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Foreign Policy, International, Politics, US

Russia Warns of Chemical Weapons Guise in Syria to Justify US Escalation

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Moscow, Russia— Russia’s Chief of the General Staff of Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, warned on Tuesday that Syrian rebels are preparing to utilize chemical weapons— to be blamed on the Syrian government— as a justification for U.S. strikes on Damascus, and cautioned that “in the event of a threat to our military servicemen’s lives, Russia’s Armed Forces will take retaliatory measures to target both the missiles and their delivery vehicles.”

According to Gerasimov, the U.S. plans to accuse the Syrian government of using chemical weapons, thus justifying a potential attack on Syrian government facilities in the Syrian capital of Damascus.

Gerasimov noted that Russia has intelligence which indicates preparations are underway to stage the use of chemical weapons against civilians, stating that the United States plans to “furnish the so-called ‘evidence’ of the alleged mass civilian deaths through the fault of the Syrian government and the Russian leadership supporting it.”

“This has been confirmed by the discovery of a laboratory for the production of chemical weapons in the village of Aftris, which was liberated from terrorists,” Gerasimov stressed.

“As a countermeasure, Washington plans to deliver a missile and bomb strike against Damascus’ government districts,” Gerasimov continued.

[RELATED: Reality Check: No Sarin Gas Used by Assad in Syria?]

“We have reliable information about militants preparing to falsify a government chemical attack against civilians. In several districts of Eastern Ghouta, a crowd was assembled with women, children and old people, brought from other regions, who were to represent the victims of the chemical incident,” Gerasimov said.

The statement by Gerasimov comes a day after US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley ominously stated that the US was “prepared” to take action in Syria to halt civilian bombing in Syria if the UN refrained from doing so. “When the international community consistently fails to act, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action,” Haley said. “We warn any nation determined to impose its will through chemical attacks and inhuman suffering, but most especially the outlaw Syrian regime, the United States remains prepared to act if we must.”

In that same session, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said that al-Qaeda linked militants had already used chemical weapons in East Ghouta.

The Russian Ministry of Defense will take retaliatory measures against the U.S. if there are any “threat to the lives” of Russian armed forces in Syria, Gerasimov warned.

“At the same time, Russian military advisors, members of the Russian Reconciliation Center for the Conflicting Sides and military policemen are staying in the Syrian Defense Ministry’s facilities in Damascus. In case there is a threat to the lives of our military, the Russian Armed Force will take retaliatory measures both over the missiles and carriers that will use them,” he said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nruCoO478Kk

Politics

Pentagon Officials Say They Can’t Decide on Which Rebels to Trust in Syria

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It’s been two weeks since President Obama started the bombing initiative of Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) positions in Syria, and the Pentagon leadership hasn’t made a decision on which Syrian rebels are trustworthy and capable enough to assist in taking territory away from the jihadist group.

Since the United States doesn’t want to commit U.S. ground troops, the military is considering raising a Syrian rebel force, which would be crucial for destroying ISIS and their footholds.

“No decision has been made as to who will lead the program,” said Commander Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, to the Guardian.

Once selected for the training, the rebels will be led by Major General Michael Nagata, a special operations veteran. The supposedly moderate Free Syrian Army is expected to form the kernel of the proxy force, reported the Guardian. Nagata smeared journalists Seymour Hersh and Jeremy Scahill in a classified briefing after they published separate articles exposing secret U.S. military operations inside Pakistan.

The Pentagon hopes to have an initial force of about 5,000. Estimates of ISIS fighters range from 20,000 to over 30,000. According to officials, it would take approximately 8 months to prepare the ground troops.

One of the main questions that hangs over the operation is that the U.S. wants to use “vetted” and “moderate” Syrians against ISIS, but those fighters have consistently lost group to both ISIS and al Qaeda linked groups.

Benswann.com reported Vice President Joe Biden admitting “there is no moderate middle in Syria” and compared these fighters to “shop keepers.”

But the Obama administration and the mainstream continues the charade that the US is only supporting “moderate” rebels.

Recently talk show host Michael Savage told Alex Jones that he wasn’t buying the narrative of the US airstrikes on ISIS. Savage questioned why the US hasn’t targeted the Abrams tanks that ISIS took from the Iraqi army.

Savage asked Jones, “Have you seen one Abrams tank blown up?”

“No,” said Savage. “This entire war against ISIS is a sham. It’s a pretext for invading Syria, taking down Assad…”

Robert Dreyfuss in his book, Devil’s Game, How the US helped Unleash Fundamental Islam, states the US has supported radical Islamic activism over the past six decades, “sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly,” and is thus “partly to blame for the emergence of Islamic terrorism as a world-wide phenomenon.”

Dreyfuss cites a statement from Chas Freeman, “The neoconservatives’ intention in Iraq was never to truly build democracy there. Their intention was to flatten it, to remove Iraq as a regional threat to Israel.”

It could be possible that America’s strategy is to continue to supply arms to rebels – which ultimately falls into the hands of ISIS – through covert and overt operations in order to keep the Middle East in chaos.

After all, many analysts believe that a Middle East that is unstable with sectarian squabbles and no central power threatening Israel is in America’s best interest.