This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Foreign Policy

  • Tell Me Again Why We’re Involved?

    During the last two months, there have been armed clashes between two Syrian rebel factions on the northern outskirts of Aleppo.  The area is contested territory, and apparently both factions want to possess it.

    One of the groups is called Fursan al Haq, or “Knights of Righteousness”. They previously controlled the territory, but in February were displaced by “Syrian Democratic Forces” that moved into the area from the east.

    This wasn’t an isolated occurrence, either.  Similar clashes have been reported earlier this month in the town of Azaz, and in Aleppo’s Sheikh Maqsud neighborhood.

    Here’s the “punch line”:  Fursan al Haq is backed – an armed – by the CIA.  The Syrian Democratic Forces?  They’re backed and armed by the Pentagon.

    Yeah, you read that correctly.  Two of the Syrian rebel groups the US has backed to oppose Assad are currently fighting each other instead.

    Sheesh.  When the factions we back start fighting each other, you really have to wonder if we’re backing the right groups – or if we even have a freaking clue about what’s really going on in Syria.

    As I’ve said repeatedly:  perhaps Syria is indeed a case of, “Better the Devil you know . . . than the Devil you don’t.”  IMO, other than countering Da’esh and its allies we have “no dog in the fight” in the Syrian Civil War.  And had we not involved ourselves in Syria, I suspect Assad’s regime would have done a much better job taking care of Da’esh and its allies than we’ve done so far – at least in Syrian territory.

    This article from The Virginian-Pilot gives more details.  IMO it’s worth a read.

  • Spain threatens England

    Spain threatens England

    gibraltar_peninsula

    According to the Daily Mail Britain is planning on a vote on July 23rd whether they want to remain in the European Union. Spain has threatened to invade Gibraltar if they do decide to leave.

    Julia Reid, the party’s MEP for Gibraltar, lashed out at comments and warned off any move made by Spain.

    She said: “Gibraltar has nothing to fear, any move for the outpost, which is as British and Britain itself, would be repelled, as every attempt has been for hundreds of years.

    “And even if Britain votes to leave the EU, it doesn’t make any difference, Gibraltar will still be British territory and that’s that.

    “It sounds more like an old communique from Buenos Aires, rather than a new one from Madrid.”

    [Jose Manual Garcia-Margallo, Spain’s Foreign Minister] said “we’ll be talking about Gibraltar the very next day” if Britons vote to quit the bloc on June 23.

    Britain got the tip of the Iberian Peninsula “in perpetuity” at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 following the War of Spanish Succession. The Spanish had trouble fulfilling their obligations in the war against terror, but they’re willing to die on this hill? It doesn’t have the same strategic value that it had in the 18th century, so I’d just give it back to them and then leave the EU and see who gets the last laugh.

  • More Clintoon “Private Email” News

    Still think there was nothing classified on that “private”, unauthorized, and ineffectively-secured email server Clintoon used to conduct official State Department business? If so, do you also still believe in the Tooth Fairy?

    Here’s a quote relating to the latest revelation about what was found on that “private”, unauthorized and unsecured server. I’ve added emphasis where I felt warranted.

    One of the classified email chains discovered on Hillary Clinton’s personal unsecured server discussed an Afghan national’s ties to the CIA and a report that he was on the agency’s payroll, a U.S. government official with knowledge of the document told Fox News.

    The discussion of a foreign national working with the U.S. government raises security implications – an executive order signed by President Obama said such unauthorized disclosures are “presumed to cause damage to the national security.”

    Don’t know about you, but my reaction on reading the above was, “Oh . . . sh!t.” Why? Because people literally can die if and when information like that falls into the wrong hands.

    Fox News has an article with more details.  It’s IMO worth a read.

    “Not classified at the time” my ass.  Someone would have to be a complete moron to believe that information was unclassified.

    Some people need to go to jail for this. For a loooong time.

  • An Interesting Case – and Dilemma

    I’m serious about the title. And I’ll admit I’m somewhat torn on this one.

    Decades ago, Otto Macias left Cuba. He came to the US, then enlisted in the Army.

    Macias fought in Vietnam. He returned from Vietnam in 1969, allegedly “broken and suffering from PTSD and schizophrenia” per his family.  It appears he really did have significant issues; he was in and out of hospitals repeatedly after his return.  And the VA apparently recognized something as being service-connected; they were paying him a relatively small monthly payment.  (The linked article calls it a “pension”, but I’m guessing it was some modest level of disability compensation.  Macias wasn’t old enough to qualify for a veteran’s pension, and the payment was only around $60/month in 1980.)

    Macias had relatives in Cuba. In 1980, he went to visit them.  He stayed.

    Since Cuba was under an embargo, after a relatively short period his payments from the VA also stopped. But now the US is in the process of normalizing relations with Cuba (IMO a huge mistake until Cuba ends its support for revolutionary movements worldwide) – and it’s now allowable for US funds to be sent to Cuba.

    Macias has asked for his VA payments to be resumed.  And though he now lives in Cuba with family and will probably stay (he’s now elderly and in bad health), he apparently doesn’t have any ill will towards the USA.

    As I said, I’m a bit conflicted.  Yeah, he earned that compensation through service in combat; Macias doubtless needs the money.  But he’s also not living in the US, or in any friendly nation – he’s living in a country that still is a US adversary.  Resuming his VA payments would help support Cuba’s economy, and would also set a precedent that I’d hate to see established.  Adversaries are adversaries; as a nation, we shouldn’t be helping nations that are our enemies.

    On balance my position would be, “Sorry– not if you’re in Cuba, or any one of the other nations in the world that are US adversaries.” But it’s a tough call, and I can certainly understand the opposite point of view.

    Fox News has an article on Macias.  IMO, it’s worth reading.

    Thoughts?

  • Vietnam shopping for US military equipment

    The US fought a war in Vietnam to prevent a Domino effect of countries in the Pacific Rim falling to Communism. When the US left Vietnam in 1975, the new communist Vietnamese government did their best to make the Domino Theory a reality. They invaded Cambodia, but they were stopped cold by the Chinese which lost about 70,000 military casualties in their efforts, first in direct heavy combat and then in a two decade-long low intensity conflict which ended in 1990 with both sides declaring victory. Now, the Vietnamese are worried about the Chinese again as they make motions to control the South China Seas and the land it touches. So the Vietnamese are turning to the US to modernize their armies;

    Squeezed by slower U.S. military spending, defense firms are looking to Southeast Asian nations for new markets, capitalizing on their concerns about China’s outlays on long-range planes, ships and submarines. The April roadshow, organized by the U.S. embassy, follows Washington’s easing of curbs on sales of nonlethal defense systems to Vietnam last October.

    “In the coming months there will be more conversations, meetings and trips back-and-forth between American companies and their potential Vietnamese clients,” said Vu Tu Thanh, chief Vietnam representative of the U.S.-Asean Business Council, who attended the day-long symposium. “There is a surge of interest among American defense contractors.”

    […]

    Vietnam’s military spending has risen 128 percent since 2005, reflecting its territorial tensions with China, according to an April report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Its defense budget jumped 9.6 percent in 2014 to $4.3 billion, it said.

    The U.S. is providing Vietnam with six patrol boats, part of an $18 million military aid package.

    Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Nixon opened China to end the war in Vietnam and now we’ll “lose China” by arming Vietnam. Sounds like a job for John Kerry.

  • Another Day, . . .

    . . . another report of a new Clintoon “private email server” security issue.  And like yesterday, this one is “Big (Effing) Deal” bad, too.

    How bad?  Well, I’ll just provide a link or two to explain that.  Here’s the first link, identifying yet another type of highly classified material that’s reportedly been found on Clintoon’s unauthorized, inadequately-secured “private email server”.  It rather goes without saying that this newly-identified type of classified information was not authorized to be stored there either.

    Now, here’s the second link to publicly-available IC documentation briefly describing that type of information.  The need for extreme protection for this type of information should be obvious to anyone with 3 or more working brain cells.

    Oh, and here’s another little bit of “good news”.  Former SECDEF and CIA Director Robert Gates believes there’s a very good chance that Clintoon’s server was accessed by Russian, Chinese, and Iranian intelligence .  So anything that was there . . . is very likely no longer exactly a secret.

    Geez.  First unauthorized TS-SCI info is found stored on Clintoon’s inadequately-secured “private server”.  Next, unauthorized SAP info.   Now this.

    And all of the information stored there has likely been divulged to Russia, China, and Iran.  Great.  Just freaking great.

    Damn, what’s going to be found next on that effectively unsecured “private” server – Pentagon OPLANs?  The design specifications and blueprints for a US nuclear warhead?  At this point, given what we’ve seen found so far I’m not sure I’d be shocked even by that.

    IMO multiple people should end up doing serious time for this fiasco.  There’s simply no excuse for this degree of negligence – or deliberate disregard for the law – when handling these types of classified information.

  • A Clintoon SAP Story

    “Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends . . . .”  Well, at least it seems sometimes as if this one will persist forever.

    Still, maybe not.  Remember the argument a few weeks ago, when the Clintoon camp tried to “pooh-pooh” two emails found on her poorly-secured “private email server” that contained top secret information, calling them the result of a “disagreement” over the proper classification or claiming that they “weren’t classified at the time”?  The IC came on record and flatly stated that was not the case, and that the materials in question were indeed top secret.

    Well, it looks as if there was a bit more to it than that.

    It seems as if the Intelligence Community IG office did a comprehensive review of the issue, apparently between November and earlier this month. And it’s considerably worse than they first let on.

    Bottom line: dozens of classified emails were on that ineffectively-secured and unauthorized “private” server.  And at least some of those emails apparently contained information that was not only top secret, but which was also SAP (special access program) material from the Intelligence Community.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, this linked Wikipedia article provides a decent overview of what a special access program is and why one would exist.

    If you’re thinking, “That’s bad” – yeah, that’s bad.  Really bad.  As in “Big (Freaking) Deal” bad, to quote the current VP.

    Something like this is simply NOT supposed to happen.  Period.

    The material here is so highly controlled that some members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – the Senate committee which oversees operations of the State Department – were not authorized access to this information without receiving additional security briefings and signing additional nondisclosure agreements specifically relating to the material.  This was true even though those same individuals were previously cleared for access to all other materials publicly acknowledged as being found on Clintoon’s unauthorized “private” server.

    The linked articles are quite informative – and disturbing as hell.  IMO they’re worth your time to read.

    IMO, a number of people should be going to jail for this.  At this point it appears obvious that this was not merely the result of some “honest mistake” in handling classified information.

    18 USC 793(f) and (g), anyone?  Sure looks like it to me.

  • Turkey Detains 17 Re: the Istanbul Bombing

    Most TAH readers probably have heard of the recent terrorist bombing in the tourist area of Istanbul, Turkey.  Well, it appears that Turkey now has 17 persons in custody and potentially facing terrorism charges related to that bombing.

    Wanna guess where those 17 individuals Turkey had detained came from?

    If you guessed “Syria” – give yourself a gold star.  No word on how many were “refugees”.

    But don’t worry, folks.  Our State Department is “thoroughly vetting” any Syrian “refugees” we may admit to the USA.  In fact, we’re vetting them almost as well as we’re checking out foreign-born spouses of US citizens.