Our government is a laughing stock. Kerry suggests that Assad has a week to turn over chemical weapons, even though he doesn’t believe Assad will comply, but the State Dept. says it was only a rhetorical argument. So who knows whether he really means it or not.
But then in describing the attack the US would launch against Assad, Kerry called it an “unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.” Well that sure sounds scary! Assad is surely quaking in his boots. Kerry still claims they will be able to ‘degrade’ Assad’s capacity to deliver chemical weapons, however ‘degrade’ sounds like a pretty low bar. Why not ‘arrest’ his ability to deliver chemical weapons?
With this kind of language it’s no wonder the American people are almost completely against this “unbelievably small” attack. Because it will do nothing. NOTHING.
THE GUARDIAN – The US secretary of state has said that President Bashar al-Assad has one week to hand over his entire stock of chemical weapons to avoid a military attack. But John Kerry added that he had no expectation that the Syrian leader would comply.
Kerry also said he had no doubt that Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack in east Damascus on 21 August, saying that only three people are responsible for the chemical weapons inside Syria – Assad, one of his brothers and a senior general. He said the entire US intelligence community was united in believing Assad was responsible.
Kerry was speaking on Monday alongside the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, who was forced to deny that he had been pushed to the sidelines by the House of Commons decision 10 days ago to reject the use of UK force in Syria. …
The US state department stressed that Kerry was making a rhetorical argument about the one-week deadline and unlikelihood of Assad turning over Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile. In a statement, the department added: “His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That’s why the world faces this moment.”
Kerry said the US had tracked the Syrian chemical weapons stock for many years, adding that it “was controlled in a very tight manner by the Assad regime … Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher al-Assad, and a general are the three people that have the control over the movement and use of chemical weapons.
“But under any circumstances, the Assad regime is the Assad regime, and the regime issues orders, and we have regime members giving these instructions and engaging in these preparations with results going directly to President Assad.
“We are aware of that so we have no issue here about responsibility. They have a very threatening level of stocks remaining.”
Kerry said Assad might avoid an attack if he handed every bit of his chemical weapons stock, but added that the Syrian president was not going to do that. He warned that if other nations were not prepared to act on the issue of chemical weapons, “you are giving people complete licence to do whatever they want and to feel so they can do with impunity”.
Kerry said the Americans were planning an “unbelievably small” attack on Syria. “We will be able to hold Bashar al-Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground or any other prolonged kind of effort in a very limited, very targeted, short-term effort that degrades his capacity to deliver chemical weapons without assuming responsibility for Syria’s civil war. That is exactly what we are talking about doing – unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.”