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Despite serious public opposition to involvement in another quagmire in the Middle East, chances are the United States will soon be involved in the two-year-old civil war in Syria. While there are many questions regarding how this will help or hinder national foreign policy aims, few have considered how a shift in power could affect the religious freedom of the people of Syria. Religion in Syria Syria is a nation of 22.7 million people covering 184,180 square km, approximately the size of the U.S. state of Washington. The population is predominantly Muslim, with 59-60% identifying as Sunni and 13% identifying...

With all of the attention focused on Barack Obama’s plans to use military strikes to hasten regime change in a country with al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist networks operating on a large scale, let’s not forget the last time this strategy was put in place. A year ago tomorrow, terrorists sacked our consulate in Benghazi and killed four Americans, including our Ambassador to Libya. Despite claims that the Obama administration would seek out the culprits, the New York Times reports that the successor government in Libya has refused to cooperate with the US on making arrests: A year after the attacks in Benghazi...

This was linked from Yahoo's front page as titled. DB headline: Enough Already: Syria Wasn’t a False-Flag Operation(snip)But conspiracy theories have never been about plausibility. More than anything, they reflect our uneasiness with the modern world, its complexity, and often its capriciousness. And at times, they’re a natural consequence of past actions. Given the circumstances of the war in Iraq—where high-level officials, up to and including the president, misled the public—it’s not a surprise that some people are paranoid about the situation in Syria. Still, for any given situation, the best we can do is evaluate the evidence we have...

If we give Obama the benefit of the doubt, he and Putin worked this out on the sly at the G-20 summit. If not, Kerry is just a frigging blowhard idiot who made policy up on the run. Either our national leadership is comprised of some cagey guys who figured out a way to back off from an unpopular and unwise position, or we got absolutely pantsed by Putin and Assad. Either way, we win. And by that I mean, we don’t go to war in Syria. Here’s the background. In an earlier demonstration of freelanced policy, Obama told some...

More at Reaganite Republican...

"The horrifying pictures of dead children being used by the Obama administration to justify an attack on Syria, with the claim that the Assad regime carried out the chemical attacks that killed those children, while emotionally heartbreaking, do not tell the story of those children and do not tell you the main point the Obama administration is trying to coverup. Those children were kidnapped over a week earlier, before they were slaughtered . . . by the Obama backed Syrian rebels."

Video at link.

Bashar al-Assad didn’t look like a thug in his interview with Charlie Rose. He isn’t a thug; he has thugs and murderers who can do his dirty work for him. His brother, Maher al-Assad, commands the regime’s Republican Guard and controls the Syrian Army’s 4th Armoured Division. It is they that the opposition and Western governments both suggest were behind the chemical weapons attack on August 21. Like most tyrants, Assad keeps his own hands clean and leaves the blood to the butchers. Maher is a butcher. Maher’s record as a military strong man is long and brutal. Most infamously,

CBS News teased an exclusive interview with Bashar al-Assad conducted by Charlie Rose yesterday, in which the Syrian dictator promises to respond to any attack from the United States. Assad told Rose that an attack on his armed forces would tip the civil war in favor of al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and scoffed at John Kerry’s assertion that the US has evidence that the regime conducted the chemical-weapons attack:

Syria: As a Chinese warship joins Russian ships in the Mediterranean, we should remember a cruise missile attack on an Israeli warship. President Obama should understand that Syria and Hezbollah have missiles, too. As the Obama administration continues to deploy its comical weapons, with Secretary of State John Kerry promising America any attack on Syria will be "unbelievably small," a Chinese warship deploys off the Syrian coast, joining its Russian counterparts in what used to be an "American lake," the Mediterranean Sea. The People's Liberation Army has dispatched the amphibious dock landing ship Jinggangshan, a move that follows the announcement...

Was the Bush administration right all along? Could these indeed be the very same WMDs that intelligence agencies from around the world claimed were in Hussein’s possession which he then transferred over to Syria? The earliest account of Hussein having hidden his WMDs in Syria came in January of 2004. Nizar Nayouf, an award-winning Syrian journalist who was granted political asylum in France, said in a letter to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf not only that he knew Iraq’s WMDs were being hidden inside Syria, but that he could pinpoint precisely where they were being kept. According to Nayouf’s witness, described...

Have you noticed how confident and strong Big Guy looked the last few days? Locked, Loaded and Packin’Some said it was his stare down of Russian President Vladimir “Vladdy” Putin, “Nyet!”while others suggest it was his sunset walk on the beach. Misty water-colored memories Of the way we were... Butt I think it’s just due to strapping on the old chaps and spurs, getting back in the saddle and doing what he does best: blaming and campaigning.Accordingly, we kick off our campaign to bash Assad today with appearances on state controlled PBS, state controlled CNN and Rude Rupert’s Fox, where...

Secretary of State John Kerry and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius stood shoulder-to-shoulder today to say the two countries are united in their belief that Syrian President Bashir al-Assad must be punished for unleashing chemical weapons on his own people. "This is our chance to join together and pursue accountability over appeasement. We in the United States know and our French partners know that this is not the time to be silent spectators to slaughter," Kerry said. "What we are talking about is standing together and speaking with one voice in opposition to a clear violation of a red line...

CBS's Charlie Rose asked, "Will there be attacks against American bases in the Middle East if there's an air strike?" "You should expect everything," said Assad. "You should expect everything. Not necessarily through the government. ... the government's not the only player in this region. ... You have everything in this decision now. so you have to expect that."

As President Barack Obama kicks off an all-out push for a strike on Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry came under fire on Monday for saying any attack would be “unbelievably small” and suggesting the Syrian ruler still had a week to give up his chemical weapons to avoid a U.S. assault - a remark Kerry’s spokeswoman later attempted to clarify. The off-key comments came in a joint press conference in London with Britain’s foreign secretary, where Kerry said the strike would be able to harm Assad without putting American troops on the ground and with a “very limited, very...

Obama is going on a whirlwind media blitz this week in an attempt to sell a very skeptical public on war with Syria. Yet the Washington Post notes: Obama’s top aide says the administration lacks “irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence” that skeptical Americans, including lawmakers who will start voting on military action this week, are seeking. Indeed, those who have seen the evidence say that it is incredibly weak. German intelligence also says that Assad didn’t order the attacks. Moreover, President Obama correctly noted in 2007: The President does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack...

Washington (CNN) -- As President Barack Obama presses his case for a strike on Syria, a new national survey shows him swimming against a strong tide of public opinion that doesn't want the U.S. to get involved.

Mr Kerry was in London on Monday morning on the final leg of a whirlwind European tour to drum up support for intervention in Syria. When asked by a reporter whether there was anything Assad's government could do or offer to stop an attack, Mr Kerry said: "Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week – turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting (of it). "But he isn't about to do it and it can't be done." Mr Kerry repeated...

German surveillance suggests chemical attack unauthorized, Assad also tells PBS's Charlie Rose that he did not gas his own people, as White House continues to press claim. Government forces in Syria may have launched the chemical weapons attack that reportedly killed more than a thousand civilians last month before receiving a go-ahead from President Bashar Assad. According to an article published on Sunday in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, a German spy ship intercepted repeated communications from forces loyal to Assad asking for permission to use chemical weapons; however, their requests were consistently denied. This latest report comes as...

... President Bashar al-Assad did not personally order last month's chemical weapons attack near Damascus that has triggered calls for US military intervention, and blocked numerous requests from his military commanders against opponents in recent months, a German newspaper has reported, citing unidentified, high-level national security sources. ...