Syria: The Asad government continues to insist that it did not use chemical weapons in the attack on 21 August. It approved an extension of the UN inspection team's visit and requested that it investigate three gas attacks against Syrian soldiers since 21 August.
Lebanon's Daily Star reported on 26 August that at least four Hizballah fighters are receiving treatment in Beirut after coming into contact with chemical agents in Syria, a security source said.
The source said four or five members came into contact with the chemical agents while searching a group of rebel tunnels in the Damascus suburb of Jobar over the weekend. (The attack on 21 August is being called the Jobar incident.)
Last Saturday, Syrian state television said Syrian soldiers found chemical agents in Jobar and that some had suffocated while entering the tunnels
Comment: The three primary questions about the attack remain unanswered.
The newly disclosed information includes individual agency budgets along with program area line items, as well as details regarding the size and structure of the intelligence workforce. So one learns, for example, that the proposed budget for covert action in FY2013 was approximately $2.6 billion, while the total for open source intelligence was $387 million.
Some of the information only confirms what was already understood to be true. The budget for the National Security Agency was estimated to be about $10 billion, according to a recent story in CNN Money (“What the NSA Costs Taxpayers” by Jeanne Sahadi, June 7, 2013). The actual NSA budget figure, the Post reported, is $10.8 billion.
And the involuntary disclosure of classified intelligence budget information, while rare, is not unprecedented. In 1994, the House Appropriations Committee inadvertently published budget data for national and military intelligence, the size of the CIA budget, and other details. (“$28 Billion Spying Budget is Made Public by Mistake” by Tim Weiner, New York Times, November 5, 1994)
But the current disclosure of intelligence budget information dwarfs all previous releases and provides unmatched depth and detail of spending over a course of several years, based on original documents. The disclosure is doubly remarkable because the Post chastely refrained from releasing about 90% of the Congressional Budget Justification Book that it obtained. “Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online,” Post reporters Gellman and Miller wrote.
This is not a whistleblower disclosure; it does not reveal any illegality or obvious wrongdoing. On the contrary, the underlying budget document is a formal request to Congress to authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence.
But the disclosure seems likely to be welcomed in many quarters (while scorned in others) both because of a generalized loss of confidence in the integrity of the classification system, and because of a more specific belief that the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy today requires increased public accountability.
Though it has never been embraced as official policy, the notion of public disclosure of individual intelligence agency budgets (above and beyond the release of aggregate totals) has an honorable pedigree.
In 1976, the U.S. Senate Church Committee advocated publication of the total intelligence budget and recommended that “any successor committees study the effects of publishing more detailed information on the budgets of the intelligence agencies.”
In a 1996 hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then-Chair Sen. Arlen Specter badgered DCI John Deutch about the need for intelligence budget secrecy.
“I think that you and the Intelligence Community and this committee have got to do a much better job in coming to grips with the hard reasons for this [budget secrecy], if they exist. And if they exist, I'm prepared to help you defend them. But I don't see that they exist. I don't think that they have been articulated or explained,” the late Sen. Specter said then.
Committee Vice Chair Sen. Bob Kerrey added: “I would concur in much of what the Chairman has just said. I do, myself, believe not only the top line, but several of the other lines of the budget, not only could but should, for the purpose of giving taxpayer-citizens confidence that their money is being well spent.”
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission itself recommended disclosure of intelligence agency budgets: “Finally, to combat the secrecy and complexity we have described, the overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret” (at page 416, emphasis added).
These are clearly minority views. They could have been adopted at any time — as disclosure of the aggregate total was — but they haven't been. (And even these voices did not call for release of the more detailed budget line items that are now public.) And yet they are not totally outlandish either.
The initial response of the executive branch to the Washington Post story will be to hunker down, to decline explicit comment, and to prohibit government employees from viewing classified budget documents that are in the public domain. Damage assessments will be performed, and remedial security measures will be imposed. These are understandable reflex responses.
But in a lucid moment, officials should ponder other questions.
How can public confidence in national security secrecy be bolstered? Is it possible to imagine a national security secrecy system that the public would plausibly view not with suspicion but with support, much as the strict secrecy of IRS tax returns is broadly understood and supported? What steps could be taken to reduce national security secrecy to the bare minimum?
Looking further ahead, is it possible to devise an information security policy that is based on “resilience” to the foreseeable disclosure of secrets rather than on the fervently pursued prevention of such disclosure?
The US/Israel, Britain, France and Their Arab Puppets Reach “Consensus” on Syria Invasion
Western and Arab military leaders have reached a “consensus” on military intervention in Syria over accusations that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons, a Jordanian security official told German news agency, DPA.
“It was decided that should the international community be forced to act in Syria, the most responsible and sustainable response would be limited missile strikes,” the official said on condition of anonymity on Tuesday following a meeting held in the Jordanian capital, Amman.
The military leaders led by Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey agreed to prepare for the strike as early as this week, the official added.
Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman said UK armed forces are devising contingency plans for military action against the Arab country over the alleged use of chemical weapons.
The UK has been reportedly sending warplanes and military transporters to its airbase in Cyprus, situated near Syria.
US defense officials also say several navy destroyers have been deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean to be used against Syria upon an order of President Barack Obama.
More on Origins of False Flag Syrian Gas Attack Conspiracy
This Yahoo item originally came out in January 2013 in a UK newspaper, The Daily Mail:
“London, Jan 30, 2013 (ANI): The Obama administration gave green signal to a chemical weapons attack plan in Syria that could be blamed on President Bashar al Assad's regime and in turn, spur international military action in the devastated country, leaked documents have shown. A new report, that contains an email exchange between two senior officials at British-based contractor Britam Defence, showed a scheme ‘approved by Washington'. As per the scheme ‘Qatar would fund rebel forces in Syria to use chemical weapons,' the Daily Mail reports.”
More: US ‘backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria, blame it on Assad govt': Report http://in.news.yahoo.com/us-backed-plan-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-syria-045648224.html
In this article, Syria's Foreign Minister refers to the US/European plot to start gas attacks and blame it on Assad (see article above), a tactic, he says, to be repeated soon in Europe, after Syria is bombed by the US and its allies, and likely providing an even better pretext to justify attacking Syria: Syria says ‘terrorists' will strike Europe with chemical weapons http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/28/us-syria-crisis-europe-idUSBRE97R0N220130828
Syria:Update. The mainstream media headlines with slight variations predict that an attack against Syrian targets by US missiles could occur as early as Thursday. The UK and France are lobbying hard for action because of the alleged chemical attack.
Special Comment: Numerous pundits and experts have expounded on the need for the US to take action, the consequences of inaction, and the potential for a US attack to generate a regional conventional war. Curiously, they have not mentioned the probability of Iranian-instigated terrorist attacks in the US.
NightWatch has little to add to all that “wisdom,” but prefers to comment on matters not covered.
Feedback from one of the finest analysts alive provided a reminder that the “bugs and gas” (biological and chemical warfare) lobby in US intelligence contains fine people who get few opportunities to shine. That's because of the limits of intelligence on bugs and gas. Next to nukes (nuclear weapons) they are the most protected weapons a country, such as Syria and North Korea, has.
As a result, studies of national capabilities and stock piles of bugs and gas are notoriously suspect, but err on the side of caution because a little goes a long way. As a result, the record of predictive accuracy tends to be poor. That record includes the inaccurate judgments about various weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003.
This page from the Alex Jones site is a must-see, offering a remarkable compilation of 7 separate videos from Arabic sources showing evidence of non-Syrian government entities involved on the gas attack of Syrian civilians.
“With the assistance of former PLO member and native Arabic-speaker Walid Shoebat, WND has assembled evidence from various Middle Eastern sources that cast doubt on Obama administration claims the Assad government is responsible for last week’s attack.”
“On Aug. 23, LiveLeak.com hosted an audio recording of a phone call broadcast on Syrian TV between a terrorist affiliated with the rebel civilian militia “Shuhada al-Bayada Battalion” in Homs, Syria, and his Saudi Arabian boss, identified as “Abulbasit.” The phone call indicates rebel-affiliated terrorists in Syria, not the Assad government, launched the chemical weapons attack in Deir Ballba in the Homs, Syria, countryside.
The terrorist said his group, which comprises 200 terrorists escaped from al-Bayadah to al-Daar al-Kabera through a tunnel, needed to buy weapons to attack Homs.
The Saudi financier, who was in Cairo, asked the Syrian terrorists to give details about his group and how it will receive the money. The Saudi admitted his support to terrorists in Daraa and the Damascus countryside. The Syrian terrorist told him that one of the achievements of his “battalion” was the use of chemical weapons in Deir Ballba.
The recorded phone call disclosed the cooperation between two terrorist groups in Syria to bring two bottles of Sarin Gas from the Barzeh neighborhood in Damascus.
Russian media sources have consistently reported Syrian military have discovered rebel warehouses containing chemical weapons agents and have documented rebel chemical weapons attacks on the Syrian civilians the military.”
