Syria

[American Patriot]

Just so you know, Turkey is a US ally.

Syria violated the airspace, Turkey shot them down.

That's all that ought to happen at this point, the US won't jump in, Turkey handled the situation.

[BRVoice]

Rami al-Lolah ‏@RamiAlLolah 1m
#BreakingNews LCC: #Quneitra: #Rafeid: Huge reinforcements of #Assad forces heading to the southern sector of #Golan #Syria! #Israel #IDF

[American Patriot]

Rami al-Lolah ‏@RamiAlLolah 1m
#BreakingNews LCC: #Quneitra: #Rafeid: Huge reinforcements of #Assad forces heading to the southern sector of #Golan #Syria! #Israel #IDF

Oh, un-good..... very, very ungood.

[American Patriot]

Phil Sands and Suha Maayeh
Sep 16, 2013 Updated: Sep 16, 2013 23:57:00


Amman // A senior army officer and chemical-weapons specialist who defected from Bashar Al Assad’s forces says he was ordered by top regime officials to use poison gas in attacks on rebel-held areas.

“I am a witness and received orders three times to use chemical gas last year,” said Brigadier General Zaher Saket, a former commander of chemical warfare in the Syrian army’s 5th division in Sheikh Maskeen, Herak and Busr Al Harir. “But I did not implement the orders.”

Gen Saket, who defected in March this year, said there had been an escalation in the use of chemical warfare against rebels, with poison gases used on fourteen separate occasions while he was serving in the armed forces. He had been informed oftwenty other times after his defection, he said.

He described a chain of command that reached right to the highest level, with Bashar Al Assad issuing orders to the crisis cell — the close-knit group controlling the government’s response to the uprising.

Orders were then passed down to air force security, perhaps the most powerful and the most feared of Syria’s numerous secretive intelligence agencies. From there, the orders were conveyed to the army units tasked with firing chemical munitions.

“The decision requires five hours to be made,” Gen Saket said.

“If the regular army does not have the capacity to storm and destroy the Free Syrian Army, and is not capable of attacking a city or a village, the regime will use chemical weapons,” he said.

While the information could not be independently verified, it corresponds with intelligence estimates made recently by western states in regard to the deadly poison gas attack of August 21 on suburbs of Damascus, which killed hundreds of people.

It also corresponds with testimony by other former and serving army officers, who say the ultra-loyalist air force security plays a central role use of chemical weapons.

The August 21 attack prompted a UN investigation which yesterday confirmed the use of sarin gas, and served as the impetus for a US-Russian plan to decommission Syria’s chemical arsenal by mid-2014.

Gen Saket served for six years with the 5th division’s chemical warfare unit and spent one year seconded to air force security, also dealing with chemical-weapons procedures.

Unit 450 — whose existence was detailed in a French intelligence report — is one of seven production facilities for nerve gas including sarin, he said.

“We have plenty of the nerve gas: sarin, tabun, VX and mustard gas,” he said.

Sarin, tabun and VX are all deadly nerve agents outlawed under the 1993 chemical weapons convention. Mustard gas, a blistering agent used in World War One, is also regulated under chemical weapons laws.

Three other military units — 416, 417 and 418 — were in charge of protecting, moving and storing poison gases between 32 different sites, according to Gen Saket.

Gen Saket said he received his first order in October, given by a commander he identified as Brigadier General Ali Hassan Ammar, to receive a shipment of poison gas and release it in Sheikh Maskeen, a village in Deraa province.”

“It was planned that I would place the material in a sealed explosive device with TNT and a connection to electrical power …. I did not implement the order,” he said

“I used water instead and created the impression for the officers that I was using it. I dumped the [chemical munitions] substances in a hole,” he said.

The US-Russian decommissioning programme for Syria’s chemical arsenal — thought to be one of the largest in the world — refers to 45 different locations that Moscow and Washington say need to be investigated and dismantled.

Gen Saket doubted the UN-endorsed decommissioning plan would be effective in removing all of the chemical weapons from Mr Al Assad’s forces and his allies, especially the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah.

“Some of the chemical weapons shipments are already with Hizbollah,” he said.

Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/world/syri...#ixzz2f64owdbD
Follow us: @TheNationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook

[BRVoice]

zerohedge ‏@zerohedge 1 min
Car bomb has exploded on Syrian side of Turkish border - Al Arabiya

Mahir Zeynalov @MahirZeynalov 22s
At least seven killed, 20 injured in a car bomb on the Turkish-Syrian border.

[BRVoice]

In Public Shift, Israel Calls for Assad's Fall
Reuters
September 17, 2013


JERUSALEM — Israel wants to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toppled, its ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday, in a shift from its non-committal public stance on its neighbor's civil war.

Even Assad's defeat by al-Qaida-aligned rebels would be preferable to Damascus's current alliance with Israel's arch-foe Iran, Ambassador Michael Oren said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.

His comments marked a move in Israel's public position on Syria's two-and-1/2-year-old war.

Though old enemies, a stable stand-off has endured between the two countries during Assad's rule and at times Israel had pursued peace talks with him in hope of divorcing Syria from Tehran and Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long avoided openly calling for the Syrian president's fall. Some Israeli officials now worry that radical Sunni Islamist insurgents fighting Assad will eventually turn their guns on the Jewish state.

But with Assad under U.S.-led condemnation for his forces' alleged chemical attack on a rebel district of Damascus on Aug. 21, Oren said Israel's message was that he must go.

“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,” Oren said in the interview, excerpted on Tuesday before its full publication on Friday.

Assad's overthrow would also weaken the alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, Oren said.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” he said.

Oren said that other anti-Assad rebels were less radical than the Islamists.

Israel believes around one in 10 Syrian rebels are Sunni militants sworn to its destruction. Assad's Alawite sect is closer to the rival Shi'ite Islam of Iran and Hezbollah.

Oren, a Netanyahu confidant, did not say in the interview whether or how Israel was promoting Assad's fall.

Netanyahu casts Iran's disputed nuclear drive as the main menace to Israel and world stability.

Israel, which is widely assumed to have the region's sole atomic arsenal, has played down any direct Syrian threat to it but is concerned that a weak Western policy towards Assad could encourage Iran.

The Israelis have conferred closely with Washington as it first threatened military reprisals over the Damascus gas attack and then struck a deal with Russia for placing Syria's chemical weapons under international control.

Netanyahu has urged Syria be stripped of such arms, while insisting that his government was not getting involved in Assad's feud with the rebels.

[BRVoice]

Preplanned, but still timing.


OccupyURVote‏@NeighborhoodFP41m
Russia Puts Some 20,000 Internal Troops on Training Alert http://bit.ly/167wbUH @ria_novosti

[American Patriot]

"training alert"?

That's a new one on me. What's that mean?

Hmmm let me see here.

[American Patriot]

Russia Puts Some 20,000 Internal Troops on Training Alert

Deputy Interior Minister Nikolai Rogozhkin
© RIA Novosti. Grigori Sysoev


21:20 17/09/2013
Tags: Zapad-2013 drills, drills, Collective Security Treaty Organization, Russian Interior Ministry, Vladimir Putin, Nikolai Rogozhkin, Belarus, Russia
Related News

• Putin Orders More Snap Checks of Army, Civil Services
• Russian Troops Set off to Belarus for Joint Military Drills
• Russia Invites US Experts to Attend Zapad-2013 Military Drills
• 13,000 Troops to Take Part in Russia-Belarus Exercise

MOSCOW REGION, September 17 (RIA Novosti) – More than 20,000 of the Russian Interior Ministry’s internal troops have been put on alert in preparation for upcoming Russian-Belarusian drills, a senior ministry official said Tuesday.
The troops will conduct a series of territorial defense exercises in several Russian regions in preparation for the Zapad-2013 (West-2013) drills, said Deputy Interior Minister Nikolai Rogozhkin, who is also chief of the internal troops.
The missions will include counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations as well as the reinforcement of sensitive installations in emergency situations, the official added.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, supreme commander-in-chief of the nation’s armed forces, ordered a new series of snap checks of the military as well as civil services, to be conducted at the Interior Ministry’s internal troops, as well as in a number of civilian structures: the Transportation Ministry, the Energy Ministry and the Novgorod Region administration.
The Zapad-2013 two-stage strategic military drills, involving rapid-reaction units from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), will take place in Belarus and Russia from Friday to September 26.
Vyacheslav Usik, a spokesman for the Russian General Staff, said earlier that Belarus would send 10,400 servicemen to the drills, which will also involve some 60 aircraft and helicopters and up to 250 combat vehicles. Moscow and Minsk held similar large-scale military exercises in September 2009.
July this year saw unprecedented drills in the Russian Far East testing the Far East and Central Military Districts’ combat readiness. The drills involved more than 160,000 servicemen, 130 aircraft, 5,000 tanks and armored vehicles, 70 Pacific Fleet warships, five Russian armies, the Third Air Force, Air Defense Command and strategic aviation. The Defense Ministry has said that such snap inspections will be conducted regularly.

[Is45]

.


At least three other times this year... Vladimir V Putin has directly ordered a
surprise drill of the Russian armed forces... a surprise even to VVP's defense minister.

From my perspective, this proves three things: VVP is in direct, autocratic control
of Russia's military... his ministers are easily replaced... and VVP could at any time
order his military to act according to HIS secret plan.


.

[American Patriot]

Forensic Details in U.N. Report Point to Assad’s Use of Gas

Jm Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Syrian volunteers on Sunday in the northern city of Aleppo put on gas masks in a class on how to respond to a chemical attack.

By RICK GLADSTONE and C. J. CHIVERS

Published: September 16, 2013 302 Comments


A United Nations report released on Monday confirmed that a deadly chemical arms attack caused a mass killing in Syria last month and for the first time provided extensive forensic details of the weapons used, which strongly implicated the Syrian government.




Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency

Ban Ki-moon


Readers’ Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

• Read All Comments (302) »

While the report’s authors did not assign blame for the attack on the outskirts of Damascus, the details it documented included the large size and particular shape of the munitions and the precise direction from which two of them had been fired. Taken together, that information appeared to undercut arguments by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria that rebel forces, who are not known to possess such weapons or the training or ability to use them, had been responsible.
The report, commissioned by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, was the first independent on-the-ground scientific inquest into the attack, which left hundreds of civilians gassed to death, including children, early on Aug. 21.
The repercussions have elevated the 30-month-old Syrian conflict into a global political crisis that is testing the limits of impunity over the use of chemical weapons. It could also lead to the first concerted action on the war at the United Nations Security Council, which up to now has been paralyzed over Syria policy.
“The report makes for chilling reading,” Mr. Ban told a news conference after he briefed the Security Council. “The findings are beyond doubt and beyond the pale. This is a war crime.”
Mr. Ban declined to ascribe blame, saying that responsibility was up to others, but he expressed hope that the attack would become a catalyst for a new diplomatic determination at the United Nations to resolve the Syrian conflict, which has left more than 100,000 people dead and millions displaced.
There was no immediate reaction to the report from the Syrian government. But just two days before the report was released, Syria officially agreed to join the international convention on banning chemical weapons, and the United States and Russia, which have repeatedly clashed over Syria, agreed on a plan to identify and purge those weapons from the country by the middle of next year. Syria has said it would abide by that plan.
The main point of the report was to establish whether chemical weapons had been used in the Aug. 21 attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, an area long infiltrated by rebels. The United Nations inspectors concluded that “chemical weapons have been used in the ongoing conflict between the parties in the Syrian Arab Republic, also against civilians, including children, on a relatively large scale.”
The weapons inspectors, who visited Ghouta and left the country with large amounts of evidence on Aug. 31, said, “In particular, the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used.”
But the report’s annexes, detailing what the authors found, were what caught the attention of nonproliferation experts.
In two chilling pieces of information, the inspectors said that the remnants of a warhead they had found showed its capacity of sarin to be about 56 liters — far higher than initially thought. They also said that falling temperatures at the time of the attack ensured that the poison gas, heavier than air, would hug the ground, penetrating lower levels of buildings “where many people were seeking shelter.”
The investigators were unable to examine all of the munitions used, but they were able to find and measure several rockets or their components. Using standard field techniques for ordnance identification and crater analysis, they established that at least two types of rockets had been used, including an M14 artillery rocket bearing Cyrillic markings and a 330-millimeter rocket of unidentified provenance.
These findings, though not presented as evidence of responsibility, were likely to strengthen the argument of those who claim that the Syrian government bears the blame, because the weapons in question had not been previously documented or reported to be in possession of the insurgency.

[BRVoice]

Possible first Israeli killed in Syria while fighting alongside rebels
Published: 09.17.13, 21:39 / Israel News

A Wadi Ara family, whose son supposedly crossed the border into Syria to fight alongside rebels, has received word that he was killed in battles against the Syrian regime. The young man, in his 20s, flew abroad with two friends some three weeks ago and since then has been unreachable.

On Tuesday the family received a picture of a bullet ridden body and they identified it as their out of reach son. The family believes the two other young men are still in Syria. (Hassan Shaalan)

[American Patriot]

Why is an Israeli fighting with terrorists?

[Avvakum]

In Public Shift, Israel Calls for Assad's Fall
Reuters
September 17, 2013


JERUSALEM — Israel wants to see Syrian President Bashar al-Assad toppled, its ambassador to the United States said on Tuesday, in a shift from its non-committal public stance on its neighbor's civil war.

Even Assad's defeat by al-Qaida-aligned rebels would be preferable to Damascus's current alliance with Israel's arch-foe Iran, Ambassador Michael Oren said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post.

His comments marked a move in Israel's public position on Syria's two-and-1/2-year-old war.

Though old enemies, a stable stand-off has endured between the two countries during Assad's rule and at times Israel had pursued peace talks with him in hope of divorcing Syria from Tehran and Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long avoided openly calling for the Syrian president's fall. Some Israeli officials now worry that radical Sunni Islamist insurgents fighting Assad will eventually turn their guns on the Jewish state.

But with Assad under U.S.-led condemnation for his forces' alleged chemical attack on a rebel district of Damascus on Aug. 21, Oren said Israel's message was that he must go.

“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran,” Oren said in the interview, excerpted on Tuesday before its full publication on Friday.

Assad's overthrow would also weaken the alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, Oren said.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” he said.

Oren said that other anti-Assad rebels were less radical than the Islamists.

Israel believes around one in 10 Syrian rebels are Sunni militants sworn to its destruction. Assad's Alawite sect is closer to the rival Shi'ite Islam of Iran and Hezbollah.

Oren, a Netanyahu confidant, did not say in the interview whether or how Israel was promoting Assad's fall.

Netanyahu casts Iran's disputed nuclear drive as the main menace to Israel and world stability.

Israel, which is widely assumed to have the region's sole atomic arsenal, has played down any direct Syrian threat to it but is concerned that a weak Western policy towards Assad could encourage Iran.

The Israelis have conferred closely with Washington as it first threatened military reprisals over the Damascus gas attack and then struck a deal with Russia for placing Syria's chemical weapons under international control.

Netanyahu has urged Syria be stripped of such arms, while insisting that his government was not getting involved in Assad's feud with the rebels.

Stupid to make such a statement, given the war-weary mood in America today and the perception that the USA already has an 'Israel-firster' foreign policy among many in the world, particularly the Middle East.

No, Israel should definately not want Assad to fall; what's coming will be much worse and probably al-Qaida allied to boot.

[Avvakum]

Why is an Israeli fighting with terrorists?

The kid was an Arab Bedawi, from the place name, doesn't bode well for Israeli-Arab loyalties.

[BRVoice]

OccupyURVote‏@NeighborhoodFP1h
Obama says it's hard to imagine Syrian war winding down with Assad in power http://reut.rs/1aITvq3 @Reuters

Haaretz.com‏@haaretzcom36m
Netanyahu's office denies @AmbassadorOren’s claim that #Israel favors rebels in #Syria civil war http://htz.li/16CaCcm

[American Patriot]

Sabotage: Special Forces To Target U.S. Economy, Infrastructure, Railways, Power Plants, Waterworks, and Refineries In the Event of Mid East Conflict

Mac Slavo September 16th, 2013 SHTFplan.com Comments (383) Read by 28,163 people

If you were under the impression that the brewing conflict with Syria is over or that it would be a simple one sided affair with the United States launching “brief and limited” strikes on Syrian military assets, then consider the following report from a Russian military review.
According to Senior sources within the Syrian military, as well as Russian insiders, an attack on Syria will not come without repercussions here in the United States. The report, published by the widely read European newspaper Pravda and not carried by mainstream U.S. news channels, indicates that Bashar Al-Assad has been pre-positioning Syrian special operations teams inside the United States with the sole intention of disrupting our economy and causing maximum damage to critical U.S. infrastructure elements in high population areas including railways, power plants, water utilities, oil refineries and military targets.
Should President Obama launch an attack on Syria (or perhaps even Iran, Syria’s closest ally), these forces have been given orders to engage key targets on U.S. soil.

Hundreds of Syrian army special forces soldiers are currently located on the territory of the United States, ready to conduct a series of sabotage operations in case of a military aggression against Syria.
…
The publication lists potential targets that can be damaged, including railways, power stations, power plants, waterworks, oil and gas terminals, and military objects, mostly air and naval bases.
An anonymous source said that the diversion could be implemented in the most densely populated areas and states in order to cause maximum damage to the U.S. economy and infrastructure, simultaneously causing panic among the population.
Attacks against civilians are not planned, the anonymous source at the Ministry of Defense of Syria assured. All fighters grouped in units of three to seven people are employed by the Syrian special forces “al-Qassam” and undergone an extensive training. They are equipped to carry out sabotage operations in the United States.
The source said that the Syrian leadership has chosen this strategy based on the experience of the wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya, where the aggression was reflected from a defensive position, which doomed these countries to failure.

If true, it’s possible that this and the threat of a Russian military response are responsible for President Obama’s back peddling on military strikes in Syria.
Save September 11th, there have been no large-scale foreign born attacks on U.S. soil in recent history. Though German submarines targeted U.S. naval assets off our coasts during World War II, America has been left generally unscathed during military conflicts since the Korean war in the 1950′s.
That will change should the United States attempt military intervention in Syria or Iran.
If this report is to be believed (and it could be nothing more than propaganda), this time around Americans will directly experience the fallout from wars we initiate in other countries, and it will come in similar fashion to what we’ve done in Iraq and Libya, and have planned to do in Syria. The targets will be the civilian population, which will be left without electricity, water and potentially even food due to lack of gasoline supplies should the handful of refineries that make it available in the U.S. be destroyed or damaged.
These critical infrastructure elements are totally exposed to sabotage. Each of them, as well as our nuclear power plants, are usually only protected by private security firms (not the military-grade kind) and local police forces. Thus, a well coordinated military style takeover of utility plants or refineries is not out of the question, and is a completely plausible scenario.
We don’t know the exact number of Syrian special forces commandos supposedly in the United States. However, even a limited strike force, combined with cyber fighters such as the Iranian backed Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, an organization that may have been responsible for last month’s NASDAQ stock exchange outage, could wreak havoc across a totally unsuspecting U.S. public.
What we know is that our life sustaining infrastructure is not secure. The U.S. government knows this and has been planning contingency operations should these areas of our country come under attack.
We also know that any disruptions to the regular flow of commerce would be disastrous, leading very quickly to panic, looting, and a breakdown in civil order.
The Syrians, Iranians and Russians know this as well, thus it only makes sense for a country with limited military resources to take this course of action should we engage them in military conflict.
If we attack Syria or Iran in the future, the American people can fully expect a direct response on U.S. soil. This could well result in our emergency response personnel being overwhelmed and without the ability to provide aid for the millions of people who would be affected within a matter of hours.
The only prudent steps to be taken by the American people are to individually plan and prepare for such events. The government will not be there to provide aid, because despite their efforts to convince us they have everything under control, nothing could be further from the truth. Isolated regional disasters like Hurricane Sandy or Katrina led to complete pandemonium in the streets.
If we can’t handle a Hurricane when we have been given a week of advance warning, what do you think will happen if our infrastructure, economy and commerce systems are hit with a coordinated military attack across the most densely populated areas of the country?
Hattip CB

[BRVoice]

Rami al-Lolah‏@RamiAlLolah4h
#PT #BreakingNews #Turkey FM #Davutoglu: + who don't have a share in the bloodshed, "legitimate" and "moderate" opposition leaders. #Syria

Rami al-Lolah‏@RamiAlLolah4h
#BreakingNews #Turkey FM #Davutoglu: Negotiations for a "new #Syria" could be successfully held only between those members of the regime +



Rami al-Lolah‏@RamiAlLolah5h
#BreakingNews Novosti: 3 #Russian naval warships started mobilizing to Gulf of Aden!

Doug Pologe‏@DougPologe20m
Iranian Navy’s 27th fleet has docked in Port Sudan "to provide security for Iranian oil tankers and commercial ships" http://www.tehrantimes.com/politics/...-in-port-sudan …

[BRVoice]

Treadstone 71 ‏@Treadstone71LLC 2m
Germany government confirms between 2002-2006, officials authorized export of 'dual-use' chemicals to Syria - @AP http://bit.ly/1dpphJH

Doug Pologe‏@DougPologe22m
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (AQ) overran Syrian town near Turkish border, after a fight with FSA units. http://www.lbcgroup.tv/news/116320/1309180604-lbci-news …

Jenan Moussa‏@jenanmoussa9m
Its getting quiet in Azaz. Seems there are attempts to mediate & stop fighting btwn ISIS & FSA. Final death toll not known yet. #Syria

Jenan Moussa‏@jenanmoussa57m
Activist in Azaz tells me: 6 killed, 25 injured &70 missing in continuous clashes btwn AlQaeda linked ISIS group and FSA. ( not final nbs)

[BRVoice]

Germany supplied 'dual-use' chemicals to Syria

Sep. 18 2:20 PM EDT

BERLIN (AP) — Germany exported more than 100 metric tons (110 tons) of "dual-use" chemicals to Syria between 2002 and 2006, but officials insisted Wednesday there was no indication the substances had been used to make chemical weapons such as the poisonous sarin gas used in last month's deadly attack outside Damascus.

The exports were authorized after officials were assured of "plausible civilian uses" for the chemicals, the Economy Ministry said in a written response to questions from left-wing lawmakers.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said there was no indication they had been used for military purposes.

"According to all the information available to me, they were used for civilian purposes," Merkel told public television station ARD.

But she said officials were still checking whether further shipments took place after 2006 and before May 2011, when Germany imposed strict controls on exports to Syria.

The chemicals, which were exported under governments headed by Merkel and her center-left predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, included 93 metric tons (102 tons) of hydrogen fluoride and 12 metric tons (13 tons) of ammonium hydrogen fluoride.

These substances can be used in the production of sarin, but also have legitimate civilian purposes, according to Carlos Fraga, a researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.

Both hydrogen fluoride and ammonium hydrogen fluoride have been subject to export restrictions in Germany since the late 1980s — shortly after Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ordered chemical weapons used against the Kurdish village of Halabja, resulting in around 5,000 deaths.

A U.N. report earlier this week confirmed that sarin was used in the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus in which hundreds of people were killed. Russia has blamed Syrian rebels for the attack, while the U.S. and its European and Arab allies said Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces were responsible.