I’m surprised to see a Russian source even reporting on this, but it appears that the German intelligence service (BND) has concluded that Assad ordered the attack and that it was indeed sarin. They claim to have a damning intercept that bolsters their view.
The BND’s President Gerhard Schindler voiced his support for US allegations Syrian President Bashar al-Assad‘s government ordered the attack on the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August 21, Der Spiegel reported Monday.
The intelligence agency’s chief said that following a thorough analysis his ministry assumes that the regime is the perpetrator of the chemical attack which killed hundreds of people…
…The BND apparently cited new evidence to conclude the agent used was sarin, having intercepted communications between a high level Hezbollah official and Iran’s embassy.
In the tapped call, a doctor described details of patient symptoms specific to exposure to the internationally outlawed gas.
The German intelligence agency was surprised to hear the Hezbollah official saying that Assad had snapped, and had made a big mistake in going through ordering the use of poison gas. The Lebanese militant group has traditionally been viewed as Assad’s ally.
They also believe that the military made a mistake and unintentionally used too much sarin, which lines up with the earliest leaks about intercepts that claimed one commander was demanding an explanation from an underling about why the attack was so large.
Meanwhile, despite Secretary of State John Kerry making the rounds of the Sunday morning shows and claiming that tests had confirmed that sarin was the agent used, the Russians remain unimpressed and publicly unconvinced that the Assad regime is responsible.
“We were shown certain pieces of evidence that did not contain anything concrete, neither geographical locations, nor names, nor evidence that samples had been taken by professionals,” Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said in a speech at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations…
…“What we were shown before and recently by our American partners, as well as by the British and French, does not convince us at all,” Mr. Lavrov said on Monday. “There are no facts, there is simply talk about ‘what we definitely know.’ But when you ask for more detailed evidence, they say that it is all classified, therefore it cannot be shown to us. This means there are not such facts to encourage international cooperation.”
Meanwhile, the Arab League managed to cobble together a somewhat stronger interventionist stance than they produced initially, although all they really called for were trials for those responsible for the attacks. How that might be accomplished went unsaid.
The administration probably should take their evidence to the United Nations and lay everything on the table and make Russia and China defend doing nothing. Unless, of course, Congress decides that it agrees with Russia and China. In any case, as things stand, Russia feels comfortable denying that we have proof of anything. We shouldn’t hide behind classified information. If we really believe what we’re saying, we should show why we believe it. This is the kind of thing that is worth sacrificing some methods, and perhaps even sources.
As for the latest info, if Assad has truly “snapped,” then his actions would make a lot more sense.
So it’s to be the Dick Cheney “Hussein is crazy” rationale for war again? Really, Booman? LOL.
Look, given the hundreds of years of history of western nations meddling in the middle east and the utter fiasco of our recent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’m not sure why I should believe any western nation’s take on what Assad is up to.
Russia: you do realize that short of video of Assad lighting the chemical weapon fuse (they’d probably assert that was “staged” or CGI trickery) you can forget about convincing Russia of the “need to punish Assad”.
On the more reality-based front, I’ve heard Syria has a deep water port in Tartus that Russian warships have permission to use.
On the more reality-based front, I’ve heard Syria has a deep water port in Tartus that Russian warships have permission to use.
Kind of like how we use Bahrain, among many other ports around the world.
The Russians lease a small section of the harbor at Tartus. It’s somewhat less impressive the the yacht club in my town on the Great Lakes. I’m not sure of the ‘deep-water’ part but the docking facilities are too small for any of Russia’s front-line warships. These docking facilities consist of two wooden piers floating on pontoons which are lashed to a breakwater. One of them was damaged in a storm as is reported unusable.
Facilities on land are essentially nothing: a little storage, office, and parking space. What support is available is provided by a “workshop ship” moored to one of the pontoon piers. Total personal in 2012 was reported to be four (4) people on the land and a dozen sailors on the workshop ship. But Russia reportedly evacuated their people earlier this year amid the fighting.
But it is the only base Russia still has outside the former USSR’s borders and as such they over-value it compared to its negligible capabilities.
Wiki has a nice summary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_naval_facility_in_Tartus
Did Assad “snap”? We’re reading an English translation about a German observation of a conversation likely in Arabic.
I think Juan Cole likely had it correct when he implied Assad was close to panicking:
Apparently Mossad has gotten to the Germans too.
The idea that “too much sarin” was used aligns with the al-Jazeera article which was posted days ago and also this which suggest that a mixture of lethal nerve and non-lethal riot agents have been researched by the regime to confound and confuse medical and intelligence analysis of the attacks. This would imply that numerous previous alleged attacks on civilians were likely also cynical violations of the chemical weapons ban by the regime.
That Russia’s confidence in their unequivocal denials of available forensic evidence is strengthened by foreknowledge of the co-mingling of nerve and other agents which the regime has been accused of developing? Perhaps it is something they have been assisting with technically? A question worth asking.
When Obama said he was leaving it to Congress, didn’t al Jazeera’s news reader on the air practically have a fit in front of the camera?
Also, isn’t al Jazeera based in Qatar and owned by the Qatar royal family, and aren’t they and the Saudis the biggest backers of the al Qaeda rebels in Syria?
I’m not questioning their journalistic integrity, like I wouldn’t question Fox’s journalistic integrity. Well, maybe I would.
I don’t get the US version of al-Jazeera. And the citation is from their website back in May.
Your point is not a bad one about their ownership but let’s face it you are questioning their journalistic integrity. On that argument I would be interested to know what media outlet you didn’t think tainted; Médecins Sans Frontières? I have put up with a lot of evidential headwind from many people on this blog in spite of consistently trying to use credible or appropriately disclaimed sources and giving links and attributions.
If you had actually bothered to click through you would have noticed I posted a link to a corroborating article from Foreign Policy. Another tainted source?
Arguing against a comment without the simple courtesy of first clicking through to at least look at the linked sources seems a little disrespectful to me.
Every news source has a bias. Even Foreign Policy. Especially Foreign Policy.
OK, then all links and citations are meaningless. Let’s just all paint ourselves blue and dance in the light of the bonfires.
You don’t suppose we might actually use our highly regarded “critical thinking” to assess the bias of these sources in a reasonable way? By actually reading them occasionally, for example?
When the networks play back the tapes we’ll know.
There is no reason to believe our government.
Gee, since all the intelligence networks have these tapes and intercepts, I guess it wouldn’t be too much for someone to share something with the world.
I keep getting this third-person thing. I mean, Hezbollah to Iran surmising what Assad did? Through the BND? Now we’re in fourth or fifth person territory.
What’s so hard about releasing the tapes? Because the last time we got the same okey doke used to bolster our Iraq invasion when the tape was finally released, after Baghdad was smoking rubble, it wasn’t at all what they said it was.
If our government is going to kill people and destroy things in the name of playing fair in the rules of war, can’t they at least share what they say they have?
I feel like there has been a good case made that chemical weapons were used by the Assad regime from the summaries of evidence that have been released. I am not naive enough to expect them to release actual tapes which could compromise sources or methods or both.
The naive among us didn’t take our intelligence services word for it before the US invaded Iraq. And we were right. Maybe naive isn’t the right word. Try skeptical.
I’ve never doubted that sarin or a similar chemical was used. What is your proof that Assad deployed the sarin?
If asking for actual proof is naive, then I think we’ve had a change in the English language.
could very well compromise both sources and methods. Naive is expecting the public at large will have the same access to intelligence as those making these decisions. From what has been released from multiple sources I feel a compelling case has been made that the Assad regime released Sarin on his own people. I don’t know if a military strike is the correct course of action and that is what I think we should be debating. Not whether the Assad regime committed this act in the first place. As far as I am concerned that question is settled and it is time to debate the real issue here – what next if anything?
Naive is believing our intelligence services. I’ve got fifty years of history on my side. What proof do you have?
Unless we got our intel by someone standing next to Assad with a tape recorder I doubt that there was any humint involved.
Bingo! The idea that it’s such sensitive intelegence and we should just trust the government is such horseshit and you DO have plenty of history on your side.
As I mentioned in comment yesterday, there was Iraq, 2003 (and the Jessica Lynch foot note) Bosnia, 1995 (You can investigate the Markale massacre, the rationale for NATO intervention and quite possibly a false flag) Then the Kuwaiti babies tossed out of incubators story in 1990. Also the Gulf of Tonkien, the Spanish not sinking of the Maine…all of which occurred in a context where the US government was looking for a war…and presto, the right incident occurs.
More recently, there’s Libya. We now know that Qadhafi did not hire African mercenaries (some Libyans happen to be black) He did not give viagra to his troops to commit rape. Videos of soldiers being executed “for refusing to fire on protesters” turned out to be captured soldiers executed by rebels.
In light of all this, it is simply unreasonable to expect us to place our trust trust in government without troubling them with any burden of proof.
We need to see more compelling evidence before any military response is forthcoming and maybe not even then. But for pity’s sake let us assess the information we do have with maturity in the meantime.
They gave us Curveball.
How did that work out for us?
Not supposed to look back. Only forward. And watch the reluctant and self-identified liberals slowly talk themselves into the need for more war. Just like they did in 2002-03. Oops, there I go again looking back.
Shame on you.
So the evidence we have is an intercepted communication between Hezbollah and Iran. First, is there any evidence that Hezbollah was responding to reports of who was responsible for the attack or just reacting to the fact of the attack? That is, is there any evidence that the Hezbollah correspondent to Iran knew any more than the rest of us do? Or was he assuming too and inferring that if the Syrian government made the attack, then Assad must have to have cracked? These are the sorts of context and details that are missing in these reports.
Of course, Lavrov is going to dismiss all reports until there is an incontrovertible smoking gun. The US would do the same for Israel or any other ally. (I think of Pinochet in particular.) Nothing new there and not evidence one way or the other.
Until the UN inspectors report identifies what they found about the agent and the delivery devices, I don’t think we have strong information that excludes other actors.
New twist (source is Voice of America):
ok but the optics of US pols citing Russians pols as a reason to oppose the USPresident doesn’t seem like a good one for any pol, GOP/Dem. the Russian diplomats should really stay out of it, IMHO
The Russians in question are the equivalent of US Senators.
The article is from the US propaganda arm – Voice of America.
I didn’t see any US politicians’ reactions cited in the article.
Russians have an interest in avoiding a confrontation between the US and a country with which Russia has a mutual defense treaty that likely requires them to come to Syria’s defense.
If Russia was threatening South Korea and the Duma was about to vote on whether to give Putin authorization to use military force, likely there would be some US members of Congress who would be interested in not having to automatically obey our mutual defense pact with South Korea.
The idea here is how to keep any US action from spinning out of control into a wider conflict. That involves diplomacy with other countries. The two most important at the moment with regard to Syria are Iran and Russia. It is in the US interests that neither fulfill their commitments to defend Syria will military force against the US.
Russia has no treaty requiring them to come to Syria’s aid if attacked. That much at least you need not worry about.
So the ships dispatched last week with much fanfare are headed to the Eastern Mediterranean. But Tartus is abandoned, for now.
Thanks for prompting me to research this.
More detail from UPI: Russia: No military obligation to Syria
Russia is interpreting this as a consultative requirement.
Thanks for the attaboy. 🙂
Have one on me.
And looking like we’re doing the dirty work of Saudi Arabia and Israel look any better?
I’m waiting for the UN inspectors.
To some, US case for Syrian gas attack and need for strike has too many holes
The Obama administration dismissed the value of a U.N. inspection team’s work by saying that the investigators arrived too late for the findings to be credible and wouldn’t provide any information the United State didn’t already have.
U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq countered that it was “rare” for such an investigation to begin within such a short time and said that “the passage of such few days does not affect the opportunities to collect valuable samples,” according to the U.N.’s website. For example, Haq added, sarin can be detected in biomedical samples for months after its use.
The U.S. claims that sarin was used in the Aug. 21 attack, citing a positive test on first responders’ hair and blood – samples “that were provided to the United States,” Kerry said on television Sunday without elaboration on the collection methods.
Experts say the evidence deteriorates over time, but that it’s simply untrue that there wouldn’t be any value in an investigation five days after an alleged attack. As a New York Times report noted, two human rights groups dispatched a forensics team to northern Iraq in 1992 and found trace evidence of sarin as well as mustard gas – four years after a chemical attack.
Sorry but I’m calling bullshit. It may very well be there was a conversation between two people who themselves had no idea what actually happened, and were speculating…just like we do here.
As for “panicking,” please recall the summer of 2012: A bomb at the Syrian defense ministry took out the military chief of staff and 3 other top Assad advisers. This was coordinated with a massive rebel offensive on Aleppo, which was half taken, and Damascus, the fall of which appeared imminent. SO imminent, that Hassan Nassrallah’s speech that week was considered almost a eulogy for the Syrian government.
But guess what, Assad STILL didn’t use chemical weapons. So what exactly was making him panic August 21? The ‘rebels were about to take Damascus,’ seems like a contrived contrived just now and not at all like the situation on the ground as it was being reported until this moment.
Now we are looking at the west coming to a conclusion, and then trying to make what little evidence they have fit it. The biggest gap being the complete and utter lack of motive for Assad to use chemical weapons…so let’s invent one.
IMHO, the game was given away as soon as Kerry’s first speech. He where he said it was “too late” for the Syrians to allow inspectors in now 5 days after the incident. Which was untrue on two levels; first because the Syrians granted permission to the UN 24 hours after it was requested, and second because a team was already there to inspect an incident that happened in MAY(!) I’m no chemical expert, but from what I understand, the breakdown products of sarin last for a long time in the soil and is not the sort of thing that can be scooped up and hidden in a couple of days.
Then, Kerry insisted the UN inspectors leave immediately. The Syrians didn’t demand that, the US Secretary of State did. Which makes it look like he had more to hide than they did. Even Ban Ki Moon was asking that they be allowed to remain. BTW, their mandate, at the insistence of the US, was only to determine if sarin was used, NOT to say who used it. IS the US not confident the inspectors would come to the same conclusion as them?
Finally, until the accusers present real evidence in public before neutral experts who can examine it, then the correct assumption, given previous US claims of this nature, is that there is no evidence.
Leaks to a newspaper being passed off as “evidence” isn’t going to cut it…unless you are a neocon, in which ANYTHING will do.
It’s not even as if we haven’t seen this US ploy before.
Once:
Twice
Yes, to Lysander and Marie.
I think the minimum that the public should demand are new lies, not the same crap we were fed ten years ago. I realize that there are young people here, and others who are having trouble with remembering things. I am reminded that many people in Louisiana aren’t sure whether the Katrina screwup was Obama’s or Dubya’s fault, so people may not recall some of the okey dokes that happened back in 2002-3.
There is no reason we should take anyone’s word that there is proof that Assad deployed those weapons, especially when the best we get are third, fourth and fifth person accounts.
We don’t even have proof dismissing the reports of the rebels having sarin.
The claim that releasing the actual tapes would somehow jeopardize sources is a little lame. Admitting that you have the intercepts is already out in the open. If it were done by NSA Echelon-type stuff, then revealing the actual tapes doesn’t endanger any humint.
This article suggests that Assad’s position is not as strong as the Russians are suggesting.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/situation-in-syria-deteriorates-as-west-looks-for-answers-
a-919733.html
Gee, “probably”. Okay, man, balls to the wall.
My comment was intended to provide more information about Assad’s military situation and his possible motives for using WMD.
The article I linked reports, among other things, that Assad’s tactical position is tenuous, elite Alawite soldiers have been deserting, and he’s having a hard time maintaining supply lines.
The assumption that Assad was ‘winning,’ especially in the suburbs of Damascus, may be overstating his position.
Apologies in advance for the long comment.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that it was sarin, which seems likely, and it was Assad behind it, which isn’t nearly as clear – there are dozens of different militia groups now operating in Syria on both sides, any one of which could launch an operation like this with the aid of a foreign ally – it’s not just “two sides” in the civil war. But let’s just say it was Assad.
Three thoughts:
First, without laying out very clear evidence – which they have not done – Western governments are going to face far more unconvinced people than they would have prior to 2002-3. That’s recent enough (unlike, say, the Gulf of Tonkin) to remind people that governments routinely lie, especially in case of war, and the US government claims no moral high ground in this regard. A lot of people – myself included – will be suspicious of such claims, launched in this manner, no matter who’s in power and no matter who the target or alleged perpetrator is, specifically because of the Bush cabal’s unpunished war crimes of a decade ago. As far as global opinion goes, the fact that it involves a neighboring country in the same part of the world as those crimes – and where the US has already waged two open and one covert (Iran) wars in the last decade, and enables a plainly criminal government in Israel to boot – makes it that much harder a sell.
The burden of proof on the US and other Western governments is very, very high, and the standard will be innocent until proven guilty – even though Assad’s regime is by any accounting guilty of numerous other crimes, this one is special and will be considered on its own merits.
Second, again assuming Assad is guilty as charged, it requires a coordinated international response. We’re not talking the possible development of banned weapons (Iran) or their possible possession (Saddam’s Iraq) – this involves their use. And that does, in fact, cross a very serious line. If the Syrian government is in fact guilty of using a variation of a weapon that’s been banned for nearly a century, you want so far as is possible to establish a universal international precedent that it won’t be tolerated – or at minimum to make holdout countries like Russia and China explain why it should be tolerated. And the perpetrators – but not the civilian population that happen to live in the same country as both perps and victims – should be punished severely.
Ideally, this means a narrow military operation to extract the perpetrators and put them on trial. The Syrian civil war, and who should rule the country, is not at issue here. They can figure that out themselves, in whatever manner they like that doesn’t involve gassing or massacring people. It’s not a matter of Assad remaining in power; it’s a matter that even if he’s removed from power, he shouldn’t be able to retire to a nice villa on the Arabian Sea or wherever. He should be personally held criminally responsible for mass murder, and it should be done in a recognized international venue, not the sort of local kangaroo court used to convict and execute Hussein.
What any country should not do is assassinate Assad without a trial. What any country should not do is lob a few Tomahawk cruise missiles in, kill a bunch more people in service of civil war military objectives, and further muddle an already chaotic, deadly civil war. A lot of people suffer when that happens, and Assad, in all likelihood, wouldn’t be one of them.
If any country does do that, it should not be the US or any of its close allies, given our own refusal to cooperate with The Hague and our own recent abysmal human rights record in the region, including being responsible for the deaths of at least a million Iraqis for no particular reason in the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation, and another half-million Iraqis, mostly children (UNICEF estimate, and likely a low one) through sanctions in the 1990s. Among other things. Plus the US being often the sole political defender and enabler of the worst of the Israeli government’s crimes, and the weapon supplier for the Egyptian military’s very recent crimes. People in the rest of the world, especially the Middle East and Muslim world, remember and know all that, even if the US public doesn’t (or prefers not to).
Third, precisely because the use of chemical weapons – perhaps multiple times – is so much more dangerous a precedent than usual, it is not a time for refusing to share evidence, with Congress, allies, or the public, for fear of “divulging sources” or “compromising tactics.” This kind of scenario is exactly why we have these sorts of intelligence capabilities. Making sure that such attacks are documented and punished, and others dissuaded from mimicking them in the future, is well worth divulging tactics or rebuilding human intelligence networks. It’s not even close.
The Obama administration – or any intelligence service and government with damning evidence – needs to lay it all out, in specifics, because convincing everyone about what happened and who was responsible is really the game here. It’s all about creating a global consensus that, so far as is possible, prevents future chemical attacks anywhere. “Take our word for it” doesn’t work for prosecutors, and it won’t work here – especially with a self-appointed prosecutor (the US) with a recent history of lying on the stand before the same jury. And understand that that global jury does not give a rip who the US president is, or what our domestic politics are. Future US credibility is just as much on trial here as Assad is. We should act accordingly.
This is interesting.
And this:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/your-labor-day-syria-reader-part-2-william-
polk/279255/
is doubly interesting.
Thanks for posting this, it is the best analysis I’ve seen on the whole subject. Everybody should read it.
Take home quiz for extra points: how many errors are apparent in this sentence from the evidence we already have before us? Hint: more than one.
Errors by whom?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/02/1235688/-Syrian-gas-rockets-appear-homemade-and-incapable-o
f-flying-5-10-miles-to-target
Exactly. Thanks.
Very interesting. However, the citation for homemade rockets is from an earlier incident, in April.
That suggests not only that the rebels have had sarin for awhile now (and dovetails with the reports of al-Nusra having sarin in Turkey), but that the US knows it. (That’s the most generous interpretation. It’s not beyond imagination that the CIA supplied it.)
That would explain why Kerry wouldn’t want the UN inspectors to be poking around. Looking more and more like an okey doke.
This with usual caveats.
Totally agree in all particulars.
Thank you for making the point that I have been trying to make for some time. And unpacking the reasoning that makes folks skeptical and that requires better communications on the part of the Administration.
.
Der Spiegel – The Real Story of ‘Curveball’: How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq
This all sounds very good, but this scenario seems nowhere near to being realized. I don’t oppose seeing more evidence. And the idea of forcing Russia and China to put more chips on the table in defending the Assad’ regime’s use of nerve gas sounds good. Perhaps if forced to do that they’d blink.
The best possible scenario would be for both Russia and China to turn on Syria and threaten to join in with the strikes. Were that to happen Russia would probably be able to negotiate a surrender of the Assad circle. But that leaves us with the unacceptable “retire to a nice villa on the Arabian Sea” outcome.
But the idea of arresting Assad and his inner circle w/o use of military force seems the stuff of fantasy. How exactly is this to happen without forcing it to happen?
What is downright impossible is your call for this force to be applied by nations that are not the USA nor her close allies. Iraq’s army is incapable of defending Iraq still, much less invading Syria. Jordan’s army has always been to small to consider such a thing. Lebanon’s even more so.
This leaves Israel and Turkey. Both have a very powerful military but both also qualify as close US allies.
With that we are out of nations bordering Syria and with them we are out of nations capable of projecting sufficient power into Syria to do the job. The practical fact of the matter is very few nations have the ability to deploy large forces far from their own borders. And virtually every single one of them is a close US ally. With, of course, the most capable of all the US itself.
Which brings us to a final point. By asking for far less capable militaries to accomplish this deed, you are calling for far more civilian destruction and far more innocent civilian death than would happen with a US/allied intervention. Not to mention the huge battle casualties which would be suffered by the invader and the defending Syrian soldiers themselves.
Closely matched opponents tend to fight long drawn out wars. Only when one side can completely overmatch the other does the loser collpase quickly. The nations on your list of acceptables do not have vast stealthy air forces and mid-air refueling. They do not have hige navies with support bases and teh ability to transport invasion armies. They have much the same equipment as Syria has: tanks, artillery, and infantry. But Syria would have the advantage of diggin g in to defend her own territory.
Egypt has a large military. We can even say for purposes of this discussion that she is not in the middle of her own crisis which will keep the Egyptian military focused on Egypt for a long time. But Egypt cannot reach Syria w/o driving through Israel (fat chance) or having the US Navy transport it there (huge training problems for that but we’ll ignore those too.)
Problem is none of that happens w/ US and/or Israeli assistance and that would be seen as much the same thing as the US or Israel doing the act themselves. Not to mention Egypt too is seen as a “close US Ally”.
I know a lot of people using this site do not like the idea of the US as world policeman. I know many are bending over backwards hoping to find an excuse that Assad did not do the deed. But those are the facts in this world we live in.
Assad’s team did the deed. And if anything is to be done about it, either Russia at a minimum would have to turn on Syria, or the US military will be involved.
The US military and her close allies are the only forces capable of intervening in Syria in the force needed to avoid even longer, bloodier fighting. That may be as distasteful as distasteful can be, but that’s just the way things are.
The crux of the disagreement between the ‘political solution’ envisaged by the US, on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other is whether it includes an Assad-led entity, perhaps a rump Ba’ath Alawite Syria in coastal areas with a safe haven for Christians.
This isn’t a terrible idea, really, but constituted originally a problem for the US, and probably Israel, which is committed to seeing the party and Assad removed from power as they are both an ally of Iran and Hezbollah and have had a long history of meddling in Lebanon and threatening Israel. Never mind the aspirations of the rebels which demand his removal, with or without his head.
Now that the US has doubts about the rebel coalition avoiding Sunni dominance or influence they are probably more open to a rump Alawite Syria. The beauty of hanging the war crimes on Assad, assuming he’s guilty, is that Russia has to let go of his leadership as a strategy in their proposals. Maybe this brings the two sides closer together. China must be alarmed by now and perhaps Iran too.
I’m not sure I follow this scenario exactly. This suggestions carves out a new nation from the NW Syrian shore area and hands it to the Assad dynasty? That seems a non-starter on many levels. The most significant of which* would be that if the post-Ottoman boerders are redrawn to create an Alawite nation, all the post-ottoman borders are in danger of unraveling. If an Alawite nation why not a Kurdistan? Maybe both of those would be Good Things but hoo-boy many other groups will not like it.
It’s no doubt a major mess no matter what decisions are made. And again I include the decision to do nothing on that list.
(* Ask me again in a few dyas and maybe there’ll be another item atop the list.)
Yeah, nobody’s formally proposing balkanising Syria at this point. But it defeats me how one would otherwise protect the Alawite and Christian populations. The Kurdistan proposal would be virulently opposed by Turkey and resisted by Iraq; but there’s a de facto Kurdish province in Iraq already. And the Syrian Kurdish rebels are taking on the Sunni salafi rebel factions now. It is an unholy mess, to be sure.
I may be overstating the pretzel Russia, the US and China might be willing to bake to get out of this with their pipelines and alliances intact but something has got to give; in a way Assad, by accident or design, has hastened the reckoning.
See for yourself, every proposal has died on the starting block so far. And they are all pretty vague about anything beyond a cease-fire.
I know a lot of people using this site do not like the idea of the US as world policeman. I know many are bending over backwards hoping to find an excuse that Assad did not do the deed. But those are the facts in this world we live in.
You really are an ignorant tool, aren’t you?
And, don’t forget those Iraqi WMD’s are in Syria. Remember, they were smuggled out in the back pocket of someone’s jeans. Or, something like that . . .
Is that an aluminum tube in your pocket or are you glad to see me?
Why not, if the western community has really proof that Assad et al. used CW, indict them in The Hague instead of bombing and killing more children and women. Sofar the record of the international court is not to bad.
It always sounds like they will be bombing Assad, but he will be in a save place. Who will suffer is again the people at most of all children.
The Hague would be better in my opinion, than punishing breaking the international law by breaking the international law. By bombing Syria the US puts it self at the same level as Assad.
But what would the US arms manufacturers do if we didn’t go bomb the shit out of some non-threat every couple of years or so? Gotta use up some of that inventory before we can buy more.
So let the Germans attack Syria, if they’ve a mind to.
Yankee stay home.
These assholes in DC will go on forever, always finding desperately important reasons for one war after another.
It just never fucking stops.
To hell with it.
Ever since the Treaty of Fort Hunt the US has done the killing for Germany.