Kerry was just asked very pointedly about the Russians.
He's side stepping them... completely.
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Kerry was just asked very pointedly about the Russians.
He's side stepping them... completely.
Syria strike: Defense secretary says U.S. credibility at stake
CAPTIONS
1/72
Tribune news wire reports 2:52 p.m. CDT, September 3, 2013
BEIRUT/WASHINGTON—
UPDATE: A failure to take action over Syria's use of chemical weapons would damage the credibility America's pledge to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Congress on Tuesday.
"A refusal to act would undermine the credibility of America's other security commitments - including the president's commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon," Hagel told a Senate hearing, according to prepared remarks.
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- http://www.trbimg.com/img-521e233d/t...21/187/187x105 Photos: Gas attack in Syria (graphic images)
- http://www.trbimg.com/img-522631c9/t...03/187/187x105 Video: House speaker vows to back Syria strikes
- http://www.trbimg.com/img-5226320d/t...21/187/187x105 U.N.'s Ban casts doubt on legality of U.S. plans to punish Syria
- http://www.trbimg.com/img-5225f138/t...03/187/187x105 Syrian refugees surpass 2 million: U.N.
- http://www.trbimg.com/img-522518ad/t...02/187/187x105 Syria's Assad warns of a 'powder keg'
- See more stories »
"The word of the United States must mean something."
President Obama is not asking the United States to go to war but to authorize him to "degrade and deter" Syria's capability to use chemical weapons, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said.
"President Obama is not asking America to go to war," Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "He is asking for authorization to degrade and deter (Syrian President) Bashar al-Assad's capacity to use chemical weapons."
Kerry said that he did not want the resolution on the use of force in Syria before the U.S. Congress to be cast in a way that would remove the option of putting U.S. "boots on the ground".
"I don't want to take off the table an option that might or might not be available to the president of the United States to secure our country," he said in answer to a question in a Senate hearing.
But Kerry also stressed that "the president has no intention" of putting American troops on the ground to be involved in fighting Syria's civil war.
---
U.S. President Barack Obama won the backing of two top Republicans in Congress in his call for limited U.S. strikes on Syria to punish President Bashar al-Assad for his suspected use of chemical weapons against civilians.
Speaking after the United Nations said 2 million Syrians had fled a conflict that posed the greatest threat to world peace since the Vietnam war, Obama said the United States also has a broader plan to help rebels defeat Assad's forces.
In remarks that appeared to question the legality of U.S. plans to strike Syria without U.N. backing, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the use of force is only legal when it is in self-defense or with U.N. Security Council authorization.
He said that if U.N. inspectors confirm the use of chemical weapons in Syria, the Security Council, which has long been deadlocked on the 2-1/2-year Syrian civil war, should overcome its differences and take action.
Having startled friends and foes alike in the Middle East by delaying a punitive attack on Assad until Congress reconvenes and agrees, Obama met congressional leaders at the White House on Tuesday to urge a prompt decision and assure them it did not mean another long war like Iraq or Afghanistan.
John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor both pledged their support for military action after the meeting.
Votes are expected to be held in the U.S. Senate and House next week, with the Republican-led House presenting the tougher challenge for Obama.
The Republican House leadership has indicated the votes will be "conscience votes," meaning they will not seek to influence members' votes on party lines. All the same, it would have been a big blow to Obama if he had not secured the backing of the top two Republicans.
"I believe that my colleagues should support this call for action," Boehner told reporters.
The president said strikes aimed at punishing the use of chemical weapons would hurt Assad's forces while other U.S. action would bolster his opponents - though the White House has insisted it is not seeking "regime change."
"What we are envisioning is something limited. It is something proportional. It will degrade Assad's capabilities," Obama said. "At the same time we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition."
Assad denies deploying poison gas that killed hundreds of civilians last month.
The Syrian opposition, which on Tuesday said a forensic scientist had defected to the rebel side bringing evidence of Assad forces' use of sarin gas in March, has appealed to Western allies to send them weapons and use their air power to end a war that has killed more than 100,000 and made millions homeless.
The presence in rebel ranks of Islamist militants, some of them close to al Qaeda, has made Western leaders wary, while at the same time the undoubted - and apparently accelerating - human cost of the conflict has brought pressure to intervene.
The chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee said on Tuesday he was confident after talking with Obama that the United States would step up its support for "vetted" elements of the Syrian opposition.
Senator Carl Levin said he urged the president, a fellow Democrat, to arm the Syrian rebels a day after two influential Republican senators, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, sought similar assurances from Obama. Levin said he told the White House that the United States should provide rebels with arms such as anti-tank weapons "which cannot be turned on us."
Top House Democrat Nancy Pelosi also voiced support for military strikes after meeting Obama on Tuesday, but Obama will still have to persuade some lawmakers, including Democrats, who have said they are concerned the president's draft resolution could be too open-ended and allow possible use of ground troops or eventual attacks on other countries.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel took the administration's message to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Kerry said the world was watching to see what the United States would do. "They want to know if America will rise to this moment and make a difference," he told senators at the hearing.
REFUGEE CRISIS
After two and a half years of war, nearly one Syrian in three has been driven from home by violence and fear.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said there had been a near tenfold increase over the past 12 months in the rate of refugees crossing Syria's borders into Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon - to a daily average of nearly 5,000 men, women and children.
This has pushed the total living abroad above 2 million.
That represents some 10 percent of Syria's population, the UNHCR said. With a further 4.25 million estimated to have been displaced but still resident inside the country, close to a third of all Syrians are living away from their original homes.
Comparing the figures to the peak of Afghanistan's refugee crisis two decades ago, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, said: "Syria has become the great tragedy of this century - a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history."
Speaking of the acceleration in the crisis, he said: "What is appalling is that the first million fled Syria in two years.
"The second million fled Syria in six months," Guterres said.
"The risks for global peace and security that the present Syria crisis represents, I'm sure, are not smaller than what we have witnessed in any other crisis that we have had since the Vietnam war," said Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister.
Russia, backed by China, has used its veto power in the U.N. Security Council three times to block resolutions condemning Assad's government and threatening it with sanctions. Assad, like Russia, blames the rebels for the August 21 gas attack.
Obama has said he is "comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that so far has been completely paralyzed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable.
Ban questioned whether the use of force to deter Syria or other countries from deploying chemical arms in the future could do more harm than good.
"We must consider the impact of any punitive measure on efforts to prevent further bloodshed and facilitate a political resolution of the conflict," he said, calling for renewed diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis.
The conflict has divided the Middle East on sectarian lines, with Shi'ite Iran backing Assad and Washington's Sunni Arab Gulf allies supporting the mainly Sunni rebels. It has also revived Cold War-style tensions between the Western powers and Moscow.
In an interview in Tuesday's Le Figaro, Assad told the Paris newspaper: "Everybody will lose control of the situation when the powder keg blows. There is a risk of a regional war."
The rebels have been struggling to hold ground in recent months, let alone advance. According to one opposition report, government forces took the strategic northwestern town of Ariha on Tuesday, though others said the battle was not over.
MISSILE JITTERS
While Obama's wait for Congress to return from its summer recess seems to rule out Western military action this week, Israeli forces training in the Mediterranean with the U.S. navy set nerves on edge in Damascus on Tuesday with a missile test that triggered an alert from Assad's ally Russia.
When Moscow raised the alarm on Tuesday morning that its forces had detected the launch of two ballistic "objects" in the Mediterranean, thoughts of a surprise strike on Syria pushed oil prices higher on world markets and must have put the troops operating Syria's Russian-equipped air defense system on alert.
A Syrian security official later told a Lebanese television channel that its early warning radar had picked up no threats.
Clarification came only later when the Israeli Defense Ministry said that its troops had - at the time of the Russian alert - fired a missile that is used as a target for an anti-missile defense system during an exercise with U.S. forces.
The jitters reflected a nervousness since Western leaders pledged retribution for the use of chemical weapons.
Britain has dropped out of planning for attacks since its parliament rejected a proposal by Prime Minister David Cameron but France, western Europe's other main military power, is still coordinating possible action with the Pentagon.
Rush: Syrians gassed with help from U.S.?
'Al-Qaida was setting off chemical weapons on their own people'
http://www.wnd.com/files/2011/12/Kat...dle_avatar.jpg Kathy Shaidle About | Email | Archive
Kathy Shaidle is a blogging pioneer whose FiveFeetOfFury.com is now in its 12th year. Her most recent book – "The Tyranny of Nice: How Canada Crushes Freedom in the Name of Human Rights, and Why It Matters to Americans" – features an introduction by Rush Limbaugh guest host Mark Steyn.
http://www.wnd.com/files/2012/03/rus...28-340x184.jpg
Rush Limbaugh today raised the possibility that Syrian rebels were responsible for using chemical weapons on their own people – not President Bashar al-Assad.
Limbaugh said he based the theory on emails he received from friends over the weekend, both of whom “have lived in the Middle East” and “claim to know Bashar.”
The correspondents told Limbaugh that they suspect Assad is “being framed.”
The Syrian leader, they insist, would not have gassed his own people. In any case, Limbaugh’s friends asked, What would Bashar gain from committing such an atrocity?
An estimated 1,400 people died in a gas attack on a Damascus suburb just two weeks ago.
Limbaugh told listeners he was prepared to brush his friends’ opinions aside until he read an article by Yossef Bodansky, former director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, which claims that the chemical weapons attack was carried out by al Qaida terrorists posing as Syrian rebels – and that the U.S. may have had foreknowledge of the attack.
Limbaugh read the first two paragraphs of Bodansky’s World Tribune article on the air:
“There is a growing volume of new evidence from numerous sources in the Middle East – mostly affiliated with the Syrian opposition and its sponsors and supporters – which makes a very strong case, based on solid circumstantial evidence, that the Aug. 21 chemical strike in the Damascus suburbs was indeed a premeditated provocation by the Syrian opposition.
“The extent of U.S. foreknowledge of this provocation needs further investigation because available data puts the ‘horror’ of the Barack Obama White House in a different and disturbing light.”
In other words, Limbaugh explained, “Al Qaida was setting off chemical weapons on their own people … to create the situation where we take Bashir out for them because they can’t do it themselves.”
Noting that Bodansky, a consultant for the Department of Defense and the Department of State, is not an “Internet loony toon,” Limbaugh remarked, “If indeed this is a frame job, look how well it’s being run. … That template [for U.S. intervention] quickly came to life. It has all the energy in the world behind it.”
Limbaugh reminded listeners that back in September 2012, Foreign Policy magazine reported that “the U.S. has lost track of some of Syria’s chemical weapons … and does not know if any potentially lethal chemicals have fallen into the hands of Syrian rebels or Iranian forces inside the country.”
“I doubt that anybody remembered that Syrian rebels overran and controlled a government base that had chemical weapons last summer,” said Limbaugh.
“It’s an open question whether the rebels got their hands on chemical weapons last year,” he added, noting that an Associated Press story that ran Aug. 29 agreed with that assessment. “Meanwhile Kerry, the regime and media have used as their main argument that the rebels have never had access to chemical weapons, therefore they couldn’t have conducted that attack,” and Bashar had to be the culprit.
Limbaugh noted Bodansky didn’t name any of his sources. However, if Bodansky’s analysis is correct, Limbaugh concluded, “this is the set-up of all time.”
“I’m just putting this out as a possibility,” Limbaugh said. “It’s already out there. You know the old saying: ‘We report; you decide.’”
Top 9 real reasons to go to war in Syria The top 9 real reasons to go to war in Syria
by Jon Rappoport
by Jon Rappoport
September 4, 2013
www.nomorefakenews.com
In no particular order:
One: Give the appearance of unifying the country behind the President, who “did his job the right way,” by going to Congress for approval. This elevates Obama’s ratings and, by inference, suggests that his other programs should be accorded more merit. A wartime president always gains more support.
Two: Give the people an adrenaline rush. The effect should never be underestimated. Cleanses the pores, cleans the slate, and relieves frustration by proxy, temporarily…if you have very little access to your cerebral functions.
Three: In this case, winning Congressional approval reinstates the illusion, for a few moments, that we are a Constitutional Republic, with a government dedicated to justice.
Four: Help fulfill the long-planned US-Israeli agenda of destabilizing Syria and causing it to partition into warring and chaotic ethnic factions.
Five: Stop the construction of a natural gas pipeline across Syria, which would boost Iran’s economy by sending Iranian gas to Europe. Iran’s economy must be torpedoed.
Six: Send a message throughout the Middle East that the US is all-powerful and the dollar must remain the reserve currency in all oil transactions.
Seven: Feed the US military-industrial complex, which demands wars.
Eight: Aid the long-term goal of Globalism/Free Trade, which involves putting the entire Middle East into unresolvable debt and suffering…and then coming in with outside elite bankster financing, to rebuild the entire region and own it, lock, stock, and barrel.
Nine: Distract Americans from a number of scandals, including: Benghazi, Fast&Furious, IRS non-profit division crimes, NSA spying, the continuing failed war in Afghanistan, and a tanking domestic economy with more and more people living below the poverty line.
None of these reasons has anything to do with “punishing Assad for using chemical weapons.” In any case, that whole scenario has been thrown into extreme doubt.
Your government at work.
Jon Rappoport
And here's what we're being led by. Action that could theoretically have the possibility of escalating into nuclear war and this fuckstick is playing online poker! :mad: :mad: :mad:
McCain Playing Poker On His iPhone
September 3, 2013
As the hearing continues, our ace photographer Melina Mara reports she spotted Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) “passing the time by playing poker on his iPhone during the hearing.”
We eagerly await the photographic proof, but generally trust Melina’s sharp eye.
Update 5:55 p.m.: And here’s the proof:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...2w-300x200.jpg
Senator John McCain plays poker on his IPhone during a U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing where Secretary of State JohnKerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey testify concerning the use of force in Syria, on Capitol Hill in Washington DC, Tuesday, September 3, 2013. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Pope Francis condemns chemical weapons use, calls for peace in Syria
By Carol J. Williams
September 3, 2013, 1:32 p.m.
Pope Francis resolutely condemned the use of chemical weapons in a message to his nearly 3 million Twitter followers on Tuesday, but has made it clear in recent days that he opposes military retaliation against Syria for the government's alleged use of the banned armaments.
"With utmost firmness I condemn the use of chemical weapons," the pope said in his 138th tweet since his March election as leader of the Holy See.
In Sunday sermons, the pope also called on Catholics and followers of all faiths around the world to observe a day of fasting and prayer on Saturday for peace in Syria and the Middle East.
“Today, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to add my voice to the cry which rises up with increasing anguish from every part of the world, from every people, from the heart of each person, from the one great family which is humanity: It is the cry for peace!" the pontiff told thousands gathered for Angelus prayers in St. Peter's Square.
"War never again! Never again war!" Pope Francis declared in a tweet Monday.
His preachings from the pulpit and from the keyboard appeared aimed at dissuading the religious from backing appeals by President Obama and other Western leaders rallying political forces for punitive airstrikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Obama and allied leaders say they have indisputable proof that Assad's forces unleashed poison gas attacks in Damascus suburbs Aug. 21 that reportedly left more than 1,400 dead, including 426 children.
The White House has asked Congress to vote on its plan to attack Assad to dissuade him from further use of weapons of mass destruction. According to United Nations figures, at least 100,000 have died in the 2 1/2-year-old Syrian civil war, which shows no sign of ending soon.
“There are so many conflicts in this world which cause me great suffering and worry, but in these days my heart is deeply wounded in particular by what is happening in Syria and anguished by the dramatic developments which are looming," the pope said, an apparent reference to the threatened airstrikes.
“I appeal strongly for peace, an appeal which arises from deep within me. How much suffering, how much devastation, how much pain has the use of arms carried in its wake in that martyred country, especially among civilians and the unarmed!"
The pope said judgments about responsibility for the deaths of innocents shouldn't be made by laymen.
"There is the judgment of God, and also the judgment of history, upon our actions," he said, "from which there is no escaping.”
In a Tuesday analysis for the National Catholic Reporter, Jesuit priest Father Thomas Reese examined the opinions expressed by theological ethicists on whether there exists moral justification for an attack on Syria. He found the religious leaders to be deeply frustrated by the lack of viable options for preventing the use of weapons of mass destruction and the uncertain consequences that would follow airstrikes that neither destroy the chemical weapons stockpiles nor create conditions for negotiating an end to the war.
Like politicians debating the need and efficacy of military intervention, Reese concluded, "moralists are appalled by what is happening in Syria but are just as unhappy about the options available."
Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
Map showing Russian, American, British and French naval deployment in the Eastern Mediterranean
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTQ4oARIcAAPWZl.jpg:large
https://twitter.com/MahmoudRamsey/st...897536/photo/1
Russia Defense Ministry Warns About ‘Playing With Arms’ After Israel Launch
MOSCOW, September 3 (RIA Novosti) – Hours after Israel admitted to firing “ballistic targets” that resembled missiles in the Mediterranean, a launch that the country did not priorly announce, Russia’s Defense Ministry spoke out against “playing with arms and missiles” in such a “volatile” region.
“Is there any other region more volatile and packed with weapons today?” Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told journalists. “I don’t completely understand how someone could play with arms and missiles in that region today.”
Antonov called on those who launched the so-called missile-like targets to be more responsible for regional security and “not play with fire.”
“The Mediterranean is a powder keg,” he said. “A match is enough for fire to break out and possibly spread not only to neighboring states but to other world regions as well. I remind you that the Mediterranean is close to the borders of the Russian Federation.”
He recalled that a meteorological rocket launch by Norway in 1995 was mistaken as a possible rocket attack on Russia.
The two “ballistic targets,” detected by the Russian military on Tuesday, had been launched by the Israeli military as part of a joint US-Israeli test of the Middle Eastern nation’s missile-defense system, an official in Tel Aviv said.
Russia put its General Staff’s central command center on high alert after the launches, Antonov said.
The launch was detected at 10:16 a.m. Moscow time (6:16 a.m. GMT) by radar in the southern Russian city of Armavir, a Defense Ministry spokesman said. The objects’ trajectories ran from the central to the eastern Mediterranean, the spokesman said. A diplomatic source in the Syrian capital, Damascus, told RIA that the targets had fallen into the sea.
BREAKING NEWS: NEW RESOLUTION FOR SYRIA SETS A 60 DAY DEADLINE WITH ONE EXTENSION POSSIBLE, FOR OBAMA TO LAUNCH MILITARY STRIKE. @politico
I just had an interesting thought...
UN insoectors were on the ground to verify chemical agents were used, Supposedly sarin was used. Ostensibly this was determined by lab testing. Can we see if the sarin found in Syria is a chemical match for known samples UN inspectors took way back when from when Iraq had acknowledged chemical weapons stores? The odds of chemical munitions being identical or nearly identical have to be pretty low. That would definitely tell us what happened with those non-existent Iraqi WMDs.
They haven't actually voted yet. A resolution isn't binding. The Foreign Affairs committee (the ones meeting yesterday) already sound like they have a unanimous YES to launch a strike.
They are using the War Powers act, basically giving the President latitude to launch a police action against Syria for up to 90 days. The problem with this is, once you have a plane shot down you have to send in troops to get them out. Once you send in troops you end up fighting on the ground, then you need more equipment to support ground troops. Once you do that, it becomes DIFFICULT as HELL to get out in the allotted time.
McCain: Blocking Syria Strike Would Be ‘Catastrophic’
By Zeke J Miller @zekejmillerSept. 02, 2013
After a meeting with President Barack Obama in the West Wing along with Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator John McCain said Monday that the failure of Obama’s request for authorization to strike Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime in response to the use of chemical weapons “would be catastrophic” for the U.S.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House, McCain and Graham said they are not yet a lock to vote for the measure, saying they want to see Obama articulate a broader strategy for what happens when the cruise missiles stop falling to turn the tide of Syria’s civil war in favor of the opposition.
“Now that a resolution is going to be before the Congress of the United States, we want to work to make that resolution something that majorities of the members of both houses could support,” McCain said. “A rejection of that, a vote against the resolution by Congress, I think would be catastrophic, because it would undermine the credibility of the United States of America and of the President of the United States. None of us want that. What we do want is an articulation of a goal that over time to degrade Bashar Assad’s capabilities, increase and upgrade the capabilities of the Free Syrian Army and the Free Syrian government so they can reverse the momentum on the battlefield.”
(MORE: Unwilling to Act Alone, Obama Pulls Back From the Brink of War)
McCain said he encouraged Obama to think beyond simply punitive strikes against Assad, saying, “A weak response is almost as bad as doing nothing.” After the meeting, he declined to discuss the options Obama laid out, but said a larger response is now under consideration. “I don’t think it’s an accident that the aircraft carrier is moving over in the region,” he said.
McCain called it “shameful” that the Administration has not stepped up its military assistance to the opposition, criticizing Obama’s efforts over the past two years as “a policy of neglect,” but the lawmakers signaled that may change. “There seems to be emerging from this Administration a pretty solid plan to upgrade the opposition, to get the regional players more involved,” Graham said. “We still have significant concerns, but we believed there is in formulation a strategy to upgrade the capabilities of the Free Syrian Army and degrade the capabilities of Bashar Assad,” McCain added. “Before this meeting we had not had that indication.”
McCain and Graham said Americans and their fellow members of Congress need to understand that the conflict in Syria is not an isolated civil war but a “regional conflict.”
(MORE: Congressional Debate Over Syria Will Be Test of Divided GOP)
“I can’t sell another Iraq or Afghanistan, because I don’t want to,” Graham said, previewing his messaging to his constituents as well as to his colleagues. “I can sell to the people of South Carolina that if we don’t get Syria right, Iran is surely going to take the signals that we don’t care about their nuclear program, and it weighs on the President’s mind strongly about the signals we send. So if we lost a vote in the Congress dealing with the chemical weapons being used in Syria, what effect would that have on Iran in terms of their nuclear program? Most South Carolinians get that point.”
The meeting was the latest effort by the Obama Administration to build support in Congress for intervention in Syria. The lawmakers said the Administration still has its work cut out for it in the days ahead.
“I am already talking to a lot of my colleagues, but before I can persuade them to support this, I have to be persuaded,” McCain said.
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/09/02...#ixzz2dvYRzU5H
Man the Left is really pushing this bullshit attack. What are they THINKING? This is from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolit...es-no-on-syria
What If Congress Votes 'No' On Syria?
by
http://media.npr.org///assets/img/20...9e-s40-c85.jpg
President Obama attends a White House meeting on Syria Tuesday with congressional leaders.
Carolyn Kaster/AP
With Republican House leaders lining up behind President Obama's planned U.S. military strike on Syria, the chances for congressional authorization seemed higher on Tuesday than they did over the weekend.
Still, despite Speaker John Boehner's and Majority Leader Eric Cantor's full-throated support for Obama, approval of military action is far from certain. An attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime is unpopular, to say the least. A new indicates 48 percent of the American public opposes such strikes; only 29 percent approves.
A "no" vote in Congress could still happen, then, especially in the GOP-led House, whose members all face re-election next year and where those on the ideological right and left tend to be more distant from the political center than senators.
What would happen if Congress, or one half of it, voted against authorizing a punitive U.S. strike against Syria?
A view shared by the Obama administration and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., alike is that it would prove disastrous to U.S. standing and trust. After meeting with Obama Monday, McCain said outside the White House:
"If the Congress were to reject a resolution like this, after the president of the United States has already committed to action, the consequences would be catastrophic in that the credibility of this country with friends and adversaries alike would be shredded. And it would be not only implications for this presidency, but for future presidencies as well."McCain's point seems self-evident. Congressional rejection of military action against the Assad regime would diminish Obama and the U.S. on the world stage. There'd be less reason for the globe's bad guys to take U.S. warnings seriously.
A loss in Congress for Obama on the Syria authorization could also damage what's left of the president's power to achieve his second-term domestic agenda. Obama still must negotiate with Congress on fiscal matters like raising the debt ceiling and funding the government next year. An immigration overhaul remains a much desired goal, too.
Of course, there's always the possibility that the House could vote against a U.S. military strike and Obama could go forward with it anyway, especially if he gets a strong Senate vote in favor of punitive attacks. Some lawmakers, like , D-N.Y., and have argued that Obama would have the constitutional authority to order strikes without Congress' authorization. Obama has said so himself as well.
Such action, though, could heighten accusations from the Tea Party and other Obama critics that he was acting outside the Constitution and exacerbate tensions between Obama and many on Capitol Hill.
But if Obama abided by a "no" vote, a loss on Syria could very well cause the smell of well-cooked lame duck to emanate from Obama's presidency.
Based on presidential history, Obama will be hard-pressed to get substantive new legislation during his second term, anyway, Stephen J. Wayne, a Georgetown University political scientist, told me in an interview.
Second terms tend to be about consolidating first-term gains, not initiating major new legislation that gains passage, he said.
Wayne actually sees an upside for Obama and the nation if Congress were to vote down authorization. "Presidents can't admit they're wrong. They can't say that," Wayne said.
But "privately, he may have realized that he made a statement that he shouldn't have made last year about the red line and chemical weapons and the only effective way for him to back off that is to have the people through the Congress tell him that," Wayne said.
Obama says Syria crossed that red line on Aug. 21, when Assad's forces allegedly used sarin gas to kill more than 1,400 people, including hundreds of children, in the Damascus suburbs.
But if Congress votes no, Obama "can then say: 'Well, leadership is not about solely imposing your will. It's also about following the will of the people and this is a democratic electoral process and that's what I'm doing now,' " says Wayne.
"It does seem to me the public might be relieved if Congress said no," Wayne continued. "I think [seeking congressional approval] was an astute political move by a guy who placed himself in a no-win position."
So Obama "would be weakened by the [no] vote but the country might be saved by the experience," Wayne said, exaggerating for effect.
WASHINGTON--Members of the Senate Foreign Relations committee hammered out a deal on Tuesday evening that would set a 60-day deadline for military action in Syria, with one 30-day extension possible, according to a draft of the resolution.
The proposal, drafted by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., would also bar the involvement of U.S. ground forces in Syria, according to the draft. Menendez is the chairman of the foreign relations committee and Corker is the top Republican.
"Together we have pursued a course of action that gives the President the authority he needs to deploy force in response to the Assad regime's criminal use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people, while assuring that the authorization is narrow and focused, limited in time, and assures that the Armed Forces of the United States will not be deployed for combat operations in Syria," Menendez said in a statement.
Corker noted that the report also requires the Obama administration to produce a report detailing U.S. support for vetted, moderate opposition groups in Syria.
"I look forward to the input from my colleagues on the committee and in Congress who will have an opportunity to weigh in on what we've produced," Corker said. "This is one of the most serious matters that comes before the Congress, so as we proceed to a potentially defining vote next week, the president and his administration must continue to vigorously make their case to the American people."
The resolution could be voted on by the committee as early as Wednesday.
Meanwhile, in the House, Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Gerald Connolly, D-Va., introduced a draft resolution that would limit the duration of President Obama's authority to 60 days.
It also specifically prohibits any American forces on the ground in Syria and restricts the president from repeating the use of force beyond the initial punitive strikes unless Obama certifies to Congress that the Syrian forces have repeated their use of chemical weapons.
Obama has repeatedly said that any military strike against Assad would be limited in scope and duration, and would not include U.S. troops on the ground. The conflict in Syria has left more than 100,000 dead.
Earlier on Tuesday, Obama said he was open to lawmakers rewriting his resolution seeking authorization for the use of force, which was criticized as too broad in scope by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
"I would not be going to Congress if I wasn't serious about consultations," Obama said. "I'm confident that we're going to be able to come up with something that hits that mark."
Menendez and Corker introduced their resolution soon after the foreign relations committee met on Tuesday to grill Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, on the president's plan for a military strike against Syria.
Obama announced his intention on Saturday to order a strike against the Assad regime, but said that he would first seek congressional authorization.
Oh, REALLY????
Maybe we're backing off of a nuclear conflict?
Putin says Russia could support strike on Syria
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http://www.trbimg.com/img-5226e10f/t...5-20130903/600 Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during an interview. (Alexander Zemlianichenko / Associated Press / September 3, 2013)
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By Sergei L. Loiko September 4, 2013, 3:00 a.m.
MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said he has not ruled out backing a U.S.-led military operation in Syria if the Kremlin gets concrete proof than an alleged chemical attack on civilians was committed by Bashar Assad’s government.
“I don’t rule this out,” Putin said during a televised interview with First Channel, a Russian federal television network, and the Associated Press. “But I want to draw your attention to one absolutely principled issue: In accordance with the current international law, a sanction to use arms against a sovereign state can be given only by the U.N. Security Council.”
The Obama administration is engaged in a lobbying effort to persuade Congress to back a U.S. strike on Syria without U.N. approval. Late Tuesday, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed on language authorizing U.S. military action against Syria, while ruling out the commitment of U.S. ground forces and limiting the window for an attack to 90 days. A committee vote could come as early as Wednesday.
Putin's interview was recorded Tuesday at his country residence of Novo-Ogaryovo near Moscow, according to the official Kremlin website that posted it Wednesday morning.
The Russian president reiterated that the Kremlin was not impressed with the data presented by Washington on the alleged chemical attack of civilians in a Damascus suburb last month. He said video of murdered children was “horrible” but not proof of the Assad regime’s involvement.
“This footage doesn’t provide answers to the questions I myself put now,” he said. “There is an opinion that [the video] was compiled by the same rebels who, as we know and the U.S. administration recognizes, are connected with Al Qaeda and have always been notorious for their special cruelty.”
Putin maintained that it is unreasonable to think that the Assad regime would resort to chemical weapons as his army held the upper hand on the rebels in the more than two-year civil war, as some accounts have portrayed.
“We think that for the regular armed forces, which are on the attack today and in some places they have surrounded the so-called rebels and are finishing them off, in fact it is totally absurd to use prohibited chemical weapons knowing full well that it could be a pretext to take sanctions against them, including the use of force,” Putin said.
Putin called the use of weapons of mass destruction a crime and said that Russia “will take a principled position” once it gets “objective, precise data as to who committed these crimes.”
“If it is established that means of mass destruction are used by [Syrian] rebels, what will the United States do with the rebels?” Putin said. “What will the sponsors do with the rebels? Will they stop arms supplies? Will they launch combat activities against them?”
Putin said he will be convinced only by “a deep, detailed study of the issue and the real presence of evidence that could clearly prove who used what [weapons]."
“After that we will be ready to act in a most resolute and serious way,” he said. He did not say what actions he is considering.
In the meantime, Russia will continue to supply the Assad regime with arms, Putin said.
“We are doing it, and we proceed from the notion that we are cooperating with the legitimate government and are not violating any norms of international law and any of our commitments,” Putin said. “And we regret very much that the [U.S.] supplies to the rebels have been going on in full volume and from the first steps of this armed conflict.”
Putin threatened that Russia may soon go ahead and fulfill a contract to supply Assad with advanced S-300 antiaircraft systems, which, he said, are in some ways better than Patriot missiles.
“We have supplied some components for S-300s, but the supplies have not been completed as we suspended them,” Putin said. “But if we see that some steps are taken connected with violation of current international norms, we will think what we should do in the future including supplies of such powerful weapons to various regions of the world."
The Russian president also admitted that he was disappointed by Obama’s cancellation of his planned visit to Moscow this month.
“I would like the U.S. president to visit Moscow so we could have a chance to talk, to discuss the accumulated questions,” Putin said. “But I don’t see any special catastrophe in [the cancellation]. ... We understand that on some issues the Russian position causes the U.S. administration some irritation. I think in reality it would be good not to get irritated but gain some patience together and work on a search for resolutions.”
Putin said he still hopes for a meeting with Obama on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg. Putin said he recalled previous meetings with Obama as “very constructive,” and praised the U.S. president as “a very interesting interlocutor and a business-like person.”
“It is easy to talk with him, because it is clear what the man wants. His position is clear, and he hears out the position of ... his opponent and reacts to it,” Putin said.
He rejected allegations that he has personal problems with Obama and that his body language during previous summits indicated that he was sometimes bored.
“I sometimes read with amazement about the body language and that we are bored,” Putin said. “Who can say except ourselves what is there in our head or soul? There are some gestures that course could be interpreted unambiguously, but no one has ever seen such gestures either on my part toward Obama or on Obama’s part toward myself, and I hope that will never happen. All the rest are conjectures.”
Putin disagreed that a reset in U.S.-Russian relations has been replaced by a period of coldness.
“It is uneasy, tense joint work,” he said. “No, it is not covered by roses and flowers. It is complicated work and sometimes very hard, but there is nothing special about it. ... But I repeat once again that global mutual interests, I think, after all, are a good foundation for a search for joint solutions.”
He said the U.S. and Russia have common ground on a number of summit agenda items, including disarmament, global economic issues, North Korea, Iran and the fight against terrorism.
What’s at stake for Russia in Syria
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Published: Tuesday, 3 Sep 2013 | 9:58 AM ET
By: Yousef Gamal El-Din | Anchor, CNBC (EME
http://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc...g?v=1378217435 Google Maps
Tartus Port is the second largest port city in Syria.
The gridlock at the UN Security Council between the U.S.and Russia is dragging on, due to a gamut of competing interests in Syria.
(Read more: Syria strike would send 'global message': Menendez)
The Russia-Syria axis is rooted in a strong political and economic relationship that has been cultivated since the late 1950s. The bond has a deep cultural element: many Syrians go to Russia to study, while Russians go to Syria as holidaymakers, advisors or investors. Over the years, Russia has also played an essential role in restructuring the Syrian economy, and wrote off roughly 70 percent of Syria's $13.4 billion debt in 2005.
While reliable numbers are hard to come by, The Moscow Times estimated Russian investments in Syria at $19.4 billion in 2009, covering infrastructure, energy and tourism. But with outstanding projects ranging from a nuclear power plant to oil and gas exploration, the number today may be considerably higher.
(Read more: UK parliament votes against military action in Syria)
"The $20 billion figure is notional and should be treated with some caution," Richard Connolly, lecturer in political economy at the University of Birmingham, told CNBC.
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Can Russia remain relevant?
William Browder, CEO, Hermitage Capital Management, looks at Russia's relationship with Syria and the benefits of instability in the Middle East. National pride and relevance are the reasons behind the country's stance in Syria, he says. With Jason Trennert.
Either way, Russia's trade with Syria is fairly insubstantial. According to Daniel Treisman, professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, Russian exports to Syria amounted to$1.93 billion in 2011, or only 0.4 percent of Russia's total exports. That's less than its trade with Tunisia and Estonia.
Still, what stands out is that Russia-Syria trade is concentrated in the defense and energy industries. "The vast majority of Russian exports to Syria are armaments, which makes Syria relatively more important as an export destination for the Russian defense industry," Connolly said.
(Read more: U.S. Facing Test on Data to Back Action on Syria)
Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Instituteindicated that between 2005 and 2010, Syria accounted for just over 1 percent of Russia's arms exports. Between 2011-12, analysts told CNBC, that number increased to four percent.
Russia's interest in Syria is of course geo-strategic as well as economic. It predominately hinges on the Mediterranean port of Tartus,which is often used to save the Russian navy the long voyage across the Black Sea. In September 2008, work started on converting the facility to a full naval base.
"Of course Russia would like to preserve its naval base in Tartus, but it will have to adjust to the outcome of the civil war, whatever that is," Treisman said.
http://thumbnails.cnbc.com/VCPS/Y201...oSyria0903.jpgPlay Video
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Connelly said that although Tartus may not be significant militarily, it represents a last vestige of Russian influence in the region.
(Read more: UN weapons inspectors pull out of Syria early)
"It is... of symbolic importance. It marks Syria as one of the few countries in the region with which Russia continues to enjoy warm relations," he said.
The U.S. meanwhile has effectively withdrawn from Syria,leaving the bilateral relationship in shambles. In a research note late on Monday, the International Crisis Group suggested diplomatic efforts might prove more successful. It advised developing a "realistic compromise political offer" and reaching out to both Russia and Iran, "rather than investing in a prolonged conflicted that has a seemingly bottomless capacity to escalate."
For now, a Russian retreat from its anti-interventionist stance on Syria appears as unlikely as one by its U.S. counterpart, further clouding prospects for any political resolution.
(Watch: UN visits possible site of chemical attack in Syria)
"My view is that Russia can, and will, support Assad for as long as Assad can stake a claim to being the ruler of Syria, and as long as the diplomatic price remains relatively low," Connolley said.