Wag the Dog The Sequel Set in Syria

seekers

Minister (2k+ posts)
Over the last couple of weeks a western-backed (and armed) military junta slaughtered many hundreds of Egyptians in broad daylight live on television. The death toll, still concealed, may have been thousands.


The west confined itself to disapproving words and calls for “restraint” on “both sides” – even though the victims were unarmed.

In Syria hundreds of people have just been slaughtered in circumstances which are entirely unclear, and the west is about to launch (in our case without parliamentary approval with the prime minister acting from a beach in Cornwall) a military attack with entirely unforseen consequences on Damascus.


There is a “Wag the Dog” element about this, and indeed the war of President Clinton’s penis satirised in that masterful award-winning movie has already proved a handy diversion from Egypt before its even started.


It is entirely implausible that the Syrian regime chose the moment of the arrival of a UN chemical weapons inspection team to launch a chemical attack on an insurgency already suffering reverse after reverse on the battlefield and steadily losing international support with each new video showing them eating the hearts of slain soldiery and sawing of the heads of Christian priests with bread knives.



In the absence of conclusive evidence one would have to believe that the Assad regime was mad as well as bad to have launched such a chemical attack at a time when it is in less danger than it has been for almost a year. I do not believe that Bashar is mad.













There is ample evidence that the Syrian rag-tag-and-bobtail insurgency, dominated by the most extreme fanatic franchises of Al Qaeda, has access to chemical weapons, indeed any weapons the rag-tag-and-bobtail coalition behind them can get to them.


The US has a long history of using such weapons – and worse – and not just in SE Asia. In the destruction of Fallujah in next door Iraq they slaughtered thousands with the same kind of cocktails.


Israel regularly shares its own chemical weapons stockpile with their neighbours in Gaza. Check the pictures of phosphorous gas raining down upon the UN schools and hospitals in Operation Cast Lead if you don’t believe me.



Britain introduced chemical weapons to the middle east in the first place, dropping gas on the “uncivilised tribes” of Iraq in the 1920s and wondering in parliament “what all the fuss was about”.



Does anyone believe that the foul dictatorships of the Gulf – like Saudi Arabia – wouldn’t give the Syrian rebels some of their chemical weapons? Especially if the purpose was to draw the big powers into the war?



Does anyone believe that a Syrian rebel army whose vile atrocities abound on YouTube wouldn’t use them, for the same purpose?



So now we wait for the summer-surprise attack on yet another Arab country by the former colonial powers. Another summer, another Muslim country under murderous
bombardment by the last people on the planet whose motives are trusted by anyone in the Muslim world.












Meanwhile, the money, and the weapons, keep on flowing to the Egyptian junta. The blood of some people, as always, turning out to be of far greater consequence than the blood of others…


George Galloway MP
House of Commons
London.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

seekers

Minister (2k+ posts)
[h=1]Syria agrees to allow UN inspectors access to site of chemical weapon attacks[/h][h=2]Syria's government has agreed to allow inspectors to visit the site of a chemical weapons attack in Damascus, four days after the onslaught was launched.[/h]
UN weapons inspectors are staying at a central Damascus hotel less than 10 miles from the site of the attacks, but until Sunday the regime was preventing them from having access to the site.

The UN said they would visit on Monday.

Pressure from allies such as Russia and Iran appeared to have convinced President Bashar al-Assad, however.

"An agreement was concluded on Sunday in Damascus between the Syrian government and the United Nations during the visit of the UN high representative for disarmament, Angela Kane, to allow the UN team lead by professor Aake Sellstroem to investigate allegations of chemical weapons use in Damascus province," said a statement from Syria's foreign ministry.

The agreement "is effective immediately," it added.


Mr Assad's concession to international demands came as a senior White House official said there was "very little doubt" that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians.
The anonymous official told Associated Press that the White House believes the Syrian government was barring the UN investigative team from having immediate access to the site of Wednesday's attack in order to give the evidence time to degrade.
Weapons inspectors will only determine whether banned chemical agents were used in the two-year-old conflict if they are able to access sites and take soil, blood, urine or tissue samples and examine them in certified laboratories, according to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which works with the United Nations on inspections.
In May the Assad regime was thought to have used chemical weapons - but by the time blood and soil samples were analysed, it was impossible to be certain what the chemicals were.
"The confidence that we are seeking degrades over time, and in order to have a properly measured chain of custody we would need to obtain samples after an[other] incident," said Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, at the time in a briefing at the British embassy in Washington.
Ralf Trapp, an independent consultant on chemical and biological weapons control, said, "There is a limit to what you can extract from photograph evidence alone. What you really need is to get information from on the ground, to gather physical evidence and to talk to witnesses as well as medical staff who treated victims."
Sarin is a fast-acting nerve agent that was originally developed in 1938 in Germany as a pesticide. It is a clear, colorless, tasteless and odorless liquid that can evaporate quickly into a gas and spread into the environment, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Because it evaporates so quickly, sarin presents an immediate but short-lived threat.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ccess-to-site-of-chemical-weapon-attacks.html


 

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