DIA message confirms ISIL is a Western construct by Wayne Madsen

DIA message confirms ISIL is a Western construct by Wayne Madsen
A formerly SECRET NOFORN (No Foreign Dissemination) message, dated August 5, 2012, to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from a redacted U.S. government agency, provides more evidence that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), otherwise known as the Islamic State or "Da'ish," was a construct of U.S. intelligence. As WMR reported in the past, ISIL was also incubated and sustained by the Saudi, Qatari, Turkish, and Israeli intelligence services.

The message, declassified as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Judicial Watch, a conservative organization, indicates that the intelligence on ISIL was "not finally evaluated," which means it was not sanitized and editorialized by the political operatives within the U.S. intelligence community.

The message released is unusual in that some of the action and information "addees" have been redacted, which is not normally the case with declassified message traffic, whether it is originated by the Defense Department, State Department, or U.S. intelligence agencies.

The message leads off with the following: "The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Iraq." The message goes on to state: "The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the [Syrian] opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime." The "regime" is the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The message also states: "AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media . . . and conducted a number of operations in several under the name of Jaish al Nusra (Victorious Army), one of its affiliates."

There is also a direct reference to the similarity of Western support for the Syrian and Iraqi jihadists and those who emerged in Libya following the overthrow of Muammar el-Qaddafi. This support was directed to internationally-supported "safe havens" harboring the jihadist and Salafist forces: "Opposition forces are trying to control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to the western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar), in addition to neighboring Turkish borders. Western countries, the Gulf countries and Turkey are supporting these efforts[emphasis added]. This hypothesis is most likely in accordance with the data from recent events, which will help prepare safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command center of the temporary government." What the message does not state is that the "safe havens" in Syria, Iraq, and Benghazi were the locations where the Islamic State and its allies declared a caliphate (the Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq) and an emirate (the Emirate of Derna in eastern Libya). 

The operative paragraph states that the "supporting powers to the opposition" want to establish "declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers [Western countries, the Gulf countries and Turkey} want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).



The Western powers -- the United States, Britain, France, and, more importantly, Israel -- working in concert with the Gulf countries [Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain], as well as Turkey, according to U.S. intelligence, created ISIL to destroy the Shia-dominated nations of Syria and Iraq. The fall of Palmyra in Syria and Ramadi in Iraq are a result of this conspiracy of "supporting powers." The civil war in Yemen that has seen the very same "supporting powers," including Egypt, providing military forces to fight the Shi'a-aligned Houthi rebels is, like the civil wars in Syria and Iraq, of U.S. Saudi, Israeli, and Turkish design. Ultimately, Iran is the target for the "supporting powers" of ISIL and its allies.

WMR has been reporting on the NATO and Gulf Arab support for ISIL since the group first raised its black and white caliphate flag in Syria. Syrian rebels, who later formed the core of ISIL, were photographed with Senator John McCain during a covert foray by his and his assistant, Elizabeth O'Bagy, into a rebel-held "safe haven" in Syria. Among those photographed with McCain was the future Islamic State caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In a three-part series in September 2014, WMR reported the following: "The deeper one digs into the operations surrounding the 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL), or, as it is variably called, 'Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham' (ISIS), 'Al Dawlah' (the State), or 'Da'ish' (a concatenation of 'al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham,' the more the Islamist insurgent group's links to Western and Israeli intelligence are revealed . . . There is every indication that ISIL has significant links to Israel. Although there are claims to the contrary, ISIL absorbed most of the ranks of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra (Al Nusra Front) Islamist insurgent group in Syria. Al Nusra Front has coordinated its seizure of Syrian army positions along the Golan Heights border with the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Rather than hit back at Al Nusra positions on the Syrian side of the Golan frontier, the Israelis attacked Syrian army positions, giving a boost to the Syrian campaigns of Al Nusra in particular and ISIL in general. There are reports that the Israeli military has been given the coordinates of Syrian army and Hezbollah forces, as well as 'Committees for the Defense of the Homeland' militia forces of Alawites, Shi'as, Christians, and Druze, by Al-Nusra/ISIL to launch missile and drone attacks from the Israeli side of the border . . . 
The grand master of Israel's Zionist policies, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, recently stated that Iran was a bigger threat than ISIL. Prospective Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton recently lavishly praised Kissinger in a review of his new book, 'World Order.'"

Our September 2014 report continued: "ISIL/Al Nusra is enriching itself from ransom payments for hostages being received mostly from Qatar, a member of Obama's newly-formed 'coalition' to fight ISIL. The most recent ransom paid by Qatar to ISIL was for 45 Fijian peacekeepers captured by ISIL's Al Nusra allies in the Golan region of Syria bordering Israel. Qatar also paid ransom payments to Al Nusra-ISIL units for some Syrian nuns and captured Lebanese Army soldiers. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is, under Obama's 'coalition,' training so-called Free Syrian Army 'moderates' to fight ISIL/Al Nusra and the Assad government. In the past,  the Saudis have conducted such training to radicalize Sunni Muslim volunteers for the Syrian civil war and funnel them to ISIL units in Syria and Iraq."

As we previously stressed, the idea of moderate Syrian rebels is a ruse. The August 2012 U.S. intelligence report states that the core of the Syrian opposition was the Salafists, Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the Muslim Brotherhood, none of which represent anything "moderate."

There were a number of other indications about the "supporting powers'" support for ISIL. A truck carrying factory-fresh black and white ISIL flags through northern Israel to the Syrian-Lebanese border drooped one of the bags and it was found by some local Israeli farmers. Israeli commandos were witnessed delivering weapons to ISIL forces in Iraq's western Anbar province. The details of the discovery of the ISIL flags in Israel was 
that gardeners in the northern Israeli city of Nazareth Illit discovered a bag containing about 25 new black-and-white ISIL flags." In May 2015, ISIL rings bearing the same Arabic inscription that appears on the ISIL flag were "confiscated" at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. The rings were said to be destined for Gaza via Ramallah in the West Bank and had been shipped from Turkey.


ISIL rings "confiscated" at Ben Gurion Airport. They look good on the hands of "jihadists" while they are beheading hostages.

WMR also reported that "many of the ISIL guerrillas are ethnic Chechens who have either citizenship of or permanent residency in the Republic of Georgia. Moreover, ISIL has been selling oil from areas it occupies in Syria and Iraq to Ukraine via Turkish middlemen. ISIL/Jabhat al Nusra/Al Qaeda fighters, many of them Chechens but also some Syrian Arabs, are also suspected of assisting neo-Nazi Ukrainian Right Sector and 'Maidan Self-Defense Force' paramilitaries in carrying out the massacre of 48 Russian-speakers inside Odessa'sHouse of Trade Unions last May. Ironically, some of these ISIL units have also fought in eastern Ukraine alongside Ukrainian paramilitary battalions, including the Azov Battalion, funded by Ukrainian-Israeli billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. In return for their assistance in Ukraine, ISIL units are receiving military support in Syria and Iraq from Ukrainian military and paramilitary sources . . . ISIL and Turkish forces have been photographed embracing one another on the Turkish-Syrian frontier in Kobani as ISIL forces pound Syrian Kurdish forces trying to maintain control of the city."

On February 25, 2015, WMR reported on an ISIL affiliate operative who, in the past, worked for the French external intelligence service, Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure -- DGSE: "The ex-French agent is David Drugeon who is now a leader of the Khorasan Group in Syria. On October 5, 2014, McClatchy news service reported that Drugeon "defected" from DGSE to Al Qaeda. Although Western intelligence finds it useful to separate ISIL or the Islamic State, the Khorasan Group, Al Qaeda, and the Al Nusra Front, on the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields these group fight under the same command and same black and white jihadist banner."

Our February report continued: "Israel's military and intelligence services have also reportedly provided assistance to Al Nusra in Syria and ISIL in Iraq. Hakem al-Zameli, the chairman of the Iraqi Parliament's National Security and Defense Committee, stated that Iraq's armed forces shot down two British planes that were carrying weapons to ISIL in Anbar province, the same province where Israeli commandos have been witnessed transferring weapons to ISIL forces. Al-Zameli also said that his committee is receiving daily reports from Anbar province about successive U.S. coalition planes airdropping weapons and and other materials for ISIL in areas held by the jihadist group.
Khalaf Tarmouz, the head of the Anbar Provincial Council said local officials have discovered U.S., European, and Israeli weapons from the areas liberated from ISIL in the Al-Baqdadi region. The Iraqi government has also reported U.S. coalition forces have airdropped weapons to support ISIL in Salahuddin, Al-Anbar and Diyala provinces. Member of Parliament Majid al-Gharawi said he was aware of U.S. airdrops of weapons for ISIL in Salahuddin and other Iraqi provinces.

Al-Zameli said, 'The US drops weapons for the ISIL on the excuse of not knowing about the whereabouts of the ISIL positions and it is trying to distort the reality with its allegations.' He said evidence has been provided by Iraqi army officers and other Iraqi forces.

Iranian Brigadier General Massoud Jazayeri has confirmed the Iraqi government reports. He said, 'The U.S. and the so-called anti-ISIL coalition claim that they have launched a campaign against this terrorist and criminal group – while supplying them with weapons, food and medicine in Jalawla region [in Diyala Governorate].'

Western intelligence links to ISIL are beginning to be exposed around the world. Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has stated that ISIL's leader, Ibrahim Samarrai, aka 'Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, [McCain's friend] is a Central Intelligence Agency operative who receives financial backing from Western intelligence services. From reports coming from Iraq and Syria, the links between the violent jihadists and their CIA, MI-6, DGSE, and Mossad overseers are becoming abundantly clear."
WMR reported the following month, March, the following: "Recently, the leader of Lebanon's Druze Progressive Socialist Party, Walid Jumblatt, who has been an erratic on-and-off supporter of Israel, concluded an agreement with the Al Nusra Front and its Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate. Jumblatt concluded the agreement even though his fellow Druze in Idlib, Syria have been given an ultimatum by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to convert to Wahhabi Islam and destroy their shrines and mausoleums to their religious icons or face execution. Jumblatt is reported by the Lebanese press to have arranged for the forced conversions of the Idlib Druze in exchange for their lives using the offices of the United Arab Emirates.

It has also been reported in the Lebanese press that Israel has helped arrange for contacts, using Jordanian intelligence interlocutors, between Al Nusra/Al Qaeda and the Syrian Druze. Israel has offered military and intelligence support to the Syrian Druze if they attack Syrian government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies in Syria.
Arab media has also reported that Iraqi Hezbollah captured three U.S.-Israeli 'advisers,' along with their U.S. and Israeli passports, and a fourth Israeli citizen in possession of a passport from an unnamed Persian Gulf country, at an ISIL command center in Mosul province. The ISIL command center was captured by Iraqi special forces troops in 'Operation Scorpion Sting' after word reached the authorities in Baghdad that U.S. and Israeli advisers had helped set up a state-of-the-art command center in Tal Abat, in Mosul province. WMR previously reported that Iraqi troops and local Sunni tribes have witnessed Israeli commandos handing over weapons to ISIL guerrillas in Anbar province."

The involvement of Canadian intelligence in support of ISIL was contained in the same report: "Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu revealed that Turkish authorities arrested a foreign intelligence agent, believed to be an asset of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), who was charged with helping three British schoolgirls travel from Britain through Turkey and then into Syria to join ISIL. Under the Stephen Harper government, Canadian intelligence has been ordered to assist Mossad in all matters requested by the Israelis. The arrested agent is Mohammed Mehmet Rashid, aka 'Doctor Mehmet Rashid,' Mohammed al Rashid, and Mohammad Al Rashed, who reported to Bruno Saccomani, the Canadian ambassador to Jordan and Iraq and a former Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer who was the head of Harper’s personal security detail until he was appointed ambassador to Amman." In addition: "Russian President Vladimir Putin's aide Alexander Prokhanov charged last December [2014] that Mossad was training ISIL's leadership . . .National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that British and U.S. intelligence and Mossad worked together to create ISIL in an operation dubbed 'Hornet's Nest.' . . . Adrian Kaba, who represents Sweden's ruling Social Democratic Party on the Malmo City Council and the regional government, wrote in 2014 that Mossad provided training to ISIL. Kaba wrote on his Facebook page that 'ISIS is being trained by the Israeli Mossad. Muslims are not waging war, they are being used as pawns by other peoples’ game.' . . . Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested ISIL-style beheadings for Israeli Arabs suspected of supporting terrorism . . . According to former FBI agent John Guandolo, the Jesuit-educated Brennan secretly converted to Wahhabi Islam while he served as CIA station chief in Riyadh in the 1990s. In February 2013, Guandolo stated, 'Mr. Brennan did convert to Islam when he served in an official capacity on the behalf of the United States in Saudi Arabia.' Guandolo also said Brennan's life 'was interwoven with individuals that were labeled as terrorists' and that Brennan has spoken in positive terms of 'jihad' or Islamic holy war."

The Saudi government's connection to ISIL is a solid as was its links to the 9/11 "terrorists." On July 2, 2014, WMR had this report: "[Saudi intelligence chief Prince] Bandar, on a pre-Sochi Olympics trip to Moscow, offered Russia a lucrative weapons deal if Russia ceased its support for Assad. Bandar also told Putin that if Russia rejected Saudi Arabia's offer,  Saudi-backed Islamist terrorists in the Caucasus region would be free to launch terrorist attacks on the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Putin reportedly ordered Bandar out of his office in the Kremlin."

John McCain and his Syrian rebel friends, the future commanders of ISIL, in a protected Syrian "safe haven." ISIL's caliph, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, reportedly severely injured in a recent U.S. air attack, is circled in red.


One would think that committed ISIL jihadists would know the direction of Mecca during their photographed prayers. As they say in Hollywood, "poor directing."
While ISIL forces ransacked and destroyed Shi'a shrines and mosques in Iraq and Syria, Saudi war planes leveled Shi'a mosques and revered buildings in Yemen. In another example of how the Saudis and ISIL are on the same page, it was a Saudi military checkpoint that allowed an ISIL terrorist unit to enter the town of Qadih in eastern Saudi Arabia to bomb a Shi'a mosque.There was not one criticism of the Saudi regime in the official statement [below] issued by ISIL taking credit for the deadly blast at the mosque.

When is terrorism not terrorism? by Wayne Madsen

When is terrorism not terrorism? by Wayne Madsen

When is an act of terrorism not deemed an act of terrorism? When it occurs in the heart of one of the U.S. capital's most affluent residential and diplomatic neighborhoods. Washington Metropolitan police chief Cathy Lanier slipped up when she said that the brutal torture and murder of Greek-American Washington businessman Savvas Savopoulos, his wife Amy, their 10-year old son Philip, and their Salvadorean housekeeper was being investigated by the DC area's Joint Terrorism Task Force. She quickly corrected herself to say the case was being looked at by the little-known "Joint Arson Task Force." 

A former U.S. Marine Corps recruit and native of Guyana, Damon Wint, a one-time welder of Savopoulos's construction company, American Iron Works, has been charged with the multiple homicide at the Savopoulos multi-million dollar mansion in DC's Woodley Park neighborhood. The home, which was damaged by a fire set by Wint and possible accomplices, is close to the Vice President's residence and that of Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

The last major terrorist incident to hit the Washington area was the anthrax attacks on Congress in late 2001. Those attacks, using the U.S. postal system, came as Congress was deliberating the passage of the Patriot Act. Although the FBI claimed that Fort Detrick scientist Brice Ivins was the perpetrator, that charge was never proven because Ivins allegedly committed suicide. However, the anthrax event so disrupted Congress, it quickly approved the Patriot Act without some members ever having even read it.

The Savopoulos multiple homicide conveniently came as the Senate was considering extending provisions of the Patriot Act that were due to end because of sunset clauses. While the anthrax attacks, which included the media as targets, were intended to strike fear into the public as much as Congress, a terrorist shock in DC a week before the Memorial Day weekend, when tourists and military family members descend upon the nation's capital, could not be revealed to the general public. Therefore, we saw Lanier quickly revise her mention of the word "terrorism." 

However, for key members of Congress, such a revelation that a potential sympathizer of the Islamic State from Guyana, where a few years ago a jihadist cell that planned to blow up the fuel lines leading to John F. Kennedy Airport was rounded up and extradited to the United States, would have a huge impact. It is one thing to threaten Washington's upper crust where they work, but it is an entirely different matter to hit them where they live. This is especially true in Woodley Park, where homes have elaborate security systems and uniformed Secret Service agents guard some of the many embassies in the area. Any reservations about the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone and Internet traffic would quickly melt away as members of Congress contemplated their own personal security as well as that of their families. Although the Senate rejected the renewal of the Patriot Act extension bill, it was because many of the Republican opponents felt the law did not go far enough in enabling NSA to collect communications data.

DC police are now admitting that Wint had help when he terrorized the Savopoulos family and extorted $40,000 in cash from a courier who was requested by Savvas Savopoulos to deliver the money to his home. The police say that "at least" one other person aided Wint. When the U.S. Marshal's Service and police arrested Wint, his brother, another man, and two females in College Park, Maryland, after Wint traveled back to DC from Brooklyn, only $10,000 of the $40,000 in cash was recovered. The cash recovered was in a rented box truck that left a Howard Johnson's Motel parking lot along with a Chevy in which Wint was riding. 

The Guyanese-Trinidadian terrorist cell that planned to blow up JFK Airport was largely based in Brooklyn. Did Wint hand off the rest of the cash to another cell operating out of Brooklyn? 

Oddly, the four other people apprehended with Wint in College Park were not charged with any crime and were released on May 24. Evidence now indicates that the man who stole Savopoulos's blue Porsche and abandoned and burnt it in New Carrollton had short hair. Wint sports long "dreadlocks."

The brutal terrorist-style murder of the Savopoulos family came as the Islamic State or ISIL, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, was making huge gains in Syria. The ancient Roman fortress of Palmyra fell to ISIL. ISIL jihadists believe in Koranic references, attributed to prophecies of the Prophet Mohammed, that in apocalyptic times, there will be final battle between the forces of Islam and the forces of the Church of "Rum" in Dabiq on the Syrian-Turkish border. Many in the West, including Western intelligence agencies, mistakenly believe that ISIL is referring to the "Church of Rome," or the Roman Catholic Church. This is factually incorrect. ISIL's Koranic reference to the "Church of Rum" is to the church of Byzantium, which was headquartered in Constantinople, now Istanbul. The Church of Byzantium is today the Greek Orthodox Church.

The jihadists believe that after the "Dajjal" [the anti-Christ] appears, the forces of the Islamic Caliphate, which ISIL has declared, will be reduced to a force of 5000. The jihadists believe that there will be a final battle between the caliphate and Dajjal at the gates of "Rum," now Istanbul. At that point, they believe that Issa ibn-Maryam, or Jesus, will appear and slay Dajjal with a spear, thus heralding the end of the world. 

Mr. Savopoulos was a member and financial supporter of St. Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church, located around the corner from his stately home on Woodland Drive. St. Sophia's is not only the largest cathedral for Washington's Greek Orthodox community but it also serves as an important cultural center for area Greek-Americans and Greek permanent and temporary residents of the United States. 

Whether Wint was either a willing adherent or a "useful idiot" dupe of an ISIL terrorist cell operating in Brooklyn and the Washington area, it really does not matter. The message that a group like ISIL could strike in that particular neighborhood in northwest Washington sends a stark message not only to the "Church of Rum" but also to the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican's Apostolic Nuncio is also located around the corner from the Savopoulos home and is directly across Massachusetts Avenue from the Vice President's residence. Across Massachusetts Avenue is St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church. The embassies of a few NATO countries are also in close proximity: Belgium, Great Britain, Norway, and Denmark. As for the Protestants, the towering National Cathedral of the Episcopalian Church, is within close proximity to the Savopoulos home. Offices of the Department of Homeland Security are located a few blocks away at Ward Circle at the junction of Massachusetts and Nebraska Avenues. 


If ISIL wanted to strike a "soft target" in the heart of DC's government, religious, and diplomatic community, the Savopoulos residence, with a stark message to the "Church of Rum," was a prime candidate.

In many cases, the FBI has set up, through the use of confidential informants and professional entrapment agents, Muslim-Americans who are forced into pleading guilty to terrorism-related charges based on hearsay or planted evidence. In the case of the terrorist-like murders in Woodley Park, the FBI, in the interest of self-protection and not upsetting Washington's Memorial weekend tourism profit margins, may have decided to keep a real terrorist attack under wraps -- for now.

Broomstick by Boeing—she’s baaaaack!

Submitted by Raymond Nat Turner 

by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner

“A little poison,” in her depleted uranium

The Iron Lady’s baaaack—in titanium!
Some vile, nightmarish, dream-like crack
But, it’s no dream—she’s baaaaaaaaaack!

Broomstick by Boeing — she’s baaaaack!

by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner

Fracking fluid bubbling and aglow
Cauldron supplied by Monsanto
Election monkeys flying at her side
Cackle, “We came, we saw, he died!”
“Poppies” from fields of Afghanistan
For ‘white’ women’s, “Yes, we can!”
Unsavory symbols of German Police—
Though we prayed she’d Rust In Peace
“A little poison,” in her depleted uranium
The Iron Lady’s baaaack—in titanium!
Some vile, nightmarish, dream-like crack
But, it’s no dream—she’s baaaaaaaaaack!

F-16 broomstick circling the world’s skies
Emitting shrill supersonic war cries—
Popping polygraphs with populist lies,
Dumping Roundup in women’s eyes
Flaunting false, fractured, feminist pride
Like Drone Man did on the ‘Black’ side
Contributions to her war chest—matched
Broomstick by Boeing, Hellfires attached
Willy Warlock, Nuland-Powers coven in tow
The Wicked Witch of The West is all GMO!
Radar confirming the FOX route she flew
Destination: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…

Raymond Nat Turner can be contacted at Raymond (at) upsurgejazz.com

Jeb Bush's CIA activities in Caracas under closer scrutiny by Wayne Madsen

 Jeb Bush's CIA activities in Caracas under closer scrutiny
by Wayne Madsen
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the third member of the Bush family to aspire to the presidency, is under closer scrutiny for his "bank" work in Caracas, Venezuela, less than a year after his father departed Langley, Virginia as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Bush started working as a branch manager and vice president of the Houston-based Texas Commerce Bank in Caracas as President Jimmy Carter's CIA director, Admiral Stansfield Turner, began cleaning hose of many of the cohorts of Bush within the agency's clandestine service. These included a number of Cuban expatriates who carried on their anti-Castro activities as part of a virtual "shadow CIA" established to stymie Turner's reforms.

The shadow CIA included a number of private sector operations, including banking, which financed shadow CIA operations in Latin America by laundering money for the Colombian drug cartels. While he worked for Texas Commerce Bank, Jeb Bush maintained close contacts with the anti-Castro Cuban community in Venezuela, as well as with the right-wing Colombian drug lords who supported their activities with cash and weapons. Jeb Bush's work in Caracas made him steadfast friends in the Miami-based Cuban exile community, including real estate mogul Armando Codina, who Bush would partner with in a number of dubious real estate ventures after leaving Caracas and setting up residence in Miami.
One of the CIA operations Jeb Bush may have played a significant role in was the Latin American support network of Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet for right-wing opponents of Castro. These operations were primarily based in Caracas and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. In return for Chilean help, the Cuban exiles provided Chile's intelligence service, DINA, with CIA-trained assassins. This operation of weapons-for-assassins involved CIA/DINA professional assassin Michael Townley, who served a 62-month sentence for the 1976 car bombing assassination of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier, a bombing that also killed Letelier's American assistant, Roni Moffitt, on Sheridan Circle in downtown Washington, DC. The man believed responsible for authorizing the "hit" on Letelier was the then-head of the CIA, George H. W. Bush, Jeb's father. Townley, who excelled in car bombings, was also charged with the car bombing assassination in 1974 of exiled Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires. Townley's father, John V. Townley, was a CIA veteran who served in Venezuela and Chile. Today, Michael Townley, after providing narrow evidence on DINA's role in Letelier's assassination but not the CIA's involvement, is protected as part of the Federal Witness Program. Townley testified that he hired five anti-Castro Cubans to place a bomb in Letelier's vehicle. Interestingly, Townley was also in Stockholm a week before the 1985 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
The Chilean- and CIA-backed anti-Castro operations in Caracas enjoyed the protection of the Venezuelan intelligence service, DISIP. One of the chief Chilean DINA agents involved with the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans in Caracas was Enrique Arancibia, who, like Jeb Bush, provided "banking services" for the Cubans. In 1977, Arancibia, who was involved in the assassinations of Letelier, Prats, and the 1970 murder in Santiago of Prats's predecessor as Chilean Army chief of staff, General Rene Schneider, traveled to California on "banking business" for DINA and the CIA.

Arancibia answered to Italian fascist and P-2 Masonic lodge operative Stefano Delle Chiaie. The P-2 lodge was a partner for a number of CIA "false flag" terrorist attacks in Italy. Delle Chiaie was arrested in Caracas in 1989 and extradited to Italy for the 1969 false flag terrorist bombing of the Piazza Fontana in Milan, as well as the 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station. Chiaie, an operative of the CIA's Gladio operations in Italy, was acquitted by Italian courts on all the charges. Delle Chiaie also worked closely with Townley on the botched 1975 attempt to assassinate Chilean Christian Democratic leader Bernardo Leighton and his wife in Rome in 1975. The P-2 lodge was closely linked to the activities of the fascist Opus Dei, a radical right wing order within the Roman Catholic Church, which supported Pinochet's and the CIA's Operation Condor assassination operations in Latin America and elsewhere.

Townley also worked closely in Miami and Caracas with Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, two of the primary Cuban culprits behind the terrorist bombing of Cubana Airlines 455 after it took off from Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados in October 1976. George H. W. Bush was CIA director during the Cubana bombing and the Letelier/Moffitt assassinations, both of which involved CIA assets based in Caracas. Just a year later, Jeb Bush was dispatched to Caracas, under obvious CIA non-official cover (NOC), to potentially clean up for his father and help erase the CIA's fingerprints on all Condor, Gladio, DINA/DISIP, and Opus Dei operations in the Venezuelan capital.

Jeb Bush's conversion to Catholicism from Episcopalianism in 1995 after a legacy of supporting Cuban, Chilean, Venezuelan, and Italian figures identified as members of Opus Dei and the P-2 lodge deserves much more scrutiny than it is receiving from the corporate media.

Just after Jeb Bush's November 5, 1977 marriage to Columba Bush, the young couple moved to Caracas at a time when the Venezuelan capital was a hot bed of anti-Castro CIA activity.

While he was Vice President, George H. W. Bush championed the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada in order to eliminate the Cuban and Soviet "threat" to the island. The invasion came after the overthrow and execution by "extreme Marxists" of the popular prime minister, Maurice Bishop. However, Grenada was once an outpost for Pinochet's anti-Castro activities. While Jeb Bush was in Caracas, Chilean Navy ships began transporting weapons for anti-Castro Cubans to the port of St. George's in Grenada. Grenada's prime minister Eric Gairy, who was eventually ousted by Bishop, was one of Pinochet's closest allies in the Western Hemisphere. Gairy championed Pinochet at the United Nations while also calling for the world body to recognize the threat posed by unidentified flying objects (UFOs).

The Chilean weapons shipped to Grenada were marked as "medical supplies," which is noteworthy since the Reagan-Bush administration used the "danger" posed to American medical students on Grenada to justify the 1983 invasion. The Grenada medical school was also linked to CIA activities in Jonestown, Guyana. In 1978, one-time CIA asset Jim Jones presided over a mass suicide at the Jonestown religious commune after his followers assassinated California Democratic Representative Leo Ryan and members of his investigative team. Jones waited to take any hostile action against Ryan or his flock until he was notified that Richard Dwyer, the CIA station chief at the U.S. embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, was safely exfiltrated from Jonestown.

Dwyer, a veteran CIA officer from the time that George H. W. Bush was a low-level operative in Houston involved in the Bay of Pigs affair, had been stationed as a CIA official cover officer in Cairo and Damascus. Dwyer's first stop after departing Jonestown was Grenada. There were credible reports at the time, including intelligence collected by Bishop, that the St. George's University Medical School provided cover for CIA mind control experiments after Dr. Sidney Gottlieb was ordered to shut down Operations MK-ULTRA and MK-DELTA.

Ironically, the experiments at the medical school were overseen by the school's chancellor, Sir Geoffrey H. Bourne, whose son, Peter Bourne, received a doctorate in medicine in 1962 and a master's degree in anthropology in 1969 and served as President Jimmy Carter's drug czar. Peter Bourne was also a U.S. Army Special Forces psychiatric research doctor in Vietnam and at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington. Peter Bourne later became a vice chancellor at St. George's University Medical School, where his father also worked. Peter Bourne was married to Mary King, the Deputy Director of Action programs for the Peace Corps in the Carter administration. It was King who helped Jim Jones acquire the land in Guyana that became Jonestown. It is also very evident that author Robert Ludlum did not develop his Jason Bourne mind-controlled assassin character out of thin air.

The Chilean medical supplies from the Pinochet regime were off-loaded from Chilean Navy ships docked in St. George's  during the night and no trucks were ever seen transporting the supplies to any Grenadian medical centers. In fact, the crates contained weapons, which were then re-transported to Cuban exiles in Caracas and Santo Domingo. These operations took place beginning in November 1977, the same month Jeb Bush took up residence in Caracas and married his Spanish-speaking Mexican wife Columba, while ostensibly working for a Houston-based bank owned by the family of close Bush friend James Baker. Jeb remained in Caracas during 1978 and 1979, during the time frame that Caracas served as a major CIA station responsible for smaller stations in Georgetown, St. George's, Bridgetown, Kingston, Paramaribo, Cayenne, and Willemstad. It is time for Jeb Bush to come clean about his obscure activities in Caracas during some of the CIA's most egregious activities in the Caribbean region.

The architect behind the secret U.S.-Saudi-Israeli relationship by Wayne Madsen

The architect behind the secret U.S.-Saudi-Israeli relationship

The recent internal Saudi palace "coup" that saw King Salman replace his brother Muqrin Bin Abdulaziz as Crown Prince with Salman's nephew, Prince Mohammed bin Nayaf, is an indication that the decades-long but highly secret U.S.-Israeli-Saudi special alliance is undergoing a dramatic transformation.

Since the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia's defense needs has had the quiet support of successive Israeli governments that saw the Saudis as a critical bulwark against Iran and any Shi'a-led revolutions in the Persian Gulf and on the Arabian peninsula. The effective Zaidi Houthi takeover of Yemen has resulted in even closer relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem. The Zaidis, a sect close to the Shi'as, are pro-Iranian. However, the American component of the tripartite alliance is no longer guaranteed as Washington seeks a nuclear deal with Iran and closer relations with Tehran  in other arenas.

Salman also replaced other Cabinet ministers, including the long-serving foreign minister Saud al-Faisal. Saud has been replaced by the long-serving Saudi ambassador to the United States, the non-royal Adel al-Jubeir, a favorite of the Israelis and Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, the former CIA station chief in Riyadh and a known Saudophile.

Salman's ambitious son, Mohammed Bin Salman, was named the new deputy Crown Prince. Salman's changes were seen by observers as bolstering the most anti-Iranian members of the Saudi regime, which, of course, is very welcomed by the Israeli government, which, under Binyamin Netanyahu's fourth term as prime minister, is the most right-wing and internationally aggressive in Israel's history.

The intellectual architect of the Riyadh-Jerusalem-Washington alliance was an Egyptian-Jewish Zionist and paid CIA consultant at Harvard University named Nadav Safran. In 1946, Safran, born Nadav Za’farani, moved from Cairo to a kibbutz in Palestine and fought as a commando against the British and Arabs in Israel's independence war, served as the director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Although Safran died in 2003, his work on U.S.-Saudi relations, which on its face seems odd for an Israeli-American, laid the basis for the secret cooperation between the three countries, particularly with regard to Iran. In 1985, Safran published a book, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security, which closely examined Saudi security concerns and served as a virtual blueprint for future U.S. military aid to Saudi Arabia. The book was written pursuant to a secret CIA grant to Safran for $107,430. The Boston Globe published a copy of Safran's contract, dated April 13, 1982, with the CIA. Although Harvard University Press published the book, the university claimed it was unaware of the CIA contract with Safran.

In 1986, Safran resigned from the Center for Middle East Studies over his connections with the CIA. Safran's other books that significantly influenced U.S. Middle Eastern policy included, Israel: The Embattled Ally, published in 1978 during the Camp David negotiations, and Egypt in Search of Political Community, published the same year that President Anwar Sadat was assassinated.


The brains behind the not-so-secret U.S.-Saudi-Israeli alliance was Israeli-American Nadav Safran, a CIA-paid academic who likely influenced the thinking of current CIA director John O. Brennan.

Harvard's Center for International Studies had a long association with the CIA. Furthermore, Harvard was well aware that in 1985, Safran received an additional $50,000 from the CIA to organize two seminars, one on Islamic fundamentalism and the other on the Persian Gulf. The CIA laundered much of the money through the RAND Corporation. Safran was a close colleague of another pro-Israeli ex-Harvard academic on the U.S. government's payroll, Richard Pipes, who, in the 1980s, taught at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. Safran remained with Harvard's Department of Government until 1990 where he continued to maintain a relationship with the U.S. government in the months prior to the start of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq.

U.S. policymakers in the Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama administrations would use Safran's book to shape their own attitudes toward the Saudi regime. However, as the Obama administration seeks a breakthrough on U.S.-Iranian relations, the Safran book has lost much of its importance in the current environment.

Safran also served as a CIA conduit to the press and his conflict-of-interest would serve as a template for future academics and journalists who claimed independence while accepting covert payments from the U.S. intelligence and defense communities. In 1990, Safran penned an op-ed for The New York Times that called on the Bush 41 administration to reject any peace feelers from Saddam Hussein. Safran was pushing the Israeli and Saudi line that Saddam should be dealt with harshly after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

One of Safran's colleagues at Harvard, Laurie Mylroie, became one of the chief purveyors of the bogus meme that Iraq was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Mylroie's 2000 book, Study of Revenge; Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, was cited by former CIA director James Woolsey as "brilliant and brave." The book would later be cited as one of the reasons why the U.S. had to invade and occupy Iraq after 9/11.

The Day After Damascus Falls: the Beginning of the End for the American Republic By Robert Parry

The Day After Damascus Falls: the Beginning of the End for the American Republic

By Robert Parry

If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad meets the same fate as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi or Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, much of Official Washington would rush out to some chic watering hole to celebrate – one more “bad guy” down, one more “regime change” notch on the belt. But the day after Damascus falls could mark the beginning of the end for the American Republic.

As Syria would descend into even bloodier chaos – with an Al-Qaeda affiliate or its more violent spin-off, the Islamic State, the only real powers left – the first instinct of American politicians and pundits would be to cast blame, most likely at President Barack Obama for not having intervened more aggressively earlier.

A favorite myth of Official Washington is that Syrian “moderates” would have prevailed if only Obama had bombed the Syrian military and provided sophisticated weapons to the rebels.

Though no such “moderate” rebel movement ever existed – at least not in any significant numbers – that reality is ignored by all the “smart people” of Washington. It is simply too good a talking point to surrender. The truth is that Obama was right when he told  New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman in August 2014 that the notion of a “moderate” rebel force that could achieve much was “always … a fantasy.”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in front of a poster of his father, Hafez al-Assad.

As much fun as the “who lost Syria” finger-pointing would be, it would soon give way to the horror of what would likely unfold in Syria with either Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front or the spin-off Islamic State in charge – or possibly a coalition of the two with Al-Qaeda using its new base to plot terror attacks on the West while the Islamic State engaged in its favorite pastime, those YouTube decapitations of infidels – Alawites, Shiites, Christians, even some descendants of the survivors from Turkey’s Armenian genocide a century ago who fled to Syria for safety.

Such a spectacle would be hard for the world to watch and there would be demands on President Obama or his successor to “do something.” But realistic options would be few, with a shattered and scattered Syrian army no longer a viable force capable of driving the terrorists from power.

The remaining option would be to send in the American military, perhaps with some European allies, to try to dislodge Al-Qaeda and/or the Islamic State. But the prospects for success would be slim. The goal of conquering Syria – and possibly re-conquering much of Iraq as well – would be costly, bloody and almost certainly futile.

The further diversion of resources and manpower from America’s domestic needs also would fuel the growing social discontent in major U.S. cities, like what is now playing out in Baltimore where disaffected African-American communities are rising up in anger against poverty and the police brutality that goes with it. A new war in the Middle East would accelerate America’s descent into bankruptcy and a dystopian police state.

The last embers of the American Republic would fade. In its place would be endless war and a single-minded devotion to security. The National Security Agency already has in place the surveillance capabilities to ensure that any civil resistance could be thwarted.

Can This Fate Be Avoided?

But is there a way to avoid this grim fate? Is there a way to wind this scenario back to some point before this outcome becomes inevitable? Can the U.S. political/media system – as corrupt and cavalier as it is – find a way to avert such a devastating foreign policy disaster?

To do so would require Official Washington to throw off old dependencies, such as its obeisance to the Israel Lobby, and old habits, such as its reliance on manipulative PR to control the American people, patterns deeply engrained in the political process.

At least since the Reagan administration – with its “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” fascination via “public diplomacy” and “perception management” – the tendency has been to designate some foreign leader as the latest new villain and then whip up public hysteria in support of a “regime change.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Victory of Perception Management.”]

In the 1980s, we saw the use of these “black hat/white hat” exaggerations in Nicaragua, where  President Ronald Reagan deemed President Daniel Ortega “the dictator in designer glasses” as Reagan’s propagandists depicted Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua as a “totalitarian dungeon” and the CIA-trained Contra “freedom fighters” the “moral equal of the Founding Fathers.”

And, since Ortega and the Sandinistas were surely not the embodiment of all virtue, it was hard to put Reagan’s black-and-white depiction into the proper shades of gray. To make the effort opened you to charges of being a “Sandinista apologist.” Similarly, any negative news about the Contras – such as their tendencies to rape, murder, torture and smuggle drugs – was sternly suppressed with offending U.S. journalists targeted for career retaliation.

The pattern set by Reagan around Nicaragua and other Central American conflicts became the blueprint for how to carry out these post-Vietnam War propaganda operations. Afterwards came Panama’s “madman” Manuel Noriega in 1989 and Iraq’s “worse than Hitler” Saddam Hussein in 1990-91. Each American war was given its own villainous lead actor.

In 2002-03, Hussein was brought back to reprise his “worse-than-Hitler” role in a post-9/11 sequel. His new evil-doing involved sharing nuclear weapons and other WMD with Al-Qaeda so the terror group could inflict even worse havoc on the innocent United States. Anyone who questioned Official Washington’s WMD “group think” was dismissed as a “Saddam apologist.”

Amid this enforced consensus, there was great joy when the U.S.-led invasion overthrew Hussein’s government and captured him. “We got him,” U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer exulted when Hussein was pulled from a “spider hole” and was soon heading to the gallows.

However, some of the triumphal excitement wore off when the U.S. occupation forces failed to discover the promised caches of WMD. Hussein’s ouster also didn’t produce the sunny new day that America’s neocons had promised for Iraq and the Middle East. Instead, Al-Qaeda, which had not existed under Hussein’s secular regime, found fertile soil to plant its “Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” a radical Sunni movement which pioneered a particularly graphic form of terrorist violence.

That brutality, often directed at Shiites, was met with brutality in kind from Iraq’s new Shiite leadership, touching off a sectarian civil war. Meanwhile, the war against the U.S. occupation turned into a messy struggle between America’s high-tech military and Iraq’s low-tech resistance.

Lessons Unlearned

What Americans should have learned from Iraq was that just because the neocons and their liberal-interventionist friends identify a foreign “bad guy” – and then exaggerate his faults – doesn’t mean that his violent removal is the best idea. It might actually lead to something worse. There is wisdom in the doctor’s oath, “first, do no harm,” and there’s truth in the old warning that before you tear down a wall, you should ask why someone built it in the first place.

However, in the propaganda world of Official Washington, a different lesson was learned: that it is easy to create designated villains and no one of importance will dare challenge the wisdom of removing that villain through another “regime change.”

Instead of the neocons and their liberal helpers being held accountable and removed from the corridors of power, they entrenched themselves more deeply inside the U.S. government, mainstream media and big-name think tanks. They also found new allies among the self-righteous “human rights” community espousing the theory of “responsibility to protect” or “R2P.”

Despite President Obama’s election – partly driven by the American people’s revulsion over the neocon excesses during President George W. Bush’s administration – there was no real purge of the neocons and their accomplices. Indeed, Obama kept in place Bush’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the neocons’ beloved Gen. David Petraeus while installing neocon-lite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Around Obama at the White House were prominent R2Pers such as Samantha Power.

So, although Obama may have personally favored a more realist-driven foreign policy that would deal with the world as it is, not as one might dream it to be, he never took control of his own administration, passively accepting the rise of a new generation of interventionists who continued depicting designated foreign villains as evil and rejecting any discouraging word that “regime change” might actually unleash even worse evil.

In 2011, the R2Pers, as the neocons’ junior partners, largely initiated the U.S.-orchestrated “regime change” in Libya, which starred Muammar Gaddafi in a returning role as “the world’s most dangerous man.” All the old terror charges against him were resurrected, including some like the Pam Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 that he very likely didn’t do. But, again, no one wanted to quibble because that would make you a “Gaddafi apologist.”

So, to the gleeful delight of Secretary of State Clinton, Gaddafi was overthrown, captured, beaten, sodomized with a knife, and then murdered. Clinton made no effort to conceal her glee. “We came, we saw, he died,” she joked at the news of his murder (although it was not clear that she knew all the grisly details at the time).

But Gaddafi’s demise did not bring Nirvana to Libya. Indeed, Gaddafi’s warning about the need to attack Islamic terrorists operating in eastern Libya – his military offensive that led to the R2P demand that Obama intervene militarily to stop Gaddafi – proved to be prophetic.

Extremists grabbed control of much of Libya. They overran the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. diplomatic personnel. A civil war has now spread anarchy and mayhem across Libya and nearby countries.

Libya also now has its own branch of the Islamic State, which videotaped its beheadings of Coptic Christians along a beach on the Mediterranean Sea, a sickening sign of what could be expected after a possible Syrian “regime change” next. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The US Hand in Libya’s Tragedy.”]

On to Ukraine

While U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and other R2Pers took the lead in provoking the Libyan fiasco, neocon holdovers demonstrated their own “regime change” skills by turning a pedestrian political dispute in Ukraine – about how fast to build new economic ties to Europe while maintaining old ones with Russia – into not only a civil war in Ukraine but a revival of the Cold War between the United States and Russia.

In the Ukraine case, the neocons made elected President Viktor Yanukovych wear the black hat with Russian President Vladimir Putin fitted for even a bigger black hat. So, as Yanukovych and Putin were scripted as the new “bad guys,” the anti-Yanukovych protesters and rioters at the Maidan square were made into the white-hatted “good guys.”

Much as with the Sandinistas and the Contras in the 1980s, this dichotomy required assigning all evil to Yanukovych and Putin while absolving the Maidan crowd of all sins, including the key role played by neo-Nazi militias in both the Feb. 22, 2014 coup and the subsequent civil war. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Seeing No Neo-Nazi Militias in Ukraine.”]

As the Ukraine crisis has played out, Official Washington and the mainstream U.S. news media have consistently placed all blame for the violence on Yanukovych – lodging the dubious charge that he had snipers kill both police and protesters on Feb. 20, 2014 – or on Putin – fingering him for the still-unsolved case of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down on July 17, 2014.

Evidence that suggests that right-wing Ukrainian elements were responsible for those pivotal events is sloughed off with anyone daring to dispute the conventional wisdom deemed a “Putin apologist.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How Ukraine Commemorates the Holocaust.”]

Meanwhile, starting in 2011, the neocons and the R2Pers were both active in pushing for the overthrow of Syria’s President Assad, who – like all the other “bad guys” – has been made into a one-dimensional villain brutalizing innocent “moderates” who stand for all that is good and right in the world.

The fact that the anti-Assad opposition has always included Sunni extremists and terrorists drawing support from Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian Sunni Persian Gulf states is another inconvenient truth that usually gets kept out of the mainstream narrative.

Though it’s surely true that both sides in the Syrian civil war have engaged in atrocities, the neocon-R2P storyline – for much of the civil war – was to consistently blame Assad and to conveniently absolve the rebels. Thus, on Aug. 21, 2013, when a mysterious sarin gas attack killed several hundred people in a Damascus suburb, the rush to judgment blamed Assad’s forces, despite logic and evidence that it was more likely a provocation by rebel extremists. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Fact-Resistant ‘Group Think’ on Syria.”]

Though it was less clear in August 2013, it soon became obvious that the most effective rebel fighters were Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State, which had evolved from the hyper-violent “Al-Qaeda in Iraq” into the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” before adopting the name, “Islamic State.” By September 2013, many of the U.S.-armed and CIA-trained fighters of the Free Syrian Army had thrown in their lot with either Nusra Front or Islamic State. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Syrian Rebels Embrace Al-Qaeda.”]

No Self-Criticism

But the opinion leaders of Official Washington are not exactly self-critical when they misread a foreign crisis. To explain why the beloved Syrian “moderates” joined forces with Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, the neocons and the R2Pers blamed Obama for not intervening militarily earlier to achieve “regime change” against Assad.

In other words, no lessons were learned from the experiences in Iraq and Libya – that “regime change” is a dangerous strategy that fails to take into account the complexities of the countries where the United States decides to overthrow governments.

The same unlearned lesson should have applied to Ukraine, a strategically important nation to Russia and one in which much of the population is ethnic Russian. But there neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland brushed aside the possibility of a costly showdown with Russia – a conflict that could potentially evolve into a nuclear conflagration – in order to pursue the “regime change” model.

While Ukraine today remains engulfed in chaos – the same as “regime change” experiments Iraq and Libya – the most potentially catastrophic “regime change” could come in Syria. The neocons and the R2Pers – as well as the mainstream U.S. media – remain set on ousting Assad, a goal also shared by Israel, Saudi Arabia and other hard-line Sunni states.

For his part, President Obama seems incapable of making the tough decisions that would avert a Syrian victory by Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. That’s because to help salvage the Assad regime – as the preferable alternative to transforming Syria into the bedlam of “terror central” – would require cooperating with Iran and Russia, Assad’s two most important backers.

That, in turn, would infuriate the neocons, the R2Pers and the mainstream media. Obama would face a rebellion across Official Washington, where the debating points regarding “who lost Syria” are more valuable than taking realistic actions to protect vital American interests.

Obama would also have to face down both Saudi Arabia and Israel, something he does not seem capable of doing, especially as he tries to salvage an international agreement to restrict Iran’s nuclear program to peaceful purposes only – when Saudi Arabia and Israel want to enlist the U.S. military in another “regime change” war in Iran.

Indeed, the recent decision by the Saudi-Israeli alliance to go on the offensive against what it deems Iranian “proxies” is possibly the major reason why the United States is incapable of taking action to avert what may be an impending Al-Qaeda/Islamic State victory in Syria. Between Saudi Arabia’s power over finance and energy and Israel’s political and media clout, these “strange-bedfellow” allies wield enormous influence over Official Washington. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Money Seal Israeli-Saudi Alliance?”]

This alliance is now entangling the United States in ancient Sunni-Shiite rivalries dating back to the Seventh Century. Saudi Arabia, Israel and their many U.S. backers are gluing black hats on Shiite-ruled Iran and its allies while adjusting white hats on the Saudi royals and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has unleashed the potent Israel Lobby to get Official Washington in line.

Israel also has intensified its airstrikes inside Syria, bombing targets associated with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia which is supporting the Assad regime. Israel rationalizes these attacks as designed to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining sophisticated weaponry but the practical effect is to weaken the forces battling Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, along with Turkey and some Persian Gulf states, has stepped up support for the Sunni Islamists battling Assad’s army, thus explaining the recent surge of new recruits and improved fighting capabilities of the rebels.

Yemen’s Suffering

In another front in this Sunni-Shiite regional war, Saudi Arabia – deploying sophisticated American warplanes – continues to pummel neighboring Yemen where Houthi rebels, belonging to a Shiite offshoot, have gained control of the capital Sanaa and other major cities.

On Tuesday, Saudi jets bombed Sanaa’s airport to prevent an Iranian humanitarian aid flight from landing, but the destruction also made the runway unusable for other supplies desperately needed by the Yemeni people. While the Saudis prevented this aid from the air, the U.S. Navy has mounted what amounts to a blockade at sea, turning back nine Iranian ships last weekend because of unconfirmed suspicions that weapons might be hidden in the food and medicine.

The combination of these interdictions is creating a humanitarian crisis in Yemen, the poorest nation in the Middle East. The U.S. Navy, which likes to call itself “a global force for good,” has, in effect, been drawn into a strategy of starving the Yemeni people into submission as just more collateral damage in the Saudi war against Iranian influence.

Another consequence of the Saudi air campaign has been to boost “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” which has exploited the Saudi targeting of Houthi forces to seize more territory in Yemen’s east.

Yet, as tragic as the Yemeni situation is becoming, the more consequential crisis is emerging in Syria, where some analysts are seeing signs of a possible collapse of the Assad regime, a chief goal of the Saudi-Israeli alliance. Senior Israelis have been saying since 2013 that they would prefer a victory by Al-Qaeda over a victory by Assad.

For instance, in September 2013, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post in an interview:

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc. … We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”

He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

In June 2014, Oren expanded on this thinking at an Aspen Institute conference, extending Israel’s preference to include even the hyper-brutal Islamic State. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.

During Netanyahu’s March 3, 2015 speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, he also downplayed the danger from the Islamic State – with its “butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube” – compared to Iran, which he accused of “gobbling up the nations” of the Middle East. However, Iran has not gobbled up any nations in the Middle East. It has not invaded any country for centuries. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Inventing a Record of Iranian Aggression.”]

Yet, while the Saudi-Israeli alarums about Iran may border on the hysterical, the alliance’s combined influence over Official Washington cannot be overstated. Thus, as absurd and outrageous as many of the claims are, they are not only taken seriously, they are treated as gospel. Anyone who points to the reality immediately becomes an “Iranian apologist.”

But the power of the Saudi-Israeli alliance is not simply a political curiosity or an obstacle to sensible policies. As it creates the conditions for an Al-Qaeda/Islamic State victory in Syria – and the possible reintroduction of the U.S. military into the middle of the Middle East – the Saudi-Israeli alliance has become an existential threat to the survival of the American Republic.

As the nation’s first presidents wisely recognized, there are grave dangers to a republic when it entangles itself in foreign conflicts. It’s almost always wiser to seek out realistic albeit imperfect political solutions or at least to evaluate what the negative ramifications of the military option might be before undertaking it. Otherwise, as the early presidents realized, if the country plunges into one costly conflict after another, it becomes a martial state, not a democratic republic.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon andbarnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includesAmerica’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.