Ghouta Child Victims Were Abducted by Terrorists from Latakia
After insurgents murdered the men in these communities, they organized mass abductions of the surviving women and children. ISTEAMS’ report includes evidence that links these abductions to the ensuing chemical attack(s) that killed mainly women, children, and infants in Ghouta, east of Damascus, on August 21, 2013. Women and children who were disappeared after their families were massacred in Latakia appear to be among the Ghouta victims shown in western propaganda videos.
This preliminary report was prepared by ISTEAMS investigators and observers of all faiths working inside and outside the Syrian Arab Republic, as well as independent European and Australian journalists supporting Syrian sectarian and secular reconciliation (al Mussalaha)
General Coordination of ISTREAMS investigation by Sister Agnes Miriam de la Croix, St. James Monastery (Greek Catholic Rite).' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 5:53 pm Post subject:
Western rationality
by Thierry Meyssan
You liked the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Vietnam War, the Kuwaiti incubators and the first Gulf War, the Racak massacre and the war in Kosovo, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the second Gulf War and the threats to Benghazi and the Libyan war? You will just love the gassing of civilians in Ghouta and the bombing of Syria...:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article180149.html
'..All observers have noted the high proportion of children among the victims. The United States has counted 426, or more than a third. Some observers, but neither those of the US nor their French counterparts, were intrigued to find that victims were almost all of the same age and they had no families to cry over them. Stranger still, the gas would have killed children and adult men, but would have spared women.
The wide distribution of satellite channel images of victims allowed Alawite families near Latakia to recognize their children who had been abducted two weeks prior by the "rebels." This identification was long in coming because there are few survivors of the massacre by the allies of the United States, the United Kingdom and France in loyalist villages where more than a thousand bodies of civilians were discovered in mass graves...'
''Gentlemen! We have called you together to inform you that we are going to overthrow the United States government." So begins a statement being delivered by Gen. Carl W. Steiner, former Commander-in-chief, U.S. Special Operations Command. At least the voice sounds amazingly like him.But it is not Steiner. It is the result of voice "morphing" technology developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.By taking just a 10-minute digital recording of Steiner's voice, scientist George Papcun is able, in near real time, to clone speech patterns and develop an accurate facsimile. Steiner was so impressed, he asked for a copy of the tape.Steiner was hardly the first or last victim to be spoofed by Papcun's team members. To refine their method, they took various high quality recordings of generals and experimented with creating fake statements. One of the most memorable is Colin Powell stating "I am being treated well by my captors."
(So, the Israelis, or anyone else, could easily fabricate the so-called 'phone taps', and obviously have an interest in so doing).
Christof Lehmann (nsnbc),- The Former French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas continues blowing the whistle about Western war plans against Syria, long before the first protests in 2011. After Dumas made a short statement in an interview on French television, he has now added shocking detail in an interview with the Syrian news agency SANA.
Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas.” I was approached at a party in Britain, two years before the Arab Spring, and asked if I wanted to take part in toppling the Syrian government with the help of rebels”. Photo, courtesy of SANA
In June, the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, created a scandal, when he admitted, that the war on Syria was planned two years before “The Arab Spring”.
During an appearance on the French TV channel LPC, Dumas made a short remark, saying that top British officials were preparing the subversion of Syria with the help of “rebels” two years before the first protests in 2011, and that he was asked, whether he wanted to participate.
During the TV appearance on LPC, in June, Dumas said:
“I am going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me, that they were preparing something in Syria”.
“This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer Minister of Foreign Affairs, if I would like to participate. Naturally, I refused, I said I am French, that does not interest me”
(I know this has been mentioned before, but here it is in print). _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Sep 17, 2013 10:10 pm Post subject:
Cynthia McKinney and Ramsey Clark are in Damascus:
'I am in Syria now with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, where residents enjoy free education and free healthcare. Visited a Damascus hospital, the Grand Mufti, a school that has been turned into residences for Internally Displaced Per...sons. Ended the Day with Ogarit Dandash who founded "Over Our Dead Bodies," a group of young people who climbed atop Mount Qasioun and dared U.S. bombs to target them. They are still there in defiant resistance to any war against Syria. Mount Qasioun should be the site of a peace party not bombing strikes.'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQSLWH-jI04 _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 9:58 pm Post subject:
A Primer On the REAL Global Geopolitical Battle
Posted on October 8, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog
Are the Wars in the Middle East and North Africa Really About Oil?
The Iraq war was really about oil, according to Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others.
Dick Cheney made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11.
The Sunday Herald reported:
Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq … to secure control of its oil.
The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see this and this). According to French intelligence officers, the U.S. wanted to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to transport Central Asian oil more easily and cheaply. And so the U.S. told the Taliban shortly before 9/11 that they would either get “a carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs”, the former if they greenlighted the pipeline, the second if they didn’t. See this, this and this.
Congressman Ed Markey said:
Well, we’re in Libya because of oil.
Senator Graham agreed.
And the U.S. and UK overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Iran because he announced that he would nationalize the oil industry in that country.
It’s a War for GAS
But it’s about gas as much as oil …
As key war architect John Bolton said last year:
The critical oil and natural gas producing region that we fought so many wars to try and protect our economy from the adverse impact of losing that supply or having it available only at very high prices.
And the articles we have posted, re CW babies and children being from pro-Assad areas, kidnapped after their parents were killed (sometimes the women were also kidnapped), is given added credibility by Human Rights Watch, and reported by the Wall Street Journal, no less!:
'The report quoted witnesses as saying rebels went house to house, killing entire families or killing the men and taking women and children hostage.
The villagers belong to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam which forms the backbone of President Bashar al-Assad's regime—and which Sunni Muslim extremists consider heretics.
One survivor, Hassan Shebli, told Human Rights Watch he fled as rebels approached his village of Barouda at dawn, but was forced to leave behind his wife, who was unable to walk without crutches, and his paralyzed 23-year-old son.
When Mr. Shebli returned days later, after government forces retook the village, he found his wife and son buried near the house and bullet holes and blood splattered in the bedroom, the New York-based group said.
The findings are bound to feed mounting Western unease about the tactics of some of those trying to topple Mr. Assad and about the growing role of jihadi rebels, including foreign fighters linked to al Qaeda.
The main Western-backed rebel alliance, the Free Syrian Army, distanced itself from the five rebel groups named by Human Rights Watch as the main perpetrators.
"Anyone who commits such crimes will not belong to the revolution anymore," said spokesman Louay Mikdad.
He said the alliance is not cooperating with extremist groups, and that al Qaeda-linked rebels frequently attack FSA fighters.
A rebel in the Latakia area, who goes by the name of Mohammed Haffawi, denied civilians were killed during the offensive. Reached by Skype, he said one of the rebel groups is holding about 100 women and children as bargaining chips for the release of prisoners held by the regime...'
'Lama Fakih of Human Rights Watch said the rebel abuses in Latakia "certainly amount to war crimes," and may even rise to the level of crimes against humanity.
The group said more than 20 rebel groups participated in the Latakia offensive...' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Sat Oct 12, 2013 4:04 am Post subject:
'Foreigners Train Syrian Rebels in Afghanistan to Use Chem Weapons - Russian Foreign Minister':
By RT
"Al-Nusra Front is planning to smuggle toxic compounds and relevant specialists into Iraqi territory to stage terrorist attacks there this time," Lavrov said.
'There are reports that some third countries are training Syrian rebels to use chemical weapons in Afghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. The intention is to put the skill to use in new false flag actions in Syria, he explained.
The suspected training happened in Afghan territories not under control of the government in Kabul, Lavrov said.
“Some reports indicate that [Al-Qaeda-linked radical] Al-Nusra Front is planning to smuggle toxic compounds and relevant specialists into Iraqi territory to stage terrorist attacks there this time,” Lavrov said.
The Russian minister, who spoke after meeting his Kuwaiti counterpart Mohammad Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, warned against any possible provocations in Syria related to the ongoing process of its chemical weapons disarmament.
“We are standing for conducting the work in a precise manner in accordance with the roadmap and without any hindrances. We warn against any possible provocation,” Lavrov said.
Al-Nusra Front is considered one of the most combat-worthy parts of the militants fighting against Damascus.
It has said that it takes orders from an Al-Qaeda branch operating in Iraq. Many countries, including the United States, list the group as a terrorist organization over several high-profile bombings it organized in Syria...' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
'..Because the insurgents were behind the chemical attacks in March 2013, Syria’s government originally wanted the UN investigators to have the authority and mandate to officially assign blame on which party used the chemical weapons. The US, however, put all types of obstacles in place to prevent the UN from issuing a report that the US-supported insurgents were using chemical weapons. It was the US, Britain, and France that prevented an UN investigation that could assign responsibility for any chemical weapon attacks from taking place. Instead they wanted a politicized inspection team that would try to demonize Syria and write reports against Damascus. This led to a deadlock in the United Nations over the type of team that the UN would send to work in Syria. A settlement was eventually reached. The US and its allies eventually reduced the mandate of the UN inspectors to one of only determining if chemical weapons were used....'
'Cooked US Intelligence and Implausible White House Stories
The narrative that the US government and its allies present about Ghouta is contradictory to logic and highly implausible. Added to the fact that the US has a track record of lying to create pretexts for aggression, Washington’s claims should be heavily scrutinized. So should the same group of non-governmental organizations that have consistently backed American wars and conjured instant reports to justify US foreign policy and war.
President Obama and John Kerry claimed that the Syrian military used chemical weapons while it was advancing militarily in Ghouta. This is contrary to any procedure that would be followed by an organized military force. An advancing military would not gas an area when it was entering it with its forces. Obama and Kerry might as well have claimed that the Syrian military had decided to reduce the number of its own troops by killing them...' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
'The New York Times and other Western media did not seem to notice the glaring contradiction to the claims that they had been peddling only a few weeks ago - that the militants in Syria allegedly do not have chemical weapons.
Washington and its allies were about to launch a massive missile and bombing attack on Syria that would have probably caused thousands of civilian deaths. That offensive would have been an outrageous criminal aggression because, as it has clearly turned out, it was all based on lies. Central to the fabrication for military attack on Syria was the lie that the Western-backed militants did not carry out the Damascus atrocity because “they did not possess such weaponry.”
Well, clearly as the mainstream media is now letting slip, the militants do have access and control over deadly chemical weapons. So much so that the head of the OPCW is compelled to plead for cooperation from these militants in order to carry out the UN Security Resolution mandating the total chemical disarmament inside Syria.
Western propaganda lies evidently have a memory problem. But we should not let the world forget the criminal deeds that Western governments are prepared to carry out - lest they try to pull another pernicious stunt...'
Also here's NY Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/world/middleeast/syria.html?_r=0 _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
'In one round of balloting, the five countries rotating off–Azerbaijan, Guatemala, Morocco, Pakistan and Togo–were replaced by Chad, Chile, Lithuania, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. There was a hearty round of applause and some criticism of human rights records, but otherwise little in the way of surprises from the annual election.
Less than 24 hours later, Saudi Arabia announced it was rejecting its coveted seat on the Council, an unprecedented move that shocked the diplomatic community. Its diplomats cited the Council’s inability to take firm action on the current crisis in Syria (ostensibly the fault of vetoes from Russia and China) and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (ostensibly the fault of the U.S.). “The manner, the mechanisms of action and double standards existing in the Security Council prevent it from performing its duties and assuming its responsibilities toward preserving international peace and security as required,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Allowing the ruling regime in Syria to kill its people and burn them with chemical weapons in front of the entire world and without any deterrent or punishment is clear proof and evidence of the U.N. Security Council’s inability to perform its duties and shoulder its responsibilities.”
Fake BBC Video
by craig on October 7, 2013 11:35 am in Uncategorized
Irrefutable evidence of a stunning bit of fakery by the BBC:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/10/fake-bbc-video/
In this version the medic being interviewed says about the 2 minute mark:
“..It’s just absolute chaos and carnage here, erm we’ve had a massive influx of what looks like serious burns, er seems like it must be some sort of chemical weapon, I’m not really sure..”
In this version she says – it is at about 2 mins 20 seconds in this edit:
“..It’s just absolute chaos and carnage here, erm we’ve had a massive influx of what looks like serious burns, er seems like it must be some sort of, I’m not really sure, maybe napalm, something similar to that..”
The disturbing thing is the footage of the doctor talking is precisely the same each time. It is edited so as to give the impression the medic is talking in real time in her natural voice – there are none of the accepted devices used to indicate a voiceover translation. But it must be true that in at least one, and possibly both, the clips she is not talking in real time in her own voice. It is very hard to judge as her mouth and lips are fully covered throughout. Perhaps neither of the above is what she actually said.
More 'Dirty Tricks' from the US? _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
By Israel Shamir
Global Research, October 26, 2013
israelshamir.net 5 October 2013
Theme: US NATO War Agenda
In-depth Report: SYRIA: NATO'S NEXT WAR?
The Cape of Good Hope Presentation at the Rhodes Forum, October 5, 2013
First, the good news. American hegemony is over. The bully has been subdued.
We cleared the Cape of Good Hope, symbolically speaking, in September 2013. With the Syrian crisis, the world has passed a key forking of modern history. It was touch and go, just as risky as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
The chances for total war were high, as the steely wills of America and Eurasia had crossed in the Eastern Mediterranean. It will take some time until the realisation of what we’ve gone through seeps in: it is normal for events of such magnitude. The turmoil in the US, from the mad car chase in the DC to the shutdown of federal government and possible debt default, are the direct consequences of this event.
Remember the Berlin Wall? When it went down, I was in Moscow, writing for Haaretz. I went to a press-conference with Politburo members in the President Hotel, and asked them whether they concurred that the end of the USSR and world socialist system was nigh. I was laughed at; it was an embarrassing occasion. Oh no, they said. Socialism will blossom, as the result of the Wall’s fall. The USSR went down two years later. Now our memory has compacted those years into a brief sequence, but in reality, it took some time.
The most dramatic event of September 2013 was the high-noon stand-off near the Levantine shore, with five US destroyers pointing their Tomahawks towards Damascus and facing them – the Russian flotilla of eleven ships led by the carrier-killer Missile Cruiser Moskva and supported by Chinese warships. Apparently, two missiles were launched towards the Syrian coast, and both failed to reach their destination.
It was claimed by a Lebanese newspaper quoting diplomatic sources that the missiles were launched from a NATO air base in Spain and they were shot down by the Russian ship-based sea-to-air defence system. Another explanation proposed by the Asia Times says the Russians employed their cheap and powerful GPS jammers to render the expensive Tomahawks helpless, by disorienting them and causing them to fail. Yet another version attributed the launch to the Israelis, whether they were trying to jump-start the shoot-out or just observed the clouds, as they claim.
Whatever the reason, after this strange incident, the pending shoot-out did not commence, as President Obama stood down and holstered his guns. This was preceded by an unexpected vote in the British Parliament. This venerable body declined the honour of joining the attack proposed by the US. This was the first time in two hundred years that the British parliament voted down a sensible proposition to start a war; usually the Brits can’t resist the temptation.
After that, President Obama decided to pass the hot potato to the Congress. He was unwilling to unleash Armageddon on his own. Thus the name of action was lost. Congress did not want to go to war with unpredictable consequences. Obama tried to browbeat Putin at the 20G meeting in St Petersburg, and failed. The Russian proposal to remove Syrian chemical weaponry allowed President Obama to save face. This misadventure put paid to American hegemony , supremacy and exceptionalism. Manifest Destiny was over. We all learned that from Hollywood flics: the hero never stands down; he draws and shoots! If he holsters his guns, he is not a hero: he’s chickened out.
Afterwards, things began to unravel fast. The US President had a chat with the new president of Iran, to the chagrin of Tel Aviv. The Free Syrian Army rebels decided to talk to Assad after two years of fighting him, and their delegation arrived in Damascus, leaving the Islamic extremists high and dry. Their supporter Qatar is collapsing overextended. The shutdown of their government and possible debt default gave the Americans something real to worry about. With the end of US hegemony, the days of the dollar as the world reserve currency are numbered.
World War III almost occurred as the banksters wished it. They have too many debts, including the unsustainable foreign debt of the US. If those Tomahawks had flown, the banksters could have claimed Force Majeure and disavow the debt. Millions of people would die, but billions of dollars would be safe in the vaults of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. In September, the world crossed this bifurcation point safely, as President Obama refused to take the fall for the banksters. Perhaps he deserved his Nobel peace prize, after all.
The near future is full of troubles but none are fatal. The US will lose its emission rights as a source of income. The US dollar will cease to serve as the world reserve currency though it will remain the North American currency. Other parts of the world will resort to their euro, yuan, rouble, bolivar, or dinar. The US military expenditure will have to be slashed to normal, and this elimination of overseas bases and weaponry will allow the US population to make the transition rather painlessly. Nobody wants to go after America; the world just got tired of them riding shotgun all over the place. The US will have to find new employment for so many bankers, jailers, soldiers, even politicians.
As I stayed in Moscow during the crisis, I observed these developments as they were seen by Russians. Putin and Russia have been relentlessly hard-pressed for quite a while.
* The US supported and subsidised Russia’s liberal and nationalist opposition; the national elections in Russia were presented as one big fraud. The Russian government was delegitimised to some extent.
* The Magnitsky Act of the US Congress authorised the US authorities to arrest and seize the assets of any Russian they deem is up to no good, without a recourse to a court.
* Some Russian state assets were seized in Cyprus where the banks were in trouble.
* The US encouraged Pussy Riot, gay parades etc. in Moscow, in order to promote an image of Putin the dictator, enemy of freedom and gay-hater in the Western and Russian oligarch-owned media.
* Russian support for Syria was criticised, ridiculed and presented as a brutal act devoid of humanity. At the same time, Western media pundits expressed certainty that Russia would give up on Syria.
As I wrote previously, Russia had no intention to surrender Syria, for a number of good reasons: it was an ally; the Syrian Orthodox Christians trusted Russia; geopolitically the war was getting too close to Russian borders. But the main reason was Russia’s annoyance with American high-handedness. The Russians felt that such important decisions should be taken by the international community, meaning the UN Security Council. They did not appreciate the US assuming the role of world arbiter.
In the 1990s, Russia was very weak, and could not effectively object, but they felt bitter when Yugoslavia was bombed and NATO troops moved eastwards breaking the US promise to Gorbachev. The Libyan tragedy was another crucial point. That unhappy country was bombed by NATO, and eventually disintegrated. From the most prosperous African state it was converted into most miserable. Russian presence in Libya was rather limited, but still, Russia lost some investment there. Russia abstained in the vote on Libya as this was the position of the then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev who believed in playing ball with the West. In no way was Putin ready to abandon Syria to the same fate.
The Russian rebellion against the US hegemony began in June, when the Aeroflot flight from Beijing carrying Ed Snowden landed in Moscow. Americans pushed every button they could think of to get him back. They activated the full spectre of their agents in Russia. Only a few voices, including that of your truly, called on Russia to provide Snowden with safe refuge, but our voices prevailed. Despite the US pressure, Snowden was granted asylum.
The next step was the Syrian escalation. I do not want to go into the details of the alleged chemical attack. In the Russian view, there was not and could not be any reason for the US to act unilaterally in Syria or anywhere else. In a way, the Russians have restored the Law of Nations to its old revered place. The world has become a better and safer place.
None of this could’ve been achieved without the support of China. The Asian giant considers Russia its “elder sister” and relies upon her ability to deal with the round-eyes. The Chinese, in their quiet and unassuming way, played along with Putin. They passed Snowden to Moscow. They vetoed anti-Syrian drafts in the UNSC, and sent their warships to the Med. That is why Putin stood the ground not only for Russia, but for the whole mass of Eurasia.
The Church was supportive of Putin’s efforts; not only the Russian Church, but both Catholics and Orthodox were united in their opposition to the pending US campaign for the US-supported rebels massacred Christians. The Pope appealed to Putin as to defender of the Church; so did the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch. The Pope almost threatened to excommunicate Hollande, and the veiled threat impressed the French president. So Putin enjoyed support and blessing of the Orthodox Patriarchs and of the Pope: such double blessing is an extremely rare occassion.
There were many exciting and thrilling moments in the Syrian saga, enough to fill volumes. An early attempt to subdue Putin at G8 meeting in Ireland was one of them. Putin was about to meet with the united front of the West, but he managed to turn some of them to his side, and he sowed the seeds of doubt in others’ hearts by reminding them of the Syrian rebel manflesh-eating chieftains.
The proposal to eliminate Syrian chemical weapons was deftly introduced; the UNSC resolution blocked the possibility of attacking Syria under cover of Chapter Seven. Miraculously, the Russians won in this mighty tug-of-war. The alternative was dire: Syria would be destroyed as Libya was; a subsequent Israeli-American attack on Iran was unavoidable; Oriental Christianity would lose its cradle; Europe would be flooded by millions of refugees; Russia would be proven irrelevant, all talk and no action, as important as Bolivia, whose President’s plane can be grounded and searched at will. Unable to defend its allies, unable to stand its ground, Russia would’ve been left with a ‘moral victory’, a euphemism for defeat. Everything Putin has worked for in 13 years at the helm would’ve been lost; Russia would be back to where it was in 1999, when Clinton bombed Belgrade.
The acme of this confrontation was reached in the Obama-Putin exchange on exceptionalism. The two men were not buddies to start with. Putin was annoyed by what he perceived as Obama’s insincerity and hypocrisy. A man who climbed from the gutter to the very top, Putin cherishes his ability to talk frankly with people of all walks of life. His frank talk can be shockingly brutal. When he was heckled by a French journalist regarding treatment of Chechen separatists, he replied:
“the Muslim extremists (takfiris) are enemies of Christians, of atheists, and even of Muslims because they believe that traditional Islam is hostile to the goals that they set themselves. And if you want to become an Islamic radical and are ready to be circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. We are a multi-faith country and we have experts who can do it. And I would advise them to carry out that operation in such a way that nothing would grow in that place again”.
Another example of his shockingly candid talk was given at Valdai as he replied to BBC’s Bridget Kendall. She asked: did the threat of US military strikes actually play a rather useful role in Syria’s agreeing to have its weapons placed under control?
Putin replied: Syria got itself chemical weapons as an alternative to Israel’s nuclear arsenal. He called for the disarmament of Israel and invoked the name of Mordecai Vanunu as an example of an Israeli scientist who opposes nuclear weapons. (My interview with Vanunu had been recently published in the largest Russian daily paper, and it gained some notice).
Putin tried to talk frankly to Obama. We know of their exchange from a leaked record of the Putin-Netanyahu confidential conversation. Putin called the American and asked him: what’s your point in Syria? Obama replied: I am worried that Assad’s regime does not observe human rights. Putin almost puked from the sheer hypocrisy of this answer. He understood it as Obama’s refusal to talk with him “on eye level”.
In the aftermath of the Syrian stand-off, Obama appealed to the people of the world in the name of American exceptionalism. The United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional”, he said. Putin responded: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.” This was not only an ideological, but theological contradistinction.
As I expounded at length elsewhere, the US is built on the Judaic theology of exceptionalism, of being Chosen. It is the country of Old Testament. This is the deeper reason for the US and Israel’s special relationship. Europe is going through a stage of apostasy and rejection of Christ, while Russia remains deeply Christian. Its churches are full, they bless one other with Christmas and Easter blessings, instead of neutral “seasons”. Russia is a New Testament country. And rejection of exceptionalism, of chosenness is the underlying tenet of Christianity.
For this reason, while organised US Jewry supported the war, condemned Assad and called for US intervention, the Jewish community of Russia, quite numerous, wealthy and influential one, did not support the Syrian rebels but rather stood by Putin’s effort to preserve peace in Syria. Ditto Iran, where the wealthy Jewish community supported the legitimate government in Syria. It appears that countries guided by a strong established church are immune from disruptive influence of lobbies; while countries without such a church – the US and/or France – give in to such influences and adopt illegal interventionism as a norm.
As US hegemony declines, we look to an uncertain future. The behemoth might of the US military can still wreck havoc; a wounded beast is the most dangerous one. Americans may listen to Senator Ron Paul who called to give up overseas bases and cut military expenditure. Norms of international law and sovereignty of all states should be observed. People of the world will like America again when it will cease snooping and bullying. It isn’t easy, but we’ve already negotiated the Cape and gained Good Hope.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2013 7:20 pm Post subject:
Report: Israel destroyed Hezbollah-bound missile shipment in Syria
Al-Arabiya reports that latest strikes on Syria were carried out by Israel.
By Haaretz | Oct. 31, 2013 | 7:55 PM | 8
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.555428
Israel was responsible for an explosion at a Syria military missile base, the Saudi-owned media organization Al-Arabiya reported on Thursday. This was the first report to make such a claim.
Eye witnesses told the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuhrsday that the explosion, heard on Wednesday, took place near Snobar Jableh, south of Latakia.
Citing anonymous sources, Al-Arabiya reported that Israel Air Force carried out two attacks on Latakia and Damascus on Wednesday.
It said that the strikes targeted an SA-8 surface-to-air missile shipment for Hezbollah and that the two targets were destroyed.
It remained unclear whether anyone was wounded in the strike.
Reports in July claimed that the Israeli air force struck a missile warehouse that serviced Russian and Syrian interests in the area. Later, American officials told the New York Times that the strike in July did not succeed in wiping out all of the targeted Russian land-sea missiles, and that Israel was therefore likely to strike again.
The official Lebanese news agency reported that Israeli aircrafts were sighted on multiple occasions Wednesday in the south of the country. According to the report, which was based on a press statement by the Lebanese army, the airplanes entered Lebanese airspace at around 1:40 P.M. and circled over various places before leaving over the Mediterranean Sea near Tripoli and Naqoura at 5 P.M.
A Facebook page run by Syrian rebels claimed that the strike occurred at around 7 P.M. According to the page, a missile was fired from the sea and struck the Syrian base but did not result in any casualties.
Israeli sources declined to comment on the reports.
Last week, Kuwaiti newspaper Al Jarida reported that Israeli fighter planes had bombed a shipment of missiles in the border area between Lebanon and Syria. The report, which according to the paper was based on sources in Jerusalem, has no confirmation from any other source.
The source told the newspaper that the missiles that were destroyed were of an advanced model and were designated for Hezbollah, as part of the strengthening of the organization's missile system. It is not clear whether the attack was carried out on Lebanese territory or on Syrian territory.
Israel refused to comment officially on the publication in the Kuwaiti newspaper, whose reliability is questionable.
The most recent attack on the Syrian-Lebanese border, which foreign publications attributed to Israel, came at the end of July. Syrian opposition forces claimed at the time that Israel Air Force planes had attacked a Syrian army base in the Kuneitra area. According to the reports, the target of the attack was a convoy of missile launchers that was en route to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The report claimed that sorties of IAF planes in the skies of Kuneitra were heard during the night.
The movie “Syriana” came out in Dec. 2005. The complex, realistic, tense and dramatic multi-layered account of oil politics, terrorism and the CIA in the Middle East made for a fascinating story which also had at its heart personal transformation. I remember being intrigued by the film’s title “Syriana” – because Syria did not feature in the movie at all. The action began in Iran and also took in Lebanon, but no other Middle Eastern countries were featured apart from an unnamed Gulf State. Israel, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were entirely absent. There was no reference at all to Syria. But I did not look into the question of the name of the film until this year when the war in Syria reached an ever more critical condition. According to the film’s publicity materials, “Syriana” was “a very real term used by Washington think-tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East.
http://threeman.org/?p=1739 _________________ "Soon after the year 2000 has been written, a law will go forth from America whose purpose will be to suppress all individual thinking. This will not be the wording of the law, but it will be the intent" Rudolf Steiner: Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes in Menschengeiste (The Present and the Past in the Human Spirit)
Seymour Hersh Confirms Obama Lied About Syria Chemical Weapons Attacks
Almost five months after the chemical weapons attacks that took place in the Ghouta region of Syria, legendary reporter and revealer of American war crimes such as My Lai and Abu Grahib, Seymour Hersh, has revealed yet another bombshell of information – specifically that the Obama Administration intentionally misrepresented information that was used to claim Assad and the Syrian government was responsible for the attack.
Hersh’s article, “Whose Sarin?” which was notably published in the UK press and not in the American media, claims that the Obama administration is guilty of “cherry picking” intelligence information to suit the goal of military action against Syria. Hersh’s accusations come after his conversations with at least two “intelligence and military officials.”
Ultimately, Hersh’s article rests on the criticism and revelations that the administration intentionally buried information regarding Jobhat al-Nusra operating inside Syria and the clear and documented evidence that the extremist group did, in fact, have access to sarin gas and the means to deliver it via improvised rocket propelling devices. Hersh also criticizes the American media for engaging in “confirmation bias” and riding the wave of propaganda being promoted against the Assad government.
In addition, the respected journalist points out that the administration actually manipulated evidence so as to attempt to portray the Assad forces as the aggressors. Hersh clearly states that the administration's claims shortly after the Ghouta chemical weapons attack were nothing more than a fabrication, echoing the fabrication that famously preceded the tragedy of Iraq.
Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2014 11:43 am Post subject: Syriana Part 2
Syriana part two:
Antioch, Syria and T.E. Lawrence
The first part of this article (http://threeman.org/?p=1739)
closed by referring to a 1992 article in The Economist which imagined a world war scenario in the first half of the 21st century that would get underway in 2011 in the Middle East.
http://threeman.org/?p=1765 _________________ "Soon after the year 2000 has been written, a law will go forth from America whose purpose will be to suppress all individual thinking. This will not be the wording of the law, but it will be the intent" Rudolf Steiner: Gegenwärtiges und Vergangenes in Menschengeiste (The Present and the Past in the Human Spirit)
Reportedly, on 3 September 2013, Russia shot down two US ballistic missiles that were heading towards the Syrian coast, allegedly 'in the direction of Damascus'.
"The trajectory of these objects goes from the central part of the Mediterranean Sea toward the eastern part of the Mediterranean coast," Interfax news agency quoted a Russian spokesman as saying.
Russia detects ballistic launch in Mediterranean
On 3 September, Israel said it was unaware of any ballistic missile launch being conducted in the eastern Mediterranean.
"We are not aware, at this time, of such an event having occurred," a military spokeswoman in Jerusalem said.
Russia detects ballistic launch in Mediterranean; Israel denies
Rota Naval Base in Spain has been used by the USA's ballistic missile submarines.
The missiles were reportedly fired from Spain, or, from the central part of the Mediterranean.
Truth of US-Russia Confrontation
"The launches were detected by the ballistic missile early warning system in Armavir in southern Russia, the defence ministry said in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies."
Ballistic missiles launched in central part of the Mediterranean towards Syrian coast / Russia's anti-air-missile-radars registered two ballistic launches in the Mediterranean
Reportedly, Russia shot down the missiles.
Then Russia went on war alert and sent a stiff warning to US intelligence.
There is a discussion of the issue here: Did Russia Actually Shoot Down Those Missiles?
CanSpeccy points out that the UK parliament voted against a strike on Syria prior to the missile incident.
Dublinmick writes:
Al Manar TV of Lebanon claims Russia shot down two US missiles:
Truth of US-Russia Confrontation
Reportedly:
The Head of the Russian Intelligence Service contacted US intelligence and informed it that:
"Hitting Damascus means hitting Moscow...
"We have removed the term 'downed the two missiles' from our statement to preserve the bilateral relations and to avoid escalation.
"Therefore, you must immediately reconsider your policies, approaches and intentions on the Syrian crisis, as you must be certain that you cannot eliminate our presence in the Mediterranean."...
"One of the first results of the US-Russian military confrontation was the British House of Commons' rejection of participation in a war on Syria."
(The phrase 'US-Russian military confrontation' may refer to the build up of warships in the region. CanSpeccy points out that the UK parliament voted against a strike on Syria prior to the missile incident.)
FULL STORY from Al Manar TV of Lebanon:
Truth of US-Russia Confrontation
A well informed diplomatic source told As-Safir newspaper that "the US war on Syria had started and ended the moment those two ballistic missiles were fired.
"There was conflicting information, as Israel denied the missile attack and Russia confirmed the missile attack.
"An Israeli statement was issued indicating the missiles were fired in the context of an Israeli-US joint drill and fell in the sea, and that they were not related to the Syrian crisis."
The well informed diplomatic source further told the Lebanese daily that "the US forces fired these two rockets from a NATO base in Spain, and were instantly detected by the Russian radars and confronted by the Russian defense systems, so one of them exploded in the airspace and the second one diverted towards the sea."
In this context, the source pointed out that "the statement issued by the Russian Defense Ministry, which stated the detection of two ballistic missiles fired towards the Middle East, deliberately neglected two points: the first was the location from which the two rockets were fired, and the second was their downing.
"Why?
"Because the moment the full military operation was launched, the Head of the Russian Intelligence Service contacted US intelligence and informed it that 'hitting Damascus means hitting Moscow, and we have removed the term 'downed the two missiles' from the statement to preserve the bilateral relations and to avoid escalation. Therefore, you must immediately reconsider your policies, approaches and intentions on the Syrian crisis, as you must be certain that you cannot eliminate our presence in the Mediterranean.'"
"This unannounced direct confrontation between Moscow and Washington increased the Obama Administration's ... certainty that the Russian side was determined to support Syria, and that the US did not have a way out of its impasse except through a Russian initiative which would save America’s face…" he added.
The diplomatic source clarified that "Israel denied knowing anything about the rocket firing in its first statement, which is the truth.
"Washington demanded that Tel Aviv take responsibility for the rocket firing to save the USA's face in front of the International Community..."
Finally, the source pointed out that "One of the first results of the US-Russian military confrontation was the British House of Commons' rejection of participation in a war on Syria. This was followed by European statements, most significantly, the German opposition to participation in a war - announced by Chancellor Angela Merkel."
U.S. Missiles Shot Down By Russia According to Al Manar TV Of Lebanon
CanSpeccy points out that the UK parliament voted against a strike on Syria prior to the missile incident.
Another victim of the rebels, who were sent into Syria by the CIA.
DISCLAIMER: THE POSTING OF STORIES, COMMENTARIES, REPORTS, DOCUMENTS AND LINKS (EMBEDDED OR OTHERWISE) ON THIS SITE DOES NOT IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE, NECESSARILY EXPRESS OR SUGGEST ENDORSEMENT OR SUPPORT OF ANY OF SUCH POSTED MATERIAL OR PARTS THEREIN.
Moron Airbase in Spain is used by the US military
Anaconda comments:
If accurate, yes, this is huge.
Why a ballistic missile strike?
But also, where was the intercept made? It seems it would be upon re-entry on the down side of the parabolic path, but, then, again, the description sounds as if it was towards the initial launch point. But, then, again, the intercept was reported to be in the East Mediterranean of the coast of Syria.
Interception of a ballistic missile is a "big deal" in terms of technological ability.
Much, much, harder than a cruise missile or even a fighter jet.
All public reports refer to interception of ballistic missiles at the early post launch stage (the clime on the parabolic flight path).
Russia has technology the U. S. public is not aware of (I'm an American)?
...Could this have been a 'head shot' in an attempt to take out Assad?
Clearly, the corrupt leadership in Washington D. C. is desperate to get regime change.
A Pro-Assad man being beheaded by Obama's rebels.
"I don’t know how old the victim was but he was young. He was forced to his knees...
"The executioners belonged to ISIS - an Al-Qaeda faction."
Venture Capitalist, Dan Bubalo, claims US troops have received orders to deploy to Syria
Venture capitalist Dan Bubalo says he was told by a source close to Ft. Hood that US troops have been ordered to deploy to Syria.
Writing for conservative columnist Mychal Massie's website, Bubalo says the development "contradicts the posturing and false reassurances and table-pounding of Obama and Kerry."
Bubalo claims the information was "sourced thoroughly."
One alleged active duty soldier comments: "It’s truth, a few of my fellow soldiers left last week...others are setting up to go this weekend."
Dan Bubalo has appeared as a guest on mainstream networks such as CNBC.
Another victim of Obama's rebels.
Boots on the ground in Syria?
Secretary of State John Kerry said he didn't want to take the option off the table during testimony at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.
In addition to CIA training of Syrian rebels which is already taking place in Jordan, the Obama administration is considering a new proposal to use the US military to train the opposition militants, despite their close links with terrorist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra.
Anonymous writes from down under:
BTW Aang (and off-topic sorry) - Is Miley Cyrus and 'twerking' getting as much coverage in the UK as it is in Oz? It's everywhere here, a cultural reference touchstone: front page in the newspapers; the six o'clock news; entirely unmissable to kids.
What with not watching TV I initially missed it but a photo on the front page of the SMH site made my jaw drop and I hunted up the clip on youtube.
Having been a director (of TVC's but whatever) it occurred to me that had the brief been "Miley, we need you to be the precise embodiment of the whore of Babylon," it couldn't have been more perfectly fulfilled. Tongue out of her head, a utterly demented look on her face, her hair twisted into two horns, and all while copping it up the arse - perfect.
I also realised why everyone was using the otherwise idiotic word 'twerking' so much. It's because it saves the hacks having to write 'behaving like a barking mad slut from hell'.
Where is the end point in all this? I initially thought it would arrive when Miley dispenses with the flesh toned bikini, and the simulation, and treats us all to actual public copulation. But then I realised that that too would only be an intermediate step. The full and final endpoint would have to consist of all of the above albeit done on an altar with Miley's throat being cut at the point of climax.
When we see this on the TV we will know we have arrived.
Anonymous provides this link:
A Bomb Caused Tsunami, Nuclear Bomb Can Create A Tsunami ...
Anonymous writes:
Internationally "Wanted Criminal" and "Child Abuser" "Child Molester" "John Wetterer" of "Mi Casa".
- John Wetterer's brother (still wanted by US authorities - took kids from Vietnam to "Guatemala" children's shelter orphanage abuser's retreat "Mi Casa" like Paul Shaffer Chile torturer for "Augusto Pinochet" and child abuser and "religious" leader Paul Shaffer" did take children from Germany to Chile and after WWII - ("Operation Condor") - Jon Wetterer's brother a Catholic priest (Mnsr. Edward Wetterer) ,now "bishop" Monsignor in Queens, NY Flushing, New York - http://www.thecatholicdirectory.com/directory.cfm?fuseaction=display_s ite_info&siteid=53035 Edward Wetterer ran a CYO group - Catholic Youth Organization children's group in the mid 1970's at Our Lady of the Angelus Church in Rego Park, NY Flushing Diocese in Queens - NYC.
Gold Spot
$1,313
Anon at 6:35 AM
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25 comments:
Anonymous12:02 PM
itsa very odd situation where the hearts and minds of the british and american people are with the president, my grandad said the same thing happened with the war on germany.
where this will leave us i dont know, But many British ex servicemen have said they will not fight syria, and may even go to assist them
Ian Borman norfolk
Reply
Anonymous12:54 PM
Thanks Aang, and DublinMick,
I knew there was something fishy about the missile story, but this is absolutely huge. It's shifted my whole take on the affair. The collapse of the West's programme now makes perfect sense.
I postulated that it was possible that the military was jacking up on account of not swallowing a pack of absurd lies but to be honest it was bit of a stretch. Now we see what the impetus was: the prospect of an arse-kicking.
Analogy time - the US and British establishment's balls shrivel to raisins as soon as they realise their adversary isn't some emaciated six year old but is instead a perfectly capable adult who can kick the living * out of them.
But we shouldn't be surprised - it all stands to reason. We're ruled by paedophiles and as if the kind of people who rape children were ever going to be anything other than craven cowards. I mean when was the last time the Americans fought someone who wasn't the military equivalent of a pre-teen?
Anyway, are we impressed by Putin yet? I think I am.
Anaconda3:55 PM
If accurate, yes, this is huge. A ballistic missile strike.
Why a ballistic missile strike?
But also, where was the intercept made? It seems it would be upon re-entry on the down side of the parabolic path, but, then, again, the description sounds as if it was towards the initial launch point. But, then, again, the intercept was reported to be in the East Mediterranean of the coast of Syria.
Aangirfan, this has to be run down with all your sleuthing skills.
Interception of a ballistic missile is a "big deal" in terms of technological ability.
Much, much, harder than a cruise missile or even a fighter jet.
We are talking capability to intercept a supersonic projectile.
All public reports refer to interception of ballistic missiles at the early post launch stage (the clime on the parabolic flight path).
Russia has technology the U. S. public is not aware of (I'm an American)?
Why launch ballistic missiles, in any event? (as opposed to cruise missiles?
What? Plausible deniability?
And what was it designed to achieve? Would Syria attempt to retaliate against the U. S. destroyers off shore?
Or simply punishment?
This raises all kinds of questions.
Know this, regarding Syria, the objective of the U. S. has always been regime change and it still is the objective.
President Obama is lying when he states the U. S. does not seek regime change.
Well, again, if accurate, this reveals how far the U. S. is willing to go for regime change and how far Russia will go in order to prevent that (revealing new, and, as yet, secret technology capability on Russia's part).
I'm ashamed of my government, it appears that America is the new Soviet Union and Russia is the new America; the two have exchanged roles.
But it just shows that Syria is the prerequisite for an attack on Iran (my position, in numerous comments I've made, here, on this website, as an anonymous).
Syria has important geopolitical significance, in its own right, but not enough, I would think, to cause the U. S. to launch ballistic missiles at Syria.
Could this have been a 'head shot' in an attempt to take out Assad?
Clearly, the corrupt leadership in Washington D. C. is desperate to get regime change.
Reply
Anonymous4:10 PM
Very interesting as always,many thanks.
Your readers may well be interested in just how Syria would deploy their S-300 , S-400 defence systems.
Paul Coker8:21 PM
It would make perfect sense if there was an Israeli Dolphin class submarine nestled in the middle of the Yank fleet;
They used a Dolphin sub armed with a modified Popeye-class anti-ship missile to attack the USS Cole on October 2000 (according to Wayne Madsen - I believe he's right. Check out the shape of the hole)
Rather helpfully, the Egyptian Navy ALSO has (or planned to buy) the German-made Dolphin-class subs to supplement its own Navy.
Because that will never get confusing....
They can theoretically be used as a nuclear first-strike platform, and its generally understood that Isreal has and maintains the diesel-powered subs as a "Doomsday" option if the Arab armies ever decide to push them back into the sea (which hasn't been a realistic prospect for over 40 years now)
There was also a US-Shadow Government sponsored false flag planned for the Stennis Battle Group in the Straits of Hormuz, the weekend before polling day (approx. October 28th 2012) which was foiled by Obama and Leon Panetta at the last minute.
N.B. - This was Obama Administration Middle East Policy Prior to Rahm Emanuel (The Architect of 9/11) Getting His Hands All Over It
They don't want to get rid of Assad, he's the best friend they (and fhe Israelis) have in th region.
As for a BALLISTIC missile strike, rather than a Cruise missile strike - that's highly unlikely, since those are orbital or suborbital (NUCLEAR) strikes - I don't think they can be launched from surface ships, only submarines and ICBMs - there would be no point in putting a fleet there.
This is brinkmanship.
Assad cannot be seen to be backing down to American pressure - his government would collapse in a day.
But he CAN be seen to surrender the chemical weapons (which he does not want and cannot use) to an ally under a negotiated settlement.
Sergei Khrushchev (1935–), son of Nikita Khrushchev, writes in his book Nikita Khrushchev: Creation of a Super- power,
“When Father argued at a meeting of the Soviet leadership in favor of withdrawing the missiles, he made this unprecedented statement:
’We have to help Kennedy withstand pressure from the hawks [supporters of war]. They are demanding an immediate military invasion.’”
The Soviet Premier knew an invasion would lead to nuclear war.
Khrushchev agreed to a U.S. president’s “promise” not to invade Cuba again. According to Sergei Khrushchev, this would have been “inconceivable” only a few years earlier.
"I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.
We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism.
We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."
Anonymous5:35 PM
Jumping on too many bizarro theories and not reading AANG. Regular? The clear theory is Russia was planning to move into eastern MED regardless of what NATO says and it will continue to move in a large force! This area is much more important to Russia than zio-media tells us. New finds and Pipelines to wrestle control of natural gas supplies to Europe from Russia? ZIO-media needs you to believe the nonsense is ideally political so two Presidents can line wallets for after SERVICE?
Reply
CanSpeccy4:25 AM
Something quite seriously wrong with the timeline:
Reportedly, Russia shot down the missiles.
Then Russia went on war alert and sent a stiff warning to US intelligence.
The UK House of Commons fairly swiftly voted against war.
The missile launch was on September 3, the House of Commons vote against a strike on Syria was on August 30.
Reply
Anon8:30 AM
Dear CanSpeccy
Many thanks. I have amended the text.
- Aangirfan
Reply
Paul Coker5:07 PM
I told you so :
Obama is going to have a face to face meeting with President Rouhani of Iran at the UN next week.
The first time that has happened since 1977.
And just as I got done saying that, there's a lone, crazed killer in tactical gear, running around DC at the Navy Yard, global command and control centre, 5 blocks from the US Capitol.
I'm sure that's just a complete coincidence.
Reports of 3 shooters, 5 blocks from the Capitol.
Who's watching The President...?
1 shooter down.
Two still at large, one in fatigues, one confirmed to be carrying a long-gun.
BBC News just referred to the Naval Command Centre as "A Victim Disarmament Zone".
Anum Hafeez8:08 PM
Can't decent countries just put the US on lock-down When are we going to address the REAL problems: Mental illness and our violence loving culture? It's pretty easy to say, 'Ban guns!' but you could ban every legal gun in the country and we'd STILL have things like this happen. Calling for a ban on guns is intellectually lazy. It just sounds so easy. If we ban guns, how are we going to convince criminals to turn them in? Trade them for Chia Pets, maybe? As long as we encourage a gangsta culture where 'capping' people is glorified, we ALL have ourselves to blame - not just the gun owners. As long as we do such a poor job of identifying and treating the mentally ill, we ALL have ourselves to blame - not just the gun owners. Until people are willing to address the causes of this kind of violence, we're just going to continue to have one side calling for gun bans and the other side saying not gonna happen and no one gets anywhere.
Regards
Anum Hafeez
World News
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English UK News10:23 AM
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Sam10:46 AM
A nice line of coincedences.
Transfer of missiles to the eastcoast.
The suspension of a high command.
And then obama fired a icbm toward Russia and that was the 19th at 4:58 above Russia where it was intercepted.
You better get these semite and afrikan hoodlums out of gov out of state.
The head of the UN weapons inspectors said that the American case for Syrian government firing chemical weapons was weak, because the rockets can only go 2 miles … but government-held territory is much further away.
Similarly, McClatchy reported yesterday:
A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated.
***
The authors of a report released Wednesday said that their study of the rocket’s design, its likely payload and its possible trajectories show that it would have been impossible for the rocket to have been fired from inside areas controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
In the report, titled “Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the question about the rocket’s range indicates a major weakness in the case for military action initially pressed by Obama administration officials.
***
To emphasize their point, the authors used a map produced by the White House that showed which areas were under government and rebel control on Aug. 21 and where the chemical weapons attack occurred. Drawing circles around Zamalka to show the range from which the rocket could have come, the authors conclude that all of the likely launching points were in rebel-held areas or areas that were in dispute. The area securely in government hands was miles from the possible launch zones.
In an interview, Postol said that a basic analysis of the weapon – some also have described as a looking like a push pop, a fat cylinder filled with sarin atop a thin stick that holds the engine – would have shown that it wasn’t capable of flying the 6 miles from the center of the Syrian government-controlled part of Damascus to the point of impact in the suburbs, or even the 3.6 miles from the edges of government-controlled ground.
He questioned whether U.S. intelligence officials had actually analyzed the improbability of a rocket with such a non-aerodynamic design traveling so far before Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Sept. 3 that “we are certain that none of the opposition has the weapons or capacity to effect a strike of this scale – particularly from the heart of regime territory.”
“I honestly have no idea what happened,” Postol said. “My view when I started this process was that it couldn’t be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I’m not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct.”
Lloyd, who has spent the past half-year studying the weapons and capabilities in the Syrian conflict, disputed the assumption that the rebels are less capable of making rockets than the Syrian military.
“The Syrian rebels most definitely have the ability to make these weapons,” he said. “I think they might have more ability than the Syrian government.” [He's right.]
***
They said that Kerry’s insistence that U.S. satellite images had shown the impact points of the chemical weapons was unlikely to be true. The charges that detonate chemical weapons are generally so small, they said, that their detonations would not be visible in a satellite image.
The report also raised questions whether the Obama administration misused intelligence information in a way similar to the administration of President George W. Bush in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. [Correct, indeed.] Then, U.S. officials insisted that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had an active program to develop weapons of mass destruction. Subsequent inspections turned up no such program or weapons.
“What, exactly, are we spending all this money on intelligence for?” Postol asked.
***
Even the New York Times – one of the main advocates for the claims that the rockets came from a Syrian government base – has quietly dropped the claim.
But the U.S. is still taking the position that the only acceptable outcome for the coming Syria negotiations is for Assad to be replaced by the US-backed transitional government.
As with Iraq, the “facts” are being fixed around the policy.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2014 1:20 pm Post subject:
US, Israel plan to occupy south Syria: Report
Press TV, 4 February 2014
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/02/04/349254/us-israel-plan-to-occu py-south-syria/
An independent Jordanian news agency says the United States and the Israeli regime are working on a joint plan to occupy southern Syria.
The JBC News said the militant groups, which the US calls moderate opposition, will help occupy two regions in southern Syria.
The regions will then unite to finally create a security belt around Israel.
The report said the groups picked by Washington will be equipped with US-made arms such as Tow anti-tank missiles.
They will also be provided with intelligence gathered by Israeli and US spying agencies.
‘Moderate groups’ is a term used by the US administration for part of the militants fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Washington had used the same term for Taliban militants in Afghanistan, in an effort to give them legitimacy in the face of the former Soviet Union forces.
On Tuesday, a US airplane carrying a weapons cargo for foreign-backed militants fighting in Syria reportedly landed in Jordan’s Mafraq Airport, some 80 kilometers Amman.
In January, US security officials disclosed that the Congress has funded the delivery of weapons, in votes behind closed doors, through the end of government fiscal year that is September 30, 2014.
Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. According to reports, the Western powers and their regional allies -- especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey -- are supporting the militants operating inside Syria.
Reports indicate that over 130,000 people have been killed in the violence.
The foreign-backed militancy has also displaced a total of 7.8 million Syrians, more than 1.8 million of whom are living in neighboring countries, mainly in Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. _________________ www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org www.rethink911.org www.patriotsquestion911.com www.actorsandartistsfor911truth.org www.mediafor911truth.org www.pilotsfor911truth.org www.mp911truth.org www.ae911truth.org www.rl911truth.org www.stj911.org www.v911t.org www.thisweek.org.uk www.abolishwar.org.uk www.elementary.org.uk www.radio4all.net/index.php/contributor/2149 http://utangente.free.fr/2003/media2003.pdf
"The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison which alienates the possessor from the community" Carl Jung
https://37.220.108.147/members/www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli warplanes unleashed a series of airstrikes on Syrian military posts early Wednesday, killing one soldier and wounding seven in one of the most serious clashes between the countries in the past four decades.
The airstrikes came in retaliation for a roadside bombing a day earlier in the Golan Heights that wounded four Israeli soldiers on patrol along the tense frontier with Syria. The overnight raids marked a sharp escalation of activity for Israel, which largely has stayed on the sidelines during Syrian President Bashar Assad's battle against rebels trying to topple him.
It is unclear which of the many groups fighting in Syria may have planted Tuesday's bomb. But Israel has said it holds Assad responsible for any attacks emanating from his country, and accused his forces of allowing the attack to take place.
"Our policy is clear. We hurt those who hurt us," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said Assad would "regret his actions" if attacks continue.
Israel captured the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau overlooking northern Israel, from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war. It later annexed the area, though that move is not internationally recognized.
Gunfire and mortar shells from the fighting in Syria have occasionally landed in the Golan in recent years. Israel has said much of the fire was errant, but has responded with artillery fire in several cases. None of those reprisals, however, were as intense as Wednesday's airstrikes.
The Israeli military said its warplanes hit a Syrian army training facility, an army headquarters and artillery batteries. Israel also had carried out artillery strikes against Syrian military targets shortly after Tuesday's bombing.
The Syrian military said the raids early Wednesday targeted three army posts near the town of Quneitra, on the edge of the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan. It confirmed the death of one soldier and said seven were wounded.
The Syrian army denounced the airstrikes as Israel's "desperate attempt to escalate and worsen the situation" and to divert attention from Damascus' advances on the battlefront, especially the military's capture last weekend of a key rebel stronghold near the Lebanese border.
"Repeating such hostile acts (airstrikes) would endanger the security and stability of the region and make it open to all possibilities," a Syrian military statement said.
Analysts said they did not expect the situation to deteriorate, since neither Israel nor Syria is interested in a full-fledged war. Assad is focused on his battle against the rebels and Israel has little desire to upset a period of relative quiet. Syria's ally, Hezbollah, possesses tens of thousands of rockets and missiles aimed at Israel.
Even so, the area has seen an increase in tensions in recent weeks.
Last week, a roadside bomb exploded near an Israeli military patrol along the Lebanese border, causing no injuries. Israel responded with tank and artillery fire at suspected Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon.
Earlier this month, the Israeli army said it killed two militants affiliated with Hezbollah — whose forces are fighting in Syria alongside Assad's troops — as they were trying to plant a bomb along the frontier.
Also, an Israeli airstrike last month reportedly targeted a suspected Hezbollah weapons convoy in northeastern Lebanon, though officials in Israel never confirmed it. Hezbollah said it would retaliate for the airstrike, which killed a Hezbollah official overseeing the operation.
Israel stopped short of blaming Hezbollah outright for Tuesday's bombing, but defense officials said the group remained the main suspect.
Israel and Hezbollah are bitter enemies. They fought a monthlong war in 2006 that ended in a stalemate, and both sides have been gearing up for another confrontation.
Israel has said it will not allow sophisticated weapons to flow from Syria to the Iranian-supported Hezbollah. Since the Syrian war broke out, Israel has carried out a series of airstrikes in Syria that destroyed weapons shipments believed to be headed to Hezbollah.
While the Israel and Syria have largely refrained from direct confrontation since the 1973 Mideast war, Israel has shown a readiness to act.
In 2007, Israeli warplanes bombed a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria, and on two previous occasions, Israeli warplanes buzzed over Assad's palace in a show of strength. In 2003, Israel also bombed a training camp belonging to a Syrian-backed militant group that had carried out a suicide bombing in Israel.
Israel also remains concerned that an ouster of Assad could see power in Syria fall to Islamic militants there, particularly al-Qaida-linked groups, and further destabilize the region.
Israeli analyst Ephraim Kam said neither Syria nor Israel want war, and that Hezbollah and Israel are interested in only limited confrontations.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 1:19 am Post subject:
Even 'Stop the War' have printed an article on their website by Matt Carr mentioning 'that which cannot be entertained', 'False Flags' and 'conspiracy theory' used to discredit people:
'...Despite these efforts, leaked Youtube posts have revealed what seems to be a recent conversation between Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and a number of high-ranking officials earlier this year, discussing previous weapons shipments to Syrian rebels and the possibility of carrying out a faked an al-Qaeda attack on the tomb of Suleyman Shah, founder of the Ottoman Empire, in Syria, in order to justify a military invasion with tanks and special forces.
The authenticity of the recording has not been verified, but nor have I heard any evidence to suggest that it is not authentic. It is not clear when this conversation took place, but its participants included intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, army deputy chief of staff Yasar Guler, and Foreign Ministry under secretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, and there is no doubt about their intentions.
Discussing the plan, Sinirlioglu says ‘We’re going to portray this is Al-Qaeda, there’s no distress there if it’s a matter regarding Al-Qaeda. And if it comes to defending Suleiman Shah Tomb, that’s a matter of protecting our land.‘
To which Güler replies:
‘We don’t have any problems with that.’
And Prime Minister Erdogan also appears to be aware of the planning for this operation, according to this extract:
Davetoglu: Just between us, Prime Minister said that this (attacking the Tomb of Suleyman Sah) should also be considered as an opportunity in this conjuncture Hakan
Fidan: Sir, look, if the justification- we can- I can send four men to the other side, and make them fire 8 missiles to deserted territory. It is not a problem! Justification can be created.
Indeed it can, if the will is there, and with this lot it certainly is. Faking such an incident is clearly so normal in their world that the morality of it doesn’t even emerge as an issue to be discussed. The problem lies in its follow-up strategy and doability, according to Guler, who worries:
‘We cannot implement the decision, we are paralyzed for various reasons, this is our problem Mr. Minister. The apparatus of the state is not working’.
And then there are other protagonists to consider:
Ahmet Davutoğlu: Yes, we will pass on to that okay take it and I am coming. You cannot say to the US Secretary of State, “we need to take strong measures.”
Hakan Fidan: Well, sir, what I am saying is-
Ahmet Davutoğlu: Then he will say, you did not even defend your own land. We had many friendly conversations, mostly with Kerry and he told me exactly this, did you decide to strike and …
Yaşar Güler: Sir, we did, we did a hundred times. With US…
Whether this means that Kerry was actually aware of these particular plans, or whether the US had more generally been pressuring Turkey to attack Syria is not made clear in the conversation. In any case it suggests a very different way of conducting international relations to the one that appears in the mainstream press.
You might expect the revelation that a key Nato member has been plotting to fake a terrorist attack to justify a war, with the possible collusion of the world’s greatest democracy to be at least worthy of further analysis and discussion. But with the exception of Reuters, this leak has barely aroused any attention at all...'
Wonders never cease! They've got a few meetings coming up; check out their website if you're interested. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Very encouraging that STW have either belatedly discovered false flag terror or their press arm has been infiltrated by someone who appears not to worry about straying from the STW party line
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Tue Apr 01, 2014 11:13 am Post subject:
Reuteurs knocked back my comment, not unexpectedly.
Here it is, anyway, for the crac:
'@ Baris Seven: Who do you think you're kidding? I have a Turkish friend, you are not the only one who speaks Turkish.
Many people are intelligent enough to know a 'False Flag' attack when they hear one being discussed.
There have been plenty already, the main one being the murderous mercenary thugs sent to cause mass casualties with the Chemical Weapons attacks, duly blamed on Assad.
The French ex-Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, told French TV viewers that he was approoached by high British officials in 2009 (two years before the armed insurrection kicked off), and told that Britain was going to overthrow the Assad regime with mercenaries.
And 4* General (ret) Wesley Clark says on a number of video interviews that he was told in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, that the US was going to overthrow '7 governments in 5 years - Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran' (the time-scale has slipped, obviously).
So now we know who is responsible for all the carnage and destruction (along with the Saudis, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and other assorted War Criminals).'
I didn't mention 9/11 or Israel, but they knocked it back all the same.
They did allow some decent comments, though. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 25 Jul 2005 Posts: 18335 Location: St. Pauls, Bristol, England
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 12:33 pm Post subject:
As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’ Much of the support for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. ‘Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and back-slapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.’ Erdoğan’s problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.’
In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.* Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.
Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.
For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’
The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort’. (According to a Defense Department consultant, US intelligence has long known that al-Qaida experimented with chemical weapons, and has a video of one of its gas experiments with dogs.) The DIA paper went on: ‘Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting to make its own CW … Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.’ The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’ (Asked about the DIA paper, a spokesperson for the director of national intelligence said: ‘No such paper was ever requested or produced by intelligence community analysts.’)
Last May, more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin. In a 130-page indictment the group was accused of attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin. Five of those arrested were freed after a brief detention. The others, including the ringleader, Haytham Qassab, for whom the prosecutor requested a prison sentence of 25 years, were released pending trial. In the meantime the Turkish press has been rife with speculation that the Erdoğan administration has been covering up the extent of its involvement with the rebels. In a news conference last summer, Aydin Sezgin, Turkey’s ambassador to Moscow, dismissed the arrests and claimed to reporters that the recovered ‘sarin’ was merely ‘anti-freeze’.
The DIA paper took the arrests as evidence that al-Nusra was expanding its access to chemical weapons. It said Qassab had ‘self-identified’ as a member of al-Nusra, and that he was directly connected to Abd-al-Ghani, the ‘ANF emir for military manufacturing’. Qassab and his associate Khalid Ousta worked with Halit Unalkaya, an employee of a Turkish firm called Zirve Export, who provided ‘price quotes for bulk quantities of sarin precursors’. Abd-al-Ghani’s plan was for two associates to ‘perfect a process for making sarin, then go to Syria to train others to begin large scale production at an unidentified lab in Syria’. The DIA paper said that one of his operatives had purchased a precursor on the ‘Baghdad chemical market’, which ‘has supported at least seven CW efforts since 2004’.
A series of chemical weapon attacks in March and April 2013 was investigated over the next few months by a special UN mission to Syria. A person with close knowledge of the UN’s activity in Syria told me that there was evidence linking the Syrian opposition to the first gas attack, on 19 March in Khan Al-Assal, a village near Aleppo. In its final report in December, the mission said that at least 19 civilians and one Syrian soldier were among the fatalities, along with scores of injured. It had no mandate to assign responsibility for the attack, but the person with knowledge of the UN’s activities said: ‘Investigators interviewed the people who were there, including the doctors who treated the victims. It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in public because no one wanted to know.’
In the months before the attacks began, a former senior Defense Department official told me, the DIA was circulating a daily classified report known as SYRUP on all intelligence related to the Syrian conflict, including material on chemical weapons. But in the spring, distribution of the part of the report concerning chemical weapons was severely curtailed on the orders of Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff. ‘Something was in there that triggered a * fit by McDonough,’ the former Defense Department official said. ‘One day it was a huge deal, and then, after the March and April sarin attacks’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘it’s no longer there.’ The decision to restrict distribution was made as the joint chiefs ordered intensive contingency planning for a possible ground invasion of Syria whose primary objective would be the elimination of chemical weapons.
The former intelligence official said that many in the US national security establishment had long been troubled by the president’s red line: ‘The joint chiefs asked the White House, “What does red line mean? How does that translate into military orders? Troops on the ground? Massive strike? Limited strike?” They tasked military intelligence to study how we could carry out the threat. They learned nothing more about the president’s reasoning.’
In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.’ The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.
Britain and France were both to play a part. On 29 August, the day Parliament voted against Cameron’s bid to join the intervention, the Guardian reported that he had already ordered six RAF Typhoon fighter jets to be deployed to Cyprus, and had volunteered a submarine capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. The French air force – a crucial player in the 2011 strikes on Libya – was deeply committed, according to an account in Le Nouvel Observateur; François Hollande had ordered several Rafale fighter-bombers to join the American assault. Their targets were reported to be in western Syria.
By the last days of August the president had given the Joint Chiefs a fixed deadline for the launch. ‘H hour was to begin no later than Monday morning [2 September], a massive assault to neutralise Assad,’ the former intelligence official said. So it was a surprise to many when during a speech in the White House Rose Garden on 31 August Obama said that the attack would be put on hold, and he would turn to Congress and put it to a vote.
At this stage, Obama’s premise – that only the Syrian army was capable of deploying sarin – was unravelling. Within a few days of the 21 August attack, the former intelligence official told me, Russian military intelligence operatives had recovered samples of the chemical agent from Ghouta. They analysed it and passed it on to British military intelligence; this was the material sent to Porton Down. (A spokesperson for Porton Down said: ‘Many of the samples analysed in the UK tested positive for the nerve agent sarin.’ MI6 said that it doesn’t comment on intelligence matters.)
The former intelligence official said the Russian who delivered the sample to the UK was ‘a good source – someone with access, knowledge and a record of being trustworthy’. After the first reported uses of chemical weapons in Syria last year, American and allied intelligence agencies ‘made an effort to find the answer as to what if anything, was used – and its source’, the former intelligence official said. ‘We use data exchanged as part of the Chemical Weapons Convention. The DIA’s baseline consisted of knowing the composition of each batch of Soviet-manufactured chemical weapons. But we didn’t know which batches the Assad government currently had in its arsenal. Within days of the Damascus incident we asked a source in the Syrian government to give us a list of the batches the government currently had. This is why we could confirm the difference so quickly.’
The process hadn’t worked as smoothly in the spring, the former intelligence official said, because the studies done by Western intelligence ‘were inconclusive as to the type of gas it was. The word “sarin” didn’t come up. There was a great deal of discussion about this, but since no one could conclude what gas it was, you could not say that Assad had crossed the president’s red line.’ By 21 August, the former intelligence official went on, ‘the Syrian opposition clearly had learned from this and announced that “sarin” from the Syrian army had been used, before any analysis could be made, and the press and White House jumped at it. Since it now was sarin, “It had to be Assad.”’
The UK defence staff who relayed the Porton Down findings to the joint chiefs were sending the Americans a message, the former intelligence official said: ‘We’re being set up here.’ (This account made sense of a terse message a senior official in the CIA sent in late August: ‘It was not the result of the current regime. UK & US know this.’) By then the attack was a few days away and American, British and French planes, ships and submarines were at the ready.
The officer ultimately responsible for the planning and execution of the attack was General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs. From the beginning of the crisis, the former intelligence official said, the joint chiefs had been sceptical of the administration’s argument that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and other agencies for more substantial evidence. ‘There was no way they thought Syria would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was winning the war,’ the former intelligence official said. Dempsey had irritated many in the Obama administration by repeatedly warning Congress over the summer of the danger of American military involvement in Syria. Last April, after an optimistic assessment of rebel progress by the secretary of state, John Kerry, in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that ‘there’s a risk that this conflict has become stalemated.’
Dempsey’s initial view after 21 August was that a US strike on Syria – under the assumption that the Assad government was responsible for the sarin attack – would be a military blunder, the former intelligence official said. The Porton Down report caused the joint chiefs to go to the president with a more serious worry: that the attack sought by the White House would be an unjustified act of aggression. It was the joint chiefs who led Obama to change course. The official White House explanation for the turnabout – the story the press corps told – was that the president, during a walk in the Rose Garden with Denis McDonough, his chief of staff, suddenly decided to seek approval for the strike from a bitterly divided Congress with which he’d been in conflict for years. The former Defense Department official told me that the White House provided a different explanation to members of the civilian leadership of the Pentagon: the bombing had been called off because there was intelligence ‘that the Middle East would go up in smoke’ if it was carried out.
The president’s decision to go to Congress was initially seen by senior aides in the White House, the former intelligence official said, as a replay of George W. Bush’s gambit in the autumn of 2002 before the invasion of Iraq: ‘When it became clear that there were no WMD in Iraq, Congress, which had endorsed the Iraqi war, and the White House both shared the blame and repeatedly cited faulty intelligence. If the current Congress were to vote to endorse the strike, the White House could again have it both ways – wallop Syria with a massive attack and validate the president’s red line commitment, while also being able to share the blame with Congress if it came out that the Syrian military wasn’t behind the attack.’ The turnabout came as a surprise even to the Democratic leadership in Congress. In September the Wall Street Journal reported that three days before his Rose Garden speech Obama had telephoned Nancy Pelosi, leader of the House Democrats, ‘to talk through the options’. She later told colleagues, according to the Journal, that she hadn’t asked the president to put the bombing to a congressional vote.
Obama’s move for congressional approval quickly became a dead end. ‘Congress was not going to let this go by,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Congress made it known that, unlike the authorisation for the Iraq war, there would be substantive hearings.’ At this point, there was a sense of desperation in the White House, the former intelligence official said. ‘And so out comes Plan B. Call off the bombing strike and Assad would agree to unilaterally sign the chemical warfare treaty and agree to the destruction of all of chemical weapons under UN supervision.’ At a press conference in London on 9 September, Kerry was still talking about intervention: ‘The risk of not acting is greater than the risk of acting.’ But when a reporter asked if there was anything Assad could do to stop the bombing, Kerry said: ‘Sure. He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week … But he isn’t about to do it, and it can’t be done, obviously.’ As the New York Times reported the next day, the Russian-brokered deal that emerged shortly afterwards had first been discussed by Obama and Putin in the summer of 2012. Although the strike plans were shelved, the administration didn’t change its public assessment of the justification for going to war. ‘There is zero tolerance at that level for the existence of error,’ the former intelligence official said of the senior officials in the White House. ‘They could not afford to say: “We were wrong.”’ (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The Assad regime, and only the Assad regime, could have been responsible for the chemical weapons attack that took place on 21 August.’)
*
The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: ‘The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.’)
In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The report’s criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area, received front-page coverage and revived animosities in Washington, with Republicans accusing Obama and Hillary Clinton of a cover-up. A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)
The operation had not been disclosed at the time it was set up to the congressional intelligence committees and the congressional leadership, as required by law since the 1970s. The involvement of MI6 enabled the CIA to evade the law by classifying the mission as a liaison operation. The former intelligence official explained that for years there has been a recognised exception in the law that permits the CIA not to report liaison activity to Congress, which would otherwise be owed a finding. (All proposed CIA covert operations must be described in a written document, known as a ‘finding’, submitted to the senior leadership of Congress for approval.) Distribution of the annex was limited to the staff aides who wrote the report and to the eight ranking members of Congress – the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republicans leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees. This hardly constituted a genuine attempt at oversight: the eight leaders are not known to gather together to raise questions or discuss the secret information they receive.
The annex didn’t tell the whole story of what happened in Benghazi before the attack, nor did it explain why the American consulate was attacked. ‘The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’
Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels. On 28 November 2012, Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reported that the previous day rebels near Aleppo had used what was almost certainly a manpad to shoot down a Syrian transport helicopter. ‘The Obama administration,’ Warrick wrote, ‘has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft.’ Two Middle Eastern intelligence officials fingered Qatar as the source, and a former US intelligence analyst speculated that the manpads could have been obtained from Syrian military outposts overrun by the rebels. There was no indication that the rebels’ possession of manpads was likely the unintended consequence of a covert US programme that was no longer under US control.
By the end of 2012, it was believed throughout the American intelligence community that the rebels were losing the war. ‘Erdoğan was pissed,’ the former intelligence official said, ‘and felt he was left hanging on the vine. It was his money and the cut-off was seen as a betrayal.’ In spring 2013 US intelligence learned that the Turkish government – through elements of the MIT, its national intelligence agency, and the Gendarmerie, a militarised law-enforcement organisation – was working directly with al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability. ‘The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training – including training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Stepping up Turkey’s role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its problems there. Erdoğan knew that if he stopped his support of the jihadists it would be all over. The Saudis could not support the war because of logistics – the distances involved and the difficulty of moving weapons and supplies. Erdoğan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond in March and April.’
There was no public sign of discord when Erdoğan and Obama met on 16 May 2013 at the White House. At a later press conference Obama said that they had agreed that Assad ‘needs to go’. Asked whether he thought Syria had crossed the red line, Obama acknowledged that there was evidence such weapons had been used, but added, ‘it is important for us to make sure that we’re able to get more specific information about what exactly is happening there.’ The red line was still intact.
An American foreign policy expert who speaks regularly with officials in Washington and Ankara told me about a working dinner Obama held for Erdoğan during his May visit. The meal was dominated by the Turks’ insistence that Syria had crossed the red line and their complaints that Obama was reluctant to do anything about it. Obama was accompanied by John Kerry and Tom Donilon, the national security adviser who would soon leave the job. Erdoğan was joined by Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, and Hakan Fidan, the head of the MIT. Fidan is known to be fiercely loyal to Erdoğan, and has been seen as a consistent backer of the radical rebel opposition in Syria.
The foreign policy expert told me that the account he heard originated with Donilon. (It was later corroborated by a former US official, who learned of it from a senior Turkish diplomat.) According to the expert, Erdoğan had sought the meeting to demonstrate to Obama that the red line had been crossed, and had brought Fidan along to state the case. When Erdoğan tried to draw Fidan into the conversation, and Fidan began speaking, Obama cut him off and said: ‘We know.’ Erdoğan tried to bring Fidan in a second time, and Obama again cut him off and said: ‘We know.’ At that point, an exasperated Erdoğan said, ‘But your red line has been crossed!’ and, the expert told me, ‘Donilon said Erdoğan “* waved his finger at the president inside the White House”.’ Obama then pointed at Fidan and said: ‘We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria.’ (Donilon, who joined the Council on Foreign Relations last July, didn’t respond to questions about this story. The Turkish Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to questions about the dinner. A spokesperson for the National Security Council confirmed that the dinner took place and provided a photograph showing Obama, Kerry, Donilon, Erdoğan, Fidan and Davutoglu sitting at a table. ‘Beyond that,’ she said, ‘I’m not going to read out the details of their discussions.’)
But Erdoğan did not leave empty handed. Obama was still permitting Turkey to continue to exploit a loophole in a presidential executive order prohibiting the export of gold to Iran, part of the US sanctions regime against the country. In March 2012, responding to sanctions of Iranian banks by the EU, the SWIFT electronic payment system, which facilitates cross-border payments, expelled dozens of Iranian financial institutions, severely restricting the country’s ability to conduct international trade. The US followed with the executive order in July, but left what came to be known as a ‘golden loophole’: gold shipments to private Iranian entities could continue. Turkey is a major purchaser of Iranian oil and gas, and it took advantage of the loophole by depositing its energy payments in Turkish lira in an Iranian account in Turkey; these funds were then used to purchase Turkish gold for export to confederates in Iran. Gold to the value of $13 billion reportedly entered Iran in this way between March 2012 and July 2013.
The programme quickly became a cash cow for corrupt politicians and traders in Turkey, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. ‘The middlemen did what they always do,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Take 15 per cent. The CIA had estimated that there was as much as two billion dollars in skim. Gold and Turkish lira were sticking to fingers.’ The illicit skimming flared into a public ‘gas for gold’ scandal in Turkey in December, and resulted in charges against two dozen people, including prominent businessmen and relatives of government officials, as well as the resignations of three ministers, one of whom called for Erdoğan to resign. The chief executive of a Turkish state-controlled bank that was in the middle of the scandal insisted that more than $4.5 million in cash found by police in shoeboxes during a search of his home was for charitable donations.
Late last year Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz reported in Foreign Policy that the Obama administration closed the golden loophole in January 2013, but ‘lobbied to make sure the legislation … did not take effect for six months’. They speculated that the administration wanted to use the delay as an incentive to bring Iran to the bargaining table over its nuclear programme, or to placate its Turkish ally in the Syrian civil war. The delay permitted Iran to ‘accrue billions of dollars more in gold, further undermining the sanctions regime’.
*
The American decision to end CIA support of the weapons shipments into Syria left Erdoğan exposed politically and militarily. ‘One of the issues at that May summit was the fact that Turkey is the only avenue to supply the rebels in Syria,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘It can’t come through Jordan because the terrain in the south is wide open and the Syrians are all over it. And it can’t come through the valleys and hills of Lebanon – you can’t be sure who you’d meet on the other side.’ Without US military support for the rebels, the former intelligence official said, ‘Erdoğan’s dream of having a client state in Syria is evaporating and he thinks we’re the reason why. When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him – where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’
A US intelligence consultant told me that a few weeks before 21 August he saw a highly classified briefing prepared for Dempsey and the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, which described ‘the acute anxiety’ of the Erdoğan administration about the rebels’ dwindling prospects. The analysis warned that the Turkish leadership had expressed ‘the need to do something that would precipitate a US military response’. By late summer, the Syrian army still had the advantage over the rebels, the former intelligence official said, and only American air power could turn the tide. In the autumn, the former intelligence official went on, the US intelligence analysts who kept working on the events of 21 August ‘sensed that Syria had not done the gas attack. But the 500 pound gorilla was, how did it happen? The immediate suspect was the Turks, because they had all the pieces to make it happen.’
As intercepts and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. ‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’ Much of the support for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. ‘Principal evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and back-slapping in numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators claiming credit for success.’ Erdoğan’s problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.’
The post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘There is great reluctance to contradict the president, although no all-source intelligence community analysis supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’
Turkey’s willingness to manipulate events in Syria to its own purposes seemed to be demonstrated late last month, a few days before a round of local elections, when a recording, allegedly of Erdoğan and his associates, was posted to YouTube. It included discussion of a false-flag operation that would justify an incursion by the Turkish military in Syria. The operation centred on the tomb of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the revered Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire, which is near Aleppo and was ceded to Turkey in 1921, when Syria was under French rule. One of the Islamist rebel factions was threatening to destroy the tomb as a site of idolatry, and the Erdoğan administration was publicly threatening retaliation if harm came to it. According to a Reuters report of the leaked conversation, a voice alleged to be Fidan’s spoke of creating a provocation: ‘Now look, my commander [Erdoğan], if there is to be justification, the justification is I send four men to the other side. I get them to fire eight missiles into empty land [in the vicinity of the tomb]. That’s not a problem. Justification can be created.’ The Turkish government acknowledged that there had been a national security meeting about threats emanating from Syria, but said the recording had been manipulated. The government subsequently blocked public access to YouTube.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:36 pm Post subject:
The same article is also on Information Clearing House, which also has a 'Comments' section:
The Red Line and the Rat Line:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38142.htm _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
'Boootiful' 'GOTCHA'. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
Joined: 30 Jul 2006 Posts: 6060 Location: East London
Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2014 12:02 pm Post subject:
Extremely interesting article:
'“US Produced Sarin Gas Used in Syria” –
Jeffrey Silverman: US Department of Defense manages a network of laboratories in Georgia with offensive capacity:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/04/08/296525/
'...I soon realised that the US government and the Department of Defense, DoD, wanted to study new infectious strains, such as Anthrax, which were evolving in the wild amongst cattle herds in rural regions of Georgia. It should be mentioned that this small country and Tbilisi were once centre-stage to the Soviet Union’s system of bio weapons research, for both animal and plant warfare.
I have been able to access the design plans for the facility and, through speaking to contractors and whistle blowers, I have learned that the US Department of Defense operates a network of labs in Georgia and that they have an offensive capacity.
Some even go so far as to claim that the US government is using Georgia and its population as part of ongoing research. I also suspect this, and that is why I am trying to obtain solid proof of this allegation right now.
The question is whether Georgians are being utilised for sinister bio programmes and vaccine field trials. This may be difficult to prove, but even the United States has experimented on its own population over the years, and it can use the population of Georgia as part of field trials for vaccines without their full informed consent.
A number of labs, strewn across Eastern Europe, are linked like an umbilicial cord to the Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention (BWPP) programme and various projects within it. This programme provides a cover for what is most likely an offensive programme. If the strains they are investigating turn out to be antibiotic resistant, this implies they are conducting ongoing research into special organisms that can eat bacteria and attack infections that are antibiotic resistant, which can be quickly accessed. Whoever has the capacity to release these controls the bioweapons battlefield.
- What comments have you received from Veterans Today?
This is a group of former US military people, defenders of the US Constitution, defence and security contractors, etc. They have been researching how chemical weapons have been provided to terrorist groups operating via Georgia. They even have collected documentation to that effect. They also have access to intelligence on how Georgian ports have been used to ship heavy bombs which will be used against Iran and other targets. They are interested in my work, and know that I am a trusted source based on my military background and record of accomplishment as a journalist....'
This article needs some serious consideration - it covers an awful lot of ground, including possibly Iran. _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
On March 16, the third anniversary of the NATO-led covert war on Syria, Syrian army won a landmark victory by taking back the Yabroud town on the Lebanese border.3 Hours later, NATO-backed ‘Al-Nusra Front in Lebanon’ retaliated by launching a false-flag bombing attack in Lebanon.4 On March 18-19, the Israeli army bombarded Syrian Army positions by tank and artillery fire and airstrikes.5
After a trip to South Africa, - which had coincided with the funeral of Nelson Mandela – and where he spoke extensively about the complicity of the British government in rendition and torture, he was met upon arrival at Heathrow by officials who served him with a notice to seize his passport under the 'Royal Prerogative' stating that it was assessed his previous visits to Syria had constituted involvement in terrorism. No explanation other than that was given.
However, in an article published soon after, he explained what he thought was the real reason behind the confiscation of his passport and the wider harassment he was subjected to.
In his own words: “I am certain that the only reason I am being continually harassed - something that began long before any visit to Syria - is because CagePrisoners and I are at the forefront of investigations and assertions based on hard evidence that British governments, past and present, have been wilfully complicit in torture”.
Nevertheless, he continued appearing in the media and delivering speeches around the country on the very same issues.
Arrest on Syria related allegations
On 25 February 2014, Moazzam Begg was arrested at his house in Birmingham with three other people on suspicion of "attending a terrorist training camp" and "facilitating terrorism overseas". The West Midlands police explained that the arrest “were pre-planned and intelligence led”. However, it added that “there was no immediate risk to public safety”.
Community reaction
The arrest of Moazzam Begg, a highly respected voice in the Muslim community and beyond, immediately caused a wide movement of support on social media as well as protests being held demanding his release...' _________________ 'And he (the devil) said to him: To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them'. Luke IV 5-7.
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