susan rice threatens syria , kosovo style

On May 30, susan rice threatened that if Russia does not capitulate to the policy of regime-change in Syria, other members of the UN Security Council working with other members of the international community will resort to action outside the authority of the United Nations.


After the meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday, Rice said that the most probable scenario is "that the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies, it reaches a higher degree of severity, it involves countries in the region, it takes on increasingly sectarian forms, and we have a major crisis not only in Syria but in the region. 


The Council's unity is exploded, the Annan plan is dead, and this becomes a proxy conflict with arms flowing in from all sides. And members of this Council and members of the international community are left with the option only of having to consider whether they're prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this Council."


Having threatened on Wednesday to act illegally in violation of the UN Charter, Rice on Thursday condemned Russia for arms deliveries to Syria, even as she was forced to admit that "It is not technically, obviously, a violation of international law, since there is not an arms embargo."


Meanwhile the head of the Free Syrian Army, Colonel Riad al-Assad, called upon Kofi Annan to announce that his peace plan has failed, and on Friday the UN Human Rights Council is being convened at the request of Qatar, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the EU, Denmark, and Turkey to escalate the attack on the Syrian government as solely responsible for the killings in Houla.


So far the Russians have foiled the British and U.S. plans against Syria. But the danger is that the latter will "manage to panic people into saying, there's a {casus belli} in Syria or someplace like that. 


Now, once they start to operate on a {casus belli} assumption, they're on the edge of actually going to thermonuclear war, or they're going to steps which will lead to thermonuclear war. And right now, we're at a point, as of this week, where they're ready to pull off stunts beyond belief.


"We're on the edge, except for what the Russians did in particular in this case; they called the bluff and there was a back-off. But the pattern is incresingly, less and less tendency to back off, more and more tendency to go all the way. We're very close to a thermonuclear event."


All this while the economies of nations collapse. Spain is finished. Naturally other countries are finished. Italy probably is finished, on the edge of being finished; and other countries as well.


Today it was announced by the Bank of Spain that the flight capital from Spain in the month of March amounted to $82 billion. Fitch downgraded eight of the regions in Spain. Yields on Spanish 10-year bonds rose to 6.69% late Wednesday. In an auction of 10-year bonds on Wednesday, Italy paid 6.03% interest.

In desperation, Spain's Finance Minister Luis de Guindos flew to Berlin Wednesday to meet Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. Thursday, Spain's Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria will meet with Timothy Geithner and the IMF's Christine Lagarde in Washington.

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Russian Amb. Churkin Rejects the Susan Rice/London Demands for Actions Against Syria


Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin yesterday rejected the views of Susan Rice, U.S. Envoy to the United Nations, after she briefed reporters that nations must "consider whether they are prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this [U.N. Security] Council."


Churkin said in reply to a reporter's question about Susan Rice's statement: first, it is necessary to carry through on the plan of U.N. envoy to Syria Kofi Annan, by all parties involved -- the Syrian government, the opposition, and the international community.


Churkin then said, "If it doesn't work -- and this is something which you don't have to quote my American colleague to me to absorb the significance of that. That's what I've been saying for months, that the Syrian situation has very grave potential of impacting not only Syria in a very bad way, but the region."


Today, the {Voice of Russia} carried another warning about the consequences of bypassing the U.N. It wrote: "Andrei Volodin of the Center for Oriental Studies at the Russian Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy, comments:


"Hopefully Ms. Rice understands that the US ruling elite risks a lot by suggesting this kind of intervention in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign. A military intervention in Syria will inevitably drive a wedge in this mosaic structure of relations that exists in the eastern Mediterranean. It might spark a raft of conflicts of medium and high intensity throughout the region and the West will be powerless to control them."  


- Rice Attacks Russia -


Amb. Churkin has also rejected the charges made yesterday against Russia by Susan Rice, that Russia is supporting violence in Syria by supplying arms. He said yesterday, "The weapons we may have provided to Syria under various contracts, which were concluded a long time ago, are fully in line with international law and do not contribute to the current armed violence in Syria."


Today, Susan Rice acquiesced in Churkin's point about law, but continued her tirade against Russia over the same point.



Speaking again to reporters at the U.N., she said, "With respect to the reported docking of a ship carrying Russian arms [last week in Tartus], this is obviously of the utmost concern given that the Syrian government continues to use deadly force against civilians...It is not technically, obviously, a violation of international law since there is not an arms embargo, but it is reprehensible that arms would continue to flow to a regime that is using such horrific and disproportionate force against its own people..."


As for Rice's continued rant that Russia should be "pressured" to go along with the UN Security Council on increased sanctions on Syria, a reply to this point was quoted today by Russia's Interfax news agency, from President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. 


He said that Russia's position on Syria is well-known, balanced, consistent, and logical. So, "it is hardly appropriate to talk about this position changing under someone's pressure."


In effect, Peskov's reply answers comments today made by Sec. of State Hillary Clinton in Copenhagen, at a youth event, where she said during the Q&A exchange, "My argument to the Russians is they keep telling me they don't want to see a civil war. And, I have been telling them their policy is going to help contribute to a civil war. It is not a satisfactory answer yet, but we are trying to keep pushing all the pieces together to support Kofi Annan as an independent voice because the Syrians are not going to listen to us. They will listen, maybe, to the Russians. So we have to keep pushing them."


President Putin on Friday will be in Germany and France, meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Francois Hollande.  

- "Kosovo Pattern in Syria?" -


Today's {Russia Today} coverage of Susan Rice, headlined, "US Ready to Act on Syria Outside UN?" carries the following section, subtitled, "Kosovo pattern in Syria?"


"Susan Rice's comment became a disturbing reminder of what happened in 1999 when the US and NATO intervened in the former Yugoslavia without a UN Security Council mandate.


"The precedent is already there -- we've mentioned Kosovo. 'It's exactly what happened -- you had an allegation of a massacre, which was the village of Racak; you had a UN decree that was severely bullied by the US ambassador who was leading the observation mission on the ground; you had claims that it was a brutal, unprovoked massacre of innocent civilians by government troops. Serbia was blamed, presented with the ultimatum and then bombed,' historian and author Nebojsa Malic told RT.


"'We have the same pattern repeating itself in Syria.'"


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U.N. Human Rights Council Meets June 1 on 'Houla Massacre' -- London's Current Pretext for War


A prominent escalation in a push toward thermonuclear holocaust, is a rushed meeting to be convened June 1 by the U.N. Human Rights Council, on the Houla Massacre which occurred last week in Syria, in which 108 persons were killed. 


Such a special session is very infrequent. It was called by 21 of 47 Council members, and announced just yesterday. The official request came from the EU, the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Denmark, and Turkey.


China officials are urging a go-slow on reflex reactions, and calling for considered judgment. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said at a daily news briefing, "China believes that the situation in Syria currently is certainly very complex and serious. But at the same time, we believe that Annan's mediation efforts have been effective and we ought to have more faith in him and give him more support."


Today, the head of the investigative committee formed by the Syrian government, Brigadier Gen. Qassem Jamal Suleiman, presented preliminary results of its investigation into last week's Houla massacre. As reported by the {Voice of Russia}, Suleiman said that the victims were families, "who refused to oppose the government and were at odds with the armed groups." 


He said that many were relatives of a member of the Syrian parliament. He said that all the victims were from families which refused to back the armed riots, and were in conflict with the rebels. He said that about 600-800 armed militants carried out a well-coordinated attack against the army and security forces in the area of Houla. The army units never entered the village.


The news yesterday that another 13 bodies had been found, in eastern Syria, of people killed at close range, with their hands tied behind them, is being parlayed into demands for summary action against the Syrian government, including U.S. UN envoy Susan Rice's demand for action to be taken, "outside" the U.N. and the Annan peace mission.


Also timed with this countdown to all-out war, are new ultimata and conditionalities issuing forth from various elements in the opposition. Yesterday, rebels within Syria, associated with the Free Syrian Army, issued a 48-hour ultimatum, for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to comply with Annan's six-point peace plan, by Friday mid-day, or the FSA considers itself "no longer bound" by the plan.


Today, an override on this was issued by a different rebel leader, Col. Riad al Asaad, based in Turkey, who said, "There is no deadline. But we want Kofi Annan to issue a declaration announcing the failure of this plan so that we would be free to carry out any military operation against the regime."

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Major U.S. Press Organs Caution Against Syria Intervention


{Washington Post} military/intelligence columnist Walter Pincus today warned of the dangers inherent in a U.S. intervention, and called for a full debate by the American public and the Congress before that course be taken. Two other major U.S. papers also came out against intervention, in terms less pointed than Pincus's column.


Pincus's column begins, "Syria is not a video game. Americans need to understand that. President Bashar al-Assad and his regime, fighting to stay in power, are using increasingly brutal force against their own people. It is becoming a civil war, with both political and religious elements complicating the picture."


Portraying the Obama Administration as focussed on a diplomatic solution, Pincus describes attempts by Republican personalities (Sens. McCain, Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham, and more recently Mitt Romney), assisted by the press, to push for arming the Syrian opposition, and/or airstrikes. 


He says, "While proponents talk in general of providing 'military assistance,' the senators recognize that would include 'weapons and ammunition, body armor and other personal protective equipment, tactical intelligence, secure communications equipment, food and water, and medical supplies.' It would also require people on the ground." The column concludes, 


"The country should think seriously about this step, and Congress should debate it. You could say the same thing about Yemen, Somalia and even Iran."


Though Pincus does not say so, the issue is not what politicians are saying, but what President Obama, or a future President Romney, will {do}. A full Congressional debate on deciding whether to go to war, is precisely the subject of Walter Jones's H.Con.Res.107 and Jim Webb's S.3176.

A {Chicago Tribune} opinion column by {Trib} editorial board member Steve Chapman is titled, "Why we should stay out of Syria," and also is posed in terms of Republican demands for more aggressive action, which are supposedly being resisted by the Administration. Chapman presents the argument of Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism at the University of Chicago, that Syria is different from Libya. After elaborating on those differences, the column says, 


"Air power is generally unavailing in situations where government loyalists and rebels are cheek by jowl on the ground and devilishly hard to distinguish from cloud level. In that situation, ground forces are the way to go, but it would involve the likelihood of significant American casualties. That prospect is a big deterrent, and it ought to be. One reason Obama got little pushback at home on Libya was that we didn't lose a single service member. Syria would be different -- more like the invasion of Afghanistan. 


We might prevail, but at a much higher price than in Libya and only if we were willing to stay on indefinitely. One reason the cost would escalate, said Pape, is that our invasion would look suspiciously like an act of conquest rather than altruism. "After all, Syria has long been at odds with its neighbor, Israel, which happens to be our close ally." The column concludes, "Critics demand that Obama show 'leadership' by doing something to help Syria's civilians. But sometimes leadership lies in knowing what not to do -- and then not doing it."


A {Los Angeles Times} editorial asks what response by international community and the "Friends of Syria" should be evoked by the Houla atrocity, and it, too, is aimed at the Republican demands. The editorial says, "We continue to oppose a potentially costly U.S. military involvement in Syria, which is a vastly better-defended country than Libya and an ally of Iran. Though less extreme than direct intervention, providing weapons to the Free Syrian Army is also problematic. The political agenda of the rebels is still unfocused, and an infusion of arms would escalate the violence without guaranteeing an early overthrow of the Assad regime." The editorial concludes that "Recent experience suggests that such engagements don't always accomplish their goals and that they often drag on much longer than intended," and it calls for continuation of diplomatic pressure.


---  New York Times Editorial: Too Much Power For a President


Following up on the article published in the New York Times on Tuesday, "Secret `Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles and Will," the paper today ran an editorial denouncing Barack Obama for carrying out an assassination policy "without any oversight."


As the Editorial states: "No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield, depriving Americans of their due-process rights, without the consent of someone outside his political inner circle.


"How can the world know whether the targets chosen by this president or his successors are truly dangerous terrorists and not just people with the wrong associations? (It is clear, for instance, that many of those rounded up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks weren't terrorists.) 


How can the world know whether this president or a successor truly pursued all methods short of assassination, or instead -- to avoid a political charge of weakness -- built up a tough-sounding list of kills?


"It is too easy to say that this is a natural power of a commander-in-chief. The United States cannot be in a perpetual war on terror that allows lethal force against anyone, anywhere, for any perceived threat. That power is too great, and too easily abused, as those who lived through the George W. Bush administration will remember.


"Mr. Obama, who campaigned against some of those abuses in 2008, should remember. But the Times article, written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, depicts him as personally choosing every target, approving every major drone strike in Yemen and Somalia and the riskiest ones in Pakistan, assisted only by his own aides and a group of national security operatives. Mr. Obama relies primarily on his counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan.


"The Times article points out, however, that the Defense Department is currently killing suspects in Yemen without knowing their names, using criteria that have never been made public. The administration is counting all military-age males killed by drone fire as combatants without knowing that for certain, assuming they are up to no good if they are in the area. That has allowed Mr. Brennan to claim an extraordinarily low civilian death rate that smells more of expediency than morality.


In a recent speech, Mr. Brennan said the administration chooses only those who pose a real threat, not simply because they are members of Al Qaeda, and prefers to capture suspects alive. Those assurances are hardly binding, and even under Mr. Obama, scores of suspects have been killed but only one taken into American custody.


"A unilateral campaign of death is untenable. To provide real assurance, President Obama should publish clear guidelines for targeting to be carried out by nonpoliticians, making assassination truly a last resort, and allow an outside court to review the evidence before placing Americans on a kill list. And it should release the legal briefs upon which the targeted killing was based." 


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Ralph Nader: Where Are the lawyers? Obama at Large


Ralph Nader today published an op ed in Counterpunch which calls upon lawyers to uphold the rule of law and defend the Constitution against the unconstitutional policies of, first, George W. Bush and, now, Barack Obama.


"As a youngster in Hawaii, basketball player Barack Obama was nicknamed by his schoolboy chums "Barry O'Bomber," according to the Washington Post. Tuesday's (May 29) New York Times published an exceptionally lengthy page-one feature article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane, that demonstrated just how inadvertently prescient was this moniker....


"The drones have killed civilians, families with small children, and even allied soldiers in this undeclared war based on secret facts and grudges (getting even). These attacks are justified by secret legal memos claiming that the president, without any Congressional authorization, can without any limitations other that his say-so, target far and wide assassinations of any suspected terrorist, including American citizens.


"The bombings by Mr. Obama, as secret prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner, trample proper constitutional authority, separation of powers, and checks and balances and constitute repeated impeachable offenses. That is, if a pathetic Congress ever decided to uphold its constitutional responsibility, including and beyond Article I, section 8's war-declaring powers.


"As if lawyers needed any reminding, the Constitution is the foundation of our legal system and is based on declared, open boundaries of permissible government actions. That is what a government of law, not of men, means. Further our system is clearly demarked by independent review of executive branch decisions by our courts and Congress.


"What happens if Congress becomes, in constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein's words, an ink blot, and the courts beg off with their wholesale dismissals of Constitutional matters based on claims an issue involves a political question or that parties have no-standing-to-sue. What happens is what is happening. The situation worsens every year, deepening dictatorial secretive decisions by the White House, and not just regarding foreign and military policies.


"Secrecy-driven violence in government breeds fear and surrender of conscience. When Mr. Obama was campaigning for president in 2007, he was reviled by Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden Jr. and Mitt Romney -- then presidential candidates -- for declaring that even if Pakistani leaders objected, he would go after terrorist bases in Pakistan. Romney said he had become Dr. Strangelove, according to the Times. Today all three of candidate Obama's critics have decided to go along with egregious violations of our Constitution.


"The Times made the telling point that Obama's orders now can target suspects in Yemen whose names they do not know. Such is the drift to one-man rule, consuming so much of his time in this way at the expense of addressing hundreds of thousands of preventable fatalities yearly here in the U.S. from occupational disease, environmental pollution, hospital infections and other documented dangerous conditions.


"Based on deep reporting, Becker and Shane allowed that both Pakistan and Yemen are arguably less stable and more hostile to the United States than when Obama became president.

"In a world of lawlessness, force will beget force, which is what the CIA means by blowback. Our country has the most to lose when we abandon the rule of law and embrace lawless violence that is banking future revenge throughout the world.