U.S. House Votes to Toughen Sanctions, Assess No-Fly Zone In Syria

By Brandon Turbeville

On November 15, 2016, the U.S. House of Representatives convened a special session with the normal rules of order suspended and passed H.R. 5732, also known as the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act. The CSCPA passed unanimously with only forty minutes of “debate” on the floor. Because normal rules were suspended, only a few members of Congress were present for the vote and, conveniently, those members who were present were all warmongers.

The CSCPA, of course, is a bill that both toughens the sanctions on Syria and calls for the creation of a No Fly Zone.

In terms of the new sanctions, the bill would impose new penalties and sanctions on entities doing business with the Syrian government, military, and intelligence. The legislation also requires the President to report to Congress regarding the viability of a No Fly Zone over Syria.

It also allows the Secretary of State to compile and gather evidence for the purpose of prosecuting those who are alleged to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. This, of course, is all based upon the assumption that the Syrian government has committed such crimes and that only the Syrian government has committed them.

Among the members present who engaged in the forty minutes of “debate” were: Ed Royce, R-California; Eliot Engel, D-New York; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; Dan Kildee, D-Michigan; Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; and Carlos Curbelo, R-Florida. All of these individuals spoke in favor of the bill.

The establishment of a “No-Fly Zone” is tantamount to a declaration of war. Such has even been admitted by top U.S. Generals when explaining exactly what a No Fly Zone would entail. As General Carter Ham stated,

We should make no bones about it. It first entails killing a lot of people and destroying the Syrian air defenses and those people who are manning those systems. And then it entails destroying the Syrian air force, preferably on the ground, in the air if necessary. This is a violent combat action that results in lots of casualties and increased risk to our own personnel.

General Philip Breedlove also echoed this description when he said,

I know it sounds stark, but what I always tell people when they talk to me about a no-fly zone is . . . it’s basically to start a war with that country because you are going to have to go in and kinetically take out their air defense capability.

When Senator Roger Wicker asked Gen. Joe Dunford what it would take to impose a No Fly Zone upon Syria, the General responded, “Right now… for us to control all of the airspace in Syria would require us to go to war against Syria and Russia.”

Notably, the bill is named after the infamous “Caesar” fraud, an alleged former Syrian military photographer who was allegedly tasked with documenting the Syrian government’s alleged war crimes by . . . the Syrian government. It is claimed that Caesar had a Damascus road conversion and could no longer take the pressures of his job and subsequently came clean to the world and exposed the Assad government for its alleged crimes against humanity.

Coming at just the right time to ignite outrage and indignation in the dazed American public, as virtually every other report and “incident” in Syria attempted to do since 2010, an alleged “Syrian defector” allegedly provided thousands of photographs revealing what mainstream propagandists called a “smoking gun” of Assad’s humanitarian crimes.

The alleged defector, who went only by the name “Caesar,” spoke in front of a closed-door session of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in late July, 2014.

The photos, which were supposed to number in the tens of thousands were “analyzed” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the request of the Ambassador-At-Large For War Crimes, Steven J.Rapp.

Rapp stated in an interview that the photos were “horrific — some of them put you in visceral pain. This is some of the strongest evidence we’ve seen in the area of proof of the commission of mass atrocities.”

Rapp, apparently intending to head off any suggestions that the photos may be either fakes or photos of some other atrocity perhaps committed by the death squads armed, trained, funded, and directed by NATO, claimed that the FBI assured him that they think it is impossible that the photographs could have been forgeries. Rapp said that the FBI assured him there was no evidence of doctoring. This, of course, is quite a bizarre conclusion to reach since the investigation was not yet over when Rapp quoted the FBI as saying the photos were real. Thus, one must wonder if the FBI had determined the veracity of the photographs before even opening the packages they came in.

As Michael Isikoff wrote for Yahoo! News,

The story behind the photos begins in March 2011, when Arab Spring protests against the Assad government swept through Syria. As the military began rounding up suspected dissidents, Caesar — a military police officer — was assigned to lead a team of 11 photographers whose job it was to document the deaths of detainees brought to a military hospital from three detention centers around Damascus.

But by the summer of 2013, Caesar has told investigators, he was so sickened by what he was seeing that he made contact with Syrian rebels. “I can’t do this anymore,” he told them, according to David Crane, a former war-crimes prosecutor for Sierra Leone who spent hours interviewing Caesar as part of a separate review of the photos commissioned by the government of Qatar.

[…]

Caesar began smuggling his photos to the rebels, providing them with thumb drives concealed in his shoes, Crane said. To protect his family, Caesar faked his death, staging an elaborate funeral, before he escaped from Syria in August 2013. He is now in hiding in Europe.

The photos, according to Crane, document “an industrial killing machine not seen since the Holocaust.” They show corpses, some of them lined up in a warehouse, many appearing to be victims of starvation, their ribs protruding from emaciated bodies.

The Syrian government claimed most of the photos as fake and has stated that it believes many of them to be pictures of dead terrorists who were killed in battle. The Syrian government’s suggestions are entirely plausible and, indeed, quite likely to be true. Remember, NATO has already attempted to frame the Assad government for a number of war crimes and atrocities that later turned out to be the handiwork of the terrorists funded by NATO itself. The Ghouta chemical weapons attack, the famous Houla massacre, and a number of other atrocities all come to mind instantly.

Unfortunately, in a gross insult to the victims of the Nazis, the Holocaust museum placed a number of these photographs on display for propaganda purposes, an obvious attempt to dredge up memories of the Holocaust and paint Assad as the new Hitler.

Such ridiculous comparisons were made the first and second time this cynical display of propaganda was pushed in mainstream media outlets.

As it was then, there remain a number of reasons to question the photographs, reports, and “defectors” presenting the “smoking gun” against Assad being dredged up yet again.

1.) The Gulf State Feudal Monarchy Qatar is the sponsor of one of the main reports and “reviews” of the photographs. Qatar is, of course, one of the major sponsors of the Syrian invasion (aka the Syrian “rebels”) and has played a massively important role in financing, training, arming, and directing the death squads currently being mopped up by the Assad government.

2.) The source of the report and photographs. One would be justified in questioning the nature of the reports and photos since the sole source of the material comes by virtue of an allegedly “defected Syrian military police officer” who was apparently fine with photographing thousands of dead victims for over a year until about 2014. Regardless of the possibility for such a “moral” conversion, taking information from a “defected” member of government forces once again returns us to the realm of the “activists say” school of journalism – a notorious method used by Western media outlets to promote the side of the death squads and only the side of the death squads as fact in popular reports. Note that “Caesar” himself claims that he was in touch with the Syrian opposition, meaning terrorist death squads and cannibal savages funded by the West. Apparently, he thought these murderers were a better option than Assad. If so, that perspective tells us much about the allegiances and affiliations of “Caesar” as well as his own “moral” stance on killing and torture.

3.) “Caesar” reminiscent of “Curveball.” We cannot forget the famous Codename, “Curveball” that played a major role in the initiation of a previous and still ongoing conflict that was later admitted to be a fabrication. Being fooled by the same type of propaganda twice in eleven years is indeed a humiliation too great for a country to bear.

4.) Past claims of Assad’s “Crimes Against Humanity.” It is important to remember past experiences with Western charges against Assad for alleged “crimes against humanity,” all of which turned out to have been committed by the death squads, not the Syrian government. From the Houla massacre to the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks, the Syrian government has been exonerated by all credible evidence. The death squads, however, have been proven guilty by virtue of their own video tapes and YouTube accounts, of some of the most horrific acts imaginable. While many innocent people have no doubt been killed in the crossfire between the military and the death squads, the Western media has done everything in its power to place the blood of each and every death inside Syria in the hands of the government.

5.) Possibility that the death squads could have killed the victims shown in the photographs, that the death squads are themselves the victims, or that the photographs contain a mix of the two. The victims shown in the report have clearly been abused and starved. However, before jumping to conclusions about just how these unfortunate individuals met their fate, perhaps it would be a good idea to look back at the context of the victims. As mentioned earlier, the death squads operating in Syria are no strangers to crimes against humanity, murder, and torture. In fact, they have been both the initiators of such depravity and overwhelmingly the largest proprietors of it. Furthermore, the fact that the victims were starved does not necessarily mean that they were starved by the government. Indeed, it is important to remember that, due to the siege of a number of cities by both the military and the death squads as well as due to death squad cruelty and attempted cordoning off of specific areas, food shortage has been a serious concern in some areas for some time. There is also plentiful evidence of death squad groups killing innocent people and shipping their bodies to the places where cameras are set up, waiting for the recording of the propaganda piece. The Ghouta chemical attack is just one instance in which innocent civilians were captured and killed by the death squads and used as stage props for propaganda purposes.

Indeed, it is also important to remember that the death squads themselves are quite adept at keeping prisoners in atrocious conditions. Remember, it was reported not too long ago that the Syrian military was able to free a number of captive Syrian women from the hands of the death squads who had kept them in captivity in underground tunnels for months on end for the purposes of using them as sex slaves.

6.) The photographs were conveniently released just two days before the Geneva II Peace Conference meeting on Syria the first time. They were conveniently released again as the United States and NATO began seriously considering a “Buffer Zone” in Syria.

After the retraction of an invitation to Iran to attend the peace conference, the Qatari-funded report regarding the photographs was released just two days before the peace conference was scheduled to take place. With such evidence being studied and analyzed and a report being compiled, to believe that it was only a coincidence that the information was released two days before the conference is absurd. If this evidence was real and of such grave importance why did world leaders only learn of it days before the peace conference? If world leaders knew, why did it take so long to hear about it?

Now, as the United States and NATO eye a No Fly Zone in Syria again, the photographs, the report, and “Caesar” himself, are being recycled complete with the requisite Hitler references during the run-up to the implementation of the “buffer zone,” this time initiated by Congress ordering the President to move in this direction.

Indeed, the “convenient” nature of this report for the NATO and GCC agenda to destroy Syria and overthrow Assad is such that precludes its honesty.

7.) Involvement of Color Revolution NGOs. “Caesar’s” entire trip to the United States was organized and facilitated by the Coalition For A Democratic Syria, an organization that has very close ties with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy, both groups being notorious color revolutions operations. The NDI website states that

NDI works with a number of established political parties and emerging movements on party development and organizational structure. The Institute’s partners include: the Damascus Declaration; the People’s Party; Building the Syrian State; the Kurdish Youth Tanseekiyat Union; the Ahrar Party; the Muslim Brotherhood; the Democratic Platform; the National Change Trend; the Syrian Democratic Coalition; and the Yekiti party, as well as many others.

It is also notable that the SDC’s website contains a number of pictures of Syria with the Green, White and Black flag of the death squads and their smokescreen “moderate” faction instead of the real Red, White, and Black flag of the Syrian government.

The NDI website also admits funding terrorists in Syria albeit through very couched terms. It says,

NDI has built long-term partnerships with Syrian organizations since 2005, working with more than 1,200 Syrian democrats in an extensive network of civil society leaders and opposition activists. Through 2010, NDI assisted a Damascus-based civil society organization and resource center, Etana Press, in assessing the needs of civil society in Syria and building resources and knowledge to meet those needs. Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, NDI has intensified its assistance to opposition activists seeking democratic reform.

Taking all of these questions into consideration and taken in conjunction with the “convenient” timing of the release of the reports and the photographs (convenient, at least, for the enemies of Syria), as well as the fact that NGOs, color revolution organizations, and shadowy “defectors” are providing the information, such reports and photographs should be taken with a large grain of salt.

The Western media has not only been wrong, but has lied on so many occasions in the past, that it cannot be expected to tell the truth now.

Unfortunately, the fact that such propaganda is easily disproven does not necessarily stop it from being used or even stop it from working. The United States/NATO war machine is dying but it is beginning to lash out in panic and desperation. It is times such as these that the danger of war is greatest. If Americans have any concern for the lives of countless people overseas or even if they have a mere sense of self-preservation, they will begin to speak out immediately.

Brandon Turbeville – article archive here – is the author of seven books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 and volume 2, The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria, and The Difference it Makes: 36 Reasons Why Hillary Clinton Should Never Be President. Turbeville has published over 850 articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s radio show Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV. His website is BrandonTurbeville.com He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com.

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