The U.S.-backed “rebels” attempting to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are being told by President Obama that they will have to wait until after the November presidential elections to start receiving the arms and intelligence they need to topple the Assad regime.

Lobbyists for the Syrian opposition made the rounds in Washington recently trying to grease the skids for a transfer of heavy duty American ordnance to the forces battling government forces in Syria. Reportedly, the lobbyists sought a supply of American anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

According to reports published by The Telegraph (U.K.), “the Syrian Support Group (SSG), the political wing of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), recently presented American officials with a document requesting 1,000 RPG-29 anti-tank missiles, 500 SAM-7 rockets, 750 23mm machine guns as well as body armour and secure satellite phones.”

Additionally, the lobbyists had their hands out asking Congress for $6 million to pay the Syrian “freedom fighters.” For now, the lobbyists went away empty handed.

Everything is not all bad for this “rebel army,” however. As The New American’s Alex Newman reported this week, those supporting the Syrian opposition are well-heeled and well-connected at the highest level of global finance and government. Newman writes:

The foreign-financed armed rebellion and the Western-backed opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad has been falsely portrayed as a spontaneous uprising of “democracy” activists since violence first broke out more than a year ago. But according to a recent investigation published in the U.K. Guardian, top figures in the “regime-change” coalition — most notably the Syrian National Council (SNC) — have intimate links to the highest ranks of the world elite: the shadowy Bilderberg conference, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Goldman Sachs megabank, billionaire financier George Soros, and, of course, the U.S. government.

With friends like that, the Syrian opposition has only one enemy — time.

President Obama has made it clear to the rebel army that no official American intervention will happen until after the election. This was the message delivered by White House Security Advisor Tom Donilon during his trip to Israel last week.

Although the Syrians (and their globalists support network) are champing at the bit to topple the Assad regime and install a new suzerainty of the American empire, they are reluctant to complain too loudly about the Obama administration’s laxity lest they be perceived as biting the hand that feeds them.

In the meantime, the rebels must carry on their fight without the official imprimatur of the United States government. This delay guarantees a weakening of the forces loyal to Assad and does little to diminish the determination of the rebels as their leaders understand that Washington’s answer to their petition was not “No,” but “Not right now.”

That realpolitik understanding of the President’s predicament does not prevent Syrian rebel leaders from adopting a position that will please the rank and file.

“We want for America and the Western countries to carry out their responsibilities,” said Abdulbaset Sieda, chairman of the official Syrian National Council. “With regard to America, specifically, we would like to say to President Obama that waiting for election day to make the right decision on Syria is unacceptable for the Syrians.”

He added, “We cannot understand that a superpower ignores the killing of tens of thousands of Syrian civilians because of an election campaign that a president may win or lose. That’s why we are saying there is work that must take place at the Security Council.”

That’s a smart and internationally savvy move for Sieda. The individuals and entities backing his organization (including the Obama administration) would like nothing more than to have the entire matter turned over to the globalists at the United Nations. If the Security Council were to approve military support for the Syrian opposition, then the United States would be required to participate and President Obama could politically wash his hands of responsibility in the matter, pointing to the overlords in the UN as those responsible for the decision.

One spokesman for a group lobbying for U.S. military intervention issued a statement declaring, “The gruesome, cynical truth is that while Kofi Annan ‘spins his wheels’ at the UN, there is a tacit understanding with Assad. He knows where his ‘red lines’ are; if he keeps the massacres beneath a certain level, he knows the US will not do anything to intervene.”

There may be reluctance at the UN not because it necessarily maintains tacit support for the government of Bashar al-Assad, but because there are other less obvious ways to accomplish the globalists’ goal.

For example, there is another avenue open to President Obama that would absolve him of personal responsibility for any pre-inaugural intervention in the Syrian civil war.

As we reported in April, President Obama has created a new government agency tasked with identifying and combatting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other such atrocities. The new committee is called the White House Atrocities Prevention Board (APB) and it will be headed by President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Samantha Power.

Exercising the powers he created for himself in Executive Order 13606, President Barack Obama established the Atrocities Prevention Board, whose formation was announced by the president during his remarks at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The goal of the APB is to first formally recognize that genocide and other mass atrocities committed by foreign powers are a “core national security interest and core moral responsibility.”

Apart from the unconstitutionality of this use of the executive order, there is something sinister in the selection of Samantha Power to spearhead the search for atrocities.

One source claims that the very existence of the APB is due to Power’s own persistence in convincing the White House that discovering atrocities should be a “core national-security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.” The statement released at the time of the signing of the executive order demonstrates Power’s remarkable power of persuasion.

Samantha Power rose to prominence in government circles as part of her campaign to promote a doctrine known as the Responsibility to Protect.

Responsibility to Protect (also known as Responsibility to Act) is a doctrine advanced by the United Nations and is predicated on the proposition that sovereignty is a privilege not a right and that if any regime in any nation violates the prevailing precepts of acceptable governance, then the international community is morally obligated to revoke that nation’s sovereignty and assume command and control of the offending country.

The three pillars of the United Nations-backed Responsibility to Protect are:

1. A state has a responsibility to protect its population from mass atrocities,

2. The international community has a responsibility to assist the state if it is unable to protect its population on its own, and

3. If the state fails to protect its citizens from mass atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures such as economic sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.

The situation in Syria seems ideally suited for the attention of the APB and for the carrying out of the United Nation’s “Responsibility to Protect.” By invoking this doctrine, President Obama demurs to the UN and the United States’ obligations thereto, thus removing himself from the decision-making process and simultaneously removing the ever-present obstacle of American sovereignty from the internationalists’ efforts to bring all the world under their control.

Finally, by adopting the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, President Obama once again fails to carry out his primary responsibility: to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Photo: This citizen journalism image taken on June 18, 2012 and provided by the Rebels Battalion of Baba Amro purports to show Syrian rebels holding their weapons as they prepare to fight against Syrian troops, in Homs province: AP Images