-------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/13/playing-with-us-assad-piles-on-demands-amid-chemical-weapons-talks/
I don't know if Bashar Assad accurately senses how much Obama is backpedaling after his clarion call for military strikes was dealt a serious blow or if the Syrian President is taking a terribly risky roll of the dice.
"U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday he expects a soon-to-be-released investigative report to show chemical weapons were used last month in Syria -- though U.S. officials claim it will not assign blame. The predictions come after an emboldened Bashar Assad began upping his demands in talks over relinquishing the Syrian government's chemical weapons to international control......
The dynamic could change next week, when U.N. inspectors release their report on the alleged Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack as early as Monday. The secretary-general said the findings will likely be an "overwhelming report that the chemical weapons (were) used."
"(Assad) has committed many crimes against humanity," he said.
At the same time, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf reiterated that the report will probably not say who used chemical weapons. Assad and his allies in Russia have used that opening to claim the opposition may have been responsible -- an allegation strongly denied by U.S. officials who have their own intelligence and say Assad's government was to blame.......
The dynamic could change next week, when U.N. inspectors release their report on the alleged Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack as early as Monday. The secretary-general said the findings will likely be an "overwhelming report that the chemical weapons (were) used."
"(Assad) has committed many crimes against humanity," he said.
At the same time, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf reiterated that the report will probably not say who used chemical weapons. Assad and his allies in Russia have used that opening to claim the opposition may have been responsible -- an allegation strongly denied by U.S. officials who have their own intelligence and say Assad's government was to blame.......
Sensing perhaps that the threat of a U.S. strike is no longer imminent, Assad is publicly trying to strengthen his hand. In an interview with Russian television, he not only demanded the U.S. drop the threat of military action -- he also said the Obama administration must stop arming the opposition.
"When we see that the U.S. genuinely stands for stability in our region, stops threatening us with military intervention and stops supplying terrorists with weapons, then we will consider it possible to finalize all necessary procedures and they will become legitimate and acceptable for Syria," Assad said, according to the translation by Russia's RIA Novosti. "Terrorists" is the term Assad often applies to members of the Syrian opposition."
Since I have been calling for the same thing almost from the beginning, I can't blame Assad for wanting the US to stop providing support to the rebels, but I do wonder how this move will end for Syria.
Obama essentially staked his reputation on getting support for strikes against the Syrian and has until this point lost - and badly so. Long ignored and denigrated-in the West, Putin has emerged as a voice of both influence and reason. Many, in spite of Obama and Kerry's increasingly frantic insistence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons, are now less fearful of publicly voicing their suspicions as to the identities of actual perpetrators. The US, thankfully, was left with no viable option other than to step aside
But for how long?
A narcissist like Obama perceives a loss - any loss,as a personal insult. Russia may or may not be able to maintain her current momentum for much longer if Assad can't extract any more concessions from the US but stands firm with his demands.
Obama may rant, rave, and back down again, but he also may fly into a knee-jerk reaction and bring the US right back to the precipice. If Obama generally keeps his mind but refuses to stop arming the rebels, Russia may increase her aid to the Syrian government to offset the advantage provided by the US. The best case scenario could be a proxy war reminiscent of the 1970's and 1980's.
The US still has her fair share of sickos who so desperately want an Islamist state in Syria that they will engage is shameless drama to sway public opinion:
Note that Christiane Amanpour employs the timeworn method of proving her point by references to claims that are now held suspect by - if not most, at least many, using the false assumption that quantity equals quality (and credibility). "How many more times do we have to say..." proves precisely nothing. Like a Christian Fundamentalist who slings Bible verses en masse, despite their actual meaning or context, in the hopes of winning by sheer volume, Amanpour tries to get people to forget that chemical weapons may well have been used by the side that the US is not proposing to attack. She also tries to cloud the picture by conflating the situation n Syria with other conflicts. Neither the horrors of the slaughters in Rwanda, nor shameful indifference that the world displayed towards the plight of people in that nation, can be compared in any way with the Syrian conflict or our current decision-making, but Amanpour hopes that we won't notice her ruse. Note that she cares so little about the Christians and other non-Sunnis in Syria that she wants to whip Americans into a frenzy to call for actions that will result in even more violence for an already terribly suffering minority]
“We can’t use this false moral equivalence about what’s going on right now. They tried to do it in the Second World War, they tried to do it in Bosnia, they tried to do it in Rwanda and they tried to do it now. There is no moral equivalence,” continued Amanpour, noting that former President Bill Clinton is still apologizing 15 years after the Rwanda crisis.........
“I’m so emotional about this,” she said after a pause"
“I’m so emotional about this,” she said after a pause"
The People of the United States have been saddled with what has become a rare task - to think for themselves and see that there is a powerful lobby that will play on our feelings to support the creation of a state far more cruel and oppressive than Syria has had in a long time. They need to, literally, brush drama queens like Amanpour aside and insist that the US refrain from taking part in creating another Sharia state.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Added 9/14/13:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/13/beck-reveals-why-he-has-such-disdain-for-cnns-christiane-amanpour/
“..........Amanpour is the biggest fraud I’ve ever met,” Beck said on the radio Friday. “She is somebody who has a distinct anti-Israel, anti-Western approach. And how do I know? Well, let’s just say that while we were at CNN…Christiane was one of the people that was instrumental in making my life a living hell trying to tell the truth about Islamic extremism.”
“We had all the video tapes. We had all the translations, and she made our life a living hell,” he reiterated. “This woman is so anti-Western and so anti-Jew, [it is] remarkable, remarkable that this woman has any credibility at all.”
Beck and his radio co-hosts also tore into the specifics of Amanpour’s argument, that “as bad as it is to decapitate somebody,” it is “by no means equal” to death by “weapons of mass destruction.”
“Let me give you that scenario: You’re snatched off the street, you’re bundled up, thrown into the back of a car. You’re held hostage. They torture you, or if you’re a woman, they rape you, repeatedly,” Beck said. “Then you get to hear them make their ‘Allah Akbar’ videotape in the other room, sharpen the machete, get it all ready, then put your head down in front of them while they make the other videotape and then they behead you.”
It is horrific to die either way, Beck said. “Murder is murder…I don’t care how you do it.”
Beck co-host Pat Gray [Noted that] she didn’t seem as affected by the horrific use of chemical weapons in the case of Iraq.
“She couldn’t care less about the Kurds and what happened to Saddam Hussein,” Gray said. “Poison gas, sarin gas meant nothing to her, as it applied to Iraq. Nothing.”.........
Added 9/14/13:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/13/beck-reveals-why-he-has-such-disdain-for-cnns-christiane-amanpour/
“..........Amanpour is the biggest fraud I’ve ever met,” Beck said on the radio Friday. “She is somebody who has a distinct anti-Israel, anti-Western approach. And how do I know? Well, let’s just say that while we were at CNN…Christiane was one of the people that was instrumental in making my life a living hell trying to tell the truth about Islamic extremism.”
“We had all the video tapes. We had all the translations, and she made our life a living hell,” he reiterated. “This woman is so anti-Western and so anti-Jew, [it is] remarkable, remarkable that this woman has any credibility at all.”
Beck and his radio co-hosts also tore into the specifics of Amanpour’s argument, that “as bad as it is to decapitate somebody,” it is “by no means equal” to death by “weapons of mass destruction.”
“Let me give you that scenario: You’re snatched off the street, you’re bundled up, thrown into the back of a car. You’re held hostage. They torture you, or if you’re a woman, they rape you, repeatedly,” Beck said. “Then you get to hear them make their ‘Allah Akbar’ videotape in the other room, sharpen the machete, get it all ready, then put your head down in front of them while they make the other videotape and then they behead you.”
It is horrific to die either way, Beck said. “Murder is murder…I don’t care how you do it.”
Beck co-host Pat Gray [Noted that] she didn’t seem as affected by the horrific use of chemical weapons in the case of Iraq.
“She couldn’t care less about the Kurds and what happened to Saddam Hussein,” Gray said. “Poison gas, sarin gas meant nothing to her, as it applied to Iraq. Nothing.”.........
Beck asserted: “Those 100,000 people were slaughtered because people like Christiane Amanpour were all celebratory about the great Arab Spring…which some of us with common sense…said, ‘don’t do it. It will destabilize the Middle East.’ Instead our president got up — along with the support of people like Christiane Amanpour — and they heralded the great Arab Spring. And our president said ‘More people should rise up!’ and they did.”........"
We need to get back to basics.
ReplyDelete1)Is it in our national interest to keep Assad, or the rebels, from using poison gas in Syria? NO!
2)Is it in our national interest to prevent poison gas from crossing the borders? Perhaps...but it is too late since Assad has already put his supplies into Iraq and Lebanon.
3) Is it in our national interest to prevent the gas from getting into the hands of our enemies? Yes. But see #2...if we can prevent it from crossing the borders our enemies can't use them on us.
4) Is it in our national interest to respond if the gas is used against our allies, like Israel or NATO? Yes, because we can assume that it will then be used against us. If we can prevent it from crossing the borders this will not be an option.
So the borders seem to be the center of gravity. Syria's borders are already crossed. Hypothetically we could have sealed them if we had the will. Now we would have to seal the Iraqi border if we had the will...just patrol it with Predators and shoot anyone who comes within 20 miles of the border on either side. Israel can do the same with Lebanon and Syria. Turkey can do the same with the Syrian border and we can seal the Syria/Iran border on the Syrian side. Any use of chemical weapons across the border would result in the perpetrator being turned to glass.
Well, the last is a little extreme but we could bomb them back to the stone age.
Obama's pinpricks will do nothing. It is like knocking down a hornet's nest with a stick, even though the hornets aren't a danger.. The hornets win. The bottom line is that if we can't use substantial force to protect our own interests we should stay our of the fight else the hornets will get us.