Utterly Atrocious
"Last Wednesday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned. And that is the major reason why American officials now say they're certain that the attacks were the work of the Bashar al-Assad regime -- and why the U.S. military is likely to attack that regime in a matter of days.
"But the intercept raises questions about culpability for the chemical massacre, even as it answers others: Was the attack on August 21 the work of a Syrian officer overstepping his bounds? Or was the strike explicitly directed by senior members of the Assad regime? 'It's unclear where control lies', one U.S. intelligence official told The Cable. 'Is there just some sort of general blessing to use these things? Or are there explicit orders for each attack?"
Foreign Policy magazine The Cable
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks about the situation in Syria from the Treaty Room at the State Department in Washington on August 30, 2013. AFP/Saul Loeb
Since the intercepted message is of prime interest and does most certainly point a finger of responsibility at the Assad regime, but it remains unclear how high up the ladder of command the communication went, with no clear delineation whether there were standing orders from on high, or individual initiative was taken because there was no need under a general order to ask permission, there is an atmosphere of uncertainty in the minds of intelligence officials.
Yezid Sayigh of the Carnegie Middle East Centre claims it unlikely that commanders would be required to seek permission specifically for each attack they plan. Since he feels that President Assad would have established discreet and discrete use of chemical weapons as a broadly held policy. The green light is there, the decision when, where and how to use them at the discretion of each commander.
Intelligence reports out of Israel inform through satellite images that the regime had been moving chemical weapons stocks into the area before the attack, as reported by the Wall Street Journale-placed.
"What's driving the certainty is the intercept evidence, particularly of communications from Syrian defence officials to field units, in conjunction with prior evidence of stockpiles being moved into the area. But this is not just about the Ghouta incident, this is about the accumulated evidence of all those attacks going back to the spring", said Shashank Joshi with the Royal United Services Institute.
There is wide incredulity that Bashar al-Assad would presume to provoke such a reaction from the international community by his imperturbable use of prohibited weapons of mass destruction. His calmly bland denials of responsibility for the attacks and the deaths of well over one thousand of his own citizens, pointing the finger of blame at the rebel "terrorists", despite the reality that none of the opposition has the means to mount attacks such as those, both infuriate and puzzle.
On the other hand, proof-positive keeps popping up all over the place. It is not only the previous such attacks that took far fewer lives, but the regime's stark flippancy about it all, as though it is of little consequence, as though it all represents a dare, one he is convinced there will be no response to. It is as though a native sense of caution has slipped away, as though his masters in Iran have convinced him that there will be no consequences.
As they wait with eager suspense to see whether there will be any, and if so, what, possibly? The virtual wrist-slap that seems likely, as a tch-tch warning that the civilized world will not stand idly by while a country ravages its own, and spreads the horror of civil break-down throughout the region? As a rehearsal for the Islamic Republic of Iran's own future plans? One can theorize till the cows come home to be milked. And that's what it is, credulity being milked.
And, as additional provocation and flip of the wrist, the latest attack that took place at a high school when teens were finishing up school for the day and preparing to return home in the town of Urum al Kubra, close by Aleppo. Where a regime plane was seen circling above as though searching for a target, and children were told to quickly disperse. And where they were bombed as they attempted to escape. Those involved suffering from Napalm-appearing burns from an incendiary bomb.
Labels: Chemical Weapons, Conflict, Controversy, Intervention, Syria, United States
posted by Pieface @ Friday, August 30, 2013
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