Re: Kerry Says Chemical Arms Attack in Syria Is ‘Undeniable’
I just heard a clip of Obama speaking today (aug 30) and he's using the BS reasoning that the Bushies did such as - paraphrasing -"We have to contain the gasses so that the terrorists don't get them and use them against us"
What a load of crap.........
General Idris’ Close Watch on Assad’s CW
Posted on
August 29, 2013 by
emptywheel
In a
piece summarizing the current state of intelligence, the AP reveals how uncertain US intelligence is about chain of control over Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons.
Intelligence officials say they could not pinpoint the exact locations of Assad’s supplies of chemical weapons, and Assad could have moved them in recent days as U.S. rhetoric builds. That lack of certainty means a possible series of U.S. cruise missile strikes aimed at crippling Assad’s military infrastructure could hit newly hidden supplies of chemical weapons, accidentally triggering a deadly chemical attack.
Over the past six months, with shifting front lines in the 2½-year-old civil war and sketchy satellite and human intelligence coming out of Syria, U.S. and allied spies have lost track of who controls some of the country’s chemical weapons supplies, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official and three other U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence shared by the White House as reason to strike Syria’s military complex. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Syrian issue publicly.
U.S. satellites have captured images of Syrian troops moving trucks into weapons storage areas and removing materials, but U.S. analysts have not been able to track what was moved or, in some cases, where it was relocated. They are also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad’s forces moving chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels took over an area where weapons had been stored. [my emphasis]
8 days after an attack they say they’re certain came from Assad loyalists, the intelligence community says it doesn’t know where all the CW are, doesn’t know who controls it all, and has questions about whether rebels seized (or took) CW after they were moved into place by Syrian forces.
With that in mind, I want to return to the
stunning report from NBC last night that casually quotes General Salim Idris, head of the Free Syrian Army, claiming he has “sources” in Assad’s inner circle.
Salim Idris, commander of the Free Syrian Army, said sources in Assad’s inner circle tell him that’s exactly what happened.
[snip]
Idris also indicated that pressure also has been growing on Assad to respond to a series of rebel advances.
Not only does the report show Idris claiming — effectively — that people in Assad’s inner circle are so disloyal that they not only continue to communicate with him, but provide key intelligence about how much pressure Assad is under.
Let’s take a step back.
Idris defected — at least publicly — from Assad’s army last July, around the same time as then CIA Director David Petraeus and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
unsuccessfully lobbied to start arming the rebels, and the month before Obama
laid out chemical weapon use as his “red line.”
Idris was elected — thanks to a lot of arm twisting by US and its allies — to command the Free Syrian Army in December, just weeks after a
chemical weapons incident I’ve been obsessing on. Shortly after his election, Idris gave a
number of
interviews in which he emphasized two things: that his people had an eye on Assad’s CW, and that Assad would use them if he got cornered.
The new Syrian rebel commander has told The Associated Press that his fighters are monitoring the regime’s chemical weapons sites, but don’t have the means to seize and secure them.
Gen. Salim Idris, who defected from the Syrian army in July, says he is “very afraid” a cornered regime will use chemical weapons in Syria’s civil war. Syria is said to have one of the world’s largest chemical arsenals.
Effectively, Idris was repeating the
line intelligence analysts had given just weeks earlier (or they had been repeating what he told them), even while suggesting his men were the ones watching over the CW.
Since that time, Idris’ authority has been in question, largely because
his value to the rebels lay in his purported ability to work with America’s allies to supply them. In March, he
wrote up the complaints he had been making — that the US wasn’t giving rebels the arms they needed.
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General Idris’ Close Watch on Assad’s CW | emptywheel