Tag: perpetual war

US Secretly Reviews & Approves Many Israeli Airstrikes In Syria

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Israel has been secretly coordinating with the US on many of its airstrikes in Syria, and senior officials at US Central Command have reviewed and approved many plans in recent years.

Israel frequently bombs Syria and frames the operations as strikes against Iran or Hezbollah, although the air raids often kill Syrian government troops and members of Iraq’s Shia militias. The latest Israeli airstrikes on Syria disabled the Damascus International Airport, marking a significant escalation in the air campaign.

Current and former officials told the Journal that the main focus of the coordination is on airstrikes that pass near al-Tanf garrison, a US military base in southern Syria near the border with Jordan. The officials said that the “vast majority” of the strikes passing through that area had been approved by the US.

The Israelis started flying airstrikes near al-Tanf in 2017 to avoid Syrian air defenses. The officials said that Israel notifies CENTCOM of its plans ahead of time. The command conducts a review of the operation and also notifies the secretary of defense and joint chiefs chairman. Israel has also notified Russian forces at the Khmeimim Air Base in western Syria of planned strikes.

The report said that the US doesn’t review all Israeli operations inside Syria, and doesn’t help Israel pick its targets. A significant number of Israeli airstrikes in the country don’t pass al-Tanf, including the strike on Damascus Airport.

The US has about 1,000 troops stationed in eastern Syria. On paper, the presence is about supporting the Kurdish-led SDF against ISIS, but the occupation is also about putting pressure on Damascus. The US maintains crippling economic sanctions on Syria, preventing the country from rebuilding after over 10 years of war.

The Journal report is the first time that the close US-Israeli coordination on airstrikes in Syria has been reported. But the US has always tacitly endorsed the operations as it never condemns them.

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Biden to send another $1 billion weapons package to Ukraine

President Biden on Wednesday announced plans to send another $1 billion security assistance package to Ukraine that will include artillery, coastal defense weapons and ammunition to help the country fight off Russian forces.

Biden also said he would send an additional $225 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine to provide drinking water, medical supplies, food and shelter for families inside Ukraine grappling with the impact of the months-long Russian invasion.  

The president said in a written statement that he spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday to inform him of the additional assistance, which is a sliver of a massive $40 billion aid package passed by Congress last month. The call Wednesday morning between the two leaders lasted about 40 minutes, according to the White House. 

“I reaffirmed my commitment that the United States will stand by Ukraine as it defends its democracy and support its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of unprovoked Russian aggression,” Biden said.  

The U.S. has sent billions in weaponry, humanitarian and economic assistance to Ukraine to help forces blunt the Russian attack since the start of the war at the end of February. The administration quickly depleted the first $13.6 billion emergency aid package Congress approved for Ukraine in March. 

According to the White House statement, the latest assistance package will include ammunition for artillery and the advanced rocket systems that the U.S. already sent to Ukraine. 

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US ‘quietly’ pressing firms to buy Russian fertilizer

US officials are “quietly” urging agricultural firms to boost Russian fertilizer imports amid growing shortages and a looming international food crisis, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the discussions. 

Companies fearful of US sanctions had apparently all but ceased purchases, despite loopholes built into the penalties.

The US and most EU countries have imposed tough trade restrictions on Moscow since its attack on Ukraine in late February, and are now facing a dilemma as shipping firms seek to avoid carrying Russian fertilizer. The penalties make exemptions for the product – of which Moscow is a key global exporter – but companies have nonetheless been reluctant to buy, helping to drive a 24% drop in Russian fertilizer sales this year.

The conflict in Ukraine has exacerbated food shortages around the globe, as both Russia and its neighbor account for a large portion of worldwide grain exports, and this has driven prices to record highs.

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Washington Starts Blame Game Over Defeat In Ukraine

The New York Times, here via Yahoo, has some rather weird piece over alleged lack of intelligence on Ukrainian warplanes:

U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has provided near-daily updates of Russia’s invasion on social media; viral video posts have shown the effectiveness of Western weapons in the hands of Ukrainian forces; and the Pentagon has regularly held briefings on developments in the war.

But despite the flow of all this news to the public, U.S. intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures, according to current and former officials.

Governments often withhold information from the public for operational security. But these information gaps within the U.S. government could make it more difficult for the Biden administration to decide how to target military aid as it sends billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine.
…
Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, testified at a Senate hearing last month that “it was very hard to tell” how much additional aid Ukraine could absorb.

She added: “We have, in fact, more insight, probably, on the Russian side than we do on the Ukrainian side.”

One key question is what measures Zelenskyy intends to call for in Donbas. Ukraine faces a strategic choice there: withdraw its forces or risk having them encircled by Russia.

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Is U.S. Intelligence Really this Screwed Up?

The New York Times published a bewildering, disturbing story today on U.S. intelligence and the Ukraine–i.e., U.S. Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say. I am sure that the average layperson who read the piece as not alarmed. But those with even a modicum of intelligence experience were shocked by the revelations in this piece.

Andrei Martyanov’s reaction is a case in point:

Or, if you wish with “We told you so” titles. I wrote so much about US “intel” and how it is not really an intel that I don’t have time to list all those occasions. But numbers of VSU (Nazi) losses during SMO which begin to circulate now give an impression on the progress of Russian operation in 404. Of course, all this info has a massive geopolitical impact, especially on the United States which, as always, came up with absolute BS narrative which is collapsing really fast.

Well, NYT decided to start steering clear of this whole Russia “lost in Ukraine” BS it promoted together with neocon crazies, and begins this ever familiar tune of the “intel failure”. Right.  . . .

Hm, how about I put it bluntly–the U.S. never had clear picture on anything, especially on Russia, or, as a private case, SMO and completely bought into Ukie propaganda, which shows a complete incompetence of the “intel” in the US.

For those of you who have not worked in the U.S. intelligence community, let me help you understand the problems raised by this piece.

First, there are four basic types of raw intelligence collected–human source, intercepted communications, imagery and electronic signals. The people and technology employed to collect this raw intelligence are not left to their own devices to figure out what should be collected. In other words, a CIA case officer does not get out of bed in the morning and ask himself (or herself) what should I do today in terms of getting intel from my human agent? Neither does the NSA analyst make a random decision about what conversations to tap and decipher.

Second, Everything is done according to a collection plan. Collection plans are put together a year or two in advance of the plan being implemented and the plans are assembled under the guidance of staff who work for the Director of National Intelligence. Those plans are updated on the fly if a crisis burbles to the surface.

While it is likely true that the collection plan for Russia is more robust than the plan for Ukraine, there absolutely had to be a plan for Ukraine. The only country in the world without a collection plan (i.e., a plan that directs the intelligence agencies on what information to collect on a specific country) is the United States.

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Ukrainian Official Admits She Lied About Russians Committing Mass Rape to Convince Countries to Send More Weapons

The top Ukrainian official who was fired for spreading misinformation has admitted that she lied about Russians committing mass rape in order to convince western countries to send more weapons to Ukraine.

Lyudmila Denisova, the former Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, was removed from her position following a vote of no confidence in the Ukrainian parliament which passed by a margin of 234-to-9.

Parliament member Pavlo Frolov specifically accused Denisova of pushing misinformation that “only harmed Ukraine” in relation to “the numerous details of ‘unnatural sexual offenses’ and child sexual abuses in the occupied territories, which were unsupported by evidence.”

In an interview published by a Ukrainian news outlet, Denisova admitted that her falsehoods had achieved their intended goal.

“When, for example, I spoke in the Italian parliament at the Committee on International Affairs, I heard and saw such fatigue from Ukraine, you know? I talked about terrible things in order to somehow push them to make the decisions that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people need,” she said.

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New revelations in attack on American spy ship

Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.

“I’m angry! I’m seething with anger! Forty years, and I’m seething with anger!”

Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.

For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy’s most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they’re also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.

“They tried to lie their way out of it!” Lockwood shouts. “I don’t believe that for a minute! You just don’t shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!”

Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.

Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency’s position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots — communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.

The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel’s reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.

In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country’s chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had “become the center of considerable controversy and debate.” It was not the agency’s intention, it said, “to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material,” available at http://www.nsa.gov/liberty .

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, called the attack on the Liberty “a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized.” Israel also paid reparations of $6.7 million to the injured survivors and the families of those killed in the attack, and another $6 million for the loss of the Liberty itself.

But for those who lost their sons and husbands, neither the Israelis’ apology nor the passing of time has lessened their grief.

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