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Syrian War Shapes Trip by Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
(New York Times) Thom Shanker - The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, opened a weeklong visit to the Middle East on Monday for discussions on potential additions of American support to Israel and Jordan, which are both facing border-security challenges from the conflict in neighboring Syria. The Pentagon already has deployed air-defense missile batteries in Jordan, along with crewed F-16s to train alongside the Jordanian Air Force in patrolling Jordan's border and airspace. A few hundred American military planners, including communications experts and logisticians, also are in Jordan. Dempsey noted that the U.S. has benefited from local intelligence efforts tracking Syrian chemical weapons. "Probably the single point of greatest collaboration with Israel, Jordan and the United States is in identifying the potential chemical threat, its location, trying to determine the intentions of the Syrian regime." Dempsey described expanding American efforts to identify and assist moderate elements of the rebel movement. "I am very concerned about the radical element of the opposition, and I am concerned about the potential that extremist ideologies will hijack what started out to be a popular movement to overthrow an oppressive regime." He added, "The issues that are fueling the conflict in Syria will not be resolved in the short term, even if the Assad regime were to fail tomorrow....This is a regional conflict that stretches from Beirut to Damascus to Baghdad," he said. "It is 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."