Pepe Escobar is the roving reporter for Asia Times. He really roves, and he knows knows many of the languages. He was the first, and perhaps the only, reporter to note the possible assassination of Dubya Bush's Saudi friend Bandar bin Salton a year ago. Bandar has now reappeared and is an active party to the destablization of Syria. Here Pepe explains in detail why Syria is so coveted by many global power centers. You are not likely to learn this from the mainstream media.

---

Category: Best of the Web

Original Here

---

Pepe Escobar on Pipeline Politics and what was really behind the U.S. wanting to bomb Syria?

 
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hold a press conference on US-Russia reaching an agreement on Syria Weapons. Roving correspondent Pepe Escobar of Asia Times discusses the geopolitical machinations behind what was really behind the developments in Syria. We discuss the possibility of an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline and how the regional players react to such a proposal, and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia's role in the current conflict. GlobalResearchTV

Abby Martin (arguably the best TV newscaster in the world on subjects the mainstream media never tells us but we dearly need to know) interviews George Galloway (described by Paul Craig Roberts as "the only real leader in the entire Western World") on the horrors soon to unfold in Syria and the Middle East and how they will affect us. Don't miss this!

---

http://youtu.be/I6qMCb14K3s
George Galloway: US in Bed w/ al-Qaeda & Christian Leaders Overseeing Destruction of Christian Sites

Published on Sep 6, 2013

Abby Martin speaks with UK Parliament Member, George Galloway, about Syria war propaganda and his upcoming film 'The Killing of Tony Blair'.

LIKE Breaking the Set @ http://fb.me/BreakingTheSet
FOLLOW Abby Martin @ http://twitter.com/AbbyMartin

Two days ago, September 11th, was 40th anniversary of the coup in Chile that overthrew the democratically elected Allende government. This coup has long been known to have been orcestrated by Henry Kissinger, including the murder of a journalist, Charles Horman, who was going to expose the truth that the U.S. already had "boots on the ground." Was it a coincidence, or something more sinister, that on the very day of this anniversary John Kerry was getting advice from Kissinger, the war criminal.

---

  theREALnews                                                                           - Permalink -

What's behind Kerry and Kissinger's meeting? 

Michael Ratner: Despite being from different parties, the meeting between Kerry and Kissinger highlights the consistency of an American foreign policy based on imperialism - September 13, 13

Bio

Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. He and CCR brought the first case challenging the Guantanamo detentions and continue in their efforts to close Guantanamo. He taught at Yale Law School, and Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. His current books include "Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in the Twenty-First Century America," and “ Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder.” NOTE: Mr. Ratner speaks on his own behalf and not for any organization with which he is affiliated.

Fellow Democrats, it's high time to admit to yourselves that Obama is not the "great black hope" you thought you had elected. On a little reflection you will realize that in the past five years he has presided over the imminent collapse of our economy, talked of cutting Social Security while ever increasing military spending, and lied us into senseless foreign wars that have subjected our troops (who we "support" with little ribbon stickers) to grave injury, post traumatic stress syndrome, and death (often at their own hand). Syria in not a threat to continental U.S. ...although it does have Russian missiles capable of sinking ships dispatched to rain cruise missiles on it's towns. So it's high time for Democrats and Republicans who are not brain dead to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and oppose Obama's plan to strike Syria!

---

The rule of zombies: Why Are Obama and Kerry So Desperate to Start a New War? — Paul Craig Roberts

---

September 8, 2013 | Original Here                                               Go here to sign up to receive email notice of this news letter

The rule of zombies

Why Are Obama and Kerry So Desperate to Start a New War?

Paul Craig Roberts

What is the real agenda?

Why is the obama Regime so desperate to commit a war crime despite the warnings delivered to the White House Fool two days ago by the most important countries in the world at the G20 Summit?

What powerful interest is pushing the White House Fool to act outside of law, outside the will of the American people, outside the warnings of the world community?

The obama Regime has admitted, as UK prime minister david cameron had to admit, that no one has any conclusive evidence that the Assad government in Syria used chemical weapons. Nevertheless, obama has sent the despicable john kerry out to convince the public and Congress on the basis of videos that Assad used chemical weapons “against his own people.”

What the videos show are dead and suffering people. The videos do not show who did it. The obama Regime’s case is nonexistent. It rests on nothing that indicates responsibility. The obama Regime’s case is nothing but an unsubstantiated allegation.

What kind of depraved person would take the world to war based on nothing whatsoever but an unsubstantiated allegation?

The world’s two worse liars, obama and kerry, say Assad did it, but they admit that they cannot prove it. It is what they want to believe, because they want it to be true. The lie serves their undeclared agenda.

If obama and kerry were to tell the public the real reasons they want to attack Syria, they would be removed from office.

The entire world is teetering on a war, the consequences of which are unknown, for no other reason than two people, devoid of all integrity who lack the intelligence and humanity to be in high office, are determined to serve a tiny collection of warmongers consisting of the crazed, murderous Israeli government and their Muslim-hating neoconservative agents, who comprise a fifth column inside the obama Regime.

The Russian government has given evidence to the UN that conclusively proves that the al-Nusra, al-Qaeda affiliated invaders are responsible for the attack. There is also conclusive proof that the “rebels” have chemical weapons. In addition, a highly regarded journalist has reported, using direct quotes and the names of al-Nusra fighters, that the chemical weapons were given to al-Nusra by Saudi Arabia without proper handling instructions, and that an accidental explosion occurred before al-Nusra could use the Saudi-supplied weapons to frame-up the Assad government.

However the deaths were caused, they are unfortunate, but no more so that the deaths that obama has caused in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Syria. The proven deaths for which obama is responsible are many times the unproven deaths that obama attributes without evidence to Assad.

The indisputable fact is that Syrian deaths occur only because Washington initiated the invasion of Syria by external forces similar to the ones that Washington used against Libya. However the deaths occurred, the deaths are the doings of the criminal obama Regime. Without the criminal obama Regime seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government, there would be no deaths by chemical weapons or by any other means. This was a war initiated by Washington, Israel, Israel’s neoconservative fifth column inside America and the White House, and the captive western media that is bought and paid for by the Israel Lobby.

Assad did not start the war. The Syrian government was attacked by outside forces sent in by Washington and Israel.

Assad has much higher public support in Syria than obama has in the US, or cameron has in the UK, or hollande has in France, or merkel has in Germany, or netanyahu has in Israel.

The White House Fool keeps repeating his nonsensical statement, as if the Fool is a wound-up talking doll, that Assad’s unproven “use of chemical weapons is a threat to global security.”

Dear reader, who besides the White House Fool is so unbelievably stupid as to believe that Syria is a threat to world security?

If Syria is a “threat to world security,” like Iraq was a “threat to world security,” like Iran is alleged to be a “threat to world security,” what kind of superpower is the United States? How low does the IQ have to be, how mentally impaired does the public have to be to fall for these absurd hysterical allegations?

Let’s turn obama’s claim upon the Fool. Why isn’t it a threat to global security for obama to attack Syria? There is no authority for obama to attack Syria just because he wants to and just because he has demonized Assad with endless lies and just because obama is the total puppet of the crazed Israeli government and his neoconservative national security advisor, in effect an Israeli agent, and just because the Ministry of Propaganda, including NPR, repeats every obama lie as if it were the truth.

Isn’t it a threat to international security when a superpower can, acting on a whim, demonize a leader and a country and unleash mass destruction, as the US has done seven times in the past twelve years,? There are millions of innocent but demonized victims of the “indispensable, exceptional USA,” the “light unto the world.”

Forget about the US media, which is nothing but a propaganda ministry for the Israel Lobby. What the members of Congress and what the American people need to ask obama is why does the White House only represent the Israel Lobby?

No one supports an attack on Syria but the Israel Lobby.

Why is obama going to add yet another war crime to Washington’s 12-year record? Wasn’t it enough to destroy the lives and prospects of millions of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Egypt? Why kill and destroy the life prospects of yet more millions of people in Syria and other countries into which obama’s war could spread?

Maybe the answer is that obama, kerry, and the crazed netanyahu and his neoconservative fifth column are zombies.

---

More and more Americans are changing their beliefs regarding whether or not the U.S. should attack Syria, fueled by John Kerry's incessent lying. We must convinvce our Congress persons and Senators that we'll vote them out of office if they support Obama's intention to commence a war of aggression against Syria.

Blogger's Note: In this post I am putting up snippets from the Huff Post having to do with John Kerry's assertions that the forces of Bashar al-Assad were responsible for the murderous chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians in a suburb of Damascus in the presence of UN observers (who were ordered away by the UN before they could judge who was actually responsible.) So where did Kerry get his information? Short answer, he didn't need information because his intention appears to be to lie about everything (see Paul Crag Roberts' assessments here and here). And for some of the best information of what very likely did happen that day in Damascus, go to Pepe Escobar's early expose here.

---

Kerry: Chemical Weapons Used In Syria

Posted: 08/26/2013 3:05 pm EDT | Updated: 08/27/2013 12:49 am EDT

Find original here, including all of the materials I've deleted in order to get to the point quickly.

Update: 5:30 p.m. EST

More from the Associated Press:

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry declared Monday that there was "undeniable" evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack in Syria, toughening the Obama administration's criticism of Bashar Assad's regime and outlining a justification for possible U.S. military action.

Kerry, speaking to reporters at the State Department, said last week's attack was a "moral obscenity" that "should shock the conscience" of the world. Officials said there was very little doubt that the attack was perpetrated by the Syrian government.

"The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable and – despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured – it is undeniable," said Kerry, the highest-ranking U.S. official to confirm the attack in the Damascus suburbs that activists say killed hundreds of people.

"This international norm cannot be violated without consequences," he added.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
-- Joseph Goebbles

---

---

 Emily Swanson

emilys@huffingtonpost.com                                                                                        Find entire column here

 

---

Syria Poll Finds Little American Support For Air Strikes

Posted: 08/28/2013 6:16 pm EDT | Updated: 08/28/2013 7:09 pm EDT

Americans largely oppose any U.S. intervention in Syria's civil war, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll, with only a quarter saying they support air strikes there.

The new poll, conducted after U.S. officials claimed Syria's government killed thousands of civilians with chemical weapons, shows 25 percent of Americans now support air strikes to aid rebels in Syria, while 41 percent said they are opposed. Another 34 percent said that they're not sure.

Support for air strikes has risen since two previous HuffPost/YouGov polls. A poll conducted in April found found that 16 percent of Americans supported air strikes. A poll in June found 19 percent supported air strikes.

A U.S. air attack against Syria appears more likely after Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the U.S. believes a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last week was carried out by the Syrian government. NBC News reported Wednesday that one senior U.S. official expects a strike "within days."

The 59 percent of respondents who said they believe Syria has used chemical weapons against rebels there were about evenly divided on whether the U.S. should conduct air strikes, with 37 percent in support and 38 percent opposed. Twenty-six percent were unsure. The June HuffPost/YouGov poll found that a plurality of those who believed Syria has used chemical weapons were opposed to air strikes, 49 percent to 29 percent.

Respondents to the latest poll were divided over whether the U.S. has a responsibility to prevent the Syrian government from using chemical weapons. Thirty-one percent said it does, 38 percent said it does not, and 31 percent said that they were unsure.

Two other options for intervening in the Syrian conflict were even less popular than air strikes. Sending U.S, troops to aid the rebels was opposed by a 65 percent to 11 percent majority of respondents, while providing weapons to rebels was opposed by a 49 percent to 13 percent plurality.

The White House said in June that it would begin sending arms to some rebel groups.

Other recent polls have also shown little American appetite for intervention. A recent Ipsos-Reuters poll found a 60 percent to 9 percent majority of Americans saying that the U.S. should not intervene in the conflict, although that poll did not test support for specific ways of intervening. In that poll, a 46 percent to 25 percent plurality of respondents said that the U.S. shouldn't intervene, even if the Syrian government has used chemical weapons.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted Aug. 26 and Aug. 27 among 1,000 adults using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.

The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov's nationally representative opinion polling.

---

Blogger's note: Clearly the Huff Post readers are more educated and better informed than the typical American.  So if the mainstream (aka presstitute) media continues to forcefully advocate for U.S. intervention in Syria, those red bars in the polls above that favor intervention could grow to a point where members of Congress and Senators might feel that their seats would be secure if they agree to a U.S. attack on Syria.  So we must do all we can to make them nervous. However, I wonder if YouGov has anything to do with the U.S. Gov[ernment]. Rigging elections hasn't been beneath our government, so why not rigging public opinion?

If this poll holds up, U.S. Congress persons and Senators will not give Obama license to attack Syria. But, hold on! What if the presstitute media should begin to rig the polling?

---

New Poll: Only 9% Want US To Attack Syria

Educate! Democracy, Wars and Militarism                                                                                Original Here
By Max Fisher, www.washingtonpost.com
August 26th, 2013

A Syrian woman stands amid the ruins of her house, which was destroyed in an airstrike by government warplanes a few days earlier. (AP Photo/Abdullah al-Yassin, File)

Let’s see whether President Obama cares what the people think in the “greatest democracy on Earth”

New poll: Syria intervention even less popular than Congress

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has finally found something that Americans like even less than Congress: the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Syria. Only 9 percent of respondents said that the Obama administration should intervene militarily in Syria; a RealClearPolitics poll average finds Congress has a 15 percent approval rating, making the country’s most hated political body almost twice as popular.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was taken Aug.19-23, the very same week that horrific reports emerged strongly suggesting that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people, potentially killing hundreds or even thousands of civilians. If there were ever a time that Americans would support some sort of action, you’d think this would be it. But this is the lowest support for intervention since the poll began tracking opinion on the issue. The survey also found that 60 percent oppose intervention outright, with the rest, perhaps sagely, saying that they don’t know.

Strangely, 25 percent said that they support intervention if Assad uses chemical weapons. I say strangely because the United States announced way back in June that it believed Assad had done exactly this. A large share of people who answered that the United States should intervene if Assad uses chemical weapons are apparently unaware that this line has already been crossed. Presumably, some number of these people would drop their support if they realized the question was no longer hypothetical.

The United States certainly appears to be considering limited strikes on Syria in response to last week’s suspected chemical weapons attack. The calculus for and against is complicated enough in foreign policy terms. But the White House is also a political institution, and it will surely keep the domestic politics, which appear to oppose any intervention very strongly, well in mind.

Blogger's Note: The link below was actually appended to this post by its creators. On checking it out I found that it has significant evidence to back up a false-flag theory of who gassed whom and why. While I highly recommend it to conspiracy theorists seeking facts that support their theories, I am not re-posting it here because citizen opinion polls and their possible rigging are my chief concern today.

← Leaked Documents: U.S. Framed Syria in Chemical Weapons Attack  

Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, explains the REAL reason why Obama has been intent on attacking Syria. It is not to destroy chemical weapons but rather to degrade the Syrian military, leading ultimately to "...the overthrow of Assad and getting rid of some of the opposition groups that the United States doesn't want in there." The only lawful international justifications for a war of agression are (1) self defense and (2) a ruling by the UN Security Council. The only national justification under the U.S. Constitution is an affirmative vote of the U.S. Congress. Obama will violate both if he goes forward with his plan.

---

 theREALnews                                                                               Permalink

Fool Me Twice, Shame on US

Michael Ratner: Obama administration asserting the use chemical weapons by Assad feels like deja vu of the lead-up to the Iraq War - August 31, 13

Bio

Michael Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. He is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. He and CCR brought the first case challenging the Guantanamo detentions and continue in their efforts to close Guantanamo. He taught at Yale Law School, and Columbia Law School, and was President of the National Lawyers Guild. His current books include "Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in the Twenty-First Century America," and “ Who Killed Che? How the CIA Got Away With Murder.” NOTE: Mr. Ratner speaks on his own behalf and not for any organization with which he is affiliated.

Hypocrisy of the criminal U.S. government exposed (one more time)

---

Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran
The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history -- and still gave him a hand.

---

BY SHANE HARRIS AND MATTHEW M. AID | AUGUST 26, 2013                                                Original Here

The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.

In 1988, during the waning days of Iraq's war with Iran, the United States learned through satellite imagery that Iran was about to gain a major strategic advantage by exploiting a hole in Iraqi defenses. U.S. intelligence officials conveyed the location of the Iranian troops to Iraq, fully aware that Hussein's military would attack with chemical weapons, including sarin, a lethal nerve agent.

The intelligence included imagery and maps about Iranian troop movements, as well as the locations of Iranian logistics facilities and details about Iranian air defenses. The Iraqis used mustard gas and sarin prior to four major offensives in early 1988 that relied on U.S. satellite imagery, maps, and other intelligence. These attacks helped to tilt the war in Iraq's favor and bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they ensured that the Reagan administration's long-standing policy of securing an Iraqi victory would succeed. But they were also the last in a series of chemical strikes stretching back several years that the Reagan administration knew about and didn't disclose.

U.S. officials have long denied acquiescing to Iraqi chemical attacks, insisting that Hussein's government never announced he was going to use the weapons. But retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was a military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 strikes, paints a different picture.

"The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn't have to. We already knew," he told Foreign Policy.

According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials like Francona, the U.S. had firm evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks beginning in 1983. At the time, Iran was publicly alleging that illegal chemical attacks were carried out on its forces, and was building a case to present to the United Nations. But it lacked the evidence implicating Iraq, much of which was contained in top secret reports and memoranda sent to the most senior intelligence officials in the U.S. government. The CIA declined to comment for this story.

In contrast to today's wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein's widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people. The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted.

In the documents, the CIA said that Iran might not discover persuasive evidence of the weapons' use -- even though the agency possessed it. Also, the agency noted that the Soviet Union had previously used chemical agents in Afghanistan and suffered few repercussions.

It has been previously reported that the United States provided tactical intelligence to Iraq at the same time that officials suspected Hussein would use chemical weapons. But the CIA documents, which sat almost entirely unnoticed in a trove of declassified material at the National Archives in College Park, Md., combined with exclusive interviews with former intelligence officials, reveal new details about the depth of the United States' knowledge of how and when Iraq employed the deadly agents. They show that senior U.S. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks. They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.

Top CIA officials, including the Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, a close friend of President Ronald Reagan, were told about the location of Iraqi chemical weapons assembly plants; that Iraq was desperately trying to make enough mustard agent to keep up with frontline demand from its forces; that Iraq was about to buy equipment from Italy to help speed up production of chemical-packed artillery rounds and bombs; and that Iraq could also use nerve agents on Iranian troops and possibly civilians.

Officials were also warned that Iran might launch retaliatory attacks against U.S. interests in the Middle East, including terrorist strikes, if it believed the United States was complicit in Iraq's chemical warfare campaign.

"As Iraqi attacks continue and intensify the chances increase that Iranian forces will acquire a shell containing mustard agent with Iraqi markings," the CIA reported in a top secret document in November 1983. "Tehran would take such evidence to the U.N. and charge U.S. complicity in violating international law."

At the time, the military attaché's office was following Iraqi preparations for the offensive using satellite reconnaissance imagery, Francona told Foreign Policy. According to a former CIA official, the images showed Iraqi movements of chemical materials to artillery batteries opposite Iranian positions prior to each offensive.

Francona, an experienced Middle East hand and Arabic linguist who served in the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency, said he first became aware of Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Iran in 1984, while serving as air attaché in Amman, Jordan. The information he saw clearly showed that the Iraqis had used Tabun nerve agent (also known as "GA") against Iranian forces in southern Iraq.

The declassified CIA documents show that Casey and other top officials were repeatedly informed about Iraq's chemical attacks and its plans for launching more. "If the Iraqis produce or acquire large new supplies of mustard agent, they almost certainly would use it against Iranian troops and towns near the border," the CIA said in a top secret document.

But it was the express policy of Reagan to ensure an Iraqi victory in the war, whatever the cost.

The CIA noted in one document that the use of nerve agent "could have a significant impact on Iran's human wave tactics, forcing Iran to give up that strategy." Those tactics, which involved Iranian forces swarming against conventionally armed Iraqi positions, had proved decisive in some battles. In March 1984, the CIA reported that Iraq had "begun using nerve agents on the Al Basrah front and likely will be able to employ it in militarily significant quantities by late this fall."

The use of chemical weapons in war is banned under the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which states that parties "will exert every effort to induce other States to accede to the" agreement. Iraq never ratified the protocol; the United States did in 1975. The Chemical Weapons Convention, which bans the production and use of such arms, wasn't passed until 1997, years after the incidents in question.

The initial wave of Iraqi attacks, in 1983, used mustard agent. While generally not fatal, mustard causes severe blistering of the skin and mucus membranes, which can lead to potentially fatal infections, and can cause blindness and upper respiratory disease, while increasing the risk of cancer. The United States wasn't yet providing battlefield intelligence to Iraq when mustard was used. But it also did nothing to assist Iran in its attempts to bring proof of illegal Iraqi chemical attacks to light. Nor did the administration inform the United Nations. The CIA determined that Iran had the capability to bomb the weapons assembly facilities, if only it could find them. The CIA believed it knew the locations.

Hard evidence of the Iraqi chemical attacks came to light in 1984. But that did little to deter Hussein from using the lethal agents, including in strikes against his own people. For as much as the CIA knew about Hussein's use of chemical weapons, officials resisted providing Iraq with intelligence throughout much of the war. The Defense Department had proposed an intelligence-sharing program with the Iraqis in 1986. But according to Francona, it was nixed because the CIA and the State Department viewed Saddam Hussein as "anathema" and his officials as "thugs."

The situation changed in 1987. CIA reconnaissance satellites picked up clear indications that the Iranians were concentrating large numbers of troops and equipment east of the city of Basrah, according to Francona, who was then serving with the Defense Intelligence Agency. What concerned DIA analysts the most was that the satellite imagery showed that the Iranians had discovered a gaping hole in the Iraqi lines southeast of Basrah. The seam had opened up at the junction between the Iraqi III Corps, deployed east of the city, and the Iraqi VII Corps, which was deployed to the southeast of the city in and around the hotly contested Fao Peninsula.

The satellites detected Iranian engineering and bridging units being secretly moved to deployment areas opposite the gap in the Iraqi lines, indicating that this was going to be where the main force of the annual Iranian spring offensive was going to fall, Francona said.

In late 1987, the DIA analysts in Francona's shop in Washington wrote a Top Secret Codeword report partially entitled "At The Gates of Basrah," warning that the Iranian 1988 spring offensive was going to be bigger than all previous spring offensives, and this offensive stood a very good chance of breaking through the Iraqi lines and capturing Basrah. The report warned that if Basrah fell, the Iraqi military would collapse and Iran would win the war.

President Reagan read the report and, according to Francona, wrote a note in the margin addressed to Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci: "An Iranian victory is unacceptable."

Subsequently, a decision was made at the top level of the U.S. government (almost certainly requiring the approval of the National Security Council and the CIA). The DIA was authorized to give the Iraqi intelligence services as much detailed information as was available about the deployments and movements of all Iranian combat units. That included satellite imagery and perhaps some sanitized electronic intelligence. There was a particular focus on the area east of the city of Basrah where the DIA was convinced the next big Iranian offensive would come. The agency also provided data on the locations of key Iranian logistics facilities, and the strength and capabilities of the Iranian air force and air defense system. Francona described much of the information as "targeting packages" suitable for use by the Iraqi air force to destroy these targets.

The sarin attacks then followed.

The nerve agent causes dizziness, respiratory distress, and muscle convulsions, and can lead to death. CIA analysts could not precisely determine the Iranian casualty figures because they lacked access to Iranian officials and documents. But the agency gauged the number of dead as somewhere between "hundreds" and "thousands" in each of the four cases where chemical weapons were used prior to a military offensive. According to the CIA, two-thirds of all chemical weapons ever used by Iraq during its war with Iran were fired or dropped in the last 18 months of the war.

By 1988, U.S. intelligence was flowing freely to Hussein's military. That March, Iraq launched a nerve gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in northern Iraq.

A month later, the Iraqis used aerial bombs and artillery shells filled with sarin against Iranian troop concentrations on the Fao Peninsula southeast of Basrah, helping the Iraqi forces win a major victory and recapture the entire peninsula. The success of the Fao Peninsula offensive also prevented the Iranians from launching their much-anticipated offensive to capture Basrah. According to Francona, Washington was very pleased with the result because the Iranians never got a chance to launch their offensive.

The level of insight into Iraq's chemical weapons program stands in marked contrast to the flawed assessments, provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies about Iraq's program prior to the United States' invasion in 2003. Back then, American intelligence had better access to the region and could send officials out to assess the damage.

Francona visited the Fao Peninsula shortly after it had been captured by the Iraqis. He found the battlefield littered with hundreds of used injectors once filled with atropine, the drug commonly used to treat sarin's lethal effects. Francona scooped up a few of the injectors and brought them back to Baghdad -- proof that the Iraqis had used sarin on the Fao Peninsula.

In the ensuing months, Francona reported, the Iraqis used sarin in massive quantities three more times in conjunction with massed artillery fire and smoke to disguise the use of nerve agents. Each offensive was hugely successful, in large part because of the increasingly sophisticated use of mass quantities of nerve agents. The last of these attacks, called the Blessed Ramadan Offensive, was launched by the Iraqis in April 1988 and involved the largest use of sarin nerve agent employed by the Iraqis to date. For a quarter-century, no chemical attack came close to the scale of Saddam's unconventional assaults. Until, perhaps, the strikes last week outside of Damascus.

Click here to read the recently declassified CIA files.