By SHAMUS COOKE - December 17, 2012

The Obama administration has already declared war on Syria, even if it isn’t “official” yet. Consider the facts...The U.S. now recognizes a group of Syrian exiles to be the official government of Syria; the U.S. is providing direct support for rebels attacking the government; the U.S. has coordinated with NATO to place advanced missile systems...on Syria’s border with Turkey; Obama has drawn a “red line” that, if Syria crosses, would result in U.S. direct military intervention. If any other country made similar moves toward the U.S., there would be no question that war had been declared.

They're merciless cutthroat murderers. They commit grotesque atrocities. Torture, beheadings, and other monstrous savagery are all in a day's work. They're Washington favorites. They're recruited, heavily armed, trained, funded and directed in all US regional wars. Ronald Reagan called earlier equivalents "freedom fighters." Some got White House visits.

By Joseph Kishore - WSWS

The United States and the major European powers this week have taken a number of steps to more directly intervene in the bloody sectarian civil war they have stoked in Syria, with the aim of bringing down the government of Bashar al-Assad...Syria — which has seen tens of thousands killed and faces economic catastrophe as a result of the US-backed operation — is now the latest in a long series of countries to face the prospect of American bombardment.

By Jacob Hornberger - Thursday, 13 December 2012

...[An] important factor [is]...the rendition-torture partnership that the U.S. government entered into several years ago with the Assad dictatorship. That’s the partnership in which U.S. officials kidnapped Canadian citizen Maher Arar and renditioned him to the Assad regime for the purpose of torture...When the brutal Assad dictatorship was in total control of the country and wasn’t threatened by a revolution, the U.S. government obviously had no reservations about working with it to torture people for the U.S. government.

By David Enders and Hannah Allam - Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Right after the United States formalized its backing of a new Syrian opposition group...the group’s leader openly criticized the United States for declaring the rebel movement’s Nusra Front a terrorist group linked to al Qaida in Iraq...Sheik Moaz al Khatib, head of the Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, asked the Obama administration to rethink its labeling of the Nusra Front, stressing that the militant faction was integral to the fight against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

By Bill Van Auken - WSWS

The formal significance of designating al-Nusra as a terrorist organization is that any US citizen providing it with assistance would be liable for criminal prosecution. It is highly unlikely that any charges will ever be brought...as the only Americans engaged in such activities are covert operatives of the US Central Intelligence Agency...The US has been directly involved in supporting and arming Al Qaeda elements...The State Department’s designation stands as a damning self-indictment. Washington...is exposed once again as the foremost state sponsor of terrorism.

Propaganda wars precede hot ones. Conflicts and other forms of violence are glorified in the name of peace. Doublespeak duplicity claim it. Wars are waged to prevent it.

Since conflict erupted last year, Washington, other NATO states, and regional allies recruited, armed, funded, trained and directed Syrian insurgents.

News from Syria is grim. Libya 2.0 looms. Fabricating a chemical weapons threat looks like pretext for full-scale war.

Washington planned war on Syria years ago. Only its timing and methodology remained to be decided. US administrations want all independent governments replaced by pro-Western puppet regimes. War is the bottom line option when other methods fail.

It's vital for anti-war activists to challenge what's too potentially catastrophic to tolerate. The risks are far too great to stay sidelined.

Citizens in the countries of the west...are of course caught up in “our” engagement with Syrian issues by their media, i.e. supplied with war propaganda so that they understand which side deserves “our” support and which side death. This pre-fixed partisanship selects the images and stories – always showing victims on the side of the rebels and the civilian population, and looking for perpetrators on the side of the regime. In this way, the reader is engrossed in the partisan perspective of the reporting.

By Bill Van Auken - WSWS

...Al Qaeda forces inside Syria are acting as US proxies in the war for regime-change. They have been armed to the teeth by the CIA and Washington’s Arab allies, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and unleashed in a brutal sectarian civil war aimed at destroying the country and creating the conditions for the imposition of a US puppet regime...The Syrian events, like the Libyan war before them, have served to expose the US “war on terrorism” as an utter fraud.

Citizens in the countries of the west, as is proper in democracies, are of course caught up in “our” engagement with Syrian issues by their media, i.e. supplied with war propaganda so that they understand which side deserves “our” support and which side death. This pre-fixed partisanship selects the images and stories – always showing victims on the side of the rebels and the civilian population, and looking for perpetrators on the side of the regime. In this way, the reader is engrossed in the partisan perspective of the reporting...

By Bill Van Auken - WSWS

One week after the reelection of President Barack Obama, the drumbeat for war against Syria has escalated sharply...Over the past two days, military threats have escalated on both Syria’s northern and southwestern borders, with Turkey threatening intervention and Israel repeatedly firing on Syrian forces...Simultaneously, Washington has plowed ahead with the sordid business of fabricating a new “sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”