Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Doesn't this always appear to be the case. Those who commit the crime take the fifth amendment so as not to incriminate themselves. If you have done nothing wrong then tell us what happened.


May 22, 2013 at 1:00 am

IRS chief to take fifth at hearing

Lerner key figure in case, reportedly knew of tea party targeting

  • Stephen Ohlemacher and Alan Fram
  • Associated Press
  • 3 Comments
Shulman
Shulman )
Washington — Summoned by Congress, a key figure in the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups plans to invoke her constitutional right against self-incrimination and decline to testify at a congressional hearing today.
Lois Lerner heads the IRS division that singled out conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns. She was subpoenaed to testify today before the House oversight committee.
But in a letter to committee leaders, Lerner's lawyer said she would refuse to testify because of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department.
Among the harsher Republican comments after the IRS targeting was revealed last week, House Speaker John Boehner said he wanted to know, "Who's going to jail over this scandal?" Lerner's Washington lawyer, William W. Taylor III, said Tuesday his client "has not committed any crime or made any misrepresentation, but under the circumstances she has no choice but to take this course."
Ali Ahmad, a spokesman for Oversight committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the subpoena stands, raising the possibility of a public spectacle in which Lerner would decline to answer question after question.
News of her plans came on the same day the agency's former commissioner said he first learned in the spring of 2012 — in the heat of the presidential campaign — that agents had improperly targeted political groups that vehemently opposed President Barack Obama's policies.
But former Commissioner Douglas Shulman said he didn't tell higher ups in the Treasury Department and he didn't tell members of Congress.
And he wouldn't apologize for it.
"I had a partial set of facts, and I knew that the inspector general was going to be looking into it, and I knew that it was being stopped," Shulman told the Senate Finance Committee in his first public comments on the matter.
"Sitting there then and sitting here today, I think I made the right decision, which is to let the inspector general get to the bottom of it, chase down all the facts and then make his findings public."
Lerner has emerged as a central figure in the controversy because she learned in June 2011 that IRS agents were singling out groups with "Tea Party" or "Patriots" in their applications for further scrutiny, according to a report by the agency's inspector general. She ordered the initial tea party criteria to be scrapped, but it later evolved to include groups that promoted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the report said.
Shulman, however, said this information wasn't relayed up the chain of command until a year later.
"I agree this is an issue that when someone spotted it, they should have brought it up the chain," Shulman said. "And they didn't. I don't know why."
Lerner is also the IRS official who first disclosed the targeting of tea party groups at a legal conference last week. Lerner has not been disciplined for her role, IRS officials said.

Tea party activists rally

Tea party activists waving flags and signs, singing patriotic songs and chanting anti-IRS slogans held rallies outside federal buildings across the country Tuesday to protest the agency’s extra scrutiny of conservative groups.
There were rallies outside IRS offices in Cincinnati, Atlanta; Louisville; Chicago; Cherry Hill, N.J.; Denver; Kansas City, Mo.; Helena, Mont.; Philadelphia; Phoenix, and Providence, R.I., among others.


From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130522/POLITICS03/305220336#ixzz2U11eiWGJ
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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Another Obama official sited by an Inspector general investigation that shows he lied to federal investigators and congress. This guy tried to smear a whistle blower in the fast and furious scandal that resulted in the death of a federal agent. This culture of cover up, seek and destroy anyone who gets in our way continues in Washington under Obama's presence.


Watchdog report says DOJ official retaliated against ‘Furious’ whistle-blower, lied about it

By 
Published May 20, 2013
FoxNews.com
The former U.S. Attorney for Arizona could be disbarred, after an investigation found he lied to the Justice Department about his role in trying to discredit the federal whistle-blower who exposed the botched gun-running scheme known as Fast and Furious.
An Office of Inspector General report showed that Dennis Burke -- the former chief of staff for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appointed as U.S. Attorney for Arizona by President Obama in September 2009 -- lied when asked if he leaked sensitive documents to the press meant to undermine the credibility of ATF whistle-blower John Dodson.
The IG report also said Burke likely leaked the memo in retaliation for Dodson's whistle-blowing, and challenged the credibility of statements he made to congressional investigators. Dodson first went to Congress in 2010 after his own agency and the Justice Department refused to investigate his complaints that Operation Fast and Furious, an anti-gun-trafficking effort, was out of control.
"We also concluded that Burke's disclosure of the Dodson memorandum was likely motivated by a desire to undermine Dodson's public criticisms of Operation Fast and Furious. Although Burke denied to congressional investigators that he had any retaliatory motive for his actions, we found substantial evidence to the contrary," the IG report, released Monday, said.
Dodson appeared before Congress in June 2011. At the time, the Department of Justice denied his claim that the federal government approved a plan to knowingly assist criminals in smuggling thousands of guns to the Mexican drug cartels.
Dodson's credibility was crucial since nearly everyone above him denied the allegation. The report found that Burke leaked information that sought to undermine Dodson's story to a Fox News producer.
"The report brings into question, yet again, the treatment that whistle-blowers receive from this administration," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Monday. "Instead of examining the allegations that came forward, the Justice Department almost immediately began to attack the credibility and good name of a dedicated federal agent upset with what he was ordered to do."
Burke used his private email account to leak the information to a friend in Washington who then hand-delivered the information to the Fox producer. The IG said in its report it used an "administrative subpoena" to identify the personal email of relevant Department employees to confirm the leak.
Once contacted by IG staff, Burke admitted he was the source. The IG's office had asked 150 Justice Department employees to affirm they were not the leak.  
But the report said he gave misleading information to congressional investigators. Asked about the issue by congressional investigators, Burke said: "I was under the impression that (the Dodson memo) had gone to the Hill and that I was basically giving (the Fox producer) a time advantage."
He also allegedly misled his own superior in Washington, Assistant Attorney General James Cole.
At the time, Cole had seen a New York Times story about Fast and Furious. In it, the paper published a picture which showed the document had been faxed from the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona. When confronted, the report said Burke told Cole, "I don't think we have a fax machine."
The IG report claims Burke was "admonished by Deputy Attorney General Cole for lying to him ... and had been put on notice such disclosures should not occur."
After speaking with Burke, Cole wrote "another horrible incident of bad judgment." The following day, Aug. 13, Burke resigned.
Fox News tried unsuccessfully to contact Burke, who recently formed a security and lobbying firm with former Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano's Chief of Staff Noah Kroloff.
The Office of Inspector General is an investigative arm that monitors the Justice Department. It tried to interview Burke, but he resigned.
The IG said Burke violated numerous federal and professional rules of conduct and it would forward a copy of its report to the Arizona State Bar Association for disciplinary conduct.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/20/watchdog-report-says-doj-official-retaliated-against-furious-whistle-blower/?test=latestnews#ixzz2TvpaYL1f
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Now a story is breaking that the white house has also secretly investigated fox news reporters. If this proves to be true it'll start another white house scandal. This white house is out of control and unamerican. Everyone in the country should be outraged by these stories and actions taken by the Obama administration to simply stay in power. Outrageous.


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This could be the bottom line in all of the current white house scandals. Paranoia. Its a bit of a stretch but its also what got President Nixon into hot water. Paranoia coupled with arrogance is a recipe for disaster.

IRS targeted and leaked info about a group I am affiliated with

By 
Published May 20, 2013
FoxNews.com
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  • 051113_anhq_irs2_640.jpg
 
As Congress and the public struggle to comprehend the scandals rocking the Obama administration, it is important not to overlook a common thread linking all of the misconduct: the administration’s paranoia that voters would see it as weak on national defense.
For having the temerity to raise questions about U.S. policy toward terrorists and Iran, Israel and North Korea, the Obama IRS targeted a non-partisan group with which I am affiliated and illegally leaked its confidential information.
The White House’s paranoia about public perceptions of foreign threats also drove its scandalous surveillance of Associated Press (AP) reporters.
The Obama administration has demonized and harassed those who posed inconvenient questions about its policies.
It is also at the heart of the cover-up over the attack in Benghazi that resulted in the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
Secure America Now, on whose advisory board I serve, has criticized and supported politicians of all political stripes.
For example, the organization critiqued the Republican governor of New Jersey when he derided the New York Police Department’s monitoring of suspected terrorists. And the non-partisan organization criticized the independent mayor of New York for supporting the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero.
Secure America Now also posed questions about the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism and other national security issues.
For example, last October, the organization released a short video that criticized Mr. Obama’s reaction to the Benghazi attack. The widely viewed video contrasts misleading statements by Obama officials with those of reporters and the victims’ family members.
As a Wall Street Journal article revealed last week, the IRS has held up Secure America Now’s application for 501(c)4 status for more than two years and counting.
Furthermore, the IRS illegally provided confidential information about Secure America Now to an organization the White House counts among its political allies. 
Such leaks are intended to scare off supporters by signaling they too may be illegally targeted and harassed. This is a method of civic disenfranchisement.
The White House’s paranoia is also at the heart of the AP reporter surveillance scandal. The administration contends that it was necessary to spy on AP journalists’ household, office and cell phone usage over two months because a leak to the AP potentially revealed sensitive information about a counterterrorism operation. Attorney General Eric Holder even said the leak “put the American people at risk.”
In fact, what the story revealed was that Al Qaeda was planning to attack the United States on the anniversary of Usama bin Laden’s death—an attack prevented by diligent professionals in America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies. 
The AP delayed the story until the CIA said its release would no longer pose a risk. However, the existence of the threat contradicted President Obama’s claim that Al Qaeda “was on its heels”—a major talking point in his reelection campaign. The foiled attack would have occurred less than six months before the election.
Thus all three scandals—the Benghazi cover-up, the unprecedented spying on AP journalists, and the IRS affair—all involve national security to varying degrees.
Exploring the foreign threats facing America and debating the performance of the man elected to manage them is the type of lawful civic activity that is essential to healthy democracy. Rather than accept this, the Obama administration has demonized and harassed those who posed inconvenient questions about its policies.
Why did officials go to such great lengths to do this? After all, using government power for illicit political purposes could put officials on the wrong side of laws like the Internal Revenue Code, the Hatch Act, the Privacy Act, and the Ethics in Government Act.
The general motive is apparent: the administration’s determination to win a second term. This is of course the primary wish of any first-term administration. But the actions of officials went far beyond what is acceptable and legal. 
Ahead of a close election, Obama administration officials went to extraordinary lengths to try to silence numerous groups and individuals, including those concerned with foreign threats that are evolving rapidly and drawing nearer.
Christian Whiton was a senior adviser at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration.  He is a frequent contributor to Fox News Opinion, and is the author of the forthcoming book, “Smart Power: Between Diplomacy and War."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/05/20/irs-targeted-and-leaked-info-about-group-am-affiliated-with/#ixzz2TvGkGPIf
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My most heart felt thoughts and prayers go out to Oklahoma today. I hope only the best for you. This article relays the good of human mankind.


AP photographer describes rescuers pulling kids out of rubble at Okla. school hit by tornado

Published May 21, 2013
Associated Press
MOORE, Okla. –  I left the office as soon as I saw the tornado warnings on TV. I had photographed about a dozen twisters before in the past decade, and knew that if I didn't get in my car before the funnel cloud hit, it would be too late.
By the time I got to Moore, all I could see was destruction. I walked toward a group of people standing by a heaping mound of rubble too big to be a home. A woman told me it was a school.
I expected chaos as I approached the heaping mounds of bricks and twisted metal where Plaza Towers Elementary once stood. Instead, it was calm and orderly as police and firefighters pulled children out one-by-one from underneath a large chunk of a collapsed wall.
Parents and neighborhood volunteers stood in a line and helped pass the rescued children from one set of arms to another to get them out of harm's way. Adults carried the children through a field littered with shredded pieces of wood, cinder block and insulation to a triage center in a parking lot.
They worked quickly and quietly so rescuers could try to hear voices of children trapped beneath the rubble.
Crews lifted one boy from under the wall and were about to pass him along the human chain, but his dad was there. As the boy called out for him, they were reunited.
In the 30 minutes I was outside the destroyed school, I photographed about a dozen children pulled from under the rubble.
I focused my lens each one of them. Some looked dazed. Some cried. Others seemed terrified.
But they were alive.
I know students are among those who died in the tornado, but for a moment, there was hope in the devastation.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/21/ap-photographer-describes-rescuers-pulling-kids-out-rubble-at-okla-school-hit/#ixzz2TvFGq3In
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The IRS probe gets deeper and deeper. Now we find out the White House did know of the investigation more than one year ago. I do not believe that counsel did not tell the president. Another potential cover up. At the end of the article the IRS admits they did not target progressive or liberal groups only conservative ones. Very dangerous for a democracy. This will also be a set back for attempts at gun control. For all those who think the government is desiring a take over this will fuel those flames even further.


Ex-IRS chief heads to Hill as Carney says White House senior staff told of probe findings

Published May 21, 2013
FoxNews.com
  • IRSPoliticalGroups.JPG
    Aug. 2, 2012: Then-Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP)
Lawmakers will get their first opportunity to question the man who ran the IRS when agents were improperly targeting tea party groups Tuesday, as the timeline for when senior White House officials knew about the scandal seems to be shifting.
The lawmakers are expected to ask former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman why he didn't tell Congress that agents had been singling out conservative political groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status -- even after he was briefed on the matter.
Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, left the IRS in November when his five-year term ended. He is testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, which has launched a bipartisan investigation into the matter.
The hearing comes after White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the president’s counsel was told on April 24 about the preliminary findings of an IRS audit that showed tax officials unfairly targeted Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status. 
Carney had previously said that White House counsel did not have any details about the IRS probe and was given a generic heads up that one was being conducted. 
Senior legal counsel Kathryn Ruemmler was told about the audit on April 24, Carney said Monday. She then told Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff and other senior officials about the investigation.
“It was the judgment of counsel this is not a matter she should convey to the president,” Carney said. “Her opinion that this is not the kind of thing that requires notification to the president.”
“No one in this building intervened in an independent investigation or anything that could be seen that way,” he said, adding that the misconduct had stopped in 2012, “almost a year before we knew about it.”
Carney also said while Ruemmler knew the subject of the investigation and potential findings, they were not given a draft of the report and understood details could change.
Ahead of the hearing, the committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the ranking Republican, sent a letter to the IRS Monday, asking for an explanation. The letter included 41 separate requests for information. They gave the IRS until May 31 to respond.
The two senators said the IRS had not been forthcoming about the issue in the past.
"Targeting applicants for tax-exempt status using political labels threatens to undermine the public's trust in the IRS," Baucus and Hatch wrote. "Lack of candor in advising the Senate of this practice is equally troubling."
For more than a year, from 2011 through the 2012 election, members of Congress repeatedly asked Shulman about complaints from tea party groups that they were being harassed by the IRS.
Shulman's responses, usually relayed by a deputy, did not acknowledge that agents had ever targeted tea party groups for special scrutiny. At a congressional hearing March 22, 2012, Shulman was adamant in his denials.
"There's absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people" who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman said at the House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing.
The IRS has said Shulman did not know about the targeting at the time of the hearing.
The agency's inspector general says he told Shulman on May 30, 2012, that his office was auditing the way applications for tax-exempt status were being handled, in part because of complaints from conservative groups. However, the inspector general, J. Russell George, said he did not reveal the results of his investigation.
George was also testifying at Tuesday's hearing. So was Steven Miller, who took over as acting commissioner in November, when Shulman's term expired. Last week, Obama forced Miller to resign.
George issued a report last week blaming ineffective management for allowing agents to inappropriately target conservative groups for more than 18 months during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
The agents were trying to determine whether the groups were engaged in political activity. Certain tax-exempt groups are allowed to engage in politics, but politics cannot be their primary mission. It is up to the IRS to make the determination, so agents are supposed to look for clues when reviewing applications for tax-exempt status.
In March 2010, agents starting singling out groups with "Tea Party" or "Patriots" on their applications. By August 2010, it was part of the written criteria for identifying groups that required more scrutiny, according to George's report.
Agents did not flag similar progressive or liberal labels, though some liberal groups received additional scrutiny because their applications were singled out for other reasons, the report said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/21/white-house-timeline-irs-scandal-when-were-told-shifts/#ixzz2TvDmgelR
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Monday, May 20, 2013

So now the fact checkers are starting to check the claims and statements the IRS officials are making regarding the latest scandal. Naturally, their claims are not adding up. Why can't those in Washington just tell the truth for once? It'll al catch up to them on this one.

The Washington Post gives the IRS official in this article 4 Pinocchio's.


Fact check rips IRS official over Tea Party targeting claims

Published May 20, 2013
FoxNews.com
A detailed fact-check published Monday tore into an IRS official's claim that the agency's scrutiny of conservative groups started in response to an influx of nonprofit applications, showing the practice started well before the forms started flooding in. 
The piece in The Washington Post disputed a central claim that Lois Lerner, head of the exempt organizations division, and other IRS officials made as they admitted to targeting conservative groups for additional scrutiny as they sought tax-exempt status. 
Lerner claimed they did so in response to a "very big uptick" between 2010 and 2012 in the number of applications for a status known as 501(c)(4). 
Indeed, there was an uptick recorded in that time period. But, as the Post wrote, "it was relatively small." 
"The real jump did not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups had been implemented," the Post wrote. 
The inspector general report released last week said a Cincinnati office began drafting the new criteria as early as May 2010. But statistics included in the report show the number of applications in that group actually declined between 2009 and 2010 -- from 1,751 to 1,735. 
The Post fact-check column adjusted the numbers to reflect the rise from one calendar year to the next, as opposed to fiscal year. Even then, the increase was from 1,745 to 1,865. 
Applications did not begin to rise significantly until 2011 and 2012. 
The Post column gave this and several other Lerner claims a rating of "four Pinocchios," which is the worst score given by the newspaper's fact-check column. 
"In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner's misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS's activities first came to light on May 10," the Post wrote. 
The column also questioned her claim that they looked at the issue after seeing "information in the press." However, as the Post points out, the IG report said Lerner was briefed on the program in June 2011. Press reports didn't appear until early 2012. 
Further, Lerner claimed, as she publicly acknowledged the program, that nobody had asked her about it before. But she was asked about the probe during congressional testimony two days earlier. It has since emerged that Lerner contacted a friend to pose the question about the IRS program to her at a May 10 conference.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/20/fact-check-rips-irs-official-over-tea-party-targeting-claims/#ixzz2TrIizbEx
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I totally agree with the Senator from Ohio. There must be a special counsel set up to investigate the IRS scandal. It must be independent from the white house where it might have been given the go ahead. Anything else would be a white washing and not credible.


Sen. Portman: IRS will need special counsel

By Meghashyam Mali - 05/19/13 01:43 PM ET
Interview begins at 0:33 second mark.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) on Sunday said he believed a special counsel to investigate the IRS targeting scandal would ultimately be “necessary."
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Portman welcomed an inspector general’s report and the launch of congressional hearings, but said there were still many unanswered questions.
“I also think that special counsel is going to end up being necessary here, because it has to be independent of the White House,” said Portman of the ongoing investigation.
“What we do know is that politics was put ahead of the public interest. And it was done in two of the most sensitive areas of our government. One, of course, the tax collection agency, which has this enormous power over all of us. And second, our national security,” said Portman referring to the Justice Department’s seizure of journalists’ phone records in a leak probe.
“There's a lot of issues here we need to get bottom of. We need to find out what really happened and ensure that we can begin to regain some trust in our government. That's my concern,” he added.
But other lawmakers expressed caution, saying that Congress needed more time to gather facts.
Fellow GOP lawmaker, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), said that while the IRS actions were “chilling” it was still “premature” to say whether a special counsel would be needed.
“I do believe that the committees of jurisdiction in the House and in the Senate need to continue their investigation and determine exactly who made these decisions,” said Price, also appearing on ABC.
The IRS admitted to subjecting Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status to higher scrutiny. The announcement led to criticism from both parties, with Obama requesting and accepting the resignation of the acting director of the IRS last week.

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GOP lawmakers have pledged to find out if the political targeting was directed by anyone at the White House.
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), however, said he did not see a need yet for a special counsel.
Menendez said that the law governing tax-exempt status should be the real focus of Congress.
“I think there are two scandals here.  And clearly what the IRS did in this regard is absolutely wrong and it's outrageous. It's a lack of management,” he said.
“But there's second scandal, and that fact is, is that hundreds of millions of dollars had been used in C-4s that are supposed to be used a nonprofit social welfare entities for political purposes,” Menendez added.
Senior Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday said no one at the White House knew of the IRS targeting beforehand and vowed the president would investigate the scandal thoroughly.


Read more: http://thehill.com/video/senate/300613-sen-portman-irs-will-need-special-counsel#ixzz2TpnPZ1Qu 
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

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The middle east continues to be most unstable. The pot is brewing on an Israeli and Syrian conflict. Both sides have much at stake. For the Syrians it could mean the end of their regime. For the Israeli's it could mean the changing of the guard to an even worse degree for them. This is a must watch to see what transpires.



Fears grow of clash between Israel and Syria

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Benjamin Netanyahu, Avichai Mandelblit
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, with Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mandelblit during a weekly meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday. (Ronen Zvulun / AP)
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By Edmund Sanders
May 19, 2013, 9:48 a.m.
JERUSALEM — Fears about a possible escalation of violence between Israel and Syria grew Sunday amid renewed Israeli threats to destroy Syrian weapons caches and Syria's warnings of retaliation.
After decades of relative calm along the two nations’ borders, some Israeli officials say tensions with Syria have reached one of the highest points since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
During a Cabinet meeting Sunday, Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu said Israel would continue to act to prevent Syria’s advanced weapons from falling into the hands of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah or other organizations deemed to be terrorists.
“The Middle East is in one of its most sensitive periods in decades with the escalating upheaval in Syria,’’ Netanyahu said. “We are monitoring the changes there closely and are prepared for any scenario.”
Israel has been accused of launching three air strikes this year against Syrian weapons stockpiles and convoys, though officially the Israeli government has not acknowledged its responsibility.
But Israeli officials have said repeatedly they will not hesitate to attack if they fear weapons, including chemical stockpiles, are at risk of falling into the wrong hands.
In response, Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose regime did not retaliate for the previous three attacks, has signaled that he will not tolerate a fourth strike.
His government has reportedly trained advanced surface-to-surface missiles on the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, with instructions to fire in the event of another Israeli attack, according to information from reconnaissance satellite imagery reported Sunday by the Times of London.
Israeli military officials have insisted that they do not wish to interfere in the Syrian civil war or topple Assad’s regime, and that they would limit military actions toward halting the arms pipeline from Iran to Hezbollah.
At the same time, Israelis have warned Assad that if he strikes back against Israel, he risks losing control of Syria because Israel would respond with less restraint.
So far, the Israeli calculation that Assad is too weak and distracted to respond has been proven correct. But some Israeli defense analysts warn that Israel might be pushing its luck if it attacks again.
“We might think Israel enjoys full freedom of action in Syria because the regime knows what’s good for it,’’ said Shlomo Brom, analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “But this is an illusion because it ignores the fact that when you push someone into a corner, they are ultimately forced to react. I am not sure Assad is so far from this mind-set. This could cause an escalation, and the question is whether such an escalation serves Israel’s interests.”
Assad, who has surprised many by holding on to power for more than two years, struck a defiant tone over the weekend, accusing Israel of helping the rebels.
Russia, which has maintained strong ties to the Assad regime, also made a strong statement of support last week, vowing to proceed with the sale of advanced S-300 air-defense missiles to Syria despite a personal appeal from Netanyahu. Israel fears such weapons will hinder its ability to launch air strikes over Syria and Lebanon.
Many in Israel see the arms sale as a message to Israel and the West that Russia will not tolerate outside intervention in Syria.
“The Russians have shown determined support for Assad,” Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, head of policy and political affairs strategy for the Israel Defense Forces, told Israel Radio on Friday. He said Syria “has become a battleground in which the defense of Assad and his regime has become a central pillar of Russian policy. That hasn’t changed and it has been the case throughout the entire duration of the period. That is a very tenaciously held position.”
For Israel, Russian support for Assad raises the stakes in its evolving military strategy.
Initially Israelis believed Assad could not be toppled and that despite his support for Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, his survival was preferable because he had proved to be something of a paper tiger when it came to militarily confronting Israel. Even after Israel reportedly bombed a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007, Assad did not respond.
Over the past year, Israelis came to believe that Assad could not survive, though they have been reluctant to openly support the rebels. They fear such support might backfire because of the strong anti-Israel sentiments in Syria.
Now Israeli officials appear split on which outcome in Syria will be worse for them: a victorious Assad regime that continues to support Hezbollah with help from Iran, or a takeover by Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels who might be less reluctant to strike Israel.
“Israel really has no clear preference between Assad’s regime and that of the gangs who would succeed him and tear the country to pieces,” said Mordechai Kedar, a Middle East expert at Bar-Ilan University. “Each has its own dangerous characteristics.”
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edmund.sanders@latimes.com
News researcher Batsheva Sobelman in The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.
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