The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sun Aug 12, 2018 8:19 pm

Notice: I regret that in the process of moving an off-topic post, I quite unintentionally deleted it. I've suggested to the poster they repost it in an appropriate thread.

:backtotopic:
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sun Aug 12, 2018 9:18 pm

Posted in wrong thread, sorry.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby dada » Sun Aug 12, 2018 10:44 pm

What is the topic of this thread, in your opinion, Elvis?
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby American Dream » Mon Aug 20, 2018 11:42 am

FOUR WOMEN ICONS OF THE SYRIAN REVOLUTION

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The student Lama Albasha. Photo shared by her friends on Twitter.

The student Lama Albasha is one of the thousands of names on the infamous ‘death list’, a catalog of those executed or who have died under torture in government prisons. Prisons such as Saydnaya, which Amnesty International described as a ‘human slaughterhouse’. Lama’s family learned, on accessing the general security register on July 31, 2018, that she had died years ago in prison, alleged of a heart attack.


Read more: http://blackrosefed.org/four-women-icon ... evolution/
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 21, 2018 12:18 pm

A federal court has ruled that the Trump administration does not have to disclose memos detailing its legal authority to conduct missile strikes on Syria in 2017.

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https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... inion.html


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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Sep 02, 2018 9:02 pm

Assad Can’t Put The Syrian-Kurdish Genie Back In The Bottle

September 1, 2018Guest
YPG fighters in Raqqa in 2016
by Paul Iddon

Kurds in Syria are currently negotiating their future with the Syrian regime in Damascus. They want the decentralisation and democratisation of Syria, which will ensure their own continued self-rule.

While it’s unlikely they will achieve such an ambitious goal it is equally unlikely that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad can expect to once again relegate them to their pre-war status.

The Syrian Kurds did not join the uprising against Assad, which is one reason it’s unclear if Assad will revert to brute force readily, as he has with other groups across the country. The Kurds briefly did mount an uprising against the regime in March 2004, after a football match in Qamishli degenerated into violence, and Assad sent in tanks and helicopters to suppress them.

The Syrian Kurds were long disenfranchised and marginalised, thousands weren’t able to attain Syrian citizenship. Damascus even went so far as to deny that they existed.

Following six years of de-facto self-rule – in which droves of Kurdish youth, both male and female, sacrificed themselves to defend their homeland against Islamic State – it’s clear that they are have established themselves in ways that impossible to reverse or undo.

Michael Gunter’s 2014 book on the Syrian Kurds is entitled ‘Out of Nowhere‘ in reference to the fact that the Syrian Kurds were in almost total obscurity before the Syrian conflict. In many ways the historical experience of their Iraqi Kurdish counterparts is an informative precedent.

Although the Iraqi Kurds fought a nine year war with Baghdad for self-rule throughout the 1960s they were barely known in the West. Even when the Nixon administration participated in a covert programme with the Shah’s Iran and Israel to support their struggle against Baghdad in the mid-1970s, the administration had little understanding about who the Kurds were.

“We did not know much about the Kurds – we thought they were some kind of hill tribe,” then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger later admitted.

In the 1980s, when Baghdad slaughtered over 180,000 Kurds in the ‘Anfal’ campaign, and infamously murdered 5,000 in a single day with poison gas in the town of Halabja, it was still difficult for the Kurds to garner international attention and support.

Najmaldin Karim, the former Kurdish governor of Kirkuk, once told me how difficult it was to get attention from the US Congress back then, since in “those years nobody knew the Kurds” in contrast to now, when Kurds “are known all over the world” for both their bravery and the atrocities committed against them.

After Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, it focused its efforts on subduing Shia Arab and Kurdish revolts. Images broadcast on CNN of the destitute Kurdish refugees fleeing in terror from Saddam Hussein’s helicopter gunships saw public pressure put on the US to protect them from more massacres. A no-fly zone was established and Iraqi Kurdish autonomy incubated in the process.

“You are good strugglers, brave men,” Saddam Hussein told Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani at the time. “We thought we defeated you, we thought you’d never come back, and now you are on the ground. I’m now recognising your rights.”

After the Hussein regime overthrow in 2003 Iraqi Kurdistan became a legal and recognised autonomous region within the new federal Iraq. In late 2017, after Iraqi Kurds voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence in a referendum, Baghdad sought to curtail the region’s autonomy by closing its airspace and seizing most of the disputed territories it had with the autonomous region, most notably Kirkuk.

Despite this, Kurdish autonomy endured and now relations are once again being normalised. When Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi campaigned across Kurdistan earlier this year – the first Iraqi premier to do so – he was largely ignored and his platform, which essentially advocated for the dissolution of Kurdish autonomy and the reversion to direct governance from Baghdad, dismissed.

It’s clear that after 15 years of autonomy, following the previous 13 years of post-1991 de-facto self-governance, the Iraqi Kurds were are not going to simply give up all that they achieved after generations of struggle without a fight.

None of this is of course completely analogous to the situation for Syrian Kurds who have no recognised entity in the country.

The Syrian Kurds are likely to make some compromises to salvage what they have achieved over the last six years but certainly will not give it all up, and become subjugated under the yoke of Damascus once more without putting up a serious fight.

Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, who writes about Middle East affairs. Republished, with permission, from The New Arab.
https://lobelog.com/assad-cant-put-the- ... he-bottle/
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 04, 2018 7:53 am

Trump Gingerly, Politely begs Russia not to Do Syria Idlib Campaign, Pretty Please
JUAN COLE
09/04/2018

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – AFP reports that President Trump is cautioning the Syrian regime against launching an all-out assault on the last remaining rebel stronghold of Idlib Province. He also said that Russia and Iran would be making “a grave humanitarian mistake” to take part.

It is hard to take the humanitarian part too seriously. This is a man who in 2016 promised to carpet bomb ISIL, which is pretty much what Russia plans to do to the HTS (Committee to Liberate the Levant, formerly Nusra Front), with its links to al-Qaeda.


Obviously, Trump did not actually send out this tweet, given its articulate grammar and lack of misspellings plus the lack of phrasal emoticons (sad!). It is an expression of the public position of his national security team– NatSec Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and possibly Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. It isn’t Trump’s policy. For one thing, the tweet mildly criticizes Russia, which Trump almost never does. The foreign policy team also doesn’t really care about civilians in Idlib, but just doesn’t want to see another military victory for which Iran is partially responsible, which strengthens Tehran in the Levant (which detracts from unilateral Syrian power in the region).

Moreover, the tweet is toothless. Trump has already announced that he wants out of Syria. (“Why are we still there?!” he is alleged to have fumed earlier this summer). He initially seems to have wanted to pull out by the beginning of October so that Republican lawmakers could run on having defeated ISIL and gotten out of Syria. He appears to have been convinced to delay that withdrawal, though who knows?

Further, Trump has already said that he thinks Syria would be better off with a strongman like Bashar al-Assad in control.

In any case, the US is not actually in a position to stop an Idlib campaign. Its primary allies in Syria, the Kurds of the northeast, are as eager as the Assad regime to see an end put to the fundamentalist Arab Muslim militias of the northwest, who have made no secret of their hatred for the secular-minded leftist Kurds and who have closely cooperated with Turkey in ethnically cleansing Kurds from the western canton of Afrin. So the US cannot deploy its Kurdish proxies to stop an Idlib campaign. In fact, it may be that members of the YPG Kurdish militia will actually join in on the side of the regime, Iran and Russia.

The US only has a couple thousand special operations personnel in northeastern Syria, who are frankly irrelevant to any Idlib campaign in the northwest. The US Air Force is not going to interfere in an operation of the Russian Federation Aerospace Forces in northwest Syria, which is not an American sphere of influence.

Mind you, despite the cynical game of public relations being played by the Trump team, the prospect is horrifying, of a massive assault by Syrian armor and artillery, Shiite militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, and Russian fighter jets on a rural province where 3 million people, the bulk of them refugees, are huddling. While a significant proportion of Idlib is held by extremist militias and Brett McGurk has admitted that it is the biggest concentration of al-Qaeda fighters since 9/11, the 3 million civilians are not extremists, and perhaps 40% of the militias aren’t either.

The looming Idlib campaign will likely replicate the vast destruction and loss of life of the Mosul campaign, where it was the US that gave air support to the Iraqi army.

This business of re-subduing national territory that went into rebel hands by a frontal assault and intensive bombardment, producing high civilian casualties and destruction of entire city districts, is a horrible recrudescence of total war tactics from World War II.

I very much doubt that the large orange man in the White House is relevant to any resolution of this looming catastrophe.

It would be better, as the Crisis Group argues, if a negotiated settlement could be reached.

It is pie in the sky, but political compromise would be a better outcome for Syria. It would be better for the country if Turkey could sideline the HTS and then the regime negotiated a decentralization of Syria with a federal constitution that accommodated the religious conservatism of Idlib and the Bukchenist Left Anarchism of the northeastern Kurds. Syria needs a framework for working out political disputes peacefully, through elections (the ruling Baath Party does not believe it would win, but I’d wager they’d get a majority, given the alternatives).

A heavy-handed Putinist attempt to restore a one-party state in Syria, as though it were a big Chechnya, is more likely in the medium and long term to produce either chronic instability or a generation of zombie-like and debilitating stagnation than a genuine social peace.

But, none of the sides in this seven-year-old conflict have demonstrated a taste for compromise, with the possible exception of the Kurds. The Syrian, Russian and Iranian foreign ministers have indicated that they think the rebels in Idlib are all terrorists and must be purged for the sake of the peace of the region.

I have a sinking feeling that Very Bad Things are about to happen in northwest Syria.

—–

Bonus video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS3ATUuQjDU

https://www.juancole.com/2018/09/ginger ... paign.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Sounder » Tue Sep 04, 2018 6:10 pm

Oh Juan, Juan, warmongering Juan, yes civilians often bear the brunt of war. You supported the wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, leaving their diabolical legacy of suffering, and yet you are still able to bluster up your self-righteousness and call for yet more western terroristic intervention.

Fortunately the hubris of the Neo-cohort will be it's undoing
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 04, 2018 6:18 pm

"Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,"


Trump 'wanted Assad assassinated': key claims in Bob Woodward's book


Trump suggested assassinating Syria’s president
Donald Trump wanted to have the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, assassinated last year but his defense secretary ignored the request, according to the book, which depicts top Trump aides sometimes sidestepping instructions to limit what they see as his damaging and dangerous behavior.


Bob Woodward's book details Trump's chaotic and dysfunctional White House

According to the book, Trump told the defense secretary, Jim Mattis, that he wanted to have Assad assassinated after the Syrian president launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.

Mattis told Trump he would “get right on it” but instead developed a plan for a limited air strike that did not threaten Assad personally
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... sad-claims


Joyce Karam


Just In: Pompeo called Turkey FM to discuss Syria ... Agreed “Any Assad regime offensive in Idlib would be unacceptable”

Image

This is important as US delegation concluded talks in Turkey, all eyes on what is next from Washington and Ankara if Assad, Russia and Iran launch assault.

Turkey holds immense leverage in Idlib.
https://twitter.com/Joyce_Karam
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby 8bitagent » Sun Sep 09, 2018 7:17 am

If you google "Syria" lately, it sure sounds like World War 3 is closer than ever in a crazy clusterfuck of Russia/Iraq/Iran/Israel/America/France/Syria/Turkey about to go down. Of course, you wouldnt know it to read the media where a porn actress is the leader of the resistance and Nike is a totally woke progressive company now
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sun Sep 09, 2018 8:36 pm

Elvis » Thu Jul 12, 2018 2:05 pm wrote:
Iamwhomiam » Tue Jul 10, 2018 2:55 pm wrote:The NY Times has an interesting video showing more about the chlorine bombs they claim Assad was responsible for.
One Building; Dozens Killed in Syria: How Bashar al-Assad Gassed His Own People

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000005840873/syria-chlorine-bomb-assad.html



"Won't be fooled again!" :roll:


Okay...I can't believe I have to do this here. :tongout

This New York Times video, produced by Malachy Browne (who seems to have some cred as reporter) pretends to be an investigation but it's mostly a media department project created to prove its foregone conclusion that Assad is responsible for gas attacks in Syria. However, it proves absolutely nothing of the sort.

Its makers' belief in Assad's guilt may or may not have been genuine (likely a mixed bag), but the assertion in the video's title alone—that Assad "Gassed His Own People"—presumes what the content never comes close to proving.

That we're getting a skewed and and very "cropped" picture here becomes obvious with the narrator's first sentence:

@ 00:00 — "The UN has accused the Assad regime of repeatedly committing war crimes in Syria. . . including a chemical attack in April"

Let's not be dishonest, shall we not, New York Times? The real accusers are the White Helmets, aka "Syrian Civil Defense," whose nature has been thoroughly explored in this and other threads (while unexplored by the incurious New York Times). There are no other sources in the occupied areas and all of the reports and claims of gas attacks come from the White Helmets.

The White Helmets and their ISIS associates/officemates control the situation on the ground and if they chose to do so, they have the leisure to arrange the scene. Remember, they are well paid with USAID/UK/Qatari millions. They've gotten better at staging videos—the hospital scene in Douma itself is one example, if we rationally assume the featured little boy, his father and the doctors et al. are not all "crisis actors"—since their laughable 2013 efforts.

@ 1:20 — Narrator says video "exposes Syria's lies" and "concrete evidence is right here"—CUT TO: an exploding projectile hitting a building.

Not necessarily the building mentioned in the title, but a building, believably in Douma, but look carefully: the shot is disinegenuous (or is it telling?) because the projectile is artillery coming from the ground. This looks like ground fighting between whatever factions, or I suppose it could be ISIS firing a gas cannister or something into a building, though I don't think so; more likely it's just video of a ground battle. A superimposed title says, "The Fight for Douma" (which might a title be left from an existing film from which they lifted the shot?).

The point is, the viewer is being primed.


@ 1:50 — A bold and bizarre assertion is made: "The [Assad] strategy: to terrorize the civilian population into submission."

This is worse than "They hate us for our freedoms." Submission to what? Holy Mother of Muhammad, could there be a more nonsensical claim? It's not even a rational speculation. The viewer is insulted.

Then OMG! the Syrian army "seized town after town". We see sections of a map go dark. When Syria is overrun by extremist jihadi proxy armies, is the government supposed to sit idle? Does the New York Times really think the vast majority of Syrains would rather live under ISIS than under Assad?—this is the promoted fiction.


Zoom in on the map where the Douma attack is alleged to occur.

@ 2:50 — After the attack, narrator says, Russian journalists were the first in, to "broadcast their own distorted version of events."

"Their own distorted version of events"! :lol: :ohno: I guess that might be fair if Russian journalists did it, since the New York fucking Times is doing it.

Some forensic modeling of the building ensues, and a case is made that a cannister may have fallen through the roof and released compressed gas. This may have happened, while it's also possible that an empty cannister was moved around; see earlier post with photo comparisons.


@ 4:30 — Shot of helicopter hovering in sky.

It's just a shot of a helicopter, to prime your imagination.

I have to stop here and wonder: ISIS took over the city with weapons, they're an army FFS. If an enemy helicopter was hovering in the sky, would they say, "Grab a video camera! Get a shot of that helicopter!"? Wouldn't they try to shoot it down?...that is, with guns? Just a niggle, but we never hear about that, we only hear vague stories about helicopters and "barrel bombs." (BBC reported the other day that 'it was believed' Assad was preparing to use barrel bombs on Idlib. I am not shitting you.)


@ 5:56 — "Our analysis suggests. . ."

Oh STFU. I suggest. (I may send them this.)

@ 6:10 — Show stock hovering helicopter shot again. Narrator: "We have evidence. . ."


@ 6:25 — Show helicopter again!

Unnamed "flight observers" say nearby Syrian helicopters took off about the right time for the operation. Questions arise, e.g., who are these "flight observers"? I smell fishy business. Anyway, in a war, aren't helicopters always coming and going?


@ 6:45 — Screen shot of a White Helmets Tweet: "Douma bombed with poisonous gases" today but we "can't reach the area" due to fighting. If they can't reach the area, how do they know what happened? More likely this will let them take video later, without raising questions of why victims are freshly dead but they remain unaffected.


@ 7:30 — Iffy white shape in video could well be a cannister with frost, indicating released gas. They claim it must have been dropped by the Assad forces, but they describe the cannister as a "crude weapon' which very reasonably suggests that it could be used by anyone.

Considering that the OPCW investigation on Duoma basically found zilch, I think the question of weather chlorine cannisters were dropped on Douma is open. But who would do such a thing? Assad is not irrational and would not order gas attacks when his side is winning. Such tactics are the last-gasp effort of a losing side. More on that below.


@ 11:24 — A helicopter at low altitude shoots or drops something and there's a big explosion. Has zero to do with any attack in question. But it helps you get the idea.


@ 11:20 — The use of chlorine "we believe is a deliberate strategy of Bashir Al-Assad to poison his own people."

But why? would Assad do that? They don't say. Because it makes no sense. Nor do they offer any of the very sensible reasons why Assad would not use gas. The video ends with the message that Assad should not be running around free.


Roll credits... "Sources... Syrian Civil Defense"






Consider for a moment that cannisters were dropped or fired into buildings, by someone else. Who?

Everyone here should recall that during the wave of daily bombings around Baghdad and other cities, two British SAS guys dressed as Arabs driving a car full of explosives and timers were arrested by Iraqi police. The Brits had to knock down the wall of the jail to get them out.

So I think SAS/MI6 are suspects in these chlorine bombings (assuming they have happened at one time or another); the false-flag MO is an established reality. (Also recall the unconfirmed Mail story of the SAS purchasing 200 black "ISIS uniforms.") The MSM (and others anxious for Assad to be the guilty party) are fond of saying "the opposition has no aircraft"—but is that exactly true?

The SAS are just one example of an interested party with the established means & motives to perpetrate such an attack, in order to blame Assad; the White Helmets do the rest, providing the initial publicity outreach. The MSM do the rest.

Could be SAS, could be Mossad, could be CIA, and what are those quite numerous US special forces doing in Syria? To me, any of those, or in combination, constitutes a far better explanation for these events. Same old tricks.


I mention SAS because considering their history, it made sense to me when this fellow Richard Black mentioned them in connection with gas attacks in Syria. Yes he's a Republican politician but he's going against his party, going against everyone, and will likely forfeit his political career to be saying this:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/vi ... dccc55e93d

Va. state senator who met with Assad says British are planning fake chemical attack

RICHMOND — Fresh off a sit-down with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Virginia state Sen. Richard H. Black turned up on an Arab TV channel last week making an extraordinary claim about one of the United States’ closest allies.

Black said Britain’s MI6 intelligence service was planning a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, which it would then blame on Assad.

“Around four weeks ago, we knew that British intelligence was working toward a chemical attack in order to blame the Syrian government, to hold Syria responsible,” Black said on Al Mayadeen, an Arab news channel based in Beirut.

Black (R-Loudoun) said later that he meant the British were planning not to carry out an attack themselves, but to either direct rebels to do so or stage a phony attack, with actors posing as victims.

Black also said some chemical attacks previously reported to have occurred in Syria were British fakes, pulled off with help from volunteer first responders known as White Helmets.

[Meet the Virginia state senator who sat down with Assad]

“From what I can tell, they have been planning a fake attack, not a genuine one, but one where they actually move people out of a town and they have trained people to portray victims of a gas attack,” Black said Friday in an interview with The Washington Post. “And the plan is to use the White Helmets who have always been involved in these notorious deceptions, to portray an attack.”

The State Department flatly rejected Black’s allegations, which echoed what it called “outrageous” Russian and Assad-regime claims that Britain and the United States have carried out chemical attacks with help from the White Helmets.

“The Syrian regime has repeatedly used chemical weapons,” a State Department official, who discussed the matter on the condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to do so publicly, said in an email. “Russian and regime denials have no credibility, nor does the increasingly offensive and outrageous Russian propaganda accusing the US and the UK of planning and executing CW attacks in order to justify retaliation in Syria. . . . The White Helmets are a humanitarian organization that has saved thousands of lives and continues to respond to bombardments by Russian and regime military forces.”


The British Embassy issued a statement Sunday calling Black’s allegations “nonsense.”

“Before Russia vetoed their UN Security Council mandate, international investigators found the Asad regime responsible for using chemical weapons four times,” the statement said. “The Asad regime’s use of these barbaric weapons against the Syrian people is beyond doubt. To suggest otherwise is nothing but propaganda by Russia and the Asad regime.”

His claims also drew condemnation from some Middle East experts.

“Wrap your head around this: an elected American official is parroting Russian/Assad Regime/Hezbollah propaganda on a TV channel closely affiliated with (if not under the direction of) a designated foreign terror org, Hezbollah,” tweeted David Daoud, a Washington-based research analyst at the think tank United Against Nuclear Iran.

Critics said Black was being used, perhaps unwittingly, as a tool for Syrian propaganda as government forces massed for an assault on Idlib province, the country’s last rebel-held stronghold. It is home to almost 3 million people, including hardened fighters who refused to surrender elsewhere. A least half of the population are civilians.


Black’s comments about Britain promised to draw more controversy to the 74-year-old legislator, who was interviewed Friday by the Russian state-owned RT TV network. Five Democrats are competing to take him on next year in elections that will determine whether Republicans hold on to their two-seat majority in the Senate.

This was Black’s second trip to visit Assad, whom the Trump and Obama administrations have blamed for chemical weapons attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians in rebel-held areas during Syria’s civil war. Black, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and retired Pentagon lawyer, regards Assad as a protector of Syrian Christians and a buffer against Islamist extremism.

“I’m just an individual who is deeply concerned about achieving peace and stopping the slaughter in the Middle East,” Black said. “Americans go all over the place all the time, and the only reason that they focus on me is because I tell the truth about what I’m seeing and what’s going on.”


Jake Rubenstein, spokesman for the Democratic Party of Virginia, called Black’s comments “a disturbing new low.”

“He is clearly more interested in being Bashar Al-Assad’s Propaganda Minister than a Virginia State Senator,” he said in an email.

Some Republicans expressed concern that Black’s controversial comments could hurt his chances for reelection and threaten the GOP’s efforts to hold Richmond’s upper chamber.

“He’s practically handing the majority to Democrats in the state Senate,” said former Republican delegate David Ramadan.

Others said Middle East politics are so complicated that voters may pay little attention. “People are never concerned about Dick Black going to Syria. People are more concerned about him coming back,” said Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax).

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency identified Black as an “America senator” in reports on his visit. As a state legislator, Black plays no role in setting U.S. foreign policy. But he pushes back against the notion that the Syrian conflict does not affect Virginians, citing the U.S. troop presence in the Middle East, including troops from Virginia.

Black, who flew from Paris to Beirut and then traveled five hours by car to Damascus, said his flight and lodging outside of Syria were covered by Nasser Ani, a prominent surgeon from New Jersey who chairs the Syrian American Forum. The group has featured Black as a speaker.

Black said the Syrian government provided his lodging in Damascus, as well as an interpreter and ground transportation between Beirut and Damascus.

Virginia’s public officials cannot accept gifts worth more than $100 from lobbyists or government contractors. But Ani and the Syrian government do not fall into either category, so Black said their gifts are allowed.

State ethics officials signed off on Black’s 2016 trip to Syria, which carried a $10,000 tab that was paid by a Tampa-area gasoline wholesaler Paul Jallo. Black said last week’s trip cost far less because it was shorter.

Black said he and Assad spent three hours in the president’s office, in a mostly upbeat discussion about how the country has fared since the senator’s last visit.

“There was sort of a spring in his step and a sense of joy and optimism, and looking out to the future and bringing the nation together,” Black said.


Azhar AlFadl Miranda contributed to this report.



Here's Black on teevee:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fQQVvOr8CA
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby conniption » Wed Sep 12, 2018 7:51 pm

RT

Tulsi Gabbard calls out Trump’s troubling double standard on Al-Qaeda

Published time: 12 Sep, 2018

Image
Members of al Qaeda's Nusra Front in Idlib province May 28, 2015. © Ammar Abdullah / Reuters

Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard marked 9/11 by pointing out that Donald Trump paid tribute to the victims of Al-Qaeda even while protecting the terrorist group's last stronghold in Syria – sparking a range of responses online.

In a tweet written on the seventeenth anniversary of the tragic terrorist attacks, Gabbard noted that “while President Trump & VP Pence give 9/11 speeches about how much they care about the victims of al-Qaeda’s attack on our country, they are simultaneously acting as protectors of AQ in Syria/Idlib, threatening Russia and Syria that if they attack al-Qaeda, we will punish them.”

The tweet sparked a dizzying range of responses, with some praising the Democratic congresswoman and others resorting to all-caps-lock condemnations.

“At least one person in Congress gets it. I am a libertarian and wouldn't mind seeing @TulsiGabbard run for the White House in 2020. A refreshing breath of fresh air,” one Twitter user wrote. “Thank you Tulsi. You are a genuine beacon of hope and change in Washington,” said another.

READ MORE: 17 years after 9/11, Al-Qaeda rebranded by US government & media as besieged rebels

“Hello Americans, hello, did you understand this? Reread it and think on it. Get it yet?” one seemingly impatient Twitter user asked.

But the congresswoman was also peppered with accusations of whitewashing the “real” bad guys in Syria.

Gabbard may have been the only lawmaker to draw attention to the troubling contradiction, but similar observations found fertile ground across social media.

“I’ll never reconcile how the biggest post-9/11 hawks turned into the biggest boosters of the jihad in Syria,” professor Max Abrahms noted in his own tweet marking the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

Others highlighted how western media outlets, following the example of the US government, had rebranded Al-Qaeda as “rebels” under siege in Syria. The New York Times went so far as to praise the terrorist group as "a de facto governmental authority, facilitating trade across the long border with Turkey and organizing aid deliveries."

https://www.rt.com/news/438319-tulsi-ga ... eda-trump/


<^> I'm with her... ^



https://www.rt.com/news/438282-white-he ... l-attacks/
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby conniption » Sat Sep 15, 2018 2:25 am

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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby American Dream » Sat Sep 15, 2018 6:08 am

https://al-bab.com/blog/2018/09/false-f ... ions-syria

False flags and Russia's failed predictions in Syria

Article by: Brian Whitaker
Date: 12th September 2018


Video footage of a faked chemical attack in Syria, which the Russian military claimed would be "handed to global news outlets by the end of Tuesday", has so far failed to materialise.

According to a briefing note issued by the Russian Centre for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria and posted on the Russian defence ministry's website, "some Middle East TV-channels and a regional branch of a leading US news channel" (none of them named) had been filming in Jisr al-Shughur, a town in Idlib province currently held by anti-Assad fighters.

The briefing note said:

According to the scenario of the staged scene, civilians of Jisr al-Shughur "were provided with help" by "activists" of "civil defence" (the White Helmets) after an alleged chemical attack carried out by Syrian army using barrel bombs armed with chemical agents.

To make shooting more natural and to ensure rapid collection of soil samples by the White Helmets, early in the morning the[y] delivered two containers with chemical substances based on chlorine from Khirbat al-Jawziyah to Jisr al-Shughur.


The Russian propaganda channel, RT, said the film would be delivered to TV newsrooms for broadcasting after first being posted on social media. The film, it said, was "meant to serve as proof that the Syrian government has conducted a chemical weapons attack in Idlib".

Russia has long claimed that chemical attacks reported in Syria (and in some cases confirmed by OPCW investigators) either didn't happen or were false flag operations by rebels. More recently, however, it has adopted a new tactic of claiming to know about fake attacks that are supposedly in preparation. Up to now, all these predictions have proved wrong, though that doesn't seem to deter the Russians and other supporters of the Assad regime from making them:

February 13: Russian Centre for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria says it received a phone call from a resident of Saraqeb in Idlib province about plans for a staged attack: "According to the source, on the afternoon of February 12, rebels from the Jabhat Al-Nusra (Al-Nusra Front) terrorist organisation brought three cars packed with more than 20 cylinders of chlorine along with personal protective equipment to Serakab. Additionally, according to the caller, representatives of the local branch of the White Helmets, wearing individual means of protection, conducted rehearsals of 'giving first aid' to 'local residents' who were supposedly suffering from poisoning."

June 23: Sputnik News says Syrian field sources are "monitoring the movement of White Helmets members in the town of Basr al-Harir and other regions in eastern Deraa". The sources said this might signify preparations for a false flag chemical attack but "the tightness of the frontlines in the area may hinder the White Helmets from going ahead with their plans".

August 8: Citing Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem, Sputnik News says the White Helmets organisation has "kidnapped 44 children in Idlib to use in a staged chemical attack".

August 27: Russian embassy in South Africa tweets: "English-speaking 'foreign specialists' have arrived in Syria to attempt staging chlorine chemical attack early this week. Latest intel indicates the hoax is planned to take place in the village of Kafr Zita (Hama province)." The tweet is accompanied by a photo which appears to show filming of a staged attack, though it was actually taken on the set of "Revolution Man" – a fictional film made by the Syrian government.

August 28: Russian defense ministry says the chemicals intended for use in a fake attack in Idlib "have been already delivered to terrorists in the area with the assistance of the infamous White Helmets group."

August 31: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov says there is "no doubt" that militants are plotting a false-flag chemical-weapons attack in Idlib province, and Russia has "presented concrete facts" about this to both the UN and OPCW.

August 31: Vanessa Beeley, a prominent defender of the Assad regime on social media, tweets: "White Helmets transported drums carrying toxic materials to Saint Nicholas church & National Hospital – Jisr al-Shughour. Location of chemical hoax changed by foreign orders after 1st area exposed. Now Maarrat Al Nu'man is new location." Beeley adds: "Sources on the ground told @khalediskef that the plan is to use 'female' White Helmets for maximum propganda impact."

September 5: Fares Shehabi, a Syrian member of parliament, tweets: "Expect a new WhiteHelmets chemical hoax ahead of the upcoming [UN security council] meeting on Friday to put pressure on Syria. More likely it will take place in Jisr Al-Shugur town as local sources told us."

September 6: Following a meeting with President Assad during a visit to Syria, Republican US state senator Richard Black claims Britain is involved in planning fake attacks: "We knew about four weeks ago that British intelligence was planning to work to stage a false flag chemical attack to pretend that it was the fault of Syria and to blame it on Syria and then to come to the rescue of al-Qaeda."
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Re: US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?

Postby Elvis » Sat Sep 15, 2018 6:58 am

^^^^ Sounds like they had some good intel which may have busted the alleged operation. Hopefully in Idlib there'll be an orderly surrender and negotiated evacuation of the terrorists, as we saw happen in past liberations.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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