Joe Quinn | Sott.net | 08 Feb 2012
Hundreds of thousands of people have been repeatedly taking to the streets of Damascus to show their support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Photo taken October 12, 2011
While the mainstream media is going to great lengths to convince the world that events in Syria are the result of yet another 'people's revolution', the facts point clearly to yet another US government-sponsored bloody 'regime change'. Given that the US has been a de facto global empire for at least 60 years, with all of the power, infrastructure and influence that entails, how difficult do we think it would be for agents of the empire to manufacture a 'revolution' in any given country? The answer, surprisingly, is 'not so easily'. But it is doable, as long as the empire is willing to murder innocent civilians to create the impression of a brutal regime in need of removal. And the USA has never balked at murdering a few hundred, a few thousand, or even a few million civilians to ensure it gets its geo-political way, to the delight of psychopaths in power everywhere.
A CIA History of Mass Murder and Global NIGYSOB
'Hey, what's in those boxes?' CIA agents living it up in Laos in the 1960's.
Back in the late '60s and '70s, the CIA funded, trained and armed so-called 'anti-Communist' Hmong rebels in Laos, a strategy that ultimately led to the US military dropping more bombs on the innocent civilians of Laos than all the bombs dropped during the second World War. From 1964 through 1973, 580,000 bombing runs were flown over Laos - one every nine minutes for ten years. At the same time, vast quantities of heroin were flown out by the CIA's 'Air America' planes. Previous to, and since then, the CIA has orchestrated dozens of armed insurgencies in dozens of countries around the world, arming bands of mercenaries and death squads in an effort to establish and expand American economic and political hegemony over every corner of the globe.
Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has mounted approximately 3,000 major operations and 10,000 minor operations of this nature, every one of them illegal and many of them "bloody and gory beyond comprehension". According to former CIA agent John Stockwell (who was involved in several such operations), by 1988, over six million people had been killed as a result.
In an interview with Amy Goodman on March 2, 2007, U.S. General Wesley Clark (Ret.), explained that the Bush Administration planned to "take out" seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. While the sequence of invasions seems to have been revised to some extent, the plan appears to be progressing nicely for the psychopathic lords of empire. But wait! The Bush government isn't in power anymore! Obama's in charge now, right? How can the Obama administration be following a foreign policy of subversion and mass murder that was devised under another president's leadership?! Unless the president really isn't the 'commander in chief'. Unless the position of the president of the USA is little more than a ceremonial one, and some other group, that transcends changes in administrations, actually dictates government policy. But that wouldn't be democratic, so obviously it's not true.
Like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya before it, Syria is next in line for NATO (aka American/Israeli) regime change, and the hallmarks of CIA, MI6 and Mossad subversion tactics are all over the media reporting of this latest 'Arab revolution'. Syria has been on the Israelis' 'to-do' list for several years, mainly because it is (now) the last independent, secular, multi-ethnic Arab country in the Middle East, a staunch supporter of Iran and, as such, an obstacle to Israeli hegemony over the entire Middle East.
Any questions?
It's actually a grand game of NIGYSOB ('Now I've Got You you Son Of a Bitch') whereby some Arab governments that refuse to submit to Western and Israeli dominance are continually harassed and destabilized to the point that they are forced, in order to survive, to develop a security infrastructure that is, to one extent or another, totalitarian. Western powers and the Israelis can then, when it suits them best, decry the lack of 'freedom' within the targeted nation and begin the process of overthrowing the government. See Hugo Chavez's terms as Venezuelan president as an example of how this 'game' is played by Western powers.
The origins of the Israeli-Arab conflict are, as many know, based on the fact that the Zionists decided that the Jewish people needed a homeland that belonged to some Arabs. With the help of the British and a liberal dose of ethnic cleansing in the late 1930s and 1940s, the founders of the Jewish state ensured then, and by their actions since, that Israel would be in perpetual conflict with their neighbors. For their part, the American elite's motivation in targeting Syria is that which motivates all psychopaths: greed, power and the compelling desire to make others suffer, as was evidenced most recently by Hilary Clinton's ecstatic delight at the brutal televised murder of Muammar Gaddafi. Of course, there are also more mundane reasons like the fact that, in 2006, the Syrian government switched all of the state's foreign currency transactions from dollars to euros, or that the same year Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad publicly stated the obvious, yet consistently denied, fact that the Israelis murdered Yasser Arafat.
So far, the Syrian 'revolution' has been a carbon copy of most other CIA-sponsored 'regime changes' over the past 60 years: mercenaries and death squads are imported into the country to 'stir things up' in advance of a bombing campaign when the time is right. In Libya, that's exactly what happened, with the British, Americans and Israelis pooling their resources and sharing the contents of their little black books of 'al-qaeda' fighters they have been recruiting over the years.
Born Again Muslim Terrorists
Abdelhakim Belhadj - 'Me? A Muslim terrorist? But I work for the CIA!'
Consider the fact that the one of the leaders of the 'rebel' assault on Tripoli and the current military governor of Tripoli (more or less the commander-in-chief of the Libyan military) is Abdelhakim Belhadj. Belhadj has an interesting past. After a stint as a Mujaheddin fighter (trained and funded by the US) in the Soviet-Afghan war, Belhadj travelled across the Middle East and then came back to Libya in the early 1990s. There he joined the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and tried to overthrow Colonel Gaddafi before being forced to flee in 1998. He then moved to Afghanistan and joined the Taliban. In 2002, after the September 11 attacks and Gaddafi's reconciliation with the West, an arrest warrant was issued for Belhadj by the Libyan authorities. In it, it was alleged that Belhadj had developed "close relationships" with al-Qaeda leaders, and specifically Taliban chief Mullah Omar. Based in Jalalabad, he is alleged to have run and financed training camps for Arab mujaheddin fighters. According to the former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Belhadj was suspected of complicity in the 2004 Madrid train bombings. As a virtual CIA asset, he was being tracked by the agency and was arrested in Bangkok and rendered to a secret prison in Libya in 2004. He stayed there until last year when he escaped and became a CIA-funded leader of the Libyan revolution.
In case you are a little confused by all that, let me spell it out: the CIA is using 'Muslim terrorists', i.e. people against whom America is waging the 'War on Terror', to bring 'freedom and democracy' to states that 'harbor Muslim terrorists'.
Mahdi al-Harat with his wife and some CIA money that he lost, or maybe they just wanted it back.
A fine 'Irish' chap by the name of Mahdi al-Harati was second in command to Belhadj in the Tripoli Military Council until he resigned in October 2011. Married to an Irish national, Mr al-Harati has admitted that he was paid by the CIA to organise anti-Gaddafi fighters in 2011. According to a Sunday World article of November 6, 2011, €200,000 in cash and expensive jewellery was stolen from al-Harati's Dublin home a month previously. The Sunday World reported that a criminal gang working the area found two envelopes stuffed with €500 notes during a raid on al-Harati's family home, October 6. The article, apparently relying on police sources, stated that al-Harati, who had been a Dublin resident and employed as an Arabic teacher for 20 years, when contacted by Irish police, claimed that the stolen cash was "given to him by an American intelligence agency."
Note that al-Harati resigned from his position on the Tripoli Military Council just a few days after the money was stolen.
Barely two months later, on December 17, 2011, the Spanish paper ABC, carried a report by Daniel Iriarte entitled: Libyan Islamists move to Syria to help the revolution. During his visit with the Libyan rebels in Syria, Mr. Iriarte meets three Libyan rebels: Adem Kikli, who says he works for Belhadj; Fuad, who appears to be a body-guard; and none other than Mahdi al-Harati. Al-Hariti told the ABC reporter that he and his friends are in Syria to "evaluate the needs of our Syrian revolutionary brothers, not to fight". But it strikes me that that is precisely what a CIA agent in Syria today might say if challenged. al-Harati then told the ABC reporter something rather unexpected: "I was injured on the assault on the Mavi Marmara and spent nine days in a Tel Aviv jail." Yes indeed, it seems that this high-profile Muslim CIA mercenary, every-ready to do battle to oust Muslim leaders (secular or not) for NATO, is also a pro-Palestinian (and, we must assume, anti-Zionist) activist! Unless, of course, he was on the Mavi Marmara in the role of spy for the Mossad. What seems to be the case is that these former Muslim terrorists turned NATO freedom fighters are nothing more than unscrupulous hired guns, who will fight for any cause as long as someone is willing to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars, with €200,000 or more left over for their spouses.
Members of the 'Free Syrian Army' - they'll shoot at anyone for the right price.
Cut-throats, Thugs and Hired Hitmen
In April 2011, Syrian state television aired the testimonies of three men arrested on suspicion of being involved in attacks on civilians and Syrian security forces. Anas al-Kanj, who presented himself as the head of an "armed terrorist group" is heard saying in a taped broadcast that he received "arms and money" from Lebanese MP Jamal Jarrah through an intermediary, Ahmad al-Uda, who identified himself as a member of Syria's banned Muslim Brotherhood.
Kanj said he was instructed "to incite people to protest, particularly outside the Ummayad Mosque in Damascus" and in the flashpoint protest towns of Daraa, Latakia and Banias, to "incite protests to topple the regime and to carry out acts of sabotage". Agence France-Presse, citing Syria's Ath-Thawra newspaper, said that Kanj was instructed "to open fire on protesters in order to sow disarray and lead people to believe that the security forces was shooting on the demonstrators."
In a December 2011 post on her web site, Turkish-American former FBI translator and founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC), Sibel Edmonds, stated that, according to her sources, "foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, began to spread near the villages of the north-Jordan city of Al-Mafraq, which is adjacent to the Jordanian and Syrian border."
In January this year, the UK website 'Elite UK Forces' published a report that stated:
Other UK tabloids reported the same story. At this stage, the pattern of events is mirroring that of Libya, where British and French special forces were on the ground prior to the launching of NATO's aerial bombardment.
Mr death squad junior, Ambassador Robert Ford
US ambassador to Syria since 2010 is Robert Stephen Ford. Before Syria, Ford was Political Counselor to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad from 2004 until 2006 under 'Mr. Death Squad' John Negroponte. Before his recent departure and the closing of the US embassy, Ford temporarily left Damascus in October 2011 over fears for his safety after he was attacked with eggs by Syrians and accused by the Syrian media of overseeing the use of death squads in Syria. Having successfully overseen the establishment of his death squads in Syria, Ford is reportedly heading back to his old stomping ground, Iraq, to take command of the death squads US embassy there.
The Syrian 'revolution' proper began in March 2011 when fighting broke out in the relatively small town of Daraa on the Jordanian border, rather than in large cities like Damascu or Homs. Since then, the mainstream media has systematically misrepresented the sizes of the anti-government demonstrations and relied on biased reports for casualty counts.
For example, almost all of the first reports from fighting in Daraa in March made reference to police attacks on 'anti-government' protestors. Yet other reports point to more police being killed than demonstrators. So who, exactly, in this supposedly 'peaceful demonstration' was able to shoot and kill 7 policemen? And what exactly did anyone expect the Syrian government to do in response? After seeing what US police do to actual peaceful protestors, like the OWS movement, we can only imagine what the US government would do if US cops came under fire from protestors.
In June 2011, Syrian state media reported that at least 120 members of the country's security forces were killed in a battle with what it called "armed organizations". According to NPR's Deborah Amos:
Notice that the reports of the most serious fighting come from border towns, which is indicative of incursions by armed groups from Turkey to the north, Jordan to the south and, of course, US-controlled Iraq to the east. Indeed, the main 'centers of unrest', as they're being called, are Daraa near Jordan, Talkalakh, Homs, Talbiseh and Al-Rastan near Lebanon, and Jisr ash-Shugur near Turkey, all located along Syria's borders. In November 2011, Albawaba reported that 600 fighters had already gone from Libya to Syria in order to support the newly established 'Free Syrian Army'.
On December 23rd, two powerful car bombs exploded outside government security offices in Damascus. 44 people were killed, most of them civilians. Clearly the attack was aimed at the government, but what kind of popular Syrian uprising produces people who indiscriminately attack and kill Syrian civilians? These types of 'suicide bombings' were (and, to an extent, still are) a feature of the attempt by US forces to terrorize a population and justify foreign intervention and occupation. It has worked in Iraq, so why not Syria?
The scene of the Dec. 23rd Damascus car bomb. Who benefits from chaos and the death of civilians and Syrian security personnel?
On January 6th, 2012, another 'suicide bomb' attack in the central Damascus neighborhood of al-Midan killed 26 people, most of whom were civilians. The funeral of the victims coincided with a large pro-Assad rally.
On January 11th, a mortar attack on a pro-government rally in Homs killed a French journalist, Gilles Jacquier of France 2, along with seven other civilians.
Yet another 'suicide bomb' was detonated in the city of Homs yesterday, February 8th, and yet again the targets and dead were civilians and members of the Syrian security forces.
Just out of interest, did you know that between December 24th 2011 and January 18th 2012, there was a League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria that comprised observers from every single country in the Arab world? Did you know that they published a report? Of course you didn't, because the report was suppressed by US and Israeli cronies in the Arab world (think Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar for example) and the Western media. Go ahead, try a web search for 'Report of the Head of the League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria for the period from 24 December 2011 to 18 January 2012', because that is its title.
In their report, the members of the Mission came to some very interesting conclusions that make it very clear why you haven't heard of this report, until now.
On page 4 the report states:
Read the full report here.
In June 2011, even an (unnamed) Obama administration official was forced to admit:
Obama might not know who these 'armed groups' are, but the CIA/MI6/Mossad nexus of evil certainly do.
Clearly, the 'Syrian Free Army' and those 'opposition groups' are not fighting in the interest of the Syrian people, but in the interest of those that shout the loudest (and can pay the most) for 'regime change' on the fly.
Mainstream Media Make-Believe
Within a few weeks of the beginning of the CIA-sponsored uprising in Syria, the Syrian government expelled most foreign journalists from the country and tightly controlled the activities of those that remained. Given the nature of the Western media - the propaganda arm of the empire builders - this was an understandable reaction. Unfortunately, the Syrian government seems to have underestimated the extent to which the CIA had infiltrated Syria.
With little or no direct access to events in Syria, most Western media reports rely on the claims of unnamed 'opposition activists' who, frankly, could be anyone, and an organisation calling itself the 'Local Coordination Committees of Syria' (LCC), which claims to be a "collection of local committees in towns and cities across Syria that meet, plan and organize events on the ground. Together the committees formed the Local Coordinating Committees of Syria, an umbrella organization with members from most cities and many smaller towns across Syria." Strangely enough, however, the web sites associated with this LCC are based in Germany and owned by a person named Andreas Bertsch.
In short, factual information about what is actually happening in Syria is extremely difficult to obtain, and, given that we are dealing with CIA-sponsored 'regime change', we have every reason to be suspicious of reports of Syrian police and soldiers indiscriminately killing Syrian civilians. We need only remember bogus, emotionally charged claims about 'babies in incubators' leading up to the first Iraq invasion, fabricated WMD claims leading up to the second, and, more recently, false statements that Gaddafi was 'bombing his own people'. Consider this short video report from RT.com for an example of the way in which reports of Syrian government's 'crack down' can be entirely fabricated.
Incidentally, the above report concerns the Syrian Mediterranean town of Lattakia, where tens of thousands marched in October 2011 in support of Assad, which came one day after a similarly strong showing of pro-Assad support in Damascus.
PysOps For The Masses
Speaking of making things up; what we are dealing with here is known in military circles as psychological warfare or 'psywar', which is a kind of warfare that aims to influence a target audience's value systems, belief systems, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior, usually by inventing lies and presenting them as truth. Such operations take many different forms. In our modern internet age, the various intel agencies are well aware of the need to ply their propagandistic trade in cyberspace.
'Amina Arraf' aka a disturbed and bearded American man living in Scotland.
One flagrant example of psywar in cyberspace as it related to Syria was the case of Amina Arraf, an alleged Syrian lesbian blogger ('A gay girl in Damascus') who rose to fame in the first half of last year as a result of her frank posts about her sexuality, the lack of freedoms in Syria and her open criticism of President Assad. In early June 2011, a post appeared on Amina's blog (supposedly by her cousin) telling her fans that she had been kidnapped by armed men. Thousands of campaigners around the world joined protest groups when media outlets picked up on the story and spread it far and wide.
Within a few days however, it was revealed (via IP traces) that this anti-Assad lesbian blogger from Syria was in fact a bearded American male by the name of Tom McMaster posting from his computer in Edinburgh. Why did he do it? According to Tom, it was all about "vanity", and he "never expected this level of attention". Sure. That's why he led a Canadian woman to believe that she was having a 6-month-long relationship with 'Amina'; that's why he created dozens of accounts on social networking sites in her name as far back as 2006. That's why he gave an email interview in her name to CNN. That's why he stole a picture of Jelena Lečić, a Croatian national and expatriate in the United Kingdom, and claimed it was 'Amina'. All very low key stuff.
Interestingly, while her blog was still active, 'Amina' posted a picture of a billboard in Damascus showing President Assad. The image was taken from Britta Froelicher's Facebook page and shows a date of 2006, which suggests that Britta, perhaps with McMasters, were in Syria in 2006, which was the year that the US began to covertly fund the Syrian opposition.
Interviewed by the Washington Post, Tom McMaster admitted to being a 40+ year old native of Virginia who is married to Britta Froelicher. Local real estate records show that MacMaster has owned a house in Georgia since 2000 and that he and his wife lived there until they left for Scotland in September 2010 where they both enrolled as students at Edinburgh University and where she is pursuing a PhD in Syrian economic development.
Tom McMaster - CIA psyops agent? Or just in need of a proper job?
Tom MacMaster's brother, Sam, said that his brother was offered a full scholarship from Emory University in Georgia, where he specialized in Arabic studies. Later he traveled to Syria and Jordan to perfect his language skills.
MacMaster has been active in the University of Edinburgh's Students for Justice in Palestine and has written articles critical of 'Zionists'.
When contacted by the Electronic Intifada, McMasters replied:
But within a few days he was forced to come clean, at which point he took off ... to Turkey of all places. Here's a video interview of McMasters by the Guardian, and a 2009 interview of his wife about her work for the Quaker 'American Friends Service Committee'. Readers can make up their own minds whether or not these two are conscious psywar agents of empire or just an pair of gullible idiots.
Another interesting piece of trivia; it was the Local Coordination Committees of Syria that first broke the fake story that Amina had been arrested by Syrian police. Coincidence?
Proxy Guvvermints in Exile Я Us
Burhan Ghalioun - Syrian-French tool of the CIA
As was the case with the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya, high on the CIA's to-do list for 'regime change' in Syria was the creation of an embryonic Syrian government-in-exile made up of right-wing hardliners and/or convicted conmen. Early last year, the Syrian National Council was created with its headquarters in Turkey. To get an idea of the political leaning of this clique, we need only look to the comments of its Chairman, Burhan Ghalioun, a French professor of political sociology and potential future President of Syria. On December 2, 2011 Ghalioun said that if his regime takes over Syria it would "end the military relationship to Iran and cut off arms supplies to Hezbollah and Hamas, and establish ties with Israel."
This fact alone points to strong Israeli backing and motivation in the effort to oust Assad. With a pro-US/Israel government in Syria, crucial Iranian support to Hizb'allah and the Palestinians would be cut off, leaving Israel free to enact its final solution for its 'Arab problem'.
One World Government
The countdown to NATO airstrikes on Syria has begun. When that happens, it's all over for Assad and a relatively normal life for Syrians. Libya's al Qaeda mercenaries rebels were able to call in NATO air support as they rampaged through the country, brutally murdering and torturing people as they went. The same gruesome story is playing out in Syria. Russia and China recently vetoed the US/UK motion for another NATO war on Syrian civilians. Yet Hilary Clinton still had the gall to be "disgusted" at their veto, declaring:
Complicit? Clinton is already up to her neck in the blood of the Syrian people, the only problem being that she likes it that way, and the vile harpy will have her way! That's why two days ago, the US proposed a "international coalition [of the willing?] to support Syria's opposition", which is precisely what the US did when they failed to get UN approval for war on Iraq. The result was 1.5 million dead Iraqi civilians.
Taking into consideration what I wrote above about the actual policy-makers transcending the revolving door of successive administrations, the only thing that is certain in a world where most are so abysmally ignorant of the true state of affairs, is that the psychopaths in power will get their way, no matter how many lies they have to tell, or innocent people they have to kill. Syria's fate is tightly bound to Iran's. China and Russia's in turn is bound to Iran's. Things are so chaotic, yet everything remains exactly the same. Only a dramatic intervention, from somewhere, can hasten the final chapter of this insane script that is human life on earth in the early 21st century.
Which brings me to my final point.
The tumult of political and military events over the past few years, including the current blood-letting in Syria and the sabre-rattling over Iran, is, in the final analysis, a distraction from a much greater threat to humanity than the power plays of a cabal of psychopaths. 'Climate change' is upon us (in case you haven't noticed). All of the objective evidence points to imminent and major 'earth changes' (including the prospect of a new ice age), the results and severity of which will make the survivors look back with some fondness on the last days of the American Empire. The days when there was still food in the supermarkets; when there was still a growing season; before the comet impacts, the earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions; when human life on earth was still, to some extent, viable.
An established web-based essayist and print author, Joe has been writing hard-hitting editorials for Sott.net for 8 years and is the author of Sott.net's The Sott Report Videos. His articles have appeared on many alternative news sites and he has been interviewed on several internet radio shows. His articles can also be found on his personal blog JoeQuinn.net
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