Truthout has the report How Intelligence Was Twisted to Support an Attack on Syria by Gareth Porter.

That pattern was particularly clear in the case of the intelligence gathered by covert means. The summary claims, “We intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on August 21 and was concerned with the U.N. inspectors obtaining evidence.”

That seems to indicate that U.S. intelligence intercepted such communications. But former British Ambassador Craig Murray has pointed out on his blog August 31 that the Mount Troodos listening post in Cyprus is used by British and U.S. intelligence to monitor “all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East … ” and that “almost all landline telephone communications in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage [and] picked up on Troodos.”

All intelligence picked by the Troodos listening post is shared between the U.S. and British intelligence, Murray wrote, but no commmunictions such as the ones described in the U.S. intelligence summary were shared with the British Joint Intelligence Organisation.  Murray said a personal contact in U.S. intelligence had told him the reason was that the purported intercept came from the Israelis. The Israeli origin of the intelligence was reported in the U.S. press as well, because an Israeli source apparently leaked it to a German magazine.

There has to be a certain amount of paranoia to believe this report, but it also seems that a bit of paranoia is driving the U.S. intelligence agencies interpretation of what they see.

The intelligence community is rightly used to assessing the worst-case scenario for the evidence they find.  (I presume that to give their bosses a range of options, they also think of the best-case scenario, which analysis we are not seeing.)

However true risk analysis does not only consider worst-case scenarios of what could happen.  Risk analysis must also consider fail-safe responses to the worst-case scenario.  In other words, you need to consider the safest way possible to respond to the worst-case event, especially if there is a possibility of misinterpreting the incoming information about what is going on.  The true worst-case scenario might be misinterpreting the data, the situation occurring is not actually the situation you think it is, and responding in such a way that more damage is caused than if you had  done nothing.

This is the trouble with the worst-case assumption that Assad carried out the nerve gas attack.  Perhaps, the truly worst-case situation is that the rebels perpetrated the attack to draw us in, and in response to our first weak retaliations, they will carry out bigger attacks in order to draw a bigger retaliation.

In testimony today, John Kerry used the fact that Assad is acting irrationally in carrying out the initial attack, if he is equally irrational in responding to us, he may carry out a bigger attack.  Kerry and General Dempsey indicated that they had already chosen further targets in case such an eventuality happened.

One could equally assume that Assad is rational and did not carry out the first attack.  You could assume the rebels were being rational by faking an attack or carrying out a real one to draw us in.  If we announce that will will attack other targets if another gas attack is carried out, we are telling the rebels that there first attack was a partial success and another attack would draw more responses from us.  So we have given the rebels a road map in how to manipulate us.

I think Kerry testified that it would be irrational to assume the rebels carried out the gas attack.  I don’t think he gave any reason why that would be irrational.  Seemed pretty rational to me, though.  Especially since the symptoms displayed in the videos did not seem consistent with a real nerve gas attack.  It could have been staged, just like the moon landing was staged.  (I threw in that last phrase just to see if  you were paying attention.)

The Real News Network has the video and transcript for the interview Wall Street Eager to See Larry Summers Nominated Fed Chair.

POLLIN: I think it is. And here’s the reason. Larry Summers was a crucial figure in the late 1990s at the end of the Bill Clinton administration supporting the repeal of the financial regulatory system that we had in place, the Glass-Steagall system that was created in the wake of the 1930s depression, the last massive economic crisis. We did put in place a financial regulatory system that was reasonably effective.

Now, over time, of course, Wall Street and others lobbied against this year after year after year. But it took a Democratic president, a Democratic administration, Clinton, to pass a law to repeal the previous regulatory law. And who was Treasury Secretary of the United States at the time of the repeal of Glass-Steagall? Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

And Larry Summers plays this crucial role. Not only is he a public official, but he is a very well known, sophisticated economist. And on top of that, he had been, in his academic writing, in support of financial regulations. Once he became a public official under Clinton, all of a sudden he became a very aggressive deregulator, such that even the person who was the head of one of the regulatory agencies, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who argued–her name was Brooksley Born–she argued on behalf of regulating derivatives, the most dangerous financial products, and Summers was vehement in opposing it. So, actually, if you had to trace the collapse of the 2007-2009 financial crisis on one person–and, of course, you can’t really trace it to one person–but if you did, I think you could make a fair argument that Larry Summers is more to blame for the financial crisis that we experienced than any other person. So why in the world are we putting him in charge as the government’s top financial regulator to implement these rules that are coming out with Dodd-Frank? Clearly the reason is that Wall Street is fighting like mad to put Larry Summers in so the government will go soft on Wall Street and we still won’t have good financial regulations.

I don’t know how he knows that this is clearly what Wall Street wants, but it wouldn’t be hard to believe.

Hannah Allam and Mark Seibel of the McClatchy Washington Bureau have written the article To some, US case for Syrian gas attack, strike has too many holes.

The Obama administration’s public case for attacking Syria is riddled with inconsistencies and hinges mainly on circumstantial evidence, undermining U.S. efforts this week to build support at home and abroad for a punitive strike against Bashar Assad’s regime.

They have done an excellent job of reporting that does not just echo what one side has  to say about the attack in Syria.  They even identify some of the holes that I have not mentioned in my previous blog posts.

One of my arguments all along has been that we should not be making life and death decisions when there are so many holes in the argument.  If the Obama administration justifies retaliation with claims that the intelligence supports their conclusions, then they are going to have to shows us a lot of the actual evidence.  If they would prefer to keep the evidence secret, then they are just going to have to accept the fact that they cannot use these secrets to justify what they want to do.  It is up to Obama to decide which is more important, keeping secrets or taking action.

New Economic Perspectives has the William Black piece Larry Summers’ Take on Efficient Markets and Regulators: Brilliance v. Idiots. Here is perhaps the key insight.

It would be good if economists read the criminology literature on control fraud.  It would be good if economists read the regulatory literature on control fraud.  It should be unacceptable that economists fail to read the economics literature about control fraud by a Nobel Laureate (Akerlof, 2001).  Summers missed the most fundamental point about accounting control fraud.  Here’s the key passage again:  “the parties to these kinds of contract are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves.”  “Institutions” are not the issue – the controlling officers are the issue.  In accounting control frauds the controlling officers loot “their” “institutions.”  “Institutions” are “[in]capable of protecting themselves” from their controlling officers.

I have heard it said that magicians love to perform in front of an audience of engineers. The engineers keep looking for logical explanations of how the tricks could be performed without realizing it isn’t logic, but deception that is behind the trick.

Applying this to economists, they develop all sorts of theories on how the rational person will behave in an economic situation.  What they don’t always take into account is how people might make money the easy way by deception.

CNN has a long article and several videos under the headline Could Syria strike back if United States, allies, attack?

Here is one  video  that is an interview with Bilal Saab, an expert on the Middle East.

The interviewer does try to get Bilal Saab to consider more than he has considered up to that point in the interview, but she fails to get him to consider one obvious possibility. Whatever may be rational or irrational for Assad to do in response to our attack, if it were in fact the Syrian rebels that made the first attack, what is rational for them to do would be quite different from what it would be rational for Assad to do. What they had the ability to do would be quite different from what Assad could do.

The experts might be quite right that Assad would just shrug off the pin-prick attack planned by President Obama. However, while Assad was shrugging, the Syrian rebels might just mount an even bigger chemical attack and pin it on Assad again.

If the Obama administration is failing to take this possibility into account, then the President could be impeached for criminal negligence if this scenario actually plays out.

The Onion has the article Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus’ VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning.

Over the years, CNN.com has become a news website that many people turn to for top-notch reporting. Every day it is visited by millions of people, all of whom rely on “The Worldwide Leader in News”—that’s our slogan—for the most crucial, up-to-date information on current events. So, you may ask, why was this morning’s top story, a spot usually given to the most important foreign or domestic news of the day, headlined “Miley Cyrus Did What???” and accompanied by the subhead “Twerks, stuns at VMAs”?

It’s a good question. And the answer is pretty simple. It was an attempt to get you to click on CNN.com so that we could drive up our web traffic, which in turn would allow us to increase our advertising revenue.

This may be one of the best articles I have seen on The Onion recently.  It may even be filled with details that are technically quite correct.

The Boston Herald has the article Markey backs surgical strike in Syria, Warren hesitant. Here is what they had to say about Ed Markey for whom I campaigned and voted.

Markey proposed the use of cruise missiles and “other mechanisms” as alternatives.

“The statement to Assad is we are going to hit you and our allies stand with the world in saying that Assad must not use chemical weapons,” Markey said.

I went to the Markey’s Senate web page to leave the following message:

Please rethink your position on Syria.

For the sake of argument, say I buy your conclusion that Assad is responsible for the chemical attack and it is not an accident by the rebels, nor a false flag operation by them supported by our CIA (and the CIA is supplying trustworthy intelligence to the President).

If we do a limited, surgical strike with bombs (an oxymoron if there ever was one), what would be our next step if Assad decides to see our play and raise us one by doing a larger chemical attack?

Would we say, “Oops, I guess that didn’t work, but we do not want to get drawn in?”  Or would we escalate our retaliation?  Or is there a third possibility?

If there is a third possibility, why don’t we try that now before we drop any bombs?

To my readers, I ask you to send your own message to Senator Markey.

September 1, 2013

I just realized that I missed an important point.  Even if you think that it would be stupid for Assad to use chemical weapons again in response to our retaliation, consider another possibility.  If it really were the rebels responsible for the first attack because they were trying to draw us in, might they not escalate because our initial response was not as heavy as they wanted?

When you plane operations like the President is planning, you have to think of all the things that might happen.  I think it would be foolish to dismiss the actions I have brought up as, “Oh, that will never happen.”

The question we should be asking is, “Should Assad  suffer consequences even if he is not responsible for the chemical attack?”

Another question would be, “If the rebels did this by accident or in an effort to drag us in, should they be rewarded for killing what the President now claims is more than 1,000 people?”

If Obama should take action against Assad and it turns out Assad is not responsible for the chemical attack, Obama would teach two lessons.

1.  If you want to drag the US into a war, then perform a false flag operation that crosses the clear line that Obama has put before the world.
2. If you do not want to be bombed by the U.S.A., you’d better have nuclear weapons.

Should Obama take the chance of teaching these lessons to the world before he knows the facts?  Is this the kind of lessons we want our President teaching?

The Real News Network has a conversation between Chris Hedges and Paul Jay headlined Chris Hedges on Obama Decision to Attack Syria and “Give Congress a Voice”.

One thing to note is the mention of the story in my recent post EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack. Paul Jay acknowledges the credentials of the reporter who reported this story.

The one part that this interview did not acknowledge was the issue of building a pipeline in Syria to give access to the European market to Saudi Arabia in competition with Russia. Arms sales may be a big part, but oil may be bigger. See my previous post Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern.

Seems like my scouring the web for news is a day ahead of The Real News Network, perhaps the oil issue will be coming soon to The Real News Network.

On a web site hosted by the UK Guardian, there is the article Syria intervention plan fueled by oil interests, not chemical weapon concern: Massacres of civilians are being exploited for narrow geopolitical competition to control Mideast oil, gas pipelines.

These strategic concerns, motivated by fear of expanding Iranian influence, impacted Syria primarily in relation to pipeline geopolitics. In 2009 – the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria – Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.”

Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo – and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a “direct slap in the face” to Qatar’s plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that “whatever regime comes after” Assad, it will be “completely” in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will “not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports”, according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

It would seem that contradictory self-serving Saudi and Qatari oil interests are pulling the strings of an equally self-serving oil-focused US policy in Syria, if not the wider region. It is this – the problem of establishing a pliable opposition which the US and its oil allies feel confident will play ball, pipeline-style, in a post-Assad Syria – that will determine the nature of any prospective intervention: not concern for Syrian life.

What is beyond doubt is that Assad is a war criminal whose government deserves to be overthrown. The question is by whom, and for what interests?

Who knew that if you dug deeply enough, you would find an oil motive for all of this? Perhaps the British Parliament that rejected calls for a strike against Syria didn’t get the memo explaining the real necessity.  I bet that John McCain and Lindsay Graham did get the memo or else had a hand in writing it.

As with all reports of what is going on, you don’t know who is telling the truth or any facsimile thereof. I guess you just pour all this stuff into the big cesspool of your mind, and see what stench emanates.