Turkey, not Assad behind chemical attack that almost pushed US to war in Syria
The latest piece by Seymour Hersh (April 4, 2014) quotes a former US intelligence official as saying it was Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan,
whose dream of having a client state in Syria was evaporating due to
Assad's upper hand on the rebels, had ‘the need to do something
that would precipitate a US military response’. The former
official said that US intelligence analysts ‘sensed that Syria
had not done the gas attack. But the 500 pound gorilla was, how did it
happen? The immediate suspect was the Turks, because they had all the
pieces to make it happen.’
‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s
people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence
official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near
Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus
on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas – were
there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military
officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that
the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have
gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training
in producing the sarin and handling it.’ Erdoğan’s
problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama
will say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least
that was the idea. But it did not work out that way.’
One reason it didn't work out that way was US General Martin Dempsey,
then chairman of the joint chiefs who had been sceptical of the Obama
administration’s argument that it had the facts to back up its
belief in Assad’s guilt in the Aug. 21 2013 chemical attack in
Syria. ‘There was no way they thought Syria would use nerve gas
at that stage, because Assad was winning the war,’ the former
intelligence official said.
The post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the
White House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the
former intelligence official said. ‘There is great reluctance to
contradict the president, although no all-source intelligence community
analysis supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single
piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack
produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My
government can’t say anything because we have acted so
irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and
blame Erdoğan.’
Turkey’s willingness to manipulate events in Syria to its own
purposes seemed to be demonstrated late last month, a few days before a
round of local elections, when a recording, allegedly of Erdoğan and
his associates, was posted to YouTube. It included discussion of a
false-flag operation that would justify an incursion by the Turkish
military in Syria.
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE
Whose sarin? By Seymour Hersh
Obama cherry-picked intelligence
Like
Bush and Iraqi WMD, Obama cherry-picked intelligence on the Aug. 21
chemical attack as a way to justify war on Syria. One high-level
intelligence officer called Obama's assurances of Assad's supposed
chemical weapons attack a 'ruse', and that the attack was not the result of Assad.
Obama failed to
acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the
Syrian army was not the only entity with access to sarin. Even
though it knew the al-Nusra Front, al al-Qaeda affiliated group
fighting against the Syrian government, had mastered the mechanics of
creating the nerve gas in quantity. But Obama cherry-picked the
intelligence to justify a strike against Assad, in part, as a way to
not lose political points for the Democratic party since he had set a
"red line" on chemical weapons use.
A former senior
intelligence official told Hersh that the Obama administration had
altered the available information – in terms of its timing and
sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make
intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been
picked up and analyzed in real time, as the attack was happening. The
distortion, he said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident,
when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National
Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of
North Vietnam. The same official said there was immense frustration
inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: ‘The guys are
throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this
guy” – Obama – “when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’
In trying to justify an attack on Syria, the White House claimed it
knew about the sarin attack 3 days before it killed an estimated 1400
people. If this were true, why did it not give any warning to the
Syrian people? After this question was raised, the administration
retracted its statement saying that it did not know beforehand. (read)
Bombing Syria would make US pilots ‘Al-Qaeda's air force’ – Kucinich
(read)
Nearly half rebel fighters are jihadists or hardline Islamists, says IHS Jane's report
(read)
The U.S. violates its own laws by arming rebels in Syria
(read)
With its decision to directly arm Syrian rebels (Obama has already authorized clandestine operations), the Obama administration is in violation of U.S. laws that prohibit material support of terrorists.
Regardless of how
advocates of increased Syrian intervention attempt to nuance the
debate, included amongst the Syrian rebels are the al-Nusra Front, a group the U.S. has labeled a terrorist organization, and Al-Qaeda, the sworn enemy of the U.S. Further, the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri has urged all Muslims to help Syrian rebels. (Zawahiri’s has also said that he wants Syria to become an Islamic state,
not the secular state that currently exists under al-Assad.) It
is self-evident that arming the rebels in Syria is a violation of U.S.
law (USA PATRIOT Act -18 U. S. C. §2339B).
On the same day that Obama emphasized his commitment to Syrian rebels on a call to Saudi Arabia, the Pakistan Taliban
announced that it was likely to join the fray in Syria, meaning the
U.S. is now on the same side as the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Syria.
Syrian rebels have promised U.S. and European
officials that any military weaponry they receive won't end up with
extremists among their forces. That would be similar to a tavern owner
promising that none of its patrons would drive drunk after being at
their drinking establishment all night.
These are the same rebels who refused to enter into Russian/U.S.-led peace talks; have cut out the heart of a Syrian soldier and eaten it; recruited a 14-year-old boy as a fighter and had a child take part in beheading two government soldiers; have instituted Sharia law in parts of rebel-held territory; and according to a U.N. official, are not seeking democracy.
The Obama administration's claim that Syria
crossed a "red-line" by using chemical weapons is dubious at
best. Chemical weapons experts are skeptical, and in fact, a former Bush administration official
said that Israel may be behind use of chemical arms in Syria, and the
initial reports of chemical weapons use stated that it was likely that it was the rebels, not the government who used the weapons.
When Colin Powell went to the U.N. in 2003 to convince people that Iraq
had large stockpiles of WMD, democrats were skeptical, and said that
even if Iraq did have WMD it is not a reason for war, given the U.S.
has the largest arsenal of WMD in the world.
The real reason Obama decided to send arms to the Syrian opposition has nothing to do with chemical weapons, according to Shamus Cooke.
The United States and its European allies want regime change in Syria
and are prepared to add fuel to the fire in Syria to do so. Just as
importantly, the Obama administration has repeatedly said that 'Assad
must go', thus, according to Cooke, "if Assad stayed in power, US
foreign policy would appear weak internationally, which is one main
reason that the US political establishment wants to go "all in" for
regime change in Syria: super powers must back up their threats, since
otherwise other nations might choose to challenge the United States."
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St. Pete for Peace
U.S. on same side as al-Qaeda in Syria - 10 things everyone should know
SOURCES
1. Obama Clears $10 Million in Aid for Syrian Opposition
April 11, 2013 - Bloomberg
2. Militant rebels in Syria announce merger with al-Qaeda
April 10, 2013 - Associated Press
3. Jihadists, not Assad, apparently behind reported chemical attack in Syria
March 24, 2013 - Haaretz
4. ‘Rebels’ bring Sharia law to Syria
March 19, 2013 - Washington Post
5. Kerry: U.S. pledges $60M in new aid to Syria opposition
Feb. 28, 2013 - USA Today
6. Obama authorized covert support for Syrian rebels, sources say
Aug. 1, 2012 - CNN
7. As many as a quarter of the 300 rebel groups
in Syria may be fighting under the banner of al-Qaeda, says Rep. Mike
Rogers (R-MI)
July 24, 2012 - Los Angeles Times
8. C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition
June 21, 2012 - New York Times
9. Hillary Clinton: Arming Syrian rebels could help al Qaeda
Feb. 27, 2012 - CBS News
10. Al Qaeda’s chief urges Muslims to help Syria rebels
February 12, 2012 - CBS News
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