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.
Lavrov: US pressuring Russia into passing UN resolution on Syria under Chapter 7
RT | September 22, 2013
The US is pushing Russia into approving a UN resolution that would allow for military intervention in Syria, in exchange for American support of Syria’s accession to OPCW, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
“Our American partners are starting to blackmail us: ‘If Russia does not support a resolution under Chapter 7, then we will withdraw our support for Syria’s entry into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). This is a complete departure from what I agreed with Secretary of State John Kerry’,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Channel 1’s Sunday Time program.
Chapter 7 of the UN charter would allow for potential military intervention in Syria.
Western countries blinded by ‘Assad must go’ attitude
The head of Russia’s Foreign Ministry went on to say he was surprised by the West’s “negligent” approach to the conflict.
“Our partners are blinded by an ideological mission for regime change,” said Lavrov. “They cannot admit they have made another mistake.”
Slamming the West’s intervention in Libya and Iraq, the foreign minister stated that military intervention could only lead to a catastrophe in the region. Moreover, he stressed that if the West really was interested in a peaceful solution to the conflict that has raged for over two years, they would now be pushing for Syria’s entry into the OPCW in the first place, not for the ouster of President Bashar Assad.
“I am convinced that the West is doing this to demonstrate that they call the shots in the Middle East. This is a totally politicized approach,” said Lavrov.
‘A repeat of Geneva 2012’
Lavrov harked back to last year’s Geneva accord which was agreed upon by the international community, including Russia and the US. However, when the resolution went to the Security Council the US demanded that Chapter 7 be included.
“History is repeating itself. Once again in Geneva an agreement has been reached which does not contain any mention of Chapter 7. But the Security Council wants to redo the document in their own way to include it.”
He called on the West to observe international law and stop writing resolutions motivated by their “geopolitical ambitions.”
‘Both sides must hand over chemical weapons’
Sergey Lavrov has also insisted that opposition forces take part in the decommissioning of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.
“The solutions currently being worked out at the OPCW suggest that all stocks of Syrian chemical weapons must be brought under control and ultimately destroyed.”
Lavrov further charged that the West was “not telling the whole story” by asserting that chemical weapons are only possessed by the regime, and not the opposition.
He added that the available information provided by the Israelis confirmed that on at least two occasions, the rebels had seized areas in which chemical weapons were stored and those arms might have fallen into their hands.
“According to our estimates, there is a strong probability that in addition to home-grown labs in which militants are trying to cook up harmful and deadly concoctions, the data provided by the Israelis is true,” the Russian FM said.
“Preparatory work for OPCW inspectors to assume control of chemical weapons storage sites requires that those who fund and sponsor opposition groups – including extremists – demand that they hand over the [arms] which have been seized so that they can be destroyed, pursuant to the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”
Lavrov added that Russia was not a guarantor for the disarmament of Syria’s chemical weapons, as Syria’s commitments fell under the auspices of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which is internationally administered by the OPCW.
Lavrov said Russia and the US were working out a draft resolution to be submitted to the OPCW, although several points were yet to be agreed upon.
Logistics of destruction
Sergey Lavrov said that the time frame for the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons was not unrealistic.
“The overwhelming majority of the figures as per timing, term, beginning, finishing of the mission have been suggested by the American side,” he added.
Even if the time frame is feasible, there remains disagreement on the cost of the venture.
Earlier this week, President Assad said the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal would be a costly venture.
“It needs a lot of money, it needs about one billion [US dollars]. It’s very detrimental to the environment. If the American administration is ready to pay the money, and to take responsibility of bringing toxic materials to the United States, why don’t they do it?” Assad told Fox News
Lavrov said he had heard of the cost estimate, although during his negotiations with his US counterpart in Geneva last week, the figure was much lower. Lavrov said the discrepancy stemmed from the fact that a professional estimate was in order.
“When OPCW experts visit Syria and view the storage sites for chemical weapons, they will understand what can be destroyed on the spot (and this is also possible) with the use of mobile equipment which a number of states have, and those where special factories need to be built, as we did when destroying Soviet chemical weapons stockpiles. But for those which need to be taken out of the country – toxic substances – will require a special decision, because the convention considers it essential that the destruction takes place on the territory of that country which possesses the chemical weapons,” he said.
Lavrov said legal grounds would need to be found to move forward in this case, but if all sides could agree in principle, then drawing up a legally binding document will not be hard.
He further noted the difficulties that would be faced in assuring the security of both the Syrian and international experts tasked with bringing the chemical weapons under control and laying the groundwork for their ultimate destruction.
“We’ve considered that an international presence will be demanded in those areas where experts are working. We are prepared to allocate our own servicemen or military police to take part in those efforts. I do not believe it is necessary to send in a strong [military] contingency. It seems to me that it will be sufficient to send in military observers. It will be necessary to do it in such a way that the observers will come from all permanent members of the UN Security Council, Arab states and Turkey, so that all conflicting sides in Syria understand that this contingent represents all external forces who are collaborating with one or the other conflicting sides in Syria…so that they don’t resort to provocations,” he said.
Lavrov reiterated previous statements made during his negotiations with Secretary of State John Kerry following their talks in Geneva last week that the opposition was equally responsible for providing for the safety of OPCW and UN experts in the country and not allowing for any “provocations.”
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US-Russia reach landmark deal on destruction of Syria chemical weapons arsenal
Providing this framework is fully implemented it can end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but also their neighbors – John Kerry
RT | September 14, 2013
Russia and the United States reached a deal on a framework that will see the destruction or removal of Syria’s chemical weapons by mid- 2014. Under the plan, the Assad government has one week to hand over an inventory of its chemical weapons arsenal.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his US counterpart John Kerry announced the plan on putting an end to Syria’s chemical weapons program following their third day of negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland.
Kerry outlined several points of the plan, which would see the “rapid assumption of control by the international community” of Syria’s chemical weapons. He further stressed US-Russia commitment to the complete destruction of not only of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, but also its production and refinement capabilities.
Syria will also become a party to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which outlaws their production and use.
Damascus must submit within a week’s time – “and not 30 days” – a complete inventory of related arms, “including names, types, and quantities of its chemical weapons agents, types of munitions, and location and form of storage, production and research and development facilities.”
The Syrian government should provide the OPCW, the UN and other supporting personnel “with the immediate and unfettered right to inspect any and all sites in Syria.” Lavrov later said that security for all international inspectors on the ground should be provided for not only by the government, but opposition forces as well.
It remains undecided who will actually be tasked with destroying the stock, although their destruction “outside of Syria” and under “OPWC supervision” would prove to be optimal.
On the timetable, Kerry said UN inspectors must be on the ground no later than November, while the destruction of chemical weapons must be completed by the middle of 2014.
“Providing this framework is fully implemented it can end the threat these weapons pose not only to the Syrian people but also their neighbors,” Kerry said adding that Russian and US teams of experts had reached “a shared assessment” of the existing stockpile and that Syria must destroy all of its weapons. It was possible that the Syrian rebels have some chemical weapons, he acknowledged.
If Damascus fails to comply with the plan, a response in accordance with UN Charter Chapter 7 will follow, Kerry said, in a reference to the use of military force. The chapter provides for “action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security” in the event other measures fail.
But Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said the agreement did not include any potential use of force against Syria. He however said that deviations from the plan, including attacks on UN inspectors, would be brought to the UN Security Council, which would decide on further action.
There is no prior agreement about what form the Security Council’s measures might take if Syria does not comply, Kerry said.
Kick starting Geneva II
Meanwhile, both sides reiterated previously stated intentions to meet with Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria, on the margins of the UN General Assembly on September 28.
Speaking alongside Kerry and Lavrov in Geneva on Friday, Brahimi said ongoing work to put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control was a necessary step for convening the Geneva II conference. The conference, which is intended to hammer out a political solution to the brutal civil war which has embroiled Syria for over two years, could be held in October, Lavrov told reporters.
On Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to present a report to the Security Council which sources say contains overwhelming evidence that “chemical weapons were used” in an August 21 attack in a Damascus Suburb which killed between 355 and 1,729 people.
The government of Bashar Assad strongly denied government forces were responsible for the attack, while the West overwhelmingly blamed Damascus, prompting US Barack Obama’s threat of military action.
Obama has threatened to strike Syria unilaterally, prompting Russia’s Saturday’s joint proposal which will see Syria’s chemical weapons brought under international control.
Although President Assad immediately acquiesced to the Russian-backed plan, rebel forces have resisted efforts which have staved off Western intervention in the country.
On Saturday, the Free Syrian Army rejected a US-Russian deal as a stalling tactic and vowed to continue fighting to topple the Assad government.
“The Russian-American initiative does not concern us. It only seeks to gain time,” said Salim Idriss, the chief of the FSA command, said.
“We completely ignore this initiative and will continue to fight to bring down the regime,” he told a press conference Saturday in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
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.
Questions on Syria’s Chemical Weapons disarmament
By Dr. Kaveh L. Afrasiabi | Press TV | September 11, 2013
Citing a “potential positive development” in the Russian proposal regarding Syrian chemical weapons stockpile, US President Barack Obama has put a temporary break on the express train of war on Syria and, simultaneously, accelerated the White House push for a congressional authorization for a military strike.
This new development, following a purportedly off-the-cuff press statement by US Secretary of State John Kerry, has been viewed as a potential game-changer that may result in a win-win scenario, whereby Obama can safeguard his reputation, heal the rifts with Moscow, avoid another US entanglement in Middle East conflicts, and simultaneously declare victory by resorting to “credible military threat,” an important consideration given the close links with the US’s Iran policy (of nuclear containment).
The Russian proposal, put forth by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, has two skeletal components respecting the international supervision and monitoring the Syrian chemical stockpile and the provisions for the destruction of that stockpile, yet to be fleshed out. The Syrian foreign minister has welcomed this initiative and so has UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who has warned that a unilateral US strike without the UN authorization would be illegal. Iran’s initial reaction has been positive as well, in the light of a statement by the Foreign Ministry spokesperson articulating the position of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In turn, a number of important questions have been raised as a result of this new development. First, how feasible and practical is the idea of international supervision of the chemical weapons stockpile in the present context of warfare in Syria? The likelihood of danger to the inspectors being relatively great, will they need to be accompanied by an international force and, if so, is the UN willing to risk its peacekeepers in a war zone?
Second, although the international community is correct to push Syria to join the Protocol on Chemical Weapons and to disarm, such a decision cannot be taken in the vacuum of regional realities, above all the fact that historically these weapons have served a deterrent purpose for the Syrian regime vis-à-vis Israel, which has reportedly amassed a huge arsenal of chemical weapons over the years; a recent CIA document confirms this by referring to Israel’s “nerve gas facilities” which went into production decades ago. Indeed, the deterrent value of Damascus’ chemical weapons capability have been demonstrated in the current crisis, whereby Israel has been forced to take several drastic steps such as mass distribution of masks, early installation of Iron Dome defense shield, etc.
Henceforth, Syrian disarmament without a parallel disarmament of the Israeli stockpile would, in strictly military terms, shift the balance in Israel’s favor. Therefore, it is important to explore the short and long-term implications of Syrian disarmament with respect to the long-standing territorial dispute between Syria and Israel. Perhaps Israel should pledge to refrain from the use of chemical weapons against Syria as a part and parcel of the Syrian disarmament agreement.
Third, what happens if the Syrian regime disarms but the rebels, who are reportedly in possession of chemical weapons, do not and resort to these weapons? The threat of chemical weapons by the Syrian rebels has so far been completely overlooked by the White House and, yet, must be taken into consideration in any agreement on Syrian disarmament. In other words, a total disarmament covering the rebels as well as the government, irrespective of the difficulties with respect to the leading rebel groups, which have known Al-Qaeda ties. In principle, this is the right approach that would not discriminate toward any group suspected of possessing and or using the ghastly weapons.
Fourth, a complicating factor is the role of certain regional states that support the rebels and may not consent to any such deal, which raises the question what happens if these sates are not brought on board the agreement on Syrian chemical weapons disarmament? The US should push for explicit and unequivocal endorsement of the plan by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Persian Gulf Cooperation Council member states.
Finally, the two issues of supervision and destruction of Syrian chemical weapons stockpile should not be conflated, and a preliminary investigation of the merits of the former without the necessity of the latter should be conducted. Given the stated concern of Obama and other Western leaders regarding the future use of chemical weapons, the stationing of international monitors on the ground will go a long way in terms of confidence-building that the regime will not use them. This more moderate approach is far more realistic than the issue of “control” that raises serious practical difficulties, such as interfering in the Syrian system of military “command and control.”
For now, however, a glimmer of hope against a US strike on Syria has sparked on the horizon that may not be long-lasting, if the disarmament issue is used by the White House to acquire a “yes” vote on the war power authorization and then attack Syria with the excuse that it has skirted its disarmament obligation.
Theoretically, it is now easier for Obama to lobby the US Congress, by nuancing the pitch in the name of the noble objective of chemical weapons disarmament. In that case, the potential breakthrough in the Russia disarmament proposal may only serve the ultimate US’s war aims which have been partly checked, ironically, by Syrian chemical weapons threats to Israel. By removing these weapons, the imminent threat of US strike may be put to rest and, yet, the paradoxical effect is likely to be a weakened Syria more vulnerable to foreign threats and pressures. In a word, a war-saving proposal adversely affecting Syrian national security interests may be an invitation to war in the future.
Obama, the US Liar-in-Chief
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | September 10, 2013
Forget diplomatic protocol: When a government is outrageously pushing the world into a criminal war based on a crock of lies, that government and its representatives forfeit the customary right to diplomatic niceties.
When truth is being twisted with rhetoric and bombast, then it is incumbent to untwist it with simple words.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is right. The American Secretary of State John Kerry is a barefaced liar. And it’s not just Kerry. President Barack Obama is an even bigger liar, and so is the entire White House administration, including Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey.
All of them are lying through their teeth about the forthcoming American criminal war of aggression on Syria, claiming that it is “limited” and “punitive.” Not that such description would make a military assault on Syria any less criminal. But the fact is that the US is gearing up for an all-out war on the Arab country. That American leaders are trying to play down the onslaught they are intending to unleash on the people of Syria belies their depth of deception and their real criminal agenda.
If these leaders in Washington cannot even tell the American people about what the real military contingency plans are for Syria, why should we believe them on all their other claims about chemical weapons used in that country. It’s a con trick, and the American people know it. Moreover, Liar-in-Chief Barack Obama and his partners-in-crime know that the people know it.
That is why the White House is going on a “media blitz” this week, with Obama and his top aides saturating the television networks in a bid to convince the American public and Congress to back its plan to launch a military attack on Syria – a country of 22 million people, a third of whom are refugees, which does not pose any threat to the US.
This media bombardment of the American people ahead of the physical bombardment of the Syrian people speaks of a desperate move by the White House. Poll after poll shows that the US public does not believe what the politicians are telling them about the Syrian government’s alleged use chemical weapons.
It really is saying something of the collapsing legitimacy of the US presidency when foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin or even Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad – the latter vilified as a despotic tyrant – project more moral authority and credibility to the American people than their own leaders do.
The American people are right. American governments, and the Obama administration in particular, are chronic liars. They have lied about every past and recent overseas military intervention, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Libya, and the supposed humanitarian or security reasons that allegedly motivated these wars.
American wars have bankrupted the country’s economy, forcing millions of US citizens into poverty, and have greatly worsened the humanitarian suffering in the targeted countries. American wars have trashed international law and increased global insecurity. They have created the exact despicable opposite of what they claimed to seek.
The latest Big Lie is the White House telling the American people and the world that the US is “not going to war” in Syria.
President Obama says: “This would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan.
There would be no American boots on the ground. Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope – designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so.”
US top diplomat John Kerry spun the lie to gossamer thinness while on a visit to London this week when he said: “We are not going to war. It is about holding [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad accountable in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term action… on an unbelievably small scale.”
Right there, that is the pathetic, contemptible voice of a chronic liar who has lost the cognitive ability to realize how ridiculous he sounds.
What the US Congress is voting on this week is a resolution that would give Washington a 90-day period to strike Syria at will. The resolution also contains provisions for indefinite prolongation of the military attacks and for sending in US troops under the guise of “search and rescue missions.”
While on the one hand the White House talks about “very limited, targeted punitive strikes to deter chemical weapons” in order to con Congress to vote Yes, on the other hand the evidence and the White House’s own words speak of an all-out war on Syria.
Four US Navy destroyers off the coast of Syria are equipped to launch 200 Tomahawk cruise missiles [each]. On its way to Syrian waters are the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and another battle group of three destroyers.
US officials have told The New York Times and others that the plan is to launch “the vast majority of those missiles.”
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Congress last week that the cost of the American military campaign would be “tens of millions of dollars.” Well, that’s another lie, aimed at playing down the crime. The above US navy launch of at least 400 cruise missiles at a cost of $1 million each puts the war bill at $400 million. And that’s not counting all the other costs to implement those strikes.
In addition, media reports say that the US is planning to deploy long-range B-52 and B-2 bombers from North America, as well as B-1s based in Qatar in the Persian Gulf. All of these aircraft are capable of launching cruise missiles from outside Syrian airspace to avoid Syria’s defense systems. At a conservative estimate that brings the cost of war up to near $1 billion – or a hundred-fold more than what Hagel claimed.
The point is that the White House and Pentagon are preparing for a full-scale war, not some kind of limited, punitive action.
The New York Times reports: “Mr Obama… is now determined to put more emphasis on the ‘degrade’ part of what the administration has said is the goal of a military strike against Syria – to ‘deter and degrade’ Mr Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons. That means expanding beyond the 50 or so major sites that were part of the original target list.”
Yet, incongruously, the American media quote Obama as saying elsewhere: “I’m not itching for a military action [in Syria].”
The ABC news channel reported more on the expanded list of targets in Syria that Obama is drawing up with his generals: “According to [General Martin] Dempsey military planners were focusing on targets directly linked to the control of chemical weapons but without exposing those chemical weapons to a loss of security. Secondly, the means of delivery and the third, those things that the regime uses – for example, air defense, long-range missiles and rockets – in order to protect those chemical weapons or in some cases deliver them.”
That open-ended list – wrapped up in false talk about chemical weapons – just about covers every military installation in Syria and much more, including obliteration of civilian infrastructure and mass murder. How many times have we heard this nonsensical cynical charade before?
Think about it. Even if American secret intelligence accusing the Assad government in Syria of using chemical weapons were true, which it is not according to independently verifiable Russian reports and many other international sources, the massive military American build-up is in no way plausibly “limited” or “punitive”?
It is absurd to claim otherwise. Yet, that is what Liar-in-Chief Barack Obama and his lieutenants are telling the American people and the world. They are telling barefaced lies about their criminal regime-change plan towards the sovereign government of Syria involving a full-scale war of aggression and possibly thousands of deaths due to “collateral damage.”
If Liar-in-Chief Barack Obama can’t even come clean on a war build-up that is staring the whole world in the eyes, nothing, absolutely nothing, he and his White House says should be given the slightest respect. Far from it; Obama and his cabal in Washington should be hauled off to face a Nuremberg trial.
International experts have strong proof images of chemical victims fabricated – Moscow
RT | September 10, 2013
Footage and photos of the alleged chemical attack in Syria, which the US cites as the reason for a planned military intervention, had been fabricated in advance, speakers told a UN human rights conference in Geneva.
Members of the conference were presented accounts of international experts, Syrian public figures and Russian news reporters covering the Syrian conflict, which back Russia’s opposition to the US plans, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The speakers argued that the suspected sarin gas attack near Damascus on August 21 was likely a provocation of the rebel forces and that a military action against the President Bashar Assad government will likely result in civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe affecting the entire region.
The possible attack by US military without a UN Security Council mandate would violate international law and should be prevented by the United Nations, some of the speakers said.
Evidence for the Russian case, including numerous eyewitness reports and results of investigations of the chemical weapon incident by activists, was handed over to a UN commission of experts probing the Syrian crisis, the ministry said.
The Obama administration voiced an intention to use military force in Syria after reports of mass deaths in Eastern Houla, a neighborhood of Damascus, which killed more than 1,400 people according to US estimates. Washington says the deaths was due to a chemical weapons attack of the Syrian army on rebel forces and says it plans to use force to prevent such incidents in the future.
Russia is convinced that the chemical incident was a provocation by rebel forces, which staged a false flag attack to drag the US into the conflict and capitalize on the damage that the Syrian army is likely to sustain in the American intervention.
An increasing number of reports are backing Russia’s position, with local witnesses, US and British former intelligence professionals and Europeans recently released from rebel captivity all speaking for a provocation scenario.
In the latest development this week a possible way to de-escalate the tension was voiced, which would involve the Assad government handing over control of his chemical arsenal to the international community. The plan was backed by Russia, China and Syria’s main ally Iran, while Syria said it will review it.
Mixed signals over the plan came from the US. The US State Department initially said Secretary of State John Kerry, who initially voiced a possible disarmament, saw it as a rhetorical move and didn’t expect Bashar Assad to actually disarm. But later President Obama said such a move from Damascus would make him put the military action plan on pause.
Meanwhile RT learned that Syrian rebels might be planning a chemical weapons attack in Israel. The possible attack would be carried out from the territory supposedly controlled by the Syrian government and would trigger another round of escalation, leaving little hope of defusing the tension.
Bye, Bye, American Pie: US intransigence in the face of a war-weary world
US intransigence in the face of a war-weary world will mean the end of the country as we know it
By Daniel Patrick Welch | September 4, 2013
It actually shouldn’t be that much of a shock. For the last twelve years at least, Americans have watched their country drift into the shadows of international law abroad and onto the shoals of fascism at home. Inexorably, the weight of imperial overstretch has crippled an economy already on a constant war footing and led to the steady erosion of civil liberties once taken for granted.
At one point, Democrats cried out in (what turns out to be mock) horror when one of the Bushmen smirked at the Geneva Convention as ‘quaint.’ Outrageous! Squeaked the remnants of an American “Left.” No more. As drones are poised to darken the skies like a plague of locusts, intelligence agencies can read all of our communications even as we write them, and the general criminalization of dissent has accelerated without objection because, after all, the guy doing it has a -D after his name.
And now, nary a peep from so-called ‘progressives’ in Congress as a Democrat and his lurking, smooth-talking Consigliore use the same lies and fabrications to shove yet another war down our throats, all neatly packaged in Red, White and Blue, the specter of National Security—in short, the same old bullshit we’ve heard before.
But it’s not the same—that’s the point. And it’s a shame the fools in congress are too stupid (most of them, apparently) to see it. Showing the delusional thinking that is now seemingly required to hold and keep public office, one particularly deranged congresswoman actually told Wolf Blitzer that “dozens” of countries stood ready to support the US’ aggressive war against Syria, though she couldn’t name them offhand. Debbie Wasserman Schultz actually said “I mean we have, from the briefings that I’ve received, there are dozens of countries who are going to stand with the United States, who will engage with us on military action and also that back us up.”
Oh, okay then. Micronesia will send staples, and Samoa is serving drinks. The problem is that, inside the bubble of American “thought,” these people really think that mobilizing the ‘international community’ is the same a papering an audience for a bad musical on a weeknight. It is all just a cynical farce to them. They don’t know, or don’t care, that the whole world sees this for the fraud that it is. The Obama regime is about to make the biggest mistake in history.
This is not hyperbole. Bush had far more support going into Iraq, and Saddam had far less. His case for war, filled with lies and fabricated ‘evidence’ and ginned up ‘intelligence’ findings, is far better than the US’ current position—a complete crock of shit to the whole world, but that somehow smells like roses to the US Congress. The government has ceased to function as a representative body, and is completely divorced from the interests of the American people. Don’t want to trust such a judgment to an old commie like me? Take it from a former president—Jimmy Carter. Mr. Peanut himself admitted there is ‘no functioning democracy’ currently in the US. The arrogance of Obama’s War Council is stunning. Russia, China, and Iran have given repeated warnings—stern, clear, and unequivocal, against such an illegal and foolhardy course of action. The world has had it with American intransigence. It makes no difference whether an illegal war of aggression is ‘authorized’ by a compliant US Congress. Zero.
No matter what happens from here on out, the balance of power is already shifting, away from the US and its vassal states toward BRICS and the nations of the Global South. Even if the US regime does not attack (in itself a poor choice of words since it has been arming and funding foreign mercenaries in Syria for over two years), a too-patient world is ready to muzzle the rabid dog that is the US. China, while keeping mostly cool, has let it be known that if a strike does go ahead, that others should offer assistance to resist. This is as clear a shot across the bow as there is, and should give US warmakers pause.
What it means is that Syria, as a sovereign state, is justified in calling on its allies for help, by which it means Iran and its store of Russian Sunburn missiles, or Hezbollah and its own Chinese C-802 missiles, or Russia itself with its S300, S400 & S500 missiles. This is the real red line, and the US already crossed it in Libya. Putin has said that the Americans are acting like a monkey with a grenade in the Middle East. To put a finer zoological point on it, the Panda and the Bear are not fooling around. They have decided, and rightly so, that the US is too dangerous and must be stopped. If Obama goes ahead with this maniacal and murderous plan, China, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah will help Syria sink a few US destroyers, sending hundreds and perhaps thousands of kids to the bottom of the Mediterranean—they have as much as said so. They—not the US—will be within their rights and within international law to do so.
Mourn now, not later. And mourn at least equally for the kids your kids kill and for your kids who are killed in return. Don’t go running for the flag or screaming for revenge. Don’t accuse those of us who shouted from the rooftops of being un-American, or try to bully us into abandoning our principles and join the call for blood. This is wrong. It is illegal. It is as predictable as it is preventable. Even some tepid ‘antiwar’ types have it wrong when they say the US can’t be the world’s policeman. This misses the mark: the real point is that we have no moral authority to do so, and the whole world knows it. The criminal cabal in Washington is so obsessed with its own greatness that is has stood history on its head. In his long, insidious career of lies and obfuscation, Merchant of Death John Kerry finally got something inadvertently right: this *is* a Munich moment. But of course, true to form, he has it backwards. And Chamberlain‘s first name is not Neville, it’s Vlad. And he may give Obama and his henchmen a Nuremberg Moment.
Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia. Together they run The Greenhouse School. Translations of articles are available in over two dozen languages.
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Obama regime calls on EU to postpone ban on Israel
Press TV – September 8, 2013
US Secretary of State John Kerry has urged the European Union (EU) to delay a planned ban on Israel over the Tel Aviv regime’s continued settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, according to a senior US official.
On July 19, the EU published new guidelines in its Official Journal, banning its 28 members from funding projects in the illegal Israeli settlements in al-Quds (Jerusalem), the West Bank or Golan Heights, which the Tel Aviv regime occupied during the 1967 war.
The ban sparked anger among the Israeli officials, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres threatening that the new directive would undermine attempts by Kerry to relaunch talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
A senior US State Department official, whose name was not mentioned in the reports, said that, in a meeting with EU foreign ministers in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, on Saturday, Kerry called on the Europeans to consider postponing the implementation of the EU guidelines.
Kerry also asked EU diplomats to support the talks between the Israeli regime and the Palestinian Authority, which resumed in July after a three-year hiatus.
Meanwhile, the EU is to send a team to Israel on Monday to move forward on the guidelines against Israeli organizations in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel has announced plans to construct more than 3,000 housing units in al-Quds and the occupied West Bank since the resumption of the talks with the Palestinian Authority in July.
On August 11, Israel’s Housing Minister Uri Ariel gave final approval for the construction of 793 settlement units in the occupied east al-Quds (Jerusalem) and 394 others in the West Bank.
A day later, the EU described as “illegal” the Israeli regime’s decision to approve the building of settlement units.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top aide to Mahmoud Abbas, the acting Palestinian Authority (PA) chief, said on September 4 that continued Israeli settlement construction had undermined the talks with Israel.
Palestinians demand that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Related article
Congress Denied Syrian Facts, Too
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | September 7, 2013
A U.S. congressman who has read the Obama administration’s classified version of intelligence on the alleged Syrian poison gas attack says the report is only 12 pages – just three times longer than the sketchy unclassified public version – and is supported by no additional hard evidence.
Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also said the House Intelligence Committee had to make a formal request to the administration for “the underlying intelligence reports” and he is unaware if those details have been forthcoming, suggesting that the classified report – like the unclassified version – is more a set of assertions than a presentation of evidence.
“We have reached the point where the classified information system prevents even trusted members of Congress, who have security clearances, from learning essential facts, and then inhibits them from discussing and debating what they do know,” Grayson wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times on Saturday.
“And this extends to matters of war and peace, money and blood. The ‘security state’ is drowning in its own phlegm. My position is simple: if the administration wants me to vote for war, on this occasion or on any other, then I need to know all the facts. And I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
As I wrote a week ago, after examining the four-page unclassified summary, there was not a single fact that could be checked independently. It was a “dodgy dossier” similar to the ones in 2002-2003 that led the United States into the Iraq War. The only difference was that the Bush administration actually provided more checkable information than the Obama administration did, although much of the Bush data ultimately didn’t check out.
It appears that the chief lesson learned by the Obama administration was to release even less information about Syria’s alleged chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21 than the Bush administration did about Iraq’s alleged WMD. The case against Syria has relied almost exclusively on assertions, such as the bellowing from Secretary of State John Kerry that the Syrian government sure did commit the crime, just trust us.
The Obama administration’s limited-hangout strategy seems to have worked pretty well at least inside the Establishment, but it’s floundering elsewhere around the United States. It appears that many Americans share the skepticism of Rep. Grayson and a few other members of Congress who have bothered to descend into the intelligence committee vaults to read the 12-page classified summary for themselves.
Rallying the Establishment
Despite the sketchy intelligence, many senators and congressmen have adopted the politically safe position of joining in denunciations of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (where’s the downside of that), and the mainstream U.S. news media has largely taken to writing down the administration’s disputed claims about Syria as “flat fact.”
For instance, the New York Times editorial on Saturday accepts without caveat that there was “a poison gas attack by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime that killed more than 1,400 people last month,” yet those supposed “facts” are all in dispute, including the total number who apparently died from chemical exposure. It was the U.S. white paper that presented the claim of “1,429” people killed without explaining the provenance of that strangely precise number.
The New York Times editorial also reprises the false narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Assad are to blame for the absence of peace negotiations, although the Times’ own reporters from the field have written repeatedly that it has been the U.S.-backed rebels who have refused to join peace talks in Geneva. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Getting Syria-ous About Peace Talks.”]
Nevertheless, the Times editorial states, “it was the height of cynicism for Mr. Putin to talk about the need for a Syrian political settlement, which he has done little to advance.” One has to wonder if the Times’ editors consider it their “patriotic” duty to mislead the American people, again.
Increasingly, President Barack Obama’s case for a limited war against Syria is looking like a nightmarish replay of President George W. Bush’s mendacious arguments for war against Iraq. There are even uses of the same techniques, such as putting incriminating words in the mouths of “enemy” officials.
On Feb. 5, 2003, before the United Nations Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell needled some intercepted quotes from Iraqi military officers to make some innocuous comments about inspecting weapons sites into proof they were hiding caches of chemical weapons from UN inspectors. Powell’s scam was exposed when the State Department released the actual transcripts of the conversations without some of the incriminating words that Powell had added.
Then, on Aug. 30, 2013, when the Obama administration released its “Government Assessment” of Syria’s alleged poison gas attack, the white paper stated, “We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence.”
However, the identity of the “senior official” was not included, nor was the direct quote cited. The report claimed concerns about protecting “sources and methods” in explaining why more details weren’t provided, but everyone in the world knows the United States has the capability to intercept phone calls.
Reasons for Secrecy?
So, why didn’t the Obama administration go at least as far as the Bush administration did in putting out transcripts of these phone intercepts? A reasonable suspicion must be that the actual words of the conversation – and possibly other conversations – would have indicated that the Syrian high command was caught off guard by the Aug. 21 events, that the Syrian government was scrambling to figure out what had happened and why, that the intercepts were less incriminating than the paraphrase of them.
That fuller story might well have undercut the U.S. case for taking military action. So, the administration’s white paper left out conversations reflecting the Syrian government’s confusion. The white paper didn’t even bother to put in the actual quote from the one “senior official” who supposedly “confirmed” the chemical weapons use.
Indeed, although the white paper states that its conclusions were derived from “human, signals, and geospatial intelligence as well as a significant body of open source reporting,” none of that intelligence was spelled out in the unclassified version. It is now unclear how much more detail was provided in the 12-page classified version that Rep. Grayson read.
In his op-ed, Grayson wrote, “The first [unclassified version] enumerates only the evidence in favor of an attack. I’m not allowed to tell you what’s in the classified summary, but you can draw your own conclusion. On Thursday I asked the House Intelligence Committee staff whether there was any other documentation available, classified or unclassified. Their answer was ‘no.’”
So, what is one to make of this pathetic replay of events from a decade ago in which the White House and intelligence community make sweeping claims without presenting real evidence and the major U.S. news outlets simply adopt the government’s uncorroborated claims as true?
One might have thought that the Obama administration – understanding the public skepticism after the disastrous Iraq War – would have gone to extra lengths to lay out all the facts to the American people, rather than try to slip by with another “dodgy dossier” and excuses about the need to keep all the evidence secret.
President Obama seems to believe that “transparency” means having some members of Congress interrupt their busy schedules of endless fundraising to troop down to the intelligence committee vaults and read some pre-packaged intelligence without the benefit of any note-taking or the ability to check out what they’ve seen, let alone the right to discuss it publicly.
In my 35-plus years covering Congress, I can tell you that perhaps the body’s greatest weakness – amid many, many weaknesses – is its ability to investigate national security claims emanating from the Executive Branch.
Beyond all the limitations of what members of Congress are allowed to see and under what circumstances, there is the reality that anyone who takes on the intelligence community too aggressively can expect to be pilloried as “unpatriotic” or accused of being an “apologist” for some unsavory dictator.
Soon, the troublesome member can expect hostile opinion pieces showing up in his local newspapers and money pouring into the campaign coffers of some electoral challenger. So, there is no political upside in performing this sort of difficult oversight and there is plenty of downside.
And once an administration has staked its credibility on some dubious assertion, all the public can expect is more of a sales job, a task that President Obama himself is expected to undertake in a speech to the nation on Tuesday. That is why the Obama administration would have been wise to have developed a much fuller intelligence assessment of what happened on Aug. 21 and then presented the evidence as fully as possible.
In the days of the Internet and Twitter – and after the bitter experience of the Iraq War – it is a dubious proposition that the White House can rely on national politicians and Establishment news outlets to whip the public up for another military adventure without presenting a comprehensive set of facts.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
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From the Archives
Neocon Max Boot: Legal and illegal aliens need to enlist in the US army and die for Israel
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | October 16, 2107
In 1973 Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement, made a stunning statement which is still relevant to understanding the Israeli influence in US foreign policy. Kristol said:
“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States…
“American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”
Read the statement again very carefully. A big military budget, said Kristol, is only good for Israel, not America or much of the Western World. In other words, precious American soldiers who go to the Middle East to fight so-called terrorism are just working for Israel, not for America.
So, whenever the Neocons use words such as “democracy” or “freedom,” they are essentially conning decent Americans to support Israel’s perpetual wars. … continue
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