95% of 'Syrian rebels' not Syrians - report

Archibald Ramsey, Nameless War, states that the French Revolution was composed entirely of foreigners. Amazing how two hundred years can go by and revolutions are always the same.

reply to post by Soshh


For record keeping -

the link was missing the text part after the number, the full link was

german.irib.ir/nachrichten/politik/item/211483-deutscher-geheimdienst-95-der-rebellen-in-syrien-sind-ausländer

and the text in German was

Berlin (IRIB) – Der BND gab zu, dass nur 5 % der bewaffneten Terroristen in Syrien wirklich Syrer sind, 95 % von ihnen kommen aus dem Ausland.
Laut der Zeitung „Die Welt“ hat der BND in einem offiziellen und genauen Bericht die Nationalitäten der Rebellen in Syrien und ihre Standorte in dem Land veröffentlicht. Die Mehrheit der Rebellen kommt aus afrikanischen Ländern. Es handelt sich wahrscheinlich um Mitglieder von Al Kaida.
Laut diesem Bericht wird die Zahl der Rebellen in Syrien auf 14.800 geschätzt.

This adds to the list of damages to IRIB's credibility to have any chance as an opposing media source.

Did people honestly think that the Us was fighting Iraqis during the Iraq war?

Did they think they are fighting Afghani's in Afghanistan?

Think those are all Pakistani's getting Droned?

People not going to say 95% of foreign fighters in those theatres but there are a lot of foreign fighters/and aid.

Originally posted by ollncasino
Yes it is a serious question. He is an International law professor at Georgetown University Washington, D.C..

I am not sure that law professors at Georgetown University Washington quite constitute 'clowns' as you put it.

How many Georgetown University law professors were in that RT clip? You're speaking about them in plural but I'm only seeing one. So either there are some other guys hiding somewhere and I'm just not very observant or you're trying to use the supposed respectability of the entire university to prop up this poor bloke. That if I say he is discussing a false report (which he is) then I'm also somehow saying that Georgetown alumni are all spastics now. Nice try anyway.

Someone certainly does qualify for a 'clown' tag in my book if they are willing to be filmed discussing something which doesn't exist. He either knew that or RT did a number on him and he's particularly gullible, probably combined with him not knowing enough about the foreign fighters issue to question the report in the first place.

Originally posted by Soshh
Not meaning to be cheeky but it took you 4 minutes to come up with a dead link which apparently was a "German-language service of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting citing a Die Welt article which doesn't exist"?

Dead Link

Both of your sources are either dead/never existed and were, if they ever existed, written in German.

That dead link is the actual original source for this story and it cites a Die Welt article which is the ostensible original source, the problem being that it was never published and doesn't exist. Naturally even if this report was genuine the original source would be German language anyway and so I'm not sure why you have a problem with that.

You didn't answer my question of how much effort you put into verifying this report but I'll take your response as one of "absolutely zero effort mate". You can find that IRIB site linked in threads and blog posts preceding the RT video and all other sources that I could find for this story (other than the RT video which completely ignores the matter of who the BND report was originally published by) are either citing the RT video or that IRIB link or an English-language source also citing the IRIB link.

It's a sad day for RT when they run a story which is such complete toss that even Press TV won't touch it. It certainly pisses all over frequent protestations on this website that RT are actually a perfectly respectable bunch. A report is supposedly released by the German Foreign Intelligence service and yet the story can only be found on dubious 'alternative' news websites, forums and blogs citing an IRIB article which was later deleted. On the plus side you can witness a rare instance of the term 'disinformation' being used correctly on ATS - this story is disinformation.

Originally posted by Soshh

How many Georgetown University law professors were in that RT clip? You're speaking about them in plural but I'm only seeing one.

So either there are some other guys hiding somewhere and I'm just not very observant or you're trying to use the supposed respectability of the entire university to prop up this poor bloke.

That if I say he is discussing a false report (which he is) then I'm also somehow saying that Georgetown alumni are all spastics now.

Is it unreasonable to rely on the generally high reputation of law professors at Georgetown University, as a group, when assessing the credibility of one when he presents a piece of information?

You appear to think so.

You then jump the shark by reasoning erronously that to do so amounts to suggesting that you are of the belief that "Georgetown alumni are all spastics".

Originally posted by Soshh

Someone certainly does qualify for a 'clown' tag in my book if they are willing to be filmed discussing something which doesn't exist.

He either knew that or RT did a number on him and he's particularly gullible, probably combined with him not knowing enough about the foreign fighters issue to question the report in the first place.

Perhaps the law professor is a 'clown' as you state. However, I am puzzled why you appear to feel so passionately about this issue.

Originally posted by Soshh

That dead link is the actual original source for this story and it cites a Die Welt article which is the ostensible original source, the problem being that it was never published and doesn't exist.

To be fair, you are quite probably absolutely correct.

However, a dead link which was in German which referred to another article in German which never existed, would make it rather tricky to carry out effective due diligence, if one was not a German speaker. I am not.

Another poster kindly posted part of the 'dead link' article, which added to the thread.

Originally posted by Soshh

You didn't answer my question of how much effort you put into verifying this report but I'll take your response as one of "absolutely zero effort mate".

Not true. I checked to see what sort of institution Georgetown University was. On that basis I felt that a law professor from such an institution appeared a reliable source.

Then I went to my bed.

Originally posted by Soshh

It's a sad day for RT when they run a story which is such complete toss that even Press TV won't touch it.

One can only hope that I and my fellow posters can live up to your high standards of due diligence. In addition, I can only hope that you don't have a coronary as a direct result of your obvious frustration.

Originally posted by ollncasino

Is it unreasonable to rely on the generally high reputation of law professors at Georgetown University, as a group, when assessing the credibility of one when he presents a piece of information?

You appear to think so.

You then jump the shark by reasoning erronously that to do so amounts to suggesting that you are of the belief that "Georgetown alumni are all spastics".

The point is that you brought up the respectability of this professor and his university when the report isn't sourced from him (although it is presented in the video as if it were). I'd be interested to know how he came across it, but I suppose that it was handed to him by RT and he was asked to comment on it in the interview.

Originally posted by ollncasino
Perhaps the law professor is a 'clown' as you state. However, I am puzzled why you appear to feel so passionately about this issue.

I really don't feel passionately about it at all.

Originally posted by ollncasino
To be fair, you are quite probably absolutely correct.

However, a dead link which was in German which referred to another article in German which never existed, would make it rather tricky to carry out effective due diligence, if one was not a German speaker. I am not.

Another poster kindly posted part of the 'dead link' article, which added to the thread.

I do speak some German myself which was useful but if not there are still online services which you can use to translate blocks of text or even entire pages. In itself it's true that a dead link (i.e. a blank page) doesn't tell us much, but since parts of the article were reposted and cited elsewhere, the content of the dead link is known. It is also known that the earliest appearances of the report in media and on blogs et cetera all cite this article as the source.

The IRIB report is ostensibly sourced from an article in Die Welt but the search function on their site returns nothing, and Germany-based posters on the German and English language blogs/threads where the IRIB article has been reposted have also commented that no such Die Welt article exists. These factors in aggregate mean that one can quite comfortably state both that IRIB is the original source and not Die Welt and that the IRIB report is intentionally false.

Just now I revisited one of those repost sites and found something interesting: (This is a pro-Assad site with one of the earliest appearances of the article - 4 days old)
friendsofsyria.wordpress.com...

A moderator, when told that the article does not appear in Die Welt online, said that the site had taken the article from the German-language IRIB site. (It seems unlikely that they would be frequenting German language media but I'm not going to guess at how they found it for fear of reaching too far into conspiracy land.)

A few hours ago, when told that the link is broken, the moderator said that he may remove his site's repost of the article since "it has been trouble from the start". Take from that what you will but I reckon that he now realises that they've been had.

Originally posted by Soshh
The point is that you brought up the respectability of this professor and his university when the report isn't sourced from him (although it is presented in the video as if it were).

To be fair, my comment does state

"German intelligence agency report states that 95% of Syrian rebels are foreign mercenaries, claims International law professor, Georgetown University Washington, D.C., Daoud Khairallah."

so I made it clear that the the law professor was asserting that the report was a fact.

Originally posted by Soshh

I do speak some German myself which was useful but if not there are still online services which you can use to translate blocks of text or even entire pages.

Such translation is useful to understood a web page when it is found. Unfortunately it is of limited utility when attempting to actually find relevant web pages or track things down.

Originally posted by Soshh

In itself it's true that a dead link (i.e. a blank page) doesn't tell us much, but since parts of the article were reposted and cited elsewhere, the content of the dead link is known. It is also known that the earliest appearances of the report in media and on blogs et cetera all cite this article as the source.

To be honest, I was somewhat less than 100% satisfied the report itself was genuine, which is why I phrased my comment in the manner I did above.

Originally posted by Soshh

A moderator, when told that the article does not appear in Die Welt online, said that the site had taken the article from the German-language IRIB site. (It seems unlikely that they would be frequenting German language media but I'm not going to guess at how they found it for fear of reaching too far into conspiracy land.)

A few hours ago, when told that the link is broken, the moderator said that he may remove his site's repost of the article since "it has been trouble from the start". Take from that what you will but I reckon that he now realises that they've been had.

As indeed I appear to have been.

Thank you for a more measured response.