Warmongers, Terrorists, Rebels, Al Qaeda , Puppet Masters, Syria and Good guys

From Reuters:
U.S. Senator John McCain will submit an opinion piece to the Russian newspaper Pravda in response to an op-ed on Syria in The New York Times by Russian President Vladimir Putin that infuriated many members of Congress, a spokesman said on Friday. 
 "I almost wanted to vomit," Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on CNN.
McCain and Menendez were among 10 members of the foreign relations panel who voted last week to approve a resolution authorizing President Barack Obama to use military force against Syria......

From WashingtonPost:
Final tally: 10 to 7, with one senator voting present.   
Who voted yes?: Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) (by proxy — was absent due to the Jewish holiday), Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Christopher Coons (D-Del.), Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.). Ranking member Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Who voted no?: Sens. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.), James Risch (R-Idaho), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
Among senators facing reelection in 2014: Six senators on the committee — Shaheen, Coons, Durbin, Udall, Markey and Risch — face the voters next year. Shaheen, Coons and Durbin voted yes. Udall and Risch voted no, while Markey voted present.............



Daniel Greenfield writing at FrontPageMag:
 ....The Myth of the Moderate Syrian Rebels.The moderate Syrian rebels, like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, are a myth; an imaginary character used to tell soothing stories to children. Unfortunately the storytellers think that we’re the children.
The Syrian Civil War is a religious war. It’s not a war over democracy or freedom. It’s a conflict between two totalitarian systems, one loosely based on a mixture of Islam and Socialism, and the other more rigidly based on Islam. Both are brutal and merciless to anyone who doesn’t belong. Both have their death squads and extensive corruption on the inside.
Both are evil.

 From Time:
Witness to a Syrian Execution: “I Saw a Scene of Utter Cruelty”  All wars are vicious, but the civil war in Syria seems every day to set new standards for brutality. As the fighting rages in its third year, increasing numbers of atrocities are committed by soldiers and fighters from forces loyal to the regime of President Bashar Assad, as well as armed rebels and Islamic militants from the numerous, loosely aligned groups opposing Assad. The violence is frequently sectarian in nature, with fighters claiming they act in defense of their faith, be it Sunni, Alawite, Shiite or any of the other sects that contribute to Syria’s religious landscape.
The perpetrators of atrocities themselves often use digital cameras or smartphones to photograph or film their acts of torture and murder, uploading the images to the Internet. These images and videos are used for propaganda, and their authenticity is often impossible to verify. It is very rare that a group of fighters from either side gives a professional photojournalist from a country outside Syria full and unfettered access to chronicle an atrocity as it unfolds. The images above are products of that access..........

From Reuters:
...."Instead of being tucked safely in their beds at home, we saw rows of children lying side by side sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad's gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate. The United States Government now knows that at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in this attack, including at least 426 children," he said.
Some U.S. congressional sources are now casting doubt on those figures.
Three congressional sources told Reuters that administration officials had indicated in private that some deaths might have been caused by the conventional bombing that followed the release of sarin gas in suburban Damascus neighborhoods. This disclosure undermined support for President Barack Obama's plan to strike Syria, they said.



 From HuffingtonPost:
  Elizabeth O'Bagy, Syria Researcher Cited By Kerry And McCain  In Hearings, Fired For Ph.D Claim.....
.....But the Journal came under scrutiny for publishing the op-ed without disclosing O'Bagy's role as political director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a Washington-based advocacy group that has lobbied the White House and Congress to support the Syrian rebels......

From WashingtonExaminer:
Assad tells Obama to stop arming rebels, or no deal.  President Obama must promise not to arm rebel forces or Syrian dictator Bashar Assad will not hand over his chemical weapons, the embattled leader told a Russian state media outlet today while demanding that Israel also surrender its nuclear arsenal.
“When we see that the U.S. genuinely stands for stability in our region, stops threatening us with military intervention and stops supplying terrorists with weapons, then we will consider it possible to finalize all necessary procedures and they will become legitimate and acceptable for Syria," Assad told RIA News..........

From NYTimes:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, plans to dispatch 300 of its members to Capitol Hill on Tuesday as part of a broad campaign to press Congress to back President Obama’s proposed strike on Syria, the group said Monday.  
The push by the group, known as Aipac, which included asking its supporters to call members of Congress, came as Israeli newspapers reported Monday that President Obama urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to get personally involved in lobbying Congress. The reports said that Mr. Netanyahu had called several members himself......



From: NYTimes
Saudi Arabia, quietly cooperating with American and British intelligence and other Arab governments, has modestly increased deliveries of weapons to rebels fighting in southern Syria, the rebels say............

From DailyStar:
Washington’s last-minute decision to call off military strikes against Syria deals a blow to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but the states that arm rebels battling President Bashar Assad will not soon give up on a war that has already cost them billions.
With Assad now looking unlikely to crumble soon and the West showing no desire to bomb him from power, the Gulf princes face few options beyond continuing to fund one side in a perpetual military stalemate that has already killed 100,000 people.
“If the U.S. doesn’t launch an attack there’s really no plan B drawn up yet by the GCC states,” said an Arab diplomat, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council of six rich Arab countries. “What I’m telling you is simple: They have no plan.”
The Sunni Arab monarchs see defeating Assad as fundamental in their confrontation with the Syrian leader’s main regional patron, Shiite Iran.
Since 2011, Western leaders appeared to be on the same page, repeatedly demanding Assad be removed from power and insisting that no solution was possible unless he goes.
But the West’s latest diplomatic efforts have been focused on dismantling Assad’s chemical weapons stockpiles, not on removing him from power, leaving the Arab states alone......


From TorontoStar:
The frantic yet fragile diplomacy over Syrian  chemical weapons veered toward an ominous impasse Thursday as President Bashar Assad added a new demand that the United States stop arming rebel forces in exchange for his regime’s compliance.
Assad’s new condition loomed as a deal-breaker in a day full of fresh twists in the diplomatic dance to avert American airstrikes.
Mere hours after Damascus filed formal paperwork with the United Nations, setting in motion the process for the surrender of toxic weaponry it has previously denied possessing, Assad told Russia’s state broadcaster more was needed to complete the transaction.
“When we see that the U.S. genuinely stands for stability in our region, stops threatening us with military intervention and stops supplying terrorists with weapons, then we will consider it possible to finalize all necessary procedures and they will become legitimate and acceptable for Syria,” Assad told RIA News.  

From CBSNews:
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday that a report on last month's deadly attack in Syria would be "overwhelming" in showing that chemical weapons were used.In unusual candor, the secretary-general said that Syrian President Bashar Assad "has committed many crimes against humanity."
The U.N. chief's deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, said that Ban was not referring to the chemical weapons attack but to reports from the Human Rights Council and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.........