Exclusive: Despite President Trump’s well-known trouble with the truth, his White House now says “trust us” on its Syrian-sarin charges while withholding the proof that it claims to have, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
After making the provocative and dangerous charge that Russia is covering up Syria’s use of chemical weapons, the Trump administration withheld key evidence to support its core charge that a Syrian warplane dropped sarin on a northern Syrian town on April 4.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis welcomes Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman to the Pentagon, March 16, 2017. (DoD photo by Sgt. Amber I. Smith)
A four-page white paper, prepared by President Trump’s National Security Council staff and released by the White House on Tuesday, claimed that U.S. intelligence has proof that the plane carrying the sarin gas left from the Syrian military airfield that Trump ordered hit by Tomahawk missiles on April 6.
The paper asserted that “we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence,” but then added that “we cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods.”
I’m told that the key evidence was satellite surveillance of the area, a body of material that U.S. intelligence analysts were reviewing late last week even after the Trump-ordered bombardment of 59 Tomahawk missiles that, according to Syrian media reports, killed seven or eight Syrian soldiers and nine civilians, including four children.
Yet, it is unclear why releasing these overhead videos would be so detrimental to “sources and methods” since everyone knows the U.S. has this capability and the issue at hand – if it gets further out of hand – could lead to a nuclear confrontation with Russia.
In similarly tense situations in the past, U.S. Presidents have released sensitive intelligence to buttress U.S. government assertions, including John F. Kennedy’s disclosure of U-2 spy flights in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Ronald Reagan revealing electronic intercepts after the Soviet shoot-down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983.
Yet, in this current case, as U.S.-Russian relations spiral downward into what is potentially an extermination event for the human species, Trump’s White House insists that the world must trust it despite its record of consistently misstating facts.
In the case of the April 4 chemical-weapons incident in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which reportedly killed scores of people including young children, I was told that initially the U.S. analysts couldn’t see any warplanes over the area in Idlib province at the suspected time of the poison gas attack but later they detected a drone that they thought might have delivered the bomb.
A Drone Mystery
According to a source, the analysts struggled to identify whose drone it was and where it originated. Despite some technical difficulties in tracing its flight path, analysts eventually came to believe that the flight was launched in Jordan from a Saudi-Israeli special operations base for supporting Syrian rebels, the source said, adding that the suspected reason for the poison gas was to create an incident that would reverse the Trump administration’s announcement in late March that it was no longer seeking the removal of President Bashar al-Assad.
President Trump at a news conference with Jordan’s King Abdullah II on April 5, 2017, at which the President commented on the crisis in Syria. (Screen shot from whitehouse.gov)
If indeed that was the motive — and if the source’s information is correct — the operation would have been successful, since the Trump administration has now reversed itself and is pressing Russia to join in ousting Assad who is getting blamed for the latest chemical-weapons incident.
Presumably, however, the “geospatial intelligence” cited in the four-page dossier could disprove this and other contentions if the Trump administration would only make its evidence publicly available.
The dossier stated, “Our information indicates that the chemical agent was delivered by regime Su-22 fixed-wing aircraft that took off from the regime-controlled Shayrat Airfield. These aircraft were in the vicinity of Khan Shaykhun approximately 20 minutes before reports of the chemical attack began and vacated the area shortly after the attack.”
So, that would mean – assuming that the dossier is correct – that U.S. intelligence analysts were able to trace the delivery of the poison gas to Assad’s aircraft and to the airfield that Trump ordered attacked on April 6.
Still, it remains a mystery why this intelligence assessment is not coming directly from President Trump’s intelligence chiefs as is normally the case, either with an official Intelligence Estimate or a report issued by the Director of National Intelligence.
The photograph released by the White House of President Trump meeting with his advisers at his estate in Mar-a-Lago on April 6, 2017, regarding his decision to launch missile strikes against Syria.
The White House photo released late last week showing the President and a dozen senior advisers monitoring the April 6 missile strike from a room at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida was noteworthy in that neither CIA Director Mike Pompeo nor Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was in the frame.
Now, it is the White House that has released the four-page dossier supposedly summing up the assessment of the “intelligence community.”
An Argumentative Dossier
The dossier also seems argumentative in that it assumes that Russian officials – and presumably others – who have suggested different possible explanations for the incident at Khan Sheikdoun did so in a willful cover-up, when any normal investigation seeks to evaluate different scenarios before settling on one.
It is common amid the “fog of war” for people outside the line of command – and even sometimes inside the line of command – to not understand what happened and to struggle for an explanation.
On April 6, before Trump’s missile strike, I and others received word from U.S. military intelligence officials in the Middle East that they, too, shared the belief that the poison gas may have resulted from a conventional bombing raid that ruptured containers stored by the rebels, who – in Idlib province – are dominated by Al Qaeda’s affiliate and its allies.
Those reports were cited by former U.S. intelligence officials, including more than two dozen who produced a memo to President Trump urging him to undertake a careful investigation of the incident before letting this crisis exacerbate U.S.-Russia relations.
The memo said “our U.S. Army contacts in the area” were disputing the official story of a chemical weapons attack. “Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died,” the memo said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing the audience at a concert for Palmyra, Syria, via a satellite link on May 5, 2016, after the ancient city was liberated from the Islamic State. (Image from RT’s live-streaming of the event)
In other words, to suggest possible alternative scenarios is not evidence of a “cover-up,” even if the theories are later shown to be erroneous. It is the normal process of sorting through often conflicting initial reports.
Even in the four-page dossier, Trump’s NSC officials contradicted what other U.S. government sources have told The New York Times and other mainstream news outlets about the Syrian government’s supposed motive for launching the chemical-weapons attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun.
According to the earlier accounts, the Syrian government either was trying to terrorize the population in a remote rebel-controlled area or was celebrating its impunity after the Trump administration had announced that it was no longer seeking Assad’s removal.
But the dossier said, “We assess that Damascus launched this chemical attack in response to an opposition offensive in northern Hamah Province that threatened key infrastructure.” Although Khan Sheikhoun was not near the fighting, the dossier presented the town as an area of support for the offensive.
Assuming this assessment is correct, does that mean that the earlier explanations were part of a cover-up or a propaganda operation? The reality is that in such complex situations, the analyses should continue to be refined as more information becomes available. It should not be assumed that every false lead or discarded theory is proof of a “cover-up,” yet that is what we see here.
“The Syrian regime and its primary backer, Russia, have sought to confuse the world community about who is responsible for using chemical weapons against the Syrian people in this and earlier attacks,” the dossier declared.
But the larger point is that – given President Trump’s spotty record for getting facts straight – he and his administration should go the extra mile in presenting irrefutable evidence to support its assessments, not simply insisting that the world must “trust us.”
[In a separate analysis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Postol, a national security specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, concluded that the White House claims were clearly bogus, writing:
“I have reviewed the document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017.
“In fact, a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4. This conclusion is based on an assumption made by the White House when it cited the source of the sarin release and the photographs of that source. My own assessment, is that the source was very likely tampered with or staged, so no serious conclusion could be made from the photographs cited by the White House.”]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Well, Mr. Robert Parry, has it occurred to you that their is a legitimate reason for them to not release the source? You journalists are famous for not releasing the names of your confidential informants. Don’t you think that it’s possible that by releasing the source it might be jeopardizing the informant or even jeopardizing national security? So why don’t you do your patriotic duty and keep your nose out of things that are sensitive to this country’s security? And for God’s sake stop publishing clearly biased opinions aimed at committing character assassination and further pushing the division existent in our country. What’s more important?
It’s easy to hide something when it’s not there to begin with.
Even if it were true that they had satellite pictures of a Syrian warplane flying over the area around the time the attack is reported by the White Helmets to have taken place, how is that evidence one way or the other that that plane dropped a bomb with the chemical agent. Has the agent been identified? Has any trustworthy investigator been able to penetrate to the area where the attack was supposed to have taken place? Conceivably there could be COMINT making a connection and showing culpability, but in the absence of that or a chemical analysis of residual traces at Khan Sheikhoun it doesn’t seem possible to prove a connection.
Why no mention of the composition of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapon’s Executive Council which the UN resolution in the investigation of the sarin gas attack in Syria called for, and Russia vetoed?.
It is a kangaroo court of epic proportions dominated by the US and its allies, like France, Germany, Italy, the UK. and Latvia. while Russia and its allies aren’t even on it.
May I post one thought dear to my heart. Many intetelligent comments from very learned people on this site are borderline arcane in their thinking. Whatever happened with the Romans, the Ming Dinasty, the Japanese, and the generals planning in WW1, and WW2 are false and misleading historical concepts for the modern era. Those trained 50 years in War Colleges and West Point are but a blip in history. Nuclear has changed many, if not most of their expertise from a half century ago and yet people seem to quote them even today. Aggression is not defense.
It’s a new ara people and the successes NATO has was against near defenseless countries. Please keep this in mind when a 60 yr old Genereral spouts on Fox News about the conditions in the world. Please remember times have changed and enjoy your chocolate malted at the drugstore as you age and not read, but only react. Blessings apond the ignorant and illiterate in this country. It’s time to re-learn what you only suppose is true.
I am at a loss for words. What this nation is doing under the guise of self-defense is incomprehensible. The U.S. mainstream media is not only biased; it is an enormous propaganda machine that hides the truth from Americans and supports without question any false flag
operation, no matter how crude or how obvious.
Lies,cover up of lies, fabricating narratives upon narratives, for what reason? For what purpose? The fact that both Russia and China have arrived at their respective positions of national developement and both desire good relations,even partnerships, in major areas of human economic developement says alot. Yet that is not being discussed by mainstream media and we’ll known electronic media. Why is that? Is forcing Russia into submission to the decaying west more important than admitting their own systemic collapse? The collapsing British System of London and Wall Street is the dynamic that drove the British stooge Obama to push for war and is the same reason for maneuvering an impressionable and reactionary Trump who before this incident was all for restoring productive relations with Russia and China; for abandoning “regime change” as US policy. President Trump must go before the American people and confess his crime. The majority will forgive him.
This has all the marks of a false flag operation by the deep state to keep us in a state of perpetual war. Who benefits? Assad already has Isis and rebels on the run. The tide has turned. Territory is being liberated from Islamic extremists. Why risk the universal condemnation of the world for gassing his own people? Who benefits by gassing Syrians? War is a racket. There is a lot of money to be made from continuous war by the deep state. They just have to use their “presstitutes” in the media to put out the narrative favoring regime change and more war. Blame Assad for it so we can go over there and take him out.
Have we not learned anything from the disasters of Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya and Egypt? How is America going to win Syria’s civil war? America sure did a great job of wining Iraq’s civil war. Same for Afghanistan, Libya and Egypt. Are the people of those countries better off today than before we decided they needed regime change?
In order to “withold” an information, you first must have it!
BEG your JEW friends and your PEERS PLEASE PLEASE NO MORE 911’s on the poor citizens of the USA!
PS:GIVE them MEXICAN SLAVES for stopping the TERRORISM!
land in SYRIA ANYTHING THEY DEMAND!
PLEASE MR.PRESIDENT TRUMP !!!!!
BEG your JEW friends BEG them for some little SOMETHING for the USA!
PLEASE PLEASE!!! Mr.PRESIDENT OF ALL THE US CITIZENS BEG and PLEAD with your ISRALIE JEWS and YOUR PEERS for some tiny little CRUMBS for the USA!!!
Here is an impeccable article that disallows any further accusations of Assad/Russia using chemical weapons. A must-read:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/dereliction_of_duty_redux_20170412
good link…longish, but thorough investigation and analysis
http://watch.pair.com/schacht.html
Seer — Two “words:” Jared Kushner — Look at how this guy is magically ascending the rungs of power.
::
George Soros Backed Jared Kushner Venture Cadre With $250 Million
It turns out that George Soros is the money behind a new real estate venture called Cadre which was founded by Donald Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner and his brother Joshua Kushner.
The Real Deal has uncovered the fact that George Soros was the man who provided Cadre with a $259 million line of credit. A source told the publication, “Soros has had a long and productive relationship with the Kushner family.”
http://jewishbusinessnews.com/2017/01/31/george-soros-backed-jared-kushner-venture-cadre-250-million/
::
Kushner is being groomed for something huge — possibly president of the World Bank?
Also of interest is the presents of *LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES* within Kushner’s building at 666 Fifth Ave.
Former CEO of Lucent was one Henry Schacht whose father was among the cadre of Wall Street banker/funders/supporters of Nazi Germany in the run up to WW2.
::
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/Trading_Enemy_excerpts.html
::
Lucent Tech has a very dark side vis-a-vis connection to surveillance apparatus; (RFID chips, AT&T, Nokia, etc.).
It’s strange to me how all the Jew haters blame Israel for all these wars yet the end result is that the Islamic jihadists are stronger than ever. We now have Muslim Albania in NATO. Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria…the whole freaking world has turned into jihadist enclaves and yet people blame the jews.
Google ” Carpe Chaos “.
I have never met a “Jew-hater” have you? There are certainly many who see that it is zionists and Israel that bribe the US to get into these wars for Israel. Most funding for most political campaigns in the US comes from zionists. Like other racist Jews, you pretend that it is racist to oppose the destruction of democracy by racists.
Jihadism is obviously largely due to the racism of Israel. Not only in the racist imperialism of Israel itself, but in its bribes of the US to overthrow Iran, invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and destroy Egypt, Libya, and many other countries.
So your fake confusion is more racist propaganda masquerading as defense against racism.
Not many are confused by that crap anymore.
He must. There is too much evidence that it would never hold up. You cannot conduct an investigation into these matters in 24 hours. In 24 hours, they said that chemical weapons were used, what kind and who did it. That is physically impossible no matter how much technology you have. IMPOSSIBLE to make that determination in 24 hours.
The week before, a US Coalition plane bombed a town and killed 200 civilians. They went before the UN one week later and said they were still investigating – that they needed more time. It was their own actors, and they could not figure out what had happened.
These people are not fooling anyone who wishes not to be deceived.
All it all means is that you should not have bombed Syria. But Syria was not bombed for that reason. On March 22, 2017 it was reported that Putin threatened Israel for breaching its agreement and bombing Syria days before. Netanyahu responded to the superpower Putin, saying, “We will bomb Syria whenever we feel it is necessary.” Putin responded that he is not going to listen to their words, but wait for their actionsbefore responding.” In late March 2017 we deployed more troops on the Jordanian border. A few days later, Trump standing next to Israel’s puppet, the Jordanian President, made his beautiful babies speech. A day or two later, Trump sent his missiles, he said, to send a message to Assad. It was not a message to Assad, who knew he did not use chemical weapons. It was a message to Putin – “don’t threaten Israel again, or you will have to deal with us too.”
Quote
It was a message to Putin – “don’t threaten Israel again, or you will have to deal with us
too.”
Unquote
If Russia is a super power and its president is being sternly warned to silence, then Russia is already neutered! Additionally, this is the same leader who bypassed the POTUS to directly address the US Congress not long ago!
The New World Order is here folks!
If I have correctly understood articles on other websites, Syria admits that is carried out the attack. They claim that they attacked a building in which the gas was contained, causing the gas to escape. If their intelligence services were good enough to identify the building as a target, they should also have been good enough to know what was inside it and be aware that an air attack would have catastrophic consequences.Of course, the ever-inefficient Russians may be responsible for the intelligence screw-up. Thus, Trump doesn’t need any evidence. The Syrians admit that they were at fault.
Yes , the Syrians admit they bombed a CW facility , just as the U.S. and coalition has done on multiple occasions :
US bombs ISIS chemical weapons plant
By Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent, and Nicole Gaouette
Updated 10:41 PM ET, Tue September 13 , 2016
( Google the article title – should come up at top of search )
No, there is no reason to believe that they would know the exact contents of the weapons depot.
If they had known, they could have shown the US that the rebels had such weapons for the prior Al Ghouta attack. And why wouldn’t the US have known from its far superior surveillance technology?
i am not a munitions expert….but, is the crater the appropriate size if the canister was detonated by a munition from a drone?
regards
D
I think it’s well within the realm of possibilities. First of all , if it was an air-launched munition , you would expect it to have had only a small explosive charge – just enough to rupture the sarin canister and disperse , but not incinerate , its contents. If you do a google image search on “grad rocket impact site” ( grads are probably a reasonable facsimile here ) , you’ll see impact damage ranging from small potholes to large craters.
What has occurred is that our President is now under control, to the neocons he is one of us. Statements by Trump, Tillerson and Haley are so outlandish to be humorous, if not so dangerous. Tillerson’s comment that not only Assad must go but Russia must leave Syria are bizarre. Saying these things before contact with his Russian counterparts are so unbefitting of Americas Secretary of State that I shake my head in wonder. What in the hell is this grown man doing except to bury détente and then cover it with cement.
There is so much information / disinformation circulating on this subject that it is well nigh impossible to follow it all and prove or disprove any of it. Has the US Government really not produced any serious supporting evidence for its claims? I have come across an article from our old friend, Bellingcat, now transformed into “AtlanticCouncil’s Digital Forensic Research Lab” purporting to analyse available open source evidence that proves Assad’s guilt. (see: https://medium.com/dfrlab/khan-sheikhouns-digital-footprints-41125e6a1c44 ). This is being widely shared by people I would consider honest (e.g., UK’s George Monbiot). Surely with all their wealth of resources, satellites, radar, spy equipment etc., the US military have more credible proof they could release. Is it that when adequate professional intelligence proof is lacking that Bellingcat is used to propagate the NATO case – somewhat at arms length? I also see the usual sources in rebel-occupied areas quoted as gospel. In addition to various rebel press agencies, we have Doctor Shajul Islam, the doctor who reported on symptoms of the gas attack victims, who, it transpires, has been charged in UK with terrorist offences relating to kidnapping of journalists in rebel-held areas in Syria. See: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4388780/Doctor-Syria-stood-trial-terror-offences.html . The case collapsed because one of the journalists was again kidnapped and could not give evidence. Dr Islam was also debarred in UK as a doctor, though it has not been officially disclosed on what basis. Dr Islam was interviewed by “independent” American journalist, Abdul Kareem, who is a supporter and promoter of the most sectarian Saudi type of Islam (as shown here: http://www.alternet.org/world/bilal-abdul-kareem-us-journalist-syria-aleppo-propaganda-extremist-rebels ). Now Dr Islam may be a jihadi rebel, but that does not mean his observations of the affects of the gas attack are not accurate. However, a little caution might be advised in uncritically reporting him and various other pro-rebel spokespersons.
***According to a source, the analysts struggled to identify whose drone it was and where it originated. Despite some technical difficulties in tracing its flight path, analysts eventually came to believe that the flight was launched in Jordan from a Saudi-Israeli special operations base for supporting Syrian rebel…***
But then ***he (Trump) and his administration should go the extra mile in presenting irrefutable evidence to support its assessments, not simply insisting that the world must “trust us.”***
SO WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE OF A “SAUDI-ISRAEL ANTI-ASSAD BASE IN JORDAN”?
Above
“Last year the chiefs of staff of the US, Britain, France, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey met in Jordan; and a report by UAE’s newspaper… also mentions the existence of a secret command center in Jordan which is staffed by military officials from 14 Western and Arab countries including Israel. This command center coordinates the operations of the rebels (jihadis) in southern Syria; while the operations of the jihadis in northern Syria are coordinated by similar command centers and bases in Turkey….” Nauman Sadiq, Asia Times Sep. 22, 2014.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-220914.html
It’s dishonest to bash Trump. He was the one candidate against the war, and, as we learned with Carter and Obama (whom this site probably adores), the neocon/neolib establishment (occupation?) has some kind of leverage against the US that they use to control the presidents that don’t want war.
Anyway, it’s pretty clear what this is all about: https://votable.com/p/bg3o
With the possible exception of Jimmy Carter, every US president since Andrew Jackson (including him) was an unabashed war criminal. Donald Trump is well on his way to exceeding them all.
Carter “looked the other way” on East Timor.
I suppose a technical case could be made iagainst Kennedy, but he was certainly not a warmonger in spirit or intention, and was easily one of the most reflective and redemptive of Presidents.
Another WMD lie. Pure and simple. It works because large numbers of Americans are plain stupid.
The latest from CNN says they have intercepts of the Syrian military talking to chemical weapons experts in preparation for the attack. Naturally , no details are forthcoming , to protect sources and methods blah blah blah.
I think there may be a grain of truth here. Assad presumably was aware that the weapons warehouse they were targeting was being used to store CWs and assemble CW munitions. Thus , prior to undertaking the attack , there may have been a consultation with CW experts to assess the chances of civilian deaths from toxic gas clouds and how best to minimize that outcome. This may be the communication that was intercepted , which is why we’ll never see anything about it.
What this admission of intercepted Syrian military communications tells us is that the U.S. probably had knowledge of this operation well in advance. Which means the rebels did as well. It created the perfect opportunity for a magnificent CW atrocity , live-streamed for all the world to see and to then gasp in horror. The only missing piece from the Syrian operation was a sarin bomb and some sarin victims. No problemo , say the false-flag maestros.
Just now , via Sputnik :
The Syrian General Staff said that the US-led coalition struck a Daesh depot storing chemical weapons in Deir ez-Zor on Wednesday.
“The jets of the so-called US-led coalition launched a strike at about 17:30-17:50 [local time, 14:30-14:50 GMT] on a Daesh warehouse where many foreign fighters were present. First a white cloud and then a yellow one appeared at the site of the strike, which points at the presence of a large number of poisonous substances. A fire at the site continued until 22:30 [19:30 GMT],” the Syrian army’s command statement obtained by Sputnik said. ”
“According to the Syrian General Staff, the US-led coalition’s strike killed several hundred people, including civilians. Hundreds were poisoned as a result of the strike on Daesh’s headquarters and depot with chemical weapons.”
…..
Question : What if Daesh had managed to deploy a sarin pipe-bomb in the same area at around the same time , killing many civilians in the process , and then claimed that the U.S. coalition was using WMDs against civilians ? Would anyone hear that tree in the forest fall ?
How about if Daesh had radio intercepts of coalition officials consulting with CW experts just prior to the attack ? Can you hear that tree fall now ?
No ? Gee , I wonder why.
I agree. From CNN:
The wikileaks release of the Vault 7 CIA software capabilities, especially the Marble one, highlights what an agency with unlimited resources and money can do. And learning about it starts a person thinking in different directions.
It’s curious that when the Syrians decide to use chemical weapons their targets are always civilians who just happen to be very near helpful White Helmet gangs outfitted with professional camera crews. If those Syrians weren’t just plain evil, it would make more sense to me if they’d been attacking known concentrations of ISIS with their war chemicals.
But what if one or another non-Syrian Agency decided to stir the pot and create a genuine Chemical Weapons attack, complete with evidence. Professionally created conversations could be taped and broadcast by the nice ISIS soldiers. Or by Agency agents. Or maybe even by Agency drones flown over Syria. All of these would be plausible low-power signals which would be vacuumed up by the US, perhaps even by the same Agency which created them in the first place. Their presence on the airwaves would allow verification by others. “Marble” created false signals to be “discovered” within software. Why not another Secret Project to create false signals to be “discovered” by US intelligence satellites?
I’m not denying that the Syrians might be stupid enough to use Chemical Weapons despite their winning a conventional war against the head choppers. It’s just that I find it hard to believe that if they’re going to take such an awful risk they’re not going to get their money’s worth and use them against ISIS in places where there are many of the enemy and no civilians at all.
The accusation that the Syrian Government carried out the chemical attack on 04 April 2017 is reminiscent of the chemical attack in El Ghouta on 21 August 2013 which, as analysis of the trajectory of the rocket carrying the sarin gas conducted by Richard Lloyd; Ted Postol of the M.I:T, demonstrated that it was fired from a distance of about 2 kilometers, where the rebels were located, and not from the Syrian army’s lines, which were 8 kilometres away.
What I find most annoying, therefore, is that neither the Russian or Syrian ambassadors to the U.N. made any reference to the EL Ghouta incident when defending the fact that it was not the Syrian Government that carried out the chemical attack on 04 April 2017. What also makes me very angry that nothing was said about the source of information which, most likely, are the White Helmets who are masters at the art of fabricating evidence.
Apart from that, it is also really disappointing to see that alternative media outlets such as yours, the Global Research – Centre for Research, and 21st Century Wire allowing the mainstream media (CNN, MSNBC, Fox New, the New York Times and others) to control the narrative on Syria, both on TV and the newspapers. You all need to find a way to counter it so that the truth about what is happening in Syria will be revealed to the world.
Of course we Trust you, Mr Trump. We Trust you to lie. Truth is hanging by a thin thread. Donate to Consortium news today.
This latest report, as is suggested, exposes the yankee regime as a nest of nihilist liars using what can be reasonably shown to be a false flag to start a fatal world war. It’s not only criminal but stupid and treason to civilizaiton.
Is This What They Call politically Correct!
It has been proven that the politically correct and absurd are related as both are relative when without logical definition.Politically correct is a contradiction of the First Amendment including the 9 others in the Bill of Rights of the American Organic Constitution.
Who has the motive is answer to probable criminal act.
If one is making effort to create peace they do not commit act of war.One who wants war will find tactics for it.
Blackmail will force one to act opposite to their character and political position in many cases.Association indicates political position when it is continued beyond a mistake that is not acknowledged.
Condoning illegals acts of Organic American Constitution and international law indicates fascism.
To indicate in Fake News that the majority support criminal acts indicates how deranged Fake News and its supporters are.Of course this includes Washington D.C.
Since the Iraq war was illegal and there were no WMD,and the USA sold gas to Iraq which killed allot of babies,etc it is difficult to believe that Assad would betray himself by gassing babies.You see where probable motive is coming from.Since they have done it before they may do it again if they think they can trick the sheep as usual.
If a mistake has been committed as a result of lack of knowledge then nuclear war is not the sane solution.Where is the evidence that is fact.It is not available.There are no grounds for action without investigation that is factual,and is agreeable with the American Organic Constitution, Not the 1871 Act-Research.
If President Donald Trump supports the Neo Cons now as is indicated then he has betrayed those who voted for him.We know them by their actions.
I have supported Trump,but in last few days there is indication of my misjudgment.
Fake News and Fox are on same propaganda sellout road,and now support Trumps extreme deviation from his stated path that he was elected on.Now Neo Cons are his guide as is indicated.Where is Bannon,and his faction now.
Herd,cattle,product you can fool every time.Is this the consensus of those who control.Are the sheep called the little people on occasion to be nice.
If Trump does not oppose the Neo Cons then he has blended with them.
One man against the NWO with little support and mixed blood indicates little hope.Who he supports indicates his direction.
Bipolar world means cold war.If so America will progress,but at what cost.Public Private Partnership is monopoly NWO.
Albert Pike 3 World Wars is still in the works.This is NWO solution to create the NWO-Research-Chaos using refugees and immigration to divide and conquer is tactic to destroy the west.
Caves are security until 90% of population is knocked out.Georgia Guide Stones.Club of Rome Depopulation-Research.Agenda 21-30.What is it.
George Green-How they Plan To kill Us-YT-Internet—All facts have been recorded.The criminals are known by their documented statements.
Keep in mind that nothing I have said is true.Research for facts and evidence with documents to prove it.The truth is a lie is the truth.There is no right ,or wrong-Public Showers for all is okay.
Walter Haas—God Bless America
White House claims on Syria chemical attack ‘obviously false’ – MIT professor (VIDEO) …. https://www.rt.com/usa/384520-postol-report-sarin-syria/
Regarding Ronald Reagan revealing intercepts of a Soviet fighter communicating before and during the shoot down of Korean airlines flight 007, I feel it’s important to clarify that the Whitehouse manipulated the recording they presented in order to misrepresent the incident as a purely malicious act rather than the tragic accident it actually was.
Selective release of evidence or manipulation of evidence presented is nothing new as far as the US is concerned. This is just more of the same, rather than anything new.
A very interesting analysis here:
“The Chemical Fake in Idlib”
h t t p : / / colonelcassad . livejournal . com / 3356267 . html
The article is in Russian, but a person who sent me the link gave me some instruction on how to read that extremely interesting stuff –
since the textual part of the article is rather short, it’d be quite easy to copy-paste chunks of the russian text that are between images into the Google Translator
Please remove spaces in the link
FOX NEWS: “US defense officials tell Fox the two warships have been training for the past two days to execute this mission” (April 6, 2017)
It seems to me that the gag order on the prominent MSM western media is so deeply rooted that TV anchors are visibly agitated and sometimes fearful when a guest commentator deviates from the official line. I was watching Newspaper Headline Commentary on the BBC this morning and an analyst questioned the credibility of the narrative for the priority of regime change in Syria vs dealing with ISIS first as well as the legality of the US strike on another UN member with no one’s consent. The host was very nervous as if afraid for his career.
This is my question for Robert Parry: Have you observed similar behaviour? or am I imagining things?
Yes, I notice it all the time. Whenever guest commentator deviates even slightly from the official propaganda line, host visibly unsettled interrupts the guest to change the narrative to something else. One should know that at the back, there is the producer or his deputy standing there with red flag over the head of the host. It is censorship, that is what we have, for some time now.
There is no free Media (MSM) to speak of left in U.S.
Daniel – no, you are right on in your observation and NOT imagining things.
Tantamount to treason. You must not deviate from the anti-Assad message.
Why do you keep posting children were killed in the US missile strikes in Syria? Some Syrian newspaper said that, but its nonsense. If children were killed its literally because Russian-Syrian soldiers put them on purpose. Why would children be playing near Syrian airplane hangars and the like.. especially after the Russians were warned in advancd of the attack? The Russians & Syrians moved airplanes and such, but not CHILDREN? Thats the most ridiculous thing Ive ever heard.
Do we have to accept at face value the U.S. claim that no missiles went astray ? There’s a picture circulating that is claimed to show part of a Tomahawk in a local resident’s turnip patch. Do Syrian military airfields typically have turnip patches ?
Maybe because they Tomahawks missed the airfield and hit a village several kms away.
You know a village where children and old people live.
“Villagers were the majority of victims of the US strike on the Shayrat Airbase on April 6, portrayed as retaliation against the Bashar Assad government, according to the governor of Homs Talal al-Barazi. A total of 14 people including nine innocent civilians were killed in the US missile attack.”“This shameless aggression… caused panic among the children and civilians and inflicted huge damage to this village and to the surrounding villages,” he said, adding that the strike shattered windows and broke the facades of some buildings.
“One of their missiles landed between the houses in our village,” he said.
The airfield was basically empty as the notice of intention to attack gave the personnel time to evacuate.
Silly people assumed that the US missiles were accurate.
“because the Russians are mocking Western rhetoric for its insincere claims to the moral high ground, the West is responding by defining Russian claims as disinformation.”
https://posttrumpanalysis.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/tillerson-confirms-u-s-strategy-is-to-accuse-russians-of-lying-about-the-u-s/
“…the flight was launched in Jordan from a Saudi-Israeli special operations base for supporting Syrian rebels…”
If Israel had anything to do with it, that would explain Trump’s total change of policy. No American president is going to allow Israel to implicated in anything like this regardless of what the truth is.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the next revelation of the U.S. “investigation” is that the sarin container had ” Death to Israel” engraved on its side , leading to the obvious conclusion : ” Aha ! Iran provides the WMDs to Assad ! ”
We need something else to do after we destroy Syria and exterminate Assad , and Iran is high on the list of places we’d like to visit.
Two “words:” Jared Kushner
Look at how this guy is magically ascending the rungs of power. Seems that this is like a dumb-waiter, with Trump being the weight and Kushner being the “goods.” (one falling while the other rises)
It’s a freaking lie. This is the most obvious false flag I’ve seen in my entire lifetime.
We are supposed to believe that a week after Trump’s administration said that if Assad could get elected, which he would be, he would be allowed to stay in power – and this when Assad is on the verge of ending this conflict. As a result, he decides to murder a bunch of civilians, not militants, using the one weapon that is guaranteed to create outrage.
I understand what you say, but China’s position on this incident does not look consistent with its traditional support for the Syrian government. Nobody has denied Trump’s version of Xi’s comments after the American attack, and today (Wednesday), China did not veto the UNSC’s resolution condemning Syria. Very strange indeed.
Bigger than 9/11? (9/11 essentially launched all of this)
Trump told Maria Bartiromo that Xi Jingping made a comment approving (after the fact) of Trump’s launching the 59 Tomahawk missiles on the Syrian airfield, and that Xi even said that anybody who “gasses children” should be punished. Today China did not veto the UNSC resolution condemning Syria; they just abstained. What is going on?
The scary thing about this incidence and the after math is pax-americana can now wage a war with whom ever it likes just on the a whim of MSM propaganda . It’s a done deal this last events has demonstrated to the world that we r living in fascistic times . The west has lost any semblance of humanity. war and more war. Wolfawitz must be so pleased with himself these days.
(a) JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA is where General IDI AMIN DADA settled after slaughtering 500,000+ of his own people and feeding thousands the slaughtered victims to River Nile crocodiles. He peacefully died of kidney failures in Saudi Arabia in August 16, 2003.
(b) The rise of the 4th grader, Idi Amin, was not an accident. The folks who installed Idi Amin to power in Uganda later referred him (Amin) as mad man only because he rebelled against them; however the efficiency of his bloody reign of terror (1971-1979) may have been the required talent that attracted his handlers to pick him for the job! These handlers are not interested in finding peaceful solution to problems; to them, it is either their way or the highway; even if that means cutting down millions of innocent lives.
The policy implemented in Uganda using Idi Amin’s killing talents was/is known as “ALLIANCE OF THE PERIPHERY”. Here is the wikipedia definition of that policy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_the_periphery
***************************************************************************
Col. Baruch Bar?Lev, Israeli Defense Attache in Uganda was Idi Amin chief handler.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/revealed-how-israel-helped-amin-to-take-power-100683.html
The turmoil in the Middle East indicates that this policy will continue. Iran was added on the chopping block once the Shah of Iran was removed.
A link from RT with video/photos from a reputable MIT critic-says admin account cannot be true:
https://www.rt.com/usa/384520-postol-report-sarin-syria/
And report from Washington blog by same MIT critic:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/04/66712.html
FWIW, Truthdig has a very long report from Scott Ritter debunking mcmaster/white house account-warning 4 long pages with detail.
Bottom line, as it is obvious, is the admin has no idea, no evidence, no facts.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/dereliction_of_duty_redux_20170412
good one
In my opinion whatever information they have wouldn’t stand the “laugh” test. So they simply refuse to release it.
“Trust Us”, says the Trumpies.
No.
They expect us to be satisfied with the official “Sarren Commission Report”. What…you take all these ridiculous conspiracy theories seriously? (Just kidding.)
“Trust Us”, said the Obama defenders.
“Trust Us”, said the Bush defenders.
That fooled a lot of people.
Find those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq yet?
Hey, now that Libya is a failed state in civil war, are you feeling better that Gadaffi isn’t going to be killing people – that’s why we went in under Obama.
Nothing has changed, in 16 years.
Of course this is a false flag, and yet another lie to get us into another war.
I hope you realize this has been going on for longer than a week though. It’s been going on for 16 years. EVERY war that the US has been involved with since Iraq in the middle east has been because of lies. Obama bombed 7 nations over his 8 years. Can you even name them? What did these nations do to the United States to deserve this?
The United States government has gone insane, because it has a lazy, lackadaisical population that doesn’t care it’s insane. Don’t be one of them.
It’s hilarious. Are they laying this ‘proof’ side-by-side with the ‘proof’ that Trump is a Kremlin agent? How crazy does it have to get, before the whole country wakes up.
And war is good for business, as well as keeping the citizens focused on something else to get revved up about. Like the spider that sucks its victims from the inside out.
Trump Changes his mind on NATO
——————————————————————
Donald Trump says Nato is no longer obsolete as he threatens to claw back money from alliance members who have ‘underpaid’
As a candidate in the presidential election, US President said the bloc had outlived its usefulness
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-nato-syria-chemical-attack-no-longer-obsolete-a7681211.html
F. G. Sanford, amazing political poem! You must widely disseminate it.
Robert Parry as usual provides a sane analysis, which the “official” propaganda papers will not do. Will the MIT professor, Theodore Postel, get his arguments into any but alternative media? And Moon of Alabama today stated “In less than 48 hours we are to believe the DOD’s use of social media proving that Assad chemed his own people in a town known as ground zero for jihadists, with video filmed by a jihadist Dr Shajul Islam, who was brought to trial on terror charges”. The White Helmets were in the videos, were they not? And Dr. Shajul Islam apparently had the terror charges dropped (I think in UK) and went on to mastermind kidnapping of hostages including beheading of several, James Foley being one of them. Also, Seymour Hersh charges that Clinton as SoS after decimation of Libya, sold Qaddafi’s sarin gas to terrorists by way of Benghazi, which is what Chris Stevens’ embassy was fronting, on through Turkey to Syria. I hope he brings out more details.
It’s heating up, now the CN article on US pushing Australia on China? And North Korea. Must be something really bad in the wind on the US economy, I feel it in my bones!
I am reminded of that quote from Euripides, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad”. I just hope that somehow us good folks are spared.
The economy? Congress hast to approve another extension of the debt ceiling, which no one on either side of the aisle thinks they can do. The U.S. government is just a few weeks from total default on its debts. What happens then? By the way, economists say that the domestic economy simply cannot be goosed by issuing more debt. Doing that will require the infusion of hard capital which no one wants to pony up. Some kind of crisis is imminent and all the rats in Washington know it.
Very good points, that the warmongering covers up an economic bubble about to burst; and that the madness of warmongering presages doom of the infected empire.
The Russia-gate scams certainly cover up the Israel-gate facts about the Dems money coming largely from Israelis and Saudis and their fascist supporters here. Of course the Reps consider that normal business.
It may be that Trump’s threats in Syria and NK are merely feints, but even if so the warmongers will be doomed by their victims sooner or later. The sooner the better.
The only way for the American people to discover whether Trump was just another puppet installed by the Deep State (it could very well have been Hillary) or someone who is actually being bullied and threatened by the Deep State is to get out onto the streets and start protesting “No More War”, and don’t stop until the Deep State is bent and broken and run over.
If Trump tries to dissuade the people, then you will know he is a puppet. If he gets behind the people, then you will know otherwise.
Only one way to find out.
Good point. Rallies against the Israel/WallSt/MIC wars of CIA/DIA/NSA will show who supports the people.
Moon of Alabama today and Robert Parry above both point to questions that need answers, as well refer to MIT professor Postol’s critical analysis which says the government case presented, once again, comes up short. In a history of false flags for God’s sake why don’t we slow down a little??? No, we leap to a conclusion two days after an incident. This is both the action of an infant mentality and an unscrupulous, manipulative political opportunism.
Once again we have “assessment,” not “we know beyond a shadow of a doubt.” We also know the US intelligence community is split on this assessment. At the very least what’s required is investigation, which MofA says takes at least 2-3 weeks, a full investigation at least 2 months. Trump has jumped. Excuse him if you will, the point is that he’s in a position of responsibility requiring a person of self-control who can THINK. He has rushed to judgment, apparently to assuage his ego and curry better poll ratings, and in the process shown how silly and weak he is. We need to get over the sentimentality that Trump means well. It’s too late for that.
“Saudi-Israeli special operations base” Say no more, nudge nudge, wink wink.
Nor do they know how he died.
No he died due to untreated heart disease. Wikileaks released documents that showed his US jailers hid his medical condition from the court.
(Note that when the Russians did this to an anti-Putin oligarch charged with tax-evasion, it resulted in US Sanctions.)
The intelligence community is using asymetrical warfare in the US so that one hand does not know what the other is doing. This is how Al Qaeda operates.
Could we be in “The final days of The Human Race”?
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2009/03/in-final-days-of-human-race.html
If I had the the know how to spell it, I’d say say it was the crime done with an inside false flag gassing and with a purposeful retaliatory missile strike to recover the loosing public face of Donald Trump and should end with his impeachment?
Sure, and the strike by the US was illegal under international law but the IC and law doesn’ta pply to American Exceptionalism
yer a better speller than me.
I believe Trump has caved in to the NWO . That he has like Obama lost his nerve . Lost his direction, Now he is helping the terrorist to enslave yet another country. This is so wrong , he is continuing to make us murderers of children and the innocent. America does not want this ! The rich do ! Then there is the true problem. America has been sold to the highest bidder. Its revolution time people lets stop the entire country! Nothing moves we are closed . From the Docks , trains ,buses,subways on land and Sea in the Air . Not one store open nothing at all for one week . No school work NOTHING!!!
Anndrea Quaill – yep, it is revolution time. Time to take back the country. It is the only thing that will save the U.S. and possibly the world.
He never had any direction except straight to the bank or bankruptcy court
hear hear….and he will do to this country, in the same fashion that he has done many times previous…decieve investors(taxpayers) while he and his cronies funnel the money away….the whole thing goes bankrupt(economy) they become wealthier and the investors(taxpayers) pay for the loss..
Danny – it’s evident he did have direction by the way the neocons and the neolibs went after him, progressives too. Build a wall, enforce borders, vet refugees, stop globalization and unfair trade, get rid of Obamacare, end wars, possibly end NATO. They don’t like his direction, but he did have one.
Why do I get the sneaking suspicion this article too – will be ignored. It just doesn’t fit the ‘narrative.’
I am sick to death of a media and dark state that propagandizes the populace.
The issue is of course to organize to get back to the tennis shoes and clipboard approach to meeting with people. Door to door work not hiding behind a computer.
From The Saker:
“During his campaign Trump made a lot of excellent promises and he did inspire millions of Americans to support him. I personally believe that he was sincere in his intentions, and I don’t buy the “it was all an act” theory at all. Just look at the total panic of the Neocons at the prospects of a Trump victory and tell me this was all fake. No, I think that Trump was sincere. But when confronted with the ruthless opposition of the Neocons and the US deep state, Trump snapped and instantly broke because he is clearly completely spineless and has the ethics and morals of a trailer park prostitute.”
The media, think tanks, Congressmen and Senators, the neocons were all accusing Trump of being Putin’s puppet (with absolutely no evidence). He was being hammered from every direction. Even after striking Syria, the above (especially Democrats) are saying that’s not enough, he must go further, put boots on the ground. No President has been vilified by the above more than Donald Trump.
I have been in this position before (of course not on this level), been pushed to do what I didn’t want to do. It is very hard to resist, especially when criticism is unrelenting, and day after day you are attacked. They wear you down, or they try to. They didn’t go after Obama because he pretty much acquiesced to their demands. He knew going in what was expected of him, but Trump didn’t. Trump was going to stand up to them, drain the swamp.
Of course the media and the neocons were happy when Trump struck. “Yay, we turned him. He’s playing ball now.” They bent him to their will. They set him up, and he took the bait.
I’m not defending Trump. An idiot of the highest order for going along with them! But I wonder who here could have withstood the onslaught of goading and negative criticism that Trump has been subjected to on a daily basis for months and months now.
The government has been taken over by a Deep State, and we all expected Trump to rise above them. How do you do that when they’re everywhere? Who here, putting themselves in Trump’s shoes, would have done differently? I suggest very, very few, if any.
Trump is an egotistical, thick-skinned individual. He didn’t even flinch when the “pussy” story surfaced. If they can get to him, then there is really no hope.
Trump needs to regroup. If this is all he does, and no more, then he can possibly be forgiven. Once. He needs to start draining this swamp, and keep draining it until it’s dry.
Ivanka reportedly pleaded with Trump to act “because of the children,” yeah, her children which the spooks probably threatened unless her dad did their bidding.
Or, maybe the guy has simply snapped, gone totally round the bend and now repudiates everything he campaigned on.
It’s a puzzlement, at least to ethical altruistic people.
Realist – you bring up another point: the threat of assassination of Trump or someone he loves. If thwarted, would the Deep State stoop to this tactic? In a New York minute.
We sit here in judgment of him (and others), and yet the above is almost certainly a reality. Sam F said that Trump needed to come in and immediately start draining, purging. Sam F is right.
The Saker said:
“If John Wayne is the prototypical American hero, Danilo Bagrov, from the movies “Brother” and its sequel “Brother 2”, is the prototypical Russian hero: rather shy, softly spoken, of modest means, at times charmingly clumsy and naive, but in reality ‘the toughest of us all’.
What is sure is that the John Wayne types would never survive in the Russian street, they would be immediately perceived as fake, weak and showing off to try to conceal their lack of strength and they would be crushed and humiliated. Nowadays when Americans adopt what I call the ‘Delta Force/Blackwater style’ (pointy beard, long hair, dark sunglasses, and a ton of muscles, etc.) they look comical by Russian standards. Russian special forces (and I have met a lot of them) *never* look the part if only because they try hard not to look it.”
Let’s just hope that this was just for show, and understood to be that by all players involved.
I don’t want this opinion or rather thought I had about Trump to be misconstrued as an endorsement of him. Although read James W Douglas book about ‘JFK’s Murder and Why it Matters’ and seriously take note of how alone Kennedy was with his back channel negotiations he had going on with Khrushchev, and you will see what loneliness is for a president. So where is a President Donald Trump going to get the right and necessary people who will watch his back? I would not be surprised there is not one left in Washington if there ever were who someone like Trump could have put his trust in, and rely on them for their undying loyalty. They always say it gets lonely at the top, so if not for any other reason has Trump turned into a warmonger, because he has no one there beside himself that he may trust. I might add Jared, Ivanka, Bannon, and some others are not of the Washington ilk like that which Trump could use to fight the already mighty system he has now entered into…Flynn no doubt was.
Joe – good observations. Paul Craig Roberts made the same statement early in Trump’s presidency. Roberts said that Trump would need insiders, people who knew their way around, knew all the different players, but there are very few who aren’t aligned with the neocons. The neocons have built up a formidable wall, and they’ve been at it for years. Talk about building a wall! They did. Even the media is aligned with them, along with virtually every congressman and senator. The country is captured.
You’re right, it is lonely at the top. To boot, Trump does not have the knowledge that Kennedy had as far as foreign affairs. If he did, he could lead from a position of strength, and he’d know in his gut that he was making the right choices. But look what happened to Kennedy – and his brother too! Both snuffed out.
Could be Trump understands well that last sentence. I wonder what you or I would do, Joe, if they came up to us and whispered, “You follow our instructions or you won’t be seeing one of your children again.” Maybe they had a good talk with Trump about JFK.
Who knows. It’s just that for Trump to change that quickly, something must have happened. The American people are going to have to get behind Trump and fight these mothers! This Deep State has got to go. I’d rather see the protesters protesting at the homes of Kagan and Nuland, Clinton, Comey, Brennan, McCain and Graham. Why aren’t they doing this? This is where the evil is.
I read somewhere sometime ago how the author mapped out the variety of positions to power,and how my being able strategically to place your people in these positions, would essentially give you the power to do whatever it was you wished to be done. Kind of like the later days of Rome, where if you had the legions you had the power. I have even pondered to if there are but a tiny few at the very top of our worldly list, and could it be possible that this very wealthy people could be held captive just as the rest of us by the might of this organizations. Remember JFK warned about secret organizations.
When you survey the Think Tanks and the Neocon breed it would look as though they control the controls. Do you recall the dignitaries at the top of 911? They weren’t only Neocon’s and PNACers they were dual citizen a lot of them. Nothing wrong with being dual, but where does that leave your loyalties when working for the U.S. Government?
I’ve been following Robert David Steele throughout this process. He was a die-hard Trump supporter and said he cried election night when he thought Trump lost.
He maintained that with good advisors an electoral reforming, isolationist, anti-waste anti-swamp,Trump could be the greatest modern president.
He has been tracking the assault by the deep state on his alt-right blog and trying to get Trump to see how the neocons are eroding and compromising his support base.
Yesterday he posted a link that said in part, “I think the Russians have finally reached the same conclusion that many of us have: we are dealing with a bloodthirsty, utterly delusional psychopath who’s drunk on power, surrounded by like-minded psychopaths, enablers and apologists of every stripe, and being egged on by a Satanic, Jewish-supremacist death cult.”
http://phibetaiota.net/2017/04/penguin-the-psycho-revealed-trumpenstein-removes-his-mask/
It appears his staunchest supporters have left him…
Hope and Chang from the right.Worked with Obama and with a country full of suckers it worked again. Recent poll shows 88%of the American people on board with the strike.
DannyWeil – only because the U.S. has been captured, and the American people are NOT getting factual information.
If you believe the MSM, the personal approach used by Kassem Eid, the Palestinian-Syrian refugee, to reach President Trump was partially responsible for the turn-around.
Does this make sense? Here’s the guy who wrote the N. Y. Times hit piece …, Kassem Eid. He has been pranced about for a few years as an ideal freedom fighter/media person. He has been an icon of the resistance.
He is also apparently a graduate of Hillary Cinton’s program to create a cadre of Activists, Citizen Journalists, basically revolution-fomenters. His writings spell that out clearly.
Why, QZ, when you were still in Syria on Dec 9th, 2013 did you write “We Want Both Bread and Freedom in Syria” for The Progressive just 3 1/2 months after the chemical attack in Ghouta, and not mention that attack?
Your story seemed to change a whole year after that episode. Were you being coached as a propagandist? You state in your writings you are fighting Assad with your writing.
Do you remember the Dec 9th, 2013 article? It had nothing to say about chemical weapons. It was about wanting to live free. In Moadamiya, your adopted home town, ringed by Syrian troops, it was about blocking your access to food & a feeling Assad was trying to starve the residents out.
You saw children die from starvation. Maybe just a few?
You mention you are Palestinian Syrian but that you were very young when you came to Moadamiya as a refugee, that you grew up there, went to University in Homs. Did the Assad government provide affordable education for Palestinian refugees, or did the UN help? More disturbingly, were you funded by the Arab Spring fomenting operators from the US?
Interestingly, you blame the Arab Liberation Army for your parents being displaced from their olive growing village in Palestine by the fighting in 1948, nothing about the Israelis.
Back to your Dec. 2013 article. Good work, you helped negotiate 4 evacuations of townspeople from Moadamiya. you imply those 8,000 who stayed want to stay, but also to be free and to eat.
You say the Assad government is depriving towns of food and medicine, punishing civilians, but you just said they, the 8,000, wouldn’t cooperate and leave the town. It’s a civil war, right?
You said you got a rifle & joined the front at the edges of town, for a week in August (2013)
Here is your story: it’s December 9th, 2013, 31/2 months after what John Kerry and “60 Minutes” described is such horrific terms – we all saw the pictures – Your side took the pictures, Mother Agnes’ novitiates found pictures showing the same
children arranged differently, in different rooms, but wearing the same clothes! The UN couldn’t verify the burial sites, etc etc
But your big thing, 3 1/2 months later, is you’re going on a Hunger Strike! after you just told us everyone was being starved to death!
It’s not about the accused war crimes at this point for you – “ I want the world to know what this is about: not just the right to food, but the right to freedom”
Hear what a person says close to the time something happened, and you get a better picture of what really happened.
At that point, had your brothers in arms started to realize the gas attack may not have come from Assad but from Al Nusra and Al Queda who were also at war with you over control of Moadamiya?
A very interesting article at link below”
———————————————————————————-
A multi-level analysis of the US cruise missile attack on Syria and its consequences
April 11, 2017
https://thesaker.is/a-multi-level-analysis-of-the-us-cruise-missile-attack-on-syria-and-its-consequences/
The psychopaths of the beltway are hell bent to destroy as much of humanity as possible with profit the primary motive for any belligerence abroad and the stoolies in the White House say things that ease people’s minds. How are people with little time,(to read independent news) supposed to know what’s going on in the real world. What kind of ‘news’ is to be taken as truth? Nothing in the MSM has been reported on all the children and civilians killed on US strikes on Mosul last month, where’s the outrage? Where’s the outrage for the expense of 59 cruise missiles at a cost of $1.87 million each,(wiki) or about a total of $110.3 million, of which only less than half hit their targets. (They were warned of impending strike that allowed them to save some of their planes). Think of all the starving people in this county that could feed. All the people are getting their propaganda to instigate war whoops so that illegal attacks seem to be justified. Woodrow Wilson used these same techniques to get Americans to support the Great War that supposedly ended all wars. The oligarch’s found out how well this worked and haven’t stopped to this day. Only this time they may also lose their lives.
Stop the presses!
Theodore Postol of MIT has just posted a devastating rebuttal to the “white paper”.
https://www.rt.com/usa/384520-postol-report-sarin-syria/
Caution: pages in Postol’s memo are in wrong sequence: 1,3,2,4, rather than 1,2,3,4.
Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta of Bellingcat blog are in the vanguard of propaganda about “chemical attacks” in Syria.
Back in 2013 and 2014, Higgins and Kaszeta of Brown Moses blog were in the vanguard of propaganda about “chemical attacks” in Syria.
After the August 2013 chemical attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, US President Barack Obama was ready to launch an air strike to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons. Two days before the planned strike, Obama announced that he would seek congressional approval for the military intervention. The strike was subsequently cancelled when President Bashar al Assad offered to relinquish the Syrian Army’s chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia.
The Syrian government maintained that the gas which killed hundreds of Syrian civilians in Ghouta had been used by terrorist groups in the hope that the West would blame Assad and turn its strategic weapons against the regime. Russian sources stated that the chemicals had not been sold to Assad, but had come from stocks sold by Moscow to the former Libyan government of Muammar Gaddafi.
On 17 April 2014, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published “The Red Line and the Rat Line” in the London Review of Books. Hersh reported that British intelligence had confirmed to the Americans that the gas used at Ghouta did not come from the Syrian Army’s chemical arsenal. According to Hersh’s information, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had allowed the Americans to ship a “rat line” of weapons from Libya via Turkey to the Syrian militants.
On 22 April 2014, Higgins and Kaszeta published an article in the UK Guardian attacking Hersh. However, the technical claims of Higgins and Kaszeta’s were found to be either inaccurate or irrelevant.
In a 22 May 2014 letter to the London Review of Books, Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology addressed the controversy.
Lloyd and Postol stated unequivocally that “Higgins, a blogger who, although he has been widely quoted as an expert in the American mainstream media, has changed his facts every time new technical information has challenged his conclusion that the Syrian government must have been responsible” for the attack. Postol later presented a detailed refutation of published statements in the media made by Kaszeta.
Nevertheless, the claims of Higgins and Kaszeta continue to be cited by governments and mainstream media.
Lloyd and Postol’s concluding remarks from 2014 remain relevant today:
“We do not claim to know who was actually behind the attack […]. But we can say for sure that neither do the people who claim to have clear evidence that it was the Syrian government. The mainstream American media have done a disservice to the public by allowing politically motivated individuals, governments, and non-government organisations to misrepresent facts that clearly point to serious breaches of the truth by the White House.
For a detailed rebuttal of all of Kaszeta’s claims regarding the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack:
http://whoghouta.blogspot.com/2013/11/response-to-dan-kaszetas-chemical.html
Accurate analysis of all primary and secondary evidence relating to the 21 August 2013 chemical attack at Ghouta indicate it was carried out by opposition forces. According to the most likely scenario, they used looted incendiary rockets, refilled them with sarin they manufactured themselves, and launched them from a rebel-held territory 2 km north of Zamalka.
Bellingcat “expert” Dan Kaszata has fixated on an “air-dropped Sarin bomb” scenario
https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/articles/2017/04/13/anatomy-sarin-bomb-explosion-part/
Now, about that hole in the road…
Assessment of the White House Intelligence Report Issued on April 11, 2017 About the Nerve Agent Attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria.
By Theodore A. Postol
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Vs2rjE9TdwR2F3NFFVWDExMnc/view
Postol states that the document provided by the White House “does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syria at roughly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017. In fact, a main piece of evidence that is cited in the document points to an attack that was executed by individuals on the ground, not from an aircraft, on the morning of April 4.”
Postol bases this conclusion is based on an analysis of the assumption made by the White House concerning the source of the sarin release and the photographs of that source location.
“My own assessment,” states Postol, “is that the source was very likely tampered with or staged, so no serious conclusion could be made from the photographs cited by the White House.”
“However, if one assumes, as does the White House, that the source of the sarin was from this location and that the location was not tampered with, the most plausible conclusion is that the sarin was dispensed by an improvised dispersal device made from a 122 mm section of rocket tube filled with sarin and capped on both sides.”
Postol states that the White House report contains no evidence that the attack was the result of an aerial munition:
“The only undisputable facts stated in the White House report is the claim that a chemical attack using nerve agent occurred in Khan Shaykhun, Syria on that morning. Although the White House statement repeats this point in many places within its report, the report contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft. In fact, the report contains absolutely no evidence that would indicate who was the perpetrator of this atrocity.”
Postol specifically addresses “the location of that crater on the road in the north of Khan Shaykhun, as described in the White House statement”.
According to Postol’s analysis:
“The data cited by the White House is more consistent with the possibility that the munition was placed on the ground rather than dropped from a plane. This conclusion assumes that the crater was not tampered with prior to the photographs. However, by referring to the munition in this crater, the White House is indicating that this is the erroneous source of the data it used to conclude that the munition came from a Syrian aircraft.
“Analysis of the debris as shown in the photographs cited by the White House clearly indicates that the munition was almost certainly placed on the ground with an external detonating explosive on top of it that crushed the container so as to disperse the alleged load of sarin.”
Physical evidence of the chemical attack contradicts mainstream media claims based on purported “analysis” by Dan Kaszeta and Eliot Higgins, and their collaborators at Bellingcat.
Abe
I have only just found this site and its comments section which stand apart from 99% of the web in that people are clearly prepared to think reasonably and put a lot of effort into writing sustained analysis to the questions of the day. This is sadly lacking on the web in general with facebook and twitter limiting how much one can say. Congratulations to you and everyone else here for doing the reading and putting in the hard academic miles required to try and distil what elements of truth we can amongst all these competing narratives.
These are difficult questions and they require us all to think very hard about them and not make glib sound bite rallying cries.
In addition to Bellicat, Eliot Higgins and one man band outfits like the Syrian Human Rights Observatory then all the information sources referred to by the MSM seem to be highly questionable in that they all rely upon analysing social media input. IHS Markit often cited by the BBC is a Nasdaq listed Business Intelligence company with headquarters in London is another example that needs to be looked into. They provide the handy map showing the current occupation of Syria by various faction in section 2 of the BBC report below which is tagged IHS Conflict Monitor.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/syria_football_on_the_frontline
I highly recommend reading that report in that whilst trying to give a negative view of Assad it can’t help giving a fairly positive view of life in government controlled areas of Syria in general.
IHS Markit list their areas of expertise as the following.
Aerospace, defence and Security (Janes)
Automotive
Chemicals
Energy
Financial Markets
Life Sciences
Marine & Trade
Natural Resources
Product Design
Supply Chain
Sustainability
Technology
http://news.ihsmarkit.com/industry-analysts
Within those areas I find no industry expertise that would enable them to produce any reliable information on conflict monitoring in the Middle East. No western journalists operate in any of the ISIS or ‘rebel’ held areas and precious few ever turn up in government held areas and when they do they turn up to report on football it seems. If one looks at IHS Markit’s advertisement for its conflict monitor at the web page below we find that all of their ‘research’ is rather jokingly based upon ‘validated’ social media sources and a vague HUMINT or ‘human intelligence’. We “Identify, understand and monitor threats by connecting data, information and insights from validated social media sources”.
https://www.ihs.com/products/conflictmonitor.html
In the era of social media and fake news why does the BBC suddenly believe that social media sources are unimpeachable and not question the basis of IHS’s intelligence? What is involved in ‘validating’ a social media source and how many ‘sources’ does one need to validate in order to build an accurate picture of what is going on in Syria? Who is validating these sources? I can create 100s of BBC accounts under different names and all with different email addresses that can be validated. Why is the BBC news department not reporting on Syria itself through objective research and proper journalism and has instead opted to believe reportage on social media as being a preferred ‘source’ of reliable information?
I strongly suspect that IHS Markit have validated none of their sources and that their ‘information’ as such – comes straight to them pre-packaged by the CIA.
IHS reports over 20 oil and gas experts in their energy department showing they are heavily biased towards the interests of Western oil companies in their reportage. This is not some peaceful human rights monitoring organization – they are centrally implicated in corporate aims, goals and decision making and the BBC is not being objective in the slightest in unquestioningly taking them as a reliable source.
Why are the BBC using information from a Nasdaq listed ‘information’ company whose sole raison d’etre is to directly serve the needs of large Western corporations? I am also concerned at how media manipulative this company is in providing its own highly developed broadcast studios services to disseminate the questionable views of its experts throughout the main stream media. This is not ‘independent’ analysis. In terms of the shale oil business I can only think of 2 independent analysts, the rest are paid publicists for US oil companies constantly seeking new investment in a loss making business. These are business intelligence services aligned with the neo-conservative political aims and the neo-liberal economic aims of the US deep state in the political establishment and intelligence services.
IHS Markit experts are available for live or taped television, radio, and online interviews direct from one of six in-house television studios, providing you with independent analysis and timely commentary on breaking news covering a wide range of issues, including:
Economic, political, and security developments in the United Kingdom, Europe, Russia, Middle East, Africa, and Asia
Central bank rate decisions, latest macroeconomic data, and forecasts
Major industries around the world-automotive, energy, healthcare and pharmaceutical, telecoms, and more
Energy prices, as well as gas and oil project developments across the globe
Climate change, renewable energy, nuclear power, and other environment issues
Worldwide security issues, including terrorism, piracy, policing, and crime
http://news.ihsmarkit.com/broadcast_studios
Social media is so obviously open to manipulation and fake news in general as it is impossible to verify the real sources behind the ‘information’. They could be CIA funded operatives, terrorists etc. We just don’t know. What we do know is that its incredibly easy to create any number of accounts on facebook or twitter or any number of discussion and forum sites and load the bases and generally manipulate and steer the narrative in directions that suit the Neocon agenda.
In my view we cannot blindly accept any information coming from such sources and naively accept them to be honest representations of what is happening in Syria or anywhere else for that matter. For ‘open source’ we can easily substitute ‘unreliable source’ which is systemically open to propaganda abuse.
I imagine we all would agree that we need rather more thoroughly researched objective investigations before rushing off to war with Russia. Trial by Facebook or twitter only leads to the kind of international lynch mob mentality that we have seen in Trump’s response to the CWA in Syria.
Regards
SImon
Postol’s full 14-page report is now online here:
https://imgur.com/a/W4zQx#xC7yL6U
Thank you William for posting that link from professor Posol from MIT. You beat me to it.
After one reads his analysis about the wind conditions and the way the tube was crushed gave him all the info he needed to know that the tube or canister was placed on the ground, and not delivered from the air. Tellingly the tube was crushed from above and gave no appearance of detination within the tube. He also draws his theory of how this could happen.
I do wonder how many of the corporate newspapapers will publish Postols’ 14 page report. He does make the op look like a setup, planted, and very ameturish. He also goes on the say and competent analysis would spot these errors, which doesn’t bode well for our Mad Dog Mathis since he said he personally saw the intel.
Who benefits from an attack or a staged event like this? Certainly not Assad as it creates no forward momentum in his takeover of the rebels. He benefits in no way from the US entering the conflict.
This premise is enough to say he had no use for such a technique and it was a setup to get the US to spend 85 million as a show of force to say they are still on the side of the rebels and Al Nusra, and the theatrical fake white helmets handling the patients without gloves, which would have killed those ‘medical’ pretenders if it was indeed sarin.
And yet, many in the US bought in without so much of a “are you sure about this?”
The White House 4-page report titled “The Assad Regime’s Use of Chemical Weapons on April 4” repeatedly refers to “open source reporting”, “open source accounts” and “open source video”. “Video” is specifically referenced 11 times in the document.
Anticipating concern about the degree to which their “story” about the attack depends on “a significant body” of pro-opposition reports, the White House and National Security Council manufacture their own alibi:
“We are certain that the opposition could not have fabricated all of the videos and other reporting of chemical attacks. Doing so would have required a highly organized campaign to deceive multiple media outlets and human rights organizations while evading detection. In addition, we have independently confirmed that some of the videos were shot at the approximate times and locations described in the footage.”
This is the only instance where the word “certain” appears in the document.
The White House document does not mention who “independently confirmed” the times and locations of video footage, because the source for that information is a blog:
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/04/10/khan-sheikhoun-chemical-attack-bombed/
As in past episodes of White House produced “Government Assessment” political documents concerning the 2013 chemical attack in Syria and the 2014 downing of Flight MH17 and its aftermath, UK citizen Eliot Higgins of the Brown Moses and Bellingcat blogs purportedly “verified” the body of the “open source” information.
Higgins collaborator Dan Kaszeta, a US-UK dual national based in London, provided supplemental “assessment” of chemical use in Syria for both the Brown Moses and Bellingcat blogs.
Since 2012, self-appointed “citizen investigative journalist” Higgins and “chemical weapons expert” Kaszeta claimed to have “independently confirmed” numerous alleged “chemical attacks” in Syria.
Like previous “Government Assessment” documents, the latest White House report appears to depend heavily on Higgins and his collaborators to tell a “story”.
Mainstream media have directly collaborated with Higgins. Immediately following the the alleged chemical attack at Khan Sheikhoun, Kaszeta and Higgins were cited as a go-to “experts” by numerous media outlets.
Independent investigative journalists have been timid at best in their analyses of Higgins and Bellingcat. Even journalists like Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept have provided platforms for Higgins’ storytelling.
Robert Parry is one of very few investigative journalists to directly challenge the storytelling of Higgins and Bellingcat.
Let’s hope Parry, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and others rise to the occasion and address Bellingcat’s latest “story” before the next barrage of missiles or terrorist produced mass casualty event.
A significant body of Al Qaeda (Al Nusra Front, now re-branded as Tahrir al-Sham) propaganda is laundered by Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat.
Propaganda launderers like Bellingcat, the White Helmets, and the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights are employed as deception conduits by the more aggressive factions in Western governments, which seek to sabotage peace efforts in Ukraine, Syria and other parts of the world.
Here’s how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro1byfe5vUM
“Intelligence” ain’t what it used to be, apparently https://off-guardian.org/2017/04/02/why-vault-7-tools-used-by-private-contractors-shows-us-intel-needs-a-ground-up-rebuild-part-1/
Eliot Higgins his collaborators at Bellingcat are the primary fake news tag team tasked with propaganda laundering in the aftermath of the chemical attack in Syria.
Higgins and the Atlantic Council’s so-called “Digital Forensics Research Lab” have released their latest propaganda mashup
https://medium.com/dfrlab/khan-sheikhouns-digital-footprints-41125e6a1c44
A typical Bellingcat style mix of disparate so-called “open source” elements and spurious reasoning, the latest Atlantic Council report is being broadcast via Medium, is an online publishing platform developed by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams.
References to “Russian conspiracy theories” have used to peddle logical fallacy à la Bellingcat “investigations”, Atlantic Council “reports”, and other fake news.
Skepticism is the process of applying reason and critical thinking to determine validity. It’s the process of finding a supported conclusion, not the justification of a preconceived conclusion.
Journalistic skepticism appears to be abandoned in the mainstream media response to the recent chemical attack in Syria.
Eagerly abandoning skepticism, Robert Mackey of the Intercept joins the mainstream media chorus in propaganda laundering by indirectly promoting the work product of Eliot Higgins and the Bellingcat
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/12/vladimir-putin-doesnt-know-syria-conspiracy-theory-believe/
Mackey’s remark that the Syrian military was “implicated in the killing of hundreds of civilians with a nerve agent in 2013 outside Damascus” links to the Human Rights Watch report “Syria: Government Likely Culprit in Chemical Attack” which explicitly relied on “the independent investigation conducted by Eliot Higgins of the ‘Brown Moses’ blog, who collected and analyzed photos and videos from the attacks.”
Mackey’s remark that the Syrian military “bombed rebel-held neighborhoods of Aleppo with Chlorine gas as recently as December” links to a Twitter remark by Ole Solvang, deputy emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. The Human Rights Watch report on chlorine attacks again relied on Higgins and Bellingcat laundering of allegations by The White Helmets group.
Mackey implies that the Syrian military “did indeed drop a chemical payload on Khan Sheikhoun”.
In the next paragraph, Mackey acknowledges the reality that “so much of the open-source evidence of the attack’s aftermath came from activists more committed to overthrowing Assad than to the impartial reporting of facts” by linking to a Bellingcat blog article that dismisses the Syrian and Russian governments’ denials of direct responsibility for the attack.
Mackey continues a disturbing pattern of uncritical reporting at the Intercept concerning the claims of Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat.
In November 2016, Glenn Greenwald of the Intercept published verbatim the Twitter remarks of Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat and James Miller of the Interpreter Mag about the Washington Post/ProporNot debacle.
ProporNot listed several “Related Projects” including Bellingcat, Stopfake, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab. In a Twitter exchange with Greenwald, Higgins claimed he “hadn’t heard of Propornot before the WP piece”.
Interestingly, on November 25, the day before the Intercept article appeared, Higgins Tweeted that Bellingcat “in no way endorses the work or methodology” of ProporNot and “found their behaviour unprofessional”.
What is clear about Greenwald’s Intercept article is that Higgins and Bellingcat are portrayed as “professional” in comparison to PropOrNot.
Apparently Greenwald never bothered to investigate the Bellingcat site. Higgins’ group of ostensible “independent researchers” precisely fits Greenwald’s description of ProporNot. Indeed, Bellingcat “far more resembles amateur peddlers of primitive, shallow propagandistic clichés than serious, substantive analysis and expertise; that it has a blatant, demonstrable bias in promoting NATO’s narrative about the world; and that it is engaging in extremely dubious McCarthyite tactics about a wide range of critics and dissenters”.
Greenwald rightly criticized ProporNot for its “”compilation of a lengthy blacklist of news and political websites that it smears as peddlers of ‘Russian propaganda.'”
Had Greenwald conducted an actual investigation of PropOrNot “Related Project” Bellingcat, he would have identified the frequency with which Higgins engages in precisely the same “McCarthyite tactics” against critics, including veteran journalists Seymour Hersh and Robert Parry.
Parry’s exposure of Higgins’ erroneous claims about the 2013 chemical attacks in Ghouta, Syria and Bellingcat’s numerous deceptive “investigation reports” about the 2014 crash of Malaysian Air flight MH-17 in eastern Ukraine have triggered Twitter attacks from Higgins.
A a real investigation of PropOrNot’s list of purported “Allies” would have verified that self-acclaimed “expert on verifying citizen journalism” Miller frequently promoted self-acclaimed “citizen investigative journalist” Higgins. In fact, the news outlets acclaimed by ProporNot are very actively engaged in organized mutual promotion.
The deeper layer of deception underlying the Washington Post / ProporNot episode was that PropOrNot functioned as a conspicuous straw man. Repudiation of PropOrNot was leveraged to project the appearance that Higgins and Bellingcat, and other and ProporNot “Related Projects” are “professional” organizations of true “independent researchers” by comparison.
This disinformation strategy is reinforced by the fact that Bellingcat is directly allied with the Washington Post and New York Times, the two principal mainstream media organs for “regime change” propaganda in the United States, via the Google-founded “First Draft” network.
Google, an enthusiastic supporter of Higgins despite his track record of debunked claims about Syria and Russia, formed the “First Draft” coalition in 2015 with Bellingcat as a founding member.
In a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak, this Google’s new “post-Truth” propaganda coalition declares that member organizations will “work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process”.
Apparently the key method of “verification” is to cite Higgins and his collaborators at Bellingcat.
Designated reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, and other “First Draft” media “partners” write articles based on the “findings” of Higgins & Co.
Regime change groups like the Atlantic Council, and compromised human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also cite Higgins “findings as having been “confirmed” by reporters at key “First Draft” coalition media outlets.
This highly streamlined game of fake journalistic “verification” has intensified in the aftermath of the Khan Shakhun attacks in Syria. The misinformation process enabled the Trump administration to launch a missile attack against Syria without significant resistance from the American public.
Without dedicated efforts by independent investigative journalists and online media to expose this new propaganda syndicate sourced from Higgins and Bellingcat, we may expect more severe military action in the weeks ahead.
Theodore A. Postol, a professor of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a prominent critic of U.S. government statements about missile defense. In 1991, he debunked claims by the U.S. Army that its Patriot missiles were successfully shooting down Iraqi Scud missiles during the first Gulf War.
Postol has been a contributor to MIT Technology Review since 2002, and has been frequently consulted by other authors on a range of scientific and technical issues.
In September 2013 and January 2014, Postol and former UN Weapons Inspector Richard Lloyd published important investigations of faulty US technical intelligence in the Damascus nerve agent attack of August 21, 2013. Analyzing available data, they found a number of items to be inconsistent with the Obama White House’s narrative of the incident. Postol and Lloyd concluded that the Ghouta chemical attack did not seem to have been launched by the Syrian government.
The investigations of Postol and Lloyd were attacked by UK blogger Eliot Higgins.
Higgins and his collaborator Dan Kaszeta at the Brown Moses blog. The claims of Higgins and Kaszeta were repeatedly debunked by Postol and Lloyd.
In July 2014, MIT Technology Review published Postol’s analysis of Israel’s U.S.-funded Iron Dome rocket-defense interceptors. An MIT expert on national security technology, Postol presented data explaining evidence of weaknesses in the Iron Dome defense system. He argued that Iron Dome’s interceptors had not been succeeding at their crucial warhead-detonation job.
On 11 April 2017, Postol presented analysis of the report released by the Trump White House concerning the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack. Postol wrote that the report “contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft” and that photographic evidence used by the White House pointed to an attack by people on the ground.
On 13 April 2017, as if on cue, MIT Technology Review published an article purportedly revealing dastardly Russian Disinformation Technology. The article featured Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat, and was little more than an outsourced mashup of Atlantic Council reports and Bellingcat blog allegations of Russian perfidy.
Higgins, Kaszeta, and the disinformation team at Bellingcat continue their pattern of backing the White House’s unproven narrative of a chemical attack from the air in Syria.
Efforts are underway to marginalize Postol and others who point at the White House’s lack of evidence, and who dare to challenge the prevailing drive for further military action against the government of Syria.
A physicist, Postol is an expert in ballistic missile defense technologies. Prior to coming to MIT, he worked as an analyst at the Office of Technology Assessment and as a science and policy adviser to the chief of naval operations. In 2001, he received the Norbert Wiener Prize from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for uncovering numerous false claims about missile defenses.
Postol was co-author of an article In the March 2017 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an academic journal that covers global security and public policy issues related to the dangers posed by nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, emerging technologies, and other issues.
Postol and fellow science experts Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie addressed the US nuclear forces modernization program.
According to Postol, Kristensen and McKinzie, the US program “has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing—boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three—and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.”
Postol and colleagues specifically address the highly destabilizing impact of new US “superfuze” technology to vastly increase the effectiveness of US nuclear weapons against hardened targets such as Russian ICBM silos:
“Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability—a capability that would require Russia to undertake countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear forces. Tense nuclear postures based on worst-case planning assumptions already pose the possibility of a nuclear response to false warning of attack. The new kill capability created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used in response to early warning of an attack—even when an attack has not occurred.”
Postol and his colleagues also discussed implications of the new US “superfuze” technology in the March 2017 edition of Science magazine, the journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
There once was a Potus named Trump. In the ratings he’d taken a slump.
So he called up McMaster, that inglorious blaster, Who offered him missiles to dump!
Conspiracy theories abounded. The pundits were truly confounded.
Was the sarin home made by the Nusra brigade…Or were Turkish components compounded?
Brian Williams remarked at the beauty- “The Prez was inspired by duty!”
Charles Blow offered praises with affective phrases- He was clad in a suit by Cerutti!
Sean Spicer made Freudian slips, Praising Hitler with cynical quips,
Ivanka then cried forcing dad to decide- That he must launch those missiles from ships!
There were fifty nine missiles to fire- Uncle Sam is a Raytheon buyer.
It was such a good deal, some would say quite a steal- Until thirty six seemed to misfire!
The airfield was hit, we assume. The missiles would land with a boom!
Sean Spicer was stumped, quite a load had been dumped- But Assad fixed it up with a broom!
Bannon and Kushner were pouting. Kushner’s Russian connections were outing.
Such scenes would perplex causing grief for T-Rex, As he set off for Russia still doubting.
Russian real-estate oligarch friends, Jared’s hook-ups were under the lens-
To avoid the lad’s outing, First Dad sent him scouting- To Iraq so he might make amends!
The Neocons posture with pride. By comparison, what’s apartheid?
Faced with moral derision they forced a decision. War crime birds of a feather abide!
Pompeo was not at the meeting. Some have cautioned, he might have been cheating!
Was intelligence fixed so the plan wasn’t nixed? Sound judgement can be so defeating!
This all happened when Xi was in town. Speculation presaged a showdown.
Carl Vinson was steaming, the missiles were screaming, And Kim Jung was the specified clown!
Some analysts mention McCain. He arranged the false flag, they explain-
Alternative news speculates about clues- Robert Steele hesitates to abstain!
Other commenters offered two cents. They propound intervention by Pence.
Aspersions were thrown by dear old Roger Stone, He’s a gadfly and never relents!
There’s suspense in the South China Sea. It’s a worrisome issue for Xi:
“If they call it South China, not South Carolina, might be why it is belong to me!”
Fukushima was quite a forecaster. Radiation escapes ever faster.
Carl Vinson’s reactor could increase that factor – if Chinese ship missiles lambaste her!
What we mustn’t forget is Ukraine. Nikki Haley opines with disdain.
After Donbass dead babies and Nazis with Rabies, you’d think she’d be shy to complain!
Yes, we’re anxious to start World War Three. The lunacy’s easy to see.
Now if Hillary won, there’d already be fun, mushroom clouds would be smoke from the gun!
But there’s reason to be optimistic. The intelligence take is simplistic.
Thirty six missiles got lost in the thistles, imagine if they were ballistic?
All the nuclear planners are shaken. Their predictions were widely mistaken.
Missile defense is no idle pretense, so now maybe the a**holes will waken…!
I’m predicting that the Republican ticket for 2020 will be Haley-Kushner…the Republicans think they look enough like Jackie and Jack to rekindle the dream…
Clouds of gas from Kaszeta and Higgins, but that hole in the road ain’t a biggin.
The White House declared “Sure, we’re sure.” Expert Postol exclaimed “amateur.”
The perpetual Eliot cry: “Damn those Russians! You know how they lie!”
Now we know: It’s all bull. We can see in the hole. Bellingcat’s barrel bombs ne’re did fly.
Nice going F.G. this may be my favorite of your poems yet.
I also find it interesting to consider the mind set of a father in law trying to avoid his son in law getting bad press….Hmmm! Can’t say I thought that one through, but now you have me thinking. This makes sense because like many other world events between detente and war we always think of the big brain centers and how they influence a leaders decisions, but hardly do we take the time to look at the simple things. So what you did by pointing to the fact that Donald was possibly saving Jared’s ass is worth noting.
I never had much of a concern about a president hiring his relatives to work near him. Jack may have stayed alive if Bobby had not been working under him, but still Bobby seemed an important asset to Jack’s presidency. Only now between Ivanka’s tears, and Jared’s shaky business deals I now wonder if it is good having close relatives working for a president. Just remember Hillary was going to put Bill in charge of the economy, and for the life of me I can’t see how anything could have gone wrong with that arrangement (not).
Enjoyed your collection of limericks.
My prediction is that the planet won’t make it to 2020.
The crazies in control are hell bent on thermonuclear extermination.
Isn’t this still a viable theory or has this somehow been refuted? I am having difficulty figuring out if this is a defensive statement on a theory that is now out of favor or just a truth stated cited in a general manner. I read the 4 page dossier and I did not find their refutation of this theory convincing at all. I am very curious as to where Robert Parry was going with this statement.
Of course it is a viable theory. The problem is the media and the Trumpies have no intention of investigating it. There are other plausible theories as well, but the administration is stonewalling investigation. Our heroes shoot first and do not ask questions later. They just create their own facts and reality on the ground and march on – remember?
SENTENCE FIRST – VERDICT AFTERWARDS?
Lessons from Ghouta – UN/OPCW, chain of custody, scientific illiteracy, perception management and gullible media.
Past investigations relied on ethical and trusting cooperation between US, UK and Russian CW analysts, but the results of chemical weapons tests carried out on the Syrian arsenal have vanished down a kind of Orwellian ‘memory hole’. The most economical hypothesis is that they corroborated the conclusion that ‘kitchen sarin’ had been used in the Khan Al-Asal and Ghouta attacks. If they had not done, it seems likely that the results would have been trumpeted to the skies.
Obama’s decision to abruptly change course on airstrikes, against the wishes of most of his ‘top national security advisers’, resulted from General Dempsey presenting him with the test results. Evidence suggests Cameron hid these same results from the British Parliament.
In the wake of the recent incident in Idlib province, and the response to it of President Trump, hopes for that kind of cooperation have faded very sharply.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2017/04/sentence-first-verdict-afterwards-a-revision-by-david-habakkuk-14-april-2017.html#more
Watch it Mr. Parry, you are a blip on the radar screen again. We would all hate it if Consortium News was relegated to the really Slow Lane….., permanently. It is amazing , I’lI agree , that the Mainstream Media and Democrats have suddenly muted their criticisms of Trump( Excepting a few of the Usual Suspects who qualify whatever criticisms they make) and blithely ignore that Trump launched a Military Strike on a Sovereign Nation, an Act of War, without notification or oversight from Congress. Putin’s remark that the heads of NATO governments are now like Bubble-head dolls for Trump. His comment should have extended to our Congress and Senate and the New York Times and Washington Post as well. Peace is better than War but you’d never know it from our Government actions or those of our Democratic Allies either. Creeping Fascism. Pax Americana, or else.
No matter what happens to Trump, he has moved the country so far to the right toeven get back to the 1960’s would require almost a 180 degree shift.
Are you sure its to the Right.
Globalism isn’t Right – It Pro-Slave World, Pro-Plantation – Pro-Domination by the 1 per-centers.
If that is what you mean by Right. Zionism, Noahide Laws,The Greater Israeli Project, the UN, the EU, NATO, all of these apparently are what Trump is turning toward, as if his Committed Pre-Election Words were all manufactured lies, so as to get the election.
Hillary was no different, to suggest that no matter who received the PRIZE of POTUS, they in fact would never really do what they said that they would do for the America People. I believe that both Progressives and Conservatives are in more agreement now, as they have ever been. Why, because the US Government is owned by the Globalist Corporations, and we the people are SCREWED. Question just how is it that Trump is getting what he wants from China and Russia? How?
Does Evil Rule Over Us?
The Work of Evil
“The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive, you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
[read more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2011/11/work-of-evil.html
Like you Stephen, I know that many “realists” and “materialists” and atheists frequent these blogs, and that is OK by me – for a long time years ago I was among their number. So I try to low key my spiritual beliefs, but they will come out now and then, because we are in a decisive spiritual conflict as well as it’s more obvious physical dimensions. The battle for hearts and minds is at the core of this struggle and the forces involved know it and are maximizing their efforts to sway the battle in their direction.
Although I feel I should apologize for bringing these subtle dimensions into the discussion here, I won’t because my studies have made me aware that the happenings of the times are the resultant of many vectors of forces and subtle dimensions of reality as well as the more obvious gross dimensions. I would remind skeptics that science itself has found that surface affairs are affected by deeper very subtle dimensions. Who would have thought way back when I was born that realities like quarks and leptons would be crucial influences on the survival of our species?
And let’s not forget the findings of depth psychologists, molecular biologists, cosmologists, etc. about the hidden subtle but very powerful dimensions underlying our surface affairs.
Trump is now a ‘made’ Man and has earned his spurs alongside the other criminal Potus’s since Reagan. Spare a thought for the families of the 14 killed at the airport attack and also the Yemeni casualties.
The chemical attack itself is shrouded in obfuscation as there is no access to the ISIS controlled site.The White Helmets with their Hollywood Oscar acting experience,thanks to the lobbying of the idiot George Clowney, would have had no problem setting up this atrocity scenario, especially as it seems they had prior notice of an attack on the ware house.
Why only back to Reagan? There was a raft of Central American coups under Truman and Eisenhower, JFK did the Bay of Pigs and of course the big enchilada – Vietnam. Hey, hey LBJ – how many kids did you kill today?
Long ago…
No one tore the ground with plowshares
Or parceled out the land
Or swept the sea with dipping oars —
The shore was the world’s end.
Clever human nature, victim of your inventions,
Disastrously creative,
Why cordon cities with towered walls?
Why arm for war?
Ovid, Amores, Book 3
I know in this politically correct world it is verboten to mention the Devil. But, I believe based based on the evidence we are in the hands of Satanic Monsters, perhaps it is time for Prayer. Can anything else save us or ‘Deliver us From Evil’?
“Deliver us from evil” is a wish from deep in one’s heart. Whether a Higher Entity answers such a deep request or not, such a prayer feeds one’s Soul. Whether there are evil entities impinging on our affairs or not, there are evil people ruining everything good and true here, and they need to be stopped.
Yes. Though I also am confused about why these so called worship Satan, there is something else that can save us.
Autonomous democracy. Rapid and purposeful evolution to a modern form of democracy that might secure another few hundred years.
Ever see any evidence that “Autonomous Democracy” works for more than 250 years? Historical Evidence that is repetitive would be a good sample. However there just doesn’t seem to be any “Good Samples”, in any historical record. You know science demands repeat-ability, as well as objectivity – that without these two elements the purpose of the study of science is merely a mutation seen once and never again. But then who ever said that government was scientific in its DNA formula? False Hope, resides in the minds of many who claim science to be their hero, which itself is ever changing, and commutative, as its repeat-ability and objective reality demonstrates the Truth. Governments rise and fall, – mostly due to the frailties of human corruption – not the false hope of ever evolving Constitutions. And that’s the Truth!
Where have all the flowers gone?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, every one
Oh when will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?
Evil warmongers lie and seek to dominate the world. Do not believe anything they say. Trump’s concern for little babies was a foul lie in the mouth of a very foul person. We are being governed by a hateful crew of evil persons. When such as these speak of compassion it is an obvious lie that only renders them objects of disgust.
A small crew of dangerous pirates has commandeered the helm. Many democrats are involved as cheerleaders.
And enablers and part of the deep state
It is not a party thing. Both partied are traveling to the same destination. They just play the good cop, bad cop game and people fall right in line with it. If this was a party thing, not that the republicans have control of all three branches, they should be able to clean house. I have $10 that says they do nothing and the cheerleaders for the republicans make up excuses why they cannot.
Republicrats or Demicans, they are two wings of the same bird of prey.
Remember all the verbiage from Trump about putting Hitlery in prison for her crimes? (She would have genuinely deserved it). Now that Trump is in office, that sentiment is quietly forgotten. There seems to be a gentlemen’s agreement to not prosecute me for my crimes in office and I won’t prosecute you for yours after you are out of office. And we look down on third world tin-horn dictatorships for their corruption!
Minor point, Robert: Coats was present at the meeting via video conference. Recommended: see Moon of Alabama today re evaluating this report (and comments):
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/04/white-house-intelligence-assessment-is-no-such-thing-but-shows-support-for-al-qaeda.html
good link…actual investigating
Regarding western “leaders and their “allies” I believe this question needs to be asked:
“Should the Past and Present Leaders of a Number of Countries Be Charged With Conspiracy, War Crimes, Crimes Against Humanity, and Funding, Training and Arming Terrorists? “
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/02/should-past-and-present-leaders-of.html
I would nominate for “war crimes” and “crimes and against humanity” Ronald Reagen, G H W Bush, Bill Clinton, G W Bush, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condaleeza Rice, and Donald Trump, to name a few. It is past due.
Why stop there at just White House. This should go all the way to anyone that knowingly aided terrorists. That means even down to the private the was “just following orders”.
The courts are all bought and paid for…
they were created and staffed by these people
to serve them.. NOT US.
An option to consider:
Hunt down guilty parties,
schedule a global live televised
public execution,
restore faith in humanity and justice,
Rinse and Repeat.
Bankers who direct the sh+tshow are up on deck first.
Special Forces can begin the roundups at Goldman Sachs
and move from there…
The Globalist are well prepared, financially and militarily, to take down the boxed-in citizens at a moment notice!
Unless the supporting fighting forces mutiny, these elites have well designed and well thought out plans to reign in on the population should they decide not to be obedient! Most of the young people wreaking havoc in North Africa and the Middle East, like ISIS, Boko Haran, al Nusra, or al Qaeda, are recruited from the poor families of the boxed population. Unless forced to join these organizations, some of these young people are willing to die to earn a living, no matter how short lived that life might be!
At least, that is what Mr. John W. Whitehead seems to be alluding to in this link:
https://www.newsbud.com/2017/04/11/is-the-u-s-military-planning-to-take-over-america/
Yes, the police and national guard must refuse to suppress rebellion by their own people. Their own friends and family must be among the demonstrators, which requires that they must not be fooled by mass media propaganda. That requires a period of years with mass media facilities under widespread attack.
So the restoration of democracy must begin with widespread attack and destruction of all mass media facilities.
Sounds like a solid plan to me
“analysts eventually came to believe that the flight was launched in Jordan”…
…
Interesting article Mr. Parry, there is a newspaper report that states the West and its allies have a “secret command center in Jordan.”
See Info at link below:
———————————————————————
“Last year the chiefs of staff of the US, Britain, France, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey met in Jordan; and a report by UAE’s newspaper… also mentions the existence of a secret command center in Jordan which is staffed by military officials from 14 Western and Arab countries including Israel. This command center coordinates the operations of the rebels (jihadis) in southern Syria; while the operations of the jihadis in northern Syria are coordinated by similar command centers and bases in Turkey….” Nauman Sadiq, Asia Times Sep. 22, 2014.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-220914.html
Not so sure it is secret, Jordan came out years ago and stated that the US trained, what was soon to be ISIS leaders in Jordan. Google John McCain and ISIS. Treason will be the word that comes to mind.
here is a link to the actual aricle referred to:
http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/syrian-rebels-get-arms-and-advice-through-secret-command-centre-in-amman#page1
who benefits from an incident like this? Assads forces have been winning on the ground. when the US(MIC/Neocons) actual agenda in the middle=east is to have perpetual war and militarization…trimming Assad back a little and garnering some tuff guy political rep for Donald Dump, is all a win-win theatre for the US….why do you think the US never has an endgame strategy or exit strategy? The agenda is to have NO end, only perpetual war. This is just one more bit of theatre in an endless string of theatrics, taking your eyes off the other schemes to steal the rest of the worlds trillions….
regards
D
Agreed,tell that to Rachel Maddow
She is the female version of Bill O’Railly and Sean Hannity………..what a tragic trio……
“The agenda is to have NO end, only perpetual war.”
Exactly.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/07/is-us-policy-to-prolong-the-syrian-war/
“The evidence is that the underlying U.S. policy — whether the president is Obama or Trump — is to prolong the Syrian war as much as possible. Let Assad off the hook when he’s cornered, hit him when he’s about to win.”
A failed state in Syria is the preferred outcome for its southern neighbor. They would have a free hand to act in the area and get to keep the Golan.
Why can’t the American people be trusted with the truth? We revealed the missiles in Cuba in 1962! We are talking about war and peace here, again more human misery versus American corporate/imperial interests. Is this a legacy we can proudly pass on to the next generation of Americans? When is it time to wake up and see we are being steam rolled one more time into a war? As aivd, long time conditioned consumers we can see a sales job as clear as a bulldozer in the front yard. Why do we come up short when it comes to another regime change war we have (almost) put off for five years? Maybe it’s time we learn a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two!
Thank you Bob Parry and Consortium News.
Yes, Consortium News fulfills a crucial role in providing info that makes sense in the ongoing crisis in Western society.
Thank you!
Yes, the article is an essential counterpoint to the mass media “newspeak.”
Those who would like to petition the NYT to make Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
He may prefer to be independent, and there may be better polling websites, but pressure on the NYT to recognize the superior reporting of their opposition is a good thing. It is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition can demonstrate the concerns of a far larger number. I will repeat this post from time to time.
Howard Mettee,
Thank you for taking the time and sharing your outstanding, completely logical, honest thoughts. The same appreciation goes to others commenting here as well.
Either Donald Trump shows the world his (classified – naturally) “evidence” or humanity is witnessing another historical example of the devastatingly destructive-to-life, war-initiating Big Lie. “We have the evidence, believe us, but you can’t see it…” does not cut it anymore.
Such a disturbing state of affairs – especially as related to war and peace on Earth – is unacceptable from any perspective.
Just show the world your evidence, Mr. Trump.
I don’t think that the US will stop its aggression against Syria, if the false flag massacre is being debunked by for example the UN. In the 90s the same PsyOp was successfully conducted by NATO-backed terrorists in the war against Yugoslavia. Even though the UN debunked it, Clinton did not care and supported with weapons and airstrikes the “moderate” terrorists that were committing genocide against Christians. (Today the Balkans are a base for IS terrorists because of this.) It is always the same brazen lies and terrorism. The French PM Balladur even openly defended the false flag massacres: “Yes, but at least they have forced NATO to intervene”.
https://archive.is/x2i4i
Canadian (UN) soldier testimonies from the book “The Sharp End” by James D. Davis:
“Bosnians murdered their own people in well-staged attacks for PR reasons”
https://archive.is/KZr4B
Must-see report with former Clinton officials on US support for “moderate” terrorists:
“Exclusive: U.S. Policy on Bosnia Arms Trafficking”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DcivO-xO1g
You write that the UN debunked Clinton’s allegations about Yugosavia. Can you be more specific?
Related: Milosevic was cleared posthumous of all charges in 2016 by the ICC in The Haque. Not many people know that.
The criminal process against Miloševi? did not continue after his death, so he was not formally cleared, but sentences in other cases show quite clearly that Miloševi? would have been acquitted if he had not died too early.
There are different elements. Before the illegal military aggression of NATO that caused many civilian deaths, the story that a large-scale expulsion of Kosova Albanians was imminent was spread – the “plan horseshoe”, the Green German foreign minister used this as one of the main reasons for the German participation in the military aggression. This story has clearly been debunked. The ICC did not even spend very much time with the events in Kosovo because it was clear that Miloševi? could not be charged in connection with that.
On one hand, there was a political crisis – a vast majority of Kosovars wanted independence, and they boycotted state institutions, while Serbia did not want to allow the secession of Kosovo, especially when the Serbian minority in Kosovo could be threatened. On the other hand, there were terrorist attacks by the Kosova Liberation Army. The KLA was temporarily on the US list of terrorist organizations, but it was also supported by the US. The KLA targeted police stations, other institutions of the states, people from the Serbian minority in Kosovo and ethnic Albanians who had normal contacts with Serbs (“traitors”). In some cases, in the fight against these terror attacks, there was probably excessive violence by the police (as a consequence of many police people being killed by the KLA), but this was not a systematic policy ordered by the government, and the driving force in this circle of violence was the KLA, not the police. Apart from that, there were also terrorist attacks against Albanian Kosovars by Serbian extremists (Arkan etc.), albeit on a smaller scale than the ones of the KLA. These nationalist extremists were not under the control of the government, and they were not even close to Miloševi? politically. As far as Kosovo was concerned, there clearly was no basis for an indictment of Miloševi?.
In Bosnia, there were war crimes committed by all sides. It is true that Serbia provided some support to Bosnian Serbs – like Croatia (and probably Germany) provided support to Croatian Bosnians and Muslim countries and the US provided support to Muslim Bosniaks. But that alone can hardly be enough for an indictment, otherwise, the government of other countries, including the US would also have to be indicted. The investigations of the ICC showed that the Serbian government (Miloševi? etc.) tried to exert some influence on the Bosnian Serbs (who, like other parties in the war in Bosnia, were dominated by extreme nationalists) in order to push them towards moderation and a peaceful solution.
He was “formally cleared” .
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has quietly cleared the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, of war crimes. —- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45342.htm
The UN investigated massacres like for example the so-called “Market Massacre” in 1994 and established beyond doubt that the NATO-backed terrorists were killing civilians in false flag massacres:
“United Nations investigation into the market-place bombing in Sarajevo two weeks ago had established beyond doubt that the mortar shell that killed 68 people was fired from inside Bosnian [Muslim] lines.”
For more please read the chapter “Self-Inflicted Atrocities” in the official Congressional Press Release of 1997:
https://archive.is/x2i4i#selection-823.0-823.25
US Army Field Manual on PSYOP:
„PSYOP increase the relative combat power of friendly forces and adversely affect the combat power of the adversary. PSYOP accomplish this result by targeting the identified vulnerabilities of foreign audiences through the employment of the PSYOP development process. Within the DOD, the Army has the primary military role to conduct PSYOP. Army PSYOP units perform this role by supporting U.S. national policy, by conducting PSYOP in support of military operations and United States Government (USG) agencies, and by providing PSYOP training, advice, and assistance to U.S. forces and to friendly nations.“
https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-05-301.pdf
This is really good juicy stuff, thanks for sharing
You hit on the truth about the usefulness of a false flag, peter m.
What al Quaeda learned about their Idlib chemical attack, is that filmed White Helmets get a lot more wider distribution of tragic scenes showing little children dying better than when al Quaeda does using their own head choppers to record these war crimes with their cellphone camera.
The other thing the terrorists just got hip too, is now when they need to hit Assad with an Air Strikes, just create a chemical attack somewhere, and then blame it on Assad….play it again Uncle Sam.
It would seem to a fairly smart society that these kind of schemes could only be used once, but hey this is America where memories are short, and retribution is the right thing to do.
The false flag in America is treated just by it’s mention as a taboo subject, and an idea belonging to the wandering minds of seriously mislead conspiracy gooks. And that’s unfortunate, because there have been many events of our pass, and there will many more to come, where an event was thought to be reported correctly at its time of occurrences when one day suddenly it becomes unveiled as a false flag that happened in our pass…Operation Gladio, anyone?
That so-called dr. Islam was struck off the medical rolls in Britain because he fled back to Syria rather than facing charges of kidnaping and murder based on his actions as an el qaeda thug in Syria. The yankee regime is thus going to war on the basis of false propaganda provocation charges by a known raghead leader. The legitimacy of the yankee regime, its media supporters, and its vassal satellites thus is totally lacking. Civilization itself is under threat from such dangerous fascist fools.
I think that false flag strain of warrior, which as always been there, just got more popular with the technology age. Now what is needed is a populace who’s wise to their shell game.
Now we have the curious situation of Syria claiming that a US attack yesterday on an ISIS weapons depot at Der Ez-zor released poison gas causing several hundred civilian casualties, still not confirmed although Russia sent drones to investigate.
This is described at Zero Hedge at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-13/syria-claims-us-led-coalition-strike-isis-chemical-weapons-depot-has-killed-hundreds.
If it is true, then the recent US attack upon a Syrian government airfield in “retaliation” for an alleged CW incident at an Al Qaeda depot in Khan Sheikhoun is shown to be more likely murder than carelessness. If the new Der Ez-zor incident is itself a false flag, it is no worse than that of the US, and could rationalize a larger “retaliation” against Israel.
here is another very uncomfortable story from NEO, that the chemical “incident” may very well be a part of…
http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/30/golan-heights-israel-oil-and-trump/
I was near the Albanian border at the time when the Serbian military started to deport the Kosovo Albanians (which are Muslim and Roman Catholic while Serbians are Eastern Orthodox) and was surprised to see about 30 tractors with entire families coming down the road. Later I worked in several refuge camps and can assure you that the number of people forced to leave Kosovo was more than half a million. And I’m talking only about the people that came through two border crossings in northern Albania. They were all forcefully expelled and many had seen their houses burn and people killed, also the Serbian border guards had taken their passports and and all vehicle plates. After the war I worked for more than 6 years for USAID in Kosovo and was able to verify some of their accounts myself. So get your facts straight before posting conspiracy theories.