A highly illuminating interview (for Argentinian TV) in which Assad argues that the Syrian people should decide who rules Syria in internationally monitored elections scheduled for 2014. They would be conducted according to constitutional reforms enacted in 2011-2012 that limit the power of the ruling Ba’ath Party. *

Assad also has some interesting observations on changes in US foreign policy under Obama. He notes our current president favors proxy wars relying on terrorist mercenaries rather than direct military intervention.

**The US clearly disagrees with Assad’s proposal, as he would likely win the elections. A substantial majority of Syrians want to retain secular government and are immensely fearful the rebels and their US and Saudi backers will install a repressive Islamic government (as in Libya).  I am reminded of the Obama administration’s decree in 2010  that socialist ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide could only return to Haiti if he agreed not to run for president. This was after two US-backed coups against Aristide, who was democratically elected, in 1991 and 2004. The US government also opposed the decision of the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans to elect socialist Hugo Chavez as president.

photo credit: Ammar Abd Rabbo via photopin cc

It appears the Obama administration and their Turkish, Saudi and Qatari allies are losing the covert war in Syria. If so, this explains why the President and US and British media are once again trying to ramp up momentum for military intervention against the Assad regime.

The following video from AMTV examines the evidence that Assad loyalists are gaining ground against widely disunited Syrian opposition.

Anchor Topher Morrison summarizes evidence that government forces have successfully cut the rebels’ weapons supply line from Turkey. This, in turn, has forced them to fall on more primitive terrorist tactics, such as recent bombings in Damascus.

For awhile there was speculation that Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Moscow signaled a possible relaxation in Russia’s opposition to military intervention. This ceased after the Russian government arrested (during Kerry’s visit) a US State Department official for spying for the CIA.

photo credit: FreedomHouse via photopin cc

Breaking News: According to the Daily Mail, it now appears Russia’s CIA spy bust was linked to Boston Bombing. Click here:

Russia’s CIA spy bust ‘linked to Boston bombing’

Ambassador Stevens

What Really Happened in Benghazi?

Americans (at least the ones who know where Libya is) are understandably confused and angry about the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that killed US ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi. If they are looking to the current congressional hearings to clarify what really happened, they will be greatly disappointed.

Despite accusations by Republican leaders that Obama committed has treason and is trying to cover it up, they have no more interest than Democrats in bringing out the truth. No one wants the dirty little secret coming out that Stevens was involved in a covert CIA operation to funnel Libyan weapons and jihadists to Syria to fight the Assad regime.

The funding, arming and training of Al Qaeda terrorists for geopolitical ends is a well-established pillar of US foreign policy. (National Counterterrorism Center Report on Terrorism 2011). This isn’t a partisan issue, as CIA support for jihad has received equal levels of support from both Obama and his predecessor George W Bush.

The Road to Damascus Starts in Benghazi

The May 9^th Washington’s Blog provides a comprehensive summary of the factual details about September 2012 that have come out over the past eight months. Numerous official and mainstream sources confirm that Benghazi is a long time stronghold of Al Qaeda terrorists, who transferred their focus to Syria and the Assad regime after Gaddafi was overthrown. For example (specific sources shown in parentheses):

• The US-supported opposition which overthrew Libyan president Muammar Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists (Telegraph interview with Libyan rebel commander).
• According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters and sent Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq prior to Gaddafi’s overthrow (West Point military academy).
• Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya, and the Libyan Provisional Government immediately ran up Al Qaeda flags at the Benghazi courthouse (the seat of their new government) after Gaddafi was overthrown (Daily Mail).
• Gaddafi, who always maintained Benghazi was an Al Qaeda stronghold, was on the verge of invading the city in 2011. However NATO planes stopped him, and protected Benghazi (Telegraph correspondent in Benghazi).
• CNN, the Telegraph, the Washington Times and many other mainstream sources confirm that since Gaddafi’s overthrow, Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have been flooding into Syria to fight the Assad regime.
• Mainstream sources, such as the New York Times also confirm the Syrian opposition is largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.
• Despite claims to the contrary, The U.S. has been arming the Syrian opposition since 2006. (Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, CBC News).
• The post-Gaddafi Libyan government is also a top funder and arms supplier of the Syrian opposition. (Washington Post, Telegraph correspondent in Istanbul).

Was Stevens Running the Operation?

Mounting evidence suggests Stevens was assigned to run the covert CIA operation to funnel Libyan arms and jihadists to Syria via Turkey:

•  In 2011, Stevens was appointed to be the Obama administration’s liaison with the “budding Libyan opposition” (ABC News).

• Stevens and the State Department worked directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, who has direct connections with Al Qaeda (Russia Today).
• The Wall Street Journal, Telegraph and other sources confirm that the US consulate (which wasn’t really a consulate but a “State Department Special Mission Compound”) in Benghazi was mainly being used for a secret CIA operation.
• Retired Lt. General William Boykin, former US Special Forces Commander and deputy defense undersecretary for intelligence (who worked with the CIA in the 1990s), stated in a January interview that it’s a “reasonable supposition” that Stevens was in Benghazi as part of an effort to arm the Syrian opposition. He draws this conclusion based on 1) the directive Stevens was given to support the Syrian rebels, 2) the logical assumption the Special Mission Compound would be the hub of that activity and 3) the absence lack of any other logical explanation for Stevens’ sudden reappearance in Benghazi on September 10, 2012 after a year’s absence. (CNS News)
• Egyptian security officials and US intelligence sources have confirmed Boykin’s hypothesis (WND Politics, CNBC)

Why Was Stevens Murdered?

 I have yet to see a plausible explanation anywhere for the terrorist attack on the Special Mission Compound or Stevens’ murder. Perhaps a genuine congressional investigation – in place of the soap operate we saw last week – could come up with some genuine leads. However so long as Congress refuses to examine the covert operation angle, they are unlikely to add much to what we already know.

I agree with Boykin that the Obama administration and Congress need to come clean, without necessarily revealing details, that Stevens was involved in a covert operation. The main problem (besides being illegal and morally bankrupt and undermining US standing internationally) with the existing US policy of covertly funding and arming jihadists is that it isn’t secret any more. This continuing duplicity on the part of the Obama administration and Congress only further undermines Americans’ confidence in government, as well as the major respect the United States used to enjoy abroad.

photo credit: Steve Rhodes via photopin cc

Reposted from Veterans Today

Syrian "rebel" - note black al Qaeda flag in background

According to an October 14^th New York Times artice: “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats.”

Thanks to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds at Boiling Frogs, most of the blogosphere knew the truth about the Syrian civil war twelve months ago. I guess the recent acknowledgement in the New York Times – the mouthpiece of the Pentagon, US State Department and CIA – makes it official.

So why now? Why would Obama suddenly decide to disclose the truth about Syria three weeks before an election?

The answer seems pretty obvious: to undercut a Republican opponent who has made Syria a campaign issue by promising to provide Syrian rebels with the more powerful weaponry, including antiaircraft and antitank weapons that the US and its allies have are thus far declined to provide.

The article stresses the dreadful consequences of such weapons ending up in the wrong hands. Unnamed officials even express concern that ousting President Assad could have extremely negative consequences: “American officials worry that, should Mr. Assad be ousted, Syria could erupt afterward into a new conflict over control of the country, in which the more hard-line Islamic groups would be the best armed.”

Imagine that. Sounds like what Americans of conscience – as well as Russia and China – have been saying all along.

Robert Fisk

Legendary Middle East reporter Robert Fisk, the first western eyewitness to enter the massacre town of Daraya, writes in the Independent about eyewitness reports that Syrian rebels, not government forces, are responsible for the mass killing of 245 Darayan men, women and children. This contrasts with the version being told in rest of the western media, which predictably blames President Assad for the deaths.

Fisk links the massacre to a failed prisoner exchange between the Free Syrian Army and the government army. Residents told him about the Free Syrian Army kidnapping a number of civilians and off-duty soldiers when they first seized Daraya (six miles from center of Damascus) – how both sides subsequently engaged in talks about exchanging them for prisoners in the army’s custody. According to the witnesses he spoke to, when talks broke down, the government army stormed the town to take it back from rebel control.

One woman Fisk spoke to insists the killings were carried out by armed insurgents wearing hoods while the rebels still held the town. A second witness, a man, talks about the rebels targeting off-duty conscripts and government workers for assassination. He describes the “Free Army” forces taking over the home of a friend to use as a base, smashing the family crockery, burning carpets and beds and tearing the parts out of laptops and TV sets in the home.

Maybe with a credible, non-embedded reporter like Fisk on location in Syria, the western world will finally learn the truth about what’s happening there. Unless, of course, the Saudi-funded CIA-trained rebels decide to take him out, too. A pity there were no reporters of Fisk’s caliber in Libya.

Read more here

Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab

Riad Farid Hijab is the former agriculture minister President Assad recently appointed as Syria’s new prime minister. Syrians went to the polls to elect a new parliament last month, and Assad has asked Hijab to form a new government. In Syria, as in Russia, the position of prime minister is mainly administrative, with the president holding ultimate authority as head of state.

Until yesterday, I was totally unaware that Syria held parliamentary elections last month, the first elections in the country’s history in which non-Baathist opposition parties were allowed to stand candidates in all provinces. The election was held under Syria’s revised constitution, which for the first time allows non-Baathist parties to serve in government. Although Hillary Clinton and other western leaders have had a lot to say about Syria in the last few months, I can’t recall any of them mentioning the Syrian elections. It must have slipped their minds.

Participation of Opposition Parties in the Elections

According to Alakbhar English, which offers the most comprehensive English coverage of the elections, the hopelessly divided Syrian opposition approached the parliamentary elections in three totally divergent ways. One group called for entering the parliamentary elections, based on their view that it would increase the public profile of opposition parties. Two parties that took this position – the People’s Will Party and the SSNP (Popular Front for Change and Liberation) – fielded 45 candidates.

The second group, consisting mainly of the Syrian Nation Council (SNC), the Building the Syrian State movement and similar opposition parities and figures, called for a complete boycott of the elections on the basis that participating would mean compromising with the regime and recognizing its legitimacy.

The third group, which calls themselves the “Muhammad Brigades,” belongs to the Free Syrian Army (FSA). They vowed to carry out assassinations against candidates who participated in the elections. In a FSA video released online the stated, “If they do not withdraw, we will make them withdraw by force.”

Candidates from the National Progressive Front (NPF), the only opposition party recognized prior to the constitutional reforms, stood in the May 7^th elections as the National Unity coalition. In past elections, the NPF included the parties of Syria’s workers and farmers. Yet previously no party other than the Baath Party was allowed to field candidates in all Syrian provinces. The Communists and the Syrian Social Nationalist (SSNP) parties also had a modest showing in last month’s elections, as they are old established parties, despite the prior restriction on their ability to field candidates. Other opposition parties, many of which are less than a year old, had far less funding for advertising and faced a major uphill battle in getting their principles and goals in front of the Syrian public.

A Political Loss for Assad

Karl Sharo, who covered the election returns for Alakbhar English feels the elections, which were intended to bolster support for the Assad government, did just the opposite. The turn-out for the elections was a pitiful 51%. This related in part to the SNC boycott and, in part, to the impracticality of setting up polling stations in areas of active conflict, such as Hama and Homs. Assad’s Baathist party reportedly won 183 seats out of 250, giving it a commanding 73% share of the new parliament. Crucially, none of the new parties that were established in the lead up to the elections managed to win a single seat.

Sharo feels that the timing of the elections, while opposition strongholds like Hama and Homs remain active combat zones, suggests Assad has already accepted Syria as a divided country. He sees this, along with the low turn-out, the abysmal showing of reform parties and widespread allegations of electoral fraud by opposition candidates who previously subscribed to his reforms, as a clear sign of Assad’s weakening political influence.

Given the parallel, equally dysfunctional process operating in the Syrian National Council (SNC), the umbrella opposition group seeking to oust Assad, Sharo is troubled by the current political vacuum in Syria. He describes the current disarray in the SNC, sparked by the reelection of Burhan Ghalioun as leader, and which ultimately culminated in his resignation. Sharo feels the sectarian infighting reflects growing frustration among youthful opposition protestors with the SNC’s inability to transform their organizing efforts into political gains.

The SNC: a Creation of the Council on Foreign Relations

This might relate to the rarely reported fact that the SNC is a creation of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a highly secretive elite roundtable group founded in 1921 by the Rockefeller family. According to  Charlie Skelton, one of the few “mainstream” reporters to cover the recent Bilderberg conference in Chantilly Virginia, Basma Kodmani, a SNC co-founder and executive committee member, is also a member of the CFR. She was an invited guest at last week’s  Bilderberg (another secretive roundtable elite) conference, as well as the 2008 Bilderberg Group meeting.

Skelton refers readers to the Syrian National Council website, which indicates the SNC is a non profit public policy research organization registered in the District of Colombia and headquartered in Washington DC. Sounds to me like a puppet government in waiting to oversee a US/NATO occupation of Syria – just like the ones the Bush administration installed to oversee the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Houla Massacre

I find the US government version of the Houla massacre in Syria extremely problematic for all the usual reasons:

1)      The story keeps changing. The initial reporting blamed the civilian deaths on heavy artillery bombardment and shelling by the Syrian government. When UN observers reported that most of the deaths resulted from execution-style shootings, the official narrative changed. Only a few civilians were killed by government shelling. The rest were murdered by the pro-government Shabiha militia. The who? According to the BBC website, the shabiha (small “s”) militia were Mediterranean gangs primarily involved in weapons and drug smuggling and protection rackets. They were brutally suppressed by Assad and his father during the 1990s. The “proof”  that they have turned pro-government comes from a single YouTube video posted in March 2011. Al Qaeda style executions have been occurring in Syria for months. Suddenly, without a shred of evidence, the western media is blaming them on an obscure, allegedly pro-government criminal gang.

2)      It makes absolutely no sense for Syrian troops to shell a region where they risk killing pro-government militia.

3)      The Syrian civil war is an ethnic/religious war between the majority Sunni population and Assad’s secular government, which is largely made up of Alawites (a Shiite offshoot). According to a number of independent sources NATO death squads, Maan News, From the Trenches, Atrocities Made to Order, the Houla victims were mainly Alawites and Christians. Why on earth would the Syrian government wish to execute their own supporters? The mainstream media conveniently fails to address the ethnicity of the civilian victims.

4)      In the weeks prior to the Houla massacre, the US and NATO amassed 12,000 troops on the Jordan side of the Syrian border as part of Operation Eager Lion 2012 war games. Fancy that. This wouldn’t be the first time the US initiated a false flag operation as a justification for a war of aggression (e.g. 911 and the US wars of aggression in the Middle East and North Africa and the fictitious Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam).

Obama’s New Cold War Against Russia and China

The Obama administration, which has been lobbying the UN Security Council for nearly a year to endorse military intervention in Syria (see Why the US Wants Regime Change in Syria), is fomenting major hysteria over the Houla atrocities, while simultaneously escalating their belligerent rhetoric against Russia and China for opposing a military solution. (I note Clinton’s inflammatory posturing has subsided since Germany allied itself with Russia in supporting a political solution in Syria). The western media echoes the Obama administration line, accusing both Russia and China of placing strategic interests (arms deals and access to Middle East oil and gas) above humanitarian concerns.

How come no one mentions US strategic interests in Syria? How come no mainstream commentators find it troubling that the Obama administration backs the governments of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain when they shoot unarmed protestors – while being the first to call for military intervention when it happens in Libya and Syria?

US First Strike Nuclear Capability Against Russia and China

The plot thickens. My OMG (Oh, my God!) moment this week was learning that Obama is preparing for first strike nuclear war against both Russia and China. The Pentagon is encircling both countries with a ring of new bases equipped with so-called “missile defense shield” technology. Many are situated right on the Russian border in former Soviet Union countries. In the case of China, new bases are being built in Taiwan, Japan, Ju Ju Island South Korea and even Darwin Australia.

Both Rick Razeroff of Stop NATO Chicago and Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space make it clear that the true purpose of so-called “missile defense” (MD) isn’t defensive but offensive. According to Rzeroff:

“…the US/NATO missile shield, which is not to be construed as a defensive project whatsoever, ‎has the potential of being a first strike system that is able to knock out missiles that withstand ‎a potential first strike by the US and NATO against other countries.‎”

Gagnon elaborates:

“Keep in mind the Space Command’s annual computer war game first-strike attack on China (reported in Aviation Week) set in the year 2016. The existence of missile defense becomes a crucial factor considering China’s 20-some nuclear weapons capable of hitting the west coast of the U.S. In the war game the Space Command launches another new speculative space technology, called the military space plane that is now under development. This system helps to deliver the initial attack on China’s nuclear forces. When China fires its remaining nuclear missiles in a retaliatory strike it is then that the U.S. Missile defense systems, now being deployed throughout the Asia-Pacific region, are used to pick off these nuclear weapons.”

I imagine most Americans would be as alarmed and angry as I was if they knew that all Clinton’s inflammatory rhetoric was a cover for preparations for a first strike nuclear attack on our major trading partners China and Russia. Especially if they knew it was costing taxpayers trillions of dollars during the worst economic crisis in US history. Sadly there is a total blackout on such developments by the major newspapers and TV networks, which have become little more than the propaganda arm for Wall Street and the military industrial complex.

If you read/hear it in the US media, assume it's a lie.

Anyone who has followed the war in Iraq is aware of the bitter religious and political rivalry between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Thus it’s pity that the mainstream corporate media fails to enlighten us about the major sectarian conflict underlying the civil war in Syria. Yes, civil war. For thirteen months, the Muslim Brotherhood, which claims to represent the majority Sunni population, has been fighting to overthrow the predominantly Shiite government of Bashar al-Assad. The US media, which continues to perpetuate the myth that Syria’s only problem is a ruthless dictator who likes shooting unarmed civilians, omits important historical facts essential to understanding the current military conflict:

1. This is the second attempt by Syrian Sunnis, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, to overthrow the Shiite government. The first uprising of Sunni Islamists occurred in 1976 -1982, against the regime of Hafez al-Assad (father of the current dictator Bashar al-Assad).
2. The civil war in Libya was also Sunni-led, which is the main reason the Muslim Brotherhood, which runs post-Gaddafi Libya, has instituted strict sharia law. The latter is notorious for extremely harsh penalties (including death) for blasphemy, homosexuality, theft, adultery and use of intoxicants.
3. Both the Libyan and Syrian rebels have received major financial support from Sunni Gulf States in the Arab League, most notably Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Qatar also provided the bulk of military aid to the Libyan rebels. Both countries have approved weapons shipments to the Free Syrian Army. However at the request of Secretary of State Clinton, they have postponed delivery to avoid undermining the Annan peace process. At the same time, it’s a matter of public record that Sunni Gulf states are supplying the funds for Free Syrian Army salaries See Gulf States Warned Against Arming Syria. In addition, many former Libyan rebels have relocated to Syria with their weapons.

Most of this background, about Syria’s sectarian divisions and the major support Syrian rebels receive from Sunni Gulf states (as well as CIA trainers and US special operations forces – see Why the US Wants Regime Change in Syria), receives fairly good coverage in the British and international press. In contrast, the US media merely functions as the propaganda arm of the Obama administration.

The Political Agenda of Wahhabi Sunnis

As Tariq Ali outlines in his book the Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, the Sunni Wahhabism practiced in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait, is a conservative and austere form of Islam that insists on a literal interpretation of the Koran. Strict Wahhabis believe that Muslims who don’t practice their form of Islam are heathens and enemies. Part and parcel of Wahhabism is the belief that their religious doctrine must also have political expression. This translates into the view of many Sunnis that the only form of government acceptable to Allah is an Islamic state operating according to strict Sharia law.

Wahhabism’s explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi and United Arab Emirate (UAE) charities (and US intelligence) began funding Wahhabi schools (Madrassas) throughout the Islamic world. The US government strategically supported the rise of Wahhabism and the Muslim Brotherhood to counter the secular Arab leftists and nationalists who controlled most of the Middle East prior to 1967 (see Israel’s Role in Creating Hamas). The latter were understandably unsympathetic to the corporate interests of US oil companies who were heavily invested in the region.

The spread of Madrassas in Pakistan led to the gradual islamization of a state that was largely secular at the time of its separation from India (see Wikileaks: Saudi Arabia, UAE funded jihadi networks). This was accompanied by increasing religious intolerance and the creation of a jihadist mujaheddin army (funded and trained by the CIA) to repel the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. These CIA freedom fighters would later become the Taliban, who would come to occupy all of Afghanistan and enact an extremely oppressive version of Sharia law.

The US Role in Bringing Sharia Law to Libya

The US and NATO have recently been complicit in bringing a similar Wahhabi government to Libya. Owing to Syria’s close relationship with Iran’s Shia-led government, Obama is extremely gung-ho about pursuing a similar agenda in Syria. Fortunately, thanks to the refusal of China and Russia to go along with UN-sanctioned regime change, the truth about Syria’s civil war is gradually coming out (at least in the international media). Many Syrian civilians, especially Shias, Christians, Sufis and other minorities, are terrified of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power and subjecting them to the same intense persecution these minorities experience in Saudi Arabia, Libya and other states governed by Whahhabi Sunnis.

Disunity in the Syrian Opposition

It has also come out that there are deep divisions in both the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Free Syrian Army. Both veteran opposition leaders and a new generation of young activists are deeply critical of the lack of support they receive from the Muslim Brotherhood leaders and Syrian exiles who run the SNC. Many of the SNC’s critics are Sunni Muslims who see strong advantages to continuing secular rule in Syria. They just want to end the hereditary dictatorship of the Assad family.

Likewise, members of the Free Syrian Army who have defected from Assad’s forces feel that their military experience makes them the natural leaders of the rebel forces. Yet they are continually overruled by religious zealots who control the purse strings, thanks to their links to Sunni governments in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

A few analysts have speculated that this disunity was the main rationale for the SNC’s urgent request for NATO support. Their leadership believes an international bombing campaign would serve to unify a hopelessly fragmented opposition, as it did in Libya.

(This is the second of two blogs about the covert US war against Syria. The case Obama is making for sanctions and “humanitarian” intervention in Syria is a total fabrication. The US goal in Syria is regime change. The people Assad is attacking aren’t unarmed protestors. They are Islamic militants that the US and NATO have been funding and training for at least ten months.)

The People of Syria Support Assad

According to John R Bradley, author of After the Arab Revolution and the only analyst to predict the Egyptian revolution, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also providing arms and funding to the Free Syrian Army. In an interview with Russia Today, Bradley supports the prevailing view of Assad as a ruthless despot. However he also points out that Syria’s president is one of the last secular Arab leaders in the most ethnically diverse nation in the Middle East. At the moment, he enjoys wide popular support because many Syrians view him as the last bastion between them and a fundamentalist Islamic government, like the one just installed in Libya.

Recent callers from Homs (the Syrian city under siege) to the February 10, 2012 BBC Have Your Say seem to support this perspective. While none are big Assad fans, the growing strength of the Islamic resistance worries them. Moreover they see Assad’s secular administration as far preferable to Sharia Law.

The US Military Agenda in the Middle East

Michel Chossudovksy, who has also been writing for months on the covert US war in Syria, is more alarmed about its significance in the context of broader American objectives in the Middle East. He explains that the US has targeted Syria, both because of its strategic alliance with Iran and because of Pentagon’s underlying strategy of isolating and encircling Iran as a prelude to toppling its current government. In a recent interview on Guns and Butter, he describes how the US has systematically occupied and/or militarized nearly all the countries that border Iran. First you have US-occupied Afghanistan and Pakistan (the target of a second undeclared US war) on Iran’s eastern border. Then you have Iraq, which is still partially occupied, Kuwait (where the US deployed 15,000 troops in December), and Turkey, with its US airbases, on Iran’s western border. Finally you have Saudi Arabia (also host to major US military bases) and Qatar to the south. According to Chossudovksy, US military intervention in Syria will spill over and involve the Hezbollah in Lebanon, effectively neutralizing Iran’s last remaining allies.

In a disturbing article entitled When War Games Go Live , Chossoduvsky quotes from retired General Wesley Clark’s 2003 book Winning Modern Wars regarding the role of military intervention against Syria and Iran in the Pentagon’s grand Middle East strategy. According to Clark, the Pentagon has been making preparation to attack both countries since the mid-nineties. On page 130 of Winning Modern Wars, Clark states

“As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.”

The reliability of these predictions, despite a 2008 regime change from George Bush, the so-called neocon hawk, to Barack Obama, a supposed soft power advocate, is uncanny. The US persists in its occupation of Iraq, in addition to major military engagements in Somalia and Sudan. Presumably the military intervention in Libya is complete, now that the new US-friendly regime has agreed to privatize Libyan oil for the benefit of US oil companies.

According to Chossudovsky, countries such as Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Iran and Sudan became US military targets because they refused to play ball by allowing Anglo-American oil company unlimited access to their oil resources. In contrast, oil-poor countries like Syria and Lebanon are current targets because of strategic alliances with oil-rich Iran.

The body of Brig Gen Dr Issa al-Kholi

(This is the first of two blogs about the covert US war against Syria. The case Obama is making for sanctions and “humanitarian” intervention in Syria is a total fabrication. The US goal in Syria is regime change. The people Assad is attacking aren’t unarmed protestors. They are Islamic militants that the US and NATO have been funding and training for at least ten months.)

People may have noticed that the official narrative concerning Syria changes on a daily basis – except for continuing to heap contempt and scorn on the Russians and Chinese for their Security Council veto. To be frank, this veto makes more and more sense as events on the ground unmask US culpability in the civil war in Syria. Yes, civil war. That’s what you call it when an armed resistance takes up arms against a sovereign government. The interim report by the Arab League Observer Mission (although the Arab League declined to “approve” the report, it was leaked) clearly confirms the presence of an “armed entity” in Syria. Detailed descriptions of militants firing on government forces, as well as planting bombs and blowing up government and civilian infrastructure tend to support Assad’s claims that militant Islamists are attempting to overthrow his government. You can read the Report of Arab League Observer Mission for yourself on the Columbia University website

At first the Obama administration explained all this away by asserting that Syrian’s nonviolent protestors had become some frustrated with Assad’s intransigence that they joined forces with defectors from the Syrian Army. A day and a half ago, when two bomb blasts in Alepo killed twenty-five people, we were told the Syrian government had done this in a devious ploy to discredit the Free Syrian Army. This story wouldn’t wash after militants assassinated a Syrian general, a doctor responsible for running a military hospital in Damascus. Now the current line is that Iraqi members of Al Qaeda are taking advantage of Syrian civil unrest to cross the border and become Syrian Al Qaeda

NATO Support for Syria’s Armed Militants

The problem with this new version of events is that a number of credible Middle East analysts, including former FBI interpreter and whistle blower Sibel Edmunds, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, British author and foreign correspondent John R Bradley, and Canadian economist and globalization analyst Michel Chossudovsky have been reporting on Syrian’s armed resistance for many months. Moreover all four also cite a growing body of credible evidence that the US, Turkey and other NATO forces, along with Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are supplying these armed militants with funding, arms and training.

Edmonds first broke the story last November that the US and NATO were involved in arming and training Syrian militants. On November 21, 2011 sources in Turkey informed her of the presence of secret training camps at the US air force base in Incirlik. They were reportedly established in April-May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. According to her sources, these support activities included smuggling US weapons into Syria, participating in US psychological warfare inside Syria and opening a humanitarian/medical corridor between Syria and Turkey to assist opposition groups.

On December 11 she reported, based on Jordanian sources that included a Jordanian military officer, that hundreds of foreign speaking troops had been observed near the Jordan-Syria border. Her informants also revealed that NATO had established a second secret training camp near Mafraq Jordan to train the armed wing of Syria’s Islamic brotherhood. She was also informed, by a London-based Iraqi reporter, that an unknown number of US troops had been deployed from Iraq to Mafraq Jordan.

Eight days later former CIA officer Philip Geraldi essentially confirmed Edmonds’ assertions in NATO vs Syria. This was an article he wrote for the American Conservative, based on information leaked by CIA analysts concerned by the Obama administration’s apparent “march to war” in Syria. According to Geraldi, the CIA was refusing to sign off on the frequently cited UN report that more than 3,500 civilians had been killed by Assad’s soldiers. In their view, this information was based on rebel sources and uncorroborated. They also asserted that the Syrian government’s claims of being assaulted by rebels armed, trained, and financed by foreign governments were more true than false.

Unnamed CIA sources also informed him that NATO warplanes were arriving at Turkish military bases near Iskenderum on the Syrian border, with weapons from the late Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals, as well as volunteers from the Libyan Transitional National Council. There, the latter, along with French and British special forces, engaged in training members of the Free Syrian Army. Reportedly the CIA and US Special Ops role in all this was to provide communications assistance and intelligence.

To be continued.