Gilbert D. 30 Nov :
Europeans can take pleasure in the rare phenomenon these days of diametrically opposed narratives on major international issues being laid out...
"the switch at Euronews was very obviously flicked in time for President Hollande’s visit to Moscow on Thursday, 26 November to agree on the terms of Russian-French military cooperation. In its coverage of the press conference which followed, Euronews gave equal time to the French and Russian presidents and chose the most important assertion from Putin’s statements for airing, his answer to a French journalist on why Assad’s remaining in power is not an impediment to combatting the Daesh, but is rather an essential precondition: as Putin explained, the Islamic State forces in Syria can only be defeated on the ground, and there is only one military force in existence today, the regular Syrian Army of President Assad. This very reasonable logic just happens to fly in the face of everything Washington, and official France as well, has been saying about the Syrian civil war."
Gareth Porter:
"The data supports Putin's assertion that the shoot-down was prepared in advance due to Russian bombing of Turkey-linked rebels in Syria"
"The Turkish shoot-down was thus in essence an effort to dissuade the Russians from continuing their operations in the area against al-Nusra Front and its allies, using not one but two distinct pretexts: on one hand a very dubious charge of a Russian border penetration for NATO allies, and on the other, a charge of bombing Turkmen civilians for the Turkish domestic audience."
By Matthew Schofield McClatchy Foreign StaffJanuary 15, 2014 "In the report, titled “Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the question about the rocket’s range indicates a major weakness in the case for military action initially pressed by Obama administration officials"
Washington, DC January 14, 2014 by Richard Lloyd, Former UN Weapons Inspector Tesla Laboratories Inc.|Arlington, VA, and Theodore A. Postol, Professor of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gen Wesley Clark, interviewd by Amy Goodman, March 2, 2007: "You see, essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. It is secondly a law enforcement effort and a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force."