With the attacks on Syrian civilians seemingly getting worse by the day, the United Nations Security Council took up a resolution that would back efforts by the Arab League to bring an end to the crackdown, an effort that collapsed in failure as both Russia and China exercised their veto power:

UNITED NATIONS — A United Nations Security Council effort to end the violence in Syria collapsed in acrimony and a veto by Russia and China on Saturday, hours after the Syrian military attacked the ravaged city of Homs in what opposition leaders described as the bloodiest government assault in the nearly 11-month-old uprising.

The Security Council voted 13 to 2 in favor of a resolution backing an Arab League peace plan for Syria, but the measure was blocked by Russia and China, which opposed what they saw as a potential violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

Pressure had mounted on the Security Council to act as Syrian opposition leaders said more than 200 people were killed in the attack in Homs, and the White House accused Syria of having “murdered hundreds of Syrian citizens, including women and children.”

While the casualties were impossible to confirm, and were denied by Syria, reports of the bloodshed drew widespread international condemnation, and moved the Security Council toward a vote on an Arab League peace plan, despite new objections by Russia.

President Obama condemned what he called “the Syrian government’s unspeakable assault against the people of Homs,” saying in a statement that President Bashar al-Assad “has no right to lead Syria, and has lost all legitimacy with his people and the international community.”

The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said, “The massacre in Homs is a crime against humanity, and those responsible will have to answer for it.”

Protests broke out Saturday at Syrian embassies around the world, including in Egypt, Germany, Greece and Kuwait, and Tunisia expelled Syria’s ambassador there.

Security Council members met Saturday morning to try to resolve disagreements with Russia, Syria’s main ally, which had promised to veto any resolution that could open the way to foreign military intervention or insist on Mr. Assad’s removal.

But the resolution’s sponsors pushed the measure to a vote anyway, virtually daring Russia to exercise its veto and risk mounting international opprobrium for preventing action to stanch the escalating death toll in Syria. In the end, both Russia and China exercised vetoes.

Russia’s last-minute changes appeared to be another attempt to create equivalency between the Syrian government and the armed elements in the opposition, including by removing all the wording that detailed human rights violations by the Assad government.

Arab and Western ambassadors said they had compromised enough to meet the demands of Russia and other skeptics. The resolution that was defeated said that the Council “fully supports” the Arab League plan, which calls for Mr. Assad to cede power to his vice president and a unity government to lead Syria to democratic elections. But specific references to Mr. Assad’s ceding power and calls for a voluntary arms embargo and sanctions had been deleted from the Security Council resolution, and language barring outside military intervention was added.

Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said that Moscow still had two objections to the latest revised resolution: that it did not place sufficient blame for the violence on the opposition, and that it unrealistically demanded that the government withdraw its military forces back to their barracks.

If nothing else, this vote makes it plain that international action of any kind in Syria is not going to be nearly as easy to pull of as the Libyan operation was. In that case, the U.S. was able to get Russia and China to abstain from voting rather than exercising their vetoes. That’s clearly not going to happen this time.

Of course, the other side of the equation is what should happen in Syria, or at least what the West should do. International intervention along the lines of what happened in Libya wouldn’t seem to be the answer, especially considering that the Syrians don’t seem to be using air power against civilians and rebelling military elements the way the Libyans did. Instead, they’re engaging in large scale urban warfare in the cities that have been sympathetic to the rebels. That’s likely to be far more difficult to combat from the air, and I seriously doubt that there’s any nation on Earth that would be willing to send ground troops into Syria at this point. Then there’s the unknown factor of how Syria’s terrorist allies in Lebanon might react to outside intervention in Syria. In the long run, the Assad regime is clearly doomed, the question is how long they’re going to be able to hang on and how much damage they’ll be able to do on the way down.

Rick Perry has apparently decided that he can’t wait for debates to say stupid things. So, he went on Fox Special Report to call for a no-fly zone in Syria.

Ben Armbruster (“Perry Calls For No-Fly Zone In Syria, Would Act Unilaterally Without U.N. Authorization“) has the transcript:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Would you do what we did in Libya which is institute a no-fly zone over Syria? If you were the president would you advocate that we do that in Syria?

PERRY: Absolutely. Absolutely. …

BILL KRISTOL: And you’d do that I suppose unilaterally without waiting for the U.N. to approve it?

PERRY: I would not spend a lot of time waiting for the U.N. I will tell you that my position on the U.N. is if they continue to go around as the Palestinian state tried to do. We need to sit down as a country and have a conversation about, is the continued funding of the United Nations in the best interest of America.

Armbruster seems to think ignoring the UN is the issue here. I’d say the fact that Assad is brutalizing the people with ground forces, not airplanes and helicopters, and that a no-fly zone wouldn’t hinder that one bit is the more problematic issue here.

Perry does go on to talk about the possibility of de-funding the UN, which is a different sort of stupid.

Among the explanations given for why the West intervened in Libya but has thus far stayed out of the far greater crisis in Syria has been the lack of regional support for action. That excuse appears to be nearing its expiration date.

As NATOSource reported earlier today, the Arab League has asked Britain and France to lead an international response. Deutsche Welle has details:

Britain and France have been approached by senior Arab League officials about taking the lead in a Libya-style contact group which would coordinate the next phases of action against President Bashar al-Assad, and plan for what many regard as his inevitable departure from power.

It is widely believed that the approach to Britain and France has considerable support within the Arab League with many states feeling that the Europeans’ proximity to the Middle East and their greater understanding of its complexities would make them better leaders of such a contact group than the United States. King Abdullah of Jordan presented the case to British Prime Minister David Cameron during talks on Tuesday.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe appeared to take France’s first steps toward assuming a leadership position by calling on the UN Security Council to take action against Syria after meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoglu, on Friday.

One senior Arab diplomatic source told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on Friday that Syria’s neighbors held too many different views to coordinate action effectively and that the West had to take the lead in formulating a robust international response should Syria collapse. “Leaving it all up to us, you are going to get a lot of shenanigans,” the source is quoted as saying. “If you need a team captain on this you have got to go to the West.”

Now, the report goes on to note,

[T]there appears to be little desire among Arab or Western states to push for any military involvement – at least at this stage.

“The intervention in Libya proved controversial in the Arab world as the limited initial UN mandate was far exceeded by NATO’s subsequent intervention,” [Dr. Kristian Ulrichsen, a Middle East and North Africa expert at the London School of Economics] said. “This placed its Arab supporters in a difficult position although subsequent developments allowed Qatar and the UAE to position themselves to play a major role in post-conflict reconstruction and recovery.”

Should the Syrian regime escalate its response by using air power against its own people, calls for a Libya-style no-fly zone to protect civilians may reach fever pitch among Arab nations. “And who would enforce a no-fly zone? It would be the UN or NATO,” the senior Arab diplomatic source was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.

Any military intervention in Syria could act as a catalyst for a wider conflagration in a volatile region already primed to explode, with al-Assad’s main ally Iran under increased pressure from the West over its nuclear program and under threat from an Israeli administration which appears to be preparing to take matters into its own hands.

Not only would Western-led intervention in a major Arab state threaten to plunge the Middle East into a wider regional conflict, it would also ratchet up the tensions between the West and Syria’s powerful allies in Russia.

Russia, a long-term supporter of the Syrian regime and one which maintains a naval base in the country, has already accused Western countries of inciting opposition to al-Assad’s rule, as well as condemning the Arab League’s decision to suspend Syria. Moscow, in tandem with China, also blocked a UN Security Council motion last month to bring sanctions against Syria.

It’s incredibly unlikely that Russia would intervene militarily on behalf of Syria. But, certainly, it’s unlikely to go along in with action in the Security Council, as it did by abstaining on the enabling resolution for Libya. And, given that there’s little appetite among Western publics for yet another war, the lack of a legitimating UN imprimatur may well be sufficient cover for refusing to act.

But the alternative choice appears to be to allow a full-scale civil war to break out, with massive civilian casualties sure to result. Hannah Allam for McClatchy:

“When you see what’s going on in Syria now, you see a civil war in the future,” said Rami Abdel Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “The Syrian regime keeps killing people and no one’s protecting these people. In the end, the people have to protect themselves.”

The United Nations says that pro-regime forces have killed more than 3,500 protesters since mid-March. Last weekend, the Arab League suspended Syria’s participation over the crackdown and has demanded that government forces stop their attacks on peaceful demonstrators by this weekend.

Analysts and activists, however, said those threats are empty and the Arab League’s proposal dead on arrival. Without a diplomatic miracle or foreign intervention, they said, Syria is on track for a bloody civil war with the potential for disastrous regional consequences.

Syria shares borders with five nations of strategic importance to U.S. interests in the region: Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

The Atlantic‘s Max Fisher argues, though, that Western choices are far harder than they were in Libya.

The biggest reason that Syria has looked so hopeless is that there’s little the outside world can do. The U.S. and European Union already had strong sanctions in place, and while the new sanctions are collapsing Syria’s economy, the regime only needs pennies on the dollar to keep sending tanks and helicopters against protesters. So the West can’t do much — except make it easier for other Middle Eastern states to follow the West and turn against Assad. Today’s Arab League condemnation is not immediately very meaningful — the Arab League has few real tools here except to call for United Nations Security Council action, and their statement insisted they won’t support intervention. Still, their turn against Assad — something that would have likely been impossible only a few years ago — suggests that Arab leaders are more responsive to public opinion, which has also turned sharply against Assad.

Even if the world still has few options for tipping the balance against Assad, regional and global leaders have clearly announced they won’t be helping Assad, either, something that’s unlikely to change with Arab public opinion so hostile toward the Syrian leader. Jordan’s king called on him to step down, Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud argued resignation was Assad’s only choice, and Turkey’s diplomats are getting so aggressive with Assad that they’ve suggested they might cut off electricity to the country. Even Iran, his most important ally, is allegedly meeting with Syrian opposition leaders (although the Iranian embassy in Syria denies this). Assad is all alone. This means that if his military turns against him or refuses orders to continue shooting civilians, his rule will collapse.

Assad’s backers in the government, the Syrian military, and in Syrian society must now all understand this new reality. That’s going to make them less likely to continue abetting the regime’s atrocities and more likely to jump ship. This is how an autocratic government collapse can be like a bank run: the more likely regime collapse looks, the greater incentive that supporters and officials have for defecting, which in turn increases the chance of collapse. This may be why military defections seem to be increasing, a process that could accelerate in the coming weeks.

There is little reason to believe that Assad or his military leadership, galvanized against surrender by hostile neighbors and the awful death of Muammar Qaddafi, will stop firing on protesters or that the world will intervene militarily in Syria. An intervention would require an Iraq-style ground invasion; unlike in Libya, where the desert geography made an air campaign relatively easy and low-risk, Syria’s fighting is mostly in dense urban areas. Senior military leaders are unlikely to attempt a coup as they must understand that their role in the crackdown so far means that neither protesters nor neighboring states would tolerate them in power. So the only foreseeable way for this conflict to end (other than an outright victory by Assad, which is sadly plausible) would be for mid- and low-level military defectors to lead an armed rebellion against the regime. And that’s beginning to happen.

So, things are coming to a head. The level of violence has reached a level that’s impossible to ignore, arguments for why the vaunted Responsibility to Protect doctrine don’t apply are wearing thin, and the regional powers that be are on the verge of asking the West to live up to its stated principles. And, unlike Libya, there’s a very real argument that American national interests are actually at stake here.

Yet everything else conspires against action. The West is in the midst of the greatest economic crisis in generations and cutting spending to the bone. A decade of fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have left all concerned weary of war and, in many cases, severely under resourced. Oh, and there are elections coming up in Italy, France, and the United States.

AP Photo

Despite efforts by the United States to dissuade them from doing so, the Palestinian Authority has formally requested that the United Nations recognize it as a state on the same day that both Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the General Assembly:

UNITED NATIONS —President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority formally requested the Security Council to grant full United Nations membership on Friday as a path toward Palestinian statehood, rejecting arguments by the United States and Israel that it was not a substitute for direct negotiations for peace in the Middle East.

Mr. Abbas was greeted by numerous standing ovations from the moment he approached the lectern to deliver his speech to the General Assembly. “I do not believe anyone with a shred of conscience can reject our application for full admission in the United Nations,” Mr. Abbas said, calling statehood “the realization of the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people.”

The largest and most sustained applause, along with cheers and whistles of approval, came as Mr. Abbas held up a copy of the letter requesting membership that he said he had handed to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon shortly before. “The time has come,” he said.

Less than an hour later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel took to the same lectern in “a hall that for too long has been place of darkness for my country” and said that he would not be seeking applause but rather speaking hard truths. “The truth is the Palestinians want a state without peace,” he said.

Mr. Netanyahu lashed out at the United Nations, whose prior actions against Israeli he described as “a theater of the absurd,” and challenged a comment by Mr. Abbas that the Palestinians were armed “only with their hopes and dreams.”

“Hopes, dreams — and 10,000 missiles and Grad rockets supplied by Iran,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

The request for Palestinian statehood on land occupied by Israel has become the dominant issue at this year’s General Assembly, refocusing global attention on one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

Both men used the occasion to summarize the history of the conflict from their own perspectives. Mr. Netanyahu, in his early remarks, reviewed the many occasions when the United Nations had issued resolutions against Israel, saying the country had been unjustly singled out for condemnation “more often than all the other nations combined.”

Mr. Abbas, in his 40-minute speech, said every previous peace effort had been “shattered on the rock” of Israeli settlements and cited what he said was the historical responsibility of the United Nations to solve the problem.

He described the West Bank as “the last occupation” in the world, one that showed no sign of ending. “It is neither possible nor practical nor acceptable to return to conducting business as usual,” he said.

Drawing a line between his statehood request and the revolutions that swept through the Arab world this spring, he said, “The time has come also for the Palestinian spring, the time for independence.”

The Security Council is likely to take up the issue in earnest next week, diplomats said, when the question becomes whether the United States and its allies can stall it.

Washington is also working to prevent the Palestinians from gathering the nine votes needed for it to pass in the full council and thus avoid further wrecking the image of the United States in the Middle East by casting yet another veto against something Arabs dearly want.

It’s difficult to see how this ends well unless the Israelis and the Palestinians decide to finally sit down and talk about a final resolution of this whole matter, which seems unlikely. If the application falls short in the Security Council, Palestinians are likely to see it as being the result of American intervention to block a majority vote in their favor. If it gets the nine votes required and then gets blocked by a U.S. veto, then the result will be the same. In either case, it strikes me that this has the potential to do serious damage to the long-held American position that we’re a neutral broker in the dispute. I’m not sure that’s ever been true given that our ties with Israel are well-known to the world, but this would make it certain and would likely make it difficult for any American President to approach the Palestinians under the guise of objectivity.

That’s not saying that I think it would be advisable for the U.S. to allow this statehood vote to succeed, of course. However you feel about the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, it’s fairly clear that unilateral action like this isn’t going to do anything but inflame tensions in an already tense part of the world. Furthermore, how can you really say that there is such as thing as a Palestinian state when there’s not even agreement on what the borders of that state are?

The 1947 Partition that created Israel, and would have created a Palestinian state had the Arab world not declared war on the new nation immediately, established borders but it did so in a context where there were no other nations in existence in the area under question. One can quibble about the way the borders were drawn from land that used to be the British Mandate of Palestine, but the situation then was far different from what exists now. Israel is a sovereign nation, and the land that would theoretically make up this Palestinian state is disputed. Creating a state before resolving these situations is idiotic, and only seems guaranteed to create more tension between the parties.

There are already signs of that happening. Palestinians began rallying in the West Bank when word spread that the application was going to be submitted before Abbas’s speech, and tensions in the area are high:

As the Palestinians seek United Nations membership in New York, the situation on the ground remains calm. But tensions lie just below the surface. Israel has stationed thousands more police officers in the West Bank armed with tear gas, noise machines and putrid liquid to stop possible marches on settlements.

The settlers themselves have no training in such crowd-control techniques, and they fear for their communities, some of which reject fences for ideological reasons, arguing that they live in their homeland and will not fence themselves in. So the risk of their using live fire against Palestinians who might try to march on their communities is quite real. In more remote outposts, wooden clubs have been distributed.

“They feel the world is with them, so why not make an innocent march?” asked Shimon Shomron, a former undercover commando who heads the rapid response team of Bat Ayin, a fenceless settlement near Bethlehem known for its radicalism. He stood on a ridge looking at the Palestinian town of Tzurif across the valley, an M-16 across his shoulder. “But they know we will not meet them with flowers.”

For much of the world, the very presence of more than 300,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank amounts to a kind of violent crime. They are holding land widely considered Palestinian by right, obstructing a two-state solution. And they are armed and protected by one of the world’s most powerful militaries.

But geopolitics aside, the question facing security forces — both Palestinian and Israeli — in the coming weeks and months is whether the relative quiet of the past few years is coming to an end. And a wild card in their calculations, they say, is the small group of radical, frightened settlers who have recently attacked both Palestinian villages and an Israeli military base.

“I consider this a major threat,” Police Chief Yohanan Danino, Israel’s national police chief, said recently of settler violence in announcing a new team of police officers aimed at tracking radical Jews. “Those events are liable to produce an escalation, and that is the last thing we need right now.”

All it takes is one little incident to set off a tinder box like the West Bank. The Arab Spring started when a fruit vendor in Tunisia set himself on fire in a public square because he was sick and tired of being harassed by the police. It’s not hard to imagine one confrontation between a settler and a group of Palestinians going badly and leading to something more widespread. Both sides are at fault in this dispute, and they both need to make the compromises necessary to get negotiations started, but I fear that Abbas’s foolish move is only going to make more conflict inevitable.

The status of the Palestinian statehood bid is still unknown, but President Obama used his speech to the General Assembly today to explain why the United States would, if necessary, exercise its Security Council veto to block the measures:

UNITED NATIONS — President Obama declared his opposition to the Palestinian Authority’s bid for statehood through the Security Council on Wednesday, throwing the weight of the United States directly in the path of the Arab democracy movement even as he hailed what he called the democratic aspirations that have taken hold throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

“Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N.,” Mr. Obama said, in an address before world leaders at the General Assembly. “If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now.”

Instead, Mr. Obama said, the international community should continue to push Israelis and Palestinians toward talks on the four intractable “final status” issues that have vexed peace negotiations since 1979: the borders of a Palestinian state, security for Israel, the status of Palestinian refugees who left or were forced to leave their homes in Israel, and the fate of Jerusalem, which both sides claim for their capital.

Less than an hour after Mr. Obama spoke, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France stood at the same podium in a sharp repudiation, calling for a General Assembly resolution that would upgrade the Palestinians to “observer status,” as a bridge towards statehood. “Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “Let us begin negotiations and adopt a precise timetable.”

For Mr. Obama, the challenge in crafting the much-anticipated General Assembly address on Wednesday was how to address the incongruities of the administration’s position: the president who committed himself to making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians a priority from Day One, who still has not been able to even get peace negotiations going after two and a half years; the president who opened the door to Palestinian state membership at the United Nations last year ending up threatening to veto that very membership; the president who was determined to get on the right side of Arab history ending up, in the views of many on the Arab street, on the wrong side of it on the Palestinian issue.

The Arab Spring quandary, in particular, has been enormously troublesome for Mr. Obama. White House officials say that he has long been keenly aware that he, like no other American president, stood as a potential beacon to the Arab street as the ultimate symbol of the hopes and rewards of democracy. But since he is the president of the United States, he has had to put American interests first.

So Mr. Obama’s entire 47-minute address appeared, at times, an effort to thread the needle meant to balance his efforts in support of democratic movements against his efforts to stand behind Israel, America’s foremost ally. From the moment he stepped behind the podium and began talking, everything he said seemed directed to one point. “Mr. President, Mr. Secretary-General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen: It is a great honor for me to be here today. I would like to talk to you about a subject that is at the heart of the United Nations—the pursuit of peace in an imperfect world.”

Mr. Obama called this year “a time of transformation.” This year alone, he said, “more individuals are claiming their universal right to live in freedom and dignity.”

He hailed the democratic movements in the Ivory Coast, in Tunisia, in South Sudan. Of Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak fell after 30 years, Mr. Obama said, “we saw in those protesters the moral force of non-violence that has lit the world from Delhi to Warsaw; from Selma to South Arica—and we knew that change had come to Egypt and to the Arab world.”

He hailed the Libyan toppling of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and threw his weight behind the protesters in Syria.

But, he said, Palestinians must make peace with Israel before gaining statehood themselves. Both Israelis and Palestinians, he said, have legitimate grievances that should be addressed. “The deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes,” Mr. Obama said. And he issued an oblique challenge to the United Nations itself as an institution which has long been accused of being anti-Israel.

“This body, founded, as it was, out of the ashes of war and genocide; dedicated, as it is, to the dignity of every person, must recognize the reality that is lived by both the Palestinians and the Israelis,” Mr. Obama said. “We will only succeed in that effort if we can encourage the parties to sit down together, to listen to each other, and to understand each other’s hopes and fears. That is the project to which America is committed, and that is what the United Nations should be focused on in the weeks and months to come.”

Several times as Mr. Obama spoke, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, seated in the room, put his forehead in one hand. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, whose relationship with Mr. Obama has often been tense, expressed appreciation after the speech, calling it a “badge of honor” when both leaders met later in the day.

According to some reports this morning, the Palestinians are only two votes short of the majority that would require the United States to exercise its veto, and it’s fairly clear that the President would prefer not to have to do that. If that happens, then whatever good will the Untied States has left in the Middle East will likely be shot and the Islamists and Iranians will be handed a propaganda victory that they will no doubt exploit to distract the masses in their countries from the social problems that have led to nearly a year of protests and revolution. The reaction in the territories is likely to be negative as well, and that could lead another round of conflict with Israel that will set the peace process back even further. Thus, it appears that the current strategy in New York is to get the Palestinians to withdraw the request or accept something lesser, such as an enhanced Observer Status in the General Assembly.

At this point, though, one wonders if a delay or compromise will just make the situation worse.  The U.S. has taken a public role in trying to block the Palestinian resolution and that became even more public with the President’s speech today. The fact that the U.S. position happens to be correct here is irrelevant, because its the propaganda that it will create in the Arab world that will be the cause of problems in the future. On the Palestinian side, Abbas has led his people down the primrose path with a statehood resolution that really isn’t going to create a state, and will do nothing to solve the massively complex border issues that need to be negotiated with Israel. If he returns home with something less, one wonders if that will cause him to lose credibility at the expense of those who prefer a more radical and violent approach. Whatever one thinks about the Israeli/Palestinian issue, this statehood resolution is a foolish and dangerous move.

It’s General Assembly time again in New York City and, along with the ongoing controversy over the Palestinian statehood bid, that means a return visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahdmedinejad, who never ceases to find something offensive or idiotic to say when he addresses the world body. This year, though, there’s a Presidential election going on and one Presidential candidate wants him barred from the country:

DES MOINES – Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann on Tuesday called on President Obama to block Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from speaking at the United Nations – a violation of long-standing international treaty obligations.

At a campaign appearance here, Bachmann called the Iranian leader an enemy of Israel and said he should be barred from this week’s meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

“He has proven he is in violation of the United Nations charter and of international law,” Bachmann declared. “Since he is, in the most literal sense, an outlaw, he should not be allowed in the United States of America.”

Iran’s hostility to Israel has caused controversy before. In 2009, some diplomats walked out of Ahmedinejad’s speech to the U.N. because of its virulent anti-Semitism. Bachmann’s forceful declaration may be politically savvy at a time when Republicans are trying to take advantage of some Jewish voters’ apparent disaffection with Mr. Obama’s Middle East policies.

But under the treaty that established world’s international peacekeeping body, what she’s asking would be illegal. The 18-acre site on the east side of Manhattan that is occupied by the United Nations headquarters is international territory. Because of that, the United States is obligated to allow access for leaders of the body’s 193 member nations.

But, what’s a treaty when there are political points to be scored?

Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, says today that he plans to go ahead with plans to ask the United Nations Security Council to approve the existence of a Palestinian State:

JERUSALEM — The Palestinian president announced Friday that he would seek membership for a Palestinian state at the United Nations Security Council next week, a move strongly opposed by Israel and the United States that adds significant tension to one of the most intractable conflicts in the Middle East.

The move by the president, Mahmoud Abbas, constitutes a new Palestinian strategy 20 years after the start of peace negotiations with Israel, which have failed to produce an agreement. It confirmed an approach that frustrated Palestinian officials have been moving toward for months.

American, Israeli and European diplomats have struggled to dissuade Mr. Abbas and his aides from taking such a step, and his decision to proceed anyway represents what could become a foreign policy debacle for the Obama administration.

“We need to have full membership at the U.N.,” Mr. Abbas said in his announcement during a speech at his headquarters in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, broadcast live on Al Jazeera and other outlets. “We need a state, a seat at the United Nations.”

He added: “We are going to the Security Council,” as Palestinian dignitaries gave him a rousing applause and standing ovation. Mr. Abbas called it “our decision, which we have conveyed to everyone.”

The United States has said it will use its veto at the Security Council to stop any Palestinian statehood bid, adhering to the American-Israeli view that the only way to achieve peace is through direct talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. Each side maintains that the other presents the obstacles to negotiations.

The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel issued a brief statement after the speech, saying “Peace will not be achieved by a unilateral approach to the United Nations.”

John Cole worries that the inevitable American veto will set the stage for another round of disaster in the Middle East. Sadly, this may end up being true, although much of Gaza and West Bank is arguably on a such a tinderbox right now that it wouldn’t take much for another round of protests and bombings to start, which will of course be responded to by Israel with more crackdowns.

But, what other option is there?

Even if you agree that Palestinian statehood is both inevitable and necessary, a unilateral action like this, with little more than the grudging support of the United Nations, doesn’t strike me as being much of a positive development. Israel isn’t going to accept it, and without a resolution of borders and questions about the status of Jerusalem it’s not going to accomplish much of anything other than reinforcing the Israeli perception that they are standing alone against the world. I tend to agree that the current Israeli government has been needlessly intransigent in dealing with the Palestinians, but then so have the Palestinians. Half of the territory that would make up this Palestinian State is currently controlled by an organization that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist and has launched acts of terror against it. I can’t say I blame Israel for refusing to negotiate with them until they repudiate both of these positions. In fact, that’s exactly what the PLO had to do before Israel sat down and came up with the first real agreements between the parties 20 years ago. If Hamas cares about governing rather than killing Jews, they can do the same.

It’s also worth noting a little bit of history. The United Nations Resolution that led to the creation of Israel was  only the beginning of the process. Rather than accept the U.N.’s partition plan, which created a Jewish and a Palestinian State and made Jerusalem an International City, the Arab world decided to make war against the Jewish state. It was only after an eight month long war that the issue was resolved, and even that didn’t end the cycle of war that continued for another twenty years. The point? U.N. resolutions recognizing a new state aren’t going to accomplish anything unless all of the issues that statehood implicates are resolved beforehand.

I’m not going to pretend to know the answer to this solving this conflict, but I’m pretty sure that unilateral action by the United Nations isn’t it.

The Syrian government is continuing its brutal crackdown on civilians amid internati0nal condemnation, but there may not be much the world can do about it:

Ignoring mounting condemnations, the Syrian military deployed tanks, armored vehicles and snipers Wednesday into the symbolic center of Hama, a rebellious city that has emerged as a linchpin of the nearly five-month uprising, in what appeared a decisive step by President Bashar al-Assad to crush opposition to his rule.

The military’s assault on Assi Square, the scene of some of the biggest demonstrations against Mr. Assad’s leadership, marked a moment that many activists and residents had thought impossible: The government’s determination to retake by force a city that suffered one of the most brutal crackdowns in Syrian history in 1982.

But the government, whose calculations continue to mystify its own people and run the risk of invigorating the uprising, seemed to view the momentum of demonstrations there that numbered in the hundreds of thousands last month as a threat to its survival. The critical mass of the uprising there has spread to Deir al-Zour in restive eastern Syria, and together, the locales represent two of Syria’s five largest cities.

“The regime wants to finish with Hama as soon as possible,” said Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut.

Activists and residents in Hama said the city was under nearly continuous gunfire since the early hours of the day, with the tanks heading toward Assi Square before dawn. Amid scenes of confusion, they reported many casualties, adding to the toll since Sunday of more than 100 people, by activists’ count. They said some residents had tried to stop the advancing armored columns with barricades, many of them built of furniture, iron railing, rocks and cinderblocks, but stood little chance against the military’s might.

“The army is now stationed in Assi Square,” read a post on the Syrian Revolution Facebook page. “The heroic youths of Hama are confronting them.”

The government’s calculus — tentative efforts at reform made meaningless by a relentless escalation of violence – has plunged Syria into its deepest international isolation in decades. A crackdown that has killed more than 1,500 people, according to the United Nations, citing human rights groups, has given more resilience and fervor to an uprising that, for weeks, managed to turn out protests only in the thousands.

That the assault came during Ramadan, a holy, usually festive month on the Muslim calendar when the observant fast from dawn to dusk, made the violence even more egregious in the view of the Syria government’s critics. The government appeared to fear vows by the opposition to escalate the uprising, taking advantage of crowds that assembled in mosques for nightly prayers.

“Hama is under the fire for three days in this holy month of Ramadan,” said an opposition leader in Damascus, who asked not to be named. “Syrians are still in shock and they will wake up and protest against the Assad regime. No one can imagine that people there cannot find bread to eat, water to drink and electricity when it’s so hot.”

The latest international pressure on the Assad regime came today in the form of a United Nations Security Council condemnation of the regime’s actions. However, the condemnation contains no sanctions, calls for further action, or instructions to member nations to begin considering economic sanctions or changes in diplomatic action. No doubt, this is due in large part to the influence of Russia and China on the Council, neither of whom seem eager to back the kind of actions against Syria that they were willing to allow go forward against Libya. More importantly, though, it’s fairly clear that the options for the international community are far more limited this time around:

Syrians aren’t holding their collective breath. “We can’t really expect much from the international community,” says Jabri, and most Syrians are wary of external involvement in their struggle. The fractious opposition — which is only loosely connected to the street protesters, in many cases — is concentrating its efforts instead on building consensus and proving to Syrians that it is a viable alternative to Assad, a task made all the more difficult by the reality that until recently, as Jabri puts it, “no two Syrians could get together and talk about politics without ending up in jail.” New meetings are being planned both within Syria and abroad, possibly in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

(….)

Few analysts think words will do much to damage the deeply entrenched Syrian regime, and some, like the Century Foundation’s Michael Hanna, worry that Assad could limp on far longer than anyone expects. Nor would multilateral sanctions, even if they do somehow pass the Security Council, have an immediate effect. “It’s unlikely that, short of massive defections within the security services at an elite level, outside pressure is going to change the calculus of the inner circle of the regime,” says Hanna. Instead of being toppled, he cautions, Assad could become another international pariah, like Saddam Hussein or the Burmese junta.

The Obama Administration has said more than once already that Assad is “on his way out” and that he’s lost legitimacy, but these words are fairly meaningless if events on the ground don’t precipitate a collapse of the Assad regime. Furthermore if there’s one thing that our misadventure in Libya has taught us, it is that predictions about when a dictator determined to fight to the last man will finally fall are easy to make, but unlikely to be accurate. According to most of the predictions that were made in March of this year, Qaddaffi should have been long gone by now. Instead, despite occasional signs of gains by the opposition and continued NATO bombardment, he clings stubbornly to power.

More broadly, though, I don’t think there’s much the West is going to be able to do in Syria because everybody knows that there’s a line that we’ll never be willing to cross:

Threats of military action against Syria aren’t going to have any credibility, because Assad and everyone else will understand them to be empty threats. France has ruled out military intervention in Syria, it is hard to imagine that Turkey will have any interest in hastening Syria’s collapse (which is what military action would accomplish), and there is no appetite in the U.S. for a fourth war in a predominantly Muslim country. Britain’s military is badly overstretched as it is, Libya has badly dented the government’s credibility at home, and there will be little enthusiasm for another campaign so soon. There will certainly be no appeal from the Arab League. Members of the Security Council may be willing to discuss Syria in the future, but authorizing military action will be out of the question for those members that see how the Libyan intervention has evolved in ways they don’t like. That will remain the case whether or not Gaddafi falls from power.

None of this is to say that I am advocating military intervention in Syria of any kind. For one thing, the Syrian opposition has said they don’t want it, and that’s fine with me. For another, the idea of international intervention in a nation so close to the powder keg of the Middle East is, quite simply, insane. I hate to say it, but it’s true, the people are Syria are, for the most part, on their own.

According to The New York Times, Libyan rebels are being accused of attacking civilians in several captured towns:

Rebels in the mountains in Libya’s west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month from the forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, part of a series of abuses and apparent reprisals against suspected loyalists that have chased residents of these towns away, Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.

The looting included many businesses and at least two medical centers that, like the towns, are now deserted and bare.

Rebel fighters also beat people suspected of being loyalists and burned their homes, the organization said.

The towns that have suffered the abuses are Qawalish, which rebels seized last week, Awaniya, Rayaniyah and Zawiyat al-Bagul, which fell to the rebels last month. Some of the abuses, Human Rights Watch said, were directed against members of the Mashaashia tribe, which has long supported Colonel Qaddafi.

The organization’s findings come as support for the war has waned in Europe and in Washington, where Republicans and Democrats alike have questioned American participation on budgetary and legal grounds.

They also raise the prospect that the NATO-backed rebel advances, which have stalled or slowed to a crawl, risk being accompanied by further retaliatory crimes that could inflame tribal or factional grievances, endangering the civilians that NATO was mandated to protect.

Rebel officials in the mountains have played down the looting and arson in recent days. In an interview on Sunday, Col. Mukhtar Farnana, the region’s senior commander, said that reprisals were not sanctioned and that he did not know any details about them.

But Human Rights Watch said the same commander shared details with its investigators and conceded that rebels had abused people suspected of being collaborators as towns changed hands.

“People who stayed in the towns were working with the army,” the organization quoted him as saying. “Houses that were robbed and broken into were ones that the army had used, including for ammunition storage.” The commander added, “Those people who were beaten were working for Qaddafi’s brigades.”

This isn’t the first time there have been rumors of attacks on civilians by the rebels, so this shouldn’t be a surprise. Considering that the United Nations Security Council Resolutions that authorized the intervention in Libya speak to protection of civilians, this would seem to create a conflict between NATO’s support of the rebels and its supposed enforcement of the UNSCRs.

The New York Times engages in a bit of editorializing with the headline “Mexican Citizen Is Executed as Justices Refuse to Step In.” The better editorial headline would be “Supreme Court Declines to Stay Execution of Convicted Murdering Child Rapist Over Technicality.”

In a 5-to-4 decision that split along ideological lines, the Supreme Court on Thursday evening rebuffed a request from the Obama administration that it stay the execution of a Mexican citizen on death row in Texas. The inmate, Humberto Leal Garcia Jr., was executed about an hour later.

So, why was the administration intervening in a state murder case?

The administration had asked the court to delay the execution so that Congress might consider recently introduced legislation that would provide fresh hearings on whether the rights of Mr. Leal and about 50 other Mexican citizens on death row in the United States had been violated.

Fair enough. We certainly don’t want to execute innocent men.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague found that the inmates had been denied their rights under the Vienna Convention. The convention requires that foreigners detained abroad be told they may contact consular officials.

In 2008, the Supreme Court acknowledged that the international court’s ruling was binding but said that the president acting alone could not compel states to comply with it. Congress also had to act, the court said.

On Thursday, in an unsigned majority opinion, the Supreme Court said that Congress had had plenty of time to act and that the court would not now “prohibit a state from carrying out a lawful judgment in light of unenacted legislation.”

“Our task,” the majority wrote, “is to rule on what the law is, not what it might eventually be.”

The majority also noted that “the United States studiously refuses to argue that Leal was prejudiced by the Vienna Convention violation,” suggesting that a fresh hearing would do Mr. Leal no good. He was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing a 16-year-old girl.

“We decline,” the majority wrote, “to follow the United States’ suggestion of granting a stay to allow Leal to bring a claim based on hypothetical legislation when it cannot even bring itself to say that his attempt to overturn his conviction has any prospect of success.”

So . . . nobody is arguing that Leal is innocent? Or that he was denied due process under American law for a horrendous crime committed in the United States? Not Leal:

In the death chamber, Leal said he admitted responsibility for the crimes. “I have hurt a lot of people. … I take full blame for everything. I am sorry for what I did,” he said. “Let this be final and be done.”

Some quick background, gleaned from Wikipedia, BBC, and other readily available online sources: Leal was born in Mexico but “came to the USA as a child.”

In 1994 Leal kidnapped, raped, and murdered 16 year old girl Adria Sauceda. Official court documents state “There was a 30- to 40-pound asphalt rock roughly twice the size of the victim’s skull lying partially on the victim’s left arm; Blood was underneath this rock. A smaller rock with blood on it was located near the victim’s right thigh.” There was also a 15 inches (380 mm) stick extending out of her vagina, with a screw at the end.

He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995. That is, 16 years ago.

Subsequent to his conviction, he learned that, under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963, he had a right to inform the Mexican consulate of his arrest and for them to offer him representation. He had never been informed of that right. He filed an appeal in 1998 on that basis–subsequent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upholding his sentence earlier that year.

Finally, in 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled [in Avena and Other Mexican Nationals (Mexico v. United States of America)] that Leal and about 50 others had indeed had their rights violated. In 2008, the US Supreme Court declared that ruling binding (the US is a signatory to the Vienna Convention) but that the enforcement mechanism specified in the treaty was for Congress to pass legislation.

This had not happened three years later and there is a greater likelihood that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will vote to restore a 90 percent top marginal rate and then announcing that they are going to get gay married than there is of Congress passing legislation to free a murdering child rapist on a flimsy technicality that has zero bearing on his conviction.

Still, it’s worth noting that the Obama administration is following the lead of the Bush administration on this one. BBC again:

US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli wrote in the brief that the execution would have “serious repercussions for United States foreign relations, law enforcement and other co-operation with Mexico, and the ability of American citizens travelling abroad to have the benefits of consular assistance in the event of detention”.

The Obama administration had wanted a delay to allow Congress to consider legislation covering foreign nationals who were not given proper consular access before being tried for crimes that carry the death penalty.

The Mexican government said prior to the execution that the nation regarded it as a violation of international law. “This is about the right that each person has under the Vienna Convention to be able to enjoy the support of their country of origin when they face criminal proceedings in a foreign country,” the Mexican Foreign Ministry said.

Leal is one of 51 Mexican nationals on death row who were the focus of a 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ said that their convictions should be reviewed because they were denied consular access.

President George W Bush told Texas officials they should comply with the ICJ order but the Supreme Court ruled that he had overstepped his authority.

As readers may have gathered by this point, I’m not sympathetic to Leal’s plight here and agree with the Supreme Court’s denial of stay here. Leal was not some hapless tourist arrested in a strange land and railroaded through a system he had no way of understanding; he’d lived in the United States since moving with his family as a 2-year-old. He was 20 or 21 when he committed his horrific crime.

Additionally, here is the implementation order in the ruling from the ICJ:

- unanimously finds that, should Mexican nationals nonetheless be sentenced to severe penalties, without their rights under Article 36, paragraph 1 (b), of the Convention having been respected, the United States of America shall provide, by means of its own choosing, review and reconsideration of the conviction and sentence, so as to allow full weight to be given to the violation of the rights set forth in the Convention, taking account of paragraphs 138 to 141 of this Judgment.”

Two presidential administrations have reviewed the case and the Supreme Court has had two bites at it.

As to the matter of “”serious repercussions for United States foreign relations, law enforcement and other co-operation with Mexico, and the ability of American citizens travelling abroad to have the benefits of consular assistance in the event of detention,” I consider it a serious issue. But it’s largely mitigated by the ICJ finding in question:

Finally, with regard to Mexico’s request for the cessation of wrongful acts by the United States, the Court finds no evidence of a “regular and continuing” pattern of breaches by the United States of Article 36 of the Vienna Convention.  And as to its request for guarantees and assurances of non‑repetition the Court recognizes the United States efforts to encourage implementation of its obligations under the Vienna Convention and considers that that commitment by the United States meets Mexico’s request.

We are in fact dealing with a minor technical breach with no impact. Leal was, for all intents and purposes, an American, having spent every day of his life that he could be expected to remember living in the United States. There’s no allegation that he was denied legal representation, merely representation from a country of whom he was only technically a citizen. Nor is there allegation that he was not read his Miranda rights in Spanish. Nor was he denied any due process rights but a technical one under a treaty:

For 16 years, Leal has exercised his right to file appeals and motions so extensively, one judge in federal district court called his case “one of the most procedurally convoluted and complex habeas corpus proceedings” he ever reviewed.

Given this background, the Obama administration’s plea for more time rings hollow.

Photo: Urban Christian News

Sometimes, you just can’t make stuff like this up:

In the latest ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ news from the United Nations, North Korea assumed the presidency of the Conference on Disarmament Tuesday.

“Bare months after the U.N. finally suspended Libya’s Col. Muammar Qaddafi from its Human Rights Council, North Korea wins the propaganda coup of heading the world’s disarmament agency,” the executive director of UN Watch Hillel Neuer said in a statement protesting the move. “It’s asking the fox to guard the chickens, and damages the U.N.’s credibility.”

According to the U.N. summary of the meeting, North Korea’s So Se Pyong addressed the 65-member arms control forum, saying that “he was very much committed to the Conference and during his presidency he welcomed any sort of constructive proposals that strengthened the work and credibility of the body.”

Neuer said that though North Korea’s new role as head of the conference, which reports to the U.N. General Assembly, would likely be justified by the U.N. by saying it was the result of a an “automatic rotation,” such an excuse was not sufficient.

“While the U.N. will likely defend North Korea’s appointment as simply an automatic rotation,” he said, “no system should tolerate such a fundamental conflict of interests. It’s common sense that a disarmament body should not be headed by the world’s arch-villain on illegal weapons and nuclear proliferation, notorious for exporting missiles and nuclear know-how to fellow rogue regimes around the globe.”

If you needed any additional evidence of the irrelevance of the United Nations, this would be it:

The brutal crackdown by Syrian President Bashar Assad may finally be getting the attention of world leaders — but apparently not enough to stop Syria from becoming the newest member of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

And despite calling for an independent investigation into the crackdown, which has left hundreds dead, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon apparently won’t do much about blocking Syria’s path to the human rights group.

“That’s not really for the secretary general to suggest to a member state,”  said Martin Nesirky, a spokesman for the secretary-general, when asked if the U.N. chief would ask Syria to drop out of the running for the post. When asked if Ban had brought up the point during his telephone conversation April 9 with Assad, Nesirsky told Fox News, “that’s not really something the secretary general would raise specifically, because it’s for other member states to decide on the membership of the Human Rights Council.”

(…)

A State Department spokesman last week said the U.S. would oppose Syria’s bid to the Human Rights Council, calling it “inappropriate and hypocritical.” But it would seem Syria is virtually guaranteed a seat, having been selected as one of four candidates for the Asian bloc.

While no Asian state is known to be looking to challenge Syria, Rupert Colville, the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, told Fox News that, “clearly it’s an issue being discussed among the States and obviously depends on whether other countries in the Asian group put themselves up as a candidate.”

Perhaps the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is available.

CAIRO, April 10 (Reuters) – The Arab League called on the United Nations on Sunday to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza and lift an Israeli siege of the territory after a flare-up of violence that is stoking fears of a wider escalation.

The death toll since Israel launched retaliation for an attack on a school bus that critically wounded a teenager on Thursday has climbed to 19 Palestinian militants and civilians. [ID:nLDE73901M]

Condemning what it called Israel’s “brutal” aggression in Gaza, a gathering of the Arab League’s permanent delegates chaired by Oman called on the U.N. to convene its Security Council.

The meeting would “consider the Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip on an urgent basis to stop its siege and impose a no-fly rule on the Israeli military to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip,” the Arab League said in a statement.

This has little or no chance of being taken up by the UN, but still it’s likely to make Israel just a little upset to say the least.

The conflict between the stated desire to see Muammar Gaddafi removed from power and the actual authority granted by UNSCR 1973 is becoming readily apparent:

WASHINGTON — Members of the NATO alliance have sternly warned the rebels in Libya not to attack civilians as they push against the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, according to senior military and government officials.

As NATO takes over control of airstrikes in Libya and the Obama administration considers new steps to tip the balance of power there, the coalition has told the rebels that the fog of war will not shield them from possible bombardment by NATO planes and missiles, just as the regime’s forces have been punished.

“We’ve been conveying a message to the rebels that we will be compelled to defend civilians, whether pro-Qaddafi or pro-opposition,” said a senior Obama administration official. “We are working very hard behind the scenes with the rebels so we don’t confront a situation where we face a decision to strike the rebels to defend civilians.”

The warnings, and intense consultations within the NATO-led coalition over its rules for attacking anyone who endangers innocent civilians, come at a time when the civil war in Libya is becoming ever more chaotic, and the battle lines ever less distinct. They raise a fundamental question that the military is now grappling with: Who in Libya is a civilian?

In the early days of the campaign, the civilian population needing protection was hunkered down in cities like Benghazi, behind a thin line of rebel defenders who were easily distinguishable from the attacking government forces.

That is no longer always the case. Armed rebels — some in fairly well-organized militias, others merely young men who have picked up rifles to fight alongside them — have moved out of Benghazi in an effort to take control of other population centers along the way, they hope, to seizing Tripoli.

Meanwhile, fresh intelligence this week showed that Libyan government forces were supplying assault rifles to civilians in the town of Surt, which is populated largely by Qaddafi loyalists. These civilian Qaddafi sympathizers were seenchasing rebel forces in nonmilitary vehicles like sedans and trucks, accompanied by Libyan troops, according to American military officers.

The increasing murkiness of the battlefield, as the freewheeling rebels advance and retreat and as fighters from both sides mingle among civilians, has prompted NATO members to issue new “rules of engagement” spelling out when the coalition may attack units on the ground in the name of protecting civilians.

It was unclear how the rules are changing — especially on the critical questions surrounding NATO’s mandate and whether it extends to protecting rebels who are no longer simply defending civilian populated areas like Benghazi, but are instead are themselves on the offensive.

“This is a challenge,” said a senior alliance military officer. “The problem of discriminating between combatant and civilian is never easy, and it is compounded when you have Libyan regime forces fighting irregular forces, like the rebel militias, in urban areas populated by civilians.”

The challenge would seem to only become greater if the rebels do manage to return to the outskirts of Surt, or even to Tripoli itself. At that point, we’ll likely be dealing with an urban war not unlike Somalia and it would be exceedingly unclear exactly who it is we’re supposed to be protecting. This has the potential to get much more difficult, and much messier.

Reuters is reporting that the U.S. is now going to start arming the Libyan rebels:

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Obama signed the order, known as a presidential “finding”, within the last two or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the matter.

A few thoughts here.

First of  all, this “secret” order isn’t really a secret anymore, which makes one wonder who may have leaked it. There may be more dissension within the Administration over Libya than we’ve been led to beleive.

Second, this would seem to directly contradict the policy that the President announced in his speech on Monday.

Third, any action to arm the rebels would seem to clearly violate the arms embargo established in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 (PDF), and strengthened in UNSCR 1973 (PDF).