Biden Bombs in Syria — Helping to Steal Its Oil but What Is There to Talk About?

 

Biden Bombs in Syria — Helping to Steal Its Oil but What Is There to Talk About?

And Western media either don’t tell you or operate as one megaphone for the administration and Pentagon.

Pentagon on February 25, 2021:

“At President Biden’s direction, US military forces earlier this [Thursday] evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” said spokesman John Kirby in a statement on Friday.

“These strikes were authorised in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel,” he said. (Here another report).

If you had any doubts – which you should not if you have followed him over the years – about Biden’s attitude to warfare, this bombing in Eastern Syria should clarify things for you.

It is true that both Russia and Iran operate in Syria, but whether you like it or not, they have been invited by the Syrian government in response to the Western+Arab allies’ attempt at regime-change in Syria that started in spring 2011. Being in another country by invitation is not against international law; regime change and occupation by one sovereign state of another is.

We remember President Trump proudly stating that the US has secured the oil – that is, Syria’s oil.

What strikes me when going through CNN, BBC, NYT and other media reports this morning is that the US is just “retaliating” in a non-escalating manner for something done to American personnel in Iraq. The NYT first wrote that one US personnel had been killed and later corrected itself that one had been injured. All interviewed are Americans – not one of them raising any issues. According to some sources, mentioned by Reuters, as many as 17 pro-Iranian militia people may have been killed last night.

None of these leading Western mainstream media offers a background, mentions international law, or mentions how many may have been killed. It comes through as a megaphone for the US, Pentagon and the Biden administration.

One is reminded of how Pravda operated in the Soviet Union.

The map on top is self-explicable. The US has 10 illegal bases in Syria and it’s building the 11th in Hasakah. Just about 1,5 years ago, reliable US military sources wrote that the US is leaving Syria – “What it means for American bases in Syria to be occupied by Syrian and Russian forces” (!).

Today the reality is a different one: 140.000 barrels of oil are stolen per day from oil fields in the Hasakah region and transported by trucks to Iraq. A similar report here with slightly different information.

Below are some facts about the mindboggling – I guess to many – US military presence in Syria and Iraq – two countries in which it has nothing to do.

This reporting is a very good example of what I have maintained for years: Lies and fake is old hat – just more sophisticated and widespread than before. Omission – the background, larger framework, perspectives, news bureaus, and counterpoints that are left out. Deliberately.

Interesting fact sites

Wikipedia: List of US military installations in Iraq

Co-bases: US military bases in Iraq

Middle East Monitor, MEMO: US continues to reinforce military bases in Syria

And note the take on this by CNN’s international security editor, Nick Paton Walsh: Biden sends a message to Iran, but with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer

David Andelman on CNN, February 27, 2021: The tough message Biden just sent Iran

Try to use various search engines and you’ll find that a search like “U.S. military bases in Syria” gives very little. Not even Wikipedia has such an entry. It is reasonable to assume that this is controversial, or sensitive, to an extent that public information about them has been reduced.