John McCain´s message at the Munich security conference

US Senator John McCain´s message at the Munich security conference is clear: You cannot trust Vladimir Putin in Syria, nor anywhere else. Watch the speech here.

Two excellent articles about Putin´s Russia

Two must read articles focusing on the reality in Putin´s Russia. Here are two excerpts:

In general, an autocratic regime’s foremost concern is its own survival, and, when economic circumstances threaten its existence or even its legitimacy, the regime must pursue policies that either cure the problem or distract from it.
Rather than embrace the cure of structural economic reform and market liberalization, Putin has consistently opposed such measures, a decision rooted in his preference to keep himself and other Russian kleptocrats wealthy and in power at the expense of the Russian people. Opting for the second option taught in Autocratic Regimes 101, Putin has chosen to disguise widespread economic malaise at home by engaging in adventurism abroad, all in the name of demagogic nationalism and the “rescue” of “repressed” Russian minorities in neighboring ex-satellite states. Irrespective of the actual outcomes of such a foreign policy—which, as I would argue, is really a domestic policy—Putin’s state media will continue to craft an image of Russian triumph and adversarial acquiescence.

Read the entire article here

The leaders of the United States and the European Union are making a grievous error in thinking that President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a potential ally in the fight against the Islamic State. The evidence contradicts them. Putin’s current aim is to foster the EU’s disintegration, and the best way to do so is to flood the EU with Syrian refugees.

Russian planes have been bombing the civilian population in southern Syria forcing them to flee to Jordan and Lebanon. There are now 20,000 Syrian refugees camped out in the desert awaiting admission to Jordan. A smaller number are waiting to enter Lebanon. Both groups are growing.

Russia has also launched a large-scale air attack against civilians in northern Syria. This was followed by a ground assault by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s army against Aleppo, a city that used to have 2 million inhabitants. The barrel bombs caused 70,000 civilians to flee to Turkey; the ground offensive could uproot many more.

Read the entire article here

Hillary Clinton is right when she distances herself from Obama´s foreign policy

Hillary Clinton is of course right:

Distancing herself from President Barack Obama's foreign policy, potential 2016 U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in an interview published on Sunday that the U.S. decision not to intervene early in the Syrian civil war was a "failure."

Republican critics and others have faulted Obama for doing too little to support Syrians who rose up against President Bashar al-Assad. Syria has been torn apart by a civil war for three years, with Assad staying in power and Islamic militants among the opposition gaining strength.

"The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad - there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle - the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled," Clinton said in an interview with The Atlantic.

Putin has finally found an ally

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin must be delighted. He has finally found a formidable ally:

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seconds Russia’s position in the Ukraine crisis, reported Syria’s state news agency SANA on Thursday.
In a message addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad expressed his solidarity, on behalf of the Syrian people, with Putin’s efforts to “restore security and stability in the friendly country of Ukraine”.
Assad stressed that Putin’s reaction to the crisis in Ukraine is legitimate and adheres to the UN’s objectives that aim “to create a balanced and transparent world based on respecting the sovereignty of countries and the right of peoples to decide their destiny,” reported SANA.

Garry Kasparov: Putin is winning because of Obama's lack of leadership and weakness

Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion turned political activist, has written a must read article in The Spectator on why Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is winning the poker game of international politics:

 Although — as I will explain — his winning streak may not last, at least for the time being he has outplayed all his opponents, largely because President Obama and other western leaders have left the game wide open for him. Putin is now so confident that he is busy drawing up plans for a new ‘post-Assad’ Syria. He is sure he can retain his influence, whoever is in charge.
The West’s inadequate and vacillating response to the Syria crisis has made some people draw parallels with Munich in 1938 — and for once the comparison actually rings true. Even while Cameron and Hollande have been desperately trying not to look like Chamberlain and Daladier, they looked exactly like them. Meanwhile President Obama showed he could not keep his own promises. The consequences of his failure to enforce his own ‘red line’ on the use of chemical weapons will come back to haunt him long after this current impasse is over.

But it wasn’t just that Putin played his hand well. Both Obama and Cameron played a genuinely inept game. The Conservative party was disorganised and Obama’s argument about legal technicalities proved unconvincing. If you want people to authorise and approve of military action, you have to sound both convincing and capable. Persuading the American public to intervene in Europe in the 1940s was a tough sell for FDR. But he succeeded in selling it, winning the election and winning the vote in the House. That was leadership.
But the disaster of President Obama’s presidency is not just his lack of leadership but the fact that he shows such weakness. It is not only Putin who is watching and taking note of this. There are other players in this new Great Game waiting in the wings — the Iranians in particular, who will arrange their nuclear progress in accordance with the weakness they see.

The sad truth:"Russia, not America, is now the dominant power at the Security Council for the first time in the history of the UN"

The sad truth - Dictator Vladimir Putin's mafia state is now the dominant power in the UN Security Council:

The real story from this week's UN General Assembly is that Russia, not America, is now  the dominant power at the Security Council for the first time in the history of the UN.
This dramatic shift in the power balance at the UN seems to have been completely overlooked by many of those covering the meeting, who are more interested in wittering on about the proposed Security Council resolution on disarming Syria's chemical weapons stockpile (it won't work) or Iran's utterly transparent charm offensive (they are desperate to get the sanctions lifted) towards some of the world's more gullible world leaders.
But the key to this disturbing realignment in the global power structure is clearly visible in the draft of the Security Council resolution on Syria, which entirely reflects Russia's interests at the expense of those of the Western powers. America, Britain and France, the three Western members of the five permanent members of the Council, wanted the option to take punitive action against the Assad regime if, as most observers expect, Damascus does not fully comply with the U.N.'s requirements. (Nor has anyone considered how U.N. inspectors can be expected to examine and neutralise stockpiles of chemical weapons in the midst of a civil war.)
But Russia is determined to prevent any form of military intervention in Syria, and to that end insisted that the resolution be watered down to the effect that, if Assad fails to comply, then the issue will be referred back to the U.N. where, as we know from history, it will be subsumed by the organisation's bureaucratic complacency.
In short, Russia has won the diplomatic battle, and the Western powers, after all their threats to bomb Assad into submission, have been made to look weak and impotent.

Read the entire article here

This is what you get when you have a weak and incompetent "leader" of the Free World.

The Economist on a weakened US (and West)

I do not very often find myself agreeing with what the people at the Economist write, but when it comes to Barack Obama's Syria "policy", I think they are right:

Now every tyrant knows that a red line set by the leader of the free world is really just a threat to ask legislators how they feel about enforcing it. Dictators will be freer to maim and murder their own people, proliferators like North Korea less scared to proceed with spreading WMD, China and Russia ever more content to test their muscles in the vacuum left by the West.
The West is not on an inexorable slide towards irrelevance. Far from it. America’s economy is recovering, and its gas boom has undermined energy-fuelled autocracies. Dictatorships are getting harder to manage: from Beijing to Riyadh, people have been talking about freedom and the rule of law. It should be a good time to uphold Western values. But when the emerging world’s aspiring democrats seek to topple tyrants, they will remember what happened in Syria. And they won’t put their faith in the West.

Read the entire editorial here

Assad's message to the "Leader" of the Free World: "A victory for Syria"

War criminal Assad's message to the "Leader" of the Free World:

Syria's government hailed as a "victory" a Russian-brokered deal that has averted U.S. strikes, while President Barack Obama defended a chemical weapons pact that the rebels fear has bolstered their enemy in the civil war.President Bashar al-Assad's jets and artillery hit rebel suburbs of the capital again on Sunday in an offensive that residents said began last week when Obama delayed air strikes in the face of opposition from Moscow and his own electorate.
Speaking of the U.S.-Russian deal, Syrian minister Ali Haidar told Moscow's RIA news agency: "These agreements ... are a victory for Syria, achieved thanks to our Russian friends.

Is anybody surprised?

US senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham: Syria deal is "meaningless"

Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have - rightly - criticized the deal struck by the US and Russia regarding the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. The deal is "meaningless" according to the senators:

"It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and [Russian president] Vladimir Putin."

"What concerns us most is that our friends and enemies will take the same lessons from this agreement – they see it as an act of provocative weakness on America's part. We cannot imagine a worse signal to send to Iran as it continues its push for a nuclear weapon."

 "Assad will use the months and months afforded to him to delay and deceive the world using every trick in Saddam Hussein's playbook."

"The only way this underlying conflict can be brought to a decent end is by significantly increasing our support to moderate opposition forces in Syria. We must strengthen their ability to degrade Assad's military advantage, change the momentum on the battlefield, and thereby create real conditions for a negotiated end to the conflict."

PS

Syndicated columnist Mark Steyn describes the deal even more realistically:

In the Obama era, to modify Teddy Roosevelt, America chatters unceasingly and carries an unbelievably small stick. In this, the wily Putin saw an opening, and offered a “plan” so absurd that even Obama's court eunuchs in the media had difficulty swallowing it. A month ago, Assad was a reviled war criminal and Putin his arms dealer. Now, Putin is the honest broker and Obama's partner for peace, and the war criminal is at the negotiating table with his chances of survival better than they've looked in a year. On the same day the U.S. announced it would supply the Syrian rebels with light arms and advanced medical kits, Russia announced it would give Assad's buddies in Iran the S-300 ground-to-air weapons system and another nuclear reactor.

Charles Krauthammer on Obama's "epic incompetence"

Charles Krauthammer says it all:

Yet consider what’s happened over the last month. Assad uses poison gas on civilians and is branded, by the United States above all, a war criminal. Putin, covering for the war criminal, is exposed, isolated, courting pariah status.
And now? Assad, far from receiving punishment of any kind, goes from monster to peace partner. Putin bestrides the world stage, playing dealmaker. He’s welcomed by America as a constructive partner. Now a world statesman, he takes to the New York Times to blame American interventionist arrogance — a.k.a. “American exceptionalism” — for inducing small states to acquire WMDs in the first place.
And Obama gets to slink away from a Syrian debacle of his own making. Such are the fruits of a diplomacy of epic incompetence.

The Russian proposal to destroy Assad's chemical weapons is not serious

The Russian proposal to destroy Assad's chemical weapons is nothing but a ploy to play for time. US experts explain why:

Experts in chemical weapons disposal point to a host of challenges. Taking control of Assad's enormous stores of the munitions would be difficult to do in the midst of a brutal civil war. Dozens of new facilities for destroying the weapons would have to be built from scratch or brought into the country from the U.S., and completing the job would potentially take a decade or more. The work itself would need to be done by specially-trained military personnel or contractors. Guess which country has most of those troops and civilian experts? If you said the U.S., you'd be right.
"This isn't simply burning the leaves in your backyard," said Mike Kuhlman, the chief scientist for national security at Battelle, a company that has been involved in chemical weapons disposal work at several sites in the U.S. "It's not something you do overnight, it's not easy, and it's not cheap." --

Finding and securing all of Assad's sites would be the first major challenge of implementing the Russian plan, but it would be far from the only one. The U.S. and allied personnel would then have to separate the chemical substances themselves from the warheads of his rockets, artillery shells or missiles that had been designed to carry them to their targets. The work itself would be carried out by either robots, contractors or specially-trained troops, but it would still be time-consuming and dangerous.
The next step would be to physically destroy all of chemical weapons, which can be done through one of two basic options.  The first involves spraying the chemicals themselves into specialized furnaces and then burning them at around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for one or two seconds. Nerve agents like sarin can also be rendered largely harmless by the addition of liquid sodium hydroxide, while mustard gas can be made safe with alkaline water.
Kuhlman and other experts say that either type of destruction would have to be done at individual Syrian weapons sites because it wouldn't be safe to move the munitions to a centralized collection point inside Syria while the fighting was raging.  That would mean either building a new permanent disposal facility at each Syrian compound or bringing in newly-fielded mobile disposal units from the U.S.  The mobile systems have not been tested in an active warzone and may not have the capacity to deal with Assad’s huge quantities of weapons.  
"Do you really want to have truckloads of chemical weapons driving around Syria during the current situation?" Kuhlman asked.
A senior Defense Department chemical weapons specialist raised a different concern.  The official said the biggest security challenge would be keeping the weapons safe while they were in storage waiting to be destroyed, not while they were being moved.
“Does an insurgent group attack a heavily armed convoy of chemical weapons moving from one or more sites to a disposal facility, with lots of response plans and forces on call, or does it wait until the weapons are moved and the nasty military units go away and the disposal operations start,” the official said. “The easier target is the disposal facility.”
The official said a safer option might involve moving the weapons out of Syria entirely and doing the disposal work in a safer and more secure country. 
Cheryl Rofer, who supervised a team responsible for destroying chemical warfare agents at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said none of the work could be carried out until there was a full cease-fire between Assad and the rebels fighting to unseat him. There are no indications, she noted, that either side was prepared to come to the negotiating table or wind down a civil war that has already been raging for more than two years.
"This is simply dangerous to do while people are shooting at each other," she said.

Top Syrian rebel commander: "President Putin is a terrorist"

At least one person, top Syrian rebel commander, General Salim Idris, is telling the truth about "peace maker" Vladimir Putin, whom weak and incompetent US President Barack Obama seems to be trusting:

The top rebel commander in Syria, General Salim Idris, in an exclusive interview with TIME on Tuesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “terrorist” and accused Syrian dictator Bashar Assad of an effort to “win some time … to deceive our American friends and the international community.”

Speaking via Skype, the Free Syrian Army leader warned that widespread violence in Syria would make it impossible for U.N. weapons inspectors to certify that Assad had given up all of his weapons, the goal of a Russian-backed proposal now under consideration in Washington and at the U.N. Idris said his forces would grant U.N. inspectors access to rebel-controlled areas if necessary, though he said he hoped such inspections wouldn’t occur as he considered them a Russian-backed diversion from strikes against the Assad regime.

Speaking via Skype, the Free Syrian Army leader warned that widespread violence in Syria would make it impossible for U.N. weapons inspectors to certify that Assad had given up all of his weapons, the goal of a Russian-backed proposal now under consideration in Washington and at the U.N. Idris said his forces would grant U.N. inspectors access to rebel-controlled areas if necessary, though he said he hoped such inspections wouldn’t occur as he considered them a Russian-backed diversion from strikes against the Assad regime.

Although Idris is battling Assad’s forces on the ground, his fury was mainly directed toward Assad’s patrons in Moscow. The Russians “are trying now to find a solution for the regime,” he said, warning that “it is very important … not to be deceived [by] the Russians. They are liars. President Putin is a terrorist. He is a liar. He is lying. He is killing the Syrian people with Russian[-supplied] air jets and Russian tanks. They are killing our people since two and a half years. We can’t trust them, and we can’t trust in Bashar and believe in President Putin. The two are criminals and liars. Excuse me, please, but this is the reality.”

Idris said Syrian rebels still live under constant threat of not just chemical weapons, but also SCUD missile and other heavy artillery. He renewed his longtime pleas, rejected by Washington, for antiaircraft weapons and a no-fly zone over Syria. And he reiterated his insistence that his forces do

Norman Podhorez on Obama: ¨his behavior fits his strategy to weaken America abroad"

The astute foreign policy observer Norman Podhoretz sums up Barack Obama's "Successful Foreign Failure":

The president may look incompetent on Syria. But his behavior fits his strategy to weaken America abroad. --

The consequent erosion of American power was going very nicely when the unfortunately named Arab Spring presented the president with several juicy opportunities to speed up the process. First in Egypt, his incoherent moves resulted in a complete loss of American influence, and now, thanks to his handling of the Syrian crisis, he is bringing about a greater diminution of American power than he probably envisaged even in his wildest radical dreams.

For this fulfillment of his dearest political wishes, Mr. Obama is evidently willing to pay the price of a sullied reputation. In that sense, he is by his own lights sacrificing himself for what he imagines is the good of the nation of which he is the president, and also to the benefit of the world, of which he loves proclaiming himself a citizen.

The problem for Mr. Obama is that at least since the end of World War II, Americans have taken pride in being No. 1. Unless the American people have been as fundamentally transformed as their country is quickly becoming, America's decline will not sit well. With more than three years in office to go, will Mr. Obama be willing and able to endure the continuing erosion of his popularity that will almost certainly come with the erosion of the country's power and influence?

No doubt he will either deny that anything has gone wrong, or failing that, he will resort to his favorite tactic of blaming others—Congress or the Republicans or Rush Limbaugh. But what is also almost certain is that he will refuse to change course and do the things that will be necessary to restore U.S. power and influence.

And so we can only pray that the hole he will go on digging will not be too deep for his successor to pull us out, as Ronald Reagan managed to do when he followed a president into the White House whom Mr. Obama so uncannily resembles.

Putin and Assad playing games with weakest US president since Carter

Dictators Putin and Assad are playing games with the weakest US president since Carter:

If Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gives up his chemical weapons, a military strike would "absolutely" be on pause, President Obama said today.

"I consider this a modestly positive development," Obama told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in an interview at the White House when asked whether Syria's apparent willingness to relinquish control of its chemical weapons would prevent a U.S. strike.

"Let's see if we can come up with language that avoids a strike but accomplishes our key goals to make sure that these chemical weapons are not used," the president said.

Obama's comments come after the Russian foreign minister suggested today that Syria could avoid a U.S. attack by turning over its chemical weapons stockpiles over to international control and destroying them, a proposal the Syrian government "welcomed."

Obama said that Secretary of State John Kerry would pursue the proposal with Russia, an ally of Syria.

 

It is so sad to see the leader of the Free World in free fall. Barack Obama has lost whatever credibility he might have had.

A sad day in the British Parliament

War criminal Assad (and his supporter and sponsor, the corrupt dictator Putin) must be rejoicing:

Dozens of Conservative MPs refused to support the Prime Minister and sided with Labour in opposing a Government motion which supported the principle of military intervention. The motion backing the use of force "if necessary" was rejected by 285 votes to 272, a majority of 13 votes.

There were not enough sensible MPs like Sir Malcolm Rifkind:

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the head of the Intelligence and Security committee, said: “At this very moment, the Assad regime in Damascus are watching very carefully as to whether they will get away with what they have done.”
“If they get away with what they have done, if there is no significant international response of any kind, then we can be absolutely certain that the forces within Damascus will be successful in saying we must continue to use these whenever there is a military rationale for doing so.

“There is no guarantee that a military strike against military targets will work, but there is every certainty that if we don’t make that effort to punish and deter, then these actions will indeed continue.”

Read the entire article here

Assad (and his friend Putin) must be smiling: Obama's bomb strikes "will be brief and limited"

Dictator and war criminal Assad (and his Russian colleague Putin) must be smiling: Obama's bomb strikes will be brief and strictly limited:

An American military attack on Syria could begin as early as Thursday and will involve three days of missile strikes, according to "senior U.S. officials" talking to NBC News. The Washington Post has the bombing at "no more than two days," though long-range bombers could "possibly" join the missiles. "Factors weighing into the timing of any action include a desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week," reports CNN, citing a "senior administration official."

Assad is most likely already celebrating, but Obama has to wait for the champagne until he meets his "reset" partner Putin in St. Petersburg next week.

Germany's Bundeswehr will not take part in any action against the forces of criminal dictator Assad

Only yesterday it appeared that the US "ally" Germany was supporting a military strike against Syrian dictator Assad's forces:

Westerwelle emphasized that if the use of chemical weapons "was confirmed, then the world community would have to act. Then Germany would be among those who would support consequences."

However, this morning Die Welt reports that Germany refuses to participate in any military action in Syria. The foreign policy spokesperson for the ruling CDU party, Philipp Mißfelder, has explained that the Bundeswehr is already overstretched, which is why it cannot take part in any action.

The rich Germans never seem to run out reasons for non-action. Hopefully they will at least support US strikes, and not again side with Putin's Russia ...

Ban Ki-moon on the chemical attack in Syria

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been making the case for dictator Assad to allow UN experts to visit the site of the chemical attack in Syria:

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pressed for a UN team to gain access to the site of an alleged chemical attack in Syria, saying he sees “no good reason” for either side in the civil war to deny a chance to get to the truth of what happened.
Ban said today he has asked Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s government for its “full cooperation” so that the UN team of chemical experts already in Damascus can “swiftly investigate” the Aug. 21 attack that opposition groups say killed as many as 1,300 people.
“Any use of chemical weapons, anywhere, by anybody, under any circumstances, would violate international law,” Ban said in a speech in Seoul. “Such a crime against humanity should result in serious consequences.”

Ban Ki-moon must be a rather naïve man. Of course Assad has a very good reason to prevent the UN chemical experts from visiting the site - he does not want them to see the truth.

Heavy snowfalls making life unbearable in Syrian refugee camps

Heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures are making life unbearable for tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the violence in the country:

Brutal winter weather is making dire conditions even more unbearable in parts of the Middle East, particularly for Syrian refugees who must endure frigid temperatures in tents.

The coldest air of the season is moving in behind a heavy snowstorm that has blanketed refugee camps in Turkey and Lebanon.
And inside Syria, residents in cities pummeled by warfare are taking drastic measures to stay warm -- and alive -- through the winter.
In a video posted online, three men and two children are burning pages of school books to stay warm in the besieged city of Rastan,
"We cant use the heaters inside our residences. No fuel, no wood, no electricity," one of the men says.
Jordan:

Torrential rain and increasing snowfall are paralyzing much of the country, and most government and public offices in Jordan will be closed Wednesday, the state-run Petra new agency said.
In the next three days, temperatures in Amman will drop below freezing, Petra said, citing the Jordan Meteorological Department.
Lebanon:

More than 40 displaced Syrians in Bar Elias were trapped inside their tents Tuesday by rising floodwater from the Ghazeel River, Lebanon's National News Agency reported.
Authorities rescued those trapped and provided them with adequate housing, the NNA said.
Elsewhere in the country, the army evacuated residents trapped by torrential snowfall, according to the NNA.

Read the entire article here

The end of the criminal Assad regime is close

The end of the criminal Assad regime in Syria  is close:


"A few weeks ago, we were counting the life span of this regime in months. Now after the last week and today, I think you'd have to say weeks. This is a very fast moving conflict."
Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut

Assad´s main international supporter, Russia´s de facto dictator Vladimir Putin, will no doubt share the same fate in the not too distant future.