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As for the "no-fly zone" advocated by McCain and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Secretary Carter said, "We have not made that recommendation to the President," adding the obligatory caveat, "He hasn't taken it off the table." Dunford added, "From a military perspective, we can impose a no-fly zone."
Diplomacy
We continue to believe that Obama prefers to regard this past month's events in Syria as an opportunity to bring the main players to the negotiating table rather than the battlefield.
Defense Secretary Carter called attention to talks later this week in Vienna, in which Secretary of State John Kerry will be engaged, that are "precisely aimed at the contours of [a] political settlement." The big news here is that Kerry has dropped the U.S. objection to having Iran, a supporter of the Assad regime, participate.
As for Kerry, unlike his behavior in late summer 2013 and in early 2014, he seems to be following the President's instructions to negotiate an end to the conflict and to the misery in Syria.
Emerging on Friday from contentious talks with the Saudi and Turkish foreign ministers, as well as Foreign Minister Lavrov, Kerry sounded a hopeful note: "Diplomacy has a way of working through very difficult issues that seem to be absolutely contradictory ... but if we can get into a political process, then sometimes these things have a way of resolving themselves."
At the Senate hearing, Defense Secretary Carter called for an early political transition in Syria, but was careful to add, "The structures of the Syrian state are going to be important to the future, and we don't want them to dissolve entirely. ... The U.S. approach to removing Assad has been mostly a political effort."
At which point, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, a close ally of Sen. McCain, complained bitterly, "Assad is as secure as the day is long," adding, "you have turned Syria over to Russia and Iran."
The vitriol of McCain and Graham is no surprise. We want to make sure you know something about a relatively new player, JCS Chairman Joseph Dunford, who chose at his confirmation hearing on July 9, 2015, to let the world know that he is an unreconstructed Cold Warrior:
"If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I'd have to point to Russia," Dunford said. "If you look at their behavior, it's nothing short of alarming." Dunford added that he thought it reasonable to send heavy weapons to Ukraine.
Dunford took up his new duties at an inauspicious moment -- the day after we began launching air strikes against terrorist targets in Syria. Suffice it to say that, for the U.S. military and CIA, October has been one of the most humiliating months since the inglorious U.S. departure from Vietnam. It is important to bear that in mind.
We think this serves to double the pressure on President Obama to let loose the military on Syria and Iraq, as pushed by most of the corporate media that are attacking Obama for weakness and indecision. You will recall that he faced the same challenge in August 2013, when he came very close to letting himself be mouse-trapped into a major attack on Syria with U.S. forces.
A Special Danger
This time there is a new, quite delicate element of which you need to be aware -- the so-called "moderate" rebels whom the U.S. (primarily the CIA) trained, equipped, and inserted into Syria. This issue came up at the Senate Armed Services Committee meeting yesterday, when Chairman McCain expressed particular concern for pro-U.S. Syrian rebels he said are now being bombed by Russia and Syria.
Defense Secretary Carter replied that "no rebel group directly supported by the Defense Department under the law had been attacked." Casting a look of incredulity, McCain replied, "I promise you they have."
This is a particularly sore spot for McCain and his CIA friends. Ten days into our air-strike campaign, another Washington Post lead story with the headline, "Early signs of Russian intent ... Strikes seemed to catch White House flat-footed," claimed that Russian aircraft "pounded" CIA-sponsored "moderate rebel groups ... who appeared to get no warning that they were in Russian jets' crosshairs."
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