Tag Archives: State Department

US Rebuffs Iraq PM Request To Talk Troop Exit: It’s “Our Right” As A “Force For Good” To Stay, by Tyler Durden

Posted on January 11, 2020 | Leave a comment

It’s truly tragic that the rest of the world doesn’t realize what a “Force For Good” the US is. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Perhaps entirely to be expected, the US administration has unambiguously rejected Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi’s urgent call for Washington to enact a US troop ‘withdrawal mechanism’ in Iraq. In a Thursday phone call to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Iraqi leader urged the administration to “send delegates to Iraq to prepare a mechanism to carry out the parliament’s resolution regarding the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq.”

Echoing prior statements of Mark Esper, the State Department underscored Friday that it’s “our right” as a “force for good” in the region to maintain “appropriate force posture in the Middle East” in a statement by spokesperson Morgan Ortagus. She stated the US considers that a troop pullout is not on the table for discussion with Baghdad officials.

“At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership — not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East,” Ortagus said. The words also appear aimed at Abdul-Mahdi’s assertion that US forces were operating “without permission”.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Imperialism, Military

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Russia: Friend or Foe? by Jacob G. Hornberger

Posted on December 9, 2019 | Leave a comment

The Islamic terrorism justification for perma-war has worn very thin, so the military-industrial-intelligence complex has turned Russia into the existential threat de jour. From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:

Ever since the end of the Cold War, it has been the mission of the U.S. national-security establishment to re-institute the relationship of hate, hostility, and fear that existed between the Soviet Union, especially Russia, and the United States during the Cold War.

That’s what the U.S. post-Cold War invigoration of NATO was all about, especially its absorption of former Warsaw Pact countries. It’s also what NATO’s attempt to absorb Ukraine, oust the Soviets from their long-established base in Crimea, and install U.S. missiles on Russia’s borders were all about.

It’s also what all the anti-Russia brouhaha has been all about. The aim has always been to reconvert Russia into an official enemy, adversary, opponent, and rival of the United States. What better way to keep the American people agitated and fearful? What better way to guarantee ever-increasing budgets for the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, the three principal components of America’s deep state?

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Is Ukraine Vital to US Security? by Edward Lozansky

Posted on November 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

Russia could roll into Ukraine and take over, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing the US could do about. How a country so easily conquered by its next door neighbor can be vital to US security is a question that never seems to get answered. From Edward Lozansky at antiwar.com:

The ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Trump can certainly compete with Hollywood’s most successful drama or comedy shows. However, when we deal with national security issues one expects the actors, in this case members of Congress and witnesses, to tell the truth. In this case, some do, but some regrettably do not. The whole picture, said House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, looks like a “Soviet-style” event.

As someone who grew up in the Soviet Union, I tend to agree with Mr. Scalise. When I listen to Adam B. Schiff and Co. they indeed remind me of Soviet apparatchiks who knew they were telling lies, contemptuous of the fact that their hearers didn’t believe a single word they said. These were the unspoken rules everyone had to accept – or else. But for God’s sake, we are in America, aren’t we?

When Ukraine and all other Soviet republics, including Russia, became independent states, I organized with the help of Paul Weyrich, the late leader of the Free Congress Foundation, a trilateral meeting on Capitol Hill of legislators from the U.S. Congress, Russia’s Duma and Ukraine’s Rada.

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A dozen document troves that could change the Ukraine scandal if Trump released them, by John Solomon

Posted on November 27, 2019 | Leave a comment

By all means, release every single relevant document in the Ukraine matter. From John Solomon at johnsolomonreports.com:

There are still wide swaths of documentation kept under wraps inside government agencies like the State Department that could substantially alter the public’s understanding of what has happened in the U.S.-Ukraine relationships now at the heart of the impeachment probe.

As House Democrats mull whether to pursue impeachment articles and the GOP-led Senate braces for a possible trial, here are 12 tranches of government documents that could benefit the public if President Trump ordered them released, and the questions these memos might answer.

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Posted in Crime, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Intelligence, Investigations, Politics

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The Resistance Digs Their Hole Deeper, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on November 26, 2019 | Leave a comment

The so-called resistance is drowning in the quicksand and bullshit of their own made up stories. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

“No, you don’t understand. It was the Russians, I tell you, the Russians!” And so, with a holiday recess for Adam Schiff’s impeachment soap opera, and news that DOJ Inspector General Horowitz will unload in early December, the media vassals of the Deep State are giving you their own turkey gristle to chew on: “The Russians did it! Yes, really, they did! Believe us!”

Perhaps The New York Times has hooked up to a direct line of Burisma’s product as they flood the darkened arena with eerie blue gaslight. Friday, they featured a story — Russia Inquiry Review Is Said to Criticize F.B.I. but Rebuff Claims of Biased Acts — geared to make readers think that the entire FBI FISA warrant hair-ball came down to one lowly lawyer chump named Kevin Clinesmith messing with an email. Later, Times reporter Adam Goldman, posted this howler on Twitter.

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Governments, Intelligence, Investigations, Law, Media, Politics

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The Pitfalls of a Pit Bull Russophobe, by Ray McGovern

Posted on November 23, 2019 | 1 comment

A thing or two has changed since the 1980s, but don’t tell the State Department. From Ray McGovern at antiwar.com:

Like so many other glib ‘Russia experts’ with access to Establishment media, Fiona Hill, who testified Thursday in the impeachment probe, seems three decades out of date.

Fiona Hill’s “Russian-expert” testimony Thursday and her deposition on Oct. 14 to the impeachment inquiry showed that her antennae are acutely tuned to what Russian intelligence services may be up to but, sadly, also displayed a striking naiveté about the machinations of U.S. intelligence.

Hill’s education on Russia came at the knee of the late Professor Richard Pipes, her Harvard mentor and archdeacon of Russophobia. I do not dispute her sincerity in attributing all manner of evil to what President Ronald Reagan called the “Evil Empire.” But, like so many other glib “Russia experts” with access to Establishment media, she seems three decades out of date.

I have been studying the U.S.S.R. and Russia for twice as long as Hill, was chief of CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch during the 1970s, and watched the “Evil Empire” fall apart. She seems to have missed the falling apart part.

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Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History, Politics

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Impeachment Theater Allows Americans a Glimpse of the Unseen Unelected Who Actually Rule Over Us, Instead of Just the Minor Functionaries We Get to Vote For. From diogenesmiddlefinger.com

Posted on November 23, 2019 | 1 comment

The impeachment hearings have demonstrated a bureaucracy that believes it sets policy and those we elect to supposedly run the government are nothing more than a nuisance. From diogenesmiddlefinger.com:

American voters have been introduced to the idea that the elected President of the United States can be accused of “undermining” foreign policy determined by the permanent bureaucracy, which spends billions of our tax dollars but is not even slightly interested in our input.

We’ve been told top bureaucrats who supposedly serve at the pleasure of the president are actually entitled to their jobs and firing them is a crime, with the president presumed guilty unless he can prove he had an acceptable reason for terminating or reassigning them.

We’ve learned that Made Men of the bureaucratic empire and its political wing, the Democrat Party, cannot be investigated for corruption unless the most exquisite preliminary rituals are followed and the investigators can demonstrate the absolute purity of their intentions

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Trump And Zelensky Want Peace With Russia. The Fascists Oppose That. By Moon of Alabama

Posted on November 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

Who makes the ultimate decisions on US foreign policy, the president or the bureaucrats? From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.com:

NBC News is not impressed by the first day of the Democrats’ impeachment circus. But it fails to note what the conflict is really about:

It was substantive, but it wasn’t dramatic.In the reserved manner of veteran diplomats with Harvard degrees, Bill Taylor and George Kent opened the public phase of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on Wednesday by bearing witness to a scheme they described as not only wildly unorthodox but also in direct contravention of U.S. interests.

“It is clearly in our national interest to deter further Russian aggression,” Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said in explaining why Trump’s decision to withhold congressionally appropriated aid to the most immediate target of Russian expansionism didn’t align with U.S. policy.

But at a time when Democrats are simultaneously eager to influence public opinion in favor of ousting the president and quietly apprehensive that their hearings could stall or backfire, the first round felt more like the dress rehearsal for a serious one-act play than the opening night of a hit Broadway musical.

“In direct contravention of U.S. interests” says the NBC and quotes a member of the permanent state who declares “it is clearly in our national interest” to give weapons to Ukraine.

But is that really in the national U.S. interest? Who defined it as such?

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The Deep State’s Deep State Department, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on November 15, 2019 | 1 comment

The State Department doesn’t want an interloper of a president telling it how to conduct foreign policy. From James Howard Kuntler at kunstler.com:

For now, it comes down to this: the US State Department is at war with the White House.  State’s allies in the Democratic majority congress want to help overthrow the occupant of the White House because he’s interfering in the department’s foreign policy. The lifers at State are the same ones who executed a coup in 2014 against Ukraine’s government and threw out the elected president Victor Yanukovych because he tilted to join a Russian-backed regional customs union rather than NATO.  State’s diplomatic lifers are old hands at coups. Now they’re at it at home, right here in the USA.

Ever since the Maidan Revolution of 2014, they have worked sedulously to exert control over Ukrainian affairs. And they especially can’t stand that the recently elected president Zelensky declared that he wants to improve his country’s relationship with next-door-neighbor (and ex-sovereign) Russia. The occupant of the White House, Mr. Trump, had often expressed a similar interest to improve the USA’s relations with Russia. State would prefer to amp up a new cold war. Mr. Trump has some nerve interfering with that!

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