BREAKING NEWS John McCain has died of brain cancer at 81. Once a prisoner of war, he made two bids for president and was a towering presence in the Senate.

August 25, 2018 By administrator

John S. McCain, the proud naval aviator who climbed from depths of despair as a prisoner of war in Vietnam to pinnacles of power as a Republican congressman and senator from Arizona and a two-time contender for the presidency, died on Saturday at his home in Arizona. He was 81.

According to a statement from his office, Mr. McCain died at 4:28 p.m. He had suffered from a malignant brain tumor, called a glioblastoma, for which he had been treated periodically with radiation and chemotherapy since its discovery in 2017.

Why Are State Sponsors of Terrorism Receiving U.S. Taxpayer Dollars?

November 22, 2016 By administrator

terrorist-spocer By Christopher A. Preble,

How a President Trump will approach relations with Russia — and especially what that means for U.S. policy in the Syrian civil war — has become one of the most discussed issues during a tumultuous transition. But we should be paying at least as much attention to what America’s putative partners — including those groups currently receiving U.S. taxpayer funding — are doing to prolong a brutal conflict that has claimed nearly 500 thousand lives, and driven more than ten million from their homes.

During the campaign, Trump even tangled with his running mate Mike Pence over Syria. When Pence suggested during the vice presidential debate that the United States institute a no-fly zone over Syria, Trump promptly swatted the idea away. “He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree.” Late last week, Trump admitted that he “had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria,” and suggested that he would withdraw support for anti-Assad rebels, and focus on fighting ISIS.

Members of the GOP foreign policy establishment, however, are doubling down on the status quo.

On Tuesday, in one of the first post-election warning shots fired across Team Trump’s bow, Senator John McCain warned the president-elect not to trust “a former KGB agent who has plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America’s allies and attempted to undermine America’s elections.”

“At the very least, the price of another ‘reset’ would be complicity in Putin and Assad’s butchery of the Syrian people.

“That is an unacceptable price for a great nation. When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side [of] those fighting tyranny,” McCain added. “That is where we must stand again.”

Alas, finding those who are “fighting tyranny” but not secretly committed to imposing it once they prevail is the tricky part. The abundant evidence from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — not to mention the Cold War — shows that legitimate freedom fighters are often indistinguishable from charlatans and thugs. Despite this unhappy track record, McCain retains his childlike optimism in the United States’ ability to find the “good guys” and help them to reshape fractured foreign polities.

Few Americans are so inclined. President Obama was caught between wanting to see Bashar al-Assad’s regime overthrown, but not wanting to see violent extremists take its place, for example, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (Conquest of Syria Front), the one-time Al Qaeda affiliate formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. Unsurprisingly, the president’s efforts to arm the few factions that cleared the vetting process were an abject failure, in part because the tools available to protect the U.S.-approved anti-Assad factions are deeply problematic.

A no-fly zone, for example, may forestall the complete annihilation of certain groups, but only at the risk of widening the war. Since Assad’s Russian ally is also operating from time-to-time in Syrian airspace, a no-fly zone would necessarily threaten Russian planes and pilots. And U.S. planes and pilots would also be at risk. At a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations last month, National Intelligence Director James Clapper told CBS’s Charlie Rose, “I wouldn’t put it past them to shoot down an American aircraft.”

Some in Congress have pushed back against the executive branch’s occasional zeal for intervention in Syria. In the late summer and fall of 2013, members of Congress were flooded with phone calls urging them to block U.S. military action there. Obama got the message too, and backed away from his ill-advised red line that would have entailed direct U.S. military action in the civil war.

But the Obama administration continued to funnel money to some anti-Assad rebels. Since then, a few in Congress have tried to cut off funds for the so-called “Syrian Train and Equip” program. An amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill sponsored by Reps. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and Austin Scott (R-GA) garnered 135 votes from both Republicans and Democrats, despite opposition from party leaders and the White House. It is reasonable to believe that a similar effort would fare even better in the post-election environment.

Read More: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-skeptics/why-are-state-sponsors-terrorism-receiving-us-taxpayer-18452

Ron Paul: McCain encouraged anti-government protesters in Ukraine last year:

February 23, 2015 By administrator

Former congressman Ron Paul

Former US congressman Ron Paul says Republican Senator John McCain should have stayed home instead of making several visits to Ukraine and encouraging protesters to oust the government.

“Senator John McCain made several visits to Kiev and even addressed the crowd to encourage them,” Paul wrote in an article published on his website on Sunday.

“What if John McCain had stayed home and worried about his constituents in Arizona instead of non-constituents 6,000 miles away,” he asked.

The former congressman shed light on the foreign intervention which brought Ukraine to “its current, seemingly hopeless situation,” comparing it with an imaginary situation in which Russian President Vladimir Putin “came to Washington to encourage protesters to overthrow the Obama administration.”

He further wrote if Ukraine was left to its own, with no foreign intervention, “the problem may well have solved itself in due time rather than escalated into a full-out civil war.”

However, the interventionists in the US and EU won out again, he wrote.

“As we soon found out from a leaked telephone call, the US ambassador in Kiev and Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, were making detailed plans for a new government in Kiev after the legal government was overthrown with their assistance,” Paul said.

The former presidential candidate said last year’s incidents that overthrew the legally-elected government of Ukraine “was not only supported by US and EU governments — much of it was actually planned by them.”

Earlier this month, US President Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN that Washington brokered a power transition deal in Ukraine.

“We had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine” since Putin “made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine,” Obama said.

Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in the east have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Russian forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations to silence pro-Moscow protests in mid-April 2014.

Violence escalated later in May after the two flashpoint regions held local referendums in which their residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation.