It turns out that a classified U.S. military document says the same thing.
A former senior security policy analyst in the office of the secretary of defense, F. Michael Maloof, reports at WND:
In a classified document just obtained by WND, the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria.
Little did your school boy chums in Hawaii, watching you race up and down the basketball court, know how prescient they were when they nicknamed you “Barry O’Bomber”.
Little did your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal, ever imagine that you could be a president who chronically violates the Constitution, federal statutes, international treaties and the separation of power at depths equal to or beyond the George W. Bush regime.
After searching for 10 years, the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have finally been found – in Syria!
Secretary of State John Kerry: “There is no doubt that Saddam al-Assad has crossed the red line. … Sorry, did I just say ‘Saddam’?”
A US drone has just taken a photo of Mullah Omar riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Damascus. 1
So what do we have as the United States refuses to rule out an attack on Syria and keeps five warships loaded with missiles in the eastern Mediterranean?
Munich’s Security Conference is held annually. This year marks the 49th session. Dozens of countries participated. Hundreds of world leaders attended.
They included heads of state, foreign affairs and defense ministers, as well as other senior figures. Active engagement was prioritized. Current and future security challenges were discussed.
In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin took full advantage. He pulled no punches. He sharply criticized US foreign policy. He called it:
“very dangerous (in its) uncontained hyper-use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts.” US imperialism, he stressed, “overstepped its national borders in every way.”
Thursday, 26 July 2012 20:47
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Washington's Latest War Crime
One wonders what Syrians are thinking as “rebels” vowing to “free Syria” take the country down the same road to destruction as “rebels” in Libya. Libya, under Gaddafi a well run country whose oil revenues were shared with the Libyan people instead of monopolized by a princely class as in Saudi Arabia, now has no government and is in disarray with contending factions vying for power.
Just as no one knew who the Libyan “rebels” were, with elements of al Qaeda reportedly among them, no one knows who the Syrian “rebels” are, or indeed if they are even rebels (Antiwar.com).
The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO, and the European Union — or an approved segment thereof, can usually get what they want. They wanted Saddam Hussein out, and soon he was swinging from a rope. They wanted the Taliban ousted from power, and, using overwhelming force, that was achieved rather quickly. They wanted Moammar Gaddafi's rule to come to an end, and before very long he suffered a horrible death. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was democratically elected, but this black man who didn't know his place was sent into distant exile by the United States and France in 2004. Iraq and Libya were the two most modern, educated and secular states in the Middle East; now all four of these countries could qualify as failed states.
These are some of the examples from the past decade of how the Holy Triumvirate recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that they can do whatever they want in the world, to whomever they want, for as long as they want, and call it whatever they want, like "humanitarian intervention". The 19th- and 20th-century colonialist-imperialist mentality is alive and well in the West.
Next on their agenda: the removal of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. As with Gaddafi, the ground is being laid with continual news reports — from CNN to al Jazeera — of Assad's alleged barbarity, presented as both uncompromising and unprovoked. After months of this media onslaught who can doubt that what's happening in Syria is yet another of those cherished Arab Spring "popular uprisings" against a "brutal dictator" who must be overthrown? And that the Assad government is overwhelmingly the cause of the violence.
"THE WORST MISTAKE IN AMERICAN HISTORY": The Road to Disaster
Fidel Castro ‘s latest reflections hints to the danger of a looming US Iran war. Fidel Castro warns that a war with Iran war would be the worst mistake in US history.
This Reflection could be written today, tomorrow or any other day without the risk of being mistaken. Our species faces new problems. When 20 years ago I stated at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro that a species was in danger of extinction, I had fewer reasons than today for warning about a danger that I was seeing perhaps 100 years away. At that time, a handful of leaders of the most powerful countries were in charge of the world. They applauded my words as a matter of mere courtesy and placidly continued to dig for the burial of our species.
It seemed that on our planet, common sense and order reigned. For a while, economic development, backed by technology and science appeared to be the Alpha and Omega of human society.
Today, everything is much clearer. Profound truths have been surfacing. Almost 200 States, supposedly independent, constitute the political organization which in theory has the job of governing the destiny of the world.
The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul's inimitable words, "lie their way into invading Iraq" in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam.
With the exception of Ron Paul, who actually knows the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, the Republican presidential contenders have declared their belligerency toward Iranian officials who they accuse of moving toward nuclear weapons.
The Iranian regime disputes that charge, claiming they are developing the technology for nuclear power and nuclear medicine.
The inspection teams of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) that monitor compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran belongs, have entered Iran numerous times and, while remaining suspicious, have not been able to find that country on the direct road to the Bomb.
Despite promises made for improvements, Iraq's economy and infrastructure are still a disaster.
As a daily drumbeat of violence continues to reverberate across Iraq, people here continue to struggle to find some sense of normality, a task made increasingly difficult due to ongoing violence and the lack of both water and electricity.
During the build-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration promised the war would bring Iraqis a better life, and vast improvements in their infrastructure, which had been severely debilitated by nearly 13 years of strangling economic sanctions.
More jobs, improved water availability, more reliable electricity supplies, and major rehabilitation of the medical infrastructure were promised.
But now that the US military has ended its formal military occupation of Iraq, nearly eight years of war has left the promises as little more than a mirage.
"Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?" – Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011
A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.
In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.
Well, let's see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.
The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like "humanitarian".
If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn't want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how many protesters they shoot dead in their Freedom Square, the Triumvirate will simply not overthrow them.
Letter Addressed to Candidates in the Upcoming Federal Elections in Canada
Dear Candidate, I am a Canadian citizen writing to you with great concern for the current state of my country.
A week before our Parliament was dissolved for the upcoming federal election, our Government committed itself militarily to enforce a No-Fly Zone in the North African state of Libya on the basis of humanitarian intervention. This is an incredibly important issue of Canadian foreign policy and it is the responsibility every single political party that is participating in the current federal election to clearly state their stance on this issue.
If in fact your political party is intending to support the military intervention in Libya, the following is a list of information on this conflict that - as my potential political representative to the Canadian Federal Government - you should seriously consider informing your party with.
Col. Muammar Qaddafi is being demonized as a dictator, a tyrant, and a mass murderer. Canadians are being told that it is for the sake of protecting innocent civilians from the Qaddafi government that we are involved in enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya. A brief historical background on Libyan government - and the rebels we are supporting - clearly demonstrates how flawed this argument is.
n watching the live streaming coverage of the Egyptian revolution on Aljazeera I am awe-struck by the incredible humanity of what is unfolding in that country. I imagine Jean Jacques Rousseau wandering amongst the throngs of people and being equally amazed and delighted. For the character of this uprising, this outpouring of frustration and joy, of kindness and determination, of compassion and hope and community is more Rousseau than it is Mohammed or Marx.
The image of an old man with a long white beard racing his horse across Liberation Square yelling at the top of his lungs “I am free! I am Free! I am free!” – hardly able to comprehend that he was able to do so without fear of bring beaten or worse, is for me the most enduring image of the incredible events taking place in Egypt.
Sunday, 06 February 2011 16:55
by Michel Chossudovsky
Financial Bonanza for Wall Street Investors and Speculators
Hidden Agenda behind Mubarak's Decision Not to Resign?
Mubarak's decision not to resign was taken in close consultation with Washington. The US administration including US intelligence had carefully identified the possible scenarios. If Washington had instructed Mubarak to step down, he would have obeyed forthright.
His decision not to resign indelibly serves US interests. It creates a situation of social chaos and political inertia, which in turn generates a vacuum in decision making at the government level.
The continued social crisis has also resulted in a massive outflow of money capital. More concretely, what this signifies is that Egypt's official foreign exchange reserves are being confiscated by major financial institutions.
Wednesday, 04 August 2010 14:21
by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Memorandum to the President from former Intelligence Officials
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: War With Iran
We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war.
Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel.
Saturday, 12 June 2010 17:02
by Felicity Arbuthnot
"Man's stupidity has no bounds at all."W.H. Auden.
"When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice, in a contemptible struggle."Edmund Burke, 1729-1797.
No matter how Israel attempts to dress up piracy on the high seas, in international waters - described by legal experts and politicians as state terrorism, resulting in nine confirmed deaths, claims of more, and up to sixty reportedly injured; the abduction and hostage taking of the passengers on six vessels - an act from a country given unique legal latitude, which might prove a final act of political suicide.
The second worst thing that ever happened to the Jewish people is the state of Israel.
Things internationally are so dispiriting there's nothing left to do but fantasize. I picture Turkey, as a member of NATO, demanding that the alliance come to its defense after being attacked by Israel. Under Article 5 of the NATO charter an armed attack on one member is deemed to constitute an armed attack on all members. That is the ostensible reason NATO is fighting in Afghanistan — the attack against the United States on September 11, 2001 is regarded as an attack on all NATO members (disregarding the awkward fact that Afghanistan as a country had nothing to do with the attack). The Israeli attack on a Turkish-flagged ship, operated by a Turkish humanitarian organization, killing nine Turkish nationals and wounding many more can certainly constitute an attack upon a NATO member.
For the first two weeks of March, Palestine’s supporters around the world focus public attention on Israel’s continued brutal occupation of the West Bank and its even more vicious siege of Gaza. They do so through Israeli Apartheid Week and this is the sixth year the public education campaign has taken place.
One of the principal signs of its success has been the ferocious counter-campaign by supporters of Israel. Like so much of the history of Israel’s powerful propaganda machine, the facts about Israeli separation of Jews and Arabs — also known as apartheid — are beside the point. The response to criticism of Israel has always been one of self-righteous indignation and outrage, accompanied by charges of anti-Semitism.
Friday, 05 February 2010 19:32
By Agence France-Presse
DUBAI — Dubai will issue an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if Israel is found to be implicated in the murder of a top militant Palestinian in the emirate, The National newspaper reported on Friday.
Dubai police chief Dhahi Khalfan has said that Israel's spy agency Mossad could have been behind the January 20 killing of Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a founder of the military wing of the Palestinian movement Hamas, in a luxury hotel room.
Netanyahu "will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill al-Mabhuh in Dubai," The National quoted Khalfan as saying.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009 20:26
by Stephanie Westbrook
Upon returning home from Gaza, a friend commented, "It must have been horrifying seeing all the destruction." And it was. The 22-day Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip laid waste to an already ravaged territory.
The landscape is dotted with piles of rubble of bombed out buildings, the twisted iron and aluminum of destroyed factories, once green fields reduced to sand and dirt by Israeli tanks, apartments with 2 meter holes in the walls and toppled minarets of mosques turned to ruins.
But as devastating as bearing witness to the destruction was, it was the absurdities of the siege, the total blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt, that really affected me.
On March 15, 2006, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly 170 to 4 (with only the US, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau against) "to establish the Human Rights Council (HRC), based in Geneva, in replacement of the Commission on Human Rights, as a subsidiary organ of the General Assembly....responsible for promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of any kind and in a fair and equal manner."
HRC "is an inter-governmental body within the UN system made up of 47 states responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe."
Monday, 09 February 2009 22:07
by Prof. Michael Mandel
Did self-defence justify Israel’s war on Gaza?
Objections have been raised to this claim on grounds of a lack of both proportionality and necessity. To kill over 1000 Palestinians in 3 weeks, hundreds of them children, and wound thousands more, in order to deter a threat from rockets that did not kill or injure anybody in Israel for the six months the truce was declared by both sides, or even before Israel launched its attack on December 27, is so disproportionate as to be intolerable in any ethical system that holds Palestinian lives equal in value to Israeli lives. It is also so disproportionate as to defy belief that defence against these rockets was the real motive of the war. To ignore the many diplomatic avenues available to avoid even this threat, such as lifting the suffocating 18-month siege, suggests the same thing.
On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.
That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee.
Wednesday, 21 January 2009 20:35
by Shourideh C. Molavi
On January 17, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced a unilateral ceasefire, where Israel will stop its attacks but continue its military presence. "We have met and even surpassed our goals," declared Olmert, as he thanked the Israeli public for their continued support of the 22-day onslaught in Gaza.
Sunday, 11 January 2009 23:47
by Michel Chossudovsky
Are the US and Israel Planning a Broader Middle East War?
A very large delivery of US weaponry to Israel consisting of 3,000 tons of "ammunition" is scheduled to sail to Israel. The size and nature of the shipments are described as "unusual":"Shipping 3,000-odd tons of ammunition in one go is a lot," one broker said, on condition of anonymity.
Friday, 09 January 2009 23:51
by Michel Chossudovsky
The Israeli Invasion and Gaza's Offshore Gas Fields
The military invasion of the Gaza Strip by Israeli Forces bears a direct relation to the control and ownership of strategic offshore gas reserves.
This is a war of conquest. Discovered in 2000, there are extensive gas reserves off the Gaza coastline.
British Gas (BG Group) and its partner, the Athens based Consolidated Contractors International Company (CCC) owned by Lebanon's Sabbagh and Koury families, were granted oil and gas exploration rights in a 25 year agreement signed in November 1999 with the Palestinian Authority.
Wednesday, 07 January 2009 19:06
by Shourideh Cherie Molavi
No matter how the current war plays out, it is certain that Israel has made a big historical mistake in entering Gaza.
On Saturday night, one week after the start of Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli ground operation began. Israeli Forces began deploying combat units to surround Hamas' main power base, the declared goal of which is "not to chase after and destroy every last rocket launcher, but rather to break the Hamas' resistance." Israel believes that the ground incursion into Gaza will significantly damage Hamas' standing army and give its leadership a clear sense of the threat to their rule.
Shortly after darkness fell on Saturday night, January 3, Israel launched a massive land invasion of Gaza involving 9,000-10,000 soldiers, tanks, helicopters, and heavy artillery, engineering and intelligence forces, with the support of Israel’s Air Force, navy, and secret police and spy agencies. The ground invasion came after Israel, for the first time, unleashed an artillery barrage on Gaza, striking a mosque and killing at least 11 people. By the next day, Israeli forces had reportedly cut Gaza in half, “bisecting” it between north and south.
Israeli tanks taking position on the northern border with the Gaza Strip. Iran's Air Force is on alert after the country's president envisaged major regional developments in the wake of the Israeli raids on Gaza.
Israel has tried to take the initiative in the propaganda war over Gaza but, in one important instance, its version has been seriously challenged. The incident raises the question of how to interpret video taken from the air.
about the Middle East
We’ve extensively documented that the Syrian rebels do have access to chemical weapons.
T
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