Posted on 09/08/2013 8:45:19 AM PDT by BarnacleCenturion
“Common sense...” Really? I think all sober analysts actually believed that a false flag was “common sense,” given the fact that Obomba had his “red line” and the UN inspectors has just arrived in Damascus. THAT is “common sense.” I feel badly for our intelligence analysts and military commanders that are being gang-pressed into this thing. There will be some best sellers coming out authored by some of them, down the line...
But..but Mr. Kerry said this isn’t about getting involved in their civil war! I’m so confused!
Barry's malignant narcissism is on full display, here, and everyone around him is scrambling to come up with a solution that won't either send him into complete meltdown, or trigger WWIII.
Of course, if he doesn't get his way, he may just find a way to start WWIII out of spite.
I've never in life considered "prepping" before now, but find myself building a modest stock of essentials, just in case the "just in time" supply chain is rocked by some as-yet unknown global upheaval in the not-too-distant future.
Thanks for the Ping on the UT's new home. . .
BFD. A "common-sense test" rather than "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence" makes it clear that Barack Obama is an Indonesian Sunni Muslim, and NOT a United States citizen. And that he didn't register with Selective Service when he was 18, because he was a foreign student.
That and a quarter won't get you a cup of coffee...
So - STFU, Obama.
Good suggestion, along with: “Do ya hear what I’m sayin’?”
We have no business there. Zero. Zip. Nada.
Welcome for the ping.
Waiting for the child like emperor to meltdown and spark a global war myself.
Expect Jarret to be behind anything of that kind, faithful Iranian that she is.
So it’s common sense to bomb Syrians because Syrians are bombing Syrians and we sell the bombs to some of the jihad Syrians already. Ok.
you have to be a person that really hates America or you are a total moron to want to be such an assclown's chief of staff.
Excuse me but common sense would tell anyone with a brain that the rebels did this. They were losing the war and they needed to do this horrible thing to get us into backing them. Whoever was winning didn’t need to do this. This is the common sense this administration doesn’t have.
My common sense tells me the government is/was winning and had no need to use chemical weapons.
On the other hand, the rebels who are losing have EVERY reason to use them.
But I think the truth is that the rebels were planning to use them but had an accident and killed themselves and all their neighbors when they screwed up. Sort of like a bomb maker who blows themselves up by accident.
Absolutely right! Why would the one winning the war do something stupid like this and risk bringing in the US? This administration has no common sense. They are intellectual eggheads with a lot of book learning but zero common sense. This whole episode just boggles the mind. We are still dependent on foreign oil because of a void of common sense that would tell us that we have all the oil we would need right here to be energy independent. But, BO continues to insist on wind and solar. Stupid! We drive cars that run on gasoline. Why is this so hard to understand, BO?
Absolutely right! Why would the one winning the war do something stupid like this and risk bringing in the US? This administration has no common sense. They are intellectual eggheads with a lot of book learning but zero common sense. This whole episode just boggles the mind. We are still dependent on foreign oil because of a void of common sense that would tell us that we have all the oil we would need right here to be energy independent. But, BO continues to insist on wind and solar. Stupid! We drive cars that run on gasoline. Why is this so hard to understand, BO?
Since they HAVE no common sense, that’s a moot point, doncha think?
It is becoming well known, “who did it”, which is why the White Hut is talking nonsense about “Common Sense.”
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(Almost one year ago:) Panetta: We’ve Lost Track of Some Syrian Chemical Weapons
September 4, 2013 5:31:31 PM · 8 of 8
Candor7 to Libloather
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3062120/posts
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EXCLUSIVE: Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3061869/posts
Clarification: Dale Gavlak assisted in the research and writing process of this article, but was not on the ground in Syria. Reporter Yahya Ababneh, with whom the report was written in collaboration, was the correspondent on the ground in Ghouta who spoke directly with the rebels, their family members, victims of the chemical weapons attacks and local residents.
Gavlak is a MintPress News Middle East correspondent who has been freelancing for the AP as a Amman, Jordan correspondent for nearly a decade. This report is not an Associated Press article; rather it is exclusive to MintPress News.
Ghouta, Syria — As the machinery for a U.S.-led military intervention in Syria gathers pace following last week’s chemical weapons attack, the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.
Interviews with people in Damascus and Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital, where the humanitarian agency Doctors Without Borders said at least 355 people had died last week from what it believed to be a neurotoxic agent, appear to indicate as much.
The U.S., Britain, and France as well as the Arab League have accused the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the chemical weapons attack, which mainly targeted civilians. U.S. warships are stationed in the Mediterranean Sea to launch military strikes against Syria in punishment for carrying out a massive chemical weapons attack. The U.S. and others are not interested in examining any contrary evidence, with U.S Secretary of State John Kerry saying Monday that Assad’s guilt was “a judgment … already clear to the world.”
However, from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the dealing gas attack.
“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.
Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion. The father described the weapons as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”
Ghouta townspeople said the rebels were using mosques and private houses to sleep while storing their weapons in tunnels.
Abdel-Moneim said his son and the others died during the chemical weapons attack. That same day, the militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is linked to al-Qaida, announced that it would similarly attack civilians in the Assad regime’s heartland of Latakia on Syria’s western coast, in purported retaliation.
“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K.’ “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”
“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.
A well-known rebel leader in Ghouta named ‘J’ agreed. “Jabhat al-Nusra militants do not cooperate with other rebels, except with fighting on the ground. They do not share secret information. They merely used some ordinary rebels to carry and operate this material,” he said.
“We were very curious about these arms. And unfortunately, some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions,” ‘J’ said.
Doctors who treated the chemical weapons attack victims cautioned interviewers to be careful about asking questions regarding who, exactly, was responsible for the deadly assault.
The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders added that health workers aiding 3,600 patients also reported experiencing similar symptoms, including frothing at the mouth, respiratory distress, convulsions and blurry vision. The group has not been able to independently verify the information.
More than a dozen rebels interviewed reported that their salaries came from the Saudi government.
Saudi involvement In a recent article for Business Insider, reporter Geoffrey Ingersoll highlighted Saudi Prince Bandar’s role in the two-and-a-half year Syrian civil war. Many observers believe Bandar, with his close ties to Washington, has been at the very heart of the push for war by the U.S. against Assad.
Ingersoll referred to an article in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks alleging that Bandar offered Russian President Vladimir Putin cheap oil in exchange for dumping Assad.
“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” Ingersoll wrote.
“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Bandar allegedly told the Russians.
“Along with Saudi officials, the U.S. allegedly gave the Saudi intelligence chief the thumbs up to conduct these talks with Russia, which comes as no surprise,” Ingersoll wrote.
“Bandar is American-educated, both military and collegiate, served as a highly influential Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., and the CIA totally loves this guy,” he added.
According to U.K.’s Independent newspaper, it was Prince Bandar’s intelligence agency that first brought allegations of the use of sarin gas by the regime to the attention of Western allies in February.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the CIA realized Saudi Arabia was “serious” about toppling Assad when the Saudi king named Prince Bandar to lead the effort.
“They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn’t: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout,” it said.
Bandar has been advancing Saudi Arabia’s top foreign policy goal, WSJ reported, of defeating Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies.
To that aim, Bandar worked Washington to back a program to arm and train rebels out of a planned military base in Jordan.
The newspaper reports that he met with the “uneasy Jordanians about such a base”:
His meetings in Amman with Jordan’s King Abdullah sometimes ran to eight hours in a single sitting. “The king would joke: ‘Oh, Bandar’s coming again? Let’s clear two days for the meeting,’ ” said a person familiar with the meetings.
Jordan’s financial dependence on Saudi Arabia may have given the Saudis strong leverage. An operations center in Jordan started going online in the summer of 2012, including an airstrip and warehouses for arms. Saudi-procured AK-47s and ammunition arrived, WSJ reported, citing Arab officials.
Although Saudi Arabia has officially maintained that it supported more moderate rebels, the newspaper reported that “funds and arms were being funneled to radicals on the side, simply to counter the influence of rival Islamists backed by Qatar.”
But rebels interviewed said Prince Bandar is referred to as “al-Habib” or ‘the lover’ by al-Qaida militants fighting in Syria.
Peter Oborne, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, has issued a word of caution about Washington’s rush to punish the Assad regime with so-called ‘limited’ strikes not meant to overthrow the Syrian leader but diminish his capacity to use chemical weapons:
Consider this: the only beneficiaries from the atrocity were the rebels, previously losing the war, who now have Britain and America ready to intervene on their side. While there seems to be little doubt that chemical weapons were used, there is doubt about who deployed them.
It is important to remember that Assad has been accused of using poison gas against civilians before. But on that occasion, Carla del Ponte, a U.N. commissioner on Syria, concluded that the rebels, not Assad, were probably responsible.
Some information in this article could not be independently verified. Mint Press News will continue to provide further information and updates .
Dale Gavlak is a Middle East correspondent for Mint Press News and has reported from Amman, Jordan, writing for the Associated Press, NPR and BBC. An expert in Middle Eastern affairs, Gavlak covers the Levant region, writing on topics including politics, social issues and economic trends. Dale holds a M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. Contact Dale at dgavlak@mintpressnews.com
Yahya Ababneh is a Jordanian freelance journalist and is currently working on a master’s degree in journalism, He has covered events in Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Libya. His stories have appeared on Amman Net, Saraya News, Gerasa News and elsewhere.
Common Sense Test: A test to see if you believe whatever Obama says.
I wholeheartedly dissagree ! The USA is up to its eyeballs in debt with the world banking system, every one of these wealthy dictator states that gets toppled chips away at the debt, Assad will be killed and regime toppled, he has to go, they already took his money, now its just a matter of closing the deal,(just like sadaam and ghadaffy)
you didnt really think it was about averting a humanitarian disaster did you ?
Sure.
It couldn’t be the rebels trying to make the government look bad so they could coerce the rest of the world into taking Assad out for them, now could it?
There was some fancy diplomatic dancing going on when Bush1 sent USA troops against Hussain. Just read about how that lady US ambassador bamboozled Hussain.
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