MESOP FLASH : AMBASSADOR ROBERT FORD’S CONFESSION

3-6-2014 – CNN – MESOP – PHENOMENAL THAT HE CAME OUT WITH THIS:

The Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria, who left his post just a month ago, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday that he could no longer stand behind his government.“I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend the American policy. We have been unable to address either the root causes of the conflict in terms of the fighting on the ground and the balance on the ground, and we have a growing extremism threat. There really is nothing we can point to that’s been very successful in our policy except the removal of about ninety-three percent of some of Assad’s chemical materials. But now he’s using chlorine gas against his opponents.”

At the beginning of Syria’s conflict, the U.S. State Department – including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – pushed hard for America to provide robust support for the moderate opposition; that recommendation was not borne out. Ford said that the current state of affairs, in which the moderate opposition has now been forced to fight both the Assad regime and Islamist terrorist groups, is no surprise.
Assad “physically does not control two-thirds of Syria,” Ford said. “And we warned even as long as two years ago that terrorist groups would go into that vacuum, as we had seen in places like Afghanistan and Somalia and Yemen and Mali.This is not rocket science. In a place where there is no government control, terrorist groups can infiltrate in and set up places where they can operate freely. And we warned this would happen in Syria, and it has.”