No tanks … Dennis Kucinich
Follow the money – as Hillary Clinton and the US foreign policy establishment prepare for war against Syria, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich says observers should apply the golden rule.
The former Ohio Representative said he spent 16 years at congressional hearings where “pedigreed experts” advocated for wars across the globe with circular thinking “devoid of depth, reality and truth.”
“I remember other hearings where the Pentagon was unable to reconcile over $US1 trillion in accounts, lost track of $12 billion in cash sent to Iraq and rigged a missile defence test.
“War is first and foremost a profitable racket,” he writes in The Nation.
He blames think tanks and their highly paid “experts” who, he says, are often beholden to external interests – including armaments manufacturers and defence contractors.
“The self-identified liberal Centre for American Progress (CAP) is now calling for Syria to be bombed, and estimates America’s current military adventures will be tidied up by 2025, a tardy twist on “mission accomplished,” he says.
CAP, according to media reports, Kucinich says, has received funding from war contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing who make the bombers it wants to see “raining hellfire” on the people of Syria.
Kucinich won acknowledgement, and no little notoriety, for the rigour of independent research that helped convince 125 fellow Democrats to vote against Bush’s 2002 invasion of Iraq.
You can read Kucinich, and his urgent call for an effective anti-war movement, here http://www.thenation.com/article/why-is-the-foreign-policy-establishment-spoiling-for-more-war-look-at-their-donors/
Photo credit – Huffington Post
Ceasefire extended …
Meanwhile, in Syria the unilateral Russian missile strike ceasefire in eastern Aleppo has been extended into a 10th day.
Initially, the Russians and Syrians announced an 11-hour ceasefire to allow civilians, rebel fighters and the injured to leave the city’s opposition controlled east.
The ceasefire has been extended a number of times although the Russians, and various news outlets, report rebel fighters continue to block civilians from leaving the city, raising fears they will be used as human shields.
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov, gave the US and the rebel coalition, headed by Al Queada’s Syrian franchise, a serve over the issue in Moscow on Monday
“Our opponents must ensure appropriate behaviour by anti-government groups that, in particular, sabotaged the medical evacuation that was intended,” he told the Interfax news agency.
“Over the last few days, what was needed did not happen.
But not forever
Lebanon-based AMN is reporting Syrian air force planes are dropping leaflets over the city’s east warning jihadis and residents to flee the area.
It reports thousand of leaflets were dropped on Monday, featuring images of dead terrorists, with a warning that rebels should abandon the city or share their fate.
Anti-government forces have repeatedly refused to leave the city in a mirror image of what is transpiring over the border in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Rebel forces are dominated by terrorists, backed by Turkey and Qatar. The US claims it funds some other “moderate” rebels but the importance, indeed existence, of that faction, is increasingly being questioned by US analysts and independent media
.