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Dozens of U.S. diplomats have urged bombings of President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria in order to make him more likely to step down. The memo, sent to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, was not necessarily intended to be public, and was sent through a "dissent channel":
More than 50 U.S. State Department officials have signed an internal memo calling for a change in the way the United States approaches Syria — specifically, advocating military pressure on Bashar Assad's regime to push him toward the negotiating table.
The diplomats expressed their opposition to the current U.S. policy through a cable on the State Department's dissent channel — which exists for just that reason. But NPR's Michele Kelemen reports that it's unusual for so many officials to sign on to such a cable. "Secretary of State John Kerry says he respects the process and will study their views," Michele tells our Newscast unit.
"The cable reportedly calls for targeted military strikes against the Assad regime, something the Obama administration has been reluctant to do," she reports. "Such action would also put the U.S. on a collision course with Russia at a time that Moscow is backing the Assad regime — and working with Secretary Kerry on a cease-fire and a diplomatic path that has faltered."
The New York Times , which has seen a copy of the memo, reports that the diplomats say they aren't advocating a confrontation with Russia. But a credible military threat against Assad is necessary to pressure him to negotiate, the officials argue. "The moral rationale for taking steps to end the deaths and suffering in Syria, after five years of brutal war, is evident and unquestionable. ... The status quo in Syria will continue to present increasingly dire, if not disastrous, humanitarian, diplomatic and terrorism-related challenges," the cable says, according to the Times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 19 2016, @03:31PM
http://www.thedailystar.net/the-yinon-plan-and-the-role-of-the-isis-31469 [thedailystar.net]
The picture thus being unfolded to the world is that Iraq is on the verge of being divided into three small states: Sunni Iraq, Shiia Iraq and an independent Kurdistan....
The division of Iraq into three separate entities had also been strongly advocated by US Vice-President Joe Biden....
Iraq, which was not only the most mechanised and urbanised state in the Middle East, possessing the largest oil reserve in the Middle East (tapped and untapped), but also cohesively united as a state with diverse ethno-linguistics and sectarian groups was the biggest strategic challenge to the plotters of this balkanisation plan.... Although Iraq has been represented to the world as a Shiite-majority state, Sunni Iraqis form the majority since the Kurds in Iraq are also Sunnis. The existence of the two major ethno-linguistics groups, the Arabs and the Kurds and the two major sectarian groups within the Islamic faith, the Sunni and the Shiia in Iraq allowed the balkanisation planners to foment tensions leading to total disintegration of the social fabric of the Iraqi society since the US-UK led invasion in 2003....
http://muslimvillage.com/2014/08/13/56742/the-yinon-plan-greater-israel-syria-iraq-and-isis/ [muslimvillage.com]
Some graphics.
One might remember that it was PNAC that also published the now infamous document “Rebuilding Americas Defenses” in which the following statement was made:
Further, the process of transformation [of the military], even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor”....
[ISIS] are not engaging the Kurds and have stopped North of Baghdad, thus effectively dividing Iraq into three states as pictured on the map: Free Kurdistan, Sunni Iraq, and the Arab Shia State....
Either the Yinon Plan is actually being implemented, using the sectarian animosity within the Muslim community as the vector or it is phenomenally coincidental that from Sudan, to Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Iraq the essential tenets of the Yinon Plan are being implemented.
It would certainly explain many of incongruities that we see in US foreign policy, especially with regard to our decision to arm and fund radical Islamic groups in Syria.
Compare with area of operations map in sidebar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant [wikipedia.org]