AL ASSAD MAKES CASE, TAUNTING OBAMA

BASHAR AL ASSAD TAUNTS OBAMA ON CBS

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his case to CBS News’s Charlie Rose in an interview that aired on Monday against an American-led military strike on his country in response to his government’s alleged chemical weapons use.

Assad charged that the United States and the international community have no evidence that forces linked to his government used chemical weapons. He later seemed to try to push Congress toward voting against a resolution to give President Obama authorization to attack Syria, arguing, as some like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have, that any U.S.-led military action against the Syrian government would help al Qaeda:

Assad Asks Congress To Vote Against War





White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said on Sunday that the intelligence on whether Assad’s forces were responsible for the attack isn't in dispute. “Every member of Congress I’ve spoken to accepts the intelligence that they carried out this attack,” he said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “And so what we need now is to communicate very clearly what is expected of him. And what is expected of him is to live up to the prohibition now, almost a hundred years old, against using these dastardly weapons to gas women and children.”

Assad also said in the CBS interview that the Obama administration is no different from the Bush era. “They are operating the same doctrine with different accessories,” he claimed.

The Syrian president also said the U.S. and its allies should expect some kind of retaliation to an attack and suggested it might be carried out by non-state Syrian allies like Hezbollah. “You should expect everything. Not necessarily from the government. It’s not only the government are not the only player in this region. You have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideology. You have everything in this region now. So you have to expect that,” Assad said.

Despite the fact that his forces started the civil war in Syria with its brutal and violent crackdown on peaceful protesters more than two years ago, Assad also later disputed that he’s the aggressor, likening himself to a doctor saving a patient. “A doctor who cut the leg to prevent the patient from the gangrene, if you have to, we don’t call him butcher, we call him doctor. And you– thank you for saving the lives. When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always– you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war.”

Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Sunday that the Saudis offered support for an American strike on Syria and during a press conference with Kerry, Qatar’s foreign minister called for foreign intervention “to protect the Syrian people.”

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement on Saturday that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was “blatant violation of international law, a war crime and a crime against humanity” and that the evidence “seems to indicate strong evidence that the Syrian regime is responsible.” The E.U. statement called for action but did not endorse a military strike. Most European countries have said they want some kind of United Nations process to play out and want U.N. weapons experts to report on their findings in Syria, a process that could take weeks, before deciding whether to support an attack.

Meanwhile, Obama is set to make his case to the American people and Congress this week in a series of interviews and speeches. As it stands right now, it appears that the White House has an uphill climb to get Congress on board, or at least the House. According to a NFTOS's preliminary tally, more than 200 lawmakers in the House are against military action or lean toward not supporting it.



NFTOS

STAFF WRITER

SYRIA, WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

THIS MAN NEEDS TO GO AKA BASHAR al-ASSAD.

Over the last several days, the Syrian crisis has exploded back into the news. As the U.S. debates how to respond to the now two-year long struggle, here’s the what you need to know:

How this all began

The current crisis in Syria began in 2011, with civilian protests launched during a wave of pro-democracy sentiment known as the Arab Spring. Those protests were met with harsh repression from the Syrian government under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s regime continued to crackdown on protesters, eventually resorting to massive human rights abuses including torture, disappearances, extrajudicial executions and detention of medical patients. In response, civilians began to take up arms against the Syrian government, transforming a peaceful movement to increase democratic freedoms into an all-out civil war. Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 70,000 Syrians have died.

Who’s doing the fighting
Over the past two years, the make-up of the Syrian opposition has shifted considerably. In the beginning, the opposition was composed mostly of civil society leaders and Syrian citizens with a small armed group taking shape across the border in Turkey. Since then, the rebels have spawned an entire network of loosely affiliated groups fighting against the Assad regime — and each other at times. Instead of hiding across the border, rebels now openly control a large swath of territory in the north and west of the country as the Syrian government continues to push back.

While many of the rebel groups are secular, recent months have shown an influx of foreign fighters into the country, seeking to impose a harsh version of Islam upon Syria once the Assad regime falls. The U.S. has labeled one such group — Jabhat al-Nusra — a terrorist group for its close ties to Al Qaeda. These murky connections between the rebels and jihadis have proved difficult for Western governments seeking to effect the situation on the ground.

The effect on the Syrian people and the region

As time wore on in the conflict, the Syrian government unleashed more and greater violence was against civilians, including the use of armored vehicles, fixed-wing aircraft and mortars against whole neighborhoods. Making matters worse, rebels are now accused of taking part in atrocities as well.

This has all led to a massive humanitarian crisis in Syria and the surrounding region. As of March, more than one million Syrians have fled into the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, placing a massive strain on those states’ governments. According to the United Nations, over 4.25 million Syrians are now internally displaced within the country.

Did Syria use chemical weapons?

Whether or not the Syrian government utilized chemical weapons against its people is the primary reason Syria has exploded back into the news. Last week, the United States announced that it has evidence that chemical weapons were used in Syria, namely sarin. That revelation comes with several caveats, however: the chain of custody of the evidence the U.S. has isn’t clear, nor is exactly how the samples obtained were exposed to the chemical. The U.S. government has also not declared definitively whether or not it was the Assad regime that used sarin, an act that would cross a “red-line” the administration set forth as an action that would spur greater intervention.

The United States’ response

The Obama administration has declared several times that the Assad regime’s days are numbered and that the Syrian president must go. So far, however, the United States has stuck with its policy of providing humanitarian aid — more than $385 million worth to date — to Syria’s civilians and providing “non-lethal aid” to the opposition. That includes a recent decision to provide items such as night-vision goggles and bullet-proof vests to the rebels. The United States is also heavily involved in coordinating the flow of weapons to Syria from Gulf states while not providing such arms itself.

The question that remains is whether a greater U.S. intervention is necessary, and if so in what form. The range of possible responses under consideration range from directly providing arms to the Syrian opposition to establishing a No-Fly Zone in Syria to protect civilians and give the rebels cover to operate. The debate does not evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, with members on both sides advocating for swift action in Syria and members of both parties urging caution in proceeding forward. Even hawks like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), however, are coming out against the idea of American boots being on the ground in Syria.

The current policy towards Syria does not appear to be in the U.S.’ best interests, however. “It is time for a change in policy,” CAP experts said in a report on the situation in Syria released in February. “The United States needs to increase its assistance to the Syrian opposition with the goal of supporting an alternative opposition government that is better organized than at present.” Several CAP experts also last week released a series of recommended courses of action for the U.S. to lead the way in responding to the Assad regime’s possible use of chemical weapons. Such actions include coordinating with NATO and regional allies to provide a major humanitarian aid push for Syrian refugees and calling an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to put the onus on Russia to stand by the Syrian regime publicly in the aftermath of a likely chemical weapons attack.

NFTOS

STAFF WRITER