I have created a petition, President Obama: Don’t bomb side that didn’t use chemical weapons to favor side that did.  The wording might not be ideal because I had to shrink it to 75 characters.

My previous posts, Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack Carried Out by Rebels, Says UN (UPDATE) and In Rush to Strike Syria, US Tried to Derail UN Probe, show that it is quite likely that President Obama has identified the wrong side as the user of chemical weapons in Syria.

It would be a horrible miscarriage of justice and it would severely harm the interests of humanity if we were to punish the side that did not use chemical weapons in a way that could bring to power the people who did use chemical weapons.

If past history is any guide we will be saddled with the aftermath of this huge blunder for more than 50 years. See my previous post, A CIA Hand in an American ‘Coup’? about our legacy in Iran.

At least don’t let this horrible mistake be on your conscience.  Please sign the petition.  Please spread the word about this petition.

August 29, 2013

I changed the title of the petition to

President Obama: Don’t bomb the wrong side over the use of chemical weapons

When you sign the petition, the following email will go out:

To:
The President of the United States
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts
Rep. Edward Markey, Massachusetts-05
Rep. Richard Neal, Massachusetts-01
Barack Obama, President of the United States

Don’t bomb the wrong side over the use of chemical weapons

Sincerely,
[Your name]

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.”