Washington floats chemical weapons charge as pretext for Syria buildup

Washington floats chemical weapons charge as pretext for Syria buildup
World Socialist Web Site – 4 December, 2102

The Obama administration and the corporate media have cited unspecified “intelligence” about the movement of chemical weapons to issue new threats of direct intervention in Syria, where Washington and its allies have been backing so-called “rebels” in a bid to topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both made public statements Monday alleging a danger of Syria using chemical weapons and threatening US retaliation.

Appearing before a military audience at the National Defense University in Fort McNair, Obama declared, “I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and anyone who is under his command… If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons there will be consequences and you will be held accountable.”

“This is a red line for the United States,” Clinton said earlier in the day after a meeting in Prague with Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

“I’m not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people, but suffice it to say that we’re certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur,” Clinton warned.

Schwarzenberg told the media that Czech troops specializing in chemical weapons had been sent to Jordan and were “training” with forces there.

Citing unnamed senior officials who claim to have seen unspecified intelligence on Syrian chemical weapons, the New York Times, CNN and other media have joined forces with the Obama administration in promoting the chemical weapons justification for another US war of aggression.

What becomes clear in examining these reports, as well as the statements from the administration, is that the alleged threat from Syrian “weapons of mass destruction” is entirely concocted. Not a single piece of hard evidence is cited by any government official or any media source.

In a breathless report on Monday, CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr quoted an unnamed “senior US official” as describing “worrying signs” of supposed activity around chemical weapons sites in Syria in “the last few days.”

“The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitiveness of the information discussed, declined to specify the exact intelligence that the United States has gathered in the past few days,” Starr said.

The CNN report quotes one US official as saying that “this puts us into the contingency of potential US action.”

The chemical weapons story was initially broken on Sunday by the New York Times in a front-page article co-authored by David Sanger, the Times’ chief Washington correspondent, and Eric Schmitt, its national security correspondent. Writing that “what exactly the Syrian forces intend to do with the weapons remains murky,” the Times correspondents cited as their source unnamed “officials who have seen the intelligence from Syria.”

Syria’s Foreign Ministry categorically denied that the country’s military is preparing to use chemical weapons. A statement released in Damascus said that Syria “would not use chemical weapons—if there are any—against its own people under any circumstances.”

What is particularly significant in the statements of Obama and other US officials is the absence of any expression of concern over the Syrian military’s chemical weapons stockpile falling into the hands of the so-called rebels whom Washington is supporting. …more