No More WARS Mr. President

[Kevin Hall]

Well Jim, it would appear I've failed in my message even though I don't think we are far apart.

Best wishes to you.

[Peter Lemkin]

I [very sadly] predict there will be US cruise missiles hitting targets in Syria [likely near Damascas] within the next week and continuing for quite some time.....We just moved another warship near Syria and more are headed that-a-way....now, we aren't going to waste all that fuel for nothing....especially when Obama, as was Bush, have been chaffing at the bit to get at Syria - and then Iran.

To me, it does look like someone used Sarin-like chemical nerve weapons...but, in truth, we don't know who. It could easily have been Assad. It could also have been the coalition of 'rebels'. It could have been a third party to make it look like Assad - or either of the two main factions to make it look like the other. Reportedly about 3.500 were made terribly ill and about 10% of them died - about half women and children [and the number may well be much higher]. For a chemical weapons attack that was a very low number affected.....it would be easy, in the near future, to kill a few hundred thousand the same way - by any of the three named 'sides'.

Please, an end to this madness!!!!....however, I sense it is highly unlikely.​

[Tracy Riddle]

A partisan Democratic blog momentarily stops drinking the Kool-Aid.

Obama to ask Congress for permission to bomb Syria - let the repulsive horse trading begin President Obama announced today that he will ask Congress for its approval before directly intervening in the Syrian Civil War.
In a brief Rose Garden speech with Vice President Biden by his side, Obama laid out why he thinks the United States should intervene, and why he thinks Congressional approval is important, even though he said he believes he has the authority to act without it.
He told the press that he informed Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Harry Reid, and Mitch McConnell of his decision. The two houses will preside over the debate when Congress reconvenes on September 9.
But his case for war is so riddled with falsehoods and logical fallacies, it's difficult to see Congress agreeing to this unless the President makes significant concessions in other policy matters.
The two year long-and-counting Syrian Civil War is hardly an emergency needing immediate redress, as the President insists, given that he is willing to wait a full nine days before even starting the Congressional debate.
Nor is it an urgent matter of "national security." Direct participation in a brutal sectarian conflict would, however, almost certainly create a number of actual "national security" threats in response.
Nor are we exactly neutral observers in this whole affair. Despite his warnings about the "consequences of doing nothing," the President can breathe a sigh of relief - we're not "doing nothing." We're aiding the rebels and have been actively supporting the subversion of the Assad regime for the past two years.

Nor should President Obama be allowed to say with a straight face that this will "not be an open-ended intervention." Given the region's volatility, some sort of blowback is a real possibility - what will our response be then?
Nor is it about humanitarianism. There are few independently confirmed reports about the Ghouta attack and we can't say with absolute certainty who committed the atrocity and to what extent it was based on official orders a fact that should raise serious red flags over calls for intervention. Not that Assad's goons aren't responsible for repugnant crimes. But did we not care when thousands of Kurds recently fled to Iraq, claiming the Nusra Front were decapitating children? Do we really think that these Saudi-financed rebels are going to be champions of humanitarian causes (notice how the President failed to mention the Saudis when rattling off a list of regional allies impacted by the war)? Why haven't we taken into account the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights findings about the make up of casualties, which "cast[s] doubt on the widely repeated assertion that the government of President Bashar Assad is responsible for an overwhelming majority of the deaths there"?
That the Obama administration lacks credibility on all these issues makes its arguments wholly unbelievable certainly not airtight casus belli. The President and John Kerry can claim they're deeply disturbed by infanticide all they want - it's a claim, however, that's easily debunked with cursory Googling. This is all about the regional balance of power. It is official policy to support the rebels over negotiations which, the Obama administration says, can only start without Assad.

Which brings us back to the concessions. The case for war might be flimsy, but the Obama administration is lucky that Congressional Republicans weren't present when Zeus was handing out the ability to empathize. Chomping at the bit to reverse DOD sequestration cuts, it seems likely that Republicans' main issues with an intervention in Syria is that the President didn't want to ask them first and that it could create a shortfall in the Defense budget.
"I cannot support military action in Syria unless the president presents to Congress his broader strategy in the region that addresses our national security interests and the budget to support it," James Inhofe has said. "[Obama] has underfunded overseas contingency operations (OCO) fund, reduced base defense budget, and put into motion sequestration. Our military has no money left."
Why wouldn't the President cave on this? He wants to order the military to participate in another unnecessary war. Why wouldn't he give it a budget that allows for excessive Wars of Choice?

[John Mooney]

Today, Putin demanded that the USA put their "undeniable proof" before the UN.

Perhaps that influenced Obama and his controllers as well.

Anyway.. they must know that people are not buying their story and Obama may be looking for a way to save face.

[Phil Dragoo]

Is the administration setting fires, putting them out, or is it their pants which are on fire

And, what difference does it make

Did we not have this debate ten years ago

Why did we go to Iraq--was it for an oil pipeline, to take out some Saudi trash, to ease pressure on Iran--

--for in 2004 the CFR paper "Iran: Time for a New Approach" was authored by Brzezinski and Gates, supposedly from different ideological camps

Now comes the teleprompter orator with the same slam-dunk WMD chest-beating

Buzzwords in the lottery of political rhetoric are climbdown, blowback, coalition of the won't-ing

Did Kerry realize the security state he serves killed the president who opposed the war he protested

Can't these people get off the treadmill

Assad could be taken out with a .50 cal. from miles away--or in any number of methods--the so-righteous Putin would just say here's some Polonium--bon appetit

Benghazi was CIA using Qatari resources to arm Muslim Brotherhood which made Turkey's Erdogan happy but some of the children very angry

Where are the righteous forces

Not in the White House or Congress if all they can do is waste the money which could feed Africa this week on a HE catharsis

Sibel Edmonds said transcend the partisan in favor of a deeper investigation

It would seem we need to transcend all the politicians in favor of making the region a demilitarized zone and providing the humanitarian aid necessary

The guy who couldn't watch all of the OBL raid but had to go play cards with Reggie Love is trying to finesse a situation with a missile salvo and a wave from the door of Marine One

It's deja vu Mission Accomplished all over again

And as for Egypt, what can he do--Saudi says don't re-install Morsi, but Qatari and Turkey demand it, and of course Hillary-Huma are all in

And the article says the supposed other side of Gore Vidal's one party with two right wings is worried about defense budgets

Isn't it more likely that the decision is clouded by Saudi control of USG and a generalized sub rosa struggle for the oil regardless of team colors

Yet the trappings are always noble while the real stakes stack profit over people in war after war

Jim, it's a good open letter to the White House and Congress: Ask the People for permission--and they're closing your account

Of course, some cynics would say any blowback would facilitate martial law and further engorge the security state like a blood-sucking tick

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[Peter Lemkin]

At least Stevenson showed the Spy plane photos in the Security Council during the Cuban Missile Crisis - now all is secret [and mostly faked 'intelligence' IMO]. Trust us...we're the United States!

[Jim Hackett II]

It bothers me that too few inside the Beltway are asking where did Syria get chemical weapons?

Does some CEO somewhere in the Beltway Gang hold a receipt as for Saddam Hussein?
Did someone sneak WBu$h's "missing" WMDs into Syria from Iraq? To recoup the right wing's so-called credibility?
Forget that US SOG people were caught attempting to bring WMDs INTO Iraq from Syria to cover W's ignorant behind?

When the Wurlitzer tunes up I get angry. I know the note of disharmony of that crap when I detect it.
The Beltway can't pay for schools, for hospitals away from the lucrative wealthier neighborhoods, while our bridges rot and fall.
As a not active Journeyman Ironworker I know the structural failures are from a near complete neglect.

But the Pentagon/Beltway Criminals can't be bothered with the needs of the People.
WE ARE EMPIRE DEAL WITH IT AND LIKE IT.
Sit down and shut the f**k up a**hole, that's how we roll.

As I said NOT IN MY NAME.
STOP and sort the truth from the uncertain trumpets of Empire.
After all dammit WeThe(poor)People are gonna be the ones handed the butcher's bill and the bill from the weapons manufacturers.
I know, history shows my protest produces nothing positive. We no longer have Presidents that seek peace and cooperation with other nations as John Kennedy did.
Sometimes what I know of our past really brings me down,
momentarily then I get a little angry and then I act, peacefully most often.

Consider all our fates or the fates of your parents if Nixon had been President during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
For Your Consideration.

[Tracy Riddle]

Or is it the CIA, the Pentagon, the Mossad, and Saudi intelligence who are setting the fires, expecting Obama to be forced into new wars? And if he doesn't, they'll have their media assets talk about how weak he is, yammer about Munich and American exceptionalism, maybe trigger new attacks (let's hit the British embassy in Damascus next!)

I'm not apologizing for Obama here (he must know the forces that put him in office, and how he has to accommodate them). But I remember all my life hearing about how the Kennedy brothers were responsible for the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and most of us here know it's not that simple.

[Phil Dragoo]

Ten years. deja vu. All over again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/world/...-says.html

THE STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ: WEAPONS SEARCH; Iraqis Removed Arms Material, U.S. Aide Says


By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: October 29, 2003


The director of a top American spy agency said Tuesday that he believed that material from Iraq's illicit weapons program had been transported into Syria and perhaps other countries as part of an effort by the Iraqis to disperse and destroy evidence immediately before the recent war.

The official, James R. Clapper Jr., a retired lieutenant general, said satellite imagery showing a heavy flow of traffic from Iraq into Syria, just before the American invasion in March, led him to believe that illicit weapons material ''unquestionably'' had been moved out of Iraq.

~ ~ ~

Phil's footnote: Climbdown, blowback, coalition of the won't-ing, shell game, false-flag, Reichstag Fire, enabling act--

--somehow it seems so familiar. . . .

[Tracy Riddle]

Watched some of the bobble-head news shows today, and they were pretty much all goading Obama into bombing SOMEBODY: "weakness, appeasement, National Honor at stake, allies can't depend on America, Iran and Syria laughing at us, how much will it cost to have all those ships sitting out there doing nothing?..." :banghead: