chemTrailActivist · @chemTrailActivi
12th Apr 2014 from TwitLonger
#syria #iran #saudiarabia #turkey #SeymourHersh
The Red Line and the Rat Line
Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels
Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya?
The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous.
Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire.
British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal.
The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff.
The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could lead to a wider war in the Middle East.
As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.
For months there had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence community about the role in the war of Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey.
[....]
Although the strike plans were shelved, the administration didn’t change its public assessment of the justification for going to war.
‘There is zero tolerance at that level for the existence of error,’ the former intelligence official said of the senior officials in the White House.
‘They could not afford to say: “We were wrong.”’
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
[The sooner we realize that being Secretary of State requires that person to lie repeatedly to the American people and to the world, the better. Then we'd be even more isolationist than we already are.]