Posted 11th Sept 2013

After a stunning geopolitical move by Russia and Syria involving the surrendering of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, the special interests seeking war have been forced to adjust their rhetoric and timetable around what is now a quickly dissolving casus belli.

In a MSNBC roundtable discussion, Hillary Mann Leverett, a veteran of both the Bush and Clinton administrations, took on three liberal warmongers and the moderator questioning the consequences of helping Al Qaeda rebels if they conducted the attack on civilians and told them “the rest of the world does not believe what we’re saying for good reason. We made it up last time”.

Mann Leverett said, “It is strikingly similar to the lead up to the war in Iraq . I was in the Bush administration in the Bush White House dealing also with Congressional Democrats and with members of the media, with the New York Times, with NBC. The herd mentality that took over to buy into the Bush administration’s narrative that Saddam Hussein had to have chemical weapons and weapons of mass destruction and was determined to use them against us was something unquestioned. I remember going with a key member of the Bush national security team to see President Clinton and he putting his arm around her, telling her not only was the intel right, but she was doing the right thing morally. It was not only a mistake, it was based on manufactured evidence.”

John Kerry hasn’t ruled out the possibility that the sarin gas attack was the work of Al Qaeda rebels. He simply doesn’t care who used it. He has asserted that the presence of sarin gas (if that was actually what was used) is sufficient reason to attack Assad. But what if it was the rebels that carried out the attack as a former correspondent for AP & BBC, Dale Gavlak reported and as a Belgian teacher and former rebel hostage, Pierre Piccinin da Prata, stated.

‘The Definition of Insanity’

Mann Leverett continued, “Here, nobody is asking this basic question, except for our friends in Moscow, what if Assad didn’t order this? What if this wasn’t a Syrian troop chemical attack? What if this was perpetrated by Al Qaeda affiliated oppositionists? The consequences here for going into Syria are even more grave than Iraq. Because if we go into Syria and we degrade and we weaken Assad to be the extent that Al Nusra the other Al Qaeda and other affiliated oppositionists get away with mass chemical warfare, if that’s what happened, and we think they’re going to stop there, that’s the definition of insanity.”

Hillary Mann Leverett points out some of the specific reasons that UN inspector, Carla del Ponte’s investigatory commission said there was “strong concrete suspicions” that a previous gas attack was launched by rebel forces using sarin gas.

Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem today formally accepted a Russian proposal – first mooted by John Kerry – for Syria to hand its chemical arsenal over to international control in a bid to avoid a US military attack.

Many see the development as a stunning example of Russia once again outmaneuvering the United States, seizing on an apparent gaffe by Kerry in order to pull the rug out from underneath Washington and derail Obama’s pretext for war.

However, could the precondition of Syria destroying its chemical weapons actually be used to rescue a congressional vote that had looked doomed to fail?

As Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain – both aggressive supporters of military intervention – have indicated, Congress could now be made to vote for air strikes not on the dubious basis of last month’s alleged chemical weapons attack, a justification that has failed to convince the vast majority of representatives, but on the basis of a complex set of terms that would mandate Syria disarm or face US attack. As RT reports,

Hardline Republican Senator John McCain said the US should get on board with Russia’s proposal for Syria to hand over control of its chemical weapons to the international community.

“If there is an international [agreement], if you have the guidelines, the requirements, the reporting, the dates— all of that guided by a very detailed resolution to the UN Security Council, I think that you can’t say no to it even though I’m very dubious that this is a real proposal,” McCain told Time magazine.

“I think it’s just a stalling tactic but to reject it out of hand is obviously not something that you can do.”

And Assad’s response to requests for him to hand over his (in his words, non-existent) chemical weapons…

With lawmakers seemingly confident that Syria would agree to disarm now that they have accepted the Russian proposal, they would be far more likely to green light such a resolution.

The United States could then, as happened with Iraq, accuse Syria of being too slow or failing to disarm, before launching air strikes with congressional approval already secured.

Forcing Syria to relinquish its chemical weapons would also significantly reduce the country’s capability to fend off any potential future aggression on behalf of Israel or other hostile Gulf states.

It would be naive to think that the White House has not at least considered using Syria’s supposed “victory” against US aggression as a precondition which could be used weeks, months, or even years down the line to back Assad into a corner from which he cannot escape.

However, to believe that this had been the plan from the very beginning would mean Kerry’s apparent “gaffe” of giving Assad a week to disarm was in fact a calculated maneuver.

It also fails to explain why Israel has all but rejected the idea, in addition to people like British Foreign Secretary William Hague pouring cold water on the plan by assuming Assad will fail to go ahead with disarmament anyway.

However, history tells us that regimes who attempt to acquiesce to demands for disarmament are by no means protected from future US military aggression.

We need tp remember that in December 2003, Colonel Gaddafi agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction and allow unimpeded inspections. This didn’t stop the Obama administration coming to the aid of Al-Qaeda-linked rebels eight years later to destroy Libya and leave it in the hands of brutal warlords.

Similarly, Saddam Hussein agreed to give UN weapons inspectors unfettered access in a desperate bid to prevent the US invasion of Iraq, but the move was completely futile because, as in the case of Syria, the decision to attack had already been made.

Even if Syria does relinquish its chemical weapons arsenal, it will do nothing to stop the hordes of foreign insurgents and terrorists being armed, trained and funded by the CIA , Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, who continue to flood into Syria and to whom Obama has indicated he will now offer increased support.

It would now appear that the surrendering of Syria’s chemical weapons would not only critically set back rhetorical arguments being made to justify war with the nation, but would also preempt future false flag operations in the works. Perhaps fearing war was not possible, just such a false flag appears to have been exposed by Russia’s English language news service, RT. RT claims sources have discovered a plot by terrorists to carry out a chemical weapons attack on Israel from government controlled areas within Syria for the sole purpose of framing the Syrian government and provoking an Israeli retaliation.

One can only imagine the torrent of propaganda that would burst forth from the Western media invoking “gassed Jews” and the 21st Century “Hitler” Bashar al-Assad – right around the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Sources
http://www.infowars.com/mccain-graham-seize-on-peace-initiative-to-push-war/
http://www.infowars.com/assad-well-do-anything-to-prevent-another-crazy-war/
http://www.infowars.com/former-bush-and-clinton-administration-insider-nobody-is-asking-the-basic-question-2/
http://www.infowars.com/is-assad-being-tricked-into-sacrificing-syria/