Obama hopes Putin will change mind over Syria
Source: The Irish Times
Wed, Sep 4, 2013, 16:50
President Barack Obama said today he hoped Russian president Vladimir Putin would change his position of opposing military action against military targets in Syria.
“Do I hold out hope that Mr Putin may change his position on some of these issues? I’m always hopeful, and I will continue to engage him,” Mr Obama told a news conference in Sweden.
Mr Obama added he had made appeals directly to Mr Putin on Syria, but so far he had resisted efforts to achieve UN Security Council action.
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Aides say that even as Mr Obama travels he will stay on top of the congressional debate raging back in Washington, where his national security team has waged an intensive campaign to ease the concerns of reluctant lawmakers and a war-weary American public.
Read more: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/obama-hopes-putin-will-change-mind-over-syria-1.1515907
= new reply since forum marked as read
Putin and Russia have supported a father and son regime in Syria. The father simply slaughtered his opposition quietly. From the link below:
In 1982, Assad’s father and then-dictator Hafez al-Assad responded to a Muslim Brotherhood-led uprising in the city of Hama by leveling entire neighborhoods. He killed thousands of civilians, many of whom had nothing to do with the uprising.
The next year, Reagan tried to intervene in the Lebanese Civil War, which was said to be part of the Greater Syria move by the father. Israel had tried to set up a buffer zone between itself and those who were lobbing missiles at itself. Iran set up a military base after the Lebanese government fell and still supplies Hezbollah from that base.
We know the results of Reagan's efforts:
A smoke cloud rises from the rubble of the bombed barracks at Beirut International Airport (BIA).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing
The Wikipedia page there explains a lot of how we got here today, including Reagan's RWR views. It is worth the read. It is no wonder the GOP and Tea Party is like it is today.
Assad's son is desperate because he is losing the ground war, even the capitol city of Damascus, where this latest chemical attack took place. Deaths were documented by Doctors Without Borders, so there is no 'false flag.'
All the actions detailed below is Assad's response to Syria's Arab Spring, which won't gain him and his supporters much love anywhere.
9 questions about Syria you were too embarrassed to ask
By Max Fisher, August 29, 2013
1. What is Syria?
Syria is a country in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It’s about the same size as Washington state with a population a little over three times as large – 22 million. Syria is very diverse, ethnically and religiously, but most Syrians are ethnic Arab and follow the Sunni branch of Islam. Civilization in Syria goes back thousands of years, but the country as it exists today is very young. Its borders were drawn by European colonial powers in the 1920s.
Syria is in the middle of an extremely violent civil war. Fighting between government forces and rebels has killed more 100,000 and created 2 million refugees, half of them children.
2. Why are people in Syria killing each other?
The killing started in April 2011, when peaceful protests inspired by earlier revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia rose up to challenge the dictatorship running the country. The government responded — there is no getting around this — like monsters. First, security forces quietly killed activists. Then they started kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing activists and their family members, including a lot of children, dumping their mutilated bodies by the sides of roads. Then troops began simply opening fire on protests. Eventually, civilians started shooting back.
Fighting escalated from there until it was a civil war. Armed civilians organized into rebel groups. The army deployed across the country, shelling and bombing whole neighborhoods and towns, trying to terrorize people into submission. They’ve also allegedly used chemical weapons, which is a big deal for reasons I’ll address below. Volunteers from other countries joined the rebels, either because they wanted freedom and democracy for Syria or, more likely, because they are jihadists who hate Syria’s secular government. The rebels were gaining ground for a while and now it looks like Assad is coming back. There is no end in sight...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/29/9-questions-about-syria-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask/
In keeping with the four paragraph limit, here is a summary of some items, but a good read would be helpful. Note the map above which shows just what Assad is facing from the rebel forces.
That's about half the country and he is losing territory. He will use whatever he can to stop the rebels. I am not in favor of seeing what we saw in Egypt, with a new government enforcing religious edicts.
That may end up being done and I'm suspicious of anyone that McCain supports, as I remember Reagan's hearty support of the religious groups that met his standards like Rand Paul has.
And then Bush supporting Taliban forces initially before September 11th. Reagan encouraged the fall of the Afghan regime to give the Russians their own taste of Vietnam in supporting what allegedly was secular government.
A good read of the article here might explain how Obama can, in private so that everyone saves face:
UN Chemical Weapons Convention
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons. Its full name is the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. The agreement is administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is an independent organization based in the Hague, in the Netherlands.
The main obligation under the convention is the prohibition of use and production of chemical weapons, as well as the destruction of all chemical weapons. The destruction activities are verified by the OPCW. As of January 2013, around 78% of the (declared) stockpile of chemical weapons has thus been destroyed.[5][6] The convention also has provisions for systematic evaluation of chemical and military plants, as well as for investigations of allegations of use and production of chemical weapons based on intelligence of other state parties...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention
Please note that the USA and Russia are making signifigance progress in eliminatind their national stockpiles. And that Syria is not a signatory to the agreement. But the vast majority of the world is.
