7 New Messages
Digest #4796
Messages
Wed Sep 4, 2013 6:55 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.itar-
Itar-Tass
September 4, 2013
Three Russian naval ships to enter Mediterranean September 5
MOSCOW: Two Ropucha-class
All three ships set course for the Mediterranean from the same base - the port of Novorossiysk. Priazovie has been en route since Monday, and Novocherkassk and Minsk, since Tuesday. The ships will pass through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles one by one, on September 5 and 6, to enter the Mediterranean practically at the same time,†the source said.
“Whereas Novocherkassk and Minsk were dispatched for the Mediterranean within the framework of rotation of Russia’s permanent naval force and will operate according to the plans of its command, the Priazovie was dispatched to the region to step up reconnaissance efforts near the Syrian coast in keeping with General Staff plans,†the source said.
On September 2 a source at the General Staff has told ITAR-TASS the Defence Ministry had made a decision to step up efforts to monitor the situation near Syria’s coast.
“The number of ships in the Mediterranean involved in monitoring and covering the situation in areas near Syria will be increased somewhat,†the source said.
“This is standard practice for any fleet to follow in case of soaring tensions in this or that ocean or sea area. The situation around Syria will be monitored comprehensively,†the General Staff’s representative said.
According to Russian military experts the number of reconnaissance ships involved in situations similar to that around Syria normally ranges three to five.
============
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Itar-Tass
September 4, 2013
Three Russian naval ships to enter Mediterranean September 5
MOSCOW: Two Ropucha-class
All three ships set course for the Mediterranean from the same base - the port of Novorossiysk. Priazovie has been en route since Monday, and Novocherkassk and Minsk, since Tuesday. The ships will pass through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles one by one, on September 5 and 6, to enter the Mediterranean practically at the same time,†the source said.
“Whereas Novocherkassk and Minsk were dispatched for the Mediterranean within the framework of rotation of Russia’s permanent naval force and will operate according to the plans of its command, the Priazovie was dispatched to the region to step up reconnaissance efforts near the Syrian coast in keeping with General Staff plans,†the source said.
On September 2 a source at the General Staff has told ITAR-TASS the Defence Ministry had made a decision to step up efforts to monitor the situation near Syria’s coast.
“The number of ships in the Mediterranean involved in monitoring and covering the situation in areas near Syria will be increased somewhat,†the source said.
“This is standard practice for any fleet to follow in case of soaring tensions in this or that ocean or sea area. The situation around Syria will be monitored comprehensively,†the General Staff’s representative said.
According to Russian military experts the number of reconnaissance ships involved in situations similar to that around Syria normally ranges three to five.
============
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Wed Sep 4, 2013 12:23 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.aco.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
September 4, 2013
NO PLANS FOR COMPLETE WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN, ISAF GENERAL SAYS
Story by Josh Smith, Stars and Stripes
KABUL, Afghanistan: The commander of NATO ground forces in Afghanistan says there has been no discussions that the coalition would completely withdraw after 2014, despite continued uncertainty in political negotiations over the future of the international military effort.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, the No. 2 commander for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, calls the term "withdrawal†a misnomer.
"We have no indication whatsoever of a withdrawal completely from Afghanistan,†he told Stars and Stripes in a Monday 2 September 2013 interview at his headquarters in Kabul. "We are going to change our mission, and we are going to reduce in size and scope.â€
Frustrated with negotiations with the Afghan government over leaving international troops in the country, U.S. officials floated the idea over the summer of removing all troops. For his part, President Hamid Karzai suspended the negotiations in June 2013 and said in August 2013 that he is in no hurry to sign an agreement over future troop levels.
Milley, who took command in May, acknowledged that he is still awaiting final guidance from the political leaders of NATO’s member counties, including the United States, but planning is ongoing for an advising and support mission after 2014.
"The current NATO mandate ends on 31 December 2014, but there’s another mission that follows that called Resolute Support which is currently in planning,†he said.
There have been no signals given that U.S. troop levels will drop to zero, Milley said. "We haven’t been told to plan for that. â€Military leaders have been trying to assure the Afghans, and a skeptical American public, that the reduction in American troops is tied, as Milley insisted, to the capabilities of the Afghan security forces.
"We’re only pulling out of areas where we think the Afghan security forces are capable of standing up and fighting on their own,†he said. "But even when they, ‘fight on their own,’ we are still going to provide limited [intelligence and reconnaissance] and close-air support, because those capabilities won’t be ready for several years.
â€That message of a conditional reduction is complicated by President Barack Obama’s pledge to cut the American presence in Afghanistan from nearly 70,000 troops earlier this year to 34,000 by February 2014. All "combat†troops are scheduled to leave at the end of next year.
"All the national leaders of the various countries of NATO, to include our own, have publicly stated many times that we’re not going to abandon Afghanistan,†Milley said.
Milley’s boss, ISAF commander U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, told The Guardian newspaper that Afghan forces may need up to five more years of international military support. Support for the war effort has dwindled among the American public, however, and military leaders calling for a continued military presence in Afghanistan are often finding little support among political leaders.
...
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============
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
September 4, 2013
NO PLANS FOR COMPLETE WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN, ISAF GENERAL SAYS
Story by Josh Smith, Stars and Stripes
KABUL, Afghanistan: The commander of NATO ground forces in Afghanistan says there has been no discussions that the coalition would completely withdraw after 2014, despite continued uncertainty in political negotiations over the future of the international military effort.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, the No. 2 commander for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, calls the term "withdrawal†a misnomer.
"We have no indication whatsoever of a withdrawal completely from Afghanistan,†he told Stars and Stripes in a Monday 2 September 2013 interview at his headquarters in Kabul. "We are going to change our mission, and we are going to reduce in size and scope.â€
Frustrated with negotiations with the Afghan government over leaving international troops in the country, U.S. officials floated the idea over the summer of removing all troops. For his part, President Hamid Karzai suspended the negotiations in June 2013 and said in August 2013 that he is in no hurry to sign an agreement over future troop levels.
Milley, who took command in May, acknowledged that he is still awaiting final guidance from the political leaders of NATO’s member counties, including the United States, but planning is ongoing for an advising and support mission after 2014.
"The current NATO mandate ends on 31 December 2014, but there’s another mission that follows that called Resolute Support which is currently in planning,†he said.
There have been no signals given that U.S. troop levels will drop to zero, Milley said. "We haven’t been told to plan for that. â€Military leaders have been trying to assure the Afghans, and a skeptical American public, that the reduction in American troops is tied, as Milley insisted, to the capabilities of the Afghan security forces.
"We’re only pulling out of areas where we think the Afghan security forces are capable of standing up and fighting on their own,†he said. "But even when they, ‘fight on their own,’ we are still going to provide limited [intelligence and reconnaissance] and close-air support, because those capabilities won’t be ready for several years.
â€That message of a conditional reduction is complicated by President Barack Obama’s pledge to cut the American presence in Afghanistan from nearly 70,000 troops earlier this year to 34,000 by February 2014. All "combat†troops are scheduled to leave at the end of next year.
"All the national leaders of the various countries of NATO, to include our own, have publicly stated many times that we’re not going to abandon Afghanistan,†Milley said.
Milley’s boss, ISAF commander U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, told The Guardian newspaper that Afghan forces may need up to five more years of international military support. Support for the war effort has dwindled among the American public, however, and military leaders calling for a continued military presence in Afghanistan are often finding little support among political leaders.
...
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Wed Sep 4, 2013 12:24 pm (PDT) . Posted by:
"mart unknown"
Forward from mart
Please Distribute Widely
*Lies, Lies and more Lies - Iraq War **Déjà Vu - How U.S. "Intelligence
Reports" Are Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria.
------------
*
And also, just as in the run-up to the illegal U.S. war on Iraq too -
which the U.S. corporate, so-called "news" media also equally vigorously
championed and cheer-led - the U.S "corporate- *
war-propaganda-
again, running fill-tilt, printing, broadcasting and distributing these
false, bogus and slickly manipulated and even more slickly "interpreted&q
so-called "intelligence reports"
- these so-called and claimed "intelligence reports" - along with all of
the other blatant and malicious war propaganda emanating from the
Whitehouse, the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon - they are not
merely being reported on, written about and distributed, *unquestioningly*
but in fact, as are being reported on, written about and distributed by the
media, as as absolute - and in fact, as *unquestionable* - "truths"
and "proofs" of the need and justification for yet another illegal U.S.
war. - mart.*
------------
*
"*The bigger the lie, the more often it's told the more
who believe it*" - Joseph Goebbels*
*
"*I have seen the enemy...and he is us!*" - Pogo*
*
*-----------
http://truth-
*Truth Out
http://truth-
Sept. 3, 2013,*
*How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria
Tuesday, 03 September 2013 09:05
By Gareth Porter, Truthout | News
Secretary of State John Kerry assured the public* that the Obama
administration&#
for military action to punish the Assad regime for an alleged use of
chemical weapons was put together with an acute awareness of the fiasco of
the 2002 Iraq WMD intelligence estimate.
Nevertheless, the unclassified summary of the intelligence assessment made
public August 30, 2013, utilizes misleading language evocative of the
infamous Iraq estimate'
geospatial and human source intelligence that purportedly show that the
Syrian government prepared, carried out and "confirmed&quo
attack on August 21. And it claims visual evidence "consistent with" a
nerve gas attack.
But a careful examination of those claims reveals a series of convolutedly
worded characterizations of the intelligence that don't really mean what
they appear to say at first glance.
The document displays multiple indications that the integrity of the
assessment process was seriously compromised by using language that
distorted the intelligence in ways that would justify an attack on Syria.
*Spinning the Secret Intelligence*
That pattern was particularly clear in the case of the intelligence
gathered by covert means. The summary claims, "We intercepted
communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the
offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on
August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence."
That seems to indicate that U.S. intelligence intercepted such
communications. But former British Ambassador Craig Murray has pointed out
on his blog August 31 that the Mount Troodos listening post in Cyprus is
used by British and U.S. intelligence to monitor “all radio, satellite and
microwave traffic across the Middle East … ” and that “almost all landline
telephone communications in this region is routed through microwave links
at some stage [and] picked up on Troodos.”
All intelligence picked by the Troodos listening post is shared between the
U.S. and British intelligence, Murray wrote, but no communications such as
the ones described in the U.S. intelligence summary were shared with the
British Joint Intelligence Organization. Murray said a personal contact in
U.S. intelligence had told him the reason was that the purported intercept
came from the Israelis. The Israeli origin of the intelligence was reported
in the U.S. press as well, because an Israeli source apparently leaked it
to a German magazine.
The clumsy attempt to pass off intelligence claimed dubiously by the
Israelis as a U.S. intercept raises a major question about the integrity of
the entire document. The Israelis have an interest in promoting a U.S.
attack on Syria, and the authenticity of the alleged intercept cannot be
assumed. Murray believes that it is fraudulent.
But even if the intercept is authentic, the description of it in the
intelligence summary appears to be misleading. Another description of the
same intercept leaked to The Cable by an administration official suggests
that the summary’s description is extremely tendentious. The story
described those same communications as an exchange of "panicked phone
calls" between a Syrian Defense Ministry official and someone in a chemical
weapons unit in which the defence ministry official was "demanding answers
for [about?] a nerve agent strike." That description clearly suggests that
the Syrian senior official'
made on August 21 by opposition sources in Ghouta. The use of the word
"panicked"
document, may have been added later by an official eager to make the story
more compatible with the administration’
But the main problem with the description is that it doesn't answer the
most obvious and important question about the conversation: Did the
purported chemical weapons officer at the other end of the line say that
the regime had used chemical weapons or not? If the officer said that such
weapons had been used, that would obviously have been the primary point of
the report of the intercept. But the summary assessment does not say that,
so the reader can reasonably infer that the officer did not make any such
admission. The significance of the intercept is, therefore, that an
admission of chemicals weapons use was not made.
The carefully chosen wording of the summary - the ministry official was
"concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence" - suggests that the
official wanted to make sure that UN inspectors would not find evidence of
a nerve gas attack. But it could also mean precisely the opposite - that
the official wanted the inspectors to be able ascertain that there was no
use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces in eastern Ghouta. The latter
possibility is bolstered by the fact that the regime agreed within 24 hours
of the first formal request on August 24 from UN envoy Angela Kane for
unimpeded access to eastern Ghouta. As late as Friday, August 23, the UN
Department of Safety and Security had not yet decided to give permission to
the UN investigators to go into the area because of uncertainties about
their safety.
The intelligence summary makes no effort to explain why the regime promptly
granted access to the investigators. Another anomaly: the fact that the UN
investigators were already present in Damascus, having been initially
requested by the Assad regime to look into a gas attack the regime had
charged was carried out by the rebels on March 19. The two-page assessment
by the British Joint Intelligence Organization released August 29, pointed
to this question:"
said, "for regime use of Chemical War on an apparently larger scale now,
particularly given the current presence of the UN investigating team."
Another obvious case of a misleading description of intelligence in the
summary involves information from US geospatial and signals intelligence
purporting to show that the Assad regime was preparing for a chemical
attack in the three days prior to August 21. The intelligence summary
describes the intelligence as follows: "Syrian chemical weapons personnel
were operating in the Damascus suburb of Adra from Sunday, August 18 until
early in the morning on Wednesday, August 21 near an area that the regime
uses to mix chemical weapons, including sarin."
That seems like damning evidence at first glance. However, despite the use
of the term "operating,
actual activities of the individual or individuals being tracked through
geospatial and signals intelligence. When administration officials leaked
the information to CBS news last week, they conceded that the presence of
the individual being tracked in the area in question had been viewed at the
time as "nothing out of the ordinary."
Yet, after the August 21 event, the same information was suddenly
transformed into "evidence"
refers to "streams of human signals and geospatial intelligence that
revealed regime activities that we assessed were associated with
preparations for a chemical attack." Thus the same information that
provided no indication of "preparations&
included knowledge of some "activities&qu
for chemical warfare.
A third piece of intelligence cited in the summary - unsourced but
presumably from an intelligence agent – might seem to denote the intent to
carry out a chemical weapons attack. However, the wording is slippery. "On
August 21," the document says, "a Syrian regime element prepared for a
chemical weapons attack in the Damascus area, including through the
utilization of gas masks." That intelligence, if accurate, doesn’t
establish an intent by the government to carry out an attack; it could
conversely suggest the government’s anticipation of a chemical attack by
the rebels. The intelligence&#
certainty that the chemical weapons attack for which the regime was
preparing was one it intended to initiate itself.
*Behind the Uncertainty on "Nerve Gas" *
The intelligence summary includes a notable indication that the
intelligence community was far from convinced that nerve gas had been used
August 21.
The summary said the intelligence community had "high confidence" that the
government had carried out a "chemical weapons attack," and added, "We
further assess that the regime used a nerve agent in the attack." The fact
that a separate sentence was used to characterize the assessment of the
nerve agent issue and that it did not indicate any level of confidence is a
signal that the intelligence community does not have much confidence in the
assessment that nerve gas was used, according to a former senior US
intelligence official who insisted on anonymity. The former official told
Truthout that the choice of wording actually means the intelligence
analysts "do not know" if nerve gas was used.
The summary includes yet another sign of the analysts' lack of confidence
that nerve gas was used, which was equally well-disguised. "We have
identified one hundred videos attributed to the attack," it said, "many of
which show large numbers of bodies exhibiting physical signs consistent
with, but not unique to, nerve agent exposure." Unless it is read
carefully, the use of the word "bodies" - meaning corpses - instead of
"victims" might be missed. But why would the intelligence community be
focused on how many "bodies" – meaning corpses – exhibit particular
"physical signs" when the far more relevant indicator of nerve gas would
the number of "victims" exhibiting certain symptoms?
That strange choice averts acknowledgement of a fundamental problem for the
intelligence community: Most of the alleged victims being shown in the
videos posted online do not show symptoms associated with exposure to nerve
agent. Corpses without any sign of wounds, on the other hand, would be
"consistent&qu
The symptoms of a nerve agent attack are clear-cut: Soon after initial
symptoms of tightness of chest, pinpoint pupils and running nose, the
victim begins to vomit and to defecate and urinate uncontrollably, followed
by twitching and jerking. Ultimately, the victim becomes comatose and
suffocates in a series of convulsive spasms. The symptoms shown in dozens
of videos of victims being treated in medical centers in Ghouta, however,
are quite different. In an interview with Truthout, Dan Kaszeta, a
specialist on chemical, biological and radiological weapons who has advised
the White House on those issues, pointed out that a nerve gas attack would
have been accompanied by a pattern of symptoms that are not shown in the
videos posted online. "There should be more or less universal vomiting,"
Kaszeta said. But he did not see any vomiting or evidence of such vomiting
on the clothing or on the floor in any of the videos he saw. Stephen G.
Johnson, a chemical weapons forensics expert at Cranfield University in the
United Kingdom, noticed the same thing. "Why aren't more people vomiting?"
he asked Truthout in an interview.
A number of specialists, including Kaszeta and Johnson, also noticed that
personnel were shown handling the victims without any special protective
clothing but not exhibiting any symptoms themselves. Paula Vanninen,
director of the Finnish Institute for Verification of Chemical Weapons, and
Gwynn Winfield, the editor of CBRNe World, a magazine specializing in
chemical weapons, made the same point in interviews with AFP on August 21.
The only evidence of such effects is secondhand at best: Statements issued
the following day by both the spokesman for the Supreme Military Council of
the Free Syrian Army, Khaled Saleh, and the spokesman for its Washington,
DC, arm, the Syrian Support Group, said that doctors and "first responders"
had reported that they were suffering symptoms of neurotoxic poisoning.
Saleh claimed that at least six doctors had died.
Experts noticed yet another anomaly: The number of those treated who
survived far outnumbered the dead, contrary to what would be expected in a
nerve gas attack. Dr. Ghazwan Bwidany told CBS news August 24 that his
mobile medical unit had treated 900 people after the attack and that 70 had
died. 'Medecins Sans Frontieres&#
treated at hospitals in the area of the attack and that 355 had died. Such
ratios of survivors to dead were the opposite of what chemical weapons
specialists would have expected from a nerve gas attack. Kaszeta told
Truthout that the "most nagging doubt" he had about the assumption that a
nerve gas attack had taken place is the roughly 10-to-1 ratio of total
number treated to the dead. "The proportions are all wrong," he said.
"There should be more dead people." Johnson agreed. In an actual nerve gas
attack, he said, "You'
[is] a very low level of lethality."
These multiple anomalies prompted some specialists to come up with the
theory that the government had somehow diluted the nerve gas to make it
less detectable and thus made it less lethal. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a
former commander of the chemical biological and nuclear terrorism unit in
the UK Ministry of Defense, told USA Today August 23 that the absence of
symptoms associated with nerve gas attack might be explainable by a "low
dose" chemical weapons attack.
Three days later, Winfield wrote in an article for CNN that the symptoms
seen in the videos indicated "lower toxicity" than was associated with
nerve agents. Winfield suggested that nerve agent might have been mixed
with other substances that were likely to remain in the environment longer
than a nerve agent such as sarin.
But Kaszeta cast doubt on the idea of a "low dose" nerve agent being used.
In an interview with blogger Eliot Higgins, who specializes in weapons
associated with the Syrian conflict under the name Brown Moses, he said,
"There&#
with Sarin." The concentration causing any symptoms at all, he said, "would
quickly lead to absorption of a lethal dose."
*
Case Not Closed *
If it wasn't a nerve gas attack, then, what other chemical weapon could
have produced the symptoms exhibited in the videos? In an analysis on the
Strongpoint Security website, Kaszeta considered each known type of
chemical weapon in turn and concluded that the symptoms exhibited in the
videos were not consistent with those associated with any of them. And as
Kaszeta told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the fact that none of the people
treating casualties were suffering obvious symptoms "would seem to rule out
most types of military-grade chemical weapons. … "
Instead of addressing the issue, the intelligence community opted to accept
information about the numbers and the cause of death provided by sources
that were presumably subject to the influence of opposition forces in the
area. The intelligence summary cites a "preliminary U.S. government
assessment" that 1,429 people were killed by chemical weapons, including
"at least 426 children." It provides no indication of how the analysts
arrived at such a precise estimate, which is highly unusual for an
intelligence assessment. The normal practice in arriving at such an
estimate is to give a range of figures reflecting different data sources as
well as assumptions.
The intelligence community'
to weapons of mass destruction is the CIA's Office of Weapons Intelligence,
Nonproliferation and Arms Control (WINPAC) Center. It is the same center
that tilted the 2002 Iraq estimate toward conclusions that were not
supported by technical facts. As the Robb-Silverman report on the Iraq WMD
intelligence fiasco pointed out, intelligence analysts at WINPAC explained
to the staff privately that they had reversed the normal intelligence
analysis burden of proof and operated on the assumption that Iraq did have
WMD programs.
That dynamic seems to have re-emerged in the case of Syrian chemical
weapons, especially with the appearance of hundreds of videos containing
highly emotive scenes of children suffering and, in many cases, already
having died. The contradiction between the emotionally charged visual
evidence and the technical analysis by chemical weapons specialists,
however, poses an unresolved issue. The uncertainty about what actually
happened on August 21 can be resolved only on the basis of actual blood
samples from victims who have been gathered by the UN inspectors and are
now being analyzed in European laboratories.
Both Médecins Sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch issued statements
citing statistics and descriptions of symptoms provided by local medical
personnel and, in the case of Human Rights Watch, local activists and other
contacts. However Human Rights Watch acting Middle East Director Joe Stork
stated, "The only way to find out what really happened in Ghouta is let the
UN inspectors in."
Médecins Sans Frontières made it clear in its original August 24 statement
that it could not confirm the figure of 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic
symptoms," because its own staff did not have access to the medical
facilities in question. And in an August 28 statement, the organization
said scientific confirmation of the toxic agent was required, and that the
data it had been given could not be a "substitute for the [UN]
investigation.
But the advocates of an attack on Syria within the Obama administration
have not demonstrated a willingness to rely on the definitive evidence from
the UN investigators. Instead, they have evinced a strong hostility toward
the UN investigation ever since the Syrian government agreed to allow it
unimpeded access to the locations where chemical attacks were alleged.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice sent an e-mail to key officials August
25 asserting that the UN investigation was pointless.
Since then, administration officials have dismissed the UN investigation as
representing a Syrian political tactic. Kerry claimed in his statement
Friday that when the UN inspections were "finally given access, that access
- as we now know – was restricted and controlled."
But Farhan Haq, the associate spokesperson for Secretary General Ban
Ki-Moon, who has been getting regular reports from the UN team on its work
in Syria, told Truthout that he was unaware of any restrictions on the
team's work.
The Obama administration has made it clear it does not intend to rely on
the UN investigation&#
blood and hair from medical personnel in eastern Ghouta had been found to
contain traces of sarin nerve gas.
However, those samples did not go through the UN investigators, but were
smuggled out of Syria by opposition activists. The spokesman for the Free
Syrian Army's Supreme National Council, Khaled Saleh, had announced August
22 that "activists&quo
and were smuggling them out of the country.
The Obama administration had obtained physiological samples related to
previous alleged nerve gas attacks, which had tested positive for sarin,
but administration officials had insisted that, without being certain of
the chain of custody, "they couldn't be sure who had handled those
samples," as one official put it.
Despite the knowledge that samples lacking a clear chain of custody could
have been tampered with, however, the administration began to disregard
that key factor in June. It adopted a policy of accepting such samples as
evidence of government guilt, on the argument, as one official explained,
"It'
instances in so many locations."
That policy shift is part of the undeclared framework in which the
intelligence assessment was carried out.
Regardless of what evidence emerges in coming weeks, we would do well to
note the inconsistencies and misleading language contained in the
assessment, bearing in mind the consequences of utilizing ambiguous
intelligence to justify an act of war.
------------
*Photo: *"*In a White House handout photo, President Barack Obama meets
with his national security staff to discuss the situation in Syria, in the
Situation Room of the White House, in Washington, Aug. 31, 2013*."
www.truth-out.
============
Please Distribute Widely
*Lies, Lies and more Lies - Iraq War **Déjà Vu - How U.S. "Intelligence
Reports" Are Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria.
------------
*
And also, just as in the run-up to the illegal U.S. war on Iraq too -
which the U.S. corporate, so-called "news" media also equally vigorously
championed and cheer-led - the U.S "corporate- *
war-propaganda-
again, running fill-tilt, printing, broadcasting and distributing these
false, bogus and slickly manipulated and even more slickly "interpreted&q
so-called "intelligence reports"
- these so-called and claimed "intelligence reports" - along with all of
the other blatant and malicious war propaganda emanating from the
Whitehouse, the State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon - they are not
merely being reported on, written about and distributed, *unquestioningly*
but in fact, as are being reported on, written about and distributed by the
media, as as absolute - and in fact, as *unquestionable* - "truths"
and "proofs" of the need and justification for yet another illegal U.S.
war. - mart.*
------------
*
"*The bigger the lie, the more often it's told the more
who believe it*" - Joseph Goebbels*
*
"*I have seen the enemy...and he is us!*" - Pogo*
*
*-----------
http://truth-
*Truth Out
http://truth-
Sept. 3, 2013,*
*How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria
Tuesday, 03 September 2013 09:05
By Gareth Porter, Truthout | News
Secretary of State John Kerry assured the public* that the Obama
administration&#
for military action to punish the Assad regime for an alleged use of
chemical weapons was put together with an acute awareness of the fiasco of
the 2002 Iraq WMD intelligence estimate.
Nevertheless, the unclassified summary of the intelligence assessment made
public August 30, 2013, utilizes misleading language evocative of the
infamous Iraq estimate'
geospatial and human source intelligence that purportedly show that the
Syrian government prepared, carried out and "confirmed&quo
attack on August 21. And it claims visual evidence "consistent with" a
nerve gas attack.
But a careful examination of those claims reveals a series of convolutedly
worded characterizations of the intelligence that don't really mean what
they appear to say at first glance.
The document displays multiple indications that the integrity of the
assessment process was seriously compromised by using language that
distorted the intelligence in ways that would justify an attack on Syria.
*Spinning the Secret Intelligence*
That pattern was particularly clear in the case of the intelligence
gathered by covert means. The summary claims, "We intercepted
communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the
offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on
August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence."
That seems to indicate that U.S. intelligence intercepted such
communications. But former British Ambassador Craig Murray has pointed out
on his blog August 31 that the Mount Troodos listening post in Cyprus is
used by British and U.S. intelligence to monitor “all radio, satellite and
microwave traffic across the Middle East … ” and that “almost all landline
telephone communications in this region is routed through microwave links
at some stage [and] picked up on Troodos.”
All intelligence picked by the Troodos listening post is shared between the
U.S. and British intelligence, Murray wrote, but no communications such as
the ones described in the U.S. intelligence summary were shared with the
British Joint Intelligence Organization. Murray said a personal contact in
U.S. intelligence had told him the reason was that the purported intercept
came from the Israelis. The Israeli origin of the intelligence was reported
in the U.S. press as well, because an Israeli source apparently leaked it
to a German magazine.
The clumsy attempt to pass off intelligence claimed dubiously by the
Israelis as a U.S. intercept raises a major question about the integrity of
the entire document. The Israelis have an interest in promoting a U.S.
attack on Syria, and the authenticity of the alleged intercept cannot be
assumed. Murray believes that it is fraudulent.
But even if the intercept is authentic, the description of it in the
intelligence summary appears to be misleading. Another description of the
same intercept leaked to The Cable by an administration official suggests
that the summary’s description is extremely tendentious. The story
described those same communications as an exchange of "panicked phone
calls" between a Syrian Defense Ministry official and someone in a chemical
weapons unit in which the defence ministry official was "demanding answers
for [about?] a nerve agent strike." That description clearly suggests that
the Syrian senior official'
made on August 21 by opposition sources in Ghouta. The use of the word
"panicked"
document, may have been added later by an official eager to make the story
more compatible with the administration’
But the main problem with the description is that it doesn't answer the
most obvious and important question about the conversation: Did the
purported chemical weapons officer at the other end of the line say that
the regime had used chemical weapons or not? If the officer said that such
weapons had been used, that would obviously have been the primary point of
the report of the intercept. But the summary assessment does not say that,
so the reader can reasonably infer that the officer did not make any such
admission. The significance of the intercept is, therefore, that an
admission of chemicals weapons use was not made.
The carefully chosen wording of the summary - the ministry official was
"concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence" - suggests that the
official wanted to make sure that UN inspectors would not find evidence of
a nerve gas attack. But it could also mean precisely the opposite - that
the official wanted the inspectors to be able ascertain that there was no
use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces in eastern Ghouta. The latter
possibility is bolstered by the fact that the regime agreed within 24 hours
of the first formal request on August 24 from UN envoy Angela Kane for
unimpeded access to eastern Ghouta. As late as Friday, August 23, the UN
Department of Safety and Security had not yet decided to give permission to
the UN investigators to go into the area because of uncertainties about
their safety.
The intelligence summary makes no effort to explain why the regime promptly
granted access to the investigators. Another anomaly: the fact that the UN
investigators were already present in Damascus, having been initially
requested by the Assad regime to look into a gas attack the regime had
charged was carried out by the rebels on March 19. The two-page assessment
by the British Joint Intelligence Organization released August 29, pointed
to this question:"
said, "for regime use of Chemical War on an apparently larger scale now,
particularly given the current presence of the UN investigating team."
Another obvious case of a misleading description of intelligence in the
summary involves information from US geospatial and signals intelligence
purporting to show that the Assad regime was preparing for a chemical
attack in the three days prior to August 21. The intelligence summary
describes the intelligence as follows: "Syrian chemical weapons personnel
were operating in the Damascus suburb of Adra from Sunday, August 18 until
early in the morning on Wednesday, August 21 near an area that the regime
uses to mix chemical weapons, including sarin."
That seems like damning evidence at first glance. However, despite the use
of the term "operating,
actual activities of the individual or individuals being tracked through
geospatial and signals intelligence. When administration officials leaked
the information to CBS news last week, they conceded that the presence of
the individual being tracked in the area in question had been viewed at the
time as "nothing out of the ordinary."
Yet, after the August 21 event, the same information was suddenly
transformed into "evidence"
refers to "streams of human signals and geospatial intelligence that
revealed regime activities that we assessed were associated with
preparations for a chemical attack." Thus the same information that
provided no indication of "preparations&
included knowledge of some "activities&qu
for chemical warfare.
A third piece of intelligence cited in the summary - unsourced but
presumably from an intelligence agent – might seem to denote the intent to
carry out a chemical weapons attack. However, the wording is slippery. "On
August 21," the document says, "a Syrian regime element prepared for a
chemical weapons attack in the Damascus area, including through the
utilization of gas masks." That intelligence, if accurate, doesn’t
establish an intent by the government to carry out an attack; it could
conversely suggest the government’s anticipation of a chemical attack by
the rebels. The intelligence&#
certainty that the chemical weapons attack for which the regime was
preparing was one it intended to initiate itself.
*Behind the Uncertainty on "Nerve Gas" *
The intelligence summary includes a notable indication that the
intelligence community was far from convinced that nerve gas had been used
August 21.
The summary said the intelligence community had "high confidence" that the
government had carried out a "chemical weapons attack," and added, "We
further assess that the regime used a nerve agent in the attack." The fact
that a separate sentence was used to characterize the assessment of the
nerve agent issue and that it did not indicate any level of confidence is a
signal that the intelligence community does not have much confidence in the
assessment that nerve gas was used, according to a former senior US
intelligence official who insisted on anonymity. The former official told
Truthout that the choice of wording actually means the intelligence
analysts "do not know" if nerve gas was used.
The summary includes yet another sign of the analysts' lack of confidence
that nerve gas was used, which was equally well-disguised. "We have
identified one hundred videos attributed to the attack," it said, "many of
which show large numbers of bodies exhibiting physical signs consistent
with, but not unique to, nerve agent exposure." Unless it is read
carefully, the use of the word "bodies" - meaning corpses - instead of
"victims" might be missed. But why would the intelligence community be
focused on how many "bodies" – meaning corpses – exhibit particular
"physical signs" when the far more relevant indicator of nerve gas would
the number of "victims" exhibiting certain symptoms?
That strange choice averts acknowledgement of a fundamental problem for the
intelligence community: Most of the alleged victims being shown in the
videos posted online do not show symptoms associated with exposure to nerve
agent. Corpses without any sign of wounds, on the other hand, would be
"consistent&qu
The symptoms of a nerve agent attack are clear-cut: Soon after initial
symptoms of tightness of chest, pinpoint pupils and running nose, the
victim begins to vomit and to defecate and urinate uncontrollably, followed
by twitching and jerking. Ultimately, the victim becomes comatose and
suffocates in a series of convulsive spasms. The symptoms shown in dozens
of videos of victims being treated in medical centers in Ghouta, however,
are quite different. In an interview with Truthout, Dan Kaszeta, a
specialist on chemical, biological and radiological weapons who has advised
the White House on those issues, pointed out that a nerve gas attack would
have been accompanied by a pattern of symptoms that are not shown in the
videos posted online. "There should be more or less universal vomiting,"
Kaszeta said. But he did not see any vomiting or evidence of such vomiting
on the clothing or on the floor in any of the videos he saw. Stephen G.
Johnson, a chemical weapons forensics expert at Cranfield University in the
United Kingdom, noticed the same thing. "Why aren't more people vomiting?"
he asked Truthout in an interview.
A number of specialists, including Kaszeta and Johnson, also noticed that
personnel were shown handling the victims without any special protective
clothing but not exhibiting any symptoms themselves. Paula Vanninen,
director of the Finnish Institute for Verification of Chemical Weapons, and
Gwynn Winfield, the editor of CBRNe World, a magazine specializing in
chemical weapons, made the same point in interviews with AFP on August 21.
The only evidence of such effects is secondhand at best: Statements issued
the following day by both the spokesman for the Supreme Military Council of
the Free Syrian Army, Khaled Saleh, and the spokesman for its Washington,
DC, arm, the Syrian Support Group, said that doctors and "first responders"
had reported that they were suffering symptoms of neurotoxic poisoning.
Saleh claimed that at least six doctors had died.
Experts noticed yet another anomaly: The number of those treated who
survived far outnumbered the dead, contrary to what would be expected in a
nerve gas attack. Dr. Ghazwan Bwidany told CBS news August 24 that his
mobile medical unit had treated 900 people after the attack and that 70 had
died. 'Medecins Sans Frontieres&#
treated at hospitals in the area of the attack and that 355 had died. Such
ratios of survivors to dead were the opposite of what chemical weapons
specialists would have expected from a nerve gas attack. Kaszeta told
Truthout that the "most nagging doubt" he had about the assumption that a
nerve gas attack had taken place is the roughly 10-to-1 ratio of total
number treated to the dead. "The proportions are all wrong," he said.
"There should be more dead people." Johnson agreed. In an actual nerve gas
attack, he said, "You'
[is] a very low level of lethality."
These multiple anomalies prompted some specialists to come up with the
theory that the government had somehow diluted the nerve gas to make it
less detectable and thus made it less lethal. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a
former commander of the chemical biological and nuclear terrorism unit in
the UK Ministry of Defense, told USA Today August 23 that the absence of
symptoms associated with nerve gas attack might be explainable by a "low
dose" chemical weapons attack.
Three days later, Winfield wrote in an article for CNN that the symptoms
seen in the videos indicated "lower toxicity" than was associated with
nerve agents. Winfield suggested that nerve agent might have been mixed
with other substances that were likely to remain in the environment longer
than a nerve agent such as sarin.
But Kaszeta cast doubt on the idea of a "low dose" nerve agent being used.
In an interview with blogger Eliot Higgins, who specializes in weapons
associated with the Syrian conflict under the name Brown Moses, he said,
"There&#
with Sarin." The concentration causing any symptoms at all, he said, "would
quickly lead to absorption of a lethal dose."
*
Case Not Closed *
If it wasn't a nerve gas attack, then, what other chemical weapon could
have produced the symptoms exhibited in the videos? In an analysis on the
Strongpoint Security website, Kaszeta considered each known type of
chemical weapon in turn and concluded that the symptoms exhibited in the
videos were not consistent with those associated with any of them. And as
Kaszeta told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the fact that none of the people
treating casualties were suffering obvious symptoms "would seem to rule out
most types of military-grade chemical weapons. … "
Instead of addressing the issue, the intelligence community opted to accept
information about the numbers and the cause of death provided by sources
that were presumably subject to the influence of opposition forces in the
area. The intelligence summary cites a "preliminary U.S. government
assessment" that 1,429 people were killed by chemical weapons, including
"at least 426 children." It provides no indication of how the analysts
arrived at such a precise estimate, which is highly unusual for an
intelligence assessment. The normal practice in arriving at such an
estimate is to give a range of figures reflecting different data sources as
well as assumptions.
The intelligence community'
to weapons of mass destruction is the CIA's Office of Weapons Intelligence,
Nonproliferation and Arms Control (WINPAC) Center. It is the same center
that tilted the 2002 Iraq estimate toward conclusions that were not
supported by technical facts. As the Robb-Silverman report on the Iraq WMD
intelligence fiasco pointed out, intelligence analysts at WINPAC explained
to the staff privately that they had reversed the normal intelligence
analysis burden of proof and operated on the assumption that Iraq did have
WMD programs.
That dynamic seems to have re-emerged in the case of Syrian chemical
weapons, especially with the appearance of hundreds of videos containing
highly emotive scenes of children suffering and, in many cases, already
having died. The contradiction between the emotionally charged visual
evidence and the technical analysis by chemical weapons specialists,
however, poses an unresolved issue. The uncertainty about what actually
happened on August 21 can be resolved only on the basis of actual blood
samples from victims who have been gathered by the UN inspectors and are
now being analyzed in European laboratories.
Both Médecins Sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch issued statements
citing statistics and descriptions of symptoms provided by local medical
personnel and, in the case of Human Rights Watch, local activists and other
contacts. However Human Rights Watch acting Middle East Director Joe Stork
stated, "The only way to find out what really happened in Ghouta is let the
UN inspectors in."
Médecins Sans Frontières made it clear in its original August 24 statement
that it could not confirm the figure of 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic
symptoms," because its own staff did not have access to the medical
facilities in question. And in an August 28 statement, the organization
said scientific confirmation of the toxic agent was required, and that the
data it had been given could not be a "substitute for the [UN]
investigation.
But the advocates of an attack on Syria within the Obama administration
have not demonstrated a willingness to rely on the definitive evidence from
the UN investigators. Instead, they have evinced a strong hostility toward
the UN investigation ever since the Syrian government agreed to allow it
unimpeded access to the locations where chemical attacks were alleged.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice sent an e-mail to key officials August
25 asserting that the UN investigation was pointless.
Since then, administration officials have dismissed the UN investigation as
representing a Syrian political tactic. Kerry claimed in his statement
Friday that when the UN inspections were "finally given access, that access
- as we now know – was restricted and controlled."
But Farhan Haq, the associate spokesperson for Secretary General Ban
Ki-Moon, who has been getting regular reports from the UN team on its work
in Syria, told Truthout that he was unaware of any restrictions on the
team's work.
The Obama administration has made it clear it does not intend to rely on
the UN investigation&#
blood and hair from medical personnel in eastern Ghouta had been found to
contain traces of sarin nerve gas.
However, those samples did not go through the UN investigators, but were
smuggled out of Syria by opposition activists. The spokesman for the Free
Syrian Army's Supreme National Council, Khaled Saleh, had announced August
22 that "activists&quo
and were smuggling them out of the country.
The Obama administration had obtained physiological samples related to
previous alleged nerve gas attacks, which had tested positive for sarin,
but administration officials had insisted that, without being certain of
the chain of custody, "they couldn't be sure who had handled those
samples," as one official put it.
Despite the knowledge that samples lacking a clear chain of custody could
have been tampered with, however, the administration began to disregard
that key factor in June. It adopted a policy of accepting such samples as
evidence of government guilt, on the argument, as one official explained,
"It'
instances in so many locations."
That policy shift is part of the undeclared framework in which the
intelligence assessment was carried out.
Regardless of what evidence emerges in coming weeks, we would do well to
note the inconsistencies and misleading language contained in the
assessment, bearing in mind the consequences of utilizing ambiguous
intelligence to justify an act of war.
------------
*Photo: *"*In a White House handout photo, President Barack Obama meets
with his national security staff to discuss the situation in Syria, in the
Situation Room of the White House, in Washington, Aug. 31, 2013*."
www.truth-out.
============
Thu Sep 5, 2013 5:39 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://news.
Xinhua News Agency
September 5, 2013
Syrian civilians coping with fear of possible U.S. strike
DAMASCUS: Over the past two years, Syrians lived with daily mortar attacks by rebels. Now, they have to cope with a new fear: Tomahawk missiles likely to be launched by the United States.
As the U.S. Obama administration was garnering support for a planned military strike against the Arab country, Syrian civilians, torn between "war" and "no war" speculations, are struggling to carry on with daily lives.
The streets of Damascus, the Syrian capital, are packed on Wednesday as any other day, as people are walking down the streets, talking and chatting as if nothing is wrong in their country.
They even have become accustomed to the noises of shelling reverberating from a distance, not blinking or even turning when a big boom rattles the atmosphere.
"The rockets that would strike from America are not different than those fired by the rebels on us every day," said Akram al-Orduni, a resident in Damascus.
On Wednesday, a taekwondo player in the Syrian National Team of Taekwondo was killed and seven other people were wounded when two mortar shells struck the Faiha Sport City in the heart of Damascus.
For many Syrians, the memories of their beloved ones being killed in indiscriminate attacks by rebels have scarred them for life. Some began to wonder: maybe it is either dying of rebels' mortar shell or of a U.S. Tomahawk missile.
Sadly, if they have to choose, dealing with daily mortar attacks would surely be "much easier" than surviving America'
"We hope there would be no strike on Syria, because the situation in Syria is already so tense; and we are looking for a political solution to the crisis, not a military strike," Bassem Sabban, a shopkeeper in a Damascus marketplace, told Xinhua.
With the looming of a West's strike to "punish" the administration of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over allegations of nerve gas attacks by his troops near Damascus, residents in the war-torn city defiantly said they were not afraid of any possible war launched by the United States and its allies.
"Definitely, there is no fear at all," Mazenah Zarifa, a 40- year-old Damascene woman, told Xinhua at the Muhafaza Square in Damascus. "Personally, I don't think there will be any military strike."
Another Damascus resident, Ala'a Hassoun, agreed with Zarif, saying that "we live our lives normally...we go to work and stroll around fearlessly."
"America talks and threatens only, but it knows that it's incapable of doing anything to Syria. Even if the U.S. strikes us, we would continue to live our normal lives," he continued.
While a large portion of the Syrians defiantly dismiss the potential war with the U.S., some Damascenes are worried that the war would occur but hope that somehow the country could avoid it.
Akram al-Orduni, a Damascus resident, told Xinhua that he was sure the strike would take place for "they (referring to the West and their allies) haven't made all of these preparations and paid billions of dollars in vain..."
"May God protect us," al-Orduni said. "We will not be afraid."
============
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Xinhua News Agency
September 5, 2013
Syrian civilians coping with fear of possible U.S. strike
DAMASCUS: Over the past two years, Syrians lived with daily mortar attacks by rebels. Now, they have to cope with a new fear: Tomahawk missiles likely to be launched by the United States.
As the U.S. Obama administration was garnering support for a planned military strike against the Arab country, Syrian civilians, torn between "war" and "no war" speculations, are struggling to carry on with daily lives.
The streets of Damascus, the Syrian capital, are packed on Wednesday as any other day, as people are walking down the streets, talking and chatting as if nothing is wrong in their country.
They even have become accustomed to the noises of shelling reverberating from a distance, not blinking or even turning when a big boom rattles the atmosphere.
"The rockets that would strike from America are not different than those fired by the rebels on us every day," said Akram al-Orduni, a resident in Damascus.
On Wednesday, a taekwondo player in the Syrian National Team of Taekwondo was killed and seven other people were wounded when two mortar shells struck the Faiha Sport City in the heart of Damascus.
For many Syrians, the memories of their beloved ones being killed in indiscriminate attacks by rebels have scarred them for life. Some began to wonder: maybe it is either dying of rebels' mortar shell or of a U.S. Tomahawk missile.
Sadly, if they have to choose, dealing with daily mortar attacks would surely be "much easier" than surviving America'
"We hope there would be no strike on Syria, because the situation in Syria is already so tense; and we are looking for a political solution to the crisis, not a military strike," Bassem Sabban, a shopkeeper in a Damascus marketplace, told Xinhua.
With the looming of a West's strike to "punish" the administration of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over allegations of nerve gas attacks by his troops near Damascus, residents in the war-torn city defiantly said they were not afraid of any possible war launched by the United States and its allies.
"Definitely, there is no fear at all," Mazenah Zarifa, a 40- year-old Damascene woman, told Xinhua at the Muhafaza Square in Damascus. "Personally, I don't think there will be any military strike."
Another Damascus resident, Ala'a Hassoun, agreed with Zarif, saying that "we live our lives normally...we go to work and stroll around fearlessly."
"America talks and threatens only, but it knows that it's incapable of doing anything to Syria. Even if the U.S. strikes us, we would continue to live our normal lives," he continued.
While a large portion of the Syrians defiantly dismiss the potential war with the U.S., some Damascenes are worried that the war would occur but hope that somehow the country could avoid it.
Akram al-Orduni, a Damascus resident, told Xinhua that he was sure the strike would take place for "they (referring to the West and their allies) haven't made all of these preparations and paid billions of dollars in vain..."
"May God protect us," al-Orduni said. "We will not be afraid."
============
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Thu Sep 5, 2013 5:39 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.itar-
Itar-Tass
September 4, 2013
West seeks to put mask of legitimacy to use force against Syria
MOSCOW: Western countries seek to “put a mask of legitimacy to use force against Syriaâ€, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported on Wednesday.
“The West lacks ideas on how to portray use of force against Syria as legitimate. There are attempts to interpret the situation in different ways,†the report adds.
Armed interference should be authorized by the U.N. Security Council. The attempts to revive a notorious concept of “humanitarian intervention†bewildering, the report says. Reaction of the world community and certain states to the use of chemical weapons “should be put with the results of a thorough independent investigationâ€, the report says.
A possible armed action against Syria in circumvention of the U.N. Security Council “will have all signs of aggressionâ€, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported.
“The United States gives anxious signals to start military intervention into the Syrian conflict in circumvention of the U.N. Security Council,†the report says, adding that "Russia believes that such position runs counter international law. Our country considers it unacceptable.
Earlier on Wednesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called use force against Syria bypassing the U.N. Security Council, unacceptable.
In a telephone conversation with U.N./LAS Special Envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi on Wednesday, Lavrov said, “The use of force is a gross violation of international law.â€
“Lavrov and Brahimi discussed the situation in Syria in the context of a possible U.S. military action. The conversation was held on the initiative of Brahimi,†the Foreign Ministry reported.
============
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Itar-Tass
September 4, 2013
West seeks to put mask of legitimacy to use force against Syria
MOSCOW: Western countries seek to “put a mask of legitimacy to use force against Syriaâ€, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported on Wednesday.
“The West lacks ideas on how to portray use of force against Syria as legitimate. There are attempts to interpret the situation in different ways,†the report adds.
Armed interference should be authorized by the U.N. Security Council. The attempts to revive a notorious concept of “humanitarian intervention†bewildering, the report says. Reaction of the world community and certain states to the use of chemical weapons “should be put with the results of a thorough independent investigationâ€, the report says.
A possible armed action against Syria in circumvention of the U.N. Security Council “will have all signs of aggressionâ€, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported.
“The United States gives anxious signals to start military intervention into the Syrian conflict in circumvention of the U.N. Security Council,†the report says, adding that "Russia believes that such position runs counter international law. Our country considers it unacceptable.
Earlier on Wednesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called use force against Syria bypassing the U.N. Security Council, unacceptable.
In a telephone conversation with U.N./LAS Special Envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi on Wednesday, Lavrov said, “The use of force is a gross violation of international law.â€
“Lavrov and Brahimi discussed the situation in Syria in the context of a possible U.S. military action. The conversation was held on the initiative of Brahimi,†the Foreign Ministry reported.
============
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Thu Sep 5, 2013 5:39 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.presstv.
Press TV
September 5, 2013
‘US war on Syria not to be limited’
Audio at URL above
An American anti-war activist says US President Barack Obama’s claim of having a limited and surgical plan for military action against Syria is anything but a lie.
“The claims by the Obama administration and its supporters in Congress that what they are contemplating is a limited, surgical and symbolic military strike is simply but a lie†said Rick Rozoff, the manager of Stop NATO in an interview with Press TV.
The US and some of its allies accuse the Syrian government of carrying out a chemical attack against its own people on the outskirts of Damascus last month and are paving the ground for what President Obama calls a “tailored and limited†military action against the Arab nation. Damascus has rejected the allegations as baseless and accused the foreign-backed militants of being behind the attack.
“The language being used suggests it’s almost a medical intervention that is something humane and something that is beneficial to the health of a nation. It is just anything but that,†Rozoff went on to explain.
The anti-war activist added that the US along with its military allies has accumulated in the eastern Mediterranea “a veritable armada of warships and submarines equipped with several hundred missiles.â€Â
“The US has deployed over 600 Tomahawk missiles in the region which could have a devastating impact on a comparatively small country like Syria with a population of perhaps 25 million people.â€Â
Rozoff added that this talk about destroying the air defense or deterring the ability of the Syrian government to defend itself against an attack and ultimately the enforcement of a no fly zone is hardly a limited surgical operation.
“In fact we have precedent we know what it looks like. Similar claims were made before the air war against Yugoslavia in 1999 and lasted for 78 full days.â€Â
He added that the US and its allies intend “to wage an active military aggression against a sovereign nation."
“Once the monsters are let out of the Pandora’s box it’s impossible to put it back again,†he concluded.
============
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Press TV
September 5, 2013
‘US war on Syria not to be limited’
Audio at URL above
An American anti-war activist says US President Barack Obama’s claim of having a limited and surgical plan for military action against Syria is anything but a lie.
“The claims by the Obama administration and its supporters in Congress that what they are contemplating is a limited, surgical and symbolic military strike is simply but a lie†said Rick Rozoff, the manager of Stop NATO in an interview with Press TV.
The US and some of its allies accuse the Syrian government of carrying out a chemical attack against its own people on the outskirts of Damascus last month and are paving the ground for what President Obama calls a “tailored and limited†military action against the Arab nation. Damascus has rejected the allegations as baseless and accused the foreign-backed militants of being behind the attack.
“The language being used suggests it’s almost a medical intervention that is something humane and something that is beneficial to the health of a nation. It is just anything but that,†Rozoff went on to explain.
The anti-war activist added that the US along with its military allies has accumulated in the eastern Mediterranea “a veritable armada of warships and submarines equipped with several hundred missiles.â€Â
“The US has deployed over 600 Tomahawk missiles in the region which could have a devastating impact on a comparatively small country like Syria with a population of perhaps 25 million people.â€Â
Rozoff added that this talk about destroying the air defense or deterring the ability of the Syrian government to defend itself against an attack and ultimately the enforcement of a no fly zone is hardly a limited surgical operation.
“In fact we have precedent we know what it looks like. Similar claims were made before the air war against Yugoslavia in 1999 and lasted for 78 full days.â€Â
He added that the US and its allies intend “to wage an active military aggression against a sovereign nation."
“Once the monsters are let out of the Pandora’s box it’s impossible to put it back again,†he concluded.
============
Stop NATO e-mail list home page with archives and search engine:
http://groups.
Stop NATO website and articles:
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Thu Sep 5, 2013 5:51 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Rick Rozoff" rwrozoff
http://www.itar-
Itar-Tass
September 5, 2013
Russian analyst: US strike against Syria unavoidable
MOSCOW: The United States will inevitably deal a strike against Syria although over a half of the country’s population is against this idea and nearly all of its closest allies have refused to participate in such use of force, the director of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, Lieutenant-General Leonid Reshetnikov, has told ITAR-TASS in an interview.
“The Americans are obsessed with the intention to do away with the Bashar Assad government. I believe they have left the point of no return behind,†he said. “Although Russia is doing its utmost to prevent aggression the United States will possibly deal a blow.â€
“The aggression, should it take place, will bring about a sharp aggravation of the situation in the Middle East,†the analyst believes. “Over the past three to four years the United States has created in the region a whole belt of states that have to exist in the condition of semi-chaos, semi-destruction and semi-functioning. This is true of the whole of North Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. Syria is next. Then there will follow Iran, if it does not surrender to the Americans’ demands.â€
General Reshetnikov believes that “this smells like war near Russia’s southern borders.â€
“The United States is building a corridor from China to the Mediterranean, where it will be deploying its military basis, just the way it has done in Afghanistan in Iraq, because it regards this part of the world as its oil and gas artery,†Reshetnikov concluded.
Itar-Tass
September 5, 2013
Russian analyst: US strike against Syria unavoidable
MOSCOW: The United States will inevitably deal a strike against Syria although over a half of the country’s population is against this idea and nearly all of its closest allies have refused to participate in such use of force, the director of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies, Lieutenant-General Leonid Reshetnikov, has told ITAR-TASS in an interview.
“The Americans are obsessed with the intention to do away with the Bashar Assad government. I believe they have left the point of no return behind,†he said. “Although Russia is doing its utmost to prevent aggression the United States will possibly deal a blow.â€
“The aggression, should it take place, will bring about a sharp aggravation of the situation in the Middle East,†the analyst believes. “Over the past three to four years the United States has created in the region a whole belt of states that have to exist in the condition of semi-chaos, semi-destruction and semi-functioning. This is true of the whole of North Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. Syria is next. Then there will follow Iran, if it does not surrender to the Americans’ demands.â€
General Reshetnikov believes that “this smells like war near Russia’s southern borders.â€
“The United States is building a corridor from China to the Mediterranean, where it will be deploying its military basis, just the way it has done in Afghanistan in Iraq, because it regards this part of the world as its oil and gas artery,†Reshetnikov concluded.
