U.S.-UK ponder strikes against Assad forces

Generals Martin Dempsey (left) and David Richards

America’s top military officer told a Senate panel overnight the Obama Administration is evaluating whether to conduct “direct kinetic strikes” against the Syrian regime.

Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the use of kinetic strikes -- a military term that typically refers to missiles and bombs -- "is under deliberation inside of our agencies of government.”

In interviews to two British newspapers published in London the same day, General Sir David Richards, the outgoing Chief of the Defense Staff, said: “If you want to have the material impact on the Syrian regime’s calculations that some people seek” then “ground targets” would have to be “hit.”

DEMPSEY

Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona said he would block Dempsey's nomination for a second term as Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman until the general gave his personal opinion on what the U.S. should do in Syria.

McCain, who supports a stronger role in supporting opposition rebels, accused the Obama administration of inaction in Syria and questioned the quality of advice Dempsey has provided to the White House over the past two years.

He said the risks of inaction in Syria outweighed risks the United States would face in engaging more actively in supporting rebels.

"We have not been inactive," Dempsey countered.

The White House has said it will arm rebels, but opposition leaders in Syria say they have yet to receive those weapons and momentum is shifting toward President Bashar al-Assad.

Dempsey later acknowledged that the "tide seems to have shifted in his favor.” He also said the momentum ebbs and flows between the two sides.

McCain expressed concerns that Dempsey's advice on arming rebels has shifted.

“You testified this February you had advised the president to arm vetted units of the Syrian opposition,” McCain said. “In April, you testified you no longer supported the position. Now we read in published reports that the administration has decided to arm the Syrian opposition units. How do we account for those pirouettes?”

"I wouldn't accept the term pirouettes, sir," Dempsey said. "We have adapted our approach based on what we know of the opposition and if you recall, at the beginning of the year, there was a period where it was pretty evident that the extremist groups were prevailing inside the opposition." He said he supports “the building of a moderate opposition and including building its military capability.”

When pressed again by McCain, Dempsey – in a not-so-subtle reference to Iraq – asked the senator whether he would agree "that situations could be made worse by the introduction of military force?"

McCain said the general disagreed with him in a similar debate in 2006 over whether to send some 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq to quell violence in Baghdad an al-Anbar province. President George W. Bush ultimately ordered the deployment, which was known as "the surge" and credited it with helping to turn the tide of the war.

"I think history shows that those of us who supported the surge were right and people like you who didn't think we need a surge were wrong," McCain said.

McCain asked Dempsey whether regional destabilization is a "good outcome" of the Syria conflict.

"Senator, somehow you've got me portrayed as the one who's holding back from our use of military force inside of Syria,” Dempsey said.

"We've given [President Obama] options," Dempsey said. "The members of this committee have been briefed on them in a classified setting. We've articulated the risk. The decision on whether to use force is the decision of our elected officials."

McCain reminded Dempsey that the general agreed at the beginning of the hearing to provide the committee with his personal opinion, if asked. "I'm asking for your opinion," McCain said.

"About the use of kinetic strikes?" Dempsey asked. "That issue is under deliberation inside of our agencies of government and it would be inappropriate for me to try to influence the decision with me rendering an opinion in public about what kind of force we should use."

McCain took the parting shot.

"If it is your position that you do not provide your personal views to the committee when asked, only under certain circumstances, then you have just contradicted what I have known this committee to operate under for the last 30 years," he said.

McCain told reporters after leaving the hearing room he planned to put a hold on the nomination, essentially blocking any further action until he gets an adequate response from Dempsey.

"I want to see him answer the question," McCain said.

Seeking a compromise, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee chairman, asked Dempsey to provide the panel by early next week with an unclassified list of options and the general's assessment of the pros and cons of each. Levin made clear he is not asking Dempsey to share his personal opinion on whether or not to use force in Syria. Dempsey agreed to provide the list.

Levin said he hoped the assessment from Dempsey would give McCain "greater reassurance."

RICHARDS

The outgoing head of the British Army said in turn the West would need to fight a war against Assad if it wanted to have a "material impact" on his calculations.

In interviews to two British newspapers, General Sir David Richards said there were arguments for and against such a course of action and the British government was still debating its options on Syria.

But if a political decision was made to try to change the tide of the conflict to put pressure on the Syrian government, which has notched up military gains in recent months, Britain would need to intervene in the same way as it did in Libya, he said.

The 61-year-old general said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph there was "a lack of international consensus" over how to act over Syria but a shared reluctance to see Western boots on the ground.

“If you wanted to have the material impact on the Syrian regime’s calculations that some people seek, a no fly zone per se is insufficient.

“You have to be able, as we did successfully in Libya, to hit ground targets.

“You have to establish a ground control zone. You have to take out their air defenses. You also have to make sure they can’t maneuver – which means you have to take out their tanks, and their armored personnel carriers and all the other things that are actually doing the damage.

“If you want to have the material effect that people seek you have to be able to hit ground targets and so you would be going to war if that is what you want to do.”

He added: “That is rightly a huge and important decision. There are many arguments for doing so but there are many arguments for not doing so too.”

Richards described the situation as “highly complex” and suggested that the focus of government action was also on ensuring the conflict did not “spread” to neighboring countries.

“We are looking at Syria much more from a regional perspective and making sure that as awful as things are there it doesn’t spread materially to other countries like Lebanon and Jordan,” he said.

Richards separately told The Sun newspaper that Britain “would have to act” if it saw chemical weapons proliferation as a result of the Syrian conflict.

And he also revealed planning for a major new operation in the war-torn country, which Special Forces would lead, is well underway.

Richards said, “The risk of terrorism is becoming more and more dominant in our strategic vision for what we might do in Syria.

“If that risk develops, we would almost certainly have to act to mitigate it and we are ready to do so.

"I think it is a very big question. If we saw chemical weapons proliferate as a result of what is happening in Syria then we would have to act.

“Obviously we have contingency plans for everything.”

Pressed on whether that meant a brand new theater of war for the armed forces, the general added: “Some could characterize that, even though it might be for a limited period, as a war”.

Britain is only likely to act alongside the US, Richards suggested, adding: “We would have to do it as part of a wider effort because you know the scale of the challenge would be too much for any one country.

“But it has huge strategic implications beyond what might be actually quite a straightforward tactical effort.”

U.S. Marines deployed near Syria’s shoreline

File photos of the USS Eisenhower (top) and the USS Iwo Jima

The Iraq playbook is all set for Syria:

1. The American aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower has arrived at the Syrian coast, joining the USS Iwo Jima amphibious assault ship.
2. France is said to be lining up a relatively small contingent of its Special Forces -- Brigade des forces spéciales terre (BFST) -- for a mission in Syria.
3. U.S. officials confirm the Syrian military have loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs to be used against rebel fighters.
4. Overnight, the US Senate voted nearly unanimously to assess military options to cripple President Bashar al-Assad’s air force. Lawmakers said the action aims to stop the killing of civilians.

Rebels along the perimeter of Damascus airport

The big question though is whether these are simply deterrence measures or concrete steps for imminent direct intervention. Only time will tell.

But either way, they come after opposition forces scored a series of tactical victories around Syria in recent weeks, overrunning military bases and airports, closing in steadily on Damascus and halting air traffic at the capital's international airport for days.

According to RT, the first Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news, the USS Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier that holds eight fighter-bomber squadrons and 8,000 men, arrived at the Syrian coast yesterday in the midst of a heavy storm, indicating U.S. preparation for a potential ground intervention.

While the Obama administration has not announced any sort of American-led military intervention in the war-torn country, the U.S. is now ready to launch such action “within days” if President Assad decides to use chemical weapons against the opposition, The Times reports.

The USS Eisenhower joins the USS Iwo Jima amphibious assault ship, which holds about 2,500 Marines.

“We have (U.S.) special operations forces at the right posture, they don’t have to be sent,” an unnamed U.S. official told The Australian, which suggested that US military troops are already near Syria and ready to intervene in the conflict, if necessary.

If the U.S. decides to intervene militarily in Syria, it now has at its disposal 10,000 fighting men, 17 warships, 70 fighter-bombers, 10 destroyers and frigates and a guided-missile cruiser. Some of the vessels are also equipped with Aegis missile interceptors to shoot down any missiles Syria might have at hand, according to DEBKAfile.

“The muscle is already there to be flexed,” a U.S. official told the London Times about the U.S. military’s presence off Syria’s coast. “It’s premature to say what could happen if a decision is made to intervene. That hasn’t taken shape; we’ve not reached that kind of decision. There are a lot of options, but it [military action] could be launched rapidly, within days.”

The move comes after NATO made a significant strategic decision Tuesday to deploy Patriot Air and Missile Defense Systems in Turkey on the border with Syria where opposition groups have their stronghold. The Patriots would be able to protect Turkey from potential Syrian missiles that could contain chemical weapons, as well as intimidate Syrian pilots from bombing the northern Syria border towns, which the armed rebels control. Syria is thought to have about 700 missiles.

“The protection from NATO will be three dimensional; one is the short-range Patriots, the second is the middle-range Terminal High Altitude Air Defense [THAD] system and the last is the AEGIS system, which counters missiles that can reach outside the atmosphere,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.

DEBKAfile’s anonymous military sources claim the THAD and Aegis arrived at the Syrian coast aboard the USS Eisenhower.

France in turn is preparing a small contingent of its Special Forces for Syria action.

The French weekly Le Point says the move appears to be in response to fears the regime intends using chemical weapons against rebel forces closing in on Damascus. It says a large ground operation "is out of the question" and a move to secure chemical weapon stockpiles is possible.

With mounting fears the capital will become the next major battlefield in the 21-month-old Syria conflict, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday Assad’s army has effectively loaded chemical weapons into bombs and is awaiting his order to use them against insurgents.

The officials said the army loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto opposition forces from fighter-bombers. 

As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence the process of mixing the "precursor" chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs.

Sarin is an extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces killed 5,000 Kurds with a single sarin attack on Halabja in 1988.

U.S. officials stressed the sarin bombs hadn't been loaded onto planes as yet and Assad hadn't issued a final order to use them.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated U.S. warnings to Assad not to use chemical weapons, saying he would be crossing "a red line" if he did.

Speaking Wednesday at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Clinton said the Syrian government was on the brink of collapse, raising the prospect that "an increasingly desperate Assad regime" might turn to chemical weapons or that the banned weapons could fall into other hands.

Aides told NBC News Clinton was expected next week to officially recognize the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, with which she is scheduled to meet in Morocco.

On Capitol Hill meanwhile, the 100-seat U.S. Senate voted almost unanimously to assess military options to cripple the Assad’s air force. Legislators said the action aims to stop the killing of civilians.

Ninety-two Senators voted to move forward with a Pentagon report on possible military options in Syria, with six opposing the legislation.

The bill in question gives Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta 90 days in which to carry out the study and report back to the Senate with the findings, aimed at “advancing the goals of President Obama of stopping the killing of civilians in Syria and creating conditions for a transition to a democratic, pluralistic, political system in Syria."

The report will detail three military options, including the deployment of Patriot missiles in the Syria-Turkey border zone, the creation of a no-fly zone and the possibility of airstrikes on key government air bases.

French president shows Syria opposition the way

President François Hollande addressing French ambassadors yesterday

Will the Syrian opposition have the wisdom to close ranks and take up the baton from French President François Hollande?

I exhort them to do so at all costs and without delay or hem and haw. They would instantly trump the Syrian regime and be recognized by a world power and permanent member of the UN Security Council as sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

Here is what Hollande said yesterday in reference to the Syria crisis during an annual foreign policy speech to French ambassadors, his first as president:

…The second challenge is the Syria crisis.

The principle is simple: Bashar al-Assad must go. There is no political solution with him. He is a threat. He continues, with unprecedented violence, to massacre people, destroy cities and cause the death of women and children. We had further proof of that in the last few days. This is unbearable to the human conscience and unacceptable as regards security and stability in the region. The International Criminal Court should be seized of the matter so that those responsible for these atrocities could be judged one day.

I want to be clear: France assumes all her responsibilities and spares no effort to ensure the Syrian people attain their freedom and security.

To achieve this, we have to overcome hurdles at the Security Council; our foreign affairs minister is working on that. We will have another go because the Syria crisis is a threat to everyone, chiefly to Syria’s neighbors. We will keep up as much as necessary the pressure and persuasion at the Security Council to arrive at an international community consensus. But for now, we must act.

First, we have to intensify efforts to ensure the political transition takes place as soon as possible. In this context, France asks the Syrian opposition to form a provisional government — inclusive and representative — that can become the legitimate representative of the new Syria. We urge our Arab partners to quicken this step and France will recognize the provisional government of the new Syria once it is formed.

Furthermore, and without holding back, we provide strong support to those striving on the ground for a free and democratic Syria that upholds the security of all its communities. We mainly help those setting up liberated areas on Syrian territory. We’re working on the buffer zones proposed by Turkey. We are doing so in tandem with our closest partners. Lastly, and I say so in all seriousness, we remain – together with our allies – very much on our guard to prevent the use of chemical weapons by the regime, which would provide legitimate cause for direct intervention by the international community.

I am aware of the difficulty of the task and I assess the risks but the stakes are greater than Syria – they concern the overall security of the Middle East, and particularly Lebanon’s independence and stability.

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Want to know Washington’s reaction to President Hollande’s speech?

Some dilly-dallying at yesterday’s State Department press briefing, where spokesperson Victoria Nuland was asked:

QUESTION: Well, I was going to ask about – the French President has called on the Syrian opposition to form a provisional government, and he said that France would recognize that provisional government. I wonder if the U.S. has a position on that? Would you support that move, and do you think it’s a viable endeavor at the moment?

MS. NULAND: Well, as you know, we have been working with the Syrian opposition for some time as it’s worked through its own code of conduct and its own planning for a transitional government. We have been encouraging the opposition to begin thinking – both the opposition outside Syria, the opposition inside Syria – about the plan that it put forward on July 3^rd, and if that were to be implemented, who it might want to have in its transitional government.

But as you know, they are continuing to confer among themselves. What’s most important is that, moving forward, the Syrian opposition outside Syria and the Syrian opposition inside Syria coordinate and collaborate both in terms of the kind of Syria that they want to see -– this code of conduct -– but also in terms of the transitional structures that they would support and the emerging leaders that they see. But those conversations continue with Syrians inside and outside.

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French President François Hollande’s speech came as Syrian activists continued the body count in Darayya, a township on the outskirts of Damascus, where government troops killed hundreds over the last week.

The activists have now put the Darayya death toll at 384. They posted a log on the internet showing the full names and ages of the civilians killed from three days of heavy shelling culminating in a ground attack last Saturday, when Syrian government troops and allied militiamen went from door to door summarily executing men, women and children.

Going through the log, I counted among the dead 41 females, ten infants and 12 boys and girls aged between three and 18 years.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman Martin Nesirky yesterday said, “The secretary-general is certainly shocked by those reports and he strongly condemns this appalling and brutal crime… This needs to be investigated immediately, in an independent and impartial fashion.”

“Chemical Assad” evokes Iraq’s “Chemical Ali”

View interactive map of Syrian chemical weapons and production sites

Ali Hassan Abdelmajid al-Tikriti was Iraq’s one-time defense minister and a first cousin of Saddam Hussein.

He was dubbed “Chemical Ali” for using chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds in the 1987-1988 Anfal offensive culminating in the infamous attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja, which killed more than 5,000 people.

He was captured after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, tried, sentenced to death and hanged in 2010.

The Syrian regime yesterday started to lay claim to a new title for its president – namely, “Chemical Assad.”

It threatened to unleash its chemical and biological weapons if the country faced a foreign attack.

During a televised news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi stressed the weapons are secure and would only be used in the case of an external attack.

“No chemical or biological weapons will ever be used, and I repeat, will never be used, during the crisis in Syria no matter what the developments inside Syria,” he said. “All of these types of weapons are in storage and under security and the direct supervision of the Syrian armed forces and will never be used unless Syria is exposed to external aggression.”

It was the regime’s first acknowledgment that it possesses weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

“Given the regime's stockpiles of chemical weapons,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in a foreign policy speech to veterans in Reno, Nevada, “we will continue to make it clear to Assad and those around him that the world is watching and that they will be held accountable by the international community and the United States should they make the tragic mistake of using those weapons.”

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington was “working with allies to monitor the situation” and to send the message to both Syria’s government and opposition about the importance of protecting unconventional weapons.

A “Reuters Factbox” on Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal says, “Syria appears to have acquired the ability to develop and produce chemical weapons agents including mustard gas and Sarin, and possibly also VX nerve agent…

“According to Global Security, there are four suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria - one just north of Damascus; the second near the industrial city of Homs; the third in Hama, believed to be producing VX agents in addition to Sarin and Tabun; and a fourth near the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

“Analysts have also identified the town of Cerin, on the coast, as a possible producer of biological weapons. Several other sites are monitored by foreign intelligence agencies and are listed only as suspect…”

The most senior Syrian politician to defect to the opposition told the BBC last week the regime will not hesitate to use chemical weapons if it is cornered.

Asked if he thought the Syrian president might use chemical weapons against the opposition, Nawaf Faris, ex-ambassador to Iraq, told BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner in an interview in Qatar that he would not rule it out, describing Assad as "a wounded wolf and cornered.”

The opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) yesterday said the chemical arsenal had been moved in a bid to pressure the international community.

“We in the joint command of the Free Syrian Army inside the country know very well the locations and positions of these weapons,” the statement said.

“We also reveal that Assad has transferred some of these weapons and equipment for mixing chemical components to airports on the border.

“According to our information, the regime began moving its stocks of weapons of mass destruction several months ago ... to put pressure on the region and the international community.”

Maj. Gen. Adnan Nawras Salou, a Syrian Kurd who defected to the FSA and was chief of staff of the chemical warfare authority for five years until 2008, will no doubt have vital intelligence to share about the regime’s WMD. (See my July 15 post, “Syria’s ex-chemical war chief to head military opposition”).

Minimizing the dangers posed by Syria’s chemical weapons is a challenge of considerable complexity, Leonard S. Spector, deputy director of James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterey Institute in Washington, told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee last week.

You can press here to read the full text of his testimony before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade. But following are some salient snippets from Spector’s testimony:

# Outside Syria, I believe our core objective is to ensure that Syria's various assets do not find their way to parties, such as Hezbollah, anti-government insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban, or al-Qaeda… Assad has been warned not to take this step, which would certainly lead to calls for military intervention against him that even Moscow would find hard to oppose.

# [Within Syria] our most urgent goal is to ensure, for humanitarian reasons, that these weapons are not used in the current conflict.

# Timing is another key parameter to bear in mind as we develop strategies to reduce the risks from Syria's arsenals. Broadly speaking, we need to think in terms of three time frames: the current period of increasingly violent hostilities; the period of transition to a post-Assad government of one type or another; and the period after the authority of that government has been established within Syria.

# It is my understanding that CW storage facilities were deliberately built outside major population centers, probably to enhance secrecy and as a safety precaution. Production facilities are likely outside city centers. Thus it is possible that as the current phase of the conflict unfolds, such facilities may fall within insurgent-controlled territory. Although it has been reported that Syria has recently moved some of its chemical weapons, possibly to more secure locations, some chemical assets, such as large stocks of bulk agent may be difficult to relocate and may remain in situ and at risk of diversion.

# One measure that should be implemented immediately is to make clear that chemical weapon custodians who find themselves behind insurgent lines and who peacefully relinquish formal control over these stockpiles and then stay in place to protect them from misadventure, will be protected, and even rewarded, by the post-Assad government.

# Syria is one of a handful of states that have not joined the 1997 Chemical Weapon Convention, which prohibits parties from possessing these weapons and requires parties to destroy existing stocks. A key goal for the United States, which would be widely supported by other nations, would be to orchestrate Syria's commitment to eliminating its chemical arsenal and joining the Convention.

# The Syrian government that replaces Assad must be pressed to take similar steps as a condition for recognition and sustained support.

# To avoid such a relapse to the status quo, as the Free Syrian Army seizes territory where chemical facilities are situated (see map attached to this testimony) in coming weeks and, thereafter, as the Assad regime approaches collapse, with neither the regime nor the insurgents fully controlling the state apparatus, Washington and its allies must take steps to negotiate international monitoring and security arrangements for these sites. It may be best for us to do this with another country taking the lead, such as Turkey, the Netherlands, or Sweden. Access to sites would be negotiated with the Free Syrian Army for facilities within territory it controlled and, clandestinely, with site managers for facilities nominally remaining within Assad's chain of command.