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    The Kurds will never again help the US in the Middle East: Veteran CIA officer

    Dana Kennedy, DCReport @ RawStory
    October 22, 2019

    Thanks for your support!

    This article was paid for by reader donations to Raw Story Investigates.

    Female fighters form a key part of the Kurdish security forces in Iraq and Syria (AFP Photo/Atta Kenare)

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

    Dana Kennedy, DCReport @ RawStory

    This week, as hundreds of ISIS fighters escaped from Kurdish prisons in northeastern Syria following Donald Trump’s decision to pull out American troops, a group of current and former “special operators” for U.S. intelligence met for a previously scheduled casual lunch in Washington.


    Their take on Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds—a move that enabled Turkey to invade the region, for Russians to move into former U.S. positions and for extremists to maybe start plotting attacks on Europe again.

    Everyone is heartbroken. We’ve lost face in front of the world and we’ve lost everyone’s trust.

    “Everyone is heartbroken,” said one former CIA agent at the lunch who worked conflicts all over Europe, Africa and the Middle East during a long career. “We’ve lost face in front of the world and we’ve lost everyone’s trust.”

    The lunch took place one day before a Kurdish female politician, Hevrin Khalaf, 35, was brutally pulled from her car and shot dead along with eight other people by pro-Turkish forces, many of which are recycled Syrian rebel soldiers with the same extremist sentiments as ISIS. The Turkish proxies are also reportedly deliberately releasing ISIS prisoners while they maraud and pillage through Syria.

    It was bad enough, said the CIA agent, that Trump totally lied last year when he said ISIS had been “100 percent” defeated. For months now, everyone from Pentagon officials to Sen. Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] to witnesses on the ground in Syria have insisted ISIS is still very much active in the Middle East. One Parisian-based terror expert told DCReport he was in Syria in July and had proof of more than 100 ISIS attacks that month alone.

    Lost Credibility

    “But the worst part for us is that we’ve completely lost our credibility,” said the operative, who once fought alongside the Peshmerga, the Kurdish fighters, in Kurdistan in Iraq, among many others.

    “We’ll never get that trust back again when we go in for any kind of special ops or covert operations. We used to have respect as Americans. Now if we come in with our SUVs and our money and our tech and say we want to help you fight, they’re not going to want any part of us. They’re gonna think we’ll betray them.”

    U.S. officials, most notably Brett McGurk, the former U.S. special envoy for the coalition to defeat ISIS who quit in protest of Trump’s policies late last year, have been vehemently opposed to Trump’s actions in Syria.

    McGurk was furious when he heard Trump tell the faithful at his Dallas rally Oct. 17 that the Turks and the Kurds were like a couple of kids fighting.

    “This is an obscene and ignorant statement,” McGurk tweeted. “200k innocent people displaced. Hundreds dead. Credible reports of war crimes. ISIS prisoners escaping. US evacuating and bombing its own positions or handing them to Russia. Two kids in a lot?”

    McGurk is right, said the CIA agent, but even he doesn’t know what it will be like for U.S. soldiers and operatives on the ground from now on.

    “It changes everything,” he said. “On our level, it’s warrior to warrior, that is all. In war, all that matters is who you think you can trust and who you can’t. Not being trusted can get you killed out there.”

    U.S. Soldiers 'Devastated'

    Mark Campbell, the co-chair of the Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign in London, said he knew American soldiers still left in Syria who are “completely devastated, right up the ranks.”

    “The Kurds had built up a very good relationship with military on the ground under Obama,” Campbell said. “The Kurds were the boots on the ground ... They had an incredible comradeship with the Americans. Now I’ve heard that the American soldiers who are still in Syria are actually crying over this. Crying.”

    Campbell was in constant touch with Kurdish fighters and civilians on the ground this week. He told DCReport Friday that unarmed civilians were trying to form “human shields” to advance through the region and bring back the dozens if not hundreds of “rotting, stinking bodies” of those killed by pro-Turkish forces since the invasion.

    “There’s no military around to help them,” Campbell said. “They don’t have guns. There are numerous reports of war crimes. Kurds are being dragged out of their cars and shot and the (pro-Turkish) fighters are filming it. Just like ISIS. And remember these are the people doing the fighting for NATO. These are NATO fighting forces that are acting in the same way as ISIS fighters. It almost begs the question, was this a calculated plan to instill fear among the Kurds, just as ISIS did?”

    The Turkish proxies who are coming over the border from Turkey, brandishing their guns and yelling in the same style as ISIS did in their heyday from 2015 to 2017. Brazenly filming their attacks and flooding the videos on social media is also reminiscent of ISIS, Campbell said.

    Watching Trump brag Thursday that he had reached a “great” ceasefire deal with Turkish president Erdogan “a situation where everyone is happy and there is no fighting,” was painful and disgusting, Campbell said.

    “What he said was a bizarre public relations stunt I guess to make him look good to his base and has literally nothing to do with the reality of what’s happening,” Campbell said. “I don’t think Trump understands one thing about the Kurdish situation. Nothing he said many any sense. And there is no ceasefire. There are Turkish airstrikes as well as attacks on the ground.”

    Campbell said he considered Trump’s remarks about the Kurds quite “racist” as well.

    “Characterizing them as children was so disrespectful and patronizing,” he said “We’re talking about the future of millions of people in the Middle east. The way he talks about it is disgusting.”

    This article was paid for by Raw Story subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

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    Report typos and corrections to: corrections@rawstory.com.
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    Survey: Should Donald Trump be prosecuted after he leaves office?

    Trump to pardon Steve Bannon after scamming his supporters into paying for border wall: CNN

    Sarah K. Burris
    January 19, 2021

    Former White House aide to President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon is said to be getting a pardon according to CNN and Bloomberg news. It was a last-minute decision in the final hours of his presidency.


    News w @PamelaBrownCNN — Trump has decided to pardon Steve Bannon in a last-minute decision made hours before he’s… https://t.co/EGsYI1lC44
    — Kaitlan Collins (@Kaitlan Collins)1611114614.0


    BREAKING: Trump is likely to grant Steve Bannon a pardon, sources tell me, ending federal prosecution of the presid… https://t.co/DYw0rrJbJK
    — Jennifer Jacobs (@Jennifer Jacobs)1611114527.0

    Bannon scammed Trump's supporters out of millions of dollars to contribute to the wall on the U.S. and Mexico border. Bannon and his allies pocketed the cash. Bannon was arrested on Aug. 20 while aboard a luxary yacht off the coast of Connecticut and was freed on a $5 million bond.

    "This entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall," he proclaimed leaving the court.

    Trump conspiracy theorists excited he'll declare martial law before Biden inauguration

    Sarah K. Burris
    January 19, 2021

    There is a slew of conspiracy theories that all come to a head on Wednesday. One claims that cell phones will somehow stop working, protests are planned, and attacks are rumored. The latest conspiracy is that President Donald Trump will declare martial law before President-elect Joe Biden can be inaugurated, using the Emergency Broadcast System to announce it.

    CNN.com reported that the QAnon crowd on Parler is flocking to fake posts from spoofed accounts.

    "Nothing can stop this," says a Telegram account pretending to be Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten. "They can no longer hide in the shadows."

    "Last hours," it said about 20 minutes later. It then posted photos of soldiers in uniform behind a Washington, D.C. fence saying, "Stay in your homes."

    Among those most ardent Trump cultists who believe that the election was stolen, there is a belief that a reckoning is coming on Wednesday. Some kind of war will break out and the outgoing president will rise to power.

    "After the [Jan. 6] riot, similar groups of people had faith that they could hang back and wait because Trump and the military would take action," said CNN.com. "But given the way conspiracy theories work generally, and the way they have proliferated after the riot, it is easy to imagine these theories spinning out in new ways once it is clear no such action is coming. Much of the discussion around martial law online ultimately connects to QAnon, which has long had a promise of and a lust for blood. But the people who are excitedly discussing the possibility of a military takeover may not know the origins of their obsession. And the phenomenon does not appear to be confined to a niche corner of the internet."

    Trump fans are warning their followers to stock up on food because martial law will begin. One YouTube star who purports to have an alien mother and alien daughter has more than 3.5 million views on a video saying Trump signed the Insurrection Act. Another video with 1.7 million views says as much as 85 percent of Congress could be arrested.

    TikTok too has thousands of videos seen by tens of thousands of viewers about the same conspiracies. Many seem excited about the prospect of the downfall of America while others are rushing to bring it about.

    Read the full report from CNN.com.

    Mary Trump: This is 'the worst day' of the president's life

    Matthew Chapman
    January 19, 2021

    On CNN Tuesday, Mary Trump, the outgoing president's niece and a clinical psychologist, broke down her uncle's state of mind in the final hours of his presidency.

    "President Trump did not acknowledge he won't be president anymore [in his latest video]," said anchor Anderson Cooper. "He did not concede or say President-elect Biden's name and, of course, he's not going to the inauguration. He acknowledges he's become what he loathes, which is a loser. What do you think he's going through now?"

    "This is probably the worst day of his life, because the clock is ticking and he's running out of time," said Trump. "The other thing I just want to point out about that speech, it was reminiscing of a video he made after the insurrection saying the movement is just beginning, which seems like a bit of a threat to me. My hope is that he be as contained as possible. He's going to do whatever he can or believes he can to change the narrative, and I think we're going to see that play out with some of these pardons in excess of 100, if I'm hearing that correctly, and some of these pardons will be quite horrific, some of them will be strategic."

    "But the bottom line is he's out of there," she added. "I mean, he's been out of there, you know, metaphorically speaking, for a long time. He's not been doing the job. As of 12:00 or earlier, he's heading down to Florida and he no longer has powers and protections of the Oval Office, and he knows it."

    Watch below:

     
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    WATCH: Viral video calls for GOP senators to be prosecuted for 'aiding and abetting acts of terrorism'

     
     

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