The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

[conniption]

Found the link to the following article at aangirfan blog.

Al Manar

Truth of US-Russia Confrontation

Daoud Rammal – As-Safir
12-09-2013


Aggression was over the Moment those Two Missiles were Fired

A well informed diplomatic source told As-Safir newspaper that “the US war on Syria had started and ended the moment those two ballistic missiles were fired, leaving inconsistent information, as Israel denied and Russia confirmed, until an Israeli statement was issued indicating they were fired in the context of an Israeli-US joint drill and fell in the sea, and that they were not related to the Syrian crisis.”

US Russia NavyThe source further told the Lebanese daily that “the US forces fired these two rockets from a NATO base in Spain, and were instantly detected by the Russian radars and confronted by the Russian defense systems, so one of them exploded in the airspace and the second one diverted towards the sea.”

In this context, the source pointed out that “the statement issued by the Russian Defense Ministry, which stated the detection of two ballistic missiles fired towards the Middle East, intended to neglect two points: the first was the location from which the two rockets were fired, and the second was their downing. Why? Because the moment the full military operation was launched, Head of the Russian Intelligence Service contacted the US intelligence and informed it that “hitting Damascus means hitting Moscow, and we have removed the term “downed the two missiles” from the statement to preserve the bilateral relations and to avoid escalation. Therefore, you must immediately reconsider your policies, approaches and intentions on the Syrian crisis, as you must be certain that you cannot eliminate our presence in the Mediterranean.”

“This unannounced direct confrontation between Moscow and Washington increased the Obama Administration’s confusion and certainty that the Russian side was ready to move until the end with the Syrian cause, and that the US did not have a way out of its impasse except through a Russian initiative which would save America’s face…” he added.

From this point, the diplomatic source clarified that “in order to avoid further US confusion, and after Israel denied knowing anything about the rocket firing in its first statement, which is the truth, Washington demanded Tel Aviv to adopt the rocket firing to save its face in front of the International Community, especially since these two rockets were the beginning of the US aggression on Syria and the announcement of the beginning of military operations, after which US President Barack Obama was supposed to go to the G20 Summit in Russia to negotiate the destiny of Syrian President Bashr Al-Assad. However, he went to find a way out of the impasse he’s in.”

The source further indicated that “after the US-Russia rocket confrontation, Moscow intended to increase its number of military experts in Russia, and added to its military units and destroyers to enhance its military presence in the Mediterranean. It also set a time for announcing about its initiative on stopping the aggression on Syria after the G20 Summit, after drawing a side scene on the sidelines of the summit which was followed by two successive visits for Iranian Foreign Minister, Hussein Amir Abdul Lahyan, and Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Al-Moallem, in which a way out was agreed on with the Russian side, and it included a Syrian announcement on approving the Russian initiative regarding putting Syrian chemical weapons under international supervision and preparing Syria for joining the non-proliferation treaty.

Finally, the source pointed out that “One of the first results of the US-Russian military confrontation was the British House of Commons’ rejection to participate in a war on Syria. This was followed by European stances, most significantly, the German stance announced by Chancellor Angela Merkel."

Translated by Sara Taha Moughnieh

[coffin_dodger]

Troops oppose strikes on Syria by 3-1 margin

To the list of skeptics who question the need for air strikes against Syria, add an another unlikely group — many U.S. troops.

“I haven’t heard one single person be supportive of it,” said an Army staff sergeant at Fort Hood who asked not to be identified by name.

A Military Times survey of more than 750 active-duty troops this week found service members oppose military action in Syria by a margin of about three to one.

more: http://www.militarytimes.com/interactiv ... 3-1-margin

Interesting. Welcome to an agenda without muscle.

[conniption]

RT

'To bomb or not to bomb?' Obama's Hamlet omnishambles

British journalist Tim Wall is an editor at RT.com. A former editor-in-chief of The Moscow News, he has lived and worked in Russia since 2003.

September 14, 2013

[justdrew]

1. not bombing (as predicted) in defiance of an array of advisers and lobbyists and foreign interests who wanted the bombing very badly.

2. A chemical weapons stockpile is being removed from the board. Despite Syria's once understandable desire for it as a deterrent against invasion, it's no longer worth keeping. They're probably glad to be rid of it frankly. That shit is dangerous you know.

3. The 'rebels' will not be able to play this card again. (if this was an op on their part, as I think we mostly all think it was)

4. The 'hawks' (US and otherwise) have been broadly declawed.

5. International Law has been strengthened and reasserted as a valid principle.


If this was all a mistake or bumbling, we need a LOT MORE of this sort of bumbling please.

[justdrew]

A plain blog about politics: Point One on Obama's Presidency and Syria - Of all of those, there's one permutation that absolutely, no question about it, would destroy the rest of Barack Obama's presidency is: a disastrous war. Ask Lyndon Johnson or George W. Bush. Or Harry Truman. Unending, seemingly pointless wars are the one sure way to ruin a presidency.

Inside AIPAC's Syria Blitz - Shalom Yerushalmi, a senior political columnist at Maariv, another Israeli newspaper, was more critical, writing the same day as the Haaretz editorial that AIPAC is "harming Israeli interests," and that Israel should tell AIPAC to "stay out of this." And the Jerusalem Post warned that lobbying on Syria by U.S.-based groups with strong ties to Israel should "not be predicated in any way on whether the [military] action against Syria is 'good' or 'bad' for Israel."

5 biggest ways the media misled America this month - Salon.com - We just had one of our nation's most important foreign policy debates in years -- and the media made us dumber

In case you were wondering: AIPAC is not Israel - Opinion Israel News | Haaretz - Only the American people are sovereign to make decisions of war and peace regarding their country’s army; Israeli decision-makers should give up any pretense of intervening.

Israel and AIPAC clash on Syria strike - Features - Al Jazeera English - Dismissing threat from Syria, many Israelis would rather keep Iran in the international community's cross hairs.

[parel]

Fraudulent ‘Human Rights’ Watch Says Assad Did It

Thursday, September 12, 2013 15:10



Left: Barack Obama. Right: George Soros, Human Rights Watch’s greatest donor. Image Credit: Rogue Government

The fraudulent Human Rights Watch group, an arm of the United States Department of State, according to political analysts, has reported “compelling evidence” that Assad’s army used chemical weapons on its own people, a story making headlines across the nation Thursday to gain support to topple Assad and takeover the country.

“Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an arm of the U.S. Department of State,” political analyst Don DeBar stated in a brief Skype interview Thursday morning. ”It and Amnesty International’s U.S. chapter have shared Clinton State Department functionaries as CEOs.

“Human Rights Watch always carries the U.S. Department of State line with respect to U.S. military actions against other states,” DeBar said.

Nevertheless, the fraudulent group’s “findings” on the recent chemical attack of Syrians are being splashed across United States news headlines as though it is an independent group ethically reporting true findings.

For example, Elizabeth Palmer for CBS News on Thursday reports, “On Tuesday, the group Human Rights Watch issued a report that said evidence strongly implies that Syrian government troops’ firing of rockets containing a nerve agent into a Damascus suburb on August 21 that the U.S. said killed over 1,400 people.”

Palmer irresponsibly adds, ”While the report doesn’t furnish conclusive proof that the Syrian government carried out the attack with chemical weapons, it does present the most coherent circumstantial evidence I’ve seen so far to support the case.”

HRW furnishes no conclusive proof because it is contrived to push Obama and Kerry’s objective to topple Assad, just as the group did when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

In 2010, financier George Soros announced he was donating US$100 million to Human Rights Watch over ten years, as reported by the Jursalem Post..

“Human Rights Watch is one of the most effective organizations I support,” Soros said.

His donation increased the group’s budget from $48 million to $80 million and was the largest in the organization’s history.

Syria, Libya similarities: US fraud, hypocrisy, exceptionalism, war crimes

Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth was challenged on a Russia Today interview program Worlds Apart debate about Human Rights Watch’s position on the Syrian Civil War, that mirrors that of the Obama administration — as opposed to that of any other body in the international community.



Clinton actually laughed about assassinating Gadaffi.

NATO celebrating the murder of Gadaffi and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joking and laughing about his murder on CBS News was part of what Professor Michel Chossudovsky called a “so-called ‘victory’” that “has nothing to do with democracy, freedom or justice.”





John Kerry, Human Rights Watch, and the CIA are repeating the same brutal psychological operation in Syria that was used to “bomb Libya back to the stone age,” as the report above RT program documents. Today, however, only some of America’s most naive are believing warmonger propaganda, despite mainstream news outlets vigorously promoting it and Obama’s exceptionalism and “war is peace” campaign.

“[T]he entire region is suffering, damaged already from the Libyan expedition, the Iraq expedition, even the Afghanistan war that was started by the US in the late 70’s or 80’s which continues today,” DeBar told Press TV. ”Unfortunately I do not see peace in the near future because the government here in the United States will not allow it.”

[Watch Press TV's August 2013 interview: US govt. hinders peace in Syria: Don DeBar]

International lawyer and Kuala Lumpur International War Crimes Tribunal Judge Alfred Lambremont Webre reported to Dupré today about the HRW “compelling evidence,” with reasoning that might surprise some readers, “It is important to wait for the final reports.”

”One preliminary UN report suggest that both the Syrian government and factions within the rebels used poison gas on the Syrian population. Another report notes that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad did not give the order ro use poison gas.”

“If these reports prove to be true,” Webre stated, “then it may be the case that the reported uses of poison gas by both the Syrian government and the rebels were in fact a coordinated ‘false flag attack’ to trigger a U.S. armed intervention and an escalation into regional and perhaps global conflict.”

[conniption]

Bad Attitudes

September 13, 2013
Posted by OHollern

Listen To The Whores In Church

Vladimir Putin’s op-ed in the NY Times has really gotten under the skin of our lawgivers. They are outraged — outraged, I tell you — that Putin has the temerity to lecture us about our foreign policy. He also criticized American exceptionalism, which is verboten here in the land of the free. “It is extremely dangerous, ” he wrote, “to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”

Well, our politicians were having none of that. “I almost wanted to vomit,” said Senator Bob Menendez. Many of his colleagues also chimed in to register their indignation. It was a bipartisan affair:

During a news conference Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner said, “I was insulted,” when he read Putin’s editorial.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he didn’t think Putin was trying to undermine the president on Syria with his op-ed but was instead “looking for an excuse to show off his Super Bowl ring.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in a tweet, called Putin’s words “an insult”: “Putin’s NYT op-ed is an insult to the intelligence of every American.”

Sen. James M. Inhofe, R-Okla., said in an interview with CNN on Thursday that he too was not a fan of Putin’s piece: “I could hear Reagan turning over in his grave.”

First, a little historical perspective. As P.M Carpenter points out, twenty million Russians were killed in World War II by a country that encouraged its people to view themselves as exceptional, so the wicked Putin is making a serious point. Of course, I wouldn’t expect people like James Inhofe to stretch their minds that far. He is Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity’s intellectual equal (he thinks global warming is a socialist conspiracy).

Frankly, the fact that John McCain is regarded as a foreign policy expert is an insult to the intelligence of every American. If we followed his advice we would have put ground troops into Serbia during Clinton’s splendid little war there, and we’d probably be at war with Iran right now. Metternich he ain’t. I’m a little surprised Joseph Lieberman hasn’t popped out of retirement to give us his two cents. This situation is tailor-made for his uniquely nauseating brand of unctuous moralizing.

(Oops. I said “ground troops.” How retro of me. Apparently, the preferred term these days is “boots on the ground.” Question: When you put the boots on the ground, what side of the red line do you put them on?)

Putin also says something that I think most readers of this blog would probably agree with:

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

Is that untrue? The fact that Putin is an authoritarian gay-basher is irrelevant here. There is not a single word in that paragraph that is false. The United States does rely too heavily on brute force. We do have a “you’re either with us or against us” mentality. It’s perhaps not quite as bad as it was during the Bush-Cheney Dark Ages, but it’s still there. We do involve ourselves in foreign civil wars, and we have nothing to show for it but a growing list of spectacular failures. Our foreign policy thinkers are forever bleating about credibility and sending messages, as if every one else in the world is a little child who looks exclusively to the US for all of their cues on how to think and behave. Well, nothing ruins your credibility more quickly and completely than military defeat.

Putin has taken our measure and concluded, correctly, that we are bunch of self-important dullards and phonies. He’s laughing at us and we deserve it. It’s odd that our politicians should be so offended by him. Their hero is Henry Kissinger, who is every bit as hypocritical and callous as Putin.

Isn’t it rich seeing our pompous leaders wax indignant? These are the same morally upstanding optimates who brought us the USA Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq, and Wall Street bailouts. They are presiding over a country that is experiencing third world levels of inequality and show very little inclination to change it. They countenance waterboarding, extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, drone strikes, targeted assassinations, and NSA spying. Their entire careers are built on a system of legalized bribery that makes a used condom seem clean by comparison. What moral exemplars they are!

[seemslikeadream]

Do Syrian Rebels Have Sarin?
September 15, 2013

Exclusive: A U.S.-Russian agreement calls for the Syrian government to disclose and dispose of its chemical weapons, but that doesn’t resolve the mystery of who was behind the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus – or the question of whether Syrian rebels have their own stores of CW, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

As the Syrian government agrees to relinquish its chemical weapons, questions remain about whether some elements of the fractious Syrian rebel forces have obtained their own CW. There have been scattered news reports to that effect although rebel leaders deny the accounts.

Yet, one of the many questions left unanswered by the sketchy U.S. “Government Assessment” on the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus is whether U.S. intelligence analysts are among those who believe the rebels possess some stockpiles of chemical weapons.

President Barack Obama talks with Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, following a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Sept. 12, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The four-page white paper, issued on Aug. 30, danced around the question of whether the rebels possess CW by focusing only on whether the rebels were responsible for the attack. “We assess that the scenario in which the opposition executed the attack on August 21 is highly unlikely,” the white paper said. “Our intelligence sources in the Damascus area did not detect any indications in the days prior to the attack that opposition affiliates were planning to use chemical weapons.”

The dog-not-barking in that phrasing is the U.S. government’s silence on whether some rebels have these weapons. After all, why would the U.S. intelligence agencies employ this narrow phrasing discounting the likelihood of a rebel attack on this one occasion if they could simply assert that the rebel forces could not have been responsible because they have no chemical weapons, period?

The likely explanation is that U.S. intelligence agencies have indications that at least some rebel groups possess CW and may have used it in the past. That is a view that was expressed last May by Carla Del Ponte, a senior United Nations official responsible for Syrian investigations.

Del Ponte told a Swiss-Italian TV station, “Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report … which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated.”

Del Ponte added, “This was used on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”

Though other UN officials distanced themselves from Del Ponte’s comments, he was not alone in raising the possibility of Syrian rebels with chemical weapons. Former Defense Department official F. Michael Maloof wrote on Sept. 11 for the right-wing World Net Daily’s web site that WND had obtained a classified U.S. document in which “the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria.”

Though Maloof has a checkered reputation for accuracy – having been part of President George W. Bush’s propaganda campaign for invading Iraq – he cites specific information from what he describes as a document classified “Secret/Noforn” produced by the U.S. intelligence community’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC.

According to Maloof, “The document says sarin from al-Qaida in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some was seized, more could have been used in an attack last March on civilians and Syrian military soldiers in Aleppo. … It revealed that AQI had produced a ‘bench-scale’ form of sarin in Iraq and then transferred it to Turkey.”

Quoting from the NGIC’s report, Maloof wrote that it “depicts our assessment of the status of effort at its peak – primarily research and procurement activities – when disrupted in late May 2013 with the arrest of several key individuals in Iraq and Turkey. … Future reporting of indicators not previously observed would suggest that the effort continues to advance despite the arrests.”

Maloof further reported that a 100-page report sent by the Russian government to the UN claims that rebel sarin gas was “manufactured in a Sunni-controlled region of Iraq and then transported to Turkey for use by the Syrian opposition, whose ranks have swelled with members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups.”

Last week, prosecutors in southern Turkey obtained an indictment alleging that two Syrian rebel groups were seeking to buy precursor chemicals for the production of sarin gas, Turkish media reported. The indictment named six defendants, including Syrian national Hytham Qassap, and accused them of seeking the chemicals for Islamist rebels in Al Nusra Front and the Ahrar al-Sham Brigades.

The Turkish prosecutors said they found no actual sarin during the May arrests that led to the indictment, but the case provided further evidence that some Syrian rebel groups have tried to arm themselves with chemical weapons. The Syrian government has blamed rebels for several apparent chemical attacks, including the one on Aug. 21, but the United States and its allies have fingered the Syrian army instead.

In the case of the Aug. 21 attack, which led to threatened U.S. military retaliation against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the Obama administration has asserted with “high confidence” that the Syrian government was responsible, but the U.S. “Government Assessment” presented no verifiable evidence pointing to Assad’s guilt.

Meanwhile, an Italian journalist and a Belgian teacher who were just freed after months of captivity at the hands of Syrian rebels reported that they overheard the rebels claiming responsibility for the Aug. 21 chemical attack. Domenico Quirico, the journalist, and Pierre Piccinin, the teacher, reported that they overheard their captors discussing the Aug. 21 attack on Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, and saying that Assad’s forces were not behind it.

“It wasn’t the government of Bashar al-Assad that used sarin gas or any other gas in Ghouta,” Piccinin said on Belgian RTL radio. “We are sure about this because we overheard a conversation between rebels. It pains me to say it because I’ve been a fierce supporter of the Free Syrian Army in its rightful fight for democracy since 2012.”

Other on-scene reports have raised doubts about the certainty of the U.S. “Government Assessment” blaming the Syrian government. For instance, an article by MintPress News – based on interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta – presented evidence that “the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit. …

“[F]rom 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 … gas attack.”

The article also cited comments by rebel-connected Ghouta residents indicating that the release of the poison gas may have resulted from a conventional artillery strike by government forces accidentally hitting a rebel storage site for chemical weapons or from careless rebel handling of the dangerous material.

One intelligence source following the Syrian conflict told me that some U.S. analysts believe that the Syrian rebels do possess chemical weapons, possibly obtained with the help of Saudi intelligence which has been providing much of the military equipment and money for the rebels, including some of the most radical Islamist elements.

Given these various accounts – and the Syrian government’s acceptance of Russian demands that it surrender its chemical weapons – the United States may want to make a similar demand of the rebels. At least, the Obama administration might clarify what its own intelligence files contain about rebel possession of chemical weapons.

[parel]

Hands Off Syria: UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria “is Acting to Incite Further Massacres”

Hands Off Syria Australia, Press Release

Hands Off Syria (Australia) condemns the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria (COI) and calls for its disbanding and replacement by a body which does not act as a partisan propaganda organ for the foreign powers waging war against Syria.

Hands Off Syria member Ms Hanadi Assoud says

‘The Commission of Inquiry has proven itself a partisan body, inciting massacres and protecting the main architects of this crisis: the USA and its proxies, in particular Saudi Arabia.’

Dr Tim Anderson, Hands Off Syria member and academic at the University of Sydney, said

‘There is a fatal conflict of interest here. So long as the sectarian Islamist fighters are backed by the big powers, the COI seems incapable of recognising their well-publicised crimes. The UN should disband the Commission of Inquiry and then reconstitute it excluding the influence of those states promoting war and violence, in particular the USA and the Gulf monarchies.

‘The latest Commission of Inquiry report on the gas attacks in east Damascus, like the general report last month and the report on the dreadful Houla massacre last year actively covered up the crimes of ruthless Takfiri-Islamists. In its report on the Houla massacre (May 2012) the COI investigators were literally led by the hand by the killers. The technical report on the Damascus gas attacks is also being used to set up a major attack on Syria. The COI is being led by the nose by the US-backed sectarian Islamists’, Dr Anderson added.

Ms Assoud said: ‘This Commission of Inquiry is responding cynically to each new provocation, inciting repeated massacres by holding out hope to the terrorists that, if only their next massacre is big enough, they might get US air force backing for their ‘holy war’.’

Dr Anderson: ‘At best the Commission of Inquiry has been arguing ‘a plague on both your houses’, which implies that the Syrian nation cannot act to defend its own people from foreign backed terrorists; at worst the COI recklessly accuses the government, thus inciting foreign intervention. Further, by pretending a moral equivalence between the Syrian Government and the foreign backed terrorists, the COI betrays the Charter of the United Nations, which embodies respect for nations and their right to self-determination, while selectively ignoring the many U.N. resolutions on the need to combat terrorism.’

Hands off Syria calls for the disbanding of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry, and for a new and independent U.N. body, not shaped those states which persist in promoting the war against Syria. Foreign powers cannot be both aggressors and judges.

Some background on the Commission of Inquiry and the Ghouta incident is attached.

Further information: Ms. Hanadi Assoud:

Hands Off Syria, PO Box 109, Glebe, NSW, Australia

Background: the United Nations Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria

The Human Rights Council (HRC) motion S-17/1 that established the U.N.’s Commission of Inquiry on Syria (22 August 2011), immediately condemned the Syrian Government, before any inquiry. The founding text decided there had been ‘continued grave and systematic human rights violations by the Syrian authorities … including indiscriminate attacks on the Syrian population’. Little wonder the Syrian Government has been reluctant to cooperate.

President of the HRC, Polish diplomat Remigiusz Achilles Henczel, appointed four members, two of whom were from countries (Turkey and the USA) deeply involved in the aggression. The Turkish delegate was soon replaced by Swiss lawyer Carla del Ponte, but the US delegate Karen Koning AbuZayd remains deputy to the chair, Brazilian diplomat Paulo Sergio Pinheiro. Apart from her UN roles, AbuZayd is a board member of the Washington based Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), a body which includes US generals and delegates from the oil-rich Gulf monarchies –the major sponsors of international terrorism against Syria. The Commission was thus poisoned against Syria from the beginning.

The Houla ‘False Flag’ massacre , May 2012

The COI’s second report on the Houla massacre (15 August 2012) relied on interviews organised by members of the Farouk FSA Brigade, then blamed unnamed government militia (‘shabiha’); no motive was given. However a number of independent investigators showed Houla to have been a ‘false flag’ massacre, organised to falsely blame the Syrian Army so as to incite the UN Security Council to intervene.

Interviews by German journalist Rainer Hermann showed that the Houla victims were ‘nearly exclusively families from the Alawi and Shia minorities … and the family of a Sunni member of parliament who was considered [by the FSA] a government collaborator’. A large FSA brigade, led by Abdurrazzaq Tlass and Yahya Yusuf , had swept aside the small army posts, and carried out the killings. They took over the area and then organised the COI’s access to witnesses. Hermann’s report was supported by Russian journalist Marat Musin and Arabic speaking Dutch writer Martin Janssen. Melchite nun Mother Agnes Mariam also spoke with witnesses and observed the manipulation of bodies as this ‘false flag’ massacre was presented to the world. The COI missed all this, either through wanton negligence or plain malice.

Report of August 16, 2013

The COI produced another partisan report on the violence on 16 August, once again highly selective and relying on pro-FSA sources. This report was useless in the sense of independent evidence. It also ignored major massacres committed by the Takfiri-Islamists (sectarian Islamists fighting to replace the secular Syrian Government with an Islamic state), such as the August 2012 massacre at Daraya (after the failure of a prisoner swap), the December 2012 massacre of Alawi villagers at Aqrab (documented by a British journalist), the multiple al Nusra-FSA attacks on students at Aleppo University (as part of their close down the university campaign) and the al Nusra Sarin gas attacks on Aleppo in early 2013.

The al Ghouta incidents

On 21 August 2013, some crude chemical weapons seem to have killed many people in parts of eastern Damascus (al Ghouta) under the control of Takfiri-Islamists. Video images were released immediately, accusing the Syrian Arab Army of having attacked and killed hundreds of civilians.

Video also shows a number of people walking through the laid out dead bodies; several of these people have been identified as Islamist fighters.

The publicity given to these killings derailed the attention of the COI team which had just arrived in Damascus to investigate Syrian Government evidence of the sectarian Islamists using sarin gas in the Khan al Assal area of Aleppo, in March 2013. This investigation did not take place because the team was diverted to al Ghouta; a convenient diversion because UN investigator Carla del Ponte had announced earlier that the evidence of sarin use provisionally pointed to ‘the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.’ Russia had provided a large brief of evidence to the UN. However the COI’s brief was technical and did not include determining who was responsible for the attacks.

Partisan ‘evidence’ from Washington

The Obama administration immediately asserted that the Syrian Government was to blame; later it presented some circumstantial evidence (30 August). Obama was backed up by the Washington based group Human Rights Watch (10 September). Both claim the Syrian Government’s motives were ‘to gain the upper hand or break a stalemate’ in certain areas. Foreign Policy magazine (11 September), claimed a UN inquiry group would produce a ‘strong circumstantial case’ against the government. The main US claims are:

1. The ‘opposition’ (i.e. Islamist fighters) does not have the capacity to make and deploy chemical weapons. The White House and HRW both say that the Islamist ‘rebels’ have no access to the 140mm and 330mm rockets they say were used in the attack.

2. Communications intercepts show government activity around the attacks, and the extent of social media postings is too wide to have been fabricated. In this area the Obama administration mixes the questions of whether CW were used and who used them.

Independent evidence implicating the foreign-backed fighters

Evidence implicating the foreign-backed fighters, as in previous massacres, is more specific, and the motive is more obvious: to incite a ‘humanitarian intervention’ that will help them.

1. Islamist fighters in Syria do indeed have chemical weapons and rocket capacity. They have posted video and photos of themselves firing large blue tank-canisters from artillery. In April al Nusra stole 400 tonnes of liquid chlorine from an Aleppo factory. In May six anti-Syrian ‘rebels’ were arrested and later indicted by Turkish authorities; 2kgs of ‘kitchen variety’ sarin was seized. In July the government seized 261 barrels of chemicals from terrorist groups in Baniyas. Then 26 people including soldiers were killed by al Nusra chemicals attacks in Aleppo. The army also discovered a chemical fabrication plant in Jobar (Damascus countryside), making use of ingredients from Saudi Arabia.

2. The first independent interviews of people in al Ghouta indicated that Islamist fighters there were collecting chemical weapons. Jordan-based journalists Dale Gavlak and Yahya Abaneh interviewed: (a) the father of a fighter who said his son had died while mishandling chemical weapons provided by a Saudi man; (b) townspeople who said fighters had been sleeping in mosques and houses while their tunnels were used to store tanks or canisters; and (c) two fighters who complained that they had not been trained in the handling of chemical weapons.

3. Syrian analysts have released video which begins to identify the dead at al Ghouta, and those around them. Establishing who the victims are may be the key to proving who is responsible. Two weeks before the killings in al Ghouta many women and children were kidnapped from the site of an al Nusra massacre in Lattakia. It is believed many of these are amongst the dead at al Ghouta. Video also shows several alive and identifiable, kidnapped government supporters, later seen as dead victims at al Ghouta.

Adam Larson says the crime at al Ghouta was either: ‘the perfect gift from the ‘regime’ to its hostile opponents, or a custom sewn false flag event of great audacity’.

A dozen former senior US military and intelligence officers wrote to President Obama, reminding him of the lies told about WMDs in Iraq. They said ‘the most reliable intelligence shows that [President] Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21 … [and] the various groups trying to overthrow Syrian President … have ample incentive to get the U.S. more deeply involved’.

Chemical weapons agreement

The Syrian government has now agreed to a Russian initiative, to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, heading off the immediate threat of missile attacks from US warships, stationed in the eastern Mediterranean. However that agreement does not resolve the matter. The al Ghouta incident was just the latest in a long chain of pretexts for war. The US clearly wants to dominate the entire region, and cannot tolerate any independent state.

Bitterly disappointed at the delay in a direct US attack on Syria, the ruthless and sectarian Islamist fighters will most likely try to stage another ‘false flag’ attack. The partisan United Nations COI will almost certainly act, once again, to lend them credibility. For its part, the US will pursue any new disarmament commitments as part of its attempts to topple the Syrian government. And double standards in disarmament will continue. Under the Chemical Weapons Convention the USA was due to destroy all its chemical weapons by 2012; Washington now says it will comply by the year 2023.

Selected sources:

Adam Larson (2013) Rebel Capabilities and the Damascus Chemical Attacks, 14 Sept, GR,

http://www.globalresearch.ca/rebel-capa ... ks/5349717

RT (2013) Turkish prosecutors indict Syrian rebels for seeking chemical weapons, 14 Sept,

http://rt.com/news/turkey-syria-chemical-weapons-850/

Video identifying persons in the incident at al Ghouta (East Damascus)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdF6aSnxhDs

Global Research (2013) ‘Syria : One Year After the Houla Massacre. New Report on Official vs. Real Truth’, 18 May, http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-one- ... report-on- official-vs-real-truth/5335562 TRNS (2013) ‘281 barrels of dangerous chemical found in Syria: UN Ambassador’, 8 July, http://www.talkradionews.com/united-nat ... -found-in- syria-un-ambassador.html#.UjTdqX8s3Po

Breaking News (2013) Army discovers chemical materials factory in Jobar, 14 July,

http://breakingnews.sy/en/article/21152.html

[conniption]

Moon of Alabama
September 14, 2013
A Short History Of The War On Syria - 2006-2014

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Moon of Alabama

September 15, 2013

Syrian Government Air-Support For The Syrian Insurgents?

From yesterday's Short History Of The War On Syria - 2006-2014:

The Syrian Military Council will do its best to derail [the chemical weapons deal]. But it will soon be out of political support and out of money. Meanwhile the local SMC forces are fighting al-Qaeda aligned groups. It could well be that some of the local Syrian insurgency groups will soon join government forces in attacking the Jihadis.

That was, may be, a bit wrong. It seems like its not the local Syrian insurgency groups joining government forces in fighting the Jihadis but just the other way around.

continued

[seemslikeadream]

Jane’s Report: About Half of Syria Rebels Are Jihadists
Secularists Are Miniscule Part of Overall Rebellion
by Jason Ditz, September 15, 2013

A new report from defense analysts IHS Jane’s provided some of the first recent estimates of the size of Syria’s rebellion, and more importantly the groups that make it up.

They put the overall rebel fighters at 100,000 strong, but that is made up of some 1,000 different factions. Al-Qaeda directly commands the loyalty of around 10,000 of those fighters.

Another 30,000 to 35,000 of the rebels are “jihadists” from pro-al-Qaeda factions that aren’t explicitly run by the group, and still 30,000 more represent various Islamist factions of a somewhat more moderate character. What’s left is the secularist component, a pretty small minority in the grand scheme of things, made doubly so by the fact that the al-Qaeda run forces like Jabhat al-Nusra have been dramatically more formidable in fighting.

Jihadists have been the most active portion of the rebellion, attacking ethnic Kurds and religious minorities nationwide, including three more Alawite villages sacked today in Homs Province.

It is in this environment that the Syrian National Coalition’s new prime minister, Ahmad Tumeh, will be taking the helm. A moderate Islamist himself, Tumeh is calling for a confrontation of al-Qaeda and the other more jihadist factions in the rebellion. That may make the US happy, but its a fight that the SNC’s own faction seems unlikely to be able to win.

It’s also a fight al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri seems resigned to, warning his factions and those allied with them not to associate with the secularists or form serious alliances with them. In the past this was less a concern, but with the “rebellion” tearing itself apart at the seams, it seems the various factions will be committing more and more of their forces to fighting each other, rather than the Assad government.

[coffin_dodger]

Half of Syria rebels are hardline Islamists: study

Jihadists and members of hardline Islamist groups make up almost half of forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to extracts from a British defence study published in Monday's Daily Telegraph.

The analysis by defence consultancy IHS Jane's, due to be published in full later this week, puts the number of rebel forces at around 100,000, the Telegraph reported.

But these fighters have split into as many as 1,000 bands since violence flared two years ago, the study concluded.

Of the rebel forces, IHS Jane's estimates that around 10,000 are jihadists fighting for groups linked to Al-Qaeda and another 30,000 to 35,000 are hardline Islamists, who differ from jihadists in that they are concentrated only on the Syrian conflict, and not on the global Islamist fight.

more: http://news.yahoo.com/half-syrian-rebel ... kAjijQtDMD

The comments section seems unanimous.

[seemslikeadream]

U.N. Report Confirms Rockets Loaded With Sarin in Aug. 21 Attack
By RICK GLADSTONE and NICK CUMMING-BRUCE
Published: September 16, 2013 79 Comments

Rockets armed with the banned chemical nerve agent sarin were used in a mass killing near Damascus on Aug. 21, United Nations chemical weapons inspectors reported Monday in the first official confirmation by nonpartisan scientific experts, saying such munitions had been deployed “on a relatively large scale” in the Syria conflict.
LIVEUpdates on Syria
12:14 PM U.N. Report Echoes Open-Source Investigations


U.S. and Allies Push for Strong U.N. Measure on Syria’s Arms (September 17, 2013)

Although the widely awaited report did not ascribe blame for the attack, it provided in graphic and clinical detail the evidence of sarin residue in three neighborhoods in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, the precise types of projectiles and trajectories to deliver it and the symptoms of the victims. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attack the most horrific use of chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein of Iraq gassed the Kurdish village of Halabja a quarter century ago.

“The report makes for chilling reading,” Mr. Ban told a news conference after he delivered the report to the Security Council. “The findings are beyond doubt and beyond the pale. This is a war crime.”

Mr. Ban declined to say which side he blamed.

The United States and its allies quickly seized on the volume of evidence in the 38-page report to draw the conclusion that only Syrian government forces of President Bashar al-Assad had the capability to carry out such a strike, calling it validation of their own long-held assertions. But Russia’s ambassador said there too many unanswered questions to draw such a conclusion.

The report’s release punctuated a tumultuous week spawned by the global outrage over the Aug. 21 attack, in which an American threat of punitive force on the Syrian government was delayed as Russia proposed a diplomatic alternative, Syria agreed to ban chemical weapons and intense diplomacy between the United States and Russia led to a sweeping agreement in which Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal could be destroyed by the middle of 2014.

The United Nations itself, in danger of becoming irrelevant in helping end the 30-month-old Syria conflict, was suddenly thrust back into a central role, with the long-paralyzed Security Council engaged in deliberations over an enforceable measure to hold Syria to its commitment on chemical weapons, even as the war in that country shows no sign of abating.

The report concluded that “chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale.”

The inspectors, who visited the Damascus suburbs that suffered the attack and left the country with large amounts of evidence on Aug. 31, said that “In particular, the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used.”

Mr. Ban told reporters “it is for others to decide whether to pursue this matter further to determine a response” and that the chemical weapons inspectors intended to return to Syria to investigate other suspected chemical weapons attacks, including some in which Mr. Assad’s side claims insurgents had used them.

Speaking to reporters later, the American ambassador, Samantha Power, and British ambassador, Sir Mark Lyall-Grant, were emphatic in their assertions that the report implicated Mr. Assad, whose government has amassed one of the largest stockpiles of chemical munitions over the past two decades, and only last week admitted it possessed them.

“This was no cottage-industry use of chemical weapons,” said Sir Mark said. The evidence “confirms, in our view, that there was no remaining doubt that it was the regime” that used the chemical weapons.

Ambassador Power concurred, saying: “The technical details of the U.N. report make clear that only the regime could have carried out this large scale of chemical weapons attack.”

The report carried the conclusions of a team of inspectors headed by Ake Sellstrom, a Swedish chemical weapons expert, under the auspices of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a Hague-based institution that monitors compliance with a 1997 treaty outlawing such munitions.

The report said the facts supporting its conclusion included “impacted and exploded surface-to-surface rockets, capable to carry a chemical payload,” which “were found to contain sarin.” The facts also included sarin-contaminated areas at the sites, more than 50 interviews given by survivors and health care workers, clear signs of exposure in patients and survivors, and blood and urine samples by those patients and survivors that were “found positive for sarin and sarin signatures.”

The consistency of the symptoms included “shortness of breath, eye irritation, excessive salivation, convulsions, confusion/disorientation and miosis,” or constriction of the pupils. First responders also became ill, the report said, “with one describing the onset of blurred vision, generalized weakness, shaking, a sensation of impending doom, followed by fainting.”

The report also found that the weather conditions on the morning of Aug. 21 may have increased the number of victims because the temperatures had been falling. The use of chemical munitions in such conditions, the report said, “maximizes their potential impact as the heavy gas can stay close to the ground and penetrate into lower levels of buildings and constructions where many people were seeking shelter.”

Although the report confirmed what the United States, its allies and Human Rights Watch had already concluded about the nature of the attack, it was nonetheless regarded as important as the first purely scientific and politically neutral accounting of the facts about the weapons that were used.

The report did not specify the number of people killed in the attack. The United States has asserted that more than 1,400 people were killed, including more than 400 children. That would be the worst single death toll in the conflict, in which more than 100,000 people have been killed.

Mr. Assad and Russia, his principal foreign ally, have said Syrian insurgents were responsible.

The release of the report came as a separate panel of investigators from the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva said they were investigating 14 episodes of suspected chemical weapons use in the conflict and would use the report to help identify those responsible for the Aug. 21 attack.

Panel members and diplomats acknowledge, however, that gaining entry to Syria is essential to complete the investigation. Syria this month invited one of the four panelists, Carla del Ponte, to visit “in her personal capacity,” said Paulo Pinheiro, the panel’s chairman. But he said, but any visit could only take place as a member of the panel. The entire panel, he said, had asked for permission to visit.

Mr. Pinheiro’s panel, which relies on testimony and interviews with Syrian refugees and defectors, has been accused by President Assad of an inherent antigovernment bias in its quarterly reporting of rights abuses in the conflict. Mr. Pinheiro has argued that the government should allow it to enter Syria for that very reason.

The panel has said that abuses have been committed by both sides but that the government is responsible for most of them.

[seemslikeadream]

Syrian Rebel War Crimes Fueling Faction SplitForeign Rebels Predominantly Responsible
by Jason Ditz, September 16, 2013

Discussions of the war crimes committed by the many assorted factions in Syria’s ongoing civil war inevitably lead to ugly arguments about which of the many war criminals is worst. The issue is also underscoring the divide between rebel factions.

While almost no one in the civil war is blameless, UN investigators say that the foreign Islamist fighters that have flocked to al-Qaeda’s banner are “committing the worst crimes,” and that the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a secular faction, is at least trying to have its fighters follow international law.

The investigators expressed concern that the stark differences in strategy among the factions would make it hard to get the rebels together for the planned Geneva 2 peace conference, though none of the factions have even agreed to participate, so that’s in many ways academic.

Instead of rebel unity, the more immediate prospect is more war-within-a-war situations erupting, with the FSA and al-Qaeda seemingly headed into open conflict, and al-Qaeda already fighting Kurdish factions

[8bitagent]

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-s ... ershare_fb