Colonel Pat Lang wrote yesterday:
I am told that NATO has decided on regime change using military action if necessary. The Hula thing is the instrument of perception management that has been chosen. Look for a Chapter 7 resolution soon. pl
But as Russia and China have made clear there will be no chapter 7 resolution and without that, the new French president said, NATO will not go to war on Syria.
Russia and China have not fallen for that sentimental perception management, or lies, that the rebels and "western" media put out:
Alistair Crooke points to the real culprits:
[O]ne thing that stands out quite clearly, and which is very important, is that the methodology, this type of killing – of beheadings, of slitting of throats, slitting of throats of children, too, and of this mutilation of bodies – has been a characteristic, not of Levantine Islam, not of Syria, not of Lebanon, but really of what happened in the Anbar province of Iraq. And so it seems to point very much in the direction of groups that had been associated with the war in Iraq against the United States, who have perhaps returned to Syria, or perhaps Iraqis who have come up from Anbar to take part in it…. But this whole process of mutilation is so very much against the tradition of Levantine Islam that I think it’s very hard to see this will have come either from soldiers or even from others who might have been bent on revenge… I don’t think this speaks of soldiers going on the rampage.’
I agree.
The NATO Friends of Syria also have the quite difficult problem that they lost their puppets game with the Syrian National Council. Another meeting with them was supposed to take place in Washington this month but that did not happen because the SNC fell apart. Today it also became clear that the Free Syrian Army in Turkey has no say at all towards the fighters on the ground:
"Nobody has the right to issue press releases, take decisions, or speak about operations in the Free Syrian Army's name, except for the FSA command inside Syria," the group's spokesperson Colonel Kassem Saadeddine told AFP.
He was reacting to a statement by Turkey-based FSA chief Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad who earlier denied that armed rebels gave the Syrian regime a 12 pm Friday deadline to observe a UN-backed peace plan to end the violence.
…
An FSA statement issued from inside Syria earlier had given the Syrian government until noon on Friday to observe the Annan plan."If the Syrian regime does not meet the deadline by Friday midday, the command of the Free Syrian Army announces that it will no longer be tied by any commitment to the Annan plan … and our duty will be … to defend civilians," a FSA statement said.
"Defend civilians" means to kill more of them.
It is clear that the rebels have used the ceasefire to rearm and to prepared for expanded action. The FSA in Syria now threatens a new offensive starting Friday. Expect to hear tomorrow of some big suicide attacks in Syria and possibly of all out attacks on Syrian government checkpoints.
Their western overlords wanted the FSA to wait with the new offensive until the end of the Annan mission. That would have given more justification for intervention. If full FSA action restarts tomorrow it will quite difficult to blame the Syrian government for breaking the ceasefire. Even perception management can not cover up for too many lies.