CBS news reporter Charlie Rose interviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Sunday September 9, 2013.

Philip Hammond praises 'fabulous' arms trade fair in London

Selling weapons abroad is a top priority for the government, Philip Hammond, the UK defence secretary, made clear on Tuesday, praising what he called a "fabulous show" displaying "fantastic kit".

It was the opening day of London Docklands' biennial arms bazaar, the biggest so far with 40 countries, including Russia and Israel, having their own national pavilions, and as many as 1,500 companies offering their wares.

Official guests at the arms show include the governments of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya - countries that need to build up their armed forces after recent conflicts in which Britain has played its part - as well as such traditional arms trade allies as Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

A Belgian writer held hostage for five months in Syria has said that his own rebel captors denied that President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the Ghouta massacre.

Pierre Piccinin said that he and fellow hostage Domenico Quirico, an Italian war reporter, heard their jailers talking about the chemical weapon attack and saying that Assad was not to blame.

Quirico confirmed to La Stampa newspaper that they had eavesdropped such a conversation through a closed door but added that he had no evidence to substantiate what he heard.

Piccinin said the captives became desperate when they heard that the US was planning to launch a punitive attack against the regime over the gas attack in the Damascus suburb.

Following the broadcasting of the images of the massacre in Ghouta, distributed by the Free Syrian Army and relayed by US and French services, Alawite families from Latakia have filed a complaint for murder.

Some of these videos were filmed and posted on Youtube before the events they picture.*

They show children suffocating from a chemical intoxication that can't possibly be sarin gas (the latter provokes yellow drool, not white drool).

The children do not correspond to a sample of the population: they are all almost of the same age and have light hair. They are not accompanied by their grieving families.

They are in fact children who were abducted by jihadists two weeks before in Alawite villages in the surroundings of Latakia, 200km away from Ghouta.

Contrary to the sayings of the Free Syrian Army and the Western services, the only identified victims of the Ghouta massacre are those belonging to families that support the Syrian government. In the videos, the individuals that show outrage against the ''crimes of Bashar el-Assad'' are in reality their killers.

Former US Marine Ken O'Keefe, who renounced his US citizenship in disgust at his country's crimes against humanity, is today an outspoken activist for Truth and Justice, supporting America's victims in the Middle East and elsewhere.

In this snippet from a recent appearance on a Press TV debate, Ken places the warmongering against Syria in the bigger picture.

Full Press TV debate available here

Does the American public have the strength of character to face the fact that the US government stands before the entire world revealed as a collection of war criminals wholie every time that they open their mouth? Will Congress and the American public buy the White House lie that they must support war criminals and liars or "America will lose face"?

The obama regime's lies are so transparent and blatant that the cautious, diplomatic President Putin of Russia lost his patience and stated the fact that we all already know:

John Kerry is a liar. 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 [Kerry] is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad."

When Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent by the criminal bush regime to lie to the UN, Powell and his chief of staff claim that Powell did not know he was lying. It did not occur to the Secretary of State that the White House would send him to the UN to start a war that killed, maimed, and dispossessed millions of Iraqis on the basis of total lies.

Arizona Republican Congressman Matt Salmon told National Review Wednesday that only two of the 500 calls his office has received concerning Syria have supported President Obama's planned attack.

Far more shocking, Maryland Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings told MSNBC's Ed Shultz Wednesday that 99 percent of the calls his office has received also oppose such an attack.

ED SCHULTZ, HOST: But Congressman, how can we assume that the Syrian people are going to say that this is not an act of war, that they only hit us with a few citizen missiles, that they only hit with us 200? I mean, we may not view it as an act of war in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the debate coming up in the House, but who is to say that the Syrian people and the Arab world isn't going to view this as some, you know, cowboy diplomacy that we've taken a shot at them, and it could inflame the entire Arab world against the United States?

CONGRESSMAN ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D-MARYLAND): Well, I got to tell you, Ed, this is the argument, the argument that you're making right now is one that I'm hearing from my constituents. I know Bernie Sanders says most of the calls coming into his office were against this effort. I can tell you 99 percent of the calls coming to my office are against it, and they are citing the types of things that you just said.

Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC's Newsnight programme.

Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.

Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.

But Vice-President Dick Cheney's office rejected the plan, the official said.

The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities.

In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and repatriate its members.

Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had allowed the rebel group to base itself in Iraq, putting it under US power after the invasion.

In a rare moment of diplomatic candor, US Secretary of State John Kerry told a congressional hearing Wednesday that oil sheiks have offered to pay the United States to unseat Bashar al-Assad as Syrian strong man. The surprising admission came in response to congressional pressure on the administration to explain how yet another military operation would be paid for during a period of prolonged budgetary sequestration.

Apparently trying to assuage concerns about billions and billions of taxpayer dollars financing a "punishment strike" that most legislators know in their guts is the opening salvo in another Libyan style war of degrading the Syrian military (while untold numbers of civilians are also killed in the process), Kerry, according to The Washington Post, revealed more than he probably meant to:

Secretary of State John Kerry said at Wednesday's hearing that Arab counties have offered to pay for the entirety of unseating President Bashar al-Assad if the United States took the lead militarily.

"With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes," Kerry said. "They have. That offer is on the table."

Asked by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) about how much those countries would contribute, Kerry said they have offered to pay for all of a full invasion.

"In fact, some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we've done it previously in other places, they'll carry that cost," Kerry said. "That's how dedicated they are at this. That's not in the cards, and nobody's talking about it, but they're talking in serious ways about getting this done."

The conundrum for Kerry is that you can't say "nobody's talking about it" when you've just said that an offer is on the table in case the Syrian conflict becomes a full-fledged Libyan style regime replacement operation.

The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation. The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6). Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA. It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.

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.