By Pepe Escobar
September 10, 2013 "Information Clearing House - "Russia Today" - The frantic spin of the millisecond is that the White House is taking a ‘hard look’ at the Russian proposal for Bashar Assad to place Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under UN control, thus at least postponing another US war in the Middle East.
Oh, the joys of the geopolitical chessboard; Russia throwing a lifeline to save US President Barack Obama from his self-spun ‘red line’.
True diplomats are supposed to prevent wars – not pose as warmongers. American exceptionalism is of course exempted. So just as Secretary of State John Kerry had the pedal on the metal selling yet another war in a London presser, his beat up Chevy was overtaken by a diplomatic Maserati: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
This was Kerry’s slip: “... [Assad] could turn over any single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over. All of it. And without delay and allow the full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it and it can't be done obviously.”
It can be done, obviously, as Lavrov turned Kerry’s move against him – forwarding a two-step proposal to Damascus; Syria turns its chemical weapons to UN control and later agrees with their destruction, as well as joining the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Syrian Foreign Minister Moallem took no time to agree. The devil, of course, is in the fine print.
More here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36197.htm
Intercepts caught Assad rejecting requests to use chemical weapons, German paper says
09 Sep 2013
Intercepts caught Assad rejecting requests to use chemical weapons, German paper says 09 Sep 2013 Syrian President Bashar Assad has repeatedly rejected requests from his field commanders for approval to use chemical weapons, according to a report this weekend in a German newspaper. The report in Bild am Sonntag, which is a widely read and influential national Sunday newspaper, reported that the head of the German Foreign Intelligence agency, Gerhard Schindler, last week told a select group of German lawmakers that intercepted communications had convinced German intelligence officials that Assad did not order or approve what is believed to be a sarin gas attack on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus's eastern suburbs.
Syria chemical weapons attack not ordered by Assad, says German press 08 Sep 2013 President Bashar al-Assad did not personally order last month's chemical weapons attack near Damascus that has triggered calls for US military intervention, and blocked numerous requests from his military commanders to use chemical weapons against government opponents in recent months, a German newspaper has reported, citing unidentified, high-level national security sources. The intelligence findings were based on phone calls intercepted by a German surveillance ship operated by the BND, the German intelligence service, and deployed off the Syrian coast, Bild am Sonntag said. The intercepted communications suggested Assad, who is accused of war crimes by the west, including foreign secretary William Hague, was not himself involved in last month's attack or in other instances when government forces have allegedly used chemical weapons.
More here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/09/201515/intercepts-caught-assad-rejecting.html#.Ui-19LyOzjg
Striking Russia Through Syria
By Linh Dinh
08 September, 2013
Countercurrents.org
We're witnessing the last grotesque convulsions of a dying empire. As it threatens humanity with annihilation, it's also nauseating the still sane among us with an unending farce, as in the hypocrite Kerry declaring, “this is not the time to be silent spectators to slaughter,” but John, you lying cynic, the world has been asked to be a mute audience to American mass murder for how long now? But Johnny wants more, much more.
Feigning outrage, the former anti-war darling and Democratic Presidential candidate was talking about the Syria chemical attack, which was likely the work of America itself, through its crazed terrorists, though Washington is trying hard to convince incredulous listeners that Assad somehow did this just so the US of A could have the excuse to destroy him, along with thousands of innocent Syrians. Putin called this explanation nonsense, and even branded Kerry a liar, and the UN has even concluded that an earlier chemical attack, also blamed on Assad, was committed by the American-backed “rebels.”
As in so many other wars, the US must save civilians by killing or maiming them, as well as poisoning their environments for centuries. Though the US routinely targets civilian infrastructures such as electrical stations and water treatment plants, and uses war means that murder long after the last bullet is fired, as in cluster bombs and depleted uranium, for example, it is now acting livid over Assad's alleged use of sarin.
But in his ketchup-bleeding heart, Kerry knows full well that America 's aggression against Syria is not over sarin but natural gas. First of, Syria's biggest supporter, Russia, is the world's leading exporter of this stuff, and supplies Europe with nearly 40% of its needs, so that's a lot of leverage, Watson. If overly irked by America 's puppets in NATO, Russia can retaliate by turning off the gas, as has been done several times already.
More here: http://www.countercurrents.org/dinh080913.htm
Why Are Obama and Kerry So Desperate to Start a New War?
By Paul Craig Roberts
What is the real agenda?
Why is the obama Regime so desperate to commit a war crime despite the warnings delivered to the White House Fool two days ago by the most important countries in the world at the G20 Summit?
What powerful interest is pushing the White House Fool to act outside of law, outside the will of the American people, outside the warnings of the world community?
The obama Regime has admitted, as UK prime minister david cameron had to admit, that no one has any conclusive evidence that the Assad government in Syria used chemical weapons. Nevertheless, obama has sent the despicable john kerry out to convince the public and Congress on the basis of videos that Assad used chemical weapons “against his own people.”
What the videos show are dead and suffering people. The videos do not show who did it. The obama Regime’s case is nonexistent. It rests on nothing that indicates responsibility. The obama Regime’s case is nothing but an unsubstantiated allegation.
What kind of depraved person would take the world to war based on nothing whatsoever but an unsubstantiated allegation?
The world’s two worse liars, obama and kerry, say Assad did it, but they admit that they cannot prove it. It is what they want to believe, because they want it to be true. The lie serves their undeclared agenda.
If obama and kerry were to tell the public the real reasons they want to attack Syria, they would be removed from office.
More here: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/09/08/the-rule-of-zombies-why-are-obama-and-kerry-so-desperate-to-start-a-new-war-paul-craig-roberts/
White House lies to launch the next illegal war: There is no Justification for Obama's War on Syria
By Dave Lindorff The Obama administration's campaign for war against Syria is so flagrantly wrong, so ill-advised and so illegal, that it is making a fool of both the president and his secretary of state, John Kerry.
Certainly Kerry, who was in combat in Vietnam, where he commanded a river boat in the waterways of the lower Mekong River estuary, who later had the good sense to become an opponent of the war, and who clearly knows what war is, surely knows that launching an armada of high-explosive-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles and probably high-altitude heavy bombers for a three-day blitz of Syria is exactly that: war. And yet there he was telling members of Congress during a hearing over the weekend that "the president is not asking you to go to war," but only to bomb Syria for two or three days.
Think for a minute what the US would call it if Russia, or Venezuela, or Iran, fired even one cruise missile at a target in the US. Would we say it wasn't an act of war. Just a missile firing?
The idea is laughable, right? And yet that is the argument that our vaunted Yale-graduate Secretary of State is making to Congress and the American people.
And Obama? This ludicrous holder of a Nobel Peace Prize is claiming that the US has to attack Syria to defend "international norms," because the Syrian government allegedly launched a poison gas attack on an area of Damascus allegedly killing upwards of 1000 people, including children. A big point is made about the deaths of children.
The thing is, the focus of Obama's outrage is always the children and the civilian deaths, which nobody denies. But the evidence he presents that it was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government army that launched that attack, is not just thin, it is purely circumstantial. It is not even internally consistent.
One of the worst parts of the president's argument is the claim that the US had satellite and ground-based intelligence showing that the Syrian army was making preparations for a gas attack three days before the attack allegedly occurred. Yet in prior cases when the Syrian government was thought to be preparing to use its stocks of gas weapons, the administration issued a clear warning that if it did so, the US would act. That was the "red line" which President Obama once did announce for US involvement in Syria's conflict (a "red line" which he now claims, preposterously, that he never announced, claiming it is "the world's red line). So the question is: if it were true that the US had evidence that Syria was planning to use gas in late August, why didn't it re-issue its warning?...
For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new uncompromising three-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1954
Obama’s War Grows as Support Shrinks
by SHAMUS COOKE Some careful listening has exposed the lie that a U.S. attack (war) against Syria would be, as Obama put it, “a shot across the bow,” i.e. a “tiny war.” But even before the first missile is launched the birth of Obama’s baby war began to grow, and when it’s eventually unleashed it will resemble any other fully matured war, complete with massive destruction, the death of untold innocents and yet another Middle Eastern nation torn to pieces.The debated Syrian war resolution in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee saw the infancy of “limited strikes” quickly evolve into “altering the balance of forces” between Assad and the U.S.-backed rebels. Out of the Senate committee emerged a fully mature war, hell bent on regime change, though clothed in bureaucrat-speak to fool the American public. The resolution includes:
“It is the policy of the United States to change the momentum on the battlefield in Syria so as to create favorable conditions for a negotiated settlement that ends the conflict and leads to a democratic government in Syria.”
Translation: regime change.
Obama himself used the language of regime change to sell the war to the Republicans, though again, hidden in a swamp of words:
“[the attack on Syria] also fits into a broader strategy that can bring about over time the kind of strengthening of the opposition and the diplomatic, economic and political pressure required — so that ultimately we have a transition [regime change] that can bring peace and stability, not only to Syria but to the region.”
More here: http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/09/obamas-war-grows-as-support-shrinks/
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