Pulitzer
Prize winning Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has authored an article in
the London Review of Books, in which he makes the case that Obama (and his
Secretary of State, John Kerry) lied to the American people about allegations
that the Syrian Assad regime had used Sarin gas against its own people, in
order to justify taking military action against the Syrian regime. Hersh made
the assertions in an article titled "Whose Sarin?" According to
Hersh:
"...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..."
The Hersh allegations add gasoline to the fire of
widespread and growing public perceptions about Obama and his administration's
diminished credibility due to his having lied to Americans about what they
should have expected from ObamaCare, including the failed roll-out of the
ObamaCare web site weeks ago, and a host of scandals that continue to plague
the White House: The failed "Fast and Furious" Gun Running scandal;
Benghazi; the IRS targeting of the Tea Party and Conservatives; the NSA Spying
scandal; the Department of Justice spying on the media; the killing of Seal
Team Operatives in Afghanistan by the Taliban; etc.
Hersh writes:
"...In
his nationally televised speech about Syria on 10 September, Obama laid the
blame for the nerve gas attack on the rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta
firmly on Assad’s government, and made it clear he was prepared to back up his
earlier public warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a ‘red
line’: ‘Assad’s government gassed to death over a thousand people,’ he said.
‘We know the Assad regime was responsible … And that is why, after careful
deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the
United States to respond to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons through
a targeted military strike.’ Obama was going to war to back up a public threat,
but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning
of 21 August..."
Hersh says in the article that "... 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..."
Hersh reports that Obama's actions were in question
by military and intelligence leaders, writing that:
"...in
recent interviews with intelligence and military officers and consultants past
and present, I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was
repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level
intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration’s
assurances of Assad’s responsibility a ‘ruse’. The attack ‘was not the result
of the current regime’, he wrote. A former senior intelligence official told me
that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms
of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make
intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up
and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening. The distortion, he
said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson
administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to
justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam. The same official said
there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy:
‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, 'How can we help this
guy' – Obama – 'when he and his cronies in the White House make up the
intelligence as they go along?'..."
Hersh concludes that:
"...The
administration’s distortion of the facts surrounding the sarin attack raises an
unavoidable question: do we have the whole story of Obama’s willingness to walk
away from his ‘red line’ threat to bomb Syria? He had claimed to have an
iron-clad case but suddenly agreed to take the issue to Congress, and later to
accept Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical weapons. It appears possible
that at some point he was directly confronted with contradictory information:
evidence strong enough to persuade him to cancel his attack plan, and take the
criticism sure to come from Republicans..."
Source: Tea Party Nation,
December 10, 2013 at 9:58pm, article by Seymour Hersh, Trinity University, Sam
Antonio Texas, posted by Van Guard, teapartynation.com
Comments:
Ever since Nero
implemented the first Redevelopment Authority Project to burn down the urban
blight in Rome and blame the Christians, we’ve know that leaders lie to get
their way. The cast of characters in
this urban renewal plan made it tough for us to believe Assad would be that
stupid. It was also clear that the competition for the pipelines pitted the Saudi
group against the Iranian/Syrian/Russian group.
Both had motive and opportunity. Then we sent the famously corrupt UN to
do half the job. For once Congress
listened to us and we averted another costly intervention.
Norb Leahy Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment