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GARETH PORTER,
porter.gareth50[at]gmail.com,
@GarethPorter
An investigative journalist and author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, Porter just wrote the piece, “Hillary Clinton and Her Hawks” for Consortium News, which states: “As Hillary Clinton begins her final charge for the White House, her advisers are already recommending air strikes and other new military measures against the Assad regime in Syria.

“The clear signals of Clinton’s readiness to go to war appears to be aimed at influencing the course of the war in Syria as well as U.S. policy over the remaining six months of the Obama administration. (She also may be hoping to corral the votes of Republican neoconservatives concerned about Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy.)

“Last month, the think tank run by Michele Flournoy, the former Defense Department official considered to be most likely to be Clinton’s choice to be Secretary of Defense, explicitly called for ‘limited military strikes’ against the Assad regime.

“And earlier this month Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director, who has been advising candidate Clinton, declared in an interview that the next president would have to increase the number of Special Forces and carry out air strikes to help ‘moderate’ groups against President Bashar al-Assad. (When Panetta gave a belligerent speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, he was interrupted by chants from the delegates on the floor of ‘no more war!’ …

“It is highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for figures known to be close to a presidential candidate to make public recommendations for new and broader war abroad. The fact that such explicit plans for military strikes against the Assad regime were aired so openly soon after Clinton had clinched the Democratic nomination suggests that Clinton had encouraged Flournoy and Panetta to do so.

“The rationale for doing so is evidently not to strengthen her public support at home but to shape the policy decisions made by the Obama administration and the coalition of external supporters of the armed opposition to Assad.

“Obama’s refusal to threaten to use military force on behalf of the anti-Assad forces or to step up military assistance to them has provoked a series of leaks to the news media by unnamed officials – primarily from the Defense Department – criticizing Obama’s willingness to cooperate with Russia in seeking a Syrian ceasefire and political settlement as ‘naïve.’

“The news of Clinton’s advisers calling openly for military measures signals to those critics in the administration to continue to push for a more aggressive policy on the premise that she will do just that as president.”

The Washington Post is reporting: “Ashton Carter to be nominated as next defense secretary.”

MELVIN GOODMAN, goody789 at verizon.net
In his recent piece “The Dumbing Down of National Security Policy” following the resignation of Chuck Hagel, Goodman wrote: “The inability of three secretaries of defense [under President Obama] to ride herd on senior general officers at an important juncture in national security policy points to the need for a seasoned expert who can reexamine use of force issues, gain control over weapons acquisition policy, and take a hard look at defense spending. The mainstream media is already speculating that former deputy defense chiefs, such as Ashton Carter or Michele Flournoy, are leading candidates to replace Hagel but neither one is strong enough for such a difficult assignment.”

Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. His 42-year government career includes tours with the U.S. Army, the CIA, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense. His most recent books are The Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism.

USA Today notes that Carter “worked in the Clinton administration, helping develop the U.S. nuclear weapons policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

ALICE SLATER, aslater at rcn.com
Slater will be leaving the U.S. for Vienna for a week beginning Thursday for a conference organized by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She is with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the Abolition 2000 coordinating committee. Slater said today: “Carter has been through the revolving door between industry, the military and academia — advising Goldman Sachs and other investment firms on military technology along the way.

“He was present at the desecration of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, signed by Bill Clinton with a $6 billion promise to the Dr. Strangeloves in the U.S. weapons labs that they could do computer simulated laboratory tests of nuclear weapons, coupled with sub-critical tests a thousand feet below the desert floor at the Nevada test site, where plutonium is blown up with explosives, but because there is no chain reaction, the Clinton administration contended it was not a test, kind of like not inhaling or not having sex with that woman.

“It was because the U.S. refused to preclude advanced technical testing that India announced it would do a whole new series of nuclear tests, developing its own nuclear arsenal, swiftly followed by Pakistan. This $6 billion program grew like a cancer upon the nation and is now projected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years with projections for new bomb factories, new warheads, and delivery systems.

“Carter was also instrumental in establishing the policy that led to the new demonization of Russia which we see today. He advised Clinton on missile technology and how the U.S. could begin to deploy a missile shield in Alaska while claiming it was not violating the 1972 anti-ballistic Missile treaty with Russia, although Russia was not convinced. Bush actually walked out of the ABM treaty, which Clinton had already violated, and the missile race was on. Carter also advised Obama on expanding the U.S. empire to Asia in the so-called Asia pivot, which resulted in new bases in the Pacific, expanded missile shields with Japan and South Korea, and actually stationing troops in Australia.”

See Carter’s profile on RightWeb.

In 2006, Carter outflanked the Bush administration, advocating a strike on North Korea if they did a ballistic missile test in a Washington Post op-ed titled “If Necessary, Strike and Destroy.”

In 1996, he warned of the presumed threats posed by Iraq and Iran’s alleged weapons of mass destruction programs.