CIA, MI6 agents direct massacres in Syria: American analyst [video included]
PressTV
June 10, 2012
An American author says agents of the CIA and MI6 are directing armed groups to carry out massacres inside Syria, Press TV reports.
Stephen Lendman, writer and radio host from Chicago, said the CIA and MI6 “special forces” are in Syria now, directing massacres.
“They go after pro-Assad loyalists,” Lendman stated in an interview with Press TV on Saturday.
“There is no question this is a Washington-orchestrated war.”
“It is a low-level war to the extent that NATO has not gotten directly involved. But it is exactly what happened in Libya last year. An insurgency began. Washington orchestrated it. Insurgents were recruited. They were funded. They were armed.”
The American author stated that Syria has been “targeted for regime change for years, at least a decade.”
Lendman also referred to the six-point peace plan presented by the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, in March.
“His so-called peace plan puts the onus on a side. He barely mentions these insurgents, these death squads, these killers.”
“I have written about Kofi Annan. I have written several times about him. During his tenure as UN secretary general, a decade, a solid decade, he never did a thing to stop imperial wars,” Lendman added.
He made the comments on the same day when the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) elected 56-year-old Abdulbaset Saida, a Kurdish activist, as its new leader during a meeting in Istanbul.
Saida replaced former SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun, who resigned in May.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister said in a press conference in Moscow on June 9 that Russia “will not sanction the use of force (against Syria) at the United Nations Security Council.”
Lavrov added that the Annan plan had begun to “seriously falter,” but that there was “no alternative” to it.
HSN/PKH/MA
[hat tip: Friends Of Syria]
Syrians see a correlation between the Zionist State and the West’s activities – Ammar Waqqaf [video]
108morris108
June 7, 2012
Yet Syrian’s may not go into so much detail on where the Zionist interests are. I actually caught Ammar inbetween interviews at Sky Television. He is a frequent speaker on Syrian affairs. And is known as being part of The Syrian Social Club in the UK.
He describes Russia’s interests very well.
US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention” in Syria: Towards a Regional War? [video]
Global Research TV
June 7, 2012
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization weighs in on the insurrectionary nature of the Syrian conflict and its potential to generate a larger regional conflict in the Middle East.
As the Syrian crisis enters its 16th month, the recent massacres in Houla and Hama have revived calls for foreign intervention and the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad. US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has recently hinted that the United States would soon take action outside of the Annan plan and the authority of the United Nations if the persistent violence in Syria continued unabated. While the Syrian opposition severs its commitment to uphold Kofi Annan’s peace plan and openly calls for a UN- no-fly zone to replace the monitoring mission, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced a new transition plan that would remove Assad from power completely. As outside forces plan a post-Assad transition strategy, the people of Syria are fast approaching a historic crossroads, of which may lead to a broader sectarian conflict that would forever reshape the Middle East.
Neo-Con: Syria Has Nothing to do with Humanitarian Concerns [video included]
FDD’s Clifford May admits Syria is a proxy war with Iran and Russia, Neo-Cons in bed with Al Qaeda. Human rights merely a pretense.
by Tony Cartalucci
June 8, 2012 – Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Clifford May in an article titled, “The Battle of Syria: Assad’s survival would be a victory for Iran — and a defeat for the US,” openly dispels the commonly held notion among the West’s remaining public support, that their meddling in Syria’s ongoing strife has anything to do with humanitarian concerns. In fact, May openly states that defeating Syria as a proxy of Iran is far more important than “the dearth of sincere Muslim freedom fighters” or “humanitarian concerns.”
Video: Clifford May begins by playing the “humanitarian card” but ends admitting the entire conflict is a proxy war with Iran, and by implication, Russia. Amid a myriad of lies directed at Iran, May proposes worldwide occupation is necessary to maintain American “influence in the long run,” a notion that sounds suspiciously a lot like Empire.
May also makes mention of “strange bedfellows” in the current conflict, by quoting a fellow commentator who stated, “the McCain wing of the Republican party, and the rest of Washington’s progressive, Islamophilic clerisy” are aligning with “al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri and Muslim Brotherhood icon Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”
Aligning with Al Qaeda indeed, something that, while May claims is a spontaneous convergence of interests, was actually being planned as early as 2007, as stated in Seymour Hersh’s article, “The Redirection” in the New Yorker. And just like May concedes now, Hersh painted a picture of US-Israeli-Saudi machinations to destroy Lebanon and Syria as a means of undermining and toppling Iran – and using sectarian extremists to do so. Hersh specifically mentioned that many of the militant groups the West was arming and staging for this operation now unfolding in Syria today, were affiliated with Al Qaeda. The 2007 article specifically states:
“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.”
May, perhaps hoping his readership is as profoundly ignorant of history as he assumes they are of current events, claims that Al Qaeda was a creation of Iran, willfully remiss of the fact that America’s CIA indeed created the terror organization in the mountains of Afghanistan to fight the Soviets in the 1980’s, and have continuously retooled it to execute Western foreign policy since, up to and including in Syria now. Essentially, May expects readers to believe that Iran created Al Qaeda and unleashed it upon its own ally. Clearly, May’s narrative not only falters at face value, but contradicts the somewhat more reputable, and certainly better cited work of Seymour Hersh.
May’s faulty conclusion is that should Syria prevail against these long-planned US machinations, with the help of Russia and Iran, the world would face a “nuclear armed” Iran emboldened by its ability to throw off American influence and would run roughshod over the peoples of the Middle East. May induces fear with the threat of an uncontrollable “nuclear armed” Iran specifically as a smokescreen for his true fear, and the fear of all Western neo-imperialists – that Iran, Syria, and Russia would begin overturning the decades old hegemonic order of Wall Street and London.
The internal documents of US policy makers, including Brookings Institution’s “Which Path to Persia?” concede that even if Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons, they would not be deployed as anything but a means of deterrence, just as the US and Soviets did during the Cold War. Brookings concedes that it is a feared shift in geopolitical influence at the expense of America and its proxies that drives Western ambitions toward regime change in Iran, not any legitimate threat to the national security of either America or Israel.
The doomsday scenario Clifford May paints is unfounded, his accusations against Iran as being a “state sponsor of terror” ring hollow as he himself backed the overthrow of the Libyan government and direct military intervention that saw millions of dollars of weapons and cash, along with air support and diplomatic backing go to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), literally a wing of Al Qaeda. May also conveniently fails to mention that the US and Israel are funding, training, and arming a US State Department-listed foreign terror organization (#29), Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) against Iran. May does however mention Al Qaeda being in Syria, and how US policy runs parallel to its agenda. Since the US is admittedly funding these armed militants, it turns out that the US is yet again a state that is sponsoring terrorism.
Image: Brookings Institution’s Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change.
While May’s writings may seem like throwaway statements designed to stoke fear amongst the weakest of minds, it is instructive to note, after navigating through overt contradictions, that he makes no illusions of Syria being a battle fought for humanitarian causes. His colleagues at Brookings Institution, who authored the “Middle East Memo #21” that suggested Syria be “bled” with unending violence confirms this is the general consensus of prevailing Western policy makers. The goal is to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at any cost, including the utilization of “strange bedfellows” like Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, and regardless of how high the cost is in terms of human life – with some options including US-subsidized bloodshed that extends over the period of several years.
There is nothing noble about the West’s involvement in Syria – the architects and promoters of this agenda, like Neo-Con Clifford May and those amongst the Bookings Institution, confirm this in their own words. It is and always has been about expanding Western hegemony across the planet. If common sense, healthy skepticism, and critical thinking have yet to awaken some amongst the public, perhaps their governments’ own policy makers telling them the conflict is an unjust act of aggression, will.
Syria Destabilization Is Not Internal; Impeach UN Secretary General [video]
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
PressTV – Tarpley.net
June 8, 2012
China, Russia United Against Intervention in Syria
by Scott Stearns
VOA News
June 5, 2012
BATUMI, Georigia – China and Russia say they are united in opposing foreign intervention in Syria. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to meet with allies Wednesday in Turkey to discuss how best to pursue a political transition to end President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
Secretary of State Clinton says it is “pretty clear” that the main focus of international diplomacy must be on intensifying efforts to speed a political transition in Syria.
“We believe there is a way forward and we are going to continue to pursue that and we invite the Russians and the Chinese to be part of the solution of what is happening in Syria,” she said.
But China and Russia remain opposed to any effort to force Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad from power, a position their leaders re-stated again on Tuesday.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman says Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russian President Vladimir Putin oppose a change of power by force in Syria and continue to call for a political dialogue between President Bashar al-Assad and his opponents.
President Putin and President Hu met in Beijing, where they repeated demands for an immediate end to 15 months of violence in Syria.
Russia and China, however, have repeatedly blocked tougher U.N. action against President Assad, including U.N. sanctions and the potential use of force.
Clinton spoke to reporters Tuesday in the Black Sea port of Batumi, following talks with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.
She says the violence of the past 10 days shows that there must be change in Syria. “Peace and human dignity will not be possible in Syria without political change.
So I will look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues tomorrow in Istanbul,” she said.
Clinton meets Wednesday in Istanbul with diplomats from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the European Union, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates to discuss how best to pursue a political transition in Syria.
The U.N. and Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, is to brief U.N. members Thursday in New York before meeting Friday with Secretary Clinton in Washington.
[hat tip: The Intel Hub]
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