The United States has concluded that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in its fight against opposition forces, and President Obama has authorized direct U.S. military support to the rebels, the White House said Thursday.
“The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser. Rhodes said U.S. intelligence had determined with “high certainty” that Syrian government forces have “used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.”
Intelligence agencies estimate that 100 to 150 people have died as a result of chemical weapons use, he said.
Rhodes did not detail what he called the expanded military support, but it is expected initially to consist of light arms and ammunition. He said the shipments would be “responsive to the needs” expressed by the rebel command.
Obama has “not made any decision” to pursue a military option such as a no-fly zone and has ruled out the deployment of U.S. ground troops, Rhodes said.
Syria’s outgunned rebels have issued urgent appeals this week for antitank and antiaircraft weaponry to counter a government offensive that is backed by Hezbollah fighters and Iranian militia forces.
“Suffice it to say this is going to be different in both scope and scale,” Rhodes said of the new assistance. Obama said last year that confirmation of chemical weapons use would cross a “red line” for the United States.
The shipments, to begin in a matter of weeks, are likely to be undertaken by the CIA, which has been the primary U.S. government interlocutor with the opposition’s Supreme Military Council, led by Salim Idriss. Such covert action requires a signed presidential finding.
That method avoids what the administration previously has said are legal restraints on supplying arms for attacks against another government without approval by an international body such as the United Nations, according to U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about intelligence matters.
The weapons would probably be delivered by air to Turkey or Jordan, or both, and by land into Syria along rebel-held corridors. The opposition’s requests for antitank and antiaircraft weaponry are still under discussion . . .In other words, the CIA will be providing military aid the exact same way we've been providing it over the past couple of years indirectly. Naturally, the abundance of liberals who opposed the Bush administration's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are nowhere to be found because its Barack Hussein Obama and not George W. Bush who wants to drag us further into yet another conflict, the only purpose of which is to further feed the insatiable appetite of the military industrial complex for more defense-related spending.
Anyone with a brain knows that any chemical weapons floating around the Middle East were put there by the American government. The U.S. furnished chemical weapons to Iraq during its long war with Iran, which Hussein in turn used on the Kurds.
The Washington Post report claims the U.S. has provided a little over a half billion dollars in "humanitarian and non-lethal aid" already to the rebels, which consists largely of Al Qaeda terrorists. The Post suggests that the weapons have come from other countries in the region, which means the CIA puppet regimes like Saudi Arabia. The Post report offers no explanation for contradictory conclusions by the UN on the use of chemical weapons in Syria. It's just another in a line of classical false flags engineered by the CIA since its inception to create war and mayhem throughout the world.
UPDATE: Check out this story. It looks like our true interest in Syria is helping one of our CIA puppet regimes in Qatar build a natural gas pipeline through the country to reach an existing pipeline in Turkey. Isn't that what drives our interest in all these countries?
Also, check out the background of Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser to Obama quoted in the Post's story. He holds a master's degree in fiction writing:
35-year-old Rhodes has been a speechwriter for Obama since 2007 and now enjoys the role of deputy national security adviser for strategic communication. He created the infamous term “kinetic military action” to describe the bombardment of Libya which allowed Obama to skirt around the constitutional question of having to declare war.
Rhodes’ expertise revolves around manufacturing narratives. “He earned a master’s degree in fiction-writing from New York University just a few years ago,” writes Ed Lansky. “He did not have a degree in government, diplomacy, national security; nor has he served in the CIA, or the military. He was toiling away not that long ago on a novel called ‘The Oasis of Love” about a mega church in Houston, a dog track, and a failed romance.”
As Stephen Hayes documents in a lengthy Weekly Standard piece, Rhodes was instrumental in altering CIA talking points to delete references to Islamic terrorists being involved in the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, setting the foundation for the Obama administration’s cover-up of the incident by claiming the siege was a demonstration against an anti-Muslim film. This was an attempt to hide the fact that the White House had supported Al-Qaeda terrorists in the overthrow of Gaddafi, just as they are now doing in Syria.
Rhodes can also count on the support of the US corporate media in selling fairytales about chemical weapons, since his brother David is the president of CBS News.
The central involvement of a fiction writer in selling yet another war based on dubious claims about the use of weapons of mass destruction is perfectly appropriate for an administration that is clearly beating the war drums in order to distract from domestic scandals.
Amazing, the Imperial President can announce arming the "rebels" and not the slightest dissent from Congress. "Bomber" McCain always ready for a new war supports the President.
ReplyDeleteWe are told our Intelligence community has confirmed the use of chemical weapons, that same Intelligence community that told us Iraq had WMDs.