Border Patrol officials say communities along the border are safer following the completion of 74 miles of improved border wall systems. Those systems include 30-foot bollard walls, new border-access roads, lighting, and electronic surveillance. Construction on an additional 158 miles is underway with 450 miles scheduled to be completed by the end of 2020.
Construction crews under the direction of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a report on Friday showing the completion of 74 miles of replacement border wall systems along the southwestern border with Mexico. Officials stated that 158 miles of additional walls are currently under construction and 276 miles are in a “pre-construction phase,” according to information provided to Breitbart News by CBP officials.
The new border wall system in Calexico, California, is the first section of replacement wall to be completed, El Centro Sector Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Joshua C. Devack said in a video presentation on Friday. “Since the border wall system was completed in this area, local business and commerce is thriving and areas once considered dangerous are now secure,” Devack stated. “In addition, overall crime in this area has been significantly reduced thus making our community a safer place to live and work.”
Prior to the new wall systems installed in January 2017, many sections of the border were relatively unsecured. Those areas consisted of landing mat walls that could easily be cut or climbed and other barriers designed only to stop vehicle traffic, Devack reported. The newly completed wall system includes 30-foot high bollard walls, new border-access roads allowing faster response by agents, additional lighting, and electronic surveillance systems, which provide advance warning and faster detection of border-crossing activities.
The new wall systems also provide safety for Border Patrol agents working alongside the wall.
In July, Border Patrol Agent Mike Matzke told Breitbart News in his capacity as president of the National Border Patrol Council’s Local 2554 in El Centro, California, “We’ve had people throw Molotov cocktails over the old landing mat fence and it was dangerous because we couldn’t see through it like we can with Trump’s new border barrier. Here in El Centro, we have the highest stretch of border wall on the entire Southwest border. Trump’s new wall section is 30-feet high,” Matzke said.
“A couple-mile stretch of Trump’s wall might not seem like a lot to some people, but it sure makes all the difference in the world to us,” Matzke said about the new wall in El Centro. “We are safer and our objectives are much easier to meet.”
Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan tweeted, “The frontline men and women of @CBP tell me walls work and help them do their job. That matters. And while not everyone who crosses the border is bad, this wall is important to protect USBP agents and to stop drugs and criminals from entering your communities.”
CBP spent approximately $292 million to construct 40 miles of new border wall systems in the San Diego, El Centro, and El Paso Sectors, officials stated. These walls replaced “dilapidated and outdated designs in high priority locations.” CBP funded an additional $49 million in the Rio Grande Valley Sector to build 35 border wall gates to close gaps in the existing wall systems. The gates are currently under construction, officials reported.
CBP officials report approximately 509 miles of new border wall systems are identified for construction projects. These projects will be funded by a combination of Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense funding and proceeds from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund. Those plans include approximately 141 miles of new primary walls, 24 miles of new primary levee walls, 68 miles of replacement primary walls for dilapidated designs, 205 miles for primary walls replacing existing vehicle barriers, 14 miles of secondary walls in place of dilapidated designs, and 57 miles of new secondary walls.
“Every new mile of new border wall system—including new barrier, technology, lighting, and roads—delivers new capability that will help my men and women immensely in their efforts to safely and effectively secure the border,” U.S. Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost said in a written statement.
US sends 3,000 more
troops to defend Saudi monarchy
The Pentagon confirmed Friday that
3,000 more US troops are being deployed to Saudi Arabia to defend the
blood-soaked monarchy led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and prepare for
war against Iran.
The deployment includes two fighter
squadrons, one Air Expeditionary Wing (AEW), two more Patriot missile
batteries, and one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD).
According to a Pentagon statement
Friday, the US Secretary of Defense phoned Crown Prince bin Salman (who also
holds the post of Saudi minister of defense) to inform him of the coming
reinforcements, which he said were meant “to assure and enhance the defense of
Saudi Arabia.”
The Pentagon also acknowledged that
the latest escalation brings the number of additional troops sent into the
Persian Gulf region since May to 14,000. They have been accompanied by an
armada of US warships and a B-52-led bomber task force. The Pentagon has also
announced that an aircraft carrier-led battle group will remain in the Persian
Gulf.
US soldiers
deployed in the Middle East (U.S. Army by 1st Lt. Jesse Glenn)
While initiated as a supposed
response to unspecified threats from Iran, the US buildup in the Persian Gulf
region has constituted from its outset a military provocation and preparation
for a war of aggression. This military buildup has accompanied Washington’s
so-called “maximum pressure” campaign of sweeping economic sanctions that are
tantamount to a state of war. The aim, as the Trump administration has stated
publicly, is to drive Iranian oil exports down to zero. By depriving Iran of
its principal source of export income, Washington hopes to starve the Iranian
people into submission and pave the way to regime change, bringing to power a
US puppet regime in Tehran.
The latest military buildup was
announced in the immediate aftermath of an attack on an Iranian tanker in the
Red Sea, about 60 miles from the Saudi port of Jeddah.
The National Iranian Tanker Co.
reported that its oil tanker, the Sabiti, was struck twice by explosives early
Friday morning, leaving two holes in the vessel and causing a brief oil spill
into the Red Sea.
While Iranian state news media blamed
the damage on missile attacks, a spokesman for the company told the Wall
Street Journal that the company was not sure of the cause.
Some security analysts have suggested
that the fairly minor damage to the vessel could have been caused by limpet
mines. Such mines were apparently used last June when two tankers—one Japanese
and one Norwegian-owned—were hit by explosions in the Sea of Oman. At the time,
Washington blamed the attacks on Iran, without providing any evidence. Tehran
denied the charge, saying that it sent teams to rescue crew member of the
damaged tankers.
The Iranian Students News Agency
(ISNA) quoted an unnamed Iranian government official as stating that the
Iranian tanker had been the victim of a “terrorist attack.”
“Examination of the details and
perpetrators of this dangerous action continues and will be announced after
reaching the result,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said.
The National Iranian Tanker Co.
issued a statement saying that there was no evidence that Saudi Arabia was
behind the attack.
The incident raised the specter of an
escalating tanker war that could disrupt shipping through the strategic Strait
of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows. News of
the attack sent crude oil prices spiking by 2 percent.
In addition to the June attacks on
the tankers in the Gulf of Oman, in July British commandos, acting on a request
from Washington, stormed an Iranian super tanker, the Grace 1, in waters off
the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. In apparent retaliation, Iranian
Revolutionary Guards seized the British-flagged Stena Impero for what Tehran
charged were violations of international maritime regulations as it passed
through the Strait of Hormuz. Both tankers were subsequently released.
Earlier this week, US Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo issued a statement charging that the Iranian super tanker,
renamed the Adrian Darya 1, had offloaded its oil in Syria in violation of
European Union sanctions and a pledge made by Tehran to the UK at the time of
the vessel’s release. He demanded provocatively that “EU members should condemn
this action, uphold the rule of law, and hold Iran accountable.”
The Trump administration, which in
May of last year unilaterally and illegally abrogated the 2015 nuclear
agreement between Tehran and the major powers has been pressuring the European
signatories to the deal—Germany, France and the UK—to follow suit.
While the respective governments of
the three countries have insisted that they still support the nuclear
agreement, they have repeatedly bowed to Washington’s war drive, while failing
to take any significant actions to counter the effects of the US “maximum pressure”
campaign and deliver to Tehran the sanctions relief and economic normalization
that it was promised in exchange for curtailing its nuclear program.
Most recently, the three European
governments backed Washington in blaming Iran for a September 14 attack on
Saudi oil facilities that temporarily shut down half of the kingdom’s oil
production and sent crude prices spiraling by 20 percent—again without
providing a shred of proof.
Washington is seeking to topple the
Iranian regime or bully it into accepting complete subordination to US
imperialist predatory interests in the energy-rich and geostrategically vital
Middle East.
The US sanctions regime and military
buildup have placed the entire region on a hair trigger for the outbreak of a
catastrophic war that could engulf not only the Middle East, but the entire
planet.
All of the regimes involved in the
escalating conflict are gripped by crises that make the drive to war all the
more explosive.
The impact of the sanctions on Iran’s
economy has been devastating. It is estimated that oil exports last month fell
to just 400,000 barrels per day (b/d), compared to 1.95 million b/d in
September 2018. Left with little means of combating spiraling inflation and
growing unemployment, Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime is caught between
intense pressure from imperialism on the one hand, and the growth of social
opposition among Iranian workers and poor on the other.
The Saudi monarchy is confronting the
debacle of its four-year-old and near genocidal war against the people of
Yemen, made possible by the weapons and logistical aid provided by Washington,
even as Prince bin Salman remains a global pariah for his ordering of the
grisly assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year in
Istanbul.
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu,
incapable of forming a new government after two elections and confronting
criminal indictments, has grown increasingly concerned over the apparent lack
of appetite by the Persian Gulf Sunni monarchies for military confrontation
with Iran and Washington’s failure to carry out military strikes after the
downing of its drone in June and the attacks on the Saudi oil facilities last
month. Clearly, Tel Aviv, which has cast Iran as its strategic enemy, would
have a motive for attacking Iranian tankers in the hopes of provoking a
response that could lead to US military action.
And then there is Trump. He has
proclaimed his determination to halt the “endless wars” in the Middle East and
provoked a political firestorm by pulling back a relative handful of US troops
in Syria, allowing Turkey to launch a long-planned attack on the Pentagon’s
erstwhile proxy force, the Kurdish-dominated YPG militia.
Faced with an escalating political
crisis and growing social tensions within the US, along with an impeachment
investigation by the Democrats in Congress that is focused entirely on the
national security concerns of the CIA and the Pentagon, he has ample motive for
launching a new war.
While the Democrats’ exclusive focus
on Trump’s failure to pursue a sufficiently bellicose policy against Russia and
prosecute the war for regime change in Syria has allowed the US president to
absurdly posture as an opponent of war, the reality is that he has overseen a
staggering increase in military spending designed to prepare for “great power”
confrontations, particularly with China.
Meanwhile, whatever his political
pretense, Trump has done nothing to end any of the wars in the Middle East.
While he has ordered US troops to pull back, allowing the Turkish invasion,
none of them have been withdrawn from Syria.
With the latest buildup of US forces
in Saudi Arabia, Washington is preparing, behind the backs of the working
class, to launch a catastrophic military conflict with Iran. The most urgent
task posed by these developments is the building of a global antiwar movement
led by the working class. This movement must be armed with a socialist and
internationalist program to unify working people in the United States, Europe
and the Middle East in a common struggle against imperialist war and its
source, the capitalist system.
TRUMP AND THE
MURDERING 9-11 MUSLIM SAUDIS…
Why is the Swamp Keeper
and his family of parasites up their ar$es??
WHAT WILL TRUMP AND HIS
PARASITIC FAMILY DO FOR MONEY???
JUST ASK THE SAUDIS!
JOHN DEAN: Not so far. This has been right by the letter of the special counsel’s
charter. He’s released the document. What I’m looking for is relief and
understanding that there’s no witting or unwitting likelihood that the
President is an agent of Russia. That’s when I’ll feel comfortable, and no
evidence even hints at that. We don’t have that yet. We’re still in the process
of unfolding the report to look at it. And its, as I say, if [Attornery General
William Barr] honors his word, we’ll know more soon.
“Our entire crony capitalist system,
Democrat and
Republican alike, has become a
kleptocracy
approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This
is the way a great country is raided
by its elite.” ---
- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES DONALD TRUMP:
Pathological liar, swindler, con man, huckster, golfing cheat, charity
foundation fraudster, tax evader, adulterer, porn whore chaser and servant of
the Saudis dictators
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars in
penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other
charities.”
Opinion: Trump And Pompeo Have Enabled A Saudi Cover-Up Of
The Khashoggi Killing
October
2, 201911:45 AM ET
AARON DAVID MILLER
RICHARD SOKOLSKY
In the
weeks following the death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump
spent more time praising
Saudi Arabia as a very important ally than he did reacting to the killing.
Hasan
Jamali/AP
Aaron
David Miller (@aarondmiller2) is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and a former State Department Middle East analyst, adviser
and negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations. He is the author
most recently of the End
of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President.
Richard
Sokolsky, a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, worked in the State Department for six different
administrations and was a member of the secretary of state's Office of Policy
Planning from 2005 to 2015.
It has
been a year since Saudi journalist and Washington Post
The Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's admission in a recent CBS interview that he takes "full responsibility," while
denying foreknowledge of the killing or that he ordered it, sweeps under the
rug the lengths to which the Saudis have gone to obscure the truth about their
involvement in the killing and cover-up.
The
Saudi campaign of obfuscation, denial and cover-up would never have gotten off
the ground had it not been for the Trump administration's support over the past
year. The president and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not only refused to
distance themselves from the crown prince, known by his initials MBS, but also
actively worked to relegitimize him. The Saudis killed Khashoggi but Trump
acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to protect the U.S.-Saudi
relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah status. In short, without
Trump, the attempted makeover — such as it is — would not have been possible.
The Saudis killed Khashoggi but Trump
acquiesced in the cover-up and worked hard to protect the U.S.-Saudi
relationship and soften the crown prince's pariah status.
Weak
administration response
The
administration's weak and feckless response to Khashoggi's killing was
foreshadowed a year before it occurred. In May 2017, in an unusual break with
precedent, Trump visited Saudi Arabia on his inaugural presidential trip; gave
his son-in-law the authority to manage the MBS file, which he did with the
utmost secrecy; and made it unmistakably clear that Saudi money, oil, arm
purchases and support for the administration's anti-Iranian and pro-Israeli
policies would elevate the U.S.-Saudi "special relationship" to a new
level.
Predictably,
therefore, the administration's reaction to Khashoggi's killing was shaped by a
desire to manage the damage and preserve the relationship. In the weeks
following Khashoggi's death, Trump spent more time praising Saudi Arabia as a
very important ally, especially as a purchaser of U.S. weapons and goods, than he did reacting to the killing. Trump
vowed to get to the bottom of the Khashoggi killing but focused more on
defending the crown prince, saying this was another example of being "guilty before being
proven innocent."
Those
pledges to investigate and impose accountability would continue to remain
hollow. Over the past year, Trump and Pompeo have neither criticized nor
repudiated Saudi actions that have harmed American interests in the Middle
East. Two months after Khashoggi's death, the administration, in what Pompeo
described as an "initial step," imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi individuals implicated
in the killing. But no others have been forthcoming, and the visa restrictions
that were imposed are meaningless because none of the sanctioned Saudis
What's
more, the administration virtually ignored a congressional resolution imposing sanctions on the Saudis
for human rights abuses and vetoed another bipartisan resolution that would
have ended U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia's inhumane military
campaign in Yemen.
The
Saudis opened a trial in January of 11 men implicated in the killing, but the
proceedings have been slow and secretive, leading the United Nations' top human
rights expert to declare that "the trial underway in Saudi Arabia will not
deliver credible accountability." Despite accusations that the crown
prince's key adviser Saud al-Qahtani was involved in the killing, he's still
advising MBS, has not stood trial and will likely escape punishment.
A year later, there are still no reports of convictions or serious punishment.
Legitimizing
Mohammed bin Salman
The Trump
administration has not only given the crown prince a pass on the Khashoggi
killing, but it has also worked assiduously to remove his pariah status and
rehabilitate his global image. Barely two months after the 2018 slaying, Trump
was exchanging pleasantries with the crown prince at the Group of 20
summit in
Buenos Aires and holding out prospects of spending more time with him. Then
this past June, at the G-20 in Osaka, Japan, Trump sang his praises while
dodging questions about the killing. "It's an honor to be with the crown
prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of mine, a man who has really done things in
the last five years in terms of opening up Saudi Arabia," Trump said .
And you
can bet that when Saudi Arabia hosts the G-20, scheduled to be held in its
capital of Riyadh in November 2020, the Trump administration will be smiling as
its rehab project takes another step in its desired direction.
What
the U.S. should have done
Trump has
failed to impose any serious costs or constraints on Saudi Arabia for the
killing of a U.S. newspaper columnist who resided in Virginia or for the
kingdom's aggressive policies, from Yemen to Qatar. In the wake of the
Khashoggi killing, the administration should have made it unmistakably clear,
both publicly and privately, that it expected a comprehensive and credible
accounting and investigation.
Back
to business as usual
The dark
stain of the crown prince's apparent involvement in Khashoggi's death will not
fade easily. But for Trump and Pompeo, it pales before the great expectations
they still maintain for the kingdom to confront and contain their common enemy,
Iran, as well as support the White House's plan for Middle East peace, defeat
jihadists in the region and keep the oil spigot open.
Most of
these goals are illusory. Saudi Arabia is a weak, fearful and unreliable ally.
The kingdom has introduced significant social and cultural reforms but has
imposed new levels of repression and authoritarianism. Its reckless policies
toward Yemen and Qatar have expanded, not contracted, opportunities for Iran,
while the Saudi military has demonstrated that, even after spending billions to
buy America's most sophisticated weapons, it still can't defend itself without
American help.
Meanwhile,
recent attacks on critical Saudi oil facilities that the U.S. blames on Iran
have helped rally more American and international support for the kingdom.
When it
comes to the U.S.-Saudi relationship and the kingdom's callous reaction to
Khashoggi's killing, the president and his secretary of state have been
derelict in their duty: They have not only failed to advance American strategic
interests but also undermined America's values in the process.
TRUMP AND HIS SAUDIS
The Saudi Challenge
Jamal
Khashoggi's murder -- and no one now questions whether the Washington Post
contributor was killed by Saudi agents in the kingdom's consulate in Turkey --
has far-reaching implications for the Trump administration. President Donald
Trump appears to want to help sweep the incident under the rug, providing cover
for the Saudis' ludicrous suggestion that the killing was a rogue operation or
an interrogation gone awry. And he's enmeshed the highest officials of his
administration in the mess by sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Riyadh,
where the secretary was photographed, all smiles, sitting with Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman, who most likely ordered Khashoggi's murder. The
administration is giving itself little leeway to take serious measures to
protest the killing, signaling to the world that the U.S. cannot be counted on
to stand up against bloodthirsty autocrats, even when a U.S. resident and
member of the American press is the victim.
I doubt that Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message
he's sending. Wealthy Saudis, including members of the extended royal family,
have been his patrons for years, buying his distressed properties when he
needed money. In the early 1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht
so that the then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off
personal bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel,
one of Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of
his landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001. During
the campaign, the Trump Organization registered more than a half-dozen limited
liability companies in the kingdom, in anticipation of cashing in on Trump's
enhanced renown. When Trump actually won (which apparently he didn't think he
would at the time), someone must have explained he couldn't move ahead with new
business there as president, because he withdrew the registrations. Of course,
a little thing like benefiting from the office of the presidency hasn't stopped
the Trump Organization, run by the president's two eldest sons, from accepting
Saudi largesse since the election. With many Trump properties and brands losing
customers in today's highly polarized political atmosphere, Saudis are spending
lavishly on Trump properties in Washington, New York and even Chicago as many
others avoid them.
But
if Trump doesn't get why looking the other way when an American journalist is
tortured, beheaded and hacked to pieces by a team of Saudi government
operatives is bad, surely national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary
Pompeo do. Autocrats are stepping up their game around the world. Russian
President Vladimir Putin didn't hesitate to order a hit on British soil of an
ex-KGB agent and his daughter earlier this year. But the United Kingdom
responded quickly, kicking out Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions. The
United States followed suit, but only because Congress, not Trump, knew that to
do otherwise would have let down an ally and encouraged a despot. When asked in
a "60 Minutes" interview Sunday whether he believes that Putin was
involved in the poisoning and other assassinations, Trump's response was:
"Probably he is, yeah. ... But I rely on them. It's not in our
country."
The
Trump administration relies on Saudi Arabia, too. It is the enemy of our enemy
Iran, which, in political calculus, makes Saudis our "friends." But
even friends require reining in at times. And these friends need us more than
we need them. We are no longer dependent on oil imports; our oil reserves
surpass those of Saudi Arabia. Although Trump worries about losing that
promised $110 billion Saudi arms purchase he keeps touting (but which has yet
to materialize), the Saudis don't have anywhere else to go if they want to keep
their airplanes in the air. They are locked in by past purchases; no one else
can deliver the spare parts for U.S.-built weapons. As for the help in
challenging Iran, they have no choice there, either. Iran is far more a direct
threat to the kingdom than it is to the U.S. And as for their most crucial role
-- the war on Islamic terrorism -- the Saudis claim to fight terrorism but are
also a major source of funding for radical Islamic schools and mosques that
recruit terrorists around the world.
The
administration has only a short time to come up with a proper and proportionate
response to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The president thinks Americans will
move on -- but his inaction makes the world a more dangerous place. And next
time, the attack just might be on American soil.
Trump
scrambles to cover for Saudi regime as crisis over Khashoggi murder mounts
By Barry
Grey
Following US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s emergency talks in
Riyadh and Ankara, and amid mounting reports implicating Saudi Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman in the murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal
Khashoggi, the Trump administration is scrambling to shield Washington’s closest
ally in the Arab World.
On Thursday, Trump continued to suggest that Prince Mohammed and
his father, King Salman, may have had nothing to do with the disappearance and
evident torture and murder of Khashoggi on October 2 in the Saudi consulate in
Istanbul. However, after being debriefed by Pompeo following the latter’s talks
with Prince Mohammed and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump told
reporters it appeared that Khashoggi was dead.
The official line is that Pompeo secured a pledge from the Saudi
leadership to hold accountable anyone found in the course of the regime’s own
investigation to have played a role in Khashoggi’s disappearance. On that
fraudulent basis, Pompeo advised Trump to give Riyadh several more days to
provide an accounting, after which the White House will decide its response.
Meanwhile, unnamed Turkish officials and the pro-Erdogan
newspaper Yeni
Safak reported Wednesday on the contents of what they claim is
an audio recording of the events that transpired in the Istanbul consulate
following Khashoggi’s entering the building on the afternoon of October 2. The
60-year-old self-exiled Saudi national and resident of Virginia in the US, who
went from being a regime insider to a Washington
Post columnist and critic of the new crown prince, ostensibly
went to the consulate to obtain documents in advance of his impending wedding
to a Turkish national. He never emerged from the consulate.
According to the Turkish accounts, he was almost immediately
attacked by a team of 15 men who had flown that day to Istanbul from Saudi
Arabia, brutally tortured, drugged, murdered, beheaded and dismembered. These
sources say his fingers were cut off, but do not stipulate whether that
occurred before or after he had expired. One of those reported to have been in
the group is a forensic doctor who carried a bone saw.
The Washington
Post on Wednesday published a detailed profile of the 15 men,
complete with photos and scans of travel documents. It reported that at least
nine of the men have ties to Saudi security. The New York Times reported
Wednesday that at least four are directly linked to the crown prince, having
traveled with him as part of his personal security detail.
The claim of Crown Prince Mohammed that he had no foreknowledge
of a plan to kill the former regime loyalist-turned critic is absurd on its
face. He is an absolute ruler in a brutal totalitarian dictatorship, and is
known to closely oversee the activities of his security apparatus and to be
personally extremely cruel.
Pompeo’s meetings on Tuesday with King Salman and Crown Prince
Mohammed were aimed at signaling continued US support while making a pretense
of seeking a full accounting of Khashoggi’s disappearance. The same is true of
his meeting the following day with Erdogan, at which he evidently did not ask
for a copy of the audio recording of the events inside the consulate.
For his part, the Turkish president has yet to publicly make any
accusation against the Saudi leadership or endorse the reports being leaked by
Turkish officials and the media. At odds with Riyadh over the Saudi regime’s
support for US-allied Kurdish forces in Syria, its backing for the el-Sisi
dictatorship in Egypt, and its lineup with Washington over Iran, Erdogan
appears nevertheless to be reluctant to sever relations with the oil-rich
Saudis and may be seeking to use Riyadh’s crisis as leverage in obtaining
concessions.
On Wednesday after meeting with Erdogan, Pompeo told reporters
on his plane back to the US: “I do think it’s important that everyone keep in
their mind that we have lots of important relations, financial relationships
between US and Saudi companies, government relationships, things that we work
on all across the world. The efforts to reduce the risk to the United States of
America from the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, Iran.
“We just need to make sure that we are mindful of that as we
approach decisions that the United States government will take when we learn
all of the facts.”
This amounts to an unwitting admission of the outright
criminality of both governments.
As the former CIA director and current secretary of state,
Pompeo’s reference to the “things we work on all across the world” includes
conspiring to strangle, destabilize and potentially wage war against Iran, in
alliance with Israel and most of the other Gulf oil sheikdoms.
These “things” also include the near-genocidal Saudi-led war in
Yemen, which has already killed some 50,000 men, women and children and
threatens another 14 million with starvation and deadly epidemics of cholera
and diphtheria. The Saudis could not carry out their relentless bombing and de
facto blockade of the Arab world’s poorest country without US arms, its mid-air
refueling of Saudi bombers, its provision of intelligence and help in selecting
targets and the assistance to its naval forces.
It is notable that in all of the US press commentary critical of
Trump and the Saudi crown prince, there is virtually no mention of the US role
in the slaughter in Yemen.
There is as well the collaboration between Washington and Riyadh
in suppressing the Palestinians and propping up Israel, and their joint support
for Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist terrorists in the war for regime-change in Syria.
The US is particularly reliant on the Saudi monarchy at the
present moment, in advance of its November 5 deadline for imposing sanctions
against all Iranian exports. It is counting on Riyadh to open its oil spigot to
prevent a spike in oil prices as a result of a sharp reduction in Iranian oil
exports.
At the same time, the administration is coming under increasing
pressure, both internationally and at home, to distance itself from the crown
prince. It made a reluctant concession to this pressure on Thursday with the
announcement that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would join the swelling
ranks of Western officials, bankers and media organizations that have announced
they will not attend next week’s international investors’ conference in Riyadh,
to be hosted by Crown Prince Mohammed.
Dubbed “Davos in the Desert,” the event is on the brink of
collapse. On Wednesday, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine
Lagarde pulled out. Businesses that have made similar announcements include
Uber, JPMorgan Chase, Viacom, BlackRock and Blackstone Group. CNN, the Financial Times , CNBC,
Nikkei and the New York
Times are among the media organizations that have withdrawn as
media sponsors.
The likely debacle of the investors’ conference will intensify
an already acute crisis facing the Saudi monarchy. The Wall Street Journal reported
Thursday that global investors are growing increasingly alarmed at what the
newspaper called Saudi Arabia’s “debt binge” in recent months. In the
two-and-a-half years since May 2016, the country has floated $68 billion in
dollar-denominated bonds and syndicated loans—up from zero.
In addition, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund took out its
first-ever bank loan last month, raising $11 billion. And the national oil
company Saudi Aramco plans to raise up to $50 billion.
Reflecting declining confidence in the regime, the cost of
insuring against Saudi default has risen by 30 percent since the disappearance
of Khashoggi, and even before the Khashoggi allegations, foreign direct
investment had fallen to historically low levels.
Also on Thursday, the Washington
Post published Khashoggi’s final column for the newspaper.
Introducing the piece, Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah explained that
the Post had
received the column one day after Khashoggi’s disappearance, but had decided to
hold it in the hope that he would reemerge. In publishing the piece, the
newspaper acknowledged that the author had died.
The content of the column points to Khashoggi’s likely links to
sections of the US state and intelligence apparatus. A former aide to the Saudi
chief of intelligence and one-time ambassador to the US, Khashoggi had long
been known as an interlocutor between the Saudi regime and Western media and
government officials. He also had close ties to Osama bin Laden.
In his final column he compares the suppression of speech and
expression in the Arab world to the Soviet “Iron Curtain,” and calls for the
development of an “independent” news source in the Middle East modeled after
the cold war-era propaganda organ Radio Free Europe.
This would in part explain the furious reaction of Trump critics
in both political parties, the media and the intelligence establishment to the
administration’s efforts to alibi for the Saudi leadership. Obama’s CIA chief
John Brennan, for example, has repeatedly denounced Trump’s attempts to cover
for the regime and insisted that the crown prince personally ordered the murder
of Khashoggi
Trump’s Four Horsemen
The president is unleashing autocrats to create a Middle East apocalypse.
October 26, 2019
The White House/Flickr
T exas tornadoes are potentially caused by the “flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil,” according to the Butterfly Effect theory. Determining the ultimate cause and effects in weather is a tough call, however, given how many random physical factors ultimately come into play. But it’s fascinating to think that a distant and peacefully fluttering butterfly has so much potential power.
Easier to determine is how one man’s wanton tongue wagging and temper tweeting can not only cause a political storm but has now unleashed the four horsemen of a modern regional apocalypse: Turkish President Recep Erdoğan, Syrian President Bashir al Assad, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the ever-present Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Donald J. Trump, in his “great and unmatched wisdom ,” has shown that not only can he distract a domestic electorate but that the power of his presidency can create limitless distant chaos, death and destruction with the tap of a thumb and the flip of a finger. Now that’s power.
Trump’s causal tweet-to-terror relationship reanimated the biblical fearsome four horsemen who, in their initial iteration, represented Conquest, War, Famine and Death. This is no small feat. In one feckless action, the president of the United States has whipped up the apocalyptic forces that one hoped the world’s most powerful man would instead be able to tamp down.
The first horseman rode in, chuffed and bare-chested on his nag, a vision of strength and wearing the religious symbols of a loving God. But in the form of Putin, this rider drew behind him a fierce and unmerciful flock of jet-powered birds dropping bombs on the sick and infirm, raining explosive charges on targeted Syrian hospitals both to sow fear and remind the beleaguered recipients of his desire for conquest—that he alone can decide individuals’ fate.
Turkey’s Erdoğan galloped in as the second horseman, but always saw himself as the first to plow the field that borders his earthly realm. He, too, seeks conquest, but initiates this latest war against not only Kurds, but the rest of humanity. His steed leads both mechanized infantry and coordinated shelling. Irregular troops, mercenaries and retributive forces walk the plains to find families it can force to flee. Contemptible men seek the already suffering in order to show them the real meaning of torture. They reveal their true colors and cruelty when a bound and frightened prisoner must not only face a Geneva Convention-breaking level of humiliating indignity, but is ultimately put down like a dog in a ditch. For Armenians, this is a tragically familiar story.
Horseman Assad, the “Butcher of Damascus,” initially came to his people hidden, Trojan horse-like, in the form of a healer, an ophthalmologist who presumably once took the Hippocratic Oath to “First, do no harm.” Instead, he rode his father’s coattails and despotic style to defy the healing gods and apply his brutal hand to blind a nation to the distant freedoms it could once see. His marauders now ride roughshod with Russian ravagers over territory where a few short days ago American troops balanced a relative peace. Assad enforced a famine that starved his opponents and deprived them of medical supplies. He now has civilian enemies on the run while his starved dogs of war eat from the abandoned American tables. As a result, we all taste the bitterness of Trump’s dishonorable retreat.
Let us not forget the final of the four: Iran. America’s president effectively invited the Persian potentate to come to town, enlivening his proxies and apostles of death. Ayatollah Khamenei keeps his robes clean while he deploys merciless men who seek to extend his revolution from the Gulf to the Mediterranean. They never left Assad’s side and never lost sight of completing their Shia crescent. Iraq had already entered Iran’s sphere of influence; Assad was always Tehran’s partner in crime. A policy-indifferent Trump who, willy-nilly, dumps allies and revokes treaties has created another opening to an empire-oriented Iran with great ambitions, educated people, oil reserves aplenty and a willingness to flaunt its confederates’ firepower, whether with refinery-destroying drones or ship-sinking stealth. The Ayatollah is on a roll.
Lo and behold this prophesy: The four horsemen of the regional apocalypse are revealed to be upon us now. Neither the desire to rein them in by Trump’s handwringing congressional sycophants, nor the post-American retreat media spin, nor any post-tragedy justification from he who unleashed the beasts can lasso them back into the stable.
Trump catalyzed a war “7,000 miles away” in a “land that has nothing to do with us.” He let his tweet fly . The Butterfly Effect has whipped up the winds of war that are now sweeping across the Middle East in renewed violence. Let us pray that they do not grow and gust at biblical proportions.
Trump shifts from ending “forever wars” to sending tanks into Syria’s oil fields
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper Friday confirmed that Washington would leave military forces in Syria to maintain control of the country’s principal oil and gas fields.
The Pentagon is “considering how we might reposition forces in the area in order to make sure that we secure the oil fields,” Esper said. His remarks came at the close of a meeting of NATO defense ministers that expressed bitter resentment within Europe over US President Donald Trump’s green lighting of a Turkish invasion of northeast Syria earlier this month along with his announcement that US troops would be pulled out of the region.
American military convoy stops near the town of Tel Tamr, northern Syria [Source: AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad]
While refusing to “get into details,” Esper said the oil field deployment “would include some mechanized units.”
Newsweek magazine has reported that the plan drafted by the Pentagon calls for the deployment of “half of an Army armored brigade combat team battalion that includes as many as 30 Abrams tanks” along with roughly 500 US troops.
The Pentagon’s plan makes a mockery of Trump’s demagogic claim that his administration was putting an end to Washington’s “forever wars” and pulling US forces out of Syria.
The escalation of the US military presence in oil fields located in Syria’s eastern province of Deir al-Zour will also create a situation of extreme instability and the threat of a potentially catastrophic war under conditions in which Russia is deploying forces to the Turkish-Syrian border. Syrian government troops are also moving into areas that had previously been controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces—consisting primarily of the Kurdish YPG militia—which served as the Pentagon’s proxy ground troops in the so-called war on ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).
Moscow announced on Friday that some 300 more Russian military police had arrived in northeastern Syria after having been transferred from Russia’s southern republic of Chechnya. They are to patrol most of the 273-mile Syrian-Turkish border, outside of the areas that were seized by Turkey's armed forces during the invasion carried out earlier this month in the northeast, along with the northwestern Afrin district that was occupied by Turkey during a previous invasion last year.
Under an agreement reached earlier this week between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, the Russian troops are also tasked with overseeing the pullback of Kurdish YPG militia units to positions 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Syria’s border with Turkey. Erdogan has vowed that after next Tuesday, if the Kurdish units remain in the border area, Ankara will resume its military offensive.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that if the Kurdish forces did not withdraw, they would be left “face to face with the Turkish military,” because the Russian troops “wouldn’t stand between them.”
Other Russian units, equipped with armored vehicles, have already taken up positions in the border area, as have columns of Syrian government soldiers. Moscow has declined to say precisely how many troops it has deployed in the area.
Trump signaled his shift over keeping US troops in northeast Syria after coming under a barrage of criticism directed at his pullout order by both the leadership of the Democratic Party, which is committed to continuing the Syrian intervention initiated under the Obama administration, and sections of the Republican Party. This was joined with an unprecedented wave of denunciations by retired US military commanders, whose intervention expressed a near-mutinous reaction within sections of top brass.
According to NBC news, the US president was convinced to change his decision after a briefing by Jack Keane, a right-wing retired general who served as an adviser in the US “surge” in Iraq under President George W. Bush and has since become a multimillionaire as the chairman of the company that manufactures Humvee military vehicles as well as by sitting on the boards of other arms corporations. Keane is also a paid commentator on Fox News.
Keane was one of those who denounced Trump’s withdrawal order as a “betrayal” of the Kurds and a “strategic blunder”. The principal concern is that it would weaken the offensive against Iran and Russia, the powers that constitute the main impediment to the unfettered control over the oil-rich and strategically vital Middle East, sought by Washington through successive wars since 1991.
According to NBC, Keane pitched the proposal to maintain a US presence by showing Trump a map of the area being evacuated by US troops, highlighting the oil and gas fields. The US president, who previously suggested that Washington should have kept the oil fields in Iraq to “reimburse” itself for its invasion and destruction of that country, responded favorably.
Trump first signaled his about-face on Syria on Monday, when he announced at a cabinet meeting: “I always said if you’re going in, keep the oil. We’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, so that they have some cash flow. Maybe we’ll get one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”
The idea that a major US oil company has an interest in going into Syria to illegally exploit its rather modest resources in a war zone is as absurd as the claim by Defense Secretary Esper that US troops are being deployed to the oil fields to prevent them falling into the hands of an already defeated ISIS.
The purpose of the US deployment is to deny these resources to the Syrian government and stymie any attempt to reunify and reconstruct the war-torn country. It is also aimed at confronting Russia and Iran, which have backed the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
From the outset of the CIA-orchestrated war for regime change in Syria, Washington and its allies have sought to deny Damascus access to Syria’s domestic energy supplies. Initially, the oil and gas fields fell under control of Islamist militias led by the Al Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda, which served as the main shock troops in the drive to overthrow Assad.
While Al Nusra controlled the fields, the European Union lifted sanctions on Syrian oil, allowing the Al Qaeda affiliate to finance itself by exporting Syrian oil at rock-bottom prices.
The fields subsequently fell under the control of ISIS and then were taken by Washington’s Kurdish proxies.
The movement of US tank units into the oil fields is the clearest demonstration that the Trump administration is committed to continuing the more than eight-year-old war for regime change that has claimed the lives of over half a million people, while forcing nearly half the population, some 11 million people, from their homes.
At the same time, the US deployment is directed at escalating US military aggression against Iran, pushing the Middle East further toward the brink of a region-wide war.
The threat of a direct confrontation with Russia under the conditions of destabilization created by the Turkish invasion and partial US withdrawal, along with the strengthened Russian presence in northeast Syria, will now be greater than ever.
In February of last year, an attempt by a column of Syrian government forces supported by Russian military contractors to move into the area of the oil fields was meant by devastating US air strikes in which at least 100 were killed. Under the present conditions, a similar action could provoke a direct military conflict between the world’s two major nuclear powers.
Trump Breaks His Pattern and Retreats on All Fronts
October 21, 2019
The White House/Flickr
When acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney stepped to the mic on Thursday to address the press corps, he thought he’d be creating controversy by announcing that the 2020 G-7 conference would be held in one of the president’s own resorts. He was correct about that, but he did far more damage by his admission that there had been a quid pro quo of dirt on the Democrats in exchange for military aid to Ukraine, and that we should all just “get over it.”
“What is Mulvaney even talking about?” Sean Hannity, a Fox News host and confidant of the president’s, said on his radio show Thursday afternoon, referring to what he called the acting chief of staff’s “idiotic interpretation of things.”
“I just think he’s dumb, I really do. I don’t even think he knows what he’s talking about,” Mr. Hannity said.
It won’t be possible to undo the damage from the Ukraine admission, although Mulvaney made a very unsuccessful attempt to reverse his position during a Sunday appearance on Fox News . Yet, as the New York Times reports , the decision on the G-7 conference proved even more immediately untenable.
The president first heard the criticism of his choice of the Doral watching TV, where even some Fox News personalities were disapproving. By Saturday afternoon, his concerns had deepened when he put in a call to Camp David, where Mr. Mulvaney was hosting moderate congressional Republicans for a discussion of issues facing them, including impeachment, and was told the consensus was he should reverse himself. Those moderates are among the votes Mr. Trump would need to stick with him during an impeachment.
By Saturday night, the president was convinced they he couldn’t stick by his decision on the G-7 and reversed himself on Twitter. He blamed the media and the Democrats, of course, but it was Republican pushback that forced his hand. The same can be said of his decision to leave some troops in Syria, where his announced withdrawal had caused immediate humanitarian and geopolitical catastrophes.
These three reversals, on Syria, Ukraine and his Doral resort are significant because they represent a break from the crisis management style Trump learned from his old friend Roy Cohn .
Beneath the surface, though, Trump had connections that help explain how he came to launch a demagogic political career based on the racist and transparently inane theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to serve as our president.
First among them was Trump’s long relationship with the lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn is most famous for his role as chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy. In that role, he led the aggressive and unethical red-baiting Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations until the U.S. Army pushed back and he was forced to resign in August 1954. In private practice, Cohn represented prominent New Yorkers like la cosa nostra crime boss Carlo Gambino, Francis Cardinal Spellman and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, but was frequently at odds with the law. Over the years, he won four separate acquittals on charges varying from conspiracy, securities fraud, bribery, and obstruction of justice before finally being disbarred in 1986 as he was dying of HIV. What Cohn learned from McCarthy was the value of being dramatic and the utility of exaggerated claims and accusations. He passed these lessons along to Donald Trump.
According to Trump, he first met Roy Cohn in a members-only Midtown establishment called Le Club. It was 1973, and the government was accusing the Trumps of discriminatory housing practices. He asked Cohn, “The government has just filed suit against our company saying that we discriminated against blacks. What do you think I should do?” Cohn advised him to “Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court and let them prove you discriminated.”
The Trumps retained Cohn to represent them and Donald became his student. According to author Sam Roberts , it was from Cohn that Trump learned his now familiar three-part strategy for handling litigation which he has now transferred to political combat: 1. Never settle, never surrender. 2. Counter-attack, counter-sue immediately. 3. No matter what happens, no matter how deeply into the muck you get, claim victory and never admit defeat.
If nothing else, it’s fair to say that Donald Trump doesn’t like to reverse decisions or admit mistakes. It goes against his training and he considers it a losing strategy. Even when he is convinced that surrender is the best option, he resents the advice and eventually turns on the advisers.
Yet, the president finds himself in a very vulnerable position now, and he can’t afford to ignore the opinions of congressional Republicans if he hopes to win an acquittal in his inevitable trial in the Senate. Already, he’s almost certain to see some defections from House Republicans during the vote on impeachment. The more bipartisan the impeachment vote is, the harder it will be for Republican senators to paint the whole things as a partisan witch-hunt.
This is why Trump has been in full retreat over the last week. Congressional Republicans did not consider his positions on Syria, Ukraine and the G-7 defensible and so the lines were abandoned and mitigation efforts were attempted.
It’s not a promising place to begin what will probably prove to be the worst week yet for Trump and his horrid presidency.
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