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Obama, Putin in battle over purported Syria chemical weapons evidence at G-20 summit in Russia
5 September, 2013 – CBS – AP

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia The Group of 20 summit kicking off Thursday on the Russian shores of the Baltic sea will bring the two men at the forefront of the geopolitical standoff over Syria’s civil war into the same room for meetings: President Obama and his Russian counterpart, President Vladimir Putin.

Alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria

As they arrive in St. Petersburg for two days of meetings, Mr. Obama and French President Francois Hollande are preparing for possible military strikes over what they insist was a chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s army in the suburbs of Damascus on Aug. 21.

Both presidents are effectively waiting, however, for the U.S. Congress to weigh in first, so bombs are unlikely to fall on Syrian government targets during the gathering in Russia. President Obama’s objective of backing from Congress came one step closer to reality on Wednesday with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee narrowly approving the use of U.S. military force in Syria.

In the meantime, Presidents Obama and Hollande are likely to continue lobbying other world leaders at the summit to accept their alleged evidence that Assad’s regime was behind the deadly attack on the eastern Ghouta suburbs, which the White House says killed more than 1,400 people.

G-20 host President Putin, however, is a staunch ally of President Assad’s regime, and he’ll be wielding his own evidence to convince the other heads of state in St. Petersburg that the U.S. and French governments are rushing into military action without solid proof of who was behind the chemical attack.

Putin issues warning to U.S. on going it alone in Syria

On his own turf and looking strong in the face of Western hesitancy to tangle militarily with Assad and his Russian backers, Putin said this week that any one-sided action would be rash. But he said he doesn’t exclude supporting U.N. action — if it’s proven that the Syrian government used poison gas on its own people.

President Obama said Wednesday during a one-day stopover in Sweden that armed groups fighting against Assad in Syria simply do “not have the capability” to have carried out the Ghouta attack.

“These weapons are in Assad’s possession, we have intercepts of people in the regime before and after the attack acknowledging it, we can show rockets going from Assad controlled areas into rebel territory with the weapons,” asserted Mr. Obama.

But if the White House has already shown that evidence to its partners in the United Nations Security Council — including, most crucially, the veto-wielding members Russia and China — it has failed to convince the vast majority of them of its veracity.

Heading into St. Petersburg, the only nation to say it will join in a military intervention not sanctioned by the Security Council is France.

Arguing over previous “evidence”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, has reportedly handed its own 100-page report to the United Nations on a previous alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria. Russia said in July that tests conducted by Russian scientists on samples from the northern town of Khan al-Assal following an alleged March 19 chemical attack showed that rebel fighters were most likely to blame.

According to information posted this week to the Foreign Ministry’s website, tests carried out by the Russian scientists on samples from Khan al-Assal showed the missile used to deliver the chemical agent was “not a regular munition of the Syrian army,” but rather a “artisan-type” device which they concluded was likely built by the rebels. The report also says the explosives used in the projectile, and the chemical agents themselves, were not typical of the materials used by militaries in such weapons.

According to the Foreign ministry website, the nerve agents found in soil samples at Khan al-Assal, which it said named as sarin and diisopropyl fluorophosphate, did not appear to have been concocted in “an industrial environment.”

The March 19 attack in Khan al-Assal was one of two alleged chemical attacks that the Obama administration first furtively confirmed — and pinned “with some degree of varying confidence” on the Assad regime.

Shortly after letters from the White House to U.S. senators leveling that initial charge against the Syrian government were made public in April, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Capitol Hill that there were two instances of chemical weapons use — the one in Khan al-Assal and another near Damascus. …more

A war the Pentagon doesn’t want
By Robert H. Scales, 5 September, 2013 – Washington Post

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College.

The tapes tell the tale. Go back and look at images of our nation’s most senior soldier, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and his body language during Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Syria. It’s pretty obvious that Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, doesn’t want this war. As Secretary of State John Kerry’s thundering voice and arm-waving redounded in rage against Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities, Dempseywas largely (and respectfully) silent.

Dempsey’s unspoken words reflect the opinions of most serving military leaders. By no means do I profess to speak on behalf of all of our men and women in uniform. But I can justifiably share the sentiments of those inside the Pentagon and elsewhere who write the plans and develop strategies for fighting our wars. After personal exchanges with dozens of active and retired soldiers in recent days, I feel confident that what follows represents the overwhelming opinion of serving professionals who have been intimate witnesses to the unfolding events that will lead the United States into its next war.

They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. None of the White House staff has any experience in war or understands it. So far, at least, this path to war violates every principle of war, including the element of surprise, achieving mass and having a clearly defined and obtainable objective.

They are repelled by the hypocrisy of a media blitz that warns against the return of Hitlerism but privately acknowledges that the motive for risking American lives is our “responsibility to protect” the world’s innocents. Prospective U.S. action in Syria is not about threats to American security. The U.S. military’s civilian masters privately are proud that they are motivated by guilt over slaughters in Rwanda, Sudan and Kosovo and not by any systemic threat to our country.

They are outraged by the fact that what may happen is an act of war and a willingness to risk American lives to make up for a slip of the tongue about “red lines.” These acts would be for retribution and to restore the reputation of a president. Our serving professionals make the point that killing more Syrians won’t deter Iranian resolve to confront us. The Iranians have already gotten the message.

Our people lament our loneliness. Our senior soldiers take pride in their past commitments to fight alongside allies and within coalitions that shared our strategic goals. This war, however, will be ours alone.

They are tired of wannabe soldiers who remain enamored of the lure of bloodless machine warfare. “Look,” one told me, “if you want to end this decisively, send in the troops and let them defeat the Syrian army. If the nation doesn’t think Syria is worth serious commitment, then leave them alone.” But they also warn that Syria is not Libya or Serbia. Perhaps the United States has become too used to fighting third-rate armies. As the Israelis learned in 1973, the Syrians are tough and mean-spirited killers with nothing to lose.

Our military members understand and take seriously their oath to defend the constitutional authority of their civilian masters. They understand that the United States is the only liberal democracy that has never been ruled by its military. But today’s soldiers know war and resent civilian policymakers who want the military to fight a war that neither they nor their loved ones will experience firsthand.

Civilian control of the armed services doesn’t mean that civilians shouldn’t listen to those who have seen war. Our most respected soldier president, Dwight Eisenhower, possessed the gravitas and courage to say no to war eight times during his presidency. He ended the Korean War and refused to aid the French in Indochina; he said no to his former wartime friends Britain and France when they demanded U.S. participation in the capture of the Suez Canal. And he resisted liberal democrats who wanted to aid the newly formed nation of South Vietnam. We all know what happened after his successor ignored Eisenhower’s advice. My generation got to go to war.

Over the past few days, the opinions of officers confiding in me have changed to some degree. Resignation seems to be creeping into their sense of outrage. One officer told me: “To hell with them. If this guy wants this war, then let him have it. Looks like no one will get hurt anyway.”

Soon the military will salute respectfully and loose the hell of hundreds of cruise missiles in an effort that will, inevitably, kill a few of those we wish to protect. They will do it with all the professionalism and skill we expect from the world’s most proficient military. I wish Kerry would take a moment to look at the images from this week’s hearings before we go to war again.

Read more at PostOpinions: Dana Milbank: The White House’s Syria secrets Anne Applebaum: Obama’s mixed messages on Syria E.J. Dionne Jr: Syria and the return of dissent David Ignatius: Syria nears a turning point Greg Sargent: Why House Dems think Syria resolution could still pass Robert J. Samuelson: Syria and the myth that Americans are ‘war weary’ …source

G20 shows that world no longer trusts Obama
By: Thomas Walkom – National Affairs – 6 September, 2013

Politically, the latest G20 summit confirms what until now had only been whispered:

U.S. President Barack Obama no longer commands the moral authority he was once accorded by the rest of the world. Nor does America.

While controversial at home, Obama has always been viewed outside of the United States as a larger-than-life figure.

In part, this is because he is America’s first black president. But in part, Obama’s electoral successes convinced many that the U.S. was returning to sanity — that the dark malevolence represented by his predecessor George W. Bush (and particularly by Bush sidekick Dick Cheney) had finally passed; that America was preparing to become once again a force for good.

Perhaps, this was a naive hope. The U.S. is a great power and great powers are not always nice. Washington’s involvement in blatantly illegal enterprises predated Bush and Cheney.

Yet around the world, America was viewed — in general — as a country whose heart was in the right place.

And Obama was viewed as the leader who could makes U.S actions reflect that heart.

So high were the hopes around Obama that he was awarded the Nobel peace prize simply for being elected.

Over time, the cruel world of reality eroded those hopes. Obama promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. He didn’t. He promised a short, sharp war that would defeat the Taliban and bring peace to Afghanistan. That never happened.

He authorized drone strikes against nations with which the U.S. is not at war, strikes that killed not only Americans but others whose only crime was to be in the wrong place.

He permitted the U.S. National Security Agency to snoop on U.S. citizens and foreign allies in an unprecedented manner.

He promised openness but went after whistleblowers like Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and Edward Snowden with unprecedented zeal.

In an earlier time, any U.S. president who called for international action against chemical weapons would have received a sympathetic response from much of the world.

True, it is hypocritical to single out chemical weapons. Syria has not signed the international convention against chemical weapons. But the U.S. has not signed a similar convention against cluster bombs, which can be just as devastating.

Still, chemical weapons have the capacity to frighten. The idea of civilians being killed in war seems bad enough. The idea of civilians being killed without visible marks upon them seems, for some reason, worse.

In an earlier time, the moral outrage expressed by Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry would have resonated worldwide.

These days, it does not. When Obama claims he has proof that the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad used chemical weapons, a great many people around the world — people who count themselves as friends of the U.S. — simply don’t believe him.

Russian President Vladimir Putin insists that Syrian rebels were behind any chemical attack. He calls Kerry a liar. In earlier times, Putin would have been discounted as a propagandist for Syria’s regime.

But so jaded is today’s world about American motives that the former KGB thug seems more credible than Obama.

Britain won’t join any U.S. attack because the British people no longer trust American leadership. Ditto Germany. Ditto most other nations. That became obvious at the two-day G20 summit in St. Petersburg.

Only 10 of the 20 signed a statement accusing Syria’s government of using chemical weapons. Of those 10, only France has suggested it would participate in a U.S. attack.

Even Canada’s vigorously pro-U.S. Conservative government refuses to lend Obama anything beyond moral support.

Ironically, Jean Chrétien offered the U.S. more military assets for its 2003 attack on Iraq — although the former prime minister technically opposed that war.

Yet in their reluctance to sign on fully to America’s latest war, Harper and Obama’s other recalcitrant allies are being politically rational. Their voters no longer give the U.S. and its vigorous young president the benefit of the doubt.

They are suspicious and rightly so. …source