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Military strikes against Assad's Syria | Updates & Discussions.

Pro-Syrian war U.S. Senators receive big money from defense industry

OCALA, Fla., September 13, 2013 — As the debate over whether or not the United States should take military action against Syria continues, an interesting fact has been uncovered about many U.S. Senators supportive of such a conflict.

Last week, David Martosko of the English newspaper Daily Mail reported that a “10-7 vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee supporting an authorization of military attacks on Syria may have been affected by varying levels of financial support the senators got from political action committees representing the defense industry, and from the companies’ employees.”

“The ten Senate Foreign Relations Committee members who voted to attack Syria received 83 percent more campaign contributions from defense contractors than the seven senators who voted against it, according to analysis from Maplight.org,” wrote Brendan Bordelon of The Daily Caller.

He continued: “Examining data from 2007 to 2012, the analysts found that the average senator who voted “yes” on the authorization of the use of military force took $72,850 from defense contractors and other defense industry interests. Senators who voted “no” received just $39,770 on average.”

The role which special interest groups play in American politics has long been criticized.

Earlier this year, Josh Silver of Represent Us, an anti-corruption watchdog group, told The Washington Times Communities that “(w)hen federal elections cost over $6 billion, politicians from both major parties become dependent on donors instead of everyday Americans. As disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff says, ‘Contributions from lobbyists and special interests to public servants are bribes.’

“These bribes cause politicians to advance policies that are great for those interests and very bad for the vast majority of Americans. The politics of obstruction and polarization become their only option: accuse the other party of being radical and destructive in order to distract and confuse the public. The irony is that both Republican and Democrat leaders are selling out the public every day while attacking the other party, all while majorities of Americans are suffering.”

In the same interview, Silver went on to mention that “(i)t isn’t just corrupt transactions that wreck the legislative process. It is the culture of common understanding by both major parties that identifies organized money as the most important form of power. At the beginning of every significant policy debate in Congress, the first set of questions is not about the right answer; it is about which moneyed forces will take what positions and how that will impact the effort.”

President Obama and some members of Congress support a strike on Syria due to allegations of its embattled leader, President Bashar al-Assad, using chemical weapons against Syrians. Since the landlocked Middle Eastern nation has taken no military action against the United States, some say that attacking it would be criminal.

“The post-World War II Nuremburg tribunal championed by the United States established the principle that war not justified by self-defense, i.e., a response to an actual or imminent attack, constitutes the crime of aggression,” former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein pointed out in a recent Huffington Post article. “Syria has neither attacked the United States nor threatens to do so. United States military action against Syria to maintain national prestige or otherwise would be a war crime.”

Read more: Pro-Syrian war U.S. Senators receive big money from defense industry | Washington Times Communities
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Pro-Syrian war U.S. Senators receive big money from defense industry | Washington Times Communities
 
U.S.-Russia deal says nothing about use of force: Lavrov
GENEVA | Sat Sep 14, 2013 6:52am EDT

(Reuters) - A U.S.-Russian deal to remove Syria's chemical weapons arsenal contains nothing about the potential use of force if Syria fails to comply, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.

But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said there was no pre-agreement on what action the U.N. Security Council might take if Syria fails to comply with the plan, which envisages a complete destruction of its chemical weapons by mid-2014.

(Reporting by Tom Miles, editing by Warren Strobel)

U.S.-Russia deal says nothing about use of force: Lavrov | Reuters

Resistance mindset, public opinion averted US war on Syria: Iran MP

The United States halted its plan to attack Syria as Washington was apprehensive of the resistance movement and the opposition of the world public opinion to such an offensive, an Iranian lawmaker says.


In a Saturday interview, Mohammad Esmaili, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s Majlis, pointed to “myriads of problems” that the US faced over its decision to attack Syria, adding, “The most important reason behind the US backtracking on [its decision to launch] a military strike against Syria has been the resistance mindset.”

“Even the American and European people do not approve of an attack on Syria under the pretext of chemical weapons use, because US officials had also used a big lie, that is the discovery of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), to attack Iraq,” Esmaili stated.


In 2003, the United States and its allies invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law under the pretext that Baghdad was in possession of WMDs. However, no such weapons were ever discovered in Iraq.

A Gallup survey, conducted September 5-8, indicates that Americans’ trust in Washington’s ability to deal with international issues is at an all-time low, with only 49 percent saying they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the federal government.

Esmaili expressed optimism that the US decision to halt its war plan against Syria will boost the morale of the Syrian army and lead to more defeats for the foreign-backed Takfiri militants in the coming days.

On September 9, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem said Damascus welcomed a proposal by Russia for the Syrian chemical weapons to be put under international control.

Obama has said that plans for a military strike against Syria could be averted if the Syrian “gesture” regarding the Russian proposal is “real.” Obama said it takes time “to tell whether this offer will succeed.” He has, therefore, asked the US Congress to postpone a vote on the plan for an attack on Syria.

The rhetoric of war against Syria first gained momentum on August 21, when the militants operating inside the country and the foreign-backed Syrian opposition claimed that over a thousand people had been killed in a government chemical attack on militant strongholds on the outskirts of Damascus.

The Syrian government categorically rejects the allegation and says the militants carried out the attack to draw in military intervention.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/09/14/323881/us-halts-syria-plan-due-to-resistance/
 
Assad Pledges Quick Moves on Chemical Weapons Elimination - Bloomberg

Assad Pledges Quick Moves on Chemical Weapons Elimination

Syria will swiftly make available information about its chemical weapons and open sensitive facilities to international inspectors, while “getting rid of” those munitions within about a year, President Bashar al-Assad said in a televised interview.

Meeting the disclosure and inspection conditions under the Chemical Weapons Convention, the international accord banning such arms, is “no problem, we can do it tomorrow,” Assad said in an interview with Fox News that aired yesterday. While saying he is now committed to surrendering those weapons, he gave no ground in his assertions that rebels, not his forces, were responsible for the Aug. 21 sarin gas attack near Damascus that the U.S. says killed more than 1,400 people.

Assad said he has set no conditions on cooperating with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the body based in The Hague in the Netherlands that implements the treaty. Previously, he’d said that Syria’s actions depended on the U.S. and others not supplying weapons to rebel forces.
“We are committed the full requirements” of the treaty and any delay in implementation “is not about will, it’s about techniques,” he said.

Assad faces an early test because under the U.S.-Russia accord negotiated last week in Geneva by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, he must turn over a full inventory of his country’s chemical weapons arsenal by Sept. 21. That will then be subject to intrusive verification by the OPCW.
Complicated Process

Assad said that eliminating the arsenal is a complicated process that will be done as directed by OPCW experts. He said he’s been told it may take about a year and cost as much as $1 billion to destroy the chemical weapons without creating environmental problems.

Assad didn’t explicitly address the U.S.-Russia accord, which averted American military action in return for Syria giving up its chemical arsenal. He presented Syria’s promised actions as occurring under the requirements of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Syria joined last week after decades during which it didn’t acknowledge having chemical arms.
“Whenever we join an agreement as Syria, we always committed to those agreements,” he said.
The Fox News interview in Damascus was arranged by Dennis Kucinich, an anti-war activist who’d met with Assad on a past visit to Syria when he was a Democratic congressman from Ohio. Kucinich, who works as a contributor to Fox News, was joined by Fox correspondent Greg Palkot in questioning Assad.

Early Test

The U.S.-Russia accord, which averted the American military action against Syria, sets an objective of completing the destruction or removal of chemical weapons and related equipment by next June 30.

Earlier yesterday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf had raised the prospect that Syria might miss the first test of its compliance with the agreement.
While Kerry has said that Syria “must submit” a full disclosure of its chemical weapons by Sept. 21, Harf said that the date -- one week after the accord was reached in Geneva -- and others in the accord were more a “time line” than “a hard and fast deadline.”
What counts is seeing “forward momentum, understanding that it’s complicated and that these are targets on a calendar,” she told reporters in Washington.
Russia’s army may send chemical and biological experts to Syria to assist with the operation, Kommersant reported, citing an unidentified military official.

Oil Price

With the threat of military action receding, West Texas Intermediate crude fell Sept. 17 to the lowest level in almost four weeks before rebounding yesterday. WTI crude for October delivery rose 0.5 percent to $108.63 a barrel at 9:05 a.m. London time today after the Federal Reserve said it will maintain monthly bond purchases to stimulate growth.
The unedited, hour-long interview provided Assad with an extended opportunity to present his view of the civil war in his nation that has killed more than 100,000 people and uprooted about 6 million.

He described the rebels as 80 percent to 90 percent jihadists, in effect dismissing the broad public opposition that started with peaceful protests, and he said that more than 15,000 government soldiers have died in the 2 1/2 years of fighting. While saying he is open to peace talks, his view of how that might proceed differs from that of opposition leaders, who insist that he must quit as part of any deal.

While not disputing the findings of UN inspectors that the nerve agent sarin was used in an attack in the Ghouta area near Damascus, Assad said his forces were not responsible. The U.S., U.K., France and many private analysts have said the findings implicate regime forces. The UN team was barred by its mandate from placing responsibility.
Assad’s Denial
“We didn’t use any chemical weapons in Ghouta,” he said, saying such use would have put at risk his troops as well as tens of thousands of civilians.

Syria yesterday gave Russia what it said was evidence supporting its case that rebels were responsible. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said during a visit to Damascus yesterday that Russia is “unhappy” about the findings of the UN investigation, according to Russian state broadcaster RT.
“We think that report was distorted, it was one-sided, the basis of information upon which it is built is not sufficient, and in any case we would need to learn and know more on what happened beyond and above that incident of Aug. 21,” Ryabkov told RT.
Lavrov on Sept. 17 called for a further inquiry, saying Russia has “serious grounds” for thinking that the attack last month was a rebel “provocation,” as Assad claims.

The conflicting U.S. and Russian views about the attack underscored the two nations’ conflicting interests as the UN Security Council attempts to negotiate a resolution mandating that Syria fulfill the Geneva agreement and give up its chemical weapons.
To contact the reporter on this story: Terry Atlas in Washington at tatlas@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
Click to expand...

While this is good news ofcourse, the first good news I've heard out of Syria in a long while, it does beg the question; how will Assad's regime now deal with the rebels and their civilian supporters? More oppression and violence without using chem weapons, or an actual peace process that brings the rebels into a coalition government as soon as possible? Ofcourse I think the second option is a much better and more civilized one. I hope Assad and his friends can see this as well, because the ball is clearly in their court; they are the only ones who can offer compromises to the rebels that will finally end the bloodshed.
 
Slowly and gradually Syria will move from front page to back and then insider column. Finally diminish. It is better for Obama to let this natural course take itself; whether chemical weapon come under Russian control or not. Otherwise, he again may be confronted with a situation where he has to back track and face embarrassment.
 
Syria crisis: Assad regime wants ceasefire after war reaches

Assad regime wants ceasefire after war reaches ‘stalemate’
Deputy Prime Minister says there is a 'zero balance of forces' between the state and the rebels

The Syrian government does not believe that either side can win or lose the country’s civil war, and will propose a ceasefire monitored by international troops when peace talks can be convened in Geneva.

The Deputy Prime Minister of the Assad regime said that after the war has raged for two years, claiming more than 100,000 lives, neither the state’s forces nor the rebels have the military strength to overwhelm the other side.

Speaking in an hour-long interview with the Guardian newspaper, Qadri Jamil said that if the US and Russia could agree on a way of getting the rebels to attend peace negotiations, the regime would call for: “An end to external intervention, a ceasefire and the launching of a peaceful political process in a way that the Syrian people can enjoy self-determination without outside intervention and in a democratic way.”

Mr Jamil said: “Neither the armed opposition nor the regime is capable of defeating the other side. This zero balance of forces will not change for a while.”

The Deputy Prime Minister insisted that he spoke for the whole of Bashar al-Assad’s government, and in his capacity as minister for the economy said that the war had cost Syria about $100 billion (£62 billion), the equivalent of two years of normal production.

His comments come as Mr Assad warned that while Syria will comply with a US-Russian deal for the destruction of the country’s chemical weapons, it would be a long, complex and expensive process.

And Vladimir Putin said yesterday that he could not be “100 per cent certain” that the plan would be carried out successfully.

“But everything we have seen so far in recent days gives us confidence that this will happen,” he said, adding: “I hope so.”

Mr Jamil reiterated his president’s denial that the regime was responsible for the Damascus chemical weapons attack on 21 August which the US says killed 1,429 people.
Click to expand...

Great :)

I hope the rebels are wise enough to accept the offer, and perhaps even offer the Assads the end of outdoor demonstrations if the Assads will promise to listen in a reasonable way to online and street-vendored petitions organized by the Syrian opposition.

Another thing that would be very wise for every Syrian is to (gradually) establish a multi-party political system, where different sections of the population (ethnicity, income level, etc) see their interests voiced by different political parties who need to treat eachother as equals and with regard to how many votes each party received in the last elections. It would also be wise to put in your constitution that the government can for instance fall because parties declare they no longer trust eachother, resulting in early new elections to establish a clear sense of how the population actually wants to proceed.

And lastly; an obvious one but way too often overlooked; the people (of any country) should pay very close attention to choosing leaders who truly serve the people without looking to enrich themselves and their immediate friends.
 
Syria

Syria’s Chemical Weapons: The Russia Factor
SEPTEMBER 26, 2013
Author(s): Carroll Bogert
Published in: Vedomosti (in Russian)
Russian diplomacy has dramatically changed the trajectory of Western response to the Syria crisis and put the Kremlin at the center of international negotiations to control Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. But the Russian government’s insistence that chemical weapons were used by rebel forces now places it on the fringes of a serious debate over what to do next to end the atrocities in that embattled country.

In his op-ed for the New York Times, President Putin made the case for pursuing diplomacy over military strikes in Syria. He also wrote that there is “every reason to believe” the attack was carried out by opposition forces to provoke a Western military intervention.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has continued to claim that the “obscure case of the August 21” attack was “clearly fabricated.” Last week in Damascus, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced that Russia would be analyzing new “evidence” from the Syrian government that exonerates their forces for the attack.

Syrian opposition forces are indeed responsible for serious crimes in their conduct of war, including attacks against civilians, summary executions, kidnappings, torture, and other abuses. They include extremist Islamist elements that should be of real concern. But they are not responsible for the August 21 chemical weapons attack, and a review of the evidence demonstrates that.

The United Nations inspection team remains the only independent group to have accessed the site of the attacks. When US military strikes against Syria appeared imminent, Russian diplomats urged the world to wait for the UN inspectors’ report. But now that the report points clearly to Syrian government responsibility for the attack, the same officials are dismissing it as “politicized,” ”biased,” and “one-sided.”

UN inspectors were able to visit sites and interview victims and eyewitnesses, but it was not within their mandate to state explicitly who they thought was responsible. But they have provided substantial evidence of Syrian government responsibility, and that evidence is backed up by a 21-page research report by Human Rights Watch, an independent, nongovernmental organization.

We analyzed witness accounts of the rocket attacks, information on the likely source of the attacks, the physical remnants of the weapon systems used, and the medical symptoms exhibited by the victims as documented by medical staff. Using this information, Human Rights Watch’s expert arms team, specialized in the identification of weapons and munitions used in conflicts around the world, made detailed reconstructions of the weapons used, and consulted internationally respected experts to analyze the symptoms shown by those sickened in the attack.

Human Rights Watch is headquartered in New York, but a visit to our website at Human Rights Watch | Defending Human Rights Worldwide will easily show that we are often vehement critics of US foreign policy and have more than a 30-year track record of documenting and criticizing US government violations of human rights at home. Contrary to some Russian media reports, we have not taken a position favoring US military strikes in Syria. But we have published dozens of reports, briefing papers, and extended press releases in the two and a half years since the Arab Uprisings spread to Syria, beginning as a protest movement against the authoritarian government and now morphing into a devastating civil war. We have reported on violations of international humanitarian law by both sides

Everyone agrees that the August 21 attacks took place at two sites 16 kilometers apart. They were caused by surface-to-surface rockets, not on-the-ground explosions.

The UN inspectors, as well as Human Rights Watch, identified two systems that launched the rockets carrying Sarin into Ghouta. Both systems are known to be in the arsenal of the Syrian armed forces. One system launches 330mm rockets-most likely Syrian produced- from truck-mounted launchers, each rocket carrying canisters of 50 to 60 liters of Sarin, while the second uses Soviet-produced 140mm rockets with a smaller Sarin warhead. These launching systems and their rockets have never been seen in rebel hands.

Meanwhile, the amount of Sarin used in the attack – many hundreds of kilograms, according to Human Rights Watch’s calculations – also indicates government responsibility for the attack. Opposition forces have never been known to be in possession of such significant amounts of Sarin, if any.

Some members of the Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra have been indicted in Turkey for trying to acquire chemicals with the intent to produce Sarin. That is indeed a worrying development, but irrelevant to the question of responsibility for the August 21 attack, which involved hundreds of liters of military-grade Sarin, not small quantities of home-made Sarin. This was not a chemical attack cooked up by opposition forces in some underground kitchen.

In appendix 5 of the UN report, after describing the two rocket systems used in the attack, the inspectors go one step further and actually reveal the trajectory of some of the rockets. Using standard field investigative techniques, examining the debris field and impact area where the rockets struck, the report provides precise azimuths, or angular measurements, that allow us to work out the actual trajectory of the rockets.

The two attack locations are located 16 kilometers apart. According to declassified reference guides, the 140mm artillery rocket launched into Moadamiya (described by the UN as “impact site number 1”) has a minimum range of 3.8 kilometers and a maximum range of 9.8 kilometers. Meanwhile, a well-known military base of the Republican Guard’s 104th Brigade is approximately 9.5 kilometers from Moadamiya.

We don’t know the firing range for the second type of rocket used, the 330mm rocket that hit Ein Tarma (impact site number 4). But that site is 9.6 kilometers away from the main Republican Guard base in Damascus, well within range of most rocket systems.

Click to enlarge map
HRWRocketBearingMap_v1b.jpg



Meanwhile, what is the evidence that opposition forces are responsible for the attack? Russian diplomats have called into question the timing of the posted videos of the attacks. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Aleksandr Lukashevich has said opposition activists uploaded the first YouTube videos of the victims on August 20, one day before the “so-called attack.” What he overlooked is that all videos uploaded on YouTube are date-stamped for Pacific Standard Time, 10 hours behind Syria. So any video uploaded before 10 am Syrian time would have been date-stamped August 20. And the attacks occurred in the the early hours of August 21.

Russian diplomats often cite “experts” who are not expert at all. Foreign Minister Lavrov has relied upon a “nun from a local convent,” Mother Agnès-Mariam de la-Croix of the St. James Monastry in Qara, Syria. She has previously spread false stories seeking to deflect blame from the government for earlier crimes, such as the Houla massacre, which has been investigated by several independent observers (including the UN Commission of Inquiry and Human Rights Watch). But Mother Agnès does not have direct knowledge of the Ghouta attack. Her convent is located some 100 kilometers from the attack sites. She does not have military expertise and has not visited the site or examined the remains.

Lavrov has also cited 12 retired officers from the US Defense Department who claimed the Ghouta attack was fabricated. Their group has advanced the theory that “some canisters containing chemical agent were brought into a suburb of Damascus, where they were then opened.” But Sarin is not a “gas” contained in canisters that can accidentally explode or be immediately dispersed. In its natural state, Sarin is a liquid, which must be vaporized to function effectively as a chemical weapon agent (of course, exposure to liquid Sarin would be deadly as well, but the vaporized Sarin is dispersed over a larger area). These retired officers also reject the notion that rockets were used in the attack, but they provide no evidence, simply quoting “the most reliable intelligence sources.” That can hardly trump the report by the independent UN team that visited the site.

A good deal of “evidence” is clearly fabricated. For example, a series of grainy short videos suddenly appeared on the day of the release of the UN report, from a new account that had not uploaded such videos before (we monitor all such accounts closely). It claimed to show Islamist fighters from Liwa al-Islam firing the very rockets identified by Human Rights Watch and the UN experts. The videos bear all the hallmarks of an amateur attempt to deflect responsibility from the Syrian government: the rockets are conveniently draped with Islamist flags and emblems identifying the Liwa al-Islam group, something not seen in other videos circulated by the group. Most significantly, the weapon filmed in the videos isn’t associated with the chemical weapons attack: it is a D-30 howitzer, which is not a weapon capable of firing 140mm or 330mm rockets.

The United States and its intelligence agencies suffer from a serious credibility gap when it comes to reporting on weapons of mass destruction, thanks to the false and misleading claims made in 2003 regarding the extent of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programs. That information, used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, turned out to be wrong.

That does not mean the US government is necessarily wrong when it accuses the Syrian government of these attacks. The evidence must be examined carefully and weighed. Russian diplomacy at this critical moment must be conducted on the basis of verified evidence.

Energetic and fact-based Russian diplomacy could contribute positively to the Syria crisis. The first step would be to recognize that Syrian government forces carried out the chemical weapons attacks of August 21 and refocus international efforts to ensure that chemical weapons stocks are put under international control and destroyed.

Russia should also call for accountability for the perpetrators. A chemical weapons attack is a war crime and may be a crime against humanity, and such serious crimes should never go unpunished. Russia should insist on the UN Security Council referring Syria to the International Criminal Court.

The ICC would have the authority to investigate serious crimes by both sides. Given the overwhelming evidence of government responsibility, Russia should not have a shred of doubt about who committed the August 21 attack. But if it still does, why not let international legal authorities assign the blame?
Click to expand...

Well, that confirms what I've suspected for a while now...
Fight with TRUTH ONLY, dear Russians, if you want to be taken seriously as geopolitical players.
 
The syrian rebels can go down in history as one of the worst political-military failures ever.
 
Read in the news here today: "ISIL refuses to give up fighting other rebel groups".

So, "other rebel groups". Gang up on ISIL, before you lose the momentum by ISIL gaining support of other rebel groups. PUMMEL THEM, these violent FOOLS.

I'll see what I can do about renewed western support for the Syrian opposition, in the form of negotiative help towards the Assad regime.
Peace is the ONLY REAL WAY to prosperity, folks..

And I'd like to retract (deny) my previous post in this thread right now. There have indeed been worse military-political failures than the Syrian rebels throughout history. In fact, most large empires fit that bill when they grew too large and 'imploded'..
 
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