The US secretary of state vowed Washington’s support for the Iraqi government in its fight to regain control of towns in its western province taken over by militants belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
That’s rich. The government of Syria is battling to root out these same al-Qaeda-linked militants. But in that country, Washington offers no such support.
Geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser on Press TV explained what is behind recent infighting between foreign-funded fighters battling along and within Syria’s borders. It is suggested that a new narrative is in the making, portraying “good terrorists” locked in battle with “bad terrorists,” thus providing a new context within which the West can continue arming and funding terrorist groups waging war on Syria.
Syria’s Ambassador at the UN, Dr Bashar al-Jaafari, blamed Saudi, Qatari and Turkish intelligence agencies of funding and arming terrorists in his country (SANA 18 Dec). On 30 December Syria formally asked the UN Security Council to prosecute Turkey and other countries which have been helping terrorists pass freely into Syria.
The simple fact is that the sectarian bloodshed inundating Syria and Iraq, and increasingly now in Lebanon, as well as in countries as far apart as Yemen and Russia, would not be happening if it were not for the blood money flowing from Saudi Arabia.
Months after the events took place, Pulitzer prize winning journalists and others are finally reporting about the lies and manipulations of the US government regarding the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria. Far from shining a light on the true situation in the country, however, these reports continue to avoid the underlying causes and explanations for what is happening in Syria, and the forces that are behind it
The uprisings of the Arab Spring have so far produced anarchy in Libya, a civil war in Syria, greater autocracy in Bahrain and resumed dictatorial rule in Egypt.
The use of mercenaries, death squads and snipers by Western intelligence agencies is well documented. No rational government attempting to stay in power would resort to unknown snipers to intimidate its opponents. Shooting at innocent protestors would be counterproductive in the face of unmitigated pressure from Western governments determined to install a client regime in Damascus. Shooting of unarmed protestors is only acceptable in dictatorships that enjoy the unconditional support of Western governments such as Bahrain, Honduras or Colombia.
The fact that Hersh’s revelations have been met by an almost total silence in the corporate media is stunning but sadly unsurprising. After all, this is simply the standard performance by ‘mainstream’ news media that have demonstrated decades of adherence to state-corporate power. That this is still happening after the horrendous war crime of Iraq, which was facilitated by intense media boosting of Western propaganda claims, is utterly shameful.
On the eve of the Geneva 2 Conference, the American organisers no longer have any puppets to play the role of Syrian revolutionaries. The sudden disappearance of the Free Syrian Army shows those who believed in it that it was a fiction. There has never been a popular revolution in Syria; just foreign aggression staged by mercenaries and billions of dollars.
Twelve years on, it is more clear than ever we were right to oppose those war policies. The vote in the British parliament on 30 August was a reflection that our political leaders can — by the force of majority public opinion, which opposes any more western intervention in other people’s countries — be made to end this era of perpetual war.
The American president that we now have—a guy I voted for, – was willing to go to war, wanted to throw missiles at Syria, without really having a case and knowing he didn’t have much of a case. And that, to me, is very troubling
The West abandoned its plans for military intervention in Syria because the world rejected its narrative, and despite assurances that the West had air tight intelligence, after many months still, the lid is tightly closed. It is clear that the West desired military intervention in the worst way, and had it possessed real intelligence linking the attacks to the Syrian government, it surely would have revealed it. As Hersh points out, they never had such evidence to begin with and depended entirely on their ability to sell yet another pack of lies to the public.
