Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: notorious terrorist or American agent?

MAR 26, 2024

Zarqawi, once a petty criminal turned Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq and the US posterchild for takfiri terrorism, served as a US intelligence asset tasked with quelling Iraq’s resistance to occupation and fanning sectarian hate for the benefit of both Tel Aviv and Washington.

(Photo Credit: The Cradle)

William Van Wagenen

Ranked second only to Osama bin Laden, the US’s most notorious declared enemy during the so-called War on Terror was Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

But a closer examination of Zarqawi’s life and his impact on events in Iraq shows that he was likely a product and tool of US intelligence.

Neoconservative strategists within the administration of George W. Bush utilized Zarqawi as a pawn to justify the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the American public.

Moreover, he was instrumental in fomenting internal discord within Iraqi resistance groups opposing the US occupation, ultimately instigating a sectarian civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities.

Israel’s plan unfolds in Iraq 

This deliberate strategy of tension in Iraq advanced Tel Aviv’s goal of perpetuating the country’s vulnerabilities, dividing populations along sectarian lines, and weakening its army’s ability to challenge Israel in the region.

It has long been known that the CIA created Al-Qaeda as part of its covert war on the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and supported Al-Qaeda elements in various wars, including in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya in the 1990s.

Additionally, evidence points to CIA support for Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups during the clandestine war in Syria launched in 2011 amid the so-called Arab Spring. 

Despite this history, western journalists, analysts, and historians still take at face value that Zarqawi and AQI were sworn enemies of the US. 

Without understanding Zarqawi’s role as a US intelligence asset, it is impossible to understand the destructive role the US (and Israel) played in the bloodshed inflicted on Iraq, not only during the initial 2003 invasion but in launching the subsequent sectarian strife as well.

It is also essential to understand the importance of current Iraqi efforts to expel US forces and rid the country of US influence moving forward. 

Who was Zarqawi?

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was born Ahmed Fadhil Nazar al-Khalaylah but later changed his name to reflect his birthplace, Zarqa, an industrial area near Amman, Jordan. In and out of prison in his youth, he would become radicalized during his time behind bars. 

Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the CIA-backed mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Upon his return to Jordan, he helped start a local Islamic militant group called Jund al-Sham and was imprisoned in 1992.

After his release from prison following a general amnesty, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan in 1999. The Atlantic notes that he first met Osama bin Laden at this time, who suspected that Zarqawi’s group had been infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence while in prison, which accounted for his early release.

Zarqawi then fled Afghanistan to the pro-US Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and established a training camp for his fighters in the fateful year of 2001.

The missing link

Eager to implicate Iraq in the 9/11 attacks, it wasn’t long before the Bush administration officials soon used Zarqawi’s presence to shroud Washington’s geopolitical agendas there. 

In February 2003, at the UN Security Council, US Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed that Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq proved Saddam was harboring a terrorist network, necessitating a US invasion.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “This assertion was later disproved, but it irreversibly thrust Zarqawi’s name into the international spotlight.”

Powell made the claim even though the Kurdish region of Iraq, where Zarqawi established his base, was effectively under US control. The US air force imposed a no-fly zone on the region after the 1991 Gulf War. Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, was also known to have a presence there, a reality that Iran actively acknowledges and remains vigilant about.

Curiously, despite Zarqawi’s base being nestled within the confines of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Bush administration opted for inaction when presented with a golden opportunity to neutralize him.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon drew up detailed plans in June 2002 to strike Zarqawi’s training camp but that “the raid on Mr Zarqawi didn’t take place. Months passed with no approval of the plan from the White House.” 

Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, justified the inaction by claiming “the camp was of interest only because it was believed to be producing chemical weapons,” even though the threat of chemical and biological weapons falling into the hands of terrorists was supposedly the most important reason for toppling Saddam Hussein’s government. 

In contrast, General John M. Keane, the US Army’s vice chief of staff at the time, explained that the intelligence on Zarqawi’s presence in the camp was “sound,” the risk of collateral damage was low, and that the camp was “one of the best targets we ever had.” 

The Bush administration firmly refused to approve the strikes, despite US General Tommy Franks pointing to Zarqawi’s camp as among the “examples of the terrorist ‘harbors’ that President Bush had vowed to crush.” 

As soon as Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq had accomplished its initial purpose of selling the war on Iraq to the US public, and after the March 2003 invasion was already underway, the White House finally approved targeting his camp with airstrikes. But by then, the Wall Street Journal adds, Zarqawi had already fled the area.

Singling out Shiites 

Then, in January 2004, the key pillar of the Bush administration’s justification for war unraveled. David Kay, the weapons inspector tasked with finding Iraq’s WMDs, publicly declared, “I don’t think they exist,” after nine months of searching. 

The Guardian reported that the failure to locate any WMDs was such a devastating blow to the rationale for invading Iraq that now “even Bush was rewriting the reasons for going to war.”

On 9 February, as the WMD embarrassment mounted, Secretary of State Powell again claimed that before the invasion, Zarqawi “was active in Iraq and doing things that should have been known to the Iraqis. And we’re still looking for those connections and to prove those connections.”

Two weeks before, US intelligence had conveniently made public a 17-page letter it claimed Zarqawi had written. Its author claimed responsibility for multiple terror attacks, argued that fighting Iraq’s Shia was more important than fighting the occupying US army, and vowed to spark a civil war between the country’s Sunni and Shia communities. 

In subsequent months, US officials attributed a series of brutal bombings targeting Iraq’s Shia to Zarqawi without providing evidence of his involvement. 

In March 2004, suicide attacks on Shia shrines in Karbala and the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad killed 200 worshippers commemorating Ashura. In April, car bombings in the Shia-majority city of Basra in southern Iraq killed at least 50.

Regarding the Karbala and Kadhimiya attacks, Al-Qaeda issued a statement through Al-Jazeera strongly denying any involvement, but Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer insisted Zarqawi was involved.

Zarqawi’s alleged attacks on Iraq’s Shia helped drive a wedge between the Sunni and Shia resistance to the US occupation and sowed the seeds of a future sectarian war.

This proved helpful to the US army, which was trying to prevent Sunni and Shia factions from joining forces in resistance to the occupation.

‘Dividing our enemies’

In April 2004, President Bush ordered a full-scale invasion to take control of Fallujah, a city in Anbar province that had become the epicenter of the Sunni resistance. 

Vowing to “pacify” the city, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt launched the attack using helicopter gunships, unmanned surveillance drones, and F-15 warplanes. 

The attack became controversial as the Marines killed many civilians, destroyed large numbers of homes and buildings, and displaced the majority of the city’s residents.

Eventually, due to widespread public pressure, President Bush was forced to call off the assault, and Fallujah became a ‘no-go’ zone for US forces.

The failure to maintain troops on the ground in Fallujah had US planners turning back to their Zarqawi card to weaken the Sunni resistance from within. In June, a senior Pentagon official claimed that “fresh information” had come to light showing Zarqawi “may be hiding in the Sunni stronghold city of Fallujah.”

The Pentagon official “cautioned, however, that the information is not specific enough to allow a military operation to be launched to try to find al-Zarqawi.”

The sudden appearance of Zarqawi and other Jihadists in Fallujah at this time was not an accident. 

In a report written for the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) entitled “Dividing our enemies,” Thomas Henriksen explained that the US military used Zarqawi to exploit differences among its enemies in Fallujah and elsewhere.

He writes that the US military maintained the goal of “fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters” so that America’s “enemies eliminate each other,” adding that “When divisions were absent, American operators instigated them.”

The Fallujah Case Study

Henriksen then cites events in Fallujah in the fall of 2004 as “a case study” that “showcased the clever machinations required to set insurgents battling insurgents.” 

He explained that the takfiri–Salafi views of Zarqawi and his fellow jihadis caused tension with local insurgents who were nationalists and embraced a Sufi religious outlook. Local insurgents also opposed Zarqawi’s tactics, which included kidnapping foreign journalists, killing civilians through indiscriminate bombings, and sabotaging the country’s oil and electricity infrastructure. 

Henriksen further explained that US psychological operations, which took “advantage of and deepened the intra-insurgent forces” in Fallujah, led to “nightly gun battles not involving coalition forces.”

These divisions soon extended to the other Sunni resistance strongholds of Ramadi in Anbar province and the Adhamiya district of Baghdad.

The divisions instigated by US intelligence through Zarqawi in Fallujah paved the way for another US invasion of the restive city in November 2004, days after Bush secured re-election.

BBC journalist Mark Urban reported that 2,000 bodies were recovered after the battle, including hundreds of civilians.

Conveniently, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not among the dead,” having slipped through the US cordon around the city before the assault began, Urban added.

Domestic consumption 

US military intelligence later acknowledged using psychological operations to promote Zarqawi’s role in the Sunni insurgency fighting against the US occupation. 

The Washington Post reported in April 2006 that “The US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” which helped “the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks.”

The Post quotes US Colonel Derek Harvey as explaining, “Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will – made him more important than he really is.”

As the Post reports further, the internal documents detailing the psychological operation campaign “explicitly list the ‘US Home Audience’ as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.”

The campaign to promote Zarqawi also proved helpful to President Bush during his re-election campaign in October 2004. When Democratic challenger John Kerry called the war in Iraq a diversion from the so-called War on Terror in Afghanistan, President Bush responded by claiming:

“The case of one terrorist shows how wrong [Kerry’s] thinking is. The terrorist leader we face in Iraq today, the one responsible for planting car bombs and beheading Americans, is a man named Zarqawi.”

Who killed Nick Berg?

Nick Berg, a US contractor in Iraq, was allegedly beheaded by Zarqawi. In May 2004, western news outlets published a video showing Berg, dressed in an orange Guantanamo-style jumpsuit, being beheaded by a group of masked men.

A masked man claiming to be Zarqawi stated in the video that Berg’s killing was in response to the US torture of detainees in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Berg was in Iraq trying to win reconstruction contracts and disappeared just days after he spent a month in US detention in Mosul, where he was interrogated multiple times by the FBI.

On 8 May, a month after his disappearance, the US military claimed they found his decapitated body on the side of a road near Baghdad.

But US claims that Zarqawi killed Berg are not credible. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, there is evidence the beheading video was staged and included footage from Berg’s FBI interrogation. It was uploaded to the internet not from Iraq but from London and remained online just long enough for CNN and Fox News to download it. 

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt also lied about Berg having been in US military custody, claiming instead he had only been held by the Iraqi police in Mosul.

But the video cemented in the minds of the American public that Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda were major terror threats. 

Such was the impact in the US, that following the video’s release, the terms ‘Nick Berg’ and ‘Iraq war’ temporarily replaced pornography and celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as the internet’s main searches.

Sectarianism, a key US–Israeli goal

Large-scale sectarian war erupted following the February 2006 bombing of the Shia Al-Askari Shrine in the Sunni city of Samarra in central Iraq, although the full extent was mitigated thanks to religious guidance issued by the highest and most influential Shia authority in the land, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Al-Qaeda did not take credit for the attack, but President Bush later claimed that “the bombing of the shrine was an Al-Qaeda plot, all intending to create sectarian violence.”

Zarqawi was finally killed in a US airstrike a few months later, on 7 June 2006. An Iraqi legislator, Wael Abdul-Latif, said Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone at the time of his death, further showing Zarqawi was being used by elements within the US-backed Iraqi government.

By the time of Zarqawi’s death, the neoconservative agenda to divide and weaken Iraq through instigating chaos and sectarian conflict had reached its pinnacle. This goal was further exacerbated by the emergence of a successor group to AQI – ISIS – which played an outsized role a few years later in destabilizing neighboring Syria, igniting sectarian tensions there, and providing the justification for the renewal of a US military mandate in Iraq.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Multipolarity was triggered by the 2003 US invasion of Iraq

March 20 2023

Twenty years after the unlawful and destabilizing US-led invasion of Iraq, Washington must face the ultimate consequence of that war: UNSC powers China and Russia laying the foundation for a genuine, UN Charter-based system of multipolarism. 

Photo Credit: The Cradle

By Karin Kneissl

On the night of 19-20 March, 2003, the US air force began bombing the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. The EU and NATO were deeply divided on whether to join the aggression: While newer NATO members from Central and Eastern Europe were in favor of the war, European heavyweights Paris and Berlin opposed it.

The Iraq war also marked the onset of diplomatic coordination between Moscow and Beijing at the UN Security Council (UNSC). The two countries began in 2003 to apply similar voting patterns in the Council, first on Iraq, then on Libya in 2011, and over Syria in several key votes. That early Russia-China UN coordination has, 20 years later, transformed into a determined joint policy toward “guarding a new world order based on international law.” 

Looking back at March 2003 from the vantage point of March 2023, the invasion of Iraq unleashed geopolitical consequences far beyond the obvious ones, like the proliferation of terrorism, a decline of US power, and regional chaos. In 2003, a foundational, global shift in the balance of power was surely the last possible consequence envisioned by the war’s planners in Washington and London.

Disconnecting the dots

The destruction of Iraq, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army by the first “US Consul” Paul Bremer in May 2023, the outflow of refugees to neighboring states such as Syria and Jordan, and the exponential growth of extremism and terror attacks are among the consequences of this misguided war.

The flimsy reasons for the war, such as non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and Baghdad’s alleged support of terror groups like Al Qaeda, were debunked extensively in the following years. By the spring of 2004, evidence was already rife – whether from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or from the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group (ISG) – that Iraq had no WMD program at all.

Rarely before had disinformation campaigns – what is now commonly referred to as “fake news” – been so meticulously executed. The “with us or against us” narrative had firmly taken hold: Western think tanks were out in full force promoting regime change and “democracy” (not a stated goal of the US-led invasion) in Iraq, while those who opposed it were labeled anti-Israel or anti-America.

Despite unprecedented, massive public protests across western capitals in opposition to the Iraq war, the US and its allies had already set in motion their considerable war machine, led by figures such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar.

A false narrative linking Baghdad and the September 11 attacks had already been well-seeded, despite there being no connection whatsoever between the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the bombers. It should be noted that there were no Iraqi or Afghan citizens among the terrorists who piloted the 9-11 planes, who were predominantly Saudi nationals.

Unfinished Business

In the autumn of 2001, war scenarios for an invasion of Iraq and regime change were already being laid out in Washington. Johns Hopkins University dean Paul Wolfowitz – an avid supporter of regime-change and US military expansion into Iraq – was named deputy secretary of defense in February 2001, a full seven months before the 9-11 attacks. Wolfowitz’s working hypothesis was that Iraq, with the liberalization of its oil industry, would be able to finance a post-war reconstruction from its own petroleum exports.

The group around Vice President Dick Cheney, which included Wolfowitz and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was influential in shaping President George W. Bush’s position on Iraq. Unlike his father, George H. Bush, who was an experienced CIA director and analyst, the younger Bush lacked a distinct personal worldview on foreign policy, which he outsourced to his hawkish coterie.

Nevertheless, he was determined to finish what he saw as his father’s “unfinished business” from the 1991 ‘Gulf War’ aimed at expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait. That conflict was executed under a UN Security Council resolution, authorizing legal measures against Iraq as a state, but which did not constitute a war under international law.

In 1991, only Jordan‘s King Hussein took a position supporting Saddam Hussein, with all other nations backing the coalition assault against Baghdad. The US government adhered to the UN resolution, which aimed to restore Kuwait‘s territorial integrity – but not to overthrow the Iraqi government.

Instead, the US supported Iraqi Kurds in the north of the country and encouraged them to revolt against Baghdad. The Iraqi army crushed that rebellion, as it did an uprising in the Shia-dominated south. Perhaps the rebels had hoped for more concrete military aid from the US, but regardless, Hussein remained firmly in power despite military defeat elsewhere.

From Washington’s perspective, the US had failed to unseat Hussein, and within the Bush family, there was a desire to settle a score. For George W. Bush, the invasion of Iraq provided an opportunity to step out of his powerful father’s shadow by executing the elusive regime-change goal. The September 11 attacks provided a justification for this obsession – what remained was to connect Iraq to the US terror attacks and galvanize public and political support for a war, both domestically and internationally.

The UN Security Council in turmoil

In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there was a great deal of division among UN Security Council (UNSC) members. US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented questionable evidence of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, while the foreign ministers of Germany and France publicly opposed the aggression, for which they occasionally received applause in the Council.

China and Russia, who vehemently opposed the war, began coordinating their decisions and responses, in part because of their respective oil interests in Iraq. This cooperation between Moscow and Beijing set the stage for a coordinated multilateral approach between the two nations. Both governments understood that a war would open Pandora’s box, leading to the collapse of Iraqi institutions and resulting in widespread regional disharmony.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what happened. The subsequent years saw weekly attacks, an expansion of Salafi terror groups like Al Qaeda, the rise of ISIS in 2014, and perpetual internal Iraqi conflict. Anyone familiar with the country‘s conditions was aware of the looming catastrophe when the illegal invasion of Iraq began on 20 March, 2003.

China and Russia and the multipolar order  

Twenty years to the day, Chinese President Xi Jinping will embark on a three-day state visit to Moscow, and the focus will extend beyond bilateral energy relations, which have been a consistent priority since 2004.

As previously stated in their joint declaration in Beijing in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart aim to coordinate their foreign policy and advance it together. Their discussions may also touch on the Ukraine dossier, although media expectations in the west may be overestimated.

It may be pure coincidence that the meeting coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion. Yet it also highlights how extensively Russian and Chinese strategies have intertwined over the past two decades.

Today, increasingly, “orientation comes from Orient.” Cooperative geostrategic leadership and sound alternative propositions to resolve global conflicts are being shaped in Beijing and Moscow – because the old centers of power can offer nothing new.

Twenty years after the US invasion of Iraq, a failed ‘war on terror,’ the proliferation of extremism, millions of dead and displaced in West Asia, and never-ending conflict, China and Russia have finally teamed up to systematically advance their view of the world, this time with more resolve and global clout.

As catastrophic as it was, the Iraq war ended the practice of direct US military invasions, ushering in a war-weary era that desperately sought other solutions. That global division of opinion that began in 2003 over Iraq is, 20 years later, being institutionalized by emerging multipolar powers that seek to counter forever wars.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.

Ambassador Sabbagh: Syria Warned that Incorrect Track of OPCW on Alleged Douma Incident Will Lead to False Conclusions

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° 

February، 2023
New York, SANA

Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh, said that Syria has repeatedly warned that the incorrect and unprofessional track adopted by The OPCW Fact-Finding Mission in Syria on Douma alleged incident will lead to false and null conclusions.

Sabbagh was regretted that the fact-finding committee had not correct the method of its work despite all the demands addressed to it to commit to the rules included in the Chemical Weapons Convention.

“Syria took a strategic decision in 2013 to join the Chemical Weapons Convention and has eliminated all its stockpile in a record time despite difficult conditions the country has been passing through,” Sabbagh said at UN Security Council session on “the Chemical File in Syria.”

He added that Syria has persistently stressed its firm stance to condemn the use of chemical weapons by any one, at any time or place.

The Syrian diplomat recalled Washington’s scenario to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the false pretext to Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, saying that Washington’s crimes in Iraq are imprescriptible.

Mazen Eyon

Vassily Nebenzia’s Statements at the UNSC Briefing on the Syrian Chemical File

In Douma Cover-up, OPCW’s New Smoking Gun Backfires

The Mushroom Principle

December 22, 2022

THE MUSHROOM PRINCIPLE (part 1) or How the AngloEuroZionist “democracies” operate: Keep the people in the dark and feed them shit

Source

by Eric Arthur Blair

After the dust had settled following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US was ultimately forced to admit, after searching left and right, back and forth, up and down, that there were no WMDs to be found anywhere in Iraq. I was surprised by their admission back then, because I fully expected their propaganda machine to keep persisting ad nauseum with the lies, to disseminate numerous external pictures of closed-door warehouses and claim they were full of WMDs (but in reality empty). However there does eventually come a time when complete lies must be abandoned, especially when every single one of the US personnel in Iraq could never, ever, verify any finding of WMDs whatsoever.

So it turned out that the pre-invasion testimonies from experts such as Hans Blix, Scott Ritter (UN weapons inspectors) and Andrew Wilkie (Australian military intelligence officer) that no significant WMDs in Iraq existed back then were 100% vindicated. The US Deep State 1 (and its Satrapies) spared no effort to discredit, punish and even kill those who had dared to contradict the US “WMDs in Iraq” fabrications. Andrew Wilkie was forced out of his job. They harassed and bullied Hans Blix endlessly, prompting Blix to call the Anglo WMD liars “those bastards” who used “bad faith” to perpetrate a “witch-hunt”. Scott Ritter was character assassinated, tried and convicted on unrelated matters, in what was an obvious set-up 2. Word of warning to vocal opponents of the Deep State: their surveillance tentacles are all pervasive and they can easily plant kiddie porn on your computer as an excuse to throw you in jail.

In the UK, the story of Dr David Kelly, a scientific weapons expert who had contradicted Tony Blair’s claim that Saddam could deploy WMDs in 45 minutes, was even more tragic. Kelly, who had no prior psychiatric history, was found dead in the woods with a slit wrist. Very little blood was found at the scene, indicating that his wrist was slit elsewhere and his body then moved. Phoney Blair appointed good-ole-boy Hutton to head a bogus whitewash “enquiry” that dutifully declared Kelly’s death a suicide, exonerating his buddy Blair and the UK authorities 3.

In the USA, the psychopath in charge (limp-Dick Cheney, not the gormless crab-infested Bush) viciously turned against even long term Republican loyalists and CIA employees who did not toe the line. I refer of course to the Republican loyalist Joe Wilson, who proved that Saddam Hussein had never sought Uranium from Niger, which Wilson duly reported to Cheney. Cheney nevertheless persisted in spreading that lie to the public, which Wilson then openly disputed. In retaliation Scooter Libby, Cheney’s lapdog, publicly outed Valerie Plame (Wilson’s wife) as a CIA agent, a disclosure that was illegal under US law because it destroyed her career and could put her life in danger. What then happened? Scooter was found guilty and convicted in a court of law but later received a Presidential pardon.

The stinking corruption and devious double-dealing and rank hypocrisy that infests the Beltway swamp has become even more rancidly rotten over the past two decades 4.

Everyone needs to be reminded of the historical facts described above, because they remain of utmost importance today. It is in the interests of the US Deep State to impose blanket amnesia upon the global public regarding the war crimes they committed with regard to Iraq (as well as Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, not to mention more than 50 despicable “interventions” in foreign countries, from Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954 and one of the most egregious – Chile in 1973). Only by the imposition of such blanket historical amnesia can the Deep State today sanctimoniously point their finger at Russia for their “illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine”.

What has changed today? The mechanisms of “narrative control” have been tightened exponentially. Back in 2003 it was still possible to read occasional pieces in the “respectable” press such as the BBC, NY Times, Washington Post or The Guardian that questioned the official narrative, particularly the fabricated justifications put forward by the Deep State for their invasion of Iraq. Ever since then, there has been a systematic purge of any and all honest investigative journalists who dare to challenge the Deep State narrative. Most notable was Chris Hedges, Pulitzer prize winning head of the Middle East Bureau of the NY Times, who was forced out of his job for his righteous opposition to the US invasion of Iraq. Another luminary, summarily removed from The Guardian (despite contributing to their Pulitzer Prize win in 2014), was Glenn Greenwald. Voices of reason such as that of Noam Chomsky have long been sidelined and shunned. The legendary John Pilger, former icon of Fleet Street, has been denied any mainstream platform that could earn him a living wage. There are many others too numerous to mention. Now the Deep State is slowly murdering the greatest journalist of our modern times, Julian Assange, using bogus charges that were trumped-up by the Trump regime. Assange’s greatest crime? Exposing the war crimes of the USA.

The US Establishment can now effectively block or stifle any public dissent opposing their War Agenda, while simultaneously instructing the stupid sheeple who they must direct their daily two minutes of hatred against. The Western media have truly turned Orwellian. They have learned how to do this step-by-step over the years since the Vietnam and Afghan and Iraq debacles, now achieving total control over the mainstream media. Hence when Russia was provoked by the USA into invading Ukraine in February this year, it was falsely and repeatedly and uniformly described as an “unprovoked invasion” by those MSM sewer outlets, completely ignoring the genocide the Ukronazi proxies of the US had been committing against Russophone civilians in Donbass over the previous 8 years. The war criminal Condoleezza Rice condemned Russia for their “criminal invasion” without the slightest hint of irony, while the stenographers “reporting” her words failed to point out the bleeding obvious. Ditto for sleepy Joe Biden who had supported the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Twenty years ago, France and Germany had enough wit and spine to disagree with the US invasion. This year in 2022, France and Germany are witlessly and spinelessly descending into economic and social collapse because of energy poverty brought about by their own sanctions imposed on Russia at the behest of the USA. Despite numerous public street protests in many European countries about their skyrocketing energy prices and out-of-control-inflation, the stupid sheeple remain locked in their Russophobic mindset and few seem to have a clue regarding the actual factual underlying cause for all their hardship. Well here is the clue: USA! USA! USA! Same answer as to who blew up the Nordstream pipelines (whether the British poodle actually pressed the button is neither here nor there – there is overwhelming evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that the USA was the underlying culprit).

Part 2 of “The Mushroom Principle” will look at certain lies of omission (keeping you in the dark) and commission (feeding you shit) perpetrated by today’s AngloEuroZionist mainstream media, as well as explore the true function (as opposed to the proclaimed, purported function) of the AEZ MSM.

Further reading: https://thesaker.is/tag/eric-arthur-blair/

Footnotes (please do your own websearch to verify the matters I outlined above):

1. By Deep State or Establishment I refer to the famous term MICIMATT coined by Ray McGovern. This applies as much to the US MIC and CIA as it does to the UK DOD and MI5&6 or the Israeli IDF and Mossad, with their associated corporations, banking/financial structures, media, academia and think tanks.
2. Neither you nor I can ever know for sure whether Ritter was guilty or not of the accused transgressions. It was the word of the Deep State against the word of Ritter in a situation that reeked of entrapment. But please use your common sense: do you accept the word of a proven liar (the Deep State) or the word of a proven truth teller (Ritter)? If you keep faith with a proven liar you are a fool. In any case, our opinions regarding Ritter’s personal proclivities have ZERO relevance with regard to his proven expertise in matters of military intelligence.
3. Any moron who believes that David Kelly committed suicide must also believe that Gary Webb, who exposed the CIA’s involvement in drug trafficking from Latin America, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head twice (which was the official verdict in the report written by, you guessed it, the CIA). Such people must also believe the Warren commission that JFK was killed by a lone shooter from behind, even though the shot obviously came from the front (Zapruder film + multiple witnesses + indisputable evidence that the exit wound was at the back of JFK’s head). Also another magic bullet was supposedly able to make wild turns through tissue and bone causing multiple injuries in different people, the bullet itself found to be undamaged and pristine when “found” on a hospital gurney.
4. For those moronic sheeple who continue to keep faith with the Establishment, here is a comforting grand delusion for you: Ukraine is winning the war and will reconquer Donbass and Crimea soon. Burisma will rebuild Ukraine under the brilliant scientific and engineering expertise of Hunter “Beelzebub” Biden, powered by US LNG and funded by FTX. The future’s so bright, you gotta wear shades! Let’s go Brandon!

A guide to the AngloEuroZionist Establishment Lexicon

September 17, 2022

Source

by Eric Arthur Blair

Neoliberal economics:

Establishment version: modern free market freedom, practised by freedom loving people, to freely create freedomaceous wealth everywhere! Woohoo!

Real World Translation: rigged system to funnel wealth from the poor to the rich by imposition of slave wages and debt servitude = economic enslavement of the 99%

Disinformation:

Establishment version: anything contrary to the “truthiness” narrative espoused by Western Mainstream Media Patriots. Is Israel an apartheid state? That’s disinformation!

Real World Translation: anything which portrays the AngoEuroZionist Empire in a bad light and their enemies du jour (Russia, China, Iran etc) in a neutral or favourable light. Absolutely nothing to do with truth or facts.

National Endowment for Democracy:

Establishment version: benevolent fund by the USA to promote rule by, for and of the ordinary people in foreign countries. Yay!

Real World Translation: CIA cutout to finance astroturf campaigns to destabilise foreign governments that do not bend to the US will, in order to install US puppet regimes that will funnel wealth to the USA.

US invasion of Iraq in 2003:

Establishment version: act of “liberation” to save the world from Saddam’s WMDs and bring democracy to the Iraqi people.

Real World Translation: WMD story was a fucking LIE, invasion was done to preserve the US petrodollar and control Iraqi oil assets and give massive contracts to US corporations. Killed more than a million Iraqis by 2010, so I guess you could say those Iraqis were “liberated” (from life).

Russian invasion of Ukraine:

Establishment version: unprovoked aggression by Russian dictator Vlad-the-Impaler Putin on 24 Feb 2022 because he is just plain crazy (also a vampire). So naturally the West needed to ban Russian cats and Tchaikovsky in response.

Real World Translation: belated response by Russian Duma (democratic parliament) to relentless aggression by the US/NATO since 2014 – including the murder of 14,000 civilians in Donbass, ie Russia was forced to intervene to protect Russian speaking Ukrainians from genocide by the US proxies. Also more than 30 bio-pathogen labs funded by the USA (by Victoria Nuland’s own admission) were discovered in Ukraine, so there WERE WMDs in-the-making in Ukraine.

International “Rules based order”:

Establishment version: even the USA cannot properly define WTF this crapulent term means.

Real World Translation: USA makes up their one-sided rules (to always benefit itself) and orders everybody else about, otherwise foreigners face sanctions or coups or assassination of their leaders or invasion. Nothing to do with United Nations International Law.

Far too many Newspeak and Doublethink terms to itemise here!!

Commenters can think of many more!!

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

• Speaking Truth is an act of Treason in an Empire of Lies.
• Putin called the USA an Empire of Lies.
• Who is the most prominent Truth speaker in the Empire?
• Julian Assange – who is now being suitably punished for such Treason.

EAB.

Andrei Martyanov: Response to YouTube “military analysts”

July 16, 2022

Please visit Andrei’s website: https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/
and support him here: https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=60459185

Sitrep: Urgent Briefing from the Russian Mod re new provocations

April 23, 2022

❗️ The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation (https://t.me/mod_russia_en) held an urgent briefing, (https://t.me/MFARussia/12376) detailing a provocation against the Russian Federation prepared by the USA and NATO with the accusation of using nuclear, biological and chemical weapons

💬 The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation possesses the information related to the preparation of provocations by the United States of America in order to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of using chemical, biological or tactical nuclear weapons.

There are three scenarios to be applied in order to accuse the Russian Federation.

👉 The first one is a ‘staged incident under a false flag’ that is the most probable.

👉 The second one refers to a ‘Maximally covert use of weapons of mass destruction in small volumes’ for neutralising the will power and the capacity to resist within the fulfilment of a particular operational task.

👉 The third and the least probable one is the ‘overt use of weapons of mass destruction at a combat area’.

The Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation possesses the information related to the preparation of provocations by the United States of America in order to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of using chemical, biological or tactical nuclear weapons. This plan has already been developed and represents a response to the success of Russia in conducting the special military operation.

▫️Only in March and April senior officials of the Western countries have been making regular provocative ‘warning’ statements. The mass media propagate the points about the possibility of using weapons of mass destructions by Russia.

▫️For example, the National Security Advisor J.Sullivan has commented on Biden’s words that the USA “in kind” to the possible use of weapons of mass destructions by our country. And on February 27 the American permanent representative to the UN Greenfield announced an intention of Russia to use any instruments ‘under a false flag’, including chemical and biological weapons for intimidating the Ukrainian population and the international community.

▫️Against this background, the US State Department considered positively the transfer of up to 400 sets of personal protection equipment, 390 NBC reconnaissance devices and 15 ‘Stryker’ reconnaissance vehicles.

Staged use of WMD is aimed at accusing Russia of using prohibited weapons with the subsequent implementation of the so-called «Syrian scenario», in which the state is subjected to economic and political isolation, as well as exclusion from international organizations, including the UN Security Council.

▫️A possible way forward is to put pressure on the countries loyal to and friendly to the Russian Federation, including India and China, to compel them to impose sanctions on our country.

❗️We would like to recall that the Russian Federation completely destroyed its chemical arsenal on September 27, 2017, which is confirmed by an OPCW certificate. In turn, the United States, with its strong financial, economic and technical potential, is the only country party to the Chemical Weapons Convention that still possesses an impressive arsenal of chemical warfare agents (672.5 tons).

▫️CIA Director Burns’ statement about Russia’s possible use of tactical nuclear weapons is absurd. With the current level of technical equipment of the international nuclear test monitoring system, it is impossible to conceal the use of such weapons. If the CIA director does not understand this, then he is either unprofessional, or he is being misled.

▫️The biological weapons programs in the USSR were completely phased out in 1972. At the same time, the number of U.S. biological laboratories is incomparable to other countries. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Washington controls 336 laboratories in 30 countries, which is of great concern.

To date, the United States is the only state in world history that has used all three types of weapons of mass destruction.

▫️The dropped nuclear bombs during the Second World War on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the use of toxic chemicals in Vietnam and Iraq – all these crimes were not properly assessed by relevant international organizations.

❗️Thus, in an attempt to discredit the special military operation of the Russian troops, the Kiev regime, at the suggestion of the American administration, is able to implement scenarios in the near future that will lead to the death of tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens and cause an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe.

The various posts on the Mod Telegram channel starts here:

https://t.me/mod_russia_en/1059

The Growing Scandal of the Missing Intelligence, Including on Alleged Russian ‘Kill Lists’

February 20, 2022

There’s been no intelligence revealed at State Dept. briefings, to the U.N., to European allies or Ukraine, but the U.S. wants everyone to believe they’re telling the truth about an imminent Russian invasion and its “kill lists,” writes Joe Lauria. 

Biden at White House press briefing on Friday saying he’s ‘convinced’ of an invasion. (Ruptly screenshot)

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday said he was convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had made up his mind to invade Ukraine, but European officials are not convinced.

“As of this moment I’m convinced he has made the decision” to invade, Biden told a reporter in response to a question at a White House press briefing.  Asked how he knows this, Biden said, “We have a significant intelligence capability.”

But The Washington Post reported on Saturday that:

“Some European allies questioned the United States’ conviction that the Kremlin will launch hostilities, saying that they have not seen direct evidence suggesting Putin has committed to such a course of action.

One European official told The Washington Post in Munich that ‘we have no clear evidence ourselves that Putin has made up his mind and we have not seen anything that would suggest otherwise.’ Another said that although the situation is grave, ‘at this stage we do not have such clear intelligence’ that Putin has decided to invade.

The officials said they have been told little about the sources and methods the United States used to arrive at its conclusions, limiting their capacity to make independent decisions about how much weight to give statements from Biden that Putin has made a decision to attack.

‘It’s always the raw material that they do not share,’ said one senior NATO diplomat who has had extensive conversations with top American policymakers in Brussels.”

Withholding any raw intelligence, if they have any, U.S. officials just want the Europeans to believe them on a matter of the highest consequence. It is a humiliating position for allies the U.S. has long treated as subordinates.  The U.S. does not appear to have given any intelligence, raw or otherwise, to the Ukrainians either, except for satellite photographs last month, which Ukrainian intelligence dismissed. 

President Volodymyr Zelenksy told a press conference at the time that the U.S. should stop its hysteria about an invasion. “They keep supporting this theme, this topic. And they make it as acute and burning as possible. In my opinion, this is a mistake.” He added: “If you look only at the satellites you will see the increase in troops and you can’t assess whether this is just a threat of attack or just a simple rotation.”

Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. (MSC/Kuhlmann)

What US Says the Intelligence Is

In the same article, the Post tried to explain where this evidence came from, which no one outside of a tight Washington circle has apparently seen, or heard of:

“U.S. intelligence that provided Biden with the confidence to make the assertion came from an order given to Russian subordinates to proceed with a full-scale attack, according to several people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. The United States obtained intelligence on the order as Russian military and security officials were taking steps to implement it, and did so very recently, the people said.”

This could only come from a mole in Russia’s political or military hierarchy, from an intercept or it is made up. Not even a redacted version of these reports — if they exist — were shared with senior European officials. 

Perhaps feeling the heat from the Post report and other feedback from its allies, a few Biden administration officials on Sunday tried to give a few more crumbs away. They talked anonymously to the The New York Times, but didn’t dare say too much: 

“Officials declined to describe the intelligence in any detail, anxious to keep secret their method of collecting the information. But intelligence officials have told the administration they have a high level of confidence in the intelligence they have collected in recent months about Russian military planning, as well as about plots by Moscow’s intelligence agencies to try and create a pretext for war.” 

“American military and intelligence assets have confirmed that they have observed the Russian military take steps to execute an attack plan,” the Times reported, but these are merely assertions from intelligence agencies that lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Russia and the Trump campaign were in a conspiracy to steal the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They also got the fall of Kabul wrong.

One would think that having been embarrassed in these major instances that intelligence officials would put forward some evidence or shut up.

But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken went on a Sunday morning news show to say the intelligence learned about “false flags” were already coming true. “Everything leading up to the actual invasion appears to be taking place,’’ he said on on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “All of these false-flag operations, all these provocations to create justifications — all that is already in train.” 

This is clearly emerging as the strategy, backed up by “intelligence” that may be fabricated, namely that whatever is happening around Donbass now are Russian-directed attacks covered by deception to make it look like a Ukrainian government offensive, and not an actual U.S.-directed Ukrainian government offensive to draw Russia into invading. If that’s the U.S. plan, there’s good reason to hide it from the Europeans.

Biden said Friday all of NATO, Europe and the “entire free world is united” against Russia, even though none of them have seen the evidence – if there is any — and none of them seem as convinced as he is that there will be war.  

“Mr. Biden’s declaration, and the new description of what he based it on, are the latest salvos in a campaign by the administration to use declassified intelligence to expose and disrupt the Kremlin’s plans, perhaps slowing an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy,” the Times reported. However no “declassified intelligence” has emerged, only administration statements masquerading as evidence, while the Times plays along. 

Military analyst Scott Ritter wrote Sunday on Consortium News that the U.S. should have evidence indicating whether the Russian troop formations indicate an exercise or an invasion, intelligence which it could have shared with the world at the U.N. Security Council last week — or with European officials this weekend.

Two Bizarre New Pieces of ‘Intelligence’

On Sunday night, the Post reported that the U.S. had sent a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council alleging that after Russia invades and occupies Ukraine, it will use lists it has drawn up to target people for torture and detention in concentration camps. The Post reported:

“The letter alleges that Moscow’s post-invasion planning would involve torture, forced disappearances and ‘widespread human suffering.’ It does not describe the nature of the intelligence that undergirds its assessment.”

“We have credible information that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation,” the letter to Michele Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, says. 

Those targeted would include “Russian and Belarusian dissidents in exile in Ukraine, journalists and anti-corruption activists, and vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons.” 

As the Post pointed out, the letter is only based on “credible information” and does not disclose the “nature of the intelligence,” though it ends by telling Bachelet to contact the U.S. official for “any additional information,” which one would assume would not include raw intelligence.  This comes from a government that runs a concentration camp at Guantanamo, ran a torture center at Abu Ghraib and had a kill list review every Tuesday at the White House. 

If this letter is true, how could the United States not try to deter such an invasion and Nazi-like occupation by sending U.S. troops to Ukraine? That it won’t undermines the credibility of this “intelligence.”

The second strange matter was the U.S. embassy in Moscow sending this warning to U.S. citizens on Sunday:

“According to media sources, there have been threats of attacks against shopping centers, railway and metro stations, and other public gathering places in major urban areas, including Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as in areas of heightened tension along the Russian border with Ukraine.” 

The media “sources” are not named and there is no further explanation for such a message, which could have numerous meanings.

“Common symptoms of psychosis are … having strong beliefs [or intelligence] that are not shared by people within your community,” might define U.S. foreign policy, which has become increasingly difficult to explain rationally.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe  

‘OPERATION CYCLONE – UKRAINE EDITION’ THE REAL PLAN?

15.02.2022 

South Front

By Gavin O’Reilly 

For almost three months, the Western mainstream media, in a move not dissimilar to its previous assertions that Saddam Hussein had the capability to launch WMDs within 45 minutes, or that Iran was building a nuclear bomb, has repeatedly claimed that Russia is planning an ‘imminent’ invasion of its Western neighbour Ukraine – under the rule of the successive US-EU friendly governments of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky since the 2014 Euromaidan, a CIA and MI6-orchestrated regime change operation launched in response to then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s November 2013 decision to suspend an EU trade deal in favour of pursuing closer ties with the Russian Federation.

With the ongoing collapse of the global COVID-19 media narrative following the highly coincidental timing of last month’s World Economic Forum Davos Agenda virtual event, a hypothetical Russian invasion of Ukraine has now taken centre stage amongst corporate media outlets with a track record of promoting war and regime change in countries refusing to kowtow to the demands of the US-NATO hegemony, a media narrative which has seen thousands of US and British troops being deployed to Eastern Europe as a result – a highly provocative action and one, that should even a minor miscalculation occur amidst the current tensions, could easily escalate into a full-blown military conflict between East and West.

Recent comments by current Ukrainian President Zelensky however, in which he poured cold water over the idea of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as the recent supply of over 90 tonnes of weaponry to Kiev by the United States amidst the current tensions, and US President Joe Biden stating himself that Washington would not engage militarily with Russia, would suggest that although the possibility of the current crisis inadvertently spiralling into a global conflict between Russia and NATO remains, that that is not the current intention of the West – rather a plan seemingly exists to provoke Russia into intervening in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine to protect the predominantly ethnic Russian inhabitants of the breakaway Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, before drawing Moscow into a wider guerrilla conflict in the rest of Ukraine, the second largest country in Europe, with the intentions of tying Russia down for the foreseeable future in an Iraq-style military quagmire, a tactic with previous historical usage against the Kremlin.

In 1978, at the height of the Cold War, both East and West were locked in a battle to prevent their opposing ideologies of Socialism and Free Market Capitalism taking hold in their respective spheres of influence – with previously Western-friendly Afghanistan having come under control of the pro-Soviet PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) following that year’s Saur Revolution, a plan was quickly hatched by the White House and Downing Street to destabilise the newly-established Left-wing state.

From 1979 until 1989, the CIA’s Operation Cyclone would see the arming, funding and training of Islamist militants known as the Mujahideen, including none other than Osama Bin Laden and others adhering to the ultraconservative Saudi Arabia-backed Wahhabi ideology, in neighbouring Pakistan, before sending them on to wage war on the ‘atheist Communists’ of Afghanistan and their Soviet allies – with Moscow having intervened at the outset of the conflict following an official request for assistance from Kabul.

This decade long intervention by Moscow however, would ultimately fail to shore up their client state, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, with Kabul’s Socialist government lasting a mere three years following the Soviet withdrawal before a civil war would see it replaced by the religious fundamentalist Islamic State of Afghanistan in 1992 – a government which would itself be overthrown by the Taliban four years later.

The ten-year long Soviet effort is also widely seen as a contributing factor to the Bloc’s subsequent breakup in 1991 – indeed, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to then-US President Jimmy Carter when Operation Cyclone was launched in 1979 and instrumental in its implementation, would later recount in a 1998 interview about how drawing the USSR into a Vietnam-style quagmire in order to drain its resources was a motivating factor – and with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu recently outlining a plot to stage a Syria-style false flag chemical attack in eastern Ukraine, as well as media reports of the CIA training Ukrainian guerrilla fighters, drawing Russia into a costly military conflict is seemingly a motivating factor of the regime change lobby yet again.

MORE ON THE TOPIC:

• Russian Military Exercises Are coming To Their End – Russian Defence Minister Shoigu
• Maidan-Revolutionary Oligarchs Flee Ukraine
• Making Sense Of The Ukraine Standoff

Inside Syrian Idlib

30 Nov 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

Tim Anderson

For NATO, dismembering a country [Syria] is a second-best war aim, after the failure of complete ‘regime change’.

Idlib; where NATO-embedded media is exposed

The NATO-embedded media often speaks as though the HTS/Nusra/al-Qaeda held enclave in two-thirds of Idlib Province represents Syria and is a haven of ‘moderate rebels’. They also claim the enclave holds 4 million people, while the Syrian government says 1.3 million.

War propaganda themes have become dutifully reported ‘facts’: this is a ‘Syrian Civil War’ (even as Syria is occupied by NATO’s two largest armies plus Israel, plus thousands of foreign terrorists), the Syrian Government has repeatedly used ‘chemical weapons’ (i.e. WMDs, meriting NATO retaliation) and (for some unexplained reason: pure evil?) bombs its own schools and hospitals.

But there is another Idlib: that part liberated, at great cost, by Syria’s national army.

From August 2019 through to early 2020, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) liberated the south-eastern third of Idlib province, including the towns of Khan Shaykhoun, Maarat al-Numan, and Saraqeb. That opened the M5 highway for all traffic from the south to Aleppo, through Hama and SE Idlib.

The SAA looked for further advances, but the NATO powers demanded an end to Syrian operations, in defense of the al-Qaeda enclave. That real threat of intervention led Russia to engage in further talks with Turkey and to stall further advances. 

Yet this development demonstrated that Syria, with its allies, could have freed the country from all terrorism were it not for repeated interventions from the NATO-led war coalition, which prefers to dismember and maintain occupied enclaves: NW Idlib, the NE ‘autonomous’ zone, the US occupied al Tanf zone and the Israeli occupied Golan.

In November 2021, I visited Syrian Idlib, authorized by the Syrian Army, just as most western journalists are authorized by US troops when they enter its various war zones. In one day, we traveled to Khan Sheykhoun in the south through Maarat al-Numan, the second-largest provincial city, to the strategic crossroads town of Saraqeb.

Khan Sheykhoun is the only Idlib town I saw with a significant civilian population. Mayor Mohammad Iskandar told us that 600 to 700 families have returned, about 10% of the pre-war population. Now far from the frontline, the town is peaceful with some rebuilding and small markets.

Most of those displaced moved to Turkey or north Idlib and some to other parts of Syria. The mayor is in touch with many and says most want to return, but the armed groups (HTS/Nusra) demand large sums of money for them to leave.

We also spoke with Mr. Iyad Sukheta, who runs a small grocery store, a small farm, and used to drive a bus. Like the Mayor, Iyad has also remained in Khan Sheykhoun throughout the conflict. 

He says the ‘musalaheen’ (armed groups) took many prisoners and killed many local people, including his 17-year-old son. They wanted him to use his bus to drive people north, but he refused. 

Asked about the chemical weapons incident of April 2017, Iyad said that the prisoners were not sacrificed (as they had been in East Ghouta in 2013) but rather, after a Syrian airstrike, the armed groups attacked the local people directly with chemicals. Many were killed. 

Back in 2017, the armed groups blamed the SAA, using their own false flag massacre to incite President Trump (who had campaigned against the war) to make his first missile strike on Syria.

Maarat al-Numan is a much bigger town, with an ancient history and sitting on the frontline between Syrian forces and the Turkish-backed Nusra/HTS gangs. Even though the SAA has pushed its effective frontline forward three times in the past two years, there are no civilians here. The frontline, about 4km north, is constantly tested by the armed groups.

I visited Maarat’s museum with its famous Roman and Byzantine mosaics, which have been protected for several years with sandbags. As with many mosques, schools, and hospitals throughout Syria, the HTS/Nusra terrorists had used it as a military headquarters, digging tunnels under the Museum.

Jabal Zeitoun (Olive Mountain) is now at the center of the frontline, as it occupies the high ground from which the SAA’s 9th Division has placed a substantial vanguard of soldiers, tanks, arms, and surveillance equipment. Yet the actual Maarat frontline extends over many kilometers.

Nusra/HTS had built barricades around the town’s hospital and placed a small mosque inside. We saw evidence of supplies (medicines and cars) from Qatar, Germany, Sweden, and France. The typical pattern of the armed groups’ takeover of Syrian hospitals (for example in Aleppo) has been that they first rob all existing supplies.

Despite nominal support at the UN for the ‘territorial integrity’ of Syria, the NATO states had backed a breakaway Idlib enclave called ‘North Syria’. In much the same way, and contrary to international law, they still support an ‘Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria’. Dismembering a country is a second-best war aim, after the failure of complete ‘regime change’.

Further on up the road, the crossroads town of Saraqeb is also at the frontline, with Nusra/HTS making daily small arms attacks on, and occasional shelling of, SAA positions. They hide behind, and sometimes in front of, the many Turkish bases which are all across northern and central Idlib. The aim of these attacks, according to General J, has been to provoke retaliation which might spark direct conflict between Syrian and Turkish forces. 

Captain Y took us to the frontline, looking out on the road to Ariha, and with a Turkish base 1.7 kilometers ahead. They know these distances quite precisely and are ready to liberate their country from foreign occupation and NATO-backed terrorism when the time is right.

Syria could have eliminated terrorism and restored its territorial integrity long ago, were it not for the NATO-led war coalition which prefers to fragment and occupy segments of the country, all along its land borders. In this way, they provide safe haven for internationally-proscribed terrorist groups.

The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

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Colin Powell’s Death: Liar of the Century

19 Oct 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen Net

Hussam AbdelKareem

Colin Powell was part of the Quartet (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Powell) of American officials who were responsible for the illegal, unethical, and criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Colin Powell passed away at the age of 84. In his eulogy, writers in the American press will certainly talk about the “brave soldier” who ascended the US army ranks to the “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff” position and who eventually became the first African-American Secretary of State (he’s born to Jamaican parents). But in fact, he will be remembered for his role in Iraq’s invasion more than anything else in his career. Colin Powell was part of the Quartet (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Powell) of American officials who were responsible for the illegal, unethical, and criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was Colin Powell who presented America’s case for the war on Iraq to the world in the famous UN Security Council session on Feb 5, 2003.

“Every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence”

– Colin Powell; Feb 5, 2003. 

During the UN Security Council session, Powell detailed the serious threats Iraq was posing to the world by its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) secret programs and its links with terrorism. He even went on to show a vial in his hand saying that it could be used to store Iraq’s Anthrax germs as part of biological warheads.  

Powell actually used that UN Security Council meeting as “show business”, using projectors and audio recordings to “prove” to the world that Iraq was an imminent threat and that the US has no other option but to go to war. Well, it was all lies, nothing but lies and fabrications. Powell was lying all-out when he talked about: 

– Iraq’s possession of mobile labs to produce WMD’s 

– Iraq’s links to Al-Qa’eda and Bin-Ladin.

– Iraq’s buying Uranium from Niger

– Iraq’s possession of long-range missiles (900 km)

All that was proven false. America failed to find any evidence to support those allegations even after years of extensive search operations all over Iraq after its invasion. 

Colin Powell was lying intentionally. He was not “mistaken”, he knew exactly what he was doing. His boss, Bush, tasked him with the dirty work of presenting a convincing “war case” to the world even if he needs to use lies, misleading information, and false evidence, and Powell accepted to do it. It’s as simple as that. It’s typical soldier behavior: obey the commander. He’s part of the crime and cannot distance himself from it as he tried to do at a later stage in his life. 

After he left office, Powell tried to blame others for what he said in the UN Security Council, portraying himself as “deceived” not as a liar. On Feb 16, 2011, The Guardian newspaper of the UK published an article titled “Former US secretary of state asks why CIA failed to warn him over Iraqi defector who has admitted fabricating WMD evidence”. Also in 2011, Powell told Al Jazeera News Channel that “I deeply regret some of the information I presented was wrong. It has blotted my record, but you know, there’s nothing I can do to change that blot”. And in 2017 Powell said in an interview on Bloomberg “I was more than embarrassed. I was mortified”.

Well, that can hardly be an apology. Talking about the CIA not informing him, his embarrassment, and the blot on his record is no more than an excuse and justification. 

Colin Powell died after he actively participated in destroying another country without any legal or moral basis. His name will remain in history’s list of invaders and barbarians.The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Colin Powell’s Own Staff Had Warned Him Against His War Lies

October 18th, 2021

By David Swanson

Source

In the wake of WMD-liar Curveball’s videotaped confession, Colin Powell was demanding to know why nobody warned him about Curveball’s unreliability. The trouble is, they did.

Can you imagine having an opportunity to address the United Nations Security Council about a matter of great global importance, with all the world’s media watching, and using it to… well, to make shit up – to lie with a straight face, and with a CIA director propped up behind you, I mean to spew one world-class, for-the-record-books stream of bull, to utter nary a breath without a couple of whoppers in it, and to look like you really mean it all? What gall. What an insult to the entire world that would be.

Colin Powell doesn’t have to imagine such a thing. He has to live with it. He did it on February 5, 2003. It’s on videotape.

I tried to ask him about it in the summer of 2004. He was speaking to the Unity Journalists of Color convention in Washington, D.C. The event had been advertised as including questions from the floor, but for some reason that plan was revised. Speakers from the floor were permitted to ask questions of four safe and vetted journalists of color before Powell showed up, and then those four individuals could choose to ask him something related – which of course they did not, in any instance, do.

Bush and Kerry spoke as well. The panel of journalists who asked Bush questions when he showed up had not been properly vetted. Roland Martin of the Chicago Defender had slipped onto it somehow (which won’t happen again!). Martin asked Bush whether he was opposed to preferential college admissions for the kids of alumni and whether he cared more about voting rights in Afghanistan than in Florida. Bush looked like a deer in the headlights, only without the intelligence. He stumbled so badly that the room openly laughed at him.

But the panel that had been assembled to lob softballs at Powell served its purpose well. It was moderated by Gwen Ifill. I asked Ifill (and Powell could watch it later on C-Span if he wanted to) whether Powell had any explanation for the way in which he had relied on the testimony of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law. He had recited the claims about weapons of mass destruction but carefully left out the part where that same gentleman had testified that all of Iraq’s WMDs had been destroyed. Ifill thanked me, and said nothing. Hillary Clinton was not present and nobody beat me up.

I wonder what Powell would say if someone were to actually ask him that question, even today, or next year, or ten years from now. Someone tells you about a bunch of old weapons and at the same time tells you they’ve been destroyed, and you choose to repeat the part about the weapons and censor the part about their destruction. How would you explain that?

Well, it’s a sin of omission, so ultimately Powell could claim he forgot. “Oh yeah, I meant to say that, but it slipped my mind.”

But how would he explain this:

During his presentation at the United Nations, Powell provided this translation of an intercepted conversation between Iraqi army officers:

“They’re inspecting the ammunition you have, yes.

“Yes.

“For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.

“For the possibility there is by chance forbidden ammo?

“Yes.

“And we sent you a message yesterday to clean out all of the areas, the scrap areas, the abandoned areas. Make sure there is nothing there.”

The incriminating phrases “clean all of the areas” and “Make sure there is nothing there” do not appear in the official State Department translation of the exchange:

“Lt. Colonel: They are inspecting the ammunition you have.

“Colonel: Yes.

“Lt. Col: For the possibility there are forbidden ammo.

“Colonel: Yes?

“Lt. Colonel: For the possibility there is by chance, forbidden ammo.

“Colonel: Yes.

“Lt. Colonel: And we sent you a message to inspect the scrap areas and the abandoned areas.

“Colonel: Yes.”

Powell was writing fictional dialogue. He put those extra lines in there and pretended somebody had said them. Here’s what Bob Woodward said about this in his book “Plan of Attack.”

“[Powell] had decided to add his personal interpretation of the intercepts to rehearsed script, taking them substantially further and casting them in the most negative light. Concerning the intercept about inspecting for the possibility of ‘forbidden ammo,’ Powell took the interpretation further: ‘Clean out all of the areas. . . . Make sure there is nothing there.’ None of this was in the intercept.”

For most of his presentation, Powell wasn’t inventing dialogue, but he was presenting as facts numerous claims that his own staff had warned him were weak and indefensible.

Powell told the UN and the world: “We know that Saddam’s son, Qusay, ordered the removal of all prohibited weapons from Saddam’s numerous palace complexes.” The January 31, 2003, evaluation of Powell’s draft remarks prepared for him by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (“INR”) flagged this claim as “WEAK”.

Regarding alleged Iraqi concealment of key files, Powell said: “key files from military and scientific establishments have been placed in cars that are being driven around the countryside by Iraqi intelligence agents to avoid detection.” The January 31, 2003 INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and added “Plausibility open to question.” A Feb. 3, 2003, INR evaluation of a subsequent draft of Powell’s remarks noted:

“Page 4, last bullet, re key files being driven around in cars to avoid inspectors. This claim is highly questionable and promises to be targeted by critics and possibly UN inspection officials as well.” That didn’t stop Colin from stating it as fact and apparently hoping that, even if UN inspectors thought he was a brazen liar, US media outlets wouldn’t tell anyone.

On the issue of biological weapons and dispersal equipment, Powell said: “we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations, distributing them to various locations in western Iraq.”

The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK”:

“WEAK. Missiles with biological warheads reportedly dispersed. This would be somewhat true in terms of short-range missiles with conventional warheads, but is questionable in terms of longer-range missiles or biological warheads.”
This claim was again flagged in the February 3, 2003, evaluation of a subsequent draft of Powell’s presentation: “Page 5. first para, claim re missile brigade dispersing rocket launchers and BW warheads. This claim too is highly questionable and might be subjected to criticism by UN inspection officials.”

That didn’t stop Colin. In fact, he brought out visual aids to help with his lying

Powell showed a slide of a satellite photograph of an Iraqi munitions bunker, and lied:

“The two arrows indicate the presence of sure signs that the bunkers are storing chemical munitions . . . [t]he truck you […] see is a signature item. It’s a decontamination vehicle in case something goes wrong.”
The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and added: “We support much of this discussion, but we note that decontamination vehicles – cited several times in the text – are water trucks that can have legitimate uses… Iraq has given UNMOVIC what may be a plausible account for this activity – that this was an exercise involving the movement of conventional explosives; presence of a fire safety truck (water truck, which could also be used as a decontamination vehicle) is common in such an event.”

Powell’s own staff had told him the thing was a water truck, but he told the U.N. it was “a signature item…a decontamination vehicle.” The UN was going to need a decontamination vehicle itself by the time Powell finished spewing his lies and disgracing his country.

He just kept piling it on: “UAVs outfitted with spray tanks constitute an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons,” he said.

The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this statement as “WEAK” and added: “the claim that experts agree UAVs fitted with spray tanks are ‘an ideal method for launching a terrorist attack using biological weapons’ is WEAK.”

In other words, experts did NOT agree with that claim.

Powell kept going, announcing “in mid-December weapons experts at one facility were replaced by Iraqi intelligence agents who were to deceive inspectors about the work that was being done there.”

The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and “not credible” and “open to criticism, particularly by the UN inspectorates.”

His staff was warning him that what he planned to say would not be believed by his audience, which would include the people with actual knowledge of the matter.

To Powell that was no matter.

Powell, no doubt figuring he was in deep already, so what did he have to lose, went on to tell the UN: “On orders from Saddam Hussein, Iraqi officials issued a false death certificate for one scientist, and he was sent into hiding.”

The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and called it “Not implausible, but UN inspectors might question it. (Note: Draft states it as fact.)”

And Powell stated it as fact. Notice that his staff was not able to say there was any evidence for the claim, but rather that it was “not implausible.” That was the best they could come up with. In other words: “They might buy this one, Sir, but don’t count on it.”

Powell, however, wasn’t satisfied lying about one scientist. He had to have a dozen. He told the United Nations: “A dozen [WMD] experts have been placed under house arrest, not in their own houses, but as a group at one of Saddam Hussein’s guest houses.”

The January 31, 2003, INR evaluation flagged this claim as “WEAK” and “Highly questionable.” This one didn’t even merit a “Not implausible.”

Powell also said: “In the middle of January, experts at one facility that was related to weapons of mass destruction, those experts had been ordered to stay home from work to avoid the inspectors. Workers from other Iraqi military facilities not engaged in elicit weapons projects were to replace the workers who’d been sent home.”

Powell’s staff called this “WEAK,” with “Plausibility open to question.”

All of this stuff sounded plausible enough to viewers of Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. And that, we can see now, was what interested Colin. But it must have sounded highly implausible to the U.N. inspectors. Here was a guy who had not been with them on any of their inspections coming in to tell them what had happened.

We know from Scott Ritter, who led many UNSCOM inspections in Iraq, that U.S. inspectors had used the access that the inspection process afforded them to spy for, and to set up means of data collection for, the CIA. So there was some plausibility to the idea that an American could come back to the UN and inform the UN what had really happened on its inspections.

Yet, repeatedly, Powell’s staff warned him that the specific claims he wanted to make were not going to even sound plausible. They will be recorded by history more simply as blatant lies.

The examples of Powell’s lying listed above are taken from an extensive report released by Congressman John Conyers: “The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Coverups in the Iraq War.”

Iraq’s Agriculture Reaps the Despoiled Seeds of US Meddling

October 5, 2021

Source: Al Mayadeen

By Farah Hage-Hassan

The poisonous effects of American interference and failed policies are still affecting Iraq’s agricultural sector today. Here’s how.

Decades of US interference have plagued Iraq’s agricultural sector

“You lied!”

Those were the screams of former US Army veteran Mike Prysner echoing in the lecture hall during a speech by George W. Bush, and the lasting trauma still resonates in the ears of millions of Iraqis and Americans today, almost two decades later.

From a full-scale invasion under the pretext of overthrowing Saddam Hussein to the insurgence of ISIS, Iraq has been plagued with endless wars and destruction. This invasion and endless interventions aggravated the marginalization of sectors in Iraqi society and allowed the internal state of Iraq to crumble under sectarianism and violence.

The lasting effects of the US policies are especially present within the aftermath of the agricultural sector among others. Farmers across the country continue to be displaced and doubt remains overcast on Iraq’s environmental capabilities and the future of agricultural development.

American invasion 

One of the many false pretenses for the heavily documented war was the alleged harboring of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell infamously claimed that the US was aware of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and their role in terrorism. Powell’s bold statements and deceptive assertions regarding the evidence that was available have ultimately haunted the US for what has become known as the very public “campaign of lies” the US tricked global citizens into believing.  

For over 7 years, Iraq was invaded and bombed by the US and the coalition of the willing, not to mention their use of white phosphorous munitions. Although they claimed that white phosphorus was used whilst fully considering the incidental effects on civilians, the secondary effects on Iraq’s agriculture were most definitely not taken into account.

Deliberate destruction

The invasion and destruction that accompanied the war did not only permanently damage arable lands with mines and cluster ammunition, but the suspension of government agricultural institutions and irrigation projects also caused disastrous results to the population.

From 2002 to 2008, agriculture’s contribution to the country’s GDP has decreased from almost 9% to 3.6% due to challenges created by war, social instability, and institutional and economic concerns. 

Agriculture, forestry, and fishing, value-added, % of GDP (Source: World Bank)

In a final blow after causing significant damage to the agricultural sector, the US secured its monopoly over the Iraqi farming industry and the future of agriculture by issuing Order 81. The Order was described as an attempt to “rebuild” Iraq’s agriculture industry by the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, Paul Bremer.

What was Order 81?

After Coalition Provisional Authority Order 81 was implemented, farmers were forbidden from conserving, distributing, or propagating harvested seeds, resulting in a dependency on big businesses such as Monsanto, Cargill Inc., and Dow Chemical. As a consequence, Iraq has only been able to meet 4% of its seed demands since 2005. These distributors are known to patent their seeds and collect fees without considering if crops were proven to contain their proprietary genetic information.

Monsanto, an agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901, is notorious for its contribution to the neutron initiators inside the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, as well as for producing Agent Orange. The US military used Agent Orange in Vietnam during the infamous operation Ranch Hand, destroying crops and ultimately causing half a million Vietnamese children to be born with birth defects and millions of others left with cancer and other serious health conditions. 

Dying of thirst

Reconstruction efforts in Iraq also targeted the distribution of safe drinking water. 

Millions of dollars were lost in the attempt and efforts failed, with only one-third of the objectives reached in the context of providing safe drinking water. 

Iraq’s infrastructure was heavily bombed in the 1990s after the US-led coalition conducted massive airstrikes on the region during the gulf war. Water and sewerage treatment facilities were heavily damaged. As people suffered from a lack of access to clean water, diseases multiplied.

The US war has critically aggravated the water crisis. Water is scarcely passing through the Tigris and Euphrates as is, causing contaminated water to reach crops, and in turn poisoning much of the population. The UN Security Council described the effects of the war as returning Iraq to the “pre-industrial age”, and warned of the imminent catastrophe that would hit the Iraqi population. 

The Tigris River is bordered by Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Along with the Euphrates, they create a river system that encircles Mesopotamia known as the Fertile Crescent. The Tigris is an important source of transportation and irrigation, with a history dating back to the earliest known civilizations.

Tigris River (Global Atlas)

Scorched earth

The catastrophic insurgence of ISIS ripped Iraq’s already suffering sectors into developmental and economic shreds. 

The US policies created a weak state that resulted in the marginalization of considerable sectors of Iraqi society. ISIS militants, armed partially with CIA-funded weapons, developed into one of the goriest terrorist organizations of our time. 

The world watched in horror as ISIS became globally renowned for unspeakable atrocities like beheadings, kidnapping of women and children, and numerous suicide bombings and terrorist attacks that not only affected the Middle East but many western countries, especially Europe. 

ISIS used the burning tactic to terrorize inhabitants, laid landmines, and destroyed agricultural equipment. IEDs were frequently utilized to fortify their defense. They attempted to meticulously carry out a form of ecocide, as their “scorched earth” tactics took hold. Oil wells were set on fire and thousands of civilians came close to suffocation and others suffered respiratory complications.

In a final effort to devastate their targets, they booby-trapped escape routes, barns, and pump stations. 

The presence of the terrorist group forced agricultural workers and farmers to evacuate their farmlands during the bloody conflicts. Numerous families retell their experiences of being forced to abandon their farming communities when ISIS militants surrounded the area in mid-2014. The same families who evacuated their homes reported returning to their homes post-ISIS and finding them heavily booby-trapped. Numerous families have lost children and relatives after bombs inexplicably detonated on their properties. 

A glimpse of hope

Away from the nightmares that haunt Iraq, as one of many initiatives, Iraq’s holy shrines have begun to establish massive farms for relying on agricultural production and providing national agricultural products that are distinguished by quality, as well as meat at subsidized prices.

Farms administrated by the Imam Hussein Holy Shrine (Website)

Agricultural cities are being established to provide the cultivation of wheat, barley, yellow corn, fodder, jet, and cattle, as well as raising sheep and cows.

Despite the seemingly irreversible effects of America’s assaults and intrusion on Iraq’s wellbeing have undoubtedly damaged the country, things can still be turned around. With Iraq’s Parliamentary elections looming, the crucial vote of the youth may have the power to carry Iraq out of decade-long darkness and into the light. 

NATO Supremacists Continue anti-Syria Chemical Hoax UNSC Meetings

 MIRI WOOD MARCH 6, 2021

NATO supremacists klansmen running the United Nations held their umpteenth chemical hoax anti-Syria UNSC meeting on 3 February. The UN press corps had immediately chosen not to publish a release on the bad infinity meeting, seemingly too busy in sharing the announcements of various new (temporary) permanent members engaging in ring-kissing meetings with Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres (a small photo gallery of the SG’s colonialist leanings found here).

These monthly reruns are held under the guise of implementing UNSCR 2118, which was passed on 27 September 2013; UNSCR 242 that was passed in 1967 not only does not require monthly meetings on implementation, but also does not require any resolutions to condemn occupying forces from treating wounded terrorists, nor to condemn occupying forces when they bomb from the region, nor to condemn presidents who illegally make presents of the occupied region.

When it comes to terrorists on the occupied Golan, Israel spares no US taxpayer expense in state of art medical care

Before taking a perfunctory glance at the hypocritical arrogance of the P3 Security Council member supremacists, and their customary vomiting up lies and then eating their own, and each other’s emesis, like ravenous dogs, the following article will serve as a refresher course from the first threats to use chemical weapons against Syria, beginning 5 December 2012. It was published 2 March 2017, one month and two days before Jahbat al Nusra terrorists staged its heinous murders of mostly children who were kidnapped, for the supremacists and their media dogs, in Khan Sheikhoun.

True History of FSA Chemical Weapons Threats against Syria

https://syrianews.cc/true-history-fsa-chemical-weapons-threats-syria/embed/#?secret=27AGpDFILd

Let us take a short trip down memory lane, followed by an amnesia antidote on the chemical terror attack leading up to UNSCR 2118 (2013), possibly the resolution that incited the most excitement among the supremacists running the United Nations — that bastion of peace and security that continues to inversely unleash mayhem throughout the world.

Western P3 supremacists France, Britain, and the US have extensive histories as the world leaders in genocide, and also in deployment of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical ones. France called its nuclear bombings of Algerian tribes, Gerboise Bleue; Britain gassed Russia and also “uncivilized tribes” in Iraq; America’s Truman chuckled before telling his people that he had used the country’s two nuclear bombs against Japan, and the US has consistently used white phosphorus as an alleged incendiary device. By naming the chemical weapon white phosphorus ”incendiary device,” it becomes exempt from being considered a chemical weapon. Human beings destroyed by them are merely ”collateral damage,” oh well.

Photos of Algerian survivors of France nuclear bombings seem to be in permanent lockdown.

Let us now do a short decontamination of the NATO supremacists’ convenient amnesia:

• The US joined the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997. The US still has over 3,000 tons of CWs that have somehow not yet been destroyed. There was no UNSC resolution when the US joined; therefore there is no ability to hold monthly meetings for its implementation.
• In December 2012, threats of unleashing chemical attacks were uploaded to social media. The threats came from within Turkey. The criminals used rabbits in two fatal experiments; the first appeared to have used VX. In the second, the savage demonstration, the claim was made that a quick-acting poison would be used to pollute the Alsinn water supply to Lattakia. Dr. Jaafari requested a UN investigation, which was ignored (comparing the 21 December 2012 rabbit video with the original Khan Sheikhoun snuff porn video uploaded by the al Qaeda White Helmets on 4 April 2017, this author states with reasonable certainty that this was the same chemical poison.
• On 19 March 2013, terrorists unleashed weapons-grade chlorine on Khan al Asal. Two dozen soldiers and civilians were murdered. Ambassador Jaafari’s request one day later, for a UN-OPCW investigation was sabotaged by the British and French ambassadors. OPCW investigators sent to inspect Khan al Asal five months after evidence would have been degraded arrived just before the 21 August Ghouta attack, and were diverted.
• In May 2013, American illegal in Aleppo, Matthew VanDyke emailed former ladies’ undergarments salesman cum unemployed couch potato and gamer Eliot Higgins that terrorists had ”small quantities” of chemical weapons, and were prepared to use them against civilians, to blame on the Syrian government. 
• In early August 2013, moderate FSA terrorists — including criminals from Qatar’s al Jazeera — raided villages in Lattakia, slaughtering men, and kidnapping women and their children. Some of the abductees were identified by their corpses shown after the terrorist chemical attack in al Ghouta, 21 August 2013. Terrorists later complained that they did not know that the missiles from al Saud contained chemical agents, that Prince Bandar should have sent instructions on how to use them.
• The world stood on edge as Obama and other western supremacists considered the obliteration of the S. A. R., because Western-supported terrorists had used chemical weapons. Syria acceded to the CWC on 14 October 2013.
• The UN-OPCW held several meetings high-fiving each other for the speed at which Syria’s CWs were collected and obliterated (some photos, here.). Nobody mentioned that the UN-OPCW came under missile fire via Madman Erdogan, though, while at the Lattakia port — daintily described as “volatile security conditions” in the 4 June 2014 UN news report on OPCW-UN Special Coordinator Sigrid Kaag’s address to the Security Council.
• Secretary of State John Kerry — whose ‘slip of the tongue‘ opened the door to Syria joining the CWC to avoid being Libyanized — told Meet the Press in 2014: “We struck a deal where we got 100 percent of the chemical weapons out.” 
• As literature has taught us there is no good outcome to making a deal with the devil (the best possible outcome is a regrouping during postponement– in this case, western supremacists — the P3-headed demon lead by Trump, bombed Syria on 7 April 2017 because a Brit illegal whose medical license was permanently revoked, told CNN that Syria had bombed Syria with chemical weapons. Almost one year later, the tripartite war criminals again bombed Syria, based on the lies of malignant sociopaths in Douma, who kidnap, murder, and one who somehow was in possession of a Syrian woman’s dead fetus.

How did a White Helmet come into possession of a dead fetus & why does this pervert play with the body?

On 20 January 2020, an Arria Formula meeting was held on Douma, because the NATO supremacists refused to give a Security Council audience to the OPCW’s own Ian Henderson, who led the investigations (Syria News reminds our readers that the SAR immediately requested an investigation by UN-OPCW, and that the investigations were postponed after members came under sniper fire by the same terrorists who had slaughtered dozens of Syrians in Douma, uploaded what should have been recognized as their crimes, to social media, while screaming ‘chemical weapons.’). This was the same SC that refused to hear Jose Bustani in October 2020, on the pretense that he had not participated in the investigations, after which the OPCW censored people with questions, but limiting comments to its Twitter account, to the insider elite tagees.

OPCW has sold itself to NATO warmongers & functions as press liaison for al Qaeda in Syria.

Upon digesting the above, it comes as no surprise that the tripartite aggressor UN representatives — speaking for the world’s leaders in genocide, colonialism, and all other forms of supremacy — were the unified, barking rabid dogs of war, unabashedly unashamed by their hypocrisy and arrogance. The UK — the country whose Tony Blair has not only never been indicted for his war crimes involving his WMD lies about Iraq — lied that “Syria’s declaration…can still not be considered accurate & complete.” France — which never forgave Syria for ejecting French occupiers — again announced its support of al Qaeda in the SAR, functioning as press liaison to terrorists of Ghouta, Khan Sheikhoun, Ltamenah, Douma. The US — which released al Baghdadi from an Iraqi jail and sent him to Jordan with a $10,000,000 slush fund to train DAESH savages — demanded Syria to be held accountable for the terror inflicted on the country by the degenerate criminals it has trained, armed, and deployed into the country.

Utilizing his unique and uncanny skill of throwing those proverbial pearls before swine while maintaining the protocol of true diplomatic language, Dr. Jaafari again meticulously explained reality to the P3 NATO klan supremacists — and to their dancing House Servants — that Syria joined the OPCW 2013, that Syria relinquished all of its chemical weapons stockpile, that Syria has engaged in full cooperation with the OPCW.

Nonetheless, the barking hyenas continue to use these bad infinity “chemical files” as another criminal weapon — “political blackmail” — in the criminal foreign war imposed upon his country.https://www.youtube.com/embed/ky6yXqXSlRg?start=2&feature=oembed

Syria News reminds our readers that on 22 November. Syria’s President Dr. Bashar al Assad appointed Dr. Jaafari as Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister.

Though it was beginning to look as though His Excellency, Minister Dr. Jaafari were to give new meaning to Permanent Representative, this 3 February address to the NATO junta supremacists ruling the United Nations, was his final act of pearl-throwing.

— Miri Wood

Postscript:

Due to circumstances beyond her control, the author was unable to issue this essential report at an earlier time.

Dr. Jaafari took his oath of office on 14 February.

Foreign and Expatriates Minister Faisal Mekdad attends Dr. Jaafari’s swearing in, by President Assad, 14 February.

Recommended reading:

Syria’s Jaafari to UNSC NATO Klan: Let My People Breathe

https://syrianews.cc/syria-jaafari-to-unsc-nato-klan-let-my-people-breathe/embed/#?secret=IasWRsHfCX

Kurd SDF Official Defects and Exposes the Group’s Relationship with ISIS

https://syrianews.cc/kurd-sdf-official-defects-and-exposes-the-groups-relationship-with-isis/embed/#?secret=jHkMXVsMLR

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Why U.S. Must Be Prosecuted for Its War Crimes Against Iraq

May 16, 2020

by Eric Zuesse  for The Saker Blog

The reason why the U.S. Government must be prosecuted for its war-crimes against Iraq is that they are so horrific and there are so many of them, and international law crumbles until they become prosecuted and severely punished for what they did. We therefore now have internationally a lawless world (or “World Order”) in which “Might makes right,” and in which there is really no effective international law, at all. This is merely gangster “law,” ruling on an international level. It is what Hitler and his Axis of fascist imperialists had imposed upon the world until the Allies — U.S. under FDR, UK under Churchill, and U.S.S.R. under Stalin — defeated it, and established the United Nations. Furthermore, America’s leaders deceived the American public into perpetrating this invasion and occupation, of a foreign country (Iraq) that had never threatened the United States; and, so, this invasion and subsequent military occupation constitutes the very epitome of “aggressive war” — unwarranted and illegal international aggression. (Hitler, similarly to George W. Bush, would never have been able to obtain the support of his people to invade if he had not lied, or “deceived,” them, into invading and militarily occupying foreign countries that had never threatened Germany, such as Belgium, Poland and Czechoslovakia. This — Hitler’s lie-based aggressions — was the core of what the Nazis were hung for, and yet America now does it.)

As Peter Dyer wrote in 2006, about “Iraq & the Nuremberg Precedent”:

Invoking the precedent set by the United States and its allies at the Nuremberg trial in 1946, there can be no doubt that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a war of aggression. There was no imminent threat to U.S. security nor to the security of the world. The invasion violated the U.N. Charter as well as U.N. Security Council Resolution #1441.

The Nuremberg precedent calls for no less than the arrest and prosecution of those individuals responsible for the invasion of Iraq, beginning with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleez[z]a Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.

Take, for example, Condoleezza Rice, who famously warned “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” (That warning was one of the most effective lies in order to deceive the American public into invading Iraq, because President Bush had had no real evidence, at all, that there still remained any WMD in Iraq after the U.N. had destroyed them all, and left Iraq in 1998 — and he knew this; he was informed of this; he knew that he had no real evidence, at all: he offered none; it was all mere lies.)

So, the Nuremberg precedent definitely does apply against George W, Bush and his partners-in-crime, just as it did against Hitler and his henchmen and allies.

The seriousness of this international war crime is not as severe as those of the Nazis were, but nonetheless is comparable to it.

On 15 March 2018, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies headlined at Alternet “The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq” and wrote that “our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion,” and linked to solid evidence, backing up their estimate.

On 6 February 2020, BusinessInsider bannered “US taxpayers have reportedly paid an average of $8,000 each and over $2 trillion total for the Iraq war alone”, and linked to the academic analysis that supported this estimate. The U.S. regime’s invasive war, which the Bush gang perpetrated against Iraq, was also a crime against the American people (though Iraqis suffered far more from it than we did).

On 29 September 2015, I headlined “GALLUP: ‘Iraqis Are the Saddest & One of the Angriest Populations in the World’,” and linked to Gallup’s survey of 1,000 individuals in each of 148 countries around the world, which found that Iraq had the highest “Negative Experience Score.” That score includes “sadness,” “physical pain,” “anger,” and other types of misery — and Iraq, after America’s invasion, has scored the highest in the entire world, on it, and in the following years has likewise scored at or near the highest on “Negative Experience Score.” For example: in the latest, the 2019, Gallup “Global Emotions Report”, Iraq scores fourth from the top on “Negative Experience Score,” after (in order from the worst) Chad, Niger, and Sierra Leone. (Gallup has been doing these surveys ever since 2005, but the first one that was published under that title was the 2015 report, which summarized the 2014 surveys’ findings.) Of course, prior to America’s invasion, there had been America’s 1990 war against Iraq and the U.S. regime’s leadership and imposition of U.N. sanctions (which likewise were based largely on U.S.-regime-backed lies, though not totally on lies like the 2003 invasion was), which caused massive misery in that country; and, therefore, not all of the misery in Iraq which showed up in the 2015 Global Emotions Report was due to only the 2003 invasion and subsequent military occupation of that country. But almost all of it was, and is. And all of it was based on America’s rulers lying to the public in order to win the public’s acceptance of their evil plans and invasions against a country that had never posed any threat whatsoever to Americans — people residing in America. Furthermore, it is also perhaps relevant that the 2012 “World Happiness Report” shows Iraq at the very bottom of the list of countries (on page 55 of that report) regarding “Average Net Affect by Country,” meaning that Iraqis were the most zombified of all 156 nationalities surveyed. Other traumatized countries were immediately above Iraq on that list. On “Average Negative Affect,” only “Palestinian Territories” scored higher than Iraq (page 52). After America’s invasion based entirely on lies, Iraq is a wrecked country, which still remains under the U.S. regime’s boot, as the following will document:

Bush’s successors, Obama and Trump, failed to press for Bush’s trial on these vast crimes, even though the American people had ourselves become enormously victimized by them, though far less so than Iraqis were. Instead, Bush’s successors have become accessories after the fact, by this failure to press for prosecution of him and his henchmen regarding this grave matter. In fact, the “Defense One” site bannered on 26 September 2018, “US Official: We May Cut Support for Iraq If New Government Seats Pro-Iran Politicians”, and opened with “The Trump administration may decrease U.S. military support or other assistance to Iraq if its new government puts Iranian-aligned politicians in any ‘significant positions of responsibility,’ a senior administration official told reporters late last week.” The way that the U.S. regime has brought ‘democracy’ to Iraq is by threatening to withdraw its protection of the stooge-rulers that it had helped to place into power there, unless those stooges do the U.S. dictators’ bidding, against Iraq’s neighbor Iran. This specific American dictator, Trump, is demanding that majority-Shiite Iraq be run by stooges who favor, instead, America’s fundamentalist-Sunni allies, such as the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia and who hate and loathe Shiites and Iran. The U.S. dictatorship insists that Iraq, which the U.S. conquered, serve America’s anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian policy-objectives. “The U.S. threat, to withhold aid if Iran-aligned politicians occupy any ministerial position, is an escalation of Washington’s demands on Baghdad.” The article went on to quote a “senior administration official” as asserting that, “if Iran exerts a tremendous amount of influence, or a significant amount of influence over the Iraqi government, it’s going to be difficult for us to continue to invest.” Get the euphemisms there! This article said that “the Trump administration has made constraining Iran’s influence in the region a cornerstone of their foreign policy.” So, this hostility toward Iran must be reflected in Iraq’s policies, too. It’s not enough that Trump wants to destroy Iran like Bush has destroyed Iraq; Trump demands that Iraq participate in that crime, against Iraq’s own neighbor. This article said that, “There have also been protests against ‘U.S. meddling’ in the formation of a new Iraqi government, singling out Special Presidential Envoy Brett McGurk for working to prevent parties close to Iran from obtaining power.” McGurk is the rabidly neconservative former high G.W. Bush Administration official, and higher Obama Administration official, who remained as Trump’s top official on his policy to force Iraq to cooperate with America’s efforts to conquer Iran. Trump’s evil is Obama’s evil, and is Bush’s evil. It is bipartisan evil, no matter which Party is in power. Though Trump doesn’t like either the Bushes or Obamas, all of them are in the same evil policy-boat. America’s Deep State remains the same, no matter whom it places into the position of nominal power. The regime remains the same, regardless.

On April 29th, the whistleblowing former UK Ambassador Craig Murray wrote:

Nobody knows how many people died as a result of the UK/US Coalition of Death led destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and, by proxy, Syria and Yemen. Nobody even knows how many people western forces themselves killed directly. That is a huge number, but still under 10% of the total. To add to that you have to add those who died in subsequent conflict engendered by the forced dismantling of the state the West disapproved of. Some were killed by western proxies, some by anti-western forces, and some just by those reverting to ancient tribal hostility and battle for resources into which the country had been regressed by bombing.

You then have to add all those who died directly as a result of the destruction of national infrastructure. Iraq lost in the destruction 60% of its potable drinking water, 75% of its medical facilities and 80% of its electricity. This caused millions of deaths, as did displacement. We are only of course talking about deaths, not maiming.

UK’s Prime Minister Tony Blair should hang with the U.S. gang, but who is calling for this? How much longer will the necessary prosecutions wait? Till after these international war-criminals have all gone honored to their graves?

Although the International Criminal Court considered and dismissed possible criminal charges against Tony Blair’s UK Government regarding the invasion and military occupation of Iraq, the actual crime, of invading and militarily occupying a country which had posed no threat to the national security of the invader, was ignored, and the conclusion was that “the situation did not appear to meet the required threshold of the Statute” (which was only “Willful killing or inhuman treatment of civilians” and which ignored the real crime, which was “aggressive war” or “the crime of aggression” — the crime for which Nazis had been hanged at Nuremberg). Furthermore, no charges whatsoever against the U.S. Government (the world’s most frequent and most heinous violator of international law) were considered. In other words: the International Criminal Court is subordinate to, instead of applicable to, the U.S. regime. Just like Adolf Hitler had repeatedly made clear that, to him, all nations except Germany were dispensable and only Germany wasn’t, Barack Obama repeatedly said that “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”, which likewise means that every other nation is “dispensable.” The criminal International Criminal Court accepts this, and yet expects to be respected.

The U.S. regime did “regime change” to Iraq in 2003, and to Ukraine in 2014, and tried to do it to Syria since 2009, and to Yemen since 2015, and to Venezuela since 2012, and to Iran since 2017 — just to mention some of the examples. And, though the Nuremberg precedent certainly applies, it’s not enforced. In principle, then, Hitler has posthumously won WW II.

Hitler must be smiling, now. FDR must be rolling in his grave.

The only way to address this problem, if there won’t be prosecutions against the ‘duly elected’ (Deep-State-approved and enabled) national leaders and appointees, would be governmental seizure and nationalization of the assets that are outright owned or else controlled by America’s Deep State. Ultimately, the Government-officials who are s‘elected’ and appointed to run the American Government have been and are representing not the American people but instead represent the billionaires who fund those officials’ and former officials’ careers. In a democracy, those individuals — the financial enablers of those politicians’ s‘electoral’ success — would be dispossessed of all their assets, and then prosecuted for the crimes that were perpetrated by the public officials whom they had participated in (significantly funded and propagandized for) placing into power. (For example, both Parties’ Presidential nominees are unqualified to serve in any public office in a democracy.)

Democracy cannot function with a systematically lied-to public. Nor can it function if the responsible governmental officials are effectively immune from prosecution for their ‘legal’ crimes, or if the financial string-pullers behind the scenes can safely pull those strings. In America right now, both of those conditions pertain, and, as a result, democracy is impossible. There are only two ways to address this problem, and one of them would start by prosecuting George W. Bush.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

الشعب العراقي في مواجهة دولة «بريمر»

يناير 6, 2020

د. وفيق إبراهيم

للمرة الأولى منذ الاحتلال الأميركي للعراق في 2003، يتكشف ان الدولة التي ضغط لإنشائها المندوب الأميركي “بريمر”، هي مجرد آلية شكلية مصابة بعطل بنيوي بالولادة وغير قابل للاصلاح او المعالجة.

لقد بذل الأميركيون جهوداً جبارة لبناء دولة عراقية تشبه النماذج الكونفدرالية التي يحتاج أي قرار فيها لموافقات كبيرة من المؤسسات الدستورية وتتطلب في البعض تأييداً يفوق الثلثين في مجالسها النيابية وحكوماتها ورؤساء بلدياتها. وهذا يعني استحالة صدور أي قرار إلا بالاتفاق المسبق والعميق بين قادة المذاهب والقوميات بما يؤكد عجز هذا النوع من الدول الاتفاق على القرارات الوطنية الكبرى. وهذا يعني شللاً في إنتاج المواقف التاريخية الكبرى مع الميل الى المساومات بين القوى السياسية للتحاصص الداخلي فقط، في الوظائف والأموال العامة والتعيينات.

هذا حال العراق الذي اجتاحه الأميركيون قبل سبعة عشر عاماً من دون إذن أممي متذرعين بوجود اسلحة دمار شامل على اراضيه، فقضوا على نظام صدام حسين سافكين دماء مئات آلاف العراقيين ومؤسسين هذه الدولة الضعيفة التي فرضوا عليها بموجب سيطرتهم على موازنات القوى، توقيع معاهدة تجعل احتلالهم شرعياً للعام 2011، فانتهت هذه المهلة ولم يخرجوا إلى أن اكتشفت دولة “بريمر” العراقية الحل الناجع فأجبرت حكومة العراق على توقيع اتفاق جديد يسمح للقوات الأميركية بالبقاء لتدريب القوات العراقية ورفدها باستشارات ونصائح في اوقات المحن.

ضمن هذا السيناريو الدقيق عمل الأميركيون على السيطرة على الجيش العراقي ومجمل القوى الأمنية، ولم يكتفوا بذلك، ساعين الى التفتيت بمستويات متعددة: سياسي طائفي وآخر داخل كل قوة مذهبية بمفردها، وثالث قومي وعرقي، وذلك لصنع المزيد من الفرقة بين الكتل السياسية الشيعية والسنية من جهة والشيعية الشيعية والسنية السنية من جهة أخرى مع خلافات عربية كردية مشجعين الإرهاب على قتل المسيحيين والايزيديين ما أحدث خللاً سياسياً وطنياً ادى الى اضعاف الأقوياء والأقل قوة في آن معاً حتى بدا أن القوى الوحيدة هو ذلك الأميركي المتحكم بمفاصل القوة، فهو محتل ومستشار وسياسي وإعلامي يلعب على نيران الفتنة الداخلية ولص يسرق نفط كردستان وكركوك ويسوّقه في تركيا، بما يؤدي الى انتفاع ثلاثي في هذه الثروة العراقية: آل البرزاني المتحكمون بالسلطة في كردستان واردوغان البراغماتي الذي لا يريد دولة كردية، لكنه يأكل من نفطها، والأميركيون أصحاب الرعاية والتنسيق الذين يحمون مقابل حصة من نفط العراق.

بشكل يشابه ما يفعلونه دائماً مع الإمارات والسعودية وقطر والكويت أي: ادفع تسلم.

كما ذهبوا في مناطق الوسط الى حدود دعم كل التيارات الانفصالية والعشائر مستعينين بخدمات الأحزاب الإسلاموية الموالية لتركيا، وادوار السعودية والإمارات في التأثير على عشائر الأنبار وبعض احزاب الوسط عبر تزخيم شعار العداء لإيران وتصوير العراق على أنه ساحة للنفوذ الفارسي المجوسي كما تقول إشاعاتهم اليومية.

ولم ينسوا جذب بعض القوى الشيعية التي تريد الإمساك بالحكم على غرار سائرون جماعة مقتدى الصدر وطموحات عراقيين شيعة آخرين، مستعدين لبيع سراويلهم مقابل رئاسة الحكومة.

فأمسك الأميركيون بهذه الطريقة بالكثير من الأحزاب في كردستان والوسط والكلدان والصابئة والايزيديين وبعض قوى الجنوب والعاصمة.

بذلك استطاعت دولة “بريمر” لعب دور مرجعية لا يمكن لأي قرار وطني ان يعبر إلا بإذنها، واداء دور المنظم للأحجام والحائل دون وصول قوة الى درجة تستطيع فيها إلغاء الآخر.

انها اذاً دولة مشلولة وعاجزة تراقب “بصمت العاجزين” ولادة مشروع سياسي أميركي جديد يريد تحويل العراق الى جدران تمنع تطوير العلاقات التنسيقية مع سورية وتلغي أي دور سياسي او اقتصادي لحدودها مع إيران، ولو استطاعت إلغاء انظمة الزيارات الدينية لمراقد الأولياء والأئمة بين العراق وايران لما تلكأت لحظة واحدة.

لذلك يذهب الجنون الأميركي هذه المرة الى حدود اغتيال قائدين أمنيين من الدرجة الاولى، أحدهما رجل أمن إقليمي تاريخي له مكانة متقدّمة في محور المقاومة في لبنان وسورية والعراق وإيران واليمن وفلسطين، والشهيد الثاني نائب رئيس الحشد الشعبي في مواجهة الأميركيين.

هذا إذاً اغتيال له أبعاد سياسية عراقية لكن جغرافيته العراقية تتطلب رداً سياسياً حازماً من الدولة العراقية اولاً، ولن تستطيع التقدم بشكوى لمجلس الامن الدولي بسبب الفراغ السياسي في المؤسسات الدستورية، فبرهم هارب الى باكستان والحلبوسي صاحب الآراء الرمادية وعاد عبد المهدي المستقيل الذي لم يعد باستطاعته حتى جمع وزراء من حكومته. هذا الى جانب أن حكومة تصريف الأعمال الحالية لا قدرة قانونية لديها على إنتاج موقف وطني.

فهل يعجز العراق عن تأمين بديل من مؤسساته الدستورية المشلولة؟

إنه الشعب العراقي بكامل أطيافه الذي ملأ بغداد والنجف بالملايين المستنكرين لاغتيال القائدين. هي الآلية الشجاعة وعلى رأسها مفتي السنة والشيعة المنلا الذي يجهر مطالباً بإخراج الأميركيين. هؤلاء هم القادرون على إصدار فتوى شعبية تعلن انتهاء مفاعيل كل المعاهدات والاتفاقات مع الأميركيين على أساس حظر كامل لأي تفاعل مع القواعد العسكرية الأميركية ومعاملتها كمراكز تنتهك سيادة العراق وصولاً الى حدود إعلان الكفاح الشعبي لطرد هذا الاستعماري.

المطلوب إذاً أن يلعب الشعب العراقي دوراً في إعادة بناء عراق داخلي موحّد وعراق إقليمي قادر على التنسيق مع سورية لبناء أقوى معادلة ممكنة منذ سقوط النظام العربي القديم على يد الرئيس المصري السادات في 1979.

فهل يتحوّل الاغتيال الأميركي للشهيدين الى مناسبة لطرد الأميركيين من العراق وسورية؟هذا ممكن بالقوة الشعبية وحلف المقاومة ورفع شعار يقوم على المساواة بين الشعوب في سورية والعراق ولبنان وفلسطين على أساس المساواة في السياسة والاقتصادي والاجتماع بمنأى عن التباين الديني والعرقي، لذلك فالمأزوم اليوم هم الأميركيون الذين يفقدون آخر أوراقهم في المنطقة بما يبشر بفجر جديد لشعوب مضطهدة منذ ألف عام وأكثر.

21st Century Wire YEAR IN REVIEW: 2019 Top Ten (Real) Conspiracies

21st Century Wire

It’s New Year’s Eve again, which means it’s time for our annual wrap-up, looking at some of the most important and unusual, and dare we say conspiratorial events of 2019. This past year was built on the back of a highly polarizing 2018, which saw the post-World War II world order coming apart at the seams, and the 20th century religions of neoliberalism and globalization being relegated to the ideological depths in the face of an evolving nationalist and mercantilist Anglo-American-dominated transatlantic order. Following on from 2018, this year saw the collapse of the seemingly sacrosanct ‘official conspiracy theory’ narratives of improbable ‘chemical attacks’ like Skripal in the UK, and Douma in Syria, both of which had profound geopolitical ramifications at the time. These are just a few stories which helped to shape the zeitgeist this past year. If 2019 taught us anything, it’s that conspiracies are real…

There were a number of honorable mentions this past year which would have normally been good enough to break into the top ten in previous years, but not this time…

Honorable Mentioned Highlights – One event which would’ve normally made it into the top ten, but didn’t, was President Trump’s grand decree in October that he would be “pulling US troops out of Syria” – only this was the third time he made such an announcement in the past 24 months, and just like the previous ones, this one was another bait and switch. To compensate for leaving US forces to illegally occupy Syria’s own oil fields, Trump was able to ‘close the file’ on alleged ISIS leader Abu Bakar Al-Baghdadi. We’re told that the illusive Caliph was supposedly chased-down, “whimpering and crying,” by a US military German Shepherd in a dead-end underground tunnel in Idlib. Of course, we’ll never know what actually happened because the US military proceeded to level the compound with an airstrike, thus destroying any evidence. Other official conspiracy theories of note included the untimely death of British mercenary entrepreneur, James Le Mesurier, who was founder of the controversial White Helmets ‘search and rescue’ group. After his death, ruled a likely suicide under the influence of medication (falling from his balcony while his wife was sleeping in the adjacent room) by Istanbul police, Le Mesurier’s defenders in mainstream media and intelligence agencies began blaming his death on members of public, journalists and academics who had either questioned or criticized Le Mesurier and the nature of US and UK-backed White Helmets operations alongside listed terrorist organizations in Syria. On a related geopolitical front, Iran featured heavily in what some dubbed as the Tanker Wars in 2019, which included a series of unidentified attacks on western and Gulf flagged oil tankers traveling in the Persian Gulf. Naturally, these were blamed on Iran by the US, and were followed by the British military hijacking and seizing an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar and preventing it from delivering fuel to the sanctions-hit economy of Syria. It seemed the West was testing various mechanisms to trigger a war with Iran, maybe hoping for an irrational response which never came. The US also baited the Iranians by flying in its airspace with their $150 million Globalhawk drone, which Iran shot down with their $12,000 anti-aircraft unit. Tensions remain high. 2018’s “Antisemitism in the Labour Party” canard was ramped-up and weaponized in 2019 to form part of an all-out establishment propaganda effort to reduce electoral support for Britain’s Labour Party in the run-up to the General Election. Sadly, it worked, but the political assassination of Jeremy Corbyn will go down in history as one of the darkest political acts ever, perpetrated by a shrewd coalition that included the Israeli Lobby, the Conservative Party, the Tony Blair wing of the Labour Party, and the mainstream media. Other honorable mentions for 2019 may include Brussels moving ever-closer to finalizing its new “EU Army”, aka EU Defense Union, something which Tories happily avoided talking about before the last election, possibly because they have quietly committed to opt-in to the new defense arrangement – even if there’s a Brexit. In Asia, the western press began ramping-up the human rights rhetoric in order to condemn China for its treatment of Muslim ethnic minority Uyghurs in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, claiming China has interned millions of Uyghurs in cruel concentration camps. But the US seems to be taking a leaf from China’s authoritarian book, as Silicon Valley’s Kafkaesque political censorship and de-platforming program reach new highs in 2019, and looks set to continue in 2020 with the US elections. Twitter was also exposed as employing Saudi spies to dig up dirt on critics of the regime, as well as British spooks from Brigade 77 information warfare unit embedded at the tech firm too. Late in the year, the US also saw a bizarre mass shooting by a ‘rogue’ Saudi pilot training at the US base there, which was quietly swept under the rug by US officials. Around the same time, we saw yet another alleged ‘ISIS inspired’ terror attack on London Bridge – a quintessential Daily Shooter event if there ever was one, featuring another known wolf, on the radar of intelligence, wearing a tag, and even attending a ‘prisoner reform’ conference next door. Unfortunately the perp won’t be interrogated because he was executed on the city pavement before anyone could get to the bottom of what happened, and more importantly, why. Shades of Jean Charles de Menezes, and so many others by now.

One important thing to consider about 2019 is the slow motion break-down of all the western establishment’s official Russian conspiracy theories, all of which have featured so heavily in American and European politics since 2014. In other words, this worn-out framework has all but collapsed, but that won’t stop the usual media maven and political opportunists from still flogging that old horse.

With that in mind, here are some of the absolute blockbuster top real conspiracies of 2018…

10. Hong Kong’s ‘Democracy’ Protests – Hong Kong ends 2019 with more ‘democracy’ protests, supposedly disrupting normal festivities and shopping in China’s unique financial hub. Both US Democrats and Republicans gushed over protest leader Joshua Wong, flying him to Washington for photo-ops with Nancy Pelosi and Marco Rubio. However, it soon became known that the US government was actually directing and funding this supposed ‘grass roots uprising’ in China’s troubled territory. The US mainstream media then spun a propaganda campaign to try and paint the Chinese police in Hong Kong as ‘brutal’ and ‘repressive’, when in fact they were the opposite. Then evidence began to emerge showing extreme violence being used by the US-backed protest mobs, where Wong’s masked foot soldiers could be seen beating innocent passers-by, and even attacking elderly residents as well. ‘Pro-Democracy’ violence featured one particularly grisly attempted murder of multiple Hong Kong residents, including State Department-backed ‘freedom demonstrators’ who set a man on fire, attempting to burn him alive on the street. This push to demonize China can be viewed as part of the new US focus to disrupt and damage China’s reputation internationally as it attempts to forge ahead with its world-beating Belt and Road Initiative. Of course, the US is not taking China’s ascendancy lying down, but by the same token, fielding street thugs on the streets of Hong Kong may not net any long-term dividends, other than anger China and re-polarize the Pacific Rim. Maybe, that’s the plan.

9. Reconquista: Washington’s Take-down of South America – In 2019, Washington began turning back the clock to CIA’s golden years of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, where democratically Latin American governments were toppled one by one, and replaced by US-installed fascists and military juntas. The year started off with a bang, as the US State Department and its various operatives, over the span of three months, attempted no less than three failed coups in Venezuela. They even wheeled-out Jurassic neocon Elliot Abrams from the basement of Foggy Bottom to see if he had any of his 1980’s dark clandestine magic left in him. But the public support of the government of Nicholas Maduro was much stronger than the policy maven and spooks in Washington had anticipated. Comically, Neocons even went so far as to appoint their own President for Venezuela, a marionette named Juan Guaidó, which half of Venezuela hadn’t even heard of. A year on, the entire escapade has become a joke. Not surprisingly, a humiliated Trump Administration has quietly backed off of Venezuela, opting instead to continue sanctioning its economy, shorting its currency, stealing its foreign assets – all in all, punishing its citizens for rejecting a hostile US takeover. But Washington had better luck in Bolivia where a US-backed ultra rightwing fascist column was used in violent street protests demanding the removal of democratically elected President Evo Morales. To pull off the final move, the US had effectively bought off the country’s military and police forces who were used to depose Evo – in classic 1960’s CIA style. Evo was forced to flee his own country to Mexico, as US-backed mobs ransacked his home, and began hunting down and intimidating his political allies. That’s freedom and democracy, American style.

8. Yemeni Drones & Saudi Aramco – In September, an incredible underdog event took place. After nearly five years of a relentless war being waged against Yemen by its neighbor Saudi Arabia along with accomplices the United States, UK and the UAE – Yemen struck back, with its Houthi Resistance fighters launching a makeshift drone attack hitting two major Saudi Aramco oil installations across the border. Even though the Houthi Rebels immediately claimed responsibility for the assault on Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil processing plant, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo immediately rejected the claim, and instead the US and Saudi invented a new official conspiracy theory which blamed Iran, accusing the regional rival of having “now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.” Saudi put on an legendary TV press performance to show the world the ‘evidence’ it had of drone fragments, supposedly implicating Iran. They hoped this could raise tensions enough to justify military action against Iran. “There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen,” said Pompeo on Twitter. In the end, this intricate conspiracy theory spun by Washington simply fizzled out due to a lack of evidence to support their tenuous claim. As with its embarrassing failure in Venezuela, Washington just backed off quietly, and hoped no one would talk about it any more. What this incident really showed was that under-equipped, under-funded, and fully embargoed Yemen – could deliver a fatal blow inside of Saudi Arabia, and influence world energy markets by doing so. Make no mistake about it: Saudi and the US have been put on notice in Yemen.

7. Mueller and the Collapse of RussiaGate – Remember the official conspiracy theory pushed by the US establishment – that Russia somehow intervened in the 2016 US Presidential Election on behalf of Donald Trump, thus catapulting him into the White House? This past spring, the hysteria and excitement reached such a fever pitch, that Robert Mueller was canonized as the new patron saint of the Resistance movement. But it was a house of cards. Well after three long and torturous years, in an big top circus featuring 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants and staff assigned to investigate, more than 2,800 subpoenas issued by the Special Counsel Mueller’s office, some 500 search warrants executed, more than 230 orders for communication records, 50 authorized orders (lets the government know who someone is communicating with and when, but not what they said), 13 evidence requests to foreign governments, 500 witnesses interviewed, well over $30 million taxpayer costs… the much-anticipated Mueller Report and investigation found no evidence that Trump had conspired with Russia. No collusion, and no election ‘interference’ by Russia. Nothing. RussiaGate R.I.P.

It should go down in history as one of the biggest phony official conspiracy theories of all-time. During his own testimony, the vaunted former FBI director Mueller came off as an incompetent old crank. The entire affair was a disaster for Democrats and their loyal mainstream media networks, all of whom had relentlessly hyped this conspiracy for years. In the end, this epic dud can only help Trump in his 2020 re-election bid. Let that sink in for a minute…

6. UkraineGate and Trump’s Impeachment – Alas, the death of RussiaGate gave way to a brand new gate… UkraineGate, and with it came that impeachment hammer which Democrats had been promising from before Trump was even sworn in office. Suddenly, Trump was facing the most perilous threat to a tenure of POTUS since Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson before that – all because of a telephone call on July 25th (the day after Robert Mueller tanked with his disastrous congressional testimony) with Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenksy. According to House Democrats, during the call, Trump threatened Zelensky with withholding a free donation of US weapons to Ukraine unless the Ukrainian president re-opened a corruption investigation into 2016 US election meddling under the previous President Poroshenko, and more importantly the activities former vice-president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. According to lead inquisitor Adam Schiff (CA-D), someone told someone about the call, who then told a “whistleblower” (a CIA analyst and friend of Obama and the Bidens) about it, who then then filed a complaint. In the end, Ukraine got its free stash of US missiles as ordered, but Democrats claimed Trump abused his power by asking for a “Quid Pro Quo” that somehow placed the national security of the US in grave danger, and that Trump tried to railroad a political opponent (Joe Biden is supposedly the DNC’s pre-determined selection for presidential nominee) by asking a foreign power to investigate him and his son, all of which they say rises to the level of “high crimes” by Trump. When asked, even Zelensky said there was no quid pro quo. This hardly mattered, as the verdict was already written before the hearings. Another grand official conspiracy theory cooked up by the establishment? Seems so. So shaky are Democrats about their case, that House leader Nancy Pelosi has failed to send her Articles of Impeachment before Christmas to the US Senate for the next step which is an Impeachment trial. This kicks the whole affair into the new year, and with poll numbers steadily rising against Democrat’s impeachment misadventure, it does not look good at all for Democrats heading into the 2020 election.

5. Greta – On paper, it sounded like the stuff of Hollywood: a 15-year-old Swedish student started a school strike for ‘the climate’ outside the Swedish Parliament, and her campaign went viral around the globe, and a new youth climate change movement was born. Incredible. Inspiring. Al Gore and associates were over the moon; their Joan of Arc had finally arrived to help save the planet. Time Magazine even named her “Person of the Year” in 2019. But on closer examination, the rise of Greta Thunberg was anything but grassroots. From the very first day, her campaign was driven by a multi-million dollar public relations machine that includes dozens of NGOs and media outlets, foundations and trusts, as part of an environmental astroturf extravaganza, the likes of which we’ve never seen. The practice is known as greenwashing – and in this case, Wall Street and City hedge funds, as well as a gaggle of foundations and NGOs – all hoping to capitalize on the new green bubble, and all determined to use this young child as their political battering ram to drive home an international ‘climate’ agenda. Greta gained headlines after scolding the public with her angry prose, “How dare you!” scowled the angry Swede at the infamous UN panel. “You have stolen my dreams!” railed the youngster to a room full of jovial stakeholders (while putting on an injured voice, reading off the script provided to her by a team of handlers). Their ‘climate emergency’ narrative is based on the theory that man-made CO2 is heating up the Earth’s atmosphere which will cause seas levels to rise and cause the “sixth mass extinction.” However, real data actually indicates that the Earth is heading into a cooling phase and that any changes in climate have nothing to do with man-made activity, but rather from the sun’s activity. Both sides of the debate do not appear to be budging, but the cooling camp seems to have real data in its favor, while the warmists seem to be relying heavily theory and computer-modeled climate predictions – programmed by scientists eager to show that man-made global warming is a real phenomenon. In the end, this unsuspecting child is being used by a cynical class of millionaires and billionaires, clearly stoking-up a generational culture war, with angry middle class youth demanding that western governments ‘unlock’, or rather rob trillions from existing pension funds in order to finance the bold dream of a ‘Green New Deal’ and the promise of a green utopia – they just need you to give them some $51 trillion to fund various and sundry “green tech,” which activists are convinced can lower the earth’s temperature and stave off the inevitable extinction of the human race by 2030, or maybe 2050, or is it 2100? We’re actually not sure, but we promise it’s totally real. What could possibly go wrong?

4. Epstein – As horrendous as revelations of Jimmy Saville were for western high society, the chronicles of billionaire VIP sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein were more devastating by orders of magnitude. His exploits ensnared US President Bill Clinton, and high-flying lawyer Alan Dershowitz, along with a long list of high-ranking VIPs. The fallout didn’t spare the British Royal Family either, with Prince Andrew being cast out into social oblivion for his own role in the scandal. The more the story marinated, the more seedy it became. His was a story of one locked door after another, concealing the adjoining halls of a castle dark which can only be acquired by navigating the circles of extreme wealth and influence. Many believe this was part of a high level blackmail operation designed to create leverage over top decision makers in politics and industry. There are also indications that Epstein “belonged to intelligence,” although it’s not certain which agencies he may have been supplying information to. For his own part, Epstein’s story ended abruptly after he was reportedly unconscious in a federal jail cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center on Saturday August 10, 2019. The death was quickly ruled a “suicide by hanging.” Somehow, the CCTV camera footage appears to have gone missing. The guards, we’re told, were not on duty. “It was a horrible series of coincidences,” so says the official conspiracy theory of the highly unlikely death of Jeff Epstein in federal custody. He was awaiting a federal trial for charges of conspiracy and sex trafficking of underage girls dating back to the early 2000s. After his death, the trial was shelved. So it goes without saying that many ‘important’ and powerful people benefited from this outcome. His main accomplice is still at large, Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the late media tycoon and Israeli super spy, Robert Maxwell. Many of the female victims are now speaking out publicly. Will there be any justice? Certainly, the mainstream media appear disinterested in pursuing the criminal segues of this story. Or will it become another grand conspiracy for the ages, alongside JFK, RFK and MLK?

3. A Global Uprising? – In 2019, we saw major uprisings and popular mobilzations on the streets in France, in the Spanish province of Catalan, Chile, Colombia, Argentina, India, Lebanon, Iraq, Haiti, Sudan, Hong Kong, as well as protests building in Netherlands, Italy, and Germany. Many of experts are scratching their heads, asking ‘what does it all mean’? Are these event interconnected, or are they being driven by the same underlying social or economic forces? Many of these events appear to be genuine grassroots events. However, others quite clearly were being co-opted and fueled by foreign powers seeking to capitalize on any succession of power that might be occurring, as was the case with protests in Hong Kong, Iraq, Russia and certainly there was evidence of this in Lebanon, although not as blatant as in other locations. Regardless, this trend is real and potentially world-changing and cannot be ignored, as billions of people (many of them younger) around the globe begin to realize that 20th century stalwarts like neoliberal vudoo economics, savage capitalism, US dollar and IMF debt-based control of the developing world, along with US-led neocolonial foreign policy and endless ‘regime change’ wars – are simply no longer going to cut it going forward. It seems that this new generation won’t settle for business as usual any more. Look out…

2. The OPCW Leaks – Never has there been such a profound story which was being categorically denied and ignored by the entire mainstream press. This past year saw a series of leaks coming out of the UN appointed watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which reveal that the alleged ‘chemical attack’ which the West and MSM said took place in Douma, Syria on April 2018 – never actually happened. Which means that the US, UK and France launched a retaliatory strike against Syria on the basis of a well-orchestrated ‘false flag’ hoax. Worst yet, there is proof the OPCW perpetrated an internal cover-up of evidence which would’ve exonerated Damascus. Consider this as Iraq WMD 2.0, because the very same fraudulent practices and heavy-handed US tactics, along with total media acquiescence to the official conspiracy theory narrative – has happened again. Like with the Integrity Initiative leaks which broke in late 2018, the OPCW leaks have been dripping out, some via WikiLeaks, and it’s been death by a thousand cuts for the US, UK and NATO establishment, who’ve been caught not only tampering with an investigation of what was meant to be a neutral international watchdog group, but have summarily closed ranks in an information blackout, even though the scandal is there for the world to see (for those willing to look). The reason for their evasive action is now clear: when the Douma ‘chemical attack’ happened, it was the mainstream media who colluded with western governments, and who relied on US and Saudi-backed terrorists Jayash al-Islam and the White Helmets – all working hand-in-hand to spin-up the West’s official narrative that somehow “Assad had gassed his own people.” And the leaks are still ongoing. Will the media and bamboozled politicians ever address this scandal, or will they play the ostrich until it’s too late? Either way, their credibility is now shot.

1. The Capture of Julian Assange – In April, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested and bundled out of his safe haven in the Ecuadorian embassy after his asylum and citizenship were suddenly revoked by the host country – very clearly part of a coordinated conspiracy waged by the governments of the US, UK, Sweden and Ecuador – to prepare Assange for extradition to the US to face espionage charges by disingenuously re-framing Assange and WikiLeaks, a journalist and a publication – now as a “cyber terrorist” and a “hostile foreign intelligence service.” His removal from the embassy by British police was an act of extraordinary rendition. Despite interventions and rulings by multiple UN representatives, determined British authorities continue to hold Assange without charge in solitary confinement, and heavily sedated (by his own admission), inside of London’s Belmarsh super max prison. The UN’s has ruled that his detention constitutes torture. He is also unable to prepare for his US extradition hearing in February – one of the most important precedent cases, maybe in history, for the future of the freedom of the press. His legal team even requested for more time to submit evidence and postpone of the extradition hearing, but the fix was already in, and the judge flatly refuse to entertain any argument or admit Assange should no longer be held on remand without charge in high security confinement. With his physical and mental health deteriorating rapidly, there is a real risk now that Assange could even die in custody. How long can the supposed guardians of freedom and democracy in the West stand idle while this incredible injustice continues to unfold? Whatever your preferred outcome, the answers to these questions may come soon in the new year. Needless to say, many are hoping that the plutocracy in Washington and London come to their senses, and realize what a historic mistake they are making – and reverse course on this unprecedented judicial disaster.. 

What a wild year. Expect more of the same in 2020.

HAPPY NEW YEAR.

SEE PREVIOUS TOP TEN CONSPIRACIES:

2018 Top Ten Conspiracies

2017 Top Ten Conspiracies

2016 Top Ten Conspiracies

2015 Top Ten Conspiracies

2014 Top Ten Conspiracies

Trump’s Syria Missile Strike Was a Scandal

December 31, 2019

Peter HITCHENS

I suspect the Third World War will begin with a claimed atrocity — probably the use of poison gas by a ‘regime’ against ‘its own people’. Such things are now the favorite way to make wars where there was peace.

Border violations went out of fashion years ago. Invasions are illegal under the UN Charter. There are no Archdukes left to assassinate. ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ will forever evoke hollow laughter. But democracy needs a popular pretext for war, and righteous mass outrage about the inhumanity of the enemy is almost invariably effective.

This is why it is rather important that the people we trust to verify such claims are honest and trustworthy. For who will verify the verifiers? Ignore this little matter and we could obliterate the world by mistake, sooner than you think.

Hence this story of one of the least-covered major scandals of the moment. Apart from Tucker Carlson on his Fox show, no journalist in the United States has even touched it yet. Things are not that much better in Europe.

It begins on April 7, 2018, when social media, quickly followed by professional news organizations, began to spread harrowing reports of mass murder by gas in the Damascus suburb of Douma. Many deaths were reported. Urgent amateur films then appeared showing the dead, horrible to behold, some of them children, many foaming at the mouth. President Trump reacted swiftly, Tweeting ‘Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia, and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!’

In fact he did not wait for that verification. Within a week, the USA had showered Syria with missiles crammed with high explosives. France and Britain swallowed any doubts they may have had and added their own small salvoes, in the usual coalition of the sycophantic.

But then the problems began. It is actually illegal to bomb sovereign countries unless you have a clear justification. And nobody really knew what had happened in Douma. There were no independent Western sources there at the time of the alleged atrocity. They would have been killed or kidnapped if they had been, by the notoriously feral jihadi militia, Jaysh al Islam, which then held the area. The journalists who wrote so confidently about it were in no cases nearer than Beirut, 85 miles away. More of them were even more distant, in Istanbul, London and New York. The sources they quoted from the scene were unnamed and uncheckable. As for the films, there was no way of knowing for sure where they had been made, or how.

It is to resolve doubts such as this that most of the nations of the world — the USA among them — pay for the impartial verification services of Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). From its toadstool-shaped headquarters in The Hague, capital of the Netherlands, the OPCW sent a small team of experts. The jihadis were gone. The area was clear. They were able to get swift access.

By late June of that year they had compiled their report. It contained no smoking gun. Rather the opposite. There was no trace at all of sarin — despite the fact that the corpses in the films showed symptoms normally associated with that cruel gas. And there was about as much chlorine there as you might find in your kitchen. It was present only in trace elements, parts per billion, and in forms so common that it could have come from household bleach.

And then the scientists discovered that they had come up with the wrong answer. Diligent fair inquiry was not wanted at all. Thanks to a courageous whistleblower, who passed on the details, I and a small number of other journalists reported this week that a disgraceful thing happened inside the OPCW. A new report had been prepared for publication. It was a travesty of what the investigators had written. Their careful, impartial work had been trashed by persons or persons unknown. Their document had been slashed and censored to remove crucial information, especially that the traces of chlorine were tiny.

There were protests. In response, a group of three unidentified US officials appeared unexpectedly at the OPCW’s high-security building. According to one scientist present, these men simply told them that the Syrian regime had conducted a gas attack. Even after this, the struggle for truth went on. Senior officials eventually promised — after much argument — to include the key information about the tiny traces of chlorine in the report that was about to be published. The promise was immediately broken.

The document that was finally issued was conveniently vague, and major news organizations rushed to decide, quite incorrectly, that it had said chlorine gas had been used. Actually, it said nothing of the sort. We have to wonder how so many agencies, broadcasters and major newspapers all reached this wrong conclusion from these few vague words ‘Various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from Locations 2 and 4’. But they did.

Now it has been established beyond doubt that the report was doctored. But most people still don’t know that, as it has barely been reported. Why is this? Is it possible that many in the media, just like many in politics, had invested so much in the original outrage that they now could not bear to find that there was, in fact, no proper evidence of the thing they had blazoned on their front pages and shouted in their bulletins? They had been furious and righteous and condemnatory. And now they were left without any proof that the thing had even happened.

We all know Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’, which don’t exist, and of the little boy who cries out that the potentate is naked, and everyone in the town then joins in with the little boy. But experience in this case tells me this is all rubbish. In reality the Emperor’s secret police would have arrested the little boy and his father and told them to shut up. And of course, the imperial media would have kept quiet about the incident, providing detailed descriptions for their readers of the monarch’s sumptuous apparel. So it has been in the case of the OPCW. The whistle was blown, but hardly anyone heard it. Who is verifying the verifiers? Nobody is verifying the verifiers, who will one day take us to war — and hell — on a falsehood.

spectator.usThe views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The David Kelly Black Hole

By Alison Broinowski
Source

In July 2003, five months after the US and its allies invaded Iraq, Dr David Kelly CMG was found dead in woods near his Oxfordshire home. The circumstances did not suggest suicide, although some of the British biological weapons expert’s friends and family knew he had differences with his employer, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) over his retirement salary. After his comments to journalists about the Blair government’s use of a ‘dodgy dossier’ to justify invading Iraq were reported by the BBC, Kelly was subjected to aggressive questioning by the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee. In an interview that could have been scripted from Kafka’s The Trial, Kelly (like Josef K) was not told what evidence they had, or what he was charged with. But K’s grilling did not take place in the mother of parliaments, as Kelly’s did.

Lord Hutton was commissioned by Blair to inquire into Kelly’s death and in January 2004 found it was suicide. He did not call the Thames Valley constables to appear, though they had been at the scene, and he sealed the medical evidence for 70 years. That made it impossible for what Kelly knew from his experience as a weapons inspector in Iraq to lead to Blair being indicted for war crimes.  Arrangements were made by the Prime Minister’s friend from university, Charles Falconer, who gave the inquiry no powers to compel witness, and no requirement to take evidence under oath, but complete control over what was made public. Blair later advised another friend Rebekah Brooks, whose News of the World was accused in 2011 of phone hacking, to ‘publish a Hutton-style report’ which the former PM told her would ‘clear you’, and deliver a similarly acceptable result (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, ‘How the Murdoch gang got away’, New York Review of Books, 8 January 2015: 32-3).

But Tom Mangold, a former BBC journalist, believed it was suicide, arguing that Kelly, when cornered by the Committee, lied about what he had said to two journalists and weakly claimed not to have been the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan’s main source for the story about the ‘sexed-up’ dossier (Rod Barton, The Weapons Detective, Melbourne: Black Inc 2006. Tom Mangold, ‘Shame made David Kelly kill himself’, Independent Online, 22 August 2010).

In 2006 Norman Baker, a Lib-Dem. MP, took up the case, concluding that Kelly’s death was notsuicide. Data was inexplicably wiped from the hard drive of Baker’s computer in July 2006, but he wrote The Strange Death of Dr David Kelly the following year. An ex-Army medical officer, Dr Stephen Frost, also waged a long campaign for a full investigation of Kelly’s death, as did journalist Miles Goslett, who recently published An Inconvenient Death: How the establishment covered up the David Kelly affair (Daily Mail Australia, 14 January 2019). None of them, predictably, has succeeded in getting anyone to open the trapdoor of the black hole where the truth lies.

Dr Kelly went out for his usual mid-afternoon walk on 17 July 2003 and failed to return. Eighteen hours later, volunteers with a search dog succeeded where a heat-seeking helicopter had failed, in finding his body. After their report to local police, it was at least 25 minutes before two Thames Valley Constables came to take charge, with two paramedics. In the meantime, the volunteers met three other policemen, led by Detective Constable Graham Coe, near the scene. Coe later claimed he had only one companion, although five witnesses saw two. The paramedics saw very little blood, much less than would be expected from a severed artery, but a forensic pathologist described seeing scratches and bruises and copious quantities of blood, as did a forensic biologist. The volunteers saw the body propped against a tree, with a cut in the left wrist, and no objects on the ground. When the Thames Valley police arrived they saw the body on its back, a distance from the tree, with a knife (50 years old, and blunt), a watch and a water bottle near it. No fingerprints were found on them.

Evidence from the autopsy showed a knife wound whose direction and location suggested it almost certainly was not self-inflicted. The forensic report found 29 co-proaxamol painkillers in Kelly’s system, but the autopsy revealed only one fifth of one such tablet, which he was prescribed for a heart condition. A letter to The Times from medical specialists argued that it was impossible for Kelly to have died by cutting the ulnar artery and bleeding to death in the way Hutton described (Jim Rarey, ‘The Murder of David Kelly,’ The Journal of History, Winter 2004). Their doubts were shared by a plastic surgeon (a relative of Kelly’s) and a vascular surgeon whom she consulted after the inquiry.

Without inquiring into these or other anomalies, such as the failure to check Kelly’s mobile phone records, the Oxford Coroner obligingly adjourned his inquest when the Hutton inquiry pre-empted it. The Coroner later reviewed the evidence with the Lord Chancellor and concluded in March 2004 there was no need to reopen the inquest (Brian Wheeler, BBC News, ‘MP investigates Dr Kelly’s death’, 19 May 2006).

Some strange events appeared to anticipate Kelly’s death, on which silence later fell or was imposed. In the Thames Valley Police Tactical Support Major Incident Policy Book a ‘not for release’ document for Operation Mason was opened at ‘1430 17.07.03,’ up to an hour before Kelly went out, and closed at ‘930 18.07.03,’ about the time when Coe and his men left the scene. Kelly’s records disappeared from his dentist’s room on 17 July, before his body was officially located. The day before his death, Kelly told his confidante Judith Miller, the New York journalist, about ‘dark actors playing games’. Kelly had earlier expressed fear that he was on a hit-list to David Brouder, a former British Ambassador to Prague, saying he could be ‘found dead in the woods’. He told Brouder in Geneva that the PM’s claim that Iraq could launch WMD within 45 minutes was false, and said Blair’s PR adviser Alistair Campbell wanted a strongly-worded dossier supporting it. A barrister, Michael Shipton, reported a British intelligence contact telling him Kelly had been ‘taken down’ (Marcus Lowth, ‘Maybe the suicide of Dr David Kelly should face more scrutiny,’ 2 April 2018).

Kelly knew about much more than WMD. As a leading biological weapons expert, he transferred in 1984 from the Institute of Virology in Oxford to the Ministry of Defence at its Porton Down facility near Salisbury. After Vladimir Pasechnik defected to the UK in 1989 he revealed to Kelly and others that the USSR maintained a bioweapons program in violation of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (in force 1975), producing ‘microbial agents, bacterial agents and viral agents, particularly, plague and smallpox, which are transmissible from man to man, and could be launched against large civil populations’ (Jim Rarey, ‘The Murder of David Kelly,’ The Journal of History, Winter 2004. Christopher Davis,’ Frontline,’ PBS.). Kelly travelled several times to Russia and Iraq to inspect bioweapons, which in 1997 were banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. He went earlier to South Africa where the CIA collaborated with an apartheid-era program to develop genetically-altered diseases which would affect only designated groups, such as black people, as well as materials for use in assassinating individuals. Two scientists from Porton Down were transferred to that program.

This suggests there is much more in the black hole about Kelly, and the Skripals too. Some people at Porton Down may know what it is, but if they want to keep their jobs and their lives, they won’t say.