"Right now," the message accompanying the Avaaz diplomacy petition stated, "the global drums of war are beating over Syria, but if enough of us make sure Rouhani and Obama know the world wants bold diplomacy, we could end the nightmare for thousands of terrified Syrian children under gas attacks. We have no time to lose""
But as pointed out repeatedly by Robert Parry of Consortium News and a few other independent journalists over the last two years -- as well as recently by an organization of former U.S. intelligence professionals, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) -- the Obama administration has publicly offered not one shred of evidence to back up its early claims that Assad gassed his own people in August 2013.
To the contrary, recent disclosures in Turkey provide evidence that strongly suggest it was not Assad's military that carried out the sarin gas attack.
As Parry recently wrote, summing up his findings from his earlier articles, there is "growing evidence that it was a jihadist group, possibly with the help of Turkish intelligence, that staged the outrage as a provocation to draw the U.S. military into the conflict against Syria's military by creating the appearance that Assad had crossed Obama's 'red line' on using chemical weapons." The sarin gas attack, it should be recalled, came at a very tense time when Obama was considering military action against Assad, and seemed in the eyes of many hawks to provide final justification for attacking Syria and removing Assad from power.
The VIPS group, in a December 22, 2015 memorandum it sent to Kerry and to Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, noted comments made in the Turkish Parliament 12 days earlier by member Eren Erdem from the opposition Republican People's Party. In his remarks in Parliament, and four days later in an RT television interview, Erdem confronted the Turkish government on its possible role in the sarin gas issue. He cited a closed criminal case, official reports and electronic evidence documenting a sarin gas smuggling operation that was allegedly carried out with Turkish government complicity.
In the RT interview, according to the VIPS memo, "Erdem said Turkish authorities had acquired evidence of sarin gas shipments to anti-government rebels in Syria, and did nothing to stop them." The General Prosecutor in the Turkish city of Adana "opened a criminal case, and an indictment stated 'chemical weapons components' from Europe 'were to be seamlessly shipped via a designated route through Turkey to militant labs in Syria.'" Erdem cited evidence implicating the Turkish Minister of Justice and the Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation in the smuggling of sarin."
This bombshell piece of information, largely ignored by the mainstream news media, is a strong indication that the original sarin gas story linking the chemical attack to Assad's forces is either false or at best unproven.
This information also undercuts one of the major shocking and emotion-filled underpinnings for Avaaz's campaign for a no-fly zone -- as well as the rationale repeatedly voiced by other advocates of stepped-up military action against the Syrian government.
Gassing your own people is about as low as a dictator can get. True or not, it's a powerful piece of propaganda that provides a clinching bit of information to someone considering whether or not to sign something like the Avaaz no-fly zone petition. Since the mainstream media have ignored the Turkish Parliamentarian's disclosures, it's a safe bet that most of the petition signers to this day harbor no doubts about the source of the sarin gas attack, since no one in the Obama administration, much less Avaaz or other no-fly zone advocates, has ever publicly offered any contrary information to suggest it might not have been Assad who unleashed the attack.
The shaky nature of the sarin gas allegation is one of the areas about which ExposeFacts queried Avaaz further, but we have received no response to date.
Avaaz Didn't Tell Members That Top U.S. Generals Warned Against Syria No-Fly Zone
Among our unanswered questions submitted to Avaaz were ones noting that the organization's Syria petitions and accompanying supporting materials made no mention of the warnings by top U.S. generals (cited earlier) of the dangers inherent in establishing a no-fly zone there -- including risking drastically expanding that bloody, many-sided war and thereby endangering civilians.
Without any indication of such dangers, potential petition signers could very easily get the idea that there is little down-side to a no-fly zone. And, after all, if lives could be saved and there is little down-side, isn't that a course of action every compassionate human being could get behind? Especially if the organization calling for it has built up trust with its members through its hundreds of other liberal and progressive petitions?
Also, in information provided by Avaaz in its emails to members and on its website relating to its Syria no-fly zone petition, there was no mention of Libya, or any explanation of what Avaaz leaders thought, in retrospect, about the chaos, death, destruction, displacement and rise of ISIS there in the aftermath of the military intervention by NATO including its use of a no-fly zone. (Or, more recently, what Avaaz might think of news reports that the United States is going back into Libya with airstrikes and commando raids to counter ISIS -- which did not exist in Libya until after the NATO bombing campaign and the killing of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.)
Surely, you would think that the experience in Libya would limit an organization's willingness to push once again for a no-fly zone, this time in Syria. Yet, despite that ongoing disaster in Libya, Avaaz was apparently not chastened. (See our follow-up article for an in-depth discussion of Avaaz's advocacy for no-fly zone in Libya.)
As with our other questions, Avaaz did not answer whether the Libya experience made the organization's leaders think twice about taking up the Syria no-fly zone issue. It was possibly obscurely referencing the Libya no-fly zone when it stated to us: "Much of what you're asking for are reflection on past campaigns given the geopolitical landscape today. But based on the way we work, I cannot tell you how any Avaaz member would feel today about a past campaign without going back and asking them."
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