‘The West is looking for an excuse to attack Syria, but Assad is not giving one’

The Turkish interception of a Syrian civilian jet heading to Damascus from Moscow was yet another attempt to provoke Assad to give the West a reason to strike Syria, Sibel Edmonds of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition told RT.

RT: There are lots of ways of smuggling weapons – why would Russia even try to send arms into Syria on a commercial flight?Sibel Edmonds: Look, we started reporting on the preparation by US and NATO and their Turkish partners in southern Turkey starting in May 2011. You are looking at 16 or 17 months ago, the United States, with their base in Turkey, started preparations for war against Syria. And then we reported, we broke the story in December 2011, with another preparation taken place in Jordan when some of the US troops from Iraq were being transferred secretly into Jordan. Again the mainstream media did not report on this. So you are looking at this war preparation against Syria that began at least 16 months ago. Now, the initial aim was to wait and provoke Assad into stepping into this trap and making a single move for us to basically go there and start the war. And Assad so far has played very cautiously and smartly. He has not provided that ignition, that move for the West to justify the attack on Syria as a response of defense versus offense. And obviously since that aim, that plan has not worked, right now they are just looking to create an excuse, like a false flag operation to basically start this war and do so right before the elections here in the United States. But that is exactly what they are looking for. What Turkey says about the intercepted plane or what the mainstream media is portraying here has nothing to do with the reality on the ground. We the United States, right after Gaddafi’s fall, right after Libya, immediately after Libya, started preparing this war against Syria with the Assad regime in May 2011. And now our military and NATO are in the process of creating – if not making up – the event, that set-up or excuse to proceed and start it. As I said, Assad has been playing very smart so far. RT:  Do you think Turkey is being deliberately provocative in an effort to pull NATO into the conflict, given that the alliance has been reluctant to get involved?SE: That is one way to look at this thing. But as I’ve said, NATO and the US have been preparing the rebels along the Syrian-Turkey border since May-June 2011. Maybe that is the image that NATO and its Western allies want to maintain, and have Turkey be the initial step taker, let’s put it this way. But in terms of wanting and having decided on this war and the regime change in Syria – no, they have had this planned, as I have said, 16 month ago. To their surprise, Syria has not yet made any wrong move. It started with this so-called incident between Turkey and Syria just a few days ago. And now we have this issue of the plane.  All these are just baiting. And creating this base, this false base, for an attack on Syria and making it look as if this did not come from us, and Syria and the Assad regime initiated it. And Assad so far has been doing very good.