by Seymour Hersh, London Review of Books, April 6, 2014
http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
Hersh shows how the neocons and the Turks very nearly mousetrapped Obama into a major war with Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry was not telling the truth on Aug. 30, 2013 when he declared, 35 times, “we know” that the Syrian regime was responsible for the Aug. 21, 2013 chemical event near Damascus. He did NOT know; he adduced no evidence. Hersh presents a convincing case that the perpetrators were NOT the Syrian government but the “rebels.”
While the neocon-dominated media beat the drums for what Kerry called an “unbelievably small war,” Hersh writes that the “small war” was also a fiction. Rather, it was to be Shock and Awe Number 2.
Integrity thwarted it. Honest British and US military and intelligence officers, led by gutsy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, nipped war in the bud. Dempsey told Obama the truth, leaving Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham fulminating as they complained at White House the following day. The neocons would not get their war with Syria.
Worse still from the neocons’ point of view, Vladimir Putin moved quickly to pull Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by getting the Syrians to agree to give their chemical weapons over to be destroyed.
No wonder the neocons hate Putin so much. I’m reminded of why those “Indian savages” kept hating Gene Autry. They hated him yet from an earlier movie!