Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today I will again be discussing Syria and the United States involvement there.

An attack on Syria – for no good reason

The further we get from the alleged poison gas attack by the forces of Syrian president Bandar al Assad upon his own civilian population, the less sense it makes. We are expected to believe that Assad used a poison gas weapon, banned by international agreement and sure to draw an immediate US response, against a civilian population, which was no threat to him, and in an area in which he was apparently just hours away from complete victory. In addition, the attack was launched immediately after President Trump announced that the United States would soon be leaving Syria. The claim is therefore not believable.

I watched the speech of UN Ambassador Nikki Haley to the Security Council and her statements seem pretty implausible. She made many accusations but offered zero evidence. Her statement was a long diatribe blaming Russia for the alleged attack because Russia has refused UN inspections and sanctions on Assad in the past. She again offered no evidence whatsoever that anything she said was true. We are expected to believe and accept the statement, “the United States believes, or United States intelligence has revealed”, as evidence but that doesn’t cut it anymore. Unfortunately, United States intelligence agencies have lost the right to be believed at face value and real evidence is required.

France and the United Kingdom joined in the American attack and also defended it alongside Ambassador Haley at the Security Council. However, former UK Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, offered a different view. Mr. Ford did not share his government’s and the media’s version of the attack. He said that he did not believe the poison gas attack by Assad forces actually happened and the whole thing was a false flag attack.

History of relations with dictators

Bandar al Assad is a bad dictator and the United States really doesn’t like bad dictators, or does it? Muammar Gaddafi of Libya was a bad dictator, Saddam Hussein of Iraq was a bad dictator, and so are Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-Un. According to Freedom House’s rating system there were 49 nations in the world, as of 2015, the last year measured, that were characterized as “dictatorships”. The United States Government provides military assistance to 36 of them. Seventy three per cent of the world’s dictators are on the dole of U.S. taxpayers.

Furthermore, we are now in the 17^th year of the “war on Terror”, declared unilaterally by President George W. Bush in 2001. That war seems to be spreading instead of ending so the question becomes– Where in the world is the U.S. military operating today? According to a recent article by US News and World Report entitled “Where in the World id the US Military? Everywhere”, the U.S. military is literally everywhere. American counterterrorism forces are active in 76, or 40%, of the world’s countries. Those are just the forces actively deployed fighting actual wars in 40% of the world. U.S. forces are based or located in most of the rest.

Expanding operations

Operation Enduring Freedom, which started in Afghanistan in October of 2001, has now rapidly spread around the entire world. Right now Africa, more than anywhere else, is the most active region in the war on terror and is therefore getting the most U.S. attention. Military personnel, as well as massive amounts of military technology, hardware, training and expertise are pouring in to local African military and police forces. U.S. military bases, camps, compounds, port facilities and “cooperative security locations” dot the African continent. U.S. Special Forces are being deployed to track insurgents across Africa. Drone strikes to kill targets are also increasing in frequency across the region.

This expansion of the commitment to Africa was started with the creation of AFRICOM or the African command. Some of the military voices that one might presume reach the top of the chain say that all this military investment was a necessary precursor to economic development in the region. The Department of Defense’s manual on AFRICOM says that AFRICOM will concentrate on war prevention rather than war fighting, but it sure looks like war fighting so far. U.S. commitments in the African region have been shifted from diplomacy to military action. This change in tactic is part of a U.S. strategy that crosses the globe with counterterrorism efforts, and so the militarization of Africa is just part of a worldwide process.

War as business

That’s all bad news, but the good news is that war is very good for business. If one could know in advance where and when the U.S., U.K., and/or France were going to war then one could make a lot of money in the markets. That’s exactly the situation with Philip May, husband of Teresa May, the Prime Minister of the U.K. Mr. May is a senior executive of Capital Group, which is a major stockholder of both Lockheed Martin and British Aerospace. This insider information available to Mr. May from his wife constitutes an obvious conflict of interest for the husband of the Prime Minister.

It seems that Mr. May’s firm made a great deal of money from the bombing of Syria and that means he did as well. Mr. May and a handful of others in all three countries had advance knowledge of when the missiles would fly and that there would be no direct conflict with Russia. Who knows what other cronies in the leadership of the three countries also had advance warning. Mr. Macron of France, like Donald Trump, was a business man and not a politician before he was Prime Minister, so perhaps those experienced in business will be the new trend in world leadership. Mr. Macron recently entertained the CEO of Goldman Sachs Group, the most powerful force in finance worldwide, at Versailles.

Russia agrees not to respond…

Apparently the talk of a U.S. and Russia confrontation was headed off with an agreement that Russian forces and Russian assets would not be targeted and, in return, Russia would not respond. There seems to have been no clear objective to the attacks which mostly just made the rubble dance. No evidence of chemical weapons has been found as yet, and no clouds of poison gas were released by the attacks. Over 100 missiles were directed against only 3 targets which, according to Global Research, were agreed upon in advance by the Russians. This careful negotiation with Russia was obviously known in advance by the financial insiders and therefore they also knew the outcome in advance.

…and the war merchants make out like bandits

On Monday morning after the attack Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and British Aerospace stocks skyrocketed when the markets opened. Raytheon produces the Tomahawk cruise missiles which were used in the attack. Insider trading such as that I have described here is illegal, and an investigation should have been conducted to see if it really happened. The sad state of affairs, however, is that no investigation of these people is possible given their political ties.

Five days after the attack on Syria, the U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin an almost one billion dollar contract to start the design of a new hypersonic cruise missile. Lockheed is to design and produce the new missile as part of a Pentagon push for America’s hypersonic arsenal to be built over decades. Total value of the deal for Lockheed was reportedly as high as $928 million over the course of the unspecified timeline. These contracts rarely come off as scheduled however, and the delays always raise the cost two or three times.

War is indeed good for business. The U.S. 17 year war on terror around the globe, and the U.S. 17 year war in Afghanistan with no end in sight and no understanding of the concept of victory, must be really good for business. I wonder if they are fools, madmen or just good businessmen.

What then is the nature of war in the 21^st century; death, destruction, and most of all money?

At least that’s the way I see it,

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle,