April 22, 2014

Updates On Syria [4.22.14]: US And KSA Arm Jihadist Terrorists With Advanced Anti-Tank Weapons, Crazy Neocons Continue On The Warpath Against Moscow, DC Desperateados Rehash The Same Failed Chemical Weapons Storyline

Photo: Lords of war President Obama and Saudi King Abdullah laughing it up as they begin supplying international Jihadist terrorists in Syria with new advanced anti-tank weapons and air defense systems. The blood of Syrians is on their hands. Assad's hands are merely splattered, he can still shake hands with his people at Easter ceremonies, but Barack Abdullah Obama's hands are drenched to the bone.
Source of photo

1. US And KSA Arm Jihadist Terrorists With Advanced Anti-Tank Weapons. An excerpt from, "US reportedly starts supplying Syrian rebels with anti-tank weapons" RT, April 7, 2014:
Then over the weekend, a blog that specializes in covering the Syrian conflict published screenshots from just-uploaded YouTube videos alleged to show rebels using the US-made tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided anti-tank missiles.

Until more photos or videos of the missile and possible other locations pop up, it's hard to tell who might have been the supplier. But most likely, the TOWs were indeed foreign-supplied to the rebels,” one blogger wrote. “Since the TOW missiles are made in the US such a transfer likely needs permission from the Obama administration.”
2.  Crazy Neocons Continue On The Warpath Against Moscow. An excerpt from, "Russia-US crisis may soon spread to Near East" by Vitaly Naumkin, Al-Monitor, April 21, 2014:
This information came as no surprise to Moscow, which as Russian sources say, was already aware of deliveries of antitank weaponry. According to them, an expansion of deliveries was discussed during President Barack Obama's visit to Riyadh on March 28. At the same time, a senior administration official at the press briefing on the president’s bilateral meeting with King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz said that “our approach on that issue hasn’t changed” and confirmed “concerns about certain types of weapons systems that could be part of a proliferation that would not serve our interest.”

Moscow analysts believe that the following circumstances played a role in changing the course of the American administration.

First of these is the worsening in Russian-American relations due to the reunification of Russia and Crimea, alongside the strengthened role of neoconservative elements in the Washington bureaucracy, who are anxious to spite Russia wherever they can, and to hinder normalization of American-Iranian relations. These are the very same people who worked behind the scenes during the coup in Kiev. As Robert Merry recently wrote, referring to William Pfaff, Victoria Nuland “even identified the man who should replace Yanukovych after his ouster,” and “the United States spent some $5 billion in fostering ‘democratic institutions’ in Ukraine designed to nudge the country away from Russian sway.” He said that only “saner heads would have understood how dangerous this kind of activity can be.”
3. DC Desperateados Rehash The Same Failed Chemical Weapons Storyline. An excerpt from, "US: Some Indication Chlorine Gas Was Used in Syria" by Jason Ditz, Antiwar, April 21, 2014:
Both government and rebels reported the incident, and blamed one another. They have identified the chemical as chlorine gas, and each insisted the other deliberately released it, though civilians and not combatants appear to have been the ones hit with the gas.

The US, as it so often does, couched the whole thing as a possible Assad government use, and didn’t suggest the rebels were even under suspicion. Yet Syria did not report chlorine as part of its significant chemical weapons arsenal, and most nations abandoned the gas in military use in favor of more effective chemicals around World War One.

Attempts to attribute blame aside, chlorine gas is a common enough chemical for industrial uses, and it seems entirely possible that during the intense fighting in Kfar Zeita the gas was inadvertently released.
Video: Syria's Assad pays Easter visit to old Christian town. Source: AFP. Date Published: April 21, 2014. Description:
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad paid an Easter Sunday visit to a historic Christian town newly recaptured from jihadist-backed rebels, as opposition fighters counter-attacked his forces in a key battleground city.