Author: Daniel McAdams

You know the old saying: if at first you don’t succeed, keep trying the same dumb thing over and over and wonder why you are still not succeeding. Well, at least that’s the Beltway version of that old saying.

We know what happened last time the Pentagon launched a program to train rebels to fight ISIS (and overthrow Assad) in Syria: they spent half a billion dollars and ended up with five fighters.

What do they care, it’s only (our) money!

But the interventionists are never dissuaded by failure, so last month President Obama signed off on yet another Syria rebel training program. This time they decided the solution to the problem of most of their trained rebels either being killed by or going over to the side of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and ISIS – and more than half of the US-supplied weapons going into the hands of al-Qaeda: instead of training rebels in groups, train rebel commanders one at a time in Turkey. Yes, that Turkey.

Continue reading “They’re at it Again: Pentagon Training New Syrian Rebels”

US backing for the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was supposed to be all about democracy. As Washington tells it, the people took to the street demanding democratic reforms and Assad did not listen, so he lost his legitimacy and needed to be overthrown. The US helped facilitate that overthrow by shipping in tons of weapons (much of which ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda and ISIS).

What Syrians were supposed to get in Assad’s place was a bright new future where they could vote for whoever they pleased to lead their government. That is what Washington told us was the noble goal of its regime change operation in Syria.

But just as in other US “democratization” operations overseas, that turns out to be not the case at all.

Syrians are free to choose their leaders as long as they choose the leaders Washington has chosen for them.

Continue reading “White House to Syrians: Don’t Dare Vote for Assad!”

It is going to cost the US $3.4 billion, but Commander of NATO’s European Command Gen. Philip Breedlove announced that the US will be sending thousands of additional troops to deploy on Russia’s border in the Baltics, as well as in Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. This “European Reassurance Initiative” is said to protect NATO’s eastern borders from “Russian aggression.” But isn’t putting you troops on the border of another country thousands of miles away itself an aggressive act? And what about helping overthrow the elected leaders of another country, as the US did in Ukraine? Is that not aggressive? Who is the real aggressor here — today in the Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

The media focuses like a laser on terror attacks like we saw in Brussels last week. The endless news cycle pores over every detail, every angle. But what happens when US-backed Saudi jets bomb a market in Yemen, killing five times as many as died in Brussels? Silence. What about the million people who died directly or indirectly because of the US-led attack on Iraq, which was illegal and based on lies? One million people. Is this the greatest terrorist attack in modern times — and why is it not looked at in this manner? Shouldn’t those responsible for the carnage be brought to justice? More on the media’s selective coverage of terrorism in today’s Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

No sooner had the smoke cleared in Brussels than the security “experts” began telling the Europeans they must sacrifice more of their liberty for the promise that their governments would keep them safe. Never mind that the big lesson from Brussels is that their governments have not kept them safe, the answer is always to do more of what clearly is not working. Those are the “experts” and the Europeans will probably listen to them. But what if there is another way? What if something could be done differently that would not promise a perfect world, but might deliver a better one? We discuss that possibility in today’s Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

What does today’s bombing in Brussels have to do with ISIS in Iraq? Both feed the usual calls for military escalation in response to a problem created by military escalation in the first place. If ISIS is in Iraq as a result of the ill-fated 2003 US military action in Iraq, how can more military action in Iraq solve the problem? Likewise, if Europe’s slavish adherence to the Washington-led interventionist foreign policy line has resulted in blowback attacks, how does signing on to more of what the Beltway neocons have to offer going to remedy the problem? Perhaps, strangely enough, we can learn from what President Reagan did in a similar situation…

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.