Start worrying more about the largest WMD stockpile in the Arab world - Syria.
By DOUGLASS BLOOMFIELDAssad visits Homs 370(photo credit: Syrian TV/Reuters)
Don’t ignore the Iranian nuclear program, but bear in mind it is still in the development stage and probably years away from producing weapons that can be delivered on missiles, and start worrying more about the largest WMD stockpile in the Arab world and the thousands of ballistic missiles that are real and ready to go. And they’re in Syria, just a very short distance from Israel.An increasingly desperate Bashar Assad, facing a smoldering revolution he has been unable to extinguish with his family’s legendary brutality, could ultimately turn those weapons against his own people – and try to pin the blame on both internal insurgents and an unlikely coalition of external enemies, including Israel.A pro-Syrian political analyst on Hezbollah’s Al- Manar TV late last month said he had “actual information” that the Free Syrian Army, the main opposition group, has acquired chemical weapons from the Libyan arm stockpiles and “we expect them” to be used against Syrian civilians “in order to pin the blame on the Syrian army.”Al-Manar’s reputation as a fact-free propaganda vehicle raises this question: What was he really telling us? If his message has a familiar ring it may be because in the wake of the massacre of unarmed civilians an Houla (and more in the following days) Bashar Assad went on television to blame the killing – which the rest of the world, even his allies, believe had his fingerprints – on his enemies. It wasn’t the first time that he has blamed the atrocities committed by his thugs, like the Shabiha, on his enemies and used it as justification for even more brutal retaliation.That’s what makes the Al-Manar broadcast so chilling.Assad has said the 15-month-old uprising is not homegrown but the work of foreign interests and terrorists.Who are these forces? They’re an alliance of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel, according to his government.Who would have guessed those four countries are in cahoots? Only the sick minds of the Syrian propagandists.In fact, said the Al-Manar analyst, Taleb Ibrahim, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is “the Saudi-Qatari-Israeli enemy militia in Turkey,” where it is being trained to use WMD and Russian-made Kornet missiles “to embroil our country and army in a situation that is worse than the current massacre.”Coming from a regime that shamelessly perpetrates atrocities and blames the victims, this could be a warning that Assad is increasingly desperate and plans to escalate the conflict exponentially.
