"Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake." (Matthew 24:8-9).
"Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done" (Mark 13:30).
October 29, 2011
On Those Syrian ‘Protestors’ and Turkey: War Is Coming Soon
Hundreds of Syrian army and police forces have been killed by the much-vaunted “unarmed democracy protestors,” a fact almost completely ignored by the US press. Instead, US media outlets, even some alternative and antiwar sites, focus exclusively on uncorroborated atrocity reports from the rebels themselves (exactly as they did in Libya), which logically should be considered suspect. We now see that those reports coming out of Libya were out and out lies.
Turkey, the US and Israel’s best friend in the Middle East, has been for months nurturing and arming the forces seeking to overthrow the Syrian regime. Now Turkey has virtually declared war on Syria by agreeing to house and protect the “Free Syrian Army” on Turkish soil. Some may tire of these analogies, but how would the Obama administration — or any administration — react if Mexico were harboring armed insurgents crossing the border to murder federal agents in Texas?
The US has recalled Robert Ford, its ambassador to Damascus, citing fears for his safety. His open assistance to those seeking to overthrow the Syrian government has infuriated the local population. Last month he was pelted by citizens on the street with tomatoes as he left yet another meeting with the insurgents. A US overthrow is not wanted.
It is clear that the US and NATO mean to overthrow the Syrian regime, which is the last speed bump on the road to Tehran and a general Mideast war. That means Israel as well. Does it mean nuclear war? Can anyone halt this runaway train?
October 26, 2011
The U.S. Has Spent a Trillion Dollars on Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya
Over a trillion U.S. taxpayer dollars have been spent on wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Whether you are for the wars or against the wars, it is important for all of us to step back and evaluate what we have really gotten for all of that money.
In Libya, we have actually helped al-Qaeda forces that were shooting at U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan take over the country. Now they have announced that they will be imposing strict Sharia law on all of Libya. After 10 years of having our boys shot up in Afghanistan, the Afghan government is so “grateful” that they are publicly saying that they will side with Pakistan in any future war against the United States. In Iraq, Islamic radicals are beheading and murdering dozens and dozens of Christians and the new Iraqi government seemingly can’t wait to push the remaining U.S. soldiers out of the country. We ran up well over a trillion dollars of new debt to “liberate” these countries, but are they really in better shape than they were before these wars? Are we really in better shape than we were before these wars?
Today, the United States military has at least one base in more than half of all the nations on the planet.
The U.S. spends more than 7 times as much on the military as any other country on earth does.
Without a doubt, the United States will always need a strong military. But with the national debt soaring to unprecedented heights, is it really wise for us to try to be the police of the entire globe?
We have poured well over a trillion dollars into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and we have very little to show for it.
Are Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya safer places than before we went to war with them?
No.
Are Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya producing fewer “terrorists” than before we went to war with them?
No.
Are we safer than before we started all these wars?
No.
Our government has spent well over a trillion dollars and the blood of thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers has been spilled and in the final analysis very little has actually been accomplished.
Let’s take a closer look at these conflicts and see exactly what we have gotten for all of the money that we have spent….
Libya
In Libya, we have actually helped al-Qaeda take power.
In Afghanistan and Iraq we were supposedly fighting to do just the opposite.
Yes, Gaddafi was a tyrant, but have we invested a lot of time and effort only to watch as an even worse government takes power?
According to The Telegraph, the leader of the Libyan rebels was openly admitting that his “troops” included jihadists that were firing bullets at U.S. forces in Iraq….
Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
A recent article by Kurt Nimmo for Infowars.com discussed some of the other ways that al-Qaeda has been active in Libya during the fight against Gaddafi….
Despite Aujali’s assurance, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the former head of LIFG, was appointed to run a military council in September. He fought with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
In February, it was reported that al-Qaeda had set-up an Islamic emirate in Derna, in eastern Libya, headed by a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Abdelkarim al-Hasadi.
Now that they have won, the “rebels” have announced that they will be imposing strict Sharia law all over Libya.
According to a new article posted on The Telegraph, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of NATO’s National Transitional Council, has even announced plans to repeal polygamy laws because they are not compliant with Sharia law….
Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree, one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia – that banning polygamy.
Should we be cheering this?
Why would the U.S. government want to spend a single penny helping al-Qaeda take over Libya and set up Sharia law there?
There should not be a single American (conservative or liberal) that supports what has gone down in Libya.
Afghanistan
The U.S. military has now been in Afghanistan for 10 years. World War II lasted less than 6 years. The U.S. government has spent over 467 billion dollars on the war in Afghanistan, and thousands upon thousands of our troops have been killed or wounded there.
Even after all this time, a single day of the war in Afghanistan costs more money than it took to build the entire Pentagon.
So are the Afghans grateful that we have sacrificed so much to bring “democracy” to that nation?
In Afghanistan right now, a one-legged Afghan Red Cross worker named Said Musa is sitting in a prison cell awaiting his execution. Musa, a father of six children, was arrested by the Afghan government as he attempted to seek asylum at the German embassy last year. He was sentenced to death by an Afghan court that was established by the new Afghan government that the United States worked so hard to set up. He has been tortured and sexually abused for months. An Afghan judge has told him that he will be hung within a matter of days. So what was his crime? He was a Muslim that has become a Christian. Under Sharia law, that is punishable by death. Is this is the “freedom” that we have sacrificed so many American lives to bring to Afghanistan?
Thankfully he was later released from prison and was able to get out of the country.
However, this just shows that the people of Afghanistan are currently experiencing a level of freedom that is quite comparable to what they experienced under the Taliban.
After all that the United States has done over there, very little positive change has taken place.
Iraq
Up to now, it is estimated that the U.S. government has spent over 800 billion dollars on the war in Iraq.
Thousands upon thousands of U.S. soldiers lost arms and legs in Iraq.
Thousands of U.S. soldiers will never be coming home at all.
But after all of our efforts, Iraq is still a far less safe place than it was before we invaded.
Christians and other religious minorities once were able to worship in peace, but now they are racing to get out of Iraq as fast as they can.
Why?
Well, because Christians and other religious minorities are being brutally targeted by Islamic radicals.
For example, about a year ago more than 80 Iraqi Christians were beheaded on a single day. All that the Christians were trying to do was attend a church service. One four-month-old baby was actually beheaded right in front of her parents. You can see pictures of the shocking violence from that day right here.
Iraq is a complete and total disaster zone at this point.
The Iraqi government says that it is willing for U.S. military trainers to stay in the country, but they also say that there will be no more immunity for U.S. soldiers.
We have left the country in far worse shape than we found it, and Iraq is now a bigger breeding ground for terrorists than it ever was before.
You see, the truth is that the populations of these countries will continue to hold a grudge once we leave. They are simply not going to forgive and forget. There are millions of Islamic radicals in these countries that will never, ever, ever forgive the United States. The hatred that they feel for us could be passed down for generations.
We have not brought freedom to the people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Instead, we have just replaced the tyranny that they were suffering under with new forms of tyranny.
Meanwhile, we continue to spend ourselves into oblivion.
Yes, the U.S. will always need a strong military.
Yes, there are areas where we actually need to spend more on the military. For example, now that Barack Obama has completely gutted our strategic nuclear arsenal, that is one area that we desperately need to attend to.
However, we simply cannot continue to recklessly spend money like we are today. We are in debt up to our eyeballs, and trying to be “the police of the world” is very expensive….
*Before the start of the “War on Terror”, the U.S. national debt was under 6 trillion dollars. Today, it is getting very close to 15 trillion dollars.
*Right now, the U.S. military is in nearly 130 different nations and it has a total of approximately 700 military bases around the world. It takes about 100 billion dollars a year to maintain these bases.
*U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.
*The United States accounts for 46.5% of all military spending on the planet. China is in second place with only 6.6%.
Meanwhile, our national security just continues to deteriorate. Millions of people have illegally poured across our border with Mexico and the federal government is actually suing border states such as Arizona to keep them from trying to stop this.
Our national security priorities are way, way out of whack. We continue to waste money in some of the most bizarre ways imaginable and yet we continue to become less secure with each passing year.
Yes, the United States needs a very, very strong military.
Yes, national security needs to be a very, very high priority.
But what we have been doing over the past decade has not worked. In fact, the Bush/Obama foreign policy has been an abject failure. We have poured hundreds of billions of dollars down the drain and we are less secure today than at any point since World War II.
It is time to admit that Barack Obama and George W. Bush have been fundamentally wrong about these wars. Because of their foolishness, we are less safe today and our allies are less safe today.
Afghanistan is not our friend now. Neither is Iraq. Libya looks like it is going to become an al-Qaeda paradise thanks to us.
There is very little “freedom” in those 3 nations today. Instead, “Islamic law” is being shoved down the throats of the people living in those countries.
So, in the final analysis, what have we really accomplished?
By Saman Mohammadi, The Excavator October 23, 2011
These are dangerous times.
The state terrorist regimes in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Washington are madly pushing for world war three in the Middle East. If fought to the very end, this war will bring down many nations. Israel, America, and Iran will all be destroyed.
America will fall for economic reasons, and Israel and Iran will trade blows with each other until they both collapse. At that point, when all nations are bleeding on their knees, a new global authoritarian government, wielding the sword of world peace, will cut off their heads with one stroke. The flag of a new age will then be planted on the ruins of both Western civilization and Islamic civilization.
If you’ve been anticipating Armageddon your whole life, then stop anticipating and start preparing for what’s ahead. The real thing will be upon us soon. Our mad leaders and the establishment media are dragging us all to hell, down the hill of lies. And there’s no coming back.
How is this being done? How is public opinion being manufactured for a new war? We have a better sense of what’s happening this time because the build-up to the Iraq War still remains fresh in our minds.
The biggest thing to notice is that new bullet points in the psychological war are being pumped daily into the global public mind by Israel, Washington, and Saudi Arabia.
Here are some of the key bullet points:
“Iran aimed to assassinate an American ally on American soil.”
“America and Israel must act or the regime will grow bolder.”
“The Iranian government is crazy. It does not want peace. It has been at war with America since 1979.”
“Israel has no choice but to defend itself and prevent a nuclear holocaust.”
“President Obama cannot chicken out and allow Iran to take control of Iraq, murder American allies, and kill American troops.”
Also, old history is being rewritten and new history is being created out of thin air. Washington’s destruction of Iraq is being judged a success, while the war criminals behind the scenes are busy inventing new excuses to attack the next country on the Neocon/Israeli hit list: Iran.
And they’re sticking with the same formula that worked last time: accuse and slander Iran, censor skepticism and facts in the Western press, call for retaliation against Iran, denounce pro-peace voices as friends of the Ayatollahs, invent as many propaganda stories as possible, and finally attack Iran in the name of defending civilization against savagery, terrorism and religious fanaticism.
All these lies come to life after being repeated a thousand times by dishonest government officials and their lieutenants and foot soldiers in the media.
Roasting the public mind is like roasting a pig over an open fire. The heat of propaganda must be consistently applied to the public mind over a closed fire of myths until it is completely cooked. Then it is ready to be carved up and eaten by the wolves of war.
Government officials and propagandists who are pushing for war with Iran have to be forceful and direct. The party line must be maintained even if the party line is a joke. Showing weakness is a sin. Giving air time to dissenting opinions will get you lynched by the Zionists and Neocons. These lunatics are committed to starting a total war in the Middle East.
The purpose of the latest onslaught in the psychological war is to make America look good for war crimes that it committed in Iraq and Libya, and make Iran look bad for war crimes that it never committed and that are totally made up.
In the Washington Post, war criminal David Ignatius writes that fellow conspirator and war criminal Ahmed Chalabi, the neocons’ choice for the saviour of Iraq, has “no regrets over pushing the U.S. into war with Iraq.”
In the Wall Street Journal, war criminal Emanuele Ottolenghi saysthe Iranian government “should be made to pay a heavy price,” for a crime that the U.S. government has no evidence that it committed or planned.
Former CIA analysts Paul R. Pillar and Ray McGovern are warning the American people and the world to not buy this madness again.
Dan Simpson, a former Foreign Service Officer and a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, questions President Obama’s motives in his article, “We don’t need a war with Iran.”
Maybe the Zionists, Globalists and Neocons will be punished for their transgressions against the law, and sanity will prevail. But that’s unlikely.
Sanity will not prevail until the warmongers who spread lies on television and the print media are boldly confronted and charged with war crimes. Establishment journalists, pundits and broadcasters who use their public platform to repeat official lies and legitimize world war three must feel the wrath of people around the world.
All hail humanitarian war. Regime change can be a bitch. Start with sanctions because of ‘humanitarian’ reasons. If they don’t work, arm ragtag mercenaries and implement a ‘no-fly zone’ through an international body. If the rebels can’t hunt down the defunct leader, then just bomb the hell out the country until a bloody carcass vaguely resembling the leader turns up. Then claim that the humanitarian intervention was a wild success. PS: Make sure you destroy enough of the infrastructure to secure a huge IMF bondage loan for reconstruction.
The before and after picture of Libya below shows what the U.S./NATO means by a humanitarian war:
Paul Craig Roberts | Now that the CIA’s proxy army has murdered Gadhafi, what next for Libya?
October 14, 2011
CIA Fuels Iran Murder Plot
"The strategy for the Iraq war is now making itself known.By using 9/11 as a pretext to invade Afghanistan, Iran is flanked on the east side. By using the Desert Storm protocols and UN Resolution 1441, among others, the excuse to invade and occupy Iraq is brought forward because Saddam is not disarming, we are told. By taking Iraq, the U.S. forces then flank Iran to the West. Having troops stationed in Turkey is a key part of this plan, for then Iran is flanked to the North, which is why so much pressure is being applied to Turkey to allow our troops there. Although we cannot be sure which incidents will be used to bring war with Iran, we can be sure something will transpire to make is necessary to invade Iran, and most likely Syria would be next. Syria is also isolated in all directions. With Israel the main benefactor in the Middle East, this strategy will totally rearrange the Middle Eastern landscape and set the stage for the appointment of the 10 puppet kings of Revelation chapter 17, which have no 'kingdom yet' but will with the beast for 42 months.
"If we are reading the book of Habakkuk correctly, not only do we win the Iraq war, it is over rapidly and with few casualties on our side; however, there may be massive casualties of Iraqi civilians and military. We then use this stronghold to further buildup our Middle East military might for the strikes on Iran and Syria, and then eventually every Arab state in the region.
This may take some time, and it is difficult to assess that part of it, because Habakkuk does not tell us how long this conquest of the Middle East is. We only know that it happens, and that it sets the stage for the demise of the United States and the rise of the "antichrist" powers in America. It is this war that sets the stage for the removal of Babylon-America by nuclear strike at a later time."
Iranian authorities have dismissed Washington's accusation as a smear campaign aimed at fueling Iranophobia in the world and distracting attention from the ongoing wave of Islamic Awakening in North Africa and the Middle East as well as the underway popular anti-Wall Street protests across the US. The emergence of the Islamic Awakenings has been the result of the ineffectiveness of the Zionist and American conspiracies, the Deputy Chairman of Iran's Majlis (parliament) Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy added. “US conspiracies today show they are struggling against the tide of the Islamic Awakening in regional nations,” Kowsari noted. - Awakenings foil anti-Iran US plots, PressTV, October 14, 2011
By Ray McGovern, Consortiumnews.com October 13, 2011
Exclusive: The U.S. media and public are being riled up again with a new set of allegations against Iran, this time for a bizarre assassination plot aimed at the Saudi ambassador in Washington. But former CIA analyst Ray McGovern wonders if this is propaganda from David Petraeus’s CIA.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, in his accustomed role as unofficial surrogate CIA spokesman, has thrown light on how the CIA under its new director, David Petraeus, helped craft the screenplay for this week’s White House spy feature: the Iranian-American-used-car-salesman-Mexican-drug-cartel plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
In Thursday’s column, Ignatius notes that, initially, White House and Justice Department officials found the story “implausible.” It was. But the Petraeus team soon leapt to the rescue, reflecting the four-star-general-turned-intelligence-chief’s deep-seated animus toward Iran.
Before Ignatius’s article, I had seen no one allude to the fact that much about this crime-stopper tale had come from the CIA. In public, the FBI had taken the lead role, presumably because the key informant inside a Mexican drug cartel worked for U.S. law enforcement via the Drug Enforcement Administration.
However, according to Ignatius,
“One big reason [top U.S. officials became convinced the plot was real] is that CIA and other intelligence agencies gathered information corroborating the informant’s juicy allegations and showing that the plot had support from the top leadership of the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the covert action arm of the Iranian government.”
Ignatius adds that, “It was this intelligence collected in Iran” that swung the balance, but he offers no example of what that intelligence was. He only mentions a recorded telephone call on Oct. 4 between Iranian-American cars salesman Mansour Arbabsiar and his supposed contact in Iran, Gholam Shakuri, allegedly an official in Iran’s Quds spy agency.
The call is recounted in the FBI affidavit submitted in support of the criminal charges against Arbabsiar, who is now in U.S. custody, and Shakuri, who is not. But the snippets of that conversation are unclear, discussing what on the surface appears to be a “Chevrolet” car purchase, but which the FBI asserts is code for killing the Saudi ambassador.
Without explaining what other evidence the CIA might have, Ignatius tries to further strengthen the case by knocking down some of the obvious problems with the allegations, such as “why the Iranians would undertake such a risky operation, and with such embarrassingly poor tradecraft.”
“But why the use of Mexican drug cartels?” asks Ignatius rhetorically, before adding dutifully: “U.S. officials say that isn’t as implausible as it sounds.”
But it IS as implausible as it sounds, says every professional intelligence officer I have talked with since the “plot” was somberly announced on Tuesday.
The Old CIA Pros
There used to be real pros in the CIA’s operations directorate. One — Ray Close, a longtime CIA Arab specialist and former Chief of Station in Saudi Arabia — told me on Wednesday that we ought to ask ourselves a very simple question:
“If you were an Iranian undercover operative who was under instructions to hire a killer to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, D.C., why in HELL would you consider it necessary to explain to a presumed Mexican [expletive deleted] that this murder was planned and would be paid for by a secret organization in Iran?
“Whoever concocted this tale wanted the ‘plot’ exposed … to precipitate a major crisis in relations between Iran and the United States. Which other government in the Middle East would like nothing better than to see those relations take a big step toward military confrontation?”
If you hesitate in answering, you have not been paying attention. Many have addressed this issue. My last stab at throwing light on the Israel/Iran/U.S. nexus appeared ten days ago in “Israel’s Window to Bomb Iran.”
Another point on the implausibility meter is: What are the odds that Iran’s Quds force would plan an unprecedented attack in the United States, that this crack intelligence agency would trust the operation to a used-car salesman with little or no training in spycraft, that he would turn to his one contact in a Mexican drug cartel who happens to be a DEA informant, and that upon capture the car salesman would immediately confess and implicate senior Iranian officials?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to suspect that Arbabsiar might be a double-agent, recruited by some third-party intelligence agency to arrange some shady business deal regarding black-market automobiles, get some ambiguous comments over the phone from an Iranian operative, and then hand the plot to the U.S. government on a silver platter — as a way to heighten tensions between Washington and Teheran?
That said, there are times when even professional spy agencies behave like amateurs. And there’s no doubt that the Iranians — like the Israelis, the Saudis and the Americans — can and do carry out assassinations and kidnappings in this brave new world of ours.
Remember, for instance, the case of Islamic cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, who was abducted off the streets of Milan, Italy, on Feb. 17, 2003, and then flown from a U.S. air base to Egypt where he was imprisoned and tortured for a year.
In 2009, Italian prosecutors convicted 23 Americans, mostly CIA operatives, in absentia for the kidnapping after reconstructing the disappearance through their unencrypted cell phone records and their credit card bills at luxury hotels in Milan.
Then, there was the suspected Mossad assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a hotel in Dubai on Jan. 19, 2010, with the hit men seen on hotel video cameras strolling around in tennis outfits and creating an international furor over their use of forged Irish, British, German and French passports.
So one cannot completely rule out that there may conceivably be some substance to the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador.
And beyond the regional animosities between Saudi Arabia and Iran, there could be a motive — although it has been absent from American press accounts — i.e. retaliation for the assassinations of senior Iranian nuclear scientists and generals over the last couple of years within Iran itself.
But there has been close to zero real evidence coming from the main source of information — officials of the Justice Department, which like the rest of the U.S. government has long since forfeited much claim to credibility.
Petraeus’s ‘Intelligence’ on Iran
The public record also shows that former Gen. Petraeus has long been eager to please the neoconservatives in Washington and their friends in Israel by creating “intelligence” to portray Iran and other target countries in the worst light.
One strange but instructive example comes to mind, a studied, if disingenuous, effort to blame all the troubles in southern Iraq on the “malignant” influence of Iran.
On April 25, 2008, Joint Chiefs Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, told reporters that Gen. Petraeus in Baghdad would give a briefing “in the next couple of weeks” providing detailed evidence of “just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability.” Petraeus’s staff alerted U.S. media to a major news event in which captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then destroyed.
Oops. Small problem. When American munitions experts went to Karbala to inspect the alleged cache of Iranian weapons, they found nothing that could be credibly linked to Iran.
At that point, adding insult to injury, the Iraqis announced that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had formed his own Cabinet committee to investigate the U.S. claims and attempt to “find tangible information and not information based on speculation.” Ouch!
The Teflon-clad Petraeus escaped embarrassment, as the David Ignatiuses of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) conveniently forgot all about the promised-then-canceled briefing. U.S. media suppression of this telling episode is just one example of how difficult it is to get unbiased, accurate information on touchy subjects like Iran into the FCM.
As for Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama, some adult adviser should tell them to quit giving hypocrisy a bad name with their righteous indignation over the thought that no civilized nation would conduct cross-border assassinations.
The Obama administration, like its predecessor, has been dispatching armed drones to distant corners of the globe to kill Islamic militants, including recently U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki for the alleged crime of encouraging violence against Americans.
Holder and Obama have refused to release the Justice Department’s legal justification for the targeted murder of al-Awlaki whose “due process” amounted to the President putting al-Awlaki’s name on a secret “kill-or-capture” list.
Holder and Obama have also refused to take meaningful action to hold officials of the Bush administration accountable for war crimes even though President George W. Bush has publicly acknowledged authorizing waterboarding and other brutal techniques long regarded as acts of torture.
Who can take at face value the sanctimonious words of an attorney general like Holder who has acquiesced in condoning egregious violations of the Bill of Rights, the U.S. criminal code, and international law — like the International Convention Against Torture?
Were shame not in such short supply in Official Washington these days, one would be amazed that Holder could keep a straight face, accusing these alleged Iranian perpetrators of “violating an international convention.”
America’s Founders would hold in contempt the Holders and the faux-legal types doing his bidding. The behavior of the past two administrations has been more reminiscent of George III and his sycophants than of James Madison, George Mason, John Jay and George Washington, who gave us the rich legacy of a Constitution, which created a system based on laws not men.
That Constitution and its Bill of Rights have become endangered species at the hands of the craven poachers at “Justice.” No less craven are the functionaries leading today’s CIA.
What to Watch For
If Petraeus finds it useful politically to conjure up more “evidence” of nefarious Iranian behavior in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, Lebanon or Syria, he will. And if he claims to see signs of ominous Iranian intentions regarding nuclear weapons, watch out.
Honest CIA analysts, like the ones who concluded that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in late 2003 and had not resumed that work, are in short supply, and most have families to support and mortgages to pay.
Petraeus is quite capable of marginalizing them, or even forcing them to quit. I have watched this happen to a number of intelligence officials under a few of Petraeus’s predecessors.
More malleable careerists can be found in any organization, and promoted, so long as they are willing to tell more ominous — if disingenuous — stories that may make more sense to the average American than the latest tale of the Iraninan-American-used-car-salesman-Mexican-drug-cartel-plot.
This can get very dangerous in a hurry. Israel’s leaders would require but the flimsiest of nihil obstat to encourage them to provoke hostilities with Iran. Netanyahu and his colleagues would expect the Obamas, Holders, and Petraeuses of this world to be willing to “fix the intelligence and facts” (a la Iraq) to “justify” such an attack.
The Israeli leaders would risk sucking the United States into the kind of war with Iran that, short of a massive commitment of resources or a few tactical nuclear weapons, the U.S. and Israel could almost surely not win. It would be the kind of war that would make Iraq and Afghanistan look like minor skirmishes.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years, and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
President Barack Obama said today that Iran will "pay a price" through sanctions and international pressure for its recent hostile behavior including the alleged Iran-directed plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. in Washington, D.C.
Echoing previous statements by top U.S. officials, Obama said that when dealing with Iran, "We don't take any options off the table," but did not make any mention of possible military action in favor of pushing harsh economic sanctions and corralling international condemnation of Iran's alleged action.
"We're going to continue... to mobilize the international community to make sure that Iran is further and further isolated and pays a price for this kind of behavior," Obama said.
Obama declined to comment on whether he believed the highest levels of the Iranian government were aware or involved in the alleged plot, but said even if the Iranian president or supreme leader did not have "detailed operational knowledge, there has to be accountability with respect to anybody in the Iranian government engaging in this kind of activity."
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced Tuesday the DEA and FBI had disrupted a plot "conceived, sponsored and... directed from Iran" to murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. in or outside a crowded Washington, D.C. restaurant which potentially would have been followed up by bombings of the Saudi Arabian and Israeli embassies. The U.S. said an Iranian-American, 56-year-old Manssor Arbabsiar of Corpus Christi, Texas, was working for elements of the Iranian government -- specifically Iran's elite military unit the Quds force -- when he attempted to hire hitmen from the feared Zetas Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit, but Arbabsiar was unwittingly speaking to a DEA informant from the start.
The U.S. Treasury Department announced Tuesday sanctions against five Iranians allegedly tied to the plot and additional sanctions Wednesday against an airline company allegedly linked to the Quds force. U.S. representatives began Wednesday meeting separately with members of the United Nations Security Council as part of the American government's effort to "unite world opinion" against Iran, in the words of Vice President Joe Biden.
A lawyer for Arbabsiar has not returned requests for comment, but the man's wife, Martha Guerrero, said he was wrongly accused.
"I may not be living with him being separated, but I cannot for the life of me think that he would be capable of doing that," she told ABC News' Austin affiliate KVUE Tuesday, noting the two had been separated some time. "He was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm sure of that."
Iranian officials have strongly rejected the U.S. accusations, calling them a "fabrication." The head of the Iranian mission to the United Nations penned a letter Tuesday to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressing "outrage" at the allegations.
"The U.S. allegation is, obviously, a politically-motivated move and a showcase of its long-standing animosity towards the Iranian nation," the letter says. "The Islamic Republic of Iran categorically and in the strongest terms condemns this shameful allegation by the United States authorities and deplores it as a well-thought evil plot in line with their anti-Iranian policy to divert attention from the current economic and social problems at home and the popular revolutions and protests against United States long supported dictatorial regimes abroad."
Alleged Terror Plotter Claims He Was 'Directed By High-Ranking' Iranian Officials
The case, called Operation Red Coalition, began in May when Arbabsiar unwittingly approached a DEA informant seeking the help of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, according to counter-terrorism officials.
Arbabsiar reportedly claimed he was being "directed by high-ranking members of the Iranian government," including a cousin who was "a member of the Iranian army but did not wear a uniform," according to a person briefed on the details of the case.
Arbabsiar and a second man, Gohlam Shakuri, an Iranian official, were named in a five-count criminal complaint filed Tuesday afternoon in federal court in New York. They were charged with conspiracy to kill a foreign official and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, a bomb, among other counts. Shakuri is still at large in Iran, Holder said.
Holder identified Shakuri as an Iran-based member of the Quds force.
Arbabsiar, a naturalized U.S. citizen, expressed "utter disregard for collateral damage" in the planned bomb attacks in Washington, according to officials.
The complaint describes a conversation in which Arbabsiar was allegedly directing the informant to kill the Saudi ambassador and said the assassination could take place at a restaurant. When the informant feigned concern about Americans who also eat at the restaurant, Arbabsiar said he preferred if bystanders weren't killed but,
"Sometimes, you know, you have no choice, is that right?"
U.S. officials said Arbabsiar met twice in July with the DEA informant in the northern Mexico city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, and negotiated a $1.5 million payment for the assassination of the Saudi ambassador. As a down payment, officials said Arbabsiar wired two payments of $49,960 on Aug. 1 and Aug. 9 to an FBI undercover bank account after he had returned to Iran.
Officials said Arbabsiar flew from Iran through Frankfurt, Germany, to Mexico City Sept. 29 for a final planning session, but was refused entry to Mexico and later put on a plane to New York, where he was arrested.
Officials said Arbabsiar is now cooperating with prosecutors and federal agents in New York, where the case has been transferred.
"Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would've been very real and many lives would've been lost," FBI Director Robert Mueller said of the foiled plot.
In a 'united against Iran campaign,' the US government has accused Tehran of orchestrating an assassination plot against the Saudi envoy in Washington, a move which is to be seen as part of US stratagem to carry on with its plan of demonizing and isolating the Islamic Republic of Iran.
US Vice President Joe Biden said on "The Early Show" on Wednesday that "It's critically important that we unite the world in the isolation of and dealing with the Iranians. That's the surest way to be able to get results."
Obviously, the US officials will use the fabricated occasion to press for new international sanctions as they say the Iranian agents have sought to hire a purported member of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi envoy on American soil.
Regardless of the impertinence and hollowness of the claim, one should not disregard the influence of the powerful Zionist lobby in the new mudslinging plan which is, as Iran Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani puts it, a 'tactless and childish game.”
To add more fuel to Iranophobia, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on other countries to work together against what is becoming a clearer and clearer threat" from Iran and said,
“This really, in the minds of many diplomats and government officials, crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for.”
Washington went on labeling spree again and called Iran “the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.”
There is a well-grounded speculation that the new move is meant to stir up dissension in the region so that the US may bolster its waning influence among the Middle Eastern countries as Iran wields a great amount of political muscle in the region. In other words, the US will then be in a position to fish in troubled waters.
In concerted efforts with Israel, Washington has a long history of covert operations in Iran including cyber-terrorism, commercial sabotage and targeted assassinations. A notable instance of such operations is a computer worm known as Stuxnet which has hit the Iranian nuclear facilities, categorically a deliberate attempt by the US government in trying to destroy what Iranian scientists have reaped during years.
The worm was reportedly tested in Israel in the notorious nuclear arsenal Dimona in a joint Israeli-American effort (The New York Times January 15, 2011). Ironically, Dimona which has been used a testing ground for the worm, houses over 300 nuclear warheads, and was kept hidden for years until Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona, fled to Britain in 1986 and revealed the Israeli nuclear program as well as a top-secret underground facility directly below the installation. Reports say that Israel has at its disposal material for roughly 20 hydrogen bombs and 200 fission bombs. After all, Israel is not a threat despite its secret nuclear warheads and irresponsible behavior towards the Palestinians as it is a fawning ally of the USA.
Apart from sabotaging the nuclear program in Iran, Washington has shamelessly engaged in a series of assassinations against the Iranian nuclear scientists. In July 2011, a university student named Daryoush Rezaei, 35, was shot down while his wife sustained serious injuries and was rushed to hospital. In 2010, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a nuclear scientist, was killed by a remote-controlled bomb in Tehran.
On November 29, 2010, two other scientists were targeted by bombs that hit their cars in the capital. The assailants who were on motorcycles had stuck magnetized bombs to the victims' cars. Professor Majid Shahriari was killed on the spot, but Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi and his wife sustained minor injuries and were taken to a hospital. A report carried by The Jerusalem Post citing French Weekly Le Canard enchaine revealed that Mossad had conducted the assassinations “with the help of the CIA and MI6.”
According to intelligence sources, the assassinations were part of Joint US-Israeli plots meant to sabotage Iran's nuclear program. Also, an article published in the Portuguese-language Weekly, The Expresso revealed that high-ranking Mossad officials gathered at the spy agency's headquarters in northern Tel Aviv, concluding that the killing of Shahriari would be Mossad's last covert operation under its current director, Meir Dagan. However, the two spy agencies declined to assume any responsibility for the attacks whatsoever.
In the Iowa Republican President Debate in August 2011, Newt Gingrich spurted out his brazen sloganeering against the Islamic republic and when asked about the situation about Libya, he unconsciously let go of his anger and started railing about Iran, saying the nation had “gone on the offensive” against the USA and needed to be confronted. Soon other hawks joined him and former US Gov. Tim Pawlenty spoke venomously in favor of attacking the country and boldly lauded the “good works” of the US government in assassinating Iranian scientists and the “good work” of creating the Stuxnet computer virus. This was how he spilled the beans and it became clear that the USA was behind all those atrocities.
Some pundits believe that the US move will put Iran in the forefront of global hatred. This will never happen as the US and its lapdog Israel have already played similar games about Iran over and over again.
What the US government has done to the Iranian nation is not easy to forget and the support it keeps voicing for Israel is not difficult to digest.
Isn't it strange that Iran which has long been a victim of terror and assassinations should become a target of baseless US allegations?
-- Ismail Salami is an Iranian author and political analyst. A prolific writer, he has written numerous books and articles on the Middle East some of which have been translated into more than ten languages. His analysis can be found on many other online publications such as Veterans Today, Media Monitors, Global Research, Opinion Maker, Palestine Chronicle, Dissident Voice, Foreign Policy Journal, Al-Ahram, Arab News, Salem News, Intifada Palestine, Iran Review, Counter Currents, Turkish Weekly Journal, Intrepid Report and Ramallah Online.
October 11, 2011
U.S. Says Iran Tied to Failed Assassination Plot; Iran Denies Charges
1 of 5. Manssor Arbabsiar is shown in this courtroom sketch during an appearance in a Manhattan courtroom in New York, New York on October 11, 2011. Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Sept. 29. U.S. authorities broke up a plot by two men linked to the Iranian government to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington. Arbabsiar was ordered detained and assigned a public defender.
Credit: Reuters/Jane Rosenberg
Manssor Arbabsiar is shown in this courtroom sketch during an appearance in a Manhattan courtroom in New York, New York on October 11, 2011. Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Sept. 29. U.S. authorities broke up a plot by two men linked to the Iranian government to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in the United States, U.S. officials said on Tuesday, escalating tensions between Tehran and Washington. Arbabsiar was ordered detained and assigned a public defender.
Reuters October 11, 2011
The United States accused Iran on Tuesday of backing a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington, escalating tensions with Tehran and stirring up a hornet's nest in the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have long jostled for power.
U.S. authorities said they had broken up a plot by two men linked to the Iranian government to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir. One was arrested last month while the other was believed to be in Iran.
Iran denied the charges.
Saudi Arabia called the plot "a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions."
Revelation of the alleged plot, and the apparent direct ties to the Tehran government,had the potential to further inflame tensions in the Middle East and the United States said Tehran must be held top account.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a Reuters interview, called it a "blatant violation" of international norms. She expressed hope that countries that have hesitated to enforce existing sanctions on Iran would now "go the extra mile."
FBI Director Robert Mueller told reporters the convoluted plot, involving drug cartels in Mexico, big payments of money and an attempt to kill the ambassador in a Washington restaurant, could have been material for a Hollywood movie.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder pointed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the guardian of Iran's 32-year-old revolution, and the Quds force, its covert, operational arm.
"High-up officials in those (Iranian) agencies, which is an integral part of the Iranian government, were responsible for this plot," Holder said.
"I think one has to be concerned about the chilling nature of what the Iranian government attempted to do here," he said.
QUDS FORCE CONNECTION
According to the indictment, one of the alleged plotters said after his arrest that he had been recruited and directed by men he understood were senior Quds Force officials.
There are no formal diplomatic ties between the Islamic republic and Washington,which accuses Tehran of backing terrorism and pursuing nuclear arms, a charge Iran has denied.
Iran already faces a raft of tough economic sanctions and Washington slapped further economic sanctions on five Iranians including four senior members of Quds.
Iran and Saudi Arabia have likewise long been at odds. The Saudis, who see themselves as the center of the Sunni sect of Islam, have been alarmed by what they see as expansionist tendencies by majority Shi'ite Iran, whose people are primarily Persian rather than Arab.
U.S. officials said there had also been initial discussions about other alleged plots, including attacking the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, however no charges for that were revealed on Tuesday.
Rejection the allegations, Iran's state English language Press TV said:
"The Islamic Republic of Iran has rejected U.S. accusations of the country plotting to assassinate the Saudi envoy to Washington as a prefabricated scenario."
Last month hopes were raised of improved ties when Iran released two U.S. hikers accused of spying when they were arrested on the Iran-Iraq border in 2009. Holder said there was no link between the hikers' case and the alleged plot.
U.S. SAYS AMBASSADOR NEVER IN DANGER
U.S. officials identified the two alleged plotters as Gholam Shakuri, who is a member of the Quds force, and Manssor Arbabsiar, who was arrested on September 29 when he arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport from Mexico.
Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, initially cooperated with authorities after being arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on September 29.
He made calls to Shakuri after being arrested and acted as if the plot was still a go, court documents said.
Arbabsiar made a brief appearance in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday where he was ordered detained and assigned a public defender. He appeared in blue jeans and a dress shirt, thinning gray hair and a scar on the left side of his face.
Officials said that the Saudi ambassador, Al-Jubeir, who is close to King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz and has been in his post since 2007, was never in danger. President Barack Obama was briefed in June about the alleged plot and through a spokesman expressed gratitude for it being disrupted.
The assassination plot began to unfold in May 2011 when Arbabsiar approached an individual in Mexico to help,but that individual turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The confidential source, who was a paid informant but not identified, immediately tipped law enforcement agents, according to the criminal complaint. Arbabsiar paid $100,000 to the informant in July and August for the plot, a down payment on the $1.5 million requested.
LIKE A "HOLLYWOOD MOVIE"
Shakuri approved the plan to kill the ambassador during telephone conversations with Arbabsiar, the complaint said.
As part of the plot, the informant talked to Arbabsiar about trying to kill the ambassador at a Washington, D.C. restaurant he frequented, but warned him that could lead to dozens of others being killed, including U.S. lawmakers.
The criminal complaint said that Arbabsiar responded "no problem" and "no big deal".
After Arbabsiar was arrested in New York, he allegedly confessed and provided U.S. authorities with more details about the Iranian government's alleged involvement, Holder said.
Mueller said:
"This case illustrates that we live in a world where borders and boundaries are increasingly irrelevant, a world where individuals from one country sought to conspire with a drug trafficking cartel in another country to assassinate a foreign official on United States soil."
He added:
"Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost," he said.
The men are charged with one count of conspiracy to murder a foreign official, two counts of foreign travel and use of interstate and foreign commerce facilities in the commission of murder for hire and one count each of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism.
Authorities said no explosives were acquired for the plot and the weapon of mass destruction charge can range from a simple improvised device to a more significant weapon. They face up to life in prison if convicted.
The United States disrupted an Iranian-backed plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, D.C., the Justice Department said Tuesday.
The stunning accusations came in a Justice Department criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday afternoon at a press conference featuring Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller and a team of Justice Department prosecutors.
The key suspect charged in the plot, a naturalized Iranian-American citizen identified as Manssor Arbabsiar, was arrested late last month at JFK Airport; a second accused conspirator named in the complaint, an alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force official identified as Gohlam Shakuri, remains at large and is believed to be in Iran. The five-count criminal complaint also refers to other unnamed conspirators in the plot and suggested they also were members of the Qods force in Iran.
In a related action, the Treasury Department on Tuesday designated Arbabsiar and four alleged Iranian Qods force members, including Shakuri, Qasem Soleimani, Hamed Abdollahi, and Arbabsiar's cousin Abdul Reza Shahlai, as being connected to the alleged assassination plot.
The alleged assassination plot targeting Saudi envoy Adel Al-Jubeir--unraveled by federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI--was "conceived, sponsored and was directed from Iran" Holder said in a statement Tuesday.
"The U.S. is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions."
President Obama "was first briefed on this issue in June and directed his Administration to provide all necessary support to the investigation," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told journalists by email Tuesday.
"The disruption of his plot is a significant achievement by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and the President is enormously grateful for their exceptional work."
Federal officials said the disrupt plot sought to assassinate Saudi envoy to the U.S. Adel Al-Jubeir -- possibly by being one of his favorite Washington restaurants.
It also discussed "subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C.," ABC News reported on the complaint.
The case, called Operation Red Coalition, "began in May when an Iranian-American from Corpus Christi, Texas,"--Arbabsiar--"approached a DEA informant seeking the help of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador," the ABC News report on the unsealed complaint said.
But the man Arbabsiar approached who he thought to be a member of a brutal Mexican drug cartel turned out to be a confidential source for the Drug Enforcement Agency.
From May through September, Arbabsiar traveled to Mexico twice to meet with the DEA source to arrange the assassination. Arbabsiar is also accused in the complaint of having transferred $100,000 to the recruited-assassin's bank account--the down-payment on what he said would be $1.5 million paid in total after the assassination. They money was transferred from Arbabsiar's Qods-force contacts in Iran, the complaint alleges.
After he was arrested on September 29th at JFK Airport flying back from an attempted meeting with the hit man in Mexico, Arbabsiar allegedly told federal authorities that he had been recruited to organize the assassination by members of Iran's Qods Force, including his cousin, last spring.He also said that Qods force members had financed the plot.
"According to the complaint, Arbabsiar also admitted to agents that, in connection with this plot, he was recruited, funded, and directed by men he understood to be senior officials in Iran's Qods Force," the FBI press release said.
"Arbabsiar allegedly told agents that his cousin,"--identified by the Treasury Department as Abdul Reza Shahlai''""s a senior IRGC-[Qods Force] official and deputy to [Shakuri], who he had long understood to be a senior member of the Qods Force, had approached him in the early spring of 2011 about recruiting narco-traffickers to kidnap the Ambassador," the FBI document states.
"Arbabsiar told agents that he then met with the [confidential source] CS-1 in Mexico and discussed assassinating the Ambassador," the FBI document said. "According to the complaint, Arbabsiar said that, afterwards, he met several times in Iran with Shakuri and another senior Qods Force official, where he explained that the plan was to blow up a restaurant in the United States frequented by the Ambassador and that numerous bystanders could be killed, according to the complaint. The plan was allegedly approved by these officials."
The United States has previously accused the Qods Force of sponsoring militant attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iran on Tuesday denied the American accusations.
Middle East experts noted that alleged plot emerges in the context of heightened tensions and competition for regional influence between predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and predominantly Shiite Iran in the midst of the tumultuous Arab awakening uprisings.
"This alleged terror plot takes place at a time when tensions in the Middle East have reached a boiling point," Trita Parsi, with the National Iranian American Council said in a statement Tuesday. "If today's allegations are true, this means that regional rivalries may have spilled over onto U.S. shores."
The Saudi King sent a private letter to President Obama in September hand-delivered by Saudi ambassador al-Jubeir, who has been frequently absent from Washington much of that month. U.S. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon traveled to meet with the Saudi King in Riyadh earlier this month.
Turkey Accused of Killing Kurd Leader – Trying to Trigger Civil War in Syria
By Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer October 9, 2011
Murderous gambit aimed at provoking Kurdish militants – who have until now stayed out of US-backed unrest in Syria. Turkey a NATO member, and notorious butchers of the Kurdish people not only within their borders but well beyond them, including multiple incursions into Iraq in 2007, 2008, and 2010, with tank battalions as well as air strikes on “suspected” militant targets on both sides of the border, has played a role in the assassination of Syrian-Kurdish leader Mashaal Tammo according to Kurdish activists.
Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that Kurdish Party leaders accused Turkish intelligence of assassinating Tammo, aiming to ignite sedition throughout the northern province of Hasaka. Hasaka Province conveniently shares a borders with Turkey – a border Turkey has systematically militarized in its decades long war against the Kurdish people. It is also a border Turkey is now conducting “military exercises” along in an overt threat to Syria, Voice of America reports. Turkey and its Western sponsors are now hoping the resulting chaos will trigger an armed Kurdish uprising in Syria against the Assad government and be the “tipping point” in an otherwise stalled 7 month-long destabilization attempt.
Photo: Turkish tanks line up on the Iraqi boarder for yet another internationally sanctioned, extraterritorial murder-spree aimed at Northern Iraq’s Kurdish population. Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, has waged a genocidal war against the Kurds both within its borders and beyond at the cost of over 40,000 lives. Despite the immense hypocrisy, Turkey has taken the lead in chastising neighboring Syria for reining in foreign-funded sedition.
….
The assassination was also complemented by mystery gunmen who opportunistically attacked Tammo’s funeral procession, killing several attendees and further provoking Syria’s Kurd minority to rise up in violence. Details of the shootings were filtered through the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a notorious propaganda front whose second-hand reports are faithfully repeated by Western media outlets as “fact.”
The expediency with which propagandists at BBC and the US State Department concluded the shootings were the work of the Syrian government further lends suspicion over who indeed carried out the assassination and the subsequent shootings at Tammo’s funeral – a dream scenario for Western nations bent on ousting Assad by collapsing Syrian society into a Libyan-style civil war.
It should be noted, that out of Syria’s opposition movement, Mashaal Tammo was one of the few leaders opposing foreign meddling in Syria’s affairs, going as far as not attending an opposition confab held in Turkey on this basis. It should be further noted that of all of Syria’s minorities, the Kurds have so far not joined in large scale protests. Western corporate-funded think tanks and media outlets have been fantasizing over the prospect of Kurdish militants joining the US-funded uprising, despite what, up until now, appeared to be their neutral stance.
The Wall Street Journal’s “Kurds Look Beyond Assad, With Dreams of Autonomy” acknowledged the muted role the Kurds were playing in the uprising and their hesitation to make wider commitments. Tammo’s assassination may just have been the geopolitical ploy necessary to spur the Kurds past this point of hesitation.
After months of stalled, now failing armed opposition against the Syrian government through the Muslim Brotherhood and an assortment of Al-Qaeda linked militant groups, the West is exhibiting an almost palpable madness in pursuit of war with Syria. Western propaganda networks, including BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera and contrived “human rights advocacy” fronts fully funded by corporate-financier special interests have been caught fabricating in whole, stories of atrocities being perpetrated by the Assad government.
One activist reported by Soros-funded Amnesty International (page 10) to have been “brutally murdered in custody” turned up alive and well. Amnesty International would later reveal just how tenuous the information was behind what was essentially baseless, sensationalized propaganda aimed at the Syrian government. After a failed UN resolution, vetoed outright by Russia and China, and receiving no votes from other BRIC nations, more desperate measures are sure to follow, including the increasing prospect of unilateral military action taken by Turkey, on behalf of NATO and its corporate sponsors.
Syrian Cleric Warns U.S., Europe That His Country Would Unleash Suicide Bomb Attacks in If They Launch Military Strikes Against Syria
Syria's most senior Sunni Muslim cleric has warned the United States and Europe that his country would unleash suicide bomb attacks in their countries if they launched military strikes against Syria.
Mufti Ahmad Hassoun, whose son was shot dead by gunmen in the northern province of Idlib a week ago, made the comments to a visiting Lebanese delegation late Sunday.
"I say to the whole of Europe, I say to America: We will prepare our suicide bombers who are already with you if you bombard Syria or Lebanon," Hassoun said in remarks broadcast by Al Jazeera television.
"From today an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
The United States and the European Union have condemned President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on six months of street protests, imposing sanctions on Syrian oil exports and some businesses, and pushing the United Nations to pressure Damascus.
But no country has suggested military intervention in Syria along the lines of the NATO action which helped Libyan rebels topple Muammar Gaddafi.
The United Nations says 2,900 people have been killed in Assad's crackdown on the protests. Syria blames foreign-backed armed gangs for the violence and says 1,100 members of its army and security forces have been killed.
The assassination of the mufti's son was the first attack on Syria's state-backed clergy, who have supported Assad despite widespread Sunni Muslim resentment at decades of dominance by Assad's minority Alawite sect.
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