PNAC/AIPAC dreams come true; towelheads killing each other all over Middle East!

If you're a Likud acolyte or a neocon, you have to admit it doesn't get much better than this. In fact, I'd wager you've already cracked the bubbly.

Not only are the towellers slaughtering one another in Syria, but now our ISIS boys are turning Iraq into a charnel house!

Again!

I suppose a possible downside is going to emerge when enough of these folks who are busy slaughtering one another step back and consider who is pulling the strings...

That could get ugly.

Saudi Arabia and the $3B gift to Lebanon's Army; what could go wrong?

For one thing, the fact that the biggest banker and supplier of the jihadist factions in Syria is becoming the de facto banker of the Lebanese army implies a certain common interest between the State of Lebanon and the jihadists. Will that translate into direct military support of anti-Assad fighters? And when it does, will Assad's army feel free to take the battle to the Lebanese Army?

Secondly, any encroachment by the Lebanese army on Hezbollah's area of influence in southern Lebanon will be fiercely resisted. While Hezbollah is widely portrayed as an Iranian proxy in Western media, the reality is that the Shite population of Lebanon sees them as a legitimate defense force, and only those Lebanese completely blinded by wishful thinking believe that more hardware would allow the Lebanese army to rout Hezbollah military forces.

Thirdly, what impact will internecine violence in southern Lebanon have on the relative stability that has obtained on the Lebanon-Israel border since Hezbollah forced the end of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon? Even Lebanese who are not Hezbollah supporters understand that the Israeli withdrawal was a Hezbollah victory for all Lebanese, not just the Shia. 

Finally, while three billions may buy a lot of deadly hardware, the generosity of the Saudis can only have the effect of stimulating reciprocal generosity on the part of Iran and Russia, who have thus far shown no inclination to back away from their support of Assad. This Saudi gesture will inevitably lead to a massive escalation in the regional arms race. 

Given that the Syrian conflict is already leaking across Syria's borders on all sides, such an influx of weaponry will all but guarantee a regional conflagration that is bound to engulf not only Lebanon, but Turkey, Jordan, and Israel as well.

Nations of Virtue leave Syrian opposition twisting in the wind

It's pretty much over for the dupes who dared rise up against Assad.

They are now sitting ducks, waiting to be mopped up by Assad loyalists. And you know what that means.

All the big talk about how Assad will crumble is pretty much forgotten now, especially in those countries most vocal in their condemnation of Assad.

Today SNC acting President George Sabra made a pathetic and desperate plea for more military assistance.

That won't be happening, my friend.

And it's partially the fault of Sabra and his minions, who allowed their "revolution" to be hi-jacked by parties that everyone always knew could never be countenanced by the Nations of Virtue.

Jabhat al Nusra might find sympathy in Saudi Arabia, but so did Bin Laden. They won't find much in the NATO nations.

True, you've still got Hague and Fabius clamoring for more arms to the Syrian rebels, but those are marginal men running from their domestic issues. Fabius in particular has no credibility whatsoever. France more than has her hands full in Mali. If they can't see that through, they shouldn't even dream about Syria.

And Hague is just running a diversionary campaign to take the British electorate's eye off Cameron's foibles at home.

The future of  Syria has been decided in Washington.

And in Washington they seem resigned to Assad staying on awhile.

US Marines land in Jordan, head for Syria border

Why?

Because the logical place to hold the upcoming "Operation Eager Lion" joint US-Jordanian war games would be right on the Syrian border.

Because there's no possible way that war games on the Syrian border could possibly inflame a situation that is already beyond volatile.

Because war games on Syria's border would mean US troops won't have too far to go just in case Assad crosses another one of those imaginary "red lines" again.

This is Obama inching his way into America's next war without it being too obvious. After all, you don't want to unduly alarm the electorate.

So much stupidity, so little time...

Even though Francis Fukuyama authoritatively declared the final triumph of imbecility twenty-five years ago, it's impossible to open a newspaper without realizing that politicians the world over conduct themselves as though it's still "game-on."

There are at least a dozen stories that demand a good skewering today, and I fear I don't even know where to start.

Over in NATO's weakest link the wily but not-too-bright Erdogan is up a stump of his own making. Anti-Erdogan rioting has spread to multiple cities, and the media want us to believe that these "protests" are about resistance to a shopping mall! The flames are burning so bright that no less a moral arbiter than Noam Chomsky has been provoked to comment.

The protests in Turkey are the result of Erdogan's slow but steady progress down the Sharia highway to Shariaville. Today we ban booze, next week we ban Bon Jovi... it's a slippery slope, mark my words.

Had the glorious victory over the Alawite infidels next door played out the way his NATO betters convinced him it would, much could be forgiven. Alas, the wily-as-Erdogan but substantially brighter Assad refused to follow the script, and we know the rest. Odds are Assad will still be in power long after Erdogan takes a teaching post at Princeton.

Still in the "hoist by his own petard" department, the hapless Hollande has given an interview at France 24 which confirms our worst fears; the man has utterly no clue what he's doing. He wants to eliminate Islamic terrorists from Africa but arm them in Syria.

Makes perfect sense to me...

He'll be on the faculty of an Ivy League university not long after Erdogan.

The Syria end game; one possible scenario

The Syrian "uprising" was well into its second year when Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush, was promoted to the top post in the Saudi intelligence apparatus.

Days later unconfirmed reports briefly circulated claiming that Bandar bin Sultan had been assassinated. Though that story was roundly denied by various Saudi spokesmen, the fact remains that we haven't seen him since.

Not that there haven't been plenty of claims that he is alive and well. The Saudi house organ Al Arabiya speaks as though he is very much alive and masterminding the "game-changing" strategy that will have us rid of Assad "in months." (Al Arabiya, 13 April 2013)  Israeli website Debkafile routinely asserts that Bandar is still in charge. 

Perhaps what the case of Bandar Bush underlines is the fact that spokespersons on all sides have been busy as can be shovelling disinformation into the public realm to bolster their particular points of view. The Saudis have considerable prestige invested in the success of the anti-Assad struggle. Likewise, Turkey and Qatar.

The Americans have maintained the position that they are a hands-off bystander, although no serious person imagines that the Turkey-Saud-Qatar triumvirate embarked on their Syrian adventure without the blessing of the White House. In terms of the public perception of Obama's domestic audience, the Americans maintain deniability.

Nowhere is tension between public pronouncements and the national interest as extreme as in Israel. At the time of the recent Israeli attacks on Syria, we were told that the actions were intended to prevent the shipment of "advanced Syrian weapons" to Hezbollah in Lebanon. That's a good story, but one suspects that for the moment Assad has greater need for those missiles himself.

It is more than plausible that the intent of the Israeli action was to keep those weapons out of the hands of some faction or another of the Free Syrian Army. There have emerged two distinct "Syrian Free Armies" since the Syrian uprising began. On the one hand, you have the US-friendly officially-endorsed "good guys."

These are the FSA  types who are seen regularly on TV screens in the West. They talk a good revolution but command little or nothing on the ground in Syria.

On the other hand are the Al Nusra Front and their assorted fellow travellers, a collection of Wahabi radicals who do virtually all of the fighting. When Washington politicians voice their fears of having weapons fall into the "wrong hands," these are the people whose hands they are talking about. While they are more than happy to fight Assad today, they will be even happier to take their battle to the Israelis or the Americans tomorrow.

This is obviously of great concern in Tel Aviv. Since Israel's last foray into Lebanon in 2006 there's been no enthusiasm for the next round. Plenty of talk, yes, but a keen interest in ensuring that talk is all it is.

When IDF intel boss Aviv Kochavi claimed in February last year that 200,000 missiles were pointed at Israel, he was inadvertently making an acknowledgement that perhaps needn't have been made. While his statement was at least in part intended to pressure the Americans to fund more Iron Dome units, those additional Iron Domes are going to expand the envelope of immunity by mere minutes in the event of an all out war. Telling the Israeli people that they now have protection from the first two hundred incoming instead of the first one hundred isn't all that reassuring after you've told them 200,000 are on the way.

Which is why in spite of all the warlike rhetoric, Israel has no interest in a war with Hezbollah or anyone else, including Syria or any elements of the so-called Syrian opposition. 

That leaves both Israel and Hezbollah with a common interest in ensuring that Assad remains. And while it would be impossible for any American politician to say so, this is also were America's best interests lie, at least for the foreseeable future. Owing to their usual toxic combination of hubris and over-reach, the Americans had convinced themselves that their Syrian proxy opposition would make short work of the Assad regime. 

The past two-plus years have disabused them of that delusion.

That leaves the Americans in the position of having to make a climb-down without it appearing as such. While there are plenty of voices on the American political scene encouraging a more robust US involvement in Syria (see for example John McCain's visit to Syria today) there are many more cautioning against it.

Look for Assad to run Syria for years to come.

Paper claims US has delivered 300 tons of weapons to Syria rebels

That's a lot of non-lethal assistance.

Note the discussion in the final paragraphs about these weapons already being used by Al Qaeda affiliated groups.

Is there a containment plan or is the CIA just making up strategy on the fly? Are the radical groups being groomed to infiltrate Iran once they have finished Uncle Sam's work in Syria? Will Sunni radicals from Gaza currently fighting in Syria be bringing their US supplied gear home with them?

Those are just a few of the questions somebody should have given some thought to, because it's not hard to see at least 101 ways that the blowback from this policy is going to lead to more trouble than Assad ever caused.

About those NATO missiles in Turkey

IRAN WAR SOON

There's an air of undue haste about the stationing of Patriot missile batteries on the easterly extremities of the Turkey-Syria border. And the supposed rationale for the placement - to protect Turkey from a Syrian missile attack, is obvious rubbish.

The real reason for the sudden arrival of NATO missiles is to protect Israel from Iranian retaliation in the pending war on Iran.

It is significant that these missile batteries will not be under the control of the Turkish armed forces, but rather under "NATO" command. On the face of it the reason given for this, that Turkey is after all a member of NATO, seems plausible.

The USA is a member of NATO too but no one believes for a moment that anyone but Americans control "NATO" missiles on American soil, just like they'll be controlling the hardware on Turkey's soil. The reason this is important is because any overt Turkish participation in a US/Israel war on Iran would be highly controversial both within the Turk military establishment and with the public at large.

In fact, such complicity would bring on a "Turkish Spring" in a heartbeat, and/or another military coup. The latter is somewhat less likely with the elite of the military command languishing in prison after the last "conspiracy."

Turkey cannot be relied on to fight in Israel's defense as another Islamic country is attacked, and this NATO maneuver neatly solves that problem. 

One wonders what promises were made to Netanyahu to bring about the premature cease-fire in Gaza?

US ramps up bipartisan war on Islam

No matter who wins the "vote" tonight, one thing is clear. Going forward, the war on Islam is going to be ramped up rather than toned down.

At this moment US emissaries are scouring Libya for "good" jihadists who can be relied on to do battle with the "bad" jihadists, like the ones who killed Ambassador Stevens.

These lads will get top-flight yankee training, lots of yankee green-backs, plenty of heavy-duty support from the drone-meisters and the US military establishment, and of course the latest guns and hand-held missiles.

Everybody except the numb-nuts putting this program together already knows how it will end up.

They'll take the money and the training and the weapons.

They'll even take out some of their rivals in Libya, which will garner them tons of attention in the Western media. They might even have their spokes-people on CNN and Fox basking in the glory of it all!

Then they'll be taking out the next US Ambassador and using their Stinger stockpile to take out airliners at Ben Gurion Airport.

While this is going on we've got the Syrian Salvation Symposium continuing in Doha. The big news there is that the farcical Syrian National Council hasn't been diligent enough in keeping "bad" jihadists out of the fray, and Hillary herself has decreed that "we" need a new leadership for the Syrian resistance.

Everybody except the numb-nuts in the State Department can see where this will end up... (see above)

Finally, the numb-nuts who steer the Empire are putting together a team of brigands, war-profiteers, opportunists, and ne're-do-wells of all stripes to take back Mali. We have never in history given a solitary shit about Mali until it became evident that there might be oily wealth under that sand.

Everybody except the idiots putting this plan together already knows how it will end up...

So there's one thing that we know for sure. Regardless of who wins the White House tonight, America is committed to at least three more losing conflicts in the years ahead.

Wiping Syria from the map

While researching the topic of oil embargoes and oil pipelines this morning I ran across this quote:

This is a new world order now. This is what things look like... particularly if we wipe out Syria... it is all about oil.

The speaker is James Akins, American ambassador to Saudi Arabia in the 1970's and a man who knew the oil business and petro-politics as well as anyone on the planet.

He's speaking in 2003 and quoted in a Guardian article about the feasibility of an Iraq-Haifa oil pipeline.

Those were heady times, those triumphalist months basking in the first blush of victory over Sadam. Anything was possible. The Pentagon had big plans for Ahmed Chalabi, international man of mystery and bullshitter supreme. With Chalabi in the driver's seat in Baghdad, not even the sky was the limit!

Then of course it all went for a shit.

Democracy, however imperfect, reared its head and cut short Chalabi's political career in Iraq. He is in many quarters today regarded as an Iranian agent.

The Israel-Iraq pipeline was never built, but according to a Guardian article by Richard Silverstein in 2008, the Haifa refinery met its crude oil needs by buying Iranian oil.

Also around that time, Iran and Iraq announced an agreement to build a pipeline from Basra in the south of Iraq to the Iranian city of Abadon. At the time, I believe the plan was to pump Iraqi crude to a refinery in the Iranian city.

One of the marvels of a pipeline is that its contents can flow in either direction. Would the Shia government in Iraq support their Shia brothers in Iran by shipping Iranian oil from Basra as Iraqi product? Just wondering.

A rise in Iraqi exports in step with a decline in Iranian exports could very well signal that this is happening.

The US-led embargo seems to be a fickle creature. Just the other day one of America's closest allies in Africa, Kenya, signed a major deal with Iran to import their oil.

One would almost think that the embargo is more about optics than about oil.

As for Syria, it looks like Akins' plan is running about ten years behind schedule.

Hillary convenes conclave of Arab dictators to plan "inclusive democracy" for Syria!

Hillary is hanging out in Riyadh today with the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE.

What's on the agenda? Why, a good dose of democracy for America's enemies in the Middle East! First and foremost, Hillary is rallying support for arming the armed opposition in Syria. The evil dictator Assad refuses to go gently into the twilight of democratic reform, so obviously the armed opposition needs more weapons to make Assad see the error of his ways.

Also on the agenda is more democratic reform for Iran. Democratic reform in this case means crippling sanctions aimed at deterring Iran's nuclear program in the short term and affecting regime change in the long term.

Not on the agenda is democratic reform for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE.

The many lives of Senator John McCain

In his time John McCain has played many roles.

War hero.

Public servant.

Traitor.

Prisoner of war.

Presidential aspirant.

He's getting a lot of ink these days as the gung-ho guy in favor of American action in Syria. America must intervene, opines McCain, to prevent the slaughter of Syrian civilians.

McCain knows a thing or two about the slaughter of civilians. After all, that was his mission in Viet Nam when he was shot down and became a traitor and/or a war hero, depending on your point of view.

From slaughtering civilians in Viet Nam to saving them in Syria, it's been a long road to redemption for the Senator from Arizona.

NATO back-pedaling furiously over Syria

"We have no intention whatsoever of intervening in Syria" NATO boss Anders Rasmussen announced today from Ankara, where he has been overseeing the negotiations to free 49 NATO intelligence advisers held by the Syrian Army.

Which begs the question; how did those NATO advisers get captured in
Syria, if we're not interfering already?

And from Mexico, where she's helping celebrate the success of the War on Drugs, Hillary Clinton tweeted this morning that the US continues to stand behind the Syrian opposition and support the "protesters".

It's not like the NATO boss to contradict his US masters.

So is Rasmussen back-pedaling or just lying?

The think tank here at Falling Downs believes that this is a bit of strategic fibbing in the course of negotiations.

Once the NATO advisers have been released it'll be back to a full court press for "humanitarian intervention."

And we all know what that looks like.