The website of Syria’s news agency SANA is constantly subjected to fierce DDoS (distributed denial of service attacks) and cannot be accessed from here. In the last year the internet has become a bloody battleground with the video site YouTube swamped by rebel videos and hundreds of rebel accounts set up on all social networking sites. Professional commenters (shills) are skimming comment sections of popular news sites to slander Assad and to shout down Syria supporters.
Together with the colluding mass media this allows total message control and is is increasingly difficult to get reliable information from within Syria.
According to the Israeli news agency DEBKAfile, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have substantially stepped up the flow of weapons to the rebels. The supplies are reaching combatants inside Syria as well as the trainees at Turkish and Jordanian military facilities.
The rebel numbers have risen to 50,000 armed men who are efficiently organized in 17 brigades. Fighting inside the country are 260 military units, each consisting of one or two battalions, which mostly range from 1,000 to 1,500 men. By the first week of July, the rebel army had put in place an efficient logistical system.
Regional operational commands are working in most provinces and hi-tech communications equipment connects the provinces and links them to the FSA’s high command in Turkey. A well-organized arms smuggling ring transfers weapons from one command to another as required for local attacks on Syrian military and security forces. This pipeline is fed by Turkish, Saudi and Qatari suppliers via Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey.
Foreign military advisers are posted at each provincial command center. They are usually special forces experts mainly from British, French, Turkish, Saudi, and Qatari armies.
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The efforts to built up a military structure seems to pay off and the rebels have significantly increased the efficiency of their attacks.
FSA fighters have converged on Damascus for a major offensive which they call "Damascus Volcano and Syrian Earthquake" and shortly seized the district of Midan. Most shops in Damascus are closed, the usually crowded boulevards are empty and only few people are outside.
The FSA rebels have also overrun the Abu Kamal/Qaim border post to Iraq and the Bab al-Hawa and Jarablus border posts to Turkey. Eyewitnesses from the Iraqi and Turkish side of the border reported, that the captured Syrian border guards were summarily executed which is corresponding with previous reports that FSA rebels usually execute captured security and army personal on the spot.
A bombing assassination, which bears all the hallmarks of a Mossad or CIA operation, killed defense minister Daoud A. Rajha (the most prominent Christian in the government), his deputy Asef Shawkat, and assistant vice president Hassan Turkmani. Syria's intelligence chief Hisham Bekhtyar died later from his wounds.
Rebel officials told Britain’s Daily Telegraph that there were two bombs -- one hidden in a flower arrangement and one in a chocolate box, which had been smuggled into the meeting days earlier by FSA members working closely with the drivers and bodyguards of the crisis management cell.
This is probably not the real story but it seems likely that this attack has been carried out with the collaboration of regime insiders and it again proves the widely held view that the Syrian intelligence services are corrupt and infiltrated by Mossad.
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Russia and China still stand firm to Syria but the European Union plans to inspect aircraft and ships for violations of the EU arms embargo against Syria, prompting Roman Pukhov, director of Russia’s Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technology to declare: “The EU has no international legal right to inspect aircraft and ships belonging to countries that are not its members, including Russia.
The USA in the meanwhile is bringing more and more forces into the Persian Gulf in a military build-up that the Gulf has not seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The USA already has two aircraft carriers and the accompanying strike groups in the region and plans now to send the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier strike group there.
In April an undisclosed number of F-22 stealth fighters were moved to the Al Dhafra air base in the UAE. In June four Navy minesweeping ships arrived in the Gulf, doubling the Navy's minesweeping force; the Navy has also positioned the USS Ponce in the Gulf, an amphibious assault ship now reconfigured as an "afloat forward staging base.”
Qatar has agreed to host a long-range X-band missile defense radar site, adding to similar sites the United States already operates in Israel and Turkey.
Though the US military build-up at first glance seems to be targeted at Iran, it could be as well used for a military intervention into Syria. The USA and NATO allies will not miss any chance to humiliate Russia and China and will also not be deterred by the looming danger of a military escalation.
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Western leaders, like Wall Street bankers and corporate CEO’s, are by nature high stake gamblers. The reward of this particular gamble in the Middle East could be huge both in military strategic and in economic terms. Petroleum and natural gas are one of Syria's most vital natural resources and would be needed in Europe, water from the Golan Heights and South Lebanon is wanted by Israel.
The destruction of Syria would open the door to Iran, the destruction of Iran would open the door into the South Caucasus and Central Asia, leading to the destabilization of the former Soviet republics and southern Russian provinces with Islamic populations. Saudi Arabia funded terrorists are already active in Ingushetia, Dagestan, and Chechnya.
G.W. Bush was not very bright and thought, that it needs a military invasion and “boots on the ground” to subdue other nations. Barrack Obama is more clever and knows, that the same result can be achieved by arming religious fanatics, gangsters, and desperadoes.
Western leaders are not interested in nation building, they are only interested in resource exploration, which can easily be done in a failed state by bribing warlords and gang leaders. The scheme was first tested in Africa (Somalia, DRC) and is now applied to the Middle East (Libya, Syria). US strategists are confident, that Russia and China will not risk a dangerous escalation and finally give in and that Russia subsequently will break up into smaller and smaller pieces.
It is high stake gambling, and if Russia stands firm this could result in a military confrontation between two or more nuclear armed adversaries.
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