Wars are a sector; they are an industry. Every once in a few years there is a growth in demand and if there is no immediate demand, then the marketing pitch needs to change a bit, or new market segments discovered (new targets). Not too long ago, David Petraeus (CIA Director) feared the 'threat' of peace, so he identified a new market [1] and fueled yet another proxy war [2] which up until very recently [3] involved the CIA's manufacturing of 'rebels' [4,5], funneling weapons to some terrorists [6] (labeling only the victims terrorists [7]), and as usual covering that up with some more televised propaganda [8]. War criminals, especially those from the last major invasion, already have traveling limitations [9] as they can't rely on overzealous policing [10] even from violent police forces like Canada's.
A year later, Assad was still in power. At the first high-level talks on potentially getting involved in Syria's civil war, then-CIA Director David Petraeus laid out a plan to secretly arm and train groups of Syrian rebels in Jordan. Obama's advisers were split on the issue, and remained so throughout many subsequent discussions. The president appeared hesitant to intervene in Syria, or make a call one way of the other, even as new intelligence in early 2013 suggested Assad was using chemical weapons, and the rebels were losing. Per the Times:
Up until early September, it appeared that the Obama administration was about to order the bombing of Syria. However, on Monday, September 9, Secretary of State John Kerry made his now famous statement indicating that war could be avoided if Syria agreed to destroy its stockpiles of chemical weapons. Whether this statement was an off-the-cuff remark or a carefully planned diplomatic masterstroke—a maneuver so ingenious and subtle that even a Talleyrand would have been impressed—is not known. Given the confusion that found expression in the initial responses of State Department and White House spokesmen, the argument could be plausibly made that Kerry, who is not an especially intelligent man, had not thought through the implications of his response to a reporter’s question. On the other hand, an argument could be made that Kerry’s seemingly ad-libbed statement arose from secret discussions that had been held with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
The United States has cut off northern Syrian moderate rebel groups from non-lethal aid, with an al-Qaeda advance in northern Syria physically blocking the aid’s dispersal, as the Obama administration continues to ‘disengage’ itself from Syria.
The CIA is expanding a clandestine effort to train opposition fighters in Syria amid concern that moderate, U.S.-backed militias are rapidly losing ground in the country’s civil war, U.S. officials said.
The U.S. military’s involvement (or lack thereof) in the Syrian civil war that has been taking place over the past few years has been a point of contention both within the U.S. and around the world. After a chemical attack killed and injured thousands, the debate as to whether or not the Obama administration would respond with a military strike dominated discussion within the U.S. and the U.N. governing bodies.
Authorized by Congress, the CIA has started sending weapons to Syrian rebels. But under a legal definition of terrorism adopted by the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks, those same rebel groups are considered terrorist organizations.
The designation could prevent some of the more than 2 million refugees who have fled Syria from coming to the United States, even if they haven’t actually taken up arms against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Homeland is nothing like the mundane reality of intelligence work, say former CIA staff members.
Former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has cancelled an April appearance in Toronto citing concerns Canada is too dangerous.
The list of former U.S. officials who believe drone strikes create more enemies than they eliminate juts got a little bit longer.
Earlier this week, I opened the Daily Cal to find a harmless-looking sketch of a U.S. military drone flying in a purple sky. Under it, I saw the title “Drones make America safer.” After reading the op-ed piece written by political science student Blair Rotert, I felt absolutely compelled to stop studying for my midterms and write a response from my background as a peace and conflict studies major.
The ultimate claim in the article was, “Simply put, drones are a more effective and efficient way to combat our enemies. What’s the point in opposing that?” Well, in direct opposition to that, I find it necessary for someone to present the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of drones.
One reason US assertions of limited civilian casualties in drone strikes don't hold water.
A UN report accuses the United States of downplaying the number of civilians killed in anti-terrorist drone operations, while failing to assist in the investigation by releasing its own figures.
US policymakers don’t even claim that all the targets of their drone strikes are posing a threat to the US, Phyllis Bennis, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, told RT.
Drones are often lauded for their supposed precision and accuracy. Sometimes, though, the machines - and their human operators - make mistakes, as two new reports from human rights organisations show.
In Yemen, Human Rights Watch investigated six selected airstrikes since 2009 and concluded that at least 57 of the 82 people killed were civilians, including a pregnant woman and three children who perished in a September 2012 attack.
Just a week before the wide release of “The Fifth Estate,” the DreamWorks-produced WikiLeaks picture, Julian Assange accurately predicted how the movie would perform.
“‘The Fifth Estate’ is going to fail,” he told the Hollywood Foreign Press Association via Skype from the Ecuador Embassy in London, where he has been residing in diplomatic asylum for more than a year.
[...]
Some have called the film’s dismal numbers a victory for Assange.
With WikiLeaks biopic The Fifth Estate launching today in the US, the organization will show its own competing film for free on the opening weekend. Mediastan, a documentary, is described as a "road movie" that follows WikiLeaks during its 2011 distribution of classified government cables. It's positioned as an antidote to The Fifth Estate, which praises WikiLeaks' overall mission but suggests the cable leaks were irresponsible and poorly planned. WikiLeaks has been consistently outraged through the hype cycle of both it and earlier documentary We Steal Secrets, and it's now getting a chance to go firmly on the offensive.