Transparency International warns: "Corruption has fueled political unrest, extremism, and formed a narrative for violent extremist groups" Western nations—led by the United States—are selling large quantities of weapons to governments in the Middle East and North Africa, providing little oversight for how these arms are used, and thereby fueling corruption and conflict in countries from Sau [...]

When I was a kid, three presidents told us we had to fight in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, because if we didn’t fight them over there, we’d have to fight them on the beaches of California. We believed. It was a lie. I was a teenager during the Cold War, and several presidents told us we needed to create massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons, garrison the world, invade Cuba, fight in odd litt [...]

Newly acquired documents show the Pentagon spent nearly $400 million, or $2 million per fighter, on its failed train-and-equip program, according to USA Today. The Pentagon claims the actual cost was $30,000 per trainee. [...]

Damascus is opposed to having US troops on its soil, thus the US is committing aggression and international crimes against the nation of Syria, says Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute. [...]

DOHA - Amidst the wilderness of mirrors surrounding the Syrian tragedy, a diamond-shaped fact persists: Despite so many degrees of separation, the Saudis are still talking to the Russians. Why? A key reason is because a perennially paranoid House of Saud feels betrayed by their American protectors who, under the Obama administration, seem to have given up on isolating Iran. [...]

A Russian fighter jet was forced to enter Turkish airspace in early October while performing an evasive maneuver against a surface-to-air missile system, the commander of Russia’s Air Force said. “Our fighter jet was on a combat mission in Northern Syria in very dense cloud conditions.  [...]

Russian and US air forces have staged joint drills to practice air safety measures in the skies over Syria, according to the Russian General Staff, which also reported that its military has begun to coordinate with Syria’s moderate opposition forces. In the course of the drills, both the air crews and ground services of Russian and US forces drilled procedures aimed at avoiding problems in ca [...]

In a move that critics says fulfills long-held warnings of "mission creep" and amount to throwing "gasoline on a fire," the Obama administration on Friday announced that U.S. ground troops will now be deployed inside Syria. In strategic leaks to various media outlets, the Pentagon made clear the president's plan to send approximately 50 Special Operations soldiers inside the war-torn country. R [...]

I first came to the conclusion that the U.S. is a dictatorship in 2002, when I found proof that George W. Bush was lying to claim that he possessed proof that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his WMD (weapons of mass destruction) stockpiles, and when the U.S. and UK ’news’ media hid this crucial fact that their heads-of-state were lying. [...]

The Russian Defense Ministry has denied media reports its aircraft hit hospitals in Syria, saying the medical facilities mentioned by Western media don’t actually exist. The Defense Ministry has checked the data presented in recent media reports, which blamed Russian aviation for hitting several hospitals in Syria, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, the ministry spokesman said in a press briefin [...]

Official Washington’s neocon-dominated “group think” on Syria is that everything is the fault of President Assad and Russian President Putin, but the actual history shows many missed opportunities for peace because of the U.S. obsession with dictating “regime change” in country after country, as Jonathan Marshall explains. [...]

Sending some 50 US advisers to Syria illegally to train the so-called ‘moderate rebels’ looks like a calculated move. If, or when, someone gets hurt, the US will have a pretext for boots on the ground, believes retired US Air Force Lieutenant Col Karen Kwiatkowski. Does this deployment mean Americans will be putting themselves in the direct line of fire in Syria? [...]

Obama’s decision to send Special Forces into Syria is being widely viewed as a US military escalation in the country. The troop dispatch also signals that the US trying to forestall Russian successes in wiping out Washington’s regime-change assets in Syria. In short, the US Special Forces are being used as “human shields” to curb Russian air strikes against anti-government mercenaries, [...]

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair “misrepresented” military intelligence in order to secure approval to invade Iraq in 2003, Dr Hans Blix, the head of the UN inspection team at the time, has revealed. Blix, who inspected Iraq for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) before the US and British-led invasion, told former-Telegraph journalist Peter Oborne the intelligence gathered was not accuratel [...]

Threatening continued assaults on the Kurdish militia in Syria, the Turkish president has warned he will not request anyone’s permission to do whatever is necessary to prevent the spread of support for Kurdish autonomy, even if it requires bombing US-allied rebels.   [...]

Sir John Chilcot has told Prime Minister David Cameron that the long-delayed, highly controversial report into the legality of the Iraq War will certainly be published in June or July 2016. In an official letter to Cameron, Chilcot said the text of the report would be completed by April 18, 2016, at which point “national security” checking of the content will commence. [...]

The Iraqi government never asked for and does not need any US involvement in ground operations against Islamic State terrorists. The eye-opening statement came only a day after the Pentagon promised its partner more ground support if it was required. “This is an Iraqi affair and the government did not ask the US Department of Defense to be involved in direct operations,” spokesman Sa'ad al- [...]

Something really fishy is going on in Syria, US Marine combat veteran Gordon Duff notes, adding that Western mass media remains suspiciously mute about the matter. There are lots of battles being fought across Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Cameroon, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Libya, accompanied by various local conflicts, US Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War and senior editor of Vet [...]

Once again, whatever hangs in the future for Syria on both the political and military fronts depends on the new Battle of Aleppo. The city and its outskirts, with the influx of internal refugees, may be harboring up to three million people by now. It’s always about Aleppo. Here’s what’s going on, essentially, on the ground. West Aleppo is controlled by Damascus, via the Syrian Arab Army ( [...]