All playing out according to schedule - part 1
The White House announced earlier this week that an intelligence report would be released before any military action is taken. It was released today; and John Kerry gave us a little pep talk - differentiating "us" from "them".
Kerry calls attack against Syrian civilians 'crime against humanity' (NBC News; by F. Brinley Bruton and Erin McClam, August 30, 2013):
Kerry Makes Case That Syria Used Chemical Weapons (NYT; by Michael D. Shear, August 30, 2013):Secretary of State John Kerry made a forceful moral case Friday for the United States to punish Syria for using chemical weapons — painting a ghastly portrait of twitching bodies, victims foaming at the mouth and more than 400 children killed.
He called Syrian leader Bashar Assad “a thug and a murderer” and pledged, to a country weary after more than a decade of war in the Middle East, that the American response would not involve troops on the ground and would not be open-ended. ...
John Kerry makes forceful case for U.S. military intervention in Syria (WP; by Anthony Faiola, August 30, 2013):Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Friday there was “clear” and “compelling” evidence that the government of President Bashar al-Assad used poison gas against its citizens, as the Obama administration released an unclassified intelligence report on the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
“Read for yourselves the evidence from thousands of sources,” Mr. Kerry said in aggressively laying out the administration’s case for strikes on Syria. “This is the indiscriminate, inconceivable horror of chemical weapons. This is what Assad did to his own people.”
Mr. Kerry said that more than 1,400 people were killed in the chemical attack, including more than 400 children.
A four-page intelligence summary released by the White House said the government had concluded with “high confidence” that the Assad government had “carried out a chemical weapons attack” outside Damascus, based on human sources as well as communications intercepts. The suggestion that the opposition might have been responsible “is highly unlikely,” the assessment said.
Mr. Kerry said the administration had “high confidence” in the intelligence, much of which was being released to the public as he spoke. But he vowed that the government had carefully reviewed the evidence to avoid the kind of intelligence failures that preceded the Iraq war.
Thus, an explicit recitation of "...the horror, the horror ...", because that is, indeed, the Obama administration's strongest point of argument.Secretary of State John F. Kerry made a forceful case Friday for U.S. military intervention in Syria, saying that U.S. intelligence has information pinning responsibility for last week’s chemical weapons attack squarely on the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
In a speech at the State Department, Kerry said U.S. intelligence has “high confidence” that the Assad government was responsible for the attack based partly on knowledge of regime officials’ conversations about the attack and the tracking of movements of regime personnel before and after the strike.
Kerry said that for three days before the Aug. 21 attack, the Syrian government’s chemical weapons personnel “were in the area, making preparations” for the strike. He also said that “regime elements were told to prepare for the attack by putting on gas masks” and taking other precautions. And he said U.S. intelligence knows that the rockets containing the poison gas were launched only from “regime-controlled areas.”
The attack killed 1,429 Syrians, including 426 children, Kerry said.
Also, we now seem to have a revitalized French Connection.
Kerry also noted that France is our oldest ally - vive le ancien regime ! .... Oh, what a difference a decade makes ....Kerry spoke after French President Francois Hollande said Friday that his country is prepared to act in Syria despite Britain’s surprise rejection of military action, potentially making a nation that turned its back on Washington during the war in Iraq the primary U.S. ally in a possible strike against Syrian forces.
...
Hollande’s apparent willingness to take action in Syria stems, analysts say, from a number of variables. France is the former colonial power in Syria. The country, in military missions in Mali and Libya in recent years, has been reasserting its military might.
In addition, because the country sat out the war in Iraq, French politicians are not carrying the same painful baggage as those in Britain, whose troops joined the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq based on false intelligence that dictator Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction.
“There is no feeling here that ‘we are at it again’ or that ‘our government is lying to us,’ ” said Dominique Moisi, senior adviser at the French Institute for International Relations in Paris. “We are in a better position to have public opinion favoring intervention in Syria.”
The intelligence report (presumably the "1000s of sources" were redacted to protect sources and methods) is here: Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013 (The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, August 30, 2013); and Syria: Damascus Areas of Influence and Areas Reportedly Affected by 21 August Chemical Attack (1 page map).
- to be cont. -
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