US closes Embassy in Syria

[ziggystarlust]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/us-closes-embassy-in-damascus-pulls-american-diplomats-out-of-syria/2012/02/06/gIQAAGhrtQ_story.html?tid=sm_twitter_washingtonpost

 

[bngenoh]

This is pretty weird, i have never seen a newspaper article like this. All it says is:

WASHINGTON — US closes embassy in Damascus, pulls American diplomats out of Syria.

Absolutely no context at all.

 

[Biomiast]

The only context is, when Obama said they want to solve Syria issue peacefully, U.S. embassy was being evacuated at the same time. So, they didn't write it as it is because that would be admitting U.S. embassy personel disregards President's words and run away, or it would mean despite what Obama said about peaceful solutions, they will attack Syria.

 

[Ðekel]

when embassies are being closed... Beware.

 

[1984]

Here's a bit more on the closing: https://www.sott.net/articles/show/241191-U-S-closes-embassy-in-Damascus-due-to-Syria-violence

 

[paralleloscope]

This is pretty weird, i have never seen a newspaper article like this. All it says is:

It says twitter in the address line but it's still weird that such a message travels alone, with no links to press release or reuters blurb.

 

[Nević Nenad]

They have done their job, so leaving now. Time for the air force now, it seems (I would say that they will start in a month or so. The usual "modus operandi")

 

[bngenoh]

Here's a bit more on the closing: https://www.sott.net/articles/show/241191-U-S-closes-embassy-in-Damascus-due-to-Syria-violence

Thanks for the link 1984, i found this telling:

"Together with other senior U.S. officials, Ambassador Ford will maintain contacts with the Syrian opposition and continue our efforts to support the peaceful political transition which the Syrian people have so bravely sought,"

because i don't even think they believe that this vomit of theirs works anymore, but still they do it, it's like a computer going error, error,... It's very reminiscent of Libya with the head of the opposition officially in D.C.

It says twitter in the address line but it's still weird that such a message travels alone, with no links to press release or reuters blurb.

Yeah that's what i meant parallel.

 

[loreta]

Canada, via their web page, tells the citizens living in Syria to leave the country, and this since about 2 months ago. And also advertise to Canadians NOT to travel to Syria. Yes, they will attack Syria as they did to Libya!

 

[paralleloscope]

France and italy to follow UK/US withdrawal of embassy personnel as Assad meets Russia's Lavrov.
_http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/feb/07/assad-russia-lavrov-syria-video

 

[Mr Meowgi]

I believe this was foretold prior to the beginning of the year on SOTT. There was an article saying to pull all non-essential personnel out of Syria by I believe 1/15/2012 or something like that. This has been planned.

 

[Esote]

The end of a very good article in January from Jeremy Salt, who teaches the history of the modern Middle East in the Department of Political science, Bilkent University, Ankara :

The west is on the hunt for another war in the Middle East. This is the essence of the campaign against Syria. Iran is being provoked every other day. This week another nuclear scientist was assassinated. The clear intention is to goad Iran into retaliating, providing the pretext for the armed attack that many in Israel and the US want. There is no question that Syria needs to reform but anyone who thinks that the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are campaigning against Syria for the cause of reform is living in a dream world. Every wild accusation made by activists and dutifully reported by the media is grist to their mill. They don't want the violence to end. They want it continue until the Syrian government is destroyed, and they have the resources to keep this going virtually endlessly. If they take the plunge and launch an open attack on Syria or Iran they are likely to trigger off a regional war and, in the view of some, a global war. In their grey suits and pastel ties, these people are as crazy as any fascist in a brown uniform.

Brown uniforms for a New Era with 'purity' of the human race motives, being replaced by grey suits for a New World Order with 'humanitarian' motives...
Don't worry, they wear pastel ties (so cute), are politically correct and their wars are pretty clean !

 

[Biomiast]

Alright, this report comes from an Iranian source, Press TV, but I couldn't open their site, so I link Alex Jones instead. The U.S. Scenario against Syria is described in this report as:

Informed sources have uncovered a US plot entailing a Turkish incursion and a full-scale Israeli strike to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

The sources said aspects of the plan such as rejecting calls by Damascus for an Arab League meeting over the crisis in the country, recognizing of the Syrian opposition as the “legitimate” government of the country and granting them offices in Turkey to work against the Syrian government, have already been carried out.As part of the plan, Syrian embassies and consulates would be attacked in several countries and the diplomatic offices would be used as bases to inflict heavy blows on the Syrian government.

According to the sources, the other parts of the US plot which are in process or expected to happen in the near future include:

- Firstly the Syrian government will be demonized as a war criminal and its case will be taken to The Hague and international human rights bodies.

- Washington will then task Turkey with sending troops across the border into Syria to incite internal friction and civil war within the country by arming Syrian civilians and the opposition against the government.

- In the next step, Washington will arm Wahhabi fighters and members of the Fath al-Islam in Tripoli, supported by the Qatari army and Libyan fighters, and order them to attack Syrian border villages.

- Israel will jump into the fray by expressing readiness to carry out military operations against Syria.

_http://www.infowars.com/us-scenario-in-syria-exposed-turkish-incursion-israeli-invasion/

I don't know how accurate this is, we just have to wait and see. I am sick of those vultures who planned these things, attacking countries they want to and leaving the ones they like.

 

[mamadrama]

Also in the news today is a report of the downsizing of the Iraq embassy:

February 8, 2012
U.S. combat troops are gone from Iraq and soon, up to half the diplomatic staff will leave too. State Department officials say it's part of a plan to scale back embassy operations there. But conflicts with the Iraqi government may also be driving the decision. Tim Arango, a reporter with The New York Times, talks to Steve Inskeep about the decision.

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/08/146565915/u-s-to-scale-back-diplomatic-staff-in-iraq

Rats jumping ship? Or merely a reorganization of staffing priorities for elsewhere?

And on the Syrian topic from Global Research:

SYRIA: CIA-MI6 Intel Ops and Sabotage

By Felicity Arbuthnot

Global Research, February 7, 2012



“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, ...a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. ...[to] be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, ...

Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals. ...Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus …

Further : a “necessary degree of fear .. frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention... the CIA and SIS [MI6 should use … capabilitites in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.” (Joint US-UK leaked Intelligence Document, London and Washington, 1957)



“'The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history." (George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair, 1903-1950.)



For anyone in two minds about what is really going on in Syria, and whether President Assad, hailed a decade ago as “A Modern Day Attaturk”, has become the latest megalomaniacal despot, to whose people a US-led posse of nations, must deliver “freedom”, with weapons of mass, home, people, nation and livelihood destruction, here is a salutary tale from modern history.

Have the more recent sabre rattlings against Syria* been based on US-UK government papers, only discovered in 2003 - and since air brushed (or erroneously omitted) from even BBC timelines, on that country?(i)

In late 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, Matthew Jones, a Reader in International History, at London’s Royal Holloway College, discovered “frighteningly frank” documents:1957 plans between then UK Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, and then President, Dwight Eisenhower, endorsing: “a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion (of Syria) by Syria’s pro-western neighbours.” (ii)

At the heart of the plan was the assassination of the perceived power behind then President Shukri al-Quwatli. Those targeted were: Abd al-Hamid Sarraj, Head of Military Intelligence; Afif al-Bizri, Chief of Syrian General Staff: and Khalid Bakdash, who headed the Syrian Communist Party.

The document was drawn up in Washington in the September of 1957:

“In order to facilitate the action of liberative (sic) forces, reduce the capabilities of the regime to organize and direct its military actions … to bring about the desired results in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals.

“Their removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention, and in the light of circumstances existing at the time.”

In the light of President Assad’s current allegations of foreign forces and interventions, cross border incursions (as Colonel Qadafi’s before him, so sneered at by Western governments and media – and, of course, ultimately proved so resoundingly correct.) there are some fascinating, salutary phrases:

“Once a political decision has been reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS (MI6) will attempt to mount minor sabotage and coup de main (sic) incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.

“Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus … care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.”

Further : a “necessary degree of fear .. frontier incidents and (staged) border clashes”, would “provide a pretext for intervention”, by Iraq and Jordan - then still under British mandate.

Syria was to be: “made to appear as sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments … the CIA and SIS [Her Majesty's Secret International Serivce, MI6] should use … capabilities in both psychological and action fields to augment tension.”

Incursions in to Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, would involve: “sabotage, national conspiracies, and various strong arms activities”, were, advised the document, to be blamed on Damascus.

In late December 2011 an opposition “Syria National Council” was announced, to “liberate the country”, representatives met with Hilary Clinton. There now seems to be a US – endorsed “Syrian Revolutionary Council.”

The Eisenhower-Macmillan plan was for funding of the: “Free Syria Committee” and “arming of political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities”, within Syria.

CIA-MI6, planned fomenting internal uprisings and replacing the Ba’ath-Communist-leaning government, with a Western, user-friendly one. Expecting this to be met by public hostility, they planned to: “probably need to rely first on repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power.”

The document was signed off in both London and Washington. It was, wrote Macmillan in his diary: “a most formidable report.” A Report which was: “withheld even from British Chiefs of Staff …”

Washington and Whitehall had become concerned at Syria’s increasingly pro-Soviet, rather than pro-Western sympathies - and the Ba’ath (Pan Arab) and Communist party alliance, also largely allied within the Syrian army.

However, even political concerns, were trumped by Syria then controlling a main pipeline from the Western bonanza of Iraq’s oil fields, in those pre-Saddam Hussein days.

Briefly put: in 1957, Syria allied with Moscow (which included an agreement for military and economic aid) also recognized China - and then as now, the then Soviet Union warned the West against intervening in Syria.

Syria, is unchanged as an independent minded country, and the loyalties remain. It broadly remains the cradle of the Pan Arab ideal of Ba’athism, standing alone, since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

In 1957, this independent mindedness caused Loy Henderson, a Senior State Department official, to say that:“the present regime in Syria had to go …”

Ultimately, the plan was not used, since, British mandate or not, neighbouring countries refused to play. However, the project, overtly, bears striking similarity to the reality of events over the last decade, in Syria – and the region.

In a near 1957 re-run, Britain’s Foreign Minister, William Hague has said President Assad “will feel emboldened” by the UN Russia-China vote in Syria’s favour.

Hilary (“We came, we saw, he died”) Clinton, has called for: “friends of a democratic Syria”, to unite and rally against the Assad government:

“We need to work together to send them a clear message: you cannot hold back the future at the point of a gun”, said the women filmed purportedly watching the extrajudicial, illegal assassination of may be, or may be not, Osma Bin Laden and others – but certainly people were murdered - by US illegal invaders – at the point of lots of guns.

Supremely ironically, she was speaking in Munich (5th February) historically: “The birth place of the Nazi party.”

The Russia-China veto at the UN on actions against Syria, has been condemned by the US, varyingly, as: “Disgusting”, ‘shameful”, “deplorable”, “a travesty.”

Eye opening, is the list of US vetoes to be found at (iii). Jaw dropping double standards can only be wondered at (again.).

Perhaps the bottom line is: in 1957, Iraq’s oil was at the top of the agenda, of which Syria held an important key. Today, it is Iran’s - and as Michel Chossudovsky notes so succinctly: “The road to Tehran is through Damascus.”(iv)

Notes

i. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-14703995

ii. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/27/uk.syria1

iii. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4237/us-on-un-veto_disgusting-shameful-deplorable-a-tra

iv. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25955

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29126

 

[Joe]

I pulled a few ideas together here

https://www.sott.net/articles/show/241383-Syria-s-Bloody-CIA-Revolution-A-Distraction-