Category: Civil War

Jeebus. He’s Bush with a F%$#ing Tan

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First, it is announced that will be sending military advisers to Iraq. It’s supposed to be limited, but that will last until someone gets killed there, and then the military and Republican pressure for escalation, and we are back in a war:

President Obama said Thursday that he would deploy up to 300 military advisers to Iraq to help its struggling security forces fend off a wave of Sunni militants who have overrun large parts of the country, edging the United States back into a conflict that Mr. Obama once thought he had left behind.

 Warning that the militants pose a threat not just to Iraq but also to the United States, Mr. Obama said he was prepared to take “targeted and precise military action,” a campaign of airstrikes that a senior administration official said could be extended into neighboring Syria.

 Mr. Obama’s calibrated military moves — coupled with his pointed warning to Iraq’s Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, to quell his country’s sectarian fires, and his announcement that Secretary of State John Kerry would embark on a diplomatic campaign — opened a risky new chapter in the president’s reluctant engagement with Iraq.

Advisers and airstrikes ……… Jeebus.

Escalate much?

BTW, while we are at it, it should be noted that the Obama administration is pressuring Maliki to step down as PM, which is probably a good thing, but one of the front runners to succeed him is ……… Wait for it ……… Wait for it ……… Wait for it ……… Ahmed f%$#ing Chalabi:

Iraqi officials said Thursday that political leaders had started intensive jockeying to replace Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and create a government that would span the country’s deepening sectarian and ethnic divisions, spurred by what they called encouraging meetings with American officials signaling support for a leadership change.

President Obama implicitly added his voice on Thursday to the call for change, saying any Iraqi leader must be a unifier. He declined to endorse Mr. Maliki.

The jockeying began as a series of meetings with American officials were held here in which, according to at least two participants, they saw the first indications that the Americans would like to see a replacement for Mr. Maliki, whose marginalization of non-Shiites since United States forces left Iraq in 2011 has made him a polarizing figure.

At least three people, who like Mr. Maliki are all members of the Shiite majority, have emerged as possible candidates to take over as prime minister, with more potential nominees in the wings as parties negotiate alliances from the recent elections. Any prospective successor must convince Iraq’s Sunni Muslims and its ethnic Kurds that he can hold Iraq together, as well as vanquish a Sunni-led insurgency that has escalated into a crisis threatening to partition the country.

………

It is far from clear, however, whether any of the suggested successors could gather enough votes. The names floated so far — Adel Abdul Mahdi, Ahmed Chalabi and Bayan Jaber — are from the Shiite blocs, which have the largest share of the total seats in the Parliament.

 Mr. Mahdi came within a vote of winning the prime minister’s job in 2006 and previously served as one of Iraq’s vice presidents. He is viewed as a moderate who has long worked well with the Kurds.

 Mr. Chalabi is a complex figure who has alternately charmed and infuriated the Americans but has ties both to them and to Iran. His biggest liability could be his uncompromising support for the systematic purge of many Sunnis from government jobs after the American-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party a decade ago. Mr. Chalabi now says he supports terminating the basis for that purge, the so-called de-Baathification law.

(emphasis mine)

Seriously, Ahmed Chalabi?

We lost Iraq and Afghanistan well before the current actions by ISIS, it’s time to stop throwing good money after bad. 

And we can’t help here, because our state security apparatus has been too busy surveilling our selfies on Facebook to accurately pick targets in Iraq:

Army general Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told a Senate panel on Wednesday that “until we can clarify this intelligence picture” the US would have difficulty knowing who it would be attacking from the air, indicating military as well as political reluctance to any return to the skies above Iraq.

Your tax dollars at work.

Paul Bremer is not Having a Good Week

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This time, it’s Erin Burnett reminding Paul Bremer that he is clueless incompetent f%$#. She actually led with it:

Bremer penned an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “Only America Can Prevent a Disaster in Iraq,” in which he argued for some form of U.S. troops on the ground there. After 4,490 American lives lost and $1.7 trillion spent, Burnett asked him, “How can you advocate any more people, any more lives going to risk for that country?”

 “Because it’s in our interest,” Bremer responded matter-of-factly, going to elaborate that the U.S. cannot allow Iraq to become a home base for terrorists like those that constitute the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

 Taking on the role of the skeptical viewers, Burnett asked Bremer, “Aren’t you the one who got us into this mess?” She confronted Bremer with video from 2003 of him heralding Iraq’s “hopeful” future after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

 Bremer defended his words and the actions the Bush administration took to bring democracy to Iraq, instead blaming the Obama administration for presiding over the deterioration of those gains over the last few years.

Erin Burnett is just about as establishment as Halperin was yesterday.

She started off at Goldman “Vampire Squid” Sachs, after a stint at CNN, she went to Citi, then Bloomberg, then CNBC, and finally CNN.

She married a guy who worked for Lehman and Citi.

And she just called out Bremer as a clueless incompetent little sh%$.

I’m smelling a very positive trend.

The Neocons Have Lost Mark Halperin???? Seriously???

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Roll Tape!

Did Mark Halperin just call Paul Bremeran incompetent loser?

I think that Halperin, perhaps the poster child for the toxic consensus inside Washington D.C,  did:

“It seems what you’re proposing is to double down on the policies that the Bush administration and you thought would lead to, not just a democratic and independent Iraq, but a force for good in the region,” Halperin said. “Why should we even consider going back to the same set of ideas to try to prop up a government with U.S. intervention, which seems to have failed and left us in this position?”

“I’m not proposing to prop up any government,” Bremer said, arguing that Maliki had dissolved many of the post-surge gains in Iraq. “In fact, I explicitly said we need a new government…I explicitly called for him to resign as Defense Minister and Minister of the Interior.”

“But what business is it of the United States at this point who is in the government of people of Iraq?” Halperin asked. “Why isn’t that up to the people of Iraq, civil society and leaders there, to figure it out and not the United States?”

“Because there is no one there who can do it and no other country who can do it,” Bremer said. “The experience of all of us involved in this for the last decade is that only the Americans can help the Iraqis broker across these sectarian and ethnic lines. There is nobody else who can do it, including the Iraqis.”

“What’s our record on that –” Halperin tried to ask, but Bremer cut him off.

“We may regret that, but it’s a fact, and facts have a nasty way of coming back and basically determining your options,” Bremer said.

This was on Morning Joe, and though the aforementioned Joe (Scarborough) seemed to like the idea of re-invading Iraq, but everyone else, the very heart and soul of the Beltway consensus are actually unwilling to swallow the bullsh%$ that Bremer was attempting to sell.

I think that the evil spawn of Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the Senator from Boeing, Richard Pearle, Elliot Abrams, Doug “The f%$#ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth” Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, etc.  may have finally run out their string.

I certainly hope so, but I am an inveterate optimist on such matters.

Another Reason to Shut Down the Fusion Centers

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Because they treated a consumer boycott for “Black Friday” 2011 as a terrorist event:

The documents reveal that Fusion Centers and their personnel even conflate their anti-terrorism mission with a need for intelligence gathering on a possible consumer boycott during the holiday season. There are multiple documents from across the country referencing concerns about negative impacts on retail sales.

The Executive Director of the Intelligence Fusion Division, also the Joint Terrorism Task Force Director, for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department circulated a 30-page report tracking the Occupy Movement in towns and cities across the country created by the trade association the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC).

He directed that the recipients of the document, who included top staff at the Washington, D.C. Fusion Center, “develop a one page product that we can send to our District Commanders to make them aware of the potential threat.”

(emphasis original)

Can you say out of control totalitarian organization?

Good, I knew that you could.

Eric Arthur Blair is Spinning in His Grave, Again

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Over at Emptywheel, Jim White shows us a bit of cognitive dissonance that will make your head spin on the “World” section of the New York Times:

Seriously, first, we, (and the House of Saud) arm rebels in Syria, then they move into, and take over ¼ of Iraq, and take more of our weapons, and the very serious people think that we need to send them more weapons.

We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

(On Edit)

And Obama is looking at air strikes to support the government. Obama has gone the full Nixon/Vietnamization route.

Our Friends in the Ukraine are Hiring Blackwater

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Guess what? In addition to advising the current government in Kiev, it appears that we have lent them mercenaries from the firm formerly known as Blackwater:

Soldiers from a private US security company with a record of alleged atrocities in Iraq are supporting Ukraine‘s security forces in the volatile east of the country, the German newspaper Bild reported Sunday.

The report, citing Germany‘s federal intelligence agency BND, said 400 of the heavily-armed men employed by the group formerly known as Blackwater were deployed in the vicinity of Lugansk where pro-Russian separatists are seeking self-rule.

The BND declined to comment on the report, while the security company – now known as Academi – dismissed similar reports in March.

Bild reported that according to a BND assessment, US intelligence services had knowledge of the covert involvement of the private soldiers in Ukraine. BND representatives relayed the information to Germany‘s federal chancellory on April 29, Bild said.

Academi was known as Blackwater during its time as key security services contractor to the US government in the war it led to oust Iraq‘s president Saddam Hussein in 2003.

It was later implicated in the killing of unarmed civilians and arms smuggling in Iraq.

This is nucking futs.

I can think of no more inflammatory news than having the most notorious mercenary organization in the real world providing “security consultants” for a government that is already being viewed with suspicion by much of the eastern half of the country.

I think that we have learned that the EU and US don’t care about the Ukraine as much as they want to just f%$# with Russia.

This is not going to end well.

H/t R1 at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

I’m Not Sure What it Means, but It Sounds Promising

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Vladimir Putin has suggested that any referendum on autonomy/secession for the eastern Ukraine be delayed:

The Kremlin beat a tactical retreat over a regional referendum following days of soaring tension that have left dozens dead and fed fears of a civil war in Ukraine.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, said the referendum being staged by pro-Russia separatists in parts of eastern Ukraine on Sunday should be postponed. If the referendum goes ahead, it will provide an argument for the region joining Russia as happened in Crimea in March.

Overt Russian support for the plebiscite could have triggered more substantive EU and US sanctions against Russia. Putin’s statement, following talks with the president of Switzerland in Moscow, looked likely to delay the imposition of a harsher round of economic penalties.

While Moscow has also opposed the holding of presidential elections in Ukraine on 25 May – a ballot strongly supported by the west – Putin sounded more conciliatory, saying that the poll could be a step in the right direction.

The Russian leader insisted, however, that a presidential election should be preceded by constitutional changes in Ukraine aimed at federalising the country and handing greater powers to the regions, steps that would favour greater Russian influence over eastern Ukraine after the Kremlin annexed Crimea.

I don’t know what it means, but it is rather telling the first time that I’ve seen a statement, from either side that seems to be the slightest bit directed toward a deescalation.

With Obama sounding intensely bellicose, and John Kerry channeling General Jack Ripper from the movie Dr. Strangelove, it appears that Putin is the adult in the room.

We live in Bizarro World.

I Got my Ass Owned

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When I wrote about evidence that Poland training Right Wing Paramilitaries from the Ukraine, I relied (and noted at the time) that the story came from a translation of a Polish weekly by a 911 truther.

Well, it appears that the original source, the Polish publication Nie is a news and PARODY publication, much along the lines of Le Canard Enchainé, which has both broken news, and done parody.

As Thierry Meyssan notes, “This article is based on information obtained by the Polish opposition. I erroneously cited as my source the satirical weekly Nie, which published a pastiche mixing truths and non-truths. The data it provides needs to be verified.”

Needless to say, 911 truthers are inherently unreliable sources, so without alternate credible sources, I will not publish.

Note also that Google translate is not adequate for many foreign sources for verification.

My apologies.

911 Truther Links Polish Government to Right Wing Paramilitaries in Ukraine

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There are reports that the Polish government gave military training to fascist militia members from the Ukraine:

The Polish left-wing weekly Nie (No) published a startling witness account of the training given to the most violent of the EuroMaidan activists.

According to this source, in September 2013, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski invited 86 members of the Right Sector (Sector Pravy), allegedly in the context of a university exchange program. In reality, the guests were not students, and many were over 40. Contrary to their official schedule, they did not go to the Warsaw University of Technology, but headed instead for the police training center in Legionowo, an hour’s drive from the capital. There, they received four weeks of intensive training in crowd management, person recognition, combat tactics, command skills, behavior in crisis situations, protection against gases used by police, erecting barricades, and especially shooting, including the handling of sniper rifles.

Such training took place in September 2013, while the Maidan Square protests were allegedly triggered by a decree suspending preparations for the signing of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, which was issued by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov on November 21, i.e. two months later.

The Polish weekly refers to photographs attesting to the training, which show the Ukrainians in Nazi uniforms alongside their Polish instructors in civilian clothing.

Let me be clear: this source is highly dubious.

I know nothing of the Polish weekly Nei, and the machine translation is anything but clear, but I do know that the author of this article, Thierry Meyssan, is a 911 truther, and hence highly suspect.

That being said, if there is one thing that is certain about “Tradecraft”, as some are wont to call covert activities, it is that Poland would not do something like this without explicit support and approval from the US state security apparatus.

After all, they supported the CIA’s establishment of torture sites following 911.

So the short form is that if this report is accurate, and that is a big if, then the CIA or the State Department had to give support and approval.

Hopefully someone with a bit more journalistic credibility will look into this.  (It’s one of the reasons that I put “911 Truther” in the hed: it is simply not credible at this time).

I Can Do This Pissing in a Bucket of Bleach………

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After screwing it up by using Fascists to stage an at best marginally effective coup in the Ukraine, it looks like the Obama administration is
trying to use new dodgy allegations of chemical weapons use to try to create support for US action:

The United States has indications of the use of a toxic chemical, probably chlorine, in Syria this month and is examining indications that the Syrian government was responsible, the US State Department said on Monday.

 “We have indications of the use of a toxic industrial chemical” in the town of Kfar Zeita, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

 “We are examining allegations that the government was responsible,” she told reporters.

Earlier this month the Syrian regime and opposition forces accused each other of carrying out a chemical attack in Kfar Zeita, located in the embattled country’s western-central province of Hama.

 Opposition activists reported that dozens of residents suffered from symptoms of suffocation after air units loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad targeted the town with explosive barrels allegedly containing toxic material.

 Yesterday, French President Francois Hollande said that his country had “information” that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has continued using chemical weapons, although Paris lacked proof, AFP reported.

 “We have a few elements of information but I do not have the proof,” AFP quoted Hollande as telling the Europe 1 radio station.

And yes, you can create chlorine gas by peeing in a bucket of bleach.

Unlike the (blatantly false) allegations that the Syrian insurgents lacked the capabilities to make Sarin, making chlorine gas is pretty simple: (Pee has a low yield)

  1. Run DC current through sea water.
  2. Collect the oxygen and chlorine off of the anode.  (This is why, in chemistry class, they used something other than table salt, typically Epsom salt or lye).
  3. Either cool the mixture to less than -40°, or pressurize it at room temperature to more than about 100 psi. (or some combination of the two)
  4. When the chlorine condenses into a liquid, VERY carefully collect  it, and put in munitions.

Note that the provenance of the the Sarin is unclear, with Seymour Hersh detailing how the Obama administration chose to very suppress significant facts to in order to justify their abortive attempt to create a justification for a bombing campaign.

Hersh’s latest, The Red Line and the Rat Line, details how many inside and outside of the US state security apparatus are accusing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan of actively aiding the Islamist rebels in Syria develop chemical weapons capability.  (It appears that he objects both to Syria’s secular character, and wants the country to be a client state of Turkey).

Note that we have tapes of senior Turkish security officials planning an attack on Suleiman Shah Tomb, technically Turkish soil, so as to justify direct Turkish (and possibly NATO) intervention.

Count me as tremendously dubious of the latest chemical weapons revelations.

    I Wish that This Was True

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    In response to Georgia’s issuing a vanity plate featuring the Klu Klux Klan Confederate Battle Flag, John Perr comes up with a parody that is pure genius.

    The only thing that could make this better would be if this were true:

    The state of Georgia this week began offering a new version of its vehicle license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag. Sponsored by the Georgia division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (to whom a portion of the purchase price and annual registration fees will go), the revised design has many people inside the state and out howling mad.

    In response to the outcry, Georgia SCV commander Jack Bridwell asked, “What’s the big deal?” Echoing Bridwell’s explanation that “the design is just people trying to show who they are and trying to be proud of their heritage,” Sons of Confederate Veterans spokesman Ray McBerry invited other groups to do the same:

    “We believe that all people ought to be able to celebrate their history and their heritage, and that includes Southerners. We did anticipate that there could be some folks who would not like that, but we encourage them to go and make application for their own specialty plates.”

    Now, a little known organization is taking him up on the offer. The group, calling itself The American People, is sponsoring a license plate to mark the 150th anniversary of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea.

    After capturing the South’s vital manufacturing center and rail hub at Atlanta, Sherman’s troops marched southeast to Savannah leaving a swath of ruin in their wake. Between November 15th and December 21st, 1864, Sherman more than accomplished his objective to “create havoc and destruction of all resources that would be beneficial to the enemy.” Sherman’s brilliant campaign (or what the Sons of Confederate Veterans brand “atrocities and war crimes“) hastened the end of the Confederacy and with it the enslavement of four million Americans.

    Read the rest, it’s brilliant, and if you know anyone in Georgia, have them petition for a vanity plate.

    This is f%$3ing brilliant!

    Barack Obama is Determined to Go to War Against Syria

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    Because we need to find some little country to beat up every decade or so.

    The US is now amping up complaints about the speed of Syrian chemical weapons destruction as a justification for military strikes:

    The United States on Thursday accused Syria of deliberately delaying the surrender of its chemical weapons stockpiles and jeopardizing a tightly timed and costly international removal and destruction operation that narrowly averted U.S. airstrikes last year.

    It was the first formal accusation that Syria was not cooperating with the terms of its disarmament after months in which international diplomats and chemical weapons experts marveled at the speed with which the process was being carried out. The public denunciation, however, closely tracked concerns that independent experts have expressed privately in recent weeks about the operation’s pace.

    ………

    Most chemical weapons experts agree that Syria’s ability to manufacture and deploy the banned weapons was destroyed last year. ………

    This is Unbelievably F%$#ing Stupid

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    Iran was just disinvited from the Syria peace talks:

    U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon withdrew a last-minute invitation to Iran to attend peace talks on Syria on Monday after the Syrian opposition threatened to boycott this week’s conference if President Bashar al-Assad’s main sponsor took part.

    Ending nearly 24 hours of confusion that dismayed diplomats who have spent months cajoling Assad’s opponents to negotiate, Ban’s spokesman said Iran was no longer welcome at the initial day of talks at Montreux, Switzerland on Wednesday.

    The opposition immediately withdrew its threat to stay away from the conference known as Geneva-2. But the uproar over Iran, which has provided Assad with money, arms and men, underlined the difficulties of negotiating an end to a bloody, three-year civil war that has divided the Middle East and world powers.

    Ban, his spokesman said, made the invitation to Iran after Iranian officials assured him they supported the conclusion of a U.N. conference in 2012, known as Geneva-1, which called for a transitional administration to take over power in Syria – something neither Assad nor Tehran have been willing to embrace.

    Throughout Monday Iranian officials made clear that they were not endorsing that conclusion as a basis for the talks.

    I would also note that US Secretary of State John Kerry was also having a hissy fit over Iran showing up.

    This is all about the United States, and the Syrian exiles, supporting the House of Saud’s agenda of both hostility toward secular Arab regimes, and support toward Sunni hegemony in the region.

    Doing the Saudi’s bidding might be unavoidable for the Syrian National Council, they are clearly clients of Riyadh, but for the US, intervening in a 1400 year old sectarian dispute is a losing proposition.

    Doing the bidding of Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Al Saudr is not in America’s best interest.

    Supreme Court Considers the Death of the 5thAmendment

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    One of the foundations of our civil rights is that you have the right not to testify against yourself, and that asserting this right cannot be used against you.

    In other words, not testifying cannot be used against you, whether in the trial or in the sentencing, except it appears in the punishment phase of a death penalty case:

    As in many recent cases applying limits on relief contained in the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act’s text (AEDPA, 28 U.S.C. §2254(d)(1)), Wednesday’s argument in White v. Woodall involved mind-numbing hairsplitting. On the state’s side, Susan Lenz, an attorney in the office of Kentucky’s attorney general, sought to explain why Woodall’s entitlement to a “no-adverse-inference” instruction at the punishment phase of his capital trial was not “clearly established” at the time the Kentucky courts rejected his constitutional claim. Yes, the Supreme Court had held that the Fifth Amendment entitles a defendant to a no-adverse-inference instruction at trial (Carter v. Kentucky). Yes, the Court had announced that the right against self-incrimination applies in punishment as well as trial proceedings (Estelle v. Smith). And, yes, the Court had reversed a sentence where a trial court had actually made an adverse inference regarding a contested fact based on a defendant’s silence at sentencing (Mitchell v. United States). But here, Lenz argued, the defendant sought a no-adverse-inference instruction when he had conceded all of the facts concerning his death eligibility. Because the state had already satisfied its burden of proof, the defendant’s silence would not be used to make the state’s case.

    Kentucky is arguing that a refusal to testify can be used as affirmative evidence of lack of remorse, and hence used to sentence him to death.

    Delightful.

    Here’s hoping that the Supreme Court makes the right decision, but I doubt it.

    F%$# Him. Walk Away, and He Will Be Hanging from a Lamp Post in 9 Months

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    It looks like Hamid Karzai is issuing new demands for a status of forces agreement:

    Efforts by the United States and Afghanistan to finalize a long-term security arrangement appeared on the brink of collapse Monday as Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a new set of demands, and the Obama administration said it would be forced to begin planning for a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of 2014.

    In a two-hour meeting here, Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s top national security adviser, told Karzai that if he failed to sign the bilateral security agreement by the end of this year, the United States would have “no choice” but to prepare for withdrawal, according to a statement by the National Security Council in Washington.

    Karzai told Rice that he would sign only after the United States helps his government begin peace talks with the Taliban and agrees to release all 17 Afghan citizens being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba, according to Afghan and U.S. officials.

    In addition to those new demands, the Afghan leader reiterated that he will not sign if “another [U.S.] soldier steps foot into an Afghan home,” Karzai spokesman Aimal Faizi said. The United States has already promised to show “restraint” in “home entries” by U.S. troops and to carry them out only in conjunction with Afghan troops, but the tactic remains a part of U.S. operations against some insurgents here.

    If I were a cynical son of a bitch, I would be thinking that he is deliberately trying to encourage the Taliban to mount attacks to against the Afghan Presidential Elections in the Spring, so that he can hang onto power.

    Wait ……… I AM a cynical son of a bitch.

    Seriously. Just call his damn bluff, and either he capitulates, or the Taliban plays piñata with his mutilated corpse.

    Either way, it is a win for the United States, and for the Afghan people.

    Oops!

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    A while back I reported that a story co-written by Dale Gavlak which related reports that the rebels were responsible for the gas attacks in Ghouta.

    Much of the credibility on this story was as a result of Gavlak’s journalistic credibility.

    It turns out that she did not write the story. She just provided what amounts to editorial help with the writing of the story:

    A freelance contributor to the Associated Press whose byline appeared on a controversial story that alleged Syrian rebels had gassed themselves in an accident told McClatchy on Saturday that she did not write the article and has been seeking to have her name removed from it since it was published by a small Minnesota-based website.

    Dale Gavlak, a long time contributor from the Middle East to AP, released an email statement to McClatchy and several blogs denying any role in reporting the story, which was published Aug. 29 by Mint Press News, which describes itself with the phrase “independent advocacy journalism.” The article carried her byline along with that of Yahya Ababneh, a Jordanian Arab-language journalist.

    ………

    The initial email detailing the filing of the story – Gavlak admits to helping Ababneh convert his Arabic reporting into English – reads “Pls find the Syria story I mentioned uploaded on Google Docs. This should go under Yahya Ababneh’s byline. I helped him write up his story but he should get all the credit for this.”

    After seeing the story published under her name and the amount of interest it was generating – in large part because of the credibility lent to it by her relationship with AP, which bills itself as the “world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organization” – Gavlak demanded her name be removed. Muhawesh refused.

    “We will not be removing your name from the byline as this is an existential issue for MintPress and an issue of credibility as this will appear as though we are lying,” Gavlak said Muhawesh responded.

    Needless to say, any credibility that I assigned to the story by Gavlak’s association with it is now inoperative, and the response of MintPress makes me less inclined to assign any credibility to them.

    MintPress has also released a statement on this issue contradicting Dale Gavlak’s account.

    Needless to say this is now well and truly a clusterf%$#.

    How About some F%$#ing Details

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    OK, so now the Russians are denouncing the UN chemical weapons report, claiming that they have been given evidence that the rebels gassed the people in Ghouta:

    Russia sharply criticized the new United Nations report on Syria’s chemical arms use on Wednesday as biased and incomplete, hardening the Kremlin’s defense of the Syrian government even while pressing ahead with a plan to disarm its arsenal of the internationally banned weapons.

    The Russians also escalated their critiques of Western governments’ interpretations of the report, which offered the first independent confirmation of a large chemical weapons assault on Aug. 21 on the outskirts of Syria’s capital, Damascus, that asphyxiated hundreds of civilians.

    ………

    Russian news reports quoted the country’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, as saying during a visit to Damascus that Syria’s government had provided additional information that showed insurgents used chemical weapons not only on Aug. 21 but also on other occasions.

    The Syrians offered no such information to the United Nations chemical weapons inspectors before they left Syria with a trove of forensic samples on Aug. 31. The inspectors have said they will return to Syria to investigate other reported instances of chemical weapons use, but no dates have been announced.

    I called off Obama and His Evil Minions™ about their profoundly disingenuous claims regarding poison gas use in Syria, where they said that they had incontrovertible evidence, and put out crap completely bereft of information, and I will call out Mr. Ryabkov as well.

    If you have information release it.

    I have been thinking about the implications of the UN Report (more in a later post) and it does appear to present a much stronger case for the Assad regime having agency in the gas attack than I have previously seen.

    I am dubious of the Russian “evidence”.

    Your Syria Update

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    Let us start with the thought that maybe Binyamin Netanyahu should tell his political allies to shut the F%$# up:

    ‘Israel wanted Assad gone since start of Syria civil war’

     “Tehran-Damascus-Beirut arc is the greatest danger,” says outgoing Israeli envoy to US Michael Oren.

     “Bad guys” backed by Iran are worse for Israel than “bad guys” who are not supported by the Islamic Republic, Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the US Michael Oren told The Jerusalem Post in a parting interview.

     Oren, in the interview that is to be published in full on Friday, traced the evolution of Israel’s message on Syria during the three weeks of the chemical weapons crisis.

     “The initial message about the Syrian issue was that we always wanted [President] Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,” he said.

     This was the case, he said, even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated to al-Qaida.

    Seriously. In one interview, he dissed the United States by saying that al Qaida is not that bad, and effectively endorses Bashir Assad, because if Israel is for it, then the Arab world is against it.

    Oh, for f%$# sake, shut the f%$# up!

    BTW, in the whole soft on terrorist sh%$, we have Obama waiving the rule against supplying weapons to terrorists:

    President Obama, in order to arm Al-Qaeda linked Syrian rebels, has waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups. Not surprisingly, federal law currently bans giving weapons to terrorists. Though it seems Obama does have the authority to bypass the restriction and he is choosing to do so by arming the Syrian rebels who have links to Al Qaeda, a group still listed as supporting terrorism.

    The president, citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, announced today that he would “waive the prohibitions in sections 40 and 40A of the AECA related to such a transaction.”
    Those two sections prohibit sending weaponry to countries described in section 40(d): “The prohibitions contained in this section apply with respect to a country if the Secretary of State determines that the government of that country has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” Congress stated in the Arms Control Export Act.

    The Syrian rebels not only include factions that are explicitly loyal to Al Qaeda but, according to US intelligence and experts analysts, those factions are now dominant within the opposition. So it is highly likely that some of the arms being shipped into Syria right now by the CIA will fall into the hands of Syrian rebels loyal to Al Qaeda.

    This has epic fail written all over it.

    As to the UN report it is not conclusive, but it does point toward the Syrian government as being the perps.  Note however though that some people disagree with this strongly.

    I’ve looked at the UN report, I have a number of thoughts:
    It’s 41 pages long, and pages 9-41 are appendices.  (I like this format, it allows you to take in the information quickly.)

    • It’s definitely Sarin.  The processes and technology are solid.
    • They were scrupulous in maintaining a chain of custody.
    • There are mentions of “interesting chemicals” in addition to decomposition products of Sarin.  

    I would assume that this would be stabilizers and production impurities, but my knowledge of the chemistry of chemical weapons is limited.  (I’m sort of in the “biz”, but I just package detection methods, and so have a limited knowledge of the chemistry)

    As such, the “interesting” chemicals that could present a clearer picture of how the agents were manufactured and stored.

    This would probably give some better indications as to the who produced the agents.

    In any case, it appears that my earlier assessment, where I fingered the rebels, now appears to be somewhat less likely.