South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham holds a press conference following lunch with President Donald Trump. Beyond the border security shutdown issues, notably Senator Graham shares:
…” We had a great lunch. We talked about Syria; and he told me some things I didn’t know that make me feel a lot better about where we’re headed in Syria”.. [@03:35]
Several people have requested specificity as to why President Obama and candidate Hillary Clinton viewed Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as a risk worthy of primary confrontation/removal after Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election.
The most obvious answer is not too complex; predates the election; and is connected directly to three core components of the Libya crisis: (1) White House; (2) State Department; (3) Hillary Clinton.
Drawing from years of exhaustive research within the Benghazi Brief; along with breakout information as to how the FBI and DOJ are directly connected to the issues therein; there is a clear and concise reason why Flynn was viewed as a risk to the interests of President Obama, Hillary Clinton and State Department Officials.
Lieutenant General Flynn was appointed to head the Defense Intelligence Agency on July 24th, 2012, approximately two months before the attack on the State/CIA compound in Benghazi Libya.
The Benghazi compound itself was controversial as it was part of a joint State Department and CIA mission to try and stop the spread of weapons to radical Islamic elements in the region. After the fall of Muammar Gaddafi the Libyan weapons depots -as well as U.S. weapons shipped into Libya to assist the “rebels” in Gaddaffi’s ouster- were the immediate problem.
Weapons in 2012 were being redirected to Syria. An operation to secure those weapons was ongoing in Benghazi (Eastern Libya).
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President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump deliver remarks to U.S. military during a surprise visit to Al Asad Air Base in Iraq.
During his remarks President Trump outlines his determination to remove U.S. military from Syria and to hold regional allies accountable to retain stability and security.
Additionally President Trump directly addresses the notion that any withdrawal from the region means a reconstituted terror threat that might strike the U.S: “if that was to happen, they would suffer consequences like never before.” “That’s not a threat, that’s going to be a fact.” … “If anything were to happen at all.”
The announcement of The United States drawing down troop deployment from Northern Syria – with the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia sending in replacements to bolster the region, highlights a much larger backstory.
President Obama’s February ’09 Cairo speech began a sequence of events that led to what was called the “Arab Spring“; factually an extremist uprising. Bolstered by the resulting chaos the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power in Egypt behind Mohammed Morsi.
However, a majority of the Egyptian people rejected President Morsi’s sharia governance, and asked a well respected General Fattah al-Sisi to step in. Accepting the request of a desperate people Sisi removed Morsi, disbanded the Muslim Brotherhood and went on to win a landslide election in 2014. The leadership of the Brotherhood fled to Qatar.
President Obama and his policy team was not happy with this outcome. Obama supported Morsi, not al-Sisi. Another person who was not happy, was Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who also supported Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Undeterred, and understanding the need for urgency, Egyptian President al-Sisi then began a long process of confronting extremism. Sisi destroyed the Hamas terror tunnels on the border between Egypt and Israel; and, despite the anxiety expressed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Sisi brokered an interim peace agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israelis.
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U.S. Senator Rand Paul (KY) appears on CBS Face-the-Nation to discuss the appropriations conflict, border security and his support for President Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
CTH readers will know Brett McGurk; he is the departing U.S. state department envoy in-charge of the U.S./State Dept./Coalition de-ISIS campaign. We have discussed his presentations at great length [See Here in 2017].
McGurk was scheduled to exit the State Department in less than two months (Feb ’19); as the 27-nation coalition “de-ISIS operation” is now complete, and has shifted into maintenance mode. However, McGurk has announced he is resigning at the end of this year. CBS takes this as an opportunity to present a political hit-job against President Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria and allow regional allies to take over.
(Via CBS) […] Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, had been planning to exit his post in February 2019. But sources tell CBS News that he informed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he will accelerate his departure due to a strong disagreement with President Trump’s snap decision to withdraw 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, effectively abandoning U.S. allies in the region.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the DC Decepticons are concerned about the Kurdish groups in Syria as the President Trump withdraws U.S. forces. The concern stems from a possibility of Turkey taking hostile action toward our Kurdish allies. However, a new report from the region highlights Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is sending his forces to replace the U.S. troops.
SAUDI ARABIA – Saudi Arabia and the UAE have sent military forces to areas controlled by the Kurdish YPG group in north-east Syria, Turkey’s Yenisafak newspaper reported.
The paper said the forces will be stationed with US-led coalition troops and will support its tasks with huge military enforcements as well as heavy and light weapons.
CTH has some new readers, so against the backdrop of the UniParty in Washington DC jumping into action to criticize President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria; perhaps a little factual historic refresher is in order….
On September 30th 2016 the New York Times quietly released a leaked audio recording of Secretary John Kerry meeting with multiple factions associated within Syria.
The 40-minute discussion took place on the sidelines of a United Nations General Assembly in New York. The meeting took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on Sept. 22nd 2016:
[…] Kerry’s off-record conversation was apparently with two dozen ‘Syrian civilians’, all from US backed opposition-linked NGO’s in education and medical groups supposedly working in ‘rebel-held’ (aka terrorist-held) areas in Syria.
This opposition conclave also included ‘rescue workers’ which can only be ambassadors from the White Helmets, a pseudo NGO which serves as Washington and London’s primary PR front in pursuit of a “No Fly Zone’ in Syria, and it’s being bankrolled by the US, UK, EU and other coalition states to the tune of well over $100 million (so far). (link)
When you listen to the audio recording (embedded below) it becomes immediately obvious what was going on in 2014, 2015 and 2016 as an outcome of policy from the White House. In addition, you discover why this jaw-dropping 2016 leak/story was buried by the U.S. media and how it connects to the prior 4 years of perplexing U.S. mid-east policy.
This evidence within this single story would/should forever remove any credibility toward the U.S. foreign policy under President Obama. It also destroys the credibility of a large number of well known republicans, and explains how the prior action placed President Trump into a precarious position requiring a careful approach.
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President Trump delivers a deliberate message announcing the full U.S. military withdrawal from Syria.
The White House says U.S. has started returning troops home from Syria as it transitions to next phase of campaign. Additionally, all U.S. State Department personnel are being evacuated from Syria within 24 hours (link).
White House – “Five years ago, ISIS was a very powerful and dangerous force in the Middle East, and now the United States has defeated the territorial caliphate. These victories over ISIS in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign. We have started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign. The United States and our allies stand ready to re-engage at all levels to defend American interests whenever necessary, and we will continue to work together to deny radical Islamist terrorists territory, funding, support, and any means of infiltrating our borders.” (Link)
The UniParty Decepticons will not be pleased…