Trump has just asked Congress for $150bn for military operations in the Middle East at a time when the US is, supposedly, shutting down its efforts there and has very few troops stationed and nearly none at all in combat. This is more money than the US spent when it had up to 20,000 men in combat. Why?
With America officially talking peace in Syria, something quite different is going on. Reports are coming in out of Iraq and from Russian operatives inside Syria. You see, the Idlib peace process is being interfered with; al Qaeda is receiving massive funding and arms and has virtually wiped out any Turkish allied forces. America is trying to turn Idlib into its own bastion.
Idlib sits on major oil and gas discoveries, call this a curious coincidence, discovered only months before a fake civil war descended on Syria, one that targeted oil rich regions and Syria’s industrial heartland. Then there is this, confirmed by Damascus, America has restaffed their command center in Amman, Jordan, one shared with Israel and Saudi Arabia, a command center not just for “the allies” but, were one to be honest, for ISIS and al Qaeda as well.
About the MOC, from The National, a 2013 story:
“A secret operations command centre in Jordan, staffed by western and Arab military officials, has given vital support to rebels fighting on Syria’s southern front, providing them with weapons and tactical advice on attacking regime targets.
Rebel fighters and opposition members say the command centre, based in an intelligence headquarters building in Amman, channels vehicles, sniper rifles, mortars, heavy machine guns, small arms and ammunition to Free Syrian Army units – although it has stopped short of giving them much coveted anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.
Officials in Amman denied the command centre exists. “We dismiss these allegations. Jordan is not a host or part of any cooperation against Syria. Jordan’s interest is to see a stable and secure Syria, one that is able to keep its problems inside its borders,” said Mohammad Al Momani, minister of media affairs.
‘We will not do anything that will feed violence in Syria,’ he said.
But Syrian opposition figures familiar with rebel operations in Deraa, about 75 kilometres north of Amman, said Jordan hosted the command centre and had tasked senior Jordanian intelligence officials to work with western and Arab states in helping rebels to plan missions and get munitions and fighters across the border.”
Backed by credible reports from Russia, Syrian, Kurdish and Iraqi sources, we know that the US is readying a force of up to 2500 ISIS cadres, including top commanders, that Iraqi sources say are being trained at three American bases without the knowledge of the Iraqi government.
At the same time, in Southern Syria at Deraa, Syrian intelligence sources tell us that demonstrations have begun, as embedded terror cells have begun showing up publicly, carrying arms many of them kept after signing reconciliation agreements. The Damascus government sees these demonstrations as a prelude for military intervention in Syria to coincide with any Syrian attempt to move on Idlib.
Deraa is the front where Israeli military have been most active, entering Syria through Jordan, according to our sources there, and escorting ISIS recruits to both Syria and Iraq that have come from as far away as the Philippines, Australia and Malaysia, making use of Tel Aviv’s new airport.
Reports, by ISIS recruits inside Australia, of being routed through Israel, have been “cleansed” from the media.
The Wider Story
America is preparing for war in Venezuela and Iran; and credible reports, as mentioned above, show that the US is re-organizing and re-equipping ISIS units from bases inside Iraq to redeploy against Syria. Despite any agreements, despite any conclaves or public handshaking, Congress and the American people are being told this is being done to stop Russia from taking over the world and “threatening democracy.”
The insanity of this is unquestioned as though it were a religion, and, in fact, it is a religion; it is the basis for “neo-conservativism,” and the infection that runs rampant in Washington DC at the behest of John Bolton inside the White House and Sean Hannity, media spokesman for America’s “Taliban.”
“Russia haters” in Washington have been hiding, biding their time for years. They now feel this is “their moment in history.”
Though Russia is a Christian democracy and China is America’s largest trading partner and the biggest investor in American debt, an imaginary secret alliance backed by nothing but conjecture has brought us back to 1972 or 1938 or 1914, a fake world created to justify America’s program of global dominance.
The great communist alliance of the Cold War now looms over the world, if one is to believe the Western press, poisoning enemies, gassing civilians, with communists hiding behind every tree and bush.
The Military Imbalance
Let’s take a look at the forces arrayed in the Middle East, for instance. Russia, at last count, has around 20 planes at their Syrian base, supporting counter-terrorism operations there.
The United States has, in the region, around 800 combat aircraft. This includes Diego Garcia, al Udeid in Qatar, a massive base, six bases inside Iraq, two inside Turkey, one inside Israel, three inside Jordan, five in Kuwait, 3 in the UAE, one in Bahrain and a tiny base in Oman. We can add to that two major air bases in Afghanistan and 65 smaller facilities. Recent agreements with the Taliban will diminish this capability over, according to reports, five years.
Then again, the US is still operating facilities inside Syria, for the time being at least.
To this, we add the new Trump military budget for 2020. From CNN:
“President Donald Trump will ask for a Pentagon budget of $718 billion for 2020, part of an overall $750 billion request for defense, two US officials tell CNN.
The figure includes both the Pentagon budget as well as the nuclear weapons elements of the Energy Department budget.
The Pentagon request represents an increase of 4.7% over this year’s budget.
The officials told CNN that approximately $544 billion is being requested for the “base” defense budget with an additional $9 billion going to an “emergency” fund. The remaining $165 billion would go to ‘Overseas Contingency Operations,’ an account that pays for military operations overseas in places like Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. That’s a dramatic increase from the 2019 budget, which sought $69 billion for that operational account.
The Trump administration’s decision to make a large OCO request, which was reported previously by several media outlets, was criticized earlier by senior Democratic lawmakers.
‘The President’s budget will apparently rely on a giant OCO gimmick to prop up defense spending. If true, this is nothing more than a blatant attempt to make a mockery of the federal budget process, obscure the true cost of military operations, and severely shortchange other investments vital to our national and economic security,’ House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith said in a joint statement last month.
While the amount of money requested for that account reached similar levels during the early years of the Obama Administration, at that time the US had some 150,000 troops deployed to active combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan compared to 14,000 troops in Afghanistan and some 7,000 in Iraq and Syria today where US forces now serve largely in advisory roles.”
All of it Fake
Inside the US, the big threat isn’t Russia but rather from the South, an imaginary invasion of armed thugs, rapists and drug dealers crossing into the US. Trump is right, border crossings from Mexico have doubled during his tenure, but not from any effort to invade the US, but rather from a “stand down” by officials who have manufactured a fake threat while using brutal tactics on the endless thousands who are simply allowed to openly walk into the US.
One of the most common themes of recent times is the mobilization of refugees through manipulation of social media and to use this process to destabilize nations, Turkey for instance, the entire EU and, of course, the United States.
You see, the US has long been able to close the Mexican or any other border using the 20,000 border agents and 380,000 armed police in the border region, a force nearly equal to that used against Vietnam.
Speaking of Vietnam, it was there, 50 years ago, that magnetic and seismic intrusion detectors along with ground radar were perfected for use against the Viet Cong. Since that time, the US has developed satellite and aerostat-based platform systems that stretch 200 miles into Mexico, powered by algorithms that see every vehicle, every individual approaching the US, and sees them days in advance.
I only know this because I helped develop this equipment and deploy it, not just in the US but Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and a dozen other nations. It works just fine, but I digress.
We aren’t even mentioning Synthetic Aperture Satellite systems that can even see tunnel complexes or “disturbed earth” where IED (improvised explosive devices) are planted. There are no unseen refugees, most of the planet is under “persistent surveillance” from multi-level surveillance and detection systems under the command of interlocking operational intelligence centers. Add to this that all communications are monitored as well and the Trump administration’s blatant inability to provide evidence of almost everything they assert on any subject becomes evidence in itself, evidence of deception.
China
While Russia is being accused of election rigging and espionage, we now learn that a Florida-based bordello/massage parlor owner name Li Yang has been working closely with Trump, bringing in secret Chinese “delegations” that stay at Mar a Lago and cut private deals with Trump, Kushner and their wealthy supporters.
The end result has been, despite trade bans on China and America’s military confrontations with that nation, America’s trade deficit with China has increased wildly, by nearly 40%. Is this a failed policy or engineered deception, hidden behind military aggression, a policy based on corruption?
American heavy bombers and warships ply the Chinese coastline as a supposed threat, while corrupt American officials are and have been in bed with China all along.
Russia
Using Russia as an enemy by drawing on a fake history of the post-WWII era, when extremist propaganda in the United States became as rampant as it is today, is pure fabrication. Yes, Russia has advanced technologies, certainly many superior to the US.
What Russia doesn’t have is military bases in 160 nations, 12 aircraft carriers and a trillion dollar per year military industrial complex that runs roughshod over its government.
Thus, though Russia may build weapons capable of equaling most American technology, the vastly inferior size of Russia’s military economy makes the idea of parity in numbers of weapons pure insanity.
Yet, to this day, the Pentagon trains for scenarios of thousands of Russian long-range bombers or fleets of modern tanks backed by air armadas, driving NATO into the sea. A generation of American military officers has become insulated from reality.
Conclusion
One might then ask, why maintain policies of unsustainable military expenditure and confrontation that is predicated on threats that simply cannot exist? There is little question that the United States has developed a policy of surrogate/asymmetrical warfare against nearly ever resource-rich nation on earth yet, America herself is over $21 trillion in debt and quickly sinking into economic collapse.
We offer no answer here; only one question and that one is simple, why are no relevant questions being asked?
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”