Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack? By Yossef Bodansky Global Research, September 01, 2013 Defense and Foreign Affairs and Oilprice.com Region: Middle East & North Africa Theme: Intelligence, US NATO War Agenda In-depth Report: SYRIA: NATO'S NEXT WAR? There is a growing volume of new evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its sponsors and supporters — which makes a very strong case, based on solid circumstantial evidence, that the August 21, 2013, chemical strike in the Damascus suburbs was indeed a pre-meditated provocation by the Syrian opposition. The extent of US foreknowledge of this provocation needs further investigation because available data puts the “horror” of the Barack Obama White House in a different and disturbing light. On August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major and irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US Intelligence [“Mukhabarat Amriki”] took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Istanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development” which would, in turn, lead to a US-led bombing of Syria. The opposition forces had to quickly prepare their forces for exploiting the US-led bombing in order to march on Damascus and topple the Bashar al-Assad Government, the senior commanders explained. The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. Indeed, unprecedented weapons distribution started in all opposition camps in Hatay Province on August 21-23, 2013. In the Reyhanli area alone, opposition forces received well in excess of 400 tons of weapons, mainly anti-aircraft weaponry from shoulder-fired missiles to ammunition for light-guns and machineguns. The weapons were distributed from store-houses controlled by Qatari and Turkish Intelligence under the tight supervision of US Intelligence. These weapons were loaded on more than 20 trailer-trucks which crossed into northern Syria and distributed the weapons to several depots. Follow-up weapon shipments, also several hundred tons, took place over the weekend of August 24-25, 2013, and included mainly sophisticated anti-tank guided missiles and rockets. Opposition officials in Hatay said that these weapon shipments were “the biggest” they had received “since the beginning of the turmoil more than two years ago”. The deliveries from Hatay went to all the rebel forces operating in the Idlib-to-Aleppo area, including the al-Qaida affiliated jihadists (who constitute the largest rebel forces in the area). Several senior officials from both the Syrian opposition and sponsoring Arab states stressed that these weapon deliveries were specifically in anticipation for exploiting the impact of imminent bombing of Syria by the US and the Western allies. The latest strategy formulation and coordination meetings took place on August 26, 2013. The political coordination meeting took place in Istanbul and was attended by US Amb. Robert Ford. More important were the military and operational coordination meetings at the Antakya garrison. Senior Turkish, Qatari, and US Intelligence officials attended in addition to the Syrian senior (opposition) commanders. The Syrians were informed that bombing would start in a few days. “The opposition was told in clear terms that action to deter further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime could come as early as in the next few days,” a Syrian participant in the meeting said. Another Syrian participant said that he was convinced US bombing was scheduled to begin on Thursday, August 29, 2013. Several participants — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that the assurances of forthcoming bombing were most explicit even as formally Obama is still undecided. The descriptions of these meetings raise the question of the extent of foreknowledge of US Intelligence, and therefore, the Obama White House. All the sources consulted — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that officials of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” actively participated in the meetings and briefings in Turkey. Therefore, at the very least, they should have known that the opposition leaders were anticipating “a war-changing development”: that is, a dramatic event which would provoke a US-led military intervention. The mere fact that weapon storage sites under the tight supervision of US Intelligence were opened up and about a thousand tons of high-quality weapons were distributed to the opposition indicates that US Intelligence anticipated such a provocation and the opportunity for the Syrian opposition to exploit the impact of the ensuing US and allied bombing. Hence, even if the Obama White House did not know in advance of the chemical provocation, they should have concluded, or at the very least suspected, that the chemical attack was most likely the “war-changing development” anticipated by the opposition leaders as provocation of US-led bombing. Under such circumstances, the Obama White House should have refrained from rushing head-on to accuse Assad’s Damascus and threaten retaliation, thus making the Obama White House at the very least complicit after the act. Meanwhile, additional data from Damascus about the actual chemical attack increases the doubts about Washington’s version of events. Immediately after the attack, three hospitals of Doctors Without Borders (MSF: médecins sans frontières) in the greater Damascus area treated more than 3,600 Syrians affected by the chemical attack, and 355 of them died. MSF performed tests on the vast majority of those treated. MSF director of operations Bart Janssens summed up the findings: “MSF can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack. However, the reported symptoms of the patients, in addition to the epidemiological pattern of the events — characterized by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers — strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent.” Simply put, even after testing some 3,600 patients, MSF failed to confirm that sarin was the cause of the injuries. According to MSF, the cause could have been nerve agents like sarin, concentrated riot control gas, or even high-concentration pesticides. Moreover, opposition reports that there was distinct stench during the attack suggest that it could have come from the “kitchen sarin” used by jihadist groups (as distinct from the odorless military-type sarin) or improvised agents like pesticides. Some of the evidence touted by the Obama White House is questionable at best. A small incident in Beirut raises big questions. A day after the chemical attack, Lebanese fixers working for the “Mukhabarat Amriki” succeeded to convince a Syrian male who claimed to have been injured in the chemical attack to seek medical aid in Beirut in return for a hefty sum that would effectively settle him for life. The man was put into an ambulance and transferred overnight to the Farhat Hospital in Jib Janine, Beirut. The Obama White House immediately leaked friendly media that “the Lebanese Red Cross announced that test results found traces of sarin gas in his blood.” However, this was news to Lebanese intelligence and Red Cross officials.
According to senior intelligence officials, “Red Cross Operations Director George Kettaneh told [them] that the injured Syrian fled the hospital before doctors were able to test for traces of toxic gas in his blood.” Apparently, the patient declared that he had recovered from his nausea and no longer needed medical treatment. The Lebanese security forces are still searching for the Syrian patient and his honorarium. On August 24, 2013, Syrian Commando forces acted on intelligence about the possible perpetrators of the chemical attack and raided a cluster of rebel tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar. Canisters of toxic material were hit in the fierce fire-fight as several Syrian soldiers suffered from suffocation and “some of the injured are in a critical condition”. The Commando eventually seized an opposition warehouse containing barrels full of chemicals required for mixing “kitchen sarin”, laboratory equipment, as well as a large number of protective masks. The Syrian Commando also captured several improvised explosive devices, RPG rounds, and mortar shells. The same day, at least four HizbAllah fighters operating in Damascus near Ghouta were hit by chemical agents at the very same time the Syrian Commando unit was hit while searching a group of rebel tunnels in Jobar. Both the Syrian and the HizbAllah forces were acting on intelligence information about the real perpetrators of the chemical attack. Damascus told Moscow the Syrian troops were hit by some form of a nerve agent and sent samples (blood, tissues, and soil) and captured equipment to Russia. Several Syrian leaders, many of whom are not Bashar al-Assad supporters and are even his sworn enemies, are now convinced that the Syrian opposition is responsible for the August 21, 2013, chemical attack in the Damascus area in order to provoke the US and the allies into bombing Assad’s Syria. Most explicit and eloquent is Saleh Muslim, the head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) which has been fighting the Syrian Government. Muslim doubts Assad would have used chemical weapons when he was winning the civil war. “The regime in Syria … has chemical weapons, but they wouldn’t use them around Damascus, five km from the [UN] committee which is investigating chemical weapons. Of course they are not so stupid as to do so,” Muslim told Reuters on August 27, 2013. He believes the attack was “aimed at framing Assad and provoking an international reaction”. Muslim is convinced that “some other sides who want to blame the Syrian regime, who want to show them as guilty and then see action” is responsible for the chemical attack. The US was exploiting the attack to further its own anti-Assad policies and should the UN inspectors find evidence that the rebels were behind the attack, then “everybody would forget it”, Muslim shrugged. “Who is the side who would be punished? Are they are going to punish the Emir of Qatar or the King of Saudi Arabia, or Mr Erdo?an of Turkey?” And there remain the questions: Given the extent of the involvement of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” in opposition activities, how is that US Intelligence did not know in advance about the opposition’s planned use of chemical weapons in Damascus? It is a colossal failure. And if they did know and warned the Obama White House, why then the sanctimonious rush to blame the Assad Administration? Moreover, how can the Obama Administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians in order to provoke a US military intervention? Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Copyright Defense and Foreign Affairs and Oilprice.com 2013
| Let’s Join One Another to Crush the Unholy, Unruly, Jihadi Muslims by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin 3 Sep 2013 832 post a comment How do I put this politely? You Americans are dumb. Today, Russia and America are fighting each other over fighting the Muslim radicals. Instead, we should be uniting to crush these violent Islamists, once and for all. You Americans want to remove my ally, the Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad. To borrow a phrase from your John F. Kennedy, Assad may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s my son-of-a-bitch. So if you want to destroy him, what are you going to give me in return? If your answer is, “We will give you nothing,” well, why would I ever agree to that? That’s not negotiation, that’s dictation; it’s a return to the bad Yeltsin days, when Holy Mother Russia was pushed into the mud like a used whore. Look, I’ll be the first to say that Obama’s “red line” comment was dumb. It’s obvious he hadn’t thought it through; one can see it in the words he used to express his policy. He said that the “red line” would be crossed if “a whole bunch” of chemical weapons were used. What kind of language is that? How does one quantify a “whole bunch”? This is the President of the High-and-Mighty United States, and he’s talking like a schoolboy? All for this silliness over sarin in Syria? Do I think that Assad did it? Gassed those people? I don’t know; I’ve never asked him. He’s certainly capable of it, and yet only the Americans think that the case against Assad is a “slam dunk.” Everyone else agrees that the case is murky. Everyone else follows the first rule of intelligence-gathering: Consider the source--namely, the pro-rebel media. In this instance, the rebels were losing, and then they got “gassed”--and now Uncle Sam is rushing to their side. How convenient. The Romans, who knew something about both imperialism and trickery, always asked, cui bono--who benefits? Well, the beneficiaries in this episode are the rebels--also known as Al Qaeda. Way to go, Americans! So let’s check some other news items: Here’s a June 6 item from a Turkish newspaper reporting on “the case of Syrian rebels who were seized on the Turkish-Syrian border with two kilograms of sarin.” And it’s not just the Turks: Carla Del Ponte, the Swiss-born former UN Prosecutor for War Crime Tribunals, has echoed those same charges against the rebels. They’re the bad guys! Yet could this evidence against the rebels all be Russian disinformation? Hey, we’re good, but not that good. Meanwhile, go ahead: Look for this information in your mainstream American media--your so-called “free press.” You can barely find it. Yankee lapdog reporters will cover everything that Obama says, and everything that John McCain says, but they won’t send reporters to warzones to go and actually figure out what happened. Nor will American “presstitutes” remind their people of their own country’s history of helping the Iraqis use poison gas, all the time, in the 80s. Yes, American reporters are sheep. They try to figure out what Obama wants them to write, and then they write it. Or if Obama doesn’t have a clear line on some topic--which is often--they look over the shoulder of the reporter next to them and copy that. Like I said, sheep. The result is a herd mentality, showing no understanding of what true necessity truly looks like. Here’s an example of a real “red line”: It’s June 24, 1812, and Napoleon Bonaparte, having conquered all of continental Europe, is now leading a half-million soldiers across the Neman River, invading Russia, heading straight for Moscow. Six months later, Napoleon retreats in disastrous defeat, but only after he burns our sacred capital and leaves 200,000 Russians dead in battle. Now that’s a red-line situation. But even the Czars, those blockheads, weren’t dumb enough to send Russian forces halfway around the world because someone wasn’t being nice to someone else. So in my time, I can hardly get worked up over Assad using poison gas--if he did. Dead is dead, I say. In any case, Assad is adhering to the first rule of a leader: Stay in power. And so you do what it takes. In fact, I’m not against gas warfare; I’m for gas warfare, if that’s what it takes. For example, I would love to gas the Chechens--all 1.2 million of them. They are like cockroaches, murderous Muslim cockroaches, and if the Chechens had done to Americans what they have done to Russians, maybe the US public would want to join with us. Oh wait, they have: The Boston Bombers, those Tsarnaev brothers, were Chechens. You took them in--against our advice. You put them on welfare for a decade, ignored our intelligence warnings, and then they terror-bomb you. The Chechens deserve to be fumigated. As an aside, what's wrong with your media? They seem like "useful idiots"--to borrow Lenin's phrase--for the terrorists. That Rolling Stone cover? Really? That would never happen in Russia. In addition, there are another billion or more Muslims to the south of Russia--and a lot of them are trouble, too. Indeed, Russia has been fighting Muslims all across Central Asia for centuries. It’s not easy. But the American leaders don’t seem to understand any of this. They are lost in their silly theories about liberation, human rights--all that nonsense. They don’t see that the struggle with radical Islam is a war, pure and simple. It’s a war that should unite all the civilized countries of the world. I didn’t say “democratic,” I said “civilized.” One Western journalist who at least begins to understand where I’m coming from is The New York Times’ Steven Lee Myers. In his report of August 28, Myers accurately describes the Putin view of what’s been going on in the Middle East: “In his view, the United States and its partners have unleashed the forces of extremism in country after country in the Middle East by forcing or advocating change in leadership — from Iraq to Libya, Egypt to Syria.” That’s right. Over the last 15 years, from Clinton to Bush 43 to Obama, America has stirred up all the hornet-nests in the Middle East. For the most part, those angry hornets are far away from the US, but those insects are on Russia’s southern border--starting with those lousy Chechens. And it’s not just the Americans stirring things up; it’s flunky-countries, too. It still kills me to think back to what British Prime Minister Tony Blair said just a few weeks after 9-11. In a speech that made the Americans swoon, Blair chose to regard all the coming wars as a great opportunity for international do-gooding. After talking up the importance of “freedom,” Blair cited all needy peoples of the Muslim world and declared, “They, too, are our cause.” What kind of bull is that? Radical Muslims kill you, and so you want to go help them? Put them on welfare? America put its blacks on welfare, and were they grateful? Did they become less violent? Yet in Blair’s mind, these same Muslims were supposed to be grateful for all this “help.” That was the theory. Then Blair concluded with these lines: “This is a moment to seize. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.” And of course, that’s what Blair and Bush did--they reordered the Muslim world. But not in a good way. They made it much worse! Look, I’m a conservative. I have my imperial ambitions, to be sure, but the last thing I want to do is send all the pieces of the world-kaleidoscope fluxing around. We’ve had enough gratuitous messing things up in our own history, whether by Ivan the Terrible or Comrade Stalin. I want order--Russian Orthodox order. So I’ve been predicting, all along, that the Bush-Blair crusade wouldn’t work--and I’ve been right, all along. A Reuters reporter quoted me as saying on September 1: “We need to remember what's happened in the last decade, the number of times the United States has initiated armed conflicts in various parts of the world. Has it solved a single problem?” And the answer, of course, is “no.” The US made things worse. Today, look at Syria. Indeed, by my count, the US has led six major interventions in the Muslim Asia and Africa over the last 30 years: Reagan in Lebanon, Bush 41 and Clinton in Somalia, Bush 43 in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Obama in Libya and Egypt. None of them have worked out well. And so now, Syria! Needless to say, I’m happy to see the Americans make fools of themselves once again. Anything that weakens Uncle Sam helps Mother Russia. Yet even so, after all this, I could be persuaded to make a deal with Obama on Syria. Other US presidents have done just that; they have gone over the heads of the crummy little countries they were fighting in some benighted corner of the world, and reached a war-ending agreement with us Russians. That’s what Nixon did with Brezhnev in May 1972, as Vietnam was still raging. He said, in effect, I need to get out of this stupid war, but I must look tough so I get re-elected. So you Russians, pretty please, look the other way while I bomb the crap out of the North Vietnamese. So the US can stand tall on its way out of Vietnam, secure a “decent interval,” and not obviously lose our honor. And then we’ll owe you one. Brezhnev went along, Nixon bombed and then got out, and the result was “detente,” a notable warming of US-Soviet relations in the 1970s. So that’s the kind of deal that Obama could make with me today on Syria. Coincidentally, he’s coming this week to St. Petersburg for the G-20 Summit; we could easily peel off some time and figure out how to solve the Syria question. Yet once again, Obama would have to give me something in return. What would it be? A free rein in Chechyna? A blind eye toward the incremental reclaiming of lost Soviet territories, back into the Russian Motherland? Or just a simple bribe? Who knows. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. But that rendezvous at the bridge almost certainly won’t happen, because Obama doesn’t seem to think he needs me for anything. Indeed, he is going out of his way to stick his finger in my eye: Just on Monday, we learned that the President is going to be meeting with “gay” groups while in Russia, as a not-so-subtle statement against recent Russia’s anti-homosexuality crackdown. He is meeting with my enemies! Right in my own country! I don’t do that to him. I don’t come to America to meet with, say, the National Rifle Association. Yes, Obama would rather cultivate the worldwide “gay” constituency than work with me to solve Syria. The Americans still think they can have it all: They think they can clobber Assad in Damascus, snub me here in Russia, and pander to their liberal sexual constituencies. In other words, they get everything, and we get nothing. The Americans have had it so good for so long that it just doesn’t occur to them that they might have to make some tradeoffs. We Russians know about tradeoffs. Back during the Great Patriotic War, in ’42, the Nazis were besieging both Leningrad and Stalingrad. The Red Army had to manage its resources: Do we seek to relieve Leningrad in the north and keep a million people from starving, or do we relieve Stalingrad in the south and keep the Hitlerites from capturing our oil resources? We did the latter, of course, and not only did we save the Hero City of Stalingrad, but we wiped out the entire German Sixth Army. So yes, it was a tough tradeoff, the kind you have to make when you need to win. Hundreds of thousands in Leningrad died--including my uncle--but the tide of the war was shifted, and the USSR was saved. Today, of course, I will make it my business to see to it that Obama gets none of what he wants. I will help Assad, I will subdue the homosexuals here in Russia, and I will be still be in power when Obama is laughed off the world stage. Yet while I will savor the prospect of humiliating Obama, I still lament the lost opportunity--the lost opportunity to focus on the real enemy, which is Islamic radicalism. We can deal with Saudi Arabia, that’s for sure--but even they have trouble with the crazies. They would be glad to have our help. But we should do it together, so that one party doesn’t come to dominate. The Americans, the Europeans, the Israelis, the Christian Africans, the Chinese, and the Indians all have something in common with us: The jihadis are our collective enemy. From Nigeria to Libya, from Syria to Chechnya, we see terrorism and strife. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we can manage this problem--again, if we work together. Let’s look at the globe. The truth is that we have Islam surrounded: east, west, south and north. So we, the civilized people, should make a deal. For starters, let Russia reoccupy the Central Asian states--the five “Stans”--that broke away during Russia’s most recent time of troubles, in the early 90s. In return, I will turn Assad over to his fate, and so will the Chinese. Why? Because the Chinese are cursed with 50 million or so Muslims in their westernmost province, Xinjiang, which is right next to Russia. So as part of the same deal, the Chinese get to suppress--I guess that’s the nice way of putting it--their restive Muslims. Wait, there’s more. Under this new deal, the Israelis can do what they want with the Palestinians. My fellow ex-Soviet citizen, Avigdor Lieberman, the former foreign minister of Israel--he gets this. And he’s still close to Bibi. And together, we can all deal with those two most troublesome nations: Iran and Pakistan. Iran is a lot closer to Russia than it is to America--I don’t want those nuts to have nuclear weapons! But I have defended Iran to keep the Americans from filling the space instead. I’d rather have the ayatollahs in Tehran than a hostile US Army, bent on still more “liberation.” As for Pakistan, the Americans are only beginning to figure out how badly they have been played by those guys. All along, the Pakistanis have using all their US foreign-aid money to boost the Taliban. Those Americans--they thought they were so cool for helping to push the Red Army out of Afghanistan in the 80s. And look what they got after that--Osama Bin Laden in his new home. Now, 25 years later, the Americans are finally giving up on their missionary work in Afghanistan. If we ever have to go back to bring order there, it will be no more Mr. Nice Guy! But Pakistan is the real problem--they make Afghanistan possible. So those are the real evil empires: Iran and Pakistan. Bringing them to heel won’t be easy, of course, but we Russians have never shied away from strong measures. The Americans could learn a lot from us. So that’s my vision. Let’s stop worrying about silly little niceties about the right and the wrong way to fight a war. Let’s stop trying to bring democracy to barbarians. Instead, let’s bring them the only thing they understand--force. Let’s all of us--Moscow, Washington, London, Paris, Brussels, Jerusalem, Lagos, Addis Ababa, Beijing, New Delhi--come together in a new Holy Alliance, similar to that which kept Europe safe from radicalism in the early 19th century. Let’s join one another to crush the unholy, unruly, jihadi Muslims. The good Muslims will thank us for it. And if they don’t--too bad. Admit it: You, too, think it’s a good idea. |
Graphic [misrepresents Senate option to prevent a shutdown by accepting defunding of Obamacrap.]
