US rejects taking responsibility for it’s own use of chemical weapons

aimed at destroying the forest and jungle cover used by enemy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops fighting against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam War. U.S. aircraft were deployed to spray powerful mixtures of herbicides around roads, rivers, canals and military bases, as well as on crops that might be used to supply enemy troops. During this process, crops and water sources used by the non-combatant peasant population of South Vietnam could also be hit. In all, Operation Ranch Hand deployed more than 19 million gallons of herbicides over 4.5 million acres of land.

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The most commonly used, and most effective, mixture of herbicides used was Agent Orange

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Effects on US war veterans

In 1979, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of 2.4 million veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange during their service in Vietnam. Five years later, in an out-of-court-settlement, seven large chemical companies that manufactured the herbicide agreed to pay $180 million in compensation to the veterans or their next of kin. Various challenges to the settlement followed, including lawsuits filed by some 300 veterans, before the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed it in 1988. By that time, the settlement had risen to some $240 million including interest.

Effects on Vietnam

In addition to the massive environmental impact of the U.S. defoliation program in Vietnam, that nation has reported that some 400,000 people were killed or maimed as a result of exposure to herbicides like Agent Orange. In addition, Vietnam claims half a million children have been born with serious birth defects, while as many 2 million people are suffering from cancer or other illness caused by Agent Orange.

In 2004, a group of Vietnamese citizens filed a class-action lawsuit against more than 30 chemical companies, including the same ones that settled with the U.S. veterans in 1984. The suit, which sought billions of dollars worth of damages, claimed that Agent Orange and its poisonous effects left a legacy of health problems and that its use constituted a violation of international law. In March 2005, a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, dismissed the suit; another U.S. court rejected a final appeal in 2008. 

http://www.history.com/topics/agent-orange

French public also against intervenion in Syria

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/31/syria-un-weapons-inspectors-leave

A poll in France revealed that most French people do not want their country to take part in military action on Syria, and most do not trust the president, François Hollande to do so.

The poll was published by Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France on Saturday, showed 64% of respondents opposed military action, 58% did not trust Hollande to conduct it and 35% feared it could “set the entire region ablaze”.

No country on earth is guiltier of using chemicals as weapons of war than the United States

“In Vietnam, from 1962 to 1969, the U.S. sprayed over 100 million pounds of liquid Agent Orange and other poisons over four million acres.”

“Additionally, about 388,000 tons of our chemically gelled gasoline — napalm — was dropped on SE Asia between 1963 and 1973”

“The people responsible for the spreading of 400 tons of DU there [Southern Iraq] in 1991 were conducting a very peculiar sort of experiment — one in which the ‘guinea-pigs’ were the soldiers and civilians present … and in which the ‘experimenters’ did not want to know the results.”

“The memory of the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed or poisoned by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia and Yemen should give pause to today’s gung-ho warriors”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/29/bombing-for-peace/

Intelligence Suggests Assad Not Behind Chemical Weapons Attack

http://www.infowars.com/intelligence-suggests-assad-not-behind-chemical-weapons-attack/

“Intercepted phone calls that will be presented by the Obama administration as proof that Bashar Al-Assad was behind last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria actually suggest that the attack was not ordered by the Syrian government.”

The CIA about al Qaidas capability to use chemical weapons

“Al-Qa’ida and associated extremist groups have a wide variety of potential agents and delivery means to choose from for chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) attacks…however, most attacks by the group—and especially by associated extremists—probably will be small scale, incorporating relatively crude delivery means and easily produced or obtained chemicals, toxins, or radiological substances…Analysis of an al-Qa’ida document recovered in Afghanistan in summer 2002 indicates the group has crude procedures for making mustard agent, sarin, and VX.”

http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/opinion/musa-algharbi-toxic-discourse-on-chemical-weapons_17457

The US do not care much about the UN (inspectors)

“http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-crisis-as-us-prepares-to-reveal-intelligence-on-suspected-damascus-chemical-weapons-attack-what-do-we-know-already-8787788.html”

“Officials in the US and the UK have made it clear that any decision to proceed with military action will be based on intelligence gathered by the US, and not the findings brought back by the UN inspectors currently on the ground in Syria.”

Aleppo Christians Fear Iraq-Style Ethnic Cleansing

“One such case is the sad story of a young Christian boy named Salim Nahhas, whose siblings I knew quite well. He was only 19 when he died fighting with the regime against the rebels in the Rashdeen area of Aleppo in July 2013.
But the most remarkable aspect of Nahhas’ story is that most of his family was initially with the uprising and against the regime, some even taking part in protests and later aid work for the displaced. That was before Aleppo was invaded by the rebels in the summer of 2012 and before rebel mortar shells hit Nahhas’ neighborhood, killing some of his friends and neighbors. Since then, many things have changed in Aleppo.”

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/08/aleppo-christians-syria-rebels-regime.html

CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/26/us-saddam-hussein_n_3815109.html

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/25/secret_cia_files_prove_america_helped_saddam_as_he_gassed_iran

a generation ago, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.

U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein’s military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983. At the time, Iran was publicly alleging that illegal chemical attacks were carried out on its forces, and was building a case to present to the United Nations. But it lacked the evidence implicating Iraq, much of which was contained in top secret reports and memoranda sent to the most senior intelligence officials in the U.S. government. The CIA declined to comment for this story.

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But it also did nothing to assist Iran in its attempts to bring proof of illegal Iraqi chemical attacks to light. Nor did the administration inform the United Nations.

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But the CIA documents, which sat almost entirely unnoticed in a trove of declassified material at the National Archives in College Park, Md., combined with exclusive interviews with former intelligence officials, reveal new details about the depth of the United States’ knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly agents. They show that senior U.S. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks. They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.

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But the agency gauged the number of dead as somewhere between “hundreds” and “thousands” in each of the four cases where chemical weapons were used prior to a military offensive.

 

Does Obama know he’s fighting on al-Qa’ida’s side?

“In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?”

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/does-obama-know-hes-fighting-on-alqaidas-side-8786680.html

Russian politician giving US politicians a lesson in logic

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/0826/As-world-prepares-to-act-on-Syria-Russia-scrambles-to-apply-brake

“To us, it looks as though [George W.] Bush, [Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld never left the White House,” says Alexei Pushkov, chair of the State Duma’s international affairs committee.

“It’s basically the same policy, as if US leaders had learned nothing and forgotten nothing in the past decade. They want to topple foreign leaders they regard as adversaries, without even making the most basic calculations of the consequences. An intervention in Syria will only enlarge the area of instability in the Middle East and expand the scope of terrorist activity. I am at a complete loss to understand what the US thinks it is doing,”