By S.T. Patrick
It is a president’s vital responsibility to direct national security policy in ways that are advantageous for both the security of the country and the lives of those in the military. It is the job of the national security and intelligence apparatus to brief the president with the best information available so that those decisions can be made. In a recent interview with the “Defense One” website, outgoing U.S. envoy to Syria James Jeffrey, who now also briefs Joe Biden, revealed that U.S. officials have been purposely misleading President Donald Trump—the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military—about the number of troops in Syria.
When Trump supporters proclaim that this presidency is and has been a fight against the Deep State, it was men like Jeffrey that made up that unseen enemy. Trump had ordered troops out of Syria, but it was an order that the Deep State militarists believed they had the sovereignty to ignore and disobey.
“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said. Trump agreed to leave 2,000 troops in Syria in 2019. According to Jeffrey, the real number of troops the military left there is “a lot more than” that.
The military-industrial complex was so surprised that Trump would order troops out of their Syrian chess game for control of the Middle East that they didn’t know how to handle the situation. What they did to combat this great shock was to lie to the White House about the troop numbers. The mere fact that Trump wanted to withdraw from a bloody entanglement with no end in sight was, according to Jeffrey, “the most controversial thing in my 50 years in government.” Before author Bob Woodward portrayed Jim Mattis as the protagonist constantly battling the antagonistic Trump on foreign policy, Mattis was the defense secretary who enthusiastically supported intervention in Syria.
This should be a lesson of history for the American people. Mattis, whose reputation was propped up mightily in Woodward’s Fear, wanted to morph Syria into a decades-long protracted war with regime change and regional dominance as its end game. Trump wanted to leave a situation that was worsening to the point of becoming a Russian Afghanistan or an American Vietnam. The mainstream media has painted the situation as a reckless Trump ignoring the best advice of his best military leaders. The historians will follow suit for decades. This allows the MSM to spin this story as the patriotic military doing what is best for the country despite being ordered to do the opposite by an unhinged executive.
Jeffrey now even questions whether there was an order to withdraw. “What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,” Jeffrey said. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.” What Jeffrey is saying is that when you can manipulate the president into staying in a full-scale war through false estimates and false information, then the order is invalid.
Jeffrey, earlier this year speaking at a Hudson Institute video event, relayed to his fellow think tankers that the U.S. was not in Syria to fight terrorism. Rather, it was there to create “a quagmire for the Russians.” It isn’t that we are now trying to prevent it from becoming a Russian Afghanistan or an American Vietnam. Jeffrey admitted that the purpose of being there in the first place was to create another Afghanistan situation for the Russians, similar to the one they were in from 1979 through 1989, the one that birthed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and Osama bin Laden.
Last year, this writer also reported in the American Free Press that the military-industrial complex had hidden cyberattacks against the Russian grid from the president. The New York Times reported, “Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place ‘implants’—software code that can be used for surveillance or attack—inside the Russian grid. . . . Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction—and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials.”
There is a large group of JFK historians who operate outside of the mainstream historical establishment. They disagree ferociously on many things, but one thing they agree on as a group is that President John F. Kennedy was a victim of a soft coup d’état when the CIA and the military lied to him about the Bay of Pigs. President Richard Nixon’s demise was also accelerated by military operative Al Haig, who was installed as chief of staff after the resignation of Bob Haldeman. Thus, another soft coup was executed. We can now illustrate at least two instances where President Trump was a victim of the same power struggle. In all three instances, the Deep State won, and it will continue to win. They are entrenched and they have control over the two-party duopoly that moves American politics. At the end of Trump’s first term in office, the swamp is still fouled with filth.
S.T. Patrick holds degrees in both journalism and social studies education. He spent 10 years as an educator and now hosts the “Midnight Writer News Show.” His email is [email protected]. He is also an occasional contributor to TBR history magazine and the current managing editor of Deep Truth Journal (DTJ), a new conspiracy-focused publication available from the AFP Online Store.
