http://www.infowars.com/man-behind-syrian-chemical-weapons-claim-is-fiction-writer-who-covered-up-benghazi/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-14/russian-mp-accuses-us-fabricating-syrian-chemical-weapons-report
( Russia not happy - but what will Russia DO ? )
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/14/2013 07:50 -0400
http://www.juancole.com/2013/06/resist-clintons-europe.html
http://www.debka.com/article/23045/Unspecified-US-weapons-for-Syrian-rebels-but-no-intervention-to-save-Aleppo
The Syrian rebels will ask Western countries for weapons, a no fly zone, and to push Russia to remove Iranian and Hezbollah fighters inside Syria, at a meeting to be held in Istanbul at the weekend.
The meeting will come ahead of next week’s G-8 meeting, where the Syrian crisis will top the agenda.
Western officials will meet the commander of the Syrian armed opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA), Salim Idris, on June 15 in Turkey to discuss new aid, diplomats said.
Louay al-Mokdad, the political and media coordinator of the FSA, confirmed the meeting to the Hürriyet Daily News.
“There will be a meeting on June 15 with some foreign countries. We will discuss the situation on the ground and we will ask for weapons from them, a no fly zone, and we will ask them to push Russia to remove Iranian and Hezbollah fighters from inside Syria,” he said when contacted by phone.
Western countries hope that by channeling assistance through Idris, a former senior commander in al-Assad’s army, they can reduce the influence of groups like al-Nusra, which Washington views as a front for al-Qaeda fighters from Iraq.
Renewed push for Syria
Western countries have so far refused to send arms to the rebels directly, although they have provided support for Arab states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia that do. Last month, France and Britain forced the European Union to lift an arms embargo, clearing the way to start shipping arms. The meeting came ahead of the G-8 meeting.
World leaders from the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan will meet between June 17 and 18 in Northern Ireland for a renewed push in the Syrian crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin will fly to Britain a day before G-8 summit for Syria talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
World leaders also aim to add new momentum for a peace conference proposed by the U.S. and Russia in May. That conference in Geneva was first envisioned for May but has since been postponed until July at the earliest.
Sevim Songün Demirezen contributed to this report from Daily News Istanbul bureau.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/13/2013 18:01 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-13/us-propose-no-fly-zone-over-syria-concludes-use-chemical-weapons-against-rebels
( Now I understand why treasuries rallied today even after a lousy thirty year auction.... )
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/13/2013 16:51 -0400
Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Thursday, June 13: "The president and every member of his national security team are greatly concerned by the terrible situation… and the worsening situation in Syria. As terrible as the situation is in Syria, he has to make decisions when it comes to policy toward Syria that are in the best interests of the United States.”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/13/2013 15:05 -0400
http://www.businessinsider.com/officials-snowden-may-defect-to-china-2013-6
Recent comments from prolific National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden have caused alarm in the intelligence community that he may defect to China, reports ABC.
Man Behind Syrian ‘Chemical Weapons’ Claim Is Fiction Writer Who Covered Up Benghazi
White House makes miraculous discovery to distract from domestic scandals
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
June 14, 2013
Infowars.com
June 14, 2013
Ben Rhodes, the White House national security advisor behind the claim that President Bashar Al-Assad used chemical weapons in Syria, is a fiction writer with zero educational background in government, diplomacy or national security who also played a key role in covering up the truth behind the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
Ben Rhodes (left). Image: Wikimedia COmmons
Yesterday, Rhodes announced that the White House had “high confidence” that the Syrian Army had used chemical weapons, providing no evidence, and that the Obama administration would now take steps to arm FSA rebels, who as has been widely documented are being led by Al-Qaeda terrorists who killed U.S. troops in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal also reports that a no fly zone is being prepared that would embroil the United States in yet another war.
35-year-old Rhodes has been a speechwriter for Obama since 2007 and now enjoys the role of deputy national security adviser for strategic communication. He created the infamous term “kinetic military action” to describe the bombardment of Libya which allowed Obama to skirt around the constitutional question of having to declare war.
Rhodes’ expertise revolves around manufacturing narratives. “He earned a master’s degree in fiction-writing from New York University just a few years ago,” writes Ed Lansky. “He did not have a degree in government, diplomacy, national security; nor has he served in the CIA, or the military. He was toiling away not that long ago on a novel called ‘The Oasis of Love” about a mega church in Houston, a dog track, and a failed romance.”
As Stephen Hayes documents in a lengthy Weekly Standard piece, Rhodes was instrumental in altering CIA talking points to delete references to Islamic terrorists being involved in the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, setting the foundation for the Obama administration’s cover-up of the incident by claiming the siege was a demonstration against an anti-Muslim film. This was an attempt to hide the fact that the White House had supported Al-Qaeda terrorists in the overthrow of Gaddafi, just as they are now doing in Syria.
Rhodes can also count on the support of the US corporate media in selling fairytales about chemical weapons, since his brother David is the president of CBS News.
The central involvement of a fiction writer in selling yet another war based on dubious claims about the use of weapons of mass destruction is perfectly appropriate for an administration that is clearly beating the war drums in order to distract from domestic scandals.
“Just a few weeks ago the US Intelligence Community did not believe claims that the Syrian government used chemicals, then, after scolded by the Israelis they changed their tune to a very qualified “maybe.” Now, with no formal investigation at all and no word on the chain of evidence or its source, we are told with absolute certainty that the Assad government has used the weapons. And they can’t tell us because it is secret! Just like magic these things happen when needed!” writes Daniel McAdams.
In addition, the innumerable examples of Obama-backed Syrian rebels obtaining and using chemical weapons - including the recent discovery by Turkish police of 2kg of sarin nerve gas in the hands of Al-Nusra terrorists – have been conveniently swept aside.
The question of why the Syrian Army, which has been achieving battlefield victories via conventional means for months, would use chemical weapons on a limited scale with no appreciable advantage other than to draw international condemnation and a pretext for US involvement, remains unanswered.
The White House is now accelerating America’s involvement in yet another unconstitutional, unaffordable war despite there being little appetite for it on both sides of the aisle and despite warnings that the conflict could escalate into World War 3.
In pledging to increase military support for Syrian rebels and preparing a no fly zone, the Obama administration is openly aiding terrorists who have sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda.
- Immediately after the State Department declared Jabhat al-Nusra a terrorist organization, 29 different FSA rebel outfits pledged allegiance to the Al-Qaeda group.
- FSA rebels have vowed to “fight the U.S.” once they finish with Bashar Al-Assad.
- FSA rebels have been filmed burning US and Israeli flags on more than one occasion.
- FSA rebels have been filmed singing songs that glorify Osama Bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks.
- One FSA group even calls its fighting unit the “Osama Bin Laden” brigade.
- Another video shows FSA rebels chanting, “We are all with Osama bin Laden!”
- FSA rebels have voiced their desire to see the Al-Qaeda flag fly over the White House once the rebels are victorious across the region.
- FSA rebels recently massacred an entire village of Christians while this week they slaughtered a 14-year-old boy for supposedly insulting Mohammed.
President Barack Obama is preparing to add another bullet point to the growing list of reasons of why he should be impeached, by embroiling the United States in another unconstitutional war which will serve little purpose other than to empower terrorists while pouring gasoline on an already raging inferno.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-14/russian-mp-accuses-us-fabricating-syrian-chemical-weapons-report
( Russia not happy - but what will Russia DO ? )
Russian MP Accuses U.S. Of Fabricating Syrian Chemical Weapons Report
Following yesterday's "news" that the US is rerunning the Iraq invasion script has been busy collecting made up solid evidence proving the Syrian government has used chemical weapons, which it would use as a basis for yet another foreign intervention including a no-fly zone and arming the Syrian rebels (just to accelerate the passage of a Qatari natgas pipeline into Europe, bypassing Gazprom, and installing another Muslim Brotherhood government in Syria), the entire world waited with bated breath to learn what Russia's response, and remember to Russia Syria is a key geopolitical outpost and critical national interest, to the US allegations would be.
The wait was short-lived. As Novosti reports at least someone, somewhere has had the guts to call out this farce of an intervention from an official standpoint: "A US government report concluding Syria has used chemical weapons against rebels, crossing what US President Barack Obama has previously described as a “red line,” is a fabrication, a senior Russian lawmaker said Friday. "Information about the usage of chemical weapons by Assad is fabricated in the same way as the lie about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.” Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian lower house of parliament’s international affairs committee, said on Twitter.
The truth-telling continues:
President Obama “is going the same way” as former President George W. Bush did then, Pushkov said.
Pushkov is known for being quite a truth-teller in the past. From June of 2012:
I think that what we had been hearing from the US is very partial. Somehow the US thinks that the only source of civil war in Syria is the government, which is not the case. There are 33 thousand people who are fighting the Syrian government, and they’re fighting the Syrian government with heavy weapons, not just Kalashnikovs and pistols. It’s heavy machine guns, it’s anti-tank guns and all of this armament was on display when a ship coming from Libya full of US weapons was arrested in Lebanon. On the photos you can see what kind of armament was sent to the insurgents. It’s Syrian force which has been trained outside of Syria. Some of them are really professional fighters. There’s some information about people who have been fighting in Libya, now are fighting on the side of the insurgents. I think that the US had better look at what kind of people they try to support there and what these people will bring to Damascus. Until now Syria was a secular country where different ethnicities and different religious factions were living in peace and for many years, - that’s very valuable. You have Christians, Sunnis, Alawis, Druze, Kurds and quite a few other groups. And if all of this explodes, I don’t think that we’ll have 10 thousand victims, we’ll have maybe 100 thousand victims. Russia wants to prevent this explosion. What we hear from our Western partners is that Assad should go and they are willing to support the insurgency.But supporting the insurgency, they are basically throwing oil into the flame. That is why Russia suggested having international conference where we can try to find the solution that would be proposed to both sides in the Syrian conflict. The key Russian position is that we are ready to influence Assad’s government, but the West should influence the insurgents. Otherwise it will not work out.Do you think that the Western media was unfairly portraying Russia?I think one of the reasons the West has been so critical about Russia in the Syrian issue is that the West doesn’t have the policy at all towards Syria. I’m not pretending that Russia has the answers, but Russia fulfills a very important role for the Western media. By this could not criticize their own governments for not having any kind of solutions. Because the only political program the West has is that Assad should go. OK, what happens after Assad goes? How the regime falls? Who will come in its place?Is Russia prepared for that situation?Russia is ready to look for answers together with Western countries. And we don’t accept this kind of criticism. And we don’t accept this kind of mythology that insurgents are poor foreign people. Because we know very well that they have been financed and armed by monarchies of the Persian Gulf.They don’t even hide this fact and I hardly see a situation where democracy in Syria will be established with the help of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.And finally there have been some accusation that Russian foreign policy towards Syria is driven by its business interests. How do you respond to that?I think that the most important thing is not business. Syria doesn’t play such a huge role in Russian foreign trade. The key factor in the Russian position is a very clear stand against the so-called regime change, against the so-called humanitarian intervention.We think that the Libyan example showed that these kinds of interventions lead to chaos and to the creation of a parallel international law: when you have a UN charter and at the same time you have some kind of parallel law which is being conducted by either friends of Syria or the Coalition of the Willing, something which goes around the UN rules or charters.We don’t want to accept a world where there would be another international law instead of internationally accepted one.Syria is just a very serious example of the Russian desire to fight for international law which is universally accepted.
Ah, the new normal: when Russia is telling the truth, and the USSA is openly lying.
Things will get more interesting when instead of using a proxy to tell the world how he feels, Putin actually takes the microphone in one of his signature brutally candid exposes. Also being former KGB, who knows just what revelations he may bring to the table regarding claims of prior "humanitarian" US interventions around the world, liberating so much crude oil from the heathen natives.
Things will get most interesting when the Russian armada currently stationed in Cyprus and swimming around in the Mediterranean, decides to park in the Russian naval base in Tartus. Because last we checked it was a no-fly zone, not a no-sail zone...
http://www.juancole.com/2013/06/resist-clintons-europe.html
Obama should Resist the Clintons & Europe on Syria
Posted on 06/14/2013 by Juan Cole
Former president Bill Clinton criticized President Obama on Thursday for his inaction in regard to Syria. This step seems extraordinary and surely has something to do with positioning Hillary Clinton to run as a more hawkish New Democrat against anyone in the Obama circle in 2016. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton appears to have pushed for arming the Syrian rebels, but could not get Obama’s backing for the move. Bill Clinton’s criticism is extremely unfair, since there are many bad situations in the world in which the US cannot fruitfully intervene, and Clinton knows this sad truth all too well.
In 1992-2002 Algeria’s secular generals, tied to France and fueled by petroleum, fought a bloody dirty war against the Islamic Salvation Front and other devotees of political Islam. The world watched in horror as an estimated 150,000 people died. And yet, Clinton never directly intervened. Behind the scenes France backed the generals, and the latter won. The terrorism produced by the bloody repression in Algeria spilled over onto France and even targeted the United States, when a member of the Algerian Armed Islamic Group attempted in 2000 to drive a car bomb from Canada to LAX (he was stopped at the border and arrested). Nobody remembers Clinton’s paralysis in Algeria, contrary to what he is now predicting about Obama and Syria. This is because if you avoid a quagmire as president, no one holds that against you.
Obama has also been getting substantial pressure from the French and British to do something, and French intelligence has been the most vigorous in pressing the case that the Baath regime in Syria crossed the red line of chemical weapons use. France and Britain have longstanding imperial interests in the Levant, and both fear that the Syrian civil war could produce terrorism that spills over onto Western Europe. Unstated is that it may also produce a refugee crisis in which tens or hundreds of thousands of new immigrants wash up on European soil. Immigrants and terrorism are two key issues in French and British politics, and may be spurring them to action.
Likewise, the Baath and Hizbullah counter-attacks against the opposition in the past two months have yielded battlefield victories and the reassertion of Damascus over parts of the country that had been lost. Russian support appears to have increased in kind and quality, and Iran is playing the Shiite card. If someone doesn’t intervene soon on the rebel side, Washington hawks realize, the war might soon be over and the pro-Iranian regime will survive (just as Algeria’s did).
Obama seems to be attempting to find a face-saving way of getting a little involved but not too much, by sending light weaponry (which of course is not what the rebels need).
Clinton compared what the US could do in Syria to Ronald Reagan’s effort against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. But that covert operation of giving billions of dollars and high-tech weaponry to Afghan jihadis was a huge catastrophe, contributing to the creation and rise of al-Qaeda and setting the background for the emergence of the Taliban. It surely would have been far preferable to let the Soviets try to build a socialist state in Afghanistan, as they tried in Uzbekistan. The whole thing would have fallen apart in 1991 anyway. (There is no truth to the notion that the Afghanistan war bled the Soviet Union or contributed to its collapse. Soviet military spending was flat in the 1980s). The Reagan jihad destabilized both Afghanistan and Pakistan and left us with a long term terrorism problem. We let the Soviets alone in Kazakhstan, and we never worry about today’s Kazakhstan.
You never, ever want to encourage the rise of private militias and flood a country with high- powered weaponry.
Clinton also has in mind his bombing of Serbian forces in the Balkans to protect the Bosnians. But the situation in Syria is not like that in the Balkans, in these ways:
– Syria has stockpiles of chemical weapons, the exact position of which is unknown; indiscriminate bombing raids on Syrian military facilities could release those chemicals on civilian populations
– Unlike in Bosnia, this is not a war by an outside force like the Serbs of ethnic cleansing against a neighbor, but rather it is a civil war. The Alawis, Christians and secular-minded Sunnis in Syria are afraid of the rebel forces and either support or are neutral toward the Syrian government; together they may well come to half the country. That isn’t exactly a mandate for outside intervention.
– Syria’s tanks and artillery are inside cities such as Homs and Damascus, and couldn’t be destroyed from the air without risking hitting civilian apartment buildings. If you want to see a war go bad real quickly, just kill dozens of innocent civilians in their own home from the air.
– The backing for the regime of Russia and Iran makes this more like Vietnam, where the Russians and Chinese supported the Viet Cong, than like the Balkans in the early 1990s when the Russians were weak and supine.
– Flooding Syria with medium or heavy weaponry could destabilize it and its neighbors, including Israel & Palestine, for decades, as the CIA did to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Often in the past, US intelligence actually urged locals involved in covert wars to grow and peddle drugs to get money for weapons, creating long-term problems of narco-terrorism, which still plague Afghanistan and Pakistan.
– The prominence of the Nusra Front and other hard liners affiliated to al-Qaeda in the opposition ranks means the US could end up arming terrorists and helping them take over a whole country.
Given the logistical and tactical difficulties of intervening from the air, and given the lack of a UNSC resolution authorizing the use of force, Obama should be training Syrian oppositionists in Gandhian tactics and encouraging them to create a long-term civil resistance instead of going the militarization route. Some struggles have to be fought over a couple of decades, and those typically only succeed if non-violent.
In general Bill Clinton had few foreign policy successes. He had many more victories on the domestic front, fixing budget woes, getting more justice for workers, and fostering heightened productivity. One of his great failures was yielding to the pressure of the hawks around the Project for a New American Century and bombing Iraq in 1998, in preparation for which he forced the UN weapons inspectors to withdraw. Had they remained on the ground, they could have continued to certify that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction. It was later falsely alleged ad infinitum by Bush and his stenographer press corps that Saddam Hussein kicked out the inspectors. The PNAC warmongers maneuvered Clinton into helping them blind US and world intelligence with regard to Iraq, thus allowing them to make the most outlandish and mendacious allegations without fear of contradiction, and to drag us into a quagmire. Bill Clinton was a patsy for the hawks, and now he is setting up Obama to be another one.
http://www.debka.com/article/23045/Unspecified-US-weapons-for-Syrian-rebels-but-no-intervention-to-save-Aleppo
The White House, in a second statement, said early Friday said the US would provide “direct military support” for the first time to the Syrian opposition after obtaining proof that the Syrian government had used the chemical weapon sarin against rebel forces. The nature of the package was not specified. The rebels responded to this apparent evasion with a demand for anti-aircraft and other advanced arms to save them from Syrian air bombardment. The first White House statement, eagerly awaited for months, amounted to a rejection by President Barack Obama of proposals to intervene to save Aleppo and Idlib from a defeat that would give Bashar Assad a decisive victory.
It followed a special consultation on Syria by the president and his national security team, necessitated by the need for drastic action to thwart the Syrian-Hizballah offensive to capture Aleppo, Syrian’s biggest city of more than 2 million..
Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Thursday, June 13: "The president and every member of his national security team are greatly concerned by the terrible situation… and the worsening situation in Syria. As terrible as the situation is in Syria, he has to make decisions when it comes to policy toward Syria that are in the best interests of the United States.”
What Carney conveyed on behalf of the president was that while stopping the battle for Aleppo was crucially important in terms of the Syrian war, intervention was not in the interests of the United States.
Our sources learn that the US president even turned down a plan for a limited no-fly zone being imposed over the northwest city of Aleppo and the province of Idlib, the largest piece of territory still remaining in rebel hands. This plan entailed no more than 20 US and Turkish fighter bombers for preventing the Syrian air force from extending air support to the decisive Aleppo offensive launched by the Syrian army Monday as Operation Northern Storm.
Our military sources report that the Syrian and Hizballah armies need between one to two months to wrest from rebel hands the northwest town of Aleppo and Idlib province which abuts the Turkish border. While their conquest of Al Qusayr was a major regional victory, the fall of Aleppo and Idlib would make Bashar Assad the winner of the 28-month Syrian civil war, just when its death toll nears 100,000 according to official figures.
Here we go: White House formally announces that Assad has used chemical weapons
POSTED AT 6:03 PM ON JUNE 13, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
So Ed was right. They sent out the Big Dog to pretend-goad Obama into intervening, knowing that Clinton’s popularity would give O extra cover on his already-made decision to intervene. They’ve been planning to do this for weeks at least, I’d bet. You don’t promote “responsibility to protect” aficionados like Susan Rice and Samantha Power if you aren’t.
And away we go.
According to an internal memorandum circulating inside the government on Thursday, the “intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.” President Obama said in April that the United States had physiological evidence that the nerve gas sarin had been used in Syria, but lacked proof of who used it and under what circumstances. He now believes that the proof is definitive, according to American officials…It is unclear precisely how the Obama administration made its final determination about the chemical weapons use in Syria. According to the internal memorandum, intelligence agencies have “high confidence” in their assessment, and estimate that between 100 and 150 people have died to date from chemical weapons attacks. The memorandum goes on to say that the conclusion is based on a variety of intelligence…The Obama administration’s cautious approach about Syria has already frayed relations with important American allies in the Middle East that have privately described the White House strategy as feckless. Saudi Arabia and Jordan recently cut the United States out of a new rebel training program, a decision that American officials said came from the belief in Riyadh and Amman that the United States has only a tepid commitment to supporting rebel groups.
Here’s the official White House statement, which emphasizes that using chemical weapons is a “red line” in case you had any doubt that this announcement means we’re intervening in some way. Their findings are based in part on hair, blood, and urine samples from two rebels that showed traces of sarin. I’ll repeat what I said in this post last month about polls showingdeep opposition to U.S. action in Syria: The only way he can sell it is by emphasizing the WMD angle. If you look back at the polling data, only when chemical weapons are mentioned does public opinion against getting involved there begin to soften. Go figure that U.S. intelligence would suddenly conclude that sarin has been used at precisely the same time that Obama’s looking to intervene in Syria for strategic reasons unrelated to WMD — namely, that if the rebels aren’t reinforced soon somehow, Assad and Hezbollah might roll right over them and the big upcoming “peace” conference will be even more meaningless than it’s expected to be. One of the ironies of the U.S. putting such stock in the peace talks, notes Aaron David Miller, is that when they inevitably fail, military intervention of some form will be the only option left to Obama. He boxed himself in. Maybe he realized that and decided to get the ball rolling today. Another grand irony is that if you asked Americans what they’re most afraid of vis-a-vis Assad and WMD, most would probably say it’s the prospect of jihadi rebels overrunning his stockpiles and using those chemical weapons against western targets. Well, thanks to Assad’s recent victory streak, that seems less likely than ever right now. And yet here we are.
What will intervention look like? White House advisor Ben Rhodes isn’t sure yet, but…
Syrian rebels to meet West ahead of key G-8 summit
A rebel shoots his weapon near Kindi hospital in Aleppo, which is under the control of the regime forces. UN fears a Qusayr-like bloodshed in the city. REUTERS photo
The meeting will come ahead of next week’s G-8 meeting, where the Syrian crisis will top the agenda.
Western officials will meet the commander of the Syrian armed opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA), Salim Idris, on June 15 in Turkey to discuss new aid, diplomats said.
Louay al-Mokdad, the political and media coordinator of the FSA, confirmed the meeting to the Hürriyet Daily News.
“There will be a meeting on June 15 with some foreign countries. We will discuss the situation on the ground and we will ask for weapons from them, a no fly zone, and we will ask them to push Russia to remove Iranian and Hezbollah fighters from inside Syria,” he said when contacted by phone.
Western countries hope that by channeling assistance through Idris, a former senior commander in al-Assad’s army, they can reduce the influence of groups like al-Nusra, which Washington views as a front for al-Qaeda fighters from Iraq.
Renewed push for Syria
Western countries have so far refused to send arms to the rebels directly, although they have provided support for Arab states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia that do. Last month, France and Britain forced the European Union to lift an arms embargo, clearing the way to start shipping arms. The meeting came ahead of the G-8 meeting.
World leaders from the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Canada and Japan will meet between June 17 and 18 in Northern Ireland for a renewed push in the Syrian crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin will fly to Britain a day before G-8 summit for Syria talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
World leaders also aim to add new momentum for a peace conference proposed by the U.S. and Russia in May. That conference in Geneva was first envisioned for May but has since been postponed until July at the earliest.
Sevim Songün Demirezen contributed to this report from Daily News Istanbul bureau.
June/14/2013
Full White House Statement On Syria's "Red Line" Crossing
What comes after George Bush and George Bush Jr.? Must be George Bush the Third, only this time armed with a Nobel peace prize. Seriously, are they that stupid to think they can rerun the entire Iraq invasion scenario without changing anything? And is the US public really that dumbto let it slide? And how many Syrian citizens and US soldiers have to die in what is the most glaring instance in the past decade of a wag the dog-type distraction from on onslaught of domestic administration scandals?
Complete Text of White House Statement on Chemical Weapons in Syria
Following is the statement issued by the White House in the name of Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser.
Following is the statement issued by the White House in the name of Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser.
At the President’s direction, the United States Government has been closely monitoring the potential use of chemical weapons within Syria. Following the assessment made by our intelligence community in April, the President directed the intelligence community to seek credible and corroborated information to build on that assessment and establish the facts with some degree of certainty. Today, we are providing an updated version of our assessment to Congress and to the public.
The Syrian government’s refusal to grant access to the United Nations to investigate any and all credible allegations of chemical weapons use has prevented a comprehensive investigation as called for by the international community. The Assad regime could prove that its request for an investigation was not just a diversionary tactic by granting the UN fact finding mission immediate and unfettered access to conduct on-site investigations to help reveal the truth about chemical weapons use in Syria.
While pushing for a UN investigation, the United States has also been working urgently with our partners and allies as well as individuals inside Syria, including the Syrian opposition, to procure, share, and evaluate information associated with reports of chemical weapons use so that we can establish the facts and determine what took place.
Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year. Our intelligence community has high confidence in that assessment given multiple, independent streams of information. The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is likely incomplete. While the lethality of these attacks make up only a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria, which now stands at more than 90,000 deaths, the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses clear red lines that have existed within the international community for decades.
We believe that the Assad regime maintains control of these weapons. We have no reliable, corroborated reporting to indicate that the opposition in Syria has acquired or used chemical weapons.
The body of information used to make this intelligence assessment includes reporting regarding Syrian officials planning and executing regime chemical weapons attacks; reporting that includes descriptions of the time, location, and means of attack; and descriptions of physiological symptoms that are consistent with exposure to a chemical weapons agent. Some open source reports from social media outlets from Syrian opposition groups and other media sources are consistent with the information we have obtained regarding chemical weapons use and exposure. The assessment is further supported by laboratory analysis of physiological samples obtained from a number of individuals, which revealed exposure to sarin. Each positive result indicates that an individual was exposed to sarin, but it does not tell us how or where the individuals were exposed or who was responsible for the dissemination.
We are working with allies to present a credible, evidentiary case to share with the international community and the public. Since the creation of the UN fact finding mission, we have provided two briefings to Dr. Åke Sellström, the head of the mission. We will also be providing a letter to UN Secretary General Ban, calling the UN’s attention to our updated intelligence assessment and specific incidents of alleged chemical weapons use. We request that the UN mission include these incidents in its ongoing investigation and report, as appropriate, on its findings. We will present additional information and continue to update Dr. Sellström as new developments emerge.
The President has been clear that the use of chemical weapons – or the transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups – is a red line for the United States, as there has long been an established norm within the international community against the use of chemical weapons. Our intelligence community now has a high confidence assessment that chemical weapons have been used on a small scale by the Assad regime in Syria. The President has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has. Our decision making has already been guided by the April intelligence assessment and by the regime’s escalation of horrific violence against its citizens. Following on the credible evidence that the regime has used chemical weapons against the Syrian people, the President has augmented the provision of non-lethal assistance to the civilian opposition, and also authorized the expansion of our assistance to the Supreme Military Council (SMC), and we will be consulting with Congress on these matters in the coming weeks. This effort is aimed at strengthening the effectiveness of the SMC, and helping to coordinate the provision of assistance by the United States and other partners and allies. Put simply, the Assad regime should know that its actions have led us to increase the scope and scale of assistance that we provide to the opposition, including direct support to the SMC. These efforts will increase going forward.
The United States and the international community have a number of other legal, financial, diplomatic, and military responses available. We are prepared for all contingencies, and we will make decisions on our own timeline. Any future action we take will be consistent with our national interest, and must advance our objectives, which include achieving a negotiated political settlement to establish an authority that can provide basic stability and administer state institutions;protecting the rights of all Syrians; securing unconventional and advanced conventional weapons; and countering terrorist activity.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-13/us-propose-no-fly-zone-over-syria-concludes-use-chemical-weapons-against-rebels
( Now I understand why treasuries rallied today even after a lousy thirty year auction.... )
US To Propose No-Fly Zone Over Syria, "Concludes" Use Of Chemical Weapons Against Rebels
It seems the red-line has been crossed. The New York Times is reporting that:
- *U.S. CONCLUDES SYRIA USED CHEMICAL WEAPONS AGAINST REBELS: NYT, and
- *NYT SAYS EUROPEAN OFFICIALS REACH SAME CONCLUSION ON SYRIA
And along side that finding, as part of (or justification for?) the arming of the Syrian rebels, the WSJ reports that the US Military is calling for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria.
Breaking News4:37 PM ET
Syria Has Used Chemical Weapons Against Rebels, U.S. and European Officials Conclude
A U.S. military proposal for arming Syrian rebels also calls for a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who would train there, according to U.S. officials.Asked by the White House to develop options for Syria, military planners have said that creating an area to train and equip rebel forces would require keeping Syrian aircraft well away from the Jordanian border.To do that, the military envisages creating a no-fly zone stretching up to 25 miles into Syria which would be enforced using aircraft flown from Jordanian bases and flying inside the kingdom, according to U.S. officials.
http://www.debka.com/article/23045/Obama-rules-out-intervention-to-thwart-Syria-Hizballah%E2%80%99s-decisive-Aleppo-victory
The eagerly-awaited White House statement on the decision reached in President Barack Obama’s special consultation on Syria with his national security aides was seen by DEBKAfile’s Washington sources as his final rejection of all the proposals for intervention put before him. The consultation was necessitated by the need for drastic action to thwart the Syrian-Hizballah offensive to capture Aleppo, Syrian’s biggest city.
Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Thursday, June 13: "The president and every member of his national security team are greatly concerned by the terrible situation… and the worsening situation in Syria. As terrible as the situation is in Syria, he has to make decisions when it comes to policy toward Syria that are in the best interests of the United States.”
What Carney conveyed on behalf of the president was that while stopping the battle for Aleppo was crucially important in terms of the Syrian war, intervention was not in the interests of the United States.
Our sources learn that the US president even turned down a plan for a limited no-fly zone being imposed over the northwest city of Aleppo and the province of Idlib, the largest piece of territory still remaining in rebel hands. This plan entailed no more than 20 US and Turkish fighter bombers for preventing the Syrian air force from extending air support to the decisive Aleppo offensive launched by the Syrian army Monday as Operation Northern Storm.
Our military sources report that the Syrian and Hizballah armies need between one to two months to wrest from rebel hands the northwest town of Aleppo and Idlib province which abuts the Turkish border. While their conquest of Al Qusayr was a major regional victory, the fall of Aleppo and Idlib would make Bashar Assad the winner of the 28-month Syrian civil war, just when its death toll nears 100,000 according to official figures.
Meanwhile as the War Machine gears up for its next Middle Eastern Kinetic Action , smear campaign heats up as to Ed Snowden and Glenn Greenwald......
GREENWALD ON NSA SNOOPING: POLS WANT ME ARRESTED FOR 'CRIME OF DOING JOURNALISM'
The Guardian reporter Glen Grenwald pushed back hard at politicians who are calling for his investigation and prosecution for his involvement in the NSA snooping scandal.
Greenwald, who broke the exclusive story of whistle-blower Edward Snowden and the PRISM program that consists of data mining and collection of digital calls, internet usage, emails and instant messages of millions of Americans, appeared on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night. He specifically challenged Rep. Peter King's (R-NY) assertion that Greenwald should be prosecuted for publishing the leaked information from Snowden.
King, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, has said he wants Greenwald prosecuted for threatening to reveal the identities of CIA agents. Meanwhile, Greenwald claims he never made such a threat. He said King and other politicians are targeting him for “the crime of doing journalism.”
Watch the segment here:
Congressman Peter King Calls For Prosecution Of Journalist Who Broke NSA Snooping Story
Rep. who supported terrorists calls for jailing reporters in America
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
June 13, 2013
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
June 13, 2013
GOP Congressman Peter King, who earlier in the week called for the extradition and prosecution of the National Security Agency whistle blower Edward Snowden, has now called for the arrest and prosecution of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who broke the story in the London Guardian.
Greenwald has been facilitating the release of Snowden’s revelations on the NSA’s phone and internet surveillance programs, which have secretly targeted everyday Americans.
While many are dubbing Snowden and Greenwald heroes for bringing government overreach to light, Congressman King believes that the book should be thrown at them BOTH.
“No right is absolute, and even the press has certain restrictions,” King told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly yesterday. “It should be very targeted, very selective, and certainly a very rare exception.”
“But in this case, where you have someone who’s disclosed secrets like this and threatens to release more, then to me, yes — there has to be legal action. Legal action should be taken against him.” King added.
On Tuesday, after calling Snowden a “traitor”, King suggested on CNN that reporters should also be prosecuted for “willingly” publishing such classified information.
“If they willingly knew that this was classified information, I think actions should be taken, especially something of this magnitude,” King said.
“On something of this magnitude, there is an obligation both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something that would so severely compromise national security.”
and......
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-13/high-school-dropout-snowden-lying-chairman-house-intelligence-committee-claims
"High-School Dropout Snowden Is Lying" Chairman Of House Intelligence Committee Claims
That the US "big brother" surveillance state would not keel over and die in the aftermath of the Snowden revelations is hardly surprising. But the means by which the government, and in this case the House Intelligence Committee, have set about defending, legitimizing and promoting full state intrusion into personal privacy is a comic sight to behold.
Enter today's hearing between the NSA Director Keith Alexander, and House Intel Committee's Mike Rogers (R-Mich) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md), who nearly a week after the initial Edward Snowden charges have resorted to the oldest trick in the book:calling him a liar.
From the Hill:
The NSA leaker is lying about both his access to information and the scope of the secret surveillance programs he uncovered, the heads of the House Intel Committee charged Thursday.Emerging from a hearing with NSA Director Keith Alexander, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.), the senior Democrat on the panel, said Snowden simply wasn't in the position to access the content of the communications gathered under National Security Agency programs, as he's claimed."He was lying," Rogers said. "He clearly has over-inflated his position, he has over-inflated his access and he's even over-inflated what the actually technology of the programs would allow one to do. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.""He's done tremendous damage to the country where he was born and raised and educated," Ruppersberger said.Asked how much additional information – including other FISA verdicts – Snowden has in his possession, Rogers said, "No one really knows the answer to that today. I think we will know the answer to that shortly."
Someone will, but not the general public: because it is easy to accuse Snowden of lying when the government can claim the national security exemption when anyone demands to confirm if Snowden is actually telling the truth. In other words, it is our (classified) word over his.
Just to stir it up a little more, and invoke imagery of Daniel Craig in a tux driving an Aston Martin, the hint that Snowden was a double agent is quietly being tested:
Rogers said investigators are also trying to determine whether Snowden has any relationship with foreign governments – something national security officials don't know yet, he said.
If that fails to gain traction, there is always the accusation that he should have just follow proper whistleblowing protocol. No really.
"Some people are saying that he's a hero. He's broken the law," Ruppersberger said. "We have laws in the United States for whistleblowers, for people that think there's an injustice being done. All he had to do was raise his hand. … Under the whistleblower law, he is protected. Yet he chose to go to China."
And when all else fails, go for good old character assassination, and the media's favorite fall back plan: shooting the messenger.
"I hope that we don't decide that our national security interests are going to be determined by a high-school dropout who had a whole series of both academic troubles and employment troubles," Rogers said.
Well, there is a high-school dropout... and then there is a successful community organizer who supposedly was familiar with the constitution, until proven otherwise. Repeatedly.
and....
Intelligence Officials Concerned Snowden May Defect To China
REUTERS/Stringer
Snowden recently said China was under a tidal wave of U.S. cyber war, suffering "hundreds" of successful hacking attempts on everything from universities to public officials.
Snowden also disclosed that the U.S. has conducted at least 61,000 cyber operations globally.
"We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one," he told the South China Post.
The response from officials was immediate.
"I think if a foreign government learned everything that was in Edward Snowden's brain, they would have a good window into the way we collect signals intelligence… He had access to highly classified information," Jeremy Bash, former CIA and Pentagon Chief of Staff, told ABC.
"He could do tremendous damage."
It goes without saying that Snowden's intimate knowledge of the NSA would be very useful to the Chinese.
Another senior intelligence official told ABC that Snowden defecting was a "very legitimate" concern.
Although, Snowden's not quite saying something new. Chinese officials have been complaining for quite some time that the U.S. was attacking them in cyberspace.
There's also section of the NSA with the explicit mission of hacking into Chinese networks. Apparently they've been pretty successful too.
According to a Foreign Policy report, the U.S. government pretty much knows everything it needs to know about the makeup of China's Communist Party and it's growing military.
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