Special Update for Saturday, January 20, 2018

It's just incredible to me how the U.S. corporate media, politicians, and the general public completely ignore the military actions of their own government. The Pentagon operates, it seems, with no political accountability. We have to depend on Juan Cole to tell us that the U.S. has made an open commitment to an endless military presence in Syria.

The U.S. has 2,000 special operations troops in eastern Syria. Did you even know that? They are embedded with a Kurdish faction called the YPG, in a pseudo-state called Afrin. Which Turkey is now shelling. The U.S. troops, according to Rex Tillerson, are supposed to eliminate any resurgence of IS, depose Bashar Assad, enable Syrian refugees to return home, reduce Iranian influence, and eliminate any so-called "weapons of mass destruction" from the country, of which there aren't any. (Chemical weapons are not "weapons of mass destruction.") Right. Sure. But they might get us into a war with Turkey and/or Russia.

Of course, U.S. troops are already in Iraq forever, and Afghanistan forever, and in a whole bunch of other countries you won't know they are in until some of them get killed, for reasons nobody is bothering to tell you, which nobody seems to care about.