Tarpley: US bent on destruction of Middle East countries

Press TV
May 4, 2012

A third explosion rocked Syrian city of Idlib on Monday, hours after twin bomb blasts killed more than 20 people in the northwestern city.

Casualties are feared in the third blast which shook the university neighborhood in Idlib on Monday.

Activists say at least 20 people were killed and dozens of others were injured in twin explosions targeting the Air Force Intelligence headquarters and the Military Intelligence buildings in Idlib earlier in day.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author and historian from Washington, to further explore the issue. What follows is an approximate transcription if the interview.

Press TV: Many point out the situation in Syria and the US involvement in the region in the past year specifically are part of the US plan for a new middle east. Would you agree with that assessment and how would you define the US’ views of a new Middle East?

Tarpley: I think the US strategic role in the Middle East is the destruction of all existing national states. There is an outline for this that has been known for many years as the Bernard Lewis plan.

It has been expressed again by people like Zbigniew Brzezinski. Microstates, mini states, rump states, secessionism, chaos, warlords and NATO feels free to seize whatever assets they think are important, be it oil or water or strategic ports or things like this.

If we just look at what is happening in Syria right now, I think we can say that –the so-called Syrian opposition, these Syrian national council and the terrorists of the free Syrian army– they are politically defeated and their only hope right now is to maintain a constant series of terrorist attacks, bombings, murders; they have had suicide bombings.

This is not a technique of the Syrian army; it is a technique of al-Qaeda. We have just heard, as you say, Idlib near the Turkish border three attacks in one day, coordinated attacks, another hallmark of the al-Qaeda.

So there is no political content here. It is simply a desire to keep something going so that there will be a pretext for foreign forces to intervene and I think that is where we are headed right now.

We have a movie here in the United States called ‘Wag the Dog’ and it is the story of a president who is facing defeat in an election and he looks around and he says how can I get a provocation going? How can I get people’s attention focused on a foreign war, a foreign enemy?

Well, maybe President Sarkozy of France fills the bill this week, as he looks at the coming defeat of his electoral hopes. He is a lame duck president; he seems to be on his way out; may he not mount something. His Foreign Minister [Alain] Juppe, at the end of last week, said it is time now to get serious and get that attack on Syria organized.

The other news of today or of yesterday is the arrival of General [Robert] Mood, the Norwegian NATO general who is supposed to direct these NATO observers. Now this, I would point as the reductio ad absurdum of this entire situation. Here we have a NATO general.

Norway is a NATO state. They are part of that aggressive neocolonialist group of states called NATO. He is now going to be the judge in jury of what is going on in Syria. His brother NATO officers across the border in Turkey are actively sending death squads, weapons, organizing these actions that we see; his brother NATO officers from France have been have been captured in the area of Homs.

So how can General Mood be impartial? We would need to see lots of observers from Russia, from China, from Cuba, from Venezuela, from North Korea, from what the West would call the rogue states. That is the only hope of getting some kind of an honest vision of what is going on in Syria.

Press TV: Dr. Tarpley , I’d like to pick up on a point that you made earlier which was even the Syrian media has drawn parallels between the recent terrorist attacks in Syria and those carried out by al-Qaeda. What do you make of al-Qaeda involvement under what the Syrian government calls ‘US backing’?

Tarpley: Well, al-Qaeda of course is the CIA Arab legion created by the CIA and by MI6 to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan back in 1980 and there are still people running around Washington who had a hand in that.

Robert Gates was Secretary of Defense until just a little while ago; Michael Vickers is going to be the head of the new Defense Clandestine Service. He is a top official in the Pentagon. He was present at the creation back in the 1980s.

So the trick is that these al-Qaeda fighters have been used for example to overthrow the government of Libya and they would then redirect it into Syria. Very interesting fact, this ship that was caught by the Lebanese navy, I believe, off the Coast of Eastern Mediterranean.

It was coming from the NATO puppet state of Libya which has been taken over by precisely these people, loaded to the gills with heavy weapons and this was going to be deliberate to the Syrian death squads and the Syrian rebel coalition.

So this is an example of hypocrisy and double-dealing, I guess, in order to find a comparison we have got to go back to Hitler and the Sudetenland in 1938 where Hitler was actively fomenting terrorism inside the country and then he could turn around and say, ‘oh, I am sorry I have got to intervene’, and he was telling his minions on the ground, ‘do not negotiate, make unreasonable demands, do not come to an agreement because we need an issue; we do not need an agreement; we need a reason to invade’.

That is the NATO posture today.

Press TV: Then I guess the multimillion question here is that who then is going to gain from this? Who stands to benefit?

Tarpley: We are talking about a significant piece of the world and a building bloc for world domination.

Everybody has observed that if Syria falls into chaos, if Syria is wiped off the map and replaced by Kurdish, Alewite and other entities and warlords, then Iran loses an ally, Hezbollah loses its strategic depth, the predicament of the Israelis is made much easier, there are probably hotheads in Istanbul and Ankara who think that they can seize pieces of this right on their way to some kind of new Ottoman Empire.

There are lots and lots of people who would like to carve themselves a piece of Syria. Naturally, I would warn them, especially the Turks that when the US offers Turkey this wonderful perspective of invading Syria, the goal there is to destroy Turkey as well as Syria.