Wednesday, July 25, 2012


Syrian Opposition Signs Pro-War Neo-Con Letter to Obama
Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer, Jul 24 2012
Neo-Conservatives have “called on” Obama to assist in the establishment of “safe zones” inside of Syria in a recent letter published by the “Foreign Policy Initiative” and the “Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.” Both faux-institutions are corporate, foundation, and government funded clearing-houses, extensions of larger think-tanks like the AEI, for corporate-financier driven agendas, more specifically, wars. They serve the sole purpose of manufacturing consensus behind an agenda that has little or no support within the general public. The letter covered by Foreign Policy’s article, “Conservatives call on Obama to establish ‘safe zones’ in Syria,” not only parrots Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution’s report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change,” recently repeated almost verbatim by US Sec State Clinton, but was signed by co-conspirators in the invasion of Iraq including Elliott Abrams, Karl Rove, Paul Bremer, Robert Joseph, and Douglas Feith, along with Romney advisors including Eric Edelman, Jamie Fly, Robert Kagan, and Stephen Rademaker, as well as Syrian National Council member Radwah Ziadeh, who it should be remembered is also a “senior fellow” of the US State Dept’s US Institute for Peace (USIP) which has just revealedit is behind training, coaching, and tutoring Syria’s opposition leaders as well as preparing Syria’s new constitution, currently being called a “transition strategy document.” Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Neo-Cons’ letter is that it essentially calls for a no-fly zone:
We urge you to take immediate steps, in close and continuing consultation with the Congress, to work with regional partners to establish air-patrolled “safe zones” covering already liberated areas within Syria, using military power not only to protect these zones from further aggression by the Assad regime’s military and irregular forces, but also to neutralize the threat posed by the Syrian dictatorship’s chemical and biological weapons.
Basically an amalgamation of every false pretext the US has used to wage war upon its enemies in the last 20 years, and the dirty tricks used to inch USAians into another war, the letter reveals who is once again behind US foreign policy, and that warmongering, corporate-financier interests, not humanitarian concerns, seek to spend US blood and treasure in their pursuit of global hegemony. It has been covered extensively that the campaign against Syria began as early as 2007, during the Bush administration. With this list of signatories (at bottom), which also includes Paula Dobriansky, Max Boot, Eric Edelman, William Kristol, and Danielle Pletka, we literally have 2007′s agenda coming full circle, and leaving us at the doorstep of war with Iran. In essence, our so-called Democratic, progressive, liberal Pres Obama is fighting our so-called Republican Neo-Conservative former Pres Bush’s wars, plural, because Libya was also on the long list of nations targeted by the Neo-Conservatives, and was also the subject of a letter to Obama (and one to House Republicans) urging him to intervene militarily, which the US did.
Video: Seven nations, five years: US Army General Wesley Clark exposes in 2007 Neo-Conservative ambitions dating back to 2001, that involved the destruction of seven nations: Iraq, Syria Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. That Iraq, Libya, and Somalia have suffered direct military intervention by the US, with Lebanon and Sudan having suffered and Syria now suffering covert destabilization, and open threats of war being made against Iran, there is no doubt that this plan is underway. That the Neo-Cons are literally articulating the next leg, in letters to the US president, indicates that they and the interests they represent, never left the driver’s seat in 2008.
Syria is not about its people rising up against a dictator. It is about neo-imperialists couching their long-harbored dreams of global hegemony within the ideals of humanitarianism, democracy promotion, freedom, and if that fails, fearmongering over terrorism and violence of their own design. The Neo-Cons and the corporate-financier interests they represent, along with their willing helpers on both sides of the aisle including Sec State Clinton, constitute the greatest threat to world peace, not the government and people of Syria, who have not once threatened the US and its people in any conceivable way, nor possess the capacity to do so if they desired. And while the West’s megalomania may only be sated by defeat at the hands of their enemies abroad, we may yet reclaim our destiny at home by identifying, boycotting, and replacing the monolithic corporations and financial institutions that have so lent them the unwarranted influence with which they plague the world.
Media Hysteria Over Syria “Bombing” City of Aleppo
Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer, Jul 24 2012
Fighter jets have reportedly launched bomb attacks on Syria’s second city of Aleppo, which, if confirmed, would be the first time Assad forces had used war planes against citizens.
Image: A sole”tweet” from BBC’s Ian Pannell, who has yet to provide any source, evidence, or details regarding his vague claim, immediately made headlines across the Western media.
The claim is based on a single “tweet” from BBC’s Ian Pannell who, after hours of making this claim, has failed categorically to cite his source, provide any evidence of his claims, or provide details of the targets and context of the attacks, if indeed they took place. Yet the Western media “echo chamber” began repeating the story seconds after it was posted, and through this alone it attempted to validate the claim while building momentum behind NATO insinuations.
Image: Taken from an official Defense Dept transcript, US Sec Def Gates and Adm Mullen both concede they’d seen no confirmation “whatsoever” regarding claims by the corporate media that Libya’s Qaddafi had used airstrikes against his own people. However, this fabrication would be used for very real airstrikes, not by Qaddafi, but by NATO under the guise of the “Responsibility to Protect.” 
Narratives of “brutal dictators” bombing civilians with aircraft have been used before, most notably in Libya where verified lies were told regarding Qaddafi’s use of aircraft against the city of Benghazi. These fabrications were used to justify foreign military intervention and regime change under the guise of a “no-fly zone” to “protect civilians.” However, the US Dept of Defense itself noted that none of these accusations were founded in fact or confirmed in any way, and the Russian government went as far as providing satellite imagery of sites allegedly bombed to show no such strikes were made. Ironically, NATO’s subsequent “protection of civilians” flattened several cities across the country, slaying thousands of civilians.
Syria’s Violence in Context 
The Syrian military cannot, however, rule out the use of airstrikes considering the overt manner in which foreign interests such as USraeland the Gulf States are increasingly sending heavily-armed militants over their borders to destabilize their nation. It must be taken into consideration that FSA militants have been conducting indiscriminate bombings across Syria for months now, and with their latest assassinations and offensive, have shed the ability to play to role of “victim-civilians.”
Image: The West’s “lightly armed” FSA. ABC (Australia) claims this is a picture taken this week of an FSA-seized tank on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria. One wonders if this tank was rolling along the outskirts of Washington in the middle of a war, whether or not the US would use airstrikes to neutralize it. 
The West has eagerly described this violence in Syria as a “civil war,” yet has conveniently continued to depict their heavily-armed, foreign-backed fighters streaming across Syria’s borders as “citizens” and “civilians,” even as their ties to Al Qaeda and other foreign militant groups become ever more apparent. In fact, Iraqi officials are already linking the recent bombings in their country by Al Qaeda to the same forces and backers of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) in Syria.
ImageAl Jazeera was running this picture along with the description, “Syrian rebels near Aleppo city, as they took much of the formerly loyalist city from the government [EPA].” Heavy weapons can be seen mounted on several of the trucks, and images like this are increasingly common as militants attempt to enter cities like Damascus and Aleppo where there are more cameras, and hiding these weapons from the general public becomes increasingly difficult.
Additionally, despite a repeated mantra by the Western media that the FSA is “lightly armed,” these same media outlets have shown columns of trucks mounted with heavy weapons, and even captured tanksidentified as FSA forces. While the US conducts airstrikes on entirely unarmed civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and with Turkey likewise brutalizing its own “rebels” in Kurdish dominated provincesfrom the air, NATO and its allies attempt to condemn Syria for doing likewise against heavily armed militants like those pictured above.
Fishing for a Pretext
Between lies revolving around distorted statements regarding chemical weapons, fabricated atrocities, and now claims of airstrikes being used upon “civilian populations,” the West is desperately running down the list for a “casus belli” that will stick. The Syrian government, after a year and a half of being undermined by foreign interests and hordes of foreign militants, has maintained both the faith and trust the majority of its population has put into it. If it is deploying airstrikes, it can be assured they are doing so with keeping that faith and trust intact, and as the West often claims in the midst of its military adventures, doing so to minimize as much as possible collateral damage. Recent attacks by the FSA have aimed at undermining that faith and truth, and militants in the northern city of Aleppo have purposefully moved to the commercial center of the city to draw in the heavy weapons necessary to neutralize them. While the Western press portrays this move toward the center of Aleppo as “progress,” it should be noted that the Syrian military operates out of bases on the city’s outskirts. This means the further militants push toward the center of the city, the further from engaging the military directly they become. While the FSA claims they are “liberating” Aleppo, even the Western media concedes it is a bastion of government support. This indicates that terrorism, intimidation, and panic, not “liberation” are the FSA’s goals in Aleppo, and that the government is justified to take any measures necessary to stop them. Conversely, NATO and its allies see Syria’s vigorous defense capabilities as an obstacle to Western-planned regime change – therefore if neutralizing them through covert  means is not possible, they will attempt to neutralize them by declaring them a threat to “civilians,” invoking “Responsibility to Protect,” and initiating foreign military intervention.
West Spreads Syrian WMDs Lies For Foreign Intervention
Tony Cartalucci, Land Destroyer, Jul 24 2012
Hysterical propaganda has increasingly amplified since early Monday when the Syrian government’s Foreign Minister Jihad Makdissi insisted that if Syria had any unconventional weapons, they would be under strict security and only used against foreign aggression. Makdissi went on to clarify further his statement by insisting that his comments in no way implied Syria even has such weapons. Despite this, the Western media has begun the all too familiar WMD-mantra, heard in the lead up to Iraq, where bold-faced lies and fabrications based on knowingly dubious intelligence sources, were picked specifically to tell the narrative the West sought to sell the public. The culmination of this propaganda campaign vs the government and people of Iraq, of whom over 2 million died between sanctions leading up to the war and the West’s invasion and occupation, was the West’s primary intelligence source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed “Curveball,” admitting:
I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime.
In other words, as the Guardian put it in the title of their article, “Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war.” Now in Syria, we have another “defector,” the discredited former-Syrian ambassador to Iraq, Nawaf Fares, clearly fabricating fantastical tales to both undermine the Syrian government, and give the West the impetus it needs for wider military intervention, especially since NATO’s proxy “Free Syrian Army” has suffered catastrophic defeats in both Damascus, and now Aleppo. Fares claimed that he knew Syria’s weapons were being mobilized, and that the government planned on using them. Building on this, Reuters has reported, “Syria rebels: Assad regime moved chemical weapons near border,” citing habitually deceitful FSA leaders and little else. Israel and Turkey have been gearing up for strikes against Syria to save a faltering FSA offensive that had begun in Damascus, but already has been put down, and is now faltering in Aleppo. The Israelis in particular have stated they will strike to prevent WMDs from “falling into the hands of Hezbollah,” the rhetorical cover they are using to swoop in and save their failing campaign to overthrow Syria’s government. It is believed that NATO and the Gulf State’s FSA terrorist proxies have reached the very limit of their ability to destabilize Syria and the West recognizes the necessity of limited strikes to cripple a Syrian government that remains intact, coherent, and far from “crumbling” as the Western media has tried, but failed to portray. M K Bhadrakumar wrote as much in his most recent analysis titled, “The rise and fall of Turkey’s Erdogan.”
However, a pretext for such strikes must be fabricated, and there have been stark warnings from analysts and international press from around the world of a possible false-flag chemical weapons attackstaged by NATO and its proxies to be then blamed on the Syrian government, and give NATO, Israel, and the Gulf States the impetus they’ve sought for a wider military intervention. The hysterical rhetoric coming from the West is directly proportional to the failing fortunes of their terrorist proxies on the ground across Syria. After a year and a half of trying to undermine the Syrian government and its people, only but a collection of towns sheltered by the Turkish military along the border lie in FSA hands, with their attacks repeatedly fended off across the country and the tide of public opinion worldwide turning against them. The West is still paying the price for its lies leading up to the condemned invasion and occupation of Iraq, but seems prepared to reach further yet into the depths of its own depravity. We must remind the public of the outcome when last the West told tales of WMDs, real or imagined, to justify a war of aggression.

Wednesday, 7:20 AM
BBC Covers Up War Crimes – Misleads Over Syrian Security Operations.
by Tony Cartalucci
July 25, 2012 – When big lies must be told, BBC is there. From Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and now Syria, BBC has paved the way for Western disinformation meant to mange public perception around a war the public would otherwise never support or tolerate.
The BBC, caught on record producing entire “documentaries” on behalf of corporate-financier interests, has already been caught in immense lies regarding the NATO-fueled destabilization of Syria. This includes the disingenuous use of photos from Iraq, to depict a so-called “massacre” in the village of Houla, Syria.
Now, as NATO’s Al Qaeda mercenaries operating under the banner of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” flow over the Turkish-Syrian border in an attempt to overrun the city of Aleppo, BBC is there, attempting to manipulate the public’s perception as the conflict unfolds.
BBC’s Ian Pannell admits he rode with a convoy of milatnt fighters into Aleppo at night. He claims many are desperate for the FSA to succeed, “clamoring for freedom denied by their president,” but concedes many others fear an “Islamic takeover” and sectarian “division and bloodshed.” The latter of course, is self-evident, while the former is the repeated, unfounded mantra of the Western media used to cover up the latter.
Pannell poses amongst staged settings, claiming a single burning tire equates to a barricade set up by the militants (see more on the use of burning tires as propaganda here and here). He concedes that militants are taking to the rooftops with sniper rifles in the districts they claim they control – begging one to wonder where else terrorist snipers have been, and how many “sniper” deaths have been mistakenly blamed on the government.
Covering Up FSA War Crimes
Pannell then attempts to cover up serious war crimes committed by the FSA militants he is traveling with, claiming that men the FSA arbitrarily rounded up while “seeking revenge” were “suspected Shabiha,” harking back to Libya’s NATO-backed terrorist death squads rounding up and killing Libya’s black communities in orgies of sectarian genocide – which outlets like the BBC defended as simply rebels targeting “suspected African mercenaries.” Pannell papers over what he just reported with the unqualified claim that there is “little justice” on either side. What became of the FSA’s victims is not revealed.

Image: From BBC’s Ian Pannell – young men “suspected” of being “Shabiha” are rounded up as the FSA “seeks revenge.” BBC fails categorically to explain how NATO-backed terrorists can “liberate” a city that is admittedly pro-government – but it appears it will be done through terrorism, brutality, mass murder, and intimidation. 
BBC reporter Ian Pannell’s failure to report on the war crimes he admitted witnessing, smacks of endorsement and complicity – an attempt to preserve the romanticism the West has desperately tried to associate with their FSA death squads. Pannell’s report also confirms earlier descriptions of widespread atrocities committed by the so-called “Free Syrian Army.”
In Libya, when the government of Muammar Qaddafi collapsed, and as Libyan terrorists overran the last of the nation’s security forces, entire cities of Libya’s blacks were overrun, their populations either mass-murdered, imprisoned, or forced to flee to refugee camps. These are people who had lived in Libya for generations. A similar fate awaits Syrians should NATO prevail.
BBC Confirms Syrian Army Use of Heavy Weapons ARE Proportional to FSA Threats
Pannell’s propaganda in Aleppo continues, where he admits FSA militants possess tanks they allegedly “captured” from the Syrian military, but then, showing video of what is clearly an anti-tank SU-25 aircraft rolling in with machine guns, claims it marks a “dramatic escalation” and a sign of “desperation.”

Image: From BBC’s Ian Pannell -FSA tanks are positioned in or around Aleppo, according to BBC. The myth that NATO-backed militants are “lightly armed” is unraveling as they attempt to take on large cities flush with cameras and media from both sides. Eager propagandists attempting to portray victories have more than once shown “captured tanks” in the hands of militants. Heavy militant weapons beget heavy government weapons. 
In reality the Syrian army is using force directly proportional to the threats NATO-backed militants have presented. Tanks and heavy weapons mounted on trucks, also featured in the BBC report, are legitimate targets for government heavy weapons. The precision an SU-25 lends the battlefield verses heavy artillery bombardments when neutralizing FSA heavy weapons is the only conceivable way to minimize civilian casualties.


Images: (Top) From BBC’s Ian Pannell – BBC and other Western media outlets have claimed “MIGs” are bombing Aleppo’s civilian populations. Thisall based on a single “tweet” made by BBC’s Ian Pannell. Pannell now reports this video depicts what he saw – which in reality is an anti-tank SU-25 deploying machine guns, not bombs, verses what Pannell already admits are FSA heavy weapons, not civilian populations. (Bottom) Several orthographic views of the SU-25 for comparison. 
And as the Western media is so found of reminding its viewers, Aleppo is decidedly pro-government, and pro-President Bashar al-Assad. Therefore to indiscriminately use disproportionate force serves no purpose for the Syrian government, who has gone through extraordinary lengths and placed its soldiers at great risk to minimize damage to the city and its inhabitants – a city and population that serves both an important role economically and culturally for all Syrian people.

Remember Fallujah, Iraq
A government is put in a difficult position when armed gangs enter a city “seeking revenge” as BBC’s Ian Pannell puts it, when these gangs have trucks mounted with heavy weapons as well as tanks in their possession. For the West, to berate the Syrian government and portray its security operations as unmitigated “brutality” is disingenuous at best, especially considering the militants are there solely because of years of financial, military, and political support from the US, Israel, and the Gulf State despots.


Image: Western hypocrisy – Fallujah, Iraq in 2004 was bombarded by artillery and airstrikes for weeks leading up to the final invasion. When over 10,000 troops entered the city, they were accompanied by tanks, and supported by heavy artillery and airstrikes. When the West is subjugating others, heavy weapons seems acceptable – but not when another nation attempts to defend itself from admittedly Western-backed terrorists. 
The West might want to also revisit the lessons it learned from flattening the Iraqi city of Fallujhah, twice. The US bombarded the city for weeks prior to its final invasion in 2004, where over 10,000 troops entered with heavy artillery and air support. Apparently it is acceptable for the West to subjugate others using such tactics, but nations are prohibited from using similar tactics to defend themselves. The Syrian uprising was a foreign-plot stretching back as far as 2007, foreign militants admittedly flowing over the border from across the Arab World, admittedly armed and funded by the US, Israel,Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
The Battle of Fullujah is considered a notch in the belt of Western military prowess, while the West condemns Syria’s attempts to defend one of its most important cities from foreign-subversion and destruction. While NATO believes it can still win the geopolitical battle it is waging against the Syrian people, it has already long lost the battle for moral superiority.

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