Rebels Without a Leader Show Limit to U.S. Role in Syria War

By Donna Abu-Nasr and Alaa Shahine - Aug 28, 2013

Even Mustapha al-Sheikh, among the first senior officers to defect from the Syrian army, says the rebels he joined are too divided to gain much from a possible Western military attack against President Bashar al-Assad.

“The strength of the regime comes from the weakness of the opposition,” al-Sheikh, who was a brigadier-general in Assad’s army, said in a phone interview yesterday from an undisclosed location in Syria.

Because of those divisions, as the U.S. and its allies consider military action against Assad, they are struggling to identify potential successors to the Syrian leader should his regime collapse. More than two years into the conflict, hundreds of militias fighting Assad aren’t unified under a national command and don’t report to opposition politicians in exile, who have been cultivated by the West. Some of them are radical Islamist groups allied with al-Qaeda.

That has constrained U.S. efforts to provide support for the rebels. It’s also likely to limit the scope of any U.S.-led strikes to punish Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons, according to al-Sheikh and defense analysts in Europe and the Middle East.

“We don’t have an opposition that I think we should be putting in power,” said Col. Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, speaking by phone from London. “The opposition is dominated by al-Qaeda and other extremists, so it’s going to be bad, possibly worse than Assad himself.”

‘Face-Saving Move’

Al-Sheikh said he expects any military strikes now to be no more than a “face-saving move for Western countries,” because “a sudden change of regime will create a political vacuum that both the West and Arabs fear.” U.S. and British officials have said the possible attack won’t aim to topple the government.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-27/rebels-without-a-leader-show-limit-to-u-s-role-in-syria-war.html

Gasoline Gains as Looming Syria Strike Sends Crude Above $112

Source: Bloomberg

Gasoline jumped to a five-week high, following crude’s rally, amid concern that any U.S. military strikes against Syria will lead to a widespread Middle East conflict and oil supply disruptions.

Futures rose as much as 2.3 percent. West Texas Intermediate crude surged to the highest level since May 2011. U.S. officials aren’t limited to a one-day operation, an administration official said as the U.K. drafted a United Nations resolution to condemn last week’s suspected chemical attack in Syria. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said yesterday “we have the means to defend ourselves, and we will surprise people with them.”

“We’re off the highs, but until we have a clear feeling on how the aftermath of this potential strike in Syria will go, you can’t afford to be short,” said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. “All the major oil producers are on opposite sides of the conflict.”

Gasoline for September delivery rose 3.89 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $3.073 a gallon at 9:46 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices touched $3.1033, the highest intraday price since July 22. Trading volume was 10 percent above the 100-day average.

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Pending Home Sales Fall 1.3% in July as Higher Rates Slow Demand

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Contracts to purchase previously owned homes declined in July, as buyers feeling the impact of rising interest rates retreated from the housing market.

The National Association of Realtors on Wednesday said its Pending Home Sales Index fell 1.3% to 109.5 in July from 110.9 in June, although the index was 6.7 % above July 2012.

Economists were expecting pending home sales to fall 1%.

Pending home sales are a leading indicator of existing-home sales activity, as it measures contracts signed during the month. A sale is usually closed within one or two months from the time the contract is signed.

Recent data suggests thatbuyer demand is slowing down as the rapid rise in interest rates and higher home prices have dented affordability. Buyers are also weary from the bidding wars that have been prevailing due to an acute shortage of inventory.

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http://www.thestreet.com/story/12020898/1/pending-home-sales-fell-13-in-july-as-higher-rates-slowed-demand.html

U.S. Sees Multiday Syria Strikes as U.K. Goes to UN

By Leon Mangasarian, Dana El Baltaji and Robert Hutton - Aug 28, 2013

U.S. officials planning potential military strikes on Syria aren’t limited to a one-day operation, an administration official said, as the UN Security Council’s permanent members considered a resolution condemning last week’s suspected chemical attack.

The U.S. and its allies are still working to define goals for a military strike on Syria, said the official, who asked not to be identified discussing war-planning efforts. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said today the United Nations resolution offered by his country would authorize action to protect civilians in Syria.

U.S. and British officials say there’s little doubt that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are responsible for the chemical attacks near Damascus that opposition groups say killed more than 1,300 people. The head of the UN said its inspectors in Syria need time to establish the facts.

The U.K. resolution would allow the use of “all necessary measures under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter to protect civilians from chemical weapons,” Cameron’s office in London said in an e-mailed statement. The veto-wielding permanent Security Council members -- the U.S., U.K., Russia, China and France -- were meeting in New York to discuss the draft. Russia, an ally of Syria with a naval base in the country, has so far opposed moves to censure Assad’s government.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-27/u-s-allies-move-closer-to-military-strike-against-syria.html

Can The U.S.'s Limited Military Strike Against Assad Stay Limited?

By Ian Bremmer
Tue Aug 27, 2013 5:50pm EDT

--CLIP
But even as the United States prepares to strike, Syria is not really the heart of the issue. As Kerry said in his speech, "The meaning of attack goes beyond the conflict in Syria itself." The goal will not be to tilt the scales in Syria's civil war or to put an end to the violence; rather, the U.S. wants to retaliate against an affront to its credibility, and the unambiguous breaching of an international norm. But there is danger. What begins as a limited military strike to punish Assad could quickly devolve into deeper engagement in Syria, or it could scuttle America's top regional priorities like its nuclear discussions with Iran.

Months ago President Obama made clear that he would not permit any chemical weapons abuses in Syria, calling it his "red line." But despite evidence of small batches of chemical weapons being deployed on Syrians, Obama sat idle for months. It's only now, after chemical attacks last week that left hundreds dead and more traumatized, that the U.S. is moving to action. The chemical warfare became too large — and calls from the United States' allies too loud — for the United States to remain a spectator any longer. So after two years of idling on Syria, it's clear that what the U.S. is really defending is not Syrians, but the international prohibition of chemical weapons, and, most of all, its own credibility. Assad has to be punished because he clearly and publicly crossed Obama's one explicit red line — however arbitrary hundreds of chemical weapons-induced deaths may seem in comparison to the 100,000-plus Syrians who have perished in the civil war.

As I explained a few months back, the United States had two options that weren't quite as bad as the status quo of slowly slipping into the conflict: it could go big — establish a no-fly zone and do what is necessary to stem the violence — or go home: firmly stay on the sidelines. The Obama administration opted for the latter — that's why it dragged its feet responding to chemical weapons charges the first time around. The White House believes the best way to stay the course is to apply the minimum amount of force that will satisfy the mounting pressure for action without becoming further entangled: "The options we are considering are not about regime change," the White House said on Tuesday. Afterwards, it can return to its backseat role.

But it has only become more difficult to pull that off. If there were limited military actions that had no risk of dragging the U.S. deeper into the Syrian conflict, Obama would have opted for them in response to the first wave of chemical attacks. The irony is that the bar for what the international community will deem an acceptable response to Assad's chemical weapon use has risen substantially since that first instance a few months back. If this had been an Israeli red line that was breached, we would have seen an immediate, limited and surgical strike in response. The U.S. dithered, a much bigger atrocity occurred, and now the U.S. will need to engage in a broader response to maintain its credibility and satisfy its allies — just the sort of response that carries a higher risk of pulling the U.S. further into the quagmire.

So what will be deemed sufficient action? It's hard to say. But it seems clear that a cruise missile or two aimed at specific weapons sites in Damascus will likely no longer be sufficient. The situation demands bellicose words from America's top diplomats, and actions that can back them up — certainly a broader set of military targets, perhaps sustained aerial strikes as well. It demands just the sort of actions that always carry the potential to exceed their limited scope.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/us-can-the-uss-idUSBRE97Q13C20130827

Three Leaking Mustard Gas Shells Isolated At Pueblo Chemical Depot

A mustard gas leak discovered in early July at a storage facility for aging chemical weapons was cleaned up last week, the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot announced in a Monday news release.

Chemical crews transferred three leaking 155 mm steel shells into containers and moved them to a storage facility approved for over-packed, leaking munitions. The wine-bottle shaped shells are vulnerable to pressure changes that can cause them to leak.

--clip
The Pueblo Chemical Depot is a complex of almost 100 underground igloos where a massive cache of World War II era chemical weapons from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal are stored until they can be destroyed, as required by the international Chemical Weapons Convention.

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http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23949548/three-leaking-mustard-gas-shells-isolated-at-pueblo?source=rss

US Media ‘Beats The Drums Of War’

Does the “drum beat” for war come from the White House or from a media that just loves war? (Screenshot: Fox News)What the US media still doesn’t know about the use of chemical weapons in Syria last week has done little to keep it from accepting statements from the US government with barely a whiff of the skepticism one would expect after the colossal—and well-documented—media failure that preceded the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

And if there were voices cautioning against a volly of U.S./NATO airstrikes (note: there are), most media consumers scanning the front pages of top news websites wouldn’t know it.

Instead what they’d see if they looked at CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the Huffington Post on Tuesday morning was not so much a US government on tapping the “drums of war” but a corporate media system banging on them.

CNN:

Fox News:

MSNBC:

Huffington Post:

Similarly, as FireDogLake’s Kevin Gosztola cataloged, the editorial boards from some of the largest US newspapers penned editorials that somewhat unanimously supported direct military action by the US. Despite the continued lack of concrete evidence about the details of the chemical attack, Gosztola continued his critique of mainstream outlets by noting how the troubling trend was

further proven by the round of reports in US media [Sunday], which granted an Obama administration official anonymity to say there was “very little doubt” that chemical weapons had been used by the Syrian regime against civilians. Such a statement could easily help increase public and political support for military action yet the media did not force the person to go on the record and give his or her name if the administration wanted such a statement to be published.

Following Right-Wing Attacks, Museum Seeks To Cancel 'Right Of Return Conference'

An international conference by Zochrot, an Israeli NGO which focuses on the Nakba and the “right of return,” is under threat, following pressure from right-wing organizations.

The Eretz Israel Museum, where Zochrot decided to host the event, has recently informed organizers that due to the risk of demonstrations and public disorder, they will need to pay for increased, onsite security. The museum management has also demanded that the name “Al-Shaykh Muwannis” mentioned next to the museum’s name in the event invitations be removed.

“Al-Shaykh Muwannis” is a Palestinian village that was located in what is today’s north Tel Aviv, and which stood where the museum and the Tel Aviv University are currently located.

The conference, titled “From Truth to Redress” is due to take place on September 29-30. The museum has informed Zochrot that the event will be canceled, should the organization not meet the new requirements. In response, Attorney Michael Sfard sent a letter on behalf of Zochrot to the museum, stating that backing away from the agreement would be “an illegal act” and “would constitute intellectual and ideological discrimination.”

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http://972mag.com/following-right-wing-attacks-museum-seeks-to-cancel-right-of-return-conference/77969/

Syrian Kurdish Leader Doubts Assad Would Be 'So Stupid' As To Carry Out Gas Attack

BERLIN | Tue Aug 27, 2013 10:59am EDT

(Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would not be "so stupid" as to use chemical weapons close to Damascus, the leader of the country's largest Kurdish group said.

Saleh Muslim, head of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), said he doubted the Syrian president would resort to using such weapons when he felt he had the upper hand in the country's civil war.

He suggested last Wednesday's attack, which the opposition says was carried out by government forces and killed hundreds of people, was aimed at framing Assad and provoking an international reaction. Assad has denied his forces used chemical weapons.

"The regime in Syria ... has chemical weapons, but they wouldn't use them around Damascus, 5 km from the (U.N.) committee which is investigating chemical weapons. Of course they are not so stupid as to do so," Muslim told Reuters.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/us-syria-crisis-kurds-idUSBRE97Q0LP20130827

Arab Allies Withhold Public Support for U.S. Strike on Syria

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and NOUR MALAS in Amman, Jordan

The U.S. is moving toward possible military strikes against Syria without the public support of any major Arab ally, reflecting broad unease in the region about another Western military intervention.

The lack of public endorsement from Arab governments, even from Saudi Arabia and other countries that have helped arm, train and fund rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leaves the West with little political cover regionally should any Western-led attack go badly.

Arab League delegates on Tuesday urged the United Nations Security Council, rather than the West, to take "deterrent" action against Syria to prevent a repeat of alleged chemical attacks on Aug. 21 in the suburbs of Damascus. In Cairo, Egypt Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy appeared to side against intervention, saying on Tuesday, "The solution for Syria must be diplomatic, not militaristic."

While senior Saudi officials have been urging the U.S. and others behind the scenes to support tougher action in Syria, Arab leaders for more than a year have publicly maintained that any international military action there should be sanctioned by the U.N. Security Council, where Russia and China have blocked action.

In an atmosphere poisoned by persistent violence in Iraq 10 years after the U.S. invasion there, and by top-level disputes between the U.S. and its Mideast allies over the international response to revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere, the Arab world at large is split over whether the West should intervene.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324906304579038910953494966.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories