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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 1/24/14

Neocons Take Aim at Syrian Peace Talks

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If the Washington Post's editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt learned anything from the disastrous Iraq War, it should have been to treat "defector" claims with many grains of salt. But it's probably a safe bet that Hiatt and his fellow neocon opinion-shapers are not really interested in applying the normal skepticism of professional journalism. They're looking more toward advancing the neocon agenda.

The Post's only reference to the discredited accusations blaming the Aug. 21 Sarin attack on the Syrian government is implicit, mentioning how Obama's threat of a military strike had gotten the Assad regime to surrender its chemical weapons. So, the Post argues, Obama should forsake the current Syrian peace talks -- what the editorial calls "feckless diplomacy" -- and go back to the well of making more military threats to enforce new demands:

"President Obama demonstrated last year that the credible threat of force could change the regime's behavior. His promise of airstrikes caused Mr. Assad to surrender an arsenal of chemical weapons. Yet the president seems not to have learned the lesson of that episode.

"Now he makes the defeatist argument that, as he put it to David Remnick of the New Yorker, 'It is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which our involvement in Syria would have led to a better outcome, short of us being willing to undertake an effort in size and scope similar to what we did in Iraq.' In fact, Mr. Obama probably could force the measures [demanding more concessions] by presenting Mr. Assad with the choice of accepting them or enduring U.S. airstrikes."

The problem with the Post's threat of a military attack is that President Obama would have to be ready to carry it out if Assad did not comply with the new U.S. demands. But that may well be what the Post's neocon editors really desire, another war against another Arab nation.

[For more details on the Syrian-Sarin issue, see Consortiumnews.com's "NYT Replays Its Iraq Fiasco in Syria." For our early reporting on the Syrian chemical weapons attack, see: "A Dodgy Dossier on Syrian War"; "Murky Clues From UN's Syria Report"; "Obama Still Withholds Syria Evidence"; "How US Pressure Bends UN Agencies"; "Fixing Intel Around the Syria Policy."]

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at
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