Wednesday, September 25, 2013

So Obviously About Oil that one is amazed they can't just own up to it

I wrote this before Obama made his concession to common sense, but it is still accurate. I was opposed to unilateral action for a number of reasons:

Reasons
One: Syria hasn't attacked the USA. Traditionally the USA has had a rule, and the UN Charter establishes the same guideline, that it doesn't attack a country merely because it may be a threat, but only if it actually attacks us, or according to the imperialist Bush doctrine poses an "imminent threat." For us to move along the imperial route shows that we are now working for the oil interest rather than for ourselves.
Two: the only legal mechanism for redressing human rights violations is diplomacy or the UN. That is where we put the locus for dealing with human rights, not unilateral action.
Three: Putin is offering a way out of unilateral action. [Post Script, Obama accepted his offer].
Four: Putin may be right in that the Al Qaeda types are almost always Salafists in the Saudi Arabian Mold; Al Nusra is universally labeled as Al Qaeda by even it's allies, and there is credible circumstantial and eye witness evidence that they ran a false flag on August 21st; because there are credible reports that Al Nusra acquired chemical weapons through Bandar, threatened to use them, and was setting up to use them. Local rebels tell the story of receiving these weapons and putting them in the same storage bunkers the Syrians attacked when the people died. So a cook-off of chemical weapons is plausible.
Five: One does not engage in conflict resolution by blowing the other side to smithereens. That only works if one can do a complete genocide. Otherwise the "other side" finds a way to extract revenge.
Six: Many of these anti-Assad rebels are even more stridently anti-Israel and anti-Christian than Assad is.
Seven: The Saudis have been playing both sides since the 80's. They fund Salafist anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel and militant propaganda, and reports show they fund Al Qaeda.
Eight: Bandar is the one who originally trained Al Qaeda when he was working with the CIA against the Russians in Afghanistan during the 80's. Bin Laden was his asset.

I think Obama saw the intelligence, heard all his advisers and their drumbeat for war, and thought twice about the subject. He still insists the Syrians launched those rockets, but that's his intelligence service. And if there are CIA folks or other officials who have more loyalty to Bandar, Big Oil and our Oily Industries, then the USA, they aren't going to confess that to him. Folks have a way of convincing themselves that the truth is whatever they want it to be. That could be me. So here are some facts:

Bandar and the Bandits

Bandar is popular among some CIA types and these Al Nusra rebels. I quoted a Wall Street article:

"Officials inside the Central Intelligence Agency knew that Saudi Arabia was serious about toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad when the Saudi king named Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud to lead the effort."

Our CIA loves Bandar, even in the face of circumstantial evidence linking him to Al Qaeda. They know he has "Wasta:"

"They believed that Prince Bandar, a veteran of the diplomatic intrigues of Washington and the Arab world, could deliver what the CIA couldn't: planeloads of money and arms, and, as one U.S. diplomat put it, wasta, Arabic for under-the-table clout."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323423804579024452583045962.html

But Bandar created Al Qaeda, and we don't know if he continued to have relations with Al Qaeda after it attacked the USA on 9/11 but we do know that they got most of their funding from Al Qaeda, and that the Saudis embrace the same ideology. My own suspicion is that Bandar was running Al Qaeda and still is as a proxy war false flag to keep his enemies distracted and portray himself as a hero. The fact that he supports the Chechens and boasted during his negotiations with Putin that he controlled them, indirectly threatening that he could cause them to attack the Russian Olympics coming up. The Chechens have been increasingly radicalized over the year. My suspicion is that he's Al Qaeda and that some of our CIA know this. But it's a secret of course -- to innocent folks living in the USA. Not so much in the rest of the world. The AL Monitor reports:

" As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us."
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2013/08/saudi-russia-putin-bandar-meeting-syria-egypt.html

Bandar is great at portraying himself as moderate, while we hear other leaders portray themselves as blood thirsty. But this doesn't mean that is his reality. In Arabia moderate rulers have to pretend to be tough & even genocidal even when they really are more moderate. For example in the 1948 war Abdullah is the one who really saved Israel when he had the only army that could have crushed the country. He really did not want to exterminate Jews or Israel; and he was assassinated for it. And of course it goes the other way too. The Saudis pretend to be moderate while selling Salafism and extremism. To get real Wasta, we need to be more savvy and recognize when we are being had by our own experts, monied interests, or politicians. Likewise our Arab friends need to make some major changes in their own societies so that their own people know the real deal and aren't being sold substitutes. You can't call everyone you don't like "baddies." Christians aren't necessarily blood thirsty Crusaders, and not all Arabs are blood thirsty Jihadis. That doesn't mean one can always trust governors of any country. It's all a matter of interests and working out those interests either for selfish or even violent interests, or for the common good. We have to setup the calculations so it stops being in their interests to both be our "friend" and sponsor Al Qaeda; and for our Arab friends to want to settle with Israelis, and our Israeli friends to settle with the Arabs.

If we can setup some confidence building, educational efforts, and economic exchanges that actually result in schools, infrastructure and social improvement for the folks who actually live there -- then maybe the officers won't have such an interest in keeping their people distracted. But that is not the case anywhere yet -- least of all at home.

Economic interest and Common Interest.

My Internet friend Thomas B. Nielson posted some information that helps put all this talk about gassed children into perspective. The administration appears to be trying to justify something that probably has nothing to do with misuse of chemical weapons and everything to do with geopolitical economic proxy battles between giant petro-chemical companies and their proxy countries. The more I dig into the reality the more it becomes obvious that if they really cared about little children they'd do more to stop Prince Bandar from providing chemical weapons to the rebels, or to lessen the stakes for the Assad regime and their personal survival, but Cruise Missile attacks won't do that. On the contrary that agenda seems to come from Prince Bandar and his faction trying to stop, or gain control of a pipeline.

A number of internet sources reference the Kirkut-Banias pipeline. This report from pipelines international on the pipeline tells us:
"The Strategic Pipeline was constructed in 1975, which comprised two parallel 700,000 bbl/d pipelines capable of transporting crude from Kirkuk south to the Arabian Peninsula. In 1976 Iraq ceased pumping oil through the Kirkuk – Banias Pipeline. Oil flow through the pipeline resumed in February 1979 but again ceased following the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980. In March 1981 Iraq once again resumed pumping oil through the pipeline to Syria; however when Syria concluded a deal with Iran to import significant volumes of crude oil, the pipeline was shut down in 1982."

http://pipelinesinternational.com/news/the_kirkuk_banias_pipeline/055366/

The pipeline was destroyed in part in 2003, but the oil interests in the local region knew that eventually a new pipeline would be needed:

"In late 2010, his government signed a memorandum of understanding with Iraq for the construction of two oil and one gas pipeline to carry gas and oil from Iraq’s Akkas and Kirkuk fields, respectively, to the Syrian port of Banias on the Mediterranean Sea. In July 2011 Iranian officials announced a $10 billion gas pipeline deal between Syria, Iraq and Iran that would transport gas from Iran’s South Pars gas field, the world’s biggest, through Iraq to Syria. Also planned was an extension of the AGP from Aleppo, in Syria, to the southern Turkish city of Kilis that could later link to the proposed Nabucco pipeline linking Turkey to Europe, if that pipeline ever materializes."
http://openoil.net/2012/03/28/syrias-transit-future-all-pipelines-lead-to-damascus/

Carl Gibson, writing in Reader Supported News back on June 18, 2013 wrote [http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/17981-the-us-wants-syrian-oil-not-democracy]:

"The Kirkuk-Banias pipeline runs from Kirkuk in Northern Iraq, to the Syrian town of Banias, on the Mediterranean Sea between Turkey and Lebanon. Ever since US forces inadvertently destroyed it in 2003, most of the pipeline has been shut down. While there have been plans in the works to make the Iraqi portion of the pipeline functional again, those plans have yet to come to fruition. And Syria has at least 2.5 billion barrels of oil in its fields, making it the next largest Middle Eastern oil producer after Iraq. After ten unproductive years, the oil companies dependent on the Kirkuk-Banias pipeline's output are eager to get the pipeline operational again. The tension over the Syrian oil situation is certainly being felt by wealthy investors in the markets, who are thus dictating US foreign policy."(Reader Supported News article)

And not just US investors, as I've developed, the primary driver for the rebel effort and the anti-Syrian Government rebels has been the Saudis. So US investors and the Oily Sheikhs all have an interest in quickly resolving Syria's conflict. Some of them have an interest in sabotaging it. And some in preserving it. Gibson claims:

"It's easy to see why the oil-dominated US government wants to be involved in Syria's outcome. The Free Syrian Army has since taken control of oil fields near Deir Ezzor, and Kurdish groups have taken control of other oil fields in the Rumeilan region. Many of the numerous atrocities that Assad's government committed against unarmed women and children were in Homs, which is near one of the country's only two oil refineries. Israel, the US's only ally in the Middle East, is illegally occupying the Golan Heights on the Syrian border and extracting their resources. The US wants to get involved in Syria to monopolize its oil assets, while simultaneously beating our competition – Iran, Russia and China – in the race for Syrian black gold.(Reader Supported News article)

And Global Research claims that Syria and Iraq have plans to build a new pipeline that would share that countries oil directly to the Mediterranean. That would directly threaten Russian monopoly over central Asian Oil, and Iran's control of the Straits of Hormuz. Ending the war is clearly in the interest of some investors, while others have an interest in keeping Syria preoccupied.

Apparently the Qataris and Turks are for a new pipeline and the Saudis are against it. Hence the Saudis supporting their Al Nusra assets and the Syrian rebels, while the Qataris are not. This explains a lot of the current line up.

Further reading:

Additional Sources for article in addition to digestion from Facebook posts and other sources:

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/17981-the-us-wants-syrian-oil-not-democracy
http://www.globalresearch.ca/oil-and-pipeline-geopolitics-the-us-nato-race-for-syrias-black-gold/5330216
http://topekasnews.com/president-obama-why-so-syria-ous/
http://pipelinesinternational.com/news/the_kirkuk_banias_pipeline/055366/
http://openoil.net/2012/03/28/syrias-transit-future-all-pipelines-lead-to-damascus/
http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrian-opposition-studies-terror-tactics-in-kosovo-free-syrian-army-fsa-and-kosovo-liberation-army-kla-join-hands/30686
http://thenewsdoctors.com/why-sryia-its-not-what-you-think-its-not-what-youve-been-told/

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