Washington: Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, the battle-tested Army officer tapped as President Donald Trump's national security adviser last year to stabilise a turbulent foreign policy operation, will resign and be replaced by John Bolton, a hard-line former US ambassador to the United Nations, White House officials said Thursday.

McMaster will retire from the military, the officials said. He has been discussing his departure with Trump for several weeks, they said, but decided to speed up his departure, in part because questions about his status were casting a shadow over his conversations with foreign officials.

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https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/trump-dumps-mcmaster-picks-su...

Bolton is a mad warrior who should have been committed to an asylum on mental issues... As El Donaldo annoys the Chinese, Bolton will declare war on the rest of the planet. Australia, it is time to decouple from the USA.

On 17 March 2018, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov denounced the presence of the US, British and French Special Forces in Syria; this is something that both London and Paris deny. He drove home the point, insisting: “What this presence means is that the issue is no longer a war by proxy but direct intervention in a war”.

Mr. Lavrov then went on to give a stern warning to Washington, London and Paris, should they take the decision to bomb Damascus. The documents seized by the Syrian and Russian Secret Services confirm the existence of a plan to attack Damascus along similar lines to the plan conceived against Bagdad in 2003. Part of this plan includes killing off President al-Assad. Allied ships have been positioned to enable them to carry out this attack from the Mediterranean.

On 19 March 2018, the Syrian and Russian armies warned of a new chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta instigated by the United Kingdom under a false flag. The Syrian and Russian armies have already seized two chemical laboratories on 12 and 13 March. On 20 March, during a meeting of the Leaders of the Russian Armed Forces, the Russian Minister for Defence, General Sergey Shoygu, referred to three attempts to use these weapons during the week in Eastern Ghouta. While he explicitly avoided inculpating London with backing these attempted bombings, the way his words were couched, removes any possible doubt from his listeners’ minds. He continued: 
“We are hoping that in the current situation, our Western Partners will allow good sense to guide their decision-making; that they stop flirting with terrorists and come together with Russia in their peaceful initiatives in Syria”.

In five days, more than 79 000 prisoners of armed groups in the Ghouta have successfully sought refuge in the Syrian Arab Republic. This is thanks to the humanitarian corridors of Muhayam al-Wafedin and Hamouriyah.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

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http://www.voltairenet.org/article200260.html

Would that John Bolton were only a clown. The mustachioed alleged diplomat, briefly of the Bush administration—and initially criticized as too controversial even for that team—has now been appointed national security advisor. That position will give him the president’s ear on matters of foreign policy, as well as control over which other administration principals enjoy such access. Donald Trump pledged that if elected he would be a different kind of Republican president, and he’s delivered: under the last GOP administration, Bolton occupied a slightly lower-ranking position than he does now.

Bolton is indeed no circus act: he’s one of the sharpest and most dangerous national security operatives in Washington. To take just one example, last summer, Trump made it known that he was considering pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, a campaign promise he wanted fulfilled but that had been discouraged by his then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson. Sensing an opportunity, Bolton wrote an essay for National Review explaining in breezy (i.e. Trump-digestible) terms just how to abrogate the agreement. The piece is chockablock with nonsense: at one point it claims sans any evidence that the Obama administration believed the JCPOA was “disadvantageous to the United States.” It also offers scant evidence to underpin its claim that Iran was in violation of the deal, an assertion that’s been repeatedly repudiated by the authorities at the IAEA. But the truth wasn’t the point: the piece was meant to water a seed in the president’s mind, to lend expert opinion to Trump’s burning preference that the JCPOA be reversed.

That Bolton did this shouldn’t surprise anyone because this is how Bolton works: shrewdly and always towards the goal of more war. As Gareth Porter detailed in a rigorously reported piece for TAC, during his tenure under Bush, Bolton maneuvered behind the scenes to pump up a pretext for conflict between the United States and Iran. Among his methods was to pretend that satellite images of a military base at Parchin demonstrated Iranian nuclear experimentation. That supposed smoking gun is cited to this day by neocons as proof of Iran’s atomic dreams.

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http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-madman-on-the-national...

Last week, retired Army colonel Ralph Peters quit his post at Fox News where he’d been a longtime fixture. Peters had become known for his impassioned commentaries against Russian appeasers, critics of Israel, and other enemies of American democracy. 

Over the last year and a half, Peters has warned incessantly against the brutal designs and antidemocratic maneuverings of Vladimir Putin. Almost as obsessively, he has declaimed against the current occupant of the White House, Donald Trump, whom he has invariably described as an instrument of the Russian government. In fact, he openly supported his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election. 

Of course, that isn’t much of a departure from his treatment of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, whom Peters called a “total pussy” on air and said had been “date-raped” by Putin. More recently he accused conservative Fox host Tucker Carlson of sounding like a Nazi sympathizer from the 1930s.

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/ralph-peters-the-man-too...

Retired Army colonel Ralph Peters looks a bit like our own Major General Jim Molan...

By DANIEL LARISON

The conclusion of Stephen Walt’s column on John Bolton is exactly right:

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to “normalize” this appointment or suggest that it shouldn’t concern you. Rather, I’m suggesting that if you are worried about Bolton, you should ask yourself the following question: What sort of political system allows someone with his views to serve in high office, where he helps talk the country into a disastrous war, never expresses a moment’s regret for his errors, continues to advocate for more of the same for the next decade, and then gets a second chance to make the same mistakes again? [bold mine-DL]

So by all means worry. But the real problem isn’t Bolton — it’s a system that permits people like him to screw up and move up again and again.

There is a strong bias in our foreign policy debates in favor of “action,” no matter how stupid or destructive that action proves to be. That is one reason why reflexive supporters of an activist foreign policy will never have to face the consequences of the policies they support. Bolton has thrived as an advocate of hard-line policies precisely because he fills the assigned role of the fanatical warmonger, and there is always a demand for someone to fill that role. His fanaticism doesn’t discredit him, because it is eminently useful to his somewhat less fanatical colleagues. That is how he can hang around long enough until there is a president ignorant enough to think that he is qualified to be a top adviser.

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http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/hawks-always-fail-upwards/

It has been about four days since President Donald Trump appointed former U.S. ambassador John Bolton to be his next national security adviser, and the reactions have ranged all over the map. Fellow uber-hawks like Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton are charged up about Bolton joining Trump’s national security team, while the rest of us are heading to church and praying that the rapture won’t come early. For those in the a realist persuasion who prize diplomacy as a preeminent foreign policy tool rather than a form of appeasement, it’s hard to find anyone who would be as terrifying in the Situation Room as Bolton. What’s next? Another stint for Dick Cheney as secretary of defense?

As dangerous as Bolton’s foreign policy views are—which, if one were to sum them up, consist of bombing any adversary callous enough not to succumb to America’s wishes—his cutthroat, take-no-prisoners approach to policymaking should be just as nerve-wracking. With experience across three administrations, Bolton’s bureaucratic chops are as ruthless as his mustache is bushy. He takes the national security bureaucracy by the horns and is not afraid to play dirty.

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http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/john-boltons-history-of-...

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Fears of increasing friction between the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Trump White House in the wake of neoconservative Bolton's installation as the president's national security adviser have many career military staffers on edge, as the newest cabinet pick — although a stranger to combat — has a long history of avowing a ‘shoot first ask questions later' doctrine.

Current US Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who met with Bolton for the first time on Thursday, stated previously that he had "no reservations, no concerns at all," in working alongside a notorious military hawk who previously resigned as the interim US ambassador to the United Nations during the presidency of George W. Bush when he realized that his official appointment to the position under a democratic-controlled Senate was unlikely.

Mattis was quoted as saying about Bolton: "Last time I checked he's an American. I can work with an American, okay?" cited by The Hill.

Meeting Bolton on the steps of the Pentagon last week, reporters' microphones clearly picked up the general greeting the civilian with the words: "Thank you for coming. It's good to finally meet you. I heard you're actually the devil incarnate."

Mattis's bantering tone was taken as a good sign by DoD insiders although some asserted that the two were oil and water, and would ultimately disagree on most key issues, particularly the response to a nuclear threat posed by the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) and several ongoing wars being propagated by the Trump White House in the Middle East.

"I don't think they will get along," an unnamed source cited by The Hill suggested, adding, "I think they'll be at odds."

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/military/201804011063124833-pentagon-braces-for-...

The alleged mastermind behind the US pullout from the historic INF treaty, John Bolton will expect a wintry reception in Moscow, with only the embers of the long-forgotten Helsinki summit to warm the parties.

Washington can be commended at least on laying its cards on the table with Friday’s announcement by Donald Trump that he was considering withdrawing from the Gorbachev-Reagan 1987 agreement, which limits both sides from producing intermediate range missiles.

But the news is likely to cast a pall over Bolton’s two-day visit, during which the National Security Advisor will meet not only his Russian counterpart Nikolay Patrushev, but foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and, on Tuesday, likely Vladimir Putin himself, though the face-to-face has not been given final approval by the Kremlin.

The foreign ministry has already demanded “to hear a coherent explanation” of Washington’s actions, while various senior Russian officials have called the prospect of withdrawal “blackmail”, “a landmine under the nuclear disarmament process”, and a harbinger of “complete chaos in the sphere of nuclear armaments.”

And this is not one Bolton can blame on his boss. Appointed only in March, Bolton has become arguably the most influential US foreign policy architect, and is a long-time critic of arms control treaties. According to senior staff sources who spoke to the Guardian and the Washington Post last week, he personally persuaded Trump to quit INF. Stateside reports indicate that despite Trump’s customarily hazy pronouncements, Bolton will definitively signal US intentions to leave – a six-month notice is required to leave the indefinite-term agreement - during the Russian visit.

For nearly two decades the two states have taken turns claiming the other is violating the treaty, which bars both of them from producing all land-based ballistic and cruise missiles – not just nuclear-tipped ones – with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km. The Pentagon – citing its classified intelligence –claims that Russia has developed an intermediate range missile for the Iskander-M launcher, the existence of which Moscow has never acknowledged. In turn, Russia insists that the launchers that form the US missile defense shield in eastern Europe are themselves capable of firing intermediate range missiles, and should be destroyed under the terms of the agreement.

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https://www.rt.com/news/441900-bolton-moscow-visit-inf/

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Bolton is an ugly dangerous uncivil idiot who has "war on his mind" because peace is too cute...

The United States will continue to develop its nuclear weapon stockpile, the US president told reporters Monday, until nations around the world come to their senses.

The threat was directed at China and Russia, the president emphasized. Trump did not elaborate what it would take for China and Russia to show they'd "come to their senses" regarding the development of nuclear weapons.

Washington is on the verge of ripping up the Cold War-era Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) from 1987, an intention announced by Trump on Saturday. Speaking to reporters on the south lawn of the White House Monday, Trump complained that Moscow has not done enough to adhere to the INF treaty. He also said China should be part of the treaty.

Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov denied that Russia was in violation of the treaty on Monday.

The Russian Security Council said Monday that "the Russian side has again voiced its principal position on the importance of maintaining the treaty in force, and has also voiced its readiness to work together on eliminating the mutual claims related to the implementation of this treaty," Sputnik News reported. 

Terminating the treaty would also be "a heavy blow for the entire international legal system of nonproliferation and arms control," the security council said. The INF was signed in 1987 and was pivotal in eliminating thousands of missiles from the American and Russian arsenals. Former Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed the treaty along with former US leader Ronald Reagan, called Trump's planned withdrawal from the treaty "very irresponsible." 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201810221069114599-trump-us-nuclear-arsenal/

Read from top. Bolton is a dangerous moron.

Bolton continued his efforts to drag out withdrawal from Syria for as long as possible:

President Trump’s national security adviser, John R. Bolton, rolled back on Sunday Mr. Trump’s decision to rapidly withdraw from Syria, laying out conditions for a pullout that could leave American forces there for months or even years.

One of the reasons that I didn’t believe that U.S. withdrawal from Syria would really happen was the presence of Bolton and Pompeo on Trump’s national security team. As committed Iran hawks, they have strong incentives to delay and undermine any withdrawal plan, and Bolton is already doing that with his current trip abroad to “reassure” regional clients. It seems that they will pay lip service to the long-term goal of withdrawal, play along with the idea that U.S. forces will eventually leave, but then set so many conditions and create so many obstacles to withdrawal that it will never take place. 

Bolton’s conditions are designed to make withdrawal practically impossible for the foreseeable future. Staying in Syria “until the last remnants of the Islamic State” are defeated commits U.S. forces to remain for a long time to come. When any group like this has been beaten, there are always going to be a few scattered members that survive. Going after those last few “remnants” isn’t a good reason to keep U.S. troops illegally in a country where they were never properly authorized to go. The other condition that Bolton mentioned is even harder to fulfill. Keeping U.S. forces around until Turkey pledges not to attack the YPG amounts to waiting forever, because Turkey’s government considers them terrorists and isn’t going to make a credible promise not to attack them. Having set the protection of Kurdish forces as one of the key requirements for withdrawal, the administration can’t very well disregard it later on when it becomes obvious that the Turkish government won’t make any guarantees that can be trusted. Unless he does something to repudiate it immediately, Trump is stuck with the Syria policy Bolton has created for him.

Read more:

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/boltons-syria-conditions...

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White House national security adviser John Bolton has resigned at the request of President Donald Trump, who said he called for the resignation due to numerous policy disagreements.

Mr Trump announced the decision on Twitter: "I informed John Bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the White House. I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning."

"I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week."

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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-11/donald-trump-fires-john-bolton/11...

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Some GOP people are in two minds (one mind really):

...

But there’s a flip side to this argument, especially as it pertains to President Trump. Bolton offered a voice of reason that understood the implications of drawing down troops from various hotspots. Like I said, I’m not in favor of keeping troops where they don’t belong, but I’m also not in favor of removing troops prematurely. That was Bolton’s primary sticking point with the President. If Bolton wanted to keep troops out there too long, President Trump wanted to bring them home before it was time. The combination of the two perspectives made for good foreign policy decisions, which we saw after the President Tweeted last year that he’d be withdrawing immediately from Syria at the request of Turkey. It would have been a poor move, and his advisers slowed him down enough for preparations to be made properly.

This is why the White House needed John Bolton, Jim Mattis, or someone who will keep the President from making military mistakes on a whim. I didn’t have to agree with Bolton’s or Mattis’s policy ideas completely to appreciate their voice in the President’s ear. He wants things done, but his expert advisers are there to tell them when his desires do not align with our interests.

Read more of this awful stuff at: https://noqreport.com/2019/09/10/john-boltons-firing-great-awful-time/

The "interests" of the USA is to destroy as many contrariants as possible, to steal their goods, and turn friend into slaves, to steal their goods. Bolton wanted interminable wars. Good riddance. 

John Bolton is everything you don’t want in a national security adviser. He is as stubborn as a rhinoceros, as crafty as a snake, and as dangerous as a scorpion. 

Bolton’s is an extreme black-and-white view of the world: if you aren’t an ally of the United States, you are an adversary who needs a boot on your neck in the form of U.S. military force or economic sanctions. The second- and third-order strategic consequences are no obstacle in Bolton’s mind. Why go through the humiliating spectacle of negotiations when you can simply bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities or take out the Kim regime by force?  

Diplomacy, after all, is for wimps, spineless State Department bureaucrats, and appeasers. If the boss is insisting on diplomacy, then demand the moon, stars, and everything in between before offering a nickel of sanctions relief.

This is how John Bolton made his career: as the proverbial wrecking ball of arms control agreements—and indeed agreements of any kind. And he makes no excuses for it. Indeed, he takes prideful ownership of his views, seeing anyone who disagrees with him or who isn’t on his level as a weasel. Before Bolton joined the Trump administration as national security adviser, he was the short-lived ambassador to the United Nations and the undersecretary of state for arms control, where he attempted to get an intelligence analyst removed for disagreeing with his position on Cuba’s alleged biological weapons program.

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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/john-bolton-meets-his-f...

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