26 years ago, 1991 Iraq Gulf War: The massacre at the “highways of death”

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From Global Research

April 4th, 2016
by Joyce Chediac

The indiscriminate bombing of tens of thousands of Iraqi troops and civilians retreating from Kuwait is one of the most heinous war crimes in history.

I want to give testimony on what are called the “highways of death.” These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.

US planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. “It was like shooting fish in a barrel,” said one US pilot. The horror is still there to see.

On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description – tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, fire trucks, according to the March 18, 1991, Time magazine. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. While 450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it’s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel.

“Even in Vietnam I didn’t see anything like this. It’s pathetic,” said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the US and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history.

The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by US troops as the Bush administration maintains. They were not retreating in order to regroup and fight again. In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home, responding to orders issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660 and leaving Kuwait. At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time) Baghdad radio announced that Iraq’s Foreign Minister had accepted the Soviet cease-fire proposal and had issued the order for all Iraqi troops to withdraw to positions held before August 2, 1990 in compliance with UN Resolution 660. President Bush responded immediately from the White House saying (through spokesman Marlin Fitzwater) that “there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight. . . We continue to prosecute the war.” On the next day, February 26, 1991, Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad radio that Iraqi troops had, indeed, begun to withdraw from Kuwait and that the withdrawal would be complete that day. Again, Bush reacted, calling Hussein’s announcement “an outrage” and “a cruel hoax.”

Eyewitness Kuwaitis attest that the withdrawal began the afternoon of February 26, 1991 and Baghdad radio announced at 2:00 AM (local time) that morning that the government had ordered all troops to withdraw.

The massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Common Article III, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who are out of combat. The point of contention involves the Bush administration’s claim that the Iraqi troops were retreating to regroup and fight again. Such a claim is the only way that the massacre which occurred could be considered legal under international law. But in fact the claim is false and obviously so. The troops were withdrawing and removing themselves from combat under direct orders from Baghdad that the war was over and that Iraq had quit and would fully comply with UN resolutions. To attack the soldiers returning home under these circumstances is a war crime.

Iraq accepted UN Resolution 660 and offered to withdraw from Kuwait through Soviet mediation on February 21, 1991. A statement made by George Bush on February 27, 1991, that no quarter would be given to remaining Iraqi soldiers violates even the US Field Manual of 1956. The 1907 Hague Convention governing land warfare also makes it illegal to declare that no quarter will be given to withdrawing soldiers. On February 26,199 I, the following dispatch was filed from the deck of the USS. Ranger, under the byline of Randall Richard of the Providence Journal:

Air strikes against Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait were being launched so feverishly from this carrier today that pilots said they took whatever bombs happened to be closest to the flight deck. The crews, working to the strains of the Lone Ranger theme, often passed up the projectile of choice . . . because it took too long to load.

New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd wrote, “With the Iraqi leader facing military defeat, Mr. Bush decided that he would rather gamble on a violent and potentially unpopular ground war than risk the alternative: an imperfect settlement hammered out by the Soviets and Iraqis that world opinion might accept as tolerable.” In short, rather than accept the offer of Iraq to surrender and leave the field of battle, Bush and the US military strategists decided simply to kill as many Iraqis as they possibly could while the chance lasted. A Newsweek article on Norman Schwarzkopt, titled “A Soldier of Conscience” (March 11,1991), remarked that before the ground war the general was only worried about “How long the world would stand by and watch the United States pound the living hell out of Iraq without saying, ‘Wait a minute – enough is enough.’ He [Schwarzkopf] itched to send ground troops to finish the job.” The pretext for massive extermination of Iraqi soldiers was the desire of the US to destroy Iraqi equipment. But in reality the plan was to prevent Iraqi soldiers from retreating at all. Powell remarked even before the start of the war that Iraqi soldiers knew that they had been sent to Kuwait to die. Rick Atkinson of the Washington Post reasoned that “the noose has been tightened” around Iraqi forces so effectively that “escape is impossible” (February 27, 1991). What all of this amounts to is not a war but a massacre.

There are also indications that some of those bombed during the withdrawal were Palestinians and Iraqi civilians. According to Time magazine of March 18, 1991, not just military vehicles, but cars, buses and trucks were also hit. In many cases, cars were loaded with Palestinian families and all their possessions. US press accounts tried to make the discovery of burned and bombed household goods appear as if Iraqi troops were even at this late moment looting Kuwait. Attacks on civilians are specifically prohibited by the Geneva Accords and the 1977 Conventions.

How did it really happen? On February 26, 1991 Iraq had announced it was complying with the Soviet proposal, and its troops would withdraw from Kuwait. According to Kuwaiti eyewitnesses, quoted in the March 11, 1991 Washington Post, the withdrawal began on the two highways, and was in full swing by evening. Near midnight, the first US bombing started. Hundreds of Iraqis jumped from their cars and their trucks, looking for shelter. US pilots took whatever bombs happened to be close to the flight deck, from cluster bombs to 500 pound bombs. Can you imagine that on a car or truck? US forces continued to drop bombs on the convoys until all humans were killed. So many jets swarmed over the inland road that it created an aerial traffic jam, and combat air controllers feared midair collisions.

The victims were not offering resistance. They weren’t being driven back in fierce battle, or trying to regroup to join another battle. They were just sitting ducks, according to Commander Frank Swiggert, the Ranger Bomb Squadron leader. According to an article in the March 11, 1991 Washington Post, headlined “US Scrambles to Shape View of Highway of Death,” the US government then conspired and in fact did all it could to hide this war crime from the people of this country and the world. What the US government did became the focus of the public relations campaign managed by the US Central Command in Riyad, according to that same issue of the Washington Post. The typical line has been that the convoys were engaged in “classic tank battles,” as if to suggest that Iraqi troops tried to fight back or even had a chance of fighting back. The truth is that it was simply a one-sided massacre of tens of thousands of people who had no ability to fight back or defend themselves.

The Washington Post says that senior officers with the US Central Command in Riyad became worried that what they saw was a growing public perception that Iraqi forces were leaving Kuwait voluntarily, and that the US pilots were bombing them mercilessly, which was the truth. So the US government, says the Post, played down the evidence that Iraqi troops were actually leaving Kuwait.

US field commanders gave the media a carefully drawn and inaccurate picture of the fast-changing events. The idea was to portray Iraq’s claimed withdrawal as a fighting retreat made necessary by heavy allied military pressure. Remember when Bush came to the Rose Garden and said that he would not accept Saddam Hussein’s withdrawal? That was part of it, too, and Bush was involved in this cover up. Bush’s statement was followed quickly by a televised military briefing from Saudi Arabia to explain that Iraqi forces were not withdrawing but were being pushed from the battlefield. In fact, tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers around Kuwait had begun to pull away more than thirty-six hours before allied forces reached the capital, Kuwait City. They did not move under any immediate pressure from allied tanks and infantry, which were still miles from Kuwait City.

This deliberate campaign of disinformation regarding this military action and the war crime that it really was, this manipulation of press briefings to deceive the public and keep the massacre from the world is also a violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the right of the people to know.

Joyce Chediac is a Lebanese-American journalist who has traveled in the Middle East and writes on Middle East issues. Her report was presented at the New York Commission hearing, May 11, 1991.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/twenty-five-years-ago-the-1991-iraq-gulf-war-america-bombs-the-highway-of-death/5518407

How U.S. flooded the world with psyops — newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library

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“[T]he planned use of communications to influence attitudes or behavior should, if properly used, precede, accompany, and follow all applications of force…
Military psychological operations are an important part of the ‘PSYOP Totality,’ both in peace and war. … We need a program of psychological operations as an integral part of our national security policies and programs. … The continuity of a standing interagency board or committee to provide the necessary coordinating mechanism for development of a coherent, worldwide psychological operations strategy is badly needed.”
“Military Psychological Operations and U.S. Strategy”, 1983
Col. Alfred R. Paddock Jr.
–
By
Global Research, March 27, 2017
Consortiumnews 25 March 2017

Newly declassified documents from the Reagan presidential library help explain how the U.S. government developed its sophisticated psychological operations capabilities that – over the past three decades – have created an alternative reality both for people in targeted countries and for American citizens, a structure that expanded U.S. influence abroad and quieted dissent at home.

The documents reveal the formation of a psyops bureaucracy under the direction of Walter Raymond Jr., a senior CIA covert operations specialist who was assigned to President Reagan’s National Security Council staff to enhance the importance of propaganda and psyops in undermining U.S. adversaries around the world and ensuring sufficient public support for foreign policies inside the United States.

Raymond, who has been compared to a character from a John LeCarré novel slipping easily into the woodwork, spent his years inside Reagan’s White House as a shadowy puppet master who tried his best to avoid public attention or – it seems – even having his picture taken. From the tens of thousands of photographs from meetings at Reagan’s White House, I found only a couple showing Raymond – and he is seated in groups, partially concealed by other officials.

But Raymond appears to have grasped his true importance. In his NSC files, I found a doodle of an organizational chart that had Raymond at the top holding what looks like the crossed handles used by puppeteers to control the puppets below them. Although it’s impossible to know exactly what the doodler had in mind, the drawing fits the reality of Raymond as the behind-the-curtains operative who was controlling the various inter-agency task forces that were responsible for implementing various propaganda and psyops strategies.

Until the 1980s, psyops were normally regarded as a military technique for undermining the will of an enemy force by spreading lies, confusion and terror. A classic case was Gen. Edward Lansdale — considered the father of modern psyops — draining the blood from a dead Filipino rebel in such a way so the dead rebel’s superstitious comrades would think that a vampire-like creature was on the prowl. In Vietnam, Lansdale’s psyops team supplied fake and dire astrological predictions for the fate of North Vietnamese and Vietcong leaders.

Essentially, the psyops idea was to play on the cultural weaknesses of a target population so they could be more easily manipulated and controlled. But the challenges facing the Reagan administration in the 1980s led to its determination that peacetime psyops were also needed and that the target populations had to include the American public.

Walter Raymond Jr., a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist who oversaw President Reagan’s “perception management” and psyops projects at the National Security Council. Raymond is partially obscured by President Reagan and is sitting next to National Security Adviser John Poindexter.. (Photo credit: Reagan presidential library)

The Reagan administration was obsessed with the problems left behind by the 1970s’ disclosures of government lying about the Vietnam War and revelations about CIA abuses both in overthrowing democratically elected governments and spying on American dissidents. This so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” produced profound skepticism from regular American citizens as well as journalists and politicians when President Reagan tried to sell his plans for intervention in the civil wars then underway in Central America, Africa and elsewhere.

While Reagan saw Central America as a “Soviet beachhead,” many Americans saw brutal Central American oligarchs and their bloody security forces slaughtering priests, nuns, labor activists, students, peasants and indigenous populations. Reagan and his advisers realized that they had to turn those perceptions around if they hoped to get sustained funding for the militaries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras as well as for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels, the CIA-organized paramilitary force marauding around leftist-ruled Nicaragua.

So, it became a high priority to reshape public perceptions to gain support for Reagan’s Central American military operations both inside those targeted countries and among Americans.

A ‘Psyops Totality’

As Col. Alfred R. Paddock Jr. wrote in an influential November 1983 paper, entitled “Military Psychological Operations and US Strategy,”

Continue reading →

U.S. forces block Syrian Army advance in preparation for Syria partition

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By Russia Insider
Global Research, March 27, 2017
Russia Insider 27 March 2017

A U.S.-backed operation near Raqqa aims to “block any advance by Syrian government forces from the west”. The Balkanization of Syria begins

The road to Raqqa is now blocked by U.S. forces and their allies. The chances that Raqqa (and the surrounding region) will be returned to Syria are now slim to none. Foreign armies and their proxies are sharpening their carving knives.

U.S. Special Forces and Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters have just captured a “strategic air base” from Islamic State in northern Syria; in doing so, they have also “blocked” the advance of the Syrian Army as it approaches Raqqa from the west:

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on Sunday that they captured the Tabqa air base, 45km west of Raqqa, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group’s de facto capital in Syria.

Earlier this week, US forces airlifted SDF fighters behind ISIL lines to allow them to launch the Tabqa assault, and on Friday the alliance reached one of the dam’s entrances.

SDF forces were within 10km of Raqqa from the north, and aimed to effectively surround the city before launching an assault.

But as RFE/RL quietly notes:

Besides recapturing the dam, SDF said the U.S.-backed operation also aimed to block any advance by Syrian government forces from the west.

The landing forces airdropped into Syria seized four small villages in the area west of Tabqa and cut a main highway that links the provinces of Raqqa, Deir al-Zor, and Aleppo, Scrocca said.

The SDF cut the last main road out of Raqqa earlier this month, narrowing in on the city from the north, east, and west.

The only way in or out of Raqqa now is over the Euphrates River that borders the city to the south.

Incredible, isn’t it? A foreign army that is illegally operating in a sovereign nation can just march in and cut off the legitimate army of said sovereign nation from liberating its own city from terrorists.

What a world — and so much for international law.

It will be interesting to see Moscow’s reaction. Was this always part of the “deal” in Syria? Or is Washington hoping that Syria, Iran and Russia will accept Raqqa’s U.S.-ordained fate?

Stay tuned.

Plotnitsky: Donbass still plans to join Russia

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March 18, 2017 – Fort Russ News –
RIA Novosti – translated by J. Arnoldski –
Plotnitsky at the conference “Paths of Donbass’ Integration into Russia”
The head of the Lugansk People’s Republic, Igor Plotnitsky, has spoken out in favor of holding a referendum in the DPR and LPR on joining Russia. 
“We do not merely assume, but we are confident that there will necessarily be such a referendum. Of course, we want to initiate it, but there is a time for everything. In fact, in the very beginning there was the question of immediately following the Crimea scenario so that we could become part of the Russian Federation, but things turned out a little differently. But this question has never been withdrawn,” Plotnitsky said yesterday in response to a question on whether the Donbass republics will hold a referendum on reunification with Russia as happened in Crimea.
In Plotnitsky’s words: “If such a referendum will be held, and it of course will be, then the results will be just like in Crimea.”
Plotnitsky also stated that the leadership of the DPR and LPR considers Kiev’s decision to blockade Donbass a de facto recognition of the republics’ independence. “You only declare a blockade against those whom you recognize,” Plotnitsky remarked. 
Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that Moscow has no written scripts on the possibility of incorporating the DPR and LPR into Russia. 
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/03/plotnitsky-donbass-still-plans-to-join.html

Major development: Syria shoots down Israeli jet

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March 17th, 2017 – Fort Russ News –
– SANA – – translated by Samer Hussein –
–
General Command of the Syrian Armed Forces confirmed to the media that the Syrian air defense systems shot down an Israeli jet that violated Syrian airspace in the Bureij area near the Lebanese border on Thursday night.
The statement reads:
“Four Israeli jets violated Syrian airspace at at 2:40 am in the Bureij area, located next to the Lebanese border and targeted  military positions in the direction East of Palymra in the central province of Homs.
The air defense system responded and shot down the jet inside in the Occupied Territories, hit another one and forced the rest to flee.
This blatant assault is only helping ISIS to boost their morale and their terrorist activities amid the catastrophic results the terrorist group is facing at the moment.”
The statement further added that the “General Command of the Syrian Army is determined to counter any possible future violations and acts of aggression, coming from the Israeli side”.

During the past three years, Israel occasionally violated Syrian airspace and bombed Syrian Army positions in the areas of Damascus province, often while the Syrian Army was in the midst of battle with the terrorist groups.

White Helmets/al Nusra bases in east Aleppo and M10 hospital still standing — what the mainstream news won’t tell (VIDEO, AUDIO)

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By Patrick Henningsen and Pierre Le Corf
Global Research, March 18, 2017
21st Century Wire 15 March 2017
–

The US and its allies have spun a web of lies about Syria over the last 6 years. After West and Gulf-backed terrorists were driven from their stronghold in eastern Aleppo this past December, the West’s propaganda facade has been gradually disintegrating. 

On a recent SUNDAY WIRE episode, host Patrick Henningsen conducted a live interview with French humanitarian Pierre Le Corf, who has been based in Aleppo for the last year. In this incredibly segment, Le Corf gives details about the the current safety situation in the city, as well as new evidence which reinforces previous reports regarding the US and UK funded White Helmets’ obvious terrorist affiliations.

Listen to Le Corf’s interview segment here:

Le Corf’s video completely dismantles the corporate media’s deceptive White Helmet narrative which the west has been promoting intensely over the last 3 and half years.

Pierre Le Corf writes: “As a French citizen, I refuse to support my country’s criminal foreign policy. Please read my letter to the President of the French republic where I outline my objections very clearly. In less than two hours I have gathered images of two hospitals that are still operating, claimed to have been destroyed. I have walked past tonnes of medicines reserved for the various terrorist groups and prohibited for civilians. I have passed by the remains of the buildings under the control of Jabhat Al Nusra and the Free Syrian Army, next door to the White Helmets building, which as civilian testimony shows us, mainly helped terrorists not civilians.”

Watch this stunning video walk-through of former White Helmet and Al Nusra (al Qaeda) encampments in war-torn East Aleppo:

The original source of this article is 21st Century Wire
Copyright © Patrick Henningsen and Pierre Le Corf, 21st Century Wire, 2017

http://www.globalresearch.ca/terrorism-with-a-human-face-white-helmets-were-al-qaedas-next-door-neighbours-in-aleppo/5580274

Senators and anonymous “Syrian-American Medical Society” doctors denounce Syria and Russia in orchestrated Congressional hearing; little mention of terrorist groups

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Below is the rough transcript from C-SPAN of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, March 15, 2017

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is swimming against a very powerful current.

This is another rendition of the “babies being thrown out of incubators” story used to justify the first Gulf War. The frightening mindset of Washington, the drumbeats for war, the information bubble and justification for more direct American intervention are starkly visible in this hearing yesterday. Mercy Corps, a well-known aid group, lavishes praise on the State Department and American values. The International Rescue Committee also speaks, as well as masked, pseudonym-ed doctors. “Dr. Farida” is the first doctor to speak.

Historically pathological liars keep on lying; to expect the truth would be absurd, no matter how they gift wrap their message in tales of woe from anonymous sources. This hearing led to even more extreme conclusions than Congress previously held publicly. The finger pointing at Assad and Russia as the true problem greatly worsened, and there were repeated claims that Russia and Assad are responsible for chlorine gas attacks and for deliberately targeting hospitals.

Terrorists were only mentioned occasionally as “oh, yes, and the terrorists, too” The focus is on Aleppo. The hearing did not advocate changing any American direction, such as NATO or regime change. There are no surprises here, and surprises and changes of opinion would show up in a complex and real situation.

This hearing was as fake as WMDs, and the “doctors” are scripted liars.

This hearing was necessary because the Syrian people are beating back the terrorists and winning. Washington needs justification for war and to seize Syria. This was it.

From C-SPAN
March 15, 2017

https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?425417-1/syrian-doctors-describe-unspeakable-horrors-civil-war-call-aid

MARCH 15, 2017

“Syrian Civil War’s Humanitarian Toll Three Syrian doctors were among the witnesses at a hearing on the impact six years of constant militarized conflict on the Syrian people. They and two executives of foreign aid organizations talked about atrocities seen and experienced on the ground in Syria, particularly in and surrounding medical facilities in cities such as Aleppo. David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee and some of the senators on the committee were also critical of the impact a newly issued executive order on immigration from President Trump, which they said complicated humanitarian efforts related to the Syrian conflict. Continue reading →

Ukrainian neo-Nazis form united front

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From Fort Russ

March 16, 2017 – Fort Russ News –
RIA Novosti – translated by J. Arnoldski –
Azov, Svoboda, and Right Sector leaders
Ukrainian neo-Nazis have signed a manifesto on joining forces. In particular, the manifesto has been signed by representatives of Svoboda, the National Corps formed on the basis of the Azov battalion, and Right Sector.
 

Right Sector
Azov
Svoboda march with portrait of Stepan Bandera, a WWII Nazi collaborator
 

Svoboda leader Oleg Tyagnibok with patrons John McCain and Victoria Nuland
The manifesto contains 20 points, among which figure recognizing Russia as “the aggressor country” and severing diplomatic relations, and recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk regions uncontrolled by Kiev as “occupied territories.” 
The unified neo-Nazi front also stands for the creation of a professional army and recognizing Ukrainians as the only state language.

 

The leaders of the front’s groups do not rule out running together in early parliamentary elections. 
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/03/ukrainian-neo-nazis-form-united-front.html

Dead children, the Syrian-American Medical Society (SAMS) and its friends

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From New Eastern Outlook

by Henry Kamens

24/08/2016

In civil war situations, such as the conflict in Syria, sides routinely make conflicting claims. It is hard to see who is telling the truth unless you have access to actual intelligence and a front row seat. But it becomes easier to see what is really happening by watching the mainstream news and comparing it to reality.

Let us take the recent Democracy Now interview with Dr. Zaher Sahloul, the former President of the Syrian American Medical Society. This accompanied the global media coverage of the bombed, bloodied and beaten little boy from Aleppo, apparently rescued from what was left of a makeshift refugee camp. At one time Democracy Now was a respected alternative media site. Unfortunately, this article and the circumstances of its writing suggest that it has bought into the system it once stood up to.
Gut ruling head
The article includes this quote, designed to be as emotive as possible:
“I’ve just had to watch a woman lose three of her children, who were killed—OK?—and crying over their dead bodies. Thirty people just got killed not far from here in place called Shaar [inaudible]. We were just there yesterday. In a marketplace, 30 people just got killed. So, we’ve had so many dead bodies. You can hear what’s going on here. So, my dear brothers and sisters … We need to get the message out right now: Hospitals are being targeted; People are being killed. OK? And war crimes are being committed. We need a no-fly zone in Syria. We need everybody to start voting for a no-fly zone. This is a massacre going on. This is genocide.”
These sort of reports are emerging daily from Syria. But the wave of recent killings of children by Saudi forces is overlooked. Why? For the same reason that all these reports don’t mention how the war in Syria started and how the hodgepodge of antigovernment fighters and terrorist groups which have escalated are funded.
The article fails to mention why the Syrian government is fighting terrorists in the first place. The questions the doctor is asked are also revealing, as is the use of key terms such as barrel bombs, WMD, no fly zone, UN, etc, which never used to be a hallmark of Democracy Now coverage. Like others, the article is designed to get us so upset that we don’t want to look any further. It uses dead children as a means of stifling any debate about why they are dying: we are expected to get angry at those we are told to get angry at, to prevent us getting angry about anyone else.

This interview raises many flags, firstly in its timing, during the countdown to the US presidential elections, and then in the context of Iran and Russia now closely collaborating in the war on terror. An agreement has recently been reached for Russia to make bombing raids against US-backed terrorists in Syria from Iranian territory. This is what the West says it wants, fight terrorism, but in reality does everything to prevent. Getting us angry about “foreign bombers” killing children is merely another way of trying to prevent the War on Terror, which the US started, ever actually taking place.

Not shooting the messenger

Dr. Zaher Sahloul was a classmate of Bashar al-Assad in medical school but is now a critical care specialist in Chicago. He has visited Aleppo five times since the war began, but is observing the situation from a US vantage point.
This smooth-talking humanitarian seems happy to recount horrific stories of maiming and killing in graphic detail, as long as he can blame Assad and the Russians. Last week he addressed the UN Security Council on the humanitarian crisis in Syria, making the same points. In the US doctors are often scared of making public statements, much less prescribing medicines, for fear of malpractice suits. So if a US doctor makes a public statement someone is watching his back.
Dr. Sahloul works in the US, which has a vested interest in the Syrian conflict. Is it conceivable that he would be called to address the UN Security Council if he wasn’t spouting an agreed line?
Sahloul’s Democracy Now interview was conducted CNN-fashion, meaning that he did not respond to questions posed on the spot but released a carefully scripted text which the questions were adjusted to fit. The details about babies being tossed from incubators in Kuwait, and those not killed by barrel bombs surviving on cat food and grass, are revealed in such a way that they are unlikely to be spontaneous recollections. Nor do these “memories” remind Dr. Sahloul of the beheading of innocent children by the IS, which they might be presumed to do if child welfare was his concern.
If Dr. Sahloul wanted to stop the killings he would question who stands behind this terrorism – the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – but he does not do so. It can be assumed that he is interested in ending all the killings as he has addressed the UN Security Council, which claims a peace promotion remit. But there is no mention anywhere of stopping the terrorists, only of stopping Assad, thus allowing terrorist atrocities against children to continue unabated.
Mouths we are fed
CNN has responded to the Democracy Now interview by claiming that the killing of children in Aleppo was done by a pro-regime militia force made up mostly of Palestinians. It is also CNN which is parading that poor little boy all over the media, apparently in confirmation of Dr. Sahloul’s claims.
We are used to seeing CNN reports exposed as manipulation. Unfortunately for this little boy, these reports appear to be part of this tradition. There is ample evidence that much of the reporting on Syria by “legitimate sources” is carefully manipulated.
For instance, CNN is quoting the Syrian-American Medical Society as claiming that US-trained doctors are being harassed when they return to Syria. This is denied by even the US Embassy, which says there have been no reports of this, and by a Wikileaks cable.
In fact the US medical establishment has continued to support the maintenance of bilateral relations with the Syrian medical community, in spite of the war and this alleged harassment. Dr. Sahloul’s comments, which are entirely consistent with the US political position in that conflict and obscure the humanitarian concerns which emerge from the behaviour of both sides, give us a clue as to why. The US is using this open access attitude of the Assad government as a means of getting MDs into the country to conduct intelligence and PR work. This is borne out by the use of Syrian doctors to obtain evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons, as reported by the Guardian.
SAMS claims to be an apolitical, non-profit organisation founded by American medical professionals of Syrian descent. Its alleged objective is to share best medical practices with local hospitals and medical schools and donate medical care to needy Syrians. This work necessarily involves going into secure facilities in conflict zones.
As the work of other US aid agencies has long demonstrated, such aid is ultimately designed to secure allegiance to the US. Providing such aid buys the US a green light for whatever it wants to do, rather than serving its ostensible humanitarian purpose.
According to its own website SAMS is provided with full support by the US State Department, millions of dollars’ worth of it. The website even includes a video by US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Powers, hailing SAMS as one of her “personal heroes.”
Furthermore, Dr. Sahloul is said by those who know him in Chicago to be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood himself. His alleged medical work would be the perfect cover for providing support to terrorist organisations which seek to divide and destroy Syria. All he has done with his Democracy Now interview is confirm that repeating the State Department’s unfounded narratives regarding “barrel bombs” and the use of “chlorine gas” by the Syrian government is a tactic used by the US to further this end.
Assad knows very well that these medics are working for US intelligence. He also knows the headlines that would follow him if he refused them entry. He calculates that whatever the doctors can do will harm him less than denying them access would. This is very embarrassing for the US, as it demonstrates Assad doesn’t have as much to hide as the US wants to think, and so he is happy to continue allowing these “revelations” to take place, while real doctors actually treat the war victims on a daily basis.
What’s in a name?
At least on the surface, Dr. Zaher Sahloul believes in what he is doing. However there is further reason to doubt that his actions are prompted by either medical considerations or support for his native or adopted country.
In 2009, before this war began, Syria embarked on a process of “economic liberalisation,” as favoured by the US, and “previously disallowed businesses” were suddenly permitted and encouraged by the Syrian Government. According to an article published in The National on February 9, 2009 one such business had just been founded by a certain Zhouheir Yassar Sahloul, described as “the most powerful rogue trader in Syria.”
As the head of the country’s largest money changing enterprise, Sahloul was the link between Syria’s struggling, isolated economy and its huge diaspora, which still remits billions of dollars a year to families back home. In a country saddled with strict foreign exchange laws, it was Mr Sahloul’s agents who ensured Syrian merchants were supplied with enough hard currency to do business with partners overseas.
At the same time Yassar Sahloul and Sons were licensed as foreign exchange traders, Dr. Sahloul and his SAMS were building hospitals in Syria, on the basis of the same “regulatory relaxation.” This might explain why Yassar Sahloul also established a more formal mechanism for handling capital inflows, an Islamic bank with a capital base of US$100 million (Dh367m). It also chimes in with his reported ambition to make Yassar Sahloul and Sons the holding company for a diversified concern including “shipping and property investment assets as well as banking and finance,” as hospitals are valuable properties whose worth only increases the more customers they serve.
These two Sahouls may or may not be immediately related. What we know about the one who stayed behind is his present business address, which is in Aleppo, and that in 2006 he was an Informal Financial Intermediary who participated in a “Feasibility Study to develop new options for private sector investment financing in the Syrian Arab Republic”.
A Zuher Sahloul Construction Company was active during the lead up to the war in Syria. According to a Wikileaks cable:
“As Washington policy makers consider ways to pressure the regime, one possibility would be to go after President Assad’s money-men. Four individuals Assad uses to make and move money are Zuhair Sahloul, Nabil Kuzbari, Assad’s uncle Mohammad Makhlouf, and his father-in-law, Fawas Akhras. Each is important to Assad and each plays a somewhat different role in facilitating regime graft.”
In short, “(S) Sahloul (AKA Abu Shafic) is the most important black-market money changer in Syria. When the Syrian Pound (SYP) devalued precipitously in the fall of 2005, the SARG gave Sahloul an office in the Central Bank and access to its hard currency reserves so he could intervene in the black market to stabilize the currency. NB: Sahloul was surprisingly effective, and within weeks the SYP appreciated 20 percent, allowing Sahloul in the process a handsome profit for both himself and a handful of regime-insiders. End note.) Sahloul moves Assad’s money using his own network and his access to Hawalis worldwide. A Sahloul intimate bragged to us recently that Sahloul could move ten million dollars anywhere in the world in 24 hours.” 
If Washington insiders are dealing with someone called Sahloul, from Syria, who is involved with the regime they have targeted they are not going to let someone else called Sahloul address the UN Security Council, or build hospitals in Syria, without conducting background checks. It is not an unusual surname, but not a very common one either. Whatever the US knows about the good doctor it knows he is not going to compromise its dealings with the other Sahloul, the one in Aleppo. He is, at the very least, a safe person to send to face the press.
End of the line
There is a lot more to the story of the little boy from Aleppo than meets the eye. But we are being encouraged not to look further, and rely on our emotional response. We are led to look for someone to blame, and then, by coincidence, told exactly who without any complications entering the picture.
The victims of Aleppo deserve better than to suffer for the sake of a set up. So does everyone who sees this story. But given that Yassar Sahloul was one of those promoting the protests in Damascus which led to the civil war, is it any wonder things are turning out how they are?

Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/08/24/dead-children-the-syrian-american-medical-society-sams-and-its-friends/

Ukrainian National Guard blocks all roads to Donbass

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March 15, 2017 – Fort Russ News –
By J. Arnoldski –
All roads and railway lines leading to the frontline in Donbass have been cut off by the Ukrainian National Guard, National Police, and State Border Guard Service.
 
More than 800 troops have been deployed to checkpoints on the Ukrainian side of the frontline in Donbass. The blockade checkpoints are reportedly being reinforced with military vehicles. 
“Pursuant to the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, today all roads and railway lines leading to the demarcation line have been blocked by forces of the National Guard, National Police, and border guard services in order to ensure control over and prevent the illegal movement of goods,” the National Guard’s statement reads.
 
 
This escalation comes on the heels of Ukrainian President Poroshenko’s ultimatum to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to reverse the nationalization of Ukrainian enterprises. 
This new Kiev-enforced blockade follows the recently dispersed blockade of Donbass railways by neo-Nazi battalions who demanded that all trade with the Donbass republics be terminated. The government’s failure to suppress the latter initiative on the demand of the Donbass republics provoked the nationalization of hitherto undisturbed Ukrainian enterprises on the territory of the people’s republics.
Poroshenko has since named the conditions for the blockade’s lifting: 
“We say: please return enterprises to Ukrainian owners…comply with points one and two of the Minsk Agreements, meaning cease-fire and withdraw heavy equipment and artillery, and we’ll remove the restrictive measures on the movement of goods across the contact line,” the president stated.
In addition, Poroshenko threatened to impose sanctions on Russia if Donbass sells goods manufactured at the recently nationalized factories to Russia.
Meanwhile, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, has dismissed the blockade as Ukraine’s “own domestic problem.”
“The decision of Porsohenko and the National Security and Defense Council is the internal affair of former Ukraine. More precisely, this is a fact of internal power struggle in Kiev which Poroshenko seems to be losing. We don’t have any relationship to this whatsoever,” Zakharchenko stressed, adding that Donbass has its own blockade in force which will be lifted only when Kiev fulfills its part of the Minsk Agreements.
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/03/ukrainian-national-guard-blocks-all.html