Do you know what they call such a move in chess?

Checkmate.

We were originally told that the primary goal of a U.S. military strike on Syria would be to prevent them from using chemical weapons in the future, and then John Kerry said that Assad could avoid a conflict by giving up all of his chemical weapons.

Well, the Russians and the Syrians have called the bluff.

So does this mean that we will have peace?

Unfortunately, the Obama administration does not seem to want that.  The State Department has already come out and announced that what John Kerry said was a mistake.  They insist that it was a “rhetorical argument” instead of an actual peace proposal.

But why wouldn’t the Obama administration grab such a deal?  The American public does not want this war and neither does Congress at this point, so this could be a way out for Obama.

Wouldn’t getting Assad to give up all of his chemical weapons be a major coup?

And it certainly sounds like Syria wants peace…

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem told reporters in Moscow that his nation “welcomes” a proposal by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during talks on Monday: put Syria’s chemical weapons under international control to avert a U.S. military response over an alleged poison gas attack last month.

“I declare that the Syrian Arab Republic welcomes Russia’s initiative, on the basis that the Syrian leadership cares about the lives of our citizens and the security in our country,” Moallem said. “We are also confident in the wisdom of the Russian government, which is trying to prevent an American aggression against our people.”

We already know that a military strike would not get rid of Assad’s chemical weapons.

So wouldn’t a diplomatic solution that got rid of those weapons be far more preferable?

You would think that would be the case, but the sad truth of the matter is that this was never about Syria’s chemical weapons.  This conflict is about money, religion, a natural gas pipeline, and looking out for the interests of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey.  The Obama administration is not going to be able to achieve what they really want in Syria without military conflict.

And Obama seems to have developed a real appetite for military action.  In fact, Business Insider has pointed out that the attack on Syria will be the eighth military conflict during Obama’s presidency…

In 2011, America was more or less kicked out of Iraq. By then, Obama had surged troops in Afghanistan and increased cross-border strikes in Pakistan.

He took what was a one-off cruise missile strike in Somalia in early 2008, and expanded it into a concerted military operation against Boko Haram. That’s four.

He also cut a deal with Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi to conduct counter-terrorism operations and a bombing campaign in Yemen. That’s five.

He initiated a bombing and air campaign in Libya that ended in a boots-on-the-ground situation that was likely much bigger than anyone without a clearance knows. That’s six.

He then aided in French direct operations in Mali by providing surveillance drones and transport. That’s seven.

Now he’s pitching the idea of a cruise missile attack and possibly even a aerial bombing campaign in Syria, one that could conceivably lead to further escalation.

That’s eight.

But of course the Obama administration is promising that the assault on Syria will be very “limited”.  On Monday, John Kerry even went so far as to claim that the attack would be “unbelievably small“.

So precisely how does the launching of hundreds of cruise missiles constitute an “unbelievably small” strike?

I think that John Kerry will end up deeply, deeply regretting that statement.  He is an incompetent bumbler that is making the United States look like a total fool.  Instead of being our top diplomat, he should be mopping the floors in a Dairy Queen somewhere.

When the U.S. attacks Syria, there is a very good chance that we could be starting World War III.

You see, it won’t just be a matter of Syria retaliating against the United States.  Assad put it this way during an interview with Charlie Rose…

“You should expect everything. Not necessarily from the government”

So what does Assad mean by that?  Debka gives us a clue…

The Syrian and Hizballah armies Sunday, Sept. 8, finished supplying rockets to dozens of Palestinian groups, some invented ad hoc, and deploying them on the Syrian and Lebanese borders facing Israel, debkafile’s military sources disclose. An array of Katyushas, Grads and Fajr-5s, with ranges of up to 70 kilometers, is now in place. This development prompted the first deployment in the Jerusalem region Sunday night of an Israeli anti-missile Iron Dome battery.

The information reaching Israeli intelligence is that the newly-armed Palestinian groups fully intend targeting the Israeli capital, following the example of Hamas, which aimed missiles from the Gaza Strip at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in November 2012.
In his interview to PBS’s Charlie Rose Show airing Monday, Bashar Assad spoke of “people aligned to Syria” carrying out “some kind of retaliation” for an American attack.

It now turns out that he intends using pro-Syrian and amorphous Palestinian groups as his instruments of retaliation, while at the same time disavowing responsibility for their actions.

In the south, likeminded Hamas and Jihad Islami groups in the Gaza Strip may try and join the rocket offensive against Israel. It will be hard for them to stand aside and watch, although Egypt’s counterterrorism offensive in Sinai is cutting into their resources.

In addition to what the Palestinians have, the Syrians have approximately 100,000 rockets that they can fire at Israel and Hezbollah has approximately 70,000 rockets that they can fire at Israel.

If thousands of rockets start falling in Israeli cities, and if especially if any of those rockets have unconventional warheads, Israel will respond with absolutely overwhelming force and the number one target will be the city of Damascus.

Then we will have World War III, and the rest of the world will blame the United States and Israel.

Anyone that claims that this upcoming conflict will be good for the U.S. or for Israel is not being very smart.

There is so little that could be gained from a war with Syria and so much that could be lost.

And at this point, the American people are overwhelmingly against attacking Syria.

A brand new CNN poll has found that the American people are opposed to a military strike by a 71 percent to 27 percent margin if Congress does not approve it.

And if the vote was taken right this moment, it would almost certainly fail in the U.S. House of Representatives.  If you doubt this, just check out the chart in this BBC article.

And a different survey has found that the American people are against military action in Syria by a 63 percent to 28 percent margin…

Opposition to U.S. airstrikes against Syria is surging, a USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll finds, despite a White House campaign to convince Americans it is the right course ahead.

By more than 2-1, 63%-28%, those surveyed Wednesday through Sunday say they are against U.S. military action against the Syrian regime for its reported use of chemical weapons against civilians. In the past week, support has declined by a percentage point and opposition has swelled by 15 points, compared with a previous Pew Research poll.

Hopefully Obama is listening.

If the American people were told the actual truth, those numbers would probably be even more lopsided.  At least that is what U.S. Representative Justin Amash thinks…

If Americans could read classified docs, they’d be even more against #Syria action. Obama admn’s public statements are misleading at best.

So will the American people get to see the “evidence” that the Obama administration has been touting?

Of course not.

In fact, a request by the Associated Press to see the evidence has been denied…

The Associated Press ran a skeptical piece Sunday about the Obama administration’s public case for military intervention in Syria in response to a reported Aug. 21 chemical attack.

The AP’s Zeina Karam and Kimberly Dozier wrote that “the U.S. government insists it has the intelligence to prove it, but the public has yet to see a single piece of concrete evidence produced by U.S. intelligence — no satellite imagery, no transcripts of Syrian military communications — connecting the government of President Bashar Assad to the alleged chemical weapons attack last month that killed hundreds of people.”

The Obama administration has released videos to make its case, but the AP noted that its requests for additional evidence the government claims to possess have been denied

Instead, we are being told to “trust” Barack Obama and John Kerry as they lead us toward World War III.

And Obama seems absolutely obsessed with making this conflict happen.  According to Politico, an unprecedented media blitz is planned to drum up support for this war…

Obama will tape interviews Monday afternoon with anchors from ABC, CBS and NBC, as well as with PBS, CNN and Fox News, the White House said.

The interviews will be conducted by ABC’s Diane Sawyer, CBS’s Scott Pelley, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Fox’s Chris Wallace, NBC’s Brian Williams and PBS’s Gwen Ifill.

The interviews will air that night, ahead of Obama’s Tuesday speech on Syria.

So what do you think?

Should we attack Syria and potentially start World War III?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

The post Deal Or No Deal: John Kerry’s Historic Diplomatic “Mistake” Proves That Obama Does Not Want Peace appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

If Obama insists on going forward with this, it will be the greatest foreign policy disaster in modern American history.

Right now, both Russia and China are strongly warning Obama not to attack Syria.  And Russia is not just warning Obama with words.  According to Bloomberg, Russia has sent quite a collection of warships into the region…

Russia is sending three more ships to the eastern Mediterranean to bolster its fleet there as a U.S. Senate panel will consider President Barack Obama’s request for authority to conduct a military strike on Syria.

Russia is sending two destroyers, including the Nastoichivy, the flagship of the Baltic Fleet, and the Moskva missile cruiser to the region, Interfax reported today, citing an unidentified Navy official. That follows last week’s dispatch of a reconnaissance ship to the eastern Mediterranean, four days after the deployment of an anti-submarine ship and a missile cruiser to the area, which were reported by Interfax. Syria hosts Russia’s only military facility outside the former Soviet Union, at the port of Tartus.

China is also letting it be known that they absolutely do not want Obama to hit Syria.  On Friday, China issued a warning about what military conflict in the Middle East could do to “the global economy”…

“Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on the oil price – it will cause a hike in the oil price.”

And according to Debka, China has also deployed “a number of warships” to the region…

Western naval sources reported Friday that a Chinese landing craft, the Jinggangshan, with a 1,000-strong marine battalion had reached the Red Sea en route for the Mediterranean off Syria.  According to DEBKAfile, Beijing has already deployed a number of warships opposite Syria in secret. If the latest report is confirmed, this will be the largest Chinese deployment in the Middle East in its naval history.

If the U.S. attacks Syria, Russia and China probably will not take immediate military action against us.

But they could choose to hit us where it really hurts.

According to the U.S. Treasury, foreigners now hold approximately 5.6 trillion dollars of our debt.  Over the past couple of decades, the proportion of our debt owned by foreigners has grown tremendously, and today we very heavily depend on nations such as China to buy our debt.

At this point, China owns approximately 1.275 trillion dollars of our debt, and Russia owns approximately 138 billion dollars of our debt.

So what would happen if China, Russia and other foreign buyers of our debt all of a sudden quit purchasing our debt and instead started dumping the debt that they already own back on to the market?

In a word, it would be disastrous.

As I have written about previously, the U.S. government will borrow about 4 trillion dollars this year.

Close to a trillion of that is new borrowing, and about three trillion of that is rolling over existing debt.

If China and other big foreign lenders quit buying our debt and started dumping what they already hold, that would send yields on U.S. Treasuries absolutely soaring.

And we have already seen bond yields rise dramatically in recent weeks.  In fact, on Thursday the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries briefly broke the 3 percent barrier.

So what is going to happen if the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries continues to go up?  The following are a few consequences of rising bond yields that I have discussed in previous articles…

-It will cost the federal government more to borrow money.

-It will cost state and local governments more to borrow money.

-As bond yields go up, bond values go down.  In the end, rising bond yields could end up costing bond investors trillions of dollars.

-Rising bond yields will cause mortgage rates to skyrocket.  In fact, we are already starting to see this happen.  This week the average rate on a 30 year mortgage hit 4.57 percent.

-Higher interest rates will mean a slowdown in economic activity at a time when we definitely cannot afford it.

-As economic activity slows down, that will be very bad for stocks.  When the next great stock market crash happens (and it is coming), equity investors could end up losing trillions of dollars of wealth.

-Of course the biggest threat of all is the 441 trillion dollar interest rate derivatives time bomb that is sitting out there.  Rapidly rising interest rates could potentially bring down several of our “too big to fail” banks in rapid succession and throw us into the greatest financial crisis the nation has ever seen.

Are you starting to get the picture?

And the 3 percent mark is just the beginning.  Brent Schutte, a market strategist for BMO Private Bank, told CNBC that he expects the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries to eventually go up to 6 or 7 percent…

“4 percent (on 10-year Treasurys) somewhere around the end of the year to early next year would be a good intermediate-term level. And if you look over the longer term, I don’t think that 6 or 7 percent is out of the question.”

If that happens, we will experience a full blown financial meltdown.

Of course it would greatly help if Obama would back down and not attack Syria.  As Vladimir Putin noted at the G20 summit, large nations such as India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia are all strongly against the U.S. taking military action…

In reply to the question what other country in the world may theoretically be subjected to aggression similar to that Syria is facing, Putin said, “I do not want to think that any other country will be subjected to any external aggression.”

A military action against Syria will have a highly deplorable impact on international security at large, Putin emphasized.

He said he was surprised to see that ever more participants in the summit, including the leader of India, Brazil, the South African Republic, and Indonesia were speaking vehemently against a possible military operation in Syria.

Putin cited the words of the South African President, Jacob Zuma, who said many countries were feeling unprotected against such actions undertaken by stronger countries.

“Given the conditions as they, how would you convince the North Koreans, for example, to give up their nuclear program,” he said. “Just tell them to put everything into storage today and they’ll be pulled to bits tomorrow.”

He underlined the presence of only one method for maintaining stability – “an unconditional observance of international law norms.”

Can we really afford to have most of the international community turn on us and quit buying our debt?

Of course not.

Sadly, as I noted the other day, Obama appears to be locked into doing the bidding of Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

In fact, as the Washington Post reported the other day, Secretary of State John Kerry has even admitted that they are even willing to pay all of the costs of a U.S. military campaign that would overthrow Assad…

Secretary of State John Kerry said at Wednesday’s hearing that Arab counties have offered to pay for the entirety of unseating President Bashar al-Assad if the United States took the lead militarily.

“With respect to Arab countries offering to bear costs and to assess, the answer is profoundly yes,” Kerry said. “They have. That offer is on the table.”

Asked by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) about how much those countries would contribute, Kerry said they have offered to pay for all of a full invasion.

“In fact, some of them have said that if the United States is prepared to go do the whole thing the way we’ve done it previously in other places, they’ll carry that cost,” Kerry said. “That’s how dedicated they are at this. That’s not in the cards, and nobody’s talking about it, but they’re talking in serious ways about getting this done.”

Why aren’t we hearing more about this in the news?

Fortunately, despite the relentless propaganda coming from the mainstream media, a lot of members of Congress are choosing to take a stand against this war.  For example, U.S. Representative Tom Marino recently shared the following about why he is voting against military action in Syria…

Secretary Hagel could not tell lawmakers who the U.S. could trust among the Syrian opposition, stating “that’s not my business to trust.”  Like many Americans, I believe it is our duty as decision makers to be informed and confident when making choices – especially in those choices that could result in sending U.S. troops or money abroad.  It is no wonder Secretary Hagel isn’t in the business to trust when more players are added daily to the growing list of ‘Syrian opposition’—many of them jihadist, terrorists, known Al Qaeda affiliates, members of the Muslim Brotherhood and enemies of the U.S. and our allies.  To simplify, the Secretary of Defense was unable to tell us, after nearly three years of the Syrian Civil War, who the good guys are or if there are any at all.

And Marino is very right.  There are no “good guys” in Syria.  The “rebels” are murderous jihadist psychotics that would be even worse than Assad if they took power.

For much more on what the mainstream media is not telling you about the war in Syria, check out a stunning video report from investigative reporter Ben Swann that you can find right here.

The picture above comes from the official Facebook page of one of the “rebel groups” in Syria.

I am sure that you do not need me to point out that the White House is burning in the background of the picture.

These are the people that Obama wants to help?

According to NBC News, the rebels are also displaying images of the black flag of al-Qaeda on Facebook too…

The image is one of eight photos posted on the official Facebook page of the “Al-Aqsa Islamic Brigades,”  a small armed Sunni rebel faction fighting with the Free Syrian Army, the main umbrella military organization of the opposition forces. Two other photos posted on the group’s page feature the widely recognized black flag of the al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group, which operates freely in Syria.

Let’s assume for a moment that Obama is successful in Syria and that Assad is overthrown.

That would hand Syria over to al-Qaeda.

Once in power, the “rebels” would slaughter or force the conversion of millions of Christians, Jews and non-Sunni Muslims that have been living peacefully in Syria for centuries.

To those that would support this war, I would ask you this question…

Is that what you want?

Do you want the blood of millions of Christians, Jews and non-Sunni Muslims on your hands?

If you are a Christian that is supporting Obama on this, I would ask you to consider an excerpt from a letter from Christian nuns in Azeir, Syria that I have posted below…

We look at the people around us, our day workers who are all here as if suspended, stunned: “They’ve decided to attack us.” Today we went to Tartous…we felt the anger, the helplessness, the inability to formulate a sense to all this: the people trying their best to work and to live normally. You see the farmers watering their land, parents buying notebooks for the schools that are about to begin, unknowing children asking for a toy or an ice cream…you see the poor, so many of them, trying to scrape together a few coins. The streets are full of the “inner” refugees of Syria, who have come from all over to the only area left that is still relatively liveable…. You see the beauty of these hills, the smile on people’s faces, the good-natured gaze of a boy who is about to join the army and gives us the two or three peanuts he has in his pocket as a token of “togetherness”…. And then you remember that they have decided to bomb us tomorrow. … Just like that. Because “it’s time to do something,” as it is worded in the statements of the important men, who will be sipping their tea tomorrow as they watch TV to see how effective their humanitarian intervention will be….

You can read the rest of that letter right here.

Also consider the following shocking video of Senator John McCain being confronted by a very emotional woman that says that her 18-year-old cousin in Syria was just killed by rebels loyal to al-Qaeda…

Any American that supports this war is aiding al-Qaeda.

Any American that supports this war is choosing to ally themselves with radical jihadist Christian killers that want to conquer the entire Middle East in the name of Sunni Islam.

If Congress votes to approve this war, then we should do what one site has suggested and send those that vote yes to Syria.

They don’t even have to fight.  We’ll just drop them off in the middle of the “rebel forces” and entrust them into the gentle hands of the al-Nusra Front.

But of course they would never go.  The ones that will be endangered will be the precious sons and daughters of other Americans.

This is not a war that has a good outcome for America.  Conservative voices and liberal voices all over the country are joining together to speak out against this war.

Hopefully Barack Obama will listen and cooler heads will prevail.  If not, things could spin wildly out of control very rapidly.

The post Who Is Going To Buy Our Debt If This War Causes China, Russia And The Rest Of The World To Turn On Us? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

It has been common knowledge that Qatar has desperately wanted to construct a natural gas pipeline that will enable it to get natural gas to Europe for a very long time.  The following is an excerpt from an article from 2009…

Qatar has proposed a gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey in a sign the emirate is considering a further expansion of exports from the world’s biggest gasfield after it finishes an ambitious programme to more than double its capacity to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“We are eager to have a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey,” Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, said last week, following talks with the Turkish president Abdullah Gul and the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the western Turkish resort town of Bodrum. “We discussed this matter in the framework of co-operation in the field of energy. In this regard, a working group will be set up that will come up with concrete results in the shortest possible time,” he said, according to Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.

Other reports in the Turkish press said the two states were exploring the possibility of Qatar supplying gas to the strategic Nabucco pipeline project, which would transport Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, bypassing Russia. A Qatar-to-Turkey pipeline might hook up with Nabucco at its proposed starting point in eastern Turkey. Last month, Mr Erdogan and the prime ministers of four European countries signed a transit agreement for Nabucco, clearing the way for a final investment decision next year on the EU-backed project to reduce European dependence on Russian gas.

“For this aim, I think a gas pipeline between Turkey and Qatar would solve the issue once and for all,” Mr Erdogan added, according to reports in several newspapers. The reports said two different routes for such a pipeline were possible. One would lead from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to Turkey. The other would go through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey. It was not clear whether the second option would be connected to the Pan-Arab pipeline, carrying Egyptian gas through Jordan to Syria. That pipeline, which is due to be extended to Turkey, has also been proposed as a source of gas for Nabucco.

Based on production from the massive North Field in the Gulf, Qatar has established a commanding position as the world’s leading LNG exporter. It is consolidating that through a construction programme aimed at increasing its annual LNG production capacity to 77 million tonnes by the end of next year, from 31 million tonnes last year. However, in 2005, the emirate placed a moratorium on plans for further development of the North Field in order to conduct a reservoir study.

As you just read, there were two proposed routes for the pipeline.  Unfortunately for Qatar, Saudi Arabia said no to the first route and Syria said no to the second route.  The following is from an absolutely outstanding article in the Guardian…

In 2009 – the same year former French foreign minister Dumas alleges the British began planning operations in Syria – Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.”

Instead, the following year, Assad pursued negotiations for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan with Iran, across Iraq to Syria, that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field shared with Qatar. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo – and earlier this year Iraq signed a framework agreement for construction of the gas pipelines.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a “direct slap in the face” to Qatar’s plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Vladmir Putin that “whatever regime comes after” Assad, it will be “completely” in Saudi Arabia’s hands and will “not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports”, according to diplomatic sources. When Putin refused, the Prince vowed military action.

If Qatar is able to get natural gas flowing into Europe, that will be a significant blow to Russia.  So the conflict in Syria is actually much more about a pipeline than it is about the future of the Syrian people.  In a recent article, Paul McGuire summarized things quite nicely…

The Nabucco Agreement was signed by a handful of European nations and Turkey back in 2009. It was an agreement to run a natural gas pipeline across Turkey into Austria, bypassing Russia again with Qatar in the mix as a supplier to a feeder pipeline via the proposed Arab pipeline from Libya to Egypt to Nabucco (is the picture getting clearer?). The problem with all of this is that a Russian backed Syria stands in the way.

Qatar would love to sell its LNG to the EU and the hot Mediterranean markets. The problem for Qatar in achieving this is Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have already said “NO” to an overland pipe cutting across the Land of Saud. The only solution for Qatar if it wants to sell its oil is to cut a deal with the U.S.

Recently Exxon Mobile and Qatar Petroleum International have made a $10 Billion deal that allows Exxon Mobile to sell natural gas through a port in Texas to the UK and Mediterranean markets. Qatar stands to make a lot of money and the only thing standing in the way of their aspirations is Syria.

The US plays into this in that it has vast wells of natural gas, in fact the largest known supply in the world. There is a reason why natural gas prices have been suppressed for so long in the US. This is to set the stage for US involvement in the Natural Gas market in Europe while smashing the monopoly that the Russians have enjoyed for so long. What appears to be a conflict with Syria is really a conflict between the U.S. and Russia!

The main cities of turmoil and conflict in Syria right now are Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. These are the same cities that the proposed gas pipelines happen to run through. Qatar is the biggest financier of the Syrian uprising, having spent over $3 billion so far on the conflict. The other side of the story is Saudi Arabia, which finances anti-Assad groups in Syria. The Saudis do not want to be marginalized by Qatar; thus they too want to topple Assad and implant their own puppet government, one that would sign off on a pipeline deal and charge Qatar for running their pipes through to Nabucco.

Yes, I know that this is all very complicated.

But no matter how you slice it, there is absolutely no reason for the United States to be getting involved in this conflict.

If the U.S. does get involved, we will actually be helping al-Qaeda terrorists that behead mothers and their infants…

Al-Qaeda linked terrorists in Syria have beheaded all 24 Syrian passengers traveling from Tartus to Ras al-Ain in northeast of Syria, among them a mother and a 40-days old infant.

Gunmen from the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant stopped the bus on the road in Talkalakh and killed everyone before setting the bus on fire.

Is this really who we want to be “allied” with?

And of course once we strike Syria, the war could escalate into a full-blown conflict very easily.

If you believe that the Obama administration would never send U.S. troops into Syria, you are just being naive.  In fact, according to Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School, the proposed authorization to use military force that has been sent to Congress would leave the door wide open for American “boots on the ground”…

The proposed AUMF focuses on Syrian WMD but is otherwise very broad.  It authorizes the President to use any element of the U.S. Armed Forces and any method of force.  It does not contain specific limits on targets – either in terms of the identity of the targets (e.g. the Syrian government, Syrian rebels, Hezbollah, Iran) or the geography of the targets.  Its main limit comes on the purposes for which force can be used.  Four points are worth making about these purposes.  First, the proposed AUMF authorizes the President to use force “in connection with” the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war. (It does not limit the President’s use force to the territory of Syria, but rather says that the use of force must have a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian conflict.  Activities outside Syria can and certainly do have a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war.).  Second, the use of force must be designed to “prevent or deter the use or proliferation” of WMDs “within, to or from Syria” or (broader yet) to “protect the United States and its allies and partners against the threat posed by such weapons.”  Third, the proposed AUMF gives the President final interpretive authority to determine when these criteria are satisfied (“as he determines to be necessary and appropriate”).  Fourth, the proposed AUMF contemplates no procedural restrictions on the President’s powers (such as a time limit).

I think this AUMF has much broader implications than Ilya Somin described.  Some questions for Congress to ponder:

(1) Does the proposed AUMF authorize the President to take sides in the Syrian Civil War, or to attack Syrian rebels associated with al Qaeda, or to remove Assad from power?  Yes, as long as the President determines that any of these entities has a (mere) connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war, and that the use of force against one of them would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect the U.S. or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the (mere) threat posed by those weapons.  It is very easy to imagine the President making such determinations with regard to Assad or one or more of the rebel groups.

(2) Does the proposed AUMF authorize the President to use force against Iran or Hezbollah, in Iran or Lebanon?  Again, yes, as long as the President determines that Iran or Hezbollah has a (mere) a connection to the use of WMD in the Syrian civil war, and the use of force against Iran or Hezbollah would prevent or deter the use or proliferation of WMD within, or to and from, Syria, or protect the U.S. or its allies (e.g. Israel) against the (mere) threat posed by those weapons.

Would you like to send your own son or your own daughter to fight in Syria just so that a natural gas pipeline can be built?

What the United States should be doing in this situation is so obvious that even the five-year-old grandson of Nancy Pelosi can figure it out…

I’ll tell you this story and then I really do have to go. My five-year-old grandson, as I was leaving San Francisco yesterday, he said to me, Mimi, my name, Mimi, war with Syria, are you yes war with Syria, no, war with Syria. And he’s five years old. We’re not talking about war; we’re talking about action. Yes war with Syria, no with war in Syria. I said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ He said, ‘I think no war.’

Unfortunately, his grandmother and most of our other insane “leaders” in Washington D.C. seem absolutely determined to take us to war.

In the end, how much American blood will be spilled over a stupid natural gas pipeline?

The post Is The United States Going To Go To War With Syria Over A Natural Gas Pipeline? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Syria has highly advanced weapons systems that Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya did not have.  Anyone that thinks that we can just sit back and lob cruise missiles at them is being naive.  Syria has weapons that “have never before been seen” in the Middle East.  The following is from a recent article by Mac Slavo…

According to the report from Syrian-based Dam Press and the Dyar Newspaper, the Russians aren’t backing off their Syria policy and they are getting ready to double down by supplying Assad’s military with weapons the have never before been seen in the middle east.

If and when Western forces engage the Syrian army you can be assured that it will be nothing like the 1991 conflict in Iraq when a hundred thousand of Saddam Hussein’s soldiers surrendered without firing a shot. Nor will it be a no-fly zone free-for-all where air forces will be able to target military assets as they did in Libya without being challenged.

No, this time will be different.

Posted below are some excerpts from a translation of the article from Syrian-based Dam Press that Mac Slavo mentioned…

The Patriot Missiles will be hit and repealed with S300 SAM [already installed in Syria]. Putin also threatened to deliver the more advanced S400 anti-aircraft missiles

—–

He added that Russia will also supply Syria with state-of-the-art 24-Barrell rocket launchers which have a range of 60 km ranked as the most developed artillery weapon of its kind.

—–

Putin clearly stated that the Middle East is going to witness a significant change.  Syria will be armed with weapons that have never been seen before [in the Middle East] including computer guided smart missiles that never miss their target.

He also added that Russia will supply Syria with Skean 5 ground-to-sea missiles that are capable of hitting and sinking any target up to 250 km off the Syrian coast.

The weapons systems mentioned in that article are very powerful.  For instance, the video posted below contains footage of the rocket launchers mentioned in the article…

But of most immediate concern for the U.S. military are the anti-ship missiles which Syria has reportedly acquired.

According to the New York Times, the P-800 Yakhont anti-ship missiles that Russia has sent to Syria are equipped with highly advanced radar capabilities…

Russia has sent advanced antiship cruise missiles to Syria, a move that illustrates the depth of its support for the Syrian government led by President Bashar al-Assad, American officials said Thursday.

Russia has previously provided a version of the missiles, called Yakhonts, to Syria. But those delivered recently are outfitted with an advanced radar that makes them more effective, according to American officials who are familiar with classified intelligence reports and would only discuss the shipment on the basis of anonymity.

These missiles have a range of approximately 180 miles, and they can do an extraordinary amount of damage…

The missiles are about 22 feet long, carry either a high-explosive or armor-piercing warhead, and have a range of about 180 miles, according to Jane’s.

They can be steered to a target’s general location by longer-range radars, but each missile has its own radar to help evade a ship’s defenses and home in as it approaches its target.

Two senior American officials said that the most recent shipment contained missiles with a more advanced guidance system than earlier shipments.

Posted below is video footage of a test firing of a P-800 Yakhont anti-ship missile…

And yes, these missiles have the range to hit targets in Cyprus.  Perhaps someone should tell U.S. military planners that it is probably not a good idea to be parking so much air power at bases there.

It also looks like the Syrians are going to have plenty of naval targets to shoot at as well.  According to Reuters, a U.S. carrier group will soon be joining the five U.S. destroyers that are already parked in the eastern Mediterranean…

The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and other ships in its strike group are heading west toward the Red Sea to help support a limited U.S. strike on Syria, if needed, defense officials said on Sunday.

The Nimitz carrier strike group, which includes four destroyers and a cruiser, has no specific orders to move to the eastern Mediterranean at this point, but is moving west in the Arabian Sea so it can do so if asked. It was not immediately clear when the ships would enter the Red Sea, but they had not arrived by Sunday evening, said one official.

“It’s about leveraging the assets to have them in place should the capabilities of the carrier strike group and the presence be needed,” said the official.

In addition, ABC News says that an amphibious ship “with several hundred Marines aboard” is also parked in the eastern Mediterranean…

On Friday, the USS San Antonio, a Navy amphibious ship with several hundred Marines aboard, was ordered to remain in the eastern Mediterranean though defense officials said it too was not part of the U.S. military planning for a limited strike against Syria. Defense officials described the move as “a prudent decision should the ship’s capabilities be required.

The San Antonio was originally to be in the Mediterranean as part of a long-scheduled commitment to support U.S. Africa Command, several officials said. The ship was on its way to a port call at the U.S naval base at Souda Bay on the Greek Island of Crete when it was ordered to remain in the area.

The San Antonio has resources that could prove useful in future operations in the region. For example, the ship has several hundred Marines aboard from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), as well as several helicopters or V-22 Ospreys that could be useful in helping to rescue downed pilots.

So what do you think will happen if the Syrians are able to hit any of our ships or any of the air bases in Cyprus?

Do you think that there is any chance that we will be able to avoid a full-blown war at that point?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

The post Russia Has Equipped Syria With Their Most Advanced Anti-Ship Missiles appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Not that we should be supporting Assad either.  Assad is horrible.  He should be rotting in prison somewhere.  But just because a country has a bad leader does not mean that we have justification to attack them.

The U.S. military should only be put into action when there is a compelling national interest at stake.  And getting involved in a bloody civil war between Assad and al-Qaeda does not qualify.

For the moment, we have a little bit of time to educate the American people about this because the Obama administration has decided to try to get the approval of Congress before striking Syria.  Hopefully cooler heads will prevail.

Unfortunately, some members of the U.S. Congress are actually trying to push Obama into even stronger action.  In fact, some Senators are now saying that they will not support military intervention in Syria unless it is a part of an “overall strategy” to remove Assad from power.

If the U.S. does try to remove Assad, it will unleash hell in the Middle East.  Syria has already threatened to attack Israel if the U.S. tries to remove Assad and so has Hezbollah.

As I mentioned the other day, right now there are 70,000 Hezbollah rockets aimed at Israel.

When Hezbollah and Syria start sending rockets into the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel will respond with even greater force.

And if a single one of those rockets that land in Tel Aviv have an unconventional warhead, Israel will respond by absolutely flattening Damascus.

When I say that, what I mean is that a city of 1.7 million people will be gone permanently.

Do our politicians have any idea of the hell that they are about to unleash?

Do our leaders actually want Israel to be attacked?

Do our leaders actually want major cities in the Middle East to be completely wiped out?

Do our leaders actually want millions of precious people to die?

As I mentioned above, those serving in the U.S. military understand these things better than most people, and right now many of them are expressing a very strong desire to stay out of this conflict.

According to a tweet from U.S. Representative Justin Amash, he has heard from numerous members of the U.S. military that are urging him to vote against an attack on Syria…

“I’ve been hearing a lot from members of our Armed Forces. The message I consistently hear: Please vote no on military action against #Syria.”

Journalist Paul Szoldra says that he has also heard from a lot of service members that want nothing to do with this conflict…

I’ve reached out to my own sources who are either veterans or currently on active duty in the military, and asked them to share their thoughts on whether we should, or should not, intervene in the two-year-old Syrian civil war. Most have responded with a resounding no.

The following is what a Marine Corps infantry veteran with three deployments to Iraq named Jack Mandaville wrote to Szoldra…

The worst part about this Syria debacle, among many things, is how closely it resembles Iraq. Those Vietnam veterans who warned us about disastrous results in Iraq were doing so based off their experience in a war that, contrary to popular belief, was vastly different from our war and was separated by at least two decades. Many veterans of Iraq are still in their twenties and have a firsthand understanding of Arab political issues. The complicated things we faced with Syria’s next door neighbors is freshly ingrained in our memories. How quickly the American people and our political leaders forget.

Our involvement in Syria is so dangerous on so many levels, and the 21st century American vet is more keen to this than anybody. It boggles my mind that we are being ignored. My anger over this issue has actually made me seriously comment on our foreign policy for the first time since 2006 when I was honorably discharged after three stints in Iraq and subsequently watched it continue for nearly another six years. I’m sickened that we’re putting ourselves in a position for another prolonged war where the American people will quickly forget about the people fighting it.

And even an establishment mouthpiece like the Washington Post is admitting that top U.S. military officials are expressing “serious reservations” about a war with Syria…

The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.

Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.

One officer even told the Post that he “can’t believe” that Obama is even considering a conflict with Syria…

“I can’t believe the president is even considering it,” said [one] officer, who like most officers interviewed for this story agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because military personnel are reluctant to criticize policymakers while military campaigns are being planned.

What Obama wants to do is utter insanity.

Why would we want to enter a war on the side of Christian killers?

In areas of Syria that are controlled by the rebels, Christians are being treated brutally.  The following is from eyewitness testimony from a Christian missionary who recently visited the region…

“The Christian residents were offered four choices: 1. renounce the ‘idolatry’ of Christianity and convert to Islam; 2. pay a heavy tribute to the Muslims for the privilege of keeping their heads and their Christian faith (this tribute is known as jizya); 3. be killed; 4. flee for their lives, leaving all their belongings behind.”

How would you like to be faced with those choices?

In other instances, Christians are not even given any choices.  Instead, they are being summarily executed for their faith.

For example, the following is one incident that made news back in December…

Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists.

The nun said taxi driver Andrei Arbashe, 38, was kidnapped after his brother was heard complaining that fighters against the ruling regime behaved like bandits.

She said his headless corpse was found by the side of the road, surrounded by hungry dogs. He had recently married and was soon to be a father.

How would you feel if a member of your family was beheaded and fed to the dogs?

And the rebels have continued to slaughter Christians even though they know the world is watching.  The following is from an NBC News report on August 18th…

Syrian rebels killed at least 11 people, including civilians, in an attack on a checkpoint west of the city of Homs on Saturday that official state media described as a massacre.

Most of those killed were Christians, activists and residents said.

Sometimes these psychotic Syrian rebels actually round up Christian women and children and gun them down.  The following is from a report about what the rebels did to the Christian village of al-Duvair when they took control…

Images obtained exclusively by Infowars show the aftermath of an alleged massacre of a Christian village in Syria during which men, women and children were slaughtered and churches desecrated by Obama-backed FSA rebels.

The photos, which were provided by a source inside the village of al-Duvair in Syria’s Western province of Homs, show ruined homes, ransacked churches as well as the burned remains of what looks like an infant.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) on May 29, “The armed rebels affiliated to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) raided the Christian-populated al-Duvair village in Reef (outskirts of) Homs near the border with Lebanon….and massacred all its civilian residents, including women and children.”

But sometimes women are not killed by the rebels.  If they are young and lovely, they are often systematically raped.  What happened to one 15-year-old Christian girl from Qusair named Mariam is a total abomination…

The commander of the battalion “Jabhat al-Nusra” in Qusair took Mariam, married and raped her. Then he repudiated her. The next day the young woman was forced to marry another Islamic militant. He also raped her and then repudiated her. The same trend was repeated for 15 days, and Mariam was raped by 15 different men. This psychologically destabilized her and made her insane. Mariam, became mentally unstable and was eventually killed.

This is who Obama wants to help?

We are going to shed American blood to help those monsters take over Syria?

Are we insane?

Of course one of the most prominent examples of rebel brutality was even reported on by CNN…

The ghastly video shows how barbaric the Syrian civil war can be.

A man, said to be a well-known rebel fighter, carves into the body of a government soldier and cuts out his heart and liver.

“I swear to God we will eat your hearts out, you soldiers of Bashar. You dogs. God is greater!” the man says. “Heroes of Baba Amr … we will take out their hearts to eat them.”

He then puts the heart in his mouth and takes a bite.

After reading that, can anyone out there possibly justify helping the Syrian rebels?

But the Obama administration insists that we “must” attack Syria because Assad supposedly used chemical weapons against his own people.

Secretary of State John Kerry says that samples taken by UN inspectors have tested positive for the nerve agent sarin, and therefore what we must do is clear.

But is it really?

According to Reuters, the UN has had evidence that Syrian rebels have been using sarin gas against Assad forces since May…

U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

And as I discussed the other day, Syrian rebels have admitted to an Associated Press reporter that they were the ones that used sarin gas during the incident that the Obama administration is so concerned about.

The chemical weapons were supplied to the rebels by Saudi Arabia, but the Obama administration will never, ever admit this.  If the U.S. called the Saudis out on this, it would potentially endanger the status of the petrodollar.

Instead, the U.S. government is going to end up doing exactly what the Saudis want, which is to attack Syria.

But people all around the world are seeing through this charade.  For example, the following is a statement that Pat Buchanan made during a recent interview with Newsmax…

“I would not understand or comprehend that Bashar al-Assad, no matter how bad a man he may be, would be so stupid as to order a chemical weapons attack on civilians in his own country when the immediate consequence of which might be that he would be at war with the United States. So this reeks of a false flag operation.”

Sadly, it doesn’t really seem to matter what any of us think.  According to James Rosen of Fox News, the Obama administration has apparently made the decision to go ahead with an attack on Syria no matter what Congress decides…

A senior State Department official tells Fox News the president’s decision to take military action in Syria still stands, and will indeed be carried out, regardless of whether Congress votes next week to approve the use of such force.

The official said that every major player on the National Security Council – including the commander-in-chief – was in accord last night on the need for military action, and that the president’s decision to seek a congressional debate and vote was a surprise to most if not all of them. However, the aide insisted the request for Congress to vote did not supplant the president’s earlier decision to use force in Syria, only delayed its implementation.

“That’s going to happen, anyway,” the source told me, adding that that was why the president, in his rose Garden remarks, was careful to establish that he believes he has the authority to launch such strikes even without congressional authorization.

Very soon, the U.S. military will be embroiled in a vicious civil war between a brutal dictator and absolutely psychotic Christian-killing jihadists.

Should American blood be spilled in such a conflict?

Of course not.

Is it worth potentially starting World War III just to teach Assad a “lesson”?

Of course not.

Hopefully this war will not happen, because if it does I fear that it is going to be very, very bloody.

The post The U.S. Military Does Not Want To Fight For Al-Qaeda Christian Killers In Syria appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

There would be other winners from a U.S. war with Syria as well.  For example, it is well-known that Qatar wants to run a natural gas pipeline out of the Persian Gulf, through Syria and into Europe.  That is why Qatar has also been pouring billions of dollars into the civil war in Syria.

So if it is really Saudi Arabia and Qatar that want to overthrow the Assad regime, why does the United States have to do the fighting?

Someone should ask Barack Obama why it is necessary for the U.S. military to do the dirty work of his Sunni Muslim friends.

Obama is promising that the upcoming attack will only be a “limited military strike” and that we will not be getting into a full-blown war with Syria.

The only way that will work is if Syria, Hezbollah and Iran all sit on their hands and do nothing to respond to the upcoming U.S. attack.

Could that happen?

Maybe.

Let’s hope so.

But if there is a response, and a U.S. naval vessel gets hit, or American blood is spilled, or rockets start raining down on Tel Aviv, the U.S. will then be engaged in a full-blown war.

That is about the last thing that we need right now.

The vast majority of Americans do not want to get embroiled in another war in the Middle East, and even a lot of top military officials are expressing “serious reservations” about attacking Syria according to the Washington Post…

The Obama administration’s plan to launch a military strike against Syria is being received with serious reservations by many in the U.S. military, which is coping with the scars of two lengthy wars and a rapidly contracting budget, according to current and former officers.

Having assumed for months that the United States was unlikely to intervene militarily in Syria, the Defense Department has been thrust onto a war footing that has made many in the armed services uneasy, according to interviews with more than a dozen military officers ranging from captains to a four-star general.

For the United States, there really is no good outcome in Syria.

If we attack and Assad stays in power, that is a bad outcome for the United States.

If we help overthrow the Assad regime, the rebels take control.  But they would be even worse than Assad.  They have pledged loyalty to al-Qaeda, and they are rabidly anti-American, rabidly anti-Israel and rabidly anti-western.

So why in the world should the United States get involved?

This war would not be good for Israel either.  I have seen a number of supposedly pro-Israel websites out there getting very excited about the prospect of war with Syria, but that is a huge mistake.

Syria has already threatened to attack Israeli cities if the U.S. attacks Syria.  If Syrian missiles start landing in the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel will respond.

And if any of those missiles have unconventional warheads, Israel will respond by absolutely destroying Damascus.

And of course a missile exchange between Syria and Israel will almost certainly draw Hezbollah into the conflict.  And right now Hezbollah has 70,000 rockets aimed at Israel.

If Hezbollah starts launching those rockets, thousands upon thousands of innocent Jewish citizens will be killed.

So all of those “pro-Israel” websites out there that are getting excited about war with Syria should think twice.  If you really are “pro-Israel”, you should not want this war.  It would not be good for Israel.

If you want to stand with Israel, then stand for peace.  This war would not achieve any positive outcomes for Israel.  Even if Assad is overthrown, the rebel government that would replace him would be even more anti-Israel than Assad was.

War is hell.  Ask anyone that has been in the middle of one.  Why would anyone want to see American blood spilled, Israeli blood spilled or Syrian blood spilled?

If the Saudis want this war so badly, they should go and fight it.  Everyone knows that the Saudis have been bankrolling the rebels.  At this point, even CNN is openly admitting this…

It is an open secret that Saudi Arabia is using Jordan to smuggle weapons into Syria for the rebels. Jordan says it is doing all it can to prevent that and does not want to inflame the situation in Syria.

And Assad certainly knows who is behind the civil war in his country.  The following is an excerpt from a recent interview with Assad…

Of course it is well known that countries, such as Saudi Arabia, who hold the purse strings can shape and manipulate them to suit their own interests.

Ideologically, these countries mobilize them through direct or indirect means as extremist tools. If they declare that Muslims must pursue Jihad in Syria, thousands of fighters will respond. Financially, those who finance and arm such groups can instruct them to carry out acts of terrorism and spread anarchy. The influence over them is synergized when a country such as Saudi Arabia directs them through both the Wahhabi ideology and their financial means.

And shortly after the British Parliament voted against military intervention in Syria, Saudi Arabia raised their level of “defense readiness” from “five” to “two” in a clear sign that they fully expect a war to happen…

Saudi Arabia, a supporter of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad, has raised its level of military alertness in anticipation of a possible Western strike in Syria, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The United States has been calling for punitive action against Assad’s government for a suspected poison gas attack on a Damascus suburb on August 21 that killed hundreds of people.

Saudi Arabia’s defense readiness has been raised to “two” from “five”, a Saudi military source who declined to be named told Reuters. “One” is the highest level of alert.

And guess who has been supplying the rebels in Syria with chemical weapons?

According to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak, it has been the Saudis…

Syrian rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have admitted to Associated Press correspondent Dale Gavlak that they were responsible for last week’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.

“From numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families….many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the (deadly) gas attack,” writes Gavlak.

And this is someone that isn’t just fresh out of journalism school.  As Paul Joseph Watson noted, “Dale Gavlak’s credibility is very impressive. He has been a Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press for two decades and has also worked for National Public Radio (NPR) and written articles for BBC News.”

The Voice of Russia has also been reporting on Gavlak’s bombshell findings…

The rebels noted it was a result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them.

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta.

As Gavlak reports, Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels died in a weapons storage tunnel. The father stated the weapons were provided to rebel forces by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, describing them as having a “tube-like structure” while others were like a “huge gas bottle.”

“They didn’t tell us what these arms were or how to use them,” complained a female fighter named ‘K’. “We didn’t know they were chemical weapons. We never imagined they were chemical weapons.”

“When Saudi Prince Bandar gives such weapons to people, he must give them to those who know how to handle and use them,” she warned. She, like other Syrians, do not want to use their full names for fear of retribution.

Gavlak also refers to an article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph about secret Russian-Saudi talks stating that Prince Bandar threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with terror attacks at next year’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if Russia doesn’t agree to change its stance on Syria.

“Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord,” the article stated.

“I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” Saudi Prince allegedly told Vladimir Putin.

Yes, the Saudis were so desperate to get the Russians to stand down and allow an attack on Syria that they actually threatened them.  Zero Hedge published some additional details on the meeting between Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan and Russian President Vladimir Putin…

Bandar told Putin, “There are many common values and goals that bring us together, most notably the fight against terrorism and extremism all over the world. Russia, the US, the EU and the Saudis agree on promoting and consolidating international peace and security. The terrorist threat is growing in light of the phenomena spawned by the Arab Spring. We have lost some regimes. And what we got in return were terrorist experiences, as evidenced by the experience of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the extremist groups in Libya. … As an example, I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us, and they will not move in the Syrian territory’s direction without coordinating with us. These groups do not scare us. We use them in the face of the Syrian regime but they will have no role or influence in Syria’s political future.”

It is good of the Saudis to admit they control a terrorist organization that “threatens the security” of the Sochi 2014 Olympic games, and that house of Saud uses “in the face of the Syrian regime.” Perhaps the next time there is a bombing in Boston by some Chechen-related terrorists, someone can inquire Saudi Arabia what, if anything, they knew about that.

But the piece de resistance is what happened at the end of the dialogue between the two leaders. It was, in not so many words, a threat by Saudi Arabia aimed squarely at Russia:

As soon as Putin finished his speech, Prince Bandar warned that in light of the course of the talks, things were likely to intensify, especially in the Syrian arena, although he appreciated the Russians’ understanding of Saudi Arabia’s position on Egypt and their readiness to support the Egyptian army despite their fears for Egypt’s future.

The head of the Saudi intelligence services said that the dispute over the approach to the Syrian issue leads to the conclusion that “there is no escape from the military option, because it is the only currently available choice given that the political settlement ended in stalemate. We believe that the Geneva II Conference will be very difficult in light of this raging situation.”

At the end of the meeting, the Russian and Saudi sides agreed to continue talks, provided that the current meeting remained under wraps. This was before one of the two sides leaked it via the Russian press.

Are you starting to get the picture?

The Saudis are absolutely determined to make this war happen, and they expect us to do the fighting.

And Barack Obama plans to go ahead and attack Syria without the support of the American people or the approval of Congress.

According to a new NBC News poll that was just released, nearly 80 percent of all Americans want Congress to approve a strike on Syria before it happens.

And according to Politico, more than 150 members of Congress have already signed letters demanding that Obama get approval from them before attacking Syria…

Already Thursday, more than 150 members of Congress have signaled their opposition to airstrikes on Syria without a congressional vote. House members circulated two separate letters circulated that were sent to the White House demanding a congressional role before military action takes place. One, authored by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.), has more than 150 signatures from Democrats and Republicans. Another, started by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), is signed by 53 Democrats, though many of them also signed Rigell’s letter.

But Obama has already made it perfectly clear that he has no intention of putting this before Congress.

He is absolutely determined to attack Syria, and he is not going to let the U.S. Congress or the American people stop him.

Let’s just hope that he doesn’t start World War III in the process.

The post Who Benefits From A War Between The United States And Syria? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

It isn’t as if it is even possible for the U.S. military to resolve the conflict that is going on in that country.  At the core, the Syrian civil war is about Sunni Islam vs. Shia Islam.  It is a conflict that goes back well over a thousand years.

Assad is Shiite, but the majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims.  Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been pouring billions of dollars into the conflict, because they would love to see the Assad regime eliminated and a Sunni government come to power in Syria.  On the other side, Iran is absolutely determined to not allow that to happen.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have no problem with using Sunni terrorists (al-Qaeda) to achieve their political goals.  And as a very important ally of the Saudis, the U.S. has been spending a lot of money to train and equip the “rebels” in Syria.

But there was a problem.  The Syrian government has actually been defeating the rebels.  So something had to be done.

If it could be made to look like the Assad regime was using chemical weapons, that would give the U.S. government the “moral justification” that it needed to intervene militarily on the side of the rebels.  In essence, it would be a great excuse for the U.S. to be able to go in and do the dirty work of the Saudis for them.

So that is where we are today.  The justification for attacking Syria that the Obama administration is giving us goes something like this…

-Chemical weapons were used in Syria.

-The rebels do not have the ability to use chemical weapons.

-Therefore it must have been the Assad regime that was responsible for using chemical weapons.

-The U.S. military must punish the use of chemical weapons to make sure that it never happens again.

Unfortunately for the Obama administration, the world is not buying it.  In fact, people are seeing right through this charade.

The U.S. government spends $52,000,000,000 a year on “intelligence”, but apparently our intelligence community absolutely refuses to see the obvious.  WND has been able to uncover compelling evidence that the rebels in Syria have used chemical weapons repeatedly, and yet government officials continue to insist over and over that no such evidence exists and that we need to strike Syria immediately.

Shouldn’t we at least take a little bit of time to figure out who is actually in the wrong before we start letting cruise missiles fly?

Because the potential downside of an attack against Syria is absolutely massive.  As I wrote about the other day, if we attack Syria we have the potential of starting World War 3 in the Middle East.

We could find ourselves immersed in an endless war with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah which would be far more horrible than the Iraq war ever was.  It would essentially be a war with Shia Islam itself, and that would be a total nightmare.

If you are going to pick a fight with those guys, you better pack a lunch.  They fight dirty and they are absolutely relentless.  They will never forget and they will never, ever forgive.

A full-blown war with Syria, Iran and Hezbollah would be a fight to the death, and they would not hesitate to strike soft targets all over the United States.  I don’t think that most Americans have any conception of what that could possibly mean.

If the American people are going to stop this war, they need to do it now.  The following are 25 quotes about the coming war with Syria that every American should see…

1. Barack Obama, during an interview with Charlie Savage on December 20, 2007: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

2. Joe Biden, during a television interview in 2007: “The president has no constitutional authority … to take this nation to war … unless we’re attacked or unless there is proof we are about to be attacked.  And if he does, if he does, I would move to impeach him.”

3. U.S. Representative Ted Poe: “Mr. President, you must call Congress back from recess immediately to take a vote on a military strike on Syria. Assad may have crossed a red line but that does not give you the authority to redline the Constitution.”

4. U.S. Representative Kurt Schrader: “I see no convincing evidence that this is an imminent threat to the United States of America.”

5. U.S. Representative Barbara Lee: “While we understand that as commander-in-chief you have a constitutional obligation to protect our national interests from direct attack, Congress has the constitutional obligation and power to approve military force, even if the United States or its direct interests (such as its embassies) have not been attacked or threatened with an attack.”

6. The New York Times: “American officials said Wednesday there was no ‘smoking gun’ that directly links President Bashar al-Assad to the attack, and they tried to lower expectations about the public intelligence presentation.”

7. U.S. Senator Rand Paul: “The war in Syria has no clear national security connection to the United States and victory by either side will not necessarily bring in to power people friendly to the United States.”

8. U.S. Senator Tim Kaine: “I definitely believe there needs to be a vote.”

9. Donald Rumsfeld: “There really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation.”

10. Robert Fisk: “If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa’ida.”

11. Former congressman Dennis Kucinich: “So what, we’re about to become al-Qaeda’s air force now?”

12. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem: “We have two options: either to surrender, or to defend ourselves with the means at our disposal. The second choice is the best: we will defend ourselves.”

13. A Syrian Army officer: “We have more than 8,000 suicide martyrs within the Syrian army, ready to carry out martyrdom operations at any moment to stop the Americans and the British. I myself am ready to blow myself up against US aircraft carriers to stop them attacking Syria and its people.”

14. Khalaf Muftah, a senior Ba’ath Party official: “We have strategic weapons and we’re capable of responding.”

15. An anonymous senior Hezbollah source: “A large-scale Western strike on Syria will plunge Lebanon virtually and immediately into the inferno of a war with Israel.”

16. Ali Larjiani, the speaker of the Iranian parliament: “…the country which has been destroyed by the terrorists during the past two years will not sustain so much damage as the warmongers will receive in this war.”

17. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: “Starting this fire will be like a spark in a large store of gunpowder, with unclear and unspecified outcomes and consequences”

18. General Mohammad Ali Jafari, chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards: (an attack on Syria) “means the immediate destruction of Israel.”

19. Israeli President Shimon Peres: “Israel is not and has not been involved in the civil war in Syria, but if they try to hurt us, we will respond with full force.”

20. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “We are not part of the civil war in Syria, but if we identify any attempt whatsoever to harm us, we will respond and we will respond in strength.”

21. The Jerusalem Post: “The lines between Hezbollah and the Syrian regime are so blurred that Israel will hold Damascus responsible if Hezbollah bombards Israel in the coming days, Israeli officials indicated on Wednesday.”

22. Ron Paul: “The danger of escalation with Russia is very high”

23. Pat Buchanan: “The sole beneficiary of this apparent use of poison gas against civilians in rebel-held territory appears to be the rebels, who have long sought to have us come in and fight their war.”

24. Retired U.S. General James Mattis: “We have no moral obligation to do the impossible and harm our children’s future because we think we just have to do something.”

25. Syrian refugee Um Ahmad: “Isn’t it enough, all the violence and fighting that we already have in the country, now America wants to bomb us, too?”

The post 25 Quotes About The Coming War With Syria That Every American Should See appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

We can always hope that cooler heads prevail and that a conflict is avoided, but at this point it does not look like that is going to happen.  In fact, according to Richard Engel of NBC News, a senior U.S. official has admitted that “we’re past the point of return” and that a strike on Syria can be expected within days.

Obama is promising that the U.S. will “take limited, tailored approaches”, and that we will not be “getting drawn into a long conflict, not a repetition of, you know, Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about”, but how in the world can he guarantee that?

Syria, Iran and Hezbollah have all threatened to attack Israel if the U.S. attacks Syria.

If missiles start raining down on Israeli cities, the Israelis are not just going to sit there and take it like they did during the first Gulf War.  In fact, according to the Los Angeles Times, “Israeli leaders are making it clear that they have no intention of standing down this time if attacked”.

If Israel is attacked, their military response will be absolutely massive.

And then we will have the major regional war in the Middle East that so many people have been warning about for so many years.  Hundreds of thousands of people will die and the global economy will be paralyzed.

So what will Obama do in such a situation?

Will he pack up and go home?

Of course not.  We would be committed to fighting a brutal, horrific war that there was absolutely no reason to start in the first place.

And we are already starting to feel the effect of rising tensions in the Middle East.  This week, the price of oil rose to a 10-month high…

U.S. oil prices soared to an 18-month high as traders worried that a potential military strike against Syria could disrupt the region’s oil supplies.

October crude futures surged 2.9%, to $109.01 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, their highest close since February 2012. Brent futures ended up 3.2% at $114.28 a barrel, a six-month high.

Posted below is a chart that shows how the price of oil has moved over the past several decades.  Could we soon break the all-time record of $147 a barrel that was set back in 2008?…

And of course we all remember what happened when the price of oil got that high back in 2008.  The global economy was plunged into the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

A major conflict in the Middle East, especially if it goes on for an extended period of time, could send the price of oil to absolutely ridiculous levels.

Every single day, a massive amount of oil is moved through the Suez Canal.  The following is from a recent Wall Street Journal article…

To the southwest is the Suez Canal, one such chokepoint, which connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of the Suez with the Mediterranean Sea. The canal transports about 800,000 barrels of crude and 1.4 million barrels of petroleum products daily, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Another regional oil shipping route potentially threatened by the Syria crisis is the Sumed, or Suez-Mediterranean, pipeline, also in Egypt, which moves oil from the Persian Gulf region to the Mediterranean. The Sumed handles 1.7 million barrels of crude oil per day, the EIA said.

And of course an enormous amount of oil moves through the Persian Gulf each day as well.  If the Suez Canal and/or the Persian Gulf were to be shut down, there would almost immediately be global supply problems.

So how high could the price of oil go?

Well, according to CNBC, some analysts believe that $150 a barrel could easily be hit if the U.S. attacks Syria…

Some analysts believe even U.S. crude, West Texas Intermediate (WTI crude) could get close to the $150 zone. “If oil prices spike on the Syria attack, and surge above $120, the next logical upside target is going to be the 2008 high of $147, which could easily be taken out,” said John Kilduff of Again Capital. “It’s the retaliation to the retaliation that we have to be worried about.”

If the price of oil soars up to that level and keeps going, we could see the price of gasoline go up to four, five or maybe even six dollars a gallon in some areas of the country.

You better start saving up lots of gas money.

It looks like you are going to need it.

The post Will War With Syria Cause The Price Of Oil To Explode Higher? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

A potential war with Syria has been brought to the forefront because of a chemical weapons attack near Damascus last week that killed as many as 1,400 people.  The Obama administration and several other western nations are blaming this attack on the Assad regime.

But others are pointing out that it would make absolutely no sense for the Assad regime to do such a thing.  They appear to be winning the civil war, and Assad knows that Obama has previously said that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” for the United States.

So why would the Assad regime launch a brutal chemical weapons attack against women and children just miles from where UN inspectors were staying?

Why would Assad risk war with the United States and the rest of NATO?

Assad would have to be extremely stupid or extremely suicidal to do such a thing.

The ones that benefit from this chemical weapons attack are the jihadist rebels.  The odds of foreign intervention in the conflict just went way, way up.

We will probably never learn the real truth about who was actually behind that attack.  And even if it had not happened, the U.S. and the rest of NATO would have probably come up with another justification to go to war anyway.  They appear absolutely obsessed with getting rid of Assad, but they have not really thought through the consequences.

The following are 15 signs that Obama has already made the decision to go to war with Syria…

#1 Syria has agreed to allow UN officials to inspect the site of the recent chemical weapons attack that killed up to 1,400 people, but a “senior U.S. official” says that such an inspection would be “too late to be credible“.

#2 According to ABC News, the White House is saying that there is “very little doubt” that the Assad regime was behind the deadly chemical weapons attack last week.

#3 Four U.S. warships with ballistic missiles are moving into position in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. If the command is given, they will be able to rain Tomahawk cruise missiles down on targets inside Syria within minutes…

U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.

U.S. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military actions, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.

#4 CBS News is reporting that “the Pentagon is making the initial preparations for a Cruise missile attack on Syrian government forces”.

#5 On Saturday, Barack Obama met with his national security team to discuss what actions should be taken in Syria.

#6 U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel says that Barack Obama has asked him to “prepare options for all contingencies” as far as a conflict with Syria is concerned.

#7 After a phone conversation with British Prime Minister David Cameron about the situation in Syria, the White House announced that both leaders expressed “grave concern” about the chemical weapons attack that took place last week.

#8 Military commanders from the United States, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, France, Italy and Canada are meeting in Amman, Jordan on Sunday to coordinate plans for upcoming attacks on Syria.

#9 According to France’s second largest newspaper, rebel forces that have been trained by the CIA have been pouring toward Damascus “since mid-August“…

According to our information, the regime’s opponents, supervised by Jordanian, Israeli and American commandos moving towards Damascus since mid-August. This attack could explain the possible use of the Syrian president to chemical weapons.

According to information obtained by Le Figaro , the first trained in guerrilla warfare by the Americans in Jordan Syrian troops reportedly entered into action since mid-August in southern Syria, in the region of Deraa. A first group of 300 men, probably supported by Israeli and Jordanian commandos, as well as men of the CIA, had crossed the border on August 17. A second would have joined the 19. According to military sources, the Americans, who do not want to put troops on the Syrian soil or arming rebels in part controlled by radical Islamists form quietly for several months in a training camp set up at the border Jordanian- Syrian fighters ASL, the Free Syrian Army, handpicked.

#10 The U.S. military moved a significant number of F-16 fighter jets to Jordan earlier this year for military exercises, and kept them there afterward “at the request of the Jordanian government“.

#11 According to a government document that Wikileaks released back in March 2012, NATO personnel have been on the ground inside Syria preparing for regime change since 2011.

#12 The Times of Israel is reporting that an internal military assessment has concluded that “Washington is seriously considering a limited yet effective attack that will make it clear to the regime in Damascus that the international community will not tolerate the use of weapons of mass destruction against Syrian civilians or any other elements”.

#13 U.S. Senator John McCain recently said that if the U.S. military does not hit Syria, it will be like “writing a blank check to other brutal dictators around the world if they want to use chemical weapons”.

#14 According to the New York Times, “the NATO air war in Kosovo” is being studied “as a possible blueprint for acting without a mandate from the United Nations”.

#15 The White House has released a statement that says that the Obama administration has no plans to put “boots on the ground“, but it did not rule out any other types of military action.

This is not a conflict that the U.S. military should be involved in.

And we should especially not be on the side of the rabidly anti-Christian, rabidly anti-Israel and rabidly anti-western forces that are attempting to take control of Syria.

The terrorists that the Obama administration is backing are absolutely psychotic.  Just check out the following example from a recent article posted on the Blaze…

New video posted on YouTube purports to show the graphic murder – execution style – of three Syrian truck drivers who did nothing more than belong  to a minority faith the local Al Qaeda affiliate does not like.

In the video, a small band of Islamist radicals with the Al Qaeda-linked ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) group is seen waving the tractor trailers off the side of an Iraqi road and then proceeds to interrogate the unsuspecting drivers about their prayer habits, trying to discover if they are Sunnis or members of the Alawite minority in Syria.

When they “fail” the Sunni jihadis’ pop roadside quiz, the truck drivers are seated in a line in the median of the road and shot in the back of their heads firing squad style by the self-appointed law enforcers, jury, judge and executioner.

Why in the world would the United States want to arm such people?

Why in the world would the United States want to go to war to help such people take power?

It is utter insanity.

And as I mentioned earlier, most Americans are totally against getting involved.  According to a stunning new poll, 60 percent of all Americans are against U.S. military intervention in Syria, and only 9 percent are in favor of it.

So in light of all that you have just read, why is the Obama administration so determined to help the rebels in Syria?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

The post 15 Signs That Obama Has Already Made The Decision To Go To War With Syria appeared first on The Economic Collapse.