The Pentagon’s ‘Salvador Option’, Al Qaeda Government in Damascus
[This article was first published by Global Research. You may read it here.]
In mid-2024, the Western media was portraying former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Stephen Ford as a “moderate”, committed to supporting so-called “moderate mainstream opposition rebels”. R. S. Ford was upheld as a outspoken critic of US foreign policy, tacitly blaming the US State Department for gross mismanagement:
“I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend the American policy… We have been unable to address either the root causes of the conflict in terms of the fighting on the ground and the balance on the ground, and we have a growing extremism threat.”… (quoted in Slate, June 3, 2014, emphasis added)
R. S. Ford called upon Washington to support the moderates:
“We need – and we have long needed – to help moderates in the Syrian opposition with both weapons and other non-lethal assistance. … Had we done that a couple of years ago, had we ramped it up, frankly the al Qaeda groups that have been winning adherents would have been unable to compete with the moderates who frankly we have much in common with,” (Reuters,June 3, 2014, emphasis added)
Responding to Ford’s comments, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, “He’s a private citizen. He’s entitled to his views.”(Reuters,June 3, 2014)
Who Is Robert Stephen Ford?
In a bitter irony, Robert Stephen Ford is no “moderate” as portrayed by the media. He was from the very outset in January 2011 involved in carrying out the “extremism threat” scenario including the channeling of military aid to the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels, including Al Nusra.
I was in Damascus in mid-January 2011 when Robert Ford presented his credentials to President Bashar Al Assad. I was familiar with his role as “number two official” at the Embassy in Iraq under Ambassador John Negroponte.
Negroponte’s mandate as US ambassador to Iraq (together with Robert S. Ford) was to coordinate out of the US embassy, the covert recruitment and support to death squads and paramilitary groups in Iraq with a view to fomenting sectarian violence and weakening the resistance movement. Robert S. Ford as “Number Two” (Minister Counsellor for Political Affairs) at the US Embassy in Baghdad played a central role in this endeavor.
My hunch –which I conveyed to my friend, Ali, Prof. at Singapore’s NUS Middle East Institute– was that “something was to going to happen in the next few months.”
To understand Robert S. Ford’s mandate in both Baghdad and subsequently in Damascus, it is important to reflect briefly on the history of US covert operations and the central role played by John D. Negroponte (see text below).
In the months leading up to the March 2011 insurrection, Robert Stephen Ford was among the key architects involved in the formulation of a US “Terrorist Option” for Syria inc
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