Assad is using chemical weapons... really? A sensible piece on general politics.

The US needs Assad to use chemical weapons in violation of the UN weapons resolution for a repeat of Iraq. Assad does not want to use chemical weapons because it signals the end of his power. When the US says that Assad is using chemical weapons why would he and why wouldn't they lie?

Not sure who is more stupid: the people who read the news, the people who write it, the people who create the press releases or the politicians who're in arm locks from their backers.

So Assad knows the US/UK want regime change. They're certainly capable of it and been doing it a lot in the past 60 years; originally covertly through CIA/MI6 involvement but now not so covertly with the backing of massive military invasion. Invasion is something the public have grown used to and it no longer raises revulsion. After the annihilation of Germany and Italy in WW1 and WW2 we have been desensitised to the crazy logic, "the regime is so bad that the people must suffer."

Assad like Hussein and other leaders is smart enough to play the political game in his country: get support, keep support and ruin his competitors: the standard global political game. I'm sure in Syria the government has made the civil war look how it is: a civil war with the government being threatened by terrorists and minority factions.

On the outside our politicians who no longer benefit from Assad (for whatever reason) see it as a dictator oppressing his people. Quick reality check: I'd like to see the US/UK governments roll on their backs faced with a civil uprising. We faced a small one with the IRA in UK, the union disputes against Thatcher's regime, possibly have another with Islamists who disagree with liberalism and have peaceful uprisings against the UK involvement in wars and biased support of the City of London in 2009 onwards: all of which have been outright rejected by the government. Poll tax was the one uprising that did get listened to, but one wonders whether that bill was sacrificially headed by something so controversial to distract attention from other reforms that came bundled. Which ever it's all just normal daily politics.

Given the competing interests are we really to assume that Assad (and his advisors) are so unaware of the way the cards are stacked that they will play the one card that gives the USUK the green light to destroy them? If they did it would have to be a mistake, or at the very least highly serendipitous for the USUK.

The US alone amongst nations once wanted us to believe that Hussein apparently made the same lucky mistake. Weapons inspectors and all other countries thought that Hussein hadn't. The US were in fact, surprisingly: wrong. I have no access to secret intelligence, I have simply intelligence. Colin Powell, decidedly uncomfortable at the UN, presenting random snaps of vehicles from satellites and spy planes doesn't actually tell us anything about weapons. There was no terrorist involvement in 9/11: no one even in US really suggested there was. A 45 minute claim for Scud weapons with a range of 150 miles hardly represents a clear and present danger to anyone but Israel. The press releases were nonsense the first time, there was simply nothing substantial about any of it, the UK government even had a show reconvening to discuss this snow storm. No one believed it but the decision for war had already been made in the US and no-one could stop it. Basically the US openly and unashamedly lied in the full gaze of the world's media. Basically they couldn't be trusted.

So why do we give credence to press releases from a nation which neither tries to speak the truth, nor apologises when it has been proven to be deliberately lying. Lies it must be added which cost the lives of an estimated 1.5 million innocent victims of the US sanctions and invasion. In terms of pure death of innocent civilians at 11 million the US is rising in the ranks and I believe now only has Japan and Germany to beat. Can it really be advisable to invite them into your country?

For the history the original turning point for Hussein's relationship with the West was the invasion of Kuwait. As I understand it Kuwait was violating the OPEC quotas, adding extra oil on the world market which obviously suited the US. It was also side drilling into Iraqi oil reserves. A friend working in the city saw many astonishingly large cheques pass to Kuwait: there was apparently some kind of oil racket going on. Something Western observes also over look when they view world affairs is the arbitrary borders left the League of Nation and Western colonialisation. Kuwait is disputed territory of Iraq. US invasions are more Roman and colonial in style being into completely foreign territory; all the other invasions (including Nazis) are for disputed land. Germany for example in part felt entitled to its pre-WW1 territory (that it had a bizarre racially driven ideology is a side issue.) So we see that the invasion of Kuwait was not so megalomaniac as our press made out.

The telling of truth is not something any country does when it doesn't suit their interests: but few nations apart from the US present themselves, in the same breath as their lies, as the torch bearers of global truth and justice. If the media expects Assad, Russians, Hussein, Iraq etc to lie, then we expect the US to tell the truth. For this reason they deserve to be especially singled out for criticism when they lie openly and intentionally.

So I can say with no shadow of doubt that Assad is not using chemical weapons. He has no chemical weapons facilities, all his once weapons were sold to him by the West (before they changed sides) and Russia and he has been dutifully removing them just as Hussein did after the UN resolutions. If we wish to point fingers here we might move out attention to those Western businesses (US/UK/France) who make a living taking money from countries in return for weapons (chemical and other) so the ruling elites can kill. France is even implicated in supporting the genocide in Rwanda. The network of insidious involvement of the West in the same atrocities it openly abhors is as deep and dark as you wish to explore. Independent groups like Global Witness work hard to bring light to these networks and enable a cleaner world. But governments, and the US, despite the rhetoric, they don't!

The stories of chlorine could just as easily be sparked by an incident at a swimming pool or industrial chemical plant, or by chemical weapons brought into the country by those creating unrest, or it is entirely fabricated and those pictures are not of people injured in chemical attack at all. We simply don't know, our own people are demostrably liars. But we do know for sure that Assad is fight to keep power and so he won't do that which will make him lose power.