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May 6, 2020

Chinese Intel Ministry Warns of Growing Risk of War With US

US warships are being sent regularly through the South China Sea to challenge Chinese maritime claims, and warplanes did recent overflights over the area. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is faulting China for its “provocations.”

The US ships are deliberately being provocative, but the US objection is that China reacted by expelling the USS Barry from the area near the Paracel Islands. The islands are claimed by China, but the US backs a contrary claim by Vietnam.

Amid all of this, China’s top intelligence ministry has issued a report to President Xi warning that the risk of a direct war with the US is at its highest level since the Tiananmen Square massacre. This is being driven by mounting anti-Chinese sentiment, related to the coronavirus pandemic.

— By  Jason Ditz

Two Decades of War in Afghanistan Is Enough

The Trump administration is edging America toward the exit in Afghanistan, nearly two decades after President George W. Bush intervened in the aftermath of 9/11. The U.S. quickly dispersed Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda and ousted the Taliban, only to spend the following years failing to build a stable, liberal democracy centered in Kabul.

America’s extended commitment of lives and resources to Afghanistan never made sense. If there is one spot on the planet in which the US has little strategic interest, it is Afghanistan. The latter is geographically distant, landlocked among Iran, China, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

— By  Doug Bandow

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OPCW Insiders Denounce Latest Syria Report

Over the past year, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has been quietly facing a crisis of credibility. The crisis started when whistleblowers within the organization shared information that contradicted the findings of an OPCW investigation into the April 2018 alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. Leaks and whistleblower testimony show the organization suppressed the findings of its experts to fit the narrative that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack. That crisis of credibility continues. A group of OPCW insiders have just spoken out against a new report that blames the Syrian government for an alleged 2017 chemical weapons attack.

On April 8th, the OPCW issued the first report from its new Investigation and Identification Team (IIT), a unit of the organization established to identify the perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks inside Syria. The new IIT report found "reasonable grounds" to conclude the Syrian government was responsible for three chemical attacks in Ltamenah, Syria at the end of March 2017. Specifically, two sarin attacks on March 24th and 30th, and one chlorine attack on March 25th. The three alleged attacks jointly "affected" 106 people and did not claim any lives.

— By Dave DeCamp

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Nine years on – and one pandemic later – the Libyan "shit show," has gone full mercenary…and few notice.

— By Maj. Danny Sjursen, USA (ret.)

Inspector General: NATO Withholding Key Information on Taliban Attacks in Afghanistan

Trying to find proper metrics to gauge the Afghan War has been a challenge for awhile now. Analysts really muddle through with publicly offered information, and even people like the US Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) struggle, with officials preferring they not be too informed on the state of affairs.

SIGAR’s latest quarterly reported revealed how tough it has been, noting that one of the last sources of data, NATO’s stats on Taliban attacks, are now being withheld both from the public and from the SIGAR office.

— By Jason Ditz

Averting Our Gaze From Biowarfare: Pandemics and Self-fulfilling Prophecies

People who are dismissing the possibility that the pandemic might have come from a lab – either accidentally from a Wuhan lab or them being effectively framed, as we saw with the 2001 anthrax attacks – are basically risking the future of humanity because they don’t want to have an uncomfortable discussion.

On Feb. 11, I asked Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s Principal Deputy Director, at the National Press Club if it were a “complete coincidence” that the outbreak of the novel coronavirus happened in Wuhan, a center of China’s declared biowarfare/biodefense capacity. I didn’t get a satisfactory answer. In fact, at the end it was remarkably evasive. She wouldn’t answer my follow-up question about whether the claimed “zoonotic origin” precluded the outbreak from being caused pathogens from nature that then could be accidentally leaked from the labs.

— By Sam Husseini

US Drawdown in Afghanistan Is Ahead of Schedule

Aaron Maté on the Latest OPCW Scandal

With Apparently Fabricated Nuclear Documents, Netanyahu Pushed the US Towards War With Iran

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