The Syria Thread 2011 - Present

[seemslikeadream]

Syria’s Confirmation of Strike May Add to Tension With Israel

By JODI RUDOREN
Published: January 31, 2013

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials remained stone silent on Thursday about their airstrike in Syrian territory the day before, a tactic that experts said was part of a longstanding Jerusalem strategy to give targeted countries face-saving opportunities to avoid conflict escalation. But Syria’s own confirmation of the attack, followed by harsh condemnation not only by Israel’s enemies Iran and Hezbollah but also by Russia, may have undercut that effort, analysts said, increasing the likelihood of retaliation, which could prompt further Israeli attacks.

“From the moment they chose to say Israel did something, it means someone has to do something after that,” said Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s National Security Council and a longtime military leader. “Contrary to what I could hope and believe yesterday, that this round of events would end soon, now I am much less confident.”

The Iranian deputy foreign minister warned on Thursday that Israel’s strike would lead to “grave consequences for Tel Aviv,” while the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the strike “blatantly violates the United Nations charter and is unacceptable and unjustified, whatever its motives.”

Israel has not acknowledged the attack, which American officials say hit a convoy before dawn Wednesday that was ferrying sophisticated antiaircraft missiles called SA-17s to Lebanon. The Syrians and their allies said the target was actually a scientific research facility in the Damascus suburbs. It remained unclear Thursday whether there was in fact one strike or two, and what involvement the research outpost might have had in weapons production or storage for Syria or Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite organization that has long battled with Israel.

Most experts agree that Syria, Hezbollah and Israel each have strong reasons to want to avoid a new active conflict right now: the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is fighting for his survival in a violent and chaotic civil war; Hezbollah is struggling for political legitimacy at home and battling its label as a terrorist organization internationally; and Israel is trying to keep its head down in an increasingly volatile region.

But it is equally clear that Hezbollah — backed by Syria and Iran — wants desperately to upgrade its arsenal in hopes of changing the parameters for any future engagement with the powerful Israeli military, and that Israel is determined to stop it. And Hezbollah is perhaps even more anxious to gird itself for future challenges to its primacy in Lebanon, especially if a Sunni-led revolution triumphs next door in Syria.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his deputies said loud and clear in the days leading up to the strike that they saw any transfer of Syria’s extensive cache of chemical weapons, or of sophisticated conventional weapons systems, as a “red line” that would prompt action. Now that it has followed through on that threat, even without admitting it, analysts expect Israel — perhaps backed by its Western allies — to similarly target any future convoys attempting the same feat.

“Once this red line has been crossed, it’s definitely going to be crossed time and again from now on, especially as the situation of the Assad regime will deteriorate,” said Boaz Ganor, head of the International Institute for Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. “They will do the utmost to gain control of those weapons. In that case, I don’t see why Israel wouldn’t have the same type of calculation that Israel had two days ago into the future.”

Mr. Ganor said the United States and Europe should be as concerned as Israel, because Syria’s chemical weapons could end up in the hands not of Hezbollah but of jihadist organizations like Al Qaeda or its proxies. “If one organization will put their hands on this arsenal, then it will change hands in no time and we’ll see it all over the world,” he said. “We, the international community, are marching into a new era of terrorism.”

Eyal Zisser, a historian at Tel Aviv University who specializes in Syria and Lebanon, said that if there was no retaliation to Wednesday’s airstrike, “Why not repeat it? For Israel it’s going to be the practice.” The question, Professor Zisser said, “is what they will try to do next, Syria and Hezbollah, if there is another Israeli attack, whether they will avoid any retaliation the next time as well.”Israel’s steadfast silence on the airstrike was reminiscent of its posture after it destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 — an attack it has never acknowledged, though many officials discuss it with winks and nods. But in that case, President Assad bought into the de-escalation strategy by saying the attack had hit an unused — and implicitly unimportant — military building, relieving the pressure for a response.

Syria and Israel are technically at war, though there has long been a wary calm along the decades-old armistice line. Though Wednesday’s strike was on Syrian soil, analysts said its actual goal was to send a strong signal to Hezbollah — something the Lebanese organization tried to deflect in its own statement after the attack, which expressed “solidarity with Syria’s leadership, army and people.”

“Israel has tried very hard not to take part in all of what happens in Syria, and I don’t think we will start to be involved now,” said Dan Harel, a former deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. “Israel is trying to stay within its own borders, look outside, not be involved — just trying not to let what happens in Syria change the equation vis-à-vis Lebanon.”

The use of either chemical weapons or complex conventional ones like the Russian-made SA-17s would be a game changer in what most here see as the inevitable next war with Hezbollah. Since Israel’s bloody war with Lebanon in 2006, Hezbollah is believed to have increased its missile stash to more than 50,000 from perhaps 15,000, including some long-range ones that can hit any part of Israel. But Israel is well-prepared to defend against even an intense barrage of such rockets. On the other hand, if Hezbollah gained the ability to curtail Israel’s relatively free rein in Lebanese airspace, that would truly alter the landscape.

“If they manage to bring down an Israeli plane, it would have two pilots — for them it’s as if they won the war,” Yoram Schweitzer, a senior research fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, said of Hezbollah. “They have the ability to blackmail Israel, to torture the Israeli public opinion. They won’t be able to cope with the Israeli Air Force, but just to be able to reduce the free-of-charge Israeli airstrikes, that’s the logic.”

As experts debated the likelihood of retaliation by Syria, Hezbollah or Iran on Israeli radio and television, residents in the north rushed to get gas masks as municipal workers checked bomb shelters’ electricity and security and reviewed emergency procedures. Mayor Nissim Malka of Kiryat Shmona, a town of about 23,000 near the Lebanon border that withstood more than 1,000 rocket attacks in 2006, said his office had been flooded with calls about whether children should go to school, businesses should close, and weddings should proceed.

“Every door slamming made people jump,” said Mayor Malka, 60. “People are on edge and keep asking if we know anything about what may develop.”

Report: IAF strike in Syria hit Iranian Guards
By ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, YAAKOV LAPPIN02/01/2013 03:00

Iraqi paper quotes source as saying alleged Israeli strike caused heavy casualties among Iranian Guards stationed at Syrian facility.
IAF plane takes part in maneuvers [file] Photo: IDF spokesperson
Iraqi daily Azzaman quoted a Western diplomatic source as saying Thursday that the alleged Israeli attack on Syria reported on Wednesday caused heavy casualties among special Iranian Guards stationed at the Syrian facility. The source also said that the attack took place more than 48 hours before it was reported, eventually being leaked by Israel.

The source for the story, who was interviewed by the paper in London, said that the report about a strike on a convoy to Lebanon was probably meant to divert attention away from the main objective of the operation, which used F-16 aircraft to fire at least eight guided missiles at the facility.


Israel most likely got its intelligence, said the source, from penetrating deep inside Iran and from other operations meant to penetrate Hezbollah.

The report came as outgoing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday that there are signs that Iran is sending growing numbers of people and increasingly sophisticated weaponry to support Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"It appears that they may be increasing that involvement and that is a matter of great concern to us," she told reporters as she prepares to step down on Friday. "I think the numbers (of people) have increased ... There is a lot of concern that they are increasing the quality of the weapons, because Assad is using up his weaponry. So it's numbers and it's materiel."

Iran, Syria vow retaliation for attack

Tehran and Damascus on Thursday threatened an unspecified, “surprise” retaliation against Israel in response to the reported Israeli air strike on a Syrian weapons center the day before.

The Iranian regime’s English-language mouthpiece, Press TV, quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian as saying that the “strike on Syria will have serious consequences for Tel Aviv.”

Syria issued its threat to retaliate through the country’s ambassador to Lebanon.

Ali Abdul Karim Ali told a Hezbollah-run news website on Thursday that Damascus had the option of a “surprise decision” to respond to what it said was an Israeli air strike on a research center on the outskirts of the Syrian capital on Wednesday.

“Syria is engaged in defending its sovereignty and its land,” he added, without spelling out what the response might entail.

According to foreign sources, in 2007 Israeli jets bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear site, and no retaliation was forthcoming despite Syrian threats.

Last week, the Associated Press quoted a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader as saying that any attack on Syria would be seen by Tehran as an attack on itself.

The official, Ali Akbar Velayati, said the regime of Syrian President Assad was a central component of the “resistance front.”

Report: Syrian regime transferred nonconventional weapons to Hezbollah

Also on Thursday, the Saudi-based Al-Watan newspaper reported that the Syrian regime had transferred nonconventional weapons to Hezbollah.

Al-Watan, quoting unnamed sources from the Syrian opposition, reported that Assad had been transferring weapons to Hezbollah since the beginning of 2012, including 2 tons of mustard gas and long-range missiles, capable of carrying chemical warheads and traveling 300 kilometers.

Syrian opposition sources also claimed that the transfers to Hezbollah took place over 40 days, from mid-February to March 2012, the Saudi daily reported.

The chemical weapons transfer to Hezbollah was carried out under the supervision of Syrian Brig.-Gen. Ghassan Abbas. The Syrian source said that it observed these transfers since the beginning of last year.

The tankers drove through Damascus and Zabadani, and then through Sirghaya on the Lebanese border, carrying the chemical weapons in blue barrels labeled “Chlorine Acid.”

They took the material to “Hezbollah warehouses and delivered it to a person nicknamed ‘Abu Talal,’ who was subordinate to the party leadership.”

The report also said that some of the chemical weapons were stored in a warehouse at the Mezze military airport, as well as at other locations around Syria.

The Syrian SANA news agency released a statement by the General Command of the Armed Forces, which sought to link the supposed strike to Israel’s support – and that of other countries – for the Syrian rebels.

“Warplanes violated Syrian airspace on Wednesday at dawn and bombarded a scientific research center responsible for raising our levels of resistance and self-defense. This attack came after Israel and other countries that oppose the Syrian people utilized their pawns in Syria to attack vital military locations,” the statement said.

General Command also said that the attack “martyred” two workers and wounded five others.

The “research center” building was also destroyed. It went on to deny claims that the attack targeted a convoy headed for Lebanon.

In addition, it stated, “The General Command said that it has become clear to everyone that Israel is the motivator, beneficiary and sometimes executor of the terrorist acts which target Syria and its resistant people, with some countries that support terrorism being accomplices in this, primarily Turkey and Qatar.”

An article in the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily claimed that Syria would probably have to respond against Israel this time around.

Wednesday’s attack on Syria “is very different from all previous raids at every level, and a non-response this time around would mean the acceptance of a new equation that Israel is trying to impose, in the form of shackles on the regime’s freedom of action. It is likely that the regime will be unable to accept these constraints without risking its very survival. Based on this, the more logical question has to do with the manner, nature, and scale of the Syrian response,” the paper said.

Hezbollah called it “a savage attack that carries out the Zionist entity’s policy, which aims at preventing any Arab and Muslim state from developing its technological and military capabilities,” according to its Al-Manar website.

Reuters and Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.

At the Hagel hearing today Linsey Graham said the words Iranian Guard probably 20 times

[seemslikeadream]

With US Approval, Israel Plans Syria Escalation
New Plan Calls for Ground Invasion, Occupation of 'Buffer Zone'
by Jason Ditz, February 03, 2013

Few things seem to get Israeli officials planning as quickly as a US imprimatur to launch an attack. Having been given the green light not just for Wednesday’s attacks but for other, future attacks Israel is now said to be planning a dramatic escalation.

The new Israeli plan, under consideration by its leadership, calls not only for additional strikes inside Syria but a full-scale ground invasion across the Purple Line, seizing a 10 mile “buffer zone” on the other side of the line in which to install large numbers of Israeli troops and tanks.

Israel’s previous strikes targeted a military research facility as well as a military convoy parked at a base. The convoy reportedly had anti-aircraft missiles on board, which Israel feared would make its regular attacks on Lebanon much less convenient should they fall into Hezbollah’s hands.

The new strikes would center around a putative Iranian listening post, which Iran is apparently using to keep an eye on Israel, which has regularly threatened to attack them.

The “buffer zone” plan is likely to be far more controversial and potentially explosive, since Israel already has a de facto 10 mile buffer zone it seized in 1967, the Golan Heights. In the past half a century Israel has filled this zone with 20,000 settlers, and the new zone would inevitably look like another land grab.

An Israeli invasion might provoke action from Turkey as well, which condemned Israel’s last strikes and has talked about setting up its own “buffer zone” in the far north, hoping to house Syrian refugees inside of that region instead of inside Turkey itself.

US comments on Israel’s attack amounted to unequivocal endorsement of the strikes and any future strikes, but didn’t specify just how far they’re comfortable with Israel going. Since this plan is under consideration at all, it seems safe to say that the Obama Administration is comfortable with leaving the scope of the war up to Israel, which given its current government’s bellicosity will inevitably mean as broad a scope as possible.

[seemslikeadream]

Pentagon leaders favored arming Syrian rebels

By Craig Whitlock, Updated: Thursday, February 7, 4:52 PM

The Pentagon’s top leaders said Thursday that they favored supplying weapons to rebels locked in a grinding civil war with the Syrian government, a position that put them directly at odds with the White House.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made only a brief mention of their views on Syria while testifying at a Senate hearing on the attacks against the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, last year.

A look at the Syrian uprising nearly two years later. Thousands of Syrians have died and President Bashar al-Assad remains in power, despite numerous calls by the international community for him to step down.
Graphic

Timeline: Major events in the country’s tumultuous uprising that began in March 2011.

But their surprise remarks underscored sharp divisions within the Obama administration over its policy toward Syria, where an estimated 60,000 people have died since an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began about two years ago. The statements also marked a rare instance in which the Pentagon’s leaders publicly voiced disagreement with the White House.

At the tail end of a line of questioning about Benghazi, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) asked Panetta and Dempsey whether they supported a plan “that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria.” The plan, he said, was floated in the summer by then-CIA Director David H. Petraeus and endorsed by another heavyweight in the administration at the time, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“We do,” Panetta replied.

“You did support that?” McCain asked again.

“We did,” added Dempsey, who was sitting next to Panetta. Neither elaborated on their positions.

McCain appeared taken aback by the answers. A few hours later, he issued a statement saying he was “very pleased” to learn of the Pentagon’s stance but criticized President Obama for blocking arms shipments to Syrian rebels.

“What this means is that the president overruled the senior leaders of his own national security team,” said McCain, who has long advocated for U.S. intervention in Syria.

The White House declined to comment on the rift. At the State Department, where Secretary of State John F. Kerry has been in the job for only a week, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also declined to “talk about internal policy deliberations of the government.”

A U.S. defense official, however, confirmed that Panetta and Dempsey “supported looking into the idea last year” of directly arming Syrian rebels. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the two Pentagon leaders “understand the difficulties” of supplying weapons and currently back Obama’s policy of giving nonlethal aid to the Syrian opposition.

Later in Thursday’s hearing, in response to a follow-up question, Panetta and Dempsey confirmed that they had supported the CIA proposal in the summer to arm Syrian rebels. But Panetta added that “obviously, there were a number of factors that were involved here that ultimately led to the president’s decision to make it nonlethal. And I supported his decision in the end.”

Obama has consistently opposed arming the Syrian resistance, saying that U.S. involvement could backfire.

He and other administration officials have said that they are particularly concerned by the emergence of rebel groups affiliated with al-Qaeda, which see the conflict with Assad as a holy war and are filling their ranks with foreign fighters.

“The longer this goes on, the more there is a magnetic effect of the most extreme groups to come in and join the fight,” national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon said Monday on the “Charlie Rose” show. “Dealing with those groups is going to be a real challenge.”

There have been no overt signs recently that Obama might change his mind and adopt a more aggressive policy on Syria. But pressure to do something remains high as the death toll in Syria steadily rises and concerns about Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons mounts.

A look at the Syrian uprising nearly two years later. Thousands of Syrians have died and President Bashar al-Assad remains in power, despite numerous calls by the international community for him to step down.

The U.S. government has provided $355 million in humanitarian aid and supplies to Syrian refugees and rebels. Although the the Obama administration has helped to vet Syrian opposition figures and provided intelligence to countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia — which are supplying weapons to anti-Assad fighters — it has not given weaponry directly.

During the rest of their testimony, Panetta and Dempsey defended the Pentagon’s response to the September attack in Benghazi, saying that U.S. forces were too far away to respond effectively.

Panetta told the Armed Services Committee that it would have taken nine to 12 hours for warplanes or armed drones to reach Libya, too late to mount a counterattack on gunmen who killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Even if fighter jets or gunships could have scrambled more quickly to North Africa from bases in Europe, Panetta cast doubt on whether they could have intervened. He said the military lacked good information to sort out the chaotic events on the ground.

“You can’t just willy-nilly send F-16s there and blow the hell out of a place without knowing what’s taking place,” he said. “You can’t send AC-130s there and blow the hell out of a target without knowing what’s taking place. You’ve got to be able to have good information.”

But Republican lawmakers criticized Panetta and Dempsey for not having stronger contingency plans to respond more quickly to the assault. They pointed out that Islamist militants had carried out several attacks against foreign consulates and diplomats in Benghazi in the preceding weeks and that it was well known that the temporary U.S. mission there was vulnerable.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) chided Dempsey for “a very weak response and reaction to this incident,” adding: “You knew what was happening in Benghazi. You failed to respond in a way that provided security to that particular United States mission complex.”

In response, Dempsey said Benghazi was not the only place where American diplomats were confronting threats that day, the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He pointed out that embassies in Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan were under assault by protesters or mobs. He also said that the State Department had not specifically asked the Pentagon to provide extra security in Benghazi.

Dempsey revealed that the U.S. military has designated “a handful of high-value individuals” in North Africa for their connections to al-Qaeda, making them potential targets for capture or death.

The target list does not include any suspects in the Benghazi attack “to this point,” he added, “although we work with other agencies to try to build the intelligence case to do so.”

[seemslikeadream]

Obama Administration Reveals Deep Divisions on Syria Policy
By Samer Araabi

A resident of Aleppo in the midst of buildings damaged by an airstrike from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

WASHINGTON, Feb 14 2013 (IPS) - Though President Barack Obama has been reticent to involve his administration too deeply in the Syrian uprising, revelations over the past week have shown near-unanimous agreement among the president’s top national security advisors for greater military intervention.

A New York Times story last week uncovered a strategy by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus to directly involve the U.S. in arming and supporting the Syrian rebels, in order to have a more direct influence on the course of events in the war-torn country.

The following week, during congressional testimony on the Benghazi embassy attacks, former Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey both professed similar support for the idea of arming Syrian rebels. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is also said to have backed the plan.

The revelations paint a very different picture from the official narrative of the Obama administration, which has remained publicly sceptical of the idea of providing weapons to unknown militant groups operating in Syria.

The proposals put in front of (Obama) don’t have a plan about how to get out, or if things don’t go according to plan. They don’t outline in any way how America is going to win, or achieve its goals.
“The U.S. long ago accepted the strategy of supporting insurgents as a way to counter the Assad regime or at least to appear to be doing something about Syria,” Leila Hilal, director of the Middle East Task Force for the New America Foundation, told IPS.

“Even if full-scale military support was not mobilised earlier, steps were taken to allow others to arm rebels. The indirect approach failed to turn the conflict and undermined the revolution.”

Foreign policy analysts have jumped to widely different conclusions about the disparate opinions of the president on one hand, his senior national security staff – the secretary of state, the secretary of defence, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and director of the CIA – on the other.

Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams refers to the president’s decision as “tragically wrong”, and states that “one cannot escape the conclusion that electoral politics played a role” in ignoring the advice of his national security team.

Joshua Landis, associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and proprietor of the widely-read blog Syria Comment, disagrees.

“Obama doesn’t seem to agree with the prevailing interests in Washington, and the way they want to formulate our Middle East policy,” he told IPS.

Landis claims that instead of being influenced by the cabinet’s push for more involvement, “that’s a driver for him for staying out of Syria, because he knows powerful interests will quickly weigh in if we get involved there. He doesn’t seem to trust our Middle East policy-making apparatus.”

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Pressed further on the question, General Dempsey clarified later in the week that he supported arming the Syrian opposition “conceptually”, noting that “there were enormous complexities involved that we still haven’t resolved.”

The interventionists’ plan was further undermined by a study within the CIA itself, where a team of intelligence analysts concluded that the influx of U.S. arms would not “materially” affect the situation on the ground.

Landis also cautioned that “the proposals put in front of (Obama) don’t have a plan about how to get out, or if things don’t go according to plan. They don’t outline in any way how America is going to win, or achieve its goals.”

Little is known about the current state of U.S. involvement in the two-year Syrian uprising, which may have claimed the lives of over 60,000 Syrians. Senior White House officials have repeatedly expressed concern that increasing the arms supply to the Syrian rebels may result in weapons falling into the “wrong hands”, a concern exacerbated by the influx of foreign fighters in Syria.

As Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have risen in the ranks of the armed Syrian opposition – partially due to better financial backing, equipment, training, and experience in Iraq/Afghanistan – it has become increasingly difficult to disentangle such groups from other opposition elements.

Even the very same cabinet members who have vocally supported arming the Syrian opposition have expressed grave reservations about the increasingly extremist inclinations of the rebels. Hillary Clinton herself has warned that “the opposition is increasingly being represented by Al-Qaeda extremist elements,” a development she considers “deeply distressing”.

“You can always vet, but can you make the people you like win?” asked Landis. “I’m sure we know people we like, but the problem is, can you make them winners?”

Thus far, Washington’s efforts to marginalise militant Al-Qaeda groups have largely backfired. After the U.S. designation of Jubhat Al-Nusra, the largest Al-Qaeda-linked fighting group in Syria, as a foreign terrorist organisation, most of the Syrian opposition leadership jumped to their defence.

Moaz Al-Khatib, the titular head of the Syrian opposition’s main coalition, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, immediately defended Jabhat Al-Nusra’s role in the uprising as “essential for victory”.

Nevertheless, Washington has been covertly supporting rebel groups for well over a year, with “non-lethal aid”, intelligence, and other unknown means.

The recent statements by Clinton and Panetta, therefore, still reveal little about the actual relationship between the White House and the Syrian rebels.

President Obama openly criticises the idea of armed assistance but has been silently supporting the rebels, while his administration’s liberal interventionists who have openly called for a more militant role have also expressed grave reservations about the ideology and direction of the very people they hope to arm.

These varied opinions and perspectives leave the door open for any number of policies toward Syria.”No one has taken any option off the table in any conversation in which I’ve been involved,” said Dempsey.

Nevertheless, Landis thinks a more militaristic approach in Syria is unlikely.

“Clearly…the people Obama has tried to put forward, all of his appointees, are not in favour of a muscle-bound Middle East policy and are not in favour of more military involvement,” he said. “They’re consistent with his overall plan, which is not to get involved with Syria, not to start a war with Iran.”

[seemslikeadream]

The Syrian Back Door to War With Iran
Arming the Syrian rebels is a very bad idea whose time may have come

by Justin Raimondo, March 01, 2013

Secretary of State John Kerry has long urged increased US support for Syria’s Islamist rebels, and now he has his wish: shortly after being confirmed, he announced the US would now directly aid rebel groups, rather than "indirectly," as we’ve supposedly been doing. Not only that, but the definition of "non-lethal" aid is being stretched to include armored vehicles and body armor: in addition, US "advisors" will be sent to the region – an ominous development that historians of the Vietnam war will observe with a high degree of skepticism. That’s another war that started with sending American "advisors," you’ll recall.

The war propaganda we’ve heard on this subject is all about "the children," the alleged atrocities committed by the Syrian government – "Assad is killing his own people!" (where have we heard that one before? – and how it’s our "humanitarian" duty to help the bloodthirsty jihadists fighting to overthrow the regime. Although no one doubts the brutality of the Ba’athists, a lot of this is utter hogwash: the Syrian opposition has been launching one hoax after another to shame the West into intervening more directly, but their clumsiness in arranging a verifiable incident hasn’t helped their cause.

Up until this point, President Barack Obama has resisted calls by many on the "progressive" left, as well as the usual suspects on the neocon right, to plunge head first into the Syrian maelstrom. Kerry’s announcement may augur the beginning of a new phase of US involvement in this dirty war – and that’s bad news for America.

It’s worse news for the Syrians, who have seen their society destroyed by fanatics in league with al Qaeda – the real fighting forces who dominate the rebel "army." Initially domiciled in Turkey, and having taken over a good part of the country, seasoned jihadists from all over the Middle East and points beyond are imposing sharia law wherever they gain a foothold, destroying centuries-old churches and slaughtering any "infidels" unlucky enough to be in their path. These are the West’s vaunted "allies" in this latest "humanitarian" war – the very same people who brought down the World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

So why in the name of all that’s holy are we allying with and arming these monsters?

In a word: Iran. The Western alliance with the Syrian sons of Osama bin Laden is a cold geopolitical calculation. We’re out to show the mullahs of Tehran that we mean business. Syria could wind up opening an oh-so-convenient back door to war with Iran.

If a Western attack on Iran – the top item on the War Party’s agenda – will mean World War III in the Middle East, then the Syrian conflict is the War Party’s Spain, the prelude to a wider slaughter. In this reenactment of World War II, Assad is playing the role of Franco, while the rebels take the part of the "Loyalists." As for Hitler – he lives in Tehran, or so the Israelis and their American amen corner would have us believe. And while historical analogies are never models of precision, we can take this one further by noting that, like the Spanish Loyalists, the Syrian rebels, too, have their Western "progressive" sympathizers and fellow-travelers, including the American Secretary of State.

With (mostly sketchy) reports of Iranian Revolutionary Guards already in Syria aiding government forces, the West (and its Sunni allies, Saudi Arabia and Qatar) is putting their own proxy army in the field. But that army consists primarily of two Salafist groups, al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, the former linked to al Qaeda and the latter to rich sheikhs in Kuwait. These groups are carrying out car-bombings against civilian targets, murdering Christians and Alawites, and waging a ruthless terrorist campaign that has wreaked havoc in all major cities and killed many. The irony is that the West is now pointing to the success of these groups as a reason to intervene: we cannot permit them to gain a foothold in "post-Assad Syria."

That’s a classic example of creating a problem and then solving it with more of the same misguided policies: aid has been flowing to these Islamist groups via our Sunni allies for over a year. Yet now we claim we must intervene more directly in order to ensure that the consequences of our past policies don’t ensure a victory for "extremists."

The problem with that is there are no "moderates" with any significant military or political clout in Syria: the jihadists are in near total control of the military component of the rebel groups. Politically the supposedly "secular" moderates are nearly invisible, with more support in the capitals of the West than inside the country itself. The overriding fact of the matter is that the fighting forces of the rebel army are solidly Salafist-"extremist."

Interventionists argue we should have listened to John McCain and Lindsey Graham (and Anne-Marie Slaughter), and armed the rebels much earlier, but this fails to take into account the fact that war requires the sort of fanaticism embodied by al-Nusra and its Islamist allies in the Syrian rebel army. The "moderates" never were all that numerous or effective: they never are in any conflict, and especially not in a civil war with heavily religious-sectarian overtones.

In seeking the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s secular Ba’athist dictatorship in Iraq, the US and its allies played the Shi’ite card, enlisting –with various degrees of success – the various Shi’ite opposition groups, such as the Da’wa Party of Nouri al-Maliki (now Prime Minister of "liberated" Iraq), while other groups (such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) stayed close to Tehran. Together with the CIA-created "Iraqi National Congress" of Ahmed "Hero in Error" Chalabi, these groups united in common cause against Saddam. It was, however, a short-lived Popular Front.

In Iraq, the alleged "democrats" – held up by Bush administration as the vanguard of their so-called Global Democratic Revolution – evaporated right after the "liberation." Chalabi, for his part, joined up with the militantly anti-American Sadrists. Baghdad and Tehran grew closer, forging economic and ideological links. It was time for a new turn by our brilliant policymakers, who were playing it by ear all along: in short, it was time for the Sunni turn.

The great irony of our global "war on terrorism," launched in response to attacks on the United States by fanatic Sunni fundamentalists, is that we have wound up on the same side as bin Laden’s heirs and legatees. The essence of US policy in the Middle East today is ginning up a religious war between the two main branches of Islam, represented in the world of nation-states on the one hand by Iran – the only country where political Shia-ism holds state power – and Saudi Arabia (and the Gulf emirates) on the other, the epicenter of the strict Wahabist version of Islam and the site of Mecca and Medina. Having played the Shi’ite card in Iraq, we are now playing the Sunni card in Syria (and in Libya), even to the extent of supporting the Jundullah Sunni terrorist group in Iranian Baluchistan.

If bin Laden were reincarnated today, he would be among the frontline fighters of the Syrian "revolution." His likely successor is no doubt arising within its ranks.

We have been here before. Syria isn’t the first place we backed a Sunni fundamantalist rebellion against a secular socialist regime: back in the days of the now-forgotten cold war, American arms and aid went to the Afghan mujahideen, hailed by President Ronald Reagan as "freedom fighters." We are making the same mistake again – but, then again, does anybody in Washington know history, let alone have the smarts to heed its lessons?

Today’s grand strategists think they’re being oh-so-smart by claiming they’ll avoid that kind of "blowback" by making sure the Good Guys are getting the aid, not the Bad Guys who mean us harm. In the real world, however – as opposed to the alternate universe inhabited by Washington’s policymakers and cloistered theoreticians – the difference is most often impossible to discern. Today’s Good Guys have a very bad habit of becoming tomorrow’s Bad Guys. I seem to recall Chairman Mao used to be an "agrarian reformer," and we used to call Stalin "Uncle Joe." Closer to our own time, those Afghan "freedom fighters" didn’t take that long to morph into the villains of the century.

Such dramatic transformations tend to take place with alarming speed these days. Who would be surprised if Syria’s Islamist George Washington ,whoever he may turn out to be, becomes the latest in a series of anti-American demons unleashed by our own too-clever-by-half machinations?

The same hubris that lured us into Iraq is now summoning us for a replay in Syria. The interventionist impulse is energized by the conceit that we can really pull off a feat of social engineering in Syria, a complex collection of religious and ethnic subcultures with ancient roots whose nature we can only observe from a certain cultural distance – no matter how many "boots on the ground" we have in country. It is the same conceit that allows us to believe we can centrally plan the American economy, or even the world economy, and effectively run the lives of people of whom we know – and can know – really nothing.

It is the hubris of political elites everywhere that is the cause of all the troubles in this world, the worst of these being war. Let us hope the gods punish them for their arrogance sooner, rather than later: in any case, we are all likely to be punished for their sins, of that there can be no doubt.

[Seamus OBlimey]

UK to send armoured vehicles to Syrian opposition

The UK will provide non-combat armoured vehicles to opposition forces to help them move around in safety, as well as body armour. Other material being provided includes communications and refuse collection equipment as well as support for the electricity grid and water supply.

'Carefully monitored'

Testing equipment to provide evidence of any use of chemical weapons will also be supplied, Mr Hague added, as there was a risk that such weapons could be used against Syrian civilians.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-21684105

Here we go again, thanks to little willy. Will he?

[seemslikeadream]

UN: 1 Million People Have Fled Syria

Syrian families wait their turn to register at the UNHCR center in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Wednesday, March. 6, 2013. The number of Syrians who have fled their war-ravaged country and are seeking assistance has now topped the one million mark, the United Nations’ refugee agency said Wednesday warning that Syria is heading towards a “full-scale disaster.”
BARBARA SURK AND DAVID RISING MARCH 6, 2013, 7:09 AM 85
BEIRUT (AP) — The number of Syrians who have fled their war-ravaged country and are seeking assistance has now topped the 1 million mark, the U.N. refugee agency said Wednesday, warning that Syria is heading towards a “full-scale disaster.”

TPM SLIDESHOW: Devastation In Syria
The announcement came as government troops and rebels fought street battles in Syria’s strategic northern city of Raqqa, and regime forces dispatched reinforcements in an attempt to push out opposition gunmen who now control most of the city, activists said.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, said in a statement released in Geneva that the 1 million figure is based on reports from his agency’s field offices in countries neighboring Syria that have provided safe haven for refugees escaping the civil war.

“With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiraling towards full-scale disaster,” Guterres said.

Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 with protests against President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian rule. When the government cracked down on demonstrators, the opposition took up arms and the conflict turned into a full-blown civil war. The United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed.

The relentless violence also has devastated many cities and forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to seek refuge abroad.

In Lebanon, 19-year-old Bushra, a mother of two, became the millionth Syrian refugee registered in the region since the conflict began. Since fleeing the fighting in central city of Homs a few weeks ago, Bushra has lived in the Lebanon’s restive city of Tripoli, squeezed into a room with 20 other people.

“Our life conditions are very bad, it is very expensive here (in Lebanon) and we cannot find any work,” Bushra, who asked to be identified with her first name for fear of government reprisals, told reporters at a UNHCR registration center in Tripoli in northern Lebanon.

The U.N. refugee agency has registered more than 300,000 Syrians in Lebanon, although its representatives say many more Syrians are living in the country in dire need of basic aid.

“It’s a number, a million, but it’s a number that represents a million individuals,” said Ninette Kelley, the UNHCR’s representative in Lebanon. “A million individual lives, who have been uprooted is a great sense of tragedy and loss that accompanies the flight from violence.”

Guterres said the number of refugees has swelled dramatically this year, with most Syrians pouring into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. More than 400,000 people have become refugees since Jan. 1, and often arrive in neighboring countries “traumatized, without possessions and having lost members of their families,” he said.

Around half are children; the majority under age 11.

“We are doing everything we can to help, but the international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched,” he said. “This tragedy has to be stopped.”

The U.N. estimated in December that 1.1 million Syrian refugees would arrive in neighboring countries by the end of June this year. At the time, the agency’s regional response plan was only 25 percent funded, and it is now in the process of adjusting that in light of the new figures, Guterres said.

In Beirut, Panos Moumtzis, the UNHCR regional coordinator for Syrian refugees, said that 7,000 Syrians have been crossing into neighboring countries every day since the fighting escalated in December.

This has stretched the resources of states like Lebanon and Jordan, and has made the refugee crisis one of the fastest deteriorating situations in decades, he said.

“When you stand at the border crossing, you see this human river flowing in, day and night,” Moumtzis told The Associated Press after inspecting UNHCR’s registration centers at border crossings in Lebanon.

He said the U.N. refugee agency badly needs money to help host countries cope and manage the refugee population, adding that of the $1 billion for aiding Syrian refugees in neighboring countries that was pledged at the Kuwait donor conference in January, only $200 million has come through.

“We are getting desperate,” Moumtzis said, adding that the agency is able to provide Syrians fleeing violence with a bare minimum: a tent, a blanket, a sleeping mat, 2,000 calories a day and 20 liters of water a day.

“We are going hand to mouth, constantly trying to catch up in a crisis that is complex and dangerous because it has a potential to turn into a regional conflict,” Moumtzis said.

In Cairo, Arab foreign ministers held a meeting, ahead of a scheduled Arab summit later this month, during which the foreign minister of Lebanon and Qatar’s prime minister argued over Syria’s crisis.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour called for ending Syria’s suspension from the Arab League saying such a move “is a necessity for a political solution.” He warned that if Arabs don’t work to stop Syria’s civil war and al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremists who are playing a bigger role in the conflict the “fire will spread to our nations.”

The 22-member Arab League suspended Syria’s membership in 2011 after Damascus did not abide by an Arab peace plan to end the conflict.

Qatar’s Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim replied that the Arab decisions aimed to resolve the crisis peacefully and not “to create a sea of blood.”

Qatar has been one of Assad’s harshest critics, while Lebanon’s Cabinet is dominated by the militant Hezbollah group that backs the Syrian government.

Also Wednesday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees said Syrian warplanes bombarded rebel-held areas in Raqqa as the fighting intensified around the Military Intelligence headquarters in the city.

Rebels were able to capture most of the city on Monday, tearing down a giant statue of Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez Assad, as well as giant posters of the leader in the city. The rebels are now battling pockets of government troops in Raqqa, struggling to crush the remaining government holdouts in the city of 500,000 people on the Euphrates River, activists said.

Syria’s pro-government daily Al-Watan said “terrorists” — a term the regime uses for rebels — have occupied several government buildings in the city. It also confirmed activist reports that that the rebels captured Raqqa’s governor, Hassan Jalali, and the head of the ruling Baath party’s branch, Salman al-Salman.

Huge military reinforcements have reached the outskirts of Raqqa and “are preparing to enter the city to liberate it and restore security and stability,” the newspaper reported.

The Observatory said army reinforcements coming from the nearby town of Tabqa, also known as Thawra, clashed with rebels on the way to Raqqa. It said rebels are holding 300 regime troops and pro-government militiamen that were captured in the recent fighting.

It also reported that regime forces are attacking several neighborhoods in the central city of Homs, which the rebels have been holding for more than a year.

Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi told state-run Syrian TV that said rebels attacked Raqqa after the army gave them severe blows in the northern city of Aleppo and Damascus.

“Their presence in some areas of Raqqa is a matter of time,” he said.

____

Rising reported from Berlin. Associated Press writers Robert H. Reid in Berlin, Albert Aji in Damascus and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this story.

[seemslikeadream]

Alleged chemical attack kills 25 in northern Syria


By Oliver Holmes and Erika Solomon
BEIRUT | Tue Mar 19, 2013 11:00am EDT
(Reuters) - Syria's government and rebels accused each other of launching a deadly chemical attack near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday in what would, if confirmed, be the first use of such weapons in the two-year-old conflict.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who has resisted overt military intervention in Syria, has warned Assad in the past that any use of chemical weapons would be a "red line". There has however been no suggestion of rebels possessing such arms.

Syria's information minister said rebels had fired a rocket carrying chemical agents that killed 16 people and wounded 86. State television said later the death toll had risen to 25.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict using a network of contacts in Syria, put the number of dead at 26, including 16 soldiers.

The reported death toll is far below the mass slaughter inflicted on the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja where an estimated 5,000 people died in a chemical attack ordered by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein 25 years ago.

There was no immediate confirmation from Western governments or international organizations of a chemical attack, but Russia, an ally of Damascus, accused rebels of carrying out such a strike.

"We are very seriously concerned by the fact that weapons of mass destruction are falling into the hands of the rebels, which further worsens the situation in Syria and elevates the confrontation in the country to a new level," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Britain said its calculations would change if a chemical attack had taken place. "The UK is clear that the use or proliferation of chemical weapons would demand a serious response from the international community and force us to revisit our approach so far," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

A Reuters photographer said victims he had visited in Aleppo hospitals were suffering breathing problems and that people had said they could smell chlorine after the attack.

"I saw mostly women and children," said the photographer, who cannot be named for his own safety. He quoted victims at the University of Aleppo hospital and the al-Rajaa hospital as saying people were dying in the streets and in their houses.

President Bashar al-Assad, battling an uprising against his rule, is widely believed to have a chemical arsenal.

Syrian officials have neither confirmed nor denied this, but have said that if it existed it would be used to defend against foreign aggression, not against Syrians. There have been no previous reports of chemical weapons in the hands of insurgents.

"CONVULSIONS, THEN DEATH"

Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi said rebels fired "a rocket containing poison gases" at the town of Khan al-Assal, southwest of Aleppo, from the city's southeastern district of Nairab, part of which is rebel-held.

"The substance in the rocket causes unconsciousness, then convulsions, then death," the minister said.

But a senior rebel commander, Qassim Saadeddine, who is also a spokesman for the Higher Military Council in Aleppo, denied this, blaming Assad's forces for the alleged chemical strike.

"We were hearing reports from early this morning about a regime attack on Khan al-Assal, and we believe they fired a Scud with chemical agents," he told Reuters by telephone from Aleppo.

Washington has expressed concern about chemical weapons falling into the hands of militant groups - either hardline Islamist rebels fighting to topple Assad or his regional allies.

Israel has threatened military action if such arms were sent to the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group.

Zoabi said Turkey and Qatar, which have supported rebels, bore "legal, moral and political responsibility" for the strike - a charge dismissed by a Turkish official as baseless.

In a televised news conference, Zoabi said Syria's military would never use internationally banned weapons.

"Syria's army leadership has stressed this before and we say it again, if we had chemical weapons we would never use them due to moral, humanitarian and political reasons," he said.

Syrian state TV aired footage of what it said were casualties of the attack arriving at one hospital in Aleppo.

Men, women and children were rushed inside on stretchers as doctors inserted medical drips into their arms and oxygen tubes into their mouths. None had visible wounds to their bodies, but some interviewed said they had trouble breathing.

An unidentified doctor interviewed on the channel said the attack was either "phosphorus or poison" but did not elaborate.

"The Free Syrian Army hit us with a rocket, we smelled something and then everyone got dizzy and fell down. People were falling to the ground, " said a sobbing woman in a flowered veil, lying on a stretcher with a drip in her arm.

A young girl on a stretcher wept as she said: "My chest closed up. I couldn't talk. I couldn't breathe ... We saw people falling dead to the floor. My father fell, he fell and now we don't know where he is. God curse them, I hope they die."

A man in a green surgical mask, who said he had been helping to evacuate the casualties, said: "It was like a powder, and anyone who breathed it in fell to the ground."

"PINK SMOKE"

Two weeks ago rebel fighters seized a police academy in Khan al-Assal, about eight km (five miles) southwest of Aleppo, which was being used as an artillery base by Assad's troops.

But the Syrian Observatory said Assad's forces had since retaken at least part of the town.

A rebel fighter in Khan al-Assal said he had seen pink smoke rising after a powerful blast shook the area.

Ahmed al-Ahmed, from the Ansar brigade in a rebel-controlled military base near Khan al-Assal, told Reuters that a missile had hit the town at around 8 a.m. (02.00 a.m. EDT).

"We were about two kilometers from the blast. It was incredibly loud and so powerful that everything in the room started falling over. When I finally got up to look at the explosion, I saw smoke with a pinkish-purple color rising up.

"I didn't smell anything, but I did not leave the building I was in," said Ahmed, speaking via Skype.

"The missile, maybe a Scud, hit a regime area, praise God, and I'm sure that it was an accident. My brigade certainly does not have that (chemical) capability and we've been talking to many units in the area, they all deny it."

Ahmed said the explosion was quickly followed by an air strike. A fighter jet circled a police school held by the rebels on the outskirts of Khan al-Assal and bombed the area, he said.

His account could not be independently verified.

Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said in Vienna he had no independent information about any use of such arms in Syria.

The World Health Organization, a U.N. agency, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, also said they had not been able to confirm the reports.

Blair: Iraq uprising would have been 'worse than Syria'

19 March 2013 Last updated at 06:38 ET Help
Former UK PM Tony Blair has told the BBC he has no regrets over Iraq on the 10th anniversary of the country's invasion - and said the situation otherwise would have been "a lot worse than Syria".

The UK lost 179 servicemen and women, while at least 100,000 Iraqis died in the invasion and ensuing violence.

However, speaking about former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Mr Blair said, "How can you regret removing a monster who created enormous carnage?"

He told Norman Smith, "If you examine what's happening in Syria - just reflect on what Bashar al-Assad, who is a 20th as bad as Saddam, is doing to his people today and the number of lives already lost."

[cptmarginal]

Assad and his allies have absolutely nothing to gain from launching such a limited chemical weapons attack. The clearly stated US position that chemical weapons were the red line that must not be crossed constitutes an obvious reason not to launch such an attack, in whatever form. If Assad's people were going to flagrantly cross that line, wouldn't they do it in a bigger way, or for a good reason? Instead it's a small attack of indeterminate origin, with an apparently negligible strategic effect in that area. What would be the point of doing this? It's like giving up.

I'm looking at the numerous reports that the attack was perpetrated on a Syrian government controlled area, whether or not that's wholly true. In the meantime, the US media (and, by implication, the US government) are immediately exploiting this incident to raise the stakes. Nothing odd about that!

[DrEvil]

Well, if some third party wanted to draw in the US, this sure would be a good way to do it.

[justdrew]

http://wildhunt.org/2013/03/the-fall-of-a-syrian-pagan.html

[seemslikeadream]

CIA Expands Role in Syria Fight
Agency Feeds Intelligence to Rebel Fighters, in Move That Deepens U.S. Involvement in Conflict

By ADAM ENTOUS, SIOBHAN GORMAN and NOUR MALAS

The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its role in the campaign against the Syrian regime by feeding intelligence to select rebel fighters to use against government forces, current and former U.S. officials said.

The move is part of a U.S. effort to stem the rise of Islamist extremists in Syria by aiding secular forces, U.S. officials said, amid fears that the fall of President Bashar al-Assad would enable al Qaeda to flourish in Syria.

Demonstrators chant and wave opposition flags during a protest of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad Friday.

The expanded CIA role bolsters an effort by Western intelligence agencies to support the Syrian opposition with training in areas including weapons use, urban combat and countering spying by the regime.

The move comes as the al Nusra Front, the main al Qaeda-linked group operating in Syria, is deepening its ties to the terrorist organization's central leadership in Pakistan, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials.

The provision of actionable intelligence to small rebel units which have been vetted by the CIA represents an increase in U.S. involvement in the two-year-old conflict, the officials said. The CIA would neither confirm nor deny any role in providing training or intelligence to the Syrian rebels.

The new aid to rebels doesn't change the U.S. decision to not take direct military action. President Barack Obama last year rejected a CIA-backed proposal to provide arms to secular units fighting Mr. Assad, and on Friday he reiterated his argument that doing so could worsen the bloodshed.

He also warned that Mr. Assad's fall could empower extremists. "I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism because extremists thrive in chaos, they thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums," Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Amman, Jordan.

The new CIA effort reflects a change in the administration's approach that aims to strengthen secular rebel fighters in hope of influencing which groups dominate in post-Assad Syria, U.S., European and Arab officials said.

The CIA has sent officers to Turkey to help vet rebels that receive arms shipments from Gulf allies, but administration officials say the results have been mixed, citing concerns about weapons going to Islamists. In Iraq, the CIA has been directed by the White House to work with elite counterterrorism units to help the Iraqis counter the flow of al Qaeda-linked fighters across the border with Syria.

The West favors fighters aligned with the Free Syrian Army, which supports the Syrian Opposition Coalition political group.

Syrian opposition commanders said the CIA has been working with British, French and Jordanian intelligence services to train rebels on the use of various kinds of weapons. A senior Western official said the intelligence agencies are providing the rebels with urban combat training as well as teaching them how to properly use antitank weapons against Syrian bunkers.

The agencies are also teaching counterintelligence tactics to help prevent pro-Assad agents from infiltrating the opposition, the official said.

Among other U.S. activities on the margins of the conflict, the Pentagon is helping train Jordanian forces to counter the threat posed by Syria's chemical weapons, but isn't working directly with rebels, defense officials say.

The extent of the CIA effort to provide intelligence to Syrian rebels remains cloaked in secrecy. The U.S. has an array of intelligence capabilities in the region, mainly on the periphery of the conflict.

The U.S. uses satellites and other surveillance systems to collect intelligence on Syrian troop and aircraft movements as well as weapons depots. Officials say powerful radar arrays in Turkey are likewise used to track Syrian ballistic missiles and can pinpoint launch sites.

The U.S. also relies on Israeli and Jordanian spy agencies, which have extensive spy networks inside Syria, U.S. and European officials said.

The current level of intelligence sharing is limited in scope because the CIA doesn't know whether it can fully trust fighters with the most sensitive types of information, several U.S. and European officials said. The CIA, for example, isn't sharing information on where U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies believe the Syrian government keeps its chemical weapons, officials said.

Rebel leaders and some U.S. lawmakers say more robust U.S. support is needed to turn the tide in the civil war. These officials say the CIA's current role comes as too little, too late to make a decisive difference in the war.

In a letter to Mr. Obama this week, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, joined Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona in calling for the president to take "more active steps to stop the killing in Syria and force Bashar al-Assad to give up power."

Sens. Levin and McCain urged the White House to consider using precision airstrikes to take out Mr. Assad's air force and Scud missile batteries, among other military options.

The CIA got a green light from the White House last year to look for ways to provide limited support to the rebels, current and former officials said. But officials say the ramp-up has been slow, in part because of the difficulty of identifying reliable partners among the Syrian opposition to work with the U.S.

A senior U.S. official said the decision to provide actionable intelligence to vetted rebel units "shows that we're working on the humanitarian level and the diplomatic level and on the intelligence level."

"This would be a more direct level of engagement on the intelligence front," the official added.

Officials said one of the advantages of providing actionable intelligence to rebel units is that such information is generally of operational use for a limited period because would-be targets move around the battlefield.

Arms, in contrast, can be used for years and passed between groups, reducing U.S. control over where they end up.

The shift in part reflects growing Israeli concerns about the limited ability of the U.S. to shape the outcome in Syria. In recent months, Israeli officials have privately pressed their European and American counterparts to strengthen secular forces in Syria because of concerns that the al Nusra Front will become more entrenched the longer the civil war drags on, according to Israeli and European officials.

Israeli officials are concerned that the U.S. reluctance to more directly intervene will limit Washington's leverage in a post-Assad Syria. "Israel would welcome America's influence in shaping the post-Assad Syria" said a senior Israeli official involved in deliberations on the neighboring Arab country.

U.S. and European officials said they fear that the al Nusra Front, which has seized control of swaths of northern Syria, could dominate the country once Mr. Assad falls.

U.S. counterterrorism officials said they have seen a growth in communications among operatives from al Nusra Front, al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda's central leadership in Pakistan. Officials also report growing numbers of al Qaeda fighters traveling from Pakistan to Syria to join the fight with al Nusra.

The ties to al Qaeda's central operations have become so significant that U.S. counterterrorism officials are debating whether al Nusra should now be considered its own al Qaeda affiliate instead of an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq, as it has generally been viewed within the U.S. government, according to a person familiar with the debate.

Al Nusra is "an organization that resembles an army more than a quaint little terrorist group," said Seth Jones, an al Qaeda specialist at the Rand Corp. think tank in Washington. "As this war drags on against Assad and as long as they are able to build up their capabilities, it's going to make it all the more harder to target them once the regime falls."

[seemslikeadream]

WPost Pushes for Syrian War
April 3, 2013

The neoconservative Washington Post wants people to forget about how badly it and other Iraq War boosters got pretty much everything wrong about that disaster. Amnesia is especially important now as the Post and the neocons begin a new push for U.S. military intervention in Syria, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

By Paul R. Pillar

Just when it seemed we could move beyond the anniversary-related armchair refighting of the Iraq War, we get from Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post editorial staff another mis-aimed salvo from a proponent of that war. Diehl’s more immediate subject is the current Syrian civil war, into which a U.S.-armed intervention has been a favorite cause of the Post‘s editorial page for many months.

Diehl’s declared objectives in his signed column are to absolve himself and other Iraq War proponents from any credibility gap when they advocate U.S. immersion in yet another Middle Eastern war, and to warn of how any Iraq War syndrome might unwisely dissuade the United States from conducting worthwhile military interventions — such as in Syria. If the Iraq War is to be used to make such a case on an issue of current importance, then we had better wallow a little longer in issues involving the old war.

Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post.

Diehl begins his comparison to Iraq with the thundering understatement that the situation there “hasn’t turned out, so far, as we war supporters hoped.” (“So far”? That has to be one of the choicest examples of hope springing eternal.) He then addresses his topic from a humanitarian angle, giving us some figures to try to make a case that “the larger humanitarian price of Syria has been far greater” than that of war in Iraq.

His methodology of comparing current rates of casualties in Syria with averages for the entire period of the U.S. presence in Iraq is deeply flawed by the fact that the period of intense, high-casualty civil warfare in Iraq, which was comparable to what we have seen in Syria over the past couple of years, was only one portion of the longer period of U.S. occupation. A more fundamental flaw is that he gives us no reason to believe that adding more flames to an existing fire through military intervention would lead the humanitarian problem in Syria to lessen rather than worsen. Nor does he make any moral, as well as policy, distinction made between a war that one starts oneself and one that is already under way.

The next topic in the column is al-Qaeda, with Diehl repeating the flypaper theory of counterterrorism by saying that “in Iraq, the United States faced down al-Qaeda and eventually dealt it a decisive defeat.” The fallacy with this theory is that it assumes there is a fixed number of terrorists, with the task simply being one of attracting them to where we can kill them. In fact, by its invasion and occupation of Iraq, the United States generated far more terrorists, including those of the al-Qaeda ilk, than it killed.

There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq until after the U.S. invasion and the ensuing civil war created it. Moreover, the entire war was a propaganda bonanza for Osama bin Laden, lending credibility in many eyes to his accusations about the United States being out to kill Muslims, occupy their lands, and plunder their resources. The war unquestionably gave a major boost to jihadist terrorism.

Diehl asserts that “the Iraq war prompted low-level meddling by Iran, Syria and other neighbors but otherwise left the surrounding region unscathed, thanks to the U.S. presence.” Actually, the “low-level meddling” by Iran amid the U.S.-triggered disorder brought Iran the payoff of now being the dominant foreign influence in Iraq. And far from leaving the surrounding region unscathed, the U.S.-unleashed turmoil in Iraq stimulated a wider regional sectarian conflict, with the civil war in Syria being itself the bloodiest current manifestation of that conflict.

Of course, advocates of entering the Syrian war have to deal with public resistance to anything like the long and costly Iraqi expedition. So Diehl assures us that he is only talking about “limited use of U.S. airpower and collaboration with forces on the ground,” which, he says, “could have quickly put an end to the Assad regime 18 months ago, preventing 60,000 deaths and rise of al-Qaeda.”

He offers no explanation of how, given all the ingredients (especially the sectarian hatred) of the current civil war, dispatching the Assad regime would have had anything like the salutary effects he postulates, or would have those effects if the regime collapsed this week. What, for example, happens to the Alawites if the regime goes, and what happens to all the desire for vengeance on the Sunni side when that happens?

Note especially the remarkable parallel (which Diehl himself does not highlight) between what is being promised (or hoped for) here and what was promised and hoped for with the invasion of Iraq: that toppling the incumbent regime would be quick and cheap and could be done without any messy, resource-devouring turmoil to follow. The column has other remarkable echoes of the selling of the Iraq War. There is even a line about how if we don’t intervene in Syria, al-Qaeda will gain control over chemical and biological weapons.

Diehl says, “The problem here is not that advocates of the Iraq invasion have failed to learn its lessons.” If his column is any indication, that is very much a problem.

[smiths]

i wonder if he has spent any time at this site?

http://syriavideo.net/

or maybe he is a sociopath like so many of the other American war cheerleaders

[smiths]

http://www.lobelog.com/washington-posts ... aken-down/

Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl Taken Down

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by Jim Lobe

Jackson Diehl, the deputy editorial page editor at the Washington Post who also writes a weekly foreign affairs column, generally stands at the intersection of neo-conservatism and liberal interventionism and, in my view, holds a lot of the responsibility for the paper’s neo-conservative editorial drift over the past decade. Of course, it was neo-conservatives, combined with aggressive nationalists like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Christian Zionists (who tend to defer to neo-cons on foreign policy), who led the march to war in Iraq. But too many liberal interventionists also championed the war and helped provide the ideological cover for Democratic members of Congress who should have known better, to rally behind it. In any case, Diehl, in many ways a classic liberal in his strong support for civil and political rights and general disdain or disregard for economic and social rights (see any of his prolific and often obsessive editorials and columns on Latin America, especially on Hugo Chavez or other populist leaders in the region), has moved the Post’s editorial line ever closer to that of the Wall Street Journal, which, as many have observed, has a habit of ignoring its own generally solid news reporting in favor of its hard-line neo-conservative foreign policy agenda.

Since Syria’s civil war began in earnest nearly two years ago, Diehl has been especially outspoken in favor of US intervention (albeit, of course, not with “boots on the ground.”). On Monday, he used the tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion to add yet another outraged column about the failure of the Obama administration to do more to support the rebels and thus — presto! — end the conflict. The column headline (in the print edition) told the story: “Lessons from Iraq …and why that war shouldn’t stop us from aiding Syria.” Its conclusion:

“The problem here is not that advocates of the Iraq invasion have failed to learn its lessons. It is that opponents of that war, starting with Obama, have learned the wrong ones.”

The column bears close reading, and you can find what lessons Diehl, who admitted outright that he had supported the war and that it “hasn’t turned out, so far, as we war supporters hoped” [emphasis added], extracted from that debacle and how they purportedly do or don’t apply to Syria. I found the column extremely aggravating. Among its more startling assertions: “In Iraq, the United States faced down al Qaeda and eventually dealt it a decisive defeat” — a particularly ironic notion, not only because al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq when US troops arrived there, but also because of its recent resurgence in apparently close collaboration with the Nusra Front in Syria.

Fortunately, however, I don’t have to respond in detail. Two former senior CIA intelligence analysts apparently also felt sufficiently provoked by Diehl’s misreading of history to do so themselves. Paul Pillar, who served as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, devoted a characteristically devastating point-by-point critique of Diehl’s analysis appropriately entitled “Unlearned Lessons and the Syrian Civil War.” It’s well worth a read.

Then Nada Bako, a former CIA analyst who served on the team charged with analyzing the purported relationship between Iraq, al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, and was the chief targeting officer following Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia until his targeted killing in a US bombing run in 2006, also decided enough was enough. Her article, ”Humility Now! The Miseducation of Jackson Diehl,” was published on the Foreign Policy website. I especially appreciated her conclusion, given the enduring fantasies held by neo-cons and liberals hawks like Diehl about Washington’s — and especially its military’s — ability to positively transform extremely complex societies with internal dynamics that we know so little about it:

The argument that unleashing the U.S. military industrial complex can bring about desired results during a conflict should have been deflated, beaten, and buried by now. The winner of the Iraq War was humility, and it is a prerequisite for a wiser foreign policy. That’s the only lesson that matters.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Diehl and ideologues like him are particularly open to that lesson.