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Press TV has conducted an interview with Webster Griffin Tarpley, author and historian from Washington about the situation in Syria.

- Let’s talk about this threat. It’s been a repeated announcement now by the US, the threat of these foreign fighters. James Clapper came out and said there’s 7,000 of them. Some estimates actually put it at 150,000 from some 50 countries, even though the number of countries is said to be higher, which includes Europe, with some of these insurgents said to be Americans tied to al-Qaeda, the al-Nusra front in particular, inspiring to attack the United States.

And we still have the US saying they’re going to arm the moderate opposition. This threat is a big deal, isn’t it? We’re seeing the reaction from the US. Why would it then come out and say, again, that they are going to keep arming the moderate opposition?

- It’s very surprising. We’ve just had the first certified British...bomber going into action – a tragic and wretched story for this person from Sussex and for his family.

Yesterday here at the White House we had the state dinner for the French President Holland. And even though he’s somewhat changeable in his affections, the war-monger role seems to be a permanent fixture of Holland. We had a rather dangerous combination with some war-monger toasts being made at this state dinner, at the White House, a couple of hundred yards from where I’m sitting.

This has not been pacified. In other words, the threat of military action continues to be there. The war party here was of course checked back in September, October, thanks primarily to Putin and Lavrov for whom the American people, I think, have reason to be grateful.

But now there’s been a kind of gradual drumbeat and it takes the following form. It’s all around the humanitarian intervention, the so-called ‘Responsibility to Protect’ or R2P.

This focuses on the siege of Aleppo where the terrorist rebels have been gradually driven back, and some places like the Yarmouk camp.

What goes on in these places, of course, is that these...[militants] are the ones who prevent humanitarian supplies from getting in. In the majority of cases it’s certainly the...[militants]. They have every interest to block the humanitarian aid deliveries.

Then of course they turn around and the US, the British and the French have been working on this United Nations resolution since about seven to 10 days ago, I would say, which focuses precisely on these humanitarian issues within humanitarian corridors of some kind.

The Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has correctly said that this is based on unreality. It is absolutely unacceptable. Russia and China will and certainly should veto this.

The structure of the resolution has been if the aid is not delivered within two weeks, then the countries that want to, can begin taking sanctions or maybe even military action against Syria. So this is a one-way ticket to war.

I would just point out historically in the 20th century, the person who really pushed forward the idea of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ is of course Hitler. In the Czechoslovakian crisis of 1938, Hitler’s position was responsibility to protect, in that case Germans – Sudeten Germans inside Czechoslovakia. In that period, the Sudetenland became the humanitarian corridor.

Humanitarian corridor, when you see that word, just like ‘no-fly zone’, means acts of war. It means a general Middle East war which nobody can want.

The perspective, of course, here is when does it end? These imperialists seem to be one-trick ponies. They’re like a crocodile. They only know how to bite, that’s all they know how to do. This of course puts a big question mark over the future of the world.

As far as Kerry is concerned, there’s worry about his sanity. Has he begun to lose his marbles?

When the neocons lied, the neocons knew they were lying – people like Bush and Cheney, Wolfowitz and Feith, people like this. They had a whole theory of lying. They knew what they were doing.

Kerry seems to believe the nonsense that he tells. When he says that President Assad foments the presence of al-Qaeda for public relations purposes, we have to scratch our heads and say has Secretary of State Kerry gone off the deep end? Shouldn’t he be removed from office because of manifest mental instability?

- Sounds exactly like the question, Webster Griffin Tarpley, that Britain’s state TV, the BBC, asked in a press conference from Lakhdar Brahimi, which there came no answer to.

Saudi Arabia is known to be arming these terrorists, forming some of these terrorists under one umbrella.

And of course, you have Iran as being one of the countries not invited.

At this point, given the track record, Webster Griffin Tarpley, of the failure of the Geneva talks, which by many accounts it has been deemed as such, why is there not a movement towards inviting Iran to the talks given that the track record speaks for itself, that it hasn’t bore, really, any concrete results?

- Well I would certainly advocate the immediate presence of Iran in this. The State Department argument is that Iran is a party to the conflict. Well, if they believe that, then in the same breath they should be saying Iran has to be invited, because as Lavrov points out, the point of peace talks is not to invite people you like. It’s not your birthday party. It’s supposed to have the presence of the countries whose cooperation is essential to create a doable settlement, so that should be done.

I would also point out, I cannot see how Ban ki-Moon can stay in office. I think whatever the mechanism for impeachment might be in the UN charter, and I don’t think it’s actually spelled out, one of the things in the UN charter is that the Secretary General of the United Nations is not supposed to take dictation from any country or group of countries. He’s supposed to be an international civil servant. Ban Ki-Moon has flunked the test.

Back to this question about peaceful demonstrations at the beginning, I had an opportunity to investigate that question a little while ago in both Homs, the important center of this entire tragedy, and in Banyas along the coast.

In both of those cases, as soon as there were democratic demonstrations, in Homs in particular, there was a third force, people who came in with weapons and began shooting in both directions - in other words, provocateurs, and these were death squads. They were death squads sent in by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and like-minded people.

In the case in Banyas, before there was any democratic demonstration, there was a massacre of some poor Syrian logistical troops, draftees who were cut down by some pretty capable guerillas who had been shipped in by the United States from Libya, right? This was the project of the Ambassador of the United States who was killed there.

The most important question for Syria is to kick out the foreign fighters, repatriate them. Expel them.

As far as I can see, even the draft coming from the Jarba forces - the Syrian National Coalition or whatever they call themselves this week - that draft says that the removal of the foreign fighters is a goal embraced by the Syrian National Coalition. Of course, the Syrian National Coalition has no military ability to do that.

The magnets for terrorism are Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia, MI-6, the British intelligence, the CIA and let’s not forget the famous DGSE, the DGSE of France, who have their dream of reestablishing some kind of French colonial yolk over Syria, where they were in recent decades. They occupied the place well into the 1940s.

But the foreign fighters - most of the Syrian fighters on the ground who were in a middle position would say Syrians could solve their problems.