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The " known unknowns " ...
"We also know there are known unknowns,"
"absence of evidence, is not the evidence
of absence" ...Such tit-for-tat behavior,
is in the realm of the "unknown unknowns"....
For Israel's scheme to succeed, the internal
conflict in Lebanon must escalate and internal
cohesion must not be achieved, an ongoing
mission entrusted to the "mysterious" car
bombings that have been blamed squarely on
Syria and its Lebanese allies.... in the
"legendary" , cowardly, White House Murder
Inc., and its Chief Operating Officer,
Assef Shawkat,the Lieutenant of
Elliott Abrams, CIA , MOSSAD and OSP.
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February , 2008 -- Behind the media smoke screen in the Middle East.
Reality paints a much different picture of Middle East covert operations.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell tipped his hand just a bit when he recently opined that Syria may have been responsible for the February 12 car bombing in Damascus of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh. McConnell, according to WMR's Middle East Intelligence sources, provided only a small part of the intelligence cooperation that actually occurs in the Middle East between factions from the Syrians, Iranians, Israelis, and Americans.
It is becoming apparent that the head of Syrian military intelligence, Assef Shawqat, and a group of his operatives in Syria and Lebanon have been carrying out a number of car bombings, including that of Mughniyeh and Lebanese politicians, in order to provide "plausible deniability" and a firewall between Syria and the Israelis and Americans. This whole Covert effort started in earnest with the Assassination of Mr. Elie Hobeika, January 24th 2002. Mr. Hobeika was closest to this group, earlier in his career, hence it was decided to take him out of the picture first, because he adamantly refused offers to induce him to join this whole strategy anew, since the latter part of the 1990s, and because it is a given, for people "in the know", that had he been alive today, he would be able to decipher all these covert links with exact details, names, and more...! Significantly, Shawkat is the brother-in-law of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
WMR's sources report that "a faction" within the Iranian military decided to help the Shawkat faction take out Mughniyeh in order to avoid an outbreak of war between Hezbollah and Israel in south Lebanon and a possible concurrent "shock and awe" US air strike on Iran. Hezbollah's operational command maintains close links with the Iranian embassies in Syria and Lebanon. In addition, Hezbollah's Special Security Apparatus is provided with weapons, military training, and money by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Al Qods force of the IRGC.
Shawkat has maintained close ties with the CIA, providing the agency with extraordinary rendition prisons and torture rooms for individuals grabbed by CIA operatives around the world, including Canadian citizen Maher Arar, a native of Syria. In September 2006, a Canadian Commission of Inquiry concluded that Arar, who was kidnapped while transiting JFK Airport in New York, was tortured by Syrian military intelligence. The report stated that Shawkat's service tortured Arar "while interrogating him during the period he was held incommunicado at the SMI’s [Syrian Military Intelligence's] Palestine Branch facility.”
After the car bomb hit on Mughniyah in Damascus, Shawkat's intelligence operatives ensured that the scene of the bombing was completely cleansed by first light the next morning. The only signs that the bombing had occurred were some black marks on the street and some minor damage to adjacent walls.
What is lost on the Western media is that there are covert channels between Israeli, Syrian, and Iranian intelligence. The Secretary of the conservative Islamic Coalition Society and close friend of Ayatollah Ali Khamanei is Habibollah Asgaroladi, a radical Muslim who rejected attempts by former President Mohammad Khatami to improve relations with the United States. Khatami's entreaties were also rejected by the neocons in the George W. Bush administration.
Asgaroladi is a member of the Expediency Council, an influential advisory group in the country chaired by former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who was the main Iranian interlocutor between the Americans and Israelis in the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s. More noteworthy is the fact that Asgaroladi, counted as one of Iran's richest men, converted to Islam from Judaism during the time of the Shah's reign.
According to WMR's Iranian sources, beyond his radical rhetoric, Asgaroladi serves as an important back channel to Israel, especially in matters of trade matters. Asgaroladi's position in Iran has been likened by WMR's Middle East sources to the large number of Turkish leaders whose families converted from Judaism to Islam before and after the Turkish secular revolution of Kemal Ataturk. In fact, knowledgeable Turkish sources report that Ataturk, himself, was one such convert. These Turkish leaders provide much of the support for close Turkish-Israeli relations, including military and intelligence links.
Our Middle East intelligence sources report that the Syrians, Israelis, and Iranians prefer that U.S. intelligence remain largely ignorant of "some covert" and "subtle links" between Israel, the minority Alawite Muslim regime in Damascus, and factions within the mullahs in Tehran. However, it is just possible, that ignorance by the United States... that could propel America into a disastrous military action in Iran.
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Bush's strangest Syrian bedfellow: Assef Shawkat, Head of Syria's Military Intelligence, and Partner in the Ultimate White House Murder Inc.
The facts will always point the finger at Assef Shawkat in this assassination, as he tried to "convince" Hizbullah to keep Imad Moughnieh's assassination in Damascus, a SECRET... and burry him secretly... without "Fanfare"...that the initial announcement of Imad Fayez Mughnieh's death was made public by Hezbollah, rather than by Syrian officials....is a testament to Mr. Hassan Nasrallah's complete independence from the Syrian Murderers, killers, assassins, working for CIA and MOSSAD's Meir Dagan, "The Gun"....
Syria has vowed to soon release the results of its inquiry into the assassination of Hizbullah official Imad Mughniyah. However, there is increasing likelihood that the findings, rather than explain what happened, will become a weapon in the regional struggle between Syria, Iran and their Lebanese allies on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan , and the March 14th coalition of the creeps and stooges of CIA and MOSSAD, on the other.
In the past week since Mughniyeh's funeral, unidentified sources in Beirut and Damascus have been feverishly spinning media coverage of the killing. The Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, which is close to Hezbollah, was the first to identify an Arab angle in the Mughniyeh affair, quoting someone as saying that among those arrested by the Syrian authorities were "non-civilian elements of Arab nationality." Syria's daily Al-Watan, which is owned by the powerful cousin of President Bashar Assad, Rami Makhlouf, also cited a source as mentioning an Arab connection.
In the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai Al-Aam, a source close to Hizbullah was quoted as saying that the Mughniyah hit was "Palestinian-Israeli," using American technology and financed by an unidentified Gulf Arab official. Another Kuwaiti daily, Al-Siyassa, which is hostile to Damascus, wrote that Mughniyeh had been residing in an apartment building belonging to a business partner of Makhlouf - in effect linking the late Hezbollah official to people at the heart of Syria's political and economic elite.... which is none of his Business, never been his Business.
Perhaps most disturbing for what may lie ahead, however, was a report in Al-Haqiqa, the publication of Nizar Nayouf, a Syrian opposition figure. Nayouf was for years instrumentalized by Syria's regime, before moving to France..., to become Assef Shawqat's resident representative, with DST, DGSE, and CIA's... station in Paris. However, most observers of Syrian affairs believe his publication is often used by the White House's subsidiary of Murder Inc., incorporated with the Assad regime, as a conduit for disinformation, or for sending political messages. According to a Syrian source cited by Al-Haqiqa, the Mughniyeh investigation may accuse "official or semi-official Lebanese parties ... allied with [the 14 Hmars...]" of having participated in the Mughniyeh operation. The paper suggested investigators might also identify Walid Jumblatt, or more specifically his alleged security chief, Hisham Nasreddine, as having played a role in the killing. LOL
The "official or semi-official" parties the source refers to is almost certainly the Information Department of the Internal Security Forces - essentially the state security apparatus most loyal to FBI.... A key objective of Syria and the opposition in the negotiations over a new government has been to ensure that the Interior Ministry, which oversees the Dis-Information Department, is taken out of the hands of the parliamentary majority. If the information in Al-Haqiqa becomes the basis of an official Syrian charge, the aim may be to advance this agenda. As for Jumblatt, no one will seriously believe the Druze leader has the capacity to eliminate so secretive as figure as Mughniyeh. However, if the Syrians do level such an accusation, it may exacerbate tension on the ground between Jumblatt's supporters and Hizbullah, without the latter being able to express doubt in the Syrian conclusions. The party has little margin of maneuver vis-a-vis Damascus, and Iran has reportedly indicated it wants no quarrel with the Assad regime over Mughniyeh. Hizbullah has blamed Israel for the assassination, but its secretary general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has also described March 14 as having sided with Israel. If the Syrians play on that theme, Nasrallah may find himself tossed back into the unforgiving alleyways of inter-Nationalized conflict.
Where would Hezbollah stand on this? One message in the Mughniyah assassination was that while the party was stuck in the viper's nest of Lebanese politics, someone, Israel, and the White House's Murder Inc., scored a goal ...against it.
The same holds for Syria's conflict with major Arab states. At a time when Iran is improving its relations with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, there is little real advantage to Hizbullah in seeing Damascus manipulate Mughniyeh's death to score points in its dispute with Riyadh and Cairo. All that would prove, again, is that Hizbullah is, and has always been, an Arab nationalist organization waging a regional struggle in Lebanon .
Recent events have shown that Hezbollah, even though many publicists will dutifully underline its independence from Syria and Iran, is in fact a National Resistance and Legitimate movement, bent on liberating the lands of Lebanon from utter destruction by the Israeli and Syrian war machines for decades. Hassan Nasrallah will prove his humanistic and moral values ounce more for all to see, because he is simply a Nationalist, bent on using all tools at his disposal to liberate his country and his people.
February 14th, 2008 -- !
Bush's strangest Syrian bedfellow: Assef
Shawkat, Head of Syria's Military Intelligence.
At center of suspicion in Hezbollah leader's
car bombing... of America's "Most Wanted"
Imad F. Mugniyah.
The head of Syrian military intelligence,
Assef Shawkat, is no stranger to working
with the CIA. Syria has, since 9/11, served
as a host for the torture of "extraordinarily
renditioned" prisoners captured by the CIA.
Shawqat has been at the center of the CIA's
program.
WMR has learned from reliable sources that
the car bombing in Damascus of Hezbollah
military commander Imad Mugniyah on February
12 was carried out by Shawqat with the active
encouragement and support of Deputy National
Security Adviser Elliott Abrams and Israel's
Mossad. WMR has reported in the past that
Abrams is the coordinator within the Bush
White House of political assassinations,
particularly those in the Middle East, and
specifically, similar car bombing
assassinations in Lebanon. WMR has also
previously reported that many of the car
bombings in Lebanon were the result of
coordination between Israeli, American,
and Syrian operatives, including "rogue"
Syrians and Lebanese agents in the employ
of Assef Shawqat.
Mugniyah was wanted by the United States
and Israel for a number of terrorist attacks
in the 1980s and 1990s, including the 1983
bombings of the US Embassy and Marine
Barracks in Beirut, the 1985 hijacking of
an Athens-to-Rome TWA flight in which Navy
diver Robert Stethem was murdered,and the
kidnapping and murder of Beirut CIA
station chief William F. Buckley in 1984
and Marine Corps Lt. Col. William Higgins
in 1988.
Significantly, the Israeli Prime Minister's
office has denied any role in Imad Fayez
Mughniyeh's assassination. However, Israeli
government and intelligence officials are
happy that it occurred.
Mugniyah's car exploded at around 10:45 pm
in the up-market Tantheem Kafer Souseh
neighborhood of Damascus. WMR has learned
that the car bombing of Mugniyah was to be
timed with the February 9th birthday of
President Ronald Reagan, a gesture by Shawkat
to the Americans, but the specially designed
Mitsubishi seats containing the bombs were
installed, or "activated..." later... due to
"Political calculations... ", linked to the
Intelligence "aims" sought....and security
Concerns..., resulting in the February 12th
assassination, a timing quite reminiscent for
Assef Shawkat and his brutal "Henchmen"....
[ Assef's last "promotion" dates to February
13th 2005...] The "ultimate Promotion" for
Assef Shawkat's LONG Murder career, with
MOSSAD and CIA ... is around the corner now...
Assef is on the HOT Seat for Blowback...
In the Middle East, dates, particularly
anniversaries, carry much weight.
The assassination of the popular Christian
Leader, Lebanese Member of Parliament,
and ex-Minister in several Hariri Governments,
Mr. Elie Hobeika on January 24th 2002,
coincided with the birthday of Elliott Abrams,
the then-National Security Council Middle East
director. Hobeika's car bombing assassination
in Beirut was also carried out by Shawkat's
operatives, according to WMR's Middle East
sources. The Hobeika assassination was the
first in a series carried out by the CIA and
Mossad with the assistance of Shawkat's
intelligence operatives in Lebanon.
Shawkat, by delivering the goods on the
assassination of America's "Most Wanted"
Imad F. Mugniyeh, has ensured that he will
now receive the protection of the Bush White
House in the current UN investigation of car
bombings in Lebanon, most notably that of
former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Now, the 241 Marines, William F. Buckley,
Colonel Higgins, Robert Stethem, the 63
Murdered at the US Embassy in 83, and many
others, including French troops at Drakar,
can rest in Peace.... 25 years later.....
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The next president will likely face a Russia led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, determined to stand up to a West that Russians believe played them for fools when they sought to be friends...
Americans who think Putin has never been anything but a KGB thug will reject accusations of any U.S. role in causing the ruination of relations between us.
Yet the hubris of Bill Clinton and George Bush I, and the Russophobia of those they brought with them into power, has been a primary cause of the ruptured relationship. And the folly of what they did is evident today, as Putin's party, United Russia, rolls to triumph on a torrent of abuse and invective against the West.
Entering the campaign's final week, Putin, addressing a rally of 5,000, ripped the Other Russia coalition led by chess champion Gary Kasparov as poodles of the United States, "who sponge off foreign embassies ... and who count on the support of foreign resources and governments, and not of their own people."
"Those who oppose us," roared Putin, "don't want our plans to be completed. They have completely different tasks and a completely different view of Russia. They need a weak, sick state, a disoriented, divided society, so that behind its back they can get up to their dirty deeds and profit at your and my expense."
Putin is referring to the time of the "oligarchs" of the Yeltsin era, who looted Russia when its state assets were sold off at fire-sale prices.
Putin is also accusing his opponents of attempting to use the Western-devised tactics of mass street protests to bring down his government. "Now that they have learned some things from Western specialists and tried them in the neighboring republics, they are going to try them on our streets."
Putin is talking here about the "color-coded" revolutions that the U.S. and NATO embassies, the National Endowment for Democracy, and allied foundations and front groups engineered in Ukraine and Georgia. Governments tilting toward Moscow were dumped over and pro-Western regimes installed – to bid for membership in NATO and the European Union.
Blowback is a term broadly used in espionage to describe the unintended consequences of covert operations. The revolution that brought the Ayatollah to power is said to be blowback for the U.S.-engineered coup to overthrow Mossadegh in 1953 and install the Shah.
The nationalism and anti-Americanism rife in Putin's Russia is blowback for our contemptuous disregard of Russian sensibilities and our arrogant intrusions into Russia's space. How did we lose a Russia that Ronald Reagan and Bush I had virtually converted into an ally?
We pushed NATO into Moscow's face, bringing six ex-Warsaw Pact nations and three ex-Soviet republics – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – into our Cold War alliance and plotted to bring in Ukraine and Georgia.
We financed a pipeline from Baku through Georgia to the Black Sea to cut Russia out of the Caspian oil trade. After getting Moscow's permission to use old Soviet bases in Central Asia to invade Afghanistan, we set about making the bases permanent. We pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty over Moscow's objection, then announced plans to plant ABM radars in the Czech Republic and anti-missile missiles in Poland.
Putin has now responded in kind, and who can blame him?
As we tried to cut him out of the Azerbaijan oil with a Black Sea pipeline, he is slashing subsidies on Ukraine's oil and colluding with Germany on a Baltic Sea pipeline to cut Poland out of the oil trade with Western Europe.
As we moved our alliance and bases into his front and back yard, he has entered a quasi-alliance with China and four nations of Central Asia to expel U.S. military power from the region.
As we abandoned the ABM Treaty, the Duma, in November, voted 418 to 0 to suspend participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which restricts the size of the Russian army west of the Urals.
If we recognize Kosovo as independent, at the expense of Serbia, Putin is now threatening to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the breakaway republics of Georgia and Transdneister, claimed by Moldova.
Where we backed the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and the Cedars "Revolution" in Lebanon, with USA's bestial and Barbaric assassinations... Made In Israel and USA...., Russia backs its favorites in Kiev and supports street protests in Tbilisi against the pro-American regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, whom the United States now seems desperate to help.... and it did, at what cost?
It was not NATO that liberated Eastern Europe. Moscow did – by pulling out the Red Army after half a century. Why, then, did we think moving NATO into Eastern Europe was a surer guarantee of their continued independence than the goodwill of Russia?
Many among our foreign policy elite now talk of a Second Cold War. John McCain wants Russia kicked out of the G-8.
But do we not have enough enemies already that we should add the largest nation on earth?
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