Global Research

While all the incessant warmongering directed toward Iran at the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington was grabbing the headlines, the momentum for Western intervention into Syria continued to steadily build.  All those neo-con "real men," it appears, just might prefer to go to Tehran via Damascus.

Taking to the Senate floor on Monday, Arizona Senator John McCain, one of the first supporters of arming the Free Syrian Army, upped the ante by calling for a U.S.-led air campaign against Syrian military targets.  McCain deemed such an escalation necessary to establish “humanitarian corridors.”

“The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces,” the intervention-hungry McCain declared.

And as the Washington Post reported in late February, Obama administration officials have made it clear that “additional measures” might still be considered in order to oust Assad.  That favored refrain of all options being on the table appears to be in effect in regards to Syria.

Indeed, for according to CNN, the Pentagon has already composed “detailed plans” for military action inside Syria.  As the network reported, the Pentagon has especially focused on securing Syrian chemical weapons sites, with one scenario in particular calling “for tens of thousands of troops to potentially be used for guarding the installations.”

Although, according to a December email recently published by Wikileaks from the U.S. global intelligence firm Stratfor (known as a private C.I.A.), special operations forces from the U.S., U.K., France, Jordan, and Turkey are already on the ground in Syria.  And as the email states, these forces are actively “training the Free Syrian Army.”  Additional measures indeed!

Not wanting to be left behind in any march on Syria, the U.S. corporate media has largely begun to join the ranks of the recently ascendant intervention hawks.   

In an editorial on Friday, the New York Times, although ruling out military force, called for providing greater tactical assistance to the Free Syrian Army.  As the paper wrote: “The United States and its allies should consider providing the rebels with communications equipment, intelligence and nonlethal training.”  Of course, a mission providing such tactical support would ultimately transform into more explicit military involvement.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post also editorialized on Friday for a more credible threat of force against Assad.  As the paper wrote: 

“The Obama administration’s public arguments against the use of force in Syria are simply encouraging a rogue regime to believe it can act with impunity.  Until he is faced with a credible threat of force, from the opposition or outsider powers, Mr. Assad’s slaughter will go on.” 

The Christian Science Monitor has likewise called for the U.S. to help “forcefully” end Assad’s rule.

Of course, the driving force behind such intense Western interest in Syria is Iran.  Let there be no doubt, the ouster of Assad is not driven by some great humanitarian impulse, or "responsibility to protect."  Nor does the bloodletting and slaughter inside the country disturb U.S. elites.  After all, the U.S. had no qualms with laying siege to Fallujah.  Rather, all the contrived moralizing is being utilized in an attempt to garner support for imposing Syrian “regime change,” which would deal a strategic defeat to Tehran.  It’s all nothing more than realpolitik.  The Syrian people and their revolution are being cynically recruited as means to imperial ends, and thus would be wise to resist all foreign intervention.

More here:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29641