Worse than any Payoff: The Case of Stormy Daniels Charges and Syria Bombing Timeline -- Wag the Dog and the Dogs of War
Cases of Trump and Clinton: Do presidents bomb other countries to distract from their scandals; or does the "Deep State" effectively use scandals and other mechanisms to push presidents to bomb?
March 25, 2018: USA Today reports in “Stormy Daniels to '60 Minutes': I feared for my safety after threat to 'Leave Trump alone’” that “Adult film actress Stormy Daniels said she agreed to accept what she called an ‘extremely low’ payout of $130,000 days before the 2016 presidential election to remain silent about her alleged affair with Donald Trump because she had been threatened years earlier and still feared for her safety.”
April 2: Pope issues plea for peace in Syria at Easter mass.
April 4: Iranian President Rouhani, Turkish President Erdogan and Russian President Putin meet in Turkey and vow to bring peace to Syria.
April 5: Trump broke his silence on Daniels’s charges and denied knowing about hush money payment to her.
April 7: Alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria — which would turn out to be apparently staged — see below. The New York Times states the following day: “Dozens Suffocate in Syria as Government Is Accused of Chemical Attack.”
April 9: FBI raids Michael Cohen’s home. John Bolton's official first day as National Security Adviser.
April 11: Trump says missiles “will be coming” to Syria. Stormy Daniels largely drops off the front pages.
April 12: CIA Director Mike Pompeo's hearing following his nomination as Secretary of State, ramps up threats re Syria. The following day, Trump pardons former Cheney staffer Scooter Libby, virtually the only legal thread pursued from the illegal invasion of Iraq.
April 12: Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons announces it will begin work investigating what happened in Douma on April 14. I highlight this on a news release on April 13, but later that day:
April 13: US / Britain / France strike. The following day, the British Guardian claimed: “Syria: US, UK and France launch strikes in response to chemical attack.” NPR headlined a story: “US, Allies Hit 3 Syrian Sites Linked To Chemical Weapons Program.” See series of news releases I did from this period.
April 24: Trump meets with Macron, President of France, the former colonial power over Syria.
March 24, 2023: New York Times reports: “Conflict in Syria Escalates Following Attack That Killed a U.S. Contractor.”
March 30: Israeli missile attack on Syria’s Damascus area wounds 2 soldiers.
March 30: Trump indicted in Stormy Daniels hush money case.
May 21, 2019: I put out a news release: “Postol: Newly Revealed Documents Show Syrian Chemical ‘Attacks Were Staged’” featuring MIT Professor Ted Postol highlighting documents leaked from the OPCW and posted by SyriaPropagandaMedia.org and would follow up with several others.
May 25: Aaron Maté would follow up and go on to expand the story, speaking at the UN Security Council in 2020 and just recently.
Clinton Tries to “Wag the Dog”:
On August 20, 1998, as Monica Lewinsky was testifying before a grand jury, Clinton bombed Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan, justifying the attack with a series of fabrications which would even be debunked soon after by James Risen and others in the New York Times.
Then, as Clinton’s impeachment approached:
Dec. 16, 1998: Just before his scheduled impeachment vote, Clinton withdrew the weapons inspectors from Iraq and began bombing Iraq. The impeachment was delayed briefly, but once it was clear it would proceed, Clinton stops bombing on Dec. 19 and is impeached that day. Jimmy Carter claims the timing is coincidental.
US media would spend years, continuing to the present, claiming that Iraq halted the weapons inspectors when in fact it was the US government and the pro-US government head of UNSCOM, Richard Butler.
See my “The Dogs of War” from Feb. 12, 1998 (Newsday). and “Twisted Policy on Iraq” from Jan. 26, 1999 (Washington Post).
Followup:
When Big Media Cried "Wag the Dog" on Stormy Daniels and Trump's Bombing of Syria
Trump is not my favorite subject to write about, but I feel this is important given the media obsession with him, which seems set to escalate. And I should note that along with a very small handful of people, I pegged Trump fairly well from before his presidential run, see my recent “
I think this was the Epstein game plan - use personal/sexual blackmail to manipulate these people. There was the early Trump attack in Yemen in 2017, where they killed Anwar al-Awlaki's 8-year-old daughter, after previously killing Awlaki and his son, all American citizens. This was an expansion of the Yemen invasion, and took place during the first month of Trump's term. There were still federal informants in his inner circle at this point.
Not that I know of. The 2017 killing was a bit controversial at the time (yet again killing a US citizen without due process, etc.) but the Pentagon said it was excusable error in their zeal to go after "Al Queda in the Arabian Peninsula," an entity that likely never existed.. The Pentagon claims they did not know the girl was present when the house was bombed, but we all knew about it without days of the killing. And why was the bombing justified at all?