foreign military involvement in/against syria newswire

[Sasha]

Since the apparent chemical attack in Damascus it increasingly seems that the US is about to move military against the Assad regime soon. Even if it remains to be seen how exstensive, I thought it prudent to open a seperate newswire to run next to the one in the ongoing struggles sub forum.

This is primarily meant as an newswire, please keep discussion etc to a minimum.

[Sasha]

Despite contingency plans, Obama remains skeptical of military intervention in the conflict. Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. naval forces edged closer to Syria on Saturday as President Barack Obama weighed possible military options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad government.

Obama has previously emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war is problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike.

Nonetheless, the president met with his national security team Saturday to consider possible next steps by the United States. It comes as the U.N.'s disarmament chief Angela Kane arrived in Damascus to further press the Assad regime into allowing weapons inspectors access to the purported site of a chemical assault earlier this week.

“The President has directed the intelligence community to gather facts and evidence so that we can determine what occurred in Syria,” a White House official told reporters .

“We have a range of options available, and we are going to act very deliberately so that we're making decisions consistent with our national interest as well as our assessment of what can advance our objectives in Syria.”

Following the shift of U.S. naval forces toward Syria, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel acknowledged that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria without going into specifics. U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.

"The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options — whatever options the president might choose," Hagel told reporters traveling with him to Asia.

Hagel said the U.S. is coordinating with the international community to determine "what exactly did happen" near Damascus earlier this week. According to reports, a chemical attack in a suburb of the capital killed hundreds of people. It would be the largest chemical weapons attack since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988.

On Saturday, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said hospitals it works with in Syria had reported thousands of patients displaying "neurotoxic symptoms" in line with mass exposure to nerve gas.

"Medical staff working in these facilities provided detailed information to MSF doctors regarding large numbers of patients arriving with symptoms including convulsions, excess saliva, pinpoint pupils, blurred vision and respiratory distress," Bart Janssens, the organization's director of operations said.

Around 3,600 patients have been treated in the three hospitals, he added. Of those 355 have reportedly died, according to MSF.

Despite the Naval fleet change and the convening of his national security team, Obama remains cautious about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.

'Bigevent of grave concern'

"If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it — do we have the coalition to make it work?" Obama said Friday. "Those are considerations that we have to take into account."

Because Russia would likely veto any military action authorized by the U.N. Security Council, any American shift towards the use of force would have to come through another mechanism such as NATO, something which has led commentators and some in the administration to make comparisons to President Clinton's bombing of Kosovo in the 1990s.

"Kosovo, of course, is a precedent of something that is perhaps similar," said an anonymous administration official as reported by the New York Times.

Whatever the case, Obama conceded in an interview on CNN's "New Day" program that the episode is a "big event of grave concern" that requires American attention. He said any large-scale chemical weapons usage would affect "core national interests" of the United States and its allies. But nothing he said signaled a shift toward U.S. action.

For a year now, Obama has threatened to punish Assad's regime if it resorted to its chemical weapons arsenal, among the world's vastest, saying use or even deployment of such weapons of mass destruction constituted a "red line" for him. A U.S. intelligence assessment concluded in June chemical weapons have been used in Syria's civil war, but Washington has taken no military action against Assad's forces, nor do limited weapons deliveries that the president authorized to rebel groups in June seem to have been delivered on the ground.

The president’s reticence on greater involvement in the conflict has been echoed elsewhere in the government.

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top-ranking uniformed officer in the U.S. military, has twice urged caution on U.S. involvement in the conflict in two public letters within the last month.

In a July letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee laying out U.S. military options, Dempsey warned of “unintended consequences” of direct U.S. action.

“We could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control,” he said.

While in an Aug. 19 letter to Rep. Eliot Engel, D-Ny, Dempsey said that U.S. involvement is not about “choosing between two sides” but choosing between multiple sides. He added that the Syrian opposition would not currently support American interests were they to displace the Assad government.

UN inspectors in Damascus

As the U.S. considers its options, the United Nations disarmament chief, workede to press the Syrian government over the issue of access for U.N. experts.

Kane did not speak to reporters upon her arrival in the Syrian capital.

The U.S., Britain, France and Russia have urged the Assad regime and the rebels fighting to overthrow him to cooperate with the United Nations and allow U.N. experts already in Syria to look into the latest reports of chemical attacks. Each side has accused the other numerous times of using chemical weapons.

Kane's visit comes after U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon handed her the task and called for the Syrian regime and the rebels to cooperate with U.N. efforts to investigate into the alleged attacks.

Rebels have reported a death toll of up to 1,300 resulting from Wednesday's attack on the eastern suburbs of Damascus.

But the Syrian government says the claims are "absolutely baseless."

In addition to unequivocally rejecting those claims, the Syrian government accused opposition forces Saturday of storing chemical weapons outside Damascus.

Syrian state television said Assad troops found chemical agents in rebel tunnels in a Damascus suburb on Saturday and some soldiers were "suffocating".

Al Jazeera and wire services

Source: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/24/us-naval-fleet-positionstowardsyriaasobamaconsidersoptions.html

[Paul Pott]

It's almost inevitable. It's increasingly doubtful the rebels, much less the secular liberal rebels, are ever going to topple Assad.

The proxies have failed, so, another lie, another war.

edit: oh, no discussion...

[adipocere]

Syrian rebels use toxic chemicals against govt troops near Damascus - state media (http://rt.com/news/rebel-tunnel-damascus-chemical-940/)

[Le Socialiste]

Syria lets U.N. inspect gas attack site, Washington says too late (http://news.yahoo.com/obama-studies-options-syria-gas-attack-consults-uks-013947792.html)


BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria agreed on Sunday to let the United Nations inspect the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, but a U.S. official said such an offer was "too late to be credible" and Washington was all but certain the government had gassed its own people.

The U.S. remarks appeared to signal that a military response was more likely. A senior senator said he believed President Barack Obama would ask for authorization to use force when Congress returns from recess next month.

The comments follow forceful remarks from other Western powers, including Britain and France, which also believe President Bashar al-Assad's government was behind a massive poison gas attack that killed many hundreds of people last week.

Foreign powers have been searching for a response since the killings in a Damascus suburb, which if confirmed would be the world's worst chemical weapons attack in 25 years.

[Homo Songun]

military action against Assad is a terrible thread title. Who is taking military action? On behalf of whom?

As to "against Assad"... I seem to recall similar "action" against Saddam (another modern day Hitler I guess) that ended up having to take a path through several hundred thousand Iraqi bystanders first.

What I'm saying is that "US preparing to attack Syria" is a more coherent and fair description of what is happening.

[Sasha]

Except that it might wel not being the US doing most of the attacking, turkey and france look a lot more eager to get involved than obama does. Oh, and just so you know, there are already a hundred thousand dead in syria, i think the loss of life thanks to some half arsed US missles will be a speck in the meat grinder that is the syrian cilvil war.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Except that it might wel not being the US doing most of the attacking, turkey and france look a lot more eager to get involved than obama does. Oh, and just so you know, there are already a hundred thousand dead in syria, i think the loss of life thanks to some half arsed US missles will be a speck in the meat grinder that is the syrian cilvil war.

so you want full arsed US missiles?




Assad is not to blame for Syria chemical attacks, says Kurdish party leader (http://mg.co.za/article/2013-08-26-kurdish-pyd-leader-assad-is-not-to-blame/)

[Sasha]

no, i opened a newswire thread to separate stories about foreign nation state aggression against the syrian regime from the one about the syrian uprising in the ongoing struggles forum. which was meant to be about the popular street protests against Assad but already, along with the country, devolved into one about the civil war.
my personal opinions, which is that i oppose US involvement but i think it will be as relevant as their involvement in somalia was, a distraction from the real problem, are for another thread.
but i'll edit the thread title if it wasnt clear enough.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

Oh, and just so you know, there are already a hundred thousand dead in syria, i think the loss of life thanks to some half arsed US missles will be a speck in the meat grinder that is the syrian cilvil war.
so its okay for a few more thousand civilians to be thrown into the 'meat grinder' then? because you don't like assad?

you said that you don't support american intervention. do you oppose it?

[Sasha]

I'm pretty indiferent to it, Assad caused it, it hardly can't get worse, no matter what people say this isn't Iraq 2.0 this is lebanon or Balkans, US involvement can hardly make it worse and my "opposition" would be pointless posturing.

[MarxSchmarx]

Smoking gun perhaps?

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/27/exclusive_us_spies_say_intercepted_calls_prove_syr ias_army_used_nerve_gas


Last Wednesday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people. Those conversations were overheard by U.S. intelligence services, The Cable has learned. And that is the major reason why American officials now say they're certain that the attacks were the work of the Bashar al-Assad regime -- and why the U.S. military is likely to attack that regime in a matter of days.

I suppose it's still possible that Washington is making this up, but that's probably grasping at straws. It seems the only real question left is what Assad knew and when.

[Bardo]

The intervention is extremely unpopular among Americans. Something like 89% of polled citizens disapprove of further escalation of American involvement beyond simply arming the rebels. I'm sure the sentiment is pretty consistent across the board among western countries contemplating involvement. This is irrelevant of course, public opinion doesn't seem to be having any substantial effect on the decision to intervene.

[DasFapital]

British parliament rejects intervention
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/29/cameron-british-attack-syria-mps

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

A BBC team inside Syria filming for Panorama has witnessed the aftermath of a fresh horrific incident - an incendiary bomb dropped on to a school playground in the north of the country - which has left scores of children with napalm-like burns over their bodies.
Eyewitnesses describe a fighter jet dropping the device, a low explosion, followed by columns of fire and smoke.

(BBC News - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-23892594)

Will no doubt we used by the hwaks as an extra incentive / reason for the US to intervene.

[Paul Pott]

Russia is sending warships to the Mediterranean.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Russia is sending warships to the Mediterranean.

only 2 ships. and they apparently wont be there for roughly a week. in it they also say they are rotating some ships out. at the same time the US cancelled sending a carrier back to washington state from the persian gulf.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/29/us-syria-crisis-russia-navy-idUSBRE97S0AK20130829

as far as the russian navy goes, its unlikely it will be there for combat. it may be a message but again, i doubt russia is doing this to fight off american and french ships. that would be a ridiculous and horrifying move.

[Nakidana]

I'm pretty indiferent to it, Assad caused it, it hardly can't get worse, no matter what people say this isn't Iraq 2.0 this is lebanon or Balkans, US involvement can hardly make it worse and my "opposition" would be pointless posturing.

Wow. We have no idea of the consequences this might have. Hundreds of innocent civilians could die as a result of a bombing of Syria, the region could explode even further with the regional powers going all in to preserve their interests. Yet you're indifferent to all that just cause you believe "Assad brought it on himself".

This isn't about Assad, it's about the real consequences this might have on the already suffering Syrian working class. Apparently you don't give a fuck about them.

[Sasha]

Wow. We have no idea of the consequences this might have. Hundreds of innocent civilians could die as a result of a bombing of Syria, the region could explode even further with the regional powers going all in to preserve their interests. Yet you're indifferent to all that just cause you believe "Assad brought it on himself".

This isn't about Assad, it's about the real consequences this might have on the already suffering Syrian working class. Apparently you don't give a fuck about them.


actually my feeling are pretty much like the below article except i make a more cynicall deathtoll calculation:

http://humanprovince.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/an-open-letter-on-syria-to-western-narcissists/

but i'll open a separate thread for discussing that article as its more an opinion piece and i still have some hope of keeping this as an functioning newswire: http://www.revleft.com/vb/open-letter-syria-t182977/index.html

[Delenda Carthago]

I'm pretty indiferent to it, Assad caused it, it hardly can't get worse, no matter what people say this isn't Iraq 2.0 this is lebanon or Balkans, US involvement can hardly make it worse and my "opposition" would be pointless posturing.
OMG dude.

[MarxSchmarx]

OMG dude.

I assume you had more to say? Let's try to avoid one-liners, and critique the positions of each other if we have disagreements. Only by hashing them out can we advance.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

So I like just saw on Facebook that China is supposedly sending troops to Syria. Can anyone confirm this? I haven't yet seen it from a reliable news source so I was wondering.

[SovietCommie]

www(dot)globalresearch(dot)ca/president-al-assad-syria-will-never-become-a-western-puppet-state/5346955

President al-Assad: “Syria will Never become a Western Puppet State”

I know this is quite delayed, but I think Assad was pretty based for sticking the middle finger out to US imperialism, even if he was a Syrian nationalist.

"Assad's rule may endure"
www(dot)csmonitor(dot)com/World/Middle-East/2014/0105/Why-President-Bashar-al-Assad-s-rule-may-endure

Meanwhile, the de facto partition of Syria appears to be solidifying. That may leave Assad nominally in control of Damascus and the areas outlined above, but still heavily dependent on his Russian and Iranian allies for survival. On his hands will be an economy and infrastructure in tatters, an Alawite community fearful for its future, and almost total diplomatic and financial isolation because of sanctions against the regime.

"The US and Europe will never relegitimize Assad," says Landis. "So even if there is some formal cease-fire, the sanctions will remain imposed on the regime and it will become a North Korea, completely ostracized and a pariah state."