Does anybody remember how the USA prevented the Bosnian-Serbs from participating in any negotiations about their own future? The USA came up with trick to say that the only Serbs invited to any negotiations would be the Serbs from Yugoslavia, representatives of the Milosevic regime. With the brilliant move, the USA made it look like the Bosnian-Serbs were nothing but a proxy for an expansionist Serbian Yugoslavia hell-bent on creating a “Greater Serbia”. That option also made it possible for the USA to use a very compliant, if not subservient Milosevic, against the Bosnian-Serbs (does anybody remember that Yugoslavia participated in the NATO blockade of the Bosnian-Serbs or is that fact totally lost in the memory hole?).
- The Secretaries-General of the United Nations and the League of Arab States
- The Foreign Ministers of China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, Turkey, Iraq (Chair of the Summit of the League of Arab States), Kuwait (Chair of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the League of Arab States) and Qatar (Chair of the Arab Follow-up Committee on Syria of the League of Arab States)
- The European Union High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy
Now if we set aside the official nonsense about all these folks being independent actors we have the following parties in presence: the US/Israeli Empire represented by the US and its vassal states (UK, Turkey, EU, Kuwait, Qatar) while all the others are I would call “independent third parties” including Russia, China and Iraq (present only as the chair of the Summit of the League of Arab States and not as a sovereign country). The only real ally of Syria, Iran, has been prevented from participating by the categorical refusal of the USA. Russia expressed “
regrets” about this state of affairs, but accepted it.
This is very reminiscent of the tactics used by the USA against the Bosnian-Serbs or, for that matter, against the Palestinian people and Hamas. How does the current situation of the Syrians compare to situation of the Bosnian-Serbs?
I would argue that it is marginally better a simple reason: Russia and China are large and powerful nations which cannot be blackmailed, pressured or co-opted like Milosevic was. Regardless of the US/NATO propaganda, Milosevic was used by the US and NATO against the Bosnian-Serbs, and that is most likely not going to happen with Russia and China.
And yet, I don’t think that these countries can be trusted to represent the interests and views of the Syrian regime so, just as was the case in Bosnia, these negotiations are hopelessly lopsided and heavily skewed against Syria. So it is rather unsurprising that all what these folks came up with is yet another
vague and rather insipid statement about yet another a “road-map” for Syria beefed-up by some equally vapid, if well-meaning,
remarks by the UNSG.
From the US point of view the key sentence in this text is the following one:
The establishment of a transitional governing body which can establish a neutral environment in which the transition can take place. That means that the transitional governing body would exercise full executive powers. It could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.
Hillary Clinton
immediately “explained” that this meant that “Assad will have to go because “h
e will never pass the mutual consent test”. Well, both parties can play this game. For example, Assad could follow the Israeli “negotiating model” and declare that he will never negotiate with “anybody with Arab blood on their hands” thereby excluding the entire insurgency. Or Assad could do the exact opposite: declare that he will negotiate with anybody, even the worst of the worst, and set no preconditions. Such a move could make it very easy for him to blame the insurgents for refusing to talk to him.
All this immediately brought back memories of the Bosnian war to me, especially when I read the following sentence of the “Agreement”:
All parties must cooperate with the transitional governing body in ensuring the permanent cessation of violence. This includes completion of withdrawals and addressing the issue of the disarming, demobilization and reintegration of armed groups. Effective steps to ensure that vulnerable groups are protected and immediate action is taken to address humanitarian issues in areas of need.
This is exactly what happened in Bosnia: the USA declared that all parties must be disarmed and civilians protected (in safe areas), only to initiate a massive arms transfer to the Bosnian-Muslims who used the “safe areas” as rear bases and assembly points for their armed groups. Today,
as is now well-known, the
USA is already arming the Syrian insurgents while various Gulf States (lead by Qatar) are financing it all. Finally, just as in Bosnia, Wahabi Jihadists (aka “foreign fighters”) are being brought into the country from all over the region.
Of course, all of the above applies to the wars in Kosovo and Libya. We can really speak of a “Bosnia v.4, Kosovo v.3, Libya v.2, Syria v.1” model. Let’s summarize it here:
1. Identify some minority and/or opposition group and “help” it (in the name of democracy and human right, of course) by providing it with money and visibility
2. Try to foment some civil unrest and/or violent incidents
3. Encourage and assist the minority and/or opposition group to denounce any governmental reaction to the unrests/incidents
4. Spread rumors about all sorts of atrocities already committed or soon to be committed
5. Back up these rumors by making sure that atrocities are actually committed against the minority/opposition, against the regime and against civilians, bystanders and random people
6. Initiate phase one of a strategic psyop campaign in the corporate media which will present a simple narrative explaining that the minority/opposition are “innocent victims who only want freedom, democracy and human rights” while the “hated regime” in power is “bloody” and “dictatorial”
7. Begin sending special agents tasked with unifying the various minority/opposition groups and take control, via typically via exiles, of the top echelons of the opposition
8. Initiate phase two of the strategic pysop campaign in the corporate media which will present the unified opposition as the “sole legitimate representative” of “the people”
9. Demand negotiations between the “sole legitimate representative” of “the people” and the regime and create some “troika”, “quartet” or “action group” composed of vassal states to participate in the “negotiations”
10. Declare that the regime has lost all “credibility or “confidence” and therefore reject any and all offers of negotiations or cease-fires proposed by the regime as “not credible”
11. Create one or more false flag atrocities against the minority/opposition
12. Initiate phase three of the strategic psyop campaign in the corporate media and flood the public with outraged statements about “crimes against humanity” and even “genocide”
13. Demand an arms embargo on all the parties to the conflict and immediately initiate a large scale deliveries of weapons and “foreign fighters”
14. Seize the assets of the regime and its officials and use it to covertly finance the insurgency
15. Respond to any military success by the regime by demanding the “protection” of civilians, preferably under Chapter VII of the UN Charter
16a.If a Chapter VII UNSC Resolution is adopted, make sure that NATO countries provide the bulk of the military forces engaged
16b.If a Chapter VII UNSC Resolution is not adopted, vehemently denounce the UNSC members which vetoed it, and create a “coalition of the willing” justified under the “Duty to Intervene” (“le devoir d’ingérence” in French) theory
17. Send special operation forces, including forward air controllers, to coordinate the insurgency and the upcoming air campaign
18. Apply the Combined Joint Task Force doctrine to send enough troops (and mercenaries) to secure key facilities and objectives in the country
19. Hunt down ex-regime officials and send them to the Hague
20. Declare victory, built a few military bases and let the corporations take over the resources of the country
With a few variations, this is the model the USA has used in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya and, is now applying to Syria. The case of Iraq under Saddam, and Iran for that matter, are somewhat different since they did not have a minority/opposition strong enough to be used as a lever by the USA, hence all the propaganda about these countries developing (or even having) weapons of mass destruction.
So will this model work in Syria?
It’s hard for me to tell as there is practically zero useful information coming out of Syria right now. And while during the Bosnian war I could get UNPROFOR intelligence delivered to me every morning, now I only have access to public, and mostly unreliable and uninteresting, sources. Still, as far as I know, the insurgency currently controls no territory at all, at least not permanently. Or, if it does, it is not a significant amount. This tells me that the insurgency is currently rather weak. Hence the endless stream of bomb blasts in Damascus and other major cities.
Turkey is clearly acting as a rear base for the insurgency and a forward command post for US/NATO forces, just like Croatia did during the war in Bosnia, but the incident with the Phantom shot down
in Syrian air space seems to indicate that the regime is serious about keeping control of the Syrian-Turkish border. Finally, Russia and China have made it quite clear that no Chapter VII UNSC Resolution will be adopted against Syria. All in all, it appears that the situation is currently frozen somewhere around phases 14-16 of the model above. In other words, Syria is at the brink of a complete collapse, but its not quiet over yet and as long as the regime can hold on to most of Syria’s territory the US will not be able to implement the latter stages of its subversion model.
I might be mistaken here, but I don’t see a “coalition of the willing” (aka “NATO”) simply attack Syria, not only because the Syrian military might offer some non-trivial resistance, but because the public opinion is currently not in the type of hysterical interventionist frenzy which is needed to justify an illegal intervention.
Furthermore, NATO will not send in special forces and forward air controllers if there is a real risk of them being captured by the regime. Libya is a big country and the Libyan insurgents controlled large parts of the country, whereas Syria is rather small and most of it is controlled by the regime. This being said, there is a very real risk of Turkey triggering some kind of military incident with Syria and then
demand a NATO response under the Article 5 of the NATO Charter. That is definitely a possibility, but the blowback from such a decision could be formidable as the reality of Turkey essentially aggressing an Arab country will not sit well with the so-called “Arab street”.
My feeling is that Turkey will grandstand and shake its fists, and that it will gladly provide a rear base for US/NATO covert operations, but I am not quite convinced that it would be willing to trigger a real, full-scale, war against Syria. Turkey might be a far superior military power then Syria, but the Syrian military is not completely toothless either and the example of Iraq has shown that an easy initial victory can rapidly turn into a nightmare for the “victorious” occupying force.
My other hope is that Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are all using their formidable intelligence capabilities (some of the best on the planet) to disrupt US/NATO covert operations and to assist Syrian security forces. Contrast that situation with the one of the Bosnian-Serbs were completely alone and whose intelligence capabilities were minimal.
If all these speculations are not too far off the mark, then it appears that the US/NATO and the Syrian regime have arrived at some kind draw in which neither side can really “win” or “loose”. There appear to be little or no prospects for phases 17-20 to be implemented by the US, but neither can the regime achieve a convincing victory against the insurgency, in particular if it decides to follow the Chechen model and transform itself into a purely terrorist underground, capable of blowing up bombs here and there, but with no hope of actually achieving anything meaningful.
So in the long term it is likely that the Syrian people themselves will have to decide whom they dislike least – the regime or the insurgency – and herein lies a very real danger for Syria:
the majority of Syrians are Sunni Arabs (74%) with the rest of the population consisting of various Shia sects (for a combined total or 12%), Christians (10%) and Druze (3%). Officially, Syria is a secular republic founded by the Baath party, but just as in Iraq most of the people in power are from a religious minority and this fact could potentially be used to turn a majority of Syrians against the regime. I honestly don’t know.
The Syrian people are really facing a terrible choice: on one hand, a corrupt, despotic, secular, Baathist regime with roots in a minority of the population and on the other, a federation of various Jihadi groups, federated and overseen by the US/NATO puppeteers. At least Assad is NOT (please see note below) a clueless megalomaniac Baathist clown like Saddam or Gaddafi, but so far his performance in dealing with the conflict as been mediocre at best. My hope is that the Russians, Iranians and Chinese have some kind of plan to slowly ease him out of power and replace him with an anti-Wahabi Sunni leader (like Ramzan Kadyrov in Chechnia).
The Bosnian, Kosovan and Libyan model can still be avoided in Syria, but very strong and concerted action needs to be taken by the countries who do not want Syria to turn into yet another US/NATO colony in the Middle-East. So far I see no signs of that, but I will keep hoping.
The Saker
NOTE: the word “NOT” was missing from my original text, and I only added it after Christella B. Krebs and Brian posted comments challenging my apparent characterization of Assad as a clown. Please not that my sentence begins with “AT LEAST” which could have indicated that the missing “not” was a typo. So, to make clear, I do NOT believe that Assad is a clueless clown like Saddam and Gaddafi were (in my opinion). But I do believe that “so far his performance in dealing with the conflict as been mediocre at best”.
I apologize for this typo and I thank Christella and Brian for bringing my attention to it.
“And while during the Bosnian war I could get UNPROFOR intelligence delivered to me every morning…”
And did you learn a lot which went on that was different/unknown by what was put out in the mainstream media? I’ve seen photos by Japanese journalists of Serb POWs which were roasted alive by the Bosnian Muslims, and also Serbian civilians who were mutilated by them all around Srebrenica. They were brutalizing Serbs from the start, but virtually all their crimes were ignored.
I also read about a tunnel/concentration camp of Serbs around Sarajevo, early in the war, that the UN knew about but didn’t of course do anything about.
As for the Croats – I read they had 40,000 troops from Croatia stationed in Bosnia during the entire war. Last year there was the arrest of a Croat woman soldier in the U.S. named Azra Basic, who with the Croat soldiers, had set up and “worked” in at least 3 concentration camps of Serb civilians in the eastern part of Bosnia, close to the Serbian border. The Serb villagers were attacked on their Easter 1992. The fact that Croat soldiers were deep in Bosnia at the beginning of the war, and in eastern Serbia, where the media claimed was overrun and controlled by Serb forces, shows that a true account of what was happening there was not being told.
As for Syria, if it is not tricked/bribed into gradually being overtaken (and I think their allowing the UN monitors/forces to come in was a big mistake in that direction) it depends on how strong their anti-aircraft is whether NATO or another country would risk it or get very far.
If they are a few times stronger – have better, more modern, weapons systems and training – than the Serbs in 1999, I don’t believe cowardly NATO would risk it.
@anonymous: And did you learn a lot which went on that was different/unknown by what was put out in the mainstream media?
Yes, indeed, so much that I can say without any exaggeration that the truth about what happened in Bosnia was the POLAR OPPOSITE of the propaganda spewed by the entire corporate media. In fact, I was so shocked and amazed by that, that it ended up wrecking my entire career. Before the war in Bosnia I had heard the phrase “truth is the first casualty of war” but I had never imagined that this could be quite so literally true. Frankly, this war changed my entire life and resulted in a process of soul-searching for me which ended up pretty much changing my politics by 180 degrees. This is a long and very painful story which I do not want to discuss here, but I just want to say that this difference between what I was reading in the press and in the UNPROFOR reports ended up making a huge difference in my entire life. Again, NOT A SINGLE ASPECT OF THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE WAS TRUE, not one. You would get much closer to the truth if you basically did a “negative” of the official narrative.
In the case of Syria I do not have access to any solid information at all and, unlike Bosnia, Syria never was my area of expertise so all of what I write about it is only speculation, “guesstimates” at best and there is a strong possibility that I am getting even my basic facts wrong. And yet, the similarities between these wars is such that I cannot ignore them.
Lastly, for me Libya was a BIG eye opener. As I wrote many times here, I really hated the Gaddafi regime (I also hated Milosevic, by the way), and I initially was encouraged by the rebellion against him. Frankly, I cannot stand these Arab secularists and Baathists (they are just such a total disaster for their people and such systematic screw-ups), but when I saw what US/NATO did in Libya I was both horrified and disgusted by the brazen hypocrisy of it all. I just don’t want that to happen to ANY other country, regardless of its regime, and this is why I feel compelled to denounce the lies about the current war on Syria.
Cheers!
Fantastic article as always. You yourself mention that “accurate” information is scarce and that reflects a bit.
Personally I’d remove the pictures from your article. As much as I like them and as much as they make me chuckle, I think that they diminish the sense of importance.
I’ve been reading your articles for some time now, please keep writing :)
Sincerely,
Z.K.
US/Israeli Empire.
Oh please it is Britain and Israel that has major influence in the US that Britain is certainly no vassal.
Is George Soros a British or US citizen?
What about Adnan Khashoggi British or US citizen?
It was Britain and France that launch the Libyan war.
The CFR in a British established globalist elite think tank.
Russia’s shock therapist’s reformers were trained in London and British connected institutions during Gorbachevs rule.
It is Britain that controls the Caspian Azeri energy consortium and backers of Chechen separatists/terrorism.
The security apparatus of these Gulf states are controlled by former British intelligence personal.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Qatar are essentially branches of British intelligence.
Off topic but do you know if it is true that Putin’s bodyguards are Chechen.
@VINEYARDSAKER:
What is it exactly that you didn’t like about Milosevic keeping in mind the geo-political reality at the time with Serbia having no allies and the world pretty much being pro US after the collapse of the Soviet regime?
@ZK:You yourself mention that “accurate” information is scarce and that reflects a bit.
Yup, guilty as charged here. Actually, there is some stuff here and there, like this article: http://respect-discussion.blogspot.com/2012/07/map-of-foreign-armed-groups-in-homs-and.html. The problem for me is that I have not had the time to really develop a list of generally trustworthy sources. For example, I have no idea who Nidal Hamadeh is (other than that he writes for al-Manar). What I lack most is some solid professional-grade military analysis looking into the actual military/security information on the ground. With other areas I usually have a list of sources, but in this case I simply lack the expertise to accurately “read between the lines” or to understand the mindset of key actors.
Personally I’d remove the pictures from your article
I understand your point, but I just don’t want this blog to look like a page from the Washington Post or Le Monde. I don’t take myself so seriously, and I like to goof around. This is also why I often use non-academic language, emoticons, etc. I hope that the pics don’t irritate you too much :-)
I’ve been reading your articles for some time now, please keep writing :)
Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate them.
Cheers!
@Saker: “I can say without any exaggeration that the truth about what happened in Bosnia was the POLAR OPPOSITE of the propaganda spewed by the entire corporate media. … Again, NOT A SINGLE ASPECT OF THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE WAS TRUE, not one. You would get much closer to the truth if you basically did a ‘negative’ of the official narrative.”
That reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from George Orwell, from his essay “Looking Back on the Spanish War”:
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/Spanish_War/english/esw_1
“I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, ‘History stopped in 1936’, at which he nodded in immediate understanding. We were both thinking of totalitarianism in general, but more particularly of the Spanish civil war. Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines’.”
Do read the whole thing. Nearly everything Orwell wrote in that essay is reflected in the Balkan War.
Like you, I have had a hard time trying to explain to other people how it is that total fabrications can become “official history.” It is just like Hitler said in Mein Kampf – big lies are easier to pull off than small ones. As Orwell would have said, most people expect lies to have some relationship to facts, if even to conceal or distort them. People, in general, don’t know how to handle complete fabraications.
The late Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski, in hos book Political Ponerology called this technique the “Reversive Blockade.” He describes it thus:
“Reversive Blockade:Emphatically insisting upon something which is the opposite of the truth, this blocks the average person’s mind from perceiving the truth. In accordance with the dictates of healthy common sense, he starts searching for meaning in the ‘golden mean’ between the truth and its opposite, winding up with some satisfactory counterfeit. People who think like this do not realize that this was precisely the intent of the person who subjected them to this method. If such a statement is the opposite of a moral truth, at the same time, it simultaneously represents an extreme paramoralism, and bears its peculiar suggestiveness. We rarely see this method being used by normal people; even if raised by the people who abused it; they usually only indicate its results [on their thinking] in the shape of characteristic difficulties in apprehending reality properly. Use of this method can be included within the above-mentioned psychological knowledge developed by psychopaths concerning the weaknesses of human nature and the art of leading others into error. Where they are in rule, this method is used with virtuosity, and to an extent conterminous with their power.”
I read Orwell’s Homage to Catelonia when I was a teenager ever since I’ve been emotionally on the left.
Read on a thread on the Anatole Karlin site that the Yugoslav blockade of the Bosnian Serbs only existed on paper and in reality arms supplies and men were going over the border all the time with the full knowledge of Belgrade. Mind you even if true I don’t see why that is any different from the Croat intervention in the war.
The media were demonising the Serbs right from 1992 ever since ITN broadcast pictures from a Serb camp of an emaciated figure Fikret Alic behind barbed wire. A small libertarian Marxist magazine, LM published an article by a German journalist Thomas Deichmann which proved that it was the journalists who had been filming from behind barbed wire and Alic hadn’t been imprisoned behind barbed wire at all. But the image went round the world and gave the impression that the Serbs were running Nazi style concentration camps.
ITN sued LM for libel and the magazine was shut down. In his summing up the judge said yes LM had their facts right about who had been behind the barbed wire but “does it matter?” The jury were persuaded that LM had nefarious motives and were extremists questioning the reality of Serb atrocities in the war and so even if their facts were right on the barbed wire issue they deserved to be punished for having a bad attitude.
When journalism succumbs to Good Cause Corruption i.e never mind if the facts are true provided it’s all in a good cause then journalism simply becomes propaganda. This can become deadly dangerous in a war situation with propaganda potentially leading to lots of people being killed.
I don’t know the truth about Srebrenice. I’m willing to believe the Serbs massacred Muslims although the figure may be a lot less than 8000. But there were no good guys in that war which was a brutal sectarian conflict where all sides committed atrocities.
@Robert: “I don’t know the truth about Srebrenice. I’m willing to believe the Serbs massacred Muslims although the figure may be a lot less than 8000. But there were no good guys in that war which was a brutal sectarian conflict where all sides committed atrocities.”
I don’t know the truth either. However, please consider your statement as a possible example of the “Reversive Blockade” technique Lobaczewski was talking about. The news media asserts that 8000 men and boys were massacred. The Serbs claim that no organized massacre happened at all. So, the “natural” thing is to assume that the truth lies somewhere “in between.” But, suppose it doesn’t? What if at least one “side” (and possibly more than one side) is lying and fabricating “factoids” out of whole cloth?
The thing is, that we know that the Mainstream Media (MSM) are liars. They have been caught out in lie after lie about so many things. They lied about the leadup to the Iraq War (remember the nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction”?). They lied about the leadup to Operation Desert Storm (1991). Are you old enough to remember the fake atrocity stories about Iraqi troops throwing premature babies out of incubators in Kuwait when they invaded? That story was later exposed as a fabrication by the public relations firm Hill and Knowlton. H&K testified to that effect in hearings before Congress, and boasted to the world about their public relations prowess! They weren’t ashamed of what they did, only about the fact that they got caught!
To this day, the MSM continue to lie to God’s face about 9/11. All you have to do is look at their own video footage to know that the official story is a scam.
Given their exhaustively proven track record as brazen liars, why should you or I take anything they say about the Balkan Wars seriously at all? They have lied about everything else, why not about this as well?
Assuming that the truth about anything lies “somewhere in between” competing narratives is an attitude of intellectual laziness which psychopaths can exploit. If you don’t know who to believe, then believe nobody! Instead, ignore “narratives” and examine whatever evidence you have. Even evidence can be misleading, if your interpretive methods are faulty. You can still make mistakes. However, you are less likely to be persuaded to believe complete lies if you do this.
So will this model work in Syria?
I think NO
Syia, would be a greater eye opener
@uprooted Palestinian: first, thanks for posting my piece on your blog and, second, I very much hope that you are right.
Cheers!
Welcome Saker
I do believe the battle in and on syria is the mother od all battales. It’s Putin’s great opportunity to change the the rules of the Game of nations
Dear Saker;
Great Analysis as usual and I concur with most of what you wrote.
Nidal Hamadeh is very Good and I know first hand that he has very good sources, some of whom I know as well…
To make a long story short, I think that Syria has an established and well indoctrinated/Nationalistic security establishment which is prepared, willing and able to fight the kind of war we are seeing in Syria for 15 Years…, come Hell or High Water, regardless of the presence or not of the Mafiosi/Clown Bashar Assad… Syria is part of an Axis, and that Axis will not be Broken as yet for the foreseeable Future. I don’t see any real change in this environment for now… If I see it or if there is an unforeseen event, I will be the first to admit it and will let you know…If the criminal gangsters of the US/Israeli Empire of Evils and their subservient Wahhabi/Takfiri and European idiots make any False move, a Regional War will ensue inevitably….and it will affect negatively the Whole World for decades, with the price of OIL soaring into the Stratosphere…
Best,
Joe
Hi, Saker;
I just saw this at Gordon Duff’s website Veterans Today
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/07/02/nato-tied-to-muslim-slaughter-at-srebrenica/
Whaddya know?! Srebrenica may have been a false flag operation, a 9/11 of the Balkans. Who’d’a thunk it?!
P.S. I have been praying every Thursday, at my church, to St. Nicholas of Myra to expose perjury and false testimony at the Hague. Apparently, St. Nicholas is a good saint to pray to for this kind of thing:
————————————————————————
“The original Nicholas of Myra is indeed a shadowy figure. A later tradition says he was present at the Council of Nicea in 325 and boxed the ears of the leading heretic Arius. But that only gets a mention in a 14th century Latin author. His earliest fame rests more on some events recounted in a later 6th century text known as “Action for the Generals.” According to this Nicholas had intervened with the local authorities to rescue three innocent victims of Myra from an unjust execution. Later those who witnessed this achievement called him in aid when three generals were put in prison in Constantinople. As a result of this Nicholas appeared before the Emperor Constantine in a dream in the palace bedchamber and ordered him to halt the second execution of men who had been falsely accused of treason. So Nicholas is associated from the beginning with the innocent. He is a powerful intercessor. . . .
—Lord Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1980–1991
An excerpt from a lecture”
@Michael: Interesting but wholly unsubstantiated, at least so far. As a source, I rate Gordon Duff’s Veterans Today and Pravda as a rather unreliable and very highly biased sources. If this officer “TD” actually shows up either in the Hague or somewhere else, and if we can actually see the documents the Belorussians are supposed to have, then I will gladly revise my position, but so far I am very dubious for a very basic reason: a lot of French officers were rather pro-Serb during this war, even of their political leaders were not, and I just don’t see the US/NATO using the French military intelligence to run Serb paramilitaries though I would not say that this is impossible.
As for the Dutch battalion and even Akashi I can say the following: they did request air support on at least THREE occasions, but NATO refused (without ever giving a reason). So I cannot say that the Dutch were ordered to stand down: they simply had no choice at all.
Please do keep me posted if you hear anything more about this as I am personally extremely interested in the issue of Srebrenica.
Thank you very much and kind regards,
The Saker
BUT I MUST OBJECT to the statement Shakir made –which is a hideous lie and very spiteful and I do not know why SHAKIR says “At least Assad is a clueless megalomaniac Baathist clown like Saddam or Gaddafi, but so far his performance in dealing with the conflict as been mediocre at best.”
We all know the foresight and great understanding, holiness and wisdom of Muammar al-Qathafi–who is the farthest thing from a “clown” (as he is now on the brink of VICTORY with the Green Resistance)—and as for Bahear Assad, he has withstood American attacks no for well over a year …
It is a shame that SHAKIR has to be so prejudicial, when so much of his thesis is sound.
BUT I MUST OBJECT to the statement Shakir made –which is a hideous lie and very spiteful and I do not know why SHAKIR says “At least Assad is a clueless megalomaniac Baathist clown like Saddam or Gaddafi, but so far his performance in dealing with the conflict as been mediocre at best.”
We all know the foresight and great understanding, holiness and wisdom of Muammar al-Qathafi–who is the farthest thing from a “clown” (as he is now on the brink of VICTORY with the Green Resistance)—and as for Bahear Assad, he has withstood American attacks no for well over a year …
It is a shame that SHAKIR has to be so prejudicial, when so much of his thesis is sound.
yes Saker..this is one time you not Assad is clueless:
… SAKER says “At least Assad is a clueless megalomaniac Baathist clown like Saddam or Gaddafi, but so far his performance in dealing with the conflict as been mediocre at best.”
this sort of language is more suited to the insurgents. How does Assad get to be clueless? and calling him a clown only ricochetts onto you! Here is Assad talking…please show me how he is a clown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PwFBqiH6As
unfortunately in what is otherwise a good post, youve shamed yourself, and by attacking Assad you end up supporting the enemies of syria..
as for Assads performance….you seem unaware syria is under attack by islamic terrorists….whay would you do?
Sorry about my “typos” before:
The SAKIR made a very nasty statement concerning our dear brother leader on 07 JULY at:
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/us-subversion-model-bosnia-v4-kosovo-v3.html
It is a hideous lie and very spiteful and I do not know why SAKER says “At least Assad is a clueless megalomaniac Baathist clown like Saddam or Gaddafi, but so far his performance in dealing with the conflict as been mediocre at best.”
We all know the foresight and great understanding, holiness and wisdom of Muammar al-Qathafi–who is the farthest thing from a “clown” (as he is now on the brink of VICTORY with the Green Resistance)—and as for Bashear Assad, he has withstood American attacks no for well over a year …
It is a shame that SAKER has to be so prejudicial, when so much of his thesis is sound.
@Christella and Brian:
Please check the note I have just added at the bottom of my post. Basically, what happened was a bad case of me committing yet another typo. I decided that this was such a grievous mistake that rather than just answering you here, I place a disclaimer inside the text and an explanation at the bottom. So, I hope that this convinces you that I do not consider Assad as a “clueless clown”. However, I am unlikely to satisfy your other objection, as I do not consider him as an effective or even respectable leader. How could I have any respect for a leader who tortured innocent people for the CIA or who made it possible for the Israeli to murder Imad Mugniyeh?
As for his performance in this conflict, I am fully aware that Syria is the object of a joint attack of international Wahabism and the US empire (the same thing,for all practical purposes). But I also know, from personal contact, how brutal and corrupt this regime is, and always was, and how it is failing to make its case both internally and internationally, which explains the lackluster performance of the Syrian military and the gradual increase in so-called “defections” from privates to generals.
If either of you seriously think that the regime is doing a good job in this civil war, you are in for some very painful surprises (unless Assad comes to his senses and starts really listening to the advice coming from Moscow).
My 2cts.
The Saker