Syrian opposition needs $60 billion in aid in next six months

That's according to George Sabra, the former communist who is now the leader of the old SNC, which is not to be confused with the new SNC, but is a part of the new SNC...

Anyway, George is making headlines today with his call for 60 billion in aid for the six month period after the fall of Assad, which he is pretty sure will be tomorrow or maybe the day after.

60 billion over six months might be a little steep for the Nations of Virtue. After all, half of them are courting financial collapse themselves.

According to the CIA World Factbook, $60B was Syria's GDP the year before the revolution started.

I know that commies are notoriously incompetent at budgeting and all that stuff, but how is such a number even conceivable?

I think George is figuring on a chicken in every pot every day and a Volvo in every garage to come up with 60 billion.

Maybe it's just his opening gambit. Maybe they'll settle for 60 millions instead of 60 billions.

Hell, this is all contingent on Assad going somewhere, which he doesn't seem to be in any great rush to do.

In fact, now that Assad is taking the lead in fighting al Qaeda, maybe we should keep him around for awhile... and save 60 billion bucks!

Gaza attack wipes Syria off the news map

Click on any major American news site right now and chances are you won't even find a reference to the Syrian conflict. When the only democracy in the middle east decides, (and it usually needs to do this just before an election, coincidentally) to teach those implacable Palestinians one of their periodic good sharp lessons, all other news disappears.

Which is not to say it stops happening. In fact, if one visits news sites based in the region, there seems to be quite a lot going on.

The popular Turkish news site Hurriyet has a take on the Gaza strikes that readers here wouldn't imagine. In the first place they seem to assume, incorrectly, that the Israelis would never undertake such an adventure without the explicit approval of the US.

Secondly, the tone used by Hurriyet suggests that they see the US/Israel attack on Gaza as an attack on Islam, and take offence accordingly. They have gone from being the crucial conduit  keeping the Syrian insurrection going to being yesterday's news.

They further seem a little put out that only France among the NATO allies has joined Turkey in recognizing the new Syrian opposition coalition that the Americans themselves were pushing so hard for the past two weeks. Yesterday Obama seemed to say the US still doesn't trust the rebels.

Here's another reason the Turks are miffed. Regardless of how the Syrian insurrection unfolds for Assad, there is a de-facto Kurdish state being created right now all along Turkey's border with Syria. The Kurdish militias creating the new Kurdistan are allies of the PKK that the Turkish state has been fighting for years.

Erdogan is up a stump. In an attempt to ingratiate himself with his NATO pals he went along with their plans to destroy his one-time ally Assad. In doing so he's allowed his country to violate international law continuously for the past year and a half by providing safe haven and supplying the rebels operating in Syria. Not only is Assad not out of power, but Erdogan's NATO friends, with the exception of France, are clearly losing interest.

And in the meantime, his worst nightmare, an independent Kurdistan, is blossoming right at his door.

So in spite of what you see or don't see at Fox or CNN, Gaza is just one story from a Middle East in chaos, and probably one of the more predictable ones. A few thousand Palestinians and a few dozen Israelis will die, Netanyahu will be re-elected, and it will be business as usual in the Holy Land.

But it's that rapidly changing landscape all around it that we need to be watching.

The blossoming of the Syria Salvation Strategy

Hillary has succeeded with the Doha operation to imbue an American-sponsored Syrian opposition with the aura of legitimacy. The Gulf Cooperation Council, those Sunni state-lets fully dependent on American largess for their continued existence, were quick to rubber stamp the newly formed "We're Not The SNC We're Totally Different Revolutionary Coalition" (WNTSNCWTDRC) as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people today.

Their rubber stamp was quickly followed up by another from the Arab league.

One of the disturbing truths that Washington and her allies in the Nations of Virtue and their media will be struggling to obscure in the coming weeks is the fact that virtually none of the fighters on the ground in Syria answer to anyone in the newly minted cadre of  "legitimate representatives."

That means building a reliable revolutionary army from the ground up while Syria is in flames. While that job is already well underway across the border in Turkey, it will take US/NATO minders on the ground in Syria to keep an eye on who is receiving American arms and money.

This new "legitimate" entity will also pave the way for at least a partial no-fly zone in Syria as soon as the new representatives of the Syrian people can get at least a few representatives on the ground in Syria to justify calling for one. This will enable a repetition of the Libyan strategy of NATO bombing paving the way with Paveway smart bombs for our rebels.

There is a complication in Syria, of course. What of the rebels that are already fighting in the country, and do not take their orders from this new al-Attasi/ al-Khatib/ Sabra/ Saif (AASS, another acronym if you find WNTSNCWTDRC too unwieldy) pro-USA group?

Aye, that is a complication indeed, but only for the people of Syria. In the Nations of Virtue the prospect of having rival Islamist groups fight it out over the next generation or two isn't seen as an altogether unpleasant prospect.

Remember, the same crowd in Washington who did everything they could to provoke and prolong the Iran/Iraq war are engineering the Syrian Salvation Strategy.