lo yeeOn
2016-10-15 03:58:45 UTC
WikiLeaks: The two faces of Hillary Clinton on Syria
By Sharmine Narwani
Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East
geopolitics. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony's
College, Oxford University and has a master's degree in International
Relations from Columbia University. Sharmine has written commentary
for a wide array of publications, including Al Akhbar English, the New
York Times, the Guardian, Asia Times Online, Salon.com, USA Today, the
Huffington Post, Al Jazeera English, BRICS Post and others. You can
follow her on Twitter at @snarwani Published time: 14 Oct, 2016 17:45
Edited time: 14 Oct, 2016 18:32
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/362819-clinton-emails-syria-wikileaks/
Not a Syrian uprising; a regime change plan
A 2012 email released by WikiLeaks last year shows that, behind the
scenes, Clinton's State Department was calculating its Syria policy
using entirely different metrics than its publicly-stated narrative of
supporting reforms and rejecting violence:
"It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of
Bashar Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine
Israel's security - not through a direct attack, which in the thirty
years of hostility between Iran and Israel has never occurred, but
through its proxies in Lebanon, like Hezbollah, that are sustained,
armed and trained by Iran via Syria. The end of the Assad regime
would end this dangerous alliance. Israel's leadership understands
well why defeating Assad is now in its interests."
The email, written by an unidentified person and included within the
WikiLeaks `Clinton archive', lays out a plan:
"Washington should start by expressing its willingness to work with
regional allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to organize,
train and arm Syrian rebel forces. The announcement of such a
decision would, by itself, likely cause substantial defections from
the Syrian military. Then, using territory in Turkey and possibly
Jordan, US diplomats and Pentagon officials can start strengthening
the opposition ... Arming the Syrian rebels and using Western air
power to ground Syrian helicopters and airplanes is a low-cost high
payoff approach."
Arming a Syrian rebellion from outside the country was already a
consideration "from the very beginning", according to a recent
WikiLeaks release of a June 2013 speech by Clinton:
"So, the problem for the US and the Europeans has been from the very
beginning: What is it you - who is it you are going to try to arm.
And you probably read in the papers my view was we should try to find
some of the groups that were there that we thought we could build
relationships with and develop some covert connections that might then
at least give us some insight into what is going on inside Syria.
Certainly, we know that by early 2012, the Obama and Erdogan
administrations had struck a deal to establish a rat-line transporting
weapons and ammunition from Libya to Syria - via the CIA and MI6, and
funded by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi which killed US Ambassador
Christopher Stevens was only a temporary setback. Weapons and
financial assistance to militants in Syria, however, continued to flow
from America's regional allies without any US pushback, even though
Washington clearly knew arms were being siphoned to extremists.
A declassified DIA document from August 2012 circulated to Clinton's
State Department states that "plainly the Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood
and AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) are the major forces driving the insurgency
in Syria" and that "the West, Gulf countries and Turkey support the
opposition."
But if US Special Forces were involved in driving arms and fighters
into Syria in early 2012, the groundwork would have had to have begun
many, many months before. The US military's unconventional warfare
(UW) strategy requires that target-state population perceptions are
first `groomed' into accepting an armed insurrection, using
"propaganda and political and psychological efforts to discredit the
government..."creating local and national `agitation'"...helping
organize "boycotts, strikes and other efforts to suggest `public
discontent'"... before beginning the "infiltration of foreign
organizers and advisors and foreign propaganda, material, money,
weapons and equipment".
You get an idea of how this `propaganda' and `grooming' works in a
June 2011 email from Clinton's recently-departed Director of Policy
Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter, who openly calls for fabricating
sectarian narratives to incite Syrian protestors:
"This suggests US should be making much more of the ways in which
Syrian regime is simulating violence. Can't we call for a meeting
of the UNSC where we do not call for action but simply present
information along the lines of what is recounted below so as to
'bring it to the attention of the Council' in a way that then has
greater credibility globally? Making the point repeatedly that the
regime wants this to look like/turn into sectarian violence? At the
very least that can be broadcast back into Syria in various ways
that will encourage protestors. There is an information war going
on; we can do much more to elevate and legitimate the truth."
This is business as usual for a US State Department well-versed in
sowing sectarian discord in the Middle East - all while publicly
denouncing sectarian strife. A WikiLeaks email from 2006 shows that
this thinking was already well-entrenched in Foggy Bottom, with a
focus on "exploiting vulnerabilities" - particularly "sectarian" ones
- inside Syria.
Fueling the sectarian Jihad
By late 2011, US intelligence had assessed that Al-Qaeda was operating
inside Syria. This information was public, but not widely disseminated.
Instead, Clinton's team focused heavily on flogging the narrative that
"Assad must go" because of his government's widespread human rights
violations.
Clinton liberally used the "humanitarian" pretext to advance a regime
change agenda - pushing, behind the scenes, for increased assistance
to militants and direct US military intervention, while publicly
decrying the escalating violence inside Syria.
But did she give a toss about keeping Syrians safe? The evidence
suggests otherwise. In this new WikiLeaks release of a speech to the
Jewish United Fund in August 2013 - "flagged", incidentally, by her
staffers who worried about its content - Clinton outlines one possible
Syrian policy option:
"One way is a very hands off, step back, we don't have a dog in this
hunt, let them kill themselves until they get exhausted, and then
we'll figure out how to deal with what the remnants are. That's a
position held by people who believe there is no way, not just for
the United States but others, to stop the killing before the people
doing the killing and the return killing are tired of killing each
other. So it's a very hands off approach."
To any observer of the foreign-fueled Syrian war of attrition, it
looks very much like Clinton opted for this course of action.
And given that Washington's allies in the Syrian fight consisted
mainly of head-chopping, jihadist foot soldiers, Clinton's scenario of
a killing field to keep all sides "exhausted" may have even been the
starting plan.
These fighters came equipped with a militant, sectarian mindset
courtesy of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar - under the supervision, of
course, of a CIA that cut its teeth doing the exact same thing with
the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan.
A WikiLeaks email sent from Hillary Clinton to her now-campaign chief
John Podesta in August 2014 shows that the former Secretary of State
is fully aware that her allies were partial to supporting terrorists:
"While this military/paramilitary operation is moving forward, we
need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets
to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia,
which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to
ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."
Qatar and Saudi Arabia are, of course, two staunch US allies in the
region that host American military bases and, apparently, also support
ISIL.
Another October 2013 Clinton speech "flagged" by her campaign staff,
and released by WikiLeaks this week, has her saying:
"The Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons - and
pretty indiscriminately - not at all targeted toward the people that
we think would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems
in the future."
The State Department knows all too well that both fighters and weapons
are fungible in the Syrian militant marketplace. It is a key reason
the US has always resisted naming those groups it considers "moderate"
rebels. Arms and supplies to US-backed groups have often found their
way to ISIL and Al-Qaeda, with photo evidence aplenty making the
social media rounds.
Despite these loaded disclosures, Clinton and other US policymakers
still flog outdated narratives about an `evil Syrian regime killing
innocent civilians' while ignoring the narrative they know to be true:
bloodthirsty jihadists armed to the teeth by ideologically-aligned US
allies.
This Syrian conflict - privately, at least - is about regime change at
all costs for the hawkish side of the policy establishment which
includes the CIA, Pentagon brass and Clinton. Publicly, however, it's
still about "crimes against humanity" - whatever that means today.
Earlier this month, Clinton began to publicly reveal that truth in
advance of the November presidential election. Reuters reports Clinton
as saying "removing President Bashar al-Assad is the top priority in
Syria".
She is also once again touting a "no-fly zone" over Syria - much as
she did with Libya. In yet another speech "flagged" by her campaign
and released by WikiLeaks - this one delivered to Goldman Sachs at
their CEO conference in June 2013 - Clinton explains:
"To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense,
many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if
they are standoff missiles so we're not putting our pilots at risk -
you're going to kill a lot of Syrians. So all of a sudden this
intervention that people talk about so glibly becomes an American and
NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians."
So Clinton is advocating for a no-fly zone despite the fact that she
recognizes she's "going to kill a lot of Syrians". Which then puts
that other speech of hers about letting Syrians "kill themselves until
they get exhausted" into context.
Her only regional allies in this endeavor will be the Saudis and
Qataris, who we now know support ISIL and other terrorists inside
Syria. We also know that Clinton will continue to ignore this
indiscretion - not because of what she says, but because of what she
does:
Her public-versus-private position on the Saudis, after all, has been
bandied about since the 2010 WikiLeaks State Department cables were
released.
In 2009, a secret WikiLeaks cable signed off by then- Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton reads, in part:
"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of
funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide...Saudi Arabia remains a
critical financial support base for Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT
(Laskhar-e Taiba), and other terrorist groups...It has been an
ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist
financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority."
Yet, by 2011, Clinton was already ushering through the biggest weapons
sale to Saudi Arabia in US history - a massive $67 Billion arms dump
into the epicenter of global terror.
Clinton is not averse to cashing in on Saudi riches for her and her
family's foundation either. The Clinton Foundation has received
millions of dollars from Saudi, Qatari and other Gulf sources, despite
the role their governments have played in funding global Jihad. And
her campaign manager's brother, Tony Podesta, just signed on to
furnish the Saudi government with very expensive public relations
services earlier this year.
There is something schizophrenic about Hillary Clinton's
compartmentalization of issues that speaks to the very competence of
her judgment. Her whole private-versus-public-positions shtick is
antithetical to the transparency, process and accountability demanded
by democracy.
She speaks of her Iraq "mistake", yet we have still not heard what
lessons she has learned. And it grates, because we can see she has
repeated them again and again, in Libya and in Syria.
The `public' Hillary Clinton supports self-determination, freedom and
human rights for Syrians. The `private' Hillary Clinton supports the
wholesale massacre of Syrians by a closely allied network of depraved
sectarian terrorists - in order to weaken Iran and strengthen Israel.
If you're one of those Americans who don't trust her, you have good
reason. At this point it is hard to ascertain if Clinton herself knows
what her truth is anymore.
By Sharmine Narwani
Sharmine Narwani is a commentator and analyst of Middle East
geopolitics. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony's
College, Oxford University and has a master's degree in International
Relations from Columbia University. Sharmine has written commentary
for a wide array of publications, including Al Akhbar English, the New
York Times, the Guardian, Asia Times Online, Salon.com, USA Today, the
Huffington Post, Al Jazeera English, BRICS Post and others. You can
follow her on Twitter at @snarwani Published time: 14 Oct, 2016 17:45
Edited time: 14 Oct, 2016 18:32
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/362819-clinton-emails-syria-wikileaks/
Not a Syrian uprising; a regime change plan
A 2012 email released by WikiLeaks last year shows that, behind the
scenes, Clinton's State Department was calculating its Syria policy
using entirely different metrics than its publicly-stated narrative of
supporting reforms and rejecting violence:
"It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of
Bashar Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine
Israel's security - not through a direct attack, which in the thirty
years of hostility between Iran and Israel has never occurred, but
through its proxies in Lebanon, like Hezbollah, that are sustained,
armed and trained by Iran via Syria. The end of the Assad regime
would end this dangerous alliance. Israel's leadership understands
well why defeating Assad is now in its interests."
The email, written by an unidentified person and included within the
WikiLeaks `Clinton archive', lays out a plan:
"Washington should start by expressing its willingness to work with
regional allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to organize,
train and arm Syrian rebel forces. The announcement of such a
decision would, by itself, likely cause substantial defections from
the Syrian military. Then, using territory in Turkey and possibly
Jordan, US diplomats and Pentagon officials can start strengthening
the opposition ... Arming the Syrian rebels and using Western air
power to ground Syrian helicopters and airplanes is a low-cost high
payoff approach."
Arming a Syrian rebellion from outside the country was already a
consideration "from the very beginning", according to a recent
WikiLeaks release of a June 2013 speech by Clinton:
"So, the problem for the US and the Europeans has been from the very
beginning: What is it you - who is it you are going to try to arm.
And you probably read in the papers my view was we should try to find
some of the groups that were there that we thought we could build
relationships with and develop some covert connections that might then
at least give us some insight into what is going on inside Syria.
Certainly, we know that by early 2012, the Obama and Erdogan
administrations had struck a deal to establish a rat-line transporting
weapons and ammunition from Libya to Syria - via the CIA and MI6, and
funded by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The attack on the US consulate in Benghazi which killed US Ambassador
Christopher Stevens was only a temporary setback. Weapons and
financial assistance to militants in Syria, however, continued to flow
from America's regional allies without any US pushback, even though
Washington clearly knew arms were being siphoned to extremists.
A declassified DIA document from August 2012 circulated to Clinton's
State Department states that "plainly the Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood
and AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq) are the major forces driving the insurgency
in Syria" and that "the West, Gulf countries and Turkey support the
opposition."
But if US Special Forces were involved in driving arms and fighters
into Syria in early 2012, the groundwork would have had to have begun
many, many months before. The US military's unconventional warfare
(UW) strategy requires that target-state population perceptions are
first `groomed' into accepting an armed insurrection, using
"propaganda and political and psychological efforts to discredit the
government..."creating local and national `agitation'"...helping
organize "boycotts, strikes and other efforts to suggest `public
discontent'"... before beginning the "infiltration of foreign
organizers and advisors and foreign propaganda, material, money,
weapons and equipment".
You get an idea of how this `propaganda' and `grooming' works in a
June 2011 email from Clinton's recently-departed Director of Policy
Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter, who openly calls for fabricating
sectarian narratives to incite Syrian protestors:
"This suggests US should be making much more of the ways in which
Syrian regime is simulating violence. Can't we call for a meeting
of the UNSC where we do not call for action but simply present
information along the lines of what is recounted below so as to
'bring it to the attention of the Council' in a way that then has
greater credibility globally? Making the point repeatedly that the
regime wants this to look like/turn into sectarian violence? At the
very least that can be broadcast back into Syria in various ways
that will encourage protestors. There is an information war going
on; we can do much more to elevate and legitimate the truth."
This is business as usual for a US State Department well-versed in
sowing sectarian discord in the Middle East - all while publicly
denouncing sectarian strife. A WikiLeaks email from 2006 shows that
this thinking was already well-entrenched in Foggy Bottom, with a
focus on "exploiting vulnerabilities" - particularly "sectarian" ones
- inside Syria.
Fueling the sectarian Jihad
By late 2011, US intelligence had assessed that Al-Qaeda was operating
inside Syria. This information was public, but not widely disseminated.
Instead, Clinton's team focused heavily on flogging the narrative that
"Assad must go" because of his government's widespread human rights
violations.
Clinton liberally used the "humanitarian" pretext to advance a regime
change agenda - pushing, behind the scenes, for increased assistance
to militants and direct US military intervention, while publicly
decrying the escalating violence inside Syria.
But did she give a toss about keeping Syrians safe? The evidence
suggests otherwise. In this new WikiLeaks release of a speech to the
Jewish United Fund in August 2013 - "flagged", incidentally, by her
staffers who worried about its content - Clinton outlines one possible
Syrian policy option:
"One way is a very hands off, step back, we don't have a dog in this
hunt, let them kill themselves until they get exhausted, and then
we'll figure out how to deal with what the remnants are. That's a
position held by people who believe there is no way, not just for
the United States but others, to stop the killing before the people
doing the killing and the return killing are tired of killing each
other. So it's a very hands off approach."
To any observer of the foreign-fueled Syrian war of attrition, it
looks very much like Clinton opted for this course of action.
And given that Washington's allies in the Syrian fight consisted
mainly of head-chopping, jihadist foot soldiers, Clinton's scenario of
a killing field to keep all sides "exhausted" may have even been the
starting plan.
These fighters came equipped with a militant, sectarian mindset
courtesy of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar - under the supervision, of
course, of a CIA that cut its teeth doing the exact same thing with
the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan.
A WikiLeaks email sent from Hillary Clinton to her now-campaign chief
John Podesta in August 2014 shows that the former Secretary of State
is fully aware that her allies were partial to supporting terrorists:
"While this military/paramilitary operation is moving forward, we
need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets
to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia,
which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to
ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region."
Qatar and Saudi Arabia are, of course, two staunch US allies in the
region that host American military bases and, apparently, also support
ISIL.
Another October 2013 Clinton speech "flagged" by her campaign staff,
and released by WikiLeaks this week, has her saying:
"The Saudis and others are shipping large amounts of weapons - and
pretty indiscriminately - not at all targeted toward the people that
we think would be the more moderate, least likely, to cause problems
in the future."
The State Department knows all too well that both fighters and weapons
are fungible in the Syrian militant marketplace. It is a key reason
the US has always resisted naming those groups it considers "moderate"
rebels. Arms and supplies to US-backed groups have often found their
way to ISIL and Al-Qaeda, with photo evidence aplenty making the
social media rounds.
Despite these loaded disclosures, Clinton and other US policymakers
still flog outdated narratives about an `evil Syrian regime killing
innocent civilians' while ignoring the narrative they know to be true:
bloodthirsty jihadists armed to the teeth by ideologically-aligned US
allies.
This Syrian conflict - privately, at least - is about regime change at
all costs for the hawkish side of the policy establishment which
includes the CIA, Pentagon brass and Clinton. Publicly, however, it's
still about "crimes against humanity" - whatever that means today.
Earlier this month, Clinton began to publicly reveal that truth in
advance of the November presidential election. Reuters reports Clinton
as saying "removing President Bashar al-Assad is the top priority in
Syria".
She is also once again touting a "no-fly zone" over Syria - much as
she did with Libya. In yet another speech "flagged" by her campaign
and released by WikiLeaks - this one delivered to Goldman Sachs at
their CEO conference in June 2013 - Clinton explains:
"To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defense,
many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if
they are standoff missiles so we're not putting our pilots at risk -
you're going to kill a lot of Syrians. So all of a sudden this
intervention that people talk about so glibly becomes an American and
NATO involvement where you take a lot of civilians."
So Clinton is advocating for a no-fly zone despite the fact that she
recognizes she's "going to kill a lot of Syrians". Which then puts
that other speech of hers about letting Syrians "kill themselves until
they get exhausted" into context.
Her only regional allies in this endeavor will be the Saudis and
Qataris, who we now know support ISIL and other terrorists inside
Syria. We also know that Clinton will continue to ignore this
indiscretion - not because of what she says, but because of what she
does:
Her public-versus-private position on the Saudis, after all, has been
bandied about since the 2010 WikiLeaks State Department cables were
released.
In 2009, a secret WikiLeaks cable signed off by then- Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton reads, in part:
"Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of
funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide...Saudi Arabia remains a
critical financial support base for Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, LeT
(Laskhar-e Taiba), and other terrorist groups...It has been an
ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist
financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority."
Yet, by 2011, Clinton was already ushering through the biggest weapons
sale to Saudi Arabia in US history - a massive $67 Billion arms dump
into the epicenter of global terror.
Clinton is not averse to cashing in on Saudi riches for her and her
family's foundation either. The Clinton Foundation has received
millions of dollars from Saudi, Qatari and other Gulf sources, despite
the role their governments have played in funding global Jihad. And
her campaign manager's brother, Tony Podesta, just signed on to
furnish the Saudi government with very expensive public relations
services earlier this year.
There is something schizophrenic about Hillary Clinton's
compartmentalization of issues that speaks to the very competence of
her judgment. Her whole private-versus-public-positions shtick is
antithetical to the transparency, process and accountability demanded
by democracy.
She speaks of her Iraq "mistake", yet we have still not heard what
lessons she has learned. And it grates, because we can see she has
repeated them again and again, in Libya and in Syria.
The `public' Hillary Clinton supports self-determination, freedom and
human rights for Syrians. The `private' Hillary Clinton supports the
wholesale massacre of Syrians by a closely allied network of depraved
sectarian terrorists - in order to weaken Iran and strengthen Israel.
If you're one of those Americans who don't trust her, you have good
reason. At this point it is hard to ascertain if Clinton herself knows
what her truth is anymore.