How a false-flag chemical attack near Damascus almost mousetrapped Obama into launching “shock and awe (II)” on Syria in late summer 2013.

New evidence from Turkish court proceedings and a Turkish Parliamentarian adds to the many previous signs that the perpetrators of the sarin attack were, in fact, rebels in Syria supported and supplied by Turkey. Sounds of Dissent’s John Grebe of WZBC-Boston on January 2 gave Ray the hour needed to explain what happened and the implications.

Before you listen: Doesn’t what you’ve seen in the NY Times convince you that Assad “gassed his own people?” Please listen:

https://archive.org/details/DidRebelsUseSarinGasRayMcGovernWZBC

​A Call for Proof on Syria-Sarin Attack

Documentary evidence based on an official Turkish investigation-then-cover-up corroborates earlier reporting that rebels in Syria – with the indispensable support of Turkey — were responsible for the chemical attack, not President Assad’s government (as U.S. officials and media stenographers keep claiming).

By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, December 22, 2015

A Call for Proof on Syria-Sarin Attack

In Moscow on Dec. 10, Ray asked former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Flynn about the August 21, 2013 sarin attack outside Damascus that brought the U.S. inches from applying “shock and awe” to Syria. Like, whose sarin was it?

It happened on Gen. Flynn’s watch; he was in charge of DIA at the time; but, alas, he could not remember the incident. Early Alzheimer’s?

Ray’s was the first question in the Q & A following an interview of Flynn by RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze. It begins at minute 29:45. The other questions are also interesting; the answers not so much.

 

A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes

by Robert Parry, Dec. 16, 2015

A Blind Eye Toward Turkey’s Crimes

To refresh memories, in late summer 2013 Secretary of State John Kerry, the neocons, and the Fawning Corporate Media – all lusting for an open U.S. armed offensive to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – came within inches of mousetrapping President Obama into ordering a “shock and awe” attack on Syria.

The proximate casus belli was a sarin attack outside Damascus. It was blamed on the Syrian government, but the intelligence smelled to high heaven. As VIPS wrote in a Memorandum for the President on Sept. 6, 2013, Turkish-supported rebels were probably the culprits – a false-flag attack their chosen modus operandi.

Better late than never, confirmation has finally come that Turkish intelligence, not Bashar al-Assad, was responsible for the infamous sarin gas attacks outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. Intelligence analysts, including those in the Defense Intelligence Agency, strongly suspected that this was the case, but they were shut down by the White House and Kerry.

Ray had an opportunity to raise this question last Thursday in Moscow during a Q and A following a presentation by Gen. Michael Flynn (DIA Director from 2012 to 2014). Flynn said he did not remember anything about the sarin attack and its aftermath.

But the neocons remembered; they were cheated out of their war. As Ray reported at the time, Paul Wolfowitz and Joe Liebermann looked as though their mothers had just been run over by a truck, when Ray found himself in their company at CNN on Sept. 9, 2013. The ambiance was funereal. The dearly departed – the almost-war on Syria.​

How War on Syria Lost Its Way

On Dec. 3, 2014, Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), then ranking member and now chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, complained bitterly that the U.S. military was poised to launch a “very targeted, very brief” operation against the Syrian government for using chemical weapons before President Obama called off the attack at the last minute.

“I think the worst moment in U.S. foreign policy since I’ve been here, as far as signaling to the world where we were as a nation, was August a year ago when we had a 10-hour operation that was getting ready to take place in Syria but it didn’t happen.”

Well, bummer.

Corker’s remarks provide insight into the extent of military plans for imminent attack, which were ordered up by the White House in August 2013. A reporter covering Sen. Corker for The Hill dutifully wrote that it was all because Syrian President Bashar Assad defied Obama’s “red line” against using chemical weapons against rebels in the country’s civil war.

Corker added, “In essence — I’m sorry to be slightly rhetorical — we jumped in Putin’s lap, and we are where we are today in Syria.”

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/225844-corker-us-was-poised-to-launch-10-hour-attack-on-syria

Another revealing remark. Yes, Russian President Putin helped pull Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by immediately persuading Assad to give up his chemical weapons for destruction. But the neocons are, if anything, persistent. The Western-instigated coup in Kiev a short six months later was, in part, payback for Putin’s effrontery in easing Obama’s “embarrassment” for having “chickened-out” of the wider war for which the neocons had been salivating.

Security or Surveillance?

Julian Assange (live-streamed), Phil Giraldi, Gregory Copley, and Ray devote an hour to Security or Surveillance: Privacy vs. Anti-Terror Security in the Digital Age at RT observance of its 10th anniversary at Metropol Hotel in Moscow, Dec. 10. Thom Hartmann moderated. (The segment containing Ray’s most relevant remarks is found between minutes 21:00 and 24:35.)

 

Follow-up interview on whether Saudis, Qataris, Turks can now be expected to join the U.S.-led coalition in a serious effort to “destroy” the very terrorists they have been funding, arming, and ushering into Syria. This was the question put to Ray at the start of the interview; it is what he called a “sick joke.” Dec. 15; 9 minutes

Ray highlighted the risk of another provocation by Turkey, NATO’s loose cannon and skillful provocateur. A Turkish member of Parliament had just substantiated much of what Seymour Hersh wrote about Turkey in his April 17, 2014 London Review of Booksarticle, “The Red Line and the Rat Line:”

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

Seven months earlier VIPS had written a more timely (if less comprehensive) Memorandum to the President: Is Syria a Trap? (Sept. 6, 2013)

Obama Warned on Syrian Intel

Both pieces reported that Turkey appeared to have played a key role in the false-flag sarin gas attack outside Damascus on August 21, 2013. Obama came inches from letting himself be mousetrapped by the neocons into launching full-scale war on Syria, with John Kerry leading the charge and groups like “Human Rights Watch” and the NY Times cheering them on.

With Kerry meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and President Putin this week – today (Dec. 15) it turns out, Ray offered some guesses as to what Kerry is likely to hear — besides appeals to rein in the Turks. What neither Kerry nor Obama seem to be able to grasp as yet, is that geography itself makes jihad in Syria and nearby countries a far more urgent problem for Russia than for countries sitting behind a large ocean.

Should it be so difficult to understand Kremlin fears that thousands of the terrorists enlisted, trained by the U.S. and others, paid by the Saudis, and granted safe passage by the Turks hail from, and will go back to, Russia? It is reasonable to assume that upon their return they will constitute huge problems not unlike those Moscow confronted in Chechnya not too long ago. This is not a synthetic concern but a real one, involving what the Kremlin sees as a clear and present danger to Russian national security.