Category Archives: WMD

Iraq, Syria, WMD

Syria and Iraq: On Chemical Weapons and Cluster Bombs and Their Use when Necessary…………

         

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“Syria accuses rebels of using chemical weapons. Residents of an area that has been reportedly targetted with chemical weapons in Syria were said to be showing symptoms including breathing difficulties in an incident that could cross US “red lines” on intervention in the conflict. Britain said on Tuesday it was aware of media reports about a chemical weapons attack in Syria, adding that the use or proliferation of chemical weapons there would demand a serious response from the international community. Syria’s regime accused rebel fighters of firing a chemical weapon at a town…………………”

Cute. First the FSA gangs repeatedly accused the Assad regime of using chemical weapon, that was a few weeks ago. Even some schmuck at the American embassy in Turkey got into the act and confirmed that false report, as I recall. Now the regime is returning the favor and accuses the FSA gangs of using chemicals. I never believed either side on this, the politically motivated British response notwithstanding.
Nobody has used chemical weapons in the Middle East since the 1980s, when Saddam Hussein used them against Iraqi Kurds and against Iranian forces in the war. Nobody “important” objected at that time”: it was deemed necessary and maybe even democratic (small D). Now, as for cluster bombs, the next best thing…………
Cheers
mhg

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Hezbollah, Iran, Israel, Syria, Weapons deals, WMD

Syrian Air Defenses, Hezbollah Air Defenses……………

    

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“Syria has been arming and training Hezbollah fighters in the use of advanced antiaircraft weapons in recent months, Israel Defense Forces sources have told Haaretz. A senior officer in the Northern Command says hundreds of fighters were taught to use surface-to-air missiles in Syria and Iran. IDF officers are worried by two developments involving Syria and Hezbollah that could change the balance of power in the region. The first is the transfer of huge quantities of surface-to-air missiles; the second, the transfer of chemical and biological weapons. IDF officers believe that Hezbollah use of advanced antiaircraft missiles could jeopardize Israeli aerial supremacy……….”

Training is possible, in fact both Iran and Syria do it. However, supplying sophisticated weapons or WMD is doubtful (especially WMD). There are no doubt some sophisticated missiles supplied to Hezbollah by the Iranians but not by the Syrians (and certainly not WMD).


The Syrians don’t give away their somewhat sophisticated air defense systems, especially not to a Lebanese group. Any Lebanese group. Same applies even more to WMD: contrary to the Western (especially American) fear-mongering legend, Middle East regimes do not supply outsiders with WMD (or sophisticated conventional weapons).
Besides, the same air defense system failed the Syrians when the Israeli air force bombed the alleged nuclear plant (an odd story that has not been explained to the public in either Syria or Israel). Of course the Syrians may have been unwilling, too afraid, to use their air defenses; Hezbollah is certain to use them, if they have them, if Lebanon is attacked.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear Iran, Persian-American Gulf, War on Iran, WMD

The Beatles and Iranian Intentions: Western Fools on the Hill of Nuclear Intelligence……….

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“But the fool on the hill,
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.
Well on the way,
Head in a cloud,
The man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud
But nobody ever hears him,
or the sound he appears to make,
and he never seems to notice,……” Les Beatles

“It was the Little Interventionist Tony Blair who first began sanctions on Iran. And the build-up of hostilities has unnerving parallels with the case for war conjured by Blair and George Bush against Iraq. We have another dodgy dossier, in the shape of the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which claims Iran is developing nuclear weapons but says so largely on the basis of intelligence which ends in 2003. It relies on documents on a laptop, found in 2004 by the Israelis, whose reliability prompted deep scepticism among Western intelligence at the time. The foreign scientist said to have worked on a bomb with the Iranians turned out to be a nanotechnologist. And a former IAEA chief inspector has said the type of explosion chamber referred to in the report could not be used in a nuclear test. On that, is based hawkish noises and sabre-rattling sanctions. Intelligence chiefs publicly say such things as, the West must use covert operations to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme. Politicians make thinly veiled threats of military attack using weasel words such as “all options are on the table”. Pardon me if it feels like Iraq all over again……… But Iran is a big, politically sophisticated country whose constitution of parliament, president, councils and assemblies of religious experts, creates a system of checks and balances in which change is possible. Reformers have held sway at times in this political pluralism. The Iranian establishment is fragmented into factions; a third of MPs did not vote for the measure to reduce the diplomatic status of Iran’s relations with Britain last Sunday. But it is precisely the wrong reactionary factions which are strengthened by the bellicosity of the West. And make no mistake, the war has begun. …………”

The West gets some of its ‘intelligence’ from certain Iranian exiles, and from the Israelis, not exactly an impartial source. The Israeli Likud would love for the Iran nuclear program to dominate the news so much that people would forget all about the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They would love for the world to focus on any other issue, HIV-AIDS, Global Warming, Tax Cuts, the War on Drugs, Dr Phil, anything but the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Israelis get some of their ‘intelligence; from certain Iranian exiles.
Everybody else relies on Tony Blair and the Saudi royal family and Alarabiya (which belongs to the Saudi royal family) for intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program. Some are beginning to rely on the ruling al-Nahayan clan of Abu Dhabi for ‘intelligence’.
 
This does not mean that I have reliable intelligence that the Iranians are NOT working on a nuclear weapon. For all I know they could be in the last stage of making a Doomsday Bomb. I have no idea, but I would never believe what the IAEA or the UN or the US intelligence or British Intelligence or Israeli intelligence or Iranian intelligence or Ahmadinejad say about the Iranian program. That is what I learned from Iraq. And the writer is right, they are pushing the same arguments they used before the invasion of Iraq (which I supported at the time), and it is very likely based on faulty or downright fake information. The true goal is not nuclear weapons, it has to do with a balance of power in the Middle East.
Cheers
mhg


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WMD

A Sinister Axis of Mayhem: O Cluster Bombs, O Cluster Bombs……….

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“A coalition of countries including Britain on Friday defeated an attempt by the US, Russia, China and Israel to get an international agreement approving the continued use of cluster bombs. The weapons, which have been used in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon scatter “bomblets” over a wide area, maiming and killing civilians, notably children, long after they have been dropped and are banned under a 2008 convention which was adopted by the UK and in more than 100 countries. The US, refused to sign and in negotiations in Geneva, over the past two weeks pressed for a protocol to be added to a UN convention to provide legal cover for the continuing use of cluster munitions. But smaller countries, supported by agencies including Amnesty and Oxfam, refused to give way…………”

Interesting bedfellows: a cluster bomb fan club. The United States, China, Israel, and Russia: these are superpowers each in their own region, yet they feel the need to endanger civilians to death and maiming through the use of these dirty bombs. Mr. Obama is going along, at least: now that is no change most people would believe in, especially the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon who have been targets, victims, of these cruel (and unnecessary) bombs.
Cheers
mhg


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