'Well said, Mr. Speaker. In this rare case, the President
is on the right track. Lets hope that the isolationists get isolated
within the GOP.'
tommy71 on September 3, 2013 at 2:54 PM
What is our national security interest in Syria?
What is our objective in Syria because not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, evidently can say what it is that we're seeking in Syria?
Traditionally, Americans have been known to pull for ‘the underdog,’ but in Syria, who is our dog?
With whom are we supposed to side?
The thuggish Ba’athist government and its Hezbollah and Iranian allies, who possibly did this (or, maybe, not)?
The ‘rip your opponent’s heart out and eat it’ Al-Nusra rebels?
'I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog.'
- Khalid al-Hamad, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, the well-known founder of Homs' Farouq Brigade
Al Qaeda because of whom we have ceded an enormous amount of our civil liberties here at home?
This is what the Syrian 'rebels' look like and what the poor babies are doing. Note the flags of Al Qaeda flying over and 'blessing' this execution...
The Free Syrian Army, which has been infiltrated, protestations of 'The Mav' notwithstanding?
The 'moderate' Syrian Free Army, who have engaged in widespread kidnapping, including 11 Lebanese Shi’ite pilgrims
I’m not going to side with AQ, who attacked us on 9/11 and because of
whom I have had too many civil liberties taken away, or the rebels, who
rip out their opponents’ hearts AND EAT THEM or tyrannical Ba'athists.
Al-Nusra beheads a Christian
Al-Nusra forces this young, Shia Muslim girl to watch her parents being executed
I’m not going to side with al-Nusra, who does things like murders Christians and Shia Muslims in front of their children.
Hezbollah
Hezbollah Youth
Hezbollah soldiers
Islamic fundamentalism has combined with Nazism as shown by this Nazi salute by Hezbollah (party of Allah) in Lebanon.
I’m not going to side with Assad’s Ba’athist government, Iran, and
Hezbollah, which like the MoFoBros, who sided with Hitler and STILL USE THE NAZI SALUTE.
This is why we should stay out of other countries’ civil wars. In the
case of Syria, especially, there are no ‘good guys’ assurances from
‘The Mav’ notwithstanding.
By the way, Mav, you have proven that it is possible to have less-than-zero credibility. You had none before today and you certainly have none now considering you were doing this during today in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee where issues of life and death, blood and treasure, and further US intervention in a region that HATES us and is already unstable without us doing anything more:
Obama plays 'Spades;' Senator Senile plays 'Poker'
You are a disgusting, doddering, old fool, who MUST retire. Your 'Hero Card' was maxed out a long, long time ago. While I honour your past military service, you get no passes from me. If you refuse to retire, I promise you this: I will support a nice, sort-of-state funeral for you, but I will celebrate the death of one of the greatest warmongers that I have encountered in my entire life. (Miss Manners scolds, sorry, but it's how I feel and I'll pull no more punches with this fool.)
It's
not as if Muslims haven't staged attacks against their own people in order to
trigger the West to intervene on their behalf. They did it in
Bosnia.
And,
yes, the rebels do have chemical weapons. From The Washington Post
yesterday, Yes, the Syrian Rebels DO Have Access to Chemical
Weapons:
One of the U.S.
government’s main justifications for its claim that the Syrian government
carried out a chemical weapons attack is that the rebels don’t have chemical
weapons.
However, multiple
lines of evidence show that the rebels do have chemical weapons.
According to
intelligence officials, U.S. spies have lost track of who controls some of Syria's
chemical weapons supplies.
WaPo linked to the AP report that explored the
questions remaining about who actually controls those chemical weapons
stores …
U.S. analysts … are
also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad’s forces moving
chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels
took over an area where weapons had been stored.
AP hit the nail on the head when it wrote:
U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad’s orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said.
Another possibility
that officials would hope to rule out: that stocks had fallen out of the
government’s control and were deployed by rebels in a callous and calculated
attempt to draw the West into the war.
Back in May, the Turks captured Syrian rebels with a 2kg cylinder full of nerve gas sarin at the Turkish-Syrian border.
Yossef
Bodansky, 'an Israeli-American political scientist who served as Director of
the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the US
House of Representatives from 1988 to 2004. He is also Director of Research of
the International Strategic Studies Association and has been a visiting scholar
at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International
Studies (SAIS). In the 1980s, he served as a senior consultant for the
Department of Defense and the Department of State. He is also a senior editor
for the Defense and Foreign Affairs group of publications and a contributor to
the International Military and Defense Encyclopedia and is on the Advisory
Council of The Intelligence Summit," and he has a piece today in Defense
and Foreign Affairs':
'There is a growing
volume of new evidence [that the White House knew and possibly helped plan a
Syrian chemical weapon attack by the opposition].
Several senior officials
from both the Syrian opposition and sponsoring Arab states stressed that these
weapon deliveries were specifically in anticipation for exploiting the impact
of imminent bombing of Syria by the US and the Western allies. The latest
strategy formulation and coordination meetings took place on August 26, 2013.
The political coordination meeting took place in Istanbul and was attended by
US Amb. Robert Ford.
More important were the
military and operational coordination meetings at the Antakya garrison. Senior
Turkish, Qatari, and US Intelligence officials attended in addition to the
Syrian senior (opposition) commanders. The Syrians were informed that bombing
would start in a few days.
'The opposition was told
in clear terms that action to deter further use of chemical weapons by the
Assad regime could come as early as in the next few days,' a Syrian participant
in the meeting said. Another Syrian participant said that he was convinced US
bombing was scheduled to begin on Thursday, August 29, 2013. Several
participants — both Syrian and Arab — stressed that the assurances of
forthcoming bombing were most explicit even as formally Obama is still
undecided.
What if Al-Qaeda is
setting off their own chemical weapons on their own people, if the rebels are
nerve gassing their own people to create exactly what is happening, us
mobilizing to get rid of Bashar because they can't for some reason?'
Is
it so very hard to believe that AQ and its allies could kill their own in order
to trigger US intervention? We are talking about people that have NO
problem with killing fellow Muslims...much less infidels.
Just last week, the Spokeswoman for the State Department, Marie Harf, 'let the 'cat out of the bag' when she admitted to reporters that the U.S. government is not sure whether President Bashar Assad ordered the chemical attack that led to the deaths of hundreds of people two weeks ago.'
Remember
when then-Secretary of Defence, Leon Panetta, admitted that we had lost track
of Syrian chemical weapons last September? Remember just a
few days ago when the AP and The Washington Post reported 'in spite of Obama’s
assertion, intelligence on weapons use in Syria no ‘slam dunk’' even though
John Kerry has claimed it was an
absolute 'slam dunk'?
Remember when then-Director of the CIA, George
Tenet, told President Bush that it was a 'slam dunk case' that Saddam Hussein
had 'unconventional weapons'?
'The Free Syrian Army is viable, it’s strong, and it’s moderate.'
- Senator Senile, 3 September 2013
The FSA is 'viable, strong, and moderate'? Not even the administration and the New York Times believe that, which reported that 'nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of' in April, 2013.
Perhaps, you are under the mistaken assumption that there are ‘good
guys’ in Syria. There are not. It is not only a civil war, but a
sectarian one with Islamists on both sides. Iran v Saudi Arabia, Sunni v
Shia, AQ/AN v SFA/MoFoBros.
Lobbing dozens/hundreds of cruise missiles at $1.5 million a pop
when we can’t even reopen the White House and which will not change
anything on the ground ensures ‘peace in our time’ exactly how?
Can you assure us that attacking Syria will not result in escalation and/or a regional war when even John Kerry was 'thinking out loud about putting boots on the ground in Syria' in the hearing before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee today and a US general says Syria action could be 'more substantial than thought'?
Can you give us any assurance that, if we topple Assad, Syria will not become a failed state like Libya?
Can you assure us that, if Assad is removed, that Syria will not become a state run by radical Islamists, which even US military advisers will not do?
It is way past time that the Middle East start policing itself and
I’m not going to cheerlead every time an American President decides to
pick sides in the ME. You can, but I will not. I don’t fit the
definition of insanity.
'I am going to support the president’s call for action. I believe my colleagues should support this call for action.'
- Speaker of the House, John Boehner, 3 September 2013
'The United States’ broader policy goal, as articulated by the President, is that Assad should go,
and President Obama’s redline is consistent with that goal and with the
goal of deterring the use of weapons of mass destruction. It is the
type of redline virtually any American President would draw. Now America’s credibility is on the line.
A failure to act when acting is in America’s interests and when a red
line has been so clearly crossed will only weaken our ability to use
diplomacy, economic pressure, and other non-lethal tools to remove Assad
and deter Iran and other aggressors.
- Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, 3 September 2013
The Republicans will always bail out Obama. They are too afraid of being called ‘racist’ if they do not.
Raise the debt ceiling?
‘Yep.’
Fund Obamacare even though the majority of Americans want it repealed?
‘Gotta do it ‘cuz, like, um, you know, we lost the 1996 Presidential
election because we shut down the government, not because we ran an old
‘Go along to get along’ fool like Bob Dole.’
Side with those that attacked us on 9/11 and caused us to cede too
many of our civil liberties already when the majority of Americans wants
us to stay out?
‘You betcha ‘cuz we have to ‘Save (Obama’s) Face.’
'99% of people on this site are putting the national
security of the United States in grave danger just because you want to
screw Obama…'
- mnjg on September 3, 2013 at 10:54 AM
Which, very obviously, explains why I opposed the Afghan ground war and the Iraq war.
By the way…
The Syrian 'rebels' that we are supposed to arm
See Also:
One of the "use to be" 3 big magazines (Time, Newsweek, or U.S. News & World Report) published a story on Hezbollah with pictures of their NAZI-like Regimentation & Philosophy. It was Summer of 2006.
ReplyDeleteMore people need to see that.
The pictures you have here are wonderful in that they are eye opening.