{"id":80104,"date":"2016-09-26T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T11:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80104"},"modified":"2016-09-22T14:20:04","modified_gmt":"2016-09-22T13:20:04","slug":"syria-attack-on-aid-convoy-kills-twenty-destroys-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/09\/syria-attack-on-aid-convoy-kills-twenty-destroys-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Syria: Attack on Aid Convoy Kills Twenty, Destroys Aid\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

… and Obliterates US War Crimes?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.\u201d
\n\u2014 Candidate Barack Obama, December, 2007<\/p>\n

21 Sep 2016 – <\/em>As the US heaps blame and accusations on Russia and Syria for the alleged air strike on the aid convoy on Monday September 19th, as ever there are more questions than answers \u2013 and whatever US spokespersons state, absolutely no certainties.<\/p>\n

The only undeniable fact is that another tragedy killed at least twenty Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers and the organisation\u2019s local Director Omar Barakat, father of nine. At least eighteen of the thirty one-truck convoy were destroyed with the warehouse where humanitarian aid was stored.<\/p>\n

The Russian Defence Ministry has categorically denied any attack<\/a> and claims the convoy caught fire:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have studied video footage from the scene from so-called \u2018activists\u2019 in detail and did not find any evidence that the convoy had been struck by ordnance\u201d, commented Igor Konashenkov, a Ministry spokesman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no craters and the exterior of the vehicles do not have the kind of damage consistent with blasts caused by bombs dropped from the air.\u201d His observations are hard to challenge.\u00a0 Anyone who has studied the assaults of the \u201cinternational community\u201d on far away countries over the last decades knows what a bombed truck looks like \u2013 what fragments remains of it.<\/p>\n

Photographs of the affected lorries show burned out vehicles, metal skeleton intact.<\/p>\n

Konashenkov said that damage visible in footage was instead the result of cargo igniting \u2013 \u201coddly\u201d occurring at the same time as militants (formerly Nusra Front) had started a big offensive in nearby Aleppo, backed by tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment.<\/p>\n

He added:<\/p>\n

Only representatives of the \u2018White Helmets\u2019 organization close to the Nusra Front who, as always, found themselves at the right time in the right place by chance with their video cameras can answer who did this and why.<\/p>\n

Indeed the \u2018White Helmets\u2019 boasted in a video of being on the scene within \u201cmoments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cWhite Helmets\u201d, who have had the gall to entitle themselves the Syrian Civil Defence Force, are seemingly neither Syrian, nor Civil, nor Defence. Vanessa Beeley, who has meticulously charted their antics, explains<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This is an alleged \u2018non-governmental\u2019 organization \u2026 that so far has received funding from at least three major NATO governments, including $23 million from the US Government and $29 million (\u00a319.7 million) from the UK Government, $4.5 million (\u20ac4 million) from the Dutch Government. In addition, it receives material assistance and training funded and run by a variety of other EU Nations.<\/p>\n

She informs of such concerns regarding the organization that:<\/p>\n

A request has been put into the EU Secretary General to provide all correspondence relating to the funding and training of the White Helmets. By law this information must be made transparent and available to the public.<\/p>\n

Beeley adds:<\/p>\n

There has been a concerted campaign by a range of investigative journalists to expose the true roots of \u2026 the White Helmets. The most damning statement, however (comes from) their funders and backers in the US State Department who attempted to explain the US deportation of the prominent White Helmet leader, Raed Saleh, from Dulles airport on the 18th April 2016.<\/p>\n

Of the incident, Mark Toner, State Department spokesman stated:<\/p>\n

And any individual \u2013 again, I\u2019m broadening my language here for specific reasons, but any individual in any group suspected of ties or relations with extremist groups or that we had believed to be a security threat to the United States, we would act accordingly. But that does not, by extension, mean we condemn or would cut off ties to the group for which that individual works for.<\/p>\n

Figure that one, Dear Reader.<\/p>\n

The Ron Paul Institute has pointed out:<\/p>\n

We have demonstrated that the White Helmets are an integral part of the propaganda vanguard that ensures obscurantism of fact and propagation of Human Rights fiction that elicits the well-intentioned and self righteous response from a very cleverly duped public. A priority for these NGOs is to keep pushing the No Fly Zone scenario which has already been seen to have disastrous implications for innocent civilians in Libya, for example.<\/p>\n

What better chance to push \u201cthe No Fly Zone scenario\u201d than arriving within \u201cmoments\u201d of the convoy tragedy, filming it and creating a propaganda scenario before any meaningful forensic investigation could even be started, since the trucks were still burning. And, of course, the \u201cWhite Helmets\u201d, aka \u201cSyrian Defence Force\u201d, were filming rather than attempting to put out the fire and rescue those in the burning trucks.<\/p>\n

The Russian Defence Ministry subsequently caused outrage by claiming<\/a> that Drone footage: \u201cshows bombed Syrian aid convoy included truck full of militant fighters carrying mortar guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

However: \u201cThe footage emerged as the United Nations rowed back from describing the attack on the aid convoy as air strikes, saying it did not have conclusive evidence about what had happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

It must be asked, why on earth, after long and protracted negotiations over the convoy would Syria and\/or their Russian ally risk the wrath of US and \u201ccoalition\u201d further decimation of the country by laying themselves open to accusations of bombing aid convoys?<\/p>\n

The tragedy has emphatically achieved one thing, however. Wiped from the headlines is another atrocity \u2014 the US bombing which killed over sixty Syrian soldiers and wounded over a hundred others just two days earlier, on Saturday September 17th, causing Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova,\u00a0according to the RIA Novosti news agency, to comment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

We are reaching a really terrifying conclusion for the whole world: That the White House is defending Islamic State. Now there can be no doubts about that.<\/p>\n

Again \u2013 Quis custodiet ipsos custodes<\/em>? Who will guard the guards?<\/p>\n

___________________________________<\/p>\n

Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist with special knowledge of Iraq. Author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of <\/em>Baghdad in the Great City series for World Almanac books, she has also been Senior Researcher for two Award winning documentaries on Iraq, John Pilger’s <\/em>Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and <\/em>Denis Halliday Returns for RTE (Ireland.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 dissidentvoice.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… and Obliterates US War Crimes? Only representatives of the \u2018White Helmets\u2019 organization close to the Nusra Front who found themselves at the right time in the right place by chance with their video cameras can answer who did this and why. They boasted in a video of being on the scene within \u201cmoments.\u201d The \u201cWhite Helmets\u201d, who have had the gall to entitle themselves the Syrian Civil Defence Force, are neither Syrian, nor Civil, nor Defence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syria-in-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}