“Dempsey Pegs Syria No-Fly Zone at $1 Billion a Month”
Bloomberg, July 23, 2013
“Imposing a no-fly zone over Syria would cost as much as $1 billion a month and put U.S. aircraft at risk of being shot down without necessarily toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the U.S. military’s top officer said. Thousands of U.S. troops would be required on the ground if the U.S. wanted to establish buffer zones to protect targeted geographic areas or to control the proliferation of chemical weapons, Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a letter to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee that was released yesterday. Underscoring his reluctance to take military action in Syria, Dempsey said U.S. intervention ‘could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control,’ without the emergence of a ‘viable opposition.’ Dempsey’s letter is the strongest public statement by a Pentagon leader setting out the dangers of direct involvement in Syria.”
Quickie analysis: $1 billion per month is more than we’re going to find in the sofa cushions. Gen. Dempsey’s letter to Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, lays out various options for US military involvement in Syria. The full text of the letter can be seen here: http://www.levin.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/gen-dempsey-responds-to-levins-request-for-assessment-of-options-for-use-of-us-military-force-in-syria (then click on the PDF of the letter).
Not What You Might Think 