Begins with ending arms, cash, and support for terrorist front. by Tony Cartalucci
July 16, 2012 – At 20 million, if even half of Syria’s population rose up against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, armed with pointed sticks, the revolution would be over in an afternoon. Instead, it has dragged on for nearly a year and a half, consisting of hit-and-run battles, terrorist bombings, and cross-border infiltration – indicating that but a slim minority has “risen up” and of that minority, the vast majority of them are sectarian extremists – admittedly many are not even Syrian.
Most importantly, it is not within Syria, but beyond its borders, that these “rebels” derive the summation of their support.
Syria’s Violence Was Premeditated From Abroad
Since 2007, interests within the US, Saudi, and Israeli governments, along with other Gulf State despots and proxies in both Turkey and northern Lebanon, have been assembling from across the Arab World an army of sectarian extremists, with close ties – even direct affiliations with Al Qaeda. Exposing this was US journalist, Seymour Hersh, who published his findings in a 2007 New Yorker article titled, “The Redirection.” Readers should note that Al Qaeda itself was an “Arab foreign legion” of sorts, created in the 1980’s also by the US to fight its proxy wars.
These militants drawn from across Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Lebanon, Turkey, Libya, and Iraq, were armed, funded, and staged along Syria’s borders between 2007-2011. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, who had fought a failed but brutally violent campaign to establish a faux-theocracy in the late 70’s and early 80’s was also contacted during this time by the West, receiving funding and directives to begin preparing for the violent overthrow of the Syrian government.
Photo: The face of Libya’s NATO-backed “revolution” was literally Al Qaeda – effectively ending 10 years of “War on Terror” mythology. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) commander, led sectarian extremists with NATO arms and air support against Qaddafi, and is now involved directly in arming, training, and supplying Libyan militants to NATO’s subversion of Syria. Belhaj and his LIFG mercenaries are just one of many groups of foreign fighters assembled by NATO to infiltrate and undermine Syria.
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While this militant front was being assembled and prepared by US-Saudi-Israeli clandestine services, the US State Department was assembling a cover story with which to justify the planned bloodbath. That cover story would be later called the “Arab Spring.” In 2008, the US State Department hosted activists from Egypt in New York City, who would be funded, equipped, and trained both there, and later in Serbia by US-funded CANVAS before returning to Egypt in 2010 to prepare the grounds there for the “Arab Spring.”
Two years before the “Arab Spring” would be “sprung,” the US State Department began training and funding activist leaders from across the region, including Syria and Lebanon. They received up to $50 million, communication equipment, and were invited to training sessions organized by the US State Department itself. The goal was, admittedly, to send them back to their respective countries to train others, thus creating a “ripple effect.” This was later revealed by Assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights, Michael Posner in an April 2011 AFP report.
This indicates that both the “peaceful” and militant components of the Syrian so-called “uprising” were premeditated, organized, and manipulated geopolitical calculations for achieving Western foreign policy objectives, not to fulfill the “democratic aspirations” of the Syrian people. In fact, the inclusion of violent ideological militants in the equation almost certainly ensures such “aspirations” will never be achieved.
Image: A visual representation of the National Endowment for Democracy’s corporate-financier ties found across their Board of Directors. Far from “human rights advocates,” they are instead simply leveraging such issues to disguise what is in reality corporate-financier hegemonic expansion.
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Furthermore, the very organizations and institutions the US State Department used to direct “activists,” namely the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries including Freedom House, the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), are steered not by progressive-liberals from Berkley, but rather names drawn from Boeing, Exxon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Conoco Philips, and other corporate-financier special interests.
NED’s board of directors also includes names from America’s pro-war Neo-Conservative establishment including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate Project for a New American Century. These same interests, in fact, were simultaneously building up both the “pro-democracy” protesters and their violent extremist militant counterparts – with the obvious intentions of couching one within the other to then set the stage for the military intervention they are now incessantly lobbying for.
The Obvious Solution – Stop Foreign Arms & Cash
That the events playing out in Syria now were entirely premeditated from abroad by corporate-financier interests couching their aspirations for global hegemony within “democracy promotion,” does not condemn all of Syria’s opposition as “illegitimate.” However, those supporting both the violence created by foreign-funded death squads, and the unyielding interventionist agenda of the West’s so-called “Syrian National Council,” are indeed both illegitimate and a threat to Syrian peace as well as world peace.
Perhaps most indicative of just how disingenuous the so-called “Free Syrian Army’s” cause is, is the fact that their primary backers both financially and in terms of supplying military arms, are the despotic absolute monarchies of the Gulf States. These include Qatar and Saudi Arabia – the latter so despotic and nepotistic, the nation itself is named after the unelected, eternally ruling “Saud” family. That they, in concert with the West, seek “democracy” and “freedom” in Syria is an absolute absurdity – with their true intentions of undermining and destroying neighboring Iran the much more plausible, even admitted goal of violently subverting Syria.
Both the genesis and perpetuation of Syria’s violence is rooted not within Syria’s borders, but beyond them. Not in the alleys of Syria’s cities, nor the fields of its villages, but in Washington, Riyadh, Doha, Tel Aviv, London, Tripoli, and Ankara.
The obvious solution is for the “international community” to recognize, condemn, and end the flow of weapons, cash, and political support provided to overt foreign proxies. Syria’s borders should be secured with vast penalties imposed on Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon for failing to cooperate with Syrian security forces in stopping the flow of foreign arms, cash, and fighters.
Why the US Solution Will Not Work – Peace is Not Their Goal
The violence could literally grind to a halt overnight, when foreign mercenaries and Syrian Muslim Brotherhood extremists realize the spigot of arms, cash, and impunity had been turned off and the restoration of order throughout Syria made inevitable. Instead, the US, feigning ignorance to the documented role they played in the malicious origin of this conflict, proposes to increase the violence by further arming and providing “air support” for their front of militant extremists, just as they did in Libya to catastrophic effects.
They plan on doing this through a UN Security Council resolution loaded with Chapter 7 provisions – meaning military intervention, after a brief “last effort” to implement the UN’s peace plan the US fully prepares to sabotage. Since another NATO-led military campaign is universally reviled, the West has organized a series of publicity stunts to shock, scare, panic, and stampede their resolution through the Security Council. These include confirmed fabrications regarding the latest “massacre” in Tremseh, Syria – which UN monitors have concluded was instead a battle.
There was also the suspicious claim by “US officials” that the Syrian government was moving its “chemical weapons.” The reports warned that the Syrian government might deploy the weapons against civilians – failing to explain what besides justifying foreign military intervention, doing so might achieve. The reports also failed to mention “where” the weapons were being moved to – essential information “civilians” at risk might use to avoid a “massacre.”
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. Failing to achieve this, US policy makers are satisfied to arm and fund militants in an effort not to end the violence but to perpetuate it and its costly effects to keep a “regional adversary weak.” Clearly, the West’s interests in Syria are geopolitical, not humanitarian, and plan options to purposefully compound the humanitarian catastrophe it has engineered from the very beginning.
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Failing to push their UN resolution through the Security Council, the US in its policy papers has literally stated it plans to “arm the opposition even knowing they will probably never have sufficient power,” to then “pin down the Asad regime and bleed it, keeping a regional adversary weak, while avoiding the costs of direct intervention.”
This unconscionable, callous act of hostility toward Syria and its people – admits openly to using the militants it hails as “freedom fighters” to mire Syria in protracted violence destroying the lives, prospects, and potential of some 20 million people. This policy paper, crafted by the Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution, illustrates the true self-serving nature behind the West’s “concern” for Syria.
Syria’s Fall Will Embolden a Dangerous Enemy of Humanity
It is essential, not only for the people of Syria, but for the entire planet placed in danger by the precedent being set by allowing the West to continue on with this insidious agenda, for the UN Security Council to block any resolutions put forth designed to implement it. Russia and China have been wrongfully berated for not capitulating to Western demands that military intervention be green-lighted so the atrocities committed by NATO in Libya can be repeated in Syria. Considering the premeditated, foreign orchestrated nature of Syria’s violence, and that it is the West itself that is responsible, it is unconscionable that they remain free of international condemnation, let alone given a say in how the bloodbath of their own creation is resolved.
For the vast majority of humanity, excluded from this process – we are given an instructive example of how dangerous and ineffective international law is – to the point where it has become a tool used by elitist perpetrators of vast crimes against humanity rather than a defense against them. But while we have no say in what the UN ultimately does, the monolithic power wielded by the West, granted to them by the fortunes of their immense corporations, financial institutions, and organizations, lays exposed directly to us – open to condemnation, boycotts, and their uprooting through their replacement with local alternatives.
The answer to solving Syria’s violence is simple – doing it will take some effort and courage. However, we must not fool ourselves into believing that Syria’s problems are theirs and theirs alone. What the corporate-financier interests are doing to their nation and people today, will embolden and strengthen them for when they finally decide to do it to us tomorrow.
The Kurds of Northern Iraq have the most Independence of all Kurds and they are closely aligned with Turkey, will they allow the newly found autonomy for Syrian Kurds to be become a springboard for Anti Turkish activities?
Roy Gutman is a specialist in this area.
Although there was not time for me to present my question would other outside forces (NATO or Israel?) blackmail Turkey into being more antagonistic to Syria by supporting (militarily) the Kurds of Turkey?
This is his recent and often quoted article on this issue: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/07/26/157943/assad-hands-control-of-syrias.html
Apologies for the poor internet connection, which is why I allowed myself in the video – because his image becomes frozen.
Admits hosting foreign fighters seeking to enter Syria, trucks in weapons to rearm terrorist groups. by Tony Cartalucci
July 26, 2012 – The Washington Post has just published an article with the very misleading titled, “Turkey a hub for Syria revolution as illegal border crossing points abound,” in which it describes “Salafi Muslims,” who have “come to offer help from the countries of the Persian Gulf region” arming and joining the so-called “Free Syrian Army.” The article also claims “weapons are ferried into Syria, delivered by Turkish military trucks and picked up by fighters on the other side in the dead of night.”
A more apt title would be, “Turkey hosts invading Saudi and Qatari mercenary army.”
This confirms earlier reports featured in the New York Times and the Washington Post, that not only are the Gulf States of Saudi Arabia and Qatar funding and arming militants via Turkey, but that the US is coordinating the logistical aspects of the operation as well.
Likewise, CNN has attempted to spin concessions made by its own Ivan Watson, traveling with sectarian extremists into Syria, where it was admitted:
Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade’s ranks.
A volunteer Libyan fighter has also told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a “platoon” of Libyan fighters to armed movement.
On Wednesday, CNN’s crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way.
The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as … a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.
CNN then attempts to claim the “real” Syrian “revolutionaries” “do not want an Islamist political agenda to be mixed in with their revolution.”
Photo: The face of Libya’s “revolution” was literally Al Qaeda. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) listed by the US State Department as a “Foreign Terrorists Organization,” was armed and backed by NATO (including the US) in his efforts to topple the government of Libya. Belhaj more recently pledged (NATO) weapons, cash, and Libyan militants to the “Free Syrian Army.”
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Unfortunately for CNN, despite its best efforts, it cannot qualify its claim that these foreign fighters are “unwanted,” – for the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) has long since exposed itself as a sectarian extremist front infiltrated with foreign fighters and foreign weapons, stretching back as far as 2007.
Saudis and Qataris Attempt “Arab League-UN” Rescue of Faltering Mercenaries
Perhaps as a sign the Gulf States of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are stretched to the limits of their ability to covertly undermine Syria, they have announced plans to seek “UN General Assembly action” for a “political transition and establishment of a democratic government in Syria.” For the despotic, unelected, grandiose nepotism of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to call for a “democratic government in Syria” is truly a move made as much out of desperation as it is one of farcical hypocrisy.
Image: In “progressive” Saudi Arabia, who is calling for a “democratic transition” in Syria, women are not even allowed to drive, let alone vote for their leaders – who with Qatar, are amongst the few remaining absolute monarchies on Earth.
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Both Gulf State nations are run by absolute monarchies – some of the only kind still left in the world. In Saudi Arabia, not only are elections out of the question, but women are in fact, prohibited from even driving. How the Saudis themselves are not subject to UN resolutions, open condemnations, sanctions of all kinds, and ultimatums over their own dictatorship is a true indication of the bankrupted, hypocritical, self-serving dysfunction that punctuates a Western corporate-financier dominated “international order.” It is an “international community” that creates the illusion of urgency and injustice when it seeks to expand its interests into one nation, but conveniently ignores real injustice when it jeopardizes their interests elsewhere.
Turkey Supports Subversion of Syria, While Crushing Dissent at Home
Turkey itself 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 Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan 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.
One can only imagine the “threat” Syria would be portrayed as if it were to likewise strafe and bomb targets beyond its borders in pursuit of now admittedly foreign-armed, foreign fighters invading its country via Turkey. Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, would most likely invoke “Chapter V” of NATO’s treaty, a mutual defense clause that makes an attack on one alliance member an attack on all members – thus opening up the door for more direct foreign military intervention.
Turkey’s ruling government led by PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is in fact undermining its own national security by running errands for NATO versus Syria. By supporting foreign terrorists invading neighboring Syria, it undermines the legitimacy of its own campaign against Kurdish rebels within its borders, not to mention beyond them. Turkey’s current stance vis-a-vis Syria is not shared by all members of Turkey’s government, and at this critical stage, now more than ever they need to make their voices heard both to the Turkish people and to the people of the world.
Carving Out “Safe Havens” for the US State Department’s SNC
The ultimate goal of inundating Syria with foreign fighters and weapons while Saudi Arabia and Qatar farcically call for a “democratic transition” in Syria is to create a “safe haven” from which the US State Department coached and directed “Syrian National Council” (SNC) can rule from – further dividing and undermining the Syrian nation-state.
The US foreign-policy think-tank, Brookings Institution blueprinted designs for regime change in Libya as well as both Syria and Iran. In their report, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” it is specifically stated (emphasis added):
“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.” –page 4, Assessing Options for Regime Change, Brookings Institution.
Image: Also out of the Brookings Institution, 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.
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The Brookings Institution’s “safe havens” and “humanitarian corridors” are meant to be established by NATO-member Turkey, who had been threatening to partially invade Syria in order to accomplish this. And while Turkey claims this is based on “humanitarian concerns,” examining Turkey’s abysmal human rights record in addition to its own ongoing armed campaign against the Kurdish people both within and beyond its borders, it is clear they are simply fulfilling the agenda established by their Western patrons on Wall Street and in the city of London.
There is still extreme danger that with Aleppo still under threat by foreign fighters and the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” NATO is preparing cross-border provocations to justify the “limited military power” Brookings calls for in establishing its prescribed “safe havens.” Fabricated “massacres,” “humanitarian crisis,” and false flag attacks involving chemical weapons are also pretexts the West might use for a limited military incursions into Syria in an attempt to cripple its military and lend its militant proxies a “safe haven” in Syria to rule over.
As FSA proxies fail and psychological operations falter, US prepares more direct (and desperate) approach for long-sought regime change. by Tony Cartalucci
July 22, 2012 – As it becomes increasingly clear that last week’s “surge” by NATO-backed so-called “Free Syrian Army” terrorists was a failed psychological operation, coordinated with meticulously timed assassinations the day of the UN Security Council vote designed to stampede the Syrian government out of power, the FSA’s foreign sponsors are preparing the public for a more direct intervention while desperately attempting to maintain the illusion of chaos and the imminent collapse of Syria’s government.
Video: Thierry Meyssan in Damascus, Syria. Please choose from “choose language” to see English subtitles.
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Contradicting NATO’s narrative, was Thierry Meyssan in Damascus, Syria who reported that Syria’s continuity of government seamlessly moved forward after the assassinations last week, and that state institutions are still standing and very much functional. He describes Syria’s latest unrest as the result of a coordinated NATO-backed terrorist operation aimed at creating confusion and panic, coupled with Western propaganda – and warns that more operations are likely on the way.
The Telegraph’s, “Bashar al-Assad’s Syria is now in a death spiral,” and the Guardian’s “Syria endgame: who and what will emerge from the ruins?” both desperately attempt to write off the Syrian government as already finished, an unsubstantiated reoccurring narrative being repeated daily by the West. Both articles however, categorically fail in qualifying their premises with subsequent facts – instead they depend on rehashing the initial violence that accompanied last week’s assassinations – violence that has already been adequately dealt with by Syrian security forces.
In New York Times’ article, “US to Focus on Forcibly Toppling Syrian Government,” is all but an admission that indeed NATO’s FSA terrorists have failed, and that what is in reality imminent, is the restoration of order by the Syrian army after over a year of foreign subversion and armed infiltration. Essential to the West’s plan, is now fabricating a justification the US, Israel, and the Gulf despots currently do not have – to more directly intervene before the limitations of NATO’s proxy forces are irrevocably exposed.
To achieve this, the Western media has decided to continue depicting Syria as “collapsing” even as security has been fully restored in Damascus, border crossings retaken after NATO-harbored terrorists struck from across Syria’s borders, overrunning small platoon-sized garrisons, and now it is confirmed that bolstered Syrian border defenses near Daraa on the Jordanian-Syrian border, entirely balked FSA terrorists.
Despite this, the Western media is still reporting “battles” in Damascus, that have “spread” to Aleppo. Aleppo being another relatively unscathed city, is being purposefully attacked in order to enhance NATO’s campaign to terrorize, panic, and divide the Syrian people. Already, however, Syrian troops have begun security operations to surround and neutralize terrorist elements, just as they have done already in Damascus.
But before the violence ebbs, at least, before the Western media finds it no longer tenable to report battles that have subsided days ago, the West has stampeded through several declarations. New York Times’ article, in addition to admitting more direct military intervention is being prepared, admits that the US and France are putting their proxy “Syrian National Council” in place to lead a “transitional government.”
The West’s problem is that not a square-inch of Syrian territory is held by NATO’s terrorist proxies – unlike in Libya where NATO proxies were operating out of Benghazi – raising the specter that some larger military intervention emanating from Syria’s borders will take place. The most likely location of such an operation would be via Turkey to establish a seat of power for the Western client regime.
To justify more overt Western intervention, an incredible amount of time and energy has been invested in preparing the general public for the prospect of a “chemical attack.”Syria has never deployed its chemical weapons, nor does it stand to gain from any such deployment, tactically, politically, or geopolitically. The only beneficiaries of such an attack would be NATO, Israel, and the Gulf despots, who could then use it to justify the “forcible toppling” of the Syrian government they now openly seek. If chemical weapons are deployed in Syria, it will most certainly be the work of NATO and its FSA proxies, using Libya’s admittedly pilfered and proliferated arsenal.
The announcement that indeed the US and France are maneuvering their client regime into place, while they plan on openly intervening on behalf of the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” is the final nail in the “opposition’s” legitimacy, exposing them as place holders of Western geopolitical aspirations in Syria, and in the Arab World. Earlier it was reported that the Syrian opposition was literally being coached and tutored by the US State Department, via the US government-funded US Institute of Peace (USIP) who is literally writing Syria’s “new” constitution, as well as engineering the entire “transitional” process on their behalf.
Syria and its allies, should they remain resolved and react only to the actual conditions on the ground can continue to balk Western ambitions by standing united, as they have throughout their history. For now, it appears the West will be happy to divide Syria along sectarian lines, forcing the government’s supporters to flee to ethnic enclaves. This means that NATO death squads will be focusing primarily on attacking minorities – a campaign that seems to have already begun.
Above all, skepticism and vigilance is needed to objectively analyze further developments, with further NATO machinations all but assured to follow.
For the latest updates, follow LD on Twitter @LandDestroyer.
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[Potent News Editor’s note: Click HERE for Tony Cartalluci’s “(LIVE SYRIA BLOG): NATO Carrying out Vast Syria Disinformation Campaign” which covered a lot of the recent developments in the past few days.]
Rick Rozoff of Stop NATO describes the NATO meeting occurring during heightened tensions with Syria. With the war machine heating up, he investigates the position of the new government in France, the composition of the UN team, and whether the UN is a problem or a solution.
Zafar Bangash investigates the foreign support for Syria’s rebels. “The Saudis have opened their chequebooks.”
Syria’s President says countries like the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are hindering peace in his country by supporting those he calls ‘terrorists’.
Bashar al-Assad accused Washington of being partially responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians by partnering with the rebels. The Syrian army have started large-scale drills simulating defense against outside attacks.
Some opposition leaders previously appealed to the West for foreign intervention against the regime.
But as Maria Finoshina reports from Syria, many in the country are fearing for their lives if the rebel forces get what they want.
PN 