Obama’s Smoking Gun Proof That Assad Was Behind Chemical Weapons Attack Was Doctored?

Alan Grayson

(Nice Deb) What?

The Daily Caller reported this a week ago – and somehow I missed it???

Alan Grayson (D-Bag) had to bring it to my attention after asking about it at the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.

Via US News:

Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who is aggressively lobbying against a military strike on Syria, says the Obama administration has manipulated intelligence to push its case for U.S. involvement in the country’s two-year civil war.

Grayson made the accusation in an interview published Wednesday by The Atlantic and offered more detail in a Thursday discussion with U.S. News. He says members of Congress are being given intelligence briefings without any evidence to support administration claims that Syrian leader Bashar Assad ordered the use of chemical weapons.

Grayson said he cannot discuss the classified briefings, but noted details in the administration’s public, non-classified report are being contested.

The White House released its four-page public report Aug. 30, arguing that Assad’s government killed 1,429 people on Aug. 21 with a planned chemical weapon attack. Evidence cited in that report included “intercepted communications involving a senior official intimately familiar with the offensive who confirmed that chemical weapons were used.”

Grayson, however, says “the claim has been made that that information was completely mischaracterized.”

He points to an article published by The Daily Caller that alleges the communications actually showed Syrian officers were surprised by the alleged chemical weapon attack. The communications, according to unnamed sources paraphrased in article, were intercepted by Israeli intelligence and “doctored so that it leads a reader to just the opposite conclusion.”

What’s Alan Grayson doing reading the Daily Caller?

Never mind that… What Kenneth Timmerman reported in the Caller last Thursday is quite stunning. He charges that the Obama administration has selectively used intelligence to justify the military strikes on Syria, basing his assessment on the testimony of former military officers with access to the original intelligence reports.

According to these officers, who served in top positions in the United States, Britain, France, Israel, and Jordan, a Syrian military communication intercepted by Israel’s famed Unit 8200 electronic intelligence outfit has been doctored so that it leads a reader to just the opposite conclusion reached by the original report.

The doctored report was leaked to a private Internet-based newsletter that boasts of close ties to the Israeli intelligence community, and led to news reports that the United States now had firm evidence showing that the Syrian government had ordered the chemical weapons attack on August 21 against a rebel-controlled suburb of Damascus.

The doctored report was picked up on Israel’s Channel 2 TV on Aug. 24, then by Focus magazine in Germany, the Times of Israel, and eventually by The Cable in Washington, DC.

According to the doctored report, the chemical attack was carried out by the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division of the Syrian Army, an elite unit commanded by Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother.

However, the original communication intercepted by Unit 8200 between a major in command of the rocket troops assigned to the 155th Brigade of the 4th Armored Division, and the general staff, shows just the opposite.

The general staff officer asked the major if he was responsible for the chemical weapons attack. From the tone of the conversation, it was clear that “the Syrian general staff were out of their minds with panic that an unauthorized strike had been launched by the 155th Brigade in express defiance of their instructions,” the former officers say.

According to the transcript of the original Unit 8200 report, the major “hotly denied firing any of his missiles” and invited the general staff to come and verify that all his weapons were present.

The report contains a note at the end that the major was interrogated by Syrian intelligence for three days, then returned to command of his unit. “All of his weapons were accounted for,” the report stated.

This ties in with what Walid Shoebat has been reporting - Evidence: Syrian Rebels used Chemical Weapons (not Assad) and Yossef Bodansky’s blockbuster piece: Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?

Just wow…….

#Syria: 2,000-Year-Old #Synagogue Burned And Looted In #Damascus… #Hezbollah Blames “Zionist Commandos” And Al Nusra Front…

(Weasel) Of course, because why wouldn’t Israel team up with al-Qaeda to destroy one of Judaism’s holiest sites?

Via JPost:

The 2,000-year-old Jobar Synagogue in the Syrian capital of Damascus was looted and burned to the ground.

The Syrian army loyal to President Bashar Assad and rebel forces are blaming each other for the destruction of the historic synagogue, according to reports on Sunday.

The rebels said the Syrian government looted the synagogue before burning it to the ground, Israel Radio reported Sunday.

The government said the rebels burned the synagogue and that so-called Zionist agents stole its historic religious items in an operation that had been planned for several weeks, the Arabic Al-Manar Television reported, citing the Arabic Syria Truth website.

Via Hezbollah’s Al-Manar:

The Zionist intelligence agency has succeeded in robbing various precious items from the synagogue located in Jobar neighborhood, north-east of the Syrian capital, Syria Truth website reported.

The Zionist agents were assisted by the Jordanian Kingdom, Turkish militias, the so-called “Free Syrian Army” and al-Nosra front of al-Qaeda which controls the area, the website stated.

The site obtained this information from its correspondent Lea Abarmovitch citing sources close to the Syrian Rabbi Ibrahim Hamra who lives in the Occupied Territories of Palestine since 1994.

The sources confirmed to Syria Truth that the decision to steal the contents of the Syrian Jewish temple was made three weeks ago, due to being a victim of several shells that have ravaged its outer wall.

Moreover, the sources assured that a Zionist commandos unit composed of 15 members landed in Damascus earlier this week and removed rare items from the temple known as “Eliyahoo.” The operation was carried out with the help of Islam Brigades militia, noting that the Zionist commandos were divided into 5 teams in order to get out of Syria through five different directions.

A Syrian Jewish source also revealed that Zionist members of the commando were of Arab origins: Iraqi, Moroccan and Lebanese, and were dressed in Islamist jihadists’ uniforms.

Is this shocking? Yes. I'm shocked that a Synagogue lasted in Syria this long

Syria’s chemical arms match Israel’s nuclear arsenal: defected general.

Syria’s chemical arms match Israel’s nuclear arsenal: defected general.(AA).The Syrian regime has a large arsenal of chemical weapons, which matches up to Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the defected former head of Syria's chemical warfare program told Al Arabiya on Monday.
Major-General Adnan Sillu, who defected from the regime earlier this year, was party to top-levels talks about the use of chemical weapons on both rebel fighters and civilians.
He told Al Arabiya where the Syrian regime has stored its chemical weapons in specific cities across the war-torn country, highlighting chemical warehouses in the city of Homs and weapons stored also in scientific research center in Aleppo.
“Syria’s chemical arsenal has reached similar levels to Israel’s nuclear weapons,” he said in the interview. Israel is believed to be one of the world’s largest nuclear superpowers.
Sillu, who once led the army’s chemical weapons training program, said in June that the main storage sites for mustard gas and nerve agents are supposed to be guarded by thousands of Syrian troops but that they would be easily overrun.
“Probably anyone from the Free Syrian Army or any Islamic extremist group could take them over,” he said.
Recently, U.N. peacekeeping troops on the Golan Heights have said they were prepared in the event of Damascus using chemical weapons amid mounting unrest between the Syrian regime and the armed opposition.
Meanwhile, United Nations ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, told U.N. leaders in letters circulated Monday that opposition fighters might use chemical weapons against against civilians, and try to blame the regime of President -Assad.
The Pentagon has drawn up plans for responding to possible scenarios involving Syria’s chemical arms, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday during a visit to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 60 miles from the Syrian border.Read the full story here.

via mfs-theothernews.com

al-Qaeda, Chemical weapons, free syrian army, Israel, Syria, Syrian muslim brotherhood

US court orders #Syria to pay $330m to family of victim of 2006 #TelAviv #terror attack.

The money won't bring back their son... nor will it change the minds of the media and academics and the idiots that support our US President that funds terrorists as well

(Times of Israel)A Washington, DC, court has awarded $332 million in damages to an American-Jewish family whose 16-year-old son was killed in a 2006 suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. The court found Syria guilty of having supported the Palestinian terror group behind the attack and thus ordered Damascus to pay the damages.
“It’s a great feeling. Justice was done for the terror victims,” said activist attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who heads Shurat HaDin — Israel Law Center, Tuesday. The Israeli civil rights organization sues terror groups and their sponsors in courtrooms worldwide and helped the bereaved Wultz family in their legal struggle, which ended this week. The amount of $332 million awarded by the court on Monday — mistakenly reported as $323 million by some media outlets — was one of the largest sums the group has ever won in a lawsuit, she said, and marks the first time Syria has been held responsible for damages.
On April 17, 2006, Daniel Wultz, of Weston, Florida, sat down with his parents in Tel Aviv’s “Rosh Ha’ir” shawarma restaurant, near the city’s old central bus station, to enjoy one of his favorite dishes. In the middle of lunch, at around 1:30 p.m., Sami Salim Mohammed Hammed of Jenin detonated five kilos of explosives in a bag packed with nails and metal shards, killing Wultz and 10 others. More than 60 people were wounded in the attack, including Wultz’s Israeli-born father Yekutiel. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Wultz’s mother Sheryl and other family members filed a suit against the Syrian and Iranian governments and intelligence agencies. In the case, filed three years ago in the United States District Court for Washington, DC, the family and Shurat HaDin argued that the Syrians were liable “for their provision of material support and resources” to the Palestinian terrorist group, according to court documents.
While her group has won suits against Iran in the past, this week’s decision marks the first time a court held Syria liable for sponsoring terrorism, Darshan-Leitner said.
“It shows that you can impose law on an lawless regime like Syria. It proves that even non-democratic states can be brought into democratic frameworks in a democratic system,” she told The Times of Israel on Tuesday. Since the judgment was handed down against Syria, it will be enforced “against Syrian assets” — such as US-based real estate, bank accounts and companies in the US that belong to the government in Damascus — Darshan-Leitner said.
“When a state chooses to use terror as a policy tool — as Iran and Syria continue to do — that state forfeits its sovereign immunity and deserves unadorned condemnation,” District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ruled, according to the Associated Press.

Annan ends Syria visit with no clear progress

Russia and China are kind of right here. We should not get involved. This is not our war.

(Reuters) U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has ended talks with President Bashar al-Assad and left Syria with little sign of progress on halting the country's growing political bloodshed. "I am optimistic for several reasons," Annan said in Damascus on Sunday. "The situation is so bad and so dangerous that all of us cannot afford to fail." There was no clear response from Assad to Annan's "concrete proposals" for a ceasefire, dialogue and humanitarian aid. Assad told Annan opposition "terrorists" were blocking any political solution. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New York on Monday when the U.N. Security Council holds a special meeting on Arab revolts. Russia, long an ally of Syria, and China have blocked attempts to pass a Security Council resolution condemning Damascus for its attempts to crush a year-old rebellion by force, in which thousands have died. Moscow and Beijing want any international blame for the violence to be apportioned more evenly. China's Assistant Foreign Minister Zhang Ming said in Riyadh on Sunday both Syrian sides should stop fighting and aid should be sent to strife-torn areas - but he also warned other states not to use aid to "interfere". Saudi Arabia and Qatar have taken a hawkish line against the Syrian government. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Feisal on Sunday repeated calls for the Syrian opposition to be provided with weapons. This was the only way to end the conflict without foreign intervention, he said. "The regime in Syria is committing a massacre of its own citizens," he added, after talks with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle in Riyadh. "We cannot accept the completely unreasonable continuation of the atrocities being perpetrated by the Assad regime against its own people," Westerwelle said. The United Nations says Assad's forces have killed more than 7,500 people in their crackdown on protesters and insurgents. Authorities say rebels have killed 2,000 soldiers. Annan's mission coincided with a Syrian military offensive against opposition strongholds in the northwest. Activists said at least four people were killed in the town of Idlib on Sunday after troops and tanks moved in a day earlier. Three soldiers and a civilian were also killed in fighting in the village of Janoudiya in Idlib province on Sunday morning, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. State news agency SANA said "terrorists" shot dead a former boxing champion, Ghiath Tayfour, in the city of Aleppo and also killed a leading Baath Party member in Homs province. Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are both ruled by autocrats and espouse a strict version of Sunni Islam, are improbable champions of democracy in Syria. Riyadh has an interest in seeing Assad fall because this could weaken its Shi'ite regional rival Iran, which has been allied with Syria since 1980. The exiled opposition Syrian National Council ruled out talks while Assad is in power. "Negotiations can never take place between the victim and torturer: Assad and his entourage must step down as a condition before starting any serious negotiations," it said. (Andrew Roche and Dominc Evans)

More Hamas/Fatah Marriage woes

(Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt | Fair Weather Friends Back the Winning Horse) Hezbollah loses Syria, gains Iraq, Obama and his Muslim Brotherhood get Syria... and the Jews get five rockets. @IDFSpokesperson: During the night a total of 5 rockets were launched from Gaza at southern Israel

(EOZ)From AFP:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his rival Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Thursday postponed talks on forming a unified government, a Fatah official said, in a further delay to ending an almost five-year rift.
The official with the Abbas-led party said the talks were postponed “because Hamas continues to prevent the election committee from registering voters in Gaza,” the Islamist-ruled Palestinian territory.
He added that Hamas, which has been split internally on agreeing the unity government with the secular Fatah, has “not yet informed Abbas of its formal approval to end internal disputes on forming the government.”

Reuters reports it this way:

Hamas has set new terms for implementing a reconciliation deal with President Mahmoud Abbas's rival Fatah group, an official said on Thursday.
Abbas and Khalid Mashaal, Hamas's political chief in exile, agreed in Qatar earlier this month to form a unity government led by the Western-backed president.
But in a rift with the Islamist group's leadership outside the Gaza Strip, officials in the Hamas-ruled enclave swiftly criticized the accord, particularly its call for Abbas to serve as prime minister as well as president.
At an internal meeting chaired by Mashaal in Cairo on Wednesday, Hamas officials united behind new demands, said a Palestinian official involved in the talks. The terms seemed certain to be rejected by Abbas.
"Hamas demanded to keep the key ministries in the new government, including the ministry of interior," said the official. "It also demanded no change in the structure of security services in the Gaza Strip."
The interior ministry oversees the Hamas-run security services, and Palestinian political analyst Samir Awad said the new terms proved the group "was not prepared to abandon control of Gaza", territory it seized from Fatah in fighting in 2007.
Abbas has been seeking a unity government staffed by independents and technocrats to ensure it would not be boycotted by the West, which donates essential funds to his Palestinian Authority and refuses to deal with Hamas.
Other demands that emerged from the Cairo meeting included naming a Gaza-based deputy to Abbas and making his appointment as prime minister conditional on a vote of confidence in the Palestinian parliament.

Meanwhile, Hamas is again accusing Fatah of arresting its members in the West Bank - the one basic issue that was supposed to be resolved since May.
They are also squabbling over the Gaza power plant issue, as Hamas has bypassed the PA in order to try to secure a deal with Egypt to get a supply of cheap diesel, with Haniyeh effectively acting as if he is the head of government - after supposedly agreeing to Abbas being prime minister.
They agree on one thing, though: stopping any chance of a "Palestinian spring" against their respective leaders. They'll plan meeting after meeting and photo-ops galore for the next decade to try to fool their people that they actually care about them rather than their own hold on power, which is what prompted this whole "unity" farce to begin with.

Hamas ditches Assad, backs Syrian revolt | Fair Weather Friends Back the Winning Horse

(Reuters)

Shi'ite Hezbollah still supports the Assad family, from the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, which has maintained authoritarian rule over Syria's Sunni majority for four decades but now may have its back to the wall.

Leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas turned publicly against their long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule.
The policy shift deprives Assad of one of his few remaining Sunni Muslim supporters in the Arab world and deepens his international isolation. It was announced in Hamas speeches at Friday prayers in Cairo and a rally in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas went public after nearly a year of equivocating as Assad's army, largely led by fellow members of the president's Alawite sect, has crushed mainly Sunni protesters and rebels.
In a Middle East split along sectarian lines between Shi'ite and Sunni Islam, the public abandonment of Assad casts immediate questions over Hamas's future ties with its principal backer Iran, which has stuck by its ally Assad, as well as with Iran's fellow Shi'ite allies in Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.
"I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, visiting Egypt from the Gaza Strip, told thousands of Friday worshippers at Cairo's al-Azhar mosque. more

This is what the Arabs did during WWII with the Nazis. Most of them were allied with Hitler till it became clear he was a loser. Our CIA then covered all those Nazi henchmen up and gave them states.

Glick - A pact signed in Jewish blood

Regardless of any liberal slant of mine.... I believe that Israel needs a death penalty for terrorism to avoid creating future incentives for Israeli abductions. That said I disagree with Glick and other Conservative pessimism concerning the Shalit deal.

(Caroline Glick) ...Netanyahu's decision to sign the deal with Hamas lacks any political rationale.
WHAT HAS really changed since the deal was first put on the table two years ago is Hamas's position. Since the Syrian people began to rise up against the regime of Hamas's patron and protector President Bashar Assad, Hamas's leaders, who have been headquartered in Syria since 1998, have been looking for a way to leave. Their Muslim Brotherhood brethren are leading forces in the Western-backed Syrian opposition.
Hamas's leaders do not want to be identified with the Brotherhood's oppressor.
With the Egyptian military junta now openly massacring Christians, and with the Muslim Brotherhood rapidly becoming the dominant political force in the country, Egypt has become a far more suitable home for Hamas.
But for the past several months, Hamas leaders in Damascus have faced a dilemma. If they stay in Syria, they lose credibility. If they leave, they expose themselves to Israel.
According to Channel 2, in exchange for Schalit, beyond releasing a thousand murderers, Netanyahu agreed to give safe passage to Hamas's leaders decamping to Egypt.
What this means is that this deal is even worse for Israel than it looks on the surface.
Not only is Israel guaranteeing a reinvigoration of the Palestinian terror war against its civilians by freeing the most experienced terrorists in Palestinian society, and doing so at a time when the terror war itself is gradually escalating. Israel is squandering the opportunity to either decapitate Hamas by killing its leaders in transit, or to weaken the group by forcing its leaders to go down with Assad in Syria.... (h/t Calev Ben Yefuneh)

Does Glick really believe that the only way Hamas can go from Syria to Egypt is by Israel's consent? Schalit would of been tortured for years while the thousands of captives in Israeli jails would of been treated humanely at the expense of the tax payer with Red Crescent visits. These terrorists that are freed are now targets for extermination as opposed to living martyrs in jails. Does Glick really believe that the Palestinians have any shortage of future terrorists? I don't see any mistake on Bibi's part. This deal was a one time offer. Any negotiating partner with Egypt will be gone shortly. Barry Rubin says:

“The number 1000 is impressive but most will be chosen by Israel, meaning they will be prisoners with the lightest sentences and crimes — in other words, people who would have been released anyway during the next year or two. Israel rejected Hamas’s demand to release those being called “arch-terrorists” who were major organizers of attacks or responsible for a larger loss of life….”

It was a good deal. Here is EOZ Agreeing with this. Israelly Cool disagrees. You can read why here: Elder of Ziyon Misses The Point by Israellycool:

From 10million.org:

On the night of January 1, 1970, a group of Fatah terrorists infiltrated Metula from Lebanon and abducted a night watchman named Shmuel Rosenwasser. The terrorists, together with the abduction victim, withdrew to Kfar Kila which is located about two kilometers west of Metula in Lebanon. This was the first abduction attack perpetrated by a Palestinian terror organization inside Israel.
This terror attack was perpetrated to mark the anniversary of the Fatah’s first terror attack (placing a demolition charge at Israel’s national water conduit). January first was also considered the anniversary of the organization’s establishment. The Fatah claimed responsibility for the abduction several days after the attack and demanded that the State of Israel release 100 terrorists incarcerated in Israel while giving first priority to the terrorist Mahmoud Hijazi
Mahmoud Hijazi was a terrorist who served in the Fatah organization. On January 7, 1965 Hijazi commanded the Fatah’s first terror attack. Hijazi’s terror squad, which included 5 additional terrorists, detonated an explosive device at the water institute in moshav Nechusha situated in the Ela Valley in Israel. Hijazi was wounded and apprehended.
He stood trial at a military court which sentenced him to death. Hijazi appealed this verdict in the military appeals court, which ordered a retrial. During the trial, Hijazi demanded to be recognized as a prisoner of war. The court turned down this request and in May 1966, Hijazi was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Hijazi was only the second person in Israeli history to be sentenced to death, after Adolf Eichmann.
The decision to swap him for Rosenwasser was only a one-to-one swap. However, and in retrospect, that was the decision that emboldened Palestinian Arabs to continue to kidnap Israelis in order to bargain for Israel’s release of other terrorists.
The Rosenwasser abduction was followed by a number of others kidnappings and attempted hostage taking, such as a 1974 attack in Beit She’an where terrorists broke into a family home for the purpose of taking them hostage and negotiating a release of terror prisoners. The 1974 Ma’alot massacre started off as a hostage drama as well. Even though Israel did not capitulate in any of the attacks on Israeli soil and usually killed the terrorists, their incentive to mount hostage-taking attacks did not lessen.
The prisoner-exchange train had already left the building in 1970. It is not possible to turn the clock back. Even if the current Israeli government had publicly announced that Shalit was considered dead and that there will be no negotiations, the public pressure in Israel would not have closed the door and Hamas would have waited for a different government to renew its demands.
For these reasons, I do not accept the argument that it is possible to remove the incentive for kidnappings by refusing to negotiate. The terrorists will continue no matter what.

I should probably also give the other argument... (and also say that I have never disagreed with Glick before... and have full respect for her)

(Princess Pana)
* After his release in 1996, Abbas ibn Muhammad Alsayd was involved in three terror attacks in Netanya, including the Park Hotel Passover massacre on March 27, 2002, in which 31 people were murdered and 155 wounded.
* After his release by the Netanyahu government as a “goodwill gesture” to Yasser Arafat, at the behest of Bill Clinton in 1998, Iyad Sawalha perptrated the June 5, 2002 bus bombing at the Megiddo junction, murdering 17 people and wounding 42.
* Seven months after his release, Ramez Sali Abu Salmim blew himself up in Jerusalem’s Café Hillel on September 9, 2003, murdering 7 young people and wounding over 50.
* Matsab Hashalmon was released from jail as part of the “Tennenbaum deal” on January 29, 2004. Three months later, on August 31, 2004, he masterminded the attack on two buses in Beersheba, that killed 16 civilians and wounded scores of others.(MORE)

as you can see... even I am not sure Bibi made the right decision... I'm not even sure Bibi is sure.

Hezbollah Cuba

IBD Editorial:

...According to a report in Italy’s respected Corriere della Sera Wednesday, three Hezbollah terrorists operating out of Mexico have left that country to establish a permanent “bridgehead” to the communist island, calling their clandestine operation “The Caribbean Dossier.”...Twenty-three other terrorists from the Iran-linked terror group are expected to join the operation, which has a startup budget of more than $500,000. Corriere reported that the mission in Cuba is to provide logistical support for upcoming terrorist attacks planned in the hemisphere.
This is what “state sponsor of terrorism” means, which is how the U.S. accurately classified this odious regime since 1982, even as Cuba’s leftist apologists have dismissed it, claiming Cuba is no threat...The Italian newspaper reported that Hezbollah might be planning a major attack against Israeli targets in the Western Hemisphere in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Hezbollah’s chief assassin, Imad Mughniyeh, in Damascus in 2008. Mughniyeh was a Hezbollah terrorist leader implicated in the two huge attacks in Buenos Aires in the 1990s on Jewish targets — strikes that remain unpunished.

There's a precedent for Assad using chemical weapons: His father did it.

א מַשָּׂא, דַּמָּשֶׂק: הִנֵּה דַמֶּשֶׂק מוּסָר מֵעִיר, וְהָיְתָה מְעִי מַפָּלָה.

1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

א מַשָּׂא, דַּמָּשֶׂק: הִנֵּה דַמֶּשֶׂק מוּסָר מֵעִיר, וְהָיְתָה מְעִי מַפָּלָה.

1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.

Isaiah Chapter 17 יְשַׁעְיָהוּ

Many countries, including the United States and Russia, gradually eliminated their chemical-weapons arsenals, but Syria refused to sign the U.N. Chemical Weapons convention and proceeded to develop an ever larger and deadlier stockpile. The CIA has concluded that Syria possesses a large stockpile of sarin-based warheads and was working on developing VX, a deadlier nerve agent that resists breaking down in the environment.
By early in the last decade, some weapons experts ranked Syria’s chemical stockpile as probably the largest in the world, consisting of tens of tons of highly lethal chemical agents and hundreds of Scud missiles as well as lesser rockets, artillery rockets and bomblets for delivering the poisons. Leonard Spector lays down some other scenarios in which Assad's chemical weapons could be used. Let's start with the possibility of civil war. According to researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, open sources indicate that there are at least four, and potentially five, chemical weapons production facilities in Syria. One or two are located near Damascus, the other three situated in Hama, Latakia, and al-Safir village, near the city of Aleppo. Hama is one of the hotbeds of the Syrian revolt, which Assad's tanks attacked in early August and where, more recently, fighting has severely damaged the city's hospitals. Latakia is another center of unrest; it was shelled by the Syrian Navy in mid-August. Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, has also seen significant demonstrations.

If anti-Assad insurgents take up arms, the chemical sites, as symbols of the regime's authority, could become strategic targets. And, if mass defections occur from the Syrian army, there may be no one left to defend the sites against seizure. This could lead to disastrous outcomes, including confiscation of the chemical weapons by a radical new national government or sale of the weapons as war booty to organized nonstate actors or criminal groups.

In such chaos, no one can predict who might control the weapons or where they might be taken. With these chemical weapons in the hands of those engaged in a possible civil war, the risks that they would be used would increase substantially. The problem would be worsened further if some possessors were not fully aware of the extent of the weapons' deadly effects.

And let's imagine that Assad is eventually removed: What leaders would gain control of these weapons after he departed? Saudi-backed Sunni groups? Iranian-backed Shiite organizations? Whoever they might be, it is unclear that the newcomers would follow the Assads' cautious-use doctrine and refusal to share chemical weapons with nonstate groups, or that the new leaders would be able to maintain strict security measures at the chemical sites.

Meanwhile, it's possible that an existential threat will cause the Assad regime to abandon its previous policy of restraint regarding chemical weapons. It is not a huge leap from attacking civilians with tank fire, machine guns, and naval artillery to deploying poison gas, and the shock effect and sense of dread engendered by even limited use could quash a citywide uprising within an hour. h/t Carl

Do Lesbians exist?

Or are they just a rumor, like Yeti or Bigfoot, supported by a few ardent believers and writers of erotic fiction?
Just asking.

“I didn’t start this with my name because... I thought people wouldn’t take it seriously, me being a straight man,” he said.
He felt secure that no one would discover his true identity until the story of Amina started to unravel. He said his connection to Amina was purely coincidental and started when Amina commented on a post on the Lez Get Real site in February. It “was a major sock-puppet hoax crash into a major sock-puppet hoax.”
In the guise of Paula Brooks, Graber corresponded online with Tom MacMaster, thinking he was writing to Amina Arraf. Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian. via washingtonpost.com

we can now say with confidence that the American male needs a shot of ego confidence. Feminism has gone way too far. These guys have a major inferiority complex. It seems to be an epidemic. image of The Real Paula Brooks via simplyjews.blogspot.com

‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ comes clean? But the Washington Post attacks blogging. Go figure a paper attacks blogs

‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ comes clean? But the Washington Post attacks blogging. Go figure a paper attacks blogs

the problem is with bleeding hearts who need to make up an emotional story, not with blogging. Newspapers have not won a war against the people, rather it is people who have proven that it is better to go with the truth then some feminist story...

The gay girl in Damascus confessed to being a 40-year-old American man from Georgia.

The persona he built and cultivated for years — a lesbian who was half Syrian and half American — was a tantalizing Internet-era fiction, one that Tom MacMaster used to bring attention to the human rights record of a country with severe media restrictions that make traditional reporting almost impossible.

via washingtonpost.com
The problem is not people not being reliable.  Newspapers are just as unreliable.  To answer people's question as to the reliability of truth on the internet getting out there is that this guy got exposed!   end of story.

At Washington Post, "‘Paula Brooks,’ editor of ‘Lez Get Real,’ also a man."
And don't miss Jonah Golberg, "The 'Gay Girl in Damascus' hoax is worse than a lie. It's propaganda" (via Instapundit).

Syria Murders Hundreds; "Pro-`Arab Spring'" West Yawns or Supports Syrian Regime

Got a Public Relations problem with HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES? No problem... Syria Attacks Israel, but...

The situation in Syria is terrible. Hundreds_of_people_have_been_shot; others arrested and tortured. And yet after weeks of demonstrations and repression the West has done nothing. True, the U.S. government has shifted from defending the dictatorship to scolding it mildly. Big deal.  ...Assad is likely to survive both because of his own ruthlessness and the West’s shameful behavior. Warsaw, 1944; Budapest, 1956; Prague, 1967; meet Damascus, 2011. more via rubinreports.blogspot.com

Got a Public Relations problem with HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES? No problem... Syria Attacks Israel

typical Goldstone styled accusation of civilian casualties....

Syria Allows Hundreds Across Israeli Border
for Naqba Protest to OBSCURE issues...
...Masses gather at border (Photo: Avihu Shapir)

Syria's squawking because
Israel killed "protesters"
...now this is chutzpah...

Assad is desperate when he punches below the belt like this. This is another example of how low the Syrians hold on the value of human dignity. They insult their own people like this. Absolutely no pride or respect. All eyes on Israel to put egg on it's face at any cost. Reminds me of what Fidel Castro did to his people.  Like usual the Arabs use the "NAQBA" as a cover for their own abuses.

Expert says details surrounding Nakba Day infiltration of border still unknown, but Israel will have to explain its actions.

“Most of the details surrounding the shooting are not yet known. Important considerations are whether the protesters were armed or not, whether they were an organized association of a para-military nature, whether the soldiers who fired felt they were in immediate danger and shot out of self defense and a series of other possibilities that are too vague to judge,” said Richmond-Barak.

...Abu Mazen AKA ABBAS....says:
protesters "precious blood will not be wasted";

She added that while there were legal questions to be considered, the most urgent concern was a deterioration of the diplomatic relations between the countries. via jpost.com

so without any information in yet... the typical Goldstone accusation of civilian casualties, and a Democracy is made responsible for the actions of a third world dictatorship.

Hamas calls Nakba Day events
"a turning point in the Israeli-Arab conflict"via jpost.com

I.e., killed a handful among large numbers of people who were trying to stage a violent invasion of Israel. How many "protesters" has Syria killed in the last couple of months?--I think 850 was the last count. The annual Chutzpah Prize has been awarded. The rest of 2011 is not required; nothing can possibly beat this.

via pdavidhornik.typepad.com

This is not very surprising, in fact it was predicted days ago.
The Syrian government, with the encouragement of anti-Israel Palestinian groups, Hezbollah and the Iranians, has sent hundreds of supposed "Palestinian refugess" surging across the Israeli border in the Golan in an attempt to provoke a confrontation.  The infiltratrors attempted to capture an Israeli Druse village, and fighting ensued, with initial reports of at least several infiltrators killed and many wounded.  Israel has sealed the border.
Israel Matzav is following and updating, including this video:

The invasion coincides with other violent actions against Israel to commemorate "Nakba" day. This is the day on which Palestinian Arabs commemorate the fact that they chose not abide by the U.N. Resolution creating separate Jewish and Arab states, and instead launched a war to drive the Jews into the sea, which they lost resulting in hundreds of thousands of refugess. Of course, true to form, the Palestinians blame everyone but themselves.
The narrative of the Palestinians as victims endures in academiaHundreds of thousands of Jews fled Arab lands during and in the aftermath the Arabs' attempt to drive the Jews into the sea. That is the part of the narrative you almost never hear about. via legalinsurrection.blogspot.com and image via israelifrontline.com and at the U.N. 

IDF troops on Syria border (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

By Sunday afternoon, the infiltrators began to make their way back to Syria following negotiations between the IDF, police and Druze elders.

The forces tried not to intervene as the Syrian youngsters marched back to their country while calling out "we'll be back," encouraged by applause from the Druze villagers who looked on. By 5 pm Sunday, the IDF said that all infiltrators left Israeli territory.

'We come in peace' 

"I'm tired of living in Syria, we'd rather die than see more bloodshed," one of the Syrian infiltrators into Majdal Shams told Ynet earlier. He called on Israel to grant him asylum, adding: "We've crossed the border in order to stay with our families, away from all the killing in Syria. We ask the powers at be in Israel to help us stay and not send us back."


Other infiltrators told Ynet that "we come in peace," adding that they had decided to cross the border in the aims of living in the Golan Heights – "even if it means risking our lives." Still, others declared "we are here to liberate the Syrian Palestinian land. These people are Palestinian freeman, Allah willing, the Palestinian groups will not give up."


Some of those expressing a wish to remain on the Israeli side of the border, said the uprising against
Syrian President Assad is proving more and more dangerous and that many Palestinians now fear for their lives.

via ynetnews.com

Chavez Defends Gaddafi, Tries to Save Assad

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez can be counted on always to stand on the side of radicals and dictatorships. After defending the Libyan regime, Chavez is now trying to save Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. The Venezuelan leadership is openly supporting the Syrian regime, accusing Western countries of using a "new imperialist format" to topple his friend, Assad. According to Chavez, it is the West that foments revolts in the Arab world to loot Arab resources. "The attack on Syria has begun, there have been some supposedly peaceful protests and some deaths (...) and they are accusing the president [Assad] of killing his people (…) And then the Yankees come in to bomb the people in order to save them. What cynicism on the empire's part," the Venezuelan President said.

Chavez depicted Assad as a "socialist Arab leader, a humanist and a brother," "with a great human sensibility," and who is "in no way an extremist." Chavez made also a comparison between what is happening in Syria and the situation in Libya: "It's the same format … They generate violent conflicts, bloodshed in a country, and subsequently they under take military intervention, in order to take possession of its natural resources and convert it into a colony."
In a recent press release by the Venezuelan press agency (AVN), Chavez said he is convinced that the US wants to generate a revolt in Venezuela similar to those that are taking place in Arab world. In that case, Chavez said, the Venezuelan regime will not keep "its arms crossed;" it will use -- as Assad and Gaddafi are doing -- military weapons, to repress any threat against the Venezuelan regime.
From the press:

• Chavez: "Old, mad imperialism, your days are numbered!"
• Chavez :The US is plotting to topple Assad to loot the resources of the Arab state
• Chavez calls Assad a "humanist"
• Venezuelan FM: Colonial powers have only one objective and it is to take ownership of the oil

March 28, 2011
Chavez: "Old, mad imperialism, your days are numbered!"
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said [...] that the colonialist invasion of NATO and the United States against Libya "will turn back against them. I've said this even before the madness of the bombing began." Chavez stated that imperialism's attitude is cynical, since [the Western countries] say that the bombing against the Libyan people does not mean intervention. "How cynical can they be? How much disrespect for the world! They believe they are the Almighty. The world will turn back against them. Note it down." [...]
According to Chavez, NATO maintains a plan to bomb Venezuela, but - the Venezuelan President says - imperialism won't have nor time neither the circumstances to carry out a military attack against Venezuela. [...] "Old, mad imperialism, your days are numbered!" said President Chavez, adding that when this century ends, Imperialism will disappear and the sovereign will of the people will prevail. AVN (Venezuela)
March 27, 2011
Chavez :The US is plotting to topple Assad to loot the resources of the Arab state
Syria has been hit with a fresh wave of anti-government protests during the past week that left scores of people dead. "The attack on Syria has begun; there have been some supposed peaceful protests and some deaths (...), and they are accusing the president [Assad] of killing his people," AFP quoted Chavez as saying on Saturday at a political event. "And then the Yankees come in to bomb the people in order to save them. What cynicism on the empire's part," he noted. […]
Comparing the Syrian situation to the crisis in Libya, Chavez said, "It's the same model." A NATO-led coalition is enforcing a UN-approved no-fly zone over troubled Libya by striking forces loyal to Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. "Generate internal conflicts, bloodshed, in a country in order to then step in, seize its natural resources and make it a colony. It is a new model they have come up with," Chavez said. The Venezuelan president also said that he had spoken with Assad by phone. […] Press TV (Iran)
March 27, 2011

Chavez calls Assad a "humanist"

[…] Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the United States and other nations are seeking to intervene militarily in Syria using the same strategy as in Libya. "The supposedly peaceful movements have already begun, and then there will be some deaths and they'll be accusing the Syrian president of killing his people. Later, the Yankees come and want to bomb the people in order to save them, imagine that," said President Chavez.
"What shameless cynicism! It's a new strategy they've invented, to generate violent armed conflicts and spill blood in a country in order to then bomb it and intervene and take ownership of its natural resources and convert it into a colony," Chavez said. […] Chavez also defended Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, calling him a "humanist" and pointing out that he is "a doctor educated in London; he is no extremist." […]

Venezuelan FM: Colonial powers have only one objective and it is to take ownership of the oil

Meanwhile, Venezuela continues to denounce the international military operation in Libya, which has now been taken over by NATO commanders. "These colonial powers have only one objective and it is to take ownership of the oil and riches of our brotherly people of Libya," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro told a state-owned radio program.
Venezuela supports the African Union's proposal for a plan for peaceful mediation, Maduro said. "The empire desperately bombs the Libyan people every night. They want to destroy Libya before arriving at a peace accord," he said.
"All the world is seeing lessons we are learning about the way the former colonial power act desperately when presented with an opportunity. They speak of democracy and human rights, but until yesterday they flattered Gaddafi, they were really courting the oil," Maduro said.
Before the military intervention in Libya began, Chavez proposed a multi-national commission to mediate the conflict between Gaddafi and the rebels and forge a peaceful solution. The Chavez administration has forged unprecedented diplomatic and economic ties with Middle East and African countries to form what Chavez calls a "multi-polar world," not subject to domination by any superpower. Venezuelan Analysis

via hudson-ny.org

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Posted via email from noahdavidsimon's posterous

image via hurryupharry.org

The Syrian Revolution 2011: First Protest Shooting in Damascus

Syrians living in Jordan shout slogans as they protest in solidarity
with anti-government protesters in Syria,
outside the Syrian embassy in Amman April 2, 2011.
(REUTERS/Majed Jaber)

The Syrian Revolution 2011: First Protest Shooting in Damascus

A DEBKAfile Exclusive Report:

The Syrian uprising took a new turn Tuesday, April 5, when armed protesters opened fire for the first time on security forces from a well-laid ambush in a Damascus suburb. Two policemen were killed according to first reports. The fact that armed elements have taken over and are willing to use violence against Assad regime — and in the capital yet — marks a new and dangerous stage in the two-week long protest.
Syria’s banned opposition groups and Muslim Brotherhood, under the combined new banner of “The Syrian Revolution 2011,” earlier announed a fresh round of demonstrations against President Bashar Assad starting Tuesday, April 5, and lasting until next week, debkafile’s Middle East sources report.
Both sides of the conflict realize that the Assad regime is not yet at the tipping-point for its survival after street protest rallies and bloody crackdowns centering on Daraa in the south and Latakia on the Mediterranean coast, in which 110 demonstrators died. However, a mass, nationwide uprising could badly shake its stability because it would seriously overtax Assad’s loyal military and security troops.
The opposition and the regime are meanwhile playing cat and mouse to see which holds the balance. The protest movement has already made an important gain: Even if Assad weathers the storm, his regime will never recover its old stability, arrogance and confidence. After 11 years in power, the Syrian president’s authority will be on the wane.
To knock it over completely, the Sunnis, who are 76 percent of the Syria’s population of 26 million, must join the protest movement en masse. This they have so far avoided doing for fear of the bullets which Assad’s loyalist forces do not hesitate to shoot.
Because it is hard to get ordinary Sunni Muslims out on the streets, the heads of Syrian Revolution 2011 have instigated a campaign of passive resistance. This week, for example, opposition leaders told the population to stop paying their electricity bills, an act of protest that has caught on in Syria’s big cities. The Assad regime is therefore confronted both by the “Days of Rage” and quiet civil resistance.
Furthermore, the important port-town of Latakia has split down the middle between two opposing camps — the 300,000 members of the ruling Allawite sect fear to venture into the districts populated by the town’s 400,000 Sunnis — and vice versa. Army control is reduced to keeping open the road linking the Syria’s main import and export port facilities to the highway out of the city.
In the next 48 hours, the opposition is hoping to whip up mass demonstrations in Aleppo and Damascus, the capital. Aleppo, a city of 2.8 million inhabitants is the political and economic hub of the Syrian Sunni community. Therefore, major outbreaks there would produce a big crack in Assad’s authority.
The Syrian ruler has tried to pre-empt the Aleppo demonstration by pouring substantial armed strength into the city, cutting its Internet links and arresting thousands of people suspected of opposition ties.
But he faces a huge problem. He can’t trust the Sunni rank and file to obey orders to suppress a large-scale Sunni insurrection in Aleppo — only the Allawite units which owe loyalty to the president and the Assad clan. He must therefore rely on the support of the 4th Army Division and the security and intelligence services and they may be too thin on the ground to shoulder the task. He dare not try and loose Sunni troops on the protesters of Aleppo for fear they join the protesters.

via crethiplethi.com

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The Future of Syria

The Syrians have finally realised that their "young, charismatic, UK-educated and open minded" president is following in the footsteps of his late father, Hafez el Assad.

Hating Israel isn't enough

Hafez el Assad

On Friday, protests spread from Daraa to other towns and cities,

including the capital, Damascus,

in the biggest threat to the 45-year-old president

since he assumed power in 2000.

Security forces fired tear gas and in some places

live ammunition into the crowds,

killing at least 14 people,

according to witnesses and activists.

via washingtonpost.com
Troops open fire as protests explode across Syria

In yet another Arab country it becomes apparent that

hating Israel isn't the only thing that's important.

That country is Syria

.....in Syria, which have seen unarmed demonstrators gunned down by government forces, prove conclusively that when push comes to shove, Bashar is actually not all that different from his late father. As some of his critic comment, "The apple does not fall far from the tree."
His handling of pro-democracy protests that have erupted in several Syrian cities since March 15 is a reminder that Bashar is a dictator who, like Colonel Gaddafi and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, will not surrender power gracefully.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal several weeks ago, Bashar boasted that the Tunisian and Egyptian models did not apply to his country and that there was no fear for the survival of his regime. He was right in the first part of his analysis: both neither the Egyptian nor Tunisian presidents chose to fight their people to the last drop of their blood.
But the second part of his analysis is faulty: Syria is far from immune from the political tsunami of popular uprisings currently sweeping through the Arab world.
Syrian human rights organizations have expressed deep concern over the Syrian authorities' ruthless and brutal crackdown. They note how in many instances children under the ages of 15 were arrested by the notorious "mukhabarat" secret service for allegedly painting anti-government graffiti on city walls.
In another incident that took place in the southern Syrian city of Daraa, Bashar unleashed his commandos against peaceful worshippers who were staging a sit-in strike in a mosque; he killed dozens and wounded many others.
Syrians are asking: Will the son go as far as his father in stamping down on all protests? The public has not forgotten the terrible events of 20 years ago in the city of Hama, when government forces using artillery and air power killed an estimated 20,000 civilians.
Syrians are also asking who will replace their dictator. Some fear that in the absence of an alternative, Iran and Hizbollah could end up controlling Syria.
But the collapse now of Bashar el Assad's regime would be a severe blow to Iran, Hamas, Hizbollah and other radical powers in the region.
Reports indicate that Hizbollah militiamen have been brought to Syria to help suppress the wave of anti-government protests. Other reports have claimed that members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard were flown into Syria to help Bashar's regime.
As international criticism mounts, Bashar has suddenly started talking about the need for financial and political reforms. His critics shout that he is a liar who had 11 years to implement necessary changes, but chose instead to run his country as the leader of a mafia.

via hudson-ny.org
image of  Hafez el Assad via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

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