UN says Syrian rebels may have been behind chem weapons attack, former Bush official says it's Israel
The United Nations says that it has testimony that contradicts earlier reports that the Assad regime used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians. According to the UN, the Syrian rebels were the ones who introduced the chemical weapons (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria
has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical
weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission
member Carla Del Ponte.
"Our
investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims,
doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week
which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet
incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims
were treated," Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian
television.
"This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," she added, speaking in Italian.
Del
Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no
details as to when or where sarin may have been used.
The
Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and other human rights violations
is separate from an investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons
in Syria instigated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which has
since stalled.
Meanwhile, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, blames the Joooz, claiming that Israel used chemical weapons as a false flag operation to implicate the Assad regime.
"We don’t know what the chain of custody is. This could’ve been an
Israeli false flag operation, it could’ve been an opposition in Syria...
or it could’ve been an actual use by Bashar Assad.
But we certainly
don’t know with the evidence we’ve been given. And what I’m hearing from
the intelligence community is that that evidence is really flakey,"
retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff,
told Cenk Uygur in an interview with Current TV.
Given this "flimsy evidence," Wilkerson doesn't believe a red line
has been crossed in Syria, and that the US should not base its
intervention in the war-torn country based on such evidence.
Wilkerson
criticized Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu harshly, saying there is a
"geostratigically, geopolitical inept regime in Tel Aviv right now."
I guess all the anti-Semites are going to come crawling out of the woodwork now. Muslims murder Muslims, so of course the Joooz are to blame. Maybe Colon Bowel himself will say the same thing soon. It's in line with some of his otherrecentpronouncements.
OK, I get it. An errant slip of the tongue isn't proof of prejudice. We
have all said things the offensiveness of which we perhaps didn't fully
appreciate when we opened our mouth.
Like the time when, according to Bob Woodward, Mr. Powell accused
Douglas Feith, one of the highest-ranking Jewish officials in the Bush
administration and the son of a Holocaust survivor, of running a
"Gestapo office" out of the Pentagon. Mr. Powell later apologized
personally to Mr. Feith for what he acknowledged was a "despicable
characterization."
Or the time when, according to George Packer in his book "The
Assassins' Gate," Mr. Powell leveled another ugly charge at Mr. Feith,
this time in his final Oval Office meeting with George W. Bush. "The
Defense Department had too much power in shaping foreign policy,
[Powell] argued, and when Bush asked for an example, Powell offered not
Rumsfeld, the secretary who had mastered him bureaucratically, not
Wolfowitz, the point man on Iraq, but the department's number three
official, Douglas Feith, whom Powell called a card-carrying member of
the Likud Party."
Anyway, on this business of hypersensitivity to prejudicial remarks,
real or perceived, here is Mr. Powell in the same interview talking
about what ails the Republican Party:
"There's also a dark vein of
intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean
by that is they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I
evidence that? When I see a former governor [Alaska's Sarah Palin]
say that the president is shuckin' and jivin,' that's a racial-era
slave term. When I see another former governor [New Hampshire's John
Sununu] say after the president's first debate when he didn't do well,
he said he was lazy. Now it may not mean anything to most Americans but
to those of us who are African-Americans, the second word is shiftless
and then there's a third word that goes along with it."
So let's get this straight. Mr. Powell holds it "disgraceful" to
allege anti-Semitism of politicians who invidiously use the phrase "the
Jewish lobby." But he has no qualms about accusing Mr. Sununu—along
whose side he worked during the George H.W. Bush administration—of
all-but whispering the infamous N-word when he called Mr. Obama's first
debate performance "lazy."
It's hard to decide whether Mr. Powell is using a double standard
hypocritically or inadvertently. I'll assume the latter, since he seems
to have missed the reason why Mr. Hagel's nomination to be secretary of
defense has run into so much opposition.
Consider the following hypothetical sentence: "The African-American
lobby intimidates a lot of people up here." Would this pass Mr. Powell's
smell test?
I don't believe Powell's double standard was inadvertent, and I believe it has much darker motives than just supporting Hagel's nomination. I don't care how much Yiddish Powell ostensibly knows.
Former Secretaries of State Colin Powell (a RINO like Hagel) and Madeline Albright are trying to convince everyone that Chuck Hagel is pro-Israel. Both are pathetic. Let's start with Powell, who thinks that what Hagel said about that lobby is just fine - he should just have said "Israel lobby" instead of "Jewish lobby."
Defenders of Hagel, including retired general and former US Secretary
of State Colin Powell, said the decorated fellow Vietnam War veteran's
military service and reputation for candor enhances his credibility.
"He
knows what war is and he will fight a war if it's necessary, but he is a
guy who will do it with great deliberation and care," Powell told NBC's
"Meet the Press."
...
Powell said many figures in the national security community,
including retired Cabinet officials, consider Hagel to be "a solid guy
who speaks his mind, he is a good supporter of Israel ... but he is not
reluctant to disagree when he thinks disagreement is appropriate."
Conservative
Republicans leading the criticism of Hagel say he has at times opposed
Israel's interests. US neoconservatives have been particularly critical
of him.
In the Senate, Hagel voted repeatedly against US sanctions
on Iran over its nuclear program and made disparaging remarks about the
influence of what he called a "Jewish lobby" in Washington.
"Chuck
should have said 'Israeli lobby' not 'Jewish lobby' and perhaps he
needs to write on a blackboard 100 times, 'It is the Israeli lobby,'"
Powell said on NBC.
"I'm very supportive of the state of Israel,
so is Senator Hagel, and you will see that in the confirmation
hearings," said Powell.
"But it doesn't mean you have to agree with every single position that the Israeli government takes," he added.
I think that's ridiculous. I think that Senator Hagel has been somebody
that has voted for help for Israel over the years, has made very clear
his support for Israel, and has talked about the historic bond. And so I
think that is just a charge that doesn't make sense at all.
Except that Albright is ignoring an awful lot of inconvenient facts.
In case anyone doesn't recognize them, the guy on the left is Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan, and the one on the right is RINO former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed Barack Hussein Obama in 2008. The picture was taken at the London Olympics.
Defector admits 'duping' US on presence of WMD's in Iraq
Al-Guardian reports that the Iraqi defector who was the source for the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction has now admitted that he lied.
Let's go to the videotape.
But what's worse is that the story was apparently discredited as far back as 2000.
Janabi claimed he was first exposed as a liar as early as mid-2000, when the BND travelled to a Gulf city, believed to be Dubai, to speak with his former boss at the Military Industries Commission in Iraq, Dr Bassil Latif.
The Guardian has learned separately that British intelligence officials were at that meeting, investigating a claim made by Janabi that Latif's son, who was studying in Britain, was procuring weapons for Saddam.
That claim was proven false, and Latif strongly denied Janabi's claim of mobile bioweapons trucks and another allegation that 12 people had died during an accident at a secret bioweapons facility in south-east Baghdad.
The German officials returned to confront him with Latif's version. "He says, 'There are no trucks,' and I say, 'OK, when [Latif says] there no trucks then [there are none],'" Janabi recalled.
He said the BND did not contact him again until the end of May 2002. But he said it soon became clear that he was still being taken seriously.
He claimed the officials gave him an incentive to speak by implying that his then pregnant Moroccan-born wife may not be able to travel from Spain to join him in Germany if he did not co-operate with them. "He says, you work with us or your wife and child go to Morocco."
The meetings continued throughout 2002 and it became apparent to Janabi that a case for war was being constructed. He said he was not asked again about the bioweapons trucks until a month before Powell's speech.
After the speech, Janabi said he called his handler at the BND and accused the secret service of breaking an agreement that they would not share anything he had told them with another country. He said he was told not to speak and placed in confinement for around 90 days.
With the US now leaving Iraq, Janabi said he was comfortable with what he did, despite the chaos of the past eight years and the civilian death toll in Iraq, which stands at more than 100,000.
"I tell you something when I hear anybody – not just in Iraq but in any war – [is] killed, I am very sad. But give me another solution. Can you give me another solution?
"Believe me, there was no other way to bring about freedom to Iraq. There were no other possibilities."
As bad as Saddam was, it's a pity they didn't attack Iran instead.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
