Hillary Clinton: Russia sending attack helicopters to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks during a press conference in Istanbul June 7, 2012. / AFP/Getty Images
Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET
(AP) WASHINGTON - The Obama administration said Tuesday that Russia is sending attack helicopters to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and warned that the Arab country's 15-month conflict could become even deadlier.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. was "concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria."
She said the shipment "will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."
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Clinton's comments at a public appearance with Israeli President Shimon Peres augured poorly for a peaceful solution to Syria's conflict. Officials from around the world are warning that the violence risks becoming an all-out civil war, with Middle East power brokers from Iran to Turkey possibly being drawn into the fighting.
Diplomatic hopes have rested on Washington and Moscow agreeing on a transition plan that would end the 40-year Assad regime.
But Moscow has consistently rejected the use of outside forces to end the conflict or any international plan to force regime change in Damascus. Despite withering criticism from the West, it insists that any arms it supplies to Syria are not being used to quell anti-government dissent.
With diplomacy at a standstill, the reported shipment of helicopters suggests a dangerous new turn for Syria after more than a year of harsh government crackdowns on mainly peaceful protests and the emergence of an increasingly organized armed insurgency.
There was no immediate reaction from the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Russia and Syria have a longstanding military relationship and Syria hosts Russia's only naval base on the Mediterranean Sea. But in light of the brutal violence, the U.S. has repeatedly demanded that any further deliveries of weaponry be halted. Russian military support in the form of materiel as advanced as attack helicopters would deal a serious blow to efforts to starve the Syrian army of supplies.
Some 13,000 people have died, according to opposition groups, but the U.S. and its allies have been hoping that sanctions on Assad's government and its increased isolation would make it increasingly difficult to carry out military campaigns.
Asked why the Pentagon isn't blocking Russian weapons shipments to Syria, Defense Department officials noted that the administration hasn't declared an arms embargo. Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, accepted the argument that Moscow's resupplying of helicopters enables the regime to kill its own people, but said the key issue is how the Syrians use the materiel.
"Let's not let the Assad regime off the hook here," he told reporters. "The focus really needs to be more on what the Assad regime is doing to its own people, than the cabinets and the closets to which they turn to pull stuff out. It's really about what they're doing with what they've got in their hands."
In recent days, the State Department has decried what it calls "horrific new tactics" by Syrian forces, including helicopters attacks on civilians.
Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Clinton's comments referred specifically to new helicopters that were being sent to Syria, and not already existing Russian-made or Soviet-made supplies being used by Assad's government.
"We have been pushing the Russians for months to break their military ties with the Syrian regime and they haven't done it," she told reporters in Washington. "Instead, they keep reassuring all of us that what they are sending militarily to Syria can't be used against civilians.
"But what are we seeing?" Nuland asked. "We are seeing the Syrian government using helicopters to fire on their own people from the air. So our question remains: How can the Russians conscience their continued military sales to Syria?"
Clinton, as well, warned about a massing of Syrian forces near Aleppo over the last two days, saying such a deployment could be a "red line" for Syria's northern neighbor Turkey "in terms of their strategic and national interests."
"We are watching this very carefully," she said.
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I think you are confusing time periods.....when we supported Iraq, it was so that Iran would not win the Iran/Iraq war, which benefited us........now, things are much different.....so don't pick something from 30+ years ago, and try to equate it with modern times, when the conditions have completely changed.
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Wasn't it in modern times that Hussein was charged and executed? And it was for an act in which the U.S. was directed associated some eighteen years earlier? If you want to suggest that times are different, then that reasoning should have worked in favor of Saddam but the U.S. made sure that it didn't. You cannot equate how times differ according to the singular issue of the interests of the United States.
Ummm, speaking of harsh government crackdowns, how are the OWS protests coming along?
Syria is just the next domino in the PNAC agenda.
Now for extra points, how would the american government react if armed insurgents and protestors, armed and financed by a foreign country, were killing american troops and police on the steets of america, and trying to overthrow the government?
Look how "grateful" Afghanistan and Iraq is for our interference.
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Hardly surprising considering neither invited invasion by a megalomaniac.
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As if the US providing Israel with arms to use against Palestinians is any different.
Sheesh.
Ya mean it's OK for all those variations of ethnic people - who are intolerant of ALL other religions - to have their respective countries and fight wars to establish them, except for Jewish or Israeli people, who as a minority, truly need to defend themselves?
OK, so according to your 'understanding of things' ALL Caucasians wrongfully killed the original inhabitant-natives and should not have their countries today.
Look how "grateful" Afghanistan and Iraq is for our interference.
Never mind the fact that we can't even afford the two wars we've already started. Have we forgotten that North Korea still doesn't consider us their best-bud? Syria is not the only unstable country in the Middle East. Do we really think we have the resources and money to essentially fight a global war? Are we REALLY that stupid?
Do we really think that our "enemies" are so stupid that they can't see that if they get us spread out thinly enough, we don't stand a chance? That if we do so, we're just playing straight into their hands?
Truth of the matter is that if we'd stopped supporting the Israeli terrorists years ago, the USS Cole, the bombing of the American embassy in Kenya, 9/11 and other terrorist activities against the US never would have happened. When Israel refused to give back it's land-grab in 1967, we should have just said, "Then no more backing from us. Start all the wars you want, but don't expect us to fight your battles for you anymore. If you want us to help you make sure you continue to exist, then give it back, sit down, and shut up."
We also could have just accepted and adjusted to the fact that oil prices were rising, just like the rest of the free world did, and not meddled in middle-eastern governments just to keep our favorite dictators in power because they offered us "cheap oil."
If the United Nations votes to launch a COMBINED attack against Syria (or other countries), then the US could be expected to contribute. But the US should not act alone, nor should we be willing to "play a leadership role" in any military attacks.
Yes, I'm quite well aware that the UN is basically a powerless, totally ineffective organization. But what do you expect when the US always goes off and does what it want to regardless? We need to sit down, shut up, and let the UN be what it was designed to be. And that includes NOT jumping up to take the lead whenever the UN decides to use force. Or even says it would consider possibly using force. I really don't give a crap about this idea that we should always bear the greatest burden since we have the largest military. We can't even afford to support the military we have, and we've already started two unending wars that's stretching our military past the breaking point already.
Oh, and while we're at it, now that there are no more "super-powers", the permanent seats in the UN security council need to be abolished and those seats need to be rotated along with all of the others. Nobody gets a bigger say than anybody else.
The cost of accommodating adversaries, terrorists and enemies, whose strategic agendas are to harm and destroy America, is far greater than we are able to digest at the moment.
It is Barack Obama and his advisers, who naively believes that 'accommodative' bargaining with the devil, will somehow change our adversaries and our enemies into our 'friends and helpers'. Under ideal utopian conditions, such regular diplomatic approach may work. However, with Obama's approach, the Forces of Darkness of today, have only been encouraged to destroy more and murder more with impunity.
Vote Obama out, and ship him back to his gangster venue in Chicago.
The US invited response should be to blocade the Russian naval port.
When the rebellion ends and free syria has government control, I hope they boot the ruskies and invite a US fleet in.