Seymour Hersh Says Hillary Approved Sending Libya's Sarin To Syrian Rebels

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/01/2016 22:00 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-01/seymour-hersh-says-hillary-approved-sending-libyas-sarin-syrian-rebels
Authored by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,
The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in two previous articles in the London Review of Books ("Whose Sarin?" and "The Red Line and the Rat Line") has reported that the Obama Administration falsely blamed the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for the sarin gas attack that Obama was trying to use as an excuse to invade Syria; and Hersh pointed to a report from British intelligence saying that the sarin that was used didn’t come from Assad’s stockpiles. Hersh also said that a secret agreement in 2012 was reached between the Obama Administration and the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to set up a sarin gas attack and blame it on Assad so that the US could invade and overthrow Assad.

"By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria."

Hersh didn’t say whether these 'arms' included the precursor chemicals for making sarin which were stockpiled in Libya, but there have been multiple independent reports that Libya’s Gaddafi possessed such stockpiles, and also that the US Consulate in Benghazi Libya was operating a "rat line" for Gaddafi’s captured weapons into Syria through Turkey. So, Hersh isn’t the only reporter who has been covering this. Indeed, the investigative journalist Christoph Lehmann headlined on 7 October 2013, "Top US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria" and reported, on the basis of very different sources than Hersh used, that:
"Evidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia´s Interior Ministry."
And, as if that weren’t enough, even the definitive analysis of the evidence that was performed by two leading US analysts, the Lloyd-Postal report, concluded that:

"The US Government’s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT."

Obama has clearly been lying.
However, now, for the first time, Hersh has implicated Hillary Clinton directly in this 'rat line'. In an interview with Alternet.org, Hersh was asked about the then-US-Secretary-of-State’s role in the Benghazi Libya US consulate’s operation to collect weapons from Libyan stockpiles and send them through Turkey into Syria for a set-up sarin-gas attack, to be blamed on Assad in order to ‘justify’ the US invading Syria, as the US had invaded Libya to eliminate Gaddafi. Hersh said:

"That ambassador who was killed, he was known as a guy, from what I understand, as somebody, who would not get in the way of the CIA. As I wrote, on the day of the mission he was meeting with the CIA base chief and the shipping company. He was certainly involved, aware and witting of everything that was going on. And there’s no way somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by some channel".

This was, in fact, the Syrian part of the State Department’s Libyan operation, Obama’s operation to set up an excuse for the US doing in Syria what they had already done in Libya.
The interviewer then asked:

"In the book [Hersh’s The Killing of Osama bin Laden, just out] you quote a former intelligence official as saying that the White House rejected 35 target sets [for the planned US invasion of Syria] provided by the Joint Chiefs as being insufficiently painful to the Assad regime. (You note that the original targets included military sites only – nothing by way of civilian infrastructure.) Later the White House proposed a target list that included civilian infrastructure. What would the toll to civilians have been if the White House’s proposed strike had been carried out?"

Hersh responded by saying that the US tradition in that regard has long been to ignore civilian casualties; i.e., collateral damage of US attacks is okay or even desired (so as to terrorize the population into surrender) – not an ‘issue’, except, perhaps, for the PR people.
The interviewer asked why Obama is so obsessed to replace Assad in Syria, since "The power vacuum that would ensue would open Syria up to all kinds of jihadi groups"; and Hersh replied that not only he, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "nobody could figure out why". He said, "Our policy has always been against him [Assad]. Period". This has actually been the case not only since the Party that Assad leads, the Ba’ath Party, was the subject of a shelved CIA coup-plot in 1957 to overthrow and replace it; but, actually, the CIA’s first coup had been not just planned but was carried out in 1949 in Syria, overthrowing there a democratically elected leader, in order to enable a pipeline for the Sauds’ oil to become built through Syria into the largest oil market, Europe; and, construction of the pipeline started the following year. But, there were then a succession of Syrian coups (domestic instead of by foreign powers – 1954, 1963, 1966, and, finally, in 1970), concluding in the accession to power of Hafez al-Assad during the 1970 coup. And, the Sauds' long-planned Trans-Arabia Pipeline has still not been built. The Saudi royal family, who own the world’s largest oil company, Aramco, don’t want to wait any longer. Obama is the first US President to have seriously tried to carry out their long-desired "regime change" in Syria, so as to enable not only the Sauds’ Trans-Arabian Pipeline to be built, but also to build through Syria the Qatar-Turkey Gas Pipeline that the Thani royal family (friends of the Sauds) who own Qatar want also to be built there. The US is allied with the Saud family (and with their friends, the royal families of Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, and Oman). Russia is allied with the leaders of Syria – as Russia had earlier been allied with Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya, and Yanukovych in Ukraine (all of whom except Syria’s Ba’ath Party, the US has successfully overthrown).
Hersh was wrong to say that "nobody could figure out why" Obama is obsessed with overthrowing Assad and his Ba’ath Party, even if nobody that he spoke with was willing to say why. They have all been hired to do a job, which didn’t change even when the Soviet Union ended and the Warsaw Pact was disbanded; and, anyone who has been at this job for as long as those people have, can pretty well figure out what the job actually is – even if Hersh can’t.
Hersh then said that Obama wanted to fill Syria with foreign jihadists to serve as the necessary ground forces for his planned aerial bombardment there, and, "if you wanted to go there and fight there in 2011-2013, ‘Go, go, go… overthrow Bashar!’ So, they actually pushed a lot of people [jihadists] to go. I don’t think they were paying for them but they certainly gave visas".
However, it’s not actually part of America’s deal with its allies the fundamentalist-Sunni Arabic royal families and the fundamentalist Sunni Erdogan of Turkey, for the US to supply the salaries (to be "paying for them", as Hersh put it there) to those fundamentalist Sunni jihadists – that’s instead the function of the Sauds and of their friends, the other Arab royals, and their friends, to do. (Those are the people who finance the terrorists to perpetrate attacks in the US, Europe, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, India, Nigeria, etc. – i.e., anywhere except in their own countries.) And, Erdogan in Turkey mainly gives their jihadists just safe passage into Syria, and he takes part of the proceeds from the jihadists’ sales of stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil. But, they all work together as a team (with the jihadists sometimes killing each other in the process – that’s even part of the plan) – though each national leader has PR problems at home in order to fool his respective public into thinking that they’re against terrorists, and that only the ‘enemy’ is to blame. (Meanwhile, the aristocrats who supply the "salaries" of the jihadists, walk off with all the money.)
This way, US oil and gas companies will refine, and pipeline into Europe, the Sauds’ oil and the Thanis’ gas, and not only will Russia’s major oil-and-gas market become squeezed away by that, but Obama’s economic sanctions against Russia, plus the yet-further isolation of Russia (as well as of China and the rest of the BRICS countries) by excluding them from Obama’s three mega-trade-deals (TTIP, TPP & TISA), will place the US aristocracy firmly in control of the world, to dominate the 21st Century, as it has dominated ever since the end of WW II.
Then, came this question from Hersh:

"Why does America do what it does? Why do we not say to the Russians, Let’s work together?"

His interviewer immediately seconded that by repeating it, "So why don’t we work closer with Russia? It seems so rational". Hersh replied simply: "I don’t know". He didn’t venture so much as a guess – not even an educated one. But, when journalists who are as knowledgeable as he, don’t present some credible explanation, to challenge the obvious lies (which make no sense that accords with the blatantly contrary evidence those journalists know of against those lies) that come from people such as Barack Obama, aren’t they thereby – though passively – participating in the fraud, instead of contradicting and challenging it? Or, is the underlying assumption, there: The general public is going to be as deeply immersed in the background information here as I am, so that they don’t need me to bring it all together for them into a coherent (and fully documented) whole, which does make sense? Is that the underlying assumption? Because: if it is, it’s false.
Hersh’s journalism is among the best (after all: he went so far as to say, of Christopher Stephens, regarding Hillary Clinton, "there’s no way somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by some channel"), but it’s certainly not good enough. However, it’s too good to be published any longer in places like the New Yorker. And the reporting by Christof Lehmann was better, and it was issued even earlier than Hersh’s; and it is good enough, because it named names, and it explained motivations, in an honest and forthright way, which is why Lehmann’s piece was published only on a Montenegrin site, and only online, not in a Western print medium, such as the New Yorker. The sites that are owned by members of the Western aristocracy don’t issue reports like that – journalism that’s good enough. They won’t inform the public when a US Secretary of State, and her boss the US President, are the persons actually behind a sarin gas attack they’re blaming on a foreign leader the US aristocrats and their allied foreign aristocrats are determined to topple and replace.
Is this really a democracy?

Obama’s Most Momentous Decision

Posted on February 18, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

By Joe Lauria. Originally published at Consortium News.

With the Russian-backed Syrian army encircling Aleppo, cutting off Turkish supplies to rebels and advancing on the Islamic State’s capital of Raqqa, a panicked Saudi Arabia and Turkey have set up a joint headquarters to direct an invasion of Syria that could lead to a vast escalation of the war. And there’s only one man who could stop them: President Barack Obama.
It is probably the most important decision Obama will make in his eight years in office since a Turkish-Saudi invasion risks a direct showdown between Russia and NATO, since Turkey is a member of the alliance.
The U.S. traditionally has held tremendous power over client states like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. So, an order from Washington is usually enough to get such governments to back down. But Ankara and Riyadh are being led by reckless men whose continued existence in power might well depend on stopping a Syrian government victory – helped by Russia, Iran and the Kurds – and a humiliating defeat of the Turkish-Saudi-backed Syrian rebels, who include some radical jihadist groups.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prince Mohammad bin Salman have shown increasing defiance of Washington. Neither man is the legal ruler of his respective country. But both have seized power nonetheless.

Erdoğan is technically in a symbolic post, a presidency without power. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu should be leading the country the way Erdoğan did when he was prime minister, but Davutoğlu is still letting Erdoğan call the shots.
Erdoğan is campaigning for a referendum that would make Turkey a presidential system to legalize the power he already has. But that hasn’t happened yet. So, he is simply acting as a de facto executive leader while potential rivals are afraid to contest his overreach of power.
Erdoğan’s increasing authoritarianism is alarming some people in Washington. He is routinely throwing in jail journalists and academics who dare criticize him. After a brutal crackdown in the Kurdish city of Cizre inside Turkey this month, leaving much of the city in ruins, Erdoğan has turned his attention to the Syrian Kurds.
They are among the best fighters on the ground against the Islamic State and are supported by both the U.S. and Russia. And they are threatening to formalize their de facto autonomy inside Syria, which Erdoğan has vowed to crush. By fighting the Islamic State, the Kurds are also messing with Erdoğan’s goal of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Erdoğan has staked much of his power on overthrowing Assad. A Syrian victory against Erdoğan’s five-year project of “regime change” in Damascus could mean the end of him politically. Sensing this danger, Erdoğan has been increasingly belligerent toward anyone standing in his way.
Erdoğan showed his defiance of the Obama administration when he said, “How can we trust [you]? Is it me who is your partner or the [Kurdish] terrorists in Kobane?”
Turkey Shells Syria
On Sunday, Erdoğan began shelling Syrian Kurdish areas in Aleppo province, especially the city of Azaz. “We will not allow Azaz to fall,” Prime Minister Davutoğlu vowed on Monday, reflecting Erdoğan’s hard line. Turkey’s attacks also are aimed at preventing the Syrian government from sealing the Turkish border where the Islamic State and other jihadist groups have smuggled across fighters, weapons and other supplies into Syria – as well as oil from Syria into Turkey.
With his aggressive strategies toward his neighbors, Erdoğan has been accused of wanting to establish a new Ottoman empire. Azaz is near Dabiq, the town where the Ottoman Empire began in 1516. Because of that symbolism, Turkey’s defeat there could mean the death of Erdoğan’s neo-Ottoman dreams and perhaps of his presidency. (For the Islamic State, Dabiq is the place where a future Christian-Muslim battle will take place heralding the end of the world.)
The Saudis appear equally spoiling for a fight. Prince Mohammed bin Salman is deputy crown prince, second in line to the crown. But his father, King Salman, is suffering from dementia and the current crown prince, Mohammad bin Nayef, 56, is considered loyal to the U.S. But 30-year-old Mohammed has launched the most independent Saudi military policy in the history of the modern Saudi state. He is said not to trust the United States. And as defense minister, he has recklessly launched a disastrous war in Yemen, where – despite widespread death and destruction – the most powerful Arab army cannot defeat the poorest Arab nation. Mohammed has staked his credibility on the outcome of the Yemen war. But he also has vowed to check Iranian regional influence. So, he may be going for broke now by threatening to invade Syria.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia have established a joint headquarters at Turkey’s Incirlik base, 62 miles from the Syrian border. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu told a Turkish newspaper last week that Saudi warplanes and troops would be arriving at the base.
The Saudis are also planning war games inside the Kingdom with 150,000 troops from 20 Arab nations. Jordan, however, sensibly said it would not take part in an invasion unless it is led by U.S. and British troops and has a U.N. Security Council mandate “with full coordination with Russia.”
However, the war clouds continued to darken along the Syrian border. On Sunday, Turkey began shelling Syrian Kurdish positions, including the town of Azaz in Aleppo province. And, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Russia “will fail to save” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Jubeir vowed to overthrow. In response to Saudi threats, Hezbollah said it would “slaughter Saudi troops” if they invade.
Assad Confronting Fanatical Erdoğan
For his part, Assad has not ruled out that Turkey and Saudi Arabia will invade. He told the French Press Agency (AFP) on Monday: “Logically, intervention is not possible, but sometimes reality is at odds with logic, particularly when there are irrational people leading a certain state. That’s why I don’t rule that out for a simple reason: Erdoğan is a fanatical person with Muslim Brotherhood inclinations. He is living the Ottoman dream…
“He believes that he has an Islamist mission in our region. The same applies to Saudi Arabia. The collapse of the terrorists in Syria is a collapse of their policies. I tell you that this process is surely not going to be easy for them, and we will certainly confront it.”
The risks of a Saudi-Turkish invasion of Syria are enormous. If soldiers from NATO-member Turkish are killed by the Syrian army or Russian air force, will they seek NATO protection? If Saudi or its allied troops are killed how would the U.S. respond? An invasion could pit Saudi troops against Iranian forces on the same battlefield in what could be an historic Sunni-Shia battle.
Despite the tough Turkish and Saudi rhetoric, Saudi Arabia at least, has made it clear that it won’t invade without the U.S. leading the way. That puts the ball squarely in the Oval Office where President Obama has resisted committing U.S. combat troops to another war in the Middle East but reportedly wants to avoid further alienating U.S. “allies,” Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
At the State Department, John Kerry has made no statement about a possible invasion. Instead he’s using his close ties to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to try to nail down a partial ceasefire that is supposed start on Friday. The ceasefire would allow continue fighting against terrorists, but the U.S. and Russia disagree on exactly who should be included on the list of terrorists. Further, many of the U.S.-backed rebel groups collaborate with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front in some areas, making targeting difficult even when there is U.S.-Russian agreement of who’s the terrorist.
Other mixed signals have come from the Pentagon where Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has “welcomed” the Saudi offer of ground troops. The matter was discussed at a NATO defense ministers meeting last week, but the only outcome was the acceptance of special forces from the United Arab Emirates.
Obama has given no public indication of what he will do if Turkey and Saudi Arabia press ahead with an invasion. It’s not even clear that he still has the leverage to stop Turkey and Saudi Arabia if they press ahead.
Obama could simply cut U.S. losses in its disastrous Syrian “regime change” policy and accept a Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian government victory, but he would come intense criticism from Washington’s influential neoconservatives as well as Republicans. But does he have another choice if he wants to avoid war with Russia?
On Saturday, Obama called Russian President Vladimir Putin. It’s not known what they discussed about a possible invasion of Syria. However, if Obama threatened to intervene if Russia doesn’t end its military support for the Syrian military offensive, we could be in the middle of the most serious game of chicken since the Cuban missile crisis.
Nor do we know what Obama is telling the Turks and Saudis. On Monday, both countries toned down their bellicose rhetoric. Perhaps Obama delivered the only sane message possible: avoid a military confrontation with Russia at all costs. But it seems the lights will remain on at the Kremlin and the White House as the two nuclear powers look for some way to avoid a collision.
Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist based at the U.N. since 1990. He has written for the Boston Globe, the London Daily Telegraph, the Johannesburg Star, the Montreal Gazette, the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. He can be reached atjoelauria@gmail.com  and followed on Twitter at @unjoe.

U.S. Ends Its Opposition to Democracy in Syria

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/12/u-s-ends-opposition-democracy-syria.html#more-52577

For the first time today (December 15th), the United States has publicly and officially accepted the position that Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon have consistently held on the Syrian situation: that only a free and fair internationally monitored and accepted election of Syria’s President by the people of Syria can legitimately determine whom the President of Syria ought to be, and that no Syrian citizen, not even the current Syrian President Bashar al-Assad if he decides to be a candidate, can be blocked by any foreign power from being a candidate in that election.

The way America’s AP (Associated Press) put this in their news-report on Tuesday December 15th, was: “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday accepted Russia’s long-standing demand that President Bashar Assad’s future be determined by his own people.”

The way that Ban ki-Moon, or Mr. Ban, had expressed this “demand” is: 

“I believe that the future of Syria, or the future of the peace talks, … should not be held up by an issue of the future of one man. I believe that it is up to the Syrian people who have to decide the future of President Assad.”

“The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people.”

As the present reporter had noted, headlining on November 15th, “U.S. Yields to Russia’s Insistence Upon Democracy in Syria”: “the agreement is said to specify that, by 14 December 2015, diplomats will reconvene to discuss any residual issues,” and this meant that, until this “reconvening” would be over, nothing would be final. Now that the second meeting is completed and the agreement is publicly affirmed without changes, the agreement has become official.

Here (as stated in my previous article) are the next steps that are specified in this agreement:

On 1 January 2016, the UN will then convene formal negotiations between the Syrian government and its political opponents who are not involved in terrorist activities. Obviously, defining who those parties are will be highly contentious between the U.S. and its allies, and Russia and its allies.

On 14 May 2016, free elections will be held in Syria, administered by the UN.

The agreement specifies that the war against jihadist groups, all of which have been trying to bring down the Syrian government, will continue. This provision of the agreement recognizes the unacceptable role that these groups, such as Al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria) and ISIS, play in bombings not only in France but throughout Europe and the Middle East. The agreement won’t say whether those groups may participate in the elections, but it will specify that the war against those groups can continue, even while the peace process in Syria is being implemented. The “ceasefire” won’t apply to efforts to wipe out those jihadist groups, which are illegal in Syria.

Above and beyond those details, the atmospherics of the way that the current meeting ended, add further confirmation to the significance of what has transpired here:

http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-moscow-talks-syria-ukraine-081842398.html#

http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-moscow-talks-syria-ukraine-081842398.html# at 0:27

In the AP’s accompanying video of the closing announcement, Putin enters the room with a smile on his face and greets the U.S. team including Secretary of State John Kerry and his Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, by warmly shaking Kerry’s hand and being warmly greeted by him, and then by (at 0:27 in the video) approaching and shaking hands with what is evidently a stand-offish if not hostile Nuland, as he bends slightly toward her and she bends slightly backward, with a facial expression that’s not entirely clear but doesn’t look at all friendly. Kerry is looking at Nuland’s face with what appears to be concerned worry, and the two other members of his team are looking down at the two shaking hands; one of those two members, the woman, looks down at the handshake sporting a quizzical expression such as if to say, “Victoria can’t be enjoying this eating-of-crow.”

Nuland is a close friend of Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and was brought by Hillary into the Obama State Department after having previously been Vice President Dick Cheney’s Foreign Affairs Advisor. Her Husband, Robert Kagan, like others of his family, Fred Kagan, Donald Kagan, and Kimberly Kagan (the wife of Fred Kagan), all share a visceral hatred of Russia, and all of them also share instant entrée into the offices of almost any Republican member of Congress, and of almost all of the top or Presidential level of the Democratic Party, such as the Clintons and Obama, and their respective advisory friends. So, the Kagan clan pass easily as “neoconservatives” and “neoliberals” but, in any case, as ‘respectable’ haters of Vladimir Putin, and as passionate supporters of anyone in Russia who might be able to aid the U.S. aristocracy to bring him down and to restore post-Soviet Russia to control by the U.S. aristocracy as it had been under Boris Yeltsin.

Kerry had been advised by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to rely upon Nuland to become his chief Assistant Secretary, and even before Kerry became the new Secretary of State, Nuland was already actively working in the State Department to plan and organize a coup to bring down Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in order to enable Ukraine to become admitted ultimately into NATO and serve as a missile base against Moscow, right on Russia’s border. She installed anti-Russian racist fascists, ideological nazis, into the post-coup Ukrainian government. When Kerry finally had had enough of this, he contradicted her in public, and Obama backed Nuland and Kerry was sidelined from the Ukrainian issue for a while. This time, it’s Nuland who must eat crow. 

The uprising against Assad had been in the planning stages from the very moment that Obama had entered the White House in 2009, but finally he seems to have decided that he himself will have to eat crow on this one. Kerry in that video seems pleased: he’s not being embarrassed this time, by his President, his boss.

The Russian Television (RT) video from the press conference in the morning presents Kerry sitting next to Nuland and praising both Putin and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while Nuland starts to look down at around 0:50 on the video after Kerry says, “Russia made a significant contribution to the dialogue,” and yet again at 1:00 looks down when he says “Russia has been a significant contributor to the progress that we have been able to make.” Then, he says directly to Lavrov, “You personally have been a co-convenor,” and she yet again looks down, but this time even looks away, at her notes.

These results are a victory for Putin and his team, and for Kerry personally, and for the people of Syria, but not for the U.S. President and his closest advisors. Kerry has been isolated within this Gladio Obama Administration, but nonetheless has achieved positive results, whereas Kerry’s predecessor in his office had been a failure, as her entire record in public life has been, for everyone except her corporate sponsors. 

Those sponsors never give up, however. They might have lost a battle on this, but certainly not the war, which will continue. 

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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.

Ban Ki-Moon Condemns the American Stand on Syria, Endorses Putin’s

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.

Eric Zuesse

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/ban-ki-moon-condemns-the-american-stand-on-syria-endorses-putins.html 

In an interview with Spanish newspapers that was published October 31st, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be removed from office, and Moon said: “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people.”

Here is the entire quotation: “The future of President Assad must be decided by the Syrian people. Now, I do not want to interfere in the process of Vienna, but I think it is totally unfair and unreasonable that the fate of a person [diplomatese here for: U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Assad be removed from the Presidency of Syria] to paralyze all this political negotiation. This is not acceptable. It’s not fair. The Syrian government insists that Assad should be part of the transition. Many Western countries oppose the Syrian government’s position. Meanwhile, we lost years. 250,000 people have been killed. There are 13 million refugees or internally displaced. Over 50% of hospitals, schools and infrastructure has been destroyed in Syria. You must not lose more time. This crisis goes beyond Syria, beyond the region. It affects Europe. It is a global crisis.”

The U.N. Secretary General is here implicitly blaming all of this — lots of blood and misery — on U.S. President Obama, and on the “many Western countries” who ally with him and have joined with him in demanding regime-change in Syria.

The position of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been, and is, to the exact contrary of Obama’s: namely, that only an election by the Syrian people can determine whom Syria’s President should be. The U.N. Secretary General is here agreeing with Putin, and rejecting Obama’s demand, that the matter be determined instead by non-Syrians, and by non-democratic means (which is basically like George W. Bush did in Iraq, and like Barack Obama did in Libya).

Suckers in the West fall for the Western aristocracies’ line that Putin and not Obama is wrong on this and is the cause of the dragged-out Syrian war. Such fools don’t even ask themselves whether in this dispute it is Obama, or instead Putin, who is supporting the most basic democratic principle of self-rule by the people. But the average individual is that manipulable: so manipulable as to think that black is white, and white is black; that good is bad, and bad is good. Totally manipulable.

This interview was buried by Spanish newspapers, because the Spanish government is allied with the United States. For example, the most prominent Spanish newspaper to publish even quotations from this interview is El Pais, and their headline for the story is “Catalonia is not among the territories with the right to self-determination.” Even there, the headline is false. What Moon actually said instead on that issue of the Catalonian independence movement, was: “The Catalan question is a very delicate matter and, while the UN Secretary General, I’m not in a position to comment on that because it is a purely internal matter.” Lies and distortions in the Western ‘news’ media are that routine: so obvious, sometimes, virtually any intelligent reader can easily recognize that he’s reading lies and propaganda (like in that ‘news’ story).

This newspaper actually buried the part about Assad and Obama (the blockbuster in the entire story) near the end, but not at the very end, of its report, because one of the standard things that ‘news’ media do if they want to de-emphasize a particular point is to bring the matter up near the end but not at the end. To place it at  the end, would emphasize, instead of de-emphasize, the given point: it’s not the professional way to bury news. Knowledge of how to bury news is important for the managers of any ‘news’ medium, because such knowledge is essential in order to make the medium achieve the objectives of the medium’s owner, the propagandistic function, which is the main reason why wealthy people buy major ‘news’ media, and why major corporations chose to advertise in (and thereby subsidize) these media (which increases that given ‘news’ media-owner’s income).

As to why the managers (including editors) of El Pais wanted their ‘reporter’ to misrepresent Moon as being opposed to Catalan independence, the reason is that the owners of El Pais are opposed to Catalan independence. It’s not only in the editorials. With very few exceptions, a newspaper’s editorials and its ‘news’ reporting are slanted the same way. However, sometimes, for particular reasons, the editorial position is instead slanted the opposite way from the ‘news’ ‘reporting.’ Public relations, or PRopaganda, is a science, not for amateurs. And a major function of management is to apply that science so as to maximize value for the medium’s owners. It’s like any business, but the press is also part of the business of government: moulding the public’s opinions so as to serve the needs of the aristocracy that owns the vast majority of the nation’s wealth. The idea of ‘the free press’ is itself PRopaganda. In reality, the press is far from free.

Anyway, Ban ki-Moon took a rare courageous position here: what he said was correct, though it’s virtually unmentionable in the West. For example: how widely is this news-report being published? It was submitted to virtually all national news-media in the U.S. and several other Western countries. You can google the headline, “Ban Ki Moon Condemns the American Stand on Syria, Endorses Putin’s” to find out how many (and which ones) are actually publishing it.

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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.

Western Propaganda Machine Kicks Into Overdrive As UK Brands Assad "A Butcher", France Bombs Syria In "Self Defense"

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/27/2015 21:05 -0400
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-27/western-propaganda-machine-kicks-overdrive-uk-brands-assad-butcher-france-bombs-syri
On Sunday, France proudly announced that it had launched its first strikes against ISIS targets in Syria. Here’s The New York Times:

In France’s first airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Syria, warplanes destroyed a training camp, President François Hollande announced on Sunday.

At a news conference in New York, where he had arrived for the United Nations General Assembly, Mr. Hollande said that the warplanes had attacked the training camp in eastern Syria after it had been identified by French air surveillance with help from the coalition of Western and Middle Eastern states conducting the air campaign against the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh.

“Our forces reached their objectives: the camp was completely destroyed,” Mr. Hollande said. “Six jets were used, including five Rafales, and they were able to ensure that our operation did not have 

He added that France might launch other strikes in the coming weeks if necessary, with the goal of “identifying targets that are training camps or places where we know that the Daesh terrorist group can threaten the security of our country.”

Prime Minister Manuel Valls also confirmed to reporters in southeastern France on Sunday that the airstrikes had taken place.

“We are striking Daesh in Syria because this terrorist organization prepares and organizes attacks in France from Syria, from these sanctuaries,” Mr. Valls said. “We are therefore acting in self-defense, which Article 51 of the United Nations Charter permits us to do.”

Got that? Paris needs to bomb Syria in "self defense" because clearly, a ragtag group of militants who only exist because they're still a useful tool in Washington's geopolitical calculus, pose a very real threat to the territorial integrity of France, one of the most influential nations on the face of the earth.
Obviously, that is absurd to the point that it's almost not worth mentioning were it not for the fact that France's involvement comes as Britain is also set to step up its own "anti-ISIS" air raids in Syria.
In short, both France and Britain are ramping up their involvement in Syria's civil war just as Russia, Iran, and China are set to bolster the Assad regime. As we've detailed exhaustively, the West is now finding it almost impossible to maintain the narrative. Russia and Iran both have an interest in ensuring that Assad does not fall which means that by default, they also have an interest in eradicating the Sunni extremists operating in Syria. That's extremely inconvenient for Washington and its allies given that the US has gone out of its way to portray ISIS as the greatest threat to human decency since the Third Reich. Now, Moscow, Tehran, and Damascus have effectively said the following: "Yes, you're right, so why won't you join us in defeating them?"
So far, the West's response has been to suggest that somehow, Russia's efforts to defeat anti-regime forces in Syria will serve to embolden terrorists. For instance, here's what British think tank Royal United Services Institute has to say:

The deployment of Russian troops in Syria could end up helping Islamic State as they have been sent to areas where they are most likely to fight other groups opposed to Isis, according to a new report.

Essentially, the contention there is that Russia should not attempt to eradicate one group of extremists because in doing so, they might inadvertenlty help other extremists. If you applied that logic to sports, it would be the equivalent of saying no one should ever try to win, because by defeating one opposing team, you might indirectly improve the position of another opposing team.
As ridiculous as that is, the one thing you can say about the West and foreign policy is that things can always get more ridiculous and with that in mind, we bring you the following from U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron (via Bloomberg): 

Bashar al-Assad should face a criminal trial, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said, while keeping open the possibility the Syrian president could temporarily remain in power to oversee a transition to a more inclusive government.

Cameron made the comments on Sunday as he flew to New York for the United Nations General Assembly, where he’ll meet with other leaders to discuss possible solutions to the 4 1/2-year conflict that has seen Islamic State take control of parts of the Middle Eastern country and led to an exodus of millions of refugees.

"People who break international law should be subject to international law,” the prime minister told reporters traveling with him. “He’s butchered his own people, he’s helped create this conflict and this migration crisis, he’s one of the great recruiting sergeants for ISIL."

As we've said on a number of occasions, no one is arguing that Bashar al-Assad is the most benevolent leader in the history of statecraft, but when Western propaganda reaches the point where Syria's President is accused of being a "butcher" and, going still further, of facilitating the recruitment of the very people who are trying to oust him, the world should start asking questions.
At this point, if you're buying the Western narrative with regard to Syria, we suggest you refer to the clip shown below...

US demands Russia prioritize regime change in Syria over war against terrorists: International lawyer

essTv User

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/09/25/430714/US-Russia-Assad-ISIL-terrorists

An Indonesian based political commentator says the recent remarks made by high ranking US officials suggest a new effort is under way to pressure Russia into embracing America’s “incoherent” and “contradictory policies on Syria.”
Barry Grossman, an international lawyer based on the Indonesian island of Bali, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Friday while commenting on US officials’ statements over Russia’s assistance to the Syrian government.
Echoing similar remarks made recently by UK and European officials, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday that the Russian military build-up in Syria “appears to be an effort to continue to prop up the Assad regime.”
Advancing the same theme, Pentagon chief Ashton Carter said on Thursday that any effort to crush the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group without simultaneously pursuing a political transition away from President Bashar al-Assad will only “fuel the very kind of extremism that underlies ISIL and stressed Washington’s “desire to defeat ISIL” as well as “the need for a political transition in Syria.”
Grossman said that he would that “be astounded if many Americans understand what their nation’s objectives are in Syria”, adding that “these latest comments by John Kirby and Ashton Carter highlight the continuing contradiction in US policy towards Syria.”
According to the analyst, “their  remarks suggest that the US is making a calculated new effort  to bring Russia into line with its own  incoherent  policy by pressuring [Russian President] Putin  to embrace the US-led effort to oust Assad at any cost and to prioritize that objective  over  the fight against terrorism.”
“The problem,” Grossman observed, “is that the effort on the ground to oust Assad is overwhelmingly being carried out by armed combatants supported by regional governments and which the United States has officially designated to be members of terrorist organizations. That being the case, there simply is no moderate opposition to take over should the elected Assad government fail.”
Regarding US policy on Syria, the international lawyer highlighted its contradictions by saying that “despite US political rhetoric which claims to denounce the very same groups which are targeting Assad as being terrorist organizations, the dominant position embraced by the US political and security apparatus continues to encourage and even support combatants fighting under the various banners of convenience which have emerged in Syria.”
“Apparently, as far as Syria is concerned,” Grossman said that  “the US now distinguishes what it euphemistically refers to as terrorist organizations  - which it is supposedly  committed to fighting - from the individuals associated with those very same  offending organizations. It certainly doesn’t seem to concern the US establishment that the insurgents which it supports only exist because of their affiliation with those very same organizations.”
Regarding US priorities in the region, the political commentator said that “whatever US politicians say  publically about fighting ISIS [ISIL] and other groups in the region which are designated as terrorists, these latest remarks by Ashton Carter and others  make it clear that the US remains committed to  prioritizing its goal of regime change over all other considerations in Syria,  including the so-called war on terrorism,  the dictates of international law, and the exploding humanitarian crises.”
Grossman concluded his remarks by observing that “for a nation which, since its war on Vietnam, has been obsessed about having clear objectives and an exit strategy in all military conflicts, it is very strange indeed that when it comes to Syria, the US-led coalition’s lack of both clear exit strategy and clear objectives does not have the alarm bells ringing around the clock.”
US officials claim that Russia is engaged in a military build-up in the Arab nation. They say Moscow has recently sent hundreds of troops, as well as fighter jets, artillery and other military hardware to an airport in Syria’s western province of Latakia.
Washington says that Moscow is seeking to establish a military outpost in Syria to help the government in its fight against Daesh terrorists. US officials also said the deployment raises the possibility of air combat missions in Syrian airspace.
Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since March 2011. The United States and its regional allies - especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - have been supporting the militants operating inside Syria since the beginning of the crisis.