CTH has some new readers, so against the backdrop of the UniParty in Washington DC jumping into action to criticize President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria; and against the backdrop of President Trump authorizing an operation last night that killed ISIS leader Baghdadi, perhaps a little factual and historic refresher is in order….

On September 30th 2016 the New York Times quietly released a leaked audio recording of Secretary John Kerry meeting with multiple factions associated within Syria.

The 40-minute discussion took place on the sidelines of a United Nations General Assembly in New York. The meeting took place at the Dutch Mission to the United Nations on Sept. 22nd 2016:

[…] Kerry’s off-record conversation was apparently with two dozen ‘Syrian civilians’, all from US backed opposition-linked NGO’s in education and medical groups supposedly working in ‘rebel-held’ (aka terrorist-held) areas in Syria.

This opposition conclave also included ‘rescue workers’ which can only be ambassadors from the White Helmets, a pseudo NGO which serves as Washington and London’s primary PR front in pursuit of a “No Fly Zone’ in Syria, and it’s being bankrolled by the US, UK, EU and other coalition states to the tune of well over $100 million (so far). (link)

When you listen to the audio recording (embedded below) it becomes immediately obvious what was going on in 2014, 2015 and 2016 as an outcome of policy from the White House. In addition, you discover why this jaw-dropping 2016 leak/story was buried by the U.S. media and how it connects to the prior 4 years of perplexing U.S. mid-east policy.

This evidence within this single story would/should forever remove any credibility toward the U.S. foreign policy under President Obama. It also destroys the credibility of a large number of well known republicans, and explains how the prior action placed President Trump into a precarious position requiring a careful approach.

The key Secretary Kerry moments are at 02:00, and again at approximately 18:30 forward.

The discussion from 18:30 through to 29:00 are exceptionally revealing and should be listened to by anyone who has wondered what was going on in Syria. Kerry even makes mention of the “Responsibility to Protect, or R2P” principle:

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@18:30 Secretary John Kerry [transcript]:

[…] “Well, the problem is the Russians do not care about law, and we do. And, we don’t have a basis -our lawyers tell us- unless we have a U.N. Security Council resolution, which the Russians can veto and Chinese, OR unless we are under attack from the folks there, or unless we are invited in. Russia was invited in by the legitimate regime, well, it’s illegitimate in our mind, by the regime. And so, they were invited in and we’re not invited in.”

“We’re flying in airspace there, where they can turn on the air defense and we have a very different scene. The only reason they’re letting us fly is because we’re going after ISIS. If we were going after Assad, those air defenses, we’d have to take out all those air defenses, uh, and we don’t have a legal justification, frankly, for doing that unless we stretch it way beyond the law on a humanitarian basis, which some people argue we should – by the way.”

“Uh, but so far American legal theory has not gone into these so called “right to protect”, uh, and we don’t even have what we had in Kosovo where we had an, you know, an existing resolution and so forth. Uh, even though we went alone.”

“And so it’s complicated, it’s not easy. And we’ve been fighting. How many wars have we been fighting? We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan, we’ve been fighting in Iraq, we’ve fighting -you know- in the region for fourteen years. And a lot of Americans don’t believe that we should be fighting and sending young Americans over to die in another country. That’s the problem.”

“The congress won’t vote to do it. And you can be mad at us, but what we’re trying to do is help Syrians fight for their own country; and we’ve been spending a lot of money, a lot of effort to try and help do this. So, there’s an opposition there; the opposition is doing very well. Russia came in, and that’s a problem I know, because, uh, y’ know, uh, we don’t behave like Russians, it’s just a different standard.”

“So we are trying to see if we can test whether Russia, you see, is serious about a political solution. And if they are not serious, then we will help the opposition more. But I don’t think that’s particularly good for Syrians in the end because it will mean more fighting.”

Secretary Kerry is then questioned by an obvious sympathizer toward the extremist elements (calls pro-assad Sunni faction “Sunni Jews”) about why the U.S. fights the extremist Sunni (ISIS), but not the extremist Shia (Hezbollah). Kerry’s response:

“Well, they’re [Hezbollah] a terrorist organization, we’ve designated them a terrorist organization. The reason for [airstrikes against the Sunni Extremists] is because they have basically declared war on us; and are plotting against us, and Hezbollah is not plotting against us; Hezbollah is exclusively focused on Israel, they’re not attacking now, and on Syria where they are attacking in support of the, uh, in support of Assad.”

“So it a, uh, it’s…”

[Interrupted]

Question: “But how to make the majority of the Syrian people accept this approach, that because Hezbollah or the Iraqi or Iranian groups are not attacking the U.S. now when they are attacking against the terrorism in Syria?”

Kerry: “Well, they, they are targeted by the opposition who we are arming and training.”

What the recording reveals is substantive:

♦ First, only regime change, the removal of Bashir Assad, in Syria was the 2013, 2014, and 2015 goal for President Obama. This is admitted and outlined by Secretary John Kerry.

♦ Secondly, in order to accomplish this primary goal, the White House was willing to watch the rise of ISIS (’13, ’14, ’15) by placing their bet that ISIS’s success would force Syrian President Bashir Assad to acquiesce toward Obama’s terms and step down.

♦ Thirdly, in order to facilitate the objective, Obama and Kerry intentionally gave arms to ISIS and even, arguably, attacked a Syrian government military convoy to stop a strategic attack upon the Islamic extremists killing 80 Syrian soldiers.

Pause for a moment and consider those three points carefully. Because the audio, along with accompanying research now surfacing, not only exposes these three points as truth – but also provides the specific evidence toward them.

The problem in the Obama/Kerry’s secret strategy became clear when ISIS grew in sufficient strength to give the White House optimism for the scheme – however, instead of capitulation Assad then turned to Russia for help.

When Russia came to aid Bashir Assad the Syrian Government began being able to defeat ISIS and the Islamic Extremist elements within Syria. For the hidden plan of Obama/Kerry (and also McCain, Graham, et al), Russia defeating ISIS, al-Qaeda and al-Nusra, upended their objective.

Against the backdrop of this recording we can reconcile so many historic issues. We already know of a Second Presidential Finding Memo authorizing additional CIA covert action in 2012, this time in Syria. However, unlike the 2011 Libyan operation we do not know the operational name of the second action in 2012 Syria.

2012: WASHINGTON, Aug 1 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said.