World Affairs Brief, July 20, 2012 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)
THIS WEEK’S ANALYSIS:
Syria: West Using Terror to Provoke Defections
Obama’s Statist View of Success
Obama Protects Russian Uranium Deal from Litigation
Another Obama Illegal Executive Order
HSBC Executive Resigns over Money Laundering
Book Review: Gen. Brady’s Vietnam Saga: “Night in the Dog’s Head”
DISCLOSE Act Fails
Ron Paul Takes on Bernanke One Last Time
SYRIA: WEST USING TERROR TO PROVOKE DEFECTIONS
A well coordinated rebel attack on Damascus has been going on all this week. Although the chances of beating Assad’s well-equipped army are slim, it appears that the West (who is directing the tactics for the rebels) is unleashing this attack, combined with a terror attack to spur a lot more people in the Syrian leadership to defect. Just to prove how vulnerable these leaders might be if they stay with Assad, western security services planted a bomb at the meeting place of the country’s top military and civilian leaders—undoubtedly timed to create panic among Assad’s ranks.
According to Reuters, “An explosion inside the Syrian national security headquarters in Damascus targeted ministers from President Bashar Assad’s regime who were meeting with defense officials on Wednesday, killing two of the most senior members of Assad’s inner circle, including his brother-in-law. The Syrian Army said Defense Minister Gen. Dawoud Rajha and his deputy Asef Shawkat were both killed in the explosion. Shawkat, Assad’s brother-in-law, also held the title of Deputy Chief of Staff [and had a ruthless reputation].
“Other ministers and military officials were seriously wounded in the explosion, according to the state-run TV channel… The explosion appeared to be part of a coordinated assault on the fourth day of fighting in the capital that rebel fighters have called the ‘liberation of Damascus’ after months of clashes which activists say have killed more than 17,000 people [highly exaggerated].”
The US is openly trying to make it appear as if the Assad regime is on the verge of collapse, which they are actively working to make true: Reuters said, “The United States said on Wednesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was losing control of his country and urged Russia and the international community to get behind a political transition plan to avert sectarian civil war.”
And the Guardian added, “US defense secretary, Leon Panetta, says the situation in Syria is spiraling out of control. He called on the international community to ‘bring maximum pressure on Assad to do what’s right to step down and allow for that peaceful transition.’ Abdelbasset Seida, head of the opposition Syrian National Council, said today was ‘a turning point in Syria’s history,’ and said the Assad regime would ‘fall soon.’”
Given the strength of the Syrian Army, there’s only one way in which the rebels can win: The US has to gain at least a dozen more key defections from top Syrian military leaders, just as they did in Libya. When you can’t beat an army directly, you have to compromise its leaders so the Army ceases to back its political leaders. I think the infiltration of a suicide bomber into Assad’s highest level of security is a major coup and must have shaken the confidence of Assad’s core leaders badly. This is the kind of terror act that is capable of scaring the rest into cutting a deal with the West before they are killed too.
There are two other conflicting stories on timing relative to the attacks on Syria and Iran that are adding fuel to the fire. Jason Ditz reports that “Pro-Syrian-opposition lobbyists say the Obama Administration has warned Syrian rebel factions as well as other pro-war allies that they will not intervene in a serious way against the Assad regime until after the November US election [judging by this week’s actions, the US is hoping they won’t have to intervene in a direct way, even though they are deeply involved in every covert way possible using third parties].”
The Syrian overthrow is a “must accomplish” goal of the US and Israel prior to the coming attack on Iran. The West must overthrow Assad prior to any attack whether it be before the election or after so that Israel doesn’t have to face Syrian missiles as part of the inevitable Iranian retaliation.
In another leaked prediction date, Debka-Net-Weekly says, “It is already decided…. The first week of October is now tagged as decision-time for attacking Iran.” If that timetable is correct, then that would explain why the desperate push to eliminate Assad now. That said, Debka publishes a lot of hype each week and has only about a 50% success rate in predictions. This small Israeli outfit claims to get all of their info from western intel sources, much of which has to be disinformation, judging by how often Debka is led astray. So, we’ll have to wait and see on this prediction.
The only reason the US would not intervene directly in Syria before the election is if they were sure that other black operations on behalf of the rebels would produce the necessary results—which remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, the propaganda machine continues to gear up to ever higher levels against Syria. One not-so-subtle threat that is being communicated to the Syrian leadership is that of being tried as war criminals. That’s why the West went to all that trouble to condemn Mubarak even though he was on his death bed. It sends a message.
This is also the reason why it has been so important to falsify the evidence of massacres against Syria, so that US or Israeli agents can make good on their threats against Syrian leaders about future war crime tribunals. The BBC, perhaps the worst purveyor of the big lie, promoted the myth about the massacre of Houma. Here’s Justin Raimundo’s brief summary on how the West is falsifying these massacres:
“For what seems like months we have been inundated with reports of ‘massacres’ carried out by Syrian government troops against defenseless villagers. The sourcing for these reports is always Syrian ‘activists,’ sometimes named but often not, and the details are always quite horrific: There was the ‘massacre’ at Houla, touted by the BBC in a story that included a photo of a boy jumping over the shrouded bodies of the victims. The report claimed Syrian forces had murdered children and women in a house to house rampage in the village of Houla: it was all very dramatic.
“There was just one problem with the story: it wasn’t true. The photo used by the BBC to illustrate this tall tale was taken in Iraq, not Syria, and it had been pilfered by the Syrian ‘activists’ who palmed it off to the BBC as ‘evidence’ of atrocities committed by the regime.
“Now we have another such attempt: in Tremseh, a village near the city of Hama, the rebels claim, hundreds of civilians were wantonly slaughtered in a full-scale military operation by the Syrian army and air force. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the Syrian action as ‘an outrageous escalation of violence,’ and went on to ‘condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the indiscriminate use of heavy artillery and shelling of populated areas, including by firing from helicopters.’”
Except the firing wasn’t indiscriminate. As the New York Times reports: “New details emerging Saturday about what local Syrian activists called a massacre of civilians near the central city of Hama indicated that it was more likely an uneven clash between the heavily armed Syrian military and local fighters bearing light weapons.”
Now the BBC is on the forefront of another big lie campaign. Blaring the headline, “Assad regime ‘ready to use chemical weapons,’” the Brits are trying to set up the public for a phony “weapons of mass destruction” justification for intervention. This one is easier than Saddam since there is no question Assad has chemical and biological weapons. In fact, Assad took possession of many truck loads of Saddam’s weapons when the Russians convoyed them out of the country into Syria, just prior to the US invasion.
But the threat of Syria using these weapons on the rebels is pure hype. Having captured Libya’s chemical weapons, the West can easily plant some chemical weapons at will and blame it on Assad– making the case for immediate intervention.
Landdestroyer.blogspot.com offered the following analysis: “After unconfirmed reports [always the mantra of media propaganda] by nameless US officials that Syria was moving chemical weapons out of storage, and now in the midst of a massive media disinformation campaign, several leading ‘activist’ Twitter accounts have been hysterically warning about an ‘imminent’ chemical attack by a ‘desperate regime.’ The US has repeatedly insinuated that any use of chemical weapons would require either it, or Israel to militarily intervene [naturally].
“In reality, it is NATO’s militant front that has the means (chemical weapons brought in from Libya), the motivation (subsequently receiving military intervention on their behalf), and a demonstrated willingness to carry out indiscriminate, mass-casualty terrorist attacks as demonstrated by their months’ long bombing campaign.”
Then, there’s this little “coincidence” which just happens to add urgency to the agenda to attack Iran: “With confusion surrounding events in Syria, there is now news of a bombing in Bulgaria involving buses full of Israeli tourists. Before any investigation has been carried out, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already placed the blame on Iran [latest report says the suspect had a fake Michigan driver’s license and fake American passport]
“Similar attacks, but on a smaller scale, were carried out in Georgia and Thailand with all signs pointing not to Iran, but Israeli and US trained, armed, funded, and directed MEK terrorists. Not only is the timing of the most recent attack in Bulgaria suspicious – corresponding with a major push to destabilize Syria, but the rush to judgment by Israeli officials seems all to conveniently assisting Western, not Iranian objectives.” Correct. Iran knows the West is just looking for an excuse to attack. They aren’t stupid enough to provide that excuse. This smells like agent-provocateurs.
Assad also knows exactly how the cards are stacked against him. He’s not about to do anything stupid that gives the West an excuse to intervene like using chemical weapons or killing hundreds of unarmed people [the “protestors” the Syrian army did kill were armed]. So if some chemical weapons show up, they will be planted. Of course, the way our lackeys in the media operate, all the US has to do is say they have ‘reliable intel’ about chemical weapons and the media will run with the story as fact.
Once again, let me say that I’m no fan of Bashar al-Assad and his tyrannical regime. I also have contempt for our own government which used the Assad regime to torture subjects sent to Syria under “extraordinary rendition.” But I’m also completely convinced that the entire Arab rebellion in the name of democracy is contrived. Not that there aren’t legitimate longings for freedom in Syria, but that the US never lifted a finger for decades to help till now—when it serves a globalist purpose of taking down Iran and creating hatred against the West among the Muslim world.
As in Egypt and Libya, the so-called democratic opposition will be no better than Assad, or Saddam, or Gaddafi. Syrians will be trading one tyrant for a different form of oligarchical control, masquerading as democracy. It’s a bit more complicated to keep up pretenses of elections and representing the people, but the US has proved how it’s done for decades. This is not going to turn out well for the Syrians no matter what the outcome.
Related:
Skousen: Beheading of James Foley as a New Provocation for War — “Remember that the US has a long history of creating horrific stories to justify going to war. Remember the supposed ripping of premature babies out of incubators in Iraq? It didn’t happen. The supposed chemical weapons attack on civilians by Assad in Syria? Also not true”
U.S.-Backed ISIS Beheads American Journalist — U.S. government provided weapons and training to the same jihadists in Syria who later crossed into Iraq!

OBAMA PLANS TO ‘FIGHT ISIS’ BY ARMING ISIS — ISIS the excuse to get done what the PTB have so far failed to accomplish – the overthrow of the Assad government

NSA Doc Reveals ISIS Leader is U.S., BRITISH and ISRAELI Intelligence Asset | Israel’s Hornet Nest Strategy
(video) Leaked Documents: U.S. Framed Syria in Chemical Weapons Attack
(video) U.S. Intelligence: Rebels Used Sarin — And is there a moral imperative to bomb Syria even if there were 400 children killed? How about 500,000 killed by US foreign policy that Albright said was worth it?
[Why-they-hate-US video] Webster Tarpley: Syria & Iran, the Colorado Shooting — We are murdering Syrians, falsely blaming it on Assad in order to justify invasion so Syria can’t strike us when we/Israel strike Iran. The German people are being told while our presstitutes go along with the deception.
Joe Biden (2012 Hypocrisy): If Romney Wins, We’ll Go To War With Syria | CNN (2012): ROMNEY has accused Obama and his administration of being weak in dealing with President Bashar al-Assad, and has called for the United States and allies to ARM SYRIAN REBELS