Reuters: US to Strike Syria Before UN Evidence Collected

Tony Cartalucci
Activist Post

The US has accused the Syrian government of delaying UN inspectors from accessing the site of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus. But now, according to Reuters, the US appears to be preparing to strike Syria militarily before the UN's now ongoing investigation is concluded and evidence revealed to either support or conflict with the West's so far baseless allegations.

Reuters' article, "Syria strike due in days, West tells opposition: sources," states that:

Western powers told the Syrian opposition to expect a strike against President Bashar al-Assad's forces within days, according to sources who attended a meeting between envoys and the Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul.

"The opposition was told in clear terms that action to deter further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime could come as early as in the next few days, and that they should still prepare for peace talks at Geneva," one of the sources who was at the meeting on Monday told Reuters.

Clearly, such a strike would render moot both the UN inspection team's investigation and any evidence they may find.

While the US has accused the Syrian government of obstructing an investigation that is indeed already being carried out, the impending US attack would indefinitely end the UN's efforts. If, as the US reasons, obstructing the UN's investigation implicates guilt, then the US has just made itself the prime suspect of what is increasingly appearing to be a staged provocation to salvage a proxy war the US and its allies have all but lost.

What "Limited Strikes" Really Means

Before the US and its allies mire the world in another unprovoked military adventure at the cost of thousands, perhaps even millions of lives, the wider strategy behind what the US is calling "limited strikes" should be fully understood.

Much of the West's proxy war against Syria has been drawn from plans laid by the Brookings Institution versus Iran in a 2009 document titled, "Which Path to Persia?" The report stated: 

...it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.)  -Brookings Institution's 2009 "Which Path to Persia?" report, pages 84-85.

Clearly those in the West intent on striking Iran (and now Syria) realize both the difficulty of obtaining a plausible justification, and the utter lack of support they have globally to carry out an attack even if they manage to find a suitable pretext. An article recently published in Slate indicates that the approval rating of a proposed assault on Syria is only 9% - making the potential war the most unpopular conflict in American history.

Brookings would continue throughout their 2009 report enumerating methods of provoking Iran, including conspiring to fund opposition groups to overthrow the Iranian government, crippling Iran's economy, and funding US State Department-listed terrorist organizations to carry deadly attacks within Iran itself. ...
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