And it was all going so nicely! (Is Assad about to defeat the Syrian uprising?). Also: best wishes for recovery to Stirling

I don’t pretend to know whether this is correct, but the Agonist under Sean Paul Kelley was generally a place to go for international news. I am less taken with the current editor, Michael Collins, but it’s certainly a tonic to what we hear in our press:

The war in Syria went from a seeming quagmire to a conflict that may reach a dramatic climax with the coming battle for Aleppo, a city of nearly three million people that was once the commercial center of the nation.
…
The Syrian Army finished off final rebel resistance in the city of Qusayr last week fighting alongside the Lebanese group Hezbollah. As a result, the rebel supply line from Lebanon is shut down and the major road from Damascus to Aleppo via Qusayr is open. The road will serve the supply line for an attack to end rebel occupation of half of that city.

A victory by the Syrian military in Operation Northern Storm, its name for the Aleppo effort, will leave the rebels with very little in the way of major influence or meaningful territory.

Our press has been telling us that victory is certain for the rebels. Collins seems to believe the opposite. I have no opinion, just a vain hope that when it’s all over, the industrialized nations will not abandon a shattered Syria.

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Unrelated. Via the Agonist, this note dated 6/3:

To all Stirling [Newberry]’s friends; please know that he has had a stroke. He is in Mass. General Hospital and will get moved out of intensive care in the next couple of days. He has a long road to rehabilitation ahead of him. Please wish him well and visit with him if you can. (Stirling’s Facebook page is active for wishing him well)

A fast recovery to Mr. Newberry, one of the Internet’s most thoughtful iconoclasts.
_______________
Update. Bill Clinton risks looking like a fool:

Former President Bill Clinton offered a stinging critique of President Barack Obama’s inaction in Syria during a closed-press event this week, Politico reported, arguing that Obama’s hesitance to get involved in the lengthy conflict could end up making him look like a “total fool” and a “wuss.”

While only 15 percent of Americans said they’d back military action in Syria, according to a recent poll

Ex-presidents are not supposed to grade sitting presidents, particularly with this sort of rhetoric.
________________
Update: And now with this background the White House announcement of lethal aid for the Syrian rebels looks very much like an admission that Assad has won and that the only way to impose the American will is through the CIA, which will presumably be filling the gap until the rebels can get armed and trained.

No news today

Julian Borger, The Guardian:

Russian military advisers are manning some of Syria’s more sophisticated air defences – something that would complicate any future US-led intervention, the Guardian has learned.

The advisers have been deployed with new surface-to-air systems and upgrades of old systems, which Moscow has supplied to the Assad regime since the Syrian revolution broke out 21 months ago.

The depth and complexity of Syria’s anti-aircraft defences mean that any direct western campaign, in support of a no-fly zone or in the form of punitive air strikes against the leadership, would be costly, protracted and risky.
…
Air strikes against chemical weapon depots would potentially disperse lethal gases over a vast area, triggering a humanitarian disaster. US and allied special forces have been trained to seize the air bases where the warheads are kept, but it is unclear what the next step would be. It would be physically impossible to fly the hundreds of warheads out of the country, while it would take thousands of troops to guard the arsenal for what could be many months.

A prayer for Riverbend

She moved from Iraq to this:

This morning, Syrian tanks and gunboats reportedly shelled the main Mediterranean port city of Latakia, killing one person and bringing the total dead to at least 28 since government forces moved into the city on Saturday. The violence follows massive demonstrations on Friday in which tens of thousands of people turned out to protest the Assad regime. On Saturday, a large crowd of mourners gathered in Douma, a suburb of the capital Damascus, for the funerals of four protesters who activists say were killed by security forces.

Hariri probe winds down

The UN has finally completed its investigation of the assassination of Rafik Hariri. The first probe had to be abandoned because it had been deeply corrupted, with witnesses being offered huge sums in exchange for their testimony. Robert Parry has reviewed the history here:

In 2009, the UN tribunal examining Hariri’s murder and other terrorist acts in Lebanon had acknowledged that it lacked the evidence to indict the four Lebanese security officials who had been held without formal charges since 2005. Finally, Judge Daniel Fransen of a special international tribunal ordered the four imprisoned security officials released.

In a similar situation – say, one that involved a U.S. ally – the release would have been viewed as proof of innocence or at least the absence of significant evidence of guilt.

The report has not yet been unsealed. And, as Parry says, the fact that the original probe was so incompetent and corrupt will weaken the credibility of this report. But this is a story we covered early on and will continue to cover even if the evidence leads us to overcome our skepticism that Syria was behind it.

Report: bombed Syrian facility resembled a reactor

A story we have followed for over a year is the bombing of a facility in northern Syria by Israel on the suspicion that it was a nuclear facility[1, 2, 3].
The Independent:

The nuclear watchdog has said that a Syrian complex bombed by Israel resembled an undeclared nuclear reactor and warned the country to co-operate more with UN inspectors.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that “significant” numbers of uranium particles were found at the site in June, but that it was not enough to prove a reactor was there. The confidential report, published yesterday and obtained by Reuters, said the IAEA would ask Syria to show debris and equipment it removed from the site after the air raid in September 2007.

So, it appears that I was probably wrong in dismissing the likelihood that this was a nuclear facility. But unilateral action was still the wrong way to deal with this.

Froomkin Gets It WRT Bush And Syria

The WaPo’s Dan Froomkin nails it right out of the gate:

Intelligence reports from this administration can’t be taken at face value.
President Bush has built up a prodigious track record of selectively disclosing intelligence findings that serve his political agenda. And some of the most important of those findings, of course, turned out to be completely false.

The latest disclosure from the White House’s intelligence apparatus — that Syria secretly built a nuclear reactor with North Korean help — is in many ways a blockbuster. But at the same time, its highly suspicious timing raises doubts about the motivation behind its announcement.

And even if everything the administration says is true, there are many elements of the emerging story that deserve scrutiny.

Consider, for instance, that the Syrians were still nowhere near being able to build a nuclear weapon when the White House tacitly approved Israel’s attack on the facility. Did you think Bush’s pre-emption doctrine was dead? Just listen to the administration officials yesterday speaking sympathetically of Israel’s conclusion that it faced an “existential threat.”

Another obvious question: Why now? Why is the White House going public more than seven months after Israel’s attack?

Administration officials offered an explanation yesterday — saying that they were initially worried about provoking Syrian retaliation, and that the disclosure could actually help the ongoing nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

But there are still some who suspect the announcement is the work of Vice President Cheney and other administration neocons who are trying to upset those negotiations — and further ratchet up tensions with Iran. The White House statement about the Syrian installation insisted that “this development . . . underscores that the international community is right to be very concerned about the nuclear activities of Iran and the risks those activities pose to the stability of the Middle East.”

The timing outraged even Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, who had this to say after his meeting with CIA briefers yesterday: “I think many people believe that we were used today by the administration because – not because they felt they had to inform Congress because it was their legal obligation to do that, but because they had other agendas in mind. . . . I think what we saw in the committee today, I think the chairman would agree that the relationship that we need to get international issues done, foreign policy issues done, a trusting environment between the administration and Congress, does not exist.”

Go read the whole thing. It’s good.

Latest on Syrian reactor: Cue Emily Litella

David Sanger, NYT:

But after a full day of briefing members of Congress, two senior intelligence officials acknowledged that the evidence had left them with no more than “low confidence” that Syria was preparing to build a nuclear weapon.

So… if the evidence is so good, why are senior intelligence officials skeptical?

Could it be that there’s some doubt about the provenance of those photos?

Actually related posts:

Hersh says no evidence bombed Syrian facility was a reactor

The improbable Syrian reactor

But Syriasly, folks

The Great Syrian Nuclear Watermelon Bombing Raid, Part 2

Update on Syrian reactor story (updated)/re-updated

I remain skeptical, but it’s only fair to update the story. This is what Paul Richter and Greg Miller of the LAT say:

CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, a U.S. official said, a disclosure that could touch off new resistance to the administration’s plan to ease sanctions on Pyongyang.

The CIA officials will tell lawmakers that they believe the reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons but was destroyed before it could do so, the U.S. official said, apparently referring to a suspicious installation in Syria that was bombed last year by Israeli warplanes.

This is what Hersh said just a couple of months ago:

Wars and rumors of wars

Via Johnny Wendell of KTLK, a report from Haaretz:

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on Saturday called on their citizens living in Lebanon to leave the country as soon as possible, a Lebanese television report said.

Future Television, privately owned by Saad Hariri who heads the majority anti-Syrian bloc in parliament, said Saudi Arabia had advised its nationals to leave Lebanon “as soon as possible.”

Also, AP on Haaretz:

A U.S. deployment of warships off Lebanon sharpened tensions in the crisis-ridden nation as the Shiite militant group Hezbollah said it won’t be intimidated, and the U.S.-backed government that the ships may be intended to bolster distanced itself from the move.

The planned deployment of three ships, announced Thursday, appeared to be aimed at making an American show of strength at a time of increasing international frustration at the volatile political deadlock in Lebanon between the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the opposition, led by Hezbollah.

My assessment is that this is in the category of hissy kabuki. Let’s recall the brilliant outcome the last time US warships deployed off the coast of Lebanon. 243 Marines gave their lives in one of the most pointless deployments of the Cold War.

But of course the pop in oil prices could have been a sign that some people take it seriously. Maybe I should too, but at this point I’m just too d–ned cynical.

Hersh: No evidence bombed Syrian facility was a reactor

Hersh, New Yorker (via Sherwood Ross, SC):

Sometime after midnight on September 6, 2007, at least four low-flying Israeli Air Force fighters crossed into Syrian airspace and carried out a secret bombing mission on the banks of the Euphrates River, about ninety miles north of the Iraq border….