Robert Parry
Last August,
the Obama administration lurched to the brink of invading Syria after
blaming a Sarin gas attack outside Damascus on President Bashar
al-Assad’s government, but new evidence – reported by investigative
journalist Seymour M. Hersh – implicates Turkish intelligence and
extremist Syrian rebels instead.
The significance of Hersh’s latest report is
twofold: first, it shows how Official Washington’s hawks and neocons
almost stampeded the United States into another Mideast war under false
pretenses, and second, the story’s publication in the London Review of
Books reveals how hostile the mainstream U.S. media remains toward
information that doesn’t comport with its neocon-dominated conventional
wisdom.
In other words,
it appears that Official Washington and its mainstream press have
absorbed few lessons from the disastrous Iraq War, which was launched in
2003 under the false claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was
planning to share hidden stockpiles of WMD with al-Qaeda, when there was
no WMD nor any association between Hussein and al-Qaeda.
A decade later
In August and September 2013, as a new war hysteria broke out over Assad
allegedly crossing President Barack Obama’s “red line” against using
chemical weapons, it fell to a few Internet sites, including our own Consortiumnews.com, to raise questions about the administration’s allegations that pinned the Aug. 21 attack on the Syrian government.
Not only did
the U.S. government fail to provide a single piece of verifiable
evidence to support its claims, a much-touted “vector analysis” by Human
Rights Watch and the New York Times – supposedly tracing the flight
paths of two rockets back to a Syrian military base northwest of
Damascus – collapsed when
it became clear that only one rocket carried Sarin and its range was
less than one-third the distance between the army base and the point of
impact. That meant the rocket carrying the Sarin appeared to have
originated in rebel territory.
There were other reasons to doubt the Obama administration’s casus belli,
including the irrationality of Assad ordering a chemical weapons strike
outside Damascus just as United Nations inspectors were unpacking at a
local hotel with plans to investigate an earlier attack that the Syrian
government blamed on the rebels.
Assad would
have known that a chemical attack would have diverted the inspectors (as
it did) and would force President Obama to declare that his “red line”
had been crossed, possibly prompting a massive U.S. retaliatory strike
(as it almost did).
Plans for War
Hersh’s article
describes how devastating the U.S. aerial bombardment was supposed to
be, seeking to destroy Assad’s military capability, which, in turn,
could have cleared the way to victory for the Syrian rebels, whose
fortunes had been declining.
Hersh wrote:
“Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster
strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to
Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles
were deployed.
“‘Every day the
target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told
me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at
Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below
ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were
assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue teams
to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became
huge.’
“The new target
list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad
had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included
electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons
depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known
military and intelligence buildings.”
According to
Hersh, the administration’s war plans were disrupted by U.S. and British
intelligence analysts who uncovered evidence that the Sarin was likely
not released by the Assad government and indications that Turkey’s
intelligence services may have collaborated with radical rebels to
deploy the Sarin as a false-flag operation.
Turkey’s Prime
Minister Recep Erdoğan sided with the Syrian opposition early in the
civil conflict and provided a vital supply line to the al-Nusra Front, a
violent group of Sunni extremists with ties to al-Qaeda and
increasingly the dominant rebel fighting force. By 2012, however,
internecine conflicts among rebel factions had contributed to Assad’s
forces gaining the upper hand in the conflict.
The role of
Islamic radicals – and the fear that advanced U.S. weapons might end up
in the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists – unnerved President Obama who
pulled back on U.S. covert support for the rebels. That frustrated
Erdoğan who pressed Obama to expand U.S. involvement, according to
Hersh’s account.
Hersh wrote:
“By the end of 2012, it was believed throughout the American
intelligence community that the rebels were losing the war. ‘Erdoğan was
pissed,’ the former intelligence official said, ‘and felt he was left
hanging on the vine. It was his money and the [U.S] cut-off was seen as a
betrayal.’”
‘Red Line’ Worries
Recognizing
Obama’s political sensitivity over his “red line” pledge, the Turkish
government and Syrian rebels saw chemical weapons as the way to force
the President’s hand, Hersh reported, writing:
“In spring 2013
US intelligence learned that the Turkish government – through elements
of the MIT, its national intelligence agency, and the Gendarmerie, a
militarised law-enforcement organisation – was working directly with
al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability.
“‘The MIT was
running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie
handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training – including
training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said.
‘Stepping up Turkey’s role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its
problems there. Erdoğan knew that if he stopped his support of the
jihadists it would be all over. The Saudis could not support the war
because of logistics – the distances involved and the difficulty of
moving weapons and supplies. Erdoğan’s hope was to instigate an event
that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond
[to small chemical weapons attacks] in March and April.’”
The dispute
between Erdoğan and Obama came to a head at a White House meeting on May
16, 2013, when Erdoğan unsuccessfully lobbied for a broader U.S.
military commitment to the rebels, Hersh reported.
Three months
later, in the early hours of Aug. 21, a mysterious missile delivered a
lethal load of Sarin into a suburb east of Damascus. The Obama
administration and the mainstream U.S. press corps immediately jumped to
the conclusion that the Syrian government had launched the attack,
which the U.S. government claimed killed at least “1,429” people
although the number of victims cited by doctors and other witnesses on
the scene was much lower.
Yet, with the
media stampede underway, anyone who questioned the U.S. government’s
case was trampled under charges of being an “Assad apologist.” But we
few skeptics continued to point out the lack of evidence to support the
rush to war. Obama also encountered political resistance in both the
British Parliament and U.S. Congress, but hawks in the U.S. State
Department were itching for a new war.
Secretary of
State John Kerry delivered a bellicose speech on Aug. 30 amid
expectations that the U.S. bombs would start flying within days. But
Obama hesitated, first referring the war issue to Congress and later
accepting a compromise brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin to
have Assad surrender all of his chemical weapons even as Assad continued
denying any role in the Aug. 21 attacks.
Obama took the
deal but continued asserting publicly that Assad was guilty and
disparaging anyone who thought otherwise. In a formal address to
the UN General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2013, Obama declared, “It’s an
insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to
suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack.”
Suspicions of Turkey
However, by
autumn 2013, U.S. intelligence analysts were among those who had joined
in the “insult to human reason” as their doubts about Assad’s guilt
grew. Hersh cited an ex-intelligence official saying: “the US
intelligence analysts who kept working on the events of 21 August
‘sensed that Syria had not done the gas attack. But the 500 pound
gorilla was, how did it happen? The immediate suspect was the Turks,
because they had all the pieces to make it happen.’
“As intercepts
and other data related to the 21 August attacks were gathered, the
intelligence community saw evidence to support its suspicions. ‘We
now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s people to push
Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They
had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN
inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the
earlier use of gas – ‘were there. The deal was to do something
spectacular.
“’Our senior
military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence
assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only
have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the
training in producing the sarin and handling it.’
“Much of the
support for that assessment came from the Turks themselves, via
intercepted conversations in the immediate aftermath of the attack. ‘Principal
evidence came from the Turkish post-attack joy and back-slapping in
numerous intercepts. Operations are always so super-secret in the
planning but that all flies out the window when it comes to crowing
afterwards. There is no greater vulnerability than in the perpetrators
claiming credit for success.’”
According to
the thinking of Turkish intelligence, Hersh reported, “Erdoğan’s
problems in Syria would soon be over: ‘Off goes the gas and Obama will
say red line and America is going to attack Syria, or at least that was
the idea. But it did not work out that way.’”
Hersh added
that the U.S. intelligence community has been reluctant to pass on to
Obama the information contradicting the Assad-did-it scenario. Hersh
wrote:
“The
post-attack intelligence on Turkey did not make its way to the White
House. ‘Nobody wants to talk about all this,’ the former intelligence
official told me. ‘There is great reluctance to contradict the
president, although no all-source intelligence community analysis
supported his leap to convict. There has not been one single piece of
additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced
by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government
can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we
blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’”
Like the bloody
U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, last year’s near U.S. air war
against Syria is a cautionary tale for Americans regarding the dangers
that result when the U.S. government and mainstream media dance off hand
in hand, leaping to conclusions and laughing at doubters.
The key
difference between the war in Iraq and the averted war on Syria was that
President Obama was not as eager as his predecessor, George W. Bush, to
dress himself up as a “war president.” Another factor was that Obama
had the timely assistance of Russian President Putin to chart a course
that skirted the abyss.
Given how close
the U.S. neocons came to maneuvering a reluctant Obama into another
“regime change” war on a Mideast adversary of Israel, you can understand
why they are so angry with Putin and why they were so eager to hit back
at him in Ukraine.
Consortiumnews.com, April 6, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment