The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation. The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6). Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA. It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.
Troodos is highly effective – the jewel in the crown of British intelligence. Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering. The US do not have their own comparable facility for the Middle East. I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s. This is fact, not speculation.
It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee.
On one level the explanation is simple. The intercept evidence was provided to the USA by Mossad, according to my own well placed source in the Washington intelligence community. Intelligence provided by a third party is not automatically shared with the UK, and indeed Israel specifies it should not be.
But the inescapable question is this. Mossad have nothing comparable to the Troodos operation. The reported content of the conversations fits exactly with key tasking for Troodos, and would have tripped all the triggers. How can Troodos have missed this if Mossad got it? The only remote possibility is that all the conversations went on a purely landline route, on which Mossad have a physical wire tap, but that is very unlikely in a number of ways – not least nowadays the purely landline route.
Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months. This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children – has brought no condemnation at all from the West. Israel has now provided “intelligence” to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel’s bombing and missile campaign.
The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple. Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist. Mossad fabricated them. John Kerry’s “evidence” is the shabbiest of tricks. More children may now be blown to pieces by massive American missile blasts. It is nothing to do with humanitarian intervention. It is, yet again, the USA acting at the behest of Israel.
“Since coming onto this blog I’ve been continually surprised by the way in which most of the Eminences appear to believe that governments are actively (even sadistically) engaged in plotting to grind their peoples down into poverty, slavery and even death. And that all govt foreign policy is evil, rascist, only concerned about energy resources, et cetera. Naturally, all the foregoing applies only to western govts (Russia, China, and most of the rest of the world are good guys)”
Yes. You’ve been consistent in your call for optimism on related matters, but other than the most abstract positions, you seem reticent to express any opinion about Syria that has some concrete in the formula.
Should Obama send missiles or diplomats to solve the equation?
Ben. I doubt you wish to relegate the point I made to Falling Down (Michael Douglas) proportions. The point I was making was whether we ask ourselves when faced with fear/scepticism whether the loss we incur was a good deal. Human being attitude is a phenomenon which affects all decision making. Any human decision made is not made scientifically or in a way which can be clinically observed.
“The reference to the picture by Kerry does match the 2003 picture wrongly used by the BBC prior to his speech and later taken down by the BBC .”
Which part of the speech was that? I heard nothing in the speech to suggest it was the BBC picture rather than one of the others. I would have thought the phrase “we have seen” to an American audience suggests something which was shown on American TV not a British web site.
The implications broadly are that these dogs of war have been bending the knee a tad to democracy.
First, Cameron, then Obama, then maybe the froggyman
Could be, as I said a few days ago that this is Russia’s red line too, and this democracy malarky is the West’s way of saving face with their peeps.
Herbie. I do not believe that a theory of force is the right starting point to understand international relations. History offers us instances which stand out as examples of change which have come about through force. But better examples, I believe, can be offered by those instances which offer future peace. We can select those examples if we choose and use them proactively. Abolition of slavery is an example. Nations responsible had a chance to forever feel indebted or to drive the ambition required for abolition. With a similar attitude I do not feel that we need to be so bleak.
Habby
You haven’t answered a very straightforward question about relationships you may have to the BBC.
Easy enough to say yes or no, I’d have thought.
No need for blather, just yes or no.
What’s the problem.
” Any human decision made is not made scientifically or in a way which can be clinically observed.”
James; If you could give a concrete example. I am lost in Samsara.
@ Ben Franklin
May I suggest you re-read (and digest) a post from John Spencer-Davies on the previous thread (22h51 on 30/08)?
It contains excellent advice and you should in fact remember it, since it was a reply to a somewhat insolent query from your goodself on why Mr Spencer-Davies doesn’t post more often.
You and others should perhaps take his advice to heart and then we’d have a little less ill-informed speculation and fewer displays of hysterics on Syria. Not to mention the need for face, wiping egg off therefrom.
@Fred – This seems to match to me. There was also alleged to have been a two minute lag on his ‘live’ speech so further edits could have been made:
“..childre lying side by side, sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad’s gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate.”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/08/john-kerrys-case-for-bombing-syria.html
@ Herbie
You’re right, I didn’t answer.
The answer is no.
Your own opinions as expressed through your various posts impel me to ask if you have a relationship with any left-wing or anarchist grouping or with Occupy? A simple yes or no will do.
“ask if you have a relationship with any left-wing or anarchist grouping or with Occupy? A simple yes or no will do.”
Nope, not me. Now about that Syria question; What to do? You have lots of good ideas, I’m sure. we just don’t get to review them for efficacy because you never commit…..to anything…..except maybe positive thinking.
Ben. No concrete example. Brain and concrete do not mix. Even the best concrete mixers won’t offer that kind of service. Unless they are contracted.
And I don’t think that Israel, for once, had much to do with it – it was Joe Biden;s doing, thanks to the role that he, and his son Beau, Delaware’s Attorney General, played in the murders and cover ups of what happened to John P. Wheeler III and Ali-Resa Pahlavi, the heir to the Iranian throne.
Wheeler learned that the US Air Force was going to use its gas spraying-planes to set back Tehran’s WMD efforts so that a new START treaty could be agreed to, and tried to tell Pahlavi about it, but NSA learned what he was attempting, and bushwhacked him when he went to meet in Wilmington what he thought were the Shah’s agents,
The NSA’s Special Collection Service had set Wheeler up by making it look like he was involved in entrapping and kidnapping Iran’s arms smugglers, and that he was working to expose the poison=spraying by speaking out about what the Air Force had done, apparently accidentally, to bird and fish around Arkansas and Louisana.
The only trouble with Wheeler’s murder was that his body was accidentally found, making it necessary to kill Pahlavi, making it look like suicide, for fear that he would speak out about what had happened to Wheeler.
I revived this whole scandal when I restarted a thread on The Local in July, stating that I had been taken in by the series that John Shiffman wrote for The Philadelphia Inquirer, making it look like Wheeler was involved in ICE’s operations, and the Iranians killed him, when, in fact, NSA’s SCS did it too.
This got Joe Biden hurriedly involved in gassing Syria, and his son feigning physical problems for his father so that attention would again be diverted away from Wheeler’s and Pahlavi’s fate.
And these killings were instrumental in Edward Snowden finally deciding to blow the whistle on the runaway NSA.
Mr Mason
The Abolition of Slavery is not a very good example of the system benign.
Have you any other examples?
Trowbridge; Lurch’s (Kerry) statement of evidence is the direct result of this.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/28/israeli-intelligence-intercepted-syria-chemical-talk
@Chris Jones
The BBC picture didn’t show children lying side by side on a hospital floor, no parents and grandparents. Just white body bags which seem to be out in the open, some sort of square or yard maybe.
Herbie. I do believe the abolition of slavery was a turning point. I accept your view that it seems benign. But I prefer to see the forward propulsion which it achieved beyond the cycle of recrimination which could have pressed a pause button on human rights evolution. Mistake and error are inevitable. Learning from them is key in my view. But also being able to spot when an error will allow a genuine transformation. Beyond what sceptics see as a reason for delayed retribution. That does not mean I believe in rash judgement. Quick justice is not beyond qualitative justice.
1) Interesting thread this one with the discussion between Craig and N and also this point about Phil being upset for Craig taking umbrage with him for having referenced Alex Jones. I also thought blimey why is Craig sourcing from there. We spend time and energy looking for reasons to doubt or trust a source of information as once there is trust we hope to shortcut the process of verifying the information (though in reality I doubt we really ever do verify it) .
Of course given that I like most people have not got a cat’s hope in hell of verifying facts in international disputes I am left with the options of a) turning my back on it all, b) trusting the state message ( blunt or subtle with its internal dialogue), c) reading the state message and oppo propaganda, d) reading all states propaganda and unofficial sources many of which may be some degree of state prop or misinformation. People here seem to try to follow d), but how to interpret the contradictions. The traditional human weakness is to believe what others repeat. Even those who say they are independent thinkers tend to look for others of their ilk and see what is repeated by those who they respect. Maybe there appears to be some sense in that for without actually access to the facts trust in sources is key, and so I see the reason for Phil’s questioning. At the end of the day as this is about war and uncertain facts. Therefore credibility of those making assertions is vital. However, is it perhaps the case that we always delude ourselves when we decide whether we have properly checked out a source of info. Probably we are only asking ourselves whether we id with the maker of the statement and if so we accept what they say. Can’t really get away from that tribal factor in our thinking.
2) Good to see a vote taking place in the US. Of course voting is not something which features in The Art of War.
3) This “oldest ally comment”: was John Kerry referencing French assistance in the War of Independence?
Thanks for that response, habby.
I think much of mainstream media is more or less the same these days. You work for one, you work for the other.
So, are you involved in any media more generally which might colour your view of the BBC, such that you ought to declare an interest and absent yourself from any further discussion of them?
I’ve only been drawn to this since you earlier presented the rather dimwitted defence of them that they often use themselves.
Thanks, Ben, for the link, but one would have to be daft to believe it.
Given what has happened over the world during the last six months when it comes to states, especially Western ones, eavesdropping on all communications, only a Syrian engaged in overthrowing the Assad regime would dare to even imply the prospective use of chemical weapons.
The Israelis are just lying to help set back Lurch’s peace efforts with the Palestinians.
@Fred – This is the alleged photo anyhow http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9293620/BBC-News-uses-Iraq-photo-to-illustrate-Syrian-massacre.html Political poetic licence could well have been used in the description although I don’t know if this photo was actually shown at the actual venue of the Kerry speech or not. I think this is slightly missing the main point though, which is that everything seems to be based on hear say and the usual misleading rhetoric..
@Chris Jones
Yes, I have seen the picture, that is how I know it isn’t a picture of children on a hospital floor.
No that picture nor any other picture was shown at the Kerry speech.
Here is a picture of children lying on a hospital floor, I have seen other similar pictures in the news shortly after the event.
http://www.channelstv.com/home/2013/08/23/un-chief-troubled-by-syria-chemical-weapons-report/
Wouldn’t you say that picture better matches the Kerry description than the BBC picture?
“The Israelis are just lying to help set back Lurch’s peace efforts with the Palestinians.”
Trowbridge; You’re losing me. Are you saying the Israelis are neutral on Syria, and by way of context, Iran?
OT. Believe it or not, this came up on Facebook
http://wikispooks.com/wiki/The_Maltese_Double_Cross
Hullo Craig,
Very good. But of course your point here needs to stand as a bookend with the beyond obvious unlikelihood of Assad as logic-less and idiotic inviter of his own demise. I know that there’s no end of people keen to tell us that Muslims are crazy, logic-defying, hell-bent loons who perpetually act against their own best interests, but Assad? Really? As for your new (and welcome) revelations I still the think the obviousness of Assad-as-not a-loony is doing all the heavy lifting with your piece here coming in merely as support for that.
May I make a point that you don’t? Say we were the police and we had in our custody a fellow whom we knew had made a deliberate false accusation against someone we also knew hadn’t commited a murder. And let’s not be shy: an act of mass murder, to wit the horrific gassing of hundreds of women and children. Anyway, where would our well-founded suspicions now fall? Wouldn’t they fall on the individual keen to point us elsewhere? How could they not?
Someone killed hundreds of women and children in cold blood. Why would we shy away from the fellow who thought it fine to blame someone else?
Furthermore I ask the question: Is cui bono a dirty word? Here you don’t actually cite cui bono but make an effective cui bono argument regardless, and all in support of the case for a false allegation. And hats off to that but doesn’t that self-same of case for cui bono stand in precise support for the question of who committed the atrocity?
And further to that, and in keeping with the police/crime analogy, given that the correct response to a murder is to punish the culprit, and given that the punishment in this case is to rain missiles down upon that culprit (don’t argue, our politicians have told us it is so), why oughtn’t we to be demanding that Israel be on the receiving end of a military response? Clearly all the hysterical moralistic high dudgeon of the West must be directed at someone. An horrific crime was committed. A guilty party exists. And that party has foolishly told us who they are.
There’s no need for anyone to get their nose out of joint. Nothing I’ve said here is very shocking. It’s merely me agreeing with the government’s case for the rightness of military intervention.Frankly I’m with them. I think we should do it.
Mr Mason
Have you any criticism to make of the work of Noam Chomsky?
I think he’s very good in documenting the facts as they’re recorded in official literature, and challenging the mainstream literary, media, movie narrative, which is only ever a fictional construct, even when it calls itself “News and Current Affairs”
Who comes closest to your way of thinking, school, whatever?
@Fred – Out of basic respect to all those involved let’s leave it there. Neither of us have a way of knowing exactly which picture/s Kerry meant but I think we can both agree that the guy is trying to use the same old nasty techniques to launch another illegal attack
“Out of basic respect to all those involved let’s leave it there. Neither of us have a way of knowing exactly which picture/s Kerry meant but I think we can both agree that the guy is trying to use the same old nasty techniques to launch another illegal attack”
Of course he is.
That’s no excuse for abandoning truth for the propaganda we’d prefer to believe. That makes us no better than he is.
Nobody, I agree that if one’s view is to bomb Israel, one should not be shy of making the point. But I prefer diplomatic solutions in all cases – if Israel is guilty of using CW in Syria, then they should be internationally isolated, and perhaps have economic sanctions applied.
However, even before that, we would need the same very high standard of proof that has recently been demanded of the claim that it was Assad. I’m willing to look at such evidence, but cui bono in itself isn’t very satisfactory. That could in itself be another false flag, by people who wished to pin something upon the Israelis.
Re: our oldest ally
In the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), France fought alongside the United States, against Britain, from 1778. French money, munitions, soldiers and naval forces proved essential to America’s victory over the Crown, but France gained little except large debts.
Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War