COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, July 31, 2016

Snake Oil Salesman, Phillip Karber and Strangelove Psycho, General Phillip Breedlove, Lying and Panting to Start a War with Russia

Hacked Emails Reveal NATO General Plotting Against Obama on Russia Policy

Retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, until recently the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, plotted in private to overcome President Barack Obama’s reluctance to escalate military tensions with Russia over the war in Ukraine in 2014, according to apparently hacked emails from Breedlove’s Gmail account that were posted on a new website called DC Leaks.

Obama defied political pressure from hawks in Congress and the military to provide lethal assistance to the Ukrainian government, fearing that doing so would increase the bloodshed and provide Russian President Vladimir Putin with the justification for deeper incursions into the country.

Breedlove, during briefings to Congress, notably contradicted the Obama administration regarding the situation in Ukraine, leading to news stories about conflict between the general and Obama.

But the leaked emails provide an even more dramatic picture of the intense back-channel lobbying for the Obama administration to begin a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.

In a series of messages in 2014, Breedlove sought meetings with former Secretary of State Colin Powell, asking for advice on how to pressure the Obama administration to take a more aggressive posture toward Russia.
“I may be wrong, … but I do not see this WH really ‘engaged’ by working with Europe/NATO. Frankly I think we are a ‘worry,’ … ie a threat to get the nation drug into a conflict,” Breedlove wrote in an email to Powell, who responded by accepting an invitation to meet and discuss the dilemma. “I seek your counsel on two fronts,” Breedlove continued, “how to frame this opportunity in a time where all eyes are on ISIL all the time, … and two, … how to work this personally with the POTUS.”
Breedlove attempted to influence the administration through several channels, emailing academics and retired military officials, including former NATO supreme commander Wesley Clark, for assistance in building his case for supplying military assistance to Ukrainian forces battling Russian-backed separatists.
“I think POTUS sees us as a threat that must be minimized, … ie do not get me into a war????” Breedlove wrote in an email to Harlan Ullman, senior adviser to the Atlantic Council, describing his ongoing attempt to get Powell to help him influence Obama.
“Given Obama’s instruction to you not to start a war, this may be a tough sell,” Ullman replied a few months later, in another string of emails about Breedlove’s effort to “leverage, cajole, convince or coerce the U.S. to react” to Russia.
Breedlove did not respond to a request for comment. He stepped down from his NATO leadership position in May and retired from service on Friday, July 1. Breedlove was a four-star Air Force general and served as the 17th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe starting on May 10, 2013.

Phillip Karber, an academic who corresponded regularly with Breedlove — providing him with advice and intelligence on the Ukrainian crisis —  verified the authenticity of several of the emails in the leaked cache. He also told The Intercept that Breedlove confirmed to him that the general’s Gmail account was hacked and that the incident had been reported to the government.

“The last conversation I had about it with General Breedlove, he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve been hacked several times,’” said Karber. He added that he noticed at least one of his personal emails appearing online from the leak before we had contacted him. “I turned this over to the U.S. government and asked them to investigate. No one has given me any answer.”

“I have no idea whose account was leaked or hacked,” said Powell, when reached for comment about the emails. Powell said he had no comment about the discussions regarding Obama’s response to the conflict in Ukraine.
In the European press, Breedlove has been portrayed as a hawkish figure known for leaning on allied nations to ditch diplomacy and to adopt a more confrontational role again Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. Breedlove, testifying before Congress earlier in February of this year, called Russia “a long-term existential threat to the United States and to our European allies.”
Der Spiegel reported that Breedlove “stunned” German leaders with a surprise announcement in 2015 claiming that pro-Russian separatists had “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of the most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” sent to Donbass, a center of the conflict.

Breedlove’s numbers were “significantly higher” than the figures known to NATO intelligence agencies and seemed exaggerated to German officials. The announcement appeared to be a provocation designed to disrupt mediation effortsled by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In previous instances, German officials believed Breedlove overestimated Russian forces along the border with Ukraine by as many as 20,000 troops and found that the general had falsely claimed that several Russian military assets near the Ukrainian border were part of a special build-up in preparation for a large-scale invasion of the country. In fact, much of the Russian military equipment identified by Breedlove, the Germans said, had been stored there well before the revolution in Ukraine.

The emails, however, depict a desperate search by Breedlove to build his case for escalating the conflict, contacting colleagues and friends for intelligence to illustrate the Russian threat. Karber, who visited Ukrainian politicians and officials in Kiev on several occasions, sent frequent messages to Breedlove — “per your request,” he noted — regarding information he had received about separatist military forces and Russian troop movements. In several updates, Breedlove received military data sourced from Twitter and social media.

Karber, the president of the Potomac Foundation, became the center of a related scandal last year when it was discovered that he had facilitated a meeting during which images of purported Russian forces in Ukraine were distributed to the office of Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and were published by a neoconservative blog. The pictures turned out to be a deception; one supposed picture of Russian tanks in Ukraine was, in fact, an old photograph of Russian tanks in Ossetia during the war with Georgia.

Breedlove stayed in close contact with Karber and other officials who shared his views on the Ukrainian conflict.

“Phil, can’t we get a statement to counteract the Russians on use of force? what can I do to help? If the Ukrainians lose control of the narrative, the Russians will see it as an open door,” wrote retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who forwarded on his messages with Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs. He also passed along concerns from the Bulgarian president that Bulgaria might be Russia’s next target.

In other messages, Clark relayed specific requests for the types of military aid desired by Ukrainian officials. In addition to radar systems and other forms of military equipment, Clark recommended that Breedlove “encourage Ukraine to hire some first rate pr firms and crisis communications firms in U.S. and Europe.” He added, “They need the right tools to engage in information warfare.”
Ukraine did hire several D.C. lobbying and communication firms to influence policymakers. In June 2015, the government signed a deal with APCO Worldwide, an influential firm with ties to senior Democratic and Republican officials.
In an email in February 2015, Karber told Breedlove that “Pakistan has, under the table, offered Ukraine 500 TOW-II launchers (man-portable version) and 8,000 TOW-II missiles,” adding that deliveries of the anti-tank weapons could begin by the end of the month. “However,” Karber wrote, “Pakistan will not make these deliveries without U.S. approval; moreover they will not even request that approval unless they have informal assurance that it would be approved.”
Karber told The Intercept that the Pakistani arms deal never materialized.
Breedlove was most recently in the news explaining that he now thinks we need to talk to the Russian government to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. “I think we need to begin to have meaningful dialogue,” he said last week, while reiterating his views on the need for a strong NATO to militarily match Russia. “Russia does understand power, and strength, and unity,” he said.

The emails were released by D.C. Leaks, a database run by self-described “hacktivists” who are collecting the communications of elite stakeholders such as political parties, major politicians, political campaigns, and the military. The website currently has documents revealing some internal communications of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, among others.


26 comments:

  1. THE NEOCONS ARE AT THE READY

    General Breedlove's departure from his NATO post in May has done little to placate anyone in the German government. After all, the man Breedlove regarded as an obstacle, President Obama, is nearing the end of his second term. His possible successor, the Democrat Hillary Clinton, is considered a hardliner vis-a-vis Russia.

    What's more: Nuland, a diplomat who shares many of the same views as Breedlove, could move into an even more important role after the November election -- she's considered a potential candidate for secretary of state.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. ONCE MORE KARBER REARS HIS HEAD

      The general and his likeminded colleagues perceived US President Barack Obama, the commander-in-chief of all American forces, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel as obstacles. Obama and Merkel were being "politically naive & counter-productive" in their calls for de-escalation, according to Phillip Karber, a central figure in Breedlove's network who was feeding information from Ukraine to the general.

      "I think POTUS sees us as a threat that must be minimized,... ie do not get me into a war????" Breedlove wrote in one email, using the acronym for the president of the United States. How could Obama be persuaded to be more "engaged" in the conflict in Ukraine -- read: deliver weapons -- Breedlove had asked former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

      Breedlove sought counsel from some very prominent people, his emails show. Among them were Wesley Clark, Breedlove's predecessor at NATO, Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Kiev.

      One name that kept popping up was Phillip Karber, an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC and president of the Potomac Foundation, a conservative think tank founded by the former defense contractor BDM. By its own account, the foundation has helped eastern European countries prepare their accession into NATO. Now the Ukrainian parliament and the government in Kiev were asking Karber for help.

      Karber is a highly controversial figure. During the 1980s, the longtime BDM employee, was counted among the fiercest Cold War hawks. Back in 1985, he warned of an impending Soviet attack on the basis of documents he had translated incorrectly.

      He also blundered during the Ukraine crisis after sending photos to US Senator James Inhofe, claiming to show Russian units in Ukraine. Inhofe released the photos publicly, but it quickly emerged that one had originated from the 2008 war in Georgia.

      By November 10, 2014, at the latest, Breedlove must have recognized that his informant was on thin ice. That's when Karber reported that the separatists were boasting they had a tactical nuclear warhead for the 2S4 mortar. Karber himself described the news as "weird," but also added that "there is a lot of 'crazy' things going on" in Ukraine.

      The reasons that Breedlove continued to rely on Karber despite such false reports remain unclear. Was he willing to pay any price for weapons deliveries? Or did he have other motives? The emails illustrate the degree to which Breedlove and his fellow campaigners feared that Congress might reduce the number of US troops in Europe.

      Delete
    2. MORE BACKGROUND HERE:

      http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/breedlove-network-sought-weapons-deliveries-for-ukraine-a-1104837.html

      Delete
  2. ENTER HILLARY CLINTON

    Exclusive: Prominent GOP Neoconservative to Fundraise for Hillary Clinton

    prominent neoconservative intellectual and early promoter of the Iraq War is headlining an official campaign fundraiser for Hillary Clinton next month, Foreign Policy has learned. The move signals a shift in the Clinton campaign’s willingness to associate with prominent Republicans and is the latest sign of how far some GOP defectors are willing to go to block a Donald Trump presidency.

    Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, will speak at a Hillary for America fundraiser in Washington’s Logan Circle neighborhood on July 21. According to an invite obtained by FP, the “event will include an off-the-record conversation on America’s continued investment in NATO, key European allies and partners, and the EU.”

    ROBERT KAGAN IS MARRIED TO VICTORIA NULAND, REPORTED TO BE HILLARY CLINTON'S SECRETARY OF STATE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/23/exclusive-prominent-gop-neoconservative-to-fundraise-for-hillary-clinton/

      Delete
  3. This election choice should have a conclusion the majority of us can agree on:

    We are in big trouble.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 5% of the American People, according to PPP, would vote for Harambe, the Gorilla (okay, ex-gorilla) at the Cincinnati Zoo.

    :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Deuce ☂Sat Jul 30, 11:40:00 AM EDT
    Israel 200 nukes :: Iran 0 nukes
    OMG! Israel is under threat! Start the presses: Send more billions. Ask no questions.


    ISIS doesn't have nukes and yet America is spending billions to bomb them daily.....


    But to your point,

    "Deuce ☂Sat Jul 30, 11:40:00 AM EDT
    Israel 200 nukes :: Iran 0 nukes"


    So maybe you are suggesting that Israel just USE 40 nukes on Iran and deal with the threat and not bother America with requests for additional aid?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That would leave 160 nukes. They could easily nuke Damascus, Aleppo, Cairo and others...

      and yet they don't...

      Better question, would Iran use a nuke IF THEY HAD ONE?

      Would Hezbollah or Syria?

      Many rational folks believe they would...

      Delete
  6. Why did the UNSC put sanctions of Iran for it's nuke program in the 1st place?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Deuce, with no respect intended, your position seem to advocate that Israel, (whether you like her or not) SHOULD use extreme prejudice with dealing with her enemies.

    You do not accept Israel's right to exist, inside any borders (just like the Iranians), so if that is the reality? Why should Israel NOT just destroy Iran since Iran advocates, funds, supplies, trains those who are active in the destruction of the Jewish state.

    There is no rational reason to engage in "talks" with the Palestinians since there cannot be a peace with those that cannot accept Israel's right to be.

    Let's be honest. You, the Palestinian own Unity Government, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, ISIS all reject Israel as a cancerous colony in the middle east.

    OK, I accept that is your position.

    SO?

    If that is the case? Why should Israel not simply USE some of its nukes BEFORE Iran can build theirs and simple destroy (completely) their enemies.

    After all yours and others position on Israel has never budged in 60 years. Destroy the Jewish state.

    No different today than in 1972, 1967, 1948 and even 1917 when the arabs slaughtered the Jews of Hebron.

    Can you provide an answer to WHY Israel should not do to it's enemies what America is doing to ISIS or Assad is doing to it's own people in syria?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Assad, with direct help from Iran and their proxy Hezbollah (and Russia too) have slaughtered 500,000 civilians in Syria. Basically caused the creation of ISIS (sunnis) by the Shia genocide in both Iraq and Syria. they have created 14 MILLION refugees (that are REAL refugees, unlike the Palestinians and their claims 4th generation "refugee" status (unlike any other people in the world)) that are now destabilizing Europe and potentially the USA and more...

    And yet you think that the solution to the world's problems are the destruction of Israel?

    LOL

    ReplyDelete
  9. Deuce, a small lesson for you to learn.

    The jews, within the last 80 years have lived thru real genocide. Just because you don't LIKE Israel, or even hate israel doesn't mean Israel will commit suicide to ease your mind.

    Now that finally you have come to be open in your hatred (and others) that the jews have the balls to have their own self determination in their own nation state you and yours have FINALLY changed the rules.

    Your advocation of the destruction of the Jewish state has now erased the fake peace process, 2 state solution as pure bunk.

    Your goal (with others) is the destruction of the Jewish state.

    So if that is the case, tell me why the Jewish state (including it's wonderful Mossad) should not liquidate it's enemies?

    You deleted my comment about a certain Jew hating, Israel hating, Zionist hating, Judaism hating poster being under the watchful eyes of the Mossad, why?

    Surely this poster, who claims SPEC OPS history, should be well aware that his public anti-Semitism should enjoin attention from an alphabet soup of organizations...

    ‎Hoisted with his own petard... so to speak.

    BDS targets Israeli companies, American companies, Jews, Academics and Entertainers with harsh retributions for even doing business with the Jewish state.....

    ISIS publishes lists of their enemies to kill....

    Maybe this is in fact a new day...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies

    1. It is indeed a new day, "O"rdure.
      Israelis are admitting what I have been writing, for years, is true.

      The Israeli army's deputy chief of staff, Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan in bombshell speech: Israel today shows signs of 1930s Germany


      http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/IDF-general-in-bombshell-speech-Israel-today-shows-signs-of-1930s-Germany-453142

      Ehud Barak accuses the Netanyahu government of establishing apartheid

      http://www.voltairenet.org/article192401.html

      Delete

    2. “It is time to honestly admit that Israeli society is ill – and it is our duty to treat this disease,”
      - Reuven Rivlin, President of Israel

      Delete
    3. We all must assume the 'dreaded' Mossad is also watching Reuven Riven, Ehud Barak and Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan.

      Booo!

      {;-)

      Delete
    4. Jack, your out of context comments aside.

      It's a new day and you are on the losing side of history.

      You the self confessed killer of civilians, you the Jew hating, israel bashing troll.

      You are the one with the self confessed violent history, I am sure, no matter how many times deuce deletes it, you are under watch of the NSA, Mossad and the FBI at a minimum.

      Delete

    5. The long arm of fascist Zionist terrorism is supposed to be intimidating ...
      But "O"rdure veiled threats merely provide a comical interlude, a sad, sad reflection of "O"riginal.

      Delete
    6. No terrorism, a legal justified action.

      You are a wanted criminal.

      Own it.

      Delete
    7. Jack HawkinsSun Jul 31, 12:46:00 PM EDT

      The long arm of fascist Zionist terrorism is supposed to be intimidating ...


      Jack, it most likely will be the very same FBi you claim to have had sources at that will be the arresting party

      Please let us know as I have a bottle of 21 year old Macallun i want to crack open...

      Delete


    8. Jack HawkinsSun Jul 31, 12:46:00 PM EDT

      The long arm of fascist Zionist terrorism is supposed to be intimidating ...
      But "O"rdure veiled threats merely provide a comical interlude, a sad, sad reflection of "O"original.



      So when you were sniping at 200 yards civilians in central america, were you not a terrorist?

      Delete
    9. Jack, do you still see the faces of those you murdered?

      Delete

  10. Wonder how true this report is ....

    Thousands of Turkish protestors have taken control of a U.S. airbase in Turkey, under the orders of President Erdogan.

    The Incirlik Air Base contains an arsenal of nuclear weapons, which has been effectively seized by Turkish authorities.

    The air base commander, General Bekir Ercan Van, has been detained at Incirlik by the Turkish authorities along with over a dozen lower ranking officers, all accused of complicity in the attempted coup.


    http://yournewswire.com/turkey-seize-control-of-us-airbase/

    Robert "Draft Dodger" Peterson told us this could not happen ...
    Wonder if he was wrong, yet again?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jack, hiding in AZ as you do...

      Which USA agency will be the one with the honor of capturing you?

      You pick!!!!

      Delete
    2. OK asshole, you didn’t like the subject of this post. You want more on Israeli. Coming up.

      Delete