Alex Lantier and Joseph Kishore

Behind the panoply of lies, the Obama administration, abetted by the entire political establishment and the media, wants a military solution. The discussion now about a UN resolution has perhaps temporarily delayed, but has in no way ended the threat of war.

President Barack Obama spoke on national television last night, presenting to the American people the latest diplomatic tack in his administration’s drive for war with Syria. His rambling 15-minute address notably did not ask Congress to authorize war. Rather, it sought to develop UN negotiations emerging from a Russian-Syrian offer to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons as a political framework for launching a war, in defiance of international law and mass popular opposition in the United States.

Without providing a scintilla of probative evidence, Obama repeated claims that the Syrian government of Bashar Al-Assad was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on August 21. Obama tried to bolster this assertion with various unsubstantiated assertions, combined with lurid images of the victims of the attack.

Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)

President Bashar al-Assad gave an interview to American CBS news. Following is the full text of the interview:

Charlie Rose: Mr. President thank you very much for this opportunity to talk to you at a very important moment because the President of the United States will address the nation this week and, as you know an important conversation is taking place in Washington and important things are happening here in your country. Do you expect an airstrike?

President al-Assad: As long as the United States doesn’t obey the international law and trample over the Charter of the United Nations we have to worry that any administration – not only this one – would do anything. According to the lies that we’ve been hearing for the last two weeks from high-ranking officials in the US administration we have to expect the worst.

Charlie Rose: Are you prepared?

President al-Assad: We’ve been living in difficult circumstances for the last two years and a half, and we prepare ourselves for every possibility. But that doesn’t mean if you’re prepared things will be better; it’s going to get worse with any foolish strike or stupid war.

Charlie Rose: What do you mean worse?

President al-Assad: Worse because of the repercussions because nobody can tell you the repercussions of the first strike. We’re talking about one region, bigger regions, not only about Syria. This interlinked region, this intermingled, interlocked, whatever you want to call it; if you strike somewhere, you have to expect the repercussions somewhere else in different forms in ways you don’t expect.