WHO IS PULLING THE STRINGS? Is there a Bush/Blair rump still in charge of the (not so) secret Middle East agenda? by Tim Veater. – Tim Veater

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Admin

WHO IS PULLING THE STRINGS? Is there a Bush/Blair rump still in charge of the (not so) secret Middle East agenda? by Tim Veater.
WHO IS PULLING THE STRINGS?

Is there a Bush/Blair rump still in charge of the (not so) secret Middle East
agenda? by Tim Veater.

Recent statements out of Washington, London and further afield, could have been
scripted by the same person. This cannot be co-incidental. Further it strangely
replicates the recently widely publicised and criticised, overview by Tony
Blair, that had two or three main strands: “the chaos in the region has nothing
to do with the joint US/UK decision to invade Iraq in 2003”; “Islamic
fundamentalism poses the biggest threat to world peace”; and “western recruits
to the Syrian civil war are likely to result in domestic terrorism if and when
they return”.

We do not need to be reminded that Mr Blair was the British Labour Party UK
Premier from 1997 to 2007 – a record breaking time – and was ultimately
responsible for the decision to back the United States Iraq invasion in 2003, on
the back of what proved to be an non-existent fifteen minute threat from weapons
of mass destruction (WMD), nor that he represents “the Quartet” – the US, UN, EU
and Russia – as Peace Envoy to the Middle East – a less convincing advocate it
would be hard to find. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartet_on_the_Middle_East
)

With some of his analysis we can wholeheartedly agree: “However the Middle East
matters. What is presently happening there, still represents the biggest threat
to global security of the early 21st C. The region, including the wider area
outside its conventional boundary – Pakistan, Afghanistan to the east and North
Africa to the west – is in turmoil with no end in sight to the upheaval and any
number of potential outcomes from the mildly optimistic to catastrophe.”

However his nuanced explanation of why the present state of affairs exists, is
where we part company. He says: “ At the root of the crisis lies a radicalised
and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that distorts and warps Islam’s true
message. The threat of this radical Islam is not abating. It is growing. It is
spreading across the world. It is de-stabilising communities and even nations.
It is undermining the possibility of peaceful co-existence in an era of
globalisation. And in the face of this threat we seem curiously reluctant to
acknowledge it and powerless to counter it effectively.”

What he clearly fails to accept, as the rest of his speech proves, is that his
decisions, jointly with America, on Afghanistan and Iraq had anything to do with
it; that those decisions had ulterior, unpublicised motives relating to raw
materials (principally oil) and the security and hegemony of Israel in the
region; that the events in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere have all the
hallmarks of direct, principally American/Israeli, clandestine manipulation;
that the violent chaotic mess left behind is nothing to do with “us”; that the
Syrian Civil War is a continuation of a master plan hatched at the end of the
20th Century; or that “Muslim extremism” has been promoted and engineered by the
west to fill the vacuum created by the loss of the “Red Peril” – a creation of
the west to justify global policy objectives. Given the horrendous violence
perpetrated and encouraged by the west, and between religious Shia/Sunni
historic divisions, the current suggested t
hreats are only to be expected.

We cannot disagree with one of his conclusions: “It means supporting the
principles of religious freedom and open, rule based economies. It means helping
those countries whose people wish to embrace those principles to achieve them.
Where there has been revolution, we should be on the side of those who support
those principles and opposed to those who would thwart them. Where there has not
been revolution, we should support the steady evolution towards them.”

The problem is that it naively under-estimates the deep resentment by
Muslim-dominated populations, to what it sees as both a morally decadent and
ethically compromised meddler in their internal affairs, selfishly using and
abusing them for their own ends. The actions of the west has encouraged the
radicalisation of which he complains but for which he fails to accept any
liability. In so doing he takes a very ego-centric, one might say blind-folded,
view.

He concludes by saying: “Consider for a moment since 9/11 how our world has
changed, how in a myriad of different ways from the security measures we now
take for granted to the arenas of conflict that have now continued over a span
of years, there is a price being paid in money, life and opportunity for
millions.”

He appears to overlook the small fact that 9/11 was a wholly fraudulent,
CIA/Mossad/Saudi incident. So deeply embroiled in that process is he – even if
taken in by the conspiracy himself at the time – he fails to admit his own
culpability.

For the first time the “Father” of the House of Commons, Sir Peter Tapsell, has
called for the impeachment of Tony Blair on the basis that he knowingly mislead
the House. It may not come to anything (note David Cameron’s Delphic reply) but
it is indicative of how, pending the Leveson report, the wind is blowing.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10910542/Impeach-Blair-over-Iraq-says-Britains-most-senior-MP.html

His current warning of terrorism arising from the Syrian conflict and wider
radicalisation reminds one of the fable of the boy crying “Wolf! Wolf!”. Indeed
the Mayor of London Boris Johnson went as far as to suggest that he “put a sock
in it”! The British people might have been persuaded by the first lie (a large
proportion was not of course) but are unlikely to be taken in again. Hopefully
they are also now increasingly “Gladio and 9/11 – aware” and realise that there
are no lengths to which some controlling elements of the political and social
establishment are prepared to go to achieve the necessary public opinion backing
to an intended military action. It is in this context that the “Syrian
terrorist” warning takes on a more chilling and sinister aspect.

So what have the political leaders been recently saying? From Guardian reports
we have the following:

US President Obama: Obama said in an interview on CNN “He was “deeply concerned”
about the terrorism threat posed by Australian jihadists fighting in Syria on
their return to Australia. “There is no doubt the problem in Syria is one that
we have been paying a lot of attention to over the last couple of years, as you
see jihadists coming in from Europe and as far as Australia to get trained and
then going back into their home countries.”

Australian PM Tony Abbott: On Friday, the prime minister, Tony Abbott, warned
that jihadists who were “trained killers” and who “hate our way of life” must be
stopped from re-entering the country. In his strongest words yet about
Australians fighting in Iraq and Syria, Abbott said the government had “absolute
determination” to prevent “returning jihadis”.
“The important thing is to ensure that, as far as is humanly possible, they
don’t come back into our country,” he said on Macquarie Radio. “And if they do
come back into our country, they are taken into detention.” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/22/obama-deeply-concerned-by-terrorism-threat-from-australian-jihadists-in-syria
UK PM David Cameron: “The “incipient terrorist threat” from Syria is more
dangerous to Britain than threats from Afghanistan or Pakistan, David Cameron
has said as he warned of the risks posed by jihadists returning to the UK. In
some of his strongest remarks about the impact of the civil war in the “broken”
state of Syria, the prime minister said that the police and security services in
Britain were having to work hard to prevent a terror attack.” “So we have got to
work really hard with our international partners, and people like the United
States to do everything we can to track these people, to arrest these people if
they try to come back into Britain, to disrupt their networks, to find all we
can about them and keep the country safe. This week I will be meeting president
Obama in Brussels for the G7 meeting and that is a big part of our
conversation.” http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/02/david-cameron-claims-syrian-terror-threat-worse-than-afghanistan
From the BBC web site come the following:

Met Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick: “Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s The World
This Weekend, Ms Dick – who is currently head of specialist operations including
counter terrorism at the Met – warned Britain would face “the consequences” of
the conflict in Syria “for years to come” said the conflict represented a
“long-term” terrorist threat. She said young British Muslims might commit
violence on their return. Her comments came after an apparent internet
recruitment video for jihadists in Syria and Iraq featured several Britons.”

I doubt we need reminding that this particular officer was in charge of the
notorious killing of Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005 nor that she has been
recently “sidelined” in a Met reorganisation. (see: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/mets-assistant-commissioner-in-running-for-northern-ireland-job-in-scotland-yard-reshuffle-9315396.html)

Former MI6 director of global counter-terrorism Richard Barrett: told Sky News’s
Murnaghan programme that as many as 300 radicalised young men had already
returned to the UK. More than 50 people have been arrested in the UK since 2013
for alleged Syria-related offences. Mr Barrett said: “It’s an absolute nightmare
[for the security agencies] because with such numbers there’s no way that they
have the resources to be able to look at all of them. “So they have to
prioritise and to prioritise is difficult. Clearly, some of them will have come
to their attention before they went to Iraq so they may be at the top of the
list. “But others are probably completely unknown and maybe even their return is
unknown and will only come to light later.”

Retired British army colonel Stephen Thomas said: he believed there were “so
many radicalised Islamic people in the UK” that the security services could not
keep track of them all.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said: “the big question was whether the
situation abroad was going to bounce back here to the UK”.

Former Defence Secretary Liam Fox said: “It would be a mistake for politicians
to be reticent to get involved in Iraq because of any threat to the UK.
“Remember, the West is seen as a single entity. There are those who say ‘If we
don’t get involved, if we hunker down, then we’ll be fine, there’ll be no
backlash’. “That is utterly wrong because the jihadists don’t hate us because of
what we do, they hate us because of who we are.” Mr Fox said the question had to
be asked whether the security services had adequate resources for an increased
threat. He said there should be more surveillance, more manpower and more money,
if required. Mr Fox added: “At heart it’s an ideological battle. We have to
realise we have to win the ideological battle as well.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27960816
The same message comes from France in the following CNN report:
“(CNN) – The city of Cannes on the French Riviera is best known as a hang-out of
the rich, and for its film festival, not as a terrorist hide-out. But police
recently swooped on an apartment on its outskirts — and discovered soda cans
converted into crude bombs. The devices contained nearly one kilogram of the
high explosive TATP — a substance used to make detonators in multiple al Qaeda
bomb plots against the West in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on
the United States.”
“The apartment was the home of a 23-year old man — named by prosecutors only as
Ibrahim B — who had swapped online messages that talked of “punishing France.”
He had spent 18 months in Syria fighting with the al Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al
Nusra before being arrested in February after returning to France.”

“The case of Ibrahim B is one of dozens in recent months involving European
jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq, after joining groups like al-Nusra and
the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — gaining combat experience,
training and an extremist mindset. A European counter-terrorism official told
CNN up to 300 veterans of the Syrian Jihad have already come back to Europe as
never been greater — not at the time of 9/11, not after the war in Iraq —
never,” the European counter-terrorism official told CNN. He envisaged a flood
of small-scale but effective and chilling attacks. An early indicator of the
potential threat came last month when a gunman opened fire at a Jewish museum in
the Belgian capital, Brussels, killing four people. Authorities are
investigating whether ISIS had a role in what was the first terror attack on
Western soil linked to Syria. ” http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/19/world/europe/lister-european-jihadists/
These simultaneous, replicated, duplicated statements (notice the common use of
the term “Jihadists” for example) can only indicate one thing: that they
represent a co-ordinated, agreed policy by the parties concerned. The fact that
they do not make this explicit is indicative of secret negotiations, not only as
to content but also to timing. We might therefore reasonably infer ulterior
motive and the involvement of clandestine agencies working behind the scenes, of
which the spokespersons are merely the mouthpieces. They ooze public opinion
manipulation based on an inchoate fear of terrorism. We might indeed pose the
question: “Who is pulling the strings?”

Last time it was the fiction of Al Qaeda. This time it is “ISIS” who we are told
disgust and terrify even Al Qaeda! This is straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales
and looks suspiciously like a re-run of the propaganda we were subjected to in
the run-up to the 2001 and 2003 invasions. Let us hope the populations of the
countries from which this new story line is emerging are somewhat less gullible
this time around. The BBC certainly appears to be a fully signed up member of
propaganda effort.

There is no doubt that the Middle East for the last fifteen years at least has
been a cauldron of brutality and violence. In saying this, Blair is stating the
obvious. Where he fails in a spectacular way is in an accurate analysis as to
why this has happened or his part in it. The latest ISIS advance raises many
fundamental questions as to who has armed, funded and organised the attack, that
western media totally refuse to question or reveal, or how it was possible a
relatively small (800?) group of fighters without sophisticated armaments or air
cover, were able to cause a well-resourced Iraqi army to flee in disarray,
allowing the insurgents to rob around half a billion dollars from the Mosul
Central Bank and capture an array of recently supplied western armaments. One
wonders where and to whom that fortune has been transferred and to what purpose
the arms will be put? In this connection the astute assessment by President
Assad in 2003, has proved prescient. An excerpt is g
iven below.

[English translation of the transcript of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s
speech at the Arab League summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on March 1, 2003. The speech
was delivered three weeks before the invasion of Iraq.]

“At first the United States proposed the issue of the return of [weapons]
inspectors. Later, it spoke about the implementation of the UN and Security
Council resolutions. It then spoke about the weapons of mass destruction. Later
they said the problem lay in the regime itself. They then began to talk about
democracy and human rights. Now they give the promise of development in Iraq and
our region in general after this war. We will not be surprised if a new
expression appears like the empty US expressions we always hear – an expression
called the development war or development by means of war.”

“All the points presented were mere masks used by the United States to deceive
the world. In my opinion, however, nobody in the world was taken in by these
proposals. Later, bored of wearing these masks, these officials decided to take
them off. They said the issue was not any of the above. The issue was that of
taking control of the world and the region. The issue was one of oil and oil was
one of the instruments used to control the world. The issue was one of
re-drawing the map in the manner that suited them and, of course, suited Israel,
and this is another aspect of the issue. The issue is one of destroying the
infrastructure of Iraq, headed by the scientists. By the infrastructure I do not
mean factories, missiles or the other things they are talking about. They want
people whose hearts beat but whose minds do not work. This is required from all
the Arabs. It is like those who are in deep slumber. They want the minds to act
only when they want and in the manner they want
. What they did not say was the part connected with Israel, and I do not think
this is unknown to all.”

Can there be any doubt that the American invasion of Iraq was part of a
longer-term strategic plan for the Middle East in which, if not complicit, the
British Government has at least been acquiescent? Or that Western/Israeli/Saudi
interests are deeply implicated in the recent ISIS incursion with a view to
splitting and neutralising the country, pending further military adventures? Or
that the sectarian violence and decimation of the intellectual elite by murder
or forced emigration, were similarly inspired and promoted by such an alliance?
Or indeed that the coordinated current propaganda, ramping up fear of Muslim
extremists, many of which are so-called “home grown”, is similarly
disingenuous, to which significantly, Mr Blair does not allude.