In his speech yesterday at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, US President Barack Obama offered a tortured defense of extra-judicial assassinations, for the first time publicly acknowledging the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen, in September 2011.

Obama’s remarks were characterized by an essential contradiction. He sought to defend drone assassinations, while at the same time essentially acknowledging their illegality and the illegality of much of what the American government has done over the past decade.

A tone of nervousness and defensiveness pervaded Obama’s remarks, reflecting awareness within the ruling class that what they are doing is not only illegal, but also increasingly unpopular. Significantly, the speech was repeatedly interrupted by a woman who denounced the administration’s policy on drone assassinations and the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Obama’s admission that he had ordered the killing of Awlaki is part of an effort by the administration to bring the assassination program “into the open,” to institutionalize it and turn it into a permanent feature of US policy.

Imperial warriors, apologists and supporters never say they're sorry. They want more nations attacked. It's the American way.

Perhaps publishing it was strategically timed. It comes with John Kerry in the Middle East. He'll be there through Sunday.

He met with foreign ministers of 11 so-called Friends of Syria countries and opposition group representatives. In Jerusalem, he discussed Syria with Netanyahu.

At the same time, the suspicious Woolrich London killing occurred. Another article suggested a possible false flag. The Journal op-ed urges war on Syria. So did others discussed below.

On May 22, Journal editors gave Jack Keane and Danielle Pletka feature op-ed space. They took full advantage. They headlined "How to Stop Assad's Slaughter." Keane's a retired general. Formerly he served as US Army's vice chief of staff. Pletka is the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) foreign and defense policy studies vice president. AEI has enormous influence. It advances Washington's imperial agenda. It's consistently hawkish. It was a leading Bush administration foreign policy architect. It was instrumental in promoting war on Iraq. It supports regime change in Syria and Iran. More on the Keane/Pletka article below.

If you want to get some insight into how the Washington Post’s editorial board increasingly thinks of the world and the U.S. role in it, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt’s column in Monday’s newspaper provides a good idea. While Hiatt is generally not as ideological as his deputy, Jackson Diehl (although he did hire Jennifer Rubin), his basic belief in U.S. exceptionalism, his rejection of “retrenchment” and “limitations” (on U.S. power), and, above all, his implicit equation of international “engagement” with military intervention demonstrates how his version of liberal internationalism is so easily co-opted by neo-conservatives:

But the dominant impression among foreign officials [read Hiatt himself] is of a policy of retrenchment. They see a steady reduction in the size of U.S. armed forces that will mean less ability to intervene and influence. They watched Obama withdraw all troops from Iraq, failing to negotiate an agreement that would have preserved some U.S. role in that now-unraveling country. They see him preparing to withdraw most — or all, his spokesman has said; the size of any residual force has not been announced — troops from Afghanistan. [Emphasis added.]

Consider the logic of this passage. He seems to be saying (through his unnamed “foreign officials”) that U.S. influence in world affairs is directly correlated with the size of its military and the willingness of its commander-in-chief to use it to intervene in foreign countries. In this very Kaganesque view of the world, hard power is really the only power that really counts. The notion that military power must necessarily rest on a strong economic foundation — or even that “soft power” may also play an important role in gaining influence overseas — seems to him or his foreign officials to be secondary at best.

A week from now it will be one year since the world first heard about the horrors of a place in Syria called “Houla.” On the afternoon and evening of Friday, May 25, 2012, a reported 108 civilians were massacred there. They were executed inside their homes, with guns and “sharp tools,” and maybe a little bit from shelling as well. As the reader might recall, most of the victims were entire families, included some 49 younger children and even babies. Anyone who had to watch the video results might recall having the bottom drop from their stomach with dread, and the lingering depression after. Many people, naturally, wanted revenge for that.

According to activists, all of the victim families were Sunni Muslim. It was of course blamed on the Syrian Arab Army – the only ones with artillery, if blades aren’t so clear - and their allied “Shabiha,” militias from surrounding villages, of the same Alawite faith of president Assad. None of these features was completely new, but this was by many measures the worst, most massive, most unambiguous massacres of innocents to date.

Western and Gulf Arab states took the events in Houla as clarifying the urgency of toppling the perpetrators; they expelled Damascus’ diplomats and otherwise moved to isolate Syria in the kill box. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said it had become clear that the “wheels were coming off” of Kofi Annan’s peace plan. The same point was made more aggressively by rebels shaking dead babies on video – no compromise was possible after this. Military aid to the rebels and talk of increasing it increased.

While ostensibly touring the Middle East to discuss a joint US-Russian proposal for peace talks between the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and Western-backed “rebels,” Secretary of State John Kerry met with US allies to prepare for region-wide war.

Stopping first in Oman, Kerry held talks with the ruling Sultan, one of the string of monarchical dictators that constitute, together with Israel, the foundation of US influence in the Middle East. The secretary of state’s visit coincided with the signing of a $2.1 billion deal between the absolute monarchy and Raytheon Corp. for the sale of advanced weapons systems, including Avenger fire units, Stinger missiles, and Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, part of a ring of steel that Washington has sought to erect around Iran.

From there, he flew to Amman, Jordan for a meeting Wednesday of the “Friends of Syria,” a US-led “coalition of the willing” that is fomenting the war for regime change in Syria. It consists of Washington, its European NATO allies, led by Britain, Turkey, Egypt and the various sheikhdoms and sultanates of the Persian Gulf, including the major arms suppliers to the anti-Assad militias: Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

We all have common foes in the greedy and environmentally-destructive capitalist corporations and their puppets who run the governments of Canada and the United States.

By all measures of governing standards, the Conservative government of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper embodies the same racist policies as that of the governments of the former Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. The Harper government’s patronizing policies over Canada’s First Nations is a case in point. Coupled with Canada’s abhorrent support for Israel’s expansionistic Zionist policies at the expense of the people of Palestine, the Harper government’s attempt to wrest control of resource-rich lands from Canada’s indigenous peoples for exploitation by multinational corporations is reminiscent of the same policies that saw native lands of South Africa and Rhodesia crudely exploited by DeBeers and British American Tobacco…

The Harper government represents the most right-wing government in the recent history of Canada. With its Anglo-Canadian base, it has alienated the French-speaking province of Quebec, where independence sentiment has been renewed; Muslims and Arabs, with its pro-Zionist policies; and Canada’s First Nations, with its attempt to grab native lands protected by treaties.

The only area where the Harper government has shown itself to be “liberal” is that of gay rights. It should be recalled that favoring rights for homosexuals is not necessarily liberal. After the 1934 Nazi Party purge of Ernst Rohm and his coterie of working class homosexual supporters, gay Nazis like Reinhard Heydrich and Baldur von Schirach who originated from the German elite were permitted to hold high office and operate more or less in the open. In the Canadian government of today, reputed homosexuals like Foreign Minister John “Rusty’ Baird and Immigration Minster Jason Kenney, sometimes called Canada’s deputy prime minister, follow in the footsteps of Heydrich and von Schirach in frolicking with fellow Tory gays at “Fabulous Blue Tent” parties in Ottawa. Similar parties in Berlin were attended by some of the Nazi party’s top lieutenants at the height of Adolf Hitler’s reign.

Presidential Medals of Freedom are awarded annually. They mock what they claim to represent. Many go to deplorable recipients. Previous dishonorees include GHW Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair, Shimon Peres, Margaret Thatcher, Alvaro Uribe, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Alan Greenspan among others.

Nobel Peace Prize recipients include notorious war criminals. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt was honored. He once said "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one." In 1919, Woodrow Wilson won. He broke his pledge to keep "us out of war." In 1953, George Marshall was honored. He helped create NATO. It's a killing machine. He was involved in aggressive war on North Korea. Other dishonorees included Kofi Annan, Al Gore, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama, and the EU. Peacemakers aren't considered.

Intrepid Freedom Awards are made annually. They're "presented to a national or international leader who has distinguished himself in promoting and defending the values of freedom and democracy, the core beliefs of our nation." Dishonorees include a virtual rogue's gallery of recipients. They include GW and GHW Bush, Dick Cheney, Leon Panetta, Colin Powell, David Petraeus, Margaret Thatcher, Boris Yeltsin, Newt Gingrich, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Silvio Berlusconi, Michael Bloomberg, and Yitzhak Rabin among others.

It is clear that Russia’s arrest and expulsion of two CIA agents who were trying to recruit members of the Russian intelligence service fighting against Salafist separatists in the Caucasus is part of a Russian mopping-up operation directed at the CIA’s decades-long covert support for terrorists operating in the Northern and Southern Caucasus.

Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) recently arrested Ryan Christopher Fogle, a CIA «official cover» U.S. embassy Third Secretary, who was trying to recruit an FSB counter-terrorism officer for the CIA. A Russian phone intercept of Fogle’s conversation with the targeted counter-terrorism officer revealed the following offer by the CIA agent: “You can earn up to $1 million per year and I’ll give you $100,000 up front, but only if we meet right now. Yes or no?» Earlier this year, the FSB nabbed another CIA agent, yet unnamed, and quietly deported him.

The list of key U.S. Foreign Service officers, dated April 1, 2013, does not contain Fogle’s name on the list of key U.S. diplomats assigned to the Moscow embassy. Traditionally, the CIA prefers to operate under the official cover of “Political Officer” at large embassies like Moscow. In smaller embassies, the CIA presence can often be found in the deputy chief of mission. The Political Officer in Moscow is Michael Klecheski, formerly with the CIA-connected RAND Corporation and the National Security Council, who was assigned to the Moscow embassy during Soviet times. There is a good chance that Klecheski was Fogle’s local supervisor. The FSB revealed publicly that the CIA station chief for the embassy is Stephen Holmes. Another embassy Third Secretary, Benjamin Dillon, was expelled in January for activities similar to those of Fogle.