April 13, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

SYRIA Part V: Some Critical Questions that Must be Answered

Friends,

Yes, there are other issues raging in Washington-on-the-Potomac other than Syria—the continued overreach of the Mueller investigation and the FBI raid on the offices and home of President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, being two significant ones.

And, yes, the caravan—or is it now “caravans”—of illegals (intermixed with violent and vicious MS-13 gang members) continues to make its way to the US-Mexico border where the infamous “catch-and-release” program will enable them to spread out with virtual impunity into the United States. Recall this procedure “under which people caught in unlawful immigration status are released while they wait for a hearing with an immigration judge,” in other words, essentially given free passage into the continental United States, as most of them will never show up for immigration hearings. The "catch and release" nickname came into use during the Republican George W. Bush administration.

More on these topics later.

But today two additional and short items on Syria, as we await what appears to be the beginning of a full-fledged assault on that country:

Yesterday on a couple of occasions I heard Defense Secretary James N. Mattis quoted about the impending action in Syria, and this is what he said about the chemical attack on Douma:

“We know who did it, but we need to find the proof.”

I should repeat that for clarity’s sake: “We know who did it, but we need to find the proof.”

Do we understand what the honorable Secretary of Defense is actually saying: “We’ve already decided whom to blame, but we don’t have the evidence.” Even the assertion, made by retired General Jack Keane (on Fox) that the chemical attack was launched by helicopter gunships “and the rebels don’t have helicopters” (thus they couldn’t have done it) remains an unproven hypothesis.

And to muddy the waters even more, an international inspection team of independent experts and scientists [formed by the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons], supported strongly by Russia, is slated to arrive in the village this weekend. And because of that, the howls of the Neocon foreign policy hawks—of Lindsey Graham, General Keane, The Weekly Standard, and others—have reached fever pitch. “Since the Russians now occupy Douma,” they scream, “they might alter the site before the inspection team arrives, so the president must act NOW before the team arrives!”

But the facts are that even if the Russians wished to “cover up” the purported attack, they could not—the residue and evidence would still be there.

No: the real reason the Neocon foreign policy globalists who surround the president want to attack immediately is that they don’t want the inspection team to reveal the facts which could well undo their narrative and perhaps even forestall an expansion of a war which only aids in the rebirth of Islamic Jihadi terror and a potential conflict with Russia.

Even now what remains of al-Qaeda in Syria eagerly and publicly anticipates an American military strike as a signal to re-start their campaign, coordinating it with action against President Assad: “The Commander of the FSA (Free Syrian Army, aka Al-Qaeda) announced they will begin a new offensive in Syria. He also claimed that possible US strike[s] will weaken Damascus’ position and will allow [it] to start ‘real talk’ for a peace agreement.”  [http://theduran.com/al-qaeda-isis-planning-offensive-in-syria-once-trump-launches-missiles/?mc_cid=fd13066d3e&mc_eid=42e11870e2] But you won’t hear this or read this in the Neocon press or at the Mainstream Media.

Almost exactly one year ago this month the United States launched an attack on a Syrian air force base in retaliation for another alleged chemical attack, this one supposedly of sarin gas. (Sarin is extremely poisonous to unprotected skin, but damning photographs provided by the Jihadi rebels show the pro-rebel “White Helmets” handling the victims without any protective gear.)

We were also told back then by our leaders, just as today, that “we know who did it.” And the strike was made. Yet on February 8 of this year Secretary Mattis acknowledged that,

…the U.S. has “no evidence” that the Syrian government used the banned nerve agent Sarin against its own people. This assertion flies in the face of the White House (NSC) Memorandum which was rapidly produced and declassified to justify an American Tomahawk missile strike against the Shayrat airbase in Syria. Mattis offered no temporal qualifications, which means that both the 2017 event in Khan Sheikhoun and the 2013 tragedy in Ghouta are unsolved cases in the eyes of the Defense Department and Defense Intelligence Agency. Mattis went on to acknowledge that “aid groups and others” [pro-Jihadi anti-Assad Islamists] had provided evidence…. [http://www.newsweek.com/now-mattis-admits-there-was-no-evidence-assad-using-poison-gas-his-people-801542]

The parallels between the attack in 2017 and the one in 2018, the haste to assign blame, even the language are eerily similar.

The unanswered questions remain, and paramount among them are: will we initiate a conflict that could well create unimaginable chaos in the Middle East, will such action bring us into a real shooting war with Russia, will a strike unleash a new and worldwide campaign of terror and mass immigration, will what is initiated possibly bring down our president, and, lastly but very critically, will our uninformed action bring death and suffering to the homes of thousands of American families whose sons, husbands and fathers lie still in desert sands thousands of miles away?