Iraq 2.0: West will now lean on UN to delivery a WMD verdict in Syria

March 27, 2013 By Leave a Comment

PHPatrick Henningsen
21st Century Wire

Much is being made by the international media and western politicians about recent alleged chemical weapons attacks in northern Syria, with speculation rife regarding which side is responsible.

Too few are asking the most fundamentally important question here: were any real conventional chemical weapons actually used at all? Indeed, it’s a question worth asking.

On March 19, it was reported that missiles were fired that contained ‘a chemical substance’ into Khan al-Assal village near Syria’s northern city of Aleppo. The incident is said to have claimed some 25 lives with many others injured following a series of chemical explosions, where some witnesses reported “the smell of chlorine in the air”, prompting strong speculation that munitions deployed during the incident had released ‘a deadly chlorine gas’.

The Syrian government is blaming the rebels, and the rebels are blaming the Syrian armed forces. Lines are also being drawn inside the UN Security Council.

The term ‘Scud missile’ has also been injected into the mix – itself, an established and recognised WMD media brand name made infamous during Saddam Hussein’s reign prior to 2003.

Qassim Saadeddine, a rebel commander in Aleppo, told Reuters by telephone last week, “We were hearing reports from early this morning about a regime attack on Khan al-Assal, and we believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents”.

House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers is pushing for a WMD guilty verdict against Assad.

The US leadership also seem convinced that forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad are the only party in Syria who would possibly possess, and deploy, chemical weapons on the field of battle. Both President Barrack Obama and US House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers have already made sweeping statements to that effect this past week – but how much truth is actually in such statements?

What we do know is that US-led NATO and Gulf state allies are already neck-deep in a proxy war in Syria, both funding and arming various elements of the rebel opposition confab. Heavy pressure is being put the bear on the Syrian government by the west, with US-lead NATO allies having stated their ultimatum in precious months – that should any such weapons be found in the battlefield, it would be a ‘red line’ crossed, and would give the west a justification for direct military intervention in the conflict.

The debate will continue to rage on both sides about who set-off such attacks, further thrusting this issue into a media-driven propaganda and counter-propaganda downward spiral, fought in public through the UN Security Council and opposing media outlets.

Were chemical weapons really used in Aleppo?

Though no longer stationed inside Syria, even U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford is on record as stating that the Obama administration has no evidence so far to who fired the chemical attack accusations, or that an actual chemical weapons attack occurred at all.                  

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon says he intends to investigate the Aleppo incident, but already there are complaints from other member states, that the US and Britain might be delaying this process by injecting further unsubstantiated reports of another Damascus ‘chemical attack’ – perhaps a red herring of sorts, included to divert attention from ‘who did what’ in Aleppo. French UN Ambassador Gerard Araud entered this alleged new incident into the record, based on the Syrian National Coalition’s own allegations of a second chemical weapon attack last Tuesday in the Damascus.

This struggle to control the narrative is almost inseparable from the NATO and Gulf alliance’s own vested interests on the ground in Syria.

The UN Russian Security Council envoy Vitaly Churkin has described some of these new claims as mere “propaganda balloons.” 

Churkin added, “As far as I know, there is only one allegation of the use of chemical weapons…. There have been no other allegations”. Churkin has tried to delineate the two separate incidents by explaining, “To me, a concern which I expressed in the Council, was that this was really a way to delay the need for immediate, urgent investigation of allegations pertaining to March 19 (chemical attack) by raising all sorts of issues”.

The truth of what happened in Aleppo might be something completely different than the initial media narrative of events.

According to recent reports found at SyriaTruth.org which also includes some very relevant comments human rights investigator Nizar Nayouf, a rebel paramilitary group called “Front Victory” reportedly led by foreign fighters and under the guidance of Turkish Intelligence last August 2012, had seized a chlorine gas (possibly CL17) bottling plant located some 50km east of Aleppo. The UN authority was apparently made aware of this at the time, and despite efforts by the Russians to persuade rebel militants to withdraw from this site and allow it to be occupied by neutral international observers, the rebels refused.

“In the end it was agreed to close the lab, but remained cylinders in the laboratory, where the gunmen refused remove them and move them to a safe place or dropped into the Euphrates River.”

Evidence suggests industrial chlorine was taken from factory and used by rebels to make bombs.

The lab in question is said to have contained dozens of large chlorine disc, each weighing nearly 100 kilograms. Aside from the obvious danger of assembling makeshift chlorine bombs, by some people’s estimates, there was enough stock present at the time “to sterilise an entire medium size city’s water supply for a month.”

There is some evidence to suggest that the rebel group known as “Front Victory”(name translated from Arabic) is no stranger to both violent insurgency, or the use of chlorine bombs for terrorist purposes.

The same online report also describes the group’s previous destabilisation exploits in Iraq here (translated from Arabic to English):

“Front Victory” has experience in the use of chlorine gas as a chemical weapon to Iraq. After the withdrawal of the U.S. military, and in the context of the Jordanian-Saudi intelligence war in Iraq to undermine the Maliki government…

(…) Jordanian intelligence proceeded to facilitate the smuggling of chlorine gas from Jordan to the organization known as “Islamic State of Iraq”, the first to use chlorine gas technology (with the help of Jordanian Intelligence and Saudi Arabia) as a “chemical weapon” – a taboo issue in the media in the context of covering genocide….

Given the fact that the “first generation” and “second generation” of the founders and staff of “Front Victory” hailed originally out of the “Islamic State of Iraq” organisation, they were the only ones among the insurgent Syrians who are schooled in this technique. In addition, the organization “Islamic State of Iraq” deliberately to be the first installments of his gunmen who were sent to Syria as of fall 2011…

Weeks ago, “Front Victory” are reported to have begun manufacturing chlorine gas shells to be used in mortars and homemade rockets around Aleppo, utilizing the stock from the chlorine gas plant. Note that the said missile was launched from an area “Kafr Daal” in northwest of Aleppo.”

(…)”its cargo of chlorine gas, with the effects that left it in the area of ​​the explosion. (…) Two British chemist commented… (…) One British chemists said without hesitation, “the effects of chlorine gas combustion.” The second said, “chemical or gaseous nature can be transformed from a liquid to a gas, but I can not identify.”

Numerous historical references to Iraqi insurgent chlorine attacks are available through news archives online, with one incident in 2006 clearly described below, but usage of chlorine munitions dates back as far as World War I in Europe. Note the following summary currently available from Wikipedia:

“Chlorine bombings in Iraq began as early as October 2006, when insurgents in Al Anbar province started using chlorine gas in conjunction with conventional vehicle-borne explosive devices.

The inaugural chlorine attacks in Iraq were described as poorly executed, probably because much of the chemical agent was rendered nontoxic by the heat of the accompanying explosives.[1]Subsequent, more refined, attacks resulted in hundreds of injuries, but have proven not to be a viable means of inflicting massive loss of life. Their primary impact has therefore been to cause widespread panic, with large numbers of civilians suffering non life-threatening, but nonetheless highly traumatic, injuries.

Chlorine was used as a poison gas in World War I, but was delivered by artillery shell, unlike the modern stationary or car bombs. Still, its function as a weapon in both instances is similar. Low level exposure results in burning sensations to the eyes, nose and throat, usually accompanied by dizziness, nausea and vomiting. Higher levels of exposure can cause fatal lung damage; but because the gas is heavier than air it will not dissipate until well after an explosion, it is generally considered ineffective as an improvised chemical weapon.”

In the corridors of the UN, it would benefit certain parties to buy some time right now, in order to either legally reclassify makeshift chlorine munitions as conventional ‘chemical weapons’, or the build another case around the alleged chemical attack in Damascus.

NATO looking for its green light to escalate

Based on the US and NATO’s promise of military intervention in the event of any chemical attack and their stated goal of Regime change in Syria, the motivation of qui bono resides exclusively in both the rebel’s and the NATO-Gulf alliance interests, and not in the interests of Bashar al Assad’s Syria government.

Despite the western media’s aggressive pursuit of a chemical weapon aka ‘WMD’ narrative in Syria – official statements out of Washington, Paris and London alluding to a guilty verdict for the Assad regime, does not actually square with the facts on the ground. In the case of Aleppo, there is no actual evidence of made-for-purpose, military grade chemical weapons being deployed by either side, and thus efforts to substantiate a case for foreign military on this basis are, as yet, non existent.

UN appoints Swede Ake Sellstrom to play the role of Hans Blix.

UN head Ban Ki Moon has just appointed a Swedish scientist, Ake Sellstrom, as his new head of a chemical weapons investigations team for Syria. As with his Scandinavian predecessor, Hans Blix, Sellstrom will lead the fact-finding mission to determine the existence of WMD’s in Syria.

The comparisons to Iraq in 2003 are obvious here. One would hope that lessons learned from Iraq, namely, building a case a military intervention based on a pre-existing conclusion, based mainly on ambiguous association, or fabricated intelligence – would have already been learned by the west, and thus should avoided at all costs.

The elephant in the room is this: NATO, its political leaders and the western media have yet to acknowledge the most obvious fundamental flaw in their own aggressive position towards Syria – that their own diplomatic objectivity is effectively disqualified by the fact that they are financing and arming a parallel government to takeover in Syria. This fact alone renders the UN almost inoperable in terms of reaching any fair diplomatic solution to this crisis.

Could this really be Déjà vu Iraq?

….

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John Kerry Prepping for War? US Sec. of State tells Iraq to close airspace for Iranian planes

March 25, 2013 By Leave a Comment

21st Century Wire says… John Kerry’s “kinder, gentler” foreign policy mission is now underway, as it appears that he’s prepping the region for war by pressuring the Iraqi government to shut down its airspace for Iranian aircraft who Kerry suspects are sending arms to Assad – which itself is a pretext for war. No mention of any hard proof that Iran is actually arming Assad, although there is plenty of proof that the West and Gulf states Saudi and Qatar are arming foreign fighters in Syria. The narrative here from a western perspective is: NATO countries can run large shipments of heavy weapons to foreign fighters into Syria via Jordan, but Iran, or Russia for that matter, is not allowed to supply the government in Damascus with anything. US, Britain and NATO allies are simply forcing everyone to take sides – in essence, they are forcing a potentially brutal war on the region – and the world.

We can only guess what the US Secretary of State has threatened the Iraqis with should they choose not to comply with his request…

RT

Iraq shouldn’t allow Iran to use its airspace to provide aid to the Syrian government, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, warned during his unannounced visit to Baghdad.

Kerry telling the Iraqi leadership what to do.

“I made it very clear that for those of us, who are engaged in an effort to see President Assad step down… anything that supports President Assad is problematic,” Kerry said after holding private talks with Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

The Secretary of State added that the silent approval of the Iranian overflights by the Iraqi authorities has left the American people “wondering how it is a partner”.

Washington believes that, despite claims that it’s only humanitarian aid, Iran is sending arms and fighters to help Assad in his war against the US-backed National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

AP is citing an unnamed US official, who said that such flights occur “close to daily”, undermining American efforts to support the rebels.

The flights have long been an issue in the relationship between Washington and Baghdad. In 2012, previous Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, received a promise from Iraq to check the Iranian flights last year, but since then only two aircraft have been inspected.

Kerry’s comments came after a group of senators sent a letter to President Barack Obama last week, urging him to step up US military efforts in Syria, including destroying Assad’s aircraft using precision airstrikes.

Editor of Politics First magazine, Marcus Papadopolous, told RT that it’s “very difficult to tell”whether Iran is providing military support to Assad or not.

But he finds Kerry’s criticism of Iraq’s negligence towards overflights “hypocritical” as there are some other US partners, who made a lot greater contribution to fueling the Syrian conflict.

“It’s ironic given that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who are America’s strategic allies, have been the ones responsible for the bloodshed in Syria through their support for Syrian militants in the form of weapons, cash and Islamist fighters.. And they are the ones, who have blood on their hands and they should be in the International Criminal Court,” Papadopolous stressed.

The civil war has been raging in Syria for over two years, with 70,000 already killed according to UN figures, as Assad and the opposition refuse to sit together at the negotiation table.

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Latest alleged ‘chemical attack’ kills 25 in Aleppo, Syria

March 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment
21st Century Wire says…

Although this report has yet to be independently verified, watch as the West (NATO) will seize upon it to gain a military foothold in the conflict…

Oliver Holmes and Erika Solomon
Daily Star

BEIRUT: Syria’s government and rebels accused each other of launching a deadly chemical attack near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday in what would, if confirmed, be the first use of such weapons in the two-year-old conflict.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who has resisted overt military intervention in Syria, has warned Assad in the past that any use of chemical weapons would be a “red line”. There has, however, been no suggestion of rebels possessing such arms.

Syria’s state television channel said rebels fired a rocket carrying chemical agents that killed 25 people and wounded dozens. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said 16 soldiers were among the dead.

The reported toll is far below the mass slaughter inflicted on the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja where an estimated 5,000 people died in a chemical attack ordered by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein 25 years ago.

No Western governments or international organisations confirmed a chemical attack, but Russia, an ally of Damascus, accused rebels of carrying out such a strike.

Syria’s deputy foreign minister, Faisal Meqdad, said his government would send a letter to the United Nations Security Council “calling on it to handle its responsibilities and clarify a limit to these crimes of terrorism and those that support it inside Syrian Arab Republic”.

He warned that the violence that had engulfed Syria was a regional threat. “This is rather a starting point from which (the danger) will spread to the entire region, if not the entire world,” he said.

In Washington, the United States said it had no evidence to substantiate charges that the rebels had used chemical weapons.

Britain said its calculations would change if a chemical attack had taken place.

“The UK is clear that the use or proliferation of chemical weapons would demand a serious response from the international community and force us to revisit our approach so far,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

A Reuters photographer said victims he had visited in Aleppo hospitals were suffering breathing problems and that people had said they could smell chlorine after the attack.

“I saw mostly women and children,” said the photographer, who cannot be named for his own safety.

He quoted victims at the University of Aleppo hospital and the al-Rajaa hospital as saying people were dying in the streets and in their houses.

President Bashar al-Assad, battling an uprising against his rule, is widely believed to have a chemical weapons arsenal.

Syrian officials have neither confirmed nor denied this, but have said that if it existed it would be used to defend against foreign aggression, not against Syrians. There have been no previous reports of chemical weapons in the hands of insurgents.

Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi said rebels fired “a rocket containing poison gases” at the town of Khan al-Assal, southwest of Aleppo, from the city’s southeastern district of Nairab, part of which is rebel-held.

“The substance in the rocket causes unconsciousness, then convulsions, then death,” the minister said.

But a senior rebel commander, Qassim Saadeddine, who is also a spokesman for the Higher Military Council in Aleppo, denied this, blaming Assad’s forces for the alleged chemical strike.

“We were hearing reports from early this morning about a regime attack on Khan al-Assal, and we believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents,” he told Reuters by telephone from Aleppo.

Washington has expressed concern about chemical weapons falling into the hands of militant groups – either hardline Islamist rebels fighting to topple Assad or his regional allies.

Israel has threatened military action if such arms were sent to the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group.

Zoabi said Turkey and Qatar, which have supported rebels, bore “legal, moral and political responsibility” for the strike – a charge dismissed by a Turkish official as baseless.

Zoabi told a news conference that Syria’s military would never use internationally banned weapons.

“Syria’s army leadership has stressed this before and we say it again, if we had chemical weapons we would never use them due to moral, humanitarian and political reasons,” he said.

Syrian state TV aired footage of what it said were casualties of the attack arriving at one hospital in Aleppo.

Men, women and children were rushed inside on stretchers as doctors inserted medical drips into their arms and oxygen tubes into their mouths. None had visible wounds to their bodies, but some interviewed said they had trouble breathing.

An unidentified doctor interviewed on the channel said the attack was either “phosphorus or poison” but did not elaborate.

A young girl on a stretcher wept as she said: “My chest closed up. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t breathe … We saw people falling dead to the floor. My father fell, he fell and now we don’t know where he is. God curse them, I hope they die.”

A man in a green surgical mask, who said he had been helping to evacuate the casualties, said: “It was like a powder, and anyone who breathed it in fell to the ground.”

A rebel fighter in Khan al-Assal, about eight km (five miles) southwest of Aleppo, said he had seen pink-tinged smoke rising after a powerful blast shook the area.

Ahmed al-Ahmed, from the Ansar brigade in a rebel-controlled military base near Khan al-Assal, told Reuters that a missile had hit the town at around 8 a.m. (0600 GMT).

“We were about two kilometres from the blast. It was incredibly loud and so powerful that everything in the room started falling over. When I finally got up to look at the explosion, I saw smoke with a pinkish-purple colour rising up.

“I didn’t smell anything, but I did not leave the building I was in,” said Ahmed, speaking via Skype.

“The missile, maybe a Scud, hit a regime area, praise God, and I’m sure that it was an accident. My brigade certainly does not have that (chemical) capability and we’ve been talking to many units in the area, they all deny it.”

Ahmed said the explosion was quickly followed by an air strike. A fighter jet circled a police school held by the rebels on the outskirts of Khan al-Assal and bombed the area, he said.

His account could not be independently verified.

Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said in Vienna he had no independent information about any use of such arms in Syria.

Read more

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Syrian Rebels are Simply Murdering Thugs Used for US and West to Oust Assad

February 28, 2013 By 2 Comments

JLJason Liosatos
21st Century Wire

US and Western Governments are stepping up the arming and funding of Syrian rebels, and Al Qaeda, to do the dirty job of ousting President Assad for them.

This is still an act of murder by aiding and abetting, by getting someone else to do it for you, and it is cheaper, less messy and easier than doing it themselves, with no casualties in the US and Western military, no public outcry, and not a splash of blood on their hands.

A similar tactic was used in ousting Gaddafi in Libya, but they have now realized that it is much better to just stand back and pay others to do the fighting and killing for them, then when Assad has been toppled like Gaddafi they simply step in as the liberators and bringers of the pseudo democracy, and help themselves to the treasure of oil, strategic positioning, and the final step closer to the big, long-awaited goal of toppling Iran.

President Assad of course is no angel, it is true, but if we look at the figures of his war crimes against humanity, they pale in comparison to a Bush or a Blair, and currently a combo of Cameron, Hollande and Obama (catching up quickly), who are racking up the deaths and destruction at quite a pace in Mali, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

If any member of the public gave someone else a gun and pointed that person and that gun towards a victim who they then killed, the giver of that gun would immediately be sentenced to murder for aiding and abetting. Even worse is the fact that the Syrian rebels are often simply gangs of angry youths hell-bent on enjoying the sudden gift of power and control that a machine gun or rocket launcher can bring. The Saudis are also doing their part in arming the angry gangs, and we are seeing the usual horrendous ethical compromises taking place, with civilian casualties growing every day.

For a moment let us imagine what would happen if the disillusioned American people rose up against Obama, as have the Syrians against Assad, and also demanded Obama leave, as did the Egyptians and the Libyans, do we really think Obama would pack his bags and give the people the keys to the White House? And if the American people rose up and ‘rebelled’ and went to the streets like the Syrian rebels Obama would also order the police and troops to use force to quell the uprisings, and if they persisted Obama like Assad would also order the police and troops to shoot people if necessary. It is easy to forget that The US and Western governments would be as equally brutal against its population in an uprising, this is a big shock for people to imagine but it is true.

Now imagine in that same scenario, Syria or another country funding and arming the American people to help get Obama out, to achieve their interests in the region, the very possibility sounds absurd, which shockingly proves to us as Western and US citizens how superior we believe we are, and that we would never imagine our governments turning on us to crush us if we were to dare to seriously confront them and demand their exit from our lives. One of the biggest shocks for Americans is this truth, that their government, and UK, French and most others worldwide would ultimately kill its uprising population, like Assad, if that population seriously challenged them. Just a cursory glance back at the occupy movement gives us a taste of this, and if one gun had gone off from the public, then we would have seen the above scenario begin.

David Cameron: Doesn’t care how many innocent lives are lost achieving his goal of ‘regime change’.

The defining moment would come as to whether the police or military would kill its own people. I am not advocating this horrible scenario, or saying it may ever happen, but I am simply placing the shoe on the other foot for us to see the situation from another perspective, and that perspective glaringly shows us that the white man still cannot see past his own superiority, like camels that can only see other camels humps and not their own.

So how dare the US and Western warmongering governments interfere in other people’s business, fueled by their insatiable lust for power and complete control of strategic land and resources at any cost, be it human suffering and countless loss of life, the destruction of civilizations and their rich history, or the wanton destruction of the planet and the future for even their own children.

When will we wake up?

Author Jason Liosatos is a artist, writer and peace advocate based in the UK, and host of Global Peace Radio Show.

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Erdogan vs Army: 15% of Turkish Military Top Brass on Trial, Hundreds Resign

February 10, 2013 By 1 Comment

NOTE: In November 2012, Syrian President Bashar Assad told RT in an exclusive interview that Turkish PM Recep Erdogan believes “he is a caliph and the new sultan of the Ottoman Empire.” Back then Assad noted that Erdogan’s policies led to “zero friends”.



Turkish officers are resigning en masse to avoid arrest and sentencing for conspiracy against the government. The cabinet of PM Erdogan is winning the decade-long battle with country’s once almighty generals, journalist Andrew Finkel tells RT.

Mass detentions of both serving and retired officers have been taking place in Turkey over the last decade. The country’s media is closely following a number of trials against top brass accused of plotting against the ruling government. 

Over at least the past half a century, the Turkish armed forces have been notorious for regular interference in domestic politics, organizing several coups to displace governments and generally having great influence on the political landscape.

Turkish high brass has always been proud of staying guard of the secular nature of the Turkish state, the legacy of the founder of modern Republic of Turkey, the iconic first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

But when in 2002 Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) won nearly two-thirds of the seats in parliament, the situation changed dramatically.

The new prime minister of Turkey and his party, considered moderately Islamist, felt vulnerable towards an armed forces with traditionally strong political positions. 

The power struggle between Erdogan’s government and the military was predetermined, Andrew Finkel, journalist and author of “Turkey: What everyone needs to know”, told RT. In the eyes of the military the AKP symbolized the threat to Turkey’s secularism, whereas Erdogan’s party eyed the armed forces as a dictator that has been telling the country what to do for too long.

The ruling party and its leader began a gradual consolidation of power which, in several years’ time, ended with the initiation of a massive legal assault on the recent determiners of the country’s fate.

The first was heard in Turkey in July 2011, when navy, army and air force commanders stepped down over a rift with the Erdogan government. This was a result of multiple arrests of officers accused of plotting a coup against the government, with proven Islamic roots, reports at the time said.

Despite that, Turkey continued arresting officers and initiating a number of conspiracy trials against the top brass.

In September 2012, after a 21-month trial, a court sentenced three former army generals to 20 years (initially lifetime sentence) each in prison for plotting a coup. The court stated that the defendants were planning to wage a war with neighboring Greece and organize explosions in Turkish mosques to justify a coup d’état against Erdogan’s government almost a decade ago.

Together with the generals, nearly 330 officers, including senior ones, were convicted for the would-be coup. All the defendants denied the charges as unfair and unlawful, claiming the evidence had been fabricated.

Hundreds more Turkish officers remain on trial right now on a number of conspiracy cases against the state.

“Altogether, about 15 per cent of the top brass, that is colonels and generals, actually are on trial,” Finkel told RT. “This is the main cause of this major disillusionment within the army.”

According to media reports, around 10 per cent of all Turkish 348 generals and admirals are currently locked behind bars.

Exodus Revitalized

In late January 2013 the exodus of Turkish officers from the army was given a new push. Turkey’s number-two naval commander Admiral Nusret Guner resigned, allegedly over the detention of hundreds of his colleagues. His premature voluntary retirement sparked yet another wave of resignations.

“In the past few years my comrades in arms, some of whom I know very closely and about whose patriotism I have never felt the slightest doubt, have been found guilty through verdicts handed down by courts in the name of the nation,” Nusret Guner said, delivering a farewell speech to his colleagues. He also said he had demanded to be allowed to resign last September, immediately after the sensational coup d’état trial, but his submission was not granted.

Among other reasons, the admiral explained he wanted to retire as soon as possible because “a series of plots involving me could be constructed,” he said.

According to reports, some 110 Turkish Air Force officers followed the example of the commander’s resignation.

“I think these pilots have decided ‘well, no one really loves us, we’ve served the 10 years minimum time, let’s just take our pensions and get a better job in a private sector’,” Finkel supposed.

In the meantime Erdogan’s Turkey has been actively supporting the rebel side in the Syrian civil war, though traditionally Ankara maintained good relations with Damascus.

Turkey has even been considering a military interference into the Syrian national affairs, but in the end opted not to do so.

Still, Ankara’s support to Syrian rebels promises to backfire on Turkey rather soon, as Kurdish separatists dreaming of the state of their own got much more active in both Turkey and Syria. And since the heaviest burden of confronting the armed attacks of the Kurdish militants lay on the Turkish army, the worsening personnel policy in Turkish army might create serious problems of directing troops in the nearest future.

Source: RT

 

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PLAYING WITH FIRE: Israel’s Bombing of Syria Escalates Threat of Wider War

February 2, 2013 By 339 Comments

Wednesday’s bombing of a Syrian military site by Israeli warplanes has ratcheted up the danger that the Western-backed civil war in Syria will spill over into a broader regional conflagration.

Bill Van Auken
Global Research

Unnamed US officials cited by the New York Times claimed that the target of Wednesday’s dawn air strike was a military convoy carrying arms that were supposedly destined for Hezbollah, the Shia political movement and militia in Lebanon.

The Syrian government, however, said that air strikes were directed against a military research center in Jamraya, in the Qasioun mountain range about three miles west of Damascus. It said that two workers at the center were killed in the bombing and five others were wounded.

“Israeli warplanes violated our airspace at dawn today and directly struck one of the scientific research centers responsible for elevating the resistance and self-defense capabilities in the area of Jamraya in the Damascus countryside,” Syria’s military said in a statement published by the official Sana news agency.

The Syrian regime charged that the air strikes had been facilitated by coordinated attacks on the part of the US-and Western-backed “rebels” against the country’s radar networks and air defense systems.

“Late Wednesday, a US official said the accounts of two targets—a convoy of weapons and a military site—weren’t mutually exclusive,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The official suggested that the convoy was attacked inside the military facility. How Israel determined that it was carrying weapons bound for Hezbollah across the border in Lebanon has not been clarified.

For its part, the Israeli regime has maintained a complete silence on its act of aggression against Syria. The New York Times late Thursday described this silence as “part of a longstanding strategy to give targeted countries face-saving opportunities to avoid conflict escalation.”

According to this perverse reasoning, Syria’s public statement on the attack—rather than the attack itself—was responsible for “increasing the likelihood of a cycle of retaliation.”

The air strike was reportedly carried out by four Israeli warplanes that flew low over Syrian territory before firing as many as a dozen missiles into the complex.

The Lebanese Daily Star quoted residents of the Jamraya area who said that they were woken by blasts at the military site. “We were sleeping. Then we started hearing rockets hitting the complex and the ground started shaking and we ran into the basement,” a woman who lives next to the complex told the Lebanese newspaper.

Another Syrian, who has a relative working inside the military site, told Reuters: “It appears that there were about a dozen rockets that appeared to hit one building in the complex. The facility is closed today.”

The new face of international aggression: If Syria can be flipped, then Clinton will display it as her foreign policy 2016 campaign portfolio.

The extreme right-wing government of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that it fears the nearly two-year-old civil war in Syria will lead to advanced weapons falling into the hands of Hezbollah or the Western-backed Islamist militias. In reality, as it begins its third term in office, the Netanyahu government is exploiting the crisis in Syria to carry out military strikes aimed at weakening its potential adversaries and paving the way for a new eruption of open warfare.

According to US officials, the alleged convoy headed to Lebanon was not carrying chemical weapons or any other offensive arms, but rather Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be capable of hitting Israeli fighter-bombers, helicopters and drones.

As NBC News put it, “They would remove Israel’s critical freedom of flight over Lebanon.” The Israeli regime has exercised this “freedom” repeatedly in the last several days. On Wednesday, the Lebanese army reported that Israeli warplanes had carried out two sorties over Lebanese territory, circling for hours on Tuesday and returning before dawn on Wednesday.

More importantly, this unchallenged control over Lebanon’s airspace is critical for Israel if it is preparing yet another war against the country to its north, which it last invaded in 2006, destroying much of its infrastructure with air and sea bombardments and killing over 1,100 people.

This eventuality was strongly suggested by a top Israeli military commander. On the eve of the air strike on Syria, Major-General Amir Eshel, the chief of Israel’s air force, declared that Israel was now engaged in a “war between wars” and that “this campaign is 24/7, 365 days a year. We are taking action to reduce the immediate threats, to create better conditions in which we will be able to win the wars, when they happen.”

Eshel said that Tel Aviv was trying “to keep [our] efforts beneath the level at which war breaks out,” but added, “… if there is no alternative—maybe it will.”

The Israeli attack was carried out after prior consultation with the Obama administration in Washington, which, like Tel Aviv, has maintained a guilty silence over the air strikes. Indeed, the only official US response came in the form of a statement by the White House deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes, who issued a warning to Syria that it should not “further destabilize the region by transferring weaponry to Hezbollah.”

Israel’s carrying out a so-called “preventive” military action, i.e., unprovoked aggression, against a sovereign territory was clearly not seen by the US administration as “destabilizing.” This was just the latest in a long line of such criminal actions, carried out by Washington’s ally, including last October’s attack on an alleged weapons factory in Sudan and endless violence against the Palestinian populations in the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The Israeli air strikes were condemned by the Russian government, which called them “unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the UN Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives to justify it.”

Iran, Syria’s closest regional ally, warned that the “Zionist regime’s attack on the outskirts of Damascus will have grave consequences for Tel Aviv.” Previously Tehran had warned that it would treat an attack on Syria as an act of aggression against its own territory.

In Lebanon, President Michel Suleiman denounced the Israeli attack as “flagrant aggression” and accused Israel of “exploiting the developments in Syria to carry out its aggressive policies, indifferent to all the humanitarian and international treaties.”

Debka.com, an Israeli military intelligence web site with close ties to the Israeli secret services, reported that the strike on Syria had “touched off high military alerts across the region,” including on the part of a Russian fleet of 18 warships in the eastern Mediterranean, the Lebanese and Jordanian armies and US forces based at the Incerlik air base in Turkey, as well as US special operations troops deployed in Jordan.

The US-backed Israeli attack on Syria is only the beginning of what threatens to explode into a far wider war, including against Iran, dragging the entire region into a bloodbath and endangering the lives of millions.

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Filed Under: International News, Middle East Tagged With: , , , , ,

As Syria Continues To Simmer, Lebanon Remains in Limbo

January 16, 2013 By 292 Comments

Pat_BeirPatrick Henningsen
21stCentury Wire
January 16, 2013

BEIRUT – On arrival to Lebanon’s capital city, all seems very functional and normal on the surface, as the city runs business as usual.

Below the surface however, there is a feeling of trepidation, an unspoken collective worry that a city and country who has gradually managed to pick up the pieces from the decades-long conflict which stretched through the 70’s and 80’s, an Israeli occupation of its south, followed by a brief, albeit destructive, ‘33 Day War’ with Israel in 2006 – might once again be dragged into another sub-regional conflict. It goes without saying that police and security services in Lebanon are on high alert.

Tourism Hit Hard

The neighboring conflict has also had a very negative impact on Lebanon’s tourism, keeping away the much-needed outside currency for which many jobs, independent hotels and other SMEs are dependent for their economic survival. But despite the recent problems, Beirut is still moving ahead, still attracting some foreign investment made visible by the hundreds of new building projects springing up all over the city. And as expected, the restaurants seem busy and the cafes are still buzzing.Already there is a tangible presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and in the capital Beirut, who have fled from the fighting and breakdown of society currently unfolding next door. The impact of the Syrian conflict on its neighbor Lebanon in such a short space of time is substantial.Latest reports put the number of Syrian refugees recently accumulated in Lebanon at 300,000. This figure is contrasted by the number of Palestinian refugees whose ancestors fled Israel’s ethnic cleanings in 1947-48, still housed in Lebanon today – which is currently estimated at 500,000.

The Issue of Sectarianism

Lebanon is, more than ever, a demonstration of sectarianism par excellence. In of country of 4 million, there is differentiation within the Christian community – Greek Orthodox, Maronite, Melkite, Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic, as well as within and the Muslim community – Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Druze.  In addition to this, there is a substantial Armenian community, a large community of foreign nationals from the US and Europe, Asian and African migrant workers, and a small Jewish community. One might also note that the internal rifts between Christian and Muslim factions are almost as great as the polarity separating Christians and Muslim as a whole.That said, it is also the only society in the region where contrasting religions and cultures are completely intermingled and where tolerance has evolved into a virtue.
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Co-existance: A scene from a recent Christmas illustrates the country’s diversity (PHOTO: Mary Henningsen)


In its totality, Lebanon consists of some of 19 religions and dozens more ethnic , groups. Many a thesis and book have sought to chronicle (and will continue to argue no doubt) this strive towards cultural détente in the Levant. One such writer is Lebanese-American Professor Walid Phares, who sums up the country’s current alignment as follows:

“Although multi-ethic and multi-religious, Lebanon was viewed by the political establishment as a unitary republic which can only have a majority and a minority. Therefore, and without a mechanism of decentralization, Federation or simply pluralism, that establishment was vying over who really represents the “majority” of all Lebanese, and who reduced to a “minority.” The debate was then about numbers, census, demographic changes, communities who have allegedly increased in numbers because of poverty versus communities who have decreased in numbers because of emigration. But that was a false problem.”
Much of the country’s political energy has been expended over the course of the last half century in determining who is the majority and who is the minority, and although the intention was to present a fair solution to representation in its central government, it has also been the source of internal power-politics, which some believe laid down a fertile soil for the sharp upheaval Lebanon experienced from 1975 onward.

Nowhere is the nation’s simmering ‘political ratio’ reflected more than in its own constitution – a document which goes to extraordinary lengths to secure some form of socio-religious balance. The Lebanese constitution mandates that the office President should be held by a Maronite Christian, the Speaker of the House held by a Shi’ite Muslim, and the post of Prime Minister held by a Sunni Muslim.

Beirut shoulders a diverse collection of ethnic groups, along with their corresponding political issues (PHOTO: Patrick Henningsen)

Many academics such as Phares, feel that the future would be brighter if Lebanon would embrace its multicultural reality and take a feather out of Belgium’s or Canada’s cap, and consider phasing out its historical obsession with ethnic and religious minorities and majorities. In other words, if Lebanon could embrace ‘multiculturalism’, it wouldn’t need the old system. This idea is easier said than done, as vested political interests and blood spilled over decades has, to a large degree, cemented traditional political and social paradigms into place.

Syria Simmering Next Door

 What’s foremost on the minds of Lebanese in 2013 is what will happen with Syria, and will Lebanon we dragged to their war. Alongside this, many are left questioning whether or not Lebanon will ever achieve some form of long-term peace with its southern neighbor Israel. The former is the key to its short-term prosperity, while the latter is the key to healing wounds still festering from the wars, as well as the influx of Palestinians it has had to shoulder since 1948. The situation in Syria is made even more complex by the fact that a number of foreign powers with vested interests in Damascus regime change are supplying fighters, arms, logistics, money and mass media support – which has always been a recipe for chaos throughout history. Among these foreign actors vying for position in Syria are Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, US, UK and France (somehow, it’s all beginning to look more and more like pre-WWI power-politics). Syria has long played an overshadowing role in the stability – and destiny of its smaller neighbor Lebanon. The scares still run deep from Syria’s obtuse and often disjointed alliances with different factions over the course of Lebanon’s Civil Wars in the 70’s and 1980’s. The result of Syria’s hand in those affairs has been a dysfunctional, and often times confusing relationship between Damascus and Beirut, as well as the cause for political dysfunction within Beirut itself. In 2013, however, the alignments are markedly different from previous decades. For starters, Syria, itself, is now a major piece on the global chessboard, not least of all because of its three major allies, all of whom seem to run contrary to ‘central planning‘ in the West – namely, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran and now Russia. All interested parties see Syria as the key domino, and this, rightly so, is the cause for much worry right now.

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Stunning countryside: Sunset over the historic Chouf mountain range in southern Lebanon (PHOTO: Patrick Henningsen)


Lebanon has a number of internal issues I’m sure it would prefer to sort out first before being dragged into another sub-regional conflagration – like it’s own central government, its economy, its potentially massive tourism trade, and of course, the Palestinian refugee issue. Yesterday, I was able to travel south the ancient city of Tyre, some 16km from the the Israeli border. The ruins are stunning, but so are the Palestinian refugee camp which runs alongside it. It’s was a little tragic, if not amusing to discover there that some Palestinians in need of rock for building their homes had permanently borrowed some of the antiquity ruins next door. In a certain way, some five millennia of history puts the current protracted upheaval into some perspective.

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Ancient city of Tyre in Lebanon (PHOTO: Patrick Henningsen)

The recent past certainly has pulled Lebanon down in a spiral of social tension and extreme economic strife, but set against the larger backdrop of successive empires and cultures who have been overlaid on to this small, but historically pivotal region, it’s merely the latest chapter in a much larger epic novel. Many people outside of Lebanon – academics, archeologists, tourists – all long to see Lebanon achieve stability and one day showcase its incredible cultural and historical wealth to the world.In essence, making the difficult transition from a fractured state, to one of stability and eventual prosperity. I talked about this to one long-term Beirut resident, named Jamal, who put it simply, “To do all this, first we need to have peace.”It’s that simple. On paper anyway.….


Writer Patrick Henningsen is a roving correspondent for the UK Column, as well as host of 21st Century Wire TV programme airing Thursdays at 6pm on PSTV SKY channel 191 in the UK.

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Filed Under: 2012, America, Arab Spring, BREAKING NEWS, Business, EU, History, Israel, Lebanon, London, Syria, WORLD NEWS Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Pre-Empty: US Ramps Up WMD Rhetoric Against Syria

December 10, 2012 By 399 Comments
 

The chemical scare around Syria is receiving a skeptical response not only from Assad’s government, but now the very people seeking to bring him down.

A senior rebel official has dismissed Washington’s reports that Assad was arming chemical warheads, saying it was all part of a media game.
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Filed Under: 2012, America, False Flag, Journalism, Media, Middle East, Military, NATO, NEWS, Politics, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey, Uncategorized, US Politics, WORLD NEWS Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Syria regime change PR in high gear: More ‘newborn baby slaughter’ propaganda

February 13, 2012 By 1 Comment
Patrick Henningsen 21st Century Wire February 12, 2012 LONDON – We can already see exact parallels with the current PR operation to bring down Syria with how Libya went down. In one story published today, it seems that one award-winning mainstream newspaper has been caught red-handed running faux news on Syria - and incredibly, it’s not the first time this exact story has been used. Late last week, reporter Alastair Beach of The Independent newspaper based in London, cited “evidence” in his article entitled “Assad’s slaughter of the innocents“, claiming that Syrian President Assad’s security forces have indiscriminately killed scores of newborn babies in Homs this week, as his article claims:
“Bashar al-Assad’s bloody siege of Homs intensified yesterday as clear evidence emerged that his indiscriminate shelling of the restive town had started claiming innocent victims, including at least 18 premature babies and three entire families. The evidence came as civilians in the besieged city endured a fifth day of incessant shellfire – the worst yet, according to eyewitnesses – with dozens of other people being killed as the brutal assault continued.”
Writer Beach’s source for his claims seem to originate from only one organization, not in Syria – but in London. Surprisingly, the Independent’s chief source for the alleged horrors in question is a nearly invisible organization known as the ”Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”(SOHR) (and to make matters worse, there are two competing SOHR orgs in London- with the same name although the Independent does not provide a link to either org), who claim to have an office based in London, but apparently have no address or contact phone number listed - only and email address. Even murkier however, is that fact that there are no names associated with the SOHR on their website, and many of its articles have been written under the fictitious pen name known as “Rami Abdul Rahman“. It’s likely that “Rami Abdul Rahman” could be one Rami Abdelrahman, depicted in other online press coverage as head of the SOHR, and is reported to have met with Britain’s Foreign Secretary,William Hague at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on November 21, 2011. One can only conclude that with no names or contact information, the SOHR is – by definition - a very well-hidden, clandestine lobbying organization, and in this case, it appears to be lobbying for regime change in Syria, from inside Britain’s Foreign Office.  Before regime change in Tripoli, the US, France and Britain relied on the likes of Soliman Bouchuiguir, the former Libyan League for Human Rights president with ties to NATO’s National Transitional Council (NTC), helped to generate numerous lies needed by the west to justify NATO’s now famously titled “humanitarian intervention” – allegedly to protect Libyans.  This human rights impostor – like his present day Syrian counterpart Rami Abdelrahman who may very well have ties to the Paris-based rebel coalition known as Syrian National Council (SNC), made then Colonel Moumar Gaddafi a targeted by spreading lies of alleged state crimes – but with with no evidence, as outlined in documents released last October by the publication Voltaire. Syria’s President Assad is currently undergoing the exact same treatment, and in the exact same manner. Babies in incubators: a recycled media hoax Amazingly, this exact same story was also making the rounds recently in August of 2011, when a similar claim was busy circulating online through various social networks including Twitter in Arabic - the exact same tale of premature babies who died in their incubators when Syrian forces cut off electricity to hospitals during their assault, not in Homs, but on the city of Hama. Even though it admits that it could not independently verify the account, CNN still ran with the SOHR rumor back in August, broadcasting: ”Rights Group: 8 babies die after power cut to Syrian hospital“. Electronic Infidada reported on the August 2011 baby hoax, stating back then, “Evidence suggests it is a cruel hoax, and the pictures of the “dead babies” widely circulated online are false.”  They went on to outline parallels between the August faux story and other past regime change PR campaigns:
“URGENT – Syria | The electricity was cut today from the city of Hama, and the outage included the hospitals. Following this, the Shabiha [state militia] deliberately destroyed the electricity generators in the hospitals which led to the deaths of all the premature babies (more than 40 in a single hospital).”
To me the story was immediately suspicious. First of all it sounded too much like the false reports of invading Iraqi troops throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait in August 1990 — reports that were used to build public support and urgency for the 1991 Gulf War. These claims were part of an elaborate propaganda effort by the Washington PR consultancy Hill & Knowlton hired by the Kuwaiti government.
The fact that an award-winning newspaper like the UK’s Independent would use such a shadowy outfit to support one of its most shocking headlined stories on the crisis in Syria – is also surprising in itself. The biggest problem with both seperate claims of dying babies in incubators put forward by the SOHR, and circulated in the corporate media by the likes of  The Independent and CNN, is that at no point along the line, has the SOHR been held accountable for what are patently unsubstantiated claims. Lobbying groups and their governments in-exile are traditionally the source of anti-regime “heart-string” reports which have in the past been passed on for broadcast by major media outlets, which naturally follows with favoring pre-emptive military strike, or as recently seen with Libya – a ‘humanitarian intervention’.  We can see how the corporate media will knowingly run sensationalist, unverified accounts of human rights events in countries like Libya and Syria, but what about out elected leaders? Will they too run with these same wild claims in order to make their public case for war? No doubt. Members of the NATO governments have also been assigned their roles in making intervention possible. Britain’s William Hague seems to be running point on the PR campaign for regime change in Syria. Following Russia and China’s veto of the UN’s recent revolution for action in Syria, Hague condemned the decision – and used wild, unverified statistics most likely gleaned from his friend at the SOHR, as reported by the Guardian:
“More than 2,000 people have died since Russia and China vetoed the last draft resolution in October 2011,” he said after the vote. “How many more need to die before Russia and China allow the UN security council to act?”
Journalist Tony Cartalucci reported back in December regarding the clandestine activities of SOHR, adding:
It is quite clear that the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” based in London and receiving the entirety of their reports via “phone” & YouTube videos from Syria, is working in coordination with both US-funded NGOs and the British Foreign Minister. Considering that Hague similarly coddled Libyan opposition leaders in London while playing a key role in promoting the NATO attack on Libya and the subsequent installation of a BP oilman as “prime minister,” Abdelrahman’s consorting signifies a verbatim repeat of the now openly fraudulent and genocidal NATO campaign in Libya. Just as in Libya, where “human rights activists” have now admitted to fabricating the evidence used by the International Criminal Court and the United Nations to rubber stamp Wall Street and London’s designs for regime change, likewise the “evidence” from Syria has turned out to be a complete fraud, derived by opposition “witnesses” and compiled by a corporate D.C. think-tank director into a UN “human rights report.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights serves as the exclusive source of “reports” coming out of Syria despite the fact that it is actually, entirely based in London. While it is verified that the NGOs it works in tandem with are US-funded, the Observatory itself fails to publish where its money comes from or the backgrounds of those that constitute its membership. We then, are expected to simply believe on face value a mysterious organization whose head meets with the British government and their unverified “witness accounts” as evidence to initiate military intervention at the cost of potentially millions of lives.
The UN based the whole premise for its Security Council Resolution 1973 for Libya on reports from western-backed Libyan rebels and the NTC. Their wild claims included – unbelievably and highly reported by the western media - that Gaddafi led jet attacks on his own people, and killed more than 6,000 unarmed protester cum civilians in the run up to NATO intervention. This jet claim was needed as a key component in order to get a No Fly Zone included in resolution 1973. During the run-up to their vote on the matter, no due diligence was carried out by any of the UN member states, which stands to reason, why the whole UN Libyan affair – from beginning to end, was planned and executed as a political operation - hardly of any humanitarian concern.  Here we are again, at another crossroads, so soon after the last one. And like clockwork, the same patterns are emerging to sway western public opinion, this time against President Assad and his Syrian government. It seems that consumers of the press in the west are being force fed another endless diet of false claims designed to sway public opinion in favor of military action by NATO, or NATO-backed allies in Syria, and later in Iran. This writer has already attempted to contact SOHR via their email address, in order to receive further clarification as to the source of their recent claims that Assad’s security forces are responsible for the death of 18 newborn babies, but have yet to receive any response from the London-based organization.facebooktwittergoogle_plusredditpinterest
Filed Under: 2012, 2012 Election, Afghanistan, International News, Iran, Syria, Uncategorized, US Politics, WORLD NEWS Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

SO WHAT IS ACTUALLY GOING ON IN SYRIA?

November 26, 2011 By 41 Comments
21st Century Wire November 26, 2011 Patrick Henningsen, a political analyst from the US-based Infowars.com online magazine and Editor of 21st Century Wire, believes that the escalation of tensions over Syria between the world’s major powers may lead to a new chilling in world politics.
“I think we are going to see a new Cold War emerge in the next two years, and we are seeing the initial steps of that new Cold War right now,” he told RT.
Another chief concern is Russia’s close military co-operation with Syria – with reports of S-300 missile defense installations having been supplied from Moscow. Henningsen adds here:
“If the Western powers think they are going to get away with a no-fly zone in Syria, this is a very different prospect than Libya. This will be the first time, in Syria, and also, if you look forward – with Iran, that the West, actually, is engaging a country that has the ability to fight back”.
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