Rush Goes There: What If Bashar Assad Is Being Framed?

In response to Assad: There Will be “Repercussions” for Any Strike Against Syria, and Possibly a Regional War:

As I’m sure many of us are aware, there are a number of voices out there propagating alternative theories to the Obama administration’s slam-dunk assessment that Assad gassed his own people. Former Muslim Brotherhood member now peace activist  Walid Shoebat, for one, has been saying that Syrian rebels were behind the attack, and has provided what he believes is evidence to back it up.  Pat Buchanan said a few days ago that the attack “reeked of a false flag operation And mainstream media outlets haven’t dismissed the possibility, either. The Washington Post Blog reported, yesterday; Yes, the Syrian Rebels DO Have Access to Chemical Weapons.

One of the U.S. government’s main justifications for its claim that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack is that the rebels don’t have chemical weapons.

However, multiple lines of evidence show that the rebels do have chemical weapons.

According to intelligence officials, U.S. spies have lost track of who controls some of Syria’s chemical weapons supplies.

WaPo linked to the AP report that explored the questions remaining about who actually controls those chemical weapons stores …

U.S. analysts … are also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad’s forces moving chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels took over an area where weapons had been stored.

AP hit the nail on the head when it wrote:

U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad’s orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said.

Another possibility that officials would hope to rule out: that stocks had fallen out of the government’s control and were deployed by rebels in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war.

On his radio show, today, Rush Limbaugh, drawing from a “scholarly” piece by Yossef Bodansky, entitled Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack? went further, suggesting a false flag operation, aided by the Obama administration may well have been staged in Syria.

Here’s Rush, earlier today: 

You have here, ostensibly, Bashar al-Assad nerve gassing his own people.  Sarin gas.  Lurch told us. John Kerry.  He told us this Friday.  Obama’s got the red line drawn out there.  They crossed the red line.  Obama’s manhood is on the line.  Oh, my God, he’s a gotta huff and puff! He’s been huffing and puffing.  All of a sudden, “You know what?  To hell with it!  I’m gonna wait awhile.  I’m gonna wait on Congress.” 

Wait a minute. People are dying, I thought.  He’s nerve gassing people!  He’s nerve gassing his own people, chemical weapons, weapons of mass destruction, and we’re gonna wait for Congress to get back?  We gotta wait a few days, rather than strike now? ‘Cause all we’re gonna do is we’re gonna have a, what, three-minute to five-hour strike, whatever it takes to show that… (interruption)

Yeah, the assets are already in place and we’re gonna launch ’em for three minutes to five hours. That’s the length of time we’re talking about here. Get in, get it, and get out.  Why wait?  I thought time was of the essence here!  I mean, he’s nerve gassing his own people.  Anyway, here’s the point, folks: Four different people now, and the third one was just this morning, are asking, “What if Bashar didn’t do it?  What if Bashar is being framed? 

“What if Al-Qaeda is setting off their own chemical weapons on their own people, if the rebels are nerve gassing their own people to create exactly what is happening, us mobilizing to get rid of Bashar because they can’t for some reason.”  So they use chemical weapons on their people, it gets blamed on Bashar, we go in and take Bashar out or do something and end up on the same side as “the rebels,” in this case Al-Qaeda. 

What if Bashar is being framed? 

What if Bashar didn’t do it?

Sit tight, ’cause I’ve got a story by a man whose credibility is intact and beyond repute.  His name is Yossef Bodansky. He “is an Israeli-American political scientist who served as Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the US House of Representatives from 1988 to 2004. He is also Director of Research of the International Strategic Studies Association and has been a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

“In the 1980s, he served as a senior consultant for the Department of Defense and the Department of State. He is also a senior editor for the Defense and Foreign Affairs group of publications and a contributor to the International Military and Defense Encyclopedia and is on the Advisory Council of The Intelligence Summit,” and he has a piece today in Defense and Foreign Affairs. “There is a growing volume of new evidence” that the White House knew and possibly helped plan a Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition. 

This is the first scholarly piece on it that I’ve seen. 

So I want to throw this out to you, after the break here, as just a possibility, ’cause I’ve heard from a couple people who have lived in the Middle East (some of them claim to know Bashar) who say, “Basher just wouldn’t do it. He just wouldn’t gas his own people. There’s nothing in it for him.  What’s in it for him to do this, other than get what’s happening now?  What’s in it for him?  Who benefits here by nerve gas being used, and how do you make the case that Bashar benefits?”

Read the rest, here.

Audio at Mediaite.