Israeli Warplanes Strike Syrian Weapons Facility, U.S. Official Says (Video)

Israeli Warplanes Strike Syrian Weapons Facility, U.S. Official Says – Fox News

A Syrian weapons facility was struck early Friday by Israeli warplanes, a U.S. official told Fox News.

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A source told Fox News that it is not clear whether the warplanes crossed into Syrian airspace or whether the missiles were fired from across the border.

The strike was confirmed by Israeli officials who said the country’s air force targeted a shipment of “game changing” weapons bound for the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group.

One official told The Associated Press the target was a shipment of advanced, long-range ground-to-ground missiles but was not more specific.

They spoke to the news agency Saturday on condition of anonymity because they were discussing a secret military issue.

It was the second Israeli strike this year against Syria and the latest salvo in its long-running effort to disrupt Hezbollah’s quest to build an arsenal capable of defending against Israel’s air force and spreading destruction inside the Jewish state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly warned in recent weeks that Israel would be prepared to take military action if chemical weapons or other arms were to reach Hezbollah.

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When Israeli planes fired on a weapons convoy inside Syria in January, they remained outside Syrian airspace. The convoy was believed to be carrying Russian SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles.

“Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, specially to Hizbullah in Lebanon,” an official from the Israeli Embassy in Washington told Fox News.

Syria’s assistant information minister, Khalaf Muftah, told Hezbollah’s Manar TV that he has “no information about an aggression that was staged,” and said reports of an Israeli air raid “come in the framework of psychological war in preparation of an aggression against Syria.”

Israel has targeted weapons in the past that it believes are being delivered to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Earlier this week, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said his group would assist Syrian President Bashar Assad if needed in the effort to put down a 2-year-old uprising.

In 2007, Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear reactor site along the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria, an attack that embarrassed and jolted the Assad regime and led to a buildup of the Syrian air defense system. Russia provided the hardware for the defense systems upgrade and continues to be a reliable supplier of military equipment to the Assad regime.

The airstrike, first reported by CNN, came hours before President Barack Obama told reporters at a news conference in Costa Rica on Friday that he didn’t foresee a scenario in which the U.S. would send troops to Syria. More than 70,000 peoples have died and hundreds of thousands have fled the country as the Assad regime has battled rebels.

The Israeli strike also follows days of renewed concerns that Syria might be using chemical weapons against opposition forces. Obama has characterized evidence of the use of chemical weapons as a “game-changer” that would have “enormous consequences.”

While the U.S. has been providing nonlethal aide to opposition forces in Syria, even stepping up that form of support in recent days, the Obama administration has resisted calls from some American lawmakers to arm the rebels or to work to establish a no-fly zone to aid the insurgency.

On Thursday, however, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the administration is rethinking its opposition to providing arms to the rebels. He said it was one of several options as the U.S. consults with allies about steps to be taken to drive Assad from power. Officials in the administration who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss strategy said earlier this week that arming the opposition forces was seen as more likely than any other military option.

Obama followed Hagel’s comments by saying options will continue to be evaluated, though he did not cite providing arms specifically. Concerns that U.S. weapons could end up in the hands of al-Qaida-linked groups helping the Syrian opposition or other extremists, including Hezbollah, have stood in the way of that change in strategy.

“We want to make sure that we look before we leap and that what we’re doing is actually helpful to the situation as opposed to making it more deadly or more complex,” Obama said Thursday at a news conference in Mexico.

Pentagon spokesman George Little declined to comment on the report.

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Did Saddam Hussein ship his WMDs to Syria?

Is the WMD/Iraq War fixing to come full circle? There was a belief that Hussein had sent his stash to Syria, and now, Syria is threatening to use chemical weapons against those seeking to unseat Bashar Assad. At The ClashDaily with Doug Giles there is news that these weapons are those WMDs that Sadam Hussein had, and then, suddenly did not have.

As the regime of Bashar Assad disintegrates, the security of his chemical arsenal is in jeopardy. The No. 2 general in Saddam Hussein’s air force says they were the WMDs we didn’t find in Iraq.

King Abdullah of neighboring Jordan warned that a disintegrating Syria on the verge of civil war puts Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons at risk of falling into the hands of al-Qaida.

“One of the worst-case scenarios as we are obviously trying to look for a political solution would be if some of those chemical stockpiles were to fall into unfriendly hands,” he said.

The irony here is that the chemical weapons stockpile of Syrian thug Assad may in large part be the legacy of weapons moved from Hussein’s Iraq into Syria before Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If so, this may be the reason not much was found in the way of WMD by victorious U.S. forces in 2003.

Much more at Investors Business Daily

In 2006, former Iraqi general Georges Sada, second in command of the Iraqi Air Force who served under Saddam Hussein before he defected, wrote a comprehensive book, “Saddam’s Secrets.”

It details how the Iraqi Revolutionary Guard moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria in advance of the U.S.-led action to eliminate Hussein’s WMD threat.

As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded the planes with chemical weapons materials.

There were 56 flights disguised as a relief effort after a 2002 Syrian dam collapse.

There were also truck convoys into Syria. Sada’s comments came more than a month after Israel’s top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam “transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria.”

Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence observed large truck convoys leaving Iraq and entering Syria in the weeks and months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, John Shaw, former deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, told a private conference of former weapons inspectors and intelligence experts held in Arlington, Va., in 2006.

According to Shaw, ex-Russian intelligence chief Yevgeni Primakov, a KGB general with long-standing ties to Saddam, went to Iraq in December 2002 and stayed until just before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

Anticipating the invasion, his job was to supervise the removal of such weapons and erase as much evidence of Russian involvement as possible.

This story might shed new light on the “Bush Lied” mantra the Left has been pushing for a decade now. Of course, they will not change their message if these weapons are proven to be Saddam’s stockpile. Of course, I am sure MSNBS will lead the charge to report this news, right after Hell freezes over the third time.

Israels welcome letter to idiot “Flytilla” activists

Donald Douglas is perfectly right, this IS to good not to share!

God Bless Netanyahu

You gotta love this guy!

Excerpted from JP:    Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday that activists in the “flytilla” concerned about human rights abuses should look elsewhere in the Middle East.

“Why did they come to Israel, the only real democracy in the Middle East?” Netanyahu said in a meeting with US Senator Joe Lieberman. “If they want to check the issue of human rights, they should go to Syria – maybe they will help stop the killing of thousands of innocents. They should go to Iran and stop the stoning of women. They should go to Gaza and stop the practice of using children as human shields for terrorists who fire rockets on our citizens,” he said.

“After they do that educational tour, they should come to Israel and we can talk with them about what they learned about how the Middle East and how it really is.”

The prime minister’s comments closely mirrored the message in a letter given to each of the activists, mocking their focus on Israel given the region’s extreme human rights abuses.

Of course, we all know the truth about these anti-Israeli protesters. They are either useful idiots, brainwashed by Leftist propaganda, or they are anti-Semites who support terrorism. Yes, it is that simple. No one who has the most basic grasp of reality would ever blame Israel for “human rights violations” while turning a blind eye to the horrors committed by Israels enemies.

Why do I call the UN Useless Nations?

Here is yet another reason. The Leftists there are demanding an investigation into the Trayvon Martin case.

UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay has called for an “immediate investigation” into the death of Trayvon Martin.  

Leaving aside the matter of the despicable record of the UN on human rights, what kind of record does Pillay herself have on human rights, and does she have any moral leg to stand on when interfering in the domestic affaris of the United States?  According to Freedom House, between September 2008, when she became the Human Rights Chief, and June 2010, Pillay made no comment whatsoever on the victims in 34 countries rated “Not Free.”  Some of the countries not criticized were: Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria and Vietnam.

When Iranian demonstrators were abused violently by the Iranian government’s forces following the June 2009 presidential elections, Pillay refrained for three months from commenting even though video existed of demonstrators being killed; she only mentioned the matter as part of her traditional opening speech at the UN Human  Rights Council session in September 2009. She did not give any statement dealing directly with the matter.  And when she did speak, it was only in an  “unprecedented effort to engage” with the Muslim world. While she did raise some human rights concerns, she praised Iran’s progress instead of naming violence that had been recorded or current violations.

The pattern of do-nothingness continued. In July 2010, two renowned human rights lawyers, Haytham al-Maleh and Muhanad al-Hasani were jailed for criticizing the Syrian authorities on human rights grounds. In March 2010, the Syrian military detained Kurdish leader Abdel Hafez Abdel and journalists, bloggers and writers for exposing Syria’s corruption. But Pillay did not respond at all. In addition, Pillay was a staunch defender of the falsified Goldstone Report which ripped Israel and also questioned whether the United States had the legal right to kill Osama Bin Laden.

There you are, just another leftist out to destroy U.S. sovereignty. The U.N. knows that there IS an investigation going on. An investigation run by those who should be running it, the local authorities! Frankly, it would be a joke if the U.N. “investigated” this. The fools at the U.N. could not find their asses with both hands!

But, as a side note, I think someone ought to charge Pillay with a human rights violation, showing her mug in public. Yes, I know, that is mean, but it proves that while beauty is only skin deep, ugly and stupid go all the way to the bone!

Leftist Democrat Rep. Kucinich Praises Vicious Dictator Assad During Syria Trip

Leftist Democrat Rep. Kucinich Praises Vicious Dictator Assad During Syria Trip – The Hill

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) gave a press conference in Syria this week and appeared to heap praise upon Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is being widely criticized for the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in that country. Kucinich said his words were mistranslated.

Kucinich embarked on a trip, which he called a “fact-finding mission,” to Syria and Lebanon this week, even as prominent Republicans are calling upon the Obama administration to recall the U.S. ambassador to Syria because of the repressive actions of the Assad regime.

Kucinich’s plans included meetings with the presidents of both Syria and Lebanon. He met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Monday. According to the State Department, Kucinich was not accompanied at the meeting by Robert Ford, the U.S. Ambassador to Syria.

“Nor has he given us a debrief, nor was he carrying any administration messages,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday.

A story by the Syrian Arab News Agency on Tuesday has Kucinich at a press conference in Syria taking a highly controversial position toward al-Assad. In May, the U.S. imposed sanctions against al-Assad as a means of pressuring him to end the violent repression there.

“President al-Assad is highly loved and appreciated by the Syrians,” Kucinich said, according to the Syrian news site. “President Bashar al-Assad cares so much about what is taking place in Syria, which is evident in his effort towards a new Syria and everybody who meets him can be certain of this.”

Kucinich pushed back against the report later on Tuesday while in Beirut, calling the remarks “mistranslated.”

“Arab-speaking friends accompanying me have explained that the problem may have come from a mistranslation as well as the degree of appreciation and affection their state-sponsored media has for President Assad,” Kucinich said in a statement released to The Hill. “Given the stakes for Syria and the region, I will consider the article only an error, not a willful intent to mischaracterize my statements or my efforts in the region.”

Kucinich’s trip comes the same week that prominent Republicans Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, both repeated calls to recall the U.S. ambassador to Damascus.

“The regime has made it clear though its brutal actions and through the refusal of senior officials to meet with the Ambassador that it is not interested in diplomacy,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement Monday. “Any continued presence of a U.S. Ambassador will either be used by the regime for propaganda purposes or just plain ignored.”

The State Department maintains that Ford’s work is useful in representing U.S. interests and encouraging the opposition’s ability to demonstrate. “We think it’s valuable not only to have an embassy in Damascus, but to have an ambassador there,” Nuland said.

Kucinich intends to continue his trip. “I did not come to Syria with my mind made up,” he said. “After discussions with people at many different levels of society, I am convinced of the need for honesty, fairness and dialogue.”

According to Kucinich, as his trip proceeds, he will be “ever more mindful of the maxim, ‘lost in translation.’”

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The Moral Retardation of the “International Community”

The Left loves to laud the greatness and wonder of the “International Community”. Myself, I think the opinion of the so-called IC is about as worthless as tits on a boar. Rick, at Wizbang takes note of the IC’s Selective Outrage Syndrome over Israel daring to defend itself.

Jews killing Muslims who are in effect invading Israel is anathema… but Muslims, who many claim are moderate, killing Christians is no big deal:

TWELVE Christian were murdered in Egypt. Two hundred and thirty-two people wounded. The death toll will surely rise as victims succumb to their injuries. And that’s just in the past few days. In the same time period, more Christians were killed in Egypt at the hands of Muslims than people killed in Syria or in Libya as a result of protests, riots and resistance.

Two churches in Cairo were burned in recent days. Over the past few months church property has being gutted, vandalised and violated with graffiti. Churches have been blown up.

An entire community – the Christian community in the new Egypt – is under attack. And the world remains relatively silent. There has been no significant religious outcry, political redress or diplomatic pressure to stop the attacks. There has been almost no media coverage as Egypt’s Muslims systematically, over the past few months, set about massacring Egypt’s Christians.

The world is not only standing idly by, it is enabling the massacre. The US naively expects that a new era, begun in new Egypt, will ripple to the rest of the Islamic world. So in the midst of these monstrous mass murders in Egypt, the US has decided to send an extra $US1 billion to help the Egyptians ease the economic crisis that emerged as a result of the ousting of Hosni Mubarak on February 11. Muslims in Egypt are on the warpath – on the religious warpath – and the US is feeding them money.

See how the mind of the far left works, or does not work, I might say. Israel is attacked, defends itself, and the Left and their beloved IC, is outraged. Muslims slaughtering Christians for  merely being Christian? No biggie! You seem the Left loves to speak of “equality”, but clearly, to them certain people, and certain religions, are more equal than others.

Daily Benefactor News – 10,000 Protesters Detained In Syria Crackdown

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10,000 Protesters Detained In Syria Crackdown – New York Times

At least 10,000 protesters have been detained in the past several days in a mass arrest campaign aimed at quelling a seven-week uprising in Syria against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, activists said, as fresh shelling of a residential neighborhood was reported on Wednesday from Homs, the country’s third largest city.

The shelling, most intense between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., appeared to mark a further escalation in the crackdown.

“The situation is so bad this morning,” Abu Haydar, a resident there, said by telephone. “It’s been continuous shelling since Sunday.”

He said he spent the night in a basement and described the city as paralyzed, with only grocery stores and pharmacies daring to open. Checkpoints had proliferated through the city, with security forces checking residents’ identity documents, Mr. Haydar said.

The Syrian government widened its crackdown on Tuesday to include more cities and towns. Activists said army troops, backed by tanks, entered Hama, in central Syria, and several southern villages near Dara’a, the impoverished and besieged town in a region known as the Houran that has become a symbol of the uprising.

“The big question now is what’s next,” said Wissam Tarif, executive director of Insan, a Syrian human rights group. “They are about to announce victory, but what will happen when they pull the troops out?”

At least seven people were killed in demonstrations on Monday night — three in Maadamiyah, a Damascus suburb, and four in Deir al Zour, a town in northeastern Syria, he said.

“The people are very angry and they swear they will be protesting again,” a resident who lives near Othman bin Affan mosque in Deir al Zour said by telephone. The protesters were killed in front of the mosque, which security forces closed two weeks ago to worshipers to prevent them from organizing demonstrations.

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Heavy gunfire was also heard Tuesday in at least four southern villages, including Inkhil, Dael, Jassem, Sanamein and Nawa. Activists reported casualties though the numbers were difficult to ascertain, given the difficulties in communication and the Syrian government’s suppression of independent news gathering. Phones have been cut in most besieged towns and cities.

The military operations came as activists called for daily protests across the country on the Facebook page of Syrian Revolution 2011, an Internet-based opposition group.

“The Tuesday of solidarity with prisoners of conscience in the jails of the Syrian criminal regime,” the page said. “The demonstration will continue every day.”

In the capital, Damascus, security forces reinforced their presence, setting up more checkpoints and sending out more patrols, residents there reported. The measures came after 250 people, including university students and professionals, staged a small demonstration on Monday night in Arnoua Square in the heart of the city. The protesters, holding banners that read, “Stop the siege on our cities,” and, “A national dialogue is the solution,” were quickly dispersed by plainclothes police officers. Thirty-two of them were detained, Mr. Tarif said.

Protesters in Homs said they are planning a demonstration, even as the city reels under heavy security measures.

“We are changing strategies,” said Mr. Haydar, the resident in Homs reached by telephone. “We don’t want to reveal the location of our gathering. We want to surprise the security forces.” At least two neighborhoods have been completely isolated, with phones, electricity and water cut and no one allowed to enter or leave, Mr. Haydar said.

The army was also conducting operations in cities along the Mediterranean coast, including Baniyas and Jabla, both under siege for several days. In Baniyas, 63 people have been arrested since Monday night, bringing the total number arrested since Saturday to 419, Mr. Tarif said.

Meanwhile, Dorothy Parvez, a reporter who works for Al Jazeera English, the Qatar-based satellite channel, left Syria aboard a Ukrainian Airways flight headed to Iran on May 2, Bouthaina Shaaban, an adviser to Mr. Assad, said on Monday. She said Ms. Parvez had entered the country on April 29 on her Iranian passport. Al Jazeera has reported that she was detained by Syrian authorities.

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Government Forces Open Fire On Protesters In Syria’s Third-Largest City, Homs

Government Forces Open Fire On Protesters In Syria’s Third-Largest City, Homs – Christian Science Monitor

Syrian security forces fired tear gas and live bullets on a crowd of thousands of protesters in the central square of Homs late Monday night, just hours after the Syrian Interior Ministry said the protests of the last few weeks are the equivalent of an “armed insurrection,” Al Jazeera reported.

Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, was shut down by the Army and surrounded by three rings of checkpoints before security forces opened fire on the demonstration at about 2:15 a.m. on Tuesday. A Syrian rights activist told Al Jazeera that there were 10,000 people in the city square at the time. In recent days, Homs has been the site of some of the country’s largest protests.

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The New York Times reports that the “renewed protests amounted to a rejection of concessions outlined by President Bashar al-Assad in a televised address Saturday, notably lifting the country’s 48-year-old state of emergency by the end of this week.”

The number of casualties from the overnight attack is so far unclear, and may remain uncertain because many of the protesters are afraid to go to local hospitals, where they worry Syrian security forces could be waiting, according to Al Jazeera.

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Designating the protests as an “armed insurrection” is a step up from last week, when the Syrian government placed the blame for the protests on “foreign saboteurs” and said its use of force against demonstrations was justified because “there is no more room for leniency or tolerance in enforcing law, preserving security of country and citizens, and protecting general order,” The Christian Science Monitor reported.

That was the government’s first public acknowledgment that it was intentionally using force against the protesters. SANA, reporting on the Interior Ministry statement, wrote that “the Ministry said it will not be lenient with such terrorist acts and it will work strictly to enhance security and stability all over Syria and pursue terrorists everywhere to bring them to justice.”

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“Some of these groups have called for armed insurrection under the motto of jihad to set up a Salafist state,” the ministry statement read, referring to the Salafi movement of ultraconservative Sunni Islam, according to Al Jazeera’s translation. “What they did is an ugly crime severely punished by law. Their objective is to spread terror across Syria.”

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According to the Associated Press, the Homs protesters said they would not leave the protest camp they set up in the city square until President Assad stepped down. Their demand, which may be the first for Assad’s removal, is a “brazen escalation” – previously the protesters’ demands were limited to political reforms, such as the lifting of the country’s state of emergency.

Assad has been in power for a decade. He followed his father Hafez al-Assad, who ruled the country for almost 30 years. While his policies have been sometimes unpopular, the younger Assad has been able to maintain popular support by portraying his strong-armed policies and rule as essential to holding together the country, which has significant sectarian divides.

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Is Syria next Mr. President?

The Real Revo poses the obvious question about the vaunted Obama Doctrine!

Attacking Arab dictators who kill their own people is the Obama Doctrine, right?

Witnesses say Syrian troops have opened fire on anti-government protesters in Daraa Friday as thousands take to the streets demanding reforms and mourning dozens of protesters who were killed during a violent, weeklong crackdown.

Well Mr. President?

Iran testing the waters

Iran, emboldened by a weak, and spineless American president, and events in Egypt is testing Isreal’s resolve

Get ready to rumble? The anti Israel forces are out on blogs and twitter threatening Israel if they defend themselves as usual. The two Iranian warships are allegedly going to pass through the Suez Canal to reach Syria. Israel is of course watching this closely and will act if provocative. The cowardly Pentagon here wouldn’t comment on the situation. Oh btw, Egypt controls the Suez Canal, and is going to allow this provocation. But remember, these “democracy loving” Egyptians just want to be free, and don’t want to cause any problems.

Iran is playing with fire, and Israel is fully capable of making them pay, but damn wouldn’t it be nice if Presuident Obama stood up in FULL AND ABSOLUTE support of our best ally at times like this?