USA Holds Off Attack If Syria Turns Over All Chemical Weapons

[morrissex95]

The US used depleted uranium all throughout there operations in Iraq and still use it in Afghanistan to this day. This has caused high birth defects and cancer. It's been directly related to it. Very little has been made public about it... They also used so much agent orange in Vietnam that there are still repercussions to this day.

The proof they are going on is absolutely terrible... The poison gas hit the Ghouta area, where acres upon acres of agricultural land supply the capital of 3 million people with fresh vegetables, meat and dairy. Ghouta feeds Damascus: the city Assad lives in, the city that supplies SAA. SAA did not gas the people... FSA did.... There is proof that some websites reported the gas attacks a day before it even happend... Whats even worse is that the UN inspectors were being fired on from inside the FSA lines... You know, the same side the West support. hasn't there already been kidnappings of UN members from the FSA in the past?

It really makes zero sense that the Americans fight Al Qaeda in one country and then support them in another. The FSA is completely flooded with Al Qaeda linked groups and extremists.

[Edler0023]

People talking about Muhammad and his life in this thread - wtf? What has that got to do with ANYTHING?

The videos coming out of Syria are horrible to watch. Understandably, it is difficult for people outside of Syria to decide whether or not chemical gas has actually been released or not since the details coming out are so vague and unclear, but again, the videos are something else. Unless you believe its all a giant conspiracy and they (vids) are staged.

[Salmonberries]

Putin Orders Massive Strike Against Saudi Arabia If West Attacks Syria

A grim “urgent action memorandum” issued today from the office of President Putin to the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is ordering a “massive military strike” against Saudi Arabia in the event that the West attacks Syria.

According to Kremlin sources familiar with this extraordinary “war order,” Putin became “enraged” after his early August meeting with Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan who warned that if Russia did not accept the defeat of Syria, Saudi Arabia would unleash Chechen terrorists under their control to cause mass death and chaos during the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held 7-23 February 2014 in Sochi, Russia.

Lebanese newspaper As-Safir confirmed this amazing threat against Russia saying that Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord by stating: “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us.”

Prince Bandar went on to say that Chechens operating in Syria were a pressure tool that could be switched on an off. “These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role in Syria’s political future.”

London’s The Telegraph News Service further reported today that Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria, an offer Putin replied to by saying “Our stance on Assad will never change. We believe that the Syrian regime is the best speaker on behalf of the Syrian people, and not those liver eaters” [Putin said referring to footage showing a Jihadist rebel eating the heart and liver of a Syrian soldier HERE], and which Prince Bandar in turn warned that there can be “no escape from the military option” if Russia declines the olive branch.

Critical to note, and as we had previously reported on in our 28 January 2013 report “Obama Plan For World War III Stuns Russia,” the Federal Security Services (FSB) confirmed the validity of the released hacked emails of the British based defence company, Britam Defence that stunningly warned the Obama regime was preparing to unleash a series of attacks against both Syria and Iran in a move Russian intelligence experts warned could very well cause World War III.

According to this FSB report, Britam Defence, one of the largest private mercenary forces in the world, was the target of a “massive hack” of its computer files by an “unknown state sponsored entity” this past January who then released a number of critical emails between its top two executives, founder Philip Doughty and his Business Development Director David Goulding.

The two most concerning emails between Doughty and Goulding, this report says, states that the Obama regime has approved a “false flag” attack in Syria using chemical weapons, and that Britam has been approved to participate in the West’s warn on Iran, and as we can read:

Email 1: Phil, We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington. We’ll have to deliver a CW (chemical weapon) to Homs (Syria), a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record. Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion? Kind regards David

Email 2: Phil, Please see attached details of preparatory measures concerning the Iranian issue. Participation of Britam in the operation is confirmed by the Saudis.

With the events now spiraling out of control in Syria, and London’s Independent News Service now reporting that Prince Bandar is “pushing for war,” Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich further warned the West today by stating, “Attempts to bypass the Security Council, once again to create artificial groundless excuses for a military intervention in the region are fraught with new suffering in Syria and catastrophic consequences for other countries of the Middle East and North Africa.”

Heedless of Russian warnings which have fallen on deaf ears, however, British Prime Minister David Cameron this morning recalled the British Parliament to vote on attacking Syria as the Obama regime abruptly cancelled their meeting with Russia scheduled for tomorrow on finding a path to peace for Syria, and the West begins its plans to attack the Syrian nation “within days.”

As Syria itself has warned that should it be attacked by the West there will be “global chaos,” the Western peoples themselves have not been told of the fact that on 17 May 2013, Putin ordered Russian military forces to “immediately move” from Local War to Regional War operational status and to be “fully prepared” to expand to Large-Scale War should either the US or EU enter into the Syrian Civil War, a situation they are still in at this very hour.

With Putin’s previous order, and as we had reported on in our 17 May report “Russia Issues “All-Out War” Alert Over Syria,” and now combined with his new ordering of massive retaliatory strikes against Saudi Arabia, any attack on Syria is viewed by Russia as being an attack on itself.

And as we had previously explained in great detail, the fight over Syria, being led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and their lap-dog Western allies, has but one single objective: To break Russia’s hold on the European Union natural gas market which a pipeline through Syria would accomplish, and as reported by London’s Financial Times News Service this past June:

“The tiny gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.

The cost of Qatar’s intervention, its latest push to back an Arab revolt, amounts to a fraction of its international investment portfolio. But its financial support for the revolution that has turned into a vicious civil war dramatically overshadows western backing for the opposition.

Qatar [also] has proposed a gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey in a sign the emirate is considering a further expansion of exports from the world’s biggest gasfield after it finishes an ambitious programme to more than double its capacity to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).”

And in what is, perhaps, the most unimaginable cause to start World War III over Syria was noted by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich who said this past week: “We’re getting more new evidence that this criminal act was of a provocative nature,” he stressed. “In particular, there are reports circulating on the Internet, in particular that the materials of the incident and accusations against government troops had been posted for several hours before the so-called attack. Thus, it was a pre-planned action.”

For the West to have so sloppily engineered yet another “false flag” attack to justify a war where they posted the videos of this so-called chemical weapons attack a full day before it was said to occur is the height of arrogance and disdain, but which their sleep-walking citizens, yet again, will fall for as they have done so many times in the past.

http://www.eutimes.net/2013/08/putin-ord...cks-syria/

[Salmonberries]

[Salmonberries]

UN: Syrian war has uprooted 1 million children

The 1 million children who have fled Syria, and the 2 million displaced within the country, have been largely unable to get an education or receive help coping.

Sara Miller Llana

Europe Bureau Chief

One million children, three-quarters of them under age 11, have had to flee violence in Syria since the conflict began in 2011. The grim figure was released by UN agencies Friday morning.

“This one millionth child refugee is not just another number,” said Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, the UN children’s agency. "This is a real child ripped from home, maybe even from a family, facing horrors we can only begin to comprehend."

The statistic was released as the UN pushes for immediate investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack near Damascus. The Syrian government refuted the accusation, calling it “illogical and fabricated,” according to the BBC.

"But unverified footage shows civilians – many of them children – apparently suffering horrific symptoms, as well as rows of shrouded bodies," the BBC reports. "Chemical weapons experts have told the BBC that footage appears genuine and that the injuries shown are consistent with nerve agents."

On Friday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon renewed calls for UN inspectors to be allowed to investigate the claims immediately.

"I can think of no good reason why any party, either government or opposition forces – would decline this opportunity to get to the truth of the matter," the UN chief said, according to Reuters.

As the Daily Beast reports, the UN is acting quickly as pressure mounts across the globe in the face of the allegations.

Angela Kane [the UN's top disarmament representative] will fly to Syria, which has received a formal request for access to the suburb where more than a thousand died in what appears to be a the largest attack so far in the Syrian conflict. The UN team currently inside Syria is only authorized to investigate three of the 13 sites deemed suspicious before Wednesday's attack. Meanwhile, France has urged that force be used if the use of chemical weapons is confirmed.

Syria has become, according to the UN, the worst refugee crisis since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Some 100,000 people have been

killed since protests broke out against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011. Refugees have been fleeing to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Egypt, and increasingly North Africa and Europe.

Children are among the most vulnerable. While 1 million have been forced to flee the violence, the UN says that 2 million others are displaced within the country. "The youth of Syria are losing their homes, their family members and their futures," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres.

Education is a top longterm concern, as these children are part of a so-called “lost generation” that won’t easily be able to bring stability to their country in the future, says the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes. Few have been able to study or receive psychological counseling.

Throughout the region, one of the biggest concerns for Syrian refugee families is finding schooling for their children, who make up 48

percent of the Syrian refugee population and are unable to attend official schooling in their host countries. The longer children stay out of school, the

less likely they are to eventually return, according to a March report from Save the Children. In Jordan, CARE found that more than 60 percent of school-age children are not attending any classes, despite the availability of free schooling.

For most parents, the auxiliary costs associated with schooling, such as transportation, supplies, and lunches, prove an insurmountable barrier.“It’s a worry in its own sense, of course for the education and the future of those children, but we also think it’s a very clear indicator of the levels of poverty that families are experiencing,” says Kate Washington, Syrian refugee response coordinator at CARE Jordan. “One of the things that is of concern … is the scope and scale of needs and the fact that they are increasing, and we have absolutely no reason to suspect that they will stop increasing.”

On Friday, UNICEF officials urged the international community to respond to the problem, which it says belongs to everybody. "We must all share the shame," said UNICEF's Mr. Lake, "Because while we work to alleviate the suffering of those affected by this crisis, the global community has failed in its responsibility to this child. We should stop and ask ourselves how, in all conscience, we can continue to fail the children of Syria."

But Michael Gerson in The Washington Post shows the limits on countries that are responding to Syrian children who have been forced to leave their homes.

More than three-quarters of Syrian refugees live outside the camps in cities and towns. Initially, many Jordanians opened their homes and even took out personal loans to offer help. But this welcome has (naturally) faded over time. In a Jordanian border region near Syria where I visited, hospitals are full and refusing referrals, medicines are in short supply, schools are running double shifts, scarce water is delivered less frequently and wages have been undercut by high-skill, low-cost Syrian labor.

Add to this a growing resentment that refugees get aid while equally poor Jordanians often do not. Add to this a recent cut in the electricity subsidy in Jordan, a reform mandated by the International Monetary Fund as an austerity measure. At best, this is a recipe for tension; at worst, for instability. And Jordan is the keystone of stability for the whole region.

Jordan — a nation of about 7 million next to a collapsing country of 22 million — is in the process of being overwhelmed.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism...n-children

[Salmonberries]

Syrian Christians fear rise of jihadist rebels

In Wadi al-Nassara, a valley in western Syria dotted with Christian hamlets, residents have hung white silk ribbons to mourn war victims and pray the army will defeat its jihadist foes.

Portraits of “martyrs” who died in the 29-month conflict between government forces and rebel fighters such as the radical Al-Nusra Front group, dot the streets.

President Bashar al-Assad’s face is also omnipresent in the region, including in Marmarita, once a bustling summer resort near the Krak des Chevaliers, a fortress listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.

In July, an air raid by the regime damaged one of the towers of the ancient Crusader castle, as fierce fighting raged between regime forces and rebel fighters who control the fortress.

Around 50,000 Christians now live in Wadi al-Nassara, where they have formed “popular defence committees” with the blessing of the authorities.

On August 15, rebels travelling from Al-Hosn village where the Krak is located attacked checkpoints manned by the local committees killing 11 people — five of the militiamen and six civilians.

Jacques Saade was one of the men killed.

“Jacques was defending us against those who wanted to hurt us,” said his mother, clad in black, breaking down in tears.

“My son died a martyr,” she sobbed in the family living room, where a huge picture of the young man in military fatigues and standing against Syria’s red-white-black flag stares down at visitors.

Issa Saade, the father, said his son’s death will not prompt him to leave his home village, despite it being the frequent target of attacks by rebels.

“I will stay here, cowering in a hole if I have to, but in my own house. May God bless Bashar and may the government win.”

His daughter Marta, 40, agreed.

“We urge the government to send the troops to protect us against armed men who are assassinating our children and our youths,” she said, dressed in mourning black like her mother.

Issa Yazigi, whose son Soumer was also killed in the August 15 attack, said most residents have fled Al-Hosn and now the town is in the hands of jihadist fighters.

“The extremist groups threaten us and are trying to chase us out” of Marmarita, said Yazigi.

Syria’s main opposition group, the National Coalition, has issued a statement urging residents to defend the “revolution” that is aimed at toppling Assad and his government.

“We urge our relatives on the coast and in the mountains… to show solidarity with the goals of the revolution to put an end to decades of despotism,” the National Coalition said.

It also urged residents to be wary of “lies fabricated by the regime which pretends to protect minorities, while using them as hostages to defend the (Assad) clan.”

Christians account for only five percent of the population in Syria, and many back the Assad regime because they fear the growing strength of jihadists whose aim is to set up an Islamic state in Syria.

The majority of rebel fighters — like the population — are Sunni Muslims, while Assad belongs to another minority sect, the Alawite community which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Though it started in mid-March 2011 with peaceful protests calling for the fall of Assad’s regime, Syria’s war has grown increasingly sectarian and jihadists have flooded the battlefields.

“They’ve came, they’ve cut off roads. They, Al Nusra Front. They are scary,” said the mother of Soumer Yazigi. “Too many of our youths have been killed. Enough! We want the army to protect us.”

He husband insisted that “jihadists… are threatening to take over the valley.”

Other residents complained that Marmarita’s main street was constantly under fire from rebel gunners holed up in the Krak. “They open fire on us when we walk down the street,” one said.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/26/sy...st-rebels/

[Salmonberries]

'Shadow war' targets Christians in Syria

Christian minorities face threats in many parts of the convulsed Middle East today, but perhaps nowhere is the danger more acute than in Syria amid that nation's bloody civil war.

An Internet video that went viral in late June, purportedly showing the beheading of three Christian clergymen by Syrian militants, was initially believed to capture the death of a Catholic priest named Fr. François Murad.

It turned out to be older footage of uncertain provenance, but that didn't make Murad any less dead. According to officials of the Franciscan order that had given him refuge, Murad actually was shot to death on June 23 in the town of Gassanieh, in a convent where the 49-year-old monk was in hiding.

Reports suggest members of Jabhat al-Nusra, a militant Islamic group that's part of Syria's rebel alliance, killed Murad.

The killing represents the latest shock for Syria's Christian community, which has become one of the primary victims of the violent standoff between rebel forces and the Assad regime.

Like what you're reading? Sign up to receive email alerts from NCR.

Christians have long been an important minority in Syria, composing roughly 10 percent of the population of 22.5 million. The majority is Greek Orthodox, followed by Catholics, the Assyrian Church of the East, and vari­ous kinds of Protestants.

Syria was until recently a destination of choice for Christians fleeing the violence in Iraq, but all that changed with the eruption of civil war in 2011.

The kidnapping of two prominent Orthodox bishops in April underscored the new dangers. A group of armed men took the Syriac Orthodox bishop of Aleppo, Youhanna Ibrahim, and the Greek Orthodox metropolitan of Aleppo and Iskenderun, Boulos al-Yaziji, on the road to Aleppo. Their driver, a Syrian Orthodox deacon, was shot to death.

To date, the whereabouts of the bishops remain unknown.

Kidnapping Christians reportedly has become a growth industry. In late February, the website Ora pro Siria, operated by Italian missionaries in Syria, launched an emergency fundraising appeal called "Ransom a Christian." The website said the going price for a kidnapped priest was in the neighborhood of $200,000.

It's not just clergy who find themselves in harm's way. In June, the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land reported that a cluster of Christian villages along Syria's Orontes River had been almost totally destroyed in the fighting, forcing thousands into hiding.

"Of the 4,000 inhabitants of the village of Ghassanieh, as just one example, the local pastor reports that no more than 10 people remain," said Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, director of the custody, adding that bombs had also seriously damaged a Franciscan mon­astery in Knayeh near the border with Lebanon.

As NCR went to press, a Greek-Catholic monastery in Qara was under assault by rebel forces. Officials of the Norbertine order told Vatican Radio they had lost contact with a 74-year-old Belgian missionary, Daniel Maes, living at the monastery.

In a July 1 opinion piece on National Review Online, religious freedom activist Nina Shea charged that a "shadow war" is being waged against Syria's Christians. Shea pointed to the death of Murad and the fact that Islamist groups have begun setting up Shariah courts in areas of Syria under their control, charging Christians with a variety of alleged offenses under Muslim law.

In that context, some Syrian Christians have issued warnings about Western policies of arming Syria's opposition.

"I would like everyone to know that the West, in supporting the revolutionaries, is supporting religious extremists and helping to kill Christians," Fr. Halim Noujaim, the Franciscans' regional minister for Syria and Lebanon, said after the execution of Murad.

The Obama administration recently announced the U.S. will provide small arms and ammunition to the rebels. Critics such as Noujaim charge that Assad's fall could pave the way for either Iraq-style chaos or the Egyptian-style rise of an Islamist regime, in either case setting up Syria's Christian minority for special hardship.

The Catholic Near East Welfare Association has issued an emergency appeal to support Syria's Christians.

http://ncronline.org/news/global/shadow-...ians-syria

[DonLever]

Looks like owe-bomba is seriously going to pull the trigger on this.

Looks like Harper is going to sign us up.

Remember to vote smart....not with what god fearing conservative types tell you to

[Salmonberries]

Christians in the Crosshairs in the Syrian War

Syrians used to be proud of the peaceful coexistence between Christians and Muslims. They no longer are. Under the harsh rule of the Alawite dictators, some religious freedom was preserved. Christians fleeing other conflicts in the Middle East found refuge and made their home in Syria. Today, Christians in Syria are targeted by both government and rebel forces. Their salvation is fleeing the country to Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

Christians account for approximately 10 percent of Syria’s 22 million people. According to Emanuel Aydin, a bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Christians are in the middle of tensions between Alawites, Shiites and Sunni Muslims. Many have had to convert in order to survive. According to bishop Aydin, 500,000 Syrian Christians have fled the war to Lebanon, Eastern Europe, and the Scandinavian countries. Those that remain are caught in the crossfire between the rebels and the government.

It is estimated that more than 300 Christians have been killed during the war, although they did not participate in the hostilities. Several have also been kidnapped. Among them are two bishops, the Syrian Orthodox bishop of Aleppo, Youhanna Ibrahim and the Greek Orthodox bishop of Metropolitan Aleppo and Iskenderum, Boulos al-Yaziji. They were kidnapped after their driver was shot to death. The whereabouts of the bishops is still unknown.

In addition to those cases, last June, the Rev. Francois Murad, a Franciscan priest, was beheaded by jihadists after fighters from the rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra attacked the monastery where he was staying in Edlib, a Sunni northwestern city with a small Christian population. After the beheading, a video was posted online with details of the brutal incident. Although they have been accused by the rebels of supporting the government, the majority of Syria’s Christian community has carefully avoided taking sides.

Members of the clergy are not the only target of the rebels, however. There have been reports that a cluster of Christian villages located along Syria’s Orontes River have been almost totally destroyed, forcing thousands of civilians into hiding. Some women have to cover themselves up with the abaya, a robe-like dress used by Muslim women.

Among the voices for peace in that conflicted region is Mother Agnes-Mariam de la Croix, the superior of a convent near Qara, located 50 miles from Damascus. In June 2012 she was warned that she was targeted for kidnapping, after she revealed that about 80,000 Christians had been “cleared out” from their homes in Homs by the rebels and forced to flee the country.

As she declared to The Australian, only one in about 20 rebel fighters is Syrian. The rest come from countries ranging from Britain to Pakistan, from Chechnya to Indonesia and from Albania to North Africa. Many of these rebels fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and now are part of the groups fighting the government.

Although no religious community has been spared persecution, only the Christians in Syria face an “existential threat,” according to a report by the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry in Syria.

“Christians are the targets of an ethno-religious cleansing by Islamist militants and the courts. In addition, they have lost the protection of the Assad government, making them easy prey for criminals and fighters, whose affiliations are not always clear. Wherever they appear, Islamist militias have made life impossible for the Christians,” remarked Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, last June during a subcommittee hearing at the US House of Representatives.

So far, no foreign power has come out unequivocally in defense of the Syrian Christians. Given the evidence of their persecution, the voice of Mother Agnes-Mariam for mussalaha (reconciliation) and peace should be finally heard.

Dr. Cesar Chelala is a co-winner of an Overseas Press Club of America award.

http://theorthodoxchurch.info/blog/news/...yrian-war/

[Salmonberries]

Italian priest still unaccounted for in Syria

Published: August 22, 2013

Fr. Dall’Oglio reported abducted last month, now presumed dead

Conflicting reports are emerging about the whereabouts and welfare of an Italian Jesuit priest who went missing almost one month ago.

Reuters reported on July 29 that Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio had been abducted by Islamists with links to al-Qaeda in the northern Syrian city of ar-Raqqah, but the Vatican would not confirm the news.

Now, as various reports claim the priest has been killed, the Vatican remains tight-lipped.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported last week that the priest had been killed, but retracted its statement on Monday, Aug. 19.

The rights organisation said sources close to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, which claimed it has kidnaped Dall’Oglio, said he was still alive. ISIS has yet to make a statement.

“No side refuting the report that Father Paolo was killed has shown any evidence to prove that he is alive, despite their empty assurances,” said a statement released by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The group called for “solid evidence” to be given, such as a recent video proving that he is alive, and a statement from a “clear and honest” member of the Syrian opposition.

“Any harm inflicted on Father Paolo is harm inflicted on the Syrian revolution and on the Syrian peoples’ freedoms and dignity,” SOHR said.

“No side refuting the report that Father Paolo was killed has shown any evidence to prove that he is alive, despite their empty assurances.”

--Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

A Jesuit spokesperson earlier this month expressed “deep worry” about the fate of Dall’Oglio.

Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino said: “We are still groping in the dark”.

Dall’Oglio worked in Syria for more than 30 years, and described his work as “promoting Islamic-Christian harmony-building”. He was expelled last year after speaking out against President Bashar al-Assad and helping victims of the civil war. Since then, he has been working predominantly in Europe.

On July 22, he posted an online petition asking Pope Francis to advocate on behalf of suffering Syrians.

However, his stance has been controversial for many Syrian Christian leaders. Nadim Nassar, the only Syrian Anglican priest, told World Watch Monitor: “Any attempt to politicise the voice of Christians in Syria is wrong, and devastating for them, because it weakens them”.

Meanwhile, there is nothing new to report about the two Syrian bishops – Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji – kidnapped four months ago.

Metropolitan Timotheus Matta Fadil Alkhouri, patriarchal Assistant for the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, urged members of the press and politicians to refrain from speculation.

“Every week some politician or some journalist pulls out some story on the two Metropolitan Bishops of Aleppo kidnapped,” he told Fides. “But so far they have always been unverifiable deductions. The reality is that… we do not know who kidnapped them.”

http://www.worldwatchmonitor.org/2013/08/2657797/

[Salmonberries]

Syria Civil War: Syrian Christians Could Suffer if Assad Falls

Now even the warmongering Right in America seems to be getting the picture.

In an article on the militant Media Research Center's "CNSNews" outlet, even the pro-war faction of the Republican Right is finally understanding the plight of Christians in Syria.

It has been well-known for some time that the rebel factions in Syria are a mixed bag of Syrian dissenters, power-seeking defectors, and, most importantly, foreign radical Islamist terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and even Al-Qaeda. The U.S. government has been openly supplying these groups with non-weapons aid, though there is significant evidence that their Western governments are already supplying military gear, or have promised to do so.

Western media has consistently portrayed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite regime as monsters, insisting that the government has committed mass executions and is intentionally targeting civilian populations. Conveniently, both Turkish and Israeli sources claim that regime troops have fired mortars at their respective borders, which the Turks used as justification for beginning military exercises across the border into Syria. Why Assad would intentionally fire on Turkey and Israel isn't explained.

Unfortunately for the minority groups in Syria, including some 2.1 million Christians, the largely Islamist rebel factions aren't quite as understanding of non-Muslims as the largely secular Alawite regime under Assad has been. Reports indicate that the Free Syrian Army and its successors have intentionally targeted Christian groups and enclaves, and the entire city of Homs was evacuated by its estimated 35,000 Christians as a result of the conflict.

Whatever the involvement by the U.S. government happens to be, if Syria's secularist government falls to an Islamic-dominated coalition, it seems very likely that Syrian Christians will fare as badly as those in the other Middle Eastern nations that the United States has "liberated," like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Egypt.

Thankfully, Americans seem to oppose military support of the Syrian rebels by an almost 3-to-1 margin. While the death and destruction occurring in Syria are terrible, the reality is that the rebels winning could mean yet more Islamist oppression of Christians and other minorities in that country. Hopefully the world will let Syria's people sort out its own problems, instead of fomenting yet another catastrophe like the so-called "Arab Spring" has scattered across the Middle East.

http://www.policymic.com/articles/21082/...ssad-falls

[Salmonberries]

Syrian Christians ask Congress: Why is U.S. waging war on us?

A group representing Syrian Christians told congressional members on Tuesday that the United States ought to stop funding the very same extremists who are trying to kill all the Christians.

Christian Solidarity International CEO John Eibner said Christians who are fleeing the violence in Syria have asked him, “Why is the U.S. at war against us?” CBN News also reported that Mr. Eibner has visited with Christians in Syria on many occasions and that “victims recounted to me the religious cleansing of Christian neighborhoods in Homs and Qusair.”

He said the violence was at the hands of “armed jihadists who threatened them with death if they did not leave their homes,” CBN reported. “A Christian woman told me that before she fled Homs, she had seen the beheading in broad daylight of an Alawite girl who was pulled off a public minibus by armed jihadists.”

Mr. Eibner made the statements during a congressional hearing on the fate of religious minorities in Syria. Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican and chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa, global health and human rights, opened the hearing with this statement, CBN News said: “Christians are even more fearful for their lives and safety than other segments of the Syrian population.”

Nina Shea, the director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, also testified that Islamic radicals have put Christians in their cross hairs, targeting them for “ethno-religious cleansing,” CBN News reported.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013...ing-war-u/

[Salmonberries]

Syria, Lebanon and Christian Genocide

The destinies of Syria and Lebanon have been intertwined since the days of French colonial rule, in between the two world wars. It is for this reason that the ongoing civil war in Syria has had its impact on Lebanon. Lebanon is more divided on the issue of the Syrian uprising than any other country in the region.

The Syrian regime has dominated its smaller Lebanese neighbor since the mid-1970s. It has loyal allies and sworn enemies. The Syrian crisis threatens to escalate tensions between and within Lebanon’s largest religious communities, all of whom have a complex relationship with Syria’s President Bashar Assad. The Shiite-Muslims of Lebanon overwhelmingly support the Syrian government of Bashar Assad. Hezbollah, in particular, has a close alliance with Assad. The vast majority of Sunni-Muslims in Lebanon support the largely Sunni-led uprising in Syria. The Christians are divided between political parties that rely on Assad’s support. Gen. Michel Aoun, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, is allied with Hezbollah and Assad, while those Christian parties who are part of the March 14 Movement (allied with the Saudis and the U.S.) strongly oppose Syria and the Assad regime’s influence in Lebanon.

Joseph Hakim is a Lebanese native and President of the International Christian Union (ICU). In Hakim’s view, the jihadi forces within the Syrian opposition and Hezbollah on the other side, have used the conflict in Syria to ethnically cleanse the Christians. According to Hakim, the indigenous Christian minority in Syria is being “forced out of their native cities, towns, and villages.” Hakim bemoaned the passivity of the free world as it witnessed Christians being slaughtered, churches firebombed, priests being beheaded, and bishops kidnapped. “I feel that I am being accurate in calling what is happening genocide.”

As far as Hakim is concerned, there is a coordinated effort to force the indigenous Christian communities in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria out of the Middle East. He sees the conflict in Syria as a war between the Shiite forces sponsored by Iran and supported by Hezbollah on the Assad regime side, with the Sunni jihadist side being sponsored and supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey. In the Lebanese context, however, Hakim considers Saad Hariri as the leader of the Sunni forces, and fears that he is taking orders from the Saudis, which will ultimately result in Al-Qaida insertion into Lebanon. That is true particularly in Sunni-majority cities like Tripoli and the Palestinians camps. “Hezbollah,” Hakim maintained, “is the strongest party in Lebanon, and it is much stronger than either the Lebanese Army or the government.”

Hakim cited the recent clash near Sidon, Lebanon’s third largest city, as an example of how Lebanon might get embroiled in the Syrian conflict. The Lebanese Army launched an operation against the Sunni firebrand preacher Ahmad Assir in Arba, east of Sidon, after Assir’s gunmen ambushed soldiers at a checkpoint near the complex Assir commanded. Eighteen soldiers and at least 28 gunmen were killed in the 25-hour operation. Assir fled and his whereabouts are unknown. Of the 100 fighters in Assir’s radical group, Hakim contended that many were Syrians, Palestinians, and other Sunni Arabs.

“The influx of over a million Syrian refugees into Lebanon [with a population of four million],” Hakim said, “Has put a strain on Lebanon socially and economically. Violence and crime have risen dramatically.” Lebanese (Sunni) Prime Minister Najib Mikati attributes the growing crime and violence rates in Lebanon to the overflow from the Syrian conflict. Mikati declared that in January (2013) alone, 700 Syrians were caught breaking the law in Lebanon.

On May 13, 2013, the International Crisis Group released its Middle East Report, opining that the influx of over one million Syrians into Lebanon “Aggravates state dysfunction, taxes Lebanon’s already limited resources and, by reigniting fears of a shift in the sensitive confessional make-up, risks renewing violent conflict in a state still recovering from its devastating civil war of the 1970’s and 1980’s.”

According to economic analysts in Lebanon, the civil war in Syria will have an effect on the size of foreign investments in Lebanon. The Land of Cedars depends on foreign investments to plug its current account deficit (in trade and services), which is estimated at $5.6 billion by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or 14.4% of the country’s GDP. Economic experts believe that this might be a cause for instability in Lebanon.

Christians in Lebanon, more than any other confessional group, are alarmed by the demographic balance that is continuously tilting against them. The current flood of refugees from Syria harks back to the community’s experience with Palestinian refugees, whose initial short-term resettlement turned into a massive, largely Sunni, long-lasting, militarized presence. This feeds into the conviction that Lebanon’s Sunni community, and more specifically the Islamists in their midst, are being empowered. There is also concern in the Christian community that once the Syrian conflict ends, these jihadi might turn their sights on Lebanon.

In Hakim’s opinion, Christians lack strong and charismatic leadership in both Syria and Lebanon. The lack of Christian unity in Lebanon has undermined the Christian voice in the affairs of the Lebanese state. And in Syria, the ongoing bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites provides them with an opportunity to “finish off what was left behind by the Ottoman Turks.” Hakim was referring to the genocide perpetrated during WWI on the Christian Armenians in which an estimated one million had perished by 1918, while hundreds of thousands had become homeless and stateless refugees. Christian Greeks and Assyrians too were attacked and expelled from Turkey. By 1923, virtually the entire Armenian population of Anatolian Turkey had disappeared. Hakim stressed the point that Muslim persecution of the large Christian minorities in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, and the gradual disappearance of these Christian communities (those in Libya and Tunisia have largely disappeared already), are indicative of the genocidal intentions of the jihadi Muslims.

Joseph Hakim and the board of the International Christian Union (ICU) recommended that the free democratic world help create safe havens for religious and ethnic minority groups in what is today Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon (once colonial possessions of Britain and France). He proposed these safe havens in the form of recognized states with security guarantees from the U.S. and the E.U. states, as well as U.N. protection. This would include a Shiite state in Southern Iraq, a Sunni state in the heartland of Syria and Iraq, a Kurdish state in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria, a Druze state in southern Syria, and respectively, Christian and Alawi states in Lebanon and northwestern Syria. “This,” said Hakim, “does not mean that we need to have population transfers. Rather, it means that areas of Christians, Alawi, Kurdish or Druze majority would become safe havens and provide better representation for their people.”

In conclusion, Hakim stated“I am hoping that people in the free world would have the same feeling of compassion towards the persecuted Christians in the Middle East as they have towards the Palestinians, who do not necessarily deserve that.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-pude...-genocide/

[Salmonberries]

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/27/war-o...nato-vote/

War on Syria Imminent, US Won’t Seek UN or NATO Vote

International Support Apparently Just Means Britain and France

by Jason Ditz, August 27, 2013

With the pretense of the US “considering” a war long gone, and indications that the attacks could begin any day now, officials are backing off yesterday’s reports of seeking an international endorsement, either from the UN or NATO, for attacking Syria.

With neither UN nor NATO approval, and Congress in recess, President Obama is going to be launching the war virtually unilaterally, with only a brief agreement by Britain and France to get in on the bombings passing for “international support.”

In Britain, there are concerns about the total lack of legal justification for the war, especially with the Iraq debacle still fresh in everyone’s minds. President Obama, for all of his long-standing pretense of internationalism, seems set to follow the Bush-style of selling a war on flimsy evidence and launching it anyhow when he can’t get any international bodies to endorse it.

Which of course was the plan all along. Giving lip-service to the idea of the UN or even NATO endorsing a war is more about getting them to react favorably to the calls for war than anything, but once a US president decides he wants to go warring abroad, nothing from facts to public opinion to international law is going to get in his way.

[Salmonberries]

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/...s-say?lite

Military strikes on Syria 'as early as Thursday,' US officials say

NBC News reports that a military strike against Syria could come as early as Thursday. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski, Politico's Rebecca Sinderbrand, The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., discuss.

By Jim Miklaszewski, Courtney Kube and Erin McClam, NBC News

The U.S. could hit Syria with three days of missile strikes, perhaps beginning Thursday, in an attack meant more to send a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad than to topple him or cripple his military, senior U.S. officials told NBC News on Tuesday.

The State Department fed the growing drumbeat around the world for a military response to Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons against rebels Aug. 21 near Damascus, saying that while the U.S. intelligence community would release a formal assessment within the week, it was already "crystal clear" that Assad's government was responsible.

Vice President Joe Biden went even further, bluntly telling an American Legion audience in Houston: "Chemical weapons have been used."

Vice President Joe Biden addresses the use of chemical weapons in Syria and the president's response in a speech to the American Legion.

"No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, and there's no doubt who's responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime," Biden said.

White House press secretary Jay Carney repeated Tuesday that the White House isn't considering the deliberate overthrow of Assad.

"The options that we are considering are not about regime change," said during a daily briefing with reporters. "They are about responding to the clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons."

But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., an influential voice on military matters, pressed the administration to go further, calling for the U.S. and its allies to provide weapons to "the resistance on the ground."

"The important part of this whole situation is, is this just going to be just a retaliatory strike that has no lasting impact or something that changes the momentum on the ground in Syria?" McCain told reporters in Mesa, Ariz., after an event on immigration reform.

Three days of airstrikes [sic -- terrorism!] planned

Senior officials told NBC News that Defense Department planning had advanced to the point that three days of strikes were anticipated, after which strategists could run an assessment and target what was missed in further rounds.

This video contains images which some may find disturbing. Six days after an apparent chemical attack, ITV News has obtained exclusive footage, from eastern Damascus, of attempts to return unclaimed bodies of children killed in the attack to their parents. ITV's Geraint Vincent reports.

U.S. missile strikes would almost certainly be launched from Navy destroyers or submarines in the Mediterranean Sea. The U.S. in recent days has moved destroyers closer to Syria, which sits on the sea's eastern edge, but that was mostly a symbolic move. U.S. Tomahawk missiles are so precise that they can hit not just buildings but also specific windows, and they could hit Syrian targets from far farther west in the Mediterranean.

Navy officials said four destroyers are lined up ready to strike: the USS Barry, the USS Mahan, the USS Ramage and the USS Gravely.

Tuesday, a fifth guided-missile destroyer, the USS Stout, also entered the Mediterranean, through the Straights of Gibraltar, but officials said it wouldn't take part in any cruise missile attack.

"The four destroyers now in place have more than enough cruise missiles," one official said.

Pressure for a response builds

Underscoring the urgency facing world leaders, British Prime Minister David Cameron called Parliament back from vacation and said it would vote on action Thursday, and U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the U.S. military was "ready to go."

Monday, using forceful language, Secretary of State John Kerry said Syrian chemical attacks were a "moral obscenity" and accused the Assad regime not just of having used chemical agents but also of having covered up the evidence.

On Tuesday, the U.N. said its investigating team in Syria would delay its next outing by a day, to Wednesday. The team came under fire from unidentified snipers Monday on its way to check out the site of a suspected chemical attack near Damascus, the capital.

Having fled the violence within Syria, nearly 2 million refugees, a million of them children, are living in refugee camps in Jordan. NBC News' Ann Curry reports.

In Cairo, the Arab League said it held Assad responsible for the suspected attack. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other countries condemned the use of unconventional weapons.

Support from the Arab League, even if limited, would provide crucial diplomatic cover for a Western strike on Syria. Action through the U.N. is unlikely because Russia, which supports the Assad regime, has a veto in the Security Council.

Some U.S. allies, notably Britain, have signaled that a limited strike could take place without Security Council approval. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it would be a "very grave violation of international law," and China said through its government-run news service that the U.S. must refrain from "hasty armed intervention."

In Syria, the top general in the Free Syria Army, the umbrella group comprising rebel factions, told NBC News' Richard Engel that airstrikes were necessary to stop Assad from launching even broader chemical attacks.

"If there is no action, we are afraid that in the coming days, not coming weeks, Bashar will use chemical weapons and chemical materials against very wide areas and, I'm afraid, to kill maybe 20,000 or 30,000 more people," he said.

Eric Baculinao, Baruch Ben-Chorin, Catherine Chomiak, Carrie Dann, Alastair Jamieson, Stacey Klein, Andrea Mitchell, Ron Simeone and Winstone Wilde of NBC News; Reuters; and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Salmonberries]

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/26/obama...gress-act/

Obama Has Decided to Attack Syria, Will Congress Act?

Recent History Suggests Congress Will Be An Afterthought

by Jason Ditz, August 26, 2013

The Obama Administration has already publicly endorsed the narrative of Syrian government chemical weapons strikes in their own capital city, and has already decided to attack Syria within the next two weeks. Where is Congress in all of this?

Still in recess, and war enthusiast Rep. Eliot Engel (D – NY) is urging President Obama to get the war started before that recess ends, saying Congress doesn’t have to be involved until the war is already in progress.

That’s in keeping with the administration’s most recent war, when they waited until the last possible moment to inform Congress about the ongoing war in Libya and then openly refused to seek Congressional approval, despite the law explicitly requiring them to do so, on the grounds that it wasn’t “technically” a war. Congress would be extremely easy to sideline if the war is already going on, and that’s a key point of the latest rush.

Still, sometimes it’s nice to be asked, and some in Congress are expressing hope that they’ll actually get “consulted” with. The early indications are that leadership in both parties, hawkish as a matter of course, are on board with another war, and just needed to be told when and where. Or told after the fact, they’re flexible.

Still, that’s only part of the story, and while the administration’s ‘consultation’ will naturally begin and end with the pro-war leadership, an awful lot of Congressmen are expressing major concerns about the US jumping into this next quagmire.

Recent history is not supportive of the idea that Congress would actually stop a war, and particularly if it gets started before they have a chance to pass any resolutions, there is a strong tendency to shrug it off. Still, if it ever does get a hearing in Congress expect a contentious debate, centering around the paucity of evidence for the allegations against the Assad government and the risks of supporting an al-Qaeda dominated rebellion.

[Salmonberries]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/au...s-damascus

Syria crisis: warplanes spotted in Cyprus as tensions rise in Damascus

Signs of advanced readiness at likely hub of air campaign as UN inspection team comes under fire near site of alleged chemical attack

Martin Chulov in Beirut, Mona Mahmood and Julian Borger

The Guardian, Monday 26 August 2013 19.51 BST

UN chemical weapons experts visit people affected by the apparent gas attack in Damascus suburb. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters

Warplanes and military transporters have begun arriving at Britain's Akrotiri airbase on Cyprus, less than 100 miles from the Syrian coast, in a sign of increasing preparations for a military strike against the Assad regime in Syria.

Two commercial pilots who regularly fly from Larnaca on Monday told the Guardian that they had seen C-130 transport planes from their cockpit windows as well as small formations of fighter jets on their radar screens, which they believe had flown from Europe.

Residents near the British airfield, a sovereign base since 1960, also say activity there has been much higher than normal over the past 48 hours.

If an order to attack targets in Syria is given, Cyprus is likely to be a hub of the air campaign. The arrival of warplanes suggests that advanced readiness – at the very least – has been ordered by Whitehall as David Cameron, Barack Obama and European leaders step up their rhetoric against Bashar al-Assad, whose armed forces they accuse of carrying out the chemical weapons attack last Wednesday that killed many hundreds in eastern Damascus.

The standoff between Syria and the west intensified when a UN inspection team came under sniper fire as it approached the site of the suspected chemical weapons attack.

A spokesman for the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the vehicle was "deliberately shot at multiple times" by unidentified snipers while travelling in the buffer zone between rebel and government-controlled territory.

After replacing the vehicle, the team returned to the area, where they met and took samples from victims of the apparent poisoning. The attack on the inspectors came shortly after Ban said there could be "no impunity" for the use of chemical weapons, saying the international community owed it to the families of the victims to take action in Syria.

Speaking in Seoul, Ban said the UN inspection could not be delayed. "Every hour counts," he said. "We have all seen the horrifying images on our television screens and through social media. Clearly this was a major and terrible incident."

A Syrian doctor who runs a makeshift medical clinic in the Mouadamiya district of west Ghouta in Damascus, where the chemical weapons attack is said to have taken place, spoke to the Guardian by Skype after meeting the inspection team.

"The UN inspection committee was supposed to come at 10am today," Dr Abu Akram said. "The route between the Four Seasons Hotel [where the inspectors were staying] and Mouadamiya is only 15 minutes. But UN convoy was targeted by gunfire and when they are arrived we could see bullet traces on their cars. They arrived at 2pm."

He said there had been doctors with the UN team, who took blood and urine samples, as well as strands of hair, from the victims in the hospital. They also recorded statements on from the victims on video.

"They visited the hospital and talked to more than 20 victims," he said. "They were supposed to stay for six hours but they stayed for an hour and a half only."

Akram said he then accompanied the team to the site where a chemical rocket had fallen, where they collected samples from the soil and animals. "They took a chicken [but] they refused to take the chemical rocket," Akram said, speculating that the Syrian regime had refused permission for the team to take military hardware.

After an a hour and a half, the inspectors received an order from the Syrians to leave immediately, he said. "The security forces told the committee if they do not leave now, they cannot guarantee their security. They could not visit the main six sites where the chemical rockets had fallen and lots of people were killed," he added.

Akram said his clinic had received about 2,000 victims of the gas attack, about 500 of them in a critical condition. "Eighty people were pronounced dead at the hospital and I now have 20 victims in intensive care, he said."

The UN team spoke to his patients and asked them where they had been when the rockets landed. "Most of the people were civilians, sleeping at their homes," he said. "The committee did not visit any house in the district. We asked them if they could supply us with medical aid but they said that they do not have the authority to do so."

Likely targets in Syria

The US, Britain and their allies are likely to wait until the UN team has compiled its report and left Syria before carrying out any air strikes against the government. If the strikes go ahead, they are expected to focus on the strongest sinews of the Assad regime's power.

Hitting stockpiles of chemical weapons could appear more proportionate but that would bring with it the risk of dispersing neurotoxins over a wide area, potentially causing even more harm than Wednesday's gas attack.

For that reason, military experts think that if the western allies do decide to strike, they will aim to deliver a punishment and a deterrent against any further chemical weapons use.

To do so, they will probably concentrate their fire on the regime's greatest strength – the elite units on which it relies militarily and which are most tied to its chemical weapons programme.

Foremost among these is the 4th armoured division, an overwhelmingly Alawite formation headed by the president's brother, Maher al-Assad. It has its headquarters in the Mazzeh military complex in the southern suburbs of Damascus.

Another likely target is the regime's Republican Guard, another Allawite diehard unit, which is deployed around the presidential palace and in the Qasioun military complex to the north of the Syrian capital.

Much will depend on whether the chosen option is a strictly limited strike with a handful of cruise missiles, intended as demonstration of intent, or a more complex, further-reaching campaign involving waves of stealth bombers.

That would involve a huge amount of ordnance being targeted at Syria's substantial air defences, which include multiple arrays of Russian-made missiles. Such a campaign would dramatically increase the risk of causing casualties among civilians and perhaps even Russian advisers, who western intelligence officials say are present in Syria helping the regime's troops train on and maintain the anti-aircraft missiles.

Both options have shortcomings. The more limited version could be rejected by the regime's friends and foes as "pin-prick strikes" with political rather than military significance. The longer, more complex option threatens to drag the US, Britain and their allies into a more open-ended conflict that would help Assad to define his role as a bulwark of resistance against western imperialism.

[Salmonberries]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/2...rit=992637

Exclusive: Syria strike due in days, West tells opposition - sources

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN | Tue Aug 27, 2013 10:03am EDT

(Reuters) - Western powers have told the Syrian opposition to expect a strike against President Bashar al-Assad's forces within days, according to sources who attended a meeting between envoys and the Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul.

"The opposition was told in clear terms that action to deter further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime could come as early as in the next few days, and that they should still prepare for peace talks at Geneva," one of the sources who was at the meeting on Monday told Reuters.

The meeting at a hotel in downtown Istanbul was between senior figures of the Syrian National Coalition, including its president, Ahmad Jarba, and envoys from 11 core "Friends of Syria" alliance members, including Robert Ford, the former U.S. ambassador to Syria who is now Washington's pointman with the opposition, the sources said.

Facing Russian and Chinese opposition that could dampen prospects for proposed peace talks in Geneva, Assad's foes have vowed to punish a poison gas attack in some rebel-held districts of Damascus on August 21 that killed hundreds of people.

Another source said Ford told Jarba at the gathering that the coalition should "expect appropriate action to deter more use of chemical weapons".

Jarba offered the 11 nations represented in the Friends of Syria core group a list of 10 proposed targets.

They included the Mezze Military Airport on the western outskirts of Damascus, the Qutaifa missile base north of the city and compounds of the Fourth Mechanised Division, a elite unit headed by Assad's feared brother Maher and composed mainly of members of his Alawite minority sect.

"GET TEAM READY" FOR TALKS

The Friends of Syria core group comprises the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

U.N. experts trying to establish what exactly happened in the attack were finally able to cross the frontline on Monday to see survivors - despite being shot at in government-held territory. But they put off a second visit until Wednesday.

"The Americans are tying any military action to the chemical weapons issue. But the message is clear; they expect the strike to be strong enough to force Assad to go to Geneva and accept a transitional government with full authority," a Syrian opposition figure said.

"The message to the opposition was to get a team ready for Geneva, and be prepared for the possibility of a transition. But we must also be ready for the possibility of the collapse of the regime. If the strike ends up to be crippling, and if they hit the symbols of the regime's military power in Damascus it could collapse," the source said.

The sources said the meeting was planned before the suspected nerve gas attack on the Damascus suburbs, and was originally meant to discuss preparations for the proposed U.S.- and Russian-sponsored Geneva peace conference, which has been repeatedly put off.

Jarba said this month the coalition welcomed participating in Geneva without conditions, but it still expected the meeting to result in a transition that would remove Assad and his top aides from power.

Assad's foreign minister, Walid Moualem, said in June the authorities were ready to form a broad-based government of national unity, but they would not "head to Geneva to hand over power to another side", in an indication that Assad was not planning to give up control of the country.

(Reporting by Khaled Oweis, Writing by William Maclean; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

[Salmonberries]

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/26/no-pr...ndeniable/

No Proof, But Kerry Insists Syria Allegations ‘Undeniable’

Secretary of State Leads Charge in Selling Americans on War

by Jason Ditz, August 26, 2013

The US attacks on Syria could begin any day now, and the administration is hard at work selling the American public on the dubious narrative presented by the rebels as an excuse for war, with Secretary of State John Kerry leading the charge.

There’s no solid proof for the allegations of chemical weapon use by the Assad government, and the US is vigorously trying to keep the UN investigators from taking a serious look at the matter.

Rather, Kerry reiterated the story, noting that something happened in Syria and that Assad is known to have chemical weapons, and insisting that makes it “undeniable” that it was a chemical weapons attack, even though the experts say that the symptoms of chemical exposure shown in the rebels’ videos are not necessarily in keeping with the sorts of weapons Syria is known to have.

Still, this has never been so much about “proof” as about being officially convinced, and Kerry’s comments underscore that the US plans to attack very soon, with recent sources saying it could happen in the next two weeks.

Oddly, nobody seems to have told Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about the plan, as Hagel today reiterated days-old talking points that the US is still looking at intelligence and hadn’t drawn any conclusions, even though everyone else in the administration is long past that point, and has set about trying to ridicule anyone who rejects their conclusion.

[Salmonberries]

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/08/26/un-sp...war-looms/

UN Spurns US Call to Withdraw Syria Inspectors as War Looms

US Gears Up to Attack, but Inspectors Continue to Probe Accusations

by Jason Ditz, August 26, 2013

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon today rejected US demands to withdraw chemical weapons inspectors from Syria, with those familiar with the conversation saying he “stood firm on principle.”

US and other Western officials are desperate to retain the narrative of Syrian chemical weapons use, and seem to be anticipating the UN investigation doing serious harm to that claim.

That’s why after initial demands to allow inspectors into the site, the US suddenly reversed course when Syria agreed, insisting it was “too late.” Since then, officials have maintained that they are already convinced of Syria’s guilt because of media reports and rebel accounts, and are preparing to launch attacks in the next couple of weeks.

British officials went a step further and tried to preempt the investigators’ results, saying that the evidence might conceivably have been destroyed or “tampered with” and that what the investigators tell the world about what happened in Jobar couldn’t be trusted anymore.

Mirroring the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, officials have already made their decision and are now trying to do anything and everything they can to avoid evidence coming out that would ruin their scheme.