Unity: Syria’s Only Option

Land Destroyer Report

As warmongers plot to destroy Syria, Syrians face only one choice.
by Tony Cartalucci

Editor’s Note: Before considering the US military options in Syria, it would be instructive to re-read this article from March 21, 2011 titled, “Libyan War: Globalists Bluffing their way to Victory,” to understand the true purpose of these current military options and how they were used effectively to win the otherwise unwinnable military campaign in Libya. Through terror and fear, the West was able to fold superior fighting forces that could have held out for years had they stood united.

March 19, 2012 – Corporate-funded think-tank and purveyor of US foreign policy, the Brookings Institution, had in 2009 literally blueprinted the strategy with which the West would slowly strangle and topple the government of Iran. Throughout the pages of their report, “Which Path to Persia?” everything from sanctions, to purposefully provoking war with Iran, to stoking US-backed uprisings, to funding, training, and arming US State Department-listed terror organizations was plotted before being promptly executed.

Amongst those signing their names to this treasonous conspiracy to commit mass-murder against a sovereign nation was Michael O’Hanlon. Besides contributing extensively to the West’s corporate-media, he has no operational experience to speak of militarily, economically, or even administratively. He has never once shouldered a rifle for his nation, nor truly jeopardized his life for any cause he seemingly has no problem having tens of thousands of others die for in his stead. He is the quintessential imperial scribe.

Image: Also out of the Brookings Institution, Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change. Admissions that Syria’s rebels are carrying out an increasing amount of sectarian violence (page 8), that Kofi Annan’s mission to Syria is in fact to establish an occupied “safe haven” on Syrian territory to launch further attacks (page 4), as well as the involvement of Al Qaeda on the side of rebels are noteworthy points. The report would also state in reference to arming the rebels, “alternatively, the United States might calculate that it is still worthwhile to pin down the Asad regime and bleed it, keeping a regional adversary weak, while avoiding the costs of direct intervention,” which contradicts the entire premise of the “humanitarian war” and the “responsibility to protect (R2P)” by purposefully prolonging violent conflict.

O’Hanlon’s most recent work involves spelling out the “military options” the US has in regards to Syria in an op-ed aptly titled, “What Are Our Military Options in Syria?”

The West purposefully destabilized Syria, and is currently perpetuating extensive bloodshed through militant proxies funded, trained, and armed by the West and operating on Syria’s borders as well as within Syria itself. As the bloodshed mounts, the West is now insidiously using the carnage to justify more overt intervention to execute long planned regime change.

Just as it was spelled out and promptly executed in O’Hanlon’s “Which Path to Persia?,” the operation in Syria involves almost identical elements altered only slightly to suit Syria’s geopolitical predisposition. US-backed uprisings, armed militants, and sanctions have all already been set in motion with overt military options being all that is left on the table.

The military options O’Hanlon envisions to achieve the overthrow of Syria’s government include:

1. A punitive naval or air operation to encourage a coup against Assad: An outright act of war designed to completely cut off Syria, including its millions of civilians, from importing or exporting anything. There are also planned airstrikes designed to psychologically shake Assad’s allies and panic them into defecting and instead “share power” with the US-backed opposition.

Of course, O’Hanlon must perceive the Syrian government as supreme ignoramuses to have seen how “sharing” was carried out in another Brookings project, Libya, and still count this as a viable alternative to holding fast against foreign-funded militants. It was during NATO’s campaign against Libya that many defectors ended up dead the absolute first moment their services were no longer required -or sometimes even beforehand. Case in point, General Abdul Fattah Younis.

Image: General Abdul Fattah Younis‘ reward for accepting offers to “power share” with the Libyan rebels was his assassination.

2. A broader Balkans-like campaign to help depose Assad. And by this, O’Hanlon of course means, a “Libyan-like campaign,” but would rather focus on the Balkans because it is further in hindsight and much more has been done to rewrite its historical outcome as “favorable.” Evoking the NATO-led genocidal killing spree that just unfolded in Libya, complete with the destruction of several major cities, would again remind potential defectors in Syria the cost of allowing their nation to fall into NATO hands.

That cost would be the plunging of Syria into perpetual division, instability, violence, and an uncertain political future that could see any defector a hero one minute and at the wrong end of a rifle the next. There will be no power sharing, there will be no seats at the table for “defectors,” and as Libya has proven, it is very unlikely there will even be a table for seats to be placed around in the first place.

3. Creation of a safe zone for Syrian civilians: O’Hanlon indirectly admits that this would only be done as a means to eventually include one or both of the above mentioned options. This was already stated in “Genocidal Turkish Government Eyes Syria,” where it appears that NATO-member Turkey has been elected to create just such a zone from which increasing hostilities could be conducted.

What O’Hanlon is really saying…

What must be remembered is that O’Hanlon is not writing this for the consideration of the Pentagon. Instead, he is specifically writing this so that pundits and media outlets can repeat what is essentially extortion directed at Syria’s establishment. The purpose of this exercise is to prey on the fear of Assad’s political allies and those across Syria’s business community who have so far stood behind their nation’s government.

It is hoped that the West can bluff their way into folding opposition by presenting them with a difficult and costly military campaign verses the alternative of “power sharing.” Unfortunately for O’Hanlon and his superiors, Syria has already seen the dead end “power sharing” led to in Libya, a dead end Libya will remain in well into the foreseeable future. The rationale of businessmen capitulating to see UN sanctions relieved is also absurd considering the inevitable fracturing and perpetual destabilization that will wreck both the country and its economy should the current government fall.

Syria’s opposition is entirely dependent on foreign fighters, foreign arms, foreign funds, and an international consensus that allows such foreign resources to continue flowing to them unabated. Already cracks have begun to show and now the West’s only chance is to psychologically break Assad’s power base through threats and perhaps even a limited military incursion. The catch is, should Syria remain united, order can be restored and nothing short of total war waged by the West could prevent it.

Syria has only one option.

Imperialism’s favorite trick throughout time has been to purposefully mire a targeted nation in internal strife to weaken it before preying on, and ruling over, both sides. This can be seen encapsulated in the following ancient Chinese stratagem:

When a country is beset by internal conflicts, when disease and famine ravage the population, when corruption and crime are rampant, then it will be unable to deal with an outside threat. This is the time to attack. –The 36 Strategies, #5 Loot a Burning House

While it would likewise suit Assad’s opponents, it is particularly important for those who have made the decision to stand by Syria’s ruling government to stay the course of restoring order and pursuing political solutions.

The West has gone too far, its credibility and operational capacity waning by the day, it has no choice but to continue pushing forward in hopes that all before it lack the fortitude to stand up and fight. The West will not stop until either Syria is divided and destroyed or the West itself crumbles in the midst of its untenable imperial conquest. Defection, capitulation, and failure are not options. Syria’s fate will be that of Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, or worse if it falls. Unity is Syria’s only option.

March 20, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

SYRIA: Media Accuses Syrian Government of Collaborating with Al Qaeda. How the Media Refutes its own Lies…

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
March 17, 2012

The latest terrorist attack in Damascus is described by the media as yet another government sponsored initiative geared towards killing Syrian civilians.

The CTV-AP report of this tragic event resulting in 27 deaths and some 140 wounded is riddled with contradictions. First it acknowledges that the target of the attacks was government buildings including Air Force Intelligence and National Security buildings in Damascus:

Two explosions rocked the Syrian capital of Damascus Saturday … The twin suicide car bombs were aimed at intelligence and security buildings in the capital. (CTV,  March 17, 2012, emphasis added)

Obviously, it follows, says the report, that the Syrian regime is responsible for targeting its own government buildings.

Now why on earth would it do that? The answer: “The attacks occurred in areas where government security is typically high, raising opposition suspicions that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible.” (Ibid, emphasis added)

The attacks have the fingerprints of a carefully planned intelligence operation. The Syrian government pointed to the responsibility of Al Qaeda-linked terrorists supported by foreign powers, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia:

The explosions were carried out with devastating precision outside police and military intelligence headquarters in the capital, Damascus, in the early hours, Saturday. The devices comprised two vehicles packed with explosives, according to Syrian state media reports. Local residents described how the bombs were detonated within minutes of each other, causing horrific scenes of carnage.

Many ordinary Syrians are convinced that the latest atrocity – as with previous deadly blasts in the capital and other cities across the country – is the work of terrorist groups that are being trained and supplied by foreign states in a bid to destabilize the government of Bashar Al Assad.

Certainly, the lethal attack appears to be well beyond the capability of “rag-tag rebels”, as the so-called anti-government opposition is often portrayed in the Western mainstream media. Its sophisticated execution suggests the involvement of special forces. The presence of British, French, Saudi and Qatari special forces involved in training and directing Syrian oppositionists in has been reported previously by Global Research and other alternative media. But the mainstream media appear blind to the earth-shattering implications of such a connection. (Finian Cunningham, Saudi Arabia Is Arming Syrian “Opposition” As Twin Car Bombs Kill 27 In Damascus, Global Research, March 17, 2012)

How the Media Views the March 17th Attacks

At this point the media hype becomes even more embroiled and confused. The latest reports on the Damascus March 17 attacks seem to have abandoned their usual blanket statement that the killing of civilians had been ordered by Bashar Al Assad and was carried out by covert government operatives and militia.

What the Western media is now saying is that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks, which, ironically, on the surface concurs with the official position of the Al Assad government.

But there is a “But” to this media line. Implied by the CTV report, Al Qaeda is no longer working within the ranks of the opposition, as claimed by the Syrian government. Al Qaeda, so to speak, “has switched sides” and is now supportiing the secular government of Bashar Al Assad against an opposition, largely integrated by Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi groups and Al Qaeda operatives. An absurd proposition:

“Montreal-based Middle East analyst Mohamed Mahmoud said western intelligence agencies and the Syrian opposition believe the government has links to al Qaeda forces in the country and is using them to help quash the uprising” (Ibid. emphasis added)

A convoluted statement to say the least: Al Qaeda supporting a secular Middle East government against an Islamist “opposition”, when just a few weeks earlier Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged, in no uncertain terms, that the opposition was supported by Al Qaeda and other armed entities on the US “terrorist list:

“We have a very dangerous set of actors in the region, al-Qaida, Hamas, and those who are on our terrorist list, to be sure, supporting – claiming to support the opposition [in Syria].”

According to the CTV report:

“Top U.S. intelligence officials also have pointed to Al Qaeda in Iraq as the likely culprit behind the previous bombings, raising the possibility its fighters are infiltrating across the border to take advantage of the turmoil.” (Ibid)

The CTV report suggests that the government was behind the attacks. It also intimates that Al Qaeda in Iraq is now collaborating with Bashar Al Assad and is bombing key government buildings on the instructions of the secular government.

“The bombings hit the air force intelligence department building and the criminal security department, several kilometres apart in Damascus, at approximately the same time, around 7 a.m., the Interior Ministry said.

Much of the facade of the intelligence building appeared to have been ripped away.

Shooting broke out soon after the blasts and sent residents and others who had gathered in the area fleeing, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.” (Ibid)

One assumes, although the report fails to mention it, that the exchange of gunfire was between government forces protecting key government buildings (including Air Force Intelligence) and terrorist operatives allegedly sponsored by the government.

Theater of the absurd.

Media lies galore.

March 20, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

Syrian Rebels are Foreign-backed Terrorists [video included]

Land Destroyer Report

Latest terrorist attack in Damascus illustrates illegitimacy of both Syria’s rebels & the UN/NATO backing them.
by Tony Cartalucci

Update: March 19, 2012 – It is now confirmed that Saudi Arabia is shipping arms to foreign fighters and Syrian rebels operating out of Jordan. The Australian reports in their article, “Bombs in Syria as Saudis ‘send arms to rebels’,” that “Saudi military equipment is on its way to Jordan to arm the Free Syrian Army,” quoting an Arab diplomat. Of course, as reported below, the “Free Syrian Army” is led not by Syrians, but by NATO-backed Libyan militants from the US State Department-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

It must be noted that Saudi Arabia in turn, receives its weapons and a significant amount of military funding from the United States.

March 18, 2012 – A twin terrorist bombing in the Syrian capital of Damascus, allegedly targeting government buildings, ripped through a Christian neighborhood killing an estimated 27, mostly civilians. A third bomb exploded, killing only the driver of the car it was placed in, in what was apparently an attempted triple suicide bombing. CBS News reports (1) that after other similar attacks, U.S. officials suggest Al Qaeda terrorists “may be” amongst the Syrian rebels. However, while the West attempts to portray this as an unexpected development, we shall see that it not only was likely, but in fact the premeditated modus operandi of Western-backed destabilization efforts directed at upturning not only Syria, but the entire Arab World.

Pentagon’s Premeditated Arab World Blitzkrieg.

From the beginning the United States has been directly behind the unrest in Syria. In fact, America’s involvement in destabilizing Syria began years before the admittedly US-engineered Arab Spring (2) even unfolded in a premeditated plot to upturn the entire Arab World and reorder it according to their own corporate-financier and hegemonic geopolitical interests.

In a 2007 speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California (3), US Army General Wesley Clark would state that in 1991, then Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz said the US had 5-10 years to clean up the old Soviet “client regimes” before the next super power rose up and challenged western hegemony. Clark claimed that this, along with the aftermath of 9/11 constituted a policy coup where Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and the other members of the of Project for a New American Century had hijacked US foreign policy to destabilize and turn the nations of the Middle East upside down – much the way they are now.

Clark would go on to say that shortly after September 11, 2001, while at the Pentagon, a document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense indicated plans to attack and destroy the governments of 7 countries; Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Lebanon and Libya.

Clearly the United States has already “attacked and destroyed” Iraq, which in 2003 was invaded and subsequently occupied for nearly a decade at the cost of nearly a million lives including over 4,400 US soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines, and trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. Likewise Libya was destabilized and invaded by proxy through a combination of US-led NATO forces and US State Department listed terrorist organizations including the (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (listed #27) lead by Abdul Hakim Belhaj.

Somalia has been the victim of repeated US-backed invasions by Ethiopia (4), Uganda, Kenya (5), and systematic air (6) and drone campaigns (7) carried out by the recently established US Africa Command (AFRICOM), while neighboring Sudan has been carved into two separate states, isolating the oil-rich south (8) with further intervention pending as public support is built by stunts including the fraudulent Kony 2012 video and George Clooney’s pro-imperial intervention advocacy.

US designs toward Iran serve as a model for Syria.

Iran has likewise been under systematic premeditated attack for years, including brutal sanctions, and the training, arming, and funding of US State Department-listed foreign terror organization (listed #29), Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) to carry out terrorist attacks within Iran, as well as the constant threat of unilateral attack by either Israel or the US, or both – all of which was described in minute detail in 2009 amongst the pages of US policy think-tank Brookings Institution’s “Which Path to Persia?” report (9).

In their report, they openly conspire to use what is an admitted terrorist organization as a “US proxy” (emphasis added):

“Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group’s champions contend that the movement’s long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group’s supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehranand also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK’s greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.

Despite its defenders’ claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacks—often excused by the MEK’s advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership’s main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations.”

– page 117-118of “Which Path to Persia?“ Brookings Institution, 2009

It was also revealed in Seymour Hersh’s 2008 New Yorker article “Preparing the Battlefield,” that not only had MEK been considered for their role as a possible proxy, but that the US had already begun arming and financing them to wage war inside Iran:

“The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

Seymore Hersh in an NPR interview, also claims that select MEK members have already received training in the US.

More recently, the British Daily Mail published a stunning admission in their report titled, “Mossad training terrorists to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials claim… but is Israel’s real target Obama?” by “US officials” that Israel is currently funding, training, arming, and working directly with MEK. The Daily Mail article states, “U.S. officials confirmed today that Israel has been funding and training Iranian dissidents to assassinate nuclear scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program.” The article continues by claiming, “Washington insiders confirmed there is a close relationship between Mossad and MEK.”

Quite clearly then, the use of listed terrorist organizations is not an unfortunate or unexpected development in the midst of Western backed regime change operations – they are a central pillar in their planning and execution.

This leaves only Lebanon and Syria – Lebanon having suffered a brutal air assault by Israel (10) who ultimately failed to rout Hezbollah forces in the summer of 2006. Breaking the back of the Iranian-Syrian alliance that allegedly serves as the foundation of Hezbollah’s strength would next be targeted.

The overthrow of Syria’s government is a premeditated US plot.

A concerted campaign to isolate, destabilize and overthrow the government of Syria began in 2002, a year after Clark was informed of the Pentagon’s plan to blitzkrieg through the Middle East. It was then that Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the growing “Axis of Evil (11).” It would be later revealed that Bolton’s threats against Syria manifested themselves as covert funding and support for opposition groups inside of Syria spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations.

In an April 2011 CNN article (12), acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner stated, “We’re not working to undermine that [Syrian] government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we’re trying to do in countries around the globe. What’s different, I think, in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people.”

Toner’s remarks came after the Washington Post released cables (13) indicating the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 and continued until today.

In an April 2011 AFP report (14), Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.”

The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there,” (emphasis added). Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course is the “Arab Spring,” and in Syria’s case, the impetus for the current unrest threatening to unhinge the nation and invite in foreign intervention.”

More recently, revelations that Syrian militants are in fact being armed, trained, funded, and even joined on the battlefield by Libya’s Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a US State Department-listed foreign terrorist organization (listed as #27) (15) only further highlights the necessity of Syria’s government under President Assad to attempt to restore order at all costs. The Telegraph would report in November 2011 (16) that LIFG leader, Abdul Belhaj met with senior leaders of the “Free Syrian Army” on the Turkish-Syrian border. It was reported that Belhaj was pledging weapons and money (both of which he receives from NATO) as well as sending LIFG fighters to train and fight alongside Syrian militants.

VoltaireNet.org would confirm (17) Belhaj and his LIFG’s role in not just assisting Syrian militants but in fact leading them in NATO’s armed destabilization of Syria.

US-led NATO and the UN are backing terrorists in the midst of military conquest disguised as “humanitarian intervention.”

Now, with terrorist bombing campaigns targeting civilians and ripping through Damascus, we see just as it was planned for in Iran, the deployment of terrorist elements and tactics to bolster Western efforts to topple the Syrian government. The corporate media in tandem with Pentagon officials feign ignorance in an attempt to maintain plausible deniability before a public they assume are far too ignorant to have read or comprehended their designs articulated in documents like “Which Path to Persia?”

It is confirmed that the UN’s casualty reports are based solely on opposition “activist” accounts and not on any verifiable facts. The UN’s November 2011 human rights report was based solely on such accounts, recorded not in Syria or the surrounding region, but rather in Geneva. The report itself was compiled by Karen Koning AbuZayd who is concurrently a member of the Washington D.C. based Middle East Policy Council (18), along side current and former associates of Exxon, the US military, the CIA, the Saudi Binladin Group, the US-Qatari Business Council (19) and both former and current members of the US government.

Image: Just some of the corporate members of the US-Qatar Business Council, whose president just so happens to sit on the same board of directors of the Middle East Policy Center as Karen AbuZayd, co-author of the conveniently timed UN Human Rights Council report on Syria.

Likewise, other “human right advocates” like Amnesty International are similarly compromised – Amnesty being headed literally by a former US State Department official, Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director (20). Nossel had just finished a stint as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State before being appointed as head of Amnesty (21). She was also vice-president of strategy and operations for the Wall Street Journal and a media and entertainment consultant at McKinsey & Company (a Council on Foreign Relations “founding” corporate member (22)).

Amnesty International also receives funding from Wall Street speculator George Soros’ Open Society Institute (annual report page 8)(23) as well as the UK Department for International Development (page 8), the European Commission and other corporate-funded foundations.

Clearly “humanitarian concerns” are a disingenuous justification for continued meddling in Syria, with all involved notorious fabricators and harboring a staggering array of demonstratively conflicting interests.

With the addition of evidence proving the premeditated use of terrorist elements in the overthrow of sovereign foreign nations in US policy planning, the West’s efforts, as well as those of their proxies carrying their agenda out on the ground in Syria, are exposed as illegitimate criminality of vastly unprecedented proportions.

References Cited

1. “Twin suicide bombers kill 27 in Syrian capital,” CBS News, March 17, 2012
2. “2011 – Year of the Dupe,” Land Destroyer, December 24, 2011 – citing New York Times article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” April 14, 2011, Ron Nixon
3. “Wesley Clark on America’s Foreign Policy ‘Coup’,” FORA TV, October 3, 2007
4. “U.S. Support Key to Ethiopia’s Invasion,” USA Today, Barbara Slavin, January 8, 2007
5. “U.S. intensifies its proxy fight against al-Shabab in Somalia,” Washington Post, Craig Whitlock, November 25, 2011
6. “US Bombs Islamist Town in Somalia,” BBC, March 3, 2008
7. “US flies drones from Ethiopia to fight Somali militants,” BBC, October 28, 2011
8. “Sudan: Future Oil Exporting Powerhouse?” NASDAQ.com, March 16, 2012
9. “Brookings’ “Which Path to Perisa?” Land Destroyer, February 13, 2011 (links to original Brookings document.)
10. “Book Faults Israeli Air War in Lebanon,” New York Times, Steven Erlanger, October 14, 2007
11. “US Expands ‘Axis of Evil’,” BBC, May 6, 2002
12. “U.S. denies support for Syrian opposition tantamount to regime change,” CNN, April 18, 2011 (page 2)
13. “U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by WikiLeaks show,” Washington Post, April 18, 2011
14. “US trains activists to evade security forces,” AFP, April 8, 2011
15. “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” US State Department retrieved March 18, 2012
16. “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group,” The Telegraph, November 2011
17. “Free Syrian Army commanded by Military Governor of Tripoli,” Voltairenet.org, December 19, 2011
18. “Middle East Policy Council Board of Directors,” Middle East Policy Council, retrieved March 18, 2012
19. “US-Qatari Business Council Members,” US-Qatari Business Council, retrieved March 18, 2012
20. “Executive Director of Amnesty International USA,” Amnesty International, retrieved March 18, 2012
21. “Hillary Clinton aide at the helm of Amnesty International USA,” Voltairenet.org, November 23, 2011
22. “Council on Foreign Relations Corporate Members,” Council on Foreign Relations, Retrieved March 18, 2012
23. “Report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2011,” Amnesty International Limited, (page 8) Retrieved March 18, 2012
24. “Report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2011,” Amnesty International Charity Limited, (page 8) Retrieved March 18, 2012

March 20, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment

Genocidal Turkish Government Eyes Syria

Land Destroyer Report

NATO member Turkey, guilty of a century of mass murder, seeks “humanitarian intervention” in Syria.
by Tony Cartalucci

March 16, 2012 – Once again Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, is considering the partial military invasion of Syria to give foreign terrorists and extremist militants attempting to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a reprieve in their failing campaign.

Cross-border mass murder is a routine procedure for Turkey, who has been carrying out a very real genocidal campaign against the Kurd minority within and beyond its own borders for decades – this after the early 1900’s Armenian genocide which the government of Turkey to this day still denies.

Photo: Turkish tanks entering Iraq to raid Kurdish towns and hunt suspected rebels in 2008. More recently, Turkey has been bombing “suspected” rebel bases in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as conducting mass nationwide arrests. Strangely, as Turkey verifiably does what Libya’s Qaddafi and Syria’s Assad have been accused of doing, the West’s myriad of disingenuous rights advocacy groups are quiet as is the Wall Street/London beholden UN Security Council and the West’s corporate media editorials.

Turkey is currently strafing and rolling tanks over its own people.

Turkey has been waging a decades-long bloody campaign against its own armed uprising in predominately Kurdish areas bordering Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In fact, at one point, the US allowed Turkish tanks to cross into American-occupied Iraq to attack villages suspected of harboring armed Kurdish separatists in 2008, mirroring the very tactics Erdogan is now condemning Syria for. The Guardian reported in their 2008 article, “Iraq demands Turkey withdraw from border conflict with Kurds,” that the conflict had been raging since 1984 and had cost the lives of 40,000 people – dwarfing the UN’s fabricated death toll for Syria’s current conflict.

More recently, as Turkey’s prime minister lectures neighboring Syria on its bid to crush foreign-funded, armed militants, the Turkish government is preparing to augment its compliment of Israeli drones with a deployment of US Predator drones on its soil. The Associated Press reported in an article titled, “Turkey: US likely to deploy Predator drones,” that Turkey has been “pressing for the drones in an escalating war against Kurdish rebels.” Turkey, in addition to rolling tanks into towns suspected of harboring militants, and the deployment of drones, has also strafed suspected rebel stronghold with airstrikes and conducted sweeping nationwide mass arrests. In other words Turkey is doing everything Syria is accused of doing, plus what Qaddafi in Libya was accused of doing, only fully sanctioned by the West, with arms supplied by the West, and under the muted coverage provided by the Western media.

Yet Turkey, with its genocidal history and its current ongoing campaign against the Kurdish people, has been welcomed with open arms by NATO and has been leading efforts currently to funnel NATO resources into the hands of militants working to destabilize and overthrow Syria. Now it appears that the West has elected their genocidal junior member to fall on its own sword for the cause of continuing Wall Street and London’s reordering of the Middle East, a Middle East Turkey mistakenly believes it will have a leading role in.

A Turkish intervention risks wider regional war.

Reuters reports in their article, “Turkey considers buffer zone along Syria border,” that “Turkey is considering setting up a buffer zone inside Syria to tackle a growing flow of refugees fleeing the conflict there.” Noting that the buffer zone would indeed be on Syrian soil and require an armed Turkish presence to maintain it, the prospect of open war between Turkish and Syrian forces is all but certain.

Just like Israel’s planned attack on Iran is designed to allow the United States to appear a “reluctant” participant in the ensuing war, so too is Turkey’s designs of entering and occupying Syrian territory. It will provide the perfect pretext for an escalation of both Turkish military operations as well as the participation by other NATO members, including of course Washington, London, and Paris.

What is clear is that Turkey, with a century of genocide under its belt, is the least qualified candidate in or around the Middle East to claim “humanitarian concerns” as justification for any geopolitical maneuver. Additionally, Turkey’s planned invasion of Syria will only increase the bloodshed and possibly trigger a regional war at the cost of potentially millions of lives. Just the very suggestion of such an act illustrates the disingenuous, detached, dangerous, and immensely hypocritical nature of the West’s campaign-by-proxy verses Syria.

Turkey’s decision to bend to Wall Street.

Turkey must ask itself, as it struggles against the ghosts of its past and the crimes it is still committing against its own people, if they can really afford another catastrophic death toll owed to them and their meddling throughout the region. Turkey must ask itself if such a move truly benefits them, or is simply a means for other NATO members to mitigate and shift blame onto them, yet again. There are no seats at the table for Turkey, who is scorned by a European Union they seek to join, and used as a tool by the NATO alliance they count themselves a member of.

Whatever was promised to the leadership in Turkey, they must realize by now by the betrayals of nations all around them, from Saddam in Iraq, to Qaddafi in Libya, to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, that when the day comes they too will be destabilized, divided, destroyed, and pillaged either by the IMF or Kurdish separatists armed and funded by the next eager Western client-state.

Turkey does however have an opportunity for a clean break, an act of defiance against the West it is seemingly, irrationally beholden to. They can end the conflict in Syria by another means – denying foreign fighters, arms, and equipment from crossing their border and allowing their neighbors in Syria to restore order in their cities and countrysides.

Global public opinion of the world is shifting against the West and forming behind the multi-polar non-interventionism of the BRIC nations. Turkey must decide for itself whether or not it wants to be on the right side of history, or sacrifice itself in an act of war and intrusion for a conflict clearly started by meddling foreign nations from day-one.

March 20, 2012 | Categories: co-opting and/or destabilization, news, sovereignty, Syria, tyranny, war | Leave a comment