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.

Here is the video of President Obama’s speech on his intended actions in response to the chemical attack in Syria.

This is posted on the White House blog as President Obama’s Decision on Syria. There you can find a transcript. There is also a page for submitting questions and comments.

I have commented on YouTube and I have sent comments directly to the White House with various parts from the comments below.

President Obama, are you listening or are you just talking?

Do you realize that you are not the one to judge whether you have made a strong case for what you want to do? The people whose agreement you seek are the ones to make the judgement. You have to listen to them before you can conclude how well you have done?

What if the Syrian government did not launch the attacks, but it was the rebels who accidentally exposed the chemicals that were supplied to them by Saudi Arabia? What is your reaction to Syrian rebels admitting to their part in this attack?

Are you willing to take action on this chemical weapon attack even if you punish the wrong people? Will this confirm to the world that the US is too dangerous to have the military might that it does? Will attacking Syria just prove to Iran that they better get nuclear weapons to protect against a future attack from us?

What if Assad says, “I see your attack and I raise you one. Now here is a real chemical attack.” Are you going to stop at your initial pin prick and just say “Oops, that didn’t work?” Or are you going to escalate? Is there a third option? Could you try that third option before you drop bombs and cause another chemical attack?

Do you realize that diplomacy involving the interested parties means that you listen to their issues, try to understand them, and try to resolve them as well as expecting the same treatment from the other parties on your issues? Pressuring others to just accept your point of view is not a good faith effort at using a diplomatic approach.

The videos of the attack victims are consistent with certain nerve agents, but not with others. Don’t you think you ought to wait for the UN inspectors’ report to see if the blood tests show the use of the nerve agent is consistent with the videos and consistent with the types of agents that Syria has?

If it turns out that your actions are to cover the blunder of the CIA in letting Saudi Arabia provide chemical weapons to the rebels, have you not learned that the cover up gets you into more trouble than admitting to the original offense? The original offense may not be impeachable, but a cover-up is impeachable.

What if there is a whistle blower that comes out and exposes what really happen despite all your attempts to intimidate all whistle blowers?

The laws of this country have strict requirements for trying and convicting people to guard against the erroneous conviction of the wrong people on less than reliable evidence. As a lawyer and Constitutional scholar, don’t you think that bombing people who have not bombed you and are not threatening to bomb you ought to require just as much caution?

The Real News Network has the video The Most Sought After Chess Piece with Larry Wilkerson the former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell.  Here is just the beginning of the wise advice from Wilkerson.

DESVARIEUX: So, Larry, it sounds like there’s no smoking gun here. UN inspectors, they’re still in Syria currently. But the Obama administration seems to be pushing forward, saying that they are blaming Assad for this chemical attack. Why would the Obama administration come out with such aggressive language towards Assad and this strike if there’s no smoking gun? What wouldn’t they just wait for the UN inspectors to have hard evidence before proceeding?

WILKERSON: That’s an excellent question. And if I hadn’t lived through this sort of operation with three other presidents, I’d have difficulty answering that question.

As it is, I would say that probably they got too far forward in the foxhole, too aggressive. The president probably acted on an NSA intercept or something like that and made some conclusions he probably shouldn’t have made. And now they’re trying to walk it back a little bit.

I just heard that the inspectors have been asked through the Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general, to not go to the area because we claim the area is contaminated by conventional munitions that Assad has continued to use. That’s preposterous, because if it was a neurotoxic agent, we wouldn’t necessarily have to find things on the ground. It would be nice if we did, but what we’re going to do is take blood samples and so forth of the alleged victims and see if they have indeed been affected by some sort of chemical agent, in this case VX or sarin or a facsimile thereof.

So this really looks bad right now. It looks a lot like what I went through in 2003 in preparing Colin Powell for his now infamous presentation at United Nations in February of that year, where we said Saddam had an active nuclear program, had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons, had major contacts with al-Qaeda and an active nuclear program, all of which we now know was patently false.

Here is the video:

You have to wonder why the President is so dead set against listening to reason. I have proposed one reason, that Obama is trying to cover his ass over a CIA action that went wrong. Does anyone ever learn from history that the cover-up can get you in more trouble than the original crime? Can you think of any other, less idiotic reasons?

The New York Times has the article Experts Fear U.S. Plan to Strike Syria Overlooks Risks.

“Our biggest problem is ignorance; we’re pretty ignorant about Syria,” said Ryan C. Crocker, a former ambassador to Syria and Lebanon, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.
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In outlining its tentative plans, the Obama administration has left many questions unanswered. Diplomats familiar with Mr. Assad say there is no way to know how he would respond, and they question what the United States would do if he chose to order a chemical strike or other major retaliation against civilians.

That would leave the United States to choose between a loss of credibility and a more expansive — and unpopular — conflict, they said. “So he continues on in defiance — maybe he even launches another chemical attack to put a stick in our eye — and then what?” Mr. Crocker said. “Because once you start down this road, it’s pretty hard to get off it and maintain political credibility.”

I am so confused.  Here I am agreeing with the Dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.  Moreover, this article is being published by the Iraq warmongers at The New York Times.

It’s enough to make my head spin if it were not for the fact that I am standing still and the other people are doing the flipping and flopping.

The BBC has the story and video Russia’s Vladimir Putin challenges US on Syria claims.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has challenged the US to present to the UN evidence that Syria attacked rebels with chemical weapons near Damascus.

Speaking to journalists in the Russian far-eastern city of Vladivostok, Mr Putin urged Mr Obama – as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate – to think about future victims in Syria before using force.

He said it was ridiculous to suggest the Syrian government was to blame for the attack.

“Syrian government troops are on the offensive and have surrounded the opposition in several regions,” he said.

“In these conditions, to give a trump card to those who are calling for a military intervention is utter nonsense.”

“So I’m convinced that is nothing more than a provocation by those who want to drag other countries into the Syrian conflict.”

He said that the US failure to present evidence to the international community was “simply disrespectful”.

“If there is evidence it should be shown. If it is not shown, then there isn’t any,” he said.

Some of Obama’s critics call him a communist.  At least if he were Russian, he could sound reasonable, like Putin on this issue.  Who’s of thought that to an American the Russian logic would sound more logical than the American logic?

This story does NOT come from The Onion.  The story  from Mint Press News is EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack.

However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.

Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime’s heartland of Latakia on Syria’s western coast, in purported retaliation.

Since Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan is a favorite of the CIA according to this article, this explains why the Obama administration is so anxious to blame this on Bashir al Assad.  The President is trying to cover his ass.  Of course, who knows if this story is credible?

I was watching Secretary of State John Kerry explain some of the evidence they have for blaming Assad.  He showed spots on a map where  our satellites picked up rockets firing from government held territory and hitting rebel territory.  They know when the rockets were fired.  What I did not hear him say is that he had any indication the rockets contained a nerve agent.  He also did not claim any evidence of a rocket hit near where the nerve agent attack was supposed to have happened.

The US is not waiting to hear from the UN inspection team what the nerve agent was.  My previous post Evidence: Syria gas attack work of U.S. allies quoted an expert who said that sarin gas is absorbed through the skin so that a gas mask would not be sufficient protection for the people treating the victims.  If you look at the videos of the doctors treating the victims, they are not adequately protected, and yet there are no reports of the doctors dying.  If you look at the equipment worn by the UN inspectors, you see contamination suits that completely enclose the inspectors. This is what you wear if you suspect sarin. Perhaps it was not even sarin that was used.  Perhaps this is why the President wants to act now, before reports come in that the agent is something that can be linked back to Saudi Arabia and the CIA.

If this attack were somehow connected to the CIA, what is the likelihood that the CIA would provide the President with reliable intelligence that pointed the finger back at them.  Compare this with the likelihood that they would gin up some intelligence that pointed the finger elsewhere.

If any of this is true, this would be an impeachable offense in my opinion.

Surely if this is a legitimate story, this can not be the only place reporting it. Google the phrase nerve gas rebel accident.

Politisite reports the above article and then adds some information from the UK Telegraph, Saudis offer Russia secret oil deal if it drops Syria.  Well, actually the information was in the original article, but it used a link to a Business Insider article REPORT: The Saudis Offered Mafia-Style ‘Protection’ Against Terrorist Attacks At Sochi Olympics. This actually links back to the same Telegraph article.

According to U.K.’s Independent newspaper, it was Prince Bandar’s intelligence agency that first brought allegations of the use of sarin gas by the regime to the attention of Western allies in February.

The link just above points to the article, Syria, the Saudi connection: The Prince with close ties to Washington at the heart of the push for war.

The Time magazine world page has the article, The Known Knowns and Known Unknowns of a Chemical Attack in Syria. One of the items it talks about is the symptoms from nerve gas attacks.  It is in line with the expert I quoted yesterday.

Video footage coming from the attack sites reveals a horrifying litany of symptoms, from vomiting, difficulty breathing, catatonic states, paralysis, foaming at the mouth, dilated pupils, constricted pupils, tremors, excess salivation and uncontrolled defecation and urination. These could all be symptoms of chemical attack, but they are inconsistent. Nerve agents like sarin, for example, don’t cause foaming at the mouth, but other lung irritants like chlorine gas might. Age, allergies and asthma can also impact how symptoms manifest. The agents in question could be diluted or combined in novel ways that produce an unusual array of symptoms. Even if the videos are unconfirmed, they clearly demonstrate that the victims are suffering horribly and that something terrible has happened to a large number of people. The only way to know for sure what kind of agents were used would be through testing blood and tissue samples of the victims, and environmental samples taken at the site.

At this point, I give up.  There are references all over Google to the story, but I have not found one yet that didn’t link back to the original story above.

WND has the story Evidence: Syria gas attack work of U.S. allies.  I found the link to this in one of the comments to the article discussed in my previous post The rush to judgment on Syria is a catastrophic and deadly error.

This WND story was written by Jerome R. Corsi.  This is what WND has for his bio:

Jerome R. Corsi, a Harvard Ph.D., is a WND senior staff reporter. He has authored many books, including No. 1 N.Y. Times best-sellers “The Obama Nation” and “Unfit for Command.” Corsi’s latest book is the forthcoming “What Went Wrong?: The Inside Story of the GOP Debacle of 2012 … And How It Can Be Avoided Next Time.”

From what I had heard about his books, I always considered Corsi a bit of a nutter (Even a nutter might be right once in awhile, maybe not as often as a stopped watch, though.), so I am hesitant to even mention anything he writes.  However, the videos in his presentation are important if they are to be believed.  I have no way of knowing if they are to be believed.  I don’t know who to believe at this point. But as the UK Guardian pointed out, some of the people we have not believed in the past have turned out to be more truthful and foresighted than the people I want to believe.  (Bush was not one of the people I wanted to believe, but Obama was. Corsi was also not one that I wanted to believe. The links to his book above show why i didn’t, and probably still don’t.)

From the Corsi article, here is but one sample video.

A separate YouTube video from Syrian television shows a government-captured arsenal of what appears to be nerve gas weapons seized from a rebel stronghold in Jobar, Syria.

There are several other videos of more or less veracity. When these videos claim they intercepted a radio communication, at least they play you the audio for you to hear the emotional state of the speakers, and there is a translation in subtitles. In this world where you can trust nothing, at least we have some questions to ask the other side of this argument.

Either side is capable of carrying out false flag operations. Either side is also capable of filming their false flag operations. We need to be aware of that. If we cannot figure out which flag being flown is false or if a false flag is being flown, we need to slow down and do a lot more investigation. If the false flag operation is that of the CIA/US, then there is little hope for a rational discussion. Scratch that, there is no hope.

August 29, 2013

I have been doing some Googling to see what reliable reports I can find about the use of sarin gas in Syria by the rebels. I don’t claim that any of the items I post below are any more or less reliable that what I have already posted.

There is (Video) Syrian Rebels CAUGHT And ARRESTED With Sarin In Turkey In 5/2013. This video originates from RT news. The R in RT used to stand for Russia or Russian, I believe.

Arutz Sheva 7 from Israel reports Russia Accuses Syrian Rebels of Using Sarin Gas.

Truth Out has the report Chemical Weapons Experts Still Skeptical About US Claim That Syria Used Sarin from June 15, 2013. What I find interesting about this article is some information that you might be able to use to judge the veracity of videos about the sarin attacks of any flavor.

“It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just that we can’t prove a sarin attack, it’s that we’re not seeing what we would expect to see from a sarin attack.”
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Zanders, however, said that much about that report bears questioning. Photos and a video accompanying the report showed rebel fighters preparing for chemical attacks by wearing gas masks. Sarin is absorbed through the skin, and even small amounts can kill within minutes.

He also expressed skepticism about the article’s description of the lengthy route victims of chemical attacks had to travel to get to treatment, winding through holes in buildings, down streets under heavy fire, before arriving at remote buildings hiding hospitals.

Zanders, who also has headed the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and was director of the Geneva-based BioWeapons Prevention Project, noted that had sarin been the chemical agent in use, the victims would have been dead long before they reached doctors for treatment.

Zanders also said he’s skeptical of sarin use because there have been no reports of medical personnel or rescuers dying from contact with victims. Residue from sarin gas would be expected to linger on victims and would infect those helping, who often are shown in rebel video wearing no more protection than paper masks.

Le Monde reported that one doctor treated a victim with atropine, which is appropriate for sarin poisoning. But that doctor said he gave his patient 15 shots of atropine in quick succession, which Zanders said could have killed him almost as surely as sarin.