by Yoni Hirsch, Daniel Siryoti, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Bloomberg: Pentagon chief shoots down Kerry's argument for immediate U.S. airstrikes against airfields under the control of Assad's army -- particularly the fields it has used to allegedly launch chemical weapons attacks against rebel forces.
What's your strategy? Dempsey.
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Photo credit: AP 
U.S. President Barack Obama
with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G-8 Summit in Northern
Ireland on Monday
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Photo credit: Reuters  |
A Syrian rebel in a
destroyed neighborhood of Aleppo on Tuesday
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Photo credit: AP 
At a meeting in the White House situation room
last Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry began arguing,
vociferously, for immediate U.S. airstrikes against airfields under the
control of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime -- specifically, those
fields it used to launch chemical weapons raids against rebel forces,
Bloomberg Views journalist Jeffrey Goldberg reported on Tuesday.
According to Goldberg, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, demanded to know exactly what the
post-strike plan would be and pointed out that the State Department did
not fully grasp the complexity of such an operation.
Dempsey informed Kerry that the U.S. Air Force
could not simply drop a few bombs, or fire a few missiles, at targets
inside Syria: To be safe, the U.S. would have to neutralize Syria's
integrated air-defense system, an operation that would require 700 or
more sorties. At a time when the U.S. military is exhausted, and when
sequestration is ripping into the Pentagon budget, Dempsey is said to
have argued that a demand by the State Department for precipitous
military action in a murky civil war was not welcome, Goldberg reported.
In his first public comments since the
administration announced stepped-up aid to the rebels in Syria, U.S.
President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the U.S. had "serious
interests" in Syria, but remained cautious over over-involvement in the
war-torn country.
"It is very easy to slip slide your way into deeper and deeper commitments," Obama told Charlie Rose of PBS.
The comments were a possible counter to a
bipartisan trio of key U.S. senators demanding he take more decisive
action to stem the military advance by Assad's forces.
Democratic Senators.Robert Menendez and Carl
Levin, and Republican John McCain, said in a joint letter to Obama that
Syrian government forces were advancing so dramatically that providing
weapons to the opposition alone was unlikely to shift the war back in
the rebels' favor.
The senators said the U.S. should consider
targeting regime airfields, runways and aircraft and help rebels
establish safe zones in Syria.
Meanwhile, initial reports of U.S. weapons
reaching rebel hands have begun circulating. The London-based pan-Arabic
daily Asharq Al-Awsat reported Tuesday that a Middle Eastern country
transferred 250 Concourse anti-tank missiles to rebel forces. The report
also included a worrying development -- that most of the weapons had
reached the hands of the extremist Islamist elements comprising the
rebellion.
"Now, on the other side there are folks who
say, 'You know, we are so scarred from Iraq. We should have learned our
lesson. We should not have anything to do with it,'" Obama said. "Well, I
reject that view as well because the fact of the matter is that we've
got serious interests there."
Obama warned of "ongoing chaos" in Syria,
which borders major allies in Jordan and Israel. However, lethal
assistance -- which Obama would not expand on -- must be done "in a
careful, calibrated way."
"What people really typically want is a clean solution, a silver bullet," Obama said.
Repeating evidence that Assad's government had used chemical weapons against the rebels, Obama outlined his hopes for Syria.
"The goals are a stable, non-sectarian,
representative Syrian government that is addressing the needs of its
people through political processes and peaceful processes," he said.
"We're not taking sides in a religious war
between [Shiites] and Sunni[s]. Really, what we're trying to do is take
sides against extremists of all sorts and in favor of people who are in
favor of moderation, tolerance, representative government, and over the
long-term, stability and prosperity for the people of Syria."
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin
faced further isolation on the second day of a G-8 summit on Tuesday as
world leaders lined up to pressure him into toning down his support for
Assad.
Following an icy encounter between the Kremlin
chief and Obama late on Monday, the G-8 leaders will seek to find
resolution to the war.
"It's a clarifying moment to see what kind of
commitments the Russians are willing to make in a leading world forum," a
British official said before the leaders met for dinner at a remote,
heavily guarded golf course outside of Enniskillen.
An official close to one of the delegations
said the talks over dinner had gone better than expected and that a
joint communiqué with Russia on Syria now seemed more likely. However,
the official declined to speculate on what Russia might be willing to
sign up for.
But if consensus could not be reached, it was
possible a final statement at the end of the two-day summit might be
released without Russia's input and in the name of the G-7 rather than
the G-8.
Putin and Obama appeared tense as they
addressed reporters late on Monday after about two hours of talks, with
Putin mostly staring at the floor as he spoke about Syria and Obama only
glancing occasionally at the Russian leader.
Putin said Moscow and Washington had different
views on Syria but agreed the bloodshed must stop and that the warring
parties should be brought to the negotiating table.
"With respect to Syria, we do have differing
perspectives on the problem but we share an interest in reducing the
violence and securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they're neither
used nor are they subject to proliferation," Obama said.
Meanwhile, Army Radio reported Wednesday that
French military officers were training Syrian rebels in bases in Jordan
and Turkey and teaching them how to use weapons supplied by westerns
counties.
According to the report, French intelligence
officers have been coordinating their operations with the Saudis. In the
two weeks since the fall of the city of Qusair, in southwest Syria, the
French have held several meetings with their counterparts in Saudi
Arabia and Turkey, ahead of what is believed to be the nearing and
inevitable battle over Aleppo.
Gen. Salim Idriss, who heads the Supreme
Military Council of the Free Syrian Army has also taken part in these
meetings. Idriss, a former officer in Assad's army who is a vocal
opponent of the various jihadi organizations in Syria, is said to be
acting as France and Saudi Arabia's liaison to the rebels.
The report, which quoted sources familiar with
the issue, said that Paris had taken the lead in the European Union's
efforts to topple the Assad regime.
France has been pushing for a second Geneva
peace conference, but Russia is averse to having it turn into a "public
act of surrender" by Assad, and diplomatic sources said the given the
current disagreements between Russia and the U.S. on the matter, it is
unlikely that Geneva-2 will take place.
Yoni Hirsch, Daniel Siryoti, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Source:http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10109
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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