After John Kerry gives Syria one week to turn over its chemical weapons, the Russians come back with this. We don’t know if this is enough to deter the U.S. from bombing Syria, but it certainly offers a respectable out to Obama:
MOSCOW — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday that his country has asked Syria to transfer control of its chemical weapons to international monitors in order to prevent a U.S. military strike.
Lavrov also called on Syria to sign and ratify the Convention on Chemical Weapons, which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons, including the nerve gas that the government of President Bashar al-Assad is accused of deploying outside Damascus last month, killing more than 1,400 civilians.
“We do not know whether Syria will agree to this, but if the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country will avoid strikes, we will immediately begin working with Damascus,” Lavrov said. “We call on the Syrian leadership not only to agree on a statement of storage of chemical weapons under international supervision, but also to their subsequent destruction.”
Lavrov spoke after meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in Moscow, and presenting him with the proposal. “We look forward to a quick and hopefully positive response,” Lavrov said.
Hours earlier, in London, Secretary of State John F. Kerry sketched out a similar scenario after being asked by a reporter whether there was anything that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could do to avoid an attack. “Sure, he could turn over every bit of his weapons to the international community within the next week, without delay,” Kerry said. “But he isn’t about to.”
So this NYTimes video is making quite a splash across the internets. I don’t understand why anyone’s surprised.
Didn’t they see the video of the Syrian rebel eating the heart of a Syrian soldier he killed? Or the many execution videos they’ve been posting for the past year or so? This is what war is. Once a war begins, the line between “good guys” and “bad guys” becomes very, very blurred. That’s why it’s important to be as cautious as possible before getting involved — because as we’ve so often learned (although apparently not often enough), the cure may be much worse than the situation we’re attempting to remedy:
The Syrian rebels posed casually, standing over their prisoners with firearms pointed down at the shirtless and terrified men.
“If they regard anyone associated with the old regime as evil, one can only imagine what they will do if they come to power.”
The prisoners, seven in all, were captured Syrian soldiers. Five were trussed, their backs marked with red welts. They kept their faces pressed to the dirt as the rebels’ commander recited a bitter revolutionary verse.
“For fifty years, they are companions to corruption,” he said. “We swear to the Lord of the Throne, that this is our oath: We will take revenge.”
The moment the poem ended, the commander, known as “the Uncle,” fired a bullet into the back of the first prisoner’s head. His gunmen followed suit, promptly killing all the men at their feet.
This scene, documented in a video smuggled out of Syria a few days ago by a former rebel who grew disgusted by the killings, offers a dark insight into how many rebels have adopted some of the same brutal and ruthless tactics as the regime they are trying to overthrow.
The Assad regime is just as brutal — maybe more. And injecting ourselves into this mess solves what, exactly?
Okay, now this gets interesting. Obama claimed only the first group of 50 were entering, while Le Figaro claimed there were two groups, with the first one being 300 and the second one not specified by size. Further, note the dates and location: they entered on August 17 and 19 and they passed through Ghouta. The large number of deaths from a suspected chemical warfare agent occurred on August 21 in Ghouta. In fact, the second paragraph of the Jerusalem Post article notes:
Le Figaro reported that this is the reason behind the Assad regime’s alleged chemical weapons attack in Damascus on Wednesday morning, as UN inspectors were allowed into the country to investigate allegations of WMD use.
Were these first groups of CIA-trained death squad members the target of the attack? Or could it be even worse than that? Vladimir Putin had some very interesting things to say in a wide-ranging interview today, but this bit stands out in relation to the death squad story:
“If it is determined that these rebels used weapons of mass destruction, what will the United States do with the rebels?” Mr. Putin asked. “What will the sponsors of the rebels do? Stop the supply of arms? Will they start fighting against the rebels?”
Whether they were the targets of an attack by Assad’s forces or whether they were the agents carrying out a false flag attack, US-trained death squads could well be at the center of the disputed use of chemical weapons. That would seem to be both a strong incentive and a huge tell for Obama to change both the date and the size of the entry of the first of these agents trained by the US. After all, even while reporting Obama’s leak to McCain and Graham on Monday, the New York Times noted that the training program is covert.
Except that it’s not just the US training them. Going back to the Jerusalem Post article:
The rebels were trained for several months in a training camp on the Jordanian-Syrian border by CIA operatives, as well as Jordanian and Israeli commandos, the paper said.
Oh my. That’s quite the international faculty for this training program. What new wonders await us as more graduates of the program pour into Syria?
I think we have sufficient reason to question the official version of events.
Let me be more precise. Just shut your fking piehole. Forever. You useless walking, bloodstained pile of casual death.
Lieberman said that he would urge lawmakers — including his “amigos,” Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — to approve an action in Syria. “I’m sure that our enemies are cheering now as a result of this decision because they realize it’s not clear the president will get authority, and our allies are worried,” he concluded. “That’s why, again, this resolution or something like it has to pass Congress.”
Let us be clear. There is no blazing, murderous maw into which Joe Lieberman would not be willing to feed someone else’s child. There is no fiery death from above that he is not willing to inflict upon children in a distant land. The man could care less about the dead. He’d feed on them himself, if he could.
Found an interesting read regarding how the debate is shaping up on intervention in Syria in Congress. I think this describes accurately the schools of thought on the Syrian issue…
Pro-Interventionist Republican Hawks
A vocal segment of the Republican Party, foreign policy hawks believe it is role of the United States, as the sole surviving superpower, to use its military might to stamp out brutal tyrants and prevent the world from spiraling into Hobbesian mayhem. This faction of the GOP reigned supreme during the post-9/11 Bush era but has lost some of its influence in the wake of the Iraq war and the election of Obama.
Their rationale for intervening in Syria: Bashar al-Assad’s regime must be overthrown for terrorizing and mass-murdering his own people, for threatening U.S. allies and interests in the region, and for flouting an international norm not to use chemical weapons…..
Liberal Humanitarian Interventionists
A faction of liberals has long supported limited, targeted U.S. interventions in war-torn places to advance humanitarian goals. And various Democrats, including the party’s congressional leadership, see the Syria mission in this light: a move to stand up for an oppressed people against a mass-murdering tyrant who has crossed a red line by, according to U.S. intelligence, employing chemical weapons to kill his own people…(A similar philosophy incubated the Clinton-led U.S. intervention in Kosovo.)
War-Weary Conservative Isolationists
Isolationist sentiments are flourishing in key segments of the conservative movement and are poised to play a key role in the debate over Syria. This philosophy has long been an undercurrent in the GOP, waxing and waning over different eras, and has made a comeback since the failures of the Iraq War and more so since the election of a Democratic president, which made Republicans freer to express their war-weariness.
Anti-War Progressive Democrats
They’re not exactly pacifists, but a significant segment of the Democratic Party rejects the view that the answer to violence is more violence. Unless war clearly threatens U.S. interests, as in the case of World War II, these lawmakers are inclined to oppose military intervention. And they’re plainly unconvinced that an attack on Syria meets that standard.
“We are not the world’s policemen. That is not our responsibility,” Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) told CNN late last week. “I don’t know where we got this odd notion that every time we see something bad happen in the world, we should bomb it.”
This segment of the Democratic Party was marginalized in the aftermath of 9/11 but rose up again when Iraq descended into chaos. It saw vindication as the public concluded that the Iraq War was a mistake.
Much was made of the belief that the gas had been delivered by rocket. However, as The New York Times correspondent Ben Hubbard reported (April 27, 2013) “”Near the attack sites, activists found spent rockets that appeared to have been homemade and suspected that they delivered the gas.” Would the regular army’s chemical warfare command have used “homemade” rockets? That report seemed to point to some faction within the opposition rather than to the government.
Several days into the crisis, we have been given a different source of information. This is from Israel. For many years, Israel is known to have directed a major communications effort against Syria. Its program, known as Unit 8200 is Mossad’s equivalent of NSA. It chose to share what it claimed was a key intercept with outsiders. First, a former officer told the German news magazine Focus (according to The Guardian,August 28, 2013) that Israel had intercepted a conversation between Syrian officers discussing the attack. The same Information was given to Israeli press (see “American Operation, Israeli Intelligence” in the August 27 Yediot Ahronoth,) It also shared this information with the American government. Three Israeli senior officers were reported to have been sent to Washington to brief NSC Director Susan Rice. What was said was picked up by some observers. Foreign Policy magazine reported (August 28, “Intercepted Calls Prove Syrian Army Used Nerve Gas, U.S. Spies Say”) that “in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Minister of Defense exchanged what Israeli intelligence described as “panicked phone calls” with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answer for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people.”
But, as more information emerged, doubts began to be expressed. As Matt Apuzzo reported (AP, August 29, “AP sources: Intelligence on weapons no ‘slam dunk.’”), according to a senior US intelligence official, the intercept “discussing the strike was among low level staff, with no direct evidence tying the attack to an Assad insider or even a senior commander.” Reminding his readers of the famous saying by the then head of the CIA, George Tenet, in 2002 that the intelligence against Saddam Husain was “slam dunk,” when in fact it was completely erroneous, the AP correspondent warned that the Syrian attack of last week “could be tied to al-Qaida-backed rebels later.”
Two things should be borne in mind on these reports: the first is that Israel has had a long-standing goal of the break-up or weakening of Syria which is the last remaining firmly anti-Israeli Arab state. (the rationale behind this policy was laid out by Edward Luttwak in the OpEd section of the August 24, 2013 New York Times). It also explains why Israel actively had sought “regime change” in Iraq. The second consideration is that Israeli intelligence has also been known to fabricate intercepts as, for example, it did during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
So, unless or until more conclusive evidence is available, the request by Mr. Ban (“U.N. seeks more time for its inspectors,”International Herald Tribune, August 29, 2013) for more time appears to be prudent. Despite what Messrs Biden and Kerry have said, I believe a court would conclude that the case against the Syrian government was “not proven.”
This is all sounding so painfully familiar, but at least I can say that most people don’t seem to be falling for it. Not that it will stop the war machine, of course, but it’s something. So strange to watch all these administration officialsand other noted war hawks on teevee, trying to communicate a sense of urgency to the public. What’s so urgent? Israel’s war fetish? The latest gas pipeline?
WE DON’T BELIEVE YOU.
When you’ve lied to your own people about so much for so long, it’s downright silly that you expect us to believe you now. You tell us we can’t afford to pay Social Security payments for old people, but we have all the money in the world for defense contracts. We’re not supposed to notice the contradiction?
Notice how hard Alex Witt pushes Grayson. No, it’s not because she’s a good journalist; it’s because they’ve all fallen into line to bang the war drum. In fact, the TV media is pretty unanimous in wanting another war — it’s good for ratings.
A U.S. official briefed on the military options being considered by President Obama told the Los Angeles Times that the White House is seeking a strike on Syria “just muscular enough not to get mocked.”
“They are looking at what is just enough to mean something, just enough to be more than symbolic,” the official told the paper, giving credence to similar reports describing a limited military strike in the aftermath of last week’s alleged chemical weapons attack.
NBC News reported earlier this week that the administration would launch three days of missile strikes, while CNN cited a senior administration official saying that the White House wanted to conclude any action before the president departs for the G-20 summit next week.
And today we have President Obama asking for Congress to vote on those Syria strikes (even though his staffers were eager to leak this afternoon that he would probably go ahead and bomb them anyway if they vote against it. A symbolic vote for a symbolic war!)
“We are the United States of America. We cannot, and must not, turn a blind eye to what happened in Damascus.”
