Finally some good news. John Kerry threw everyone a life preserver ring in an offhand comment yesterday — suggesting an attack could be averted in the unlikely event that Syria agreed to hand over and report all its chemical weapons to international control — and the Russians, the Syrian regime, the UK, and the United Nations Secretary-General immediately backed the idea.
Category Archives: Commentary
U.S. won’t provide “smoking gun” Syria evidence
Given the insistence that Syria 2013 case ≠ Iraq 2002 case, it’s probably a good idea to make damn sure we know exactly what happened. But the AP has carefully documented the complete lack of “smoking gun” evidence tying it to the regime, though the Pentagon/White House previously declassified lots of satellite images from Syria for other purposes.
We do have reasonable certainty that chemical weapons were used and that they were most likely used by someone aligned with the regime. But we still have seen no evidence that this was ordered by the regime we’re about to “punish” and that it was not some renegade, unauthorized action by a pro-regime unit or commander with access to the chemical weapons. It’s a complicated, opaque conflict with tons of different factions. There’s a lot of reasonable doubt going around.
Here are some key pulls from the AP review:
Excerpt 1:
The U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence produced by U.S. intelligence – no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications – connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people.
Excerpt 2:
“Some experts think the size of the strike, and the amount of toxic chemicals that appear to have been delivered, make it doubtful that the rebels could have carried it out. What’s missing from the public record is direct proof, rather than circumstantial evidence, tying this to the regime.”
Excerpt 3:
“We can’t get our heads around this – why would any commander agree to rocketing a suburb of Damascus with chemical weapons for only a very short-term tactical gain for what is a long-term disaster,” said Charles Heyman, a former British military officer who edits The Armed Forces of the U.K., an authoritative bi-annual review of British forces.
Excerpt 4:
Multiple U.S. officials have told AP that the intelligence tying Assad himself to the Aug. 21 attack was “not a slam dunk” – a reference to then-CIA Director George Tenet’s insistence in 2002 that U.S. intelligence showed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction – intelligence that turned out to be wrong. They cite the lack of a direct link between Assad and the chemical assault – a question the administration discounts by arguing Assad’s responsibility as Syria’s commander in chief. A second issue is that U.S. intelligence has lost track of some chemical weaponry, leaving a slim possibility that rebels acquired some of the deadly substances.
Court: Dutch troops liable in Srebenica massacre
18 years later, Dutch UN Peacekeepers who served at Srebenica have been found liable by the Dutch Supreme Court for having ordered refugee men and boys out of the sanctuary of their base and into the waiting ranks of the Serb paramilitaries outside who then massacred them. Although their non-Dutch UN commanders gave the orders, the Court found they should not have followed the orders and that the Dutch government and commanders back home could have and should have intervened. The liability finding means the Netherlands will have to pay reparations to victim families in Bosnia. Meanwhile, in a just irony, the paramilitary commander who led the massacres is on trial now in the Hague (also in the Netherlands).
More on Pat Robertson’s blood diamonds
New revelations in the dormant Pat-Roberton-used-to-mine-conflict-diamonds-with-Charles-Taylor scandal. It was already known that he had used religious funds for an illegal blood diamond mining operation in Liberia (after President Taylor was indicted by the UN for war crimes!), but there was less evidence regarding longstanding allegations about his operations in the DR Congo. Now humanitarian mission air pilots from the Rwanda mission are coming forward to confirm that he was diverting planes from Rwandan Genocide aid efforts to carry mining equipment into the Congo. To give credit where it’s due, as I noted in my 2010 piece linked above, local Virginia reporters had figured a lot of this out as early as 1999 but there wasn’t as much evidence to confirm they were on the right track and also no one pays attention to local news unfortunately. The new information from the pilots and others also tells us used a failed farm in the Congo as a cover for the donations he was raising and diverting into mining.
The State of Virginia continues to refuse to investigate because he has consistently made huge donations to GOP candidates for attorney general.
UK gov’t ok’d nerve gas ingredient export to Syria
Nearly a year into the brutal Syrian Civil War, the British coalition government somehow decided to issue a license for a UK firm to export to Syria the chemical components used in sarin gas manufacturing. To a regime known to hold chemical weapons. In the middle of a civil war. The exports were only blocked by external, EU trade sanctions added 6 months later.
No.10 Downing Street (the office of the prime minister) says this was “the system working.”
What? You don’t authorize companies to send dual-use weaponizable chemicals to a dictator during a war. That’s just common sense.
Syria vote a game-changer for UK?
The British media is very worked up (Slate) over the failed vote for Syria military action in the British parliament, because it could alter the domestic balance of power permanently.
When your country doesn’t have a formal constitution and governance operates entirely on precedents and norms, any big reversals for the government are game-changing for the country. Unlike the US security state, the trend in Britain is often to take power away. For example, it will now be a matter of expectation that all future military action be authorized by parliament (except perhaps in emergency self-defense).
Surprise: UK parliament revolts on Syria
Huge news from Britain as a massive parliamentary revolt blocks British intervention in Syria. David Cameron’s plans in shambles as his own party (even in the House of Lords) goes rogue and joins Labour rebels in unexpectedly voting down military action completely. Cameron already promised not to use force without Commons authorization, which he then failed to get.
