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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; chemical weapons</title>
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		<title>Saddam&#8217;s WMDs: The Left&#8217;s Iraq Lies Exposed</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/saddams-wmds-the-lefts-iraq-lies-exposed/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=saddams-wmds-the-lefts-iraq-lies-exposed</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2014 04:58:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WMD]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234626</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where is the apology to the Bush administration?  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BN-DI219_0619ic_G_20140619114229.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234688" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/BN-DI219_0619ic_G_20140619114229-450x300.jpg" alt="BN-DI219_0619ic_G_20140619114229" width="255" height="170" /></a>The recent turmoil in Iraq brought on by the rise of the Sunni extremist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has ironically struck a blow to the American Left’s endlessly repeated narrative that there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq prior to the war. The State Department and other U.S. government officials have revealed that ISIS now occupies the Al Muthanna Chemicals Weapons Complex. Al Muthanna was Saddam Hussein’s <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/10910868/Iraq-crisis-Obama-may-launch-air-strikes-without-Congress-amid-calls-for-Maliki-to-go-live.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">primary</span></a> chemical weapons facility, and it is located less than 50 miles from Baghdad.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Obama administration claims that the weapons in that facility, which include sarin, mustard gas, and nerve agent VX, manufactured to prosecute the war against Iran in the 1980s, do not pose a threat because they are old, contaminated and hard to move. &#8220;We do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military value and it would be very difficult, if not impossible to safely move the materials,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The administration’s dubious rationale is based on information provided by the Iraq Study Group, which was tasked with finding WMDs in the war’s aftermath. They found the chemical weapons at Al Muthanna, but they determined that both Iraq wars and inspections by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) had successfully dismantled the facility, and that the remaining chemical weapons were rendered useless and sealed in bunkers. The report called the weapons facility &#8220;a wasteland full of destroyed chemical munitions, razed structures, and unusable war-ravaged facilities,” the 2004 <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/chap5_annxB.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">report</span></a> stated.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Yet other sections of the same report were hardly reassuring. &#8220;Stockpiles of chemical munitions are still stored there,” it stated. &#8220;The most dangerous ones have been declared to the UN and are sealed in bunkers. Although declared, the bunkers&#8217; contents have yet to be confirmed.” It added, &#8220;These areas of the compound pose a hazard to civilians and potential black-marketers.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Another <a href="http://cns.miis.edu/stories/100304_iraq_cw_legacy.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">report</span></a> paints an even more disturbing picture of the Muthanna facility. It warned that the number and status of Saddam&#8217;s sarin-filled rockets was unknown because facilities were not able to be inspected, leaving investigators only able to surmise about the weapons&#8217; condition. Even in degraded conditions, the report said, these rockets still posed a proliferation risk:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Although the damaged Bunker 13 at Muthanna contained thousands of sarin-filled rockets, the presence of leaking munitions and unstable propellant and explosive charges made it too hazardous for UNSCOM inspectors to enter. Because the rockets could not be recovered safely, Iraq declared the munitions in Bunker 13 as &#8216;destroyed in the Gulf War&#8217; and they were not included in the inventory of chemical weapons eliminated under UNSCOM supervision.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Because of the hazardous conditions in Bunker 13, UNSCOM inspectors were unable to make an accurate inventory of its contents before sealing the entrances in 1994. As a result, no record exists of the exact number or status of the sarin-filled rockets remaining in the bunker. &#8230; In the worst-case scenario, the munitions could contain as much as 15,000 liters of sarin. Although it is likely that the nerve agent has degraded substantially after nearly two decades of storage under suboptimal conditions, UNMOVIC cautioned that &#8216;the levels of degradation of the sarin fill in the rockets cannot be determined without exploring the bunker and taking samples from intact warheads.&#8217; If the sarin remains highly toxic and many of the rockets are still intact, they could pose a proliferation risk.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #232323;">Nonetheless, U.S. officials, who claimed they were well aware of the facility insisted that the United States wouldn’t have left it there if it were a genuine threat. They also continued to stress that the takeover by ISIS doesn’t constitute a military gain by the group because the weapons would prove useless, even if ISIS were able to penetrated the sealed bunkers where they are stored. ISIS has reportedly yet to gain access to the bunkers.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">However, there are numerous holes in these assessments. The Obama administration, eager to leave a &#8220;sovereign, stable, and self-reliant Iraq” as the president <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/380810/disaster-his-own-making-charles-krauthammer"><span style="color: #1255cc;">described</span></a> it in 2011, paid little heed to the prospect of large swaths of that nation being overrun by terrorists who have taken over key cities and military bases, and confiscated sophisticated American military equipment in the process. One defense official conceded as much, telling the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> that had they known the Maliki government would lose control so soon, they might not have left the weapons behind. And Psaki’s contention that the weapons could not be moved safely even by terrorists is hardly reassuring when one considers the reality that ISIS uses suicide bombings as one of it <a href="http://www.syriadeeply.org/articles/2013/10/2558/suicide-bombs-isiss-military-tactic/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">chief</span></a> military tactics.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">A far more critical consideration is the possibility that many of the Iraqi Sunnis who have joined ISIS due in large part to their alienation by the Shi’ite-dominated government of Nouri al-Maliki are comprised of former Saddam Hussein loyalists, some of whom may have working knowledge of the chemical weapons stored at Al Muthanna. Former WMD specialist Paul Perrone extrapolated on where such working knowledge might lead. &#8220;I&#8217;m more concerned with the prospect that these Muslim terrorists have access to formulas or precursors that would enable them to create their own WMD,” he warned.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The latest revelations on the details of Saddam&#8217;s weapons stockpile, now potentially in the hands of Sunni radicals, affirm the Bush administration&#8217;s characterization of Iraq as a territory situated in a hotbed of radicalism, flooded with a bevy of highly dangerous weapons and overseen by a criminal rogue regime. Indeed, the WMDs are to say nothing of the Hussein government&#8217;s nuclear weapons program, also put to a stop by intervention in Iraq. In 2008, American and Iraqi officials had &#8220;completed nearly the last chapter in dismantling Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program with the removal of hundreds of tons of natural uranium from the country’s main nuclear site,” the <i>New York Times</i> <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html?_r=2&amp;">reported</a>.</span> Approximately 600 tons of “yellowcake” was removed from the Tuwaitha facility, the main site for Iraq&#8217;s nuclear program. <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/tuwaitha.htm"><span style="color: #1255cc;">According</span></a> to global <a href="http://security.org/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">security.org</span></a>, uranium enrichment levels of 95 percent were achieved at the Tuwaitha facility. That site was also the location of the Osirak nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel in 1981.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And in what sounded like a harbinger of the future, the <i>Times</i> noted that although the yellowcake could not be used in its current form to produce a nuclear device or dirty bomb, the “unstable environment” in Iraq necessitated its removal, lest it fall into the “wrong hands.” In an updated correction to the article, the <i>Times</i> notes that the Osriak nuclear reactor “theoretically produced plutonium, which can fuel an atomic bomb.”</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">The Left dismissed this reality by claiming the yellowcake had been in Iraq prior to 1991 and thus was not the same yellowcake Bush referred to in his 2003 State of the Union address as part of his justification for invading Iraq. Led by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, the emboldened anti-war Left attempted to turn the claim into a scandal saying that Bush knowingly lied to the American public regarding Iraq’s effort to procure yellowcake from Niger.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Ultimately, Wilson and his story were <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2064"><span style="color: #1255cc;">thoroughly discredited</span></a> a year later by a Senate Select Committee report, which further noted that President Bush had been fully justified in including the infamous “16 words” regarding that intelligence in his speech. Moreover the left has never bothered to explain why yellowcake procured before 1991 was any less dangerous in terms of its WMD potential, given Saddam Hussein’s regular defiance of international law also enunciated by Bush as one of the primary reasons for deposing him.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In 2010, documents procured by Wikileaks revealed more information on the WMD threat posed by Iraq that was known to the government. The self-described whistleblowers, who could hardly be called pro-war, released 392,000 military reports from Iraq that revealed several instances of American encounters with potential WMDs or their manufacture. These included 1200 gallons of a <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/7726706C-22D1-404B-B73C-5BB9F23BD1ED/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">liquid mustard agent</span></a> in Samarra that tested positive for a blister agent; <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/7726706C-22D1-404B-B73C-5BB9F23BD1ED/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">tampering</span></a> by large earth movers thought to be attempting to penetrate the bunkers at Muthanna; the <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/ECC9C0F2-5A52-4DA3-AC76-ECC421663C40/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">discovery</span></a> of a chemical lab and a <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/34B3B909-B0E3-4286-BF06-96B65A121702/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">chemical cache</span></a> in Fallujah; and the discovery of a cache of weapons <a href="http://warlogs.wikileaks.org/id/151E7734-E81A-D113-5818DB36E7BABD4F/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hidden</span></a> at an Iraqi Community Watch checkpoint with 155MM rounds that subsequently tested positive for mustard.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Foreign involvement with WMDs in Iraq was documented as well. A war log from January 2006 <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/iraq/warlogs/D3127776-BF22-4583-81BD-4DB8CD7F9357"><span style="color: #1255cc;">speaks</span></a> of 50 neuroparalytic projectiles smuggled into Iraq from Iran via Al Basrah; Syrian chemical weapons specialists who came in to support the “chemical weapons operations of Hizballah Islami” (Hezbollah); and an Al Qaeda chemical weapons expert from Saudi Arabia sent to assist 200 individuals awaiting an opportunity to attack coalition forces with Sarin. As Wired Magazine <a href="http://www.wired.com/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">characterized</span></a> it, the Wikileaks documents revealed that for several years after the initial invasion, &#8220;U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.”</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Left-wing members in Congress were certainly aware of these threats and more posed by the Hussein regime, which lead them to unanimously authorize war and even vocally champion its necessity. Their assessment was based on nothing less than the very intelligence known to the Bush administration at the time. Secretary of State John Kerry, as a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations before war was authorized, <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2013/09/kerry-spins-his-record-on-iraq/">said</a>, &#8220;There&#8217;s no question in my mind that Saddam Hussein has to be toppled one way or another, but the question is how&#8221; and that there was likewise &#8220;no question&#8221; that Hussein &#8220;continues to pursue weapons of mass destruction, and his success can threaten both our interests in the region and our security at home.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intoned in 2002:</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="color: #323333;"><span style="color: #444444;">In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members &#8230; It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p style="color: #323333;">Justifying her well-known position, Clinton said later said in a 2003 interview with Code Pink, &#8220;<span style="color: #000000;">I ended up voting for the resolution after carefully reviewing the information, intelligence that I had available, talking with people whose opinions I trusted &#8230; I would love to agree with [Code Pink], but I can&#8217;t, based on my own understanding and assessment of the situation.&#8221; </span></p>
<p style="color: #323333;">However, these statements were made in the wake of 9/11 when Democrats sensed hawkishness was the key to their political fortunes. A few short years later, sabotaging the war that they had started and betraying the troops that they had sent to the field was where Democrats&#8217; political futures lied. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and others made this transition through a blatant campaign of deceit that went virtually unchallenged by the media. Clinton, for example, averred on the campaign trail, &#8220;[I]<span style="color: #000000;">f we had known then what we know now there never would have been a vote and I never would have voted to give this President that authority&#8221; and claimed that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/13/hillary-clinton-defends-2_n_81261.html">she didn&#8217;t know</a> that her vote for the &#8220;Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002&#8243; was a vote for war. </span></p>
<p style="color: #323333;">The con is still on going. In September of last year, Secretary Kerry brazenly <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/09/10/kerrys-claim-that-he-opposed-bushs-invasion-of-iraq/">asserted</a> that he and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had &#8220;opposed the president&#8217;s decision to go into Iraq&#8221; and that &#8220;evidence was used to persuade all of us that authority ought to be given.&#8221; Chuck Hagel, in fact, also voted in favor of the war before jumping ship, forsaking the lost lives he squandered in the field and joining with the hard left. As for the &#8220;manipulated evidence&#8221; canard cited by Kerry, the latest details of Saddam&#8217;s WMD stockpile &#8212; something there can be no doubt that the Secretary of State was aware of &#8212; exposes yet again the left&#8217;s great deception on the danger of Hussein and the motivation behind the Iraq war.</p>
<p style="color: #323333;">And now ISIS, disowned by al Qaeda for being even more ruthless than it is, controls a chemical facility containing contents declared &#8220;destroyed&#8221; because they couldn’t be recovered safely, along with bunkers containing contents “yet to be confirmed.” And an administration with an unparalleled facility for lying assures us everything will be fine because the chemical weapons have no useful military value and can’t be moved safely.  As with the rest of the Left&#8217;s handling of Iraq, this is an analysis that no one should have faith in.</p>
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		</item>
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		<title>Can You Hear Me Now?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/can-you-hear-me-now/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=can-you-hear-me-now</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/can-you-hear-me-now/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Sep 2013 04:22:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Bush]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saddam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204523</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Remember when President Bush said Saddam sent Iraq's chemical weapons into Syria?]]></description>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Syria Spin</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/obamas-syria-spin/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-syria-spin</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Sep 2013 04:54:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204377</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A diplomatic victory?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/barack-obama-george-stephanopoulos.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-204378" alt="barack-obama-george-stephanopoulos" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/barack-obama-george-stephanopoulos-432x350.jpg" width="259" height="210" /></a>Even with the assistance of his media minions, President Obama is failing to articulate any kind of a rational defense of the administration&#8217;s nonsensical, on-again, off-again policy toward Syria.</span></b></p>
<p>Yet somehow despite Obama&#8217;s bumbling on the domestic and world stages, Russia and the United States agreed Saturday to take custody of Syria&#8217;s stockpile of chemical weapons by the middle of next year. Syria is required to hand over an inventory of the illicit weapons within a week.</p>
<p>U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry <a href="http://m.washingtonpost.com/world/officials-us-wont-seek-un-approval-for-strike-if-syria-reneges-on-chemical-arms-pact/2013/09/13/a203b068-1cb3-11e3-80ac-96205cacb45a_print.html">said</a> the pact will be backed up by a UN Security Council resolution. Noncompliance could lead to sanctions or other actions, he said. Kerry said the inspections could begin by November and that destruction of the weapons could get underway in 2014. Assad sent a letter Thursday to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon promising that he will sign the international treaty that bans chemical weapons today.</p>
<p>Then the games will begin. The parties are likely to negotiate the same kind of weapons inspections regime that the world saw in Saddam Hussein&#8217;s Iraq and Kim Jong-il&#8217;s North Korea. Even if inspectors are allowed to locate and examine the weapons, it is far from clear how they will be able to seize and destroy them while Syria&#8217;s increasingly brutal two-and-a-half year-old civil war continues to rage.</p>
<p>Obama is now claiming that this supposed diplomatic victory is related to his effort to obtain authorization from Congress to use force against the Syrian regime. In fact Obama backed away from the congressional push when it became obvious that Congress would have turned him down.</p>
<p>This means that unless Obama was willing to cause a constitutional crisis by acting against Syria without congressional approval, there was no credible threat to use force.</p>
<p>But happily things still turned out according to his secret master plan, Obama <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/09/obama-defends-shifting-syria-policy-im-less-concerned-about-style-points/">told</a> ABC&#8217;s George Stephanopoulos.</p>
<p>It may not have appeared &#8220;smooth and disciplined and linear,&#8221; but it&#8217;s working, he offered.</p>
<p>“I’m less concerned about style points. I’m much more concerned with getting the policy right,” said Obama who has been using the Syrian regime&#8217;s alleged use of chemical weapons as a pretext for helping al-Qaeda and the other Islamofascist terrorists now fighting Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s forces.</p>
<p>Obama then acknowledged an assist provided by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia&#8217;s diplomatic plan has put the U.S. “definitely in a better position,” Obama said.</p>
<p>“My entire goal throughout this exercise is to make sure what happened on Aug. 21 does not happen again,” Obama said, referring to a large-scale chemical weapons attack outside Damascus that he claimed killed more than 1,400 civilians.</p>
<p>“We have the possibility of making sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.</p>
<p>Leftist lapdogs who earn their living whitewashing Obama&#8217;s record continue to push the president&#8217;s proposed alliance with al-Qaeda in Syria without acknowledging that Obama wants to work with the same people who flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon just 12 years ago.</p>
<p>Obama-worshippers deal in different ways with the unpleasantness of the cognitive dissonance they experience from defending the president.</p>
<p>For example, at Daily Kos, senior policy editor Jed Lewison mocked Syrian President Assad for his self-serving but factually accurate observation about the enemy he&#8217;s fighting in Syria.</p>
<p>During Charlie Rose&#8217;s recent English-language <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57601934/assad-says-any-u.s-strike-on-syria-is-going-to-support-al-qaeda/">interview</a> with Assad on CBS, the dictator said the U.S. should not attack the Syrian government because doing so &#8220;is going to support al-Qaeda and the same people that kill[ed] Americans in the 11[th] of September.&#8221;</p>
<p>Although it is an objective fact that Obama is supporting al-Qaeda, which orchestrated the 9/11 attacks and is a major player in the coalition fighting Assad, Lewison <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/09/09/1237526/-Assad-Attack-would-support-al-Qaeda#">criticizes</a> Assad by name instead of Obama:</p>
<blockquote><p>Personally, I find Assad&#8217;s scaremongering against attacking about as convincing as I find the scaremongering in favor of attacking, but I guess at least there&#8217;s one thing that that the scaremongers can all agree on: That if you&#8217;re not with them, then you&#8217;re with Al Qaeda.</p></blockquote>
<p>Lewison, a former mouthpiece for Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), is also editor of Daily Kos TV.</p>
<p>A Media Matters blogger who has strategized with Obama at the White House also doesn&#8217;t seem to grasp that the president wants to arm al-Qaeda.</p>
<p>After Ayman al-Zawahiri called last week for Muslims to attack inside the U.S., Obama supplicant Oliver Willis <a href="https://twitter.com/owillis/status/378737264018591744">denounced</a> the al-Qaeda leader on Twitter. &#8220;[T]his ass can&#8217;t die quick enough,&#8221; wrote Willis without a hint of irony.</p>
<p>Fresh from humiliating Obama, Putin <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/14/report-putin-to-travel-to-iran-for-nuclear-strategy-talks/">plans to visit</a> Tehran to help craft a strategy for Iran&#8217;s nuclear program, which is believed to be a front for developing nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>Obama is eager to bow before the new leader of the Islamofascist regime in Tehran, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, and has acknowledged reaching out to him. A meeting between the two <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/15/obama-rouhani-united-nations-meeting">may take place</a> at the United Nations as soon as this week.</p>
<p>Obama said he is cautiously optimistic that Putin will be a reliable partner in the process in Syria, while at the same time slighting him. “I don’t think that Mr. Putin has the same values that we do,” Obama said, replying to the Russian president&#8217;s controversial <i>New York Times</i> op-ed that rejected &#8220;American exceptionalism.&#8221;</p>
<p>Funny. It was just two years ago that Obama pronounced the idea of American exceptionalism meaningless by saying that every country believes it is exceptional.</p>
<p>“I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” Obama said at the time.</p>
<p>In this, Obama and Putin are on the same page.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Israel Sobered By Syria Debacle</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/davidhornik/israel-sobered-by-syria-debacle/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-sobered-by-syria-debacle</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Sep 2013 04:15:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203994</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Netanyahu: We can only rely on ourselves.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/0519_World_-NetanyahuSyria_full_600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203995" alt="0519_World_-NetanyahuSyria_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/0519_World_-NetanyahuSyria_full_600-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>Saturday marks Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar and, this year, the 40<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, the greatest trauma in Israeli history.</span></b></p>
<p>On the morning of October 6, 1973—the day on which Yom Kippur fell that year—Chief of Staff David Elazar met with Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to warn that the Egyptian and Syrian armies were about to attack Israel. Elazar urged a preemptive strike; six years earlier, in the Six-Day War, Israel’s preemptive strike had proved highly effective.</p>
<p>But Meir and Dayan, who were under heavy pressure from U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger not to preempt, overruled the chief of staff. The result was near-catastrophic as later that day the Egyptian and Syrian armies attacked first and took battlefield advantages while inflicting heavy casualties.</p>
<p>Israel was able to turn the tide and, with the help of a massive U.S. airlift, prevail. But the price was almost 2700 casualties and a country shocked, depressed, and shaken to its roots.</p>
<p>It all comes back with added force as Israel faces a new year (on the Jewish calendar) with Iran closer than ever to crossing the nuclear threshold. The question—now as then—is how much to work in synch with the U.S. and how much—and at what point—to take matters in one’s own hands.</p>
<p><i>Israel Hayom </i><a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=11925">reports</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Ever since U.S. President Barack Obama surprised the world by seeking congressional approval for a military strike on Syria, concerns have grown among Israeli government officials in Jerusalem about a decline of America’s status in the Middle East and the implications for Iran’s nuclear program. No Israeli spokesperson has made an official statement on the issue….</i></p></blockquote>
<p>On Wednesday, though, addressing a graduation ceremony for navy cadets, both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon made statements that have been taken as implicitly critical of Obama’s <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/fifteen-minutes-of-foreign-policy-malfeasance/">confused, dithering approach</a> to the Syrian chemical-weapons issue.</p>
<p>Netanyahu, invoking a “rule” from the ancient Jewish sage Hillel, said:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>It…must be ensured that the Syrian regime will be disarmed of its chemical weapons, and the world needs to make certain that those who use weapons of mass destruction will pay the price for it. The message that Syria receives will be clearly heard in Iran.</i></p>
<p><i>Today, the rule that has guided me in most of my actions as prime minister and to which I adhere very carefully is perhaps more valid than ever. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us? And the practical translation of this rule is that Israel will always be able to defend itself by itself against any threat.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Yaalon said in a similar vein:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>We don’t know how the Egyptian revolution will end or how Iran’s race toward nuclear weapons will be stopped. We don’t yet know how the free world will act in light of the massacres in Syria. We are monitoring events and developments responsibly and with sound judgment, with the understanding that ultimately we must</i> <i>rely on ourselves, on our strength and our deterrent capability.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Since at least the start of Netanyahu’s previous prime ministerial term in 2009, the Israeli top echelons have been bitterly riven by a debate over whether or not to trust Washington and the “international community” to handle the Iranian nuclear issue.</p>
<p>Reportedly, when Netanyahu and his then defense minister, Ehud Barak, ordered the defense establishment to prepare a plan to attack Iran, the defense establishment balked and, in effect, refused—and particularly the then Mossad chief, Shin Bet (domestic security) chief, and chief of staff.</p>
<p>After stepping down, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin went public (for instance, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi6YDTC0Rb4">here</a> and <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Former-Shin-Bet-chief-slams-messianic-PM-Barak">here</a>, respectively) with ridicule for Netanyahu and Barak’s hawkishness on the Iranian issue amid assurances that Israel could rely on President Obama and the “international community.”</p>
<p>Although Dagan and Diskin are quiet these days, one wonders if they still feel so sure after Obama’s bungling of the Syrian issue, the British Parliament’s ringing slap to Prime Minister David Cameron, and the “international community’s” usual gullible quest for an easy “solution”—possibly Russian president Vladimir Putin’s <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/why-russia-plan-for-syria-wont-work-2013-9">patently unworkable idea</a> for Syria to give up its chemical stockpiles.</p>
<p>Jerusalem needs to stay mindful of the Yom Kippur War precedent and of the fact that, after the last two weeks, the chances of the West posing a “credible threat” to Tehran are lower than ever.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>The Shiite Coalition and Obama&#8217;s Impotence</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/majid-rafizadeh/the-shiite-coalition-and-obamas-disaster/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-shiite-coalition-and-obamas-disaster</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Sep 2013 04:03:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Majid Rafizadeh]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203991</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Iran, Hezbollah and Assad get the message.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/2349077637.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203992" alt="2349077637" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/2349077637-450x348.jpg" width="315" height="244" /></a>The hesitant, premature, indecisive, inconsistent, and uninformed foreign policy initiatives of President Barack Obama on the Assad regime are working towards undermining American credibility, power, prestige, and legitimacy in the international community and the Middle East. From the perspective of Russian and Chinese leaders, the Obama administration has projected a crucially weak geopolitical position.  These undetermined and ambiguous foreign policy moves toward the Middle East and Syria are significantly contributing to emboldening the Shiite-Islamist coalition of Iranian clerics, Ayatollahs, Hezbollah, and Assad’s regime.</p>
<p>Firstly, President Obama has not yet articulated a concrete foreign policy plan for Syria as the conflict enters its third year, with the Islamists beginning to emerge as the more coordinated, and organized, battlefield winners.  For the first 15 months of the Syrian uprising, the Obama administration preferred to act as a bystander, merely reacting as events unfolded in Syria while Russia, Iran, China, and Hezbollah led. Afterwards, when regional and international pressures to act began to pile up— and when American legitimacy and values were questioned—the Obama administration issued a red line for the use of chemical weapons.  More precisely, Obama stated, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus… That would change my equation… We’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans.”</p>
<p>A central principle of international affairs— directly linked to credibility, legitimacy, and the global image of a state— is warning, issuing a red line, declaring an ultimatum, and delivering definitive statements to the international community or other states. Geopolitical and geostrategic foreign policies of ruling nations generally indicate that a state should not warn other states of serious repercussions, unless it fully intends to implement its demanded policies if the drawn red line is crossed.</p>
<p>After President Barack Obama issued his warning, 13 reports on the use of chemical weapons came out from Israeli, French, and British intelligence. Due to the fact that the Obama administration did not have any particular foreign policy plan towards Syria from the beginning, the administration first began by dodging questions related to these reports. In addition, the administration’s argument for not following up on its own political warning focused on several notions: pointing out that they were not cognizant of who indeed used the chemical weapons, where the weapons were precisely utilized, and whether the rebels were in possession of the chemical weapons or the Assad regime. The Obama administration then changed positions, stating that chemical weapons where used in “varying degrees,” which would not qualify as crossing the red line. Apparently, the red line meant using chemical weapons in large amounts.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, after Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders)—a credible international organization— presented a report on the use of chemical weapons, the Obama administration was further pushed to address the red line that was issued almost over a year ago.</p>
<p>While there were no specific foreign policy goals on the Syrian issue, President Obama warned that America would conduct limited military strikes. Geopolitically and geostrategically speaking, what was the purpose of such policy? There does not seem to have been any sort of national security plan that this military operation would have accomplished. This strike would not even have worked towards fundamentally altering the balance of power on the ground in Syria. Besides spending millions of dollars, the objectives of such military strikes are not at all clear. It would be difficult to refer to any definite geopolitical, national, and economic interests that these limited military strikes would bring about. Additionally, the overwhelming majority of UN member states and European countries have opposed it.</p>
<p>As the Obama administration saw the reactions from other ally states towards its ambiguous and “wait and see” foreign policy plan, President Obama attempted to defer the case to the Congress and avoid responsibility for two reasons. Primarily, this move was intended to throw blame on Congress in case of another catastrophic event occurring in Syria and in the region. Second, by deferring the case to Congress, President Obama could project the picture that he is not taking unilateral military action, but rather seeking congressional authorization as a fundamental part of the democratic system. As a result, President Obama will seek credit for himself in both these scenarios, being a political winner in any case.</p>
<p>Finally, the indeterminate and indecisive foreign policies of the Obama administration have fundamentally contributed to emboldening the Shiite coalition of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Assad regime. As President Obama keeps issuing red lines and changing his rhetoric, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and Assad’s regime have received a clear and formidable message about the Obama administration’s weak position. This has also contributed to damaging America&#8217;s global image and diplomatic prestige.</p>
<p>These countries and non-state actors— supported by Moscow and Beijing— have been empowered to the extent that their lawmakers and leaders are explicitly undermining the U.S., threatening it and its ally Israel.</p>
<p>For example, according to Hussein Sheikholeslam, the director general of the Iranian parliament’s International Affairs bureau and a senior Iranian lawmaker, the United States would not dare attack Syria, but if it does, “the Zionist regime will be the first victim.” On Monday, Sheikholeslam was quoted on Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency saying: “No military attack will be waged against Syria… Yet, if such an incident takes place, which is impossible, the Zionist regime will be the first victim of a military attack on Syria.” Contrastingly, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of the Republican Guards’ elite Basij paramilitary force, shrugged off any potential Western military response, stating that “[the Americans] are incapable of starting a new war in the region, because of their lacking economic capabilities and their lack of morale.”</p>
<p>More fundamentally, Iranian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi solidified Iran’s stance under Hassan Rowhani’s presidency by emphasizing that Iran is resolved and determined to defend Syria and Assad’s apparatuses. Araghchi stated in a news conference in Tehran: “We want to strongly warn against any military attack in Syria. There will definitely be perilous consequences for the region,” adding, “these complications and consequences will not be restricted to Syria. It will engulf the whole region.”</p>
<p>Considering international politics, the lack of a clear foreign policy agenda and issuing an ambiguous and vague red line, are more detrimental to national security and global geopolitical status than implementing many other, more real and physical, foreign policy gaffs.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Russia Rising</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/russia-rising/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=russia-rising</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Sep 2013 04:30:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[After checkmating Obama, Putin ramps up his quest for regional hegemony. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/put.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-203967" alt="put" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/put.jpg" width="276" height="182" /></a></p>
<p>Following up on its proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles under international control for inspection and destruction, Russia submitted its plan to implement this proposal to the United States for review. One day after President Obama’s prime time televised speech in which he called for a diplomatic pause before moving forward with any military action against the Assad regime, Secretary of State John Kerry sounded a hopeful note. He liked what he heard from his phone conversation on Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whom, Kerry said, &#8220;had some interesting observations about the ways in which he thinks we might be able to achieve this.&#8221; This situation is not likely to be resolve so simply, however, and geopolitical complications appear to be mounting, as Russian President Putin senses his advantage and Obama&#8217;s weakness.</p>
<p>Kerry and Lavrov are to meet in Geneva on Thursday to try and reach agreement on securing Syria’s chemical weapons, which Kerry reiterated must contain an &#8220;ongoing verifiable process&#8221; with &#8220;unlimited&#8221; access by international inspectors to all Syrian chemical weapons sites. &#8220;This cannot be a game. And that we have made very, very clear to the Russians,&#8221; Kerry insisted.</p>
<p>The problem for Kerry and his feckless boss is that, to the Russians, this is little else but a game. And the Obama administration is being played. Putin helped Obama get out of the corner in which he painted himself – at least temporarily – but at a steep price. Sensing Obama’s ambivalence and the likelihood that he would lose a vote in Congress for authority to launch a punitive strike against Syria, Putin pounced. The wily former KGB agent has managed to gain the moral high ground while Obama looks like a combination of a paper tiger and a deer caught in the headlights.</p>
<p>Russia is demanding that Obama foreswear the future use of any military force against Syria. It opposed a draft UN Security Council resolution put forward by France, with U.S. and British backing, which would have authorized the use of force if Syria reneged on the transfer of all of its chemical weapons to international control. Give peace a chance, Putin is telling Obama, all the while chuckling as he outflanks the Nobel Peace Prize-winning U.S. president as the anti-war world leader.</p>
<p>Yet while Putin projects a peacemaking image to the world, he is busy sending arms to the Assad regime as well as to Assad’s friends in Iran. He is renewing his offer to supply Iran with sophisticated S-300 air defense missile systems as well as offering to build a second reactor for the Bushehr nuclear plant. Putin and the new, supposedly more “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rowhani will be discussing &#8220;questions of military technical cooperation&#8221; at a summit meeting this Friday, according to Putin&#8217;s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.</p>
<p>Putin’s interest in advancing an international monitoring plan for Syria’s chemical weapons, while continuing to arm Syria and Iran, is designed to enhance Russia’s influence in the critical Middle Eastern Shiite arc at the expense of the United States and its allies. Russia also wants to maintain its naval base in Syria as well as build a bulwark against Sunni jihadist expansion from the Middle East into the North Caucasus and the rest of Russia. Putin is not about to let Syria slip out of Assad’s hands if he can help it.</p>
<p>From the perspective of Putin’s overriding interest to keep the Assad regime in power, his international monitoring proposal makes Machiavellian sense. The devil is in the details of monitoring and enforcement. Who would be responsible? Assuming that the United Nations is called upon to provide chemical weapons inspectors for the mammoth task of verification, custody and destruction of Syria’s vast chemical weapons stockpiles, just consider how difficult it was to get even the small UN expert team into Syria, for a short period of time, to investigate past allegations of chemical weapons use. The “modalities,” in UN-speak, took months to negotiate. And we are still waiting for the results from their investigation of the August 21st chemical weapons attack – simply to ascertain that chemical weapons were in fact used, which we all know already, not who used them. We are now told that the results will be made available by this Monday.</p>
<p>Negotiating the mandate and procedures for a more permanent presence of UN chemical weapons inspectors in Syria is sure to run into far more difficulties. As they have already shown, the Russians will not agree to a Security Council resolution with any firm deadline or ultimatum imposed on Syria to surrender its weapons for inspection or face the use of force. Thus, Obama would have to go back into the corner from which Putin rescued him a few days ago. Either he would have to ask Congress for the authority to launch a strike on his own if negotiations with the Syrian regime drag on too long for his taste, or risk domestic and international wrath if he proceeds without any authorization from Congress or the UN Security Council while the UN is still in negotiations.</p>
<p>Even in peacetime situations involving nations that volunteer to give up their chemical weapons, the process of collection, identification, destruction and deactivation can take years. Syria is a war zone. The chemical weapons are dispersed, including in areas where the conflict with the rebels is raging. Security is imperative, as the small UN chemical weapons expert team found out last month when it came under sniper fire and had to temporarily retreat. Even with full cooperation from the Syrian government and military, the al Qaeda forces and their jihadist allies will not stand idly by. They are sure to do everything they can to disrupt the chemical weapons transfer to international control and launch attacks to seize loose chemical weapons for themselves.</p>
<p>As a former UN weapons inspector from Iraq, quoted by the <i>New York Times</i>, said: “We’re talking boots on the ground. Whichever country would be sent in there to try to get the accountability and do the security, and maybe eventually get to the destruction – they will be a target for someone, for one group or another. Because no matter who you are, you get mortared somewhere by one of the parties.”</p>
<p>A Pentagon study concluded that just securing the weapons would take more than 75,000 troops on the ground.  They will obviously be in harm’s way.  Where will they come from?</p>
<p>The United Nations will not say whether there is any contingency planning underway for a UN peacekeeping force to provide security. However, the UN peacekeeping operations are stretched thin as it is, have suffered significant casualties in other missions, and are not set up to handle this kind of massive task.</p>
<p>NATO is a possibility.  Turkey, which is a member of NATO and is a neighbor of Syria’s with the potential for direct exposure to Syria’s chemical weapons, provides a rationale for NATO involvement. However, a NATO-led operation, even if were to be under the auspices of a UN Security Council resolution, is almost certain to run into heavy resistance from Russia, which does not want to see a repeat of the Libya experience. In any case, it is inconceivable that the American people would support a significant commitment of American troops as part of a NATO or other international force contingent, after being assured that there would be no American “boots on the ground” in Syria.</p>
<p>Unless Turkey, Arab League countries and possibly some European countries such as France take up the slack, that leaves Russia itself and the Syrian military as the prime guarantors of security with some other nations’ troops possibly involved for window-dressing. In other words, to carry out Russia’s plan for protected international assumption of control over the Assad regime’s chemical stockpile, the price would be the Assad regime’s retention of power to avoid the specter of complete chaos.</p>
<p>The Assad regime buys significant time. Russia increases its military presence under the pretext of providing security for the transfer to international control. The rebels, including the so-called “moderates” whom the Obama administration says it is supporting, are marginalized.</p>
<p>In short, Russia wins. And the United States, under President Obama, looks weaker than ever.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Fifteen Minutes of Foreign Policy Malfeasance</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/fifteen-minutes-of-foreign-policy-malfeasance/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=fifteen-minutes-of-foreign-policy-malfeasance</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Sep 2013 04:20:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203780</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama takes a bow while America's geopolitical position takes a direct hit. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/1378861871000-AFP-522771470.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203800" alt="1378861871000-AFP-522771470" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/1378861871000-AFP-522771470-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>On the eve of the 12<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the terrorist strikes on 9/11, President Obama last night addressed the nation and reprised every delusional and bankrupt internationalist idea that contributed to that disaster. The current Syrian crisis––merely the latest Middle Eastern example of Obama’s incompetence––exemplifies more thoroughly than the rest just how politicized, incoherent, hypocritical, and dangerous to this country’s security and interests Obama’s foreign policy has been.</p>
<p>Let’s review how Obama got himself and this country into this mess. He came into office as a moralizing internationalist, a fervent champion of international law and multilateralism as necessary restraints on an America exceptional only for its xenophobic swagger and exploitative dominance abroad. He promised to restore democracy, make efforts to reach out to our enemies, and rein in those unilateral, ally-scorning, U.N.-hating Republicans and their itchy trigger fingers. His foreign policy philosophy was encapsulated in his 2007 <i>Foreign Affairs</i> article, in which he promised to use America’s power “not in the spirit of a patron but in the spirit of a partner––a partner mindful of his own imperfections.”</p>
<p>Starting from the assumption that America’s problems in the Middle East were the consequence of our neo-imperialist meddling and arrogance, Obama anxiously stroked the esteem of our enemies, flattering Islam in Cairo in 2009 and bowing low to the Saudi King even as he banished from the White House the bust of Winston Churchill, history’s most famous enemy of appeasement. He purged our military and security establishment of any mention of Islamic jihad, and designated one of the worst jihadist attacks since 9/11, the Fort Hood massacre, as “workplace violence.”</p>
<p>When the so-called Arab Spring exploded in December 2010, he recycled the stale left-wing narrative that American support for autocrats was why other nations despised us, and threw American support and legitimacy behind the gangs of jihadists who were the driving force of the revolutions. Egged on by NATO allies and military pygmies France and England, he used American military power to overthrow Libya’s Ghaddafi, even though that bizarre thug had renounced his nuclear weapons program and was suppressing the jihadists of eastern Libya. He abandoned the reliable Hosni Mubarak in Egypt to empower the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, and then dithered when a military coup drove Morsi from power, unable to forthrightly admit his error and support for an anti-American, anti-Semitic, terrorism-supporting, jihadist gang. And don’t forget, all the while he played footsie with Turkey’s Islamizing, dissident-suppressing, and Israel-hating Prime Minister Erdogan, and gratified <i>bien pensant</i> academics and other lefties by periodically scolding Israel, the left-wing scapegoat for all that’s wrong in the Middle East. Finally, and most important, he continued the charade of “outreach” and sanctions with Iran, serially kicking that nuclear can down the road even as the centrifuges spin and the enriched uranium piles up.</p>
<p>In this dismal catalogue we see the received wisdom and creaking dogma of internationalism. Problems arise from Western imperialism, colonialism, and interference in other countries. The lack of economic development and political freedom accounts for violence and disorder, while Islamic intolerance, supremacism, and theologized violence are mere epiphenomena of those material causes. Summits and shuttle diplomacy and various other diplomatic gabfests are the way to resolve crises and forestall conflict. International institutions and “conventions” that subordinate national interests to global needs and goals are the way to create peace by creating and enforcing “international norms.” American power is problematic and stained by its history, and so the U.S. must be diffident, humble, and accommodating not just to our allies, but also to our enemies.</p>
<p>Most important, for Obama, all this shop-worn idealism provided legitimacy for behavior that is driven by raw politics––the success of his own presidency and that of his party–– and, along with the bumbling John Kerry, that reveals an astonishing incompetence, if not outright stupidity, about how the most powerful country in the world and source of global order must conduct itself in a dangerous world of hard men who aren’t impressed by outreach, flattery, or prostrations of grief, but only by mind-concentrating action. Is it any wonder that every major world leader and two-bit jihadist gang like the Mullahs in Iran take Obama’s lunch money?</p>
<p>So here we are, with a disaster brewing in Syria because this president shot off his mouth about “Assad must go” and “red line” and “change my calculus,” empty rhetoric unconnected to any thoughtful foreign policy strategy, but useful for pacifying his base and the internationalist do-gooders about his commitment to “responsibility to protect” and the international conventions against chemical weapons. Desperate to escape the railroad tracks he tied himself onto, Obama challenged Congress to vote up or down on military strikes. Then like Dudley Do-Right, Russia’s Putin, seizing on an off-the-cuff, half-baked remark by John Kerry, rescued Obama with a spurious diplomatic solution the main effect of which was to elevate Putin into the major power in the region. After all, Obama had struck out in the U.N., had no international material support, was facing repudiation in the House of Representatives, and had two-thirds of Americans opposed to military strikes. What he needed was some breathing space, which Putin’s shrewd move provided for him, at the same time he gave his ally Assad more time to destroy his enemies and squirrel away his stockpiles.</p>
<p>With that background, we can examine last night’s 15-minute speech, which simply recycled the same incoherence and bluster Obama has been trading in for the past few weeks.</p>
<p><i>Sentimentalism</i>: Obama spent many words on describing the horrors of the gas attack, even implausibly linking chemical weapons to the Nazi use of Zyklon-B to murder Jews. And he invited Americans to watch the videos, which means we are to obscure the rational calculations of means and ends to secure our interests and security, with harrowing images of suffering children. Of course, artillery shells inflict the same sort of random and indiscriminate death and dismemberment. So we still are left with no argument why one sort of death and suffering is worse than another, why 1000 dead are so much more heinous than the other 99,000. And given that we know Assad used chemical weapons in June, the question left hanging is, why now? Short answer: political expediency.</p>
<p><i>Deterrence</i>: Obama claimed the use of chemical weapons was a “danger to our security” because if Assad is left unpunished, “other tyrants” will use them too. So why didn’t we roll down that slippery slope after Saddam Hussein used them to kill many thousands more than Assad did? Why not after Egypt’s Gamal Nasser used poison gas against Yemenis in 1967? They were both unpunished for these violations of “international norms.” As for Obama’s fear about Syria’s handing these weapons off to terrorists, that contingency didn’t seem to hinder his bitter opposition to the Iraq war, against a brutal autocrat that had used chemical weapons and was friendly to various terrorist outfits. And given that opposition, which continued when he became a Senator and vocally opposed the ultimately successful “surge” of forces in Iraq, it is remarkably shameless for Obama to try and sell Congress on backing his policy by saying that America “acts more effectively when we stand together.”</p>
<p>Worse yet, given Kerry’s description of the proposed strike as an “incredibly small limited kind of effort,” and Obama’s vow that “I will not put American troops on the ground,” and given how blatantly he telegraphed his intentions to Assad, giving him time to hide his stockpiles, the president effectively drains the threat of any serious deterrent value. If Obama really believes that we need to deter future offenders, and that the use of chemical weapons is a <i>sui generis</i> form of weaponry, then he should be proposing a massive bombing campaign to destroy Assad’s regime, and the insertion of troops to secure the chemical weapons so that they don’t end up in the hands of jihadists.</p>
<p>As for Obama’s remarks in his speech that if we don’t punish this brutality against Muslims we will create more terrorists, this psychology of terrorist motivation has long been shown by events to be incredible. This buys in to the specious jihadist rhetoric––designed to exploit Western guilt and self-loathing––that war against the infidel enemies of Islam sanctioned by Islamic theology is merely a reaction to Western sins against Muslims. This pretext should be thrown in the dustbin along with the delusion that the majority of Syrians “want to live in peace and freedom,” and that only a minority of “extremists” is among those fighting Assad.</p>
<p><i>The Russian ploy</i>: Now we come to heart of the matter. Like his boss, John Kerry spoke without thinking about a possible resolution that did not involve force. Putin jumped on this loophole and endorsed a resolution involving inspections of Assad’s stockpiles, with the promise of their destruction. And Obama, seeing a way out of the political straitjacket he managed to put on all by himself, in turn jumped on Putin’s suggestions, calling them “encouraging signs” wrought by his “credible threat of military action.”</p>
<p>This is the most politically shameless and self-serving part of the whole sorry affair. “Incredibly small” military strikes telegraphed for more than a week are unlikely to scare Assad into surrendering his weapons. But Russia’s ploy and Obama’s buy in served the interests of everybody involved except the American people. Russia and Assad know that a “diplomatic pause” to ponder and discuss and workshop the whole regime of “inspections” is nothing other than a way to buy time and give Obama an excuse to delay action. The logistics of an inspections process are incredibly complex, and certainly will not begin while a war is raging in Syria. Like North Korea, Iraq under Hussein, and Iran today, the process can be gamed with delays and duplicity.</p>
<p>But Obama benefits by the need to “postpone a vote while we pursue this diplomatic path,” which includes a fruitless trek to the U.N. to secure a Security Council resolution that will never pass. This whole process could take months, if not years. Just remember how Saddam Hussein, two-thirds of his country’s airspace under the control of his enemies, played WMD whack-a-mole with the U.N. inspectors before simply kicking them out of the country. This means Obama’s promise “to respond if diplomacy fails” is an empty threat, especially since Putin has made taking a military strike off the table a condition for the whole deal to proceed. But Obama, supported by his flunkies in the press, will sell the narrative that his tough resolve brought Assad to the negotiating table and solved this crisis. Meanwhile Putin comes off as the region’s main power broker.</p>
<p>So Obama is likely off the hook, time will be wasted with running down this phony “diplomatic” solution, Syrians will keep dying, the jihadists will keep gaining invaluable battlefield experience, Iran will keep spinning its centrifuges, and American prestige will sink even lower in the estimation of our friends and enemies alike. File last night’s speech as one more piece of evidence demonstrating Obama’s foreign policy malfeasance.</p>
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		<title>Whither the Anti-War Left?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/whither-the-anti-war-left/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=whither-the-anti-war-left</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Sep 2013 04:55:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strike]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203366</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lining up to support Obama's coming disaster in Syria. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/08caucus.480.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203370" alt="08caucus.480" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/08caucus.480.jpg" width="264" height="221" /></a>As America&#8217;s leftist president demands war against Syria, the anti-war Left is nowhere to be found.</span></b></p>
<p>Democratic lawmakers who reflexively oppose any military action proposed by a Republican president are for the most part missing in action now that a Democrat occupies the Oval Office.</p>
<p>Earlier this week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 10 to 7 to authorize the president to use U.S. forces to attack Syria. The resolution stipulates that military action is restricted to within Syria&#8217;s borders, forbids U.S. troops on Syrian soil, and limits hostilities to a maximum of 90 days. Newly elected Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) heroically emulated Obama in his earlier legislative career by voting &#8220;present.&#8221;</p>
<p>The White House lauded senators for &#8220;moving swiftly and for working across party lines on behalf of our national security.&#8221;</p>
<p>Democrat are coalescing behind Obama because they don&#8217;t want him to be a lame duck for the rest of his time in office after he foolishly threw down the gauntlet against Syria in his &#8220;red line&#8221; speech last year.</p>
<p>On MSNBC, former top congressional aide turned liberal logorrheic Chris Matthews put the situation bluntly:</p>
<blockquote><p>I think the Democrats are going to be forced to sacrifice men and women who really, really don’t want to vote for this. They’re going to have to vote for it to save the president’s hide. That’s a bad position to put your party in.</p></blockquote>
<p>Although Syrian authorities were accused of using chemical weapons around the beginning of this year, lawmakers didn&#8217;t care much about the issue until the White House starting breathing down their necks a few weeks ago.</p>
<p>Suddenly, as President Obama tries to steer an unpopular immigration amnesty, Obamacare funding, and a debt ceiling increase through Congress this fall, Capitol Hill is experiencing an outbreak of bleeding-heart humanitarianism.</p>
<p>Former Vermont Gov. and ex-DNC chairman Howard Dean, the anti-war Left’s candidate for president in 2004, endorsed the force authorization. “Thus far I fully support the president, including his going to Congress.”</p>
<p>As the <a href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/democratic-leadership-more-pro-war-than-gop-leadership/article/2535180"><i>Washington Examiner</i></a> observed, more members of the Democratic leadership in the Senate and House currently support military action in Syria than Republican leadership in either chamber. This makes sense because Democrats tend to view U.S. soldiers as heavily armed social workers who should be deployed overseas only to render humanitarian aid or advance fuzzy utopian schemes.</p>
<p>Four out of eight members of the Democratic leadership are on record as backing Obama&#8217;s dangerous military adventure. The other four are uncommitted but seem inclined to support the mission. Only two out of 10 members of GOP leadership on the Hill favor a resolution authorizing action against Syrian government forces, according to the <i>Examiner</i>&#8216;s tally.</p>
<p>Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) supports the president. &#8220;I believe the use of military force against Syria is both justified and necessary,” Reid said.</p>
<p>Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) also backs the force resolution. “If we can do something to discourage [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad and others like him from using chemical weapons without engaging in a war and without making a long-term military commitment of the United States, I’m open to that debate,”</p>
<p>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) supports Obama. “This is behavior outside the circle of civilized human behavior and we must respond,” she said.</p>
<p>So does Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). “I believe that the Syrian regime must know that their blatant violation of international norms will be met with a strong response,” Hoyer said.</p>
<p>Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), obediently kept his mouth shut at the insistence of the Obama White House. “I reserve judgment on Syria until a resolution and more details are forthcoming,” Clyburn said. The administration has instructed members of the Democrats&#8217; Congressional Black Caucus <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/05/congressional-black-caucus-reportedly-told-to-keep-quiet-regarding-opposition-to-obama-on-syria/">to stay silent</a> on the issue in public to give it more time to twist lawmakers&#8217; arms.</p>
<p>These are the same people who had regular temper tantrums in the George W. Bush years as that administration took aim at terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, declaring quagmire after quagmire as terrorist body counts mounted.</p>
<p>So far the most eloquent critic of President Obama&#8217;s Syria policy is Illinois State Senator Obama.</p>
<p>In 2002 Obama <a href="http://reason.com/archives/2013/09/04/obamas-case-against-attacking-syria">acknowledged</a> that Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was &#8220;a brutal man,&#8221; &#8220;a ruthless man,&#8221; and &#8220;a man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.&#8221; Hussein &#8220;repeatedly defied U.N. resolutions, thwarted U.N. inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity,&#8221; Obama said at the time.</p>
<p>But Obama still opposed action against Iraq even though he admitted &#8220;the world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.&#8221; Hussein &#8220;poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States,&#8221; and a U.S. invasion to oust him would be &#8220;a dumb war,&#8221; &#8220;a rash war,&#8221; and &#8220;a war based not on reason but on passion.&#8221;</p>
<p>As Jacob Sullum notes, even though Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds of northern Iraq, killing more than 5,000 men, women, and children, Obama didn&#8217;t consider that outrage sufficient to warrant American military intervention in Iraq.</p>
<p>Yet the 1,400 deaths Obama says were caused by the Syrian government&#8217;s sarin-gas attacks on its own population require a U.S. military response, in Obama&#8217;s view.</p>
<p>&#8220;What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?&#8221; Obama said in a speech over the weekend.</p>
<p>&#8220;Presumably the same message he was willing to send when he opposed war with Iraq,&#8221; Sullum dryly observes.</p>
<p>Becoming president also changed Obama&#8217;s views on the constitutional authority of the executive branch.</p>
<p>In late 2007, then-presidential candidate Obama told reporters that &#8220;the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now that he&#8217;s president, Obama says he does have the constitutional authority to act without Congress but that he wants congressional approval anyway. &#8220;I&#8217;ve long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,&#8221; he said a few days ago.</p>
<p>When the ill-fated intervention in Syria&#8217;s civil war blows up in the administration&#8217;s face, Obama will be able to pin at least part of the blame on Republicans who lacked the moral courage to say no to an imperial president who has never had the best interests of the U.S. at heart.</p>
<p>There seem to be plenty of willing Republican dupes who support the president&#8217;s ill-defined call for action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.</p>
<p>Commentator Jed Babbin says President Obama may get congressional authority to strike Syria because “the Republican ‘leadership’ of national security affairs—at least the only ones who get media attention—is comprised of Obama’s most dedicated allies in Congress, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham.”</p>
<p>House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/matthew-vadum/boehner-capitulates-on-syria/">have said</a> they support Obama&#8217;s plan. At press time, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is expecting a tough primary fight back home next year, had not taken a position on the issue.</p>
<p>And it turns out that an influential writer whose opinion lawmakers are relying on to justify war in Syria is also <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/05/woman-informing-kerry-mccains-opinions-on-syria-also-an-advocate-for-syrian-rebels/">a paid advocate</a> for that country&#8217;s jihadist-dominated insurgency. This week Secretary of State John Kerry urged House lawmakers to read a dubious <i>Wall Street Journal</i> op-ed by Elizabeth O’Bagy of the Institute for the Study of War. She is also political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a group that advocates within the U.S. for Syria’s rebels.</p>
<p>In what could be a <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=669">Walter Duranty</a> moment, O&#8217;Bagy claimed concerns about Islamists&#8217; sway over the anti-Assad coalition are overblown. “Contrary to many media accounts, the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and al-Qaida die-hards,” O’Bagy wrote.</p>
<p>“Moderate opposition groups make up the majority of actual fighting forces,” she wrote, only to be echoed in recent days by <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/john-mccain-what-an-embarrassment/">Koran and Arabic language scholar</a> John McCain.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, opponents of Obama&#8217;s plan to reshape the Middle East by giving the Islamists the upper hand are being bought off and silenced in Congress while left-wing groups are kept on a tight leash.</p>
<p>The Obama administration is working behind the scenes to hand out legislative goodies in exchange for support for intervention in Syria&#8217;s civil war.</p>
<p>“I think the White House candy store is open,” said John Bolton, President George W. Bush&#8217;s ambassador to the United Nations.</p>
<p>“What do you need for your district or state? A post office? A new military facility? What do you want? I think anything you want you’re going to get because the White House is going to do whatever it takes to get a majority.”</p>
<p>Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) called out Democrat-aligned groups for their stunning hypocrisy, noting that &#8220;many of the most vocal opponents of the U.S.&#8217;s intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan under President Bush have changed their tune under Obama&#8217;s leadership.&#8221;</p>
<p>Although few Americans support U.S. intervention in Syria&#8217;s ongoing civil war, leading left-wing youth groups including College Democrats, Young Democrats, and Generation Progress (formerly Campus Progress, a high-traffic blog run by the Center for American Progress Action Fund), haven&#8217;t yet found the time to criticize President Obama&#8217;s proposal to involve U.S. forces in war 6,000 miles away from home.</p>
<p>Occupy Democrats openly <a href="http://www.occupydemocrats.com/president-obama-breaks-from-ghost-of-wars-past/">praises</a> Obama for his courage, or something.</p>
<p>&#8220;After President Bush&#8217;s war for ideology and profit,&#8221; foreign governments have been skeptical of U.S. intervention &#8220;for good reason,&#8221; the group said on its website. &#8220;[B]y sending the matter to Congress for a vote, it shows that President Obama is trying hard to shake the ghosts of this country’s past.&#8221;</p>
<p>YAL spokeswoman Bonnie Kristian said it is &#8220;astonishing to see some on the Left stumble to defend Obama&#8217;s indefensible position on intervention in Syria. The usual talking heads on MSNBC are scrambling to explain how Syria is different than Bush&#8217;s wars.&#8221;</p>
<p>That scrambling will intensify in coming weeks as Democrats try to save Obama&#8217;s hide.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Putin Puts Obama in the Hot Seat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/putin-puts-obama-in-the-hot-seat/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=putin-puts-obama-in-the-hot-seat</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Sep 2013 04:45:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Raymond Ibrahim]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[What if the rebels are the ones using chemical weapons?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Vladimir-Putin_4.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203347" alt="Vladimir-Putin_4" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Vladimir-Putin_4-301x350.jpg" width="241" height="280" /></a>Russian President Vladimir Putin has a strange way of speaking straightforwardly, without all the artificial and “morally superior” airs one expects from Western politicians.</p>
<p>Earlier, for example, he <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/16/putin-warns-against-arming-syrian-rebels">wondered why Western leaders were supporting <em>cannibals</em> in Syria</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>You will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras. Are these the people you want to support? Is it them who you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to humanitarian values that have been preached in Europe for hundreds of years.</p></blockquote>
<div>
<p>Putin was referring to the notorious video of a jihadi leader biting into the organs of a Syrian soldier while screaming Islamic slogans.</p>
<p>Now, the straightforward Russian has asked another equally important and straightforward question — the sort of question so full of common sense that most Western politicians never expect to hear a fellow politician asking (and, as usual, one the Western media have failed to report on, though <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=zVAliU-Qk3c">Arabic media is abuzz with it</a>).</p>
<p>In a videotaped interview published today concerning U.S. attempts to go to war in Syria, not only did Putin criticize Secretary of State John Kerry’s <a href="http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/09/04/vlad-impales-kerry-on-syria/"> dissembling concerning the nature of the Syrian opposition</a>, but he also said:</p>
<blockquote><p>There is another question: if it turns out that the armed rebels are the ones who used weapons of mass destruction, what will the United States do with the armed rebels?  And what will it do with those sponsoring the rebels? Will they stop supplying them with arms? Will they start fighting against them?</p></blockquote>
<p>Indeed.  Considering that invading Syria is almost entirely being rationalized in the context of Assad violating the human rights of others, what will the U.S. — Obama, Kerry, McCain, et. al. — do if it turns out that the al-Qaeda led rebels are, in fact, the ones using such weapons, as<a href="http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/syrian-rebels-used-sarin-nerve-gas-not-assads-regi/">significant evidence</a> already indicates?</p>
<p>Probably what they are doing now: continue misleading Americans and go to war anyway, since — and once again — <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/other-matters/u-s-hypocrisy-for-syrian-human-rights/" target="_blank">this has nothing to do with chemical weapons</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Update</strong>: RT posted the video and translation of Putin’s questions regarding what the U.S. would do if it turns out the rebels used chemical weapons (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntkkJwl8TNY&amp;feature=youtu.be">here</a>, around the four-minute mark).</p>
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		<title>No to War in Syria</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/robert-spencer/no-to-war-in-syria-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=no-to-war-in-syria-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Sep 2013 04:40:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203235</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Obama heads the U.S. toward disaster.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203238" alt="obamad" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/obamad-450x281.jpg" width="315" height="197" />A Senate panel has voted to authorize Barack Obama to use military force in Syria. This is a disaster in the making.</p>
<p>Just as in Afghanistan, Obama has no goal, no plan for victory. He said that the military strikes in Syria would not be directed toward removing Bashar Assad, but then he said that it would be a good thing to remove Assad from power. This was just one of many indications of how ill-conceived and misbegotten Obama’s Syria plan really is.</p>
<p>Obama said that Assad used chemical weapons, but still has not produced compelling enough evidence to convince our closest allies, the British. What he has produced is a series of YouTube videos of dubious provenance, establishing nothing conclusive.</p>
<p>And as is increasingly the case in Afghanistan also, as Hamid Karzai continues to show his true colors, Obama doesn’t even have any real allies inside Syria, either. Even the <a href="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/middleeast/islamist-rebels-gains-in-syria-create-dilemma-for-us.html">New York Times has admitted</a> that there is no significant secular fighting force within Syria. The major rebel groups are all allied with al-Qaeda. <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/04/kerry-insists-syrian-rebels-are-secular/">John Kerry insists they’re “secular”</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=56D8m6RAgj0">John McCain assures us they’re “moderates.”</a> None of these groups, however, have shown any sign of being either.</p>
<p>And now McCain has refused to support the Senate resolution, saying that we should only go in if Obama intends to remove Assad. So again we see that Obama’s Syria plan is entirely opaque, even to its most ardent supporters. And that is no surprise, for it is not founded upon any facts that have as yet been established.</p>
<p>Vladimir Putin has <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/04/us-syria-crisis-russia-congress-idUSBRE9830N620130904">openly accused</a> Kerry of lying, saying: &#8220;They lie beautifully, of course. I saw debates in Congress. A congressman asks Mr Kerry: &#8216;Is al Qaeda there?&#8217; He says: &#8216;No, I am telling you responsibly that it is not.&#8217; Al Qaeda units are the main military echelon, and they know this. It was unpleasant and surprising for me &#8211; we talk to them, we proceed from the assumption that they are decent people. But he is lying and knows he is lying. It&#8217;s sad.&#8221;</p>
<p>Putin added that “what Congress and the U.S. Senate are doing in essence is legitimizing aggression. This is inadmissible in principle.&#8221;</p>
<p>It is hard to argue with that. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=3paoNfu_XMM">Obama has even admitted</a> that “we may not be directly imminently threatened by what&#8217;s taking place” in Syria. In fact, in light of al-Qaeda’s dominance of the Syrian rebels and the opposition of Russia and China to our intervention, going in to Syria could touch off a much larger conflict.</p>
<p>Obama and his national security team – Kerry, Hagel, and Rice – once again seem indifferent to American interests. They have not been honest with the American people about the nature of the Syrian opposition, or how it could possibly be good for America once again to aid pro-Sharia, pro-jihad forces in Syria, as Obama did in Egypt and Libya with disastrous results.</p>
<p>Above all, it is appalling that Barack Obama still hasn’t provided proof that Assad used chemical weapons. It is the height of hypocrisy for him to push forward with military action after criticizing George W. Bush mercilessly for providing insufficient proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The stakes are too high for Obama to be playing politics: we need to see the proof, and we need it now.</p>
<p>Yet even if Obama does manage to produce conclusive proof that Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people, that in itself does not ipso facto make the case for intervention – unless the United States is now going to intervene against every tyrant who terrorizes his own people the world over. We do not have a military of sufficient size to do that, especially after the interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have depleted our resources, weakening us militarily and economically. With no compelling national interest sending us into Syria, it would be much wiser for us to take steps to restore the economy and revive the military rather than get involved in an adventure with no point, no clear goal, and no easy way to get out.</p>
<p>This is the crowning misjudgment of a presidency that has been alarmingly full of them. Nonetheless, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/obama-america-credibility-syria-96254.html">Obama said Wednesday</a>: “My credibility is not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line.” But the international community has not joined in his call for an attack on Syria. Nor has it agreed that Assad used chemical weapons, or that the rebels are “secular moderates” who must be aided. Obama also said that he &#8220;didn&#8217;t set a red line,&#8221; the world did – but the world is not with him in this.</p>
<p>The American people shouldn’t be, either. The Republican leadership – John Boehner, John McCain, Lindsay Graham – have gone along with Obama. They shouldn’t have. America needs a loyal opposition to stand up in Congress for true American interests, and to insist: no U.S. war in Syria.</p>
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		<title>Will Congress Authorize?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/will-congress-authorize/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=will-congress-authorize</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Sep 2013 04:39:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=203248</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why approval for a strike on Syria is far from certain. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/McCain-at-Syria-Senate-he-008.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203250" alt="McCain at Syria Senate hearing" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/McCain-at-Syria-Senate-he-008.jpg" width="251" height="191" /></a>Will Congress authorize a military strike against Syria? The political maneuvering engendered by President Obama&#8217;s newfound interest in having the legislative branch be part of the equation is turning into quite the campaign. The latest developments present anything but a clear cut picture of the expected outcome.</p>
<p>On the Senate side of the equation, the Foreign Relations Committee <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/09/03/senators-strike-deal-on-wording-for-new-resolution-authorizing-force-against-syria/?wprss=rss_election-2012&amp;clsrd">came</a> to a tentative agreement on the wording of a resolution that would authorize the use of force. It would permit 60 days of military engagement against Assad&#8217;s regime, with the option for an additional 30 days, conditioned on the president&#8217;s notification of Congress. It bars putting U.S. troops on the ground, save for the deployment of a small rescue force for emergency purposes. Within 30 days of the resolution&#8217;s enactment, Obama would be required to send Congress a plan outlining a diplomatic solution for ending the violence in Syria.</p>
<p>If this nonsense has a familiar ring, that&#8217;s because it sounds remarkably like Obama&#8217;s rationale for the use of force in Libya, a military engagement he conducted with no input whatsoever from Congress. &#8220;U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors,&#8221; stated a 32-page <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/fp_uploaded_documents/110615_United_States_Activities_in_Libya_--_6_15_11.pdf">report</a> that justified Obama&#8217;s intervention there, absent the congressional approval required by the Constitution <i>and</i> the War Powers Act of 1973.</p>
<p>Ironically, the Senate&#8217;s plan cost Obama support from one of his main cheerleaders, the reliably clueless John McCain (R-AZ). McCain insisted the resolution didn&#8217;t go far <i>enough.</i> &#8220;There&#8217;s no reference to changing the momentum on the battlefield, there&#8217;s no reference to arming the Free Syrian Army,&#8221; he <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/04/20325141-mccain-opposes-senate-resolution-authorizing-syria-strikes?lite">said</a>. That would be the same Syrian Free Army that <a href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2013/08/al_qaeda_rebel_group.php">routinely</a> conducts operations with al Qaeda and other Islamist-dominated rebel forces, a reality calculatingly ignored by the Arizona Senator. Equally ignored is the reality that &#8220;changing the momentum” is virtually impossible to accomplish without American boots on the ground.</p>
<p>In the House, leaders of both parties declared their support on Monday for military intervention in Syria. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), said he would &#8220;support the president&#8217;s call to action.&#8221; Majority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) insisted America &#8220;has a compelling national security interest to prevent and respond to the use of weapons of mass destruction, especially by a terrorist state such as Syria, and to prevent further instability in a region of vital interest to the United States.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the alleged use of chemical weapons &#8220;cannot be ignored.&#8221; “Humanity drew the red line, not President Obama,” she added.</p>
<p>If that talking point sounds familiar, that’s because it was <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/04/201163/obama-i-didnt-draw-the-red-line.html#.UidsELwjH1w">recited</a> almost verbatim by the president himself a day later. “I didn’t set a red line, the world set a red line,” Obama contended at a press conference in Stockholm, Sweden. “My credibility’s not on the line. The international community’s credibility is on the line. And America and Congress’s credibility’s on the line.&#8221;</p>
<p>The president continued. “The moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing,” said Obama. “I do have to ask people if in fact you’re outraged by the slaughter of innocent people, what are you doing about it?”</p>
<p>That&#8217;s a question the president has had more than 30 months to ponder, while the death toll in Syria steadily climbed to the point where it now tops 100,000 deaths&#8211;and while any hope of finding legitimately pro-American forces in Syria has dwindled to nothing.</p>
<p>Furthermore, even as the president announced his intention last Saturday to involve Congress in any decision, he did not call them into emergency session. Since Congress officially reconvenes September 9, Obama has given Assad plenty of time to prepare for any strike. Assad is <a href="http://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/syria-said-be-hiding-weapons-moving-troops">using</a> that time to hide military hardware in residential areas, and shift troops from military bases to civilian locations.</p>
<p>On the other side of the equation, politicians in both chambers <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324432404579053344262636248.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories">expressed</a> their doubts about the current plan of action. House, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) remains noncommittal, as does Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Both men remained that way despite a meeting at the White House. McConnell voiced a sentiment that ought to resonate with the public. &#8220;While we are learning more about his plans, Congress and our constituents would all benefit from knowing more about what it is [the president] thinks needs to be done,&#8221; he said in a statement.</p>
<p>Other critics of military action were far more succinct. “We should be focused on defending the United States of America,” <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/04/ted-cruz-syria_n_3867006.html">said</a> Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). &#8220;That’s why young men and women sign up to join the military, not to, as you know, serve as Al Qaeda’s air force.” Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH) also wondered why we were intent on serving in that capacity. As for the arming of Syrian rebels, Cruz clearly explained the folly of such an idea.<b> </b>“I’ll give you one of the simplest principles of foreign policy that we ought to be following: Don’t give weapons to people who hate you,&#8221; he said. “Don’t give weapons to people who want to kill you.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet it was Rand Paul (R-KY) who <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/03/its-explicit-rand-paul-battles-john-kerry-over-the-constitution-syria-in-tense-senate-showdown/#">cut</a> right through the political posturing and got down to the essential reason behind Obama&#8217;s desire to get Congress involved. After conceding that some kind of resolution authorizing force is likely to be passed, Paul pounced on Secretary of State Kerry during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday. Paul was incensed by Kerry&#8217;s contention that, irrespective of how Congress votes, President Obama retains the right to authorize a military strike. “Madison was very explicit when he wrote the Federalist Papers,” Paul explained. “He wrote that&#8230;the Constitution supposes what history demonstrates. That the executive is the branch most likely to go to war and therefore the Constitution vested that power on the Congress.”</p>
<p>Paul then cut to the chase. “If we do not say that the Constitution applies, if we do not say explicitly that we will abide by this vote, you’re making a joke of us,&#8221; he contended. &#8220;You’re making us into theater. And so we play Constitutional theater for the president. If this is real, you will abide by the verdict of Congress.&#8221;</p>
<p>The theater aspect of this debacle, as well as the scope of the mission itself, was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics-live/liveblog/the-houses-syria-hearing-live-updates/#e68f139f-e012-476c-876e-2467ba30e5e3">amplified</a> by Kerry at a congressional hearing yesterday, when he revealed that Arab countries were willing to pick up the tab for a full invasion that would topple Assad. “In fact, some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we’ve done it previously in other places, they’ll carry that cost,” Kerry said.</p>
<p>Remarkably, Kerry is apparently undaunted by the thought of Arab nations using the American military as hired help &#8212; boots on the ground, in harm&#8217;s way.</p>
<p>As for a congressional verdict, despite Paul&#8217;s contention, the outcome remains <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/09/02/where-the-votes-stand-on-syria/">very much</a> in doubt. The totals for those who have already weighed in publicly are as follows:</p>
<p>Six Senators, (all Republican) oppose military action, while 14 Senators, (9 Republicans, 4 Democrats, 1 Independent) lean in that direction. Seventeen Senators, (11 Democrats, 6 Republicans) favor military action. The remaining 63 Senators, (37 Democrats, 26 Republicans) are undecided. In the House, 56 Representatives, (38 Republicans, 18 Democrats) are opposed to action, while 86 Representatives (62 Republicans, 24 Democrats) lean no. Seventeen Representatives favor military action (10 Democrats, 7 Republicans), while 99 Representatives (58 Democrats, 41 Republicans) remain undecided.</p>
<p>The resolution authorizing the use of force will fail if 217 House members vote against it, or 40 Senators agree to filibuster it.</p>
<p>If the public matters at all, polls show substantial <i>bipartisan</i> <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/09/six-in-10-oppose-u-s-only-strike-on-syria-a-closer-division-if-allies-are-involved/">opposition</a> to both a unilateral missile strike and arming Syrian rebels. They remain opposed by a smaller margins if allies become such as France and Britain become involved, but opposed nonetheless. The British parliament has already rejected the idea of getting involved, and France will be <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1136841/syria-crisis-france-to-debate-military-action">engaging</a> in two debates in their Senate and their second chamber, known as Congress National, in coming days. Like Obama, French President Francois Hollande favors a strike, but won&#8217;t go it alone if the U.S. Congress votes against it.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/04/senate-breaks-own-rules-in-rush-to-vote-on-syria-war.html">brushed aside</a> Senate rules and rushed through a vote on the aforementioned resolution late Wednesday afternoon. It passed 10-7 with one abstention. A senior GOP senate aide characterized the vote as a “rush to war behind closed doors,” because it would allow the Democratically-controlled Senate to bring the measure to the floor as early as Friday and to a full vote Monday, before the House could craft and vote on a resolution of its own. “We were told there was a need to have a thoughtful and public debate about how this nation goes to war, but this seems to be about simply getting a resolution done to cover the president,” the aide added.</p>
<p>Despite everything the American public will be told in the coming days, getting Congress involved was never about anything else.</p>
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		<title>John Kerry: Face of Defeat</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/john-kerry-face-of-destructive-u-s-foreign-policy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=john-kerry-face-of-destructive-u-s-foreign-policy</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 04 Sep 2013 04:18:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The poster boy of Obama's incompetence and untrustworthiness on the world stage. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/pic_edited-2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-203181" alt="pic_edited-2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/pic_edited-2-422x350.jpg" width="295" height="245" /></a>A <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2408805/John-Kerrys-cosy-dinner-Syrias-Hitler-Secretary-State-Assad-pictured-dining-Damascus.html">picture</a> of John Kerry has recently resurfaced that exemplifies the quality of his judgement and the reality of his long relationship with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. The same man Kerry compares to Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein today was Kerry&#8217;s dining partner in 2009. The picture was taken at time when Kerry and a number of other Democrats, eager to spurn the Bush administration post-Iraq, were pushing the notion that Assad could be a potential partner in bringing peace to the Middle East. If such a colossal mistake represented an anomaly in Kerry&#8217;s career, it might be understandable. It does not, however. Kerry in fact has a long track record of supporting totalitarians and killers that makes him an embarrassment on the world stage.</p>
<p>After serving in Vietnam as a swift boat captain, Kerry immediately embraced the anti-war movement diametrically opposed to that service. In 1970, Kerry <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2004/08/did_navy_lt_kerry_violate_the.html">met</a> with the North Vietnamese and Vietcong delegations in Paris, to discuss their peace proposals. He was unconcerned his effort bordered on violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which holds accountable any person who “without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly.” Kerry was especially enchanted with eight points offered by Madame Nguyen Thi Binh, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lenin_Peace_Prize_recipients">winner</a> of the Lenin Peace Prize, urging the U.S. Senate to adopt them. Kerry also became a spokesman and organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), a group that signed a &#8220;People&#8217;s Peace Treaty&#8221; aligning itself with the Viet Cong&#8217;s conditions for ending the war. Kerry approved of that treaty as well.</p>
<p>Yet the most despicable part of Kerry&#8217;s anti-war efforts occurred in 1971. Representing the VVAW, Kerry <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/10/investigate_the_winter_soldier.html">testified</a> before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, relaying the <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/10/investigate_the_winter_soldier.html">still-unproven</a> claims of 150 Vietnam veterans who supposedly said “they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war.&#8221; Kerry further asserted that these were &#8220;not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.&#8221;</p>
<p>Yet there is one quote from those hearings that highlights Kerry&#8217;s “evolving” judgement regarding intervention in Syria. &#8220;In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America,&#8221; Kerry insisted at the time.</p>
<p>In the ensuing years, Kerry embraced a number of other dubious causes and despicable characters. In 1983, a year before becoming Senator, he denounced the invasion of Grenada that <a href="http://www.military.com/Resources/HistorySubmittedFileView?file=history_grenada.htm">resulted</a> in the rescue of American medical students, as well as the overthrow the Communist regime that had seized power there. Kerry likened it to a &#8220;bully’s show of force against a weak Third World nation.&#8221; In 1985 he met with Nicaragua&#8217;s communist Sandinista government leader Daniel Ortega, in an effort to undermine President Reagan&#8217;s attempt to buttress the Contra freedom fighters. At the time, Kerry noted he was willing to take a chance on the &#8220;good faith of the Sandinistas.” Soon after, Ortega received a $200 million loan from the Soviet Union. After Ortega was defeated by Violeta Chamorro in 1990, Kerry insisted that the U.S. effort to aid the Contras had nothing to do with it, labeling it &#8220;an irrelevant debate right now.&#8221;</p>
<p>In 1991, Kerry chaired the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, created to explore the possibility that Americans might still be held by the Communist Vietnamese government. Yet as U.S. Veteran Dispatch <a href="http://www.usvetdsp.com/story10.htm">puts</a> it, &#8220;no one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue,&#8221; than Kerry, who &#8220;never missed a chance to propaganderize (sic) and distort the facts in favor of Hanoi.&#8221;</p>
<p>And despite his impassioned speech in Congress last week advocating the right of the president to unilaterally act on his own if Congress doesn&#8217;t approve of striking out at Assad, Kerry <a href="http://www.questia.com/library/1G1-117035670/john-kerry-radical-internationalist-though-john">claimed</a> in his 2003 book, <i>A Call to Service,</i> that &#8220;multilateral organizations are vehicles for the promotion of our ideals and interests around the world.&#8221; This echoed his contention from 1970. &#8220;I&#8217;m an internationalist,&#8221; Kerry told the Harvard Crimson at the time. &#8220;I’d like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.&#8221; Kerry later disavowed that remark in a 2004 interview with the late Tim Russert. Yet that interview, coupled with his earlier career underscores an unpleasant reality: our current Secretary of State&#8217;s judgement is seriously lacking.</p>
<p>Which brings us to Kerry&#8217;s longstanding relationship with Bashar Assad, the man he currently calls a &#8220;thug&#8221; and a &#8220;murderer,&#8221; even as he insists that &#8220;history would judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turned a blind eye to a dictator.&#8221;</p>
<p>No one turned a blinder eye to Assad than Kerry himself. As the <i>Washington Free Beacon</i> <a href="http://freebeacon.com/an-affair-to-remember/">noted</a> in 2012, Kerry has spent the last ten years as the &#8220;highest-ranking apologist in American politics for Syria’s Assad regime.&#8221;</p>
<p>Kerry&#8217;s efforts began in 2003 when he helped to undermine the Bush administration&#8217;s efforts to isolate Syria after their attempt to diplomatically engage Assad failed. Between 2009, when the above picture in the <i>Mail</i> was taken, and 2011, Kerry <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/12/16/generous-remember-john-kerrys-praise-of-syrian-dictator-assad/">visited</a> Assad five times.</p>
<p>During his visit in February 2009 shortly after Barack Obama&#8217;s inauguration, Kerry was <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/senator-kerry-syria-willing-to-help-achieve-palestinian-unity-1.270630">sure</a> that Assad would take advantage of the &#8220;hope and change&#8221; era that had descended upon Washington. &#8220;I believe very deeply that this is an important moment of change, a moment of potential transformation, not just in the relationship between the United States and Syria but in the relationship of the region,&#8221; Kerry crowed. He even believed Assad would aid the so-called peace process, contending that &#8220;Syria could be, in fact, very helpful in helping to bring about a unity government,&#8221; between Fatah and Hamas.</p>
<p>Kerry also used the occasion to bash the former administration. ”Unlike the Bush administration that believed you could simply tell people what to do and walk away and wait for them to do it, we believe you have to engage in a discussion,” he said. ”So we are going to renew diplomacy but without any illusion, without any naivety, without any misplaced belief that, just by talking, things will automatically happen.”</p>
<p>Of course, this is precisely the policy the Obama administration has pursued in the Middle East for five years with disastrous results.</p>
<p>A year later, Kerry was back in Damascus trying to revive the stalled peace process. And once again, he was <a href="http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2010/04/01/104671.html">effusive</a> regarding Assad and his nation&#8217;s role in the effort. &#8220;Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region,&#8221; Kerry said, following a meeting with Assad&#8211;even he called on Syria to stop supplying weapons to Hezbollah. He further insisted that the Obama administration&#8217;s effort to appoint the first U.S. ambassador to Damascus in five years was &#8220;evidence that engagement with Syria is a priority at the highest levels of our government.&#8221; (The Bush administration had withdrawn the U.S. ambassador in 2005, following the assassination of Lebanon’s former premier Rafiq Hariri, in a car bombing most likely orchestrated by the Assad regime).</p>
<p>Seven months later a Wikileaks cable <a href="http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/11/29/wikileaked_john_kerry_calls_for_israel_to_cede_golan_heights_and_east_jerusalem">revealed</a> that Kerry told Qatari leaders Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, and the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa, the Golan Heights should be returned to Syria, and that a final agreement of the peace process must include a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Kerry&#8217;s delusions remained remarkably consistent through 2011, even as the Middle East began unraveling in what Kerry and his fellow travelers in government and the media famously mislabeled the &#8220;Arab Spring.&#8221; In a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444025204577544891777555840.html">column</a> for the <i>Wall Street Journal,</i> Bret Stephens recalled that Kerry had characterized Assad as a man of his word &#8220;who had been very generous with me.&#8221; Kerry further insisted that “Syria will move; Syria will change as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States.”</p>
<p>More than 100,000 deaths later, Syria has certainly changed. So has the man who during his anti-Reagan, pro-Sandinista days took a <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/node/210519/print">diametrically opposed</a> position to the one he&#8217;s taking now. &#8220;Our foreign policy should represent the democratic values that have made our country great, not subvert those values by funding terrorism to overthrow governments of other countries,” Kerry said.</p>
<p>That would be the same John Kerry who is now more than willing to abet al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in the effort to punish Assad.</p>
<p>Even worse, yesterday Kerry upped the ante, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/3/kerry-no-doubt-assad-used-weapons-civilians/">refusing</a> to rule out the possibility that the U.S. would put troops on the ground in Syria. &#8220;I don’t want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to the president that might secure our country,” he said, offering a hypothetical scenario of securing chemical weapons to prevent terrorists from obtaining them. Yet he immediately flip-flopped, saying that the administration will accept whatever limits Congress places on them to make sure the U.S. isn&#8217;t drawn into the civil war. Kerry then sought to immunize Obama from  his ill-advised &#8220;red line&#8221; that is the primary impetus for this political drama. “This debate is about the world’s red line. It’s about humanity’s red line. And it’s a red line that anybody with a conscience ought to draw,” he insisted.</p>
<p>Apparently much of the American public has no conscience. The average of four separate polls taken on public support for airstrikes (much less boots on the ground) <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/03/syria-airstrike-polls_n_3861639.html">show</a> that only 33 percent of Americans are in favor of the effort, while an average of 49.5 percent of the public are opposed.</p>
<p>Ironically, Kerry who accused his critics of “armchair isolationism” played a major role in solidifying American resistance to <i>any</i> Middle East intervention. As co-authors David Horowitz and Ben Johnson noted in their book, &#8220;Party of Defeat: How Democrats and Radicals Undermined America&#8217;s War on Terror Before and After 9/11,&#8221; when Kerry saw radical anti-war leftist Howard Dean vault to the head of the pack of Democratic presidential nominees in 2003, followed by the equally anti-war Dennis Kucinich, Kerry suddenly decided he was against an Iraq war he formerly supported. Thus, the man who now demands a Syrian vote based on conscience, abandoned his own in a pursuit of greater political glory.</p>
<p>In short, John Kerry is a man whose judgement with regard to America&#8217;s enemies is utterly lacking, and whose &#8220;principles&#8221; can be easily cast aside for the sake of political expediency.</p>
<p>Yesterday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey <a href="http://freebeacon.com/dempsey-cant-say-what-u-s-is-seeking-in-syria/">summed up</a> Kerry&#8217;s current logic. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) asked the General what the administration &#8220;was seeking&#8221; in Syria. &#8220;I can’t answer that, what we’re seeking,&#8221; Dempsey replied. Neither can our clueless Secretary of State, even as he personifies the Obama administration&#8217;s weakness, incompetence and untrustworthiness.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Plan to Blame Syria on Congress</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obamas-plan-to-blame-syria-on-congress/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-plan-to-blame-syria-on-congress</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Sep 2013 04:38:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The president's devious catch-22 strategy vis-à-vis Republicans on Syria. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gop-s6-c30.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-202865" alt="gop-s6-c30" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/gop-s6-c30-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>Obama’s belated agreement to take the Syrian strikes before Congress, while asserting that he will not be bound by whatever Congress decides, buys him a convenient exit strategy.</p>
<p>The Congress trap will let Obama opt out of an attack that he is ambivalent about while blaming Republicans for destroying American credibility. Even now the progressive spin machine is roaring into action and denouncing Congress for not immediately returning to session to consider Obama’s plan.</p>
<p>Considering that Obama waited for two years before deciding to bomb Syria, it seems ridiculously hypocritical of his political palace guard to denounce Congress for not immediately springing into action; but hypocrisy is hardly an obstacle for a Democratic Party that dramatically reversed its position on Iraq and now once again favors unilateral wars over WMDs.</p>
<p>Obama’s Rose Garden speech baited the trap with its warning to Congress to avoid partisan politics.</p>
<p>&#8220;I ask you, members of Congress, to consider that some things are more important than partisan differences or the politics of the moment. Ultimately, this is not about who occupies this office at any given time; it&#8217;s about who we are as a country. I believe that the people&#8217;s representatives must be invested in what America does abroad,&#8221; Obama said.</p>
<p>That is the Catch 22 trap. Either Congress adopts an unpopular attack in order to do the supposedly responsible thing or it gets accused of sabotaging American credibility for partisan politics and is held responsible for a great many dead children.</p>
<p>Obama prefers creating Alinskyite political traps for his opponents over doing the responsible thing. And his favorite trap is the one that shifts the blame for his irresponsibility to the Congressional Republicans who have been his favorite target ever since Bush retired to paint dog pictures.</p>
<p>Either Congress “invests” in Obama’s war and immunizes him from criticism by the Republican Party. Or Obama opts out of the war and blames Republican obstructionism for undermining American credibility abroad while splitting the Republican Party between interventionists and non-interventionists.</p>
<p>Obama’s speech and the distorted media coverage of it have given the impression that Congress gets the final say and that Republicans either have to give Obama a blank check on Syria or get the blame. These are the same cynical tactics that Obama has employed on the economy.</p>
<p>When faced with a difficult political choice, Obama’s natural instinct is to find someone to blame and to use that blame to sow division among his enemies while escaping responsibility for his own disaster.</p>
<p>On the debt ceiling, Obama self-righteously insisted that he would not allow Congress to avoid “paying our bills”. The bills were actually his bills, but he frequently uses the singular possessive pronoun for things that he believes that he controls but does not own, like the United States military, but shifts over to the plural possessive pronoun when trying to avoid responsibility for things that he should own up to.</p>
<p>&#8220;Now is the time to show the world that America keeps our commitments,&#8221; Obama said in the Rose Garden. But America had made no such collective commitments. Congress certainly had not.</p>
<p>When avoiding responsibility, Obama uses “Our”  to mean “Mine”.  What he really means is that having made a mess of Syria, he intends to dump the problem on Congress and make it “our problem” while still keeping all of his options open.</p>
<p>Once Congress begins debating Syria, the media will spin it as “partisanship” and an inability to reach a decision while contrasting that unfavorably with the decisiveness that led Obama to announce that his red line had been crossed some months later. Congress will be lambasted in editorials and cartoons for being unable to make a decision while Syrian children are dying.</p>
<p>Congress can give Obama the option of staying out of Syria while scoring political points. And that is why the Republican Party has to be careful when navigating these treacherous political currents.</p>
<p>Americans largely oppose intervention in Syria. So do most other countries. The Republican Party should not undermine its 2014 prospects by rubber stamping an unpopular military campaign that will raise Obama’s profile and reward Al Qaeda. But it should also avoid giving the appearance of irresponsibility that the media will be looking to seize on.</p>
<p>The best way to blunt the push for war is to ask the tough questions about the links between Al Qaeda and the Free Syrian Army, why so little attention is being paid to chemical weapons manufacture by the Al Nusra Front and whether the strikes will actually destroy Assad’s WMD stockpiles or whether they are only meant as the symbolic gesture that some officials have said that they will be.</p>
<p>Obama has said that he does not intend to intervene in the war or to implement regime change by military means. These assertions would be more credible if he were not arming the Syrian rebels and if he were willing to carry out drone strikes against Al Nusra Front leaders, instead of limiting the attack to the Syrian military, implicitly favoring the operatives of Al Qaeda in Iraq.</p>
<p>Mitt Romney failed to be fully prepared when challenging Obama’s Libyan War narrative. Republicans should learn from his mistake.</p>
<p>Benghazi was the outcome of Obama’s Libyan War. Republicans failed to hold him accountable for that. Now Obama has thrown another war with even more dangerous implications into the lap of Congress while hoping that it will blow up in their faces.</p>
<p>The debate will provide a national forum to question whether we should be picking a side in this war. The interventionists will point to photos of dead children, a staple of regional conflicts, but Republicans should instead ask the hard questions about the number of dead and exiled Christians at the hands of the Islamist militias we will be fighting to protect. And they should even call on some of them to testify.</p>
<p>In Libya, Obama claimed that the humanitarian plight of the people of Benghazi required urgent military intervention, but it was really the Islamist militias of Benghazi that he was worried about. In Syria, any strikes will be conducted on behalf of the same Islamist militias scrambling to hold on to cities that were once full of Christians, but are now run by Sunni Islamic Jihadists implementing Islamic law at gunpoint.</p>
<p>Obama intends to use Syria as a weapon in a political power struggle against the United States Congress, but it’s also an opening for exposing his Muslim Brotherhood alliances and the wisdom of his Muslim Brotherhood regime change operations in Syria and Egypt.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Bad Reasons for Bombing Syria</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/bad-reasons-for-bombing-syria/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bad-reasons-for-bombing-syria</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 02 Sep 2013 04:31:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[The key issues Congress needs to debate.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/1377972249000-AP-Obama-Syria-001.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-202755" alt="1377972249000-AP-Obama-Syria-001" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/1377972249000-AP-Obama-Syria-001-450x337.jpg" width="270" height="202" /></a>President Obama Saturday laid out the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/31/world/meast/syria-civil-war/">case</a> for a military strike on Syria. He evoked the same rationales Secretary of State <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/running-transcript-secretary-of-state-john-kerrys-remarks-on-syria-on-aug-30/2013/08/30/f3a63a1a-1193-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story_3.html">Kerry</a> and others, including some conservatives, have been articulating for the last week. We’ve heard of “international norms,” “common understandings of decency,” the “international community” that codified a “normal prohibition against chemical weapons” in the Chemical Weapons Convention, the need to act to deter other rogue states like Iran, and the imperative to punish “crimes against humanity.”</span></b></p>
<p>Almost as an afterthought, the necessity of putting teeth into America’s credibility and prestige in order to defend our interests was mentioned by the President. And he vaguely asserted that the gas attack was a “serious danger to our national security,” though it’s hard to see how “making a mockery of the global prohibitions on chemical weapons” endangers our security. Terrorists and their state enablers like Iran and North Korea don’t abide by such “prohibitions.” But that fuzzy national security argument was swamped by the waves of delusional internationalism and dubious psychologizing about the motives and calculations of ruthless dictators and autocrats. The fact is, the only reason to use American military power and risk American lives is to advance our interests and defend our security. Evoking some fantasy “international community” complicates and confuses that critical criterion.</p>
<p>Start with the chimera of “international norms”  and “common understandings of decency.” Such statements imply a universal moral standard shared by all peoples, one which international agreements and institutions codify. The proscription of torture, the protection of non-combatants, the humane treatment of the wounded and prisoners of war, and the ban against using certain kinds of weapons are the sort of presumably universal beliefs that are enshrined in international law.</p>
<p>But where is the evidence that such norms exist in fact rather than in language? Certainly not on the pages of history or your daily newspaper, which are filled with serial violations of such norms, including by signatories to these various conventions and agreements. What <i>can</i> be found is the eternal truth that nations pursue their interests by whatever means they can, and different peoples have different attitudes towards the legitimacy of violence and its acceptable victims, particularly in Muslim Arab lands. Thus nations sign treaties and join transnational institutions because they think doing so will serve their interests, not because they share some “international norm.” Their participation is based not so much on shared values, as on treaties signed because of perceived utility.</p>
<p>Take the Chemical Weapons Convention. The vast majority of nations that signed that treaty did so because it cost them nothing. They did not have such weapons, had no intention of acquiring them, or did not have the money or expertise to acquire them. What difference does it make if Belgium or Burkina Faso signs such a document? Other nations with significant militaries and global responsibilities, like the United States, could afford to honor principle and eschew such weapons because they have plenty of alternative weapons equally or more effective. Then there is the handful of nations that didn’t sign––including Syria.</p>
<p>This raises the main problem with such conventions. They are agreements signed by sovereign nations. Being a sovereign nation means choosing which treaties to sign and which to ignore, which to honor and which to violate. Take the Ottawa Treaty, which bans the use of land mines. Almost as many nations have signed that treaty as signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. Landmines have killed and maimed many thousands more people than have chemical weapons. But the United States did not sign the treaty, or the Convention on Cluster Munitions, because our leaders have judged that given our global responsibilities and interests, landmines and cluster munitions are a critical military resource.</p>
<p>So how consistent or compelling can be the “international norms” that presumably create these various agreements, if some nations don’t sign them? And if the convention is a treaty signed by sovereign nations, how can a nation that does not sign be held accountable for violating its provisions? Either we invent “common understandings of decency” that override the treaty––an obvious pretext for perfuming with principle the calculated pursuit of our own interests–– or we openly punish the non-signatory nation because it serves <i>our</i> interests and security to do so.</p>
<p>And then there are the nations that sign with the full intention of violating the terms of the convention if necessary. Does anyone think that signatory nations like Russia, China, and Iran won’t use these weapons if they think they need to? Let’s not forget that the 3 axis powers of World War II, Germany, Italy, and Japan, were members of the League of Nations and signatories of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand pact that bound the parties to “condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy.” How did that work out?</p>
<p>As for Syria’s use of chemical weapons, if there is some “international norm,” why are signatories to the CWC Russia and China blocking a Security Council resolution to punish the violators of “norms” Russia and China presumably endorse? We know the answer. It’s not in their national interests to do so, just as it wasn’t in France’s national interests in 2002 to endorse punishing a much more egregious violator of “international norms,” Saddam Hussein.</p>
<p>Hussein brings us to the other spurious rationale for acting against Syria: that doing so will serve as a deterrent to other nations (read Iran) contemplating the development or use of proscribed weapons. In March 1988, towards the end of the Iraq-Iran war Hussein poisoned between 3,500 and 5,000 Kurds, injuring many thousands more. Does anyone remember any sort of international outcry and calls for action similar to those that we are hearing now, or when he used chemical weapons against the Iranians? Indeed, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office officially stated, “We believe it better to maintain a dialogue with others if we want to influence their actions. Punitive measures such as unilateral sanctions would not be effective in changing Iraq&#8217;s behaviour over chemical weapons, and would damage British interests to no avail.” Did the British take that attitude because the Chemical Weapons Convention hadn’t been signed yet? But surely the “norms” that lead to the convention were already in existence.</p>
<p>In fact, when in 2003 Congress authorized the Iraq War, the resolution twice referenced Hussein’s chemical attacks on his own people as a basis for invading. So punishing a regime that had violated “international norms” concerning chemical weapons was one of the reasons the U.S. destroyed Hussein’s regime and executed Hussein. But at the time, the need to punish violators of “international norms” and send a deterrent message to future violators was ignored by those protesting the war, including our current President. The French, now so noisily encouraging the U.S. to take action, vigorously opposed a U.N. resolution authorizing the war––the same U.N. Obama is now not even trying to get on board. So where then were all the imperatives to punish and deter violators of “international norms” we keep hearing today?</p>
<p>And if destroying Hussein’s regime and killing him and his sons has not deterred Bashar al Assad from using chemical weapons, what makes us think anything short of destroying his regime and killing him will do so? He’s more likely to remember the fate of Libya’s Ghaddafi, who gave up his nuclear program and ended up sodomized with an iron rod then shot down in the street. Nor is it likely that any future violator like Iran is going to stop its criminal behavior even if Bashar al Assad does end up dead. The Iranians will weigh the risks and benefits, calculate our levels of resolve, and trust in Allah. At this late stage, even killing Assad is unlikely to alter the mullahs’ estimation of our lack of nerve, hypocrisy, and propensity for empty bluster.</p>
<p>Finally, all this rhetoric about “crimes against humanity” and the “responsibility to protect” reeks of hypocrisy and moral preening. The President said, “We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale.” Who’s he kidding? We already have, in Hussein’s Iraq. Change “gassed” to “bombed,” “fire-bombed,” “hacked to death,” “machine-gunned,” and “starved” and you can cover the globe with the victims whose deaths on a “terrible scale” we have “accepted.” We have stood by and watched millions of women, children, and innocent civilians murdered in all sorts of ways equally as, or more gruesome and painful than, dying by poison gas.</p>
<p>In Rwanda anywhere from 500,000 to 1,000,000 men, women, and children were slaughtered in 1994, many by being hacked to death with machetes, not to mention the women raped, purposely infected with HIV, and sexually mutilated. We did nothing to stop the killing not because we militarily couldn’t, but because it was not in our national interests and security to do so. Hence we sent in a toothless U.N. to salve our consciences and deflect the charge of callous inactivity.</p>
<p>So all those calling for intervention in Syria or anywhere else to prevent “crimes against humanity” should be required to explain just how this unfortunately common slaughter is different from all those others we did not intervene to stop. The fact is, given that we cannot expend our citizens’ lives to protect all the millions of global victims of violence, we must make the decision based not on “international norms” but on the national interests and security of the United States, as these are determined by the citizens of the United States through their elected representatives. In the event, frequently pursuing those interests will end up punishing egregious violators like Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. But the definitive criterion must be how the action concretely protects our citizens and our interests.</p>
<p>Specifically answering that question––not appealing to delusional “international norms,” or assertions of deterring future malefactors on behalf of some imagined “global community”––should be the focus of the upcoming Congressional debate.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama&#8217;s Bread and Circuses</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/obamas-bread-and-circuses/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamas-bread-and-circuses</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/caroline-glick/obamas-bread-and-circuses/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Aug 2013 04:44:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202660</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the president's incompetence on Syria has signaled to our enemies that the U.S. is an empty suit. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><i><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Obama-and-ship-of-fools-thumb-470x254-3130.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-202667" alt="Obama and ship of fools-thumb-470x254-3130" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Obama-and-ship-of-fools-thumb-470x254-3130.jpg" width="216" height="176" /></a>Originally published in T<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-One-Obamas-bread-and-circuses-324714">he Jerusalem Post</a>. </i></p>
<p>Over the past week, President Barack Obama and his senior advisers have told us that the US is poised to go to war against Syria. In the next few days, the US intends to use its air power and guided missiles to attack Syria in response to the regime&#8217;s use of chemical weapons in the outskirts of Damascus last week.</p>
<p>The questions that ought to have been answered before any statements were made by the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have barely been raised in the public arena. The most important of those questions are: What US interests are at stake in Syria? How should the US go about advancing them? What does Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons means for the US&#8217;s position in the region? How would the planned US military action in Syria impact US deterrent strength, national interests and credibility regionally and worldwide? Syria is not an easy case. Thirty months into the war there, it is clear that the good guys, such as they are, are not in a position to win.</p>
<p>Syria is controlled by Iran and its war is being directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and by Hezbollah. And arrayed against them are rebel forces dominated by al-Qaida.</p>
<p>As US Sen. Ted Cruz explained this week, &#8220;Of nine rebel groups [fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad], seven of them may well have some significant ties to al-Qaida.&#8221;</p>
<p>With no good horse to bet on, the US and its allies have three core interests relating to the war. First, they have an interest in preventing Syria&#8217;s chemical, biological and ballistic missile arsenals from being used against them either directly by the regime, through its terror proxies or by a successor regime.</p>
<p>Second, the US and its allies have an interest in containing the war as much as possible to Syria itself.</p>
<p>Finally, the US and its allies share an interest in preventing Iran, Moscow or al-Qaida from winning the war or making any strategic gains from their involvement in the war.</p>
<p>For the past two-and-a-half years, Israel has been doing an exemplary job of securing the first interest. According to media reports, the IDF has conducted numerous strikes inside Syria to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry, including missiles from Syria to Hezbollah.</p>
<p>Rather than assist Israel in its efforts that are also vital to US strategic interests, the US has been endangering these Israeli operations. US officials have repeatedly leaked details of Israel&#8217;s operations to the media. These leaks have provoked several senior Israeli officials to express acute concern that in providing the media with information regarding these Israeli strikes, the Obama administration is behaving as if it is interested in provoking a war between Israel and Syria. The concerns are rooted in a profound distrust of US intentions, unprecedented in the 50-year history of US-Israeli strategic relations.</p>
<p>The second US interest threatened by the war in Syria is the prospect that the war will not be contained in Syria. Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan specifically are threatened by the carnage. To date, this threat has been checked in Jordan and Lebanon. In Jordan, US forces along the border have doubtlessly had a deterrent impact in preventing the infiltration of the kingdom by Syrian forces.</p>
<p>In Lebanon, given the huge potential for spillover, the consequences of the war in Syria have been much smaller than could have been reasonably expected. Hezbollah has taken a significant political hit for its involvement in the war in Syria. On the ground, the spillover violence has mainly involved Shi&#8217;ite and Shi&#8217;ite jihadists targeting one another.</p>
<p>Iraq is the main regional victim of the war in Syria. The war there reignited the war between Sunnis and Shi&#8217;ites in Iraq. Violence has reached levels unseen since the US force surge in 2007. The renewed internecine warfare in Iraq redounds directly to President Barack Obama&#8217;s decision not to leave a residual US force in the country. In the absence US forces, there is no actor on the ground capable of strengthening the Iraqi government&#8217;s ability to withstand Iranian penetration or the resurgence of al-Qaida.</p>
<p>The third interest of the US and its allies that is threatened by the war in Syria is to prevent Iran, Russia or al-Qaida from securing a victory or a tangible benefit from their involvement in the war.</p>
<p>It is important to note that despite the moral depravity of the regime&#8217;s use of chemical weapons, none of America&#8217;s vital interests is impacted by their use within Syria. Obama&#8217;s pledge last year to view the use of chemical weapons as a tripwire that would automatically cause the US to intervene militarily in the war in Syria was made without relation to any specific US interest.</p>
<p>But once Obama made his pledge, other US interests became inextricably linked to US retaliation for such a strike. The interests now on the line are America&#8217;s deterrent power and strategic credibility. If Obama responds in a credible way to Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons, those interests will be advanced. If he does not, US deterrent power will become a laughing stock and US credibility will be destroyed.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the US doesn&#8217;t have many options for responding to Assad&#8217;s use of chemical weapons. If it targets the regime in a serious way, Assad could fall, and al-Qaida would then win the war. Conversely, if the US strike is sufficient to cause strategic harm to the regime&#8217;s survivability, Iran could order the Syrians or Hezbollah or Hamas, or all of them, to attack Israel. Such an attack would raise the prospect of regional war significantly.</p>
<p>A reasonable response would be for the US to target Syria&#8217;s ballistic missile sites. And that could happen. Although the US doesn&#8217;t have to get involved in order to produce such an outcome. Israel could destroy Syria&#8217;s ballistic missiles without any US involvement while minimizing the risk of a regional conflagration.</p>
<p>There are regime centers and military command and control bases and other strategic sites that it might make sense for the US to target.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the number of regime and military targets the US has available for targeting has been significantly reduced in recent days. Administration leaks of the US target bank gave the Syrians ample time to move their personnel and equipment.</p>
<p>This brings us to the purpose the Obama administration has assigned to a potential retaliatory strike against the Syrian regime following its use of chemical weapons.</p>
<p>Obama told PBS on Wednesday that US strikes on Syria would be &#8220;a shot across the bow.&#8221;</p>
<p>But as Charles Krauthammer noted, such a warning is worthless. In the same interview Obama also promised that the attack would be a nonrecurring event. When there are no consequences to ignoring a warning, then the warning will be ignored.</p>
<p>This is a very big problem. Obama&#8217;s obvious reluctance to follow through on his pledge to retaliate if Syria used chemical weapons may stem from a belated recognition that he has tethered the US&#8217;s strategic credibility to the quality of its response to an action that in itself has little significance to US interests in Syria.</p>
<p>And this brings us to the third vital US interest threatened by the war in Syria &#8211; preventing Iran, al-Qaida or Russia from scoring a victory.</p>
<p>Whereas the war going on in Syria pits jihadists against jihadists, the war that concerns the US and its allies is the war the jihadists wage against everyone else. And Iran is the epicenter of that war.</p>
<p>Like US deterrent power and strategic credibility, the US&#8217;s interest in preventing Iran from scoring a victory in Damascus is harmed by the obvious unseriousness of the &#8220;signal&#8221; Obama said he wishes to send Assad through US air strikes.</p>
<p>Speaking on Sunday of the chemical strike in Syria, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned, &#8220;Syria has become Iran&#8217;s testing ground&#8230;. Iran is watching and it wants to see what would be the reaction on the use of chemical weapons.&#8221;</p>
<p>The tepid, symbolic response that the US is poised to adopt in response to Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons represents a clear signal to Iran. Both the planned strikes and the growing possibility that the US will scrap even a symbolic military strike in Syria tell Iran it has nothing to fear from Obama.</p>
<p>Iran achieved a strategic achievement by exposing the US as a paper tiger in Syria. With this accomplishment in hand, the Iranians will feel free to call Obama&#8217;s bluff on their nuclear weapons project. Obama&#8217;s &#8220;shot across the bow&#8221; response to Syria&#8217;s use of chemical weapons in a mass casualty attack signaled the Iranians that the US will not stop them from developing and deploying a nuclear arsenal.</p>
<p>Policy-makers and commentators who have insisted that we can trust Obama to keep his pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons have based their view on an argument that now lies in tatters. They insisted that by pledging to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Obama staked his reputation on acting competently to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. To avoid losing face, they said, Obama will keep his pledge.</p>
<p>Obama&#8217;s behavior on Syria has rendered this position indefensible. Obama is perfectly content with shooting a couple of pot shots at empty government installations. As far as he is concerned, the conduct of air strikes in Syria is not about Syria, or Iran. They are not the target audience of the strikes. The target audience for US air strikes in Syria is the disengaged, uninformed American public.</p>
<p>Obama believes he can prove his moral and strategic bonafides to the public by declaring his outrage at Syrian barbarism and then launching a few cruise missiles from an aircraft carrier. The computer graphics on the television news will complete the task for him.</p>
<p>The New York Times claimed on Thursday that the administration&#8217;s case for striking Syria would not be the &#8220;political theater&#8221; that characterized the Bush administration&#8217;s case for waging war in Iraq. But at least the Bush administration&#8217;s political theater ended with the invasion. In Obama&#8217;s case, the case for war and the war itself are all political theater.</p>
<p>While for a few days the bread and circuses of the planned strategically useless raid will increase newspaper circulation and raise viewer ratings of network news, it will cause grievous harm to US national interests. As far as US enemies are concerned, the US is an empty suit.</p>
<p>And as far as America&#8217;s allies are concerned, the only way to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power is to operate without the knowledge of the United States.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama Leaks His Own War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-leaks-his-own-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-leaks-his-own-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Aug 2013 04:23:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bombing]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202410</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The president's Syria game plan is already public.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/0620-Obama-Strategy-Syria_full_600.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-202429" alt="0620-Obama-Strategy-Syria_full_600" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/0620-Obama-Strategy-Syria_full_600-450x332.jpg" width="270" height="199" /></a>As the first drops of a cool afternoon rain begin to fall from the sky, the administration that has been described as the most ruthlessly zealous in pursuit of whistleblowers is showering down its own rain of leaks about the upcoming attack on Syria.</p>
<p>Stand outside the New York Times building with a bucket in one hand and a thick wad of wood pulp in the other, and you may even be able to figure out whether we’re going to war or, as one official told the Los Angeles Times, the air strikes will be &#8220;just muscular enough not to get mocked&#8221;… but not sinewy enough to really upset Tehran and Moscow.</p>
<p>Anything from Clinton’s air strikes on Iraq to Obama’s regime assault on Libya may be on the table, but we seem to be headed into featherweight territory, with Obama telling PBS that the attacks would be a “shot across the bow”.</p>
<p>The New York Times, the usual leakhole of Obama Inc, quoted officials describing a limited one or two day campaign that would degrade Assad’s ability to launch chemical weapons, without forcing him out of power. That might be true, but then again no less a figure than Barack H. Obama had promised that the Libyan intervention would last “days, not weeks”. It lasted months, not weeks, let alone days.</p>
<p>Less than 50 sites are reportedly being targeted; a few command centers and chemical warfare units. That makes it a somewhat larger scale version of the attacks that Israel has already carried out in Syria.</p>
<p>The New York Times story doesn’t just lay out a broad guideline, but a detailed list of targets. Some of those targets are harder to move than others, but if the list is accurate, then the attack plan has already been leaked before it began and the strategic damage is sizable.</p>
<p>Senator McCain, who had been urging a harder intervention, said, “All of these leaks, when the strikes are going to take place, what’s going to be used, if I were Bashar Assad, I think I would declare tomorrow a snow day and keep everybody from work.”</p>
<p>Why leak a limited strike to the public? It may be to reassure Iran and Russia that Obama isn’t really serious about picking a fight with them; he’s just trying to avoid being mocked by the mean lads in the locker rooms of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Or it may be to dissuade the American people from treating yet another unilateral and undeclared war seriously by calling it the W word.</p>
<p>Considering all the Clinton people at the helm, Libya may have been Obama’s Yugoslavia, but Syria could be his Iraq. A few cruise missiles, a few targets that won’t be there by the time the missiles are launched and then everyone goes out for drinks at Lounge 201 with a few Media Matters staffers.</p>
<p>Or the leaks may be there to misdirect the Syrian military into protecting the wrong assets in a bombing campaign that will be waged against the same broad scope of military targets as in Libya. But McCain’s criticisms suggest that if the leaks are an act of misdirection, no one let him in on the game plan.</p>
<p>In an administration that lies reflexively about everything while maintaining an incestuous relationship with the media, it’s hard to know whether we’re hearing deliberately planted lies or truths that leaked inappropriately.</p>
<p>This state of confusion exists because instead of being told directly by the man they elected to represent their interests in the foreign affairs of the nation what he intends, the people have to sift through media leaks to learn whether they are about to be involved in a war or a slap fight. And there are now signals that unlike Libya, Obama will not even bother to address the nation. Apparently telling the people of the country why you began military operations on their behalf is passé in our blindingly modern digital age.</p>
<p>The American people, who in poll after poll oppose a war, are being told that the attacks are happening. And once the important people are done deciding what the attacks will look like, they may get around to informing them just how much of their money and lives will be spent winning Syria for the armies of the Muslim Brotherhood who have proven as inept at taking over that country as they have at taking over Egypt.</p>
<p>White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said yesterday that while Obama wants Assad out and is arming Syrian Sunni rebels who want Assad out, the attacks will not be about regime change.</p>
<p>Beginning a war with an obvious lie is never a good start. And a country with a media unwilling to call out the chief propagandist of its own government for telling it, tells us that in this conflict truth is already the first casualty.</p>
<p>Obama has done everything to help the Sunni rebels overthrow Assad short of actually attacking Syria. Now that he actually will be attacking Syria, the claim that the attacks are not meant to weaken Assad and help the rebels win is not credible. And indeed, a Free Syrian Army official has already said that the FSA is coordinating target lists with the United States.</p>
<p>If the goal were to stop mass murder, there are a lot of other places that Navy warships could go; like Sudan. This conflict has always been about achieving political goals, not humanitarian ones. The goal in Syria is not to end the violence or Obama wouldn’t be supplying weapons and dropping bombs.</p>
<p>Libya also wasn’t about regime change. At least not until we bombed Gaddafi’s convoy using a UN no fly zone as a pretext for attacking a bunch of ground vehicles. Assad’s equipment is a lot more lethal and up to date. It won’t pose too much of a challenge for NATO air power, but Syria will be Obama’s war. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, anything that happens in it cannot be blamed on Bush. Not even by the media.</p>
<p>That’s why Obama is afraid of Syria. This will be one war whose consequences he cannot escape. It will be fully his war. And he will have to own it.</p>
<p>War in Syria is wildly unpopular with Americans, who may give Obama a pass on a casualty free conflict, but if Americans begin dying, then the political casualties will include his controversial domestic agenda.</p>
<p>Obama may want to help the Muslim Brotherhood take Syria, but sacrificing his domestic agenda for their foreign agenda may not be a price that he is willing to pay.</p>
<p>And that is why he may stick to firing a barely muscular shot across Assad’s bow.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Unilateralism, Obama-Style</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/unilateralism-obama-style/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=unilateralism-obama-style</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Aug 2013 04:18:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=202251</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left's romance with international consensus suddenly dissipates. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/afp-516123548-4_3.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-202257" alt="afp-516123548-4_3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/afp-516123548-4_3-450x337.jpg" width="315" height="236" /></a>The United Nations Chemical Weapons Team led by Swedish Professor Sellstrom has decided for security reasons to postpone for at least a day any further visits to the locations of the most recent alleged chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs last week. It came under sniper fire on August 26<sup>th</sup> as it tried to enter the affected area, but team members were able to take some samples, visit two hospitals and interview survivors, eyewitnesses and doctors in the western district of Muadhamiya.</p>
<p>In a statement issued on August 27th, the UN Secretary General’s Spokesperson Office said the following:</p>
<blockquote><p>Following yesterday&#8217;s attack on the UN convoy, a comprehensive assessment determined that the visit should be postponed by one day in order to improve preparedness and safety for the team.  Considering the complexities of the site, confirmation of access has not been obtained but is expected later today.</p></blockquote>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, all but declared the UN expert team’s investigation irrelevant. He claimed during a news briefing, without citing any concrete evidence, that the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in the August 21<sup>st</sup> attack against opposition strongholds is now “undeniable.” He dismissed out of hand the distinct possibility that Islamist elements of the opposition forces, which include al Qaeda affiliates, could have launched the chemical weapons attack themselves with weapons they were able to obtain, and staged it to look like an attack by the Syrian government. Black and white, pre-determined assumptions are driving Obama administration policy, not hard evidence.</p>
<p>Accordingly, the Obama administration, under increasing pressure from the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, and hawkish members of Congress to take military action, is poised to launch a missile strike against the Assad regime. According to Reuters, “Western powers told the Syrian opposition to expect a strike against President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s forces within days.”</p>
<p>With four destroyers already in the eastern Mediterranean Sea within striking distance of Syria and with warplanes in the region as well, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel pronounced the U.S. military “ready to go&#8221; if and when President Obama gives the order to proceed.</p>
<p>Obama has little room to avoid a military confrontation, having backed himself into a corner by declaring a red line last year on the use of chemical weapons and doing nothing about it until now. The problem is that Obama has no clear strategy in the Middle East to align U.S. interests with the least unfavorable outcome, since we can expect no real positive outcome in that part of the world no matter what we do – only a choice between the lesser of two evils. It is true that even a couple of days of missile attacks on weapons arsenals, aircraft, command and control centers, and other military facilities that the Obama administration may now be contemplating can weaken some of Assad’s military advantage. This may create some space for the opposition forces to regroup and regain some momentum in the fighting that it has lost in recent weeks. However, such limited-scope use of force will have no major strategic effect, especially with both sides to the conflict knowing that the Obama administration has no appetite for wider and more sustained military involvement. And helping the opposition means helping the al Qaeda affiliates and other Sunni jihadist groups that are fighting to replace the Assad regime with an Islamist state. A decisive victory by such Islamist forces would be even worse for the United States than the status quo.</p>
<p>The best we can hope for in terms of U.S. national interests is to help create the conditions for a stalemate, which draws Iran and Hezbollah even further into the Syrian conflict on one side and al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadists on the other side. It works to our advantage by having these terrorists fight each other to the death, but it will likely be at the cost of many more innocent lives as well.</p>
<p>Ironically, if Obama does proceed militarily as planned, he will be doing so without the imprimatur of the United Nations Security Council, whose authority under international law to legitimize the use of outside military force against a member state Obama has stressed in the past. This appearance of double standards by the United States is a problem of Obama’s own making. He has relied too much previously on the UN’s capacity to deal with issues affecting international peace and security, even those on which geopolitical rivalries and colliding national interests prevent a consensus necessary for the Security Council to act.</p>
<p>The result of Obama’s decision to operate outside the auspices of the UN this time will be to hand Russia and China cheap propaganda points, as one or both countries will be likely to demand an emergency session of the Security Council to protest what they will no doubt denounce as naked aggression. Any chance for the Geneva II peace conference that Kerry has labored to set up with his Russian counterpart, for the purpose of bringing Syrian government and opposition leaders to the table to negotiate a political solution, will be greatly diminished in the near term.</p>
<p>&#8220;Attempts to bypass the Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa,&#8221; Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement.</p>
<p>There is no good outcome that can be expected to emerge from the Syrian conflict. However, President Obama should at least avoid making things worse, which requires a well thought-out strategy for the entire Middle East region that is sorely lacking at present.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>John McCain’s Syria Delusions</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/john-mccains-syria-delusions/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=john-mccains-syria-delusions</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:45:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Assad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civil war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John McCain]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=193408</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The crucial questions the senator refuses to ask in his haste to arm jihadists. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/McCainSyria2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-193432" alt="McCainSyria2" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/McCainSyria2.jpg" width="251" height="197" /></a>Following the president’s announcement that we will provide small arms and ammunition to the rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Senator John McCain has intensified his drumbeat for war and demanded even more extensive U.S. involvement, particularly a no-fly zone. But McCain has not indicated any awareness of the risks and complications of such an escalation.</span></b></p>
<p>McCain’s argument is the typical one made by “responsibility to protect” internationalists like Samantha Power, Obama’s new U.N. ambassador, whom McCain supported despite her record of anti-Israel animus and doubts about America’s worthiness. But we can’t stand by and watch Assad slaughter his people, the interventionists claim. Except we have stood by on numerous occasions, in Congo, Sudan, and Rwanda, to name just a few venues of slaughter. We are standing by right now as Christians in the Middle East are being murdered, assaulted, harassed, and cleansed from lands that have been Christian for two millennia. We are standing by as al-Qaeda in Iraq slaughters its political and sectarian rivals, and we will for sure be standing by in Afghanistan when the Taliban slaughter even more enemies after we depart in 2014.</p>
<p>The lofty notion of “responsibility to protect” is a fraud, for the fact is we can’t protect every victim of global violence and oppression. This means that our national interests and security can be the only reasons for an armed intervention.</p>
<p>Of course, McCain et al. argue that our interests are at risk, and that providing weapons or even a no-fly zone offers little danger to our soldiers. An Assad victory, so the argument goes, will also be a victory for Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah. But Iran’s real achievement will be the possession of nuclear weapons, which will change the geostrategic calculus in the Middle East much more than Assad’s holding on to power. If we’re concerned about Iran, then, we should be focusing on the regime’s nuclear weapons program, which day by day relentlessly progresses to fulfillment. It’s not Iran’s proxies we should worry about, but Iran.</p>
<p>Nor should the apparent ease with which the U.S.––excuse me, NATO––toppled the Gaddafi regime fool us into thinking we can do the same in Syria. The odds of civilian casualties, for example, will be much greater in Syria if we attack Assad’s air defense system. Once the videos of dead children amidst the rubble hit the international media, how long will all those “allies” still be in our corner? And what about Assad’s stockpiles of chemical weapons? What if he responds by unleashing them against his enemies? And will Russia simply stand by while we bomb its ally’s assets that it provided to them? Perhaps Putin will decide to send the promised S-300 missiles after all. There are all sorts of risks and contingencies, and unless we have a plan to deal with them that puts all our assets on the table, including ground troops, we could make the situation even worse.</p>
<p>Equally bad, McCain doesn’t really know to whom he is eager to give sophisticated weapons. Clearly the most effective and dedicated fighters are to some degree Islamist in ideology, ranging from Muslim Brotherhood affiliates to al-Qaeda franchises like the al Nusra front, which has already pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda headman Ayman al-Zawahri. Jihadists from Europe and across the Middle East are streaming to Syria, where they are getting valuable battlefield experience. The so-called “moderate” Syrian Free Army, the force comprising mostly army defectors, has made it clear they will cooperate with the al-Nusra fighters and anybody else committed to destroying Assad’s regime. Do we really think that if they win, they will then turn their guns on their allies?</p>
<p>And what makes McCain think that weapons delivered to “vetted” groups––assuming that there is any way to definitively establish that they are “moderate”–– will be kept out of the hands of jihadist gangs that are sworn enemies of the U.S. and Israel? We’ve already suffered blowback in Benghazi from Gaddafi’s looted arsenals in the four coffins of dead Americans. The Syrian rebels have asked for anti-aircraft weapons, as these are necessary for countering Assad’s air superiority. So we’re going to provide weapons that can bring down commercial airliners to committed jihadists? In 1979 we hadn’t yet been sufficiently awakened to the terrorist threat from jihadists, so providing the mujahidin with the means to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan made sense. But we know now the nature of the enemy, and so should be a little more prudent.</p>
<p>No one pressing for intervention in Syria has confronted the fact that even if defeating Iran and its proxies is critical to our national interests, arming a congeries of different jihadist groups and imposing no-fly zones are not going to accomplish that aim. It will take a much larger, more intrusive force, including troops on the ground, to defeat Assad, secure his chemical weapons arsenals, and marginalize the jihadists. After our experience in Iraq and the failure of political nerve that has kept us from achieving similar aims, good luck reprising that experiment in Syria.</p>
<p>But even if Assad is driven out just by airpower and arming rebels, what sort of government does McCain think will arise out of these various Islamist factions? As Barry Rubin <a href="http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/06/14/panic-in-washington-is-iran-and-syriaa-regime-winning-and-what-to-do-about-it/">points out</a>, our choice in Syria “will be one of Sunni anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites rather than Shia anti-Christians, anti-Americans, and anti-Semites.” Whatever it is, it’s not going to be a liberal democracy friendly to us and our interests, if what’s going on in Egypt is any indication. The most likely outcome will be Libya on steroids, with large swaths of the country available for sheltering jihadist camps right next door to Israel and Jordan.</p>
<p>And so live on the delusions of Middle East “democracy” promotion, a consequence of wishful thinking rather than analysis of reality. And so continues the baleful influence of John McCain on our foreign policy. His demonizing of waterboarding helped to eliminate one of the most effective tools for extracting intelligence, with the result that now we have no effective means for gleaning intelligence from captured terrorists. And his naïve faith in the magic powers of “democracy” to change a culture steeped in 14 centuries of religious intolerance, supremacism, and violence promises to repeat in Syria the empowerment of jihadist regimes we’re witnessing in Egypt. We’ll be living with the consequences of those delusions for a long time.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Al Qaeda in Iraq Still Threatens America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/al-qaeda-in-iraq-still-threatens-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=al-qaeda-in-iraq-still-threatens-america</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Jun 2013 04:37:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[chemical weapons]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Sarin]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=191891</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A foiled nerve gas plot shows the terrorist group is more dangerous than ever. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Iraq-AQ-chemical-agents.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-191898" alt="Soldiers wearing gas masks hold bottles containing chemical materials during a news conference at the Defence Ministry in Baghdad" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Iraq-AQ-chemical-agents-450x281.jpg" width="270" height="169" /></a>A week ago, Obama declared that Al Qaeda was on a path to defeat. Not only is that not true of Al Qaeda as a whole; it’s not even true of Al Qaeda in Iraq.</p>
<p>During his multiple withdrawals from Iraq, Obama claimed that the mission had been successfully concluded and that the war there never had anything to do with Al Qaeda. Unfortunately Al Qaeda in Iraq begged to differ.</p>
<p>This May<a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2013/06/01/More-than-1-000-people-killed-in-May-Iraq-violence-U-N-says.html">, over a thousand Iraqis</a> have been killed, nearly equaling the death toll from the worst days of the Iraq War. Car bombings in Baghdad no longer make the evening news, but they are commonplace and despite the withdrawal, Americans haven’t been immune from the violence.</p>
<p>Among the Benghazi attackers <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/24/world/benghazi-al-qaeda-in-iraq">were about a dozen members of Al Qaeda in Iraq</a>. The four Americans who died in the attack could be considered four additional Al Qaeda in Iraq kills.</p>
<p>But Al Qaeda in Iraq’s real mission lay in Syria. The Al-Nusra Front has dominated the Sunni side of the Syrian Civil War. Robert Ford, the United States ambassador to Syria, <a href="http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/12/12/ford_al_nusra_front_is_just_another_name_for_al_qaeda_in_iraq">has said that the Al-Nusra Front</a> is just Al Qaeda in Iraq operating under another name.</p>
<p>While Obama has been taking an extended victory lap, his unfinished business in Baghdad is on the way to accomplishing in Syria what it failed to accomplish in Iraq; take over an entire country. The Al-Nusra Front started life as a Syrian arm of Al Qaeda in Iraq which fed foreign fighters into the Iraq War and made the fighting so bloody. It has now become Al Qaeda in Iraq’s biggest success story.</p>
<p>In April, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq announced the creation of an Islamic state encompassing Iraq and Syria. The Al-Nusra Front responded by pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda while avoiding acknowledging that they are not a Syrian independence movement, but a transnational Salafist front operating in Syria.</p>
<p>All this might seem academic. After years of trying to police Iraq, most Americans could be forgiven for not giving a damn who is blowing up who in Syria or Iraq. Unfortunately as we found out in Benghazi, what happens in Iraq, doesn’t stay in Iraq. It doesn’t stay in Benghazi either.</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/al-qaeda-in-iraq-caught-plotting-nerve-gas-attack-in-the-united-states/">Iraqi authorities have arrested five members</a> of Al Qaeda in Iraq and seized a production facility for manufacturing Sarin nerve gas along with remote controlled planes that they planned to use as drones to deploy their chemical weapons.  Their immediate targets were Shiite Muslims, but the Iraqi defense ministry <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1098214/iraq-smashes-al-qaeda-poison-gas-cell">stated that there were plans to smuggle the weapons</a> to the United States and Europe.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Turkey arrested members of an Al-Nusra Front cell with their own stockpiles of Sarin nerve gas. Syria claims to have done the same thing.</p>
<p>While there are good reasons to be skeptical of any claims from the Syrian government, Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry, <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/6/syrian-rebels-used-sarin-nerve-gas-not-assads-regi/">had stated earlier that evidence</a> pointed to the use of Sarin nerve gas by the Sunni rebels.</p>
<p>The seizure of multiple WMDs from Al Qaeda in Iraq’s operations across three countries shows just how big the problem has become.</p>
<p>In his recent national defense speech, Obama repeated the familiar theme that Bush had diverted focus from the fight against Al Qaeda by going into Iraq and that he had restored the proper focus by moving back to Afghanistan.</p>
<p>In fact, Al Qaeda was far stronger in Iraq than in Afghanistan when he took office and remained so during his failed attempts at defeating and then appeasing the Taliban. While Obama threw away lives fighting the Taliban, Al Qaeda in Iraq was laying plans for capturing an entire country and its WMD stockpiles.</p>
<p>There is a certain irony to Al Qaeda in Iraq threatening the United States with Sarin, classified officially as a weapon of mass destruction, long after the Democrats had discredited the Iraq War with taunts of “Where are the WMDs?”</p>
<p>Chemical weapons are notoriously tricky and it’s likely that Al Qaeda in Iraq still has some work to do before it can successfully deploy a WMD. In the nineties, a Japanese doomsday cult’s Sarin nerve gas attacks only killed twenty people and sickened thousands. But 0.5 milligrams of Sarin is a lethal dose for an adult and the Al-Nusra Front cells had kilograms of it.</p>
<p>Syria as a whole may have a thousand tons of Sarin. The Tokyo doomsday cult planned to kill millions with its 70 tons. And as Syrian bases and facilities fall into the hands of the Al-Nusra Front, it will no longer have to rely on crude attempts to manufacture weapons that it can just pick up wholesale.</p>
<p>In his speech at the National Defense University, Obama declared that the war must end. And no doubt it will. One way or another. Nothing lasts forever. But his implication that America can end the war by becoming more passive is wrong.</p>
<p>The war did not begin because the United States was too active, but because it was too passive and took refuge in the cult of root causes instead of dealing directly and immediately with threats. September 11 was shocking, but it was also inevitable. It is equally inevitable that a terrorist attack will one day occur that will be bigger and more devastating than it.</p>
<p>Washington, D.C. often lives in its own bubble. Having forgotten about Iraq once it stopped being a political football, Democratic politicians imagine that Iraq and its Al Qaeda legions have forgotten about them. The Sarin raids in Iraq, Turkey and Syria are a reminder that Al Qaeda in Iraq may now be a bigger threat than it ever was before.</p>
<p>The Clinton Administration chose not to take down Bin Laden when it had the chance, instead taking refuge in outreach and “smart” targeted strikes that were the predecessors of today’s drone warfare. It believed that showing Muslims that we would engage in humanitarian intervention to empower their national aims in Yugoslavia would count for more than hunting down Osama bin Laden. It was wrong.</p>
<p>September 11 was the outcome of its neglect. Now the Obama Administration is allowing history to repeat itself with more humanitarian interventions and smart strikes that overlook the real threat growing on the horizon.</p>
<p>The Sarin raids should be a wake up call. But this is not an administration that takes 3 AM calls.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Syrian Rebels and Chemical Weapons</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/walid-and-theodore-shoebat/syrian-rebels-and-chemical-weapons/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=syrian-rebels-and-chemical-weapons</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 04:54:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Walid and Theodore Shoebat]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=188570</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The disturbing evidence continues to mount. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/rb.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-188582" alt="rb" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/rb.jpg" width="277" height="182" /></a>Last month, Frontpagemag.com courageously and <i>despite all the media hype</i> was one of the first to <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/theodore-and-walid-shoebat/alarming-footage-who-is-really-using-chemical-weapons-in-syria/" target="_blank">publish</a> our detailed findings from Arabic sources which demonstrated that it was the Syrian Islamist rebels and not the Syrian regime who used chemical weapons.</p>
<p>While our findings went against the tide and few believed them, the major media trumpeted the sounds of war claiming that it was the Syrian regime that used chemical weapons against innocent civilians. Now, our conclusions have been confirmed; Reuters has shed doubt on the common belief and just <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/05/us-syria-crisis-un-idUSBRE94409Z20130505" target="_blank">reported</a> that:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>“U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria&#8217;s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.”</i></p></blockquote>
</div>
<p>The report was based on former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte who told Swiss TV that a UN commission has indications Syrian rebel forces used nerve agent sarin as a weapon.</p>
<p>Yet when Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel read a letter sent by the White House to Congress, he <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/syria-chemical-weapons-chuck-hagel_n_3155389.html" target="_blank">stated</a> that the Syrian regime likely used chemical weapons. Such unconfirmed allegations were also passed to President Obama who described the situation as a “red line” and a “game changer” &#8212; only to later temper his statement down by stating: “We don’t have a chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened.”</p>
<p>John McCain and Lindsay Graham also jumped to judgment calling for U.S. intervention and the granting of weapons to the jihadists. In a recent <a href="http://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.PressReleases&amp;ContentRecord_id=84315d03-b017-6943-0169-f18538e13669&amp;Region_id=&amp;Issue_id=" target="_blank">joint statement</a>, the two Republican senators Mike Rogers and John McCain expressed huge concerns regarding the Syrian regime using chemical weapons, which today is becoming more doubtful.</p>
<p>But instead of listening to rational thinking, meanwhile, the White House expressed its doubts over Del Ponte’s revelations, saying it was “highly skeptical” that Syrian rebel forces had used sarin.</p>
<p>&#8220;We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime. And that remains our position,&#8221; White House spokesperson Jay Carney told reporters.</p>
<p>Yet such a claim is void of any evidence; how could the United States make such strong allegations, especially since weapons inspectors will only determine whether banned chemical agents were used only if they are able to access sites and take soil, blood, urine or tissue samples and examine them in certified laboratories? This is indeed the question poised by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which works with the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/subjects/united-nations?lc=int_mb_1001" target="_blank">United Nations</a> on inspections.</p>
<p>That type of evidence, needed to show definitively if banned chemicals were found, has not been presented by governments and intelligence agencies accusing <a href="http://www.reuters.com/places/syria?lc=int_mb_1001" target="_blank">Syria</a> of using chemical weapons against insurgents. &#8220;This is the only basis on which the OPCW would provide a formal assessment of whether chemical weapons have been used,&#8221; said Michael Luhan, a spokesman for the Hague-based OPCW.</p>
<p>While the White House takes a position accusing the Assad regime of lobbing chemical weapons, it fails to answer the obvious: one assault happened in the town of Khan al-Assal, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9950036/Syria-chemical-weapons-finger-pointed-at-jihadists.html" target="_blank">a predominately Shiite town</a>. The Syrian revolution <a href="http://shoebat.com/2012/08/13/obama-administration-supports-islamists-in-syria-but-stops-revolution-against-the-hitler-of-sudan/" target="_blank">is a Sunni movement</a>, and one of its main goals is to remove the Shiite Assad regime. The town has also been a common victim <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9950036/Syria-chemical-weapons-finger-pointed-at-jihadists.html" target="_blank">of attacks by Al-Qaeda</a>, a Sunni organization. This is an indication that Sunnis, and not the government &#8212; which is Shiite &#8212; conducted the attack.</p>
<p>Moreover, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9950036/Syria-chemical-weapons-finger-pointed-at-jihadists.html" target="_blank">neither the rebels nor the government deny</a> that amongst the victims were military personal. In fact, it is said that out of the 26 dead <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/un-to-investigate-chemical-weapons-use-in-syria/2013/03/21/2f497eee-9230-11e2-9cfd-36d6c9b5d7ad_story.html" target="_blank">16 were Syrian soldiers.</a></p>
<p>According to Middle East expert Walid Phares, if Assad ever escaped from the rebels and hid in the northwestern part of Syria, where most of the Alawites live, and his enemies came to attack there, he would use chemical weapons “to defend his own community,” not kill them.</p>
<p>Furthermore, a medic at the local civilian <a href="http://shoebat.com/2013/03/25/alarming-footage-syrian-rebels-used-chemical-weapons/" target="_blank">hospital</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9950036/Syria-chemical-weapons-finger-pointed-at-jihadists.html" target="_blank">said</a> that he personally saw soldiers attending to the wounded at the scene of the attack which is now confirmed by Del Ponte.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9950036/Syria-chemical-weapons-finger-pointed-at-jihadists.html" target="_blank">Another factor</a> that deserves attention is that the device used for the attack was not advanced; both American and independent weapons analysts confirm this. If the Assad regime had such incursion, then it would have utilized something of a more sophisticated arsenal.</p>
<p>Also, if the government was behind this, the attack would have killed more than just 26 people, since Syria<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/what-are-chemical-weapons-and-how-would-syria-use-them/274220/" target="_blank"> is said</a> to own the largest chemical arsenal in the region.</p>
<p>And what about the arsenals captured by the rebels? We have <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=z3XupYFuE48#action=share" target="_blank">showed</a> the use of Scud missiles never seen on western media as well as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKcdXeSa83g&amp;feature=player_embedded#action=share" target="_blank">major</a> missile cache obtained by rebel forces.</p>
<p>The growing evidence suggests that it is the Syrian rebels who are guilty of using chemical weapons against civilians. The Obama administration would do well to stand back before it punishes the wrong party and, by so doing, continues its lethal habit of making matters worse rather than better &#8212; and  strengthening and emboldening our deadliest enemies in the Middle East.</p>
<p><strong>Theodore and Walid Shoebat are the authors of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/God-Tyranny-When-Nations-Natural/dp/0982567901"><em>For God or For Tyranny.</em></a> Walid is the author of the new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Case-Islamophobia-Jihad-Americas-Warning/dp/0982567960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1367902153&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=the+case+for+islamophobia"><em>The Case For Islamophobia</em></a>. Visit their site at <a href="http://shoebat.com/">Shoebat.com</a>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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