Iran, not Syria, is the West’s real target

8 thoughts on “Iran, not Syria, is the West’s real target”

1. Speaking of false flag operations (as Eric did in last week’s Planet Waves FM webcast):

   Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?

   by Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor, Defense & Foreign Affairs
   Wed, 28 August 2013

   There is a growing volume of new evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its sponsors and supporters — which makes a very strong case, based on solid circumstantial evidence, that the August 21, 2013, chemical strike in the Damascus suburbs was indeed a pre-meditated provocation by the Syrian opposition.

   The extent of US foreknowledge of this provocation needs further investigation because available data puts the “horror” of the Barack Obama White House in a different and disturbing light.

   On August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major and irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US Intelligence [“Mukhabarat Amriki”] took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Istanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development” which would, in turn, lead to a US-led bombing of Syria.

   The opposition forces had to quickly prepare their forces for exploiting the US-led bombing in order to march on Damascus and topple the Bashar al-Assad Government, the senior commanders explained. The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive.

   Indeed, unprecedented weapons distribution started in all opposition camps in Hatay Province on August 21-23, 2013. In the Reyhanli area alone, opposition forces received well in excess of 400 tons of weapons, mainly anti-aircraft weaponry from shoulder-fired missiles to ammunition for light-guns and machineguns. The weapons were distributed from store-houses controlled by Qatari and Turkish Intelligence under the tight supervision of US Intelligence.

   These weapons were loaded on more than 20 trailer-trucks which crossed into northern Syria and distributed the weapons to several depots. Follow-up weapon shipments, also several hundred tons, took place over the weekend of August 24-25, 2013, and included mainly sophisticated anti-tank guided missiles and rockets. Opposition officials in Hatay said that these weapon shipments were “the biggest” they had received “since the beginning of the turmoil more than two years ago”. The deliveries from Hatay went to all the rebel forces operating in the Idlib-to-Aleppo area, including the al-Qaida affiliated jihadists (who constitute the largest rebel forces in the area).

   Several senior officials from both the Syrian opposition and sponsoring Arab states stressed that these weapon deliveries were specifically in anticipation for exploiting the impact of imminent bombing of Syria by the US and the Western allies. The latest strategy formulation and coordination meetings took place on August 26, 2013. The political coordination meeting took place in Istanbul and was attended by US Amb. Robert Ford.

   More important were the military and operational coordination meetings at the Antakya garrison. Senior Turkish, Qatari, and US Intelligence officials attended in addition to the Syrian senior (opposition) commanders. The Syrians were informed that bombing would start in a few days.
   “The opposition was told in clear terms that action to deter further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime could come as early as in the next few days,” a Syrian participant in the meeting said. Another Syrian participant said that he was convinced US bombing was scheduled to begin on Thursday, August 29, 2013. Several participants — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that the assurances of forthcoming bombing were most explicit even as formally Obama is still undecided.

   The descriptions of these meetings raise the question of the extent of foreknowledge of US Intelligence, and therefore, the Obama White House. All the sources consulted — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that officials of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” actively participated in the meetings and briefings in Turkey. Therefore, at the very least, they should have known that the opposition leaders were anticipating “a war-changing development”: that is, a dramatic event which would provoke a US-led military intervention.

   The mere fact that weapon storage sites under the tight supervision of US Intelligence were opened up and about a thousand tons of high-quality weapons were distributed to the opposition indicates that US Intelligence anticipated such a provocation and the opportunity for the Syrian opposition to exploit the impact of the ensuing US and allied bombing. Hence, even if the Obama White House did not know in advance of the chemical provocation, they should have concluded, or at the very least suspected, that the chemical attack was most likely the “war-changing development” anticipated by the opposition leaders as provocation of US-led bombing. Under such circumstances, the Obama White House should have refrained from rushing head-on to accuse Assad’s Damascus and threaten retaliation, thus making the Obama White House at the very least complicit after the act.

   Meanwhile, additional data from Damascus about the actual chemical attack increases the doubts about Washington’s version of events. Immediately after the attack, three hospitals of Doctors Without Borders (MSF: médecins sans frontières) in the greater Damascus area treated more than 3,600 Syrians affected by the chemical attack, and 355 of them died. MSF performed tests on the vast majority of those treated.

   MSF director of operations Bart Janssens summed up the findings: “MSF can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack. However, the reported symptoms of the patients, in addition to the epidemiological pattern of the events — characterized by the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers — strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent.” Simply put, even after testing some 3,600 patients, MSF failed to confirm that sarin was the cause of the injuries. According to MSF, the cause could have been nerve agents like sarin, concentrated riot control gas, or even high-concentration pesticides. Moreover, opposition reports that there was distinct stench during the attack suggest that it could have come from the “kitchen sarin” used by jihadist groups (as distinct from the odorless military-type sarin) or improvised agents like pesticides.

   Some of the evidence touted by the Obama White House is questionable at best.

   A small incident in Beirut raises big questions. A day after the chemical attack, Lebanese fixers working for the “Mukhabarat Amriki” succeeded to convince a Syrian male who claimed to have been injured in the chemical attack to seek medical aid in Beirut in return for a hefty sum that would effectively settle him for life. The man was put into an ambulance and transferred overnight to the Farhat Hospital in Jib Janine, Beirut. The Obama White House immediately leaked friendly media that “the Lebanese Red Cross announced that test results found traces of sarin gas in his blood.” However, this was news to Lebanese intelligence and Red Cross officials.
   According to senior intelligence officials, “Red Cross Operations Director George Kettaneh told [them] that the injured Syrian fled the hospital before doctors were able to test for traces of toxic gas in his blood.” Apparently, the patient declared that he had recovered from his nausea and no longer needed medical treatment. The Lebanese security forces are still searching for the Syrian patient and his honorarium.

   On August 24, 2013, Syrian Commando forces acted on intelligence about the possible perpetrators of the chemical attack and raided a cluster of rebel tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar. Canisters of toxic material were hit in the fierce fire-fight as several Syrian soldiers suffered from suffocation and “some of the injured are in a critical condition”.

   The Commando eventually seized an opposition warehouse containing barrels full of chemicals required for mixing “kitchen sarin”, laboratory equipment, as well as a large number of protective masks. The Syrian Commando also captured several improvised explosive devices, RPG rounds, and mortar shells. The same day, at least four HizbAllah fighters operating in Damascus near Ghouta were hit by chemical agents at the very same time the Syrian Commando unit was hit while searching a group of rebel tunnels in Jobar. Both the Syrian and the HizbAllah forces were acting on intelligence information about the real perpetrators of the chemical attack. Damascus told Moscow the Syrian troops were hit by some form of a nerve agent and sent samples (blood, tissues, and soil) and captured equipment to Russia.

   Several Syrian leaders, many of whom are not Bashar al-Assad supporters and are even his sworn enemies, are now convinced that the Syrian opposition is responsible for the August 21, 2013, chemical attack in the Damascus area in order to provoke the US and the allies into bombing Assad’s Syria. Most explicit and eloquent is Saleh Muslim, the head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) which has been fighting the Syrian Government. Muslim doubts Assad would have used chemical weapons when he was winning the civil war.

   “The regime in Syria … has chemical weapons, but they wouldn’t use them around Damascus, five km from the [UN] committee which is investigating chemical weapons. Of course they are not so stupid as to do so,” Muslim told Reuters on August 27, 2013. He believes the attack was “aimed at framing Assad and provoking an international reaction”. Muslim is convinced that “some other sides who want to blame the Syrian regime, who want to show them as guilty and then see action” is responsible for the chemical attack. The US was exploiting the attack to further its own anti-Assad policies and should the UN inspectors find evidence that the rebels were behind the attack, then “everybody would forget it”, Muslim shrugged. “Who is the side who would be punished? Are they are going to punish the Emir of Qatar or the King of Saudi Arabia, or Mr Erdogan of Turkey?”

   And there remain the questions: Given the extent of the involvement of the “Mukhabarat Amriki” in opposition activities, how is that US Intelligence did not know in advance about the opposition’s planned use of chemical weapons in Damascus?

   It is a colossal failure.

   And if they did know and warned the Obama White House, why then the sanctimonious rush to blame the Assad Administration? Moreover, how can the Obama Administration continue to support and seek to empower the opposition which had just intentionally killed some 1,300 innocent civilians in order to provoke a US military intervention?

   Yossef Bodansky (born in Israel) is an Israeli-American political scientist who served as Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the US House of Representatives from 1988 to 2004. He is also Director of Research of the International Strategic Studies Association and has been a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). In the 1980s, he served as a senior consultant for the Department of Defense and the Department of State.

   He is also a senior editor for the Defense and Foreign Affairs group of publications and a contributor to the International Military and Defense Encyclopedia and is on the Advisory Council of The Intelligence Summit. Bodansky’s numerous articles have been published in Global Affairs, Jane’s Defense Weekly, Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy and other periodicals.

2. Chris Hedges and Paul Jay discuss President Obama’s statement that he has decided to attack Syria and seek authorization from Congress . . . Even though he says he doesn’t need it

   The Real News Network 1 September 2013

   PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay.

   On Saturday afternoon, President Obama issued a statement from the White House. He said he had decided to authorize a military attack on Syria to, in his words, punish the Syrian administration and regime for its use of chemical weapons. He also said he was going to give American Congress a voice.

   Here is a segment from his statement.~~~

   BARACK OBAMA, U.S. PRESIDENT: Our intelligence shows the Assad regime and its forces preparing to use chemical weapons, launching rockets into highly populated suburbs of Damascus, and acknowledging that a chemical weapons attack took place. All told, well over 1,000 people were murdered. Several hundred of them were children–young girls and boys gassed to death by their own government.

   After careful deliberation, I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. I’ve made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people’s representatives in Congress. I’m comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that, so far, has been completely paralyzed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable.

   Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.

   Make no mistake–this has implications beyond chemical warfare. If we won’t enforce accountability in the face of this heinous act, what does it say about our resolve to stand up to others who flout fundamental international rules? To governments who would choose to build nuclear arms? To terrorists who would spread biological weapons? To armies who carry out genocide?~~~

   JAY: Now joining us to analyze the significance of President Obama’s statement is Chris Hedges. Chris is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and senior fellow at the Nation Institute. His latest book is Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. He was The New York Times’ Middle East Bureau chief. Thanks for joining us again, Chris.

   CHRIS HEDGES, JOURNALIST AND WRITER: Sure.

   JAY: So what do you make of President Obama’s statement? He’s authorizing the attack, except he’s kind of not authorizing the attack, ’cause he’s kind of going to give Congress a vote, except he made it clear in a statement he was only doing that sort of because he thought it would be a more effective message to Syria, not because he actually thinks he’s actually bound by such a vote.

   HEDGES: Well, I mean, that’s the first disturbing point of the rise of our imperial presidency, where the executive branch abrogates to itself the right to declare war, which is, of course, traditionally the role of Congress. But more importantly, we’re talking about a military strike which will have consequences that will ripple outside of the boundaries of Syria itself. These explosive devices–cruise missiles–are never used surgically. I’ve been around them on the receiving ends when they are fired. So we’re talking about inevitable what they will euphemistically call collateral damage. We’re talking about civilian dead. That’s without question. I believe that, you know, one of the primary lessons of the Holocaust is that when you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you are culpable. But there has to be an active campaign of genocide. So we are culpable by not intervening during the genocide in Rwanda, in Cambodia, when Saddam Hussein was wiping out the Kurds in northern Iraq. But to respond after that genocide is complete as a kind of punishment is for me very shortsighted, because it essentially involves the United States not in an act of preventing an ongoing or current act of genocide, but in essence taking sides in this civil war. The consequences of that: empowering Hezbollah to go after Israel. It of course will anger Iran. Syria is an Iranian ally, and I think much of this decision to attack Syria is a kind of backdoor attempt to punish Iran within the region.

   And let’s not forget that we may not be aware of this as Americans, but within the Middle East there is a widespread remembrance that, for instance, Israel used over 200 white phosphorus rockets when they did their 22-day aerial bombardment of Gaza, that we as a country used chemical agents–Agent Orange in Vietnam, and we have littered the Middle East–Afghanistan, Iraq–with depleted uranium.So the notion that we have a right to act as the world’s policeman, that we have a right to use these kinds of weapons to shift a balance of power, you would think we would have learned our lesson in Iraq or we would have learned our lesson in Afghanistan, but apparently we have not. And let me finally say that in the end, you know, there are weapons contractors for whom, once again, this is about profit. They don’t really care what the consequences are. For them it’s about how to swell their bank account.

   JAY: Now, the so-called evidence that these chemical weapons were used by the Assad regime seems to be paper-thin. In fact, there really hasn’t been any evidence shown to the public. It certainly didn’t persuade British parliamentarians. I mean, this smells so much of a pre-Iraq situation. You would think they must have something. I mean, it seems so stupid that Obama and Biden, who both were fairly clear on the Iraq situation–certainly Obama was–that they wouldn’t proceed. On the other hand, he seemed to have painted himself in the corner. He so stuck his neck out on this so quickly, he seemed to have nowhere to go. So it almost seems like this now letting Congress have a vote is really a way to buy himself some time because he was in such an isolated position. I mean, it’s really rather crazy. Instead of all the world’s attention being on, in theory, if this was Assad, on Assad for using chemical weapons, the attention of the world is now on Obama for violating international law.

   HEDGES: Right. And, you know, in the past it’s kind of selective enforcement. If the Israelis are using white phosphorus, which is incinerating–white phosphorus–I’ve been around white phosphorus attacks. The Salvadoran military used them when I covered the war. And when bits of white phosphorus fall on your body, they burn right through your body. There’s no way to stop it, in essence. It’ll literally burn a swath right through the core of your body. The fact that we were complicit, in essence, with the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War–we gave them satellite imagery so that they knew where to drop it–that we stood by and did nothing when Saddam Hussein was dropping poison gas on places like Halabja, this is not lost to people in the Middle East. So there’s no kind of uniformity at all to our response. When those who are our purported allies (and in the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq was tacitly our ally) do these kinds of things, we ignore it. When the Israelis do it, we ignore it. And when it happens in Syria, you know, supposedly we respond.I think morally the United States has no case to make unless they were actively stopping a delivery system of these chemical agents, i.e. intercepting the planes that were dropping them or, if they used artillery shells, which is what Saddam Hussein had, you know, the 155 howitzers or the units that were delivering those shells.

   But we have no legal, moral, as you pointed out, right to intervene at this point. Nor do we have the moral credibility to do it.

   JAY: In President Obama’s statement today, he specifically says, I’m comfortable about going ahead with this without a UN resolution, which is more or less to say, I’m comfortable doing this violating international law.

   HEDGES: Sure. Well, I mean, the whole invasion of Iraq, which Obama–you know, he wasn’t very clear. He made one speech that nobody could ever find opposing the Iraq War. A figure like Dennis Kucinich made literally hundreds. He was pretty silent in the buildup to Iraq, because, of course, it wasn’t politically astute at that point to challenge it. Sure. I mean, this is just a continuation of the Bush shredding of both international and domestic law. And, you know, this capacity by the executive branch not only to wage war but draw up kill lists–and we haven’t even gotten into the shredding of privacy, and both at home and abroad. I mean, it’s a kind of terrifying development. And I think that the response that we’re seeing–and, again, as you point out, we don’t have at this point credible evidence, although it would not, as somebody who covered Syria, it would not surprise me if they used it. But you’re right. We don’t know. And even if they did, at this point I don’t think we have a right to intervene.

   JAY: Right. And there’s an interesting story out on Saturday as well by a Dale Gavlak, who’s been covering the Middle East for AP, apparently for quite a few years. He’s reporting in MintPress News–and it’s making its way around the internet–that he interviewed people in the area where the alleged chemical attack took place, although I don’t think it’s so alleged anymore there was a chemical attack. That seems to be–even Iran seems to acknowledge that there was one. But Gavlak apparently interviewed some people, and they say these weapons came from the Saudis. They actually mention Prince Bandar. And he interviewed, apparently, the parents of a young jihadist fighter who was handling the weapons, was killed when they went off. And they’re blaming the Saudis for handing these weapons over to people that didn’t know how to use them. Who knows whether this is true or not true. But it does lead to the issue that there’s no clear line here who was responsible. And when you look at it on the face of it, the Saudis, who to my mind get away with murder in the American media, in the sense that no one ever talks about the Saudi role in any death in the American media, nor does the White House ever speak of it, and certainly they’ve been driving and fueling much of this war, but the Saudis and certainly the opposition on the face of it had way more to gain with some kind of use of chemical weapons than Assad did. I mean, I don’t agree with Mr. Putin on a lot of things, but I do on this one. This just makes no sense for the Assad regime to have done this.

   HEDGES: Yeah, although, I mean, let’s be clear. I’ve covered lots of stories where it doesn’t make much sense for regimes to carry out acts of atrocity. It didn’t make much sense for the Bosnian Serbs to start massacring people at Srebrenica. But I think, you know, the point that you’re making is that at this point we don’t really know definitively what happened, and (having been a reporter in those situations) we may not know for a few weeks. That’s number one.And number two, after it’s over, I don’t think we have either a legal or a moral right to start dropping cruise missiles in Syria.

   JAY: Now, one of the ideas I’ve heard proposed about why President Obama is doing this–because the way he’s acting so quickly, how far out ahead the was on this, has a lot more to do with the tide of the war shifting to Assad’s favor. There’s been this sort of prevailing view amongst many analysts that what was in the interest of Israel, and to a large extent in the interest of the United States, is a long-term low-level civil war where neither side gains the upper hand. And there was some thinking Assad was gaining the upper hand. And so what this is really about is trying to hammer Assad to, you know, equal the playing field again, as it were.

   HEDGES: Well, and that is what I meant when I spoke about changing the balance of power, because clearly at this moment the Assad regime does have the upper hand. The rebel movement, which, you know, is fractious and spends a lot of time fighting each other, is reeling backwards. And what we are doing once again is using military force to insert ourselves into a conflict without understanding the repercussions or the consequences of that insertion.

   JAY: And it’s a way to weaken Assad without putting more arms into opposition hands when they’re afraid, you know, al-Qaeda types are getting hold of these guns. So instead of arming the opposition at a higher level, they just directly hit Assad.

   HEDGES: Right. And you can be sure that the Saudis and the Qataris and others are making sure that al-Qaeda types are getting these weapons. This goes all the way back to the war in Afghanistan. This has been the modus operandi of the Saudis for a very long time. [incompr.] you know, their intervention throughout the region has been so disastrous. We didn’t have to end up with the Taliban running Afghanistan after the war with the Soviets, but because we let the Saudis essentially direct our money that was provided to the opposition in Afghanistan, or funnel it through the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service, we starved those movements. And there were movements and figures that were not wedded to this radical Islamist ideology. So once again we see the utter ineptitude on the part of the Saudis and the promotion of this jihadist movement throughout the region fueled by Saudi money and Saudi weapons.

   JAY: And Saudi weapons purchased from the United States, on the whole.

   HEDGES: There you go. Again, it gets back to the whole arms trade. You know, they’ll–and, of course, we are the largest seller of weapons and munitions on the planet, and these people don’t care as long as they make money. And I think that is a lot of what is fueling these conflicts in places like Afghanistan, that companies like Halliburton and Raytheon, Boeing, they don’t want to get out. They don’t ever want to get out. They don’t care how many Americans die, how many Afghans die. They don’t care what happens in Afghanistan. They don’t care what happens within the region. Look at their stock prices, like Halliburton. They’ve all quadrupled since 9/11. And that is sort of the unseen engine behind a lot of this. So there’s a lot of pressure.

   JAY: I was at a conference a couple of months ago. I was invited as the press. And it was a lobbying agency that lobbies Middle Eastern governments more or less on behalf of arms manufacturers. I found myself a rather strange table fellow there. But the talk there was all about how much Saudi Arabia wanted the United States to not just deal with Assad, but wants an attack on Iran, and that the Saudis were going to find some way to make this happen.

   HEDGES: And, you know, the Saudis have created more havoc and damage within the Middle East, arguably, in the last two decades than any other country or any other group, including, of course, al-Qaeda.

   JAY: Yeah. I mean, Israel is a story all of its own, of course, but I take your point. Thanks very much for joining us, Chris.

   HEDGES: Thank you.

   JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

   END OF TRANSCRIPT

3. EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack

   Rebels and local residents in Ghouta accuse Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan of providing chemical weapons to an al-Qaida linked rebel group.

   By Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh | August 29, 2013 MintPress News

   Ghouta, Syria — As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.

   Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.

   The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”

   However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

   “My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

   Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

   Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.

   Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime’s heartland of Latakia on Syria’s western coast, in purported retaliation.

   “They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

   “When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.

   A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.

   “We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” ‘J’ said.

   Doctors who treated the chemical weapons attack victims cautioned interviewers to be careful about asking questions regarding who, exactly, was responsible for the deadly assault.

   The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders added that health workers aiding 3,600 patients also reported experiencing similar symptoms, including frothing at the mouth, respiratory distress, convulsions and blurry vision. The group has not been able to independently verify the information.

   More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government.

   Saudi involvement

   In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.

   Ingersoll referred to an article in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks alleging that Bandar offered Russian President Vladimir Putin cheap oil in exchange for dumping Assad.

   “Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” Ingersoll wrote.

   “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Bandar allegedly told the Russians.

   “Along with Saudi officials, the U.S. allegedly gave the Saudi intelligence chief the thumbs up to conduct these talks with Russia, which comes as no surprise,” Ingersoll wrote.

   “Bandar is American-educated, both military and collegiate, served as a highly influential Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., and the CIA totally loves this guy,” he added.

   According to U.K.’s Independent newspaper, it was Prince Bandar’s intelligence agency that first brought allegations of the use of sarin gas by the regime to the attention of Western allies in February.

   The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the CIA realized Saudi Arabia was “serious” about toppling Assad when the Saudi king named Prince Bandar to lead the effort.

   “They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn’t: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout,” it said.

   Bandar has been advancing Saudi Arabia’s top foreign policy goal, WSJ reported, of defeating Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.

   To that aim, Bandar worked Washington to back a program to arm and train rebels out of a planned military base in Jordan.

   The newspaper reports that he met with the “uneasy Jordanians about such a base”:

   His meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah sometimes ran to eight hours in a single sitting. “The king would joke: ‘Oh, Bandar’s coming again? Let’s clear two days for the meeting,’ ” said a person familiar with the meetings.

   Jordan’s financial dependence on Saudi Arabia may have given the Saudis strong leverage. An operations center in Jordan started going online in the summer of 2012, including an airstrip and warehouses for arms. Saudi-procured AK-47s and ammunition arrived, WSJ reported, citing Arab officials.

   Although Saudi Arabia has officially maintained that it supported more moderate rebels, the newspaper reported that “funds and arms were being funneled to radicals on the side, simply to counter the influence of rival Islamists backed by Qatar.”

   But rebels interviewed said Prince Bandar is referred to as “al-Habib” or ‘the lover’ by al-Qaida militants fighting in Syria.

   Peter Oborne, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, has issued a word of caution about Washington’s rush to punish the Assad regime with so-called ‘limited’ strikes not meant to overthrow the Syrian leader but diminish his capacity to use chemical weapons:

   Consider this: the only beneficiaries from the atrocity were the rebels, previously losing the war, who now have Britain and America ready to intervene on their side. While there seems to be little doubt that chemical weapons were used, there is doubt about who deployed them.

   It is important to remember that Assad has been accused of using poison gas against civilians before. But on that occasion, Carla del Ponte, a U.N. commissioner on Syria, concluded that the rebels, not Assad, were probably responsible.

   Some information in this article could not be independently verified. Mint Press News will continue to provide further information and updates .

   Dale Gavlak is a Middle East correspondent for Mint Press News and has reported from Amman, Jordan, writing for the Associated Press, NPR and BBC. An expert in Middle Eastern affairs, Gavlak covers the Levant region, writing on topics including politics, social issues and economic trends. Dale holds a M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago.

   Yahya Ababneh is a Jordanian freelance journalist and is currently working on a master’s degree in journalism, He has covered events in Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Libya. His stories have appeared on Amman Net, Saraya News, Gerasa News and elsewhere.

   Clarification: Dale Gavlak assisted in the research and writing process of this article, but was not on the ground in Syria. Reporter Yahya Ababneh, with whom the report was written in collaboration, was the correspondent on the ground in Ghouta who spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents.

   Gavlak is a MintPress News Middle East correspondent who has been freelancing for the AP as a Amman, Jordan correspondent for nearly a decade. This report is not an Associated Press article; rather it is exclusive to MintPress News.

4. I have a lot of respect for Robert Fisk – but I can understand your irritation, bodymindalchemy. Many thanks for this information.

5. Syria: how the violence began in Daraa

   “The claim that armed opposition to the government has begun only recently is a complete lie. The killings of soldiers, police and civilians, often in the most brutal circumstances, have been going on virtually since the beginning.’ — Professor Jeremy Salt, October 2011 (Ankara)

   There is no doubt that there was popular agitation in Syria in early 2011, after the events in Egypt and Tunisia. There were anti-government and pro-government demonstrations, and a genuine political reform debate. However the serious violence that erupted in March 2011 has been systematically misreported, in line with yet another US-NATO ‘regime change’ agenda.

   For many months the big powers and the corporate media pretended that armed opposition in Syria did not exist at all. All violence was government forces against “peaceful protestors’. In the words of the US-based Human Rights Watch (strongly linked to the US Council on Foreign Relations), “protestors only used violence against the security forces ” in response to killings by the security forces or ” as a last resort’. This was a dreadful deceit. Washington and its allies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and some elements in Lebanon) were sponsoring armed attacks within Syria from the very beginning.

   With the revelations of foreign Islamist fighters in Syria, engaged in kidnappings, torture and executions, we can see a “revised imperial line’. These “jihadis’ or “Al Qaeda’ groups are said to be “on the fringes’ of the rebel “Free Syrian Army’ (FSA), which is said to be led by defectors from the Syrian Arab Army. An alternative line is that the genuine “revolution’ is in danger of being “hijacked’ by the fundamentalists.

   Daraa: the killings begin

   In February 2011 some anti-government demonstrations began. They were met in March with even larger pro-government demonstrations. In early March some teenagers in Daraa were arrested for graffiti that had been copied from North Africa “the people want to overthrow the regime’. It was reported that they were abused by local police. Time magazine reported that President Assad intervened, the local governor was sacked and the teenagers were released.

   What followed is highly contested. The western media version is that protestors burned and trashed government offices and that “provincial security forces opened fire on marchers, killing several’ (Time, 22 March). After that, “protestors’ staged demonstrations in front of the al-Omari mosque, but were in turn attacked. The western media exaggerated the demonstrations, claiming crowds of up to 300,000, with 15 anti-government “protesters’ killed (AP 23 March). Daraa is a border town with 150,000 inhabitants.

   The Syrian government, on the other hand, stated that armed attacks had begun on security forces, killing several police, along with the burning of government offices. There was corroboration of this account. While its headline blamed security forces for killing “protesters’, the British Daily Mail showed pictures of guns, AK47 rifles and hand grenades that security forces had recovered after storming the al-Omari mosque. The paper noted reports that “an armed gang’ had opened fire on an ambulance, killing “a doctor, a paramedic and a policeman’.

   Israeli and Lebanese media gave versions of the events of 17-18 March closer to that of the Syrian government. An Israel National News report (21 March) said “Seven police officers and at least four demonstrators in Syria have been killed ” and the Baath party headquarters and courthouse were torched’. The police had been targeted by rooftop snipers.

   Al Jazeera (29 April), owned by Qatar’s royal family, implied the rooftop snipers in Daraa were government forces. “President Bashar al Assad has sent thousands of Syrian soldiers and their heavy weaponry into Derra for an operation the regime wants nobody in the word to see’. However the Al Jazeera claim that secret police snipers were killing “soldiers and protestors alike’ was both illogical and out of sequence.

   The armed forces came to Daraa precisely because police had been killed by snipers. Once in Daraa they engaged in more gun-fire and stormed the local mosque to seize the guns and grenades storied by “protesters’. Michel Chossudovsky wrote: “The deployment of armed forces including tanks in Daraa [was] directed against an organised armed insurrection, which has been active in the border city since March 17-18.’

   Saudi Arabia, a key US regional ally, had armed and funded extremist Sunni sects (Salafists and Wahabis) to move against the secular government. From exile in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Adnan Arour called for a holy war against the liberal Allawi muslims, who dominated the government: “by Allah we shall mince them in meat grinders and feed their flesh to the dogs’. The Salafist aim was a theocratic sate or “caliphate’. Sheikh Muhammed al Zughbey said the Alawites were “more infidel than the Jews and the Christians’. The original North African slogan was rapidly replaced by a Salafist slogan “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave’. They would soon act on these threats.

   Saudi official Anwar Al-Eshki later confirmed to BBC television that arms had indeed been provided to groups within Syria, and they had stored them in the al-Omari mosque.
   While the Syrian Baathist system has been authoritarian, is has also been secular and inclusive. The Saudi-Qatari and US-NATO backed armed insurgency aims to derail the reform program led by President Bashar al-Assad. If a more compliant government cannot be formed in Damascus, the big powers will probably settle for a country mired in sectarian chaos. That is, after all, what we see across the border in Iraq.

   Tim Anderson is an academic and social activist based in Sydney, Australia

   Sources:

   Al Jazeera (2011) “Daraa, a city under siege’, 29 April

   Daily Mail (2011) “Nine protesters killed after security forces open fire by Syrian mosque’, 24 March

   Gavriel Queenan (2011) “Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings torched in protests’, Israel National News, Arutz Sheva, March 21

   Human Rights Watch (2011) “We’ve never seen such horror: crimes against humanity by Syrian Security Forces’, New York, June 2011

   Jeremy Salt (2011) Truth and Falsehood in Syria, The Palestine Chronicle, online

   Joseph Wakim (2012) “Arab Spring model not a Syrian reality’, ABC Drum Opinion, 27 June

   Michel Chossudovsky (2012) “Syria: who is behind the protest movement? Fabricating a pretext for US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention”, Global Research, August 6

   Rania Abouzeid (2011) “Syria’s Revolt, how graffiti stirred an uprising’, Time, 22 March

   Truth Syria (2012) “Syria — Daraa revolution was armed to the teeth from the very beginning’, BBC interview with Anwar Al-Eshki,YouTube, 10 April

6. What I find most interesting is that (what appears to be) the generic truth about our position on Syria was fairly simple to piece together visavis info on the internet. That we can get our hands on this information is to be highly regarded. Obviously it takes more than knowledge of how we are lied to, but seeing the lies before they are acted upon is a step in the right direction…..

7. I suppose it’s worth noting that the wonderful Robert Fisk leaves the truth very much behind the mask. The three-page white paper released by the White House is designed to obscure the fact that the “intelligence” about “Syrian Government Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21” comes from the enemy of Syria and Iran. In fact, no definitive evidence has been presented that the Syrian government or military are on the hook when it comes to mass gassing.

8. Yes. I was wondering what was behind all this – and of course, Robert Fisk comes up with the truth behind the mask. The wonderful Robert Fisk. Thanks so much for this, Eric. had forgotten to check him out in these days- with other things weighing on my mind.