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Proposed Military Strike on Syria


John Simkin

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The House of Commons last night rejected the government's proposed military strike in Syria. The defeat of a government on foreign policy is extremely rare and usually ends with the prime minister resigning. That will not happen this time but has badly weakened David Cameron.

The government claimed it could attack Syria under the UN's "responsibility to protect" doctrine, where people in a foreign state are abused by their own government. There is no way that any military strike would have protected people from future chemical attacks.

The use of chemical weapons is terrible and politicians need to find a way of punishing the culprits. But to launch a military attack will only make matters worse.

Why has President Obama been so quiet on the napalm attack in Syria earlier this week. Is it because that the United States used such weapons in Vietnam? Does he complain about chemical weapons and not about the use of phosphorous and depleted uranium shells and delayed-action cluster bombs, because he is willing to use those terrible weapons in military conflict?

As Simon Jenkins has pointed out: "While Assad seems unlikely to repeat the outrage, the idea that he will roll over if bombed and stop killing his people is naive. As for "degrading" his arsenals, if this releases chemical clouds how stupid is that? The likelihood is now of a single burst of destruction by US forces if only and blood-letting, to assuage the do-something lobby. This can hardly alter the balance in the civil war, though it seems certain to increase the refugee flow, alienate Russia and its regional allies, and infuriate a newly moderate Iran. All this is to 'punish a dictator' in what seems depressingly like a gesture to allow western politicians to strut tall and feel good."

What is the mood in the United States? Will a debate and a vote on this issue be taken in Congress?

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It would not surprise me if the F, UK, US backed terrorists in Syria use chemical weapons. They are not above carrying out a cleansing of the Kurdish people which the F,UK,US alliance remain silent on.

here is a further article in Russia Today about the ongoing gross hypocrisy :

The US charge against Syria is being driven by Damascus’ alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians. While Washington is quick to intervene on moral grounds, its own checkered past regarding WMDs may put the world’s policeman under the spotlight.

“Nobody disputes – or hardly anybody disputes – that chemical weapons were used on a large scale in Syria against civilian populations,” US President Barack Obama told a briefing Wednesday. “We have looked at all the evidence, and we do not believe the opposition possessed … chemical weapons of that sort.”

It is this charge, so far unsubstantiated by UN inspectors, that underpins Western attempts to intervene militarily in Syria.

"If we are saying in a clear and decisive but very limited way, we send a shot across the bow saying, 'Stop doing this,' this can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term," Obama said.

On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry was more emphatic in stressing the ethical basis for intervention.

“Let me be clear: The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders, by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity.”

The obscenity of such attacks is a reality Kerry is all too familiar with, as the decorated war veteran served at a time when the US was engaged in a decade of chemical warfare in Vietnam.

From 1962 to 1971, the US military sprayed an estimated 20 million gallons of defoliants and herbicides over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in a bid to deprive the Vietcong of food and cover.

The Vietnamese government estimates that 400,000 people were killed or maimed and 500,000 children born with birth defects as a result of the so-called 'rainbow herbicides.'

Christopher Busby, an expert on the health effects of ionizing radiation and Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, said it was important to make the distinction that defoliants such as Agent Orange are not anti-personnel weapons designed to kill or deform people, and are thus “not quite the same as using a nerve gas or something that is intended against personnel.”

“But nevertheless, it had a very serious effect, and they shouldn’t have used it because they must have known that it would have these side-effects,” Busby said. “At least, when they were using it they must have learned that there would be these side-effects, and they should have stopped using them at this or that point. But they didn’t.”

A similar legacy was left by the deployment of white phosphorous and depleted uranium following the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Busby said that while the genotoxic effects of white phosphorous were debatable, the deadliness of depleted uranium was beyond question.

“All of the genetic damage effects that we see in Iraq, in my opinion, were caused by… depleted uranium weapons. And also [non]-depleted uranium weapons of a new type. And these are really terrible weapons. These are weapons whic have absolutely destroyed the genetic integrity of the population of Iraq,” he said.

The people of Fallujah, where some of the most intense fighting during the Iraq war took place, have since suffered a veritable health crisis.

Four studies on the health crisis in the city were published in 2012. Busby, an author and co-author of two of them, described Fallujah as having "the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied."

There is a case to be made that in terms of Agent Orange, White Phosphorous and depleted uranium, the often deadly consequences have been a side-effect rather than the goal of their deployment.

While Washington currently argues that the use of chemical weapons is a “red line” that requires a swift and immediate military response to deter future crimes against humanity, the US has a checkered record on the issue, said former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, citing the time when then-US ally Saddam Hussein deployed chemical weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War with US knowledge.

“We had the famous picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein,” McGovern told RT. “That happened the day after the first public announcement that the Iraqis had used mustard gas against the Iranians. So [turning a] blind eye, yeah, in spades.”

“The problem is that we knew what was going on, and there is a Geneva Convention against the use of chemical warfare. Our top leaders knew it," McGovern continued. “The question is: had they no conscience, had they no shame?”

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Edited by John Dolva
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Associated Press journalist Dale Gavlak

Rebels Admit Responsibility for Chemical Weapons Attack

Paul Joseph Watson

Infowars.com

Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have admitted to Associated Press journalist Dale Gavlak that they were responsible for last week’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.

“From numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families….many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the (deadly) gas attack,” writes Gavlak.

Rebels told Gavlak that they were not properly trained on how to handle the chemical weapons or even told what they were. It appears as though the weapons were initially supposed to be given to the Al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra.

“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” one militant named ‘J’ told Gavlak.

His claims are echoed by another female fighter named ‘K’, who told Gavlak, “They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them. We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of an opposition rebel, also told Gavlak, “My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” describing them as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.” The father names the Saudi militant who provided the weapons as Abu Ayesha.

According to Abdel-Moneim, the weapons exploded inside a tunnel, killing 12 rebels.

“More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government,” writes Gavlak.

If accurate, this story could completely derail the United States’ rush to attack Syria which has been founded on the “undeniable” justification that Assad was behind the chemical weapons attack. Dale Gavlak’s credibility is very impressive. He has been a Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press for two decades and has also worked for National Public Radio (NPR).

Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in providing rebels, whom they have vehemently backed at every turn, with chemical weapons, is no surprise given the revelations earlier this week that the Saudis threatened Russia with terror attacks at next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi unless they abandoned support for the Syrian President.

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Prince Bandar allegedly told Vladimir Putin, the Telegraph reports.

The Obama administration is set to present its intelligence findings today in an effort prove that Assad’s forces were behind last week’s attack, despite American officials admitting to the New York Times that there is no “smoking gun” that directly links President Assad to the attack.

US intelligence officials also told the Associated Press that the intelligence proving Assad’s culpability is “no slam dunk.”

As we reported earlier this week, intercepted intelligence revealed that the Syrian Defense Ministry was making “panicked” phone calls to Syria’s chemical weapons department demanding answers in the hours after the attack, suggesting that it was not ordered by Assad’s forces.

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US evokes ghost of Hitler as PR campaign against Assad goes crazy
Published time: September 03, 2013 00:04

The shock and awe that has greeted President Obama’s decision to get congressional consent to wage war in Syria underscores the problem with US foreign policy, not to mention our mainstream media machine.

Americans somehow think it is standard operating procedure for the Commander-in-Chief to bypass a quaint little place called Congress (Population 535) along the road to war. Perhaps this way of thinking is due to the general atmosphere of fear and loathing now gripping the crotch of the Heartland like a TSA officer. Or maybe it’s just that we’ve been conditioned to believe the president has the right to enjoy dictatorial powers. Whatever the case, the situation demands some consideration.

Up until Friday, it looked all but certain that Barack Obama, America’s Nobel-nominated president, would order yet another military strike on a foreign country without congressional approval (Libya was the first). The Democratic leader’s designs for a “limited” strike on Syria, however, were quickly dashed when British Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a historic defeat, as the House of Commons denied him permission to jump on the military bandwagon heading for Syria.

This was the first time since 1782 that the British parliament refused a government request to enter a war. Could it be that British intelligence knew something the Americans did not, like perhaps the truth? After all, Cameron himself admitted that the UK intelligence was not 100 percent certain that the Assad government was responsible for the chemical attack.

Whatever the case, with Washington’s foremost ally suddenly missing in action, Obama had nothing but respect for the US Constitution, which clearly states, Article 1, Section 8, “Congress shall have power…to declare war.”

Thanks to the broadside delivered to Washington by the bumpy car of the British parliament, the American people got a fleeting, jolting reminder of their candidate on the early campaign trail, those bygone days of yesteryear when hope hung like dew on the American prairie and the sweet aroma of change dispelled the noxious vapors of George W. Bush’s fighter jets.

I've long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And that's why I've made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people's representatives in Congress,” Obama said Saturday from the Rose Garden.

After the initial shock of those incredible words was fully digested, and the dogs of war were yanked snarling and slobbering back in the house, the PR campaign against the Syrian regime went haywire. The US mainstream media was clearly knocked off its stride, set as it was for an imminent war.

Consider this opening paragraph in Monday’s issue of The Wall Street Journal.

President Obama's Syrian melodrama went from bad to worse on Saturday with his surprise decision to seek Congressional approval for what he promises will be merely a limited cruise-missile bombing. Mr. Obama will now have someone else to blame if Congress blocks his mission, but in the bargain he has put at risk his credibility and America's standing in the world with more than 40 months left in office.”

America’s leading business paper somehow believes that seeking congressional approval for war will “risk his credibility and America’s standing in the world.” Indeed, considering America’s basement rankings in the world, seeking such approval as mandated by international law could only have the opposite effect.

And what is one to make of Obama’s (money-back?) guarantee of a “narrow and limited” cruise missile attack on Syria; a Lawrence-esque back-before-dinner jaunt that won’t leave the same kind of trillion-dollar aftertaste that the eight-year Iraq War did? After all, it will only take the firing of a single Syrian missile at a US naval vessel for Obama’s weekend fling to transmogrify into World War III.

The editorial then entered hand-wringing, hysteria mode, trembling at the thought that a single square-mile of real estate in a corner of the empire has not been stamped with the imprint of a US Army boot.

A defeat in Congress would signal to Bashar Assad and the world's other thugs that the US has retired as the enforcer of any kind of world order…Unlike the British in 1956, the US can't retreat from east of Suez without grave consequences. The US replaced the British, but there is no one to replace America.”

With some 900 US military bases now straddling a disproportionate amount of the globe, it will take a lot more Congress voting to take a pass on a military scuffle in a Syrian civil war for the US war machine to suddenly go wobbly. Yes, the Obama administration will have to swallow a big slab of humble pie if Congress doesn’t vote in favor of war, but the long-term consequences in the event of such a decision on American power should not be exaggerated.

But exaggerating the consequences is exactly what America does best. Just one day after Obama had his faith miraculously restored in the battered US Constitution, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that a little birdie informed him that sarin nerve gas was used in the Damascus attack. This revelation allowed Kerry to pull out the most-effective ploy in the PR bag of tricks: the noxious Nazi analogy.

“Bashar al-Assad now joins the list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein who have used these weapons in time of war,” Kerry told NBC’s Face the Nation. Kerry called the attack an “affront against the decency and sensibilities of the world.”

“In the last 24 hours, we have learned through samples that were provided to the United States that have now been tested from first responders in east Damascus, and hair samples and blood samples have tested positive for signatures of sarin,” he continued.

So now, when US Congressmen return from their summer break on September 9, you can guarantee their email boxes will be littered with messages from special interest groups imploring them to support military action against the “world’s next Hitler.”

"This is squarely now in the hands of Congress," Kerry told CNN, saying he had confidence "they will do what is right because they understand the stakes."

Meanwhile, the calm voice of reason against a senseless war in Syria has been thrown under the bus.

Ron Paul was branded a “conspiracy theorist” by Salon for suggesting that the Syrian chemical attack was a false flag operation designed to get America into another Middle East war.

Paul pointed to the false intelligence that led to the Iraq War to back up his statement.

“[syrian President Bashar] Assad, I don’t think is an idiot. I don’t think he would do this on purpose,” Paul told Fox News host Neil Cavuto on the allegation that Assad used chemical weapons on civilians.

Just look at how many lies were told us about Saddam Hussein prior to that (Iraq War) build up. More propaganda. It happens all the time,” Paul said. “I think it’s a false flag.”

Paul then forwarded the single most important question regarding Syria that has been completely ignored by the US mainstream media: “Why are we on the side of the Al-Qaeda?”

Finally, infowars.com reported that Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta admitted to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak that they were responsible for the chemical weapons attack, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.

Any story that challenges the one-world perspective of the US mainstream media will be ignored and condemned as just another “conspiracy,” just as they ignored the millions of critics in the build up to the Iraq War.

With a little bit of luck, however, truth may finally get the last word in the upcoming congressional debate on Syria.

Robert Bridge, RT

Bridge is the author of the book, Midnight in the American Empire, which examines the dangerous consequences of extreme corporate power in the United States.

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from Russia Today :

Probes from Khan al-Assal show chemicals used in the March 19 attack did not belong to standard Syrian army ammunition, and that the shell carrying the substance was similar to those made by a rebel fighter group, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated.

RT's LIVE UPDATES on Syrian 'chemical weapons' crisis

A statement released by the ministry on Wednesday particularly drew attention to the “massive stove-piping of various information aimed at placing the responsibility for the alleged chemical weapons use in Syria on Damascus, even though the results of the UN investigation have not yet been revealed.”

By such means “the way is being paved for military action” against Damascus, the ministry pointed out.

But the samples taken at the site of the March 19 attack and analyzed by Russian experts indicate that a projectile carrying the deadly nerve agent sarin was most likely fired at Khan al-Assal by the rebels, the ministry statement suggests, outlining the 100-page report handed over to the UN by Russia.

The key points of the report have been given as follows:

• the shell used in the incident “does not belong to the standard ammunition of the Syrian army and was crudely according to type and parameters of the rocket-propelled unguided missiles manufactured in the north of Syria by the so-called Bashair al-Nasr brigade”;

• RDX, which is also known as hexogen or cyclonite, was used as the bursting charge for the shell, and it is “not used in standard chemical munitions”;

• soil and shell samples contain “the non-industrially synthesized nerve agent sarin and diisopropylfluorophosphate,” which was “used by Western states for producing chemical weapons during World War II.”

The findings of the report are “extremely specific,” as they mostly consist of scientific and technical data from probes’ analysis, the ministry stressed, adding that this data can “substantially aid” the UN investigation of the incident.

While focusing on the Khan al-Assal attack on March 19, in which at least 26 civilians and Syrian army soldiers were killed, and 86 more were injured, the Russian Foreign Ministry also criticized the “flawed selective approach” of certain states in reporting the recent incidents of alleged chemical weapons use in August.

The hype around the alleged attack on the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta showed “apparent attempts to cast a veil over the incidents of gas poisoning of Syrian army soldiers on August 22, 24 and 25,” the ministry said, adding that all the respective evidence was handed to the UN by Syria.

The condition of the soldiers who, according to Damascus, suffered poisoning after discovering tanks with traces of sarin, has been examined and documented by the UN inspectors, the ministry pointed out, adding that “any objective investigation of the August 21 incident in eastern Ghouta is impossible without the consideration of all these facts.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said the UN investigators are set to return to Syria to investigate several other cases of alleged chemical weapons use, including the March 19 incident in Khan al-Assal.

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How about we wait for the UN report? I agree with the Russian stance: if the UN report shows evidence that it was the government, then get a UN mandate to act.

Everyone is always so quick to blame the US. Yes, they have made plenty of mistakes in the past and that is why I think waiting for a UN mandate is the correct course... but some people act as those whoever is opposing the US would never do anything wrong, that butter wouldn't melt in their mouth.

Of course, I expect the normal reaction from the rabid anti-American fringe: if the UN say that no CW was used, or that it was used by rebel forces, it will be a fair and just report. If the UN say that it was the Syrian government who used CW then the UN will have been bought off by the MIC, that evidence was falified, that they are just lackeys of the imperial running dogs!

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How about we wait for the UN report? I agree with the Russian stance: if the UN report shows evidence that it was the government, then get a UN mandate to act.

I agree.

_________________

I wonder : if evidence shows it was/is the terrorists? What position does the USA (and it's allies) take then?

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How about we wait for the UN report? I agree with the Russian stance: if the UN report shows evidence that it was the government, then get a UN mandate to act.

I agree.

_________________

I wonder : if evidence shows it was/is the terrorists? What position does the USA (and it's allies) take then?

There can only be one response - stop any and all aid to them, seek a UN mandate to take military action against them.

In the military world, the use of CBW is a game changer; it means you no longer follow the accepted rules, have gone 'rogue' and need to be stopped immediately.

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I think the Kurdish issue will prove an important matter. I think that how they are treated shows the character of groups involved in the whole mess.

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I tried following the sources in that Infowars link, above, some days ago, and all it led to was a mutual-masturbation circle-jerk of other tinfoil blogs. Nothing of substance. I'll not hold my breath it's changed in the meantime.

Just after this all hit the fan, and The Reich-Whingers, along with their propaganda machine - FauxNoise - started clamouring that Obama consult congress before any action in Syria is taken.

So he acquiesced.
As should be the case under the constitution, anyway. Subverted by decades of (mostly) Republican presidents unilateral decisions.

And given that most of them are bought by the arms manufacturers, and WANT to invade another sovereign, foreign nation, it's REALLY going to be fun watching themselves tie themselves in knots because Obama ("appears" * ) to also want to take action, but they can't be seen to be doing ANYTHING that Obama wants....even if they want it, too. A la their one submitted jobs creation bill that as soon as Obama agreed he could get it passed through Congress, and enacted, they almost to a man voted against it!

And then cue last week, and suddenly they're spitting tar and feathers that he didn't just make a unilateral decision to invade anyway. Hypocrisy, much? >.<
It must be hard being a Conservative. The flip-flops would give you whip lash.

They much prefer grandstanding to actually doing something.

So, as I see it, and I may be wrong, but :
I think *Obama is giving Republicans what they want, and knows they will vote against it, because he has asked for it.
What's more he is destroying the free pass for a military strike by Presidents for all presidents to come, by seeking Congressional approval for a military strike now. It will be much more difficult for Presidents to do anything militarily now without seeking Congressional Approval in the future.
By asking for Congressional Approval he is making fools out of Congressional Republicans who have demanded this strike ability forever, and now find themselves voting against it because of their hatred for Obama.


He's playing Grandmaster-level Chess, while they, and FauxNoise, are playing schoolyard tiddlywinks.
they don't even see it coming.

But will it shut them up? Given their level of hypocrisy over the last 12 years, I really doubt it, but time will tell, I suppose.

Edited by Steve Knight
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John Pilger, The Guardian (10th September, 2013)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/silent-military-coup-took-over-washington

On my wall is the Daily Express front page of September 5 1945 and the words: "I write this as a warning to the world." So began Wilfred Burchett's report from Hiroshima. It was the scoop of the century. For his lone, perilous journey that defied the US occupation authorities, Burchett was pilloried, not least by his embedded colleagues. He warned that an act of premeditated mass murder on an epic scale had launched a new era of terror.

Almost every day now, he is vindicated. The intrinsic criminality of the atomic bombing is borne out in the US National Archives and by the subsequent decades of militarism camouflaged as democracy. The Syria psychodrama exemplifies this. Yet again we are held hostage by the prospect of a terrorism whose nature and history even the most liberal critics still deny. The great unmentionable is that humanity's most dangerous enemy resides across the Atlantic.

John Kerry's farce and Barack Obama's pirouettes are temporary. Russia's peace deal over chemical weapons will, in time, be treated with the contempt that all militarists reserve for diplomacy. With al-Qaida now among its allies, and US-armed coupmasters secure in Cairo, the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran. "This operation [in Syria]," said the former French foreign minister Roland Dumas in June, "goes way back. It was prepared, pre-conceived and planned."

When the public is "psychologically scarred", as the Channel 4 reporter Jonathan Rugman described the British people's overwhelming hostility to an attack on Syria, suppressing the truth is made urgent. Whether or not Bashar al-Assad or the "rebels" used gas in the suburbs of Damascus, it is the US, not Syria, that is the world's most prolific user of these terrible weapons.

In 1970 the Senate reported: "The US has dumped on Vietnam a quantity of toxic chemical (dioxin) amounting to six pounds per head of population." This was Operation Hades, later renamed the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand – the source of what Vietnamese doctors call a "cycle of foetal catastrophe". I have seen generations of children with their familiar, monstrous deformities. John Kerry, with his own blood-soaked war record, will remember them. I have seen them in Iraq too, where the US used depleted uranium and white phosphorus, as did the Israelis in Gaza. No Obama "red line" for them. No showdown psychodrama for them.

The sterile repetitive debate about whether "we" should "take action" against selected dictators (ie cheer on the US and its acolytes in yet another aerial killing spree) is part of our brainwashing. Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law and UN special rapporteur on Palestine, describes it as "a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence". This "is so widely accepted as to be virtually unchallengeable".

It is the biggest lie: the product of "liberal realists" in Anglo-American politics, scholarship and media who ordain themselves as the world's crisis managers, rather than the cause of a crisis. Stripping humanity from the study of nations and congealing it with jargon that serves western power designs, they mark "failed", "rogue" or "evil" states for "humanitarian intervention".

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US’s evidence on Syria, fabricated: Retired CIA analyst

PressTV, 9/11/13

Elements within the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have fabricated intelligence to implicate the Syrian government in the recent chemical attack in Syria and cater for Washington’s case for launching strikes on the Middle Eastern country, says a retired CIA analyst.

Ray McGovern made the remark in an interview with Russia Today (RT) channel on Monday amid the US rhetoric of war against Syria.

The US has been intensively campaigning for strikes on Syria since August 21, when the militants operating inside the Arab country and its foreign-backed opposition claimed that over a thousand people had been killed in a government chemical attack on suburban Damascus.

The Syrian government categorically rejected the accusation.

The US has all along the way been insisting that it has strong “evidence” against the Syrian government while refusing repeated calls to release it publicly.

“The media is drumbeating for the war (on Syria) just as before Iraq,” McGovern said. “And they don’t want to hear that the evidence is very very flimsy. They don’t want to hear that people within the CIA - senior people, with great access to this information - assure us, the veterans, that there’s no conclusive evidence that Assad ordered those chemical incidents on August 21.”

McGovern was among the veteran intelligence professionals who recently signed a letter to US President Barack Obama, warning that Damascus was not behind the August 21 chemical attack in the Arab country and that CIA Director John Brennan “is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, [and] the public.”

The former CIA analyst stressed that only the Israeli regime would benefit from the crisis in Syria, as the unrest would make the Tel Aviv regime feel that “the Sunni and the Shia aren’t going to be turning their swords and their guns on Israel. It’s that simple.”

“So, what we have here is a situation where Israel and the tough guys - and tough gals now - in the White House, advising Obama, say, ‘you’ve got to do something’,” he added, in an apparent reference to US National Security Advisor Susan Rice and US envoy to the UN Samantha Power, who have been heavily involved in the US campaign for strikes on Syria.

Obama “is being given cooked-up intelligence because John Brennan, the head of the CIA, and James Clapper, the confessed perjurer, have thought it in their best interests to cater to the wishes of the White House, which have been very clear: ‘this time, we want to strike Syria,’” McGovern concluded.

The US president, who has faced very weak support for his war plans, said on August 31 that his administration would first seek authorization from an already skeptical Congress.

Reports indicate a majority of Congress members are either against the planned strikes on Syria or are yet undecided. The mood in the Congress seems to mirror that of the general American public, which, polls show, is largely opposed to any US strikes on Syria.

Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem said on Monday, September 9, that his country “welcomes” a Russian proposal to put its chemical weapons under international control. The Russian proposal was prompted by an apparently off-the-cuff comment by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Following the new twist in the events, Obama suggested that the planned US strikes on Syria could be averted if the Syrian “gesture” is “real.” In televised comments, parts of a round of TV interviews meant to garner support for his war plans, Obama said it takes time “to tell whether this offer will succeed.” The US president has, therefore, asked the Congress to postpone a vote on his administration’s plan for strikes on Syria.

Obama, however, has said that the threat of American force would remain.

The UN, Iran, Russia, and China have been voicing strong opposition to the US plan for war.

SAB/HJL

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/09/11/323221/us-syria-evidence-fake-excia-analyst/

Edited by Ron Ecker
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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, that wasn't very hard to predict, was it?

An independent UN report confirms that chemical weapons were used, beyond any doubt. Although not in the terms of reference, the evidence points towards the Syrian government being responsible. So now Russia says that the report is biased, fabricated, etc. Just as I said would happen.

What I didn't see was John Kerry making that big blunder, on how to "stop the attack". Russia was very quick to take advantage of that, as would anyone. That should have defused the situation quite rapidly but now the Syrians are now dragging their feet. That's giving the US renewed justification for military action.

Watch this space....

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27.09.2013 08:40



Killing Syrian children with one hand, saving them with other

All over British television this week, in ads strategically placed in the middle of news bulletins, the Disasters Emergency Committee fund has been raising money from viewers for Syrian refugees alongside the 'No Child Born To Die' campaign.

26.09.2013 17:35



lavrov-un-resolution-syria.s.jpg No ‘military measures’ in Syria draft resolution – Lavrov

A Syria resolution drafted by Russia and the US and submitted to the UN Security Council does not suggest immediate military action under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, Russia’s FM Lavrov said. A vote on the measure could take place Friday evening.

26.09.2013 14:08



000_nic6250341.s.jpg Assad dubs chemical weapons ‘burden’

Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, said his country is committed to its agreements on getting rid of chemical weapons, adding that they are something of a burden, as their destruction is costly and he has no use for them.

26.09.2013 14:53



000_nic6243759.s.jpg Russia: Syria’s chemical weapons must be destroyed inside country

Russia is insisting that Syria’s chemical weapons should stay in the country until they are destroyed. Moscow is ready to help guard stockpiles and factories when Assad’s government starts the disarmament process, a senior Russian official says.

26.09.2013 13:32



000_nic6241060.s.jpg 'No reason the US would want Syrian chemical weapons process to succeed'

With Syria the United States is going to create a formula for failure, like it did with Libya, changing the rules, playing games to use leverage in the area, Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today Newspaper and a former Vietnam marine told RT.

26.09.2013 09:22



000_180781228.s.jpg ‘Too many questions’ in UN chemical weapons report to blame Damascus

While many in the West asserted that the UN report on August sarin attack in Syria all but proves the Syrian government was behind it, a closer look on it shows inconsistencies which clash with that narrative, says political expert Sharmine Narwani.
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