Syria

[Ry]

The neocon spin about Syria has not stopped. Anyone familiar with the Israel "Clean Break" scenario knows the phrase "the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad".

Three things come to mind in the war propaganda against Syria.

1 Moving WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)
2 assassination of Hariri
3 Aiding the insurgentcy

As soon as the WMD in Iraq were no where to be found the Neocon parrots and talking heads on TV started to 'suggest' with no evidence that the weapons must have been moved across the border to Syria. Ha, that makes sense, have a war and have WMD but don't use them against your enemy. Instead get killed but hide your weapons just to make the US look bad. What a farce. Never mind the near impossibility of moving weapons into a different country, (who I guess, they would have us believe would just hold them for safe keeping). They would be moved under the watchful eye of satellites and in the middle of a war that they were hopelessly losing, where the western half which boarders Syria was lost first.

Still this busload of baseless propaganda worked. I have heard many times, when arguing with Bush supporters, that the missing WMD were sent to Syria. Why now, would a country at war get rid of their best weapons when they had everything to lose? The US never had evidence of Iraq's WMD.

They claimed Iraq did not comply with UN resolution 1441. Saying that they had not gotten rid of their Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was a modern witch trial, where Iraq had to prove they didn't have something. You can not prove a negative. So since they did not turn in the weapons that they didn't have (because that would be impossible) they were charged with not complying. Iraq had not had any WMD since the 1990s when inspectors got rid of the last ones which our own country sold to them during the war against Iran.


yeh that's dummy Rummy who has connections to Dow Chemical, a chemical company involved in making the gas we gave them.

Back when Rafik Hariri was killed, the Neocons tried to pin it on the Syrians. They had a theory about a bomb placed under the road in an underground tunnel. The problem being that no undergound tunnel existed and then Ahmed Tayseer Abu Adas, took the blame/credit for the act.

Now we have a new attempt reaching for a pretext for Syria. We have increased tension on the Syrian border. We have Israel periodically firing mortor rounds into Syria from the other side (which goes totally unreported in the US media) and now it looks like a stage is being set. The US will get into a 'shoot out' with Syrians or at least claim to, on the border of Iraq and Syria. Then claims one and two will be revisited by the Neocon media. I'm sure Fox News will be foaming at the mouth.

If you think they are not crazy enough or dumb enough, to do this, let me remind you that these are the same people who delayed helping hurricane victims for 5 days and then had the gall to try and rationalize it.

This time I don't think the public will fall for it outside of the 30% or so of born again types who could watch Bush eat a baby on TV and find a way to rationalize it. But I also don't think public support is going to matter to the neocons who live in their own world. (Bizzaro World) Maybe they will stage another beheading or another CONUS attack. They always have a way to use scare tactics to sway the public herd into obedience.

Breaking news

It now appears as though a faction from the OSP was sent to Iraq to PLANT Weapons of Mass Destruction. Larisa Alexandrovna reported,

"Three U.S. intelligence sources and a source close to the United Nations Security Council say that the Pentagon civilian leadership under the guidance of Stephen Cambone, appointed to lead Defense Department intelligence in March 2003, dispatched a series of 'off book' missions out of the ultra-secretive Office of Special Plans (OSP). The team was tasked to secure the following in order of priority: fallen Navy pilot Scott Speicher, WMD, and Saddam Hussein."

"'They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,' the UN source said. "Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that 'Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?'

"The source said intelligence officers understood quickly what they were being asked to do and that the assumption was they were being asked to provide WMD in order for coalition forces to find them. 'But the guys were thinking this is absurd because anything put down would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology,' the source added."

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8383 More here on that story.

I had always wondered why they did not just plant some weapons and then 'discover' them. The off the book missions were set into place yet fortunately for truth they failed. Amazingly it did not even seem to matter to the warhawks who unconditionally support war when it serves as feel good machoism and vicarious power for the scared and prejudice.

With the up coming war with Iran and Syria, we must keep this in mind. Will the Zionist OSP plant some evidence to serve as a pretext for invading Iran? It is not beyond them. They lied about the Niger forgeries which link right back up to Libby and the rest of the OSP. And we all know these cabals have rigged false flag opperations before and have cooked up bogus intelligence in the recent past to justify their crimes.

Get out there an exspose this. Blog away because the MSM is not going to report it. We have to become the media because basically we don't have one.

[Ry]

PNAC is following the Zionists' plan for Greater Israel. Big business and religious instituoins which are just tax free big businesses themselves are deeply invested in the weapons industry and all the industries involved in warfare.

These people are simply crazy. They actually believe in theocratic claims to land and a plutocratic one world government. They orchestrated 911 and with the OSP they started the lie factory to drag us into Iraq. Afghanistan despite its contract for Unocal ect was primarily a Beta test for Iraq. Syria is next just because it is simply the most do-able. Then Iran them Saudi Arabia and that last one will be on the Dems watch. Make no mistake about it, both parties are war parties.

If the AIPAC and Rove scandals go quick enough and if arrest can be made. We could turn it all around. The new congress of 2006 could even begin a long list of impeachments.

Bush and co are absolutely unconstitutional. They finally broke the 2d amendment in New Orleans this week. It was about the last section of the Bill of Rights they hadn't violated yet. These profiteering psychos belong in jail, some of them belong in a nut house.

I had a dream too, it was that some one shot Cheney and they were from our own military.

[Ry]

I wonder if the news will start pumping up the Syria hype soon.

[bornonaugust10th]

I really don't know what to say anymore, I'm just in awe of how much bullsh!t that we live in. I can't wait see more, and how much people are in trouble, I really don' know wat to say, i thank you for the news.

[Ry]

I wonder if the news will start pumping up the Syria hype soon.

Well I asked that on Sep 16th I guess we have our answer now. Bolton has been calling for Syrias's head at the UN. And Bush said war was a last resort which is neocons speak for first resort.

[Revolution]

The Syrian Gambit Unravels
When the main witnesses recant, you don't have a case
by Justin Raimondo
The effort to demonize Syria and, in effect, Saddamize its ruler, Bashar al-Assad, has run up against a brick wall: the recantation of the prime witness, who says he was bribed, intimidated, and tortured into going along with the narrative being sold by UN prosecutor Mehlis – that Syrian intelligence pulled off the Feb. 14 assassination of Lebanese entrepreneur and politician Rafik Hariri in Beirut. The New York Times reports:

"Hussam Taher Hussam, said he had been held in Lebanon by supporters of Saad Hariri, the son of the former prime minister, and subjected to torture and drug injections to force him to testify. Saad Hariri, he said, offered him $1.3 million if he would lie about senior Syrian officials. …

"He said Mr. Hariri and his associates had asked him to tell investigators that he had seen a truck used in the assassination at a Syrian military camp, and to present false evidence implicating Maher Assad, the younger brother of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and Asef Shawkat, the president's brother-in-law, in the killing in February."


Hussam's statement on Syrian television was well-received in Syria, where his references to the vagaries of Alawite minority rule and other details gave it added credibility. Naturally, Syria's enemies rejected this new testimony, just as they had hailed Hussam's previous statements as proof positive of Syria's perfidy. What they didn't – couldn't – acknowledge was that their chief witness is effectively discredited, and he isn't the only one. As the various threads of the "Syria did it" scenario unravel, the whole conspiracy theory is coming apart like a badly made sweater.

In the Mehlis report – or at least the "preliminary" and highly speculative document released last month – Hussam was the "masked" witness whose identity supposedly could not be revealed because his life was in danger from the Syrian authorities. His "evidence" was the key link in tying the highest echelons of the Syrian regime to Hariri's assassination. That he has now shown up on Syrian television – looking presentable, sounding articulate, and showing no signs of having been intimidated or even having a single hair on his head ruffled – has the anti-Syria crowd looking pretty silly. Even worse for them, however, is the news that yet another prominent figure in the narrative woven by Mehlis, Muhammad Zuhayr al-Sadiq, has also been discredited.

According to an article in Le Figaro, a French right-of-center daily associated with the party of Jacques Chirac, the CIA described al-Sadiq as a "fabulist." French intelligence was all too aware of the witness' unreliability but ignored the CIA's skepticism due to political pressure from on high. Mehlis himself didn't believe Sadiq, at least in the beginning, and, according to Le Figaro's reporter, the UN's chief investigator used Sadiq's testimony as a "bluff" to enable the detention of the four Lebanese generals in hopes that they would incriminate themselves. The German newspaper Der Spiegel gives us even more reason to question Sadiq's testimony: they report that he was introduced to Mehlis by Rifaat al-Assad, brother of the late President Hafez al-Assad, who hopes to inherit the Syrian presidency if and when the Americans invade.

One mysterious reference in the Le Figaro story: a "member of the entourage of Saad Hariri" is cited as saying that Sadiq was used to convey information that came from "elsewhere." Der Spiegel also reported Sadiq told his brother in Damascus that "I've become a millionaire" as a result of his testimony – with the money coming, presumably, from that same "elsewhere."

As for Mehlis, he is apparently so sick and tired of this endless probe that he's retiring from the scene having undergone a surprising transformation: he's no longer the stern, no-nonsense Teutonic prosecutor, a Germanic version of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, but shamefaced and subdued in the face of this massive debunking of his "preliminary" report. What a comedown!

That report had been a major bludgeon for the Bush administration and their newfound allies, the French, to hit Syria over the head with in the UN Security Council, and it served the same purpose on the home front: yet more evidence that it was high time for the imposition of sanctions and a little "regime change" in Damascus. The discrediting of Hussam and Sadiq has deprived the War Party of this particular weapon, but they aren't giving up: UN Ambassador John Bolton is demanding that the Mehlis investigation be continued, even without Mehlis.

The official end date of the UN investigation into Hariri's assassination is Dec. 15, but you can be sure that Bolton and the rest of the get-Syria crowd will try to ensure that its life span is extended. They are determined to gin up another war, and they don't care how transparently false the pretext is: these people have raised lying into a sophisticated art form, of which the Mehlis propaganda blitz is just the beginning. They don't care how far-fetched the indictments of their targets appear, nor how often they are debunked: what they're counting on is the residue left by "news" stories trumpeting "evidence" that Syria killed Hariri and is wreaking havoc in Lebanon. The debunking takes place on the back pages, while the initial charges were given front-page headlines.

This is how the propaganda assault works: keep flinging dirt in the hope that at least some of it will stick. If your "evidence" turns out to be false, and your "witnesses" start recanting, then don't backpedal – instead, invent new charges. Attack, attack, attack!

The utter absurdity of UN Security Council resolution 1363 – which calls on Syria to cooperate fully with an international commission investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or face possible "further action" – can be easily seen if we imagine that the UN had taken a similar interest in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Picture Lyndon Baines Johnson and top members of the U.S. government being called in by a United Nations "prosecutor" for questioning. It's interesting that the same American "conservatives" who waste no opportunity to show their disdain for the UN and would have risen in armed revolt if the UN had intervened in the Kennedy affair, are now upholding the UN's authority to "investigate" the murder of Hariri and pin it on Syria.

Syria is now girding for the imposition of economic sanctions and trying to head off the campaign to destabilize the country on two fronts: by restarting talks with Israel, and by cooperating with the request to permit Syrian officials to be questioned in the Hariri investigation. I have the funny feeling, however, that this is not going to do them a lot of good, as far as their enemies in the West are concerned. As we have seen in the case of Iraq, when the U.S. wants to manufacture a case for war, it can be done pretty easily: Congress is not likely to ask inconvenient questions until it's too late, and the American people can hardly be expected to keep up with arcane doings in faraway Lebanon, the scene of the intrigue and obscure religious-ethnic rivalries that could spark another Mideast war. Acting pretty much without either congressional or public scrutiny, this administration thinks it can get away with anything when it comes to Syria – and in that, they are probably right.

The scenario laid out by the War Party is this: pin the murder of Hariri on Syria, concoct phony "evidence" that high Syrian officials – including members of President Assad's immediate family – were involved, and set up an "international tribunal" under the jurisdiction of the UN, which will then demand that Syria surrender the accused – or else. U.S. troops are waiting just across the Syrian-Iraqi border, ready for the command to cross in full force – or perhaps as part of a scouting expedition in hot pursuit of "terrorists," who will then be set upon by Syrian troops in a Middle Eastern remake of the Tonkin Gulf incident.

Coming soon to a theater of war near Iraq…

[Gyps]

i got syria is off the hot seat now and iran is back on it.

[Demockery101]

I take exception to dummy rummy... its ronald dumsfeld

[Ry]

"To hear the American government and its Israeli allies tell it, the struggle in the Middle East is a straightforward black-and-white one, which pits the Forces of Goodness (Washington and Tel Aviv) against "terrorists" and terrorist-supporting states like Iran and Syria. This narrative enables the Americans and the Israelis to mask their own agendas – regional hegemony, territorial expansion (on Israel's part), and access to cheap oil – behind the "war on terrorism" rubric. It also lets them lump together groups – including Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda – that are not only different but opposed to each other's interests, their only commonality being that they are Arab, Muslim, and armed. However, every once in a while, reality intrudes and the official narrative suffers a direct hit: the latest such incident is the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Damascus.

Syrian security forces gunned down three men who tried to blow up the U.S. embassy in Damascus Tuesday, wounding and capturing another. The upscale Abu Romana area, where embassies and the houses of the rich nestle near the presidential palace of Bashar al-Assad, was the scene of a 30-minute gun battle. Shouting religious slogans and firing RPGs, four Takfiri, reportedly members of Jund al-Sham (Soldiers of Syria), a shadowy jihadist Sunni group vaguely affiliated with al-Qaeda, stormed the building. One Syrian guard was killed and two were wounded, in what is being described as a failed attempt to detonate a car bomb in front of the embassy. Eleven civilian bystanders were injured". -Raimondo

this is written about a year after I reported on Hariri I think the events are helping to unfold what really happened there. Mossad.

Un-mentioned here is why people would want to blow up the US embassy? They are not attacking Canada, or Sweden etc its the US oh gee what reason might they have... The US can do no evil, every reaction to our imperialism and warmongers is met with shock. But we can support the illegal occupation of Palestine, and dump DU all over the Middle East, and white posphorus on Fallujah and torture people from Cuba to Afghanistan and that wont even be on the news. Syaria is the goal for Israel, Iraq and Iran are just in the way.

[The Beam Doc]

I'm sure these neo-con dickheads will find a way to make Syria look like a terror state. False Flag maybe? Who knows, you just never know what you'll get!