Benghazi Gun Running is the Real Scandal
Check it out:
In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.＊ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.
Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.
For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’
The joint chiefs also knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort’. (According to a Defense Department consultant, US intelligence has long known that al-Qaida experimented with chemical weapons, and has a video of one of its gas experiments with dogs.) The DIA paper went on: ‘Previous IC [intelligence community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons] stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting to make its own CW … Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.’ The paper drew on classified intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.’ (Asked about the DIA paper, a spokesperson for the director of national intelligence said: ‘No such paper was ever requested or produced by intelligence community analysts.’)
Read more at http://conservativebyte.com/2014/05/benghazi-gun-running-real-scandal/#ZZdudQ6A1HyObRj2.99
Benghazi Gun Running is the Real Scandal
Check it out:
In 2011 Barack
Obama led an allied
military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August,
after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch
an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly
crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.＊
Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that
he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was
postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama
accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by
Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about
rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the
administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military
leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially
disastrous.
Obama’s change of mind
had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British
intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack
and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to
exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case
against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of
staff. The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint
chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching
bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in
the Middle East. As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute
caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his
cancelling the attack.
For months there had
been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community
about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey. Prime
Minister Recep Erdoğan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a
jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel
groups. ‘We knew there were some in the Turkish government,’ a former senior US
intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, ‘who
believed they could get Assad’s nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack
inside Syria – and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.’
The joint chiefs also
knew that the Obama administration’s public claims that only the Syrian army
had access to sarin were wrong. The American and British intelligence
communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in
Syria were developing chemical weapons. On 20 June analysts for the US Defense
Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’
briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra
maintained a sarin production cell: its programme, the paper said, was ‘the
most advanced sarin plot since al-Qaida’s pre-9/11 effort’. (According to a
Defense Department consultant, US intelligence has long known that al-Qaida
experimented with chemical weapons, and has a video of one of its gas
experiments with dogs.) The DIA paper went on: ‘Previous IC [intelligence
community] focus had been almost entirely on Syrian CW [chemical weapons]
stockpiles; now we see ANF attempting to make its own CW … Al-Nusrah Front’s
relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW
aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future.’ The paper drew on classified
intelligence from numerous agencies: ‘Turkey and Saudi-based chemical
facilitators,’ it said, ‘were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk,
tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in
Syria.’ (Asked about the DIA paper, a spokesperson for the director of national
intelligence said: ‘No such paper was ever requested or produced by
intelligence community analysts.’)
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