Syria: How U.S. Pays SNC, Auxiliaries Pull Back, Fake Rape
Is the Syrian National Council of expats that demands war against Syria a western political intelligence operation?
Sure. And if there ever were any doubts about that this piece should bury them.
This is a story about the storytellers: the spokespeople, the "experts on Syria", the "democracy activists". The statement makers. The people who "urge" and "warn" and "call for action".It's a tale about some of the most quoted members of the Syrian opposition and their connection to the Anglo-American opposition creation business.
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As we will see, several of these spokespeople have found support, and in some cases developed long and lucrative relationships with advocates of military intervention on both sides of the Atlantic.
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The piece goes into the well sourced details of years-long western finance for several of the leading SNC functionaries including for one of their main promoters the neocon Michael Weiss who we flagged here half a year ago.
Remember that Turkish jet Syria shot down? Erdogan and his sidekicks were so up in arms about that they ran to their NATO daddies to ask for help. They claimed that the jet was shot down outside of Syrian air space. NATO help was denied because, as I interpreted it, NATO was sure that the jet was shot down within Syrian airspace while it tested the Syrian air defense.
Erdogan is under fire from the Turkish opposition and is now heavily backtracking on his original claim:
There are growing numbers of question marks surrounding last month’s downed Turkish plane as the prime minister admitted yesterday that all details from the incident were not yet known as Washington said it knew everything about the downing but was refusing to share the information with the media.The sense of confusion was enhanced by an Air Force general who said the plane, which was downed June 22, might have been hit by a personally operated missile from a Syrian ship rather than a surface-to-air missile. At the same time, the military also altered the way it is has been describing the event, referring to the plane as the jet that “Syria claimed to have shot down” rather than the jet that “Syria shot down.”
It seems that Erdogan and his military will soon claim that the jet went down for "technical reasons" or because of a "pilot error".
That news comes as the Washington Post claims that arms deliveries to Syrian rebels are delayed:
Activists give differing interpretations of what they say are shipments of weapons that are not making it across the usual route — the Turkish-Syrian border.One leading opposition member attributed the blockage to Turkish anxiety in the wake of Syria’s downing of a Turkish jet last month.
Or anxiety about Russia doubling its troops in Armenia near the Turkish border ?
The Lebanese government is reinforcing its troops on the Syrian border to prevent smuggling and cross border fighting.
Jordan is also tightening its border with Syria as it fears infiltration of loyal Syrian troops.
All these steps by Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan may be to just starve off various freelance groups and Salafis fighting in Syria and to channel the guns to groups selected by the CIA and its new friends in the Muslim Brotherhood.
But another interpretation is that they finally found sense and recognized that further fighting in Syria will inevitably deliver serious blowbacks to their countries. They recognize that the U.S. project for regime change in Syria has for now failed and are winding down their part of it.
As I currently read it the second interpretation is a bit more likely one. This does not mean that Washington has stopped the war mongering. But its auxiliaries seem to leave the field or at least have second thoughts.
To instigate war one needs propaganda and here is a very typical piece of such: The Ultimate Assault: Charting Syria's Use of Rape to Terrorize Its People. The piece is simply fake news based on very dubious third hand tales and propagated by one of the U.S. government sponsored fake humanitarian endeavors. In the comments thereto Don Bacon points out that the piece was commissioned by Joe Lieberman, the neocon Senator for Israel.
That fact as well as the trails in the first linked piece tells us where this whole operation against Syria was thought up and is coming from.
Posted by b on July 12, 2012 at 17:44 UTC | Permalink
Halfway through reading The Guardian piece, some truly great reporting by Charlie Skelton.
This is the kind of thing that Russia-China would have been aware of from day one. Russia got itself burned with the color revolutions so would have been on guard against this kind of tactic.
Posted by: Colm O' Toole | Jul 12 2012 18:38 utc | 2
Oooppss.. oh well.. what can you say!!!! Erdogan, you the man!
"Contrary to all other statements made to the public so far, the military referred to the plane as “our aircraft that Syrian authorities claimed to have downed,” immediately raising questions whether the plane's crash was an accident."
This is getting hilarious.
Posted by: Rd. | Jul 12 2012 19:32 utc | 3
Erdogan is becoming more like a character in a bad sitcom every week, except only sit and no com, though very bizarre.
Posted by: Alexander | Jul 12 2012 19:58 utc | 4
the main point about the Guardian piece is that the Guardian is printing it now though they could have done the research a year ago.
this here is also from a year ago:
Sibel Edmonds: The Syrian revolution is not Syrian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AkY5O9zEXU
Posted by: somebody | Jul 12 2012 20:10 utc | 7
the main point about the Guardian piece is that the Guardian is printing it now though they could have done the research a year ago.
yep
perhaps it's a sign that for the moment the Syrian regime has survived the NATO onslaught - for the moment the dogs appear to be being called off
given that it appears in the "Official Journal of Murderous Humanitarian Intervention" and all . . .
Posted by: Hu Bris | Jul 12 2012 20:48 utc | 8
For those of us who want prevent another US backed insurrection in the ME this is good news. It looks like the West and Turkey are having some second thoughts about all out war. That said, the damage to Bashar regime might still be fatal. The defection of the high level general and the Iraqi ambassador are troubling signs. Should the current regime collapse every militia and gangster in the ME will be rushing in.
Posted by: ToivoS | Jul 12 2012 21:46 utc | 9
They recognize that the U.S. project for regime change in Syria has for now failed and are winding down their part of it.
Oh, blah blah.
Posted by: slothrop | Jul 12 2012 21:57 utc | 10
One General and one Ambassador and a pilot are totally insignificent given their likely motivation. Look how many did not defect. The US does not have the stomach and Russia has too much to lose. No change.
Posted by: boindub | Jul 12 2012 22:00 utc | 11
Toivo, Syria has sewn a lot of bad stuff out there over the years; you know the saying. The focus here is on the bad things the US is doing, and they are bad beyond any doubt, but it doesn't mean that Syria was and still is faultless in all of this. Nobody is giving any thought to the possibility of the regime collapsing and to what might rush in to fill the void, as you have noted. Some of b's wishful thinking about the opposition crumbling is based on erroneous assumptions.
Posted by: www | Jul 12 2012 22:12 utc | 12
My attitude toward Syria is not that much different from the one towards Khadaffi's Libya. It was led by a ludicrous tyrant that in any ideal world probably belonged in an asylum. However, a Nato led "revolution" was not an improvement. I too think b may let his wishful thinking sometimes overcome his generally sound judgement.
Posted by: ToivoS | Jul 12 2012 22:47 utc | 13
Just finished viewing the NBC Evening News with Brian Williams..Richard Engel is showing "proof" of a massacre in some village in Syria...with cellphone camera video showing 100+ deaths...video appeared to be taken by blind villagers and obviously edited....are we idiots for accepting this as journalism??? Engel has lost all credibility with me......
Posted by: georgeg | Jul 12 2012 22:48 utc | 14
b, Radio Liberty is a subsidiairy of Radio Free Europe, commmunications dodos leftovers from the days of the cold war and the iron curtain that are operated at an exhorbitant cost by the US State Dept, so you have to take what they report with a grain of black pepper. What the State Dept radio station didn't tell you was that the doubling of the troops in Armenia is at Iran's borders in anticipation of an Israeli attack on Iran and to have the necessary power to force open a supply route through Georgia that would be an ally to the US and Israel in case of war. This has nothing to do with Syria.
As to the other article about the Lebanese Army reinforcing the borders with Syria to stop the cross-border traffic of arms, the Lebanese publication that you linked to is practically an organ of the US State Dept and it never mentioned about stopping the arms traffic. What was actually written was that the army was sent up to the border with Syria because the Lebanese have had enough of the Syrian army indiscriminately shelling Lebanese towns suspected of arms smuggling into Syria since 10 days and killing about 4 Lebanese in the process. The Lebanese border with Syria is about 325 km, half of which located in Hezbollah controlled regions and nothing crosses the border there and the other half is in controlled by pro-US salafists that are heavily involved in both arms shipments and other activities. It was to this area that the army was sent to make the Syrian stop the shelling and killing of Lebanese people.
Posted by: www | Jul 12 2012 22:49 utc | 15
I would recommend reading Tim Weiner's excellent book "Legacy of Ashes" and in particular the section on the CIA's over-throw of the Guatemalan government. It illustrates a fine example of just how the CIA manufactures/foments discontent and unrest and then uses that unrest to justify and execute regime change.
Posted by: skuppers | Jul 12 2012 22:54 utc | 16
Aha talk of books! Some MoA habitues still prefer to get info from sources outside of 'the voices' whispering about alphabet agencies in their heads.
So with that in mind I thought I would find a copy of Charles Ferguson's book "Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America" out there in 'the cloud'©.
Russell Mokhiber has written a sorta review of this book. Read the article first cause yo'll see that Ferguson is a lesser of two evils bloke when considering oblamblam - nothin wrong with the concept in theory - but oblammer is the worst of two evils cause a vote for him won't help, it will delay the changes humanist political movements must make to ever be relevant or effective again, but that's an aside.
As some of you are aware facts are facts where ever you find em, so a run through Fergusson's book is a good way of gettin a hold on who the real crims and terrorists are, what crimes they have committed, and perhaps even some ways they can be brought to justice, with or without 'law enforcement'.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 13 2012 0:11 utc | 17
Things are changing. Russia has decided that there will not be regime change in Syria the way that there was in Iraq and Libya. They have nothing to lose and much to gain by obstructing the United States. They know that sooner or later it will have to be done and Syria is a better place for them than Iran, after Syria, to call a halt. And, after all, what Russia and China are doing is nothing more than defending the UN Charter and International Law.
Then there are the allies of the US in the Arab world. There again the ground is shifting, Saudi Arabia is rumbling with discontent and if it blows up all of the Gulf tyrants will be vulnerable. So will Oman and Yemen. As to Iraq, its government is now firmly in the anti-US camp while the Sunnis, who the Sauds have been sponsoring, are likely to re-evaluate the benefits they get from raiding Syria for Uncle Sam.
Uproar in the Arab world will neutralise Egypt's military too, while Jordan's Hashemites will be fully occupied in staying afloat. And Hariri in Lebanon will have to find new sponsors for its expensive campaigns.
I think that b is dead right in working out that the NATO plans will not work in Syria. The United States has given itself free rein, a long rope, since 1989 and it has extended itself beyond its strength. Now it is hanging itself. Which is good news for us all, particularly the American people who have paid for the Pentagon's follies, their living standards, once the envy of the world, are falling rapidly. Once the land of opportunity and employment it is the US has record levels of unemployment, jobs are scarce and educational opportunities, once available for most of the (white) working class are now a mirage, bad education plus enormous tuition.
Putin and his diplomats are making idiots of the dilettantes who run the State Department and the White House, soft, overfed amateurs tremble before the boastful bullshitters who run AIPAC and the Washington Post Editorial page.
In the meantime even the Pakistani government, bought and paid for several times over, must be longing for saner allies and less treacherous ones. And China and Russia are just next door.
The latest news is of another massacre in Syria, which reminds us all of the boy who kept crying wolf: maybe there has been a massacre, maybe this time the Syrian government is to blame, but only a fool would take The Guardian, the BBC or the New York Times's word for it. What would once have been a propaganda coup is now just another lie from the source of lies, cheap propaganda and double talk, formerly known as the Atlantic alliance.
Posted by: bevin | Jul 13 2012 0:44 utc | 18
bevin writes: In the meantime even the Pakistani government, bought and paid for several times over, must be longing for saner allies and less treacherous ones. And China and Russia are just next door.
If I am not mistaken both Iran and Pakistan have observer status in the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. Right now this is some very vaguely defined economic cooperation group but if it realizes its potential it will definitely become a more significant political and diplomatic alliance (hopefully not a military one).
Without doubt US policy is driving those countries into these kinds of associations.
Posted by: ToivoS | Jul 13 2012 1:24 utc | 19
rather amazing powers of resurrection some of the most pointless old lefty zombies reveal once you dare criticise their idols - that they actually think it looks anything other than pathetic when such decrepit old farts decide it's smart to attack people for actually reading (shock horror) is a sign of their ever increasing mental, and possibly moral to boot, degradation - (age related no doub, possibly ye olde alzheimers sneakin up on em?)
reminds me of a old hick's line (geddit?) "what ye readin fer, mister?"
Posted by: Hu Bris | Jul 13 2012 1:51 utc | 20
georgeg @ 14 -- This kind of thing may be one of the reasons why American liberals now trust TV news even less than conservatives do. Supporters of Obama still tend to trust the TV MCMers (members of the Mainstream Corporate Media).
Almost all reporting now tends to offer support and praise to the Powers That Be and also serves as a major propaganda arm of the War Party (both Repubs and Dems).
BTW, the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler just wrote that anyone who thinks that someone who states on an SEC filing that he was “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” --as Mitt Romney did for 3 years' filings, from 2000 to 2002-- was actually in any position to have control over the business is just crazy. Apparently, Kessler believes any ol' “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” can just put stuff down and not really mean it. And that's A-OK.
So, maybe people will tend to discount what MCMers write, given that they can see with their own eyes and can read the words themselves.
Posted by: jawbone | Jul 13 2012 22:04 utc | 21
I couldn't remember where I'd read about the Gallup results on American's trust of the media, but I see it was posted by claudio below.
So, proper tip of the hat to claudio. Thank you for the link and good info.
Posted by: jawbone | Jul 13 2012 22:40 utc | 22
Ack! Can't even get my correction right! Thnx, claudio.
Posted by: jawbone | Jul 16 2012 23:39 utc | 24
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Retired CIA officer Philip Giraldi reveals in his Deep Background column in the July 2012 American Conservative magazine that even U.S. intelligence has evidence that the rebels against the Syrian government have committed at least some of the massacres:
Posted by: lysias | Jul 12 2012 18:09 utc | 1