Here We Go Again: Fabricating a Casus Belli with Syria

Last week it was Amnesty International's "HUMAN SLAUGHTERHOUSE: MASS HANGINGS AND EXTERMINATION AT SAYDNAYA PRISON, SYRIA," thoroughly demolished by Rick Sterling in his "Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War."

Then yesterday it was the Atlantic Council's "Breaking Aleppo," which, according to The New York Times' Michael Gordon, the man who helped bring us the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "The analysis shows that the hospital, contrary to claims by a Russian general, was bombed multiple times. It indicates that Russian aircraft used incendiary munitions and cluster bombs, despite the Kremlin’s denials, and concludes that Syrian forces used chlorine gas on a far greater scale than is commonly believed."

But all one needs to know about "Breaking Aleppo" comes midway through the article: "Much of the analysis of the photos and social media was done by [Eliot] Higgins, a Britain-based researcher who founded the investigative website bellingcat.com." To mention that Eliot Higgins is a principal author of the report (a guy who is clearly a government agent) without mentioning his role in using spurious arguments and bogus evidence to blame the Syrian government for the 2013 chemical attack in East Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, or his role in arguing for Russian complicity in the downing of MH17 in Eastern Ukraine is clearly misleading to the Gray Lady's readers. Once again with The New York Times we are in the realm of crass banana-fingered propaganda.

Now comes the absurd "Syria: Coordinated Chemical Attacks on Aleppo," released yesterday by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Rick Gladstone, like his colleague Michael Gordon, another spook posing as a reporter, writes breathlessly in "Syria Used Chlorine Bombs Systematically in Aleppo, Report Says" -- the opening paragraph -- that

Syrian military helicopters systematically dumped canisters of chlorine gas, a banned weapon, on residential areas of Aleppo at least eight times late last year in the final weeks of the battle to retake the city from rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a detailed study released Monday.

But skim through the report --  it is not hard to do -- and for all the video links and purported photographic evidence there is not one image of a Syrian helicopter dumping chlorine canisters! An example of the willful suspension of disbelief that Human Rights Watch is asking of us can be found below:

Omar Arnaout, a photographer, said that he saw a helicopter drop an object near a cemetery in Qadi Askar at about 3 p.m. on November 28:

"Suddenly, yellow smoke started spreading followed by the smell of chlorine a few minutes later. It’s the smell of the liquid that we use to clean toilet, but more intense, much more intense. People were unable to breathe, they are coughing. Some children were throwing up. The smell was everywhere."

Arnaout said that about 20 civilians were injured in the attack and taken to hospitals for treatment.

If he is a photographer, why didn't he take a picture of the helicopter? I guess he didn't have his camera with him. Then why in this instance, which is supposed to document a Syrian helicopter dropping a chlorine bomb, mention that he is a photographer? Clearly it is a rhetorical sleight of hand meant to convey to the reader photographic evidence where there is none.

The HRW report is chock full of everything we've seen plenty of times before -- pictures of spent shell casings, eyewitness testimony from jihadis posing as citizen activists, photos of babies in emergency rooms receiving oxygen.

The overall idea is to reboot the Western war on Syria now that the Syrian-Russian-Iranian coalition is about to conquer the Western-backed jihadis; that, and block the Trump administration from working with Russia. With Flynn out it looks like the U.S. posture to Syria will be identical to the one during Obamatime.

War Crimes in Yemen

The Gray Lady seems to be paying more attention to Yemen these days. The Saudi-led, U.S.-backed destruction of the poorest Arab nation has received spotty coverage in the "newspaper of record" because it tars the Obama administration as guilty of war crimes.

Today a story by Rick Gladstone, "Amnesty International Says All Sides in Yemen Have Committed War Crimes," makes this quite clear. Amnesty released a report, "Yemen: Bloody trail of civilian death and destruction paved with evidence of war," as did UNICEF, "Yemen Conflict: Over a thousand child casualties so far," which detail the crimes against humanity. As Gladstone says,

The Amnesty and Unicef reports were released as heavy airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition hit Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeida, the main gateway for trade and emergency supplies to north and central Yemen.

Jamal Ayesh, the port director in Hodeida, said that the airstrikes hit after midnight, destroying the only five cranes in the port. He said that hangars used for maintenance and storing goods were also destroyed. “We can say that the cranes are out of service now,” he said.

Lloyd’s List, a London-based news service for the insurance industry, said Hodeida had closed because of the airstrikes.

Edward Santiago, the Yemen director for Save the Children, said in a statement that the full extent of the damage to Hodeida was unclear, but that “the impact of these latest airstrikes will be felt most strongly by innocent children and families.”

Mr. Santiago called the Hodeida bombing “the final straw.”

More than 4,000 people have been killed in Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest country, since March, when the Saudis began bombing Houthi rebels who had driven the Saudi-backed government into exile. Saudi Arabia views the Houthis as proxies of Iran, its regional rival.

Yemen is now one of the world’s most acute humanitarian catastrophes, with 80 percent of the population in dire need of food and other emergency relief.

The Houthis have suffered a series of defeats in the past month and have been driven out of the southern port of Aden by fighters aligned with the exiled government.

Although the Houthis still control Sana, the capital, exiled Yemeni officials are predicting that they will reclaim it within weeks.

The important thing to remember here is that the United States is acting as air-traffic controller for the Saudis, not to mention that the U.S. Navy is participating in the blockade of Yemen. Beyond a doubt, the Obama administration is participating in a total war on the Yemeni civilian population. The airstrikes on the port of Hodeida are intended to staunch the flow of aid to territory that the Houthis control. The Obama administration is guilty of war crimes; this should be obvious to all.

Remember this the next time some Western official stands at a lectern and admonishes the Syrian government for insufficient care to its civilian population. Because of the dominant role that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Israel play in the determination of U.S. foreign policy, Obama did a somersault and now fully and openly backs the Egyptian police state of Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi. One wonders how Obama is going to explain away the famine he is helping to create in Yemen.

House Holds Hearings Titled "Assad's Abhorrent Chemical Weapons Attacks"

The bane of a frontline wage-worker's life is repetition. Life is largely routinized Monday through Friday down to quarter-hour intervals. There is a tiny bit of freedom that the weekend affords, but Saturday and Sunday, for me at least, are largely routinized as well.

The silver lining to all this repetition is that it does yield a certain kind of deep knowledge. Doing the same thing over and over again gives one a type of understanding that is prized as "organic."

Reading the newspaper every morning for years one bit of organic wisdom that I have gleaned is that anything in the Gray Lady with a byline by Eric Schmitt or Rick Gladstone usually mirrors a U.S. governmental department perspective. These reporters' jobs are to act as a conduit -- most of the time, not 100% of the time -- for USG propaganda.

Another fruit of repetition (we seem to be on a lunar cycle here) is the Syrian chlorine gas barrel bomb delivered by "only Assad's military has helicopters" helicopters. There were hearings held yesterday by the House Foreign Affairs Committee neutrally titled "Assad's Abhorrent Chemical Weapons Attacks." Gladstone, in his story covering the hearings, "Claims of Syrian Chlorine Bombs Counter News of Progress on Chemical Arms," could not bear to refer to the hearings by their title, no doubt because he is a seasoned propagandist and "Assad's Abhorrent Chemical Weapons Attacks" is clearly of a class with Gaddafi's rape rooms, Saddam's soldiers throwing babies onto the floor from their incubators, etc.

Gladstone even includes the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announcement of the successful disposal of Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles as a way to balance the House Foreign Affairs Committee dog & pony show:

The monitoring group overseeing the destruction of Syria’s chemical arms stockpile said Wednesday that almost all effluent from the neutralized weapons had been eliminated, portraying the progress as a great success in the nearly two years since Syria agreed to give up its arsenal. 

But the news from the group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was partly overshadowed by outrage over what critics of the Syrian government call its increasingly brazen use of chlorine in makeshift poison gas bombs dumped on civilians and suspected rebels in the civil war. 

Witnesses at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington, including a Syrian doctor and a civil defense coordinator from areas said to have been attacked, described the chlorine bombs as horrific weapons that had asphyxiated young children.

One witness, Dr. Annie Sparrow, a pediatrician and human rights activist who has helped train doctors working in rebel-held areas of Syria, accused the Syrian government not only of using chlorine in bombs, but also of withholding chlorine for water purification and other critical sanitation needs in areas it does not control. 

Dr. Sparrow, an outspoken critic of the Syrian government, said it had “transformed a principal element of public health into a tool of disease and terror.” 

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria denies that his forces have dropped chlorine bombs, which would be a war crime. Such attacks would also violate the Chemical Weapons Convention, which the Syrian government, under heavy pressure from Russia, signed in 2013 to avert an attack threatened by the United States.

Gladstone doesn't mention that Dr. Annie Sparrow is married to Human Rights Watch (HRW) executive director Kenneth Roth. HRW authored a report, now discredited, blaming the Syrian government for the Ghouta sarin attack in August of 2013. Sparrow and Roth are partisans in the campaign to topple the Syrian government.

To get a more in depth look at these hearings one should consult a story (Alice Ross and Shiv Malik, "Syrian doctors to show the US evidence of Assad’s use of chemical weapons") that appeared in The Guardian a few days ago:

A network of Syrian doctors is due to tell the US Congress that Bashar al-Assad’s regime is systematically weaponising chlorine to spread fear among civilian populations, in defiance of a recent UN security council resolution.

The testimony on Wednesday will be accompanied by a dossier of evidence compiled by the Syrian American Medical Society (Sams), a charity that runs 95 medical facilities inside the country. It documents 31 separate chlorine attacks between 16 March and 9 June. The charity says all the attacks were conducted by launching barrel bombs from helicopters and many targeted civilian areas, leaving 10 dead and at least 530 people seeking medical treatment.

The dossier, which has been seen by the Guardian, provides US lawmakers with data, photos and videos that Sams says were taken in the aftermath of chlorine bombings in a province of Syria recently overrun by militants, including the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front.

The Guardian has been unable to verify the material, which includes videos and photos of adults and children struggling to breathe, often wearing oxygen masks. Some are retching, while others are being stripped and hosed down to remove chemical residue.

Sams also provided the Guardian with a redacted list of basic patient information for 221 people treated for chlorine exposure. According to that list, 57 were under 18.

The lead medical coordinator for Sams in Idlib province, Dr Mohamed Tennari, has flown to Washington DC and has been invited to testify in front of the House foreign affairs committee on Wednesday morning. Tennari will say that although chlorine is less likely to kill than conventional weapons, it has created a “new type of psychological torture” for the Syrian people. He told the Guardian: “We would like to see a no-fly zone and increasing help being provided to refugees.”

The Sams data only reflects attacks that have been confirmed by the charity’s own facilities, and only those taking place in Idlib province. Other activists, including the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue service who will also testify at the hearing, have reported further incidents in the adjoining Hama province.

Recent reports suggest that militant forces in Syria, including Isis, are developing a chemical weapons capability of their own. Isis are understood to have used chlorine in Iraq. However, Sams said that all the attacks in their data were launched from helicopters, which are only operated by the Assad regime. [!]

The Syrian president has denied that his forces have deployed chlorine. Although the chemical is widely available, its weaponisation is strictly banned under international law. In an interview with France 2 on 20 April, Assad said there was no proof of chlorine use in attacks on Idlib city. 

“This is another fake narrative by the western governments … The regular armaments that we have are more influential than chlorine, so we don’t need it anyway,” he said. “We didn’t use it. We don’t need to use it. We have our regular armaments, and we could achieve our goals without it. So, we don’t use it. No, there’s no proof.”

These chlorine gas stories crop up every month to keep alive the issue of a no-fly zone in northern Syria. Obama's realpolitik brain trust has been wary of overt moves to get rid of Assad, but his administration has supported CIA front groups like SAMS and White Helmets. Once a neocon, whether Hillary or the Republican (whomever that may be), recaptures the presidency, the issue of chlorine gas will be part of the public record and used to launch the no-fly zone.

What is incredible to me is that even in a superior story like the one that appeared on Tuesday in The Guardian the absolutely bald lie that only Assad's regime operates helicopters used to deliver the chlorine barrel bombs in the Idlib and Hama is waved through without comment or disclaimer.

Strategy Behind Ongoing Campaign to Cover Up CIA Torture Program Revealed

A second day dawns following the release of the Senate report on CIA torture and it is clear where the action is. The action is going to be in holding the United States accountable to international legal conventions to which it is signatory.

The take-away from two different articles (one by Somini Sengupta, "Americans Involved in Torture Can Be Prosecuted Abroad, Analysts Say"; the other by Joseph Goldstein and Rick Gladstone, "Afghan Leader Expresses Shock at Torture Revelations") is a statement by United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Hashemite scion Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, making clear that “The [International Convention on Torture] lets no one off the hook — neither the torturers themselves, nor the policy-makers, nor the public officials who define the policy or give the orders.”

The Obama administration has argued as recently as last month that the U.S. is in compliance with the International Convention on Torture because of a four-year Department of Justice criminal investigation into the CIA torture program led by federal prosecutor John H. Durham. Durham recommended against bringing charges and Attorney General Eric Holder agreed.

Now the Gray Lady is going to court to access documents from this DOJ investigation in order to allow the public to see some of the interviews with CIA officials and understand the reasoning why no charges were brought by Durham. Charlie Savage has the must-read story, "U.S. Tells Court That Documents From Torture Investigation Should Remain Secret":

Last month, in a presentation in Geneva before the United Nations Committee Against Torture, which oversees compliance with a global anti-torture treaty, the Obama administration pointed to Mr. Durham’s investigation as having fulfilled the United States’ obligation under the treaty to investigate torture. 

The United Nations panel expressed skepticism about the Durham investigation, pressing for details like whether Mr. Durham’s team had spoken only with government officials, or whether it also interviewed any current or former detainees as part of the investigation. A Justice Department lawyer who was part of the delegation defended the investigation as vigorous and told the committee that Mr. Durham’s team had interviewed about 96 witnesses. But he declined to identify them because no charges were filed. 

The Senate and Justice Department investigations trace back to a December 2007 article by The Times that the C.I.A. had destroyed videotapes of interrogation sessions. The Intelligence Committee started an oversight investigation, and the attorney general at the time, Michael B. Mukasey, appointed Mr. Durham to lead a criminal inquiry. 

In 2009, as President Obama took office, the committee voted to expand its investigation into the C.I.A. program. Months later, Mr. Holder announced that he was expanding Mr. Durham’s mandate to look into whether charges should be brought for any interrogation that went beyond approved techniques. 

In 2010, Mr. Durham, an assistant United States attorney in Connecticut, recommended against any charges connected with the tape destruction. The next year, he recommended closing the preliminary investigation into the treatment of about 100 detainees in C.I.A. custody, but elevated two other incidents that resulted in detainee deaths into full investigations. In 2012, he also recommended closing those without any indictments. 

“In light of our assessment of the evidence, the reports thoroughly analyzed the type and nature of criminal charges that could be brought against suspected wrongdoers, along with various defenses that could be raised in opposition to any such charges,” Mr. Durham wrote in his declaration filed on Tuesday. “The reports also discussed what the evidence showed and did not show, and evaluated previous investigations conducted by other entities.”

Accessing these investigatory documents could be the Rosetta Stone for deciphering the CIA torture program. That is why the Obama administration is going to court to block their release.

Charlie Savage does an excellent job concisely tracing the history of both the DOJ and Senate probes to the illegal destruction of the torture tapes in 2005.

Savage also does a superb job of deftly unpacking the mechanics of the cover-up actively perpetrated by the Obama administration. The main line of attack by the CIA and its Republican defenders is that the Senate report is false because it includes no interviews with CIA personnel responsible for the torture. That wasn't by choice of the Senate investigators; that was because CIA personnel wouldn't talk to Senate investigators because of Durham's active criminal investigation.

Savage deftly describes the mechanics of the ongoing cover-up:

The Justice Department said in a statement on Tuesday that its investigators had looked at the full version of the Senate Intelligence Committee report “and did not find any new information that they had not previously considered in reaching their determination,” adding that Mr. Durham’s “inquiry was extraordinarily thorough and we stand by our previously announced decision not to initiate criminal charges.” 

Mr. Holder’s decision in 2009 to open a criminal investigation into the C.I.A.’s treatment of detainees abroad had prompted a political backlash and made it difficult for congressional investigators to speak with current and former agency officials, since they faced legal jeopardy. 

Citing the fact that the Senate investigation would have to rely only on internal C.I.A. documents and not interviews with witnesses, committee Republicans withdrew their support for it. And since the report’s release, defenders of the C.I.A. have argued that the report should not be seen as an accurate and complete historical account.

Michael Davidson, who was the top lawyer for the Senate Intelligence Committee until his retirement in 2011 and who worked on the first four years of its investigation, portrayed the executive branch’s stance as a Catch-22. 

“One agency of the executive branch (the C.I.A.) complains that no one was interviewed,” he said in an email. “Another element of the executive branch (D.O.J.) actually conducted lots of interviews,” he added, referring to the Department of Justice.

“Its investigation made it difficult for a Senate committee to conduct interviews. So check there. Then D.O.J. objects to disclosing them. So checkmate there. That leaves the C.I.A. free to complain about lack of interviews. Pretty neat,” he said.

It is too early to say that we have to returned to the social ferment of the 1970s when the Church Committee and the Pike Committee shined a light on the CIA's family jewels, when the Weather Underground still roamed the land, when athletes were activists. But it seems like we're getting there.

Bees are Dying as are Palestinians and Soon it Will be Our Turn

At a certain point during the day on Thursday the realization dawns on me that I am going to make it through another week. Friday is on the horizon, and with it the promise of a bit of rest and relaxation. When I realize I am going to make it I feel relief. The repetition of the rat race becomes less demanding. It seems as if I have a little more room to move.

But yesterday, let me just say this about yesterday before moving to a brief treatment of the hollowness, the stupidity of John Kerry's ceasefire negotiations. I can't get out of my head this OpEd I read a few weeks back by Mark Winston, a Simon Fraser University professor, "Our Bees, Ourselves: Bees and Colony Collapse." I was telling a coworker about it. Honeybee colonies are collapsing because of mono-crop agriculture, overuse of pesticides, overwork due to being hauled by tractor trailer from one field to the next to perform pollination duties. And this Simon Fraser University professor thinks the same thing is going to happen to us homo sapiens because the same basic conditions apply: We are basted in chemicals, sustained by mono-crop agriculture, and we are overworked:

Honeybee collapse has been particularly vexing because there is no one cause, but rather a thousand little cuts. The main elements include the compounding impact of pesticides applied to fields, as well as pesticides applied directly into hives to control mites; fungal, bacterial and viral pests and diseases; nutritional deficiencies caused by vast acreages of single-crop fields that lack diverse flowering plants; and, in the United States, commercial beekeeping itself, which disrupts colonies by moving most bees around the country multiple times each year to pollinate crops.

The real issue, though, is not the volume of problems, but the interactions among them. Here we find a core lesson from the bees that we ignore at our peril: the concept of synergy, where one plus one equals three, or four, or more. A typical honeybee colony contains residue from more than 120 pesticides. Alone, each represents a benign dose. But together they form a toxic soup of chemicals whose interplay can substantially reduce the effectiveness of bees’ immune systems, making them more susceptible to diseases.

These findings provide the most sophisticated data set available for any species about synergies among pesticides, and between pesticides and disease. The only human equivalent is research into pharmaceutical interactions, with many prescription drugs showing harmful or fatal side effects when used together, particularly in patients who already are disease-compromised. Pesticides have medical impacts as potent as pharmaceuticals do, yet we know virtually nothing about their synergistic impacts on our health, or their interplay with human diseases.

Observing the tumultuous demise of honeybees should alert us that our own well-being might be similarly threatened. The honeybee is a remarkably resilient species that has thrived for 40 million years, and the widespread collapse of so many colonies presents a clear message: We must demand that our regulatory authorities require studies on how exposure to low dosages of combined chemicals may affect human health before approving compounds.

Honeybees are ancient and very stable. So much so that Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe hypothesize that they came fully formed from outer space. The fact that honeybees are dying now in great numbers is a very bad sign not just for them but for all life on the planet. Humans will not be spared. A great die off is coming our way.

Winston's solution is let some things return to the wild. Capitalists will actually make more money:

Bees also provide some clues to how we may build a more collaborative relationship with the services that ecosystems can provide. Beyond honeybees, there are thousands of wild bee species that could offer some of the pollination service needed for agriculture. Yet feral bees — that is, bees not kept by beekeepers — also are threatened by factors similar to those afflicting honeybees: heavy pesticide use, destruction of nesting sites by overly intensive agriculture and a lack of diverse nectar and pollen sources thanks to highly effective weed killers, which decimate the unmanaged plants that bees depend on for nutrition.

Recently, my laboratory at Simon Fraser University conducted a study on farms that produce canola oil that illustrated the profound value of wild bees. We discovered that crop yields, and thus profits, are maximized if considerable acreages of cropland are left uncultivated to support wild pollinators.

A variety of wild plants means a healthier, more diverse bee population, which will then move to the planted fields next door in larger and more active numbers. Indeed, farmers who planted their entire field would earn about $27,000 in profit per farm, whereas those who left a third unplanted for bees to nest and forage in would earn $65,000 on a farm of similar size. 

Such logic goes against conventional wisdom that fields and bees alike can be uniformly micromanaged. The current challenges faced by managed honeybees and wild bees remind us that we can manage too much. Excessive cultivation, chemical use and habitat destruction eventually destroy the very organisms that could be our partners.

And this insight goes beyond mere agricultural economics. There is a lesson in the decline of bees about how to respond to the most fundamental challenges facing contemporary human societies. We can best meet our own needs if we maintain a balance with nature — a balance that is as important to our health and prosperity as it is to the bees.

But any such common sense has difficulty gaining traction in a world dominated by greed, lies, vanity and stupidity. Case in point is the U.S. Secretary of State's shuttle diplomacy to secure a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza. As Michael Gordon and Rick Gladstone report, "Kerry Claims Progress Toward Gaza Truce, but Hamas Leader Is Defiant," he is only talking to, on the Palestinian side, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas will be able to deliver nothing:

But even as Mr. Kerry pressed his case with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, a defiant note was struck by one figure whom the secretary of state has conspicuously not talked with: Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas. 

“Everyone wanted us to accept a cease-fire and then negotiate for our rights,” Mr. Meshal said at a news conference in Qatar, his home in exile, taking aim at the very approach Mr. Kerry has sought to nurture. “We reject this, and we reject it again today.” 

Mr. Kerry has emphasized that his immediate goal is to obtain a cease-fire, after 16 days of fighting that has killed nearly 700 Palestinians, 32 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians.

Kerry is trying to secure an immediate ceasefire with only a promise to address substantive issues later. We know what some of those issues are -- an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza, open borders and ports, release of Hamas political prisoners, etc. -- and we also know that Israel has no intention of budging on any of them without some form of Gaza demilitarization backed up by intrusive inspections. Hamas will not agree to this. Furthermore, Israel has stated there will be no ceasefire until leadership is satisfied Hamas' tunnels have been identified and destroyed.

Israel got a big boost late last night when the FAA lifted its flight ban. No doubt a lot of pressure was placed on the Obama administration. But Meshal is resolute. There will be no ceasefire without a lifting of the blockade:

In Doha, Qatar’s capital, Mr. Meshal outlined his own demands. While Mr. Meshal said that Hamas would not “close the door” for a brief truce to evacuate the wounded and deliver humanitarian aid, he stressed a more lasting agreement would not come until some of the group’s demands were met. 

“We will not accept any initiative that does not lift the blockade on our people and that does not respect their sacrifices,” he said.

So the slaughter will continue. The United States' days as a leading power are over. It no longer commands any moral force. Europe is moving away. Eventually, hopefully soon, the American people will move away as well. By this I mean smash Washington. This will take a new political formation, which, given all the election and campaign finance law revisions of the last twenty years, will basically require a revolution.

Don't Expect Much U.S. Military Action in Iraq

The United States is not an egalitarian country. It plays one on TV. But the reality it is corporate-dominated kleptarchy that is only nominally democratic.

Our nominal democracy and vestiges of constitutional protections give us a leg up on the subjects of Saudi Arabia. But in terms of an ally who has a strong voice in the conduct of American affairs, you would be hard pressed to find one greater than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Yesterday, when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani proclaimed his country's readiness to intervene in Iraq to protect the Shiite holy sites there, the Saudis responded by issuing a warning against any foreign intervention. Rick Gladstone and Dan Bilefsky report in "Insurgency in Iraq Widens Rivals’ Rift" that

In a televised speech in Iran on Wednesday, Mr. Rouhani expressed full support for the Iraqis who have joined volunteer militias to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Sunni extremist group that straddles both countries. It has seized large sections of northern and western Iraq over the past few weeks, threatened to march on Baghdad and vowed to obliterate cities and shrines dear to Shiites.

“Regarding the holy Shiite shrines in Karbala, Najaf, Kadhimiya and Samarra, we announce to the killers and terrorists that the big Iranian nation will not hesitate to protect holy shrines,” the president vowed in the speech to a crowd in Lorestan Province in western Iran. “These terrorist groups, and those that fund them, both in the region and in the international arena, are nothing, and hopefully they will be put in their own place.”

Mr. Rouhani also said many Iranian volunteers were prepared to travel to Iraq to defend religious sites. He sought to cast them as the allies of patriotic Iraqis from all backgrounds who see the Sunni insurgents as a scourge — a theme he also emphasized in a posting on his Twitter account.

“Iranian nation will protect Iraq’s holy shrines & they aren’t alone. Iraq’s Sunnis, Shias & Kurds all ready to defeat terrorism solidarity,” he wrote.

Mr. Rouhani signaled over the weekend that Iran did not intend to send troops to Iraq. But Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, recently traveled to Iraq to meet with Iraqi leaders, who have mobilized thousands of militia fighters, almost exclusively Shiites. The high-level contact suggested that General Suleimani was helping oversee their training and strategy.

In Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal warned that no outside power should be meddling in Iraq. Coming on the same day that Mr. Rouhani spoke, the clear implication was that the Saudi minister was referring to the Iranians. He said the Iraqis needed to achieve national reconciliation without “foreign interference or outside agendas.”

Prince Faisal's admonition goes for the United States as well. That is why stories that appear in the press regarding Obama's deliberations on the use of force in Iraq always accentuate the limited strategic options he is dealing with. A few drone strikes are usually mentioned. The stories convey no sense of urgency, certainly none of the shrieking that went along with the press's drumbeat for strikes on Damascus last summer. Then it was the entire global order at stake, dependent as it is, or at least thought to be inside the Beltway, on unilateral U.S. belligerence. Here we are only dealing with the realization -- a caliphate rising in northern Iraq erected by a group Osama bin Laden found too extreme -- of the fantasy that Bush-Cheney used to justify their 2003 invasion.

The U.S. and the Kingdom are reading from the same script when it comes to Iraq: the ISIS blitzkrieg is due to the sectarianism of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. This is the talking point that has been reiterated with great discipline since Mosul fell.

Another red flag is that the atrocities and war crimes of ISIS are given short shrift, mentioned only as if in passing. Whereas any Shiite reprisals, such as the 44 Sunni prisoners who ended up shot in an attack on a Baquba prison earlier this week, are labeled "horrific."

Gladstone and Bilefsky mention that

The Saudi kingdom also issued a statement repudiating accusations by Iraq’s Iranian-backed Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, that it was providing moral or financial support to the Sunni insurgents.

“Any suggestion to the contrary is a malicious falsehood,” the Saudi statement said.

But Saudi sponsorship of ISIS was even acknowledged yesterday by the Gray Lady in her lede editorial: "Turkey, for instance, should shut its border to militants and to materiel flowing into Syria and Iraq. And Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other gulf states need to stop financing (directly or indirectly) ISIS, which began as an Al Qaeda affiliate, and other extremist groups."

Salting the Earth of Lebensraum

Do you ever forget what year it is? For a second there I thought it was 2013. But then, rubbing a sore right calf muscle from a race this past Sunday, I remembered that, yes, it is spring of 2014, and we are at the beginning of a New World Order, which is a U.S.-engineered re-creation of the old Cold War. Communism is no longer a global force, and the useful canard of the West being pitted in an existential struggle against Sunni Islamic fundamentalism has been blown to smithereens by the violent Saudi reaction to the Arab Spring; hence, the much-ballyhooed roll out of the "Asia pivot."

But somewhere on the way to the Diaoyu Islands, the Obama administration got caught up in Kiev, and the pivot to Asia became a pivot to Russia. Now, instead of reordering the globe along the lines of a New Cold War with China, the old Russian bear will have to do.

All this by way of saying that the best stop this spring morning for a news consumer to get a sense of the the shift underway is Rick Gladstone's "Russia and Iran Reported in Talks on Energy Deal Worth Billions":

The Obama administration’s strategy of punishing Russia with economic sanctions over the Ukraine crisis encountered a new complication on Monday with word that the Russians are negotiating an $8 billion to $10 billion energy deal with Iran, another country ostracized by American-led sanctions, which partly depend on Moscow’s cooperation to be effective. 

The Russia-Iran energy deal, reported by the Iranian state news media, is the second significant economic collaboration under negotiation between the two countries that could undercut the efficacy of the sanctions on Iran. Those sanctions are widely credited with successfully pressuring the Iranians in the current talks over their disputed nuclear program.

*** 

The Obama administration has expressed anger about a previously reported negotiation between Iran and Russia, worth an estimated $20 billion, under which the Iranians would trade 500,000 barrels of oil a day for Russian goods. Administration officials have said such a barter arrangement would violate sanctions on Iran. There has been no indication that the deal is close to completion.

A critical part of Obama's Asia pivot is to neutralize Iran, get out of the decades-long wars of the Greater Middle East (a preoccupation of Bush II) and refocus U.S. military might on the shipping lanes of the South and East China Seas. All this has been scrambled by the February putsch in Kiev and Russia's quick reaction to it by making sure that Crimea would not fall to the neocons. What is going on in eastern Ukraine, and what explains the intense U.S. wailing that Russia's non-supine response has elicited, is that things have really changed here. This is not cosmetic, though so far U.S./EU sanctions have largely been. The world has changed and a dash is underway to control that change.

The U.S. cannot simply announce "bombs away!" in Ukraine because of Russian conventional force superiority in the region, not to mention that Russia is a great nuclear power. That removes the pro forma U.S. response to every geopolitical issue -- force or the threat of force. Next is war by other means, economic sanctions. Iran serves as a prime example. But the EU cannot do to Russia what it went along with in the case of Iran. Future European growth is predicated on eastward economic integration. Cutting itself off from Russia is not a viable route forward.

The only option for the United States in this situation seems to be to destabilize Ukraine so that Russia and Europe can't couple to create their new Eurasian economy. Call this option, "Salting the earth of Lebensraum." That is why I was worried to read at the end of the C.J. Chivers and Noah Sneider story, "One City Falls to Pro-Russian Militants; in Another, the Mayor Is Shot":

In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the West should be more concerned about the buildup of Ukrainian military forces in the east of the country than with the actions of the self-defense units, a reference to the rebels and separatists who now roam freely in several cities and towns. 

Ukraine has deployed 11,000 troops in the area, plus 160 tanks, 230 armored personnel carriers, at least 150 artillery systems and “a large number of planes,” the statement said. 

Military analysts have said that Ukraine has gradually been shifting its armed forces eastward both to try to address the unrest and in response to Russian military maneuvers taking place just over the border. The Ukrainian military has about 70,000 troops total.

The putsch government in Kiev and the EU would be far better off negotiating a generous settlement with Russia, cutting the U.S. out entirely. I know this is asking for too much; there is too much rationality in it. What remains to be seen is if putschists are so devoid of common sense, so in thrall to the neocons running the show in the U.S., that they attack the city centers being occupied by pro-federalization protesters. Then the carnage will truly begin and Great Satan will get what he wants.

Death Rattle from the House of Saud?

What is interesting about the Gray Lady's coverage this morning is the overt mention that current events in the Middle East point to the possibility that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia might be on the verge of collapse.

First, in Thomas Erdbrink's "U.S. and Iran Face Common Enemies in Mideast Strife," a story detailing the shared interests of the United States and Iran in combating the recent florescence of Sunni fundamentalism in the Middle East -- a story mostly built out of quotes from Aziz Shahmohammadi, a former adviser to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council -- comes this pearl in the third-to-last paragraph:

“We are worried for Saudi Arabia, which seems weak and potentially unstable,” said Mr. Shahmohammadi, the former adviser, who heads an institute that promotes dialogue between Sunnis and Shiites. “Even we, as their competitor, see all the horrible consequences if things go wrong there.”

Then after reading the Anne Barnard-Rick Gladstone piece, "Rebel Infighting Spreads to an Eastern Syrian City," on the civil war among Saudi-backed jihadis fighting the Syrian civil war, one comes upon Anne Barnard's noteworthy "Saudis’ Grant to Lebanon Is Seen as Message to U.S." Here Barnard explores the issues involved in Saudi Arabia's $3 billion "gift" to the Lebanese Army for the purchase of French weapons. (What she doesn't mention is that the French are being rewarded by the Saudis for obstructing the P5+1 nuclear agreement with Iran.) And once again the image of a bloated, senile, despotic Saudi Arabia floats to the surface:

Yezid Sayigh, a scholar of Arab militaries at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said the Saudis were declaring a “tactical divorce” from the Obama administration over their frustrations with what they see as America’s indecisiveness on Syria and its attempts at reconciliation with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival and Hezbollah’s patron. 

“They’re on the warpath, angry, and that doesn’t make for good policy,” Mr. Sayigh said. 

Analysts on both sides agree that if Lebanon’s government, under Saudi pressure, pushed the army to confront Hezbollah, it would risk fracturing the force along political and sectarian lines and destroying the closest thing the country has to a broad-based national institution. Mr. Sayigh said that not even the United States had tried to link aid to Lebanon’s army with action against Hezbollah. 

“Those are illusions,” said Talal Atrissi, a Lebanese military analyst who favors Hezbollah. “The Lebanese Army would be dismantled.”

While the Gray Lady has regularly reported Saudi estrangement with the Obama administration, she has not done so through an interpretive lens that focuses on Saudi weakness, irrationality and instability. This seems new and -- spread over three different stories -- feels intentional. One would have to go back to the Sunday Review opinion piece by Christopher Davidson, "The Last of the Sheiks?," published last October to find a similar example of speculation regarding the impending doom of the House of Saud.

The New York Times is largely aligned with the Obama administration. This is no mystery. All one has to do is read the Gray Lady's coverage of the recent implementation of the Affordable Care Act to figure this out. A message is being sent to the Saudis: "Relax!"

Hold the Pivot to Asia: Al Qaeda and the House of Saud

What is interesting about today's frontpage story, "Jihadist Groups Gain in Turmoil Across Middle East," by Robert Worth and Eric Schmitt, a decent sketch of the growing Al Qaeda hot spots in Yemen, southern Libya, the Sinai Peninsula and Syria, is the almost total absence of any explanation of the role of Saudi Arabia. Worth and Schmitt frame the Qaeda renascence in terms of a realignment of the Obama administration's relationship with the Baathist government of Bashar al-Assad:

“We need to start talking to the Assad regime again” about counterterrorism and other issues of shared concern, said Ryan C. Crocker, a veteran diplomat who has served in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. “It will have to be done very, very quietly. But bad as Assad is, he is not as bad as the jihadis who would take over in his absence.” 

It is not clear whether or when the White House would be willing to make such an abrupt shift in approach after years of supporting the Syrian opposition and calling for Mr. Assad’s ouster. It would certainly require delicate negotiations with Middle Eastern allies who were early and eager supporters of Syrian rebel groups, notably Saudi Arabia.

The role of the House of Saud in the explosive turmoil in the Middle East is given greater mention in a story this morning by Rick Gladstone, "Syria Crisis Is Worsening, U.N. Relief Official Says":

Mr. Jaafari [Syrian ambassador to the United Nations] also had harsh words for Saudi Arabia, long accused by his government of financing, recruiting and arming Sunni jihadist militants linked to Al Qaeda that are waging war in Syria. He said “thousands of Saudi fighters” had been killed in Syria and that the government had taken 300 Saudis prisoner. Saudi diplomats did not return telephone calls for comment. 

“Somebody should hold the Saudis responsible for what they are doing,” Mr. Jaafari said. 

In Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that is fighting on Mr. Assad’s side in Syria, accused Saudi Arabia directly for the first time on Tuesday of involvement in the deadly double bombing at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut last month. Mr. Nasrallah, on the Lebanese television channel OTV, said Saudi intelligence had collaborated with Qaeda-linked militants to carry out the attack, which was a direct challenge to Iran, Saudi Arabia’s regional rival for power. 

But Mr. Nasrallah also pushed with new vigor for a political solution in Syria. He praised the signs of reconciliation between Iran and the United States as having averted regional war.

The assassination of senior Hezbollah leader Hassan Laqees is more proof (though Hezbollah is blaming Israel) of Saudi-fueled escalation of sectarian conflict.

The end game? Region-wide destabilization that keeps U.S. military forces fully engaged in the Middle East and the ballyhooed "pivot to Asia" on the drawing board for the foreseeable future.

Here's the last paragraph of the Worth and Schmitt story on the flowering of Al Qaeda groups:

“Whether they are dismayed by the way things played out in Egypt or by the growth of Al Qaeda in Syria, the worm has turned in the Middle East in the minds of American foreign policy makers,” said William McCants, an expert on jihadist movements and a former senior adviser at the State Department. “It seems we are back to counterterrorism as a guiding focus for American policy.”

How successful Obama will be in staying out of the Middle East briar patch is a tough question to answer. His agreement with Russian on Syria's chemical weapons and the nascent deal with Iran on its nuclear program have been spectacular successes given the outsize influence of the Saudis and Israelis on U.S. foreign policy. In our pay-to-play system, Congress is pretty much Saudi and Israeli occupied territory.

That's why keeping on an eye on events in Syria is so important. How Obama treads there -- whether a meaningful Geneva II deal is reached -- will point the way forward in terms of the Greater Middle East.

Kerry Jets to Riyadh to Kiss the Ring of the King

As Secretary of State John Kerry prepares to pay fealty to Saudi ruler King Abdullah with a trip to Riyadh next week, the Israelis have apparently indulged in one of their periodic missile attacks on Syria, this one coming Wednesday night against a Syrian Arab Army base outside Latakia; the reason being given is the familiar one, a shipment of Russian missiles bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Syrian government has met its deadline to dismantle its chemical weapons production facilities. Anne Barnard reports in "Syria Destroys Chemical Sites, Inspectors Say":

Syria’s ability to produce chemical weapons has been destroyed and its remaining toxic armaments secured, weapons inspectors said Thursday, as President Bashar al-Assad has offered unexpectedly robust cooperation, at least so far, with a Russian-United States accord to dismantle his arsenal. 

Elimination of Mr. Assad’s manufacturing ability is the most significant milestone yet in a process that still faces a monumental task: destroying the government’s 1,290 tons of declared chemical weapons in the midst of a bloody civil war that has killed well over 100,000 people and carved up control of the country.

So we're left with the status quo ante Ghouta: a Syrian civil war that is no longer a civil war but a Saudi-funded and inspired jihad against a secular state that has much more support domestically than any of its opponents. Kerry's meeting with King Abdullah looms large for the fate of peace talks in Geneva. It seems to me that the United States is no longer committed to Geneva II. Back in September when Obama was facing a revolt by his party there was a sense that the administration wanted nothing more to do with war games in the Middle East and that it was prepared to shift the paradigm. Out of this came Obama's one-on-one contact with newly-elected Iranian president Rouhani, and ever since we've been dealing with the Saudi and to a lesser extent the Israeli reaction. This is from Rick Gladstone's story, "Kerry to Visit Saudi Arabia to Smooth Relations":

The Saudis are known to have been upset by President Obama’s telephone call with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran on Sept. 27, the first direct contact between an American and Iranian president since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The call was one of a number of signs that the United States and Iran want to settle the longstanding dispute over Iran’s nuclear energy program. Saudi Arabia considers Iran its strategic rival in the Middle East.

Last week the Moon of Alabama blog raised an important issue: "Syria: After CW Removal, Obama May Again Go For Regime Change." While I don't think Obama will mess with any Tomahawk cruise missile attacks launched from U.S. carriers in the Mediterannean Sea, this doesn't mean that Kerry and King Abdullah won't agree to scuttle Geneva II and then reinvest in the covert war along the Jordanian border.

Iraq is connected of course. Al-Maliki's meeting with Senators Menendez and Corker who lead the Foreign Relation Committee did not go well. Menendez and Corker serve the interests of Israel and House of Saud. The Obama administration's decision on whether to supply the military hardware -- drones, Apache helicopters, Hellfire missiles -- al-Maliki wants to deal with the efflorescence of ISIS in western Iraq should illuminate the way forward on Syria and Iran.

Chapter VII a Stretch for the West Despite Winning Propaganda War on Ghouta CW Attack

C.J. Chivers, a reporter who does good work, has another story today, "U.N. Data on Gas Attack Points to Assad’s Top Forces," fleshing out the azimuths evidence contained in the recently released United Nations report on the August 21 chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. The angle of impact taken from rocket craters point to the Republican Guard 104th Brigade located atop Mount Qasioun. This revelation, mostly unanswered in the last 36 hours, is being countered this morning by the Syrian government. Agence France Presse reports that "Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday after the first of two days of talks in Damascus that the Syrian regime has handed Russia new materials implicating rebels in the attack that horrified the world." Ake Sellstrom's UN investigators are returning to Syria to continue inspections.

Regardless of the actual truth of who is behind the Ghouta chemical attack, the Syrian government has been losing the rhetorical war with the West since Monday. This has given renewed impetus in the Security Council to include Chapter VII sanctions in the draft resolution governing Syrian compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention. Here's Rick Gladstone's take in "Security Council Returns to Role in Syria Conflict":

[D]iplomats, who declined to be identified, said Russia, Syria’s most important ally, was resisting components of the draft, composed by the three Western permanent members — Britain, France and the United States — that discuss the threat of force to ensure Syrian compliance, whether to condemn the Syrian government for chemical weapons use and whether suspected users should be referred to the International Criminal Court for war crimes prosecutions. 

The discussions are unlikely to produce a quick resolution, the diplomats said, and it is unclear when a draft will be ready for a vote.

Even though Syria and their Russian ally are losing the public relations war on the Ghouta attack, they remain in a strong position vis-a-vis the West. Public opinion is overwhelming against military intervention even though a super-majority already believes the Syrian government to be responsible for the attack; that's what polls published earlier showed. The United States Government is facing the very real threat of a shutdown in the near future. In his negotiations with the House GOP there is no way Obama is going to risk losing public support by launching a unilateral strike. Russia will block any threat of force or official condemnation in the Security Council. It is likely that Sellstrom's inspection team will eventually document evidence of rebel chemical weapons use. The West will do everything it can to prevent this because once it happens any military support for the opposition will be exceedingly difficult to justify to a public bludgeoned about the horrors of using gas on the battlefield.

Be Wary, Warmongers Aren't Done with Syria

With the release of the United Nations report on chemical weapons in Syria yesterday a bum's rush is underway to assign blame to the Syrian government for the August 21 chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. I see this as a way to rejuvenate the the unilateral force option that was taken off the table temporarily last week thanks to a combination of overwhelming public opposition and skilled Russian diplomacy. The Western powers will use the Sellstrom report to generate support in the Security Council for the use of force if the Syrian government is decided to be not in compliance with the Kerry-Lavrov agreement ridding the country of its chemical munitions. Then we will be right back to the situation preceding the invasion of Iraq: The United States will insist that the Syrian government is not cooperating; Russia and China will disagree; and the United States will jump the rails and launch a unilateral attack.

That's the idea at least. First work has to be done to make it universally accepted that the Syrian government launched the Ghouta attack. The UN report -- I haven't had a chance to read it yet, just skim sections online -- is said to point to the Syrian government for two reasons: 1) the rockets used require large launchers "not previously documented or reported to be in the possession of the insurgency"; and 2) the azimuth data gleaned from the rocket impact craters are said to point back to a Syrian military facility. This is from a Rick Gladstone and C.J. Chivers story, "Forensic Details in U.N. Report Point to Assad’s Use of Gas," that appears in the New York Times today:

The weapons inspectors, who visited Ghouta and left the country with large amounts of evidence on Aug. 31, said, “In particular, the environmental, chemical and medical samples we have collected provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used.” 

But the report’s annexes, detailing what the authors found, were what caught the attention of nonproliferation experts. 

In two chilling pieces of information, the inspectors said that the remnants of a warhead they had found showed its capacity of sarin to be about 56 liters — far higher than initially thought. They also said that falling temperatures at the time of the attack ensured that the poison gas, heavier than air, would hug the ground, penetrating lower levels of buildings “where many people were seeking shelter.” 

The investigators were unable to examine all of the munitions used, but they were able to find and measure several rockets or their components. Using standard field techniques for ordnance identification and crater analysis, they established that at least two types of rockets had been used, including an M14 artillery rocket bearing Cyrillic markings and a 330-millimeter rocket of unidentified provenance. 

These findings, though not presented as evidence of responsibility, were likely to strengthen the argument of those who claim that the Syrian government bears the blame, because the weapons in question had not been previously documented or reported to be in possession of the insurgency. 

Moreover, those weapons are fired by large, conspicuous launchers. For rebels to have carried out the attack, they would have had to organize an operation with weapons they are not known to have and of considerable scale, sophistication and secrecy — moving the launchers undetected into position in areas under strong government influence or control, keeping them in place unmolested for a sustained attack that would have generated extensive light and noise, and then successfully withdrawing them — all without being detected in any way.

One annex to the report also identified azimuths, or angular measurements, from where rockets had struck, back to their points of origin. When plotted and marked independently on maps by analysts from Human Rights Watch and by The New York Times, the United Nations data from two widely scattered impact sites pointed directly to a Syrian military complex. 

Other nonproliferation experts said the United Nations report was damning in its implicit incrimination of Mr. Assad’s side in the conflict, not only in the weaponry fragments but also in the azimuth data that indicated the attack’s origins. An analysis of the report posted online by the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said “the additional details and the perceived objectivity of the inspectors buttress the assignment of blame to Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government.”

The first argument -- that insurgents have not been seen using large rocket launchers -- I don't find compelling. Peter Krohn posted a link to a video yesterday showing rebels using 140-mm rockets. Granted this not a 330-mm rocket that Gladstone and Chivers mention. But simply because rebels have not been documented using this particular ordnance is not proof of Syrian Arab Army guilt.

What is more difficult to refute, assuming it is being accurately reported, is the azimuth data. We'll have to see how this plays out. Syria needs to address this argument in particular. There is enough information in the public sphere regarding rebel access to sarin and rockets that this isn't so much of a problem. But what about angles of impact pointing to Syrian military facilities?

The Gladstone and Chivers story ends tendentiously though, making me suspicious of the information that preceded it:

The report’s release punctuated a tumultuous week spawned by the global outrage over the attack, in which an American threat of punitive force on the Syrian government was delayed as Russia proposed a diplomatic alternative and intense negotiations between the United States and Russia led to a sweeping agreement under which Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal could be destroyed. 

The United Nations, in danger of becoming irrelevant in helping to end the Syria conflict, was suddenly thrust back into a central role, with the Security Council now engaged in deliberations over an enforceable measure to hold Syria to its commitment on chemical weapons.

This is a clear example of an ex post facto sculpting of reality. Horrible as it is, the global outrage was not over the chemical attack. Global outrage was over threats of another illegal, destabilizing U.S. war. It was not the United Nations that was in danger of becoming irrelevant, it was Obama. This is slanted reporting. Be wary, the warmongers aren't done with Syria.

Growing U.S. Isolation on Syria

In the space of a day the seemingly inexorable U.S.-led run up to war on Syria appears to have come undone. Obama is still talking tough but it is apparent that the United States is for now almost entirely isolated. The United Nations is clearly on record with statements by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi that the inspectors be given time to do their job and that any military action must be approved by the Security Council. Adding to the Obama administration's woes is an announcement yesterday by Syrian UN ambassador Bashar Jaafari that

[H]e had submitted evidence of the three new instances of chemical weapons use in Syria, which he asserted had been carried out by armed terrorist groups, the government’s blanket term for Syrian opposition forces.

Mr. Jaafari said they occurred on Aug. 22, 24 and 25, and were also in the Damascus suburbs. He said Syrian soldiers were the targets. The ambassador did not explain why he waited to come forth with the allegations. 

“The Syrian government is requesting the secretary general to immediately instruct the investigation team operating in Damascus to investigate immediately these three heinous crimes,” the ambassador said. 

Mr. Jaafari repeated the Syrian government’s denials that it had ever used chemical weapons in the conflict and said the accusations were a conspiracy by Western nations acting on Israel’s behalf. He rejected assertions by the United States, Britain and other Western allies that there was persuasive evidence of Syrian government culpability in the use of the banned weapons. 

“We are not warmongers,” he told reporters outside the Security Council chambers. “We are a peaceful nation seeking stability.”

This from a story by Stephen Castle, Steven Erlanger and Rick Gladstone, "Britain to Wait on Weapons Report Ahead of Syria Strikes," which, given the extensive coverage in the press this morning, is probably the best single story on yesterday's setback for the warhawks.

Responding to Britain's failed effort to clear a authorization of force out of the Security Council, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf did her best to impersonate the bellicose tones of former Bush UN ambassador John Bolton:

“All previous attempts to get the Security Council to act on Syria have been blocked, and we cannot allow diplomatic paralysis to be a shield for the perpetrators of these crimes,” she said. “We do not believe that the Syrian regime should be able to hide behind the fact that the Russians continue to block action on Syria at the U.N.” 

Asked if the United States would await the findings of the United Nations inspectors, Ms. Harf repeated the administration’s assertions that their work was too late to be credible because Syrian government forces had repeatedly shelled the attack sites, compromising evidence-gathering efforts. 

“We’re going to make our own decisions on our own timelines about our response,” she said. “Obviously, we will continue consultations with our international partners around the world, but we are making decisions based on our own timeline.”

It's all right out of the Bush playbook. It's as if we're suddenly reliving the end of 2002 and the beginning of 2003. But the good news here is that while in the past Obama has been able to successfully put over the same old Bush policies -- drones, surges -- because of his gravitas as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, those days are effectively done.

Cameron had to agree to two not one Parliamentary votes spread out over nearly a week. The debate promises to be lively with the warhawks taking a drubbing since their position is riddled with contradictions and omissions. What's the purpose of limited strikes other than to kill more innocents? Why can't the rebels be behind the Ghouta chemical attack? Unlike Iraq, why not let the inspectors complete their mission this time? The U.S. Congress, though less convincingly than its British cousins, is also demanding a debate and a vote.

Today the Obama administration will reveal its "irrefutable evidence" of Syrian government responsibility for last week's chemical attack. Its lies -- Biden repeated again yesterday the canard that Syrian Arab Army shelling of the site of the chemical attack has rendered any inspection not credible -- and silence up until now foretell a presentation that will be underwhelming.

The Poverty of Elections

Elections are proving not to be the answer. Look at Obama's solid, one might even argue historic, progressive repudiation of a troglodyte conservative Republican Party. Nothing has changed. The economy remains hobbled with too many unemployed; the national security state grows ever stronger. Even Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama's one great promise -- that he'll wind down the wars in the Middle East -- has turned into a lie as we end up where we began 35 years ago -- arming the mujahideen.

Elections that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt have done nothing to address the nation's ills. The Mubarak security forces remain ensconced in the Interior Ministry; the economy teeters on the brink; and the society is divided between followers of conservative Islam and everyone else. Violence spiked yesterday in the run up to Sunday's huge planned protest. There could be a full-blown civil war in a matter of days.

Iraq is suffering through daily multiple terror bombings.

Al Nusra Front jihadis are claiming to have taken the Binayat checkpoint from the Syrian Arab Army in the southern city of Dara'a. But even the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights doubts the veracity of the claim. According to the story by Hania Mourtada and Rick Gladstone in this morning's paper,

Video posted on the Internet showed what the rebels claimed to be the destruction of a high-rise building at the checkpoint, along with proclamations of victory by fighters of the Nusra Front “and the Islamic battalions who participated in the operation.” 

Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory, said the insurgents had not taken full control of Dara’a. But in remarks quoted by Reuters, he said the Syrian military’s position in Dara’a was under threat and “this could change the balance of power there.”

An anti-Assad activist from Dara’a who is currently in Jordan agreed in a telephone interview that the seizure of the Binayat checkpoint was a setback for Syrian forces in Dara’a, but cautioned that the rebel claims of victory could be overstated. “The Islamic groups are trying to make a big deal behind this operation, a boasting attempt,” said the activist, who identified himself only by his given name, Taysir, for security reasons.

In other words, an attack on a government checkpoint has, thanks to the power of jihadi magical thinking, turned into the capture of an entire city.

The Guardian is reporting stepped up government activity to retake the Khalidiyah district in Homs.

I woke up this morning thinking that what's happening here is that the Wahhabis are making their move to take control of the Middle East. It's hard to think that in this environment the Israelis are going to budge one inch towards a two-state solution. This is a war for survival.

Talibanizing Sykes-Picot

A decent piece summarizing the positions of the great powers in relation to the Syrian civil war appears on Reuters this morning; written by Louis Charbonneau, "Analysis: Syria peace conference: Don't hold your breath," it predicts a long conflict:

There may be no swift end to the war. And even if the opposition were to prevail, it is unlikely to bring stability. 

"The Syrian civil war is likely to go on for years," said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

"It is not just that it is proving harder and taking longer to oust the Assad regime than many expected," he told Reuters. "It is also that even if the regime were to be removed, what would follow would be a prolonged round of fighting among opposition forces who disagree on just about everything except their opposition to the current regime."

Haass, who in the past has not been shy about advocating the use of U.S. military force, recently had a opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times saying that the United States should not get involved militarily in Syria. Sadly, it appears too late for that. Kerry appears to be committed to air strikes. There are a lot of obstacles in the way, but the Franklin Lamb story, based on his discussions with congressional staffers, that the U.S. will be conducting an air war against Syria by the end of summer, is looking like a reliable prediction.

Hwaida Saad and Rick Gladstone's story, "Christian Quarter of Old City in Damascus Hit by Attacks," explains why the attacks on the Syrian pound have not phased the al-Assad government:

The conflict and the Western sanctions imposed on Syria have caused a near economic collapse in the country, and the official currency, the Syrian pound, has plummeted in value against the dollar and the euro. Last week Mr. Assad’s government ordered double-digit increases in salaries for public employees and retirees to help offset the pound’s diminished worth, which is almost certain to cause sharply higher inflation in Syria. 

But in a sign that the Syrian leadership does not seem overly concerned about a financial crisis, a senior economics official said in an interview with The Financial Times, published on its Web site Thursday, that Iran, Russia and China were helping to prop up the Syrian economy, delivering $500 million a month worth of oil and extending generous credit lines. 

The official, Qadri Jamil, deputy prime minister for the economy, was quoted as saying that the Syrian government was now doing all of its business in Iranian rials, Russian rubles and Chinese renminbi, and that the three economic allies would soon help with a “counteroffensive” against what he called a foreign plot to destroy the Syrian pound’s value. 

“It’s not that bad to have behind you the Russians, the Chinese and Iranians,” Mr. Jamil was quoted as saying.

As the terror bombings continue in Iraq, what we're witnessing, thanks to the Gulf Arab monarchies and their partners Uncle Sam and the old colonial powers Britain and France, is the Talibanizing of Sykes-Picot. In a jiffy, the Global War on Terror is tossed on the dung heap in favor of a Global War with Terror. No wonder Israel has pulled its head into its tortoise shell the last month.

Saudis Send Big Guns to Jihadis in Aleppo

Looking for information on the military campaign in and around Aleppo, I notice that there is little in the Western media. The best available reporting of late has been from The Telegraph's Richard Spencer. His story, "Syrian rebels get first heavy weapons on the front line of Aleppo," though reported from the rebel point of view, at least provides a sense of the contours of the struggle. The government, according to Spencer, seeks to cut the rebel held north in two and then pacify the rural areas:

After the fall of Qusayr on June 5, the regime promised an all-out attack on Aleppo, but it has not yet materialised.

Ahmed Hafash, the leader of Free Men of Syria, the non-Islamist brigade leading the defence of Kafra Hamra, said he expected the assault to drive north away from the city. 

Five kilometres north-east lie two loyalist Shia towns, Nobbul and Zahra, where a regime general has raised a local militia several thousand-strong and flown in reinforcements from the Labenese militia Hizbollah. 

Walky-talky intercepts suggest the regime hopes to link up with these towns and press on to relieve the Minegh air base, under rebel siege for 10 months, and then head to the Turkish border nearby. Having cut the north in two, the regime could squeeze out the rebels in their rural strongholds and surround Aleppo.

Most of Spencer' story deals with the arrival of antitank guns thanks to Saudi Arabia. Al Jazeera has a similar story.

Rick Gladstone's story for the New York Times has a headline that mentions government battlefield gains but the copy talks only of the loss in value of the Syrian pound since the Obama administration announced at the end of last week that it would supply weapons to the rebels. Much if not all of Gladstone's reporting feels as if it has been crafted at Langley or Foggy Bottom.

This dearth of balanced information has led me to bookmark on my web browser both the Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn pages on The Independent, as well as the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). Yes, SANA is a Syrian government web site. But I'm not convinced it is significantly more biased than the Western prestige press. Al-Assad's labeling the rebels "terrorists" was derisively dismissed in the U.S. media. Now we know that to be accurate. After all, the post-9/11 law authorizing the U.S. to wage war on Al Qaeda and its affiliates could easily be used by Obama to bomb the Syrian rebels.

As for the military campaign to expunge the rebels from Aleppo, if it goes at all like Qusayr, the government will move slowly and methodically; and after several weeks, if not a month or two, it will fall to the government.

Wahhabis on the March

Reuters is reporting this morning a massacre of Shiites in the rebel-held Syrian town of Hatla:

A video posted online by rebels on Tuesday, entitled "The storming and cleansing of Hatla" showed dozens of gunmen carrying black Islamist flags celebrating and firing guns in the streets of a small town as smoke curled above several buildings.

Rick Gladstone has a story this morning, "U.S. Blacklists Fund-Raisers for Hezbollah," about the Treasury Department sanctioning four Hezbollah fundraisers who operate out of Africa:

The Treasury said that the four, identified as Ali Ibrahim al-Watfa, Abbas Loutfe Fawaz, Ali Ahmad Chehade and Hicham Nmer Khanafer, had “organized fund-raising efforts, recruited members, and in some cases styled themselves as ambassadors of Hezbollah’s Foreign Relations Department.” 

David S. Cohen, the Treasury under secretary in charge of administering sanctions, rejected Hezbollah’s depiction of itself as a resistance organization, noting that three of Europe’s biggest countries — Britain, Germany and France — now support an effort within the European Union to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist group. Such a change could hurt Hezbollah’s fund-raising in Europe.

The Gulf Cooperation Council, that league of Arab monarchies, also announced yesterday its intention to sanction Hezbollah.

Gladstone provides an economical summary of yesterday's civil war news:

On Tuesday, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported that rocket fire from Syria struck the Shiite border village of Hermel, in what appeared to be a rebel reprisal. In Syria’s capital, Damascus, two suicide bombers killed at least 14 people, which Syria’s state news agency, Sana, called a cowardly retaliation that illustrated “the bankruptcy of the armed terrorist groups and those who stand behind them.”

As Taliban suicide bombers rock Afghanistan, it's worth mentioning yet again that the West is working in concert to destabilize the Middle East with the same regressive Wahhabism that we have been purportedly locked in existential war since 9/11. Assad's characterization of the opposition as foreign-backed terrorists, scoffed at initially, is now impossible to deny.

And this is what Obama is going to wade into with heavy weapons? Madness.

Hezbollah Fighter Talks Qusayr

For a good, brief description of the fighting on the ground to take Qusayr, check out the story, "Hezbollah fighter tells of Syria battle," by Alexandra Sandels and Jeffrey Fleishman in this morning's Los Angeles Times. A Hezbollah squad leader named Hassan tells of battling foreign-funded Islamist rebels of the Al Nusra Front, many from Libya and Tunisia, in door-to-door combat. There is no doubt after reading Hassan's account that this is an international conflict, and that so far the Shiite forces are much more motivated than the West and its Al Qaeda proxies. Interestingly -- because it is rarely if ever reported in the Western media -- the Hezbollah squad leader says that the fighting is heavy and daily around Sayyida Zainab, the Shiite shrine to Muhammad's granddaughter Zaynab:

"Hezbollah can't cover all of Syria," he said. "Those who say Hezbollah is all over [Syria] are stupid. You have some strategic places." 

One of those is the Shiite shrine Sayyida Zainab, which Hassan said he has been protecting on and off for months from Sunni militants who want to destroy it to ignite an Iraq-style sectarian war. He said the fighting was heavy each day he was stationed at the shrine. 

Hassan said that for him, the battle goes on "until the last breath." It is a fight, he said, that cannot be lost to Hezbollah's many enemies, including the United States. 

"I love the fighting," he said. "You are doing something you are convinced of. You are not being paid money to go. There is a difference."

The rebels don't have an answer for this level of commitment. The opposition's strategy at this point seems to be to do whatever it can to instigate direct military intervention by Israel and/or the West, thereby bringing superior firepower to bear on a fighting force that Sunni jihadists can't best in the field.

Michael Gordon is reporting this morning that "Syrian Opposition Won’t Attend Talks Unless Rebels Get Arms, Top Commander Says." The West is in a difficult spot:

“There is agreement on one point within opposition circles: the regime, Iran and Hezbollah, supported by Russia, aim to win; the U.S. aims for talks,” said Frederic C. Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former senior State Department official who worked on Syria transition issues. “This helps to explain the opposition’s reluctance to attend a Geneva conference and the difficulties it’s having organizing itself around a coherent goal.” 

At the State Department, Mr. Kerry and his aides have long said that it is vital to change Mr. Assad’s “calculation” about his ability to maintain his grip on power in order to facilitate a political transition. 

With Mr. Assad digging in and his forces making headway on the battlefield, any leverage the United States might be able to bring to bear on the Assad government appears to depend on the possibility that the British and French might send arms to the rebels later this summer, and the prospect that the United States might expand its assistance to the armed opposition, which has consisted of food rations and medical kits.

The Syrian opposition's position remains that talks can't begin unless Assad first agrees to step down. All more firepower will do is expand the conflict and guarantee world war in the Middle East. Even Cameron's bellicoseTory-led government is split over the wisdom of increasing arms traffic to the rebels.

The Syrian civil war roundup provided by Nick Cumming-Bruce and Rick Gladstone, "In Its Biggest Appeal Ever, U.N. Requests $5 Billion in Humanitarian Aid for Syria," in this morning's New York Times covers Putin's offer to supply replacement troops for Austrian members of the UN peace keeping force who are leaving the Golan Heights because of fighting between rebels and Syrian government forces at the Quneitra crossing. The Russian offer was promptly refused:

United Nations officials declined Mr. Putin’s offer. “We appreciate the consideration that the Russian Federation has given to provide troops to the Golan,” said Martin Nesirky, a spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “However, the disengagement agreement and its protocol, which is between Syria and Israel, do not allow for the participation of permanent members of the Security Council in Undof.”

The Security Council issued a statement yesterday calling on Syria to allow humanitarian relief to reach Qusayr.

The World Food Program is feeding 2.5 million people in Syria, a number expected to increase to 4 million by the end of the year.