Jon Schwarz highlights a Washington Post excerpt from the latest book by Bob Woodward on the Trump administration.
After Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called [Defense Secretary James] Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.
Mattis told the president that he would get right on it. But after hanging up the phone, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” The national security team developed options for the more conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered.
Then we have this report about how the Trump administration plotted with military elements in Venezuela to overthrow president Nicholas Maduro before deciding tk not go through with it (at least as far as we know).
The U.S. held at least three meetings with Venezuelan military officers before deciding not to help them overthrow President Nicolas Maduro, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing unidentified U.S. officials and a former Venezuelan military commander who participated in the talks.
You can expect these stories to cause just a blip and then quickly disappear from the news. That is what always happens with such stories. What is noteworthy is not that the US government so blatantly intervenes in the internal affairs of other countries, to the extent of ordering the overthrow or even the murder of their leaders. That is so well known as to be barely worth mentioning anymore. What is significant is that the media can largely ignore stories of such gross interference in other countries while simultaneously issuing shrill cries of alarm at even alleged marginal attempts by other countries to influence US elections.
It is a telling sign of the remarkable propaganda system that exists in the US where the government does not have to dictate to the media what to say. They reflexively censor themselves.
Yes, indeed. The US has always reserved the right to interfere in other countries’ elections, or to bomb the crap out of them with impunity. America’s whining about 9/11 or Russian interference is typical of a bully. Trump became president because of a gerrymandered electoral system not because of evil foreigners.
One of the most significant achievements of the US propaganda machine is that people, both domestic and foreign actually pay for being lied to, it’s called Hollywood.
Those of us who follow these things know quite well that such interference never occurs with the well-being of the targeted nations’ peoples in mind.