U.S. ‘backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad’s regime’

In January 29, 2013, Britain’s most popular Daily Newspaper, in its online version Dailymail.co.uk published an article titled:


U.S. ‘backed plan to launch chemical weapon attack on Syria and blame it on Assad’s regime’
A few days later they pulled the article.


What the reason was for the deletion remains unclear. The article was published at this URL:


dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270219/U-S-planned-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-Syria-blame-Assad.html


There exists a cached version of the article which can be found here:


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270219/U-S-planned-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-Syria-blame-Assad.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://web.archive.org/web/20130129213824/http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270219/U-S-planned-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-Syria-blame-Assad.html


See scan of complete deleted article below:


One day later, on January 30, a moderated news board thread was 
created, which is still online, at Mail Online about that article. “Thread: Syrian WMD False Flag – Are False Flags a way of life now?“
In their initial article Mail Online refers to an Infowars.com 
article (dated January 28, 2013), that’s where they probably found the 
information on the leaked e-mail and other documents.
CapitalBay (who published the wrong areal pictures of the school in Sandy Hook), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270219/U-S-planned-launch-chemical-weapon-attack-Syria-blame-Assad.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mail Online, Infowars, Yahoo News India, News Track India, Whale.to, Philippine Times, Uganda News,LiveLeak, Truth Media TV
and others all claim in their mirrored articles that the alleged e-mail
from Britam’s David Goulding to Philip Doughty was dated December 25, 
2012.
However, at Neftegaz.ru (translated with Google) there also exists another version of the alleged e-mail. There the e-mail is dated December 24, 2012.


Whether the content of the alleged e-mail is correct, that’s open for debate. Fact is that PressTV has an article online which supports the claims in the alleged e-mail. And RT‘s article from last year (June 10, 2012) still claims that “Syrian rebels aim to use chemical weapons,”
to then blame Assad for it. Those weapons came from Libya, according to
RT. This begs the question: Did Christopher Stevens know about those 
weapons when he died in the CIA villa in Benghazi last year?
But why was the article pulled by Mail Online?


Why do there exist at least 2 versions of the same alleged e-mail?


And what about Britam admitting that they were hacked, according to Ruvr.co.uk (The Voice of Russia)?


But there’s also this, according to Mail Online it was a Malaysian 
hacker who got to the alleged e-mail(s), while Infowars claims that the 
e-mail was “obtained by a hacker in Germany.”
Either way, whoever initiated the Britam e-mail escapade did a good 
job at fooling both mainstream and alternative news outlets because it’s
a real mess and few know what really happened and why.
Yet it’s ironic that Mail Online did not delete their other article where they wrote about the UN’s Carla Del Ponte who claims that Syrian rebels are responsible for “sarin gas attacks, which had been blamed on Assad’s troops.” The same rebels who now receive resources from the EU and the U.S., since the EU is buying oil from those “rebels” and the US is arming them for a proxy war as the Washington Post describes it.


Earlier it was reported that Israel had granted oil exploration rights
inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy who’s 
shareholders include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild. See http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2013/02/israel-grants-oil-rights-in-syria-to-murdoch-and-rothschild/ 


source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/deleted-daily-mail-online-article-us-backed-plan-for-chemical-weapon-attack-in-syria-to-be-blamed-on-assad/5339178
Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bc5_1377173676#z5kASk3e68Xzqk26.99 

Cameron and Obama move west closer to intervention in Syria

British prime minister and US president agree that alleged chemical attack 'requires a response'

David Cameron and Barack Obama moved the west closer to military intervention in Syria on Saturday as they agreed that last week's alleged chemical weapon attacks by the Assad regime had taken the crisis into a new phase that merited a "serious response".

In a phone call that lasted 40 minutes, the two leaders are understood to have concluded that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was almost certainly responsible for the assault that is believed to have killed as many as 1,400 people in Damascus in the middle of last week. Cameron was speaking from his holiday in Cornwall.

The prime minister and US president said time was running out for Assad to allow UN weapons inspectors into the areas where the attack took place. Government sources said the two leaders agreed that all options should be kept open, both to end the suffering of the Syrian people and to make clear that the west could not stand by as chemical weapons were used on innocent civilians.

A spokesman for No 10 said: "The prime minister and President Obama are both gravely concerned by the attack that took place in Damascus on Wednesday and the increasing signs that this was a significant chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian regime against its own people. The UN security council has called for immediate access for UN investigators on the ground in Damascus. The fact that President Assad has failed to co-operate with the UN suggests that the regime has something to hide.

"They reiterated that significant use of chemical weapons would merit a serious response from the international community and both have tasked officials to examine all the options. They agreed that it is vital that the world upholds the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons and deters further outrages. They agreed to keep in close contact on the issue."

The dramatic upping of the stakes came after the international medical charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) reported that three hospitals in Damascus had received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms in less than three hours on the morning of Wednesday, 21 August. Of those patients, 355 are reported to have died.

Dr Bart Janssens, MSF's director of operations, said: "Medical staff working in these facilities provided detailed information to MSF doctors regarding large numbers of patients arriving with symptoms including convulsions, excess saliva, pinpoint pupils, blurred vision and respiratory distress."

He said the reported symptoms strongly indicated "mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent. This would constitute a violation of international humanitarian law, which absolutely prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons."

France's foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said on Saturday that "all the information at our disposal converges to indicate that there was a chemical massacre near Damascus and that the [regime of Bashar al-Assad] is responsible".

The foreign secretary, William Hague, said last week that "this is a chemical attack by the Assad regime" and "not something that a humane or civilised world can ignore".

Obama has been reluctant to commit American forces to what has become a bitter and protracted civil war. However, he said last year that use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line" triggering a more robust US response. It was confirmed yesterday that the US navy is deploying an extra missile warship to the eastern Mediterranean ahead of a summit to debate the massacre.

The summit will be held in Jordan's capital, Amman, in the first half of the week as a consensus hardens that the nerve agent sarin was used in the attack in rebel-held east Damascus early on Thursday. Biological samples taken from victims of the attack have been passed to western officials in Jordan after having been smuggled out of Syria over the past 72 hours. Questionnaires have been distributed to officials in the three most affected communities, asking for scientific and environmental details, as well as for organ tissue and clothing worn by victims.

Officials, who have not identified themselves but claim to be part of an international response, have also made phone contact with rebel officials, seeking photographs of the rockets that are thought to have carried the gas.

France, Britain and Turkey have blamed the Syrian regime for the attack, which came as its military forces were advancing into the area.

Syria has continued to deny responsibility as the UN's disarmament chief, Angela Kane, arrived in Damascus to try to negotiate access to the site of the attack for an inspection team that was sent to investigate three earlier alleged attacks. The team has been in the capital for the past six days and has been pressing for permission to make the journey – only a short distance from its hotel.

Rebel groups in the area say that they will guarantee safe passage. However, the Syrian government has not agreed and the UN fears that the journey is unsafe without a negotiated agreement.

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, spoke to Syria's foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, on Thursday, the State Department revealed on Saturday. Kerry told him the Damascus government should have let UN inspectors have access to the site of the alleged gas attack, the department said.

Kerry called "to make clear that if, as they claimed, the Syrian regime has nothing to hide, it should have allowed immediate and unimpeded access to the site rather than continuing to attack the affected area to block access and destroy evidence," a State Department official said.

The chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Martin Dempsey, will travel to Jordan along with the head of the US central command, General Lloyd Austin, and chiefs of staff from Turkey, Britain, France, Qatar, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Italy and Canada.

The addition of a US destroyer takes to four the US Mediterranean flotilla, one more than normal. US defence secretary Chuck Hagel said no decision has been made to use the warships in operations against Syria. Speaking on Friday, officials in Washington said no response to Syria would involve sending troops into the country.

Two of Syria's three main allies, Russia and Iran, have supported calls for a transparent and credible inquiry into the attack. Both accuse rebel groups of having carried out the atrocity. Syrian state television said on Saturday that its forces had found tunnels in rebel areas in which chemicals were stored.

The Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, has remained silent since Thursday. Hezbollah leaders roundly condemned car-bombings of two mosques in Lebanon's second city, Tripoli, one day later, which killed 42 and wounded hundreds. The mosques had been focal points of anti-Assad rhetoric in the largely Sunni north.

Lebanon, an unstable multi-confessional state, has been perennially on edge since the start of the Syrian uprising with occasional flare-ups in violence that threaten to drag it into the chaos consuming its powerful neighbour. The remains of 20 such rockets have been found in the affected areas, activists and local residents say. Many remain mostly intact, suggesting that they did not detonate on impact and potentially dispersed gas before hitting the ground.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/24/syria-cameron-obama-intervention

U.S. naval forces are moving closer to Syria!

US FORCES MOVE CLOSER TO SYRIA AS OPTIONS WEIGHED

BY BRADLEY KLAPPER AND ROBERT BURNS 
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. naval forces are moving closer to Syria as President Barack Obama considers military options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. The president emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war was problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike.

The White House said the president would meet Saturday with his national security team to consider possible next steps by the United States. Officials say once the facts are clear, Obama will make a decision about how to proceed.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to discuss any specific force movements while saying that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria. U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.

U.S. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military action, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.

"The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options - whatever options the president might choose," Hagel told reporters traveling with him to Asia.

Hagel said the U.S. is coordinating with the international community to determine "what exactly did happen" near Damascus earlier this week. According to reports, a chemical attack in a suburb of the capital killed at least 100 people. It would be the most heinous use of chemical weapons since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988.

Hagel left little doubt that he thinks the attack in Syria involved chemical weapons, although he stressed there is not yet a final answer. In discussing the matter, he said, "it appears to be what happened - use of chemical weapons."

The United Nations disarmament chief, Angela Kane, arrived in Damascus on Saturday to press the Syrian government to allow U.N. experts to investigate the alleged chemical attacks.

Obama remained cautious about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al-Qaida. He made no mention of the "red line" of chemical weapons use that he marked out for Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago and that U.S. intelligence says has been breached at least on a small scale several times since.

"If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it - do we have the coalition to make it work?" Obama said Friday. "Those are considerations that we have to take into account."

Obama conceded in an interview on CNN's "New Day" program that the episode is a "big event of grave concern" that requires American attention. He said any large-scale chemical weapons usage would affect "core national interests" of the United States and its allies. But nothing he said signaled a shift toward U.S. action.

U.S. defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss ship movements publicly. But if the U.S. wants to send a message to Assad, the most likely military action would be a Tomahawk missile strike, launched from a ship in the Mediterranean.

For a year now, Obama has threatened to punish Assad's regime if it resorted to its chemical weapons arsenal, among the world's vastest, saying use or even deployment of such weapons of mass destruction constituted a "red line" for him. A U.S. intelligence assessment concluded in June chemical weapons have been used in Syria's civil war, but Washington has taken no military action against Assad's forces.

U.S. officials have instead focused on trying to organize a peace conference between the government and opposition. Obama has authorized weapons deliveries to rebel groups, but none are believed to have been sent so far.

In his first comments on Syria since the alleged chemical attack, Obama said the U.S. is still trying to find out what happened. Hagel said Friday that a determination on the chemical attack should be made swiftly because "there may be another attack coming," although he added that "we don't know" whether that will happen.

After rebels similarly reported chemical attacks in February, U.S. confirmation took more than four months. In this instance, a U.N. chemical weapons team is already on the ground in Syria. Assad's government, then as now, has rejected the claims as baseless.

Obama also cited the need for the U.S. to be part of a coalition in dealing with Syria. America's ability by itself to solve the Arab country's sectarian fighting is "overstated," he said.

---

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_SYRIA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-08-24-07-37-32

Video Footage of ‘Chemical Weapons Attack’ Uploaded Before it Happened?

Hundreds of videos showing apparent victims of a chemical weapons attack in Syria were uploaded to YouTube on August 20, a day before media reports say the attack actually happened, prompting Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesman to assert the incident was a “pre-planned” provocation staged by rebels.

As PBS reports, “At around 3 a.m. (on August 21st) , patients started streaming in from neighborhoods in suburban Damascus like Zamalka and Ain Terma,” following the alleged chemical weapons attack.

However, a playlist of videos entitled ‘Alleged Chemical Attack in Eastern Ghouta August 21st 2013‘ contains 159 videos – every one of which was uploaded to YouTube on August 20th.

While no one is denying that some kind of attack did indeed take place, the fact that hundreds of videos showing victims of the attack were uploaded to YouTube a day before the incident is supposed to have actually happened remains unexplained.

The time stamp attributed to uploaded videos applies to the country in which they were uploaded, meaning that the videos were uploaded in Syria on August 20th, which is seemingly impossible given that the attack took place in the early hours of the 21st. The only way the videos could display as being uploaded on the 20th was if they were uploaded in America, which is on an earlier time zone.

According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich, this represents evidence of a “pre-planned” provocation. Lukashevich labeled the accusations “another anti-Syrian propaganda wave.”

“We’re getting more new evidence that this criminal act was of a provocative nature,” he told RT. “In particular, there are reports circulating on the Internet, in particular that the materials of the incident and accusations against government troops had been posted for several hours before the so-called attack. Thus, it was a pre-planned action.”

The unanswered question as to how footage showing victims of an attack that occurred on August 21 was uploaded to YouTube on August 20 is in addition to doubts cast about the veracity of the videos by several chemical weapons experts.

Paula Vanninen of the Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention questions the behavior of those seen handling the victims in the video footage. “At the moment, I am not totally convinced because the people that are helping them are without any protective clothing and without any respirators….In a real case, they would also be contaminated and would also be having symptoms,” he stated.

Stephen Johnson, an expert in weapons and chemical explosives at Cranfield Forensic Institute, told Euro News that the video footage also looked suspect.

“There are, within some of the videos, examples which seem a little hyper-real, and almost as if they’ve been set up. Which is not to say that they are fake but it does cause some concern. Some of the people with foaming, the foam seems to be too white, too pure, and not consistent with the sort of internal injury you might expect to see, which you’d expect to be bloodier or yellower,” Johnson said.

His comments were echoed by chemical and biological weapons researcher Jean Pascal Zanders, who said that the footage appears to show victims of asphyxiation, which is not consistent with the use of mustard gas or the nerve agents VX or sarin. “I’m deliberately not using the term chemical weapons here,” he said, adding that the use of “industrial toxicants” was a more likely explanation.

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*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

This article was posted: Friday, August 23, 2013 at 12:42 pm

Tags: foreign affairs, war

http://www.infowars.com/video-footage-of-chemical-weapons-attack-uploaded-before-it-happened/

NSA Analysts Intentionally Abused Spying Powers Multiple Times

Some National Security Agency analysts deliberately ignored restrictions on their authority to spy on Americans multiple times in the past decade, contradicting Obama administration officials’ and lawmakers’ statements that no willful violations occurred.

“Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities have been found,” the NSA said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and cooperates fully with any investigations -- responding as appropriate. NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities.”

The incidents, chronicled in a new report by the NSA’s inspector general, provide more evidence that U.S. agencies sometimes have violated legal and administrative restrictions on domestic spying, and may add to the pressure to bolster laws that govern intelligence activities.

The inspector general documented an average of one case per year over 10 years of intentionally inappropriate actions by people with access to the NSA’s vast electronic surveillance systems, according to an official familiar with the findings. The incidents were minor, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence.

The deliberate actions didn’t violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or the USA Patriot Act, the NSA said in its statement. Instead, they overstepped 1981 Executive Order 12333, issued by President Ronald Reagan, which governs U.S. intelligence operations.

The actions, said a second U.S. official briefed on them, were the work of overzealous NSA employees or contractors eager to prevent any encore to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Defending NSA

The agency has taken steps to ensure that everyone understands legal and administrative boundaries, whom to consult when questions arise, and the consequences of violations or willful ignorance, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inspector general’s report is classified. The report was provided to the congressional intelligence committees, according to administration officials.

The compilation of willful violations, while limited, contradicts repeated assertions that no deliberate abuses occurred.

Army General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, said during a conference in New York on Aug. 8 that “no one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacy.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Republican Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have defended the NSA.

Careful Distinctions

Feinstein said in an Aug. 16 statement that her committee “has never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes.”

Rogers said on CBS Corp.’s “Face the Nation” television show on July 28 that there were “zero privacy violations” in the agency’s collection of phone records of Americans.

The lawmakers’ staffs since have parsed the comments by their bosses, distinguishing between violations of the law governing electronic surveillance and the deliberate violations of the 1981 executive order.

Susan Phalen, a spokeswoman for Rogers, said in an Aug. 16 statement that Rogers meant there hadn’t been “willful and intentional violations of law.”

Feinstein meant there hadn’t been any intentional violations of the NSA’s authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to her office.

Violating FISA

John DeLong, the NSA’s director of compliance, first referred to abuses of the 1981 executive order on Aug. 16, telling reporters there had been rare instances of “willful violations” of legal authority and the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. He said there had been “a couple over the past decades,” according to a transcript provided by the agency.

“When they do occur, right, they are detected, corrected, reported to the inspector general and appropriate action is taken,” he said.

Intelligence officials have attributed most abuses of the FISA restrictions on the NSA’s surveillance of domestic phone calls, e-mails and other communications to technical or inadvertent errors.

Legal opinions declassified on Aug. 21 revealed that the NSA intercepted as many as 56,000 electronic communications a year of Americans who weren’t suspected of having links to terrorism, before a secret court that oversees surveillance found the operation unconstitutional in 2011.

In a declassified legal opinion from October 2011, the court said the agency substantially misrepresented the scope of surveillance operations three times in less than three years.

A May 2012 internal government audit found more than 2,700 violations involving NSA surveillance of Americans and foreigners over a one-year period. The audit was reported Aug. 16 by the Washington Post, citing documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-23/nsa-analysts-intentionally-abused-spying-powers-multiple-times.html

U.K. Says Assad Regime Behind Syria Chemical Attack

The U.K. accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government of carrying out an attack using chemical weapons that opposition groups say killed 1,300 people, as calls grew for United Nations inspectors to be given access to the site near Damascus.

“Some people in the world would like to say this is some kind of conspiracy brought about by the opposition in Syria,” Foreign Secretary William Hague said in televised comments in London today. “I think the chances of that are vanishingly small, and so we do believe that this is a chemical attack by the Assad regime on a large scale.”

Hague, who spoke to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last night and will confer with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later today, said the “priority is to make sure the UN team can investigate on the ground and establish the facts.” President Barack Obama said the reports of chemical-weapons use are “something that’s going to require America’s attention.”

Syrian troops yesterday renewed their artillery assault on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta where opposition groups say that hundreds were killed by toxic gas the day before. While the attack hasn’t been independently confirmed, doctors on the scene reported injuries consistent with the use of nerve gas and pesticides, and photos and video footage posted on the Internet showed bodies without visible wounds.

Ban Call

Earlier today, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he saw “no good reason” for either side in Syria’s civil war to deny a chance to get to the truth of what happened and that he’d asked Assad’s government for its “full cooperation” to allow a swift investigation by the UN team of chemical experts already in Damascus.

“Any use of chemical weapons, anywhere, by anybody, under any circumstances, would violate international law,” Ban said in a speech in Seoul. “Such a crime against humanity should result in serious consequences.”

A chemical attack, if confirmed, would be a war crime and the worst atrocity in 2 1/2 years of civil war in which more than 100,000 Syrians have died and 2 million more have fled to neighboring countries, according to UN estimates. The U.S. and European powers have resisted opposition appeals for more help as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia bolster Assad.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said today that Lavrov and Kerry agreed on the need to conduct an “objective investigation” in a phone call yesterday.

Deteriorating Evidence

Hague said the UN Security Council would need to meet again to strengthen the inspectors’ mandate if the team in Damascus isn’t granted access to the site.

“Time is of the essence in these things -- the evidence will deteriorate over a matter of days,” Hague said.

In an interview broadcast today on CNN’s “New Day” program, Obama said allegations that Syria used chemical weapons “on a large scale” get to “some core national interests that theUnited States has, both in terms of us making sure that weapons of mass destruction are not proliferating, as well as needing to protect our allies, our bases in the region.”

Obama told CNN that “we don’t expect cooperation” from Assad’s government, “given their past history.”

The “very troublesome” allegations indicate “that this is clearly a big event of grave concern,” he said.

Obama, who in June pledged increased support for rebel forces in Syria not allied with Muslim extremists, has repeatedly said the use of chemical weapons by Assad’s regime would cross a “red line” for the U.S.

UN Envoy

The UN secretary-general said he’d ordered his top envoy on disarmament, Angela Kane, to travel to Damascus to discuss the alleged attack. There’s “no time to waste” in seeking a halt to hostilities as the situation in Syria “continues to worsen,” Ban said.

The medical center in east Ghouta has counted 1,302 bodies, according to a e-mailed statement yesterday from the Syrian Support Group, a Washington-based nonprofit licensed to raise funds for the opposition Free Syrian Army. Many civilian victims were found unconscious in the street, the group said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said yesterday the world should act “with force” if chemical weapons had been deployed.

Hague said the U.K. government would not “rule out any options for the future” should Syria refuse access to inspectors. “Any option that complies with international law, and could save innocent lives, we have to be open to those options. But decisions about that would come later. Now, we have to establish the facts.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-23/u-k-says-assad-regime-behind-syria-chemical-attack.html

America-s Downturn:WWII vet, beaten by teens outside Eagles Lodge, dies

WWII veteran Delbert Belton survived being wounded in action during the Battle of Okinawa only to be beaten and left for dead by two teens at the Eagles Lodge in Spokane on Wednesday evening.

Belton, 89, died from the injuries he suffered in the beating Thursday morning at Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Witnesses say the Belton was in the parking lot of the Eagles Lodge at 6410 N. Lidgerwood, adjacent to the Eagles Ice-A-Rena, around 8 p.m. Wednesday when the two male suspects attacked him as he was about to head inside to play pool.

Police responded with K-9s to track the suspects' scent but were not able to locate them.

"It does appear random. He was in the parking lot, it appears he was assaulted in the parking lot and there was no indication that he would have known these people prior to the assault," Spokane Police Major Crimes Detective Lieutenant Mark Griffiths said.

Belton died from his injuries Thursday morning at Sacred Heart Medical Center.

"Shorty," as he was known by his friends at the Eagles Lodge, served in the U.S. Army in the Pacific during WWII and was shot in the leg during the Battle of Okinawa. He went on to work at Kaiser Aluminum at the company's Trentwood plant for more than 30 years. Belton's wife passed away several years ago.

He loved playing pool, even though he claimed he was no good at it and had been a member of the Eagles Lodge for the last four months. In addition to playing pool he loved working on cars.

Shorty was Ted Denison's best friend of 23 years; the two played pool occasionally and worked on cars daily.

"He was always there for me when I needed him," Denison said. "We'd joke back and forth. We were always having fun, some sort of fun."

He was the kind of nice old man who'd become your friend in minutes.

"Probably every time I come into town, he'd have a project for me to do," Denison said. "I thought of him more as a dad than I did a friend really."

Now, with the suspects still at large and the Spokane Police Department working to track them down, Shorty's friends are hoping for justice.

"I don't understand how somebody could do this. I really don't," Denison said.

Spokane police are looking for two male suspects in the attack. They said the suspects are African Americans between 16 and 19 years old. One suspect was described as heavy set and wearing all black clothing. The other was described as being about 6 feet tall and 150 pounds. There was no description of what clothing the second suspect was wearing other than a silk do-rag.

Police investigating the deadly attack on Belton have also obtained surveillance footage from the scene. Click this link to see still images of the two suspects in the attack.

http://www.kxly.com/news/spokane-news/elderly-man-dies-after-being-attacked-outside-ice-arena/-/101214/21574858/-/9flm7iz/-/index.html