Islamist Rebels Release Video Showing Execution of 11 Syrian Soldiers
Second Execution Video Released by the Group in Two Days
by Jason Ditz, May 16, 2013
The al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra rebels have released another video, the second in as many days, showing their fighters summarily executing captured Syrian soldiers.
Today’s video showed 11 soldiers, bound and blindfolded before being shot to death. The executioner in the video said the killings were ordered by “the sharia court for Deir Azzor,” though it is unclear if such a court even exists outside of the militia’s own leadership.
A video released the previous day showed the execution of three soldiers in Raqqa, with a statement read saying it was “retaliation” for claimed government massacres in Baniyas and Homs.
Nusra regularly releases videos of executions, one of several policy moves that is fueling international concern over the group’s consider influence on the rest of the Syrian rebellion.
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/05/14/syrian-rebel-defends-eating-soldiers-heart-as-legitimate/
( Barbaric rebel act - silence of the lambs from the West and UN.... update - the UN speaks out against heart eating ! )
Graphic Video Of CIA’s Heart Eating Cannibal Terrorist Sparks UN Call For War Crimes Prosecution
May 15, 2013Source: Before It's News
After Time Magazine confirmed the authenticity of a video showing a CIA backed Syria terrorist calling for genocide and eating the heart out of a dead man the UN is calling for the act to be prosecuted as a war crime.
In another media backlash against the Obama administration the corporate media is now reporting on the war crimes committed by CIA backed terrorists in Syria and the UN is calling for their acts to be prosecuted as war crimes.
A few weeks ago the latest of numerous videos of the CIA’s rebel terrorists in Syria committing war crimes went viral on the internet.
Time Magazine verified the authenticity of video which shows the CIA’s terrorist commander calling for an open genocide against Alawite Muslims in Syria while cutting organs out of a man and eating it.
Exclusive: ‘We Will Slaughter All of Them.’ The Rebel Behind the Syrian Atrocity Video
[...]
Omar al-Farouk brigade
Khalid al-Hamad, left, in an undated photo that originally appeared on the website of the Syrian rebel group, the Independent Omar al-Farouk Brigade, which he commands
News sites around the world have shown Khalid al-Hamad sink his teeth into what appears to be the lung of a dead Syrian government soldier. His fellow rebels have called for him to be arrested or killed for the act. Human-rights groups have condemned him. But al-Hamad has no regrets.
In an interview conducted via Skype in the early hours of May 14, al-Hamad explained to TIME what caused him to cut out the soldier’s organs: “We opened his cell phone, and I found a clip of a woman and her two daughters fully naked and he was humiliating them, and sticking a stick here and there.”
The video, a 27-second clip in which al-Hamad brandishes organs that appear to be the lungs and heart of the Syrian soldier who lies dead at al-Hamad’s feet, was first seen by two TIME reporters in April. A few weeks later, TIME obtained a copy. Though we had been told by witnesses to the filming that the video was legitimate, we set about authenticating its content, aware of the potential that it could have been faked for propaganda purposes. Al-Hamad has now confirmed that the video is real, and that he did indeed take a bite of the soldier’s lung. (At the time of filming, al-Hamad believed he was biting into the liver. A surgeon who has seen the video confirms that the organ in question was a lung, which somewhat resembles the liver). On May 12, a copy of the video appeared on a proregime website, sparking a flood of Facebook Shares and YouTube views.
Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/05/14/we-will-slaughter-all-of-them-an-interview-with-the-man-behind-the-syrian-atrocity-video/#ixzz2TNJO1y8ZThe Time report is a change from previous behavior by the corporate media which often would entirely ignore war crimes committed by the terrorists such as the video below showing the barbarians mass executing civilians.
When the media did report on the war crimes those reports were quickly scrubbed from the internet much like the following BBC report which was only on the internet for a day before being erased.
The BBC and the NY Times has scrubbed this video and the accompanying story altogether, removing the video and the story all together. Down the memory whole.Following the Time article verifying the authenticity of the latest video Human Rights Watch called the act of cannibalism a war crime and appealed to the UN to take action on the issue.
The video details man held hostage by Syria terrorists being told he was released in a prisoner exchange being sent on his way in a rebel truck.
But he didn’t know the terrorists had place a 300 kilo bomb in the truck that the rebels planned on detonating remotely to turn him into an unwitting suicide bomber.
The video also shows the terrorist ransacking a police chiefs house, making fun of the ‘freedom’ of photos of the chiefs family and wife whose face was uncovered in wedding photos.
Even the BBC narrator states if the attack was successful this would have been considered a war crime ball all measures.
Cannibal terrorist says video from Syria is real“I have another video clip that I will send to them. In the clip I am sawing another Shabiha [pro-government militiaman] with a saw. The saw we use to cut trees. I sawed him in small pieces and large ones,” al Hamad told Time.Read Entire Article…
A foreign-backed militant who was seen eating an organ of a dead Syrian soldier in a recent video has confirmed the authenticity of the 27-second clip.
In an interview with Time magazine conducted via Skype on Tuesday, Khalid al Hamad, known by his nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, confirmed that the video is real and that he did indeed take a bite of the soldier’s lung.
The video shows him cutting out some of the soldier’s organs and biting into one. At the time of the filming, al Hamad believed that he was eating the man’s liver, but A surgeon who saw the video said the organ in question was actually a lung.[...]Human Rights Watch said it was a war crime.[...]Human Rights Watch, which validated the video, issued a report on Monday in which it called on the United Nations Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes and crimes against humanity.[...]
Upon being called upon by Human Rights Watch the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called the eating of a dead Syrian soldier’s organ by a foreign-backed militant as a “truly atrocious act,” saying it should be investigated as a “war crime” according to Press TV:
Organ eating of Syria soldier atrocious act, war crime: UN
“The video that has just emerged from Syria, apparently showing a rebel leader cutting out and biting the heart of a dead soldier, depicts a truly atrocious act,” Navi Pillay said on Tuesday in comments from Geneva.On Sunday, the footage posted on the internet showed that Khalid al Hamad, known by his nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, cutting out some of the soldier’s organs and biting into one. At the time of the filming, al Hamad believed that he was eating the man’s liver, but a surgeon who saw the video said the organ in question was actually a lung.
“Mutilating or desecrating corpses during a conflict is a war crime,” the High Commissioner said, adding, “I urge the armed opposition groups in Syria to do everything in their power to halt such gross crimes.”
Pillay also called for a probe into other serious violations by the foreign-backed militants in Syria, such as acts of torture, summary executions and extra-judicial killings.
[...]
Read Entire Article…
and....
Syrian Rebel Defends Eating Soldier’s Heart as ‘Legitimate’
Sociopathic Commander's Video Raises Ire Among Rights Groups
by Jason Ditz, May 14, 2013
Yesterday’s video of a then-unnamed Syrian rebel carving the heart out of a slain enemy and taking a big bite out of it was among the most decisively ugly visuals of the civil war so far. It was so appalling that it got rights groups condemning him, and even his fellow rebels disavowed it.
It turns out to be far from being one of those “caught on tape” moments that was immediately regretted. The rebel, identified now as commander Khaled al-Hamad, is not only unapologetic about the incident but loudly defends it as a “legitimate” action.
“I swear to God we will eat your hearts, Alawite soldiers of Bashar the dog,” he declared, adding that “hopefully we will slaughter all of them.” Hamad then went on to brag about having other videos of himself sawing up corpses of slain militia members.
The incident is just one more reason why the increasingly unstable rebellion, with its al-Qaeda linked fighters and now its cannibals, who are decidedly violating Islamic dietary law, is finding growing reluctance to secure Western backing. Though the US is said to still be considering sending arms to the rebels, it is clear that having them wind up in the hands of an unrepentant heart-eater would be a PR-blunder, and that is sure to have the administration thinking twice.
Is this why the US has been silent on the cannibal rebels ?
Brandon TurbevilleActivist Post
As the Syrian army continues to gain the upper handagainst the NATO-backed death squads made up of mercenaries, fanatics, and al-Qaeda terrorists, it appears that the Western powers responsible for the creation of the armed and violent rebellion have kicked into high gear as the advance of their proxy army has been stalled.
Even though the barbarism of death squad participants seems to have recently hit a fever pitch, while Israeli air strikes on sovereign Syrian soil are targeting military andcivilian targets alike, and newfound erroneous claims by Western nations of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government, the Syrian army has managed to continue its mop up of the inappropriately named “rebels.”
Yet the Western agitators have not given up. This much is made clear by the recent “secret” visit by former U.S. Ambassador to Syria and notorious destabilization agent Robert Ford made to the current death squad leader, Gen. Salim Idriss.
This visit took place Wednesday, May 9, 2013 and was likely initiated via the Bab al-Salama crossing on the Turkey/Syria border. According to Deborah Thomas of NPR, “Ford met with the head of the Aleppo military council, Abdul Jabbar Okaidi, who thanked him for the shipment of nonlethal aid. Seven trucks transported some 65,000 MREs, or meals ready to eat, the U.S. military's battlefield rations.”
Although no mention is made of the actual lethal aid that has been provided to the death squads by the generosity of the American taxpayer via Gulf State feudal monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Thomas points out that the MREs were part of “an additional $10 million aid package” dedicated to the death squads by the U.S. government. Secretary of State John Kerry announced in April that the United States would be donating $123 million to the Syrian death squads, despite facing a worldwide economic depression, drastic levels of unemployment at home, and a manufactured crisis such as the “sequester” and a host of other domestic crises.
Ford’s visit to Syria is both part of the overarching attempt to further destabilize the country, organize death squad activity, and create a public relations campaign aimed at forming an image of Idriss as a figure around which popular support can be rallied. This, of course, is at least the third time Western interests have attempted to create a “freedom fighter” lead image for the Syrian death squads – Moaz al-Khatib and Ghassan Hitto being the more recent failures.
Idriss appears to be nothing more than the latest incarnation of a would-be puppet dictator set up to impose the Western will upon the Syrian people and act as a proxy stabilizing force in the event of the much-desired (on the part of NATO) removal of Assad. Idriss was actually a military officer in the Assad government himself until defecting in 2012. Now, he is theofficial commander of the Free Syrian Army and thus a comrade in arms of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and a ragtag band of fanatics, mental deficients, traitors, and mercenaries.
As Webster Tarpley commented on PressTV on May 10, 2013,
Ford’s very presence in Syria was never anything more than a destabilization tactic. Indeed, he has managed to draw quite a bit of international attention to himself by traveling across the country at will, “meeting with protestors” and turning terrorists into martyrs in the minds of the gullible Western public.
Logically, by “meeting with protestors” one can read “instigating terrorism.” The mainstream media, however, reported Ford’s terror encouragement tour as a heroic act of solidarity with “the people.”
Ford’s action in Syria, even as the official U.S. Ambassador, served exactly the same purpose as his presence in Iraq only a few years previous. With Syria, however, it seems that Ford attempted to take on a more central role in the affair. Indeed, many Syrians, if not aware of the more specific sinister acts of Ford, are at least aware that he has been instrumental in fomenting violent rebellion and negative Western public opinion against the ruling government. This is why Ford’s convoy was attacked by “pro-government” Syrians as he rode through town meeting with his terrorist pets.
The reality is that Ford is nothing more than a globalist chaos promoter who is merely taking over from his mentor John Negroponte, who became quite refined as a enabler of mass slaughter in Central America and Iraq. Indeed, Negroponte’s Iraq affair is where Ford himself was able to hone his skills in the arming and assistance of ruthless death squads who target innocent people in campaigns of terror and mass murder.
It should be noted that Prof. Michel Chossudovsky of GlobalResearch.ca has provided an excellent historical presentation of the connections of Negroponte, Ford, and even David Petraeus in relation to death squads and destabilization in his article “The Pentagon’s ‘Salvador Option’: The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria.” I encourage everyone to read this excellent piece for context and analysis as a companion to my own article.
John Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. In this role, he was instrumental in supporting and overseeing the Nicaraguan Contra killers who, although based in Honduras, engaged in horrific acts of terrorism inside Nicaragua. Ultimately, this operation claimed the lives of approximately 50,000 innocent civilians. This is the origin of the term “Salvador Option” when speaking of the formation of “death squads” for political purposes, an option that has become a hallmark of Negroponte and the system which he represents.
Negroponte was also responsible for the formation of the Honduran death squads who engaged in a mission of terror against opponents of the US-backed Honduran regime as well as the Sandinistas and civilian populations in Nicaragua.
As Peter Roff and James Chapin write in their article “Face-off: Bush’s Foreign Policy Warriors,”
The Sun described the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves."
On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report entitled “Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980s.” This report was partly declassified on Oct. 22, 1998, in response to demands by the Honduran human rights ombudsman.
In 2005, Negroponte was appointed as ambassador to Iraq. In this role, he again oversaw the formation of death squads who targeted both the civilian populations and the Iraqi insurgency. The goal here was to foment division within the insurgency and turn it into a fragmented front. A divided opposition is obviously much easier to defeat than a united one. This theory has been proven accurate time and time again.
Indeed, in 2005, a story was leaked to Newsweek where the Pentagon confirmed that it was “considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago.”[1]
The Pentagon did more than “consider” this option. Not very long after this information was leaked, Iraq began to see the results of its implementation. As Dahr Jamail of Antiwar.com wrote in 2007,
Under the "Salvador Option," Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980s, Ret. Col James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi'ite militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance.
Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiraled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq. Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today. Of course, the fact that the death squad option was implemented so quickly after the release of the report suggests that the mercenaries were being organized and applied long before Newsweek was made aware of them.
Nevertheless, serving in Iraq at the same time that the death squads were beginning to make their bloody mark on the cohesion of the “insurgency,” was Robert Ford who, at the time, had been appointed political counselor to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Ford remained in this post from 2004-2006 where he worked closely with Negroponte. He was also heavily involved in the organization of the death squads. Ford was instrumental in helping make “contacts” with these individuals as well as developing and maintaining relations with them for other purposes such as continued and future terror campaigns.
In fact, Ford was once described by Negroponte as “one of these very tireless people . . . who didn’t mind putting on his flak jacket and helmet and going out of the Green Zone to meet contacts.” In short, Ford acted as a foot soldier in death squad formation.
Attempting to summarize the death squad plan, Michael Hirsh and John Barry of Newsweekwrote in 2005:
Notes:
[1] “El Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants.” Times Online. January 10, 2005. As quoted and sourced by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky ofGlobalResearch.ca in his article, “ The Pentagon’s ‘Salvador Option’: The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria.”
Is this why the US has been silent on the cannibal rebels ?
 |
| image source |
As the Syrian army continues to gain the upper handagainst the NATO-backed death squads made up of mercenaries, fanatics, and al-Qaeda terrorists, it appears that the Western powers responsible for the creation of the armed and violent rebellion have kicked into high gear as the advance of their proxy army has been stalled.
Even though the barbarism of death squad participants seems to have recently hit a fever pitch, while Israeli air strikes on sovereign Syrian soil are targeting military andcivilian targets alike, and newfound erroneous claims by Western nations of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government, the Syrian army has managed to continue its mop up of the inappropriately named “rebels.”
Yet the Western agitators have not given up. This much is made clear by the recent “secret” visit by former U.S. Ambassador to Syria and notorious destabilization agent Robert Ford made to the current death squad leader, Gen. Salim Idriss.
This visit took place Wednesday, May 9, 2013 and was likely initiated via the Bab al-Salama crossing on the Turkey/Syria border. According to Deborah Thomas of NPR, “Ford met with the head of the Aleppo military council, Abdul Jabbar Okaidi, who thanked him for the shipment of nonlethal aid. Seven trucks transported some 65,000 MREs, or meals ready to eat, the U.S. military's battlefield rations.”
Although no mention is made of the actual lethal aid that has been provided to the death squads by the generosity of the American taxpayer via Gulf State feudal monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Thomas points out that the MREs were part of “an additional $10 million aid package” dedicated to the death squads by the U.S. government. Secretary of State John Kerry announced in April that the United States would be donating $123 million to the Syrian death squads, despite facing a worldwide economic depression, drastic levels of unemployment at home, and a manufactured crisis such as the “sequester” and a host of other domestic crises.
Ford’s visit to Syria is both part of the overarching attempt to further destabilize the country, organize death squad activity, and create a public relations campaign aimed at forming an image of Idriss as a figure around which popular support can be rallied. This, of course, is at least the third time Western interests have attempted to create a “freedom fighter” lead image for the Syrian death squads – Moaz al-Khatib and Ghassan Hitto being the more recent failures.
Idriss appears to be nothing more than the latest incarnation of a would-be puppet dictator set up to impose the Western will upon the Syrian people and act as a proxy stabilizing force in the event of the much-desired (on the part of NATO) removal of Assad. Idriss was actually a military officer in the Assad government himself until defecting in 2012. Now, he is theofficial commander of the Free Syrian Army and thus a comrade in arms of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, and a ragtag band of fanatics, mental deficients, traitors, and mercenaries.
As Webster Tarpley commented on PressTV on May 10, 2013,
Well, I think we have some mixed signals from the Obama regime here. Let us hasten to say that anybody calling themselves “Free Syrian Army” is, in fact, a representative of the al-Nusra Front because we’re getting reports everyday of more and more units of the so-called FSA showing their true colors or going over to Nusra and proclaiming themselves full-fledged terrorists, al-Qaeda disciples, death squads in every sense of the word. Now, we had, in the last twenty four hours, Ambassador Robert Ford of the State Department, somebody who did a lot to get this tragic rebellion going in the first place . . . Ambassador Robert Ford who is a taskmaster of death squad deployments, having learned it from Negrponte in Baghdad some years ago, he crossed into Syria, not with the permission of the Syrian government, but to go and meet General Idriss. And this General, Salim Idriss, is the new golden boy here. He is the new darling of the CIA and the State Department. And it looks like Ford is trying to coordinate the next move with Idriss. You can think of Idriss as the new Ahmed Chalabi – somebody the U.S. is grooming to become dictator of the country.Of course, this is not the first time that Ford has engaged in a publicity-based visit to the Syrian death squads inside Syria, thus drawing the ire of the Syrian government. In 2011, after his travel as U.S. Ambassador had been restricted due to his destabilization efforts already taking place, Ford traveled to Hama in order to promote and encourage the violent assault waged by the Western-backed death squads against innocent Syrian civilians as well as Syrian soldiers.
Ford’s very presence in Syria was never anything more than a destabilization tactic. Indeed, he has managed to draw quite a bit of international attention to himself by traveling across the country at will, “meeting with protestors” and turning terrorists into martyrs in the minds of the gullible Western public.
Logically, by “meeting with protestors” one can read “instigating terrorism.” The mainstream media, however, reported Ford’s terror encouragement tour as a heroic act of solidarity with “the people.”
Ford’s action in Syria, even as the official U.S. Ambassador, served exactly the same purpose as his presence in Iraq only a few years previous. With Syria, however, it seems that Ford attempted to take on a more central role in the affair. Indeed, many Syrians, if not aware of the more specific sinister acts of Ford, are at least aware that he has been instrumental in fomenting violent rebellion and negative Western public opinion against the ruling government. This is why Ford’s convoy was attacked by “pro-government” Syrians as he rode through town meeting with his terrorist pets.
The reality is that Ford is nothing more than a globalist chaos promoter who is merely taking over from his mentor John Negroponte, who became quite refined as a enabler of mass slaughter in Central America and Iraq. Indeed, Negroponte’s Iraq affair is where Ford himself was able to hone his skills in the arming and assistance of ruthless death squads who target innocent people in campaigns of terror and mass murder.
It should be noted that Prof. Michel Chossudovsky of GlobalResearch.ca has provided an excellent historical presentation of the connections of Negroponte, Ford, and even David Petraeus in relation to death squads and destabilization in his article “The Pentagon’s ‘Salvador Option’: The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria.” I encourage everyone to read this excellent piece for context and analysis as a companion to my own article.
John Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. In this role, he was instrumental in supporting and overseeing the Nicaraguan Contra killers who, although based in Honduras, engaged in horrific acts of terrorism inside Nicaragua. Ultimately, this operation claimed the lives of approximately 50,000 innocent civilians. This is the origin of the term “Salvador Option” when speaking of the formation of “death squads” for political purposes, an option that has become a hallmark of Negroponte and the system which he represents.
Negroponte was also responsible for the formation of the Honduran death squads who engaged in a mission of terror against opponents of the US-backed Honduran regime as well as the Sandinistas and civilian populations in Nicaragua.
As Peter Roff and James Chapin write in their article “Face-off: Bush’s Foreign Policy Warriors,”
The Sun described the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves."
On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report entitled “Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980s.” This report was partly declassified on Oct. 22, 1998, in response to demands by the Honduran human rights ombudsman.
In 2005, Negroponte was appointed as ambassador to Iraq. In this role, he again oversaw the formation of death squads who targeted both the civilian populations and the Iraqi insurgency. The goal here was to foment division within the insurgency and turn it into a fragmented front. A divided opposition is obviously much easier to defeat than a united one. This theory has been proven accurate time and time again.
Indeed, in 2005, a story was leaked to Newsweek where the Pentagon confirmed that it was “considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago.”[1]
The Pentagon did more than “consider” this option. Not very long after this information was leaked, Iraq began to see the results of its implementation. As Dahr Jamail of Antiwar.com wrote in 2007,
Under the "Salvador Option," Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980s, Ret. Col James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi'ite militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance.
Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiraled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq. Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today. Of course, the fact that the death squad option was implemented so quickly after the release of the report suggests that the mercenaries were being organized and applied long before Newsweek was made aware of them.
Nevertheless, serving in Iraq at the same time that the death squads were beginning to make their bloody mark on the cohesion of the “insurgency,” was Robert Ford who, at the time, had been appointed political counselor to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. Ford remained in this post from 2004-2006 where he worked closely with Negroponte. He was also heavily involved in the organization of the death squads. Ford was instrumental in helping make “contacts” with these individuals as well as developing and maintaining relations with them for other purposes such as continued and future terror campaigns.
In fact, Ford was once described by Negroponte as “one of these very tireless people . . . who didn’t mind putting on his flak jacket and helmet and going out of the Green Zone to meet contacts.” In short, Ford acted as a foot soldier in death squad formation.
Attempting to summarize the death squad plan, Michael Hirsh and John Barry of Newsweekwrote in 2005:
[O]ne Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called 'snatch' operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries. [emphasis added]While Robert Ford is by no means the architect of any of these conflicts, particularly the Syrian version, it is without a doubt that he has played a vastly important role in the the destruction of these sovereign nations. Ford, like Negroponte, may not have been the architect of deconstruction but he has no doubt, also like Negroponte, served as a ferventworker bee in the process.
Notes:
[1] “El Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants.” Times Online. January 10, 2005. As quoted and sourced by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky ofGlobalResearch.ca in his article, “ The Pentagon’s ‘Salvador Option’: The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria.”
US still willing to give these rebels more arms .... no warning against Rebels who refuse to negotiate
Kerry Warns Assad: More Help to Rebels If You Do Not Negotiate
Kerry warned the Syrian government even though it's the rebels who have refused to negotiate
by John Glaser, May 14, 2013
Secretary of State John Kerry warned the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad that if it chooses not to participate in upcoming international negotiations aimed at ending the country’s two-year conflict, then “the opposition will be receiving additional support.”
After a visit to Moscow, Kerry said he expects every party to the conflict to participate in an international conference to negotiate a peaceful transition in Syria, planned for early June. The conference will be endorsed by both the U.S. and Russia.
“If he decides not to come to the table it will be another one of President Assad’s gross miscalculations. Now, I don’t believe that that is the case at this moment,” Kerry said.
“If President Assad decides to miscalculate again about that,” Kerry added, “as he has miscalculated about his own country’s future over the course of the last years, it is clear the opposition will be receiving additional support, there will be additional efforts made and unfortunately the violence will not end.”
What Kerry didn’t mention is that the Syrian rebels, which have no organized leadership, have consistently and defiantly opposed any negotiations with the Assad regime. Still, his warning was issued to the Syrian government and not the rebels.
In any case, the threat is probably an empty one meant for rhetoric only. While the Obama administration has facilitated the delivery of weapons and other aid from countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it has stopped short of directly arming the rebels, citing concerns about weapons getting in the hands of terrorists.
Israel the armed wing for Rebels ....
Is Israel Hastening the Fall of Assad?
John Glaser, May 14, 2013
Israel’s official silence following its airstrikes on weapons depots in Syria earlier this month fueled accusations in every direction. Damascus condemned it as an attempt to destroy the regime, Tehran said the real targets were Iran and Hezbollah, analysts in the U.S. said it was a demonstration of “credibility.”
But now a Syrian rebel commander has a different take: “The assault was in support of Assad.”
Abdul Qader Saleh, commander of the Al-Tawhid Brigade, told the Turkish news agency Cihan that Bashar Assad’s regime has in fact already been defeated and that Iran and Hezbollah , with Israel’s backing, are preventing his downfall.“The Syrian opposition was on the verge of taking over Assad’s weapons caches and that is why Israel attacked Syria,” Saleh claimed.“There were several senior Syrian officers who were planning to defect and hand over weapons to the opposition. Israel bombed those caches for fear they would fall to the hands of the opposition. They contained air defense systems and heavy artillery. The assault was in support of Assad.”
This clashes with analyses that claim Israel aims to overthrow Assad in order to get to Iran. The claim is about as credible as the rest of the assertions of Israel’s intent. But Saleh’s accusation isn’t out of nowhere.
Efraim Halevy, who served as chief of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002, argued the same in a piece in Foreign Affairs:
Israel’s most significant strategic goal with respect to Syria has always been a stable peace, and that is not something that the current civil war has changed. Israel will intervene in Syria when it deems it necessary; last week’s attacks testify to that resolve. But it is no accident that those strikes were focused solely on the destruction of weapons depots, and that Israel has given no indication of wanting to intervene any further. Jerusalem, ultimately, has little interest in actively hastening the fall of Bashar al-Assad.Israel knows one important thing about the Assads: for the past 40 years, they have managed to preserve some form of calm along the border.
If you compare the threat assessment Israel must be doing on Assad with the threat assessment Israel must be doing on Sunni rebel extremists possibly coming to power in Syria, clearly the latter is significantly worse. Israeli foreign policy is menacing and criminal, but it isn’t stupid.
Not only does Israel in all likelihood see Assad as less threatening than al-Qaeda-affiliated militias, but there is also an argument out there, made yesterday by Thanassis Cambanis in Foreign Policy, that Iran’s backing of Assad is draining the Islamic Republic’s resources and reputation in the region. Israeli policymakers may be viewing that favorably.
Turkey banging War Drums....
Turkey PM to Push Obama for Action Against Syria
Efforts to Pin Border Bombs on Assad Continue, But Is Anyone Buying It?
by Jason Ditz, May 14, 2013
Following up on the Turkish government’s narrative that the weekend Reyhanli bombings were caused by the Syrian government, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to press President Obama for “assertive action” against Assad this week.
Erdogan’s government blamed Assad almost immediately for the blasts, a fact many saw as an effort to prevent them being pinned on the PKK and derailing peace talks. Days later, however, the Assad allegations aren’t holding water.
Turkey arrested nine people over the bombings on Sunday, every last one of them a Turkish citizen, and all reportedly linked to an “old Marxist terrorist organization.” A key opposition MP said he believes that the Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian rebel group with links to al-Qaeda, is the culprit.
Protesters in southern Turkey have also clearly repudiated the government’s narrative, saying they believe the bombings are simply blowback from the Erdogan government’s hasty intervention in Syria’s fighting.
Still, the Turkish government seems to be sticking to its story no matter how few people believe them, and that is fueling the push for US intervention as well. Though the US is unlikely to be “fooled” by the allegations, they may well be the excuse that US hawks have been waiting for.
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