Quote: Under the new government, there has been an increase in food prices, poverty, unemployment, rioting and crime.

Ed Jewett Wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xncznvkB7S8 (9:36)(Dizzy and friends in Havana in 1985)

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2012/08/al-qaeda-destroying-tunisia-tourists.html

Magda Hassan Wrote:Bill, I suggest to look at the National Endowment for Democracy and their various fronts like Otpor to see how they work.

Have you seen General Wesley Clark's interview about military plans to invade all these countries?

Once the US has finished with their dictator or their dictator gets too uppity they get replaced.

Bill Kelly Wrote:I haven't seen Clark's interview but would like to. I do know that since Iraq, the US military policy is they will not invade to occupy a country again, as they have learned their lesson.

I am open to persuasion, but not the propaganda I have been reading from either side.

BK

Quote:

Wes Clark and the neocon dream

In 2007, the retired General described a necon "policy coup" aimed at toppling the governments of 7 countries VIDEO

BY GLENN GREENWALD

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(updated below)
In October, 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark gave a speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco (seven-minute excerpt in the video below) in which he denounced what he called "a policy coup" engineered by neocons in the wake of 9/11. After recounting how a Pentagon source had told him weeks after 9/11 of the Pentagon's plan to attack Iraq notwithstanding its non-involvement in 9/11, this is how Clark described the aspirations of the "coup" being plotted by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and what he called "a half dozen other collaborators from the Project for the New American Century":

Six weeks later, I saw the same officer, and asked: "Why haven't we attacked Iraq? Are we still going to attack Iraq?"
He said: "Sir, it's worse than that. He said he pulled up a piece of paper off his desk he said: "I just got this memo from the Secretary of Defense's office. It says we're going to attack anddestroy the governments in 7 countries in five years we're going to start with Iraq, and then we're going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran."

Clark said the aim of this plot was this: "They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control." He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz back in 1991 in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: "But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region in the Middle East and the Soviets won't stop us. And we've got about 5 or 10 years toclean up those old Soviet regimes Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us." Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz's desires because, as Clark put it: "the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It's not to deter conflicts?"
The current turmoil in the Middle East is driven largely by popular revolts, not by neocon shenanigans. Still, in the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya (the latter leading to this andthis), with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six count em: six different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it's worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam's rape rooms! Gassed his own people!). As Jonathan Schwarz (or, as he would be called by establishment newspapers: "a person familiar with Jon Schwarz's thinking on the subject who asked not to be identified") put it about the supposedly contentious national security factions:

As far as I can tell, there's barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars.

The difference between seven and four overt wars isn't non-existent or unimportant, of course, but it's a question of means. The neocon end as Clark reported them regime change in those seven countries seems as vibrant as ever. It's just striking to listen to Clark describe those 7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001, and then compare that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since then with regard to those precise countries.





UPDATE: Those unreasonable, inscrutable Pakistanis are angry just because the U.S. entered their country by air and killed 30 of their soldiers today. As a result, they have demanded that the U.S. vacate its drone base on their soil. What an outrageous over-reaction: I'm sure the U.S. would be extremely understanding if a foreign nation came and killed 30 U.S. soldiers on American soil from the air.

Quote:Tunisian police fired teargas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters demanding jobs in Sidi Bouzid, the site of the of the CIA false flag operation that triggered the CIA's Arab Spring uprisings.

Lauren Johnson Wrote:Regarding the binary "CIA managed vs. indigenous uprising":

I recall a Rumsfeld speech (which I cannot locate) in which he said something to the effect: 'you cannot control the chaos but you can manage and give it shape.' This is the kind of thinking that would apply to the Arab Spring.

So how might that apply? Riots break out in Syria. You have a long standing goal of cleaning up the old Soviet supported regimes. You activate sleeper operatives or send in some to stir the pot. Make sure that people know that they will be supported. Make sure there are plenty of victims and make sure the narrative is about an evil dictator cruelly abusing a single group seeking justice. Make sure the MSM gets the same story out; eliminate nuances. Etc.