Internal pilot-union memo claims terrorism ‘dry-runs’ happening on US flights
RT | October 12, 2013
An internal memo from the union that represents pilots for US Airways claims there have been “several cases recently” throughout the airline industry of what the union believes are “dry-runs” for potential attacks with or on an aircraft.
The memo – released sometime just before September 11, 2013 – from the US Airline Pilots Association states “there have been several cases recently throughout the (airline) industry of what appear to be probes, or dry-runs, to test our procedures and reaction to an in-flight threat.”
The union memo, titled “9/11 Security Update,” went on to detail one “typical example” that happened on a US Airways flight to Orlando International Airport (MCO) originating at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) in Washington, DC.
“A group of Middle-Eastern males boarded in DCA. Shortly after takeoff, one got up and ran from his seat in coach towards the flight deck door. He made a hard left and entered the forward lav, where he stayed for a considerable length of time! While he was in there, the others got up and proceeded to move about the cabin, changing seats, opening overhead bins, and generally making a scene. They appeared to be trying to occupy and distract the flight attendants.
“Coincidence?”
Both US Airways and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) verified the incident.
The TSA responded to the original story with a statement, saying it “takes all reports of suspicious activity on board aircraft seriously,” and that “the matter required no further investigation at this time.”
One skeptical US House member, however, called for further review of the event.
“Any suspicious reported incident of this nature should be properly investigated,” said Congressman John Mica (R), who represents area north of Orlando. “It is government’s obligation and responsibility to remain vigilant. While the specifics of the US Air incident are not public, federal authorities must review the matter.”
The union memo was obtained and reported by WTSP in Tampa Bay.
At least one unnamed Federal Air Marshal was interviewed for the original WTSP story and a follow-up published Friday morning.
The source said the TSA’s motivations should be received with suspicion.
“They’re liars. They’re flat out liars.”
According to WTSP, the Air Marshal and other airline employees said several flights they have worked on have been the target of “dry-runs,” no matter what the TSA reports.
The security update memo followed the first DCA-to-MCO example with “another interesting twist to this case,” according to its authors.
“It just so happens that on the return flight from MCO – DCA, with the same flight number, a group of 8 Middle Eastern females — concealed in full burkas — were in the boarding area for the flight to DCA. This flight did not have a (Federal Air Marshal) team, even though it was supposed to have a significant VIP aboard. (He was rebooked when all these details were made known to his security detail.)
“Coincidence?”
A pilot for Delta Airlines who is also chairman of the Aviation Security Committee for the Air Line Pilots Association, International – a pilots union for many North American airlines, not including US Airways – told WTSP any belief that another major attack on or with an aircraft will not happen again “is very foolish.”
The events of 9/11 were “an incredible attack on us. It was very well orchestrated and they’re going to try it again… 100 percent, no question in my mind. They’re going to try it again,” said Wolf Koch.
The union memo urges aircraft crews to be aware of safety protocols.
“ALWAYS, ALWAYS use the cart as a barrier when the flight deck door is opened in flight because, ladies and gentlemen, if a bad guy gets into the cockpit (it only takes 2 seconds!) and another 9/11 happens — its GAME, SET and MATCH in favor of the bad guys!”
One airline ground crew member told WTSP ground crews are not screened and could plant bombs or weapons in a lavatory, for example.
“We could just carry our backpacks right through the turn style (sic) gate and could have anything we wanted to put on that plane.”
The memo includes inflammatory and political commentary that appear to be meant to motivate union members to stay vigilant.
“Islamic terrorists have a thing about significant dates, and it just so happens that the 12th anniversary of 9/11 is in a few days. Do you remember that day? You can bet The Enemy does. Remember Benghazi? That’s when the US was attacked again on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. (And no, it was not about an anti-Muslim video.)
“Right now the Middle East is burning as the ‘Arab Spring’ turns into the Arab Winter and the conflagration is consuming an entire region of the world. Tensions are high — and that is when bad things happen. Whatever the US does in the Middle East will be used as an excuse to kill Americans. As always, but especially now, keep the safety of your passengers and crew a top priority. Don’t cut corners.”
Assad: Terrorists may attack chemical weapons inspectors, blame Damascus
RT | September 23, 2013
Syrian armed opposition may be ordered by its foreign sponsors to stage a false flag operation against foreign inspectors when they arrive in the country to monitor destruction of the country’s chemical weapons stockpile, says the Syrian president.
Bashar Assad voiced his concerns in an interview by China’s state television CCTV in Damascus. The Syrian leader proposed this possible scenario as he was explaining how his government may be accused of trying to dodge its obligations to destroy its chemical arsenal.
“We know that these terrorists are obeying the orders of other countries and these countries do drive these terrorists to commit acts that could get the Syrian government blamed for hindering this agreement,” he explained.
Russia brokered an agreement with Syria to dispose of its stockpile of chemical weapons amid US threats to use military force against Syrian army over alleged use of sarin gas, which killed an estimated 1,400 people in August.
Moscow expects the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which received detailed inventory of the Syrian arsenal last week, to prepare a deadline for the operation. It also plans to work with other members of the UN Security Council on a resolution, which would support the OPCW plan and provide for security of the inspectors, who would control the disarmament.
But Washington, London and Paris are insisting on a UNSC resolution which would involve punitive measures against Damascus for any possible hindering of the operation under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. Chapter 7 allows for the enforcement of Security Council resolutions with military action. Russia opposes such provisions.
Speaking on the UNSC debate, Assad said the three Western powers are fighting an ‘imaginary enemy’.
“By submitting the draft to the UN Security Council, or by urging the US and Russia to agree on a deal, the US, France, and Britain are just trying to make themselves winners in a war against a Syria which is their imaginary enemy,” he said.
The president said he was assured that Russia and China would “ensure any excuse for military action against Syria will not stand.”
Asked for details on the stockpile of chemical weapons, Assad said, “Syria has been manufacturing chemical weapons for decades so it’s normal for there to be large quantities in the country.”
The WMD arsenal was created due to Syria’s confrontation with Israel, the Syrian leader said.
“We are a nation at war, we’ve got territories that have been occupied for more than 40 years, but in any case, the Syrian army is trained to fight using conventional weapons,” Assad assured.
While admitting that the security situation in Syria is far from perfect for the work of OPCW inspectors, Assad said the weapons are safe from being captured by any party.
They are stored “under special conditions to prevent any terrorist for other destructive forces from tampering with them, that is, destructive forces that could come from other countries,” he said.
“So there is nothing to worry about. The chemical weapons in Syria are in a safe place that is secure and under the control of the Syrian army.”
Earlier China said it is willing to send experts to contribute to the OPCW’s mission to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons. Russia pledged its assistance, which would probably involve securing locations where the stockpile would be processed.
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Potential US war on Syria based on a snuff movie
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | September 21, 2013
The American war footing towards Syria plumbs a new diabolical depth.
Not only is it an act of criminal aggression against an innocent country – the supreme crime according to Nuremberg Principles – but that transgression would itself be based on another vile crime – the deliberate killing of children for propaganda purposes.
The notorious videos purporting to show the half-clothed bodies of dozens of lifeless Syrian children are the central component of US claims for launching a war against Syria. Suspiciously, this footage gained wide circulation on the internet and on international television news bulletins within hours of the alleged toxic gas attack on 21 August near Damascus.
Now it appears that those videos are part of an elaborate, diabolical fabrication, the circumstances of which are very different from what they are meant to assign.
Nobody is questioning the fact that the children are dead. But what transpires is that the children seem to have been murdered by some form of intoxication and that their deaths were then recorded by their killers – with the calculated intention of producing a propaganda video.
That propaganda purports to blame the Syrian government forces of using chemical weapons causing massive civilian casualties. That in turn is aimed at provoking outrage among world public opinion, which would underpin US military intervention on the basis of President Obama’s so-called red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
In other words, the world is being pushed into acquiescing to a US-led criminal war on Syria based on a vile “snuff movie.”
In the world of vice, there can be few acts more criminal and morally depraved than that of making snuff movies. This illegal genre of film is where some unwitting victim is murdered on screen for the perverse gratification of those behind the camera and the eventual underground audience who indulge in such odious entertainment.
Usually, in the making of snuff movies, the persons recording the scene of death are the killers or their accomplices. These movies are, needless to say, highly illegal and confined to a secretive subculture. Those who make snuff movies and watch them are complicit in murder, and the videos are in effect indictable evidence of their crime.
On close examination of the alleged gas attack videos that came out of Syria on 21 August, the blunt assessment is that the footage is nothing less than a snuff movie.
This is the shocking conclusion from an independent study carried out by Syrian Christian leader Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib. Under the auspices of the Geneva-based International Institute of Peace, Justice and Human Rights, the study concludes that the infamous gas-attack videos showing dead children is a fabrication. That is, the children were not killed, as alleged, by Syrian government forces firing chemical weapons on the Ghouta suburb of Damascus.
According to the authors: “From the moment when some families of abducted children contacted us to inform us that they recognized the children among those who are presented in the videos as victims of the chemical attacks of east Ghouta, we decided to examine the videos thoroughly.”
Mother Agnes’ investigation goes on to say chillingly: “Our first concern was the fate of the children we see in the footages. Those angels are always alone in the hands of adult males that seem to be elements of armed gangs. The children that trespassed remain without their families and unidentified all the way until they are wrapped in the white shrouds of the burial. Moreover, our study highlights without any doubt that their little bodies were manipulated and disposed with theatrical arrangements to figure in the screening.”
The authors add: “Thus we want to raise awareness toward the humanitarian case of this criminal use of children in the political propaganda of the east Ghouta chemical weapons attack.”
Mother Agnes and her co-authors have submitted their findings to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva. But, tellingly, the report, which was published earlier this week, has received negligible coverage in the Western mainstream media.
It is not determined who actually killed the children and by what method. Some observers have pointed out that the victims appear to have tourniquets on their arms. That would suggest that they received a lethal injection.
It also appears that the children are not from the location of Ghouta. It is believed that many of them were abducted by the foreign-backed militants during raids on pro-government villages in the Latakia area of northwest Syria during the weeks prior to 21 August.
That confers on the crime in Ghouta on 21 August the most hideous proportions. For what is deduced is that dozens of children were abducted for the fate of cold-blooded murder, to be videoed with the purpose of fabricating a crime falsely attributed to others for propaganda effect – propaganda to precipitate a war.
When we look at the choreographed way in which the US government and its Western allies have reacted to the incident and the videos, it is suggestive of collusion at some level. Several reports have tied the involvement of Saudi, Turk and Israeli intelligence with the supply of toxic chemicals to the foreign-backed militants fighting in Syria for the Western agenda of regime change against the government of President Assad. These intelligence agencies are closely aligned with those of the US, Britain and France.
The fundamental importance of the alleged gas-attack videos to the US and Western case for military intervention in Syria raises the question of how much do these governments know about the exact circumstances of the child deaths that ostensibly occurred in Ghouta on 21 August.
Apart from flawed interpretation of the inconclusive UN chemical inspectors’ report released earlier this week, the other component of the US government’s case for a military attack on Syria are the videos purporting to show the aftermath of a chemical weapons incident in Ghouta.
Appealing to Congress for military strikes on Syria earlier this month, US Secretary of State John F Kerry described those images as “sickening,” and added that “the world must act on such horror.”
Affecting an air of privileged briefing, members of Congress were taken into closed-door sessions. There, they watched the videos showing lifeless children lying in gaunt rooms in an unknown location, apparently having died from exposure to sarin or some other toxic gas.
It appears that US lawmakers viewed the same video footage that the rest of the world has also accessed via the internet and on television news bulletins. The viewing of such distressing scenes paved the way for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations to vote for resolution 2021 backing President Obama’s military attack on Syria.
While the momentum for war has abated in the past week because of the Russian-brokered deal to decommission Syrian government chemical weapons, nevertheless the US continues to threaten that military strikes still remain an option on the table.
US-led wars in the past have notoriously relied on false flags and pretexts, such as the sinking of the USS Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and 9/11. But if the US commits to war on Syria, its lawlessness will have reached a new low. In that event, it will be a war of aggression based on a snuff movie.
~
Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.He co-hosts a weekly current affairs programme, Sunday at 3pm GMT on Bandung Radio.
Western lies, criminality unraveling in Syria
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | September 19, 2013
The US has accused Russia of “swimming against the tide” in persisting with its claims that foreign-backed militants in Syria committed the chemical weapons attacks, not the Syrian armed forces, as the Western governments have asserted.
In a sense, the US is correct. Russia is indeed swimming against a tide – a powerful tide of fabrication and propaganda promulgated by Washington, its Western allies and their dutiful news media.
But that tide is now subsiding, by the day, as more facts emerge about what really happened in Syria with regard to the use of chemical weapons. If Russia was swimming against a tide, the position of the US and its allies is now sinking from lies and criminality.
As each day passes, it becomes clear that Western states tried to railroad a guilty verdict on the Syrian government and thereby trigger a desired military aggression.
The Western propaganda operation went into full speed on Monday following the release of the report by the United Nations chemical weapons team, led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom. No sooner had that report been published than the US, British and French governments were crowing that it provided “conclusive proof” of their allegations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had committed the mass killings on 21 August near the capital, Damascus.
The UN team did not actually state who perpetrated the chemical gas attack, but its inferences allowed others to point the finger of accusation at the Syrian army. So too did the tone of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon who called for sanctions against those who commit such crimes “against your own people”.
So, they all lined up in familiar choreography to denounce the Syrian government. The US, British and French said they were justified in calling for military strikes and that they intended incorporating such action in the recent chemical decommissioning deal worked out by Washington and Moscow. For a day or two, it seemed that the Western governments had gained the psychological upper hand.
But it is increasingly clear that the Western “certainty” over Syrian chemical weapons is an edifice built on sand. The initial Western claims were never supported by verifiable evidence, only “secret intelligence”. Now it turns out that the UN inspectors’ report upon which the Western governments have rested their case is fatally flawed.
By its own admission, the UN study was carried out hurriedly under duress and in circumstances tampered with by the Western-backed anti-government militants. In a word, its putative evidence is unreliable.
More damning is the new disclosure by the Syrian government purporting to show that the culpable party for the gas attack near Damascus is the insurgents. Syria shared this “factual evidence” with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who was in Damascus this week. Syria and Russia are to submit this information to the UN.
What is disturbing is that this latest evidence, which includes ballistic charts and chemical analysis data, was already presented to the UN team led by Sellstrom. Russia has also said that other evidence and information presented to the UN team during the investigation was ignored in its final report. That suggests that the UN team was compromised to accommodate Western political interests.
Another disclosure this week is that Moscow confirmed that it never supplied Syria with sarin gas, not even during the years of the former Soviet Union. The significance of this is that Western governments flagged up the finding in the Sellstrom report that the inspectors had recovered remains of unusual rockets with Cyrillic (Russian) lettering. The inference was that Russia supplied Syria with chemical weapons, which the Syrian army had used.
But the Kremlin denied that it has ever delivered such munitions to Syria. It said that Soviet-era rockets with Cyrillic markings of the type cited in the Sellstrom report were supplied in the past to Libya. Given that Libya is a major arms supply conduit to the Western-backed so-called rebels in Syria, this again lends credibility to the Russian and Syrian claims that the chemical gas attacks near Damascus were carried out by these groups in a provocation to elicit Western military intervention.
There are many other unanswered perturbing questions about the chemical weapons attack near Damascus last month. Who were those dead children in the videos that the West has based so much of its emotive claims on? Why were they dressed in day clothes if they were supposedly killed in the middle of the night when they should have been in their beds? Why were their corpses arranged in such an orderly way, suggesting the scene was organized for an anticipated video recording? Why are there so few adult female victims in the apparent gas attack? Where are the grieving mothers and fathers of the little ones whose bodies are stacked up in death shrouds?
More chilling is a study led by Syrian Christian figure, Mother Agnes Mariam, which cites relatives of the dead who claim that the children were abducted by militants during earlier attacks in the northwest Latakia area. In that case, the children may have been poisoned, not by rockets filled with sarin, but by premeditated murder, with the purpose of fabricating a chemical gas attack.
What this demonstrates is that the exact circumstances of the atrocity near Damascus are far from known. But what is clear is that Western governments are shamelessly contriving partial and unsubstantiated data to fit political objectives.
The rush to railroad a guilty verdict on the Syrian government shows once again that the Western objective is regime change. That objective is criminal and the means to achieve it – fabricating lies and fomenting acts of war – gravely compound the criminality.
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Syria Gives Russia ’New Evidence’ Militants behind Chemical Attack
Al-Manar | September 18, 2013
The Syrian government has handed Russia new materials implicating militants in a chemical attack outside Damascus on August 21, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Wednesday after talks in Damascus.
“The corresponding materials were handed to the Russian side. We were told that they were evidence that the militants are implicated in the chemical attack,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies after talks with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem late Tuesday.
He said that Russia would “examine the Syrian materials implicating the militants with the utmost seriousness.”
Russia has repeatedly expressed suspicion that the chemical attack was a “provocation” staged by the militants with the aim of attracting Western military intervention in the conflict.
Ryabkov also said Russia was disappointed with the UN report into the chemical weapons attack published this week, saying it was selective and had ignored other episodes.
“Without a full picture, we cannot describe the character of the conclusions as anything other than politicized, biased and one-sided,” he said.
Ryabkov is on a visit to Damascus to present the Syrian government with the results of the agreement between Moscow and Washington reached in Geneva at the weekend to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
He said he emphasized to Moallem the importance of the Syrian side “strictly and swiftly” handing over details of its chemical weapons arsenal to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the first step in the agreement.
The Syrian ambassador to Moscow, Riyad Haddad, told the Interfax news agency that Ryabkov was expected to have a meeting Wednesday with President Bashar al-Assad.
Ryabkov said he assured the Syrian side that there was “no basis” for a UN Security Council resolution on the chemical weapons agreement to invoke Chapter VII of the UN Charter that allows the use of force and tough sanctions.
He said this could only be considered if the UN Security Council was able to confirm violations of the convention on chemical weapons. “This is a hypothetical situation.”
“It is especially important that some kind of political interests do not again appear, especially in New York (at the UN Security Council),” he added.
Lavrov: Russia convinced Syria chemical attack a “provocation”
A-Akhbar | September 17, 2013
Russia remains convinced that the August 21 poison gas attack in Syria was a provocation by rebel forces and says a report by UN inspectors does not answer all of its questions about the attack, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a press conference alongside French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius a day after UN inspectors confirmed the use of the nerve agent sarin, Lavrov took a different view to France and other Western states which say they believe that Syrian government forces were behind the attack.
“We have the most serious basis to believe that this was a provocation,” Lavrov said.
The foreign ministers said that they had the same aim of ending the bloodshed, but disagreed on the methods to get there.
Fabius said there was a “difference in the approach on the methods.”
(Reuters, AFP)
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Turkish prosecutors indict Syrian rebels for seeking chemical weapons
RT | September 14, 2013
A court indictment by the Turkish prosecutors into the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian rebels has once again highlighted fears this week that sarin toxic gas was used by the opposition and not the Assad government.
The prosecutor in the Turkish city of Adana has issued a 132-page indictment, alleging that six men of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and Ahrar ash-Sham tried to seek out chemicals with the intent to produce the nerve agent, sarin gas, a number of Turkish publications reported.
The main suspect in the case, 35-year-old Syrian-national Hytham Qassap has been charged with “being a member of a terrorist organization” and “attempting to acquire weapons for a terrorist organization.” The other 5, all Turkish nationals are being charged with “attempting to acquire weapons for a terrorist organization.”
The indictment alleges that Qassap tried to setup a network in Turkey in order to obtain chemical materials for the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham Brigades. Citing telephone calls made by the cell, the prosecution believes that the group ordered at least ten tons of chemicals, Al-Alam News Network reports.
The prosecution also dismissed claims that the suspects were unaware of their wrong doing. “The claim that the suspects didn’t know about the possibility of producing sarin nerve gas from the chemicals they tried to buy is not true which was established when they were testifying,” the document reads.
Meanwhile all six suspects have pleaded not guilty. “The suspects have pleaded not guilty saying that they had not been aware the materials they had tried to obtain could have been used to make sarin gas. Suspects have been consistently providing conflicting and incoherent facts on this matter,” the indictment said.
If convicted, Qassab faces a 25 year prison sentence, while his accomplices face 15 years prison terms.
The six men were a part of a group of 11 people arrested in their safe house in Adana on May 23, 2013. Their apprehension came about after surveillance by Turkish police who’d received a tip that Syrian jihadists were trying to acquire two government-regulated military-grade chemical substances. Five of the detained were released from custody after questioning, background checks and after lab tests proved that chemicals seized during the arrest were not sarin gas.
The international community has long been ignoring worrying reports that the rebel fighters in Syria might be capable of carrying out a chemical attack. Russian President, Vladimir Putin also reiterated this week that while no one doubts that poison gas was indeed used in Syria, there is “every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons.”
Evidence that chemical weapons were used by the opposition was also highlighted by the two European hostages that were freed from Syrian rebel captivity last Sunday. In a phone conversation overheard by hostage Pierre Piccinin da Prata, he said it was clear the rebels used gas on civilians in an August 21 attack near Damascus.
“I don’t think that Bashar Al-Assad and the Syrian government are to blame for the chemical attack in Al-Ghouta,” Piccinin told RT. “It would have been absurd for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons.”
The Syrian government has always rejected any accusations of using chemical weapons. After one of the first alleged incidents in Aleppo in March, it was the government that called on the UN to send in chemical experts. Another alleged chemical weapons use was reported in Homs in December 2012.
Russian experts flew out to the site of the attack in March to collect samples from the incident. On 9 July 2013, Moscow submitted the results of its inquiry into the use of chemical weapons at Aleppo to the United Nations. Russian scientists analyzing the 19 March 2013 attack found that it was most likely launched by opposition forces, and not the Syrian government.
“It was determined that on March 19 the rebels fired an unguided missile Bashair-3 at the town of Khan al-Assal, which has been under government control. The results of the analysis clearly show that the shell used in Khan al-Assal was not factory made and that it contained sarin,” UN envoy Vitaly Churkin has said.
The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria into the attack in March concluded that no evidence of the use of sarin by Syria’s government troops has so far been uncovered. The lead investigator, Carla Del Ponte, did hint that it was the rebels that most likely used the chemical weapons.
“The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic wishes to clarify that it has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict. As a result, the Commission is not in a position to further comment on the allegations at this time,” the statement read.
Meanwhile, the UN chemical weapons inspection team has completed the report on the latest chemical attack in Syria on August 21 and will deliver it to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon over the weekend.
“I believe that the report will be an overwhelming report that chemical weapons (were) used, even though I cannot publicly say at this time before I receive this report,” Moon said.
Although the team was not authorized to draw any conclusions on who was the perpetrator of the attack, a number of US officials speaking to the media on condition of anonymity over the last couple of days indicated that the report would hint the Assad government was responsible.
The Syrian Gambit
James’s blog – WinterPatriot – 09/11/2013
Russia has played a new opening move in the contest with the United States and it could be called “The Syrian Gambit”. In the tradition of chess, a “gambit” is a move whereby a chess player gives away a minor piece to position him or herself better to defeat their opponent. To the beginner chess player, a gambit appears counter-intuitive because their opponent deliberately suffers a loss and the advantage only makes itself apparent later. By which time, if the gambit has been played well, the neophyte player is already suffering a disadvantage.
John Kerry now famously made a rhetorical offer to Syria that if it gave up all its chemical weapons they could avoid an attack from the US. Much to Kerry’s consternation, Sergei Lavrov, the very capable Russian Foreign Minister, said he thought it was a good idea and would discuss it with President Bashar al-Assad. That same day Assad agreed to give up Syria’s chemical weapons in exchange for not being attacked. The Gambit was offered. And now the US is very rattled and nervous about accepting. Contradictory messages from various US administration staff seem to follow each other almost by the hour.
Many commentors on the internet are saying that it is a dangerous move because both Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi got rid of their chemical weapons and both of their countries were subsequently invaded and decimated. They ask, ‘why will Syria not suffer the same fate?’
The reason Syria won’t go the way of Iraq or Libya is because of one fundamental and decisive difference: Russia is standing firmly by Syria’s side (with its warships off the coast of Syria) and has said repeatedly that it will not allow Syria to be attacked by the US or anyone else. Assad, in explaining why he agreed to the Russian initiative, said it was because he had full confidence in Russia’s protection of Syria.
So Syria is offering to give up an asset from amongst its arsenal of weapons. How will it gain from it being accepted?
The chemical weapons (CW) were becoming a liability and their military value is very limited. So not much, if any, value is being surrendered. Assad has said that the idea of CW was to counter the threat of nuclear weapons. But how likely is israel to attack Damascus with nuclear weapons with both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem little more than 210kms (130mls approx) away as the wind blows?
On a battlefield, chemical weapons need to be deployed by specially trained troops and these soldiers need to be in the right terrain at the right time with the right weather conditions for them to be effective and not be harmlessly dispersed, or worse, not blow back on their own soldiers. If the enemy soldiers have gas masks, any advantage quickly dissipates.
Holding CW may have value as a deterrent against the civilian population of a neighbouring country contemplating an invasion. But once they are fired at said population, the deterrent value evaporates while leaving the offending country open to being targeted by other surrounding countries and/or abandoned by their allies. Targeting the enemy’s civilian population does nothing to improve the immediate military situation at hand.
The US is able to say Syria was responsible for the false flag that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians because Syria has a stockpile of chemical weapons. It would be impossible to say that if it was known that Syria no longer had chemical weapons. Indeed, a day or two after this proposal from Russia came news that another CW false flag operation was being planned by the NATO mercenaries against israel. (see video in comments section below)
So making the announcement to surrender the CW nipped that false flag (and any others involving CW) in the bud.
On the plus side, it takes away the excuses of the US to invade. They no longer have to prevent Syria from using them or prevent them falling into the ‘wrong hands’ (assuming those are different hands from the ones that the US and Saudi Arabia are already supplying with CW).
Syria can be seen as serious about working for peace and as an example to all the countries that are condemning Syria who ALL have stockpiles of CW! All these countries and especially the US and israel are now on the defensive.
Syria now has the ‘high ground’ (or centre control) by jettisoning a liability – a pawn that was actually in the way.
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Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda
Dr. Joseph Mercola | July 9, 2022
“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” is the fourth vaccine-related documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It tells the story of an intentional infertility vaccine program conducted on African women, without their knowledge or consent.
While it’s been brushed off as a loony conspiracy theory for years, there’s compelling evidence showing it did, in fact, happen, and there’s nothing to prevent it from happening again. … continue
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- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
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