HIGHLY POTENT NEWS THAT MIGHT CHANGE YOUR VIEWS

Saudi Arabia

We Told You So

by Ghassan Kadi
Friends of Syria
May 21, 2012

So… the Syrian events are spilling into Lebanon. I hate to say the I/we who know about the region, have told you that it would. I hate to also say that when we said it would, we were not talking about a so-called Arab-Spring spilling into Lebanon, the like of which we saw in Egypt, and which called for reform and freedom. Our fear was purely about a bloody sectarian conflict. Yes, we told you so.

In Syria now, the calls for freedom and democracy have all but gone silence. We also told you so. And they have been replaced by Allah Akbar and pure sectarian calls to turn Syria into a Sunni fundamentalist state. We also told you so.

A Sunni Sheikh, Ahmed Abdel Wahed gets killed in Lebanon, and Lebanon is on the brink of yet another sectarian war.

No rational person condones killing in any given situation, but a rational analysis of the killing of the Sheikh can perhaps give a possible explanation of how and why it happened.

To begin with, Abdel Wahed was an outspoken supporter of Hariri, the core of Sunni fundamentalism in Lebanon. The Hariri camp refers to Abdel Wahed as a martyr and a man of God. His opponents describe him as a sectarian rascal spreading sectarian anti-Alawite hatred in the hearts and minds of young Sunni Lebanese youth as well as a militarised arms trader. No one seems to be able to pin point what he really was with clear evidence.

But why would a Lebanese army checkpoint shoot to kill?

If there was truly a Lebanese Army conspiracy to kill Abdel Wahed as his mourners claim, the Army intelligence would have found a way to do so in a manner that does not overtly implicate it. Would it not?

Even during the ugly Lebanese Civil War when all sorts of militia groups were in control of the streets and check points, the “rule” for passing traffic was to stop at checkpoints and accept being searched. Shots were fired only and only when the travelling car did not stop. And when they did not stop, they did so for good reasons because they had something or someone to hide.

So if the rogue combatant militia run and led by thugs stuck to this rule, it is only rational to think that the regular Lebanese army would also stick to this rue. There is no reason as to why it would not.

The most likely scenario is that the Sheikh and his companion driver had some “thing” to hide, not some “one” to hide. Most likely, they were hiding weapons that they were couriering from some point A to another point B.

In any which way one looks at the situation, outsiders are not in a position to understand the complexity of the situation in the Middle East.

The uprising in Syria is not about reform. It is not about democracy. It is about sectarianism, sponsored by the Sunni Arab funds (Saudi Arabia and Qatar) under the blessing of the USA with a political objective to maintain Israel’s military superiority in the region and a financial objective to keep in control of the oil.

Targeting Syria is for “good” reasons, because it is the only Arab state left that opposes Israel, and the only one in which Moslems and Christians live under a law that gives equal rights to all.
This tragedy can spill into Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia…. and sees Sunnis and Shiites engaging into a blood bath the likes of which has not been seen for centuries anywhere in the world. Nothing can serve Israel better.

I just hope that I won’t have to find myself in a situation in the future to say to the pundits and cynics, those who support the Syrian uprising; I told you so.


US Officially Arming Extremists in Syria

Land Destroyer Report

Denied no longer, US officials admit US-Saudi cash & logistical support arming terrorists in Syria.
by Tony Cartalucci

May 16, 2012 – Recently reported in “Brookings Announces Next Move in Syria: War,” it was stated that “by the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution’s own admission, the Kofi Annan six-point peace plan in Syria was merely a ploy to buy time to reorganize NATO’s ineffective terrorist proxies and provide them the pretext necessary for establishing NATO protected safe havens from which to carry out their terrorism from.” It was also examined in detail, how in 2007, US, Saudi, and Israeli officials admitted they were creating a militant front of extremists for the sole purpose of causing the destabilization of Syria we see today, and ultimately overthrowing the Syrian government. It was noted how these extremist militants had direct ties to Al Qaeda.

Now it is fully admitted that weapons, cash, and logistical support is indeed being provided to terrorist forces in Syria by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf States. This, despite a current UN ceasefire the West has continuously berated the Syrian government for violating, indicates that indeed reorganizing, rearming, and redeploying NATO’s terrorist proxies is complete, and another round of destructive violence has begun.

In the Washington Post’s article, “Syrian rebels get influx of arms with gulf neighbors’ money, U.S. coordination,” not only is this admitted, but claims made by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been confirmed that Syria’s historically violent Muslim Brotherhood, stated in 2007 by Seymour Hersh as being a direct proxy of US-Saudi-Israeli funding and support, is also directly arming and funding contingents of extremists committing acts of terror across Syria.

Areas across Syria that have until now been portrayed as centers for “pro-democracy” protests, racked by violence depicted as “repression” by Syrian troops, are now admitted by the Washington Post to be areas where “material is being stockpiled.” This includes the flashpoint city of Idlib on the Turkish-Syrian border, in the suburbs of Damascus, and along Syria’s border with Lebanon. And again, in 2007, Seymour Hersh revealed that the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had planned to array extremists along Syria’s border to commit the very violence now being admitted by the Post today.

The Washington Post openly admits that these weapons, supplies, cash and support, provided by the US and Saudi Arabia are directly responsible for the increased violence in Syria, in the midst of a ceasefire the West has attempted to disingenuously use to defame the Syrian government, hamper its ability to restore order, and indeed, rearm, reorganize, and redeploy their terrorist proxies to begin another attempt at violent foreign-backed regime change:

“The effect of the new arms appeared evident in Monday’s clash between opposition and government forces over control of the rebel-held city of Rastan, near Homs. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebel forces who overran a government base had killed 23 Syrian soldiers.” -Washington Post, May 16, 2012

The Post also admitted that Washington, again, in the midst of a UN ceasefire, was attempting to trigger yet more violence, this time in areas controlled by Syria’s Kurds who have remained out of the predominately foreign-backed conflict.

Paradoxically, the US and Gulf State military support being funneled into Syria to purposefully flare violence in the midst of a UN ceasefire, is continuing even after the Pentagon has admitted Al Qaeda is present and active in Syria, this after terrorist groups claimed responsibility for a series of bombings that have killed mostly civilians.

And in the midst of this admitted attempt to increase violence and chaos, the Washington Post also declared that NATO-member Turkey would be pressured to invoke Article IV of the NATO Charter, allowing NATO to militarily intervene to “stop” violence they openly admit they are creating. Unlike previous conflicts – the US’ admission is not a hamhanded obfuscation of the their intentions, but an open declaration of intent to provoke a war of aggression – a Nuremberg offense for all involved. In fact, direct parallels between Adolf Hitler’s September 1938 campaign of destabilization in Czechoslovakia, and NATO’s current destabilization of Syria have been made by noted geopolitical analysts.

Images: The “Henry Jackson Society” and the “Brookings Institution” are just two of many similar “think-tanks” with identical members and identical corporate sponsors. These are the authors of NATO’s increasingly long list of war crimes, including those authorized by US President George W. Bush, now officially a convicted war criminal. While Bush’s conviction currently lacks a realistic means of arresting and sentencing him, if we know the corporations and institutions that craft the policies used by Bush to commit his crimes, we the people, ourselves, can start by “imposing sanctions” on these special interests with boycotts. (click images to enlarge)  

….

A historical conviction handed down by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, finding former-US President George W. Bush guilty of war crimes, sets a precedent to be used against those committing war crimes today, and of course a model to be expanded upon, including methods and official calls to impose sanctions on organizations and institutions supporting leaders committing war crimes, including both the policy think tanks engineering the war crimes and boycotting and banning the corporations and institutions funding these think-tanks. This does not require an act by the UN, or your national government. You can begin boycotting these corporations today and thus begin undermining the authority and impunity from which they operate.


Wahhabis – Salafists – Sheik Imran Hosein [video]

108morris108
May 18, 2012

(These are the movements that are forming the violence and commonly associated with Saudia Arabia and Qatar in the Arab Spring – Morris)

From Wikipedia
Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab (1703 — 22 June 1792)[2] (Arabic: محمد بن عبد الوهاب‎) was an Arabian Islamic theologian and founder of the Salafi movement[3] whose pact with Muhammad bin Saud helped to establish the first Saudi state[4] and began a dynastic alliance and power-sharing arrangement between their families which continues to the present day. The descendants of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab, the Al ash-Sheikh, have historically led the ulama in the Saudi state,[6] dominating the state’s clerical institutions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Abd_al-Wahhab


Fighting Erupts in Lebanon

Land Destroyer Report
May 15, 2012

US, Israeli, and Saudi-funded terrorists destabilizing Syria now under fire in Lebanon. 
by Tony Cartalucci 

May 15, 2012 – According to a 2007 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, “The Redirection,” the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had been assembling a region-wide army of extremist-mercenaries to battle Hezbollah in Lebanon, destabilize and overthrow Syria, and create a united front against Iran. The forces recruited for this effort would come from the ranks of the CIA-created “Arab foreign legion,” Al Qaeda itself – extremist groups fresh back from fighting US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, including listed terror organizations like the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) from Libya.

Hersh’s 2007 report exposed the groundwork for the very violence unfolding in Syria today, and now Lebanon. Forces to destabilize Syria were primarily to be staged in northern Lebanon, as explained in the article, and indeed the heaviest fighting over the last year has been seen in the Syrian city of Homs, just across the border from northern Lebanon. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his government have been, since the beginning of the violence, attempting to illustrate just this – explained in detail in 2007, and demonstratively being carried out today, with responsibility for deadly bombings being claimed by terrorists, the Pentagon itself admitting Al Qaeda is present in Syria, and reports indicating foreign fighters, weapons, and cash are flowing over Syria’s borders.

Lebanon’s Turn?

Now, the very staging ground in northern Lebanon being used to destabilize neighboring Syria has erupted into violence. Not by Syrian troops crossing the border, but by indigenous Lebanese factions facing off against each other. News is trickling out slowly and the Western media appears intent on keeping the violence as nebulous and confused as possible, but initial information indicates that extremist groups backed by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia are fighting factions connected to Hezbollah. Extremist leaders across the region are attempting to frame the violence as “Sunni verses Shi’ia,” a ploy Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned against back in 2007:

“Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean “insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.” “In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other,” he said. “I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.)” –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

Far from genuine sectarian violence, it was planned since 2007, to use terrorist proxies in a battle stretching from Lebanon to Iran with Arab nations from North Africa to the Middle East aiding the effort, dominated by freshly installed US proxies (Tunisia & Libya) and the Muslim Brotherhood, stated in Hersh’s 2007 article to be wards of the West.

Violence has raged for nearly a week, in and around Lebanon’s northern port city of Tripoli. While being depicted as violence “spilling over” from Syria, it is clear that the violence is indigenous, sectarian in nature, and directly related to the larger conflict envisioned by US-Israeli-Saudi machinations in 2007 – pitting Sunnis against Shi’ia. An editorial from NOW Lebanon reveals the “sectarian” nature of the violence in Lebanon and how both sides identify as either supporters or opponents of the neighboring Syrian government.

This prevailing “sectarian” aspect reveals what has been stated by geopolitical analysts since the beginning of unrest in Syria – that the violence was driven not by “pro-democratic” aspirations, but by sectarian violence exploited for the sole purpose of advancing the agenda of foreign meddlers – sectarian violence that has now manifested itself in attacks on Christians, Druze, and Alawites, as well as moderate Sunnis across Syria in the midst of this so-called “democratic revolution.”

The sectarian violence now unfolding in Tripoli is not unheard of in Lebanon. The Lebanese military has already been reportedly deployed but is sitting on the sidelines as factions war in the streets. The violence may ebb, as it has in the past, but with the Syrian unrest reaching a critical point and foreign powers desperate to change momentum that’s been working against them, foreign-backed terrorist forces could try to ignite a wider sectarian battle in Lebanon. This could be to paralyze Hezbollah ahead of either a coup de grâce delivered to Syria by Turkey, or to simply inflame the entire region in conflict, making the movement of weapons, cash, and foreign support to proxy forces easier to move around, as well as grease the skids for introducing a Kosovo-style intervention.

Regardless, “sectarian” differences between Sunni and Shi’ia Muslims were planned for exploitation since at least as early as 2007 by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, for the sole purpose of advancing their self-serving hegemonic agendas throughout the region. The violence that both sides are playing into will deprive their communities of the security and stability needed for all to prosper and progress, and ultimately leave them at the mercy of foreign dominion.


Saudi + Bahrain: Decaying dictatorship shored-up by Gulf Union? [video]

Russia Today
May 18, 2012

In Iran, protests backed by the state have been organised against plans to form a European Union-style bloc amongst the Gulf states. Two key American allies, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain would be the first Arab Gulf nations to sign an agreement. Iran has called the idea a U.S.-backed plot to see Bahrain become part of Saudi Arabia. Bahrain has seen anti-government protests for more than a year, with fears now the potential union could strengthen the position of the Sunni rulers over a largely Shia population. Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi, from the University of Tehran, says it’s the Saudi royal family, together with Washington that will benefit.


Syrian War – The Prequel: 2007 New Yorker Article Exposed US-Israeli-Saudi Conspiracy to Overthrow Assad

by Tony Cartalucci, Contributor
Activist Post

– Muslim Brotherhood serves as the primary instrument of US, Israel, & Saudi Arabia.
– Lebanon was designated as staging ground to destabilize Syria with Sunni extremists.
– Saudi and Muslim Brotherhood anti-Israeli and American sentiments are feigned.
– US intelligence knew in advance unleashing Sunni extremists would result in genocide.
– Saudis and Americans admit Sunni extremists are under their control.

As previously stated, the Muslim Brotherhood and various “hardline” Sunni political factions sweeping into power in the wake of the US-engineered “Arab Spring,” have been feigning anti-Israeli and anti-Western sentiments in an attempt to swell their ranks with followers before ultimately forming a united Sunni-front against Iran. The creation of a united Sunni-front was noted by geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley who has from the beginning stated that the various possible governments resulting from these engineered revolutions “could then be used to support the fundamental US-UK strategy for the Middle East, which is to assemble a block of Arab and Sunni countries (notably Egypt, Saudis, Gulf states, and Jordan) which, formed into a front with the participation of Israel, would collide with the Iranian Shiite front, including Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, and various radical forces.”
Image: Red = US-backed destabilization, Blue = US occupying/stationed. Iran and Syria are completely surrounded by either client states or nations occupied by US forces. And while the complexity of West’s reordering of the Arab World is staggering, it is but a part of a grander strategy to eliminate the nation-state and establish global hegemony.

A reader recently pointed out this confirmed 2007 New Yorker article titled, “The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” Written by renowned journalist Seymour Hersh, it covers everything from admissions that the US, Saudis, and Israelis are working together, despite the Saudis and their Sunni proxies’ attempts to portray themselves as “anti-Israeli,” to admissions that the US is funding a region-wide network of militants and terrorists, many of whom have literally trained at Al Qaeda camps. The article also describes in great detail the role of the Hariri faction in Lebanon, working closely with the Saudis and Americans, and their role in creating a safe haven for terrorist organizations on Lebanese soil, now involved fully in destabilizing neighboring Syria.

Clearly, what has been recently portrayed by the West as mere “claims” by the Syrian government that the Saudis, Lebanese, and NATO were conspiring against them, is simply the fruition of the US policy exposed fully in the New Yorker in 2007. While many analysts have treated the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and their involvement in Syria’s uprising as a somewhat nebulous phenomenon, the New Yorker’s 2007 article makes it clear that the Brotherhood is one of the primary instruments used by the Saudis as part of a US-Israeli-Saudi effort to eliminate Syria and Iran. Not only that, but the report indicates that the US itself has been funding and using the Muslim Brotherhood as well.

Just as the US State Department feigned shock and confusion at the “Arab Spring” it had been preparing for the last 3 years, it is likewise reacting with feigned confusion and dismay over the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the “Arab Spring’s” wake. In reality it is a premeditated consequence of US foreign policy spanning both the Bush and now the Obama administrations.

Photo: The “Free Syrian Army,” whose composition consists of not only Syrian Sunni extremists, but Libyan terrorists from the US State Department listed “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group” led by Abdul Hakim Belhaj, is the manifestation of years of US, Saudi, and Israeli aid since at least 2007.While in 2007, all of this was, “soon to be,” in retrospect we see just how devastatingly accurate Hersh’s reporting was. It is clear now, with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Sunni-extremist dominated, foreign-funded destabilization ravaging Syria, that this policy created during the Bush administration, has transcended presidencies and is being brought to its premeditated conclusion under Obama – yet another example of “continuity of agenda.”

Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States Are Behind Syria’s Violence.

The evidence trickling out of the corporate-media regarding who the armed Syrian opposition is, reveals that it is predominately an extremist Sunni-movement, not only including Syrian extremists, but militants crossing the border from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and even from as far as Libya. An alliance of Gulf States led by Saudi Arabia have pledged funds for Syria’s militants and has repeatedly called for openly arming them. The US is likewise openly equipping Syrian militants.

This reality is not merely a spontaneous reaction by the “international community,” but verbatim what was planned in detail amongst the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia years in advance to topple the Syrian government before moving on to Iran, according to Hersh’s 2007 report:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

Hersh’s report would also include:

the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

This mirrors sentiments included in the Brookings Institution’s 2009 report, “Which Path to Persia?” where it was stated that reaching some sort of conclusion with Syria first was a prerequisite before attacking Iran:

…the Israelis may want to hold off until they have a peace deal with Syria in hand (assuming that Jerusalem believes that one is within reach), which would help them mitigate blowback from Hizballah and potentially Hamas. Consequently, they might want Washington to push hard in mediating between Jerusalem and Damascus. -Which Path to Persia? page 109 (.pdf)

Clearly, what we are seeing today in Syria is the full manifestation of this premeditated conspiracy against the government and people of Syria, and in turn, against the Iranians. It should be noted that a US intelligence professional interviewed by Hersh for his story, predicted that the Sunni extremists being prepared in 2007 for today’s violence, would most likely go on a genocidal killing spree, as seen in Libya, and now being quietly reported by the Western press in Syria as well:

Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, “we’ve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now it’s going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

That the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia premeditated a regional conflict utilizing militant-extremists with full knowledge they would commit wide ranging, genocidal atrocities, is clearly as much in reality a war crime as the US State Department and US representative to the UN Susan Rice have claimed the Syrian government has committed as it desperately attempts to restore order in the face of an admitted act of foreign aggression.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a Tool of US-Israeli-Saudi Machinations.

The Muslim Brotherhood is often portrayed as being anti-Israeli, anti-US, and anti-West in general. In reality they are a creation of and have been ever since servants of expanding Wall Street and London’s corporate-financier hegemony across the Islamic World. In Hersh’s 2007 report, it is made clear that the Brotherhood was the tool of choice of the US, Israeli, and Saudi elite – with the US and Saudis reported as even then directly funding and backing them – backing that continues to this day, not only in Syria, but in Egypt as well.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s rank and file surely believe in what they are being told by their leaders, but their leaders are professional demagogues peddling anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric solely for public consumption while being fully complicit in the West’s designs against the Arab World.

Hersh reports that a supporter of the Lebanese Hariri faction had met Dick Cheney in Washington and relayed personally the importance of using the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria in any move against the ruling government:

[Walid] Jumblatt then told me that he had met with Vice-President Cheney in Washington last fall to discuss, among other issues, the possibility of undermining Assad. He and his colleagues advised Cheney that, if the United States does try to move against Syria, members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would be ‘the ones to talk to,’ Jumblatt said. – The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

The article would continue by explaining how already in 2007 US and Saudi backing had begun benefiting the Brotherhood:

There is evidence that the Administration’s redirection strategy has already benefitted the Brotherhood. The Syrian National Salvation Front is a coalition of opposition groups whose principal members are a faction led by Abdul Halim Khaddam, a former Syrian Vice-President who defected in 2005, and the Brotherhood. A former high-ranking C.I.A. officer told me, ‘The Americans have provided both political and financial support. The Saudis are taking the lead with financial support, but there is American involvement.’ He said that Khaddam, who now lives in Paris, was getting money from Saudi Arabia, with the knowledge of the White House. (In 2005, a delegation of the Front’s members met with officials from the National Security Council, according to press reports.) A former White House official told me that the Saudis had provided members of the Front with travel documents. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

It was warned that such backing would benefit the Brotherhood as a whole, not just in Syria, and could affect public opinion even as far as in Egypt where a long battle against the hardliners was fought in order to keep Egyptian governance secular.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, also interviewed by Hersh for his 2007 article, perhaps described best the geopolitical gambit the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel were and are currently attempting to unfold:

Nasrallah accused the Bush Administration of working with Israel to deliberately instigate fitna, an Arabic word that is used to mean ‘insurrection and fragmentation within Islam.’ ‘In my opinion, there is a huge campaign through the media throughout the world to put each side up against the other,’ he said. ‘I believe that all this is being run by American and Israeli intelligence.” (He did not provide any specific evidence for this.) He said that the U.S. war in Iraq had increased sectarian tensions, but argued that Hezbollah had tried to prevent them from spreading into Lebanon. (Sunni-Shiite confrontations increased, along with violence, in the weeks after we talked.) – The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

Indeed, divide and conquer has been used by empires since the beginning of time, and it appears that the very radical extremists the West has featured as civilization’s greatest enemy in their fraudulent “War on Terror” is a creation and perpetuation of their own design. The role of Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood, betraying millions of Sunni Muslims by exploiting their justified outrage of US-British and Israeli foreign policy, has resulted in terrorism and violence, both spontaneous and engineered, that has destroyed millions of lives. The very “War on Terror” is the “management” of these exploited and cultivated extremists:

…[Saudi Arabia’s] Bandar and other Saudis have assured the White House that they will keep a very close eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran. –The Redirection, Seymour Hersh

For Empire, not National Security.

The only fault that can be found in Hersh’s tremendous journalistic accomplishment is perhaps the pandering to the notion that all of this demonstrative deceit and indeed, criminality, may be being done in the interest of protecting Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States. In reality, even the Brookings Institution, which was also included in Hersh’s report, admits that containing Iran is not a matter of national security for either the US or Israel (let alone Saudi Arabia), but a matter of maintaining the status quo, namely Western hegemony across the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia and Israel the principle dual benefactors.

While behind closed doors US policy makers admit Iran, even if it were to obtain nuclear weapons, is driven by self-preservation and protecting the influence it is steadily gaining throughout the Middle Eastern region it borders, the message they desperately seek to relate to the public is one of an irrational apocalyptic theocracy eager to usher in Armageddon.

However, reports out of the RAND corporation note that Iran has had chemical weapons in its inventory for decades, and other reports from RAND describe the strict control elite military units exercise over these weapons, making it unlikely they would end up in the hands of “terrorists.” The fact that Iran’s extensive chemical weapon stockpile has yet to be disseminated into the hands of non-state actors, along with the fact that these same elite units would in turn handle any Iranian nuclear weapons, lends further evidence to the conclusion that Iran is indeed driven by self-preservation and self-defense.

Brookings notes on pages 24 and 25 of their “Which Path to Persia?” report, that the real threat is not the deployment of these weapons, but rather the deterrence they present, allowing Iran to counter US influence in the region without the fear of an American invasion. The US and the West in general, have viewed the Middle East as nothing more than a divided, broken Ottoman Empire to be used and exploited, and when nationalism or resistance emerges, to be pitted against itself in destructive conflicts.

The fear of a powerful Iran overturning the status quo of Anglo-American hegemony expressed through proxies and multiple strategies of tension, Israel itself being one of them, would open the door for other nations to climb out from beneath the modern heirs of the British and French Empires and begin down the path of true self-determination. That includes freeing the people of Israel laboring under a hijacked government misleading them into a pointless and perpetual conflict with not only the Palestinians, but with the Islamic World itself.

Indeed, the ploy described in incredible detail by Seymour Hersh in 2007, and demonstratively playing out before our eyes today, is not to protect against existential threats to the people of Saudi Arabia, Israel, or the United States, but against existential threats to their leadership’s self-serving hegemonic ambitions. It is being peddled by a coalition of Saudis, Americans, and Israelis lying not only to the world, their allies, and their enemies, but to their own people about the nature of the conflict they demand troops and taxpayers to facilitate.

Image: Terrorist bombings have recently ripped through Damascus, Syria, bearing all the hallmarks of Sunni extremists, funded and directed by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia since at least 2007, according to Seymour Hersh’s article, “The Redirection.” With the back-story now fully established, and the violence in Syria exposed as not only premeditated, but the devastating consequences of unleashing Sunni extremists being well known ahead of time, those insisting on backing this horrendous crime do so amidst a public increasingly aware of their transgressions against humanity.Balking these murderous machinations is accomplished by Sunnis and Shi’ia not falling into the traps laid out by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, and terror groups and “civil society” NGO’s alike, cultivated by these admitted international manipulators. Christians and Jews must likewise avoid the contrived “clash of civilizations” between themselves and hordes of terrorists created and cultivated by their own demagogic leaders.

Finally, it is essential that people around the world recognize that the corporations and institutions they patronize on a daily basis with their time, money, energy, and attention are the ones ultimately devising and driving not only these plots, but the disingenuous politicians and media personalities we’ve mistakenly placed our trust in. We must begin to boycott and replace these corporations and institutions with genuine local alternatives or suffer the tragic conclusion of allowing such deceitful megalomaniacs construct an inescapable world order they shall presume absolute dominion over.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report.   Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here.


Explosion in Syria wounds six soldiers

Press TV
May 9, 2012

An explosion has wounded at least six Syrian soldiers escorting the United Nations monitors in the town of Daraa.

The incident occurred on Wednesday after a roadside bomb hit a Syrian military truck just seconds after a convoy carrying the head of the UN observer mission passed by.

The blast injured a 1st lieutenant and five troops.

The head of the UN observer mission, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, was heading into the southern Syrian city with a team of observers and a convoy of journalists. The explosion was more than 100 meters (330 feet) behind the convoy.

The bomb attack took place a day after UN-Arab League envoy; Kofi Annan briefed the UN Security Council (UNSC) by videoconference from Geneva on his efforts to end the year-plus-long unrest in Syria.

After Annan’s briefing, Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari accused foreign countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, of plotting to sabotage Annan’s plan by fueling the violence.

“We need to see everybody on board. We need to see these Qataris, the Saudis, the Turkish government, as well as some other nations, stopping their incitement to violence, stopping their sponsorship of…the armed rebellion in Syria, stopping their financial contribution to cover up the needs of these armed groups and the needs of the terrorist groups, which are attacking…civilians as well as military targets in Syria,” said Jaafari.

The Syrian official also stated that his country was committed to the plan.

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