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http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/former-saceur-calls-on-nato-to-back-up-obama-1.238947


Stars and Stripes
September 3, 2013


Former SACEUR calls on NATO to back up Obama
By John Vandiver 



Some critics have called President Barack Obama’s decision to seek Congressional support for military action in Syria as a sign of indecisiveness, but recently retired Adm. James Stavridis sees the decision as buying time to get NATO behind efforts to deliver a punitive message to the regime of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad.

“The North Atlantic Treaty Organization must be part of an international effort to respond to the crisis in Syria, beginning immediately with punitive strikes following the highly probable use of chemical weapons by President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime,” Stavridis wrote in a Monday op-ed in the New York Times. “The president, the secretaries of defense and state, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should all approach their counterparts to secure NATO action.”

So far, NATO has shown no sign that it intends to get involved in Syria beyond its current deployment of U.S., German and Dutch Patriot missile batteries along Turkey’s border with Syria. Those batteries are responsible for protecting Turkish air space from potential missile strikes from Syria.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Monday said he is convinced Assad's military has used chemical weapons and that an international response is required. However, NATO is not needed for a mission expected to be narrow in focus and duration, he told reporters.

"If a response to what has happened in Syria were to be a military operation, I'd envisage a very short, measured, targeted operation, and you don't need the NATO command and control system to conduct such a short, measured, tailored, military operation," Rasmussen said.

Stavridis, who served as head of U.S. European Command and as supreme allied commander-Europe for four years before retiring in May, wrote that NATO has a responsibility to protect in Syria even without U.N. Security Council approval, much like it did in Kosovo in 1999.

Since retiring and taking up his new post as dean at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Stavridis has begun to weigh in publicly on key national security matters. He recently penned a piece in Foreign Policy in which he advocated a post-2014 Afghanistan presence of 9,000 U.S. and 6,000 allied troops.

Now, he’s calling for NATO to step into the picture in Syria...

“The attacks tip the balance — a close one, to be sure — toward a need for punitive strikes as an initial form of intervention,” Stavridis wrote.

“These should be designed not only to send a strong signal that chemical weapons are unacceptable, but also to damage key parts of the Assad regime’s infrastructure. Attacks on aircraft, aviation centers, command and control sites and missile facilities would clearly reduce the danger to Turkey and Greece.”
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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/09/03/321822/israel-saudis-target-syria-sovereignty/


Press TV
September 1, 2013


Israel, Saudi Arabia after elimination of Syria sovereignty: Expert
 
"Israel would like to see, as would several other neighboring countries, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the elimination of Syria as an independent force in the Arab World and in the general Middle East.”



Video at URL above


Press TV has conducted an interview with Rick Rozoff, with Stop NATO, from Chicago, to shed more light on the issue of foreign intervention in Syria.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What do you think Mr. Rozoff? Why do you think that many of the Israelis are so adamant that the strikes must take place?

Rozoff: Because Israel would like to see, as would several other neighboring countries, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the elimination of Syria as an independent force in the Arab World and in the general Middle East. That is, one that is not alligned militarily with the United States; that is not, like all its neighbors, I should mention, either member of NATO as in the case of Turkey or a member of NATO military partnership like the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative as are Israel, Jordan and so forth, and Iraq, incidentally, has been pulled into NATO’s latest military partnership program which is called, I suppose, aptly enough Partners Across the Globe, so that Syria and its neighbor Lebanon remain, throughout the entire Arab world, the only two countries out of 22 members of the Arab League that are not subordinated militarily to the United States and its Western allies.

So, I mean the incentive for Israel as well as for Saudi Arabia to eliminate such a bastion or outpost of independence or non-alignment in the Middle East seems fairly obvious. I think your listeners and viewers may want to recall that roughly 13 months ago, that is on August 4th of 2012, during the course of a General Assembly meeting in the United Nations, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, made a comment to the effect, I am almost quoting him, saying that a regime, meaning the government in Damascus, that would kill its own children would not hesitate to kill them with chemical weapons.

Now, Ambassador Prosor is hardly a Hebrew prophet on the order of a Daniel, Amos, Isaac, Jeremiah and so forth, rather I think that that was a tip-off that the United States and Israel were going to use the chemical weapons issue 13 months ago and longer as its so-called redline in order to justify unjustifiable military attacks against the government in Syria.

Press TV: Mr. Rozoff you seem like you want to comment, go ahead Sir!

Rozoff: Yes, I mean that is specious reasoning of the lowest type, this alleged omniscience of the person who just spoken, as though he is privy to information that evidently nobody else in the world is.

You know, yesterday the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, again referred to the claim that the government of Syria had used chemical weapons outside of Damascus as, and I quote him, unimaginable nonsense, and then took the argument apart logically bit by bit and then stated, which I think everyone should be stating right now, if the US indeed has such "gnostic" knowledge to what had occurred, it has an obligation to bring evidence of that contention to the UN Security Council and prove its case rather than through innuendo and media leaks and so forth.

Contending something that they cannot substantiate and using that as a justification for an illegal military attack against a sovereign nation. That is outrageous.

Press TV: Mr. Rozoff, you want to make a comment? Go ahead!

Rozoff: Yes I do. This is part of the accusation or the condemnation of Obama and Kerry et al.'s presumptious statements about what occurred with the tragic event outside of Damascus, which is to say why at this point of all times would the Syrian government have done this? This was what Vladimir Putin said yesterday and I think that it was echoed in the debate or rather it was anticipated in the debate in the British Parliament last week and it's a question that every sensible person asks.

Why, when the armed forces and the internal security personnel of the government of Syria are scoring victory after victory against the US- and the Persian Gulf states-backed al-Nusrah Front and the other armed insurgents in the country, would they chose this precise moment while United Nations inspectors are in the country, moreover, you know, to use chemical weapons?

You know, first of all the accusation that Syria somehow is paralleling what was done by the regime in Baghdad in its war against Iran, certainly the chemical weapons used by Saddam Hussein’s forces in the first Persian Gulf war were used after the war was already in progress.

I think the insinuation from the other guest was that somehow Iran launched military hostilities as a result of that and that is not true. Second of all, we do have a record. I mean Syria went to war in 1967, Syria went to war 1973, Syria intervened militarily in Lebanon in 1976 and stayed there for almost a decade. If they have a history of using chemical weapons, and it is yet to be substantiated, so to claim that this is part and parcel of a standard procedure, if you will, for the Syrian armed forces is another ridiculous contention.

Press TV: Mr. Rozoff, your take? Our guest in New York basically said that the United States wants to bomb them into sitting down to have talks.

Rozoff: They want to bomb them into submission, they ultimately want to bomb the government out of power. And the statements by my fellow guest are the sorts of disingenuous and unconscionable apologetics that we heard on the eve of the 78-day air war against Yugoslavia in 1999 and the six-month long bombing onslaught against the government of Libya two and a half years ago, so this is not to be taken at face value. A no-fly zone and destroying air defenses is simply the opening salvo in a common scenario that ranges from Kosovo in 1999 through Libya two and a half years ago to Syria now, which is the use the airpower and particularly rocketry, Tomahawk cruise missiles stationed by the United States right now perhaps to the number of 600 as we speak in the eastern Mediterranean ready to pulverize the capital of Syria and a good deal of the rest of the country in conjunction, closely allied with, arming and training and commanding insurgent forces on
the ground.

So what you are saying is a replication of the Yugoslav model 1999 and the Libyan model of 2011. It is a coordinated effort to have armed insurgents, including bona fide terrorist elements, wage war against the security personnel of a legitimate nation, a member of the United Nations, at the same time Western missiles and bombs are falling on the country and preventing the government from defending itself and its population. That is what we are talking about. Let us not fool ourselves.

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http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c154/863249.html

Itar-Tass
September 3, 2013

Russian expert says Mideast made narrow escape from major war Tuesday 
By Itar-Tass World Service writer Tamara Zamyatina

MOSCOW: Launching of two ballistic missiles in the Mediterranean water area testifies to the ongoing U.S. preparations for air strikes against Syria, a top-rank Russian military expert said in an exclusive interview with Itar-Tass Tuesday night.

The U.S. and Israel actually wanted to watch the reaction to the launch on the part of Russia, China and Iran, said Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, Ret. From 1996 through to 2001, Gen Ivashov was chief of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Department for International Defense Cooperation. He is President of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems at present.

He believes that the missiles were launched for the purposes of reconnaissance.

“The thing is ballistic missiles won’t be used if the U.S. and their allies begin an intervention in Syria,” Gen Ivashov said. “While a cruise missile can hit directly not only the target as such but even a separate element of it, a ballistic missile very definitely won’t hit the target due to the impact dispersal effect. Hence it’s inefficient for the purpose.”

“Those who launched the two ballistic missiles towards Syria obviously hoped Iran would consider this launch as an attack on Damascus, its ally,” Gen Ivashov went on. “The Pentagon clearly wanted to see if the Iranians would respond to this by delivering a ballistic missile strike at Israel.”

“The provocation would have thus played into Binyamin Netanyahu’s hands and would have helped him to convince his nation that Israel should throw its shoulder into a joint aerospace operation conducted by the U.S., Turkey and Saudi Arabia against Syria,” he said.

“Had Iran responded to the challenge, the U.S. would have gotten weighty reasons for attacking Syria by way of support for Israel as its ally, since Barack Obama still doesn’t have congressional support for an operation against the Syrian government either among the rank-and-file Americans or in the Congress. In the meantime, the necessity of defending Israel would offer an important argument for shaping up public opinion in favor of ousting the Bashar al-Assad regime.”

“From the angle of view of military strategy, the launch of ballistic missiles compels Syria and Iran to bring into full-scale action all the tracking systems they have,” Gen Ivashov said. “Air defense systems, too, start reacting to missile launches.”

“When this happens, the U.S. warships, aircraft, and ground-based tracking systems immediately do the computerized identification of all the locations in Syria and Iran where combat operations control is exercised from - their working frequencies, the places where radar stations are deployed, their coordinates, technical characteristics, and so on.”

“Right after that, radio-electronic jamming of the enemy’s combat control networks goes into action. It is followed by a string of missile strikes, with the data on location of the enemy’s control and command systems loaded into the programs.”

“As a result, the Syrian and Iranian Armed Forces should lose control and coordination and lose the war eventually,” Gen Ivashov said.

This is a technological side of the provocation but there is a political side to the missile launch, too.

“Israel is demonstrating blatant disregard for the norms of international law,” Gen Ivashov said. “The Israeli Defense Ministry did not issue a warning to the countries, the ships of which were cruising in the Mediterranean at the moment. More than that, Israel has a bigger arsenal of nukes than France although it is not a member of the world nuclear club.”

“Nonetheless, the Israeli government was prepared to set the machine of a major war in the Middle East into motion Tuesday - with support from the Pentagon,” he said.

Another Russian military expert commented earlier this year on the role that an element of spontaneity may play in triggering a large-scale armed conflict.

Major-General Pavel Zolotaryov, Ret., a deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute for the U.S. and Canada Studies made the comment in spring 2013 with regard to the crisis on the Korean Peninsula. “The Korean crisis may pose a danger to the world due a possibility of haphazard developments,” he said.

“When two countries, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea keep their Armed Forces in a huge tension, a factor of spontaneity can play a very bad role,” Gen Zolotaryov said. “Suppose someone has a nervous breakdown and fires a shot and then unpredictable developments start snowballing.”

A risk of a chain of haphazard events is looming in the situation around Syria, too.