E-mail: info@stpeteforpeace.org
St. Pete for Peace
The U.S. is on the same side as al-Qaeda in Syria fact sheet

.
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."

U.S. teaming up with al-Qaeda in Syria - 10 things everyone should know
U.S. teaming up with al-Qaeda in Syria - 10 things everyone should know

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


St. Pete for Peace


info@stpeteforpeace.org
© 2013 St Pete for Peace  |  All rights reserved