Syria charade: West bent on war, UN investigation meaningless

There is no evidence that the Syrian government ordered the massacre with chemical weapons, but the West will blame it anyway because they want war, investigative journalist Neil Clark told RT.

RT:As we can see the US, Britain, France and Turkey are all waiting on options in Syria. How ready are they to move from words to action at this point?

Neil Clark: They are really bent on war and whatever the UN inspectors do this week won’t matter because it is a replay of 2003 when Saddam Hussein was bullied into allowing weapons inspection teams into Iraq. They went in there, they found no weapons, and yet we still had the war. In fact, they launched the war before the weapons inspection team could finish their job.  It is a very similar scenario now in Syria.

What we are going to see this week is a charade. We are going to see these inspection teams going to this site and whatever they do the Syrian government will be blamed for [it]. The US has made it quite clear and William Hague has made that quite clear.  They will blame the Syrian government whatever the evidence or lack of evidence. There is no evidence that the Syrian government ordered this massacre with chemical weapons, they still are going to blame them because they want war.

RT:How about the investigation you just mentioned? How impartial will that be?

NC: The UN team will go there, they may find chemical weapons traces or they may not. But if they do, the US said quite clearly that the Syrian government is the only party capable of using chemical weapons, so they have made their minds up. If they don’t, then the Syrian government will be accused of moving them. The Syrian government will be damned if they do, and will be damned if they don’t, whatever the UN inspection teams find. The decision has already been taken.

RT:Do the United States want this war? If we look at the polls we can see that the American people are against a new war. It is going to be a burden on the tax payers. Will this be potentially damaging for president Obama and why would he want to go ahead?

NC: It would be. Only 9% of Americans support the war. Is America a democracy? That is what we are about to find out. The American people are sick of war. They have war after war after war.

But there are powerful lobbies in the US; the Israel lobby is pushing for this war pretty strongly. The Saudi Arabians want this war and it is the question of whether Obama stands up to it.

I fear what is going to happen is there will be some military strikes in Syria and the way President Obama will sell it to the American people is - he'll tell them on TV: ‘Look, I don’t really want this, you don’t really want this, but we have done this. Chemical weapons are being used, President Assad is a monster.’

And I think what they will also do is to increase supply of weapons to the rebels to try and tip the balances against Assad and try to bring regime change within six months. I don’t think we are going to get boots on the ground or prolonged airstrikes like in Libya, because the American people don’t want that and president Obama knows that.

RT:Britain and Turkey say that they can push ahead without UN approval. How legitimate is that and is there anything the UN Security Council can do to stop them?

NC: The point is that these countries have invested so much time, energy and money in trying to topple Assad. Assad must go because of the links he has with Hezbollah and Iran. They have put money to the rebels, they have tried everything, and it is apparent to these countries and also to Israel, the only way the Syrian government will fall now is if there is direct military intervention from NATO, bombing of Syria.

That is the only way this government is going to fall.

But it is too popular. The Syrian government has majority support in Syria which is why the rebels haven’t succeeded. The West had hoped that arming the rebels would do it and achieve regime change.

They now know that the only way is to actually bomb the country and that is why this massacre has come along because it is all about finding a pretext for a military intervention.

I feared that something like this would happen and I fear that this is a fault flag operation and it has been used as a pretext for a war against Syria.