I think Obama played the hand he was dealt brilliantly on Syria.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

It wouldn't have mattered what he did if he acted alone. If he took any action whatsoever, the presstitutes would be wetting their pants, screaming that he fucked up. If he did nothing, the presstitutes would be wetting their pants that he fucked up. Now, it's all on our bought and paid for, representatives. Whatever they decide, right or wrong, it's now all on them. Brilliant!

And, FWIW, IMHO, if we can't afford schools, roads, bridges, etc. we sure as hell cannot afford another fucking war.

[MindMover]

1. That is what the League of Nations said .....

Last edited Sun Sep 1, 2013, 11:13 PM - Edit history (1)

"we sure as hell cannot afford another fucking war."

[Llewlladdwr]

2. It's my understanding that the President intends to proceed whatever Congress votes.

That being the case, how can Congress be said to own this issue? They can all vote no safe in the knowledge that the President will go ahead anyway.

[reformist2]

3. But Obama has already changed course once. He might end up agreeing with a Congress that votes no.

[MindMover]

5. Where do you get your understanding from ... link please ....

[HooptieWagon]

40. Here.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/syria-crisis-reaction-obama-decision-military-action

If WH was going to abide Congressional vote, they would say so. Stating they don't need Congressional vote is laying groundwork to proceed with or without Congressional approval. We shall see what Congress has to say about an imperial presidency. We already know 80+% of public against it.

[MindMover]

43. "Has the right" ... not; is going to proceed with or without approval

Last edited Mon Sep 2, 2013, 01:39 PM - Edit history (1)

[CakeGrrl]

20. Wrong. He has the authority, but never said he would act on it.

The MSM is spinning, incorrectly as usual.

[gopiscrap]

4. I Obama did great with this also

[MindMover]

7. He just passed the ball and caught it at the same time ....

and is running for a touchdown ... now do you understand ... ????

We know you do not understand chess so we made it more conducive to your intellect ....

[FreakinDJ]

10. No I understand his "Evidence" is sketchy at best

His "Moment of Clarity" decision came about 1 hour after the Associated Press story broke claiming the Sarin Gas Attack was the result the rebels "Mishandling"

[MindMover]

13. Oh yea, the one about the Saudi prince giving sarin to the rebels to disperse amongst there own ...

you mean that one ....

Freakin is really freakin ....

[FreakinDJ]

14. Boot Wax is known to impair judgement ya know

just sayin

[MindMover]

15. Draw down on that dube a little less, and come back down, your judgment ...

is laden with conspiracies in the middle east ... wow, who woulda thought ....

Of course this Saudi prince had some sarin cooked up to give to these rebels who he personally knows to carry out this secret mission to corrupt any intelligence gathering about who is responsible for gassing Syrian innocents ... it makes perfect sense ....

[dionysus]

36. he's sniffing glue.. not smoking dope.

[Art_from_Ark]

30. In football, you can't catch your own pass

Any touchdown would be nullified, and the iine of scrimmage would be set back 5 yards.

[MindMover]

32. LOL .... well this one did ...

[OffWithTheirHeads]

9. Seriously? That's your response?

[FreakinDJ]

11. Just how do those boots taste - ya thats my response

[LittleBlue]

21. Agreed

If he loses this vote, or if he intervenes and the outcome is bad, he's going to look awful.

Bush got congressional authorization, and no one ever forgot it was his mistake.

The truth is that this is a desperate play after an unexpected setback occurred: British parliament rejecting intervention.

[MindMover]

23. OK, ...

1. Way too many ifs, if the world was flat ...

2. BUSH LIED, and set us up ...

3. Not unexpected at all, the British have never been deep thinkers, with a few exceptions .. Winston wanted to stop Hitler ...early on

[LittleBlue]

27. I don't think there are too many "ifs", the options are

mutually exclusive. Either there is a good outcome, or a bad outcome in Syria. Either congress votes yes or no. These are not wild scenarios among thousands of others.

The British have never been deep thinkers? That's a bold statement.

[MindMover]

31. There are many potential outcomes in Syria ...

None quite as bad as doing NOTHING ... but I think there is already a bad outcome in Syria ... with people being gassed and a treaty signed in 1925 by virtually every nation in the world to not use chemical weapons because of the carnage of WWI has been violated once again ....

And I will say again the British have never been deep thinkers with a few exceptions, one being Winston ....

[HooptieWagon]

41. Uh, escalating the war is worse than doing nothing.

BTW, Obama's missle attack is certain to kill civilians....what is an acceptable number to you?
And if Assad retaliates by striking Israel...how many Israeli civilian deaths are acceptable to you?

[MindMover]

49. You have prefaced my statement with "escalating the war" ...

There is one person responsible for escalating the war and that is the butcher of Damascus ....

Your certainty of killing civilians is based on what; especially if we are targeting military sites.?

And if this butcher attacks Israel, then his military will be wiped out ....

[HooptieWagon]

51. You think Syrian military sites

are located by themselves in the middle of the desert? No, they are located in and around cities....where civilians live. And every missle, bomb, or drone strike has incurred civilian casualties...what the military calls "collateral damage". It is inevidable. Missles go off course, wrong coordinates get entered, bad intel on target locations...any number of things can go wrong, and do on a regular basis. Do you not recall when we bombed the Chinese Embassy by mistake? Shit happens....but Obama is painting himself into a corner where there is NO room for error. All its going to take is ONE faulty missle hitting a hospital or school, and Assad will claim the moral high ground, and Obama will be the most hated man in the world.

[MindMover]

53. Over 100,000 people have been killed in Syria over the last 2 yrs ......

these people were killed by the butcher of Damascus,

and yes there is collateral damage .... sometimes ....

This butcher can only claim morality in hell; here and now, we already know the truth ... that the butcher is the most hated man on earth

[hopemountain]

29. so you're praising mentally deranged assad, & the white supremacist bigot led russia as

being better?

multi dimensional chess bullshit? what would your move be if you knew only the half of the truth of it?

[customerserviceguy]

8. I disagree

For starters, he's decided that he's the world's only moral leader, might be that Peace prize that the Nobel committee fronted him. Secondly, he's guaranteed that precious time needed for various budget negotiations will be absorbed by this nonsense. Third, he's allowed the Repukes to outflank him on the left as the party of peace, it's safe for them to vote against this, as it doesn't matter one whit to US national security, while forcing the Democratic congresscritters to either vote to support him, or be against war.

This is a clusterfuck, and he can't even blame a single part of it on Bush.

[MindMover]

12. For starters I disagree ... with your op

1. only moral leader, never said that, no mention anywhere .... link please

2. budget wudget, another libertarian, innocent lives is not nonsense, you are speaking gibberish ...

3. repukes outflanking anyone is highly unlikely especially this President, they can't even agree amongst themselves ...

4. doesn't matter about national security is exactly what the league of nations said ...

5. you might start with unscrambling your brain signals on this one ... clusterfuck .. yea for those republicans who must take a vote on whether or not to save innocents ...

[customerserviceguy]

16. Here's refutation of your points

1) True, he never said that. I infer it because he's the only world leader who wants to go ballistic on Syria right now, other than some sort of "moral" reasoning, what has he offered for this? He surely hasn't tied it to any sort of national interest.

2) That "budget wudget" that you pooh-pooh is fundamental to the economic workings of this country. I sense a recovery starting, but if the government shuts down, it will be smothered in its crib. Those are Americans we're talking about, and this President owes them a chance at making things work. No matter what we do or don't do in Syria, those people are fucked, and we really cannot (and will not) fundamentally change that fact.

3) Yes, Gramps McCain and Goober Graham cannot agree with Rand Paul, but they're wild-ass exceptions. All of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, know America is war-weary, and we saw what happened the last time we got involved in Libya. However, the Repukes have two reasons to oppose this, and the other is that they want to make Obama look bad. Other than crazy-ass McLame and chicken-hawk Graham, most know that this is an easy vote to say no. I wish our side saw it that way.

4) The League of Nations was a total failure, at least the UN managed to preside over the time when WWIII could have started, but didn't. Nobody today gives a crap what they said ninety years ago.

5) You're the one who's scrambled, when have Republicons ever cared about innocents, even in this country? Why do you think they would care about them in the Arab world, of all places? Besides, nothing we do with this "punishment" action is going to make a ding-dong damn's worth of difference. Assad can simply use conventional weapons to annihilate his opposition, it just takes more time. He really doesn't need to do this again, not until his back is completely against the wall. And if that happens, nothing we say or do would stop him when he is truly desperate.

I'm sorry, but the people he fucked over were fucked one way or the other. Unless we plan to replace him and his regime, at great cost in money and lives, we're not going to change that with a few days of cruise missiles.

[MindMover]

19. Ok, and thank you for fleshing out your op and not hurling insults ...

1. Our President has definitely tied the Syrian crisis to our national interest many times ... most recently

2. It has been stated by many repukes that there will not be a major challenge to a budget like there has been in the past budgets...

3. If your op is correct then you have nothing to worry about another war ...

4. Unfortunately, you are correct that we seem to not learn from history ...

5. You are correct about a few days of missiles ...

[customerserviceguy]

54. Point by point

1. Yes, he's made some slight attempt in that direction. However for me (and many others) he just hasn't connected the dots.

2. Some Rethugs feel that way, but we still haven't seen what the tea partiers can do when they get back. They felt burned by the year-end tax deal nine months ago, and they're not going to be fooled or outflanked again. They'll gladly shut down the government if given half a chance, and they just got the message from their August recess from the folks who put them into office just for the purpose of shutdown. In any case, every day is precious, and dragging Congress into a debating match over Syria just takes away time from a job we actually elected our government to do.

3. I certainly hope that enough of both sides of Congress can get together and deliver the President the message that he's all on his own out there, no broad support from the American people, and no support internationally, either.

4. I wish I were wrong, but nations act in their own best interests in a rational world. We didn't go risking lives and spending money in Rwanda twenty years ago (has Bill Clinton told Barack Obama how it's haunted him?) because there was no compelling national interest on our part. The same was true for Iraq a decade ago, and frankly, I think we had more reason to intervene there, although it just wasn't anywhere near enough. We've seen the price paid in lives, life-long injuries, and wasted borrowed funds that would have been better spent building up our own country.

5. That's probably the worst part, all this will accomplish is letting the military play with their toys for a short while. Then there will be more money needed to replenish the toy chest.

Thanks for a spirited debate!

[MindMover]

55. Thanks again ... Regards

[VanillaRhapsody]

18. Saving innocents....the Republicans are well known for doing that....

[MindMover]

25. They will go down in history, literally speaking .... for not saving innocents ...

[Iggo]

17. He dealt himself that hand.

[CakeGrrl]

22. Congress whined and whined about being consulted, so there it is.

Now they have to go on the record.

They're going to have to decide if they vote to try to screw the President over, or vote their conscience or principles or according to their political beliefs.

Against the evidence that is being collected, it will be interesting to see what happens. The President called their bluff, so they can't sit on the sidelines and lob shitbombs with no consequence.

[MindMover]

33. Exactly, and when they decide to do nothing, they are responsible......

[ocpagu]

24. Does he really need to campaign for a war, though?

"President Seeks to Rally Support for Syria Strike"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/world/middleeast/syria.html?hp&_r=0

[MindMover]

35. That is an opinion from an oppositional rag ... the NY times is in financial trouble and seeks ...

with every line it prints to be controversial .... to sell more print by the nytimes .... and there CEO is trying ..

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-r-schwarz/new-york-times-mark-thompson_b_1832104.html

[dennis4868]

26. You do know you're on DU

we are not allowed to make excuses for Obama. Please leave at once. Take your facts and get out of here.

[Erose999]

28. Obama said he would go ahead with the strike regardless of how congress votes. Get ready for another

decade of un-winnable war.

[MindMover]

34. Link please to your assertion ...

[Erose999]

38. "We don't contemplate that the Congress is going to vote no," Kerry said, but he stressed the

president had the right to take action "no matter what Congress does".

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/obama-strike-syria-congress-kerry

Obama and Kerry haven't even considered that Congress could vote NO.

[Erose999]

39. "I'm confident in the case our government has made without waiting for U.N. inspectors.

I'm comfortable going forward without the approval of a United Nations Security Council that, so far, has been completely paralyzed and unwilling to hold Assad accountable"

"Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective"


Those are a couple of gems from his presser in the Rose Garden yesterday.


If you read the whole speech, he keeps referring to "the decision we have made" &c. Obama put the option of not intervening in such stark terms its clear he has every intention of carrying out the strike.

[MindMover]

45. I know you have privy to all the President said and can reach into his mind ...

and definitively state that he will strike, no matter what ...

[Erose999]

46. Its not rocket science, just look at the language he used. He said he would "consult" with congress.

He said he would "allow" a debate. As if a debate were his to take away.

[MindMover]

50. Please read up on executive privilege ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_privilege

A debate is necessary to condemn the butcher of Damascus actions ....

[dionysus]

37. .

:tinfoil:

[Scootaloo]

42. That's only if he abides by their decision

If they vote no and he goes ahead anyway... Well... I guess the swamp is going to come up with a back-slapping way to frame that as a mission accomplished, but the rest of us are going to be slapping foreheads.

[HooptieWagon]

48. Yes, they'll spin it as a brilliant political move...

...27 dimensional chess....that Obama made sure there was no international, Congressional, or popular support for his war so he could take full credit for its magnificent success.
If course, if Obama's war goes wrong, they'll blame everyone but him.
Their schtick is becoming a parody of itself....

[MindMover]

56. You laid it out pretty well, except for the ongoing slaughter of innocents ...

by the butcher of Damascus....

[GeorgeGist]

57. Must you really embarass Ghandi with your blood thirst?

[MindMover]

58. Your assumptions are incorrect ....

[Puzzledtraveller]

44. No it is not on all of them

He is the POTUS, who is going to congress to ask for approval! You do not ask for what you don't want because it may be given to you.

[deaniac21]

47. He is a master statesman!

[Bradical79]

52. Politicaly, I think it could be a great move for him