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Lavrov says agreed with Tillerson no future US strikes on Syrian government

RT | April 13, 2017

Moscow and Washington have reached an understanding that further US strikes similar to the one carried out against Syria’s Shayrat Air Base “should not occur again,” the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

Lavrov emphasized that this issue was raised during his discussions with the US Secretary of State on Wednesday when Rex Tillerson was visiting Moscow.

“We have discussed this issue with the US Secretary of State in details yesterday and agreed upon the fact that a similar [strike] should not occur again,” he told journalists ahead of his meeting with his Syrian counterpart, Walid Muallem, in Moscow.

Lavrov further underlined that the US missile strike against the Shayrat Air Base played “a highly provocative role.”

He went on to say that the US confirmed its commitment to the idea that there is no other option of resolving the Syrian conflict other than political dialog, adding that this offers hope for the future of the peace process.

“It is encouraging to some extent that Rex Tillerson confirmed yesterday that [the US still holds] the opinion that there is no alternative to the political process [of the resolution of the Syrian crisis] despite all the recent negative developments,” he said.

A “right and responsible step” is how Lavrov described the Syrian government’s decision to invite experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to conduct an investigation of the chemical weapon incident in Idlib province.

He said the “hysteria” around the alleged Idlib chemical weapons attack should not impede efforts made in Astana and Geneva, which are aimed at resolving the Syrian conflict.

The Russian Foreign Minister warned that there are forces still trying to “bust up the ceasefire regime brokered in Astana and welcomed by the UN Security Council.”

Earlier, Lavrov said that failing to institute an international inquiry into the chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib would mean that the international community is not interested in establishing the truth about the matter.

He reiterated that Moscow considers the US claims concerning the chemical weapons being used by the Syrian government “unfounded” and “lacking evidence,” speaking at the joint news conference with Tillerson on Wednesday following talks in Moscow.

Lavrov also denounced attempts to hamper cooperation between Russia and the US as “shortsighted.” The two diplomats also announced the creation of a joint expert group tasked with analyzing bilateral relations and addressing sources of mutual concern as they revealed plans to improve ties between Moscow and Washington.

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

North Korea Says Washington to Blame for Escalating Tensions

Sputnik – 13.04.2017

On Thursday, a North Korean peace institute affiliated with country’s Foreign Ministry blamed the US for escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula, saying that any strike from Washington would prompt a “merciless retaliatory strike.”

In the statement, a spokesman from the institute said that US deployment of nuclear assets could very well spark a nuclear conflict. A US carrier strike group led by the nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson was recently redirected to the peninsula, as Pyongyang continues its nuclear weapons development program and its regime of threats.

This US show of force takes place only shortly after US President Donald Trump ordered a controversial strike of 59 Tomahawk missiles against Syria’s Sha’irat air base, in a move that North Korea said justified their nuclear activities.

Coming behind the Vinson group is the USS Dewey and the USS Sterett, a couple of Navy destroyers that just arrived in Hawaii and will soon be headed to the Asia-Pacific region. Meanwhile, recent satellite images analyzed by North Korean watchdog 38 North indicate that a sixth North Korean nuclear test is on the horizon.

According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, the North Korean statement said, “By relentlessly bringing in a number of strategic nuclear assets to the Korean Peninsula, the US is gravely threatening the peace and safety, and driving the situation to the brink of a nuclear war.” Regarding the strike in Syria, they said “the US. is carrying out military strikes and menacing acts against a sovereign state while calling for peace through strength.”

The institute also said that it would be “silly” to entertain any “dream” of defeating them through working with other countries, in what appears to be a reference to Washington pressuring China to take a more aggressive stance against the North’s provocations.

Trump recently met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the “Southern White House,” his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. In an interview with the Financial Times not long before his meeting with Xi, Trump said, “If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all I am telling you.”

His tone changed after Xi explained Beijing’s relationship with the North, leading Trump to realize, “it’s not so easy.”

Trump also conducted a complete about-face from frequent comments he had made about Beijing being the “grand champion” of manipulating currency, saying after the meeting, “They’re not currency manipulators.”

On Thursday, amid speculation that North Korea’s next nuclear test will take place any day now, Trump remarked that Pyongyang is a “problem” that “will be taken care of.”

Despite Washington’s saber-rattling, China has suggested that diplomatic tactics could still be used to solve the North Korean issue. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing on Thursday, “Military force cannot resolve the issue … Amid challenge there is opportunity. Amid tensions we will also find a kind of opportunity to return to talks.”

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Bashar al-Assad’s full BBC interview

“… I was very cautious in saying any opinion regarding him before he became President and after. I always say let’s see what he’s going to do, we wouldn’t comment on statements. So, actually, this is the first proof that it’s not about the President in the United State; it’s about the regime and the deep state or the deep regime in the United States is still the same, it doesn’t change. The President is only one of the performers on their theatre, if he wants to be a leader, he cannot, because as some say he wanted to be a leader, Trump wanted to be a leader, but every President there, if he wants to be a real leader, later he’s going to eat his words, swallow his pride if he has pride at all, and make a 180 degree U-turn, otherwise he would pay the price politically. …”

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Tillerson’s Bad Hand in Kremlin Showdown

By Gilbert Doctorow | Consortium News | April 13, 2017

The Russian media offered no complete account of what may have been accomplished during Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s two-day visit to Russia, but there were hints of what the Russian negotiating position would have been behind closed doors and what may have justified Vladimir Putin making two hours available for Tillerson in what was otherwise a very busy day for the Russian President relating to domestic concerns.

Before Tillerson’s arrival Russian media reported widely on his failure the day before at the G7 meeting to win support for imposing more sanctions on Russia for backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in light of the chemical weapons event in Idlib on April 4. That proposal was raised by U.K. Foreign Minister Boris Johnson and affirmed by Tillerson but rejected by all other G7 members. With that resounding defeat, Tillerson had no sticks from “the international community” to wield as an ultimatum against the Russians, telling them to get behind a U.S.-imposed “regime change” in Syria or suffer the consequences of further economic isolation from the West.

Tillerson also carried little in the way of carrots, given President Trump’s retreat on his campaign pledges to improve relations with Russia. Tillerson’s empty diplomatic bag was a topic discussed on Russian prime-time television the evening before his arrival. Senior Duma member and United Russia Party leader Vyacheslav Nikonov rhetorically demanded of Tillerson on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show: “So, make us an offer of what it means to go with America, what it brings us, and then we will consider it.”

In effect, Nikonov was calling the Trump administration’s bluff. He and the Russian elites understand perfectly that Donald Trump has no political capital to spend to get Congressional approval of normalized relations with Russia.

Just as the Tillerson-Putin meeting was taking place on Wednesday, another widely watched Russian talk show First Studio on the Pervy Kanal state channel opened with host Artyom Sheinin  posing a baiting question to the American journalist Michael Bohm, a frequent visitor to the program who is often used as a punching bag. Referring to Tillerson’s initial meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the doubt that Putin would grant Tillerson a meeting, Sheinin said, “I believe there is the practice in big corporations for a new visitor who has come to see the boss to first undergo a ‘screening interview.’ It looks as if Tillerson passed this screening process and so he was allowed in to speak to the boss. Do you think this was a positive thing?”

In other words, the Russians knew that Tillerson came with empty hands and that he was the suitor, not the one being wooed. Tillerson came to discuss reinstatement of the Memorandum of Understanding on Deconfliction in Syria because on the U.S. side there was great concern over Russia’s refusal now to speak at the regional level to U.S. military counterparts and avert clashes on the ground and in the air that could lead to escalation of confrontation and possibly to all-out-war. The Russian withdrawal from the deconfliction arrangement following the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airfield on April 6 put the continuation of U.S.-led military operations against Islamic State militants inside Syria in danger.

On April 8, senior Pentagon officials were denying that the Russians had severed all military-to-military hot lines, but there was a cold sweat in Washington. The uncertainty over whether Syrian and Russian air defenses might take aim at NATO aircraft had already led the Belgians to publicly announce cessation of all their flights within the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition. Presumably other NATO members had come to the same conclusion.

Meanwhile, my information backchannels indicate that the Russians set down their preconditions for reinstatement of the deconfliction arrangements: no further U.S. air attacks on Syrian government positions. We may be sure that this was the major subject for discussion and possible agreement during Tillerson’s talks with Putin.

The result may be something similar to the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the U.S. claimed victory publicly as the Soviets pulled their missiles out of Cuba, but privately the U.S. had granted what Moscow had wanted, the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. But Putin is no Nikita Khrushchev, who lost prestige among his Kremlin peers for striking the agreement with the Americans; Putin is likely to gain stature from such an arrangement.

The U.S. Media’s Take

Meanwhile, the mainstream U.S. media presented the Putin-Tillerson meeting in relatively neutral terms given the American press corps general hostility to all things Russian. The Washington Post did better than other media outlets, with Moscow Bureau Chief David Filipov and his colleague covering the State Department in Washington highlighting the undeniable fact that the parties were “sharply at odds” and noting:

“Russia made it clear it was unwilling to roll back its strategic alliance with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The talks appeared unlikely to bring any significant breakthroughs after last week’s missile strike plunged U.S. relations to one of the lowest points since the Cold War. But despite the growing rifts, some general compromises were discussed.”

The areas of potential compromise were possible reinstatement of the information-sharing “deconfliction” Memorandum of Understanding with the United States that the Russians suspended immediately after the April 6 missile attack and creation of a U.S.-Russian working group to find ways to ease tensions between the two nuclear superpowers.

After that, the authors moved on to more trivial pursuits such as Donald Trump’s latest remarks about Assad being “an animal.” However, even amidst this swill there were a few points worthy of note because they gave expression to Russian policy positions at the talks: Russia’s refusal to accept ultimatums, such as Tillerson brought with him over choosing ties with the U.S. or Syria; Russia’s rejection of the allegations that Assad was behind the chemical attack in Idlib; Russia’s call for the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to investigate the use of chemical weapons there; and Putin’s likening the present situation to the one immediately preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq. All of these important points are presented in the article at face value, alongside U.S., U.K. and other Western accusations directed against Russia

The New York Times coverage gave more attention to American action than to Russian reaction, as the opening of its cover headline for its several related articles indicates: “U.S. Pressures Russia …” The sub-article dealing with the Tillerson visit devotes more attention to what came before and after Putin’s meeting with Tillerson than to what they may have agreed on. The Times bureau chief David Sanger noted how Tillerson was held in suspense as his anticipated meeting with Putin was left in doubt until the last minute, what was described as a typical maneuver by the Russian president to keep his interlocutors off balance, a characterization which ignores the widely reported urgings of Russia’s talking heads before Tillerson’s arrival that their President not receive him because of the objectionable message on Syria that he had laid out on Monday at the meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Italy.

Indeed, the Times article said almost nothing about what may have justified the Putin meeting and what was agreed other than the working group to ease tensions, which Sanger correctly identifies as devoted to small and not the big divisive issues.

Gilbert Doctorow is a Brussels-based political analyst. His latest book Does Russia Have a Future? was published in August 2015.

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

‘I don’t believe a word of it’ – CIA whistleblower on US intelligence about Syria chemical attack

RT | April 13, 2017

The UN, not the unilateral bombing of Syria should have been the first stop for US diplomacy, says whistleblowing former CIA analyst John Kiriakou. As for evidence the American politicians claim they have; he says “they are making this stuff up.”

On Wednesday Russia vetoed a UN resolution backed by the US and other Western powers, condemning the Khan Shaykhun incident on April 4 as a chemical attack and demanding Syria open up its military bases to inspections.

After the vote, Russia’s representative said the action taken by the US before an investigation had been held, was a violation of international law.

RT asked John Kiriakou, former CIA analyst, and whistleblower, whether supporters of Washington’s resolution will try to push for it again.

“I think they will. They usually do. The problem here though is that the UN should have been the first stop for US diplomacy. Rather than acting unilaterally and firing 59 cruise missiles, the State Department should have engaged the UN Security Council from the very beginning,” he said.

As to why the UN voted on the resolution without any clear evidence of Assad’s culpability for the Idlib incident and the logic behind it, Kiriakou opined “they were afraid of the conclusion.”

“There are professional intelligence officers on every side of this issue who are saying that everybody needs to slow down and look at the source of these chemicals. There are people on the ground, who are telling many of us that these chemicals were in a storage facility that is controlled by ISIS, that the Syrian military launched a conventional attack, and hit the storage facility – this was not a chemical attack by the Syrian government. We frankly don’t know what the facts are. We don’t know because it just simply hasn’t been investigated. I think the US and its allies on the Security Council need to slow down, need to send in UN inspectors to take a look, get the facts on the ground, and then report back to the Security Council. This bombing should never have taken place,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Rex Tillerson was meeting with Russia’s Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin while on his first official visit to Russia as US Secretary of State.

He reiterated that the US are “quite confident” that the “chemical weapons attack carried out in Syria was planned, and directed, and executed by Syrian regime forces.” Earlier, the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said “We saw the evidence. The President saw the evidence. All of that is naturally classified.”

Kiriakou doesn’t rule out though that American politicians “are making this stuff up.”

“If they’ve already heard from their intelligence assets inside Syria – wow, they must have incredible assets inside Syria, because this [incident in Idlib] just happened. This whole story hasn’t even played out yet. So, how they’ve already got all the intelligence and analyzed it and then were able to use the analysis to formulate a policy that then enabled the President to bomb Syria?” he said. “If that’s true, I congratulate the CIA for its intelligence network inside Syria. The problem is – I don’t believe a word of it.”

In Kiriakou’s opinion, the US bombing of a Syrian airbase that followed the chemical incident was a political decision made by the White House who didn’t speak in advance with its allies.

“I don’t believe there was any intelligence. And I think this was done primarily for domestic consumption,” he said.

‘Designed to be vetoed’

The reason why the US-supported resolution was “rushed to the floor” is because “they wanted to be able to make their points,” said Daniel McAdams, executive director at the Ron Paul Institute.

“They wanted to be able to bash Syria, Russia, and Iran,” he told RT.

The analyst drew a parallel between the resolution and the Rambouillet Agreement – a US/NATO peace plan for Kosovo proposed to the then-Yugoslavia.

“Ironically we’re around the anniversary of the 1999 US bombings of Yugoslavia. But if you remember in Rambouillet [Slobodan] Milosevic and the government of Yugoslavia was presented with an agreement that there is no way they could sign, they would have opened the entire country to NATO forces. It was designed that way. It was designed to be vetoed to show recalcitrance to open the way for bombs. This is very reminiscent of this kind of approach. It is not a very serious approach. Although the consequences could be very serious,” he told RT.

McAdams also said that there’s already “a problem with a chain of evidence” regarding what happened in Khan Shaykhun.

“What is amazing – there has been no investigation whatsoever. The White House released a report [the day before] yesterday – this was a slam dunk as to what the US believes, that it was Assad who did it. But if you look at that report, it was unbelievably thin. It reminds one of the reports that they released proving the Russians hacked the elections. The intelligence community didn’t even sign off on this report. It didn’t have high confidence in the report,” he said.

While in Moscow, Tillerson reaffirmed the US administration’s view that the Assad era is coming to an end.

According to Joshua Landis from Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, the US has “certainly changed its rhetoric on Assad recently.”

“What it seems to be doing is finding the Obama doctrine in a sense falling in line with what President Obama did on Syria – a red line saying that Assad needed to step aside, but not actually doing anything to force him to step from office. That’s what we heard from the National Security advisor yesterday, who said: ‘Assad has to go, but it is not going to be America that makes him go,’” he told RT.

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Lavrov: Russian, Western Experts Should Make Up Syria Chemical Attack Probe Team

Sputnik – April 13, 2017

MOSCOW – Lavrov told reporters he “sufficiently convincingly” explained to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday the reasons why a special independent UN and OPCW-based study should investigate the purported attack.

“But, considering the enormous very confrontational resonance surrounding what happened in Syria, we offered to complement these structures with professional inspectors in this field who would be invited from both Western countries, Russia, and regional countries,” Lavrov said.

He said “it seemed to me that Tillerson quite positively reacted to this idea.” Western countries’ reluctance to send experts to the site of a reported April 4 chemical attack in Syria’s Idlib province rely on “excuses” of purported dangers, he said.

Lavrov told a briefing that US, French and UK colleagues “do not pay attention to the fact that they need to visit not only the airfield they suspect was the place where chemical weapons were loaded onto planes, but also the place where these shells were struck.”

“They said ‘we do not know who controls this area, it is not safe to send inspectors there.’ These are all excuses,” he stressed.

Syrian opposition claimed on April 4 forces loyal to President Bashar Assad had used a chemical gas on people in the northwestern province, killing nearly 80 and injuring 200. Assad argued his government has no chemical weapons after agreeing to have them destroyed in 2013. He also ruled out having used chemicals against own people.

The Russian Defense Ministry said next day that the airstrike near Khan Shaykhun was carried out by Syrian aircraft, which struck a terrorist warehouse that stored chemical weapons slated for delivery to Iraq.

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Macron, Hamon Should Quit Race After Backing US Syria Strikes – French Official

Sputnik – 13.04.2017

The US attack against a Syrian military airfield launched by President Donald Trump late last Thursday triggered criticism among such French presidential hopefuls as National Front (FN) party leader Marine Le Pen, leader of left-wing political movement Unsubmissive France Jean-Luc Melenchon and the president of Gaullist Arise France party Dupont-Aignan. Socialist Hamon and independent candidate Macron, on the other hand, have expressed their support for the US president’s action.

“Having criticized Trump before and after the election, [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel and [French President Francois] Hollande have approved of this attack, which is [Trump’s] most serious and most dangerous decision on the global scale. They have shown themselves to be completely irresponsible. The same applies to certain candidates at French presidential elections, like Hamon and Macron, the two former ministers of the socialist president. Their reaction is enough to disqualify them from assuming the office they seek, I believe,” Eric Anceau said.

Following the missile strikes, which killed seven people, according to the governor of Syria’s Homs province, Hollande in a joint statement with Merkel placed the blame for the latest developments in Syria on its President Bashar Assad, albeit without providing any evidence of his involvement in the attack.

According to Anceau, Trump’s hasty reaction to the chemical weapons incident is undoubtedly the most dangerous decision he has made since assuming office.

“When one is the head of the most powerful state in the world, one does not make decisions based on emotions, as he admitted to have done after having seen on TV all these dead bodies of children,” he said, adding that the Trump administration should have consulted the US Congress first.

“In his haste, he circumvented the US Congress, which, incidentally, says a lot about the state of the US democracy in particular and our democracies in general,” the spokesman added.

He underlined that unless the strike had an ulterior motive, such as “a desire to affirm one’s power” in regions where other world powers like Russia or Iran are present, Trump’s decision to strike Syria lacks logic.

Following the strikes, Dupont-Aignan, who according to recent polls enjoys support of some 3 percent of French voters, told the French daily Le Monde that the international community had no proof Assad ordered the chemical attack, and because of this, Trump had no reason to order the strike. At the same time, he pointed out that he would back a UN-led intervention in Syria if it is proved that the Syrian government was indeed responsible for the Idlib tragedy.

The Syrian government denied having chemical weapons, as it agreed for its entire stockpile to be destroyed under a 2013 US-Russian deal. The Organization for the Protection of Chemical Weapons confirmed in January 2016 that Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal was destroyed.

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Trump Appoints Fiona Hill Russia Adviser on National Security Council

By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 13.04.2017

Last month, Fiona Hill, a preeminent Kremlinologist and Harvard alumna, joined the National Security Council staff as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian Affairs. This is one of the most important positions within government shaping the US relationship with Russia. A dual US-UK citizen, Hill is also a member of the US Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the board of trustees of The Eurasia Foundation.

The new adviser holds a master’s degree in Soviet studies and a doctorate in history from Harvard University. British-born, she started at Brookings in 2000, taking a three-year break to serve on the National Intelligence Council under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. Prior to joining Brookings, Hill was director of strategic planning at The Eurasia Foundation in Washington, D.C. From 1991 to 1999, she held a number of positions directing technical assistance and research projects at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She pursued studies at Moscow’s State Linguistic University (former Maurice Thorez Institute of Foreign Languages).

A frequent commentator on Russian and Eurasian affairs, Fiona Hill boasts an extensive research experience on the Caucasus and Central Asia, among other issues. She is co-author of the second edition of «Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin» (2015). Lashing out at the Russian leader, Hill emphasizes it would be a mistake to underestimate Vladimir Putin.

She is also known for her book «The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold» (2003). Hill proposed to actually evacuate Siberia and start developing its resources working in shifts. The book was praised by Jeffrey Sachs who had advised Russia to adopt «shock therapy» methods to implement economic reforms, Richard Pipes, a former member of the National Security Council known for his belligerent stance on Russia, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former assistant to the president of the United States for national security affairs, widely believed to be behind the Obama’s hostile policy toward Moscow.

Being highly critical of Russian authorities in her books, Hill gives them their due pointing out that Russia had to go through the difficult times after the Soviet Union’s break up. She even compared Russian President Vladimir Putin with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle who pulled their respective countries out of severe crises.

While some of Hill’s statements indicate that she is prone to taking a hard line on Moscow, others sound positive, calling for a pragmatic approach. Fiona Hill is immune to the influence of ideological stereotypes and knows how to smooth things over. Her harsh statements about incompatibility of Russia’s foreign policy agenda with long-term US interests will calm down the most suspicious persons who believe Russia to be behind everything that goes wrong». The US and Russia just have a very hard time… being on the same page», she wrote in in the Atlantic. «We’re going to have an awful lot of friction», Hill said. «And Trump isn’t exactly the most diplomatic of people. So I imagine he’ll fall out with his new friend Vladi­mir pretty quickly», she predicted. Last October, Fiona Hill advocated keeping anti-Russian sanctions in place and rejected the idea of a «grand bargain» with Putin in which the US would «trade concessions» in Ukraine for Russian help in the Middle East.

While President Trump has yet to lay down his Russia policy, most signs suggest no swift changes in the relationship. The president’s decision shows that a major reset is not in the cards. Hill’s appointment came as a relief to Republicans. But as a seasoned scholar, she knows Russia will not become pliant under pressure. She can make cold-blooded calculations and come up with ideas on how to reach deals on issues of common interest. Nobody expects friendship under the circumstances but it could be partnership. Hill is far-sighted enough to realize that.

Fiona Hill can do her job in a professional way without temper tantrums that take place now and then in Washington. A renowned scholar on Russia and an experienced former government official, she was chosen to implement Realpolitik. Her vast knowledge of the country and perfect Russian will come in handy for the job.

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

What is Wrong With Trump’s Attack on Syria?

By David Krieger | CounterPunch | April 13, 2017

Trump may have acted with insufficient evidence as to whether the chemical weapons attack was actually the responsibility of Assad and the Syrian government.  Would Syrian president Assad be foolish enough to launch a chemical attack against civilians, when a military response from the US would be possible, even likely?  Peter Ford, a former UK ambassador to Syria, speaking on BBC Radio, said, “It doesn’t make sense that Assad would do it.  Let’s not leave our brains outside the door when we examine evidence. It would be totally self-defeating as shown by the results… Assad is not mad.”

Critics of the US military response have suggested as a possible scenario for the chemical release in Idlib province that the Syrian government attack may have been a conventional bombing that exploded stored weapons in the possession of the Syrian rebels, which may have included chemical weapons.

Trump did not seek and obtain Congressional authorization for his act of war in attacking a Syrian Air Force base.  Thus, the attack was illegal under US law.  It is not the president’s prerogative to initiate attacks against sovereign nations without Congressional authorization.  By acting without such Congressional authorization, Trump has placed himself and the presidency above the rule of law.

Trump did not seek and obtain authorization for his attack against Syria from the United Nations Security Council, as is required under international law.  By failing to do so the US has put itself outside the boundaries of the UN Charter, which is also a part of US law, as well as other international law to which the US is bound.

Trump has further undermined US relations with Russia, and has harmed the chances of the US and Russia working cooperatively in resolving the Syrian conflict.  Increased tensions between the US and Russia in Syria make conflict between these two nuclear powers more likely.

Trump has demonstrated to the world that in matters of war, as with tweeting, he is impulsive, shoots from the hip and is not constrained by US or international law.  These characteristics are not generally accepted by other world leaders as being preferred qualities in a US president.

Trump’s impulsivity in ordering the attack sets a dangerous standard for someone in charge of the US nuclear arsenal.  It demonstrates the extreme dangers of allowing a single individual to exercise control over a country’s nuclear arsenal.

Despite the illegality and inherent dangers of his military response, Trump seems to be getting a favorable response from the US media.  Nearly all US mainstream media seems to have accepted the assumption that Assad was foolish enough to have launched a chemical attack, and have not questioned Assad’s responsibility for the chemical attack.  It appears that neither the US government nor media have conducted a thorough investigation of responsibility for the chemical attack, which should have been done prior to a military response.

Referring to Trump’s ordering the missile strikes against Syria the evening before, a fawning Fareed Zakaria stated, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night.  I think this was actually a big moment.”  Given Trump’s narcissism, this is the kind of positive response that is likely to keep him returning to impulsive and illegal uses of military force.

For his violations of US and international law in attacking Syria with 59 cruise missiles, it is highly likely that Trump will also be rewarded by the American people with an upward bump in his current ground-level job-approval rating.  Too many Americans tend to like their presidents to be fast on the draw and follow the pattern of Ready, Fire, Aim.

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). 

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Lavrov Explains Why White House ‘Forced’ to Make Unfounded Anti-Russia Claims

Sputnik – 13.04.2017

MOSCOW – The White House is forced to make unfounded accusations against Russia because of pressure from US President Donald Trump’s opponents, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday.

Wednesday’s talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson helped Washington better understand Russia’s stance and formulate approaches toward fruitful cooperation, Lavrov noted.

“The negotiations with Tillerson were not useless. They, in my opinion, helped the US administration better understand our position. This, in turn, is important for them to formulate their approaches to the issues on which Russia and the US can cooperate productively,” Lavrov told reporters.

“There is not a single fact, although under pressure from Trump’s opponents, the White House is forced to periodically make certain statements with unfounded accusations against us,” Lavrov said at a briefing with his counterpart from Bangladesh, Abul Hassan Mahmood.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emerged from a closed-door summit in the Kremlin to discuss their two-hour meeting with President Vladimir Putin. While the two sides agreed that they “understand each other better,” Moscow and Washington have distinctly different perspectives on what should take place in Syria, specifically as it pertains to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s claims to power.

Russia and the United States will embark on the practical formation of generally agreed dialogue mechanisms, he said.

“These agreements have been reached in principle, we will now probably start the practical formation of these dialogue mechanisms,” Lavrov told a briefing.

Addressing two-hour talks between Putin and Tillerson, Lavrov said “the results will probably not be soon.”

“But at least in operational terms, we agreed to establish dialogue on a number of issues,” Lavrov said.

These include, he said, “an inventory of the problems created by the previous administration in bilateral relations,” mechanisms for the implementation of existing military and political agreements, as well as mechanisms to narrow differences on regional crises, including in Syria.

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

CNN uses anonymous source to push Syria/Russia ‘chemical attack’ conspiracy

RT | April 13, 2017

An anonymous senior US official told CNN that, while the US allegedly has proof that Damascus is responsible for the chemical incident in Idlib, Syria, it has uncovered no such evidence implicating Moscow, because Russia is wilier in scrambling its communications.

The anonymous official reportedly told the American news channel that the US intelligence community had intercepted communications “featuring Syrian military and chemical experts talking about preparations for the sarin attack in Idlib last week.” While the source failed to provide any concrete details about the alleged communication – such as when it was intercepted or what names or other information it contained – they did note that the US “did not know prior to the attack it was going to happen.”

CNN speculated that the communication had been sent prior to the incident, but was not processed until the US began investigating it.

The source added that “there are no intelligence intercepts that have been found directly confirming that Russian military or intelligence officials communicated about the attack,” but noted “the likelihood is the Russians are more careful in their communications to avoid being intercepted.”

The most specific proof the source could come up with was his observation that Russia has a surveillance drone, which he claimed “flew over the hospital that was treating people injured in the attack.”

CNN suggested that even if the US had evidence of Russia’s involvement, it might not go public with it, as “the US feels right now that it has made the case that Russian support for [Syrian President Bashar] Assad must end.”

The report is the latest in a long series based on anonymous sources – with undisclosed agendas citing vague evidence which is never submitted to public scrutiny – that the mainstream media has deployed to level accusations against Russia. The story that Russia allegedly meddled in the US election has become a dominant narrative for opponents of Donald Trump, who are still trying to explain his surprise victory.

The major media outlets’ eagerness to blame Russia for everything occasionally leads to embarrassment, however. A fairly spectacular example came in January, when the Washington Post was forced to backtrack on a story that falsely claimed Russia had hacked into Vermont’s power grid. The newspaper also sparked outrage in December by touting a list of “Russian propaganda” websites, which turned out to include many respected independent media sources.

The alarming trend is not limited to the US media, however. Last year, the Guardian failed to accurately report on an Italian newspaper’s interview with Julian Assange. The British newspaper falsely painted WikiLeaks’ founder as a Trump supporter who would not criticize Moscow because he was presumably in league with the Russian government.

Some examples go back years. In 2014, the New York Times published photos of armed men, claiming that they were Russian troops on a clandestine mission in Ukraine. The newspaper had taken the images from the US State Department, and both had failed to properly verify them.

April 13, 2017 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump Withholds Syria-Sarin Evidence

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | April 12, 2017

After making the provocative and dangerous charge that Russia is covering up Syria’s use of chemical weapons, the Trump administration withheld key evidence to support its core charge that a Syrian warplane dropped sarin on a northern Syrian town on April 4.

A four-page white paper, prepared by President Trump’s National Security Council staff and released by the White House on Tuesday, claimed that U.S. intelligence has proof that the plane carrying the sarin gas left from the Syrian military airfield that Trump ordered hit by Tomahawk missiles on April 6.

The paper asserted that “we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence,” but then added that “we cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods.”

I’m told that the key evidence was satellite surveillance of the area, a body of material that U.S. intelligence analysts were reviewing late last week even after the Trump-ordered bombardment of 59 Tomahawk missiles that, according to Syrian media reports, killed seven or eight Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children.

Yet, it is unclear why releasing these overhead videos would be so detrimental to “sources and methods” since everyone knows the U.S. has this capability and the issue at hand – if it gets further out of hand – could lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.

In similarly tense situations in the past, U.S. Presidents have released sensitive intelligence to buttress U.S. government assertions, including John F. Kennedy’s disclosure of U-2 spy flights in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Ronald Reagan revealing electronic intercepts after the Soviet shoot-down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983.

Yet, in this current case, as U.S.-Russian relations spiral downward into what is potentially an extermination event for the human species, Trump’s White House insists that the world must trust it despite its record of consistently misstating facts.

In the case of the April 4 chemical-weapons incident in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which reportedly killed scores of people including young children, I was told that initially the U.S. analysts couldn’t see any warplanes over the area in Idlib province at the suspected time of the poison gas attack but later they detected a drone that they thought might have delivered the bomb.

A Drone Mystery

According to a source, the analysts struggled to identify whose drone it was and where it originated. Despite some technical difficulties in tracing its flight path, analysts eventually came to believe that the flight was launched in Jordan from a Saudi-Israeli special operations base for supporting Syrian rebels, the source said, adding that the suspected reason for the poison gas was to create an incident that would reverse the Trump administration’s announcement in late March that it was no longer seeking the removal of President Bashar al-Assad.

If indeed that was the motive — and if the source’s information is correct — the operation would have been successful, since the Trump administration has now reversed itself and is pressing Russia to join in ousting Assad who is getting blamed for the latest chemical-weapons incident.

Presumably, however, the “geospatial intelligence” cited in the four-page dossier could disprove this and other contentions if the Trump administration would only make its evidence publicly available.

The dossier stated, “Our information indicates that the chemical agent was delivered by regime Su-22 fixed-wing aircraft that took off from the regime-controlled Shayrat Airfield. These aircraft were in the vicinity of Khan Shaykhun approximately 20 minutes before reports of the chemical attack began and vacated the area shortly after the attack.”

So, that would mean – assuming that the dossier is correct – that U.S. intelligence analysts were able to trace the delivery of the poison gas to Assad’s aircraft and to the airfield that Trump ordered attacked on April 6.

Still, it remains a mystery why this intelligence assessment is not coming directly from President Trump’s intelligence chiefs as is normally the case, either with an official Intelligence Estimate or a report issued by the Director of National Intelligence.

The White House photo released late last week showing the President and a dozen senior advisers monitoring the April 6 missile strike from a room at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was noteworthy in that neither CIA Director Mike Pompeo nor Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was in the frame.

Now, it is the White House that has released the four-page dossier supposedly summing up the assessment of the “intelligence community.”

An Argumentative Dossier

The dossier also seems argumentative in that it assumes that Russian officials – and presumably others – who have suggested different possible explanations for the incident at Khan Sheikdoun did so in a willful cover-up, when any normal investigation seeks to evaluate different scenarios before settling on one.

It is common amid the “fog of war” for people outside the line of command – and even sometimes inside the line of command – to not understand what happened and to struggle for an explanation.

On April 6, before Trump’s missile strike, I and others received word from U.S. military intelligence officials in the Middle East that they, too, shared the belief that the poison gas may have resulted from a conventional bombing raid that ruptured containers stored by the rebels, who – in Idlib province – are dominated by Al Qaeda’s affiliate and its allies.

Those reports were cited by former U.S. intelligence officials, including more than two dozen who produced a memo to President Trump urging him to undertake a careful investigation of the incident before letting this crisis exacerbate U.S.-Russia relations.

The memo said “our U.S. Army contacts in the area” were disputing the official story of a 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,” the memo said.

In other words, to suggest possible alternative scenarios is not evidence of a “cover-up,” even if the theories are later shown to be erroneous. It is the normal process of sorting through often conflicting initial reports.

Even in the four-page dossier, Trump’s NSC officials contradicted what other U.S. government sources have told The New York Times and other mainstream news outlets about the Syrian government’s supposed motive for launching the chemical-weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun.

According to the earlier accounts, the Syrian government either was trying to terrorize the population in a remote rebel-controlled area or was celebrating its impunity after the Trump administration had announced that it was no longer seeking Assad’s removal.

But the dossier said, “We assess that Damascus launched this chemical attack in response to an opposition offensive in northern Hamah Province that threatened key infrastructure.” Although Khan Sheikhoun was not near the fighting, the dossier presented the town as an area of support for the offensive.

Assuming this assessment is correct, does that mean that the earlier explanations were part of a cover-up or a propaganda operation? The reality is that in such complex situations, the analyses should continue to be refined as more information becomes available. It should not be assumed that every false lead or discarded theory is proof of a “cover-up,” yet that is what we see here.

“The Syrian regime and its primary backer, Russia, have sought to confuse the world community about who is responsible for using chemical weapons against the Syrian people in this and earlier attacks,” the dossier declared.

But the larger point is that – given President Trump’s spotty record for getting facts straight – he and his administration should go the extra mile in presenting irrefutable evidence to support its assessments, not simply insisting that the world must “trust us.”

[In a separate analysis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Postol, a national security specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, concluded that the White House claims were clearly bogus, writing:

“I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.

“In fact, a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4. This conclusion is based on an assumption made by the White House when it cited the source of the sarin release and the photographs of that source. My own assessment, is that the source was very likely tampered with or staged, so no serious conclusion could be made from the photographs cited by the White House.”]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

April 12, 2017 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , | Leave a comment

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