Mattis: 'No doubt' Syrian regime has chemical weapons, April 21, 2017

"There can be no doubt in the international community's mind that Syria has retained chemical weapons in violation of its agreement and its statement that it had removed them all. There is no longer any doubt," Mattis told reporters.

Full text of Dick Cheney's speech, August 27, 2002

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors ...

"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."
― Edmund Burke

© U.S. Navy Photo / Flickr

The US's game of deception about the movements of the Carl Vinson during the North Korean crisis has damaged the US's credibility and earned it deserved ridicule.

The saga of the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and its battle group serves as a good example of all that is wrong with the Trump administration's conduct of foreign policy.

Since before Chinese President Xi Jinping met with President Trump in Florida on 6th April 2017 President Trump and his officials have been talking about the US taking unilateral action if China did not move to stop development of North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

After President Xi left Florida, with rumours circulating that North Korea was about to conduct a sixth nuclear test, more threats of unilateral action poured out of the US. It is important to say that they did not come just from the President. They also came from his various other officials, including Vice-President Mike Pence (who appeared to repeat them during a visit to South Korea), Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the President's National Security Adviser General H.R. McMaster, and the President's spokesman, Sean Spicer.

The U.S. envoy to the United Nations has accused Iran and its ally Hizballah of conspiring to destabilize the Middle East during an open meeting of the UN Security Council on April 20.

Nikki Haley, who is chairing the council this month, said Iran and Lebanon's Hizballah have trained "deadly militias" that they use to fuel conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

"For decades, they have committed terrorist acts across the region," Haley said.

"Iran is using Hizballah to advance its regional aspirations," she said. "They are working together to expand extremist ideologies in the Middle East. This is a threat that should be dominating our discussion" at the UN.

"Russia Today" is cancelling their contract with Reuters after the British news agency published an article titled "Russian intervention in US elections" with unsubstantiated accusations against News agency Sputnik .

The contract for the purchase of video was previously agreed by the parties and was to come into effect on May 1.

Reuters published in "exclusive" material, stating that the Russian Institute of Strategic Research developed the intervention strategy in the US election. One of the alleged documents prepared by the Institute involves the formation of a positive image of the candidate favorable to the Kremlin, and the second - the spread of violations of the election information. RT, Sputnik and other Russian media were apparently charged with propagating this image.

It is noteworthy that as a source, Reuters names "three current and four former" American officials. No agency name is not specified.

RT Editor in Chief Margarita Simonyan said: "Western journalism has hit another low, Reuters writes that they knows the seven guys that have seen a secret Russian report. Reuters should be given an Oscar for best screenplay, they deserve it."

The leaked NSA documents and tools published in recent months by the mysterious Shadow Brokers group have provided rare insight into the clandestine digital espionage operations pursued by the spy agency over the past few years, including information on operations aimed at Iran and Russia.

Last Friday the rogue group released a new package of NSA files, this time detailing numerous tools designed to break into older versions of Microsoft Windows and a campaign to compromise banking networks in the Middle East. Additional targets were also mentioned one week prior in a separate archive that was largely ignored by most media outlets.

Yet the document cache published April 8 provides evidence that the NSA had once launched a series of successful computer-based intrusions against multiple high-profile foreign targets, including the Office of the President of Iran and the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, said two former intelligence officials who spoke to CyberScoop on the condition of anonymity due to their knowledge of internal operations. That release contained files with earmarked organizations and other evidence that explains how certain cyberattacks were engineered.

Recently, Syria and Iraq have witnessed increased chemical weapon usage. In Khan Sheikhoun, a performance was staged to accuse the Syrian government while in Iraq's Mosul, the situation is quite the opposite: the besieged ISIS militants used chemical agents chlorine and mustard gas against Iraqi troops. [The ISIS is supported by the US and its Middle East Allies].

The first reports of ISIS developing chemical weapons appeared in November, 2015. Then, the AP, basing on the information of the U.S. and Iraqi intelligences, stated that the terrorists were actively developing chemical agents with the assistance of highly qualified specialists from Iraq, Syria and other Middle East states.

As known, since the IS emerged, it has numerously used chemical weapons in Syria and Iraq. In particular, the terrorists carried out a chemical attack against the Syrian army in Deir Ezzor in April 2016 and the Kurdish-held neighborhood Sheikh Maqsood in Aleppo in March and April, 2016.

ISIS has repeatedly used chemical agents in Mosul. In November 2016, Britain-based HIS Conflict Monitor reported that since 2014 to Nov. 2016, the Islamic State conducted at least 52 chemical attacks.

Initially, the terrorists used chlorine which can be handicrafted. This agent rarely kills. Unlike chlorine, sarin and mustard gas are combat agents which require industrial environment and qualified specialists.

President Donald Trump quietly met a pair of former Colombian presidents last weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, thrusting his administration into an ugly power struggle in Latin America that threatens to undermine the country's controversial peace agreement with rebel leaders.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos is expected to push Trump to support the peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia at their first meeting at the White House next month. He wants the Trump administration and Congress to maintain the $450 million in foreign aid promised by former President Barack Obama to implement the plan to end Latin America's longest armed conflict.

The meeting between Trump and the former presidents, Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana - Colombia news media have reported it was arranged by an influential U.S. critic of the plan, Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida - was not on the president's schedule and was not disclosed to reporters who traveled with him to Palm Beach.

While we did get a hint about Trump's new strategy for Syria when the US decided, only a few weeks ago, to send more troops to Syria, no clear cut objectives were laid out at that time. However, it is quite obvious that the US is following a certain, but loosely defined, policy framework and is looking at how it can resolve the crisis to its own advantage. While deployment of troops is taking place in and around Syria, Rex Tillerson recently elaborated, using a very vague language though, upon the US plan for Syria and the steps it deems necessary for binging 'stability' back. Although coming from a top US official, the plan has the potential to send ripples of fresh conflict in Syria. It has flaws—some serious flaws—that can stir different actors, both state and non-state, into opposing positions and thus provide the necessary context for further infighting.

In a way, the "new plan" is not much different from what the Obama administration had pursued in terms of creating "zones" in Syria. But the 'new plan' says much more than mere creation of "zones" - and that is precisely where it becomes self-defeating.

For instance, during his address at Ministerial Plenary for the Global Coalition Working to Defeat ISIS at Washington, DC, on March 22, Tillerson talked about creation of "interim zones of stability" and gradual transfer of responsibilities to "local political leadership", who would provide "stable and fair governance," rebuild infrastructure, and provide essential services. Tillerson added, "a successful stabilization phase will set the stage for a successful normalization phase. In the normalization phase, local leaders and local governments will take on the process of restoring their communities in the wake of ISIS with our [US-led coalition's] support."

Reuters story of two RISS documents which supposedly 'prove' Russian meddling in the US election is absurd. From Reuters' account of the documents they show the opposite.

In the immediate aftermath of the US missile strike on Syria, I said that if it was intended to ease President Trump's domestic political problems then it was a major blunder.

I said that on the contrary what the missile strike would do was dismay the President's most vocal and intelligent supporters, whilst failing to appease his enemies.

Here is what I said

If the President believed when he launched his missiles that it would end criticism of him and obstruction of his administration by his opponents, then he will be quickly discover that it has done no such thing. The President's opponents have far too much invested in the narrative of Donald Trump the new Mussolini or Caligula to back off from it now. I doubt they will even back off from the Russiagate allegations, absurd though those are.

Within a few days, once the plaudits for the missile strikes have faded, the President will quickly find that the view of him of his opponents in Washington is the same as always, and that if anything, by launching his missile strike without first consulting Congress, he has given them another stick with which to beat him with. I note that Nancy Pelosi - one of the President's most vehement critics - is already calling for a full debate in the House to discuss the issue of authorisation for the President's action.

.......By contrast, if the President has not won over his critics, he has beyond question upset and demoralised the most intelligent and vocal part of his own political base.

One of the most interesting facts about the events of the last few days is that whilst Barack Obama's liberal supporters continued to back him even as he went back entirely on the anti-war stance he appeared to hold before he was elected, Donald Trump's supporters take their anti-war and anti-interventionist position extremely seriously, and are not prepared to compromise on it. The result is that far from defending the President for what he has done, they have turned on him and feel betrayed.

As is clear from the above comment, unlike many people I did not expect the Russiagate allegations to go away simply because the President was launching missiles at Syria and was starting to adopt the foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and of his opponents. Hysteria and paranoia are never dispelled in that way.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced earlier today that the Director of the General Office of the Communist Party of China Li Zhanshu will visit Russia on April 25-27 at the invitation of his counterpart, head of the Presidential Administration in the Kremlin Anton Vaino. The Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in Beijing that the two officials will discuss China-Russia relations "as previously agreed on by the countries' leaders" and that the Chinese side is confident that the visit will further galvanize Sino-Russian ties.

Li will be the second top Chinese official visiting Moscow in April. President Vladimir Putin has received the First Vice-Premier of China Zhang Gaoli (who is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of Chinese Communist Party) at the Kremlin on April 13, which was, incidentally, the day after the visit by the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow.

Zhang is one of the economic czars in the Chinese system and his talks with Russian officials focused on Chinese investments in Russia and energy cooperation. But part of his brief was to prepare for Putin's "working visit" to Beijing in the context of the One Belt One Road summit on May 14-15, which will be inaugurated by President Xi Jinping.