The Obama Administration has real chutzpah, but it's the kind that shows how disconnected from reality it actually is. The US administration has never actually denied that the groups that it backs in Syria have to be separated from the terrorists. It's the first commitment in the Sept. 9 Kerry-Lavrov agreement, after all, and something that the Russians have been harping since last February, at the time that the first cessation of hostilities was agreed on. So, when the Sept. 9 agreement falls apart because the US-backed groups never recognized it, who does the US blame but Russia. Kirby, at the State Department, yesterday, practically went through this logic, as I’ve just summarized it here, and yet still came to the conclusion that it's all Russia's fault and, therefore, issues threats and ultimata against Russia.
At the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergie Ryabkov was uncompromising in response to Kirby’s tirade. There will be no more 7-day truces–because they allow the jihadis to regroup and rearm–and the failure of the diplomatic track "is going on due to Washington's inability to fulfill its obligations and promises," and is therefore on the conscience of decisions made by the US. "We are outraged at the ultimatum-like tone of the signals that we are getting. Sometimes we even hear cynical threats against us and those who are really fighting terrorists in Syria. We can't consider it anything else but de-facto support of terrorists by the US," he said. Ryabkov called Washington's threats "an emotional breakdown amid the inability of the Obama administration to implement its part of the agreements" on Syria. "The US is in fact bringing grist to the terrorists' mill providing them with undisguised support," he stressed.
To add to this insanity, apparently “administration officials” are telling media that they are exploring options like US escorted air drops of relief into Aleppo, air strikes on R+6 forces, dispatching SF to help then “rebels: and air strikes on a Russian air base remote from Aleppo (but no MANPADS as they will get to the bad guys)..
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-options-idUSKCN11Y37J
Rybakov found a nicer way of saying that the DC FedRegime supports the Global Axis of Jihad. Some Americans support that support. Other Americans oppose it. If there are enough Americans Agaist Jihad voting to defeat the GAJ Candidate Clinton, then the “permanent” members of the “permanent government” might be made to understand that so many Americans oppose their government’s support for the Global Axis of Jihad that they might accept being forced to turn the peoples’ wish to resign America’s membership in the GAJ into an American resignation from the GAJ.
( On another blog, someone gave me the “World’s Worst Acronym” award for GAJ. I thought I could do even worse if I thought hard enough. So I came up with a couple of clunky graceless phrases which yield memorable easy-to-say acronyms. The GOAJ (pronounced “goadge”) for Globally Organized Axis of Jihad, and the CLEJ ( pronounced “cledge”) for Coalition of Liver Eating Jihadis. The “goadge” and the “cledge”. World’s worstest acronyms)?
Willy B
Having worked for the federal government for 42 years; one of the signs of how weird Washington DC has become is the saga how a bad Pentagon Rear Admiral spokesperson retires and shifts laterally over to the State Department to take the job for them. John Kirby is proof that it is an information operation. None of it is reality.
Simply put, the USA is supporting Jihadists but at war with the Islamic State at the same time. It maintains the fiction that the fighters and their families inside the Aleppo cauldron are not one and the same as Al Qaeda. The USA is intent on appearing to have seized Mosul and Raqqa by next month to elect Hillary Clinton but does not have the forces to do it. It is trying partitioning Iraq and Syria to form a new “moderate” Sunni homeland in order to cut the Shiite Crescent and mire Russia in a quagmire while pretending it isn’t. But, after a quarter century of fighting Americans, the Sunni Islamists want nothing to do with the infidels. They will fight to the end for God and their families.
No wonder John Kirby appears befuddled.
That’s a fair description of the situation. I had respect for Kirby at one time, when he was still at the Pentagon, having first encountered him when he was working for Adm. Mullen, but after he traded in his admiral’s stars for a suit-and-tie, he seemed to me to have, as I say in the title of my posting, here, gone off the deep end.
If you read the transcript at the link I provided, you’ll find that Kirby admits that he’s no military tactician. Information is what he did in the Navy, which reinforces what you say about him being proof that this is an information operation.
The Russians must be so tired of dealing with such unreasonable people.
Isn’t there anyone in government we can be proud of anymore???
Seriously. I look at dignified, reserved, classy diplomats like Sergei Lavrov, and, frankly, I’m jealous as hell.
That used to be US!!!!
What happened?
VV
Spot on. Let there be no doubt that Obama continues to support al Qaeda in Syria. In fact the Obama-Hillary policy has been to regime change and destabilization wether it be in Libya, Syria or Ukraine.
Since the Russians intervened in Syria to protect their interests and since they can state for the rest of the world to hear there is more dissonance emanating from Washington DC. The American people of course mostly hear and read propaganda of the Borg.
As Col. Lang pointed out today Morning Joe, Hayden, et al are all wanting the Borg Queen to pulled across the finish line so that they can teach Putin a lesson. A very dangerous game which poses an existential threat to us.
Context: Samantha Power recently accused Assad of trying “to conquer” all of Syria. Imagine that.
The Russians have a word to describe people as Samantha Power, for example: некултурний. The literal translation is “uncultured,” but when Russians use it they mean to express such supreme contempt for depths of ignorance, lack of good manners, and all-encompassing disagreeableness and uncouthness, that no four-lettered word will suffice. By any reasonable standard the US foreign policy now is indeed run by a bunch of nekulturny barbarians.
“That used to be US!!!!
What happened?”
Sclerotic deterioration caused by unaccountability (irresponsiveness): The parts of the organism are not able to communicate, interact, and fix the problems “on-line” in order to maintain a healthy functioning state. A very dangerous situation indeed. Plutocracy won – but it is going to discover soon that the victory is to its own detriment.
Over the past 15 years, most of our official spokesmen at military headquarters in Baghdad, Kabul, et al have been Rear Admirals. Can anyone enlighten me as to the reason for this odd phenomenon? Is there a compelling need to breath dry desert air after a lifetime at sea? Or, is it conceivable that there are too many of these Horatio Nelsons adrift “in irons” cluttering the Pentagon corridors?
I can’t really wrap my mind around the fact that Kirby and others are now so willing to admit that the US is supporting these “moderate” jihadists on the ground.
What’s that all about?
Aren’t they concerned that their support for these militants will expose the real objectives of the campaign which is regime change?
After all, toppling Assad may be a slam dunk with the western media, but it doesn’t seem to have the support of the American people, the congress or the international community.
Of course, maybe that doesn’t matter anymore.
There is something very odd abut that woman. There’s a hint of hysteria to all that moral certitude. Despite all the skulduggery that goes with her job, I sense she somehow really believes the nonsense she spouts.
Now, Nuland on the other hand, is a plain old cynic.
The fact that either of them wields influence is rather scary.
What happened to the ilk of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr or Averell Harriman? Whatever their misdeeds, they knew how to conduct themselves in public. And that generation of diplomats did stop WWIII from happening.
That is a whole new thread in itself.
It seems that the only tool we have is evolution as in “you screw up you die” so a couple of generations later most instinctively do not screw up.
Clearly DC has been in-breeding for far too long and the results are dangerous.
Powers could do with a 1 year continuous tour on a forward observation post somewhere in darkest Afghanistan. She will have a “come to Jesus” experience, literally or figuratively.
DC seems unable to teach common sense or to select for common sense.
“…it doesn’t seem to have the support of the American people… Of course, maybe that doesn’t matter anymore.”
It does not matter anymore indeed: “Syrian War Report – September 29, 2016: US Deploys Troops near Aleppo City” http://newsvideo.su/video/5286561
Perhaps the deployment is due to presence of the significant numbers of the Pentagon/CIA advisors in Aleppo City.
One wonders, what would a mother of a fallen American soldier should feel upon learning that her son was standing with Al Qaida on the orders from major war-profiteers/Israel-firsters.
The US is preparing for an open military support of “moderate” jihadis and other Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-29/us-suspend-syria-diplomacy-russia-prepares-military-options
A full circle for the “war on terror:” https://counterjihadreport.com/2016/09/29/u-s-backed-free-syrian-army-allies-with-terror-group-that-state-dept-designated-last-week/
What a joy for the US war profiteers!
OIFVet,
A friend of mine told me about a word which might be similar to that. The best English rendition I can do of it is ” nekulturni”. Is this the word you have given us?
He also told me a word which as best as I can render it in English sounded like ” mishchanya”. It meant “nice people” or “the nicer class/sort/type of people” and I think really meant the exact opposite of the word you offer us in all its exacting details. Do you know such a word?
I think that I might just be late to the party, but I have never seen this.
https://twitter.com/Syricide/status/779475480596578304
If everyone has already seen this, pardon my tardiness.
Different Clue,
Yep, nekulturni is the word. I think that the other word your friend told you is замечательный (zamechatelni), which is literally “remarkable, unique, great, noble,” etc., and people use it as an adjective to denote something or someone that they are truly in awe of. See full translation here: http://en.bab.la/dictionary/russian-english/%D0%B7%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9.
It’s been 25+ years since I last studied Russian though so my Russian fluency has slipped quite a bit. I find it much easier to read than to listen and especially to speak. Bulgarian and Russian are so close yet so different…
great summary here on the current Syrian situation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJZRvp6w4wc&feature=em-u
ZeroHedge has some proper words for Samantha Power:
“Her recent diatribes against Russia show a total disregard for diplomatic or legal protocol. Suffused with self-righteousness and selective «humanitarian» concern, Power is evidently leading a media campaign to mandate a NATO force being deployed to Syria’s Aleppo in order to «protect the children trapped in a killing zone» as the New York Times might put it.
Forty-six-year-old Power has made her entire professional career out of formulating the «R2P» doctrine that has in the past well-served Washington’s imperialist goals.
As a young reporter in the 1990s, Power wrote one-sided screeds about ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Balkans, which conveniently demonized Serbia, culminating in the NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999 and the subsequent carve up of Kosovo to become a NATO base. For this service to imperial interests, she was subsequently rewarded with a professorship at Harvard University and a Pulitzer-prize-winning book about genocide, a book which eminent scholars like Edward Herman have debunked as a load of plagiarism and self-serving historical distortions.
The fiery, Irish-born Power was later promoted by President Barack Obama as an advisor on his National Security Council. It was in this position that she pushed the policy of NATO bombing Libya in 2011 with a reprise of her «R2P» doctrine.
These NATO military assaults facilitated by emotive appeals to «humanitarian values» have since been shown to be reckless violations of international law amounting to foreign aggression. Earlier this year, the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was officially exonerated over war crimes allegations, charges that NATO had leveled to justify its bombardment of his country. Also, earlier this month a British parliamentary committee denounced former prime minister David Cameron for his involvement in the NATO intervention in Libya as being unfounded on claims that then Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was preparing to slaughter residents in the city of Benghazi.
But it was so-called «liberal hawks» like Samantha Power who were instrumental in providing political and moral cover for Washington and the NATO military to conduct these illegal foreign invasions and regime changes under the pretext of protecting human rights and civilian lives.”
Finally, a clear explanation to the mystery of Samantha Power professorship at Harvard University. – What’s wrong with these people, the Harvard deciders, that they select the most horrendous human beings (actually subhuman beings) to teach students at Harvard? (Larry Summers is another exemplar of sub-humanness at Harvard). Samantha Power is a prominent war criminal and petty plagiarizer – on a top of being a hypocritical moralizer and psychopath thirsting for human blood (literally).
Perhaps they have some special seminars at White House to relieve Samantha and others of conscience and empathy. She is a bloody monster – a shame of US.
I think the Russians are probably through with trying to be friends with the Administration in Washington. They don’t want to be our enemies, but are done trying to please those rodeo clowns. Yes, “некултурний” and “недоговороспособны” are very apt terms. They will do what they feel they must do and just let the howler monkeys howl in the trees and fling their info ops poo.
The Syrian Girl suggests that if American people knew about their government’s active support for Al Qaeda and ISIS, this would stop Ash Carter, Samantha Power and such from initiating a hot war with Russia. But this knowledge about US’ support for fanatical jihadis in the Middle East is not hidden – people have access to alternative media that is brave enough to state the facts.
The real problem is the impossibility of influencing the US policies by the US citizenry at large. (Look for the aid to Israel: 81% of US citizens are against it but the ziocons and whoring congress pay no attention to vox populi). A sclerotic blockade of the vitally needed communication between people and “deciders” could well destroy the US. Plutocracy/corporatism has been winning for its own detriment.
Dutch Intellectuals ‘Apologize to Putin’ for LIES on MH17, Syria, Ukraine…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOamM9899Ig
There are some honest people in Denmark and they are different from Mr. Wilbert Paulissen, the head of the Dutch National Detective Force.
Wilbert Paulissen et al. have founded their conclusions re MH17 tragedy on the “evidence” provided by Eliot Higgins.
Eliot Higgins “had no formal intelligence training or security clearance that gave him access to classified documents. He could not speak or read Arabic [or Russian or Ukrainian]. He had never set foot in the Middle East [or Russia, or Ukraine].”
Nevertheless, the presstituting Atlantic Council elevated Higgins to a position of an “expert” and “Senior Fellow, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Future Europe Initiative.” Higgins is also a “Visiting Research Associate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London.” The idiots of Atlantic Council meet the idiots of King’s College London.
Wikispook placed Higgins among “promoters of the Anglo-US-NATO Official Narratives of geo-politics and the War on Terror, but done in a slipshod and blatantly partisan fashion.” Bloggers identify “Bellingcat aka Elliot Higgins is nothing more than a simple charlatan.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/28/troubling-gaps-in-the-new-mh-17-report/
“There’s also the dog-not-barking mystery of the curious silence from the U.S. intelligence community. Although Secretary of State John Kerry claimed to know the firing location immediately after the shootdown, the U.S. government went silent after CIA analysts had time to evaluate U.S. satellite, electronic and other intelligence data.”
Perhaps off-topic, and this particular article re Syria is four days old, but this site may be useful for getting some Russian perspectives. The particular article mentioned some things that I had not previously been aware of (though likely old-news to many here).
http://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/no-ceasefire-in-syria-any-more/
to Anna re Samantha Powers:
Ah, but the Banshee shrieks & keens.
One of the great concerns I have about the nation is the openness with which the “leadership” lies to and subverts the will of the public. It has been going on a very long time, but they at least had the decency to make a pretense of not letting us know they were doing it. Such is their grip on power, and their level of contempt for the masses, that they no longer even try to hide it.
Her Harvard appointment is part of the reward structure in US.
It is for her fine contributions to the Making of History; she has participated as a willing cog of the Borg History-Making Machine.
All countries have these types of rewards structures, as far as I can tell.
Although, for the life of me, I cannot see any gains for the United States in any of this.
Anna –
While I may not usually agree with your political opinions, I think with this comment you are absolutely right on the heinousness of Samantha Power.
Is there an institution or interest group out there that is lobbying Harvard to dump her, If so, I would gladly help out or donate. Or can we pay Ireland to take her back?
Samantha Power was appointed Ambassador to he United nations mainly because of her husband, Cass Sunstein – Professor of Law at Harvard. A friend of Obama’s from Chicago Law School, in 2009 he was given the high-powered job of Office of Information and Regulatory which is responsible for writing the terms for implementation of all federal regulations. He is known for his doctrine of “light” regulation – “nudging” – which he applied in delaying hundreds of regulations. Obama encouraged him with the expectation that he’d be appointed to the Supreme Court. But the chromosomes were against him. The Power appointment (whom he married in 2008 after divorcing his first wife) was in the way of compensation. Massachusetts is a “common property” state.
U.S destroys two bridges over the Euphrates River:
http://news.antiwar.com/2016/09/29/syria-us-destroyed-eastern-bridges-in-attack-on-infrastructure/
Senator Wicks looked like a deer in the headlights after the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs stated that enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria would require going to war with both Syria and Russia…And that was not a decision he was going to make.
Samantha Power is a moral relativists. It would be much better, for a lot of people, if she dedicated her efforts to a career in sport instead of serving to “exceptional empire” (in her words).
AMY GOODMAN: “…with the 200,000, perhaps a half-a-million, protesters rallying against Kosovo’s declaration of independence, can you explain what you feel is going on here?
SAMANTHA POWER: … I think while you would certainly see protest in Serbia, what has given fuel to those protests is the knowledge that Russia stands behind them from afar, that Greece even stands behind them from afar. I was just watching the footage, and there were the flags of both Serbia, Russia and Greece. That is going to embolden people there.
And I’m not sure Putin is serious. I don’t think he’s going to put anything where his mouth is at present. He’s threatening to recognize all kinds of other autonomous movements around the world in retaliation.
But there’s no question that it’s both incredibly important for the fate of Serbs living within Kosovo that minority rights are protected, that we actually start to focus on the welfare of people who live in Kosovo, that the protests are diffused and somehow the Serbian people are given a path to some kind of integration into the West to end this kind of isolation and exclusionism that’s been going on, because it’s just — there’s so many people left out in Serbia, but moreover that we get to the structural issues…
JEREMY SCAHILL: What the United States did, though, right after NATO forces entered Yugoslavia is they brought in some high-profile thugs and criminals, people like Agim Ceku, who became the commander, the military commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army. This was a man who was a war criminal from the war in Bosnia when he served in the Croatian military. He was trained by a US mercenary company called Military Professional Resources Incorporated. He was the guy that the United States was basically bolstering to become the new head of the Kosovo army, and it’s quite interesting that that man is a war criminal.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/22/samantha_power_v_jeremy_scahill_a
Take a note of Samantha Power’ visceral hatred towards Russian Federation. Samantha wants to be an envoy of the most exceptional empire but the facts show that she is in service to the most exceptional war profiteers and war criminals. Actually, with her pushing for “humanitarian” interventions in the Middle East she is a war criminal on her own.
https://www.rt.com/news/361242-interview-lavrov-bbc-syria/: “US ‘spare Nusra for plan B’ to change regime in Syria – Lavrov”
“…the separation of so-called “moderate” anti-government fighters from terrorist groups is one of the cornerstones of the Russia-US brokered peace deal for Syria. Lavrov’s statement came on the first anniversary of the Russian anti-ISIS air campaign at the request of President Assad. On September 25 the US envoy to the UN, Samantha Power, called Russia’s actions in Syria “barbarism,” with Lavrov saying such rhetoric is “unacceptable.” When questioned about alleged civilian casualties caused by Russian strikes in Aleppo, Lavrov said that there was “no meaningful proof.”
“We are not using any munition which is prohibited by the United Nations,” he added.
Instead Lavrov noted that the West including the US is remaining silent over terrorist re-supplies in the city during the humanitarian pauses agreed between Moscow and Washington. “Every time these pauses have been used by Nusra to get from abroad more fighters, more ammunition and more weapons…”
I wonder what kind of brain damage is mandatory for the high-level US officials approved by plutocracy. Samantha Power’ behavior shows the apparent cognitive problems like her amnesia re the huge numbers of Syrians killed since 2011, when the US had entered Syria and began supporting radical jihadis (“opposition”) in order to topple the legitimate Assad. Or maybe this is just a paycheck issue.
A nicely-done exposure of MSM presstitutes:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-we-believe-in-what-we-re-doing-a-1114774.html
I think this link to the BBC Lavrov interview will work
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37523229
The presumption and rudeness of the interviewer amazes but doesn’t surprise.
Off topic
I miss the posting of Patrick Bahzad
Me too. Anyone heard word from him?
Reagan vs John Kirby
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/30/russia-baiting-and-risks-of-nuclear-war/
I thought this was a very relevant and good article on the Consortium.
Here is the punch line. They have different contributors commenting on the Soviet downing of KAL-007 and how it triggered a very poisonous confrontation between the U.S. and the USSR and how it parallels the environment today. They maintain that Reagan overdid the saber rattling but when he was informed by the CIA he backed down just a wee little bit in a timely manner.
The recap isn’t very flattering to us but at least it shows that Reagan was an adult who knew how to dial things back without looking weak. The current crowd in Washington is obsessed with the notion that any concession to the Russians is a dire Munich moment. This can lead to a perfect storm resulting in war. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic but that’s my summary of the column.
Some interesting things that I will highlight regarding their claims:
– We edited the recordings of the Russian pilot’s intercepted correspondence with ground control to make it look like they knowingly shot down a civilian airliner when we knew that this was not the case.
– We presented this to the U.N. and basically accused them of committing an atrocity (sound familiar?). The guy who gave this presentation is one of the contributors.
– We responded with military exercises that were very aggressive that also mirrored one of the nuclear preemptive strike scenarios that the Russians anticipated.
Colonel
Did you see this in the NYT yesterday?:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/30/world/middleeast/100000004683024.app.html?_r=1
Mr. Kerry has been hamstrung by Russia’s military operations in Syria and by his inability to persuade Washington to intervene more forcefully. He has also been unable to sell Syrian opponents of Mr. Assad, like the ones in that room, on a policy he does not wholeheartedly believe in.
His frustrations and dissent within the Obama administration have hardly been a secret, but in the recorded conversation, Mr. Kerry lamented being outmaneuvered by the Russians, expressed disagreement with some of Mr. Obama’s policy decisions and said Congress would never agree to use force.
No end to the humiliation (totally self-inflicted):
Comment section from Saker, http://thesaker.is/the-war-against-syria-both-sides-go-to-plan-b/
“So there you go. The US wants us to believe that under the Kerry-Lavrov pact it was willing to bomb al-Nusra and any rebel group which did not disassociate from them, but because that deal fell through the US will now ramp up arms shipments to the very same rebel groups and is even considering launching air strikes against the Syrian government in their support. Makes sense. If you’re going to start a WW3 with Russia it might as well be for the benefit of jihadist who declined to commit to your truce because it didn’t include al-Qaeda.”
http://russia-insider.com/en/russian-syrian-push-aleppo-full-swing-us-deciding-whether-ramp-support-terrorist-child-beheaders-or