rigorousintuition.ca

Calling Off America’s Bombs

– As the US Congress considers whether to authorize American military intervention in Syria, its members should bear in mind a basic truth: While Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has repeatedly used extreme violence to retain power, the United States – and other governments in the Middle East and Europe – share responsibility for turning Syria into a killing field.

These governments, led by the US, have explicitly sought the violent overthrow of Assad. Without their involvement, Assad’s regime would most likely have remained repressive; with their involvement, Syria has become a site of mass death and destruction. More than 100,000 people have died, and many of the world’s cultural and archaeological treasures have been demolished.

Syria’s civil war has occurred in two phases. The first phase, roughly from January 2011 until March 2012, was largely an internal affair. When the Arab Spring erupted in Tunisia and Egypt in January 2011, protests erupted in Syria as well. In addition to the usual grievances under a brutal regime, Syrians were reeling from a massive drought and soaring food prices.

The protests became a military rebellion when parts of the Syrian army broke with the regime and established the Free Syrian Army. Neighboring Turkey was probably the first outside country to support the rebellion on the ground, giving sanctuary to rebel forces along its border with Syria. Although the violence was escalating, the death toll was still in the thousands, not tens of thousands.

The second phase began when the US helped to organize a large group of countries to back the rebellion. At a meeting of foreign ministers in Istanbul on April 1, 2012, the US and other countries pledged active financial and logistical support for the Free Syrian Army. Most important, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared: “We think Assad must go.”

That open-ended statement, without any clear means to achieve the goal that it announced, has done much to fuel military escalation and the rising death toll in Syria, while pushing the US repeatedly to defend its “credibility” against a line in the sand that it should not have drawn.

Then and now, the US has claimed to speak in the interest of the Syrian people. This is very doubtful. The US views Syria mainly through the lens of Iran, seeking to depose Assad in order to deprive Iran’s leaders of an important ally in the region, one that borders Israel. The US-led effort in Syria is thus best understood as a proxy war with Iran – a cynical strategy that has contributed to the massive rise in violence.

The US government’s misguided move from potential mediator and problem solver to active backer of the Syrian insurrection was, predictably, a terrible mistake. It put the US in effective opposition to the United Nations peace initiative then being led by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose approach was to call for a ceasefire followed by a negotiated political transition. The US preempted this process by backing the military rebellion and insisting on Assad’s immediate departure.

It is hard to understand this blunder. Even if the US ultimately sought to force Assad from office, its blunt action hardened Assad’s resistance, as well as that of his two allies in the UN Security Council, Russia and China. Aside from seeking to defend their own interests in the region, both countries understandably rejected the idea of US-led regime change in Syria. Russia argued that America’s insistence on Assad’s immediate departure was an impediment to peace. In this, Russia was right.

Indeed, Russia was playing a plausibly constructive role at the time, albeit one premised on Assad remaining in power for at least a transitional period, if not indefinitely. Russia sought a pragmatic approach that would protect its commercial interests in Syria and its naval base at the port of Tartus, while bringing an end to the bloodletting. The Russians openly backed Annan’s peace initiative. Yet, with the US and others financing the rebels, Russia (and Iran) supplied more – and more sophisticated – weapons to the regime.

Now, with the use of chemical weapons, probably by the Syrian government (and possibly by both sides), the US has again ratcheted up the stakes. Bypassing the UN once again, the US is declaring its intention to intervene directly by bombing Syria, ostensibly to deter the future use of chemical weapons.

America’s motivations are not entirely clear. Perhaps there is no underlying foreign-policy logic, but only carelessness. If there is a kind of logic, however weak, it seems to revolve around Iran and Israel, rather than Syria per se. There are many dictatorships in the world that the US does not try to overthrow. On the contrary, many of them are ostensibly America’s close allies. So why does the US continue to back a deadly rebellion in a civil war that is continuing to escalate dangerously, now to the point of chemical-weapons attacks?

To put it simply, President Barack Obama’s administration has inherited the neoconservative philosophy of regime change in the Middle East. The overriding idea is that the US and its close allies get to choose who governs in the region. Assad must go not because he is authoritarian, but because he is allied with Iran, which, from the perspective of the US, Israel, Turkey, and several Gulf countries, makes him a regional threat.

In fact, the US has probably been lured into serving these countries’ own narrower interests, whether it be Israel’s unconvincing vision of its own security or the Sunni countries’ opposition to Shia Iran. But, in the long term, US foreign policy divorced from international law cannot produce anything other than more war.

The US should reverse course. A direct US attack on Syria without UN backing is far more likely to inflame the region than it is to resolve the crisis there – a point well appreciated in the United Kingdom, where Parliament bucked the government by rejecting British participation in a military strike.

Instead, the US should provide evidence of the chemical attacks to the UN; call on the Security Council to condemn the perpetrators; and refer such violations to the International Criminal Court. Moreover, the Obama administration should try to work with Russia and China to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention. If the US fails in this, while acting diplomatically and transparently (without a unilateral attack), Russia and China would find themselves globally isolated on this important issue.

More broadly, the US should stop using countries like Syria as proxies against Iran. Withdrawal of US financial and logistical support for the rebellion, and calling on others to do the same, would not address Syria’s authoritarianism or resolve America’s issues with Iran, but it would stop or greatly reduce the large-scale killing and destruction in Syria itself.

It would also enable the UN peace process to resume, this time with the US and Russia working together to restrain violence, keep Al Qaeda at bay (a shared interest), and find a longer-term pragmatic solution to Syria’s deep domestic divisions. And the search for a US modus vivendi with Iran – where a new president suggests a change of course on foreign policy – could be revived.

It is time for the US to help stop the killing in Syria. That means abandoning the fantasy that it can or should determine who rules in the Middle East.

SYRIA
As With Iraq, New York Times Propagates Demonstrable Lies About Syrian WMDs

September 9, 2013

NYT-Syria-and-WikiLeaks

By Jeremy R. Hammond:

A headline in the New York Times yesterday stated as fact that “With the World Watching, Syria Amassed Nerve Gas”. The lead paragraph asserted that “Syria’s top leaders amassed one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons with help from the Soviet Union and Iran, as well as Western European suppliers and even a handful of American companies, according to American diplomatic cables and declassified intelligence records.”

But as with its propagandistic reporting about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the run-up to the Iraq war, the Times provided no evidence to support its claim, and an examination of publicly available documents the Times cited for this story illustrates how the newspaper is demonstrably lying.

After asserting as fact that the documents show that Syria “amassed one of the world’s largest stockpiles of chemical weapons”, the Times stated that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, “were greatly helped in their chemical weapons ambitions by a basic underlying fact: often innocuous, legally exportable materials are also the precursors to manufacturing deadly chemical weapons.”

To support its claim that “innocuous, legally exportable materials” were used by Syria to manufacture chemical weapons, the Times cited a 2009 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks in 2010. The cable, the Times stated, “instructed diplomats to ‘emphasize that failure to halt the flow’ of chemicals and equipment into Syria, Iran and North Korea could render irrelevant a group of antiproliferation countries that organized to stop that flow.”

But on its face, this only indicates that Syria imported materials considered “dual-use”, meaning that it could have both civilian and military applications. It does not constitute evidence that Syria actually used such “chemicals and equipment” to manufacture chemical weapons.

The cable states that “Syria, Iran and North Korea have continued to acquire goods useful to their chemical and/or biological weapons programs”, but offers no evidence that dual-use materials it acquired were used for that purpose.

The Times report continued: “Another leaked State Department cable on the Syrians asserted that ‘part of their modus operandi is to hide procurement under the guise of legitimate pharmaceutical or other transactions.’”

Once again, no evidence from the cable is offered that materials that admittedly have “legitimate pharmaceutical” uses were actually used to manufacture chemical weapons.

The sentence just prior to the one quoted by the Times in the cable stated, “We remain extremely concerned that Iran and Syria are using companies in the UAE to evade U.S. trade prohibitions as well as the export control regulations of other countries to acquire chemical and biological warfare (CBW)-useful equipment and technology.”

The cable itself, however, reveals that there was no knowledge that such materials were actually directed towards any military program. The State Department, it noted, did “not have additional information” that materials that could be “useful” for manufacturing chemical or biological weapons were actually used for that purpose.

The Times nevertheless continued to falsely assert that “The diplomatic cables and other intelligence documents show that, over time, the two generations of Assads built up a huge stockpile by creating companies with the appearance of legitimacy, importing chemicals that had many legitimate uses”.

As already illustrated, the claim that the cables released by WikiLeaks “show” that Syria “built up a huge stockpile” of chemical weapons is an outright lie.

The Times then turned to one of the “intelligence documents” it cited as proof, stating that “As early as 1991, under the first Bush presidency, a now declassified National Intelligence Estimate concluded that ‘both Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union provided the chemical agents, delivery systems and training that flowed to Syria.’”

But that quote does not date to a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from 1991, but rather from 30 years ago. The NIE from which it originated, titled “Implications of Soviet Use of Chemical and Toxin Weapons for U.S. Security Interests”, was issued on September 15, 1983 and stated that Syria “probably has the most advanced chemical warfare capability in the Arab world, with the possible exception of Egypt” (p. 11).

What was deemed “probably” true three decades ago may or may not be true today, and it is useful to point out that the U.S. has backed the military dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, who took power in 1981, with billions in military “aid”. Egypt has been second only to Israel as the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, which provided for this money to flow from the American taxpayers to the regime in Egypt.

By 1983, it had also become evident that Iraq was using chemical weapons in its war with Iran, but the U.S. nevertheless removed the country from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in order to step up support for its war effort. In December of that year, President Ronald Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld, who was later Secretary of Defense under the Bush administration, for a second time to Iraq to reassure Saddam Hussein that the U.S. would continue to back him despite his use of chemical weapons.

The 1983 NIE also noted that with its foreign suppliers, “there is no need for Syria to develop an indigenous capability to produce CW agents or material, and none has been identified.” The purpose of that Cold War-era NIE was to build the case that the Soviet Union was violating the 1975 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

The rest of the Times article similarly provided no substantiation for the headline’s claim. It cited again “precursor ingredients that can also be used for medicine”, with no supporting evidence that such ingredients were used for anything other than civilian applications.

Perhaps the most egregious example of manipulation with the attempt to deceive the public came towards the end of the article, where the Times quoted from a March 2006 State Department cable: “‘Syrian businessmen regularly report on the ease with which their fellow businessmen illegally import U.S. commodities with seeming impunity, as well as express concerns that the USG’s [United States Government’s] lack of enforcement of the economic sanctions’ are ‘hurting those that choose to play by the rules.’”

“Those transactions presumably included chemicals that could be precursors for chemical warfare”, the Times added.

Yet the “commodities” described in that cable were mostly related to legitimate civilian uses—particularly for use in hospitals.

The cable relayed the “constant refrain heard from the business community” in Syria that U.S. sanctions were “ineffective” and did not impact the Syrian government, “but rather are most directly impacting legitimate business transactions.”

Among the “commodities” mentioned are “x-ray tubes, personal computers, defibrillators, and consumable supplies”.

“One source told us”, the cable states, providing an example of how sanctions are bypassed, “that he can easily purchase U.S. commodities, specifically medical spare parts, from the Internet and have them shipped to Syria through a third country.”

The cable does note that some of the materials imported are “dual-use”; for example, “a Varian linear accelerator” tendered for a military hospital—a devise used for the treatment of cancer.

Other items mentioned include “two MRI systems, at least one of which would be used by a military hospital in Aleppo.”

The cable discusses how the U.S. sanctions regime harms businesses seeking to import such items legally because their competitors are able to do so at a lower cost by obtaining them through other channels. It cites one example where a “competitor was able to offer the products at a substantially cheaper price because he did not invest the necessary time and money into pursuing an export license.”

In another example of a “dual-use” item, the cable mentions the importation of “a consumable product, potassium cyanide, shipped to a public pediatric hospital in October 2003.” The cable states that the regulatory agency intended to verify the end use of imported materials “was unable to verify that it had been used legitimately”—which is also to say that neither was there any evidence that the potassium cyanide was redirected for the purpose of manufacturing chemical weapons.

The cable adds that the supplier in this case also sold potassium cyanide “to other end-users not permitted in his export license”, with no further indication as to who the end users were or for what purpose it was acquired.

And once again, contrary to the Times’ willful lie that cables such as this one prove Syria manufactured and stockpiled chemical weapons, the cable itself implicitly acknowledges the lack of evidence for this claim, noting that the a “trained” team of “criminal investigators” in the Bureau of Industry and Security, operating under the U.S. Department of Commerce, “have not traveled to Syria to assess whether the end-use of allowable commodities is legitimate, evaluate whether commodities have been diverted to other end-users, or collect evidence of potential sanctions violations.”

The cable closes by urging that the investigative team be dispatched to “follow-up on some of the anectodal evidence that we have received” of sanctions violations.

“The Americans were not the only ones concerned”, the Times report continued. “According to another leaked cable, the Netherlands discussed how monoethylene glycol, an important raw material used to manufacture urethane and antifreeze, was shipped by a Dutch concern to the Syrian Ministry of Industry, considered a front for the Syrian military. The Dutch outlined how the chemical could also be used as a precursor for sulfur mustard, and possibly for VX and sarin.”

Yet again we see how the Times took a cable merely noting that Syria had acquired “dual-use” materials that could possibly be used to manufacture sarin gas, the chemical weapon the U.S. is alleging that the Assad regime used in a Damascus suburb last month as a pretext to launch military strikes against Syria, and dishonestly reported this in its headline and lead paragraph as proof that this was indeed the end use of the material.

This is the same kind of propagandistic reporting that the Times engaged in prior to the U.S. war on Iraq. Once again, it is evident that America’s “newspaper of record” is serving as a mouthpiece for the U.S. government, not only uncritically parroting claims of government officials for which there is no evidence, but going out of its way to propagate its own deliberate lies in such a way as to manufacture consent for U.S. foreign policy.

_____

Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and recipient of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He is the founder and editor of Foreign Policy Journal and can also be found on the web at JeremyRHammond.com, where this article was originally published. He is the author of Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian economics in the financial crisis and The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Israeli-Arab Conflict. His forthcoming book is on the contemporary U.S. role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Are we Going To War with Syria over a Natural Gas Pipeline?

By Michael Snyder (with Jim Fetzer)

“WMR has learned from multiple intelligence sources in Washington, London, Beirut, and Paris, that Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan has paid off key members of the U.S. Senate and House leadership, as well as key ministers of the French government, with “incentive cash” to support an American and French “shock and awe” military strike on not only Syria but Hezbollah positions in Lebanon“–Wayne Madsen

obama-jokerAs Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has now publicly proclaimed, the Obama/Biden administration has been manipulating intelligence to justify an attack on Syria.

Vladimir Putin has taken the extraordinary step of asserting that Secretary of State John Kerry “has been lying” about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Russia and China are increasing their military presence in the immediate vicinity and we appear to be on the verge of WWIII.

And members of Congress who have seen the “classified information” say it doesn’t prove anything, where the “rush to war” based on skewed intelligence is very similar to Iraq.

Wayne Madsen, moveover, has learned from multiple intelligence sources in Washington, London, Beirut, and Paris, that Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan has paid off key members of the U.S. Senate and House leadership, as well as key ministers of the French government, with “incentive cash” to support an American and French “shock and awe” military strike on not only Syria but Hezbollah positions in Lebanon:

Republican and Democratic members of the Senate and House leadership, including Senators Harry Reid, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Barbara Boxer, and Robert Menendez, as well as House Speaker John Boehner, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, New York’s Peter King, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and others have seen their campaign chests grow substantially as a result of Bandar’s financial largesse, according to our multiple sources.

If you ask why in the world Saudi Arabia would be so profoundly involved in promoting a war in Syria that it would bribe some of our nation’s highest officials, the answer may be that it wants to insure that a pipeline that would compete with its own preferred alternative which would pass through Syria is never built. If Michael Snyder has it right–and he appears to have “nailed it”–then all this rubbish about “international law” and the necessity to punish Assad for the use of chemical weapons is nothing but political theater.


YouTube - Veterans Today -

Obama and Kerry have been lying to the American people. The case against the Syria government is completely contrived. It appears that Prince Bandar provided the rebels with these weapons but no instructions about how to use them–and that the rebels were clumsy and gassed themselves. Syria has had the rebels on the run and a UN inspection team was about to arrive! We are being told nothing but one lie after another:

Everything that Kerry has said about knowing where they were fired from, knowing where they landed, and knowing who was responsible is rubbish, where the United States has become an international joke. Syria and Iran are the final stages in the Israeli plan to dismantle the modern Arab states (and then strike Persian Iran), but this may explain why Saudi Arabia has been playing a crucial role behind the scenes.
Is the United States going to War with Syria over a Natural Gas Pipeline?


by Michael Snyder

Pipeline-300x300Why has the little nation of Qatar spent 3 billion dollars to support the rebels in Syria? Could it be because Qatar is the largest exporter of liquid natural gas in the world and Assad won’t let them build a natural gas pipeline through Syria? Of course. Qatar wants to install a puppet regime in Syria that will allow them to build a pipeline which will enable them to sell lots and lots of natural gas to Europe.

Why is Saudi Arabia spending huge amounts of money to help the rebels and why has Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan been “jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime”? Well, it turns out that Saudi Arabia intends to install their own puppet government in Syria which will allow the Saudis to control the flow of energy through the region.

On the other side, Russia very much prefers the Assad regime for a whole bunch of reasons. One of those reasons is that Assad is helping to block the flow of natural gas out of the Persian Gulf into Europe, thus ensuring higher profits for Gazprom. Now the United States is getting directly involved in the conflict.

If the U.S. is successful in getting rid of the Assad regime, it will be good for either the Saudis or Qatar (and possibly for both), and it will be really bad for Russia. This is a strategic geopolitical conflict about natural resources, religion and money, and it really has nothing to do with chemical weapons at all.
Common Knowledge

It has been common knowledge that Qatar has desperately wanted to construct a natural gas pipeline that will enable it to get natural gas to Europe for a very long time. The following is an excerpt from an article from 2009.

Qatar has proposed a gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey in a sign the emirate is considering a further expansion of exports from the world’s biggest gasfield after it finishes an ambitious program to more than double its capacity to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).


YouTube - Veterans Today -

“We are eager to have a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey,” Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, said last week, following talks with the Turkish president Abdullah Gul and the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the western Turkish resort town of Bodrum. “We discussed this matter in the framework of co-operation in the field of energy. In this regard, a working group will be set up that will come up with concrete results in the shortest possible time,” he said, according to Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.
The Nabucco Pipeline

Other reports in the Turkish press said the two states were exploring the possibility of Qatar supplying gas to the strategic Nabucco pipeline project, which would transport Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, bypassing Russia. A Qatar-to-Turkey pipeline might hook up with Nabucco at its proposed starting point in eastern Turkey. Last month, Mr Erdogan and the prime ministers of four European countries signed a transit agreement for Nabucco, clearing the way for a final investment decision next year on the EU-backed project to reduce European dependence on Russian gas.

“For this aim, I think a gas pipeline between Turkey and Qatar would solve the issue once and for all,” Mr Erdogan added, according to reports in several newspapers. The reports said two different routes for such a pipeline were possible. One would lead from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to Turkey. The other would go through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey. It was not clear whether the second option would be connected to the Pan-Arab pipeline, carrying Egyptian gas through Jordan to Syria. That pipeline, which is due to be extended to Turkey, has also been proposed as a source of gas for Nabucco.


YouTube - Veterans Today -

Based on production from the massive North Field in the Gulf, Qatar has established a commanding position as the world’s leading LNG exporter. It is consolidating that through a construction programme aimed at increasing its annual LNG production capacity to 77 million tonnes by the end of next year, from 31 million tonnes last year. However, in 2005, the emirate placed a moratorium on plans for further development of the North Field in order to conduct a reservoir study.
Saudi Arabia said “No!”

As you just read, there were two proposed routes for the pipeline. Unfortunately for Qatar, Saudi Arabia said no to the first route and Syria said no to the second route. The following is from an absolutely outstanding article in the Guardian.

In 2009 – the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria – Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.”

Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo – and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.
The Iran-Iraq-Syria Pipeline

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a “direct slap in the face” to Qatar’s plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that “whatever regime comes after” Assad, it will be “completely” in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will “not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports”, according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

If Qatar is able to get natural gas flowing into Europe, that will be a significant blow to Russia. So the conflict in Syria is actually much more about a pipeline than it is about the future of the Syrian people. In a recent article, Paul McGuire summarized things quite nicely.

YouTube - Veterans Today -

The Nabucco Agreement was signed by a handful of European nations and Turkey back in 2009. It was an agreement to run a natural gas pipeline across Turkey into Austria, bypassing Russia again with Qatar in the mix as a supplier to a feeder pipeline via the proposed Arab pipeline from Libya to Egypt to Nabucco (is the picture getting clearer?). The problem with all of this is that a Russian backed Syria stands in the way.

Qatar would love to sell its LNG to the EU and the hot Mediterranean markets. The problem for Qatar in achieving this is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have already said “NO” to an overland pipe cutting across the Land of Saud. The only solution for Qatar if it wants to sell its oil is to cut a deal with the U.S.
Exxon Mobile and Qatar Petroeum International

Recently Exxon Mobile and Qatar Petroleum International have made a $10 Billion deal that allows Exxon Mobile to sell natural gas through a port in Texas to the UK and Mediterranean markets. Qatar stands to make a lot of money and the only thing standing in the way of their aspirations is Syria.

The US plays into this in that it has vast wells of natural gas, in fact the largest known supply in the world. There is a reason why natural gas prices have been suppressed for so long in the US. This is to set the stage for US involvement in the Natural Gas market in Europe while smashing the monopoly that the Russians have enjoyed for so long. What appears to be a conflict with Syria is really a conflict between the U.S. and Russia!

The main cities of turmoil and conflict in Syria right now are Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. These are the same cities that the proposed gas pipelines happen to run through. Qatar is the biggest financier of the Syrian uprising, having spent over $3 billion so far on the conflict. The other side of the story is Saudi Arabia, which finances anti-Assad groups in Syria. The Saudis do not want to be marginalized by Qatar; thus they too want to topple Assad and implant their own puppet government, one that would sign off on a pipeline deal and charge Qatar for running their pipes through to Nabucco.
No reason for the US to become involved

Yes, I know that this is all very complicated.

But no matter how you slice it, there is absolutely no reason for the United States to be getting involved in this conflict.

If the U.S. does get involved, we will actually be helping al-Qaeda terrorists that behead mothers and their infants.


YouTube - Veterans Today -

Al-Qaeda linked terrorists in Syria have beheaded all 24 Syrian passengers traveling from Tartus to Ras al-Ain in northeast of Syria, among them a mother and a 40-days old infant.

Gunmen from the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant stopped the bus on the road in Talkalakh and killed everyone before setting the bus on fire.
Is this really who we want to be “allied” with?


And of course once we strike Syria, the war could escalate into a full-blown conflict very easily.

If you believe that the Obama administration would never send U.S. troops into Syria, you are just being naive. In fact, according to Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, the proposed authorization to use military force that has been sent to Congress would leave the door wide open for American “boots on the ground”.

The proposed AUMF focuses on Syrian WMD but is otherwise very broad. It authorizes the President to use any element of the U.S. Armed Forces and any method of force. It does not contain specific limits on targets – either in terms of the identity of the targets (e.g. the Syrian government, Syrian rebels, Hezbollah, Iran) or the geography of the targets. Its main limit comes on the purposes for which force can be used. Four points are worth making about these purposes.

First, the proposed AUMF authorizes the President to use force “in connection with” the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war. (It does not limit the President’s use force to the territory of Syria, but rather says that the use of force must have a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian conflict. Activities outside Syria can and certainly do have a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war.).

Second, the use of force must be designed to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of WMDs “within, to or from Syria” or (broader yet) to “protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.”

Third, the proposed AUMF gives the President final interpretive authority to determine when these criteria are satisfied (“as he determines to be necessary and appropriate”).

Fourth, the proposed AUMF contemplates no procedural restrictions on the President’s powers (such as a time limit).

I think this AUMF has much broader implications than Ilya Somin described. Some questions for Congress to ponder:

(1) Does the proposed AUMF authorize the President to take sides in the Syrian Civil War, or to attack Syrian rebels associated with al Qaeda, or to remove Assad from power? Yes, as long as the President determines that any of these entities has a (mere) connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war, and that the use of force against one of them would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect the U.S. or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the (mere) threat posed by those weapons. It is very easy to imagine the President making such determinations with regard to Assad or one or more of the rebel groups.

(2) Does the proposed AUMF authorize the President to use force against Iran or Hezbollah, in Iran or Lebanon? Again, yes, as long as the President determines that Iran or Hezbollah has a (mere) a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war, and the use of force against Iran or Hezbollah would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect the U.S. or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the (mere) threat posed by those weapons.

Would you like to send your own son or your own daughter to fight in Syria just so that a natural gas pipeline can be built?


YouTube - Veterans Today -

What the United States should be doing in this situation is so obvious that even the five-year-old grandson of Nancy Pelosi can figure it out.

I’ll tell you this story and then I really do have to go. My five-year-old grandson, as I was leaving San Francisco yesterday, he said to me, Mimi, my name, Mimi, war with Syria, are you yes war with Syria, no, war with Syria. And he’s five years old. We’re not talking about war; we’re talking about action. Yes war with Syria, no with war in Syria. I said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ He said, ‘I think no war.’

Unfortunately, his grandmother and most of our other insane “leaders” in Washington D.C. seem absolutely determined to take us to war.

In the end, how much American blood will be spilled over a stupid natural gas pipeline?

This article originally appeared at theeconomiccollapseblog.com.

Russia says it will push Syria to relinquish control of chemical weapons

By Karen DeYoung and Will Englund, Updated: Monday, September 9, 9:43 AM

LONDON — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that his country is willing to push Syria to hand control over its chemical weapons to international monitors if such a move would prevent a U.S. military strike.

He also called on Syria to ratify the Convention on Chemical Weapons.

Video
In an exclusive interview with Charlie Rose, a warning from Syria's president Bashar Assad: if the U.S. strikes his country, there will be a response. Rose sat down with Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus. Assad says any U.S. military action would benefit al Qaeda fighters who are among the rebels, and it would tip the war in their favor.

In an exclusive interview with Charlie Rose, a warning from Syria's president Bashar Assad: if the U.S. strikes his country, there will be a response. Rose sat down with Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus. Assad says any U.S. military action would benefit al Qaeda fighters who are among the rebels, and it would tip the war in their favor.

“We do not know whether Syria will agree to this, but if the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country will avoid strikes, we will immediately begin working with Damascus,” Lavrov said.

“We call on the Syrian leadership not only to agree on a statement of storage of chemical weapons under international supervision, but also to their subsequent destruction.”

Lavrov spoke after meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in Moscow, and standing before reporters to proclaim the strength of the relationship between the two longtime allies.

“No military solution related with a foreign intervention exists,” Lavrov said.

Russia’s action came as Secretary of State John F. Kerry continued to try and rally global support for a U.S. military strike, stopping in Britain on Monday to say that the Washington-London relationship remains “special,” despite a parliamentary vote not to participate in a strike.

“Our bond is bigger than one vote, bigger than one moment in history,” Kerry said, standing next to British Foreign Secretary William Hague at a news conference. “The relationship remains as relevant today as it has in the past.”

In an interview Sunday with CBS News, Assad denied that his government had used chemical weapons and warned the American people not to get involved in another Middle Eastern war.

The Syrian dictator said Kerry’s effort to generate support for a strike reminded him of the “big lie” told by former president George W. Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, in justifying what became the U.S. war in Iraq. Powell based his argument for that war on claims that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction, which later proved false.

In London, both Kerry and Hague dismissed the idea that there was “still time” to avoid consequences for what President Obama has called a “horrific” chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21 that killed more than 1,400 people in a rebel-held area outside Damascus.

“There can’t be a negotiated settlement if the Assad regime is allowed to eradicate the moderate opposition,” Hague said.

Asked whether there was anything Assad could do to avoid an attack, Kerry said: “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay . . . But he isn’t about to.”

State Department spokeswomen Jennifer Psaki later said that Kerry was making a “rhetorical” point in the face of Assad’s long-standing intransigence.

“His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons. Otherwise he would have done so long ago,” Psaki said. “That’s why the world faces this moment.”



Kerry was traveling when news broke that Russia was proposing some type of transfer of control of chemical weapons, and there was no immediate response from the State Department.

Kerry used his overseas trip to pick up endorsements for a military strike. After a meeting in Paris on Sunday with Arab foreign ministers, Kerry said Saudi Arabia backed the strike that Obama is weighing.

Video
In an exclusive interview with Charlie Rose, a warning from Syria's president Bashar Assad: if the U.S. strikes his country, there will be a response. Rose sat down with Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus. Assad says any U.S. military action would benefit al Qaeda fighters who are among the rebels, and it would tip the war in their favor.

In an exclusive interview with Charlie Rose, a warning from Syria's president Bashar Assad: if the U.S. strikes his country, there will be a response. Rose sat down with Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus. Assad says any U.S. military action would benefit al Qaeda fighters who are among the rebels, and it would tip the war in their favor.

Qatar’s foreign minister, Khalid bin Mohammad al-Attiyah, speaking at a news conference with Kerry, called for foreign intervention “to protect the Syrian people.” Qatar also agreed to join a statement, signed by 11 U.S. allies who attended last week’s Group of 20 summit in Russia, condemning the use of chemical weapons, holding Assad responsible for the Aug. 21 strike and calling for a “strong international response.”

The initial signatories were Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, Britain and Germany. The statement was shepherded by the administration after the G-20 failed to agree on a common position. The G-20 nations that did not sign included Brazil, India and Indonesia, along with China and Russia, Assad’s principal arms supplier.

The statement has become the administration’s vehicle of choice to demonstrate shared international outrage as Obama fights an uphill battle for congressional authorization of the use of force against Assad. Kerry said other Arab countries had also agreed to sign it and would “make their own announcements in the next 24 hours.”

On Saturday, the 28-member European Union unanimously agreed to a similar statement. But neither document mentioned support for a military strike, and the E.U. said there should be no action against Syria until U.N. investigators who visited the site of the alleged chemical attack issue their report later this month. The administration has said the U.N. report is irrelevant because U.S. intelligence has confirmed the attack and much of the world agrees.

Although administration officials have indicated that they have wide allied backing for military intervention, the only other nations to publicly indicate support are Turkey and France, which said last week it wants to wait for the U.N. report. In Britain, Parliament rejected Prime Minister David Cameron’s request for authorization to join the United States in a military strike.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been among the leading arms suppliers to the Syrian rebels and have long backed unspecified direct foreign intervention in Syria. Although neither has said whether it would participate in a U.S.-led military strike, Attiyah said Sunday that his government was considering how it could be of assistance. Qatar sent bombers and other resources to aid the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011.

Speaking through an interpreter, Attiyah said that “the Syrian people over more than three years has been demanding or asking the international community to intervene.”

“Several parties who support the Syrian regime,” he said, had been intervening in that country since the war began with an uprising against the government in 2011. He was apparently referring to Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.

The Paris meeting was originally scheduled as an opportunity for Kerry to brief the Arab League on progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Along with the Qatar and Saudi Arabia representatives, also attending were the foreign ministers of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco, Egypt, Bahrain and the Palestinian Authority, as well as Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby.

Kerry, who flew to London late Sunday for a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, repeatedly emphasized the need and desire for a political solution in Syria. But he spent the weekend trying to rally foreign support for a military strike while the administration continued making its case to Congress and the American people at home.

Video
In an exclusive interview with Charlie Rose, a warning from Syria's president Bashar Assad: if the U.S. strikes his country, there will be a response. Rose sat down with Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus. Assad says any U.S. military action would benefit al Qaeda fighters who are among the rebels, and it would tip the war in their favor.

In an exclusive interview with Charlie Rose, a warning from Syria's president Bashar Assad: if the U.S. strikes his country, there will be a response. Rose sat down with Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus. Assad says any U.S. military action would benefit al Qaeda fighters who are among the rebels, and it would tip the war in their favor.

Assad sent his own message to those audiences, telling Charlie Rose of CBS News in a Damascus interview that “it had not been a good experience” for the American people “to get involved in the Middle East in wars and conflicts.” He added that “they should communicate to their Congress and to their leadership in Washington not to authorize a strike.”

Many of Assad’s comments, which were conveyed by Rose in a telephone report from Beirut on CBS’s “Face the Nation” ahead of their broadcast Monday, appeared designed to play on what opinion polls have shown is strong public opposition to U.S. intervention and indicated that Assad is closely following U.S. media reports.

Rose said the Syrian president “denied that he had anything to do with the [chemical] attack. He denied that he knew there was a chemical attack. . . . He said ‘I can neither confirm or deny’ ” that Syria possesses chemical weapons.

“He suggested, as he has before, that perhaps the rebels had something to do” with the reported attack, Rose said, and he quoted the Syrian leader as saying there had been no evidence that he had used chemical weapons against his people.

If the Obama administration had evidence, he said, Assad suggested “they should show that evidence and make their case.”

Assad said that his forces “were obviously as prepared as they could be for a strike,” Rose reported, and that he was “very, very concerned” that an American attack would tip the military balance of the war in the rebels’ favor.

Syria won some indirect support of its own Sunday as Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in a Baghdad news conference with his Iranian counterpart that Iraq “will not be a base for any attack nor will it facilitate any such attack on Syria.”

Speaking during his first visit abroad since his appointment last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned that U.S. intervention in Syria risks igniting a regionwide war.

“Those who are shortsighted and are beating the drums of war are starting a fire that will burn everyone,” Zarif said.

Liz Sly in Beirut contributed to this report.

Deepening Canada’s TiesBy Yves Engler

Monday, September 09, 2013

The Obama administration is looking to attack Syria. If they go forward without UN approval, the US would once again be violating international law and would likely inflame a conflict that’s already left 100,000 dead and displaced millions more.

For its part, Ottawa seems to want military action. Last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “We do support our allies who are contemplating forceful action [in Syria]” and on Friday he added “we are simply not prepared to accept the idea that there is a Russian veto [at the UN Security Council] over all of our actions.”

At the same time as they are calling for war the Conservatives are telling a skeptical public that Canada won’t be significantly involved in any military action. “We have no plans of our own to have a Canadian military mission,” Harper told the press.

Yet, ten days ago the head of the Canadian military met generals from some of the main countries backing Syria’s rebels to discuss the prospects of building an international coalition force. Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Tom Lawson traveled to Amman alongside the top generals from the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, the UK, Italy, France and Germany. The three-day meeting was co-hosted by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Tartin Dempsey, and Jordan’s chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Mishaal Zaben.

While initially trying to keep the trip secret, the Department of National Defence later shifted gears claiming, “These meetings were planned months in advance and were not in response to the escalating situation in Syria.” This is hard to believe as Lawson traveled to Jordan just four months ago.

In another sign of Canada’s deepening involvement in the Syrian conflict the National Post and Ottawa Sun recently reported that Canada has funneled $5.3-million to the Syrian rebels’ propaganda efforts since April of last year. Working alongside Washington, Canadian funding has helped the rebels set up a pirate radio network and train bloggers and journalists “in an effort to rapidly increase international credibility of the Syrian opposition and visibility of humanitarian news reporting from Syria.” Foreign Affairs also admits to giving $650,000 to the Syrian Justice and Accountability Centre to support “research and collect evidence of human rights violations for use in future Syria-led transitional justice processes.”

Over the past two years Ottawa has pushed to unite the Syrian opposition both inside and outside of the country. One way they’ve done so is by paying for the rebels’ satellite Internet communication devices with the aim of “increasing co-ordination between opposition networks of local civilian actors involved in local administration and political leadership, during both the conflict and transition phases in Syria.”

Notwithstanding their support for the rebels and involvement in military planning, Harper’s Conservatives had been relatively restrained with their public comments on the violence in Syria. Compared to their belligerence towards Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinians, they’ve taken a slightly more nuanced position towards Syria, which reflects the fact that the Israeli establishment is torn between its desire to weaken Hezbollah and Iran by overthrowing Assad and its fear that Islamists taking over in Syria could lead to more volatility in the occupied Golan Heights.

At different points both Prime Minister Harper and Foreign Minister Baird have recognized that the war is not simply a brutal dictatorship crushing innocents but that there is also a sectarian element to the conflict and the rebels include many unsavory characters. Despite recognizing the extremist nature of some Syrian rebels, the Conservatives have yet to add any Syrian group to Canada’s list of banned terrorist organizations. Unlike the US, UK and UN, Canada has not designated Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) as a terrorist group.

This might help explain why Canadians are thought to be over-represented among Western fighters in Syria. The Toronto Star reported that during the past year at least 100 Canadians have left to fight with the rebels in Syria.

While failing to list any opposition group, last September Ottawa saw fit to designate Syria a State Supporter of Terrorism. This “allows victims of terrorism to sue perpetrators… for loss or damage that has occurred as a result of an act of terrorism committed anywhere in the world.”
At the regional level Ottawa has denounced Iran, Hezbollah and Russia for supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad but they’ve ignored the role Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE and Qatar have played in the conflict. According to front-page Financial Times and Wall Street Journal articles, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have plowed billions of dollars worth of weaponry and other forms of support to the rebels. But there hasn’t been a public peep from the Conservatives about the Saudi’s and Qatar’s role in exacerbating the violence in Syria. Instead of calling on these repressive monarchies to desist, they have deepened Canada’s ties to the rebels’ main diplomatic and arms benefactors.

Conservative ministers have repeatedly visited Saudi Arabia. On his second visit to the Kingdom in a year, last week Minister of International Trade Ed Fast said, “There is a sincere desire on the part of our government to re-lift this relationship to a whole new level. We collaborate on security issues. We agree on a number of issues. … I am very bullish on where the Canadian-Saudi Arabian relationship is going.”

Over the past couple years Ottawa has ramped up arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies backing the rebels. At the start of 2010 the government-backed Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI) sent its first-ever trade mission to Saudi Arabia while in 2011 the Conservatives approved arms export licenses worth a whopping $4 billion to Saudi Arabia.

In February, 25 Canadian companies flogged their wares at IDEX 2013, the largest arms fare in the Middle East and North Africa. “We’re excited to see such a large number of Canadian exhibitors,” said Arif Lalani, Canada’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, where IDEX 2013 was held. “These companies represent the best Canadian capabilities and technologies in a number of areas of the defence and security sector.” As part of their effort to promote Canadian weaponry, Ottawa sent HMCS Toronto to the UAE during IDEX.

If the Canadian government cared about Syrians, over the past two and a half years they would have been calling on Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Hezbollah, Washington etc. to stop the flow of arms into Syria, which only prolongs people’s suffering. At the same time they would have been pushing aggressively for a negotiated resolution to the conflict.

It’s never too late to do the right thing.

Yves Engler is co-author of the recently released New Commune-ist Manifesto — Workers of the World It Really is Time to Unite, a rewriting of the original designed to spark debate about a new direction for the Left and union movement. For more information go towww.newcommuneist.com

John Kerry gives Syria week to hand over chemical weapons or face attack

US secretary of state tells London press conference with William Hague that US intelligence blames Assad regime for gas attack

Patrick Wintour
theguardian.com, Monday 9 September 2013 07.47 EDT

Link to video: John Kerry on military strikes against Syria

The US secretary of state has said that President Bashar al-Assad has one week to hand over his entire stock of chemical weapons to avoid a military attack. But John Kerry added that he had no expectation that the Syrian leader would comply.

Kerry also said he had no doubt that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack in east Damascus on 21 August, saying that only three people are responsible for the chemical weapons inside Syria – Assad, one of his brothers and a senior general. He said the entire US intelligence community was united in believing Assad was responsible.

Kerry was speaking on Monday alongside the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, who was forced to deny that he had been pushed to the sidelines by the House of Commons decision 10 days ago to reject the use of UK force in Syria.

The US Senate is due to vote this week on whether to approve an attack and Kerry was ambivalent over whether Barack Obama would use his powers to ignore the legislative chamber, if it were to reject an attack.

The US state department stressed that Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the one-week deadline and unlikelihood of Assad turning over Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. In a statement, the department added: "His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That's why the world faces this moment."

Kerry said the US had tracked the Syrian chemical weapons stock for many years, adding that it "was controlled in a very tight manner by the Assad regime … Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, and a general are the three people that have the control over the movement and use of chemical weapons.

"But under any circumstances, the Assad regime is the Assad regime, and the regime issues orders, and we have regime members giving these instructions and engaging in these preparations with results going directly to President Assad.

"We are aware of that so we have no issue here about responsibility. They have a very threatening level of stocks remaining."

Kerry said Assad might avoid an attack if he handed every bit of his chemical weapons stock, but added that the Syrian president was not going to do that. He warned that if other nations were not prepared to act on the issue of chemical weapons, "you are giving people complete licence to do whatever they want and to feel so they can do with impunity".

Kerry said the Americans were planning an "unbelievably small" attack on Syria. "We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria's civil war. That is exactly what we are talking about doing – unbelievably small, limited kind of effort."

The secretary of state repeatedly referred to genocides in eastern Europe and Rwanda in putting forward his case for taking military action. "We need to hear an appropriate outcry as we think back on those moments of history when large numbers of people have been killed because the world was silent," he said. "The Holocaust, Rwanda, other moments, are lessons to all of us today.

"So let me be clear," he continued. "The United States of America, President Obama, myself, others are in full agreement that the end of the conflict in Syria requires a political solution."

But he insisted such a solution was currently impossible if "one party believes that he can rub out countless numbers of his own citizens with impunity using chemicals that have been banned for 100 years".

Hague was forced to emphasise that the UK was engaged in the Syrian crisis through its call for greater action on humanitarian aid, as well as support for the Geneva II peace process.

He pointed out that David Cameron had convened a meeting of countries at the G20 summit in Saint Petersburg to ramp up the humanitarian effort.

Hague met members of the Syrian opposition last Friday and described its leaders as democratic and non-sectarian. On Monday, he avoided questions on why he was not providing lethal equipment to the Syrian opposition.

He said it was for the US to decide whether to attack Syria without congressional endorsement. "These are the two greatest homes of democracy and we work in slightly different ways and we each have to respect how each other's democracies work."

Kerry said he did not know if Obama would release further intelligence proving the culpability of Assad in the chemical weapons attack, saying the administration had already released an unprecedented amount of information.

The Onion

Poll: Majority Of Americans Approve Of Sending Congress To Syria

Sep 5, 2013


A majority of U.S. citizens believe congressional leaders in both the House and Senate must be sent to war-torn Syria immediately.

WASHINGTON—As President Obama continues to push for a plan of limited military intervention in Syria, a new poll of Americans has found that though the nation remains wary over the prospect of becoming involved in another Middle Eastern war, the vast majority of U.S. citizens strongly approve of sending Congress to Syria.

The New York Times/CBS News poll showed that though just 1 in 4 Americans believe that the United States has a responsibility to intervene in the Syrian conflict, more than 90 percent of the public is convinced that putting all 535 representatives of the United States Congress on the ground in Syria—including Senate pro tempore Patrick Leahy, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and, in fact, all current members of the House and Senate—is the best course of action at this time.

“I believe it is in the best interest of the United States, and the global community as a whole, to move forward with the deployment of all U.S. congressional leaders to Syria immediately,” respondent Carol Abare, 50, said in the nationwide telephone survey, echoing the thoughts of an estimated 9 in 10 Americans who said they “strongly support” any plan of action that involves putting the U.S. House and Senate on the ground in the war-torn Middle Eastern state. “With violence intensifying every day, now is absolutely the right moment—the perfect moment, really—for the United States to send our legislators to the region.”

“In fact, my preference would have been for Congress to be deployed months ago,” she added.

Citing overwhelming support from the international community—including that of the Arab League, Turkey, and France, as well as Great Britain, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Japan, Mexico, China, and Canada, all of whom are reported to be unilaterally in favor of sending the U.S. Congress to Syria—the majority of survey respondents said they believe the United States should refocus its entire approach to Syria’s civil war on the ground deployment of U.S. senators and representatives, regardless of whether the Assad regime used chemical weapons or not.

In fact, 91 percent of those surveyed agreed that the active use of sarin gas attacks by the Syrian government would, if anything, only increase poll respondents’ desire to send Congress to Syria.

Public opinion was essentially unchanged when survey respondents were asked about a broader range of attacks, with more than 79 percent of Americans saying they would strongly support sending Congress to Syria in cases of bomb and missile attacks, 78 percent supporting intervention in cases of kidnappings and executions, and 75 percent saying representatives should be deployed in cases where government forces were found to have used torture.

When asked if they believe that Sen. Rand Paul should be deployed to Syria, 100 percent of respondents said yes.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that sending Congress to Syria—or, at the very least, sending the major congressional leaders in both parties—is the correct course of action,” survey respondent and Iraq war veteran Maj. Gen. John Mill said, noting that his opinion was informed by four tours of duty in which he saw dozens of close friends sustain physical as well as emotional injury and post-traumatic stress. “There is a clear solution to our problems staring us right in the face here, and we need to take action.”

“Sooner rather than later, too,” Mill added. “This war isn’t going to last forever.”

War in Syria, Yogi Berra, & the two John Kerry’s
Posted on September 6, 2013 by Daniel Hopsicker


Why is the debate over air strikes on Syria like America’s decades-long Drug War?

Because, if you’re one of those Americans unlucky enough to have left your security clearance in your other pair of pants, questions about either receive essentially the same answer:

“You’re not cleared for that information.”

An informed citizenry is the basis for democracy, say the civics books. But whether the subject is the coming punitive attack on Syria, or the latest developments in the drug war, an informed citizenry is less popular than a 4 am car alarm with Administration officials. It's less welcome than French kissing at a family picnic.

The evidence of Wednesday's televised House hearing on Syria—which featured Secretary of State Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff presumably too powerful for anyone to have told him that his comb-over looks ridiculous—was clear and unequivocal:

Walter Cronkite’s famous phrase “the public’s right to know,” has been officially replaced in the American lexicon with two deadly words designed to stop discussion in its tracks: “It’s classified!”

yogi-berra-quotes-12The botched intelligence about Iraq still casts a long shadow over decisions about waging war in the Middle East. But both Kerry and Hagel's explanations why the US needs to strike Syria were so vague as to be insulting.

Watching the two men act like Iraq never happened was stupefying. It was surreal.

You had to go back a long way to find someone who knew how to explain it, to New York Yankees great Yogi Berra…

Yogi said, "It's like deja vu all over again."
What happened to hope and change?

hagelFlorida Congressman Alan Grayson's questioning of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel showed just how irritated officials become when they're taken to task for deliberate and arrogant vagueness.

GRAYSON: There’s been a report in the media that the administrations has mischaracterized post-attack Syrian military communications and that these communications actually express surprise about the attack. This is a very serious charge. Can you please release the original transcripts so that the American people can make their own judgment about that important issue?

HAGEL: What transcripts are you referring to?

GRAYSON: The transcripts that were reported to take place after the attack in which the government suggested that they confirm the existence of an attack but actually its been reported that Syrian commanders are expressing surprise about the attack have taken place, NOT confirmed it.

vlassifiedHAGEL: Well, that’s probably classified. Congressman I’d have to go back and review what you’re referring to.

GRAYSON: You will agree that its important the Administration not mislead the public in any way about these reports won’t you?

HAGEL: Well of course, but I’m not aware that the Administration is not misleading the public about this or any other issue.

Yogi said, "Even Napoleon had his Watergate."
"Most likely, its classified.”

yogifutureFor anyone who yearned for something better after the Bush years, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

Sec. of Defense Chuck Hagel's attitude was as dismissive as an Exxon executive in a meeting with Greenpeace.

Still, Grayson, almost heroically, persisted. Someday in the future he may be credited for making it possible to utter the words "Florida" and "Congressman" together in a sentence without sneering.

GRAYSON: Will you agree the only way to put the matter to rest is to release the original reports in some redacted form?

HAGEL: Well, I’m not going to agree to anything until I see it, and see what it is. But, most likely, its classified.

graysonGRAYSON: I understand that. I’m asking will you declassify it for this purpose.

HAGEL: I just gave you my answer. I have no idea what exactly you’re talking about. I’d have to go back and look at it, I’d have to confer with others in our intelligence community. That’s all I can tell you now. Thank you.

And, with that, Hagel indicated just how done he was with Grayson. He reached forward and peremptorily turned off his microphone.

Yankee great Yogi Berra was ahead of his time. He said, "The future ain't what it used to be."
The Two John Kerry’s

kerry_1971Kerry accused Syrian government forces of killing 1,429 people in the chemical weapons attack, an absurdly specific number which showed him offering up statements incapable of standing up to the simplest tests of verisimilitude.

"Secretary Kerry seems to have been sandbagged into using an absurdly over-precise number," said Anthony Cordesman, former director of intelligence assessment at the U.S. Defense Department.

An intelligence analyst was quoted saying, 'There’s no way in hell the U.S. can back up an estimate of the death toll this exact."

It wasn’t a yellow cake moment by any means. But it was palpably untrue. .

When an anti-war protester interrupted the Senate hearing on Syria to yell, “We don’t want another war,” Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged the irony that he first appeared before the same Senate panel 42 years ago as an anti-war activist.

“When I was 27 years old, I had feelings very similar to that protester. And I would just say that is exactly why it is so important that we are all here having this debate, talking about these things before the country, and that the Congress itself will act representing the American people,” Kerry told the Foreign Relations Committee.

Huh? It was a non-answer; it said nothing about how Vietnam Veterans Against the War protester John Kerry would view his current incarnation as a salesman advocating an attack on Syria. We’re left wondering: What happened to John Kerry?

johnkerry-apr21“It’s the arc of a man’s life,” said Bill Delahunt, a former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts who has known Kerry since the two were young prosecutors. “His history gives him credibility. He speaks with such moral authority now — just as he spoke with moral authority when he entered the national stage.”

Sounds good. Too bad its not true. Then or now—a bad war is a bad war.

One of the most insidious things about American society today is officials feel they’re doing the public a favor by lying to us. We’re feckless morons incapable of critical thought. We can’t handle the truth.

Kerry didn’t used to feel that way. Clearly, his views have changed.

"He hits from both sides of the plate," Yogi Berra said. "He's amphibious."

Kerry Couldn't Sell a Used Car
By davidswanson - Posted on 09 September 2013

After Secretary of State John Kerry suggested that President Bashar al-Assad avoid a war by handing over any chemical weapons his government possesses, Russia quickly seconded the motion, and Assad agreed to it. Just as quickly, aparently panicked by the possible delay or prevention of missile strikes, Kerry's staff put out this statement:

"Secretary Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons he has denied he used. His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That's why the world faces this moment."

Could Assad be lying? Could he hope to stash away a hidden weapons stockpile? Yes, and then at least a U.S. attack would have been delayed and more time gained to work on preventing it. But that's not likely. Inspectors are very good. That's why Prsident George W. Bush wanted them pulled out of Iraq, where they had done a stellar job and the weaponry been eliminated. That could conceivably also be why President Barack Obama wanted them kept away from the site of the August 21st attack and wanted to send missiles into Syria before the inspectors reached any results.

So, to all appearances, Assad has immediately done what Kerry just declared impossible. How reliable, then, are other assertions of which Kerry professes to be certain?

Is it really an important international norm that one nation should bomb another in support of fanatical terrorists and on the stated basis that people had been killed with the wrong variety of weapon?

Is it really true that this war will be both unbelievably small and a significant blow to the Syrian government?

Kerry is trying to sell the same used car to people who want an ambulance and other people who want a tank.

Nobody's buying.

It's not entirely Kerry's fault that he had to come on stage after Colin Powell's performance, but it is his fault that he's flubbed all of his lines.

If Obama withdraws his demand for Congressional authorization of war, it will not be because he and John Kerry played 12-dimensional chess and secretly hope to bring peace to the earth. It will be because they played duck-duck-goose with such incompetence that they managed to knock each other unconscious in the process.

If a war is prevented here -- and it's way too early to say that -- it will be the result of public opinion in the United States and the world, the courage of Parliament in Britain, and the glimmerings of actual representation beginning to sparkle through the muck and slime on Capitol Hill.

If celebrating Obama and Kerry's super brave and strong heroism in stumbling into a Russian barrier to their madness gives them the "credibility" to put their guns back in their pants, then by all means celebrate that fiction.

But if we get this crisis behind us, we should understand that Parliament acted against war for the first time in centuries, and the public stopped Congress for the first time ever. If President Obama doesn't ask for an authorization, it will be because it is not going to pass. Even if he didn't expect to use it right away, he would want it passed if possible.

Congress' apparent willingness to say no is the result of many factors, including the perversity of partisanship. But the primary factor is public pressure. That public pressure needs to intensify now that victory is in sight, not diminish.

And if it succeeds, Syria will still be in desperate need of a cease-fire, disarmament, a peace settlement, and actual aid (as opposed to humanitarian bombs). Let's not allow those needs to be forgotten if they depart from our television screens. Those same television screens have tried to move us into support for war and failed dramatically. We're in charge now. We run this country. They fill fluff that no one listens to into the spaces between advertisements for crap no one buys. Fill the government in on the new arrangement.

NeonLX » Mon Sep 09, 2013 8:05 pm wrote:Wow. What a craptacular flame-out, Obomb'em. And you're taking the democratic party down with you, too. Cool.

If Obama withdraws his demand for Congressional authorization of war, it will not be because he and John Kerry played 12-dimensional chess and secretly hope to bring peace to the earth. It will be because they played duck-duck-goose with such incompetence that they managed to knock each other unconscious in the process.