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President Barack Obama lied when he said his administration would retaliate if Syria used chemical weapons and claimed he "would promise something and do the opposite", setting the Middle East back 20 years, a former top Saudi official has claimed. Bandar bin Sultan, who served as the head of Saudi intelligence and later as the Saudi ambassador to the United States, lashed out against Obama in a wide-ranging interview with the Independent Arabia, a newly launched publication in London. He said that the late Saudi King Abdullah told Obama in their last phone call that “I did not expect that...

Former Secretary of State John Kerry said former President Barack Obama should have followed through on his infamous "red line" warning to Syria, and the United States "paid a price" as a result of Obama's inaction. Obama vowed in 2012 that if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime used chemical weapons on civilians, it would be a "game changer" for U.S. military involvement in Syria. But Obama failed to enforce the promise a year later when hundreds of Syrians were killed in a sarin gas attack, and he instead brokered a multi-nation deal in which Assad pledged to remove his chemical...

WASHINGTON — President Obama warned Syria on Monday that it would face American military intervention if there were signs that its arsenal of unconventional weapons was being moved or prepared for use. It was Mr. Obama’s first direct threat of force against Syria, as he has resisted being drawn into the bloody 18-month rebellion. [...] “We cannot have a situation in which chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people,” Mr. Obama said in response to questions at an impromptu news conference at the White House. “We have been very clear to the Assad regime...

By now it should be obvious that whenever the U.S. interferes in another nation’s politics in the name of “human rights,” that is only a pretext. So it is in Syria, as Obama prepares to plunge America in a war with that nation and, inevitably, its allies. The United States’ stated reason for intervention, as articulated by John Kerry, is that Syrian President Assad used chemical weapons on the rebels, many of whom are jihadis — including terrorists, rapists, and cannibals – and thus violated their human rights. Kerry is certainly consistent. Earlier he worried about the “human rights” of...

One of the lead United Nations investigators probing human rights abuses in Syria said Sunday that testimony from victims and field medical staff indicates that Syrian opposition forces -- and not the regime of Bashar al Assad -- may have deployed sarin gas.

(Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday. The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

Democrats on Sunday morning's news shows appeared to back away from President Barack Obama on his administration's response to the Benghazi terror attack and his blurry "red line" on Syria's chemical weapons. On Fox News Sunday, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) admitted that the Obama administration's talking points on Benghazi, edited to remove references to extremism and blaming protests against an anti-Islamic YouTube video for the violence, were "false. They were wrong. There were no protests outside the Benghazi compound." On CBS News' Face the Nation, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), the Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, also admitted that...

There are only two words to describe the New York Times’ explanation of Barack Obama’s red-line dance – smart power.  According to anonymous “senior officials” at the White House, Obama’s advisors now claim that they had a precise calculation of what to say about Bashar al-Assad and the potential use of chemical weapons in Syria.  As soon as Obama went off the TelePrompter, though, that’s when he crossed them up and drew a red line the White House had not even contemplated. Or so they claim now: The origins of this dilemma can be traced in large part to a weekend last...

Monday, April 29, 2013 The Big Fat Red Line Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Someone chalked a long red line along the street outside my building. The line is sloppy, it turns, wavers and meanders. Car tires have already rubbed it pink in places and dogs have done to it what large four-legged animals do naturally when taken out of the confines of narrow apartments. The line turns a corner and dives inside a pothole near an exposed sewer grate. And then it is gone. Obama's red line is more famous than my red line. It...