Swallowing Syria

Swallowing Syria
Jim Kavanagh

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the summit of Mt. Hermon in Syria, Dec 17, 2024. (Photo: Screenshot/GPO)

I am finding it very hard to swallow the disaster that has occurred in Syria, or to digest its consequences. It makes me sick.

Though it foresaw the looming disaster, my last article was written just before the flight of Assad and the fall of Damascus, and it was still possible to imagine there might be another out to be played. Well, it’s now, definitely, game over, and there’s no denying who won and who lost. The result is depressing and demoralizing.

To reprise what I said in that article, “If Now that Syria is lost to the Erdogan-sponsored Jihadi forces, Russia, Iran, Lebanon, the Axis of Resistance, and the Palestinian people will have lost something very important, something that cannot be recovered without a…more deadly fight than would have been required to prevent the loss.” Correspondingly, US imperialism, Zionism, and Turkish neo-Ottomanism have won a strategic geopolitical victory that gives them advantages that will be hard to overcome.

Since 2012, I’ve written at least 17 articles about the vicious “multiple, concentric proxy war” the US, Israel, Turkey, and the Gulf States (especially Qatar), with their jihadi pawns, have waged to destroy the Syrian state. By 2015, it had become “the most expensive US covert action program in history.” Along with many others, I critiqued and attacked the Axis of Chaos’s arrogant and insouciant destruction of a country and a region, creating hundreds of thousands of casualties and refugees, destroying ancient and vibrant cities and towns, replacing secular pluralism with head-chopping takfiri sectarianism—all to eliminate a polity independent of and resistant to U.S. imperialism, Zionist colonialism, and Turkish ambition. I and many others had been glad to see that project interrupted by a Russian intervention, and, even though most of us knew that it was not stopped, we were too complacent about the ongoing destructive effects of the ongoing U.S. occupation and sanctions (per US thug Diana Stroul) and way too complacent about the persistence and armament of the Turkish-controlled jihadi redoubt in Idlib.

Over the last couple of years, many of us focused on the waning hard and soft power of U.S. imperialism in relation to the rising military power of Russia and China and their allied economic bloc in BRICS, as well as to the waning of Zionism’s hard and soft power in relation to the rising power of Iran, Hezbollah, and the Axis of Resistance and in relation to the world’s (especially the world’s youth) rising understanding of the illegitimacy of Zionist colonialism.

All these factors are still true and in play, but we have foolishly underestimated how strong, tenacious, and diverse the Zio-imperialist team is, and we have to recognize that. We didn’t see him as the team slugger, but, in Syria, Erdogan came in and hit a walk-off home run. And we didn’t even know what inning we were in. It’s going to be a long, hard season.

Here’s where we now stand, what we have to accept:

Syria is gone. The “nation” of Syria exists only as a wished-for abstraction; it is no longer, and will never again be, the geopolitical polity that it was. It is now a territory divided into sectarian—ethnic and religious—cantons, with no central administration or military power, subject to the political and military whims of actual states, especially the United States, Israel, and Turkey, who planned and executed that outcome.

The current “leadership” in Syria is comprised of the rebranded Al-Qaeda, now named Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani. As I’m writing, Golani is still a “terrorist” with a USG $10-million-dollar bounty on his head, although he’s also meeting with Western media personalities and cabinet officials, who are frantically rebranding him. Haircut, beard trim, new suit, and even a new name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and voila, the old ISIS/al-Qaeda “terrorist” becomes an internationally respected, diversity-loving, moderate rebel.

In fact, the HTS/al-Golani-al-Sharaa “leadership” controls nothing. Its job, that it’s doing very well, is to stand down and allow Israel to bomb the former country over 800 times to destroy every bit of the former Syria’s military and its research facilities, to take its main water resources,  and to invade, seize, and settle all the former Syrian territory it wants. HTS’s job is to allow its immediate puppet master, Erdogan, to remind the world that, if it weren’t for that pesky World War a hundred years ago, Aleppo and Damascus would be part of Turkey. HTS’s job is to “shift” the former Syria into a full “free-market” economy so that US and European capital can buy up all its assets. And HTS/Golani has no more important job than constantly to proclaim that their new regime has no quarrel with Israel or the West, and will peacefully accommodate whatever the fuck Israel, or Turkey or the US/Blackrock want to do with the corpse of Syria. It makes me sick.

Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside

Wild Turkey: Syria’s Blindside
Jim Kavanagh

The sudden jihadi offensive in Syria is a disaster. It is, first of all, a disaster for the Syrian people. It's also a disaster for the Palestinian people, Hezbollah, Iran, and the entire axis of anti-Zionist resistance. And it's a disaster for Russia (and China) and the project of replacing unipolar American hegemony with multipolarity based on a new BRICS-based global political economy.

It's a disaster that challenges all the parties involved to recognize that what they might have more comfortably treated as parallel but separate conflicts are elements of one big, unavoidable war that is going to require new strategies from each and from all of them together—strategies that reconcile the interests of each with the interests of all. If that is possible.

It does no good to downplay the disaster-in-progress in Syria. In short order—what can aptly be called a blitzkrieg—jihadi forces have taken control of Aleppo, a city of over 2 million people and one of the oldest continuously habited cities in the world, and Hama, a city of a million people, with—and this is the crucial point—no significant resistance from the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).

We can comfort ourselves by saying it’s a tactical retreat and the Russian, Iranian, Hezbollah, and the Iraqi PMU cavalries are on the way. These are potentially formidable forces, and we all saw how Russia and Hezbollah helped the SAA defeat what seemed an unstoppable jihadi offensive from 2011 to 2019.

But, a) “Helped” is the operative word.  The SAA fought like hell during that time, resisting every assault from a panoply of forces supported by the U.S., Israel, NATO, and Gulf monarchies, until Russia and Hezbollah came in and turned the tide. This time, the SAA melted away from two major Syrian cities in a week, despite knowing that the Idlib jihadis were arming up for an offensive. As I write, the jihadis are threatening Homs and have the momentum. There may not be enough time for Russian, and/or Iranian, and/or Iraqi forces to assemble and organize an effective defense, let alone counteroffensive, before Damascus is breached. Something has gone seriously wrong with the SAA, whether complacence, incompetence, and/or corruption (per Alexander Mercouris, who reports that the SAA Aleppo contingent simply defected), and foreign forces cannot replace what was a disciplined, dedicated SAA. If Assad needs an extended commitment of masses of foreign troops (which Russia never supplied) to stop the jihadis, Assad is toast. Russia and Iran can help Syria; turning it into a protectorate of Russia or Iran is another thing entirely.

Press TV Discussion of Syria's Situation (1/16/2022)

Here's my appearance on PressTV yesterday, discussing the good and bad news about Syria's situation. According to the host, I didn't leave any questions unanswered.

Trump’s Syrian See-Saw: From Pullout to Pillage

thegrayzone.com

To withdraw, or not to withdraw? That is the question Donald Trump, in his own inimitable way, has answered both ways.

First came the withdrawal. It was real, and had a significant effect. Trump ordered the removal of US troops from Kurdish areas, putting an end to the prospect of an independent Kurdish statelet, split off from Syria. Such a partition was always implausible, given the general balance of forces in the region and the specific refusal of NATO-member Turkey to accept any such thing. (Turkey had already invaded Syria in 2016, and the Obama-Biden administration ordered the Kurds to accept it.) It was also a lynchpin of the longstanding Plan B for dismembering the Syrian state. As I argued in a previous article, agreeing with ”the entire spectrum of US-imperialist politics and media,” Trump’s withdrawal decision “marked ‘a major turning point in Syria’s long war’ and has, indeed, ‘upended decades’ of imperialist and Zionist plans for the Middle East.” 

But, as I also noted, Trump is impulsive, shallow, and weak, and “surrounds himself with neocon deep-state actors on whom he depends and who often ignore or actively oppose…his non-interventionist instincts,” and who “may yet get him to reverse that [decision] or over-compensate for it.”

And thus it came to be. Kinda-sorta.

Discussion of Brexit Delay and Syrian Situation on The Critical Hour (10/28/2019)

John Conyers Jr., Longest-Serving African American Congressman, Dies at 90

Former Michigan Rep. John Conyers Jr., a liberal Democrat from what is now Detroit’s 13th Congressional District, has died at the age of 90. Conyers was first elected in 1964, becoming one of five African Americans in the House of Representatives. His overwhelmingly Democratic constituents reelected him 26 times over a period spanning 10 presidents, from Lyndon B. Johnson to Donald Trump. He passed Sunday at his home in Detroit.

US President Donald Trump confirmed that Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has died. He was killed during a US military raid in northwest Syria on Saturday. Trump announced Sunday that al-Baghdadi died after running into a tunnel, where he detonated an explosive vest, killing himself and three of his children.

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (10/11/2019)

Trump Claims Victory Trade Deal, Did Xi Give Sleeves From His Vest?

US President Donald Trump said Friday that the US and China have reached what he called a substantial “phase one“ trade deal in which Beijing agreed to limited measures to improve trade ties between the countries. In exchange, Trump will not move forward with another round of tariff increases against roughly $250 billion in Chinese goods that had been set to take effect on Tuesday. Who really won in this deal?

Week in Review Discussion on Loud & Clear (10/18/2019)

Week in Review

Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on the Turkish invasion of Syria, the impeachment probe, and the possible breakthrough in UK-EU negotiations over Brexit. Brian and John speak with Jim Kavanagh, the editor of thepolemicist.net whose most recent article is “The Empire Steps Back: Trump Withdraws From Syria – Impeachment Now Possible,” and Sputnik News analysts and producers Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell.

Listen to "Week in Review" on Spreaker.

Loud & Clear is a daily program of news, commentary, and political analysis on Radio Sputnik, hosted by Brian Becker and John Kiriakou, featuring independent experts, activists, and political writers. (Introduction above is theirs, with related articles of mine referenced in brackets.)

The Empire Steps Back: Trump Withdraws From Syria – Impeachment Now Possible

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Week in Review Discussion on The Critical Hour (3/29/2019)

Thousands Held In Deplorable Conditions In Syrian Refugee Camp By US Military

On this episode of The Critical Hour, Dr. Wilmer Leon is joined by Whitney Webb, journalist and staff writer for MintPress News.

It's Friday, that means it is panel time!

Resist This: The United States Is At War With Syria

The United States is at war with Syria. Though few Americans wanted to face it, this has been the case implicitly since the Obama administration began building bases and sending Special Ops, really-not-there, American troops, and it has been the case explicitly since August 3, 2015, when the Obama administration announced that it would “allow airstrikes to defend Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military from any attackers, even if the enemies hail from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” With the U.S. Air Force—under Trump, following Obama’s declared policy—shooting down a Syrian plane in Syrian airspace, this is now undeniable.  The United States is overtly engaged in another aggression against a sovereign country that poses no conceivable, let alone actual or imminent, threat to the nation. This is an act of war.

As an act of war, this is unconstitutional, and would demand a congressional declaration. The claim, touted by Joint Chiefs’ Chairman, Gen. Dunford, that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) against al-Qaeda provides constitutional justification for attacking the Syrian government is patently false and particularly precious. In the Syrian conflict, it’s the Syrian government that is the enemy and target of al-Qaeda affiliates; it’s the U.S. and its allies who are supporting al Qaeda. The authorization to fight al-Qaeda has been turned into an authorization to help al-Qaeda by attacking and weakening its prime target!

No Apology: Syria, Interrupted (Part 2)

In a previous essay, I stated that Russian military help to the Syrian State was a response to a direct threat from the United States to attack Syrian armed forces, that I understood the Syrian uprising since 2011 as an instance of the ongoing program of regime change via jhiadi forces driven by the United States and its allies, and that, as a result, the Syria-Russia alliance was a necessary, legal, and legitimate defense of state sovereignty and independence that averted an impending victory of those foreign-sponsored jihadi forces. I found this interruption of imperialist chaos state destruction to be a net positive for the world, and a result I welcomed as a leftist.  I’ll call this the “anti-imperialist” position.

I also said that I recognized there are leftists out there committed to democracy, social justice, and anti-imperialism (excluding here obvious partisans of American exceptionalism, Zionism, and Euro-American capitalist globalism) who can disagree with my position as a matter of political analysis and judgement, but that—as I would explain in a later post—I disagreed vigorously with some of the spurious rhetorical tactics used to attack positions like mine and defend the alternative. Here’s that explanation.

Syria, Interrupted Game Change

CBC News

The recapture of Aleppo by the Syrian Arab Army and its allies marks a turning point not only in the conflict in Syria, but also in the dynamic of international conflict. For the first time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the rolling imperial engine of regime change via American-led military intervention has been stopped in its tracks. To be sure, it’s certainly not out of service, even in Syria, and it will seek and find new paths for devastating disobedient countries, but its assumed endgame for subjugating Syria has been rudely interrupted. And in our historical context, Syria interrupted is imperialism interrupted.

Let’s remember where things stood in Syria seventeen months ago. After a four-year campaign, directed by the United States, thousands of jihadis in various groups backed by the US/NATO, the Gulf monarchies, Turkey and Israel, were on the offensive. ISIS occupied Palmyra, Raqqa, and swaths of territory, and was systematically raping, beheading, and torturing Syrian citizens and looting and destroying the country’s cultural treasures. Al-Qeada/al-Nusra had triumphantly poured into the eastern part of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city (and one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world), were beheading and crucifying their newly-subjugated Syrian captives, and were beginning their siege of the larger and more populous part of that city. Turkey had commenced military operations on Syrian territory against Kurdish forces (who had won significant victories against ISIS), and was enabling the transit of foreign jihadis into Syria and convoys of ISIS oil through its territory. Against these dispersed offensives, the Syrian Arab Army was undermanned and overstretched.

As John Kerry himself later admitted, in a meeting with Syrian opposition, the Obama administration saw the ISIS advance as a positive development: “[W]e know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that DAESH [ ISIS] was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. [We] thought, however, we could probably manage that. Assad might then negotiate.”(By “negotiate,” Kerry meant “capitulate”—negotiate the terms of his abdication.) For the Serious People in Washington, this—the impending takeover of Syria by ISIS and Al-Qaeda jihadis—meant things were going swimmingly. (Al-Nusra was at the time—and still is, less officially—the affiliate of Al-Qaeda in Syria.) As Daniel Lazare pointed out: “After years of hemming and hawing, the Obama administration has finally come clean about its goals in Syria.  In the battle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, it is siding with Al Qaeda…[R]ather than protesting what is in fact a joint U.S.-Al Qaeda assault, the Beltway crowd is either maintaining a discreet silence or boldy hailing Al Nusra’s impending victory as ‘the best thing that could happen in a Middle East in crisis.’”

You read that right. As one al-Nusra commander said: "We are one part of al-Qaeda…The Americans are on our side.”

Turkey Invades Syria. America Spins The Bottle.

  Tom Janssen | CagleCartoons.com

So within the space of a few days, the United States has, first, commanded the government of Syria to keep its air force away from part of its own sovereign territory, Hasakah, occupied by American soldiers and their Kurdish “partners”; it then, with applause from other NATO countries, provided air support for a Turkish invasion of Syria and seizure of the Syrian town of Jarablus from those “partners.” These are unambiguous acts of war, and Orwellian acts of doublethink aggression.

Note that Hasakah, where the incident with the Syrian Air Force took place, is not in an area controlled by ISIS. So whatever American troops were doing there, they were not fighting ISIS. Note also that Turkey’s announced reason for seizing Jarablus—in order to seal the border and prevent ISIS in Syria from receiving recruits and supplies—is a flimsy excuse that, as the New York Times (NYT) reports, the Turks don’t even try to maintain: “Turkish officials made little secret that the main purpose of the operation was to ensure that Kurdish militias did not consolidate control over an area west of the Euphrates River.”’

As Al-Qaeda cleric Al-Muhaysin has assured would-be recruits: “The truth is that the Turks don't prevent anyone from entering Syria.” If the Turks wanted to close the Syrian border, across which they’ve been trafficking ISIS soldiers, arms, and oil for years, they could just close it, on their side. No need to invade Syria. In fact, ISIS was informed of the attack, and left Jarablus before the brave Turks and their Syrian rebel partners arrived. The Washington Post said: “The rebels encountered almost no resistance from Islamic State fighters, who fled ahead of the advancing force.” The blogger Moon of Alabama (MoA) made the point more sharply: “There was no resistance to the move. The Islamic State, which had been informed of the attack, had evacuated all fighters and their families out of Jarablus. … As one commentator remarked: They even left mints on the pillows. The toleration of ISIS by Turkey, which includes some not so secret support, will likely continue.”

Mali Jihadis: The Spawn of Hillary's (And America's) War On Libya

Harouna Traore/Associated Press

Another horrific jihadi attack today, this time on a Radisson Blu hotel in Mali. 27 killed. Here’s an excerpt from the New YorkTimes coverage:

Mali has been crippled by instability since January, 2012, when rebels and Al Qaeda-linked militants — armed with the remnants of late Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s arsenal — began advancing through the country’s vast desert in the north and capturing towns.

In other words, the jihadi gangs in Mali are a direct result of American/French/NATO regime change in Libya, executed by the Obama administration, spearheaded by "We came, we saw, he died" Hillary Clinton.

In 2010, Libya under Ghaddafi had the highest standard of living of any country in Africa (UN Human Development Index). Ghaddafi's Libya employed many Malians. It was an anchor of stability in North Africa. The US/France/NATO put an end to that, under entirely phony pretexts, against fundamental international law, and in violation of the UN resolution they claimed as a justification. The executioners and beneficiaries of that US/France/NATO strategy where the jihadis who shoved a stick up Ghaddafi's ass and are now rampaging throughout Mali.

Ha, Ha. Maybe she can get a gig at the Comedy Club in the Radisson.

Director's Cut

“Good al-Qaeda’s” Air Force: The United States Is At War With Syria

 Fighters of al-Nusra front driving through Aleppo 26 May (AFP)

“The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation”
— candidate Barack Obama, December, 2007

The United States has decided to allow airstrikes to defend Syrian rebels trained by the U.S. military from any attackers, even if the enemies hail from forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. officials said on Sunday.
—  "U.S.to defend Syrian rebels with airpower, including from Assad," Reuters, August 3, 2015

The United States just went to war with Syria. With the confirmation today that American planes will shoot down Syrian planes attacking USDA-approved "rebels," the United States is now overtly engaged in another criminal attack on a sovereign country that poses no conceivable, let alone actual or imminent, threat to the nation. This is an act of war. 

Please don’t try any not-really-war “no-fly zone” or “safe zone” bullshit. As the Commander of NATO says, a no-fly zone is “quite frankly an act of war and it is not a trivial matter….[I]t’s basically to start a war with that country because you are going to have to go in and kinetically take out their air defense capability.” Or as Shamus Cooke puts it: “In a war zone an area is made ‘safe’ by destroying anything in it or around that appears threatening.”  Inevitably, “U.S. and Turkish fighter jets will engage with Syrian aircraft, broadening and deepening the war until the intended aim of regime change has been accomplished."¹ 

Does anybody doubt that this is exactly what’s intended? Perhaps Obama will soothe the discomfort of his purportedly peace-loving progressive fans with some assurance like: “broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake.” He’ll be lying, as he was four years ago when he said that about Libya.

As an aggressive, unprovoked war, this is totally illegal under international law, and all the political and military authorities undertaking it are war criminals, who would be prosecuted as such, if there were an international legal regime that had not already been undermined by the United States.

The Dogs of Hell: An Original Jihadi Trashes ISIS

In my last post, I treated ISIS as a phenomenon that serves imperial interests—the latest character in an ongoing tragedy of the opportunist use of jihadi players by hegemonic powers, which went into production in Afghanistan in 1979, and which has been on the road throughout the Middle East since, with the script frequently re-written as some members of the original cast and crew drop out, and new faces take on the challenge. One of the keys to its long run is the improvisational skill with which the producers adapt to the new talent that jumps on the well-financed and outfitted stage they have provided.

Thus, I have argued that ISIS, like other jihadi groups, has been effectively armed and nourished by American interventions in the region, and that its dramatic appearance and antics are of the If-they-didn’t-exist-we’d-have-had-to-invent-them genre—particularly, at this particular conjuncture, in regard to the grand plan for Syria. I am not, however, arguing that it was deliberately created by any particular country to do so. That’s not impossible, but I’ve seen no dispositive evidence of that. ISIS is just as likely, and no less perniciously, the product of the benign inadvertence of those who set and supplied the stage.

I do find it understandable, however, that many in the region, who doubt the possibility of coincidence—especially serial coincidences, especially serial coincidences that always end up promoting the urgent necessity for imperial powers to intervene in a particular group of Arab and Muslim countries for ostensibly non-imperialist reasons—will tend to favor notions that ISIS in Syria (and Iraq) is a deliberate creation of the foreign powers meddling in the region.

To get a glimpse of the kind of thinking that is prevalent in the region, and prevalent even among fellow jihadis, about ISIS, I strongly suggest that you look at the remarkable interview with Nabeel Naiem on Syria News below. (Bear with the rocky translation from Syria News.) I don’t endorse his theories about ISIS, or anything else he says, but if you’re interested in the dynamics of jihadism and jihadi thinking in the region, and of how even the most militant Islamists detest ISIS, you’re unlikely to find anything like it.

America, ISIS, and Syria: We have to bomb the jihadis in order to save them

Artelligence Inc.

Does it take more than one full minute of thought to see what’s going on here?

The short version:

• ISIS is the product of years of American military intervention in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. ISIS is the creature of an imperial enterprise—a global effort to bring down the Syrian state using jihadi proxies that included the U.S and its allies--Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, and Israel, at least—that could only have proceeded, “at the bidding of,” and managed by, the imperial center. It was by surfing the American-directed “cataract” of weaponry and funds directed against Syria that ISIS became an international jihadi movement surpassing Al-Qaeda itself. Without that American intervention, there would be no ISIS.


• In this regard, ISIS is only the latest in a series of worst-ever takfiri groups that has been cooked up in the stew of jihadi proxy fighters the U.S. and its allies have been serving up since the its holy war in Afghanistan in 1979—the one where Zbigniew Brzezinski told Bin Laden’s jihadis, “God is on your side.”¹ As Gilbert Mercier quipped, “Just like al-Qaeda, ISIS is the secret love child of United States imperialism and the kings and sheiks of the Gulf states.”²
 
• An American (“coalition”) military attack on Syria will not destroy ISIS, and will not have the primary purpose of destroying ISIS; it will target and degrade the Syrian military, and its primary purpose will be to destroy the Syrian state’s capacity to resist the onslaught of jihadi rebels, including ISIS—a “rebellion” which hasn’t been going so well recently. The Obama administration knows, and says, that an American military attack will not defeat ISIS. It also knows, and says (sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, depending on the audience), that its main objective will be to help the jihadi onslaught succeed. “A­ssad must go” is still the prime directive; the jihadis are still the most effective instrument for that. ISIS changes nothing, except to help sell military intervention to the Western publics. In a number of ways, ISIS has intervened to save the jihadi rebellion from defeat. It’s the reverse of the Vietnam rule: We have to bomb the jihadis in order to save them.

For those who want the details, the long version:

Syria: No Better Angels

In my last post on Syria, I commented that “Short of widespread popular unrest, on issues like this, the will of the people counts for nothing against the exigencies of imperialism and Zionism, as understood by the American political elite,” that “there would be no challenging debate in the US Congress like that in the British Parliament,” and that “a combination of domestic political pressure that, along with international reluctance, [which would] create an effective pushback against Obama’s momentum towards war” was “not likely.” I was 100% certain of, and would have bet heavily on, a strike on Syria within a few days.

I am surprised and happy to see that I would have lost that bet. Indeed, there is substantially more than a glimmer of pushback on a number of fronts.  The British parliament’s rejection of a military attack on Syria turned out to be a wedge blow that opened crucial cracks in the hitherto seemingly-impervious American imperial edifice. It pushed Obama into going to Congress for a vote, which bought time in which the American people could think about the case and not just follow the leader, and in which the media would have to open the window of information and analysis at least a bit more than usual.

At the Syrian Threshold:“al-Qaeda’s Air Force” Prepares for Battle

Here's a report from July, "FSA chemical lab uncovered near Damascus":

Chemical weapons materials and facilities have been found multiple times in "rebel" areas. The "rebels" are the *only ones* who have any motive for using chemical weapons.

Yeah, it's from RT (Russia’s English-language TV channel). Do you really think you have any more reason to believe the US government and its media -- proven liars, multiple times, on the subject -- than RT?  It’s those who reflexively dismiss anything reported by RT or Press TV (Iran’s English-language TV channel), while reflexively taking for granted the truth of everything Obama and the New York Times and MSNBC say, who demonstrate their gullibility. Do you really believe that the foot-stomping insistence of Obama and Biden and Kerry that they absolutely, positively know the Syrian government is to blame is any more credible than was the sooo convincing “proof” that George Bush and Dick Cheney produced on Iraq? Remember how the media and the humanitarian interventionists liberal imperialists creamed over Colin Powell’s irrefutable presentation?  Here we go again. Fool me how often?

Guess what, Obamicans: It’s the same imperialist state. If anything, at this point, Obama has less credibility than Bush, and you have less excuse for going along with him.