As world media obsess over imaginary N Korea threats, al-Qaeda consolidates hold on Syria rebellion

North Korea has been the top news story for a couple of weeks now. The usual fanciful rhetoric has been flowing from Pyongyang that accompanies every joint US - South Korea military exercise. This time it's getting more attention because there's a new guy in the big chair in the North, but also because the folks who decide what's "news" would rather we watch that story than some of the others.

Like Syria for example. The story that the al-Nusra Front may or may not have merged with al-Qaeda in Iraq is far more relevant to word peace than the North Koreans playing hide-the-missile with US spy satellites.

Reading between the lines, it's obvious that the so-called Free Syrian Army is by now little more than a fantasy in the minds of the western-sponsored SNC. The "merger" and Zawahiri's call for an Islamic emirate in Syria exposes the true goals of the rebels, but not necessarily the ultimate goals of their backers.

Their backers are a handful of Gulf states all allied with the US. Would Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey be arming the rebels if the US didn't permit it? Not likely. The designation of al-Nusra as a terror group last year was designed to give the US a measure of deniability against the inevitable claims that America now arms it's supposed number one enemy in the war on terror.

The ultimate US goal is that the al-Qaeda rebels in Syria will eventually be turned on Iran. It's a beautiful plan. The time-line is of no consequence. The current war of attrition in Syria can go on indefinitely without harming US interests. Netanyahu doesn't mind chaos next door because it helps keep security concerns on the front burner in Israel, which is politically advantageous for him.

Sooner or later Syria will become neither the Islamic state envisioned by Zawahiri or the democracy of State Department rhetoric, but a failed state in the style of Libya today. A failed state with tens of thousands of heavily-armed and highly experienced Sunni fanatics with nothing to do except join their al-Qaeda brothers in Iraq in making jihad on the Shia devils in Baghdad and Tehran.