News Releases

KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin.gosztola at firedoglake.com, @kgosztola
Gosztola is co-author of Truth & Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning. He said today: “This assault on freedom of the press is an outgrowth of this administration’s war on whistleblowers or alleged leakers.” See Gosztola’s articles on whistleblowers at FireDogLake.

Contrary to the administration’s claims this week, Gosztola writes in “The Obama Administration’s Propensity for Chilling News Sources” that: “The Obama administration has not maintained any kind of a reasonable balance. The framing by the administration, where it is suggested that freedom must be balanced against national security interests, is not only a false choice but also a tension sustained to give the administration cover as it expands and claims new powers.

“In exhibiting a disdain for the free flow of information, the administration has targeted a record number of alleged leakers or whistleblowers. It prosecuted former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is now serving a 30-month jail sentence for providing the name of someone involved in the CIA’s rendition, detention & interrogation program to a reporter. It pursued former NSA employee Thomas Drake, who provided details on fraud, waste, abuse and illegality to a Baltimore Sun reporter. It put former FBI linguist Shamai Leibowitz in prison for 20 months for providing a ‘blogger’ documents on a possible Israeli strike on Iran.”

Gosztola also recently wrote “No Justification for Obama’s War on First Amendment,” for Salon which states: “Lawmakers have expressed outrage, but citizens should understand that they helped create the political climate for which the Justice Department would find it permissible to engage in this conduct. This is an inevitable result of leaks hysteria on Capitol Hill in June of last year.

“Recall, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Mike Rogers, Sen. John McCain, then-Sen. Joe Lieberman, Rep. Peter King and others urged the Justice Department to investigate ‘leaks’ on the Obama administration’s ‘kill list’ to reporters at the New York Times.”

And in “Holder’s Gutless Recusal & the Justice Department’s Seizure of AP Records,” Gosztola writes: “Holder recused himself early in the investigation into the leak and delegated authority to Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole, which means he would be the one in charge of deciding whether to subpoena records from press organizations. …

“Multiple representatives asked Holder if Cole could come before the committee to answer questions. Not surprisingly, Holder cautioned against this because he is the lead prosecutor in an ‘ongoing prosecution.’ So, who answers for this? Cole cannot. Holder won’t. Everyone below is not in a position to make official statements publicly. Everyone escapes accountability.”

CNN’s Gloria Borger noted on Tuesday: “White House spokesman Jay Carney says the White House changed the wording from ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ to be more accurate. So what does that mean? Thanks to the digging of Glenn Kessler in The Washington Post, it looks very much like the Benghazi consulate ‘was not a consulate at all but basically a secret CIA operation.’”

In fact, Goodman wrote in November for ConsortiumNews that: “the consulate was the diplomatic cover for an intelligence platform and whatever diplomatic functions took place in Benghazi also served as cover for an important CIA base.” See: “The Why Behind the Benghazi Attack.”

MELVIN GOODMAN, goody789 at verizon.net
Goodman is director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He was an analyst at the CIA for 24 years. His most recent book is the just-released National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. Goodman just wrote the piece “The Real Benghazi Scandal” for CounterPunch, which states: “When congressional Republicans complete manipulating the Benghazi tragedy, it will be time for the virtually silent Senate intelligence committee to take up three major issues that have been largely ignored. The committee must investigate the fact that the U.S. presence in Benghazi was an intelligence platform and only nominally a consulate; the politicization by the White House and State Department of CIA analysis of the events in Benghazi; and the Obama administration’s politicization of the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General, which has virtually destroyed the office and deprived congressional intelligence committees of their most important oversight tool.

“When U.S. personnel were airlifted from Benghazi the night of the attack, there were seven Foreign Service and State Department officers and 23 CIA officers onboard. This fact alone indicates that the consulate was primarily diplomatic cover for an intelligence operation that was known to Libyan militia groups. The CIA failed to provide adequate security for Benghazi, and its clumsy tradecraft contributed to the tragic failure. On the night of the attack, the small CIA security team in Benghazi was slow to respond, relying on an untested Libyan intelligence organization to maintain security for U.S. personnel. After the attack, the long delay in debriefing evacuated personnel contributed to the confusing assessments.”

Goodman lists a series of major failures by the CIA where no one was held accountable. The most recent: “The politicization of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003 was the worst intelligence scandal in the CIA’s history, but there were no penalties for those who supported CIA director George Tenet’s efforts to make phony intelligence a ‘slam dunk’ as well as Deputy Director John McLaughlin’s ‘slam dunk’ briefing to President George Bush. The CIA’s production of an unclassified white paper for the Congress on the eve of the vote to authorize force in October 2002 marked the misuse of classified information to influence congressional opinion, but there were no consequences.

“The destruction of the torture tapes, a clear case of obstruction of justice in view of White House orders to protect the tapes, led to no recriminations at the CIA. The controversy over the use of drone aircraft; the intelligence failure that accompanied the Arab Spring in 2011; and the inadequate security presence in Libya in the wake of the killing of Muammar Gaddafi have not received the necessary scrutiny. Any CIA component in the Middle East and North Africa is a likely target of militant and terrorist organizations because of the Agency’s key role in the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ and the Obama administration’s increasingly widespread use of drone aircraft.

“The ability of the Nigerian underwear bomber to board a commercial airline in December 2009 marked an intelligence failure for the entire intelligence community, but there was no serious attempt to examine the breakdown in coordination between five or six intelligence agencies, let alone pursue accountability. Instead, President Obama halted all efforts to return home Yemeni prisoners at Guantanamo.”

Charlie Savage and Leslie Kaufman reported Monday in The New York Times: “Federal investigators secretly seized two months of phone records for reporters and editors of The Associated Press in what the news organization said Monday was a ‘serious interference with A.P.’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news. … the timing and the specific journalistic targets strongly suggested they are related to a continuing government investigation into the leaking of information a year ago about the Central Intelligence Agency’s disruption of a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner.”

THOMAS DRAKE, @Thomas_Drake1
Available for a limited number of interviews, Drake was a senior executive of the U.S. National Security Agency. Last year he successfully concluded a legal ordeal with the federal government, including an Espionage Act centered indictment over the past several years. He blew the whistle on vast illegal electronic surveillance and data mining inside the U.S. and other government wrongdoing. He recently received awards for his role as a whistleblower. He has warned of “a key decision made shortly after 9/11, which began to rapidly turn the United States of America into the equivalent of a foreign nation for dragnet blanket electronic surveillance. … When you open up the Pandora’s Box of just getting access to incredible amounts of data, for people that have no reason to be put under suspicion, no reason to have done anything wrong, and just collect all that for potential future use or even current use, it opens up a real danger — and to what else they could use that data for, particularly when it’s all being hidden behind the mantle of national security.”

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com
McGovern is a veteran CIA analyst. He said today: “Holder? Obama? Embarrassed by gross violation of the First Amendment? The always-held-harmless-by-gutless-politicians giant telecoms? What, we worry?

“Have you not heard? ‘After 9/11 everything changed.’ As for whistleblowers on waste, fraud, and abuse — and occasional war crimes — again, not to worry. If making public our combing through AP’s records doesn’t intimidate them, as it no doubt will for most, we’ll think of something else.

“And we are to believe that the White House didn’t know anything about it, because Jay Carney said so? Puleeze!”

McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and gave the President’s Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates.

MARCY WHEELER, emptywheel at gmail.com, @emptywheel
A noted blogger on legal issues, Wheeler writes at EmptyWheel.net. She has written a series of stories on the scandal, including “‘A Full Two Month Period’ that Covers John Brennan’s Entire Drone Propaganda Campaign.”

TREVOR TIMM, trevor at pressfreedomfoundation.org, @TrevorTimm
Timm is co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and just wrote the piece “Justice Department Investigation of AP Part of Larger Pattern to Intimidate Sources and Reporters.”

Bloomberg reports today: “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Stockholm for meetings with Swedish leaders before traveling to the northern reaches of the country for a meeting on the sweeping climate changes affecting the Arctic.”

Reuters reported over the weekend: “The amount of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million at a key observing station in Hawaii for the first time since measurement began in 1958, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Friday. To many scientists, crossing the 400 ppm threshold, which means that there are 400 molecules of carbon dioxide for every million molecules in the air, is a bit like the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising above 15,000 points.”

MICHAEL DORSEY, mkdorsey at professordorsey.com, @GreenHejira
Dorsey is visiting scholar and professor of environmental policy in Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment. He said today: “The 400 ppm milestone is worrisome, but there is still time for government action, domestically and internationally.

“The Arctic Council is genuinely trying to tackle the problem of unfolding climate catastrophe, but the White House’s ongoing commitment to oil exploration and exploitation may nullify the Council’s work.

“We passed the 400 ppm milestone as a result of the strong growth of global CO2 emissions from the human-driven burning of coal, oil, and natural gas. The President and the White House are in part to blame. The President has spectacularly failed to forge bold policies to avert climate catastrophe. It’s not surprising that there is no senior climate policy team inside the White House that is working on any aggressive plan to end investments and financing in the fossil fuels sector.

“Last year alone, the administration and congress facilitated giving America’s largest five oil companies more than $350 million per day — more than $14.5 million dollars an hour — in subsidies. The average worker got about $23 an hour.

“Eliminating just the fossil fuel subsidies related to consumption by 2020 would reduce annual global primary energy demand by nearly 5 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by 5.8 percent, or 2.6 gigatons — equivalent to almost half of U.S carbon dioxide emissions.

“The U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimates that the cost of the health effects in the United States alone attributed to fossil fuel use approaches $120 billion annually.

“Now more than ever the President and the White House must lead the nation and the planet on a more aggressive pathway to stop new fossil fuel projects — like Keystone XL and continued offshore oil and gas development.”

The Boston Globe editorialized over the weekend: “When the esteemed physicist Stephen Hawking announced his decision to boycott Israel’s Presidential Conference, a gathering of politicians, scholars, and other high-profile figures scheduled for June, the response was as predictable as the movement of the cosmos that inspired Hawking’s career. The conference chair, Israel Maimon, called the move ‘outrageous and improper,’ while Omar Barghouti, a founder of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement that advocates protests against Israeli policies, declared, ‘Palestinians deeply appreciate Stephen Hawking’s support.’

“In fact, the decision to withdraw from a conference is a reasonable way to express one’s political views. Observers need not agree with Hawking’s position in order to understand and even respect his choice. The movement that Hawking has signed on to aims to place pressure on Israel through peaceful means. In the context of a Mideast conflict that has caused so much destruction and cost so many lives, nonviolence is something to be encouraged. That is equally true of attempts to inspire cooperation on the Palestinian side.

“Chances for a peaceful solution in Israel and Palestine are remote enough without overreactions like Maimon’s. Foreclosing nonviolent avenues to give people a political voice — and maybe bring about an eventual resolution — only makes what is already difficult that much more challenging.”

ALANA KRIVO-KAUFMAN, alana at jvp.org
Krivo-Kaufman is with the We Divest Coalition. She can also arrange interviews with student activists. The group put out a statement about actions today: “At 4 p.m., student activists will be protesting outside of TIAA-CREF’s national headquarters. … Students from colleges throughout the New York metropolitan area will be calling for TIAA-CREF, one of the largest retirement funds in the country, to divest from all companies benefiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” See: thefuturedivests.tumblr.com.

Students involved in the actions include:

Carolyn Klaasen, Jewish Voice for Peace-NY Chapter, Union Theological Seminary: “We are future doctors, lawyers, teachers, professors, and non-profit employees. As future professionals, we are future pension holders and TIAA-CREF clients. TIAA-CREF prides itself on socially responsible investing. We are gravely concerned with TIAA-CREF’s investments in corporations profiting from egregious human rights abuses.”

Sundus Seif, Students for Justice in Palestine, Brooklyn College: “On Feb. 7, more than 200 shareholders filed a resolution to divest from Veolia, a corporation that provides segregated transportation services to Israeli settlers living on Palestinian land in the West Bank. TIAA-CREF’s challenge of the resolution at the SEC contradicts its stated commitment to socially responsible investing and shareholder advocacy. Ultimately, we will remember if TIAA-CREF demonstrated a commitment to socially responsible investing in Israel-Palestine when we choose our retirement fund.”

See report from The Real News: “Hawking and the Growing Israel Boycott Movement.”

A verdict in the trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt is scheduled to be announced today at 6 p.m. ET.

The New York Times reports today in “Ex-Dictator Denies Role in Guatemalan Massacres” that: “Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the former dictator who ruled Guatemala during one of the bloodiest periods of its long civil war, faced the court trying him for genocide on Thursday and denied any role in the horrors narrated by Mayan survivors of massacres committed in the remote highlands three decades ago. …

“During General Ríos Montt’s 17-month rule in 1982 and 1983, the army swept through the Mayan highlands to flush out leftist guerrillas, slaughtering villagers, laying waste to their hamlets and crops, and killing livestock.”

ALLAN NAIRN, [in Guatemala City] allan.nairn at yahoo.com
A noted investigative reporter, Nairn said today on “Democracy Now!“: “Survivors of the Mayan highland massacres campaigned for three decades, remembering their wives and their husbands who were slit open with machetes and shot in the face and thrown into ditches while they were still alive — the fact that they were able to campaign for decades, and even though their movement was crushed during the slaughters of the ’80s, even though the army and the oligarchy to this day retain power in Guatemala, the people they crushed are on the verge of exacting some justice and may be getting a jail sentence against one of the main people responsible for the deaths of — I mean, nobody knows the exact death toll of all the slaughters.

“Ríos Montt in this case is being charged with just 1,700 murders, but the complete death toll over the years in Guatemala could amount to something like a quarter million. And no one has really been able to do this before. No one has been able to use their domestic courts to put a former leader on trial for genocide. This is the kind of move that would be unthinkable in the United States. You know, standing in the courtroom yesterday, I was trying to imagine what would the scene be like in the U.S. if, say, George W. Bush were called before a criminal court in Texas and put on trial for Iraq. It’s hard to imagine, but here it’s happening. …

“In May of ’82, a couple months after he had seized power and sent the army sweeping through the northwest highlands, including the Ixil area, as the army was just wiping out one town after another, executing the civilians, I asked Ríos Montt about the civilian killings. And he said, ‘Look, for each one who is shooting,’ meaning for each guerrilla, ‘there are 10 working behind them,’ meaning there are 10 unarmed people working behind them. And then his adviser, Francisco Bianchi, said, ‘We have to kill Indians, the Ixil people, because they have sold out to subversion.’

“Years later, after Ríos Montt was ousted from power, I interviewed him again. And I asked him whether he thought that he should be put on trial for his role in the massacres and whether he should be executed, since he, Ríos Montt, is a big supporter of the death penalty. And when I asked him that, he suddenly leapt up to his feet and shouted. He said, ‘Yes, try me! Put me against the wall!’ But, he said, that if he was going to be put on trial, the Americans should be put on trial with him. He specifically mentioned Ronald Reagan, who was one of his great sponsors. …

“So, if Ríos Montt is found guilty of genocide, then the question becomes: Well, what about the man who was the field commander for the massacres that got Ríos Montt convicted of genocide? That man is now the president of Guatemala. Pérez Molina did everything he could to see to it that his name did not come up in this trial. That was the bargain under which the trial was allowed to go forward. He let it go forward very, very reluctantly. One witness, to everyone’s surprise, a former military man, testified that Pérez Molina had ordered atrocities. I was due to testify in the trial but then was blocked at the last minute from testifying because there was fear that I would also mention Pérez Molina’s role.

“And, what about the U.S. sponsors who were providing the weapons, the money, the bombs, the bullets and the political support for the crimes for which Ríos Montt may today be convicted of genocide? Because Guatemalan criminal courts have the authority under international law to bring in U.S. defendants. U.S. criminal courts have that same authority. If there’s a verdict today against Ríos Montt, that will be the challenge sitting on the — put to the American and the Guatemalan criminal courts: What’s next? Will you now look at Pérez Molina? Will you now look at the Americans who made this genocide possible?”

Nairn noted in a recent piece on his website: “The trial was suspended on April 18 after intervention by Guatemala’s President and death threats by army associates against judges and prosecutors. But the backlash against the suspension was intense and the army appears to have retreated.”

AP reports: “A fire fed by huge piles of acrylic products used to make sweaters killed eight people at a Bangladesh garment factory, barely two weeks after a collapse at another garment factory building where the death toll was approaching 1,000 on Thursday.”

CHARLES KERNAGHAN, BARBARA BRIGGS, bbriggs at glhr.org, @IGLHR
Kernaghan and Briggs are with the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, which broke the news that the workers had been ordered back to work shortly before the collapse of the garment factory.

Kernaghan said today: “It’s been painfully clear to our staff on the ground for days that there would be more than 1,000 dead. There were so many parents from the villages who had come looking for their children who worked at the factory who were not finding them.

“Many injured workers are being forced to leave the hospital prematurely to make room for those with even greater injuries — including amputees. We are setting up a fund to help these workers, who lack money for food, rent, medicines and medical care.

“But the deeper issue is that real reform is needed. Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, the Bangladesh finance minister, talked about the disaster in the most cavalier manner: ‘I don’t think it is really serious — it’s an accident.’

“In 2007, together with the United Steelworkers union, we helped write the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act which, when passed, will for the first time afford human beings with the same legal rights that corporations have demanded and won to protect their trademarks and products. Mickey Mouse and Microsoft are protected but not the human beings — the workers — who produce them. This legislation will prohibit child labor and forced labor, while guaranteeing workers the right to organize, to form a union and to collectively bargain. Sweatshop goods will not be able to enter the U.S., be sold in the U.S. or be exported. The bill had 26 co-sponsors in the Senate, including then Senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, along with 175 co-sponsors in the House. In a Harris Poll, 76 percent of the American people wanted this legislation passed.

“The legislation will empower workers, build the middle class, end the race to the bottom and lift workers across the developing world.

“If enough of us raise our voices, we will win.”

TREVOR TIMM, trevor at pressfreedomfoundation.org, @TrevorTimm
RAINEY REITMAN, rainey at pressfreedomfoundation.org, @RaineyReitman
Timm is co-founder and executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation; Reitman is co-founder and chief operations officer of the organization.

The group just released a statement about their campaign to ensure a transcript for the trial of Bradley Manning, scheduled to begin June 3: “As has been documented by many media organizations, the pre-trial hearings of Bradley Manning have been hampered by heavy-handed government secrecy. Government briefs are not released to the public, written rulings are rarely given to journalists, and most importantly, there is no official transcript of the proceedings. This has denied the public of opportunities for a range of accurate, timely, and in-depth reporting on the trial.

“The Center for Constitutional Rights filed a First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of a variety of news organizations and journalists seeking timely access to court documents, but the military court of appeals ruled in favor of continued secrecy.

“As PBS recounted recently, ‘Because there is no official court record, the public is entirely dependent on the accounts of the reporters on-scene — the few who can fit into the courtroom making notes longhand, or the rest who report from the media center, typing down words and details frantically and hoping they don’t make any mistakes.’

“This campaign aims to fully fund a court stenographer, who will be credentialed with a media organization and attend the trial in the court’s media room. The court stenographer will produce a transcript of the trial, and as soon as the transcripts are available, the Freedom of the Press Foundation will post them online for journalists and the public.

“‘Journalists covering Manning’s case face many Kafkaesque obstacles, but nothing is more punitive than the government’s refusal to provide a timely and accurate transcript. By funding a court stenographer, we hope to help journalists in their effort to report on the trial,’ said Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who serves on the board of directors of Freedom of the Press Foundation and attended Manning’s Article 32 hearing.”

Reitman also just wrote the piece “SF Pride Board Denies Public Access to Public Hearing” about SF Pride Board’s “recent decision to rescind Bradley Manning as a grand marshal from the upcoming parade.”

JUNAID AHMAD, junaid.ahmad at lums.edu.pk
Ahmad is with the faculty of law and policy at the Lahore University ofManagement Sciences. He said today: “If this system of civilian democracy is to be sustained, there needs to be a dramatic reconfiguration of mainstream politics and political parties in the country. Imran Khan’s political party is a positive sign in that direction. Otherwise, the mainstream political parties’ corruption and absence of any vision for independence and self-respect for the country, and economic development, will provide a very easy opportunity for the military to come back to power — and ordinary people will be fairly indifferent.

“Washington has been working overtime establishing close links with all of the mainstream political parties, especially the PPP and the PML-N. It knows both of these parties are pro ‘war on terror,’ are pro neo-liberal market policies and generally take orders from the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. But I don’t think this time Washington can stop the momentum around new political forces like Imran Khan’s party (which is openly challenging drones and U.S. influence in the region) from taking Pakistan, slowly but surely, onto a more independent and self-respecting geo-political direction.”

SAMEER DOSSANI, sameer.dossani@gmail.com, @sameerdossani
In addition to having family ties to Pakistan, Dossani has been researching and writing about military, religious, and cultural life in South Asia for the past 15 years. His articles include “Power and Patronage: The Political Economy of Pakistan.”

He said today: “This has certainly been a more open election in Pakistan, but there are still severe limits. Imran Khan has been vocal about corruption, but has not put forward policy solutions to force transparency. His solution seems to be that he will be a strong leader as opposed to the corrupt leaders of the past, but that makes Pakistan vulnerable to a different kind of authoritarianism.

“The election coverage has understated the extent of U.S. involvement in Pakistani politics. Since Zia ul-Haq came to power in the late 1970s, Pakistan has been a key U.S. ally in the region. The full extent of CIA and other U.S. covert involvement in Pakistan is not known, but democratic accountability will remain elusive as long as U.S. money and influence continue to play such a large role.

“In terms of the limits of the political discussion in Pakistan, the biggest issue is ending the feudal system and having land reform. All the issues that do get talked about: women’s rights, development, etc., are not going to make serious progress until that is meaningfully addressed.”

The BBC reports in “UN’s Del Ponte Says Evidence Syria Rebels ‘Used Sarin’” that Carla Del Ponte, a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, stated that the investigation has so far found that nerve gas appeared to be “used by the opponents, by the rebels. And we have no indication at all that the government, the authority of the Syrian government, had used chemical weapons.” See full BBC report, including video of Del Ponte.

FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle at illinois.edu
Boyle is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law and most recently author of Destroying Libya and World Order. He said today: “I have worked personally with Carla Del Ponte. She has an enormous amount of credibility. By the logic of Obama’s ‘red line’ should he now enter the U.S. on the side of the Syria government?”

“In fact, as is true for almost every previous invocation of the doctrine of so-called ‘humanitarian intervention’ in modern history going all the way back to the mid-19th century, the application of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine to Syria is based upon outright lies, propaganda and half-truths — as with all the baseless accusations over the last several weeks regarding the Syrian government using nerve gas and calls for U.S. military intervention. The Israeli strikes on Syria are obvious violations of international law. None of this of course excuses any violation of international human rights law that might have been committed by the Assad government.”

MATTHEW LEE, matthew.lee at innercitypress.com, @innercitypress
Lee covers the UN for Inner City Press and just wrote the piece “Syria Rebels Used Sarin, UN’s Del Ponte Strongly Suspects.”

REESE ERLICH, rerlich at pacbell.net
Available for a limited number of interviews with major media, Erlich is a freelance foreign correspondent who reports for GlobalPost and CBC, among others. He said today: “The rebels might have used sarin in order to justify U.S. intervention. … The current crisis has nothing to do with chemical weapons and everything to do with breaking the stalemate. As with Libya, sectors of the Obama administration, Israel and others, are ginning up a crisis to justify military intervention. Why would Assad use chemical weapons now and give the US an excuses to attack? Israel’s attacks, using the excuse of destroying Hezbollah missiles, are actually aimed at putting pressure on Obama to attack Syria.”

The Guardian reported Sunday: “President Barack Obama came under increased pressure on Sunday regarding his discussion of a ‘red line’ over Syria’s possible use of chemical weapons, amid accusations that his apparent promise of a trigger for further U.S. action had been written in ‘disappearing ink.’

“Appearing on Fox News, the Republican senator John McCain suggested that to most minds such a line had been crossed. Referring to Israeli air strikes on targets close to Damascus over the weekend, McCain said: ‘Apparently the Syrians and Iranians have crossed a red line with the Israelis.’”

Reuters reports that Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television: “Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals. … According to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated. … This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”