On February 24, 2016, Turkey announced that it took the Syrian city of al Bab when ISIS resistance mysteriously collapsed. The day before, Veterans Today published a story, based on a live interview on the ground at al Bab, that Turkey had just loaded 950 ISIS fighters on trucks and was moving them north, into Turkey for redeployment to al Raqqah.
Based on this evidence and a strange battle narrative that had made little sense tactically, this deception by Turkey fits the Erdogan profile. Turkey has always coveted a buffer zone in Northern Syria and had, as it seems, used their own military to seize it some time ago, as our sources confirmed. Now, as part of a coalition between Russia, Iran, Syria and themselves, they staged a battle in order to occupy Northern Syria officially.
This may well be why the Syrian Arab Army is moving forces north and east to block Turkey from moving further into Syria, rather an attack Idlib or retake Palmyra.
What we are seeing is continued deception, not just in Syria but Iraq as well. But let’s look at the concurrent move by the Trump administration. President Trump had said reports damning Syria, who was actively fighting ISIS where others were, were largely fake news. One key example has been chemical warfare.
Here is another story that was buried and for good reason, because it is tied to a deception about Syria’s use of chemical weapons and how Israel was party to fabricating proof about these accusations, which are being taken to the United Nations Security Council this week by the US under orders of President Trump, a violation of his promises to not only voters but Russia as well. From SyriaNews, May 22, 2013:
“Syrianews managed to confirm the news we received a couple of days ago that a Syrian Navy boat destroyed an Israeli submarine off the Syrian coast at 150 meters depth on 02 May 2013 around 2 – 2:30 am. We were not told the type or size of the submarine but we were confirmed it was destroyed.
In the details we managed to get: the enemy object was detected and orders were given to one of the nearby boats to destroy it which they did with a torpedo (not told which type), then it was monitored sinking until landing on the seabed off the coast. A heavy movement of Syrian Army helicopters was observed over the site where the submarine was destroyed.
It’s not the first time Syrian Navy engage with enemy and hostile objects. At the very beginning of the Syrian crisis, the Syrian Navy spotted a German navy ship on a reconnaissance mission and harassed it away, a German minister then complained of the Syrian Navy acts claiming the ship was not spying, just listening and collecting information!”
What the story doesn’t tell is that the submarine with 84 onboard, went down with teams of IDF commandos who had been in Syria placing radio repeaters disguised as rocks. The repeaters were later used to send out messages “in the clear” misattributed to the Syrian Army, “confessions” of the use of Sarin gas. Evidence from these Israeli repeaters was presented to the UN after the August 2013 Sarin attack in Ghouta that killed 1000.
Now the United States under Trump is trying to renew these long ago exposed fake charges and pile on more. We might add that Russia tried repeatedly to introduce evidence on this Sarin case and subsequent uses of mustard and chlorine gasses by not only ISIS but US backed rebels as well.
The FSA went so far as to post video on YouTube showing them using gas projectiles in Syria but seemingly the CIA can’t crack into YouTube.
We can go further, correspondent Jeffrey Silverman, Georgia Bureau Chief for Veterans Today and featured contributor for New Eastern Outlook, investigated a US facility in Tbilisi, Georgia, funded by USAID and built by Bechtel Corporation. Silverman got plans of a US lab, called the Lugar Laboratory, named after a famous American politician, formerly called the National Reference Laboratory of Georgia.
According to plans for the facility that Silverman received from sources and subsequently published and statements by employees there, the US had built a bio-chemical weapons facility. A subsequent investigation showed how American corporate security operating in Georgia, working with the security services of Ukraine and Turkey, had moved chemical weapons to Syria where they were deployed by ISIS with the assistance of officers from the military of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
In December, 2014, I met with the Syrian Ministry of Justice in Damascus and reviewed his records on this issue including reports of a Syrian Spetsnaz attack on a production and storage facility in Northern Syria and the results of that attack which included captured Turkish, Saudi and Qatari military officers and considerable documentation and physical evidence of chemical weapons deployment.
This evidence has repeatedly been offered to the United Nations, the evidence has been made available to the press, and the intelligence services of the United States most certainly. We also know that President Trump has had all of this made available to him and that he is aware of the “Lugar Lab” in Tbilisi and Israel’s role, aided by the Coventry UK based Syrian Human Rights Observatory and the Reuters News Agency, in a disinformation campaign against Syria.
Let’s look at issues of the massive amount of military equipment terrorists have received. We are aware that units of the Syrian Army joined the rebels and took equipment with them including tanks, artillery and missile launchers. We are also aware that, when ISIS took Mosul, they captured tanks, Humvee’s and much more.
However, the fleets of Toyota Hilux “technical” with reinforced suspension and gun mounts are something else. These vehicles were delivered, already armed and converted, to the Jordanian port of Aqaba. With the hundreds of these units that have been captured or destroyed, no one has ever recorded the serial numbers of a single truck.
Similarly, when al Qaeda shows up with the latest TOW and Stinger missiles, in new shipping containers labeled “Raytheon Corporation/USA” nothing is said about that as well.
Then there is the issue of drones. In 2012, the Turkish Army signed a contract with Israel, despite bans put in place after the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, to buy drones. Though many of the drones ISIS uses are commercially available and supplied to them by, well we don’t really know who, do we, some of them carry weapons and are of the same type as those delivered by Israel to Turkey.
Then there is the US military air facility inside Jordan and the C130 aircraft without markings that are on the runway. In addition, US Special Forces has at least two airfields inside Syria, reported by mainstream news media but quickly forgotten, even visited by one CNN reporter, but when those facilities are used to drop supplies to ISIS, as is alleged by the Iraqi government, they suddenly vanish, from the media at least.
As President Trump relies on media that republishes these stories and uses material like this as his basis for attacking the mainstream media as fake, and rightly so, why does he not include this information in his policies as well, seeking redress?
What we have is broad support for terrorism by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey and the Gulf States, so obvious it can’t be ignored, so illegal, so heinous, one might think something should be done.
When Israel simply walks away from having a submarine sunk, and starts a multi-year deception of paying off families of the dead, silencing them, and repainting hull markings to cover the loss, as we have also confirmed, what else is being done?
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”