Panetta: U.S. sends forces to Jordan amid tension on Syria border
October 11, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
The United States has sent military troops to the Jordan-Syria border to help build a headquarters in Jordan and bolster that country’s military capabilities in the event that violence escalates along its border with Syria, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday.
Speaking at a NATO conference of defense ministers in Brussels, Panetta said the U.S. has been working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria and also to help Jordan deal with refugees pouring over the border from Syria.
But the revelation of U.S. military personnel so close to the 19-month-old Syrian conflict suggests an escalation in the U.S. military involvement in the conflict, even as Washington pushes back on any suggestion of a direct intervention in Syria.
It also follows several days of shelling between Turkey and Syria, an indication that the civil war could spill across Syria’s borders and become a regional conflict.
“We have a group of our forces there working to help build a headquarters there and to insure that we make the relationship between the United States and Jordan a strong one so that we can deal with all the possible consequences of what’s happening in Syria,” Panetta said.
The development comes with the U.S. presidential election less than a month away, and at a time when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, has been criticizing President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, accusing the administration of embracing too passive a stance in the convulsive Mideast region.
The defense secretary and other administration officials have expressed concern about Syrian President Bashar Assad’s arsenal of chemical weapons. Panetta said last week that the United States believes that while the weapons are still secure, intelligence suggests the regime might have moved the weapons to protect them. The Obama administration has said that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would be a “red line” that would change the U.S. policy of providing only non-lethal aid to the rebels seeking to topple him.
Pentagon press secretary George Little, traveling with Panetta, said the U.S. and Jordan agreed that “increased cooperation and more detailed planning are necessary in order to respond to the severe consequences of the Assad regime’s brutality.”
He said the U.S. has provided medical kits, water tanks, and other forms of humanitarian aid to help Jordanians assist Syrian refugees fleeing into their country.
Little said the military personnel were there to help Jordan with the flood of Syrian refugees over its borders and the security of Syria’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
“As we’ve said before, we have been planning for various contingencies, both unilaterally and with our regional partners,” Little said in a written statement. “There are various scenarios in which the Assad regime’s reprehensible actions could affect our partners in the region. For this reason and many others, we are always working on our contingency planning, for which we consult with our friends.”
A U.S. defense official in Washington said the forces are made up of 100 military planners and other personnel who stayed on in Jordan after attending an annual exercise in May, and several dozen more have flown in since, operating from a joint U.S.-Jordanian military center north of Amman that Americans have used for years.
He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the mission on the record.
In Jordan, the biggest problem for now seems to be the strain put on the country’s meager resources by the estimated 200,000 Syrian refugees who have flooded across the border — the largest fleeing to any country.
Several dozen refugees in Jordan rioted in their desert border camp of Zaatari early this month, destroying tents and medicine and leaving scores of refugee families out in the night cold.
Jordanian men also are moving the other way across the border — joining what intelligence officials have estimated to be around 2,000 foreigners fighting alongside Syrian rebels trying to topple Assad. A Jordanian border guard was wounded after armed men — believed trying to go fight — exchanged gunfire at the northern frontier.
Turkey Plotting NATO Attack on Syria
October 10, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
A maelstrom is sweeping the Middle East and Turkey is in the center of it; is in fact the cause of it.
The only member of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization military bloc in Asia, and one moreover bordering Syria, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, it is intensifying military attacks inside Syria and Iraq and threatening to plunge the entire region into destabilization and war.
Having shelled targets inside Syria daily for a week after a mortar shell landed inside its southeastern territory on October 3, which Ankara blamed on the Syrian military, the Turkish armed forces have again, as they did two months ago, moved tanks, armored personnel carriers, missile defenses and troops to the border and have deployed 25 warplanes to a base in Diyarbakir in the Kurdish region of the country, both actions allegedly targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) though in fact part of a general military mobilization that will not be limited to strikes against that group’s fighters and supporters.
Turkey’s Doğan News Agency reported that 25 F-16 fighter jets and other aircraft arrived at the air base on October 8 and Today’s Zaman announced that 12 F-16s struck what were identified as PKK sites on Mount Qandil on the Iraqi-Iranian border.
The following day Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh denounced the violation of his nation’s sovereignty, stating “These Turkish attacks on Iraqi territories are not acceptable and we will take the necessary diplomatic measures” and adding, “We do understand the reasons behind such acts, yet we do not tolerate such breaches.”
Recently the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Iraqi parliament announced its intention to demand Turkish military forces leave the north of the country where committee member Safia al-Suhail stated there were 16 Turkish military bases inside Iraq near the two countries’ border.
Revealingly, on October 8 Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki arrived in Moscow where he visited the foreign ministry and will meet with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to discuss closer ties in the military and energy spheres.
A week ago the top military commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis, paid an unannounced visit to the Turkish capital to meet with Chief of General Staff General Necdet Özel and Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz.
According to the Turkish press:
“The Allied Air Command in İzmir came under scrutiny during the discussions. The command in İzmir was most recently on the public agenda during the debates over NATO’s early warning system in Kürecik, Malatya, which is a part of NATO’s missile defense shield. The Kürecik radar system was installed to observe Iranian skies for any missile threat.”
After the incident of October 3, NATO’s main civilian governing body, the North Atlantic Council, met in Brussels on Turkey’s prompting to discuss a joint strategy against Syria.
A statement issued after the unprecedented late-night meeting confirmed that, “In view of the Syrian regime’s recent aggressive acts at NATO’s southeastern border, which are a flagrant breach of international law and a clear and present danger to the security of one of its Allies, the North Atlantic Council met today, within the framework of Article 4 of the Washington Treaty…”
In language more evocative of the military bloc’s Article 5 war clause, the statement added: “In the spirit of indivisibility of security and solidarity deriving from the Washington Treaty, the Alliance continues to stand by Turkey and demands the immediate cessation of such aggressive acts against an Ally…”
Ahead of a two-day meeting of NATO defense chiefs, including the Pentagon’s Leon Panetta, to convene on October 9, Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen proclaimed “I can assure you we have all necessary plans in place to defend and protect Turkey, our ally.”
On the same day Turkey’s head of state, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, threatened: “The state that is not ready for war at any moment is not fully developed. Turkey must be ready for war in any case.”
Hürriyet Daily News cited an unnamed Turkish official as confirming that NATO “was active on the issue [the escalating military conflict with Syria] behind the scenes,” with his comments paraphrased as follows:
“NATO has increased its military presence in the region with vessels patrolling in the Mediterranean Sea under Operation Active Endeavor and routine flights heading to its operations to Afghanistan, but these moves were not announced officially to avoid a reaction.”
Last week, only hours before the shelling incident that has provided Turkey the occasion for authorizing ongoing military attacks inside Syria, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters in Moscow that his country had warned NATO and its allies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) against conspiring to manufacture pretexts for military intervention inside Syria such as demanding so-called humanitarian corridors or buffer zones inside the latter nation and launching armed provocations on the Turkish-Syrian border.
He said, “In our contacts with our partners both in NATO and in the region, including on international forums, we have called on them not to look for pretexts in order to carry out a [military] operation.”
The next day just such an incident occurred.
On October Ali Akbar Velayati, former Iranian foreign minister and current senior adviser to Ali Khamenei, accused NATO of laying the groundwork for war against Syria, stating, “Today, NATO is ready to issue a threat against Syria and intends to enter Syria under the pretext that one of the members of this organization [Turkey] has been threatened.”
Turkish is harboring, arming and training thousands of so-called Free Syrian Army forces while conducting major air strikes inside Iraq and near the Iranian border and massing troops and military hardware on the Syrian border in a campaign to exterminate the PKK, a lawless rampage fully supported by the U.S. and NATO.
Turkey and its NATO allies have lit a short fuse to a large powder keg
full story:http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2012/10/09/turkey-plotting-nato-attack-on-syria/
US sends secret task force to Jordan to help deal with Syria crisis
October 10, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ELISABETH BUMILLER
editors note: not much of a secret is it?
read more:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49354128/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/?ocid=msnhp
Misfire: NATO mortar ‘gift’ from Turkey to Syrian rebels – newspaper
October 9, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
source:rt
The mortar used to attack the Turkish town of Akcakale is a design specific to NATO and was given to Syrian rebels by Ankara, according to Turkey’s Yurt newspaper. The mortar killed one adult and four children from the same family on Wednesday.
An article by the paper’s Editor-in-Chief, Merdan Yanardag, states that the newspaper received information from a reliable source, which claimed that Turkey itself sent the mortars to rebels in the so-called “free army.”
“Turkey is a longtime member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and they’re going to act in conjunction with other NATO powers, so it’s unsurprising that this has happened,” editor of the Pan-African news wire, Abayomi Azikiwe, told RT.
NATO has so far shunned any military involvement in the conflict, but Azikiwe says the alliance is deeply involved in every decision that Turkey makes.
“Ankara isn’t taking any military actions or contemplating any type of military strategy without being in full cooperation with NATO forces,” he said.
Turkey retaliated at Syria for a sixth consecutive day on Monday, after a mortar from Syria landed in Turkey’s Hatay province.
And as Turkey fights to defend its border towns, the country’s president says the country’s military will take any action necessary.
“The worst-case scenarios are taking place right now in Syria … Our government is in constant consultation with the Turkish military. Whatever is needed is being done immediately as you see, and it will continue to be done,” President Abdullah Gul said in a statement on Monday.
But it’s not only leaders within Turkey that are stating their opinions on the conflict.
Earlier on Monday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned of the consequences that the conflict could bring to the region.
“The escalation of the conflict along the Syrian-Turkish border and the impact of the crisis on Lebanon are extremely dangerous,” Ban said at the opening of the World Forum for Democracy in Strasbourg, France.
The exchange of fire began last Wednesday, when Syrian mortar shells killed a woman and four children from the same family in Akcakale.
Many fear the situation will lead to regional conflict, with political analyst Dan Glazebrook, saying that Ankara aims to drag NATO into a war with Syria.
“On the one hand the [Turks] are trying to give cover to the rebels to continue their fight, as they know that the rebels are getting defeated on the ground so they are bombarding Syria as a way to help the rebels not lose too many of their positions,” Glazebrook told RT. “But I think also they may be hoping that they can somehow nudge, provoke NATO into taking action as well, into prompting a kind of blitzkrieg that is actually the only thing really that would enable the rebels to win now at this state.”
read more:http://rt.com/news/nato-mortar-syria-turkey-954/
More weapons in Syria could trigger ‘all-out war’
October 8, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
source:msnbc
It was also a day when Gov. Mitt Romney pledged that, if elected president, he’d change the course of events here.
Among other things, he wants to green-light heavy weapons to the Syrian rebels “who share our values” in order to “defeat the tanks, helicopters and fighter jets” of the Bashar Assad regime.
read more:http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/08/14298721-more-weapons-in-syria-could-trigger-all-out-war?lite&ocid=msnhp
editors note more than 90% of free syrian army and or the rebels are not syian and they most certainly do not share our values .They masy share his values which are few but not most americans.Not that Assad is any better
Syrian fighters train for battle and the dangerous dream of an independent Kurdistan
September 29, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
source:the new york times
By TIM ARANGO
DOHUK, Iraq — Just off a main highway that stretches east of this city and slices through a moonscape of craggy hills, a few hundred Syrian Kurdish men have been training for battle, marching through scrub brush and practicing rifle drills.
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The men, many of them defectors from the Syrian Army living in white trailers dotting a hillside camp, are not here to join the armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s government. They are preparing for the fight they expect to come after, when Mr. Assad falls and there is a scramble across Syria for power and turf.
These men want an autonomous Kurdish region in what is now Syria, a prospect they see as a step toward fulfilling a centuries-old dream of linking the Kurdish minorities in Iraq, Turkey and Iran into an independent nation.
But that desire, to right a historical grievance for a people divided and oppressed through generations, also threatens to draw a violent reaction from those other nations. They have signaled a willingness to take extreme actions to prevent the loss of territory to a greater Kurdistan.
‘After the fall’
The first step is already in motion, as the Iraqi Kurds provide haven, training and arms to the would-be militia.
“They are being trained for after the fall, for the security vacuum that will come after the Assad government collapses,” said Mahmood Sabir, one of a number of Syrian Kurdish opposition figures operating in Iraq.
‘Overwhelmed’ aid agencies seek $340M to help refugees flooding out of Syria
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That the Kurds are arming themselves for a fight, one that could prove decisive in shaping post-revolutionary Syria, adds another element of volatility to the conflict. It suggests that the government’s fall would not lead to peace — but, instead, an all-out sectarian war that could drag in neighboring countries.
Against the backdrop of the raging civil war, Syrian Kurds have already etched out a measure of autonomy in their territories — not because they have taken up arms against the government, but because the government has relinquished Kurdish communities to local control, allowing the Kurds to gain a head start on self-rule.
Video: German foreign minister: UN has ‘failed’ Syria (on this page)
Kurdish flags fly over former government buildings in those areas, and schools have opened that teach in the Kurdish language, something the Assad government had prohibited.
“We are organizing our society, a Kurdish society,” said Saleh Mohammed, the leader of the Democratic Union Party, or P.Y.D., which is viewed with deep suspicion by other Kurdish groups for its ties to Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K.
The P.K.K. is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Europe and has lately stepped up its guerrilla attacks in Turkey.
Ready to fight Assad or rebels
The Kurds say they are girding for a fight, should the government try to reclaim Kurdish cities or if the Sunni-dominated militias, loosely organized under the banner of the Free Syrian Army and fighting to bring down the government, try to move into Kurdish areas.
“Of course, we’ll defend ourselves,” Mr. Mohammed said. “According to Kurdish tradition, we have weapons in our houses. Every house should have its own weapon.”
‘Senseless acts of torture and violence’: Charity appeals for help for Syria’s childrenMuch of the Syrian Kurds’ efforts are being guided by Masoud Barzani, the head of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, whose autonomy and relative prosperity serves as a model for Syrian Kurds. The men at the camp are being trained and provided weapons by an Iraqi Kurdish special forces unit that is linked to Mr. Barzani’s political party.
Mr. Barzani has sought to play a kingmaker role with his Syrian brethren by uniting the various factions, like he has in the sectarian and ethnic tinderbox of Iraqi politics. In July he reached a deal to organize more than a dozen Kurdish parties under the Kurdish Supreme Council, and many of the officials work out of an office in Erbil, in a mixed-use complex of cul-de-sacs and tidy subdivisions called the Italian Village.
PhotoBlog: Amid Syria’s civil war violence, a strange calm in the capital
Oppressed for decades under Arab autocrats, denied rights by one post-Ottoman Turkish leader after another, and betrayed after World War I by Allied powers who had once promised Kurdish independence, this time the Kurds are determined to seize the upheaval of the Arab Spring and bend history to their will.
Time to make history?
The civil war in Syria, whose nearly two million Kurds are mostly clustered near its northeastern border with Turkey, has excited the aspirations for statehood that the Kurds have held for centuries. These dreams have been kept in abeyance since the Western victors of World War I set down arbitrary new borders for the Middle East that divided the Kurdish people among four nations: Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.
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“It’s a historical moment for the Kurds to take advantage of, to achieve change,” said Kawa Azizi, a Syrian who is a professor of politics and a Kurdish opposition politician. He works out of Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region, serving now as a hub for the Syrian Kurdish militia and civilian activities.
When the uprising began nearly 18 months ago, some observers worried that the Kurds could make common cause with Mr. Assad in exchange for more rights and autonomy. Many described the Kurds as sitting on the fence, waiting to choose sides. Many Kurds dispute that analysis. They say they have always hated President Assad.
Slideshow: Syria uprising (on this page)
In ceding control of the Kurdish cities, the Assad government has been able to focus its heavy weapons on the fight with the Sunni-led opposition. The move has also antagonized Turkey, which has supported the opposition but worries that an autonomous Kurdish region in Syria could become a free zone for Kurdish insurgents to launch attacks on Turkey.
In Turkey, the fight with the P.K.K. has recently resulted in casualties at a level not seen since the late 1990s, according to a recent report published by the International Crisis Group.
NYT: Rebels besiege Syria air base, shoot down jets
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has suggested that Turkey has a right to intervene in Syria’s Kurdish areas if it believes Turkey’s security is under threat.
‘They are Arabs’
The Kurds of Syria, divided among more than a dozen factions of shifting alliances, seem united in at least two respects: they are opposed to the Assad government, but deeply suspicious of the ambitions of the Free Syrian Army.
“First of all, they are Arabs,” Mr. Azizi said of the Free Syrian Army. “We do not want the Arabs to control us.”
While there is little fighting in the Syrian Kurdish towns, and officials interviewed in Iraq say that a measure of calm has settled over the areas, Kurdish refugees are steadily streaming into northern Iraq. Refugees say government intelligence operatives are still harassing Kurds, and threatening them if they do not join the government’s army.
Food and medical supplies are also running low, contributing to the exodus of refugees. At the Domiz refugee camp near Dohuk, a tent city of nearly 25,000 people, about 150 to 200 new refugees arrive each day. “The only place we could come was Kurdistan in Iraq,” said Jawan Suleiman, 32, who has lived at the camp since April.
Mr. Suleiman earns money selling snacks and cigarettes to other camp residents. In his home, a concrete husk with a tented roof, he hangs a placard of Mr. Barzani’s late father, Mullah Mustafa Barzani, a famous Kurdish military and political leader. As Mr. Suleiman drank peach nectar and smoked cigarette after cigarette, he explained that the Kurds were never on the fence in Syria’s uprising.
“We suffered a lot,” he said. “Now it’s time that we stand and have our own region so we can get our rights.”
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The price of Saladin’s victory?
The Syrian military has kept a low profile in Kurdish areas. For now, with the focus on Syria, Kurdish leaders acknowledge the ambition of an independent nation that unites the Kurdish communities in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, but they say they will settle for independence within a united Syria — as an interim step.
In the Middle East, historical grievances are never fully in the past, but only prologue to current circumstances. As some Kurds see it, the historical roots of their oppression stretch back centuries, to the exploits of a Muslim Kurdish warrior named Saladin, the first sultan of Egypt, who achieved victory over European crusaders in the 12th century.
Some Kurds believe that what followed in the 20th century — the denial of a Kurdish state by the allies after World War I, support by the international community for Arab autocrats who shunned Kurds as second-class citizens, policies of forcibly removing Kurds from their lands and resettling Arabs, the gassing of the Kurds by Saddam Hussein — was cosmic retribution for Saladin’s victories.
Mr. Azizi, the professor and politician, said: “The West had been punishing us for what he did. Now I think that punishment is over.”
Duraid Adnan and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Dohuk and Erbil.
This article, headlined “Kurds to Pursue More Autonomy in a Fallen Syria,” was first published in The New York Times.
read more:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49221441/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/?ocid=msnhp
Rebels besiege Syria air base, shoot down jets
September 27, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
ABU AD DUHUR, Syria— The rebels huddled before darkness near the edge of the Syrian Air Force base. They were about 40 men, hiding beside small buildings on the flatlands south of Aleppo.
Each man carried little more than a rifle and several dozen cartridges. They had gathered for an effort that illustrated the lopsided nature of the fight for Syria: Lightly armed men trying to remove Syria’s attack jets from the skies.
Roughly two months into this important yet scarcely documented battle, Syria’s antigovernment fighters have succeeded in laying siege to the heavily fortified Abu ad Duhur Air Base. They have downed at least two of the base’s MIG attack jets. And this month they have realized results few would have thought possible. Having seized ground near the base’s western edge, from where they can fire onto two runways, they have forced the Syrian Air Force to cease flights to and from this place.
“We are facing aircraft and shooting down aircraft with captured weapons,” said Jamal Marouf, a commander credited by the fighters with downing the first MIG-21 here. “With these weapons we are preventing aircraft from landing or taking off.”
This is a significant setback for the government in the northern region, where rebels had already strengthened their position with homemade bombs, making roads too perilous for military vehicles to pass and restricting the military’s movements.
But air power has remained a large advantage for President Bashar al-Assad, whose air force has pounded many cities and towns.
‘Taking revenge’ For the rebels, managing to deny the use of this airfield has undermined the government’s ability to exert its full authority in some parts of the country. It has also improved the morale of fighters who remain severely outgunned.
The rebels’ boldness, and their success, have not been painless. The army units inside the base have tanks, artillery and mortars. When attacked, the soldiers often respond by firing barrages of high-explosive rounds into the nearby town, in what amounts to a tactic of collective punishment against civilians. The effects are evident in the center of town, where block after block of buildings have been shattered. “This is the army, taking revenge,” said another fighter, Abu Razaq
read more:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49190164/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/?ocid=msnhp
NATO Terrorists Bomb School in Syria
September 27, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
As NATO desperately attempts to coverup a botched false flag operation in Benghazi, Libya which left a high ranking US diplomat dead, France has urged a repeat performance in Syria. That is, arming and providing air support for the very terrorist battalions now operating in Syria that have ravaged and overrun Libya, leaving it a perpetually wrecked, destabilized terrorist epicenter.
The announcement made by French President Francois Hollande came on the heels of a deadly terrorist bombing in Damascus targeting a school rebels claim baselessly claim was being used by Syrian security forces. Western propagandists are now calling the school a “security building.” Reuters reported in their article, “Syrian rebels bomb security building in Damascus:”
Protection for “liberated” areas would require no-fly zones enforced by foreign aircraft, which could stop deadly air raids by Assad’s forces on populated areas. But there is little chance of securing a Security Council mandate for such action given the continuing opposition of veto-wielding members Russia and China.
Before quoting Hollande who said:
“How long can we accept the paralysis at the U.N.?”
To answer Mr. Hollande’s question, one might look toward Libya where an identical campaign of violent subversion based on similar lies regarding the “protection of civilians,” was carried out by NATO and proxy terrorist organizations who were in fact listed by the UN itself as affiliates of the notorious global terror network Al Qaeda. The NATO-led, UN mandated evisceration of Libya put power into the hands of genocidal, racist terror battalions who literally scoured entire cities of their inhabitantseither massacring, imprisoning, or exiling them all beyond Libya’s borders.
Image: Libyan Mahdi al-Harati of the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), addressing fellow terrorists in Syria. Harati is now commanding a Libyan brigade operating inside of Syria attempting to destroy the Syrian government and subjugate the Syrian population. Traditionally, this is known as “foreign invasion.”
It should be clear then, to Mr. Hollande, that the UN is not in fact “paralyzed” but that the member nations that constitute the Security Council and the General Assembly are increasingly aware of and opposed to the duplicitous and untenable nature of NATO’s wars of conquest, merely dressed up as humanitarian intervention. As France Pushes for A Libya Repeat, Media & Politicians Desperately Attempt to Rewrite Narrative
As international condemnation grew, recognizing that NATO, led by the US, UK, and France were essentially funding, arming, training, and handing an entire nation over to Al Qaeda affiliates, these terror battalions were directed to attack US diplomatic missions across the Arab World (and here).
One attack in Benghazi, Libya, left the US consulate ablaze, unexpectedly trapping US Ambassador Christopher Stevens who succumbed to smoke inhalation. Despite the attacks, and the subsequent media circus and staged rallies to depict Libya’s client regime as “disbanding” terrorist militias, the fact remains that vast terrorist networks stretching from Libya to Syria are still fully armed, funded, and covertly backed by the very corporate-financier interests that sold the last decade of “War on Terror” to the West.
In addition to a myriad of staged events to portray a divide between the West and its terrorist proxies, there are also sophomoric and desperate attempts throughout the corporate-media to rewrite the Syrian narrative as public awareness grows, and support for Western destabilization under the guise of “humanitarian causes” collapses.
One such attempt was published in the Washington Post in a piece titled, “Among Assad’s opponents, moderation reigns,” where David Pollock of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy attempts to argue that Syria’s “opposition” is overwhelmingly moderate, with sectarian extremists being an exception to the rule, based on a poll conducted by the International Republication Institute.
However, Pollock’s think-tank, the Washington Institute, is in fact a Wall Street pro-war think-tank, lined by notorious warmongering frauds and Neo-Cons including Richard Perle, Max Kampelman, US Ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis, accused war criminal Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and James Woolsey, all signatories of the now infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC), and all signatories of numerous letters calling for war with both Libya and Syria.
The International Republican Institute (IRI) is in fact funded by the US State Department and is chaired by Senator John McCain, who had shaken hands with the very terrorists responsible for the US consulate attack that left Ambassador Stevens dead in Benghazi, Libya. McCain has also traveled to the Turkish-Syrian border to provide these same terrorists with support. The IRI itself had played an instrumental role in engineeringthe allegedly “spontaneous” “Arab Spring,” training and organizing activists years before unrest took to the Arab World’s streets.
Image: Senator John McCain (with the now deceased US Ambassador John Christopher Stevens on the right with blue tie) in the terrorist rat nest of Benghazi after marshaling cash, weapons, and political support for militants tied directly to Al Qaeda. McCain’s insistence that the terrorists he helped arm and install into power were “not Al Qaeda” runs contra to the US Army’s own reports which state that Benghazi’s terror brigades officially merged with Al Qaeda in 2007. McCain’s “Libyan patriots” have now killed US Ambassador Stevens with weapons most likely procured with cash and logistic networks set up by NATO last year, part of a supranational terror campaign that includes violently subverting Syria – a campaign McCain also supports.
Clearly the “poll” which was conducted over “Skype” by IRI with “activists” inside Syria was produced for public perception only to cook up numbers that would allow Pollock, CNN and others to conclude, “all in all, the data show that most Syrian opposition activists are far from being Islamic fanatics or extremists,” as well as “the argument that providing this help might result in trading Assad’s hostile secular dictatorship for a hostile Islamic one does not square with these facts.”
The idea is to maintain the narrative that the US is backing “freedom fighters” not terrorists, and it is an idea perpetuated by the very pro-war advocates behind the Libyan disaster and the Arab World unrest in the first place.
We can expect calls for arming and defending terrorist proxies in Syria to continue while the corporate-media continues its attempt to portray what is literally Al Qaeda operating in Syria with NATO backing as instead, “pro-democracy” “freedom fighters” in desperate need of Western assistance. Conversely, we must continue to expose the corporate-financier narrative as the lies they are, while resolving to undermine the very source of their unwarranted influence which allows them to meddle globally in the first place.
source:http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/nato-terrorists-bomb-school-in-syria.html
Syrian Regime ‘Will Deploy Chemical Weapons As Last Resort’
September 19, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
The Syrian regime plans to deploy chemical weapons against its own people “as a last resort”, the former head of Syria’s chemical arsenal has said in an interview with a British newspaper.
Major-General Adnan Sillu said he defected from the Syrian army three months ago after being party to top-levels talks about the use of chemical weapons on both rebel fighters and civilians.
“We were in a serious discussion about the use of chemical weapons, including how we would use them and in what areas,” he told The Times, referring to a meeting held at Syria’s chemical weapons centre south of Damascus.
“We discussed this as a last resort – such as if the regime lost control of an important area such as Aleppo.”
Speaking from Turkey, General Sillu said he was certain President Bashar al-Assad’s regime would eventually use chemical weapons against civilians, adding that the discussion had been “the last straw” which triggered his defection.
His comments come after German press reported on Tuesday that the Syrian army had tested a chemical weapons delivery system.
In his first interview since his defection, General Sillu said the Syrian regime had also considered supplying chemical weapons to the Lebanon-based militant group Hizbollah.
“They wanted to place warheads with the chemical weapons on missiles – to transfer them this way to Hizbollah. It was for use against Israel, of course,” he said.
He suggested that the regime now had “nothing to lose” in sharing the weapons and added: “If a war starts between Hizbollah and Israel it will be only good for Syria.”
The Liberal Way to Run the World: ‘Improve’ or We’ll Kill You
September 13, 2012 by JJink
Filed under General News
By John Pilger
What is the world’s most powerful and violent ‘ism’? The question will summon the usual demons such as Islamism, now that communism has left the stage. The answer, wrote Harold Pinter, is only ‘superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged’, because only one ideology claims to be non-ideological, neither left nor right, the supreme way. This is liberalism.
In his 1859 essay On Liberty, to which modern liberals pay homage, John Stuart Mill described the power of empire. “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians,” he wrote, “provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end.” The “barbarians” were large sections of humanity of whom “implicit obedience” was required. The French liberal Alexis de Tocqueville also believed in the bloody conquest of others as “a triumph of Christianity and civilization” that was “clearly preordained in the sight of Providence”.
“It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and conservatives the armongers,” wrote the historian Hywel Williams in 2001, “but the imperialism of the liberal way may be more dangerous because of its open-ended nature – its conviction that it represents a superior form of life [while denying its] self-righteous fanaticism.” He had in mind a speech by Tony Blair in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks, in which Blair promised to “reorder this world around us” according to his “moral values”. At least a million dead later – in Iraq alone – this tribune of liberalism is today employed by the tyranny in Kazakhstan for a fee of $13m.
Blair’s crimes are not unusual. Since 1945, more than a third of the membership of the United Nations – 69 countries – have suffered some or all of the following. They have been invaded, their governments overthrown, their popular movements suppressed, their elections subverted and their people bombed. The historian Mark Curtis estimates the death toll in the millions. This has been principally the project of the liberal flame carrier, the United States, whose celebrated “progressive” president John F Kennedy, according to new research, authorized the bombing of Moscow during the Cuban crisis in 1962. “If we have to use force,” said Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state in the liberal administration of Bill Clinton, “it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” How succinctly she defines modern, violent liberalism.
Syria is an enduring project. This is a leaked joint US-UK intelligence file:
“In order to facilitate the action of liberative [sic] forces… a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals [and] to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria. CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main [sic] incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals… a necessary degree of fear… frontier and [staged] border clashes [will] provide a pretext for intervention… the CIA and SIS should use… capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”
That was written in 1957, though it might have come from a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute, A Collision Course for Intervention, whose author says, with witty understatement: “It is highly likely that some western special forces and intelligence sources have been in Syria for a considerable time.” And so a world war beckons in Syria and Iran.
Israel, the violent creation of the west, already occupies part of Syria. This is not news: Israelis take picnics to the Golan Heights and watch a civil war directed by western intelligence from Turkey and bankrolled and armed by the medievalists in Saudi Arabia. Having stolen most of Palestine, attacked Lebanon, starved the people of Gaza and built an illegal nuclear arsenal, Israel is exempt from the current disinformation campaign aimed at installing western clients in Damascus and Tehran.
On 21 July, the Guardian commentator Jonathan Freedland warned that “the west will not stay aloof for long… Both the US and Israel are also anxiously eyeing Syria’s supply of chemical and nuclear weapons, now said to be unlocked and on the move, fearing Assad may choose to go down in a lethal blaze of glory.” Said by whom? The usual “experts” and spooks
read more:http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=19553
