Report from Patriot Update Today, 9-4-13
What if Bashar is being framed?
What if Bashar didn’t do it?
Sit tight, ’cause I’ve got a story by a man whose credibility is intact and beyond repute. His name is Yossef Bodansky. He “is an Israeli-American political scientist who served as Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the US House of Representatives from 1988 to 2004. He is also Director of Research of the International Strategic Studies Association and has been a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
“In the 1980s, he served as a senior consultant for the Department of Defense and the Department of State. He is also a senior editor for the Defense and Foreign Affairs group of publications and a contributor to the International Military and Defense Encyclopedia and is on the Advisory Council of The Intelligence Summit,” and he has a piece today in Defense and Foreign Affairs. “There is a growing volume of new evidence” that the White House knew and possibly helped plan a Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition.
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Chicago Tribune Article:
Putin says Russia could support a strike on Syria
By Sergei L. Loiko
5:00 AM CDT, September 4, 2013
MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin said he has not ruled out backing a U.S.-led military operation in Syria if the Kremlin gets concrete proof than an alleged chemical attack on civilians was committed by Bashar Assad’s government.
“I don’t rule this out,” Putin said during a televised interview with First Channel, a Russian federal television network, and the Associated Press. “But I want to draw your attention to one absolutely principled issue: in accordance with the current international law, a sanction to use arms against a sovereign state can be given only by the U.N. Security Council.”
The Obama administration is engaged in a lobbying effort to convince Congress to back a U.S. strike on Syria without U.N. approval. Late Tuesday, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed on language authorizing U.S. military action against Syria, while ruling out the commitment of U.S. ground forces and limiting the window for an attack to 90 days. A committee vote could come as early as Wednesday.
Putin's interview was recorded Tuesday at his country residence of Novo-Ogaryovo near Moscow, the official Kremlin website that posted it Wednesday morning said.
The Russian president reiterated that the Kremlin was not impressed with the data on the alleged chemical attack of civilians in a Damascus suburb last month presented by Washington. He said the video footage of murdered children was “horrible” but not proof of the Assad regime’s involvement.
“This footage doesn’t provide answers to the questions I myself put now,” he responded. “There is an opinion that [the footage] was compiled by the same rebels who as we know and the U.S. administration recognizes are connected with Al Qaida and have always been notorious for their special cruelty.”
Putin maintained that it is unreasonable to think that the Assad regime would resort to chemical weapons as his army held the upper hand on the rebels in the more than two-year civil war, as some accounts have portrayed.
“We think that for the regular armed forces, which are on the attack today and in some places they have surrounded the so-called rebels and are finishing them off, in fact it is totally absurd to use prohibited chemical weapons knowing full well that it could be a pretext to take sanctions against them, including the use of force,” Putin said.
Putin called the use of weapons of mass destruction a crime and said that Russia “will take a principled position” once it gets “objective, precise data as to who committed these crimes.”
“If it is established that means of mass destruction are used by [Syrian] rebels, what will the United States do with the rebels?” Putin said. “What will the sponsors do with the rebels? Will they stop arms supplies? Will they launch combat activities against them?”
Putin said that he will be convinced only by “a deep detailed study of the issue and the real presence of evidence which could clearly prove who used what [weapons]."
“After that we will be ready to act in a most resolute and serious way,” Putin added. He did not say what actions he is considering.
In the meantime, Russia will continue to supply the Assad regime with arms, the President said.
“We are doing it and we proceed from the notion that we are cooperating with the legitimate government and are not violating any norms of international law and any of our commitments,” Putin said. “And we regret very much that the [U.S.] supplies to the rebels have been going on in full volume and from the first steps of this armed conflict.”
www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-fg-wn-putin-russia-syria-strike-un-20130904,0,885274.story
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