USA SYRIA another day 09/09/2013

‘Expect everything’: Assad warns U.S. bases in the Middle East could be attacked in retaliation for strikes against Syria

By DAVID MARTOSKO

PUBLISHED: 12:09 GMT, 9 September 2013

Bashar al-Assad warned that any number of factions in the region could attack U.S. military bases if America strikes Syria in retaliation for ‘alleged’ chemical weapons use, likely referring to Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Iran

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has warned that the United States should expect retaliation if the Obama administration moved forward with military strikes in response to a chemical weapons attack on August 21.

‘You should expect everything,’ Assad told American journalist Charlie Rose in a wide-ranging interview, portions of which were broadcast Monday morning on CBS.

Such attacks could come from any of a number of different sources, he said, while not ruling out that his own military could launch them.

Assad described possible future retaliation against the U.S. as ‘not necessarily through the government. It’s not only – the government is not the only player in this region. We have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideologies. You have everything in this region now. So you have to expect that. … Expect every action.’

When Rose asked if that included the possibility of chemical warfare, Assad replied, ‘That depends.’

‘If the rebels or the terrorists in this region, or any other group have it – It could happen. I don’t know. It could happen. I’m not a fortune teller, to tell you what will happen.’

Anti-government rebel groups in Syria include both pro-Democracy factions and Islamist groups, including the global terror group al-Qaeda.

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Charlie Rose interviewed the Syrian dictator in Damascus, in an interview previewed on CBS and slated for broadcast in its entirety on PBS Monday night

The Middle East is a powder keg that’s ready to explode, Assad said, insisting that the U.S. will have to deal with the consequences of failing to understand the nature of terror groups in the region

President Obama tried during the G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia to wrangle international support for striking Syria, but the White House hasn’t persuaded any other nation to participate in a military attack

Assad has warned the US to expect reprisal attacks if it…

But Assad also leverages groups inside the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah to push rebel forces back on the streets of Damascus, and nearby Iran also backs his regime.

Retaliation against the U.S., he acknowledged, ‘could take different forms, both direct and indirect,’ hinting that he could work in concert with Hezbollah and the Iranians.

The Syrian leader, on the brink of seeing American Tomahawk missiles and Predator drones rain down on his own military installations, said that Obama’s administration is ‘going to pay the price if you’re not wise in dealing with the terrorists.’

‘So nobody expects – there are going to be repercussions … Nobody expected the 11th of September, so you cannot expect – It would be difficult for anybody to tell you what is going to happen.’

‘It’s an area where everything is on the brink of explosion. You have to expect everything.’

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday in London that Assad could avoid a military strike by turning over all his chemical weapons within a week but immediately made clear he was sure that would never happen

Anti-war protesters held signs and banners outside the Foreign and Commonwealth office in central London on Monday as Kerry met with Britain’s Foreign Minister William Hague

Polls show that t vanishing minority of Americans support striking Syria, and Obama will have to contend with a growing protest movement at home as he tries to convince Congress to endorse military action

Assad has denied that he was responsible for the suspected August 21 sarin gas attack aimed at a rebel-controlled area of Syria, and challenged the Obama administration to publicly show the evidence it has and ‘prove it now.’

The president ‘didn’t present’ evidence publicly ‘because he doesn’t have [it]. Kerry doesn’t have [it], no one in the organization has. If they had it they would have presented it to you as media.’

Obama will sit down Monday afternoon for interviews with the three major TV networks and with CNN, Fox News and PBS. He is also scheduled to address the nation in a prime-time speech Tuesday night – on the eve of this year’s 9/11 anniversary.

Rose reminded Assad that Secretary of State John Kerry has disclosed that the U.S. was able to track the flight of missiles originating from government-controlled Syrian territory and landing in an area overrun by rebels.

‘We know that his regime gave orders to prepare for a chemical attack,’ Kerry said during a press conference Monday at the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office.’

We know that they deployed forces and put them in the places where this took place. We know, by tracing it, physically where the rockets came from and where they landed. And it is no accident that they all came from regime-controlled territory and all landed in opposition-controlled or contested territory. We know this.’

But ‘the Russians have completely opposite evidence,’ Assad countered to Rose, ‘that the missiles were thrown from an area where the rebels control.’

He likened the current controversy to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s public presentation before Congress of evidence, which later proved faulty, that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.

That evidence was the basis for the approval of a U.S.-led invasion.

‘He said "this is our evidence," Assad recalled, but ‘it was false evidence. Kerry didn’t even present evidence. He [said] "We have evidence" and he didn’t present anything. Not yet. Nothing so far. Not a single shred of evidence.’

Ultimately, Assad insisted, his government forces ‘were not in the area where the alleged chemical attack happened … Our soldiers in another area were attacked chemically. Our soldiers. They went to the hospital as casualties because of chemical weapons.’

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem (L) met Monday in Moscow. Russia’s government remains one of Syria’s only allies, with ties strengthened by arms sales and a Russian naval base on Syrian soil

Assad insisted that the White House doesn’t have ironclad evidence that his government used chemical weapons, and said Obama is leading a ‘social media administration’

‘But in the area where they say the government used chemical weapons, we only had video, and we only have pictures and allegations. … how can you talk about what happened if you don’t have evidence?’

‘We’re not like the American administration. We’re not a social-media administration or government. We are a government that deals with reality.’

Members of Congress should ask themselves, he said, ‘What do wars give America? Seems there’s is nothing now. Nothing. No political gain, no economic gain, no good reputation.’

America’s credibility around the world, Assad claimed, is an ‘an all-time low.’

He also insisted, as several high-profile politicians have in Washington, that starting a war in Syria would be ‘against the interests of the United States.’

‘Why? First of all because this is the war that’s going to support al-Qaeda and the same people who killed Americans on the 11th of September.’

In Moscow on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem to discuss the increasingly tense situation.

We are asking ourselves how Obama can … support those who in their time blew up the World Trade Center in New York, Moualem said during a press conference following the meeting.

Lavrov claimed there was clear evidence the anti-Assad rebels have chemical weapons, and hinted that there are still questions about who initiated the August 21 attack.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415942/Assad-warns-US-military-bases-Middle-East-attacked-Obama-strikes-Syria.html#ixzz2ePaZO2jw
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Syrian village is ‘liberated’ by rebels… who then forced Christians to convert to Islam

By MAIL FOREIGN SERVICE

PUBLISHED: 19:27 GMT, 8 September 2013

Terrified Christians claim Syrian rebels ordered them to convert to Islam on pain of death when they ‘liberated’ their ancient village.

Opposition forces, including fighters linked to Al Qaeda, gained temporary control of the Christian village of Maaloula after fighting with regime forces.

The reports have reignited fears about western support for the rebel groups, which are increasingly being infiltrated by Islamic extremists.

A Syrian military solider fires a heavy machine gun during clashes with rebels in Maaloula

Government media has provided a different account of the battle suggesting regime forces are winning

A general view of Maaloula, northeast of the capital Damascus. Rebels including al-Qaida-linked fighters are believed to have gained control of the village

Syrian government forces stand guard in Maaloula village, a scenic mountain village where people still speak the ancient Middle Eastern language of Aramaic

One Maaloula resident said the rebels, many of whom had beards and shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great), attacked Christian homes and churches shortly after moving into the village.

‘They shot and killed people. I heard gunshots and then I saw three bodies lying in the middle of a street in the old quarters of the village. Where is President Obama to see what has befallen us?’

Another Christian resident said: ‘I saw the militants grabbing five villagers and threatening them and saying, “Either you convert to Islam, or you will be beheaded”.’

Another said one church had been torched, and gunmen stormed into two other churches and robbed them.

The beautiful mountain village, 25 miles from Damascus, is one of the few places in the world where residents still use the ancient language of Aramaic, which was spoken by Jesus and his disciples.

Historic: A church in Maaloula which is on a UNESCO list of tentative world heritage sites

State-run TV reported that all churches in Maaloula were now safe and the army was chasing gunmen in the western hills

It has become a key strategic battleground in the Syrian civil war because of its proximity to the capital. It was held by President Assad’s regime, but taken at the weekend in a rebel advance spearheaded by the hardline Islamist al Nusra Front.

Villagers said they heard several foreign accents among the rebels, with many feared to be Al Qaeda fighters imported into the conflict. A villager said he heard mainly Tunisian, Libyan, Moroccan and Chechen dialects.

In a video posted online, a rebel commander shouted at the camera: ‘We cleansed Maaloula from all the Assad dogs and all his thugs.’ But Syria’s state news agency claimed the rebels had withdrawn and the regime had regained the village, saying: ‘The army inflicted heavy losses in the ranks of the terrorists.’

A Christian woman who spoke to the Associated Press on Thursday also said there were reports that militants threatened villagers with death if they did not convert to Christianity

A church in Maaloula where fighting has been taking place overnight. A poster with the portrait of Syrian President Bashar Assad is seen bottom right

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415586/Syrian-rebels-attack-historic-Christian-village-residents-speak-language-Jesus.html#ixzz2eQRuXzlh
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US: There Is No Evidence Syrian Government Carried Out Attacks

Tony Cartalucci
Infowars.com
September 9, 2013

US White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough made the unbelievable admission this week that Western interests have concluded Syria carried out an alleged chemical attack in eastern Damascus based on “common sense” rather than “irrefutable evidence.” Slate’s “White House: “Common-Sense Test” And Not “Irrefutable” Evidence Hold Assad Responsible,” states [emphasis added]:

White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough went on the Sunday talk shows to drum up support for what he called a “targeted, limited effort” that will change “the momentum on the battle field” in Syria. Yet he also acknowledged on CNN that the evidence that ties Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus that allegedly killed 1,429 people has more to do with a “common-sense test” rather than “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence.”

And while McDonogh, and his collaborators both in Washington and abroad, claim their planned assault on Syria is not a repeat of Iraq in terms of scale, it is clear that in terms of deception it is.

Slate would continue by stating [emphasis added]:

Now do we have a picture or do we have irrefutable beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence? This is not a court of law and intelligence does not work that way.” Meanwhile, McDonough also emphasized on NBC that “nobody is rebutting the intelligence; nobody doubts the intelligence.”

The answer highlights how the White House still has not shown the public a concrete piece of intelligence that directly connect Assad’s regime to the alleged chemical weapons attack, as the Associated Press points out in a detailed story.

The AP story Slate referred to is titled, “DOUBTS LINGER OVER SYRIA GAS ATTACK RESPONSIBILITY,” and states:

The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence produced by U.S. intelligence – no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications – connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people.

In its absence, Damascus and its ally Russia have aggressively pushed another scenario: that rebels carried out the Aug. 21 chemical attack. Neither has produced evidence for that case, either. That’s left more questions than answers as the U.S. threatens a possible military strike.

While evidence of who actually carried out the attack remains elusive, what is clear is that the Western interests have made an intentionally baseless claim, echoing the verified lies told during the lead up to the military invasion and decade-long occupation of Iraq, and similar fabrications used to justify the 2011 assault on Libya.

Image: From Independent’s “Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all: Defector tells how US officials ‘sexed up’ his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion.” In retrospect, the corporate-media has no problem admitting the insidious lies that were told to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq – the lead up to the war was another story. A verbatim repeat of these admitted lies are being directed at Syria amidst the West’s failure to overthrow the government with terrorist proxies.

….

What is also clear is the documented conspiracy to overthrow the Syrian government and destabilize neighboring Iran and Lebanon with a sectarian bloodbath by directly funding, arming, and otherwise providing material support for sectarian extremist groups aligned with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and who hold allegiance to Al Qaeda. This conspiracy began under the Bush administration as early as 2007 and has continued onward throughout the Obama administration.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection,” stated (emphasis added):

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

More recently, it would be revealed that the United States, the United Kingdom, and its regional axis including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have sent millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weaponry to a predominantly Al Qaeda led terrorist force operating inside and along Syria’s borders.

For instance, in the Telegraph’s article titled, “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’,” it is reported:

It claimed 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November.

The story confirmed the origins of ex-Yugoslav weapons seen in growing numbers in rebel hands in online videos, as described last month by The Daily Telegraph and other newspapers, but suggests far bigger quantities than previously suspected.

The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syria’s neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came “from several other European countries including Britain”, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms.

British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria.

“Common sense” would then dictate that with such substantial aid flowing to terrorists operating within Syria, it would be inconceivable for sectarian extremists to overrun Western-backed “moderate fighters” unless of course the summation of Western support was in fact flowing directly and purposefully into the hands of sectarian extremists from the beginning.

These are the same extremists drawn from Al Qaeda, the United States has warned for well over a decade might obtain chemical weapons and use them against a civilian population to achieve their goals. This points the finger directly toward Western-backed terrorists regarding the recent alleged chemical attack in Damascus, not the Syrian government. The attack would enable the United States and its military axis to take a more active and direct role in supporting these terrorist forces who have this past year suffered tremendous irreversible loses against a prevailing Syrian Arab Army.

“Common sense” points the finger in the opposite direction White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough has suggested. Without any actual evidence coming from a nation who has waged war habitually on fabricated justification, and who is clearly involved in a long-standing conspiracy to overthrow the Syrian government, and who is responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe it feigns interest in now ending, the world has understandably and universally opposed this latest act of unprovoked military aggression.

Unfortunately, the decision on whether or not the US goes ahead anyway with another act of unprovoked war and 21st century conquest, does not hinge on real common sense or the will of the American people who categorically oppose any military operation, but rather on the compromised, corporate-financier purchasedUS Congress. In Congress, astoundingly, the lack of evidence is not at the center of debate, but rather what the consequences of America’s proposed military assault might be, and whether the assault should be, in fact,expanded.

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U.S. Admits No Imminent Threat from Syria, No Clear Evidence Assad Ordered Chemical Weapons Attack

Obama Ramps Up War Pitch Even As Basic Arguments Fall by the Wayside

Washington’s Blog
September 9, 2013

Obama is going on a whirlwind media blitz this week in an attempt to sell a very skeptical public on war with Syria.

Credit: Public Domain

Yet the Washington Post notes:

Obama’s top aide says the administration lacks “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence” that skeptical Americans, including lawmakers who will start voting on military action this week, are seeking.

Indeed, those who have seen the evidence say that it is incredibly weak. German intelligence also says that Assaddidn’t order the attacks.

Moreover, President Obama correctly noted in 2007:

The President does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

Yet Obama admitted last week:

Some people had noted, and I think this is true, that had I been in the Senate in the midst of this period, I probably would have suggested to a Democratic or a Republican president that Congress should have the ability to weigh in an issue like this, that is not immediate, imminent, time-sensitive.

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We may not be directly, imminently threatened by what’s taking place in …Syria … in the short term, but our long-term national security will be impacted in a profound way, and our humanity is impacted in a profound way.

No wonder that Obama has lost some of his biggest initial supporters for a strike against Syria.

Reuters notes:

White House efforts to convince the U.S. Congress to back military action against Syria are not only failing, they seem to be stiffening the opposition.

That was the assessment on Sunday, not of an opponent but of an early and ardent Republican supporter of Obama’s plan for attacking Syria, the influential Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, Mike Rogers.

Rogers told CBS’s “Face the Nation” the White House had made a “confusing mess” of the Syria issue. Now, he said, “I’m skeptical myself.”

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Why Are Obama And Kerry So Desperate To Start A New War?

The rule of zombies

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
September 9, 2013

What is the real agenda?

Why is the Obama Regime so desperate to commit a war crime despite the warnings delivered to the White House Fool two days ago by the most important countries in the world at the G20 Summit?

Credit: Public Domain

What powerful interest is pushing the White House Fool to act outside of law, outside the will of the American people, outside the warnings of the world community?

The Obama Regime has admitted, as UK prime minister david cameron had to admit, that no one has any conclusive evidence that the Assad government in Syria used chemical weapons. Nevertheless, Obama has sent the despicable john Kerry out to convince the public and Congress on the basis of videos that Assad used chemical weapons “against his own people.”

What the videos show are dead and suffering people. The videos do not show who did it. The Obama Regime’s case is nonexistent. It rests on nothing that indicates responsibility. The Obama Regime’s case is nothing but an unsubstantiated allegation.

What kind of depraved person would take the world to war based on nothing whatsoever but an unsubstantiated allegation?

The world’s two worse liars, Obama and Kerry, say Assad did it, but they admit that they cannot prove it. It is what they want to believe, because they want it to be true. The lie serves their undeclared agenda.

If Obama and Kerry were to tell the public the real reasons they want to attack Syria, they would be removed from office.

The entire world is teetering on a war, the consequences of which are unknown, for no other reason than two people, devoid of all integrity who lack the intelligence and humanity to be in high office, are determined to serve a tiny collection of warmongers consisting of the crazed, murderous Israeli government and their Muslim-hating neoconservative agents, who comprise a fifth column inside the Obama Regime.

The Russian government has given evidence to the UN that conclusively proves that the al-Nusra, al-Qaeda affiliated invaders are responsible for the attack. There is also conclusive proof that the “rebels” have chemical weapons. In addition, a highly regarded journalist has reported, using direct quotes and the names of al-Nusra fighters, that the chemical weapons were given to al-Nusra by Saudi Arabia without proper handling instructions, and that an accidental explosion occurred before al-Nusra could use the Saudi-supplied weapons to frame-up the Assad government.

However the deaths were caused, they are unfortunate, but no more so that the deaths that Obama has caused in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Syria. The proven deaths for which Obama is responsible are many times the unproven deaths that Obama attributes without evidence to Assad.

The indisputable fact is that Syrian deaths occur only because Washington initiated the invasion of Syria by external forces similar to the ones that Washington used against Libya. However the deaths occurred, the deaths are the doings of the criminal Obama Regime. Without the criminal Obama Regime seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government, there would be no deaths by chemical weapons or by any other means. This was a war initiated by Washington, Israel, Israel’s neoconservative fifth column inside America and the White House, and the captive western media that is bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby.

Assad did not start the war. The Syrian government was attacked by outside forces sent in by Washington and Israel.

Assad has much higher public support in Syria than Obama has in the US, or cameron has in the UK, or hollande has in France, or merkel has in Germany, or netanyahu has in Israel.

The White House Fool keeps repeating his nonsensical statement, as if the Fool is a wound-up talking doll, that Assad’s unproven “use of chemical weapons is a threat to global security.”

Dear reader, who besides the White House Fool is so unbelievably stupid as to believe that Syria is a threat to world security?

If Syria is a “threat to world security,” like Iraq was a “threat to world security,” like Iran is alleged to be a “threat to world security,” what kind of superpower is the United States? How low does the IQ have to be, how mentally impaired does the public have to be to fall for these absurd hysterical allegations?

Let’s turn Obama’s claim upon the Fool. Why isn’t it a threat to global security for Obama to attack Syria? There is no authority for Obama to attack Syria just because he wants to and just because he has demonized Assad with endless lies and just because Obama is the total puppet of the crazed Israeli government and his neoconservative national security advisor, in effect an Israeli agent, and just because the Ministry of Propaganda, including NPR, repeats every Obama lie as if it were the truth.

Isn’t it a threat to international security when a superpower can, acting on a whim, demonize a leader and a country and unleash mass destruction, as the US has done seven times in the past twelve years,? There are millions of innocent but demonized victims of the “indispensable, exceptional USA,” the “light unto the world.”

Forget about the US media, which is nothing but a propaganda ministry for the Israel Lobby. What the members of Congress and what the American people need to ask Obama is why does the White House only represent the Israel Lobby?

No one supports an attack on Syria but the Israel Lobby.

Why is Obama going to add yet another war crime to Washington’s 12-year record? Wasn’t it enough to destroy the lives and prospects of millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Egypt? Why kill and destroy the life prospects of yet more millions of people in Syria and other countries into which Obama’s war could spread?

Maybe the answer is that Obama, Kerry, and the crazed Netanyahu and his neoconservative fifth column are zombies.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

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Obama In Desperate Propaganda Push For Attack On Syria

President will conduct six television interviews in bid to beat war drums

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
September 9, 2013

Image: Wikimedia Commons

President Barack Obama will conduct interviews with no less than six television networks later today in a desperate bid to drum up support for an attack on Syria before his speech to the nation on Tuesday.

“Obama will tape interviews Monday afternoon with anchors from ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as with PBS, CNN and Fox News,” reports Politico. “The interviews will be conducted by ABC’s Diane Sawyer, CBS’s Scott Pelley, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Fox’s Chris Wallace, NBC’s Brian Williams and PBS’s Gwen Ifill.”

Despite building opposition amongst members of Congress, White House officials are still bizarrely confident that lawmakers will give the green light, with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough telling ABC yesterday, “This resolution is going to pass after we work this.”

However, the latest whip count of Congressmembers likely to vote against the authorization shows 222 votes against, with only 217 needed to defeat the resolution. That doesn’t even include any of the other 186 representatives who are undecided or haven’t made their position clear in public.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said yesterday that should Obama lose the vote, he does not have the authority to launch an attack without being in violation of the Constitution.

Should Obama ignore Congress, prominent talking heads like Princeton University’s Cornel West have warned that the President would open himself up to impeachment.

“It would be an illegal war. It would be an immoral war for the United States to begin bombing and sending missiles to Syria and killing more innocent people,” said West, adding that such a “dictatorial” move would be “grounds for impeachment.”

Since last month’s alleged chemical weapons attack, which the latest German intelligence report suggests was not even ordered by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, military intervention has become more about saving Obama’s supposed “credibility” than any pretense at discouraging the use of chemical weapons.

The Hill’s Justin Sink thinks that the entire fate of Obama’s second term hangs in the balance.

“If Congress votes against a military attack on President Bashar Assad’s regime, Obama’s credibility may be shot, perhaps for the rest of his tenure. At a minimum, it would cement the idea that he is weak in Washington, let alone worldwide,” writes Sink.

Meanwhile, as the image below shows, Syrians are begging Obama not to use depleted uranium and white phosphorus, as the US did in Serbia and Iraq, during any potential bombardment of the country.

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Kidnapped Teacher: Rebels Said Assad Not Behind Chemical Weapons Attack

“It is a moral duty to say this”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
September 9, 2013

A Belgian teacher who was kidnapped by rebels in Syria said he overheard the militants acknowledging that President Bashar Al-Assad was not responsible for last month’s chemical weapons attack.

Speaking French, Piccinin tells RTL that he overheard rebels acknowledging that Assad was not behind the chemical weapons attack.

Pierre Piccinin da Prata was kidnapped along with Italian war journalist Domenico Quirico back in April near Damascus. According to Quirico, the two were subjected to torture, humiliation and mock executions by the western-backed rebels. They were freed yesterday and flown to Rome after the Italian Foreign Ministry managed to secure their release.

According to Quirico, the rebels who held him and Piccinin as prisoners set about on a “terrifying odyssey across Syria.”

“We were moved around a lot…it was not always the same group that held us, there were very violent groups, very anti-West and some anti-Christian,” he told AFP, adding that when the two escaped they were tracked down by rebels within 48 hours and “seriously punished.”

Piccinin told Italy’s RTL radio that he heard a conversation during which members of the Abu Ammar rebel brigade admitted that Assad was not behind the attack in Ghouta that the Obama administration has cited in building a case for military intervention.

“It is a moral duty to say this. The government of Bashar al-Assad did not use Sarin gas or other types of gas in the outskirts of Damascus,” said Piccinin.

While the Obama administration has insisted that “common sense” and not “irrefutable evidence” is enough to prove that Assad was behind the attack, others have begged to differ.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the attack was a “provocation” carried out by rebels in order to create a pretext for US military intervention.

Phone calls intercepted by Germany’s BND intelligence also indicate that Assad was not behind last month’s attack nor any other alleged chemical weapons incident.

Last week, Russia announced that it had compiled a 100 page report proving opposition rebels “were behind a deadly sarin gas attack in an Aleppo suburb earlier this year,” the same attack that Carla Del Ponte, the leading member of the UN inquiry into the incident, blamed on rebels.

As we previously highlighted, Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta admitted to a reporter that they were responsible for last month’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.

Despite the fact that the report was written by credible Associated Press and BBC correspondent Dale Gavlak, it has received virtually zero mainstream attention.

In addition, leaked phone conversations that emerged earlier this year between two members of the FreeSyrian Army contain details of a plan to carry out a chemical weapons attack capable of impacting an area the size of one kilometer. Footage was also leaked showing opposition militants testing what appeared to be nerve agents on laboratory rabbits.

On Thursday we featured a video of an FSA militant apparently confessing to using chemical weapons in order to follow Osama Bin Laden’s mantra of killing women and children.

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CNN poll: Public against Syria strike resolution

By Paul Steinhauser and John Helton, CNN

updated 12:49 PM EDT, Mon September 9, 2013

Washington (CNN) — As President Barack Obama presses his case for a strike on Syria, a new national survey shows him swimming against a strong tide of public opinion that doesn’t want the United States to get involved.

The CNN/ORC International poll released on Monday shows that even though eight in 10 Americans believe that Bashar al-Assad’s regime gassed its own people, a strong majority doesn’t want Congress to pass a resolution authorizing a military strike against it.

More than seven in 10 say such a strike would not achieve significant goals for the United States and a similar amount say it’s not in the national interest for the country to get involved in Syria’s civil war.

See complete poll results (PDF)

The poll comes at the start of a pivotal week for the president.

The Senate is expected to take up the resolution after returning from its summer recess on Monday while Obama participates in a round of interviews with the major television outlets. Wolf Blitzer’s interview with Obama will air Amid a flurry of briefings by White House officials, Obama will travel to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to make his case with lawmakers hours before he speaks to the nation in a prime-time address.

"Even as he works members of Congress one by one in small group settings, President Obama’s biggest challenge is the American public at large," said John King, CNN chief national correspondent.

"More than seven in 10 Americans simply don’t see a military response making any difference. They don’t see it doing any good. They’re very skeptical, post Iraq and even post Libya and post Egypt, that the United States can do something in a limited way in the Middle East and walk away with a success. And so the skepticism is driving it right now."

The stakes are high for the president.

After pushing for strikes against Syria, Obama unexpectedly announced on August 31 that he would ask Congress to authorize military action. Failing to get Congress to go along would be an embarrassment for the commander in chief.

"He’ll go to establishing a new high bar to what it means to being a lame duck this early," CNN contributor and Republican strategist Ana Navarro said. "It would be devastating, I think, for rest of his agenda."

But Stephanie Cutter, another CNN contributor who was Obama’s 2012 deputy campaign manager, said Congress’s not passing the resolution would be "a blow to the United States, not a blow to the president. It’s a blow to the United States’ authority all over the world. And unprecedented."

"That’s why you’re going to see some members of Congress vote for that particular reason. Some said they’re voting for that particular reason," she said.

Obama faces steep climb in House

The Senate could vote on the resolution as early as Wednesday and the outcome there is very much in doubt. Even more uncertain are prospects in the House where Republican leaders say they’ll wait to see what happens in the Senate first.

"Congressional approval would help Obama a little, but a majority would still oppose airstrikes against military targets in Syria," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "If Congress authorizes military action, 55% of Americans would still oppose airstrikes."

The president has had at least a small majority of public support behind him in conflicts involving the United States over the past 20 years.

Eighty-six percent of those surveyed in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll less than a month after the 9/11 terror attacks favored military action, and 56% backed the United States and its allies in creating a "no-fly" zone over Libya in 2011.

Only U.S. involvement in NATO airstrikes on Serbia in 1999 during the Clinton administration split the public down the middle, with 43% supporting involvement and 40% opposing it.

‘This is not Iraq or Afghanistan’

While 64% supported using American ground troops in Iraq in 2003, intelligence indicating Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction was later discredited. That has contributed to public doubts about Obama administration claims of evidence showing that al-Assad’s regime gassed its own people on August 21 outside Damascus, killing more than 1,400 people.

Fifty-nine percent of people questioned say they don’t think Congress should approve a proposed resolution authorizing military action against Syria for up to 90 days — an initial 60-day window plus another 30 following congressional notification — but prohibiting the use of ground troops. About 40% support that plan.

If Congress rejects the Syria resolution, the White House has said that the president still has the authority to strike.

"I think it would be a mistake for me to jump the gun and speculate because right now I’m working to get as much support as possible out of Congress," Obama said on Friday when asked by CNN senior White House correspondent Brianna Keilar what he would do if the resolution failed.

But the poll indicates Americans are quite clear on that point: More than seven in 10 say they would oppose U.S. airstrikes against Syria if Congress does not authorize it.

Who are the Syrian rebels?

The debate over Syria has caused intra-party divides among both parties: Hawkish Republicans and moderate Democrats say the United States should strike, while the libertarian wing of the GOP says involvement is not in the U.S. interest. Liberal Democrats say there are alternatives to military action that haven’t been exhausted.

The poll also suggests those surveyed who identified themselves as Democrats and Republicans don’t see eye to eye on the resolution. Fifty-six percent of Democrats think Congress should pass it, but only 36% of Republicans and 29% of independents say the same.

"Bringing Congress into the equation seems to have added a political dimension to the Syria debate," Holland said. "Once Congress makes up its mind, however, the gap between Democrats and Republicans nearly vanishes."

‘House of Assad’ survives on loyalty, brutality

If Congress does authorize military action, the gap between Democrats and Republicans shrinks to just four points, with 51% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans favoring military action. And if Congress rejects the resolution authorizing military action, large numbers in both parties oppose airstrikes.

"It appears that while the debate is still in the hands of Congress, politics will affect Americans’ views on Syria," Holland said. "Politics may still stop at the water’s edge for most Americans, but Capitol Hill remains a highly partisan environment, even when international affairs are being debated."

The poll gives some insight into why many Americans oppose action.

While more than eight in 10 say that it’s likely or certain that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, nearly seven in 10 say that it’s not in the U.S. national interest to get involved in Syria’s civil war. And more than seven in 10 say that airstrikes would not achieve significant goals for the U.S.

Syria’s neighbors on edge

And while most of those questioned said that how their members of Congress voted on the resolution wouldn’t affect how they voted in future elections, but the remainder by a nearly 3-1 margin said they would be more likely to vote against the lawmakers if they supported the resolution.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International on September 6-8, with 1,022 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

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Dyess Refuses to Deny Secret Nuke Transfer

Dyess officially responds to secret nuke transfer, refuses to deny

Anthony Gucciardi
Infowars.com
September 9, 2013

Update: Dyess Air Force base has issued another official response to the high level military intelligence regarding the unsigned nuke transfer, which appears to be issued to team members (likely due to widespread concern on the base and potential intelligence within the base) through their Facebook page. This time we see Dyess initiate a more direct answer, but once again they cite that the intel is simply untrue because they did not release it themselves. The post reads:

“**ATTENTION TEAM DYESS**

Dyess AFB has not been involved in the transfer of any nuclear weapons. Please be advised that any reports of this nature are inaccurate and information contained in these articles was not released, nor verified by the 7th Bomb Wing commander or other Dyess representatives.”

Engineers at Pantex work on nuclear warhead. / photo via Pantex.

Forced to respond by countless comments throughout social media as well as a bombardment of calls to the base, Dyess Air Force base has now released an official response to the high level military intelligence we revealed to you last week regarding a secret nuke transfer from the base to S.C.

Posting on their official Facebook page, Dyess responded to a question regarding the nuke transfer piece now seen by millions worldwide:

“Dyess Air Force Base: Please be advised that the information contained in recent reports on nuclear weapons movement from Dyess AFB was neither released nor supported by the 7th Bomb Wing commander or representatives from Dyess AFB. Please reference the Dyess AFB website (www.dyess.af.mil) or other official Air Force websites for accurate, up-to-date information.”

In other words, Dyess is saying virtually nothing. Instead of denying the transfer of nuclear warheads which coincided with a warmongering announcement by S.C. Senator Lindsay Graham that a nuclear attack may hitS.C. if we don’t go to war with Syria, Dyess is instead refusing to deny the secret nuke transferoutright. Their answer, as you can plainly see, is to direct readers to their official site for information about Dyess.

Why not immediately ‘debunk’ the intel if there was no transfer of nuclear warheads?

The fact that the base even responded is amazing, considering the level of information we’re talking about when it comes to a secret nuke transfer. But adding on new information we’ve uncovered regarding the nearby Pantex Plant, which assembles and disassembles nuclear weapons, the story becomes even more interesting. Extremely close to Dyess, Pantex is America’s ‘only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility and is charged with maintaining the safety, security and reliability of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.’

Was Dyess simply a temporary holding facility for nuclear weapons originally coming out of Pantex? Here are some more comments (at least the ones that haven’t been deleted assuming many may have been removed) that are absolutely blasting the official Facebook page. Virtually all of these questions are now receiving the copy paste of the Dyess refusal to deny the transfer, and many comments acknowledge the real lack of answer from the base:

The answers coincide with what I was told by an official on the phone after contacting the base, who told me she could not divulge information regarding any ‘weapons transfers’ when I did not mention anything to do with weapons in the first place. The official also told me they would get back with me by the end of the day on Friday (after telling me days earlier they’d also get in touch ‘soon’). Today, I still have not received a call. Checkout the call below for yourself:

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Bolton: Going to Congress on Syria Demonstrates Weakness

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
September 9, 2013

Following the Constitution and going to Congress for war authorization displays Obama’s “weakness” and has damaged the presidency, according to John Bolton, the recess appointed ambassador to the United Nations under Bush.

Obama: I was elected to end wars.

“I was stunned,” Bolton told Newsmax after Obama said he would seek authorization from Congress to bomb Syria – not a declaration of war, as stipulated by the Constitution. “What the president did was a display of weakness of the kind we haven’t seen in an American leader in decades, if not since the 19th century.”

New York Rep. Peter King said Obama is “abdicating his responsibility as commander in chief and undermining the authority of future presidents,” while former Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, said it is too early to know if Obama’s “lead-from-behind” style of leadership will damage the concept of the imperial presidency.

Hoekstra said by going to Congress, Obama has presented “a real opportunity” for al-Qaeda and the enemies of America.

Other insiders have also criticized Obama’s behavior, including the former Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman who characterized it as a “fiasco reminiscent of the Carter days.” Gillerman said Obama’s decision to hold off bombing Syria for its unsubstantiated use of chemical weapons would elicit “gloating and celebrating” in Iran. He said the decision to consult Congress and gain the approval of the American people will cast “a very dark shadow” over the credibility of U.S. foreign policy.

“What we seem to be losing, as we confront the challenges in Syria and Iran, is credibility,” Wall Street Journal columnist and establishment foreign-policy expert Bret Stephens told Newsmax. “We’re not taken seriously. And we’re not taken seriously because we have a president who issues a red line – as he said a red line ‘for me’ – and then several months later tells us that he didn’t issue the red line, it was the world.”

Obama’s decision, viewed as harmful vacillation by neocons and Democrat war hawks alike, has apparently damaged the long-standing effort to take out Iran.

“The feeling is that something was wrong here, that this was not the way this should have gone down, that this is not the way a superpower should act,” a former Israeli diplomat told Fox News last week.

“We look at Syria, and we think Iran. … What conclusions should be drawn about how America will act in other circumstances? Here was a clear red line. It was breached a few times. This looks like a clever move; but America’s willingness to ‘walk the walk’ now is very questionable.”

Bolton, King, Hoekstra and other Obama critics fail to understand that the founders deliberately weakened the executive branch in favor of decisions made by the legislative, at one time the direct representatives of the American people. A balance of power, James Madison wrote in the The Federalists no. 10, was imposed on government in order to defeat “the reprobated axiom of tyranny.”

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The war on Syria is just a television series

Jon Rappoport
Infowars.com
Sept. 9, 2013

No one will die. Syria is a fiction. Brian Williams, who will narrate the attack, is just the latest Pixar cartoon.

This is what I told Mr. Shrink this morning. He frowned and said the drugs weren’t working. I didn’t let him stop me. I kept going.

I told him Obama and Kerry are producers who are trying to sell the series to the networks. They’ve got the sponsors lined up, but there’s an argument about whether it should be three episodes or 12.

One NBC exec remarked, “Okay, so we have the initial missile launch. That’s one night. But afterwards, do we see ground troops? If not, the whole thing could be a bust.”

Kerry said, “If we play it right, we’ll have ground troops. They’ll take a few small towns. Maybe a city.”

CNN has built a studio in Atlanta, consisting of two rooftops, where Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper will do stand-ups in bush jackets, as they pretend to watch the missiles in the sky.

Mr. Shrink put up his hand to halt me.

“Look,” he said, “you’ve gone off the rails. Syria is real. People will die there, innocent people.”

“No,” I said. “And you know how I know that? Because you’re sitting here talking to me. If you really believed innocent people were about to die, you’d be out in the street, protesting, doing something. But you’re not. You’re crazier than I am.”

That stopped him for a few seconds.

He leaned back in his chair and slanted his head to one side and smiled. He shook his finger at me.

“You’re delusional but clever,” he said. “You’re playing some kind of angle. What is it?”

“No angle,” I said. “Ever since television came in, there’s been nothing but television. All other reality was banished. People just don’t realize it yet.”

He nodded.

“Well,” he said, “in that case there’s no problem. You must be very happy knowing all suffering has ceased. We’re all just watching television.”

“No,” I said. “You’ve got it wrong, Doc. I’m here because I’m afraid television is a fragile medium. Any number of events could cause it to go offline. And then where will we be? We’ll sink into a great Void.”

He sniffed a therapeutic opening.

“What’s this Void like?” he said.

“It’s dark,” I said. “There’s no programming. No news, no CSI, no Law and Order. You know what that means? The concomitant programing in our minds will cease as well, because we’re all wired for television and nothing else.”

“So we’ll just sit there in the great Void and stew in our own juice?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a moot question. You’re asking me to comment on what I’d be like without my internal programming. But I can only respond to you THROUGH my programming. Get it?”

He sighed and looked at his watch.

“You’re screwing with me,” he said. “Syria is real. The war would be real. The missiles are real. The destruction and loss of life would be very real.”

“Look at it this way,” I said. “Suppose, as you say, the war is real. But suppose it isn’t on television. Nothing about it, the debate, the lead-up, the attack…none of it is on television. Therefore, none of us know anything about it. See? So I ask you, would they stage the war at all? What would be the point if it wasn’t on television? The so-called message we’re sending, the punishment for Assad using chemical weapons, the muscle-flexing. It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t play.”

He stood up. He started pacing around.

“In other words,” he said, “we all have a disease called television. We don’t know how sick we are.”

“Exactly,” I said. “It’s all-embracing. Wall to wall. The television disease is reality now. Ever since 1950, it’s all there is.”

“You need a better drug,” he said.

“I already have a drug. The screen.”

“But it’s counter-productive,” he said.

“So cure me.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Why not?”

“You make up stuff all the time. You’re making up stuff now.”

Suddenly, across the room, the television set, sitting on an oak table, went on. A large face filled the screen. It was a man’s angry face. The man spoke:

THIS IS THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY. ALL CONVERSATION ABOUT THE WAR WILL STOP NOW. IT IS NOW ILLEGAL TO DISCUSS THE WAR. YOUR GOVERNMENT IS DEBATING THE ISSUE AND WILL SOON COME TO A CONCLUSION. ANYONE CAUGHT DISCUSSING THE WAR WILL BE ARRESTED AND QUARANTINED. I REPEAT, STOP DISCUSSING THE WAR.

The face vanished. The screen was blank. The television set turned off.

“See,” I said. “It’s starting.”

Mr. Shrink was blinking. His face was pale.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“They just censored the news.” I said. “Pretty soon there won’t be any more news. Then the other programs will go away. Television will cease.”

“You’re stark raving mad,” he said.

The television set came back on. The same bland angry face was there:

AS OF THIS MOMENT, ALL TELEVISION PROGRAMMING WILL STOP. THERE WILL ONLY BE GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS. WE ARE IN A CRISIS. WE WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED.

The set turned off.

The shrink sat down hard in his chair. He looked straight at me.

“What’s going on?” he said.

“Well, Doc,” I said, “apparently we’re all heading for the Void.”

“No!” he said. “There has to be television!”

“No,” I said. You’re off the mark there. There doesn’t have to be television. There only has to be government. Do you see? Government is the last stand against people being by themselves thinking their own thoughts.”

“What thoughts?” he said.

“Looks like we’re about to find out. But I don’t think it’s going to be pretty. Like I said, the war is only a television event. Without war, we all hit the Big Nothing. That’s where we’re just…wherever we are.”

“AND WHERE IS THAT?”

“In the reality that is finally real.”

He shook his head vigorously. I thought he was going to dislocate his spine.

“WE’VE GOT TO HAVE WAR SO WE CAN HAVE TELEVISION,” he said.

“Now you’re getting it,” I said. “When did that idea first occur to you? Was it just now…or was there a time, perhaps, in childhood when you realized it?”

He leaned back in his chair and took a deep breath and let it out.

“I remember when I was nine,” he said. “I was all alone in the house. My parents had gone down the street to see a neighbor. I didn’t want to go. I was sitting in the living room watching the news. I suddenly wondered what would happen if there wasn’t any news.”

“You mean you wondered what would happen if there was nothing newsworthy to report?”

He closed his eyes.

“No,” he said. “I just wondered what would happen to people if the news stopped.”

“And how did you feel when you had that thought?”

“I felt happy. I don’t know why. Then I felt guilty.”

“You felt guilty?” I said. “Why?”

He paused, then opened his eyes and looked at his hands.

“I think I felt guilty because I felt…powerless. I wanted to…invent my own news. I wanted to invent a completely different kind of news. But I didn’t think I could. The networks were too strong. I didn’t see how I could go up against them.”

“That’s interesting,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “It is. Even at that age, I saw we were all living in a bubble.”

“And war reinforces that bubble.”

“But,” he said, “war is real. People die.”

“Of course it is. Of course they do. But if they can’t put it on television, then what?”

He thought about it.

“Then we might wake up,” he said. “They’d keep killing lots of people and we’d wake up, and then something different would happen. I don’t know what it would be, but…”

He smiled. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a pistol. He checked the load and extended his arm. He fired three shots into the television set. The screen exploded.

He laid the gun down on the desk.

We sat there for a minute.

“Listen,” he said, “can I come back next week? Do you have an opening? Same day, same time?”

“Of course, Doc,” I said. “I’ll be here. But listen. Those psychiatric journals you keep stealing from the library? Try to ease off on that. I wouldn’t want you to be in jail and miss your appointment. Your parole officer is a bit of a hard-ass.”

He stood up and looked around the office.

“We might be getting somewhere,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “Good work today. See you next week.”

We had a long road ahead of us, but for the first time, I believed we were making progress.

Jon Rappoport is the author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails atwww.nomorefakenews.com

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How the White House and the CIA Are Marketing a War in the YouTube Era

Posted: 09/09/2013 8:04 am

Governments have always used fear and manipulation of emotion to get the public to support wars. The Bush administration did it in 2002 in Iraq and it is happening again in Obama’s push for war in Syria.

In possibly the biggest development yet in the story, we learned this weekend that the CIA has now been enlisted to sell this new war with unproven evidence. On Saturday, U.S. intelligence officials claimed they "authenticated" 13 videos that show the horrific aftermath of a chemical attack in Syria in August. What exactly did they "authenticate"?

Why are these videos suddenly news when they have been publicly circulating the web for weeks? Here’s why: The videos are meant to market the war, not to "prove" who committed the atrocities. (CBS News and others have reported that the White House case for war has been described as "largely circumstantial.")

We’ve seen this movie before and it doesn’t end well. A decade after the Bush administration used the CIA’s "yellow cake" tale and other faulty evidence, the government is yet again relying on the CIA to lead a domestic propaganda effort for military action abroad. If these videos can sway American public opinion, as they’re intended to do, and influence Congress to vote to attack Syria, this could become the first YouTube war.

No American could look at these horrifying videos of people suffering and dying and not be moved. But that doesn’t mean a military strike is the only way to respond to the humanitarian tragedy happening in Syria. So bald-faced is the rush to war that the White House could not restrain its anticipation that the videos could be successfully employed to market the war. As the Washington Post reported, "Administration officials and their congressional allies believe the horrific scenes depicted in the videos could help sway public opinion." But CNN, which broadcast portions of the grim videos this weekend, added thequalification that they could not independently authenticate them.

The release of these graphic videos is a cynical maneuver by the White House because the rest of the case for war remains unproven, with open questions about transcripts, satellite imagery and signal intelligence under the shield of classified information. What does it mean when the government’s case for war relies more on emotion than on evidence? Welcome to war marketing in the YouTube era.

Just as the White House would have us believe that others created the "red line," the administration has just shifted responsibility for the war onto the CIA, which is famous for the use of emotional and psychological warfare. To point to just one example, in the 1960s the Agency’s "Operation CHAOS" spied on American anti-war activists to try to disrupt and discredit opposition to the Vietnam War in order to sway public opinion against the anti-war movement.

This is the way intelligence seems to work lately: a classified sales pitch within a broader marketing plan. In an interview this weekend, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough acknowledged the administration’s case wasn’t 100%: "Do we have a picture or do we have irrefutable, beyond a reasonable doubt evidence? … This is not a court of law. And intelligence does not work that way," he said.

Actually there are laws against aggressive war and faked intelligence.

I personally witnessed this game in advance of the Iraq War. As a member of Congress, I sat in classified sessions where maps were ceremoniously produced, conjecture elevated, scenarios spun and "evidence" concocted, leading me to conclude that there was no legitimate case to attack Iraq, as I argued five months before the Iraq invasion.

The marketing of a war using the manipulation of the public’s emotion is wrong. Here are immediate remedies:

• We must insist that all information presented behind closed doors to advance a war be immediately declassified and released.
• Congress must demand that the CIA desist in promoting the war and investigate its role in this domestic propaganda campaign: Who demanded the CIA "authentication" and when? Which division of the CIA supplied it?
• Congress must recall for additional testimony from James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, who oversees the CIA.
• Congressional investigators need to demand the underlying intelligence supporting the "classified" briefings.
• There must be no war based on secret information.
• The administration must be made to account for any decisions they make to go to war.

Eleven years ago the American people were lied to in the cause of war. We can’t let it happen again.

Dennis J. Kucinich is a former 16-year member of Congress and two-time U.S. presidential candidate. Visit his website www.kucinichaction.com.

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Syria says it ‘welcomes’ Russian proposal on securing chemical weapons

View Photo Gallery — Syria situation brings protests, preparations: The possibility of a military strike by the United States and its allies against the Assad regime triggers demonstrations.

By Will Englund, Debbi Wilgoren and Karen DeYoung, Updated: Monday, September 9, 4:19 PME-mail the writers

MOSCOW — The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday said it welcomed a Russian proposal to avert U.S. military strikes by having Damascus turn over control of its chemical weapons to international monitors.

The statement by Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in Moscow offered the first indication that a diplomatic solution may be possible to the international standoff that has evolved since apparent chemical weapons attacks on rebel-held suburbs outside Damascus on Aug. 21.

In Washington, deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken told reporters Monday that the United States “would welcome a decision and action by Syria to give up its chemical weapons.” But he expressed skepticism that Syria would do so.

Hours earlier, in London, Secretary of State John F. Kerry sketched out a transfer-of-control scenario similar to the Russian proposal, then dismissed it, after being asked by a reporter whether there was anything that Assad could do to avoid an attack. “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay,” Kerry said. “But he isn’t about to.”

Kerry also sparked criticism by commenting that any U.S. strike would be “an unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”

Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton said after a meeting with President Obama that if Syria immediately surrenders its chemical weapons, “that would be an important step, but this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction.”

Last month’s reported chemical attacks, which the United States says killed more than 1,400 civilians, brought world-wide condemnation, as well as vows of military action by Obama, who had previously described the use of such banned weapons as a “red line.” But Russia, which is Syria’s chief patron, blocked efforts to generate a response by the U.N. Security Council. And the United States has struggled to build support for unilateral military strikes, although the White House announced Monday that 13 more countries have signed a statement holding the Syrian government responsible for last month’s attack.

On Monday, while meeting with Moualem, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his country would ask Syria to relinquish control of its chemical weapons to international monitors to prevent a U.S. strike. Lavrov also called on Syria to sign and ratify the Convention on Chemical Weapons, which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons.

“If the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country will avoid strikes, we will immediately begin working with Damascus,” Lavrov said. “We call on the Syrian leadership not only to agree on a statement of storage of chemical weapons under international supervision, but also to their subsequent destruction.”

Moualem said Syria “welcomes the Russian initiative,” but he did not say whether his country would agree to what Russia was asking. “We also welcome the wisdom of the Russian leadership, which is trying to prevent American aggression against our people,” Moulaem said.

In a White House news briefing, Blinken said, “We want to take a hard look at the proposal” and talk to the Russians about it. He noted that the international community has tried for 20 years to get Syria to sign on to the Chemical Weapons Convention and that Assad only last week refused to admit that he even has chemical weapons, “despite overwhelming evidence.”

He said U.S. intelligence believes that Assad ultimately controls the deployment of chemical weapons in Syria.

“We would welcome Assad giving up his chemical weapons and doing it in a verifiable manner,” Blinken said. He added that “unfortunately the track record to date” does not inspire confidence.

Kerry learned of the announcement before it was made, when he received a call from Lavrov about two hours into a flight to Washington from London, a senior State Department official said. Lavrov said Russia was “willing to engage” on the issue of weapons inspections and surrender of Syria’s chemical stocks, and he made specific reference to the possibility of U.S. action.

Kerry “expressed serious skepticism and said the United States was ‘not going to play games,’ ” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the conversation.

While Kerry told Lavrov the United States would consider a serious proposal, the official made clear that he did not consider the Russian statement Monday to be one.

Kerry “also made clear that [the Russian statement] cannot or will not be a reason to delay our efforts with Congress to authorize the president’s proposal” for a military strike, the official said.

Kerry “made clear that the Russians cannot go back to Syria and say this is a joint U.S.-Russian proposal,” the official said. “We have seen no details; we have seen no ‘proposal.’ ”

Kerry “still feels it is not possible” to arrange an adequate inspection and verifiable destruction of Syrian weapons in any reasonable time frame, the official added.

The official said the Obama administration had “batted around” in the past the idea of an ultimatum to Syria on giving up its chemical weapons, but that the idea had died internally when it was judged too complicated and likely to provoke Syrian subterfuge and delay.

Lavrov had also previously discussed the idea in conversations with Kerry, including a telephone call as recently as Thursday, the official said, but never in the context of the proposed U.S. military action.

Clinton, commenting on the situation in Syria during a speech at the White House on the fight against wildlife trafficking, said Assad’s “inhuman use of weapons of mass destruction against innocent men, women and children violates a universal norm at the heart of our global order, and therefore it demands a strong response from the international community led by the United States.”

She added: “The international community cannot ignore the ongoing threat from the Assad regime’s stockpiles of chemical weapons, whether they are used again against Syrian civilians, or transferred to Hezbollah or stolen by other terrorists. . . . The world will have to deal with this threat as swiftly and as comprehensively as possible. Now if the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control — as was suggested by Secretary Kerry and the Russians — that would be an important step, but this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction. And Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely or be held to account.”

The discussion about transferring control of those weapons could take place only “in the context of a credible military threat by the United States” to maintain pressure on Syria and its allies, Clinton said. She said she would continue to support Obama’s efforts, “and I hope that the Congress will as well.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a supporter of congressional authorization for U.S. strikes, said in a statement that she, too, would welcome the transfer and destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons.

“I believe that Russia can be most effective in encouraging the Syrian president to stop any use of chemical weapons and place all his chemical munitions, as well as storage facilities, under United Nations control until they can be destroyed,” she said.

Feinstein also noted to reporters that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and British Prime Minister David Cameron have already signaled support for the plan.

“I think if the U.N. would accept the responsibility of maintaining these [chemical weapons] facilities, seeing that they’re secure and that Syria would announce that it is giving up any chemical weapons programs or delivery system vehicles that may have been armed, then I think we’ve got something,” she said.

Asked about Kerry’s remarks earlier Monday, State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said Kerry was making a “rhetorical” point in the face of Assad’s long-standing intransigence. “His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons. Otherwise he would have done so long ago,” Psaki said. “That’s why the world faces this moment.”

Obama has said U.S. intelligence and video documentation clearly show the Syrian government was responsible for last month’s strikes, part of a bloody civil conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people in the past 2 1/2 years. Obama and Kerry are working to win enough support for congressional authorization of a strike.

In an interview Sunday with CBS News,Assad denied that his government had used chemical weapons and warned the United States not to get involved in another Middle Eastern war.

The Syrian dictator said Kerry’s effort to generate support for a strike reminded him of the “big lie” told in early 2003 by then-president George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, in justifying what became the U.S. war in Iraq. Powell based his argument for that war on claims that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction, which later proved false.

Kerry emphasized to reporters in London that any strikes ordered by the United States would be limited and would not resemble the lengthy actions in Iraq and Afghanistan that have left a legacy of public resentment.

“We’re not talking about war. We’re not going to war,” Kerry said, describing the proposed strikes as similar to action taken by then-president Ronald Reagan against Libya after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.

“We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground in any kind of prolonged effort, in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war,” Kerry said. “That is exactly what we’re talking about doing. An unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”

His words sparked a fresh round of criticism, however, from people who said that describing U.S. plans as “unbelievably small” and “limited” was hardly a good way to take a moral stand against actions the United States has said are untenable.

“Kerry says #Syria strike would be “unbelievably small” — that is unbelievably unhelpful,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on Twitter.

In London on Monday, both Kerry and British Foreign Secretary William Hague dismissed the idea that there was “still time” to avoid consequences for what Obama has called a “horrific” chemical weapons attack. “There can’t be a negotiated settlement if the Assad regime is allowed to eradicate the moderate opposition,” Hague said.

In Paris, a French defense official said France has intelligence that Assad’s “brother, cousins or nephew” might have ordered last month’s chemical weapons attack. Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential assessments, the official said France believes that the chemical strikes on the Damascus suburbs may have been launched because the Assad government feared “a powerful attack” by Syrian rebels armed with “new, more powerful weaponry” from abroad.

In the event of U.S.-led military action, the official said, France could conduct “very precise strikes without putting too many of our assets at risk.” He said France has cruise missiles that can be fired from planes roughly 30 to 40 miles from their targets.

However, he added, a Western attack “is taking an enormous risk. We are not fools.”

During his overseas trip, Kerry appears to have won backing from Saudi Arabia and Qatar for the idea of a U.S. military strike. He also generated additional support for a statement condemning the use of chemical weapons, holding Assad responsible for the strike and calling for a “strong international response.”

The statement was shepherded by the administration after the Group of 20 summit in Russia failed to agree on a common position on Syria last week. The initial signatories to the statement were Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, Britain and the United States. Germany signed a day later.

On Monday, the White House announced that Albania, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Honduras, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Morocco, Qatar, Romania and the United Arab Emirates had signed on as well.

The G-20 nations that did not sign the statement included Brazil, India and Indonesia, along with China and Russia, Assad’s principal arms supplier.

On Saturday, the 28-member European Union unanimously agreed to a similar statement. But neither document mentioned support for a military strike, and the E.U. said there should be no action against Syria until U.N. investigators who visited the site of the alleged chemical attack issue their report later this month. The administration has said the U.N. report is irrelevant because the investigators’ mandate is only to determine whether a chemical weapons attack occurred – which is not in dispute at this point – not who carried it out.

Although administration officials have indicated that they have wide allied backing for military intervention, the only other nations to publicly indicate support are Turkey and France, which said last week it wants to wait for the U.N. report. In Britain, Parliament rejected Prime Minister David Cameron’s request for authorization to join the United States in a military strike.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been among the leading arms suppliers to the Syrian rebels and have long backed unspecified direct foreign intervention in Syria. Although neither has said whether it would participate in a U.S.-led military strike, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad al-Attiyah said Sunday that his government was considering how it could be of assistance. Qatar sent bombers and other resources to aid the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011.

Speaking through an interpreter, Attiyah said that “the Syrian people over more than three years has been demanding or asking the international community to intervene.”

“Several parties that support the Syrian regime,” he said, have intervened in that country since the war began with an uprising against the government in 2011. He was apparently referring to Iran, Russia and Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite movement.

Assad, interviewed by Charlie Rose of CBS News in Damascus, said that “it had not been a good experience” for the American people “to get involved in the Middle East in wars and conflicts.” He added that “they should communicate to their Congress and to their leadership in Washington not to authorize a strike.”

Many of Assad’s comments, which were conveyed by Rose in a telephone report from Beirut on CBS’s “Face the Nation”ahead of their broadcast Monday, appeared designed to play on what opinion polls have shown is strong public opposition to U.S. intervention. The comments indicated that Assad is closely following media reports about the U.S. deliberations.

Rose said the Syrian president “denied that he had anything to do with the [chemical] attack. He denied that he knew, in fact, that there was a chemical attack. . . . He said ‘I can’t confirm or deny that we have chemical weapons.’ ”

“He suggested, as he has before, that perhaps the rebels had something to do” with the reported attack, Rose said, and he quoted the Syrian leader as saying there had been no evidence that he had used chemical weapons against his people.

If the Obama administration had evidence, he said, Assad suggested “they should show that evidence and make their case.”

Assad said that his forces “were obviously as prepared as they could be for a strike,” Rose reported, and that he was “very, very concerned” that an American attack would tip the military balance of the war in the rebels’ favor.

Syria won some indirect support of its own Sunday as Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in a Baghdad news conference with his Iranian counterpart that Iraq “will not be a base for any attack nor will it facilitate any such attack on Syria.”

Speaking during his first visit abroad since his appointment last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned that U.S. intervention in Syria risks igniting a regionwide war.

“Those who are shortsighted and are beating the drums of war are starting a fire that will burn everyone,” Zarif said.

DeYoung reported from London. Wilgoren reported from Washington. William Branigin in Washington, Michael Birnbaum in Berlin and Liz Sly in Beirut contributed to this report.

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US Refuses To Admit Checkmate By Russia And Syria, Redirects Purpose Of Military Incursion

Admits regime change intention

zerohedge.com
September 9, 2013

Following up on this morning’s shocking “appeasement” turn of events by Russia and Syria, the White House has promptly fired back in the only way it knows:

Yes – in Rwanda, Somalia and all those tens of other conflicts the US never got involved in because Qatari/Saudi petrodollar/gas interests were not involved.

With the mainstream media proclaiming last night’s Charlie Rose interview with Assad “propaganda”, the following headlines from a speech by national security advisors Susan Rice will frighten even the most “Miley Cyrus”-numb American:

• RICE SAYS OPENING DOOR TO CHEMICAL WEAPONS THREATENS U.S.
• RICE SAYS CHEMICAL WEAPONS COULD BE USED EVEN WITHIN THE U.S.
• RICE SAYS U.S. ALLIES BECOME `TEMPTING TARGETS’ IF NO RESPONSE
• RICE SAYS ASSAD ATTACK THREATENS GLOBAL SECURITY, U.S. INCLUDED

We can only imagine the ‘score’ underlying her words, which are getting scarier and louder with every verbal escalation…

• RICE SAYS SYRIA UNLEASHED `HELLISH CHAOS’ IN CHEMICAL ATTACK

and an ominous Carmina Burana ‘drum beat’, crescendoing with:

• RICE SAYS NOT RESPONDING MAY EMBOLDEN N KOREA, IRAN, TERRORISTS

So, it would appear, that a Syrian strike is no longer about preventing Assad from using weapons, as was the story until now, but deterring others from doing what Assad may or may not have done.

At the end of the day, the US will refuse to accept checkmate by being humiliated by grandmaster Putin in the world arena: it seems the decision is already made:

• RICE SAYS U.S. WOULD LIKE UN BACKING BUT IT WON’T HAPPEN

And finally, here is the admission after all. As expected, the whole point of this entire farce was to topple Assad and replace him with a pro-Syria, pro-Qatar, anti-Russia regime:

And if we were Iran we would be worried. Very worried. A false flag in which Tehran attacks Israel is coming any second:

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How Dare Assad Fight Back!

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
September 9, 2013

Syrian President Assad said he will respond to a US air strike! How dare he?

Assad should thank Obama for every humanitarian love bomb that falls on Damascus and beg for more!

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RT sources: Syrian rebels plan chem attack on Israel from Assad-controlled territories

RT
September 9, 2013

A chemical attack may be launched on Israel by Syrian rebels from government-controlled territories as a “major provocation,” multiple sources told RT.

Photo: FreedomHouse via Flickr

The report comes as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed that Syria puts its chemical weapons arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction in order to prevent a possible military strike against the war-torn republic.

Moscow also urged the Syrian authorities to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The offer has already been passed over to the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, who met Lavrov in Moscow for talks on Monday.

“We don’t know if Syria will accept the offer, but if imposing international control over chemical weapons stored in the country can help to avoid military strikes, we are immediately going to start working with Damascus,” Lavrov said.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has welcomed Moscow’s initiative, “based on the Syrian’s government care about the lives of our people and security of our country,” Muallem said later on Monday.

Meanwhile, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice made a statement saying that Damascus’ alleged “use of chemical weapons against its own people” posed threat to US national security. “The use of chemical weapons also directly threatens our closest ally in the region, Israel,” she said speaking at the New America Foundation in Washington.

The statement has come shortly after RT published a report about the possibility of a chemical provocation.

A few hours earlier, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that to avoid a military operation Syrian President Bashar Assad has a week to surrender control of “every single bit” of his stock of chemical weapons to the international community. “But he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done,” he added, speaking at a media conference in London, as he was wrapping up his European tour in a move to win support for the Obama-proposed “limited” strike against Syria.

The US Administration has blamed the Syrian government for the alleged chemical weapons use in the Damascus suburbs on August 21. Washington has maintained it has the intelligence to prove it, but has so far refused to make public a single piece of concrete evidence that would link the Assad regime to the deadly incident.

On Sunday, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee released a series of 13 videos showing what is purported to be proof of the use of chemical weapons in Syria. The disturbing images of the victims of the alleged attack were earlier shown during a closed-door briefing to a group of senators, as Obama is trying to get authorization from Congress for the military strike on Syria. The administration told senators that the authenticity of the videos was verified by the intelligence community, reported CNN, which first aired the graphic material.

The videos depict scenes of convulsing children, men vomiting and struggling to breathe and, also what appeared to be dozens of dead bodies wrapped up in white sheets, lying side by side. But they still do not provide an answer to the question of who was behind the attack. The Syrian government and the opposition forces point the finger of blame at each other.

It also remains unclear as to why exactly President Assad would order a chemical attack at a time when a group of UN experts were carrying out an investigation in the country.

There is proof the footage of the alleged chemical attack in Syria was fabricated, Mother Agnes Mariam el-Salib, mother superior of the St. James Monastery in Qara, Syria, told RT. She added that she plans to submit her findings to the UN.

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Rand Paul Challenges Senate to Not Start World War Three

“I will not vote to send my son, you son, or anyone’s daughter to fight for stalemate”

Infowars.com
Sept. 9, 2013

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, one of Congress’s more recent proponents of foreign non-interventionism, has written a letter to his fellow Congressmen explaining why he’s voting no on going to war with Syria, as well as encouraging them all to do the same.

“[War] should never be the first option. It should occur only when America is attacked or threatened, or when American interests are attacked or threatened,” Paul declares in his letter.

“I will not vote to send my son, you son, or anyone’s daughter to fight for stalemate,” Paul says, as he lays out why pursuing a war would be foolish, if not altogether illegal.

Read and share Paul’s letter below:

Rand Paul letter

Rand Paul letter

Paul recently floated the possibility of conducting another filibuster before a formal Senate vote on Syrian military intervention.

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Obama hits new low on foreign policy in CNN polling

Posted by

CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser

September 9th, 2013

Washington (CNN) – One day before President Barack Obama gives a prime time speech to make his case against Syria, a new national poll indicates the president’s approval rating on foreign policy has hit an all-time low. And only three in ten approve of how he is handling Syria.

But according to a CNN/ORC International survey, the number of Americans who approve of how Obama is handling his job in general remains steady.

Only four in ten approve of the job Obama is doing on foreign policy, with 57% of those questioned giving the president a thumbs down. The 40% approval rating on foreign policy is Obama’s lowest level ever on that issue in CNN polling.

The CNN poll’s Monday release comes as the president sits down for interviews with the country’s major broadcast and cable news networks, including CNN, to push for congressional authorization for U.S. military action to punish the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for allegedly using chemical weapons against its own citizens.

"President Obama’s approval rating on foreign affairs has continued its steady decline – from 54% in January to 49% in April, 44% in June, and just 40% now," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "This may be a troubling sign for a president who in past polls had always scored his highest ratings for his handling of foreign affairs."

Specifically on Syria, only 31% of the public approves of the president’s policies and actions, with 63% giving him a thumbs down. Four in ten Democrats say they disapprove of the job Obama’s doing on Syria, with 54% saying they approve.

There is a wide partisan divide on this question, with only 26% of independents and just nine percent of Republicans approving of how Obama is handling the situation in Syria, which is suffering through two years of a bloody civil war between government forces and various rebel factions.

"The number of Democrats who disapprove of how the president’s handling Syria may cause problems for the White House," adds Holland. "Given his low approval scores on Syria among independents and Republicans, the 40% of Democrats who disapprove may mean there is no base to rally on this key issue."

The president’s overall approval rating stands at 45%, with 52% saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing in the White House. The 45% approval rating is unchanged from CNN’s previous poll, which was conducted in June.

"An unchanged overall approval rating perhaps comes as a surprise to some observers, but arguably the unpopularity of military action against Syria is balanced by the fact that the public wanted the president to consult with Congress before taking action on Syria, and that’s exactly what he did," adds Holland.

The 45% approval rating is not Obama’s lowest mark in CNN polling. His all-time low was a 43% approval rating in September of 2011.

The poll also indicates the president’s approval rating on the economy stands at 43% on the economy, 42% on health care, and 36% on the budget deficit, all basically unchanged from earlier this year.

While the president’s overall approval rating is nothing to brag about, it’s still soars above Congress. According to the CNN poll, only one in five give federal lawmakers a thumbs up on the job they’re doing on Capitol Hill, with 78% saying they disapprove.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International September 6-8, with 1,022 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

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Why Wont MONSANTO Just Die and Go Away and take the TPP with Them

Monsanto Leading Super-Secret ‘Above Congress’ Obama Trade Scheme To Outlaw GMO Labeling Worldwide

Mike Adams
Natural News
September 9, 2013

It’s called the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), and it’s a super secret trade pact being negotiated completely outside of law, with no congressional authority but with the aim of forcing nations around the world to ban GMO labeling, embrace Monsanto’s GMO crops and keep pharmaceutical prices artificially high to enrich the world’s medication monopolists.

A purely executive creation of the Office of the United States Trade Representative — i.e. created outside of law with zero public accountability — the TPP involves White House loyalists running around the world, strong-arming over a dozen nations into signing on to a corporate domination agreement knowingly misnamed “free trade.”

Details of the TPP are so secret that even members of Congress are not allowed to review them or disclose them. What we know about the TPP has only come from leaks, as the full text of the entire agreement is being kept not only from Congress but also the American people. Yet over 600 corporate CEOs — including CEOs of companies that have been repeatedly found guilty of felony crimes in America — have been allowed to influence the details of the TPP agreements. Monsanto, Wal-Mart and Big Pharma corporations are reportedly given top influence positions in this super-secret Obama organization that hands the future of the world over to the most evil corporations of all time.

GMO labeling to be illegal, generic drugs to be all but shut down

The countries currently involved in the TPP include the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. More are being bullied into signing the agreement with each passing month. Although the exact language of the TPP is a tightly-protected secret, it is reported that the TPP will require:

• Dropping of all bans on GMOs. All countries signing the TPP must allow GMOs to be grown in their country and secretly used throughout the food supply — all GMO labeling will be outlawed.

• Shutting down all generic drug manufacturers who make “copycat” drugs that compete with the monopoly patents of top U.S. drug makers.

• Redefining resistance against GMOs as “anti-free trade practices” that can result in economic sanctions against nations that attempt to ban GMOs.

• The outlawing of “Fair Use” of copyrighted material. Anyone using an image, a short video clip, an audio clip, etc., would be criminalize and possibly arrested and imprisoned under the TPP.

• Flooding the U.S. market with polluted, unsafe food products from nations that have virtually no enforcement of regulations on pesticides and herbicides. As Nationofchange.org reports, “[Corporations] are carefully crafting the TPP to ensure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.”

• Banning people from using the internet if they engage in Fair Use of copyrighted material. This would shut down virtually the entire alternative media, many blogs, and silence most critics of the global corporate cabal.

• Forcing member nations to criminalize small-scale copyright infringement such as someone sharing a music file with a friend. Domineering copyright enforcement provisions are being influenced by the MPAA which has also been given extraordinary influence over the language of the TPP.

• Vastly reducing banking regulations, allowing criminal banksters to steal even more money globally while facing no repercussions for their actions. “The agreement would also be a boon for Wall Street and its campaign to water down regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis,” writes Wallach in the NY Times. “Among other things, it would practically forbid bans on risky financial products, including the toxic derivatives that helped cause the crisis in the first place.”

Essentially, take every criminal corporation you can imagine, make a list of all their most evil priorities to dominate and enslave humankind, and write them all down. That’s the TPP. It is the executive enforcement of a totalitarian wish list of corporate evil to dominate and enslave humankind. (No wonder Obama doesn’t want you to be able to read it…)

Maybe this is why the TPP is being referred to as the “Death Star” of our modern economy.

Learn more about the TPP in this video:

Or see more videos about the TPP here:
http://www.exposethetpp.org/TPPMedia2.html

Monsanto, GMOs and how the TPP would forbid GMO labeling globally

The best information on the GMO side of all this comes from a site called Nation Of Change. This pagedescribes the implications of the TPP on GMOs and how the TPP would globally ban GMO labeling:

• The labeling of foods containing GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) will not be allowed. Japan currently has labeling laws for GMOs in food. Under the TPP Japan would no longer be able to label GMOs. This situation is the same for New Zealand and Australia. In the US we are just beginning to see some progress towards labeling GMOs. Under the TPP GMO labels for US food would not be allowed.

• In April 2013, Peru placed a 10-year moratorium on GMO foods and plants. This prohibits the import, production and use of GMOs in foods and GMO plants and is aimed at safeguarding Peru’s agricultural diversity. The hope is to prevent cross-pollination with non-GMO crops and to ban GMO crops like Bt corn. What will become of Peru’s moratorium if the TPP is passed?

Read more at:
http://www.nationofchange.org/trans-pacific-…

Big handout to Big Pharma

Under the terms of the TPP, drug companies could force member nations to keep drug costs artificially high, thereby enriching the profits of Big Pharma. The TPP Timeline reveals that PhRMA, the lobby group representing the top drug companies and vaccine manufacturers, has special influence over the TPP.

As written in the NY Times, “Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as ‘advisers,’ have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Under the [TPP] agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal.”

The intellectual property provisions of the TPP are also a big handout to Big Pharma. They allow drug companies to shut down generic drug manufacturers that are currently keeping medication costs low in many member nations. Under the TPP, drug companies like Merck would be able to enforce global monopoly pricing, even across poor nations where the costs of a month’s medications would vastly exceed a typically monthly income.

But that’s how Big Pharma operates: the goal of the entire industry is to extract as much human wealth from the planet as possible, regardless of the true cost in human suffering or global chemical pollution from pharmaceutical manufacturing.

All this could be forced upon the world without even a debate in Congress. “Mr. Obama wants the agreement to be given fast-track treatment on Capitol Hill,” write Wallach and Beachy in the NY Times. “Under this extraordinary and rarely used procedure, he could sign the agreement before Congress voted on it. And Congress’s post-facto vote would be under rules limiting debate, banning all amendments and forcing a quick vote.”

“The secrecy of the Trans-Pacific Partnership process represents a huge assault on the principles and practice of democratic governance. That is untenable in the age of transparency, especially coming from an administration that is otherwise so quick to trumpet its commitment to open government.”

In another op-ed published in the Bangkok Post, Wallach writes “Another leaked portion of the TPP text would take aim at policies to control medicine costs. Pharmaceutical companies are among the firms enjoying privileged access to TPP negotiators as official ‘advisers’. They have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Their goal is to keep their already unaffordably high profit margins up. One leaked TPP text reveals terms that would allow pharmaceutical firms to challenge the measures that the US government uses domestically to negotiate lower medicine costs for Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ health programmes.”

Learn more at: www.citizen.org/TPP

So secret that even Congress is not allowed to see it

The federal government of the USA has, of course, become a super-secret corporate mafia that answers to no one. So when it came time to create the TPP and force U.S. corporate imperialism upon the nations of the world, Congress was left completely out of the loop. The TPP was dreamed up entirely by the executive branch without a single vote ushering it into existence. It answers to no law and has zero transparency. No representative of the People votes on its provisions. There is no oversight. There is no recourse for the public to challenge its language. The TPP exists utterly outside the boundaries of government and of U.S. law, including the Constitution.

“This is astounding, given that the US Constitution provides Congress exclusive authority over trade policy,” writes Wallach in the Bangkok Post.

This idea of total secrecy with zero oversight from Congress or the public is to offensive to the fundamental ideas of democracy that 132 members of Congress signed on to this letter demanding transparency over the language of the TPP. The letter was utterly ignored by the Obama administration, once again proving it is willing to sell out the American people for corporate interests.

“While the agreement could rewrite broad sections of nontrade policies affecting Americans’ daily lives, the administration also has rejected demands by outside groups that the nearly complete text be publicly released,” write Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy in a NY Times op-ed.

“This covert approach is a major problem because the agreement is more than just a trade deal. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports,” they add.

In another op-ed published in the Bangkok Post, Wallach writes, “A big-business-dominated group of more than 600 official US trade ‘advisors’ enjoy privileged access to TPP texts and negotiators.

Congressman declares TPP as “assault on democratic government”

After years of attempts by members of Congress to even see the TPP, finally one congressman was able to review only a few select sections of the agreement. That congressman’s name is Alan Grayson.

He immediately characterized it as an “assault on democratic government.” Watch his video here.

The Obama administration threatened Grayson if he tried to release any of the information he saw by calling the TPP “classified” information. (Yeah, national security and all that.) This is, of course, a runaway abuse of power by the federal government as well as yet another use of the police state secrecy tactics that have already made our government utterly unaccountable to the People. When the government doesn’t want the public to see something it’s doing, it simply slaps the “classified” label on the project and proceeds to engage in wild, runaway criminality with absolutely no repercussions.

“What I saw was nothing that could possibly justify the secrecy that surrounds it,” Grayson said. “It is ironic in a way that the government thinks it’s alright to have a record of every single call that an American makes, but not alright for an American citizen to know what sovereign powers the government is negotiating away.”

“Having seen what I’ve seen, I would characterize this as a gross abrogation of American sovereignty,” Grayson told HuffPost. “And I would further characterize it as a punch in the face to the middle class of America. I think that’s fair to say from what I’ve seen so far. But I’m not allowed to tell you why!”

Read some of the leaked text from the TPP here:
http://tppinfo.org/resources/leaked-texts-co…

Or learn more about the TPP at:
http://www.exposethetpp.org

Take action

If you wish, you may sign this online petition organized by Public Knowledge
http://www.publicknowledge.org/Tell-White-Ho…

Public Citizen also hosts their own petition on the subject. Check it out here:
http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action3/comm…

Chemtrail Poisons Killing Us All

Chemtrail Poisons Are Ruining Your Health From Above, And You May Not Know It

Christina Sarich
Infowars.com
September 9, 2013

If aluminum deodorants and anti-perspirants aren’t good for us, how can chemtrails being sprayed in our neighborhoods be benign? Geo-engineering, otherwise known as chemtrails, have been exposed by numerous alternative news outlets, reporters, and documentaries such as What in the World Are They Spraying? In this important piece of social activism, we can learn how we are being sprayed with huge amounts of aluminum, strontium, and barium, among with other health-wreaking chemicals against our will, and without our consent.

Chemtrails: Confirmed and Denied

The government continues to lie to us about the existence of weather-ownership via geo-engineering, but Congress is planning to legalize Bills like Senate Bill 1807 and U.S. House Bill 3445, along with the Climate Security Act (Also known as the Lieberman-Warner bill, bill number S. 2191 ) which was not passed in 2007 when it was introduced, but is up for a vote again. On the surface it looks smart and snappy – a greenhouse gas reduction bill to reduce emissions to below 2005 levels, however, Rosalind Peterson explains the true malicious intent behind these bills:

“These bills are designed to sell out the health and welfare of the people of the United States in order to establish a national and international Cap & Trade Money Market Scheme, and under Section 6E, “…initiate programs to “mitigate” the impacts of any unavoidable global climate change…” These bills have nothing to do with “Climate Security”. They are designed to fleece the American people out of billions of their tax dollars to support a questionable “market scheme of carbon trading” by selling “emission allowances” to polluters to allow them to pollute more in the future.”

Just one of the chemicals being sprayed profusely in chemtrails, aluminum, causes all sorts of health problems. The chemical attacks the nervous system, primarily, and cause everything from disturbed sleep, nervousness, emotional instability, memory loss, headaches, and impaired even impaired intellect. Whether this is an intentional or accidental side effect of chemtrails spraying remains to be uncovered.

Soil and water samples are being tested at the top of Mt. Shasta, California, and in Siskiyou County, for example, and the aluminum levels are high enough to kill a moose. The levels are “off the charts” with the highest reading so far at 4,610 times the maximum contaminate level for drinking water in the sunny state. A recent snow sample taken form Ski Bowl on Mt. Shasta showed 61,000 ug/L, 61 times the maximum contaminant level for aluminum in drinking water.

Even the minimal use of aluminum deodorants and anti-perspirants can cause the back up of lymph nodes – fluids aren’t able to move through the body and cause breakouts along the temples and neck. Prolonged exposure to aluminum at high levels, such as those being sprayed across the sky, can also cause:

– Brain degeneration

– Impede the bodies ability to digest calcium, phosphorous and fluoride.

– Prevent bone growth and lessens bone density.

– Cause aching muscles

– Speech problems

– Anemia

– Digestive issues

– Impaired liver function

– Impaired kidney function

– Colic in babies

Barium is also a chemical being found in heavily sprayed areas. According to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention, (CDC):

“Ingestion of certain forms of barium (e.g., barium carbonate or barium fluoride) in toxic amounts can lead to gastrointestinal signs and symptoms (e.g., vomiting, abdominal pain, and watery diarrhea). Within 1–4 hours of ingestion, profound hypokalemia and generalized muscle weakness can develop which may progress to paralysis of the limbs and respiratory muscles. Severe hypokalemia induced by barium toxicity can cause ventricular dysrhythmias (1-7).”

In addition to exposure to aluminum and barium, we are also being poisoned with Strontium-90. While this statement may take your breath away – chemtrails are taking your breath away. Strontium-90 is used as a radioactive tracer in medical studies and in studies of agricultural crops. It is also used in beacons for navigating, remote weather stations and space vehicles. Strontium-90 is used in electron tubes to treat eye diseases and as a radiation source in industrial thickness gauges, but it was never meant to be inhaled, or consumed through water and soil.

If this compound dissolves in water, the chemical will dissolve in the moist surface inside the lungs. Strontium will then enter the blood quickly. If the chemical form of strontium does not dissolve in water easily, a small amount may remain in the lungs. Health problems can develop including lowered red blood cell counts including anemia, which causes excessive tiredness, blood that does not clot properly, and a decreased resistance to fight disease.

We need to start detoxing these chemicals being dumped on our heads every day. Stratospheric aerosol spraying, also called geo-engineering, or chemtrails, are not good for anyone’s health. When coupled with GMO monopolies, non-organic foods, the consideration by the US government to forcibly make us take vaccines, and the push for ever more pharmaceuticals instead of natural treatments, it is anyone’s guess what is really going on at the top.

Originally appeared at Natural Society.

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Chemtrails: An Obvious Overhead Pollutant Ignored and Denied

by Paul Fassa
April 21st, 2013

Have you ever seen those long smoke-lines in the sky and wondered what they are? Some may be jet vapor contrails, but others are known as chemtrails. Most of the population doesn’t know, but these trails, loaded with heavy metals that have been measured in the water and air at several different worldwide locations, are actually a threat to your health.

Contrails are the result of jet engine vapors condensing into tiny ice particles at high altitude. They are usually not very dense and evaporate quickly. They never extend from one side of the sky to the other, not even close! These trails are dense and linger, often from horizon to horizon, sometimes widening to form streaky clouds.

As more have reported the chemtrail phenomena to government agencies, the usual cover story is that they’re being sprayed as part of a geoengineering effort to slow down global warming, or they’re conducting military drills with releasing streams of metallic particulates to confuse radar.

They are cover stories. So what are they covering? Mainstream media thoroughly ignores or debunks it. Congressman Dennis Kucinich seemed to have caught wind of the hazards of geoengineering for weather control.

He tried to into introduce a bill called the Space Preservation Act in 1997 and 2001, mostly intended to stop Star War projects. Within it the word chemtrails appeared as an item to be banned. The bill went nowhere. Most congressmen are ignorant of the issue or afraid to ask, just like the media.

The denial of something so apparent is outrageous. After looking into chemtrails for yourself, ask anyone to look up if you see them and watch them go into denial as well. Sometimes both contrails and chemtrails appear simultaneously, making it easier to differentiate.

So now that we know they exist, it’s important to recognize the dangers of chemtrails.

Consider the Hazards from Chemtrails

Readings taken after chemtrail episodes from air traps, water traps, ground and snow samples vary slightly from location to location, but they usually contain small particulates or nanoparticles of aluminum, barium, strontium, and sometimes ethylene dibromide or EDB, often called dibromoethane, an EPA banned fuel additive.

Consider that these particulates fan out at high altitudes and fall onto the ground invisibly, affecting foliage, forests, crops, rivers and lakes, animals, and humans. Many aware conservationists and environmentalists are aware of the chemtrail damage to our biosphere.

Breathing nanoparticles of toxic metals into the lungs bypasses our primary immune system’s defenses. These substances make their way into the blood directly from the lung’s capillaries. And aluminum gets through the blood-brain barrier. But don’t worry; Monsanto has patented aluminum resistant seeds. How did they know that was needed? Strange.

Just a couple of years ago, an Arizona resident collected certified medical blood test documents from seriously ill Arizonians and sent them to various State and Federal elected officials demanding an investigation. The blood sample documents showed extremely high amounts of either barium or aluminum or both. None of those people worked or had worked with hazardous materials containing those items. Some were retired.

In the past couple of decades, death from respiratory disease in the US have been increasing. Asthma rates have more than doubled in the western world and Alzheimer’s’ disease and autism spectrum disorders have risen dramatically.

Barium can be linked to multiple diseases including respiratory diseases and aluminum to neurological afflictions.

Even if you’re not directly affected by these nanoparticles from chemtrails, your immune system is adversely affected and forced to work overtime with yet more environmental and food pollutants and toxins, leaving you more prone to infectious and autoimmune diseases. And in any case, if the soil is affected (which it is) you are affected.

There are many groups and individuals doing what they can to bring awareness to government agencies. But this operation’s lid is sealed.

If you’re new to this and curious, start checking out those jet trails and notice the difference between contrails and chemtrails. You can Google chemtrails, aerosol spraying, or geoengineering for more resources and sites with photos and videos. Try to sidestep the usual debunking shills and trolls, but without disregarding all the information. It’s important to look at everything from multiple angles to get a better understanding.

Protecting Yourself

Despite all the efforts of individuals and small groups as well as documentaries, nothing gets done about this toxic elephant in the sky. So you have to protect yourself by detoxing often.

A mineral water product called Volvic, available at Whole Foods and online, has been used to remove aluminum from the brain. The recommended regimen is 1.5 liters daily for five days. And there are other ways to remove heavy metals from the body, including professional chelation and do-it-yourself solutions.

Consider consuming these 6 foods for heavy metal chelation or utilizing these 7 tips for detoxing and cleansing the body. Food grade activated charcoal is yet another detox agent that can be used.

Additional Sources:

YouTube – Documentary in seven parts

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/chemtrails-obvious-overhead-pollutant-ignored-denied/#ixzz2eQ8CBcSI
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SYRIA SYRIA SYRIA 08/09/2013

4 Questions for Supporters of a Strike Against Syria

Washington’s Blog
September 8, 2013

Ask anyone still thinking of supporting an attack on Syria to explain why the U.S. started supporting the Syrian opposition years before any uprising had occurred there.

And ask them to explain why 4-Star General Wesley Clark was told – right after 9/11 – that Pentagon officials planned to attack 7 countries in 5 years … including Iraq, Libya and Syria:

I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September.

***

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

And ask them why this planning of regime change in Syria and 6 other countries started by 1991 at the latest:

It came back to me … a 1991 meeting I had with Paul Wolfowitz.

***

In 1991, he was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy – the number 3 position at the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a 1-Star General commanding the National Training Center.

***

And I said, “Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm.”

And he said: “Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”

(Skip to 3:07 in the following video)

And ask them why the US and British governments considered using a false flag attack 50 years ago to topple the Syrian regime.

There are many other good questions as well, such as:

– Why would we attack when bombing Syria will only strengthen the hardliners … and harmAmerica’s national security?

– Why attack when the top U.S. military commander says that an attack would be both risky and expensive, and he can’t even say why we’d go to war with Syria?

– Why attack when everyone from troops and military officers to Pentagon war planners all oppose an attack on Syria ?

– Why attack when Congress members who have seen the classified intelligence aren’t even convincedthat the Syrian government used chemical weapons?

– Why attack when the U.S. and Britain have used chemical weapons in the last 10 years … and the U.S. supported the largest chemical weapons attack in history?

– Why attack when the attack itself would be a larger war crime even than chemical weapons use (here, here and here)?

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Alex Jones on Fox News: Rebels More Likely to be Behind Chemical Weapons Attack

Infowars.com
September 8, 2013

Alex appears on Geraldo at Large to discuss Syria.

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The West Dethroned

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
September 8, 2013

“The European race’s last three hundred years of evolutionary progress have all come down to nothing but four words: selfishness, slaughter, shamelessness and corruption.”
Yan Fu

It only took the rest of the world 300 years to catch on to the evil that masquerades as “western civilization,” or perhaps it only took the rise of new powers with the confidence to state the obvious. Anyone doubtful of America’s responsibility for the evil needs to read The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick.

The “New American Century” proclaimed by the neoconservatives came to an abrupt end on September 6 at the G20 meeting in Russia. The leaders of most of the world’s peoples told Obama that they do not believe him and that it is a violation of international law if the US government attacks Syria without UN authorization.

Putin told the assembled world leaders that the chemical weapons attack was “a provocation on behalf of the armed insurgents in hope of the help from the outside, from the countries which supported them from day one.” In other words, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Washington–the axis of evil.

China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Indonesia, and Argentina joined Putin in affirming that a leader who commits military aggression without the approval of the UN Security Council puts himself “outside of law.”

In other words, if you defy the world, Obama, you are a war criminal.

The entire world is waiting to see if the Israel Lobby can push Obama into the role of war criminal. Many are betting that Israel will prevail over the weak American president, a cipher devoid of all principle. A couple of decades ago before the advent of the American sheeple, one of the last tough Americans, Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly declared that “no US president can stand up to Israel.” America’s highest ranking military officer could not get an honest investigation of the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.

We are yet to see an American president who can stand up to Israel. Or, for that matter, a Congress that can. Or a media.

The Obama regime tried to counter its smashing defeat at the G20 Summit by forcing its puppet states to sign a joint statement condemning Syria. However the puppet states qualified their position by stating that they opposed military action and awaited the UN report.

Most of Obama’s bought-and-paid-for “supporters” are impotent, powerless. For example Obama counts the UK as a supporting country because of the personal support of the discredited UK prime minister, David Cameron, despite the fact that Cameron was repudiated by the British Parliament in a vote that prohibits British participation in another of Washington’s war crimes. So, although Cameron cannot bring the British people and the British government with him, Obama counts the UK as a supporter of Obama’s attack on Syria. Clearly, this is a desperate count of “supporting countries.”

The Turkish puppet government, which has been shooting its peacefully demonstrating citizens down in the streets, with no protest from Obama or the Israel Lobby, supports “holding Syria accountable,” but not itself, of course, or Washington.

The puppet states of Canada and Australia, powerless countries, neither of which carry one ounce of world influence, have lined up to do the bidding of their Washington master. The entire point of having the top government job in Canada and Australia is the payoff from Washington.

The Obama cipher also claims the support of Japan and the Republic of Korea, another two countries devoid of all diplomatic influence and power of any kind. Helpless Japan is on the verge of being destroyed by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, for which it has no solution. As the radiation leaks spread into the aquifer upon which Tokyo and surrounding areas rely, Japan is faced with the possibility of having to relocate 40 million people.

Saudi Arabia, implicated in the transfer to al-Nusra rebels of the chemical weapons used in the attack, supports Washington, knowing that otherwise its tyranny is toast. Even the neoconservatives headed by Obama’s shrill National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, want to overthrow the Saudis.

Obama claims also to have support from France and Germany. However both Hollande and Merkel have stated clearly that a diplomatic solution, not war, is their first choice and that the outcome rests on the UN.

As for Italy and Spain’s support, both governments are hoping to be rewarded with the Federal Reserve printing enough dollars to bail out their indebted economies so that both governments are not overthrown in the streets for their acquiescence to the looting of their countries by international banksters. Like so many Western governments, those of Italy and Spain, and, of course, Greece, support the international banksters, not their own citizens.

The president of the European Commission has declared that the European Union, the central overlord over Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, does not support a military solution to the Syrian Crisis. “The European Union is certain that the efforts should be aimed at a political settlement,” Jose Manuel Barroso told reporters at the G20 meeting. The EU has the power to issue arrest warrants for the heads of EU governments that participate in war crimes.

What this reveals is that the support behind the liar Obama is feeble and limited. The ability of the Western countries to dominate international politics came to an end at the G20 meeting. The moral authority of the West is completely gone, shattered and eroded by countless lies and shameless acts of aggression based on nothing but lies and self-interests. Nothing remains of the West’s “moral authority,” which was never anything but a cover for self-interest, murder, and genocide.

The West has been destroyed by its own governments, who have told too many self-serving lies, and by its capitalist corporations, who offshored the West’s jobs and technology to China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil, depriving the Western governments of a tax base and the support of its citizens.

It is difficult to know whether citizens in the West hate their corrupt governments any less than do Muslims, whose lives and countries have been devastated by Western aggression, or than do citizens of third world countries who have been impoverished by being looted by predatory First World financial organizations.

The idiot Western governments have pissed away their clout. There is no prospect whatsoever of the neoconservative fantasy of US hegemony being exercised over Russia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, South America, Iran. These countries can establish their own system of international payments and finance and leave the dollar standard whenever they wish. One wonders why they wait. The US dollar is being printed in unbelievable quantities and is no longer qualified to be the world reserve currency. The US dollar is on the verge of total worthlessness.

The G20 Summit made it clear that the world is no longer willing to go along with the West’s lies and murderous ways. The world has caught on to the West. Every country now understands that the bailouts offered by the West are merely mechanisms for looting the bailed-out countries and impoverishing the people.

In the 21st century Washington has treated its own citizens the way it treats citizens of third world countries. Untold trillions of dollars have been lavished on a handful of banks, while the banks threw millions of Americans out of their homes and seized any remaining assets of the broken families.

US corporations had their taxes cut to practically nothing, with few paying any taxes at all, while the corporations gave the jobs and careers of millions of Americans to the Chinese and Indians. With those jobs went US GDP, tax base, and economic power, leaving Americans with massive budget deficits, a debased currency, and bankrupt cities, such as Detroit, which once was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.

How long before Washington shoots down its own homeless, hungry, and protesting citizens in the streets?

Washington represents Israel and a handful of powerful organized private interests. Washington represents no one else. Washington is a plague upon the American people and a plague upon the world.

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Congress Members Who Have Seen Classified Evidence About Syria Say It Fails to Prove Anything

Classified Syria Intelligence Fails to Prove Assad Used Chemical Weapons

Washington’s Blog
September 8, 2013

The administration’s public case for chemical weapons use by the Syrian government is extremely weak, and former high-level intelligence officers say that publicly-available information proves that the Syrian government likely did not carry out the chemical weapons attacks.

The Obama administration claims that classified intelligence proves that it was the Assad government which carried out the attacks.

But numerous congressional members who have seen the classified intelligence information say that it is no better than the public war brief … and doesn’t prove anything.

Congressman Justin Amash said last week:

What I heard in Obama admn briefing actually makes me more skeptical of certain significant aspects of Pres’s case for attacking

He noted yesterday, after attending another classified briefing and reviewing more classified materials:

Attended another classified briefing on #Syria & reviewed add’l materials. Now more skeptical than ever. Can’t believe Pres is pushing war.

And today, Amash wrote:

If Americans could read classified docs, they’d be even more against #Syria action. Obama admn’s public statements are misleading at best.

Congressman Tom Harkin said:

I have just attended a classified Congressional briefing on Syria that quite frankly raised more questions than it answered. I found the evidence presented by Administration officials to be circumstantial.

Congressman Michael Burgess said:

Yes, I saw the classified documents. They were pretty thin.

Yahoo News reports:

New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, for instance, left Thursday’s classified hearing and said she was opposed to the effort “now so more than ever.”

“I think there’s a long way to go for the president to make the case,” she said after the briefing. “It does seem there is a high degree of concern and leaning no.”

Senator Joe Manchin announced he was voting “no” for a Syria strike right after hearing a classified intelligence brieifng.

Congressman Alan Grayson points out in the New York Times:

The documentary record regarding an attack on Syria consists of just two papers: a four-page unclassified summary and a 12-page classified summary. The first enumerates only the evidence in favor of an attack. I’m not allowed to tell you what’s in the classified summary, but you can draw your own conclusion. [I.e. it was no more impressive than the 4-page public version.]

On Thursday I asked the House Intelligence Committee staff whether there was any other documentation available, classified or unclassified. Their answer was “no.”

The Syria chemical weapons summaries are based on several hundred underlying elements of intelligence information. The unclassified summary cites intercepted telephone calls, “social media” postings and the like, but not one of these is actually quoted or attached — not even clips from YouTube. (As to whether the classified summary is the same, I couldn’t possibly comment, but again, draw your own conclusion.)

***

And yet we members are supposed to accept, without question, that the proponents of a strike on Syria have accurately depicted the underlying evidence, even though the proponents refuse to show any of it to us or to the American public.

In fact, even gaining access to just the classified summary involves a series of unreasonably high hurdles.

We have to descend into the bowels of the Capitol Visitors Center, to a room four levels underground. Per the instructions of the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, note-taking is not allowed.

Once we leave, we are not permitted to discuss the classified summary with the public, the media, our constituents or even other members. Nor are we allowed to do anything to verify the validity of the information that has been provided.

And this is just the classified summary. It is my understanding that the House Intelligence Committee made a formal request for the underlying intelligence reports several days ago. I haven’t heard an answer yet. And frankly, I don’t expect one.

***

By refusing to disclose the underlying data even to members of Congress, the administration is making it impossible for anyone to judge, independently, whether that statement is correct.

The rush to war based upon skewed intelligence is very similar to Iraq.

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US: The Indispensable (Bombing) Nation

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Yes We Scan. Yes We Drone. And Yes We Bomb. The White House’s propaganda blitzkrieg to sell the Tomahawking of Syria to the US Congress is already reaching pre-bombing maximum spin – gleefully reproduced by US corporate media.
And yes, all parallels to Iraq 2.0 duly came to fruition when US Secretary of State John Kerry pontificated that Bashar al-Assad "now joins the list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein" as an evil monster. Why is Cambodia’s Pol Pot never mentioned? Oh yes, because the US supported him.
Every single tumbleweed in the Nevada desert knows who’s itching for war on Syria; vast sectors of the industrial-military complex; Israel; the House of Saud; the "socialist" Francois Hollande in France, who has wet dreams with Sykes-Picot. Virtually nobody is lobbying Congress NOT to go to war.
And all the frantic war lobbying may even be superfluous; Nobel Peace Prize winner and prospective bomber Barack Obama has already implied – via hardcore hedging of the "I have decided that the United States should take military action" kind – that he’s bent on attacking Syria no matter what Congress says.
Obama’s self-inflicted "red line" is a mutant virus; from "a shot across the bow" it morphed into a "slap on the wrist" and now seems to be "I’m the Bomb Decider". Speculation about his real motives is idle. His Hail Mary pass of resorting to an extremely unpopular Congress packed with certified morons may be a cry for help (save me from my stupid "red line"); or – considering the humanitarian imperialists of the Susan Rice kind who surround him – he’s hell bent on entering another war for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the House of Saud lobby under the cover of "moral high ground". Part of the spin is that "Israel must be protected". But the fact is Israel is already over-protected by an AIPAC remote-controlled United States Congress. [1]
What about the evidence?
The former "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" are doing their part, enthusiastically supporting the White House "evidence" with a dodgy report of their own, largely based on YouTube intel. [2]
Even Fox News admitted that the US electronic intel essentially came from the 8200 unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) – their version of the NSA. [3] Here, former UK ambassador Craig Murray convincingly debunks the Israeli intercepted intel scam.
The most startling counterpunch to the White House spin remains the Mint Press News report by AP correspondent Dale Gavlak on the spot, in Ghouta, Damascus, with anti-Assad residents stressing that "certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack”.
I had a jolt when I first read it – as I have been stressing the role of Bandar Bush as the dark arts mastermind behind the new Syria war strategy (See Bandar Bush, ‘liberator’ of Syria, Asia Times Online, August 13, 2013).
Then there’s the fact that Syrian Army commandos, on August 24, raiding "rebel" tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar, seized a warehouse crammed with chemicals required for mixing "kitchen sarin". The commando was hit by some form of nerve agent and sent samples for analysis in Russia. This evidence certainly is part of President Vladimir Putin’s assessment of the White House claims as totally unconvincing.
On August 27, Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), told Reuters the attack was "aimed at framing Assad”. And in case the UN inspectors found the "rebels" did it, "everybody would forget it". The clincher; "Are they are going to punish the Emir of Qatar or the King of Saudi Arabia, or Mr Erdogan of Turkey?"
So, in a nutshell, no matter how it happened, the locals in Ghouta said Jabhat al-Nusra did it; and Syrian Kurds believe this was a false flag to frame Damascus.
By now, any decent lawyer would be asking cui bono? What would be Assad’s motive – to cross the "red line" and launch a chemical weapons attack on the day UN inspectors arrive in Damascus, just 15 kilometers away from their hotel?
This is the same US government who sold the world the narrative of a bunch of unskilled Arabs armed with box cutters hijacking passenger jets and turning them into missiles smack in the middle of the most protected airspace on the planet, on behalf of an evil transnational organization.
So now this same evil organization is incapable of launching a rudimentary chemical weapons attack with DIY rockets – a scenario I first outlined even before Gavlak’s report. [4] Here is a good round-up of the "rebels" dabbling with chemical weapons. Additionally, in late May, Turkish security forces had already found sarin gas held by hardcore Jabhat al-Nusra jihadis.
So why not ask Bandar Bush?
We need to keep coming back over and over again to that fateful meeting in Moscow barely four weeks ago between Putin and Bandar Bush. [5]
Bandar was brazen enough to tell Putin he would "protect" the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. He was brazen enough to say he controls all Chechens jihadis from the Caucasus to Syria. All they needed was a Saudi green light to go crazy in Russia’s underbelly.
He even telegraphed his next move; "There is no escape from the military option, because it is the only currently available choice given that the political settlement ended in stalemate. We believe that the Geneva II Conference will be very difficult in light of this raging situation."
That’s a monster understatement – because the Saudis never wanted Geneva II in the first place. Under the House of Saud’s ultra-sectarian agenda of fomenting the Sunni-Shi’ite divide everywhere, the only thing that matters is to break the alliance between Iran, Syria and Hezbollah by all means necessary.
The House of Saud’s spin du jour is that the world must "prevent aggression against the Syrian people". But if "the Syrian people" agrees to be bombed by the US, the House of Saud also agrees. [6]
Compared to this absurdity, Muqtada al-Sadr’s reaction in Iraq stands as the voice of reason. Muqtada supports the "rebels" in Syria – unlike most Shi’ites in Iraq; in fact he supports the non-armed opposition, stressing the best solution is free and fair elections. He rejects sectarianism – as fomented by the House of Saud. And as he knows what an American military occupation is all about, he also totally rejects any US bombing.
The Bandar Bush-AIPAC strategic alliance will take no prisoners to get its war. In Israel, Obama is predictably being scorned for his "betrayal and cowardice" in the face of "evil". The Israeli PR avalanche on congress centers on the threat of a unilateral strike on Iran if the US government does not attack Syria. As a matter of fact congress would gleefully vote for both. Their collective IQ may be sub-moronic, but some may be led to conclude that the only way to "punish" the Assad government is to have the US doing the heavy work as the Air Force for the myriad "rebels" and of course jihadis – in the way the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, the Kurdish peshmerga in Iraq and the anti-Gaddafi mercenaries in Libya duly profited.
So here, in a nutshell, we have the indispensable nation that drenched North Vietnam with napalm and agent orange, showered Fallujah with white phosphorus and large swathes of Iraq with depleted uranium getting ready to unleash a "limited", "kinetic" whatever against a country that has not attacked it, or any US allies, and everything based on extremely dodgy evidence and taking the "moral high-ground".
Anyone who believes the White House spin that this will be just about a few Tomahawks landing on some deserted military barracks should rent a condo in Alice in Wonderland. The draft already circulating in Capitol Hill is positively scary. [7]
And even if this turns out to be a "limited", "kinetic" whatever, it will only perpetuate the chaos. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has referred to it as "controlled chaos". Not really; the Empire of Chaos is now totally out of control.

**************************

Depravity Redefined: Selling US Slaughter in Syria

Tony Cartalucci
Infowars.com
September 8, 2013

The corporate interests driving the United States, its resources, and policy, have invoked dead children in the latest and grisliest propaganda campaign yet, directed at the American public to build support for an otherwise unjustified and universally unwanted war with Syria.

Image: The Summer of 1939, after staging border incidents to frame Poland for unwarranted aggression, Hitler orders the Nazi invasion of Poland. This would not be the first or last time a Western nation used a manufactured “casus belli” to start a war of aggression, now considered a Nuremberg offense and a crime against world peace.

The headline of CNN’s “First on CNN: Videos show glimpse into evidence for Syria intervention,” suggests that by watching the grotesque videos, some sort of evidence exists to justify an assault on Syria. Instead, the videos only show yet again, the crime, and only the crime – a crime which no one, including the Syrian government, denies occurred. What is missing, as has been the case since the US leveled accusations against the Syrian government on August 21, 2013, is any evidence at all as to who actually committed this crime.

Even upon reading the US’ own assessments of the incident reveal there is no evidence. The best the US can say is [emphasis added]:

The United States Government assesses with high confidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013.

Assessing with “high confidence” is not enough to execute a single criminal within the US justice system, yet somehow is enough to justify a military assault on a sovereign nation on the other side of the planet, whichposes no threat to the United States, and will inevitably lead to the death of Syrian soldiers and civilians, while assisting sectarian extremists, many of whom openly pledge allegiance to Al Qaeda. At face value, the US has no case against Syria, and no credibility after habitually using equally tenuous evidence as justification for military assaults against Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and beyond.

That CNN is using dead children as “evidence” indicates that the dubious media outlet is attempting to manipulate the American public on the most visceral emotional level possible to sell a war the corporate interests CNN represents desires.

CNN and other Western outlets, have been caught overtly fabricating stories throughout the subversion of Syria, starting in 2011 when they disingenuously portrayed the flooding of Syria with armed extremists as the “Arab Spring,” up to and including featured interviews with “Syria Danny,” who was later revealed to be staging gun fire in the background of theatrical (and fabricated) casualty reports given to CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

Exploiting dead children to manipulate the public emotionally enables the US to circumvent not only its absolute lack of evidence, but hopefully the myriad of logical conclusions an otherwise rational, intelligent person might draw.

Regarding US Claims

US Claim #1: The Syrian “Regime” Used Chemical Weapons in a Desperate Bid to Save Damascus.

Reality: The US claims in its assessment that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in a desperate struggle for Damascus:

The Syrian regime has initiated an effort to rid the Damascus suburbs of opposition forces using the area as a base to stage attacks against regime targets in the capital. The regime has failed to clear dozens of Damascus neighborhoods of opposition elements, including neighborhoods targeted on August 21, despite employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems. We assess that the regime’s frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision to use chemical weapons on August 21.

Yet it appears that mostly women and children were the victims of the attack – apparently killed in the middle of the night while they slept.

The US and its collaborators expect the world to believe: that the Syrian government risked using chemical weapons in Damascus, under the nose of UN inspectors, to clear out stalwart “opposition” fighters, and only managed to mass murder women and children in the process while giving the West a long-desired justification for military intervention. And despite “employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems” and allegedly also sarin nerve gas, the Ghouta area was still under terrorist control after the attack.

It should be noted that Ghouta is on the very edge of Damascus, facing open country that stretches to the Al Qaeda infested Syrian-Iraqi border and the extremist hotbed of Al Anbar province in Iraq – implicating another, and the most likely culprit, Al Qaeda.

US Claim #2: The “Opposition” Lacks the Capabilities to Carry Out Such an Attack.

Reality: The US, in its assessment states:

We assess that the scenario in which the opposition executed the attack on August 21 is highly unlikely. The body of information used to make this assessment includes intelligence pertaining to the regime’s preparations for this attack and its means of delivery, multiple streams of intelligence about the attack itself and its effect, our post-attack observations, and the differences between the capabilities of the regime and the opposition.

The “opposition” in Syria is Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda allegedly carried out the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, destroying three (including Building 7) World Trade Center towers in New York City and striking at the very heart of America’s trillion dollar military might, the Pentagon itself – killing in a single day nearly 3,000 using nothing more than box-cutters, pepper spray, and 4 commandeered aircraft.

The US State Department since the very beginning of the violence has acknowledged that the most prominent fighting group operating inside Syria is Al Qaeda, more specifically, the al Nusra front. The US State Department’s official press statement titled, “Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qa’ida in Iraq,” states explicitly that:

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

It is also confirmed that many fighters joining al Nusra come from abroad, including from the recently decimated Libya, where a significant arsenal of chemical weapons have fallen into the hands of a sectarian extremist government which is openly funding and arming terrorists in Syria.

The US and its collaborators expect the world to believe: that despite Al Qaeda having struck at the very heart of US military might, after circumventing a trillion dollar defense system of unprecedented capabilities, it is now somehow incapable of obtaining and using against civilians, chemical weapons – a scenario the US has warned the world of and in fact, used as justification for invading Iraq in 2003. Either we’ve been lied to about the official explanation regarding 9/11, or we’ve been lied to about the capabilities of Al Qaeda in Syria – or more likely, both.

Conclusion

Clearly, at face value, none of what the US proposes regarding the alleged chemical attacks in Syria is rational. The propaganda rolled out against Syria is poorly retreaded lies from the illegal, abhorrent Iraq invasion and occupation and the more recent NATO atrocities committed against the Libyan people who are still suffering from NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” there.

What does it mean when the combined, multi-trillion dollar defense and intelligence resources of the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others are categorically incapable of providing a single shred of credible evidence to make their case? That evidence does not exist? Or that it does, but simply points the finger unfavorably in another direction?

Without actual evidence of who committed the crimes showcased on CNN, the first and most important question that must be answered is “cui bono?” – or – to whose benefit? Clearly, the chemical attacks carried out under the nose of UN inspectors, leaving shocking images of dead women and children used to manipulate the public on an emotional level, benefits the special interests driving US, British, European, and Arab policy. These are the same interests who in 2007 openly conspired to initiate a sectarian bloodbath to drown Lebanon, Syria, and Iran – a documented conspiracy being realized in full, beginning in 2011.

The danger of a Syrian government surviving the insidious machinations of Western special interests and restoring order in a unified Syria is an unacceptable outcome for Washington, London, Paris, Riyadh, and Tel Aviv. The unprecedented impetus behind this unpopular, universally opposed war with Syria reeks of desperation and a corporate-financier axis that has used and abused all of its tricks one too many times.

Whatever the outcome in Syria may be, these corporate-financier interests have exposed themselves and have long-since resigned their legitimacy. All that they do now, they do in the open, against the will of the world, amidst growing dissent, and against the background of a socio-technological paradigm shift undermining their institutions and international rackets permanently. However vigorously these interests appear to be digging their grave, it is still, ultimately a grave.

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No law will stop Obama’s democracy-bombs over Syria

Nile Bowie is a political analyst and photographer currently residing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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Published time: September 05, 2013 13:47

US President Barack Obama (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad)

Regardless of how Congress votes, Obama is going to attack Syria. The president is doing his best to avoid constructive dialogue when the focus should be international law, not ‘international norms’ as defined by Washington.

As world leaders descend on the Russian city of St. Petersburg to discuss global tax regimes and international trade, this year’s G20 Summit is really a G20+1, with an extra seat allocated for the massive elephant in the room.

Many of the leaders attending have brought along their foreign ministers, as the summit will also informally serve as a global platform to discuss the sorry state of affairs in Syria. One can only speculate as to the substance of any exchanges between President Putin and his American counterpart and forced smiles will be in no short supply.

“He is lying and knows he is lying. It’s sad,” said Putin, of John Kerry’s address to the US Congress. That about sums it up – the lies and deceit of the Obama administration are so breathtaking, so innumerable, and they’re being trumpeted knowingly and shamelessly. Want a taste of highly moral and ethical narrative being championed in favor of “the Syrian people?” Look no further than the New York Times, with its recent headline “Bomb Syria, Even If It Is Illegal,” which argues that Obama and his poodles should “declare that international law has evolved and that they don’t need Security Council approval to intervene in Syria."

The establishment press is calling for blood, and they’re claiming the moral high ground while doing it – slightly pathological? You bet. The insane are really running the asylum on this one.

The Russians have been pushing for Geneva II with focused perseverance, but Barry and his flesh-eating rebels aren’t going to let that happen – not without a substantial sprinkling of Tomahawk cruise missiles over Damascus at the very least. The trigger-happy White House, with the most sophisticated military arsenal in the history of man, has demonstrated that it is unwilling to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts its cooker-cutter narrative – it is not open to reasoned arguments, and so the world yet again faces a dangerous precedent due to US intransigence.

To the surprise of many, the British parliament made clear that it would not drink the Cameron kool-aid, and even Ban Ki-moon chimed in to remind the Commander-in-Chief that the use of force is only legal in self-defense or with Security Council authorization.

Members of CodePink, Tighe Barry (L) and Medea Benjamin (2nd L) protest as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (R) arrives at a hearing on "Syria: Weighing the Obama Administration’s Response" before the House Foreign Affairs Committee September 4, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP )

Air Force One flies above the law

International law? Pssh! Obama knows his bombs-for-peace program isn’t going to get past Russia and China, and in the absence of a unified coalition of the willing, he’s been forced to seek approval from Congress to maintain the façade of legitimacy.

When reading in-between the lines, it’s clear that the Obama administration will proceed with an attack on Syria whether Congress gives the green light or not – in all likelihood, Congress will vote ‘Yes’. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has broken its silence on Syria, and called for war.

Unfortunately, Congress can be bought and be sure that lobbyist dollars are being dealt out faster than you can say ‘Jabhat al-Nusra’ to seal the vote. “Emperor” Obama insists that he is not required to consult Congress to seek approval for his Syrian adventure, but did so anyway after receiving a letter from more than 160 members of the House of Representatives reminding him that to take the country to war without congressional approval is an impeachable offense, which doesn’t exactly bode well for his credentials as a constitutional lawyer.

And what about the evidence? The US government insists that it has “high confidence” that the Assad regime used chemical weapons, and that the evidence is so compelling that Washington is willing to go to war – before the UN team of chemical weapon experts have yet to make a determination. If you question this narrative, you are a conspiracy theorist. But what about the UN’s commission of inquiry led by Carla Del Ponte that implicated the rebels with using chemical weapons in Khan al-Assal? What about the Russian reports that claim the projectiles were crudely produced and clearly not military grade or consistent with the weapons in Assad’s stockpiles? What about reports that rebel forces were caught with cylinders of sarin nerve gas in southern Turkey near the Syrian border? As far as Obama is concerned, all of that has already been sent down the memory hole. It’s not the media’s job to present this information in a balanced and unbiased way, its only function is to sell war and educate the public about the benefits of twerking, as displayed by Miley Cyrus last week, stealing the headlines on CNN as US warships amassed in the Mediterranean.

A picture downloaded on September 4, 2013 from the US Navy website and taken on September 3, 2013 shows an F/A-18C Hornet assigned to the Blue Diamonds of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 146 launching off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the Red Sea. (AFP Photo)

Nobody believes the “limited strike” assurances

Just as in Iraq, the war on Syria is being sold as “limited strike” designed to hasten the rebel advance, but the original draft resolution for military intervention that Congress is set to vote on suggests otherwise. The wording of the text is so broad that Obama could virtually get away with anything he pleases. For example, the phrase “The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” is deliberately vague. The intentional legal ambiguousness of the text raised eyebrows in Congress (clearly the executive branch was trying to pull a fast one) so much so that Kerry was forced to prohibit "boots on the ground," which he argued against on the grounds of Obama having options if Syria "imploded".

If there is a real danger of Syria imploding, which it very well might under a sustained campaign of US aggression, then the limited strike rhetoric should be seen as what is it – empty assurances designed to rubber stamp the war as quickly as possible.

The drive to military intervention in Syria is transparently a move to topple the legal authorities in Damascus. If that happens, it would create a power vacuum that would immediately destabilize the country and pit dozens of warring factions against one another as they vie for power – Syria explodes. Al-Qaeda and other jihadi militias will declare caliphates all over Syria while persecuting Alawite minorities and Assad loyalists. The instability could lead to the fracturing of Syria under ethnic and sectarian lines into several smaller states, and the chaos would swallow the currently war-torn and destabilized Iraq.

The toppling of Assad is a transparent declaration of war against Hezbollah and Iran and could lead to a major regional conflict that would kill large numbers of people. In essence, nothing about this situation indicates that it will be limited. Moreover, the United States has few strategic benefits here, while Saudi Arabia and Israel are dragging Washington by the nose into this conflict. When Kerry recently testified in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he divulged that the House of Saud and Qatar even offered to bankroll the whole US operation in Syria – tough bargain for cash-strapped Washington hawks to pass up!

A handout image released by the Syrian opposition’s Shaam News Network on July 29, 2013, shows an aerial view of destruction in the al-Khalidiyah neighbourhood of the central Syrian city of Homs. (AFP Photo/Shaam News Network)

Obama wears rainbow suspenders

Few have speculated about the recent “joint” missile launch conducted by the US and Israel, which was first denied, then classified as an atmospheric rocket for scientific research purposes, and finally it was admitted to be a test launch of a military rocket.

Nobody, not even NATO, was informed about it and the sketchy cover story only heightens suspicions. The Pentagon eventually admitted that the launch was carried out with technical support from the US Defense Department. This incident was probably not a legitimate Israeli missile defense system test – a launch during the incredibly tense situation in the region suggests a quality of psychological warfare and panic creation, but ultimately the Americans were measuring the preparedness and response of the Syrians to an unannounced missile launch.

Either way, the move was entirely reckless, but nothing else can be expected from Washington and Tel Aviv. As Putin said, the US is lying and it knows it’s lying. The US has fueled the Syrian conflict from the beginning under the euphemistic guise of “democracy promotion” – first by training and financing anti-Assad activists, and once they built momentum in Syria, arms and foreign fighters began pouring in.

The Syrian conflict could not have reached this point without a steady influx of aid from the US, via its stooges in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar. Is it really worth it to pass the point of no return by setting off a powder keg in the region? The human losses thus far could pale in comparison to what would follow in a wider regional war. The further destruction of lives, of culture, and even of the Syrian state as it exists is what will follow.

If Washington was serious about peace, it would have called off the rebels and channeled all of its diplomatic muscle into Geneva II, and it would cooperate with Russia, the other largest stakeholder in this conflict. Obama could have met with Putin during this G20 Summit to bridge the differences and put effort behind a political solution, but no.

Obama will use his trip to Russia to meet with gay activists, a childish gesture that is entirely political – a weak attempt to stick it to Putin for his stance on various issues. Meeting with activists and members of civil society is not wrong in and of itself, but the fact that Obama chose to meet with LBGT activists at a time when his cooperation with Putin is most needed on Syria is a move that speaks volumes. Obama is demonstrably doing everything possible to avoid any attempts to make peace through dialogue.

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