Top US General Travels to Middle East for War Talks

• Top US General Travels to Middle East for War Talks! 
  by Thomas Gaist, World Socialist Web Site, via http://www.globalresearch.ca/ 
  US Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey with IDF Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, on August 13 (Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson / Flash90)
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  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey traveled to the Middle East this week, arriving in Israel on Monday.
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  Dempsey met with top Israeli General Benny Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, to discuss “the threats that could emanate out of the region—globally and to the homeland—and how we can continue to work together to make both of our countries more secure.”
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  After he is finished in Israel, Dempsey will travel to Jordan, where over 1,000 US forces are already stationed, including F-16s with crews and Patriot missile batteries. The US has also pledged to help Jordan implement “border control techniques” to manage the large influx of refugees streaming in from Syria.
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  US Air Force chief of staff General Mark Welsh had flown to Israel for secret meetings August 4-8 in advance of Dempsey’s visit.
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  While his official task is to discuss strengthening of military ties with the regimes in Israel and Jordan, General Dempsey’s visit comes amid the serious setbacks experienced by the US-backed opposition in Syria, and is bound up with plans for a military escalation in that country, utilizing regional allies including Turkey, Jordan and Israel.
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  In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, former deputy CIA director Michael Morrell said that the situation in Syria is the number one threat to US “national security,” and that the country may become the new preferred haven for al Qaeda.
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  The purpose of Dempsey’s Near Eastern trip is to promote and coordinate support for US war plans targeting Syria. In its report on Dempsey’ visit, DEBKAfile claimed that the purpose of the trip is to “lay the ground ahead of President Barack Obama’s final decision to embark on limited US military intervention in the Syria civil war.”
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  DEBKAfile ’s report states that the US intends to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria, carve out “buffer areas” inside Syria along the Israeli and Jordanian borders, declare the southern Syrian town of Deraa, near the border with Jordan, the new capital of “liberated Syria,” and insert thousands of Syrian commandos, trained and led by Jordanian and American officers, into Syrian territory to conduct the war against Assad.
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  While Dempsey did not explicitly call for such aggressive measures, he is clearly convinced that the only solution in Syria is the removal of Assad and the installation in power of US-backed opposition elements.
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  While in Israel, Dempsey warned that the war in Syria “will not be resolved in the short term,” and characterized the cause of the war as “the unleashing of historic ethnic, religious and tribal animosities that will take a great deal of work and a great deal of time to resolve.”
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  Actually, the cause of the war in Syria is the determination of US and European imperialism to re-impose colonial status on the nations of the Middle East. Ethnic and sectarian divisions are being intentionally stoked up and manipulated by the imperialist powers as part of this project.
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