Truth Out has the article In Rush to Strike Syria, US Tried to Derail UN Probe by Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service.

Washington – After initially insisting that Syria give United Nations investigators unimpeded access to the site of an alleged nerve gas attack, the administration of President Barack Obama reversed its position on Sunday and tried unsuccessfully to get the U.N. to call off its investigation.

The administration’s reversal, which came within hours of the deal reached between Syria and the U.N., was reported by the Wall Street Journal Monday and effectively confirmed by a State Department spokesperson later that day.

 

Not only do we now know that the administration would rather not hear any facts that contradict their preconceived notions, we now know that any Wall Street type that reads the news pages of The Wall Street Journal knows it too.  My observation in the past has been that The Wall Street Journal news pages and The Wall Street Journal editorial pages are written in different worlds.  The editorial pages can be said to come from an alternate universe from the one in which most of us live. If I stumble onto something on the editorial pages, I can rest assured that it is proven wrong in its own news pages.  Perhaps the people who are inclined to believe the editorials think that the editorials disprove the news if they even bother to read the news.

Gareth Porter’s conclusion of his article states the following:

The administration’s effort to discredit the investigation recalls the George W. Bush administration’s rejection of the position of U.N. inspectors in 2002 and 2003 after they found no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the administration’s refusal to give inspectors more time to fully rule out the existence of an active Iraqi WMD programme.

In both cases, the administration had made up its mind to go to war and wanted no information that could contradict that policy to arise.

Maybe we should ask the President the classical question from the Verizon ads, “Can you hear me now?”

The Las Vegas Guardian Express has the story Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack Carried Out by Rebels, Says UN (UPDATE).  Please read the following quote before drawing any conclusions from the headline.

UPDATE: This article was updated to clarify one or two points that some of our readers found misleading: The chemical attack earlier this year was widely blamed on the Syrian regime. It is this attack that the UN now concludes was carried out by Syrian rebels. It appears unlikely – for a number of reasons – that the most recent August 21st attack was carried out by government forces – despite the rush to judgement within the international community – although this has yet to be fully determined. It is clear that both sides in the Syrian conflict have the means to use chemical weapons and it would be misguided to assume that either side has a moral objection to such attacks.

As Jean Pascal Zanders, formerly of the European Union Institute for Security Studies, has pointed out ”In fact, we – the public – know very little beyond the observation of outward symptoms of asphyxiation and possible exposure to neurotoxicants, despite the mass of images and film footage. For the West’s credibility, I think that governments should await the results of the U.N. investigation.”

This article is NOT SAYING that the current attack was carried out by the rebels. However, it is saying that the possibility still exists.  So why is everybody seeing the Russians as being obstinate because they won’t rush to judgment?  Could it be that our mainstream press is not giving us access to all the news?

By the way, I first heard about Carla del Ponte and her comments to Swiss radio late Sunday from a comment on a CBS news article.  That comment mentioned “Carla del Ponte” and “Swiss radio late on Sunday.” I found the article that is the subject of this post that you are now reading by Googling carla del ponte syria chemical weapons.  Follow the previous link to do your own research to see what else you can find out.

Before reading this article, I had been wondering if it would be possible to analyze the blood samples from the victims to determine what chemical agent was used.  Then from this information and possibly deeper analysis of the blood samples, could we make some inferences as to who had access to the exact agent that was used?  If so, why would we want to rush to judgment and possibly destroy evidence by making an attack?

Following up on some other links from my Google search, I found that the BBC has the article UN’s Del Ponte says evidence Syria rebels ‘used sarin’.

Testimony from victims of the conflict in Syria suggests rebels have used the nerve agent, sarin, a leading member of a UN commission of inquiry has said.

Again, I ask, why are people in Europe exposed to key information that is never mentioned in our own mainstream press? Should we feel so smug and sure of our own knowledge when faced with incontrovertible evidence that there is often key information to be had that is being suppressed in our own country? Is President Obama as in the dark about this key information as we were? How could this possibly be? If he does know about this information, why doesn’t he tell us if our own press corps won’t?

I may have to reread my article on how President Obama is different from George Bush father or son. I am starting to forget what those differences are.

The New York Times has the story Syria Asserts Claim of New Strikes as U.N. Impasse Looms. The previous link is to the supposedly unhacked version of the web site.  In this age of internet chicanery, there is no guarantee of anything.

Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, added a new level of complexity to the issue on Wednesday, announcing that he had submitted evidence of three previously unreported instances of chemical weapons use in Syria, which he asserted had been carried out by Syrian insurgents. Mr. Jaafari said the Syrian government had requested that the United Nations investigators expand their inquiry to include those events as well, which could lengthen their stay in the country.

Mr. Jaafari said the new instances occurred on Aug. 22, 24 and 25, and were also in the Damascus suburbs. He said Syrian soldiers were the targets. The ambassador did not explain why he was only now bringing forth the allegations, which critics were likely to view as a stalling exercise.

Mr. Jaafari repeated the Syrian government’s denials that it had ever used chemical weapons in the conflict and said the accusations were a conspiracy by Western nations acting on Israel’s behalf. He rejected assertions by the United States, Britain and other Western allies that there was persuasive evidence of Syrian government culpability in the use of the banned weapons.

The natural reaction to this might be, well of course Syria is going to deny this.  Why should we believe anything they say to avoid the consequences of their actions?  Yes, but what if in this case they are right.

Imagine, for the sake of argument, that the Syrian government was actually not responsible for the chemical weapons attack. What could they say that would convince us that they were telling the truth?  If the answer is that there is nothing they could say, then we have a problem.

Haven’t we seen this movie before?  The UN inspectors couldn’t find any WMD in Iraq before we invaded.  So we said, well of course, Saddam Hussein is hiding them.  I thought at the time that he was caught between a rock and a hard place.  He had to convince his local adversaries that he did have WMD to scare them away form attacking him.  He had to convince the US that he did not have WMD to keep us from attacking him.  Not that I have any sympathy for Saddam Hussein, but what our misguided propaganda war cost us in US soldiers’ lives is what distrubs me.

President Obama has prove once again that he does not understand the principles of negotiation.  This shows up in the trouble he is in because he announced his red line in the Syrian conflict.  He announced to the world that if Syria used chemical weapons that would be crossing his red line, after which he would take military action against Syria.

When you make such an announcement to the world, anyone who wants you to attack Syria now knows what has to be done to get you to take action.  Who would want you to take action against Syria?  Some of the rebels in Syria would certainly want you to take action.  Some people in your own government want you to take action.  They also know that it must look like the Syrian government did it.

If you must have a red line, you should only tell where that red line is to the people who would not want you to take action.

Announcing red lines is akin to going into a negotiation to sell something at a particular offering price, but announcing up front what is your actual minimum acceptable price.  Obama has already proven himself to be a past master of this technique.

The Real News Network has the interview, Bennis: There is No Military Solution to Syria. Why should we listen to what Phyllis Bennis has to say?

Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow and the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC. She is the author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer, Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis , Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer and Understanding the US-Iran Crisis: A Primer.

At the end is a great summary of the forces at work in the Syrian conflict.

BENNIS: We need to be clear there are five separate wars being fought in Syria. And, unfortunately, the victim of all of them is the people of Syria. There is certainly one war between the Syrian regime and a component of the Syrian people, as I mentioned earlier, with a very complex combination of forces challenging and fighting against the regime.

There is a sectarian war that’s underway. It didn’t start that way, but it has become a thoroughly sectarian war between, on the regional side, Sunni and Shia, with the Alawite leadership in Syria on the Shia side. And that takes shape when you see Iraq and Syria and Iran on one side versus Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey on the other side.

Then there’s a regional war for power, largely between Iran and Saudi Arabia, but being fought in Syria to the last Syrian, and with other forces such as Turkey, such as Qatar and others playing a role.

You have the war, the new Cold War, if you will, between the United States and Russia over sea lanes, over control of resources, control of oil fields, etc., pipelines. All those factors come into play. And that war is being fought to the last Syrian.

And then, of course, you have the war between Israel and United States on the one hand and Iran on the other hand over Iran’s alleged nuclear aspirations. And that war right now is being fought to the last Syrian. So you have a number of wars that are taking shape inside Syria. And the people of Syria are the ones who are paying the highest price.

One thing about our tough military stance that we usually take in these situations seems so obvious, that I cannot understand why nobody else has noticed.

What would prevent us from attacking Syria? Would we attack them if they had nuclear weapons? Is Iran correct that having nuclear weapons is the only thing that would stop us? So, has Iran made a completely rational decision based on what we did to them in 1953 and what we are doing now, that having nuclear weapons is the only good defense? Does this mean that the more pressure we put on Iran and the less willing we are to talk to them, the more we confirm their suspicions? Knowing this, should we try some other strategy?

We don’t remember Theodore Roosevelt because he said, “Speak harshly, and carry a big stick.”

Truth Out has the oped piece War on Syria: Twenty Pounds of Stupid in a Ten-Pound Bag. I’ll quote the beginning and the end of the piece.

I’m just going to throw this out on the stoop and see if the cat licks it up: instead of attacking Syria, how about we don’t attack Syria?
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I think I read somewhere that Mr. Obama is a pretty smart guy. Now would be a fantastic time for him to prove it by coming up with an answer to this that does not involve cruise missiles, bombs and mayhem.

When, a few months ago, Obama first issued the ultimatum against using chemical weapons, it sounded to me like a pretty reasonable thing to do.  Now that we are facing the consequences, I hark back to an excuse we used to use in the Army to try to get out of almost any predicament involving the intervention of our superiors in rank, “Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time.”

The implication being, “Yes, I see why you want to mete out some punishment because it doesn’t sound like such a good idea anymore, but I am just a lowly soldier who can’t always think for himself.”

All of the talk about the things we could do to punish Bashar al-Assad were all tried when we wanted to stop the democratically elected government in Iran in 1953.  It didn’t stop them then.  It isn’t stopping Iran today when we try the same tactics.  It probably won’t stop al-Assad.  Except for saving face, what will we gain by spending billions of dollars on an effort that we know will not succeed and will only further enrage the Arab population of the Middle East?

What would happen if  we actually talked to the Russians and Chinese, since they are the stumbling blocks in getting anything out of the United Nations Security Council?  Instead of trying to convince them of our point of view, or going our own way if we fail, what if we really debated the pros and cons of what they want to do against what we want to do?  Could some actual, viable alternative course of action be figured out?

In the 1953 coup that we and the British created in Iran, the British used a clever ploy to get us to rescue them from the severe loss of control over the oil fields in Iran.  Rather than stating the need for the coup in those terms, they recast the issue as one of preventing the Communists in Russia from gaining control of the Iranian oil.  Apparently President Truman was smart enough to rebuff them, but Eisenhower fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Let’s not use the same inability to talk to the Russians (and Chinese) just like we were still in the cold war.

The issues in Syria are very tough ones.  Rather than resort to our brute strength, maybe it is time to use our brains.

In talking with my SO about this issue and blog post, we almost simultaneously came up with another idea.

A quote from the article brings the point home.

Doctors Without Borders seems pretty convinced it happened, despite the fact that the use of such weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense, given the fickle nature of chemical weapons and how closely concentrated his own forces were near the area of the attack. A rogue military commander, perhaps? The rebels themselves?

So, who might gain by a use of chemical weapons?  The USA (CIA), Israel (Mossad), al-Qaida? So maybe the Russians are  right in saying that even if the chemical weapons attack is proven, we don’t know for sure who is responsible.  The Russians are saying that the UNSC has a protocol for finding the answers to these questions before they sanction military action.   Or should we just take the word of the CIA and the US administration that they have incontrovertible proof.  After all, the CIA has wiretaps. The recent NSA scandal has shown us how much the word of the clandestine part of our government is worth.  We also have plenty of experience with the hotheads in the Republican party that are calling for immediate action whether we know who is responsible or not.  If anyone has the motto “Ready, Fire, Aim” it is the Republicans and our own media.

Nation Of Change has the article Spying Scandal Engulfs Other US Agencies.

Earlier this month, Reuters revealed that a special division within the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has been using intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a mass database of telephone records to secretly identify targets for drug enforcement actions.

In the wake of these revelations, a former prosecutor tells IPS he believes he and his colleagues may have been unwitting pawns in the federal government’s effort to deceive defendants and the court system, thereby violating citizens’ constitutional rights.

The article goes on to discuss the Special Operations Division (SOD) comprised of federal agencies including Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency (NSA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the Department of Homeland Security.

Fakhouri says the SOD program is unconstitutional because of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments combined.

Full and fair disclosure is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as part of the Sixth Amendment, which states, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right… to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.”

The Fifth Amendment provides, “No person shall be… deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

It is getting harder and harder for me to make excuses for what the NSA is doing in gathering information about people’s phone calls.

New Economic Perspectives has the article Mobilization and Money. The discussion is about how the government paid for the war build-up and execution of the war, and how did it prevent inflation when there were few civilian goods to buy.  The summary at the end is as follows:

By my calculations, the fiat money flowed like this: First, the sovereign government issued and paid the people dollars to build the war machine; second, the people paid the sovereign government back some portion of the dollars they’d earned by purchasing War Bonds and paying taxes; third, the sovereign government destroyed the dollars it received in taxes and for War Bonds, thus enabling it to pay the people even more dollars to produce ships and bombers without creating a spiraling inflation; fourth, the sovereign government redeemed the War Bonds with interest, paying the people with new fiat money—but rather than being inflationary, these new dollars were absorbed by the rapidly growing post-war economy, the people using the money to buy the newly abundant goods and services produced by what was now the most technologically sophisticated, creative, well educated, productive and equitable social economy in world history.

But now, somehow, we’ve lost our way and our momentum. We’ve convinced ourselves that our sovereign monetary system works by a different logic—a logic that leads inexorably to a perpetual and growing shortage of Federal spending power. Given the real threats now racing our way with the same inevitability as was Nazism in 1938—climate change, rising sea levels, super-storms, extended droughts, gigantic forest fires, loss of fisheries and ocean acidification, water and food shortages, nuclear terrorism, and the possible failure of democracy itself—it seems we might want to consider another great mobilization to defend ourselves—if we can ever remember how to do it.

Of course there was rationing and price controls, but that does not detract from the part  war bonds and taxes played in taming inflation.  It just proves that there can be more than one thing going on in the economy at one time.  You don’t have to restrict yourself to using only one tool in the tool box to solve a problem.

The question is, “What economic principle allowed us to do this in World War II, but does not allow us to do it now?”  Anyone care to hazard a guess?  We had a gold standard then, but we don’t have one now. That should make it easier to do now what we did in WW II. Our current  foreign creditors do not seem to be complaining about our monetary policy. So that can’t be what is stopping us.

The Consortium News has the story A CIA Hand in an American ‘Coup’? by Robert Parry.

It has taken six decades for the CIA to formally acknowledge that it undertook a coup against Iran’s elected government in 1953, but the spy agency might never concede that some of its officers joined in a political strike against a sitting U.S. president in 1980, yet that is what the evidence now indicates.

This story would be absolutely unbelievable were it not for the fact that it is confirming what anybody with a brain suspected in 1980.  The Iranians released the U.S. hostages just as Ronald Reagan was sworn into office after he defeated Jimmy Carter and after they had held the hostages for over a year.  What sane person who was not a Republican would have chalked that up to coincidence.  There was even a Congressional investigation, which this story explains was subverted by the CIA, The Reagan administration, and George H. W. Bush himself.  Remember that George W. Bush, the son, wondered why “they” hate us.  He thought it was for our freedom.  I wonder if the CIA let him in on the secret?

It’s a good thing they never put Ronald Reagan’s face on Mount Rushmore.  After the facts become known about what he did before and after his election, they would have had to erase him from the monument. Do you think that negotiating with the enemy to the detriment of the sitting President would come under the Constitution’s definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors”? How about if the conspiracy and coverup continued while the perpetrator was in office?

Think of the implications for what the Republican Party and the CIA may be doing to President Obama.  Also remember this as we gear up for a war with Syria.  And remember what part Israel played in the plot to get rid of Carter.

I found it hard to isolate (see) all the links in the above quoted article to follow them up. For your and my convenience, I have extracted those links in the quotes below:

a secret CIA document

key evidence was hidden

internal doubts were suppressed.

[For details on the case, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative and Secrecy & Privilege.]

Beach noted in a “memorandum for record” dated Nov. 4, 1991. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Second Thoughts on October Surprise.“]

Americans meeting with Iranians in Paris in October 1980. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Key October Surprise Evidence Hidden.”]

on May 14, 1992, a CIA official ran proposed language past

The CIA’s persistent document-production delays finally drew a complaint

In a June 18, 1992, cable from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul

In a June 24, 1992, letter to White House counsel Boyden Gray

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Talking Points Memo has the article Colin Powell Calls Zimmerman Verdict ‘Questionable’ (VIDEO) which shows the following video:

The TPM headline trivializes what Powell has to say. His take on Egypt and Syria was much more important than what they chose to headline. It’s not whether or not you agree with what he has to say about many of these issues, but that he invites you to think rationally about what you can and cannot accomplish.

I just wish that Powell did not have such a strong sense of loyalty or unwillingness to rid himself of a decision he made early in life that he cannot divorce himself from the Republican Party. Whatever his reasons for clinging to the Republican Party and not shifting to some other party, it would be enlightening to hear what they are. Perhaps it is one of these factors that led him make his U.N. speech about Iraq that I hope he rues.