Obama's new Syrian opposition council

✚ Obama's  new Syrian opposition council

This really sounds like a legitimate body — an opposition council that has to be put together by the State Dept? Josh Rogin for The Cable:

Syrian opposition leaders of all stripes will convene in Qatar next week to form a new leadership body to subsume the opposition Syrian National Council, which is widely viewed as ineffective, consumed by infighting, and little respected on the ground, The Cable has learned.

The State Department has been heavily involved in crafting the new council as part of its effort oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and build a more viable and unified opposition. In September, for instance, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with a group of Syrian activists who were flown in to New York for a high-level meeting that has not been reported until now.

The weirdest thing about this is that it doesn't even have Turkish support. Who if not Turkey needs to be behind this for it to even have half a chance to work?

Also look at the qualifiers used by this State Dept. source:

"There's a rising presence of Islamist extremists. So we need to help these [military council leaders], the majority of them are secular, relatively moderate, and not pursuing an overly vicious agenda," the official said.

Sounds reassuring.