Ron Paul blasts Obama over Syrian War escalation

[Soul Crusher]

[Hugo Chavez]

love Paul but basically he's saying this is for "Wag the Dog" purposes.  I disagree with him on that.  Obviously it doesn't take a fucking genius to figure out by now that there is a bigger middle east agenda that was set in place long ago and we're still on whatever course was set back then.  But he's spot on with the use of propaganda being used to entice support for attack on Syria.

[Soul Crusher]

love Paul but basically he's saying this is for "Wag the Dog" purposes.  I disagree with him on that.  Obviously it doesn't take a fucking genius to figure out by now that there is a bigger middle east agenda that was set in place long ago and we're still on whatever course was set back then.  But he's spot on with the use of propaganda being used to entice support for attack on Syria.

Disagree - Obama's failed presidency is riddled by scandal and distrust as it is - his domestic agenda is finished - he looks like the twink he is next to putin after his red line bs, and now needs to save face and a distraction for his remaining days in office. 

[240 is Back]

his domestic agenda is finished -

I wish.  He and his sister Rubio will still try for immigration one more time.

[Hugo Chavez]

Disagree - Obama's failed presidency is riddled by scandal and distrust as it is - his domestic agenda is finished - he looks like the twink he is next to putin after his red line bs, and now needs to save face and a distraction for his remaining days in office.  

yea and how much of the media is dogging him on those things?  Almost none of it. WHY IS THAT? beyond accusations of liberal media why do you think that is?  IMO This isn't wag the dog, it's Obama staying in line with an agenda for the middle east that was already set.  Now I'm not letting Obama off the hook by saying that.  To me, it's even more disturbing that he would, for whatever reason, rubber stamp shit like this that could very easily lead to a real full out world war.  Not tomorrow but it's interventions like this that can tit for tat with various allies until it's to late to take it back...  Syria and Iran are very risky in this area and yet we're full on swinging the swords....  

I understand you've spent years posting on Obama scandal but obviously there is a bit more going on here than JUST Obama covering up.   This isn't wag the dog, it's 100 times worse.

[Soul Crusher]

yea and how much of the media is dogging him on those things?  Almost none of it. WHY IS THAT? beyond accusations of liberal media why do you think that is?  IMO This isn't wag the dog, it's Obama staying in line with an agenda for the middle east that was already set.  Now I'm not letting Obama off the hook by saying that.  To me, it's even more disturbing that he would, for whatever reason, rubber stamp shit like this that could very easily lead to a real full out world war.  Not tomorrow but it's interventions like this that can tit for tat with various allies until it's to late to take it back...  Syria and Iran are very risky in this area and yet we're full on swinging the swords....  

I understand you've spent years posting on Obama scandal but obviously there is a bit more going on here than JUST Obama covering up.   This isn't wag the dog, it's worse.

Obama is trying to topple all the secular leaders in the ME to help create a pan-arab Islamist superstate and region like North America or Europe than will take over all the oil and water ways.

I said this years ago and that is what he is doing.  Obama is a muslim terrorist and a Al Queada loving piece of shit.  He always has been, always will be, and can always be counted on for taking the most radical course of action in anything he touches. 

[Hugo Chavez]

Obama is a muslim terrorist and a Al Queada loving piece of shit.

Good luck with that theory   I'll stick to the facts.... Let me know if you want to even remotely come close to earth and maybe we can talk about this lol...

It's freaking amazing how far apart two people who don't trust Obama can be...  It would have been nice if you could have spent 2 seconds actually considering what I said rather than ramp off some far right wing sounding spewage typical of your posts.

[Soul Crusher]

Good luck with that theory   I'll stick to the facts.... Let me know if you want to even remotely come close to earth and maybe we can talk about this lol...

It's freaking amazing how far apart two people who don't trust Obama can be...  It would have been nice if you could have spent 2 seconds actually considering what I said rather than ramp off some far right wing sounding spewage typical of your posts.

I look at his actions.   He is getting us in to war to help terrorists. 

[Hugo Chavez]

I look at his actions.   He is getting us in to war to help terrorists. 

you're right, you look at his actions and that's what you see and respond to.  You need to look at the bigger picture, all of the politics involved, not just the shit you can find that makes Obama look bad.  If that's all you look for, you are the classic depiction of Capt. Ahab after the white whale lol....

[Soul Crusher]

you're right, you look at his actions and that's what you see and respond to.  You need to look at the bigger picture, all of the politics involved, not just the shit you can find that makes Obama look bad.  If that's all you look for, you are the classic depiction of Capt. Ahab after the white whale lol....

The bigger picture is that we are destabilizing the entire region to usher in radical islamists and extremists.  We did it in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, now Syria 

[Soul Crusher]

 

[Hugo Chavez]

The bigger picture is that we are destabilizing the entire region to usher in radical islamists and extremists.  We did it in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, now Syria 

maybe you should be asking more questions on that.  I fucking guarantee it's not as simple as Obama being part of Al Qaeda as you say lol.  There is a bigger strategy going on than that kind of silliness.  And it's a strategy I don't think we should be engaging in but it's happening now whether you like it or not and it's fucking mega risky imo...  This could easily go bad quick. 

[Soul Crusher]

maybe you should be asking more questions on that.  I fucking guarantee it's not as simple as Obama being part of Al Qaeda as you say lol.  There is a bigger strategy going on than that kind of silliness.  And it's a strategy I don't think we should be engaging in but it's happening now whether you like it or not and it's fucking mega risky imo...  This could easily go bad quick. 

Russia / Iran backing Syria - we are backing Al Queada - what could possibly go wrong? 

[Purge_WTF]

“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."

Guess who said that in 2007?

[Soul Crusher]

“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."

Guess who said that in 2007?

W?   

[headhuntersix]

This is where Obama and his lib utopian bullshit are getting us into trouble. Under folks like Reagan, we backed Right wing dictators in latin America and elsewhere because they were a hedge against communists. It also helped that the leftists were murdering thugs as well and had a history of genocide usually worse then the folks we backed. This was still a no win situation in the micro...as we backed some bad folks. However, we also denied Soviet bulwarks in the West as best we could. We were able to isolate the communists in latin America to a few countries which were not connected enough to create an iron curtain situation in our own hemisphere.

Now switch to Obama and the mid east. This idiot is all about democracy and free and fair elections, will of the people blah blah blah. He either does nothing..Iran..or backs the wrong guys..Libya/Egypt. I'm not sure what his aim is in Syria but Assad is better then islamist nuts. This is not the same as Bush...that admin was all about securing oil rights and WMD's. This is not a Bush argument. Every president has had to face issues in the mid east...Obama has proven to be weak, not feared and certainly not respected. It will take years to dig out from this. If Israel feels threatened and is attacked, they will respond. We are not positioned to stop it. Further....the cuts to the military have deeply affected things. People, especially DOD civilians are running scared. Everybody is building fortresses of importance and the buddy fucking has started. Its been very strange to watch. Nobody will stick their neck out over there, especially fi they feel that 2 months later, they'll be out of a job.

[Purge_WTF]

W?   

Obama.

[Fury]

maybe you should be asking more questions on that.  I fucking guarantee it's not as simple as Obama being part of Al Qaeda as you say lol.  There is a bigger strategy going on than that kind of silliness.  And it's a strategy I don't think we should be engaging in but it's happening now whether you like it or not and it's fucking mega risky imo...  This could easily go bad quick. 

He raises a good question, though. Obama continues to throw his weight behind Islamists and others whose stated goals are to re-establish the caliphate.

Like it or not he has allied us with Al Qaeda.

And I don't understand the propaganda claim. Only 9% of Americans support intervention. They're just doing whatever the fuck they want because they don't care what you, I or anyone else thinks.


This is going to end up 10x worse than Iraq. AQI and the other Islamists have learned a lot from the beatings they took in Iraq.

[headhuntersix]

Assad has nowhere to go and will use what he has....regardless of some grand consiracy on Obama's part..he's doing exactly what the consiracy suggests. I suspose thats more troubling as it appears Obama is a fucking retard instead of a man with a plan.

[Soul Crusher]

Obama’s third war

By RALPH PETERS

Last Updated: 11:45 PM, August 26, 2013



You might as well try to teach a snake to juggle as hope the Obama administration will think strategically. The “peace president” is about to embark on his third military adventure, this time in Syria, without having learned the lessons of his botched efforts in Afghanistan and Libya. He hasn’t even learned from the Bush administration’s mistakes — which he mocked with such delight.

Before launching a single cruise missile toward Syria, Team Obama needs to be sure it has a good answer to the question, “What comes next?”

If Obama does a Clinton and churns up some sand with do-nothing cruise-missile strikes, it will only encourage the Assad regime. But if our president hits Assad hard and precipitates regime change, then what?

If al Qaeda and local Islamists seize Damascus, what will we do? The enfeebled “moderate opposition” we back rhetorically couldn’t dislodge hardcore jihadis, no matter how many weapons we sent (the jihadis would simply confiscate the gear).

What if we weaken the regime to the point where the fanatics rev up their jihad to drive out Christians and other minorities? What’s your plan then, Mr. President? After your night of explosive passion, will you still love the opposition in the morning?

Exactly which American vital security interests are at stake in Syria, Mr. President? Your credibility? Put a number on it. How many American lives is your blather about red lines worth?

Chemical weapons use? Horrible and illegal, a war crime. So is the mass slaughter of civilians. Is it really so much worse to be gassed than tortured to death by al Qaeda or burned alive in your church? Which is more important, the number of dead, or the means that killed them?

Islamist terrorists have killed tens, if not hundreds, of thousands, of innocent Muslims. Aren’t they the real enemies of civilization?

Mr. President, do you really think it’s wise to send our missiles and aircraft to provide fire support for al Qaeda? That is exactly what you’ll be doing, if you hit Assad.

Assad’s an odious butcher, filth on two legs. But in the world of serious strategy, you rarely get a choice between black and white. You choose between black and charcoal gray.

Employing our military assets to support either side in Syria would be a mistake. Employing them without a worst-case plan for what might follow would be criminal.

We just can’t seem to learn, though. Invading Iraq, the Bush team, egged on by ideologues who never served in uniform, refused to allow our military to plan for an occupation. That sure worked out. Then, in Libya, the Obama administration deposed Khadafy, but refused to plan seriously for the aftermath. Welcome to Benghazi.

There are wars worth fighting. It was essential to go to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 (although staying there was idiocy). There will be future conflicts that demand our blood to defend vital interests. But we’ve now had a decade of do-gooder wars that haven’t done much good.

For the record, I don’t regret getting rid of Saddam or Khadafy. I regret the ineptitude with which we did these things. When you propose a war, don’t ever expect a cheap date.

Now there’s an unholy alliance pushing for attacks on Syria. We have liberal zealots, such as our UN ambassador, Samantha Power, who believe that our military’s primary purpose is to protect people who hate America. We have a few Republican senators like John McCain and Lindsey Graham who support any war, any time. We have a president who thinks that, “Gee, maybe, well, gosh, I said I’d do something, so maybe I should...” And we have elements in the defense industry who long for a return to our free-spending years in Iraq and Afghanistan and view a war in Syria as a great way to beat the sequester.

And the one thing every member of that bomb-Syria-now coalition has in common? Not one will have to fight.

Ralph Peters is a retired US Army officer and Fox News’ strategic analyst.

[JOHN MATRIX]

He is a massive hypocrite if he gets involved in Syria. He ran on an anti-war, anti foreign entanglement platform

[Soul Crusher]

Special Operations Speaks


Barack Obama, Barry, the last time you tried to sell the international community on your "Foreign Policy" you lied through your teeth about a "YouTube Video" causing the "Spontaneous Demonstrations" which led to four dead Americans. Blatant fabrication.

 You even apologized on behalf of America for it with Hillary's apology ad that cost taxpayers $75,000.

 Barry, really how can anyone take your word for WMD's in Syria. See that's the thing about lying...you've lost all credibility. Come clean about Benghazi, the truth will set you free.

[Soul Crusher]

Obama's War of Choice in Syria Isn't Defensive or Humanitarian

Posted: 08/27/2013 12:02 pm
 


 
The seemingly impending war the U.S. is about to launch on Syria is not about saving people from the Assad regime's violence. That is glaringly true given what the Obama administration is actually planning to do.

Airstrikes. No, not the kind that will last for months until the Assad regime is toppled. Regime change is pretty explicitly not the goal. Instead, the Obama administration and senior officials speaking to the press have suggested the airstrikes will be limited.

Limited to what? Is the goal to bomb the Assad regime's stockpiles of chemical weapons so that he can never again use them on his own people? According to Mark Thompson at Time, taking out Syria's chemical weapons caches "is fraught with perils," because not only is the U.S. unsure of where they are located, but bombing them could create "plumes of deadly vapors that could kill civilians downwind of such attacks." If Obama takes this route, he'll kill more civilians with chemical weapons than would have died without a U.S. military response.

Instead, Obama may target "military, and command and control, targets -- including artillery and missile units that could be used to launch chemical weapons -- instead of the bunkers believed to contain them." Ok, and what appreciable effect will this have? On the one hand, such strikes wouldn't amount to leveling Assad's entire military infrastructure since Obama is intent to "maintain the functions of the state" in order to avoid a power vacuum that would boost the al-Qaeda-linked rebels and possibly allow them to get their hands on Assad's chemical weapons (which they have said they would use).  As Phil Giraldi, former CIA intelligence officer, told me back in March, "Obama has come around to the view that regime change is more fraught with dangers than letting Assad remain."

On the other hand, these limited airstrikes against a selection of military targets might encourage Assad to act out with even more fury and indiscriminate violence, just as Clinton's initial bombing of Serbia caused Milosevic to dig in his heels before eventually giving up (most of the Serb atrocities against Kosovar Albanians occurred after the U.S. bombing).

So U.S. airstrikes won't neuter Assad's ability to continue to fight, may prompt worse violence from Assad, and may even directly kill more Syrian civilians.

It seems clear these airstrikes are not about preventing more regime violence or saving the Syrian people. So what are they about?

According to Thompson, "U.S. defense officials are weighing air strikes to punish Assad's government for their suspected use of chemical weapons." As former State Department official Aaron David Miller wrote yesterday, Obama is planning "a single retaliatory attack that strives to make a point rather than a difference."

Punitive war. That's something I'm betting the Norwegian Nobel Committee never would have predicted a recipient of their peace prize engaging in. This is not defensive war, since the Assad regime doesn't present even the remotest threat to America. It isn't a humanitarian war either, since U.S. airstrikes won't cripple the Assad regime's military capacity and may even get more civilians killed.

Obama is waging a war, as Miller explained, "to make a point." Given the fact that a mere 9 percent of Americans actually support a U.S. military intervention in Syria, I wonder what it would do to public opinion if Obama was honest with the American people about his petty disciplinary war. If the president sat in the Oval Office and told the American public that he was bombing another country, not to protect Americans or even Syrians, but "to make a point" or "punish" the Assad regime, with no greater utility, I seriously doubt the mission would gain any legitimacy in the eyes of voters.

With a backbone like an earthworm, President Obama is bowing to pressure - not from the American public or from Congress, but from "foreign-policy experts and politicians," as Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, described it -- to go to war for his own "credibility."

Obama told the world that Assad's use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would prompt U.S. military action. So, to protect Obama's reputation as a reliable war-maker who keeps his promise to bomb people, we have to go to war in Syria? It's difficult to imagine a weaker case for using international force.

Which brings us to a final point: for this apparently imminent U.S. bombing raid to be legal, it has to get the approval of both the U.S. Congress and the United Nations Security Council. Congress is likely to push back on Obama's call to war and Russia and China are sure to veto any proposal at the UN.

So on top of this being a war of choice with no humanitarian utility beyond making Obama feel tough and reliable, it is also sure to be a violation of the Constitution and international law. Couple this with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey's warning back in April that "unintended consequences are the rule with military interventions of this sort," Obama's new war in the Middle East is shaping up to be a doozy.

[billytwolips]

Obama's election was the absolute BEST thing that could've happened to make pushing the War Agenda continue. Now all of the Dems who were against war when it was Bush's have nothing to say. Pathetic.

[Soul Crusher]

Syria: why would Assad invite a Western intervention by using WMDs in a war he was winning?

By Tim Stanley World Last updated: August 27th, 2013


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100232698/syria-why-would-assad-invite-a-western-intervention-by-using-wmds-in-a-war-he-was-winning/


Crazy, yes. Stupid, we don't know.

Woah! Hold your horses, Barack. Before we go to war with Syria can we be absolutely surely sure that we've got our pretext right? Only we've made a horrible mistake about WMDs before…

The official UK/US narrative on the conflict in Syria is this. Last year, we drew a red line in the sand: if the regime uses chemical weapons then it makes itself a legitimate target for military action. Last week, it apparently did just that – murdering hundreds of people, including children, in a suburb of Damascus. John Kerry described this slaughter as defying "any code of morality", and he demanded "accountability" from the Assad regime. There could, he insisted, be no doubt that the government is culpable – and anyone saying otherwise is a tool of cold blooded killers. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, etc, etc.

Kerry's narrative is full of holes. First, we've yet to ascertain that chemical weapons really were used by Assad – specifically we've not determined a) what kind of WMDs they were or b) who actually did it. The situation is complicated by how difficult it's proving to get to the site of the attack to carry out tests. But this is a war zone, and forensic tests take longer and are more complicated to execute when you're surrounded by people trying to blow each other up. So it's going to take time.

Second, why would the Assad regime do something so stupid? It must know that by using chemical weapons it would isolate itself from any international support and invite a Western military response. More importantly, Assad was already winning the war – so why bother to use WMDs during the last lap to victory? Indeed, the only people who have anything to gain by Assad using chemicals are the rebels, because that would internationalise the conflict in a way that they have long lobbied for.

Third, why is the West obliged to act even if Assad did use chemical weapons? We are not under any such treaty obligations and the subject sure doesn't feature as a trigger for war in the US constitution. The red line itself has slimmed and thickened over time. When Obama first laid it down, it was thin to the point of invisible, quote:


We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised… That would change my equation.”

So all Assad had to do to get America's attention was move a "whole bunch" of WMDs around a bit. He didn't even have to use them. But while Obama was shockingly vague when he made that statement back in August 2012, now Kerry uses very precise language to denounce a specific action that hasn't even been verified as being Assad's fault. By the way, if the West was looking for a pretext to intervene in Syria on humanitarian grounds then it's had plenty already: Assad's been killing tens of thousands of innocents for two years. So what difference would one chemical attack make?

Maybe Kerry is right and maybe the Syrian government did use WMDs on its own people. But we've got one very good reason to doubt his accuracy: Iraq. Remember that back in 2003, the then US secretary of state, Colin Powell, told the UN in no uncertain terms that Iraq definitely had WMDs. Definitely, definitely, definitely. We now know that it didn't. We now know that the CIA got its intelligence wrong, that because Saddam Hussein used to lie about having chemical weapons the US judged that he still was. It's true that when dealing with a dictatorship built upon fabrications, trusting its word is almost impossible – but it's not logical to assume that we must proceed on the basis that everything it ever says is a lie. There is a scintilla of a possibility that Assad is innocent of this particular war crime. Should we go to war on the basis of a false accusation, we would be guilty of what TS Eilot called "the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason".


Tags: Barack Obama, David Cameron, Iraq War, John Kerry, Saddam Hussein, Syria, weapons of mass destruction