Tag: Armed Response

Countdown Has Begun

All the yelling has been done….all the waffling is about finished……someone will get their way……it is a slow countdown until the US goes all in with Syria…….

I spend a lot of time reading news from the Middle East and of course Syria is at the forefront of all reporting on the Middle east……..the US will commit itself shortly and I am hoping that all aspects of the situation have been taking into consideration…….we cannot afford another miscalculation like the one we had with Iraq….

A few stories that have not been played for us here in the US….btw action against Syria is less popular than Congress….but we will go anyway and damn the torpedoes!

Source: Saman Mohammadi, Guest Post

Who is more deaf to global public opinion – Obama or Assad? Answer: Obama. Sources of photos: AP and Reuters.
First, the U.N. official. Her name is Carla del Ponte, the “former Chief Prosecutor of two United Nations international criminal law tribunals” (Wikipedia). She’s an attorney general from Switzerland, so you know she’s neutral.

Read the excerpt below from the article, “Syrian rebels used Sarin nerve gas, not Assad’s regime: U.N. official” by Shaun Waterman, published in The Washington Times on Monday, May 6, 2013:

Testimony from victims strongly suggests it was the rebels, not the Syrian government, that used Sarin nerve gas during a recent incident in the revolution-wracked nation, a senior U.N. diplomat said Monday.

Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.

But she said her panel had not yet seen any evidence of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons, according to the BBC, but she added that more investigation was needed.

Damascus has recently facing growing Western accusations that its forces used such weapons, which President Obama has described as crossing a red line. But Ms. del Ponte’s remarks may serve to shift the focus of international concern.

The same false allegations against Assad that were flying around back in May were bound to resurface late in the summer. So the date of the article in no way diminishes its value as far as enlightening the world about who actually is willing and has the means to carry out a chemical weapons attack against Syrian civilians.

The Saudi-Turkish-Qatari-French-British-USraeli backed Al-Qaeda terrorists have everything to gain by framing Assad because they are currently losing the war and would see their fortunes reversed at least somewhat if the U.S. attacks Syria.

Saleh Muslim, Syria’s main Kurdish leader, says that Assad would be stupid to use chemical weapons against his own people in front of the eyes of the world.

The Al-Qaeda terrorists are the most likely culprits, if in fact there is proof that chemical weapons have been used in Syria.

Read the excerpt below from the article, “Syrian Kurdish leader says Assad not to blame for attack” by Alexandra Hudson, published by Reuters on Monday, August 26, 2013:
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would not be “so stupid” as to use chemical weapons close to Damascus, the leader of the country’s largest Kurdish group said.

Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said he doubted the Syrian president would resort to using such weapons when he felt he had the upper hand in the country’s civil war.

He suggested last Wednesday’s attack, which the opposition says was carried out by government forces and killed hundreds of people, was aimed at framing Assad and provoking an international reaction. Assad has denied his forces used chemical weapons.

“The regime in Syria … has chemical weapons, but they wouldn’t use them around Damascus, 5 km from the (U.N.) committee which is investigating chemical weapons. Of course they are not so stupid as to do so,” Muslim told Reuters.

Are these stories the truth……we may never know for sure…..but it needs to be read before any action involves the US……your thoughts please.

What Price Syria

Okay the news is in….chemical weapons have been used and it appears it was the Assad people that did the dirty deed….and now all the neocons are screaming about the US needs to do something and soon…….Assad has to be punished for this breach of civility…….one of the most loud people is Corker from Tennessee…..

The alleged chemical attack in Syria continues to reverberate today, with members of Congress hitting the Sunday talk show rodeo to call for action—or restraint, reports Politico. Leading the charge for action was Bob Corker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said he believes chemical agents were used and “I think we will respond in a surgical way. Something that gets their attention, that causes them to understand that we are not going to put up with this kind of activity.” Corker’s Democrat counterpart in the House, Eliot Engel, was equally hawkish, saying, “We have to move, and we have to move quickly. Congress needs to be involved, but perhaps not initially.” There were calls for caution, however: Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed said he wants to “verify that it was directed by the Assad regime because that will allow us to build an international coalition,” while Texas Republican Mike McCaul worried about public support for action, saying, “I don’t think that American people have an appetite to put troops on the ground in Syria.”

First let me say…..I am tired of the douche bags saying “boots on the ground”……we are talking about American lives and to use that offensive term is just a way to pretend that they are talking about something other than humans….

Next, here is an idea….all you dorks that are so willing to send in the Army need to take one of your famous fact finding missions to Syria….they won’t…they are cowards and do not want to put themselves in harms way but are more than willing to send others to do their dirty work….sicken pricks and that goes for ALL of them Senor, Bolton, Cheney and any other asshat that are quick to jump…..

Time for the rest of the “free” world to step up and do what is needed and let the US watch while they succumb to the hype….but for now ….we wait….we wait to see just how far the US will push itself on Syria….will it become yet another war or will it be a limited excursion?

And Then There Is Syria

For two years now the two sides have been battling each other for control of the country……each side has accused the other of one atrocity after another……and we here in the West must believe what we choose to believe…..but now there is a real push to have the world believe that one side or the other is using chemicals weapons (WMDs)…..sound familiar?

A senior Israeli official said Wednesday that it is “apparently clear” that chemical weapons were recently used in Syria, and that the alleged attack will be a main topic of conversation with visiting President Barack Obama.

The statement by Yuval Steinitz, the newly appointed minister of intelligence and strategic affairs, conflicts with U.S. assessments that there is no evidence behind accusations traded the day before between Syrian rebels and the Bashar Assad regime of a chemical weapons attack in a village in the north of the country.

Even thought there is little evidence of such an act……we have the usual neo-cons rattling the sabres……

Two top foreign policy lawmakers, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), separately called for the White House to step up military action in Syria, with Graham arguing that Obama should consider having American troops “get on the ground” to help secure chemical weapons sites.

Later in the evening, the heads of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), joined forces on CNN to say that they believed chemical weapons had likely been used, without offering evidence. They said the White House should consider military action.

“If in fact we prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they have used these chemical weapons … I think we are morally obligated to do something about their ability to deliver these weapons,” said Rogers. “And if that was a very limited military strike to do that — again, I think we’re morally obligated to do that.”

Interesting that all this bravado comes on the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war……….what could be the outcome?

My guess would be aimed at Iran who is an ally of Assad…..if the West were to go into Syria militarily then Iran would have the justification they may need for an all out attack…….Syria would just the beginning of another war that no one wants to pay for and no one wants responsibility for once the decision is made……

You Wanted Transparency

For the 8 years that GW was prez we heard almost daily from the Dems that they wanted more transparency for the administration…..and now that Obama is prez we hear almost daily from the Repubs that they want more transparency from the administration…..well you asked for it….you got it!

I am talking about all the hoopla running through the Beltway about the use of drones…….the deal is that the US is targeting Americans and killing them without due process…….you may say what a mess this is and should be subjected to the hearing process……are kidding?  Have you not been paying attention to the most recent hearings….they are jokes!  The sole purpose is to generate sound bites and talking points…..period!  Congressional hearings are a colossal waste of time and money…..they are for show not anything else!

Just what brought on all this “fake” concern?

(Newser) – It is legal for the American government to order the killing of an American citizen if a “high-level” official decides that the person is a senior member of al-Qaeda or an associated group who poses “an imminent threat of violent attack” against the US, according to a Justice Department document obtained by NBC News. The memo—which has a broad definition of “imminent”—is not the same one used to justify the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, but the legal reasoning appears very similar, reports the New York Times.

An ACLU director describes the memo as “chilling.” At its heart, “it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen,” he says. “It recognizes some limits on the authority it sets out, but the limits are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.” A bipartisan group of 11 senators wrote to President Obama yesterday urging him to release documents explaining his “authority to deliberately kill American citizens” in drone strikes or other counter-terror operations, Politico reports, and the issue is expected to play a key role in the confirmation hearing of counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan as CIA director.

But let us be real for a change…..this is nothing new….Americans that have been on the wrong side of movements have always been targets…..COINTELPRO comes to mind…..okay there may be NO document evidence that anyone was killed but there is evidence that smear campaigns and such were employ by our government against people that did not agree with the direction of the country…..so it was an easy step to move up to killing those who do not agree with you…….

All this fake outrage……it is only outrage as long as it can drive the story…….these people that are outraged are hypocrites…….the country that everyone defends almost blindly has been using this technique for decades……Israel.  They target people, families, friends, acquaintances, etc and they do not let civilians change the course of their assassinations……..

You bitched about the lack of transparency from at least two presidents and now you have it…..HAPPY?

A Bomb Or Not A Bomb?

We all have our beliefs about what is going on in Iran as I write……conservs want us, the American people, to believe that the iranians are on the verge of a nuke bomb…..liberals want us to believe that they are years away or that they do not want a bomb, just nuke energy…..so what is the true perspective?

To answer that question…NO one has any flipping idea apparently….just all conjecture and posturing…..but I did find a piece in my search for information…….

Israel’s intelligence service Mossad has acknowledged, just like their American counterparts, there is no proof Tehran is carrying out a nuclear weapons program, a source in US intelligence told the New York Times.

­An unnamed former senior US intelligence official told the paper “Mossad does not disagree with the US on the [Iranian] weapons program.” The consensus among US spy agencies remains that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons research several years ago.

“There is not a lot of dispute between the US and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts,” the official continued.

Such recognition comes in stark contrast with Israeli politicians, who have continually insisted on an immediate military strike on Iran’s nuclear installations to prevent it from evolving into an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.

The assessment of the intelligence available is the key to the ongoing war or peace dilemma with Iran. US spy agencies have been searching around for years, trying to find proof Iran is developing a nuclear warhead and missiles to deliver it. For all of their troubles, this is what they’ve found: the program was shut down way back in 2003.

But while intelligence circles might admit Iran is not close to obtaining nuclear weapons, the sanctions against Iran remain in place.  Meanwhile, neither Israeli nor American leaders make any bones of threatening Iran with a military solution to prevent the country’s frustrated nuclear ambitions from seeing the light of day.

So what is the real deal?  Do we prepare for war that will claim even more human lives or do we stop all the electioneering and let sanctions work?  Should we move forward with a plan to fight, kinda in the vain of WMDs in Iraq?  Better safe than sorry, right?

Always….A Better Way To Kill!

Since WW1 countries have spent more money trying to find the technology to kill better and rougher…….in history we went from swords and spears to guns to artillery to tanks to planes to missile and finally the ultimate weapon…the nuke!

Governments have shown good sense in their efforts to prevent the use of nukes ever again…..and now we have the drones, those remotely operated planes that are  used for everything from spying to assassination…..and with all that the world’s military-industrial complex is still NOT satisfied….they are working on another remote killer…..

This reminds me of a bad Tom Selleck movie set in the future where robots do a lot of the police work….and the bad guy was trying to obtain the new bullet that could be sterred to the person it was intended to kill……a little far fetched huh?  Maybe not necessarily so…….

I found this on the Wired website…….

The U.S. military has been after self-guided bullets for years. Now, government researchers have finally made it happen: A bullet that can navigate itself a full mile before successfully nailing its target.

The breakthrough comes courtesy of engineers at Sandia National Laboratory, owned by Lockheed Martin. They’ve successfully tested a prototype of the bullet at distances up to 2,000 meters — more than a mile. The photo above is an actual image taken during one of those tests. A light-emitting diode was attached to the bullet, showing the amazing pathway that the munition made through the night sky.

Of course, Lockheed’s been a longtime partner in the military’s quest for the ultimate, self-guided munition. In 2008, they scored a $14.5 million contract as part of Darpa’s “Exacto” program, which sought to develop sniper rifles with guided bullets. They’ve also been involved in the agency’s “One Shot” initiative, which is trying to develop scope-mounted lasers that can help snipers compensate for weather conditions.

Read More…

Always….a better way to kill!  Surely, this perfect specimen of God’s creation could find a better way to waste their time…….

Wait For It!

Inkwell Institute

While you were distracted with doings in the GOP race for the nomination…….things are getting interesting.

My regular reader know that I have an interest in the Middle East, having worked a couple of years in the area, the workings of the issues and situations is just amazing….this time I would like to talk about Iran….since it is getting a lot of air time thanks to the GOP candidates and the news of the assassination and the news of the American that has been charged with spying and sentenced to death…..

What does the normal person know about Iran……they know the little guy in charge is an ass….they know that in 1979 our embassy was taken and Americans were held hostage for over a year….the country is Islamic…is that about it?

Let us step back a few decades to the 1950’s….In 1953, the United States CIA led by one of President Theodore Roosevelt’s grandsons, initiated a coup in Iran to remove the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. The Iranian government was understandably dissatisfied with the terms of its contract with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company that allowed British interests to claim 85% of the oil profit from Iran.[9] Iran voted to nationalize the oil industry in 1951 after the British declined to renegotiate the terms. The US-led coup was successful, and the royal monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,[10] became virtual dictator. Fearing popular reprisal, Pahlavi’s government was supported by the CIA in creating the Iranian SAVAK, a vicious secret police for the Shah’s dictatorial government.[11] We can only assume that the oil revenue sharing agreement with the Shah was acceptable to the US and UK.

Under the Eisenhower administration, the US cooperated with the Shah’s government for the development of Iranian nuclear energy through the “Atoms for Peace” program.   President Ford agreed to US full cooperation to help Iran build about two dozen nuclear energy plants. When the Iranian people overthrew the Shah’s government in 1979, the US stopped cooperating. The US backed Iraq in their invasion of Iran in 1980 and throughout the war until 1988, seeking a more US-friendly Iranian government. The US provided Saddam Hussein with the chemical and biological weapons the W. Bush administration later used as justification for invading Iraq.   Since 1979, the US has worked to prevent Iran having a nuclear energy program, even under the legal provisions of the NPT, and reneged on a multi-billion dollar contract to deliver nuclear fuel to Iran without refunding Iran’s money…….

Let’s not forget that in the 1980’s Iran was fighting Iraq and Saddam was our proxy in the area…..(thanx to Carl Herman of Washington’s Blog)……

Okay, today we have Iran doing war exercises in the Persian Gulf and flexing their muscles by threatening to shut down the Straits of Hormuz….with that threat came the US Navy’s fleet group to flex their muscles in the event that they would be needed to keep oil flowing regularly…..

Now this is all too familiar!  If anyone remembers the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam then you know what I am talking about…..someone is gonna react sometime soon and that will be all the provocation that is needed for military action….Maybe Israel or maybe the US….but the way this is playing out is not a good sign that we will not be involved in another conflict….and once again it would have been because of OIL!

The military-industrial complex is bemoaning the loss of revenue from Iraq……..I regret to say that some sort of action is coming and will not be before the election……I mean we just got out of one piece of armed conflict in Iraq……why wait to start another?

Dammit! I Told You So!

Let me see Casey Anthony walks……Murdoch get grilled…….Harry Potter is over……..and a partridge in a pear tree…….and with all that Libya is still going on….go figure……you would not know it by the media….but trust me….people are still dying…….

Libya has been going strong for a couple of months….whether you call it…war, humanitarian crisis, no fly zone, defensive posturing, and the rest of the colorful words that some use to describe the conflict in Libya…..but there are several points that most people overlooked (I am NOT one of them)…….

When the conflict began and the world cheered for the democracy movement, I on the other hand, was a buzz kill….I told my readers that it was more a revenge thing than a democratic one….I told them that since Libya is a tribal society that no matter who won the conflict there would be blood in retaliation….and yet many still believe that the Libyan thing is about democracy and the people’s desire for it….it is to a small few, but basically, it is the revenge thing that is a driving force…the tribes in the East of the country want revenge on Qadahfi and his supporters…..

For those who still doubt my assertion…..BlackListedNews.com……

Confirming what geopolitical expert Dr. Webster Tarpley had for months been saying about the realities behind the Libyan unrest, often depicted as a “pro-democracy” rebellion by the corporate-owned media, reports are coming in that Libyan rebels are once again targeting rival ethnic tribes within captured towns with beatings, looting, vandalism, and much worse (though conveniently omitted in mainstream reports.) This indicates not “democratic” aspirations, but a conflict divided along ethnic lines, perpetuated by covert and now overt US/UK military support for the Western-favored and long cultivated tribes of Eastern Libyan centered around Benghazi.

CNN reported, “Libyan rebels looted and beat civilians, rights group says,” that Soros-funded Human Rights Watch received reports that, “rebel fighters and supporters have damaged property, burned some homes, looted from hospitals, homes, and shops, and beaten some individuals alleged to have supported government forces.” Mahmoud Jibril, the defacto rebel prime minister who recently pandered before the corporate-funded Brookings Institute claiming his movement was inspired by globalization, confirmed the allegations but suggested they represent only a “few incidents” and that those responsible would be “brought to justice.”

What we are confronted with in Libya is not an oppressed people aspiring for globalization and liberal democracy, but yet another political-ethnic division exploited by the global corportocracy to divide and destroy the sovereignty of an independent nation. If and when Tripoli falls to the hordes of globalists and their witless armies of dupes and mercenaries, unthinkable brutality, discrimination, and atrocities await their ethnic rivals. While NATO’s rhetorical justification for their criminal military intervention centers around protecting civilians, they are clearly and intentionally facilitating the targeting of civilians aligned to Qaddafi not politically, but ethnically.

I realize that the rest of the world wants it to be about democracy and freedoms and liberty….sometimes an uprising is just that……. an uprising……. and the one in Libya is one about revenge…..Period!