Wednesday, September 11, 2013

European Hostages - Rebels Spoke of Chemical Attack

I put off treating this report on Monday to concentrate on the Russian and Syrian reactions to John Kerry's offer/(whether it was sincere, insincere or planned to save face for Obama - I don't know) for Syria to avert an attack by surrendering their chemical weapons stores. By Tuesday, I had completely forgotten to mention it at all.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/11/teacher-and-journalist-held-hostage-in-syria-claim-they-overheard-explosive-skype-conversation-about-chemical-attack-during-captivity/

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/504735/20130909/syria-chemical-attack-assad-rebels-blame-hostage.htm

-From the International Business Times:

"A Belgian writer held hostage for five months in Syria has said that his own rebel captors denied that President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the Ghouta massacre.

Pierre Piccinin said that he and fellow hostage Domenico Quirico, an Italian war reporter, heard their jailers talking about the chemical weapon attack and saying that Assad was not to blame........

"It wasn't the government of Bashar al-Assad that used sarin gas or any other gas in Ghouta," Piccinin told Belgian RTL radio after he was released.

"We are sure about this because we overheard a conversation between rebels. It pains me to say it because I've been a fierce supporter of the Free Syrian Army in its rightful fight for democracy since 2012," Piccinin added.

"We were prisoners, stuck with this information and unable to report it," he said....."


This development is interesting. The Belgian journalist, Pierre Piccinin, while noting that he has been fully supportive of the rebel cause, declares that he is firmly convinced that the use of chemical weapons was not an act of the forces of the Syrian government. His fellow former captive, Domenico Quirico however affirms that he heard the conversation between his captors, but steadfastly refuses to draw any conclusions from what he heard. Later in the article, he even later uses the word '"madness" to label any inclination to assume that the rebels may have been speaking truthfully among themselves. 

But, Quirico did make a very telling comment.

-From The Blaze:

"Italy’s Quotidiano Nazionale reports Quirico as saying: “I am extremely surprised that the United States could think about intervening, knowing very well how the Syrian revolution has become international jihadism – in other words Al-Qaeda.”

The 62-year-old journalist was highly critical of the opposition in Syria in another interview, claiming that radical Islamic groups operating in Syria want to take down Assad and “create a caliphate and extend it to the entire Middle East and North Africa,” the Russia-friendly RT reports."


The article in The Blaze (also linked above) notes that the conversation on which the the journalists eavesdropped was in English. That part is admittedly strange and may be difficult to believe, but what would even more strange is the possibility that the rebels would have intentionally held a conversation - in a language that many Europeans know,  that that would make a US attack less likely.

If the captors did purposely speak in English so that the journalists may have been able to understand the content of the conversation, and then released them, they would have known that reports of what the captives heard would eventually make it to the press. Any claim that the rebels used chemical weapons would be another reason for the rest of the world to tell Obama, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and their cronies who currently run France to refrain from launching attacks from which the rebels would be the beneficiaries. 

Could this be a move by one rebel group to buy time while it attempts to gain ascendancy over other rebel groups? If the Syrian government was attacked  in the near future, the group that has the most personnel and equipment under its control at the moment would have the best chance of seizing power if the government is toppled. A group that needs to increase in size and strength would probably prefer that the end be put off for a while longer.

The idea of the re-creation of a unified pan-national sphere of Islam, be it a confederacy of regions or a restored Caliphate, is not something that the Left wants people discussing.  The reason for that is that they would very much want it that way. Nation-states and free peoples are anathema to committed Leftists, and an Islamic world under one government is a good start for - if not a worldwide government, at least a world of four or five super-regional governments.  

-From a previous post:


"The post at top tells the tale perfectly; the Left has no problem with Islam as it is geared towards a "transnational" outlook. Nation-states are not a part of the Islamic system.When a Leftist envisions the world order that he would prefer, that world does not contain sovereign nations. It may be a one-world government, it may be one where nations are but shadows of their former selves that have surrendered their right to govern themselves and answer to a world-wide version of the European Union, or it is a world divided up into a few regional spheres. The latter could have a Latin American-dominated union of North and South America, an EU, an Islamic sphere, and and Asian one dominated by China.

......[The people of] many Western nations allow themselves to be lead like sheep into this oncoming loss of sovereignty, a notion which many now hold to be as obsolete as that of the ancient Greek city-states*.........'









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