News

Hagel, Livni and Free Syrian Army commanders reported to gather in D.C. at behest of Israel lobby

By 21

The U.S. is evidently closely coordinating its policy toward the Syrian civil war with Israel.

On May 9, for instance, the Israel lobby group WINEP will hold an annual symposium in Washington. Reports have it here and here that speakers include Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, two commanders of the Free Syrian Army, and Tzipi Livni, an architect of the 2008-09 assault on Gaza. (The WINEP description of its conference appears to have been scrubbed of the information.) 

The 2013′ SOREF Symposium will feature many Senior US, Israeli civilian & defense officials, along with representatives of the FSA, namely (in the statement) ‘Colonel Abdul Hamid Zakaria, the commander & spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, and Colonel Abdul-Jabbar Aqidi commander and head of the Military Revolutionary Council in Aleppo. They will attend a special session on “The situation in Syria and the war against the regime of (President Bashar) Assad,”. This session will be off-the record & not for publication.Speaking at the symposium will be U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel & … Israeli Minister Tzipi Livni

WINEP is of course the offspring of the Israel lobby group AIPAC.

More coordination: Here was the New York Times lead on Friday about Israel’s latest round of Syrian strikes:

Israel aircraft bombed a target in Syria overnight Thursday, an Obama administration official said Friday night, as United States officials said they were considering military options, including carrying out their own airstrikes. 

Does anyone think that intimately coordinating American policy on Syria with Israel is going to build the credibility of whatever regime replaces Assad? (H/t Annie Robbins and Ira Glunts).

Related Posts

21 Comments
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

It does not matter in a way; the whole point is to cement US-Israeli interests. The Cable TV news shows like MSNBC on the left, and Fox News on the right, are speaking with one voice to Dick and Jane now, as I type. The message is clear: There’s no sky between the US and Israel’s best interests. PNAC is alive, well, and thriving, even though the neocons are not officially in the liberal Obama regime–they are in fact. The difference is that the right is straightforward on its rubber-stamping of Israel, in this latest case, Israeli bombing Syria regime targets while it is weak, fighting a civil war, while the Obama regime, and the likes of MSNBC, use more coded language, an abstract wordy version of shedding tears while shooting–at anyone, in this case, Assad’s regime, as a means to support Israel’s proxy war against Iran. PNAC is alive and well, with liberal Democrats now on board too.

0
0

speaking of Hagel, Livni and Free Syrian Army…specifically the power behind the FSA, which is not a lot, it should go without saying at this juncture. a week ago moa published this:

(b’s bold)

NYT Starts Telling The Truth About Syria

After more than two years of obfuscating the obvious the New York Times finally decided to write something truthful about the Syrian insurgency:

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.
…
The Islamist character of the opposition reflects the main constituency of the rebellion, which has been led since its start by Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, mostly in conservative, marginalized areas.

From the very start in Daraa the violent protests started at mosques. In late March 2011 a weapon cache was found inside the Omari mosque in Daraa. All of the “battalions” founded by the various insurgent groups were named after venerated Sunni figures or themes. It was therefore absolutely clear that this was a sectarian insurgency, with foreign support, from the very beginning.

The U.S., as the NYT, so far promoted this sectarian monster as some kind of civil rights movement. As the NYT now removed that mask (likely due to some White House proding), how long will it take until it helps to kill it off?

so the cat’s out of the bag when the nyt writes “Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of. “

0
0
View Replies (4)

Its amazing to me that all these PNAC adherents want to execute on their plan no matter the consequences. They don’t realize that they have not endeared themselves to the masses after supporting these dictators for so long and replacing secularists with Islamist will not turn out well for anyone. I cant wait for McCain and Netanyahu and Obama to start supporting islamists in Bahrain Saudi and Jordan next.

0
0

RE: “Does anyone think that intimately coordinating American policy on Syria with Israel is going to build the credibility of whatever regime replaces Assad?” ~ Weiss

MY COMMENT: Building the credibility of whatever regime replaces Assad is just a sales pitch for U.S. military intervention (much like WMDs in Iraq was). It’s not really anything the advocates for intervention really care that much about. Mostly what they really care about is “carrying water” for* Israel.

* REGARDING “CARRYING WATER”, THIS IS FROM word-detective.com:

[EXCERPTS] ● Somebody call the ASPCA.

Dear Word Detective: I have been seeing the phrase “to carry water” on a large number of mostly political weblogs, generally used in a pejorative sense to imply that the person referred to is a lackey or toady to a bad person or for an unrighteous cause . . .

Good question. . . “To carry someone’s water” does indeed mean to occupy a subservient position, to do the bidding, the menial tasks, and frequently the dirty work, of a more powerful person, and is most often used in a political context. A junior member of Congress, for instance, who calls a press conference to vigorously denounce criticisms of party elders might be said to be “carrying water” for those criticized. The implication of “carrying someone’s water” is that the underling is acting not on personal initiative but at the behest, either explicit or perceived, of more powerful figures. To describe a person as “carrying water for” someone else is pejorative and a subjective judgment, implying that the person is acting only as a proxy for a more important person, so one person’s “water carrier” may well be another’s “loyal ally.”

“To carry someone’s water” seems to have appeared in the late 1970s in the figurative sense in which it is now most often used, and almost certainly sprang from sports, where the position of “water boy,” charged with catering to the players’ comfort (including supplying them with water and the like), is the lowest rung in the team hierarchy. . .

SOURCE – http://www.word-detective.com/072104.html

0
0

A good analysis of current events in Syria from “The Real News” network http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cnpS4shHVFk

“US Syria Policy Promotes Endless Civil War”

Omar Dahi: Daniel Pipes, neo-con and ultra Zionist, spells out US policy towards Syria – let both sides destroy each other

As for any of these people in the Free Syrian Army that Western or Zionist groups meet with, I would think they are pretty much just Syrian versions of Ahmed Chalabi pre-2003. As for who holds actual sway on the ground in Syria among the rebels themselves, the strongest and most effective fighting force by far is the group known as Jabhat Al-Nusra (usually given in English as the Al-Nusra Front) which is known to be significantly linked operationally to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) aka Al-Qaeda in Iraq and to have officially “signed up” as an Al-Qaeda affiliate with a pledge of loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri.

0
0