Syria

[LondonLax]

The risk of intervention outweighed the benefit.

 

It doesn't feel right because, well, just look at the **** state of things. But there were dead kids and raped women and beheadings and burnt up carcasses wrapped up in white sheets long before the chemical attacks and a short bombing campaign would've achieved nothing but created an even playing field for further atrocities. 

 

Well the argument in support of an intervention is to try and maintain a small standard of warfare that says chemical weapons should be off the table.

 

The US has not been saying "now you have used chemical weapons this is an excuse to bring you down", if they wanted to bring down Assad they would have done it by now, they don't need to make up an arbitrary excuse. The US (and Israel) would be more worried about jihadist rebel groups taking over than they were of Assad anyway. There is no easy fix either way for them. 

 

The intervention proposed is a slap on the wrists to dissuade future use and discourage the idea that chemical weapons should be a regular battlefield weapon again. 

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

BTW what's the deal with the Ruskis sending warships into the Mediterranean?

[Xann]

Willy waving.

[Swerbs]

To try and deter the American's from doing something I guess

[KHV]

Syria produces $45.7m worth of oil per day.

This is what the action by the US is all about. Invading Syria was always next on the agenda, people were saying this last year. The chemical attacks were orchestrated deliberatley so the excuse for action was created.

[StefanAVFC]

Syria produces $45.7m worth of oil per day.

This is what the action by the US is all about. Invading Syria was always next on the agenda, people were saying this last year. The chemical attacks were orchestrated deliberatley so the excuse for action was created.

 

[peterms]

 

Thank you France. Thank you.

In what way ?

 

 

Thank you France for taking a strong line in support of removing Assad, and here's your reward.

[privateer]

 

John Kerry:  "Very Well, Alone".

 

Funny you posted that picture, I was thinking that it wouldn't hurt for the US to be first in this time and then we can join them a few years down the line, maybe just before the end. In the interim we can build and sell them weapons getting filthy rich in the process...

 

Sounds good. The Ark Royal is already in Turkey, we can lend-lease it to them. It only needs a little attention and a lick of paint and they can have it menacing the ME in a jiffy.

 

One of the unintended consequences of the defeat of the Commons motions seems to be that the so-called "special relationship" is apparently on the rocks. Thank **** for that, it's always been a total piss take. Too many people have kidded themselves that US politicians have any respect for the UK. Total horseshit, they have no respect for anybody else in the world. They may be wary of what trouble certain people/nations might cause but as far as they are concerned the rest of the world is "little people".

 

It has sickened me for years the way lickspittle British politicians have danced to their tune. Acting like some dumb, ditzy bird who regularly gets a late night phone call from the bloke she always spreads them for but he only calls when he's had a couple, hasn't pulled and wants to empty his sack. He's phoned her up wanting some threesome action with a dirty French slut, he gets told to piss off and now it's all "I ain't calling you again, you won't do what I want. Thought we were friends".

 

**** off 'Murica, you bunch of words removed, go causing shit around the world with your new whore. She's as much of a treacherous slag as you are.

 

N.B. Aimed not at the decent citizens of the US, who are actually the vast  majority. Unfortunately, you have been sleepwalked into acquiescence by politicians playing on your fears and the media giving you the soma of Honey Boo Boo and Pawn Stars. The Patriot Act, all-powerful Intelligence Services, a militarised police force who can do what the **** they want, whenever they want, to whoever they want whilst fat little words removed in tiaras and fat big words removed with goatees and tattoos are piped into your lounge to keep you distracted while they do it.

 

Sorry it's gone that way for you guys but the more distance between my country and yours, the happier I am. I have always been pretty strongly (make that very) anti EU but right now I'd rather be looking to ally with bloody Germany than the US.

[Awol]

^ It's just a little flounce. Remember 'freedom fries' and buying French wine to pour down the drains?  Now it's all best buds again - as long as you're doing what Uncle Sam wants. Let's be honest if there was a solid case for this then the UK is generally hawkish enough to get involved, but occasionally, if it's really stupid, we'll pass - Vietnam being a good example. For now this is just one of those times, but if the conflict in Syria does spread further and turn into the anticipated regional war we'll be getting involved sooner or later, if only to keep the gas coming and the lights on at home.

 

But it would be nice for a change not have the world pointing at us and saying "well you started it".

[privateer]

^ Seems like Hobama has tried to balance out Kerry's petulance and we are now their "closest ally" again. I'm not so confident as you that we pass on the really stupid conflicts -after all, we were within a dozen or so votes of getting ourselves into this one. It's suddenly got more interesting now the Hypocrite In Chief has decided to put the vote to Congress. He may well get the walkover he and Cameron thought they were going to get in the Commons but maybe not.

 

This is an interesting report which I hope turns out to be true and gets further verified because it will really put the cat amongst the pigeons. It will leave a lot of people in an uncomfortable place considering their recent strident pronouncements about the unacceptability of CW.

 

http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-saudis-supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135/

 

 

EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack

Rebels and local residents in Ghouta accuse Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan of providing chemical weapons to an al-Qaida linked rebel group.

By Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh | August 29, 2013

 

Clarification: Dale Gavlak assisted in the research and writing process of this article, but was not on the ground in Syria. Reporter Yahya Ababneh, with whom the report was written in collaboration, was the correspondent on the ground in Ghouta who spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents. 

Gavlak is a MintPress News Middle East correspondent who has been freelancing for the AP as a Amman, Jordan correspondent for nearly a decade. This report is not an Associated Press article; rather it is exclusive to MintPress News. 

Ghouta, Syria — As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.

Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.

The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”

However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime’s heartland of Latakia on Syria’s western coast, in purported retaliation.

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.

A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.

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

Doctors who treated the chemical weapons attack victims cautioned interviewers to be careful about asking questions regarding who, exactly, was responsible for the deadly assault.

The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders added that health workers aiding 3,600 patients also reported experiencing similar symptoms, including frothing at the mouth, respiratory distress, convulsions and blurry vision. The group has not been able to independently verify the information.

More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government.

 

Saudi involvement

In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.

Ingersoll referred to an article in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks alleging that Bandar offered Russian President Vladimir Putin cheap oil in exchange for dumping Assad.

“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” Ingersoll wrote.

“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,” Bandar allegedly told the Russians.

“Along with Saudi officials, the U.S. allegedly gave the Saudi intelligence chief the thumbs up to conduct these talks with Russia, which comes as no surprise,” Ingersoll wrote.

“Bandar is American-educated, both military and collegiate, served as a highly influential Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., and the CIA totally loves this guy,” he added.

According to U.K.’s Independent newspaper, it was Prince Bandar’s intelligence agency that first brought allegations of the use of sarin gas by the regime to the attention of Western allies in February.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the CIA realized Saudi Arabia was “serious” about toppling Assad when the Saudi king named Prince Bandar to lead the effort.

“They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn’t: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout,” it said.

Bandar has been advancing Saudi Arabia’s top foreign policy goal, WSJ reported, of defeating Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.

To that aim, Bandar worked Washington to back a program to arm and train rebels out of a planned military base in Jordan.

The newspaper reports that he met with the “uneasy Jordanians about such a base”:

His meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah sometimes ran to eight hours in a single sitting. “The king would joke: ‘Oh, Bandar’s coming again? Let’s clear two days for the meeting,’ ” said a person familiar with the meetings.

Jordan’s financial dependence on Saudi Arabia may have given the Saudis strong leverage. An operations center in Jordan started going online in the summer of 2012, including an airstrip and warehouses for arms. Saudi-procured AK-47s and ammunition arrived, WSJ reported, citing Arab officials.

Although Saudi Arabia has officially maintained that it supported more moderate rebels, the newspaper reported that “funds and arms were being funneled to radicals on the side, simply to counter the influence of rival Islamists backed by Qatar.”

But rebels interviewed said Prince Bandar is referred to as “al-Habib” or ‘the lover’ by al-Qaida militants fighting in Syria.

Peter Oborne, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, has issued a word of caution about Washington’s rush to punish the Assad regime with so-called ‘limited’ strikes not meant to overthrow the Syrian leader but diminish his capacity to use chemical weapons:

Consider this: the only beneficiaries from the atrocity were the rebels, previously losing the war, who now have Britain and America ready to intervene on their side. While there seems to be little doubt that chemical weapons were used, there is doubt about who deployed them.

It is important to remember that Assad has been accused of using poison gas against civilians before. But on that occasion, Carla del Ponte, a U.N. commissioner on Syria, concluded that the rebels, not Assad, were probably responsible.

Some information in this article could not be independently verified. Mint Press News will continue to provide further information and updates . 

Dale Gavlak is a Middle East correspondent for Mint Press News and has reported from Amman, Jordan, writing for the Associated Press, NPR and BBC. An expert in Middle Eastern affairs, Gavlak covers the Levant region, writing on topics including politics, social issues and economic trends. Dale holds a M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Contact Dale at dgavlak@mintpressnews.com

Yahya Ababneh is a Jordanian freelance journalist and is currently working on a master’s degree in journalism,  He has covered events in Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Libya. His stories have appeared on Amman Net, Saraya News, Gerasa News and elsewhere.

 

[AVFCforever1991]

 

Syria produces $45.7m worth of oil per day.

This is what the action by the US is all about. Invading Syria was always next on the agenda, people were saying this last year. The chemical attacks were orchestrated deliberatley so the excuse for action was created.

 

 

 

To be fair, according to General Wesley Clark, this was always the plan to invade Syria . Starting with Iraq as he states in this video.

 

Edited September 1, 2013 by AVFCforever1991

[drat01]

 

 

It has sickened me for years the way lickspittle British politicians have danced to their tune. Acting like some dumb, ditzy bird who regularly gets a late night phone call from the bloke she always spreads them for but he only calls when he's had a couple, hasn't pulled and wants to empty his sack. He's phoned her up wanting some threesome action with a dirty French slut, he gets told to piss off and now it's all "I ain't calling you again, you won't do what I want. Thought we were friends".

......

 

 

You mean like re-writing history here - ala Mr D Cameron

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10719739

[LondonLax]

So the US will follow the lead of the UK and Obama will take discussion to congress before deciding on action. I wonder if the US congressmen will have a similar view to the UK parliament. 

[bickster]

So this government allowed export licences for the sale of potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride (used in making Sarin) to Syria, ten months after the civil war started. It only stopped when the EU clamped down on exports to Syria, 6 months later.

[tonyh29]

And so making weapons is the only thing that Potassium fluoride can be used for ? Or is it used in manufacturing as well per chance

Heck we'd better stop exporting wood and nails as I'm sure I saw the A-Team make weapons out of them once

[bickster]

And so making weapons is the only thing that Potassium fluoride can be used for ? Or is it used in manufacturing as well per chance

Heck we'd better stop exporting wood and nails as I'm sure I saw the A-Team make weapons out of them once

If this was some sort of normal stable country your point may have some validity

[snowychap]

Whilst Cameron may have gone through due process with the commons debate and vote, the stuff supposedly emanating from number 10 and its environs at the moment would suggest that he doesn't 'get it' as much as he claimed he did on Thursday night.

[blandy]

So this government allowed export licences for the sale of potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride (used in making Sarin) to Syria, ten months after the civil war started. It only stopped when the EU clamped down on exports to Syria, 6 months later.

 

 

And so making weapons is the only thing that Potassium fluoride can be used for ? Or is it used in manufacturing as well per chance

Heck we'd better stop exporting wood and nails as I'm sure I saw the A-Team make weapons out of them once

 

 

 

If this was some sort of normal stable country your point may have some validity

 

 

Tony's got more than a non-relevant point. sodium fluoride is used for dental stuff, mostly - toothpaste and flouride in water supplies, as well as medical and cleaning uses. Potassium flouride is used to make anaesthetics, refrigerants, solvents and so on.

 

So in their normal usage they are beneficial, perhaps potassium fluoride less so, as it's environmentally not good stuff.

But yes, they are subject to export control because they, along with other ingredients can be used as precursors for chemical weapons.

 

It looks like the EU and the Gov't here wasn't that sharp on instigating a ban on their export as soon as they might have done. It seems more like bureaucratic cock-up than anything intentionally malign.

[peterms]

Interesting observations from Craig Murray about the source of the claimed intelligence on Syrian communications.

 

 

The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation.  The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6).  Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA.  It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus.  Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.

 

Troodos is highly effective – the jewel in the crown of British intelligence.  Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering.  The US do not have their own comparable facility for the Middle East.  I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s.  This is fact, not speculation.

 

It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee.

 

On one level the explanation is simple.  The intercept evidence was provided to the USA by Mossad, according to my own well  placed source in the Washington intelligence community.  Intelligence provided by a third party is not automatically shared with the UK, and indeed Israel specifies it should not be.

 

But the inescapable question is this.  Mossad have nothing comparable to the Troodos operation.  The reported content of the conversations fits exactly with key tasking for Troodos, and would have tripped all the triggers.  How can Troodos have missed this if Mossad got it?  The only remote possibility is that all the conversations went on a purely landline route, on which Mossad have a physical wire tap, but that is very unlikely in a number of ways - not least nowadays the purely landline route.

 

Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months.  This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children - has brought no condemnation at all from the West.  Israel has now provided “intelligence” to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel’s bombing and missile campaign.

 

The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple.  Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist.  Mossad fabricated them.  John Kerry’s “evidence” is the shabbiest of tricks.  More children may now be blown to pieces by massive American missile blasts.  It is nothing to do with humanitarian intervention.  It is, yet again, the USA acting at the behest of Israel.

 

[peterms]

This is the response from Syria to the statements made recently by the US.

 

 

Damascus, (SANA) – An official source at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said that after days of media exaggeration about what the US administration described as decisive evidence, US Secretary of State John Kerry only produced material based on old stories which were published by terrorists over a week ago and are full of fabrication and lies.

 

The source said that the Ministry is surprised that one of the bigger countries in the world is attempting to deceive its public opinion in such a naïve manner by relying on non-evidence, and that the Ministry denounces the US act of basing its positions on war and peace on what was published on social networking sites, which the Ministry views as a desperate attempt to talk the world into accepting the upcoming US aggression.

 

The source said that the numbers quoted by Kerry are fictional and produced by armed groups in Syria and the opposition abroad, both of whom instigate the US aggression, adding that this scene brings to mind the lies promoted by Colin Powell before the invasion of Iraq.

 

The Source said that Foreign and Expatriates Ministry confirms that all the accusations leveled by Kerry against the Syrian state are lies and devoid for truth for the following reasons:

 

1-Syria has challenged the US to produce one piece of true and logical evidence that it used the alleged chemical weapons, and Kerry relied on fabricated images from the internet, and the alleged call made by a Syrian officer after the alleged attack is too ridiculous to be discussed.

 

2-Syria never impeded or restricted the international investigation committee, on the contrary; as the UN Secretary-General has lauded the Syrian cooperation with the committee in his most recent call with the Foreign and Expatriates Minister on 30/8/2013, asserting that Syria permitted the committee to move exactly as per the agreement signed by the two sides.

 

3-The UN itself said time and again that the traces of using any form of toxic gas do not dissipate over time, and the proof of this is that the UN sent the investigation committee 5 months after the Syrian government requested an investigation of Khan al-Assal incident. Therefore, the Syrian government did not delay the investigation committee's access to the alleged attack site, as this occurred within 48 hours of the arrival of UN envoy Angela Kane to Damascus.

 

4-The Syrian government affirms that Kerry's allegations that the Syrian Army knew about chemical weapons use three days prior to the incident are lies, as proven by the fact that Syria requested the investigation committee to visit al-Baharia area where Syrian Army soldiers were exposed to toxic gas, and the committee met the affected soldiers in the hospital.

 

5-If the aggression on Syria, as Kerry claims, intends to halt the use of chemical weapons, we would like to remind Kerry and the United States that Syria was the first to propose a draft resolution at the Security Council to make the Middle East free of all forms of weapons of mass destruction, and that the United States was the one who prevented the draft resolution from being passed.

 

6-Regrarding Kerry's hints which he made to bypass the Security Council under the pretext that the investigation committee isn't responsible for determining who used chemical weapons and that it's task is only to verify that such weapons were used or not, the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry would like to affirm that the committee's tasks were deiced upon by the Security Council, and that the US had pressured the committee to make its authority this limited, something which Kerry, being State Secretary, certainly knows.

 

The source said that the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry, while appreciating Kerry's concern over the Syrian people's security, affirms that this pretext has become exposed to everyone, and that under the pretext of defending the Syrian people, the US is paving the way for an aggression against this very people, an aggression which will claim hundreds of innocent victims whose blood will be on the hands of the United States and those who join it in this aggression morally, politically or effectively.

 

The source concluded by saying that this unilateral behavior only serves the political interests of the United States, not the interests of its people, and that it throws aside all international law and blatantly violates international legitimacy and the UN charter.

 

Al-Moallem: Syria rejects any incomplete report before UN experts wrap up investigations

 

Syria rejects any incomplete report by the UN General Secretariat before the UN experts wrap up missions and have the results of laboratory tests of gathered samples checked, and conduct investigations at sites where the Syrian soldiers had been exposed to toxic gases, Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign and Expatriates Minister Walid al-Moallem said.

 

Al-Moallem was speaking during phone call on Friday with the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that focused on the work of the UN mission investigating an alleged chemical weapons' use.

 

The UN Secretary-General thanked Syria for its full cooperation with the mission, saying the UN Secretariat is in the process of evaluating the results of mission's work and submitting its findings to international accredited labs.

 

Al-Moallem inquired about the motives behind having the experts withdrawn from Damascus before completing their mission. ''They will return to complete their mission,'' Ki-moon replied.

 

Syria expects the UN Secretary-General to maintain objectivity and rebuff pressure, and play his role in preserving world security and peace, al-Moallem said, adding Syria throws its weight behind his efforts to convene Geneva conference as it considers a political solution an exit route from the current situation.

 

''Any aggression on Syria would wreck efforts for finding a political solution, al-Moallem pointed out.

 

M. Ismael / H. Sabbagh