Syrie, septembre 2013 : ce à quoi nous avons échappé

Syrie, septembre 2013 : ce à quoi nous avons échappé

Le journaliste d’investigation Seymour Hersh a publié, ces dernières semaines, des articles apportant des précisions historiques sur la crise d’août-septembre-2013 en Syrie ; sur l’attaque chimique du 21 août 2013, qui fut la cause de la séquence et qui se confirme comme un montage complet du bloc BAO & associés, avec la Turquie comme principal exécutant de la manigance ; sur l’attaque US qui aurait du suivre et dont le projet mit Obama dans une situation pathétique à Washington même, avec sa hiérarchie militaire en révolte ouverte, face à un refus du Congrès, avant d’être sauvé par l’intervention de Poutine (voir le 10 septembre 2013). (Obama ne cesse d’apparaître, dans ces mises au point historique, comme un personnage catastrophique et méprisable, bien pire dans son comportement et ses actes que ne le fut son prédécesseur GW Bush.)

David Stockman, l’ancien directeur du budget de Reagan, présente sur son site (David Stockman's Contra Corner), le 14 avril 2014, le plus récent article de Hersh de cette série, qu’il introduit d’un commentaire de présentation. Un extrait de ce commentaire donne une synthèse sur ce qu’aurait dû être la “frappe” prévue, présentée à l’époque comme “incroyablement réduite” par le secrétaire d’État Kerry, – autre figurant historique à la mesure des événements.

«Seymour Hersh explains in chapter and verse, based on a DIA secret report among other high level sources, how this abomination unfolded, and became the horrific gas attack in Ghouta on August 21, 2013. But the gravamen of the piece is his description of how the Obama White House came within two days of launching a Bush style war on Syria after it had already been warned that the proof of Assad’s complicity was lacking; and that a weapons testing lab in England had already concluded that a sarin sample obtained on the scene was of a homemade variety and not of the military grade known to be in the Assad arsenal.

»Despite all this, the White House apparatus pushed an increasingly resistant Joint Chiefs of Staff through more than 35 iterations of an attack plan that had nothing to do with spanking Assad for his alleged barbarity or surgically disabling his chemical weapons capacity. The attack was to involve an armada of British, French and American air strikes along with sea-based barrage of Tomahawk missiles to take out Assad’s entire military capacity.

»In short, a power-drunk amateur in the White House came within two days of launching a massive military campaign to bring about regime change in Syria—-an action of stupendous folly which would have ignited a cauldron of fire throughout the Middle East like never before:

»In the aftermath of the 21 August attack Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up targets for bombing. Early in the process, the former intelligence official said, ‘the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently “painful” to the Assad regime.’ The original targets included only military sites and nothing by way of civilian infrastructure. Under White House pressure, the US attack plan evolved into ‘a monster strike’: two wings of B-52 bombers were shifted to airbases close to Syria, and navy submarines and ships equipped with Tomahawk missiles were deployed. ‘Every day the target list was getting longer,’ the former intelligence official told me. ‘The Pentagon planners said we can’t use only Tomahawks to strike at Syria’s missile sites because their warheads are buried too far below ground, so the two B-52 air wings with two-thousand pound bombs were assigned to the mission. Then we’ll need standby search-and-rescue teams to recover downed pilots and drones for target selection. It became huge.’ The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had’, the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.

»Britain and France were both to play a part. On 29 August, the day Parliament voted against Cameron’s bid to join the intervention, the Guardian reported that he had already ordered six RAF Typhoon fighter jets to be deployed to Cyprus, and had volunteered a submarine capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. The French air force – a crucial player in the 2011 strikes on Libya – was deeply committed, according to an account in Le Nouvel Observateur; François Hollande had ordered several Rafale fighter-bombers to join the American assault. Their targets were reported to be in western Syria.

»By the last days of August the president had given the Joint Chiefs a fixed deadline for the launch. ‘H hour was to begin no later than Monday morning [2 September], a massive assault to neutralise Assad,’ the former intelligence official said.

»At the eleventh hour Obama backed down when General Dempsey said flat out no—and then lied that he had changed his mind after a walk around the White House with his clueless chief of staff. The foolish incumbent in the White House and his clownish Secretary of State, the man with the big head of hair and self-evidently not much underneath, then had to suffer the indignity of being rescued from their disastrous schemes and misadventures by Vladimir Putin...»

Mis en ligne le 16 avril 2014 à 06H19