Trump Advisor Walid Phares: Neocon, Ex-Romney Advisor, Tied to Massacres in Lebanon

[r3volution 3.0]

http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-pr...rdcore-neocon-tied-notorious-lebanese-militia

A former Middle East adviser to Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign, Phares has sought to minimize his ties to Christian militias. But a Mother Jones investigation by Adam Serwer in 2011 revealed he was a key figure in the Lebanese Forces, an umbrella group of Christian militias that aimed to create a Christian-only enclave modeled after Israel. Phares' former colleagues testify that he worked "closely with the Lebanese Forces' Fifth Bureau, a unit that specialized in psychological warfare," Serwer wrote, becoming "one of the group's chief ideologists."

...The Lebanese Forces carried out horrific killings during the war, including the 1982 massacres of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in western Beirut. The militias were aided by the Israeli military in carrying out these attacks, which took an unknown number of lives, with some estimating thousands were slain.

...After moving to the United States, Phares fashioned himself into a Middle East expert and became popular among neoconservatives, serving as a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which pushes hawkish policies from the war on terror to a pro-Israel agenda.

 

[klamath]

Interesting

 

[Tywysog Cymru]

Maybe Trump really isn't a non-interventionist after all.

 

[enhanced_deficit]

One thing is hard to understand. If Trump and gang are bonafide neoconish foreign policy activists, why are the hardcore neocons like Max Boot, Billy Kristol, NYT journalists, Wapo jounalists, Romney, Lindsey Graham, DGP's masters etc. not supporting Trump?

Why almost all neocons prefer Hillary or Cruz over Trump?

Lindsey Graham: If I can support Ted Cruz, "anybody can do it"

CBS News-14 hours ago
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, is pushing the Republican party to rally behind Ted Cruz

 

[Danke]

One thing is hard to understand. If Trump and gang are bonafide neoconish foreign policy activists, why are the hardcore neocons like Max Boot, Billy Kristol, NYT journalists, Wapo jounalists, Romney, Lindsey Graham, DGP's masters etc. not supporting Trump?

Why almost all neocons prefer Hillary or Cruz over Trump?

Lindsey Graham: If I can support Ted Cruz, "anybody can do it"

CBS News-14 hours ago
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, is pushing the Republican party to rally behind Ted Cruz

Trumphobia.

 

[klamath]

Yep trump proves he is a neocon because he supported all the middle east wars.

 

[CPUd]

Check out the new guy he hired to replace Bruiser:

Trump Decries Washington Insiders, But He Hired One to Save His Campaign
Paul Manafort is a veteran GOP lobbyist who's represented dictators and corporations.

—By Russ Choma
| Mon Apr. 4, 2016 12:12 PM EDT

Throughout his presidential campaign, Republican front-runner Donald Trump has played the angry populist, railing against fat-cat donors, influence peddlers, and Washington establishment insiders who rig the system to the detriment of the American people. "These people have hundreds of millions of dollars that they've given to these politicians, and these politicians are puppets for them," he exclaimed recently. "With me, I'm going to do what's right for the country."

Yet when Trump needed a political operative to oversee his campaign's crucial delegate strategy—which could determine whether he wins the nomination at the Republican convention in July—he hired one of the most prominent Washington insiders: Paul Manafort, a veteran Republican lobbyist and consultant who has made millions of dollars working the system on behalf of corporations seeking government favors as well as Third World strongmen and kleptocrats.

Manafort has been honing his skills as a delegate wrangler for four decades, starting with Gerald Ford's 1976 campaign, when the sitting but unelected president faced a stiff challenge in the Republican primary from Ronald Reagan. Manafort subsequently handled this function for other GOP presidential candidates, from Reagan in 1980 to John McCain in 2008. The Chamber of Commerce's Scott Reed, who worked with Manafort during Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, described him as "a proven vote counter [who] knows how to strategically move a campaign." Manafort, who was the Dole campaign's convention manager, led the effort to minimize the role at the convention of Patrick Buchanan, the right-wing commentator who placed second in the GOP nominating contest, so that Dole would not be burdened in the general election with Buchanan's controversial conservative positions.

Hunting delegates was a side job for Manafort, who focused on lucrative work as a lobbyist for under-fire corporations and reviled political figures. In 1985, for example, Manafort and an aide flew to Angola, which was then in the middle of a bloody civil war, to woo Jonas Savimbi, a onetime Maoist and brutal warlord who allegedly relied on blood diamonds to fuel his army. According to the Washington Post, Manafort's pitch to Savimbi was almost derailed by a furious outbreak in fighting, but he managed to land a $600,000-a-year contract to represent Savimbi and his UNITA party in Washington, DC, and to try to help Savimbi win US funding. Spy magazine noted that Manafort's firm at the time—Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly—did well by Savimbi:

For $600,000 a year since 1985, the firm has represented Angola's thuggish Jonas Savimbi, an alleged witch burner, and his guerilla group UNITA, helping promulgate his "freedom fighter" image and persuading Congress to approve more than $230 million in covert aid to Savimbi's rebel forces.

Savimbi was merely one of a rogue's gallery of strongmen and despots Manafort's firm represented. The company also worked for Ferdinand Marcos, the Filipino dictator who looted billions of dollars from his country, and Somali dictator Said Barre, whose violent autocratic rule left the African nation in ruins. The firm helped both leaders collect hundreds of millions of dollars in US funding.

Though Trump has talked tough about confronting Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Manafort has links to the darkest corners of Putin's foreign policy world. In the mid-2000s, Manafort went to work for former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, a Putin ally who was deposed in 2014 following mass protests over his administration's corruption and vote-rigging. A 2011 lawsuit against Manafort and other Yanukovych aides, filed in New York by former Ukranian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, accused the lobbyist of assisting in a complicated scheme to launder money for a Yanukovych ally, a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmitry Firtash who was accused of having ties to organized crime. Manafort fought the claims, and the lawsuit was later dismissed when the New York judge hearing the case ruled that his court didn't have jurisdiction and that Tymoshenko couldn't prove "that Manafort's business dealings with Firtash constituted a conscious effort to abet intimidation and harassment against his political critics in Ukraine." Emails revealed in the case showed Manafort trying to help arrange investments in the United States for Firtash. The US government is currently seeking Firtash's extradition on bribery charges.

In another chapter of Manafort's long career, he pulled off a feat that epitomizes the kind of inside-the-Beltway cronyism that Trump rails against. In 1986, Manafort was paid more than $326,000 by a developer to lobby a Reagan administration official to approve a $43 million taxpayer-funded grant for a housing project in New Jersey that local officials didn't even want. His role in the deal became the subject of a congressional hearing, where Manfort told members of Congress that he shouldn't be faulted for knowing how to game Washington. In one telling exchange, Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) challenged Manafort's involvement, calling it a "very smelly, sleazy business…I feel it wasn't a meritorious project. People who knew how the system worked were able to get their project approved, even if it wasn't meritorious."

Manafort shrugged the complaint off. "We worked the system as it existed," he said. "I don't think we did anything illegal or improper."

When asked about his purported $1,000-an-hour fee to pull strings inside Washington, Manafort dismissed the question, responding, "By Washington standards, that is not very high."

How serious is Trump about his crusade to rid Washington of high-paid, system-rigging influence peddlers? By putting Manafort on his campaign payroll, the tycoon has demonstrated he certainly isn't against using these insiders if it benefits his own special interest.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/04/donald-trump-adviser-establishment-insider-paul-manafort

 

[Danke]

Mother Jones? Really?

 

[CPUd]

Trump Hires “Fixer” With Soviet Connections


Donald J. Trump said it was a “great honor” to be complimented by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. What’s significant is what the New York businessman has done to earn this praise. He pursued deals in the old Soviet Union and Russia and, as a presidential candidate, has hired little-known “experts” like Carter Page, an adviser to Russian gas company Gazprom.

Another curious Trump hire is Republican insider Paul Manafort, a “fixer” who has a history of doing business in the former Soviet Union. After taking a job as Trump’s delegate hunter, Manafort swiftly accused Trump’s main opponent, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), of using Gestapo-like tactics in the presidential race.

But it’s Manafort who has something to explain and answer for. He did consulting work in Ukraine for the pro-Russian candidate, Victor Yanukovych. Manafort was called “Ukraine’s Fixer” when the country was under the yoke of Moscow, the Russians were desperate to remain in control, and the people of Ukraine were crying out for freedom and ties to the West.

Interestingly, Manafort’s former business partner is Roger Stone, a former adviser to Trump who now runs a pro-Trump Super PAC. He wrote a book, popular on Russian TV, insisting that President John F. Kennedy wasn’t killed by a communist conspiracy based in Moscow or Havana, but was murdered on orders from his vice-president, Lyndon B. Johnson.

The publication Politico reported that when Stone once tried to re-establish contact with Manafort, he sent out an email to a small group of friends asking, “Where is Paul Manafort?” and wondering if he had been seen “chauffeuring Yanukovych around Moscow.”

It’s funny, but may not have been that far off the mark.

With no small thanks to what was described as Manafort’s maniacal efforts, Yanukovych was elected president of Ukraine in 2010. One of Manafort’s former colleagues went so far as to say, “Yanukovych came to power through a series of elections and would never have won without Manafort’s counsel.” Indeed, Yanukovych had to overcome the Orange Revolution of 2004 which he himself provoked by allegedly trying to steal the election from Victor Yuschenko. Before the 2004 presidential election, Yuschenko was poisoned with dioxin. When Yanukovych tried to steal the election during the vote itself, this provoked the Orange Revolution in which hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protested on the streets of Kiev. Yanukovych backed down. There was a re-election. Yuschenko won the revote.

It was after the Orange Revolution that Manafort offered his campaign services to Yanukovych. Even some Bush administration officials were puzzled by Manafort’s efforts in Ukraine, as he was working for the wrong side. Yanukovych’s political fortunes quickly recovered so that he was able to make a breathtaking comeback all the way to the highest office in the land in Ukraine in 2010. However, after four years into Yanukovych’s presidency, the people of Ukraine once again took to the streets in massive numbers protesting his corrupt activities that even made Ukrainian politicians blush. Thus, in the end, the Orange Revolution came back to negate Manafort’s accomplishments, but this time with bloodshed on the streets as some 100 people were killed and many more beaten.

The same political sentiments that created the Orange Revolution in 2004 did not disappear, but came roaring back with a vengeance when Ukrainians took to the streets of Kiev with more massive protests. Yanukovych then fled his presidential post in early 2014, and was overwhelmingly impeached from office 328-0 by the Ukrainian Parliament.

...

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/trump-hires-fixer-with-soviet-connections/

 

[afwjam]

One thing is hard to understand. If Trump and gang are bonafide neoconish foreign policy activists, why are the hardcore neocons like Max Boot, Billy Kristol, NYT journalists, Wapo jounalists, Romney, Lindsey Graham, DGP's masters etc. not supporting Trump?

Why almost all neocons prefer Hillary or Cruz over Trump?

Lindsey Graham: If I can support Ted Cruz, "anybody can do it"

CBS News-14 hours ago
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, is pushing the Republican party to rally behind Ted Cruz

Maybe its a trick? Maybe Trumps purpose is to suck all the anti establishment air out of the GOP and scare the bernie dems into voting for Hillary? If the establishment said they liked Trump, his charm would be lost. What is clear is the media supports Trump, Bernie and Hillary. I suspect the plan was always Hillary with careful management of the anti establishment vote on both sides to prevent unification behind a real anti establishment candidate. More then enough fear to make it happen. It is very suspect.

 

[CPUd]

Friday, Oct 7, 2011 10:00 AM CDT
Romney’s scary Middle East advisor
The three careers of Walid Phares: Lebanese militant, pro-Israeli propagandist, and Fox News pundit

Mitt Romney has a new foreign policy adviser. His name is Walid Phares, a Lebanese -American contributor to Fox News, and rising star in Republican punditry. Phares has had three careers and all are relevant in bizarre ways to the U.S. presidential campaign.

Phares’ first career began early in the Lebanese civil war of the 1975-1990 when he allied himself with the right-wing militias, armed and financed by Israel. In his official curriculum vitae, Phares describes himself as a writer and lawyer in Lebanon at this time but he was more and less than that. He assumed a political position in the hierarchy of the militias and founded a small Christian party in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

After Genral Michel Auon assumed the presidency of Lebanon in 1988, Phares joined the right-wing coalition known as the Lebanese Front, which consisted of various sectarian groupings and militia. The Front backed Gen. Auon in his struggles against the Syrian regime of Hafez al-Assad and the Muslims of Lebanon. Phares’s role was not small, according to Beirut newspaper accounts.. He served as vice chair of another front’s political leadership committee, headed by a man named Etienne Saqr, whose Guardians of Cedar militia voiced the slogan “Kill a Palestinian and you shall enter Heaven.” (Saqr later moved to Israel, and then Cyprus.) The Front was also backed by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, a bitter foe of the Syrians. It seems unlikely that Romney knew much about this chapter in Phares’ career when he tapped him as an advisor.

...

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/07/romneys_scary_middle_east_advisor/

 

[RandallFan]

Sounds like he wants to ally with small Mediterranean states against radical islam.