American Fair-Play In Syria

 

—Notorious fair-play, allegedly immanent for the American political and business culture, doesn’t really work  when it comes to practice. Here is the last example.On September 16 the United Nations inspection team submitted a report to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.  The document summed up the results of investigation of the August 21 incident when chemical weapons were used in Syria. It confirms that poisonous gas sarin was used in the vicinity of Damascus. The U.N. inspectors in Syria were not tasked with figuring out who was responsible and that was not the point of the U.N. report. According to Ban Ki-Moon a new inquiry is required to find out who was behind the crime.
No matter that, the United States of America and its allies found that the report corroborated the fact that it was the Syrian government who did it. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs brushed aside the question about blame, saying there was no ground to make the Syrian government was culpable of using chemical weapons while actually putting the opposition beyond any suspicion it was responsible for what happened. Then the reaction of Washington followed. “He’s swimming against the tide of international public opinion, but more importantly, the facts,” State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said, referring to Lavrov. But the facts tell a story quite different from what the United States would like it to be.

This image provided by by Shaam News Network on Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, purports to show several bodies being buried in a suburb of Damascus, Syria during a funeral on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2013, following allegations of a chemical weapons attack that reportedly killed 355 people. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network)
First, the facts produced as a result of the inquiry don’t say anything about who is responsible and cannot be interpreted in a wanton way by any interested party.   Otherwise it’s not a fair play. Second, no matter how squint-eyed Anglo-Saxon politicians may be, life will make them see the facts even if they are not advantageous, whether they want it or not.  Carla Del Pont, the leader of UN inspectors team, expressed her opinion about the use of chemical weapons by rebels near Aleppo this May. According to her, the team interrogated victims and the medical staff of field hospitals.
She said there was rather solid ground to believe it was the opposition (or armed gangs to call a spade a spade) who used sarin. Her words are confirmed by the detailed report submitted to the United Nations by Russian experts who investigated very same case.  The fair play   advocates preferred to ignore these conclusions but compiled a special document   – Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013, which contains a few pages where an attempt is made to prove the Bashar Assad’s government was culpable of the crime committed on August 21.
But the world public is gradually getting free from the squint-eyed vision imposed on it.  International experts are of accord in their conviction that the report does not contain any solid evidence that would justify finger pointing at the Syrian government or its forces as alleged culprits.
The mystification led nowhere.  Now Anglo-Saxons and French are raising much ado about nothing hoping to exert psychological pressure on Russia to make it take their side. There is no even a hint of fair play. They do it in an egregious manner just because someone needs very much to get Bashar Assad away from the political scene.
As time goes by, more evidence is coming to ultimately dissipate the arguments produced by the trio: the United States, Great Britain and France. World Net Daily came up with the publication by Michael Maloof saying that in a classified document obtained by WND, the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria. The document says sarin from al-Qaida in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some was seized; more could have been used in an attack last March on civilians and Syrian military soldiers in Aleppo.
The document, classified Secret/Noforn – “Not for foreign distribution” – came from the U.S. intelligence community’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC, and was made available to WND. It revealed that AQI had produced a “bench-scale” form of sarin in Iraq and then transferred it to Turkey. The most interesting part of the publication says that, “This (document) depicts our assessment of the status of effort at its peak – primarily research and procurement activities – when disrupted in late May 2013 with the arrest of several key individuals in Iraq and Turkey,” the document said. “Future reporting of indicators not previously observed would suggest that the effort continues to advance despite the arrests,” the NGIC document said.
The May 2013 seizure occurred when Turkish security forces discovered a two-kilogram cylinder with sarin gas while searching homes of Syrian militants from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra Front following their initial detention. This seizure followed a chemical weapons attack in March on the Khan al-Assal area of rural Aleppo, Syria. In that attack, some 26 people and Syrian government forces were killed by what was determined to be sarin gas, delivered by a rocket attack. The Syrian government called for an investigation by the United Nations. Damascus claimed al-Qaida fighters were behind the attack, also alleging that Turkey was involved. “The rocket came from a place controlled by the terrorists and which is located close to the Turkish territory,” according to a statement from Damascus. “One can assume that the weapon came from Turkey.”
The report of the U.S. intelligence community’s NGIC reinforces a preliminary U.N. investigation of the attack in Aleppo which said the evidence pointed to Syrian rebels. It also appears to bolster allegations in a 100-page report on an investigation turned over to the U.N. by Russia. The report concluded the Syrian rebels – not the Syrian government – had used the nerve agent sarin in the March chemical weapons attack in Aleppo. While the contents of the report have yet to be released, sources tell WND the documentation indicates that deadly sarin poison gas was manufactured in a Sunni-controlled region of Iraq and then transported to Turkey for use by the Syrian opposition, whose ranks have swelled with members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups. now, let’s go further. MintPress News published an interview with the people who survived the gas attack in Eastern Ghouta. The conclusion of it is unambiguous – “the U.S. and its allies may be targeting the wrong culprit.”

Italian journalist Domenico Quirico and Belgian national Pierre Piccinin (unseen), both kidnapped in Syria in early April, disembark from the airplane on September 9, 2013 at Ciampino military airport in Rome. (AFP Photo/Andreas Solaro)
There was one more blow delivered against the anti-Syria trio by Italian journalist Domenico Quirico and Belgian teacher Pierre Piccinin who were kept in prison by rebels for a few months. They witnessed the preparation of the chemical attack by militants. According to them Bandar bin Sultan, director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, was involved. Pierre Piccinin said it hurt him to say so because he was an active supporter of Syrian Free Army in its fight for democracy since 2012. All this data is somehow ignored by the trio; they go on staging the play that lacks dignity.
As is know the US Congress has a tradition to listen to what witnesses say on the most burning international issues.  For instance, in 2002 it gave floor to a witness of the dire crimes committed by former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Then the truth surfaced – she had never been in Iraq. Now there is the evidence produced by an Italian and a Belgian, “the children of Western civilization”, who could be trusted. They could explain to the US authorities what is really happening. But it looks like the US leaders are least of all interested in knowing the truth.
In accordance with the hard and fast rules of American type of fair play, the culprit of the crime committed in Syria is already known; the only thing left is to test the public opinion. But the world is rapidly changing. There are less and less people who believe the Washington-staged play is real.  Now Russia and its allies ask the United Nations to conduct a separate inquiry of the international crime related to the use of chemical weapons.  The witness reports, the tests of videos, comparison of data on real and invented victims will make come to the surface the fact of staging a large scale and foul provocation that led to bloodshed – something the White House is afraid of so much…