Syria reported to have use Chemical Warfare

[Cain]

That and "but we have to do something" syndrome.  Even when we don't have the power to affect outcomes.  Even when the costs of meddling outweigh the benefits.  Even when we have no national interests at stake.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

That and "but we have to do something" syndrome.  Even when we don't have the power to affect outcomes.  Even when the costs of meddling outweigh the benefits.  Even when we have no national interests at stake.

Handwringing is the second funniest thing on Earth.

[Junkenstein]

That and "but we have to do something" syndrome.  Even when we don't have the power to affect outcomes.  Even when the costs of meddling outweigh the benefits.  Even when we have no national interests at stake.

Meddling outweighing the benefits might well be to the national benefit. Various nation heads act as sales reps for various companies, Arms being the most prominent industry that springs to mind, closely followed by energy. The supply and control of a supply of a nation's energy is pretty lucrative these days, and their ability to produce their own surely will be worth knowing.

I recall something about Israel being the current world leader in Drone manufacture, so I really have to question the content of any meeting between nation heads. When the remits are "Defence", "National Security" or "Environmental issues" it's becoming more transparently a code for "iffy business deal, no questions answered".

[Cain]

There's a good argument to be made that arms deals effectively tie the hands of the seller nation, thus diminishing their ability to manouvere and effectively negotiate on the international level.

Just because arms dealers can afford PR people who can fool the government of the day into thinking their interests are in the national interest does not make it so.

[Junkenstein]

If the government then still permits the arms deal, being fooled by PR person is the result not functionally the same though? Pretty much any nation that exports arms has/does/will/is currently doing deals with places that will obviously not use them for peaceful methods. Makes me wonder how many exports have been ordered recently to places far, far away from Syria. 

[Cain]

No.  Because if it's not in the national interest, then it's not in the national interest.

I'm not sure I can state it any more simply than that.  Do you think it was in Britain's interest to allow a backward regime of theocrats to threaten us with terrorism if we did not resume our arms deals with them?  Is it in Britain's interest to arm unstable regimes who may be an enemy in a year, or five year's time?

No, because national interest cannot be boiled down to the arms trade.  The arms trade, by it's nature, wants to sell arms to everyone it can.  But doing so is from the POV of a state, stupid and irresponsible.  That states do it regardless is more proof that states are prevented from fully realising where their own interests lie.  Normally by governmental incompetence, arms industry PR, ideology, personal links between the arms industry and government officials or similar.

[Junkenstein]

I think I'm getting it. I think I've been considering Arms as a much larger player to national interests than it may actually be.

The arms trade, by it's nature, wants to sell arms to everyone it can.  But doing so is from the POV of a state, stupid and irresponsible.  That states do it regardless is more proof that states are prevented from fully realising where their own interests lie.  Normally by governmental incompetence, arms industry PR, ideology, personal links between the arms industry and government officials or similar.

It would seem reasonable to suggest that the states that indulge in this behaviour probably have numerous problems with corruption which is where I've confused corporate interest with national interest. Lobbying for example pushes these two things much closer together than they probably should be which makes it easy for paranoid idiots like myself to assume something underhanded is going on when it's actually just business as usual.

I think there may be a decent discussion to be had about how much of the national interest is decided by those actually in control of the nation. Political parties are notorious for keeping few, if any, of their manifesto promises once the need to dominate the central ground becomes apparent. As I understand it at the moment the key factor of the UK (And US) national interests is mainly based around economic needs, with the military being a key part of the economy both here and in the US. I think we've comfortably passed the point where we can claim with a straight face to be doing anything for freedom, better living conditions and jam next Tuesday. 

I also feel like hell and am drinking a pint of coffee. If the above is idiocy and wordswordswords then apologies.

[Junkenstein]

Hey. Listen. It went quiet for a minute.

BANG THE FUCKING DRUM:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26213826

The UK and France have blamed the Syrian government for the collapse of peace talks with the opposition in Geneva.

"The responsibility for it lies squarely with the Assad regime," UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said.

His French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, said the government had "blocked any progress".

France really do seem to be spoiling for a rumble here. It's expected of the UK by this point and inevitable from the US. Hey, as long as we all keep just talking about it, no-one actually needs to go there. And we can get double the intel by monitoring our own citizens who go and come back!

[Cain]

Seymour Hersh has blamed Turkey for the Ghouta suburbs attack, calling it a false-flag attempt to get American and NATO support for a more overt role in Syria:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/2014/04/06/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

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.'

Within a few days of the 21 August attack, the former intelligence official told me, Russian military intelligence operatives had recovered samples of the chemical agent from Ghouta. They analysed it and passed it on to British military intelligence; this was the material sent to Porton Down. (A spokesperson for Porton Down said: 'Many of the samples analysed in the UK tested positive for the nerve agent sarin.' MI6 said that it doesn't comment on intelligence matters.)

The UK defence staff who relayed the Porton Down findings to the joint chiefs were sending the Americans a message, the former intelligence official said: 'We're being set up here.' (This account made sense of a terse message a senior official in the CIA sent in late August: 'It was not the result of the current regime. UK & US know this.') By then the attack was a few days away and American, British and French planes, ships and submarines were at the ready.

The full extent of US co-operation with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in assisting the rebel opposition in Syria has yet to come to light. The Obama administration has never publicly admitted to its role in creating what the CIA calls a 'rat line', a back channel highway into Syria. The rat line, authorised in early 2012, was used to funnel weapons and ammunition from Libya via southern Turkey and across the Syrian border to the opposition. Many of those in Syria who ultimately received the weapons were jihadists, some of them affiliated with al-Qaida. (The DNI spokesperson said: 'The idea that the United States was providing weapons from Libya to anyone is false.')

In January, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the assault by a local militia in September 2012 on the American consulate and a nearby undercover CIA facility in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three others. The report's criticism of the State Department for not providing adequate security at the consulate, and of the intelligence community for not alerting the US military to the presence of a CIA outpost in the area, received front-page coverage and revived animosities in Washington, with Republicans accusing Obama and Hillary Clinton of a cover-up. A highly classified annex to the report, not made public, described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and Erdoğan administrations. It pertained to the rat line. By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi's arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn't always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer. (A spokesperson for Petraeus denied the operation ever took place.)

By the end of 2012, it was believed throughout the American intelligence community that the rebels were losing the war. 'Erdoğan was pissed,' the former intelligence official said, 'and felt he was left hanging on the vine. It was his money and the cut-off was seen as a betrayal.' In spring 2013 US intelligence learned that the Turkish government – through elements of the MIT, its national intelligence agency, and the Gendarmerie, a militarised law-enforcement organisation – was working directly with al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability. 'The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training – including training in chemical warfare,' the former intelligence official said. 'Stepping up Turkey's role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its problems there. Erdoğan knew that if he stopped his support of the jihadists it would be all over. The Saudis could not support the war because of logistics – the distances involved and the difficulty of moving weapons and supplies. Erdoğan's hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn't respond in March and April.'

And as we now know, Turkish military officials also contemplated using false-flag attacks attributed to ISIS to justify their own military intervention into the country, apparently with the blessing of the Turkish Prime Minister.  When those tapes were leaked on Youtube, the government of Turkey banned Youtube from their internet.

Turkey has recently also improved its relationship with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The sarin venture seems risky without some kind of Saudi backing or foreknowledge though, given the large role Saudi Arabia plays among the Islamist rebel forces.  And given Saudi Arabia's large and enduring influence over American intelligence, especially covert actions like the "rat-line", it's entirely possible Hersh's sources are putting the full blame on Ankara to protect Riyadh.

[Cain]

Ha ha.  Guess who had a role in encouraging the Syrian insurgency to go all out?  Only none other than Victoria "fuck the EU" Nuland, who played such a prominent role in encouraging Ukraine's protestors to go all out:

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson, counseled Syrian dissidents to defy the Assad regime's offer of an amnesty in return for handing in illegal weapons, as the LA Times reported:

Syria accused Washington of "inciting sedition, supporting the acts of killing and terrorism," the official Syrian news agency said, quoting an official source at the Foreign Ministry.
...
The comments came a day after State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declared that she would counsel Syrians to reject the amnesty, in which those the government terms arms violators were asked to turn themselves in with their weapons "to the nearest police station" during a one-week period that began Saturday. Those who surrender and have not killed anyone "will be released soon," the Interior Ministry vowed.

"I wouldn't advise anybody to turn themselves in to regime authorities at the moment," Nuland told reporters in Washington.

Nuland, by the way, is married to PNACer and neocon pundit Robert Kagan.  Recalling Dick Cheney's enthusiasm for driving to Damascus post-Iraqi Freedom, maybe we should call the Syria enterprise Clean Break II: The Do-Over.

[Cain]

That first bit, about cherry-picking intel... Do you think that's a deliberate move of anti-rationalism, or does it just not occur to them that confirmation bias exists outside the internet?

It's also worth noting the US has never had a counterintelligence system worth a damn.  It could've done, if Angleton's paranoia had been reigned in some, and given administrative freedom from the CIA, but such are the missed opportunities of history.

Also recall, since the 1970s, when the CIA started to come under extreme Congressional scrutiny, it has outsourced its intelligence operations.  I really very stronly recommend purchasing Joseph Trento's Prelude to Terror: Edward P. Wilson and the Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network.

You may be wondering why you don't know about this private intelligence network.  Well, you do.  You probably just don't realise it.  It's gone by a few names...Ollie North's "Enterprise", sometimes the "Sarfari Club".

When Congressional heat got too much, Ted Shackley the "blond ghost" of the CIA Operations Directiorate and his partner in crime, Tom Clines, sought out private industry and international partners to avoid said scrutiny.  Said designs had some support from key players in the intelligence community, including a certain George HW Bush, who wasn't very keen on cleaning up the CIA in the wake of the various investigations to its illegal global operations.

Bush helped introduce Shackley and Clines to Saudi Arabia at an opportune time.  Angleton had always been too close to Israel, and it was felt that the Israelis treated the CIA like mushrooms - kept them in the dark and fed them shit.  Instead, Bush, via his family business, had a lot of strong links with Saudi Arabia.  Saudi oil money and contacts in the Middle East could help finance off the books operations around the world to combat the Soviet menace - and make a few people rich as a bonus. 

Utilising a sophisticated network of banks, including the still "too sensitive to talk about" BCCI (ask yourself the last time you heard a conspiracy theory mention this bank?  That's right, never), money was laundered across the globe to support these spooks for hire.  And it touched on more than a few strange episodes in intelligence history, such as the presence of the CIA in Qaddafi's Libya, training his troops in use of explosives, Iran-Contra, the "October Surprise" and the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

The problem is that this put American intelligence at a severe disadvantage with regards to fake intel from Saudi Arabia and its own designs on the region.  Designs which included a nuclear capability, the "Islamic bomb" and a multinational Islamic military force.  America outsourced intelligence, and got surprised that its contractors decided to slack off, or do their own thing without telling them.

And so the game continues.  Recall that after 9/11 (an event Trento links strongly with the historical actions of said private network), Cofer Black in the CIA issued the infamous "Gloves Off memo", which authorised and encouraged the wholesale purchase of intelligence from Middle Eastern client states, including presumably (but never actually named), Saudi Arabia.

But yeah.  The story's a complex one, and I cannot do it justice here.  I can only recommend reading the book.

[LMNO]

Wow.  OK, I'll see if I can get through it.

[Junkenstein]

Cain, appreciated as always. I'll pick that up when I get a chance, thanks.

[Cain]

That LRB article by Hersh also really deserves a read.  Hersh manages to deal with Benghazi and Syrian WMDs in a single article.

[LMNO]

Is Hersh really as good of a journalist as he seems, or has everyone else basically forgotten how to do it right?