Larouche Pac

The release of a letter from the Obama White House, solicited by Senators John McCain and Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has put the United States a huge step further on the course toward launching an illegal war against Syria, on the concocted excuse the Assad regime has used chemical weapons against its people. Such a war would play right into the British Empire's intention of setting off a broader World War III, up to and including thermonuclear confrontation of the United States with Russia and China, In the wake of the release, Senator McCain immediately hit the airwaves to brandish the letter, claiming that Obama's "red line" had been crossed, and the U.S. must immediately take military action.

"McCain is mentally over the edge," said Lyndon LaRouche in response to McCain's campaign. "Obviously McCain is not what he once was. He is a formerly leading member of the Senate, whose opinions are no longer to be taken seriously. Some other people, like Senator Levin, might be going along with this thing for their own reasons."

"We're dealing with war," LaRouche continued. "This is a political stunt and should be called for what it is."

The letter issued by Assistant to the President Miguel Rodriguez came following a series of unsubstantiated claims from British, French, and Israeli officials that Syria had employed chemical weapons against the Syrian people. Until the White House letter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and even Secretary of State Kerry and Defense Secretary Hagel, had declared that they could not confirm the reports. Indeed, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey has repeatedly expressed grave concern about the U.S. jumping into the Syrian situation militarily, characterizing the situation as "opaque," and military action as potentially making the situation much worse.

Senator McCain has been a long-term proponent of U.S. military intervention in Syria, including backing the al-Qaeda-linked jihadis dominating the opposition. As such, he has been in alliance with President Obama, and supported his illegal war against Libya. Thus McCain jumped on the White House letter, to rally for that action.

The relevant section of the April 25 White House letter states: "The intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin. This assessment is based in part on physiological samples. Our standard of evidence must build on these intelligence assessments as we seek to establish credible and corroborated facts. For example, the chain of custody is not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and under what conditions. We do believe that any use of chemical weapons in Syria would very likely have originated with the Assad regime."

It should be noted that there have been previous reports from within Syria that the rebel forces, among their barbaric actions, have seized and used chemical weapons. Immediately following the White House letter's release, there appears to have been an intervention by those in agreement with the antiwar efforts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A senior White House official gave a conference call for the media, in which he said: "We are continuing to do further work to establish a definitive judgment as to whether or not the red line has been crossed..."

Reflecting the obvious parallel of this unsubstantiated, and highly dubious charge, with the Tony Blair-originated lies that were used to trigger the 2003 war against Saddam Hussein, the spokesman continued:

"I'd say that given our own history with intelligence assessments, including intelligence assessments related to weapons of mass destruction, it's very important that we are able to establish this with certainty and that we are able to present information that is airtight in a public and credible fashion to underpin all of our decision-making. That is, I think, the threshold that is demanded given how serious this issue is," the official said. "But again, I think nobody should make any mistake about what our red line is... It is absolutely the case that the president's red line is the use of chemical weapons or the transfer of chemical weapons to terrorist groups."

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