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July 21st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, declined to provide details on what intelligence
assets have been sent to Syria or to say whether the CIA has sent officers
on the ground there. He said that the administration had recently deployed
“the resources necessary to collect the information that we need to make a
good decision on chemical and biological [weapons], opposition groups and
leadership transition strategies.” But, he added, “We don’t know nearly what
we need to know to be completely effective if the regime were to implode
tomorrow.”
A CIA spokesman Thursday declined to comment.
Syria never signed the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention, the treaty that bans
the use, stockpiling, or production of chemical weapons. Steven Heydemann, a
senior adviser for Middle East initiatives at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a
nonpartisan think tank, said he understands Syria’s stockpiles to be
“massive.”
Brian Sayers, the director of government relations for the Syria Support
Group, a new lobby in Washington that is pressing the Obama administration
to give guns and training to Syria’s opposition said, “We believe that if
the United States does not act urgently, there is a real risk of a political
vacuum in Syria, including the possibility of a dispersion of chemical
weapons to rogue groups such as Hezbollah.”
Paula DeSutter, who served as assistant secretary of state for verification,
compliance, and implementation between 2002 and 2009 and is now retired,
said biological weapons could be a bigger a concern. A 2011 State Department
reporton the compliance of countries with arms control and nonproliferation
agreements said it “remained unclear” whether Syria would use biological
weapons as a military option or whether Syria had violated the Biological
Weapons Convention.
DeSutter also said she would want the U.S. and international community to
secure any remaining nuclear-related equipment from the al-Kibar reactor
destroyed in 2007 by Israeli jets. Also unclear is what, if anything, Iraq
transferred to Syria before the 2003 U.S. invasion. “That is the wild card,”
said DeSutter.
Whether or not sensitive weapons technology was moved to Syria is a hotly
disputed question in the intelligence community. James Clapper, now the
Director of National Intelligence and formerly the director of the National
Geospatial Intelligence Agency, said in 2003 that he believed materials had
been moved out of Iraq in the months before the war and cited satellite
imagery.
Obama administration officials say the White House has yet to decide on how it
will respond if pro-al-Assad forces use chemical weapons against the Syrian
population or a neighboring country. The administration has told senior
regime officials that they will be held responsible if they fail to secure
chemical weapons.
DeSutter said the U.S. should remain vague about the exact consequences. “You
could say we will target the president of Syria if they are used and we will
target any military organization that used them,” DeSutter said. “I would
let them wonder. You might want to drop the word ‘Israel’ in the
conversation, too, as a subtle point.”
Hydemann said, “There is absolutely no question there has been a great deal of
attention in different agencies of the government to the location and
security of the chemical weapons stockpiles.” He says the U.S. has done some
contingency planning on securing Syria’s borders as well as airports and sea
ports to make sure sensitive weapons or terrorist and regime officials do
not escape in the event of the regime’s collapse.
Other issues pending at the White House include who in the current Syrian
government could remain in place if the regime falls and what the U.S. will
do to protect Syrian religious and ethnic minorities.
While several government agencies and departments are drawing up contingency
plans and drafting policy memos, the White House has ultimate control of the
policy process and has yet to make a decision. “We are still waiting for red
lines,” one Obama administration official who works on Syria issues told The
Daily Beast. “This is a decision for the president.”
Up until now, the Obama administration has preferred to influence events in
Syria from behind the scenes. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has helped
create a group of states known as “Friends of Syria” that seek a managed
transition through financial support for the opposition. The State
Department is also providing nonlethal aid to Syria’s opposition such as
communications equipment. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice
has pushed for U.N. Security Council resolutions and sanctions targeting
President al-Assad and his top aides. A resolution authorizing military
intervention in Syria was vetoed Thursday by China and Russia at the United
Nations.
This article was originally published on TheDailyBeast.com
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