September 13th, 2015 – Pnp.ru – translated for Fort Russ by Joaquin Flores –
“Lavrov: Russia has information that the US knows the position of the IS, but does not bomb them”
Russia has information that the US know the specific location points of the “Islamic State” (extremist organization banned in Russia), but did not give an order to strike on the positions “of the IS,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
In the program “Sunday times” on “Channel 1” Lavrov said that the US government “was not originally very careful in creating a coalition, or conspired towards goals that were not the declared ones.”
According to the foreign minister, the coalition was created spontaneously, “within just a few days it was announced that it includes a number of countries and then begun strikes.”
Lavrov said that the analysis of aviation operations in countries included in the coalition, “creates a strange impression,” – as if in addition to fighting “the IS” “there is something else which is a concern of the coalition.”
The minister said: “I hope not to disappoint anyone in saying that some of our colleagues from the incoming coalition of countries have information on where exactly and on what positions are “IS” or other subdivisions, and the commander of the coalition (the United States ) does not give consent to striking them. “
After numerous US-led Western reports of nonexistent “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, how could anyone believe its military intervened in Syria – especially when Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov (speaking for Putin) categorically denied it, and no verifiable evidence refutes him.
Believe nothing Western media claim, Peskov stressed. “(T)his issue has never been discussed in any way” – nor has Assad asked for direct Russian involvement.
Commenting on an earlier statement by Russian airborne troops commander Vladimir Shamanov, Peskov added: There ought to be no doubts that Russian airborne troops will fulfill any order from their-commander-in chief” Vladimir Putin.
“(U)se of Russian military aircraft in Syria is out of the question at the moment. The issue is not looked at now.”
Commenting from Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said “(w)e consider various possibilities (about confronting the Islamic State, but military operations aren’t) yet on our agenda.”
“We will hold consultations with our Syrian friends and the countries of the region. (W)e are providing (Assad) with a rather serious support and equipment and training forces with armament” – nothing more so far.
His comments were in the context of fighting Islamic State and other takfiri terrorists. He explained months of US air strikes did nothing to deter them – plenty to destroy Syrian infrastructure and kill noncombatant civilians in harm’s way.
Putin wants to create an anti-terrorist coalition – cooperatively with regional and Western countries, he said, so far unable to agree on a common approach to resolving Syria’s conflict.
“We are not imposing anything,” Putin stressed. “(W)e are ready to contribute to (an) intra-Syrian dialogue.” Assad is Syria’s legitimate leader – overwhelmingly reelected in June 2014 in a process international observers called open, free and fair.
Russia opposes outside interference in the internal affairs of other countries. Under core international law, it’s illegal except in self-defense if attacked and authorized by Security Council members.
On September 1, Sergey Lavrov told International State Institute of International Relations students
“(n)ow (Western leaders) are trying like previously for eliminating Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi to give the top priority on Syria to the resignation of Bashar Assad saying he is illegitimate. But he is very legitimate.”
Syrians alone have the right to choose who’ll lead them and hold parliamentary seats – not outside powers.
The reliable Saker web site provides important information about Russia and geopolitical issues. Commenting on recent reports in two separate articles (here and here) alleging Moscow’s military intervention in Syria, he said don’t expect it there or anywhere else.
On the one hand, acting unilaterally is illegal. Security Council members alone can authorize intervention. On the other, popular internal Russian support is lacking.
“It is one thing to defend your own country or your own citizens (when attacked) and quite another to intervene” in another nation’s conflict hundreds of miles away, said The Saker.
Russia is legally justified in aiding Assad by “sending advisors, sharing intelligence and supplying weapons.” Unilateral direct military intervention in another country is another matter entirely.
Moscow learned a “painful” lesson in Afghanistan. What began in the 1980s as a “limited military intervention” became protracted conflict and bitter defeat. It wants no repeat decades later.
The Saker cited Russia’s Federal Law N61-F3 “On Defense”, Section IV, Article 10, Para 2. It states the mission of the Russian Armed Forces is to “repel aggression against the Russian Federation, the armed defense of the integrity and inviolability of the territory of the Russian Federation, and to carry out tasks in accordance with international treaties of the Russian Federation” – nothing else.
Russia’s Constitution, Chapter IV, Article 80, Para 2 states:
“The President of the Russian Federation shall be guarantor of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, of the rights and freedoms of man and citizen.”
“According to the rules fixed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation, he shall adopt measures to protect the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, its independence and state integrity, ensure coordinated functioning and interaction of all the bodies of state power.”
Unlike America, Russia isn’t the world’s policeman and doesn’t operate this way, The Saker explained. It doesn’t wage endless wars of aggression anywhere – or maintain a global empire of bases, used as launching points for premeditated conflicts.
Syria is Obama’s war. So are Afghanistan and Iraq inherited from George Bush, Libya, Donbass, Yemen and partnered with Israel’s anti-Palestinian crusade on his own, as well as covert destabilizing efforts against various other countries.
America is the greatest threat to world peace. Humanity’s survival depends on stopping its madness.
According to German Economic News (September 1st, based on reports from ynetnews and others), Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has apparently decided to establish in Syria a military base with thousands of soldiers and sufficient air power to do in Syria what the Obama Administration won’t, which is to defeat ISIS and the other jihadists.
On the same day, washingtonsblog bannered, “Former CIA Boss and 4-Star General: U.S. Should Arm Al Qaeda,” and linked to several sources indicating that not only David Petraeus favors arming Al Qaeda, but much of the American establishment (who have sponsored Petraeus’s entire career) also does. The British aristocracy likewise does. In fact, that academic propaganda-piece, The Russia Challenge, discusses “the stark choices Western governments face in their policies towards Russia,” while it says nothing about “the stark choices” that Russia now faces in its policies toward the U.S. aristocracy, and toward Britain’s and other U.S-allied aristocracies.
That British academic propaganda-piece comes from Chatham House, otherwise called the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which, since early in the 20th Century, has been allied in the U.S. with the Rockefellers’ and Morgans’ Council on Foreign Relations, and, post-WWII, also with the Bilderberg group, and with the Rockefellers’ Trilateral Commission (which brought the Japanese aristocracy into the overall U.S.-led plan for global conquest).
However, there are additionally many other front-organizations for this operation, such as the Brookings Institution. Brookings has always championed American empire, and I reported even recently on a Brookings ‘study’ of this type, by headlining “Brookings Wants More Villages Firebombed in Ukraine’s ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’.”(It’s actually an operation against the residents of the part of Ukraine that had voted 90%+ for the Ukrainian leader whom the Obama Administration had just overthrown. The residents there had refused to accept Obama’s imposed regime.) The intended defeat of Russia is to come not only in the competition over oil and gas (such as between the Arabic oil potentates and Russia), but also by extending NATO right up to Russia’s borders, such as by installing next-door in Ukraine a rabidly anti-Russian government, via a coup in February 2014. (John Fitzgerald Kennedy didn’t like it when Nikita Khrushchev tried something similar against the United States in 1962. It was called “the Cuban Missile Crisis.”) The evidence is clear and overwhelming, though almost entirely absent in U.S. ‘news’ media, that America’s aristocracy place vastly higher priority upon defeating Russia than upon defeating Islamic jihad. (The implicit message to the families of America’s 9/11 victims is: “Just get lost.” But that subtle message from the aristocrats isn’t on America’s ‘news,’ either. Only their PR is.)
In fact, I provided essential background for this development, on August 16th, headlining “How & Why the U.S. Media Do Propaganda Against Russia.” This is a position by the U.S. “Establishment,” which is the entire network of think tanks and other fronts that are financed by the U.S. aristocracy (tax-free, moreover, to the aristocrats who finance these operations) so as to conquer Russia in order that the U.S. aristocracy will win unchallengeable global control, over every other nation’s aristocracy. I documented there that not only the Republican Party but the Obama-Clinton or “Establishment” wing of the Democratic Party, have been fully in agreement with Mitt Romney’s infamous 2012 statement against Russia, which Obama publicly condemned at the time, that, “this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe”; and Obama’s very public attack against that statement helped him win the 2012 election, though Obama’s second Administration has actually been carrying out Romney’s policy there.
Obama has many cheerleaders in this global-conquest program, such as his advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is proud to have helped start today’s Islamic jihad movement in order to defeat the Soviet Union. After the Soviet Union ended, Brzezinski’s hatred of Russians drove him to continue on as if it hadn’t. The war against “communism” has turned out to have been just a cover-story for these aristocrats’ war for global control, somewhat like the war against Islamic jihadists later morphed into a war against the residents of Ukraine’s pro-Russian far-east. Brzezinski was born to Polish nobility, and he retains that hatred from his childhood, which is why he has been so useful to America’s aristocrats, in order to help make the defeat of Russia into a “bipartisan” issue, and not merely an issue for Romney and the great bulk of America’s aristocrats, who are Republicans.
Basically, what Putin is apparently doing here is to go beyond the theatrics of Western aristocracies, the aristocracies that are led by America’s, and finally now to lay down the gauntlet, in Syria, against Islamic jihad. As I have previously documented, Islamic jihad is financed virtually entirely by multimillion-dollar individual contributions not only by the Saudi royal family, but also by the royals of the other Arabic oil countries.
Without that constant flow of funds, the Sauds’ operation on their own side for global empire would collapse. Theirs is to be an Islamic global empire, much like America’s Dominionist Christions have (though far less successfully) aspired to creating a global Christian empire. Ever since 1945, the U.S. aristocracy and the Saudi royal family have been united together. Increasingly in the decades after the end of communism, the only thing that remains after the beast of “The Cold War” is the skeleton of expanding the American aristocracy’s empire, still married to the skeleton of the Sauds’ imperial ambitions. It could become an Earth-killing embrace: skeletons all-around and everywhere.
If the current report in German Economic News is true, then America’s President Obama will need to reassess his entire foreign policy, which has — overtly now, during his second Administration (after he had successfully fooled the American public to think that he didn’t agree with Romney) — been virtually obsessed with defeating Russia.
America’s alliance with the Islamic jihad movement seems now to be directly challenged by Putin. If Obama is to continue his effort to replace the secular Shiite Syrian regime by an Islamic Sunni regime (one that will be controlled by the Sauds, and/or by the Qatari royal family the Thanis), the U.S. will then face the prospect of war against Russia, much as Obama has already built in Ukraine via his 2014 coup there, which is still prohibited from being reported about in the West — except via a few independent authentic news media (the few that aren’t controlled by aristocrats), which few (such as you are now reading) are allowed because they have only small audiences. As with the samizdat literature during the former Soviet Union, the truth is thus marginalized in the now overwhelmingly fascist-controlled, U.S.-dominated, West.
Today, August 21st commemorates the East Ghouta False Flag Chemical Attacks (August 21, 2013), which were used to build up a pretext by the Obama administration and its NATO allies to launch a humanitarian war against Syria, on the grounds that the Syrian government was killing their own people. This event was part of the build up towards the launching of Obama’s bombing campaign against Syria and Iraq on the grounds that it was “going after the ISIS”.
This article was first published in September 2014.
The chemical attacks which took place in East Ghouta on August 21, 2013 could be the most horrific false flag operation in history.
To date, available evidence indicates that numerous children were killed by “opposition rebels”, their bodies manipulated and filmed with a view to blaming the Syrian government for the attacks, thus sparking outrage and galvanizing worldwide public opinion in favor of another bloody, imperial US-led war.
While confirming the use of chemical weapons against civilians, the UN report has failed to identify the authors of the attacks:
Instead of a non-politicized investigation and lab analysis, the UN investigation of alleged nerve-gas attacks inside Syria was led by Professor Ake Sellstrom, a man of mystery who keeps a veil of secrecy around his research and political-military relationships…
This cosmetic veneer of Swedish neutrality has been deftly exploited by Israel and NATO to perpetrate falsehoods throughout Sellstrom’s work for the UN, including denial of the chemical-and-biological causes for “Gulf War Syndrome” and the shipments of U.S. chemical weapons to the Saddam Hussein regime…
What is publicly known about Sellstrom is that the biochemist heads the European CBRNE Center [Center for advanced Studies of Societal Security and Vulnerability, in particular major incidents with (C)hemical, (B)iological, (R)adiological, (N)uclear and (E)xplosive substances], at Umea University in northern Sweden, which is sponsored by the Swedish Defense Ministry (FOI)…
Umea University is deeply involved in joint research with Technion (Israel Institute of Technology), the Haifa-based university that provides state-of-art technology to the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and its intelligence agencies. Several departments, which are involved in joint Israeli research, participate in multidisciplinary studies at Sellstrom’s CBRNE center…
American ambassador to the UN Samantha Power made emphatically clear that the “nerve gas used in Syria was more concentrated than the nerve gas in Iraq.” Her statement should be rephrased as: “Saddam may have trans-shipped U.S.-supplied nerve gas into Syria, but it wasn’t our nerve gas used against Syrian civilians.”
That is the essential point of the Sellstrom report: To take Washington off the hook for being the major supplier of nerve gas precursors, formulations, delivery technology and storage systems to the Middle East, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and very possibly Syria (during the Clinton era of good will).
A day before the release of the UN Mission report, another carefully documented report by Mother Agnes Mariam de la Croix and the International Support Team for Mussalaha in Syria (ISTEAMS) was released with minimal media coverage. (To read the full report in pdf click here large pdf slow download)
Its findings are unequivocal: the videos used by the US and its allies as evidence to blame the Syrian government were staged.
The study says:
From the moment when some families of abducted children contacted us to inform us that they recognized the children among those who are presented in the videos as victims of the Chemical Attacks of East Ghouta, we decided to examine the videos thoroughly…
Our first concern was the fate of the children we see in the footages. Those angels are always alone in the hands of adult males that seem to be elements of armed gangs. The children that trespassed remain without their families and unidentified all the way until they are wrapped in the white shrouds of the burial. Moreover our study highlights without any doubt that their little bodies were manipulated and disposed with theatrical arrangements to figure in the screening.
If the studied footages were edited and published to exhibit pieces of evidence to accuse the Syrian State of perpetrating the chemical attacks on East Ghouta, our discoveries incriminate the editors and actors of forged facts through a lethal manipulation of unidentified children. (Mother Agnes Mariam de la Croix and the International Support Team for Mussalaha in Syria (ISTEAMS), The Chemical Attacks in East Ghouta Used to Justify a Military Intervention in Syria)
Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya who examined the report writes:
The independent ISTEAMS study contradicts the assertions of the Obama Administration and the entire US Intelligence Community […] through simple observations of the video material that has been put forward as evidence by the United States.
The ISTEAMS report does not deny that chemical weapons were used or that innocent Syrians have been killed. What the study does is logically point out through its observations that there is empirical evidence that the sample of videos that the US Intelligence Community has analyzed and nominated as authentic footage has been stage-managed. This is an important finding, because it refutes the assertions of the representatives of the US Intelligence agencies who testified that the videos they authenticated provide evidence that a chemical weapons attack by the Syrian government took place in East Ghouda. (Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Look With Your Own Eyes: The Videos of the Chemical Attacks in Syria Show Tampered Scenes)
A lot of things do not add up in the footage presented by the US government.
The same little boy in red is in two different locations
At least nine of these children appear in different footage from different locations
A little boy that appears in two different videos with two different scenarios
Among a series of important findings, the ISTEAMS report notes that even though the attacks are said to have killed up to 1400 people, mostly children appear in the videos and several corpses are shown in different videos said to have been shot in various locations.
While this report seriously challenges the assertion that the Syrian government was behind the attacks, it was not covered by the Western mainstream media, toeing the imperial line and parroting Washington’s claims, which still lack evidence and credibility.
In addition, some controversy arose pertaining to allegations that the rebels were responsible for the attacks and used chemical weapons provided by Saudi intelligence. Dale Gavlak, the co-author of an article containing these allegations, now wants to dissociate herself from the article and is facing threats. Her career is in jeopardy:
The MintPress article, published on 29th August, through interviews with rebels, family members, and villagers in Eastern Ghouta, alleges that elements within the opposition were responsible for the alleged chemical weapons attack on 21st August, and that those chemical munitions had been supplied through Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan…
Dale is under mounting pressure for writing this article by third parties. She notified MintPress editors and myself on August 30th and 31st via email and phone call, that third parties were placing immense amounts of pressure on her over the article and were threatening to end her career over it. She went on to tell us that she believes this third party was under pressure from the head of the Saudi Intelligence Prince Bandar himself, who is alleged in the article of supplying the rebels with chemical weapons.
On August 30th, Dale asked MintPress to remove her name completely from the byline because she stated that her career and reputation was at risk. She continued to say that these third parties were demanding her to disassociate herself from the article or these parties would end her career. On August 31st, I notified Dale through email that I would add a clarification that she was the writer and researcher for the article and that Yahya [Ababneh] was the reporter on the ground, but did let Gavlak know that we would not remove her name as this would violate the ethics of journalism. (Phil Greaves, Syria: Controversy surrounding MintPress Chemical Weapons Ghouta Report)
The information according to which Saudi intelligence was allegedly implicated in the Ghouta chemical attacks was mentioned by a UN official who wished to remain anonymous:
A senior United Nations official who deals directly with Syrian affairs has told Al-Akhbar that the Syrian government had no involvement in the alleged Ghouta chemical weapons attack: “Of course not, he (President Bashar al-Assad) would be committing suicide.”
When asked who he believed was responsible for the use of chemical munitions in Ghouta, the UN official, who would not permit disclosure of his identity, said:“Saudi intelligence was behind the attacks and unfortunately nobody will dare say that.” The official claims that this information was provided by rebels in Ghouta…
The UN official’s accusations mirror statements made earlier this year by another senior UN figure Carla del Ponte, who last May told Swiss TV in the aftermath of alleged CW attacks in Khan al-Asal, Sheik Maqsood and Saraqeb that there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels had carried out the attack. Del Ponte also observed that UN inspectors had seen no evidence of the Syrian army using chemical weapons, but added that further investigation was necessary. (Sharmine Narwani and Radwan Mortada, Questions Plague UN Syria Report. Who was behind the East Ghouta Chemical Weapons Attack?)
All of the above leads us to believe that this attack was one of the most horrific crimes committed in modern history, a diabolical staged operation which consisted in killing small children, producing fake video footage and photo ops of the corpses, all of which was intended to fabricate a pretext for military intervention under a humanitarian mandate.
The mainstream media which has obfuscated these crimes bear a heavy burden of responsibility. The New York Times has smeared the findings of Mother Agnes and her team, accusing her of “defending the regime” and “playing the Christian card”. The NYT casually dismisses the evidence that the videos are fake. Read the ISTEAMS Report and then judge for yourself.
The war criminals who designed and launched this diabolical staged operation must face justice.
Procedures in the United Nations Security Council directed against the Syrian government must be suspended.
We invite our readers to consult the ISTEAMS Report, as well as the following GR articles and video production: Please share these articles and the ISTEAMS report!
August 21, 2013: Obama’s insidious and criminal objective in August 2013 was to use these attacks with a view to justifying a humanitarian war against Syria.
This GRTV report was first broadcast in September 2013 in the month following the East Ghouta Chemical Attacks
In the wake of the Syrian chemical weapons attack, shocking footage of the victims of that attack were widely circulated in an effort to raise the ire of the public and spur support for military intervention.
Now, a new report on that footage finds troubling inconsistencies and manipulation with the video that calls the official narrative of the attack and its victims into question.
This is the GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.
Earlier this week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon submitted the findings of the UN chemical weapons inspection team dispatched to Syria last month to gather evidence on the August 21st chemical weapons attack in Ghouta.
The report has been used as justification for the US and UK’s allegations that the attack originated from the Syrian government, but it does not in fact reach this conclusion. The inspection team’s mandate was limited to determining if an attack took place, not where it originated from, limiting their findings to a simple statement of fact:
“On the basis of the evidence obtained during our investigation of the Ghouta incident, the conclusion is that, on 21st August 2013, chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale.”
The determination of where the attacks originated from is of course the key issue geopolitically speaking. If the attack originated with the Syrian government it would mark a serious escalation in the conflict, but if the weapons were launched by the terrorist insurgency it would mean the attack was a false flag provocation, designed to draw the US and its allies into armed military intervention in the country.
As analysts have been at pains to point out, the motive for such an attack has always suggested that it was more likely that the terrorists were the culprits in Ghouta, not the Syrian government. They have been losing the ground war against Syrian government forces for months, and they knew that the use of chemical weapons was the “red line” that Obama had set as the threshold for military intervention. Those who argue Assad’s culpability have to believe that not only did he suddenly and inexplicably resort to using chemical weapons on his own people for no strategic military reason, but that he waited until UN chemical weapons inspectors arrived in the country before doing so.
The background and history of the conflict also provide ample evidence that the terrorists have chemical weapons in their possession, and are trained and motivated to use them. Last December it was reported that US forces were training the terrorist forces in the the handling of chemical weapons. Also last December the insurgents released a video showing their chemical weapons operations and threatening to use them against government supporters. And in July of this year, Russia submitted an exhaustive 100-page report to the UN outlining how the terrorist insurgency was in fact to blame for the March 19th chemical weapons attack in Khan al-Asal on the outskirts of Aleppo.
But in the light of this latest chemical weapons attack, the UK, the US and France have all released their own intelligence studies blaming Assad for the incident and calling on the “international community” to increase pressure on the Syrian government. The reports, however, contradict each other in numerous places, with wildly different estimates of casualties in the events suggesting that the intelligence agencies that produced the report cannot even agree on the most basic details of the attack.
Now, new evidence is emerging that the attacks were used and manipulated by the terrorists in order to provoke the US and its allies into armed intervention in Syria. This evidence suggests that the videos used by the US and its allies to conclude what happened in Ghouta were in fact carefully stage managed to portray a narrative that would pin the blame for the attacks on Assad.
The first indications of this plot emerged early on, when expert analysis of the videos suggested inconsistencies in the footage itself.
That analysis was later expanded on by a report from ISTEAMS, a Syria-based human rights group working in conjunction with the International Institute for Peace, Justice and Human Rights. In this thorough report, published on GlobalResearch.ca on September 16th, numerous discrepancies and inconsistencies in the footage are documented.
The report documents through eyewitness testimony and video evidence that the affected areas had been largely abandoned by local residents in the days prior to the attack. Yet in the footage of the aftermath, there are large numbers of child victims who are portrayed. There exists very little footage of parents with their children, and what little footage exists portrays some of the parents apparently “discovering” their children on multiple occasions in different locations. Other footage shows the same children arranged in different formations in geographically distant neighborhoods. The report concludes that the footage was carefully stage managed to create the greatest emotional impact on foreign audiences. These videos were then used by the Obama administration to convince the Senate of their case for military intervention.
ISTEAMS President and one of the key researchers on the report, Mother Agnes Mariam, joined The Corbett Report to discuss the problems with the official narrative of the chemical weapon attack emanating from Washington and its allies last month.
The ISTEAMS report raises many troubling questions about the scenes in the Ghouta videos. Were the victims of the attack local children? If so, why were they there after these areas had been largely abandoned? Where are their parents? In the days after the attack, Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, an advisor to the Assad government, provided an equally troubling answer to these questions to Sky News.
These reports dovetail with videos posted by the Mujahedeen Press Office to YouTube just six days before the attack confirming that the terrorists had kidnapped hundreds of women and children from the rural villages of Alawite stronghold Lattakia to use as bargaining chips in the conflict. Were these kidnap victims moved to Ghouta to be killed in the chemical weapons attack? Is this why so many children were there in these largely-vacated areas, and why so few parents appear on video mourning their children?
Although further research and investigation is urgently needed by third-party organizations to establish the identity of the Ghouta attack victims and the whereabouts of the kidnapped Lattakian families, the reports, if true, are evidence of the most disgraceful war crimes imaginable and the most cold-blooded manipulations of evidence to suit an agenda. Earlier this month, Global Research Director Michel Chossudovsky appeared on GRTV to discuss the nature of the terrorist insurgency.
Now, the US and its allies are trying to use the UN’s new report in combination with the video “evidence” of the attack’s aftermaths to justify the use of military force to back up the Syrian chemical disarmament process. Some are even calling for Assad to face war crimes prosecution on the back of this and similarly manipulated evidence.
In order to prevent this war agenda from proceeding any further or these propaganda images from being used in the pursuit of military intervention, it is vital that this latest ISTEAMS report is downloaded from Global Research, widely disseminated, and thoroughly investigated.
It is late July 2015, and the media is abuzz with the news that Turkey will allow US jets to use its bases to bomb Islamic State (ISIS) targets in Syria. There is much talk about how this development is a “game-changer,” and how this is a clear escalation of the much ballyhooed, but more fictional than real, US war on ISIS: the terror organization that US intelligence welcomed as a positive development in 2012 in their continued attempts to instigate regime change against the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad.
The western public is told that “This is a significant shift…It’s a big deal,” as a US military official told the Wall Street Journal. What the corporate media fail to mention, however, is the fact that Turkey has been, and continues to be, a central actor in the war in Syria and, consequently, in the development and maintenance of ISIS. So, while Washington waxes poetic about stepping up the fight against the terror group, and lauds the participation of its allies in Ankara, the barely concealed fact is that Turkey is merely further entrenching itself in a war that it has fomented.
Of equal importance is the simple fact that a “war on ISIS” is merely a pretext for Turkey’s military engagement in Syria and throughout the region. Not only does Turkey’s neo-Ottoman revanchist President Erdogan want to flex his military muscles in order to further the regime change agenda in Syria, he also is using recent tragic events as political and diplomatic cover for waging a new aggressive war against the region’s Kurds, especially Turkey’s longtime foe the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK).
In this way, Turkey’s recent moves should be seen as merely a new phase of its engagement in the regional war that it has helped foment. Contrary to western corporate media talking points, Turkey has not just recently become actively engaged in the conflict; Ankara has merely shifted its strategy and its tactics, moving from covert engagement to overt participation.
Same War, New Phase
The immediate justification for the launching of renewed airstrikes by Turkey and the US is the expansion of the war against ISIS. In the wake of the bombing in Turkey’s majority Kurdish town of Suruç, which killed 32 youth activists, the Turkish government has allegedly struck hard against both ISIS and PKK targets. It is against this backdrop that any analysis of the new phase of this war must be presented.
First and foremost is the fact that even if one were to accept the Turkish government’s official story – the suicide bomber was linked to the Islamic State (ISIS) – not at all a certainty, the question of ultimate responsibility becomes central. While Ankara would have the world believe that its hands are clean, and that it is the innocent victim of international terrorism, the reality is that Turkey has done everything to foster and promote the growth of ISIS from the very beginning. As such, it is the Turkish government who must shoulder much of the blame for the Suruç bombing.
Since at least 2012, Turkey has been the principal conduit for weapons flowing into Syria. In June of that year, the NY Times confirmed that the CIA was smuggling weapons to anti-Assad forces from the Turkish side of the border using agents of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, long-time assets of US intelligence. Also in 2012, Reuters revealed that Turkey had “set up a secret base with allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar to direct vital military and communications aid to Syria’s rebels from a city near the border… ‘It’s the Turks who are militarily controlling it. Turkey is the main coordinator/facilitator. Think of a triangle, with Turkey at the top and Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the bottom,’ said a Doha-based source.”
It is now also documented fact that Turkish intelligence (MIT) has been an active player in the ongoing campaign to arm and resupply the terror groups such as the al Nusra Front and others. The evidence of this fact was made public by the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet which published video footage along with transcripts from wiretaps confirming what many eyewitnesses have stated: Turkish security forces have been directly involved in shelling and support operations for Nusra front and other jihadi groups in and around Kassab, Syria, among other sites. Many of the very same terrorists who have been armed and supported by the Turkish government are today being held up as enemies of Turkey, and rationalization of the need for Turkish military intervention.
So, with the inescapable understanding that Turkey’s government is the primary supporter and sponsor of terrorist groups in Syria, the justification for war becomes flimsy at best. But, if it’s not about fighting terror, then what exactly is Ankara’s objective? What does it hope to gain?
At the top of Erdogan’s agenda is using ISIS as a pretext for effecting the regime change in Syria that he has failed to bring about for these past four years. Despite providing weapons and cash, training sites and political cover, Turkey’s terror proxies have been roundly defeated by the Syrian Arab Army, Hezbollah, and allied forces. As such, Erdogan now needs to provide the overwhelming military superiority required to get the job done. This means air support and a “No Fly Zone” along the Turkey-Syria border, one which ostensibly will allow Turkey to fight ISIS, but in actuality is a means of securing territory for the terrorists who otherwise have been unable to do so. It is a de facto military intervention into Syria. Perhaps not even de facto, but outright declaration of war – a clear war crime.
Secondly, the alleged war on ISIS is a politically expedient cover for Erdogan to wage a full-scale war on the Kurds, and the PKK specifically. Within hours of announcing the new phase of the war, Turkish forces were bombing Kurdish targets in Syria and Iraq, effectively declaring war on both countries, in blatant violation of international law, to whatever extent such a thing still exists. Indeed, Erdogan made his position quite clear when he stated, “It is not possible for us to continue the peace process with those who threaten our national unity and brotherhood.” Essentially, Erdogan has declared war on all Kurds of the region.
Perhaps most important, and almost never discussed in the West, is the simple fact that Turkey is perpetuating an outright myth in their supposed strategy to create “Islamic State-free zones” along the border; Turkey plans to work with “moderate opposition” and “Free Syrian Army” in this endeavor. However, the fact remains that there is really no such thing as the “moderates,” and those terrorists that had at one time been labeled such have all either gone home, fled the country, gone over to the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, or are now fighting under the ISIS banner. And so, by stating such a plan, Erdogan is unwittingly admitting what this author has already reported numerous times – Turkey acts as military muscle for ISIS and al Qaeda in Syria and now Iraq.
But of course, were Turkey the only relevant party, these developments would not be of nearly the same global significance. Rather, it is the participation and collusion of the US and NATO that makes this troubling escalation far more dangerous.
Making Overt the Covert War
As of writing, NATO has not yet been convened to discuss Turkey’s war on Syria and the Kurds, though Ankara has called for the meeting under Article 4 of the NATO treaty which provides for consultation, but not necessarily collaborative military action. However, regardless of how the meeting proceeds, Turkey has been given overt support in its war by the US, which is, in effect, NATO.
Although the US feigns concern for the Kurds and the expansion of the war, Washington has in fact endorsed Turkey’s policy. White House spokesman Alistair Baskey noted that the US “strongly condemns” recent attacks by the PKK, reiterating the fact that Turkey is an important US and NATO ally. As Obama’s close adviser on national security matters Ben Rhodes stated, “The US, of course, recognises the PKK specifically as a terrorist organisation. And, so, again Turkey has a right to take action related to terrorist targets.”
While it would appear that Washington is taking a measured approach, cautiously supporting Turkey while trying to limit the scope of the operation, that illusion is merely for appearance’s sake. In fact, the Brookings Institution just last month issued a policy paper entitled Deconstructing Syria: Towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country, which brazenly laid out a plan to, as political analyst Tony Cartalucci astutely pointed out, “divide, destroy, then incrementally occupy” Syria using the pretext of ISIS and terrorism. And that is precisely what we’re witnessing now.
But neither Cartalucci, nor this author, nor any other colleagues who have predicted this turn of events are clairvoyant. Rather, this development was very much expected. As noted above, those terrorists who now provide the rationale for a new war were the very same ones openly supported by the countries now waging the war. It was clear at the time that this would be their ultimate role. Sadly, the world has not effectively mobilized to stop this imperialist war thus far.
The question remains: will Syria survive? The answer depends on the continued resolve of the Syrian Arab Army and its allies, and on the global Resistance’s capacity to organize itself to effectively oppose the Empire in Syria and beyond.
Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
A discontented nurse working clandestinely for a covert medical corps in Şanlıurfa—a city in south-eastern Turkey, close to the border with neighboring Syria— divulges information about the alleged role which Sümeyye Erdoğan plays in providing extended medical care for ISIS wounded militants transferred to Turkish hospitals.
Living in a dilapidated apartment in Istanbul’s outskirts along with her two children, a 34-year- old emaciated nurse who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, disclosed her seven-week agonizing ordeal of working in secret military hospital in Şanlıurfa, 150 km (93 miles) east of Gaziantep and 1,300 km (808 miles) southeast of Istanbul. “Almost every day several khaki Turkish military trucks were bringing scores of severely injured, shaggy ISIS rebels to our secret hospital and we had to prepare the operating rooms and help doctors in the following procedures.
I was given a generous salary of $ 7,500 but they were unaware of my religion. The fact is that I adhere to Alawite faith and since Erdoğan took the helm of the country the system shows utter contempt for Alawite minority – Alawite faith is an esoteric offshoot of Shia Islam,” Said the nurse, recoiling in horror from the thought of imminent persecution by Turkish much-vaunted secret police, known by its acronym MİT.
Since the eruption of al-Qaeda inspired rebellion in Syria aiming to topple the secular President Bashar al-Assad, the Turkish government spearheaded efforts to transfer all possible mercenaries as far as Chinese Turkestan to newly converted Wahhabis in Buenos Aires– Wahhabism adopts an extremist interpretation of Islam and is the official religion of Saudi Arabia –, albeit, the Turkish government always rejects all allegations concerning its mischievous role in Syria’s 4-year civil war.
Sümeyye Erdoğan
Turkish public opinion in the past three months became increasingly critical of President Erdoğan’s warlike policy in the volatile Middle-East and his popularity rate slumped to a record low of %15. Once praised of being a nationalist and secular politician, Erdoğan’s has been marred by his ever more pro-Jihad rhetoric. They had no confidence in Alawites, added the nurse weeping bitterly, no sooner did they become cognizant of my faith than the wave of intimidation began, for I knew many things as who was running the corps, I saw Sümeyye Erdoğan frequently at our headquarter in Şanlıurfa … I am indeed terrified , I rue the day I enrolled in that program.
A London-educated scion of wealthy family and the eldest daughter of totalitarian President Erdoğan, Sümeyye Erdoğan, more than once announced her intention to be dispatched to Mousl , Iraq’s once second-biggest city and Islamic State’s stronghold to do relief works as a volunteer which drew public ire and vast condemnation from Turkey’s opposition parties. Moreover, the Turkish opposition parties accuse the administration of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of seeking diligently to hide the truth concerning numerous financial malfeasances Mr. Erdoğan son, Bilal Erdoğan, is involved.
Mr. Erdoğan who always sheds crocodile tears for the plight of Syrian trapped between the hammer of hunger and the anvil of ISIS’ extremism, conceals the fact that his own son, Bilal Erdoğan, is involved in lucrative business of smuggling the Iraqi and Syrian plundered oil. Bilal Erdoğan who owns several maritime companies, had allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries.
Turkish government unwittingly supports ISIS by buying Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi sized oil wells. Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers. The Turkish opposition parties also accuse the belicose President Erdoğan of desperately trying to whitewash inordinate number of scandals concerning Bilal’s involvement in transporting Iraqi oil and thus making ISIS the wealthiest global terrorist group. “President Erdoğan claims that according to international transportation conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered Japanese companies, but in fact Bilal Erdoğan is up to his necks in complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he will be immune from any judicial prosecution,” Gürsel Tekin ,a senior CHP party official said in Ankara on Tuesday.
The leading CHP official further underscored that Bilal Erdoğan’s maritime company, BMZ Ltd, is considered a family business and president Erdoğan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks. Weak, dependent, lugubrious though defiant; the Turkish nurse pleaded for Turkish judiciary help, imploring the last bastion of freedom, Turkish Army, to overthrow Erdoğan’s corrupt regime.
A number of Israeli generals and political commentators have called on the Netanyahu government to provide military aid to Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria in order to prevent its downfall. It is an unprecedented campaign to “Save the Assad regime”.
According to General Azer Tsfrir, for example, allowing the Assad regime to fall would mean turning Syria into a “black hole” in which the border areas could become launch pads for operations against Israel. Writing in Haaretz, the former military intelligence officer suggested that the fall of Assad would subject Syria to the hegemony of extremist Muslim groups which have declared their desire to destroy the Zionist state. They would, he claimed, become a first degree strategic threat.
Tsfrir stressed that the most serious outcome of a Syrian takeover by extremists would be the undermining of stability in Jordan, the government of which is an important ally of both Israel and the West. Lebanon’s sectarian and ideological balance would also be disrupted, he said.
The Netanyahu government should provide military aid to the Assad regime directly or indirectly in order to guarantee that it does not fall, Tsfrir urged. “Israel should overlook the fact that the Assad regime is using the assistance of Iranian troops and elements from Hezbollah to help him in his battle for survival.” Indeed, he added, providing aid to Assad may lead to a rapprochement between Israel and both Iran and Hezbollah, as well as the Shia bloc in general.
Arab affairs commentator Jacky Houki, meanwhile, said on the Yizrael Pulse website last Friday that the continuation of the Assad regime is the guarantee for calm on the Syrian border. Israel, he explained, could exert pressure and impose economic sanctions to deter the Assad regime in case it behaved in a manner deemed harmful to security, whereas military pressure and economic sanctions do not in any way deter the radical Sunni Islamic groups. Houki believes that Israel prefers the pragmatism of Hezbollah to such Sunni groups. The Shia militia may be fierce fighters, he argued, but they would not carry out brutal attacks likes those perpetrated by the Sunnis. He accused the Netanyahu government of irresponsibility by not arresting the decline of the Assad regime. He warned that all settlers in Israel may end up paying dearly for the cost of the fall of the government in Damascus.
In yet another low reached by the American government, the Obama administration on Tuesday ordered the suspension of the Syrian government’s diplomatic and consular missions in the United States. The U.S.is now requiring all personnel who are not legal U.S. residents to leave the country.
Essentially, the order closes the Syrian embassy in Washington, D.C. as well as its honorary consulates in Troy, Michigan and Houston, Texas.
The decision is alleged to have come as a response to the Assad government’s recent announcement that it will cease consular service for Syrians who reside in the United States.
U.S. Special Envoy To Syria, Daniel Rubenstein, stated, “We have determined it is unacceptable for individuals appointed by that regime to conduct diplomatic or consular operations in the United States.”
Rubenstein continued by stating that the United States would continue to support the genocidal “rebels” and death squads currently terrorizing the nation when he said that “The United States will continue to assist those seeking change in Syria, to help end the slaughter, and to resolve the crisis through negotiations — for the benefit of the Syrian people.”
A pro-death squad organization, Coalition for a Democratic Syria, expressed pleasure at the U.S. government’s decision to restrict the movement of Jaafari, stating that he has engaged in “a series of propaganda tours” within the United States in order to “mislead and sow discord” among Syrians living in the U.S.
In the end, the closing of the Syrian embassy is only one more sad chapter in the book of the Syrian tragedy, itself entirely directed, funded, and initiated by Western powers and Anglo-American networks.
The hubris and arrogance of these Americans who make policy and manipulate governments as if they are personal property is breathtaking. For more of the same that is also openly published, read http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/09/02-army-defeat-assad-syria-Pollack An Army to Defeat Assad: How to Turn Syria’s Opposition Into a Real Fighting Force
By Kenneth M. Pollack, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014
By Tony Cartalucci
Near Eastern Outlook,
Posted on Global Research, June 26, 2015
US policymakers sign and date paper calling for the division, destruction, and US occupation of Syria.
Unbeknownst to the general public, their elected politicians do not create the policy that binds their national destiny domestically or within the arena of geopolitics. Instead, corporate-financier funded think tanks do – teams of unelected policymakers which transcend elections, and which produce papers that then become the foundation of legislation rubber stamped by “legislators,” as well as the enumerated talking points repeated ad naseum by the corporate-media.
Such a policy paper has been recently written by the notorious US policy think-tank, the Brookings Institution, titled, “Deconstructing Syria: Towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country.” [here] The signed and dated open-conspiracy to divide, destroy, then incrementally occupy a sovereign nation thousands of miles from America’s shores serves as a sobering example of how dangerous and enduring modern imperialism is, even in the 21st century.
Pretext ISIS: US Poured Billions Into “Moderates” Who Don’t Exist
The document openly admits that the US has provided billions in arming and training militants fed into the devastating and increasingly regional conflict. It admits that the US maintains – and should expand – operations in Jordan and NATO-member Turkey to provide even more weapons, cash, and fighters to the already catastrophic conflict.
It then recounts the rise of the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS), but fails to account from where its money, cash, and weapons came. It should be obvious to readers that if the United States has committed billions in cash, weapons, and training on multiple fronts to alleged “moderates” who for all intents and purposes do not exist on the battlefield, a state-sponsor of greater magnitude would be required to create and sustain ISIS and Al Qaeda’s Al Nusra Front who Brookings admits dominates the “opposition” uncontested.
Image: By all accounts, including Western think-tanks and corporate-media, ISIS territory includes corridors that lead up to NATO-member Turkey’s borders, as well as US-ally Jordan’s. Both nations host a significant number of US military personnel as well as CIA and special forces contingents. Clearly ISIS is a creation and perpetuation of the West, subsiding on a steady stream of supplies streaming from these two bases of operation.
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In reality, ISIS’ supply lines lead right into US operational zones in Turkey and Jordan, because it was ISIS and Al Qaeda all along that the West planned to use before the 2011 conflict began, and has based its strategy on ever since – including this most recent leg of the campaign.
The US Invasion of Syria
After arming and funding a literal region-wide army of Al Qaeda terrorists, the United States now plans to use the resulting chaos to justify what it has sought since the beginning of the conflict when it became clear the Syrian government was not to capitulate or collapse – the establishment of buffer zones now called “safe zones” by Brookings.
These zones once created, will include US armed forces on the ground, literally occupying seized Syrian territory cleared by proxies including Kurdish groups and bands of Al Qaeda fighters in the north, and foreign terrorist militias operating along the Jordanian-Syrian border in the south. Brookings even admits that many of these zones would be created by extremists, but that “ideological purity” wound “no longer be quite as high of a bar.”
Image: The West has only thinly veiled its support for Al Qaeda and ISIS before an impressionable general public. In policy circles, talk of using Al Qaeda to divide and destroy Wall Street’s enemies around the planet is lively and enthusiastic.
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The US assumes that once this territory is seized and US troops stationed there, the Syrian Arab Army will not dare attack in fear of provoking a direct US military response against Damascus. The Brookings paper states (emphasis added):
The idea would be to help moderate elements establish reliable safe zones within Syria once they were able. American, as well as Saudi and Turkish and British and Jordanian and other Arab forces would actin support, not only from the air but eventually on the ground via the presence of special forces as well. The approach would benefit from Syria’s open desert terrain which could allow creation of buffer zones that could be monitored for possible signs of enemy attack through a combination of technologies, patrols, and other methods that outside special forces could help Syrian local fighters set up.
Were Assad foolish enough to challenge these zones, even if he somehow forced the withdrawal of the outside special forces, he would be likely to lose his air power in ensuing retaliatory strikes by outside forces, depriving his military of one of its few advantages over ISIL.Thus, he would be unlikely to do this.
In a single statement, Brookings admits that the government of Syria is not engaged in a war against its own people, but against “ISIL” (ISIS). It is clear that Brookings, politicians, and other strategists across the West are using the threat of ISIS in combination with the threat of direct military intervention as a means of leverage for finally overrunning and seizing Syria entirely.
The Invasion Could Succeed, But Not for US Proxies
The entire plan is predicated on America’s ability to first take and hold these “zones” and subsequently mesh them into functioning autonomous regions. Similar attempts at US “nation building” are currently on display in the ravaged failed state that used to be North Africa’s nation of Libya, Syria’s neighbor to the southeast, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the list goes on extensively.
The folly of this plan both in attempts to use non-existent credibility and military will to actually implement it, as well as in terms of those foolish enough to place their trust in a nation that has left a swath of global destruction and failed states in its wake stretching from South Vietnam to Libya and back again, can be described only as monumental.
This strategy can almost certainly be used to finally destroy Syria. It cannot however, be used to do any of the things the US will promise in order to get the various players necessary for it to succeed, to cooperate.
Image: US-NATO “liberated” Libya is dominated by Al Qaeda who has more recently rebranded itself as ISIS. Claims by US policymakers that its incremental invasion of Syria will result in anything differently for Syrians is dishonest at best.
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Almost certainly there are measures Syria, its allies Iran and Hezbollah, as well as Russia, China, and all other nations facing the threats of Western hegemony can take to ensure that US forces will not be able to take and hold Syrian territory or ultimately succeed in what is essentially an invasion in slow motion. Already the US has used their own ISIS hordes as a pretext to operate militarily within Syrian territory, which as predicted, has led to this next stage in incremental invasion.
An increase in non-NATO peacekeeping forces in Syria could ultimately unhinge Western plans altogether. The presence of Iranian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Afghan, and other forces across Syria, particularly bordering “zone” the US attempts to create, may offer the US the prospect of a multinational confrontation it has neither the political will, nor the resources to undertake.
The ability of Syria and its allies to create a sufficient deterrence against US aggression in Syria, while cutting off the logistical lines the US is using to supply ISIS and other terrorist groups operating in Syria and Iraq will ultimately determine Syria’s survival.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.
