Disconnect Over Afghanistan War Shows Dysfunction of US Politics

A Washington Post report this week (reposted here) has exposed the US war in Afghanistan as a vile charade. Declassified government papers reveal notes and interviews by hundreds of senior US officials which attest to systematic lies and deception in the conduct of that war.  The GW Bush and Obama administrations are directly implicated in hoodwinking the American people about why the US went to war in Afghanistan in October 2001. Nearly two decades later, that war is continuing under the Trump administration with no sign of stopping.

Close to 150,000 people have been killed in this war, including 38,000 civilians. Afghanistan is mired in violence and corruption under a puppet regime propped up by Washington. The financial cost of the conflict is reckoned to exceed $1 trillion, which generations of American citizens will pay for through the ensuing national debt.

Senior American politicians and military leaders, from Presidents George W Bush to Barack Obama, from former Defense Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Leon Panetta, to generals David Petraeus and Douglas Lute, are implicated in waging an illegal war behind the backs of the American people. The Trump administration is also implicated because it continues to pursue this war. Indeed, there has been a surge in civilian deaths from US air strikes on Afghanistan since Donald Trump took over the presidency in 2017. Yet, as the Washington Post report makes clear, the entire war is a fraud. It was never about “fighting terrorism”, as the declassified interviews of US policymakers reveal. America is in a quagmire from which it doesn’t know how to extricate itself. It is not just an endless war; it is an endless criminal war.

The revelations about the Afghan war should be an earth-shattering moment for all politicians in Washington and the entire US news media. So far, only a handful of lawmakers such as Democrat Representative Ro Khanna are reportedly making an outcry. They are calling for Congressional hearings and for former government officials to be grilled in testimony. The chances are, however, that nothing will be done to hold politicians and military commanders to account. Like other major scandals, such as proven CIA torture programs, the Afghan war debacle will be allowed to fade away by Washington and corporate media indifference.

By contrast is the extravagance of taxpayer money, political energy and media attention that has been showered on relatively minor scandals.

Take “Russiagate” and the relentless, unfounded claims about Russian interference in US elections. A two-year report by special counsel Robert Mueller produced thin gruel to satisfy voracious appetites for Russian malfeasance. The hysterical conspiracy theories and media hyperbole against Russia continue to dominate, as can be discerned from the impeded bilateral relations, whereby Moscow is treated like an enemy. When Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited the White House this week – nearly two-and-half years after his last visit – it was evident that progress on important negotiations, such as arms control, is still frustrated by the toxic legacy of “Russiagate”.

Another illustration of cognitive dissonance in Washington and the mainstream US media is the impeachment inquiry against Trump. The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives has formally charged the president with impeachable offenses concerning a phone call with Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump is accused of abusing his office for personal political gain. Many within his Republican party are not convinced by the impeachment case against Trump. It will no doubt be terminated when it goes to a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The amount of political and media capital expended on “Russiagate” and what has been dubbed “Ukrainegate” is wildly disproportionate to the scant or slight evidence. The outcome so far is damaging to relations between the US and Russia, and may hamper the chances of a peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian conflict. President Vladimir Putin met with Zelensky in Paris this week for much-needed peace talks. But American politicians obsessed by Ukrainegate are undermining a potential resolution by falsely portraying Russia as an aggressor.

When something as flagrantly and hugely criminal as the war in Afghanistan – the longest-ever American war – is virtually ignored, while Washington fixates on issues like Russiagate and impeachment based on dubious claims, then we should know that the US political institutions are dysfunctional to their core.

Trump, Clinton Show Russia How to Really Interfere

Finian CUNNINGHAM

Never mind obscure troll farms and byzantine cyber-hacking (we’re being ironic here), Russia needs to really raise its game for “interfering” in other nations’ politics. Like, how about President Vladimir Putin going on a national radio show in Britain and telling voters how to vote in the forthcoming election? Now that’s what you call real, in-your-face influence!

Three days after Boris Johnson’s Conservative government announced on October 28 that a snap parliamentary elections would be held on December 12, lo and behold American President Donald Trump gives a “world exclusive” interview to Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage on October 31.

Farage, who counts himself a personal friend of Trump, hosts a nationwide radio talk-show. For nearly 28 minutes, Trump fawned over Farage and repeatedly told listeners how he thought Farage and Boris Johnson were “two brilliant people”. Trump also described Johnson as “the right guy for the times.”

Don’t forget, these public and partisan endorsements of British politicians by the US president are being given while a general election in Britain is underway.

Three times during the interview, Trump urged Farage and Johnson to form an electoral pact in order to push through the long-delayed Brexit plan to leave the Europe Union.

“I’d like to see you and Boris get together cos you would really have some numbers [of votes]… I think it would be a great thing… an unstoppable force,” Trump opined to Farage’s radio listeners.

It was also an opportunity for the American president to explicitly tell the British people to not vote for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“Corbyn would be so bad for your country,” said Trump menacingly. “He’d be so bad. He’d take you in such a bad way. He’d take you to such bad places.”

Prime Minister Johnson has previously rebuffed the idea of forming an alliance between the Conservatives and Farage’s Brexit Party, even though both are ardent advocates of Brexit and share a similar nationalistic, neoliberal capitalist view. The two parties are in competition for the same constituency of voters. But more centrist Conservatives tend to see Farage’s party as too rightwing and toxic.

For his part, arch Euro-skeptic Nigel Farage had vowed that his Brexit candidates would fight in every parliamentary constituency – nearly 600 – across Britain in order to push their “clean-break Brexit” agenda. Farage was highly critical of the Tories (Conservatives) under former premier Theresa May for selling-out the 2016 referendum vote to leave the EU. By standing in the forthcoming election, Farage said the Brexit Party would give voters the chance to voice their demand to get “Brexit done”.

This week saw a spectacular U-turn by Farage when he declared that the Brexit Party would not be standing in any areas – some 317 seats – held by Conservative parliamentarians. Tory leader Johnson welcomed that announcement as it would ensure no losses for his parliamentarians.

Farage, however, said his party will contest the 243 seats held by Labour. The objective is to try to steal votes from Labour supporters who are pro-Brexit and to keep the leftwing Corbyn out of power.

So, what we have here is a de facto electoral pact between the Conservatives and Brexit Party – just as President Trump had urged in the national broadcast nearly two weeks ago.

The intervention this week prompted Labour’s Corbyn to denounce what he said was a “Trump-Farage-Johnson alliance”. He also said such an alliance is designed to take British politics in a “hard-right nasty” direction of neoliberalism “on steroids” which will be bad news for workers’ rights, the National Health Service and other public services.

As if that American full-frontal interference in British democracy was not brazen enough, this week also saw Hillary Clinton plunging her oar into the electoral waters. The former Democratic presidential candidate who lost to Trump in 2016 was in Britain promoting a new book. She gave interviews to the BBC state-owned broadcaster and to the Guardian newspaper in which she peddled her nonsense about alleged Russian interference in US elections and Western democracies more generally. You could hardly make the irony of this up.

Clinton used both interviews to accuse Johnson’s government of covering up Russian interference in British politics. This contorted speculation was based on Downing Street delaying the publishing of a parliamentary report into allegations of Russian influence in the 2016 Brexit referendum and in the previous 2017 parliamentary elections. Johnson’s government has cited procedural issues for the delay and said the report will be released after the elections on December 12.

To the BBC, Clinton said it was “shameful” of the British government to not publish the report sooner. “Because there is no doubt – we know it in our country, we have seen it in Europe, we have seen it here – that Russia in particular is determined to try to shape the politics of Western democracies… I find it inexplicable that your government will not release a government report about Russian influence. Inexplicable and shameful.”

Thus, here we have Hillary Clinton pre-empting a secret report by telling Britons that Russia is interfering in their political sovereignty – unlike her or Donald Trump who has single-handedly shaped the electoral landscape of British parties with his proposed Johnson-Farage alliance.

By the way, the most likely explanation for why Johnson is not rushing to publish the said intelligence report is because there is no simply evidence that Russia did interfere in Britain’s politics. Sources close to the report have already told media there is “no smoking gun”. Which corroborates what Moscow has been saying all along; that it was not running any malicious influence campaigns in Britain (or the US and elsewhere in Europe.)

And let’s take the egregious US interference in foreign politics up yet another notch. How about Washington’s sponsorship of violent streets protests in Bolivia to foment a coup against the elected President Evo Morales which Trump this week called, with Orwellian double-think, a “great moment for democracy”?

The absurd hypocrisy of American politicians is only matched by the absurd hypocrisy of Western media which “report” naked and nefarious interference by Washington as if it is normal, benign and acceptable.

Finian CUNNINGHAM

Former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages

US Has Officially Gone Insane

Finian CUNNINGHAM

The low-ball mudslinging and pantomime palaver among America’s political class is like a theater of absurd. Any form of vilification is now acceptable. President Trump and his Twitter rants may have helped set the bar of indecency to an all-time low, but Democrats and Republicans have quickly joined the descent into madness.

The sanity test was spectacularly failed recently when former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton lashed out at her party member Tulsi Gabbard, inferring she was a “Russian asset”. The Hawaii congresswoman, who is vying for a run at the presidency in next year’s elections, was defended by some fellow Democratic politicians. But many Clinton aides and media pundits doubled down on Clinton’s smear campaign, reiterating that Gabbard was “working for the Kremlin”.

This bipartisan Russophobia can be traced back decades to the Red Scare paranoia of the Cold War and McCarthyite persecution during the 1950s of suspected Soviet sympathizers in Washington and Hollywood. But for the past three years, since the 2016 election, the Cold War has been crazily enlivened with the “Russiagate scandal” of alleged interference in American political affairs by Moscow. It was the Clinton campaign, establishment media and her intelligence agency supporters that launched that canard against Trump.

Despite lack of evidence and credibility as shown by the vacuous Mueller probe earlier this year, the ridiculous Russiagate narrative and its underlying Russophobia still manages to dominate the views of the US political class, as exemplified by how Clinton’s preposterous smearing of Gabbard was given undue media coverage and supportive commentary. Affording trust and respect for such inane paranoia is surely a sign that America has officially gone insane.

Another symptom of collective madness is seen when truth and factual evidence are presented, but then the truth-teller is pilloried and the facts are blankly ignored.

Tulsi Gabbard told the truth on a recent national TV debate when she said plainly that “the US supports Al Qaeda terrorists”. The incredulous looks from the other Democratic candidates indicated that they are cocooned in a fantasy-world of official American propaganda which claims that US military forces are in Syria and elsewhere to “fight terrorism”.

For speaking such unvarnished truth, veteran servicewoman Gabbard was savaged in media reports and commentary for disseminating disinformation and lies. As well as being labelled a “Russian asset”, she is also denounced as an “Assad apologist”.

However, this week two developments demonstrate that Gabbard is correct in her linking of US support to terror groups in Syria and the Middle East more widely.

First, we had President Donald Trump announcing approval of $4.5 million in aid to the White Helmets, the so-called rescue group operating in Syria. Trump hailed them as “important and highly valued”. Last year, the president also signed off on $6.8 million of aid to the White Helmets.

Despite this group winning an Oscar award for one its propaganda films, the White Helmets have been outed by several investigative reports as a media arm for the Al Qaeda-affiliated Hayat Tahrir al Shams (formerly, Nusra Front) and other Islamic State (ISIS) outfits. The pseudo rescue group only works in the diminished areas that are under the control of the jihadist terror network. The White Helmets are unknown to, or repudiated by, most of the Syrian civilian population. They have been exposed for having mounted false-flag terror attacks with chemical weapons and falsely attributing the attacks to the Syrian Arab Army or allied Russian forces. “They are a complete propaganda construct,” says award-winning journalist John Pilger.

For Trump and other Western governments like the British and French to openly support the White Helmets with millions of dollars is irrefutable proof of the official sponsorship by Western powers of the terrorist network in Syria. Of course, that is consistent with the analysis that these same governments have waged a covert criminal war of regime change against Syria. Again, it is only Tulsi Gabbard among American politicians who has explicitly stated this nefarious involvement of Washington in Syria. Yet she is condemned from all sides as a liar and foreign agent.

The second development this week indicting US links to terror groups – but which is studiously ignored by the Western media – are credible reports of American military force airlifting Al Qaeda-type jihadists out of northeast Syria.

Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu this week confirmed that hundreds of suspected jihadi prisoners had escaped from jails and camps amid the turmoil of the Turkish offensive against Kurdish militia.

Syrian state media reports that, “US occupation continues to transport hundreds of Daesh [ISIS] terrorists from Syria to Iraq”.

Many of the detained terror suspects were lifted by American transport helicopters from the giant Al Houl camp near Hasaka city and relocated to western Iraq. Rather than handing over these illegal militants to advancing Syrian state forces, the Pentagon seems intent on holding on to its proxy assets. Maybe to fight in a renewed insurgency against Syria or elsewhere that Washington designates for regime-change operation.

In separate media reports, US forces are also being relocated from eastern Syria to set up bases in western Iraq. This suggests a concerted consolidation between US military forces and the terror groups which were used to wage the failed war in Syria.

Whenever Washington’s political class has descended into name-calling and smearing based on clueless prejudice and paranoia, and whenever the stark truth of America’s criminal war-making is roundly rejected – indeed twisted to demonize truth-tellers like Tulsi Gabbard – then we surely know that the USA now stands for the United States of [Mental] Asylum.

Finian CUNNINGHAM

Former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages

Trump’s Foreign Policy Strategy Is All About the 2020 Elections

Federico PIERACCINI

Washington’s official announcement of the withdrawal of US troops from the northeast of Syria has provoked alarm and condemnation at home as well as from Washington’s allies. However, it is easier to understand the actions and aims of the Trump administration when one analyzes events in the light of an internal clash within the US deep state.

Before looking into the US withdrawal from protecting the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces) Kurds, it is worth considering what has been happening in the US in recent days to get a better picture.

The Democratic party has officially requested the impeachment of Donald Trump for allegedly pressuring the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate the possible corrupt actions of Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden while the latter was in Ukraine.

The allegation against Trump arose as a result of a report written on August 12 by an anonymous CIA agent with access to many White House employees and officials. The report is probably another russia-gate hoax, this time Trump allegedly asked his Ukrainian counterpart to begin an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who was a former member of a Ukrainian company that ended up the subject of a corruption investigation. The anonymous informant made himself available to testify before a Congressional committee behind closed doors.

As if to further confirm an ongoing civil war within the US deep state, a second whistleblower has made more “revelations” about the phone call between Trump and Zelensky. Many identify this person in John Bolton, recently fired by Trump. Bolton was disappointed with Trump’s lackluster enthusiasm for war.

The Democratic Party, currently in the process of selecting their candidate to contest the 2020 presidential election, has been forced to pursue the strategy of impeachment even as it enjoys little prospect for success given that the Republicans hold the majority in the Senate. Polls, moreover, show that the majority of Americans are opposed to impeachment in general.

The closer we get to the elections, the more the Democrats will feel the need to pander to their most extreme elements in the interests of winning over delegates in the primaries. This has prompted Trump to go all out against those members of the deep state aligned with the Democratic Party.

As I have previously written, Trump’s threats always have a deeper goal. Let’s take a look at some previous behaviors of Trump.

A typical example is the US threat to withdraw from NATO. The threat was never acted upon, because NATO members were accordingly startled into increasing their military budgets as Trump had demanded. Washington’s strong alliance with Riyadh, furthermore, has brought positive returns for America’s arms sales. We can therefore see how Trump’s threats to NATO served the purposes of improving the bottom line of America’s military-industrial complex. These arms manufacturers supported Trump’s electoral campaign and, because he is bringing home big money for them, they are bound to support him again in his 2020 bid.

Trump’s threat to leave NATO was never real, but the shakedown worked, forcing European allies to hand over their cash to US arms manufacturers, the various components of the deep state coordinating with the administration to ensure a positive outcome for relevant stakeholders.

Trump well understands that he will receive loud censure and obloquy if he deviates too much from the foreign policy charted by Washington’s true policy-makers, and so seems to understand that there is a big difference between what he is able to say and what he is able to actually do.

Trump only has short-term objectives in mind, the 2020 elections currently being foremost in his mind. We can observe a method to his madness with relation to Iran and North Korea. First he threatens these countries with complete destruction, then (knowing that a total war against Iran and North Korea would be impossible to sustain) tries to establish a direct dialogue with the leaders of these countries – only to be rewarded with a photo opportunity that will be most useful in the upcoming electoral campaign.

Trump’s strategy nevertheless failed when Rouhani called his bluff and decided not to meet with him in New York at the conclusion of this year’s meeting of the UN General Assembly, robbing him of the much-sought photo opportunity.

Similarly, talks between Kim Jong-un and Trump have not yielded much progress. Trump’s modus operandi explains his willingness to meet with people normally considered by American exceptionalism to be beyond the pale. Trump views foreign policy less in terms of grand strategy and more in terms of electioneering and personal gain, giving little consideration to the long-term consequences for the United States.

A striking example of this short-term thinking is Trump’s withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal, fulfilling an electoral promise and winning points with his electoral base – but greatly reducing the level of influence the US may have on Iranian policy.

Similarly, negotiations with North Korea confirmed that the US has no military solution for Pyongyang, especially when seeking to preserve relations with South Korea and Japan. As with a war with Iran, the US’s allies would be the ones on the receiving end of most of the blows, something that Japan, South Korea, Israel and Saudi Arabia would never countenance. These countries, accordingly to a multipolar environment, are bound sooner or later to come to arrangements with Tehran and Pyongyang, leaving the US even more isolated in the region.

When meeting with Kim Jong-un, Trump sought a historical photo-op that would present him in sharp contrast to his predecessors. That said, the talks foundered on the absurd American demands for the North Koreans to first complete disarmament before sanctions could be removed.

While Trump, not being in control of his foreign policy, can decide and propose very little, he can nevertheless try and get the most mileage from his “foreign policy” for the purposes of burnishing his image with an eye to the 2020 presidential election.

Once we understand that Trump’s foreign policy is only for domestic purposes, we see how the agenda of US imperialism remains quite undisturbed, with the deep state continuing to seek geopolitical expansion and start new wars or fuel existing ones.

Federico PIERACCINI

Independent freelance writer specialized in international affairs, conflicts, politics and strategies

Does Trump Have the Balls to Hold the Deep State Accountable?

By Paul Craig Roberts

This is the last chance for the US government to hold the security agencies accountable and restrain them from pursuing their secret agendas unimpeded.

It is a known fact that the orchestration of Russiagate, a hoax perpetrated on the American people and the world by the military/security complex, Democratic Party, and US presstitutes, required high officials of the CIA, FBI, and Obama Department of Justice (sic) to commit felonies. We know what the felonies are and who committed them. The plot required the print and TV media to serve as the propaganda ministry for the treasonous officials.

This is common knowledge among those who pay attention. Last April former House Intelligence Committee Chairman, now ranking member, Devin Nunes said that “criminal referrals on numerous individuals involved in the abuse of intelligence for political purposes” would soon be submitted. Apparently, the criminal referrals have been delayed while reports by Justice (sic) Department officials Michael Horowitz and John Durham are completed and cleared for release by—you guessed it—the CIA and FBI that the report investigates.

The felonies committed by the CIA, FBI, and Obama Justice (sic) Department constitute no less than a coup against the president of the United States, an act of sedition and treason. Yet, those responsible might never be held accountable.

Republicans are poor political infighters. They lack the stomach for it, and the media is against them. Trump is being advised to let the matter go. He is being told that as he was cleared he should move on rather than keep the issue alive by prosecuting those who intended his political assassination. Instead of shaking the American people’s confidence in their security agencies, he should get on with his agenda and achieve enough unity to win reelection.

This advice comes from weak and stupid people whose main interest is to protect the Washington establishment even if it means ignoring an act of high treason.

This is the last chance for the US government to hold the security agencies accountable. If they are given a pass, henceforth they will be unimpeded in the pursuit of their secret agendas. The Office of the President will never again have the opportunity to restore accountability over the Deep State.

Former CIA officer Ray McGovern gives an explanation of the current balance of power. Does Trump dare to attempt to reestablish control?

Paul Craig Roberts

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts attended four of the finest universities, studied under two Nobel Prize-winners in economics, authored 20 peer-reviewed articles in journals of scholarship, and published four academic press peer-reviewed books, including Harvard and Oxford Universities, and seven commercially published books. His most recent book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order: Washington's Perilous War for Hegemony.

Humpty Dumpty Has Had a Great Fall

By Paul Craig Roberts

Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with US President Donald Trump
on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017

The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans know that no agreement with America means anything and that Washington speaks only with a forked tongue.

While the crazed and corrupt people who comprise the Democratic Party and US print and TV media continue to insist that Russiagate is real, a very real threat is emerging in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The threat arises from the fact that Washington has taught each country to have no trust in America’s veracity. The governments of the four countries have learned that everything Washington says is a lie.

Moreover, the countries have learned that Washington does not accept their sovereignty and objects to their existence. Each of the four countries has experienced sanctions designed to overthrow their governments or cause them to submit to Washington’s will.

Russia long ago saw through Washington’s disingenuous claim that the missile ring that Washington has arrayed around Russia is defensive and directed against (non-existent) Iranian missiles. Putin has said many times that the “defensive” missiles can easily and quickly be converted into nuclear armed offensive missiles that leave Russia no response time. I have always been amazed at the utter stupidity of the Polish and Romanian governments for accepting these American missiles. No doubt the Polish and Romanian officials were paid handsome bribes, but money is no good to a dead person. You can bet your life that the Russians are not going to permit such operable weapons to be on Russian borders during a time of high tensions that exists today between the West and Russia.

Not content with this reckless provocation of Russia, the dumbshits that comprise the US government have announced a program to put weapons in space that can neutralize Russia and China’s nuclear deterrent. This reckless and irresponsible plan did not go unnoticed in Russia. Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir, Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff Operative Command, declared last week that Washington’s “on-start interception” program reveals that Washington is preparing a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia and China. You can bet your life that Russia and China are not going to sit there and wait for Washington’s attack, especially as Russia has coming into deployment hypersonic missiles incapable of interception by any known or deployed means.

What Washington and its corrupt European vassals are doing is preparing the grave for the Western world, a good riddance as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

In the US self-interested political propaganda has succeeded in crowding out all attention to real issues, such as mass displacement of jobs by robotics, global warming whatever the cause, and the rising risk of nuclear war. When the rest of the world looks at the West, it sees an insane asylum in which the two greatest threats to American national security are said to be Venezuela and a Russian agent in the Oval Office.

It is impossible for anyone to take a country this silly seriously. Consequently, American power is collapsing, to everyone else’s relief. Even Washington’s well paid puppets in Germany, Britain, and France are showing signs of independence that have not been seen since the days of Charles DeGaulle.

The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, and North Koreans know that they are dealing with fools, and they are not going to take any chances. They know that no agreement with America means anything and that Washington speaks only with a forked tongue.

Washington is going to be increasingly frustrated abroad as willingness to cooperate with the insane asylum vanishes. The consequence will be increasing tyranny at home.

Paul Craig Roberts

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts attended four of the finest universities, studied under two Nobel Prize-winners in economics, authored 20 peer-reviewed articles in journals of scholarship, and published four academic press peer-reviewed books, including Harvard and Oxford Universities, and seven commercially published books. His most recent book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order: Washington's Perilous War for Hegemony.

Why ‘Russiagate’ Is the Same as ‘WMD in Iraq’ for America’s Mainstream Media

ERIC ZUESSE

America’s Democratic Party ‘news’-media are now defending themselves against charges that they had trumpeted false allegations against Donald Trump regarding “Russiagate.” Republican Party ‘news’-media are strutting because they didn’t. But in the lead-up to America’s invasion and destruction of Iraq (and here’s “How the US Destroyed Iraq”), the mainstream ‘news’-reporting was just as bad then as now, only with the partisan sides switched. The chief difference between then and now is only that the media now have been fictitiously demonizing Putin and Trump by means of lies, whereas back in 2002 and 2003, they were fictitiously demonizing Saddam Hussein by means of lies.

In that prior instance (lies about Iraq), the Republican media were the worse of the two Party-propaganda-lines. Republican Party followers were the more-deceived back then, just as Democratic Party followers are the more-deceived today. Whereas, in 2003, increased exposure to news, about what had led up to the invasion of Iraq, produced, for Democrats, higher scores on a test of knowledge about that matter; for Republicans, it actually produced lower scores about that matter. For Republicans, at that time, the ‘news’-reporting decreased, rather than increased, a historically accurate understanding of the lead-up to (and into) Iraq-invasion events. By contrast, now in 2019, when the evidence has finally become clear that the Russiagate accusations against Trump were intensely politically motivated, it is Democratic Party followers who are the more-deceived today. In fact, whereas, back in January of this year, 83% of Republicans said that the reason for the Russiagate investigation was “politically motivated,” 84% of Democrats said that it was not. The more that Democrats had become influenced by Democratic-Party ‘news’-media, the more inaccurate their understandings of the events were. On this matter, Democrats were oblivious about the reality, just swamped by their own Party’s propaganda — just like had happened to Republicans regarding the invasion of Iraq.

In both of these two instances (both Democratic ‘news’-media now, and Republican ‘news’-media then), all of America's major media actually hid — and continue to hide — the key facts, from the public (even 16 years, now, after the invasion of Iraq). On the deeper-level issues concerning Governmental policies, there is bipartisan deceit against the American public. These are issues on which all of the billionaires were and are united, against the American public (and especially against the “40.6% million people in poverty” — the neediest instead of the richest who are themselves, those billionaires), and they therefore benefit from the public’s ignorance and misconceptions about such matters (so that the Government will continue serving chiefly themselves). These super-rich are determined to continue controlling Government-policies, for their own benefits, like increased ‘defense’ spending to buy increased products from their corporations such as Lockheed Martin, and for increased access to raw materials by their firms such as ExxonMobil. It’s all — according to their propaganda-media, ‘in defense of freedom and democracy and human rights’. That’s always the billionaires’ line. It’s always “Trust us!” “Our Government is democratic — a democracy, not a dictatorship [by us]!” So, the message from them is: invade Iraq! And: oppose any US President who would meet privately to negotiate with Russia’s President! America’s billionaires fear peace abroad. They thrive on conquest (their coups and invasions) abroad. For example, this is the reason why, consistently in Gallup’s findings, “The military” (which is actually the most corrupt of all American institutions) scores, by far, at the very top of the 17 listed “Institutions” in American society — way above (for examples) “the Supreme Court,“ or “The church or organized religion,” or “The public schools.” The billionaires shape the culture, and this is how they’ve managed to get the US to spend about half of the entire world’s total military expenses — all to be paid for by the taxes and governmental debts that the public (and their descendants), and not merely those billionaires (the actual beneficiaries) pay, and will be paying in the future. This is the way that a global empire is built, and maintained — ‘for peace and freedom and democracy and human rights around the world’.

The two Parties disagree with each other, but each Party represents only a different faction among the billionaires (not among the public) regarding what they want the public to believe. The billionaires and their corporations contribute the vast majority of the money to the major candidates, and control the think tanks and ‘news’-media that enables each winning national US politician to become and remain a winning national US politician and thus to become and be the President, or member of Congress. So, these few extremely wealthy individuals are America’s real, behind-the-scenes, government — the “Deep State” that’s represented by the top levels at CIA, Britain’s MI6, Wall Street, etc. (all servants — a few of whom are billionaires themselves — of America’s billionaires, and of their allied foreign billionaires).

No faction within America’s 585 billionaires actually represents the American public — neither group of billionaires (Democrats or Republicans) represents the public of either Party. Each of them represents only him-or-her-self and the property (and employees and other agents) which that individual controls. (Of course, that’s millions of people, who are hired and promoted and demoted by the billionaires.) But because billionaires’ wealth is so extremely concentrated within this tiny number of people (585), and is so huge, and because their corruption reigns, these few individuals effectively control the Government. Especially America’s foreign policies (including, in 2002, toward Iraq; and, in 2016-18, ‘Russiagate’, toward Russia and Trump) represent only the interests of billionaires, not of the American people, who are mainly interested in domestic affairs, such as health care, education, crimes, etc.

Right now, the billionaires are (via their media-proxies) battling each other over whom to blame for ‘Russiagate’: if not Trump, then whom? But that’s only a Democrat-versus-Republican issue. It appeals to the partisans on each side. It’s more of the same, so that the billionaires’ control over America’s Government continues to face no challenge.

Whenever American billionaires’ desires contradict the public’s needs, the latter have “a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy”, and this has been scientifically proven to have been true since at least 1981. Though it’s true regarding any field of public policy, it is the most true regarding international policies, because those are the ones on which deceiving the public is the easiest to do. Furthermore, the controlling owners of international corporations (and these are billionaires) are vastly more concerned about foreign affairs than the general public is. Whereas domestic affairs interest everyone, foreign affairs receive far less attention from most people — but not from billionaires, who are, if anything, often even more interested in those matters.

Donald Trump represents one faction of America’s billionaires; Barack Obama represented another faction of them; but each President (at least since 1981) has been representing only them (America’s billionaires). Furthermore, the 2016 Presidential contest was no exception to this rule; and, so, American democracy has been destroyed by America’s own billionaires, and not by any foreign country. Russia didn’t do this to us. Not even Israel (which interferes in American national elections vastly more than does Russia, and which also has officially the fourth-largest of all foreign nations’ lobbies in the US Congress) did. America’s billionaires did (and do) it. Overwhelmingly, it is they who actually control America’s foreign policies. (Moreover, on international matters, there appears to be virtual unanimity amongst the aristocracies of Britain, Israel, and US; and, on 15 February 2009, Britain’s Guardian reported that “The pro-Israel lobby’s contributions reach a majority of US politicians. In 2018, it spent money on 269 representatives’ and 57 senators’ campaigns, and gave to Democrats at a two to one ratio.” So: it’s not only the Republican Party that’s fronting for Israel. To front for Israel is also to front for America’s billionaires — even for the roughly 70% of America’s non-Jewish billionaires. But to front for Russia is ‘traitorous’ while to front for Israel is ‘not’ — and yet Russia never attacked and slaughtered Americans, whereas Israel did, and so did another ‘US ally’, Saudi Arabia. (Yet, America’s aristocracy is closely allied with both Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s — not just with Britain’s.)

All of these assertions will be further documented and exemplified in what follows.

The two examples to be focused upon here will be America’s successful rape of Iraq in 2003, and the Democratic Party’s unsuccessful effort, which started in 2016, to delegitimize the Republican President Donald Trump as being some type of Russian agent.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003

Here’s Robert Mueller testifying to Congress about WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq, before we invaded and destroyed Iraq:

On 11 February 2003, the then-FBI Director Mueller testified, to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, that: “Secretary Powell presented evidence last week that Baghdad has failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, willfully attempting to evade and deceive the international community. Our particular concern is that Saddam may supply al-Qaeda with biological, chemical, or radiological material.”

He just reiterated the President’s lies (and he credited Colin Powell’s supposed naiveté in having spouted them — for which deception Powell subsequently apologized, but Mueller never did). Mueller’s concern wasn’t to raise any question about the lies that led to the Iraq-invasion, but was simply to reinforce these lies. He didn’t work for the public. He worked for the President.

As I said 16 September 2016:

On 7 September 2002, US President George W. Bush blatantly lied to concoct a “new report” by the IAEA about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program, and the US news-media reported the statement but hid that it was a lie. He said (and CNN and others quoted it): “a report came out of the Atomic — the IAEA that they were six months away from developing a weapon. I don’t know what more evidence we need,” when he was asked at a press conference, “Mr. President, can you tell us what conclusive evidence of any nuclear — new evidence you have of nuclear weapons capabilities of Saddam Hussein?” Immediately, the IAEA said then that there was no such “new report,” and that the last they were able to find, there was nothing left of WMD in Iraq. The American news-media simply ignored the IAEA’s denial, and we invaded Iraq, almost six months after that boldfaced lie, a lie the press refused to expose, at all — ever. They still haven’t exposed it, even to the present day; and instead there remains a ‘debate’ as to whether George W. Bush lied or was instead merely misled by “defective US intelligence.” In this particular instance, he wasn’t even citing US intelligence, but instead citing the IAEA, and they immediately denied it, but the press failed to report that fact; so, really, the President was simply lying, and the press just continue to lie by saying he had only “been misled by the CIA” (which he actually controlled; but he didn’t control the IAEA). The American press hide the fact that the American President lied his nation into invading Iraq. The press lie that it was only “bad intelligence,” no lying President.

(Because of the news-media’s ignoring the IAEA’s denial of the President’s statement, the author of the IAEA’s denial, Mark Gwozdecky, spoke three weeks later, by phone, with the only journalist who was interested, Joseph Curl of the Washington Times, who headlined on 27 September 2002, “Agency Disavows Report on Iraq Arms” — perhaps that should instead have been “President Lied About ‘Saddam’s WMD’” — and Curl quoted Gwozdecky: “There's never been a report like that [which Bush alleged] issued from this agency… When we left in December '98 we had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment.” Other news-media failed to pick up Curl’s article. And, even in that article, there was no clear statement that the President had, in fact, lied — cooked up an IAEA ‘report’ that never actually existed — and that he never corrected his false allegation; that he compounded his lie by not correcting it.)

This is hardly the only instance where the US news-media cover for the President’s lies about foreign affairs, by merely stenographically reporting what he says, while hiding the truth that his statement was a baldfaced lie. For example, how many times have you read in the newspapers, or in a magazine, or seen on TV, or heard on the radio (all of which are supposed to report these things), that in February 2014, the Obama Administration perpetrated a bloody coup d’etat that overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine, and replaced his government with a racist-fascist, or anti-Russian nazi, government, so that Ukraine, which had been at peace for decades, was now suddenly torn by a racist bloody civil war — a war of ethnic cleansing? Oh? You were instead told that ‘democracy’ started (instead of ended) when Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown then, in a ‘revolution,’ not in any US “coup”?

The very next day, on 8 September 2002, the New York Times bannered “THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE IRAQIS; US SAYS HUSSEIN INTENSIFIES QUEST FOR A-BOMB PARTS”, and reported that, “In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.” That, too, turned out to be fiction, which the ‘news’-media stenographically reported to be reality, as any propaganda-agency is paid or otherwise rewarded to do.

Also on September 8th, Bush’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said on CNN, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

On 9 September 2002, the IAEA denied the existence of the ‘new report’ that Bush (seconded by British Prime Minister Tony Blair) had just said was proof that Saddam was within six months of having a nuclear bomb. Neither the NYT nor other ‘news’-media reported that the President had lied on September 7th. So, Gwozdecky of IAEA tried again, on September 27th, but the NYT and all the others continued to ignore them. That (the US President’s deceiving this nation into an invasion) wasn’t included to report — wasn’t even buried (like on an inside page) — in “All the News That’s Fit to Print”. Did the NYT (and WP and CNN, etc,) lose subscribers, and go out of business, for that serial-deceit of the public? The opposite: they thrived. And, now, they accuse smaller news-media (which had had had nothing to do with deceiving Americans into invading Iraq) of providing ‘fake news’. And the standards of American ‘journalism’ are just as poor today as they were back in 2002 and 2003.

Then, on 8 October 2002, President Bush delivered, to the nation, his major address on why we needed to invade Iraq very soon. He said: “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Condoleezza Rice’s fictitious “mushroom cloud” was now — exactly a month later — President Bush’s, too.

On 18 March 2003, President Bush ordered the UN’s weapons-inspectors out of Iraq by telling them that if they wouldn’t be gone within 48 hours they’d be under US bombing there. Hans Blix and his team rushed out, to meet that deadline. The Iraqi people couldn’t do any such thing — Bush’s warning simply spelt doom for them.

Nobody in the mainstream press, at the time, or afterward, reported that the IAEA had actually issued no such ‘new report’. It didn’t exist, at all. The American public didn’t know that Bush was lying through his teeth and that this invasion was 100% a blatant international war-crime. They didn’t know, because the billionaires’ American ‘news’-media hid that fact.

All of these ‘news’ lies are stenographic ‘reporting’, and it’s endemic in all of America’s mainstream ‘news’-media, all of which are controlled by billionaires, via ownership and/or their corporations’ advertising. Stenographic ‘news’-reporting is still as acceptable to them as it was to them then, when we invaded and destroyed Iraq, on the basis of those stenographically reported lies from the Government and its agents.

That’s America’s mainstream. Many in alternative, smaller, news-media had reported over and over and over and over and over and over — and even Rupert Murdoch’s own London Times had reported as early as 26 November 2009 (after the Republican President Bush was no longer in office and had been replaced by a Democrat) — that all of the insiders had known that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). What all of the mainstream ‘news’-media were publishing, back in 2003, were merely lies from the Government. What should have been the first question, then, on 9 September 2002 when the IAEA said that there wasn’t any “new report” from them, about the matter such as the US President had alleged? The questions were never asked, much less followed up immediately to expose the response to be yet another lie. This is how Bush and his team got away with mass-murder abroad. There was no resistance, in any of the mainstream (the billionaire-controlled) media. Not even in the Democratic-Party ‘news’-media. This was bipartisan evil (by the billionaires) and ignorance (by the public).

On 22 January 2018, CNN reported that, “George W. Bush's favorable rating has grown from 33% to 61% since he left office. … Most of Bush's climb back to popularity came from Democrats and independents. His favorability mark among Democrats has soared from only 11% in February 2009 to a majority 54% now.” Maybe that’s because of ‘news’-media such as CNN, continuing to trumpet ongoing official deceits as if those were instead established truths. The US Government can lie as much as it wants, because there’s nothing to stop it from lying. There is no accountability in an aristocracy, but only in a democracy (and the US is an aristocracy).

The media-mainstream, and its supporters, refuse to become honest. Mainstreamers think that they’re terrific as they are, and certainly shouldn’t be put out of business for the mass-murdering lies they’ve pumped. The ‘Russiagate’ fraud is the latest example of this. If it had succeeded, then not only would US ‘defense’-spending soar even more and the Government’s domestic spending plunge, but World War III against Russia would suddenly become enormously more likely.

Russiagate-Trump

On 23 March 2019, main conclusions from the Mueller Report — the report from US Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III — became published. Democratic Party politicians and ‘news’-media were shocked and stunned that Mueller’s report asserted: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” One needs to see the complete sentence, there, not just part of it (which is all that was released); but, if this quotation from the Report isn’t out-of-context, then the entire investigation was pursuing a Democratic Party lie and found it to be a lie.

On 24 March 2019, Michael Calderone at Politico said that “while fair-minded criticism can be beneficial to the news media, there are likely to also be bad faith attempts to delegitimize journalism.” He said there “journalism,” instead of “propaganda.” He was writing propaganda for America’s Democratic-Party ‘news’-media. Calderone was happy to report that “Some journalists have already pushed back on the weekend criticism. ‘Given the issues, stakes, and seriousness with which special counsel treated all of this, the media’s coverage of Russia-Trump connection and possible obstruction over the last two years was somewhere between about right and not quite aggressive enough,’ tweeted Esquire’s Ryan Lizza.” On the same day, Paul Farhi of the Washington Post headlined “Conclusion of Mueller probe raises anew criticisms of coverage” and reported that “Among the theories commentators advanced was one by New York magazine writer Jonathan Chait, who speculated in a cover story in July about whether ‘the dark crevices of the Russia scandal run not just a little deeper but a lot deeper.’ … In a statement Sunday night, Chait stood by his article. ‘That story relied on reports in credible public sources. None of those reports have been refuted.’” That’s rabidly false, though the top editors at both the Washington Post and the New York Times were quoted there as making similar false assertions. Farhi continued: “In fact, revelations by the Times and The Washington Post about contacts between Russian agents and Trump’s campaign advisers in 2016 helped prompt the inquiry that the special counsel took over in May 2017. The two newspapers shared a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting on the issue that year.” He seemed to be actually bragging about his very successful and severely failed ‘news’-paper and its main competitor.

On March 25th, Amy Chozick in the New York Times bannered “After Mueller Report, News Media Leaders Defend Their Work”, and she reported that, “Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, said he was ‘entirely comfortable’ with the network’s coverage. ‘We are not investigators. We are journalists, and our role is to report the facts as we know them, which is exactly what we did,’ Mr. Zucker said in an email.” Furthermore: “Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, defended coverage of the Russian investigation, including the decision to publish a dossier put together by British intelligence officer Christopher Steele full of tantalizing (and unsubstantiated) reports about Russian efforts to blackmail Mr. Trump. ‘It’s pretty hard to imagine a scenario in which people were aware of its existence but not allowed to see it,’ Mr. Smith said of the dossier.” Smith took seriously the “unsubstantiated” ‘dossier’ that the DNC had hired for creating the myth that the cause of Clinton’s loss was Putin and Russia, instead of herself, and her profoundly corrupt Party (no different, basically, from the Republican Party).

On March 26th, The Hill headlined “Media have account to settle with American people over Mueller investigation coverage”, and a journalism professor said that the news industry” had been “stumbling around unsuccessfully in the dark trying to find fact nuggets on which to build the Mueller story.” Two days later, he told Wisconsin Public Radio that “The media did underperform over the last couple of years.” The problem was just blunders, and ‘underperformance’ (instead of its long-proven-normal performance) — not the entire corrupt system of ‘journalism’ in America, where the people who do the hiring are answerable ultimately to the same billionaires who effectively control the Government. No — not that — not at all (according to him).

As I have pointed out and documented (via links to solid ultimate sources, sometimes in the linked-to sources in linked-to articles, but all ultimate sources having been very carefully verified by this reporter as being true, and those sources remaining solid), "All US Gov’t. Accusations Against Russia’s Gov’t. Are Lies.” That’s right: all of “Russiagate” is based on very dubious ‘evidence’. This means that the time-line, in the Mueller Report, lists some ‘events’ that did not happen, and some events that were not partisanly involved in the 2016 Presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

And Robert Mueller himself has a very bad record, but how widely has that been reported?