{"id":240960,"date":"2016-04-30T12:44:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T12:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=240960"},"modified":"2016-04-30T14:23:28","modified_gmt":"2016-04-30T14:23:28","slug":"saymour-hersh-says-hillary-approved-sending-libyas-sarin-syrian-rebels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/saymour-hersh-says-hillary-approved-sending-libyas-sarin-syrian-rebels\/","title":{"rendered":"Seymour Hersh Says Hillary Approved Sending Libya\u2019s Sarin to Syrian Rebels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in two previous articles in the London Review of Books<\/i> (\u201cWhose Sarin?\u201d<\/span><\/a> and \u201cThe Red Line and the Rat Line\u201d<\/span><\/a>) has reported that the Obama Administration falsely blamed the government of Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad for the sarin gas attack that Obama was trying to use as an excuse to invade Syria; and Hersh pointed to a report from British intelligence saying that the sarin that was used didn\u2019t come from Assad\u2019s stockpiles. Hersh also said that a secret agreement in 2012 was reached between the Obama Administration and the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to set up a sarin gas attack and blame it on Assad so that the U.S. could invade and overthrow Assad. \u201cBy the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi\u2019s arsenals into Syria.\u201d Hersh didn\u2019t say whether these \u201carms\u201d included the precursor chemicals for making sarin which were stockpiled in Libya, but there have<\/span><\/a> been multiple<\/span><\/a> independent reports<\/span><\/a> that Libya\u2019s Gaddafi possessed such stockpiles, and also that the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Libya was operating a \u201crat line\u201d for Gaddafi\u2019s captured weapons into Syria through Turkey. So, Hersh isn\u2019t the only reporter who has been covering this. Indeed, the investigative journalist Christof Lehmann headlined on 7 October 2013, \u201cTop US and Saudi Officials responsible for Chemical Weapons in Syria\u201d<\/span><\/a> and reported, on the basis of very different sources than Hersh used, that \u201cEvidence leads directly to the White House, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, CIA Director John Brennan, Saudi Intelligence Chief Prince Bandar, and Saudi Arabia\u00b4s Interior Ministry.\u201d And, as if that weren\u2019t enough, even the definitive analysis of the evidence that was performed by two leading U.S. analysts, the Lloyd-Postal report<\/span><\/a>, concluded that, \u201cThe US Government\u2019s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT.\u201d Obama has clearly been lying.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, now, for the first time, Hersh has implicated Hillary Clinton directly in this \u201crat line.\u201d In\u00a0an interview with Alternet.org<\/span><\/a>, Hersh was asked about the then-U.S.-Secretary-of-State\u2019s role in the Benghazi Libya U.S. consulate\u2019s operation to collect weapons from Libyan stockpiles and send them through Turkey into Syria for a set-up sarin-gas attack, to be blamed on Assad in order to \u2018justify\u2019 the U.S. invading Syria, as the U.S. had invaded Libya to eliminate Gaddafi. Hersh said:<\/span><\/p>\n

That ambassador who was killed, he was known as a guy, from what I understand, as somebody, who would not get in the way of the CIA. As I wrote, on the day of the\u00a0mission he was meeting with the CIA base chief and the shipping company. He was certainly involved, aware and witting of everything that was going on. And there\u2019s no way\u00a0somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by some channel.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

This was, in fact, the Syrian part of the State Department\u2019s Libyan operation, Obama\u2019s operation to set up an excuse for the U.S.\u00a0doing in Syria what they had already done in Libya<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The interviewer then asked:<\/span><\/p>\n

In the book\u00a0<\/i>[Hersh\u2019s\u00a0The Killing of Osama bin Laden<\/i>, just out<\/span><\/a>]\u00a0you quote a former intelligence official as saying that the White House rejected 35 target sets\u00a0<\/i>[for the planned U.S. invasion of Syria]\u00a0provided by the Joint Chiefs as being insufficiently\u00a0painful to the Assad regime. (You note that the original targets included military sites only \u2014 nothing by way of civilian infrastructure.)\u00a0Later the White House\u00a0proposed a target list that included civilian infrastructure.\u00a0What would the toll to civilians have been if the White House\u2019s proposed strike had been carried out?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Hersh responded by saying that the U.S. tradition in that regard has long been to ignore civilian casualties; i.e., collateral damage of U.S. attacks is okay or even desired (so as to terrorize the population into surrender) \u2014 not an \u2018issue\u2019, except, perhaps, for the PR people.<\/span><\/p>\n

The interviewer asked why Obama is so obsessed to replace Assad in Syria, since “The power vacuum that would ensue would open Syria up to all kinds of jihadi groups\u201d; and Hersh replied that not only he, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff, \u201cnobody could figure out why.\u201d He said, “Our policy has always been against him [Assad]. Period.\u201d This has actually been the case not only since the Party that Assad leads, the Ba\u2019ath Party, was the subject of\u00a0a shelved CIA coup-plot in 1957 to overthrow and replace it<\/span><\/a>; but, actually,\u00a0the CIA\u2019s first coup had been not just planned but was carried out in 1949 in Syria<\/span><\/a>, overthrowing there a democratically elected leader, in order to enable a pipeline for the Sauds\u2019 oil to become built through Syria into the largest oil market, Europe; and, construction of the pipeline started the following year. But, there were then a succession of Syrian coups (domestic instead of by foreign powers \u2014 1954<\/span><\/a>, 1963<\/span><\/a>, 1966<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0and, finally, in\u00a01970<\/span><\/a>), concluding in the accession to power of Hafez al-Assad during the 1970 coup. And, the Sauds\u2019 long-planned\u00a0Trans-Arabia Pipeline<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has\u00a0still<\/i>\u00a0not been built. The Saudi royal family, who own the world\u2019s largest oil company, Aramco, don\u2019t want to wait any longer. Obama is the first U.S. President to have seriously tried to carry out their long-desired \u201cregime change\u201d in Syria, so as to enable not only the Sauds\u2019 Trans-Arabian Pipeline to\u00a0be<\/i>\u00a0built, but also to build through Syria the Qatar-Turkey Gas Pipeline<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that the Thani royal family (friends of the Sauds) who own Qatar want also to be built there. The U.S. is allied with the Saud family (and with their friends, the royal families of Qatar, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, and Oman). Russia is allied with the leaders of Syria \u2014 as Russia had earlier been allied with Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, Hussein in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya, and Yanukovych in Ukraine<\/span><\/a> (all of whom except<\/i> Syria\u2019s Ba\u2019ath Party, the U.S. has successfully overthrown).<\/span><\/p>\n

Hersh was wrong to say that \u201cnobody could figure out why\u201d Obama is obsessed with overthrowing Assad and his Ba\u2019ath Party, even if nobody that he spoke with was willing to\u00a0say<\/i>\u00a0why. They have all been hired to do a job, which didn\u2019t change even when the Soviet Union ended and the Warsaw Pact was disbanded; and, anyone who has been at this job for as long as those people were, can pretty well figure out what the job actually is \u2014 even if Hersh can\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hersh then said that Obama wanted to fill Syria with foreign jihadists to serve as the necessary ground forces for his planned aerial bombardment there, and, \u201cif you wanted to go there and fight there in 2011-2013, \u2018Go, go, go\u2026 overthrow Bashar!\u2019 So, they actually pushed a lot of people [jihadists] to go. I don\u2019t think they were paying for them but they certainly gave visas.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s not actually part of America\u2019s deal with its allies the fundamentalist-Sunni Arabic royal families and the fundamentalist Sunni Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, for the U.S. to supply the salaries<\/span><\/a> (to be \u201cpaying for them,\u201d as Hersh put it there) to those fundamentalist Sunni jihadists \u2014 that\u2019s instead the function of the Sauds<\/span><\/a> and of their friends, the other Arab royals, and their friends<\/span><\/a>, to do. (Those are the people who finance the terrorists to perpetrate attacks in the U.S., Europe, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, India, Nigeria, etc. \u2014 i.e., anywhere except in their own<\/i> countries.) And, Erdogan in Turkey mainly gives their jihadists just safe passage into Syria, and he takes part of the proceeds from the jihadists\u2019 sales of stolen Syrian and Iraqi oil. But, they all work together as a team (with the jihadists sometimes killing each other in the process \u2014\u00a0that\u2019s even part of the plan<\/span><\/a>) \u2014 though each national leader has PR problems at home in order to fool his respective public into thinking that they\u2019re against terrorists, and that only the \u2018enemy\u2019 is to blame. (Meanwhile, the aristocrats who supply the \u201csalaries\u201d<\/span><\/a> of the jihadists, walk off with all the money.)<\/span><\/p>\n

This way, U.S oil and gas companies will refine, and pipeline into Europe, the Sauds\u2019 oil and the Thanis\u2019 gas<\/span><\/a>, and not only will Russia\u2019s major oil-and-gas market become squeezed away by that, but Obama\u2019s economic sanctions against Russia, plus the yet-further isolation of Russia (as well as of China and the rest of the BRICS countries) by excluding them from Obama\u2019s three mega-trade-deals (TTIP, TPP & TISA)<\/span><\/a>, will place the U.S. aristocracy firmly in control of the world, to dominate the 21st Century, as it has dominated ever since the end of WW II. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then, came this question from Hersh: \u201cWhy does America do what it does? Why do we not say to the Russians, Let\u2019s work together?\u201d His interviewer immediately seconded that by repeating it, \u201cSo why don\u2019t we work closer with Russia? It seems so rational.\u201d Hersh replied simply: \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d He didn\u2019t venture so much as a guess \u2014 not even an educated one. But, when journalists who are as knowledgeable as he, don\u2019t present some credible explanation, to challenge the obvious lies (which make no sense that accords with the blatantly contrary evidence those journalists know of against those lies) that come from people such as Barack Obama, aren\u2019t they thereby \u2014 though passively \u2014 participating in the fraud<\/i>, instead of contradicting and challenging it? Or, is the underlying assumption, there: The general public is going to be as deeply immersed in the background information here as I am, so that they don\u2019t need me to bring it all together for them into a coherent (and fully documented) whole, which does<\/i> make sense? Is that<\/i> the underlying assumption? Because: if it is, it\u2019s false<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hersh\u2019s journalism is among the best (after all: he went so far as to say, of Christopher Stephens<\/span><\/a>, regarding Hillary Clinton, \u201cthere\u2019s no way\u00a0somebody in that sensitive of a position is not talking to the boss, by some channel\u201d), but it\u2019s certainly not good enough<\/i>. However, it\u2019s\u00a0too good to be published any longer in places like the New Yorker<\/i><\/span><\/a>. And the reporting by\u00a0Christof Lehmann<\/span><\/a>\u00a0was better, and it was issued even earlier than Hersh\u2019s; and it is<\/i> good enough, because it named names, and it explained motivations, in an honest and forthright way, which is why\u00a0Lehmann\u2019s piece<\/span><\/a>\u00a0was published only on a Montenegran site, and only online, not in a Western print medium, such as the New Yorker<\/i>. The sites that are owned by members of the Western aristocracy don\u2019t issue reports like that \u2014 journalism that\u2019s good enough<\/i>. They won\u2019t inform the public when a U.S. Secretary of State, and her boss the U.S. President, are the persons actually behind a sarin gas attack they\u2019re blaming on a foreign leader the U.S. aristocrats and their allied foreign aristocrats are determined to topple and replace.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is this really<\/i> a democracy<\/span><\/a>?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org The great investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in two previous articles in the London Review of Books (\u201cWhose Sarin?\u201d and \u201cThe Red Line and the Rat Line\u201d) has reported that the Obama Administration falsely blamed the government of Syria\u2019s Bashar al-Assad for the sarin gas attack that Obama was trying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":240477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[32,951,96,535,954,698,1037,882,804,524,10937,754,523,76,40,1024],"class_list":{"0":"post-240960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-cia","9":"tag-clinton","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-global-news","12":"tag-hillary","13":"tag-hillary-clinton","14":"tag-interview","15":"tag-libya","16":"tag-politics-2","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-sarin","19":"tag-syria","20":"tag-ukraine","21":"tag-warfare","22":"tag-white-house","23":"tag-ww3"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}