(OT) Russia's Foreign Minister: Syria Is Headed for Western Strike, "US and Allies on a Slippery Slope"

(UPDATE) UK's Guardian says warplanes are gathering in the UK base in Cyprus, and the UN inspection team was attacked in Syria.

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From Bloomberg News (8/26/2013):

The U.S. and its allies are on a “slippery slope” to military intervention in Syria that will have “extremely dangerous” consequences for the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Any military intervention without UN Security Council approval would be “a gross violation of international law,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow today. He ruled out a Russian military response.

World leaders from Washington to Istanbul called for action to punish Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad for what they said was his use of chemical weapons as United Nations inspectors attempted to probe the allegations. Some Syrian opposition groups say 1,300 people were killed in the Aug. 21 attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta.

“Western leaders are making statements that indicate that they won’t wait for the results of this commission, they have already decided everything,” Lavrov said. “It’s a very dangerous slippery slope that our Western partners have gone on before. I hope common sense prevails.”

U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague said Britain is convinced Assad was behind the Aug. 21 attack and that there was agreement with the U.S. and France on the need to respond. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said his country will join a “coalition” against Syria if the UN fails to act.

The accusations are “nonsense,” Assad said in an interview with Russian newspaper Izvestia published today.

“First they make an accusation and only then search for evidence,” he said.

‘Past Mistakes’

Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council which has blocked all resolutions condemning its Soviet-era ally Syria, yesterday urged the U.S. not to “repeat past mistakes” like the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq. The U.S. and its allies attacked Iraq without UN approval after Russia, France and Germany refused to endorse the military operation to remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Syria with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron by telephone today, according to a statement on the Kremlin’s website.

U.S. statements expressing readiness for involvement in Syria’s more than two-year conflict have set off “deep alarm” in Russia, Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in a phone conversation yesterday, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said on its website.

There are “multiple indications” that the Syrian opposition staged the attack to incriminate Assad’s government, Lavrov said.

(Full article at the link)

Back in the days right before the US-led attack on Iraq after a group of mostly Saudi nationals slammed highjacked jets into the World Trade Center buildings, the Bush administration sent Colin Powell to the UN ("weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq) and Condoleezza Rice to the media (you don't want to see "mushroom cloud") to flat-out lie. Those were the good old days when enough people bought their lies.

Meanwhile, the US stock market ended near the day's low, rapidly (in about 8 minutes) reversing a modest gain after Secretary of State John Kerry stopped speaking:

What jumped was gold, without waiting for the drop in the stock market:

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