http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/18/report-kerry-urged-obama-pentagon-to-begin-immediate-airstrikes-on-syrian-airfields/
There’s been no official confirmation, though indeed there still hasn’t been from the last two Israeli attacks on Syria. Witnesses from the upscale neighborhood that overlooks the air base reported that theybelieved the incident was clearly a missile strike.
Report: Kerry urged Obama, Pentagon to begin immediate airstrikes on Syrian airfields
POSTED AT 5:51 PM ON JUNE 18, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
Man, we’re a long way from 2004 if John Kerry is urging shock and awe against a Middle Eastern dictator over WMD and most Republicans are pounding the table against a reckless intervention.
Cycle of life, my friends.
Flash-forward to this past Wednesday. At a principals meeting in the White House situation room, Secretary of State John Kerry began arguing, vociferously, for immediate U.S. airstrikes against airfields under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime — specifically, those fields it has used to launch chemical weapons raids against rebel forces.It was at this point that the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the usually mild-mannered Army General Martin Dempsey, spoke up, loudly. According to several sources, Dempsey threw a series of brushback pitches at Kerry, demanding to know just exactly what the post-strike plan would be and pointing out that the State Department didn’t fully grasp the complexity of such an operation.Dempsey informed Kerry that the Air Force could not simply drop a few bombs, or fire a few missiles, at targets inside Syria: To be safe, the U.S. would have to neutralize Syria’s integrated air-defense system, an operation that would require 700 or more sorties. At a time when the U.S. military is exhausted, and when sequestration is ripping into the Pentagon budget, Dempsey is said to have argued that a demand by the State Department for precipitous military action in a murky civil war wasn’t welcome.
I’m intrigued by the fact that Kerry’s focused on Assad’s chemical weapons when they have little to do with O’s strategic reasons for getting involved there. The White House is stressing WMD lately because it’s a rallying point for public opinion; the reason for intervention isn’t because Obama’s worried about Assad gassing people on a mass scale, it’s because he’s afraid that Assad’s going to roll over the rebels and humiliate the U.S. in light of its “Assad must go” ultimatum if something isn’t done quickly to prop up the opposition. The U.S. will have to try to grab the regime’s sarin arsenal at some point if the rebels turn the tide and Assad gets desperate, but at the moment he has no real incentive to use unconventional weapons when the conventional ones are working just fine — unless the whole point is to defy and humiliate the United States for deciding to intervene. That’s one of the great potential backfires lurking here, that Assad and his pals in Tehran might decide to punish the U.S. for deciding to arm the rebels by really flouting the “red line” with more gas attacks. Although if they’re going to do that, you would think that those weapons will already have been dispersed and/or that more are on their way into the country from Iran. Frankly, I’m not sure why Kerry thinks that bombing airfields would cripple Assad’s ability to use WMD. Part of the sarin stockpile is in shells designed to be used by ground troops. Maybe he’s thinking that they should aim to cripple the largest delivery systems, like airborne bombs and SCUD warheads. They can’t stop Assad from using WMD but they can force him into smaller-scale delivery systems to minimize casualties.
Via the Standard, here’s O making the case against deeper intervention last night on Charlie Rose’s show. His bottom line: Unless you’re in the Situation Room, you can’t know how dangerous and complicated a Kerry-style plan of attack would be. I think he’s right about that, but seeing him use secrecy as a defense here so soon after he’s used secrecy as a reason not to explain the scope of NSA data-mining proves again that, when it comes to counterterrorism and foreign policy, the big public debate he’s always claiming to want always boils down to “trust me.” What if you don’t trust him?
Reports: Israel Behind Attack on Damascus Airport, Killing 10
Mazza Stirke Initially Termed a Car Bombing
by Jason Ditz, June 17, 2013
Initially reported as a “car bomb” against a checkpoint near the Damascus military airport at al-Mazza, Syrian media outlets are now saying the massive explosion was the result of an Israeli air strike.
There’s been no official confirmation, though indeed there still hasn’t been from the last two Israeli attacks on Syria. Witnesses from the upscale neighborhood that overlooks the air base reported that theybelieved the incident was clearly a missile strike.
The Israeli military has refused comment on the incident, though that’s not uncommon either. The statement noted that a rebel faction claimed the strike, though myriad rebels claim credit for incidents they didn’t actually do.
10 soldiers were reported killed in the Mazza strike, and other reports estimated 20 casualties overall, though final figures may not be known for some time. If confirmed it would be the third Israeli attack on Syria in recent months.
Ron Paul: Obama’s Syria Policy Looks a Lot Like Bush’s Iraq Policy
Ron Paul
Infowars.com
June 17, 2013
Infowars.com
June 17, 2013
President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his “red line” and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.
War Cemetery Oosterbeek, photo by FaceMePLS
Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes. The Washington Post reported this week that the decision to overtly arm the Syrian rebels was made “weeks ago” – in other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe “with high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.
Further, this plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as the Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria.
The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war. Remember the famous quote from the leaked “Downing Street Memo,” where representatives of British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration discussed Washington’s push for war on Iraq?
Here the head of British intelligence was reporting back to his government after a trip to Washington in the summer of 2002:
“Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
That is exactly what the Obama Administration is doing with Syria: fixing the intelligence and facts around the already determined policy. And Congress just goes along, just as they did the last time.
We found out shortly after the Iraq war started that the facts and intelligence being fixed around the policy were nothing but lies put forth by the neo-con warmongers and the paid informants, like the infamous and admitted liar known as “Curveball.” But we seem to have learned nothing from being fooled before.
So Obama now plans to send even more weapons to the Syrian rebels even though his administration is aware that the main rebel factions have pledged their loyalty to al-Qaeda. Does anyone else see the irony? After 12 years of the “war on terror” and the struggle against al-Qaeda, the US decided to provide weapons to the allies of al-Qaeda. Does anyone really think this is a good idea?
The Obama administration promises us that this is to be a very limited operation, providing small arms only, with no plans for a no-fly zone or American boots on the ground. That sounds an awful lot like how Vietnam started. Just a few advisors. When these few small arms do not achieve the pre-determined US policy of regime change in Syria what is the administration going to do? Admit failure and pull the troops out, or escalate? History suggests the answer and it now appears to be repeating itself once again.
The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multi-billion dollar war has begun.
Former Congressman Paul’s article first appeared at the-free-foundation.org, the temporary home for his weekly column until his personal web page is up and running.
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