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No Irrefutable Evidence, Admits White House: Assad Not Involved, Finds German Intelligence

By Countercurrents.org

09 September, 2013
Countercurrents.org

The White House has admitted it has no "irrefutable" evidence of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's involvement in the August gas attack, but said a "strong common-sense test irrespective of the intelligence" suggested his government was responsible. [1]

Moreover, citing high-level German security source a German press reports said: Assad did not personally order chemical weapons attack. [2]

At the same time, moral standing of the US for planning to attack Syria on the gas-attack issue has been questioned. [3]

And, Syrian interventionists face increasing divide. [4]

While dealing with the question of gas attack, as BBC reported, the White House chief of staff Dennis McDonough said on Sunday: "We've seen the video proof of the outcome of those attacks."

"Now do we have a picture or do we have irrefutable beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence? This is not a court of law and intelligence does not work that way."

On the White House chief of staff McDonough’s comment Josh Gerstein writes in Politico [5]:

If White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough's foray onto five Sunday shows was supposed to clear up murky messaging on Syria from the administration in recent days, it'd probably be better for him to do that without directly contradicting senior members of the Obama team.

Yet, that's precisely what happened on CNN's "State of the Union" program.

Responding to host Candy Crowley's question about whether intelligence shows "a direct link" between Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad and the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack, McDonough said the location of the attack and rockets by which the chemicals were delivered show that the regime was behind the attack.

"All of that leads to, as I say, a quite strong common sense test, irrespective of the intelligence, that suggests that the regime carried this out," McDonough said.

He then reframed the question this way: "Do we have a picture or do we have irrefutable, beyond a reasonable doubt evidence?" McDonough said. "This is not a court of law. And intelligence does not work that way," he said, answering his own question.

However, in both of his appearances at public Congressional hearings last week, Secretary of State John Kerry said the evidence did establish beyond a reasonable doubt that Assad's regime was behind the chemical attack …

One could perhaps draw a distinction between Crowley's initial question about Assad's personal involvement and the question of whether Syrian government forces were involved in the chemical weapons use. However, McDonough himself seemed to broaden the issue to the regime's responsibility, not just Assad's.

In any event, the administration's "reasonable doubt" messaging seems a bit muddled.

The German info

On the German information regarding the gas attack, Simon Tisdall and Josie Le Blond reported from Berlin:

President Assad did not personally order last month's chemical weapons attack near Damascus, and blocked numerous requests from his military commanders to use chemical weapons in recent months, a German newspaper has reported, citing unidentified, high-level national security sources.

The intelligence findings were based on phone calls intercepted by a German surveillance ship operated by the BND, the German intelligence service, and deployed off the Syrian coast, Bild am Sonntag said. The intercepted communications suggested Assad was not himself involved in last month's attack or in other instances.

Addressing a closed meeting of the German parliamentary committee last week, the BND chief Gerhard Schindler said the spy agency had not have conclusive evidence either way, German media reported.

Assad’s claim

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told a US broadcaster there is "no evidence" that his government has used chemical weapons.
In the interview with PBS, to be aired on Monday, he also suggested his allies would retaliate if the West attacked.

Assad's government blames the attack on rebels fighting to overthrow him.

In the interview the Syrian president said it was up to the US to prove that his forces were behind the Damascus attack. "There has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people," he told the network.

A No?

A Washington Post survey said 224 of the current 433 members of the House were either "no" or "leaning no" on military action as of Friday, while 184 were undecided and just 25 were backing a strike.

The survey suggested that 27 of the 100 senators were "no" or "leaning no", while 50 were undecided and 23 supportive of military action.

Many US politicians remain concerned that military action could draw the nation into a prolonged war and spark broader hostilities in the region.

Outside the US, France supports military intervention but it wants to wait for a report by UN weapons experts before taking action.

Jihadists occupy Christian village

As international wrangling continues, Islamist militants from the Nusra Front and other rebels appear to have taken control of most of Maaloula, an ancient Christian village.

There are fears for Maaloula's heritage, with reports that militant Islamist rebels have attacked churches, the BBC's Jim Muir, in neighboring Lebanon, reports.

Moral standing of US

On the moral standing of the US, Gary Younge writes:

The alleged urgency to bomb Syria at this moment is being driven almost entirely by the White House's desire to assert both American power and moral authority as defined by a self-imposed ultimatum.

The American public is against it by wide margins.

But the insistence that a durable and effective solution to this crisis lies at the end of an American cruise missile beggars belief. It is borne from the circular sophistry that has guided most recent "humanitarian interventions": (1) Something must be done now; (2) Bombing is something; (3) Therefore we must bomb.

The problem for America in all of this is that its capacity to impact diplomatic negotiations is limited by the fact that its record of asserting its military power stands squarely at odds with its pretensions of moral authority. For all America's condemnations of chemical weapons, the people of Falluja in Iraq are experiencing the birth defects and deformities in children and increases in early-life cancer that may be linked to the use of depleted uranium during the US bombardment of the town. It also used white phosphorus against combatants in Falluja.

Its chief ally in the region, Israel, holds the record for ignoring UN resolutions, and the US is not a participant in the international criminal court – which is charged with bringing perpetrators of war crimes to justice – because it refuses to allow its own citizens to be charged. On the very day Obama lectured the world on international norms he launched a drone strike in Yemen that killed six people.

Obama appealing for the Syrian regime to be brought to heel under international law is a bit like Tony Soprano asking the courts for a restraining order against one of his mob rivals – it cannot be taken seriously because the very laws he is invoking are laws he openly flouts.

So his concerns about the US losing credibility over Syria are ill-founded because it has precious little credibility left. The call to bomb an Arab country without UN authority or widespread international support, on the basis of partial evidence before UN inspectors have had a chance to report their findings, sounds too familiar both at home and abroad. The claim that he should fight this war, not the last one, is undermined by the fact that the US is still fighting one of the last ones. And with a military solution proving elusive in Afghanistan, the US is trying to come to a political settlement with the Taliban before leaving.

Obama would enhance US credibility not by drawing lines for others to adhere to, but by drawing a line under the past and championing a foreign policy that bolstered international law and acted with the rest of the world rather than ignoring it. "The noble art of losing face," Hans Blix told me shortly after the Iraq war started, "will one day save the human race."

Increasing rift and Al Qaida

On increasing rift among the interventionists, Martin Chulov writes from a roadhouse near Aleppo where jihadists and al-Qaida affiliates prepare to face the US enemy:

When Barack Obama vowed to attack Bashar al-Assad, several thousand jihadists on the plains of northern Syria knew exactly what to do. Ever since, they have been hiding their big guns, evacuating bases, parking cars in cow sheds and spreading themselves thin among farms, factories and the communities that reluctantly host them.

"We have learned the lessons from Iraq," said Abu Ismail, a leader of the main jihadist group in the north-east of the country, known to some now as the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

While Syria's mainstream rebels are enthusiastically welcoming talk of an American attack as a chance to break the stalemate, the jihadist groups among them see things through a very different prism, in which my enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend.

All across the north, al-Qaida and its affiliates are on a war footing; a rank and file convinced that an old foe is coming their way and that if and when the US air force does attack, they will have little trouble staying out of its way.

"There are many among us [who] fought in Iraq and Afghanistan," said a second jihadist, a 26-year-old softly spoken Saudi, who called himself Abu Abid. "Our emir knows how to deal with them. And all know that while the Americans say they want to attack the regime, we are their real enemy."

Abu Abid was speaking inside a roadhouse east of Aleppo, where he and other jihadists whom he says "come from every country you could imagine" gather to eat, and drink tea or coffee.

The black banner of al-Qaida, adopted by ISIS, is more prominent in al-Bab than the gold-edged flag of the other al-Qaida-linked group, Jabhat al-Nusra, or the regular units of the Free Syrian Army.

"We don't like it this way," said a local man, Abu Nashat, pointing at a school wall that had been white-washed and then emblazoned with two giant al-Qaida logos. "But who is going to take them on over a tin of paint? We already have a big fight on our hands against the regime. Opening a new battle is not something to do lightly."

"They think everyone who doesn't think and act like them is an infidel who needs to be punished," said a young fighter from the Liwa al-Tawheed Brigade – a mainstream militia – who ran a clothes shop before the conflict. "While they may have learned how to fight the Americans, they haven't learned anything else from Iraq."

One lesson from Iraq, however, is embraced by many Syrians: the Awakening Movement, also known as the Sahawa, that drove al-Qaida out of Anbar province in 2007.

"We need the same thing here," said a senior member of the Liwa al-Tawheed. "They want to kidnap this revolution. Maybe they already have. But don't mistake all the black flags you see for community support. We just don't have the stomach to fight them now. And who could we hope to support us even if we did? America? Europe? Shame on them. Do they not see that Syria will drag down the whole Middle East?"

ISIS's leader, Abu Ismail sees little threat from an Awakening Movement in Syria. Himself an Iraqi, a veteran of al-Qaida's operations in his homeland, he said: "We are good with the people here. If an emir does something wrong he will be punished according to the sharia too. There is not one rule for us and one for the people. A Sahawa is not something that we think about."

When the Guardian spoke to Abu Ismail last November he was a new arrival to the Liwa al-Tawheed, which, though Islamic, fights for a new leadership in Syria and broadly embraces the worldview of the Free Syrian Army. With his new status as local emir, or prince, he claims that momentum for a regional jihad – which aims to install a strict interpretation of sharia law and create a caliphate on a crumbling nation state – is building. "If you control this part of Syria, you control all the Middle East," he said.

"The fight here is more difficult than Iraq. We have the regime, Hezbollah, the Lebanese army, the Shabiha, the Shia mercenaries, Iran, all of them fighting us. And now maybe the Americans. We know how to defeat their air force. We know how to maneuver and hide from them. Their number one goal is to prevent the mujahideen getting access to strategic weapons. The planned attack on Assad is a pretence to attack us."

"What emerges after the Americans are finished with Bashar and maybe al-Qaida will tell us whether we are on our own until we perish," said the Liwa al-Tawheed leader. "Or whether the world now knows that if either of these two win, we all lose."

He looked into his hands, inhaled deeply and asked: "Do you think we should evacuate our homes too? We hear a lot of talk about drones. Maybe the Americans truly don't know who their friends are. To them, we are all the same. People to demonize and ignore."

Source:

[1] BBC, September 9, 2013, “Syria's Assad says US has no proof of chemical weapons use”, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24011753

[2] theguardian.com, September 8, 2013, “Syria chemical weapons attack not ordered by Assad, says German press”,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/08/syria-chemical-weapons-not-assad-bild

[3] The Guardian, September 8, 2013, “The US has little credibility left: Syria won't change that”

[4] The Guardian, September 8, 2013, “American threats widen fault lines among Syria's rebels”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/08/american-syria-rebels

[5] 9/8/13, “McDonough v. Kerry on Syria reasonable doubt”,
http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2013/09/mcdonough-v-kerry-on-syria-reasonable-doubt-172055.html?hp=l2



 

 


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