It should be obvious to all that Obama is angling for a strategic withdrawal from the mideast. But in the name of credibility he has to do it slowly

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/bl...p/rubin/314151

From news article:

The State Department has dispatched a high-level diplomatic and trade mission to Syria, according to senior U.S. officials, marking the latest bid by the Obama administration to woo President Bashar al-Assad away from his strategic alliance with Iran. The U.S. delegation comprises senior executives from some of America’s top technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Symantec Corp., according to the U.S. officials. All these companies’ businesses in Syria are constrained by U.S. sanctions. The mission is controversial, given recent U.S. allegations that Syria transferred missiles to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Syria, Hezbollah and Lebanon deny the allegations. U.S. officials said the business delegation will meet with Mr. Assad and his cabinet and seek to facilitate the flow of information technology into the Arab state, which is ranked by watchdog group Freedom House as among the most repressive in the world.



And

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/bl...p/rubin/314166

From news article:

On June 10, with the active involvement and approval of the Obama administration, the Council adopted a decision on human rights in Iran that was a sentence long and contained no condemnation whatsoever.

The context was a review by the Council of Iran’s human rights record, as part of the Council’s consideration of all 192 UN states. The review featured a vigorous defense by Iranian representatives of Iran’s stellar human rights achievements, followed by Iran’s rejection of a host of “recommendations” made to improve its actual behavior. The “outcome” was a sentence identical for dictatorships and democracies alike, in which the Council merely refers to a bundle of documents containing praise, criticisms and responses without drawing any conclusion attributable to the Council itself.