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France to Take Kerry’s Accidental Diplomacy to UN

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The Russian gambit to take accidental diplomat John Kerry up on his offer of an “impossible” scenario under which Syria could avoid US military action continues to gather steam. This morning, both the Washington Post and New York Times fill us in on French plans to take the Russian proposal to the UN, where there seems to be a chance that there will not be a veto at the Security Council.

The Times gives us some information on the sequence of events leading to the proposal:

Mr. Lavrov said he had discussed the proposal with the Americans before announcing it at a hastily arranged briefing on Monday evening. Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin discussed the idea privately on the sidelines of last week’s summit of the Group of 20 nations, and Mr. Lavrov discussed it with Secretary of State John Kerry.

They spoke as Mr. Kerry flew home to Washington after first raising the idea in a dismissive way in London on Monday, making clear that the idea of Mr. Assad giving up Syria’s weapons seemed improbable.

In their conversation, Mr. Kerry told his Russian counterpart, “We’re not going to play games,” according to a senior State Department official.

That’s a good idea from Kerry not to play games, since he had been so badly outplayed to that point. So the official position appears to be that Obama and Putin had discussed the idea but Kerry stumbled onto the same concept, but only as an impossibility? Okay, then.

The Post has similar language on the sequence of most of the events between Kerry and Lavrov, but is a bit more nuanced as to the Obama and Putin discussion:

Obama said in an interview on “PBS NewsHour” on Monday that he had discussed the possibility of international monitoring with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin at last week’s Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg.

The senior State Department official said Lavrov had previously discussed the idea in conversations with Kerry, including a telephone call as recently as Thursday, but never in the context of the proposed U.S. military action.

Clearly, the plan being discussed now, where Syria turns its chemical weapons over to international groups for eventual destruction goes well beyond “monitoring”. Is Obama claiming that discussions on monitoring are the equivalent of discussing this plan? Or is it just a desperate attempt to save face? I’m okay with face-saving if the lives of Syrian civilians are also spared.

Putting those considerations aside, though, I have one major concern about the French plan as described. Here is the Times description: Read more →

Did Kerry’s “Impossible” Diplomatic Demand Just Get Met? Update: Now Possible?

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Okay, this is breaking very rapidly and could turn out to be nothing, but it is amazing and would even be hilarious if it weren’t for the huge number of innocent lives that are at stake. As we learn from the New York Times this morning, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is making one last push for diplomacy in the face of an Obama administration that is determined to carry out military strikes against Syria:

The appalling suffering in Syria “cries out for international action,” Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Monday in a speech in Geneva. Employing chemical weapons was “one of the gravest crimes that can be committed” and their use in Syria “seems to be in little doubt,” even if the circumstances and the party responsible remained to be clarified, Ms. Pillay said.

While the United States is calling for a limited punitive strike to punish the Syrian government, Ms. Pillay warned that “a military response or the continued supply of arms risk igniting a regional conflagration, possibly resulting in many more deaths and even more widespread misery.”

Ms. Pillay chastised the international community for being “late, very late” in acting to stop the violence in Syria that has killed more than 100,000 people. “This is no time for powerful states to continue to disagree on the way forward or for geopolitical interests to override the legal and moral obligation to save lives by bringing this conflict to an end,” she said.

In a rational world, one would expect the chief diplomat from the United States to be somewhat chastised by such strong language and to voice a new commitment to finding a peaceful solution to the problem. But this is the Obama administration we are talking about, and so John Kerry instead chose to make a statement that appears to mock calls for diplomacy. He states conditions which Syria could meet in order to avoid an attack but then immediately follows by stating that it would be impossible for Syria to meet those conditions:

When asked by a reporter whether there was anything Assad’s government could do or offer to stop any attack, Kerry said:

“Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week – turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting (of it) but he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done.”

Oh my. That is cold and beyond cynical. But it appears that Syria may well be calling Kerry’s bluff:

Wow. If the twitter account from which this came is real and if the offer is real, Kerry and the rest of the Obama administration will be facing a real conundrum. Kerry’s flip identification of an “impossible” condition which Syria could meet to avoid an attack may well have done the impossible. Stay tuned. Today could be very interesting.

Update: Twitter consensus is developing around the Brahimi twitter account being fake. There are also suggestions the State Department is doing some “walking back” of Kerry’s cynical statement.

Update: And as noted by commenter Erich Kuerschner, the twitter account has now been suspended. Even though the account was fake, it did a wonderful job of pointing out the horrible cynicism of Kerry’s “diplomacy”. What if Syria does offer up its chemical weapons? How is it Kerry’s job to pronounce that such a process is “impossible”?

Yet Another Update: It would appear that Putin appreciates the beauty of calling Kerry’s bluff:

 

And that’s AP (unless they’ve been hacked again…)

Update: New York TImes:

Syria’s foreign minister says his country welcomes Russia’s proposal for it to place its chemical weapons under international control and then dismantle them quickly to avert United States strikes.

Syria: The Administration’s Attribution Failure

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Reuters confirms something that I have long suggested: the government doesn’t know who ordered the CW attack in Syria on August 21.

The Administration’s best case tying Bashar al-Assad to the attack, through the Scientific Studies and Research Council, consists of speculation that the group may be involved and apparent specific knowledge that the head of the organization was not involved.

A declassified French intelligence report describes a unit of the SSRC, known by the code name “Branch 450”, which it says is in charge of filling rockets or shells with chemical munitions in general.

U.S. and European security sources say this unit was likely involved in mixing chemicals for the August 21 attack and also may have played a more extensive role in preparing for it and carrying it out.

[snip]

U.S. officials say Amr Armanazi, a Syrian official identified as SSRC director in a State Department sanctions order a year ago, was not directly involved. [my emphasis]

This is what every government has used as central proof; yet even here they appear to just assume that because SSRC controls Assad’s CW they probably were involved.

Remember, we’ve already had anonymous admissions that the intelligence community isn’t really sure who controls Assad’s CW; nor do they know what happened when rebels took over a location where weapons had been stored.

Over the past six months, with shifting front lines in the 2½-year-old civil war and sketchy satellite and human intelligence coming out of Syria, U.S. and allied spies have lost track of who controls some of the country’s chemical weapons supplies, according to the two intelligence officials and two other U.S. officials.

U.S. satellites have captured images of Syrian troops moving trucks into weapons storage areas and removing materials, but U.S. analysts have not been able to track what was moved or, in some cases, where it was relocated. They are also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad’s forces moving chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels took over an area where weapons had been stored. [my emphasis]

And months ago, the government worried a rogue officer might launch Assad’s CW.

So on multiple occasions the intelligence community has raised ways — rebel capture, non-authorized capture on the Syrian side, or rogue officer — in which CW might be released against Assad’s wishes. Yet their case tying this attack to Assad relies on mere assumptions that none of those things have happened, even while they know the chain of command did not operate as it normally would have.

With all that in mind, consider the implications in this Alan Grayson op-ed. He explicitly reports the Administration has provided no more than a 12-page classified summary. He suggests the summary doesn’t refer to individual social media reports and, given the rules imposed by Mike Rogers, he would be unable to take notes on which social media reports it referred and cross-check them.

Per the instructions of the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, note-taking is not allowed.

Once we leave, we are not permitted to discuss the classified summary with the public, the media, our constituents or even other members. Nor are we allowed to do anything to verify the validity of the information that has been provided.

Remember, the Administration’s own map betrays some doubts that the social media reports, at least, would all hold up. Read more →

John Kerry’s Cakewalk

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For the life of me, I don’t know why they’re doing this. But in both the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday and on Chris Hayes’ show yesterday, John Kerry made a remarkable claim.

KERRY:  — I disagree.  And, first of all, let — let — let me make this clear.  The president — and this is very important, because I think a lot of Americans, all of your listeners, a lot of people in the country are sitting there and saying oh, my gosh, this is going to be Iraq, this is going to be Afghanistan.  Here we go again.

I know this.  I — I’ve heard it.

And the answer is no, profoundly no.  You know, Senator Chuck Hagel, when he was senator, Senator Chuck Hagel, now secretary of Defense, and when I was a senator, we opposed the president’s decision to go into Iraq, but we know full well how that evidence was used to persuade all of us that authority ought to be given.

I can guarantee you, I’m not imprisoned by my memories of or experience in Vietnam, I’m informed by it.  And I’m not imprisoned by my memory of how that evidence was used, I’m informed by it.  And so is Chuck Hagel.  And we are informed sufficiently that we are absolutely committed to not putting any evidence in front of the American people that isn’t properly vetted, properly chased to ground and verified.  And we are both convinced that what we are putting before the American people is in the security interests of our country and it will not lead to some further engagement. [my emphasis]

John Kerry’s flip-flopping support for President Bush’s disastrous Iraq War was one of the most heavily litigated issues in the 2003 to 2004 Presidential campaign. Everyone knows he supported that war and only later came out against it.

And of course, a secret intelligence source called a roll call shows that both men did support Bush’s decision to go to war.

I suppose what John Kerry means — but is not saying explicitly — is that after the war started going south, he pointed to Bush’s politicized intelligence as an excuse for his vote (while still usually voting to fund the ongoing war).

But that points to the way the Syrian attack is most likely to be like the Iraq War: after all, had the war not turned out to be such a disaster, Bush’s lies to start it wouldn’t have mattered as much. Yet the war did turn out to be a disaster. The entirely foreseeable unintended consequences of the Iraq attack — not the lies about WMD — ultimately made support for Iraq toxic.

Remember, though: Bush lied not just about yellowcake and aluminum tubes, he also suppressed information about the possibility of an insurgency. And whereas the claims Kerry is making about the August 21 CW strike may be completely true (though his casualty claims appear not to be), his claims about what might happen if we overthrow Assad probably aren’t. According to Homeland Security Chair Mike McCaul, Kerry’s claims that only 15 to 25% of the rebels are extremists do not match what the intelligence community has briefed him (they’ve said over half of the fighters are extremists).

And so when Kerry says Syria will not be like Iraq — and misleadingly claims he and Hagel didn’t support the war they in fact voted for — he’s actually emphasizing the way it could very well be just like Iraq: in which the Administration presented a false picture about how easy the aftermath of the attack would be, which in turn led a lot of people — perhaps Kerry more than any other person — to regret their votes.

What matters about the Iraq War here is that it was sold as a cakewalk in spite of the fact the government knew an insurgency was likely, not that that cakewalk was sold using yellowcake and aluminum tubes. And in that sense, we already know the proposed Syria attack is like the Iraq War, because we know the government is fibbing about what might come next.

And that’s almost as readily apparent as is the misleading nature of Kerry’s claim that he (and Hagel) didn’t support Bush’s cakewalk.

Update: Meanwhile, the source Kerry cites for his estimates on numbers of extremists is a consultant for the rebels.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry encouraged members of the House of Representatives to read a Wall Street Journal op-ed by 26-year-old Elizabeth O’Bagy — an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War — who asserted that concerns about extremists dominating among the Syrian rebels are unfounded.

“Contrary to many media accounts, the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and al-Qaida die-hards,” O’Bagy wrote for the Journal on Aug. 30. “Moderate opposition groups make up the majority of actual fighting forces,” she wrote.

But in addition to her work for the Institute for the Study of War, O’Bagy is also the political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a group that advocates within the United States for Syria’s rebels — a fact that the Journal did not disclose in O’Bagy’s piece.
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Mission Creep Hits Syria Targeting, Training Before First Tomahawks Fly

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Even while Barack Obama and John Kerry are busily lobbying for a positive vote in Congress for their Not-War in Syria, it appears the Defense Department isn’t waiting for a pesky thing like Congressional approval or even the official start (as opposed to already ongoing but covert) of US actions to begin their usual process of mission creep that is undoubtedly to be followed by cries of “Just six more months and victory will be ours!”. The mission creep on targeting threatens the propaganda push that so far has been centered on selling the action as limited. We have New York Times articles this morning stating that Israel goes along with the idea of limited strikes but definitely doesn’t want to go all the way to regime change where radical Sunni groups might seize power, while at the same time we have the Pentagon claiming they’ve been tasked with expanding the number of targets for the strike. From the latter:

President Obama has directed the Pentagon to develop an expanded list of potential targets in Syria in response to intelligence suggesting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad has been moving troops and equipment used to employ chemical weapons while Congress debates whether to authorize military action.

Mr. Obama, officials said, is now determined to put more emphasis on the “degrade” part of what the administration has said is the goal of a military strike against Syria — to “deter and degrade” Mr. Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons. That means expanding beyond the 50 or so major sites that were part of the original target list developed with French forces before Mr. Obama delayed action on Saturday to seek Congressional approval of his plan.

For the first time, the administration is talking about using American and French aircraft to conduct strikes on specific targets, in addition to ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. There is a renewed push to get other NATO forces involved.

See? It’s the fault of all those dirty hippies insisting on following an old piece of paper and forcing the President to get a permission slip from Congress before taking action. That delay is why we have to expand the number of targets.

We are left to ponder just how it will be possible to magically target and kill Syrian forces tasked with moving chemical weapons around without actually hitting those weapons–which the forces are in the process of hiding. What could possibly go wrong here?

But I want to focus more fully on this AP article. Marcy had just read it when she sent out this tweet:

That, along with the title: “US officials: US considers training Syria rebels”, suggests that the article is an expansion of the effort I outlined earlier in the week, where Barack Obama is trying to change both the date and the size of the first CIA-trained death squads to enter Syria, most likely because they are somehow tied up either as targets of the chemical weapons attack or as perpetrators of a false flag operation.

Diving into the article, though, we see that this is about adding to the death squad training by expanding into a much larger operation where US troops are directly involved in training a large force (for the Afghanistan analogy, this proposal is to move beyond the CIA training Afghan Local Police–the militias who become death squads–for our military to train the actual Afghan National Army, which is about ten times larger): Read more →

Parallel Processing: AUMF Assad Spanking and Then Article II Regime Change

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There’s a fundamental dishonesty in the debate about Syria derived from treating the authorization to punish Bashar al-Assad for chemical weapons use in isolation from the Administration’s acknowledged covert operations to support the rebels. It results in non-discussions like this one, in which Markos Moulitsas refutes Nicholas Kristof’s call for bombing Bashar al-Assad based on the latter’s claim we are currently pursuing “peaceful acquiescence.”

And war opponents don’t have to deal with arguments like this one, from the New York Times’Nicholas Kristof:

So far, we’ve tried peaceful acquiescence, and it hasn’t worked very well. The longer the war drags on in Syria, the more Al Qaeda elements gain strength, the more Lebanon and Jordan are destabilized, and the more people die.

The administration has gone to great lengths to stress just how limited air strikes will be, and to great pain to reiterate that regime destabilization is not the goal. So I’m not sure where Kristoff gets the idea that such attacks will have any effect on the growing influence of Islamists in the region. But let’s say that by some miracle, the air strikes do weaken the Assad government, it is the “Al Qaeda elements” that stand most to gain, as they are be best placed to pick up the pieces.

Markos is right: the Administration has gone to great lengths to claim this authorization to use force is only about limited bomb strikes, will involve no boots on the ground, and isn’t about regime change. Here’s how the President described it:

I have decided that the United States should take military action against Syrian regime targets. This would not be an open-ended intervention. We would not put boots on the ground. Instead, our action would be designed to be limited in duration and scope.

But both are ignoring that at the same time, the Administration is pursuing publicly acknowledged (!) covert operations with the intent of either overthrowing Assad and replacing him with moderate, secular Syrians (based on assurances from the “Custodian of the Two Mosques” about who is and who is not secular), or at least weakening Assad sufficiently to force concessions in a negotiated deal that includes the Russians.

Yet here’s how the President’s National Security team discussed the other strand of this — lethal support for vetted rebels — from the very beginning of Tuesday’s hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

SEN. CORKER: What I’m unaware of is why it is so slow in actually helping them with lethal support — why has that been so slow?

SEC. KERRY: I think — I think, Senator, we need to have that discussion tomorrow in classified session. We can talk about some components of that. Suffice it to say, I want to General Dempsey to speak to this, maybe Secretary Hagel. That is increasing significantly. It has increased in its competency. I think it’s made leaps and bounds over the course of the last few months.

Secretary Hagel, do you — or General, do you want to —

SEN. HAGEL: I would only add that it was June of this year that the president made a decision to support lethal assistance to the opposition, as you all know. We have been very supportive with hundreds of millions of dollars of nonlethal assistance. The vetting process, as Secretary Kerry noted, has been significant. But — I’ll ask General Dempsey if he wants to add anything — but we, Department of Defense, have not been directly involved in this. This is, as you know, a covert action, and as Secretary Kerry noted, probably to go into much more detail would require a closed or classified hearing.

General Dempsey?

SEN. CORKER: As he’s answering that, and if you could be fairly brief, is there anything about the authorization that you’re asking that in any way takes away from our stated strategy of empowering the vetted opposition to have the capacity over time to join in with a transition government, as we have stated from the beginning?

Is there anything about this authorization that in any way supplements that?

GEN. DEMPSEY: To your question about the opposition, moderate opposition, the path to the resolution of the Syrian conflict is through a developed, capable, moderate opposition. And we know how to do that.

Secondly, there’s nothing in this resolution that would limit what we’re doing now, but we’re very focused on the response to the chemical weapons. I think that subsequent to that, we would probably return to have a discussion about what we might do with the moderate opposition in a — in a more overt way. [my emphasis]

The President, as part of covert action (that is, authorized under Article II authority), decided to lethally arm vetted rebels in June. Those efforts were already increasing significantly, independent of the spanking we’re discussing for Assad. Nothing related to the spanking will limit those efforts to arm the rebels (no one comments on it here, but elsewhere they do admit that spanking Assad will degrade his defenses, so the opposite will occur). And General Dempsey, at least, is forthright that the Administration plans to return to Congress after the spanking to talk about increased, overt support for the rebels.

So there’s the spanking.

And then there’s the lethal arming of rebels which is not a part of the spanking, but will coincidentally benefit from it and has been accelerating of late.

Spanking without regime change. And regime change (or at least a negotiated solution).

Which returns us to the content of the AUMF. Read more →

With All These Defections, How Can Intelligence Agencies Make Claims about Chain of Command?

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The French, who have a long history with Syria, offered a somewhat more developed explanation for why they’re so sure that Bashar al-Assad should be held responsible for the August 21 attack even while someone in his Ministry of Defense appears to have been panicked and confused about the attack. (Note: Alan Grayson asked for this intercept to be declassified in today’s hearing, but Chuck Hagel seemed unenthused about that idea.)

Last Wednesday, in the hours after a horrific chemical attack east of Damascus, an official at the Syrian Ministry of Defense exchanged panicked phone calls with a leader of a chemical weapons unit, demanding answers for a nerve agent strike that killed more than 1,000 people.

In their case for war they talked about how tightly controlled Assad’s Chemical Weapons are.

The Syrian chemical programme is centred around the Center of Scientific Studies and Research (CSSR), in charge among others of producing chemical warfare agents. Its Branch 450 is in charge of the filling of chemical ammunitions, as well as the security of chemical sites and stockpiles. Formed exclusively with Alawi officers, this unit is known for its high loyalty to the regime.

Bachar al Assad and some of the most influential members of his clan are the only ones empowered to order the use of chemical weapons. The order is then forwarded to the commanding officers within the competent branches of the CSSR. In parallel, the armed forces HQs receive the order, decide of targeting and of the choice of weapons and toxic agents to use.

While not definitive, it is a slightly more developed version of the argument that the US made.

Syrian President Bashar al-Asad is the ultimate decision maker for the chemical weapons program and members of the program are carefully vetted to ensure security and loyalty. The Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) – which is subordinate to the Syrian Ministry of Defense – manages Syria’s chemical weapons program.

Nevertheless, in the face of some questions about what the men in the CW unit were doing, both governments have offered simply an argument about how reliable the CW staffers are in this unit.

But that comes amidst what John Kerry claims is a big wave of defections. The most notable is that of General Habib Ali, Assad’s former Minister of Defense and like him an Alawite.

“Ali Habib has managed to escape from the grip of the regime and he is now in Turkey, but this does not mean that he has joined the opposition. I was told this by a Western diplomatic official,” Kamal al-Labwani said from Paris.

Read more →

The Syrian Not-War: Money Issues

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Screen shot 2013-09-04 at 1.05.30 PMThe most interesting details in today’s House Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Syria pertained to money.

First, when asked how much this not-war (for a second day, Kerry insisted this isn’t a real war) would cost, Chuck Hagel said it would cost tens of millions of dollars.

But when Alan Grayson asked whether Hagel would commit that he would not need supplemental funding for it (tens of millions are, after all, a rounding error for DOD), Hagel first said it depended on what options the President chose, then said um no, he couldn’t commit to that.

Finally, very early in the hearing, John Kerry intimated that someone (presumably the Saudis, but we’ve got a lot of rich autocrats in the region who want to oust Bashar al-Assad) had offered to pay the entire price of the operation if we would simply do it. But we weren’t going to take that friend up on the offer.

At this point, I’m not even sure the AUMF can pass the Senate (it passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with just a 55% yes vote: 10-7-1, which doesn’t bode will for the Senate’s filibuster customs–though that may not matter). But even if it does, the Administration would be well-served to remember they’ve got a debt limit fight coming up.

Lessons from Today’s Senate Hearing on Syria

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Lesson #1: We’re going to war so we don’t lose some friends

John Kerry twice said that if we don’t bomb Assad we’ll lose friends and/or allies. “If we fail to act we’ll have fewer allies.”

That admitted something that has been acknowledged — usually not in print — in DC. We’re doing this not to retain our general credibility, but to retain “credibility” with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Credibility with Saudi Arabia is important, I presume, because they continue to sell oil in dollars and buy lots of military toys — including $640 million of cluster bombs that undermine everything the Administration says about humanity.

Credibility is important with Israel because if they don’t believe we’ll attack Iran if they need us to, they’ll just attack on their own. Here’s confirmation of something that had already been confirmed but somehow is getting trotted out again today: the US had to stop Israel from unilaterally attacking Iran last year. (Update: As Max Blumenthal notes, AIPAC’s statement in favor of war mentions Iran more than Syria.)

Lesson #2: The friends we do have don’t want anyone to know they are our friends

At one point, when Kerry was asked who in the region support us, he deferred to closed session.

He won’t tell us who supports this!

This is likely about protecting Jordan, where we’re staging covert operations, which would make an easy target for Assad. Kerry implied Jordan supported this action, though was pretty coy about it.

Still, back when we attacked Saddam in 1991, he still had WMD. His neighbors knew that. But they were willing to openly support our attack on him. Not this war.

Lesson #3: Bombing another country unilaterally is not war in the “classic sense”

Because the Administration plans not to have boots on the ground and will instead bomb from outside Syria, and even though Kerry seems to readily admit that we may need boots on the ground, he says this is not war “in the classic sense.”

Lesson #4: The Administration promises no boots on the ground except insofar as it anticipates boots on the ground

Kerry was asked specifically about how he felt about explicitly prohibiting boots on the ground. He answered by saying the Administration didn’t want boots on the ground but might need them if Syria imploded and we needed to put people on the ground to secure the CW. He also said, with respect to securing CW, he didn’t want to take any tools away from General Dempsey.

Lesson #5: Whatever comes out of this resolution is separate from effort to oust Assad

Kerry and Obama have both said these attacks will be limited and don’t aim to oust Assad. But it became clear over the course of the hearing (as witnesses tried to balance those, like McCain and Ron Johnson, who wanted more war, and those, like Tom Udall, who wanted limits) that in addition to this strike there’s the pre-existing policy of increasing our support to the rebels, effectively to oust Assad. So while this strike is not about regime change, it exists on top of a strategy that is about regime change.

Lesson # 6: A map showing alleged attacks is physical evidence

No. I don’t understand this one.

Lesson #7: The Administration claims it has evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt” against Assad

Both Menendez and Kerry both claimed we have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt against Assad. Kerry even noted that’s the standard we use to send people away to prison.

Neither one, of course, explained why we weren’t referring (or trying to — it would take a Security Council referral) Assad’s crimes to the International Criminal Court.

But as they did with Anwar al-Awlaki, they believe that declaring something “beyond a reasonable doubt” (though honestly, they never voiced their case against Awlaki that strongly) is sufficient and they don’t need to wait for UN inspectors or real juries.

The Case for War: Since When is Médecins Sans Frontières a Secret Intelligence Source?

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There are a couple of new developments in the case for war. Most notably, a Syrian — whose former position has been described variously as head of forensic evidence in Aleppo and some medical role in Bashar al-Assad’s CW group — defected, carrying documents proving that a March attack in Aleppo was CW. Of course, that’s the March attack, not the August 21 one. And it’s not yet clear that it answers the attribution question behind all reports of CW in Syria. (I’d also repeat that every defection — particularly one that happens at such a convenient time 6 months after the atrocity that might explain it — ought to raise questions about the loyalty of the insiders in positions of authority in Assad’s government.)

Meanwhile, Walter Pincus — who wrote some of the best pieces questioning the Iraq intelligence but has been rather credulous on the NSA of late — argues that the US won’t get away with hiding its case behind a sources and methods case.

The Obama administration has to declassify more detailed intelligence on Syria’s chemical weapons usage to bolster support in Congress for using U.S. armed forces to deter any future Syrian government use of those weapons.

More evidence is also needed to maintain the administration’s integrity at home and abroad.

President Obama’s critics question the legitimacy of the administration’s intelligence assessment of “high confidence” that the Syrian regime carried out the Aug. 21 attacks. Some point to the George W. Bush administration’s cherry-picked intelligence during its four-month campaign in late 2002 to promote the invasion of Iraq.

There is a key difference. U.S. intelligence in 2002 was used to show by inference that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and might use them. Bashar al-Assad has chemical weapons, and U.S. intelligence apparently proves that his forces used them.

[snip]

Today is a time of great mistrust of government at home and abroad, and that has to be recognized. The old claim about holding back evidence to protect U.S. intelligence’s “sources and methods” no longer works.

And McClatchy (which purchased Knight Ridder along with a bunch of journalists who had also debunked the Iraq intelligence before the war) has a piece pointing out public information that challenges some of this same information.

I’ve mentioned this previously, but I’m especially curious about the Administration’s potentially inflated claims about the number of dead. Here’s how McClatchy lays that out.

Another point of dispute is the death toll from the alleged attacks on Aug. 21. Neither Kerry’s remarks nor the unclassified version of the U.S. intelligence he referenced explained how the U.S. reached a tally of 1,429, including 426 children. The only attribution was “a preliminary government assessment.”

Anthony Cordesman, a former senior defense official who’s now with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, took aim at the death toll discrepancies in an essay published Sunday.

He criticized Kerry as being “sandbagged into using an absurdly over-precise number” of 1,429, and noted that the number didn’t agree with either the British assessment of “at least 350 fatalities” or other Syrian opposition sources, namely the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has confirmed 502 dead, including about 100 children and “tens” of rebel fighters, and has demanded that Kerry provide the names of the victims included in the U.S. tally.

“President Obama was then forced to round off the number at ‘well over 1,000 people’ – creating a mix of contradictions over the most basic facts,” Cordesman wrote. He added that the blunder was reminiscent of “the mistakes the U.S. made in preparing Secretary (Colin) Powell’s speech to the U.N. on Iraq in 2003.”

An unclassified version of a French intelligence report on Syria that was released Monday hardly cleared things up; France confirmed only 281 fatalities, though it more broadly agreed with the United States that the regime had used chemical weapons in the Aug. 21 attack.

Another eyebrow-raising administration claim was that U.S. intelligence had “collected streams of human, signals and geospatial intelligence” that showed the regime preparing for an attack three days before the event. The U.S. assessment says regime personnel were in an area known to be used to “mix chemical weapons, including sarin,” and that regime forces prepared for the Aug. 21 attack by putting on gas masks. [my emphasis]

I’m especially interested by the potentially inflated number given the way the White House case introduced it.

In addition to U.S. intelligence information, there are accounts from international and Syrian medical personnel; videos; witness accounts; thousands of social media reports from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area; journalist accounts; and reports from highly credible nongovernmental organizations.

A preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children, though this assessment will certainly evolve as we obtain more information.

I confess, when I first read this and followed its presentation on Twitter, I believed the casualty numbers were attributed to the “highly credible nongovernmental organizations” referenced in the previous sentence, not “a preliminary US government assessment.” Read more →