Friday, July 27, 2012

Free Syrian Army


For many months, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has depicted the militants creating havoc across his nation as “armed gangs,” “foreign terrorists,” and simply just, “terrorists.” During a 2011 interview in Damascus with Barbra Walters, Walters feigned indignation when hearing these labels, insisting that these were people simply seeking “democracy” and “freedom.”
It turns out months later, it was President Assad who has been vindicated, and Walters’ disrespectful, curt condemnation exposed as the same brand of war propaganda that has mired the West in over a decade of ceaseless, bloody, bankrupting wars and interventions.
The FSA are Terrorists
AFP now reports that the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) militants who had attempted to overrun the city of Aleppo in Syria’s north on July 17, in coordination with an assassination bombing and a similar militant attack on Damascus, are now trapped in the city center, awaiting Syrian Army reinforcements expected to close in and neutralize them. An AFP correspondent embedded with the terrorists reported that, “two men, accused of belonging to pro-government “shabiha” militia, were summarily dispatched in the street, each with a bullet to the head.”
By this of course AFP means, two civilians were rounded up and shot in the head – killed in cold blood in the streets.
BBC’s Ian Pannell also rode in with FSA terrorists during the initial attack on Aleppo, which is by all accounts a pro-Army, pro-Syrian city. Pannell described scenes of FSA militants “seeking revenge” as they too rounded up men “suspected” of being “shabiha.” The men were unarmed, terrified, and had weapons discharged at their feet as they knelt on the ground. Pannell doesn’t tell us if this group of men were “dispatched” as well, preferring to paper over what appeared to be an atrocity in the making by stating, “there is little justice on either side.”
It appears the term suspected “shabiha” has become analogous of the Western media’s use of the term “African mercenaries” in Libya during NATO destabilization and regime change operations there last year. These “African mercenaries” were lynched, beheaded, shot, burned, and hacked to pieces, just as the FSA is now doing to suspected “shabiha.”

Photo: Images and reportseventually trickled out as NATO-backed genocide unfolded throughout Tripoli’s streets, indicating the destruction of infrastructure and the specific targeting of black Libyans written off by the corporate media as “suspected mercenaries.” Benghazi rebels have been long reported to harbor extremist ideologies and an intense ethnic & racial hatred.
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It would later turn out these black Africans were not mercenaries, but citizens who had lived in Libya for generations fighting desperately for their lives against sectarian extremists intolerant of their complexion and creed. Likewise, suspected “shabiha” are Syrians unwilling or unable, because of their ethnicity or creed, to capitulate to roving bands of foreign-armed sectarian extremists.
The FSA Include Foreign-Fighters
CNN, whose Ivan Watson also accompanied FSA terrorists over the Turkish-Syrian border and into Aleppo revealed that indeed foreign fighters were amongst the militants. It was admitted that:
Meanwhile, residents of the village where the Syrian Falcons were headquartered said there were fighters of several North African nationalities also serving with the brigade’s ranks.
A volunteer Libyan fighter has also told CNN he intends to travel from Turkey to Syria within days to add a “platoon” of Libyan fighters to armed movement.
On Wednesday, CNN’s crew met a Libyan fighter who had crossed into Syria from Turkey with four other Libyans. The fighter wore full camouflage and was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. He said more Libyan fighters were on the way.
The foreign fighters, some of them are clearly drawn because they see this as … a jihad. So this is a magnet for jihadists who see this as a fight for Sunni Muslims.
CNN’s reports provide bookends to earlier admissions that large numbers of Libyan terroristsflush with NATO cash and weapons had headed to Syria with known terrorist commandersmaking the arrangements.
Western Media is Complicit in Covering Up War Crimes
Not only are these FSA militants committing atrocities, they are doing so in front of representatives of Western media, who are demonstratively excusing, covering up, or downplaying their war crimes. Additionally, these media personalities are attempting to downplay the significant implications of foreign-fighters crossing Syria’s borders and conducting armed attacks on a heavily populated city – implications that run contra to the West’s narrative regarding their support of the FSA against the Syrian state.
By doing so they’ve become accomplices, providing impunity for the actions of terrorists, and allowing the governments of the United States, Britain, France, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, an ignoble alliance, to continue fueling this violent, foreign-contrived band of militants. And by doing so, these media representatives have undermined their journalistic immunity, putting the lives of real journalists the world over at risk.
Image: An approximation of areas where fighting has been taking place in Aleppo, Syria. Clearly during the initial offensive by the FSA, they came in from 2 of the city’s main highways, both leading to the Turkish-Syrian border. It appears that a large number of fighters have been trapped inside the center of the city, surrounded by Syrian military forces. This was not an “uprising” but rather an invasion by armed militants from across the Turkish-Syrian border. It is unclear whether a significant number of additional militants are on their way.
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And it will be this corps of professional deceivers who continue their efforts to pave way for wider NATO intervention to fulfill US ambitions to carve out “safe havens” in northern Syria form which to prolong the current bloodbath.
Perhaps this is why Russia – condemned by these very nations for its “inaction” in supporting the subversion of Syria – stated quite clearly that the West, specifically the US, was “justifying terrorism against the Syrian government.”
The West is hemorrhaging legitimacy and finds itself in an untenable position where it can neither go forward nor back without incurring tremendous, catastrophic consequences – consequences millions of people across the Middle East as well as across the West will pay for in blood and treasure. It should be remembered who exactly brought us to this precipice and why - corporate-financier interests, their stables of policy makers, and the corporate-media – all for the sake of pursuing narrow-minded, self-serving geopolitical hegemony.

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