BREAKING RANK

State Dept. Officials: Strike Assad

Urging regime change to defeat ISIS.

Dozens of officials in the State Department reportedly signed an internal document this week calling for military strikes against Bashar al-Assad’s government as a way to impose regime change to defeat ISIS. Some 51 officials signed what was referred to as the “dissent channel cable.” This is a huge departure from U.S. policy, which has long sought not to take sides in the war in Syria. “We are aware of a dissent channel cable written by a group of State Department employees regarding the situation in Syria,” said John Kirby, a State Department spokesman. “We are reviewing the cable now, which came up very recently, and I am not going to comment on the contents.”