Seymour Hersh Alleges Obama Administration Lied on Syria Gas Attack

Gas Attack, Sarin[Note from BZ: The 76-year-old Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer award winner, a George Orwell and Polk winner, who exposed the My Lai massacre in 1969 and reported on Abu Ghraib as well.  He is no shill for Republicans or Conservatives whatsoever.]

From YahooNews.com:

by Adrian Lee

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has dropped yet another bombshell allegation: President Obama wasn’t honest with the American people when he blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a sarin-gas attack in that killed hundreds of civilians.

In early September, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States had proof that the nerve-gas attack was made on Assad’s orders. “We know the Assad regime was responsible,” President Obama told the nation in an address days after this revelation, which he said pushed him over the “red line” in considering military intervention.

But in a long story published Sunday for the London Review of Books, Hersh — best known for his exposés on the cover-ups of the My Lai Massacre and of Abu Ghraib – said the administration “cherry-picked intelligence,” citing conversations with intelligence and military officials.

That was, if you recall, the predicating event that Mr Obama wanted to use for an incursion into Syria including placement of “boots on the ground.”

Mr Hersh writes (from the London Review of Books):

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.

Please read both articles entirely.  And please see my posts on Syria here and here and here and here and here.

Proving, once again, that Obama is

Obama, Lying to AmericaAnd that he is a

Obama - Dangerously Incompetent WAR MONGERIt turns out that Mr Obama is in fact a dangerous war monger.

BZ

 

 

Saudis offer Russia secret oil deal if it drops Syria

Kerry has said: “the bombing begins Thursday.”

Here is an important headline from Tuesday, from the UK Telegraph:

Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria.

The strategic jitters pushed Brent crude prices to a five-month high of $112 a barrel. “We are only one incident away from a serious oil spike. The market is a lot tighter than people think,” said Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review.

Leaked transcripts of a closed-door meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan shed an extraordinary light on the hard-nosed Realpolitik of the two sides.

That said, where does it leave the United States?  Hanging precariously?  Promises of oil contracts denied?  Broken?

Or does Saudi Arabia fear Russia — and its potential response — more than it fears the United States?

President Putin has long been pushing for a global gas cartel, issuing the `Moscow Declaration’ last to month “defend suppliers and resist unfair pressure”. This would entail beefing up the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), a talking shop. 

Apparently, a clear Russian intervention if the US and/or other countries involve themselves in Syria.

The Putin-Bandar meeting was stormy, replete with warnings of a “dramatic turn” in Syria. Mr Putin was unmoved by the Saudi offer, though western pressure has escalated since then. “Our stance on Assad will never change. We believe that the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters,” he said, referring to footage showing a Jihadist rebel eating the heart and liver of a Syrian soldier.

Prince Bandar in turn warned that there can be “no escape from the military option” if Russia declines the olive branch. Events are unfolding exactly as he foretold.

Are you listening, Mr Obama?

BZ