{"id":32303,"date":"2013-05-10T04:11:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T03:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/us-prepares-war-with-syria-as-pro-us-opposition-loses-ground\/32303\/"},"modified":"2013-05-10T04:11:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T03:11:00","slug":"us-prepares-war-with-syria-as-pro-us-opposition-loses-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/us-prepares-war-with-syria-as-pro-us-opposition-loses-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"US prepares war with Syria as pro-US opposition loses ground"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h5>By Thomas Gaist<br \/>10 May 2013<\/h5>\n<p>Calls for a war with Syria mounted yesterday, despite mass popular opposition to war in the United States, amid reports that US-backed Islamist opposition forces fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have suffered serious reverses.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on NBC News yesterday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed for Washington to take military action against Syria.<\/p>\n<p>He repeated unsubstantiated allegations that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, which have been refuted by UN investigator Carla del Ponte, claiming, \u201cIt is clear the regime has used chemical weapons and missiles.\u201d Claiming that a \u201cred line\u201d had been crossed, he said: \u201cWe want the United States to assume more responsibilities and take further steps. And what sort of steps they will take, we are going to talk about this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Erdogan dismissed out of hand reports that chemical weapons used in Syria were in fact used by the US-backed opposition.<\/p>\n<p>He stressed that his government would support US imposition of a \u201cno-fly zone\u201d in Syria, which would involve destroying Syrian air defenses and shooting down any Syrian aircraft that took to the skies.<\/p>\n<p>Erdogan\u2019s calls for military action were echoed across the American press. The <em>Washington Post<\/em> \u2019s editorial board called for \u201can air campaign as well as arms for the moderate opposition\u201d aimed to \u201cquickly tip the military balance against the Assad regime.\u201d <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> columnist Bret Stephens proposed a long list of attacks against Assad, including sending in US ground forces: \u201cdisable the runways of Syrian air bases, including the international airport in Damascus\u2026use naval assets to impose a no-fly zone over western Syria\u2026supply the Free Syrian Army with heavy military equipment, including armored personnel carriers and light tanks; and be prepared to seize and remove Syria\u2019s chemical weapons stockpile, even if it means putting boots (temporarily) on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The calls for war come amid reports of major setbacks in Syria for the US-backed opposition, reflecting its small size and lack of popular support, and growing military assistance from Russia, Iran, and Lebanon for the Assad regime.<\/p>\n<p>After two months of heavy bombardment, government forces have retaken the strategic town of Khirbet Ghazaleh from the \u201crebels,\u201d re-opening government transport routes to Deraa, the city where initial opposition protests began two years ago. Opposition leaders acknowledged it as a major setback. \u201cTomorrow, the big tragedy will happen, the regime\u2019s supply route to Deraa will reopen, and the officers  <\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on : <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2013\/05\/10\/syri-m10.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"US prepares war with Syria as pro-US opposition loses ground\">World Socialist Web Site<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 By Thomas Gaist10 May 2013 Calls for a war with Syria mounted yesterday, despite mass popular opposition to war in the United States, amid reports that US-backed Islamist opposition forces fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have suffered serious reverses. Speaking on NBC News yesterday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}