Did Anyone Hear Kerry Speak?

[Gob]

Jim, do you think I hadn't read all that? It was linked to off the BBC page. There's nothing convincing there is there?

09/18/2002, Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense (before Congress)
"We do know that the Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons. His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons -- including VX, sarin, cyclosarin and mustard gas. ... His regime has amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of biological weapons—including anthrax and botulism toxin, and possibly smallpox." (presentation to Congress)

[Lord Jim]

There's plenty convincing there

Fixed.

There's nothing there that convinces you, because there's nothing that could possibly convince you.

I guess you want Assad to confess.

[Gob]

[youtube]kMa10pGpANc‎[/youtube]

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again, y'all

War, huh, good God
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

Ohhh, war, I despise
Because it means destruction
Of innocent lives

War means tears
To thousands of mothers eyes
When their sons go to fight
And lose their lives

I said, war, huh
Good God, y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again

War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

War, it ain't nothing
But a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Ooooh, war
It's an enemy to all mankind
The point of war blows my mind

War has caused unrest
Within the younger generation
Induction then destruction
Who wants to die

Aaaaah, war-huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it, say it, say it

War, huh, yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

War, it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker
War, it's got one friend
That's the undertaker

Ooooh, war, has shattered
Many a young mans dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much to short and precious
To spend fighting wars these days
War can't give life
It can only take it away

Ooooh, war, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Say it again

War, whoa, Lord
What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing
Listen to me

War, it ain't nothing but a heartbreaker
War, friend only to the undertaker
Peace, love and understanding
Tell me, is there no place for them today
They say we must fight to keep our freedom
But Lord knows there's got to be a better way

Ooooooh, war, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for?
You tell me
Say it, say it, say it, say it

War, huh
Good God y'all
What is it good for?
Stand up and shout it
Nothing

[Econoline]

This shows, finally, the ultimate pernicious effects of the Bush administration's decision to go in after Iraq's WMDs despite having *MUCH* less convincing evidence of the existence, let alone the deployment, let alone the actual use of chemical weapons stockpiles. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al, have made the U.S. into "the nation who cried wolf" and now we find that much of the world won't be convinced of the case against the Assad regime, regardless of any conceivable evidence, now or in the future.

Thanks again, Shrub.

[Lord Jim]

Obama's supposed to make a statement about Syria in the Rose Garden in about 45 minutes.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Syria's in the Rose Garden? No wonder Cameron looked relieved when Parliament voted "no". Those USians get cranky when you burn da White House

[Gob]

Obama's stuffed on this one, isn't he?

President Obama was elected to end America's wars, and in reaction to the fallout of the invasion of Iraq. He knows, as he frankly admitted, that Americans are "weary of war". Many of his own supporters want him to focus on what he calls "nation-building at home".

But he is trapped within his own red lines and perhaps the need to send a signal to Iran and North Korea. White House sources say the British vote shows the dangers of allowing a debate - but it also removed a key ally and so, ironically, made support at home even more vital.

It also increased the demands from Congress itself to have a say. A recent poll indicated 80% of Americans thought Congress should vote before any military action. Some will say the decision shows President Obama is weak. It certainly shows the weakness of his position - he wants to take action that isn't popular and home or abroad.

But it is sensible to make sure the responsibility for unpopular action is shared with other politicians, and canny for domestic reasons to keep a very sour Congress sweet. Some might even argue that, in a democracy, it is the right thing to do.

[Joe Guy]

I saw Obama speak.

He said something about being ready & willing to attack the rose garden right now but has decided he should debate & discuss his reasoning with Congresspeople & gardeners before going out and spraying pesticides on the enemy.

It is his opinion that what the bad Syrian guys did to their own people was so bad that it is now our problem. He said we won't put any of these on the ground.

Instead we will hurl large killer missiles that will destroy whatever they land on and after that we will leave the Syrians alone.

Obama went on to say that this will send the message that war has its regulations. Then he demanded that we (the U.S. I suppose) should require all nations to take a training course that teaches which weapons are acceptable for killing large amounts of people. Then you will receive a certificate of approval for war.

"If you don't pass the weapons course, you can't kill anybody!" Obama said loudly and then he received thunderous lack of applause from the people who weren't gathered there.

He ended with a forceful threat to any nation that doesn't participate in proper killing training. He said, "If an uncertified nation uses uncertified weapons in an uncertifiable attack on another nation, we will drop some bombs on your country and then go away, being careful not to put boots on the ground. Unapproved weapon usage is like cheating and it ruins it for everybody." He screeched.

Joe Biden stood up and clapped and yelled "Right on bro!!"

It is unknown at this time if Obama's idea will catch on and be willfully accepted by all nations. "It's no fun putting bad countries in a penalty box. Not to mention unaffordable, he added. Everyone needs to learn how to kill correctly or war will never work."

Joe Biden stood up once more and screamed, "Let's get ready to rumble....................."

The president did not answer any questions. He only said, "God Bless Keny....err.. the United States. Then he got on his skateboard, fastened his helmet and pads, plugged his iPod into his ears, then whisked away from the rose garden singing "Let's stay together....."

[rubato]

Obama was elected because the war in Iraq was based on stupid lies and caused Bush II to fail in Afghanistan. He was correctly praised for supporting the intervention in Libya.

He was not elected to "end America's wars" but to get us out of Iraq which he has done.

Intervention in Syria is popular and widely supported by many of our allies and much of the Arab world. Putin appears to be against it and some of our weaker and more testosterone-challenged 'allies' appear to have problems with it. Most people understand that weakening the Assad Regime will help the insurgents and all moral people are in favor of the insurgents ultimate success.

The US is over-extended in a world of weak states lacking leadership (other than the French, who have balls). I think we've done more than our part (again) but lacking anyone else to take the lead we have to do so. The alternative is to abandon moral leadership to the islamic extremists who have shown ability and courage and who will certainly exert a greater share of power in the aftermath when Assad falls as a result.

An attack on Syrias air forces can do a lot of damage using cruise missiles and drones and perhaps shift the balance in favor of the rebels. Worth doing.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013 ... inst-syria

UK Initial weak support by Cameron followed by pussying out

France Support the US
Turkey Support the US
Germany Support the US
Nato works by 'consensus' meaning government by the weakest (see "pussying out" above)
Canada and Denmark provide political support.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

UK Initial weak support by Cameron followed by pussying out

France Support the US
Turkey Support the US
Germany Support the US
Nato works by 'consensus' meaning government by the weakest (see "pussying out" above)
Canada and Denmark provide political support.


yrs,
rubato

Germany 'support" the US?

"There has been no request to us for a military commitment, and a German military commitment has never been considered by the government," Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters. Pressed on whether Germany might later participate in military action, he replied: "We have not considered it and we are not considering it."

NATO's chief said for the first time Friday that the alliance has no plans for military action in Syria because of the alleged use of chemical weapons against its civilians.

Asked about the alleged deadly attack in a suburb of Damascus on Aug. 21, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen pointed the finger at Syrian forces. "It demands cynicism beyond what is reasonable to believe that the opposition is behind a chemical attack in an area it already largely controls," he said.

“Our government has been a very reluctant convert to the idea that there needs to be some western military action regarding the Syrian situation,” he told reporters at an event in Toronto on Thursday.

“At the present time the government of Canada has no plans, we have no plans of our own to have a Canadian military mission.”

A spokesperson from the PM's office told Jyllands-Posten that Denmark is continuing to work towards "a political solution" in Syria, perhaps casting doubt on the PM's commitment to acting military as she suggested earlier in the week. That seemed to be backed up by Dansk Folkeparti's Søren Espersen, who said that following the British parliament's vote against military action, it looked less likely that Denmark would move ahead with military plans.

"The UK means everything," Esperson told Jyllands-Posten. "We have been so close with them in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya that I can't imagine that Denmark would participate in a military action if the UK wasn't involved."

[Lord Jim]

I was immensely disappointed by the speech.

More delays and mixed signals when it looked like he was finally going to act with clarity. He should have ended the speech right before he got to the "but" and left the Rose Garden at that point.

Asking for a Congressional debate after making clear he has the power to act and laying out a persuasive case makes him look indecisive and foolish. (Hell they're not even going to come back early to have this debate) Assad and Co. must be laughing their butts off.

[Joe Guy]

Intervention in Syria is popular and widely supported by many of our allies and much of the Arab world.

Lara Jakes, The Associated Press
Published Saturday, August 31, 2013 11:35AM EDT

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is poised to become the first U.S. leader in three decades to attack a foreign nation without broad international support or in direct defence of Americans.

Not since 1983, when President Ronald Reagan ordered an invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada, has the U.S. been so alone in pursing major lethal military action beyond a few attacks responding to strikes or threats against its citizens.

It is a policy turnabout for Obama, a Democrat who took office promising to limit U.S. military intervention and, as a candidate, said the president "does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
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But over the last year Obama has warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that his government's use of chemical weapons in its two-year civil war would be a "red line" that would provoke a strong U.S. response.

So far, only France has indicated it would join a U.S. strike on Syria.

Without widespread backing from allies, "the nature of the threat to the American national security has to be very, very clear," said retired Army Brig. Gen. Charles Brower, an international studies professor at Virginia Military Institute.

"It's the urgency of that threat that would justify the exploitation of that power as commander in chief -- you have to make a very, very strong case for the clear and gathering danger argument to be able to go so aggressively," Brower said Friday.

Obama is expected to launch what officials have described as a limited strike -- probably with Tomahawk cruise missiles -- against Assad's forces.

Two days after the suspected chemicals weapons attack in Damascus suburbs, Obama told CNN, "If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a UN mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it; do we have the coalition to make it work?" He said: "Those are considerations that we have to take into account."

Lawmakers briefed on the plans have indicated an attack is all but certain and Obama advisers said the president was prepared to strike unilaterally, though France is prepared to join the effort.

The U.S. does not have United Nations support to strike Syria, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged restraint. "Diplomacy should be given a chance and peace given a chance," he said Thursday.

Expected support from Britain, a key ally, evaporated as Parliament rejected a vote Thursday endorsing military action in Syria. And diplomats with the 22-nation Arab League said the organization does not support military action without UN consent, an action that Russia would almost certainly block. The diplomats spoke anonymously because of rules preventing them from being identified.

France has said it is ready to commit forces to an operation in Syria because the use of chemical weapons cannot go unpunished.

"Presidents always need to be prepared to go at it alone," said Rudy deLeon, who was a senior Defence Department official in the Clinton administration.

"The uninhibited use of the chemical weapons is out there, and that's a real problem," said deLeon, now senior vice-president of security and international policy at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress in Washington. "It can't be ignored, and it certainly creates a dilemma. I think (Obama) had to make the red-line comment, and so Syria has acted in a very irresponsible way."

The nearly nine-year war in Iraq that began in 2003, which Obama termed "dumb" because it was based on false intelligence, has encouraged global skittishness about Western military intervention in the Mideast. "There's no doubt that the intelligence on Iraq is still on everybody's mind," deLeon said.

Both Republican George H.W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton had UN approval for nearly all of their attacks on Iraq years earlier. Even in the 2003 invasion, which was ordered by Republican George W. Bush, 48 nations supported the military campaign as a so-called coalition of the willing. Four nations -- the U.S., Britain, Australia and Poland -- participated in the invasion.

The U.S. has relied on NATO at least three times to give it broad foreign support for military missions: in bombarding Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, attacking Kosovo with airstrikes in 1999 and invading Afghanistan in 2001.

Only a few times has the U.S. acted unilaterally -- and only then to respond to attacks or direct threats against Americans.

In 1986, Reagan joined ordered airstrikes on Libya to punish then-leader Moammar Gadhafi for the bombing of a Berlin dance club that killed two U.S soldiers and wounded 79 other Americans.

Three years later, George H.W. Bush invaded Panama after dictator Manuel Noriega declared war on the U.S. when his drug-trafficking regime was slapped with crippling American sanctions. The invasion began four days after a U.S. Marine was killed in a shooting in Panama City.

Clinton ordered a missile strike against Iraq in 1993 as payback for an assassination plot against the elder Bush. And in 1998, Clinton attacked al-Qaida bases in Sudan and Afghanistan to retaliate against U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people.

Obama approved the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden, who had been considered a threat potentially going back to the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. troops living there. Additionally, the U.S. has launched hundreds of deadly drone strikes on suspected al-Qaida havens, mostly in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen during the presidencies of Obama and George W. Bush.

All other major U.S. military attacks since the 1983 Grenada invasion have been sanctioned by the United Nations. That includes the 2011 missile strikes that Obama ordered against Libya as part of a coalition to protect that nation's citizens by enforcing a no-fly zone against Gadhafi forces.

Published Saturday, August 31, 2013 11:35AM EDT

(I can't link the source. It is CTVnews.ca)

[Gob]

Meet the new boss;



same as the old boss....

[Gob]

UK Initial weak support by Cameron followed by pussying out

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden, Mr Obama referred directly to Mr Cameron’s decision to allow MPs to vote on the issue and again referred to Britain as America’s ‘closest ally’.

"As a consequence, many people have advised against taking this decision to Congress, and undoubtedly, they were impacted by what we saw happen in the United Kingdom this week when the Parliament of our closest ally failed to pass a resolution with a similar goal, even as the Prime Minister supported taking action."

[Econoline]

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is poised to become the first U.S. leader in three decades to attack a foreign nation without broad international support or in direct defence of Americans.

So far, only France has indicated it would join a U.S. strike on Syria.

So, don't them French broads count? I hear they got some fine fine broads over there!

[rubato]

Meet the new boss;



Immediate evidence of use of WMD starting with testimony of doctors at the scene who gave detailed accounts of morbidity and mortality consistent with Sarin (or another chemical agent) including medical staff who were sickened and killed by Sarin residues on victim's clothing.


Nothing like the old boss....

No evidence of WMD after months of investigation by Hans Blix. (who discovered Korea's nuclear program which Reagan and Bush I had missed)




yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Obama would have a much easier time if Bush/Cheney had not damaged American credibility so badly.

We will be digging out of their hole both in foreign policy and the economy for a long time to come.

yrs,
rubato

[Joe Guy]

We will be digging out of their hole both in foreign policy and the economy for a long time to come.

That's why our new policy is to just drop bombs on a country and then leave.

We're a kinder gentler nation.

[Econoline]

I've been saying, the moment four American casualties in Benghazi became a national political scandal, instead of simply being the utterly natural consequence of going to war with Libya, that the chances that we'd do anything significant in Syria were about nil. We'll probably do that Missile Strike That Won't Save Lives But Make Us Feel Good About Ourselves, and maybe Assad will keep slaughtering his people with conventional weapons -- a practice he will return to with new vigor as soon as our bombs start dropping.

Credit Jason Linkins of HuffPo's Sunday Morning Liveblog. (Lots more good snarky commentary there, if you're interested.)

[Lord Jim]

The more I think about it the less sense this decision to go to Congress makes...

As he has made quite clear, he doesn't need specific authorization from Congress for this; in fact no President in modern times, (and the only reason I say "modern times" is because I'm not schooled enough in what went on in the early to mid 1800's to say with certainty "ever"...though "ever" is quite possible) has sought Congressional approval for a military strike as limited as this one is supposed to be...

The best analogy would probably be the three days of air strikes Clinton authorized against Iraq after Saddam's son-in-law (Who was in charge of Iraq's WMD program) defected to Jordan bringing documents with him that showed that Hussein had snookered the UN Inspectors and successfully hidden caches of WMD...Clinton did not seek, nor did he need too, Congressional authorization for that(This unfortunate fellow was lured back to Iraq with promises that all would be forgiven...it ended badly for him; he got the Fredo treatment...)

Obama's Rose Garden Speech was borderline schizophrenic; it was like it was delivered by two different people...

The first half forcefully and persuasively laid out the case for air strikes; the second half seemed to say never mind, we can wait a couple of weeks (the fact that he didn't call Congress back into immediate session really undermined his argument) and get around to this whenever....

All he has done by taking this course, (apparently, after having decided to launch the attacks, on Friday night he changed his mind...this reminds me of the Melancholy Dane routine Obama did prior to his half-hearted authorization of the Afghan-surge) is give the isolationists on the right and pacifists on the left a chance to strut and preen, and build opposition, and the-don't-do-anything thumb suckers at the UN a chance to try to derail the whole enterprise...

And he dumps this needlessly onto the Congress at a time when they need to be focused on averting yet another "fiscal cliff" looming on October 1st...

On top of that, at the end of the day, there's a real chance he could lose this vote...

It's not likely, but it's certainly possible; he's got the leadership in both houses from both parties on board, and he's probably got a sure win in the Senate, but with the lefty pacifists and righty isolationists, the House is quite likely to be a near thing...

A few weeks ago, a vote to completely defund the NSA surveillance operation failed in the House by just 12 votes...

And the split was quite bi-partisan:

Democrats voted for the amendment by a 111-to-83 margin. Republicans, meanwhile, split 134 to 93 against it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/2 ... 47893.html

That's probably the same kind of vote that can be expected in the House on this...

Why would this President, (or any President) run a totally unnecessary risk of being the first President in American history to seek an authorization from Congress for the use of force and not get it?

The specter of that happening needlessly raises the stakes on this far beyond where they were before...What does he do then?

And of course we can expect the Assad regime to utilize this time doubling down on brutal, so they will have the rebels in the most disadvantageous position possible when and if this actually happens...

Which will further cost us good will with the Syrian people...

I just don't get it....