HowardI Don't Wanna Nuclear War
Real Crash- Looking at the Financial System and the War Drive:
RIP: Whitney Houston, I have nothing
RIP to Whitney Houston, a longtime favorite at Real Crash for spoof songs. Other paens to Whitney Houston.
I don't wanna have a nuclear war;
I don't need to enjoy a fried Qaddafi;
A first strike on Russia is bad as it gets;
Don't wanna see Syria as an excuse;
Then the submarine get to loose it;
Iran is nice, but not to bomb;
Pakistan, China, the next rung;
Don't start that nuclear war;
Obama, don't start that nuclear war;
Cause I have nothing, nothing, since we're stuck with you.
(spoof song, Whitney Houston, I Have Nothing)
Time for a touchy subject: Al-Qaeda and the Anglo-Americans
The regime of Bashar al-Assad has blamed a number of suicide bombings that were carried out in Syria, including two in Damascus on foreign terrorist groups, specifically Al Qaeda. Naturally, the so-called Syrian opposition charged that the regime itself was likely responsible for these bombings, hoping to use them to discredit the opposition. It turns out, that the Syrian government is likely correct in blaming the attacks on Al Qaeda, not only the attacks in Damascus, which took place on Dec. 23 and Jan. 6, but also two that occurred in Aleppo on Feb. 10, that killed 28 people and wounded dozens more. U.S. intelligence officials told a McClatchy News reporter in Washington, this week, that Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was likely responsible for all four attacks. They say that U.S. intelligence reports indicate that Al Qaeda's leader Ayman Zawahiri ordered the attacks after AQI lobbied to get involved in the Syria uprising. They suggest that AQI is looking to expand beyond Iraq and that AQI and Zawahiri see Syria's turmoil as an opportunity to reassert themselves after the battering the group has taken in Pakistan with the death of Osama bin Laden and the killing or capturing of dozens of key operatives. U.S. intelligence officials also believe that AQI may think that the Syria crisis also offers them the possibility of challenging Zawahiri and the Pakistan-based group for leadership of the global network. The McClatchy story has been picked up by numerous news agencies around the world, including Ha'aretz in Israel, but was ignored by Saturday's Washington Post.
As all that was developing, Russia was accusing the West of stoking the conflict by sending weapons to the opponents of Bashar al-Assad. "Western states inciting Syrian opposition to uncompromising actions, as well as those sending arms to them, giving them advice and direction, are participating in the process of fomenting the crisis," said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov while on a visit to Colombia, reported the Itar-Tass news agency. Ryabkov apparently didn't name any particular countries but did also blast certain countries that try to use the UN Security Council as a vehicle for regime change. "The UN council is not a tool for intervention in internal affairs and is not the agency to decide which government is to be next in one country or another," he said. "If our foreign partners don't understand that, we will have to use drastic measures to return them to real grounds."
Ryabkov's remarks echoes those of Chas Freeman and Paul Pillar, during a Capitol Hill forum on Feb. 7. Both men emphasized that there is a foreign covert war being waged against the Assad regime, and that it is clear that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and several Western governments are behind this campaign.
One indication of the actual nature of the violence might be the assassination of a Syrian brigadier general in Damascus Saturday morning. According to the official SANA news agency, Brig. Gen. Dr. Issa al-Khouli was shot down outside of his home on Feb. 11, by three gunmen who were apparently waiting for him to emerge. Al Khouli was a medical doctor and head of a military hospital in Damascus. SANA goes on to report on at least nine other assassinations of engineers and medical doctors in what appears to be a campaign targeting Syria's intellectual elites. SANA also reports separately on the funerals, today, of 39 army and police personnel who died in fighting in the north of the country, including in Homs.
Britain's Daily Telegraph Feb. 11 added further fuel to the civil war flames by reporting that Syrian rebels have established a "free Syria" zone, extending from the outskirts of Homs to the border with Lebanon. "This is the safe zone long sought by Syrian activists and their international supporters and -- for now at least -- it exists," the Telegraph's Richard Spencer gloated. "For months exiled Syrian activists have talked of a buffer zone. They have begged Turkey, or NATO, or the Arab League to construct by force if necessary a strip of land inside Syria to act as a base for the opposition, a refuge for those fleeing violence, and a focus for humanitarian assistance." Indeed, this is exactly the regime change scheme promoted by the Henry Jackson Society, the London branch office of the Anglo-American neo-con apparatus, in a series of reports by their communications director Michael Weiss. "But the reality now," the Telegraph asserted (with no corroborating evidence) "is that in the countryside around Homs, an area that is ten, perhaps hundreds of square miles in size and stretches to the Lebanese border is free of President Bashar al-Assad's rule."
To put it bluntly, it would appear that NATO and the Gulf states pressing for Assad's ouster have aligned with Al Qaeda, just as they did during the decade-long mujahideen war to drive the Soviet Red Army out of Afghanistan. At the Capitol Hill forum on Feb. 7, Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, warned that the outcome of the external intervention for regime change in Syria would likely be a Salafi-dominated, anti-Western regime. While Ambassador Freeman didn't draw the analogy, his description of a post-Assad Syria sounded remarkably like Afghanistan under the Taliban, which proved to be a safe haven for Al Qaeda and the staging ground for the 9/11 attacks.
