John Bolton

Trump Replaces Bolton with Fringe Neocon

It was too good to be true. For a moment, I actually thought Trump had come to his senses and decided to scour the neocons from his administration.

I was overly optimistic. I should have known better.

Back in 2016, I wrote a small ebook about the neocons giving Trump advice during his presidential campaign. I focused on the influence of Frank Gaffney, founder of the Islamophobic Center for Security Policy (CSP).

Trump’s interim national security adviser, Charles Kupperman, was John Bolton’s sidekick. He is associated with CSP and its pro-Israel, anti-Iran, Islamophobic agenda. 

Kupperman is neck-deep in the military-industrial complex. He held senior positions at Lockheed Martin and Boeing. I’m sure Trump approves, having acted as a salesman for the death merchants. He used the ineffectual and illegal missile strike on Syria as a PR event. 

For now, Kupperman is interim national security adviser. Trump is looking at equally unqualified warmongers to eventually fill the slot. For instance, Brian Hook, Trump’s Special Representative for Iran and Senior Policy Advisor to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

Hook co-founded the John Hay Initiative—named after President Theodore Roosevelt’s chief diplomat—a concerted effort to brainwash politicians and their staffs in the neocon way of doing things. Advisers include the high-level neocon Robert Kagan, former Dick Cheney adviser Eric Edelman, “the most influential neocon in academe,” Eliot Cohen, former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, former NSA director Michael Hayden, and a host of others.

The list of insiders and neocons considered to replace Bolton is lengthy. The list of potentials includes Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and the president and CEO of CSP. He served as chief of staff to Undersecretaries of State for Arms Control John Bolton during the Bush regime. 

Trump is clueless. At first glance, it appeared the president may have tried to dampen the influence of the neocons on his disastrous foreign policy, but this assessment is far too optimistic. He fired Bolton—who said he resigned—because the mustachioed neocon disagreed and argued with Trump over hosting the Taliban at Camp David. Bolton and the neocons are not interested in peace, they’re masters of forever war. 

It was personal for Trump, as always. 

The neocons will continue to leverage their influence within the administration and Trump will continue to fire those who argue too vociferously. 

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Adieu, John Bolton

President Trump has finally fired his neocon national security adviser, John Bolton. 

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1171452881729228802?s=20

The decision to show Bolton the door came after Trump suggested a meeting between himself and the Taliban at Camp David. 

As should be expected, Bolton strongly disagreed—the idea runs counter to the neocon vision of US foreign policy—and Trump, being Trump, fired him. 

Rumor has it Trump will talk to Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, although the Iranians say they will not talk with Trump until sanctions are lifted. For the neocons, the mere idea of talking to the mullahs or engaging any kind of diplomacy with Iran is unacceptable heresy. They’d rather kill Iranians than talk with them. 

The latest game of musical chairs at the White House underscores the fact Donald Trump has absolutely no idea what he is doing. 

If, as claimed during the campaign, Trump wants to shut down the wars and bring home the troops, why did he hire one of the most violent and scurrilous of neocons to advise him on foreign policy, a guy who penned a New York Times op-ed calling for bombing Iran as a response to its nonexistent nuclear weapons program? 

The Taliban were created and nurtured into power by the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI. Phil Gasper writes: 

The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban’s reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was “actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA,” according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. “The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul,” adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw “nothing objectionable” in the Taliban’s plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: “The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan.” “The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that,” said another U.S. diplomat in 1997.

That was before 9/11 and the creation of another CIA asset, Osama bin Laden. Neocons rife in the Bush administration decided the Taliban would represent in part the new face of radical Islamic evil, never mind the previous stance of the US government that the Taliban would become good friends like the Saudis. 

The Bush invasion of Afghanistan was planned before the 9/11 attack, as former Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice admitted during testimony before the 9/11 commission.

Moreover, the US set aside terrorism investigations of al-Qaeda and the Taliban at the behest of transnational oil corporations. 

From Julio Godoy of Inter Press Service:

Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim… They affirm that until August [2001], the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ”as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia”, from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.

The invasion of Afghanistan had little to do with Osama bin Laden—the Taliban said they would turn him over if his role in 9/11 could be proven—but rather the illegal invasion was part of a plan before 9/11 to secure the impoverished country for an oil pipeline and a hunt for minerals, thus the deal with the Taliban disappeared under a rain of bombs and a deadly fog of depleted uranium. 

It was reported that one US official proclaimed during negotiation with the Taliban: “either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

On October 14, 2001, The Guardian reported:

In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir—the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime—told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: “we would be ready to hand him over to a third country.” 

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky brings the real objective of the invasion into focus.

The economic dimensions of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) are rarely mentioned. The post 9/11 “counter-terrorism campaign” has served to obfuscate the real objectives of the US-NATO war.

The war on Afghanistan is part of a profit-driven agenda: a war of economic conquest and plunder,  “a resource war”.

While Afghanistan is acknowledged as a strategic hub in Central Asia, bordering on the former Soviet Union, China and Iran, at the crossroads of pipeline routes and major oil and gas reserves, its huge mineral wealth as well as its untapped natural gas reserves have remained, until June 2010, totally unknown to the American public.

According to a joint report by the Pentagon, the US Geological Survey (USGS) and USAID, Afghanistan is now said to possess “previously unknown” and untapped mineral reserves, estimated authoritatively to be of the order of one trillion dollars (New York Times, U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan – NYTimes.com, June 14, 2010, See also BBC, 14 June 2010).

John Bolton and the neocons are largely responsible for the numerous wars and violations of international law. They have managed to keep the US in what appears to be an endless war against Wahhabi-inspired fanatics (created by US and Pakistani intelligence). 

President Trump wants something else—to be at the center of a historic peace deal ending the longest war in American history—and Bolton was jettisoned due to his disagreement and sticking to his neocon principles, if they can be termed such. 

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Trump May Appoint Fringe Neocon to Head Intelligence

It keeps getting worse. The neocons have burrowed termite-deep inside the Trump administration and rumor has it the president will add yet another one to an important cabinet position.

If there is any substance to the latest rumors, DNI Dan Coats will be replaced by Fred Fleitz, former NSC executive secretary, CIA analyst, Trump Chief of Staff, Bolton enforcer, and CEO of the Center for Security Policy.

This last one should send up a huge red flag. CSP is a project launched by Frank Gaffney Jr., an Islamophobe way out on the neocon fringe. During the Trump presidential campaign, I wrote a short ebook (Donald Trump and the War on Islam) about Gaffney, among other neocons and rabid Israel-firsters exacting a corrosive influence on the Trump campaign.

I wrote:

Frank Gaffney is at the forefront of the movement to arouse hatred and fear designed to further extend and expand the war on terror and ultimately realize the objective of the [neocon] “clean break” plan [for Israel] to destroy not only Arab and Muslim nations, but societies and culture as well.

Gaffney is so radical he was rejected by the Pentagon when he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration. He is associated with other neocons, including Richard Perle, who rose to prominence as aides of the late Democrat Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson.

Fleitz was formerly the managing editor of LIGNET.com (Langley Intelligence Group Network). This is a pro-Likudnik intelligence operation is linked to Bolton, former Ambassador Otto Reich, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and others.

You can hear echoes of Fleitz in Trump’s irrational anti-Iran policies. In 2017, Fleitz signed on to a letter sent to Trump, that stated in part:

We agree with Ambassador John Bolton that strong international sanctions, a tough negotiating strategy and a decisive American president who will not engage in appeasement is the best approach to rein in Iran’s belligerent behavior and induce it to joining negotiations on a better agreement… It is time to move beyond President Obama’s appeasement of Iran and to begin work on a comprehensive new approach that fully addresses the menace that the Iranian regime increasingly poses to American and international security.

In other words, the “security” (dominance) of Israel and maintenance of the apartheid status quo.

Ambassador John Bolton has drawn up a plan to implement a far more effective, comprehensive and multilateral approach to address the threat from Iran. This approach includes strict new sanctions to bar permanently the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran. He also calls for new sanctions in response to Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and efforts to destabilize the Middle East, especially in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

The signatories—including Gaffney, leading neocon and former Cheney adviser David Wurmser, and Morton Klein (president of the Zionist Organization of America)—undoubtedly agree with the Bolton plan for Iran, as laid out in a 2015 NY Times op-ed, To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.

Bolton concluded:

The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.

In response to Trump’s clumsy partial implementation of the Bolton plan, namely jettisoning the JCPOA, Iran has indicated it will defend itself if attacked, including but not limited to shutting down one-third of the world’s oil passage through the Strait of Hormuz. It has threatened to target Israel cities, Gulf Emirate oil infrastructure, and US troops and bases in the Middle East.

Trump is reminiscent of a person suffering from a split personality disorder. On the one hand, the “Good Trump” has declared he wants US troops out of Syria, while the “Bad Trump” bombs Syria and threatens “fire and fury” levied against North Korea and Iran. It is, to say the least, a schizophrenic foreign policy.

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Trump Consiglieres Giuliani and Bolton Paid Big Bucks by MEK Terrorist Group

Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, his pockets stuffed with terrorist cash, tweeted on Saturday that MEK is a viable alternative to the rule of the mullahs in Iran. 

Rudy, of course, didn’t bother to point out that NCRI is a front organization for  MEK, short for Mojahedin-e Khalq, the terrorist organization that wants, with the help of the neocons, to rule Iran. 

According to research conducted by Ivan Kesić, a freelance writer for The Iranian, MEK is a terrorist organization on par with the Islamic State. 

Kesić writes that “based on the facts and figures, due to the terrorist attacks committed by the Mujahedin-e Khalq more than 16,000 people have been killed in Iran alone, not counting their atrocities against Iranian and Iraqi civilians during the Iran-Iraq war and the 1991 uprisings in Iraq. Their tactics included bomb attacks, targeted assassinations, aircraft hijackings, and so on. Only from 26 August 1981 to December 1982, the MEK conducted 336 terrorist attacks against targets in Iran.”

Americans were not immune from violence, according to Kesić: 

Mujahedin-e Khalq has also conducted attacks against numerous Western targets, both in Europe, North America and elsewhere. In the early 1970s, MEK members killed several US soldiers and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran. Such victims included US Army Lt. Col. Lewis L. Hawkins who was assassinated in June 1973, US Army officers Col. Paul Shaffer and Lt. Col. Jack Turner killed in May 1975, an Iranian employee at the US Embassy in Tehran two months later, and US civilian contractors Robert R. Krongrad, William C. Cottrell Jr. and Donald G. Smith assassinated by four gunmen in August 1976. Furthermore, in May 1972 US Air Force General Harold L. Price was seriously wounded in attempted assassination. Several hours later, the MEK had a plan to assassinate US President Richard Nixon and they blasted a bomb at mausoleum where Nixon was scheduled to attend a ceremony just 45 minutes after the explosion. In November 1970, a failed attempt was made to kidnap the US Ambassador to Iran, Douglas MacArthur II. MEK gunmen ambushed MacArthur’s limousine while he and his wife were en route their house. Shots were fired at the vehicle and a hatchet was hurled through the rear window, however, MacArthur remained unharmed. During the same period, MEK operatives also committed bombing of facilities of Pan-Am Airlines, Pan-American Oil, Shell Oil, and of gates of British Embassy.

Even Wikipedia, the establishment’s online encyclopedia of spin and historical omission, admits NCRI is a front for MEK. 

The organization has appearance of a broad-based coalition; however many analysts consider NCRI and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) to be synonymous, taking the former to be an umbrella organization or alias for the latter, and recognize NCRI as an only “nominally independent” political wing or front for MEK. Both organizations are considered to be led by Massoud Rajavi and his wife Maryam Rajavi. 

Not surprisingly, one of the most ardent Zionists to ever sit in Congress, Joe Lieberman, supports NCRI-cum-MEK and likely feeds at same MEK trough as Giuliani. 

None other than establishment propaganda paragon Politico reported the former New York mayor’s affection for MEK cash. 

According to a financial disclosure reported on by The New York Times, Giuliani has been speechifying at hyperspeed for years, collecting $11.4 million for 124 appearances in just one year—and that was before signing up for the MeK gravy train around 2011. Perhaps he just didn’t have time to consider the character of his paymaster.

The euphonious sounding “2019 Free Iran conference” will be held this weekend at the MEK compound in Albania. The terrorist organization has produced a video announcing the arrival of the wined-and-dined, many undoubtedly on the payroll. 

The NCRI née MEK proudly announced the following participants: 

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former United States Senator Joe Lieberman, Foreign French Foreign Ministers Michèle Alliot-Marie and Bernard Kouchner, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, former Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, former US Senator Robert Torricelli and hundreds of other international lawmakers, official and dignitaries attend the Iranian opposition’s 2019 Free Iran conference in ‘Ashraf 3’, the headquarters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK or PMOI) in Albania. Iranian opposition leader Maryam Rajavi is the event’s keynote speaker.

The chief neocon warmonger and Trump national security adviser, John Bolton, was not included on the above list. 

“There have been quite a few former officials, politicians, and retired military officers that have been cheerleading for the MEK over the last few years, but Bolton is one of their oldest and most consistent American supporters,” writes Daniel Larison. 

Bolton, like Giuliani, is slimy with MEK blood money. 

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