The United States has announced for the first time that it will supply the anti-Assad factions in Syria directly with “incredible support”, including “heavy weapons” to counteract the Syrian Government’s tanks, military aviation, advanced Russian-made flak and alleged chemical weapons systems, after deciding that Assad is guilty of breaking international law by using chemical weapons.
Written by Chris White
Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes didn’t provide any details as to the exact types of and quantities of “support” which the United States would directly supply to the rebels, but confirmed that the nature of the aid would be “different in scope and scale to what we have provided before”.
The announcement comes only weeks after Syrian Government forces expelled the mainly non-Syrian rebel forces from Syria, scoring a major series of humiliating battlefield victories against the rebel faction which were already being indirectly supported by Israel and NATO powers, with finance and diplomatic aid.
In response to the news the BBC’s Beirut correspondent Jim Muir said: “It seems clear that President Obama has finally been persuaded, as Britain and France have argued, that the battlefield cannot be allowed to tilt strongly in the regime’s favour, as is currently happening.”
The Obama announcement came on the same that Rhodes had said at the United Nations: “The US intelligence community believes that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times over the last year. We have consistently said the use of chemical weapons violates international norms and crosses red lines that have existed in the international community for decades.” – Rhodes then went on to estimate that between 100 and 150 people had been killed by Assad’s alleged chemical weapons attacks.
Later The Wall Street Journal claimed that US officials were preparing to instigate a NATO ‘non-fly-zone’ inside Syria using US bases in Jordan.
The decision to directly and openly support the rebel factions in Syria comes on foot of a UN report released yesterday claiming that at least 93,000 people had been killed in the fighting since the conflict began in March 2011, with at least 30,000 people killed since last November.
However, subsequent investigation by reporters revealed that at least 80% of the UN’s figures accounted for men over the age of 18.
Leading the charge to engage Western powers in the wore-torn country are Britain and France, who last month successfully lifted the EU’s embargo on weapons sales to the rebel forces which was imposed after fears that some rebel factions amounted to terrorist organizations.
However, despite the Obama regime’s announcement that the move was justified by an alleged chemical weapons attack by President Assad’s military, many in the international community are sceptical of American claims that Syria’s Ba’athist regime has used chemical weapons.
Speaking to reporters Alexei Pushkov, head of the Foreign Policy Committee in the lower chamber of the Russian Parliament insisted that the chemical weapons attacks were clearly “fabricated”, making reference to WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) claims made by the Bush Administration in the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, which were later proven to be false.
Russia has been especially sceptical of NATO actions in The Mediterranean ever since the Western backed overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi in the summer of 2011.
- In 2011 Russia agreed to a UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions and a non-fly-zone in Libya, but had never agreed to toppling the regime or to killing Gaddafi.
In a famous speech given after the Libyan regime’s overthrow President Putin famously said at a public conference: “Who gave NATO the right to kill Gaddafi?”
With many of the same mercenaries who fought for the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya now fighting in Syria, with similar NATO backing, Russia is naturally very cautious of US-led ambitions in the region and wishes to see Assad’s regime in Syria remain stable:
It is said that in 2011 Western chiefs decided to instigate an “Arab Spring” of their own in Libya with the use of covert financing, diplomatic action and millions of Facebook and YouTube accounts in an attempt to change the region’s psychology in a massive cognitive dissonance campaign, after becoming scared of the popular uprising in Egypt against the Western backed client dictator President Musharraf.
It is said that Libya was then chosen as the scene to launch the diversion, because of Gaddafi’s attempts to break away from Western corporate and economic control by attempting to launch an independent, gold-based currency and by making deals with countries exiting outside of major Judeo-American hegemony, such as China, Iran and Russia.
It is said that having seized Libya the Western powers then turned their eyes to Syria, believing that the momentum of their own artificially created “Arab Spring” would offset and bury the one happening in Egypt and would create a cascade-effect, bringing multiple Arab countries into Western alignment one-after-the-other but that much to the dismay of Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv, the Assad Government in Syria then weathered much of the onslaught and continued to enjoy significant popular support in Syria and elsewhere.
With the Assad Government denying that it has used its admitted chemical weapons capability, many are now speculating that the chemical injuries seen on Western television purporting to be from Syria, were in fact incurred in a chemical weapons attack covertly instigated by non-Assad forces for legal and propaganda purposes.
Meanwhile in Washington the Obama regime’s recent announcement has been greeted with belated enthusiasm from all sides of the US Congress, with prominent Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham issuing a joint statement which said:
“A decision to provide lethal assistance, especially ammunition and heavy weapons, to opposition forces in Syria is long overdue, and we hope the president will take this urgently needed step. – But providing arms alone is not sufficient. The president must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad’s ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air.”
The Speaker of The House John Boehner also welcomed the news stating: “It is long past time to bring the Assad regime’s bloodshed in Syria to an end.
As President Obama examines his options, it is our hope he will properly consult with Congress before taking any action. I am pleased that President Obama’s Administration has joined the growing international chorus declaring that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons in Syria, crossing the red line drawn by the president last August.
As I called for in a USA Today op-ed earlier this week,” Rogers said, “the United States should assist the Turks and our Arab League partners to create safe zones in Syria from which the U.S. and our allies can train, arm, and equip vetted opposition forces.”
Obama’s announcement is not least of all welcomed by Britain and France, whose economies and massive national welfare spending largely depend upon US military muscle to secure regions such as North Africa and The Middle East against competition from developing economies such as China, India and Brazil.
According to the BBC’s chief political editor Nick Robison, “UK and French leaders have long argued that President Bashar al-Assad must be made to realise that he cannot secure a military victory against his opponents and must be forced to the negotiating table”.
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