Things are not quite as they seem in Syria, according to McClatchy. Human rights activists now find that the Syrian military has suffered much more damage than previously believed.
Despite the international outcry over recent massacres allegedly committed by backers of President Bashar Assad, statistics compiled by human rights activists show that violence in Syria has dropped since a United Nations peace plan went into effect in April and is down sharply from its peak in March.
One measure of violence, however, seems to have increased appreciably: More Syrian soldiers were killed in clashes with rebels in May than in any month since the 14-month-old uprising began....... Reliable statistics on violence in Syria are difficult to come by. There are no neutral observers collecting information there, and any death toll is suspect. The United Nations stopped trying to tabulate deaths at the beginning of the year because of the difficulties involved in verifying the numbers, and the general trend is hard to discern amid daily reports of horrific mass killings and loud denunciations from U.S. and other international officials.
But a new report listing the names of the dead and the dates on which they died, compiled by the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights, for the first time provides a baseline for determining whether Syria is become less or more violent.
That report, which lists more than 14,000 names over 296 pages, indicates that since the U.N. peace plan went into effect in April, violence is off 36 percent from its peak and has dropped in each of the months that the plan has been in place.
Those numbers are still incredibly high ...McClatchy
And let's not forget that Syrian soldiers are not, in any real sense, supporters of the regime. The officers? Probably. The recruits? Just like any army, many are kids whose only job offers come from the military.
Danielle Pletka, a defense policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute ignores reality on the ground in the Middle East. Pletka wants Obama to bypass the vetoes of Russia and China, scoff at those who believe direct US involvement in Syria would ignite a war between Israel and Iran, and just go spend some nice, big, BIG US defense dollars in Syria.
NB: The American Enterprise Institute has defense interests.
Most of AEI's Board of Directors are CEOs of major companies, including ExxonMobil, Motorola, American Express, State Farm Insurance, and Dow Chemicals.
Big donors include the top conservative foundations, including Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
Corporate supporters have included: General Electric Foundation, Amoco, Kraft Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, General Motors Foundation, Eastman Kodak Foundation, Metropolitan Life Foundation, Proctor & Gamble Fund, Shell Companies Foundation, Chrysler Corporation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Pillsbury Company Foundation, Prudential Foundation, American Express Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Smith-Richardson Foundation, Alcoa Foundation, and PPG Industries.
Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, was until recently on the board of trustees of American Enterprise Institute. Other famous former trustees include Vice President Dick Cheney....People for the American Way
As long as we have close ties binding the defense industry with the military and Congress, it will be the rare president who is able to avoid military action. And survive.
