The Trump Swamp Rears Its Ugly Head Again-- Elliott Broidy

I believe the first time I heard of Elliott Broidy was when the NY Times revealed him to be working with a very right-wing shady Mercer family SuperPAC, Secure America Now (SAN), which Broidy was using to leverage the Trump regime into filling key positions with individuals favorable to-- meaning, like Broidy himself, bought off by-- the Saudi and UAE governments. Mercer was one of just 4 uber-wealthy far-right and very crooked contributors providing SAN with the millions of dollars it needed for its entirely nefarious projects. The 3 other scumbags besides Mercer funding SAN are top Best Buy freaks Brad Anderson and Richard Schulze plus neo-fascist Estee Lauder heir Ronald Lauder.

Yesterday, Washington Post reporters Matt Zapotosky, Carol Leonnig and Rosalind Helderman wrote how now-- over two years later-- Broidy is finally about to be charged "in connection with efforts to influence the U.S. government on behalf of foreign interests, according to people familiar with the matter, a result of a sprawling, years-long investigation that involved a figure who helped raise millions for Donald Trump’s election and the Republican Party." By "influence the U.S. government," the meaning is clearly using Saudi and Emirati cash to bribe Señor Trumpanzee, who isn't being charged, at least not while he's living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In fact this investigation had steered completely clear of Broidy's Saudi and Emerati paymasters-- a deal to protect Trump-- and is instead about Broidy's role as an unregistered lobbyist in "a campaign to persuade high-level Trump administration officials to drop an investigation of Malaysian government corruption, as well as for his attempt to push for the extradition of an outspoken Chinese dissident back to his home country." This gigantic mess is going to resulting a plea deal and, in all likelihood, an informal understanding with Trump that there will eventually be a pardon.

The case has intensified in recent weeks, with prosecutors securing a guilty plea Monday from one of Broidy’s business associates, Nickie Mali Lum Davis, who admitted to taking part in what prosecutors have described in charging documents as a “back-channel lobbying campaign” to end the Malaysian corruption investigation and to return Chinese exile Guo Wengui to his home country.

Guo is a vocal online critic of the Chinese government who was once allied with that country’s government elite but is now wanted by authorities in Beijing on charges of fraud, blackmail and bribery. He has denied those charges and said they are politically motivated.

According to a charging document filed in her case, Davis admitted she aided and abetted the efforts of two others involved in the influence campaigns, identified only as Person A and Person B. People familiar with the matter identified them as Fugees rapper Pras Michel and Broidy, respectively.





During a virtual hearing Monday before a federal judge in Honolulu, where Davis entered her guilty plea, prosecutors told a judge that charges may be filed against additional defendants in the case.

...The investigation puts a renewed focus on efforts by people close to the president to shape the fate of Guo, who has succeeded in remaining in the United States.

In the past few years, the Chinese billionaire has been closely aligned with Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign chief and top White House strategist. Bannon was on Guo’s yacht off the coast of Westbrook, Conn., when he was arrested last month for allegedly fleecing donors who supported a group that claimed to be building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The investigation of Broidy has its roots in a massive probe of theft from a Malaysian government development fund that has come to be known by the shorthand “1MDB.” In previous civil and criminal cases, federal prosecutors have alleged that stolen funds that made their way into the United States were used to buy pricey real estate and even fund the award-winning movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak was accused of being involved in the corruption. He was convicted in July and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

At the center of the case is a Malaysian businessman named Low Taek Jho, who was indicted in 2018 and accused of funneling tens of millions of dollars into the United States in part to get the Malaysian corruption investigation dropped. Low, who is facing multiple federal indictments, is believed to be in China, outside the reach of U.S. authorities. He has denied the allegations and said they are politically motivated.

According to court documents filed in association with Davis’s guilty plea this week, Broidy allegedly lobbied to have Guo removed from the United States at the request of Low and a Chinese government official.

Davis admitted that she met with the Chinese official-- who people familiar with the matter identified as Sun Lijun-- and the two people identified as Broidy and Michel in a Hong Kong hotel suite in May 2017, and Broidy soon launched a campaign that reached the top of the administration, court filings show.

According to the documents and people familiar with the matter, Broidy allegedly made various entreaties to people in the administration or close to it, including President Trump’s then-chief of staff, Reince Priebus; his former deputy campaign chairman, Rick Gates; and the president himself.

At one point, Broidy also tried to enlist the help of casino magnate and Trump friend Steve Wynn, according to the documents and the people with knowledge of the case. In August 2017, Broidy and Wynn called Trump from Wynn’s yacht and asked about Guo’s status.

Davis also admitted in court that she connected multiple calls between Wynn and Sun.

Reid Weingarten, an attorney for Wynn, declined to comment but said his client has been cooperating with investigators and continues to do so.

Wynn and Broidy worked closely together to get Trump elected in 2016 while they served as finance chairman and deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Wynn made his own attempt to pass a message about Guo directly to Trump from Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to two people with knowledge of the episode. In a private meeting around June 2017, Wynn told Trump why Xi felt so strongly about the United States returning Guo to China, handing Trump two pictures of Guo, the people said.

At the time, Wynn had significant business interests involving China, operating a major casino in Macao.

Trump was eager to extradite Guo, as the Chinese wished, telling aides in an Oval Office meeting that he supported the plan, according to a former administration official familiar with his views.

Priebus passed along the extradition request to the National Security Council, where it was vetted by a senior White House lawyer, John Eisenberg, who conferred with then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn, the official said.

White House lawyers agreed that extradition, which was opposed by the Justice Department, would not be appropriate, according to the official. McGahn later told aides who asked about the status request, “We killed that,” the official said.

McGahn did not response to requests for comment. A White House spokesman referred questions about the episode to the National Security Council. An NSC spokesman declined to comment and referred questions to the Justice Department.

During the 2016 campaign, Broidy, a Los Angeles-based investor, helped corral big donors to support Trump’s campaign. After the election, he was appointed to serve as a national deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee.

Broidy resigned from that post in April 2018 in the wake of a report that he had paid a former Playboy model $1.6 million in exchange for her silence about a sexual affair. Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen-- another RNC fundraiser-- helped arrange the settlement, Broidy acknowledged at the time.

As part of the Malaysian corruption probe, the U.S. government has previously alleged that Michel and a former Justice Department employee, George Higginbotham, opened U.S. accounts to move Low’s money into the United States and fund the lobbying effort.

Davis acknowledged that she helped route an $8 million retainer to Broidy for the influence campaign and that Low offered to pay a $75 million “success fee” as part of a contract with Broidy’s wife’s law firm if the 1MDB case was resolved within 180 days.

Higginbotham pleaded guilty in November 2018 to illicitly facilitating the transfer of tens of millions of dollars into the United States to finance the lobbying effort.

According to Davis’s criminal information and people familiar with the matter, Broidy met with Trump at the White House in October 2017 and told others that he raised the subject of the 1MDB investigation.

A former attorney for Broidy told the Wall Street Journal in 2018 that at no time did Broidy, his wife, “or anyone acting on their behalf, discuss Mr. Low’s case with President Trump, any member of his staff, or anyone at the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Text messages and emails quoted in Davis’s plea documents show that Broidy messaged Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, and Priebus in 2017 about arranging a visit for Malaysia’s prime minister and a possible golf outing with Trump. An attorney for Gates declined to comment.

Priebus responded but was noncommittal, saying the NSC was working on the matter, according to court filings and the people. Priebus declined to comment.

The prime minister did visit, but he did not golf with Trump, according to the court documents. The meeting was meant in part so the Malaysian prime minister could press Trump about ending the 1MDB case, according to the documents.

How many mentions of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Broidy's business partner (and a repeat child sex abuser and Erik Prince and UAE lobbyist), currently serving a 10 ten year prison term, George Nader in that Post report? How many mentions of Robert Mercer or SAN? Just the Fugees and Malaysia. Back in May of 2018, the Business Insider reported that after Broidy spent a year cultivating a couple of the corrupt princes from Arabian Peninsula, he "thought he was finally close to nailing more than $1 billion in business. He had ingratiated himself with crown princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were seeking to alter US foreign policy and punish Qatar, an archrival in the Gulf that he dubbed 'the snake.' To do that, the California businessman had helped spearhead a secret campaign to influence the White House and Congress, flooding Washington with political donations. Broidy and his business partner, Lebanese-American George Nader, pitched themselves to the crown princes as a backchannel to the White House, passing the princes' praise-- and messaging-- straight to the president's ears... Broidy and Nader sought to get an anti-Qatar bill through Congress while obscuring the source of the money behind their influence campaign... Broidy's campaign to alter US policy in the Middle East and reap a fortune for himself shows that one of the president's top money men found the swamp as navigable as ever with Trump in office.

By December of last year, the partners were riding a wave of success in their campaign to create an anti-Qatar drumbeat in Washington.

Saudi Arabia was finding a new ascendancy following Trump's election. Broidy sought to claim credit for it, emails show, and was keen to collect the first installment of $36 million for an intelligence-gathering contract with the UAE.

It all might have proceeded smoothly save for one factor: the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to look into allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In many ways, the partnership between Broidy, 60, and Nader, 59, embodies the insider influence that has given contractors in D.C. the nickname "beltway bandits."

Both of their careers were marked by high-rolling success and spectacular falls from grace-- and criminal convictions. The onset of the Trump administration presented an opportunity: a return to glory.

Broidy, who made a fortune in investments, was finance chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2006 to 2008. But when a New York state pension fund decided to invest $250 million with him, investigators found that he had plied state officials with nearly $1 million in illegal gifts while collecting $18 million in management fees.

In 2009, Broidy pleaded guilty to a felony charge of rewarding official misconduct.

"In seeking investments from the New York State Common Retirement Fund, I made payments for the benefit of high-ranking officials at the Office of the New York State Comptroller, who had influence and decision-making authority over investment decisions," Broidy said in his plea and cooperation agreement.

...Mueller's team was interested in two meetings that took place before Donald Trump's inauguration.

One was in the Seychelles, a tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which drew scrutiny because it included Prince, an informal adviser to Trump, and Russian investor Kirill Dmitriev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting has prompted questions about whether it was an attempt to establish a backchannel between Russia and the incoming Trump administration.

The other meeting was at Trump Tower in New York.

Nader and MBZ were at both.

...In late September, Broidy arranged for the most coveted meeting for any lobbyist in Washington: an audience for himself with the president in the Oval Office.

In advance of the meeting, Nader wrote Broidy a script, an email shows. There were several objectives: to sell the idea for a Muslim fighting force, to keep the president from intervening on Qatar and to arrange a discreet meeting between Trump and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.

The princes "are counting on you to relate it blunt and straight," Nader wrote.

Nader told Broidy the meeting was potentially historic and to "take advantage of this priceless asset."

And there was one more thing. Nader asked Broidy to tell the president about his connections with the crown princes, using code names for all three.

"Appreciate how you would make sure to bring up my role to Chairman," Nader emailed. "How I work closely with Two Big Friends."

After the Oct. 6 meeting, Broidy reported back to Nader that he had passed along the messages and had urged the president to stay out of the dispute with Qatar. He also said he explained Circinus' plan to build a Muslim fighting force.

"President Trump was extremely enthusiastic," he wrote. Broidy said Trump asked what the next step would be and that he told the president he should meet with the crown prince from the UAE, adding, "President Trump agreed that a meeting with MBZ was a good idea."

...Despite that successful readout, Nader wanted more: He wanted a photo of himself with the president-- a big request for a convicted pedophile.

Broidy was co-hosting a fundraiser for Trump and the Republican National Committee in Dallas on Oct. 25. The Secret Service had said Nader wouldn't be allowed to meet the president. It was not clear if the objections were related to his convictions for sexually abusing children.

Broidy drafted an email to Trump's chief of staff, John Kelly, asking him to intervene on behalf of his friend, whom he oddly called "George Vader"-- a misnomer that appears elsewhere in the emails.

"One of my companies does deep vetting for the US government," he wrote. "We ran all data bases including FBI and Interpol and found no issues with regard to Mr. Vader."

There was another issue. RNC officials had decreed there would be no photos with the president without payment. Broidy suggested that Nader meet the suggested threshold with a donation between $100,000 and $250,000.

It's unclear exactly how the two issues were resolved. Records from the Federal Election Commission show no donations from either George Nader or "George Vader," but on Nov. 30, Broidy gave $189,000 to the RNC-- more than he had given to the RNC in over two decades of Republican fundraising.

The result: a picture of Nader and Trump grinning in front of the American flag.

Broidy met Trump once again on Dec. 2. He reported back to Nader that he'd told Trump the crown princes were "most favorably impressed by his leadership." He offered the crown princes' help in the Middle East peace plan being developed by Jared Kushner. He did not tell Trump that his partner had complete contempt for the plan-- and for the president's son-in-law.

"You have to hear in private my Brother what Principals think of 'Clown prince's' efforts and his plan!" Nader wrote. "Nobody would even waste cup of coffee on him if it wasn't for who he is married to."

Days after Broidy's meeting with Trump, the UAE awarded Broidy the intelligence contract the partners had been seeking for up to $600 million over 5 years, according to a leaked email.

...The FBI raided the premises of Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, seeking information on hush money paid to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who said she'd had an affair with the president.

Broidy, it turned out, was also a Cohen client. He'd had an affair with Playboy bunny Shera Bechard, who got pregnant and later had an abortion. Broidy agreed to pay her $1.6 million to help her out, so long as she never spoke about it.

"I acknowledge I had a consensual relationship with a Playboy Playmate," Broidy said in a statement the day the news broke. He apologized to his wife and resigned from the RNC. There is no indication Broidy is under investigation by Mueller's team.

In the end, Nader and Broidy's anti-Qatar operation lost its momentum. There has been no traction on the effort to get the base in Qatar moved to the UAE. In late April, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for an end to the bickering among Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar during a trip to the Gulf.

Leaving The Trump Regime And Heading To Prison Are Two Different Balls Of Wax

Nancy Ohanian sees Kushner-in-law

It's like a Kinks song from the '60s, but who will the next be to leave the crumbling Trumpanzee Regime? Everyone was saying it was going to be McMaster-- and before April Fools Day. Then this morning Ben White reported for Politico that Gary Cohn-- still fuming he didn't get the Fed Chair-- would quit over the tariffs. Cohn, he wrote, "has been rumored to be on the brink of leaving the White House for months but stayed for one main reason: to stop the president from imposing steep tariffs. By Thursday afternoon, Cohn had lost the fight. In a meeting with steel industry executives, Trump announced plans for a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports. The decision came after a frantic 24 hours in which Cohn and others tried to talk Trump off the ledge. At one point, aides were sure Trump would make the announcement. Then they said he wouldn’t. Finally, sitting alongside steel executives, he did. The Dow promptly tanked over 500 points, and Cohn’s allies began wondering if this would be the final insult sending the director of the National Economic Council to the exit. One person close to Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive, said he wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually left the chaotic and deeply exhausting administration as a result of the decision. A second person close to Cohn described it as a brutal blow that violated one of the NEC director’s core beliefs—that protectionism is economically backward and won’t lead to increased prosperity."

But the tariffs and a peeved Gary Cohn aren't going to end Trump's Regime and McMaster will just be reshuffled into another slot. It's Hope Hicks, basically a sexy secretary, and her diary + Ivanka and Kushner-in-law who could do Trump in... Putin-Gate!! Earlier today the news came fast and furious but no one could forget the NY Times story about how Señor Trumpanzee is so frustrated with Kushner-in-law that even he finally recognizes him as "a liability because of his legal entanglements, the investigations of the Kushner family’s real estate company and the publicity over having his security clearance downgraded, according to two people familiar with his views. In private conversations, the president vacillates between sounding regretful that Mr. Kushner is taking arrows and annoyed that he is another problem to deal with." And this seems newsworthy: "Privately, some aides have expressed frustration that Mr. Kushner and his wife, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, have remained at the White House, despite Mr. Trump at times saying they never should have come to the White House and should leave. Yet aides also noted that Mr. Trump has told the couple that they should keep serving in their roles, even as he has privately asked Mr. Kelly for his help in moving them out." And here I though Kelly was moving against Kushner as a way of committing political suicide!

The Washington Post:

They were the ascendant young couples of the Trump White House: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and Rob Porter and Hope Hicks. They enjoyed rarefied access to the president and special privileges in the West Wing. Glamorous and well-connected, they had an air of power and invincibility. They even double-dated once.

But an unlikely cascade of events-- set in motion by paparazzi photos of Porter and Hicks published Feb. 1 in a British tabloid-- crashed down on Kushner this week. The shortest month of the year delivered 28 days of tumult that many inside and outside the White House say could mark the fall of the House of Kushner.

Once the prince of Trump’s Washington, Kushner is now stripped of his access to the nation’s deepest secrets, isolated and badly weakened inside the administration, under scrutiny for his mixing of business and government work and facing the possibility of grave legal peril in the Russia probe.

Ryan Grim painted an even grimmer picture-- for Kushner-- at The Intercept early, early this morning. Kushner's family firm "made a direct pitch to Qatar’s minister of finance in April 2017 in an attempt to secure investment in a critically distressed asset in the company’s portfolio, according to two sources. At the previously unreported meeting, Jared Kushner’s father Charles, who runs Kushner Companies, and Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi discussed financing for the Kushners’ signature 666 Fifth Avenue property in New York City." Charles! Wouldn't it be funny if he wound up back in his old prison cell? With his son down the cell block? I wonder who leaked this to the press:

The failure to broker the deal would be followed only a month later by a Middle Eastern diplomatic row in which Jared Kushner provided critical support to Qatar’s neighbors. Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of Middle Eastern countries, with Kushner’s backing, led a diplomatic assault that culminated in a blockade of Qatar. Kushner, according to reports at the time, subsequently undermined efforts by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to bring an end to the standoff.

The Gulf crisis involving Qatar and its neighbors will likely be Kushner’s defining foreign policy legacy. The crisis followed a May visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, by Kushner and President Donald Trump, who subsequently took credit for Saudi Arabia and its allies’ efforts against Qatar. The fallout has reshaped geopolitical alliances in the region, splitting the Gulf Cooperation Council and pushing Qatar, home to the Middle East’s largest U.S. military base, closer to Turkey and Iran.

...The news of Kushner Companies’ direct pitch to the Qatari government puts a Wednesday report from the Washington Post into broader context. U.S. intelligence services, the paper reported, had determined that officials in four countries-- the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel, and Mexico-- had been privately discussing how to use Jared Kushner’s real-estate investments as a way to gain leverage over him in order to influence official U.S. policy.

Kushner has divested from a small portion of Kushner Companies, but has retained substantial ownership. A balloon payment due in 2018 on the badly underwater property at 666 Fifth Avenue has been a ticking clock on the fortunes of the Kushner family, precipitating the global hunt for capital. The Washington Post reported earlier this year that the father-son pair, Jared and Charles Kushner, speak on a daily basis.

The New York Times reported last month that just prior to Jared Kushner’s visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia in May 2017, his family real estate company “received a roughly $30 million investment from Menora Mivtachim,” described as one of Israel’s largest financial institutions.

You don't think the Kush is in over his head-- and possibly headed for a very bad ending? Pay more attention. Watch a lovable, self-described "middle-aged, pot-bellied lesbian" who may have a new career as a crossword puzzle designer. And... read Axios on your cell while crossing the street. Jim VandeHei: Destroying Jared Kushner: a five-part play. "It’s no secret a lot of people inside and outside the White House want Jared Kushner gone. They think he’s too inexperienced, too compromised by conflicts of interest and the Russia probe, and too ineffective. Their revenge against him this week has been brutal, sustained, at times brilliant, and potentially lethal. What has unfolded is not the work of coincidence: it is the slit-by-slit slow bleed of a top adviser and son-in-law to the president." Is this Shakespeare? Or just more reality TV, playing for tawdry ratings?

Act I: The knee-capping

The public humiliation of losing his top security clearance was telegraphed and then executed by Chief of Staff John Kelly. It was promptly leaked. Kushner, who fancied himself a de facto Secretary of State and peacemaker, lost access to the power of information.

• White House staff instantly turned unafraid to leak against Jared to reporters. He’s no longer seen as untouchable. Actually now seen as almost frail. They say he’s naive and has dim political insights.
• At the same time, he lost his top image-shaper Josh Raffel, just when he needs him most. (Kushner has known for a while Raffel is leaving, but that doesn’t make the blow any easier.)

Act II: The humiliation

Nothing’s worse for ego and perception than to be seen as easy prey.  Cue the leak to the Washington Post: Foreign governments reportedly discussed ways to manipulate Kushner, "current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter" told the paper. They said his business dealings left him vulnerable.

Act III: The Godfather turns

Rupert Murdoch, the master of Fox and the Wall Street Journal, has advised Kushner for years. They are allies, friends, mentor and mentee. There was nothing friendly about the lead editorial in Murdoch's paper politely suggesting the “knives are out” and it’s time for Jared to skip town. “Giving up their White House positions would be a bitter remedy, but Mr. Kushner and first daughter Ivanka could still offer advice as outsiders.”

Act IV: The plot

You can’t execute family without cause. The whispers, which turned into constant conversation, which turned into screaming headlines, is that Kushner mixed too much personal business with official governmental work.

• Kushner, the New York Times revealed on its front page, took White House meetings with private equity billionaires and his family business benefited from their loans afterward. There is "little precedent for a top White House official meeting with executives of companies as they contemplate sizable loans to his business."

Act V: Tortured Trump

One thing Jared and Trump have in common: they read Maggie Haberman and the New York Times. Nothing says family love and I’ve-got-your-back like this: 

“Mr. Trump is also frustrated with Mr. Kushner, whom he now views as a liability because of his legal entanglements, the investigations of the Kushner family’s real estate company and the publicity over having his security clearance downgraded, according to two people familiar with his views. In private conversations, the president vacillates between sounding regretful that Mr. Kushner is taking arrows and annoyed that he is another problem to deal with.”

The End?

Well, let's hope so... but maybe a long drawn-out and very tortured ending? How about that? Gloria Borgia Friday morning: "Not since Richard Nixon started talking to the portraits on the walls of the West Wing has a president seemed so alone against the world. One source-- who is a presidential ally-- is worried, really worried. The source says this past week is 'different,' that advisers are scared the President is spiraling, lashing out, just out of control. For example: Demanding to hold a public session where he made promises on trade tariffs before his staff was ready, not to mention willing. 'This has real economic impact,' says the source, as the Dow dropped 420 points after the President's news Thursday. 'Something is very wrong.' Even by Trumpian standards, the chaos and the unraveling at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are a stunning-- and recurring-- problem. But there's an up-against-the-wall quality to the past couple of weeks that is striking, and the crescendo is loud, clear, unhealthy, even dangerous." Uh oh... batten down the hatches. We all like the entertainment part... but the danger? Not so much. And it's coming; you knew it would.

Robert Kennedy Jr.: Syria Is Another Pipeline War

Proposed pipeline routes through the Middle East to gas markets in Europe. The purple line is the Western-supported Qatar-Turkey pipeline. All of the nations it passes through — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey (all highlighted in red) — have agreed to it ... except Syria. The red line is the "Islamic Pipeline" from Iran through Iraq into Syria. See text below for further explanation. (Source: MintPress News; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

Summary first: We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase.

I'm not sure most Americans have figured out what's happening in Syria, because so much of what we hear is confusing to us, and really, we know so little of the context for it. Is it an insurgency against a brutal ruler? Is it a group of insurgencies struggling for power in a nearly failed state? Is it a proxy war expressing the territorial and ideological interests of the U.S., Russia, Turkey and Iran?

Or something else?

According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. it is something else — a war between competing national interests to build, or not build, a pipeline to the Mediterranean so natural gas can be exported to Europe. Inconveniently for Syria, that nation lies along an obvious pipeline route.

Which makes it another war between interests for money — something not very hard to understand at all.

Here's Kennedy's argument via EcoWatch. This is a long piece, well worth a full read, but I'll try to present just the relevant sections here.

The Historical Context: Decades of CIA-Sponsored Coups and Counter-Coups in Syria

Kennedy's introductory section contains an excellent examination of the history of U.S. involvement in Syria starting in the 1950s with the Cold War machinations of the Eisenhower-appointed Dulles brothers, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA. Together, they effectively ruled U.S. foreign policy.

Kennedy writes (my emphasis):

Syria: Another Pipeline War

... America's unsavory record of violent interventions in Syria—obscure to the American people yet well known to Syrians—sowed fertile ground for the violent Islamic Jihadism that now complicates any effective response by our government to address the challenge of ISIS. So long as the American public and policymakers are unaware of this past, further interventions are likely to only compound the crisis. Moreover, our enemies delight in our ignorance.

... [W]e need to look at history from the Syrians' perspective and particularly the seeds of the current conflict. Long before our 2003 occupation of Iraq triggered the Sunni uprising that has now morphed into the Islamic State, the CIA had nurtured violent Jihadism as a Cold War weapon and freighted U.S./Syrian relationships with toxic baggage.

During the 1950's, President Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers rebuffed Soviet treaty proposals to leave the Middle East a cold war neutral zone and let Arabs rule Arabia. Instead, they mounted a clandestine war against Arab Nationalism—which CIA Director Allan [sic] Dulles equated with communism—particularly when Arab self-rule threatened oil concessions. They pumped secret American military aid to tyrants in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon favoring puppets with conservative Jihadist ideologies which they regarded as a reliable antidote to Soviet Marxism. At a White House meeting between the CIA's Director of Plans, Frank Wisner, and Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in September of 1957, Eisenhower advised the agency, “We should do everything possible to stress the 'holy war' aspect."

The CIA began its active meddling in Syria in 1949—barely a year after the agency's creation. Syrian patriots had declared war on the Nazis, expelled their Vichy French colonial rulers and crafted a fragile secularist democracy based on the American model. But in March of 1949, Syria's democratically elected president, Shukri-al-Kuwaiti, hesitated to approve the Trans Arabian Pipeline, an American project intended to connect the oil fields of Saudi Arabia to the ports of Lebanon via Syria. In his book, Legacy of Ashes, CIA historian Tim Weiner recounts that in retaliation, the CIA engineered a coup, replacing al-Kuwaiti with the CIA's handpicked dictator, a convicted swindler named Husni al-Za'im. Al-Za'im barely had time to dissolve parliament and approve the American pipeline before his countrymen deposed him, 14 weeks into his regime.

Kennedy then details the history of coups and counter-coups in and against Syria, and concludes this section with this:

Thanks in large part to Allan Dulles and the CIA, whose foreign policy intrigues were often directly at odds with the stated policies of our nation, the idealistic path outlined in the Atlantic Charter was the road not taken. In 1957, my grandfather, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, sat on a secret committee charged with investigating CIA's clandestine mischief in the Mid-East. The so called “Bruce Lovett Report," to which he was a signatory, described CIA coup plots in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Egypt, all common knowledge on the Arab street, but virtually unknown to the American people who believed, at face value, their government's denials.

The report blamed the CIA for the rampant anti-Americanism that was then mysteriously taking root “in the many countries in the world today." ... A parade of Iranian and Syrian dictators, including Bashar al-Assad and his father, have invoked the history of the CIA's bloody coups as a pretext for their authoritarian rule, repressive tactics and their need for a strong Russian alliance. These stories are therefore well known to the people of Syria and Iran who naturally interpret talk of U.S. intervention in the context of that history.

While the compliant American press parrots the narrative that our military support for the Syrian insurgency is purely humanitarian, many Syrians see the present crisis as just another proxy war over pipelines and geopolitics. Before rushing deeper into the conflagration, it would be wise for us to consider the abundant facts supporting that perspective.

So much for our supposed interest in "humanitarian" intervention in Syria. From a Syrian point of view, it has never been thus. It has been about pipelines since 1949, and they understand that, even if we don't.

The Current Conflagration

Kennedy then turns to the present, or the near-present. Refer to the map above as you read:

A Pipeline War

In [the Syrians'] view, our war against Bashar Assad did not begin with the peaceful civil protests of the Arab Spring in 2011. Instead it began in 2000 when Qatar proposed to construct a $10 billion, 1,500km pipeline through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

Qatar shares with Iran, the South Pars/North Dome gas field, the world's richest natural gas repository. The international trade embargo, until recently, prohibited Iran from selling gas abroad and ensured that Qatar's gas could only reach European markets if it is liquefied and shipped by sea, a route that restricts volume and dramatically raises costs.

The EU, which gets 30 percent of its gas from Russia, was equally hungry for the pipeline which would have given its members cheap energy and relief from Vladimir Putin's stifling economic and political leverage. Turkey, Russia's second largest gas customer, was particularly anxious to end its reliance on its ancient rival and to position itself as the lucrative transect hub for Asian fuels to EU markets. The Qatari pipeline would have benefited Saudi Arabia's conservative Sunni Monarchy by giving them a foothold in Shia dominated Syria.

The Saudi's geopolitical goal is to contain the economic and political power of the Kingdom's principal rival, Iran, a Shiite state, and close ally of Bashar Assad. The Saudi monarchy viewed the U.S. sponsored Shia takeover in Iraq as a demotion to its regional power and was already engaged in a proxy war against Tehran in Yemen, highlighted by the Saudi genocide against the Iranian backed Houthi tribe.

Which puts the Qatari pipeline squarely opposite to Russia's national interest — natural gas (methane) sales to Europe.

Of course, the Russians, who sell 70 percent of their gas exports to Europe, viewed the Qatar/Turkey pipeline as an existential threat. In Putin's view, the Qatar pipeline is a NATO plot to change the status quo, deprive Russia of its only foothold in the Middle East, strangle the Russian economy and end Russian leverage in the European energy market. In 2009, Assad announced that he would refuse to sign the agreement to allow the pipeline to run through Syria “to protect the interests of our Russian ally."

That was likely the last straw vis-à-vis the U.S. Which brings us to another pipeline, the so-called "Islamic Pipeline" (see map above):

"Assad further enraged the Gulf's Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline" running from Iran's side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran's influence in the Mid-East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Another, competing pipeline which would run through Syrian territory, but this time carrying Iranian gas instead of Qatari gas. Thus the demonizing of Assad as evil in the mold of Saddam Hussein, instead of just a run-of-the-mill Middle East autocrat, as bad as some but better than others. Kennedy includes a good section on the history of the al-Assad family's rule of Syria, including this information from top reporters Sy Hersh and Robert Parry:

According to Hersh, “He certainly wasn't beheading people every Wednesday like the Saudis do in Mecca." Another veteran journalist, Bob Parry, echoes that assessment. “No one in the region has clean hands but in the realms of torture, mass killings, civil liberties and supporting terrorism, Assad is much better than the Saudis."

In September 2013, the Sunni states involved in the Qatar-Turkey pipeline were so determined to remove Syrian opposition to the pipeline that they offered, via John Kerry, to carry the whole cost of an U.S. invasion to topple al-Assad.

Kerry reiterated the offer to Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL27): “With respect to Arab countries offering to bear the costs of [an American invasion] to topple Assad, the answer is profoundly Yes, they have. The offer is on the table."

Obama's response:

Despite pressure from Republicans, Barrack Obama balked at hiring out young Americans to die as mercenaries for a pipeline conglomerate. Obama wisely ignored Republican clamoring to put ground troops in Syria or to funnel more funding to “moderate insurgents." But by late 2011, Republican pressure and our Sunni allies had pushed the American government into the fray.

The rest is a history of provocation and over-reaction — a great deal of both — and chaos and death in Syria. Kennedy provides much detail here, at one point adding:

[Syria's] moderates are fleeing a war that is not their war. They simply want to escape being crushed between the anvil of Assad's Russian backed tyranny and the vicious Jihadi Sunni hammer that we had a hand in wielding in a global battle over competing pipelines. You can't blame the Syrian people for not widely embracing a blueprint for their nation minted in either Washington or Moscow. The super powers have left no options for an idealistic future that moderate Syrians might consider fighting for. And no one wants to die for a pipeline.

I'll leave it there, but again, do read the entire piece if you want to truly understand what's going on in Syria, and what is about to go on.

Bottom Line

Bottom line, it's as Kennedy said: "No one wants to die for a pipeline" ... but many do and will.

I'll offer three thoughts. One, if we weren't so determined to be deeply dependent on fossil fuels, this would be their war, not ours. Two, we are deeply dependent on fossil fuels because of the political machinations of the oil companies, their CEOs, and the banks and hedge funds who fund them, all of whom pay our government officials — via campaign contributions and the revolving door — to prolong that dependence. We're here because the holders of big oil money want us here.

And three, keep all this in mind during the term of the next president. It will help you make sense of the phony warrior-cum-humanitarian arguments we're almost certain to be subjected to.

We have been at war in Syria over pipelines since 1949. This is just the next mad phase.

GP
  

Coalition Of The Shilling

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, says Germany isn't sending men or planes to fight in Iraq, which is significantly different from what President Obama is asserting. Instead, says Steinmeier, let Iran do the heavy lifting. At Friday's UN Security Council session on ISIS, he said that "[d]espite the difficulties that we have with Iran and its nuclear ambitions, I am of the opinion that all of the neighbors of Syria and Iraq should be included… I sincerely hope that Iran will be considered, for only then will we be able to get control of the threat posed by IS."

Over the weekend the editors of the NY Times wondered about an Iranian role in the battle against ISIS, The Unlikeliest of Coalitions. In fact, they're casting a great deal of doubt on America's ability to put any kind of effective coalition together in the Middle East, and they ran down the obstacles, country by country.

TURKEY

More than any other Sunni Muslim state, Turkey, a NATO member with one of the region’s largest armies, should be a strong ally. Yet it ruled out a front-line role, citing concerns for the safety of 49 Turkish diplomats who had been taken hostage by ISIS (they were returned to Turkey on Saturday). It also fears that efforts to arm Kurdish fighters in Iraq to fight ISIS could embolden Kurdish separatist militants in Turkey.

The Turkish government, determined to see Mr. Assad overthrown, has been supporting insurgent groups in Syria since the start of the civil war and allowing them to pass freely across the Turkish border into Syria. But even though ISIS has now proved itself a threat to Turkey and beyond, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, has failed to take aggressive measures to stop the cross-border flow of foreign fighters, weapons and oil trade benefiting ISIS. In fact, Turkey’s open-border policy early on in the Syrian war was central to the rise of ISIS…

SAUDI ARABIA AND THE GULF STATES

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were among 10 Arab states that recently promised to “do their share” to defeat ISIS. Many of these states have for a long time aided rival Islamist and militant groups, including in Syria. For example, although Qatar hosts the largest American military base in the region, it has supported a range of Islamist groups (including Islamic radicals in Syria) with safe haven, financial aid and weapons. Saudi Arabia has allowed sheikhs linked to Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch to raise funds openly, and the United Arab Emirates backed a faction in Libya against Islamic militias supported by Qatar.

Against this backdrop, however, some productive commitments have been made. Saudi Arabia has agreed to host a major base for training Syrian opposition forces. And Jordan, already a site for rebel training, is expected to provide intelligence.

While American officials say some countries, which they have not identified, want to join American forces in making airstrikes against militants in Iraq, the United States must carefully incorporate participation by Muslim countries so it does not further inflame sectarian tensions and anti-American feeling.

IRAN AND SYRIA

Both the United States and Iran, adversaries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, consider ISIS a threat. But Iranian leaders have ruled out direct cooperation in repelling the extremist group. Iran, one of the Assad regime’s strongest allies, is worried that American airstrikes in Syria and expanded support for Syrian rebel forces could further damage Mr. Assad’s hold on power. American leaders have been cool to cooperating with Iran because that would anger Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim states. Negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, now at a critical point, are also affecting these calculations.

Whether the Obama administration can bring all of these and other conflicting agendas into a coherent military and political alliance against the Islamic State is far from certain. So far, the focus has mostly been on what military-related assistance such partners can offer.

What is certain is that there can never be real success against ISIS without some kind of political settlement in Syria, an inclusive government in Iraq and some reduction in the Sunni-Shiite tensions that created space for ISIS to grow. In this regard, Saudi Arabia’s decisions to reopen its embassy in Baghdad, invite Iraq to the recent coalition meeting in Jidda and invite an Iranian official for talks in Riyadh were unheralded but potentially important steps toward a united front.

At the same time the NY Times was fretting about putting together a coalition, The Telegraph was writing about the duplicitous role American regional "ally" Qatar has been-- and still is-- playing. Remember, Qatar, an oil-rich peninsula that juts out into the Persian Gulf from Saudi Arabia is just 4,467 square miles of waterless desert (bigger than Delaware and smaller than Connecticut). The country is a feudal Wahhabi monarchy with 278,000 Qatari citizens and about a million and a half foreign workers, many of whom are, in effect, slaves. Materially very rich and, socially, very backward. David Blair and Richard Spencer, writing for The Telegraph make the point that the cash (and weapons) for the Islamist extremists-- Libya Dawn-- who have taken over Libya's capital and forced the pro-Western government to flee was provided by Qataris.

The remarkable truth is that few in the Middle East would be shocked. From Hamas in the Gaza Strip to radical armed movements in Syria, Qatar's status as a prime sponsor of violent Islamists, including groups linked to al-Qaeda, is clear to diplomats and experts.

Qatar's promotion of extremism has so infuriated its neighbours that Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates all chose to withdraw their ambassadors from the country in March.

Take Syria, where Qatar has been sponsoring the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad's regime. In itself, that policy places Qatar alongside the leading Western powers and much of the Arab world.

But Qatar has deliberately channelled guns and cash towards Islamist rebels, notably a group styling itself Ahrar al-Sham, or "Free Men of Syria". Only last week, Khalid al-Attiyah, the Qatari foreign minister, praised this movement as "purely" Syrian.

He added that its fighters had suffered heavy losses while combating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the group behind the murder of David Haines, the British aid worker, and which is holding John Cantlie and Alan Henning hostage.

Far from being a force for moderation, Ahrar al-Sham played a key role in transforming the anti-Assad revolt into an Islamist uprising. Its men fought alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate, during the battle for Aleppo and they were accused of at least one sectarian massacre.

Instead of fighting Isil, Ahrar al-Sham helped the jihadists to run Raqqa, the town in eastern Syria that is now the capital of the self-proclaimed "Caliphate." This cooperation with Isil happened for some months until the two groups fell out last year.

Last December, the US Treasury designated a Qatari academic and businessman, Abdul Rahman al-Nuaimi, as a "global terrorist." The US accused him of sending nearly £366,000 to "al-Qaeda's representative in Syria," named as Abu Khalid al-Suri.

Suri has also been a senior commander of Ahrar al-Sham. If America was right to describe him as "al-Qaeda's representative," then there was an overlap between the leadership of the two groups.

Mr Nuaimi is also accused by the US treasury of transferring as much as $2 million per month to "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and $250,000 to al-Shabaab, the movement's affiliate in Somalia. Mr Nuaimi denies the allegations, saying they are motivated by his own criticism of US policy.

…Last month, Gerd Müller, the German international development minister, implicated Qatar in the rise of Isil. "You have to ask who is arming, who is financing Isil troops. The keyword there is Qatar," he said.

Yet a state endowed with large reserves of gas and oil and one of the world's biggest sovereign wealth funds can wield immense influence, even over Berlin. Qatar was duly able to secure a formal withdrawal of this charge from the German government.

The following day The Telegraph ran an unsigned editorial whose first sentence was "Enough is enough," Funding Terrorists Is Not What Friends Do.

Finally, politicians are starting to ask who is financing the people who do these terrible things. Vernon Coaker, the shadow defence secretary, has called on ministers to press states in the Arab region to cease sending funds to the “brutal” jihadists. “These are dangerous people and we have to defeat them and one of the ways to do that is to cut off their source of funding,” Mr Coaker told this newspaper.

Indeed, an investigation for The Telegraph discovered that while oil-rich Qatar denies ever financing Isil, it did become the main patron for an extremist group fighting in Syria called Ahrar al-Sham and that Qatari weapons and money may have reached the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate. Meanwhile, Western diplomats believe that Qatar supplied arms to the Islamist coalition that captured Tripoli in Libya last month. And Qatar is a longstanding backer of Hamas, the radical Palestinian movement in Gaza. In 2012, Hamas’s political leaders moved their headquarters from Damascus in Syria to Doha, the Qatari capital.

Stephen Barclay, a Tory MP, has suggested that British diplomats might be unwilling to confront the Qataris for fear of frightening away their cash investments in the UK. But speak up they must. Security and the safety of British citizens is priceless-- and it cannot be right that a state such as Qatar can, on the one hand, support radical groups and, on the other, enjoy such a lucrative partnership with the West. It should be compelled to do the right thing.

UPDATE: So It Begins… Again

BOOM! Obama started bombing ISIS bases in Syria tonight. Supposedly, warplanes from Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and even Qatar took part. The main target was Raqqa which is about 100 miles east of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city-- or at least it was Syria's biggest city until it was much diminished by war. The population of Raqqa is somewhat under a quarter million people-- smaller now since the 10% of the population that was Christian has fled. It was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate (796 to 809) and ISIS uses it as their "capital" now, although probably not for long.