By Nicolas J.S. Davies: 9 Ways America Has Fueled the Bloody Civil War in Syria

President Obama's threats against Syria are framed by the carefully crafted image of a responsible superpower reluctantly drawn into a horrific conflict caused by others. But the reality is very different. For more than two years, U.S. policy has quietly fueled the escalation of the conflict in Syria and undermined every effort to bring the Syrian people the ceasefire and peaceful political transition they need and want. Whoever is directly responsible for hundreds of deaths in the latest chemical weapons incident, the critical covert and diplomatic role the United States has played in a war that has killed at least 100,000 people means that their blood is also on our hands. As Haytham Manna, a leader of the National Coordinating Body for Democratic Change (NCB) in Syria recently told Le Vif, the largest French language news magazine in Belgium, "The Americans have cheated. Two or three times they have withdrawn at the very moment that an agreement was in the works. Everything is possible but that will depend mainly on the Americans. The French are content to follow. A political solution is the only one that could save Syria." So, if Manna is correct, we Americans have played a decisive role at the critical moments for war or peace in Syria, including the one we are now confronting. If it comes as a surprise to you as an American that you are responsible for the horrific nightmare taking place in Syria, please review the well-documented record of what has been done in the name, albeit secretly and without your knowledge in many cases: 1) As protests spread throughout the Arab world in 2011, the mostly leftist groups who organized the Arab Spring protests and resistance to government repression. They agreed, and they still agree, on three basic principles: non-violence, non-sectarianism, and no foreign military intervention. But the U.S. and its allies marginalized the NCB, formed an unrepresentative "Syrian National Council" in Turkey as a government-in-exile and recruited, armed and trained violent armed groups to pursue regime change in Syria. 2) The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar began flying in fighters, weapons and equipment to turn the Syrian Spring into a bloody civil war. Once they had overthrown the government of Libya, at the cost of 25,000 to 50,000 lives, they began adapting the same strategy to Syria, despite knowing full well that this would be a much more drawn-out, destructive and bloody war. 3) Even as a Qatari-funded YouGov poll in December 2011 found that 55% of Syrians still supported their government, unmarked NATO planes were flying fighters and weapons from Libya to the "Free Syrian Army" base at Iskanderum in Turkey. British and French special forces were training FSA recruits, while the CIA and US special forces provided communications equipment and intelligence, as in Libya. Retired CIA officer Philip Giraldi concluded, "Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels who are armed, trained and financed by foreign governments are more true than false."           

By Ralph Nader: Stopping Barry O'Bomber's Rush to War!

Dear President Obama: Little did your school boy chums in Hawaii, watching you race up ad down the basketball court, know how prescient they were when they nicknamed you "Barry O'Bomber." Little did your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal, ever imagine that your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal ever imagine that you could be a president who chronically violates the Constitution, federal statues, international treaties and the separation of power at depths equal to or beyond the George W. Bush regime. Nor would many of the voters who elected you in 2008 have conceived that your foreign policy would rely so much on brute military force at the expense of systemically waging peace. Certainly, voters who knew your background as a child of third world countries, a community organizer, a scholar of constitutional law and a critic of the Bush/Cheney years, never would have expected you to favor the giant warfare state so pleasing to the military industrial complex. Now, as if having learned nothing from the devastating and costly aftermaths of the military invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, you're beating the combustible drums to attack Syria, a country that is no threat to the U.S. and is embroiled in complex civil wars under a brutal regime. This time, however, you may have pushed for too many acts of war. Public opinion and sizable numbers of members of both parties in Congress are opposed. These lawmakers oppose bombing Syria in spite of your corralling the cowardly leaders of both parties in the Congress. Thus far, your chief achievement on the Syrian front has been support for your opposition from al-Qaeda affiliates fighting in Syria, the pro-Israeli government lobby, AIPAC, your chief nemesis in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner, and Dick Cheney. This is quite a gathering and a telling commentary on your ecumenical talents. Assuming the veracity of your declarations regarding the regime's resort to chemical warfare first introduced into the Middle East by Winston Churchill's Royal Air Force's plastering of Iraqi tribesmen in the nineteen twenties, your motley support group is oblivious to the uncontrollable consequences that might stem from bombing Syria. One domestic consequence may be that Speaker Boehner expects to exact concessions from you on domestic issues before Congress in return for giving you such high visibility bipartisan cover. Your argument for shelling Syria is to maintain "international credibility" in drawing that "red line" regardless, it seems, of the loss of innocent Syrian civilian life, causalities to our foreign service and armed forces in that wider region, and retaliation against the fearful Christian population in Syria, one in seven Syrians are Christian. But the more fundamental credibilities are to our Constitution, to the neglected necessities of the American people, and to the red line of observing international law and the UN Charter which prohibit unilateral bombing in this situation. There is another burgeoning cost, that the militarization of the State Department whose original charter invests it with the responsibility of diplomacy. Instead, Mr. Obama you have shaped the State Department into a belligerent "force projector" first under Generalissima Clinton and now under Generalissimo Kerry.     

By Michael Snyder, Guest Post: Who Is Going To Buy Our Debt If This War Causes China,

Russia And The Rest Of The World to Turn On Us? Can the U.S. really afford to greatly anger the rest of the world when they are the ones that are paying our bills? What is going to happen if China, Russia and many other large nations stop buying our debt and start rapidly dumping U.S. debt and start rapidly dumping U.S. debt that they already own? If the United States is not very careful, it is going to pay a tremendous economic price for taking military action in Syria. At this point, survey after survey has shown that the American people are overwhelmingly against an attack on Syria, people around the globe are overwhelmingly against an attack on Syria, and it looks like the U.S. Congress is even going to reject it. But Barack Obama is not backing down. In fact, ABC News is reporting that plans are now being made for a "significantly larger" strike on Syria than most experts had expected. If Obama insists on going forward with this, it will be the greatest foreign policy disaster in modern American history. Right now, both Russia and China are strongly warning Obama not to attack Syria. And Russia is not just warning Obama with words. According to Bloomberg, Russia has sent quite a collection of warships in the region. Russia is sending three more ships to the eastern Mediterranean to bolster its fleet there as a U.S. Senate panel will consider President Obama's request for authority to conduct a military strike on Syria. Russia is sending two destroyers, including the Nastoichivy, the flagship of the Baltic Fleet, and the Moskva missile cruiser to the region, Interfax reported today, citing an unidentified Navy official. That follows last week's dispatch of a reconnaissance ship to the eastern Mediterranian, four days after the deployment of an ant-submarine ship to the eastern Mediterraean, four days after the deployment of an anti-submarine ship and a missile cruiser to the area, which were reported by Interfax. Syria hosts Russia's only military facility outside the former Soviet Union, at the port of Tartus. China is also letting it be known that they absolutely do not want Obama to hit Syria. On Friday, China issued a warning about what military conflict in the Middle East could do to "the global economy". "Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on the global economy, especially on the oil price, it will cause a hike in the oil price." And according to Debka, China has also deployed "a number of warships" to the region. Western naval sources reported Friday that a Chinese landing craft, the Jinggangshan, with a 1,000-strong marine battalion had reached the Red Sea en route for the Mediterranian off Syria. According to DEBKA file, Beijing has already deployed a number of warships opposite Syria in secret. If the latest report is confirmed, this will be the largest Chinese deployment in the Middle East in its naval history. If the U.S. attacks Syria, Russia and China probably will not take immediate military action against us. But they could choose to hit us where it really hurts. According to the U.S. Treasury, foreigners now hold approximately 5.6 trillion dollars of our debt, and Russia owns approximately 138 billion dollars of our debt.

By Nora Eisenberg: Inside America's Dark History of Chemical Warfare

As the Obama administration presses ahead with its mission to punish the Syrian government for its alleged gassing of civilians in suburban Damascus, the particulars of the attack remain unclear. All too clear, though, is the role of the United States as a supplier, supporter and even employer of a wide
range of weapons of mass destruction, including sarin gas, resulting in the death and illness of not only those considered our enemies, but our "heroes" too. The 1960s and 1970s. Agent Orange. The US military's widespread and long-term use of the defoliant Agent Orange to destroy Vietnamese jungles is among the best known and most anguishing chapters in modern chemical warfare. Published articles had demonstrated the health and environmental dangers of the chemical components of Agent Orange, so called for the orange striped barrels in which it was shipped for a full decade preceding the war. In 1952, Monsanto which along with Dow Chemicals was the principle manufacturer informed the government of the dangerous byproduct resulting from heating the chemical mix, namely dioxin. Yet we proceeded to employ Agent Orange, denying for decades the death and illness inflicted on Vietnamese and Americans alike. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by AP photographer Nick Ut documented, we used the incendiaries napalm and white phosphorus in Vietnam. As Seymour Hersh revealed in his groundbreaking 1968 reporting, we provided the South Vietnamese with the lethal arsenic-containing gas DM, claiming it was a "tear" gas for riot control, though the Field Manual clearly stated "not approved in any operations where deaths are not acceptable." Throughout the war, Hersh and others continued to document the US use of gases, incendiaries and Agent Orange and other herbicides to destroy not only Vietnam's jungles but its food supply, a crime against humanity and nature. Project SHAD Totally unknown till 35 years after the Vietnam War was the DoD's Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), a highly classified program, which from 1962 to 1971 tested whether US warships and their troops could withstand attacks from chemical and biological weapons. From overhead planes and nearby aircraft carriers, the military aimed lethal gases at ships carrying mostly unsuspecting sailors and marines. In the 1990s, veterans stationed on SHAD boats reported respiratory conditions and cancers only to be told by VA that nothing called Project SHAD had ever existed. Finally, after CBS broke the story in May 2001, the Department of Defense admitted to SHAD's existence and its almost decade-long program  of toxic testing. Project Tailwind. In 1998, a CNN two-part Sunday night news report revealed that a special commando unit in 1970 used sarin gas in Laos to kill American defectors. The story about "Operation Tailwind" was researched, written and produced by seasoned journalists April Oliver and Jack Smith, with help from Pulitzer Prize-winning Peter Arnett, who narrated the broadcast. Under pressure from Henry Kissinger and others, many claim, CNN retracted the story, and fired Oliver and Smith, and Arnett soon after. Newsroom's Aaron Sorkin recently explained on the Daily Show that he used "Operation Tailwind" as the basis of the second season's centerpiece, Operation Genoa, a secret mission set in Pakistan, in which the US supposedly used sarin against civilians. 

By Dennis Kucinch, Reader Supported News: Top 10 Unproven Claims for War Against Syria!

In the lead-up to the Iraq War, I researched, wrote and circulated a document to members of Congress which explored unanswered questions and refuted President Bush's claim for a cause for war. The document detailed how there was no proof Iraq was connected to 9/11 or tied to al Qaeda's role in 9/11, that Iran neither had WMDs nor was it a threat to the U.S., lacking intention and capability to attack. Unfortunately, not enough members of Congress performed due diligence before they approved the war. Here are some key questions which President Obama has yet to answer in the call for congressional approval for war against Syria. This article is a call for independent thinking and congressional oversight, which rises above partisan considerations. The questions the Obama administration needs to answer before Congress can even consider voting on Syria: Claim # 1. The administration claims a chemical weapon was used. The UN inspectors are still completing their independent evaluation. Who provided the physiological samples of sarin gas on which your evaluation is based? Further reading: Brown Claim #2: The administration claims the opposition has not used chemical weapons. Which opposition? Are you speaking of a specific group, or all groups working in Syria to overthrow President Assad and his government? Has your administration independently and categorically dismissed the reports of rebel use of chemical weapons which have come from such disparate sources as Russia, the United Nations, and the Turkish state newspaper? Have you investigated the rumors that the Saudis may have supplied the rebels with chemicals that could be weaponized? Has the administration considered the ramifications of inadvertently supporting al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebels? Was any intelligence received in the last year by the the U.S. government indicating that sarin gas was brought into Syria by rebel factions, with or without help of foreign government or intelligence agents? Further reading: Global Research report: Wall Street Journal article: Reuters story, Zaman story in Turkish, see Google translate from Turkish to English, Atlanta Sentinel story: AP story. Claim #3: the administration claims chemical weapons were used because the regime's conventional weapons were insufficient. Who is responsible for the conjecture that the reason chemical weapons were used against the Damascus suburbs is that Assad's conventional weapons were insufficient to secure "large portions of Damascus"? Claim #4: The administration claims to have intelligence relating to the mixing of chemical weapons by regime elements. Who saw the chemical weapons being mixed from August 18th on? Was any warning afforded to the Syria opposition and if not, why not? If, on August 21st a "regime element" was preparing for a chemical weapons attack, has an assessment been made which could definitely determine whether such preparation using gas masks, was for purpose of defense, and not offense? Claim #5: The administration claims intelligence that Assad's brother ordered the attack? What is the type of and source of intelligence which alleges that Assad's brother personally ordered the attack?  Who made the determination that Assad's brother ordered the attack, based on which intelligence, from what source?

AlterNet By Noam Chomsky: Chomsky: Why the Israel-Palestine 'Negotiations' Are a Complete Farce!

The Israeli-Palestine negotiations currently underway in Jerusalem coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Oslo Accords. A look at the character of the accords and their fate may help explain the prevailing skepticism about the current exercise. In September 1993, President Clinton presided over a handshake between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn, the climax of a "day of awe", as the press described it. The occasion was the announcement of the Declaration of Principles for political settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which resulted from secret meetings in Oslo that were sponsored by the Norwegian government. Public negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians had opened in Madrid in November 1991, initiated by Washington in the triumphal glow after the first Iraq war. They were stalemated because the Palestinian delegation, led by the respected nationalist consensus. In May 1989 Israel responded, declaring that there can be  no "additional Palestinian state" between Jordan and Israel, Jordan being a Palestinian state by Israeli dictate, and that further negotiations will be "in accordance with the basic guidelines of the Israeli Government," The Bush I administration endorsed this plan without qualifications, then initiated the Madrid negotiations as the "honest broker." Then in 1993, the DOP was quite explicit about satisfying Israel's demands but silent on Palestinian rights, apart from the vague reference to a "just settlement of the refugee problem." In the "peace process" unfolded as the DOP clearly stated, Palestinians could kiss goodbye their hopes for some limited degree of national rights in the Land of Israel. Other DOP articles stipulate that the Palestinian authority extends over "West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, except for issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations: Jerusalem, settlements, military locations and Israelis", that is, except for every issue of significance. Furthermore, "Israel will continue to be responsible for external security, and for internal security, and public order of settlements and Israelis. Israeli military forces and civilians may continue to use roads freely within the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area," the two areas from which Israel was pledged to withdraw-eventually. In short, there would be no meaningful changes. The DOP also did not include a word about the settlement programs at the heart of the conflict: Even before the Oslo process, the settlements were undermining realistic prospects of achieving any meaningful Palestinian self-determination. Only by succumbing to what is sometimes called "international ignorance" could one believe that the Oslo process was a path to peace. Nevertheless, this became virtual dogma among Western commentators. As the Madrid negotiations opened, Danny Rubinstein, one of Israel's best-informed analyst, predicted that Israel and the United States would agree to some form of Palestinian "autonomy as in a POW camp, where the prisoners are 'autonomous' to cook their meals without interference and to organize cultural events." Rubenstein turned out to be correct.

By Yossef Bodansky: Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?

There is a growing volume of new evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its sponsors and supporters which makes a very strong case, based on solid circumstantial evidence, that the August 21, 2013, chemical strike in the suburbs was indeed a pre-meditated provocation by the Syrian opposition. The extent of US foreknowledge of this provocation needs further investigation because available data puts the horror of the Barack Obama White House in a different and disturbing light. On August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major and irregular military and irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and representatives of Qatari, Turkish, and US Intelligence Mukhagarat Amriki took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors. Very senior opposition commanders who had arrived from Instanbul briefed the regional commanders of an imminent escalation in the fighting due to a war-changing development which would, in turn, lead to a US-led bombing of Syria. The opposition forces had to quickly prepare their forces for exploiting the US-led bombing in order to march on Damascus and topple the Bashar al-Assad Government, the senior commanders explained. The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. Indeed, unprecedented weapons distribution started in all opposition camps in Hatay Province on August 21-23, 2013. In the Reyhanli area alone, opposition forces received well excess of 400 tons of weapons, mainly anti-aircraft weaponry from shoulder-fired missiles to ammunition for light-guns and machineguns. The weapons were distributed from store-houses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of US intelligence. These weapons were loaded on more than 20 trailer-trucks which crossed into northern Syria and distributed the weapons to several despots. Follow-up weapon shipments, also several hundred tons, took place over the weekend of August 24-25, 2013, and included mainly sophisticated anti-tank guided missiles and rockets. Opposition officials in Hatay said that these weapon shipments were the biggest they had received since the beginning of the turmoil more than two years ago. The deliveries from Hatay went to all the rebel forces operating in the Idlib-to-Aleppo area, including the al-Qaida affiliated jihadists who constitute the largest rebel forces in the area. Several senior officials from both the Syrian opposition and sponsoring Arab states stressed that these weapon deliveries were specifically in anticipation for exploiting the impact of imminent bombing of Syria by the US and the Western allies. The latest strategy formulation and coordination meetings took place on August 26, 2013. The political coordination meeting took place in Istanbul and was attended by US Ambassador Robert Ford.