We are living through some amazing days, a historical moment really, and so much has happened in the last 10 days or so that it is probably too early to give it a full assessment.  As provisional “in the heat of the moment” assessments go, Pepe Escobar, of course, did the best job so far and I highly recommend his recent article “Russian chess move stalls US actions as Al-Qaeda Air Force“.  Check it out, its a good read, and Pepe is a most astute reader of the behind the scenes dynamics which we saw in motion these days.

What I propose to do today is just share a few thoughts with you which, I think, are important elements which could get overlooked.  These are separate issues with no direct connection with each other.

Disarming the Syrians? 

First and foremost, I want to reaffirm here that I personally am deeply convinced that chemical weapons serve no useful purpose at all for Syria.  They are only a historical “leftover” from Hafez al-Assad years and their main purpose and justification was to deter an Israeli nuclear strike on Syria and to draw attention to the Israeli stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.  To make a long story short, I do not believe that these weapons contribute at all the Syria’s ability to deter an Israeli nuclear strike, nor do I believe that they did a good job drawing attention to the Israeli nuclear stockpile.  These weapons are expensive and dangerous to stock, and they are dangerous and expensive to destroy.  Bottom line: the Syrians are getting a fantastic opportunity to get rid of a nasty, expensive and useless stockpile of chemical weapons.  And just to reiterate – the Syrians are not ‘disarming’.  They only getting rid of an expensive liability.

Role of the Russian Navy

The Russian naval task force off the coast of Syria is a pretty big one, and it includes some very powerful ships, such as the Moskva class guided missile cruisers, whose main function is to sink aircraft carriers.  Except that the Russians never had any intention of sinking anybody, much less so a US carrier.  While clearly this task for was designed with several possibly contingencies in mind, I would argue that one of its most important tasks was to protect a ship with no firepower at all: the Priazov’ye intelligence collection ship.

Medium intelligence ship Priazovie

And don’t let the “medium” descriptor fool you as it only refers to the physical size.  This ship is packed with advanced electronic and communication intelligence gear (including special electronic intelligence equipment “Profil`-M”, “Rotor-S”, “Prokhlada”, “Vizir”, “Konus”, “Zarya-1”, sonar MG-349 «Uzh», MGP-303).  Combined with the extremely powerful radars and anti-air capabilities of the rest of the Russian naval task force the electronics onboad the Priazovie made it impossible to strike Syria with any degree of tactical surprise.  This consideration, in turn, must have counted as an important element in Obama’s decision take accept Putin’s “Russian Gambit“.  Exactly has I had predicted, while the entire world was focused on whether the Russians had or had not delivered all, or part, of the S-300s to Syria, the Russians came up with a totally different move which took the world by surprise.

Saving Obama’s sorry face:

Anybody who has seen the video of Kerry running his mouth about Assad giving up all of his chemical weapons before the end of the way even though this was, I quite Kerry, “impossible” will see this was not a planned statement but just Kerry thinking out loud.  So why are the Russians now eagerly confirming that yes, indeed, this option had been discussed with Obama in Saint Petersburg?  Because Putin, Lavrov & Co are hyper-pragmatists.  They don’t want to humiliate these idiots Obama and Kerry and they are quite happy to give them a face-saving way out, as long as that contributes to the Russian objective for Syria.  This is what the State Department first said that Kerry statement was ‘rhetorical’ – even they had no clue.  And is it not fitting that one thoughtless statement by a US politician almost started a war (Obama’s “red line”) while another, no less thoughtless statement by another US politicians (Kerry’s “give up all weapons in a week”) prevented it?  Karma is beautiful!

The hostage witnesses:

Has anybody noticed that two hostages held by the insurgency have testified that the gas was not used by the Syrian government but by the insurgency, supervised by some unidentified Anglos?  Check these stories for more details:

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/504735/20130909/syria-chemical-attack-assad-rebels-blame-hostage.htm
http://rt.com/news/chemical-weapons-rebels-captives-632/

I bet you that the more time passes, the more the REAL truth about what happened in Syria will become known.  This is yet another reason why the delay caused by the “Russian gambit” is so important: it gives more time to research the truth.

UN Chapters: 

This is an important one: the Russians still have a way to screw-up and make a mess of the situation: if they allow any, repeat, *ANY* resolution linked to Syria to pass through the UN Security Council under so-called “Chapter 7“.  To make a long story short, any Resolution passed under “Chapter 7” will be interpreted by the US and its accomplices as a “right to attack” regardless of what the Resolution actually says.  I don’t think that the Russians will repeat their disgraceful abstention at the 2011 vote of the Chapter 7 Resolution on Libya, but I have to warn about this, no matter how remote such a development would be.

That’s it for now.  As Pepe Escobar explains it in his article, we need to see all the details about how all this will actually pan out.

Give time to time

As the French expression goes, it is important to give “time to time”, meaning, in our case, that time is the crucial factor which will make the biggest difference.  Even if Obama and the Ziocrazies suddenly decide to attack Syria, the “Russian gambit” will have bought the Syrians some vitally needed time (including getting shipments of all sorts of gear from Russia and China).  Also, consider this: each US intervention in the past had “The Big Excuse” (all in caps) to invade: it was either human rights violations or weapons of mass destruction.  In Syria’s case, they were mixed into one, but the Russian gambit removed them both.  Sure, while yet another false flag is always possible, it becomes most unlikely simply because the momentum to attack Syria has completely petered out.  Yes, given enough time the US Ziocrazies will recover from their rage and disappointment, and they probably come up with another plan to topple Assad and put the Wahavi liver-eaters in control, but now both sides will be ready while Russian and Chinese help will probably increase manifold. 

Yesterday I read somewhere (don’t remember where) that the so-called “FSA” was in a hysterical rage over the US agreeing to the Russian gambit.  And so they should.  Barring some unexpected and major disaster, it sure looks to me like the FSA adn its armed wing al-Nusra are history.

The Saker