ISIS update 4/9/2017…ISIS spokesman calls Trump an ‘idiot’
Russia sends frigates to Syria’s Tartus
“Syria’s Shayrat airbase active after US missile strike”
Russia: US attack on Syria played into terrorists’ hands
Iran’s leader calls US strikes on Syria ‘strategic mistake’
Mysterious Containers: What’s Wrong with Chemical Weapons in Syria
Former CIA Officer: “The Intelligence Confirms The Russian Account On Syria”
Authored by Robert Parry via ConsortiumNews.com,
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/04/07/trumps-wag-the-dog-moment/
President Trump earned neocon applause for his hasty decision to attack Syria and kill about a dozen Syrians, but his rash act has all the earmarks of a “wag the dog” moment.
Just two days after news broke of an alleged poison-gas attack in northern Syria, President Trump brushed aside advice from some U.S. intelligence analysts doubting the Syrian regime’s guilt and launched a lethal retaliatory missile strike against a Syrian airfield.
Trump immediately won plaudits from Official Washington, especially from neoconservatives who have been trying to wrestle control of his foreign policy away from his nationalist and personal advisers since the days after his surprise victory on Nov. 8.
There is also an internal dispute over the intelligence. On Thursday night, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. intelligence community assessed with a “high degree of confidence” that the Syrian government had dropped a poison gas bomb on civilians in Idlib province.
But a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.
One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek “regime change” in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.
The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus.
…………………..Alarm within the U.S. intelligence community about Trump’s hasty decision to attack Syria reverberated from the Middle East back to Washington, where former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported hearing from his intelligence contacts in the field that they were shocked at how the new poison-gas story was being distorted by Trump and the mainstream U.S. news media.
Giraldi told Scott Horton’s Webcast: “I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham.” Giraldi said his sources were more in line with an analysis postulating an accidental release of the poison gas after an Al Qaeda arms depot was hit by a Russian airstrike. “The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.”
Giraldi said the anger within the intelligence community over the distortion of intelligence to justify Trump’s military retaliation was so great that some covert officers were considering going public. “People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict,” Giraldi said before Thursday night’s missile strike. “They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”
The mainstream U.S. media has presented the current crisis with the same profound neocon bias that has infected the coverage of Syria and the larger Middle East for decades. For instance, The New York Times on Friday published a lead story by Michael R. Gordon and Michael D. Shear that treated the Syrian government’s responsibility for the poison-gas incident as flat-fact. The lengthy story did not even deign to include the denials from Syria and Russia that they were responsible for any intentional deployment of poison gas.
The article also fit with Trump’s desire that he be portrayed as a decisive and forceful leader. He is depicted as presiding over intense deliberations of war or peace and displaying a deep humanitarianism regarding the poison-gas victims, one of the rare moments when the Times, which has become a reliable neocon propaganda sheet, has written anything favorable about Trump at all.
…………………….Today, because Trump and his administration are now committed to convincing Americans that Assad really was responsible for Tuesday’s poison-gas tragedy, the prospects for a full and open investigation are effectively ended. We may never know if there is truth to those allegations or whether we are being manipulated by another “wag the dog” psyop. ISIS spokesman releases message calling Trump an ‘idiot’
Lavrov to Tillerson: Attack on Syrian airbase plays into extremists’ hands
Zakharova: USA Strikes Objects They Supposedly Want to Research
Some 2500 militants leaving Syrian city of Homs
SDF repelled ISIS attack East to Salsahah
On the Syrian-Jordanian border
http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/3348480.html#cutid1
In sots.setyah easy boiling over the situation on the border of Syria and Jordan. A number of sources indicate that a column of American armored vehicles (called the figure of about 20 tanks and BWM) advanced to the border with Syria, accompanied by parts of the Jordanian special forces. Then the data diverge – some sources say that the equipment remained in the territory of Jordan, others – that it allegedly crossed the border of Syria. There are no official comments on this issue yet. Again, unconfirmed reports, the RF CC RF are monitoring this section of the border.
It should be recalled that in the southern regions of Syria, parts of US special forces and SAS units operated earlier, which, under the programs of the CIA-supervised, supported the operations of the “New Syrian Army” whose training camps are deployed in Jordan with the full cooperation of the Jordanian military intelligence. As a pretext for the entry of additional contingents into the territory, the formally controlled NSA can be “the creation of a security zone for refugees.” It is also possible that the United States might try a re-operation against Abu-Kemal, which is only more prepared, since the CIA and the US Air Force were justified for a few weeks after last year’s disgrace.
Information about the concentration of US troops on the Syrian-Jordanian border came after the meeting of Trump with the King of Jordan. Similarly, the movement of troops may be associated with the terrorist attack on the Syrian-Jordanian border.
Tackling ISIS Militant Trying to Remove Iraqi Flag Near Mosul
Syria Opens Fire at US Aircraft near Border with Turkey Following Washington’s Recent Aggression
Syria-Iran-Russia Joint Operations Room Warns of Crushing Response to Any Further US Attack
Idlib: US-Made Arms Depot Destroyed in Syrian Airstrike
Commander: Turkish Army Planning to Access Idlib Province, Lay Siege on Aleppo
Ivanka Trump Behind US Bombing of Syria
White Helmets Act in Horrible Video by Using Dead, Moribund Children to Blame Syrian Gov’t
Syrian Army Makes Fresh Gains in Hama
Iraq: Differences Intensifying amongst ISIL Terrorists over Appointment of Successor to Baghdadi
Source: http://blogdogcicle.blogspot.com/2017/04/isis-update-492017isis-spokesman-calls.html
