bringing back the brigands of the reagan era...

abrams

MIKE POMPEO: Elliott’s passion for the rights and liberties of all peoples makes him a perfect fit, and a valuable and timely addition.

NARRATOR: On January 25, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that prominent neoconservative strategist Elliott Abrams would oversee efforts in Venezuela to complete the ouster of the country’s elected president, Nicolas Maduro.

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: It’s very nice to be back.

NARRATOR: Abrams’ appointment as special envoy to Venezuela comes as somewhat of a surprise. First of all, he strongly criticized Trump in 2016 when he wrote an article titled When You Can’t Stand Your Candidate.

But more importantly, Abrams was convicted in 1991 for attempting to cover up details of the Iran-Contra scandal while speaking to Congress. Last year, Sen. Rand Paul warned in an op-ed not to let Abrams anywhere near the State Department. “Crack the door to admit Elliott Abrams,” Paul continued, “and the neocons will scurry in by the hundreds.”

RONALD REAGAN: Central America’s problems do directly affect the security and the well-being of her own people.

NARRATOR: Abrams’ hawkish, neoconservative roots reach back to the beginning of his career. During the Reagan administration, when U.S. involvement in Latin America was ramping up, through a number of positions at the State Department, including, ironically, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, Abrams defended and helped cover up atrocities carried out by U.S.-backed governments in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. While then-Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt was carrying out what the UN would later call a genocide against the Indigenous people of the Axil region of the country. Abrams was in the halls of Congress lobbying for continued military aid to the murderous dictator.

I think you have to be–you have to play uniform standards.

NARRATOR: 13 years later, investigative reporter Allan Nairn appeared on Charlie Rose alongside Elliott Abrams to discuss U.S. accountability in Guatemala.

ALLAN NAIRN: -Have to be even-handed. If we look at a case like this I think we have to talk–start talking about putting Guatemalan and U.S. officials on trial. I think someone like Mr. Abrams would be a fit subject for such a Nuremberg-style inquiry. But I agree with Mr. Abrams that Democrats would have to be in the dock with him. The Congress has been in on this. The Congress approved the sale of 1,6000 M-16s to Guatemala in ’87 and ’88.

CHARLIE ROSE: Hold on for one second [crosstalk]

ALLAN NAIRN: -Voted more military aid than the Republicans asked for.

CHARLIE ROSE: And again, I invite you and Eliott Abrams back to discuss what he did. But right now-

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: Thanks, Charlie. But I wasn’t- [crosstalk]

CHARLIE ROSE: Go ahead, you want to repeat the question, you want to be in the dock?

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: It Is ludicrous. It is ludicrous to respond to that kind of stupidity. This guy thinks we were on the wrong side in the Cold War. Maybe he personally was on the wrong side. I am one of the many millions of Americans [crosstalk]

ALLAN NAIRN: Mr. Abrams, you were on the wrong side of supporting the massacre of peasants and organizers, anyone who dared to speak to the [crosstalk] absolutely. And that’s a crime. That’s a crime, Mr. Abrams, for which people should be tried.

NARRATOR: Abrams not only cheerled brutal U.S.-backed governments in Latin America. He promoted U.S.-backed rebels in the region as well, such as the Contras in Nicaragua, who were fighting to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government. His by-any-means-necessary approach to help overthrow the Sandinistas revealed a deep contempt for international law.

He, along with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, tried to secure funding for the Contras illegally by soliciting a $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei. He also threatened to end U.S. aid to Costa Rica in 1986, when the country said it would make public the fact that there existed an illegal Contra airstrip within its borders.

By the mid-1990s, Abrams had already defined himself as a convicted criminal and defender of Latin American regimes the world now knew were brutal and genocidal. He had also since helped orchestrate a disastrous invasion of Panama in 1989.

When it was over, thousands lay dead and wounded, and the country was in shambles.

NARRATOR: But despite Abram’s long lists of crimes and blunders, he was not only pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1992 after being sentenced only a $50 fine, two years probation, and 100 hours of community service, but was once again tapped for help in reshaping America’s foreign policy for the 21st century. The Project for a New American Century was founded in 1997, and its architects were bent on bringing Reagan’s policy of military strength and moral clarity, along with Reaganite advisers such as Elliott Abrams, back into the mainstream.

PNAC’s targets for intervention included Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, and of course, Iraq. And three of PNAC’s main architects–Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz–would serve in George W. Bush’s administration. And Elliott Abrams served as a director on Bush’s National Security Council, not only in enacting PNAC’s agenda, but sanctioning other interventions, such as the failed 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela that sought to remove Hugo Chavez from power.

Abrams also signed a letter to Bill Clinton in 1998, urging Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein by force. The letter went so far as to dismiss the international community’s opinion, saying that American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

Since supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Abrams has, unsurprisingly, continued to take the most hawkish positions available in Washington, from supporting Israel’s apartheid state, to fighting the Iran nuclear deal, to supporting American airstrikes in Syria.

In September of 2018, Donald Trump hinted that Venezuela could soon see a change of power.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s a regime that, quite frankly, could be toppled very quickly by the military, if the military decides to do that.

NARRATOR: It is evident that the Trump administration has been planning to overthrow the Maduro government for some time–a continuation of U.S. policy that led to the 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez. While then President Bush tried to keep the U.S. hidden in the background of that failed coup, Trump has returned to the overt aggression that characterized the worst days of U.S. interference: support for right-wing dictators, and war crimes throughout Latin America. It’s a criminal policy out of the Elliott Abrams playbook.

when the bullshitters join the official ranks... it ranks...

Elliott Abrams (born January 24, 1948) is an American diplomat and lawyer who has served in foreign policy positions for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Abrams is considered to be a neoconservative.[2] He is currently a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.[3]On January 25, 2019, he was appointed as Special Representative for Venezuela.[4][5]

He is best known[6][7] for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, which led to his conviction in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress. He was later pardoned by George H.W. Bush. During George W. Bush's first term, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs. At the start of Bush's second term, Abrams was promoted to be his Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, in charge of promoting Bush's strategy of "advancing democracy abroad." In the Bush administration, Abrams was a key architect behind the Iraq War.

Read more about this major bullshiter of the US political scene from the Reagan era till ... FUCKING TODAY...:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Abrams

By Gus Leonisky at 15 Feb 2019 - 6:52pm
Login or register to post comments

these bullshit warmongers are in high demand...

Why Are These Professional War Peddlers Still Around?

Pundits like Max Boot and Bill Kristol got everything after 9/11 wrong but are still considered "experts."

By TUCKER CARLSON

One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They’re happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there’s no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America.

Boot is a professional foreign policy expert, a job category that doesn’t exist outside of a select number of cities. Boot has degrees from Berkeley and Yale, and is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written a number of books and countless newspaper columns on foreign affairs and military history. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential British think tank, describes Boot as one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict.”

None of this, it turns out, means anything. The professional requirements for being one ofthe world’s Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict do not include relevant experience with armed conflict. Leading authorities on the subject don’t need a track record of wise assessments or accurate predictions. All that’s required are the circular recommendations of fellow credential holders. If other Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict induct you into their ranks, you’re in. That’s good news for Max Boot.

Boot first became famous in the weeks after 9/11 for outlining a response that the Bush administration seemed to read like a script, virtually word for word. While others were debating whether Kandahar or Kabul ought to get the first round of American bombs, Boot was thinking big. In October 2001, he published a piece in The Weekly Standard titled “The Case for American Empire.”

“The September 11 attack was a result of insufficient American involvement and ambition,” Boot wrote. “The solution is to be more expansive in our goals and more assertive in their implementation.” In order to prevent more terror attacks in American cities, Boot called for a series of U.S.-led revolutions around the world, beginning in Afghanistan and moving swiftly to Iraq.

“Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul,” Boot wrote. “To turn Iraq into a beacon of hope for the oppressed peoples of the Middle East: Now that would be a historic war aim. Is this an ambitious agenda? Without a doubt. Does America have the resources to carry it out? Also without a doubt.”

In retrospect, Boot’s words are painful to read, like love letters from a marriage that ended in divorce. Iraq remains a smoldering mess. The Afghan war is still in progress close to 20 years in. For perspective, Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of France, crowned himself emperor, defeated four European coalitions against him, invaded Russia, lost, was defeated and exiled, returned, and was defeated and exiled a second time, all in less time than the United States has spent trying to turn Afghanistan into a stable country.

Things haven’t gone as planned. What’s remarkable is that despite all the failure and waste and deflated expectations, defeats that have stirred self-doubt in the heartiest of men, Boot has remained utterly convinced of the virtue of his original predictions. Certainty is a prerequisite for Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict.

In the spring of 2003, with the war in Iraq under way, Boot began to consider new countries to invade. He quickly identified Syria and Iran as plausible targets, the latter because it was “less than two years” from building a nuclear bomb. North Korea made Boot’s list as well. Then Boot became more ambitious. Saudi Arabia could use a democracy, he decided.

“If the U.S. armed forces made such short work of a hardened goon like Saddam Hussein, imagine what they could do to the soft and sybaritic Saudi royal family,” Boot wrote.

Five years later, in a piece for The Wall Street Journal, Boot advocated for the military occupation of Pakistan and Somalia. The only potential problem, he predicted, was unreasonable public opposition to new wars.

“Ragtag guerrillas have proven dismayingly successful in driving out or neutering international peacekeeping forces,” he wrote. “Think of American and French troops blown up in Beirut in 1983, or the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in Somalia in 1993. Too often, when outside states do agree to send troops, they are so fearful of casualties that they impose rules of engagement that preclude meaningful action.”

In other words, the tragedy of foreign wars isn’t that Americans die, but that too few Americans are willing to die. To solve this problem, Boot recommended recruiting foreign mercenaries. “The military would do well today to open its ranks not only to legal immigrants but also to illegal ones,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. When foreigners get killed fighting for America, he noted, there’s less political backlash at home.

♦♦♦

American forces, documented or not, never occupied Pakistan, but by 2011 Boot had another war in mind. “Qaddafi Must Go,” Boot declared in The Weekly Standard. In Boot’s telling, the Libyan dictator had become a threat to the American homeland. “The only way this crisis will end—the only way we and our allies can achieve our objectives in Libya—is to remove Qaddafi from power. Containment won’t suffice.”

In the end, Gaddafi was removed from power, with ugly and long-lasting consequences. Boot was on to the next invasion. By late 2012, he was once again promoting attacks on Syria and Iran, as he had nine years before. In a piece for The New York Times, Boot laid out “Five Reasons to Intervene in Syria Now.”

Overthrowing the Assad regime, Boot predicted, would “diminish Iran’s influence” in the region, influence that had grown dramatically since the Bush administration took Boot’s advice and overthrew Saddam Hussein, Iran’s most powerful counterbalance. To doubters concerned about a complex new war, Boot promised the Syria intervention could be conducted “with little risk.”

Days later, Boot wrote a separate piece for Commentary magazine calling for American bombing of Iran. It was a busy week, even by the standards of a Leading Authority on Armed Conflict. Boot conceded that “it remains a matter of speculation what Iran would do in the wake of such strikes.” He didn’t seem worried.

Listed in one place, Boot’s many calls for U.S.-led war around the world come off as a parody of mindless warlike noises, something you might write if you got mad at a country while drunk. (“I’ll invade you!!!”) Republicans in Washington didn’t find any of it amusing. They were impressed. Boot became a top foreign policy adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign in 2008, to Mitt Romney in 2012, and to Marco Rubio in 2016.

Everything changed when Trump won the Republican nomination. Trump had never heard of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He had no idea Max Boot was a Leading Authority on Armed Conflict. Trump was running against more armed conflicts. He had no interest in invading Pakistan. Boot hated him.

As Trump found himself accused of improper ties to Vladimir Putin, Boot agitated for more aggressive confrontation with Russia. Boot demanded larger weapons shipments to Ukraine. He called for effectively expelling Russia from the global financial system, a move that might be construed as an act of war against a nuclear-armed power. The stakes were high, but with signature aplomb Boot assured readers it was “hard to imagine” the Russian government would react badly to the provocation. Those who disagreed Boot dismissed as “cheerleaders” for Putin and the mullahs in Iran.

Boot’s stock in the Washington foreign policy establishment rose. In 2018, he was hired by The Washington Post as a columnist. The paper’s announcement cited Boot’s “expertise on armed conflict.”

It is possible to isolate the precise moment that Trump permanently alienated the Republican establishment in Washington: February 13, 2016. There was a GOP primary debate that night in Greenville, South Carolina, so every Republican in Washington was watching. Seemingly out of nowhere, Trump articulated something that no party leader had ever said out loud. “We should never have been in Iraq,” Trump announced, his voice rising. “We have destabilized the Middle East.”

Many in the crowd booed, but Trump kept going: “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none. And they knew there were none.”

Pandemonium seemed to erupt in the hall, and on television. Shocked political analysts declared that the Trump presidential effort had just euthanized itself. Republican voters, they said with certainty, would never accept attacks on policies their party had espoused and carried out.

Republican voters had a different reaction. They understood that adults sometimes change their minds based on evidence. They themselves had come to understand that the Iraq war was a mistake. They appreciated hearing something verboten but true.

Rival Republicans denounced Trump as an apostate. Voters considered him brave.

Trump won the South Carolina primary, and shortly after that, the Republican nomination.

Republicans in Washington never recovered. When Trump attacked the Iraq War and questioned the integrity of the people who planned and promoted it, he was attacking them. They hated him for that.

Some of them became so angry, it distorted their judgment and character

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-are-these-professio...

Peace is an unknown word while middle class Amerika has no idea what their leaders are doing...

By Gus Leonisky at 16 Feb 2019 - 7:48am
Login or register to post comments

leave us alone? exactly...

Intercepted by RT America correspondent Dan Cohen while leaving a conference in DC, US envoy for Venezuela Elliott Abrams did not seem in the mood to discuss his criminal convictions or Iran-Contra weapons shipments.

Cohen confronted Abrams, recently appointed point man for the US effort to oust the elected government in Caracas, as he exited a conference on the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela hosted by the Organization for American States (OAS) in Washington, DC. The former Reagan official, who played a key role in securing US support for death squads in Central America during the 1980s, was not in the mood to chat about his past exploits, however.

“What do you say to people who are skeptical about you because of your history of using humanitarian aid to send weapons to contras in Central America? Do you have any comment about that?” Cohen asked Abrams as he walked out the conference with a female colleague.

Clearly unnerved by the line of questioning, Abrams asked Cohen to “leave us alone, please.”

https://www.rt.com/usa/451591-abrams-cohen-video-crimes-venezuela/

Read from top.

Leave Venezuela alone, please...

By Gus Leonisky at 16 Feb 2019 - 3:59pm
Login or register to post comments

this bully is a crook working for the US mafia...

With the vast majority of the world still seeing Nicolas Maduro as the legitimate leader of Venezuela, America’s hawkish special envoy has hinted that Washington might sanction third parties that defy the US regime-change efforts.

The international community must choose sides wisely in the Venezuelan conflict, the curator of US intervention in the Latin American country, special envoy Elliott Abrams, suggested on Tuesday, noting that Washington would not limit itself to economic sanctions just against the Maduro government, but against all who chose to support him.

“Secondary sanctions, it’s clearly a possibility,” Abrams said at a press conference, warning that a decision to sanction third party countries “would depend on the conduct of the [Venezuelan] regime over time.”

So far some 54 countries have bowed to US pressure and recognized the self-proclaimed ‘interim president’ Juan Guaido, who since January has been rallying support for regime change. Whilst the US claims the “momentum is good” to get more countries on board, the majority of the world’s countries and population rejected Washington’s “imperialist” ambitions, Colin Cavell, associate professor of political science at Bluefield State College, told RT.

The US administration is “internationalizing the Venezuelan conflict on a very dangerous basis... threatening other countries who deal with Venezuela, saying that if you do not support our sanctions, we are going to impose sanctions on you,” Cavell explained.

The Trump administration is forcing its allies and other countries to choose: are you to support this aggressively attempted coup to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela or are you going to go and support this government that the United States does not like.

Sanctioning governments across the globe for backing Maduro over Guaido not only violates the international law but highlights the brazen interference of the US in the affairs of a sovereign nation. Furthermore, the academic believes, the US administration seems to be acting under the assumption that “if there’s more pain on the Venezuelan people” then they will rise up and “overthrow” their government.

https://www.rt.com/news/453114-us-threatens-secondary-sanctions-venezuela/

Read from top.

By Gus Leonisky at 6 Mar 2019 - 4:41pm
Login or register to post comments

meanwhile in real venezuela...

Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly has backed a Supreme Court request to strip Juan Guaido of his immunity, paving the way for possible legal proceedings against the US-backed opposition leader calling for regime change.

The decision to revoke Guaido's immunity –which he has held as the head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly– came a day after Venezuela's Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) urged the ANC lawmakers to take action against the self-proclaimed ‘interim’ president, as he stands accused of inciting violence and engaging in an illicit financial activity.

“Justice is necessary for the guarantee of peace,” the president of the assembly Diosdado Cabello stressed, adding that ANC approves the top court’s request “so that there is justice in our country.”

https://www.rt.com/news/455402-venezuela-guaido-immunity-stripped/

Read from top.