Secretary of State John Kerry: "There is no doubt that Saddam al-Assad has crossed the red line. ... Sorry, did I just say 'Saddam'?"

A US drone has just taken a photo of Mullah Omar riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Damascus. 1

So what do we have as the United States refuses to rule out an attack on Syria and keeps five warships loaded with missiles in the eastern Mediterranean?

• Only 9 percent of Americans support a US military intervention in Syria. 2
• Only 11% of the British supported a UK military intervention; this increased to 25% after the announcement of the alleged chemical attack. 3
• British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote August 29 endorsing military action against Syria 285-272
• 64% of the French people oppose an intervention by the French Army. 4 "Before acting we need proof," said a French government spokesperson. 5
• Former and current high-ranking US military officers question the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggest that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. "If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to Islamic fundamentalist rebels, they say, the military objective of strikes on Assad's military targets is at best ambiguous." 6
• President Obama has no United Nations approval for intervention. (In February a massive bombing attack in Damascus left 100 dead and 250 wounded; in all likelihood the work of Islamic terrorists. The United States blocked a Russian resolution condemning the attack from moving through the UN Security Council)

The first cell of Syrian rebels trained and armed by the CIA is making its way to the battlefield, President Barack Obama has reportedly told senators.

During a meeting at the White House, the president assured Senator John McCain that after months of delay the US was meeting its commitment to back moderate elements of the opposition.

Mr Obama said that a 50-man cell, believed to have been trained by US special forces in Jordan, was making its way across the border into Syria, according to the New York Times.

The deployment of the rebel unit seems to be the first tangible measure of support since Mr Obama announced in June that the US would begin providing the opposition with small arms.

Congressional opposition delayed the plan for several weeks and rebel commanders publicly complained the US was still doing nothing to match the Russian-made firepower of the Assad regime.

Mr McCain has been a chief critic of the White House's reluctance to become involved in Syria and has long demanded that Mr Obama provide the rebels with arms needed to overthrow the regime.

The US Defence Minister Chuck Hagel, the Secretary of State John Kerry, the National Security counsellor Susan Rice and the National Intelligence director James Clapper, held a closed meeting regarding Syria with leaders of Congres, on Thursday August 2013.

According to representative Elliot Engel, who is the Democratic minority leader on the Foreign Affairs Commission, the Obama administration confirmed the interception of a Syrian government communication attesting to it's responsibility in the chemical attack of August 21st, as revealed by Foreign Policy.

Yet, these ''interceptions'' are in fact of Israeli origin¹.

Elliot Engel is a militant Zionist. Member of the US Committee for a Free Lebanon, which organized the ''Cedar Revolution''², he drafted, in 2002, the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, authorizing the US president to go to war against Syria without having to pass before Congress. This text, adopted by the Congress itself and signed by George W. Bush, is still in force.

I've been watching the progressive erosion of civil liberties in Vietnam with a watchful eye for some time now. The country first appeared on my radar due to its particularly aggressive measures against the citizenry's gold buying.

As the progression usually goes, first a country will lash out against its own people for buying protection against the leadership's mismanagement of the economy by blaming gold. Once that fails, a country will usually then start cracking down on civil liberties.

Shortly after that we usually see the cracking of heads. It appears Vietnam has taken a frightening and dangerous step forward in the progression with Decree 72.

From the BBC:

A controversial law banning Vietnamese online users from discussing current affairs has come into effect. The decree, known as Decree 72, says blogs and social websites should not be used to share news articles, but only personal information.

Dozens of activists, including bloggers, have been convicted for anti-state activity in the country this year.

The new law specifies that social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook should only be used "to provide and exchange personal information".

It also prohibits the online publication of material that "opposes" the Vietnamese government or "harms national security."

Last month the US embassy in Hanoi said it was "deeply concerned by the decree's provisions", arguing that "fundamental freedoms apply online just as they do offline".

Oh please. The rogue leadership in the USA is one financial crisis away from trying to do the exact same thing.

Full article here.

In Liberty,
Mike

MIT professor Noam Chomsky has warned that an attack on Syria without United Nations support would be a war crime.

"As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world," Chomsky told The Huffington Post in an article published Monday.

He added that a U.S. strike against Syria without approval from the United Nations would be a "very serious" war crime.

UK accused of 'breath-taking laxity' over export licence for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride

The Government was accused of "breathtaking laxity" in its arms controls last night after it emerged that officials authorised the export to Syria of two chemicals capable of being used to make a nerve agent such as sarin a year ago.

The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, will today be asked by MPs to explain why a British company was granted export licences for the dual-use substances for six months in 2012 while Syria's civil war was raging and concern was rife that the regime could use chemical weapons on its own people. The disclosure of the licences for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride, which can both be used as precursor chemicals in the manufacture of nerve gas, came as the US Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States had evidence that sarin gas was used in last month's atrocity in Damascus.

The US denies reports that it has carried out a joint missile test with Israel in the Mediterranean Sea. The US Navy announced that it did not fire any missiles from ships in the region.

"No missiles were fired from US ships in the Mediterranean," a spokesman for the US Navy's European headquarters was quoted as saying by Reuters on Tuesday.

The spokesman did not give further details about the incident.

The rejection comes although Israel said on Tuesday that it carried out a joint missile test with the United States in the Mediterranean.

"The Israeli defense ministry and the American MDA (Missile Defense Agency) Tuesday morning at 9:15 (0615 GMT) successfully launched an Ankor-type radar missile," Israel's defense ministry said in a statement.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Commander William Speaks also said, "I have nothing to confirm those reports whatsoever."

Americans widely oppose launching missile strikes against the Syrian government for its alleged use of chemical weapons, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that finds little appetite for military action across the country despite a growing drumbeat in Washington.

Nearly six in 10 oppose missile strikes in light of the U.S. government's determination that Syria used chemical weapons against its own people. Democrats and Republicans alike oppose strikes by double digit margins, and there is deep opposition among every political and demographic group in the survey. Political independents are among the most clearly opposed, with 66 percent saying they are against military action.

Broad opposition in the new poll contrasts with a December Post-ABC poll that found most Americans saying they would be supportive of U.S. action if Syria used chemical weapons. At that time, 63 percent supported U.S. military involvement when it was a hypothetical situation, while 30 percent were opposed.

Such possible support for action has yet to materialize in the weeks after an August 21 gassing that reportedly killed 1,429 people outside of Damascus. The survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday, as the Obama administration made its public case for military strikes and presented intelligence claiming "high certainty" that Syria's government is the culprit in attacks.
Americans express more support for action if Britain and France were to join the cause, a prospect that became far less likely after the British parliament shot down a proposal for military action in Syria. In the United States, support for missile strikes in Syria rises by 10 percentage points, to 46 percent, if Britain and France participate, including a 14 point jump among independents. Still, 51 percent remain opposed even if such a coalition materialized.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad scorned allegations that his forces were behind the chemical attack in Damascus last month and warned that any French military action against his government would lead to "negative repercussions".

President Francois Hollande, along with U.S. President Barack Obama, has said Assad should be punished for the Aug. 21 attack in which Washington says more than 1,400 people, many of them children, were killed. The Syrian government says it was carried out by rebels - who it often refers to as "terrorists".

Assad said it would have made no sense to use chemical weapons in an area where his troops were also fighting.

"Those who make accusations must show evidence. We have challenged the United States and France to come up with a single piece of proof. Obama and Hollande have been incapable of doing so," he said in an interview with French daily Le Figaro.

"Anybody who contributes to the financial and military reinforcement of terrorists is the enemy of the Syrian people. If the policies of the French state are hostile to the Syrian people, the state will be their enemy," he said. "There will be repercussions, negative ones obviously, on French interests."