If the US directly attacks Syria, the real cause will not be the recent chemical attacks. What are 300 or so dead in a 2-year old war fuelled by the western powers that has so far killed over 100,000? Chemical weapons are horrible. So are bullets, shells, bombs, cluster bombs, white phosphorus, and napalm.
After
Iraq, we can’t trust western intelligence and so-called evidence. This is not
even the main issue at hand though it makes an excellent pretext for outside
powers to intervene. The Syrian conflict
is a proxy war being waged against Iran by the United States, conservative Arab
oil producers, and three former Mideast colonial powers, Britain, France and
Turkey who are seeking to restore their domination in the region. Israel cheers
from the sidelines. Syria and Hezbollah are Iran’s only Arab friends.
Back in 1990, I was in
Baghdad covering the lead-up to the first US war against Iraq. I found four
British scientific technicians who told me – and showed documents – that they
had been sent by Her Majesty’s government to help Iraq’s biowarfare programs.
The four scientists
were stationed at Salman Pak laboratories to manufacture four types of germ
weapons for Iraq for use against Iran, including anthrax and q-fever. The
feeder stocks for the germ weapons came from a US lab in Maryland; their export
was ok’d by Washington. I repeatedly reported on this. During the long, bloody Iran-Iraq War
(1980-1988), the US, Britain, Italy and Germany exported chemical weapons
plants and raw material to Iraq that produced Sarin nerve gas and burning
mustard gas. Many thousands of Iranian soldiers were killed, horribly burned or
blinded by these western-supplied weapons.
So a little less
western moral outrage, please, particularly from the Brits whose own sainted
Winston Churchill authorized the use of poison gas against rebellious Iraqi and
Afghan tribesmen. Let’s also recall how North Vietnam was drenched with the
toxic Agent Orange, how the resisting Iraq city of Falluja was showered by
white phosphorous, how Iraq was permanently contaminated by radioactive
depleted uranium. These foul weapons also kill babies.
At least many Americans
seem to have learned caution from the campaign of neocon lies that led them
into the 2003 Iraq invasion, one of the biggest disasters and shames in US
history. Even some usually bellicose Republicans are urging the Nobel Peace
prize winner in the White House and his entourage of bloodthirsty liberals to
slow his rush to war and consult Congress.
More tellingly, Gen.
Colin Powell, who disgraced himself by parroting the Bush administration’s lies
about Iraq also now urges caution over Syria. Powell is right. The US has lost
its last two “crusades” in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US has no strategic
interests in Syria beyond an obsession to overthrow Iran’s government.
Washington’s
Syrian misadventure threatens to put the US on a very perilous collision course
with Russia, Syria’s close ally. So far, Russia has sought a diplomatic
solution, but it’s most unwise to push tough Vladimir Putin too hard. Syria is
as close to Russia as northern Mexico is to the United States. Courting even
the remote threat of a possible nuclear confrontation with Russia just to
overthrow President Assad, a former US ally, is the height of irresponsibility. [Abridged] © 2013 Eric Margolis
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/31-1
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