{"id":7022,"date":"2012-03-12T12:21:42","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T19:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=7022"},"modified":"2012-03-12T12:21:42","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T19:21:42","slug":"pentagon-prepares-war-plans-for-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=7022","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Prepares War Plans for Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pentagon Prepares War Plans for Syria<\/strong>
\nBy Bill Van Auken – 9 March 2012 – WSWS <\/p>\n

In testimony before a Senate committee Wednesday, the Pentagon\u2019s civilian and uniformed chiefs confirmed that they are drawing up war plans against Syria at the request of the Obama White House.<\/p>\n

The statements by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey came amid mounting evidence that Washington and its key European allies, working in conjunction with the right-wing monarchical regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are escalating a covert intervention aimed at bringing about Syrian regime change.<\/p>\n

Much of the media coverage of Wednesday\u2019s hearing focused on the jingoistic intervention of Arizona\u2019s Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate. He is demanding US air strikes against Syria, to carve out \u201csafe havens\u201d in which Western-backed armed groups can prepare military strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow many additional civilian lives would have to be lost in order to convince you that the military measures of the kind we are proposing [are] necessary to end the killing and force Assad to leave power?\u201d McCain demanded of Panetta.<\/p>\n

The defense secretary responded by asserting, \u201cWe are not divided here.\u201d He insisted that the Pentagon is \u201creviewing all possible additional steps that can be taken\u201d to hasten the downfall of the Assad regime, \u201cincluding potential military options if necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

General Dempsey cautioned that a US intervention in Syria would be more difficult than the NATO war in Libya given the country\u2019s \u201cfar different demographic, ethnic, religious mix.\u201d However, he assured the Senate panel, \u201cShould we be called upon to defend US interests, we will be ready.\u201d The Joint Chiefs chairman added that military operations under consideration included the imposition of a \u201cno-fly zone,\u201d the opening up of a \u201chumanitarian corridor,\u201d a naval blockade of the Syrian coastline and air strikes.<\/p>\n

Panetta and Dempsey both echoed statements made the day before at a White House press briefing by President Obama, that it would be a \u201cmistake\u201d to \u201cto take military action unilaterally.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of them, however, raised a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing use of military force as a pre-condition for US military intervention in Syria. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Pentagon Prepares War Plans for Syria By Bill Van Auken – 9 March 2012 – WSWS In testimony before a Senate committee Wednesday, the Pentagon\u2019s civilian and uniformed chiefs confirmed that they are drawing up war plans against Syria at the request of the Obama White House. The statements by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2000],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7022"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7023,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7022\/revisions\/7023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}