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Syria: The Insurgency’s New Weapons
While there is much talk and hand wringing if or when or how the “west” should or will or not supply new weapons to the Syrian insurgency, some new types of weapons have already recently appeared on the battlefield. We can be sure that Washington, London and Paris are aware of this and that the current political talk about eventually delivering further arms is just pretending.
Over the last weeks videos uploaded by the insurgents showed increasingly hits on Syrian government tanks with wire-guided anti-tank missiles. These weapons are new arrivals. The sole anti-tanks weapons so far have been unguided rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) and M-60 recoilless rifles. This stuff is new.
In this video mix several successful hits on tanks can be seen. An anti-tank missile can be seen as it starts at 0:44min. It appears to be an old French SS-11 like type of missile on a ground mount. At 0:30min an SA-7 Grail/Strela man-portable anti-air missile is fired against a helicopter and seems to hit. At 2:07 a launcher for a different type of (likely) an anti-tank guided missile is shown.
These weapons have only recently appeared. Weapons like the SS-11 can not be used without at least some professional training. Who sponsored and who delivered these weapons? Who is training the insurgents how to use them?
P.S. Dear Syrian Arab Army tank commanders. Some tank tactic 101: You are targets. Do NOT EVER park your tank on the top of a hill. ALWAYS get your hull down as deep as possible and secured from at least three sides. If possible hide your tank behind a hill and have your gunner or loader on the ground with binoculars watching surroundings from the rim. When you see an anti-tank missile launch flash immediately fire your canon roughly in that direction. Don’t waste time aiming. Your shot is not supposed to hit the missile but to distract the guy who guides it. Then throw fog and get away or flank and attack. Your welcome.
The Guardian and the NYT are reporting that Obama intends to arm the Cannibals for Trotsky and Social Democracy in Syria, as if he hadn’t been doing so for years.
Medialens, to which I cannot provide a link has a good piece, of which this is a excerpt:
“…Thus, the media would have us believe that as many, or more, people have died in Syria during two years of war than have died in ten years of mass killing in Iraq (the favoured media figure is around 100,000 Iraqis killed). The Times reports ‘as many as 94,000 deaths’ in Syria. (Anthony Loyd, ‘War in Syria has plumbed new depths of barbarity, says UN,’ The Times, June 5, 2013)
Reuters reports:
‘The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights [SOHR], an opposition group, said on Tuesday that at least 94,000 people have been killed but the death toll is likely to be as high as 120,000.’
Figures supplied by SOHR, an organisation openly biased in favour of the Syrian ‘rebels’ and Western intervention is presented as sober fact by one of the world’s leading news agencies. No concerns here about methodology, sample sizes, ‘main street bias’ and other alleged concerns thrown at the Lancet studies by critics. According to Reuters itself, SOHR consists of a single individual, Rami Abdulrahman, the owner of a clothes shop, who works from his ‘two bedroom terraced home in Coventry’.
As we noted last month, clearly inspired by the example of Iraq, Western governments and media have bombarded the public with claims of Syrian government use of chemical weapons. In April, the Independent’s Robert Fisk judged the claims ‘a load of old cobblers’.
The state-media propaganda campaign was rudely interrupted on May 6 by former Swiss attorney-general Carla Del Ponte, speaking for the United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria. Del Ponte said, ‘there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated. This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities’.
She added:
‘We have no, no indication at all that the Syrian government have used chemical weapons.’
Lexis finds 15 national UK newspaper articles mentioning Del Ponte’s claims since May 6. There has been one mention since the initial coverage (May 6-8) on May 11, more than one month ago. In other words, this is a good example of the way an unwelcome event is covered by the media but not retained as an integral part of the story.
On May 30, local Turkish media and RT News also reported that Syrian ‘rebels’ had been caught in a sarin gas bomb plot:
‘Turkish security forces found a 2kg cylinder with sarin gas after searching the homes of Syrian militants from the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front who were previously detained, Turkish media reports. The gas was reportedly going to be used in a bomb.’
This was another badly ‘off-message’ story that was again given minimal coverage, not pursued and instantly buried. Lexis records no UK newspaper mentions. A senior journalist told us privately that he and his colleagues felt the story was ‘right’ but that the ‘Turks are closing [it] down.’ (Email to Media Lens, June 7, 2013)
Last week, yet more unsubstantiated claims of possible Syrian government use of sarin generated a front page BBC report with the remarkable headline:
‘World “must act” Over Syria Weapons’
And yet a BBC article indicated the lack of certainty:
‘There is no doubt Syria’s government has used sarin during the country’s crisis, says France’s foreign minister… But he did not specify where or when the agent had been deployed; the White House has said more proof was needed.’
A UK government statement observed merely: ‘There is a growing body of limited but persuasive information showing that the regime used – and continues to use – chemical weapons.’
Readers will recall that intelligence indicating the existence of Iraqi WMD was also said to have been ‘limited but persuasive’.
As Peter Hitchens notes in the Daily Mail, UK government policy is being ‘disgracefully egged on by a BBC that has lost all sense of impartiality’.
The Guardian quoted ‘a senior British official’:
‘Are we confident in our means of collection, and are we confident that it points to the regime’s use of sarin? Yes.’
Is the case closed, then? The official added: ‘Can we prove it with 100% certainty? Probably not.’
The Guardian also quoted ‘A senior UK official’ who said it ‘appeared possible that Syrian army commanders had been given the green light by the regime to use sarin in small quantities’. ‘Possible’, maybe, but the Guardian failed to explain why anyone would trust ‘a senior UK official’ to comment honestly on Syria, or why anyone would trust an anonymous UK official after Iraq.
Adding to the confusion, the Guardian quoted Paulo Pinheiro, who chairs a UN commission on human rights abuses in Syria. According to Pinheiro it had ‘not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator’.
Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent, wrote:
‘This is potentially a game changer: The French government now believes not only that the nerve agent sarin has been used in Syria, but that it was deployed by “the regime and its accomplices”.’
In a recent interview, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald commented:
‘I approach my journalism as a litigator. People say things, you assume they are lying, and dig for documents to prove it.’
“Perhaps the BBC’s Marcus could take a leaf from Greenwald’s book of journalism and dig for evidence to show that the French government is lying when it says it ‘believes’ that sarin has been used by the Syrian enemy. After all, the US, UK and French governments also ‘believed’ Iraq was a ‘serious and current’ threat to the world.
“Far less gung-ho than the relentlessly warmongering BBC, a Telegraph headline read: ‘US unmoved by French evidence of sarin use in Syria.’
“Chuck Hagel, the US defence secretary, said: ‘I have not seen that evidence that they said that they had and I have not talked to any of our intelligence people about it.’
“The US officials’ comments ‘appeared to expose a growing a widening gap between the US and France over how to respond to Syria’s two-year civil war,’ the Telegraph noted.”
Posted by: bevin | Jun 14 2013 2:13 utc | 41
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