-CIA backers.
The Post’s editors wrote, “On Tuesday in Moscow, Mr. Kerry took another big
step backward: ‘The United States and our partners are not seeking
so-called
regime change,’ he said. He added that a demand by a broad opposition front
that Mr. Assad step down immediately was a ‘non-starting position’ —
because
the United States already agreed that Mr. Assad could stay at least for the
first few months of a ‘transition process.’”
Kerry “now agrees with Mr. Putin that the country’s future leadership must
be left to Syrians to work out,” the Post’s outraged editors wrote. Yes,
you
read that correctly.
Though the Post predicted on Friday morning that the notion of the Syrian
people being allowed to decide their future leaders was “a likely recipe
for
an impasse,” later on Friday the United Nations Security Council voted
unanimously in favor of a roadmap for a cease-fire in Syria, negotiations
on
a transitional government and elections within 18 months after the start of
talks.
The agreement makes no reference as to whether Assad can or cannot run in
the new U.N.-organized elections, meaning apparently that he will be able
to
participate – surely to the additional dismay of the Post’s editors.
Many Obstacles
Obviously, the U.N. plan faces many obstacles, especially the continued
insistence on “regime change” from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Sunni-led
regional governments, which disdain Assad who is an Alawite, an offshoot of
Shia Islam. Further condemning Assad in their eyes, he seeks to maintain a
secular government that protects Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other
minorities.
The Saudis, Turks and Qataris have been among the leaders in supporting
violent Sunni jihadists, including Ahrar al-Sham and Al Qaeda’s Nusra
Front,
which operate under the Saudi umbrella called the Army of Conquest, which
has received hundreds of sophisticated U.S.-made TOW missiles that have
proved devastating in killing Syrian government troops. Israel also has
provided some support to these jihadists operating along the Golan Heights.
While Turkey, a member of NATO, denies assisting terrorists, its
intelligence services have been implicated in helping Nusra Front
operatives
carry out the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus, with the
goal
of pinning the blame on Assad and tricking Obama into ordering a
devastating
series of air strikes against Syrian government forces. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Was Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?”]
Turkey also has allowed the hyper-brutal Islamic State to transit through
nearly 100 kilometers of openings on the Syrian-Turkish border, including
passage of vast truck convoys of Islamic State oil into Turkey for resale,
a
reality that Obama recently raised with Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who has long promised but failed to seal the border. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes.”]
At home, President Obama also faces political difficulties from Israel and
from Official Washington’s alliance of neoconservatives and liberal
interventionists who have made Assad’s ouster a cause célèbre despite the
disastrous experiences overthrowing other secular regimes in Iraq and
Libya.
In the past, Obama has been highly sensitive to criticism from this group,
including nasty comments on the Post’s editorial page. But the Post’s ire
on
Friday suggests that – at least for the moment – Obama is putting
pragmatism
(i.e., the need to stop the Syrian killing and the global insecurity that
it
is causing) ahead of neocon/liberal-hawk ideological desires.
________________________________________
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.
Syrians shout slogans against Bashar Assad during a rally. (photo: Wael
Hamzeh/EPA)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/19/neocons-object-to-syrian-democracy/htt
ps://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/19/neocons-object-to-syrian-democracy/
Neocons Object to Syrian Democracy
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
29 December 15
President Obama has infuriated Official Washington’s neocons by accepting
the Russian stance that the Syrian people should select their own future
leaders through free elections, rather than the neocon insistence on a
foreign-imposed “regime change,” reports Robert Parry.
he Washington Post’s editorial board is livid that President Barack Obama
appears to have accepted the Russian position that the Syrian people should
decide for themselves who their future leaders should be – when the Post
seems to prefer that the choice be made by neoconservative think tanks in
Washington or other outsiders.
So, in a furious editorial on Friday, the Post castigated Secretary of
State
John Kerry for saying – after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir
Putin in Moscow – that the Obama administration and Russia see the
political
solution to Syria “in fundamentally the same way,” meaning that Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad could stand for election in the future.
The Post wrote: “Unfortunately, that increasingly appears to be the case —
and not because Mr. Putin has altered his position. For four years,
President Obama demanded the departure of Mr. Assad, who has killed
hundreds
of thousands of his own people with chemical weapons, ‘barrel bombs,’
torture and other hideous acts. Yet in its zeal to come to terms with Mr.
Putin, the Obama administration has been slowly retreating from that
position.”
The Russian position, which Obama finally seems to be accepting, is that
the
Syrian people should be allowed to choose their own leaders through fair,
internationally organized elections, rather than have outside powers
dictate
who can and who can’t compete in a democratic process. Obama’s previous
stance was that Assad must be prevented from running in an election.
But that meant the Syrian bloodshed and resulting chaos – now spreading
across Europe and into the U.S. political process – would continue
indefinitely as the United States took the curious position of opposing
democracy in favor of an insistence that “Assad must go,” a demand favored
by U.S. neocons and liberal interventionists, Israel and regional Sunni
“allies,” such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar.
To the chagrin of the Post’s editors, Obama finally ceded to the more
democratically defensible position that the Syrian people should pick their
own leaders. After all, if Obama is right about how much the Syrian people
hate Assad, elections would empower them to implement their own “regime
change” through the ballot box. But that uncertain outcome is not what the
Post’s editors want. They want a predetermined result — Assad’s ouster —
regardless of the Syrian people’s wishes.
And regarding the editorial, you also should note the reference to Assad
killing “his own people with chemical weapons,” an apparent allusion to the
now-discredited – but still widely accepted (inside Official Washington at
least) – claim that Assad was behind a lethal sarin gas attack outside
Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013.
To this day, the U.S. government (or, for that matter, the Washington Post)
has not presented any verifiable evidence to support the Assad-did-it
allegation, but it nevertheless has become an Everyone-Knows-It-To-Be-True
“group think” based on endless repetition, much as Official Washington
concluded that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had WMD stockpiles, based on the fact
that it was stated as flat fact by lots of Important People, including the
Post’s editorial writers.
Official Washington’s epistemology seems to be that if enough Important
People say something is true, then it becomes true – regardless of where
the
actual evidence leads. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing
Syria-Sarin
Case.”]
Hypocritical Outrage
Other parts of the Post’s attacks are equally dubious in that the Post’s
editors — who were all-in for the “shock and awe” bombing of Iraq and
wouldn’t think of sharing blame for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
killed as a result of President George W. Bush’s Washington Post-endorsed
invasion — are now outraged over Syria’s homemade “barrel bombs” and blame
Assad for all the deaths, even though many of the dead were Syrian soldiers
killed by Islamic jihadists, armed and financed by U.S. “allies,” Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others.
And, by the way, some torture blamed on Syria was carried out in
coordination with the Bush administration’s “extraordinary rendition”
program as part of the “global war on terror.” For instance, Canadian
citizen Maher Arar, who was seized by the U.S. government at New York’s
Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 while on his way home to
Canada, was shipped to Syria as a suspected Al Qaeda member. Arar was
tortured in Syria before being cleared of suspicions by both Syria and
Canada, according to a later Canadian investigation.
But, hey, you don’t expect The Washington Post’s neocon editors to give you
any honest context, do you?
The more immediate issue is the Post’s fury over the prospect that the
Syrian people would be allowed to vote on Assad’s future rather than have
it
dictated by neocon think tanks, Islamic jihadist rebels and their
Turkish-Saudi-Qatari-Israeli-CIA backers.
The Post’s editors wrote, “On Tuesday in Moscow, Mr. Kerry took another big
step backward: ‘The United States and our partners are not seeking
so-called
regime change,’ he said. He added that a demand by a broad opposition front
that Mr. Assad step down immediately was a ‘non-starting position’ —
because
the United States already agreed that Mr. Assad could stay at least for the
first few months of a ‘transition process.’”
Kerry “now agrees with Mr. Putin that the country’s future leadership must
be left to Syrians to work out,” the Post’s outraged editors wrote. Yes,
you
read that correctly.
Though the Post predicted on Friday morning that the notion of the Syrian
people being allowed to decide their future leaders was “a likely recipe
for
an impasse,” later on Friday the United Nations Security Council voted
unanimously in favor of a roadmap for a cease-fire in Syria, negotiations
on
a transitional government and elections within 18 months after the start of
talks.
The agreement makes no reference as to whether Assad can or cannot run in
the new U.N.-organized elections, meaning apparently that he will be able
to
participate – surely to the additional dismay of the Post’s editors.
Many Obstacles
Obviously, the U.N. plan faces many obstacles, especially the continued
insistence on “regime change” from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Sunni-led
regional governments, which disdain Assad who is an Alawite, an offshoot of
Shia Islam. Further condemning Assad in their eyes, he seeks to maintain a
secular government that protects Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other
minorities.
The Saudis, Turks and Qataris have been among the leaders in supporting
violent Sunni jihadists, including Ahrar al-Sham and Al Qaeda’s Nusra
Front,
which operate under the Saudi umbrella called the Army of Conquest, which
has received hundreds of sophisticated U.S.-made TOW missiles that have
proved devastating in killing Syrian government troops. Israel also has
provided some support to these jihadists operating along the Golan Heights.
While Turkey, a member of NATO, denies assisting terrorists, its
intelligence services have been implicated in helping Nusra Front
operatives
carry out the Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus, with the
goal
of pinning the blame on Assad and tricking Obama into ordering a
devastating
series of air strikes against Syrian government forces. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Was Turkey Behind Syria Sarin Attack?”]
Turkey also has allowed the hyper-brutal Islamic State to transit through
nearly 100 kilometers of openings on the Syrian-Turkish border, including
passage of vast truck convoys of Islamic State oil into Turkey for resale,
a
reality that Obama recently raised with Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who has long promised but failed to seal the border. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes.”]
At home, President Obama also faces political difficulties from Israel and
from Official Washington’s alliance of neoconservatives and liberal
interventionists who have made Assad’s ouster a cause célèbre despite the
disastrous experiences overthrowing other secular regimes in Iraq and
Libya.
In the past, Obama has been highly sensitive to criticism from this group,
including nasty comments on the Post’s editorial page. But the Post’s ire
on
Friday suggests that – at least for the moment – Obama is putting
pragmatism
(i.e., the need to stop the Syrian killing and the global insecurity that
it
is causing) ahead of neocon/liberal-hawk ideological desires.
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
