UndercoverElephant wrote:Blue Peter wrote:Here's a long article by William Polk on the situation in Syria,
Peter.
Yes,
And for all I respect the input of Billhook, I think he should read this. I still see no reason why the Assad regime would carry out a Sarin attack in disputed territory, and numerous reasons why the rebels would do so. I simply do not believe that the regime carried out this attack.
Undercover Elephant -
the Polk article (which I read before posting on that by Tisdal) is certainly an interesting piece. Its coverage of the climatic origins of the peaceful protests that the dictatorship's callous stupidity converted into revolt, are the best I've seen published.
Yet in two critical points it seems way off the mark. First, it takes a newspaper reporter's opinion of the missile fragments "looking homemade" as a basis for placing culpability with the rebels. In fact, the missile fragments (as filmed during the UN inspectors examination) are indistinguishable from the dual-purpose ground to ground rocket quite widely used by the Syrian army. Brown Moses impartial and forensic analysis of film and text is worth seeing in this regard.
http://brown-moses.blogspot.co.uk/
When tipped with an HE shell, the rockets body is blasted to pieces - when tipped with a CW vessel (containing a small dispersal charge and the two precursor chemical that mix to produce the agent) the rocket body is left relatively intact - as at the target sites.
Polk's second oversight is in failing to recognize any motivation for the army's use of CW, and assuming this again points to some rogue rebel command's culpability, under the very dubious assumption that they have "so much to gain".
Short of Syrian army CW regiment soldiers' fingerprints being lifted by the UN from those rocket fragments, or some equally decisive evidence appearing, it is the motivation for the attack that is the central issue in determining culpability. And it is here that I differ with the popular but simplistic interpretation that convinces Polk.
What he overlooks is the fact that the attack has put the USA in the worst bind that I've seen it in during 45 years of observing its conduct. It is caught in a classic lose-lose dilemma :
- of attacking the Syrian armed forces with a missile strike - without a UN mandate, without incontrovertible evidence of its culpability, and with a coalition of two (maybe), and watching its global credibility get shredded in hardening international protests from both govts and populations -
- or of not attacking the Syrian armed forces and leaving the international law against CW use to fall into abeyance - and watching its global credibility get shredded for being no longer able to impose its will militarily.
The dilemma is not imposed in a vacuum of course - there seem to me three major factors colouring the level of protest/disaffection and loss of credibility that the choice of either horn will generate.
- the massive disgust at the Bush-Cheney agenda - that was patently as dishonest as it was callous as it was incompetent with two awful wars imposed and lost - has already split western coherence to the point of disabling the participation of British forces, that have been Washington's most reliable ally in its adventures since Korea -
- the Snowden files, which have angered govts and corporations worldwide as well as the public, not simply for the offence of spying on countries that were not enemies, but for the dishonest provision of that data to benefit US corporations over other countries' corporations -
- the bipartisan US climate policy of a brinkmanship of inaction against China, launched by Cheney and adopted by Obama, that has obstructed the essential climate treaty to the point that all nations are now getting worsening weather impacts and losses, and the prognosis is for intensifying global crop failures in the 2020s.
From today's Guardian see :
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... ate-change
From Leeds Uni see :
Food Security: Near future projections of the impact of drought in Asia is available in the 'reports' section at
www.lowcarbonfutures.org.
Quote from press release :
"Research released today shows that within the next 10 years large parts of Asia [particularly China, India, Pakistan and Turkey] can expect increased risk of more severe droughts, which will impact regional and possibly even global food security. [my insert]
On average, across Asia, droughts lasting longer than three months will be more than twice as severe in terms of their soil moisture deficit compared to the 1990-2005 period. This is cause for concern as China and India have the world’s largest populations and are Asia’s largest food producers.
Dr Lawrence Jackson, a co-author of the report, said: "Our work surprised us when we saw that the threat to food security was so imminent; the increased risk of severe droughts is only 10 years away for China and India. These are the world’s largest populations and food producers; and, as such, this poses a real threat to food security."
The US empire, just like any other before it, runs not primarily on a fossil fuel or military prowess but on credibility in its client states. Once that credibility is lost, it isn't readily regained as attempts at coercion of dissident states only raise alienation, while attempts at enticement look weak. The challenge imposed by the use of CW in Damascus at this critical juncture in US affairs is thus potentially seminal. If mishandled (as seems quite likely) it could notably accelerate the empire's decline.
With the US having demonstrated its reluctance to intervene in Syria for 2.5 yrs, and Hagel publicly telling Congress 6 months ago that intervention "would be a bad idea". the downside risk for Damascus (+ Moscow? +Tehran?) of posing the challenge via the CW attack was predictably likely to be limited to a brief missile assault.
The upside for that possible troika is
- the potential neutering of further US intervention in Syria, and the weakening of its influence across the ME;
- the massive smearing of the SFA's integrity in the eyes of western populations that might demand support for their efforts;
- and the further terrorisation of rebel populations and fighters within Syria, damaging their morale to maintain resistance.
From this perspective Polk's inability to see any motivation for Assad using CW was simply down to a lack of consideration of the consequent impact on western policies, power and public opinion.
By contrast, the rebels' false flag use of CW offers no such motivations. If some extreme jihadi unit were backed by say Riyadh or Tel Aviv as the supplier of a vehicle-mounted launcher, rockets, precursor chemicals, and highly trained personnel to launch a military-scale attack, the suppliers' govts would be very well aware that the best upside would likely be only a US missile assault that is far from decisive, and that the ensuing outcry would further reduce any US willingness to intervene in the ME.
They would also be very well aware that a CW attack while the UN inspectors were 10 miles away would give Assad the maximum cover to blame it on the rebels.
At face value Polk's assessment seems reasonable, but as soon as it is put in the context of realpolitik, it is patently missing the relevant motivations for Assad's culpability and against a false flag action using extremist elements.
It is also discounting mounting lines of evidence supporting this assessment, including that provided by UK, France and USA, each of which will predictably use any verifiable facts they can find alongside any inventions,
- for example that Sarin was used (which could not be invented with the UN report awaited)
- that it was a military-scale attack on a dozen targets in four rebel-held areas,
- that the Syrian army has the dual purpose rockets and precursor chemicals that were used and the mobile launchers and highly trained troops to use them
- and that the regime has previously shown itself to be perfectly capable of attrocities to the scale of 30,000 dead just in reprisals for the earlier failed uprising, not even in its own defence.
A couple of additional lines are also worth noting
-Newsnight showed film of the former president of Iran (who is not known as a US puppet) declaring in a public speech that the Syrian govt made the CW attack - as was then reported on Iran's semi-official news agency, before being censored into a line suiting the current regime.
- Der Speigel carried a report that the head of German Intelligence addressed a meeting of 'select lawmakers' on Syria, and in a wide-ranging briefing told of the capture of a conversation between a senior Hezboallah figure in Syria and the Iranian Embassy, in which the former reported that the attack was made by the Syrian army.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 20123.html
This is of course a western govt source, but it was not aimed at the public and there never was any prospect of German involvement, so it is not easy to justify an assumption that the head of German Intelligence is trying to mislead his government.
One other line of evidence seems notable, which is the the Mint fantasy about
Price Bandar's CW exploding in a tunnel and dispersing to hit 12 target sites dispersed across 10 miles of the city - is the best that the Assad govts propaganda office has been able to produce as to just which rebels serving which foreign power using what mobile launcher and rockets deployed at what site, carried out the attack.
The absence of any such clear and detailed accusation, this long after the attack, with all of Assad's secret police and infiltration capacity,
seems rather telling to me.
All of these points are of course just assessments of comparative motivation and lines of evidence - they are not proof. As any scientist, high court judge or senior general could explain to those who don't get it, 'proof' is that which convinces.
From the judge's outlook "proof" is that which convinces "beyond a reasonable doubt" - which of course means there is no point in hoping that those who display gross prejudice on an issue are ever going to weigh the evidence and the motivations on a reasonable and impartial basis.
For myself I can say that over and above the mounting lines of evidence, it is the disparity in motivations which I find the convincing argument for the Syrian govt having mounted this atrocity. This may become clearer to many as the ongoing US loss of credibility unfolds. As you may have seen, that the Syrian army launched the attack is in my view no justification for anything beyond perhaps a single surgical strike on Syrian airpower; the sane and effective response is the potent support of moderate SFA forces to assist their cohesion and to bring Assad to the negotiating table.
Regards,
Lewis
