PRESS RELEASE

Assad Tells the Truth:
Britain, U.S.A. Supporting al-Qaeda

March 7, 2013 (EIRNS)—Muammar Qaddafi, the subsequently murdered head of Libya, was pooh-poohed when he accused his opponents of being al-Qaeda jihadists. That accusation has since been substantiated in spades through the investigative work of EIR and other agencies, and published in extensive fact sheets circulated in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere. (See EIR's Updated Special Report "Obama's War on America: 9/11 Two," www.larouchepub.com) The same documentation is abundant in the case of the charge made by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a March 3 London Times interview.

In that interview (available at
http://www.sana-syria.com/eng/21/2013/03/03/470326.htm),
Assad calmly blasted the hypocrisy of the Western and Gulf nations, who are funding and arming the opposition against him, noting that such support for mercenaries is actually against international law. We print an excerpt here, from his charges of Western support for al-Qaeda.

"[The British are] saying that they want to send military aid [to the rebels] that they describe as non-lethal. The intelligence, communication, and financial assistance being provided is very lethal. The events of 11th of September were not committed by lethal aids. It was the application of non-lethal technology and training which caused the atrocities.

"The British government wants to send military aid to moderate groups in Syria, knowing all too well that such moderate groups do not exist in Syria; we all know that we are now fighting Al-Qaeda or Jabhat al-Nusra, which is an offshoot of Al-Qaeda, and other groups of people indoctrinated with extreme ideologies. This is beyond hypocritical! What is beyond hypocrisy is when you talk about freedom of expression and ban Syrian TV channels from the European broadcasting satellites; when you shed tears for somebody killed in Syria by terrorist acts while preventing the Security Council from issuing a statement denouncing the suicide bombing that happened last week in Damascus, and you were here, where three hundred Syrians were either killed or injured, including women and children—all of them were civilians. Beyond hypocrisy when you preach about human rights and you go into Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and kill hundreds of thousands in illegal wars. Beyond hypocrisy is when you talk about democracy and your closest allies are the worst autocratic regimes in the world that belong to the medieval centuries. This is hypocrisy!"