Monday, December 21, 2015

Moon of Alabama —Criticism Of Hersh's New Piece Fails To Understand What Really Happened

The latest Seymour Hersh piece alleges that the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) under General Dempsey undermined the official White House policy on Syria. Their impetus to do so came after a Defense Intelligence Agency analysis found in 2012 that there were hardly any "moderate rebels" in Syria but only Islamists fighting against the Syrian state. The CIA was at least since early 2012 delivering weapons from Libya to Turkey as well as through other routes. The U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was killed on September 11 2012 in Benghazi over some issues with the weapon transfers. Once in Turkey those weapons, as well as plane loads of others purchased by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, were given to "moderate rebels" who took them into Syria. There they sold off at least part of every weapon and ammunition haul to the Islamists terror gangs which were and are financed by the Wahhabi Gulf states. A new BBCRadio4 report by Peter Oborne explains in detail how that scheorks.
The JCS under Dempsey was quite disturbed that weapons transferred by the CIA were going to exactly those people they had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan just a few years ago. They decided, according to Hersh's source, to undermine the White House's and CIA's regime-change program.…
Moon of Alabama
Criticism Of Hersh's New Piece Fails To Understand What Really Happened

4 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

Clusterf**k. I'm no fan of the Pentagon but if what Hersh and MoA describe is true then the Pentagon is less dumb and less psychopathic than the Obama administration, not that that is saying much.

And it's not treason for the military to disobey an unlawful order from the President.

John said...

Dan: "And it's not treason for the military to disobey an unlawful order from the President."

They should have disobeyed the order for Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and heaven knows how many other madcap adventures.

In any case, the idea that the loony jihadis aren't backed by the Western powers is now too ludicrous to contemplate. But how do we cry when this madness seeps out on to the streets of Europe and the US. Blowback's a bitch. The hypocrisy makes you want to vomit.

Matt Franko said...

John the US warriors are 100% gung ho on the GWOT no matter where it takes us...

John said...

Matt,

A lot of truth in what you say, but there are also very many within the US military who think this is going to open the gates of hell, which it may already have done with ISIS after the botched invasion of Iraq. They want to step back, in the belief that much of the damage by Dubya and company can be undone.

It's widely accepted that Admiral Fallon led a military mutiny against Dubya (well, Cheney and Rumsfeld) when given the order to draw up plans to strike Iran. As awful as it is to contemplate military disregard for civilian and democratic orders, the time may be drawing when it is the sanest course available.

Those crazy neoconservatives really did a number on America!