Iraq 2003, looking back

Ah, but this time it’s different. For a start the word Iraq begins with an I whereas Syria clearly begins with an S. It’s a whole different world.

The Wall Street Journal (might be $) processology on how Obama came to Thursday’s decision on Syria is worth a read, of course with the necessary allowances for self-serving sources. But the gist of it — “King Abdullah made us do it” (the Jordanian one) will be darkly amusing to people like Rory Stewart who know their Arabian history and where that Jordanian royal line came from.

Better to watch/listen than to read. Can someone please link to similarly lengthy footage of Congress that is of similar quality?

@Hidari
Well, the chance of U.S. (or any Western) ground forces going into Syria seems close to zero. So in that sense (among various others) it is quite different.

@ Anderson #6- Small chance of that the British still believe in the English language.Congress speaks Murkan politicianese.Two nations divided by a common language.

How y’all feel as citizens of the vampire Empire? We been provocating like all hell in the ME for a century. You feel we should respond with all due disproportionate response if some ME punching-bag loses it a little?

Will we need to protect every little Roman, and their honor?

Well, the chance of U.S. (or any Western) ground forces going into Syria seems close to zero.

Not to belabor the point, but if I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say the equivalent statement about Iraq in 2002, I would have more money.

But also, why specify ‘ground’ forces or even ‘forces’ at all? Putting millions of guns into the hands of people who intend to attack with them isn’t respectably better, in the sense that we should or should not spend any less energy resisting and opposing it. Setting aside whether it’s true or false or logically indeterminate, what function does a statement like ‘It would be worse for us to send troops’ or ‘It was worse in Iraq because we sent troops’ fulfill?

Total casualties in Syria now look to be somewhat higher, like for like, than those in Iraq, despite a smaller polulation and shorter duration. So I don’t think you can really about war as if it was a future risk which wise counsel might avoid…

If you can understand French, definitely go buy Quai d’Orsay, by Blain & Lanzac – if not, please wait anxiously for the translation.

It’s hilarious, and I think one of the better documents about the French perspective in these times.

Soru, I don’t think that’s right—Syrian civilian death toll is in the 90,000 neighborhood, and the Iraqi total was 600,000 even before the so-called surge.

That said, this particular total anti-war lefty (though, to be fair, one with an emotional attachment to the Arab Spring) really doesn’t get the widely shared impulse to read Iraq in the place of Syria. Clinton’s operations in Sarajevo, or Obama’s in Lybia, seem far more apt. Crucially, ground operations being conducted by local insurgents tend make any eventual victory seem more legitimate by the governed population, and a nice (though self-interested) consequent of supplying only weapons and air support is that American troops can’t be shot at.

Pat:
Crucially, ground operations being conducted by local insurgents tend make any eventual victory seem more legitimate by the governed population, and a nice (though self-interested) consequent of supplying only weapons and air support is that American troops can’t be shot at.

Correct, and telling that it needed to be said at all — which it did, given some of the comments above.

Yeah – let’s give arms to the insurgents, maybe some military advisers as well, I miss the good old days of the cold war and the proxy war strategy worked out so well for all the parties involved… (and the arms dealers would be happy too, the stuff has to be shifted and it’s great to see it live in action).

B.c there’s a difference betw sending arms to X and inserting soldiers to fight alongside X.

There’s also a difference between sending army troops to fight alongside X and navy troops to fight alongside X. So what? Care to elaborate on why the difference you’re highlighting is meaningful? It’s not as easy as you’re suggesting, to see the difference between “a conflict in which it is morally alright to heavily arm one side” and “a conflict in which it is morally alright to fight on behalf of one side.” I mean, it’s easy to see a difference domestically — fewer American lives endangered per Syrian life endangered. But as bob points out, that’s a morally atrocious premise to build policy on.

More generally, “enable people to kill, believing they will X, but don’t go kill X yourself” is not some kind of moral high ground relative to “go kill X yourself.” If anything, at least with “go kill X yourself” you don’t end up with some other group of people, over whom you have essentially no control or authority, newly in possession of a deadly arsenal.

What, exactly, is the intended benefit of what you’re advocating, relative to a full-scale ‘humanitarian’ invasion?

interesting speech and ties into the level of ignorance generally brought into government decisions.

Some of the comments here call to mind Clay Claiborne’s note on cynicism:

Since the cynic is not looking for ways to attack the problem but for reasons to carry on as usual, it suits this scenario to make the New World Order, the Illuminati, or whoever, virtually all-powerful and quite capable of tricks we aren’t even aware of.

The people, on the other hand, are sheep.

“Try this one on for size, Congressman Alan Grayson on Prism: http://t.co/lNhFfixj24”

Indignation theatre. He could have read the relevant acts if he didn’t want to be shocked.

I didn’t watch the video, but I did read Hansard, and I was surprised by the fact that a number of the participants in the discussion asserted with apparent sincerity that they were surprised to find that they had been lied to by Tony Blair and company. I believe the original lips-are-moving joke began with politicians as its subject; it seems like a necessary talent for the job, and I would think politicians would know all about it. Of course, things may be different in Britain, but I recall an article in which Christopher Hitchens derided someone who pretended to be surprised that a British politician had lied, so maybe not. Now, when American politicians said they had been deceived by Bush with regard to Iraq, I knew it was possible that instead of being cynical liars, they were really, really stupid; but the people in the video and Hansard all seem at least halfway intelligent. So I don’t get it. Did these people really believe Tony Blair? How did they manage it?

The other thing that was odd for me was that it seemed to be an unspoken assumption of almost everyone in the room that Britain had some kind of humanitarian duty to help run the world, which might entail (as humanitarianism seems to) invading other countries, slaughtering their people, breaking their stuff, and so on. I am familiar with the gross imperial megalomania of many of my fellow American citizens, but I thought this spirit must have died out across the Pond given World Wars 1 and 2, the fascists, the Holocaust, the loss of the empires, and all that. No? Are they still not done ‘over there’?

Abel Cain @ 16

I doubt that your points will register with very many, even here. When one considers the broad interests of the U.S., it is strikingly odd that the U.S. would adopt an attitude of hostility to Iran and try to be an ally to Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. It reflects, I think, the hijacking of U.S. foreign policy by narrow interests and narrow visions.

Rory Stewart takes the view that Britain does not have the institutions to formulate and conduct a foreign policy as ambitious as Parliament frequently wills. That is even more true of the U.S. His point that the military, once its boots are on the ground, tries to fill the resulting vacuum, but is ill-equipped to do so effectively, applies to the U.S., as well, although the U.S. military does invest in training its elite leaders in policy and geopolitics.

Anarcissie is surprised that anyone would be surprised that politicians would lie to Parliament or Congress or the United Nations or the public in the most serious matters of state, but I wonder why, and if this quick turn to lying, and the implied unconcern with cultivating credibility, is related to the odd shape of American foreign policy and the institutional incapacities to fulfill great ambitions on the ground.

‘Anarcissie is surprised that anyone would be surprised that politicians would lie to Parliament or Congress or the United Nations or the public in the most serious matters of state, but I wonder why….’

Humans are willful animals. Therefore, they desire power to work their will. Often, they find themselves in a situations where social power is a zero-sum game; that is, the more power one has, the less another has.

(Good) knowledge is power. In many situations, and hierarchical power structures are among them, imparting knowledge to another (another person, group, party, layer, class, etc.) is, in effect, donating power, which may well lessen one’s own power by reducing the scarcity and effectiveness of the donated knowledge. In such an environment, it behooves the holders of good knowledge to impart it only when some benefit, like other knowledge, increased repute, a material reward, preferment, and so on, can be obtained. Hence most sophisticated inmates of hierarchical political structures are careful to withhold valuable knowledge, and most large institutions have barriers to the free passage of information, both between internal levels and sectors and between the institution and the outer world, as most people who have worked for a large corporation or a government can attest.

Politicians operate in such environments.

While good knowledge can simply be withheld, that may provoke interest or resentment; other strategies to keep it away from others can include substituting bad knowledge for good knowledge (lying), obfuscation, oversimplification, misdirection, distraction, propaganda, and many other means worked out over the last several thousand years.

Where facts are not already widely known, then, it will usually be advantageous, if not crucially necessary, for politicians, bureaucrats, military commanders, business leaders and managers, gurus, authorities, pundits, and other powerholders to employ these means from time to time to retain their knowledge advantages, and thus power differentials which benefit them.

Therefore we should expect politicians to lie frequently (and use the other means mentioned). And this is what we observe. In the case of the presidency of the U.S., we do not have a quick turn to lying; we were lied to about Vietnam just as we were lied to about Iraq, and about many other things in between, were we not?

@35, Bruce Wilder

Hard as I try, I really fail to see what exactly are the objections to Anarcissie’s #33, especially since most of Bruce Wilder’s posts are lucid and to the point.

As far as I’m concerned, #33 is as clear as a bell, no interpretation or second-guessing needed. Yet in the repartee, we find references to such obscure things as “the implied unconcern with cultivating credibility,” “the odd shape of American foreign policy” and “the institutional incapacities to fulfill great ambitions on the ground, ” references which, I hasten to add, do more harm than good if the original intent was to elucidate the opposing point of view.

What’s really going on in here, can anyone tell?

“I am familiar with the gross imperial megalomania of many of my fellow American citizens, but I thought this spirit must have died out across the Pond…”

But does this megalomania really exist, in either country, outside the chattering classes?

People, generally, are not stupid. It’s one thing to promise each of your soldiers an estate in Belarus (or something) – that might work, but humanitarian imperialism is not going to be very popular, I don’t think. This brand of propaganda is aimed at a narrow segment of the population, liberal intelligentsia. And for the rest, it’s just good old fear-mongering.

For that matter, can someone please link to similarly lengthy footage of the Australian Parliament that is of similar quality? House of Reps or Senate: I’m not fussed.

It’s not just that Rory Stewart did an excellent speech, but that the other people in the chamber made intelligent interjections, all of which he handled with respect and courtesy. Maybe Canberra’s going through a particularly bad patch, but I’m seeing less oratory and more tantrums.

I don’t think it’s disgusting for a citizen of a particular country to be especially concerned with the prospective deployment, and prospective loss of life, of soldiers from his/her country

It absolutely is, in context. If we were talking about who gets the first vaccines for something, it would make sense for the U.S. government to inoculate its own soldiers (and citizens) first. But what we’re talking about is encouraging and materially enabling tens of thousands of Syrians to kill each other. If you’re talking about encouraging and enabling mass violence, and you’re significantly more OK with that because the encouragement/enabling will mean many many more Syrians killed but not more Americans, then you have earned a little invective.

And yes, we’re about to help kill lots and lots of Syrians. You don’t get to claim “once the rebels are armed Assad will step down faster, therefore there will be less bloodshed” because that’s crazy in light of how often we’ve done this before; dozens of examples of arms aid are counterexamples to your claim. You’ve already retreated to ‘every case is different’ shenanigans, in order to avoid any unfavorable comparison of this instance of mid-conflict arms aid to, y’know, every other instance of mid-conflict arms aid.

Fine. It’s different. I don’t see how that’s a pliable excuse, but whatever, it’s different therefore comparisons are invalid. Fine, rule accepted, but only in exchange for one rule in return: let’s call this what it is. You are advocating a lot more bloodshed, and a lot more people killed, and frankly you need to own that and justify it if you wish to be persuasive about this. It is definitely disgusting to say, “We’ll help the rebels kill a whole lot of people, but at least they won’t be American lives lost!” But it’s probably more disgusting to refuse to at least own that you believe we should help some people to kill a whole lot of other people.

roger nowosielski @ 39
Anarcissie @ 37

A: “Humans are willful animals. Therefore, they desire power to work their will. Often, they find themselves in a situations where social power is a zero-sum game; that is, the more power one has, the less another has”

Thank you, Anarcissie, for your able and lucid exposition.

For roger, my point rests on the juxtaposition to Anarcissie’s zero-sum (or negative-sum, I would say) game of power, the positive-sum game of power.

Power is the outcome of social cooperation. Power is, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, a property and output of social organization. As individuals in isolation, we can have strength; only in an organized group, cooperating together, is there, power.

In an economic sense, power arises from the efficiency and productivity of coordinated specialization of labor, augmented by capital investment in dedicated tools and the system of organization, itself, training, etc. In a(n imaginary) market economy, organized around markets, and coordinated by market price, the optimal result, where efficiency and productivity, and, therefore, total, distributed abundance is greatest would be where the price is the “perfectly competitive” price.

The “perfectly competitive” market price is the price, which would be arrived at, in the absence of strategic behavior. It exists only — and one would think this would be obvious, but it is not obvious to many economists — in the imagination, since, of course, people always act strategically. The “perfectly competitive” price is also, in some wise, the perfectly fair price, the price at which no one is cheated or taken advantage of.

Economists do not trouble themselves to spend much time analyzing hierarchy, as a means of organizing, beyond some simplistic, principal-agent analyses of asymmetric information. Something of the same gist, though, applies, regarding the basic conflict between the positive-sum game of the hierarchy-as-a-whole and the negative-sum games of its member-players acting strategically in their own, individual interests. An hierarchy generates the greatest power, in sum, when its members cooperate perfectly with one another, which is to say, selfishlessly or without individual strategic considerations.

What we actually observe, of course, in our corrupt world is not perfection, but corruption: not perfect competition, but oligopolistic rivalry and all kinds of cheating. But, also, not perfect corruption, usually, since then social cooperation would break down entirely, as the power of social organization would generate no surplus relative to the breakdown of social organization.

Trust is the currency of social organization, and lies are the counterfeit money. Lies in serious matters of immediate concern to the mass of constituents are a clear indication of a potentially fatal degree of corruption. I expect a certain amount of petty corruption and self-aggrandizement, and don’t really care if a politician puts his name on an airport or takes a junket to Hawaii. But, when a politician is playing statesman in the glare of limelight, with scribblers busily writing the first draft of History, I expect that our second-best world will be very much better than it is, at this moment.

Rory Stewart points to other manifestations of organizational incompetence and incapacity. Lawrence Wilkerson, in the U.S., among others, has drawn attention, as well to organizational incapacity.

Abel Cain @ 16 was pointing to a different kind of indicator, pointing not at the lies, so much as the substance of foreign policy, and asking whether, in general outline, it would make the slightest bit of sense, if leaders were representing the country’s broad interests.

One problem, pointed to by Rory Stewart, is that there is no accountability, for the small or the large, no penalty for lies or for failure, and no will to correct error. Obama persecutes whistleblowers beyond the point at which he is accused of torture, but prosecutes banksters and war criminals not at all. Our chattering classes and politicians do not even acknowledge failure. With regard to Afganistan, the American military does not concede any of the damage done to itself, to the U.S., or to that benighted country; it insists, instead on the need to persist in failure.

My problem with Anarcissie’s able analysis is that its pessimism — its base assumption that power is a zero-sum game, rather that acknowledging the tension between the co-existing positive-sum game and negative-sum game — does not lead to a any practical curiosity about how we could do better, how things might be reformed, or, even, re-formed on a better basis.

“perhaps you’re reading As’ad AbuKhalil on that topic a little literally?”

Actually, he is intensely critical of both sides in the Syrian civil war, as he should be.

Imagine if a politician said: “I’m lying.” Wouldn’t that be confusing? It’s a good thing, at least they never force us to face this paradox.

“Doing nothing” is never an actual option. I don’t mean that “experts” have a bias against recognizing “doing nothing” as an option; I mean that “doing nothing” is, literally, not an option. It’s a cop-out in abstract thinking. In reality, “doing nothing” is simply non-existent. Acts of omission are just as dangerous as acts of commission.

@19: Many thanks, Pat. Always edifying to read “total anti-war lefty” opinion in the age of Obama. Yes, it is a pleasing thought that the prolonging of the war will only mean more dead Syrians with no risk to US troops. I’m sure the Americans who armed the jihadis in the 80s thought along the same lines. However, the boots did end up on the ground. It just took a couple decades for the blowback to blow back.

“Actually, he is intensely critical of both sides in the Syrian civil war, as he should be.”

Yeah, sure, that was kinda my point. Although I’d dispute the claim that he’s equally critical of the regime, but that’s not really here nor there

@53: Philosophically, doing nothing is a kind of doing something, so one is always doing something and doing nothing cannot be done. However, in attempting to influence the actions of murderous, lying psychopaths, causing or enabling them to do less seems better to me than causing or enabling them to do more. In public discourse, this might seem like advising them to do nothing (‘Stay out of Syria; don’t give more weapons to the combatants.’) Certainly, more active things could be done to improve the world of the poor Syrians, but one must consider to whom one is giving the advice, I would think, and how it will be taken and used. Advice to help the Syrians (Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans, Somalis, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Nicaraguans, Panamanians, Dominicans, Vietnamese, etc. etc. etc.) evidently may be taken to mean ‘Kill, maim, and terrorize the people, and steal or break their stuff’ because of the settled principles of those to whom the advice is given. This is not merely a hypothesis; it is exactly what we observe.

Stewart was also one of the more sensible voices on Afghanistan: http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/rory-stewart

He had to be a Tory, Blair’s New Labour was the East Atlantic branch of the neocon party.

I was actually a little off, it was actually from 2009 (dont know how I came across it now) where he told ‘Africans’ to pull up their socks and stop blaming colonialism

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/barack-obama-africa-cannot-blame-all-its-problems-on-western-colonialism-1743379.html

Although my retelling of his speech is a little caricatured and simplistic, it does seem to be a common theme with Obama afaict – a self made man in love with his maker and all that
(also, of course, if he could stop blaming Republicans for his own mistakes itd be something)

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

@Anarcissie

fyi
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16050574

@68

“In neither of those agendas is the prevention of civilian casualties even a relevant incidental benefit; lower casualties is something you would have to keep quiet about when trying to push either policy.”

QFT

On some scenarios I suppose helping to arm the Syrian opposition could result in more people being killed than not arming them.

In every conceivable scenario arming the Syrian population will result in many many more people being killed. Arming the Syrian opposition will not lead to mass surrender by the Assadians. You contribute arms in order to exert control over which people get killed, but that contribution absolutely will substantially increase the total quantity of people killed, with no uncertainty whatsoever.

Research has shown that policymakers often make poor use of historical analogies

On the question of ‘every case is different’: this is not “shenanigans”.

Yes it is. No it isn’t. Yes it is…

Look, maybe what you’re missing here is challenges like “prove to me that this won’t turn out like Iraq” are mostly just a rhetorical tactic for opposition and resistance. The point of “X is like Y” type statements, from a resist/opp point of view, is basically to set a standard for evidence. It’s saying, I’ve been bullshitted before, and I am more wary and better calibrated now, so you will need more and better bullshit before I dare to budge again. It has almost nothing to do with material facts on the ground, except on a cursory level. It is just a form of the statement “I am aware of having been similarly bullshat on about stuff like this in the past, with disastrous consequences, and I am on guard and expect better argument this time around.”

For what it’s worth I’m not going to stop opposing and resisting sending arms to Syria once somebody actually does prove something like “Syria is not like Iraq,” even if they somehow do so in a way I find convincing, or whatever. I’ll just move to whatever other rhetorical roadblocks seem to have more traction.

But I see all this as rhetoric in response to your rhetoric. Saying “it’s different” is just telling me that I ought not take cues from the times I’ve been misled in the past, when assessing the legitimacy and credibility of people who I think might be badly leading me now. What “every case is different” completely fails to prove is, why we should be OK with sending lots of arms into Syria. The burden of justification falls on the people who want to do that. Statements “X is like Y” alert the people that want to do that, that their audience has already heard many bullshit arguments the last act-of-aggression go-around and won’t find those arguments acceptable anymore.

“Doing nothing” is never an actual option. I don’t mean that “experts” have a bias against recognizing “doing nothing” as an option; I mean that “doing nothing” is, literally, not an option. It’s a cop-out in abstract thinking. In reality, “doing nothing” is simply non-existent. Acts of omission are just as dangerous as acts of commission.

“Doing nothing” is a perfectly comprehensible code phrase for “not intervening” or more specifically “not providing material aid or military support.” And not intervening is most certainly an option. I guess you’re trying to ignore this code and redefine the phrase in a literal sense so that it no longer makes sense, but… why?

This was an interesting short article from this time last year on the pressures emerging in Lebanon

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/2012416132131379581.html

I dont think Hezbollah are any worse than any one else (including the US and Israel) in how they conduct themselves regionally, but provide a useful punching bag/looming threat for certain actors in the US (and other) FP community. A sensible, reality based regional policy would probably not care one way or the other, would adopt a strictly neutral stance and try to resolve these crises without getting involved in regional politics (an impossible task I know)
I think soru’s right, outsiders should be concerned with what is happening to civilians rather than magicing national interests out of pure cloth,or getting involved in Saudi (in the case of the US) misbehaviour

Giving parliament a vote on declarations of war sounds jolly good, but recall that parliament did get a vote on Iraq and – faced with a fait accompli – Libya, and I’m pretty sure that war was not actually officially declared in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc. There is ample scope for this requirement to be circumvented once the war drums start up, and as things stand MPs seem easily prevailed on in these circumstances in any case. I wonder if anyone will table an amendment to the effect that the government should refrain from sending tanks to Heathrow Airport on the eve of such votes?

The fact is that so long as there is a secret military/intel/security component to the state, which will always feel justified in behaving as if on a war footing, things like Iraq (and other the GWOT-related phenomena) can be pushed through against the better judgement of rank-and file politicians and journos. The only really reliable constraint on this stuff has to come from a sea change in public attitudes: people need to be far more aware of the basic realities of parapolitics and willing to voice dissent loudly and in a timely fashion. It’s a cliche but the Emperor’s new clothes is a highly relevant parable. Blair accused Iraq skeptics of peddling ‘conspiracy theories’ – and this accusation was even reprised by Kevan Jones, directed against Caroline Lucas, in the Parliamentary debate under discussion here. And above we even have an NWO/Illuminati smear! If everyone else can overcome the agnotogenic ‘conspiracism’ narrative, an increased realism, and willingness to voice it, might just possibly filter up to the press and even politicians. Even the corporate media can’t push propaganda without some degree of complicity from its audience.

The need for increased realism about parapolitics is especially urgent in the case of the educated classes, within which there is something approaching a taboo about discussing this stuff, at least until it’s far too late. That is why I’m always moaning about the marginalisation/demonisation of conspiracy theorists in places like this (and that includes ‘9-11 truth’ campaigners, who are routinely caricatured and disproportionately vilified even by generally good eggs like JQ; though I can’t really expect to gain his support these days, dsquared has I think a more reasonable attitude to such matters in general).

Stratfor, a reputable specialist media source, provided this guide to how this kind of thing works: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/syria-crisis-assessing-foreign-intervention

(A week or so after publishing this very unusually forthright assessment and IIRC another one about FSA propaganda, Stratfor suffered a catastrophic cyber attack. See http://susandirgham.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/stratfor-missteps-in-the-syrian-oppositions-propaganda-effort/ . The supposedly ostensible perpetrators, Anonymous, apparently denied involvement, credibly explaining that they don’t launch unprovoked attacks on media sources.)

The relevance of this, as with the Libya intervention which I recall making numerous Cassandra-like reamrks about at the time, is that two years into armed hostilities, the reality on the ground has already been prepared. ‘Taking things on their merits’ is a trivially correct approach – the question is, what are the merits? If the manoeuvring underlying past – recent – ‘interventions’ are ignored, we can’t expect to draw realistic conclusions about the current ones, and there is no reason for them not to be repeated. Secretive actions can’t be forestalled, but also can’t be hermetically sealed off from public awareness, if the public is willing to be aware. Those engaged in engineering conflicts can only be deterred from doing so in future if they expect to be exposed and possibly even held accountable after the event.

Without splurging too much and without going into moderation with multiple links, below is a selection from extant public domain reports on the topic of NATO involvement in fomenting and sustaining the civil war in Syria. There is every reason to suppose that whatever comes to light or is announced is representative of the kind of thing that has been going on in secret for some time before. Anyone care to deny this?

Note that the early overt support for the militarisation of the protests came from the NATO-installed regime in Libya and from Turkey. The latter, a NATO member, played a large part in the Libya campaign and is unlikely to have directly acted against the stated wishes of the US or European powers, despite the fact that involvement in Syria is one of the subjects of the current popular protests. And recall that the US explicitly clarified that they wouldn’t ‘stand in the way’ of countries which sought to (further) militarise the Syrian protests – which would tend to suggest that it was in a position to stand in the way if it chose to.

CNN, June 2, 2011:
Syrian activists meet in Turkey, call on al-Assad to step down

NYT, October 27, 2011:
In Slap at Syria, Turkey Shelters Anti-Assad Fighters

LA Times, November 05, 2011:
Syria slams U.S. for ‘blatant interference’ – The angry comments come after the State Department advised Syrians to reject an amnesty offer from President Bashar Assad’s government.

International Business Times, November 28, 2011:
Libya Sending Arms to Syrian Rebels, Arab League Imposes Sanctions [Arab League of course basically meaning the US allies in the region, those who also gave cover for the Libya ‘intervention’.]

WaPo. Mar 1 2012: Saudi, Qatari plans to arm Syrian rebels risk overtaking cautious approach favored by U.S….Despite U.S. demurral on the question of arms, regional diplomats said they think the Obama administration will not oppose decisions by individual nations to provide weapons to the rebel fighters.

WSJ, June 13, 2012:
U.S. Bolsters Ties to Fighters in Syria – CIA Helping With Logistics but Not Arms, Officials Say

Sky News, Sun, Aug 19, 2012:
Syria Rebels ‘Aided By British Intelligence’

And finally, an apparently accurate report of a statement from a french ex-minister claiming that he was asked to participate in the overthrow of Assad in 2010. I needn’t recite all the issues about what this can and can’t establish, but there it is anyway.

Press TV, Jun 19, 2013:
UK planned war on Syria before unrest began: French ex-foreign minister

Barry 06.18.13 at 7:26 pm

One does not need to be a cynic to understand that some people are liars with bad intent.