Did DC Authorize Syrian Bombing?

Great Al Jazeera interview with Seymour Hersh. The "DC" referred to above is Richard [Dick] Cheney, who appears to have authorized the bombing of Syria last September, without a whiff of notice in the press, Congress, anywhere. 10 minutes reading this should put things into a much clearer perspective. Now, gydieyap, Bushie!
Interview: Seymour Hersh, By Sarah Brown
[...] Al Jazeera spoke to [Seymour Hersh] about the [Syria] bombing, why he feels the media failed on the story, and what it means for the Middle East.
Q: Why did Israel bomb a target in Syria? A: Well I don't have the answers to that direct question - one thing that is terribly significant is that the Israel and its chief ally the US have chosen to say nothing officially about this incident and that's what got me interested - whoever heard of a country bombing another one and not talking about it and thinking they had the right somehow not to talk about it?
[...] Syria of course compounded the problem by being hapless and feckless in response. It took them, I think, until October 1, almost four weeks after the incident before the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, acknowledged it had actually been bombed.
[...] A raid takes place, they announced rather quickly there was an intrusion by the Israelis, they initially say after a couple of days that munitions were bombed, then the foreign minister says in Turkey four or five days after the incident that nothing was bombed however, bombs fell but nothing was hit.
Then, three weeks later, the president says: "Oh, well actually a building was destroyed". You can't programme something that inept and that's a reality. They just weren't very good.
[...] Q: Didn't some of your sources tell you there was evidence to support the theory that the US wanted Israel to test Syria's air defences because they are similar to those of Iran?
A: In the beginning. This plan was staffed – by that I mean it was staffed by the US joint chiefs of staff, it was staffed by people in the vice president’s office.[...] It seems clear from what I've learned from my American friends and the Syrians that the Israelis came right in and the only target they had was the one they bombed.
They weren't looking at any radar site, they just went in and whacked it.
So, then you really get to the next level of questions that I didn't really deal with in the article because it's so hypothetical – who authorised it?
Who did they talk to? I mean Israel does not do a raid like this without talking to the White House and I can't find anybody that knew they were going to hit the facility beforehand.
That could be that just I can't find it, and if not that doesn't mean it's not there, and it could also be that somebody like Dick Cheney, who has done this before, overrode the chain of command.
So in other words, normally all this information about an Israeli attack would soak through to the joint chiefs, but he undercut that process perhaps - he's done it before in other incidents - but I just can't tell you for sure what happened here.
Q: Was the raid's purpose to act as a potential deterrent to Iran?
A: Of course that was the idea for the US, to let the Iranians know that despite the national intelligence estimate "We're ready to ... we have a proxy and the Israelis will go bang for us if we need."
[...] And the [result] was terrific for them, because it gave Olmert a big jump, a big boost of support.[...] For me the US press - I don't think they've come face to face with what happened here.... the newspapers missed without question the biggest moral story of the last decade, which is the illegal road to war in Iraq and we missed it.
And that's not our job, it's not our job to miss that, our job is not to listen to the president. There were elements of the same pattern of "kiss-up" going on and that's very disturbing.
[...] Somebody I know wrote a wonderful essay making the point that Iraq is a dead body, and David Petraeus, the general, and our ambassador Ryan Crocker they're the undertakers, and their job is to keep up with the rouge and the makeup on the body for the next six months until we get past the election - that's their goal.
[...]I just wish many American Jews would read the Israeli papers - particularly Haaretz - more carefully and they would see there's really a vibrant criticism of the Israeli government ... and you just don't see that today.[...]
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ED0FEEAA-BA97-47ED-99B2-06A653CBB82B.htm

Bomb First, Investigate the Rubble Later

I haven't gotten any more news about the missing nukes, but my nose smells a connection here. See these posts for more: April 6, 2008 US, Israel, Syria, Korea and (maybe) Loose Nukes, November 6, 2007 Disappearing Nuclear Reactor!, November 3, 2007 Only the Traitors Know, Who's Bombing Who?
US rebuked over Syria nuclear case
The head of the UN nuclear monitoring agency has criticised the US for withholding intelligence information that it says showed the construction of a nuclear reactor in Syria.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), on Friday also hit out at Israel for bombing the site before inspectors could investigate.
[...] The White House said in a statement on Thursday that Syria "must come clean" over its alleged secret co-operation with North Korea on the reactor.
It also described the alleged assistance as a "dangerous manifestation'' of North Korea's nuclear proliferation activities, but said it would continue six-party talks to try to resolve the nuclear standoff with the isolated nation.
The claims follow a briefing of US congressional officials in Washington DC by intelligence chiefs, including William Hayden, the CIA director. [my bold]
However, some US legislators earlier warned that the claims could wreck vital six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme.
Later on Thursday, Syria's ambassador to the US dismissed claim as a "ridiculous story".
Imad Moustapha told Al Jazeera that his government maintained there was no evidence of any alleged secret nuclear activity.
Timothy Savage, an analyst from the Nautilus Institute, told Al Jazeera that the US claims could be treated with a degree of sceptism.
"The Bush administration doesn't have a great track record with intelligence, so it's natural that people will approach this with some scepticism," he said.
[...] The controversy began last September, when an Israeli air raid destroyed a target in Syrian territory which some reports later said was a nuclear facility being built with North Korean help.
Syria, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has maintained in the past that the site was an unused military facility.
It later razed the site and built a larger building in its place.
The target of Israel's raid has been veiled in secrecy, with US intelligence and government officials refusing to confirm for months that such a raid even took place.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E007835C-444C-47E4-AB72-3FBF4641384C.htm

Carter Decries Israeli Atrocities in Gaza

Carter meets Hamas political chief
Jimmy Carter, a former US president, has met Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader, in the Syrian capital, despite strong opposition from Tel Aviv and Washington.
The controversial meeting was being held at a Hamas office in Damascus and attended by Musa Abu Marzuq and Mohmmed Nazzal, senior figures from the Palestinian movement.
Carter arrived in Syria on Friday and held talks with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, before meeting Meshaal.
[...] On Thursday, Carter met a delegation of Hamas leaders from the Gaza Strip in Cairo and held talks with Husni Mubarak, the Egyptian president.
Speaking to the media, Carter defended his meetings, calling them necessary in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The former US president also described Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip as a crime and an atrocity.
He said Palestinians in Gaza were being "starved to death", receiving fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa.
"It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza," he said. "It's a crime... I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on."
Carter said that US attempts to undermine Hamas have been counterproductive.
His meeting with leaders of Hamas, a group he insists must be included in peace negotiations, has angered many in Washington and Israel, who call the Palestinian group a "terrorist" organisation.
[...] Israel has meanwhile sealed off the West Bank and Gaza for 10 days as it prepares to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Tanks and soldiers moved into position at the crossings following the shutdown that took effect early on Friday, barring Palestinians from the occupied territories from entering Israel.[...]
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AAE23DE4-60F5-4A05-B2B8-949E9E60FF67.htm

Michael Scheuer Shares His Hubris

Although the headline might lead you to believe Mr. Scheuer has become a humanist, the rest of the article shows he is no apologist but simply trying to distance himself from the most outrageous activities that occurred under his watch. I used to think this author of Imperial Hubris was motivated by a clear-eyed understanding of what lines our nation should not cross. Perhaps we have different ideas (and ideals) regarding how deeply the foundation for a moral and ethical civilization must be to create a government of the people, by the people and for the people. But think for yourself, and read on:
'Extraordinary-rendition' procedure unreliable, says CIA vet who created it
COLIN FREEZE
From Monday's Globe and Mail
April 14, 2008 at 4:27 AM EDT
DURHAM, N.C. — The creator of the CIA's "extraordinary-rendition" program says he has always distrusted interrogation intelligence flowing from the controversial practice, given that the admissions it produced were usually "very tainted" by foreign agencies who jailed suspects at the behest of the United States.
Michael Scheuer, an outspoken anti-terrorism crusader, took part in a Duke University law-school panel on Friday. There, experts debated the future of the highly controversial snatch, jail and interrogate program that he created, and whether it should survive beyond the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which has often justified rendition as an intelligence gold mine.
In Canada, rendition has become synonymous with the process that resulted in Ottawa's Maher Arar spending a year in a Syrian jail, where he was beaten with electric cables during the first phases of his captivity. Canadian officials have apologized to the telecommunications engineer and compensated him with $10-million (U.S.), upholding that he was wrongly smeared in intelligence exchanges emanating from Canada, prior to the U.S. decision to render him.
[...] In addition to Mr. Arar's case in Canada, high-profile renditions controversies have arisen in Germany and Italy. Mr. Scheuer made a point of saying he would personally put the German suspect back on a rendition plane, but did not say the same that about the other two cases. The program he conceived was restricted to targeting only the highest level terrorism suspects, he said.
Questioned about the Arar affair, Mr. Scheuer asserted that that rendition was not technically a CIA job, but rather an FBI initiative, by agents working in cahoots with unspecified agencies north of the border.
That prompted a response from Canadian lawyer Ron Atkey, who was in attendance to give a speech about the years he spent inside the Arar Commission battling government secrecy to reveal what Canada knew about the CIA rendition program.
Mr. Atkey pointed out Canadian agencies were found to have had no foreknowledge of the U.S. decision to put Mr. Arar on a Gulfstream jet and fly him to the Middle East, after his 2002 arrest in a New York airport.
"The biggest piece of baloney," Mr. Scheuer said. "They [the Canadians] were totally surprised like Captain Renault in Casablanca," he quipped. [my bold]
The allusion referred to a scene in the 1942 film, where a duplicitous French gendarme shuts down an illegal casino operation in Morocco - saying "I'm shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on in here!" even as he is handed a big win from the roulette wheel.
Mr. Scheuer went on to describe certain U.S. newspaper reporters as "scurrilous" traitors for revealing details of the rendition program.[...]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080414.wrendition14/BNStory/International/home

Wikipedia on Mr. Scheuer: [...] is a former CIA employee. In his 22-year career, he served as the Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station (aka "Alec Station"), from 1996 to 1999, the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center. He then worked again as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004.
Scheuer resigned in 2004. He is currently a news analyst for CBS News and a terrorism analyst for the Jamestown Foundation's online publication Global Terrorism Analysis.^[1] He also makes radio and television appearances and teaches a graduate-level course on Al-Qaeda at Georgetown University. He also participates in conferences on terrorism and national security issues, such as the New America Foundation's December 2004 conference, "Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11."

US, Israel, Syria, Korea and (maybe) Loose Nukes

Is it sloppy journalism that the date of the attack doesn’t appear in the article, or a deliberate attempt to distance our “loose nukes” (Aug, 29) episode with the Sept. 8 event in Syria? The Israelis sure are worried about releasing details, despite some thinking it would “enhance” the Israeli government’s image as powerful and in control of things. But their power comes at our cost. Read on, citizens, courtesy of Haaretz...
Israel, U.S. plan to release details on Syria attack
By Barak Ravid and Amos Harel
Israel and the United States are coordinating the release of details on the air force strike in Syria last September, which foreign reports claim targeted a nuclear installation Syria was constructing with North Korean assistance. American officials may reveal details of the strike later this month during congressional hearings.
Even though the defense establishment in Israel is opposed to any publication of details of the attack, the Prime Minister's Bureau and U.S. President George W. Bush's administration are of the opinion that it is now possible to reveal details because there is little chance of a conflagration as a result of a Syrian decision to avenge the attack.
[...] Intelligence analysts in Israel maintain that any further release of the details on the strike will contribute to the already tense situation between Syria and Israel, which has been exacerbated in part because of Hezbollah's plans to avenge the assassination of the group's terrorist mastermind, Imad Mughniyah.
Any official release of the details of the attack and the nature of the installation may push Syria's Bashar Assad into a corner and put pressure him to respond, say intelligence officials.
[...] The hearings at the House Intelligence Committee may be held in the coming weeks. Congressmen have included in the bill on the intelligence budget that American intelligence agencies will not be given large portions of their budget unless they reveal in full the details of the strike in Syria and the nuclear cooperation between Pyongyang and Damascus.
This has led U.S. and Israeli officials to conclude that American officials will release details of the strike during the hearings.
Talks between the U.S. and North Korea are schedule to resume tomorrow in Singapore. One of the American conditions for lifting the sanctions on Pyongyang is for it to expose its nuclear collaboration with other countries, which North Korea maintains does not exist. According to South Korean media sources, Pyongyang has agreed to provide the U.S. with information on its nuclear cooperation with Syria, on condition that Washington will not make this public. The same sources stated that the U.S. has given North Korea a list of engineers that are suspected of involvement in the construction of the installation that was targeted in Syria. [...]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/971914.html

Disappearing Nuclear Reactor!

Gosh Gee Willickers, Batman! Where did it go? Here's an old report which lies dead in newsrooms across the globe:
Alleged Syrian atomic reactor 'vanishes'
By JPOST.COM STAFF, Updated Oct 26, 2007
New satellite images published by The New York Times overnight Thursday show that the installation allegedly attacked by Israel on September 6, and considered by experts to be a fledgling nuclear reactor, has disappeared without a trace.
…A senior intelligence official said the evacuation of debris was not a pre-planned clearing up, which usually lasts up to a year. It was "amazing" that the Syrians made such efforts to make evidence "vanish" so quickly, the official said.
…The White House spokesperson in Washington refused to respond to the report.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1192380657735&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Only the Traitors Know

BTW: The original post for the story below, USAF struck Syrian Nuclear Site, has been deleted from Jerusalem Post. Today’s search in the newspaper comes up with this story of how secretive the Syrians are that their own military didn’t know about the facility. Right!
Jerusalem Post, Nov 3, 2007 13:28 | Updated Nov 3, 2007 13:32
'Syrian politics helped IAF air strike'
The secrecy under which Syria kept its nuclear development may have contributed to the success of Israel's alleged air strike against a nuclear facility in September, Aviation Week reported on Saturday.
Quoting unnamed Israeli sources, the report stated that due to internal politics within Damascus, the site was so highly classified that even the Syrian military was unaware of its existence. Accordingly, proper air defenses were never erected, thereby leaving the area vulnerable to aerial attack.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380724188&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
So who bombed Syria? And what exactly did they bomb? And who’s government is so secretive that other branches don’t know what’s going on?
Only the traitors know.

Who's Bombing Who?

Is it's possible that the Aug. 29 "Loose Nukes from North Dakota" story was a diversion from our own strike on Syria, using Israel as cover?
USAF struck Syrian nuclear site'
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST
The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two US jets armed with tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a suspected nuclear site under construction.
The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.
The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.
At the beginning of October, Israel's military censor began to allow the local media to report on the raid without attributing their report to foreign sources. Nevertheless, details of the strike have remained clouded in mystery. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380718519&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

War Games Alert

From Oct. 15 - 20, Operation Vigilant Shield 2008 (VS-08) will engage the Pentagon and Homeland Security in war games. The games “…resembles a war-time air scenario rather than an anti-terrorist drill.” In other words, this provides a further blurring of the lines between civil law enforcement and military rule. Be alert, be informed, be prepared.

Dangerous Crossroads:
US Sponsored War Games
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, October 6, 2007
…the process of "domestic security" has become entrenched and integrated into military planning.
The 'linked exercises" provide an environment which favors the militarization of civilian institutions. They also impart the military with a further opportunity to interfere in domestic civilian law enforcement and judicial functions.

"Another [second 911] attack could create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today to retaliate against some known targets [Iran, Syria], according to current and former defense officials familiar with the plan." (WP 23 April 2006).

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6997