WikiLeaks: Oil Motivates U.S. Policy More than Fighting Terrorists - Nafeez Ahmed

ꕤ Article SOURCE alternet | here Wikileaks' Cables Suggests that Oil Motivates U.S. Policy More than Fighting Terrorists Cables released by Wikileaks demonstrate that control of the world's strategic energy reserves has always been a key factor in the direction of the "War on Terror". By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed / Foreign Policy in Focus December 16, 2010 Among the batch of classified diplomatic cables recently released by the controversial whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, several have highlighted the vast extent of the financial infrastructure of Islamist terrorism sponsored by key U.S. allies in the ongoing "War on Terror." One cable by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December 2009 notes that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” Despite this, “Riyadh has taken only limited action to disrupt fundraising for the UN 1267-listed Taliban and LeT [Lashkar e-Tayyiba] groups that are also aligned with al-Qaeda.” Clinton raises similar concerns about other states in the Gulf and Central Asia. Kuwait remains reluctant “to take action against Kuwait-based financiers and facilitators plotting attacks outside of Kuwait.” The United Arab Emirates is “vulnerable to abuse by terrorist financiers and facilitation networks” due to lack of regulatory oversight. Qatar’s cooperation with U.S. counter-terrorism is the “worst in the region,” and authorities are “hesitant to act against known terrorists.” Pakistani military intelligence officials “continue to maintain ties with a wide array of extremist organizations, in particular the Taliban [and the] LeT.” Despite such extensive knowledge of these terrorism financing activities, successive U.S. administrations have not only failed to exert military or economic pressure on these countries, but in fact have actively protected them, funneling billions of dollars of military and economic assistance. The reason is oil. It's the Hydrocarbons, Stupid Oil has always been an overwhelming Western interest in the region, beginning with Britain’s discovery of it in Persia in 1908. Britain controlled most Middle East oil until the end of World War II, after which the United States secured its sphere of influence in Saudi Arabia. After some pushback, Britain eventually accepted the United States as the lead player in the region. “US-UK agreement upon the broad, forward-looking pattern for the development and utilization of petroleum resources under the control of nationals of the two countries is of the highest strategic and commercial importance”, reads a 1945 memo from the chief of the State Department’s Petroleum Division. Anglo-U.S. geo-strategy exerted this control through alliances with the region’s most authoritarian regimes to ensure a cheap and stable supply of petroleum to Western markets. Recently declassified secret British Foreign Office files from the 1940s and 1950s confirm that the Gulf sheikhdoms were largely created to retain British influence in the Middle East. Britain pledged to protect them from external attack and to “counter hostile influence and propaganda within the countries themselves.” Police and military training would help in “maintaining internal security.” Similarly, in 1958 a U.S. State Department official noted that the Gulf sheikhdoms should be modernized without undermining “the fundamental authority of the ruling groups.” The protection of some of the world’s most virulent authoritarian regimes thus became integral to maintaining Anglo-U.S. geopolitical control of the world’s strategic hydrocarbon energy reserves. Our governments have willingly paid a high price for this access – the price of national security. Still Funding Radicalism One of al-Qaeda’s chief grievances against the West is what Osama bin Laden dubs the “Crusader-Jewish” presence in the lands of Islam, including support for repressive Arab regimes. Under U.S. direction and sponsorship, many of these allies played a central role in financing and supporting bin Laden’s mujahideen networks in Afghanistan to counter Soviet influence. It is perhaps less well understood that elements of the same regimes continued to support bin Laden’s networks long after the Cold War – and that they have frequently done so in collusion with U.S. intelligence services for short-sighted geopolitical interests. In fact, Afghanistan provides a rather revealing example. From 1994 to 2001, assisted by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the Clinton and Bush II administrations covertly sponsored, flirted and negotiated with the Taliban as a vehicle of regional influence. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, former White House Special Assistant to Ronald Reagan, also testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on South Asia about the “covert policy that has empowered the Taliban,” in the hopes of bringing sufficient stability to “permit the building of oil pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan.” The Great Game is still in full swing. “Since the U.S.-led offensive that ousted the Taliban from power, the project has been revived and drawn strong U.S. support” reported the Associated Press in 2005. “The pipeline would allow formerly Soviet Central Asian nations to export rich energy resources without relying on Russian routes. The project’s main sponsor is the Asian Development Bank” – in which the United States is the largest shareholder alongside Japan. It so happens that the southern section of the proposed pipeline runs through territory still under de facto Taliban control, where NATO war efforts are focused. Other evidence demonstrates that control of the world’s strategic energy reserves has always been a key factor in the direction of the "War on Terror". For instance, the April 2001 study commissioned by then-Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed official fears of an impending global oil supply crunch, energy shortages, and “the need for military intervention” in the Middle East to maintain stability. Energy and Iran Other diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show clearly that oil now remains central to U.S. policy toward Iran, depicting an administration desperate to “wean the world” off Iran’s oil supply, according to the London Telegraph. With world conventional oil production most likely having peaked around 2006, Iran is one of few major suppliers that can potentially boost oil output by another 3 million barrels, and natural gas output by even more.  The nuclear question is not the real issue, but provides ample pretext for isolating Iran. But the U.S. anti-Iran stance has been highly counterproductive. In a series of dispatches for the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh cited U.S. government and intelligence officials confirming that the CIA and the Pentagon have funneled millions of dollars via Saudi Arabia to al-Qaeda-affiliated Sunni extremist groups across the Middle East and Central Asia. The policy – officially confirmed by a U.S. Presidential Finding in early 2008 – began in 2003 and has spilled over into regions like Iraq and Lebanon, fuelling Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian conflict. Not only did no Democratic members of the House ever contest the policy but President Obama reappointed the architect of the policy – Robert Gates – as his defence secretary. As former National Security Council staffers Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett observe, Obama’s decision earlier this year to step up covert military operations in North Africa and the Middle East marked an “intensification of America’s covert war against Iran.” This anti-Iran directive, which extends covert U.S. support for anti-Shi’ite Islamist militant networks linked to al-Qaeda, hardly fits neatly into the stated objectives of the "War on Terror." Unless we recognize that controlling access to energy, not fighting terror, is the primary motive. Beyond Dependency While classified covert operations continue to bolster terrorist activity, the Obama administration struggles vainly to deal with the geopolitical fall-out. Getting out of this impasse requires, first, recognition of our over-dependence on hydrocarbon energy sources to the detriment of real national security. Beholden to the industry lobbyists and the geopolitical dominance that control of oil provides, Western governments have supported dictatorial regimes that fuel widespread resentment in the Muslim world. Worse, the West has tolerated and until recently colluded in the sponsorship of al-Qaeda terrorist activity by these regimes precisely to maintain the existing global energy system. Given the convergence of peak oil and climate change, it is imperative to transition to a new, renewable energy system.  Such a transition will mitigate the impact of hydrocarbon energy depletion, help prevent the worst effects of anthropogenic global warming, and contribute to economic stability through infrastructure development and job creation. By weaning us off our reliance on dubious foreign regimes, a shift to renewables and away from supporting oil dictatorships will also make us safer. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in London and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. His latest book is A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010). He blogs at The Cutting Edge. SOURCE alternet | here ---------------------- ꕤ  ---------------------- COMMENT Another great article. I'm hopeless at taking everything in at once.  Will have to do some really brief notes for myself. So when the West isn't actively sponsoring Middle Eastern terrorism, the West overlooks sponsorship of terrorism by British-installed sheikdoms, favourably disposed to US and allied interests that keep them propped up in power? The US has muscled in on Britain's Middle Eastern turf post-WWII, and Britain plays second banana to the US in the region, while the US is BFF with Saudi Arabia, until the oil runs out. The key regional Western-propped dictator (Western-puppet ... or is that partner?) regimes, sponsoring terrorism and sectarian kill-fests (to maintain their self-serving and exploitative power grip on the region), are: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. Surprised that Pakistan is there, although I know Pakistan's terrorist central.  Why?  Pakistan seems like odd man out. The Brits made a deal that should be void:  ie protecting the puppet monarchs from *internal* challenges ... which effectively means taking part in enslaving these populations under the control of these Western propped monarchies or other dictatorships, because it precludes the rise of anything remotely close to 'proper democracy' (if that's actually possible ... anywhere), I would think. British pledges to protect don't mean much, unless there's something in it for the British (I think it was Persia that they slimed out of protecting some time around the turn of last century or perhaps just before that): "... when Britain failed to defend Persia in the Russo-Persian War of 1826-28-a course of inaction which Britain was fully justified in taking because Persia had started the war and the 1814 mutual defense agreement obligated Britain to defend Persia only against aggression-the Shah concluded that Britain was an unreliable ally, and in effect he went over to the Russian side." [here] Wow, that was way earlier than I thought.  It was the early 1800s.  The Shah concluded correctly, in my opinion. lol  Stick with the Russians, Persia. Bin Laden wasn't happy about the Western support for repressive regimes in the region; but it also sounds like there's maybe a religious and cultural element to OBL's objection, judging by the terminology used:  'Crusader-Jewish'?  Or maybe I'm reading too much into that? Looks like OBL had forgotten that Islam itself was spread in the region through conquest of people and territories.  Not that the West is planning on spreading any ideology ... it's only profits for the wealthy that matter. Asian Development Bank, Japan and USA have a stake in a pipeline project that is intended to run through Taliban controlled territory and this is where NATO concentrated its aggression.  So, wherever NATO is, profit is?  With Obama's blessing, Robert Gates was the mastermind of a policy backing Sunni extremist vs the Shia side in the region (against Iran's interests),  while US GOVERNMENT, US INTELLIGENCE, the PENTAGON and CIA funnelled dollars for this project, via Saudi Arabia, who, in turn, flicked the dollars to al-Qaeda.  It's thanks to Gates' policy that there's a spread of sectarian violence in the Middle East, including Iraq and Lebanon.  The funnelling of money that reached al-Qaeda is confirmed (presidential finding, 2008).  So this isn't speculation. So, I take it there's no organised Islamic 'war on terror' 'death cult' about to attack anyone in here in the West, and there's only the random crazy head-chopping incident associated with the consequences of mass displacement and mass immigration, to sidestep when out and about, say, doing a spot of furniture shopping? That Robert Gates struck me as shifty and creepy looking when I saw him in this video, filmed on the day of Julian Assange's arrest in Britain, almost 5 years ago: ROBERT GATES US Defence Secretary in Afghanistan 7 Dec 2010 Associated Press https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g9g9F6_TC4 If I hadn't got interested in Ukraine and then curious about Assange and WikiLeaks, I'd probably never have paid this creepy old man any attention.  And look what fun I'd have missed out on.  lol Imagine this guy knows where all the bodies are buried. So, Gates, the architect of Hell (ie the policy of funnelling American money to Sunni al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists, in the Middle East) has been free the last 5 years, while Australian journalist, Julian Assange, has been a political prisoner in Britain (Britain, which is America's Middle Eastern second banana partner in oil and crime) -- held without charge, for exposing US and allied war crimes, those same 5 years that Architect of Hell, Robert Gates, has been free. Ehem.  Western values?  Where's those Western values plate-face, Dave Cameron's been preaching, then?  Eh? How can this be permitted to happen in democracies, among free men? Can somebody please help Assange: Julian Assange Australian Journalist FAQ & Support https://justice4assange.com/ Assange Transnational Security Elite, Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money London  OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011) Link  |  here ----------- PS I'm hoping I'll remember some of this.  Terrible recall of facts.  lol But I've discovered that information has a mysterious way of seeping in without being aware that it has.  A couple of times I've written things I thought were original ideas ... until I remembered where I'd read whatever it was that I'd laboured over ... for ages. It was rather upsetting to find out I'm not at all an original thinker.  lol ꕤ

Power Drunk Hillary Clinton - Wreaked Destruction on the Middle East

JUSTIN RAIMONDO ARTICLE Hillary’s War The Pentagon tried to stop her – unfortunately, to no avail by Justin Raimondo, February 02, 2015 What’s happening in Libya today is a crime: murder, rape, looting, chaos, a war of all against all. The perpetrator, the one key person who made all this possible, is a well known personage in American politics, a former Secretary of State and the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. What Hillary Clinton did to Libya is a crime on a scale rivaled only by the crimes of the Bush administration in Iraq – and there is a definite parallel in the methodology of the criminals. Libya has been pretty much off the public’s radar screen ever since the US intervention that led to Muammar Qaddafi’s downfall – and the ugly aftermath in which the US ambassador was murdered by the very people Washington was intent on "liberating." Now the aftermath is getting even uglier. The country is imploding, with two rival governments claiming suzerainty, but describing Libya’s situation as a state of "civil war" is a bit of an understatement. If ever there was such an entity as a "failed state" – that is, a state that has simply collapsed, and is dragging the rest of society down along with it – then Libya fits the definition to a tee. If we liken a society to the human body, then we can say Libya’s immune system is down, allowing a deadly infection to invade and take root – in this case, the "Islamic State," or "caliphate," known as ISIS, which first reared its head in Syria and is now spreading into Libya. [Suzerainty =  a power that controls the foreign affairs of a tributary vassal state, while allowing the subservient nation internal autonomy.] Last week ISIS gunmen stormed Tripoli’s five-star Corinithia Hotel and opened fire at everyone in sight: ten people were killed, five of them foreigners, including one American. A communiqué from the "Tripoli province" of ISIS took responsibility for the attack, which they said was in retaliation for the death of captured Al Qaeda operative Abu Anas al-Liby, who died of liver cancer in a US hospital after being captured by US Special Forces. Both Libya and Syria have been test cases in the experimental laboratory of America’s "regime-change" mad scientists – and both have given birth to Islamist Frankenstein monsters, turning on their creators with a vengeance. But who created them? Who are the Dr. Frankensteins who brought these monsters to life? The administration of George W. Bush lied us into war in Iraq, ignoring the warnings of war critics who presciently predicted the dissolution of the Iraqi state and the chaos we see there today. America’s alliance with "moderate" Sunni Islamists in Anbar province, credited with supposedly driving out Al Qaeda during the much-vaunted "surge," armed and trained the ISIS-led fanatics who have conquered that same region today. And yet while Team Bush can fairly be given some of the blame – by setting the general context of the disaster – the Obama administration is hardly innocent. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, took up a longstanding goal of the previous administration in pushing for a regime change campaign aimed at Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad: together with General David Petraeus, former CIA chief, she argued for arming the Syrian rebels, in concert with John Kerry and Republican allies like Sen. John McCain. This was part of a general strategy taken up during her tenure at Foggy Bottom, which sought to get ahead of the so-called Arab Spring and ally the US with "moderate" Islamists. The old secular-socialist despots, such as Assad and Libya’s Qaddafi, were finished, went the theory, and so the US should ally itself with this Wave of the Future so as not to be caught flatfooted by the rush of events. In Libya, this meant backing a motley collection of Islamist radicals with, at most, a few degrees of separation from al-Qaeda. This move was championed by Secretary Clinton, along with national security advisor Susan Rice and Samantha Power, then Special Assistant to the President for Human Rights – but not without pushback from the Pentagon. The generals didn’t want to get involved in what they viewed as a dubious adventure with unpredictable results. Who were these rebels we were supporting? The whole operation was "intelligence-lite," as a recent series of articles in the Washington Times puts it. The Times reports a full-scale Pentagon effort to avert US intervention: "Top Pentagon officials and a senior Democrat in Congress so distrusted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2011 march to war in Libya that they opened their own diplomatic channels with the Gadhafi regime in an effort to halt the escalating crisis, according to secret audio recordings recovered from Tripoli. "The tapes, reviewed by The Washington Times and authenticated by the participants, chronicle U.S. officials’ unfiltered conversations with Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s son and a top Libyan leader, including criticisms that Mrs. Clinton had developed tunnel vision and led the U.S. into an unnecessary war without adequately weighing the intelligence community’s concerns." Just as neoconservatives in key positions in the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence in order to shape the debate over the Iraq war, deceiving Congress and the American people, so the Hillaryites in the Obama administration did the same in the brief debate over the Libyan intervention.  As the Times relates: “‘You should see these internal State Department reports that are produced in the State Department that go out to the Congress. They’re just full of stupid, stupid facts,’ an American intermediary specifically dispatched by the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Gadhafi regime in July 2011, saying the State Department was controlling what intelligence would be reported to U.S. officials." Secretary Clinton, National Security Advisor Rice, and "humanitarian interventionist" Power argued that Qaddafi’s speech in which he called Libyan rebels "rats" toward whom he would show "no mercy" indicated a "genocide" was imminent in the eastern city of Benghazi. The media blindly accepted this assertion, as is their wont when it comes to government claims, but as the Times reports: "[D]efense intelligence officials could not corroborate those concerns and in fact assessed that Gadhafi was unlikely to risk world outrage by inflicting mass casualties, officials told The Times. As a result, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strongly opposed Mrs. Clinton’s recommendation to use force." The generals feared they were being handed yet another foreign policy hot potato by the politicians, and in this they were indubitably correct: the Times says Hillary "repeatedly dismissed the warnings offered by career military and intelligence officials" – and prevented any of those warnings from reaching the President or members of Congress. Readers with long memories will recall similar suppressed (albeit leaked) warnings from dissident members of the intelligence community as George W. Bush and his neocon-controlled national security bureaucracy marched us to war in Iraq. The intelligence, they warned, was bogus; there were no "weapons of mass destruction," and the "evidence" for their existence was ginned up out of whole cloth. Surreptitious recordings of a US agent on assignment for the Pentagon reveal the President referring to the Libyan adventure as "all Secretary Clinton’s matter" – in effect washing his hands of it. According to the tapes, the Pentagon’s man in Libya told a top Libyan official – who was trying to negotiate a peaceful end to the crisis – that Army Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, Jr., a top aide to Adm. Mullen, "does not trust the reports that are coming out of the State Department and CIA, but there’s nothing he can do about it." At one point, the Pentagon liaison tells his Libyan contacts "I can tell you that the President is not getting accurate information." Sound familiar? As in the case of the Iraq war, intelligence made public was cherry-picked in order to support a preordained conclusion, and the facts didn’t matter all that much anyway. The Times cites a senior Pentagon official who says: "The decision to invade [Libya] had already been made, so everything coming out of the State Department at that time was to reinforce that decision.” The paper also quotes a senior intelligence official familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations as saying: “Neither the intervention decision nor the regime change decision was an intelligence-heavy decision. People weren’t on the edge of their seats, intelligence wasn’t driving the decision one way or another." Facts? Who needs them? Hillary was determined to have her war, and not even the efforts by the Qaddafi family to effectively surrender were going to stop her: "On the day the U.N. resolution was passed, Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gadhafi’s son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution, the secret recordings reveal. A day later, on March 18, Gadhafi called for a cease-fire, another action the administration dismissed." But the anti-interventionist generals in the Pentagon didn’t give up even then. The Times reveals that General Carter Ham, who headed up the US African Command (Africom), tried to negotiate a 72-hour ceasefire with the Libyan regime. The possibility presented itself through the person of retired Navy Rear Admiral Charles Kubic, who was a business representative in Libya: Kubic says he was approached by top Libyan officials who were ready to negotiate a truce. Kubic relayed the proposal to Lt. Col. Brian Linvill, who was Africom’s Libya specialist, who informed Gen. Ham. The Africom chief agreed it was a good idea. According to Kubic: “The Libyans would stop all combat operations and withdraw all military forces to the outskirts of the cities and assume a defensive posture. Then to insure the credibility with the international community, the Libyans would accept recipients from the African Union to make sure the truce was honored. “[Gadhafi] came back and said he was willing to step down and permit a transition government, but he had two conditions. First was to insure there was a military force left over after he left Libya capable to go after al Qaeda. Secondly, he wanted to have the sanctions against him and his family and those loyal to him lifted and free passage. At that point in time, everybody thought that was reasonable.” The problem was that reasonableness had nothing to do with it: Obama having handed her the authority, Hillary was on her dry run as commander-in-chief and she wasn’t about to let the Pentagon stand in her way. She ordered Ham to "stand down two days after the negotiations began," reports the Times. Kubic says: "If their goal was to get Gadhafi out of power, then why not give a 72-hour truce a try? It wasn’t enough to get him out of power; they wanted him dead." They got what they wanted. They also got a failed state that has become a terrorist haven – and a dead US ambassador, along with several other Americans murdered in the same Benghazi attack. All under Secretary Clinton’s watch. Against the available intelligence, which proffered no evidence of an "imminent genocide," Hillary took her cues from Donald Rumsfeld, whose infamous disquisition on "unknown unknowns" represented the merger of foreign policy and speculative fiction. Citing Rwanda and the early stages of the Balkan conflicts, Clinton averred that inaction would be the equivalent of standing by while a "humanitarian disaster" unfolded. Evidence to the contrary was therefore not admissible because, after all, it might happen. Even as intelligence and military officials were warning that the aftermath of NATO’s Libyan campaign would be highly problematic, Secretary Clinton ignored them and instead pursued her politically-driven agenda – at a cost of thousands of lives, and a terrorist implantation in Libya. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) put it well: "I think there was a rush headlong toward war in Libya and [the State Department and the administration] weren’t listening to anyone saying anything otherwise, including the Defense Department and intelligence communities, who were saying, ‘Hold on a minute. This may not be a good idea.’ "Hillary’s judgment has to be questioned. Her eagerness for war in Libya should preclude her from being considered the next commander in chief." Amen, brother! http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/02/01/hillarys-war/ COMMENT LOL ... thought this guy's spell-check had gone haywire. Nope.  I just haven't come across the term 'suzerainty' before: Suzerainty:   a power that controls the foreign affairs of a tributary vassal state, while allowing the subservient nation internal autonomy. What I got out of this is that Hillary Clinton is a disgusting person and so is anyone associated with her, even if it's just for a book launch photo op. It's just mind-blowing that peoples lives are destroyed and that entire regions are drawn into mayhem created by these power-drunk idiots. ..................................................................................   PS  The 'power drunk' conclusion is probably a bit too simplistic.  Hillary Clinton and other US political figures that banded together to cause the mayhem in Libya did so on behalf of whoever they really represent (ie their political donors and backers).

US FILTH - Aspen Strategy Group of Psychopaths

Crafting a strategy for deterring Putin By David Ignatius Opinion writer August 19 at 8:03 PM ASPEN, Colo. At the public kickoff of a discussion here about U.S. policy toward Russia and Ukraine, former defense secretary Robert Gates joked that his favorite definition of diplomacy was “petting a dog and saying ‘nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.” Sometimes, U.S. global strategy can be as haphazard as that. But something close to a coherent, consensus policy toward Russia emerged over four days of debate by the Aspen Strategy Group, a gathering of senior current and former officials, plus some think tank leaders and journalists. The discussions were off the record, but members were encouraged to share the contours of the debate and its conclusions. The discussions converged on an approach that resists President Vladimir Putin’s push in Ukraine while continuing to engage Russia economically and politically. “Don’t give in to Putin, but don’t give up on Russia” is how one participant summed up the group’s conclusion. “How can we deter Putin from further aggression in Ukraine and drive up the costs to him while, at the same time, keep[ing] the lines open to him on nuclear security, proliferation and Iran?” That’s how Nick Burns, a Harvard professor and the group’s director, summed up the discussion in a message after the conference. [This is a corporate stooge.  The only aggression is US imperialist aggression in the region & this guy should be ashamed of himself.] When Vladi­mir Putin came to office in 2000, the former KGB man promised to bring about change in Russia. The reality is that Putin has led the country backwards. Here are several examples of abuses that have occurred under his watch. Moscow theater crisis in 2002 A TV image from Russian television network NTV shows a pistol wielding Chechen rebel, right, standing behind a group of hostages in a Moscow theater in October 2002. Chechen rebels held nearly 1,000 hostages for three days. Dozens of hostages were killed when Russian forces pumped sleeping gas into the theater before storming the building in a rescue operation. NTV-TV via Reuters The Aspen discussion mirrored the official debate taking place in Washington. The balance of Republicans and Democrats was roughly equal, and the conclusions were somewhat more hawkish than Obama administration policy. But, like the White House, the group agreed on the need for engagement and “off ramps” that open a path for Russia to accept a sovereign but nonhostile Ukraine. The plan to send humanitarian aid, administered by the International Committee of the Red Cross, in Russian convoys across the border into eastern Ukraine was just taking shape as we met, with some arguing that this was a face-saving exit for Putin and others countering that it was a cover for Russian invasion.  [Morons] One continuing theme was the fundamental weakness of Russia, despite Putin’s cocky attempt at “redux” that seeks to reassert Soviet-era prerogatives. One presenter described Russia’s demographic disaster: a shrinking population; a chronic health crisis that puts Russia between Tanzania and Angola in male life expectancy; a dearth of entrepreneurship, so that the nation ranks below Alabama in patents awarded over the past 10 years. Given these devastating numbers, noted a panelist, it’s clear that Russia is in decline. The question is whether Russia will experience a sudden decline or a gradual one. The consensus was that U.S. interests wouldn’t be served by fast decline and the resulting instability. At the beginning of the retreat, there was sharp criticism of “Putinism” and its arrogant assertion of Russian power. Some argued that Putin was “delusional” in thinking he could restore the prerogatives of the Soviet Union. But others cautioned that Putin’s actions were a predictable reaction to Russia’s humiliation after the crack up of the U.S.S.R. — and that the United States (unlike the impulsive Putin) should play what one former Cabinet official called “the long game.” Putin had made three big mistakes in Ukraine, noted one commentator. He thought the battle for eastern Ukraine would be a walkover for his covert proxy forces, as Crimea was; he thought the pro-Russian separatists could be controlled; and he thought the newly elected government of President Petro Poro­shenko would be weak and short-lived. As the Aspen discussions progressed, participants focused increasingly on positive steps the United States could take to complement the negative pressure of sanctions. Helping Poroshenko’s Ukraine to become a stronger, less-corrupt nation was a priority, and one participant suggested that the United States lead an international reconstruction program for the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Helping Ukraine resist a Russian invasion was a consensus point. There was agreement that a direct U.S. or European military intervention was unlikely, but many participants argued that it would be wise to send lethal-weapons assistance to Ukraine. Several also noted that the United States should quietly advise Ukraine on ways to make an invasion costly for Russia. Through the four days of discussion, there was a tension between the “squeezers” and the “dealers,” as one participant characterized the meeting’s hawks and doves. But interestingly, the split didn’t fit party lines. In the freewheeling discussion, Democrats sometimes argued a tougher line than Republicans. The Aspen group was celebrating its 30th anniversary, under the chairmanship of Harvard professor Joseph Nye and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft. Suffice it to say that this is the way the policy-formulation process is supposed to work in America, but it rarely does. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-strategies-for-deterring-putin-from-ukraine/2014/08/19/9d9084d2-27c2-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html

The article opens with a 'joke' from an ex US Secretary of Defence and ex CIA tosser Robert Graves.  But it doesn't go on to say that Robert Graves is some kind of psychopath warmonger who's got a history of concocting anti-Russian crap -- and a history of causing mayhem all over the world by the look of it (here).

They've got an academic representing imperialist interests and the only thing these people are concerned about is PROFITS - namely, US profits.

The toll on lives and the future of generations is of no concern to these creeps who would do anything to fuck up the lives out countless people who don't deserve to be their pawns.

What does the article tell you about the kind of people that are involved in US government and US intelligence and in US NGO lobby groups etc?  What does it tell you about US diplomacy and any trust in the US?

The US is full of filth that destroys everything it encroaches on, right around the world.

It is beyond belief that any country deals with the US, let alone allows the US to colonise their nations like they do with the trade agreements, their 'defence' agreements, their investment, the sneaky extra-national bodies etc. 

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The Sick Bastards 'Foreign Policy & National Security' Jerk Off Club:

ASPEN STRATEGY GROUP - here.