The manipulating analytical reports plays a key role in the evaluation of the “success of the US foreign policy”. Mainstream think-tanks simply wants to deliver to the political administration what it wants to hear.
This article originally appeared at Die Propagandaschau, translated by Frank Jakob exclusively for SouthFront
The facts from the article that we can regard as true describe the discontent of a remarkable number of analysts of the US secret services that complained about both the manipulation of their reports as well as about a working climate that forces them to censor themselves if they don’t want to get in trouble. These manipulations originate in both cases either directly (reports are being criticized, changed, sent back to author or not even distributed) or indirectly (self-censorship by analyst) from supervising personnel from the upper management layers of CENCOM.
The Daily Beast delivers its own explanation in its article: “Some thought it was a consequence of supervisors wanting to secure their promotions by giving the reports the desired political spin.”
This potential “explanation” for the motivation of manipulating reports plays a key role in the evaluation of the matter as a whole. This in fact is in itself a political spin because it is nothing more than an assumption that is intended to push the reader in a desired direction namely: There are no other political reasons one should worry about. The supervising personnel simply wants to deliver to the political administration what it wants to hear.
Supervisors that want to deliver what they think the administration wants to hear is more a less a plausible explanation but still just one of many and in itself contradicting to the reactions of many analysts who are obviously not happy that their reports are being tampered with and therefore risk getting into trouble by voicing their discontent. If one doesn’t cease thinking at this point – because on is not satisfied with the reasons given for this behavior – and if one keeps in mind geopolitics then one can come to a completely different conclusion.
The big geopolitical picture of the goals of US foreign policy was made public by Zbigniew Brezinski, Stratfor-CEO George Friedman or Wesley Clarke, to name some. Even before 9/11 there were plans for military intervention in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Lebanon and US intentions of splitting up Syria and the Shiite axis together with Russian influence in the region are exactly in accordance to these geopolitical goals which give the least regard to human lives.
This leaves room for two possible interpretations. The first is that an ever changing administration of the US does play no role for a group that one would call a “state-in-state” or simply a “deep state”. This group consists of administrators and high-ranking personnel of the military as well as conglomerates and think tanks that are financially and politically connected to the military. They are mainly out of reach for democratic control because their positions and not being assigned by elections but by career networks.
If this group chose a geopolitical goal – or shares geopolitical goals with the current US-administration without resorting to clandestine “conspiracy” – then it can either push its goals through in cooperation or against the administrations will. So it is likely that the US president und his administration share plans with this group and actively cooperate with them. In this case they are part of the disinformation campaign, they know the real truth about the reality in Syria and do everything in their power to control the offensive of the islamists and guide them – something that the disinformation spread to the public is a part of because the general public would not accept a cooperation of the USA with Al-Qaida or IS.
But it is also likely that a state-in-a-state would push its interests through against the will of the administration by intentionally feeding false information to the president, his advisors and ministers. If CENTCOM would consciously manipulate reports by experts to make the president and the public think that Islamic State would just be an unimportant factor that one has under control and successfully contained then this would give IS a chance to continue its offensive – in accordance to the goals of US foreign policy and geopolitics – to achieve the ultimate goal of ousting the government in Damascus.
One thing is clear: leading personnel of the US-military make sure that the political leadership of the USA receives false information, something IS is profiting from during their march from Iraq to Damascus. It remains unclear whether the political leadership is sharing these geopolitical goals and therefore is an accessory before the fact and an active part of the conspiracy to trick the general public about what is really going on in Syria. Or maybe the Obama administration is itself a victim of this trickery. The conclusion of Daily Beast that the ones responsible within the military leadership would falsify reports only to further their future career prospects remains not very convincing.
