We previously discussed the curious step of President Obama seeking approval for a new war while insisting that he does not need such authorization to attack Syria. Now, Secretary of State John Kerry has referred to a one week period for Syria to comply with U.S. demands or presumably face an attack. It so happens that the Senate is set to vote this week, but opposition in this country is extremely high to yet another military intervention by the Administration. Moreover, unsuccessful in his earlier pitch for a free war, Kerry is now trying to sell the world on an “unbelievably small” military campaign. The U.S. seems to be saying that President Obama just needs the world to let him attack briefly to show that he cannot be dismissed or mocked in his earlier red line announcement. However, Kerry suggested a new red line in turning over control of the weapons and Russia has now announced that it will ask Syria to put chemical weapons under international control. That would undermine further the U.S. rationale for war if Russia says that it is moving to comply with Kerry’s demand. However, State Department handlers are trying to again walk back from the Secretary’s public statements.
Kerry was speaking on Monday alongside his British counterpart, William Hague, when he set a new red line for war. He said “Sure, he could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week – turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting (of it) but he isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done.”
As has become a common scene with Kerry, a team of State Department officials quickly rushed in to clean up after his latest slip. The Department insisted that the reference to a week was merely “rhetorical,” though the Administration continues to insist that Obama could simply ignore a negative vote in Congress.
I previously represented members of Congress in challenging Obama’s intervention in the Libyan civil war without a declaration from Congress. In the case, President Obama insisted that he alone determines what is a war and therefore when he needs a declaration. Since the court would not recognize standing to challenge the war, it left Obama free to engage in war operations in any country of his choosing.
While Kerry conveyed a week deadline and did not indicate any restriction on unilateral U.S. action, the State Department asked people to ignore his precise words and just take the statement as an attempt to show that Assad has “a history of playing fast and loose with the facts.” Of course, as opposed to those how play fast and loose with words.
I particularly liked the comment for Hague when asked about the decision of Parliament not to allow Britain to enter another American-led war. Hague responded that “[t]hese are the two greatest homes of democracy and we work in slightly different ways and we each have to respect how each other’s democracies work.” Yes, the difference appears that the British government respects the need for a legislative consent for war while the United States now has an unabashed Imperial Presidency.
Source: Guardian
Your brother sounds like the smarter sibling to me, randy rooster.
Afghanistan never had anything more to recommend it than Iraq. History doesn’t call it “the graveyard of empires,” for nothing. That Obama didn’t recognize this history spoke poorly of him, but with the Geezer and the Go-Go Girl as alternatives, most people thought: “Well, one less stupid war beats two stupid wars, so let’s get rid of one stupid war first and then we can get rid of the other stupid war later.” This has, in fact, nearly come to pass. Too bad for all the needless death and destruction and squandered national treasure that Obama’s stupid mission-creep escalation in Afghanistan caused. In fact, Obama could have liquidated both stupid wars his first year in office — an Eisenhower would have — and then had a productive presidency. Instead, like George W. Bush the galactic dimwit, Obama has nearly squandered his presidency dragging out — while still losing — two stupid wars. And now he wants to start another one?
The pacifists have gotten the war issues correct time and time again, while those agitating for war have failed utterly and miserably. I cannot think of an instance in my lifetime where pacifism would have produced anything like the disasters caused by the mindless militarism actually indulged to the hilt by the U.S. government. By now, calling someone a “pacifist” ought to count as the highest accolade one could give an American. Certainly, coming from the likes of randy rooster, I would happily consider it so.
So lay on with the “Pacifist! Pacifist! Nya, nya, nya!” playground taunts, randy rooster. We dirty f***ing hippie Vietnam veteran pacifists will only reply with Ronald Reagan’s cheerful: “Come on over, the water’s fine.”
Kerry is a sellout.Hes now a war pig. Never saw that coming.
Kerry never was a pacifist like you.. He and I were opposed to the Vietnam war, NOT all wars or all use of US military power. You sound like my brother who is upset at US forces even being in Afghanistan, and I had to point out to him that Obama stated he was FOR increasing US forces there during his campaign. In fact, he blasted Bush for taking troops out of Afghanistan and going into Iraq. The misunderstanding is yours, not his.
“We are NOT talking about support, but the truth or falsity of a statement. …..Assad says that his forces did not use chemical weapons, Obama and Kerry say that there is ample evidence to say otherwise. ”
Actually, if you read my remark it is clear that I was talking about the ludicrous arguments used by the administration to support a rush to war.
But If you insist that we discuss the ‘truth or falsity of a statement’ then lets be clear. When it comes to who is culpable for the attacks of 082113, there are at least three possibilities:
Assad attacked the rebel held neighborhoods.
Rogue military unites, against orders, attacked the rebel held neighborhoods.
Some militia out of many attacked the neighborhoods in an attempt to provoke the west to attack Assad.
So far as I know there is no factual information available to civilians like my self that would provide a basis to reach a conclusion regarding what parties perpetrated the attack..
Even sources close to the administration admit that the administration’s so called evidence is circumstantial and ‘no slam dunk’.
It is conceivable that the Obama administration itself does not know if it was Assad or rogue military units, acting against orders, that launched the attack.
I suppose that one might try to make a personal decision for belief based on the reputation of those in the Assad administration and those in the Obama administration.
On the one hand we have Assad and his administration believed, by many, to be stone cold psychopathic killers.
And on the other hand we have the Obama administration of demonstrated, documented, publicly humiliated liars.
I am not sure how one decides between those two.
But there is at least this consideration. If you believe the Obama administration, what you have to believe is that on an issue which he has staked his reputation and is loosing badly – he has decided to turn over a new leaf and tell the truth.
In the clear absence of evidence, I prefer to take a different path. I have tried to identify and understand the techniques used to influence our opinions. At this point the Obama administration has used non sequesters and discussion of irrelevant points in an attempt to avoid meaningful discussion of the important issue of war.
BFM Sorry but there are no such things as “rogue” military units unless they are carrying out a coup. There is no possible way to establish that Assad ordered the attacks under your criterion, unless we get a video of him ordering it or loading the weapons himself. In short, you declare Assad innocent of any crimes committed by his forces under virtually all circumstances. He can claim that he never ordered any such thing and you absolve him of all guilt. That does NOT work in military norms since the commander is always the one person who has responsibility. As we say in aviation as captains, you can delegate authority, but not responsibility.
You also dodge the main point which is that Assad’s forces said that they did not even have such weapons until today, when Assad admitted that they did. Then you state that Obama has told multiple lies about this situation, but I have not seen any so far and you decline to state anything specific. The fact is that Obama has not and is not asking for a general war to intervene in Syria, In fact, if that were the case, he would not have agreed to stay an attack since his stated goal was to stop any further gas attacks. He also agreed to the changes the Senate made to restrict the use of forces. So to say that Obama wants a war is an outright lie on the part of his opponents. Unlike Bush who lied to get US TROOPS into Iraq to overthrow Hussein apart from his originally stated goal to get UN inspectors into Iraq, and when they found nothing, invaded any way. So since Bush lied, therefore Obama must be lying.
You also missed the point that by letting Congress vote on any attack, he avoids the fallout when Assad uses more gas and kills hundreds of thousands of innocents. In short, he gets a win/win since he can say with full justification that he wanted to stop Assad, but the opposition did not want to take action that would have actually stopped Assad. So any atrocities will be on their head not his.
The other problem is that it could only be Assad since the rebels do not have access to such a massive stockpile of those weapons. Common sense dictates who is responsible for that attack. Then we have the problem with using “rogue” elements doing this, they have to take such weapons out of storage, deploy them to the units, load and fire them. They are not launching those weapons right from the bunkers or the bases where they are stored. All of which have to have a lot of people and orders involved and Assad would have to be the most ignorant uninvolved leader in history.
To state the obvious:
Biggest disappointment of 2013. John Kerry.
Jill,
Regarding only one of President Obama’s fleeting (with more to come momentarily) proposals for a war-by-hook-or-crook, the administration first floated something about sequestering Syria’s chemical weapons under international auspices, and then — when both Syria and Russia expressed an interest in discussing this — withdrew the suggestion. WTF?
From Common Dreams today:
(snip)
“In the immediate term, however, what is striking so far is the speed with which the U.S. seems to have tried to close the door on the possibility of a coordinated resolution despite the fact a) it was their idea in the first place b) it would ostensibly end the need for a war the American people clearly don’t want and c) it would represent the kind of “political solution” that nearly everyone agrees is the only way to end the violence and bloodshed in Syria.”
Clearly, U.S. military intervention in Syria will only make matters worse. Therefore, the U.S. government wishes to do precisely that.
bigfatmike,
Good job of debunking two of randy rooster’s favorite fallacies (from among many) without actually naming them. To wit:
.
Arguing against an American war on Syria does not make one a partisan of Bashar al-Assad or his regime. Nor does any American need to assume only the binary choice of waging war or doing nothing. Americans can do something else other than either. If one thinks that such a war would not benefit America, then whatever Bashar al-Assad thinks or wishes has no bearing on conclusions reached by Americans thinking for themselves as they see their legitimate needs and interests. Deputy Dubya Bush taught Americans a really painful lesson in reasoning with that discredited “you’re either for us or you’re for the terrorists” line of bullshit, which combined two notorious fallacies and discredited America as a nation of easily duped ignoramuses.
“Once burned, twice shy,” goes the received wisdom. Unfortunately, Americans require quite a few burnings before they learn to look askance at a notorious snake-oil salesman with a gallon of gas in one hand and a flaming torch in the other. But with the blisters and scars from the last burning still raw and inflamed, perhaps one might dare hope for a little sanity in the United States of Amnesia, the Land that Forgot Time. Not placing too high a probability on this, but perhaps …
Obama has asked for more of his military to be in on an even larger strike. However, he is also open to the Russian plan, which he now claims was his own idea.
The man needs to go under oath before Congress and lay out what he plans to do. I think this is about his 7th idea. We really do need to know, and it really does need to be under oath.
“WASHINGTON – Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack Obama administration Aug. 30 did not represent an intelligence community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews
The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies and by the White House itself, but that the White House itself had the final say in the contents of the document.
Leading members of Congress to believe that the document was an intelligence community assessment and thus represents a credible picture of the intelligence on the alleged chemical attack of Aug. 21 has been a central element in the Obama administration’s case for war in Syria.
That part of the strategy, at least, has been successful. Despite strong opposition in Congress to the proposed military strike in Syria, no one in either chamber has yet challenged the administration’s characterisation of the intelligence. But the administration is vulnerable to the charge that it has put out an intelligence document that does not fully and accurately reflect the views of intelligence analysts.
Former intelligence officials told IPS that that the paper does not represent a genuine intelligence community assessment but rather one reflecting a predominantly Obama administration influence.
In essence, the White House selected those elements of the intelligence community assessments that supported the administration’s policy of planning a strike against the Syrian government force and omitted those that didn’t.
In a radical departure from normal practice involving summaries or excerpts of intelligence documents that are made public, the Syria chemical weapons intelligence summary document was not released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but by the White House Office of the Press Secretary.
It was titled “Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013.” The first sentence begins, “The United States government assesses,” and the second sentence begins, “We assess”.
The introductory paragraph refers to the main body of the text as a summary of “the intelligence community’s analysis” of the issue, rather than as an “intelligence community assessment”, which would have been used had the entire intelligence community endorsed the document.
A former senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified told IPS in an e-mail Friday that the language used by the White House “means that this is not an intelligence community document”.
The former senior official, who held dozens of security classifications over a decades-long intelligence career, said he had “never seen a document about an international crisis at any classification described/slugged as a U.S. government assessment.”
The document further indicates that the administration “decided on a position and cherry-picked the intelligence to fit it,” he said. “The result is not a balanced assessment of the intelligence.”
Greg Thielmann, whose last position before retiring from the State Department was director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told IPS he has never seen a government document labeled “Government Assessment” either.
“If it’s an intelligence assessment,” Thielmann said, “why didn’t they label it as such?”
Former National Intelligence Officer Paul Pillar, who has participated in drafting national intelligence estimates, said the intelligence assessment summary released by the White House “is evidently an administration document, and the working master copy may have been in someone’s computer at the White House or National Security Council.”
Pillar suggested that senior intelligence officials might have signed off on the administration paper, but that the White House may have drafted its own paper to “avoid attention to analytic differences within the intelligence community.”
Comparable intelligence community assessments in the past, he observed – including the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate – include indications of differences in assessment among elements of the community.
An unnamed “senior administration official” briefing the news media on the intelligence paper on Aug. 30 said that the paper was “fully vetted within the intelligence community,” and that, ”All members of the intelligence community participated in its development.”
But that statement fell far short of asserting that all the elements of the intelligence community had approved the paper in question, or even that it had gone through anything resembling consultations between the primary drafters and other analysts, and opportunities for agencies to register dissent that typically accompany intelligence community assessments.
The same “senior administration official” indicated that DNI Clapper had “approved” submissions from various agencies for what the official called “the process”. The anonymous speaker did not explain further to journalists what that process preceding the issuance of the White House paper had involved.
However, an Associated Press story on Aug. 29 referred to “a report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence outlining the evidence against Syria”, citing two intelligence officials and two other administration officials as sources.
That article suggests that the administration had originally planned for the report on intelligence to be issued by Clapper rather than the White House, apparently after reaching agreement with the White House on the contents of the paper.
But Clapper’s name was not on the final document issued by the White House, and the document is nowhere to be found on the ODNI website. All previous intelligence community assessments were posted on that site.
The issuance of the document by the White House rather than by Clapper, as had been apparently planned, points to a refusal by Clapper to put his name on the document as revised by the White House.
Clapper’s refusal to endorse it – presumably because it was too obviously an exercise in “cherry picking” intelligence to support a decision for war – would explain why the document had to be issued by the White House.
Efforts by IPS to get a comment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence suggest strongly that Clapper is embarrassed by the way the Obama White House misrepresented the Aug. 30 document.
An e-mail query by IPS to the media relations staff of ODNI requesting clarification of the status of the Aug. 30 document in relation to the intelligence community was never answered.
In follow-up phone calls, ODNI personnel said someone would respond to the query. After failing to respond for two days, despite promising that someone would call back, however, ODNI’s media relations office apparently decided to refuse any further contact with IPS on the subject.
A clear indication that the White House, rather than Clapper, had the final say on the content of the document is that it includes a statement that a “preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that 1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at least 426 children.”
That figure, for which no source was indicated, was several times larger than the estimates given by British and French intelligence.
The document issued by the White House cites intelligence that is either obviously ambiguous at best or is of doubtful authenticity, or both, as firm evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack.
It claims that Syrian chemical weapons specialists were preparing for such an attack merely on the basis of signals intelligence indicating the presence of one or more individuals in a particular location. The same intelligence had been regarded prior to Aug. 21 as indicating nothing out of the ordinary, as was reported by CBS news Aug. 23.
The paper also cites a purported intercept by U.S intelligence of conversations between Syrian officials in which a “senior official” supposedly “confirmed” that the government had carried out the chemical weapons attack.
But the evidence appears to indicate that the alleged intercept was actually passed on to the United States by Israeli intelligence. U.S. intelligence officials have long been doubtful about intelligence from Israeli sources that is clearly in line with Israeli interests.
Opponents of the proposed U.S. strike against Syria could argue that the Obama administration’s presentation of the intelligence supporting war is far more politicised than the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate that the George W. Bush administration cited as part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq.”
© 2013 IPS North America
And what happens if after our missile salvo a half dozen Syrian MIG 29’s come roaring at deck level in a suicide attack, and take out a couple of our destroyers, and put 600 sailors on the bottom of the Mediterranean? Where is Obama’s and Kerry’s promise of no war then?
bigfatmike,
Good quote to start off a debunking of dialectical drivel.
“So your contention is that we grant a proven liar more credibility than Obama in this case.”
I would have first rephrased that statement as follows:
“So your contention is that we grant a proven liar more credibility than a proven liar in this case.”
Obviously, given two proven liars, one would not grant credibility to either of them.
Surely the argument worth having rests on other, more defensible, propositions.
As Jacopo said to Edmond Dantes watching Fernand de Mondego gambling away his family fortune at the roulette wheel:
“He’s losing. And they’re not even cheating him.”
The story of America’s self-destructive militarized foreign policy for the past many decades. It has met its enemy, itself, and it has lost. Others could only watch in amazed disbelief.
“So your contention is that we grant a proven liar more credibility than Obama in this case.”
I did not make any such assertion either directly or by implication.
I did not mention Assad’s credibility. I did not suggest that we compare the credibility of Obama or his administration with the credibility of Assad.
I did criticize the arguments the Obama administrations uses to support its position.
If you think it through I think you will have to admit that criticism of one party, in particular Obama, does not imply support for a different party.
BFM We are NOT talking about support, but the truth or falsity of a statement. Assad says that his forces did not use chemical weapons, Obama and Kerry say that there is ample evidence to say otherwise. This is not something that you can sit on the fence with, since it can only be true or false. I think that given Assad’s lies about this are evident, and thus Kerry and Obama have the truth on their side. So your choice is only Assad is lying or Kerry and Obama are. Which do you or most people think is true? Assad or Obama?
Now there is some wiggle room as to what to DO about the facts, but there is none for the fact that Assad did or did not use chemical weapons on a town that had been in rebel hands for over a year.
Samwise Gamgee:
“Even you couldn’t say no to that.”
Smeagol/Gollum:
“Oh yes we could!”
As my sainted mother used to say about religious crusaders:
“If you’ve got something good, you don’t have to sell it. Other people will steal it from you.”
Secretary of Stale, John Kerry, keeps trying to sell what the American people have said they don’t want to buy. Therefore, he and President Obama have nothing good to offer in their crusade to crush the Assad regime in Syria. As Forrest Gump said: “Momma always had a way of explaining things to me so that I could understand them.”
Secretary of State John Kerry has an unbelievably small mind and an unbelievably large mouth, neither attached to the other by even the smallest of cognitive connections.
Wesley Clark is, “An errand boy sent by grocery clerks to collect a debt.”
During the long Iraq-Iran war — in which the U.S. took both sides against each other while “tilting” a bit more towards Saddam Hussein the chemical gas user — Henry “Der Bomber” Kissinger explained U.S. policy as follows:
“Let them kill each other off.”
As far as I can tell, that remains the Apartheid Zionist policy — and therefore U.S. policy — in the Middle East. Why then cannot Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama just come clean and explain U.S. policy to the American people? Why all the bullshit about “chemical weapons”? For all we know, given the long and ugly history of American militarism in the Middle East, we supplied the poison gas to both sides ourselves. I mean, if the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo could make the stuff for use in Tokyo subways, it wouldn’t seem that difficult to arrange for some Al Qaeda jihadis to get a bad batch of the stuff and choke on it, bringing in the United States to kill off some heretic Alawite allies of Iran, the real target of all this proxy war in Syria business.
I smell rats. Lots of rats. And lies. Lots of lies.
Oops. Lost one. I assume it will come back.
Gene. Yes. But as Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote:
“I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
bigfatmike,
Thanks for the following media quote:
“Earlier today on MSNBC an administration person posed a question, roughly, ‘why would rebels gas themselves to gain tactical advantage’ implying that only Assad would have launched a CW attack.”
Christopher Dicky has a long and complex answer to this question, but basically it boils down to Saudi Arabian double-dealing. Consider:
“On the Syrian battlefield, the lines between the [Muslim] Brotherhood and Jabhat al-Nusra, an offshoot of al Qaeda, often are blurred. The Saudis do not want to support either organization as such. But Riyadh is very concerned that the governments of Turkey and of Qatar, both of which have close ties to the Brotherhood, will dominate the Syrian scene if the Saudis themselves do not take the lead by supplying covert funding and arms to try to buy influence and control. It’s a tricky game, but of a kind that the Saudis have played for generations.”
In a simple Machiavellian paraphrase, the House of Saud wants both of its Muslim rivals — the heretic Syrian Alawites and the pan-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood — to die; but without the House of Saud publicly assuming responsibility for killing off other Muslims. Therefore, having Prince Bandar Bush supply the detested (but useful) Al Qaeda jihadis with unsecured (if not booby-trapped) chemical weapons insures that many of them will die mishandling the poison gas while the “evidence” of a chemical weapon will bring in the Americans to kill off the Alwaite heretics. The proverbial two-birds-with-one-chemical-weapon ploy. A tricky game, indeed, and one which the United States government has no business asking the people of the United States to underwrite and exacerbate.
Bottom line: If the Saudis want it and the Apartheid Zionists want it, the United States shouldn’t want it. But the “government” of the United States argues just the opposite — unconvincingly. I don’t think the American people generally understand the underhanded and back-stabbing foreign interests at work here, but they have a bad — and accurate — feeling that they simply cannot shake. “Something wicked this way comes.” And they want no part of it. Good.
“We will soon find out which of these forms of government runs things in the United States.”
You already know if you’re paying attention and properly understand the mechanics.