Free Republic

While President Barack Obama and Congress pontificate over whether Syrian President Bashar Assad used chemical weapons on his own people and whether a limited U.S. attack on Syria would be justified, what Washington needs to realize is this: Assad launched sarin on its citizens in hopes of moving the U.S. like a chess piece into his civil war and deeper onto the Middle East war map. According to New York University political scientist Alastair Smith, Assad's use of chemical weapons is in reality "a brilliant play internationally" on the global field of politics and power -- if, of course, you're...

Charlie Rose interviewed Syrian President Bashar Assad at the presidential palace in Damascus on Sunday morning. --- UPDATE (11:05 a.m.): Rose's preview of the interview as relayed by phone from Beirut, Lebanon, on CBS's "Face The Nation" on Sunday: [Assad] denied that he had anything to do with the attack. He denied that he knew there was a chemical attack, notwithstanding what has been said and notwithstanding the videotape. He said there’s not enough evidence to make a conclusive judgment. He would not say even, even though I read him the lead paragraph of the New York Times today in...

Iran threatens rape of Obama daughter Warns of mass abductions, brutal killings of American citizens if U.S. hits Syria (Daily Caller) As Congress debates whether to support President Obama’s call for a limited strike against Syria for the alleged use of chemical weapons, Iran is vowing to back Bashar al-Assad’s regime to the hilt and threatening to unleash terrorism should the U.S. strike. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Forces, Wednesday told the Assembly of Experts — the body that chooses the supreme leader — that “[w]e will support Syria to the end.” And in an unprecedented statement, a...

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the top Pentagon officer repeatedly warned against the costs and potential entanglements of military involvement in Syria. Now he's testifying on behalf of the White House. The nation's top military officer warned repeatedly in recent months that getting US military involved with Syria is a dangerous proposition... Did he change his mind or is he just doing the White House's bidding? In the past, he has made it clear that US military intervention could tip the balance of power in favor of Islamist rebels who don't necessarily have the interests of the United States at heart...

The grossly obese Syrian officer was coming in the door of the King Khalid Military City exchange while I was coming out. I saw instantly that this was no soldier; this was a thug, a threat only to the unarmed civilians that are his kind’s prey. My eyes fell downward from his cruel face to the piece of flair gracing his olive green fatigues. “Nice Assad button,” I sneered. Real warriors don’t wear pictures of dictators on their uniform. He glared back at me with his dark, rat eyes, not understanding my words but fully appreciating my contempt. Though Syria...

"We're actively looking at the various legal angles that would inform a decision." That is what an anonymous administration official told the Washington Post this week about President Barack Obama's deliberations on whether he will personally involve the United States in another Middle Eastern war by ordering military action in Syria. But the only law that ultimately matters here is the one Obama swore to preserve, protect and defend: the Constitution of the United States. As recently as six years ago, Obama exhibited a clear understanding of the power the Constitution does and does not give the president in using...

Iran is to reportedly send 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad in the fight against opposition forces, according to the The Independent on Sunday. In what was described as an Iranian “military decision,” the British newspaper said Iran was now “fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime,” citing unnamed pro-Iranian sources. The sources “have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel,” The Independent’s Robert Fisk wrote. The decision, allegedly made before this week’s presidential election, was...

Syrian Rebel Bites Heart of Dead Soldier: Video BEIRUT (Reuters) - A video of a Syrian rebel commander cutting the heart out of a soldier and biting into is emblematic of a civil war that has rapidly descended into sectarian hatred and revenge killings, Human Rights Watch said on Monday. The New York-based group said an amateur video posted on the Internet on Sunday shows Abu Sakkar, a founder of the rebel Farouq Brigade who is well known to journalists as an insurgent from Homs, cutting into the torso of a dead soldier. The video has caused outrage among both...

As the civil war in Syria enters its third year, there is much discussion of the regimeÂ’s chemical weapons and whether SyriaÂ’s Bashar al-Assad will unleash them against Syrian rebels, or whether a power vacuum after AssadÂ’s fall might make those horrific tools available to the highest bidder. The conversation centers on SyriaÂ’s chemical weaponry, not on something vastly more serious: its nuclear weaponry. It well might have. This is the inside story of why it does not. Relations between the United States and Israel had grown rocky after IsraelÂ’s incursion into Lebanon in 2006, for Secretary of State Condoleezza...

More than 3,000 U.S. military personnel have secretly returned to Iraq via Kuwait and 17,000 more are on their way in response to the civil war in Syria that has spilled over into northern Iraq, according to a report published Monday by Iran's Press TV. The news follows by four days a report from the Russian news service RT that the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower has joined the USS Iwo Jima off the coast of Syria. Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week issued stern warnings to Syria about unspecified but serious "consequences" that would follow if...

War On Terror: As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq. King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida. "One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands," he...

Illustrating that the jihadist enterprise transcends all borders, American Islamist groups typically preoccupied with remaking the U.S. have been leaving their fingerprints on the campaign to exchange secular authoritarianism for religious authoritarianism in the Middle East. As these organizations labor stateside to nudge the governing class to embrace Arab Islamists at the expense of liberals — prompting Egyptian intellectual Essam Abdallah to lament that "the most dramatic oppression of the region's civil societies and the Arab Spring … is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington" — several of the groups' past and current officials have emerged as key...

Aleppo is burning. You can read about it day after day on the front pages, or on the websites of Syrians trying to organize support for their fight against the latest Assad. Caught between regulars and irregulars, thugs in uniform and out, Aleppo's inhabitants run for cover, or hunker down where they are and wait for the next air raid, the next suicide bombing, the next massacre. Or just the next bus out. Which could be blown to smithereens. By either side. The choices grow limited: Is it better to be killed by the grandly styled Free Syrian Army or...

According to the Spanish daily ABC, a Libyan rebel commander who played a key role in overthrowing the rule of Muammar Qaddafi previously participated in the May 2010 attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza aboard the Turkish-owned vessel the Mavi Marmara. The operation famously culminated in a deadly clash between Israel Defense Force commandos and “activists” armed with iron rods and knives aboard the ship. The paper’s source for the story is the rebel leader himself: Mahdi al-Harati, the commander of the so-called Tripoli Brigades, which are widely credited with having played a decisive role in the rebel...

War On Terror: As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein's air force says they were the WMDs we didn't find in Iraq. King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida. "One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands," he...

As more people continue to die for freedom everyday in Syria, the US acts like nothing is happening. Since last weekend, the Syrian regime has launched attacks in Hama, which is 130 miles north of the capital of Damascus, killing at least 100 people. According to human rights organizations, about 1700 people have been killed since the attacks began in March.The cautious European Union is enforcing more economic sanctions on Syria. The problem is that you do not push just sanctions on Syrian government officials, but also on the country's imports and exports. Even the UN Security Council condemned the violence...

Syria's 'Butcher of Hama' living in £10 million Mayfair townhouse The massacre of civilians in the rebellious Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughur has awoken terrible memories for the people of Hama, 60 miles to the north, where up to 40,000 people were killed during an uprising in 1982. Rifaat al-Assad moved, more than a year ago, to a Georgian mansion off Park Lane By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter 9:00PM BST 12 Jun 2011 Today, Mahar al-Assad, the bloodthirsty brother of President Bashar al-Assad, is the man leading his army on a mission of vengeance against those who have dared to...

Syrian government resigns: state television Photo 8:44am EDT DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accepted the resignation of the government on Tuesday, Syrian state television said. "President Assad accepts the government's resignation," an announcement on state television said.

(1) LA Times Blog, "SYRIA: President Bashar Assad says Iran supported indirect Israel talks, denies Scud claims...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is known to have a penchant for brinksmanship. Calculating that he has nothing to fear from a timid Obama administration, he is upping the ante in his direct military support to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The latest brazen act may involve the shipment of Syrian Scud D missiles to his Shia allies. Assad’s move appears to have followed his recent tripartite summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. It also comes after numerous reports in recent months about a steady increase in the quantity and quality of Syrian-supplied weapons to Hezbollah –...