The Russian plan is a godsend for Obama. It saves him from what would look like a very serious political defeat. He has not been able to obtain virtually any international support for this—the action he’s contemplating. Even Britain wouldn’t support it. And it looked as though Congress wasn’t going to support it either, which would leave him completely out on a limb. This leaves him a way out.
Terrorists operating in Syria have threatened to “block” UN inspectors, any bloodshed will be on the hands of the US who is now openly arming them. Qassim Saadeddine of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” rejected the recent Syrian-Russian proposal to turn over Syria’s chemical weapons for independent verification and destruction, vowing to block UN inspectors should they enter Syria to carry out the task.
The Conventional Wisdom Is Wrong. Libya’s 2011 uprising was never peaceful, but instead was armed and violent from the start. Muammar al-Qaddafi did not target civilians or resort to indiscriminate force. Although inspired by humanitarian impulse, NATO’s intervention did not aim mainly to protect civilians, but rather to overthrow Qaddafi’s regime, even at the expense of increasing the harm to Libyans.
Relying entirely on the momentum of its massive media networks and their ability to “will” reality into any shape they please, headlines such as “United Nations’ Syria chemical weapons report “overwhelming,” shamelessly attempt to link two out of context statements by UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon regarding the Syria government’s “crimes against humanity” and the confirmed use of chemical weapons in Damascus Syria, to place in the mind of readers assigned blame for the attacks.
HRW also has a revolving door with the US State Department. Tom Malinowski, former ‘Washington Director for Human Rights Watch’, has just been named the Obama Administration’s “Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights”. Before joining HRW, Malinowski had been a ‘special assistant to President Bill Clinton and senior director for foreign policy speechwriting at the National Security Council’.
“When we see that the US genuinely stands for stability in our region, stops threatening us with military intervention and stops supplying terrorists with weapons, then we will consider it possible to finalize all necessary procedures and they will become legitimate and acceptable for Syria,” he said.
During his visit in Moscow William Engdahl met with audience, which has an interest in geopolitics and told about Arab Spring, situation at the Middle East and more — he is convinced that Russia’s position is right in this conflict.
Pity David Cameron. It’s bad enough that he has to show up at the G-20 Conference, all dressed up and no one to bomb, because that ‘copper-bottomed —-’ Miliband voted against him, thereby denying him the opportunity to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Obama. Then he has to endure the galling spectacle of France riding up on the imperial stagecoach instead, with Hollande really looking like a bespectacled cat that got the cream.
“Lies, disinformation and half-truths”, are how Professor of International Law Francis Boyle describes the Obama Administration handling of the use of Chemical Weapons in Syria. In a news release at the Institute for Public Accuracy, posted August 30, 2013, and titled, A “Dodgy Dossier” Instead of a Congressional Debate?, “The test the Dossier [PDF] uses is ‘high confidence’ — but the appropriate standard by the International Court of Justice (in the Corfu Channel case) is ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ The Dossier notes that it does not ‘confirm’ the allegations against Syria. So the U.S. intelligence community refuses to ‘confirm’ that the Syrian government did it.
None of the countries proposing the use of force against Syria can make any claim that Syria has attacked them, or that they are under imminent threat of attack. International treaties outlawing chemical weapons and prohibiting their use provide no special exception for such ad hoc use of military force. To the contrary, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the most comprehensive instrument concerning chemical weapons, provides for investigation of alleged violations by specialist bodies constituted by the Convention and recourse to the United Nations to authorize any use of force.
The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”
However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.
The U.S. government, of course, has a track record that will incline informed observers to approach its claims with skepticism–particularly when it’s making charges about the proscribed weapons of official enemies. Kerry said in his address that “our intelligence community” has been “more than mindful of the Iraq experience”–as should be anyone listening to Kerry’s presentation, because the Iraq experience informs us that secretaries of State can express great confidence about matters that they are completely wrong about, and that U.S. intelligence assessments can be based on distortion of evidence and deliberate suppression of contradictory facts.
