Syria blames rebels for Houla massacre

[cqo_000]

Source: Associated Press

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria on Thursday blamed up to 800 rebel fighters for the massacre in central Syria last week that killed more than 100 people, nearly half of them children, in its most comprehensive explanation to date of the bloodshed.

At a news conference Thursday, Qassem Jamal Suleiman, who headed the government's investigation into the massacre, categorically denied any regime role. He said hundreds of rebel gunmen carried out the slaughter after launching a coordinated attack on five security checkpoints.

The aim, he said, was to frame the government and to ignite sectarian strife in Syria.


"Government forces did not enter the area where the massacre occurred, not before the massacre and not after it," he said, adding that the victims were families who refused to oppose the government or carry arms.


Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFpH4Nx-eMTCGPa6EeF2Jbom40Jw?docId=cf7758a80bdf4b31b456d2f386a797e8

[MindMover]

1. Wonder what the satellites were seeing....????

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014131855

[leveymg]

6. Even the NSA can't see whose really wearing the uniforms or who they're really working for.

Not sure we'll really know anything other than this isn't what it was original made out to be.

[MindMover]

7. They saw tanks and heavy artillery pieces....

of course they did not see rebel uniforms or army uniforms.....

only the regime has tanks.............................

[leveymg]

10. That's right. After the insurgents attacked bases in the area, the tanks chased after them.

Unfortunately, they headed right toward the local village. What happened afterwards was predictable.

[MindMover]

12. BULLSHIT.....

[leveymg]

26. So, what do you think happened?

I've been waiting for a sensible answer to that question. But, some people are so brainwashed by all the Neocon regime change propaganda about Syria, they don't seem to be able to think for themselves, anymore.

[FailureToCommunicate]

2. Getting paramilitary goon squads to do al-Assad's killing

so they can deny all and keep their people confused about the role of his government in ethnic strife...

Another evil, desperate despot.



Give him the Charles Taylor treatment...and soon!

[leveymg]

8. You have to go after all the goon squads, or none at all. Don't reward any of them.

We should have gone after the top al-Qaeda sheiks and bankers in Saudi Arabia after 9/11, but stopped after only a handful. Now, they're back with their Holy War against Iran and the Shi'ia in Syria, and some Americans are going right along with the Jihadists. We know how well that has worked in the past.

Start learning, already, please.

[geek tragedy]

15. Stop spouting Assad's propaganda and talking points. nt

[leveymg]

23. How can I be spouting Assad's talking points? I've never even seen them in English-language media.

Where would one go to bone up on Syrian propaganda? I guess I'd have to learn Arabic.

These observations are based upon my own assessment of the history and events in the region, not the wall of Neocon regime-change propaganda that's been erected to keep Americans from thinking for themselves as we roll from one misguided intervention to another in the region. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Now, Syria. Iran, next.

Think. Learn. Please.

[riderinthestorm]

30. +10000. Thanks for trying leveymg, over and over and over.... nt

[DeSwiss]

17. Exactly. n/t

[David__77]

22. Thank you for your thoughtful post.

US "counterterrorist" policy has done much to breed terrorism and Sunni extremism. Of course, the US has been fostering these things for decades.

[Odin2005]

3. Assad is like the Republicans.

Accuse the other side of what you yourself are doing.

[Archae]

4. Assad should have a meetng with a Predator drone.

That's the only way he can be stopped.

[leveymg]

5. I don't know who, but someone is lying. The other alternative is the Syrian Gov't doesn't know who

did it, which is perhaps just as bad.

Looks like there was a raid on several gov't bases in the area, the raiders headed toward the nearest village, and all hell broke lose with a bunch of civilians either caught in crossfire or intentionally targeted by some very pissed-off, homicidal gunmen. But, whose gunmen? Were they really under the control of the Syrian gov't or the FSA? Perhaps, neither.

External intervention has caused this, and more of it will only make it worse.

[MindMover]

13. My question is: how much are you getting paid to say this BS???

[leveymg]

24. I am not a single-issue propagandist - unlike someone who posts only regime-change BS on this board.

You have it backwards. It's a TOS violation to post Neocon propaganda at DU, not to criticize the Neocon propaganda line.

[nanabugg]

49. It's so much like the "incubator" stories re Saddam, and Qaddafi stories about him taking the wealth

both of which were not true. Just check the PNAC agenda and you will find that each country on their list for regime change has been toppled the same way...with lies, infiltration, mass killings. Iran is the only nation left...and we are trying our best to get started on them.

[geek tragedy]

14. Nauseating apologism for a mass murdering dictator.

Why is this crap allowed on a progressive site?

[leveymg]

27. Not apologizing for the mass murder on either side. I just don't want to see more murder,

and real genocide, which is what will happen if the US intervenes in this on the side of of the Saudi Jihadists to bring down the Syrian government (which I don't like, but the alternative is far, far worse).

[MindMover]

31. So the real reason you are apologizing for Assad and his regime is....

"the alternative is far, far worse"

so the alternative to death and destruction is far, far worse......hmmmm.....

your logic is flawed in so many ways.....

[leveymg]

32. Even if you're willing to accept possible genocide as the cost of regime change, I'm not.

Yes, the level of religious community-based violence could get far, far worse in Syria, if we push it in that direction, or let the Saudis continue pumping arms and jihadist fighters into the country.

You can't deny that's a strong possibility under the circumstances. It's a country ruled by a religious minority group that's ruled by force over a hostile but much larger Sunni majority. The last round of the fighting in the 1980s produced hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, and the memories are still fresh. Genocide and ethnic cleansing would indeed be the worst-case outcome of the disintegration of Syria, as far as I'm concerned.

What would be the worst-case outcome, as far as you see it? Have you thought this through?

[MindMover]

33. So what do you call the murder of innocents....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

[riderinthestorm]

34. What's happening in Syria is tragic but not genocide.

Forcibly removing Assad or assassinating him WILL however embroil that region in a bloodbath that will make the early days of this civil war look like a picnic.

[MindMover]

35. So exactly what do you think is happening in Syria....

are the reports of murder erroneous..?

has Libya turned into a bloodbath...?

has Egypt turned into a bloodbath...?

has Yemen turned into a bloodbath...?

[riderinthestorm]

37. I believe the situation in Syria is fucked up because of so many outside agents

and many different agendas, its almost impossible to say with any degree of certainty who the "bad guys" are in this terrible drama.

The sectarian religious low level civil war that's been ongoing for decades in Syria is flaring because of the Arab Spring movements in the other countries (which haven't turned out well for the religious minorities in those countries either so Syria's Assad, part of a Shia religious minority has grounds to be deeply worried about his and his fellow Shia's safety).

The other countries haven't turned into bloodbaths because they don't have the same religious sectarian civil war that Syria has. Iraq would be the closest, though imperfect, analogy and there WAS a bloodbath there.

Israel's proximity is also a powderkeg waiting to happen. Iran has already threatened action towards Israel if any western powers intervene in Syria.

[pampango]

39. I understand your concern, but is this an argument that Syrians must live under a dictator

due to the nature of the demographics of their country and its role in the region.

Is there some way for Syrians to achieve some level of democracy and human rights or are they doomed to an absence of both because of how their borders were drawn and the politics of the region?

[riderinthestorm]

40. I know it is.

And it is a terrible argument, no dispute.

Kofi Annan is the one to watch in this imho. While the UN is basically toothless, the guy is relentless and his savvy has gotten him farther than I would have hoped in this situation. He hasn't alienated any of the players (yet) which is pretty incredible. His proposals are pretty much universally agreed as the way to move forward.

That said, this deal will need more than strongly worded letters, or strong words of condemnation. He must persuade the Soviets and China to lean on Assad to step aside voluntarily under a negotiated transition. The region is far too fraught with sectarian animosity for an outright forced removal or assassination which would make the region explode. Assad must leave under his own steam and the transitional government must be satisfactory to all of the major players. All of that is going to be very, very, very difficult - maybe even impossible but nobody else is as well positioned as Annan at the moment.

If I can recall correctly, T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wanted the capital of a new post-independence Arab nation state to be in Damascus because he recognized the strategic intersection of that particular flashpoint (I'm sure someone else will correct me if I've mis-remembered from my history decades ago). Syria really in its own category as a nation state because of its borders and its neighbors. I hate to say it but the Brits truly fucked up the region by drawing some pretty crappy lines in the sand (literally). If Assad is forcibly removed and the Shia are exposed to mass slaughter from the Sunni majority that surrounds them, Shia Iran will step in. And you just know Israel won't stand by as the Iranian Army presses towards their border.


Edited to add, a thank you for some real conversation on this instead of knee-jerk neo-con propaganda. There are war drums being thrummed in Israel, the US, NATO and more.

[David__77]

9. It would be helpful if the identities of those killed would become known.

That would be useful evidence. Most of the individuals were not killed with heavy weapons of any kind. The UN mission has been judicious in its statements regarding the matter. When it has completed investigation, it should make public its findings.

[tabatha]

11. Syria lies. Like any authoritarian.

Why would rebels kill their own people?

Too bad for the Syrian regime, there are survivors.

[may3rd]

16. Interesting point of view from 2010 . The 2nd vid about the 4:00 min mark starts to stir the pot

Check out the link but the second video of the Georgia rep gets a message commonly known as 'history repeats' with the use of social media Face Book and news sources cropping the news



http://antiwarcommittee.org/2011/08/03/our-world-in-depth-sara-flounders-and-cynthia-mckinney-on-libya-part-1/

Harmless communications equipment sent to Syria would make this link a good reference in the "twitter wars" chapter of the middle east

[MindMover]

19. Could you make your post a little more obfuscating and totally irrelevant.....

[may3rd]

42. Sorry the link scared you but irrelevant ?

You should watch the video before deciding which side YOU think is wearing the white hats.

[leveymg]

25. You intentionally ignore the fact that there's a 3rd Party in the conflict - one which cares not who

they kill, so long as the Shi'ia regime is overthrown. You know fully well who they are - the Saudis and their Sunni jihadist militias.

[may3rd]

43. This is the second decade in the WOT

the predictions were it will last 30 years.
This is the third world cold war between to sects with a common belief.
I can't wait for the blow back to the arab spring. Oh it'll happen and all the kings horses and all the kings oil men won't be able to keep him on the thrown.


jmo

[pampango]

18. Syria's ambassador to the UN knew the rebels did it, before the investigation even started.

"Despite insisting that the world had to wait for the government’s investigation to be completed to find out who was responsible for the massacre, Mr. Jaafari had no reservations in claiming minutes later that the massacre was carried out by opponents of the government."

"Speaking to another reporter for the same British channel at the U.N. headquarters in New York on Wednesday, the ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, called the massacre a “heinous and appalling crime.” But he insisted that there was no need for journalists to go to the village and gather information independently to determine who was responsible for the killings, since the Syrian government was conducting its own investigation.

In a somewhat bizarre exchange (captured in full, about 22 minutes into video posted on the U.N. Web site), Mr. Jaafari pleaded with the Channel 4 News correspondent in New York, Matt Frei, to ignore the work of his colleague in Syria, Alex Thomson, and wait for President Bashar al-Assad’s commission of inquiry to publish its findings later this week. “Don’t base your information on reports,” Mr. Jaafari told the reporter.

When Mr. Frei told the ambassador that his colleague in Syria had just spoken to survivors of the massacre who identified the killers as pro-government militiamen from two neighboring villages, Mr. Jaafari said that rather than producing a video report, Channel 4 News should have conveyed their information directly to the Syrian authorities."

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/syrias-government-sees-no-role-for-journalism-in-massacre-investigation/

[David__77]

20. To be fair, in Western capitals many drew opposite conclusions before any "investigation."

In fact, Western media reported that the casualties were all caused by shelling. This is definitely not true. Now we hear that men with long beards killed people at close range.

[pampango]

28. Actually some of them were killed by shelling which is what led to the Security Council condemnation

of the use of tanks and artillery in urban areas. Such use is something the government agreed to cease doing when it signed the ceasefire with Annan.

[MindMover]

21. Those witnesses were making it all up....

it was actually the green men from Mars that came down from the sky and zapped there relatives.....

[pampango]

29. NYT: Syrian Government Investigates Massacre and Finds Syrian Government Blameless

As my colleagues Steven Lee Myers and J. David Goodman report, on Thursday, Syria’s foreign ministry announced the results of a three-day investigation into the massacre of more than 100 people, almost half of them children, in the village of Houla last week.

Although survivors of the rampage told journalists, human rights investigators and United Nations observers this week that the slaughter was carried out by pro-government militiamen from neighboring villages, who moved in after shelling by the Syrian Army, the commission of inquiry appointed by President Bashar al-Assad found the Syrian government completely blameless.

At a news conference broadcast on Syrian state television, Brig. Gen. Qassem Jamal Suleiman, the chief investigator, claimed that hundreds of men, equipped with heavy weapons, had managed to enter the village despite the presence of the Syrian troops nearby, and carry out the massacre.

Endorsing a theory put forward by Syria’s ambassador to the U.N. on Wednesday, General Suleiman claimed the killings were staged by the opposition to incite a sectarian civil war, and provide a pretext “to bring foreign military intervention against the country in any form and way.”

In an interview from Damascus at the end of his report, Mr. Thomson noted with incredulity that the Syrian government panel had even denied that the shelling of the village, where there have been firefights between the Syrian Army and rebels, had been carried out by government forces.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/syrian-government-investigates-massacre-and-finds-syrian-government-blameless/

[MindMover]

36. According to some in this forum, video can be altered....

testimony can be bought and dead bodies or body parts could be from another video....

Reporters have to be in the shelling and video the person dying before it is real....then again maybe not...

[riderinthestorm]

41. The BBC just posted pics of a massacre from Baghdad, as being from Houla, Syria!

Are you kidding?! Of course the media is complicit!

The war machine is working overtime behind the scenes and the media is their primo method of controlling the propaganda.

I don't trust ANY outlet beating the drums of war this loudly. The invasion of Iraq wasn't so long ago that I haven't forgotten the complete distortion of truth. Shia Assad is allied like a twin brother to Shia Iran - and you know there are slavering dogs of war just looking for a way to get their teeth into Iran. What better way than to provoke the conflict by poking Assad....

[Comrade Grumpy]

38. Here's the official Syrian version:

http://www.syrianews.cc/syria-journalist-houla-massacre-703.html

It names names, for what that's worth.

I'm also curious about the men with long beards and bald heads described by a survivor.

[Prometheus Bound]

44. FIRST INTERVIEW with A SYRIAN EYEWITNESS of HOULA MASSACRE

Published On: Sat, Jun 2nd, 2012 22 minutes ago

....Shortly afterwards, they secured the army checkpoint and the police station in the city.

Just against this police stations are the families’ houses. The residential buildings against this police stations are the where all those children and families that were killed. They killed all the children of Al-Sayed family; they were 3 families and 20 children. They also killed people from Abdulrazak family, 10 persons; they killed them because they support the authorities. Of Al-Sayed family they killed the family of the brother of Abdullah Al-Mashlab, the 3rd person in the Syrian parliament. He was elected on May 24th, the next day they killed his wife and 3 kids and his brother and his family as well.

At 7:00 pm, Al-Farouq brigade, led by Abdulrazak Tlass, of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” arrived. He had more than 250 armed men with him from the city of Rastan, he also had 2 other groups with him one from Al-Qabo village, led by Yehya Al-Yusef, and another from Falla village.

At the time of the attack, the leaders always instructed the armed men to intensify the fire during their calls to Al-Jazeera. At night, the shooting stopped.

On the second day we heard them talking to each other on walkie talkies that some of the armed men should wear the Syrian Arabi Army’s uniform before the observers arrive so that they claim they’ve defected from the army and joined the armed men, and the others should dress like civilians and come to with us to the mosque, where the bodies and the observers are.

They burned some farms and houses to accuse the army of shelling the area in front of the observers................

http://spyghana.com/world-news/middle-east/first-interview-with-a-syrian-eyewitness-of-houla-massacre-another-uswest-false-flag/

[geek tragedy]

45. That is a garbage website--not critical.

They claim Turkey conspired with Israel on the Gaza flotilla to justify . . . an attack on Syria.

[Prometheus Bound]

46. Still, if the interview is true , some of these rebel groups sound awfully brutal.

[Prometheus Bound]

47. (FAZ) Report: Rebels Responsible for Houla Massacre

Report: Rebels Responsible for Houla Massacre
By John Rosenthal
June 9, 2012 4:00 A.M.

It was, in the words of U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the “tipping point” in the Syria conflict: a savage massacre of over 90 people, predominantly women and children, for which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed by virtually the entirety of the Western media. Within days of the first reports of the Houla massacre, the U.S., France, Great Britain, Germany, and several other Western countries announced that they were expelling Syria’s ambassadors in protest.

But according to a new report in Germany’s leading daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), the Houla massacre was in fact committed by anti-Assad Sunni militants, and the bulk of the victims were member of the Alawi and Shia minorities, which have been largely supportive of Assad. For its account of the massacre, the report cites opponents of Assad, who, however, declined to have their names appear in print out of fear of reprisals from armed opposition groups.

According to the article’s sources, the massacre occurred after rebel forces attacked three army-controlled roadblocks outside of Houla. The roadblocks had been set up to protect nearby Alawi majority villages from attacks by Sunni militias. The rebel attacks provoked a call for reinforcements by the besieged army units. Syrian army and rebel forces are reported to have engaged in battle for some 90 minutes, during which time “dozens of soldiers and rebels” were killed.

“According to eyewitness accounts,” the FAZ report continues,

the massacre occurred during this time. Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet......

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/302261/report-rebels-responsible-houla-massacre-john-rosenthal#

[Alamuti Lotus]

48. "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes"

a Mark Twain quote I think, or at the least attributed to him anyway.

I'm not sure I'd be comfortable associating the word 'truth' with Assad's types, but the word "lie" certainly applies strongly to the so-called "revolutionary" opposition quite comfortably. To me, what is interesting is that this report is sourced from opposition forces that are not aligned with the armed terrorist gangs.

The other interesting factlet that keeps popping up from eye-witness reports--a sizeable portion of the dead were Alawites and semi-recent Shiite converts. Not the likeliest targets for shabbiha (which are a real phenomena, despite the extreme hyperbole from Muslim Brotherhood propaganda outlets and their enthusiastic war-mongerer dupes in the "West&quot , but "nosayri and rafidah" (extreme hate expressions which have the American equivalent of "wetback" and "nigger&quot are always the first targets in mind for Saudi/Qatari-backed salafist terrorists looking to sow chaos (the only thing they're good for, actually--and well-paid to produce exactly that). A recent interview from a "Free Syrian Army" militia commander (not to be confused the commander of the Ibn Taymiyyah Brigade, or the King Abdullah bin Saud Brigade, or the Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah Brigade) named Shiites and Alawites as a bigger threat to Islam than Americans or Zionists. So, their agenda is pretty clear.

[may3rd]

50. Syria’s opposition called for (worldwide) protests against Russia

....
...In a statement late Monday, the Syrian National Council urged “Syrians and friends of the Syrian people across the world to hold peaceful demonstrations on Wednesday at 1 pm in front of Russian embassies and diplomatic offices to express their deep-seated rage concerning Russia’s official stance.”
....
..


http://www.yalibnan.com/2012/06/12/syrias-opposition-called-for-protests-against-russia/

good luck with that