Category Archives: Lands

Former Obama administration officials credit Trump for doing what their boss failed to do

Antony J. Blinken, a deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration, writes: President Donald J. Trump was right to strike at the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for using a weapon of mass destruction, the nerve agent sarin, against its own people. Mr. Trump may not want to be “president of the world” but when a tyrant blatantly violates a basic norm of international conduct — in this case, the ban on using chemical or biological weapons in armed conflict, put in place after World War I — the world looks to America to act. Mr. Trump did, and for that he should be commended.

The real test for Mr. Trump is what comes next. He has shown a total disinterest in working to end Syria’s civil war. Now, the administration has leverage it should test with the Assad regime and Russia to restrain Syria’s air force, stop any use of chemical or biological weapons, implement an effective cease-fire in Syria’s civil war and even move toward a negotiated transition of power — goals that eluded the Obama administration.

At the same time, it must prevent or mitigate the possible unintended consequences of using force, including complicating the military campaign against the Islamic State. All this will require something in which the administration has shown little interest: smart diplomacy. [Continue reading…]

Tom Malinowski, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the Obama administration, writes: Donald Trump is president; he now bears full responsibility for addressing the tragedy in Syria, and for the consequences of the response he has chosen. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t reflect on America’s response to the Assad regime’s previous chemical weapons attacks—for how we interpret the difficult and debatable choice the Obama administration (in which I served) made not to use military force when Assad last used nerve gas against his people will shape our thinking about this and similar crises for a long time to come. The lesson I would draw from that experience is that when dealing with mass killing by unconventional or conventional means, deterrence is more effective than disarmament.

After Assad’s horrific 2013 sarin gas attack on civilians, President Obama settled first on deterrence—threatening a punitive military response—then changed course when Assad agreed to disclose and surrender his chemical weapons. There were many reasons for Obama’s decision to forego military action, from his own concerns about the risks of getting involved in Syria’s war to the shameful refusal of most members of Congress to back him up. In any case, the administration and many outside observers argued then that the U.S. had achieved a better outcome by threatening force and then negotiating a deal than if we had actually used force. Air and cruise missile strikes could not have eliminated Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal, but the diplomatic deal, proponents argued, did.

That argument was never persuasive to Syrians being killed by the barrel bombs and rockets that the chemical weapons deal allowed Assad to keep using. But even if one accepts that there is something uniquely awful about poison gas, the Syrian regime’s repeated use of chlorine weapons after 2013, and now its apparent reuse of sarin, shows the difficulty of relying on disarmament alone to stop a dictator from killing by all means at his disposal. No disarmament regime is foolproof, and it was always understood that Assad likely hid some elements of his chemical weapons production capacity from inspectors. A state that calculates that using a weapon or tactic of war is in its interest will generally find a way to do so.

The more effective strategy is to establish that the costs of using such a weapon or tactic will outweigh its benefits, even if a state keeps the capacity to do so. [Continue reading…]

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Putin calls U.S. Syria strike aggression, ends airspace pact

Bloomberg reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned American air strikes on Syria in response to an apparent chemical attack as an act of “aggression against a sovereign state” and suspended an agreement with the U.S. to avoid hostile incidents in the skies above its Syrian ally.

The sudden escalation between the two nuclear-armed powers catapulted tensions to the highest level since Donald Trump took office in January. The Kremlin said the U.S. action will cause “considerable damage” to ties between Moscow and Washington. The U.S. said it had worked to minimize the risk of causing Russian casualties in the attack, which killed at least six Syrian servicemen.

The Shayrat Airfield was hit early Friday morning by 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from the USS Porter and USS Ross, two Navy destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea, in what the U.S. said was a limited strike against the airbase from which the suspected chemical attack was launched. [Continue reading…]

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Hillary Clinton says Russia used hacking ‘to great effect’ in her defeat

The New York Times reports: Hillary Clinton left no doubt on Thursday that she believes Russia contributed to her defeat by interfering in the election, condemning what she called Moscow’s “weaponization of information.”

“I didn’t fully understand how impactful that was,” Mrs. Clinton said at a women’s conference in New York. She said she was convinced that intrusions into Democratic Party leaders’ emails were carried out by Russian hackers under orders from President Vladimir V. Putin and aided by so-called online trolls and social media bots to spread disinformation.

“It is something that Putin has used inside Russia, outside Russia to great effect,” Mrs. Clinton said, and she called for an independent investigation into Russian involvement.

“I’m hopeful that the Congress will pull together and realize that because of the success the Kremlin feels it’s had they’re not going to go away,” Mrs. Clinton said. “So whatever party you are, whatever business you run, whatever concerns you have, if we don’t take action together to hold whoever was involved accountable, they will be back time and time again.” [Continue reading…]

 

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U.S. strikes Syrian military airfield in first direct assault on Bashar al-Assad’s government

The Washington Post reports: The U.S. military launched approximately 50 cruise missiles at a Syrian military airfield late on Thursday, in the first direct American assault on the government of President Bashar al-Assad since that country’s civil war began six years ago.

The operation, which the Trump administration authorized in retaliation for a chemical attack killing scores of civilians this week, dramatically expands U.S. military involvement in Syria and exposes the United States to heightened risk of direct confrontation with Russia and Iran, both backing Assad in his attempt to crush his opposition.

The missiles were launched from two Navy destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean. They targeted an airbase called Shayrat in Homs province, which is the site from which the planes that conducted the chemical attack in Idlib are believed to have originated.

In comparison, the start of the Iraq war in 2003 saw the use of roughly 500 cruise missiles and 47 were fired at the opening of the anti-Islamic State campaign in Syria in 2014.

The attack may put hundreds of American troops now stationed in Syria in greater danger. They are advising local forces in advance of a major assault on the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital. [Continue reading…]

NBC News reports: The U.S. warned the Russians before launching at least 59 tomahawk missiles aimed at Syria, NBC News reported, citing a U.S. official.

The strikes, which hit an airfield near Homs, struck aircraft and infrastructure including the runway, NBC reported. There is no word on casualties yet, but no people were targeted, the official told NBC.

No Russian assets were targeted, according to the report. [Continue reading…]

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‘The dead were wherever you looked’: Inside Syrian town after gas attack

The Guardian reports: Khan Sheikhun is a ghost town, its streets deserted and silent as though mourning the victims of the atrocity that occurred here two days earlier.

The only reminder of what happened is a small, blackened, crater near the northern part of town, where a rocket laced with a nerve agent fell, killing more than 70 people in one of the worst mass casualty chemical attacks in the six-year war in Syria.

All that remains of the attack on the town in rebel-held Idlib province is a faint stench that tingles the nostrils and a small green fragment from the rocket. The houses nearby are emptied of the living.

The victims’ symptoms are consistent with sarin, the nerve agent that was dropped on an opposition-held area near Damascus in 2013, killing more than 1,000 people. After that attack the regime supposedly gave up its chemical weapons arsenal.

Moscow, Bashar al-Assad’s principal backer in the war, said the Syrian government had bombed a rebel-run toxic gas manufacturing plant in Khan Sheikhun, and that the gas had subsequently leaked out.

The Guardian, the first western media organisation to visit the site of the attack, examined a warehouse and silos directly next to where the missile had landed, and found nothing but an abandoned space covered in dust and half-destroyed silos reeking of leftover grain and animal manure.

Residents said the silos had been damaged in air raids six months ago, and had stood unused since then.

“You can look at it ; there’s nothing there except maybe some grain and animal dung, and there’s even a dead goat there that suffocated in the attack,” one person said. Residents responded in disbelief to the Russian allegation.

There was no evidence of any building being hit in recent days or weeks near where so many people were killed and wounded by a nerve agent. The homes across the street appeared undamaged from the outside. There was no contamination zone near any building. Instead, the contamination area radiated from a hole in a road. [Continue reading…]

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Trump team gets on warpath with Syria

The Daily Beast reports: President Donald Trump said Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad might have to step down, as his defense officials spent Thursday discussing possible military options to punish the dictator for a suspected sarin gas attack this week against his own people.

“What Assad did is terrible,” Trump told reporters on a plane flight to Mar-a-Lago for meetings with the Chinese premier. “What happened in Syria is truly one of the egregious crimes and…it shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said steps are already underway for organizing an international coalition to remove Assad.

“Assad’s role in the future is uncertain, clearly, and with the acts that he has taken, it would seem that there would be no role for him to govern the Syrian people,” Tillerson said at a Palm Beach, Florida news conference a week after hinting the U.S. could tolerate Assad staying in power. “The process by which Assad would leave is something that I think requires an international community effort—both to first defeat ISIS within Syria, to stabilize the Syrian country, to avoid further civil war, and then to work collectively with our partners around the world through a political process that would lead to Assad leaving.” [Continue reading…]

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Pentagon ‘presenting options’ for military action in Syria

BuzzFeed reports: The military options range from striking the Syrian air force to targeting specific Syrian military targets. The Pentagon on Thursday afternoon was presenting options through a series of exchanges with the White House, rather than through formal meetings.

US radar showed Syrian aircraft in the area at the time of the chemical attack. Tuesday’s strike was believed to have been launched from Syria’s Al-Shayrat air base in Homs, a senior regional security official told BuzzFeed News.

A network of local monitors who track air strikes in Syria reached the same conclusion. According to an internal report by the group — which tracks fighter jets from takeoff to attack around the country, in order to provide civilians with advance warning of air strikes — the Syrian jets left Shayrat just before 6:30am and were then seen circling Khan Sheikhun before the attack. The name of the group is being withheld to protect the safety of its monitors.

Shayrat is a joint Russian-Syrian base that may include members of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to Jenny Cafarella, a Syria analyst for the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

At present, the US military is debating whether to conduct such strikes with warships nearby or aircraft and drones in the air. BuzzFeed News witnessed several members of the Joint Chiefs — including Chief Naval Officer Adm. John Richardson and Chief of Staff of the Army Mark Milley — gathering in Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford’s office on Thursday afternoon.

The US goal, it appears, is to signal to the regime that using sarin gas on civilians, as it is suspected of doing in Idlib on Tuesday, will not be tolerated, but stop short of military action that could lead to further escalation. [Continue reading…]

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Banned nerve agent sarin used in Syria chemical attack

The New York Times reports: The poison used in the deadly chemical bomb attack in a rebel-held part of northern Syria this week was the banned nerve agent sarin, the Turkish Health Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The statement from Turkey, where many of the stricken Syrians were taken after the assault on Tuesday, was the most specific about the cause.

“According to the results of preliminary tests,” the statement said, “patients were exposed to chemical material (Sarin).”

Western countries have accused the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad of carrying out the chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province, which left scores dead and hundreds sickened in one of the worst atrocities so far in the six-year-old Syria war.

The Syrian government has denied responsibility. Russia, its main ally, has accused Mr. Assad’s enemies of rushing to judgment and has threatened to veto a United Nations Security Council measure condemning the assault.

The Turkish statement said the sarin conclusion had been based on autopsies on three victims performed at Turkey’s Adana Forensic Medicine Institution with the participation of representatives from the World Health Organization and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a group based in The Hague that monitors compliance with the global treaty that bans such munitions. [Continue reading…]

In line with official statements from Moscow, a motley crew of conspiracy theorists and pundits from the alt right and anti-interventionist left are once again going to claim that the sarin released in Khan Shaykhun was produced by al Qaeda, or some other group opposed to Assad — just as was claimed after the Ghouta massacre in 2013. Aside from the absence of any credible evidence to support such claims and aside from the fact that the Assad regime’s ability to manufacture sarin is already well-documented, the technical challenges involved in such production makes sarin a chemical weapon unfeasible to be produced and effectively deployed by any non-state actor, least of all one operating in the conditions faced in Syria. What I wrote in 2013 also applies now.

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Russia: Syria gas attack victims faked it

Michael Weiss writes: Between 69 and 100 people have died so far, and hundreds more are still suffering from being poisoned, or from the follow-up airstrike on a nearby hospital that was treating them from being poisoned. As the bodies pile up, so too do the Kremlin conspiracy theories for whodunnit or whether or not this atrocity was even done at all.

Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry’s new spokesperson, has taken a leaf from her predecessor’s playbook. On Wednesday, she intimated that despite a U.S., EU assessment that around 60 people were gassed by the regime from the air using sarin—a nerve agent Assad has previously admitted to have stockpiled—the whole ordeal was an elaborate bit of playacting.

In a press conference, Zakharova darkly commented on the “too-calm behavior of the representatives of this organization under emergency conditions,” by which she meant the White Helmets, an internationally funded and trained group of first-responders who often pull victims from the rubble of Russian, Syria and American bombing raids. Her government has vilified them as being either agents of regime change, al-Qaeda or both. Though her characterization of the rescue workers’ composure is at odds with press accounts describing how some “grew ill and collapsed from proximity to the dead.” But then, this is a woman who previously said that Donald Trump won the presidency because American Jews decided the election.

Speaking of Trump, one of his allies in the tin-hatted corner of the internet, the conspiracy site InfoWars, ran several articles and segments on Wednesday calling the atrocity a “false flag attack.” One article said the attack hadn’t been carried out by Assad but by the White Helmets, which InfoWars labeled as a “an al-Qaeda affiliated group funded by George Soros and the British government.” [Continue reading…]

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CIA had evidence of Russian effort to help Trump earlier than believed

The New York Times reports: The C.I.A. told senior lawmakers in classified briefings last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump’s victory months later, former government officials say.

The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia’s intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C.I.A. and counterparts at the F.B.I., where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia’s cyberattacks were aimed only at disrupting America’s political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected, according to interviews.

The former officials said that in late August — 10 weeks before the election — John O. Brennan, then the C.I.A. director, was so concerned about increasing evidence of Russia’s election meddling that he began a series of urgent, individual briefings for eight top members of Congress, some of them on secure phone lines while they were on their summer break. [Continue reading…]

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House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes recuses himself from Russia probe

The Washington Post reports: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) temporarily recused himself Thursday from all matters related to the committee’s ongoing probe into Russian interference in the presidential election, as House investigators look into ethics charges against him.

The House Ethics Committee released a statement Thursday saying it had “determined to investigate” allegations that “Nunes may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information, in violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or other standards of conduct.”

Nunes denied the charges as “entirely false and politically motivated,” blaming “several leftwing activist groups” for filing complaints with the Office of Congressional Ethics. Nunes said his recusal — which applies only to the committee’s Russia investigation — would be in effect while the House Ethics Committee looks into the matter. He noted that he has asked to speak with that committee “at the earliest possible opportunity in order to expedite the dismissal of these false claims.” [Continue reading…]

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Trump’s response to Syria chemical attack exposes administration’s volatility

The Guardian reports: Any punitive strike would have to be backed up by consideration on what to do the day after, if Assad and Putin ignore the message. Increasing military aid to rebels would carry the same risk of falling into the hands of extremists.

Nor has any policymaker on the left or right ever credibly articulated a plan for Syria should the US succeed in toppling Assad, a strategic vacuum reminiscent of the disastrous Iraq occupation.

Moreover, any action against the Syrian regime would now also be against Russia.

Colin Kahl, a former member of the Obama White House, noted in a tweet that it was “worth remembering there are Russian advisers at nearly every relevant Assad base. Any strike means dead Russians.”

The Idlib attack appears to have driven the first meaningful wedge between Trump and Putin. He told the New York Times: “I think it’s a very sad day for Russia because they’re aligned, and in this case, all information points to Syria that they did this.”

Meanwhile, Haley – presumably with White House approval – delivered a scathing indictment of Russia at the UN Security Council.

The shift in mood is clearly another consequence of the Idlib atrocity, but it is too early to say how lasting that shift will be and whether it could lead to the US and Russia clashing in the Syrian battlefield.

The depth and duration of the change is particularly hard to predict, as it appears to have been driven by Trump’s immediate emotional response to the event.

In his remarks in the Rose Garden, he referred repeatedly to the children and babies who had been killed.

Yet the victims of the Idlib attack are far from the first Syrian children to have suffered at the hands of the Assad regime, with Russian and Iranian backing.

And there has been substantial evidence of previous regime use of chemical weapons. What seems to have made the difference this time is that Trump spent some time looking at pictures of the aftermath. [Continue reading…]

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Trump admits: White House looked the other way during Assad’s gas attacks

The Daily Beast reports: The Trump administration knew that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was repeatedly attacking his own citizens with toxic chemicals. But the White House tacitly endorsed his continuing rule anyway.

That was the subtext to President Donald Trump’s message Wednesday, when he revealed that the U.S. was aware of a series of chlorine gas attacks leading up to this week’s deadly suspected sarin strike that killed dozens of civilians in an opposition-held town.

And yet, while the toxic bombs were falling, Trump’s administration repeatedly signaled that it would do nothing to remove Assad—a policy shift the Syrian dictator may have taken as a green light that led to Tuesday’s chemical massacre.

“If you look back over the last few weeks, there have been other attacks using gas,” Trump said during a Rose Garden press conference. “You’re now talking about a whole different level,” he said, condemning Tuesday’s attack together with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, but revealing he’d just possibly been willing to let the others slide.

The White House, U.S. intelligence agencies, and the military’s Central Command all declined to elaborate on Trump’s comments, but he seemed to confirm reports from rebel groups and aid organizations of multiple suspected gas attacks in the past two weeks. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Autopsies conducted by Turkish doctors on Thursday have confirmed that chemical weapons were used in an attack which killed scores of people in Syria two days earlier, providing the most concrete evidence to date of why so many people were killed.

Dozens of victims from Tuesday’s daybreak assault on the northwestern town of Khan Sheikhoun have been evacuated to Turkey for medical treatment. Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said the World Health Organisation had supervised autopsies for three people, and that chemical agents had been detected.

His comments came after Doctors Without Borders said that patients had shown symptoms consistent with exposure to a nerve agent, the use of which has previously caused the United States to threaten military intervention. [Continue reading…]

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Inaction over Syria has exacted a terrible price

Jonathan Freedland writes: Let’s not speak of our horror. Let’s not hold emergency meetings or pass urgent resolutions expressing our outrage at the poisoning of Syrian children and adults in Idlib province through a nerve agent, probably sarin gas. Let’s have no declarations worded in the “strongest possible terms”. Let’s utter no more cliches about acts that “cannot be ignored”. Let’s not even condemn these attacks any more – because our condemnations ring so hollow.

We know what the use of this kind of chemical weapon does to people. If you have a strong enough stomach, and you make yourself look at the photos, you can see the bodies of dead children, arranged like sardines, under a threadbare quilt. You can read the accounts of how they died: “writhing, choking, gasping or foaming at the mouth,” according to the New York Times, killed by a substance so toxic that “some rescue workers grew ill and collapsed from proximity to the dead”.

We know that the poison spread after warplanes dropped bombs – and that the warplanes came again a few hours later, hitting a small clinic ministering to the victims. The injured and the dying were being treated there because the area’s larger hospital had been hit by an airstrike two days earlier.

And we almost certainly know who did it. Every sign points to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Sure, Damascus blamed the rebels who hold the town of Khan Sheikhoun, as they always do. And, yes, Assad’s enablers and accomplices in Moscow offered a variation on that theme, saying that Syrian planes had struck a rebel stockpile of nerve agents, accidentally releasing them into the atmosphere.

We know how seriously to take such pronouncements from the regime of Vladimir Putin. More credible is the word of Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, who once led the British army regiment responsible for dealing with chemical weapons and is now a director of Doctors Under Fire. He told the BBC that the Moscow explanation was “fanciful” and “unsustainable”. As he explained, “if you blow up sarin, you destroy it”.

So we know all this, and we also know that for six long, bloody years atrocities have continued in Syria – and nothing happens. Indeed, impunity may not just be the consequence of this latest crime, but also its cause. In recent days, the Trump administration has all but told Assad that he has a free hand to kill as many people as he wants, in whatever way he chooses. [Continue reading…]

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Nikki Haley says U.S. may ‘take our own action’ on Syrian chemical attack if UN fails to act

“When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.” UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, addressing the Security Council where she currently holds the seat of president.

 

Haley’s full remarks:

It was interesting to hear of the talk from my Russian colleague about the independent investigations and the importance of them, because this entire Security Council decided on what the Joint Investigative Mechanism would be and decided what it would do, and it was actually voted on unanimously. And the joint mechanism came back and said that the Syrian government committed chemical weapons acts against their own people three different times. But somehow now we don’t like what the Joint Investigative Mechanism does.

Having said that, I will say in the life of the United Nations, there are times when we are compelled to do more than just talk. There are times we are compelled to take collective action. This Security Council thinks of itself as a defender of peace, security, and human rights. We will not deserve that description if we do not rise to action today.

Yesterday morning, we awoke to pictures, to children foaming at the mouth, suffering convulsions, being carried in the arms of desperate parents. We saw rows of lifeless bodies. Some still in diapers. Some with the visible scars of a chemical weapons attack.

Look at those pictures. We cannot close our eyes to those pictures. We cannot close our minds of the responsibility to act. We don’t yet know everything about yesterday’s attack. But there are many things we do know.

We know that yesterday’s attack bears all the hallmarks of the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons. We know that Assad has used these weapons against the Syrian people before. That was confirmed by this Council’s own independent team of investigators. We know that yesterday’s attack was a new low, even for the barbaric Assad regime.

Evidence reported from the scene indicates that Assad is now using even more lethal chemical agents than he did before. The gas that fell out of the sky yesterday was more deadly, leaving men, women, the elderly, and children, gasping for their very last breath.

And as first responders, doctors, and nurses rushed to help the victims, a second round of bombs rained down. They died in the same slow, horrendous manner as the civilians they were trying to save.

We all also know this: Just a few weeks ago, this Council attempted to hold Assad accountable for suffocating his own people to death with toxic chemicals. Russia stood in the way of this accountability. They made an unconscionable choice. They chose to close their eyes to the barbarity. They defied the conscience of the world. Russia cannot escape responsibility for this. In fact, if Russia had been fulfilling its responsibility, there would not even be any chemical weapons left for the Syrian regime to use.

There is one more thing we know: We know that if nothing is done, these attacks will continue.

Assad has no incentive to stop using chemical weapons as long as Russia continues to protect his regime from consequences. I implore my colleagues to take a hard look at their words in this Council. We regularly repeat tired talking points in support of a peace process that is regularly undermined by the Assad regime.

Time and time again, Russia uses the same false narrative to deflect attention from their allies in Damascus. Time and time again, without any factual basis, Russia attempts to place blame on others.

There is an obvious truth here that must be spoken. The truth is that Assad, Russia, and Iran have no interest in peace.

The illegitimate Syrian government, led by a man with no conscience, has committed untold atrocities against his people for more than six years. Assad has made it clear that he doesn’t want to take part in a meaningful political process. Iran has reinforced Assad’s military, and Russia has shielded Assad from UN sanctions.

If Russia has the influence in Syria that it claims to have, we need to see them use it. We need to see them put an end to these horrific acts. How many more children have to die before Russia cares?

The United States sees yesterday’s attack as a disgrace at the highest level, an assurance that humanity means nothing to the Syrian government.

The question members of this Council must ask themselves is this: If we are not able to enforce resolutions preventing the use of chemical weapons, what does that say for our chances of ending the broader conflict in Syria? What does that say of our ability to bring relief to the Syrian people? If we are not able to enforce resolutions preventing the use of chemical weapons, what does that say about our effectiveness in this institution?

If we are not prepared to act, then this Council will keep meeting, month after month, to express outrage at the continuing use of chemical weapons, and it will not end. We will see more conflict in Syria. We will see more pictures that we can never un-see.

I began my remarks by saying that in the life of the United Nations, there are times when we are compelled to take collective action. I will now add this: When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action.

For the sake of the victims, I hope the rest of the Council is finally willing to do the same. The world needs to see the use of chemical weapons and the fact that they will not be tolerated.

Thank you.

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Trump’s handling of Syria has some Senate Republicans very concerned

Amber Phillips writes: Foreign policy rarely falls neatly along partisan lines — President Barack Obama never got his prized Pacific trade deal through Congress because of opposition from Democrats, for example.

But the criticism from some powerful Senate Republicans this week as to how President Trump is responding to his first major international test — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s apparent deadly chemical weapon attack on his own people — is louder, more direct than normal and very eyebrow-raising. And it suggests that in the eyes of these GOP foreign-policy leaders, Trump has failed his first test in a very dangerous way.

On Tuesday, Trump issued a wishy washy statement that blamed President Barack Obama for the chemical attack.

In an interview Wednesday with local radio “AM Tampa Bay,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed the blame right back on the Trump administration: specifically at the feet of Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. Rubio accused Tillerson of giving Assad a complicit green light to launch a chemical attack that killed dozens, including women and children, when he suggested days earlier the United States would let Assad stay in power.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a few days later we see this,” Rubio said of the chemical attack on the heels of Tillerson’s comments in Turkey that Assad’s fate “will be decided by the Syrian people.” Earlier, Rubio said that “it’s concerning that the secretary of state … said that the future’s up to the people in Syria on what happens with Assad. In essence almost nodding to the idea that Assad was going to get to stay in some capacity.” [Continue reading…]

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World Health Organization: Syria chemical attack likely involved nerve agent

The Washington Post reports: A chemical attack that killed scores of civilians in Syria likely involved a banned nerve agent, top medical groups concluded Wednesday, as the United States and European allies at the U.N. Security Council demanded a full investigation.

But denunciations at the United Nations faced strong obstacles from Russia, a critical ally of Syria’s government.

Before the Security Council’s emergency session, Russia broke with global consensus that blamed Tuesday’s attack on the Syrian regime and instead claimed it was carried out by Syrian rebel groups. A rebel commander called Russia’s assertion “a lie.”

The Russian stance underscored the difficulties of seeking greater international pressure on the government of Bashar al-Assad as it escalates an air campaign against the remaining anti-government strongholds in northern Syria. [Continue reading…]

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