Mount Troodos in Cyprus
Troodos is highly effective - the jewel in the crown of British intelligence. Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering. The US do not have their own comparable facility for the Middle East. I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s. This is fact, not speculation.
It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee.
On one level the explanation is simple. The intercept evidence was provided to the USA by Mossad, according to my own well-placed source in the Washington intelligence community. Intelligence provided by a third party is not automatically shared with the UK, and indeed Israel specifies it should not be.
But the inescapable question is this. Mossad have nothing comparable to the Troodos operation. The reported content of the conversations fits exactly with key tasking for Troodos, and would have tripped all the triggers. How can Troodos have missed this if Mossad got it? The only remote possibility is that all the conversations went on a purely landline route, on which Mossad have a physical wire tap, but that is very unlikely in a number of ways - not least nowadays the purely landline route.
Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months. This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children - has brought no condemnation at all from the West. Israel has now provided "intelligence" to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel's bombing and missile campaign.
The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple. Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist. Mossad fabricated them. John Kerry's "evidence" is the shabbiest of tricks. More children may now be blown to pieces by massive American missile blasts. It is nothing to do with humanitarian intervention. It is, yet again, the USA acting at the behest of Israel.
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Mr Putin said: "This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them (the Americans) and we assume they are decent people, but he is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad." [Link]
Sana - Foreign Ministry: Kerry's presentation is based on old stories published by terrorists [Link]
"US Secretary of State John Kerry only produced material based on old stories which were published by terrorists over a week ago and are full of fabrication and lies.... the numbers quoted by Kerry are fictional and produced by armed groups in Syria and the opposition abroad..
all the accusations leveled by Kerry against the Syrian state are lies and devoid for truth for the following reasons:
1-Syria has challenged the US to produce one piece of true and logical evidence that it used the alleged chemical weapons, and Kerry relied on fabricated images from the internet, and the alleged call made by a Syrian officer after the alleged attack is too ridiculous to be discussed.
2-Syria never impeded or restricted the international investigation committee, on the contrary; as the UN Secretary-General has lauded the Syrian cooperation with the committee in his most recent call with the Foreign and Expatriates Minister on 30/8/2013, asserting that Syria permitted the committee to move exactly as per the agreement signed by the two sides.
3-The UN itself said time and again that the traces of using any form of toxic gas do not dissipate over time, and the proof of this is that the UN sent the investigation committee 5 months after the Syrian government requested an investigation of Khan al-Assal incident. Therefore, the Syrian government did not delay the investigation committee's access to the alleged attack site, as this occurred within 48 hours of the arrival of UN envoy Angela Kane to Damascus.
4-The Syrian government affirms that Kerry's allegations that the Syrian Army knew about chemical weapons use three days prior to the incident are lies, as proven by the fact that Syria requested the investigation committee to visit al-Baharia area where Syrian Army soldiers were exposed to toxic gas, and the committee met the affected soldiers in the hospital.
5-If the aggression on Syria, as Kerry claims, intends to halt the use of chemical weapons, we would like to remind Kerry and the United States that Syria was the first to propose a draft resolution at the Security Council to make the Middle East free of all forms of weapons of mass destruction, and that the United States was the one who prevented the draft resolution from being passed.
6-Regrarding Kerry's hints which he made to bypass the Security Council under the pretext that the investigation committee isn't responsible for determining who used chemical weapons and that it's task is only to verify that such weapons were used or not, the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry would like to affirm that the committee's tasks were deiced upon by the Security Council, and that the US had pressured the committee to make its authority this limited, something which Kerry, being State Secretary, certainly knows." [...]
John Kerry’s Very Precise Death Toll: Where Does It Come From? [Link]