Month: April 2018

Pompeo: More War Could Be Coming

For antiwar wonks like myself yesterday was a dark day for the chances of less war and stress on our troops….Trump’s choice for a replacement for Tillerson has skated through the nomination….

The Rex Tillerson era is officially over. The Senate on Thursday confirmed Mike Pompeo to be the next secretary of state by a vote of 57-42, reports the AP. The confirmation of Pompeo, who is leaving his job as director of the CIA for the new position, had been in jeopardy before Rand Paul’s last-minute switch in favor allowed him to clear the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this week. Still, Thursday’s Senate vote is one of the slimmest margins for the job in recent history.

Every past nominee since at least the Carter administration has received 85 or more yes votes, with the exception of Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. He got 56 yes votes. Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, is expected to be sworn in almost immediately so he can begin serving as top diplomat. Pompeo has been deeply engaged in the administration’s efforts on North Korea and recently traveled to Pyongyang.

A big mistake has been made by the Congress and especially those cowardly Dems that voted to confirm…..

With the help of six Democrats and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), the Senate on Thursday helped President Donald Trump move one step closer to completing his war cabinet by confirming the ultra-hawkish torture supporter Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State by a vote of 57-42.

“The Senate has made a mistake of historic proportions by rubber-stamping Donald Trump’s war cabinet,” Jamal Abdi, executive director of NIAC Action, said in a statement following Thursday’s vote. “The U.S. appears headed towards a catastrophic exit from the Iran deal in spite of the pleas of our closest allies and Mike Pompeo will only encourage Trump off the brink.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/04/26/rubber-stamping-trumps-war-cabinet-6-democrats-just-voted-gop-confirm-mike-pompeo

This can only mean a return to the good old days of nation building bullshit and the possibility for a war with Iran…. Pompo’s big wish when in Congress.

But who the Hell cares?  Americans are too busy sucking up to the pig in the poke and worrying about the newest diet to ever care about our troops or the safety of the world.

Hands Across The DMZ

We have the possibility for a Nobel Prize in the making here….North and South Korea met at the DMZ and history was made……

With a single step over a weathered, cracked slab of concrete, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made history Friday by crossing over the world’s most heavily armed border to greet his rival, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, for talks on North Korea’s nuclear weapons. Kim then invited Moon to cross briefly north with him before they returned to the southern side. Moon grasped Kim’s hand and led him along a blindingly red carpet into South Korean territory, where school children placed flowers around their necks and an honor guard stood at attention for inspection, per the AP. Beyond the surface, however, it’s still not clear whether the leaders can make any progress in closed-door talks on the nuclear issue, which has bedeviled US and South Korean officials for decades.

Kim’s news agency said that the leader would “open-heartedly” discuss with Moon “all the issues arising in improving inter-Korean relations and achieving peace, prosperity, and reunification of the Korean peninsula” in a “historic” summit. It’s the first time one of the ruling Kim leaders has crossed over to the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone since the Korean War ended (though not officially) in 1953. Nuclear weapons will top the agenda, and Friday’s summit will be the clearest sign yet of whether it’s possible to peacefully negotiate those weapons away from a country that has spent decades doggedly building its bombs despite crippling sanctions and near-constant international opprobrium.

After all the tough talk about nukes a proposal has bee-n made about those nukes…..

The leaders also pledged to work for “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula and to reunify families divided by the war. “I hope this will be an opportunity for the two Korean peoples to move freely from North to South,” Kim said. “We need to take responsibility for our own history.”

The leaders pledged to make the DMZ a “peace zone” and to cease the broadcasting of propaganda across the zone by May 1. Military talks will be held next month to discuss reducing tensions, reports the AP, which notes that the declaration did not outline any concrete steps toward denuclearization. A South Korean official tells Reuters that Kim jokingly apologized to Moon for waking him up with missile tests and issued an invitation to visit Pyongyang later this year, which the South Korean leader accepted. In a tweet early Friday, President Trump, who is expected to meet Kim by early June, praised the “historic meeting,” adding: “Good things are happening, but only time will tell!”

Amazing turn of events and I am waiting for the Trump mind to start taking credit for all this….so far the Twitter thumbs have not been active on this event….but it is early….if anyone could piss up this it would be Trump.

Rwanda–24 Years Later

24 years ago the world turned its back on the African nation of Rwanda and the humanitarian crisis that ensued…..

Pres, Clinton was the typical coward and turned a blind eye to the events unfolding in Rwanda…..I wrote about this on the 20th anniversary of the crisis…..

https://lobotero.com/2014/06/06/did-we-really-care/

I relive this event because of something that has happened in Rwanda…..

Mass graves that authorities say could contain more than 2,000 bodies have been discovered in Rwanda nearly a quarter-century after the country’s genocide, and further graves are being sought nearby. The new discovery is being called the most significant in a long time in this East African nation that is still recovering from the 1994 killings of more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate ethnic Hutus. Some Rwandans are shocked and dismayed that residents of the community outside the capital, Kigali, where the mass graves were found kept quiet about them for so many years. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people are thought to be buried in the graves based on the number of area residents who went missing during the genocide, Rashid Rwigamba, an official with the genocide survivors’ organization Ibuka, tells the AP.

The information leading to the discovery came from a local landlord who at first refused to answer questions about the suspected mass graves until threatened with arrest, Rwigamba says. The landlord was later arrested, suspected of taking part in the killings and accused of knowing where people had been buried all along, he adds. Houses and toilets that had been built on top of the graves have been destroyed to make way for the search. “The exercise is ongoing and we have identified another house we suspect was built on a piece of land where victims were buried,” Rwigamba says. Bodies found so far include those of babies, based on the clothing that has been found. During the genocide, a roadblock manned by Hutu militias was established meters away from the sites of the mass graves, survivors tell the AP.

This is a chapter of American foreign policy that we had rather forget but some of us do not want us to forget the death of thousands that we could have helped and possibly prevented.

America talks a good game about human suffering but we do as little as possible to alleviate it….this is typical American foreign policy and it is about to get worse.

What Of Syria? (Updated)(Again)

Many of us foreign policy wonks have been asking some serious questions for years now.  What is our intent in Syria?  Can someone actually define our goals for Syria? Many other questions too numerous to list but those are the two most important questions that need answering.

After all do we want another extended war like Afghanistan?

This is an article that was first published in neocon paper, National Interests”……I say that because I do not agree with the praise on Pres. Trump but there are other parts that hold some validity ….at least with me…..

Give credit to Donald Trump for a moral clarity that eluded his predecessor about the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons on innocent civilians. The president stood by his word and didn’t tolerate the Syrian dictator’s use of weapons of mass destruction. But while the recent strike on Syria was important and necessary—it was far from sufficient. The consolidation of Iranian and Russian military bases there is disastrous for the security of the U.S. and its allies. And the ongoing conflict, which Assad will not end anytime soon, fuels the global jihadi movement more than any other single factor.

It pays to review the origins of the conflict: In the full winds of the Arab Spring, the people of Syria stood up against one of the most brutal and oppressive Arab dictatorships with peaceful demonstrations. The Assad regime, however, chose a course of violence, suspecting rightly that without a decisive response it might go the way of Muammar el-Qaddafi’s rule in Libya. In the ensuing civil war, outside sponsors and Salafi-jihadi groups made their way to the Syrian battleground. Assad himself, deliberately fueled the increase of jihadists in order to discredit the entire rebellion and hold the West hostage to his own survival. He released Al Qaeda members from Syrian prison and replaced them with peaceful protestors.

http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/way-forward-syria

I am waiting for someone in the government to step forward and give a full explanation of what of Syria.

The Brookings Institute has weigh in also……

Help local allies in Syria hold their ground.  As Crocker and I argue, this objective may require small deployments of U.S. forces to certain sectors of the country—for specific purposes like being able to call in airstrikes if partners are threatened, or protecting aid workers who are helping reconstruct these areas so refugees can start to return.

and more……

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/04/17/4-essential-elements-of-a-u-s-strategy-on-syria/

This leans kinda heavy on the neocon side….but at least it is some sort plan that we have been waiting for…..

After a quick bit of pulling out of Syria Trump has done what he does best……obfuscate.

(this is the updated part)

Just a month after another brief public flirtation with the idea of withdrawing from Syria, President Trump once again said he wants US troops out of Syria, promising “big decisions” very soon. His first talk of a pullout was scrapped days later. This time, he backtracked almost instantly.

With French President Emmanuel Macron in tow, Trump told reporters that he and his allies are taking a long-term approach to Syria, and that this would involve leaving “a strong and lasting footprint” within Syria. He said talk of the long-term issues in Syria was “a very big part” of his discussions with Macron.

The idea that Macron is driving Trump’s decision-making was a big issue last week. Macron claimed credit for Trump agreeing to stay in Syria, but quickly reversed course, and insisted the two had always agreed on the issue.

http://theantimedia.com/trump-vows-strong-lasting-footprint-syria

I am sure that our war weary troops will be glad for the promise of more and more danger.

And I wait…….and we wait……

Another update……

 In recent weeks the American public has been inundated with reports claiming the U.S., the U.K., and France have conclusive evidence that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reportedly used chemical weapons against his own people. Most of the American, British, and French media have lined up behind the proclamations of their respective political leaders by declaring as fact that the Assad regime is responsible for alleged chemical attacks as far back as 2013. The most recent attack is alleged to have taken place earlier this month in Douma, Syria.

http://theantimedia.com/chemical-attack-syria

Stay tuned I am sure there is more to come…..chuq

A Viet Vet–About Time

Closing Thought–26Apr18

A Viet vet has finally been awarded the medal that he richly deserves……

With a Marine down and several dozen heavily-armed enemy fighters approaching his location, 1st Lt. Philip H. Sauer grabbed his .45-cal pistol and ordered his other three men off the hill outside Khe Sanh.

Just a few hours earlier, the five-man artillery observer team had organized and set out to recon Hill 861 and potentially set up an observation post. But enemy bunkers and trenches teeming with North Vietnamese troops dotted the key, high terrain northwest of the Khe Sanh combat base.

When his point man was cut down by enemy fire, Sauer, used his own .45 pistol to provide covering fire as the Marines dove for cover and scrambled out of the kill zone.

Only one Marine survived that April 24, 1967, ambush, the first major fight with NVA in the area. It would mark the start of what became known as the “Hill Fights” during the siege of Khe Sanh the following year.

https://news.usni.org/2018/04/24/51-years-later-fallen-vietnam-marine-honored-silver-star

About time!

A War Blank Check

WE Americans have been constantly lied to so that this country can intervene around the world….accomplish regime change almost yearly……

Official Washington and those associated with it have misrepresented the facts numerous times in the service of military actions that might not otherwise have taken place. In the Middle East, these interventions have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Arab civilians, brought chaos to Iraq and Libya, and led to the expulsion of a million Christians from communities where they have lived since biblical times.

The most famous of these episodes, of course, was the U.S. government’s assurance to the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which formed the basis for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The government also insisted Saddam had ties to al-Qaeda, bolstering the call to war. Of course neither was true.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-pretty-little-lies-behind-americas-interventions/

Lies that we citizens allow to go on so that we can keep some sort of mental defense our stupidity.

And now war will be easier….and our troops will die more easily thanx to a couple of cowards in the Congress.

The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) was originally to be used by the president in a limited way….that has long been overstepped……and now the Congress has a new form of the AUMF before it….and this new attempt will do nothing to help the separation of powers……

The potential for the United States to stumble into a new war—or wars—has rarely been greater. Since before he took office, Donald Trump has been rattling his saber, and he is now backed up by a national security advisor who is openly spoiling for a fight. Instability and violence around the world are presenting them with ample opportunities. Last week marked the second time President Trump ordered bombings of Syria without congressional authorization.

Congress is now poised to bring a lit match to this combustible mix. A bill introduced yesterday by Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., would give the president a virtual blank check to expand the current war against various terrorist groups to new enemies and new locations of the president’s choosing.

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/04/corker-kaine-bill-aumf-forever-war/147516/

This should unacceptable to the American people but as usual they have their heads in the asses and our troops will be thrown at every event that the president feels it necessary…..Congress is relinquishing their power to the president…..

Cowards everyone!

Guernica–70 Years On

Exactly 70 years ago today the Condor Squadron bombed the Spanish city of Guernica out of existence……

“Guernica, city with 5,000 residents,” the commander of the Condor Legion, Wolfram von Richthofen, noted curtly in his journal, “has been literally razed to the ground. Bomb craters can be seen in the streets. Simply wonderful.” Not a word was written about the hundreds of dead.

April 26, 1937 was a Monday, a market day. Thousands of people were out on the streets of the Basque town of Guernica when around 4:30 in the afternoon, the bells suddenly began ringing. Air raid alarm! The first airplane appeared on the horizon, a German Heinkel 111 bomber — in the cockpit was Lieutenant Rudolf von Moreau. When he was over the city center, von Moreau opened his bomb bay doors — and death rained down on the city.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/hitler-s-destruction-of-guernica-practicing-blitzkrieg-in-basque-country-a-479675.html

We must know history to avoid making the same mistakes……chuq

Welcome To Agadez

Where the Hell or Who the Hell is Agadez?

It is a small town in the West African nation of Niger.  Remember Niger?  That is where some of our Special Ops troops were ambushed and killed and a major story circulated about the disrespect some felt the president gave family members.

Well we appreciated the attacks on our troops so much we are opening a new drone base…..

Agadez is 4,000 miles from Aghanistan, where the Global War on Terrorism began. It’s 2,500 miles from Iraq, our next destination in the war. It’s 2,000 miles from Syria and 1,500 miles from Benghazi. This is where we’re building a $110 million drone base that will host nearly a thousand American troops, double the number of a few years ago. Here is Eric Schmitt:

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/04/welcome-to-agadez-americas-latest-front-in-the-war-on-terror/

Just another target for the global terror network and more troops are exposed to the possibility of violence.

Syrian Attack Debrief

Below is a debrief of the attack of a couple weeks ago……yes it is from a Russian source and it does not hold to the lies Trump tells but to be honest the truth will be somewhere in the middle of both accounts…..

https://southfront.org/trumps-smart-missiles-in-syria-summing-up-evidence-and-numbers-provided-by-russia/

We have seen a detailed account from Russia…will we see the same from our government….something other than a lie?

More On North Korea

First there was the insults and then as quick as falling out of a chair we were making nice with each other and now there is a possibility that there could be peace between the three partners in this deal.

Could there be a reason for the quick turn around of North Korea….other the good intentions that we are claiming as the reason…..

Kim Jong Un on Saturday said nuclear tests would no longer be conducted at the underground Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility; a new report from the Wall Street Journal suggests the move may not be as benevolent as it appears. It flags an about-to-be-published study by Chinese researchers who say that much of the facility below Mount Mantap is actually useless following the country’s last detonation, which the seismologists say caused a partial cavity collapse. This isn’t exactly new news: Satellite images taken before and after the country’s sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 show the 7,200-foot-tall Mount Mantap actually lost elevation. Reports at the time suggested “tired mountain syndrome,” which has previously been observed at other nuclear test sites in the US and Soviet Union, was at play.

It essentially means a mountain is under such stress that the collapse of cavities or tunnels is possible. The Journal reports the upcoming study and another published this month provide more evidence that such a collapse did occur. Using data captured by Chinese seismic monitoring stations, they arrived at the same conclusion: that a 6.3-magnitude quake caused by the test led to a collapse inside the mountain that caused a 4.1-magnitude temblor 8.5 minutes later. The second study didn’t comment on whether the facility is still usable, and a commentary at 38 North asserts “there is no basis to conclude” it isn’t. Yes, the “North Portal” might be damaged, but there are two portals “located in more pristine competent rock” that the site believes would be appropriate for testing.
Could this be the reason for the warm and fuzzies that North Korea has for the US?