WASHINGTON (Opinion) — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson presented remarks on The Way Forward for the United States Regarding Syria to the Hoover Institute at Stanford on January 17.

To start, Tillerson proved his mettle in lying for the U.S. Empire by blaming Syrian president Bashar al-Assad for the rise of ISIS. First Tillerson implied Assad had the nerve to fight a war and win and then he says that’s why ISIS moved in:

In December of 2016, the key city of Aleppo fell to the regime after a brutal campaign that essentially destroyed that city, which had a population over two million people before the war. This symbolized the regime’s ruthless determination to regain momentum in the conflict. It also led to – Assad to wrongly think that he would maintain power without addressing the Syrian regime’s – the Syrian people’s legitimate grievances.”

The civil war in Syria was horrific in and of itself. But Syria was thrown into an even greater state of turmoil with the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. This was an aspiring terror-state inside the borders of Iraq and Syria. The conflict between the regime and various opposition groups fighting to change Assad’s grip on power created the conditions for the rapid expansion of ISIS in 2013 and 2014.”

Shockingly, Tillerson ignores that it was Saudi, Qatari and Turkish partners of the U.S. that provided the weapons and safe transport routes to Al-Nusra, ISIS and other jihadist groups. Therefore, the full rewrite of history is apparent from the beginning.

Then Tillerson suggests it was Syria that created ISIS. It was not the U.S. destruction of Iraq and the subsequent power vacuum that fueled the rise of ISIS, but rather Syria that was so instrumental.

ISIS originally emerged from the ashes of al-Qaida in Iraq, a group Assad had covertly backed.”

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So while Tillerson blames Syria for the destructions of its own cities in fighting off the foreign-supplied and to a varying extent foreign manned opposition, he fails to identify who actually drove the jihadists out of Syria.

Today, nearly all territory in Iraq and Syria once controlled by ISIS, or approximately 98 percent of all of that once United Kingdom-sized territory, has been liberated, and ISIS has not been able to regain one foot of that ground. ISIS’s physical “caliphate” of Raqqa is destroyed. The liberated capital of the caliphate no longer serves as a magnet for those hoping to build a terrorist empire. Approximately 3.2 million Syrians and 4.5 million Iraqis have been freed from the tyranny of ISIS. Over 3 million internally displaced Iraqis are now back home, and Mosul, the caliphate’s second capital city in Iraq and one of Iraq’s largest cities, is completely clear of ISIS. In Iraq, for the first time since the beginning of the crisis in December of 2013, there are more Iraqis going home than there are that are still displaced.”

Naturally, he can’t forget to mention Iran either.

And continued strategic threats to the U.S. from not just ISIS and al-Qaida, but from others persist. And this threat I’m referring to is principally Iran.”

So there you have it. The U.S. now has identified grounds for attacking Iran.

Last, the money shot — without telling you explicitly, and with no authority from Congress as required by the Constitution, we have invaded and occupied Syria with no intention to leave.

The United States will maintain a military presence in Syria focused on ensuring ISIS cannot re-emerge. Our military mission in Syria will remain conditions-based. We cannot make the same mistakes that were made in 2011 when a premature departure from Iraq allowed al-Qaida in Iraq to survive and eventually morph into ISIS.”

The standards for what qualifies as legal grounds for going to war have eroded ever since the last formal declaration in 1945. Accordingly, Tillerson’s remarks may be as close to a declaration of war against Syria and Iran as the American people will ever receive.

The entire speech is the rewriting of the history of the coalition’s destabilization of Syria. There are just too many lies to unpack, but let us close with this unbelievable whopper of who defeated ISIS:

The United States recognizes and honors the great sacrifices the Syrian Democratic Forces have made in liberating Syrians from ISIS.”

So the military-industrial-congressional complex would like to say, ‘Thanks, Rex. After trying to negotiate with North Korea, we’re glad you got the memo and found your war game at last.’

Top Photo | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif., Jan. 17, 2018. (AP/Jeff Chiu)

Ian Berman is an entrepreneur and former corporate banker at leading global banks in New York City. He now focuses on financial advisory services and writing about representative government, equitable public policies and ending American militarism and Israel’s continuing colonization of Palestine. He is the Co-Founder of Palestine 365, the Ongoing Oppression and its predecessor, Palestine 365, on Facebook.

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