"BEIRUT – Syrian troops pushed forward with their offensive against rebels Saturday, capturing a suburb near the Damascus international airport as the U.S. warned that the alleged use of chemical weapons by President Bashar Assad's forces and the involvement of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in the civil war threaten to put a proposed political settlement out of reach.
The U.S. and Russia have been pressing for a peace conference to end Syria's civil war in Geneva, but prospects for that have been dampened after a series of regime battlefield victories and hardened positions by both sides as the death toll from the more than 2-year-old conflict has surged to nearly 93,000.
President Barack Obama's decision this week to send lethal aid to Syrian rebels and the deepening involvement of trained Shiite fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah group also has raised the stakes, setting up a proxy fight between Iran and the West that threatens to engulf more of the Middle East.
The U.S. reversal after months of saying it would not intervene in the conflict militarily came after Washington said it had conclusive evidence the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons, something Obama had said would be a "red line."..............."
The refusal of the Assad regime to roll over and die has drawn the ire of the Obama administration.
We are told that the US has evidence that the regime as used chemical weapons against the rebels, but the story does not seem to fit. We have reports - not yet refuted, that the rebels have already used the same type of weapons, but this was not enough to bring the full logistical weight of the US to bear on them. It also makes little sense to utilize weapons that are guaranteed to bring condemnation and direct intervention of the international community if your side is winning, as is the case with the regime.
Why is it OK for the rebels to use chemical weapons and not for Assad?
Leaving aside that the accusations of chemical munition usage by Assad is dubious at best, we must note that the very survival of the regime runs contrary to the entire game plan of the Obama administration. We must also note that an accusation made by the Obama administration is akin to being declared innocent. The US has enabled and supported Islamist movements virtually every time that they had the chance and each and every time that the autocrats have fallen, Christians have suffered the most. The US seems to be hell-bent on ensuring that the Near and Middle East is run by those who take the words of the Koran as literally as possible. By running the strongmen and their ruling parties out of town, we are facilitating the demise of all nation-states in this region and preparing the way for a restored caliphate.
Islam allows for lying if the purpose of the lie is to advance that particular religion (Taqiyya). The rebels have spared no effort to prove that they can be more vicious than the regime*, and I have no doubt that some rebels would use chemical weapons in a false flag operation designed to make it appear that the attack was made by forces loyal to the Syrian government. We also have no word on the identities of the victims of the purported chemical attack by the government. Were they Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Druze, or Christians?
*A 14 year-old boy was viciously treated and murdered for a joke (Just one example)*http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2339367/Syrian-boy-Mohammad-14-shot-dead-parents-Islamic-extremists-claimed-insulted-Prophet.html
If the victims were not Sunnis, then the chances that the chemical attacks were the work of the rebels (Overwhelming comprised of Sunnis) are fairly good. The reality of Taqiyya also leaves us wondering if the rebels would be conscience-stricken if a few Sunnis had to die in order to advance the rebel cause.
Russia needs to step in and make it clear that the US and Western Europe can no longer dictate terms to the Near and Middle East. There has never been a policy more contrary to both US interests and humanity itself than the ongoing support of the Islamist rebels of our era.
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