A Mediterranean Battlefield - Syria

[Magda Hassan]

Putin's Blitz Leaves Washington Rankled and Confused

By Mike Whitney

1 October 2015

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/01/p...-confused/

"France will discuss with its partners in the coming days a proposal by Turkey and members of the Syrian opposition for a no-fly zone in northern Syria, French President Francois Hollande said on Monday…

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius "in the coming days will look at what the demarcation would be, how this zone could be secured and what our partners think," Hollande told reporters on the sidelines of the annual United Nations General Assembly…

Hollande said such a proposal could eventually be rubber-stamped with a U.N. Security Council resolution that "would give international legitimacy to what's happening in this zone."…(France, partners to discuss northern Syria safe zone': Hollande, Reuters)

Hollande is a liar and a puppet. He knows the Security Council will never approve a no-fly zone. Russia and China have already said so. And they've explained why they are opposed to it, too. It's because they don't want another failed state on their hands like Libya, which is what happened last time the US and NATO imposed a no-fly zone.

But that's beside the point. The real reason the no-fly zone issue has resurfaced is because it was one of the concessions Obama made to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the use of Incirlik airbase. Washington has kept the terms of that deal secret, but Hollande has let the cat out of the bag.

So who put sock-puppet Hollande up to this no-fly zone nonsense?

It is noted that there is no 'Oh no the sky is falling!!!' MSM response when France illegally drops bombs in Syria. No talking heads invited on to TV to remonstrate about it. No analysis about it. Just mute acceptance that France is doing what it is doing and perfectly okay to do this against International Law.

[David Guyatt]

US Complains As Russia Bombs its Terrorists

01.10.2015 Author: Tony Cartalucci

http://journal-neo.org/2015/10/01/us-com...errorists/

The New York Times in its recent article, "Russians Strike Targets in Syria, but Not ISIS Areas," attempts to frame Russia's recent actions in Syria as dishonest and dangerous. It reports:

Russian aircraft carried out a bombing attack against Syrian opposition fighters on Wednesday, including at least one group trained by the C.I.A., eliciting angry protests from American officials and plunging the complex sectarian war there into dangerous new territory.

This of course would only make Russia's actions dishonest or dangerous if groups trained by the US CIA were in fact the "moderates" the US claims they are. However, they are not, and thus Russia's actions are duly justified as is the expansion of their current policy.

There Are no Moderates, and There Never Were

For months now, after years of headlines confirming the US has been covertly arming militants in Syria for the purpose of overthrowing the government in Damascus, a narrative revolving around tens of thousands of these militants "defecting" to Al Nusra and the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS/ISIL) has been peddled to the public by the Western media and US politicians to account for the apparent failure of America's alleged policy of creating an army of "moderates" to both fight ISIS/Al Qaeda and the Syrian government.

In reality, from the beginning, there were never any moderates. Starting as early as 2007, years before the war in Syria began, the US as a matter of policy had long since decided to intentionally fund and support the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood for all intents and purposes the political wing of Al Qaeda and begin arming militants affiliated with Al Qaeda itself.

This was revealed in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker article titled, "The Redirection Is the Administration's new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?," which stated explicitly (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Hersh's prophetic 9-page report would also reveal that even then, the extremist Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was already receiving funding and support from the United States via Saudi Arabia. His report revealed (emphasis added):

There is evidence that the Administration's redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, "The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement." He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front's members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.

By 2011, Al Qaeda's affiliates in Syria, most notably the Al Nusra Front, began operating nation-wide, taking the lead in the US-backed fight against Damascus. By 2012, when the US State Department listed Al Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization, it was clear even then, that the largest contingent of anti-government forces on the battlefield was Al Qaeda.

The US State Department's official statement regarding Al Nusra reported that:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

It is clear that Al Qaeda was not only involved in the conflict since its beginning, but also led it. This betrays current US rhetoric that Al Qaeda had only entered the fight later on, seizing on the chaos created by "moderates" and their fight with Damascus. It is clear that it was Al Qaeda itself that drove that chaos from the beginning, and is still driving this chaos to this day.

The Rhetorical Pipeline

To explain how America's fictional "moderate" army has been displaced on the battlefield in Syria by Al Qaeda and ISIS, the US claims that its multi-billion dollar nearly 5-year operation has suffered from massive defections.

The Guardian would report in its article, "Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra," that:

Syria's main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organisation with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The International Business Times would report in its article, "Four Years Later, The Free Syrian Army Has Collapsed," that:

The Nusra Front, aka Jabhat al-Nusra, has picked up thousands of men who once fought under the umbrella of the FSA during the past three years. It offers its soldiers hundreds of dollars a month in salary and food installments. The soldiers in the FSA did not receive any monthly stipend. When extremist groups such as the Nusra Front gained ground in Syria and received millions of dollars in cash and weapons from wealthy businessmen in the Gulf states and Libya, the moderate rebels "had no other choice," Jarrah said. "They feel like they are cheated, so they join ISIS."

The Daily Beast would report in its article, "Main U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebel Group Disbanding, Joining Islamists," that:

The Syrian rebel group Harakat al-Hazm, one of the White House's most trusted militias fighting President Bashar al-Assad, collapsed Sunday, with activists posting a statement online from frontline commanders saying they are disbanding their units and folding them into brigades aligned with a larger Islamist insurgent alliance distrusted by Washington.

Harakat al-Hazm would take with them to Al Qaeda and ISIS, millions of dollars worth of sophisticated US weapons, including US-made anti-tank TOW missiles.

The most recent US supported group, the fabled "Division 30," has also allegedly defected to Al Qaeda assuming they weren't Al Qaeda militants from the beginning. The Telegraph in its article, "US-trained Division 30 rebels betray US and hand weapons over to al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria'," reported that:

Pentagon-trained rebels in Syria are reported to have betrayed their American backers and handed their weapons over to al-Qaeda in Syria immediately after re-entering the country.

Fighters with Division 30, the "moderate" rebel division favoured by the United States, surrendered to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, a raft of sources claimed on Monday night.

What this news, admitted to by the West itself, of these US-backed "moderates" joining Al Qaeda's ranks by the thousands proves is that at the very least America's policy of building up a moderate opposition has failed entirely. What documented evidence stretching back as far as 2007 proves is that the US had no intention of building up a moderate opposition in the first place, and news of "defections" are simply cover for the direct funding and arming of Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria.

At the very least, Russia bombing these groups either having already defected to Al Qaeda, or inevitably going to defect to Al Qaeda, is doing the Pentagon a favor.

Russia is Bombing Al Qaeda

This leads back to the most recent New York Times article. Russia is not arbitrarily bombing "moderates" backed by the US in Syria to stave off allegedly "legitimate" opposition to the government in Damascus Russia is bombing terrorists who are either operating under the banner of Al Qaeda but are portrayed as otherwise by the US, or will inevitably end up turning their fighters and weapons over to Al Qaeda. Russia is bombing Al Qaeda.

The New York Times article would also claim:

"By supporting Assad and seemingly taking on everybody fighting Assad," Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Wednesday, Russia is "taking on the whole rest of the country that's fighting Assad." Some of those groups, he added, are supported by the United States and need to be part of a political resolution in Syria.

Indeed, Russia is undoubtedly bombing militants supported by the United States, but that is only because the United States has intentionally supported Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria. At any time if the United States truly wanted to strike an irreparable blow at ISIS forces, it could simply seal off the Turkish border across which the summation of ISIS' supplies, fighters, weapons, and vehicles flow. By securing the Turkish-Syrian border to the north, and the Jordanian-Syrian border in the south, the United States could strangle ISIS out of existence in a month, if not sooner.

That it has intentionally allowed ISIS supplies to flow out from under the nose of its allies and its own military forces stationed both in Jordan and in Turkey, indicates the the US at the very least is tacitly perpetuating the existence of ISIS but most likely is actively involved in filling the trucks bound for ISIS in Syria as well.

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter claims that the Russian position is "doomed," in what appears to be a pledge by the United States to resist Moscow's attempts to stamp out Al Qaeda groups in addition to taking on and eliminating ISIS.

Some might consider doubling down on a policy of backing terrorists that will inevitably be revealed to the world, and a policy that has thus far failed to topple the Syrian government which is now being bolstered by Russian, Iranian, and possibly Chinese forces, is a policy that is ultimately doomed.

And finally, it must be noted, for those still doubting ISIS is in fact an intentional creation of US foreign policy, that ISIS is now fighting the combined military forces of Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and now Russia. One must ask themselves who has the material resources, finances, and operational capacity to support a single army capable of taking on a multinational coalition of this size. Where, if not from the US and its regional allies, is ISIS deriving the source of its fighting capacity?

Claiming to fight ISIS, while so transparently supporting them, is indeed a doomed position, one doomed to fail today, and one doomed to eternal condemnation in the future.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine"New Eastern Outlook".

I'm getting embarrassed for Obama and the Neocons. His bitching about Russia bombing America's "moderates" (i.e., ISIS) is making him a laughing stock. And his claim that bombing them strengthens ISIS is a downright hoot.

[Paul Rigby]

US Complains As Russia Bombs its Terrorists

01.10.2015 Author: Tony Cartalucci

http://journal-neo.org/2015/10/01/us-com...errorists/

The New York Times in its recent article, "Russians Strike Targets in Syria, but Not ISIS Areas," attempts to frame Russia's recent actions in Syria as dishonest and dangerous. It reports:


Russian aircraft carried out a bombing attack against Syrian opposition fighters on Wednesday, including at least one group trained by the C.I.A., eliciting angry protests from American officials and plunging the complex sectarian war there into dangerous new territory.

This of course would only make Russia's actions dishonest or dangerous if groups trained by the US CIA were in fact the "moderates" the US claims they are. However, they are not, and thus Russia's actions are duly justified as is the expansion of their current policy.

There Are no Moderates, and There Never Were

For months now, after years of headlines confirming the US has been covertly arming militants in Syria for the purpose of overthrowing the government in Damascus, a narrative revolving around tens of thousands of these militants "defecting" to Al Nusra and the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS/ISIL) has been peddled to the public by the Western media and US politicians to account for the apparent failure of America's alleged policy of creating an army of "moderates" to both fight ISIS/Al Qaeda and the Syrian government.

In reality, from the beginning, there were never any moderates. Starting as early as 2007, years before the war in Syria began, the US as a matter of policy had long since decided to intentionally fund and support the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood for all intents and purposes the political wing of Al Qaeda and begin arming militants affiliated with Al Qaeda itself.

This was revealed in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker article titled, "The Redirection Is the Administration's new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?," which stated explicitly (emphasis added):

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia's government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Hersh's prophetic 9-page report would also reveal that even then, the extremist Syrian Muslim Brotherhood was already receiving funding and support from the United States via Saudi Arabia. His report revealed (emphasis added):

There is evidence that the Administration's redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, "The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement." He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front's members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents.

By 2011, Al Qaeda's affiliates in Syria, most notably the Al Nusra Front, began operating nation-wide, taking the lead in the US-backed fight against Damascus. By 2012, when the US State Department listed Al Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization, it was clear even then, that the largest contingent of anti-government forces on the battlefield was Al Qaeda.

The US State Department's official statement regarding Al Nusra reported that:

Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed.

It is clear that Al Qaeda was not only involved in the conflict since its beginning, but also led it. This betrays current US rhetoric that Al Qaeda had only entered the fight later on, seizing on the chaos created by "moderates" and their fight with Damascus. It is clear that it was Al Qaeda itself that drove that chaos from the beginning, and is still driving this chaos to this day.

The Rhetorical Pipeline

To explain how America's fictional "moderate" army has been displaced on the battlefield in Syria by Al Qaeda and ISIS, the US claims that its multi-billion dollar nearly 5-year operation has suffered from massive defections.

The Guardian would report in its article, "Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra," that:

Syria's main armed opposition group, the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is losing fighters and capabilities to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist organisation with links to al-Qaida that is emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The International Business Times would report in its article, "Four Years Later, The Free Syrian Army Has Collapsed," that:

The Nusra Front, aka Jabhat al-Nusra, has picked up thousands of men who once fought under the umbrella of the FSA during the past three years. It offers its soldiers hundreds of dollars a month in salary and food installments. The soldiers in the FSA did not receive any monthly stipend. When extremist groups such as the Nusra Front gained ground in Syria and received millions of dollars in cash and weapons from wealthy businessmen in the Gulf states and Libya, the moderate rebels "had no other choice," Jarrah said. "They feel like they are cheated, so they join ISIS."

The Daily Beast would report in its article, "Main U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebel Group Disbanding, Joining Islamists," that:

The Syrian rebel group Harakat al-Hazm, one of the White House's most trusted militias fighting President Bashar al-Assad, collapsed Sunday, with activists posting a statement online from frontline commanders saying they are disbanding their units and folding them into brigades aligned with a larger Islamist insurgent alliance distrusted by Washington.

Harakat al-Hazm would take with them to Al Qaeda and ISIS, millions of dollars worth of sophisticated US weapons, including US-made anti-tank TOW missiles.

The most recent US supported group, the fabled "Division 30," has also allegedly defected to Al Qaeda assuming they weren't Al Qaeda militants from the beginning. The Telegraph in its article, "US-trained Division 30 rebels betray US and hand weapons over to al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria'," reported that:

Pentagon-trained rebels in Syria are reported to have betrayed their American backers and handed their weapons over to al-Qaeda in Syria immediately after re-entering the country.

Fighters with Division 30, the "moderate" rebel division favoured by the United States, surrendered to the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, a raft of sources claimed on Monday night.

What this news, admitted to by the West itself, of these US-backed "moderates" joining Al Qaeda's ranks by the thousands proves is that at the very least America's policy of building up a moderate opposition has failed entirely. What documented evidence stretching back as far as 2007 proves is that the US had no intention of building up a moderate opposition in the first place, and news of "defections" are simply cover for the direct funding and arming of Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria.

At the very least, Russia bombing these groups either having already defected to Al Qaeda, or inevitably going to defect to Al Qaeda, is doing the Pentagon a favor.

Russia is Bombing Al Qaeda

This leads back to the most recent New York Times article. Russia is not arbitrarily bombing "moderates" backed by the US in Syria to stave off allegedly "legitimate" opposition to the government in Damascus Russia is bombing terrorists who are either operating under the banner of Al Qaeda but are portrayed as otherwise by the US, or will inevitably end up turning their fighters and weapons over to Al Qaeda. Russia is bombing Al Qaeda.

The New York Times article would also claim:

"By supporting Assad and seemingly taking on everybody fighting Assad," Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said Wednesday, Russia is "taking on the whole rest of the country that's fighting Assad." Some of those groups, he added, are supported by the United States and need to be part of a political resolution in Syria.

Indeed, Russia is undoubtedly bombing militants supported by the United States, but that is only because the United States has intentionally supported Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria. At any time if the United States truly wanted to strike an irreparable blow at ISIS forces, it could simply seal off the Turkish border across which the summation of ISIS' supplies, fighters, weapons, and vehicles flow. By securing the Turkish-Syrian border to the north, and the Jordanian-Syrian border in the south, the United States could strangle ISIS out of existence in a month, if not sooner.

That it has intentionally allowed ISIS supplies to flow out from under the nose of its allies and its own military forces stationed both in Jordan and in Turkey, indicates the the US at the very least is tacitly perpetuating the existence of ISIS but most likely is actively involved in filling the trucks bound for ISIS in Syria as well.

US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter claims that the Russian position is "doomed," in what appears to be a pledge by the United States to resist Moscow's attempts to stamp out Al Qaeda groups in addition to taking on and eliminating ISIS.

Some might consider doubling down on a policy of backing terrorists that will inevitably be revealed to the world, and a policy that has thus far failed to topple the Syrian government which is now being bolstered by Russian, Iranian, and possibly Chinese forces, is a policy that is ultimately doomed.

And finally, it must be noted, for those still doubting ISIS is in fact an intentional creation of US foreign policy, that ISIS is now fighting the combined military forces of Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and now Russia. One must ask themselves who has the material resources, finances, and operational capacity to support a single army capable of taking on a multinational coalition of this size. Where, if not from the US and its regional allies, is ISIS deriving the source of its fighting capacity?

Claiming to fight ISIS, while so transparently supporting them, is indeed a doomed position, one doomed to fail today, and one doomed to eternal condemnation in the future.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine"New Eastern Outlook".

I'm getting embarrassed for Obama and the Neocons. His bitching about Russia bombing America's "moderates" (i.e., ISIS) is making him a laughing stock. And his claim that bombing them strengthens ISIS is a downright hoot.

The American foreign policy establishment is disappearing up its own sphincter before our eyes.

[Magda Hassan]

The American foreign policy establishment is disappearing up its own sphincter before our eyes.

And what a lovely sight it is. What a great time to be alive.

[David Guyatt]

Washington's forked-tongued double speak continues unabated.

From Consortium News:

Obama Tolerates the Warmongers

October 2, 2015

Exclusive: President Obama is caught between the harsh realities of the Mideast and the fantasy world of Washington's warmongers, but he prefers to risk a global catastrophe than to stand up to the neocons, the liberal hawks, the Israelis and the Saudis, a dilemma that Daniel Lazare explains.
By Daniel Lazare
"Only odd-numbered world wars start in Sarajevo." That was the joke during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. Though it turned out not to be true, fortunately, a strange echo occurred a few years later when NATO military commander General Wesley Clark threatened to shoot down Russian planes flying paratroopers into Kosovo, prompting a British general to refuse on the grounds that "it's not worth starting World War III."
But war among the great powers may now be in the offing in Syria, where the conflict seems to be exploding on a new and grander scale. Instead of two players, NATO and Russia, it now includes a half dozen or more: the U.S., France and Great Britain, plus Russia, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab gulf states. Where the conflicting claims of Bosnians, Serbs and Croats were difficult enough to sort out in former Yugoslavia, the struggle over Syria is an immense tangle in which a growing list of combatants struggle to impose their disparate points of view.

President Barack Obama at the White House with National Security Adviser Susan Rice and Samantha Power (right), his U.N. ambassador. (Photo credit: Pete Souza)

The upshot is a game of chicken that is bigger, bloodier and more intractable than anything in decades. Recognizing that an Islamic State takeover in Syria will lead to another round of jihad in Chechnya, Vladimir Putin sees no alternative but to step up support for the besieged government of Bashar al-Assad. Refusing to stand by while fellow Shiites are slaughtered, Iran sees no alternative but to step up support as well.
Determined to halt any expansion by Iran or Hezbollah on its border, Israel increasingly tilts toward ISIS and Al Qaeda, while the Saudis more and more paranoid about a "Shiite crescent" extending from Yemen to Bahrain, Syria and even the kingdom's own Eastern Province have vowed to intensify their support for the Sunnis.
Too much is at stake for anyone to back down. An Israeli-Russian rapprochement, which could conceivably defuse the crisis, has long been an intriguing possibility. Israel has refused to condemn Russia's annexation of Crimea. After all, Israel's huge Russian immigrant population tilts toward Putin, while the only monument to the victorious Red Army outside the former Soviet bloc lies in the seaside town of Netanya, about ten miles north of Tel Aviv all of which suggests that it is better disposed to Russia than is generally realized.
If Putin could engineer an agreement that would allow Assad to hold onto power while reining in Hezbollah, Israel would conceivably go along. But Israel fears that Hezbollah will take advantage of any such truce to build up its missile arsenal, which is why in the end it will almost certainly say no.
Besides, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the General Assembly on Thursday, it regards ISIS and Iran as common enemies, "and when your enemies fight each other, don't strengthen either one weaken both." Hence, its policy is to prolong the deadlock even though the results in the end may prove more dangerous for the Jewish state rather than less.
Finally, there is the United States. It has a relatively young, hip, liberal president who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It also has military expenditures bigger than those of the next nine most powerful countries combined. So surely it has both the good sense and the clout to see that disaster is averted.
But, no, the U.S. is too beholden to the Israelis, to the Saudis, and to an increasingly Strangelovian foreign-policy establishment at home to act independently.
Foot-Dragger-in-Chief
Barack Obama has long cultivated a Yoda-like air of detachment and inscrutability as hawks tried to push him in an ever more bellicose direction. Yet, despite his administration's saber rattling, he backed off from bombing Syria in 2013 when Putin arranged for Assad to jettison his chemical-weapons arsenal.
Obama also has refused consistent Turkish demands to open up a no-fly zone in Syria's north, which would inject the U.S. military directly into the battle to topple Assad's Baathists. But Obama has let the CIA channel funds to thousands of rebels, many of them Islamists allied with Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's official Syrian affiliate. He has not blocked the Saudis from supplying Al Nusra with U.S.-made high-tech TOW missiles.
The ultimate absurdity occurred two weeks ago when White House Press Secretary Josh Earnestblamed U.S. war hawks for forcing the President to embark on a $500-million program to teach anti-Assad rebels how to battle Islamic State even though he knew all along that it wouldn't work. "But I think it's also time for our critics to fess up in this regard as well," Earnest said. "They were wrong."
What was this other than a confession by the Obama administration that it is too weak to say no? It knows that its Syria policy is a disaster, but it is too worried about what the Israelis, Saudis or Washington's neocons might say to embark on anything different.
So the U.S. is unable to apply the brakes either. Ordinarily, the press might be expected to inject a note of reason except that the major media outlets so far seem as confused (or misleading) as anyone. Anne Barnard and Neil MacFarquhar's front-page story in Friday's New York Times is typical of the muddled thinking that passes for journalism these days.
Rife with innuendo, it charges that Russia has intervened in Syria in order to embarrass Obama "always a consideration for Mr. Putin" and predicts that "the glow of early Russian successes will almost certainly fade … as the realities of Syria's grim, four-year civil war slowly assert themselves. Mr. Assad's forces are worn down and demoralized, and they are in control of only about 20 percent of Syria's territory."
True enough, although they might have added that if the Syrian military is showing signs of exhaustion, it is because the U.S. and its allies have poured "hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons" into the arms of the opposition, as Vice President Joe Biden let slip in a talk at Harvard's Kennedy School last October.
Barnard and MacFarquhar also report that Assad "is vilified by many in the majority Sunni population," which may also be true, although they might have noted the longstanding campaign by the U.S. and its allies to stir up sectarian hatred in the first place. (Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shia Islam.)
In a secret 2006 diplomatic cable made public by Wikileaks, for example, then-U.S. Ambassador to Syria William V. Roebuck urged Washington to "play on Sunni fears of Iranian influence" in order to weaken the Assad regime. Although reports that Iranian Shiites are proselytizing among poor Sunnis are "often exaggerated," Roebuck said, "oth the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here (as well as prominent Syrian Sunni religious leaders) are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should coordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention on the issue."
The reports of Shi'ite proselytizing were exaggerated yet Roebuck advised blowing them up all the more.
[B]Prescient Warnings
In August 2012, the Defense Intelligence Agency warned that Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda all fiercely anti-Shiite were the main driving forces behind the anti-Assad rebellion, that they were seeking to establish a "Salafist principality in eastern Syria," and that they were attempting to drum up an anti-Shiite jihad among "the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world," which is "exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition" i.e. the West, the Gulf states, and Turkey "want in order to isolate the Syrian regime."
In his remarks at the Kennedy School last October, Biden that the Gulf states flooded the Syrian rebels with arms and money because "they were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war." Sectarianism didn't just arrive from the sky rather America and its Gulf allies did their best to nurture and expand it.
Barnard and MacFarquhar go on to say that with Islamic State advancing on Homs and Damascus from the east, "rival insurgents were putting new pressure on the Syrian coastal provinces, where Mr. Assad's support is strongest. The fighters advancing on that front were not from the Islamic State but from the Army of Conquest, a group that includes an affiliate of Al Qaeda known as the Nusra Front and other Islamist groups, including several more secular groups that have been covertly armed and trained by the United States."
In other words, U.S.-backed forces are working hand-in-glove with Al Qaeda as they advance on coastal provinces where Syria's Shiite population is concentrated. They might have added that this is a bloodbath in the making that America and its allies are doing everything to foment. But instead they criticize Putin for trying to stop it.
Instead of clearing up the confusion, the press compounds it and hence adds to the danger of a wider conflict. The Times is even more hypocritical in its opinion pages. Its lead editorial accuses Putin of "escalat[ing] the bloody conflict" as if the U.S. and its allies had not already ratcheted it up as high as possible and complains that intervention "risks bringing Russia into direct confrontation with the United States," even though Putin is acting at the invitation of the Syrian government while the United States flouts international law by sending in warplanes without Syrian government permission.
"This move by President Vladimir Putin complicates an already chaotic battlefield and will certainly make a political settlement even harder to achieve," the editorial adds. Yet it is the U.S. that has helped prevent a political settlement by demanding that Assad step down as a precondition for any further talks.
The Times says that Assad's "hold on power has weakened as the Syrian Army has lost ground not only to the Islamic State, which is trying to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, but also to a coalition of insurgent groups that is opposed to the Islamic State" without acknowledging that the same groups, as its own journalists report, are also allied with Al Qaeda.
"Mr. Putin could have prevented the turn to violence back in 2011 by persuading his ally not to attack peaceful antigovernment protesters," the editorial adds. But it is unclear how Putin could have pulled off such a feat since the U.S. failed to prevent its ally Saudi Arabia from sending in troops to crush mass protests the same year in Bahrain or from conducting nightly bombing raids in Yemen that so far this year have killed more than 2,300 civilians.
The Times faults Putin for "not try[ing] to work out a plan with the Americans to ensure their respective warplanes would not come in contact," but then says the United States "rightly rejected a Russian warning after the airstrikes started to avoid Syrian airspace and halt their attacks on the Islamic State."
It concludes by declaring that "Obama will have to work with America's partners on a unified response to Russia's moves and seek a way to end the war," which means acceding to Saudi vows that support for the rebels "will be intensified."
The effect is to encourage more of the same mindless confrontationalism that has already plunged Syria into catastrophe. What will Obama do if Russia continues to bomb rebels supported by the U.S. and Saudis? Will he step up military aid or send in jets to chase Russian fighters off? What if U.S. and Russian planes exchange fire? Will he back away from a showdown or allow himself to be maneuvered into a broader conflict?
No one knows. But with the warmongers in control in Washington, the fighting can only spread.

[David Guyatt]

Should US Ally with Al Qaeda in Syria?

October 1, 2015

Exclusive: The new U.S. "group think" is that Russian President Putin broke his promise to attack only the Islamic State when his warplanes hit other rebel targets in Syria. But Putin never limited which terrorists he'd hit and the targeted rebel coalition includes Al Qaeda's affiliate, as Robert Parry reports.
By Robert Parry
The key sentence in The New York Times' lead article about Russian airstrikes against Syrian rebel targets fell to the bottom of the story, five paragraphs from the end, where the Times noted in passing that the area north of Homs where the attacks occurred had been the site of an offensive by a coalition "including Nusra Front."
What the Times didn't say in that context was that Nusra Front is Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, an omission perhaps explained because this additional information would disrupt the righteous tone of the article, accusing Russia of bad faith in attacking rebel groups other than the Islamic State.

The World Trade Center's Twin Towers burning on 9/11. (Photo credit: National Park Service)

But the Russians had made clear their intent was to engage in airstrikes against the mélange of rebel groups in which Al Qaeda as well as the Islamic State played prominent roles. The Times and the rest of the mainstream U.S. media are just playing games when they pretend otherwise.
Plus, the reality about Syria's splintered rebel coalition is that it is virtually impossible to distinguish between the few "moderate" rebels and the many Sunni extremists. Indeed, many "moderates," including some trained and armed by the CIA and Pentagon, have joined with Al Qaeda's Nusra Front, even turning over U.S. weapons and equipment to this affiliate of the terrorist organization that attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001. Lest we forget it was that event that prompted the direct U.S. military intervention in the Middle East.
However, in recent months, the Israeli government and its American neoconservative allies have been floating trial balloons regarding whether Al Qaeda could be repackaged as Sunni "moderates" and become a de facto U.S. ally in achieving a "regime change" in Syria, ousting President Bashar al-Assad who has been near the top of the Israeli/neocon hit list for years.
A key neocon propaganda theme has been to spin the conspiracy theory that Assad and the Islamic State are somehow in cahoots and thus Al Qaeda represents the lesser evil. Though there is no evidence to support this conspiracy theory, it was even raised by Charlie Rose in his "60 Minutes" interview last Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The reality is that the Islamic State and Al Qaeda have both been leading the fight to destroy the secular Assad government, which has fought back against both groups.
And, if these two leading terror groups saw a chance to raise their black flags over Damascus, they might well mend their tactical rifts. They would have much to gain by overthrowing Assad's regime, which is the principal protector of Syria's Christians, Alawites, Shiites and other "heretics."
The primary dispute between Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which began as "Al Qaeda in Iraq," is when to start a fundamentalist caliphate. The Islamic State believes the caliphate can begin now while Al Qaeda says the priority should be mounting more terrorist attacks against the West.
Yet, if Damascus falls, the two groups could both get a measure of satisfaction: the Islamic State could busy itself beheadings the "heretics" while Al Qaeda could plot dramatic new terror attacks against Western targets, a grim win-win.
One might think that the U.S. government should focus on averting such an eventuality, but the hysterical anti-Russian bias of The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media means that whatever Putin does must be cast in the most negative light.
The Anti-Putin Frenzy
On Thursday, one CNN anchor ranted about Putin's air force attacking "our guys," i.e., CIA-trained rebels, and demanded to know what could be done to stop the Russian attacks. This frenzy was fed by the Times' article, co-written by neocon national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon, a leading promoter of the Iraq-WMD scam in 2002.
The Times' article pushed the theme that Russians were attacking the white-hatted "moderate" rebels in violation of Russia's supposed commitment to fight the Islamic State only. But Putin never restricted his military support for the Assad government to attacks on the Islamic State.
Indeed, even the Times began that part of the story by citing Putin's quote that Russia was acting "preventatively to fight and destroy militants and terrorists on the territories that they already occupied." Putin did not limit Russia's actions to the Islamic State.
But the Times' article acts as if the phrase "militants and terrorists" could only apply to the Islamic State, writing: "But American officials said the attack was not directed at the Islamic State but at other opposition groups fighting against the [Syrian] government."
Unless The New York Times no longer believes that Al Qaeda is a terrorist group, the Times' phrasing doesn't make sense. Indeed, Al Qaeda's Nusra Front has emerged as the lead element of the so-called Army of Conquest, a coalition of rebel forces which has been using sophisticated U.S. weaponry including TOW missiles to achieve major advances against the Syrian military around the city of Idlib.
The weaponry most likely comes from U.S. regional allies, since Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other Sunni-led Gulf states have been supporting Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other Sunni rebel groups in Syria. This reality was disclosed in a Defense Intelligence Agency report and was blurted out by Vice President Joe Biden.
On Oct. 2, 2014, Biden told an audience at Harvard's Kennedy School: "our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria … the Saudis, the emirates, etc., what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of military weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world." [Quote at 53:20 of clip.]
Al Qaeda's Nusra Front also has benefited from a de facto alliance with Israel which has taken in wounded Nusra fighters for medical treatment and then returned them to the battlefield around the Golan Heights. Israel also has carried out airstrikes inside Syria in support of Nusra's advances, including killing Hezbollah and Iranian advisers helping the Syrian government.
The Israeli airstrikes inside Syria, like those conducted by the United States and its allies, are in violation of international law because they do not have the permission of the Syrian government, but those Israeli and U.S. coalition attacks are treated as right and proper by the mainstream U.S. media in contrast to the Russian airstrikes, which are treated as illicit even though they are carried out at the invitation of Syria's recognized government.
Obama's Choice
Ultimately, President Barack Obama will have to decide if he wants to cooperate with Russia and Iran in beating back Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other jihadists or realign U.S. policy in accord with Israel's obsession with "regime change" in Syria, even if that means a victory by Al Qaeda. In other words, should the United States come full circle in the Middle East and help Al Qaeda win?
Preferring Al Qaeda over Assad is the Israeli position embraced by many neocons, too. The priority for the Israeli/neocon strategy has been to seek "regime change" in Syria as a way to counter Iran and its support for Lebanon's Hezbollah, both part of Shia Islam.
According to this thinking, if Assad, an Alawite, a branch of Shia Islam, can be removed, a new Sunni-dominated regime in Syria would disrupt Hezbollah's supply lines from Iran and thus free up Israel to act more aggressively against both the Palestinians and Iran.
For instance, if Israel decides to crack down again on the Palestinians or bomb Iran's nuclear sites, it now has to worry about Hezbollah in southern Lebanon raining down missiles on major Israeli cities. However, if Hezbollah's source of Iranian missiles gets blocked by a new Sunni regime in Damascus, the worry of Hezbollah attacks would be lessened.
Israel's preference for Al Qaeda over Assad has been acknowledged by senior Israeli officials for the past two years though never noted in the U.S. mainstream media. In September 2013, Israel's Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.
"The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc," Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. "We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran." He said this was the case even if the "bad guys" were affiliated with Al Qaeda.
And, in June 2014, then speaking as a former ambassador at an Aspen Institute conference, Oren expanded on his position, saying Israel would even prefer a victory by the brutal Islamic State over continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. "From Israel's perspective, if there's got to be an evil that's got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail," Oren said. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Israel."]
So, that is the choice facing President Obama and the American people. Despite the misleading reporting by The New York Times, CNN and other major U.S. news outlets, the realistic options are quite stark: either work with Russia, Iran and the Syrian military to beat back the Sunni jihadists in Syria (while seeking a power-sharing arrangement in Damascus that includes Assad and some of his U.S.-backed political rivals) or take the side of Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, including the Islamic State, with the goal of removing Assad and hoping that the mythical "moderate" rebels might finally materialize and somehow wrest control of Damascus.
Though I'm told that Obama privately has made the first choice, he is so fearful of the political reaction from neocons and their "liberal interventionist" pals that he feels he must act like a tough guy ridiculing Putin and denouncing Assad.
The danger from this duplicitous approach is that Obama's penchant for talking out of multiple sides of his mouth might end up touching off a confrontation between nuclear-armed America and nuclear-armed Russia, a crisis that his verbal trickery might not be able to control.

Above from Robert Parry.

[Magda Hassan]

Wonder what this will do for French support for US agenda in Syria?

Kunduz Hospital Bombing Exposes U.S. Airstrike Hypocrisy

Is the U.S. still using propaganda claims that the Syrian government is willingly bombing hospitals? Or that it uses "dumb bombs" or "barrel bombs" that cause "collateral damage"? Will its proxies prepare more fake videos that allegedly show such bombings?
Well, it is time to end that nonsense because the hypocrisy is now too obvious:

Kabul, October 3, 2015: At 2:10 AM local time on Saturday October 3, the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières' (MSF) Trauma center in Kunduz was hit several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged. Three MSF staff are confirmed dead and more than 30 are unaccounted for.
...
Since fighting broke out on Monday, MSF has treated 394 wounded. When the aerial attack occurred this morning we had 105 patients and their caretakers in the hospital and over 80 MSF international and national staff present.
...
MSF's hospital is the only facility of its kind in the whole northeastern region of Afghanistan, providing free life- and limb-saving trauma care. MSF doctors treat all people according to their medical needs and do not make distinctions based on a patient's ethnicity, religious beliefs or political affiliation.

MSF was hiding "terrorists" is the claim the officials make. People at the hospital were "individuals threatening the force" says the U.S. military.
A video of the aftermath shows that the MSF clinic is a single, large building with a large courtyard an walled off from the surrounding. This was no accidental hit by a "dumb bomb" but multiple willful targeting with "smart" bombs.

MSF International @MSF
All parties to conflict, including in Kabul & Washington, were clearly informed of precise GPS coordinates of our facilities in #Kunduz MSF International @MSF
Precise location of our #Kunduz hospital communicated to all parties on multiple occasions over past months, including on 9/29
MSF International @MSF
Bombing continued for >30 minutes after American & Afghan military officials in Kabul & Washington first informed of proximity to hospital.

The total number of confirmed dead is currently creeping up with some saying that it will reach over 50.
Meanwhile the U.S. and the Saudis are tussling over who of them was responsible for designating a wedding in Yemen as an air attack target thereby killing over 130 people.
The U.S. and others (note: not Jordan(!) which seems to have left the anti-Syrian coalition) are whining that the Russian air force targets al-Qaeda CIA mercenaries and are begging to end that. Why exactly it should do so is not said.
Obama said yesterday that he will not get into a proxy fight with Russia over Syria. But the measures he announced, more weapons to the opposition, more bombing runs, point exactly into that direction. But with protection from the Russian air force and air defense the causing of "collateral damage" to the Syrian government, like to the MFS clinic, will be a bit more complicate.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/10/kun...crisy.html

[Paul Rigby]

The American foreign policy establishment is disappearing up its own sphincter before our eyes.

And what a lovely sight it is. What a great time to be alive.

I have particularly enjoyed the performances of my own country's foremost diplomatist, Foreign Secretary Phil "Charisma" Hammond, the man with the air of a provincial undertaker charged with organising his own funeral. He brings a unique expertise to the subject of the Middle East in general, and Syria specifically. I confine myself to one example of this man's lugubrious acuity:

[video=youtube_share;6BIJTQakFgg]http://youtu.be/6BIJTQakFgg[/video]

While I'm at it, I want to share a dark suspicion, originating with a chap at the bar, concerning the precise nature of the slogans so expensively embroidered on the head scarfs of Langley's Islamist organ-eaters.

Are these kosher, or are they a spoof?

It was suggested that the real translations ranged from "God is great, but the CIA pays better," to the increasingly popular "I'm a Charlatan, get me out of here."

One cynic went so far as to suggest they are all sponsors' slogans, along the lines of "George Soros Foundation on Tour," and "We die that Northrop Grumman might grow."

I am appalled at this cynicism, which is why I repeat it here.

[Paul Rigby]

While I'm at it, I want to share a dark suspicion, originating with a chap at the bar, concerning the precise nature of the slogans so expensively embroidered on the head scarfs of Langley's Islamist organ-eaters.

Are these kosher, or are they a spoof?

It was suggested that the real translations ranged from "God is great, but the CIA pays better," to the increasingly popular "I'm a Charlatan, get me out of here."

One cynic went so far as to suggest they are all sponsors' slogans, along the lines of "George Soros Foundation on Tour," and "We die that Northrop Grumman might grow."

I am appalled at this cynicism, which is why I repeat it here.

Please ignore the above. It transpires that my saloon bar expert is, somewhat unusually for a Brit, a devoted viewer of a weird, obscure station called CNN:

[video=youtube_share;p26mfpGy2rI]http://youtu.be/p26mfpGy2rI[/video]

[Magda Hassan]

I bet we haven't heard the last from that CNN reporter and their intrepid National Security expert. I can sleep more soundly now knowing they are on the ball and keeping us safe from.....some thing or other.