Wayne Madsen

We all have common foes in the greedy and environmentally-destructive capitalist corporations and their puppets who run the governments of Canada and the United States.

By all measures of governing standards, the Conservative government of Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper embodies the same racist policies as that of the governments of the former Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. The Harper government’s patronizing policies over Canada’s First Nations is a case in point. Coupled with Canada’s abhorrent support for Israel’s expansionistic Zionist policies at the expense of the people of Palestine, the Harper government’s attempt to wrest control of resource-rich lands from Canada’s indigenous peoples for exploitation by multinational corporations is reminiscent of the same policies that saw native lands of South Africa and Rhodesia crudely exploited by DeBeers and British American Tobacco…

The Harper government represents the most right-wing government in the recent history of Canada. With its Anglo-Canadian base, it has alienated the French-speaking province of Quebec, where independence sentiment has been renewed; Muslims and Arabs, with its pro-Zionist policies; and Canada’s First Nations, with its attempt to grab native lands protected by treaties.

The only area where the Harper government has shown itself to be “liberal” is that of gay rights. It should be recalled that favoring rights for homosexuals is not necessarily liberal. After the 1934 Nazi Party purge of Ernst Rohm and his coterie of working class homosexual supporters, gay Nazis like Reinhard Heydrich and Baldur von Schirach who originated from the German elite were permitted to hold high office and operate more or less in the open. In the Canadian government of today, reputed homosexuals like Foreign Minister John “Rusty’ Baird and Immigration Minster Jason Kenney, sometimes called Canada’s deputy prime minister, follow in the footsteps of Heydrich and von Schirach in frolicking with fellow Tory gays at “Fabulous Blue Tent” parties in Ottawa. Similar parties in Berlin were attended by some of the Nazi party’s top lieutenants at the height of Adolf Hitler’s reign.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Presidential Medals of Freedom are awarded annually. They mock what they claim to represent. Many go to deplorable recipients. Previous dishonorees include GHW Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Henry Kissinger, Tony Blair, Shimon Peres, Margaret Thatcher, Alvaro Uribe, Colin Powell, Madeleine Albright, and Alan Greenspan among others.

Nobel Peace Prize recipients include notorious war criminals. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt was honored. He once said "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one." In 1919, Woodrow Wilson won. He broke his pledge to keep "us out of war." In 1953, George Marshall was honored. He helped create NATO. It's a killing machine. He was involved in aggressive war on North Korea. Other dishonorees included Kofi Annan, Al Gore, Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama, and the EU. Peacemakers aren't considered.

Intrepid Freedom Awards are made annually. They're "presented to a national or international leader who has distinguished himself in promoting and defending the values of freedom and democracy, the core beliefs of our nation." Dishonorees include a virtual rogue's gallery of recipients. They include GW and GHW Bush, Dick Cheney, Leon Panetta, Colin Powell, David Petraeus, Margaret Thatcher, Boris Yeltsin, Newt Gingrich, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Silvio Berlusconi, Michael Bloomberg, and Yitzhak Rabin among others.

More »

Wayne Madsen

It is clear that Russia’s arrest and expulsion of two CIA agents who were trying to recruit members of the Russian intelligence service fighting against Salafist separatists in the Caucasus is part of a Russian mopping-up operation directed at the CIA’s decades-long covert support for terrorists operating in the Northern and Southern Caucasus.

Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) recently arrested Ryan Christopher Fogle, a CIA «official cover» U.S. embassy Third Secretary, who was trying to recruit an FSB counter-terrorism officer for the CIA. A Russian phone intercept of Fogle’s conversation with the targeted counter-terrorism officer revealed the following offer by the CIA agent: “You can earn up to $1 million per year and I’ll give you $100,000 up front, but only if we meet right now. Yes or no?» Earlier this year, the FSB nabbed another CIA agent, yet unnamed, and quietly deported him.

The list of key U.S. Foreign Service officers, dated April 1, 2013, does not contain Fogle’s name on the list of key U.S. diplomats assigned to the Moscow embassy. Traditionally, the CIA prefers to operate under the official cover of “Political Officer” at large embassies like Moscow. In smaller embassies, the CIA presence can often be found in the deputy chief of mission. The Political Officer in Moscow is Michael Klecheski, formerly with the CIA-connected RAND Corporation and the National Security Council, who was assigned to the Moscow embassy during Soviet times. There is a good chance that Klecheski was Fogle’s local supervisor. The FSB revealed publicly that the CIA station chief for the embassy is Stephen Holmes. Another embassy Third Secretary, Benjamin Dillon, was expelled in January for activities similar to those of Fogle.

More »

Pepe Escobar

So Bashar al-Assad has spoken - exclusively, to Argentine daily El Clarín [1,2,3,4](.pdf) (there's a huge Syrian diaspora in Argentina, as well as in neighboring Brazil).

Cutting through the fog of Western hysteria, he made some valuable points. The record shows that, yes, the regime has agreed several times to talk to the opposition; but myriad "rebel" groups with no credible, unified leadership have always refuted.

So there's no way a ceasefire, eventually agreed on a summit - such as the upcoming US/Russia Geneva conference - can be implemented. Assad makes some sense when he says, "We can't discuss a timetable with a party if we don't know who they are."

Well, by now everyone following the Syrian tragedy knows who most of them are. One knows that the Un-Free Syrian Cannibals, sorry, Army (FSA) is a ragged collection of warlords, gangsters and opportunists of every possible brand, intersecting with hardcore jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra kind (but also other al-Qaeda-linked or inspired outfits).

More »

Gilad Atzmon

Every so often we come across a secular Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist’ who argues that Zionism is not Judaism and vice versa. Interestingly enough, I have just come across an invaluable text that illuminates this question from a rabbinical perspective. Apparently back in 1942, 757 American Rabbis added their names to a public pronouncement titled ‘Zionism an Affirmation of Judaism’. This Rabbinical rally for Zionism was declared at the time “the largest public pronouncement in all Jewish history.”

Today, we tend to believe that world Jewry’s transition towards support for Israel followed the 1967 war though some might argue that already in 1948, American Jews manifested a growing support for Zionism. However, this rabbinical pronouncement proves that as early as 1942, the American Jewish religious establishment was already deeply Zionist. And if this is not enough, the rabbis also regarded Zionism as the ‘implementation’ of Judaism. Seemingly, already then, the peak of World War two, the overwhelming majority of American Rabbis regarded Zionism, not only as fully consistent with Judaism, but as a “logical expression and implementation of it.”

More »

William T. Hathaway

"Comparing Evils" is a chapter from the book
RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War
by William T. Hathaway

Jamal Khan is an Afghan journalist who fled his country because of Taliban persecution and now lives in Germany. We met in the apartment of a mutual friend from the Deutsche Friedens-gesellschaft, the German Peace Society. Jamal is mid-forties, thin, with curly brown hair, tan skin, and clear green eyes that take everything in.

Hathaway: "Do you miss your country?"

Khan: "Only when I'm drunk, which isn't very often. Then I get stupidly sentimental.

"Actually I'm not a big fan of any country. They're all inhuman. They exist mainly as platforms for power. The rulers promote cultural rituals that make people identify with the place they live. Then they manipulate the people's patriotic emotions to get them to fight wars for them.

"We cling to the identification because it gives us a sense of security, of belonging to something greater. But the insecurity we feel is actually generated by the power the rulers have over us.

More »

Alex Kane

May 13, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -"Alternet" - The recent revelation that the Central Intelligence Agency has handed tens of millions of dollars over to the offices of the president of Afghanistan should come as no surprise. The CIA has a long history of this sort of activity. And most importantly, it’s the latest reminder of how America’s global “war on terror” has been forged through backroom deals, cold hard cash and the fostering of corruption.

From Yemen to Afghanistan to Somalia, America has prosecuted its perpetual war the usual way U.S. foreign policy is conducted: partnerships with unsavory leaders who are corrupt and commit abuses. Here are five striking examples of how the U.S. global war has been characterized by unsavory activity since 2001.

1. Bounty Payments For Alleged Terrorists

Cash payments in Afghanistan aren’t limited to the CIA paying off corrupt Afghan government officials. The lure of money played a major role at the start of the war on Afghanistan when the U.S. was looking for suspected terrorists to arrest and eventually throw in Guantanamo detention camp. The U.S. offered thousands of dollars to people to turn in alleged terrorists; 86% of all Guantanamo prisoners were people who were captured by bounty hunters, according to a report published by Seton Hall University in 2005. Many of them ended up being innocent of any crime--another clear example of how money is a corrupting tool in America’s never-ending global war.

More »

Johannes Stern

A makeshift oil refinery site in al-Mansoura village, al-Raqqa
province. Photograph: Reuters / The Guardian

According to a report yesterday in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, the European Union (EU) is directly funding US-backed Sunni Islamist terrorist groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. These groups are looting oil in parts of eastern Syria that they control and then re-selling it to EU countries at rock-bottom prices.

The Guardian writes:

“The EU decision to lift Syrian oil sanctions to aid the opposition has accelerated a scramble for control over wells and pipelines in rebel-held areas and helped consolidate the grip of jihadist groups over the country’s key resources.”

According to the Guardian, the main beneficiaries of the EU’s lifting of sanctions are the Al Nusra Front and similar Islamist terrorist groups.

“Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with Al Qaeda and other extreme Islamist groups, control the majority of the oil wells in Deir Ezzor province, displacing local Sunni tribes, sometimes by force. They have also seized control of other fields from Kurdish groups further to the north-east, in al-Hasakah governorate.”

The EU’s decision to resume trade with oil fields held by Al Nusra explodes the lie that the imperialist powers are waging war in Syria to change the repressive character of the Syrian regime. In fact, they are building up and backing deeply reactionary and oppressive forces.

These events also expose the so-called “war on terror”—the claim that Washington and the EU are fighting Al Qaeda, which served as the justification for US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—as a lie. Imperialism is arming and financing Al Qaeda-linked terrorist groups that commit terrible crimes against the Syrian population, handing over its wealth to the EU and Washington.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Previous articles discussed Washington-supported death squads in Syria. It's common practice in all US direct and proxy wars. Massacres and unspeakable atrocities are committed. Women are raped. Civilians are treated like combatants. Official coverup and denial follow.

Vietnam's Operation Phoenix became a prototype for today's wars. Terrorizing people into submission is official US policy. Guns for hire are enlisted, armed, funded, trained, and directed. Nothing too heinous is out of bounds. Killing continues daily like sport. So do gruesome atrocities.

In March 2012, Der Spiegel discussed the "Homs burial brigade." An insurgent "executioner" said he and comrades "kill in the name of the Syrian revolution. They leave torture (to) the so-called interrogation brigade...." "They do the ugly work." He believes in violence, he said. He "cut the throats of four men." He machine-gunned many more. Executions happen regularly. Atrocities are routinely committed.

On May 14, Russia Today discussed a graphic video. It showed an insurgent commander mutilating a Syrian soldier's corpse. Images showed him cutting out a soldier's heart and liver. He held the organs in his hands. He appeared to bite into them. He addressed the camera, saying:

"I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog." Others off-camera chanted "Allahu akbar (God is great)." The person filming said "God bless you, Abu Sakkar. You look like you are drawing (carving) a heart of love on him."

Even Human Rights Watch (HRW) was outraged. Nearly always it's reliably pro-Western. It backs NATO's imperial wars. It supports Washington's regime change plans. It's one-sidedly anti-Assad.

More »

Philip Giraldi

Top L-R: Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, Robert
Kagan Bottom L-R: Zbigniew Brzezinski, William
Kristol and Elliott Abrams. More members here.
(American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus)

It has been noted ironically by Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com and also by Scott McConnell over at The American Conservative how the neoconservative dominated American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus, which sees Chechens and other Central Asian Muslim militants as “freedom fighters” against Russian rule, exists side by side with other organizations like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the American Enterprise Institute that feature many of the same neoconservatives dedicated to restraining Political Islam while extirpating what they frequently describe as “Islamic fascism.” As is frequently the case with ideologically driven positions, the American neocon supporters of Chechen independence have failed to note that the Chechen nationalist uprising of the 1980s has now morphed into an Islamic based insurgency. The contradictory behavior is particularly glaring as Chechens have frequently been identified among al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere and have carried out major terrorist operations in the Russian Confederation, highlighted by the killing of 186 schoolchildren at Beslan in September 2004. The friends of Chechnya response to the massacre has been to successfully pressure the State Department to provide political asylum and a government job for Ilyas Akhmadov, a rebel leader who might have been party to the terrorist attack, a bit of hypocrisy that the Russians have noted vis-à-vis Washington’s professed global war on terror.

More »

Barry Grey

In a brazen and illegal attack on press freedom, the Obama Justice Department secretly subpoenaed the telephone records of Associated Press editors and journalists and tracked ingoing and outgoing calls on at least 20 telephone lines, including the national headquarters of the press agency and its news bureaus in New York, Hartford and Washington DC. Among the lines tracked was the telephone used by AP reporters working out of the House of Representatives press gallery in the Capitol.

The Associated Press was given no advance notice of the government dragnet, which reportedly began in April of 2012 and continued through May of that year. Such a massive operation over a two-month period would generate records of many thousands of telephone calls, providing the government with legally privileged information about AP journalists’ sources and methods. More than 100 journalists work in the offices where phone records were seized.

The lines that were tracked included the home and cell phones of at least one editor and an unknown number of reporters. While the Justice Department has not provided any reason for the spying operation, it is widely assumed, and so asserted by AP, that it was carried out in connection with a federal investigation into an alleged leak of “classified” information by the press agency in a May 7, 2012 article concerning a CIA covert operation in Yemen.

More »

Stephen Lendman

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Imperial tool, killing for Israel & the US

In 1999, Nobel laureate/outspoken anti-war critic Harold Pinter minced no words denouncing NATO's Yugoslavia war. "Let us face the truth," he said. "The truth is that neither Clinton nor Blair gives a damn about the Kosovar Albanians. This action has been another blatant and brutal assertion of US power using NATO as its missile." "It set out to consolidate one thing - American domination Europe. This must be fully recognized and it must be resisted."

Obama's using Turkey as its missile against Syria. Both countries share a common border. CIA elements infest the region. They're very much involved in Turkey. They're recruiting, arming, training and directing insurgent fighters. They're likely doing it on both sides of the border.

In June 2012, The New York Times headlined "CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition," saying: Operating covertly from southern Turkey, CIA operatives are "decid(ing) which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers." Weapons supplied include "automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition, (and) antitank weapons..." They're smuggled across Turkey's border through "a shadowy network of intermediaries..."

Turkey's a NATO country. It's a reliable imperial partner. It has its own regional ambitions. It's Washington's lead attack dog against Syria. The aftermath of Saturday's Reyhanli's bombings bears watching. Turkey blamed Syria. It did so straightaway. No evidence whatever proves it. Accusations don't wash.

More »

Thomas Gaist

The twin bombings that struck the town of Reyhanli, Turkey, near the border with Syria, this weekend are being used to push for direct, US-led military intervention against Syria. The Turkish government is blaming Syrian intelligence agencies and pushing for “international” action against regime of Bashir al-Assad, despite reports implicating US-backed “rebels” in the bombings.

Mehmet Ali Ediboğlu, a member in the Turkish parliament for Kemalist opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told Die Presse that the Turkey had allowed Syrian opposition groups to operate in the border region. He said that the cars that were used had been smuggled into the country from areas controlled by the Al Nusra Front, the Islamist organization affiliated to Al Qaeda that has played a leading role in the campaign against Assad.

The attack, Ediboğlu said, was “very professional” and had the hallmarks of an Al Nusra operation. “It looks like an Al Qaeda-style attack,” Ediboğlu said. “They want to get Turkey into the war.”

He added, “Syrians knew something and left the town in the morning before the attack.”

More »

Stephen Lendman

Since early 2011, Obama's been waging proxy war on Syria. Imported death squads masquerade as freedom fighters. The scheme's familiar. It repeats. It reflects US imperialism's dark side.

In the 1980s, CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters battled Afghanistan's Soviet occupiers. Ronald Reagan called them "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers." He characterized Contra killers the same way.

Naked aggression is called humanitarian intervention. New wars follow earlier ones. Ravaging humanity is called liberation. Nations are destroyed for their own good. Propaganda convinces people that America is threatened. Truth is turned on its head.

Syria is Washington's latest target. Plans haven't gone as expected. Ousting another government was supposed to be easy. US-enlisted terrorists are no match against Syria's military superiority. Implementing Plan B looms. It could come any time. Obama's heading toward full-scale intervention. Pretexts are easy to create. Assad's been falsely blamed for numerous insurgent massacres. Evidence showed he had nothing to do with them.

More recently, he was unjustifiably accused of using chemical weapons. Insurgents used them several times. A previous article said Pentagon contractors trained them in their use. This is how imperial America operates.

More »

Stephen Lendman

US democracy is illusory. America never was beautiful. It's not the land of the free and home of the brave. It wasn't created that way. More than ever, it's not now. Freedom is a four-letter word. It's fast disappearing. It's an endangered species. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. America's war on terror priorities advance them. International, constitutional and US statute laws are spurned. Rogue state ruthlessness replaced them.

Boston's unprecedented lockdown suggests what's coming. It covered a two hundred square mile area. An important threshold was crossed. Martial law terrorized city residents. Constitutional rights were suspended. Perhaps it was prelude to what's coming. It can happen anywhere across America. It can show up nationwide. Thousands of heavily armed militarized police, National Guard troops, FBI Swat teams, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operatives, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, and perhaps other federal, state and local enforcers showed what full-blown tyranny looks like. Defying public diktats risked arrest or getting shot. Helicopters hovered low over neighborhoods. House-to-house searches ordered pajama-clad families outside. Without probable cause, some were handcuffed and/or placed face down on sidewalks. Others were publicly strip-searched. Imagine what's coming next time. Freedom in America's on the chopping block for elimination.

More »

Bill Van Auken

Forward Operating Base Logar, Afghanistan (Wikimedia Commons)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday revealed that Washington wants to maintain nine US military bases scattered across the country after the formal deadline for the withdrawal of US and NATO coalition forces at the end of 2014.

In a speech delivered at Kabul University, Karzai stressed that he was amenable to the US demand, indicating that he was willing to trade the bases for promises of a continued flow of economic aid from the West and security for his puppet government. Another likely condition is US support for the election of his handpicked successor in an election set for next year.

“If these conditions are met, we are ready to sign the contract with the United States,” he said. As to the continued presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil after more than a dozen years of war and occupation, Karzai stated, “We see their staying in Afghanistan beyond 2014 in the interests of Afghanistan as well as NATO.”

The statements represented an abrupt rhetorical shift by the US-backed president. In recent months, Karzai has accused Washington of colluding with the Taliban to increase violence and create a pretext for a continued US military presence. He has repeatedly demanded an end to US aerial bombardments and to night raids by US Special Forces, which have claimed civilian lives and increased hatred for both the foreign occupation and Karzai’s corrupt puppet government in Kabul.

In February, Karzai barred US special operations troops from operating in the entire province of Maidan Wardak, southwest of Kabul. These and other statements and gestures have been aimed at deflecting popular hostility and posturing as a nationalist leader, rather than Washington’s stooge.

More »

Stephen Lendman

US-led anti-Assad efforts continue. Obama's going all out to topple him. He's heading America for more war. His imperial strategy prioritizes it. Rule of law principles are discarded. Unchallenged global dominance alone matters. America's longstanding permanent war agenda advances it.

Syria is now being ravaged. Assad is wrongfully blamed for US proxy death squad crimes. Ad nauseam propaganda claims otherwise. Facebook and Twitter have Stop Assad campaigns. UK-based Media Lens reports reliably on media bias. On May 8, it headlined " ' This Madman Must Be Stopped' - Syrian Chemical Weapons."

Propaganda wars precede hot ones. Western efforts are relentless. Media scoundrels regurgitate official lies. Quasi-progressive print publications and web editors are involved. So are NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Corporate foundations fund them. Well-known ones include Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Soros, and MacArthur. Tainted money expects services rendered in return. Conflicts of interest are rife.

Sources [that] viewers, listeners and readers believe are reliable replicate their scoundrel media counterparts. Critics call America's NPR National Pentagon Radio. They do so for good reason. On major world and national issues, Britain's BBC is all propaganda all the time. America's dominant media are deplorable. Truth is systematically suppressed. Managed news misinformation substitutes. When America goes to war or plans one, they march in lockstep. In modern times, it's never been any other way.

Television makes it easy. Stop Assad images proliferate. Doing so overwhelms anti-war voices of truth. Anti-Assad propaganda aims to fool enough of the people enough of the time to matter.

More »

If Americans Knew

Israel has a population of approximately 7.7 million, or a million fewer than the state of New Jersey. It is among the world's most affluent nations, with a per capita income similar to that of the European Union.[1] Israel's unemployment rate of 6.3% is much better than America's 8.2%,[2] and Israel's net trade, earnings, and payments is ranked 146th in the world while the US sits at a dismal 193rd.[3]

Yet, Israel receives more of America’s foreign aid budget than any other nation.[4] The US has, in fact, given more aid to Israel than it has to all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean combined—which have a total population of over a billion people.[5]

And foreign aid is just one component of the staggering cost of our alliance with Israel. Given the tremendous costs, it is critical to examine why we lavish so much aid on Israel, and whether it is worth Americans' hard-earned tax dollars. But first, let's take a look at what our alliance with Israel truly costs.

More »

William Blum

Boston Bomb Suspect Manhunt, New Images of Police Battle

What is it that makes young men, reasonably well educated, in good health and nice looking, with long lives ahead of them, use powerful explosives to murder complete strangers because of political beliefs?

I’m speaking about American military personnel of course, on the ground, in the air, or directing drones from an office in Nevada.

Do not the survivors of US attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere, and their loved ones, ask such a question?

The survivors and loved ones in Boston have their answer – America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber has said in custody, and there’s no reason to doubt that he means it, nor the dozens of others in the past two decades who have carried out terrorist attacks against American targets and expressed anger toward US foreign policy.[1] Both Tsarnaev brothers had expressed such opinions before the attack as well.[2] The Marathon bombing took place just days after a deadly US attack in Afghanistan killed 17 civilians, including 12 children, as but one example of countless similar horrors from recent years. “Oh”, an American says, “but those are accidents. What terrorists do is on purpose. It’s cold-blooded murder.”

But if the American military sends out a bombing mission on Monday which kills multiple innocent civilians, and then the military announces: “Sorry, that was an accident.” And then on Tuesday the American military sends out a bombing mission which kills multiple innocent civilians, and then the military announces: “Sorry, that was an accident.” And then on Wednesday the American military sends out a bombing mission which kills multiple innocent civilians, and the military then announces: “Sorry, that was an accident.” … Thursday … Friday … How long before the American military loses the right to say it was an accident?

More »

Thomas Gaist

Calls for a war with Syria mounted yesterday, despite mass popular opposition to war in the United States, amid reports that US-backed Islamist opposition forces fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have suffered serious reverses.

Speaking on NBC News yesterday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed for Washington to take military action against Syria.

He repeated unsubstantiated allegations that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, which have been refuted by UN investigator Carla del Ponte, claiming, “It is clear the regime has used chemical weapons and missiles.” Claiming that a “red line” had been crossed, he said: “We want the United States to assume more responsibilities and take further steps. And what sort of steps they will take, we are going to talk about this.”

Erdogan dismissed out of hand reports that chemical weapons used in Syria were in fact used by the US-backed opposition.

He stressed that his government would support US imposition of a “no-fly zone” in Syria, which would involve destroying Syrian air defenses and shooting down any Syrian aircraft that took to the skies.

More »