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Moscow, September 11, Interfax - Farid Salman, the head of the Ulema Council of the All-Russian Muslim Board, has called on the leaders of the United States, France, and Turkey to drop their plans to launch a military strike against Syria. "There is the impression that the U.S. authorities have imagined themselves to be the sole masters on this planet. People believing in God know that the Egyptian Pharaoh once imagined himself to be the Most High Lord on Earth. And God struck him down with a punishment in the other world and in this one," the Ulema Council said...

President Barack Obama said on Saturday he was willing to give a chance to diplomacy to help resolve the Syrian crisis, but warned the military option was still on the table. "Since this plan emerged only with a credible threat of US military action, we will maintain our military posture in the region to keep the pressure on the Assad regime," Obama said in his weekly address.

It’s always a good sign for an empire’s fortunes when the commander in chief of the armed forces completely loses the confidence and trust of the troops. While we have all seen various polls demonstrating the general public’s complete opposition to unprovoked military aggression against Syria, I hadn’t seen a survey focused on military members until now. The results are not good for the establishment. From the Military Times: Note: The article quotes the Military Times at this point. The Times is a Gannett publication which we cannot excerpt due to their restrictions. You will have read the article to...

Syria’s President Bashar Assad on Thursday demanded that Israel ratify international treaties on non-proliferation of nonconventional weapons, and that the US promise not to attack his regime, as he set conditions for a negotiated resolution of the crisis over his chemical weapon. Assad said he would submit data on his country’s chemical weapons stockpile a month after signing an international convention banning the arms, adding that it was Russia, and not the US, that was making a negotiated solution possible. His comments were believed to mark Assad’s first formal acknowledgement that he has chemical weapons. Calling a month wait the...

WASHINGTON — President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening to use force to ensure that Syria lives up to its commitment to turn over chemical weapons, but will seek other tangible consequences for Syria if it does not comply, senior administration officials said Friday. Although Mr. Obama reserves the right to order a punitive military strike on his own without United Nations backing if Syria reneges, the officials said he understood that Russia, because of its veto power in the Security Council, would never allow a resolution that authorized such a use of force. France, which...

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said President Obama has the go-ahead to use military force in Syria without congressional approval if negotiations fall through.  Hoyer, who supported a resolution authorizing military force, said Obama would be in a stronger position if he went through Congress, but Russia and Syria should understand it is not necessary.  “If we passed a resolution, he’d have a stronger hand,” Hoyer said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt to air Sunday. “But having said that, neither the Russians nor the Syrians ought to conclude that the president is without authority to act.”Secretary of...

MOSCOW (AP) — In a surprise move, Russia promised Monday to push its ally Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control and then dismantle them quickly to avert U.S. strikes. The announcement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came a few hours after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that Syrian President Bashar Assad could resolve the crisis surrounding the alleged use of chemical weapons by his forces by surrendering control of "every single bit" of his arsenal to the international community by the end of the week.

Headline only. Syria welcomes Russia's proposal for Damascus to put its chemical weapons under international control: Foreign Minister Walid Al-Moualem by Margarita Noriega (Reuters) 10:41 AM

In what looks like an off-the-cuff blunder, Secretary of State John Kerry might have accidentally given Russian President Vladmir Putin the opportunity to muddy the international diplomatic waters and buy his friends in Syria some time. During a press briefing on Monday, Kerry said that Assad could avoid American air strikes by giving up all his chemical weapons within a week. Within hours, the State Department was forced to walk Kerry's new red line back with the claim that he was making a "rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons he has denied he...

With support tanking in Congress for a US military strike on Syria, the big question is whether President Obama would go forward with an attack if Congress does not approve one...

“I don’t even know who my White House liaison is,” a frustrated Representative Adam Kinzinger, who supports military action in Syria, said on This Week this morning. The Illinois Republican told George Stephanopoulos that his office reached out to the White House to help “round up support” for authorization last week. “I haven’t heard back from the White House yet — I haven’t heard back from anyone,” he said. Kinzinger praised President Obama’s assessment of this situation in Syria, but said the “trust deficit” with Congress will prevent it from passing. “You can’t begin to build a relationship with Congress...

We spend a lot of time debating the domestic ramifications of President Obama’s handling – to use the word loosely – of the situation in Syria, ranging from political fallout to impacts on upcoming elections. But it’s a big world out there and other countries have taken a keen interest in the subject. You can now bump up the level of engagement that China has in this mess, as they have dispatched a warship of their own to the party. China has reportedly sent warships to the coast of Syria to “observe” the actions of US and Russian ships as...

Looking over the week's crazy developments, I can see only one coherent strand in Obama's foreign policy. He wants to make sure that John Kerry and Hillary Clinton will never be elected president. After sacrificing Hillary's career on the blood-streaked walls of Benghazi he had Kerry appear before the Congress and take positions utterly at odds with those he's taken all his life, supplied him with information disputed by other members of the administration, and had him make indefensible statements without any evidentiary support at all. By way of example, Kerry asserted that the chemical weapons case against Syria was...

John Kerry Careful Not To Rule Out Return To UN For Syria Resolution Secretary of state says 'the president and all of us are listening carefully to all our friends' after ally France hints at UN route 8 September 2013 The United States said on Sunday it did not rule out returning to the United Nations security council to secure a Syria resolution once UN inspectors complete a report on a chemical weapons attack, but also indicated that Arab countries were seeking a tough response. Speaking at a news conference in Paris after meeting key Arab foreign ministers, secretary of...

Susan Rice Will Brief Congress on Syria on Anniversary of Benghazi September 8, 2013 - 2:36 PM By Terence P. Jeffrey (CNSNews.com) - Susan Rice, who falsely told the nation that the terrorist attacks in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 had developed out of a spontaneous demonstration against a YouTube video, will mark the one year anniversary of those attacks by briefing Congress to make the administration's case for authorizing President Barack Obama to use military force in Syria. The administration has decided to make Rice a key point person for pushing military intervention in Syria. On Monday, Rice will...

<p>Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus is throwing his considerable weight behind the push for military action against Syria, saying a failure to act, “would have serious ramifications not just in the Mideast, but around the world.”</p> <p>Politico reports the one-time CIA director under President Obama penned a strongly worded statement in support of his former boss’ call-to-action in response to Syria's purported use of chemical weapons, writing, “I strongly support congressional approval of President Obama’s request for authority to undertake military action against the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad.</p>

...[W]atching President Barack Obama stumble through his news conference from the G-20 summit last week and trying to talk us into war with Syria, I couldn't help thinking about dogs. It was a stupid thought, yes, but I didn't put it there. One of the president's men put it there. A guy named David Axelrod, who brought it up on Twitter. Axelrod, the Democratic mouthpiece of Chicago mayors, is the guy who aligned himself with an inexperienced Illinois legislative back-bencher and ended up installing him in the White House. And after the president announced he would seek congressional approval for...

The buzz in the Middle East media is that the real reason President Obama changed his mind about striking Syria last week was not, in fact, that he is indecisive. Nor was it that the concept of war goes against his grain. Nor that there’s a major division between his personal advisors and government officials. Nor that the Arab League voted against America striking Syria and wanted the United Nations to intervene. Nor even that the British House of Commons pulled the rug out from under him by voting against a British attack on Syria—essentially slapping Obama’s primary supporter, Prime...

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough asserted that a "common-sense test" rather than "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence" makes the Syrian government responsible for a chemical weapons attack that Obama says demands a U.S. military response. McDonough acknowledged the risks that military action could drag the U.S. into the middle of a brutal civil war and endanger allies such as Israel with a retaliatory attack.

The White House asserted Sunday that a "common-sense test" rather than "irrefutable, beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence" makes the Syrian government responsible for a chemical weapons attack that President Barack Obama says demands a U.S. military response. At the same time, chief of staff Denis McDonough acknowledged the risks that military action could drag the U.S. into the middle of a brutal civil war and endanger allies such as Israel with a retaliatory attack.