Quite simply I do not believe the US, UK and French government’s assertion that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebels “multiple times in small quantities”. Why on earth would they do that? The claim that “up to 150 people have died” spread over a number of incidents makes no sense at all. In a civil war when tens of thousands of people have died, where all sides have been guilty of massacres of scores at a time, I cannot conceive of any motive for killing a dozen or so at any one time with the odd chemical shell. It makes no military sense – chemical weapons are designed for use against population centres and massed armies. They are not precision weapons for deployment against small groups.
Why on earth would the Assad regime use a tiny amount of chemical weapons against tiny groups of rebels, knowing the West would use it as an excuse to start bombing? It makes no sense whatsoever. Cui bono?
The Russians have described the evidence as fabricated, and on this one I am with the Russians.
It is of course no coincidence that this humanitarian motive to start bombing Syria arises just as the tide of war turned against the rebels, and the government forces are about to move on Aleppo. I suspect now we will see massive NATO force intervention, with huge air to ground destruction of the government forces all over the country to “defend” Aleppo, just as we saw hundreds of thousands killed and whole cities destroyed in Libya to “defend” Benghazi. Whose people showed their gratitude by murdering the US Ambassador.
It is a further fascinating coincidence that this coordinated western switch of policy happens immediately after the Bilderberg conference. An analysis of which of the corporate interests there stand to gain in Syria might be a fascinating exercise.
There were two main reasons the tide of war turned against the rebels. Firstly, Hizbollah’s decision to enter the war on a large scale was provoked by the Israeli Air Force’s massive attack around Damascus, a fact the mainstream media has managed to hide completely. Secondly, at Turkish urging, the rebel forces had diverted much of their energies to attacking the Syrian kurds. This opens the interesting question of what the American client Kurds of Iraq will make of their patron sponsoring the massacre of their brethren in Syria.
Finally, chemical weapons are a terrible thing and their use should be condemned unreservedly. But where was all this Western outrage and activity when the Israelis were pouring down white phosphorous and kicking and maiming thousands of women and children in Gaza?
It also means we aren’t talking about snooping – Obama gets himself into hot water and diverts attention to a foreign location. Very old gambit.
I still cannot believe that West will risk starting a new Cold War with Russia. The latter has got quite vocal that it will not allow its interests to be ignored anymore.
Some analysis of the “evidence” presented in Western media:
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/735-limited-but-persuasive-evidence-syria-sarin-libya-lies.html
The White House is obviously lying, but it is trying to regain the initiative from the Russians and Chinese in the Middle East, thanks to all the spying they have engaged in, especially Beijing.
Looks like we shall have a war soon which reminds one of Vietnam.
You know, I was at Watford on Saturday, and someone I met there was wondering why Craig Murray wasn’t there too, giving one of the speeches alongside Michael Meacher (and David Icke). The event needed more credibility.
So well said Craig and as you say on sarin, cui bono.
Hey Lauris,
It is more than a Cold War that the NATO Bully Boyz are risking, it is fight that could easily escalate into WWIII. Syria has treaties with both Russia and Iran. Russia has already said that the NATO evidence is “fabricated”. Yes, it appears that NATO is willing to risk WWIII to put al Qaeda in power in Syria. What a heck of a noble cause to start WWIII!!!!!!!
Why on earth would the Assad regime use a tiny amount of chemical weapons against tiny groups of rebels?
Terror. Also, he undertook at the outset not to use them against Syrians, but there are more than a few foreign fighters involved. Sorry to be devil’s advocate, but he’s not a nice guy, and that would fit.
Straw and Dore Gold on Radio 4 Today this morning who follow on from a commenter on the Iranian elections.
Worth a listen to hear Straw speak some truths about Israel and their activities in the region, their nuclear weapons and Palestine. Has Mr Straw been on a road to Damascus?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-22902292
14 June 2013
Polls have opened in the Iranian presidential election.
The six candidates to replace Mahmood Ahmadinajad are all conservatives, although one of them, the cleric Hassan Rowhani, has suggested he wants to re-engage with the West.
Special correspondent for the BBC Persian television service Kasra Naji, told Today programme presenter John Humphrys that Mr Rohani is a significant candidate in the elections:
“We are talking in these elections about Mr Rohani. He is the choice of the opposition in Iran. Today the question in Iran is whether people will go out on mass to vote for him, to tip the balance against the regime, against the hard-liners.”
“Mr Rohani has promised to steer the country towards moderation so a lot of people expect him to change the course of Iran.”
Former Labour foreign secretary Jack Straw explained that America demonised Iran by claiming it belonged to the so-called “axis of evil” but he said the West must do business with Tehran:
“The Iranians are incredibly difficult to negotiate with. I think we have to understand why. Because they have been so humiliated by the West. But there isn’t any concrete evidence, any smoking gun, that their lack of cooperation with the security council over their civil nuclear programme equals clear evidence that they have or are developing a nuclear weapon.”
On the current rush to aid the Syrian terrsts, Gilad Atzmon argues:
“Debka, an Israeli news outlet provides the answer. Seemingly, the Syrian army is winning on all fronts. Israel’s military and geo-political calculations are proved to be wrong.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/07/israel-is-losing-in-the-syrian-war/
while Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey applies for a job at Fox News:
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/04-06-2013/124739-syria_western_terrorists-0/
LOL @ Herbie. LOL even more at Tim (“Zhurnalist”) Bancroft-Hinchey, formerly Pravda’s most off-the-wall columnist. And I’ve LOL’d so long and often at Debka, the Israeli misinformation site, that a couple of tiny lulz is all I can manage.
That said, it is entirely possible that Assad is winning. But if Atzmon is citing Debka, there’s something wrong with Atzmon.
More slaughter coming soon in our name.
.
From Medialens:
“….our own inherent goodness which can only find its highest expression in the form of aerial bombardment.”
.
Full text at:
http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=735:limited-but-persuasive-evidence-syria-sarin-libya-lies&catid=51:alerts-2013&Itemid=202
I am not LOL at any of what is happening Komodo. We are in a very dangerous situation and I am fearful.
@Tim Hoddy
14 Jun, 2013 – 10:45 am
I should have read the comments before rushing to my keyboard. Thanks. I see now you beat me to it with the Medialens link. They are always worth a read.
Komodo, I think Atzmon is more a philosopher of Jewish identity than a military strategist.
You’re right though. His article is very very second hand, and the other lad is so very 70s.
Craig you have nailed this in one. America needs Sarin gas outrage so it will get Sarin gas outrage and will act in its own interest as usual. Your analysis on the use of gas pokes so many holes in the reported use of gas and really makes a mockery of the whole situation. Well done for linking Gaza and the use of white phosphorous as it has been forgotten very conveniently
Israel is lurking in the wings and will no doubt sneak a few attacks (anonymous) in on Syria as and when the world is looking the other way. As for reliable reporting, not much around. Thanks for keeping the blog up to date on this
Craig (or anyone else) – do you have further information about the Israeli air raids on Damascus being key in Hezbollah’s decision to intervene in a more prominent way?
Adrian I was at Watford too and thought it had a lot of credibility but I agree it would have been good to see Craig Murray on the platform. However getting on that stage would not have done his foot an iota of good so I guess it was as well he stayed away.
“Finally, chemical weapons are a terrible thing and their use should be condemned unreservedly. But where was all this Western outrage and activity when the Israelis were pouring down white phosphorous and kicking and maiming thousands of women and children in Gaza?”
Not to mention the use of white phosphorous and depleted uranium in Iraq by NATO forces. As to the lies of governments, like the poor, they are always with us. This video contains some good evidence not just that the Boston marathon was a false flag incident but that the US has been planning such false flag episodes for fifty years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0aBZ2codFI
I am by nature optimistic and happy. The lottery of life has dealt me a pretty decent hand. I am in my sixth decade and I’ve got a vegetable garden, my eyes, my arms, my legs and my bollocks; I have been lucky, I know it and I am grateful. But clearly someone, somewhere doesn’t like this, for I see the “news” about who we’re bombing this week and who is about to cop it (given roughly equal weight with celebrity boob-jobs, naturally) and I despair. I could almost cry for the people of Syria, Lebanon, The Balkans et al and wish that I could somehow put it all right. I feel the weight of a tremendous shame that the homicidal kleptocrats who are running the country I live in have nothing better to do than to interfere in other peoples’ civil wars and that there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. What is all this killing for? What does it accomplish? What is it even supposed to accomplish?
“We are in a very dangerous situation and I am fearful.”
I’m not fearful, Mary. But I am absolutely disgusted that they may yet pull off another Libya in Syria. Despite all the stated opposition, and with fabricated reasons – as usual.
They’ll dress it up as “responsibility to protect” although I doubt very much if they give a shit about Syrians dying, or how they die. All they care about is getting rid of Assad and then moving on.
Has anyone asked, or will anyone ask, the White House to produce their evidence that Assad has used Sarin??
“Information that the United States has given Russia about suspected use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces “does not look convincing”, president Vladimir Putin’s senior foreign policy adviser has said.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/russia-says-us-claims-of-syrian-chemical-arms-use-are-unconvincing-1.1428653
No surprise there
Herbie: There is some doubt about Hinchey’s real existence. My impression is that he is two or more old Soviet propagandists, one possibly Irish. The only other Bancroft Hinchey I could ever find, with or without the hyphen, was an engineering firm in Sussex.
Flaming – rather than cry….
Has anyone asked, or will anyone ask, the White House to produce their evidence that Assad has used Sarin??
Probably. And the answer was probably this:
“We looked at some pictures the Israelis sent us”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/world/middleeast/israel-says-syria-has-used-chemical-weapons.html?ref=world&_r=1&
@Dreoilin
“All they care about is getting rid of Assad and then moving on”.
I do ask myself, “Why now?” Didn’t they use Assad to provide them with secret prisons and torturers?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/cia-rendition-countries-covert-support
I clearly don’t know enough on this one …
Those bedtime stories of a Disney type world governed and navigated by superpower America told by grandpa ‘bonesman’ Prescott to Dorothy’s fav little boy George were exciting to him and instilled an early lust for power and domination.
National Archives REVEALED Senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. That joint venture bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to a technically superior Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler’s build-up to world war.
Britain’s request for assistance against the Nazi war machine would set back the Bush dynasty’s contrivance back by seventy years.
In later years this neurotic obsession with supremacy and superiority would propel George Herbert Walker Bush to seek a victory after the crushing defeat in Vietnam.
A ‘new pearl harbor’ would be required to pick up the pieces and restore America to dominance.
With insider knowledge Herbert Walker Bush would assembly the blocks for war in the Middle East, the reserve of America’s depleted energy resources after peak oil.
Saudi would support the terrorists, Israel and deception would provision the explosive technical resources and American’s own military would be betrayed by the first African American in a position of power, Colin Powell.
TBC. I am indebted to a great American activist and friend, David Swanson who has cut a path through the semantic fog of fear and control.
If Syria and then Iran fall the chains of world slavery will be secure for another hundred years
Israel backs both sides. Their philosophy is not Divide and Rule, it is Rule and divide. They rule governments by manipulating economies and blackmailing them and they rule individuals by torturing them and hardening them to the sufferings of others.
The target is Islam itself. All of the problems of the Muslims comes from the Muslims who think they can win in the game of Israeli Roulette. Russian roulette means you die if you lose, or have to take your clothes off. Israeli roulette is where the high stakes come from loss of National institutions for everyone, where the individuals playing, gamble to sacrifice everyone else.
Thanks for that, Komodo.
Let’s hope that the US shock jocks and the Fox clowns undermine themselves in a similarly desperate fashion.
Bilderburg? Hilarious, Craig. Do you often hang out with David Icke and Alex Jones by any chance?
Israel backs both sides.
Correct. It backs Assad against the Sunni fundamentalists, and it backs anyone who will play against Hizb’ullah. Currently, I think, it tends towards Assad because after it all goes completely pear-shaped in Syria, chances are it will have to work rather hard to keep Golan, while Assad preferred not to make Golan an issue. Russia has expressed an interest in having its peacekeepers under the UN flag, on the Golan border. There’s going to be another point of confusion if Israel, rather logically, agrees, and its pawns dissent.
As promised earlier, William bloody Hague opines right on cue:
http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/britain-agrees-with-us-that-syria-regime-used-chemical-weapons-113061400662_1.html
No need to recalibrate my crystal ball, then.
For anyone wanting an example of a real hero combating the Bushes et al., read the interview on CNN of Christopher Boyce, the young CIA agent who tried to put them out of business by telling the Soviets how they were getting rid of Gough Whitlam’s government in Australia.
If somehow they had succeeded in getting rid of the thugs running Washington, the country would not have been ruined by all those imported drugs, the world would not have experienced all those assassinations, especially those of the Popes, John Lennnon, and Olof Palme, and the USSR would still be in business.