“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”
Obama said that on August 20, 2012 in remarks to reporters. Realizing that he was close to having to engage in some kind of military action against Bashar Assad, Syria’s dictator, he was bailed out by the Russians who stepped in to remove the stores of poison gas and then, except for the “red line” gaffe, everyone promptly forgot about it.
The insurrection against Assad began in March 2011 and by September 2013 there were an estimated 120,000 dead Syrians and a million or more refugees. The conflict turned from local to regional as the extremist Islamic State (IS) emerged. It is backed by Iran and Turkey, but only for the purpose of defeating Assad, not for declaring itself the new Caliphate.
IS is now in control of much of Syria’s northern region and has taken control of central Iraq, challenging Baghdad as well as its Kurdish sector. On Sunday Islamic State fighters overtook the Lebanese city of Arsal where 100,000 Syrian refugees had fled. There were attacks in Tripoli as well. There is no accounting for how many have been slaughtered by IS at this point.
On August 4, The Daily Star, Lebanon, reported “The jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) group executed seven members of a single family from the Ismaili minority in the central Syrian province of Hama overnight, state media and an activist group said Monday. ‘An armed terrorist group committed a massacre in the Mzeiraa area near the town of Salmiya, killing seven people, including two aged 13 and 15 years old,’ Syrian state news agency SANA said.”
Three days earlier Breitbart News reported “The Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, told Palestine the terrorist group will join its fight against the ‘barbaric Jews’ but urged patience until ISIS is finished in Arab countries.”


















