Attack on Syria Approved by Washington Warmongers

[radfringe]

http://www.americanfreepress.net/10_10_03/Attack_on_Syria/attack_on_syria.html
Attack on Syria Approved by Washington Warmongers

Exclusive to American Free Press
By Gordon Thomas

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s wildcat strike on a purported terrorist training camp in Syria was planned with the support of neo-conservative war hawks in Washington, who maintain close ties to the Likud Party in Israel.

Hours before Israeli fighter bombers attacked Syria, prime minister Ariel Sharon called Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld to tell him what was about to happen. Sharon’s call to Rumsfeld was the climax of weeks of intensive and secret planning between Tel Aviv and Washington to attack what both see as a “terror harboring state.”

U.S. state-of-the-art listening equipment along the Iraq border with Syria and high flying spy planes based in Turkey provided vital information to Israel’s own electronic intelligence net over Syria.

The intention behind the attack was two fold. To issue a stark warning to the Damascus regime that it could be attacked with the same impunity that preceded the full-scale invasion of Iraq and to test the defenses—and resolve—of Syria to launch any military counterstrike against Israel.

Such an attack would be the final excuse that Sharon has been waiting for. His air force is on hard-stand readiness to make the 15 minute flight deep into Syria. American planes in Iraq could join in the assault —going to the “aid” of its one real partner in the region.

---snip----
Israeli sources said that Rumsfeld told Sharon: “We, and you, are fighting a war against terrorism.” Implicit in the words, said those sources, was that President George W. Bush would see the attack—which violated all international treaties—as no different from America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or in previous U.S. raids on Yemen.

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Syria Invasion by Selection time?

[soup]

1. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld?

Think I'll go back to bed. Hate waking up in these alternate universes.

[Guaranteed]

3. Heh yeah makes things hard to believe. n/t

[Saudade]

2. Syria

There's no doubt that Israel's bombing Syria is intended to revive and expand the phony "war on terra" which is bogged down in Iraq, thus undermining the original plan outlined in "A Clean Break." (There, knocking off Saddam is considered a first step in the campaign to "roll back Syria.")

The interesting question is whether the obese third rate thug in Israel did it on his own or with prior coordination with the Bush Administration.

Because Syria hasn't responded militarily, I have no doubt that Sharon will try it again, next time killing some brown people to make the provocation more compelling.

Syria is in an impossible situation: if they respond militarily, they play straight into the war mongers' plans, and if they don't, they suffer politically in the arab world.

[radfringe]

4. Syria is "next"

Syria is screwed no matter what

Syria is in "the way" of a pipeline out of Iraq into Israel and easy access to the Mediterrean Sea. A pipeline already exists between Iraq and Syria, it wouldn't cost much to extend it into Israel.

Follow the oil slick!

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED04Ak01.html
In the pipeline: More regime change
By Hooman Peimani -- Apr 4, 2003

An Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, has reported that Israel is seriously considering restarting a strategically important oil pipeline that once transferred oil from the Iraqi city of Mosul to Israel's northern port of Haifa. Given the Israeli claim of a positive US approach to the plan, the Israeli project provides grounds for a theory that the ongoing war against Iraq is in part a joint US, British and Israeli design for reshaping the Middle East to serve their particular interests, including their oil requirements.

According to the daily, Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritzky considers the pipeline project as economically justifiable as it would reduce the country's cost of oil imports. This is currently very high, as Israel imports oil from Russia. There would also be a strategic justification for the project, as importing oil from an oil supplier in Israel's close proximity would increase its fuel security and would address its major handicap, that is, its total dependence on imported fuel from far-away suppliers. While living in the oil-rich Middle East, the Israelis cannot count on regional oil exporters because of the existing Arab-Israeli conflict. Prior to the 1979 Iranian revolution, Iran, which was on friendly terms with Israel, provided its oil requirements. That arrangement ended in 1979 when the new Iranian revolutionary regime cut ties with Israel.

[UpInArms]

5. this was my prediction

in Feb 2003

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/02/28_iraq.html

John Bolton, Undersecretary of State met with officials in Israel on Monday, February 17, 2003. He said that he had no doubt that the United States would attack Iraq and that afterwards it would be necessary to deal with the threats from Syria, Iran and North Korea.

[joeybee12]

6. Wes Clark claims in his book he was told Syria was #2 to be attacked,

right after Iraq.

There's something to this.