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Syrian-Turkish Cross-Border Artillery Strikes Continue, Sparking Fears of Regional War

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Turkey and Syria traded artillery fire for the fourth day in a row Saturday as rebels clashed with Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces near the border, heightening fears that the crisis could erupt into a regional conflict.

Also Saturday, Syrian Defence Minister Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij vowed to crush the rebellion and bring the violence that has engulfed the country to an end.

The diplomatic crisis began on Wednesday, when a Syrian shell killed five civilians in a Turkish border town and triggered unprecedented artillery strikes by Turkey. Ankara has deployed more troops to its southern border with Syria and has responded to each shell that has struck Turkish soil with its own artillery barrage.

On Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cautioned Damascus not to test Turkey’s “limits and determination” and said Ankara was not bluffing in saying it won’t tolerate such acts.

Saturday’s cross-border exchange began when two mortar shells fired from Syria landed in rural areas near the Turkish village of Guvecci, prompting Turkish return fire, Turkey’s media reported.

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Fruits of Biden’s Iraq Policy: Iran using Iraqi airspace to Supply Assad

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Photo credit: Image Editor

Iran has resumed shipping military equipment to Syria over Iraqi airspace in a new effort to bolster the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, according to senior American officials.

The Obama administration pressed Iraq to shut down the air corridor that Iran had been using earlier this year, raising the issue with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq. But as Syrian rebels gained ground and Mr. Assad’s government was rocked by a bombing that killed several high officials, Iran doubled down in supporting the Syrian leader. The flights started up again in July and, to the frustration of American officials, have continued ever since.

Military experts say that the flights have enabled Iran to provide supplies to the Syrian government despite the efforts Syrian rebels have made to seize several border crossings where Iranian aid has been trucked in.

“The Iranians have no problems in the air, and the Syrian regime still controls the airport,” said a retired Lebanese Army general, Hisham Jaber, who heads the Middle East Center for Studies and Research in Beirut.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has played the lead role on Iraq policy for the Obama administration, discussed the Syrian crisis in a phone call with Mr. Maliki on Aug. 17. The White House has declined to disclose details, but an American official who would not speak on the record said that Mr. Biden had registered his concerns over the flights.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama plans military intervention in Syria to seize Assad’s chemical weapons

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The Pentagon has made contingency plans to send small teams of special operations troops into Syria if the White House decides it needs to secure chemical weapons depots now controlled by security forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, senior U.S. officials said.

President Obama warned this week that any effort by Assad to move or use his arsenal of chemical munitions in the country’s conflict would cross a “red line,” implying it could prompt swift U.S. intervention.

But Pentagon planners are more focused on protecting or destroying any Syrian stockpiles that are left unguarded and at risk falling into the hands of rebel fighters or militias aligned with Al Qaeda, Hezbollah or other militant groups.

Securing the sites would probably involve stealthy raids by special operations teams trained to handle such weapons, and precision airstrikes to incinerate the chemicals without dispersing them in the air, the officials said. U.S. satellites and drone aircraft already maintain partial surveillance of the sites.

U.S. intelligence agencies believe Syria has over the years produced or acquired hundreds of tons of sarin nerve agent and mustard gas, a blister agent, and has sought to develop VX, another powerful nerve gas. The toxicity of some chemical agents degrades significantly over time, so it is unclear how lethal the stockpiles are.

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Video: Now we’re Al-Qaeda’s allies?! Obama’s foreign policy idiocy continues

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This video is worth watching as the local Fox News commentator clearly isn’t spewing the typical “Obama talking points.” Instead, he questions, “Who exactly is the US supporting in Syria?”

 

Photo credit: fotosinteresantes

Obama’s rebels in Syria committing Christian genocide

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U.S.-backed rebels are committing Christian genocide in Syria, where they are sacking churches and issuing threats that all Christians will be cleansed from rebel-held territory. A mass exodus of thousands of Christians is taking place, even as mainstream Western reporters like Robert Fisk demonize those same Christians for being supportive of the secular regime.

The bloody jihad waged against Nigeria’s Christians, which has seen hundreds killed this year alone, now includes plans to kill Christians with poisoned food, as part of the Islamic organization Boko Haram’s stated goal of purging Nigeria of all Christian presence.

During Egypt’s presidential elections, Al Ahram reported that “the Muslim Brotherhood blockaded entire streets, prevented Copts from voting at gunpoint, and threatened Christian families not to let their children go out and vote” for the secular candidate.

Meanwhile, under President Obama, the U.S. State Department, in an unprecedented move, purged the sections dealing with religious persecution from its recently released Country Reports on Human Rights. Likewise, the Obama administration insists that the Nigerian crisis has nothing to do with religion, even as Obama offered his hearty blessings to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, in the midst of allegations of electoral fraud.

Categorized by theme, June’s assemblage of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity.  Read more from this story HERE.

If you want to see the Syrian rebels in action, view this video.  [warning: explicit content]

Video: Syrian rebels slaughter Assad loyalists while crowd chants ‘Allahu Akbar’

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Warning: explicit content.  Watch rebels viciously machine gun four Assad loyalists in Syria while the surrounding crown shouts “Allahu Akbar.”  Although there is no evidence that these reckless executioners were members of Obama’s favored Muslim Brotherhood, there is no doubt that Obama’s policies in the Middle East has encouraged the rise of these type of Islamic fundamentalists (read more on Obama’s efforts after the video below):

 

Reuters just reported today that

President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said.

Obama’s order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence “finding,” broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad.

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Video: Worshipers at Syrian Mosque go into Frenzy when Imam picks up AK47

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This video, shot inside a Syrian mosque this month, shows the type of “democratic reform” movement being backed by Obama.  You’ve got to watch it to believe it.  The excitement starts about one minute into the video.

 

 

Syria promises to use WMD if attacked

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The Syrian regime acknowledged for the first time Monday that it possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and said it will only use them in case of a foreign attack and never internally against its own citizens .

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said the stockpiles are secure, in an apparent response to widespread international concerns that they could fall into the hands of the disparate bands of rebel forces fighting the government.

“No chemical or biological weapons will ever be used, and I repeat, will never be used, during the crisis in Syria no matter what the developments inside Syria,” he said in conference broadcast on state TV. “All of these types of weapons are in storage and under security and the direct supervision of the Syrian armed forces and will never be used unless Syria is exposed to external aggression.”

Syria is believed to have nerve agents as well as mustard gas, Scud missiles capable of delivering these lethal chemicals and a variety of advanced conventional arms, including anti-tank rockets and late-model portable anti-aircraft missiles.

Israel has said it fears that chaos following Assad’s fall could allow the Jewish state’s enemies, to access Syria’s chemical weapons and has not ruled out military intervention to prevent this from happening.

Read more from this story HERE.

Time for the U.S. to Abandon the United Nations

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For years, pundits, politicians and columnists – including me – have fiercely criticized the United Nations. This institution has become a political cesspool controlled by totalitarian states and rogue nations that despise democracy, liberty and freedom. It’s only getting worse with time.

Look what’s happened during the past two weeks:  Syria is likely to get a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. U.N. Watch reported Iran will get a “top post” on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty conference, which it described as being “like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud in the stock market.” Meanwhile, U.N. and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan claimed to have had a “very candid and constructive” meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

These are all ridiculous stories, but honestly, should we be surprised? I’m not. The U.N. has a long, sordid history of electing tyrannies and dictatorships to its various agencies, boards and councils. For an organization that vigorously claims to support world peace, it also vigorously – and controversially – supports countries that don’t have the slightest grasp of this concept.

For example, Libya chaired the U.N. Human Rights Commission in 2003 – and was a U.N. Security Council member in 2008 and 2009. Syria has twice headed the U.N. Security Council, in June 2002 and August 2003. Iran and Iraq were scheduled to co-chair a U.N. nuclear disarmament conference before Saddam Hussein was toppled from power in 2003. Additionally, North Korea – a major nuclear threat – headed the U.N. Conference on Disarmament just last year.

Not to be overlooked is the U.N.’s repeated condemnation of Israel’s policies for more than five decades while ignoring the terrible slaughter of Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims in two bloody civil wars, publicly supporting an antiterrorism conference held in Tehran, and refusing to expel members that openly support and finance terrorist groups. The list goes on and on.

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Photo credit: FreedomHouse

Russia sends flotilla of 11 warships to eastern Mediterranean in direct challenge to US

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Russia said on Tuesday that it had dispatched a flotilla of 11 warships to the eastern Mediterranean, some of which would dock in Syria. It would be the largest display of Russian military power in the region since the Syrian conflict began almost 17 months ago. Nearly half of the ships were capable of carrying hundreds of marines.

The announcement appeared intended to punctuate Russia’s effort to position itself as an increasingly decisive broker in resolving the antigovernment uprising in Syria, Russia’s last ally in the Middle East and home to Tartus, its only foreign military base outside the former Soviet Union. The announcement also came a day after Russia said it was halting new shipments of weapons to the Syrian military until the conflict settled down.

Russia has occasionally sent naval vessels on maneuvers in the eastern Mediterranean, and it dispatched an aircraft-carrying battleship, the Admiral Kuznetsov, there for maneuvers with a few other vessels from December 2011 to February 2012. There were rumors in recent weeks that the Russians planned to deploy another naval force near Syria.

But the unusually large size of the force announced on Tuesday was considered a message, not just to the region but also to the United States and other nations supporting the rebels now trying to depose Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

Tartus consists of little more than a floating refueling station and some small barracks. But any strengthened Russian presence there could forestall Western military intervention in Syria.

Read more from this story HERE.

Photo credit: AN HONORABLE GERMAN