Something just isn't adding up for me re the Syrian embassies...

[dave123williams]

When I see the administration ramping up war rhetoric again, while there's simultaneously embassies on fire in Damascus (wow, what a wild co-inky-dink) I'm of the suspicion that our present administration, who have made their bones playing on fear, might have had something to do with it.

Covert operatives? Where might we as a country have used them before?

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

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

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

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871138549/002-6161523-2644821?v=glance&n=283155

(This one's quite interesting)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Services_Intelligence

...and that's just off the top of my head. Our history of protecting our dimly percieved national interests worldwide is long, and dirty. It's also OK with me, because it's just a simple truism that the modern nation-state will play hardball in this manner. We do it, the Soviets did it - nearly everybody who can do it does it. That doesn't mean that it's not shortsighted, and it sure doesn't make it right. It's just the way of the world, unfortunate as that is. I'd posit the idea that covert ops don't have a significant impact on the course of world events is fatuous bordering on puerile.

What concerns me, why I posted this thread in the first place, is that people burning embassies to the ground over an editorial cartoon just doesn't add up.

Here's what I fear:

Bushco, well, they want a piece of Iran; we all know it. How strangely convenient that the day the Iranians kick the IAEA out of their country there's angry, religion-fueled riots in Damascus. I mean, while Hussein did everything he could to keep inspections going - the Iranians seem to be giving us the finger. And...for Christ-sakes...Syria is a police-state; there's no violent public assembly there unless it's sanctioned.

Bush & Co., well, they appear to want war without end, because it means *power* without end. The rationale is spreading democracy and freedom, but that's just rhetoric - the concrete action taken as the result of the rhetoric involves a lot of, ummmm...ugliness.

Oh, it also involves OUR the Federal Government underwriting another $120 billion in largely un-accounted military expenditures this year alone, and just for Iraq.

Iran would be a boatload more slop from the trough; and fuck the consequences. You'd be a fool and a terrorist to suggest American foreign policy is currently a rudderless, burning hulk.

This whole thing *could* really just be spontaneous demonstrations by a lot of people who are just pissed about what they think is blasphemy. The other possibility is that they're being deliberately whipped in to a frenzy to get Americans scared, and ready to fight.

Which is more likely?

We'll soon see.

</rant>

[tocqueville]

1. I don't think it's the US or another western agency behind the

Syrian display. It's on such a scale that it would mean that the Baath party has lost control and even if they have backed out of Lebanon, they are still in charge. Or is the US playing with fire and backing the Hamas in Syria ? not likely...

I believe more in an Iranian agenda wanting to mobilize masses ahead of probable strikes. To show a display of force, make more difficult for the West to uses bases in Jordan, Turkey, even in the Gulf.

But I agree that that the whole thing is orchestrated and you don't have to wear a tinfoil hat to see that...

[QC]

2. A useful concept....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

[dave123williams]

3. Agreed, but I also trust my gut - something's out of whack on this one.

...I don't often get 'tinfoil' about this kind of thing, but something's bugging the hell out of me about this particular news item.

[Marie26]

8. I feel the same way

And I'm usually the one quoting Occam's Razor at people. Something is seriously, seriously off about this & I wish I was smart enough to figure it out. But I'll have to resort to metaphor. It feels like a marionette show, w/someone in the background making all the figures dance. And all of us are being pulled into place for some sort of finale. Thanks for your post - but hopefully we're all just overanalyzing this.

[neweurope]

4. I agree that people are being deliberately whipped into a frenzy

to get Americans ready to fight. But not only Americans - this one in my opinion is aimed much more at us Europeans. Something somebody posted here yesterday or the day before about a muslim demonstration in Great Britain made me think. Seems like there was quite a normal demonstration - and then arrived a large group of people with really hateful, dangerous signs all written in the same handwriting. "Republicans abroad" are very, very busy these days. Very busy indeed. And have you noticed how many new posters arrived here on DU solely to defend those disgusting cartoons? Same on a German board I know. Don't tell be there isn't a plan behind this. And the time I apologized for my tinfoil hat is past.

I am very, very scared of the future. Even most of us - here on DU and people we like and respect, neighbours, friends, relatives - will fall for the lies eventually. The future looks very dark.


------------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Yes, this whole 'crisis'

reeks of BushCo manipulation.

[izzie]

6. Interesting thinking. What do the protests show?

I would think if they are moving in with pre-printed signs some thing is up. Also if this was done, the cartoons, in Oct. why is it going on now just as Bush's polls are down and Iraq is doing odd things and Congress is being asked for Billions for the military? Since I have stopped thinking my own govt. is really telling me any thing right any more I tend to think some thing is up. It is a thing that has happened through out history, going nuts over some religious thing, so is it all being feed for some really bad reason? I also think that these cartoons have been on the internet for months but were so unimportant that they did not ring a bell. So for some reason they became important. Can Denmark have held these cartoons under cover since Oct. with their free press?

[malaise]

7. You're a thinking person

Chaos is what they want.

[stillcool]

9. Steve Kangas....the investigative reporter....

found suicided in the bathroom of a Scaife office building wrote:

The ironic thing about all this intervention is that it frequently fails to achieve American objectives. Often the newly installed dictator grows comfortable with the security apparatus the CIA has built for him. He becomes an expert at running a police state. And because the dictator knows he cannot be overthrown, he becomes independent and defiant of Washington's will. The CIA then finds it cannot overthrow him, because the police and military are under the dictator's control, afraid to cooperate with American spies for fear of torture and execution. The only two options for the U.S at this point are impotence or war. Examples of this "boomerang effect" include the Shah of Iran, General Noriega and Saddam Hussein. The boomerang effect also explains why the CIA has proven highly successful at overthrowing democracies, but a wretched failure at overthrowing dictatorships.

http://www.aliveness.com/kangaroo/CIAtimeline.html

[dave123williams]

10. 'Wretched failure' - that about sums it up for me.

[Taxloss]

11. Oh, rubbish.

These violent protests are being stirred up for political ends all right, but the beneficiaries are the Arab States, who are letting their populations blow off steam that might otherwise be pointed at the elitist autocracies that run the Arab world.

The Arab powers are orchestrating this, not the USA or Europe. Links:

A front-page report from the UK Guardian, "Rioting with well-planned spontaneity":

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1703506,00.html

From today's UK Independent, "Authorities backed Damascus riots, say protesters":

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article343457.ece

And from yesterday's Independent, "Muslim anger is out of all proportion: being angry does not make you right":

http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/joan_smith/article343238.ece

[LoZoccolo]

12. Twelve features of conspiracy theories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Features

Remember that you would likely discount a theory promoting another worldview on these same grounds.

[Tulum_Moon]

13. This whole thing stinks

Stinks with the smell of bush and his henchmen. These pukes have a very long reach and I put nothing past them. They do scare me!:scared: