Cross-posted from Consortium News
The American mainstream news media has rarely bought in so thoroughly to a U.S. government propaganda campaign as it has in taking sides in support of the post-coup government in Ukraine and against Russia and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Part of this is explained by the longstanding animus toward Russian President Vladimir Putin for his autocratic style, his shirtless photographs and his government's opposition to gay rights. Another part is a hangover from the Cold War when the Russkies were the enemy. In Official Washington, there is palpable nostalgia for the days of Ronald Reagan's anticommunist swagger and "Red Dawn" fantasies.
As one longtime Washington observer told me recently the neocons are motivated by two things, love of Israel and hatred of Russia. Meanwhile, the R2Pers are easily enamored of idealistic young people in street protests.
The two elements of this alliance -- the neocons and the R2Pers -- also now represent the dominant foreign policy establishment in Official Washington, with the few remaining "realists" largely shoved to the side, including to some degree President Barack Obama who has "realist" tendencies but continues to cede control over his administration's actions abroad to aggressive neocon-R2P operatives.
During Obama's first term, he made the fateful decision to create a "team of rivals" of powerful political and bureaucratic figures -- the likes of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and General David Petraeus. They skillfully funneled the President into hawkish decisions that they wanted, such as a "surge" of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan and a major confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program. (Both positions were pushed aggressively by the neocons.)
In 2011, the neocons and the R2Pers teamed up for the war against Libya, which was sold to the United Nations Security Council as simply a limited intervention to protect civilians in the east whom Muammar Gaddafi had labeled "terrorists." However, once the U.S.-orchestrated military operation got going, it quickly turned into a "regime change" war, eliminating longtime neocon nemesis, Gaddafi, to Hillary Clinton's hawkish delight.
In Obama's second term, the original "team of rivals" is gone, but foreign policy is being defined by the likes of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a neocon, and Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, a leading R2Per, with a substantial supporting role by neocon Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. Obama defeated McCain in 2008, but McCain now is pulling the strings of Secretary of State John Kerry, who also appears enamored of the hawkish stances demanded by Nuland and Power.
Power was a passionate advocate for bombing Syria to degrade the military capabilities of President Bashar al-Assad who is in the midst of a bloody civil war. For her part, Nuland threw the weight of the U.S. government behind Ukrainian protesters who -- with crucial help from neo-Nazi militias -- ousted elected (but corrupt) President Viktor Yanukovych in February.
To the surprise of many people who knew Kerry in his early days -- as a Vietnam veteran against the war and as an aggressive Senate investigator in the 1980s -- Kerry has consistently taken the side of the neocons and the R2Pers. As Secretary of State since February 2013, he also has built a dubious reputation for himself as someone who rushes to judgments and disregards evidence when the facts are inconvenient. [See Consortiumnews.com's "What's the Matter with John Kerry?"]
Sarin Attack
After a sarin gas attack last Aug. 21 outside Damascus, Kerry jumped to the conclusion that Assad's government was at fault despite serious doubts within the U.S. intelligence community and among independent analysts. Then, without presenting a shred of verifiable evidence, he gave a bellicose speech on Aug. 30 claiming repeatedly that "we know" that the regime did it.
Though it still has not been ascertained whether regime forces or the rebels were responsible, it is now clear that Kerry was wrong in asserting U.S. government certainty, especially after a team of rocket scientists determined that the one rocket found to carry sarin had a maximum range of about two kilometers, much less than was needed to fit with Kerry's claims.
One of those scientists, MIT's Theodore Postol, told MintPress News that "According to our analysis, I would not ... claim that I know who executed the attack, but it's very clear that John Kerry had very bad intelligence at best or, at worst, lied about the intelligence he had."
Postol compared Kerry's presentation to the Bush-43 administration's assertions about Iraq possessing WMD in 2002-03 and the Johnson administration citing the Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964. Postol also noted the failure of the U.S. press to question the U.S. government's accusations against Syria.
"To me, the fact that people are not focused on how the administration lied is very disturbing and shows how far the community of journalists and the community of so-called security experts has strayed from their responsibility," Postol said. "The government so specifically distorted the evidence that it presented a very real danger to the country and the world. I am concerned about the collapse of traditional journalism and the future of the country."
Just this week, Kerry further augmented his new reputation as a person who doesn't check his facts and simply spouts propaganda. On Thursday, after a Geneva conference called to tamp down tensions in Ukraine, Kerry rhetorically poured fuel on the fire by citing a claim about pro-Russian demonstrators in eastern Ukraine threatening local Jews.
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