FTR #954 Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack? Not So Fast

In the wake of the alleged sarin attack by Bashar al-Assad’s gov­ern­ment and the cruise mis­sile strike on a Syr­i­an air base by the U.S., we exam­ine some of the rel­e­vant issues in the cri­sis, includ­ing and espe­cial­ly intel­li­gence eval­u­a­tions sharply diver­gent from the offi­cial ver­sion:

a). We begin with analy­sis of the area (Idlib) where the alleged Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment sarin attack took place. It is dom­i­nat­ed by the Al-Nus­ra Front, the name giv­en to Al-Qae­da in Iraq when it oper­ates in Syr­ia. Note that the top cler­ic in the Al-Qae­da held area is Abdul­lah Muhaysi­ni, a Sau­di cler­ic: ” . . . . who was a stu­dent [25] of Sulay­man Al-Alwan, the Wah­habi cler­ic who over­saw what his Mus­lim crit­ics have called a ‘ter­ror­ist fac­to­ry [26]’ in Sau­di Arabia’s Al-Qas­sim Province. Al-Alwan was also the instruc­tor of the 9/11 hijack­er Abdu­laz­iz Alo­mari. . . .”

b.) Sad­dam and bin Laden worked out an arrange­ment in which Iraq—in order to pro­vide for a pay­back capa­bil­i­ty if the U.S. oust­ed him—gave infor­ma­tion about WMD’s to bin Laden’s peo­ple. Al Qae­da, in turn, was to act as a back-up unit for Saddam’s Iraq, strik­ing at the Unit­ed States if it knocked out Sad­dam. ” . . . . Accord­ing to Arab sources, in antic­i­pa­tion of a fore­see­able rever­sal of alliances in Kab­ul, bin Laden had been in dis­creet con­tact since Sep­tem­ber 2000 with asso­ciates of Oudai Hus­sein. . . . Bin Laden and the Iraqis are said to have exchanged infor­ma­tion about chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal weapons, despite the oppo­si­tion of some of the Bagh­dad lead­er­ship, includ­ing Tarik Aziz. . . .”

c). Robert Par­ry notes in Con­sor­tium News that ele­ments in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty do not agree with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s assess­ment of the sit­u­a­tion. ” . . . . Alarm with­in the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty about Trump’s hasty deci­sion to attack Syr­ia rever­ber­at­ed from the Mid­dle East back to Wash­ing­ton, where for­mer CIA offi­cer Philip Giral­di report­ed hear­ing from his intel­li­gence con­tacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poi­son-gas sto­ry was being dis­tort­ed by Trump and the main­stream U.S. news media. Giral­di told Scott Horton’s Web­cast: ‘I’m hear­ing from sources on the ground in the Mid­dle East, peo­ple who are inti­mate­ly famil­iar with the intel­li­gence that is avail­able who are say­ing that the essen­tial nar­ra­tive that we’re all hear­ing about the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment or the Rus­sians using chem­i­cal weapons on inno­cent civil­ians is a sham.’ . . .”

d.) Par­ry also notes that some ana­lysts are report­ing a strike by a drone launched from a joint Sau­di-Israeli base that sup­ports Syr­i­an rebels. ” . . . Despite some tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties in trac­ing its flight path, ana­lysts even­tu­al­ly came to believe that the flight was launched in Jor­dan from a Sau­di-Israeli spe­cial oper­a­tions base for sup­port­ing Syr­i­an rebels, the source said, adding that the sus­pect­ed rea­son for the poi­son gas was to cre­ate an inci­dent that would reverse the Trump administration’s announce­ment in late March that it was no longer seek­ing the removal of Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad. . . .”

e.) Par­ry con­cludes one of his arti­cles with a scathing analy­sis of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s claims by a MIT researcher: ” . . . . In a sep­a­rate analy­sis of the four-page dossier, Theodore Pos­tol, a nation­al secu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist at the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, con­clud­ed that the White House claims were clear­ly bogus, writ­ing: ‘I have reviewed the doc­u­ment care­ful­ly, and I believe it can be shown, with­out doubt, that the doc­u­ment does not pro­vide any evi­dence what­so­ev­er that the US gov­ern­ment has con­crete knowl­edge that the gov­ern­ment of Syr­ia was the source of the chem­i­cal attack in Khan Shaykhun, Syr­ia at rough­ly 6 to 7 a.m. on April 4, 2017. In fact, a main piece of evi­dence that is cit­ed in the doc­u­ment points to an attack that was exe­cut­ed by indi­vid­u­als on the ground, not from an air­craft, on the morn­ing of April 4. This con­clu­sion is based on an assump­tion made by the White House when it cit­ed the source of the sarin release and the pho­tographs of that source. My own assess­ment, is that the source was very like­ly tam­pered with or staged, so no seri­ous con­clu­sion could be made from the pho­tographs cit­ed by the White House.’ . . . ”

f.) Detailed analy­sis of an August, 2013 sarin attack, orig­i­nal­ly thought to have been per­pe­trat­ed by Bashar Al-Assad, was pre­sent­ed by Sey­mour Hersh in the Lon­don Review of Books. The sarin turns out not to have come from Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment stock­piles. “. . . . Obama’s change of mind had its ori­gins at Por­ton Down, the defence lab­o­ra­to­ry in Wilt­shire. British intel­li­gence had obtained a sam­ple of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analy­sis demon­strat­ed that the gas used didn’t match the batch­es known to exist in the Syr­i­an army’s chem­i­cal weapons arse­nal. The mes­sage that the case against Syr­ia wouldn’t hold up was quick­ly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. . . .”

g.) Al-Nus­ra (Al-Qae­da), on the oth­er hand, was pro­duc­ing Sarin and look­ing to ramp up pro­duc­tion through a sup­ply pipeline run­ning through Turkey. ” . . . . The Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ties had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syr­ia were devel­op­ing chem­i­cal weapons. On 20 June ana­lysts for the US Defense Intel­li­gence Agency issued a high­ly clas­si­fied five-page ‘talk­ing points’ brief­ing for the DIA’s deputy direc­tor, David Shedd, which stat­ed that al-Nus­ra main­tained a sarin pro­duc­tion cell: its pro­gramme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre‑9/11 effort’. . . .”

h.) The 2013 con­clu­sions of gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey are worth exam­in­ing in the con­text of the cur­rent cri­sis: ” . . . . From the begin­ning of the cri­sis, the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said, the joint chiefs had been skep­ti­cal of the administration’s argu­ment that it had the facts to back up its belief in Assad’s guilt. They pressed the DIA and oth­er agen­cies for more sub­stan­tial evi­dence. ‘There was no way they thought Syr­ia would use nerve gas at that stage, because Assad was win­ning the war,’ the for­mer intel­li­gence offi­cial said. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1. Review of the cor­po­ratist eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion of Mus­lim Broth­er­hood devel­op­men­tal the­o­ry. “. . . . The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood hails 14th cen­tu­ry philoso­pher Ibn Khal­dun as its eco­nom­ic guide. Antic­i­pat­ing sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics, Khal­dun argued that cut­ting tax­es rais­es pro­duc­tion and tax rev­enues . . . The World Bank has called Ibn Khal­dun the first advo­cate of pri­va­ti­za­tion. . . .”

2. Review of Gra­ham E. Fuller’s sup­port for the eco­nom­ic val­ues of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and his strange sup­port for Bernie Sanders, whose val­ues are the oppo­site of those espoused by Fuller.

3. The fact that war in the Mid­dle East rais­es oil prices–this to be seen against the back­ground of Rex Tiller­son being Sec­re­tary of State (pre­vi­ous­ly CEO of Exxon/Mobil). ” . . . . For investors like Mr. Abdul­lah, con­flict in the Mid­dle East means one thing: high­er oil prices. ‘It’s always good for us,’ he says. . . .”

4. Robert Par­ry’s view that the omis­sion of CIA direc­tor Mike Pom­peo and oth­er top U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials from a pho­to of Trump’s top advi­sors is indica­tive of dis­sent with­in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty from the offi­cial ver­sion of the attack.

The Big Bitcoin Bet, Part 2: Big Money to Buy Bitcoin, and Other Bad Ideas

2014 could have been bet­ter for Bit­coin. After peak­ing near $1100 in Decem­ber 2013, Bit­coin is cur­rent­ly under $250. 2014 was not a good year for Bit­coin.

But that does­n’t mean 2015 has to be the same. And if a slew of recent announce­ment involv­ing some very big investors are any indi­ca­tion of what to expect, the main­stream­ing Bit­coin is about to get a big boost. But that boost could come with a big price too. All those “micro­trans­ac­tions” of as lit­tle as 0.000000001 of one bit­coin (BTC) that much of the Bit­coin com­mu­ni­ty hates so much is pre­cise­ly what these deep pock­et­ed inter­ests are plan­ning on pro­mot­ing in a big way. And in order to make it all hap­pen, they might have to become some of the biggest bit­coin min­ers around too. And that means the future of Bit­coin is increas­ing in the hands of ‘The Man’. Also, the micro­trans­ac­tions might be used to mon­e­tize how we access the web. And how the Inter­net of Things spies on us. It does­n’t actu­al­ly sound very fun.