IRS Targeted those Educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights”, or “Government Spending, Government Debt or Taxes” or Anyone Working to “Make America a Better Place To Live”

The IRS started targeting Tea Party members, “Patriots” and similar conservatives starting in 2010.

But the IRS’ harassment of conservatives expanded way beyond those groups.

As United Press International reports:

U.S. Internal Revenue Service inquiry of conservative groups included those lobbying to “make America a better place to live,” new details emerging about the IRS investigation indicated. That lever goes beyond what the IRS admitted Friday, which was that it targeted groups with “Tea Party” or “patriot” in their names, several media outlets reported Monday, based on draft findings from disclosures to congressional investigators by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration.

***

At various points over the past two years, the Cincinnati IRS office, which is in charge of evaluating applications for tax-exempt status, focused on groups making statements that “criticize how the country is being run” and those involved in educating Americans “on the Constitution and Bill of Rights,” the draft report cited by The Washington Post indicated.

By June 2011 some IRS specialists were probing applications of groups focusing on “government spending, government debt or taxes [and] education of the public by advocacy/lobbying to ‘make America a better place to live,‘” the report cited by the Journal indicated.

The inspector general’s investigation also found the head of the IRS tax-exempt-organizations division knew as early as June 2011 conservative groups were being inappropriately targeted — several months before Douglas Shulman, IRS commissioner at the time, denied to a congressional committee the agency was targeting conservative groups, the newspapers said

Liberals should not assume that this is the “other guy’s” fight.

The targeting of conservatives under a Democratic administration could switch to a targeting of liberals under a subsequent Republican administration.

Congressman Mike Rogers is correct when he says:

I don’t care if you’re a conservative, a liberal, a Democrat or a Republican, this should send a chill up your spine.

Remember, governments always target the “out” group first, and – if we don’t protest -  spread the abuse to include everyone.

It is ironic – and downright Orwellian – that the IRS targeted people trying to educate Americans on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Unfortunately, this is not entirely surprising, given that the Bill of Rights have been fatally wounded by the Bush and Obama administrations, and that liking the Founding Fathers or being  “reverent of individual liberty”  could get one branded as a potential terrorist.

And the IRS is acting like Big Brother … spying on our shopping records, travel, social interactions, health records and files from other government investigators. The IRS targeting those who try to educate people about taxes is analogous to the Federal Reserve using web-based counter-espionage to attack critics of Fed policies.

Welcome to modern America …

Postscript: Those who assume that the Tea Party is made up of a bunch of crazies may be interested in learning that – despite the divide-and-conquer tricks that the mainstream media peddles – the Occupy movement and the Tea Party were originally protesting the exact same things: the malignant, symbiotic relationship between big government and big corporations, and the destruction to our economy  caused by the unchecked power of the Federal Reserve.

And Many More Covert Wars Without Congressional Oversight … Let Alone Public Knowledge

Fire Dog Lake’s Kevin Gosztola notes:

Linda J. Bilmes and Michael D. Intriligator, ask in a recent paper, “How many wars is the US fighting today?”

Today US military operations are involved in scores of countries across all the five continents. The US military is the world’s largest landlord, with significant military facilities in nations around the world, and with a significant presence in Bahrain, Djibouti,Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan, in addition to long-established bases in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and the UK.  Some of these are vast, such as the Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command, which has recently been expanded to accommodate up to 10,000 troops and 120 aircraft.

Citing a page at US Central Command’s (CENTCOM) website, they highlight the “areas of responsibility” publicly listed:

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) is active in 20 countries across the Middle Eastern region, and is actively ramping-up military training, counterterrorism programs, logistical support, and funding to the military in various nations. At this point, the US has some kind of military presence in Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, U.A.E., Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

US Africa Command (AFRICOM), according to the paper, “supports military-to-military relationships with 54 African nations.”

[Gosztola points out that the U.S. military is also conducting operations of one kind or another in Syrian, Jordan, South Sudan, Kosovo, Libya, Yemen, the Congo, Uganda, Mali, Niger and other countries.]

Altogether, that makes 74 nations where the US is fighting or “helping” some force in some proxy struggle that has been deemed beneficial by the nation’s masters of war.

***

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) provides an accounting of all the publicly acknowledged deployments of US military forces

But those are just the public operations.

Gosztola notes that the covert operations are uncountable:

Beyond that, there are Special Operations forces in countries. Jeremy Scahill in Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, writes, “By mid-2010, the Obama administration had increased the presence of Special Operations forces from sixty countries to seventy-five countries.

***

Scahill also reports, based on his own “well-placed special operations sources”:

…[A]mong the countries where [Joint Special Operations Command] teams had been deployed under the Obama administration were: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Baluchistan) and the Philippines. These teams also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC was also supporting US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico…

Since President Barack Obama has been willing to give the go ahead to operations that President George W. Bush would not have approved, operations have been much more aggressive and, presumably, JSOC has been able to fan out and work in way more countries than ever expected.

Global assassinations have been embraced by the current administration, opening the door to night raids, drone strikes, missile attacks where cluster bombs are used, etc. Each of these operations, as witnessed or experienced by the civilian populations of countries, potentially inflame and increase the number of areas in the world where there are conflict zones.

***

The world is literally a battlefield with conflicts being waged by the US (or with the “help” of the US). And, no country is off-limits to US military forces.

Of course, JSOC is not accountable to Congress … let alone the public:

JSOC operates outside the confines of the traditional military and even beyond what the CIA is able to do.

***

But it goes well beyond the war zones. In concert with the Executive’s new claims on extra-judicial assassinations via drone strikes, even if the target is an American citizen, JSOC goes around the world murdering suspects without the oversight of a judge or, god forbid, granting those unfortunate souls the right to defend themselves in court against secret, evidence-less government decrees about their guilt. As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh said at a speaking event in 2009:

Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on.

***

There are legal restrictions on what the CIA can do in terms of covert operations. There has to be a finding, the president has to notify at least the “Gang of Eight” [leaders of the intelligence oversight committees] in Congress. JSOC doesn’t have to do any of that. There is very little accountability for their actions. What’s weird is that many in congress who’d be very sensitive to CIA operations almost treat JSOC as an entity that doesn’t have to submit to oversight. It’s almost like this is the president’s private army, we’ll let the president do what he needs to do.

Good News for Bitcoin

There were three big stories regarding Bitcoin this week.

Business Insider notes:

Union Square Ventures [an early investor in Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga and other huge Web successes] principal Fred Wilson just led his first startup deal in nearly two years.

Wilson led a $5 million round in Coinbase, a startup for buying, selling, and accepting Bitcoins.

***

“We believe that Bitcoin represents something fundamental and powerful, an open and distributed Internet peer to peer protocol for transferring purchasing power,” Wilson wrote on the USV blog.

Tech Crunch reports:

Today, mobile gift card company Gyft has partnered with BitPay to start accepting bitcoins within its app.

***

Gyft allows you to purchase gift cards at more than 50,000 retail locations in the U.S., including Brookstone, Lowe’s, GAP, Sephora, Gamestop, American Eagle, Nike, Marriott, Burger King and Fandango. So, technically, you’ll now be able to use bitcoin to pay for a Whopper.

***

The new bitcoin payment option is only available on the Android version of Gyft, but is as easy as choosing your choice of payment once you’ve chosen the gift card that you want to buy. Simply pick bitcoin and then use your wallet to pay for it.

***

TC: How long do you suspect it will take until the average consumer gets educated on bitcoin and uses it?

Gallippi: Bitcoin is hard to use today, and that’s a good thing. There are still bugs and it is too risky for the average consumer. The infrastructure of bitcoin cannot handle hundreds of millions of users at this time, so a gradual adoption is better.

***

TC: Since this lets you convert into a gift card, how long do you think it will take to be able to make direct purchases using bitcoin?

Gallippi: E-commerce will adopt new direct bitcoin payments faster than retail, since e-commerce already has payment gateways in place for software-only payments.

TC: How do you feel about the recent stories of DDOS attacks that have affected bitcoin and how that’s perhaps scared some people away from the currency?

Gallippi: Bitcoin companies suffer from DDOS like all banks do. However consumers actually are inconvenienced less with a bitcoin wallet DDOS. With your online banking, if your bank is down, you cannot access your money. However with bitcoin, if you are in control of your private keys, if the wallet you use is down, you can upload your backup into a different wallet that is up, and have immediate access to your funds. That is possible with bitcoin, but not possible with any other type of traditional bank.

And the Bitcoin Channel points out that a China Central Television, a state-run broadcaster, has given Bitcoin a positive review.    This is likely a shot in the currency war by China against the U.S. Dollar.

Obama Names Top Fundraisers to Major Political Posts

Glenn Greenwald notes today:

Last week, the Obama administration announced its choice to lead the Federal Communications Commission: Tom Wheeler, who is not only a former telecom lobbyist but also a huge bundler for the Obama campaign. The New York Times Editorial Page today explains that this choice is “raising serious questions about [Obama's] 2007 pledge that corporate lobbyists would not finance his campaign or run his administration.” It also notes that “given his background, it is almost certain that [Wheeler] raised money [for Obama] from people whose companies he would regulate, creating potential conflicts of interest.”

Last week, President Obama named another big bundler of his, the billionaire heiress Penny Pritzker, to be his Commerce Secretary; at the Nation, Rick Perlstein details just some of the interesting questions about that choice that need to be explored. At this point, the only surprising thing is that there are any more bundlers left for Obama to appoint to important administration positions.

While despicable, this is nothing new.

The Center for Public Integrity reported in 2011 that Obama had rewarded as many big money bundlers in 2 years as Bush had appointed in 8:

Source: Public Citizen, iWatchNews analysis. Graphic: Jeremy Borden/iWatch News.

The Center wrote:

As a candidate, Obama spoke passionately about diminishing the clout of moneyed interests and making the White House more accessible to everyday Americans. In kicking off his presidential run on Feb. 10, 2007, he blasted “the cynics, the lobbyists, the special interests,” who he said had “turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.”

***

[But:]

• Overall, 184 of 556, or about one-third, of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. But the percentages are much higher for the big-dollar bundlers. Nearly 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took “key administration posts,” as defined by the White House. More than half the ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised more than half a million.

• The big bundlers had broad access to the White House for meetings with top administration officials and glitzy social events. In all, campaign bundlers and their family members account for more than 3,000 White House meetings and visits. Half of them raised $200,000 or more.

• Some Obama bundlers have ties to companies that stand to gain financially from the president’s policy agenda, particularly in clean energy and telecommunications, and some already have done so. Level 3 Communications, for instance, snared $13.8 million in stimulus money. At least 18 other bundlers have ties to businesses poised to profit from government spending to promote clean energy, telecommunications and other key administration priorities.

***

Bundling is controversial because it permits campaigns to skirt individual contribution limits of $2,500 in federal elections. Bundlers pool donations from fundraising networks and as a result “play an enormous role in determining the success of political campaigns,” according to Public Citizen. The group has tracked bundlers on a website www.whitehouseforsale.org in the belief that they are “apt to receive preferential treatment if their candidate wins.”

***

Ambassadorships have been the classic payoff for big bundlers. But it’s not just the posts in foreign capitals that are attractive. Light, the NYU expert on presidential transitions, said that in recent years many have sought jobs with deep reach into the federal bureaucracy — and found a receptive ear in the White House.

“When they get a resume from a bundler, that is a real signal of seriousness,” Light said. “It’s also a thinly veiled quid pro quo,” and it “goes without saying they will get considered.”

Bringing in a lot of cash to the campaign, Light added, “seems to be well established as a signaling device for getting into key jobs running the government. It’s become more significant and nobody seems to have much outrage about it.”

***

Passing over career diplomats in favor of mega-donors amounts to “selling ambassadorships,” said Susan Johnson, president of the American Foreign Service Association. She said it runs contrary to the law and is unethical, yet, “That hasn’t stopped anybody.”

Thomas Pickering, who served as ambassador to Russia and several other countries during a diplomatic career spanning four decades, said turning to bundlers adds a “new dimension” to what he termed “buying offices” through aggressive fundraising.

***

Hyatt hotels heiress Penny Pritzker, Wall Street titan Robert Wolf and financier Mark Gallogly, for instance, all served on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Commission.

***

In late February, in creating a new commission to take on the task of creating jobs, Obama again appointed the three businesspeople.  Transcripts of the recovery board meetings show that commission members are free to press for an agenda that could significantly benefit their business interests.

The Center pointed out in 2012:

• At least 68 of 350 Obama bundlers for the 2012 election or their spouses have served in the administration, ranging from seats on advisory boards that tackle critical national issues such as economic growth, to ceremonial posts such as serving on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
• At least 250 of the bundlers have been cleared to attend a White House event since January 2009. Most have come twice while others are frequent visitors. The events range from policy briefings to coveted invitations to state dinners and music and entertainment nights featuring top-draw performers at the executive mansion.
• At least 30 of the 2012 bundlers have ties to companies that conduct business with federal agencies or hope to do so. They range from Wall Street investors to green energy, technology and defense firms with multimillion-dollar government contracts.

***

Bundlers have been cleared for more than 5,000 visits to the White House from January 2009 through August 2011, according to visitor logs.

***

Boyle of Common Cause said that wealthy bundlers can amass political clout and use it to “further enrich themselves, and their circle of friends and business acquaintances.”

“Money buys access and influence and that’s the big problem,” she said. “Those who don’t have it are left out in the cold. That’s not how our democracy is supposed to work, and it must change.”

That’s not likely, according to Tufts political science professor Berry.

Asked if a Republican presidential challenger would end the practice should he win the office next year, Berry said: “It would be shocking if they decided not to try to reward their most loyal fundraisers. It would make no sense.”

Of course, Obama’s top donors in the 2008 election included:

• Goldman Sachs

• JP Morgan Chase

• Citigroup

• General Electric

• Morgan Stanley

Goldman Sachs folks held so many top jobs in the Obama administration in his first term that everyone called the cozy relationship “Government Sachs”.

Obama appointed GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt as his jobs czar.

And of course, Obama rewarded his big contributors with tidal waves of government money.

Bush was a horrible crony nepotist, who favored the super-elite at the expense of the little guy.

Obama’s worse.

Both Parties Are Trying to Sweep the Bigger Story Under the Rug

According to Democrats, today’s Congressional hearings on Benghazi are nothing but a partisan witch hunt.

According to Republicans, the Obama administration committed treason in it’s handling of Benghazi … and then tried to cover it up.

Both parties are avoiding the bigger picture … The fact that Democrats and Republicans alike have been using Benghazi as the center of U.S. efforts to arm the Al Qaeda-affiliated Syrian rebels.

Specifically, the U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists.

According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi:

The Hindustan Times reported in 2011:

“There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times.

It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi.

Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya. Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled.

(Incidentally, Gaddafi was on the verge of invading Benghazi in 2011, 4 years after the West Point report cited Benghazi as a hotbed of Al Qaeda terrorists. Gaddafi claimed – rightly it turns out – that Benghazi was an Al Qaeda stronghold and a main source of the Libyan rebellion. But NATO planes stopped him, and protected Benghazi.)

In 2011, Ambassador Stevens was appointed to be the Obama administration’s liaison with the “budding Libyan opposition,” according to ABC News. Stevens and the State Department worked directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Belhadj has direct connections to al-Qaeda.

CNN, the Telegraph, the Washington Times, and many other mainstream sources confirm that Al Qaeda terrorists from Libya have since flooded into Syria to fight the Assad regime.

Mainstream sources also confirm that the Syrian opposition is largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists. (Indeed, the New York Times reported last week that virtually all of the rebel fighters are Al Qaeda terrorists.)

The U.S. has been arming the Syrian opposition since 2006. The post-Gaddafi Libyan government is also itself a top funder and arms supplier of the Syrian opposition.

This brings us to the murder of ambassador Stevens …

The Wall Street Journal, Telegraph and other sources confirm that the US consulate in Benghazi was mainly being used for a secret CIA operation.

They say that the State Department presence in Benghazi “provided diplomatic cover” for the previously hidden CIA mission. WND alleges that it was not a real consulate.  And former CIA officer Philip Giraldi confirms:

Benghazi has been described as a U.S. consulate, but it was not. It was an information office that had no diplomatic status. There was a small staff of actual State Department information officers plus local translators. The much larger CIA base was located in a separate building a mile away. It was protected by a not completely reliable local militia. Base management would have no say in the movement of the ambassador and would not be party to his plans, nor would it clear its own operations with the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. In Benghazi, the CIA’s operating directive would have been focused on two objectives: monitoring the local al-Qaeda affiliate group, Ansar al-Sharia, and tracking down weapons liberated from Colonel Gaddafi’s arsenal. Staff consisted of CIA paramilitaries who were working in cooperation with the local militia. The ambassador would not be privy to operational details and would only know in general what the agency was up to. When the ambassador’s party was attacked, the paramilitaries at the CIA base came to the rescue before being driven back into their own compound, where two officers were subsequently killed in a mortar attack.

Reuters notes that the CIA mission involved finding and repurchasing heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals.

Retired Lt. General William Boykin said in January that Stevens was in Benghazi as part of an effort to arm the Syrian opposition:

More supposition was that he was now funneling guns to the rebel forces in Syria, using essentially the Turks to facilitate that. Was that occurring, (a), and if so, was it a legal covert action?

Boykin said Stevens was “given a directive to support the Syrian rebels” and the State Department’s Special Mission Compound in Benghazi “would be the hub of that activity.”

Business Insider reports that Stevens may have been linked with Syrian terrorists:

There’s growing evidence that U.S. agents—particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens—were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

In March 2011 Stevens became the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan opposition, working directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group—a group that has now disbanded, with some fighters reportedly participating in the attack that took Stevens’ life.

In November 2011 The Telegraph reported that Belhadj, acting as head of the Tripoli Military Council, “met with Free Syrian Army [FSA] leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey” in an effort by the new Libyan government to provide money and weapons to the growing insurgency in Syria.

Last month The Times of London reported that a Libyan ship “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria … has docked in Turkey.” The shipment reportedly weighed 400 tons and included SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.

***

Reuters reports that Syrian rebels have been using those heavy weapons to shoot down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets.

The ship’s captain was “a Libyan from Benghazi and the head of an organization called the Libyan National Council for Relief and Support,” which was presumably established by the new government.

That means that Ambassador Stevens had only one person—Belhadj—between himself and the Benghazi man who brought heavy weapons to Syria.

Furthermore, we know that jihadists are the best fighters in the Syrian opposition, but where did they come from?

Last week The Telegraph reported that a FSA commander called them “Libyans” when he explained that the FSA doesn’t “want these extremist people here.”

And if the new Libyan government was sending seasoned Islamic fighters and 400 tons of heavy weapons to Syria through a port in southern Turkey—a deal brokered by Stevens’ primary Libyan contact during the Libyan revolution—then the governments of Turkey and the U.S. surely knew about it.

Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as “a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles” … and that its security features “were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died.”

And we know that the CIA has been funneling weapons to the rebels in southern Turkey. The question is whether the CIA has been involved in handing out the heavy weapons from Libya.

In other words, ambassador Stevens may have been a key player in deploying Libyan terrorists and arms to fight the Syrian government.

Other sources also claim that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was mainly being used as a CIA operation to ship fighters and arms to Syria.

Many have speculated that – if normal security measures weren’t taken to protect the Benghazi consulate or to rescue ambassador Stevens – it was because the CIA was trying to keep an extremely low profile to protect its cover of being a normal State Department operation.

That is what I think really happened at Benghazi.

Was CIA Chief David Petraeus’ Firing Due to Benghazi?

CIA boss David Petraeus suddenly resigned, admitting to an affair. But Petraeus was scheduled to testify under oath the next week before power House and Senate committees regarding the Benghazi consulate.  Many speculate that it wasn’t an affair – but the desire to avoid testifying on Benghazi – which was the real reason for Petraeus’ sudden resignation.  (A self-described Pentagon whistleblower contacted us to confirm this theory.)

The Big Picture

Whatever the scope of the CIA’s operation in Benghazi – and whatever the real reason for the resignation of the CIA chief – the key is our historical and ongoing foreign policy.

For decades, the U.S. has backed terrorists for geopolitical ends. For decades, the U.S. has backed the most radical, fundamentalist, violent Muslims.

The U.S. government has been consistently planning regime change in Syria, Libya and Iran for 20 years, and dreamed of regime change – using false flag terror – for 50 years.

Obama has simply re-packaged Bush and the Neocons’ “war on terror” as a series of humanitarian wars.

Liberals rightfully lambast Bush for getting us into the disastrous Iraq war.

But Obama has in fact launched wars in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan … and up to 35 African nations (and see this).

Obama – citing a Nixon administration official’s justification for invading Cambodia – has claimed his power extends into every country in the world … well beyond those where we are engaged in hostilities.

Obama has dramatically escalated the use of drone assassinations, which are  creating many more terrorists than they are killing.  The former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo says that Obama’s drone surge is as damaging to our country as Bush’s torture program. I think he’s actually underestimating damage from the program, as drones have become the number 1 recruiting tool for Al Qaeda (especially since children are now being targeted for drone assassination … Oh, and torture is still happening on Obama’s watch; background).

And the Obama administration has probably supported even more terrorists – in Libya, Syria and elsewhere – than Bush. See this, this, this, this and this.

In other words, both GOP and Dem politicians are supporting instability and war, based upon false pretenses and pro-war media coverage … just like Iraq.

Those are the deeper truths regarding Benghazi.

Who Should You Believe …  The UN Investigator or the U.S.?

Haaretz reported on March 24th, “Jihadists, not Assad, apparently behind reported chemical attack in Syria“.

UN investigator Carla Del Ponte said that there is strong evidence that the rebels used chemical weapons, but that there is not evidence that the government used such weapons:

But the U.S. is blaming the Syrian government for the attacks in Syria.

So who’s right?

The Global Post reported on April 30th:

A closer analysis, however, raises doubts and highlights the challenge of confirming whether the Syrian government–or anyone else–is using chemical weapons…. Looking at video and photos obtained by GlobalPost at the scene, experts say the spent canister found in Younes’ [a victim's] house and the symptoms displayed by the victims are inconsistent with a chemical weapon such as sarin gas, which is known to be in Syria’s arsenal.

Here’s a picture of the spent canister:

The GlobalPost continues:

Looking at video and photos obtained by GlobalPost at the scene, experts say the spent canister found in Younes’ house and the symptoms displayed by the victims are inconsistent with a chemical weapon such as sarin gas, which is known to be in Syria’s arsenal. Sarin is typically delivered using artillery shells or spray tanks, not in the grenade-like device found in this Aleppo attack and in other similar attacks reported in recent days.

***

Watch the full, unedited video here

While analysts have not been able to identify the canister, they said tear gas, some kind of generated smoke, as well as any number of chemicals found in military munitions and devices, could also have been responsible. Chemicals used for riot control are not prohibited by the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.

***

Experts say an attack by sarin gas would cause virtually anyone who had come into contact with the toxin to immediately feel its effects. Exposure to even a very small amount of sarin could be lethal. While there were casualities in the Aleppo attack, most of the victims survived, which would not likely be the outcome of a sarin attack in a confined environment.

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Adding to the doubts, some analysts are now wondering if the attack might have actually involved chlorine, which is also a chemical weapon but can be bought over-the-counter. A March Reuters story described a possible chemical attack in the northern town of Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo, after which residents said they could smell chlorine. The Telegraph reported at the time that Syrian regime forces accused rebels of using a homemade chlorine solution in the attack.

***

Perhaps adding some credibility to fears that Syrian rebels could potentially use chlorine, militants in neighboring Iraq used chlorine bombs several times in 2007. Some Syrian fighters with the Islamist rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra are believed to have ties to Iraqi extremists.

CNN notes:

Al Qaeda in Iraq detonated a series of crude chlorine bombs in Iraq from late 2006 through mid-2007.

***

Charles Faddis, who headed the CIA’s operations against al Qaeda in Iraq’s chlorine bomb network, told me in 2010: “[T]he attacks are not being particularly successful. The people are dying in the blast, but fortunately nobody is dying from chlorine.”

The GlobalPost reported on May 5th:

Doctors in Turkey say initial tests of blood samples from victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria last month are negative for sarin gas.

***

It could have been tear gas or some other kind of generated smoke, normally used for riot control, some weapons experts said.

In other words, those who question the claim that it was the Syrian government which used chemical weapons have photographic and other evidence on their side.

Rebels Have More Motive than Government …

The Washington Post reported yesterday:

As Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell points out, Khan al-Assal was a regime-controlled area at the time, which suggests that if anyone were to attack it, it would probably be rebels. (Hat tip to Hounshell for resurfacing these March articles.)

Similarly, Tony Cartalucci points out that the Syrian government has no motivation to use chemical weapons.  And Lew Rockwell argues:

Of course anyone whose brain fired on more than one cylinder should have questioned why in the hell the Syrian government would use in such a limited and militarily insignificant way the one weapon it knew would likely bring on a US and NATO Libya-style intervention. It made no sense at all for the Syrian government to use “just a little” sarin — not enough to do more than kill a few people, nothing to alter the course of the war — knowing about “red lines” and a US/Saudi/Qatari/Israeli/Turk bloodlust to invade.

On the other hand, it made all the sense in the world for the insurgents to release some sarin here and there, make some videos of the victims, and email the links to some very willing Israeli generals and McCainian rabid warhawks in the US and their absurd poodles in the UK and France.

CNN points out that the Syrian rebels have had chemical weapons training.

Neoconservatives planned regime change in Syria – and throughout the Middle East and North Africa – 20 years ago.   And carrying out acts of violence and blaming it on the Syrian government as an excuse for regime change – i.e. false flag terror – was discussed over 50 years ago by British and American leaders.

A top Bush administration official says it’s hard to say who used chemical weapons – if anyone – and that the chemical weapons attack may have been an Israeli false flag attack.

And the American government has previously falsely blamed its enemies for chemical weapons attacks.  For example, the American government gave chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein … which he then used on Iran and on his own Kurdish population.  The American government attempted to blame Iran for the chemical weapons attack on Iraq’s Kurds … just as the U.S. is trying to blame the Syrian government for the attacks in Syria.

And see this.

And the “rebels” in Syria that the U.S. has been arming and otherwise supporting are Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood.  Indeed, the New York Times reported last week that virtually all of the rebel fighters are Al Qaeda terrorist.

But the war-hungry mainstream media – just as in Iraq – is pushing half-truths and bogus claims.

After Giving Mea Culpas for Horrible Iraq Coverage, Media Does the Exact Same Thing On Syria

Common Dreams notes:

Former New York Times’ executive editor Bill Keller is not the only un-’reluctant’ war hawk under fire for publicly pushing for US military intervention in Syria, but for those who remember the media debacle that ushered in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he has exemplified the troubling trend among the nation’s pro-war punditry class.

Since Keller’s column appeared in the ‘paper of record’ on Monday—following a weekend of disturbing news about Israeli airstrikes inside Syria and amidst shaky reports about “chemical weapons” and “red line” rhetoric—those seeking wiser guidance on the path forward in a deeply fragmented Middle East are hoping that people like Keller, so wrong when it came to Iraq, will be pilloried for their positions on Syria.

Pilloried—then disregarded.

In his op-ed, Keller describes that though his mistaken assessment of the Iraq war may have left him “gun-shy” about Syria at first, he is now of the opinion that the US should flex its military muscle in the war-torn country.

But, stating he was “frankly appalled” by both the “mindlessness” and prominence of Keller’s article in the Times, noted foreign policy analyst Jim Lobe argued the piece is “filled with the same kind of arrogance that [Keller] brought to Iraq as a “reluctant hawk” ten years ago.”

And AntiWar.com’s John Glaser characterized the piece as “absurd,” writing:

Keller lays out how terribly wrong he was for supporting the Bush administration’s war of choice in Iraq, and is now asking readers not to collapse in laughter as he speaks with an air of authority on why we should invade, or at least bomb, Syria.

Keller explains that “at the outset of the Iraq invasion, I found myself a reluctant hawk. That turned out to be a humbling error of judgment, and it left me gun-shy.” How harrowing the experience must have been for you, Bill – using your position as an opinion-shaper at the most widely read newspaper in the country to cheer-lead an illegal war that destroyed an entire country, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and cost trillions of dollars.

The Nation’s Greg Mitchell, who literally wrote the book on media malfeasance and the Iraq War, pulled no punches, writing of Keller:

He says he was gun-shy after his Iraq flub—but no more! Now he derides Obama for “looking for excuses to stand pat.” He also provides several reasons why Syria is “not Iraq,” and how now his hawkishness is based on reality: This time we really can hurt the terrorists gathered there, [never mind that we are actually supporting Al Qaeda and other terrorists in Syria] really can calm tensions in the region, and so on. Instead of a “mushroom cloud,” he warns of the next chemical “atrocity.” And he claims there’s a broader coalition of the willing this time.

He even revives the good old “domino theory,” endorsing the view that if we don’t do something in Syria it will embolden China, North Korea and Iran. And I love this one, straight from 2003: Doing nothing “includes the danger that if we stay away now, we will get drawn in later (and bigger), when, for example, a desperate Assad drops sarin on a Damascus suburb….” If a surge in aid for those Al Qaeda–lovin’ rebels fails against Assad, then we “send missiles against his military installations until he, or more likely those around him, calculate that they should sue for peace.” Yeah, how did that work out in Iraq in the long run?  ***

What good would a US military campaign possibly achieve?  Looking back on Iraq—even to ignore the justifications of war, say experts—shows that the US is ill-equipped to fulfill its promises to delivery democracy, stability, both, or either.

As Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in the Washington Post on Tuesday, “after war, years of occupation, many lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq, we have not been able to create a stable regime, power sharing or an end to the political violence.”

***

Filmmaker Michael Moore’s tweet that concluded thus:

Bill Keller of the NYTimes was wrong about Iraq but now wants 2 bomb Syria. Will some adult pls take his laptop away?

Common Dreams also points out that the U.S. claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons is highly dubious. Indeed, a U.N investigator said – and on-the-ground reports confirm – that the Syrian government likely did not use chemical weapons.

In reality, it’s not just Iraq and Syria … the corporate media is always pro-war.

In addition, wars today are fought on the Web as well as on the battlefield … and Syria is no different.

Agence France-Press reported yesterday:

The Twitter feed of satirical US news website The Onion appeared to have been hacked Monday by a Syrian group aiming to inject its own sardonic spin on the deadly conflict.

***

“UN retracts report of Syrian chemical weapon use: ‘Lab tests confirm it is Jihadi body odor,’” said one tweet, still available in a screenshot on news blogs after being deleted.

Another tweet said: “UN’s Ban Ki Moon condemns Syria for being struck by israel: ‘It was in the way of Jewish missiles.’”

***

“Either @TheOnion has been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army, or this is its most convincing stunt ever,” one tweet said.

Another user tweeted: “The Onion’s Twitter feed has been hacked and yet it is still a more reliable news source than CNN.”

The Syrian Electronic Army, which appears to be aligned with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, has previously claimed credit for hacking Agence France-Presse, the Associated Press and other news organizations.

No wonder someone has knocked Syria off the web.