John Kiriakou says his friend Bruce Fein, who represents the Karen people of Myanmar, taught him that Myanmar is the only country in the world that has been continuously at war without a single day of peace since World War II.[1][2] He argues the U.S. does not intervene because Myanmar lacks oil and strategic value, despite the country’s rich ruby, emerald, and diamond deposits.[2]
Aung San Suu Kyi and religious persecution
Kiriakou calls Aung San Suu Kyi — Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate — a “fraud” who should have the prize stripped from her, characterizing the country’s Buddhist majority as fundamentalists who kill, bomb, imprison, and starve the country’s Muslim, Christian, and Hindu minorities.[3]
Gems, not oil
Kiriakou argues the world ignores Myanmar’s atrocities because the country has no oil — despite possessing some of the highest-quality rubies, sapphires, and emeralds in the world, on display at the Smithsonian Institution. He contrasts this with a remark from a Kuwaiti who told him, shortly after the 1991 Gulf War, that the U.S. only liberated Kuwait because it had oil: “If we had gravel, you would never be here.”[4]