Anarchic Tendencies

US sources have confirmed that the presence of the Marines in Jordan has nothing to do with military drills set to be held between American and Jordanian troops later this month.

US Marines have reportedly been deployed along Jordan border with Syria as the Syrian Army continues to inflict heavy losses on foreign-backed militants.

Over 1,000 US troops, who had arrived in the Jordanian port of Aqaba via Israel earlier in the week, have headed toward the kingdom’s border area with Syria under heavy Jordanian military escort, Israeli sources reported on Friday.

The troops are reported to be members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Force.

Washington and Amman have imposed a news blackout on the deployment of US troops on Jordanian soil…

[In Full @ SouthWeb]

The state media agencies broadcast a video of a bullet-riddled car in which, they said, Ms. Mansfield had been a passenger. They said she had tossed a grenade at government forces before they fired upon the car in Idlib Province in the north of Syria. They displayed photos of Ms. Mansfield’s Michigan driver’s license, alongside photos of her body, covered in blood, with a report claiming that she was working on behalf of one of Syria’s rebel groups.

The news came as a shock to Ms. Mansfield’s family, including her 18-year-old daughter, and to Ms. Wilson, 32, of Detroit. They said they knew Ms. Mansfield was away but had no idea that she was in Syria.

“She was a good person, a peaceful person,” Ms. Wilson said. “She is all about peace. She is all about helping people. I don’t understand this. She texted me about three and a half weeks ago and said she was coming home.”

Activists reached by telephone in Idlib Province said they believed that Ms. Mansfield may have worked as a lookout or a “media coordinator” for one of the many Islamist rebel groups battling the Syrian government there.

They said they believed she worked alongside Ali al-Munasifi, the British man, who was also killed and identified by the state media as being in the car with her. The third man in the car has not been identified.

Ms. Mansfield’s daughter, Triana Lynn Mansfield, posted on an R.I.P. Nicole Mansfield Facebook page: “My mother was NOT a terrorist. She went there for a reason that is unknown.”

She went onto say that she believed that her mother was forced to stay. “She was just a regular American woman who was misguided by the people who just wanted to use her because she’s American.”

In Full, The New York Times

This in and of itself is a rather controversial decision because arms supplies to non-state entities are forbidden by international law,”

Fighting intensified in the northern city of Tripoli after talks to reach a cease-fire failed Wednesday, as the casualty toll from four consecutive days of fighting rose to 14 dead and more than 100 wounded.

Clashes were still raging in the city well into the night. Mediation attempts to put a cease-fire into place between the rival neighborhoods of Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen failed, and the partial calm of Wednesday afternoon was shattered with a new round of clashes.

Minutes after a rocket fell on the Nashabe Mosque on Syria Street separating the two neighborhoods, snipers repositioned themselves and a fresh round of fighting erupted…

[In Full @ The Daily Star]

It is a widespread misimpression (reinforced by conspiracy theorists seeking the malign influence of the “Israel Lobby”) that the neoconservative movement is in some way a Jewish thing. On the contrary, it is a distinctly American thing.

Errors by the party in power can get America into trouble; Real catastrophes require consensus!

Rarely have both parties been as unanimous about a development overseas as they have in their shared enthusiasm for the so-called Arab Spring during the first months of 2011. Republicans vied with the Obama Administration in their zeal for the ouster of Egypt’s dictator Hosni Mubarak and in championing the subsequent NATO intervention against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. Both parties saw themselves as having been vindicated by events. The Obama Administration saw its actions as proof that soft power in pursuit of humanitarian goals offered a new paradigm for foreign-policy success. And the Republican establishment saw a vindication of the Bush freedom agenda.

“Revolutions are sweeping the Middle East and everyone is a convert to George W. Bush’s freedom agenda,” Charles Krauthammer observed in February 2011. “Now that revolution has spread from Tunisia to Oman,” Krauthammer added, “the [Obama] administration is rushing to keep up with the new dispensation, repeating the fundamental tenet of the Bush Doctrine that Arabs are no exception to the universal thirst for dignity and freedom.” And William Kristol exulted, “Helping the Arab Spring through to fruition might contribute to an American Spring, one of renewed pride in our country and confidence in the cause of liberty.”

They were all wrong. Just two years later, the foreign-policy establishment has fractured in the face of a Syrian civil war that threatens to metastasize into neighboring Iraq and Lebanon and an economic collapse in Egypt that has brought the largest Arab country to the brink of state failure…

[More, with linkage]

BEIRUT (AP) — A wave of tit-for-tat kidnappings between rival Islamic militant groups in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo risks sparking large-scale internal fighting between rebels after clashes killed at least four militants earlier this week, activists said Saturday.

The director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said a coalition of rebel groups known as the Judicial Council had accused another armed opposition faction, the Ghurabaa al-Sham, of plundering factories in Aleppo’s industrial neighborhood. Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and a former commercial center, is split between rebel and government control.

Any internal fighting between rebels in the city would play into the hands of the regime, which is trying to tarnish the image of the opposition by saying it is dominated by extremists linked to al-Qaida network.

Aleppo, a city of 3 million that was once a bastion of support for President Bashar Assad, has been engulfed in heavy fighting since rebels launched an assault there in July and captured several neighborhoods. Over the past few weeks, regime forces have been pursuing an offensive in the city, mainly focused on pushing the rebels from around the international airport and a nearby military air base.

Abdul-Rahman said tensions among rebel factions have been rising in opposition-held areas, mostly on the eastern side of the city.

The two groups, the Judicial Council and the Ghurabaa al-Sham, clashed on Tuesday near Aleppo in fighting that left four members of the Judicial Council dead, Abldul-Rahman said. He added that the Judicial Council is now holding dozens of members of Ghurabaa al-Sham captive…

More, with links

US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, believes that President Bashar al-Assad is to gain 75% of the Syrian people’s votes if he runs for presidency in the year of 2014.Bashar Assad

According to Western reports, the CIA said that Assad is to remain as a president of Syria till the year of 2020.

The intelligence agency also said it has built its information according to reports from inside Syria, in addition to opinion polls. These reports and polls show that Assad is to impartially get 75% of the votes as there is no other worth mentioning candidate that can stand against him for presidency.

The developments on the battlefield give superiority to the Syrian government which has been bolstering its popularity, CIA reported, noting that it believes that this situation will last to the next year when the presidential election will take place.

Source: Al-Manar TV