U.S. and Turkey Caught Attacking Syria

Image: www.internationalnews.fr

By:  Nick Russo     TheAnimatingContest.com        October 23, 2014

Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize winning American investigative journalist.  He is a a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award. Read Bio Here..

Mr. Hersh wrote an article describing how Turkish and United States’ interests converged on the overthrowing of the Assad regime in Syria. The Turkish government is enemies with Syria and would love to make Syria a client state and the U.S. has had Syria on a ‘hit list’ since 2001 (See Here).  Syrian Rebels were given stock piles of weapons recently ‘liberated’ from the Libyan arsenal after the United States invasion of that country. The Benghazi attacks were the result of the U.S. consulate and a CIA outpost in Libya being involved in the weapons transfer via Turkey to the Syrian Rebels. These same Syrian rebels were also allowed to develop chemical weapons.  The Syrian Rebel’s chemical weapons were the weapons used in the chemical attack in Syria in August 2013 which resulted in a call to invade the sovereign nation.

Yes, that is correct.  A Pulitzer Prize winning reporter has documented the story of how Turkey and the United States, among others, armed Syrian Rebels, with Al Qaeda ties, to set off chemical weapons inside Syria. The chemical attack was to be used to blame the Assad Regime and justify an invasion and regime change in Syria.  After investigation by the British Intelligence Agencies, it was determined that the chemical weapons released did not come from the Syrian arsenal.  After these revelations, the United States Congress voted and denied President Obama authorization to attack Syria.   The false flag plan failed to create a justifiable attack on Syria and Turkey was without U.S. help to continue support of the Syrian Rebels.  This turn of events consequently left Turkey with a motivation to ‘somehow’ get international support aroused again to destroy the Assad regime.  In a leaked recording of a highest level national security meeting inside the Turkish government, the President of Turkey and the head of its intelligence agency are heard discussing how to get the world behind a Turkish invasion of  Syria by having Turkish intelligence agents attack Turkey from within Syria.  

Read Sy Hersh’s Entire Article Here…

Excerpts from reference article:

“British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff…As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.”

“Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’”

“On 20 June (2013) analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing.. which stated that al-Nusra (Syrian Rebels) maintained a sarin production cell… The DIA paper went on: ‘Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF (rebels) attempting to make its own CW … Al-Nusrah Front’s (Syrian Rebels) relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.’ The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’”

“Last May(2013), more than ten members of the al-Nusra Front (Syrian Rebels) were arrested in southern Turkey with what local police told the press were two kilograms of sarin. In a 130-page indictment the group was accused of attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin. Five of those arrested were freed after a brief detention…In a news conference last summer, Aydin Sezgin, Turkey’s ambassador to Moscow, dismissed the arrests and claimed to reporters that the recovered ‘sarin’ was merely ‘anti-freeze’.”

“A series of chemical weapon attacks in March and April 2013 was investigated over the next few months by a special UN mission to Syria. A person with close knowledge of the UN’s activity in Syria told me that there was evidence linking the Syrian opposition to the first gas attack, on 19 March (2013)”

“In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing…‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’”

“The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a ‘rat line’, a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with AL-Qaida.”

“In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The report’s criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area”

“‘The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms,’ the former intelligence official, who has read the annex, said. ‘It had no real political role.’”

“A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğa (Turkish)administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By 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’s arsenals into Syria.”

“Washington abruptly ended the CIA’s role in the transfer of arms from Libya after the attack on the consulate, but the rat line kept going. ‘The United States was no longer in control of what the Turks were relaying to the jihadists,’ the former intelligence official said. Within weeks, as many as forty portable surface-to-air missile launchers, commonly known as manpads, were in the hands of Syrian rebels….‘The Obama administration,’ Warrick wrote, ‘has steadfastly opposed arming Syrian opposition forces with such missiles, warning that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorists and be used to shoot down commercial aircraft.’”

‘Erdoğan (Turkey) was pissed,’ the former intelligence official said, ‘and felt he was left hanging on the vine. It was his money and the cut-off was seen as a betrayal.’

“In spring 2013 US intelligence learned that the Turkish government – through elements of the MIT, its national intelligence agency, and the Gendarmerie, a militarized law-enforcement organization – was working directly with al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability.”

“Erdoğan’s (Turkey’s) hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond in March and April.’”

“Without US military support for the rebels, the former intelligence official said, ‘Erdoğan’s dream of having a client state in Syria is evaporating and he thinks we’re the reason why. When Syria wins the war, he knows the rebels are just as likely to turn on him – where else can they go? So now he will have thousands of radicals in his backyard.’”

“..a highly classified briefing prepared for Dempsey…..The analysis warned that the Turkish leadership had expressed ‘the need to do something that would precipitate a US military response’. By late summer, the Syrian army still had the advantage over the rebels, the former intelligence official said, and only American air power could turn the tide….the US intelligence analysts who kept working on the events of 21 August ‘sensed that Syria had not done the gas attack. But the 500 pound gorilla was, how did it happen? The immediate suspect was the Turks, because they had all the pieces to make it happen.’”

“‘We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdoğan’s (Turkey’s) people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’ – who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas –‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey – that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support…”

“There has not been one single piece of additional evidence of Syrian involvement in the sarin attack produced by the White House since the bombing raid was called off. My government (US) can’t say anything because we have acted so irresponsibly. And since we blamed Assad, we can’t go back and blame Erdoğan.’”

“Turkey’s willingness to manipulate events in Syria to its own purposes seemed to be demonstrated late last month, a few days before a round of local elections, when a recording, allegedly of a government national security meeting, was posted to YouTube. It included discussion of a false-flag operation that would justify an incursion by the Turkish military in Syria….‘Now look, my commander, if there is to be justification, the justification is I send four men to the other side. I get them to fire eight missiles into empty land [in the vicinity of the tomb]. That’s not a problem. Justification can be created.’ Read Excerpts from Audio Recording Here..