Syria

By Michael Shrimpton

 
I have resisted commenting on the tragedy in Syria up till now.  Assad was always likely to win and the betrayal of the moderate, secular Syrian opposition has been so complete it’s a bit of a painful subject.
Gordon asked me a couple of months ago if I’d like to join in a peace mission to Syria, which involved a number of intelligence types driving over from Beirut for a quiet chat with the boys in Damascus.  It made sense to me and I was happy to go along.  Sadly, it never went ahead.   It was a pity, as the drive from Beirut to Damascus is apparently quite scenic and there are no speed cameras.
I think the idea was to have an intelligent discussion with Assad.  It must get a bit boring for the old boy having to deal with idiots all the time.
The DVD
Neither William Hague nor David Cameron get Syria.  Since Assad is backed by the DVD, or at least one faction of it, and Hague and Cameron are comically ignorant of the DVD (neither would be out of place in Thames Valley Police!), they are never going to get it.
The Ba’ath movement was set up by the Abwehr.   The key German agent in Syria was Michel Aflaq, who was desperate for an Axis victory in World War 11.  After Germany’s defeat and the replacement of the Abwehr by the DVD, the latter took over the extensive German network in the Middle East, which came to include a young student, Yasser Arafat.
The movement was reorganized in 1947, when the Syrian Ba’ath Party was founded.  It was and still is controlled from Dachau.  Unless one understands that one hasn’t a hope of understanding Syria, which is a German client state.
Interference in London and Washington
German backing for Assad brings with it a guarantee of political interference in London and Washington.  The Obama Administration is heavily penetrated by the DVD, to the point where Dachau has an effective veto over US policy.  Cameron is only a figurehead.  Real power in Britain is wielded by the Cabinet Secretary and the Cabinet Office, who disregard anything coming from Downing Street they don’t like.
David Cameron has almost no influence over policy at all.  Of course he is allowed to make meaningless policy commitments at the margins.  Quite often he will announce a policy, only to find his decision overridden by the Cabinet Office.  A pitiful figure, he is not even the most powerful member of the government.  Everybody with a brain in Whitehall knows that if you actually want to get a policy implemented, as opposed to grabbing a few cheap headlines, the man you need to go to is Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister and MP for Horsham, where I once stood as a candidate for Labour.  His predecessor as MP, Sir Peter Hordern, was a gent, and a very nice chap.  He rather admired my dear old Rover 3.5 Liter saloon, my campaign steed in 1987!
The Secular Syrian Opposition
Sadly the secular Syrian opposition lacked access to good intelligence.  Wholly ignorant of the links between Dachau and Damascus, and of the DVD itself, they assumed they would get backing from Britain and America.  They had not the slightest understanding of the degree of political paralysis in London and Washington, who have been helpless spectators to the slaughter.
In the early stages of the Syrian Civil War there were actually credible, moderate figures, who genuinely wanted a democratic Syria and peace with Israel.  They have now been sidelined in favour of al Qaeda.   The rebels are increasingly falling under the sway of the Islamists.
This process has now progressed to the point where there is no credible moderate opposition with whom we can deal.  We have left it too late.  Syria has no greater chance of becoming a democracy than the EU or Zimbabwe.
Assad will win
I see no sensible prospect of Assad losing.  He will do whatever it takes to retain his stranglehold on power, including further use of WMDs.  Only an external invasion will topple him, as with Saddam Hussein.
It will take some time, and many more thousands of Syrians will die.  Neither Cameron nor Obama is going to prevent their deaths.  Assad is aware that he has a green light from London and Washington to kill as many as of his own people as he needs.  No one is going to stop the slaughter, or even try.
Of course there will be much hand-wringing and no end of silly statements to the media.  There will be no action however, just talk.
Response to comments
There have actually been some sensible comments this week!  It was nice to be thanked for my work on Operation Vulcan.  Yes, we did good work and, yes, it turns out that there was an improvised nuclear device in London.  Well done the NRO and NSA for picking it up on the way out!
We in the UK owe a debt of gratitude to my VT colleague Ben Fulford, who picked up the threat before I did, and the Russians, who tracked the device on its way in.  Whitehall, not to mention Thames Valley Police, are still in denial, but then they still believe in global warming!  There are a few heroes I haven’t mentioned, mainly because the team are still diving for cover!  When the fact that we got the intelligence right is officially acknowledged, which will require regime change in London, they can receive the plaudits they are due.
I respectfully agree with Dr Preston James that Seal Team 6 were murdered.  I hadn’t picked up that the helo they were assigned was old, but it wouldn’t surprise me.  Someone knew that she was on a one-way mission, sadly.  They will be avenged.
Osama bin Laden did not die of kidney failure however.  He was whacked by his own side, the DVD, in 2009, having been lured out of his Abbotabad safehouse.  That is why the visual and postmortem evidence for his death in 2011 is so slim.  Burial at sea hides a multitude of sins!  There are a number of voice-authenticated recordings of bin Laden between 2001 and 2009.  A friend of mine had lunch with him in early 2005, and he was definitely alive!  Trained intelligence officers tend to pick up on little details like whether or not their luncheon companion is dead or not.  Of course I passed on that little snippet to the Good Guys, a.k.a. the NSA.
Of course with Liberal Democrats it’s not always easy to tell whether they are brain dead or not.  Most of them appear to have had a hemispherectomy.  You guys have the same problem with Obama Democrats.
If you haven’t seen the Borgias it’s well worth a look.  Series 3 is playing on Sky in the UK at the moment.  The Borgia Pope comes across as rather nicer than most historians would allow, certainly nicer than the current pope, no offense intended.  The series has quite an authentic feel about it.  It is certainly very well written and acted.  As a soap opera it beats Eastenders.  For American readers I should explain that Eastenders is a BBC propaganda program in the form of a serial, i.e. it’s serial propaganda.

Michael Shrimpton

Michael Shrimpton was a barrister from his call to the Bar in London in 1983 until being disbarred in 2019 over a fraudulently obtained conviction. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counter-terrorism. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at the American Military University.

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