The Al Arabiya news channel reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guard has deployed 15,000 armed troops to Syria recently in order to help Syrian President Bashar Assad in his fight against opposition forces. (Roi Kais)
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Success in life is a matter not so much of talent and opportunity as of concentration and perseverance.
CNN Breaking: Two administration officials confirm that the Pentagon and US Central Command are conducting a military review for Syria. "What could be possible if the President should ask for ideas." "No decisions have been made."
Gingrich on CNN. Wolf Blitzer asks him whether he would supply arms to the opposition and Gingrich replies "first of all, as President, I wouldn't tell you. I would seek to have genuinely covert operations" and "support our allies in the region." He says Assad needs to go because he's an ally of Iran.
I never thought I would see Sheila Jackson Lee beating a war drum, but that's what she's doing on the House floor at the moment, "to defend the needs of people who cannot help themselves." "The United Nations needs to fix itself." "Possibly US troops to keep the peace as was done on the continent of Africa."
The thing with overthrowing Assad is really easy. Just put 4-5 strong Turkey divisions close to the borders, threat Syria with attack and watch the regime crumble down. While Syrian army has huge superiority to FSA, they couldnt afford to put the same forces to the borders with Turkey. Syrian army is already overextended and cant be everywhere, not mention probable defections in this case. But the real thing is "what will be after Assad". Nobody is interested in another Lebanon or Iraq, which is just the case what will happen after regime fall.
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"To make money, it helps to understand how individuals and others have been brainwashed (ie the notions that colour your perception of reality - sorry for the negative connotation) and to pay attention to the flow of money" Wampeter
"It's worth mentioning also what is happening now in Wall Street and the way the demonstrations are been suppressed by policemen, police dogs and beatings."
Not possible (and besides, this is coming from an official US state enemy, so it must be false). We're "The Land of the Free" baby, which includes our Goebbels media refusing to cover the worst part of these crackdowns (like when the cops cleared out Occupy LA and attained from the media their assurance that they would not cover it - lots of beatings and cop abuse throughout the night apparently followed). Let's not even get into what happens at G20 meetings and similar, or our airports. I don't mean to thread hijack too much, but this is a very legitimate point that needs to be appreciated. America needs to take a good hard look in the mirror.
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"Shut up. You don't get a lawyer!" -Senator Lindsey Grahamnesty (and the United States government) on the civil liberties of indefinitely detained American citizens
Although the U.S. focus remains on exerting diplomatic and economic pressure on Syria, the Pentagon and the U.S. Central Command have begun a preliminary internal review of U.S. military capabilities, CNN has learned.
The options are being prepared in the event President Barack Obama were to call for them. Two senior administration officials who spoke about the review to CNN emphasized that U.S. policy for now remains the use of non-military options.
The focus on diplomatic options was underscored by the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in an interview with CNN on Tuesday.
"Before we start talking about military options, we very much want to ensure that we have exhausted all the political, economic and diplomatic means at our disposal," Ambassador Susan Rice said on CNN's “Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
The president has also said that the U.S. is working on non-military options first.
"I think it is very important for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention, and I think that's possible," Obama said in an interview with NBC News that aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday.
But the military is beginning to look at what can be done. One of the senior U.S. officials called the effort a “scoping exercise” to see what capabilities are available given other U.S. military commitments in the region. Both officials pointed out that this type of planning exercise is typical for the Pentagon, which would not want to be in the position of not having options for the president, if and when they are asked for.
It would be Gen. James Mattis, head of U.S. Central Command, who would provide details on what U.S. military assets are available, what missions they could perform if asked, and what risks U.S. forces might face.
“The Pentagon is closely monitoring developments in Syria. It wouldn’t be doing its job if it didn’t put some ideas on the table,” one of the senior U.S. officials told CNN. “But absolutely no decisions have been made on military support for Syria.”
The two officials were not willing to be identified because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Typically those types of options are held by the Pentagon as very preliminary plans and not even forwarded to the White House unless asked for. If asked, plans are then fleshed out with specific units to support them.
In this type of analysis being done, the military would typically look at all options ranging from humanitarian relief, to support for opposition groups, as well as outright military strikes, although that is an unlikely option, both officials said.
“This remains a campaign to apply economic and diplomatic pressure,” the first official said.
The military’s work to analyze potential military options for Syria has been quietly going on for several weeks, two administration officials confirm to CNN. The bulk of the analysis is being done by staff of General Mattis, who would be the senior commander if the President were to order any action.
Mattis’ analysis is being shared with General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who would then present options to the White House, if it came to that.
“We don’t want to be in the position of suddenly dusting off some five year old plan,” one official said. The official emphasized the work is extremely preliminary but said the military would look at a full range of contingencies.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services committee, told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. should consider "all options including arming the opposition."
But U.S. officials said that adding weapons into the volatile and violent situation is not a viable option.
"We never take anything off the table. The president does (or) doesn't. However, as the president himself made absolutely clear and as the secretary has continued to say, we don't think more arms into Syria is the answer," said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
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Success in life is a matter not so much of talent and opportunity as of concentration and perseverance.
Chuckmak: Russia has what is essentially standing armies in the Caucasus region at all times. They are augmented with Spetsnaz when necessary.
Another thing is that the word Spetsnaz in the Russian language and military terminology can refer to any form of special unit, either a regular army special force section, specialized marine or para units, Interior Ministry troops, some police units, or the the most elite GRU units.
I've not found any corroboration yet.
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"Yep - and that ****er didn't want to light either. I had to soak it in gasoline for a full day before that rat bastard thing would combust." - Karl Denninger ""We could not be more ill served if we had some South American tribal witch doctor shaking monkey bones at us. " - Infidel
Chuckmak
Posts: 314
Incept: 2011-01-05
City of Bridges, PA
Oh, okay. That makes sense. And I learned something new with your post. Anyway, something tells me though that Russia and China aren't going to just sit idle this time while the US and NATO put their troops in if and when they actually do.
Ambassador Ford says satellite images proof of Syria government violence
The U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, on Friday said he posted satellite imagery on Facebook to show proof of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces attacking residential neighborhoods.
Ford, speaking to NBC News from Paris days after the Feb. 6 closing of the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, said shelling by Syrian forces was “just horrific and we want that government violence to stop.”
Ford called Syrian government claims that terrorists are shelling Homs “ridiculous.” (The city sometimes is referred to as Hims in English.)
The commercial satellite image on Facebook, titled "Security Operations Escalate in Hims," is dated Feb. 6 and has labels pointing out burning buildings, smoke, impact craters, military vehicles and armored vehicles. The western Syrian city of Homs, where opposition to Assad is strong, has endured a week of bombardments that have killed dozens of civilians and drawn condemnation from world leaders LINK--> http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/201....
Photoblog: Satellite spots tanks near university housing complex in Homs
"I hear the devastating stories about newborns in Homs dying in hospitals where electricity has been cut and when we see disturbing photos offering proof that the regime is using mortars and artillery against residential neighborhoods, all of us become even more concerned about the tragic outcome for Syrian civilians," Ambassador Robert Ford wrote in a note accompanying the satellite image on Facebook.
He also appeared to take a veiled dig at Russia, which on Saturday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria. Diplomats said one Russian objection was a belief that the resolution disproportionately blamed Syria's government for the violence.
"It is odd to me that anyone would try to equate the actions of the Syrian army and armed opposition groups since the Syrian government consistently initiates the attacks on civilian areas, and it is using its heaviest weapons," Ford wrote.
He also called Feb. 6 "the most emotionally taxing day of my career as a Foreign Service Officer."
"I left Damascus with immense sadness and regret -- I wish our departure had not been necessary, but our Embassy, along with several other diplomatic missions in the area, was not sufficiently protected, given the new security concerns in the capital," he wrote. More @ link Credits--> http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/201....
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“Cognitive Co-Dependency” is when a normal rational person, internalizes irrational illogical presentations, and somehow reconciles them to fit their scripted indoctrination of logical analysis.
Quote:
Samuel L. Clemens:There is NO Native Criminal Class; EXCEPT for CONgress
Almost a week after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution intended to stop the killing, Saudi Arabia has drafted a similarly worded document -- but one that lacks the same punch.
The Saudi draft resolution will be submitted to the U.N. General Assembly, where vetoes are not allowed, but resolutions are not legally binding.
Arab ministers met in Cairo on Sunday to discuss efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria after Russia and China vetoed a Western-backed Arab League peace plan at the U.N. Security Council.
A Syrian opposition official said Gulf ministers would discuss a proposal to recognize the opposition Syrian National Council, a move that would further isolate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. League officials said such an idea was not formally on the agenda but could be raised during talks.
The Russian and Chinese veto at the Security Council drew criticism from Arab states which had sought U.N. backing for an initiative that called on Assad to step aside and hand powers to a deputy as part of a political transition to democracy.
The Arab drive to isolate Syria has been led by Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Gulf Arab ministers began talks in Cairo on Sunday ahead of broader Arab ministerial meetings later in the day.
Gulf states announced last week that they were recalling their ambassadors from Syria and expelling Syria's envoys. Libya and Tunisia, both countries where popular revolts toppled authoritarian rulers last year, have taken similar steps.
"There are Gulf states that will propose recognizing the Syrian National Council as the representative of the Syrian people during the meeting of ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council (on Sunday) in Cairo," said Abdel Baset Seda, a member of the SBC's executive committee, told Reuters in Cairo.
Abdel Baset, who has been meeting Arab ministers and officials, said ministers were also expected to discuss proposals for a "Friends of Syria" contact group of Arab, Western and other countries to press for action over Syria.
The plan was proposed by France and the United States after Russia and China blocked the Security Council resolution.
Diplomats at the United Nations said Saudi Arabia had circulated a new draft resolution backing the Arab plan for the General Assembly rather than the Security Council to consider. Assembly resolutions are non-binding but cannot be vetoed.
However, Riyadh denied on Sunday reports that it had formally presented the resolution to the assembly.
OBSERVER MISSION
Arab ministers are due to discuss the fate of a troubled Arab observer mission sent to Syria in December, but suspended last month as violence surged. They are also expected to review the idea of appointing a U.N.-Arab League envoy on Syria.
Criticized by Syria's opposition for failing to halt violence, the Arab observer mission suffered from internal dissent, as well as logistics and training problems.
The Sudanese general heading the team, Mohammed al-Dabi, has submitted his resignation for Arab ministers to consider, a Sudanese source said. The mission he headed had 165 observers until Gulf states, Morocco and Jordan withdrew their members.
League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby has proposed a joint mission with the United Nations and has asked Arab ministers to discuss the idea, a top League official said last week.
The proposal has met a lukewarm response at the United Nations, although the United States and Germany said they were studying it.
The monitors from the initial mission to Syria were told last week they could leave the country for a break and their return would depend on what Arab ministers decided.
“Cognitive Co-Dependency” is when a normal rational person, internalizes irrational illogical presentations, and somehow reconciles them to fit their scripted indoctrination of logical analysis.
Quote:
Samuel L. Clemens:There is NO Native Criminal Class; EXCEPT for CONgress
Our War Party has been temporarily diverted from its clamor for war on Iran by the insurrection against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Estimates of the dead since the Syrian uprising began a year ago approach 6,000. And responsibility for the carnage is being laid at the feet of the president who succeeded his dictator-father Hafez al-Assad, who ruled from 1971 until his death in 2000.
Unlike Egypt's Hosni Mubarak who buckled, broke and departed after three weeks of protests, Bashar is not going quietly.
And, predictably, with the death toll rising, those champions of world democratic revolution — John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham — have begun beating the drums for U.S. aid to a "Free Syrian Army."
Last week, the three senators jointly declared:
"In Libya, the threat of imminent atrocities in Benghazi mobilized the world to act. Such atrocities are now a reality in Homs and other cities all across Syria. ... We must consider ... providing opposition groups inside Syria, both political and military, with better means to ... defend themselves, and to fight back against Assad's forces."
"The end of Assad's rule would ... be a moral and humanitarian victory for the Syrian people" and "a strategic defeat for the Iranian regime."
Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, Neocon Central, is also pushing the Iranian angle.
"Syria is the soft underbelly of Iran, Tehran's most important ally, conduit for arms and cash to terrorists. ... A unique confluence of American moral purpose and America's strategic interest argue for intervention in Syria. ... It's time to start arming the Free Syrian Army."
What are the arguments against U.S. intervention?
First, there is no vital U.S. interest in who rules Syria. If we could live with Hafez al-Assad for decades — Bush 1 enlisted him as an ally in Desert Storm — and his son for a dozen years, what threat does Bashar's rule pose to the United States?
Answer: none.
Second, while McCain & Co. insist that "the bloodshed must be stopped and we should rule out no option that could help save lives," arming the rebels would cause a geometric increase in dead and wounded.
Should America start funneling arms to the rebels, Assad will realize that, like Moammar Gadhafi, he is in a fight to the death.
In 1982, his father, to crush a rebellion centered in the city of Hama, rolled up his artillery and leveled the town, killing an estimated 20,000. This is what we are risking if we start arming the rebels.
Syria is not Libya. Assad's arsenal of missiles, tanks, planes and guns is far superior. He has a 270,000-man army and thousands of security police.
And with a tiny Shia Alawite sect dominant in Syria, and the rebellion rooted in a Sunni Muslim majority, Assad and his loyalists know that if they go down, they go to the wall.
"Christians to Beirut and Alawites to the wall," was an early slogan of the resistance.
And after seeing the atrocities visited upon the Christians in Iraq when Saddam went down, and on Copts when Mubarak went down, do we want to depose another secular dictator — only to empower another regime of Islamic fundamentalists?
In Libya, the British and French led us in. Those NATO allies want no part of a Syrian civil war.
In Libya, a third of the country was rebel-held territory. With a single coastal road leading from Gadhafi's command post in Tripoli to Benghazi, NATO planes could easily interdict convoys trying to reach the rebel base.
In Syria, the rebels have no "liberated" territory.
The U.N. Security Council authorized a no-fly zone over Libya. But Russia, burned by what NATO did in Libya, stands ready to veto a no-fly zone over Syria. U.S. military aid to the rebels could bring Russian military aid to its client regime in Damascus.
U.S. intervention could also trigger a proxy war and a regional war. Assad's ally, Hezbollah, is already battling Syrian rebels in Lebanon. Sunnis in Iraq's Anbar province are shipping guns to their fellow Sunnis in Syria.
And if Assad falls, who rises? Would a triumphant Muslim Brotherhood in Damascus keep the peace on the Golan Heights, as the Assads did for 40 years?
According to U.S. sources, al-Qaida was behind the four suicide bombings that killed scores of Syrian soldiers and officials in Damascus and Aleppo. Osama bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has called on Sunnis from all neighboring countries to join the war against Assad's "pernicious, cancerous regime."
If the ouster of Assad is good for al-Qaida, can it also be good for America?
As for the Free Syrian Army to whom U.S. military aid would go, it is divided with itself, and one ranking colonel has described the Syrian National Council, with whom we have been working, as "traitors."
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya — none has turned out as was predicted when we plunged in. And other than neoconservative ideology, what makes us think intervening in Syria will?
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Success in life is a matter not so much of talent and opportunity as of concentration and perseverance.
Between the chaos and artillery fire unfolding in Homs and Damascus, the current siege against the Ba’athist State of Bashar al-Assad parallels events of nearly a century ago. In efforts to maintain its protectorate, the French government employed the use of foreign soldiers to smother those seeking to abolish the French mandated, Fédération Syrienne. While former Prime Minister Faris al-Khoury argued the case for Syrian independence before UN in 1945, French planes bombed Damascus into submission. Today, the same government – in addition to the United States and its client regimes in Libya and Tunisia – enthusiastically recognize the Syrian National Council as the legitimate leadership of Syria. Although recent polls funded by the Qatar Foundation claim 55% of Syrians support the Assad regime, the former colonial powers have made a mockery of the very democratic principles they tout.
Irrespective to the views of the Syrian people, their fate has long been decided by forces operating beyond their borders. In a speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2007 retired US Military General Wesley Clark speaks of a policy coup initiated by members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Clark cites a confidential document handed down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2001 stipulating the entire restructuring of the Middle East and North Africa. Portentously, the document allegedly revealed campaigns to systematically destabilize the governments of Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Iran.Under the familiar scenario of an authoritarian regime systematically suppressing peaceful dissent and purging large swaths of its population, the mechanisms of geopolitical stratagem have freely taken course.
Syria is but a chess piece being used as a platform by larger powers. Regime change is the unwavering interest of the US-led NATO block in collaboration with the feudal Persian Gulf Monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This is being accomplished by using Qatar-owned media outlets such as Al-Jazeera to project their version of the narrative to the world and by arming radical factions of the regions Sunni-majority population against the minority Alawi-Shia leadership of Assad. Since 2005, the Bush administration began funding Syrian opposition groups that lean toward the Muslim Brotherhood and their aspirations to build a Sunni-Islamic State. The Muslim Brotherhood has long condemned the Alawi-Shia as heretics and historically attempted multiple uprising in the 1960’s. By arming radical Sunni factions and importing Iraqi Salafi-jihadists and Libyan mercenaries, the NATOGCC plans to topple Assad and install an illegitimate exiled opposition leader such as Burhan Ghaliun (leader of the Syrian National Council) to be the face of the new regime.
The recent example of implementing foreign policy by arming Al-Qaeda fighters in Libya has proved disastrous - as the rule of law passes from the NATO-backed Libyan Transitional Council to hundreds of warring guerilla militias. At a meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Hillary Clinton, Davutoglu pledged to find ways outside the United Nations Security Council to pressure Assad. In addition to bolstering longstanding sectarian divides in Syria, the US is smuggling arms into Syria from Incirlik military base in Turkey and providing financial support for Syrian rebels. Syrian opposition forces led by defected Syrian colonel Riad al-Assad have been trained on Turkish soil since May 2011. Exclusive military and intelligence sources have reported to Israel’s DEBKAfile that British and Qatari special operations units are assisting rebel forces in Homs by providing body armor, laptops, satellite phones and managing rebel communications lines that request logistical aid, arms and mercenaries from outside suppliers.
Although the UK has vehemently denied these reports, Qatar’s leader Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani recently suggested sending troops into Syria to battle Assad’s forces. Military bases situated near Turkey’s southeastern border with northern Syria have become a crucial hub used for the delivery of outside supplies. Unmarked NATO warplanes near Iskenderum have received fighters from Libya’s Transitional National Council wielding weapons formerly belonging to Gaddafi’s arsenal. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, (former leader of the extremist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group turned NTC military governor at the directive of NATO) is leading the infiltration of Libyans into Syria in person with the help of the Turkish government. It has also been reported that Mahdi al-Harati, resigned from his functions as deputy chief of the Military Council in Tripoli to oversee the Free Syrian Army.
Syrian press has also reported that armed terrorist groups brandishing up-to-date American and Israeli weapons have roamed the countryside of Damascus committing blind acts of terror by setting off explosive devices and kidnapping civilians. As the NATOGCC continue to insist that Assad is committing acts of genocide against unarmed civilians, one must draw correlations between events reported by the Syrian state media and recent statements released by the leadership of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, praising the arrival of Iraqi fighters in Syria and advising rebels to use roadside bombs. Paradoxically, Al-Qaeda front man Ayman al-Zawahri has called on Muslims from across the Arab World to mobilize and support the Free Syrian Army after the disappointing Russian and Chinese veto at the UNSC. Few things are more absurd than the notion of Al-Qaeda terrorists – unanimously portrayed as ostensible “savages” by virtually all-Western media sources - entrust the apparatus of the United Nations and their capacity to resolve the Syrian conflict. The true purpose of Al-Qaeda and its role in influencing foreign policy has never been more evident.
Surely, Assad accusing foreign-sponsored terrorist groups of fomenting violence in Syria is simply evidence of his illegitimacy - as Western and Gulf allies assert. Even as Syrian state TV broadcasts reports showing seized weapons stockpiles and confessions by terrorists describing how they obtained arms from foreign sources, the NATOGCC continues to draft legislation in an effort pressure the Assad regime into dissolution. In the face of an outright campaign of foreign-funded sabotage, Syrian hackers have targeted Al-Jazeera’s "Syria Live Blog", which provides ongoing coverage of the unrest. The hacker-ring boldly denounced Al Jazeera for broadcasting "false and fabricated news to ignite sedition among the people of Syria to achieve the goals of Washington and Tel Aviv."
Through the fiery rhetoric of Susan Rice and her relentless condemnation of Assad - like Gaddafi before him - the United States is again attempting to invoke the Right to Protect (R2P) doctrine to take direct action against the Assad regime. In another parallel to the Libyan conflict, the UN’s astounding official death toll in Syria is taken solely from human rights groups, backed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Criminal Court and the Syrian National Council. The official numbers rely exclusively on an obscure organization known as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) - based in London, not Damascus - whose evidence is largely reliant on hearsay, pixelated YouTube videos and activist Twitter feeds. SOHR’s disputed reports present evidence that would not hold up in any court of law, much less should it be the basis of United Nations resolutions. The Observatory's director Rami Abdelrahman collaborates directly with British Foreign Minister William Hague and derives legitimacy solely from connections with corporate/foundation-funded civil society networks. Claims that Assad’s security forces indiscriminately kill scores of newborn babies are palpably a product of Britain’s foreign office.
As a further indication of the on-going media war in Syria, none is more telling than the report produced by the Arab League’s observer mission into Syria. The contents of the report were completely ignored by the corporate-media after Qatar disputed its findings, the only nation to do so in the Arab League's Ministerial Committee. The report unalterably concluded that the Syrian government was in no way lethally repressing peaceful protestors. Furthermore, the report credits armed gangs with the bombing of civilian buses, trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and the bombing of bridges and pipelines. During an interview with Arab League observer Ahmed Manaï, he praises the Sino-Russian veto at the UNSC and encouraged the Syrian leadership to implement reforms. Manaï states, “The Arab League is entirely discredited by burying the report of its own observers’ mission and its appeal to the Security Council. It missed the opportunity to participate in the settlement of the Syrian affair. All it can offer in the future will be worthless.”
While the initial observer report is predictably absent from mainstream media coverage and cited as inept (presumably for contradicting the official line of the allied Western-Gulf powers), Arab League mission leader Mohammed al-Dabi officially resigned, stating, "I won’t work one more time in the framework of the Arab League, I performed my job with full integrity and transparency but I won’t work here again as the situation is skewed.” The United Nations and the Arab League are now considering what was originally a joint observer mission – now referred to as a peacekeeping mission. The Arab League, in tandem with Saudi Arabia is preparing a nearly identical resolution calling for an armed peacekeeping council to present to the UN. Much like the indistinguishable saber rattling seen before Libyan intervention, the new resolution condemns Assad for lethal repression and calls for a transitional shift to democracy. The resolution is expected to create similar Sino-Russian divisions over its implementation, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, previously scorned the document as "the same unbalanced draft resolution text."
The conflict in Syria has brought light to longstanding Cold War divisions between world powers. The Sino-Russian veto of the UNSC resolution calling for intervention has blocked the opportunity for Western powers to exert overt aggression, as demonstrated by NATO in Libya. Instead, it appears that the Assad regime will be destabilized through covert mercenary groups bent on committing blind acts of terrorism by means of sniper assassinations and roadside bombs. Learning from the Libyan experience, Russia and China perceive the UN Human Rights Report authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the Washington-based corporate-funded think-tank, Middle East Policy Council - to be explicitly comprised; victims among the civilian population are a result of armed paramilitaries doing battle with the Syrian military in residential areas. In an interview with former Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov pledges that Russia will protect Iran, Syria, and the world from American fascism. In a show of support for the Syrian government, Russia has sent a large naval force into the region and China has further warned against a strike on Syria.
It is truly a paradox that the countries least fit to dictate principles of human rights, do so largely unhindered on the world stage. Without hesitation Hillary Clinton proclaimed, “What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty” referring to the Sino-Russian veto. She then called for the formation of an international alliance between the war-profiteering elite of the West and absolutist Wahhabi Persian Gulf monarchies - amusingly titled, the Friends of Syria. International calls to abstain from violence have done little to influence the Gulf Cooperation Council and their brutal crackdown against Shiites in Bahrain. Incredibly, Saudi Arabia has entered the dialogue on human rights and democracy promotion – perhaps the world’s most defining feudalistic theocracy, a nation that prohibits political parties and national elections and executes those who apostatize Islam.
Iran’s Press TV news network has reportedly leaked intelligence exposing the American agenda in Syria. The report calls for the recognition of the Syrian National Council as the legitimate government and their positioning in Turkey to work against the Assad regime. Washington would then task Turkey with sending troops into Syria to arm the opposition forces, followed by Wahhabi fighters and Libyan mercenaries. Ominously, the intelligence stipulates that Israel will enter the fray to carry out military operations against Syria. If the regime fails to dissolve, Syrian state television channels will be taken down and Assad will be assassinated. Considering how other enemies of the West have faired in recent times, the sequence of events reported by Press TV would be largely unsurprising. The Wahhabis of the Persian Gulf are playing junior to American aggression in an effort to dominate the Shia-Alawi religious faction presently upheld by the leadership of Syria and Iran, but also to secure their places as regional powers.
Domestic affairs in Syria are of little consequence to the powers trying to topple the nation; the real priority is to further isolate Iran by eliminating its Shia-Alawi ally in Damascus. Israel reaps enormous benefit from toppling the Assad regime, as the Syrian Nation Council pledges to cut ties with Iran and discontinue arms shipments to Hezbollah and Hamas. If Syria falls and Iran is directly threatened, the potential for a regional conflict of the utmost seriousness exists, assuming China and Russia move in to defend Iran. Such a conflict would create detrimental implications for the global economy, potentially triggering a hyper-inflationary financial crisis. William Hague and billionaire financiers behind the civil society groups bestowing legitimacy to violent opposition actors are not the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. Although the reforms have been slow, the Assad government is in the midst of drafting a new constitution. Syria’s sovereignty has come under direct fire from powers claiming to be defending Syria’s people. An attempt on the life of Bashar al-Assad may have similar consequences to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As the Syrian National Council familiarly calls for the implementation of a no-fly zone over, those members of the International Community with any integrity left must work diligently to diffuse conflict in the region.
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Success in life is a matter not so much of talent and opportunity as of concentration and perseverance.
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