Rouhani surfs the new WAVE

THE ROVING EYE Rouhani surfs the new WAVE By Pepe Escobar He came. He listened. And he surfed. "I listened carefully to the statement made by President Obama today at the General Assembly... [I'm] hoping that they will refrain from following the short-sighted interests of warmongering pressure groups and we can arrive at a framework to managing our differences." Then he outlined what has always been the official Iranian position: "Talks can happen; equal footing and mutual respect should govern the talks." Then he addressed the expectation (actually, the world's): "Of course, we expect to hear a consistent voice from Washington. The dominant voice in recent years has been for a military option." But now he had another idea. So he sets the stage for the punch line: It's WAVE time. WAVE as in World Against Violence and Extremism. Not in Farsi, lost in translation; in English. "I propose as a starting step... I invite all states... to undertake a new effort to guide the world in this direction ... we should start thinking about a coalition for peace all across the globe instead of the ineffective coalitions for war." So the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, has just invited the whole planet to join the WAVE. How come no "coalition of the willing" leader ever thought about that? Talk about a rockin' entrance on the world stage (Here's the full Rouhani speech, in English, which deserves careful reading). Rouhani was measured and composed - but forceful enough to debunk the "imaginary Iranian threat propaganda", stress the horrible effects of sanctions, and still remain hopeful that the 34-year Wall of Mistrust between Washington and Tehran can be torn down. Obama, to his credit, had tried hard not to be upstaged. It took no less than 60 years for an American president to finally admit Washington had a hand in overthrowing the democratically elected Mossadegh government in 1953 (although the ghost-written formulation in his speech was extremely sloppy). Obama officially recognized the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's fatwa against nuclear weapons (imagine the George W Bush administration doing it). And he said on the record that Washington is not seeking regime change in Tehran - thus speeding up former vice president Dick Cheney's next heart attack. Obama even mentioned the key words "mutual respect". As for the cinematic coup de grace - the "casual" meeting or handshake in the corridors of the UN - it could never have happened so soon. Both Rouhani and Obama are under enormous pressure from hawks on both sides, and so far there's nothing substantial on the table. Yet even while trying to send all the right signals to Tehran, Obama simply could not resist the urge: "I believe America is exceptional, in part because we have shown a willingness, through the sacrifice of blood and treasure, to stand up not only for our own narrow self-interest, but for the interests of all." The corollary: he kept plugging for a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the bombing of Damascus if anything goes wrong with the Syrian chemical weapons disarmament. And this for the "interests of all" - as in Israel and the House of Saud. The overwhelming majority of the real world, though, is busy reminding the US president that America is not exceptional at all, from Russian President Vladimir Putin's actions in the case of secrets whistle-blower Edward Snowden and the Syria tragedy to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who in a stinging speechqualified NSA spying as an "affront". It's not by accident that all the original four BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India and China, have been spied to kingdom come. Will WAVE drown the hawks? After the UN catharsis, the stage is now set for the real heavy work to start this Thursday, when US Secretary of State John "Assad is like Hitler" Kerry meets with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in the cadre of the multilateral P-5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany). The key points of the road map ahead are clear. Total clarification of details regarding Iran's rightful peaceful nuclear program should proceed with dismantling of sanctions. Washington's nasty financial blockade of Iran's oil sales is not working; no one, from China to India and beyond, will stop buying Iranian energy because the US says so. And Iran should also be reinstated in the global bank exchange mechanism. Here, Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, makes an extremely important point. Timing - by a series of circumstances - may be perfect, but the window of opportunity is not going to last very long. It all comes back to the same drama; will Obama and his team have enough balls to stare down the Israel lobby, the House of Saud, the neo-cons and assorted armchair warmongers across the Beltway? If not, the War Party victory will mirror the anti-Rouhani hardline victory in Tehran - with devastating consequences. So yes, the stakes could not have been higher. What the world needs now, is WAVE after WAVE after WAVE. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

An African American Perspective on U.S. Exceptionalism

An African American Perspective on U.S. Exceptionalism

by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka

Russian leader Vladimir Putin caused great consternation when he countered President Obama’s assertions of American “exceptionalism” in the pages of the New York Times. But the crimes of the United States are no secret to those who have been “invaded, enslaved, murdered, subjected to systematic racist dehumanization and colonized” by America.

An African American Perspective on U.S. Exceptionalism

by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka

“The only thing exceptional about the U.S. is its moral hypocrisy.”

In his recent op-ed in the New York Times, Vladimir Putin raised hackles among the talking-heads across the U.S. when he questioned the wisdom of President Obama’s evocation of the narcissistic idea of “American exceptionalism.” After all, the exceptionalism of the U.S. has never been a subject for reasoned discussion or debate in the media or elsewhere. Everyone knows that the U.S. is the greatest nation in the world and, therefore, has special privileges and responsibilities! Those privileges and responsibilities include not bothering with international law or processes when the government decides that the “world” (meaning itself and a few European nations and a couple of their client states) will take responsibility to enforce global order according to its own interpretations, values and needs.

The fact that many in the U.S. believe that those interpretations, values and needs are neutral, impartial representations of the global community at large is on full display every night on cable news channels, where state propagandists posing as journalists and the coterie of paid ex-military and U.S. intelligence consultants make impassioned arguments in favor of the U.S. waging war on Syria as a “punishment” for its alleged use of chemical weapons.

But for many of us, the story of American exceptionalism is an alien story, a children’s fairy tale spun from the fertile imagination of revisionist historians, a tale wherein indigenous people were sidekicks to lone rangers, the African slave trade was an unfortunate aberration that was corrected by Lincoln, children did not work in factories, women were not slaves to men, socialists and communists were not harassed and jailed, U.S. citizens of Japanese descent were not placed in concentration camps and Dr. King would have approved of Barack Obama’s warmongering.

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting.”

It is that story which informs the thinking of President Obama when he declares that “for nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security” i.e. the provider of an indispensable safety net without which transcontinental chaos would have ensued. In his version of exceptionalism, there was no CIA overthrow of the democratically elected government in Iran in 1953; the brutal war in Vietnam was a war to free the Vietnamese people from communism; there is an explanation for why the U.S. gave its support to the Apartheid government in South Africa; the coup in Chile was an internal event that did not involve the CIA, and the millions of people who died in Iraq were worth the price to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

Aurora Levins Morales quotes feminist psychologist Judith Herman as she describes the way in which perpetrators seek to control the disclosures and discourses of abuse:

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no-one listens… After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on.”

For African Americans experiencing depression-level economic conditions, our sons being murdered by agents of the state at a rate of one every 28 hours, our children locked away for life without the possibility of parole and more than a million of our sons and daughters entombed in the dungeons of this nation’s prisons, we did not need Vladimir Putin to remind us of the fiction of “America’s” commitment to values and social practices that make it “exceptional” in the community of nations. That reminder was also not necessary for our indigenous brothers and sisters who still struggle for sovereignty, dignity and self-determination in the aftermath of their American holocaust and America’s God-given manifest destiny.

Van Jones, the one-time black progressive who has since sold his integrity to the Democratic Party and CNN, recently joined Newt Gingrich during their new show to castigate Putin for having the audacity to suggest that the U.S. was not exceptional. Attempting his best effort at sincerity, Van offered that no other country in the world could have made the progress toward closing the gap between its stated values and social practices as the United States. Of course Van knows better – he has not forgotten our history of oppression, nor is he unaware of the contemporary crisis facing black working class and poor people. He has simply decided to deny the existence of those realities.

“We know and understand that the ideological foundation of U.S. exceptionalism and the equally odious notion of “humanitarian intervention” is just another manifestation of white supremacy.”

However, for the rest of us who have been invaded, enslaved, murdered, subjected to systematic racist dehumanization and colonized, we have not forgotten or denied those realities despite the best efforts by the perpetrators of our ongoing oppression to compel us to forget and just move on.

In fact we have done the hard work of reconstructing our own stories and clearing our eyes in order to see the world unencumbered by distorted myths and narratives that marginalize our experiences.

As a result, we don’t harbor any illusions about America and its real intentions when it professes humanitarian concerns. We know and understand that the ideological foundation of U.S. exceptionalism and the equally odious notion of “humanitarian intervention” is just another manifestation of white supremacy.

From our experiences and analyses, we can see that the assumptions of Euro-American racial and cultural superiority are so normalized, and social practices and structures so deeply inculcated in the collective consciousness of Americans of all races, nationalities, gender and class, that the cultural and institutional processes and expressions of white supremacy have been rendered largely invisible.

That is why so many Americans, despite their reservations related to Syria, still ultimately support the idea that the U.S. government has the right to contravene international law in order to uphold international law, to kill at will, to decide what nation has the right to sovereignty and to determine that the value of lives of human beings in Syria are worth more than the lives of the more than 2,000 murdered by the Egyptian military, or the 1,400 Palestinians murdered by the government of Israel a couple of years ago.

But as obvious as these moral contradictions are to most of the peoples of the world, it took the questioning of U.S. exceptionalism by the President of Russia to cause people in the U.S. to finally give some thought to an idea that they had taken for granted as self-evident.

What many people around the world understand is that exploding the dangerous myth of American exceptionalism is absolutely critical if the global community ever hopes to collectively solve the existential challenges that we face on the planet today. We can only hope that after a decade of war and a capitalist economic crisis, people in the U.S. will come to understand this and recognize that their interests and those of their elite are not the same, and that the U.S. must participate in the community of nations and peoples as equals.

The popular opposition to Obama’s proposal to wage war on Syria is encouraging because the world can no long afford for the people of the U.S. to continue to allow the country’s elites to impose their will over the rest of humanity. If people in the U.S. have moved closer to that realization as a result of this latest Syrian misadventure, that would be truly exceptional.

Ajamu Baraka is a long-time human rights activist, writer and veteran of the Black Liberation, anti-war, anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity Movements in the United States. He is currently a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. www.Ajamubaraka.com.

Obama-Rouhani: lights, camera, action By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Obama-Rouhani: lights, camera, action By Pepe Escobar The stage is set. By now it's established Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has given full authority to the new administration of President Hassan Rouhani to talk directly to Washington about Iran's nuclear program. This happened only a few days after US President Barack Obama leaked that letters had been exchanged between himself and Rouhani. Rouhani's empowerment was first confirmed later last week by extremely credible former nuclear negotiator ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian in this op-ed published in Japan. Mousavian was Rouhani's deputy in Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) from 1997 to 2005. Then Rouhani himself expanded on it this Wednesday in an interview with NBC. It's crucial to consider the Supreme Leader's exact position. This past Tuesday, he addressed the elite of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Tehran. [1] The key quote: "We don't accept nuclear weapons, not for the sake of the US or others, but because of our beliefs, and when we say that no one should have nuclear weapons, certainly we are not after them either." Khamenei fully endorsed Rouhani's diplomatic offensive, emphasizing - not cryptically - two concepts: "heroic flexibility", as in a wrestler sometimes giving way for tactical reasons but never losing sight of the rival; and "champion's leniency" - which happens to be the subtitle of a book Khamenei himself translated from Arabic about how the second Shi'ite imam, Hasan ibn Ali, managed to prevent a war in the 7th century by showing flexibility towards his enemy. Does that mean that a historic meeting between Obama and Rouhani next Tuesday on the sidelines of the annual UN General Assembly in New York is all but certain? No. Predictably, the White House has already exercised plausible deniability - as in Obama "not expected to meet" Rouhani. What the process implies though, is that Washington and Tehran should be talking, sooner or later, at the highest level. Watch the spoilers  Crucially, Khamenei also told the IRGC, "It is not necessary for the guards to have activities in the political field." This implies they are out of the new nuclear negotiations, in a further confirmation of how the nuclear dossier has been transferred to the Foreign Ministry. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is the man in charge. He will be traveling to New York with Rouhani. Here is an excellent insight into his frame of mind. As for former foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, now appointed by Rouhani as the head of Iran's atomic energy agency, he told the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna that it was time to "end the so-called nuclear file". The whole process, now in dizzying speed, is a radical departure from the Ahmadinejad years, when the IRGC was politicized to the extreme. One day before Khamenei's speech, Rouhani himself asked the IRGC to "stay above and beyond political currents". So Iran is now advancing pieces in the chessboard. There's no substantial American response, so far. But the spoilers in the game are already on overdrive. Not by accident Israel has ramped up its moves to stress the great "existential threat" to itself is the "strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut" - as expressed by outgoing Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren. [2] What is now clear is that Tel Aviv would rather have al-Qaeda-style jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra mould in power in Damascus than a secular Arab republic under Bashar al-Assad. That's yet another proof, if needed, of the confluence of interests between Israel and those paragons of democracy, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) petro-monarchies. No wonder all these players are bitterly despised by the Arab street. Tel Aviv will go no holds barred to bombard the Syrian chemical weapons dossier - pressuring for "conditions" that might include non-existent Iranian weapons and pressuring for everyone to believe Assad - with Hezbollah and Iran's complicity - is not cooperating with chemical weapons inspectors. Syrian "rebel" military leader, General Selim Idriss - an Israeli-GCC puppet - has already started the campaign, saying Damascus has transferred chemical weapons to Lebanon and Iraq. As for the House of Saud, the monarchy regards Russian diplomacy as worse than poison. They don't want even the possibility of a Geneva II conference - as Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush, head of the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate, told Putin in person. They want regime change, they want it now, and they will keep weaponizing the most lethal "rebel" factions, now on overdrive. The Obama administration must have registered Moscow's message that Syria is indeed a Russian "red line" - as important to Russia as Israel to the US. And the White House must have registered Khamenei's own message via Sultan Qaboos of Oman; the gist of it was that "whoever intends to destroy Syria should be prepared to lose their oil and gas in the region". The solution for the Syrian chemical weapons impasse, as reported by Asia Times Online, was worked out by Damascus, Tehran and Moscow - and later supported by Beijing. It did, in fact, save the Obama administration from itself. Yet, an interview late last week, Obama reverted to the same old (misleading) message, when referring to Iran: I think what the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue, that the threat against ... Israel that a nuclear Iran poses is much closer to our core interests. That a nuclear arms race in the region is something that would be profoundly destabilizing. There is no "threat" to Israel because there will be no nuclear Iran - as Khamenei, once again, has just stressed. The (undeclared) nuclear power is Israel, not Iran. And chemical weapons were never an issue to begin with; Obama's own, reckless, "red line" turned into an issue as a means to possibly enforce his previous red line, "Assad must go". Here, I had a shot at drawing the Big Picture. Last week, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Kyrgyzstan, Rouhani met with both Putin and China's President Xi Jinping. They are now working on a concerted strategy not only in Syria but also in terms of Iran's nuclear dossier. Russia and China firmly support Iran's right for a civilian nuclear program. And first and foremost, the BRICS group (Brazil, India and South Africa being its other members), as well as emerging regional powers such as Indonesia, Argentina and Iran itself, will keep increasing their push towards a multi-polar international order under the rule of law, instead of the usual US hegemon going on a rampage. Diplomacy is trying to have a shot at solving the Syrian tragedy. And diplomacy should have a shot at solving the 34-year Wall of Mistrust between Washington and Tehran. The question is whether Obama will have the "heroic flexibility" to stare down the spoilers. Notes: 1. Supreme Leader Reiterates Iran's Opposition to N. Weapons, Fars News Agency, September 17, 2013. 2. Israel wanted Assad gone since start of Syria civil war, Jerusalem Post, September 17, 2013. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Five Ways a Wider Syrian War Could Go Nuclear

Five Ways a Wider Syrian War Could Go Nuclear

By Harvey Wasserman

In the wake of an apparent break in the march to a wider war, the reality of a nuclear dimension in Syria remains largely unspoken.

There are at least five key reasons why American military intervention in Syria’s civil war could go nuclear:

(1) There’s a reactor near Damascus. 

It is relatively small, by most accounts containing about a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium. That’s not much in the scheme of things when it comes to building an atomic bomb. But as Alexsandr Lukashevich of the Russian Foreign Ministry puts it, “If a warhead, by design or by chance, were to hit the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MSNR) near Damascus, the consequences could be catastrophic.”

Of prime concern would be “contamination by highly enriched uranium” throughout the immediate environs. At the very least, it would be “a serious local radiation hazard,” according to Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, speaking on Russia Today. 

Lukashevich also predicts that “it would no longer be possible to account for nuclear material, its safety and control.” Such material, he warns darkly, could fall into “the wrong hands.” If the U.S. does ultimately attack Syria, it would want to avoid hitting that reactor. It’s also possible that in the ensuing chaos, one of the myriad unaccountable factions roaming through the civil war could target that nuke. Such a group could blame the U.S. or claim credit, depending on its particular orientation. 

Whether it happens, that reactor is just another sitting atomic duck awaiting a random shooter and the cover of new chaos. 

(2) Despite Secretary of State John Kerry’s promise of an “unbelievably limited” attack, once the U.S. military commits to action in Syria, it is unlikely to hold back any of its tactical arsenal. That would almost certainly include depleted uranium (DU). 

When shells made of this super-hard material penetrate armored vehicles, hardened bunkers and other structures, the DU disperses into fine radioactive particulates that are easily inhaled. Wherever deployed—as in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan—DU inflicts horrifying health consequences, including cancer among people of all ages and birth defects among children born well after its use. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, imposing virtually permanent contamination. 

Should DU weaponry be used yet again, this time in Syria, the contamination would be widespread and irreversible. Many thousands of innocent people—including the countless unborn—would suffer greatly. As with all radioactive fallout, the lethal effects will stretch through the generations.

(3) When the world’s superpowers collide, nuclear war is always a possibility.

At this point, the U.S. and Russia appear to be coming together. But in this too-often irrational global tinderbox, the stakes could not be higher.

In such situations, we hope for the best, but can’t lose sight of the potential worst. 

In Tuesday night’s speech, President Obama mentioned the use of chemical weapons during World War I. He might also recall that a bizarre assassination in Sarajevo by a tiny handful of young Serb nationals somehow touched off a four-year war that killed 10 million people outright, plus another 10 million—including 500,000 Americans—in the influenza epidemic that followed.

To this day, the circumstances that sparked that war are virtually impossible to comprehend. They seem, indeed, to have somehow acquired a devastating momentum all their own.

Yet the instability of the Balkans back then pales before the flashpoint that is today’s Middle East. A protest in Syria turned into a civil war, and then a proxy war. It could easily expand into a regional and, in the worst case, global, conflict. Looming in the background of the tense, torturous negotiations yet to come is the reality that despite everyone’s best wishes, diplomatic failure is a distinct possibility—one that could ultimately become synonymous with the atomic unthinkable.

(4) In the bottomless turbulence that defines today’s Middle East, the Americans and Russians so far seem to retain some shreds of rationality. But given the Peaceful Atom’s half century of weapons-grade proliferation, we cannot know which nations or marginal groups might now have atomic devices and what random impulses might prompt their use.

In a profoundly unpredictable world, each of the more than 400 commercial-sized reactors still operating continues to produce radioactive materials that could fuel a nuclear weapon. 

Each of those reactors is itself a profoundly vulnerable target. Should the situation in Syria devolve to a wider war, the likelihood of a freelance atomic “situation” becomes all too probable. 

(5) While the world’s attention is focused on Syria, the global-scale disaster at Fukushima spirals out of control.

The more serious the crisis in Syria, the more it will divert attention from an existing nuclear disaster.

Millions of tons of heavily contaminated water continuously flow through the site in central Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. Millions more accumulate in flimsy tanks already breaking apart, all within the specter of the next earthquake.

The three melted cores at Fukushima Daiichi have yet to be found. The common radioactive waste pool near Unit Four is surrounded by buildings whose foundations are being undermined by the continuous flow of radioactive water.

Most terrifying, the entire core of Unit Four remains perched in a damaged fuel pool 100 feet in the air, atop a structure that’s sinking. Should it crash to the ground, that core could potentially spew into the ocean and atmosphere more than 20,000 times the radiation released at Hiroshima. 

A sane species would be pouring all its resources into somehow healing the open apocalyptic wound that still festers at Fukushima.

Yet we are tied up in Syria. We can be deeply grateful that the situation there today seems at least slightly less dangerous than it did yesterday.

But atomic danger lurks without warning in every facet of this crisis. 

Harvey Wasserman edits Nukefree.org. He is the author of “Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth” and hosts the “Green Power & Wellness” radio show.

_

Five Ways a Wider Syrian War Could Go Nuclear

Five Ways a Wider Syrian War Could Go Nuclear

By Harvey Wasserman

In the wake of an apparent break in the march to a wider war, the reality of a nuclear dimension in Syria remains largely unspoken.

There are at least five key reasons why American military intervention in Syria’s civil war could go nuclear:

(1) There’s a reactor near Damascus.

It is relatively small, by most accounts containing about a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of weapons-grade uranium. That’s not much in the scheme of things when it comes to building an atomic bomb. But as Alexsandr Lukashevich of the Russian Foreign Ministry puts it, “If a warhead, by design or by chance, were to hit the Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MSNR) near Damascus, the consequences could be catastrophic.”

Of prime concern would be “contamination by highly enriched uranium” throughout the immediate environs. At the very least, it would be “a serious local radiation hazard,” according to Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, speaking on Russia Today.

Lukashevich also predicts that “it would no longer be possible to account for nuclear material, its safety and control.” Such material, he warns darkly, could fall into “the wrong hands.” If the U.S. does ultimately attack Syria, it would want to avoid hitting that reactor. It’s also possible that in the ensuing chaos, one of the myriad unaccountable factions roaming through the civil war could target that nuke. Such a group could blame the U.S. or claim credit, depending on its particular orientation.

Whether it happens, that reactor is just another sitting atomic duck awaiting a random shooter and the cover of new chaos.

(2) Despite Secretary of State John Kerry’s promise of an “unbelievably limited” attack, once the U.S. military commits to action in Syria, it is unlikely to hold back any of its tactical arsenal. That would almost certainly include depleted uranium (DU).

When shells made of this super-hard material penetrate armored vehicles, hardened bunkers and other structures, the DU disperses into fine radioactive particulates that are easily inhaled. Wherever deployed—as in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan—DU inflicts horrifying health consequences, including cancer among people of all ages and birth defects among children born well after its use. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, imposing virtually permanent contamination.

Should DU weaponry be used yet again, this time in Syria, the contamination would be widespread and irreversible. Many thousands of innocent people—including the countless unborn—would suffer greatly. As with all radioactive fallout, the lethal effects will stretch through the generations.

(3) When the world’s superpowers collide, nuclear war is always a possibility.

At this point, the U.S. and Russia appear to be coming together. But in this too-often irrational global tinderbox, the stakes could not be higher.

In such situations, we hope for the best, but can’t lose sight of the potential worst.

In Tuesday night’s speech, President Obama mentioned the use of chemical weapons during World War I. He might also recall that a bizarre assassination in Sarajevo by a tiny handful of young Serb nationals somehow touched off a four-year war that killed 10 million people outright, plus another 10 million—including 500,000 Americans—in the influenza epidemic that followed.

To this day, the circumstances that sparked that war are virtually impossible to comprehend. They seem, indeed, to have somehow acquired a devastating momentum all their own.

Yet the instability of the Balkans back then pales before the flashpoint that is today’s Middle East. A protest in Syria turned into a civil war, and then a proxy war. It could easily expand into a regional and, in the worst case, global, conflict. Looming in the background of the tense, torturous negotiations yet to come is the reality that despite everyone’s best wishes, diplomatic failure is a distinct possibility—one that could ultimately become synonymous with the atomic unthinkable.

(4) In the bottomless turbulence that defines today’s Middle East, the Americans and Russians so far seem to retain some shreds of rationality. But given the Peaceful Atom’s half century of weapons-grade proliferation, we cannot know which nations or marginal groups might now have atomic devices and what random impulses might prompt their use.

In a profoundly unpredictable world, each of the more than 400 commercial-sized reactors still operating continues to produce radioactive materials that could fuel a nuclear weapon.

Each of those reactors is itself a profoundly vulnerable target. Should the situation in Syria devolve to a wider war, the likelihood of a freelance atomic “situation” becomes all too probable.

(5) While the world’s attention is focused on Syria, the global-scale disaster at Fukushima spirals out of control.

The more serious the crisis in Syria, the more it will divert attention from an existing nuclear disaster.

Millions of tons of heavily contaminated water continuously flow through the site in central Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. Millions more accumulate in flimsy tanks already breaking apart, all within the specter of the next earthquake.

The three melted cores at Fukushima Daiichi have yet to be found. The common radioactive waste pool near Unit Four is surrounded by buildings whose foundations are being undermined by the continuous flow of radioactive water.

Most terrifying, the entire core of Unit Four remains perched in a damaged fuel pool 100 feet in the air, atop a structure that’s sinking. Should it crash to the ground, that core could potentially spew into the ocean and atmosphere more than 20,000 times the radiation released at Hiroshima.

A sane species would be pouring all its resources into somehow healing the open apocalyptic wound that still festers at Fukushima.

Yet we are tied up in Syria. We can be deeply grateful that the situation there today seems at least slightly less dangerous than it did yesterday.

But atomic danger lurks without warning in every facet of this crisis.

Harvey Wasserman edits Nukefree.org. He is the author of “Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth” and hosts the “Green Power & Wellness” radio show.

__._,_.___

Al-Qaeda's air force still on stand-by

THE ROVING EYE Al-Qaeda's air force still on stand-by By Pepe Escobar It was 12 years ago today. Historians will register that, according to the official narrative, 19 Arabs armed with box cutters and minimal flying skills pledged to a transnational Terror Inc turned jets into missiles to attack the US homeland, fooling the most elaborate defense system on Earth. Fast forward to 2013. Here's a 15-second version of the President of the United States (POTUS) address on Syria, one day before the 12th anniversary of 9/11: Our ideals and principles, as well as our national security, are at stake. The United States is "the anchor of global security". Although the United States military "doesn't do pin pricks", we still carry the burden to punish regimes that would flout long-held conventions banning the use of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. That's why I have decided to pursue an unlimited, targeted military strike against Washington DC. For countless global citizens, this alternative version predictably sounds as far-fetched as the official version of what happened 12 years ago. The fog of war obscures in mysterious ways. But the fact remains that the current, "reluctant" (farcical) Emperorcontinues to stake his - and his nation's - "credibility" on a "limited", "kinetic" operation to reinforce his self-defined red line against chemical weapons. Lose face, will travel  In theory, the Russian plan of having Damascus surrender its chemical weapons arsenal works because of its inbuilt Chinese wisdom; nobody loses face - from Obama and the US Congress to the European Union, the UN and the even more farcical "Arab" League, which is essentially a Saudi Arabian colony. Although Obama is on a media blitzkrieg stealing the credit for it, Asia Times Online has confirmed that the plan was elaborated by Damascus, Tehran and Moscow last week - after a visit to Damascus by the head of the national security committee of the Iranian Majlis (parliament), Alaeddin Boroujerdi. US Secretary of State John Kerry's now famous "slip" provided the opening. So, essentially, it's this "axis" - Damascus, Tehran and Moscow - that is helping Obama to crawl out of his self-inflicted abyss. Needless to say, that is absolutely unbearable for the plutocrats in charge of unleashing the new Syria (lethal) production. A brand new propaganda/manufactured hysteria campaign must be unfurled to justify war. And that's exactly what the Anglo-French-American axis is working on. No wonder the French proposal for a new UN Security Council resolution falls under the UN's Chapter 7 - which would explicitly allow the use of force against Damascus in case of non-compliance. As it is, this resolution will inevitably be vetoed by Russia and China. And that will be the new pretext for war. The (farcical) emperor may easily invoke plausible deniability, stress he made "every effort" to avoid a military conflict, and then convince skeptics in the US Congress this is the only way to go. And to think that a perfectly sound development of the Damascus-Tehran-Moscow plan is at hand. Syria's chemical weapons may be transferred to Russian - or European - supervision. Syria joins the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and ratifies the Chemical Weapon Convention (CWC). OPCW inspectors start working in coordination with the UN. Every expert knows the whole process will take years. Damascus has already declared it's ready to join the OPCW and abide by the CWC. So Damascus does not need a UN Security Council resolution forcing it to do what it wants to do. Any serious, comprehensive UN resolution on chemical weapons across the Middle East would have to include Israel's chemical weapons. Note that nobody, absolutely nobody, is talking about Israel's vast arsenal of chemical, not to mention nuclear weapons. The sound path, though, will not be followed - because Washington and its barking poodles afflicted with Sykes-Picot wet dreams, London and Paris, are already blocking it. Fly me to the (war) moon  There are no signs that the Obama administration is prepared to even reconsider the yo-yo "Obama doctrine" all across the Middle East. This would imply dumping the Saudi-Israeli axis and making a concerted effort for the success of the Geneva II conference, the only possible diplomatic solution for the Syrian tragedy. I have argued before that the (farcical) emperor is just a paperboy - a docile employee. Those who are paying for the upcoming lethal production, as in the House of Saud, or cheering in the sidelines, as in the Israel lobby, simply won't give up. The House of Saud wants regime change, now. The Israel lobby/AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and its masters in Tel Aviv want a massive spillover of the Syria war into Lebanon to entangle Hezbollah. Financial Masters of the Universe, significant sectors of the industrial-military-security Orwellian/Panopticon complex, and Western-propped petro-monarchies want an independent, secular Arab republic profitably integrated in their monopoly. The problem is the unilateral "kinetic" whatever may be too "limited" to satisfy the Saudi-Israeli axis and most of all the financial Masters of the Universe, and illegal enough to qualify as a war crime. At least there is a counter-power. Asia Times Online has confirmed that an outstanding meeting will take place later this week in Kyrgyzstan, during the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Picture Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani together, in the same room, discussing their common position on Syria. Iran is an SCO observer - and may soon be admitted as a full member. This is what the Anglo-French-American axis is up against. And that brings us back to 12 years ago - and the myth that aluminum jets are able to penetrate the thick steel perimeters of the Twin Towers and kerosene is capable of instantaneously melting steel perimeters and steel cores into fluffy steel dust.Check this out and draw the necessary conclusions. As for that "evil", transnational Terror Inc, it didn't even have a name when Jihad International hopefuls were being recruited in the early 1980s by assorted Islamic charities, and then trained and funded by the CIA and Saudi Arabia. One day the database was finally named - by the US - as "al-Qaeda". Or, more appropriately, "al-CIAeda". They were elevated to Ultimate Evil status. They did 9/11. They reproduced like rabbits from Mali to Indonesia. Now the CIA works side-by-side with them - as it did in Libya. And eagerly they await the US Air Force to clear their road to Damascus. Hey, it's just (war) business. Allahu Akbar. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Syrian Children Kidnapped By Rebels Identified As Gas Victims By Obama Administration (Video)

by Steve Foley on September 8, 2013

By Susan Duclos

The horrifying pictures of dead children being used by the Obama administration to justify an attack on Syria, with the claim that the Assad regime carried out the chemical attacks that killed those children, while emotionally heartbreaking, do not tell the story of those children and do not tell you the main point the Obama administration is trying to coverup.

Those children were kidnapped over a week earlier, before they were slaughtered……. by the Obama backed Syrian rebels.

August 11, 2013 a report discussed the rebels attacking the Latakia village and Sheikh Mohammed Reda Hatem, an Alawite religious leader in Latakia said  ”Until now 150 Alawites from the villages have been kidnapped. There are women and children among them. We have lost all contact with them.”

Some of those children were found less than two weeks later, in Ghouta, photos below:

The wide distribution of satellite channel images of victims allowed Alawite families near Latakia to recognize their children who had been abducted two weeks prior by the “rebels.” This identification was long in coming because there are few survivors of the massacre by the allies of the United States, the United Kingdom and France in loyalist villages where more than a thousand bodies of civilians were discovered in mass graves.

The children do not correspond to a sample of the population: they are all almost of the same age and have light hair. They are not accompanied by their grieving families.

They are in fact children who were abducted by jihadists two weeks before in Alawite villages in the surroundings of Latakia, 200km away from Ghouta.

Barack Obama’s narrative is unraveling as the truth of who murdered these children is being exposed.
The Obama backed Syrian rebels are slaughtering these children, pretending it was Assad that did it, so Obama can claim justification in attacking the Assad regime.

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Obama's CIA company routinely helped to overthrow foreign governments

Obama's CIA company routinely helped to overthrow foreign governments

Documents uncovered from CIA archives by WMR describe how Business International Corporation (BIC), the Central Intelligence Agency front company for whom Barack Obama worked from 1983 to 1985, routinely helped the CIA to overthrow foreign governments, including that of Australia in 1975.
Obama's early experience in working for a CIA front that identified governments ripe for ouster helps to explain his eagerness to overthrow Syria's President Bashar al Assad and his past enthusiasm for George Soros/Gene Sharp-inspired "themed" rebellions against Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. 

CIA archives contain a 1983 interview by the publication CounterSpy with Australian Labor Party politician Joan Coxsedge, co-author with Ken Coldicutt and Gerry Harant of the book "Rooted in Secrecy: the Clandestine Element in Australian Politics." 

Coxsedge maintains that the CIA, assisted by Business International Corporation, engineered the ouster of Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975 by longtime CIA asset and extreme right-winger, Governor General John Kerr. 

Whitlam and his government had established close ties with communist and Arab nations but its questioning of the role of the National Security Agency (NSA) bases in Alice Springs and Nurunggar and its goal of returning control of Australian mineral resources from multinational corporations to the Australian people marked it for ouster by the CIA and Kerr. Coxsedge stated that Business International actually represented "20 of the most powerful multinationals" operating in Australia and it and the CIA coordinated their efforts to oust Whitlam and his government from office. In anticipation of a move against Whitlam, President Richard Nixon in 1973 appointed career diplomat and suspected CIA asset Marshall Green as ambassador to Canberra.

Kerr, the official representative of Queen Elizabeth, dismissed Whitlam's government on November 11, 1975 outside of the normal electoral process. The Australian armed forces and police were put on alert because Kerr, the Business International executives, and the CIA expected a strong reaction from the Australian people. The "constitutional coup" took place without one Molotov cocktail being thrown and not one labor strike taking place.

Kerr worked closely with U.S. intelligence during World War II and during the Cold War he was an important member of the CIA-connected Australian Association of Cultural Freedom, a branch of the CIA's global Congress for Cultural Freedom. Kerr was also the first president of Law Asia, founded by the CIA-linked Asia Foundation. The Asia Foundation funded many of the activities at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii, including the guest house where Barack Obama, Sr. and Lolo Soetoro, Obama's father and step-father, respectively, stayed during their CIA-provided college education. The Asia Foundation also funded Ann Dunham Soetoro's clandestine activities in Indonesia after the CIA's ouster of President Sukarno.



Although Whitlam was replaced by conservative Malcolm Fraser, it was Labor Party Party politician Bob Hawke who had been groomed by Langley even before Hawke was elected to Parliament. Coxsedge reported on a speech in Melbourne in April 1981 given by Allan Carroll, Business International's Director of Client Services for Australia and Southeast Asia to an elite group of corporate executives. Carroll said he predicted accurately that Hawke would come to power as prime minister and that it was Carroll's
own actions that made that happen.

A CIA "National Intelligence Daily" dated March 10, 1976, stated that "Hawke is the best qualified candidate to succeed Whitlam" as leader of the Labor Party. The CIA document shows that Hawke was "talent spotted" at an early stage, likely while an operative and later as president of the Australian Confederation of Trade Unions (ACTU), where he would eventually purge from the leadership ranks known and suspected Communists.

Hawke ran for a seat in the Australian House in 1980 and won. After securing Labor Party leader Bill Hayden's resignation in a backroom Labor caucus coup in 1983, Hawke became Labor Party leader and defeated Fraser in the general election later that year, becoming Prime Minister. Hawke was always identified with the pro-Israeli wing of the Australian Labor Party and Whitlam's ouster as Labor Party leader in 1977, after his loss of the prime ministership in 1975, was blamed on a dirty trick engineered by Hawke and other pro-Israeli Laborites to spread the rumor that Whitlam had received campaign cash from Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

In 1983, while Coxsedge was in in the United States recounting the role of Business International Corporation in overthrowing Whitlam in 1975, Barack Obama, Jr. was not only working for the company in Manhattan but was reportedly in a two-year relationship with Genevieve Cook, an Australian diplomat's daughter who he met in Jakarta when the two lived there as children in the post-CIA coup years in the late 1960s. Obama's step-father, Lolo, served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Indonesian Army where he helped in clean-up operations against Communists and their sympathizers. Meanwhile, his wife and Obama's mother Ann was fingering suspected Communists in Javanese villages as part of the CIA's Operation PROSYMS. Most of the suspected Communists turned over to Lolo and his Army friends were executed by military and paramilitary teams advised by the CIA and U.S. Special Operations personnel.

Cook's father, Michael Cook, was appointed as the director general of Australia's Office of National Assessments (ONA) intelligence office by Fraser, the man who took over from Whitlam after his ouster by the CIA-Business International team. Cook later became Australian ambassador to Washington from 1989 to 1993. In 1983, Genevieve Cook was teaching at a Quaker school in Brooklyn while Obama was working across the East River for Business International at its office near United National headquarters. Genevieve Cook's mother, Helen Ibbitson, had divorced Michael Cook and re-married an American, Philip Jessup, Jr. the counsel of the National Gallery of Art. Ibbitson's exertise on Khmer culture in Cambodia mirrored that of Ann Dunham's knowledge of Javanese history and culture in Indonesia. Both countries were hotbeds for CIA and ASIO activity, especially in the 1960s.

The CIA's International Operations Division was active in using art specialists, jazz musicians, journalists, fiction writers, and animated filmmakers to penetrate foreign organizations with similar cultural interests. Although the program was viewed with skepticism by Presidents like Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, it gained ground with the more culture-minded John F. Kennedy.

Jessup, whose father was American diplomat Philip Jessup, Sr. and a key player in the post-war Bretton Woods conference that led to the establishment of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, had been in the "art business" in Indonesia during the Suharto regime. Such lines of business in Third World countries wracked by coups and revolutions were often CIA non-official cover (NOC) contrivances. Ann Dunham's career in Indonesia and Pakistan was closely linked to projects funded by the World Bank and IMF.

Green was the central point of contact for the CIA and Business International coup plotters in Australia. Coxsedge reported how a minister of Whitlam's government was threatened by Green in the minister's own office in Canberra. Green said that if the Whitlam government handed control of U.S. subsidiaries in Australia to Australians, "we would move in." Green was also the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia during the bloody CIA-engineered coup that ousted President Sukarno and replaced him with the fascist autocrat, General Suharto. For two years, 1967 and 1969, Green was Dunham's nominal boss at the U.S. embassy in Jakarta. Green would have also undoubtedly had contact with Cook at the Australian embassy in Jakarta since the two missions coordinated their coup planning activities through the respective CIA and ASIO stations in the Indonesian capital.

Ironically, in 1979 Green joined the board of the Population Crisis Committee, an NGO dedicated to halting overpopulation. While Green was the U.S. ambassador in Jakarta, it is estimated that between 800,000 to 1 million Indonesian Communists and ethnic Chinese were killed by Suharto's CIA-backed forces.

Obama appears to have crafted his predilection for ousting governments while serving as a CIA apprentice at Business International, the CIA's major partner is overthrowing governments. Gough Whitlam and Joan Coxsedge are still alive, Whitlam at the age of 97. Obama's urge to attack and oust governments from Libya and Tunisia and Egypt to Syria is nothing new to them. They've seen it all done before by individuals with whom Obama grew up and worked with from an early age.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals For Sanity Warn Obama On Syrian Intel

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) 

SUBJECT: Is Syria a Trap?

Precedence: IMMEDIATE

 We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”

 We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandum immediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.

The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond … the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today.

Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you.

We have observed John Brennan closely over recent years and, sadly, we find what our former colleagues are now telling us easy to believe. Sadder still, this goes in spades for those of us who have worked with him personally; we give him zero credence. And that goes, as well, for his titular boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has admitted he gave “clearly erroneous” sworn testimony to Congress denying NSA eavesdropping on Americans.

Intelligence Summary or Political Ploy?

That Secretary of State John Kerry would invoke Clapper’s name this week in Congressional testimony, in an apparent attempt to enhance the credibility of the four-page “Government Assessment” strikes us as odd. The more so, since it was, for some unexplained reason, not Clapper but the White House that released the “assessment.”

This is not a fine point. We know how these things are done. Although the “Government Assessment” is being sold to the media as an “intelligence summary,” it is a political, not an intelligence document. The drafters, massagers, and fixers avoided presenting essential detail. Moreover, they conceded upfront that, though they pinned “high confidence” on the assessment, it still fell “short of confirmation.”

Déjà Fraud: This brings a flashback to the famous Downing Street Minutes of July 23, 2002, on Iraq, The minutes record the Richard Dearlove, then head of British intelligence, reporting to Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials that President Bush had decided to remove Saddam Hussein through military action that would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” Dearlove had gotten the word from then-CIA Director George Tenet whom he visited at CIA headquarters on July 20.

The discussion that followed centered on the ephemeral nature of the evidence, prompting Dearlove to explain: “But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” We are concerned that this is precisely what has happened with the “intelligence” on Syria.

The Intelligence

There is a growing body of evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East — mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its supporters — providing a strong circumstantial case that the August 21 chemical incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition and its Saudi and Turkish supporters. The aim is reported to have been to create the kind of incident that would bring the United States into the war.

According to some reports, canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened. Some people in the immediate vicinity died; others were injured.

We are unaware of any reliable evidence that a Syrian military rocket capable of carrying a chemical agent was fired into the area. In fact, we are aware of no reliable physical evidence to support the claim that this was a result of a strike by a Syrian military unit with expertise in chemical weapons.

In addition, we have learned that on August 13-14, 2013, Western-sponsored opposition forces in Turkey started advance preparations for a major, irregular military surge. Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and their foreign sponsors.

Senior opposition commanders who came from Istanbul pre-briefed the regional commanders on an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development,” which, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria.

At operations coordinating meetings at Antakya, attended by senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials as well as senior commanders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrians were told that the bombing would start in a few days. Opposition leaders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the U.S. bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Bashar al-Assad government

The Qatari and Turkish intelligence officials assured the Syrian regional commanders that they would be provided with plenty of weapons for the coming offensive. And they were. A weapons distribution operation unprecedented in scope began in all opposition camps on August 21-23. The weapons were distributed from storehouses controlled by Qatari and Turkish intelligence under the tight supervision of U.S. intelligence officers.

Cui bono? 

That the various groups trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have ample incentive to get the U.S. more deeply involved in support of that effort is clear. Until now, it has not been quite as clear that the Netanyahu government in Israel has equally powerful incentive to get Washington more deeply engaged in yet another war in the area. But with outspoken urging coming from Israel and those Americans who lobby for Israeli interests, this priority Israeli objective is becoming crystal clear. 

Reporter Judi Rudoren, writing from Jerusalem in an important article in Friday’s New York Times addresses Israeli motivation in an uncommonly candid way. Her article, titled “Israel Backs Limited Strike Against Syria,” notes that the Israelis have argued, quietly, that the best outcome for Syria’s two-and-a-half-year-old civil war, at least for the moment, is no outcome. Rudoren continues:

“For Jerusalem, the status quo, horrific as it may be from a humanitarian perspective, seems preferable to either a victory by Mr. Assad’s government and his Iranian backers or a strengthening of rebel groups, increasingly dominated by Sunni jihadis.

“‘This is a playoff situation in which you need both teams to lose, but at least you don’t want one to win — we’ll settle for a tie,’ said Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli consul general in New York. ‘Let them both bleed, hemorrhage to death: that’s the strategic thinking here. As long as this lingers, there’s no real threat from Syria.’”

We think this is the way Israel’s current leaders look at the situation in Syria, and that deeper U.S. involvement – albeit, initially, by “limited” military strikes – is likely to ensure that there is no early resolution of the conflict in Syria. The longer Sunni and Shia are at each other’s throats in Syria and in the wider region, the safer Israel calculates that it is.

That Syria’s main ally is Iran, with whom it has a mutual defense treaty, also plays a role in Israeli calculations. Iran’s leaders are not likely to be able to have much military impact in Syria, and Israel can highlight that as an embarrassment for Tehran.

Iran’s Role

Iran can readily be blamed by association and charged with all manner of provocation, real and imagined. Some have seen Israel’s hand in the provenance of the most damaging charges against Assad regarding chemical weapons and our experience suggests to us that such is supremely possible.

Possible also is a false-flag attack by an interested party resulting in the sinking or damaging, say, of one of the five U.S. destroyers now on patrol just west of Syria. Our mainstream media could be counted on to milk that for all it’s worth, and you would find yourself under still more pressure to widen U.S. military involvement in Syria – and perhaps beyond, against Iran.

Iran has joined those who blame the Syrian rebels for the August 21 chemical incident, and has been quick to warn the U.S. not to get more deeply involved. According to the Iranian English-channel Press TV, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif has claimed: “The Syria crisis is a trap set by Zionist pressure groups for [the United States].”

Actually, he may be not far off the mark. But we think your advisers may be chary of entertaining this notion. Thus, we see as our continuing responsibility to try to get word to you so as to ensure that you and other decision makers are given the full picture.

Inevitable Retaliation

We hope your advisers have warned you that retaliation for attacks on Syrian are not a matter of IF, but rather WHERE and WHEN. Retaliation is inevitable. For example, terrorist strikes on U.S. embassies and other installations are likely to make what happened to the U.S. “Mission” in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, look like a minor dust-up by comparison. One of us addressed this key consideration directly a week ago in an article titled “Possible Consequences of a U.S. Military Attack on Syria – Remembering the U.S. Marine Barracks Destruction in Beirut, 1983.”

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Thomas Drake, Senior Executive, NSA (former)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan

Larry Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

W. Patrick Lang, Senior Executive and Defense Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.)

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.)

Todd Pierce, US Army Judge Advocate General (ret.) 

Sam Provance, former Sgt., US Army, Iraq

Coleen Rowley, Division Council & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)

Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret); Foreign Service Officer (ret.)