UNAC demands "US Out of #Libya!"???

Where are these people's heads?

If there is one thing that the killing of the US ambassador and three other US citizens in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 illustrates, it is the tiny size of the US presence in Libya now. The US knew there were still forces in Libya that opposed the overthrow of the Qaddafi dictatorship and opposed any US presence in the country. "No more than seven Americans were in the compound, including Ambassador Stevens", according to WikiPedia. They knew that Benghazi was the center of this armed opposition and yet the US ambassador went there with just a few US agents for protection and was forced to rely on the Libyans for their main protection force.

The United National Antiwar Coalition opposed the Libya revolution as soon they became aware of it and they saw it as a repeat of Iraq and now, ignoring reality, they are still trying to stuff it into that box. But consider the differences: After the defeat of Saddam Hussein by the US military, the US had over 160,000 combat troops in the country. In the Green Zone, they built the largest US embassy in the world, and the number of US contractors of all types involved in the occupation of Iraq was incredible.

Consider the contrast with Libya now. There never was a US occupation of Libya. There are no US bases, in spite of predictions that AFRICOM would be relocated there, and there are no US soldiers in Libya beyond the usual embassy marines. While the CIA undoubtedly has a presence in Libya, there is no indication that it is as large as when they were running black sites with Mummar Qaddafi. The fire power the attackers in Benghazi directed at the US forces was overwhelming and sustained. The only reason more US forces weren't killed in the Benghazi attack is that there were so few US forces there.

And yet UNAC is raising in Libya the same demand that they raised in Iraq and Afghanistan, "US Out of Libya" as if by raising the same demand they can imply that the situations are parallel without proving their case with facts.

Given the lack of a substantial US presence in Libya, one can only wonder what the practical implications of this "US Out of Libya" are. Are they, for example, demanding that the US close it's embassy in Libya and remove all diplomatic personnel?

If that is the case, it looks like UNAC may be getting its way. From the Gulf Today we have this report

US pulls out staff from embassy in Libya May 12, 2013

TRIPOLI: The United States on Friday announced that they were withdrawing some diplomatic staff from Libya, amid security concerns over a recent flare-up in political unrest there.

Tensions have risen in Libya since ex-rebels besieged two ministries at the end of last month in a row over a law that would ban officials who served under slain ruler Muammar Qadhafi from holding office. “In light of the current unsettled conditions around major anti-government demonstrations in Tripoli, the under secretary for management has approved the ordered departure of non-emergency personnel from Libya,” said US State Department deputy spokesman Patrick Ventrell.

“A handful of our staff members have, indeed, departed Libya. Our embassy in Tripoli is still open and still functioning.”

Gunmen surrounded the Libyan foreign ministry on April 28 and the justice ministry two days later to demand the passing of a law excluding Qadhafi collaborators from office. More...

The US feels threatened because some of the revolutionaries are still holding on to their arms and are willing to brandish them whenever they think their revolution may be in danger, but these concerns that widespread violence was about to break out around this political struggle have proven to be over blown.

Libyans all over country came out in large numbers to demonstrate against the heavy handed tactics of these militias and they convinced them to withdraw this siege and now the ministries are back at work. As is often chanted at Occupy demonstrations in the US, "This is what democracy looks like!" From the Libya Herald we have this report:

Ministries back to work after sieges end By Ahmed Elumami.
Tripoli, 12 May 2013:
Staff at the Foreign and Justice Ministries went back to work today after almost a fortnight of being kept out of the buildings by armed militiamen. The latter had originally mounted the blockades in support of the Political Isolation Law.

The buildings were handed over this morning to a group comprising a number of Congress members and leaders of groups that had supported the militiamen. According to the spokesman of Supreme Security Committee, Murad Hamza, the group that “received” the Foreign Ministry included its Undersecretary, Abdul-Razaq Graid, two Congressmen and a members of the Political Isolation Law coordination group.

Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdulaziz and Justice Minister Salah Marghani resumed work following an agreement between Congress officials and the leaders of the gunmen had been reached, the spokesmen for the respective ministries told the Libya Herald.

The reason for the formal handover, according to the militiamen, was that they wanted to show that nothing had been damaged or stolen during the period they h[e]ld the offices. Officials confirmed that was the case.

“Nothing has been touched,” a member of staff at the foreign ministry this afternoon, noting that files and computers of had not been tampered with.

“We’ve started working normally,” he said. More...

The truth of the matter is that US President Barack Obama showed only slightly more interest in intervening in Libya than he has shown so far in intervening in Syria. The US had to be dragged into intervening in Libya by the other NATO allies and for the first time in NATO history, it was the European allies and not the US, that played the leading role in a NATO operation. It was French planes that made the first attacks, stopping Qaddafi's tanks just as they were entering Benghazi. If not for those French planes, Qaddafi would have done to Benghazi what Bashar al-Assad has done to Homs and many other Syria cities.

Obama was trying to get the "US Out of Libya" almost as soon he got in, which is why the Independent was running this story before the Libya air campaign was just two weeks old:

US to pull out of Libya air attacks Friday 01 April 2011
The announcement, in the hope that Nato partners can take up the slack, drew incredulous reactions.

The announcement drew incredulous reactions from some in Congress who wondered aloud why the Obama administration would bow out of a key element of the strategy for protecting Libyan civilians and crippling Muammar Gaddafi's army.

"Odd," "troubling" and "unnerving" were among critical comments by senators pressing for an explanation of the announcement by Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Mike Mullen that American combat missions will end on Saturday. More...

After NATO formally took over the air campaign over Libya, the US continued to fly the majority of the supply and refueling missions and even carried out another 60 strike sorties and 30 drone strikes as of 20 June 2011, but the majority of the strike sorties were done by the US European allies. While the US flew 25% of all sorties, they were heavily weighted towards support and refueling missions rather than strike sorties.

France did the most by flying 35% of the strike sorties. Britain was also a leader. Tiny Denmark "bombed approximately 17 percent of all targets in Libya and together with Norwegian flights have been the most efficient in proportion to the number of flights involved" according to Wikipedia. This is a reference to the fact that a great many US "strike sorties" never dropped any ordinance. According to Human Rights Watch this air campaign killed 72 civilians unlawfully.

The illusion that the Libyan Revolution was largely a US instigated "regime change" operation or even that the bombing of Libya was mainly a US affair is one that Leftist like those represented in UNAC must cling to because it serves their US centric narrative that the Libya conflict was basically a repeat of what happened in Iraq, but for them to still be raising the slogan "US Out of Libya" in 2013 only shows how far from reality these folks have wandered.

Click here for a list of my other diaries on Libya

Obama's "Red-Line" was nothing but a Green Light for Assad's Slaughter of 70,000

Remember when he made these bold statements?

We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.
...
We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons. That would change my calculations significantly.

Hours after Barack Obama showed up in the White House Press Briefing on August 19, 2012 to make his "red-line" warning, I said that Obama was also telling Assad he would not intervene in the Syrian civil war as long a Assad continued the slaughter his people with every other means at his disposal. I said that Barack Obama's "red-line" was, in effect, a green light to Assad's continued slaughter.

About 25,000 Syrians had been killed to that point, 70,000 Syrians have died in this carnage since. Over a thousand where just slaughtered between May 2 -6 in Banias where Assad has been carrying out ethnic cleansing. Most were women and children, many were slaughtered with knives.

A short video about the massacre in Banias

غياب الله Absence of God from abou naddara on Vimeo.

It now appears that there never was any real upside to Obama's "red-line" statement, only the unspoken green light aspects had any real substance. True to his word, Obama didn't intervene as Assad carried out an air war against his own people. Obama didn't intervene as he dropped cluster bombs, barrel bombs and incendiaries on civilian neighborhoods. Obama didn't intervene as he continued to use his artillery to pound some of the oldest cities on Earth into dust. He didn't intervene when HRW reported that rape was being widely used by the regime as a weapon of war. He didn't intervene as Assad sent helicopter gunships to murder people queuing up in bread-lines. He didn't intervene as he sent his shabiha thugs into community after community to commit mass murder. He didn't intervene as Assad proceeded to destroy his own country and as 5,000 Syrians a day began fleeing across the borders to escape the carnage.

For the past seven months, it is only the "green light" aspects of Obama's proclamation that has rang true. Now that Assad is using chemical weapons, it has been revealed that his "red-line" warning was never anything but a bluff.

The truth has been revealed by the facts on the ground: Obama's "red-line" was never anything but a green light to Assad's continued slaughter.

In spite of the fact that UN investigator Carla Del Ponte rushed to Assad's aid with her unsupported accusation that Assad's opposition had used sarin gas, a mountain of evidence is saying the it is the Assad regime that has been using chemical weapons to kill Syrians.

There are two of Assad defected generals that have testified they were ordered to use chemical weapons. There is the testimony of victims and medical personnel with regards to at least five attacks. There are soil samples smuggled out of Syria by Britain's MI6 that tested positive for sarin. And now the PM of Turkey is saying they have proof that Assad has made chemical attacks on his opposition:

From France 24 we have this report:

Turkish PM says Syria used chemical weapons 10 May 2013 - 13H52

AFP - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has told an American television channel he believes Syria has used chemical weapons, crossing a "red line" set out by US President Barack Obama.

"It is clear the regime has used chemical weapons and missiles," Erdogan told NBC News on Thursday, without providing details on when or where they were used.

"It has been passed (a) long time ago," Erdogan said of Obama's "red line," calling for stronger US action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"We want the United States to assume more responsibilities and take further steps. And what sort of steps they will take, we are going to talk about this," said Erdogan, who will meet Obama on May 16.

Erdogan said Syrian patients showing signs of chemical attacks had been brought to hospitals across the border in Turkey, and that "remainders of missiles" that he believes were used in such attacks have been found. More...

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Socialist Alternative on Leftist Assad backers and Chicago Syrians Protest Banias Massacre

On May 2-6, Assad forces killed 1500+ people, including women, children in #Banyas, #Syria. Help us prevent #GenocideInSyria. RT

— Syria Campaigns (@SyriaCampaigns) May 9, 2013

This blog post is simply to relay to important pieces that came across my desktop today. This first one is from the Australian group Socialist Alternative:

Assad’s backers on the left are ignoring reality5 May 2013
Michael Karadjis
"Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of," claimed a recent New York Times article.

For those on the left convinced that the US is hell-bent on backing the Syrian rebellion against the regime of Bashar Assad, or who claim the US is backing these "Islamist" forces, or even that the whole Syrian rebellion is a "US war on Syria", this statement was greeted as a sign that "even the US" is coming to understand how bad the rebels "that it supports" are.

A more obvious explanation is that the NYT, which tends to closely reflect US ruling class thinking, is making this ridiculous, sweeping and clearly false statement precisely to justify the US policy, consistent over the last two years, of not supporting the Syrian uprising.

But isn’t the US is sending arms to the Syrian rebellion? Simply making that statement does not prove that it's true. CBS reported on 1 May, "The first shipment of US aid to the armed Syrian rebels was being delivered Tuesday to the opposition Supreme Military Council (SMC). It includes $8 million in medical supplies and ready-to-eat military food rations."

Note that: After nearly two-and-a-half years of the Syrian uprising, about two-thirds of that time in the form of armed rebellion, the first US shipment of aid to the rebels occurred in May 2013 in the form of "medical equipment and food rations". I guess the medical equipment and food rations have been launching this two-year "US war on Syria" retrospectively.

In reality, what we see most of the time is the US expressing extreme reservations about any kind of intervention in the Syrian civil war. In February, the US authorised a $60 million package for "non-lethal aid" for the SMC, once it had decided that the SMC leadership could be controlled and could control the flow of whatever equipment it got. Of that $60 million, it is only this $8 million in food and medicines that has yet seen the light of day.

More recently, there were hints that the package could include things like body armour and night-vision goggles. On 1 May, the Washington Post reported that US was "moving toward the shipment of arms" at some unspecified time in the next few months". But [officials] emphasised that they are still pursuing political negotiation," with Obama pursuing further talks with Russia to try to find agreement.

The US government stresses that its lack of material support for the rebels is due to US hostility to the growing "Islamist" part of the rebellion. Some of the Islamists are supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, others are not (e.g. the powerful Al-Nusra militia linked to Al-Qaida). The Islamist forces are generally hostile to US imperialism and very hostile to Israel, which has in stronger terms expressed opposition to these forces coming anywhere near power in Syria.

The idea that the US wants to support these Islamists but is pretending not to is nothing but a fantasy indulged in by parts of the left who have decided to throw their lot in with the reactionary dictatorship of Assad. Since the Islamists are doing a significant amount of the fighting, and the extreme fringe (e.g.
Al-Nusra) has taken responsibility for the most "war-like" actions (e.g. terrorist bombings), the best way to claim the uprising is a "US war on Syria" is to make the unlikely claim that the US is supporting and arming these Islamists, despite the US and other imperialist governments stressing nearly every day that these Islamists are the primary reason they are not supporting and arming the uprising.

Indeed, with all the hoo-ha about the Syrian military allegedly using chemical weapons, and leftist claims that this was the parallel of the "WMD" excuse to invade Iraq, one might have expected the US to order some kind of "strong" action. In reality, Obama's reaction was to redefine the "red line" of greater US involvement in Syria from any use of chemical weapons to any "systematic use". In sharp contrast to the lies about Iraqi WMD peddled in order to justify an invasion, in this case Obama has reacted to allegations of use of chemical weapons by stressing that the evidence "was still preliminary" and thus he was in no rush to intervene: " If we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, we can find ourselves in a position where we can't mobilise the international community…” Most analysis concludes the US is very unlikely to change course. Phil Stewart and Peter Apps, writing for Reuters, noted

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel [has] stressed that no international or regional consensus on supporting armed intervention now exists… NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has ruled out Western military intervention and US Admiral James Stavridis, NATO's supreme allied commander, cautioned last month that the alliance would need agreement in the region and among NATO members as well as a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Likewise, the till-now more hawkish British government is now, according to Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz,

exercising more caution in its attempts to arm the rebels fighting the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, following intelligence reports and warnings by other governments that the major part of the rebel movement has been taken over by Jihadist groups with links to Al-Qaida.

There are of course the much more hawkish calls from Republicans such as John McCain and Lindsay Graham for US air strikes on Syria's chemical weapons sites. Notably, McCain was not concerned about whether Assad's forces had used chemical weapons or not – even if they hadn't, he said, the US should still "use Patriot [missile] batteries and cruise missiles" and ready an "international force" to enter Syria to secure stocks of chemical weapons.

Clearly McCain is a more aggressive imperialist than Obama. Yet his testimony is still not that useful for Assad fans as an argument. His hawkishness stems from a desire to not see chemical weapons fall into the hands of the Islamist opposition.

According to Stewart and Apps, "possible military choices range from limited one-off missile strikes from ships to bolder operations like carving out no-fly safe zones". Alternatively the US could create "humanitarian safe areas that would also be no-fly zones off limits to the Syrian air force".

However, as Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution warned: "Once you set up a military no-fly zone or safe zone, you're on a slippery slope, mission creep and before you know it, you have boots on the ground."

Israel

Many of the assertions about US aid to the Syrian uprising are nothing but reiterations of the well-known fact that the reactionary Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been providing a moderate stream of arms to specific rebel groups. The fact that they are pro-US is twisted in discussion to mean they are mere puppets of the US, as if they cannot have their own policies.

In fact, these two states are engaged in an aggressive regional "sub-imperialist" project, with the dual aims of rivaling Iranian influence in the region and turning the democratic impulse of the Arab Spring, including its Syrian chapter, into a sectarian war.

The US is very wary of this strategy, principally because the only available shock troops are "jihadists" who are more anti-US and especially anti-Israel than Iran, and much more so than the Assad regime, which does not have an "anti-imperialist" history at all.

The argument that the US "must" be behind the anti-Assad rebellion because some of its Arab allies are behind parts of it, is even more strange given the key US ally in the region, Israel, remains steadfastly opposed to the Saudi-led project. Israel views the victory of a Syrian uprising with a strong Islamist component as a nightmare scenario.

Israel carried out one airstrike in January, and there are reports that a two more strikes have been carried out over the last few days. In these cases, the aim has clearly been to prevent the delivery of arms (apparently long-range missiles) to Hezbollah in Lebanon. But while Israel wants to weaken the Assad regime in order to disrupt the passage of arms between Iran and Hezbollah via Syria, it is also aware that the Syrian government has both kept the border with the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan completely quiet for 40 years, and has continually waged war on the Palestinians whenever they got too strong.

Speaking to CBS news in the US, Yuval Steinitz, Israeli Minister of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs, explained that the "only scenario" for Israeli military action in Syria would be "to prevent the delivering of arms, chemical weapons and other kinds of weapons into the hands of terrorists”.
“Steinitz emphasised,” The report said, “that Israel was not urging the US to take any military action ‘whatsoever’ in Syria at this stage”.

For Israel, these “terrorists” mean both Hezbollah in Lebanon (which is currently allied to Assad) and the Sunni Islamist forces fighting to topple Assad. In an interview with BBC TV in late April, Netanyahu called the Syrian rebel groups among "the worst Islamist radicals in the world. So obviously we are concerned that weapons that are ground-breaking, that can change the balance of power in the Middle East, would fall into the hands of these terrorists," he said.

According to Aaron Heller, writing in The Times of Israel, Israel is also worried “that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary" than Assad – specifically in relation to the Golan Heights. "The military predicts all that (the 40-year peaceful border) will soon change as it prepares for the worst." The region near the occupied Golan has become "a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests," said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general, claiming Syria has now become "a big threat to Israel" over the last two years. The military's deployment on the Golan is its most robust since 1973, "and its most obvious manifestation is the brand new border fence, 6 meters (20 feet) tall, topped with barbed wire and bristling with sophisticated anti-infiltration devices".

Those raising false "anti-imperialist" flags to justify their support for a capitalist regime involved in horrifying repression of its people are ignoring reality. Israel, the key imperialist asset in the region, very clearly sees the Syrian rebellion as a far worse alternative to the Assad regime. Assad’s Western defenders either don’t mention Israel at all when they list the countries they think are waging "war on Syria" (and hope no-one notices the omission); or, even worse, they add Israel to their list despite the evidence (and hope no-one notices).

From PRWeb we have this report of a demonstration in Chicago in support of the Syria Revolution:

Chicago Syrians Host ‘Die-In’ to Protest Banyas MassacreSyrian American Council to Launch Campaign to Prevent #GenocideInSyria.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) May 08, 2013

About two dozen Syrian-American activists gathered on Sunday in downtown Chicago to stage a “die-in” to protest the Assad regime’s large scale massacres on Friday in the coastal town of Banyas in northwestern Syria. The massacre by the Assad regime’s troops and militias targeted Sunni neighborhoods and villages, killing over 100 people including women and children, according to reports cited by the State Department.

“We felt the need to raise awareness about potential genocide taking place in Syria,” said Kenan Rahmani, the ‘die-in’ organizer and board member of the Syrian American Council, the nation’s largest Syrian American advocacy group. “Entire families were executed by Assad forces in Banyas, in an area where there were no rebel fighters, simply because they were Sunni Muslims living peacefully in a predominantly Alawite governorate. According to eyewitnesses we are in contact with, the actual death toll is over 1400, with dozens of women and children left in the streets after being stabbed, raped, and burned.”

Rahmani, a resident of Indiana, helped organize the event, and drove to Chicago to join other activists in solidarity with the Syrian victims. Using red paint and makeup, the activists created a shocking scene, which caused hundreds of passerby pedestrians and cars to stop, take pictures, and ask about Syria. Similar ‘die-ins’ are being planned nationally following the success of this event.

“Ethnic cleansing is taking place in Syria, and the U.S. and other world powers have the responsibility to protect the civilians from the Assad regime,” said Rahmani.

The U.S. Department of State issued a statement on Friday condemning the massacres and calling for those responsible within the Assad regime to be held accountable.

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

How Obama helps Assad: US tried to start war between FSA & al Nusra Front

"I'm not going to lie to you. We'd prefer you fight Al Nusra now, and then fight Assad's army. You should kill these Nusra people. We'll do it if you don't"
-----CIA to Free Syrian Army

Ever since the Arab Spring in Syria turned violent, the main line in the US Left has been that a US led attempt at "regime change" has been behind the carnage and they have been largely silent while the Assad regime proceeded to slaughter over 90,000 Syrians. Many prominent Left voices, such as Counterpunch have even gone so far as to blame these massacres on Obama and a number or important antiwar organizations such as ANSWER and IAC have actually organized "Hands off Syria" protests in support of the Assad regime. These activities reveal the complete bankruptcy of the US Left like nothing else in its history.

Even before I published Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar Assad, I have been saying that US imperialism wanted to maintain the Assad regime and, far from promoting "regime change", was actually working to undermine the Syrian Revolution. Anyone who truly understands and opposes US imperialism would not be surprised by this and yet I was banned at the Daily Kos, where I had blogged for seven years, because they objected to this "conspiracy theory."

Well, facts are stubborn things, and the facts keep piling up that the Obama administration has been playing "good cop" to Russian Putin's 'bad cop' all along and carrying out a plan to destroy the Syrian Revolution while the "anti-interventionist" anti-war movement has provided him with Left cover by demanding that the imperialist do what they planned to do all along. Today, The National has given us some more facts that clearly indicate which side the US government really is on in this fight:

America's hidden agenda in Syria's warPhil Sands
May 9, 2013
It was some six months ago that Syrian rebel commanders met US intelligence officers in Jordan to discuss the status of the war and, the rebels hoped, to secure supplies of the sophisticated weapons they need to overthrow President Bashar Al Assad.

But according to one of the commanders present at the meeting, the Americans were more interested in talking about Jabhat Al Nusra, the Al Qaeda-affiliated group waging war on the Syrian regime than they were in helping the rebels advance on Damascus.

The commander - a moderate Sunni and an influential rebel leader from Damascus who said he has met intelligence operatives from Western and Arab states - said the US officials were especially keen to obtain information about the identities of Al Nusra insurgents and the locations of their bases.

Then, by the rebel commander's account, the discussion took an unexpected turn.
The Americans began discussing the possibility of drone strikes on Al Nusra camps inside Syria and tried to enlist the rebels to fight their fellow insurgents.

"The US intelligence officer said, 'We can train 30 of your fighters a month, and we want you to fight Al Nusra'," the rebel commander recalled.

Opposition forces should be uniting against Mr Al Assad's more powerful and better-equipped army, not waging war among themselves, the rebel commander replied. The response from a senior US intelligence officer was blunt.

"I'm not going to lie to you. We'd prefer you fight Al Nusra now, and then fight Assad's army. You should kill these Nusra people. We'll do it if you don't," the rebel leader quoted the officer as saying.

What the commander says transpired in Jordan illustrates a dilemma that has preoccupied, even paralysed, Syria's opposition and their international supporters - how to deal with the expanding role of Islamic extremists in the anti-Assad insurgency.

Other meetings with Western and Arab intelligence services have shown a similar obsession with Al Nusra, the commander said.

"All anyone wants is hard information about Al Nusra, it seems to be all they are really interested in. It's the most valuable commodity you can have when dealing with these intelligence agencies," he said.
...
Those within the moderate opposition advocating dialogue with Al Nusra warn that merely dismissing all of its fighters as hard-core radicals is a dangerous oversimplification.

It also risks alienating the many ordinary Syrians in rebel-held areas who have come to admire the group, with its reputation of honesty, discipline and provision of humanitarian supplies to those in need.

"There are very localised differences between rebel groups, and Al Nusra is no exception. Some are more extreme than others, and it's not right or useful just to put them all together as being Al Qaeda," said a moderate, Western-educated pro-democracy activist who has been involved in meetings with Nusra fighters in northern Syria.

Syria's political future was discussed at the meetings, and Nusra members were open to debate and discussion, and had shown interest in proposals about democracy and safeguarding Syria's minority communities, activists said.

"When you actually sit down with them [Al Nusra], you realise they are not what you thought and they also have to rethink their own preconceptions. We had a meeting and it was very good and these young fighters were surprised because they thought all people who supported democracy were atheists," the activist said. "For those reasons, it's important to keep a dialogue going."

Another Assad opponent, a secular Syrian involved in organising armed groups in Damascus, also warned against ignoring the differences within Al Nusra.

Comparing the situation in Syria to that in Afghanistan, he said the reach of Al Qaeda had always been held in check because they were foreigners not locals. The Americans, he said, made a mistake by waging war on the Taliban, with whom the Afghan authorities are now trying to negotiate.

"I am worried about Islamic extremism, but I think we need to be smart in how we handle it. Otherwise we'll make matters worse, not better," he said. "In the end this should be a matter for Syrians to resolve, it's not for the West to tell us who are terrorists and who are not."

The rebel commander who described meeting US intelligence officers in Jordan said he had refused to give them any information about Al Nusra.

Although not a supporter of Al Qaeda's ideology, he said the Americans were being too clumsy and would only undermine the revolt against Mr Al Assad.

"There are three strands of Al Nusra - the minority are serious Al Qaeda people, some are just in for the glamour of fighting jihad and the majority are ordinary Syrians who just want to save their country," he said.
Since that meeting the rebel commander has not bothered to talk to Western or Arab intelligence agencies, despite what he described as frequent invitations for more talks. Rather than wait for foreign governments to supply weapons, his group has imported their own advanced explosives and begun manufacturing their own munitions.

"They [foreign governments] are not fighting for the same things as us," he said. "Syrians are fighting for our freedom, while they just want us to bleed to death fighting each other." More...

In its two year effort to put down its people's demand for democracy, the Assad regime has shelled resistive communities into the dust with large range artillery and tank fire. I has widely used rape as a weapon of war. It has dropped cluster bombs, barrel bombs and incendiaries on neighborhoods. It has sent in shahiba thugs in to slit throats and burn bodies but the al-Nusra Front, which has done none of this, and yet the Obama administration has branded the al-Nusra Front as terrorist.

The Lebanese group, Hezbullah, has been doing much of Assad's dirty work lately. For example. in Banias last week they slaughtered hundreds of civilians and burned their bodies, killing children by picking them up by their hair and slitting their throats. Next...

Hezbullah is also on Obama's terrorist hit list and has been there much longer than al Nusra Front, and yet it is the al Nusra Front which, whatever their plan for the future are being very effective against Assad, and not Hezbullah that is being targeted by the Obama administration.

Every US citizen should be ashame of the role the US is playing in this slaughter.

Dang, #US kudos from #Nasrallah: Shameful to see US work in #Syria’s best interest, while #Arabs sit by & permit destruction of Syria.

— Gabriel Perlman (@GabrielPerlman) May 9, 2013

---

Obama, Aren't these the real terrorists in Syria:

#Syria ;18+ VERY GRAPHIC #Assad soldiers cut the genital of this man and put a stick in the troath of 1 still alive youtu.be/oRvN3v01oiA

— tintin (@tintin1957) May 9, 2013

Now even the BBC is promoting Assad's counter-revolutionary views on the Syrian Revolution. In spite of all the flowery word of support from the West, it is becoming increasingly clear to anyone with eyes who wants to see the truth, that NATO is really backing Assad. Alex Rowell of NOW has provided up with an excellence takedown of the latest piece of trash from the BBC:

BBC peddles the Assad lineAlex Rowell
May 9, 2013
As much as people like As’ad AbuKhalil want (and need) to believe that “Western media” are leagued in a barely-concealed conspiracy to indoctrinate the masses with anti-Assad propaganda, to any neutral observer it’s become increasingly apparent that the “line,” to the extent that there ever was one, is drifting markedly in the opposite direction.

Today’s diatribe in the BBC is a sterling example. Paul Danahar is a journalist I have often read and admired. During Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza last November, he was on the ground, courageously challenging the government line, exposing injustice and generally, as they say, ‘speaking truth to power.’

In his dispatch from Damascus today, however, Danahar has taken something of a reverse approach. When I read via Twitter yesterday of the “lots of meetings with lots of government officials in Damascus” he had lined up for the day, I trusted he would proceed with the hard-nosed skepticism expected of a BBC Middle East bureau chief. Instead, the muck flung at the wall by his companions seems largely to have stayed in place, and congealed.

The alarm bell first rings when he refers sarcastically to those who “[try] to boil it down to good versus evil: the FSA versus President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.” To imagine there is any moral difference between the rebels and the regime, you see, is deeply mistaken. “The situation in Syria,” he explains, is far too “complicated” for such infantile reductions.

So what’s really going on? Who’s truly responsible for the more than 70,000 killed? Well, “the regime has played its part,” he concedes. But no less dangerous; indeed the true cause of the enduring misery; is the “meddling” of Saudi Arabia and Qatar – two “sorely undemocratic states […] the cavalry from the very un-free Gulf […] not champions of democracy either at home or abroad.”

Of course! What fools we were to think that regime air strikes, SCUD missiles, cluster bombs, helicopters, tank units, death squads, and maybe now even chemical weapons were primarily to blame for the conflict being so damned “intractable.” All this time, it was bastard “Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia [which] hates Shiite Iran [and] is using the war in Syria to try and weaken it.”

There’s no need to mention, evidently, that Iran also “hates” Saudi Arabia, and has sent untold numbers of its own military personnel to Syria to optimize the regime’s killing machine. And why bring up Hezbollah, the foreign Islamist militia for whose military assistance Assad expressed his “great gratitude” today? Surely no reader needs to know that Russia, which maintains an entire naval base in the country, has supplied the regime with over a billion dollars’ worth of arms since the uprising began? And, really, who cares about the massacre of entire families, including toddlers, in al-Bayda and Baniyas last week when a Salafist once told some Christian women to cover their hair?

It’s one thing to quote the claims of a blood-drenched dictatorship that SCUD-missiles its own people, but quite another to actually believe them. Danahar’s extraordinary credulity in the face of one of the most reprehensible regimes in modern Arab history does the BBC’s readers an enormous disservice. Much more importantly, though, it insults the memories of that regime’s literally innumerable innocent victims, and shields the killers of those continuing to perish at this very moment.

Fortunately there are still Leftist in the world who support the Syrian Revolution. I am one of them. Here are some more in Argentina:

May 8th Buenos Aires Argentina - Solidarity with #Syria Revolution from Socialist Left and uit-ci.org twitter.com/elhilorojo/sta…

— elhilorojo (@elhilorojo) May 9, 2013

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

The Assad Regime Sniper, the Old Man and the Hero

Some on the Left say there is no good side in the civil war in Syria. They see regime thugs on one side and Islamist terrorist on the other side.

That is just so much propaganda. That's not how it is.

This is how it is [Thanks to Basel Watfa ‏for the link to the video] :

A Syrian hero saved an old man life wounded by sniper in Aleppo | 8 May 2013


The old man in the middle of the street has been wounded and still can be targeted by Assad's snipers. They could easily finish him off at any time but they want to use him as bait for other civilians.

The trick for the people is to get the old man to safety without anyone else gets shot. After they try it with ropes, one hero runs out into the street to bring the old man to safety. That's when the sniper opens up on them. You'll have to watch the video to see how things turn out.

This is the type of depraved regime the Syria people are dealing with. Now some on the left, like Carl Davidson, would argue that its wrong to characterize this as a struggle between the regime and the people. He would point out that the sniper is people too, to which I respond, "Those aren't what I call people."


Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria