6/23/2017, “Only 2% Of Lawmakers Support The ‘Stop Arming Terrorists Act’,” Mint Press News, Alice Salles
“The Stop Arming Terrorists Act would bar federal agencies from using taxpayer funds to provide weapons, training, intelligence, or any other type of support to terrorist groups.”
The Stop Arming Terrorists Act is so unique that it’s also the only bill of its kind that would also bar the government from funneling money and weapons through other countries that support (directly or indirectly) terrorists such as Saudi Arabia.
To our surprise-or should we say shame?–only 13 other lawmakers out of hundreds have co-sponsored Gabbard’s House bill. Paul’s Senate version of the bill, on the other hand, has zero cosponsors.
While both pieces of legislation were introduced in early 2017, no real action has been taken as of yet. This proves that Washington refuses to support bills that would actually provoke positive chain reactions not only abroad but also at home. Why? Well, let’s look at the groups that would lose a great deal in case this bill is signed into law.
Military & Homeland Security Companies, Lobbyists, And Lawmakers All Profit From War
With trillions of tax dollars flowing to companies such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and even IBM, among others companies that invest heavily in weapons, cyber security systems, and other technologies that are widely used in times of war would stand to lose a lot — if not everything — if all of a sudden, the United States chose to become a nation that stands for peace and free market principles.
For one, these companies have a heavy lobbying presence, ensuring that lawmakers sympathetic to their plight are elected every two years. When the possibility of a new conflict appears on the horizon, these companies are the first to lobby heavily for action.
But this dynamic isn’t a secret. We all know that the crony capitalist system that thrives in Washington, D.C., is the very bread and butter of politics in America. After all, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation in his farewell address in 1961 that “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” were becoming the great powers behind U.S. politics, and that if we weren’t weary of this influence, we would risk living in a perpetual state of war.
Still, we allowed it to take over. And there isn’t one industry powerful enough to counter this destructive authority.
With the support of an army of well-established and connected millionaire lobbyists, the war machine operating in Washington is so powerful that anything can be turned into an existential threat.
Any conflict abroad that has absolutely no importance or that poses literally no threat to the common American is inflated to become a threat to the American way of life. They hate us “for our freedom.” Therefore, we must show them what democracy looks like.
Without the same kind of powerful and wealthy team behind the cause for sanity and peace, this army of big money and big lobbyists has single-handedly put us and many generations to come in debt over Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, and now Syria. And as the marketing machine behind this kind of lobbying effort taps into the social justice trend that has infiltrated every aspect of our culture in recent years, these organizations have learned that they will get even broader support from the public if they add feminist, anti-poverty, and pro-equality messages to their pro-war efforts.”…
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Added: “The U.S. plan to create a Wahhabi enclave in northeast Syria was directly referenced in a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report from 2012.”
4/16/2018, “How the US [Illegally] Occupied the 30% of Syria Containing Most of its Oil, Water and Gas,” Whitney Webb, Mint Press News
Beyond fossil fuels and pipelines, northeast Syria boasts several other key advantages in terms of resources. Chief among those is water – a resource of prime importance in the Middle East.
The U.S.-controlled portion of Syria is home to the country’s three largest freshwater reservoirs, which are fed by the Euphrates river.
One of those reservoirs now controlled by the U.S. and its proxies, Lake Assad, is the country’s largest freshwater reservoir and supplies government-held Aleppo with most of its drinking water. It also provides the city with much of its electrical power, which is generated by Tabqa Dam, also located in the occupied territory. Another key hydroelectric power plant is located at Tishrin Dam and is also controlled by U.S.-backed proxy forces….
[[map via Mint Press] In addition to its abundant water resources, northeastern Syria is also home to nearly 60 percent of Syria’s cropland, a key resource in terms of Syria’s sustainability and food independence. Prior to the conflict, Syria invested heavily in bringing irrigation infrastructure into the area in order to allow agriculture there to continue despite a massive regional drought. Much of that irrigation infrastructure is fed by the occupied Tabqa Dam, which controls the irrigation water for 640,000 hectares (2,500 square miles) of farmland.
Game plan for occupation, partition
Unlike the northeast’s fossil fuel resources, the U.S. is not hoping to gain financially from the region’s water and agricultural resources. Instead, the interest there is strategic and serves two main purposes.
First, control over those resources – particularly water and the flow of the Euphrates – gives the U.S. a key advantage it could use to destabilize Syria. For example, the U.S. could easily cut off water and electricity to government-held parts of Syria by shutting down or diverting power and water from dams in order to place pressure on the Syrian government and Syrian civilians.
Though such actions target civilians and constitute a war crime, the U.S. has used such tactics in Syria before, such as in the battle for Raqqa when it cut off water supplies to the city as its proxies took control of the city from Daesh (ISIS). Other countries, like Turkey, have also cut off the flow of the Euphrates on two occasions over the course of the Syrian conflict in order to gain a strategic advantage.
By controlling much of the country’s water and agricultural land – not to mention its fossil fuel resources — the U.S. occupation will not only accomplish its goal of destabilizing Syria’s government by depriving it of revenue; it also invites a broader conflict from Syria and its allies, who are eager to prevent another long-term U.S. occupation in the Middle East and to reclaim the territory for Syria.
Another way the U.S. has the ability to destabilize Syria through its occupation of the northeast is its plan to have the Saudis rebuild much of the area. Though the U.S. initially allied itself with the Kurds in northeastern Syria, opposition from Turkey has led Washington to focus more on working with Arabs in the area, particularly those allied with or formerly part of Saudi-allied Wahhabi groups, in order to create a Saudi-controlled enclave that could be used to destabilize government-controlled areas of Syria for years to come. The area is set to become much like the Idlib province, which is also essentially an enclave for Wahhabi terrorists.
The U.S. plan to create a Wahhabi enclave in northeast Syria was directly referenced in a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report from 2012. That report stated:
“THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…” [capitalization original]
Despite Daesh’s [ISIS] defeat, their [ISIS] presence in Northeastern Syria, as the DIA reveals, was cultivated to provide a pretext for the foreign control of the region.”…
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Added: “Washingtonians pretend to be shocked by what President Trump does, but it’s Americans who should be shocked by what Washington does” such as illegally occupying a third of Syria:
6/13/19, “End America’s Illegal Occupation of Syria Now,“ Doug Bandow, The American Conservative
“Our presence there is a violation of domestic and international law.”…
“Washingtonians pretend to be shocked by what President Trump does, but it’s Americans who should be shocked by what Washington does—such as illegally…occupying a third of that country. It’s time for Donald Trump to do the right thing and bring our troops home….
The Syria Study Group complains that “current operations will not force all Iranian-backed forces from Syria,” but why is that Washington’s job? Iran’s presence has virtually nothing to do with American security. Iranians don’t need a “land bridge” to Syria and Lebanon when they have airplanes. Nor are the Kurds likely to act as America’s catspaw, confronting Iran for Washington’s ends. There is no way to hermetically seal off Syria from Iran without far more American troops….
While the Syrian Kurds are liberal compared to others in the region, between half a million and a million Kurds effectively rule over 1.5 million Arabs. Guarding the Kurds means a permanent presence while confronting Turkey, which views Kurdish separatism as an existential threat, along with Syria itself, which fought an eight-year…war to protect its territory, and Russia, which is committed to restoring Damascus’s authority and enhancing ties with Turkey. Ankara may be the most dangerous, having launched a major offensive, Operation Euphrates Shield, against Kurdish forces in early 2018. In doing so, it seized the city of Afrin and environs, and threatened to move on Manbij, where Americans are stationed alongside Kurds….
Perhaps most important, though little discussed in Washington, is that occupying Syria militarily, for whatever purpose, is a violation of international and U.S. law. The land is indisputably Syria’s and the Constitution requires Congress to authorize war….
Turning the Assad dictatorship into a liberal, humane democracy was always a long shot. Nor was Washington’s support for the [terrorist] insurgency benign: the Syria Study Group acknowledges that “al-Qaeda is in effective control of Idlib and retains the capacity to conduct external attacks”—yet warns against a Syrian attack on this enclave. The main achievement of Washington’s intervention has been to prolong one of the worst…wars in modern times.”…......................
Added: Below is a 2013 US State Dept. map of US assets in place in Syria for military strikes, via Bloomberg, don't have link. The US political class is intensely interested in every border in the world except the dangerous, wide open 2000 mile US southern border:
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