The Last Speakers of Aramaic

September 5, 2013 by Robert Moynihan, PhD.

The Last Remaining Speakers of Aramaic — the Language Spoken by Jesus — Live in a Town in Syria under Attack from Rebel Units Being Supported by the United States

“Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.”—William Shakespeare (from the play Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1, line 273)

“(United States) Senators on Wednesday tried to write a tight resolution authorizing President Obama to strike Syria under very specific circumstances, but analysts and lawmakers said the language still has plenty of holes the White House could use to expand military action well beyond what Congress appears to intend… The resolution puts a 60-day limit on Mr. Obama’s ability to conduct strikes, while allowing him one 30-day extension of that authority… ‘Wiggle room? Plenty of that,’ said Louis Fisher, scholar in residence at the Constitution Project and former long-time expert for the Congressional Research Service on separation of powers issues… Mr. Fisher pointed to the 1964 resolution that authorized a limited response to the Gulf of Tonkin, but that ended up being the start of an escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war.” —Washington Times, September 4, 2013, reporting on developing legislation in the US Senate to permit President Obama to launch an attack on Syria

“On Wednesday morning, rebels from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group launched the assault on predominantly Christian Maaloula, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Damascus, according to a Syrian government official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime group…” —Associated Press dispatch, September 4, 2013
“Secretary of State John Kerry said at Wednesday’s hearing that Arab counties have offered to pay for the entirety of unseating President Bashar al-Assad if the United States took the lead militarily. ‘With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes,’ Kerry said. ‘They have. That offer is on the table.’” —Washington Post, September 4, 2013
“In an exchange with a senator, Kerry was asked whether it was “basically true” that the Syrian opposition had “become more infiltrated by al Qaeda over time.” Kerry said: “No, that is actually basically not true. It’s basically incorrect.” —Reuters dispatch, September 4, 2013 (yesterday), reporting on testimony in the US Congress of US Secretary of State John Kerry; Link

“They lie beautifully, of course. I saw debates in Congress. A congressman asks Mr Kerry: ‘Is al Qaeda there?’ He says: ‘No’… He is lying and knows he is lying. It’s sad.” —Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, commenting on testimony in the US Congress of US Secretary of State John Kerry, in the same Reuters dispatch

“The tragic consequences of the conflict are known. It has produced more than 110,000 deaths, numberless wounded, more than 4 million internal refugees and more than 2 million refugees in neighboring countries. In front of this tragic situation, the absolute priority is clear: to make the violence cease.” —Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the Vatican’s “foreign minister,” to nearly 200 assembled diplomats in the Vatican this morning

“The Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi denied that the Pope has called the Syrian dictator Assad. The news was published in the Argentine newspaper Clarin signed by Sergio Rubin, friend and biographer of Pope Francis.” —Agenzia Italia (AGI) dispatch, September 5, 2013

“Maaloula is a mountain village with about 2,000 residents, who are among a tiny group in the region that still speaks a version of Aramaic, the ancient language of biblical times also believed to have been spoken by Jesus.” —The same Associated Press dispatch from yesterday

“It is regrettable that, from the very beginning of the conflict in Syria, one-sided interests have prevailed and in fact hindered the search for a solution that would have avoided the senseless massacre now unfolding.”—Pope Francis, September 5, 2013, in a letter sent to Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, who is hosting a high-level summit of world leaders called the “Group of 20″ or “G20″ in St. Petersburg, Russia

The Pope Writes a Letter to Putin

Pope Francis continues to make almost desperate efforts to head off a looming escalation of the 2-year Syrian civil war.

He has called for a day of prayer and fasting on Saturday, September 7; he has spoken passionately about the suffering caused by war and the benefits of a negotiated peace; he has summoned the almost 200 ambassadors accredited to the Vatican to a briefing on the Holy See’s position (the meeting took place this morning); and he is even rumored to have telephoned directly to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to appeal to him to work for a ceasefire (the Vatican has denied the report).

Moreover, Pope Francis today sent a passionate letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his role as host of the “Group of 20″ nations meeting this weekend in St. Petersburg (US President Barack Obama is also attending, and met Putin there this morning in a moment that seems from the photograph to have been marked by some tension).

The civil war in Syria has been going on for more than 2 years. The war has pitted forces loyal to the Ba’athist (secularist) regime of President Bashar al-Assad, supported by Iran and Russia, against rebel, radical Muslim forces supported, for varying reasons, by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, France, and the United States, who seek to unseat Assad.

The Syrians since 1971 — so, for 42 years — have allowed the Russians to use the port of Tartus as a “Material-Technical Support Point” (Russian: Пункт материально-технического обеспечения, ПМТО) and not a “base”; Tartus is the last Russian military facility outside the former Soviet Union, and Russia’s only Mediterranean repair and replenishment spot, sparing Russia’s warships the trip back to their Black Sea bases through the Turkish Straits.

Recently, the Assad government forces seemed to be winning the war, rolling back a number of rebel positions.

But that momentum would likely change dramatically if the US and France were to intervene directly.

And that possibility now looms following a deadly chemical attack, which occurred on August 21, allegedly perpetrated by the Assad government (there has been considerable dispute about what the substance actually was, who actually used it, and how many were killed by it).
The United States and France have argued that the use of the gas by the regime requires a direct response, which is generally interpreted as meaning a cruise missile attack on Syrian government targets from ships offshore, but not the use of US or French troops (generally referred to as “no boots on the ground”).

The region is now filled with warships, and more are steaming toward the area. The map below shows only some of the vessels, particularly the American and Russian ones, leaving out the British, Turkish, Greek, Israeli and other vessels. (Click on map for larger view)

 

The confusing nature of the situation is shown by the fact that Britain, a staunch ally of the United States, last week decided against participation in such an attack, in a close vote, in part because many parliamentarians were not persuaded by the evidence presented that the gas attack had actually been launched by the Assad regime.

 

Other religious leaders have also issued appeals for restraint, and warned against a widening of the conflict.

The Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, asked about the Syrian situation on September 4 (yesterday) in Tallin, capital of Estonia, where he was visiting, said: “In Syria, the situation is tragic for all the inhabitants, and not only the Christians, beginning with the women and children. We pray that the terrible situation of war cease and that peace arrive in the hearts of men and throughout Syria.” He added: “We wish for a rapid resolution to escape from this impasse and to come to an Arab springtime, a true Arab springtime, and not just a formula.” He concluded: “We suffer for the two metropolitans (Orthodox and Syrian-Coptic) who were taken hostage on April 22 and about whom nothing today is known, not even whether they are still alive or dead. We pray and we appeal to all the political powers, civil and religious, to save these two men.”
See more here.

Patriarch of Baghdad: “Stop the fighting to prevent another Iraq”

The Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad, capital of Iraq, Luis Sako, has lifted his voice as well. “What justice will be done to the Syrians by air-raids? No one knows what black hole the country will be entering better than we Iraqis, who entered into that tunnel before they did, and, unfortunately, we have not been able to come out of it.”

He continued: “Why did those who say they are acting for the good of the Syrian people not intervene earlier, with pressure and diplomatic means? I am hearing the same discourses and the same proclamations that were made 10 years ago before the intervention in Iraq. Ten years have passed since then, and believe me, we have seen very little democracy and freedom.”
Ten years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains unstable, still subject to sectarian violence.
“Syria is already a fair way down this same road,” he said. “But an armed intervention from outside would do nothing but worsen the situation and would have unpredictable consequences for the country and the entire region.”

Sako has asked all of the Iraqi bishops to participate on Saturday in the day of prayer and fasting for peace called for by Pope Francis.

“If one wishes to stop the massacre of Syrian civilians,” Sako said, “the first step is to suspend the sending of arms and munitions to the warring parties and to put pressure on the regional powers who are aiding the confrontation to commit themselves to find a solution. This is a game that is being played on the heads of the Syrians, a game that hides inadmissible interests and ambitions, and which should be stopped by political means, not with more bombs.”

When Sako speaks of “inadmissible interests and ambitions,” he is referring to a whole series of interests and aims which are “in play” in this struggle.

This is not the place to go into detail on all of the interests in play, but it seems fitting to mention four.

First, there is the desire of many, from Israel to the US to even some in the Arab world, to eventually weaken Iran, which is Syria’s ally, and may or may not be building an atomic bomb (opinions vary and evidence publicly available seems inconclusive). So everything that happens in Syria is only to be fully understood in the context of a longer-term plan to encircle and perhaps attack Iran.
Second, there is the well-known “battle of the pipelines” (sometimes referred to as “Pipelinistan”). In this particular case, there is a huge gas field in Qatar, and also in bordering Iran, which could provide gas for Europe if shipped by pipeline through Syria and then under the Aegean Sea to Greece and beyond. But this pipeline — which is under construction in Qatar, but not yet built in Syria — threatens to diminish the influence of Russia, which provides much of the natural gas that heats Europe, from its own vast Siberian fields. So it is in part at the request of Russia that Assad has been blocking approval of this new gas pipeline. This has led many in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and in Europe and the US, to conclude that Assad must be replaced, by supporting rebels who will, when they overthrow Assad, approve the Qatari pipeline. Nevertheless, war is not the only option here, and perhaps not the best one: the way of diplomacy could perhaps find a solution, “cutting a deal” even with the Russians, so that all parties make some profit, and none loses everything.

Third, there has been a massive gas and oil field just recently discovered off of the Israeli, Lebanese, Syrian, and Cypriot coast, known as the “Leviathan” field. It has not yet been developed, but it promises to relieve the energy needs of all of those neighboring countries, and much of Europe as well. So there is a tremendous struggle on now, behind the scenes, to position regimes in the region to develop these massive resources and use the proceeds from them in ways suitable to the major powers.

Fourth, the general economic situation of the world, from the US, to Europe, to China, is marked by high levels of debt, slow or no growth, and high levels of unemployment, especially among youth. Attempts have been made since March of 2009 to spark growth by ultra-low interest rates, but it is not clear whether these attempts have benefited the economy at all, and interest rates in recent months have been spiking higher against the professed wishes of the US Federal Reserve. In this context, the economic impact of war, with the expense on weapons, fuel, and soldiers’ salaries, provides an economic boost which some economists think may be positive. In short, there is a desire in the West, among some, for a wider, more expensive war, to reverse the evident contraction looming over the global economy.

These remarks are, of course, incomplete.

But the one thing that can be said for certain is that cruise missiles know no distinction between walls of cement that house soldiers and walls that house civilians. Attacks on Syria will inevitably lead to civilian casualties. And there is no good reason why even one more child, one more mother, would have to die unjustly.

Patriarch Sako is right. The first step is to cut off all new shipments of arms into Syria. The second step is to ask all involved in the current fighting to stop fighting. To cease firing.

Then, under the auspices of an honest man, a just man, someone like Pope Francis, together with Muslims, secularists, Americans, and Russians, a conference could be called to draw up some sort of agreement to settle the open questions in this complex situation peacefully, not by war.
If this does not happen, the war could begin with a few cruise missiles, and the death of “a few” women and children, and then Russia could support Syria, and Syria could conceivably sink an American ship, using Russian technology, and we could be in a much wider war.

And people like the villagers in Maaloula, caught in the crossfire, are the ones who will suffer.
Villagers who for more than 2,000 years have kept not only the Christian faith, but the very language that Jesus spoke alive, the Aramaic language.

Do we really wish to risk killing and maiming these villagers, our brothers in Christ? Is that the legacy we wish to leave for all time to come, that in the early years of the 21st century, the so-called “Christian” nations of the West could find no other solution to helping to halt a civil war in Syria that could protect those Christians, those members of the body of Christ, those speakers of the language that Christ spoke?

American policies in the Middle East have led to the decimation of the Christian population of that region. The voices of those suffering Christians are seldom heard in the American media, and this is tragic.

There is a better way, and Pope Francis is the leading voice in the world today proposing that way. The world should listen to him.

Otherwise, what we seem likely to view in the Middle East will be what Mary warned of: “nations will be annihilated.”

More than ever, we need to heed this warning, and act in keeping with Our Lady’s urgent requests in order to bring about a “time of peace.”

 

Revelations on Rafik Hariri's Assassination

By Thierry Meyssan, VoltaireVet, Nov 2010

All the conflicts rocking the Middle East today crystallize around the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).
(My note: Meyssan wrote this report before onset of the so-called civil strife in Syria. The writer is now active in reporting on that latter subject.)

Peace hinges on it, and so does war. For some, the STL should bring about the dissolution of the Hezbollah, quell the Resistance and establish a Pax Americana. Others consider that the STL is flouting the law and subverting the truth to ensure the takeover of a new colonial order in the region.

The Tribunal was created on 30 May 2007, pursuant to UN Security Council resolution 1757, to prosecute the alleged sponsors of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination. In the political context at that time, this implied nothing more and nothing less than bringing to trial serving Presidents Bashar el-Assad of Syria and Emile Lahoud of Lebanon, not exactly favourites of the neo-conservatives. However, the charges were not pursued since they were based on flimsy evidence planted by false witnesses. With no accused left, the Tribunal could easily have disappeared in the meanders of bureaucracy were it not for a turn of events that catapulted it back into the epicenter of the turbulent Middle East political scene.

On 23 May 2009, Atlanticist journalist Erick Follath disclosed on Der Spiegel Online that the prosecutor was poised to indict new suspects: certain Hezbollah military leaders. For the past 18 months, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, has been proclaiming his party’s innocence. He maintains that the real aim of the proceedings is to decapitate the Resistance and clear the region for the Israeli army. For its part, the U.S. administration in a sudden surge of righteousness pledged that no one would be allowed to shun international Justice.

In any event, the indictment - which all believe to be imminent - against Shia leaders for the assassination of a Sunni leader is of such a nature as to spark off a fitna, namely a Muslim civil war, plummeting the region into new depths of bloodshed and violence.

During his 15 and 16 November official visit to Moscow, Saad Hariri - current Lebanese Prime Minister and son of the deceased - reiterated that the political exploitation of the Tribunal exposes his country to the risk of a new conflagration. President Medvedev retorted that Russia wants Justice to be served and reproves any attempt to discredit, weaken or delay the Tribunal’s proceedings. This position of principle arises from the confidence that the Kremlin decided to place in the STL. But it risks being severely eroded by Odnako’s revelations.

Indeed, we deemed it desirable to delve into the circumstances of Rafik Hariri’s assassination. The data we unearthed has opened a new avenue, making one wonder why it had never been explored until now. In the course of our lengthy investigation, we encountered a great number of actors, too many no doubt, so that the news of our work spread quickly, alarming those for whom the assassination trail implicating the armed Lebanese Resistance represents a real godsent. Aiming to intimidate us, the Jerusalem Post on 18 October launched a preventive attack through a piece referring to our work. In a purely libelous vein, it accuses the author of this article of having received 1 million dollars from Iran to exonerate Hezbollah.

Getting down to facts, Rafik Hariri’s convoy was attacked in Beirut on 14 February 2005. Twenty-three people were killed and one hundred injured. A preliminary report commissioned by the Security Council calls attention to the unprofessional conduct of the Lebanese magistrates and police. To redress the situation, the SC assigned its own investigators, providing them with the important means that Lebanon was unable to offer. From the outset of the investigation, it was generally accepted that the attack had been perpetrated by a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives.

Having been established to compensate for the Lebanese lack of professionalism, one would have expected the United Nations mission to scrupulously observe the classical criminal procedures. Not so! The crime scene - on the basis of the topography still intact as well as the photos and video footage shot on that day - was not examined in detail. The victims were not exhumed and no autopsies were performed. For a long time, no attempt was made to ascertain the modus operandi. After discarding the hypothesis of a bomb buried in the ground, the investigators espoused the one involving the van withough bothering to verify it.


And yet, this version is implausible: looking at the crime scene, anyone can easily observe the very large and deep crater that a surface explosion could not have dug out. Faced with the adamancy of the Swiss experts who refused to endorse the official version, on 19 October the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) recreated the crime scene behind closed doors. It didn’t take place in Lebanon, nor in the Netherlands which is the seat of the STL, but in France, one of the countries funding the Tribunal. The buildings surrounding the crime scene were reconstructed and earth was brought in from Beirut. The convoy was reconstituted, including the armoured vehicle. The aim was to demonstrate that the height of the concrete buildings had confined the explosion, making it possible for the blast to produce the crater. The results of this costly experiment have never been divulged.


When looking at the photos and videos taken immediately after the attack, the first most striking feature is the blaze. Car parts and various types of objects are burning all around. Then, the bodies of the victims: they are charred on one side and intact on the other. An astonishing phenomenon which bears no resemblance to what is normally caused by conventional explosives. The theory that the van was transporting a mix of RDX, PETN and TNT does not account for the damages occurred.

What is more, from the photos showing Rafik Hariri’s corpse one can observe that his solid gold wristwatch has melted, whereas the collar of his luxury shirt still hugs his neck in pristine condition.

So, what really happened?

The explosion generated a blast of an exceptionally intense heat and exceptionally brief duration. Thus, the flesh exposed to the blast was instantly carbonized, while the body underneath was not burnt.

High-density objects (such as the gold watch) absorbed the heat and were destroyed. Conversely, low-density objects (like the delicate fabric of Hariri’s shirtcollar) didn’t have enough time to absorb the heat and were unaffected.


Rafik Hariri’s remains.
Moreover, the videos show that a number of limbs were severed by the explosion. Oddly, the cuts are clean, as if made on clay statues. There is no sign of shattered or jutting bones, nor of any torn flesh. The reason is that the explosion sucked up all the oxygen and dehydrated the bodies, rendering them friable. In the hours that followed, several on-the-spot witnesses complained of breathing ailments. Wrongfully, the authorities interpreted them as a psychosomatic reaction following their psychological trauma.

Such observations constitute the abc of any criminal inquiry. They should have been the starting point, yet they do not figure in any of the reports submitted by the "professional experts" to the Security Council.

When we asked a number of military experts what kind of explosives would be capable of generating such damage, they mentioned a new type of weapon which has been developed over several decades and is featured in reports appearing in scientific journals. The combination of nuclear and nonotechnology science can trigger an explosion the exact strength of which can be regulated and controlled. The weapon is set up to destroy everything within a given perimeter, down to the nearest centimeter.

Always according to the same military specialists, this weapon can also produce other types of effects: it exerts a very strong pressure on the area of the explosion. The minute it stops, the heaviest objects are propelled upwards. Accordingly, cars were sent flying through the air.

There is one unequivocal fact: this weapon is equipped with a nano-quantity of enriched uranium, emanating radiations which are quantifiable. Now, it just so happens that one of the passengers in Rafik Hariri’s armoured car survived the explosion. Former Minister Bassel Fleyhan was taken to a topnotch French military hospital for treatment. The doctors were astounded to discover that he had been in contact with enriched uranium. But no one linked this to the attack.

Technically speaking, the weapon is shaped like a small missile, a few tens of centimeters long. It must be fired from a drone. Actually, several witnesses assured they had heard an aircraft flying over the scene of the crime. The investigators asked the United States and Israel, whose surveillance satellites are permanently switched on, to provide them with the pertinent images. On the day of the attack, the United States had deployed AWACS aircraft over Lebanon. The live feeds could help to establish the presence of a drone and even to determine its flight path. But Washington and Tel Aviv - which indefatigably urge all parties to cooperate with the STL - turned down the request.


Hezbollah intercepted and released videos from Israeli drones surveying Rafik Hariri’s movements and the scene of the crime.
At a press conference held on 10 August 2010, Hassan Nasrallah showed a video which, according to him, was shot by Israeli military drones and intercepted by his organisation. All of Rafik Hariri’s movements had been registered for months, until the final day when all the surveillance converged on the bend in the road where the attack was staged. Thus, Tel-Aviv had been surveying the area prior to the assassination. Which is not to say, as Mr Nasrallah himself points out, that they were the authors of the crime.

So, who fired the missile?

This is where things get complicated. According to the military experts, in 2005, Germany was the only country which had a handle on this new technology. It is, therefore, Berlin which supplied and set up the crime weapon.

Hence, it is easy to understand why former Berlin Attorney General Detlev Mehlis - a very controversial figure within his own profession - was eager to preside the UN Investigation Commission. He is, in fact, notoriously linked to the German and U.S. secret services. Assigned in 1986 to shed light on the attack against the La Belle disco in Berlin, he diligently covered up all Israeli and U.S. fingerprints to falsely accuse Libya and justify the bombing of Mouammar Khadafi’s palace by the U.S. Air Force. In the early 2000s, Mr Mehlis was lavishly paid for his stint as researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (think-tank linked to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby) and at the Rand Corporation (think-tank attached to the U.S. military industrial complex). All elements which cast a shadow over his impartiality in the Rafik Hariri affair and should have sufficed to have him taken off the case.

Mehlis was seconded by Commissioner Gerhard Lehmann, who is also a well-known German and U.S. secret services agent. He was formally identified by a witness as having taken part in the programme run by the Bush Administration in Europe, involving the abduction, detention and torture of prisoners in "black holes". His name is mentioned in the ad hoc Report by the Council of Europe. Notwithstanding, he managed to dodge all judicial proceedings on the strength of a strong though unlikely alibi provided by his colleagues in the German police.

Mehlis and Lehmann propagated the theory of the explosives-laden suicide van to deflect the investigation from the German weapon that was used to commit the crime.

Various earth samples were taken from the scene of the crime. They were first mixed, then divided into three jars that were sent to three different laboratories. In the first two no trace of explosives was found. The third jar was kept by Mehlis and Lehmann, who personally sent it to the third laboratory. Here, remnants of explosives were detected. In principle, if the decision is made to resort to three judiciary experts, in case of disagreement it is the majority opinion that prevails. No way! Mehlis and Lehmann violated the protocols. They deemed that theirs was the only reliable sample and embarked the Security Council on a false trail.

The profoundly flawed character of the Mehlis-Lehmann investigations has amply been proven. Their successors acknowledged as much sotto voce and declared entire sections of proceedings nul and void.

Amidst their manipulations, the most famous one relates to the false witnesses. Five individuals purported to have seen the preparations for the attack and incriminated Presidents Bashar el-Assad and Emile Lahoud. While these allegations were fueling the drums of war, their lawyers exposed the lies and the prosecution backed down.


Detlev Mehlis, President of the UN Investigation Commission violated all the rules of the criminal procedure, fabricated evidence and used false witnesses to exonerate Germany and accuse Syria.
Based on these false testimonies, Detlev Mehlis arrested - in the name of the international community - four Lebanese generals and had them incarcerated for four years. Pushing his way with his cow-boys into private homes, without a warrant from the Lebanese authorities, he also detained for questioning members of their entourage. With his assistants - who spoke Hebrew to each other - he manipulated the families. Thus, on behalf of the international community, he showed the wife of one of the generals a doctored picture to prove that her husband had not only obscured his implication in the murder, but was also two-timing her.

Concurrently, he tried the same maneuver on the son of the "suspect"’, but in this case to convince him that his mother was a woman of loose morals, a situation which had plunged his desperate father into a murderous folly. The aim was to induce a family crime of honour, thereby tarnishing the image of respected and respectable people.

Even more incredible is Lehmann’s proposition to libertate one of the four imprisoned generals in exchange for his false testimony against a Syrian leader.

Moreover, German journalist Jürgen Cain Külbel highlighted a disturbing detail: it would have been impossible to trigger the explosion by remote control or by marking the target without first disactivating the powerful interference system built into Rafik Hariri’s convoy. A system among the most sophisticated in the world, manufactured in ... Israel.

Külbel was approached by a well-known pro-Palestinian advocate, Professor Said Dudin, to promote his book. However, the outrageous declarations frequently made by Dudin served to torpedo it instead. Külbel, a former East German criminal police officer, was quick to find out that Dudin had a long-standing reputation for being a CIA mole within the German left-wing. The journalist published a number of old East-German reports attesting to this fact and was sentenced and briefly imprisoned for illicit dissemination of documents; meantime, Dudin was settling into the German Embassy in Beirut for the purpose of infiltrating the families of the four generals.

Overlooked in the Middle East, Germany’s role in this region is worth spotlighting. After Israel’s war of aggression against Lebanon in the Summer of 2006, Chancellor Angela Merkel deployed a very large contingent to join the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The 2 400 soldiers from Germany control the maritime infrastructure to prevent arms supplies from reaching the Resistance via the Mediterranean. On that occasion, Ms Merkel declared that the mission of the German army was to protect Israel. A wind of rebellion arose among the officers. By the hundreds, they sent letters to remind her that they had enlisted to defend their homeland not a foreign country, be it an ally.

An unprecedented development took place on 17 March 2008 and 18 January 2010, when the German and Israeli governments held a joint Council of Ministers meeting where various programmes were adopted, especially in the defense sector. At this stage, there shouldn’t be too many secrets left between the Tsahal and the Bundeswehr.

The investigation conducted by Detlev Mehlis is both steeped in ridicule as regards the false witnesses, and tainted with the illegal detention of the four generals. To the extent that the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention formally and firmly condemned this excess of power.

This being said, the opprobrium that befalls Mr Mehlis’ work should not reflect on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon which is in no way responsible for his manipulations. But here, again, things get complicated. The credibility of the STL rests on its ability to curb, in the first place, all those who attempted to mask the truth and falsely accused Presidents Bachar el-Assad and Emile Lahoud, with the intention of provoking a war.

Now, it transpires that the Tribunal refuses to try the false witnesses, giving the impression that it is covering up the manipulations under Mehlis’ watch and is in fact pursuing the similar political objectifs (this time against the Hezbollah, and perhaps against others in future). Even worse, the Tribunal will not hand over to Jamil Sayyed (one of the four generals illegally detained) the minutes of his accusers’ hearings, thereby barring him from requesting compensation and making it look as if it condones four years of arbitrary detention.

In more prosaic terms, the Tribunal is shirking its responsabilities. On the one hand, it must judge the false witnesses to thwart further manipulations and to make plain its impartiality; on the other hand it refuses to undertake a "clean-up" operation which might force it to arrest Prosecutor Mehlis. However, Odnako’s revelations on the German lead render this posture untenable. All the more since it’s already too late: General Jamil Sayyed filed a complaint in Syria and a Syrian examining magistrate has already indicted Detlev Mehlis, Commissioner Gerahrd Lehmann plus the five false witnesses. One can imagine the commotion at the STL should Syria decide to call on Interpol to have them arrested.

Just as the Mehlis commission was supposed to compensate for the lack of professionalism on the part of the Lebanese forces of law and order, the STL should equally have ensured the impartiality that the Lebanese courts may have been short of. But things are far off target, which raises the question of the Tribunal’s legitimacy.

Kofi Annan didn’t want the Lebanon Tribunal to exert international jurisdiction, but to function as a national Lebanese tribunal with an international character. It would have been subjected to Lebanese law while half of its members would have been nationals of other countries. The plan did not materialize because the negotiations came to a sudden end. More precisely, an agreement was reached with the Lebanese government presided at the time by Fouad Siniora, the former authorised representative of the Hariri estate, but it was never ratified either by Parliament or by the president of the Republic. Hence, the agreement was endorsed unilaterally by the UN Security Council (Resolution 1757 of 30 May 2007). The end result is a hybrid and fragile entity.

As pointed out by Kofi Annan, this Tribunal is not analogous to any other so far created within the purview of the United Nations. "It is neither a subsidiary organ of the UN, nor a component of the Lebanese judiciary system"; it is simply "a conventional organ" sitting between the executive authority of the Lebanese government and the UN. Judging by the international rule of separation of powers and independence of the judiciary, the STL cannot be regarded as a genuine tribunal, but rather as a joint disciplinary commission within the executive frameworks of the UN and the Lebanese Government. Whatever decision it may make will inevitably be coated with suspicion.

Worse still, any Lebanese government can terminate it since, not having been ratified, the related agreement was binding only on the previous government. As a result, the present Lebanese coalition government has become a battlefield between partisans and foes of the Tribunal. In an attempt to maintain governmental stability, week after week Lebanese President Michel Sleimane has been dissuading the Council of Ministers from taking a vote on any issue linked with the STL. This embargo cannot hold out forever.

Bad news coming in pairs, suspicions have now extended to the President of the STL, Antonio Cassese. This reputable international jurist was President of the International Criminal Tribunal For the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). He happens to be a ardent supporter of the Jewish colonialisation of Palestine. A personal friend of Elie Wiesel, Cassese received and accepted an honorary award, presented by Wiesel himself. He should normally have withdrawn and resigned when Hassan Nasrallah disclosed that Israeli drones had been reconnoitering the crime scene as well as the victim’s movements for months.


According to the President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Antonio Cassese, the armed resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan should be tried for "terrorism".

Worst of all, Judge Cassesse personifies an interpretation of international law that causes division in the Middle East. Although his official curriculum vitae obscures it, he took part in the 2005 negotiations between member states of the European Union and those bordering the Mediterranean Sea ("Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean"). His definition of terrorism blocked the discussions. According to him, terrorism is exclusively the act of individuals or private groups, never states. It follows that a struggle against an occupying army would not be considered as "resistance" but as "terrorism". In the local context, this juridical view is consistent with a colonial framework and disqualifies the STL.

The methods of the Special Tribunal do not differ from those applied by the Mehlis Commission. STL investigators collected mass files on Lebanese students, social security recipients and subscribers of public utility services. On 27 October, in the absence of the Lebanese judges, they even tried to snatch medical records from a gynecological clinic frequented by the wives of Hezbollah members. It is obvious that these probes have no link whatsoever with the Rafik Hariri assassination. Everything leads the Lebanese to believe that the information is actually earmarked for Israel, of which, in their eyes, the TSL is merely an offshoot.

All these problems had clearly been foreseen by President Putin when, in 2007, he had vainly made a pitch for a different wording of the STL founding resolution. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin had denounced the "juridical loopholes" of the system. He deplored that the Security Council should threaten to resort to force (Chapter VII) to achieve unilaterally the creation of this "conventional organ". He had emphasised that while the Tribunal should be working towards the reconciliation of the Lebanese people, it was devised in such a way as to divide them even more. Finally, Russia - as China - refused to endorse Resolution 1757.

The truth ultimately seeps through. The Israeli drone videos released by the Hezbollah expose Israel’s involvement in the crime preparations. The facts revealed by Odnako point to the use of a sophisticated German weapon. The puzzle is nearly complete.

Lebanese Schools Won’t Tell Why Did Palestinian Refugees Come to Lebanon?

By FRANKLIN LAMB, Counterpunch, February 6th 2012

During a workshop at the American University of Beirut last year on the subject of the right to  work and to purchase a home for Palestinian refugees, a young business major from the Christian village of  Bikerki posed a question that surprised some in the audience: “Why if Palestinian don’t like it in Lebanon do they not go home?  Why did they even bother coming here in the first place?”

“Caroline” was not being antagonistic. Many of the younger Lebanese population are taught in private and religious schools by the various sects using a curriculum including subjects that are heavily politicized and skewed, none more than modern Lebanese history.

Talking with Caroline during a tea break, she explained that she feels very politically oriented,  but admitted that she really doesn’t know much about Lebanese history and only vaguely why there are Palestinians in Lebanon. What she does know, she explained, came from her parents and family members and not from schools in her Christian hamlet which happens to be the seat of Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch, for whom she is a part time volunteer working with orphaned children.

In most private and public schools in Lebanon, sensitive political subjects have long been culled from textbooks by polarized confessional watchdog committees seeking a proper education for their children. UNWRA schools are forbidden to teach Palestinian history in Lebanon or even their history in Palestine lest the US Congress cut UNWRA funding.

This has prevented the development of a unified history curriculum. Most history lessons end in 1946, three years after Lebanon’s independence from French colonial rule. Many schools avoid teaching Lebanese history in order to prevent sectarian and political fervor.

According to Ohaness Goktchian, professor of political science at the American University in Beirut, “We are raising another generation of children who identify themselves only with their communities and not their nation… history is what unities people. Without history we can’t have unity.”

Sari Hanafi, a Palestinian professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut, says a unified history curriculum is necessary. “I think in terms of social identity it’s important for the Lebanese to have a shared history which also highlights their differences. We hold absolutely different visions of Lebanon. We should admit this, and admit our own limitations.” Hanafi continues, “There should be no vote (the content of history textbooks) by the council of ministers or the parliament… It should be defined and approved by a committee of historians and that’s it.”

All sects, get involved is checking what is being taught.  One of the Hezbollah officials this observer most admires is MP Mohammad Fneish, former Labor Minister and currently Minister of Agriculture. Fneish raised an issue with the Ministry of Education last week concerning the use of an American text book called Modern World History that is used at Beirut’s International College (IC), a popular private school.  What the Hezbollah MP and others found disturbing was that the US book states that “Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are terrorist organizations.”

A solution was quickly agreed upon by the Ministry of Education, the International College administration and Hezbollah. The offending passage was simply covered over in each of the books with a sticker and everyone seems more or less satisfied for now.

As a consequence of this impasse in education, which often sees 1946, three years after the end of the French occupation, as the end of the period of history taught in Lebanon, Caroline honestly did not know why Palestinians came to Lebanon. When it comes to the second half of the 20^th century, what happened during the Palestinian Nakba and its effects here in Lebanon are largely unknown among youth.

Caroline and I became friends and I gave her some articles from different scholars to read on the Nakba as I sensed she was becoming interested in this subject.  Partly as a dare, she agreed to do research and get back to me with what she discovered about the Nakba and its effects on Lebanon.  She wanted to write from the perspective of a Lebanese student and I in turn would try to help her get college credit for her thesis and maybe even published.

Frankly I had not thought much about our research arrangement for months, and was very happy and surprised when she contacted me the other day to say that she needed me to read her manuscript.

And quite a manuscript it is.

Why, Caroline asked her readers, did more than 129,000 Palestinians come to Lebanon during 1948 while a similar number arrived next door to Syria?

Then she laid out what she had learned and her conclusions:

The current fate of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, living for decades in inhumane conditions worse that any refugees on earth, is primarily the fault and responsibility of those who stole their lands and ethnically cleaned them during the 1948 Nakba. Additionally, the Palestinian refugees’ abject existence is the responsibility of those who have egregiously nurtured the nineteenth century Zionist colonial enterprise with aid and weapons while averting their eyes from the Palestinians Right of Return and the international responsibility to implement international law including many UN Security Council Resolutions 242, 338 and UNGAR 194. In addition to the United States and Europe, responsibility attaches to much of the World community.

They were forced out of 531 villages and 11 cities in Palestine as part of a series of detailed and meticulous ethnic cleansing campaigns rarely witnessed since Germany’s Third Reich.  Indeed, many of the same methods used to transfer the population of Palestine through terror and intimidation experienced under the Nazi administration of Germany were employed by the Zionist organizers of the Nakba.

“For more than six decades”, she wrote:  “the Zionist colonial enterprise that still occupies Palestine, falsely claimed that the Palestinians left their farms and homes because they were ordered to do so by Arab governments in order to clear the way for a massive Arab army that would soon throw the Jews into the sea.  It was nonsense of course, since the so-called Arab “army” was ten percent of the Zionist forces, had no such plan, and in the case of Syrian forces ran out of ammunition early on and the Jordanian did not want to fight at all and left after the fall  of Lod and  Ramle.”

But, according to Caroline, “the Zionist lobby in the USA and Europe repeated this and many other lies for more than half a century.” Caroline wrote that relatively recently, Walid Khalidi (1988), Zionist historian Benny Morris, the eminent Palestinian scholar Salman Abu Sitta and others exposed this lingering fraud.

Yet, during the 2012 American presidential campaigns in Florida, New York and elsewhere this shibboleth surfaced again without challenge or rebuttal by the main stream media, debate sponsors or claimed debate “fact checkers.”

A summary of Caroline’s research instructs us about the reasons Palestinians left their homes and land seeking sanctuary in Lebanon.

In approximately 90 per cent of the 531 villages, direct Zionist military attacks emptied the Palestinian population.  This took the forms of expulsion by Jewish forces (approximately 15 per cent), direct military assault by Zionist gangs and militia (60 per cent) and approximately 18 per cent as a result of an imminent attack following the destruction of a near-by village sometimes in view of neighboring villages.

Other villages were emptied by insidious “whispering campaigns” whereby Zionist agents, posing as “friendly Jewish neighbors” would whisper to Palestinian villagers that a horrible bombardment of their village was imminent and they must, at risk of their lives, leave for a week or so until ‘the situation’ returned to normal. Another 38 villages were ethnically cleansed because of “fear of Jewish attack” and five villages were emptied on orders of a local leader or Muktar.

Palestinian refugees who were forced into Lebanon more than six decades ago were all part of the Zionist creation of the so-called “refugee problem.”  They came as a direct result of a fanatical genocidal war waged against them by European colonial Zionists before, during and subsequent to the League of Nations British Mandate. Zionist tactics included military and psychological projects and both allowed for hasbara which generated some credence for the fake Zionist slogan: “Palestine is a land without people for a people without land”.

The myth that the Israelis were few and fought with sparse weapons against many well equipped Arab armies was only true in Hollywood’s “Exodus Fantasy.” The number of Arab armies participating went down during the war. The only ones who remained to the last rounds in October, November, and December were the Palestinians and Egyptians, according to Caroline. The Zionist plan from the very beginning emphasized the urgency of building a large army and out of a population of approximately 650,000. More than 100,000, or roughly 16 per cent of the colonial population were under arms.

Caroline is a credit to her religion, village, country and generation, in that she is determined to learn what Lebanon’s confessionalized education does not allow. She has pledged to send her research to all Member of Parliament and to support the intensifying campaign here in Lebanon to secure the right to work and home ownership for the ethnically cleansed Palestinian refugees.

© FRANKLIN LAMB, Counterpunch 

Syria and the Escalation Towards a Broader Middle East War

PART II- The Pentagon’s Salvador Option: The Deployment of Death Squads in Iraq and Syria

By: Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, August 16th, 2011

This present essay (Part II below) focusses on the history of the Pentagon's "Salvador Option" in Iraq and its relevance to Syria.The program was implemented under the tenure of John D. Negroponte, who served as US ambassador to Iraq (June 2004-April 2005). The current ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford was part of Negroponte’s team in Baghdad in 2004-2005. 

Syria: Overview and Recent Developments

The Western media has played a central role in obfuscating the nature of foreign interference in Syria including outside support to armed insurgents. In chorus they have described recent events in Syria as a “peaceful protest movement” directed against the government of Bashar Al Assad, when the evidence amply confirms that Islamic paramilitary groups have infiltrated the rallies.

Israel’s Debka Intelligence news, while avoiding the issue of an armed insurgency, tacitly acknowledges that Syrian forces are being confronted by an organized paramilitary: “[Syrian forces] are now running into heavy resistance: Awaiting them are anti-tank traps and fortified barriers manned by protesters armed with heavy machine guns”. Since when are peaceful civilian protesters armed with “heavy machine guns” and “anti-tank traps”?

Recent developments in Syria point to a full-fledged armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist “freedom fighters” supported, trained and equipped by NATO and Turkey’s High Command. According to Israeli intelligence sources:

NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. Instead of repeating the Libyan model of air strikes, NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011) .

The delivery of weapons to the rebels is to be implemented “overland, namely through Turkey and under Turkish army protection….Alternatively, the arms would be trucked into Syria under Turkish military guard and transferred to rebel leaders at pre-arranged rendezvous.” (Ibid)

According to Israeli sources, which remain to be verified, NATO and the Turkish High command, also contemplate the development of a “jihad” involving the recruitment of thousands of Islamist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:

Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria (Ibid).

These various developments point towards the possible involvement of Turkish troops inside Syria, which could potentially lead to a broader military confrontation between Syria and Turkey as well as a full-fledged “humanitarian” military intervention by NATO.

In recent developments, Islamist death squads have penetrated the port city of Latakia’s Ramleh district, which includes a Palestinian refugee camp of some 10,000 residents. These armed gunmen which include rooftop snipers are terrorizing the local population.

In a cynical twist, the Western media has presented the Islamist paramilitary groups in Latakia as “Palestinian dissidents” and “activists” defending themselves against Syrian armed forces. In this regard, the actions of armed gangs directed against the Palestinian community in Ramleh visibly seeks to foment political conflict between Palestine and Syria. Several Palestinian personalities have sided with the Syrian “protest movement”, while casually ignoring the fact that the “pro-democracy” death squads are covertly supported by Israel and Turkey.

Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has intimated that Ankara could consider military action against Syria if the Al Assad government doesn’t cease “immediately and unconditionally” its actions against “protesters”. In a bitter irony, the Islamist fighters operating inside Syria who are terrorizing the civilian population, are trained and financed by the Turkish Erdogan government.

Meanwhile, US, NATO and Israeli military planners have outlined the contours of a humanitarian military campaign, in which Turkey (the second largest military force inside NATO) would play a central role.

On August 15, Tehran reacted to the unfolding crisis in Syria, stating that “events in Syria should be considered only as internal affairs of that country and accused the West and its allies with trying to destabilize Syria, in order to make the case for its eventual occupation” (Iran Foreign ministry Statement, quoted in Iran urges West to stay out of Syria’s ‘internal matters’ Todayszaman.com, August 15, 2011).

We are at dangerous crossroads: Were a military operation to be launched against Syria, the broader Middle East Central Asian region extending from North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with China would be engulfed in the turmoil of an extended war. A war on Syria could evolve towards a US-NATO military campaign directed against Iran, in which Turkey and Israel would be directly involved.

It is crucial to spread the word and break the channels of media disinformation. A critical and unbiased understanding of what is happening in Syria is of crucial importance in reversing the tide of military escalation towards a broader regional war.

Background: America’s Ambassador Robert S. Ford Arrives in Damascus (Jan. 2011)

US Ambassador Robert Ford arrived in Damascus in late January 2011 at the height of the protest movement in Egypt. America’s previous Ambassador to Syria was recalled by Washington following the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafick Hariri, which was blamed, without evidence, on the government of Bashar Al Assad.

The author was in Damascus on January 27, 2011 when Washington’s Envoy presented his credentials to the Al Assad government.  

At the outset of my visit to Syria in January 2011, I reflected on the significance of this diplomatic appointment and the role it might play in a covert process of political destabilization. I did not, however, foresee that this process would be implemented within less than two months following the instatement of Robert S. Ford as US Ambassador to Syria.

The reinstatement of a US ambassador in Damascus, but more specifically the choice of Robert S. Ford as US ambassador, bears a direct relationship to the onset of the protest movement in mid-March against the government of Bashar al Assad.

Robert S. Ford was the man for the job. As “Number Two” at the US embassy in Baghdad (2004-2005) under the helm of Ambassador John D. Negroponte, he played a key role in implementing the Pentagon’s “Iraq Salvador Option”. The latter consisted in supporting Iraqi death squadrons and paramilitary forces modeled on the experience of Central America.

The Western media has misled public opinion on the nature of the Arab protest movement by failing to address the support provided by the US State Department as well as US foundations (including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)) to selected pro-US opposition groups. Known and documented, the U.S. State Department “has been funding opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, since 2006 (U.S. admits funding Syrian opposition – World – CBC News April 18, 2011).

The protest movement in Syria was upheld by the media as part of the “Arab Spring”, presented to public opinion as a pro-democracy protest movement which spread spontaneously from Egypt and the Maghreb to the Mashriq. The fact of the matter is that these various country initiatives were closely timed and coordinated (Michel Chossudovsky, The Protest Movement in Egypt: “Dictators” do not Dictate, They Obey Orders, Global Research, January 29, 2011).

There is reason to believe that events in Syria, however, were planned well in advance in coordination with the process of regime change in other Arab countries including Egypt and Tunisia. The outbreak of the protest movement in the southern border city of Daraa was carefully timed to follow the events in Tunisia and Egypt.

It is worth noting that the US Embassy in various countries has played a central role in supporting opposition groups. In Egypt, for instance, the April 6 Youth Movement was supported directly by the US embassy in Cairo.

Who is Ambassador Robert Stephen Ford?

Since his arrival in Damascus in late January 2011, Ambassador Robert S. Ford played a central role in laying the groundwork as well as establishing contacts with opposition groups. A functioning US embassy in Damascus was seen as a precondition for carrying out a process of political destabilization leading to “regime change”.

Ambassador Robert S., Ford is no ordinary diplomat. He was ambassador to Algeria before his appointment as U.S. representative in January 2004 to the Shiite city of Najaf in Iraq. Najaf was the stronghold of the Mahdi army. A few months later he was appointed “Number Two Man” (Minister Counsellor for Political Affairs), at the US embassy in Baghdad at the outset of John Negroponte’s tenure as US Ambassador to Iraq (June 2004- April 2005). Ford subsequently served under Negroponte’s successor Zalmay Khalilzad.

Negroponte’s mandate as US ambassador to Iraq (together with Robert S. Ford) was to coordinate out of the US embassy, the covert support to death squads and paramilitary groups in Iraq with a view to fomenting sectarian violence and weakening the resistance movement. Robert S. Ford as “Number Two” (Minister Counselor for Political Affairs) at the US Embassy played a central role in this endeavor. To understand Robert Ford’s mandate in both Baghdad and subsequently in Damascus, it is important to reflect briefly on the history of US covert operations and the central role played by John D. Negroponte.

Negroponte and the “Salvador Option”

John Negroponte had served as US ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985. As Ambassador in Tegucigalpa, he played a key role in supporting and supervising the Nicaraguan Contra mercenaries who were based in Honduras. The cross border Contra attacks into Nicaragua claimed some 50 000 civilian lives.

During the same period, Negroponte was instrumental in setting up the Honduran military death squads, “operating with Washington support, [they] assassinated hundreds of opponents of the US-backed regime” (Bill Vann, Bush Nominee linked to Latin American Terrorism, by Bill Vann, Global Research, November 2001, www.globalresearch.ca/articles/VAN111A.html).

“Under the rule of General Gustavo Alvarez Martnez, Honduras’s military government was both a close ally of the Reagan administration and was “disappearing” dozens of political opponents in classic death squad fashion. In a 1982 letter to The Economist, Negroponte wrote that it was “simply untrue to state that death squads have made their appearance in Honduras.” The Country Report on Human Rights Practices that his embassy sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee took the same line, insisting that there were “no political prisoners in Honduras” and that the “Honduran government neither condones nor knowingly permits killings of a political or nonpolitical nature.”

Yet according to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun in 1995, in 1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and kidnappings by the Honduran military. The Sun described the activities of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316, that used “shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves.”

On August 27, 1997, CIA Inspector General Frederick P. Hitz released a 211-page classified report entitled “Selected Issues Relating to CIA Activities in Honduras in the 1980′s: “This report was partly declassified on Oct. 22, 1998, in response to demands by the Honduran human rights ombudsman. Opponents of Negroponte are demanding that all Senators read the full report before voting on his nomination to the position of US Permanent Representative to the UN” (Peter Roff and James Chapin, Face-off: Bush’s Foreign Policy Warriors, Global Research November 2001, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ROF111A.html )

John Negroponte- Robert S. Ford. The Iraq “Salvador Option”

In January 2005, following Negroponte’s appointment as US ambassador to Iraq, the Pentagon confirmed in a story leaked to Newsweek that it was “considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago” (El Salvador-style ‘death squads’ to be deployed by US against Iraq militants – Times Online, January 10, 2005).

John Negroponte and Robert S. Ford at the US Embassy worked closely together on the Pentagon’s project. Two other embassy officials, namely Henry Ensher (Ford’s Deputy) and a younger official in the political section, Jeffrey Beals, played an important role in the team “talking to a range of Iraqis, including extremists” (See The New Yorker, March 26, 2007). Another key individual in Negroponte’s team was James Franklin Jeffrey, America’s ambassador to Albania (2002-2004). Jeffrey is currently the US Ambassador to Iraq.

Negroponte also brought into the team one of his former collaborators Colonel James Steele (ret) from his Honduras heyday:

Under the “Salvador Option,” “Negroponte had assistance from his colleague from his days in Central America during the 1980′s, Ret. Col James Steele. Steele, whose title in Baghdad was Counselor for Iraqi Security Forces supervised the selection and training of members of the Badr Organization and Mehdi Army, the two largest Shi’ite militias in Iraq, in order to target the leadership and support networks of a primarily Sunni resistance. Planned or not, these death squads promptly spiraled out of control to become the leading cause of death in Iraq.

Intentional or not, the scores of tortured, mutilated bodies which turn up on the streets of Baghdad each day are generated by the death squads whose impetus was John Negroponte. And it is this U.S.-backed sectarian violence which largely led to the hell-disaster that Iraq is today (Dahr Jamail, Managing Escalation: Negroponte and Bush’s New Iraq Team, Antiwar.com, January 7, 2007).

John Negroponte described Robert Ford while at the embassy in Baghdad, as “one of these very tireless people … who didn’t mind putting on his flak jacket and helmet and going out of the Green Zone to meet contacts.” Robert S. Ford is fluent in both Arabic and Turkish. He was dispatched by Negroponte to undertake strategic contacts:

[O]ne Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called “snatch” operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries (Newsweek, January 8, 2005).

The plan had the support of the US appointed Iraqi government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. The Pentagon declined to comment, but one insider told Newsweek: “What everyone agrees is that we can’t just go on as we are. We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing.”

Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret. The experience of the so-called “death squads” in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region.

…. John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85.

Death squads were a brutal feature of Latin American politics of the time. In Argentina in the 1970s and Guatemala in the 1980s, soldiers wore uniform by day but used unmarked cars by night to kidnap and kill those hostile to the regime or their suspected sympathizers.

In the early 1980s President Reagan’s Administration funded and helped to train Nicaraguan contras based in Honduras with the aim of ousting Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime. The Contras were equipped using money from illegal American arms sales to Iran, a scandal that could have toppled Mr. Reagan.

It was in El Salvador that the United States trained small units of local forces specifically to target rebels.

The thrust of the Pentagon proposal in Iraq, according to Newsweek, is to follow that model and direct US Special Forces teams to advise, support and train Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shia militiamen to target leaders of the Sunni insurgency.

It is unclear whether the main aim of the missions would be to assassinate the rebels or kidnap them and take them away for interrogation. Any mission in Syria would probably be undertaken by US Special Forces. Nor is it clear who would take responsibility for such a program — the Pentagon or the Central Intelligence Agency. Such covert operations have traditionally been run by the CIA at arm’s length from the administration in power, giving US officials the ability to deny knowledge of it (Times Online).

Under Negroponte’s helm at the US Embassy in Baghdad, a wave of covert civilian killings and targeted assassinations was unleashed. Engineers, medical doctors, scientists and intellectuals were also targeted. The objective was to create factional divisions between Sunni, Shiite, Kurds and Christians, as well as weed out civilian support for the Iraqi resistance. The Christian community was one of the main targets of the assassination program.

The Pentagon’s objective also consisted in training an Iraqi Army, Police and Security Forces, which would carry out a homegrown “counterinsurgency” program (unofficially) on behalf of the U.S.

The Role of General David Petraeus

A “Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq” (MNSTC) was established under the command of General David Petraeus with the mandate to train and equip a local Iraqi Army, Police and Security forces. General David Petraeus’s (who was appointed by Obama to head the CIA in July 2011), assumed the command of the MNSTC in June 2004 at the very outset of Negroponte’s tenure as ambassador.

The MNSTC was an integral part of the Pentagon’s “Operation Salvador Iraq” under the helm of Ambassador John Negroponte. It was categorized as an exercise in counterinsurgency. At the end of Petraeus’ term, the MNSTC had trained some 100,000 Iraqi Security Forces, police, etc., which constituted a body of local military personnel to be used to target the Iraqi resistance as well as its civilian supporters.

From Baghdad to Damascus: The Syria “Salvador Option”

While conditions in Syria are markedly different to those in Iraq, Robert S. Ford’s stint as “Number Two Man” at the US Embassy in Baghdad has a direct bearing on the nature of his activities in Syria including his contacts with opposition groups.

In early July, US Ambassador Robert Ford travelled to Hama and had meetings with members of the protest movement (Low-key U.S. diplomat transforms Syria policy – The Washington Post, July 12, 2011). Reports confirm that Robert Ford had numerous contacts with opposition groups both before and after his July trip to Hama. In a recent statement (August 4), he confirmed that the embassy will continue “reaching out” to opposition groups in defiance of the Syrian authorities.

General David Petraeus: President Obama’s New Head of the CIA

Obama’s newly appointed CIA head, David Petraeus who led the MNSTC. “Counterinsurgency” program in Baghdad in 2004 in coordination with Ambassador John Negroponte, is slated to play a key intelligence role in relation to Syria –including covert support to opposition forces and “freedom fighters”, the infiltration of Syrian intelligence and armed forces, etc. These tasks would be carried out in liaison with Ambassador Robert S. Ford. Both men worked together in Iraq; they were part of Negroponte’s extended team in Baghdad in 2004-2005.

© Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research