SYRIA : THE WHITE HELMETS

25.07.2018 Author: Gordon Duff

Trump, Putin and the White Helmets

 

It’s late July, 2018. In the Middle East, 800 men and their families are heading for Western Europe, Canada and the US, to be resettled as refugees. The true story behind their evacuation by Israel and their proposed “resettlement” as heroes is one of the most devious and frightening tales of our time.

Sources also tell us that among the 800 are top ISIS commanders who will soon be living in Germany, Britain, Canada and the United States, doing what terrorist commanders do, organizing cells and murdering innocent civilians, just like they did in Syria and Iraq and just like the White Helmets had done all along.

The White Helmets are an enigmatic group, lauded as volunteers and life savers, servant of mankind, they were organized by Britain’s MI6 as a black propaganda and anti-Assad organization funded by the governments of Britain, the US, Germany and others. They are not an NGO. There is nothing “non-governmental” about them.

Essentially, they are terrorist mercenaries.

With up to 30,000 opposition fighters inside Syria giving up arms and either rejoining Syrian society under the Damascus government in the last 12 months, or for some being resettled and perhaps continuing the fight, the 800-man force known as the White Helmets is unique.

Perhaps this is why they had to be “disemboweled” from Syria though an illegal military incursion that to the trained observer also demonstrates the curious close relationships between ISIS, al Qaeda and the Israeli Defense Forces, almost as if they were one in the same and the White Helmets were simply just another ISIS or al Qaeda organization.

It was the White Helmet’s fabricated stories of gas attacks and “barrel bombings” that drove Donald Trump to calling the elected Syrian leader “animal Assad” and launching multiple strikes on Syrian territory without UN authorization or NATO consensus.

It was the same Trump advisors and the same Donald Trump who now says he believes President Putin that, not so long ago, took the word of perhaps the sleaziest of all CIA terror operations, the White Helmets, a CIA he now says has always misled him, has always been useless, as justification for attacking Syria.

Why then did Trump attack Syria when the information he based his decision on was, by his own admission, “fake news” from his political enemies. Taking it one step further, not just fake but crazy as well, with Syria triumphant on the battle field. Syria had warned the world that the White Helmets were preparing a provocation in order to justify an American defense of ISIS against a Syria more united than ever under President Assad.

That news was everywhere, certainly across the international and alternative media that Trump is known to monitor nearly 20 hours a day on his smart phone. How did he miss it?

Trump and Putin

One thing the world now knows beyond a doubt is that Donald Trump believes Vladimir Putin. But if this is true, which we know it to be, then Trump’s actions regarding the White Helmets are bizarre and even criminal. Let us take a closer look.

On July 18, 2018, President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

They asked that Israel send IDF units well into ISIS and al Qaeda held territory, into Syria, in violation of the 1974 cease fire agreement.

There, the IDF was to, in less than 4 hours, screen 800 adult males claiming to be “White Helmets,” along with their families, load same onto busses and drive them to CIA controlled training camps in Jordan about 50 miles south of the recently liberated Syria city of Daraa.

The planning and execution of this effort, in less than 24 hours, was both incredible and heroic. Israeli forces met absolutely no resistance from ISIS or al Qaeda but were, rather, greeted with full cooperation and open arms.

Let us remember that, only a week ago, American President Donald Trump met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Trump was effusive in his praise of Vladimir Putin, particularly in his trust of Putin and Trump’s belief that Vladimir Putin is an honest man.

This being the case, one can’t help but wonder why President Trump would ask Israel to rescue the White Helmets from the Syrian Arab Army. Moscow has stated for many months that the White Helmets are, in fact, a terrorist organization and has offered proof at both the United Nations and at The Hague backing its assertions.

In fact, the White Helmets, supposedly a civil defense NGO made up of Syrian volunteers, has long been exposed by journalists like Vanessa Beeley, Nahed al Husaini and Carla Ortiz as guilty of the murder of thousands of Syrian civilians through staged gas attacks and bombings.

The White Helmets, lauded by American leftist and Hollywood actor, George Clooney, have been cited in the media, particularly in Russia, Iran and Syria, but other nations as well, as among the most dangerous terrorists in the world.

Why then, as Trump has stated he values Putin’s opinion so much, and this is a case where Putin’s opinion is backed up by significant and irrefutable evidence, has Trump done something so stupid?

You see, it isn’t just that Trump and Trudeau asked Israel to send troops into Syria in violation of UN agreements and Syria’s sovereignty, a war crime in itself, but Trump and to a lesser extent for Trudeau, knowingly asked Israel to aid terrorists who are guilty of crimes against humanity.

It gets worse.

According to the German newspaper, Bild, the White Helmets, 800 so far, will be sent to Germany, Britain, Canada and the US. There is considerable evidence that this is an army of “800 little bin Ladens,” with many trained bomb makers, nearly all jihadists and most minimally need to be adjudicated as to their crimes against the Syrian people.

Additionally, one might well note that no screening process was employed whatsoever. We are certain that Israel simply loaded anyone who showed up onto a bus.

Let’s take a second and picture this. We have 800 families who traveled to an embarkation point deep inside the ISIS enclave in Southern Syria, an enclave shrinking by the minute.

ISIS fighters are all around, flags and guns, many carrying their head chopping swords, others with cameras and phones, recording and uploading events to their YouTube channels and Facebook accounts that are never cancelled no matter what kind of material they post.

Along side them are IDF units, in uniform, armed, standing side by side with ISIS fighters while dozens of busses are driven in from Jordan.

Does anyone find anything wrong about this picture? Do I have something wrong here?

How was this going to be sold to the public when these ISIS terrorists show up at the Toronto or Indianapolis airports and are rushed through customs and into their new lives, paid housing, free medical care for life, government checks in the mail, their children not seized, no danger of deportation and detention.

Does anyone find anything wrong with this picture as well?

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of  Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”

https://journal-neo.org/2018/07/25/trump-putin-and-the-white-helmets/

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Swedish Medical Associations Say White Helmets Murdered Kids for Fake Gas Attack Videos

By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor
Veterans Today

When will the war guilt of Nazi Germany come home to roost in America?

Introduction by Gordon Duff

President Trump is now threatening to take America into a war against Syria, Iran and even Russia, a war he says is justified by “evidence” he has received from the Syrian White Helmets.  We will prove beyond any doubt that this is a “Deep State” organization, a melding of CIA, al Qaeda and Britain’s intelligence services.  We now have “slam dunk” proof that Trump and the “fake news” MSM are and always have been in lockstep, playing us all.

* * *
Actor George Clooney knew that the organization Swedish Doctors for Human Rights had cited the “White Helmets” as child killers when he  produced the Oscar winning propaganda video that may well have led to this latest outrage.  The organization, SWEDHR is very real, their work authoritative and their indictment of the White Helmets for killing children in order to stage propaganda videos would have been known to Clooney and Netflix.  They went ahead anyway.  Why?

George Clooney: Accused by Swedish medical group of promoting child murder videos

Moreover, Google itself is involved, at war with this group and others, censoring them from their search engines.  The information here will be new to Americans.  
Please note that at no time has the White House or any western media acknowledged the controversy regarding the White Helmets, which we allege is part of al Qaeda’s propaganda operations.  Nor is any mention of the dozens of proven gas attacks by FSA, ISIS and al Nusra which are suddenly “forgotten” as though by magic.
The White Helmets, supposedly an independent NGO, receives up to $100m from the CIA and UK Foreign Office, “dark project” funding.  Murdering children is their stock and trade as we will prove.  Sharing headquarters with Turkish Intelligence in Gaziantep, Turkey this organization is far more “death squad” than civil defense.  Please review the included videos.
____________

Children Murdered for Propaganda Videos

Swedish Doctors For Human Rights (swedhr.org) analysed videos, the rescue after an alleged attack by Syrian government forces. The doctors found that the videos were counterfeit, where even Arabic stage directions were overheard, and that the alleged “Rescue” in actuality is a murder. On first analysis, it looked as though the doctors working on the child assumed he was already dead.
However, after broader investigation, our team ascertained that the boy was unconscious from an overdose of opiates.  The video shows the child receiving injections in his chest, perhaps in the area of the heart and was eventually killed while a clearly fake adrenaline injection was administered.
This was a murder.

 

The doctors determined in its analysis:
• The video should be life-saving measures after a chemical attack with chlorine gas (now claimed to be Sarin-not possible), including injection of adrenaline via syringe with a long needle into the heart of an infant. In no way were treatments correctly given for any potential chemical agent.
• The handling and treatment of the child was done in a manner that was careless, dangerous and likely to cause serious harm.
• Most telling is the fake repeated shots of adrenalin, supposedly into the heart.  The medical personnel, and I think we can safely call them actors at this point, failed to push the plunger on the needle. Thus, the contents of the syringe were never injected as is clearly visible in the video itself.
• The visible diagnosis by a team of actual medical experts, based on what is observed in the video, indicates that the child was suffering from an injection of opiates and was likely dying of an overdose.  There is no evidence of any other agent, chemical or otherwise.
• None of the children in the videos showed any sign of being a victim of a chemical attack.  From an earlier video by the White Helmets:
• It was clear that the faked injection with the long needle administered through the stitches murdered the child in the video.  This was a purposeful killing staged to appear as medical treatment.
• Behind the fake translation of the videos, the actual Arabic included stage directions for positioning the child for the video, not for medical treatment.
• The videos were on the White Helmets-channel “Syrian civil defense in idlib province” uploaded. The videos were produced by the White Helmets, together with the organization “coordinating sarmin”, their logo a black jihadist flag (Al Qaeda). In the video are also white helmets to see.


 

The Chairman of the association, Professor Prof. Marcello fer rada de Noli, published at the beginning of March 2017 a first article with an analysis of the case: “Swedish Doctors for Human Rights: White Helmets video, macabre manipulation of dead children and staged chemical weapons attack to justify a” No-fly Zone “in Syria”.

This was followed by more macabre discoveries in the videos not seen initially in the article White Helmets Movie: Updated Evidence from Swedish Doctors Confirm Fake Life Saving Practices Injure Children.
The collective findings of the Swedish doctors (swedhr) with regard to the propaganda and fakery by al-Qaeda in Syria: (Al Nusra) are in line with the findings of leading German and International Scientists for Syria War.

---

Ferrada de Noli is the founder and chairman of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR),^[36] a non governmental research organization integrated by a group of professors and doctors operating in health-related areas, aimed to the research and report of effects of war atrocities in civil populations, torture of prisoners and human rights transgressions.
The organization implements its endeavour in the following areas: country-scenarios were civil populations have been targeted by war crimes, transgressions by the part of governments on the human rights of individuals exposing war crimes, individual cases of doctors subjected to human rights violations, and research on the effects of torture in prisoners. See further description in the organization’s Manifest.^[37]
The first elected board of SWEDHR was composed by Leif Elinder, Marcello Ferrada de Noli (Chairman), Martin Gelin, Alberto Gutierrez, Ove B. Johansson, Lena Oske, Armando Popa, Anders Romelsjö (Vice-Chairman), Marita Troye-Blomberg, and Luz Varela.^[38] In 2015 Ferrada de Noli founded with a group of European academics and publishers the magazine online The Indicter, being elected editor-in-chief.^[39]

Swedish Professors & Doctors For Human Rights (SWEDHR) is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization engaged in the research and reporting on the effects of war-crimes, torture and human-rights transgressions on civilian populations or on individuals.
Additionally, we oppose governmental assaults on the human rights of individuals who have denounced war crimes or exposed serious infringements to the civil liberties of the population. Unlike other established Swedish human-rights organizations, Swedish Doctors For Human Rights is not sponsored neither fully nor partially financed by Swedish governmental institutions.
SWEDHR is a team formed with the participation of a number of Swedish professors, PhDs, medical doctors and university researchers in the medical sciences and health-related disciplines. This participation is purely voluntary and made on a private basis.

SWEDHR statements represent solely the members of this organization, not all Swedish doctors or any other institution or professional/academic association that the participants in SWEDHR are associated with. SWEDHR follows both the United Nations doctrine on Human Rights and ethical norms according to the World Medical Association’s Ethical Declaration of Helsinki. Read on our organization’s aims and rationale for its foundation at Swedhr’s Manifest.
At difference with other organizations of this type in Sweden, SWEDHR a) do not administrate funds of any kind, b) it does not hold neither asks economic sponsoring from any governmental, corporative or private institution; c) it does not collect fees (meddlemsavgift) from its supporters; d) it does not campaign on economic-related issues associated with our HR endeavours. We also believe that abstaining from the aforementioned possibility of external contributions is one way of maintaining absolute independence and credibility regarding unbiased reporting of HR issues.
SWEDHR is open for the altruistic participation of any interested doctor sharing the aforementioned research interests. Membership forms (full member or associate member) are described in our Bylaws. For questions, comments, or if you wish to contribute in our publications online, contact: info@swedhr.org
___ http://www.veteranstoday.com/2017/04/06/swedish-medical-associations-says-white-helmets-murdered-kids-for-fake-gas-attack-videos/
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STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI-Neocons, Israel, and the fragmentation of Syria

The Yinon thesis vindicated

Neocons, Israel, and the fragmentation of Syria

By STEPHEN J. SNIEGOSKI

It is widely realized now that the fall of President Bashar Assad's regime would leave Syria riven by bitter ethnic, religious, and ideological conflict that could splinter the country into smaller enclaves. Already there has been a demographic shift in that direction, as both Sunnis and Alawites flee the most dangerous parts of the county, seeking refuge within their own particular communities. Furthermore, it is widely believed in Syria that, as the entire country becomes too difficult to secure, the Assad regime will retreat to an Alawite redoubt in the northern coastal region as a fallback position. (See "Breakaway Alawite state may be Assad's last resort," by Zeina Karam, Associated Press, posted at The Daily Herald, July 26, 2012.)

Syrian Kurds, about 10 percent of the country's population, are also interested in gaining autonomy or joining with a larger Kurdistan. The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD) — linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has engaged in a separatist insurgency in Turkey's Kurdish southeast region for nearly three decades — has gained control of key areas in northeast Syria. While Turkey has supported the Syrian opposition, it is terrified of a Kurdish autonomous zone in Syria, believing that it could provide a safe haven for staging attacks into Turkey. Moreover, Kurdish autonomy would encourage separatist sentiment within the Turkish Kurdish minority. Turkey has threatened to invade the border areas of Syria to counter such a development and has sent forces including armor to its border with the Syrian Kurdish region. A Turkish invasion would further complicate the fracturing of Syria.

What has not been widely discussed in reference to the break-up of Syria is that the Israeli and global Zionist Right have long sought the fragmentation of Israel's enemies in order to weaken them and thus enhance Israel's primacy in the Middle East. While elements of that geostrategic view can be traced back to even before the creation of the modern state of Israel, the concept of destabilizing and fragmenting enemies seems to have been first articulated as an overall Israeli strategy by Oded Yinon in his 1982 piece, "A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties" (translated by Israel Shahak). Yinon had been attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and his article undoubtedly reflected high-level thinking in the Israeli military and intelligence establishment in the years of Likudnik Menachem Begin's leadership.

In his article, Yinon called for Israel to use military means to bring about the dissolution of Israel's neighboring states and their fragmentation into a mosaic of homogenous ethnic and sectarian groupings. Yinon believed that it would not be difficult to achieve that result because nearly all the Arab states were afflicted with internal ethnic and religious divisions, and were held together only by force. In essence, the end result would be a Middle East of powerless mini-statelets unable to confront Israeli power. Lebanon, then facing divisive chaos, was Yinon's model for the entire Middle East. He wrote:

Lebanon's total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short-term target.

The eminent Middle East historian Bernard Lewis, who is a Zionist of a rightist hue and one of the foremost intellectual gurus for the neoconservatives, echoed Yinon in an article in the September 1992 issue of Foreign Affairs titled "Rethinking the Middle East." He wrote of a development he called "Lebanonization":

[A] possibility, which could even be precipitated by [Islamic] fundamentalism, is what has of late been fashionable to call "Lebanonization." Most of the states of the Middle East — Egypt is an obvious exception — are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common identity.... The state then disintegrates — as happened in Lebanon — into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions, and parties.

Lewis, who is credited with coining the phrase "clash of civilizations," has been a major advocate of a belligerent stance for the West against the Islamic states, and it appears he realized that such fragmentation would result from his belligerent policy.
 

In 1996, the neoconservatives presented to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu their study "A Clean Break" (produced under the auspices of an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies), which described how Israel could enhance its regional security by toppling enemy regimes. Although that work did not explicitly focus on the fragmentation of states, such was implied in regard to Syria when it stated that "Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions." It added that "Damascus fears that the 'natural axis' with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity."

David Wurmser authored a much longer follow-up document to "A Clean Break" for the same Israeli think tank, titled "Coping with Crumbling States: A Western and Israeli Balance of Power Strategy for the Levant." In that work, Wurmser emphasized the fragile nature of the Middle Eastern Baathist dictatorships in Iraq and Syria, in line with Lewis's thesis, and how the West and Israel should act in such an environment.

In contrast to some of the Western democracies as well as Arab states, Israel did not publicly call for Assad's removal until a few months ago. That, however, does not mean that the Netanyahu government did not support that outcome. The tardiness has a number of likely reasons, one of which being the fear that an Islamist government would replace Assad that would be even more hostile to Israel and more prone than he to launch reckless attacks. Moreover, instability in a country on Israel's border is of tremendous concern to its security establishment. It fears that with Syria in such chaos, Assad's massive chemical weapons arsenal and advanced surface-to-air missile systems could end up in the hands of terrorist groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, which would not hesitate to use them against Israel. (See "Netanyahu and Syria," Brookings Institution, March 1, 2012.)

Unlike the armchair destabilization strategists and the neocons, the actual Israeli leaders, including hard-line Likudniks such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, have to be concerned about facing the immediate negative political consequences of their decisions even if they believe that the long-term benefits would accrue to their country. That invariably leads to the exercise of caution in regard to dramatic change. Thus, the concern about the immediate security risks cited above likely had a significant effect on their decision-making.

Furthermore, it could have been counterproductive for Israel to express support for the Syrian opposition in its early stages. Assad has repeatedly maintained that the opposition is orchestrated by foreign powers, using that argument to justify his brutal crackdown. Since Israel is hated by virtually all elements in the Middle East, its open support of the opposition could have turned many Syrians, and much of the overall Arab world, against the uprising. While Israel did not openly support the armed resistance, reliable sources have claimed that Israeli intelligence has been providing some degree of covert support along with other Western intelligence agencies, including that of the United States.

Since May of this year, however, the Israeli government has become open in its support for the overthrow of the Assad regime. In June, Netanyahu condemned the ongoing massacre of Syrian civilians by Assad, blaming the violence on an "Axis of Evil" consisting of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. "Iran and Hezbollah are an inseparable part of the Syrian atrocities, and the world needs to act against them," he proclaimed. The inclusion of Iran and Hezbollah illustrates Israel's goal of using the Syrian humanitarian issue to advance its own national interest.
 

If the Assad regime were to fall, Israel would certainly be more secure, with a splintered congeries of small statelets instead of a unified Syria under an anti-Israel Islamist regime. Consequently, staunch neoconservative Harold Rhode presents the fragmentation scenario in a positive light in his article, "Will Syria Remain a Unified State?" (July 10, 2012). In contrast to the conventional Western narrative of the uprising against the Assad regime, which presents a heroic Sunni resistance being brutally terrorized by government forces and pro-government Alawite militias, Rhode writes with sympathy for the pro-government non-Sunni Syrian minorities:

In short, what stands behind most of the violence in Syria is the rise of Arab Sunni fundamentalism in its various forms — whether Salafi, Wahhabi, or Muslim Brotherhood. All of those threaten the very existence of the Alawites, the Kurds, and other members of the non-Sunni ethnic and religious groups.It is therefore much easier to understand why the ruling Alawites feel they are fighting a life and death battle with the Sunnis, and why they believe they must spare no effort to survive. It also explains why most of Syria's other minorities — such as the Druze, Ismailis, and Christians — still largely support the Assad regime.

The neoconservative background of Harold Rhode is of considerable relevance, providing further evidence for the much-denied neocon support for the fragmentation of Israel's enemies. (The mainstream view is that the neocons are naive idealists whose plans to transform dictatorships into model democracies invariably go awry.) Rhode, a longtime Pentagon official who was a specialist on the Middle East, was closely associated with neocon stalwarts Michael Ledeen, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle. He was also a protégé of Bernard Lewis; Lewis dedicated his 2003 book, The Crisis of Islam, to Rhode.

Rhode served as a Middle East specialist for Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy during the administration of George W. Bush, and was closely involved with the Office of Special Plans, which provided spurious propaganda to promote support for the war on Iraq. He participated in the Larry Franklin affair, which involved dealings with Israeli agents, though Rhode was not charged with any crime. Alan Weisman, biographer of Richard Perle, describes Rhode as an "ardent Zionist" (Prince of Darkness: Richard Perle, p. 146) and more pro-Israel than Perle, which takes some doing since the latter has been accused of handing classified material to the Israelis. Rhode is currently a fellow with the ultra-Zionist Gatestone Institute, for which he wrote the above article.

Obviously the very removal of the Assad regime would be a blow against Israel's major enemy, Iran, since Syria is Iran's major ally. Significantly, Assad's Syria has provided a conduit for arms and assistance from Iran to Hezbollah and, to a lesser extent, Hamas, to use against Israel. If Israel and Iran had gone to war, those arms would have posed a significant threat to the Israeli populace. Moreover, a defanged Hezbollah would not be able to oppose Israeli military incursions into south Lebanon or even Syria.

A fragmented Syria removes the possible negative ramifications of Assad's removal since it would mean that even if the Islamists should replace Assad in Damascus they would have only a rump Syrian state to control, leaving them too weak to do much damage to Israel and forcing them to focus their attention on the hostile statelets bordering them. Moreover, Israel is purported to be contemplating military action to prevent Assad's chemical weapons from falling into the hands of anti-Israel terrorists. With such a divided country there would be no powerful army capable of standing up to an Israeli military incursion.

The benefits accruing to Israel from the downfall of the Assad regime and the concomitant sectarian fragmentation and conflict in Syria go beyond the Levant to include the entire Middle East region. For sectarian violence in Syria is likely to cause an intensification of the warfare between Sunnis and Shiites throughout the entire Middle East. Iran might retaliate against Saudi Arabia's and Qatar's support for the Syrian opposition by fanning the flames of Shiite Muslim revolution in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia's oil-rich and majority Shiite Eastern Province. Both areas have witnessed intermittent periods of violent protest and brutal government suppression since the Arab Spring of 2011. And Iraq remains a tinderbox ready to explode into ethno-sectarian war among Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, with violence already on an uptick since the formal departure of American troops in December 2011.
 

Assessing the current regional situation, American-born Barry Rubin, professor at the Interdisciplinary Center (Herzliya, Israel) and director of its Global Research in International Affairs Center, writes in the Jerusalem Post: "The more I think about Israel's security situation at this moment, the better it looks." He goes on to state: "By reentering a period of instability and continuing conflict within each country, the Arabic-speaking world is committing a self-induced setback. Internal battles will disrupt Arab armies and economies, reducing their ability to fight against Israel. Indeed, nothing could be more likely to handicap development than Islamist policies." ("The Region: Israel is in good shape," July 15, 2012)

It should be noted that the "period of instability and continuing conflict" in the Middle East region has been the result of regime change and is in line with the thinking of Oded Yinon who, along with the other aforementioned geostrategic thinkers, pointed out that the major countries of the Middle East were inherently fissiparous and only held together by authoritarian regimes.

America's removal of Saddam in a war spearheaded by the pro-Israel neoconservatives intensified Sunni-Shiite regional hostility and, in a sense, got the destabilization ball rolling. Iran is targeted now, and Israel its neocon supporters seek to make use of dissatisfied internal elements, political and ethnic — the radical MEK, democratic secularists, monarchists, Kurds, Arabs, Baluchis, and Azeris — to bring down the Islamic regime. And while Saudi Arabia is currently serving Israeli interests by opposing Iran, should the Islamic Republic of Iran fall, Israel and its supporters would likely turn to Saudi Arabia's dismemberment, seeking to sever the oil-rich Eastern Province that the Iranians are inflaming. Some neocons have already suggested that very thing — Max Singer, Richard Perle, and David Frum, for example. But such schemes have been put on ice while Israel and its supporters have focused on Iran.

If everything went according to plan, the end result would be a Middle East composed of disunited states, or mini-states, involved in intractable, internecine conflict, which would make it impossible for them to confront Israeli power and to provide any challenge to Israel's control of Palestine. The essence of Yinon's geostrategic vision of Israeli! 
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/

Monday 17 September 2012

Robert Fisk: Al-Qa'ida cashes in as the scorpion gets in among the good guys

A Damascus friend of mine called this weekend and was pretty chipper. "You know, we're all sorry about Christopher Stevens. This kind of thing is terrible and he was a good friend to Syria – he understood the Arabs." I let him get away with this, though I knew what was coming. "But we have an expression in Syria: 'If you feed a scorpion, it will bite you'." His message couldn't have been clearer.
The United States supported the opposition against Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, helped Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour cash and weapons to the militias and had now reaped the whirlwind. America's Libyan "friends" had turned against them, murdered US ambassador Stevens and his colleagues in Benghazi and started an al-Qa'ida-led anti-American protest movement that had consumed the Muslim world.

The US had fed the al-Qa'ida scorpion and now it had bitten America. And so Washington now supports the opposition against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was helping Saudi Arabia and Qatar pour cash and weapons to the militias (including Salafists and al-Qa'ida) and would, inevitably, be bitten by the same "scorpion" if Assad was overthrown.

My friend's sermon was not quite in line with Syrian government policy. Assad's argument is that Syria is not Libya, and that Syrians, with their history, culture, love of Arabism, etc, did not want a revolution. But the Arab fury at Hollywood's obscene little anti-prophet video has occasioned almost as much rewriting of history in the West.

The US media has already invented a new story in which America supported the Arab Spring saved the city of Benghazi when its people were about to be destroyed by Gaddafi's monstrous thugs – and has now been stabbed in the back by those treacherous Arabs in the very city rescued by the US.

The real narrative, however, is different. Washington propped up and armed Arab dictatorships for decades, Saddam being one of our favourites. We loved Mubarak of Egypt, we adored Ben Ali of Tunisia, we are still passionately in love with the autocratic Gulf states, the gas stations now bankrolling the revolutions we choose to support – and we did, for at least two decades, smile upon Hafez al-Assad; even, briefly, his son Bashar.

So we saved Benghazi with our air power and expected the Arab world to love us. We ignored the composition of the Libyan militias we supported – just as Clinton and Hague don't dwell on the make-up of the Free Syrian Army today. We pay no attention to Assad's warnings of "foreign fighters", just as we largely ignored the Salafists who were moving among the brave men who fought Gaddafi.

Go back further, and we did pretty much the same in Afghanistan after 1980. We backed the mujahedin against the Soviets without paying attention to their theology and we used Pakistan to funnel weapons to these men. And when some of them transmogrified into the Taliban and nurtured Osama bin Laden and the scorpion bit on 9/11, we cried "terrorism" and wondered why the Afghans "betrayed" us. Same story yesterday, when four US Special Forces were murdered by their ungrateful Afghan police "trainees".

The tragedy of this pathetic cycle of events is that the Assad regime is horrible and its secret police thugs have tortured and murdered thousands of innocents, its personnel have committed war crimes and Syria's civil war is consuming a generation who should be building a nation rather than destroying it. And Turkey has now taken on Pakistan's role as an arms funnel and rest-and-recreation centre for Syria's mujahedin. Will Turkey turn out to be the Pakistan of the Middle East?

Syria's war is now taking on the carapace of Lebanon's 1975-90 conflict: sympathise with Palestinians and you were anti-Christian – express Christian fears and you were pro-Israeli. In Syria, the government's brutal snipers are killers of children. On the other side of the front line, the Free Syrian Army sniper is romantic; he gets married to a frontline nurse, only too sorry the family can't attend their nuptials. The mere suggestion that the opposition might be committing the occasional atrocity, and a reporter is asked – as I was – how much he is being paid by the Syrian mukhabarat intelligence service.

So over to the Department of Home Truths. When he was murdered, Osama bin Laden was a has-been. No Arab revolutionary carried his picture. But this wretched organisation has now decided to cash in. Hence this weekend's al-Qa'ida call to Egyptians to continue their protests against the anti-Muslim video. Hence Benghazi. The scorpion has got in among the good guys. All you need then is a Hollywood crackpot. And a bit of hypocrisy. For Washington reluctantly says it can't ban the video since this would endanger free speech – the same free speech which America's dictators forbad their Arab people for so many decades. 

Sunday 2 September 2012

Robert Fisk: Syria's road from jihad to prison

For the first time, a Western journalist has been granted access to Assad's military prisoners

They came into the room one by one, heads bowed, wrists crossed in front of them as if they were used to wearing handcuffs. In one of Syria's most feared military prisons, they told their extraordinary story of helping the armed opponents of Bashar al-Assad's regime. One was French-Algerian, a small, stooped man in his forties with a long beard; another Turkish, with what looked like a black eye, who spoke of his training at a Taliban camp on the Afghan-Pakistan border. A Syrian prisoner described helping two suicide bombers set off a bloody explosion in central Damascus, while a mufti spoke of his vain efforts to unite the warring factions against the Syrian government.
Given the unprecedented nature of our access to the high-security Syrian prison, our meetings with the four men – their jailers had other inmates for us to interview – were a chilling, sobering experience. Two gave unmistakable hints of brutal treatment after their first arrest. It took 10 minutes to persuade the prison's military governor – a grey-haired, middle-aged general in military fatigues – and his shirt-sleeved intelligence officer to leave the room during our conversations. Incredibly, they abandoned their office so that we could speak alone to their captives. We refused later requests by the Syrian authorities for access to our tapes of the interviews.

Two of the men spoke of their recruitment by Islamist preachers, another of how Arab satellite channels had persuaded him to travel to Syria to make jihad. These were stories that the Syrian authorities obviously wanted us to hear, but the prisoners – who must have given their interrogators the same accounts – were clearly anxious to talk to us, if only to meet Westerners and alert us to their presence after months in captivity. The French-Algerian wolfed down a box of chicken and chips we gave him. One of the Syrians admitted he was kept in constant solitary confinement. We promised all four that we would give their names and details to the International Red Cross.

Mohamed Amin Ali al-Abdullah was a 26-year-old fourth-year medical student from the northern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour. The son of a "simple" farming family in Latakia, he sat in the governor's brown leather chair in a neat striped blue shirt and trousers – given to him, he said, by the authorities – and told us he had encountered "psychological problems" in his second year. He twice broke down in tears while he spoke. He said he had followed medical advice as a student but also accepted psychological help from a "sheikh" who suggested he read specific texts from the Koran.

"This was a kind of entrance to my personality and from time to time the second man gave me disks about the Salafist cause, mostly of speeches by Saudi sheikhs such as Ibn Baz and Ibn Ottaimin. Later, he gave me videos that rejected all other sects in Islam, attacking the Sufis, attacking the Shia." The "sheikh" was imprisoned for a year but later joined Mohamed as a roommate in Damascus. "Then he used to show me videos of operations by jihadi people against Nato and the Americans in Afghanistan."

When the uprising began in Syria last year, Mohamed said, he was advised by the "sheikh" and two other men to participate in anti-regime demonstrations. "When Friday prayers were over, one of us would stand in the middle, among the crowd, to shout about injustice and the bad situation; the other four would go to the corners and shout 'Allahu Akbar' [God is great] to encourage the crowd to do the same."

Around this time, Mohamed said, he was introduced to a Salafist called "Al-Hajer" who asked him to help in his movement's "medical and logistic support – to hide men wanted by the authorities and to find safe houses". Al-Hajer began frequenting Mohamed's home, "and he offered me a kind of allegiance, where you shake hands with this man and tell him that you acknowledge him as a leader whom you will obey, and will follow jihad and will not question him". Al-Hajer brought strangers to Mohamed's home.

"They took me into their circle. I left my mind 'outside' at this period and then I recognised that this group was al-Qa'ida. On 10 April this year, one of these people asked me to go with him in a car. I went to a place where I saw cylinders 2.5m high, with cases to fill them up with explosives. There were about 10 people there. I don't know why they asked me there – maybe to drag me into involvement. There was a Palestinian and a Jordanian who were to be suicide bombers and three Iraqi citizens. We left in a car in front of the two bombers. I don't know where they were going to bomb, but 15 minutes after I arrived back home, I heard the explosion and two minutes later there was a much stronger explosion. The catastrophe came for me when I watched the television and saw the bomb had gone off in a crowded street in the Bazzaz district; there were houses crushed in the bombings and all the inhabitants [targeted] were middle class and poor people. I was so sorry."

Later, one of the Salafists asked Mohamed to visit his mother in hospital – because he was a doctor and the Salafist would be recognised – but the Syrian Mukhabarat intelligence service was waiting for him. "I said very frankly to them: 'I am happy to be arrested – better than to get involved in such a group or have a role in wasting more blood.' I don't know how I got involved with these people. I put myself in a kind of 'recycle bin'. Now I want to write a book and tell people what happened to me so that they should not do as I did. But I have not been given pencil and paper."

Mohamed saw his father, a schoolteacher, his mother and a sister two months ago. Was he mistreated, we asked him. "Just one day," he said. "It was not torture." We asked why there were two dark marks on one of his wrists. "I slipped in the toilet," he said.

Jamel Amer al-Khodoud, an Algerian whose wife and children live in Marseille and who served in the French army in the 1st Transport Regiment, was a more subdued man, his 48 years and his rather pathetic tale of a search for jihad – encouraged by al-Jazeera's coverage of Muslim suffering in Syria, he said – leaving him a somewhat disillusioned man. Born in Blida, he had emigrated to France, but though a fluent French speaker, he found only a life of odd jobs and unemployment, until, "after a long hesitation, I decided to go to Turkey and help the Syrian refugees".

He was, he said, a "moderate Salafist", but in the Turkish refugee camps had met a Libyan sheikh, many Tunisians and a Yemeni imam "who gave me lessons in jihad". He crossed the Syrian border with a shotgun, and with other men had attacked military checkpoints and slept rough in abandoned houses and a mosque in the mountains above Latakia. Trained on French weapons, he had never before fired a Kalashnikov – he was allowed to fire three bullets at a stone for target practice, he said – but after several miserable weeks of discovering that a jihad in Syria was not for him, he resolved to walk back to Turkey and return to France. "What I saw on television I didn't see in Syria."

Captured by suspicious villagers, he was taken to a city (probably Aleppo) and then by helicopter to Damascus. Why didn't he choose Palestine rather than Syria for his jihad, we asked. "A Palestinian friend told me his people needed money more than men," he replied. "Besides, that is a difficult border to cross." When I asked him if he had been treated badly in captivity, he replied: "Thank God, I am well." To the same question, he repeated the same answer.

A Syrian imam – of the Khadija al-Khobra mosque in Damascus – with a lean, dark face, told us of his meetings this year with four Syrian "militant groups" in the city which had different nationalist and religious aims, of how he tried to unite them, but discovered that they were thieves, killers and rapists rather than jihadis. Or so Sheikh Ahmed Ghalibo said. Sprinkling the names of these men throughout his conversation, the sheikh said he had been appalled at how the groups had liquidated all who disagreed with them, merely on suspicion, "cutting the bodies up, decapitating them and throwing them in sewage". He said he had witnessed seven such murders; indeed, the disposal of corpses in sewage has been a common occurrence in Damascus.

Knowing that he was a mufti at the al-Khobra mosque and apparently aware that he had met the four extremist leaders, the Syrian security police arrested Ahmed Ghalibo on 15 April this year. He told us he had made a full confession because "these militants are not a 'Free Army'", insisted he had received "very good treatment" from his interrogators, condemned the Emir of Qatar for stirring revolution in Syria, and said he believed he would be released "because I have repented".

Cuma Öztürk comes from the south-eastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, and crossed into Syria after months of training, he said, in a Taliban camp on the Afghan-Pakistan border. He could not speak Pashtu – or Arabic – but had left behind his pregnant wife Mayuda and their three-year old daughter in Gaziantep to travel to Damascus. He spoke only vaguely of jihad but said he had been asked to set up a "smuggling" trail from Turkey to the Syrian capital which would also involve moving men across the border. He was arrested when he visited Aleppo for his mother-in-law's funeral. "I regret all that happened to me," he said mournfully; he was receiving good treatment "now". He asked us to let the Turkish authorities know of his presence in the prison.

When our four and a half hours of interviews were over, we appealed to the Syrian prison governor to give his inmates greater access to their families, a request which his tired smile suggested might be outside his remit. We also asked for a pen and paper for Mohamed al-Abdullah and we spoke – however fruitlessly – of the need for international law to be applied to those in the prison. The inmates shook hands with the governor in friendly fashion, although I noticed that little love seemed lost between them and the shirt-sleeved intelligence man. Each prisoner returned to his cell as he had arrived at the governor's office – with his head bowed and his eyes on the floor.

John Pilger-Convenient Myths And Liberal Imperialism

Convenient Myths And Liberal Imperialism

By John Pilger on September 8, 2012

By John Pilger – Information Clearing House  Sept 5, 2012

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 Mills 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 pre-ordained in the sight of Providence.”

“It’s a nice and convenient myth that liberals are the peacemakers and conservatives the warmongers,” 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 $13 million.

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 bemade 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 demain [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 west’s violent creation, already occupies part of Syria. This is not news. Israelis take picnics to the Golan Heights to 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, viciously 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.

Like them, Freedland desires “a revolution without the full-blown intervention required in Libya.” According to its own records, NATO launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were civilian targets. These included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. Read the UICEF report on the children killed, “most [of them] under the age of ten.” Like the destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, these crimes were not news, because news as disinformation is a fully integrated weapon of attack.

On 14 July, the Libyan Observatory for Human Rights, which opposed the Gaddafi regime, reported, “The human rights situation in Libya now is far worse than under Gaddafi.” Ethnic cleansing is rife. According to Amnesty, the entire population of the town of Tawargha “are still barred from returning [while] their homes have been looted and burned down.”

In Anglo-American scholarship, influential theorists known as “liberal realists” have long taught that liberal imperialists – a term they never use – are the world’s peacebrokers and crisis managers, rather than the cause of a crisis. They have taken the humanity out of the study of nations and congealed it with a jargon that serves warmongering power. Laying out whole nations for autopsy, they have identified “failed states” (nations difficult to exploit) and “rogue states” (nations resistant to western dominance).

Whether or not the regime is a democracy or dictatorship is irrelevant. The same is true of those contracted to do the dirty work. In the Middle East, from Nasser’s time to Syria today, western liberalism’s collaborators have been Islamists, lately al-Qaeda, while long discredited notions of democracy and human rights serve as rhetorical cover for conquest, “as required.” Plus ca change…

John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism’s top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. “John Pilger,” wrote Harold Pinter, “unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him.” www.johnpilger.com

The Real Reason for America's War on Syria

CONFRONTING IRAN, "PROTECTING ISRAEL": The Real Reason for America's War on Syria By Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, June 8, 2012

Secretary of  State Hillary Clinton is calling for an R2P humanitarian military intervention in Syria to curb the atrocities allegedly ordered by the government of president Bashar Al Assad. In a twisted logic, Clinton recognizes that while "opposition forces" are integrated by Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists, the government rather than the terrorists is held responsible, without a shred of evidence, for the ongoing massacre of civilians. Amply documented, these sectarian killings and atrocities are being committed by foreign mercenaries and militia which are armed and supported by the Western military alliance. The killings are carried out quite deliberately as part of a diabolical covert operation. The enemy is then blamed for the resulting atrocities. The objective is to justify a military agenda on humanitarian grounds. In US military jargon, it's called a "massive casualty producing event", the historical origins of  which go back to "Operation Northwoods", an infamous 1962 Pentagon Plan, consisting in  killing civilians in the Miami Cuban community, with a view to justifying a war on Cuba. (See Michel Chossudovsky, SYRIA: Killing Innocent Civilians as part of a US Covert Op. Mobilizing Public Support for a R2P War against Syria, Global Research, May 30, 2012)   "Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro."  (U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba - ABC News emphasis added. This Secret Pentagon document was declassified and can be readily consulted, See Operation Northwoods, See also National Security Archive, 30 April 2001) In the logic of Operation Northwoods, the killings in Syria are carried out to "create a helpful wave of indignation", to drum up public opinion in favor of an R2P  US-NATO operation against Syria. "The international community cannot sit idly by, and we won’t”, said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. What lies behind this outburst of humanitarian concern by "the international community". Is America coming to the rescue of the Syrian people? What is the real reason for America's war on Syria? This question is addressed in a lead article by James P. Rubin, a Bloomberg executive editor and former State department official under the Clinton administration. The article appears in this month's Foreign Policy Magazineunder the clear-cut title: "The Real Reason to Intervene in Syria" In an unusual twist, "the answer to the question", namely "the real reason" is provided in the article's subtitle: "Cutting Iran's link to the Mediterranean Sea is a strategic prize worth the risk.". The subtitle should dispel --in the eyes of the reader-- the illusion that US foreign policy has an underlying "humanitarian  mandate".  Pentagon and US State department documents as well as independent reports confirm that military action against Syria has been contemplated by Washington and Tel Aviv for more than 20 years.    Targeting Iran, "Protecting Israel"  According to James P. Rubin, the war plans directed against Syria are intimately related to those pertaining to Iran. They are part of the same US-Israeli military agenda which consists in weakening Iran with a view to "protecting Israel". The latter objective is to be carried out through a pre-emptive attack against Iran:  "We're not done with the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran" says James P. Rubin.  According to Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies ("a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism"),  the humaniitarian concern is not the primary objective but rather as "a means to an end": "If the Arab League is unmoved by the massacres of Syrian women and children (their angry eyes fixed as ever on Israel), and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation doesn’t give a fig about Muslims slaughtering Muslims, why should we Americans expend an ounce of energy? ...[The answer]   Because Syria, under the Assad dictatorship, is Iran’s most important ally and asset. And Iran is the single most important strategic threat facing the U.S. — hands down." (See National Review, May 30, 2012) The military roadmap to Tehran goes through Damascus. The unspoken objective of the US-NATO-Israeli sponsored insurgency in Syria is to destabilize Syria as a Nation State and undermine Iran's influence in the region (including its support of the Palestinian Liberation movement and Hezbollah). The underlying objective is also to eliminate all forms of resistance to the Zionist State: "That is where Syria comes in, says James P, Rubin. It is the strategic relationship between the Islamic Republic and the Assad regime that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel's security. Over the three decades of hostility between Iran and Israel, a direct military confrontation has never occurred -- but through Hezbollah, which is sustained and trained by Iran via Syria, the Islamic Republic has proven able to threaten Israeli security interests. The collapse of the Assad regime would sunder this dangerous alliance. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, arguably the most important Israeli decision-maker on this question, recently told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that the Assad regime's fall "will be a major blow to the radical axis, major blow to Iran.... It's the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world ... and it will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza." (The Real Reason to Intervene in Syria - By James P. Rubin | Foreign Policy, June 2, 2012, emphasis added) US-Israeli War Plans directed against Syria Rubin candidly outlines the contours of US military intervention in Syria, which is to be implemented in close liaison with Israel. A diplomatic solution will not work, nor will economic sanctions: "only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator's stance" says Rubin: "U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has been understandably wary of engaging in an air operation in Syria similar to the campaign in Libya, for three main reasons. Unlike the Libyan opposition forces, the Syrian rebels are not unified and do not hold territory. The Arab League has not called for outside military intervention as it did in Libya. And the Russians, the longtime patron of the Assad regime, are staunchly opposed." (Ibid) Washington's first step, according to James P. Rubin, should be to work with "its allies", the Arab sheikdoms --Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey-- "to organize, train, and arm Syrian rebel forces." This "first step" has already been launched. It was implemented at the very outset of the insurgency in March 2012. The US and its allies have been actively supporting the Free Syrian Army (FSA) terrorists for over a year. The organization and training consisted in the deployment of Salafist and Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists, alongside the incursion of French, British, Qatari and Turkish special forces inside Syria. US-NATO sponsored mercenaries are recruted and trained in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Sidetracking the UN Rubin's proposed "second step" is "to secure international support for a coalition air operation." outside the mandate of the United Nations. "Russia will never support such a mission, so there is no point operating through the U.N. Security Council" says Rubin. The air operation contemplated by Rubin is an all out war scenario, similar to the NATO air raids conducted in Libya.  Rubin is not expressing a personal opinion on the role of the UN. The option of "sidetracking" the UN Security Council has already been endorsed by Washington. The violaiton of international law does not seem to be an issue. US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice confirmed in late May, in no uncertain terms, that "the worst and most probable scenario" in Syria might be the option of "acting outside of the UN Security Council's authority".  "In the absence of either of those two scenarios, there seems to me to be only one other alternative, and that is indeed the worst case, which seems unfortunately at the present to be the most probable. And that is that the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies, it reaches a higher degree of severity... The Council's unity is exploded, the Annan plan is dead and members of this Council and members of the international community are left with the option only of having to consider whether they're prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this Council." Actions outside UN Security Council Likely in Syria - Rice | World | RIA Novosti, May 31, 2012 Rubin also points to "the reluctance of some European states" (implying Germany without identifying the countries) to participate in an air operation against Syria: "this [military] operation will have to be a unique combination of Western and Middle East countries. Given Syria's extreme isolation within the Arab League, it should be possible to gain strong support from most Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. U.S. leadership is indispensable, since most of the key countries will follow only if Washington leads." The article calls for continued arming of the Syrian Free Army (FSA) as well carrying out air raids directed against Syria. No ground operations are to be envisaged. The air campaign would be used --as in the case of Libya-- to support the FSA foot soldiers integrated by mercenaries and Al Qaeda affiliated brigades: "Whether an air operation should just create a no-fly zone that grounds the regimes' aircraft and helicopters or actually conduct air to ground attacks on Syrian tanks and artillery should be the subject of immediate military planning. ... The larger point is that as long as Washington stays firm that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed, à la Kosovo and Libya, the cost to the United States will be limited. Victory may not come quickly or easily, but it will come. And the payoff will be substantial. Iran would be strategically isolated, unable to exert its influence in the Middle East. The resulting regime in Syria will likely regard the United States as more friend than enemy. Washington would gain substantial recognition as fighting for the people in the Arab world, not the corrupt regimes." (Rubin, op cit) While the participation of Israel in military operations is not mentioned, the thrust of Rubin's article points to active cooperation between Washington and Tel Aviv in military and intelligence affairs, including the conduct of covert operations in support of the opposition rebels. This coordination would also be carried out in the context of the bilateral military-intelligence cooperation agreement between Israel and Turkey. "Coming to the rescue of the Syrian people" under a fake "humanitarian" R2P mandate is intended to destabilize Syria, weaken Iran and enable Israel to exert greater political control and influence over neighboring Arab states including Lebanon and Syria.  A war on Syria is also a war on Palestine. It would weaken  the resistance movement in the occupied territories. It would reinforce the Netanyahu government's ambitions to create a "Greater Israel", initially, through the outright annexation of the Palestinian territories:  "With the Islamic Republic deprived of its gateway to the Arab world, the Israelis' rationale for a bolt from the blue attack on its nuclear facilities would diminish. A new Syrian regime might eventually even resume the frozen peace talks regarding the Golan Heights. In Lebanon, Hezbollah would be cut off from its Iranian sponsor, since Syria would no longer be a transit point for Iranian training, assistance, and missiles. All these strategic benefits combined with the moral purpose of saving tens of thousands of civilians from murder at the hands of the Assad regime ... make intervention in Syria a calculated risk, but still a risk worth taking." (Rubin, op cit) War Crimes in the name of human rights: What we really need is "Regime Change" in the United States of America.... and Israel.

© Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2012 The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=31320