Syrian activists inspect the bodies of people they say were killed by nerve gas in the Ghouta region, in the Duma neighbourhood of Damascus August 21, 2013. (Reuters)
Only a few days before the 12th anniversary of 9/11, Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama might be fighting side by side with... al-Qaeda, as he was foolish enough to be trapped by his own rhetoric on Syria.
The dogs of war bark and the caravan... is Tomahawked. Amid out-of-control hysteria, the proverbial "unnamed US officials" spin like demented centrifuges.
Obama's "kinetic operation" on Syria will fall out of the sky "in the next few days." It will be "limited," lasting only "three days," or "no more than two days." It will "send a message," a "short, sharp attack" against less than 50 sites on a list of targets.
But then long-range bombers may "possibly" join the Tomahawk barrage, and all bets are off.
A proverbial, anonymous "senior administration official" even stressed the "desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week."
That's it; we bomb a country like dialing a pizza delivery, and then we go to a G20 summit with the world's emerging powers hosted by no less than Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. Just because we need to prove that the president of the United States meant what he said: chemical weapons are a red line. And to hell who's responsible for deploying them.
I'm not making this up. This is the core of White House spokesman Jay Carney's message, when he said, in faultless Newspeak: "The options that are being considered do not contain within them a regime change focus."
So the administration of "constitutional lawyer" Barack Obama is mulling how to attack Syria, bypassing the UN Security Council -- which will veto, via Russia and China, the new resolution proposed by the UK; bypassing always-docile NATO; and with 91 percent of Americans against it, just to send an (explosive) political message. And all because a US president was foolish enough to get trapped in his own rhetoric.
U.N. chemical weapons experts visit people affected by an apparent gas attack, at a hospital in the southwestern Damascus suburb of Mouadamiya August 26, 2013. (Reuters)
Call it a 10th anniversary special: it's Iraq 2003 all over again.
The attack dog presumably in charge of the Obama administration war brigade is Secretary of State John Kerry. Here, Gareth Porter thoroughly debunks Kerry's game -- and lies. No wonder Kerry's "Powell moment" has gone viral -- as in "deceived" Colin Powell in his infamous February 2003 UN presentation telling the world Saddam Hussein had tons of WMDs. Unlike Powell though, Kerry knows exactly what he's doing.
The White House promises a "revelation" from above this Thursday, "above" being the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Yet the heart of the matter is that the UN chemical inspectors have had no time to identify what sort of chemical weapon is involved in the Ghouta attack (sarin or something else); where it was manufactured; how it was delivered (possibly by DIY rockets); and last but not least, who did it.
It's imperative to remember that Russia presented an 80-page report last month to the UN Security Council detailing serious evidence about the "rebels" being behind the March 19 attack in Khan al-Assal. That's why the inspectors are in Syria now. So the Obama administration is lying when it insists that it's "too late" for the inspectors to investigate the latest attack.
This time though, Russia may not have collected enough evidence; it's too early. Otherwise Ambassador Vitaly Churkin would be talking to the press, like he did last month.
These investigations take time. And the results cannot be fixed around the policy.
"Fixing" the factsLet's follow a track that is much more plausible than Washington's official narrative.
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