Us Plans To Overthrow Syria
Anti-Bomb
Join Date: 2003-08-09 Member: 19280Members
Join Date: 2003-08-09 Member: 19280Members
<div class="IPBDescription">secret plans revealed</div> <a href='http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/oct2003/syri-o06.shtml' target='_blank'>WSWS</a>
doh sorry i knew i forgot something.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->It is hardly surprising that the US vetoed, and Britain abstained from, the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s recent threat to murder Yasser Arafat. Recently published papers show that assassinations have been part of the US and Britain’s foreign policy operations in the Middle East.
An article in the Guardian newspaper on Saturday, September 27, outlined plans by America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 security forces to overthrow the Syrian government, which was increasingly orientating towards Moscow, and assassinate three of its key leaders. The plan had received approval from the very top of the political establishment: US president Dwight Eisenhower and British prime minister Harold Macmillan.
One important difference between the 1957 plan and Israel’s recent declaration should be noted: the former was kept closely under wraps and known to only a select few, not announced publicly, and without fear of international censure as with Israel deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert’s threat to Arafat.
Disclosure of the 1957 paper does provide an opportunity to review the role of US and British imperialism in the Middle East.
The US and Britain’s covert intervention in Syria to secure control of the region’s oil was only one of numerous such operations in the Middle East in the 1950s. Throughout the postwar period, London and Washington had sought to undermine popular nationalist governments in the Middle East that threatened their strategic and economic interests:
* The US and Britain had organised the overthrow of the nationalist Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953.
* Britain had attempted several times to assassinate President Nasser of Egypt, who had ejected the British military base, nationalised the Suez Canal, and secured aid from the Soviet Union to build the Aswan High Dam.
* Britain, France and Israel had invaded Egypt in 1956 in an attempt to seize the Canal, overthrow Nasser, and install a more pliant regime.
While the US, which was determined to replace Britain as the dominant power in the Middle East, forced the British and French to pull out of Egypt, it nevertheless joined the Anglo-French economic blockade of the country. Thus, the Suez war discredited all the Western imperialist powers and drove Egypt and other Arab regimes closer to Moscow.
In March 1957, the US Congress passed what became known as the “Eisenhower Doctrine,” which named “international communism” as the greatest threat to the region and promised financial help to any country that tried to resist it. It authorised the president to send US troops to any Middle East country that asked for help against “communist aggression.”
When a power struggle broke out a few weeks later in Jordan between King Hussein and his pro-Nasser government, which sought to establish diplomatic links with the Soviet Union, the US despatched the Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean in a show of support and helped Hussein to overthrow his own government. In Lebanon, the US embassy and the CIA gave assistance to the fascistic pro-Chamoun forces in the parliamentary elections.
Although Syria itself had little oil, as the centre of Arab nationalism it played a key political role in the region and controlled the West’s access to Iraq’s northern oilfields: the pipeline transporting Iraq’s oil to Turkey and the Mediterranean flowed through Syria. It would have no truck with the Baghdad Pact, the alliance of pro-Western states in the Middle East against the Soviet Union, and had refused to accept the Eisenhower Doctrine.
In August 1957, at the height of the Cold War, Syria signed an agreement with Moscow for military and economic aid, recognised China, and appointed Afif al-Bizri, an officer with Stalinist sympathies, as the armed forces’ chief of staff.
The Baghdad Pact countries, at a meeting in Ankara attended by senior State Department official Loy Henderson, agreed that “the present regime in Syria had to go; otherwise the takeover by the Communists would be complete.” The Soviet Union warned the West against intervening in Syria as Turkish troops massed along the border with Syria, generating a huge international crisis.
It has long been known that the US and British governments were actively plotting a regime change to prevent Syria falling within Moscow’s sphere of influence. But the full extent of the skullduggery and the fact that it included assassinations were not known.
Now the Guardian article provides documentary evidence of the conspiracy. It cites a report, found by Matthew Jones, a specialist in British and US postwar foreign policy at the University of London, in the private papers of Duncan Sandys, Macmillan’s defence secretary, setting out the nuts and bolts of the plan, including the proposed assassinations.
The document was drawn up in Washington by the top echelons of the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), as MI6 was then called. It shows that they planned to use agents provocateurs to launch a series of incidents. These events would create political turmoil to provide a pretext by Syria’s pro-Western neighbours to mount an invasion in support of the government’s right-wing opponents. A key element of the plan was to assassinate three leading figures: Abd al-Hamid, head of Syrian military intelligence, Afif al-Bizri, the pro-Soviet chief of staff, and Khalid Bakdash, leader of the Syrian Communist Party.
The report was quite plain. It stated, “In order to facilitate the action of liberative forces, reduce the capabilities of the Syrian regime to organise and direct its military actions, to hold losses and destruction to a minimum, and to bring about desired action in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. The removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of the circumstances existing at the time” [emphasis added].
“Once a political decision is reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS [MI6] will attempt, to mount minor sabotage and coup de main incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.
“The two services should consult, as appropriate, to avoid overlapping or interfering with each other’s activities... Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus; the operation should not be overdone; and to the extent possible care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.”
According to the Guardian, once the general climate of fear had been created, they would stage frontier incidents and border clashes to provide a pretext for Iraq and Jordan, then under British tutelage, to invade. Syria had to be “made to appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments,” the report said.
It went on to say, “CIA and SIS should use their capabilities in both the psychological and action fields to augment tension”. In other words, they should organise “sabotage, national conspiracies and various strong arm activities” in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, responsibility for which were to be attributed to Damascus. These were operations in which the special political action section of the SIS specialised during the 1940s and 1950s, before it supposedly became a purely intelligence-gathering agency.
A “Free Syria Committee” should be funded and “political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” in Syria should be armed. The CIA and MI6 should stir up trouble and encourage uprisings against the government by the Druze minority in the south and the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus. They should help to free political prisoners in the notorious Mezza prison.
The aim was to replace the government that had the backing of both the Baathists and Moscow with one that was pro-Western. Such a regime would, the report recognised, be unpopular and “would probably need to rely first upon repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power”.
In the event, the plan came to nothing. Faced with the possibility of Turkey invoking the Eisenhower Doctrine and calling for US support against Syria, Egypt’s president Nasser railed against the US and its lackeys in the Arab world, particularly Iraq and Jordan, and despatched a small military contingent to Syria. This had the desired effect. Nasser was seen as the defender of Arab nationalism, while the Jordanian and Iraqi governments were widely reviled as craven supporters of Western imperialism at the expense of their own people.
With popular opinion vehemently against them, the pro-imperialist governments were forced to do an about-face to save their political skins. The Jordanian foreign minister denied that it had ever been Jordan’s intention to interfere in Syria’s domestic affairs, while Nuri al-Said, the Iraqi prime minister, lied and said there was “complete understanding with the Syrian President.” The Saudi king urged Eisenhower to proceed with caution and moderation.
Without political cover from the Arab regimes, a Turkish invasion of Syria would have been unacceptable, so the CIA-MI6 plans fell apart.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
doh sorry i knew i forgot something.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->It is hardly surprising that the US vetoed, and Britain abstained from, the United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s recent threat to murder Yasser Arafat. Recently published papers show that assassinations have been part of the US and Britain’s foreign policy operations in the Middle East.
An article in the Guardian newspaper on Saturday, September 27, outlined plans by America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 security forces to overthrow the Syrian government, which was increasingly orientating towards Moscow, and assassinate three of its key leaders. The plan had received approval from the very top of the political establishment: US president Dwight Eisenhower and British prime minister Harold Macmillan.
One important difference between the 1957 plan and Israel’s recent declaration should be noted: the former was kept closely under wraps and known to only a select few, not announced publicly, and without fear of international censure as with Israel deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert’s threat to Arafat.
Disclosure of the 1957 paper does provide an opportunity to review the role of US and British imperialism in the Middle East.
The US and Britain’s covert intervention in Syria to secure control of the region’s oil was only one of numerous such operations in the Middle East in the 1950s. Throughout the postwar period, London and Washington had sought to undermine popular nationalist governments in the Middle East that threatened their strategic and economic interests:
* The US and Britain had organised the overthrow of the nationalist Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953.
* Britain had attempted several times to assassinate President Nasser of Egypt, who had ejected the British military base, nationalised the Suez Canal, and secured aid from the Soviet Union to build the Aswan High Dam.
* Britain, France and Israel had invaded Egypt in 1956 in an attempt to seize the Canal, overthrow Nasser, and install a more pliant regime.
While the US, which was determined to replace Britain as the dominant power in the Middle East, forced the British and French to pull out of Egypt, it nevertheless joined the Anglo-French economic blockade of the country. Thus, the Suez war discredited all the Western imperialist powers and drove Egypt and other Arab regimes closer to Moscow.
In March 1957, the US Congress passed what became known as the “Eisenhower Doctrine,” which named “international communism” as the greatest threat to the region and promised financial help to any country that tried to resist it. It authorised the president to send US troops to any Middle East country that asked for help against “communist aggression.”
When a power struggle broke out a few weeks later in Jordan between King Hussein and his pro-Nasser government, which sought to establish diplomatic links with the Soviet Union, the US despatched the Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean in a show of support and helped Hussein to overthrow his own government. In Lebanon, the US embassy and the CIA gave assistance to the fascistic pro-Chamoun forces in the parliamentary elections.
Although Syria itself had little oil, as the centre of Arab nationalism it played a key political role in the region and controlled the West’s access to Iraq’s northern oilfields: the pipeline transporting Iraq’s oil to Turkey and the Mediterranean flowed through Syria. It would have no truck with the Baghdad Pact, the alliance of pro-Western states in the Middle East against the Soviet Union, and had refused to accept the Eisenhower Doctrine.
In August 1957, at the height of the Cold War, Syria signed an agreement with Moscow for military and economic aid, recognised China, and appointed Afif al-Bizri, an officer with Stalinist sympathies, as the armed forces’ chief of staff.
The Baghdad Pact countries, at a meeting in Ankara attended by senior State Department official Loy Henderson, agreed that “the present regime in Syria had to go; otherwise the takeover by the Communists would be complete.” The Soviet Union warned the West against intervening in Syria as Turkish troops massed along the border with Syria, generating a huge international crisis.
It has long been known that the US and British governments were actively plotting a regime change to prevent Syria falling within Moscow’s sphere of influence. But the full extent of the skullduggery and the fact that it included assassinations were not known.
Now the Guardian article provides documentary evidence of the conspiracy. It cites a report, found by Matthew Jones, a specialist in British and US postwar foreign policy at the University of London, in the private papers of Duncan Sandys, Macmillan’s defence secretary, setting out the nuts and bolts of the plan, including the proposed assassinations.
The document was drawn up in Washington by the top echelons of the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), as MI6 was then called. It shows that they planned to use agents provocateurs to launch a series of incidents. These events would create political turmoil to provide a pretext by Syria’s pro-Western neighbours to mount an invasion in support of the government’s right-wing opponents. A key element of the plan was to assassinate three leading figures: Abd al-Hamid, head of Syrian military intelligence, Afif al-Bizri, the pro-Soviet chief of staff, and Khalid Bakdash, leader of the Syrian Communist Party.
The report was quite plain. It stated, “In order to facilitate the action of liberative forces, reduce the capabilities of the Syrian regime to organise and direct its military actions, to hold losses and destruction to a minimum, and to bring about desired action in the shortest possible time, a special effort should be made to eliminate certain key individuals. The removal should be accomplished early in the course of the uprising and intervention and in the light of the circumstances existing at the time” [emphasis added].
“Once a political decision is reached to proceed with internal disturbances in Syria, CIA is prepared, and SIS [MI6] will attempt, to mount minor sabotage and coup de main incidents within Syria, working through contacts with individuals.
“The two services should consult, as appropriate, to avoid overlapping or interfering with each other’s activities... Incidents should not be concentrated in Damascus; the operation should not be overdone; and to the extent possible care should be taken to avoid causing key leaders of the Syrian regime to take additional personal protection measures.”
According to the Guardian, once the general climate of fear had been created, they would stage frontier incidents and border clashes to provide a pretext for Iraq and Jordan, then under British tutelage, to invade. Syria had to be “made to appear as the sponsor of plots, sabotage and violence directed against neighbouring governments,” the report said.
It went on to say, “CIA and SIS should use their capabilities in both the psychological and action fields to augment tension”. In other words, they should organise “sabotage, national conspiracies and various strong arm activities” in Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, responsibility for which were to be attributed to Damascus. These were operations in which the special political action section of the SIS specialised during the 1940s and 1950s, before it supposedly became a purely intelligence-gathering agency.
A “Free Syria Committee” should be funded and “political factions with paramilitary or other actionist capabilities” in Syria should be armed. The CIA and MI6 should stir up trouble and encourage uprisings against the government by the Druze minority in the south and the Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus. They should help to free political prisoners in the notorious Mezza prison.
The aim was to replace the government that had the backing of both the Baathists and Moscow with one that was pro-Western. Such a regime would, the report recognised, be unpopular and “would probably need to rely first upon repressive measures and arbitrary exercise of power”.
In the event, the plan came to nothing. Faced with the possibility of Turkey invoking the Eisenhower Doctrine and calling for US support against Syria, Egypt’s president Nasser railed against the US and its lackeys in the Arab world, particularly Iraq and Jordan, and despatched a small military contingent to Syria. This had the desired effect. Nasser was seen as the defender of Arab nationalism, while the Jordanian and Iraqi governments were widely reviled as craven supporters of Western imperialism at the expense of their own people.
With popular opinion vehemently against them, the pro-imperialist governments were forced to do an about-face to save their political skins. The Jordanian foreign minister denied that it had ever been Jordan’s intention to interfere in Syria’s domestic affairs, while Nuri al-Said, the Iraqi prime minister, lied and said there was “complete understanding with the Syrian President.” The Saudi king urged Eisenhower to proceed with caution and moderation.
Without political cover from the Arab regimes, a Turkish invasion of Syria would have been unacceptable, so the CIA-MI6 plans fell apart.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Comments
D;
Also the issue that it wasn't revealed till now, it's been 40+ years why wait till now?
Even today, thousands of contingency plans are drawn up for both covert and overt action against other nations. I'm sure there's still hundreds, if not thousands of plans in the pentagon for the bombing of Russia by SAC and the launch of ICBM's by NORAD. Contingency planning is nothing new or surprising. I'm sure there are plenty of plans for things like an invasion of Syria, military response to a Saudi insurrection, military response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, etc.
The reason such things aren't revealed until 40-50 years later is because there are names in those documents. Those people can become targets to be killed or kidnapped and pumped for information. Surely you've heard about the leaking of a CIA agent name by the White House recently. There's a big uproar about that because it puts intelligence agents at risk.
<!--emo&???--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/confused.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='confused.gif'><!--endemo-->
<sarcasm>Yes, because its just so much easier to overthrow a government then deal with them politically.</sarcasm> Especially when you have trouble pronouncing 3-sylable words.
Alright, just ignore the jab at bush, I don't want to start a flamewar in the middle of the beginings of annother perfectly good flamewar...
Alright, just ignore the jab at bush, I don't want to start a flame war in the middle of the beginings of annother perfectly good flamewar... <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
as a republican, i'm still honor bound to agree with you. his speaking abilities are dismal, and the man can't even use a teleprompter properly, let alone notecards. as someone that did competetive public speaking on a state level in Texas, I can honestly say I've seen Texan teenagers that far outstrip Bush's speaking ability, and they're not even running for president (as Bush will be again soon).... yet <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
*claps hands <i>slowly in a sarcastic way</i>*
Re: Syria I don't really know what's going to happen there. Israel's recent strike could be the spark that ignites a regional conflict, something that I'm not really keen on seeing happen. Whether or not Syria is actually harboring terrorists is another matter; neither side can be considered trustworthy in this regard. I'm more inclined to think that if there are terrorist groups inside Syria, they're not there with the Syrian government's support. Bear in mind too that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Take the northern alliance in Afghanistan; these blokes arn't contenders for the Nobel Peace Prize, but they're seen as ok because they fought with the US. Yet the acts they committed were undoubtably terrorist in nature. Thus it depends very much on one's viewpoint.
The article posted is another of those tired Socialist articles that essentially preach to the converted. It didn't really impress me, and I'm left-wing <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
Its really hard to claim objectivity when you quote any American Government Official as "snarling" <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
EDIT
Could someone explain to me why the socialists really dont like Israel? If its not on topic then a pm would be great. I understand the anti Americanism, but why hate Israel?
*claps hands <i>slowly in a sarcastic way</i>* <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
i didn't say i didn't like him. i said his speaking abilities were lacking. his FoPo is fairly determined, which is respectable to a point, but his domestic policy is abhorrent. and yes, I actually am a Texan, a republican, <i>and somewhat of a liberal</i>. thanks for the sarcasm though.
Although based on the 'evidence' of this topic, someone should post up Germany's plans to invade the Soviet Union from 1941 and use that as proof that Germany is about to attack Moscow next week.
I mean its not like one of Germanys 'allies' just attacked russia...
does this topic have to revolve around the opening article, or can we talk about things that happen today aswell?
like the repeated hints that syria is next in the so called war on terror etc...
<a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2948999.stm' target='_blank'>Syria and the US</a>
<a href='http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2492591.stm' target='_blank'>Syria refuses to close Palestinian Islamic Jihad offices</a>
Even if Syria weren't actively supporting those groups, they're certainly giving them the freedom to do as they wish. Terror groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas, as well as Hezbollah, can freely plan and execute attacks from the relative safety of Syria. And when Israel should decide to bomb one of the training camps located in Syria, as they recently did, Syria can run to the UN and demand that Israel be condemned for bombing inside Syrian territory.
Although based on the 'evidence' of this topic, someone should post up Germany's plans to invade the Soviet Union from 1941 and use that as proof that Germany is about to attack Moscow next week. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's alot different because Germany has no reason to attack Moscow while Syria is a safe haven for Arab Fundamentalists that attack US troops.
Pwned.
Why can't we just keep articles current? This one is obviously out of date and, therefore, invalid. Not to mention that it's from a socialist site which makes it a very biased article.