John Pilger

A Vietnamese villager rows his boat through an area of forest
devastated by Agent Orange - 1970

Arriving in a village in southern Vietnam, I caught sight of two children who bore witness to the longest war of the 20th century. Their terrible deformities were familiar. All along the Mekong river, where the forests were petrified and silent, small human mutations lived as best they could.

Today, at the Tu Du paediatrics hospital in Saigon, a former operating theatre is known as the "collection room" and, unofficially, as the "room of horrors". It has shelves of large bottles containing grotesque foetuses. During its invasion of Vietnam, the United States sprayed a defoliant herbicide on vegetation and villages to deny "cover to the enemy". This was Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, poisons of such power that they cause foetal death, miscarriage, chromosomal damage and cancer.

In 1970, a US Senate report revealed that "the US has dumped [on South Vietnam] a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population, including woman and children". The code-name for this weapon of mass destruction, Operation Hades, was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand. Today, an estimated 4.8 million victims of Agent Orange are children

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Stephen Lendman

On June 22, Reuters headlined "Turkish jet downed by Syria air defenses: report," saying:

According to Lebanon's Al-Manar television, "Syrian air defenses shot down a Turkish military aircraft, quoting Syrian security sources."

Reportedly it was an F-4 Phantom fighter bomber. First introduced in 1960, McDonnell Aircraft produced it. It was used extensively during the Vietnam war. More advanced aircraft replaced it long ago. A pilot and navigator were on board. Turkey regularly patrols airspace close to Syria's border.

Al-Manar headlined "Crisis Meeting in Turkey after Losing Contact with Military Jet near Syria," saying:

Turkey's military said it "lost radio contact with one of its aircraft on the Mediterranean near neighboring Syria." At 7:30 GMT, the plane left Malatya airbase. At 8:58GMT, communication was lost "in the southwest of the Hatay province bordering Syria...."

Search and rescue efforts began. It's unconfirmed officially if the plane crashed or was shot down. Its pilot and navigator were reported unharmed. "Malatya governor Ulvi Saran told the Anatolia news agency that it was a F-4 plane with two pilots onboard...." In response to the incident, AFP said Turkey convened a crisis meeting.

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Bill Van Auken

Some of Syria’s “rebels” sit by the side of a street in Qaboun dis-
trict, Damascus June 11, 2012. (Photo: Stringer / Reuters)

CIA agents have been deployed to Turkey to organize the arming of the so-called rebels in Syria seeking the overthrow of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the New York Times reported Thursday.

The report, citing information provided by senior US officials as well as Arab intelligence officers, states that the CIA operatives are directing a massive smuggling operation through which “automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries, including the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and paid for by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.”

The day before the publication of the Times piece, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland reiterated the Obama administration’s public line. “We have repeatedly said that we are not in the business of arming in Syria.” She went on to describe Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari as “deluded” for charging that major foreign powers were backing “armed terrorist groups” in his country and trying to escalate Syria’s crisis into an “explosion” in order to bring about “regime change.”

The Times article only confirms earlier press reports and provides further detail in exposing the same, barely covert, operation directed at fomenting and arming a sectarian civil war in Syria.

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