Thursday, September 12, 2013 4:35:35 AM
A Plea for Caution From Russia
Oliver Munday
What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria
By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN
Published: September 11, 2013
MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.
The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.
Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.
Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.
From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.
No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.
No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.
The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.
We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.
A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.
I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.
If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
Vladimir V. Putin is the president of Russia.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?pagewanted=all [with comments]
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Rand Paul: ‘Advantage Putin!’
Paul gave a Republican response to the president's televised address.
AP Photo
By TAL KOPAN
9/11/13 12:19 PM EDT Updated: 9/11/13 9:54 PM EDT
Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday that at this point in the game, Russian President Vladimir Putin is beating President Barack Obama.
“If this were a tennis match, it would be the umpire shouting, ‘Advantage Putin!’ He seems to be running circles around this administration,” Paul said on Glenn Beck’s radio show on TheBlaze.
The Kentucky Republican, who gave a Republican response to Obama’s televised address on Syria on Tuesday night, said the White House’s attempts at a “face-saving enterprise” weren’t working.
“It really seems that they backed into this through some lucky happenstance,” Paul said of a potential diplomatic agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons, which he said would be a good thing for the region.
Paul disagreed with Beck, though, on his assertion that this week has marked the demise of the United States as the world’s superpower and the rise of Russia to that position.
“I would see that Russia is grasping, they’re grasping to try to look like a superpower that they once were, and I don’t think they are,” Paul said, saying the U.S. remains a superpower but doesn’t look like one.
Even with his criticisms, the senator said he believes the administration’s missteps don’t ruin America’s credibility internationally.
“I don’t take [Obama’s] insecurities and inabilities to make decisions, I don’t see that as something that damns all of America,” Paul said.
Paul also continued to push against the administration’s advocacy for a military intervention, echoing an attack line from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another outspoken freshman, that the American military shouldn’t be helping rebels in Syria who could be working with extremists.
“We’re hearing it directly from soldiers, we’re hearing it from their parents … they aren’t willing to fight for Al Qaeda,” Paul said, adding that members of the military shouldn’t be punished for speaking out, including on the Internet. “I wouldn’t want to see young men basically court-martialed for posting their opinion.”
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/rand-paul-syria-obama-putin-96635.html [with comments]
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Syrian Crisis: President Obama Is One Cool Customer
By Jackson Williams
Posted: 09/10/2013 7:23 pm
Remember how President Obama kept poker-faced yet jovial at a White House Correspondents' Dinner on the eve of the mission [ http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1105/obamas_poker_face_at_dinner.html ] to get Osama bin Laden? Perhaps he's been at it again.
Conservatives -- and much of the mainstream media, alas -- have been railing over Secretary of State John Kerry's "wishful rumination" in London regarding Syria's chemical weapons, and how it shows that President Obama's foreign policy is Keystone Cops.
Far from wishful, it was apparently a floated plan that looks wiser by the hour.
Monday's NY Times website had the following bit of reporting: "A senior State Department official, who was traveling on the plane with Mr. Kerry en route home from London, where he made the remarks in a news conference, said that the Russians had previewed their proposal with the Secretary of State before going public [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/world/middleeast/kerry-says-syria-should-hand-over-all-chemical-arms.html?pagewanted=all ]."
So, the initial story, that Kerry opined out loud in London and the Russians then jumped on it, may well be incorrect. Indeed, early Tuesday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the notion of the international community taking charge of Syrian chemical weapons wasn't merely the result of Kerry popping off, and Carney specifically cited prior conversations between Kerry and the Russian Foreign Secretary as well as conversations between Obama and Russian President Putin when they were together a week ago at the G-20 Summit in St. Petersburg.
It seems the American government may have been working two tracks simultaneously: diplomatic back channels with Russia, and the public threat of military action against Syria, both aimed at dealing with Syrian President Assad's chemical weapons and their shameful use.
If so, this is a lucid, smart approach that looks to generate positive dividends. I wonder if the U.S. president will acknowledge as much when he speaks to the nation Tuesday evening [he did -- (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91886558 ]?
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-williams/syrian-crisis-president-obama_b_3902953.html [with comments]
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Russian chess move stalls US actions as Al-Qaeda Air Force
A man holds the body of a dead child among bodies of people activists say were killed by nerve gas in the Ghouta region, in the Duma neighbourhood of Damascus August 21, 2013.
(Reuters / Bassam Khabieh)
By Pepe Escobar
Published time: September 10, 2013 09:03
The frantic spin of the millisecond is that the White House is taking a ‘hard look’ at the Russian proposal for Bashar Assad to place Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under UN control, thus at least postponing another US war in the Middle East.
Oh, the joys of the geopolitical chessboard; Russia throwing a lifeline to save US President Barack Obama from his self-spun ‘red line’.
True diplomats are supposed to prevent wars – not pose as warmongers. American exceptionalism is of course exempted. So just as Secretary of State John Kerry had the pedal on the metal selling yet another war in a London presser, his beat up Chevy was overtaken by a diplomatic Maserati: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
This was Kerry’s slip: “... [Assad] could turn over any single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over. All of it. And without delay and allow the full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it and it can't be done obviously.”
It can be done, obviously, as Lavrov turned Kerry’s move against him – forwarding a two-step proposal to Damascus; Syria turns its chemical weapons to UN control and later agrees with their destruction, as well as joining the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Syrian Foreign Minister Moallem took no time to agree. The devil, of course, is in the fine print.
Somebody help me! What’s the message?
Predictably, all hell broke loose at the State Department. Dammit! Darn Russki peacenik! A Kerry spokeswoman characterized it as a “rhetorical argument”. It was just “talk”. Damascus and Moscow have a horrible track record. This was just a “stalling tactic.” Washington could not trust Assad. And even if there was a “serious” proposal that would not delay the White House’s push to sell its war in the US Congress.
Yet two hours later, closet future US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton saw it as… a serious proposal, “suggested by Secretary Kerry and the Russians.” And she made clear she was for it after meeting with Obama himself.
Meanwhile, the batshit crazy department kept the pedal on the metal, with National Security Adviser Susan ‘Wolfowitz’ Rice busy warning that chemical attacks in Syria are a "serious threat to our national security" including to "citizens at home." What, no ‘mushroom cloud’?
Yet just as ‘on message’ was up in smoke, magically, deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf and Hillary herself started talking in unison (somebody forgot to brief Rice). And the White House decided to take its ‘hard look’. Sort of. Because expectations are not that high. And the push to war in the US Congress is bound to continue.
Not even hardcore Beltway junkies have been able to keep track in real time of the Obama administration’s ever-shifting ‘policy’. This is how it (theoretically) stands. “Assad is responsible for the gas attack.” Translation; he did not order it, directly (no one with half a brain, apart from the Return of the Living Dead neo-cons, believes the current White House “evidence” sticks). But he’s still “responsible”. And even if Al-Nusra Front did it – with ‘kitchen sarin’ imported from Iraq, as I proposed here [ http://rt.com/op-edge/war-chemical-weapons-obama-syria-120/ ], Assad is still “responsible”; after all he must protect Syrian citizens.
In his Monday TV Anschluss, Obama, clinging to the lifeline, was quick to steal Lavrov’s credit, saying he had “discussed” the broad outlook of what Russia announced directly with Putin at the G20 summit last week. This has not been corroborated by Moscow.
Obama told CNN this was a “potentially positive thought.” And he was keen to stress it only happened not because his Designated War Salesman slipped, but because of a “credible military threat.” To NBC, he kept peddling what Kerry defined as an “unbelievably small” attack; the US “can strike without provoking a counter-attack.” Yet to CNN he admitted, “the notion that Mr. Assad could significantly threaten the United States is just not the case.”
So why the need for the “unbelievably small” kinetic whatever? That’s too much of a metaphysical question for US journalism.
You have the right to remain inspected
Now for the fine print. Everybody knows what happened to Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi after they gave up their deterrence. Assuming both Washington and Damascus accept Lavrov’s proposal, this could easily be derailed into an Iraqi-style ultra-harsh inspection regime. At least in theory, no US Air Force will attack UN inspectors at Syrian chemical weapons depots. As for false flags, don’t underestimate Bandar Bush’s deep pockets.
Still, considering Washington won’t abandon its real agenda – regime change - Obama might eventually be re-presented with his full emperor hand to ‘supervise’ the chemical weapons handover and ‘punish’ any infringement, real or otherwise, by Damascus, facilitated by the usual spies infiltrated into the inspectors mechanism. As in, “if you complain, we bomb.”
The key point in all this, though, is that for Damascus chemical weapons are just a detail - they are worthless in the battlefield. What matters is the 250,000-strong Syrian Arab Army (SAA), as well as military support by Iran and especially Russia – as in badass missiles of the Yakhont variety or S-300 (even 400) systems. Destroying the weapons – assuming Damascus agrees - is a very long-term proposition, measured in years; even Russia and the US have not destroyed theirs. By then, the myriad gangs of the “Un-Free” Syrian Army may have been thoroughly defeated.
Obama may have read the writing on the (bloody) wall; forget about convincing the US Congress to bomb Damascus when there’s a real diplomatic way out on the table. Yet nothing changes in the long run. Those who are paying or cheering in the sidelines for this operation - from Bandar Bush to Tel Aviv – want by all means to smash Damascus, for the benefit of Israel in terms of strategic balance, and for the benefit of the House of Saud in terms of isolating Iran in the Middle East.
So Lavrov’s chess move is not a checkmate; it is a gambit, meant to prevent the United States from becoming Al-Qaeda’s Air Force, at least for now. The quagmire would then move to a negotiating table – which would include those chemical weapons inspections.
No wonder assorted Western-weaponized psychos and jihadists on the ground in Syria don’t like this one bit. It’s happening just as more damning circumstantial evidence of false flags galore surface.
RT has been informed that the ‘rebels’ may be planning a monster false flag on Israel, to be launched [ http://rt.com/news/syria-rebels-chemical-attack-israel-618/ ] from Assad-controlled ground.
And then there’s the release of two former hostages detained for five months by the ‘rebels’ in appalling conditions; Domenico Quirico, a correspondent for La Stampa, and Belgian historian Pierre Piccinin. Here is a shortened version of Quirico’s story, in English.
I talked to a very close friend at La Stampa who spoke directly with Quirico. He confirmed that Quirico and Piccinin overheard a Skype conversation between a ‘rebel’ speaking very bad English, who introduced himself as an ‘FSA General’, and somebody speaking very good English on the other side of the line. It was clear from the conversation that the Assad government was NOT responsible for the gas attack in Ghouta. So Quirico is admitting exactly what Piccinin told Belgian TV. It may not be conclusive; yet as proof goes, it certainly beats the Israeli-fed White House intel.
Unlike Piccinin, Quirico cannot tell the whole true story; most of all because La Stampa, a newspaper owned by the Agnelli family, very close to Henry Kissinger, is staunchly pro-‘rebel’.
Here’s a translation of what Piccinin said [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG5QteeaNxc ]; “It’s a moral duty that we have, Domenico and myself, to say it was not the government of Bashar Assad that used sarin gas or other nerve agent, in the Damascene suburb of Ghouta. We are certain about this, it’s a conversation that we captured, even if it pains me to say it; I ferociously support the Free Syrian Army, and its fair struggle for democracy.”
Needless to say, none of this crucial development is being fully reported by US corporate media.
The Anschluss continues. Obama is addressing US public opinion this Tuesday night. Don’t expect him to announce yet another twist to the ‘Obama Doctrine’ – criminalizing ‘evil’ dictators who use Agent Orange, napalm, white phosphorous and depleted uranium against other people.
© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2013 (emphasis in original)
http://rt.com/op-edge/russia-chemical-weapons-control-651/ [with comments]
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Exclusive: U.N. Report Will Point to Assad Regime in Massive Chemical Attack
Posted By Colum Lynch
Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - 8:41 PM
U.N. inspectors have collected a "wealth" of evidence on the use of nerve agents that points to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against his own people, according to a senior Western official.
The inspection team, which is expected on Monday to present U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon with a highly anticipated report on a suspected Aug. 21 nerve agent attack in the suburbs of Damascus [ http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/27/exclusive_us_spies_say_intercepted_calls_prove_syrias_army_used_nerve_gas ], will not directly accuse the Syrian regime of gassing its own people, according to three U.N.-based diplomats familiar with the investigation. But it will provide a strong circumstantial case -- based on an examination of spent rocket casings, ammunition, and laboratory tests of soil, blood, and urine samples -- that points strongly in the direction of Syrian government culpability.
"I know they have gotten very rich samples -- biomedical and environmental -- and they have interviewed victims, doctors and nurses," said the Western official. "It seems they are very happy with the wealth of evidence they got." The official, who declined to speak on the record because of the secrecy surrounding the U.N. investigation, could not identify the specific agents detected by the inspector team, but said, "You can conclude from the type of evidence the [identity of the] author."
The U.N. team, which is led by the Swedish scientist Ake Sellström [ http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/26/the_scientist_under_syria_s_microscope_chemical_weapons ], traveled to Damascus last month to begin an investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons. During that trip, according to the United States and other Western powers, Syrian forces launched a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 1,400 people in the al Ghouta suburb of Damascus.
A montage of video clips posted [ https://twitter.com/AmbassadorPower/status/376885534607831040 ] by Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on her Twitter page depicted horrific scenes of purported victims writhing in agony, and gasping for breath. Rows of dead children, their faces blue from apparent suffocation, were lined up in morbid rows, white sheets covering their tiny bodies.
Syria and Russia have denied that the government in Damascus carried out the attack, saying it was the work of Syrian rebels seeking to persuade the West to intervene militarily on their behalf. In an interview with Charlie Rose [ http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/10/how_assad_wooed_the_american_right_and_won_the_syria_propaganda_war (first item at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91851649 ], Assad denied his government used chemical weapons -- and compared the U.S. case against Syria to former Secretary of State Colin Powell's flawed presentation against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In Syria, Assad said, "the Russians have completely opposite evidence: that missiles [were] thrown from areas that the rebels controlled."
Syria and Russia, meanwhile, have highlighted several other alleged chemical weapons attacks that wound up hitting Syrian forces. The Syrian government initially invited U.N. inspectors to Syria to investigate an alleged March 19 sarin attack in the town of Khan al Assal [ http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/19/syria_chemical_weapons_attacks_united_nations ], near Aleppo. While the inspectors were in Damascus, Syria's U.N. ambassador Bashar al Jaafari, requested that investigators look at three other cases of alleged chemical weapons use in late August against Syrian forces. On their final day in Damascus, the U.N. inspection team visited a military hospital in Damascus to examine alleged chemical weapons victims.
Diplomats say that Sellström's inspection team is only planning to report next week on the al Ghouta attacks. The team plans to return to Damascus at a later date to complete its investigations into the other incidents, including the March incident at Khan al Assal.
Under the terms of its mandate, however, the U.N. inspectors are only authorized to conclude whether chemical weapons have been used in Syria, not assign responsibility for their use.
While Western diplomats say they are confident that U.N. report would strengthen the case against the Syrian government, they said they expected the case would not fundamentally alter the course of diplomatic efforts to contain the chemical weapons threat in Syria. "It's not a game changer," said one diplomat.
On Tuesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, admitted his country operated a clandestine chemical weapons program, and vowed to open them up to international scrutiny as part of a Russian-brokered deal to place Syria's chemical agents under international control [ http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/10/theres_almost_no_chance_this_russian_plan_for_syrias_chemical_weapons_will_work ]. "We are ready to reveal the locations of the chemical weapon sites and to stop producing chemical weapons and make these sites available for inspection by representatives of Russia, other countries and the United Nations," Moallem said [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/world/middleeast/Syria-Chemical-Arms.html ] in a statement.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, headed to Geneva to see if they could reach agreement on a plan to control and ultimately destroy Syria's chemical weapons. Secretary-General Ban, for his part, appeared to be moving beyond the Sellström investigation. "I have not yet received the report from Dr. Sellström, nor do I know what it will contain," Ban told reporters Monday. But "I'm considering urging the Security Council to demand the immediate transfer of Syria's chemical weapons and chemical precursor stocks to places inside Syria where they can be safely stored and destroyed."
©2013 The Foreign Policy Group, LLC
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/11/un_report_will_finger_assad_for_massive_chemical_attack [no comments yet]
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Syrian forces responsible for Banias massacres: U.N. report
A Free Syrian Army fighter aims his weapon behind sandbags in the eastern al-Ghouta, near Damascus, September 9, 2013. Picture taken September 9, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Raje Alsori
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA | Wed Sep 11, 2013 1:39pm EDT
(Reuters) - U.N. rights investigators have established that Syrian government forces were almost certainly responsible for two massacres last May in which up to 450 civilians were killed, a report published on Wednesday said.
The report documents nine mass killings in all, attributing all but one to government forces, but said both government and rebel fighters had committed war crimes including murder, hostage-taking and shelling of civilians.
With more than 100,000 dead in the Syrian war, there was little sign that reports of atrocities would spur international action until last month, when allegations that President Bashar al-Assad's forces had gassed hundreds of civilians sparked a threat of U.S. strikes, and furious international diplomacy.
The killings in Baida and Ras al-Nabaa, two pockets of rebel sympathizers surrounded by villages loyal to Assad on the outskirts of the town of Banias, did not involve fighting with rebels and appeared designed to send a message of deterrence.
The U.N. commission of inquiry has not been allowed into Syria, but its 20 investigators carried out 258 interviews with refugees, defectors and others, in the region and in Geneva, including via Skype, for their 11th report in two years.
In Baida, it said between 150 and 250 civilians had allegedly been killed, including 30 women, apparently executed, who were found in one house. It said armed rebels were not active in the area at the time.
"Testimonies were consistent that members of the National Defence Forces were actively involved in the raids and in many cases leading them," the 42-page report said.
"Accordingly, there are reasonable grounds to believe that government forces and affiliated militias including the National Defence Forces are the perpetrators of the al-Bayda (Baida) massacre.
The next day, as word spread that militia fighters were advancing with army support, hundreds of civilians tried to flee the neighboring village of Ras al-Nabaa, but were pushed back at checkpoints. Government forces proceeded to shell the village and then militia fighters moved in.
"As they raided the village, civilians were captured and executed," the report said, adding: "The operation did not occur in the context of a military confrontation. Government forces were in full control of the area.
It gave a figure of 150-200 dead in Ras al-Nabaa.
GOVERNMENT SILENCE
The Syrian government kept silent about the killings at the time but a Syrian intelligence officer, speaking to Reuters anonymously, acknowledged that the perpetrators were government loyalists, including some from the surrounding Alawite villages.
The conflict began in March 2011 as an uprising against Assad and descended into a civil war where mostly Sunni Muslim rebels are pitted against Assad's forces, who are backed by Shi'ite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah.
The only deliberate slaughter of civilians attributed to rebel forces in the period of investigation was in June, when rebels captured Hatla in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor.
"Anti-government armed group fighters conducted home invasions, killing and summarily executing (by shooting at close range) many Shia including at least 30 civilians, among them children, women and elderly," the report said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group that has reported abuses on both sides of the conflict, said at the time that 60 people had died in the attack, mostly pro-Assad Shi'ite militiamen.
The U.N. report, which largely covered incidents between May and July, accused forces loyal to Assad of bombing schools and hospitals, and rebels of carrying out summary executions after sentencing by Islamic Sharia courts lacking due process.
The commission, led by Paulo Pinheiro of Brazil, urged the U.N. Security Council to hold perpetrators accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The investigators, who include former U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, analyzed photographs, video and satellite imagery, as well as forensic and medical records, to draw up their report.
The team also verified the killing of 450 people during an offensive by Syrian government forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters to retake the strategic town of Qusair. Food and water were cut off during a siege, and the town was heavily shelled.
"Approximately half were civilian casualties, killed primarily in the shelling and aerial bombardment of the town in the early days of the offensive," the report said.
U.S. President Barack Obama asked Congress on Tuesday to delay a vote on authorizing a military strike against Syria in retaliation for its use of chemical weapons, to give time to a Russian plan to take away Syria's chemical weapons.
The U.N. experts said they had received allegations of chemical weapons use, "predominantly by government forces", but could not give details of the incidents, some of which have been investigated by U.N. weapons inspectors in the last few weeks.
(This story has been corrected to change figure in second paragraph for total massacres to nine from eight)
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Tom Miles and Kevin Liffey)
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/11/us-syria-crisis-warcrimes-idUSBRE98A0D520130911 [with comments]
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Not So Fast, Christian Soldiers
Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad in 2006. Some U.S. members of Congress have found themselves taking a softer stance on Russia given its ability to broker a possible settlement regarding Syria.
Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
How Congress ditched their distaste for Putin and Assad for their newfound faith in realpolitik.
By David Weigel
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013, at 11:41 AM
They walked in good cheer from Union Station to the parks across from Capitol Hill—the proud supporters of Bashar al-Assad. They wore T-shirts with the Syrian president’s cheery face emblazoned on the national flag and wore T-shirts that read, “Hands Off Syria,” complete with bloody handprints. Minerva Sabbagh, a priest’s wife who’d ridden one of six buses down from Allentown, Penn., wore a homemade number with the powerful-if-dubious slogan “Jesus Was Syrian.” Her message, like everyone else’s, was that Washington needed to prop up the dictator who could protect Syria’s Christians.
“He’s standing for Syria, just like Obama is standing for America,” said Sabbagh. “He’s an Allawite! He even goes to the monasteries and prays!”
Sabbagh contrasted Assad’s behavior—being a good husband, being falsely accused of chemical weapons attacks—with the assaults of the Syrian rebels. Why, she asked, did Americans want to side with them? “Animals don’t do what they do,” she said. “They’re opening the chests, beheading, torturing like they did 2,000 years ago.”
The presence of a reporter in the midst of this rally stirred up the protest. One man, wearing a shirt that portrayed Christ and the crown of thorns with black and orange beads, insisted to me that “it’s all over for the Christians” if Assad were to fall. Another with a sign reading, “We Support the Syrian Military Fighting Al Qaeda,” held it up straight for a photo. When Sabbagh choked up, her daughter Hope helpfully provided fresh spin. “The fall of the Byzantine empire is going to happen again,” she said, “but it’s going to happen in America.”
These were not people or opinions getting a ton of purchase in the mainstream media. They had a more important audience: Congress. The tide of realpolitik washing over the Capitol has Republicans decrying the Syrian rebels’ threat to Christians. It has both parties talking hopefully about a deal with the Russians that would remove the regime’s chemical weapons but do nothing else to upset the balance in the country.
The first argument, the “think of the Christians” spiel, has been gathering force on the right for weeks. Sen. Rand Paul, the most reliable noninterventionist in the GOP, has used nearly every public appearance to emphasize that Christians were safe under the Assad regime but threatened if the radical faction of the Syrian resistance won out. “The one thing you might say if you wanted to say something good [about Assad] is that there was some civility there for a generation or more,” he said [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/04/rand_paul_assumes_there_ll_be_a_way_to_filibuster_the_syria_resolution.html ] last week. “You see what happens when the radical Islamists take over, the Muslim Brotherhood raging through Coptic neighborhoods in Egypt.”
Ten years ago, plenty of Republicans (though not Paul’s father) were fooled into thinking that Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship was actually in league with al-Qaida. They’ve since learned to appreciate the iron boot heel of the Arab secularist. Last week, a pack of conservative House Republicans traveled the Arab world [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/09/bachmann_gohmert_and_the_usual_suspects_want_us_to_back_the_egyptian_military.html ] and met with the new–old military government in Egypt. They left singing the praises of that regime, and warning Americans of backing any rebels who might be less friendly to Christians and more friendly to al-Qaida. “We remember who caused 9/11 in America [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/09/bachmann_gohmert_and_the_usual_suspects_want_us_to_back_the_egyptian_military.html ],” said Rep. Michele Bachmann while in Cairo [the Bachmann-Gohmert-King press conference in Egypt third and fourth items at (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91848995 ].
Maybe it’s easy to dismiss Bachmann, but as members filed into Monday’s private briefing on Syria with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a few conservatives agreed with her. “Having met with some of our allies in the Middle East, privately they want to know: Do you guys understand you were fighting the Muslim Brotherhood in Afghanistan and these other places?” said Rep. Louie Gohmert, who was on the trip. “Now, you’ve turned on a guy that was a U.S. ally, Mubarak. You turned on a guy, Qaddafi, that since 2003 had been an ally. You turned on the Northern Alliance that really defeated the Taliban initially. Are you gonna turn on us next?”
No Republican, really, could promise that intervention in Syria wouldn’t backfire and help al-Qaida. Rep. Peter King, possibly the most reliable hawk in the party, suggested only that “both sides” would benefit if chemical weapons were neutralized. More skeptical members say that the briefings are full of questions about whether intervention might boost Islamists, and haven’t produced good answers. “Increasingly the opposition that are al-Qaida types are going after the Christians,” said Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey conservative who wants to set up a war crimes tribunal for Syria [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rep-chris-smith-establish-a-syrian-war-crimes-tribunal/2013/09/09/be88e10c-197c-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_story.html ]. “It’s increasingly a case of genocide, not collateral damage. It’s a very dangerous jihad.”
And how do members of Congress hope to prevent that? Realism. “I think we need to re-triple our efforts diplomatically,” said Smith—and like a lot of Republicans on Monday, he wondered if a new proposal from Russia might do the trick. Russia’s offer to allow Syria to transfer control of its chemical weapons to the international community, something that might have been cackled out of the room a few months ago, found plenty of buyers in Congress.
“The potential for a negotiated settlement here—it’s attractive for reasons that are very obvious,” said Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell. The Russian settlement was preferable to any airstrikes, “provided that the objectives that have been articulated, that the international community gains control of the weapons and ultimately they’re destroyed, this is a shared objective. I can’t imagine why one would object to that.”
In the past, hawks—largely Republicans—might have objected because they didn’t trust the Russians, or trust the “international community.” It was only 10 years ago that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was dismissing Western European nations that declined to support the war in Iraq as “old Europe,” and the New York Post was labeling France and Germany as part of the “Axis of Weasels” for preferring weapons inspections to war in Iraq. Before neoconservatives despised that “axis,” they’d despised Henry Kissinger and détente with the Soviet Union, amending trade bills [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson%E2%80%93Vanik_amendment ] to add human rights conditions for Russian Jews.
But realpolitik is back. Members of Congress are more outwardly concerned about Syrian Christians than they are about AIPAC’s endorsement of airstrikes. They’re tentatively endorsing a Russian plan that may or may not be sincere.
“We did a lot of things with the Soviets,” suggested Rep. Darrell Issa after leaving the closed-door briefing on Monday. “We did a great many things during the Cold War that were positive, including work on nonproliferation. My statement earlier that Putin was part of a smaller but still evil empire that opposes the United States, that blocks it, that has backed Iran, that continues to support Syria for purposes that are not good—I stand by that. But if Russians in this case could get weapons out of the hands of both parties, that’s something we should work on.”
A reporter who’d talked to Issa before about Russia remarked that he’d completely changed his tone. Issa swiveled to find her, looking away from the TV cameras that had been capturing his wisdom.
“He’s still an evil man from an evil empire!” Issa assured the reporter. He turned back to the cameras. “If in fact Putin can, for the sake of his sponsored nation—if he can get weapons out of the hands of Assad, for positions that are in his best interest, then we should work with him. The Russians may not be able to deliver the elimination of chemical weapons, but neither can this military strike.”
© 2013 The Slate Group, LLC (emphasis in original)
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/09/republicans_favor_vladimir_putin_s_negotiated_deal_congress_has_a_new_faith.html [with comments]
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Allen West Calls Obama Speech On Syria 'Utterly Disgusting,' Cites Benghazi Attack
09/11/2013
[...]
President Obama stated at the end of his 16 minute speech, "terrible things happen across the globe….we should act, that's what makes America exceptional." I find his words utterly disgusting because tomorrow we will remember four Americans who were abandoned by President Obama to die in Libya. I found no righteous indignation and call for a moral obligation to avenge and punish their islamic terrorist murderers - matter of fact, Obama called it a "phony scandal." Christians are being butchered daily, where is his outrage? Israel is taking rocket and missile fire, where is his outrage? Some 100,000 Syrians had been killed by conventional munitions, and this was not the first chemical attack, where was his outrage? Obama has shown incompetence and weakness and has not presented a credible threat to Assad and Putin. If he wanted to respond he could have, God knows he did not seek congressional approval for Libya. He has been strategically outmaneuvered by Putin, lost the initiative, and allowed Putin to look like a statesman while he looks like a confused community organizer.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/allen-west-obama-speech_n_3907417.html [with embedded video report, and comments]; https://www.facebook.com/ElectAllenWest/posts/10152153472321729 [with (over 8,000) comments]
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Allen West Backs Military Strike On Benghazi
09/11/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/allen-west-benghazi_n_3908168.html [with comments]
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Mike Mullen, Thomas Pickering To Testify At Benghazi Hearing
09/11/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/mike-mullen-thomas-pickering_n_3907222.html [with comments]
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A Syrian’s Cry for Help
By YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH
Published: September 9, 2013
THE story is simple. Here in Syria, there is a regime that has been killing its subjects with impunity for the last 30 months. The notion that there is a mysterious civil war that is inextricably linked to the nature of the Middle East and its complicated sectarian divisions is far from the truth.
The primary perpetrator of violence is the government of Bashar al-Assad [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/bashar_al_assad/index.html ], which controls public resources, the media, the army and the intelligence services. The civilians who rose up against that regime, first peacefully and then through armed resistance, constitute a broad spectrum of Syrian society.
When a government murders its own citizens and they resist, this can hardly be called a civil war. It is a barbaric campaign of the first degree.
During the revolution’s first year, Syrians demanded international protection [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/world/middleeast/10syria.html ]. First we asked for no-flight zones or humanitarian corridors, and later for weapons and military aid for the Free Syrian Army, but to no avail.
Not a month went by without some American or NATO official expressing little appetite for intervention. Realizing that this attitude was not about to change, the regime escalated the violence. It attacked the rebels with everything it had: first with rifles, then with tanks, helicopters, jet fighters, missiles and toxic gases.
Meanwhile, Western powers masked their diplomatic inertia with empty rhetoric about a “political solution.” Yet they have failed to coax the regime — which has not once indicated that it is ready to abandon its “military solution” — to the negotiating table.
Inaction has been catastrophic. While the world has dithered, Syrians have experienced unprecedented violence. Around 5,000 Syrians were killed in 2011. About the same number are now being killed each month [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/world/middleeast/un-syria-death-toll.html ]. The regime has targeted lines outside bakeries; it has used Russian cruise missiles to bomb densely populated areas; and local activists say they have documented 31 occasions when it has used chemical weapons (United States officials have confirmed only some of these attacks).
Countless Syrians, among them women and children, have been subjected to arbitrary detention, rape and torture. A staggering seven million people — one-third of Syria’s population — are now displaced, either internally or externally.
These violations have all been documented by international organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Human Rights Council. These organizations have repeatedly attempted to refer the Syria file to the International Criminal Court, but Russian and Chinese barriers have stood in their way.
Russia and China have used their veto privilege [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/world/middleeast/russia-and-china-veto-un-sanctions-against-syria.html ] on three occasions, blocking Security Council resolutions condemning the regime’s war crimes and crimes against humanity. Russia continues to provide arms [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/world/middleeast/russia-provides-syria-with-advanced-missiles.html?pagewanted=all ] and diplomatic cover to a regime that is becoming more dangerous by the day.
In the West, reservations about supporting the Syrian rebels that once seemed callous and immoral are now considered justified because of the specter of jihadism. But this view is myopic.
Jihadist groups emerged roughly 10 months after the revolution started. Today, these groups are a burden on the revolution and the country, but not on the regime. On the contrary, their presence has enabled the regime to preserve its local base, and served to bolster its cause among international audiences.
It is misguided to presume that Mr. Assad’s downfall would mean a jihadist triumph, but unfortunately this is the basis for the West’s position. A more accurate interpretation is that if Mr. Assad survives, then jihadism is sure to thrive.
What Syria needs is a legitimate government that is strong enough to delegitimize militias, to disarm and integrate them, and to enforce adequate policies to confront them. The Assad government does not have popular legitimacy. Only its demise can signal the beginning of the end of nihilist jihadism, and thus the beginning of Syria’s recovery.
Justice and humanity demand that the Assad regime be punished for its crimes. Even though the Russians and the Chinese have managed to impair the Security Council, it is still possible for an international and regional coalition to carry out this task.
A half-hearted intervention will not be enough. The United States and those who join it must not simply “discipline” the regime for its use of chemical weapons alone, without making a decisive impact on events in Syria [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html ]. To do so would be a waste of effort and send the wrong message.
We Syrians are human beings of this world, and the world must stop the Assad regime from killing us. Now.
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a writer and activist, was a political prisoner from 1980-96.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/opinion/a-syrians-cry-for-help.html
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John McCain Says He Feels 'Very Badly' For Free Syrian Army
09/11/13 09:53 AM ET EDT
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain said Wednesday he worries that the cause of rebels fighting Syria's President Bashar Assad has been obscured in the rapid-fire military and diplomatic events following a chemical weapons attack near Damascus.
"I feel very badly for my friends in the Free Syrian Army today," McCain said.
The Arizona Republican said that he is not against negotiating to defuse the chemical weapons issue, but he also said, "There's nothing that will drive Syrians more into the hands of extremists than to feel they have been abandoned by the West."
One of the persistent questions about U.S. policy in war-ravaged Syria is to what extent the terrorist network al-Qaida is involved in the efforts to end Assad's rule. McCain said President Barack Obama should have acted more forcefully against Assad many months ago.
McCain said he is concerned that the Russian plan for securing Syria's chemical weapons could be a "rope-a-dope" delaying tactic. But he added that it should take only a few days for the U.S. to determine whether the proposal is serious and workable.
"Put me down as extremely skeptical" about the Russian plan, he said, although McCain said Washington should not reject it out of hand.
The GOP's 2008 presidential candidate also said that should the Russian proposal fall apart, it could actually help Obama's struggle to win congressional support for a limited military strike against Syria. He said that's because the failure of diplomacy could bolster Obama's argument that a U.S. attack was a necessary course of action.
McCain spoke at a breakfast sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, the morning after Obama used a nationally broadcast speech to seek public support for military action.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/john-mccain-free-syrian-army_n_3906136.html [with comments]
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U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels
An opposition fighter fires a rocket propelled grenade during clashes with regime forces near Aleppo. A new phase of non-lethal U.S. assistance is ramping up as weapons supplied by the CIA have begun to trickle into Syria, according to opposition officials.
SALAH AL-ASHKAR/AFP/Getty Images
By Ernesto Londoño and Greg Miller, Wednesday, September 11, 2013 8:30 PM
The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.
The arms shipments, which are limited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked, began arriving in Syria at a moment of heightened tensions over threats by President Obama to order missile strikes to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in a deadly attack near Damascus last month.
The arms are being delivered as the United States is also shipping new types of nonlethal gear to rebels. That aid includes vehicles, sophisticated communications equipment and advanced combat medical kits.
U.S. officials hope that, taken together, the weapons and gear will boost the profile and prowess of rebel fighters in a conflict that started about 21 / 2 years ago.
Although the Obama administration signaled months ago that it would increase aid to Syrian rebels, the efforts have lagged because of the logistical challenges involved in delivering equipment in a war zone and officials’ fears that any assistance could wind up in the hands of jihadists. Secretary of State John F. Kerry had promised in April [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/kerry-says-us-will-expedite-new-aid-to-syrian-opposition/2013/04/21/91461f40-aa8f-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html ] that the nonlethal aid would start flowing “in a matter of weeks.”
The delays prompted several senior U.S. lawmakers to chide the Obama administration for not moving more quickly to aid the Syrian opposition after promising lethal assistance in June. The criticism has grown louder amid the debate over whether Washington should use military force against the Syrian regime, with some lawmakers withholding support until the administration committed to providing the rebels with more assistance.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has pressed the Obama administration to do more to help the rebels, said he felt embarrassed when he met with Syrians along the Turkish border three weeks ago.
“It was humiliating,” he said in an interview Wednesday night. “The president had announced that we would be providing lethal aid, and not a drop of it had begun. They were very short on ammunition, and the weapons had not begun to flow.”
The latest effort to provide aid is aimed at supporting rebel fighters who are under the command of Gen. Salim Idriss, according to officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because part of the initiative is covert. Idriss is the commander of the Supreme Military Council, a faction of the disjointed armed opposition.
U.S. officials, speaking about the provision of nonlethal aid, said they are determined to increase the cohesion and structure of the rebel fighting units.
“This doesn’t only lead to a more effective force, but it increases its ability to hold coalition groups together,” said Mark S. Ward, the State Department’s senior adviser on assistance to Syria, who coordinates nonlethal aid to rebels from southern Turkey. “They see their leadership is having some impact.”
U.S. officials decided to expand nonlethal assistance to Syria’s armed rebels after they delivered more than 350,000 high-calorie U.S. military food packets through the Supreme Military Council in May. The distribution gave U.S. officials confidence that it was possible to limit aid to select rebel units in a battlefield where thousands of fighters share al-Qaeda’s ideology, U.S. officials said.
Khaled Saleh, a spokesman for the Syrian Opposition Coalition, said Washington’s revamped efforts are welcome but insufficient to turn the tide of the civil war between rebels and forces loyal to Assad.
“The Syrian Military Council is receiving so little support that any support we receive is a relief,” he said. “But if you compare what we are getting compared to the assistance Assad receives from Iran and Russia, we have a long battle ahead of us.”
‘It’s better than nothing’
While the State Department is coordinating nonlethal aid, the CIA is overseeing the delivery of weaponry and other lethal equipment to the rebels. An opposition official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss covert arms transfers, said U.S. intelligence personnel have begun delivering long-promised light weapons and ammunition to rebel groups in the past couple of weeks.
The weaponry “doesn’t solve all the needs the guys have, but it’s better than nothing,” the opposition official said. He added that Washington remains reluctant to give the rebels what they most desire: antitank and antiaircraft weapons.
The CIA shipments are to flow through a network of clandestine bases in Turkey and Jordan that were expanded over the past year as the agency sought to help Middle Eastern allies, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, direct weapons to moderate Syrian rebel forces.
The CIA declined to comment.
The distribution of vehicles and communications equipment is part of an effort to direct U.S. aid to Syrian rebels in a more assertive, targeted manner. Before Ward established a team of about two dozen diplomats and aid workers in southern Turkey, Washington was doing little more than paying for truckloads of food and medicine for Syrian rebels. U.S. officials concede that the shipments often went to the most accessible, and not necessarily the neediest, places.
Boosting moderate factions
In addition to boosting support for rebels under the command of Idriss, who speaks fluent English and taught at a military academy [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-rebels-say-any-american-strike-on-regime-targets-should-be-powerful/2013/09/04/fa1784ea-15a2-11e3-961c-f22d3aaf19ab_story.html ] before defecting from the Syrian army last year, U.S. officials in southern Turkey are using aid to promote emerging moderate leaders in towns and villages in rebel-held areas. Across much of the north, Syrians have begun electing local councils and attempting to rebuild communities devastated by war.
Ward’s team — working primarily out of hotel lobbies — has spent the past few months studying the demographics and dynamics of communities where extremists are making inroads. Targeted U.S. aid, he said, can be used to empower emerging local leaders who are moderate and to jump-start basic services while dimming the appeal of extremists.
“We feel we’re able to get these local councils off to a good start,” said Ward, a veteran U.S. Agency for International Development official [ http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/194564.htm ] who has worked in Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We vet individuals who are getting our assistance to make sure they are not affiliated with terror organizations.”
The assistance to local communities includes training in municipal management as well as basic infrastructure such as garbage trucks, ambulances and firetrucks. The areas receiving this aid are carefully selected, U.S. officials said, noting that extremist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, are delivering services to communities newly under rebel control.
“If you see new firetrucks and ambulances in places where al-Nusra is trying to win hearts and minds, this might not be a coincidence,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to explain details of a sensitive strategy.
The initiatives are part of a $250 million effort to support moderate factions of the Syrian opposition. Of that, the United States has earmarked $26.6 million in aid for the Supreme Military Council. The delivery that began this week does not include items that the rebels have long identified as priorities: night-vision goggles and body armor.
Mohammed Ghanem, director of government relations at the Syrian American Council, which supports the opposition, said the U.S. initiatives are steps in the right direction after years of inaction and misguided policies.
“We’ve definitely seen a structural and conceptual evolution in terms of their understanding of what’s going on on the ground,” he said in an interview. “On the other hand, we’re always lagging behind. We’re not leading. Developments are always like six months ahead of us.”
Ghanem said the effect of U.S. assistance is limited by the number of proxies that Washington must use to deliver it. U.S. officials in Turkey rely on a network of contractors and subcontractors to deliver the aid.
Ward said he hopes the assistance efforts will position the United States to have strong relationships in a postwar Syria.
“When you finally have a free Syrian government, you will know them and they will know us,” Ward said. “We will have been working with them week after week, month after month. These won’t be strangers.”
© 2013 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-begins-weapons-delivery-to-syrian-rebels/2013/09/11/9fcf2ed8-1b0c-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html [with comments]
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Sarah Palin: 'It Is Time To Bomb Obamacare'
Posted: 09/10/2013 10:50 am EDT
Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin took to her social media accounts on Monday to promote her new anti-Obamacare video, which features clips of her discussing her opposition to President Barack Obama's signature health care law.
Palin posted the video to her Facebook page along with a strong message about the Affordable Care Act and the recent debate on whether the United States should strike Syria with military force.
"Enough of this foreign fiasco distraction," Palin wrote [ https://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin/posts/10151853868928588 ]. "Get back to work. It is time to bomb Obamacare."
The clip [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgt87inKDUE (next below)], titled "Just Sayin'," was produced by Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC [ http://www.sarahpac.com/ ].
Palin has previously criticized Obama's handling of the Syria situation.
"If we are dangerously uncertain of the outcome and are led into war by a Commander-in-chief who can’t recognize that this conflict is pitting Islamic extremists against an authoritarian regime with both sides shouting 'Allah Akbar' at each other, then let Allah sort it out," Palin wrote [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/31/sarah-palin-syria_n_3848819.html ] in a Facebook post last month.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/10/sarah-palin-obamacare_n_3899920.html [with comments]
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Ted Cruz Is Powerless in the Face of Obamacare
Senator Ted Cruz speaks during a rally against Obamacare on September 10, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
Even as conservatives keep rallying to defund health-care reform, congressional Republicans have come up with a plan that effectively admits they’re powerless to kill it. Jamelle Bouie reports from a pointless Capitol Hill demonstration.
Sep 11, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/11/ted-cruz-is-powerless-in-the-face-of-obamacare.html [with comments]
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Oliver Munday
What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria
By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN
Published: September 11, 2013
MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.
The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.
Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.
Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.
From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.
No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.
No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.
The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.
We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.
A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.
I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.
If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
Vladimir V. Putin is the president of Russia.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html?pagewanted=all [with comments]
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Rand Paul: ‘Advantage Putin!’
Paul gave a Republican response to the president's televised address.
AP Photo
By TAL KOPAN
9/11/13 12:19 PM EDT Updated: 9/11/13 9:54 PM EDT
Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday that at this point in the game, Russian President Vladimir Putin is beating President Barack Obama.
“If this were a tennis match, it would be the umpire shouting, ‘Advantage Putin!’ He seems to be running circles around this administration,” Paul said on Glenn Beck’s radio show on TheBlaze.
The Kentucky Republican, who gave a Republican response to Obama’s televised address on Syria on Tuesday night, said the White House’s attempts at a “face-saving enterprise” weren’t working.
“It really seems that they backed into this through some lucky happenstance,” Paul said of a potential diplomatic agreement on Syria’s chemical weapons, which he said would be a good thing for the region.
Paul disagreed with Beck, though, on his assertion that this week has marked the demise of the United States as the world’s superpower and the rise of Russia to that position.
“I would see that Russia is grasping, they’re grasping to try to look like a superpower that they once were, and I don’t think they are,” Paul said, saying the U.S. remains a superpower but doesn’t look like one.
Even with his criticisms, the senator said he believes the administration’s missteps don’t ruin America’s credibility internationally.
“I don’t take [Obama’s] insecurities and inabilities to make decisions, I don’t see that as something that damns all of America,” Paul said.
Paul also continued to push against the administration’s advocacy for a military intervention, echoing an attack line from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another outspoken freshman, that the American military shouldn’t be helping rebels in Syria who could be working with extremists.
“We’re hearing it directly from soldiers, we’re hearing it from their parents … they aren’t willing to fight for Al Qaeda,” Paul said, adding that members of the military shouldn’t be punished for speaking out, including on the Internet. “I wouldn’t want to see young men basically court-martialed for posting their opinion.”
© 2013 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/rand-paul-syria-obama-putin-96635.html [with comments]
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Syrian Crisis: President Obama Is One Cool Customer
By Jackson Williams
Posted: 09/10/2013 7:23 pm
Remember how President Obama kept poker-faced yet jovial at a White House Correspondents' Dinner on the eve of the mission [ http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1105/obamas_poker_face_at_dinner.html ] to get Osama bin Laden? Perhaps he's been at it again.
Conservatives -- and much of the mainstream media, alas -- have been railing over Secretary of State John Kerry's "wishful rumination" in London regarding Syria's chemical weapons, and how it shows that President Obama's foreign policy is Keystone Cops.
Far from wishful, it was apparently a floated plan that looks wiser by the hour.
Monday's NY Times website had the following bit of reporting: "A senior State Department official, who was traveling on the plane with Mr. Kerry en route home from London, where he made the remarks in a news conference, said that the Russians had previewed their proposal with the Secretary of State before going public [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/world/middleeast/kerry-says-syria-should-hand-over-all-chemical-arms.html?pagewanted=all ]."
So, the initial story, that Kerry opined out loud in London and the Russians then jumped on it, may well be incorrect. Indeed, early Tuesday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the notion of the international community taking charge of Syrian chemical weapons wasn't merely the result of Kerry popping off, and Carney specifically cited prior conversations between Kerry and the Russian Foreign Secretary as well as conversations between Obama and Russian President Putin when they were together a week ago at the G-20 Summit in St. Petersburg.
It seems the American government may have been working two tracks simultaneously: diplomatic back channels with Russia, and the public threat of military action against Syria, both aimed at dealing with Syrian President Assad's chemical weapons and their shameful use.
If so, this is a lucid, smart approach that looks to generate positive dividends. I wonder if the U.S. president will acknowledge as much when he speaks to the nation Tuesday evening [he did -- (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91886558 ]?
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackson-williams/syrian-crisis-president-obama_b_3902953.html [with comments]
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Russian chess move stalls US actions as Al-Qaeda Air Force
A man holds the body of a dead child among bodies of people activists say were killed by nerve gas in the Ghouta region, in the Duma neighbourhood of Damascus August 21, 2013.
(Reuters / Bassam Khabieh)
By Pepe Escobar
Published time: September 10, 2013 09:03
The frantic spin of the millisecond is that the White House is taking a ‘hard look’ at the Russian proposal for Bashar Assad to place Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal under UN control, thus at least postponing another US war in the Middle East.
Oh, the joys of the geopolitical chessboard; Russia throwing a lifeline to save US President Barack Obama from his self-spun ‘red line’.
True diplomats are supposed to prevent wars – not pose as warmongers. American exceptionalism is of course exempted. So just as Secretary of State John Kerry had the pedal on the metal selling yet another war in a London presser, his beat up Chevy was overtaken by a diplomatic Maserati: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
This was Kerry’s slip: “... [Assad] could turn over any single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over. All of it. And without delay and allow the full and total accounting for that. But he isn't about to do it and it can't be done obviously.”
It can be done, obviously, as Lavrov turned Kerry’s move against him – forwarding a two-step proposal to Damascus; Syria turns its chemical weapons to UN control and later agrees with their destruction, as well as joining the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Syrian Foreign Minister Moallem took no time to agree. The devil, of course, is in the fine print.
Somebody help me! What’s the message?
Predictably, all hell broke loose at the State Department. Dammit! Darn Russki peacenik! A Kerry spokeswoman characterized it as a “rhetorical argument”. It was just “talk”. Damascus and Moscow have a horrible track record. This was just a “stalling tactic.” Washington could not trust Assad. And even if there was a “serious” proposal that would not delay the White House’s push to sell its war in the US Congress.
Yet two hours later, closet future US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton saw it as… a serious proposal, “suggested by Secretary Kerry and the Russians.” And she made clear she was for it after meeting with Obama himself.
Meanwhile, the batshit crazy department kept the pedal on the metal, with National Security Adviser Susan ‘Wolfowitz’ Rice busy warning that chemical attacks in Syria are a "serious threat to our national security" including to "citizens at home." What, no ‘mushroom cloud’?
Yet just as ‘on message’ was up in smoke, magically, deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf and Hillary herself started talking in unison (somebody forgot to brief Rice). And the White House decided to take its ‘hard look’. Sort of. Because expectations are not that high. And the push to war in the US Congress is bound to continue.
Not even hardcore Beltway junkies have been able to keep track in real time of the Obama administration’s ever-shifting ‘policy’. This is how it (theoretically) stands. “Assad is responsible for the gas attack.” Translation; he did not order it, directly (no one with half a brain, apart from the Return of the Living Dead neo-cons, believes the current White House “evidence” sticks). But he’s still “responsible”. And even if Al-Nusra Front did it – with ‘kitchen sarin’ imported from Iraq, as I proposed here [ http://rt.com/op-edge/war-chemical-weapons-obama-syria-120/ ], Assad is still “responsible”; after all he must protect Syrian citizens.
In his Monday TV Anschluss, Obama, clinging to the lifeline, was quick to steal Lavrov’s credit, saying he had “discussed” the broad outlook of what Russia announced directly with Putin at the G20 summit last week. This has not been corroborated by Moscow.
Obama told CNN this was a “potentially positive thought.” And he was keen to stress it only happened not because his Designated War Salesman slipped, but because of a “credible military threat.” To NBC, he kept peddling what Kerry defined as an “unbelievably small” attack; the US “can strike without provoking a counter-attack.” Yet to CNN he admitted, “the notion that Mr. Assad could significantly threaten the United States is just not the case.”
So why the need for the “unbelievably small” kinetic whatever? That’s too much of a metaphysical question for US journalism.
You have the right to remain inspected
Now for the fine print. Everybody knows what happened to Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi after they gave up their deterrence. Assuming both Washington and Damascus accept Lavrov’s proposal, this could easily be derailed into an Iraqi-style ultra-harsh inspection regime. At least in theory, no US Air Force will attack UN inspectors at Syrian chemical weapons depots. As for false flags, don’t underestimate Bandar Bush’s deep pockets.
Still, considering Washington won’t abandon its real agenda – regime change - Obama might eventually be re-presented with his full emperor hand to ‘supervise’ the chemical weapons handover and ‘punish’ any infringement, real or otherwise, by Damascus, facilitated by the usual spies infiltrated into the inspectors mechanism. As in, “if you complain, we bomb.”
The key point in all this, though, is that for Damascus chemical weapons are just a detail - they are worthless in the battlefield. What matters is the 250,000-strong Syrian Arab Army (SAA), as well as military support by Iran and especially Russia – as in badass missiles of the Yakhont variety or S-300 (even 400) systems. Destroying the weapons – assuming Damascus agrees - is a very long-term proposition, measured in years; even Russia and the US have not destroyed theirs. By then, the myriad gangs of the “Un-Free” Syrian Army may have been thoroughly defeated.
Obama may have read the writing on the (bloody) wall; forget about convincing the US Congress to bomb Damascus when there’s a real diplomatic way out on the table. Yet nothing changes in the long run. Those who are paying or cheering in the sidelines for this operation - from Bandar Bush to Tel Aviv – want by all means to smash Damascus, for the benefit of Israel in terms of strategic balance, and for the benefit of the House of Saud in terms of isolating Iran in the Middle East.
So Lavrov’s chess move is not a checkmate; it is a gambit, meant to prevent the United States from becoming Al-Qaeda’s Air Force, at least for now. The quagmire would then move to a negotiating table – which would include those chemical weapons inspections.
No wonder assorted Western-weaponized psychos and jihadists on the ground in Syria don’t like this one bit. It’s happening just as more damning circumstantial evidence of false flags galore surface.
RT has been informed that the ‘rebels’ may be planning a monster false flag on Israel, to be launched [ http://rt.com/news/syria-rebels-chemical-attack-israel-618/ ] from Assad-controlled ground.
And then there’s the release of two former hostages detained for five months by the ‘rebels’ in appalling conditions; Domenico Quirico, a correspondent for La Stampa, and Belgian historian Pierre Piccinin. Here is a shortened version of Quirico’s story, in English.
I talked to a very close friend at La Stampa who spoke directly with Quirico. He confirmed that Quirico and Piccinin overheard a Skype conversation between a ‘rebel’ speaking very bad English, who introduced himself as an ‘FSA General’, and somebody speaking very good English on the other side of the line. It was clear from the conversation that the Assad government was NOT responsible for the gas attack in Ghouta. So Quirico is admitting exactly what Piccinin told Belgian TV. It may not be conclusive; yet as proof goes, it certainly beats the Israeli-fed White House intel.
Unlike Piccinin, Quirico cannot tell the whole true story; most of all because La Stampa, a newspaper owned by the Agnelli family, very close to Henry Kissinger, is staunchly pro-‘rebel’.
Here’s a translation of what Piccinin said [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG5QteeaNxc ]; “It’s a moral duty that we have, Domenico and myself, to say it was not the government of Bashar Assad that used sarin gas or other nerve agent, in the Damascene suburb of Ghouta. We are certain about this, it’s a conversation that we captured, even if it pains me to say it; I ferociously support the Free Syrian Army, and its fair struggle for democracy.”
Needless to say, none of this crucial development is being fully reported by US corporate media.
The Anschluss continues. Obama is addressing US public opinion this Tuesday night. Don’t expect him to announce yet another twist to the ‘Obama Doctrine’ – criminalizing ‘evil’ dictators who use Agent Orange, napalm, white phosphorous and depleted uranium against other people.
© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2013 (emphasis in original)
http://rt.com/op-edge/russia-chemical-weapons-control-651/ [with comments]
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Exclusive: U.N. Report Will Point to Assad Regime in Massive Chemical Attack
Posted By Colum Lynch
Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - 8:41 PM
U.N. inspectors have collected a "wealth" of evidence on the use of nerve agents that points to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons against his own people, according to a senior Western official.
The inspection team, which is expected on Monday to present U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon with a highly anticipated report on a suspected Aug. 21 nerve agent attack in the suburbs of Damascus [ http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/27/exclusive_us_spies_say_intercepted_calls_prove_syrias_army_used_nerve_gas ], will not directly accuse the Syrian regime of gassing its own people, according to three U.N.-based diplomats familiar with the investigation. But it will provide a strong circumstantial case -- based on an examination of spent rocket casings, ammunition, and laboratory tests of soil, blood, and urine samples -- that points strongly in the direction of Syrian government culpability.
"I know they have gotten very rich samples -- biomedical and environmental -- and they have interviewed victims, doctors and nurses," said the Western official. "It seems they are very happy with the wealth of evidence they got." The official, who declined to speak on the record because of the secrecy surrounding the U.N. investigation, could not identify the specific agents detected by the inspector team, but said, "You can conclude from the type of evidence the [identity of the] author."
The U.N. team, which is led by the Swedish scientist Ake Sellström [ http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/26/the_scientist_under_syria_s_microscope_chemical_weapons ], traveled to Damascus last month to begin an investigation into the alleged use of chemical weapons. During that trip, according to the United States and other Western powers, Syrian forces launched a chemical weapons attack that killed more than 1,400 people in the al Ghouta suburb of Damascus.
A montage of video clips posted [ https://twitter.com/AmbassadorPower/status/376885534607831040 ] by Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on her Twitter page depicted horrific scenes of purported victims writhing in agony, and gasping for breath. Rows of dead children, their faces blue from apparent suffocation, were lined up in morbid rows, white sheets covering their tiny bodies.
Syria and Russia have denied that the government in Damascus carried out the attack, saying it was the work of Syrian rebels seeking to persuade the West to intervene militarily on their behalf. In an interview with Charlie Rose [ http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/10/how_assad_wooed_the_american_right_and_won_the_syria_propaganda_war (first item at {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91851649 ], Assad denied his government used chemical weapons -- and compared the U.S. case against Syria to former Secretary of State Colin Powell's flawed presentation against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In Syria, Assad said, "the Russians have completely opposite evidence: that missiles [were] thrown from areas that the rebels controlled."
Syria and Russia, meanwhile, have highlighted several other alleged chemical weapons attacks that wound up hitting Syrian forces. The Syrian government initially invited U.N. inspectors to Syria to investigate an alleged March 19 sarin attack in the town of Khan al Assal [ http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/19/syria_chemical_weapons_attacks_united_nations ], near Aleppo. While the inspectors were in Damascus, Syria's U.N. ambassador Bashar al Jaafari, requested that investigators look at three other cases of alleged chemical weapons use in late August against Syrian forces. On their final day in Damascus, the U.N. inspection team visited a military hospital in Damascus to examine alleged chemical weapons victims.
Diplomats say that Sellström's inspection team is only planning to report next week on the al Ghouta attacks. The team plans to return to Damascus at a later date to complete its investigations into the other incidents, including the March incident at Khan al Assal.
Under the terms of its mandate, however, the U.N. inspectors are only authorized to conclude whether chemical weapons have been used in Syria, not assign responsibility for their use.
While Western diplomats say they are confident that U.N. report would strengthen the case against the Syrian government, they said they expected the case would not fundamentally alter the course of diplomatic efforts to contain the chemical weapons threat in Syria. "It's not a game changer," said one diplomat.
On Tuesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, admitted his country operated a clandestine chemical weapons program, and vowed to open them up to international scrutiny as part of a Russian-brokered deal to place Syria's chemical agents under international control [ http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/10/theres_almost_no_chance_this_russian_plan_for_syrias_chemical_weapons_will_work ]. "We are ready to reveal the locations of the chemical weapon sites and to stop producing chemical weapons and make these sites available for inspection by representatives of Russia, other countries and the United Nations," Moallem said [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/world/middleeast/Syria-Chemical-Arms.html ] in a statement.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, headed to Geneva to see if they could reach agreement on a plan to control and ultimately destroy Syria's chemical weapons. Secretary-General Ban, for his part, appeared to be moving beyond the Sellström investigation. "I have not yet received the report from Dr. Sellström, nor do I know what it will contain," Ban told reporters Monday. But "I'm considering urging the Security Council to demand the immediate transfer of Syria's chemical weapons and chemical precursor stocks to places inside Syria where they can be safely stored and destroyed."
©2013 The Foreign Policy Group, LLC
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/09/11/un_report_will_finger_assad_for_massive_chemical_attack [no comments yet]
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Syrian forces responsible for Banias massacres: U.N. report
A Free Syrian Army fighter aims his weapon behind sandbags in the eastern al-Ghouta, near Damascus, September 9, 2013. Picture taken September 9, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Raje Alsori
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA | Wed Sep 11, 2013 1:39pm EDT
(Reuters) - U.N. rights investigators have established that Syrian government forces were almost certainly responsible for two massacres last May in which up to 450 civilians were killed, a report published on Wednesday said.
The report documents nine mass killings in all, attributing all but one to government forces, but said both government and rebel fighters had committed war crimes including murder, hostage-taking and shelling of civilians.
With more than 100,000 dead in the Syrian war, there was little sign that reports of atrocities would spur international action until last month, when allegations that President Bashar al-Assad's forces had gassed hundreds of civilians sparked a threat of U.S. strikes, and furious international diplomacy.
The killings in Baida and Ras al-Nabaa, two pockets of rebel sympathizers surrounded by villages loyal to Assad on the outskirts of the town of Banias, did not involve fighting with rebels and appeared designed to send a message of deterrence.
The U.N. commission of inquiry has not been allowed into Syria, but its 20 investigators carried out 258 interviews with refugees, defectors and others, in the region and in Geneva, including via Skype, for their 11th report in two years.
In Baida, it said between 150 and 250 civilians had allegedly been killed, including 30 women, apparently executed, who were found in one house. It said armed rebels were not active in the area at the time.
"Testimonies were consistent that members of the National Defence Forces were actively involved in the raids and in many cases leading them," the 42-page report said.
"Accordingly, there are reasonable grounds to believe that government forces and affiliated militias including the National Defence Forces are the perpetrators of the al-Bayda (Baida) massacre.
The next day, as word spread that militia fighters were advancing with army support, hundreds of civilians tried to flee the neighboring village of Ras al-Nabaa, but were pushed back at checkpoints. Government forces proceeded to shell the village and then militia fighters moved in.
"As they raided the village, civilians were captured and executed," the report said, adding: "The operation did not occur in the context of a military confrontation. Government forces were in full control of the area.
It gave a figure of 150-200 dead in Ras al-Nabaa.
GOVERNMENT SILENCE
The Syrian government kept silent about the killings at the time but a Syrian intelligence officer, speaking to Reuters anonymously, acknowledged that the perpetrators were government loyalists, including some from the surrounding Alawite villages.
The conflict began in March 2011 as an uprising against Assad and descended into a civil war where mostly Sunni Muslim rebels are pitted against Assad's forces, who are backed by Shi'ite Muslim Iran and Hezbollah.
The only deliberate slaughter of civilians attributed to rebel forces in the period of investigation was in June, when rebels captured Hatla in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor.
"Anti-government armed group fighters conducted home invasions, killing and summarily executing (by shooting at close range) many Shia including at least 30 civilians, among them children, women and elderly," the report said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group that has reported abuses on both sides of the conflict, said at the time that 60 people had died in the attack, mostly pro-Assad Shi'ite militiamen.
The U.N. report, which largely covered incidents between May and July, accused forces loyal to Assad of bombing schools and hospitals, and rebels of carrying out summary executions after sentencing by Islamic Sharia courts lacking due process.
The commission, led by Paulo Pinheiro of Brazil, urged the U.N. Security Council to hold perpetrators accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The investigators, who include former U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, analyzed photographs, video and satellite imagery, as well as forensic and medical records, to draw up their report.
The team also verified the killing of 450 people during an offensive by Syrian government forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters to retake the strategic town of Qusair. Food and water were cut off during a siege, and the town was heavily shelled.
"Approximately half were civilian casualties, killed primarily in the shelling and aerial bombardment of the town in the early days of the offensive," the report said.
U.S. President Barack Obama asked Congress on Tuesday to delay a vote on authorizing a military strike against Syria in retaliation for its use of chemical weapons, to give time to a Russian plan to take away Syria's chemical weapons.
The U.N. experts said they had received allegations of chemical weapons use, "predominantly by government forces", but could not give details of the incidents, some of which have been investigated by U.N. weapons inspectors in the last few weeks.
(This story has been corrected to change figure in second paragraph for total massacres to nine from eight)
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Tom Miles and Kevin Liffey)
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/11/us-syria-crisis-warcrimes-idUSBRE98A0D520130911 [with comments]
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Not So Fast, Christian Soldiers
Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad in 2006. Some U.S. members of Congress have found themselves taking a softer stance on Russia given its ability to broker a possible settlement regarding Syria.
Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
How Congress ditched their distaste for Putin and Assad for their newfound faith in realpolitik.
By David Weigel
Posted Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2013, at 11:41 AM
They walked in good cheer from Union Station to the parks across from Capitol Hill—the proud supporters of Bashar al-Assad. They wore T-shirts with the Syrian president’s cheery face emblazoned on the national flag and wore T-shirts that read, “Hands Off Syria,” complete with bloody handprints. Minerva Sabbagh, a priest’s wife who’d ridden one of six buses down from Allentown, Penn., wore a homemade number with the powerful-if-dubious slogan “Jesus Was Syrian.” Her message, like everyone else’s, was that Washington needed to prop up the dictator who could protect Syria’s Christians.
“He’s standing for Syria, just like Obama is standing for America,” said Sabbagh. “He’s an Allawite! He even goes to the monasteries and prays!”
Sabbagh contrasted Assad’s behavior—being a good husband, being falsely accused of chemical weapons attacks—with the assaults of the Syrian rebels. Why, she asked, did Americans want to side with them? “Animals don’t do what they do,” she said. “They’re opening the chests, beheading, torturing like they did 2,000 years ago.”
The presence of a reporter in the midst of this rally stirred up the protest. One man, wearing a shirt that portrayed Christ and the crown of thorns with black and orange beads, insisted to me that “it’s all over for the Christians” if Assad were to fall. Another with a sign reading, “We Support the Syrian Military Fighting Al Qaeda,” held it up straight for a photo. When Sabbagh choked up, her daughter Hope helpfully provided fresh spin. “The fall of the Byzantine empire is going to happen again,” she said, “but it’s going to happen in America.”
These were not people or opinions getting a ton of purchase in the mainstream media. They had a more important audience: Congress. The tide of realpolitik washing over the Capitol has Republicans decrying the Syrian rebels’ threat to Christians. It has both parties talking hopefully about a deal with the Russians that would remove the regime’s chemical weapons but do nothing else to upset the balance in the country.
The first argument, the “think of the Christians” spiel, has been gathering force on the right for weeks. Sen. Rand Paul, the most reliable noninterventionist in the GOP, has used nearly every public appearance to emphasize that Christians were safe under the Assad regime but threatened if the radical faction of the Syrian resistance won out. “The one thing you might say if you wanted to say something good [about Assad] is that there was some civility there for a generation or more,” he said [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/04/rand_paul_assumes_there_ll_be_a_way_to_filibuster_the_syria_resolution.html ] last week. “You see what happens when the radical Islamists take over, the Muslim Brotherhood raging through Coptic neighborhoods in Egypt.”
Ten years ago, plenty of Republicans (though not Paul’s father) were fooled into thinking that Saddam Hussein’s secular dictatorship was actually in league with al-Qaida. They’ve since learned to appreciate the iron boot heel of the Arab secularist. Last week, a pack of conservative House Republicans traveled the Arab world [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/09/bachmann_gohmert_and_the_usual_suspects_want_us_to_back_the_egyptian_military.html ] and met with the new–old military government in Egypt. They left singing the praises of that regime, and warning Americans of backing any rebels who might be less friendly to Christians and more friendly to al-Qaida. “We remember who caused 9/11 in America [ http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/09/bachmann_gohmert_and_the_usual_suspects_want_us_to_back_the_egyptian_military.html ],” said Rep. Michele Bachmann while in Cairo [the Bachmann-Gohmert-King press conference in Egypt third and fourth items at (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=91848995 ].
Maybe it’s easy to dismiss Bachmann, but as members filed into Monday’s private briefing on Syria with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a few conservatives agreed with her. “Having met with some of our allies in the Middle East, privately they want to know: Do you guys understand you were fighting the Muslim Brotherhood in Afghanistan and these other places?” said Rep. Louie Gohmert, who was on the trip. “Now, you’ve turned on a guy that was a U.S. ally, Mubarak. You turned on a guy, Qaddafi, that since 2003 had been an ally. You turned on the Northern Alliance that really defeated the Taliban initially. Are you gonna turn on us next?”
No Republican, really, could promise that intervention in Syria wouldn’t backfire and help al-Qaida. Rep. Peter King, possibly the most reliable hawk in the party, suggested only that “both sides” would benefit if chemical weapons were neutralized. More skeptical members say that the briefings are full of questions about whether intervention might boost Islamists, and haven’t produced good answers. “Increasingly the opposition that are al-Qaida types are going after the Christians,” said Rep. Christopher Smith, a New Jersey conservative who wants to set up a war crimes tribunal for Syria [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rep-chris-smith-establish-a-syrian-war-crimes-tribunal/2013/09/09/be88e10c-197c-11e3-82ef-a059e54c49d0_story.html ]. “It’s increasingly a case of genocide, not collateral damage. It’s a very dangerous jihad.”
And how do members of Congress hope to prevent that? Realism. “I think we need to re-triple our efforts diplomatically,” said Smith—and like a lot of Republicans on Monday, he wondered if a new proposal from Russia might do the trick. Russia’s offer to allow Syria to transfer control of its chemical weapons to the international community, something that might have been cackled out of the room a few months ago, found plenty of buyers in Congress.
“The potential for a negotiated settlement here—it’s attractive for reasons that are very obvious,” said Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell. The Russian settlement was preferable to any airstrikes, “provided that the objectives that have been articulated, that the international community gains control of the weapons and ultimately they’re destroyed, this is a shared objective. I can’t imagine why one would object to that.”
In the past, hawks—largely Republicans—might have objected because they didn’t trust the Russians, or trust the “international community.” It was only 10 years ago that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was dismissing Western European nations that declined to support the war in Iraq as “old Europe,” and the New York Post was labeling France and Germany as part of the “Axis of Weasels” for preferring weapons inspections to war in Iraq. Before neoconservatives despised that “axis,” they’d despised Henry Kissinger and détente with the Soviet Union, amending trade bills [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson%E2%80%93Vanik_amendment ] to add human rights conditions for Russian Jews.
But realpolitik is back. Members of Congress are more outwardly concerned about Syrian Christians than they are about AIPAC’s endorsement of airstrikes. They’re tentatively endorsing a Russian plan that may or may not be sincere.
“We did a lot of things with the Soviets,” suggested Rep. Darrell Issa after leaving the closed-door briefing on Monday. “We did a great many things during the Cold War that were positive, including work on nonproliferation. My statement earlier that Putin was part of a smaller but still evil empire that opposes the United States, that blocks it, that has backed Iran, that continues to support Syria for purposes that are not good—I stand by that. But if Russians in this case could get weapons out of the hands of both parties, that’s something we should work on.”
A reporter who’d talked to Issa before about Russia remarked that he’d completely changed his tone. Issa swiveled to find her, looking away from the TV cameras that had been capturing his wisdom.
“He’s still an evil man from an evil empire!” Issa assured the reporter. He turned back to the cameras. “If in fact Putin can, for the sake of his sponsored nation—if he can get weapons out of the hands of Assad, for positions that are in his best interest, then we should work with him. The Russians may not be able to deliver the elimination of chemical weapons, but neither can this military strike.”
© 2013 The Slate Group, LLC (emphasis in original)
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/09/republicans_favor_vladimir_putin_s_negotiated_deal_congress_has_a_new_faith.html [with comments]
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Allen West Calls Obama Speech On Syria 'Utterly Disgusting,' Cites Benghazi Attack
09/11/2013
[...]
President Obama stated at the end of his 16 minute speech, "terrible things happen across the globe….we should act, that's what makes America exceptional." I find his words utterly disgusting because tomorrow we will remember four Americans who were abandoned by President Obama to die in Libya. I found no righteous indignation and call for a moral obligation to avenge and punish their islamic terrorist murderers - matter of fact, Obama called it a "phony scandal." Christians are being butchered daily, where is his outrage? Israel is taking rocket and missile fire, where is his outrage? Some 100,000 Syrians had been killed by conventional munitions, and this was not the first chemical attack, where was his outrage? Obama has shown incompetence and weakness and has not presented a credible threat to Assad and Putin. If he wanted to respond he could have, God knows he did not seek congressional approval for Libya. He has been strategically outmaneuvered by Putin, lost the initiative, and allowed Putin to look like a statesman while he looks like a confused community organizer.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/allen-west-obama-speech_n_3907417.html [with embedded video report, and comments]; https://www.facebook.com/ElectAllenWest/posts/10152153472321729 [with (over 8,000) comments]
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Allen West Backs Military Strike On Benghazi
09/11/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/allen-west-benghazi_n_3908168.html [with comments]
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Mike Mullen, Thomas Pickering To Testify At Benghazi Hearing
09/11/13
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/mike-mullen-thomas-pickering_n_3907222.html [with comments]
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A Syrian’s Cry for Help
By YASSIN AL-HAJ SALEH
Published: September 9, 2013
THE story is simple. Here in Syria, there is a regime that has been killing its subjects with impunity for the last 30 months. The notion that there is a mysterious civil war that is inextricably linked to the nature of the Middle East and its complicated sectarian divisions is far from the truth.
The primary perpetrator of violence is the government of Bashar al-Assad [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/bashar_al_assad/index.html ], which controls public resources, the media, the army and the intelligence services. The civilians who rose up against that regime, first peacefully and then through armed resistance, constitute a broad spectrum of Syrian society.
When a government murders its own citizens and they resist, this can hardly be called a civil war. It is a barbaric campaign of the first degree.
During the revolution’s first year, Syrians demanded international protection [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/world/middleeast/10syria.html ]. First we asked for no-flight zones or humanitarian corridors, and later for weapons and military aid for the Free Syrian Army, but to no avail.
Not a month went by without some American or NATO official expressing little appetite for intervention. Realizing that this attitude was not about to change, the regime escalated the violence. It attacked the rebels with everything it had: first with rifles, then with tanks, helicopters, jet fighters, missiles and toxic gases.
Meanwhile, Western powers masked their diplomatic inertia with empty rhetoric about a “political solution.” Yet they have failed to coax the regime — which has not once indicated that it is ready to abandon its “military solution” — to the negotiating table.
Inaction has been catastrophic. While the world has dithered, Syrians have experienced unprecedented violence. Around 5,000 Syrians were killed in 2011. About the same number are now being killed each month [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/world/middleeast/un-syria-death-toll.html ]. The regime has targeted lines outside bakeries; it has used Russian cruise missiles to bomb densely populated areas; and local activists say they have documented 31 occasions when it has used chemical weapons (United States officials have confirmed only some of these attacks).
Countless Syrians, among them women and children, have been subjected to arbitrary detention, rape and torture. A staggering seven million people — one-third of Syria’s population — are now displaced, either internally or externally.
These violations have all been documented by international organizations, including Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Human Rights Council. These organizations have repeatedly attempted to refer the Syria file to the International Criminal Court, but Russian and Chinese barriers have stood in their way.
Russia and China have used their veto privilege [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/world/middleeast/russia-and-china-veto-un-sanctions-against-syria.html ] on three occasions, blocking Security Council resolutions condemning the regime’s war crimes and crimes against humanity. Russia continues to provide arms [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/world/middleeast/russia-provides-syria-with-advanced-missiles.html?pagewanted=all ] and diplomatic cover to a regime that is becoming more dangerous by the day.
In the West, reservations about supporting the Syrian rebels that once seemed callous and immoral are now considered justified because of the specter of jihadism. But this view is myopic.
Jihadist groups emerged roughly 10 months after the revolution started. Today, these groups are a burden on the revolution and the country, but not on the regime. On the contrary, their presence has enabled the regime to preserve its local base, and served to bolster its cause among international audiences.
It is misguided to presume that Mr. Assad’s downfall would mean a jihadist triumph, but unfortunately this is the basis for the West’s position. A more accurate interpretation is that if Mr. Assad survives, then jihadism is sure to thrive.
What Syria needs is a legitimate government that is strong enough to delegitimize militias, to disarm and integrate them, and to enforce adequate policies to confront them. The Assad government does not have popular legitimacy. Only its demise can signal the beginning of the end of nihilist jihadism, and thus the beginning of Syria’s recovery.
Justice and humanity demand that the Assad regime be punished for its crimes. Even though the Russians and the Chinese have managed to impair the Security Council, it is still possible for an international and regional coalition to carry out this task.
A half-hearted intervention will not be enough. The United States and those who join it must not simply “discipline” the regime for its use of chemical weapons alone, without making a decisive impact on events in Syria [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html ]. To do so would be a waste of effort and send the wrong message.
We Syrians are human beings of this world, and the world must stop the Assad regime from killing us. Now.
Yassin al-Haj Saleh, a writer and activist, was a political prisoner from 1980-96.
© 2013 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/opinion/a-syrians-cry-for-help.html
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John McCain Says He Feels 'Very Badly' For Free Syrian Army
09/11/13 09:53 AM ET EDT
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain said Wednesday he worries that the cause of rebels fighting Syria's President Bashar Assad has been obscured in the rapid-fire military and diplomatic events following a chemical weapons attack near Damascus.
"I feel very badly for my friends in the Free Syrian Army today," McCain said.
The Arizona Republican said that he is not against negotiating to defuse the chemical weapons issue, but he also said, "There's nothing that will drive Syrians more into the hands of extremists than to feel they have been abandoned by the West."
One of the persistent questions about U.S. policy in war-ravaged Syria is to what extent the terrorist network al-Qaida is involved in the efforts to end Assad's rule. McCain said President Barack Obama should have acted more forcefully against Assad many months ago.
McCain said he is concerned that the Russian plan for securing Syria's chemical weapons could be a "rope-a-dope" delaying tactic. But he added that it should take only a few days for the U.S. to determine whether the proposal is serious and workable.
"Put me down as extremely skeptical" about the Russian plan, he said, although McCain said Washington should not reject it out of hand.
The GOP's 2008 presidential candidate also said that should the Russian proposal fall apart, it could actually help Obama's struggle to win congressional support for a limited military strike against Syria. He said that's because the failure of diplomacy could bolster Obama's argument that a U.S. attack was a necessary course of action.
McCain spoke at a breakfast sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, the morning after Obama used a nationally broadcast speech to seek public support for military action.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/11/john-mccain-free-syrian-army_n_3906136.html [with comments]
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U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels
An opposition fighter fires a rocket propelled grenade during clashes with regime forces near Aleppo. A new phase of non-lethal U.S. assistance is ramping up as weapons supplied by the CIA have begun to trickle into Syria, according to opposition officials.
SALAH AL-ASHKAR/AFP/Getty Images
By Ernesto Londoño and Greg Miller, Wednesday, September 11, 2013 8:30 PM
The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war.
The arms shipments, which are limited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked, began arriving in Syria at a moment of heightened tensions over threats by President Obama to order missile strikes to punish the regime of Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in a deadly attack near Damascus last month.
The arms are being delivered as the United States is also shipping new types of nonlethal gear to rebels. That aid includes vehicles, sophisticated communications equipment and advanced combat medical kits.
U.S. officials hope that, taken together, the weapons and gear will boost the profile and prowess of rebel fighters in a conflict that started about 21 / 2 years ago.
Although the Obama administration signaled months ago that it would increase aid to Syrian rebels, the efforts have lagged because of the logistical challenges involved in delivering equipment in a war zone and officials’ fears that any assistance could wind up in the hands of jihadists. Secretary of State John F. Kerry had promised in April [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/kerry-says-us-will-expedite-new-aid-to-syrian-opposition/2013/04/21/91461f40-aa8f-11e2-a8b9-2a63d75b5459_story.html ] that the nonlethal aid would start flowing “in a matter of weeks.”
The delays prompted several senior U.S. lawmakers to chide the Obama administration for not moving more quickly to aid the Syrian opposition after promising lethal assistance in June. The criticism has grown louder amid the debate over whether Washington should use military force against the Syrian regime, with some lawmakers withholding support until the administration committed to providing the rebels with more assistance.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has pressed the Obama administration to do more to help the rebels, said he felt embarrassed when he met with Syrians along the Turkish border three weeks ago.
“It was humiliating,” he said in an interview Wednesday night. “The president had announced that we would be providing lethal aid, and not a drop of it had begun. They were very short on ammunition, and the weapons had not begun to flow.”
The latest effort to provide aid is aimed at supporting rebel fighters who are under the command of Gen. Salim Idriss, according to officials, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because part of the initiative is covert. Idriss is the commander of the Supreme Military Council, a faction of the disjointed armed opposition.
U.S. officials, speaking about the provision of nonlethal aid, said they are determined to increase the cohesion and structure of the rebel fighting units.
“This doesn’t only lead to a more effective force, but it increases its ability to hold coalition groups together,” said Mark S. Ward, the State Department’s senior adviser on assistance to Syria, who coordinates nonlethal aid to rebels from southern Turkey. “They see their leadership is having some impact.”
U.S. officials decided to expand nonlethal assistance to Syria’s armed rebels after they delivered more than 350,000 high-calorie U.S. military food packets through the Supreme Military Council in May. The distribution gave U.S. officials confidence that it was possible to limit aid to select rebel units in a battlefield where thousands of fighters share al-Qaeda’s ideology, U.S. officials said.
Khaled Saleh, a spokesman for the Syrian Opposition Coalition, said Washington’s revamped efforts are welcome but insufficient to turn the tide of the civil war between rebels and forces loyal to Assad.
“The Syrian Military Council is receiving so little support that any support we receive is a relief,” he said. “But if you compare what we are getting compared to the assistance Assad receives from Iran and Russia, we have a long battle ahead of us.”
‘It’s better than nothing’
While the State Department is coordinating nonlethal aid, the CIA is overseeing the delivery of weaponry and other lethal equipment to the rebels. An opposition official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss covert arms transfers, said U.S. intelligence personnel have begun delivering long-promised light weapons and ammunition to rebel groups in the past couple of weeks.
The weaponry “doesn’t solve all the needs the guys have, but it’s better than nothing,” the opposition official said. He added that Washington remains reluctant to give the rebels what they most desire: antitank and antiaircraft weapons.
The CIA shipments are to flow through a network of clandestine bases in Turkey and Jordan that were expanded over the past year as the agency sought to help Middle Eastern allies, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, direct weapons to moderate Syrian rebel forces.
The CIA declined to comment.
The distribution of vehicles and communications equipment is part of an effort to direct U.S. aid to Syrian rebels in a more assertive, targeted manner. Before Ward established a team of about two dozen diplomats and aid workers in southern Turkey, Washington was doing little more than paying for truckloads of food and medicine for Syrian rebels. U.S. officials concede that the shipments often went to the most accessible, and not necessarily the neediest, places.
Boosting moderate factions
In addition to boosting support for rebels under the command of Idriss, who speaks fluent English and taught at a military academy [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/syrian-rebels-say-any-american-strike-on-regime-targets-should-be-powerful/2013/09/04/fa1784ea-15a2-11e3-961c-f22d3aaf19ab_story.html ] before defecting from the Syrian army last year, U.S. officials in southern Turkey are using aid to promote emerging moderate leaders in towns and villages in rebel-held areas. Across much of the north, Syrians have begun electing local councils and attempting to rebuild communities devastated by war.
Ward’s team — working primarily out of hotel lobbies — has spent the past few months studying the demographics and dynamics of communities where extremists are making inroads. Targeted U.S. aid, he said, can be used to empower emerging local leaders who are moderate and to jump-start basic services while dimming the appeal of extremists.
“We feel we’re able to get these local councils off to a good start,” said Ward, a veteran U.S. Agency for International Development official [ http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/bureau/194564.htm ] who has worked in Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan. “We vet individuals who are getting our assistance to make sure they are not affiliated with terror organizations.”
The assistance to local communities includes training in municipal management as well as basic infrastructure such as garbage trucks, ambulances and firetrucks. The areas receiving this aid are carefully selected, U.S. officials said, noting that extremist groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, are delivering services to communities newly under rebel control.
“If you see new firetrucks and ambulances in places where al-Nusra is trying to win hearts and minds, this might not be a coincidence,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to explain details of a sensitive strategy.
The initiatives are part of a $250 million effort to support moderate factions of the Syrian opposition. Of that, the United States has earmarked $26.6 million in aid for the Supreme Military Council. The delivery that began this week does not include items that the rebels have long identified as priorities: night-vision goggles and body armor.
Mohammed Ghanem, director of government relations at the Syrian American Council, which supports the opposition, said the U.S. initiatives are steps in the right direction after years of inaction and misguided policies.
“We’ve definitely seen a structural and conceptual evolution in terms of their understanding of what’s going on on the ground,” he said in an interview. “On the other hand, we’re always lagging behind. We’re not leading. Developments are always like six months ahead of us.”
Ghanem said the effect of U.S. assistance is limited by the number of proxies that Washington must use to deliver it. U.S. officials in Turkey rely on a network of contractors and subcontractors to deliver the aid.
Ward said he hopes the assistance efforts will position the United States to have strong relationships in a postwar Syria.
“When you finally have a free Syrian government, you will know them and they will know us,” Ward said. “We will have been working with them week after week, month after month. These won’t be strangers.”
© 2013 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-begins-weapons-delivery-to-syrian-rebels/2013/09/11/9fcf2ed8-1b0c-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html [with comments]
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Sarah Palin: 'It Is Time To Bomb Obamacare'
Posted: 09/10/2013 10:50 am EDT
Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin took to her social media accounts on Monday to promote her new anti-Obamacare video, which features clips of her discussing her opposition to President Barack Obama's signature health care law.
Palin posted the video to her Facebook page along with a strong message about the Affordable Care Act and the recent debate on whether the United States should strike Syria with military force.
"Enough of this foreign fiasco distraction," Palin wrote [ https://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin/posts/10151853868928588 ]. "Get back to work. It is time to bomb Obamacare."
The clip [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hgt87inKDUE (next below)], titled "Just Sayin'," was produced by Palin's political action committee, SarahPAC [ http://www.sarahpac.com/ ].
Palin has previously criticized Obama's handling of the Syria situation.
"If we are dangerously uncertain of the outcome and are led into war by a Commander-in-chief who can’t recognize that this conflict is pitting Islamic extremists against an authoritarian regime with both sides shouting 'Allah Akbar' at each other, then let Allah sort it out," Palin wrote [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/31/sarah-palin-syria_n_3848819.html ] in a Facebook post last month.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/10/sarah-palin-obamacare_n_3899920.html [with comments]
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Ted Cruz Is Powerless in the Face of Obamacare
Senator Ted Cruz speaks during a rally against Obamacare on September 10, 2013 in Washington, D.C.
Even as conservatives keep rallying to defund health-care reform, congressional Republicans have come up with a plan that effectively admits they’re powerless to kill it. Jamelle Bouie reports from a pointless Capitol Hill demonstration.
Sep 11, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/11/ted-cruz-is-powerless-in-the-face-of-obamacare.html [with comments]
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