All you need to know about the US conflict with Russia over Ukraine and Syria

If you want an authoritative collection of all the information you need to understand the current conflict then this is it.

Undeniable, glaringly obvious facts about the US, Russia & Syria that people need to get into their heads

the Moscow Report,

10 October, 2015

1. The democratically-elected government of Syria invited Russia to help them fight ISIS and related terrorist groups. This is in accordance with international law (host-state consent, intervention by invitation). The United States was never invited by the Syrian government to intervene.

2. There are no moderate rebels fighting against the government of Syria. The moderate opposition is in the parliament. The armed opposition outside the parliament that’s attempting to overthrow the government are terrorists. These so-called “moderate” rebels are linked with well-known terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Nusra, and are responsible for handing US weapons over to ISIS. It is simply a matter of playing with words to speak of moderate rebelsor relatively moderate rebels or reconcilables as Former CIA Director and CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus recently put it. The reconcilable, relatively moderate Syrian rebels are doing the same things and pose the same threat to civilization that ISIS, ISIL, or IS do.

Can we get over this “moderate Syrian rebels” myth, for crying out loud? There is no “moderate” opposition running around with machine guns and shooting at people, even if the people they’re shooting at are all military and police. What would you call, say, “moderate” Tea Party rebels (and this is totally hypothetical) trying to remove Obama from office through an armed uprising? Would you call that a “legitimate” and “pro-democracy” moderate opposition? And what would you call it if another country actively supported and funded it? Would it matter to you if you approved of President Obama’s activities or not?

Bashar al-Assad: Do you have military opposition in the United States? Would you accept it? You wouldn’t!

3. Bashar al-Assad (the democratically-elected leader of Syria) has never attacked and has never even threatened to attack the United States.

Assad has warned of blowback against the West if they attack Syria, but he has never threatened the United States or the NATO allies. Newspapers such as The Guardian try to spin his warnings into direct threats:

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has hinted at terrorist reprisals against western interests in the event of a US strike against his country, saying he could not rule out that chemical weapons might be used.

If you read his actual statements, it becomes clear that Assad is simply warning of repercussions in the region (or blowback) as many western analysts have also said:

Assad: “If you strike somewhere, you have to expect repercussions somewhere else. It may take different forms, direct and indirect. Direct when governments want to retaliate, and indirect when you are going to have instability and the spread of terrorism over the region that will influence the west directly.”

Asked if chemical warfare could be one repercussion, Assad added: “That depends if the rebels or the terrorists in this region or any other group have it. It could happen. You are going to pay the price if you are not wise with dealing with terrorists.”

What he is saying is factual and based on historical precedent – if you attack Syria, you will unleash forces that neither I (Assad) nor you (the West) can predict or control. This is actually a friendly warning and nothing more.

4. The refugee crisis in Europe was caused by ISIS and their allies, the “moderate” Syrian rebels, not Assad.

5. The regime-change policies of the United States have ended in catastrophe in every case.

6. “Humanitarian intervention” means war. This is doublespeak.

“Police actions” are wars. The Vietnam “conflict” or “police action” was a war, and it doesn’t matter what words are used to designate it.

“Kinetic military actions with no boots on the ground” are wars. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a kinetic military action with no boots on the ground, and it was indeed an act of war.

This also applies to the following (real) examples: limited operations; time-limited, scope-limited military action; a very limited operation that is geared to save lives; an unbelievably small military action; a response to violations of a norm; overseas contingency operation; humanitarian mission; nation-building mission; action limited in duration and scope; a signal; the authorized use of force; a very limited, very targeted, short-term effort.

7. The US and UK governments lied about Saddam Hussein having nuclear weapons. They invaded Iraq and overthrew his government. The US, UK, and France lied about Muammar Gaddafi killing peaceful protesters and overthew his government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then gloated over his brutal death. The US and UK lied about Assad using chemical weapons on his own supporters. They’ve been obsessed with overthrowing his government ever since.

8. If pro-American, anti-Russia propaganda is OK, then so is Russian propaganda. The difference is that the US media does it on a much larger scale with a lot more money and bigger audiences, and relies more on lies (eg. Saddam’s nuclear weapons), deception, doublespeak (eg. kinetic military actions), twisted logic, blatant hypocrisy (eg. accusing Russia of bombing “moderate” rebels in Syria at the same time the US bombed a hospital in Afghanistan), constantly claiming to be unbiased (eg. Fox News), and faked evidence (eg. the September Dossier).

A bias in reporting the news will always be present – it can’t be avoided. In telling any story, decisions have to be made about what to leave in and what to leave out. It is impossible to present every angle to a story and to do so in an entirely neutral way. Nor is this necessarily a bad thing. Who, for example, would care to see the History Channel give a “fair and balanced” or unbiased account of Nazi Germany, giving equal time and weight to both the pro- and anti-Nazi sides?

Nearly the entire US media tells the US side (or the Pentagon side) while bashing Putin at every opportunity. Why shouldn’t Russia be allowed to tell their side of the story? Why is it always propaganda when they do it, and “investigative journalism” when we do it?

9. RT and Sputnik are state-funded Russian news outlets. So is the BBC. In shaping public opinion against the Assad government and their supposed war crimes against the Syrian people, the BBC and other news outlets have relied heavily upon “evidence” gathered from “experts” such as Eliot Higgins (an unemployed office worker with no training in weapons) and his Brown Moses blog. There is also the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (according to Wikipedia: cited by virtually every western news outlet since the beginning of the uprising), which is run by Rami Abdulrahman (a shop owner in Coventry, England) from his home.

10. Russia (unprovoked) poses no threat to American national security – on the contrary, they are vital partners in the national security of the United States. Russia has neither attacked nor even threatened to attack the United States or Europe.

On September 11, 2001, Vladimir Putin was the first international leader to call President George Bush to express his sympathy and to offer the support of Russia in the war on terror. When the US was preparing to launch the invasion of Afghanistan, Putin said, “Russia will continue to provide intelligence information we have collected on the infrastructure, location and training of international terrorists.” He also allowed and coordinated for the US the use of former Soviet military bases in central Asia. Until 2015, Russia generously gave the US and NATO allies access to Afghanistan through a vital transit route for military and non-lethal supplies.

On two occasions, Russian authorities warned the US government about the Tsarnaev brothers who were accused of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombings.

When the US and UK governments were planning a lunatic invasion of Syria over the made-up story of Assad gassing his own people, it was not Obama (the Nobel Peace Prize winner) who prevented the US from leaping into yet another Iraq war disaster, it was Putin and Lavrov who gave Obama a way of getting out of his foolish “red line” promise. It was Putin and Lavrov who saved American and British kids from getting plunged into the chaos of the Syrian Civil War.

And now Russia is joining Assad in the fight against ISIS in Syria. This means that Russian soldiers are now putting their lives at risk instead of Americans. Isn’t this worth our gratitude?

11. Putin never said that he wants to bring back the Soviet Union. Here’s what he said:

“Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.”

“Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brainsч.”

12. Syria, Ukraine, and Crimea are all of vital national security interest to Russia. Russia has close ties to Assad and has a naval base in Syria, as well as in Crimea. The United States may have some security or economic interests in Syria, but is currently unwelcomed there. The United States has countless military bases all over the world. Ukraine and Crimea represent no national security interests for the United States.

13. The US strategy in Syria has been muddle-headed (at best) and doomed to failure from the beginning. This is due in large part to the unwillingness of the US government to work with Assad. Instead, the US has adopted the hopeless strategy of working with so-called moderate rebels to overthrow Assad while at the same time fighting terrorist groups who also seek to overthrow Assad. The worst-kept secret in the world is that these “moderate” rebels have been working with ISIS to overthrow Assad all along. As pointed out by Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif in an interview with Charlie Rose, the US government didn’t care about ISIS until they started attacking Iraq. Before that, the US was content to sit back and watch ISIS attack the Syrian government.

Now, after over a year of fighting ISIS, the US and NATO allies have achieved practically nothing.

By working with the government of Syria, Russia has a much better chance of eliminating the threat of ISIS and alleviating the refugee crisis in Europe.

14. Everyone, starting with the United States, should be happy that Russia is fighting terrorists in Syria, but instead they whine, criticize, and even threaten military retaliation against Russia!

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov: “One would think the world should applaud, but then we have US and the West worrying about ISIL losses. Yesterday they said it was evil, yet as soon as Russian aviation started conducting airstrikes, they suddenly condemn bombings and call for taking measures against Russia. But there’s the nation behind our army, and nobody cares about the West’s whining.”

Among the lunatics in the US who have actually called for military action against Russia to protect our so-called “assets” in Syria, we have: Presidential candidates Carly Fiorina and Senator Marco Rubio, career Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Senator John McCain. I submit to you that these people are traitors to the real national security interests of the United States. These fascist lunatics talk about “standing up to Russia” and protecting our “assets” in Syria, but nobody wants to call it what it really would be: World War III. We have no assets in Syria worth that! We need to get our ASSETS out of Syria now if they’re so important, and anyway, didn’t we already say NO several times to “intervention” in Syria?

15. Obama’s (now former) ISIS Czar General John Allen conducted the “fight” against ISIS by doing everything possible to undermine the main enemy of ISIS – Assad. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has employed the same strategy by working to overthrow Assad, bombing ISIS a little from time to time, bombing the Kurds (true enemies of ISIS and effective fighters as well) a lot, and refusing to seal the Syria-Turkey border, allowing ISIS terrorists in and out of Syria. Erdogan’s daughter even runs a covert hospital to treat wounded ISIS terrorists!

15. Globalization (including the Washington Consensus and global free trade policies with America as the world policeman) has been an unmitigated disaster for the entire world, including the United States.

The unipolar world led by the United States as the lone superpower (otherwise known as the world police) has not led to a golden age of universal democracy and freedom and the free market utopia promised in the post-USSR 90s. It has led instead to a world of brutal IMF-style austerity, out-of-control speculation and toxic derivatives markets, the absolute rule of finance capitalism in place of industrial capitalism, a Wall Street / military-industrial-complex oligarchy with an utterly subservient, toothless political class to do their bidding (lest the Too-Big-To-Fails fail and the apocalypse ensues, bringing, so they say, death, destruction, anarchy and martial law), seemingly endless wars (not of conquest of land, but of the vital assets and resources of nations), nation-building (doublespeak for attacking nations), CIA-backed color revolutions and uprisings (the disastrous Arab Spring, the Euromaidan in Kiev), speculation-driven financial warfare on nations such as Greece (followed of course by demands for ruthless, barbaric austerity), and low-wage, rip-off, monetarist economies in place of the high-wage, productive labor-oriented economies of the past), just to name a few glorious triumphs of the globalized / free trade world. The living standards of the lower and middle classes have declined throughout Europe and America, while the wealthiest of the wealthy, the one percent of the one percent, have acquired ungodly, incalculable wealth, expanding the gap between the rich and the poor to unprecedented levels. Borders open up everywhere, first world jobs are lost, third world sweat shops thrive, profits roll in, bankers rejoice, the jobless recovery is trumpeted from the mountaintops, and Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” gets louder and louder year after year.

The return to a multipolar world will not solve all of these problems, nor will socialism, or communism, or Bernie Sanders, or anything we can imagine. Jeremy Corbyn can’t save us and neither can Putin. But as Russia takes back their rightful place as a global power, along with China and the BRICS nations, what we can now hope for is the beginning of the end of Francis Fukuyama’s prophesied pseudo-Hegelian “End of History” American style – the ultimate and utter triumph of “Washington Consensus” liberal democracy, small (and feckless) government dominated by multi-national corporations and cocaine-addicted Wall Street speculators, and at the very least we can hope for an end to the nightmare of the lunatic “Wolfowitz Doctrine” neocon wars to spread democracy and topple governments around the world without any meaningful dissent. As Peter Lavelle put it, “Finally we are witnessing the first steps beyond the post-Cold War order – and praise God for this!” Since the neolibs and neocons couldn’t care less what the people think about all of this, we should all welcome Vladimir Putin’s insistent NYET, and we should all be asking our leaders the same question Putin put to them at the UN General Assembly:

Do you realize what you’ve done?

---

Sources & Relevant Links

Worst refugee crisis in a generation as millions flee Islamic State in Iraq and Syria:http://tinyurl.com/po7xghg

Only ‘4 Or 5’ U.S.-Trained Rebels In Syria? Not Exactly: http://tinyurl.com/nw37yep

Question for Obama’s Syria plan: Who are the moderate rebels?:http://tinyurl.com/nya7854

Russian Airstrike in Syria Targeted CIA-Backed Rebels, U.S. Officials Say:http://tinyurl.com/pbwrm4g

Most CIA-backed rebels in Syria ‘anti-American, anti-Western and anti-democracy’:http://tinyurl.com/pwdjxnp

“Free Syrian Army” is just a brand name without a product: http://tinyurl.com/nrhf5f3

Russian Foreign Minister calls Free Syrian Army ‘phantom’ group:http://tass.ru/en/politics/826244

Petraeus Is Wrong: You Can’t “Peel” Jihadist Away From Jihad: http://tinyurl.com/nzb8aet

Who Are the Terrorists in Syria?: http://tinyurl.com/qzdsf23

War on Islamic State: A New Cold War fiction: http://tinyurl.com/pq8d4k9

“Which Side are you Fighting for?” Russia Blasts US for Refusing to Share ISIS Intel:http://tinyurl.com/q9r64cl

Should US Ally with Al Qaeda in Syria?: http://tinyurl.com/p6oplt7

Wait! You’re bombing the wrong terrorists!: http://tinyurl.com/pp4bgbd

US has trained only ‘four or five’ Syrian fighters against Isis, top general testifies:http://tinyurl.com/nk6vjzs

Doublespeak and Vagueness in Lead-up to Invasion of Syria: http://tinyurl.com/oqtpmsf

What should Obama call the next war?: http://tinyurl.com/pn6lxr3

Most Syrians back President Assad, but you’d never know from western media:http://tinyurl.com/mc6q3el

Syrian president Assad threatens ‘repercussions’ if US launches strikes:http://tinyurl.com/q5eodcb

Libyan ‘Regime Change’ Worsened Chaos: http://tinyurl.com/n9jnm72

Libyan Regime Change: U.S./NATO Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds:http://tinyurl.com/3wuc7wm

All of the Countries which the U.S. “Regime Changed” – Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya – Have Descended into Brutal Chaos: http://tinyurl.com/n7qpf9y

WikiLeaks Reveals How the US Aggressively Pursued Regime Change in Syria, Igniting a Bloodbath: http://tinyurl.com/p533yme

Zbigniew Brzezinski On Trial At The UN General Assembly: http://tinyurl.com/pkyffzb

Brzezinski’s “Retaliation” Agenda: Break Up Russia And Absorb It:http://tinyurl.com/o2po77g

Brzezinski Mapped Out the Battle for Ukraine in 1997: http://tinyurl.com/nbjaqgj

Brzezinski: Obama should retaliate if Russia doesn’t stop attacking U.S. assets:http://tinyurl.com/oqmos85

Fiorina Explains How She Would Deal with ‘Unholy Alliance’ in Middle East:http://tinyurl.com/pajq5f5

Marco Rubio Would Risk War With Russia In Order To Enforce Safe Zone In Syria:http://tinyurl.com/qc55qkb

Syria Is In Russia’s Backyard … Not Ours: http://tinyurl.com/qagzvoc

A Plea for Caution From Russia: http://tinyurl.com/orxslpr

9/11 a ‘turning point’ for Putin: http://tinyurl.com/nk4qoua

Russia closes NATO supply corridor to Afghanistan: http://tinyurl.com/oaadj4p

Russia warned U.S. about Boston Marathon bomb suspect Tsarnaev:http://tinyurl.com/petycg8

Turkish President Erdogan’s Daughter Heads ‘Covert’ Medical Facility for Treating Injured Isis Fighters: http://tinyurl.com/pouafh8

Syrian Civil War: http://tinyurl.com/o79rf2t

Assad Did Not Gas Civilians in Ghouta in 2013: http://tinyurl.com/pljw39s

Did Assad gas his own people?: http://tinyurl.com/n9pkd69

Presidential candidate Clinton says removing Assad in Syria is No. 1 priority:http://tinyurl.com/onvxmfm

The tragi-comedy that is “Brown Moses”: http://tinyurl.com/nknjcrd

“Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”, Source Widely Cited by BCC, CNN, Guardian, etc, Is a Fraud: http://tinyurl.com/p8huoej

Who is behind Syrian Observatory for Human Rights?: http://tinyurl.com/nmtr9bg

Did Vladimir Putin call the breakup of the USSR ‘the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century?’: http://tinyurl.com/nlb5hkp

The Double-Speak of American Civilian Humanitarianism: http://tinyurl.com/nz45esd

Civilian Bombing Reports Emerged BEFORE Strikes Began: http://tinyurl.com/npek44f

Answering Russia’s Critics on Syria: http://tinyurl.com/oeayfsd

US Congresswoman: Russia Is Bombing Al-Qaeda Terrorists. How Is That a Bad Thing?:http://tinyurl.com/nqn43yp

An Assad Apologist? Who’s Apologizing?: http://tinyurl.com/o3y2jdb

A Useful Prep-Sheet on Syria for Media Propagandists: http://tinyurl.com/o9abhx2

Russia’s campaign is snuffing out the CIA’s Al-Qaeda forces: http://tinyurl.com/om3pu9os

Putin Has Just Put An End to the Wolfowitz Doctrine: http://tinyurl.com/q9oukfd

Deep State America: http://tinyurl.com/oflg6sj

Tarpley.net: http://tarpley.net/

TWSP/UFAA Morning Briefing for Friday, October 2, 2015: http://twsp.us/briefing/20151002

RT: http://www.rt.com/

Sputnik News: http://sputniknews.com/

Global Research: http://www.globalresearch.ca/

Strategic Culture: http://www.strategic-culture.org/