Update [2012-2-11 6:40 EST by Oui]
Of course after all denials yesterday, the Free Syrian Army now claims the twin deadly terror attacks in the city of Aleppo. The United States has confirmed it is in collusion for the purposeful overthrow of Assad with AQAU (Al-Qaeda of Arab Uprising). Nice going guys, perhaps this will be a gamechanger for Western policy of military intervention in Syria. I should have changed the title of my diary “Obama In Bed with Israel and Neocons” to Obama in bed with Saudi funded extreme Islamists of the Salafist jihadists. What an embarrassment to Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and the Obama administration. When will they accept, the Saudi regime is the most dangerous for U.S. security? Speaking of regime change …
- U.S. intelligence reports indicate that the bombings came on the orders of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian
who assumed leadership of al-Qaeda after the last year’s death of Osama bin Laden.
A must read – Al-Qaeda/FSA Claim Twin Bombings in Aleppo, Syria [Update]
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The call for regime change is in the foreign policy line of Bill Clinton and George Bush. The outcome for Syria is more uncertain than the call for removal of Saddam Hussein by the Clinton administration in 1996. In Iraq the US and Britain were “victorious” through the massacre of civilians in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, sectarian violence costing more than 100,000 lives. Mostly innocent victims: children, women, elderly and family members of the wrong sect. Already Israel is backtracking as the expected easy victory in Syria might leave the country in turmoil, under leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood, unchecked militias, foreign fighters (al-Qaeda) and plenty of weapons, munitions and WMDs (chemical warfare). Has the West gone insane because of Persian Gulf oil resources? How ‘Shock and Awe’ Ended.
(Asian Times) – As much as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may wish it, and the White House stresses “Assad must halt his campaign of killing and crimes against his own people now” and “must step aside” – no. The “international community” proponents of regime change in Syria are the NATOGCC (North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Gulf Cooperation Council) – or, to be really specific, Washington, London and Paris and the oil-drenched sheikh puppets of the Persian Gulf, most of all the House of Saud and Qatar.
Turkey is playing a very ambivalent game; it hosts a NATO command and control center in Hatay province, near the Syrian border, and at the same time offers exile to Assad. Even Israel is at a loss; they prefer the devil they know to an unpredictably hostile post-Assad regime led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Assad is supported by Iran; by the government in Baghdad (Iraq has refused to impose sanctions); by Lebanon (the same); and most of all by Russia (which does not want to lose its naval base in Tartus) and trade partner China. This means Syria’s economy will not be strangled (moreover, the country is used to life under sanctions and does not have to worry about a national debt). The BRICS group is adamant; the Syria crisis has to be solved by Syrians only.
Following the Neocon playbook on Syria and Iran …
A mistaken case for Syrian regime change
(CNI) Feb. 6, 2012 – “War with Iran is already here,” wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing “the combination of covert warfare and international pressure” being applied to Iran.
Although not mentioned, the “strategic prize” of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. “Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself,” Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, “nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.”
By December, senior United States officials were explicit about their regime change agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National Security Adviser, explained that the “end of the [President Bashar al-]Assad regime would constitute Iran’s greatest setback in the region yet – a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran.”
Shortly before, a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would “relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved”.
What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime “more compatible” with US interests in the region.
The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009. The report – “Which Path to Persia?” – continues to be the generic strategic approach for US-led regime change in the region.
A rereading of it, together with the more recent “Towards a Post-Assad Syria” (which adopts the same language and perspective, but focuses on Syria, and was recently produced by two US neo-conservative think-tanks) illustrates how developments in Syria have been shaped according to the step-by-step approach detailed in the “Paths to Persia” report with the same key objective: regime change.
The authors of these reports include, among others, John Hannah and Martin Indyk, both former senior neo-conservative officials from the George W Bush/Dick Cheney administration, and both advocates for regime change in Syria. Not for the first time are we seeing a close alliance between US/British neo-cons with Islamists (including, reports show, some with links to al-Qaeda) working together to bring about regime change in an “enemy” state.
Arguably, the most important component in this struggle for the “strategic prize” has been the deliberate construction of a largely false narrative that pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed in their hundreds and thousands as they protest peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime, a “killing machine” led by the “monster” Assad.
In Syria, we see the majority of Western mainstream media outlets, along with the media of the US’s allies in the region, particularly al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV channels, are effectively collaborating with the “regime change” narrative and agenda with a near-complete lack of questioning or investigation of statistics and information put out by organizations and media outlets that are either funded or owned by the US/European/Gulf alliance – the very same countries instigating the regime change project in the first place.
Claims of “massacres”, “campaigns of rape targeting women and girls in predominantly Sunni towns”, “torture” and even “child-rape” are reported by the international press based largely on two sources – the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCCs) – with minimal additional checking or verification.
Brookings’ “Which Path to Persia?”
(LandDestroyer) Feb. 13, 2011 – While the corporate owned media has the plebeians arguing over whether or not Iran should have nuclear weapons or if it intends to commit genocide against the Jews (the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel actually resides in Iran), the debate is already over, and the war has already quietly begun. Before it began, however, someone meticulously meted out the details of how it would unfold. That “someone” is the mega-corporate backed Brookings Institute.
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The Brookings Institute itself is a creation of the notorious globalist funding arms including the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, all who recently had been involved in the fake “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy. Today, Brookings boasts a full complement of support and funding from America’s biggest corporations. Upon the Brookings Institute’s board of trustees one will find a collection of corporate leaders from Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, the insurance industry, Pepsi (CFR), Alcoa (CFR), and various CFR affiliated consulting firms like McKinsey & Company.
- Remember? U.S. Loses Saudi Help for Launch of Iraq War
- Read my last diary – Foreign Troops and al-Qaeda Infiltrating Into Syria
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."