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UN finds Syria war crimes ‘on both sides’

“It was clear that ‘the majority of casualties result from unlawful attacks using conventional weapons,’ the Commission of Inquiry on Syria said in a statement. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime ‘have continued to conduct widespread attacks on the civilian population, committing murder, torture, rape and enforced disappearance as crimes against humanity,’ according to the report, which covers the period from May 15th to July 15th. It also charged that anti-government groups had ‘committed war crimes,’ including murder, torture and hostage-taking. The report does not address the period which includes the August 21st suspected chemical attack.” Continue reading →

Whom would you HIRE to intervene in Syria?

“We have no problem with the police intervening to end a criminal shootout. So why do we so passionately oppose having the U.S. federal state intervene in Syria and other places? There are multiple reasons. The Feds have a really bad track record (you can read a summary here); Tend to support bad guys and establish dictatorships; Constantly create new enemies; Force all Americans to support these interventions, even when they offend personal conscience. But does this mean that we have to sit idly by and watch bad things happen to good people overseas? We don’t think so. Instead, imagine what would happen if we had a Separation of Intervention and State.” Continue reading →

Chomsky: U.S. is a ‘rogue state’ that ‘doesn’t pay attention to international law’

“‘We should bear in mind that the core principle of the United Nations Charter bars the threat or use of force. So all of this is criminal, to begin with, but he’ll continue with that.’ ‘The United States is a rogue state,’ he averred. ‘It doesn’t pay any attention to international law.’ Furthermore, he said, ‘(t)his would be a perfect opportunity to ban chemical weapons, to impose the chemical weapons convention on the Middle East.’ The U.S., of course, Chomsky noted, will never go along with that because of one nation in the Middle East ‘which has chemical weapons and is in violation of the chemical weapons convention and has refused even to ratify it — namely Israel.'” Continue reading →

Justin Raimondo: We Beat the War Party – For Now …

“Facts on the ground have little impact on the course of American foreign policy. It’s really all about politics on the home front. The Iraq war had nothing to do with the threat of Al Qaeda, in spite of the Bush administration’s war propaganda: it was all about building domestic support for the GOP around a program of war hysteria, the mystic doctrine of ‘American exceptionalism,’ and untrammeled foreign adventurism. So too in the case of Syria, but this time things turned out differently: the War Party ran up against a brick wall of public opposition – and real outrage that the political class would even try something like this after a decade of war.” Continue reading →

Obama, the US Liar-in-Chief

“If these leaders in Washington cannot even tell the American people about what the real military contingency plans are for Syria, why should we believe them on all their other claims about chemical weapons used in that country. It’s a con trick, and the American people know it. Moreover, Liar-in-Chief Barack Obama and his partners-in-crime know that the people know it. It really is saying something of the collapsing legitimacy of the US presidency when foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin or even Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad – the latter vilified as a despotic tyrant – project more moral authority and credibility to the American people than their own leaders do. The American people are right.” Continue reading →

Syrian jihadist rebels attack, kill 12 Alawite civilians

“Twelve civilians from Syria’s Alawite minority, to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs, have been killed by jihadist fighters in the central province of Homs, a Syrian NGO said Wednesday. Fighters from the Al-Nusra Front and another rebel group attacked three Alawite villages near the city of Homs Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The rebels entered the village of Maksar al-Hissan and ‘shot 12 Alawites to death before leaving the area.’ Troops retook the village on Tuesday night, after clashes in which they lost two men and killed several members of Al-Nusra, he added.” Continue reading →

O’Donnell: Napalm is America’s ‘cheapest weapon of mass destruction’

“He begins with its invention at Harvard in 1942 and documenting its usage in World War II and Vietnam, before moving on to the more significant issue: the ‘inhumane’ ways in which napalm can kill. ‘Napalm attaches to human flesh in a way that’s impossible to remove,’ he said. But ‘it kills in other ways too. You can be untouched by [a 100 pound napalm bomb] and be killed by a heat stroke. You can be killed by suffocation. You can be killed by breathing in carbon monoxide poisoning. You can be killed by dehydration.’ ‘Napalm was an ‘instant hit’ in World War II,’ he continued. ‘It was our cheapest weapon of mass destruction. Each bomb was made of plastic, held 100 gallons of napalm and cost $40.'” Continue reading →

Spare us the hypocrisy over chemical weapons, America.

“Napalm is ‘a mixture of naphthenic and aliphatic carboxylic acid’. I don’t know about you, but ‘a mixture of naphthenic and aliphatic carboxylic acid’ sounds awfully ‘chemical’ to me, and yet this weapon has been liberally used by the US army to incinerate soldiers (and luckless civilians) in many recent wars, including Gulf War 1. So maybe the ‘global red line against chemical weapons’ has a strange footnote which exempts chemical weapons that are devised in America? That makes sense, because the greatest anomaly, when it comes to Kerry’s global red line, is Agent Orange.” Continue reading →