Author: Daniel McAdams

According to studies done by government-affiliated doctors, multiple combat deployments have nothing to do with the sharp rise in military suicides over the past several years. The problems are elsewhere, they claim, not the stresses on the military produced by the policy of perpetual war. If we are only allowed to monitor the emails and other communications of vets and active-duty military more closely, they say, we can identify problems before they fully manifest and then prescribe more drugs to fix the problems. And they need more resources. Always more resources. More today in the Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Yesterday’s “no” vote in a Dutch referendum on Ukrainian accession to the European Union has Brussels in a panic. None of the other EU member states allowed a popular vote on bringing in basket case Ukraine — their parliaments rubber-stamped the agreement. But because unanimity is required for any new members, the Dutch “no” — even if only technically advisory — means that the deal is scrapped. For now, at least. Brussels has a way of bringing back vote after vote until the people choose the “right” way. But for now, the result is a huge boost for the Brexit movement as well as for other Euroskeptic parties and politicians throughout Europe. Why did the Dutch vote no? Frustration and anger over Brussels’ immigration policy, over the EU blindly following the US “regime change” of Ukraine that has left the country worse off than before, and over Ukraine’s suspicious secrecy on the facts of the 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17 over eastern Ukraine. What’s next? It could get interesting…

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Congress loves war, but it just doesn’t like to have to vote for it. When you vote for a war you are on record having supported it. So what happens if instead of turning Libya into Switzerland into Libya, the bombing turned Libya into Bangladesh? Better to not have supported it on record. But there is a very dangerous downside to Congress habitually ignoring its Constitutional obligations. It leads to a general policy recklessness and inability to look at cause and effect. Dangerous for us at home and for those abroad. We try to tackle this issue in today’s Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

The scandal around the fixing of intelligence around the Pentagon training program for Syrian rebels has been on slow burn for some time. The mainstream media has largely avoided it, but when Pentagon superiors quash reports of intelligence analysts because they don’t match the desired outcome of the policy there is a big problem. Having spent $500 million to train rebels last year and only produced five fighters, there should be more scrutiny of this program, not less. More today in the Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

You know the old saying: if at first you don’t succeed, keep trying the same dumb thing over and over and wonder why you are still not succeeding. Well, at least that’s the Beltway version of that old saying.

We know what happened last time the Pentagon launched a program to train rebels to fight ISIS (and overthrow Assad) in Syria: they spent half a billion dollars and ended up with five fighters.

What do they care, it’s only (our) money!

But the interventionists are never dissuaded by failure, so last month President Obama signed off on yet another Syria rebel training program. This time they decided the solution to the problem of most of their trained rebels either being killed by or going over to the side of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and ISIS – and more than half of the US-supplied weapons going into the hands of al-Qaeda: instead of training rebels in groups, train rebel commanders one at a time in Turkey. Yes, that Turkey.

Continue reading “They’re at it Again: Pentagon Training New Syrian Rebels”

US backing for the overthrow of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was supposed to be all about democracy. As Washington tells it, the people took to the street demanding democratic reforms and Assad did not listen, so he lost his legitimacy and needed to be overthrown. The US helped facilitate that overthrow by shipping in tons of weapons (much of which ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda and ISIS).

What Syrians were supposed to get in Assad’s place was a bright new future where they could vote for whoever they pleased to lead their government. That is what Washington told us was the noble goal of its regime change operation in Syria.

But just as in other US “democratization” operations overseas, that turns out to be not the case at all.

Syrians are free to choose their leaders as long as they choose the leaders Washington has chosen for them.

Continue reading “White House to Syrians: Don’t Dare Vote for Assad!”