Who REALLY killed JFK? Was it a conspiracy inside the Washington Establishment that used an unwitting Mafia hitman and an embittered ex-Marine sharpshooter? John F. Kennedy assassination buffs may soon know the truth if US President Donald Trump orders the release in to the public domain the last remaining ‘top secret’ files on the probe into the mystery assassination currently held by various US federal agencies.
Meanwhile, in Syria, will the defeat of the Daesh (Islamic State) movement in the northern region result in the dismembering of that once stable – if authoritarian – and socially modern West Asian country? And has the secession campaign by Iraqi Kurds for their Kurdistan province in neighbouring Iraq failed or, is that the harbinger of the dismemberment of Iraq – at one time, also a stable (if authoritarian) and socially modern country?
Some American analysts are even wondering whether the US President, himself beleaguered by numerous parallel top level investigations and reeling under public criticism over his continued gaffes, wanted to release the Kennedy documents, simply to divert attention from his own problems.
As the Washington Post reported last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which headed the probe into the shock assassination of one of America’s youngest and most popular presidents, has been opposed to the public release of these documents. The FBI and allied agencies fear the release of sensitive information about American state security systems.
Is President Trump hoping that the controversy over the long sought Kennedy documents will divert attention away from more serious matters – like the controversy over the deaths by Islamic State ambush of four US commandos while on a secret counter insurgency mission in the deserts of the impoverished African country of Niger.
The US news media as well as the opposition Democratic Party are demanding to know details about this incident that incurred the highest death toll in any incident during Trump’s presidency so far.
They want to know why the US commando unit had been caught off guard by the IS ambushers; why better intelligence about ground conditions had not reached this unit before they entered the area.
As if that was not bad enough, Trump invited further criticism when he was overheard making his belated Presidential condolence call to the widow of one of the dead soldiers and cruelly telling the weeping widow that her dead husband “knew what he was in for when he signed up” (to join the Army).
While the President categorically denied that he had said such an insensitive thing, his chief of staff, retired Army General John Kelly, sent to defend Trump at a media briefing, not only did not deny Trump’s statements to the widow, but he seemed to acknowledge that the President had, indeed, made those cruel remarks.
Elsewhere in the world, the Daesh (IS) movement has finally been driven out of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the ‘capital’ of its so-called ‘Caliphate’ after holding on to the city since mid-2015 and, while in Iraq, the minority Kurds’ armed militia,
the Peshmerga, withdrew from the largest Kurd-populated city of as military units sent by the central government in Baghdad intervened to take control.
The IS were driven out of Raqqa by the combined forces of the US backed Syrian insurgent groups, US-backed Syrian Kurds and, Turkish military units which have entered Syria from the north.
Ankara has never hidden its dislike of the Assad-led Baathist Party regime in Damascus, more recently it had to tone down its military support for the Syrian rebels, on the realisation that it was the chaos within its neighbour that was sending millions of refugees across the border into Turkey.
Thus, the Turkish forces that have intruded from the north into Syria, have now formed a buffer zone just inside Syria between Syrian government forces and the rebels. This buffer now serves to protect the lightly armed units of the anti-government Syrian rebels from offensives by the far better armed Iraqi government forces. Damascus is outraged over the illegal Turkish intrusion but can do little due to the informal ‘no fly zone’ currently enforced by the various air forces operating over Syria – the US, Russian, Syrian and perhaps Turkish.
Washington, with its desire to dislodge or weaken the Assad regime, has never hidden its early hints at the possible division of Syria into several smaller states or, sub-states.
Turkey also favoured such moves of carving out ‘safe zones’ that many saw as a ploy to carve up what was once an important Arab state in order to weaken that state perceived as one of the most progressive and secularised Arab states.
At the same time, after the referendum held in Iraqi Kurdistan recently where the goal of secession from Iraq was overwhelmingly approved, Baghdad last week sent a powerful Iraqi force to Kirkuk, one of Iraq’s biggest and wealthiest cities and important for oil fields. By Friday, the Kurdish ‘Peshmerga’ militia – which had earned a heroic reputation for its defeat of IS forces in western Iraq – had withdrawn from Kirkuk and adjoining areas allowing Iraqi forces to take control.
If the Iraqi military’s take-over of Kirkuk may be considered a bold move, at the same time, there is a likelihood that the currently stymieing of the secessionist movement will inspire more underground action that could blow up into a full-fledged separatist insurgency. At one time many Third World analysts suspected that the ulterior motive of the Americans in invading Iraq was the weakening of that once-powerful Arab country which has remained free of US control under dictator Saddam Hussein. There is speculation whether the US would sit back and watch while Iraq is carved up – first by the Kurds and later by Shia and Sunni.