The just announced U.S.-Russia agreement in Geneva on a "joint determination to ensure the destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons (CW) program in the soonest and safest manner" sounds the death knell to an attempt by Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to get the U.S. into the war in Syria.

Equally important, it greatly increases the prospect of further U.S.-Russia cooperation to tamp down escalating violence in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. That the two sides were able to hammer out in three days a detailed agreement on such highly delicate, complicated issues is little short of a miracle. I cannot remember seeing the likes of it in 50 years in Washington.

Just two short weeks ago, the prospect of a U.S. military strike against Syria looked like a done deal with Official Washington abuzz with excitement about cruise missiles being launched from American warships in the Mediterranean, flying low toward their targets and lighting up the night sky of Damascus like the "shock and awe" pyrotechnics did to Baghdad in 2003.

On Aug. 30, Secretary of State John Kerry seemed to seal the deal with an impassioned address that declared some 35 times that "we know" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had crossed President Barack Obama's "red line" against using chemical weapons with an Aug. 21 attack and needed to be punished.

Along with Kerry's speech, the White House released a four-page "Government Assessment" declaring with "high confidence" that Assad's regime was guilty of the attack on a Damascus suburb that killed precisely "1,429" people and "at least 426 children." Though the white paper included not a single verifiable fact establishing Assad's guilt - nor did it explain where its casualty figures came from - the assessment was accepted as true by most of the mainstream U.S. news media.

At that moment, Israel and its many backers had every reason to believe they had won the day and that at least the first stage of the retribution would be delivered before President Barack Obama flew off on Sept. 3 to Europe and to the G-20 summit. But then came a series of disappointments for them, beginning with Obama's abrupt Aug. 31 decision to seek congressional authorization.

Still, the prevailing attitude was that the Israel Lobby would simply get to work whipping members of Congress into line with a variety of arguments (and a mix of threats and inducements) to ensure that a use-of-force resolution was passed and sent to the President's desk.

The confidence was so high that there was no need to disguise what was afoot. Usually the mainstream media avoids mentioning the extraordinary influence of the Israel Lobby on Congress, but this time the New York Times displayed unusual candor describing who was egging on the march to war.

An 800-Pound Gorilla

In an article posted online Sept. 2, the Times reported, "Administration officials said the influential pro-Israel lobby group Aipac was already at work pressing for military action against the government of Mr. Assad. ... One administration official, who, like others, declined to be identified discussing White House strategy, called Aipac 'the 800-pound gorilla in the room,' and said its allies in Congress had to be saying, 'If the White House is not capable of enforcing this red line' against the catastrophic use of chemical weapons, 'we're in trouble.'"

This warning about "loss of credibility" is a familiar one, artfully promoted in Saturday's Wall Street Journal in an article by Leon Aron titled "America, Syria and the World." Aron quotes a long list of Israel loyalists like Brookings Saban Center's Kenneth M. Pollack, who warn that foreigners may come to view us as wimps if strong action is not taken against Syria.

A contrary point of view was expressed by former U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman, who commented: "There is another possibility, however. And that is that they have come to see us as bullies, prone to resort to force rather than diplomacy when problems arise. The latter possibility puts a whole different face on Obama's hesitation to go to war with Syria."

In any case, to the surprise of many Washington insiders, the dreams of U.S. bombs raining down on another Mideast country began to slip away as many members of Congress listened to their constituents speaking out against war, and some even disbelieving the administration's assessment because no hard, checkable evidence was being revealed to the American people.

Morose at CNN

As the march toward war began meandering off in unexpected directions, I was lucky enough to observe, up-close and personal, the angry reaction of some of Israel's top American supporters on Monday evening. That was after Russia drew Obama a new map for how to reach the desired destination of removing chemical weapons from Assad's arsenal without going to war.

After doing an interview on CNN International, I opened the studio door and almost knocked over a small fellow named Paul Wolfowitz, President George W. Bush's former under-secretary of defense who in 2002-2003 had helped craft the fraudulent case for invading Iraq. And there standing next to him was former Sen. Joe Lieberman, the neocon from Connecticut who was a leading advocate for the Iraq War and pretty much every other potential war in the Middle East.

Finding myself in the same room with two gentlemen responsible for so much misery in the world, I fell back on my recent training in non-violence, as we watched Piers Morgan try earnestly to spin the day's astounding events. On the tube earlier, Anderson Cooper sought counsel from Ari Fleischer, former spokesman for George W. Bush, and David Gergen, long-time White House PR guru.

Fleischer and Gergen were alternately downright furious over the Russian initiative to give peace a chance and disconsolate at seeing the prospect for U.S. military involvement in Syria disappear when we were oh so close. After some caustic and condescending outbursts, an almost surreally disconsolate mood set in. It looked like these fellas were not going to get their war.

Later remarks by Lieberman and Wolfowitz reflected a distinctly funereal atmosphere. I felt I had come to a wake with somberly dressed folks (no pastel ties this time) grieving for a recently, dearly-departed war.

Among Lieberman's vapid comments was the hope-against-hope assertion that President Obama, of course, could still commit troops to war without congressional authorization. I thought to myself, wow, here's a fellow who was a senator for 24 years and almost our vice president, and he does not remember that the Founders gave Congress the sole power to declare war in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

So I dug into my back pocket, pulled out my little copy of the Constitution, and carefully tore out Article 1. Then I lurked in the ornate elevator waiting area for Joe and Paul to come out. After the usual pleasantries (all politicians feel compelled to "remember" you once you say your name as though they should), I said, "Joe, I couldn't believe what you said about the President not being required to get the approval of Congress before attacking a country like Syria. So, here; I tore out Article 1 of the Constitution for you; I have another copy, so you can keep it. Go home, read it, and see if what you just said is correct."

It was a bad evening for war and for those pundits who like to joke about "giving war a chance." For those of us who think war is not such a good idea - and truly should only be considered as an absolutely last resort - it was an uncommon day for rejoicing at the failure of the warmongers to again send young men and women to kill folks who pose no threat to us.

Salt in the Wounds

As sad as the war proponents were - including the cable news channels cheated out of some great video of flashing bombs illuminating the shattered buildings of ancient Damascus - they would face another humiliation in reading Thursday's New York Times, which published an op-ed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He made sensible points about the value of international law prohibiting one country from attacking another except in self-defense or with approval of the United Nations Security Council.

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee and an Israeli favorite, spoke for many Washington insiders by saying, "I was at dinner, and I almost wanted to vomit." [For more on this topic, see Consortiumnews.com's "Rewarding 'Group Think' on Syria."]

Menendez had just cobbled together and forced through his committee a resolution, 10-to-7, to authorize the President to strike Syria with enough force to degrade Assad's military. Now, at Obama's request, the resolution was being put on the shelf.

Events were now moving swiftly away from a U.S. missile strike. Obama dispatched Kerry to Geneva to work out an agreement with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. But the hope for war still was not fully extinguished.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was still rooting for a chance to revive the military option and - like Lieberman - suggesting that the President didn't really need congressional approval and shouldn't be deterred by popular opposition either.

At a breakfast session with reporters on Sept. 11, Levin said, "I just don't think you can be guided, when it comes to this kind of an issue, by public opinion polls. ... It would not be a surprise at all to me, even if there were no congressional authority, that he [Obama] would use his Article 2 authority" as commander in chief. (Not incidentally, Levin has been the recipient of more money from AIPAC-related organizations than any other member of Congress.)

At this point, Israel and its lobby had every reason to be disappointed in another longtime close friend, John Kerry. He had succeeded in driving the war, which was to be fought over Obama's "red line," into what football fans might call the "red zone" but Kerry was unable to push the plan for missile strikes over the goal line.

Instead, Kerry clearly is under new orders from President Obama to figure out a way in cooperation with Minister Lavrov to defuse the crisis. Putin, Obama, Lavrov and Kerry have just won some laurels from the people around the world hoping to advance the cause of peace. But they won't have the luxury of resting on them, while so many others in and around Syria have powerful incentives to reverse the progress made.

One still has to wonder what might revive prospects for U.S. missile strikes. Some in the Middle East are worried about the possibility that radical jihadists among the Syrian rebels might try to derail peace talks by launching a chemical weapons attack against Israeli targets with the hope that the provocation will be blamed on the Assad regime and set off a rush to retaliate.

Whether likely or not, it is a threat that the cooler heads in the Obama administration should anticipate and be ready to head off.
(c) 2013 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years - from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

HERE IS another Jewish joke: A hungry young Jew sees an announcement outside a local circus: anyone who climbs to the top of a 50 meter pole and jumps onto a tarpaulin below will win a prize of a thousand rubles.

Out of desperation he goes in, climbs the pole and shudders looking down.

"Jump! Jump!" the ringmaster shouts.

"Jumping is out of the question!" the Jew shouts back. "But how do I get down again?"

That's how Barack Obama was feeling, a moment before the Russians provided the means.

THE TROUBLE with war is that it has two sides.

You prepare a war meticulously. You have a perfect plan. Future generals will study it in their academies. But once you make the first move, everything goes awry. Because the other side has a mind of its own and does not behave the way you expect.

A good example was provided exactly 40 years ago today (by the Hebrew calendar) with the Egyptian and Syrian attack on Israel. According to our planning, they shouldn't and they couldn't have done so. No way. They knew that our forces were superior and their defeat inevitable.

The chief of army intelligence, the man responsible for the overall evaluation of all intelligence gathered, coined the famous phrase: "low probability." So, while hundreds of items indicated that an attack was imminent, the government of Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan still managed to be surprised when the Egyptians crossed the Suez Canal and the Syrians advanced down to the Sea of Galilee.

Some time before, I had warned the Knesset that the Egyptians were going to start a war. No one took any notice. I was no prophet. I had just returned from a peace conference with Arab delegates, and a very highly-placed Egyptian former colonel told me that Anwar al-Sadat would attack, if Israel did not accept his secret peace proposals and withdraw from Sinai. "But you can't win!" I protested, "He won't attack in order to win, but in order to get the frozen situation moving again," he responded.

SINCE THEN, the phrase "low probability" has had an ominous ring in Israeli ears. No one ever used it. But during the last two weeks, it has made a sudden comeback.

Incredible as it sounds, it was given new life by our army command. Eager to have the Americans attack Syria, and faced with a run on gas masks in Israel, they announced that there was a very low probability that Bashar al-Assad would retaliate by attacking Israel.

He wouldn't dare, of course. How could he? His army is bogged down in fighting with the rebels. It is inferior to our army anyhow, and after two years of civil war it is even weaker than usual. So it would be madness on his part to provoke us. Absolutely. Very, very low probability.

Or is it?

It certainly would be, if Assad's mind worked like that of an Israeli general. But Assad is not an Israeli general. He is the Syrian dictator, and his mind might work quite differently.

What about the following scenario:

The Americans attack Syria with missiles and bombs, with the intention of underlining the Red Line. Just a short, limited, action.

Assad declares Israel responsible and launches his missiles against Tel Aviv and Dimona.

Israel retaliates with a heavy attack on Syrian installations.

Assad declares that the civil war is over and calls upon all Syrians, and the entire Arab and Muslim world, to unite behind him to defend holy Arab land against the common Zionist enemy, the oppressor of the Palestinian brothers.

The Americans will rush to the defense of Israel and - - -

Low probability? My foot!

THEREFORE, I was as relieved as Obama himself when the Russians helped him to climb down the pole. Wow!

What will happen now to the chemical weapons? I don't really care very much. I thought from the beginning that the hysteria about them was vastly overblown. Assad is quite capable of committing all the atrocities he wants without poison gas.

It should be remembered why his father produced this gas in the first place. He believed that Israel was developing nuclear weapons. Not being able to aspire to such expensive and technically advanced devices himself, he settled for much cheaper chemical and biological weapons as a deterrent. According to a secret 1982 CIA report, Israel was producing such weapons itself.

So now we are in for a long process of negotiations, mutual recriminations, inspections, transfers of materials, and so on. Good for many months, if not years.

In the meantime, no American intervention. No regional war. Just the usual mutual bloodletting in Syria.

ISRAEL IS furious. Obama is a wimp. A coward. How dare he listen to American public opinion? Who will ever believe him again?

After this red line was crossed, who will believe in the much broader line Obama has drawn in the sands of Iran?

Frankly, nobody. But not because of Syria.

There is absolutely no similarity between the situation in Syria and in Iran. Even if the "limited" action had led to a bigger operation, as was quite possible, it would still have been a small war with little effect on American national interests. A war with Iran is a very different matter.

As I have written many times before, a war with Iran would immediately lead to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a world-wide oil crisis, a global economic catastrophe with unimaginable consequences.

I repeat: there will be no American - and no Israeli - attack on Iran. Period.

ACTUALLY, OBAMA comes out of this crisis rather well.

His hesitation, which evoked so much contempt in Israel, does him credit. It is right to hesitate instead of rushing into war. In war, people get killed. Even a surgical strike can kill very many people. In laundered military language, it's called "collateral damage".

We should know. Years ago, Israel started a tiny little operation in Lebanon and unintentionally killed a lot of people in a UN refugee camp.

Also, Obama did use military force the way it should be used: not for fighting, if fighting can be avoided, but for giving weight to diplomatic pressure. The Russians would not have moved, and Assad would not have bent to their pressure, if there had not been the credible threat of an American military strike. Even Obama's decision to ask for congressional approval was right in this context. It provided the breathing space which made the Russian initiative possible.

Yes, the Russians are back in the Great Game. They will also play a role in the coming confrontation with Iran. They are just too big to ignore. And Vladimir Putin is too shrewd a player to allow himself be shoved aside.

For viewers with a literary bent, the interplay between Obama and Putin is fascinating – such different characters, such different motivations. Like the sword-wielding and the trident-wielding gladiators in the ancient Roman arena.

And the UN is back again, too. The good old UN, so inefficient, so weak, but so necessary in situations like these. God bless them.

BUT WHAT about Syria? What about the ongoing massacre, a.k.a. civil war? Will it go on forever? Can this crisis be turned around into a solution?

I think that it is possible.

Now that the US and Russia are not at loggerheads, and Iran is speaking with a much more reasonable voice (Thank you for your Rosh Hashana greetings) we might perhaps cautiously, very cautiously, think about a solution.

I can, for example, imagine a joint American-Russian initiative along the following lines:

Syria will be reorganized as a federal state, similar to Bosnia or Switzerland.

It will be composed of confessional cantons along existing lines: Sunni, Alawi, Kurdish, Druze etc.

Instead of the all-powerful president, there will be a collective or rotating presidency. That will solve the personal problem of Assad.

This is a solution everybody can live with. I don't see any other that can be adopted without much bloodshed. I don't think that one can go back to the status quo ante. The alternative to this solution is endless bloodshed and the breaking up of the state.

If anything like this solution is adopted, this crisis may yet bear valuable fruit.

It was a strange speech, in which the real news was left for last, popping out like a Jack-in-the-Box after 11 minutes of growls and snarls and Obama's bizarre whining about how unfair it is to be restrained from making war on people who have done you no harm. The president abruptly switched from absurd, lie-based justifications for war to his surprise announcement that, no, Syria's turn to endure Shock and Awe had been postponed. The reader suddenly realizes that the diplomatic developments had been hastily cut and pasted into the speech, probably only hours before. Obama had intended to build the case for smashing Assad to an imperial peroration -a laying down of the law from on high. But his handlers threw in the towel, for reasons both foreign and domestic. Temporarily defeated, Obama will be back on the Syria warpath as soon as the proper false flag operations can be arranged.

The president's roiling emotions, visible through his eyes, got in the way of his oratorical skills. But then, he didn't have much material to work with, just an endless string of prevarications and half-truths strung almost randomly together. Obama, who was reluctantly asking permission from Congress to violate the most fundamental tenets of international law - permission that Congress is not empowered to give -framed Syria as a rogue nation because it has not signed a treaty on chemical weapons like "98 percent of humanity." This makes Syria ripe for bombing. The president does not explain that Syria's neighbors, Israel and Egypt - both U.S. allies - have also not signed the treaty. He does not suggest bombing Tel Aviv or Cairo.

Obama claims that the U.S. has proof that "Assad's chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighborhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces." Not a shred of evidence has been presented to back up this narrative - which, under the circumstances, tends to prove it is fiction. On the other hand, there are credible reports (everybody's reports are more credible than the Americans), that rebels under U.S. allied control were told to prepare to go on the offensive following an American retaliation to a chemical attack that would be blamed on Assad's forces - a story whose logic conforms to what actually occurred and answers the common sense question, Who profits?

Obama will not for long accept diplomatic delays in his war schedule. On Tuesday night, he was already priming the public to accept Assad's guilt the next time chemical weapons explode in Syria. "If we fail to act," said the president, "the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons." American and allied secret services will gladly arrange a replay.

Early in the speech, Obama raised the specter that, because of Assad's mad chemical predilections, "our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield." Moreover, "If fighting spills beyond Syria's borders, these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel." At this point, the president was arguing for a punitive strike, and had taken on the persona of warlike Obama.

Near the end of the speech, Obama responds to those who want Assad "taken out" right away and permanently, rather than merely "degrading" his forces with calibrated strikes. Now speaking as the "moderate" Obama, the president makes the case that Assad has no "interest in escalation that would lead to his demise, and our ally, Israel, can defend itself with overwhelming force."

The two Obamas are matched with two corresponding Assads. One Assad is a menace to the whole neighborhood and to himself, while the other Assad knows who to mess with and takes no risks with his own survival.

It would seem logical that the latter Assad, who is not prone to suicidal actions, would not launch a chemical attack just a few miles away from United Nations inspectors that had just arrived in the country at his government's request.

The point here is not to argue with Obama's logic, but to show how inconsistent, opportunistic and, at times, incoherent his reasoning is. He has not the slightest interest in truth or simple logic, only in what sounds right in the immediate context. Obama mixes his personas, and those of his nemesis, at the drop of a hat, because he is shameless and absolutely cynical - as befits a mass murderer.

Barack Obama pretends to believe -at least I hope he's only pretending - that it was his idea to wait for a congressional debate before blasting Syria to smithereens. "So even though I possess the authority to order military strikes, I believed it was right in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security to take this debate to Congress." He didn't take the debate to Congress; the congressional detour was forced on the White House on August 31 when it became clear that Obama lacked both domestic and foreign support for a speedy strike. That was Obama's first big defeat. The second was a knockout, after Russia and Syria seized on Secretary of State John Kerry's "joke" about Assad giving up his chemical weapons, at which point Obama's handlers advised him that his political position was, for the time being, untenable. He arrived in front of the cameras shaken, angry, and humiliated - with a patched together script and a mouth full of crow.

The president who claimed that he could bomb the sovereign nation of Libya for seven months, overthrow its government and kill its president, without triggering the War Powers Act - and, further, that no state of war exists unless Americans are killed - told his Tuesday night audience that he opposes excessive presidential power. "This is especially true," said Obama, with a straight face, "after a decade that put more and more war - making power in the hands of the president and more and more burdens on the shoulders of our troops, while sidelining the people's representatives from the critical decisions about when we use force."

In truth, it was the likelihood of rejection by American "people's representatives" - just as British Prime Minister Cameron's war plans were rejected by Parliament - that derailed Obama.

It took more than 1,500 words before Obama acknowledged the existence of the real world, in which he was compelled to "postpone" a congressional vote on the use of force while the U.S., Russia, China, France and Britain work on a UN resolution "requiring Assad to give up his chemical weapons and to ultimately destroy them under international control." Syria has already agreed to the arrangement, in principle. Obama must bear, not only the bitter burden of defeat, but the humiliation of having to pretend that the UN route was his idea, all along.

Now that public pressure has foiled U.S. plans to bomb Syria, the next urgent step is to build public pressure for stopping the deluge of weapons into that country.

Top officials in Washington are happy that American "lethal aid" has begun to flow into Syria, and they act as though such arms shipments are unstoppable. In a similar way, just a few short weeks ago, they-and the conventional wisdom-insisted that U.S. missile strikes on Syria were imminent and inevitable.

But public opinion, when activated, can screw up the best-laid plans of war-makers. And political conditions are now ripe for cutting off the flow of weaponry to Syria-again giving new meaning to the adage that "when the people lead, the leaders will follow."

Contrary to what many assume, the latest polls show that a large majority of Americans are opposed to the U.S. government sending weapons to Syria. For instance, in a CNN/ORC survey taken September 6-8, a whopping 85 percent of people nationwide answered "not either side" when asked whether the United States "should take the side of the Syrian government, or take the side of the Syrian rebels, or not take either side."

A recent ABC News/Washington Post Poll-asking "Do you support or oppose the United States and its allies supplying weapons to the Syrian rebels?"-found that 70 percent "oppose."

The results of the new polling could hardly be clearer. The vast majority of Americans are opposed to the U.S. government doing what it's doing-sending weapons into Syria to fuel the flames of a horrific war.

Collectively-in much the same way people upended the conventional wisdom that President Obama was sure to fulfill his announced desire to launch missiles at Syria-we have a real chance to put a stopper in the pipelines bringing weapons and other military supplies to Syria. We must, again, challenge the calculus in Congress and disempower the war-crazed leaderships of both parties.

This is no longer just an idea-it's now a nationwide campaign. The launch came on Monday (September 16). That day, more than 15,000 people sent emails to their senators and representative in Congress urging them to stop the shipments of weapons to Syria.

Those emails told lawmakers: "As a constituent, I urge you to halt all 'lethal aid' in the Syrian conflict. The last thing Syria needs is more weapons, ammunition and other military supplies. The U.S. government and allies should stop sending lethal aid to rebels in Syria, while working for a reciprocal cutoff of all military assistance to the Syrian government by Russia and Iran."

(If you'd like to send that message to your senators and representative, as well as to President Obama, click here.)

This RootsAction.org campaign has begun in hopes that many other groups and individuals will take it up-demanding an end to supplying weapons for the Syria conflagration. As nationwide polling numbers show, most of the public already agrees with us. What remains is for a wide array of political activists to galvanize that agreement into a powerful political force, so we can overwhelm Congress on the weapons-to-Syria issue as just occurred on the bomb-Syria issue.

The United States has now joined with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other allies-directly supplying weaponry to an array of fighters against the Syrian government. That aid supplements the longtime U.S. role in helping several countries to airlift weapons and other military equipment to rebel forces.

"The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria," the Washington Post reported last week. Those shipments have combined with "separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear-a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria's civil war."

But as the RootsAction appeal points out, "Recent days have shown that diplomacy is possible to avert even more catastrophic events in Syria. Contrary to scoffers, Russia and the United States could help to quash the war flames instead of fueling them with more gasoline. By halting its own shipments of weapons into Syria and exerting pressure on its allies to do the same, the United States could induce Russia and its ally Iran to stop supplying the Syrian government with weapons-and to work for a ceasefire."