Thread: US closes Syrian embassy as diplomacy collapses

In the wake of last week’s failed talks in Geneva, Washington and its allies are escalating pressure on Syria over chemical weapons and professed “humanitarian� concerns.

The shift toward a more aggressive posture toward the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad only underscores the fact that the Western powers remain committed to an agenda of regime change, whether by means of United Nations-brokered talks or outright military aggression.

UN envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi was compelled to admit last Friday, after the final round of talks, “We haven’t made any progress to speak of.�

The reason for the collapse of the negotiations was clear. The talks began with a ceremonial session in which US Secretary of State issued an ultimatum that the Syrian regime had to accept the removal from power of President Bashar al-Assad and the installation of a puppet of Washington’s choosing. Throughout the rest of the talks, the Western-backed “rebels� of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) followed Washington’s script, insisting on the ouster of Assad as a pre-condition for any agreements, while the negotiators of the Syrian regime insisted on a common declaration calling for an end to violence and terrorism.

The negotiations only underscored that the SNC, composed of exile politicians, represents no one outside of the US State Department and various Western intelligence agencies. In discussions on prisoner exchanges, it insisted it could not speak for the Islamist-dominated militias that have abducted civilians, while on the issue of humanitarian aid to Homs, it allowed that it had no influence over the armed factions fighting government troops there.

On the ground in Syria, the major “rebel� forces are divided between those led by the Al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and another coalition of Islamist militias led by the al-Nusra Front, an opposing faction that also swears allegiance to Al Qaeda. All of them opposed the Geneva talks and threatened deadly reprisals against anyone who attended.

In the final days of the talks, Washington staged a deliberate provocation by revealing that it has resumed arms shipments to the “rebels,� and that the US Congress recently approved secret legislation providing aid and funding for the anti-regime forces through September. This aid supplements the billions of dollars’ worth of arms and funding being funneled into Islamist militias by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, with the CIA’s collaboration.

Much of the maneuvering by the SNC and its Western backers has appeared to be aimed at securing Russia’s support for a “transition� that includes Assad’s removal from power. Both Moscow and Washington are agreed that regime change should maintain the basic institutions—most critically the security forces—intact. Russia, however, fears that the imposition of a US-backed regime in Damascus will undermine its strategic interests throughout the region.

Following the collapse of the Geneva negotiations, Washington has engaged in renewed saber-rattling against Syria, particularly over the chemical weapons disarmament agreement reached last September. This deal, brokered by Moscow, provided the means for the Obama administration to back down from its threat to launch direct military strikes on Syria, an intervention that failed to garner the support of the Congress and even the closest US ally, Britain, and which was overwhelmingly opposed by the American people.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the implementing body of the international chemical weapons treaty, which is supervising Syria’s disarmament, issued a statement Friday acknowledging that the shipment of two consignments of deadly chemicals out of Syria represented “a start� of the process, but added that the need “to pick up the pace is obvious.�

The US delegate to the OPCW, Robert Mikulak, claimed that the disarmament effort had “languished and stalled� resulting in only 4 percent of Syria’s total arsenal of 530 metric tons of poison gas being shipped out.

Damascus has said that it is working on the OPCW timetable, but that it has faced challenges moving the poison gas under threat of attack by the Western-backed Islamists as well as difficult weather conditions. The deal providing for the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons set a timetable that was unprecedentedly short, even for countries not in a state of civil war.

The Syrian government also has insisted that the international agency is satisfied with its cooperation, but that Washington is attempting to seize on delays as a pretext for aggression.

“We now know that the Assad regime is not moving as rapidly as it promised to move the chemical weapons out of Syria,� Kerry said on Friday.

He insisted that Security Council Resolution 2118, which instituted the chemical disarmament process, “makes it clear that if there are issues of non-compliance, they will be referred to the Security Council for Chapter 7 compliance purposes.�

Chapter 7 of the UN charter allows for military action to “restore international peace and security.� It was the invocation of Chapter 7 in relation to Libya that provided the legal fig leaf for the 2011 US-NATO war of aggression that toppled the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.

Meanwhile, the US, Britain, other major NATO powers and Washington’s allies among the Arab monarchies are reportedly preparing another UN resolution laying the groundwork for intervention on the grounds of humanitarianism.

The West and its Syrian puppets have indicted the Syrian regime for attempting to starve areas held by the Islamist militias into submission, including parts of the western city of Homs.

The plight of around 800 families besieged in the old city of Homs became an issue in the Geneva talks, with the West and its proxies in the SNC demanding the opening of “humanitarian corridors,� a ploy that was also used to prepare intervention in Libya. Syrian government negotiators countered with an offer to let all women and children out of the area, but this was rejected by the “rebels.�

Ignored in the West’s “humanitarian� concerns is the far larger population—an estimated 45,000 people trapped in the predominantly Shia towns of Zahraa and Nubl outside Aleppo—which is on the brink of starvation after being placed under siege by the Islamist Sunni “rebels� for the past year and a half.

Among the worst starvation has taken place in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus, which elements of the Al Qaeda-linked Islamists seized at the end of 2012 and turned into a free-fire zone. While most of the residents fled, some 18,000 people trapped there have undergone severe hunger, with dozens starving to death. Attempts to deliver humanitarian aid were repeatedly turned back both by the army’s siege and by gunfire from the US-backed armed opposition. The UN was able to deliver two shipments late last month.

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos is set to convene a conference on Syria in Rome today, which will likely lay the groundwork for the Western powers to push for a resolution designed to further their campaign for regime change.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/after-f...-syria/5367237

The outcome here is as predictable as the ending of a bad novel: these talks were engineered to fail as a prelude to military action against Syria.

Transcript

Drone strikes in Pakistan. The surge in Afghanistan. The bombing of Libya. Aiding terrorists in Syria. Crippling sanctions on Iran. The Asia-Pacific Pivot.

Here in 2014, the Nobel committee’s 2009 decision to award Obama with a Peace Prize seems like some sort of sick joke.

But then, to those who were warning that Obama was just a fresh face for the same oligarchical interests that Bush had served so well in the 8 years before him, the hope and change pandemonium of the 2008 selection cycle always was always a sick joke.

One look at the largest donors to Obama’s campaign was enough to confirm exactly who he was working for, and exactly what type of “hope� and “change� the public could expect.

Drone strikes in Pakistan. The surge in Afghanistan. The bombing of Libya. Aiding terrorists in Syria. Crippling sanctions on Iran. The Asia-Pacific Pivot.

Here in 2014, the Nobel committee’s 2009 decision to award Obama with a Peace Prize seems like some sort of sick joke.

But then, to those who were warning that Obama was just a fresh face for the same oligarchical interests that Bush had served so well in the 8 years before him, the hope and change pandemonium of the 2008 selection cycle always was always a sick joke.

One look at the largest donors to Obama’s campaign was enough to confirm exactly who he was working for, and exactly what type of “hope� and “change� the public could expect.

So why did people believe in it so fervently? Surely wishful thinking played a role. A public that had just survived eight years of Bush-era insanity could perhaps be forgiven for desiring change so desperately that they were willing to see it in Barack Obama, a clean slate upon which they could project whatever fantasies they wished.

But the problem is deeper than that. As we examined last week on The Eyeopener, the fraudulent left/right political divide has been used to keep the people divided against each other even as it is used to dupe the public into supporting the very same political agenda through puppet administration after puppet administration. Perhaps nowhere is this process of divide and rule quite so transparent as it is in the so-called “anti-war� movement of the last decade.

At the height of the Bush Administration, scores gathered for protest, marches, rallies, and acts of civil disobedience to decry the acts of torture, abuse and violence being perpetrated by the Pentagon in the name of the War on Terror. At the time, the movement was dismissed by the talking heads on the right side of the political aisle as being little more than an anti-Bush movement.

As it turns out, they were largely right. After the election of Obama in 2008, the driving impetus of the anti-war movement evaporated. No longer did it matter that the wars, covert operations, military tribunals and prison torture camps were continuing. In fact, it did not even matter that American military involvement escalated with the Obama handover, expanding into Pakistan and Yemen, involving more drone strikes and extrajudicial assassinations. This was, after all, a Democrat, and so many on the anti-war left were appeased. Groups like Veterans For Peace, which had so loudly and so admirably called for the impeachment of Bush for his participation in war crimes and atrocities have been happy to look the other way while “their guy� in the White House forwards the very same agenda.

Last year, I had the chance to talk to famed activist and writer Larry Pinkney, a veteran of the original Black Panther Party, about the process by which the anti-war movement was co-opted and ultimately squashed by the left/right political fraud.

As vexing as this endless cycle of left-wing and right-wing warmongering is, the sick joke is set to be played on the public yet again and, what’s worse, it seems to be working yet again. This time it’s the Republicans who are pretending to play the role of savior, putting up a mock opposition to the worst abuses of Obama. There were protestations over the way Obama bypassed Congress to start the war in Libya. It is now http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/rep.../548911″ target=â€�_blankâ€�>official Republican platform policy to decry illegal NSA surveillance as an abrogation of fundamental rights. But come November 2016, after the next pre-determined, rigged, phony American coronation spectacle plays itself out and a man (or woman) with an R next to his name is inevitably installed in office, the Republicans will once again be fine with any level of presumed Presidential authority and the Democrats will once again pretend to be concerned about Executive overreach. And the public, relieved to have “thrown the rascals outâ€� yet again will be content for another 4 or 8 years until the next time they decide to throw out the rascals.

And so history repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats.

And yet, there are reasons to believe that this time can be different. As Larry Pinkney highlighted last year, there are concrete steps that the public can take to help transition away from the left/right duopoly and toward a system where people collaborate and act in their shared interest against the wishes of the warmongering ruling class.

What’s more, there is reason to believe that this is actually happening. No more stunning example of a genuine, grassroots, people’s anti-war movement can be identified than the spontaneous mobilization we saw in the wake of the false flag chemical weapons attack in Syria last August. It was the grassroots alternative media that raised the alarm about the push to war and the US/British manipulation of intelligence to try to lay the blame for the attack on Assad’s doorstep. It was mass mobilization and anti-war campaigning that derailed the war drive and forced Obama to back off from sending troops into yet another war theater. And it was this intense public backlash that ultimately shamed the administration into taking Putin’s face-saving deal.

Compared to the mass carnage that has been inflicted in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere over the past decade, the aversion of the Syrian war may seem like a small victory, but it nonetheless is a victory and has to be recognized as such. The fact that NATO did not begin the bombing of Syria in 2013 may prove to be the beginning of a tidal change of resistance to the imperial bankster-driven war agenda of the warmongers on the left and right sides of the phony political divide.

Or, it might turn out to be a momentary blip on the otherwise unimpeded journey toward a state of total war. The people might go back to their mainstream news, believing the mainstream lies, voting for the mainstream political parties, and thinking that as long as it’s “our guy� in office, everything will be OK again.

In the end, the choice is ours to make. But with war on Iran and a World War III scenario involving China and Russia looming on the horizon, the time to make that choice may be running out.

http://www.corbettreport.com/anti-wa...uer-in-action/

Armed with binoculars and cameras, tourists in Israel are flocking to the Golan Heights in the hope of seeing the bloody conflict in neighboring Syria, sparking a trend among tour operators

Can they take back a peace prize once it has been awarded? They should recall it and demand their money back as well. Sorry but they jumped the gun on that one.

Me

September 2002: TRACES OF TERROR: THE STRATEGY; Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq

White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.
...
"From a marketing point of view," said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, "you don't introduce new products in August."

It is September 2014 and we are past the summer and past Labor Day. Time to roll out the (old) new product:
•NY Times: Syria May Have Hidden Chemical Arms, U.S. Says
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/05/wo...s-us-says.html
•ABC News: US: Terrorist Could Get Syria Chemical Weapons
http://abcnews.go.com/International/...apons-25249980
•HuffPo: US Warns Terrorist Could Get Hold Of Syria's Chemical Weapons
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5768492.html

United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power says the United States is concerned that the most dangerous terrorist groups could get a hold of chemical weapons if Syria is hiding any stockpiles.

We know of course that Syria has disposed of all its chemical weapons and that these were destroyed under the eyes of the OPCW. But Iraq had also disposed of all its WMD and that it has none left was in fact one reason why it could be and was easily attacked.

So is Obama is doubling down (again) on Syria? Hoping that the mystical "Free Syrian Army" (Jihadis in disguise) heavily supports by the U.S. will fight the Islamic State and the Syrian government?

The chronic warmonger Juan Cole is already searching for flimsy legal excuses, using the false pretense of fighting ISIS, to bomb whatever in sovereign Syria even without a UN Security Council resolution. Maybe Syria should invite the Russian air force to help against ISIS. A few Russian jets in Damascus would likely keep despicable nuts like Juan Cole away.

The new big international enemy is the Islamic State which is fighting the Syrian government. It would likely replace it should the government fall. But the Obama administration is not willing to draw the consequences and to ally with the Syrian army. It still wants to dispose the Syrian government under president Assad. It hopes that more weapons given to its mystic "moderate rebels" will somehow enable those to win.

But for that they will need at least additional air support and to enable such some "legal" reasoning - ISIS, Al-Qaeda, WMD - must be found and marketed to the war tired public.


http://www.blacklistednews.com/Obama...38/38/Y/M.html

Over the past few months, the Syrian Civil War has taken a back seat to the “war within a war� of faction fighting between ISIS and various other rebel groups. That seems to be coming to an end.

Today, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that ISIS and other significant rebel factions, including both Islamist and “moderate� groups, have signed a mutual non-aggression pact in a Damascus suburb.

The pact was said to have been brokered by al-Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra, and agrees that all sides will respect a truce until the destruction of the “Nussayri� regime, a pejorative term for Alawites.

The move comes as the Obama Administration pushes to provide more arms to the various non-ISIS rebel factions, on the notion that those rebels can be used against ISIS. That certainly doesn’t seem to be the plan as far as those rebels are concerned, though they will no doubt accept the US arms and, as usual, share them with ISIS.

http://news.antiwar.com/2014/09/12/m...act-with-isis/

here we go again picking the wrong side and telling countries how to run their own country. I have repeatedly asked 'why are we arming rebels who kill christians?' how would anyone in the whole US feel if some group like isis announced they are against presidents who play golf and ignore their people and decide to take over the US? we have done it to other countries - just look at the turmoil in iraq and Libya where no one is safe. we should be concentrating on protecting our own country and our own borders!

(CNSNews.com) – Russia on Tuesday accused the West of ignoring its warnings about the growing terrorist threat in Syria, and claimed that the moderate rebel front – the one the Obama administration wants to arm as part of its anti-ISIS strategy – “no longer exists.�

The remarks by Russia’s ambassador in Geneva Alexey Borodavkin came during a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, which was discussing the most recent report by a U.N.-mandated independent commission of inquiry into the conflict.

The report, released late last month and roughly covering the first half of this year, recorded atrocities by the Assad regime and by some of its opponents, including the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL).

“The commission in its report,� Borodavkin told the council through a translator, “recognizes that the Syrian government is working against a huge army of trained armed terrorists.�

“The Free Syrian Army no longer exists,� he continued. “Armed groups qualified as ‘moderate’ are closely coordinating their activities with terrorist groups.�

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is the mainstream rebel movement affiliated to the U.S.-recognized Syrian National Coalition which the administration wants to train and equip to fight ISIS jihadists in Syria. Lawmakers are expected to vote as early as Wednesday to authorize the proposal.

The commission of inquiry report to which Borodavkin referred does not state that the FSA no longer exists. It does say however that “ideological, political, tribal and personal� divisions and rivalries among rebel groups had prevented them from becoming more effective, and that “[e]fforts by external backers to reinforce the so-called ‘vetted moderate armed opposition’ failed to reverse the dominance of radical armed groups.�

The report also says that where “groups labeled as moderate� managed to score military successes against the regime they did so “closely coordinating with extremist groups, including the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra.�

Borodavkin used his intervention in Geneva to chide countries – especially Western countries opposed to Syrian President Bashar Assad – for their approach to the three-and-a-half-year civil war.

“It’s clearer than ever that the real threat to Syrian statehood and the whole region is the activity of terrorist groups,� he said.

“I’d like to remind you that Russia right from the beginning suggested that we unite the efforts of the international community, the Syrian authorities and the moderate opposition to combat jihadists.

“If we had been heard at the time, the spread of this cancerous tumor could have been stopped,� Borodavkin said.

“Now, regrettably, we must admit that our worst scenarios have materialized: the Islamic State [ISIS] has seized a third of the country’s territory, have proclaimed the Syrian city of Raqqa as a capital of their ‘caliphate’ and is committing heinous crimes. This is supplemented by violent raging of other terrorist groups.�

The Russian envoy said the new international focus on countering ISIS was to be welcomed, citing a meeting convened by France on Monday at which 26 countries, Russia and the U.S. among them, expressed support for a broad campaign against the jihadist group.

Russia was willing to contribute to the effort, he said.

On the sidelines of the meeting in Paris, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russian help in the anti-ISIS campaign included providing military and other assistance to Iraq “to strengthen its ability to ensure security.�

Moscow was “also providing military and other aid to Syria,� he said, as well as to other countries in the region, including Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon and Jordan.

Russia does not, however, support President Obama proposal to extend airstrikes against ISIS from Iraq into Syria, insisting that it would violate international law.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/...e-coordinating