By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | April 11, 2017
Secretary of State Tillerson Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s visit to Moscow was supposed to prepare the way for a Trump-Putin summit either as a self-standing event or on the sidelines of the next G-20 meeting in Germany. The hope was that the summit would consolidate the turn toward normalization of relations that President Trump had promised in his electoral campaign.
But the 180-degree reversal in the foreign policy of the Trump administration marked by the launch of a missile strike on Syria last week changed the expectations for Tillerson’s visit dramatically, to the point that one of the most widely respected Russian political observers, Director of the Near East Institute Yevgeny Satanovsky, questioned why Tillerson’s visit is still on.
“It is not clear why Tillerson is coming,” Satanovsky said. “There is no reason at all for him to be received by Putin. Maybe it’s enough for him to talk to Maria Zakharova [spokeswoman of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs], perhaps with [Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov.”
Satanovsky’s pessimism was largely shared by other experts and officials who appeared on the most popular Russian TV news programs, including the talk shows Sixty Minutes, Evening and Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, News on Saturday with Sergey Brillyov, and News of the Week with Dmitry Kiselyov. Always popular with their Russian audiences, these shows drew in remarkably high visitor rates on the internet as posted on youtube.com, between a quarter million and half a million visits each.
Following President Trump’s missile strike on a Syrian air base on April 6, pressure grew on President Putin to respond with his own muscle-flexing. However, the Kremlin’s immediate response was restrained. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs simply announced the suspension of the 2015 Memorandum of Understanding with the United States on deconfliction. That agreement put in place communications channels within the region and rules for conduct meant to prevent and/or resolve incidents between the Russian and U.S.-led coalition forces operating in Syria.
By the evening of April 7, the popular Russian state television talk show Sixty Minutes informed its audience about two essential facts regarding the U.S. missile strike. First, the level of damage inflicted on the Syrian air base at Shayrat turned out to be minimal, totally out of keeping with what one might have anticipated from 59 Tomahawks launched by U.S. naval vessels in the Mediterranean.
Rossiya 1 war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny presented footage he and his camera crew had taken at Shayrat just hours after the strike. It was clear that the landing strip itself was undamaged, that many hangars were similarly intact, and that the structural losses were limited to six out-of-date MIG23s that were being reconditioned and to some roadways and buildings of minor significance. The report also noted that a relatively small number of Syrian military personnel and civilians were killed and wounded.
Poddubny noted that not all of the cruise missiles seemed to have reached the target. Later news broadcasts clarified that only 23 of the 59 Tomahawks reached Shayrat.
The second fact, which tempered Russian anger about the attack, was news that the United States had given two hours advance warning to the Russians. This would have enabled them to withdraw any of their military personnel on the site and to avoid casualties that would call for retribution and spark a direct military confrontation.
But if the sting of the attack and its anti-Russian message were attenuated, there was from the outset some confusion among Official Russia over what message the strike was intended to deliver and to whom. There was also a great deal of interest in exploring the reasons for Donald Trump’s policy reversal on Syria and on Russia and interest in identifying the influencers behind the move so as to better understand what might come next and what to do about that.
Already in Sixty Minutes, the first authoritative view on what happened was put forward by Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party. For political reasons, i.e., policy disagreements with the current government, Zyuganov is a rare guest on Rossiya 1 and was likely invited on to rally unity among the Russian people in the face of the new threats and dangers coming from Washington.
His reading of Trump’s TV appearance announcing the missile strike was that the President looked “broken,” now in the thrall of the mafia that had been running the U.S. before his accession to power. Zyuganov noted that for once Trump was reading his text from a teleprompter and his voice seemed to be unsteady, highly emotional.
What Drove Trump
The discussion of what motivated Trump to act on Syria expanded later in the evening on a special edition of the Vladimir Solovyov talk show. The microphone was offered first to Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the Duma Committee on Education who is better known in international circles for his years at the head of the NGO Russian World, sponsors of the Russian diaspora.
Since the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, Nikonov has appeared regularly on Rossiya 1 as a consistent advocate of Donald Trump in the expectation of very positive changes in U.S. foreign policy. But he was now caught out.
Nikonov said Trump was responding to popular outrage over pictures of children gassed to death that were featured on U.S. mass media so it appeared to Americans that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was poisoning his own people. However, if the villain in the piece was the media for an exploitative presentation, Nikonov acknowledged that there were aspects that were more generally disturbing, in particular, that Russian servicemen could have been on the base under attack. It seemed as if the right hand in America did not know what the left was doing and these contradictions do not bode well.
Igor Morozov, member of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, reminded the Solovyov audience that the idea of attacking Syrian military infrastructure was not something dreamed up at the last second by the Trump administration. Its author was General James Mattis when he was U.S. Commander in the Middle East in 2013 and was removed for promoting policies that contradicted President Obama’s desire to withdraw from war operations in the region, taking down the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Mattis is the Secretary of Defense and the cruise missile attack on the Shayrat air force base comes from his playbook.
In News on Saturday, host Sergey Brilyov remarked how ineffective the U.S. missile strike was in military terms, suggesting that it must be seen as a “signal” And that raised the question of a signal to whom? By process of exclusion, Brilyov recommended to his audience two possible addressees: China and the United States itself.
For Chinese President Xi, news of the American strike on Syria was delivered by Trump in the course of the state visit at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida. The blunt warning was that if Xi does not help to rein in the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, the United States would act on its own as it had just done in Syria.
But in Brilyov’s view the more important audience for Trump’s gesture was within the United States, within the political establishment, where he was fighting a desperate rearguard battle for his domestic policies against resistance from both hardline Republicans opposed to his foreign policy objectives and the whole of the Democratic Party.
Dmitry Kiselyov, Russia’s most senior news presenter, characterized Trump as a “tabula rasa,” without any experience in international politics who was now using America’s vast military potential to create a very dangerous situation. On his News of the Week program on Sunday evening, Kiselyov featured war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny reporting again from the Shayrat air base and explaining how it was once again operational.
Poddubny also showed off the piles of canisters at the base which appeared in previous telecasts from the air field and were claimed by some Western media to represent the chemical warfare munitions stored there by the Assad regime. He carefully explained that these containers are standard issue and are used to load all kinds of munitions onto fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, so that they have no relation whatsoever to chemical weapons which were nowhere to be seen at the base.
Kiselyov detailed at length the about-face of U.S. foreign policy on Syrian “regime change” and the reversal on efforts to join with Russia to fight terrorism. Now, objectively, the United States was fighting on the side of the terrorists. All of this meant that Trump would fail as a “deal maker” with Russia, that it was improbable he could patch things up with Russia.
Kiselyov called the U.S. President’s action “impulsive” and unsupported by facts. It was done in the context of U.S. domestic political warfare. Trump’s entourage was changing, with strategic political adviser Steve Bannon being shunted to one side and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner rising in prominence.
Kiselyov reserved special scorn for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nicki Haley. He pulled up on screen both her accusations against Assad and the riposte from Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the U.N. Vladimir Safronkov that the United States was afraid of an independent investigation into the chemical incident in Idlib because it would not support their narrative.
Kiselyov concluded his reportage on the U.S. attack with harsh words, condemning what he called a prima facie case of U.S. aggression. It was not a reaction to any concrete event but was taken “due to the total failure of Donald Trump’s policies at home.”
But he said Russia would react with reason and caution: “It is clear no one intends to declare war on the U.S. But we cannot let this whole affair pass without practical response.”
Specifically, he called for the U.N. Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate the situation in Syria. They are the people who oversaw the removal and destruction of Assad’s chemical arsenal and production facilities, for which they won a Nobel Prize for Peace. Now they should be put back to work, he said.
Finally, Kiselyov ran a short interview with Yevgeny Satanovsky that summed up nicely the thinking of his peers: “All U.S. foreign policy actions are based on domestic political considerations. That is why they are so idiotic.”
The discussion of Trump’s missile strike continued on the Sunday Evening show of Vladimir Solovyov. After pointing to rumors of U.S. plans to destroy the North Korean regime with a similar attack, the host kicked off the discussion with a neat summary for his panel of how the U.S. is approaching world governance today: “The U.S. by itself decides which countries can exist, which cannot; which leaders will rule and who must be liquidated. The U.N. Security Council is not needed. The U.S. decides on its own what to do.”
A Cornered Trump
Alexei Pushkov, who was until September 2016 the chairman of the Duma Committee on Foreign Relations and is now chairman of the upper chamber’s Committee on Information, delivered a programmatic statement to explain what he believed happened:
“Trump is operating in a specific set of circumstances. The harder it is for the U.S. to manage the world, the more it tends to throw international rules to the wind. Trump has little opportunity to escape from the existing policies.
“The key question [regarding the chemical gas event at Idlib]: why would Assad use chemical weapons against this small town? He is winning the war. No one in the West has asked this question. Whose interests were served by this chemical event? It is good for American hawks, for [Sen. John] McCain, for the neighboring states which want to overthrow Assad. But it holds no advantages for Assad.
“We have not long ago heard [former National Security Adviser] Susan Rice and [former Secretary of State] John Kerry say that all of Assad’s chemical weapons were destroyed. So where did Assad get these bombs?
“Per The New York Post, Tillerson is coming to Moscow to deliver an ultimatum on removal of Assad. If he comes here with an ultimatum, then the talks will head into a dead end. The experience of the last three years shows that the language of ultimatum does not work with Russia.”
The microphone was then turned over to Yevgeny Satanovsky, a leading expert on the Near East who was more specific in his recommendations on what Russia must do now:
–Clean up the province of Idlib, or at least the city of Idlib, driving out the Al Qaeda fighters who are now installed there so that an independent investigation can begin into what happened leading to the poison gas deaths.
–Since the U.S. clearly wants to take the Assad government’s sole remaining enclave in Eastern Syria at Dar Ezzor and turn it over to the terrorists, Russia must do its best now to break the blockade there.
–Tillerson must be approached very carefully. See whether he has come to negotiate or just to conclude with a press conference at which he tells the media that Russia is hopeless, that the U.S. cannot work with Moscow, and that the U.S. will now deal with North Korea and everywhere else on its own.
Among the other panelists on the Sunday Evening show, retired Lt. General Yevgeny Buzhinsky dealt with the question of the forewarning which the Russians received from the United States before the missile launch, saying:
“Trump is sitting on two stools. This is very sad. Yes, the U.S. gave us one and a half hours, maybe two hours of advance warning of the attack. But how?
“There are several lines of communication between us. There is a Chief of General Staff to Chief of General Staff line, which is very fast. This was not used. Instead they used a line of communications set up by the 2015 Deconfliction Memorandum of Understanding, at the regional level, between Americans in Jordan and Russians in Syria.
“The message on the impending attack was sent to the U.S. command in Jordan in the middle of the night and the duty officer was in no rush to forward it to his Russian counterpart in Syria. The duty officer there sent it to Moscow, to the Ministry of Defense, which also did not rush to respond or to pass the message to the Syrians. Net result: the two hours was barely enough for the Russians to take necessary precautionary measures. The Russian Ministry was furious.”
No doubt this explains why the first Russian reaction to the whole affair was to suspend the Deconfliction Memorandum.
The Chemical Canard
Yakov Kedmi, another panelist on Skype from Tel Aviv, offered insights into why the allegations of a Syrian government chemical weapon attack was nothing more than a canard, an unfounded rumor.
Kedmi is a former Soviet citizen, one of the first Soviet Jews to demand and finally receive permission to leave the country for Israel at the end of the 1970s. In Israel he joined the intelligence services where he had a full career. Until three years ago, he was persona non grata in Russia but has since established a niche on Russian television as a valued expert on Middle East security questions.
He said:
“What is strange here is that if the Syrians used this [air] base to attack Idlib with chemical weapons, then there should be a bunker of such weapons at the base. That would be very easy to detect using the intelligence means available – satellite images, drones, etc.
“Israel follows all movements of munitions to and in Syria going to Hezbollah. We know which trucks are carrying what and where. The United States surely knows the same about what interests it. Yet when speaking of the attack on the base the Americans did not identify any bunker or location for such weapons. Supposedly they are still looking. This shows it is a canard.
“As for the Israeli government, they say Amen to whatever stupidities the Americans say. That is the situation in our country.”
Overall, Official Russia seems to have calmly adopted the cynical interpretation that Donald Trump bombed the Syrian air base on the basis of a manufactured pretext in order to gain the upper hand in his bitter fight with hardline Republicans and the entire Democratic Party over Russia-gate and to advance his domestic political agenda.
If this interpretation is true and is eventually revealed to the American people, they are not likely to appreciate Trump’s cynicism. If he launched a missile attack on Syria based on a lie, Trump would have squandered his political capital with those who voted for him and for his promised pro-détente foreign policy. It is now improbable that he will win them back.
At the same time, Trump has not shed for long the dogs that have been snarling and nipping at his heels. Already Sen. McCain has blamed the supposed chemical attack on Trump’s earlier repudiation of “regime change” in Syria.
Donald Trump’s moral standing was never very high, even among his supporters. But the recruitment of former Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson was seen as a victory for decency. Tillerson’s prepared remarks delivered at the opening of his confirmation hearings were crystal clear and bracing. He alluded to his training as an engineer who always followed the facts where they led him.
However, by loyally carrying the water for his boss on the alleged Syrian chemical attack, Tillerson has also damaged his credibility, drawing comparisons to Secretary of State Colin Powell who presented President George W. Bush’s bogus case for invading Iraq to the United Nations.
Patently, in this current matter of state importance, indeed a matter that bears on war and peace, Tillerson did nothing to establish the facts. Now, he brings his tattered credibility to Moscow where he will face Russian officials who no longer believe that they can trust the Trump administration.
Gilbert Doctorow is a Brussels-based political analyst. His latest book Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.
By Michael Jabara CARLEY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 12.04.2017
In late February 2017, the Russian Federation and China vetoed a joint, US, French and British resolution to impose sanctions on Syria over allegations of chemical weapons use. I wondered at the time why this issue was coming back. In 2014, on Russian initiative the Syrian government agreed to give up its chemical weapons stocks under international observation and with international assistance. Subsequently, the UN confirmed, and the United States accepted, that the Syrian government had no further chemical weapons stocks or facilities for producing them. The Syrian government has always denied using chemical weapons in the proxy war being waged against it by the US-led western and regional coalition consisting most importantly of Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Apartheid Israel. The only entities using chemical weapons, sometimes as false flag operations, were and are the foreign backed Jihadist mercenaries operating in Syria.
Nevertheless, Jihadist use of chemical weapons has been largely ignored, or the responsibility for using them, in an Orwellian turnabout, has been foisted upon the Syrian government in Damascus. The issue keeps coming up, and is used by the United States and its European and regional vassals as an implicit threat or means of pressure against the Damascus government. In fact, according to Seymour Hersh, the muckraking American journalist, the US State Department and the CIA facilitated, or were complicit in the shipping of chemical weapons from Libya to Syria through Turkey for the use of their Salafist allies.
If you search Google, you will find numerous stories in the western Mainstream Media (MSM) about alleged Syrian war crimes or chemical weapons use intended, apparently, to set up that Anglo-French-US sponsored resolution at the end of February. In early February, for example, the MSM published dramatic stories about the Syrian government hanging 13,000 victims in a prison «slaughterhouse». The story originated with Amnesty International, a well-known NGO and propaganda agency in the service of the US State Department. This US inspired canard nevertheless did not gain traction. On 10 February, Global Research in Canada, amongst others, dismissed the Syrian «slaughterhouse» story as bogus American propaganda intended to justify US military intervention in Syria.
Within a week this «fake news» gave way to renewed accusations against the Syrian government of chemical weapons use. On 13 February Human Rights Watch, another well-known US propaganda agency, accused the Syrian government of «chemical attacks in opposition-controlled parts of Aleppo during the final month of the battle for the city». It called on the UN Security Council to impose sanctions. Tass and Sputnik responded on the following day dismissing the allegations. «Such reports prepared by laymen with reference to the data of social networks and stories by unknown anonymous witnesses over the phone are destroying further the already ambiguous reputation of Human Rights Watch», said the Russian defence department spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov. Sputnik also quoted Konashenkov’s statement. Predictably, as if by cue the MSM immediately ran with the new allegations, accepting them as a given. Amongst these western sources were the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Voice of America and various other US overt and covert propaganda outlets.
A competing story about the US use of depleted uranium bombs in Syria was pushed into the background and disappeared. On 14 February the French government without any attempt at verification of the new accusations immediately demanded a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the imposition of sanctions on the Syrian government. «Syrian artists call for Assad’s prosecution for war crimes» ran another headline. Already, in mid-February the MSM was whipping up hysteria about Syrian chemical weapons. The big story in the last week of February was the Russian and Chinese veto of the Security Council resolution calling for sanctions on the Syrian government. «Russia breaks with Trump in the UN», said the LA Times. Russia was the real spoiler; China received less attention. Seven times, complained BBC, Russia «has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution to protect the Syrian government». China only six times, added BBC. The British and French were indignant, forgetting how many times the United States has used its veto to block resolutions condemning Apartheid Israel or Apartheid South Africa. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault declared that Russia bore a «heavy responsibility towards the Syrian people and humanity as a whole». Oh my, «humanity», he said. Does that mean that the Jihadist terrorists rampaging in Syria, backed by France, are on the side of «humanity»?
The west’s indignation did not end with the Sino-Russian veto at the end of February. As if mysteriously directed, the MSM campaign of «false news» mounted in intensity during March. All the while, the Russian government was working to get peace talks moving toward a negotiated end of the war. The Turkish and Syrian presidents were supposed to meet in Moscow. Was the MSM campaign intended to block a negotiated settlement to the US-led proxy war against Syria? «Russia sides with chemical weapons», accused the New York Times on 1 March. «Ignoring UN», Fox News declared on 6 March, «Russia and Assad continue Syrian chemical weapons and bombing attacks labeled war crimes». Even lowly, US compliant Sweden jumped on Russia’s back. «France will go on fighting chemical weapons use», declared the French foreign minister. Oh, how brave of France.
Aliens from another planet deciphering MSM headlines in March might logically conclude that the Jihadist terrorists and mercenaries destroying Syria were the real heroes of the conflict. In March, accusation after accusation was hurled at Syria and especially against President Bashar al Assad, but as far as I can see, no credible evidence was ever presented which could indict the Syrian government. There is of course evidence of the western-backed Salafists using chemical weapons, though the MSM almost never notices it. On 20 March the EU sanctioned four Syrian military officials for alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians.
Underlining western double standards, this headline on 17 March went almost unnoticed: «US Military Bombs Syrian Mosque during Evening Prayers, Killing Dozens». That’s the way it is in the western MSM, Pot calls Kettle black. One set of rules for the west and one set of rules for everyone else. The US-led sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s caused the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children. «We think the price was worth it», declared the sententious former Secretary of State Albright. How many Iraqi civilians died in the Anglo-American war of aggression of 2003? The estimates are more than a million dead.
If actions speak louder than words, one would have to reckon that the United States doesn’t give a damn about dead civilians—you know, «collateral damage» — except as bad publicity. And Washington can always count on the MSM to bury stories that tarnish the US image. Just look at the coverage of «collateral damage» around Mosul in Iraq.
And still the MSM’s invective spewed out against Assad and the Syrian government and against Russia, as though the Jihadist terrorists represent the most noble of causes. It’s true that Assad and Syria have fought back denying any use of chemical weapons. So did the dignified Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the MID spox, the eloquent Maria Zakharova, with her rapier-like sallies against US and western hypocrisy and double standards. And of course the truth-telling Vladimir Putin has repeatedly attempted to talk common sense and reason to the stone deaf west, only to be vilified for his efforts. Reason, logic and truth make little headway in the west against the cyclone of MSM invective and unsubstantiated accusations against Assad.
«Sentence first, verdict afterwards», cries out the MSM Queen of Hearts: «Off with his head!»
Then, on Tuesday, 4 April, Salafists in the Syrian town of Khan Shaykoun, long an Al Qaeda stronghold in north-western Syria, claimed that more than 50 people had been killed by a Syrian gas attack. The Syrian Arab Army denied any use of chemical weapons, though it confirmed an air raid on a Salafist arms dump where, unbeknownst to them, chemical weapons may have been stored. Outside of Khan Shaykoun, no one knows what really happened on 4 April, or whether the Salafists had launched yet another false flag attack to lay blame on the Syrian government, or indeed whether the alleged attack was staged by Al Qaeda and its «white helmets», subsidised by the United States and Britain. In the west no one wants to know. The United States did a U-turn after declaring only a day or two before that the Syrian people could decide who would govern them. Oh, how very decent of the United States, but then the Americans suddenly changed their minds.
The Khan Shaykoun gassing, or whatever it was, changed everything. The MSM cyclone, as if by cue, erupted once again to blow down Russian suggestions of a UN directed investigation. «Bashar el-Assad just gassed his own people», blared one typical headline. «Syria’s ‘barbaric’ regime» has to go, opined the British Foreign Secretary. The US ambassador at the UN, Nikki Haley, threatened US unilateral action, if the Security Council did not comply with American wishes. Khan Shaykoun looks like a set-up, the deus ex machina, the providential event, of a US orchestrated campaign to sabotage Russian-led peace talks and to justify US military aggression. Already some of Trump’s advisors are calling for a «full-scale war» against Syria.
There are a few voices of prudence in the United States, like former Congressman Ron Paul. «It makes no sense, even if you were totally separate from this and take no sides… and you were just an analyst, it doesn’t make sense for Assad under these conditions to all of the sudden use poison gasses», Paul commented: «I think it’s a zero chance that he would have done this deliberately». But no one in the US government was listening to people like Ron Paul, least of all President Donald Trump, who approved an attack in the early morning of 6 April on a Syrian airbase used in the fight against Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Fifty-nine cruise missiles were launched and 23 hit the airbase doing little damage apparently. What happened to the other 36 missiles? No one is saying for certain. The base was returned to operations within 24 hours, but the damage to the Russian-US relations is far more severe. How can Putin, Lavrov, or any Russian government official trust anything US «partners» say? They can’t. Dealing, negotiating, accepting the United States at its word is like trusting a rattlesnake. But the rattlesnake at least warns when it is about to strike.
After the sneak attack on Syria, President Putin was scathing, and accused the US of aggression, which of course it was, unless you believe the United States has special rights to attack any state it wants, if only it decides to do so. The accusations against the Syrian government, Putin said plainly, are «bullshit» or less colloquially, «utter nonsense» (дурь несусветная). Like the Tonkin Gulf, the Kosovo «genocide», the Kuwaiti incubator babies, the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Libyan government «mass rapes» and «massacres», the US accusations against Assad are canards to justify military aggression. «Will we ever learn?» the brave Bolivian ambassador asked in so many words in the Security Council: «When is enough going to be enough?» When will Europeans wake up and say enough is enough? The European powers, most importantly France, Germany, Italy and Spain, are the only ones capable of saying to the United States, we won’t support your wars any more, stop. Stop before you drag us into World War III. Stop. Only the European powers, if they have the courage and determination to reassert their national independence, can restrain the United States without war. I dare to hope that they will take their courage in their two hands and act before it is too late. Time is running out.
Consortium News | April 11, 2017
More than two dozen ex-U.S. intelligence officials urge President Trump to rethink his claims blaming the Syrian government for the chemical deaths in Idlib and to pull back from his dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)*
SUBJECT: Syria: Was It Really “A Chemical Weapons Attack”?
1 – We write to give you an unambiguous warning of the threat of armed hostilities with Russia – with the risk of escalation to nuclear war. The threat has grown after the cruise missile attack on Syria in retaliation for what you claimed was a “chemical weapons attack” on April 4 on Syrian civilians in southern Idlib Province.
2 – Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us this is not what happened. There was no Syrian “chemical weapons attack.” Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died.
3 – This is what the Russians and Syrians have been saying and – more important –what they appear to believe happened.
4 – Do we conclude that the White House has been giving our generals dictation; that they are mouthing what they have been told to say?
5 – After Putin persuaded Assad in 2013 to give up his chemical weapons, the U.S. Army destroyed 600 metric tons of Syria’s CW stockpile in just six weeks. The mandate of the U.N.’s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW-UN) was to ensure that all were destroyed – like the mandate for the U.N. inspectors for Iraq regarding WMD. The U.N. inspectors’ findings on WMD were the truth. Rumsfeld and his generals lied and this seems to be happening again. The stakes are even higher now; the importance of a relationship of trust with Russia’s leaders cannot be overstated.
6 – In September 2013, after Putin persuaded Assad to relinquish his chemical weapons (giving Obama a way out of a tough dilemma), the Russian President wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: “My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this.”
Détente Nipped in the Bud
7 – Three-plus years later, on April 4, 2017, Russian Prime Minister Medvedev spoke of “absolute mistrust,” which he characterized as “sad for our now completely ruined relations [but] good news for terrorists.” Not only sad, in our view, but totally unnecessary – worse still, dangerous.
8 – With Moscow’s cancellation of the agreement to de-conflict flight activity over Syria, the clock has been turned back six months to the situation last September/October when 11 months of tough negotiation brought a ceasefire agreement. U.S. Air Force attacks on fixed Syrian army positions on Sept. 17, 2016, killing about 70 and wounding another 100, scuttled the fledgling ceasefire agreement approved by Obama and Putin a week before. Trust evaporated.
9 – On Sept 26, 2016, Foreign Minister Lavrov lamented: “My good friend John Kerry … is under fierce criticism from the US military machine, [which] apparently does not really listen to the Commander in Chief.” Lavrov criticized JCS Chairman Joseph Dunford for telling Congress that he opposed sharing intelligence with Russia on Syria, “after the [ceasefire] agreement, concluded on direct orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Barack Obama, had stipulated that the two sides would share intelligence. … It is difficult to work with such partners. …”
10 – On Oct. 1, 2016, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned, “If the US launches a direct aggression against Damascus and the Syrian Army, it would cause a terrible, tectonic shift not only in the country, but in the entire region.”
11 – On Oct 6, 2016, Russian defense spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov cautioned that Russia was prepared to shoot down unidentified aircraft – including any stealth aircraft – over Syria. Konashenkov made a point of adding that Russian air defenses “will not have time to identify the origin” of the aircraft.
12 – On Oct 27, 2016, Putin publicly lamented, “My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results,” and complained about “people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice.” Referring to Syria, Putin decried the lack of a “common front against terrorism after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort, and difficult compromises.”
13 – Thus, the unnecessarily precarious state into which U.S.-Russian relations have now sunk – from “growing trust” to “absolute mistrust.” To be sure, many welcome the high tension, which – admittedly – is super for the arms business.
14 – We believe it of transcendent importance to prevent relations with Russia from falling into a state of complete disrepair. Secretary Tillerson’s visit to Moscow this week offers an opportunity to stanch the damage, but there is also a danger that it could increase the acrimony – particularly if Secretary Tillerson is not familiar with the brief history set down above.
15 – Surely it is time to deal with Russia on the basis of facts, not allegations based largely on dubious evidence – from “social media,” for example. While many would view this time of high tension as ruling out a summit, we suggest the opposite may be true. You might consider instructing Secretary Tillerson to begin arrangements for an early summit with President Putin.
* Background on Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a list of whose issuances can be found at https://consortiumnews.com/vips-memos/.
A handful of CIA veterans established VIPS in January 2003 after concluding that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had ordered our former colleagues to manufacture intelligence to “justify” an unnecessary war with Iraq. At the time we chose to assume that President George W. Bush was not fully aware of this.
We issued our first Memorandum for the President on the afternoon of Feb. 5, 2003, after Colin Powell’s ill-begotten speech at the United Nations. Addressing President Bush, we closed with these words:
No one has a corner on the truth; nor do we harbor illusions that our analysis is “irrefutable” or “undeniable” [adjectives Powell applied to his charges against Saddam Hussein]. But after watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.
Respectfully, we offer the same advice to you, President Trump.
* * *
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Eugene D. Betit, Intelligence Analyst, DIA, Soviet FAO, (US Army, ret.)
William Binney, Technical Director, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer and former Office Director in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research, (ret.)
Thomas Drake, Senior Executive Service, NSA (former)
Bogdan Dzakovic, Former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security, (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Robert Furukawa, Capt, CEC, USN-R, (ret.)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq and Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)
Larry C. Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)
Michael S. Kearns, Captain, USAF (Ret.); ex-Master SERE Instructor for Strategic Reconnaissance Operations (NSA/DIA) and Special Mission Units (JSOC)
John Brady Kiesling, Foreign Service Officer (ret.)
John Kiriakou, former CIA analyst and counterterrorism officer, and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Lisa Ling, TSgt USAF (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Near East, CIA and National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Torin Nelson, former Intelligence Officer/Interrogator, Department of the Army
Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (Ret.)
Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)
Scott Ritter, former MAJ., USMC, and former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq
Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
Sarah G. Wilton, Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret), DIA (ret.)
Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)
Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat
By Adam Garrie and Vladimir Rodzianko | The Duran | April 11, 2017
Russian President Vladimir Putin has just held a press conference with Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
Putin told reporters that Russian intelligence indicates that terrorist factions operating in Syria are planning further chemical weapons attacks, likely in regions south of Damascus.
Putin explained that these attacks will be used as provocations for further US military action in Syria as the terrorists will blame the attacks on President Assad. In other words, the intelligence points to a premeditated false flag attack.
“We have intelligence, showing that such provocations may happen in other parts of Syria, including territories south of Damascus. They plan to use some substances and then accuse the Syrian government of using those chemicals.”
Putin urged vigilance against such provocative attacks and reiterated Russia’s commitment to an impartial UN led investigation of the now infamous Idlib chemical weapons attack which America used as justification for their bombing of Syria last week.
“We believe every incident should be properly investigated so we plan to contact the UN institution at The Hague and we urge the international community to investigate the incident – then based on this investigation, a proper decision has to made.”
Putin also drew parallels between the US rush to war in Syria with George Bush’s attack on Iraq in 2003 when evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction turned out to be false.
The Russian President stated quite frankly, ‘we’ve seen this all before’.
This comes as US Secretary of State Tillerson is to meet Russian Foreign Minsiter Sergey Lavrov later today in Moscow.
Press TV – April 11, 2017
Through a flurry of contacts with world authorities, the Iranian Foreign Ministry has been promoting a proposal by President Hassan Rouhani for an international, impartial investigation into accusations of a chemical attack in northwestern Syria.
At least 86 people died in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib Province last week in what the opponents of the Syrian government say was a chemical attack by Damascus. Syria has, however, denied the accusation, saying instead that a chemical weapons depot held and run by anti-Damascus militants had been hit in a conventional Syrian airstrike, causing the leak of the chemicals and the deaths. Russia has confirmed that account.
Meanwhile, and amid increased belligerence toward Damascus, Iran, another Syrian ally, has called for an international investigation by impartial parties. President Rouhani put forth the idea on Saturday. He has also condemned the use of chemical weapons by any party.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has now been holding telephone conversations with world leaders to stress the need for a fact-finding probe.
He has most recently called United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfan, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Hamad Al Sabah, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.
The Iranian foreign minister has also talked to European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, as well as his Russian, Omani, Syrian, and Algerian counterparts over the matter.
Iran-Russia-Syria meeting
Amid Iranian diplomatic efforts, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Syria would hold a meeting in Moscow this week to discuss the US strikes against Syria.
“A trilateral meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Syrian minister Walid al-Muallem and Iranian minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is planned for the end of this week,” Zakharova said.
Using the Idlib tragedy as a pretext, US President Donald Trump on Friday ordered a missile strike on a Syrian airbase. A barrage of 59 Tomahawk missiles was launched against the Shayrat Airfield in the western Syrian Homs Province early on that same day, causing some 15 fatalities, including civilians.
The US strike was conducted without a mandate by the United Nations Security Council, and did not even have a US Congress approval. American officials have, meanwhile, threatened more attacks against the Syrian government.
The Friday strike and the threats of more attacks have been met with strong reactions from Syria’s main allies Iran and Russia, both of whom have condemned the attack.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that the US strike was a “strategic mistake.”
On Monday, President Rouhani warned that any further US strikes on Syria could push the region into a “very dangerous” situation.
“America did this once, but will it go unanswered next time? The Russians have said that a confrontation was only a few inches away [during the Friday strike]. They are right, if the missiles had hit a few hundred meters away from where they did hit, it could have led to a major confrontation,” Rouhani said, apparently referring to the fact that Russian forces were based at the site that the US hit.
Following the attack, the Iranian president held phone talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, during which they said aggressive US actions against Syria were not permissible and violated international law.
They also called for an objective investigation into the Idlib incident, and both stressed that finding out about all aspects of the matter through that channel would be quite “easy.”
By Alexander Mercouris | The Duran | April 11, 2017
The G7 appears to have joined calls for an independent investigation of the alleged Khan Sheikhoun chemical attack.
Such an investigation was supposed to be the subject of a meeting of the UN Security Council which was taking place last week. Instead that meeting was indefinitely postponed, the US declared President Assad guilty of the attack, and launched its missiles in reprisal. The result is that a further week has passed, giving ample opportunity for those involved to cover up or doctor the evidence, and with no less a person than the President of the United States publicly declaring President Assad guilty and launching his missiles in reprisal, the whole issue has been politicised far beyond the point where a truly impartial or independent investigation is any longer possible. Probably the best that can now be hoped for is an investigation that takes weeks or even months to report, allowing passions in the meantime to die down.
That probably is the thinking of the three European members of the G7 – Germany, France and Italy – that are pressing hardest for the investigation. Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s foreign minister, had a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov on Sunday, when Lavrov appears to have pressed the idea of an investigation on him. On the question of the need for such an investigation the Europeans, somewhat unusually, have sided with the Russians against the Americans, almost certainly because German public opinion is known to oppose the US missile strikes.
Though no one should have any high expectations of what the results of an investigation into the alleged Khan Sheikhoun attack will lead to, Russian statements since the attack do suggest that the Russians are very confident of their facts and the fact that the Europeans are calling for an investigation after the US missile strike is hardly a ringing endorsement of the US claims President Assad is guilty.
Also it is fair to point out that the UN inquiry into the attack on the humanitarian convoy in September 2016, though placed under intense pressure and working under the severest constraints, proved unexpectedly impartial, clearing the Russians entirely and suggesting the Syrians bombed the convoy by mistake. That almost certainly happened because the head of that inquiry – an Indian military officer – was a tough and principled man, who insisted on the inquiry doing its job properly. Whilst the US and its Western allies will doubtless be working overtime to ensure that any inquiry into the Khan Sheikhoun attack is not headed by such a person, since the inquiry will be set up by the UN the Russians will also have a say, and it is not completely inconceivable that it might in the end do its job properly.
If it does, and if it does report that the Russian version of what happened in Khan Sheikhoun – that the chemical was released because it was stored by the Jihadis in a warehouse that the Syrian air force bombed – is true, then this could cause President Trump more than just embarrassment. As I discussed previously, there is no doubt he acted illegally by ordering the missile strike without Congressional approval or UN Security Council authorisation. Whether his enemies would be willing to make use of the fact that he acted not just illegally but also wrongly because an international investigation reported that there was no Syrian chemical weapons strike on Khan Sheikhoun is another matter.
RT | April 11, 2017
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s mission to introduce fresh sanctions against Russia over Syria looks dead in the water after the G7 group of nations blocked the idea.
Johnson wanted the G7 to agree to “very punitive sanctions” and issue a joint declaration asking Russia to end its support for Syrian President Bashar Assad in response to last week’s alleged chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib province.
Instead, while the G7 nations meeting in Italy did agree there was no solution to the Syria crisis with Assad in power, proposals to target sanctions at senior military leaders were sidelined.
A delay on implementing sanctions will be in place until there is “hard and irrefutable evidence” over the alleged chemical attack. Russia has consistently denied Syrian forces used chemical weapons, insisting the incident at Khan Sheikhoun was caused by a hit on a rebel chemical weapons plant.
Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said the G7 had broadened consultations on Tuesday morning, with key regional allies participating including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and Turkey. He declared the talks a “political success.”
Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, sources told the Independent that the EU and Germany were “cool” on Britain and America’s plan for new punitive measures on Moscow.
Germany privately indicated on Monday that it opposed the call for sanctions on Russia, the Times reports. Senior officials said their approach to resolving the Syrian conflict had not changed despite the “barbaric” suspected chemical attack last week.
In France, President François Hollande’s government indicated it was more open to considering sanctions against Russia in response to the alleged gas attack. The country is in the middle of an election campaign, however, meaning Paris is unlikely to take a lead given a new president and government will come to power next month.
There were mixed signals from Italy, which is hosting the G7 summit in Lucca. Johnson has insisted he is working closely with the Italians attending the gathering, however Italian President Sergio Mattarella arrived in Moscow on Monday night for an official visit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The men are due to discuss strengthening relations.
Their meeting comes after Johnson canceled a trip to Moscow planned for this week, reportedly so that his US counterpart Rex Tillerson could go on behalf of the G7 to send a “clear and coordinated” message to the Kremlin about removing its support for Assad.
Tillerson hoped to take a definite G7 statement with him to Moscow.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has delivered her backing for Johnson’s sanctions plan from her walking holiday with her husband in Wales. Until late on Monday night, Downing Street had gone out of its way to stay away from Johnson’s plan to put pressure on Putin, avoiding all talk of new sanctions.
The US and EU have already imposed an array of sanctions on Russian individuals and businesses. The UK began imposing sanctions on Russia in 2014, after a coup in Kiev resulted in Crimea voting to become part of Russia, and conflict emerged between Kiev and eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
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