As she bowed out, Sec State Clinton defended her record in a NYT interview. Coincidentally, “off the record”, she shared a few secrets with her interviewers, who slipped them into a separate article.
Concerned with keeping her options open for the presidential election
of 2016, she sought to shift the blame for failure in Syria to Obama.
After two years of secret war, the armed groups charged with justifying a
NATO intervention and then failing to overthrow the regime themselves,
have lost their “revolutionary” appeal and now look like fanatics.
Still alive and in place, Assad is more than ever impossible to outmaneuver. US diplomacy, which weekly announced the “fall of the tyrant,” is ridiculed, while Russia and China, who slapped it down three times with their vetoes, are the big winners. All this comes, according to Clinton, because no one listened to her. Along with DCI Petraeus, her former enemy now turned ally, she had submitted a plan of military support for the combatant groups to the White House in late Jun 2012. But Obama, solely concerned about his reelection, rejected this in favor of the Geneva Communiqué brokered by Kofi Annan.
The idea would have been to take things in hand because they had been badly outsourced by France, the UK and the Gulf States, who had leaned on repulsive jihadists. Instead, Clinton was working to “create a legitimate opposition which would have served, through negotiations, to delegitimize Assad.” To repair the subcontractors’ errors, she had proposed that the US arm and manage combatant groups directly. During his hearing before the Armed Services Committee of the Senate, CoS Dempsey confirmed the existence of this plan. He added that Sec Def Panetta and himself were in favor. The truth is less elegant.
By admitting that she worked to overthrow the regime by creating a “legitimate opposition”, that is to say “democratic and multi-faith”, Clinton admits that there was no such opposition and that there still is none. Plus, she admits that legitimacy was and remains on the side of Assad. By publishing the fact that she presented an action plan to Obama in June, she admits she has always been opposed to the Geneva declaration. And all indications are that it is she and Petraeus who sabotaged it at the time.
Contrary to what she declares, concerns about reelection did not push Obama to reject the plan, but rather to not immediately punish those who sabotaged Geneva. The White House waited until the day after the election victory to force Petraeus to resign. Perhaps it had also taken the required steps to neutralize Clinton and keep her away from her office for a lengthy month. Dempsey’s revelations about his support and that of Panetta also aim to open the umbrella.
However, as their responsibilities are different, they do this in a different manner. For them, declaring that they were ready to intervene shows that they have not failed and are in no way responsible for the fiasco. In reality, it is they who, following the Russian and Chinese vetoes, validated the analysis according to which one could topple the Syrian regime using “contras” on a grand scale. Be that as it may, the fact that the outgoing leaders in Washington seek to justify themselves confirms that the page is turned. Obama is changing his team and his policy.
Source
Still alive and in place, Assad is more than ever impossible to outmaneuver. US diplomacy, which weekly announced the “fall of the tyrant,” is ridiculed, while Russia and China, who slapped it down three times with their vetoes, are the big winners. All this comes, according to Clinton, because no one listened to her. Along with DCI Petraeus, her former enemy now turned ally, she had submitted a plan of military support for the combatant groups to the White House in late Jun 2012. But Obama, solely concerned about his reelection, rejected this in favor of the Geneva Communiqué brokered by Kofi Annan.
The idea would have been to take things in hand because they had been badly outsourced by France, the UK and the Gulf States, who had leaned on repulsive jihadists. Instead, Clinton was working to “create a legitimate opposition which would have served, through negotiations, to delegitimize Assad.” To repair the subcontractors’ errors, she had proposed that the US arm and manage combatant groups directly. During his hearing before the Armed Services Committee of the Senate, CoS Dempsey confirmed the existence of this plan. He added that Sec Def Panetta and himself were in favor. The truth is less elegant.
By admitting that she worked to overthrow the regime by creating a “legitimate opposition”, that is to say “democratic and multi-faith”, Clinton admits that there was no such opposition and that there still is none. Plus, she admits that legitimacy was and remains on the side of Assad. By publishing the fact that she presented an action plan to Obama in June, she admits she has always been opposed to the Geneva declaration. And all indications are that it is she and Petraeus who sabotaged it at the time.
Contrary to what she declares, concerns about reelection did not push Obama to reject the plan, but rather to not immediately punish those who sabotaged Geneva. The White House waited until the day after the election victory to force Petraeus to resign. Perhaps it had also taken the required steps to neutralize Clinton and keep her away from her office for a lengthy month. Dempsey’s revelations about his support and that of Panetta also aim to open the umbrella.
However, as their responsibilities are different, they do this in a different manner. For them, declaring that they were ready to intervene shows that they have not failed and are in no way responsible for the fiasco. In reality, it is they who, following the Russian and Chinese vetoes, validated the analysis according to which one could topple the Syrian regime using “contras” on a grand scale. Be that as it may, the fact that the outgoing leaders in Washington seek to justify themselves confirms that the page is turned. Obama is changing his team and his policy.
Source