Congress, Constitutional Law, International, Military

Trump Strikes Syria As America’s Undeclared War Expands

The United States fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase last night in retaliation for a chemical attack blamed on the Syrian government.  The Syrian government previously declared U.S. troops and military operations in its country to be an invasion of the country.   With the expansion of military operations, including troops on the ground, I thought it was worth reposting the recent column on undeclared wars that have become the norm for the United States.  Of  course, the only thing rising faster than our military intervention is congressional hypocrisy as Democrats express outrage over the failure to secure a declaration of war or authorization.  These are the same members who remained silent as President Obama routinely launched missiles at targets in a variety of nations and took this country to war in Libya without even consulting Congress.  As on the filibuster issue, the Democrats frittered away any high ground years on the issue years ago.


In recent testimony before the Senate Judiciary hearing, I supported the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch, despite my disagreement with some of his opinions. I specifically noted that his textualist approach to statute and the Constitution is no vice in a federal judge. While I hold many liberal views, I also believe in a formalist and fairly textualist approach to interpretation.

What is curious, however, is how the supporters of such textualism and formalism are largely silent this week as the Trump administration is planning to send more troops into Syria and to intervene in Yemen … all without the declaration of war required by the text of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

Hundreds of more troops are planned for the Syrian conflict even though the government in the country has declared that any U.S. military operating in the country are “invaders.” We have been conducting extensive bombing raids with troops on the ground in Syria for many months. We have spent billions of dollars on the effort. All without a formal declaration by the Congress.

Now, Defense Secretary James Mattis has reportedly asked the White House to lift restrictions on U.S. military support in Yemen. The war against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels  has not been going well for our Persian Gulf allies, particularly Saudi Arabia. The United States wants now to play a bigger role, but notably, the military is asking permission not from Congress but the president. It is his call. That is precisely what the Framers wanted to avoid.

The Constitution has long had its own unreliable allies in Congress. Adherence to the text of the document seems to be a forgotten value when it would take politicians to uncomfortable or inconvenient places. Politicians hate to declare wars. It is not that they hate wars. Wars are popular. Wars can be profitable.

The problem is that they can be blamed if wars do not go well. As a result, they have used open-ended resolutions that can be used by presidents to conduct wars at their whim while allowing politicians to later deny that they ever really supported interventions or were misled if the wars go badly.

This issue most famously came up with Hillary Clinton during her presidential runs. She was eager to express her support for the wars in Iraq and Libya until they became unpopular. Clinton then blamed others and insisted that she was misled, adding, “I wasn’t alone in getting it wrong.”

Of course, the spin ignored the objections at the time that Clinton and others were unwilling to even listen to objections or demands for substantive hearings. These calls were ignored because the members did not want to hear anything that would make it difficult for them to vote for a popular war.

She is certainly right that she was not alone in discarding her duties under Article I. The vote was a popular choice and paraded before cameras … until the war dragged on with thousands of casualties and hundreds of billions in expenditures. Democrats and Republicans share equal responsibility for reading out Article I, Section 8 from the Constitution.

The courts are equally at fault. They have accepted resolutions as substitutes for declarations and, more importantly, have allowed resolutions to become increasing general and vague, thus allowing (as we are now seeing) open-ended power to intervene militarily in virtually any country at any time. Indeed, challengers rarely get any judicial review at all. Years ago, I represented both Democratic and Republican members challenging the Libyan War, but the federal court barred consideration of the merits by the members as lacking “standing” to be even heard in federal court.

We were bombing the capital of a foreign power with a recognized government. We were spending billions in war funding. Yet, the Obama administration was allowed to simply call it not a “war” but a “time-limited, scope-limited military action” or a “kinetic action.” Indeed, the Administration insisted to the court that the President alone defines what is a war. Thus, as long as he does not use that noun, Article I effectively does not apply. You can call it a “police action” or a training exercise or a bean bag and that is all that you need to claim the right to go to war on a president’s sole authority.

Does that track with anyone even remotely familiar with our Framers? These were brilliant men who created a system of carefully balanced powers. Yet, Congress and the courts have made them into the world’s biggest chumps who can be circumvented by simply a change in nouns. Where the Framers wanted Congress to take ownership of any wars, courts now allow members to delegate that authority to presidents and sit as pedestrians watching whether wars prove to be popular or problematic.

History is now repeating itself. No one in Congress wants its own new intervention, but no one wants to be seen opposing interventions against terrorists. Suddenly all of the moral outrage over non-textualist readings of the Constitution are silent … just days after the last hearing. This is why moral outrage in Washington is something of a performance art. This performance, however, is nothing but a tragedy for those who believe in adherence to the text of the Constitution.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He has litigated various national security cases.

232 thoughts on “Trump Strikes Syria As America’s Undeclared War Expands”

  1. The public would live in a better world if we removed this reliance on politicians and kings.

    1. With what are you planning to replace politicians and kings? Joseph Sobran’s fantasies?

    2. Darren:
      You wanna rely on the public school educated, cell phone obsessed populace we have now? Not moi. I’ll take an educated dolt to an uneducated one most every time.

      1. Dolts are the last people you want in charge, just look at Hank “Guam will tip up and fall into the ocean” Johnson. A meritocracy is a better form. But with our system it is not going to happen.

        You might want to consider also that being educated in a public school is not always a detriment and understand that stupidity is a trait independent of all other attributes a person might have.

        Being elected to office does not make a person the best person for the role. It means more accurately they successfully conned enough people to vote for them.

        1. Actually, I’d rather have dolts in charge – They are rarely great at anything including successfully implementing bad polices.

        2. Oh my gosh, that island tipping over remark was so bad. Cringeworthy.

          I don’t know, though. I think Pelosi can give anyone a run for their money for who has said the most batty things. She thought Hamas was a humanitarian organization, “Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.” (There are only 319 million people in the US, total) And then there is her Constitutional prowess: “We avow the First Amendment. We stand with that and say that people have a right to have a gun to protect themselves in their homes and their jobs, whereever, and that they — and the workplace and that they, for recreation and hunting and the rest. So we’re not questioning their right to do that”

          You know, I don’t know if people just get really nervous public speaking, and just act batty, or if politics somehow seems to attract an inordinate proportion of shallow, self absorbed, greedy, dishonest, ignorant people. It’s true that there are some truly dedicated public servants in office. But many of the rest of them are swinging like monkeys from the chandeliers, throwing taxpayer dollars around like confetti, and making some of the most absurd decisions.

          1. Both of them are reason enough for term limits.

            The level of incompetence shown in aggregate by federal politicians should be enough to convince people that it is folly to expect better from them. We have to wonder how many hundreds of thousands of individuals they have killed in the past fifteen years, how far the debt has grown, how badly they treat the environment, how much they have cheated the American public out of their hard earned dollars, that they manufactured a fraudulent health care system that is fundamentally broken, and that out of five hundred and thirty six of them, a disproportionate number are convicted of crimes when measured against the public as a whole. All of this time they continue to fleece the public out of more treasure and live a regal life while others are in dire straits. And worse, they protect each other despite egregious breaches of ethics and some skate while individuals who are down and out get crushed sometimes by the criminal justice system.

            A large problem is that pols have convinced people that they are who matters. I say that if the citizenry could be more self-reliant, self-sufficient, and give the government as little money as the law will permit, that we will shift the power in the country back to those who should be granting it.

            If each of us came together to accomplish matters of importance, sidelining the pols, it is in our collective interest. One example of this occurs with conservation societies that pool money to purchase land and simply allow nature to be. Or, for individuals, rather than wait for public power commissioners to lower rates to instead find ways to make their homes more energy efficient.

            1. And why can’t we call this what it is: bribery.

              http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-jerry-brown-gas-tax-side-deals-20170409-story.html

              Jerry Brown spent about $1 billion of taxpayer dollars basically bribing legislators to pass a horrendous new tax that increases the cost of gas and registration here in CA. Out of that $1 billion, a hefty $400 million went to the lone Republican vote that passed the bill. State Sen. Anthony Canella (R-Ceres). Canella will use the money for a pork project to extend the Altamonte Corridor Express, a train between the Bay Area and Central Valley that is alleged to be planned to connect to High Speed Rail (or as we call it, The Train to Nowhere, Slow Speed Rail, The Great Land Snatch, The Great Aquifer Drainer, and the Browndoggle.)

              And, yet again, a tax that is purported to fix our crumbling roads has been stolen to go toward High Speed Rail, one of the most egregious boondoggles in modern history, and to bail out CALPERS (California Public Employees Retirement System) pensions. This pension fund over promised but under delivered. As per usual, union government employees were promised cush benefits and pay that the cash strapped taxpayers of CA could not afford. The fund requires an injection of a half a billion dollars a year additional to remain solvent after an initial contribution of $3 billion.

              I just love to see slothful government employees get fat, rich, and lazy on the taxpayer dime, with benefits far above those of the people who pay them…who live in the real world.

              And such gas and registration taxes always hit the poor and middle class the hardest. Thank goodness the Democratic party is always on the “right side” of so many social issues, and hammering the poor and middle class into the ground financially is for our own good, whilst they enjoy lush pensions. Those pesky Libertarians, Republicans, and fiscal conservatives who call for lower taxes just don’t care about the poor.

              Meanwhile, our state will remain the highest taxed in the nation, one of the most unfriendly to small businesses, our roads some of the worst pot-holed in the nation, we continually suffer drought but blew our money on pork projects rather than water retention infrastructure, and now we have been voted a sanctuary state for violent criminal illegal aliens. So…we might be sliding towards dystopia with nothing to drink but at least the weather is nice.

  4. The simple fact that our media is putting out the information everywhere that Assad is to blame, should make one suspicious. When they print something about President Trump, it is often if not always a lie and everyone here assumes as much. A good assumption, but not necessarily just because it is Trump, but rather because that is all the media does; LIE and so if they are talking about President Trump, it is probably a lie.

    If they are talking about Assad, it’s probably also a lie. Consider. Thanks to Russia, Assad is winning the war in Syria. The US, just the day before the attack, relaxed it’s requirement that Assad must be deposed. What possible motive would Assad have for using chemical weapons at such a point in time? It just doesn’t make sense unless someone absolutely WANTS it to make sense.

    So, is there an alternative explanation that would fit the facts? The following, from Moon of Alabama, is just as plausible and perhaps more so. Remember, what the media is calling “Rebels” in the target area, Khan Sheikoun, are actually members of al-Qaeda . Ideologically, they are just as likely to be putting bombs in planes that attack American cities as to be fighting against Syrian Forces. But when they are fighting Syrian forces, then they are considered “Rebels” (or friendlies) by the US and the MSM

    http://www.moonofalabama.org/ – April 7, 2017


    The nerve agents in Khan Sheikoun, should they be confirmed, came either from stashed ammunition at the place attacked by the Syrian government or it was willfully released by the local ruling terrorist groups -al-Qaeda and Ahrar al-Sham- after the strike to implicate the Syrian government.The relatively low casualty numbers of mostly civilians point to the second variant.

    Several reports over the years confirm that Al-Qaeda in Syria has the precursors and capabilities to produce and use Sarin as well as other chemical agents. This would not be their first use of such weapons. Al-Qaeda was under imminent pressure. It was losing the war. It is therefor highly likely that this was an intentional release by al-Qaeda to create public pressure on the Syrian government.

    .

    This would fit the facts as known since there was no one on site when the incident happened that can be considered neutral or even qualified to say the agents came from the plane or even what they consisted of.

    Of course this is not proof positive, but it suggests that, just as with claims that Russia hacked our elections, we need to get to the bottom of the incident with a careful, methodical, fact finding mission. Simply sending off missiles, while it produces shameless unconstitutional lynch mob support from both sides of our political den of thieves sometimes referred to as our “honorable” Congress men and women, does not make America look tough so mush as like a trigger happy buffoon or like an empire that has a hidden agenda it is trying to accomplish with it’s usual shock and awe of massive propaganda.

    1. Exactly. I don’t understand why for most people this is a stretch? Our government lies continually, yet we jump to the conclusion that they are being truthful in this event. How so? What is wrong with us, given all the past precedents, that we just do that?

      Plus, the arguments are getting so thin, they’ll add suspending the laws of physics in the explanations, and people will figure that’s truthful as well.

  5. Question for fellow commentors: When was the last time a President went to Congress and asked for and obtained a “Declaration of War”?
    Was it the day after the day which will live in infamy? Which day, month, year was that?
    What did Truman ask for from Congress and obtain to get us into the Korean War?
    Kennedy, Johnson or Nixon to get us into Vietnam?
    Any Declarations of War since Nam? Since December 8, 1941? Who was that war against?

    Millennials want to chime in?

  6. As BB has alluded to many times, here’s what your war is about, and it ain’t humanitarian assistance, either…

    http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/07/investing/syria-raytheon-tomahawk-missiles/index.html

    What ever happened about the BBC crew caught in Egypt filming a false flag news story?

    Don’t believe a word of government or MSM unless proven otherwise. I always keep in mind “Gulf of Tonkin,” “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” “Yellowcake (my personal favorite).” People forget these things instantaneously. Must be a programmed limbic system response.

    1. And what Karen said about the china dude. Little hands is trying to show who carries theirs in a bigger basket.

        1. mespo – there are two types of funny: funny ha ha and funny peculiar.

  8. Trump may have been incited by the real government, not the elected one.

  9. Squeeakie your favorite Democrat and formerly mine took a Chamberlain nose dive today speaking of Gabbard. Not agreeing is one thing saying it was illegal made her look foolishly uninformed. ah well Diogenese must keep looking for an honest Democrat.

    Sawe Turley on O’Reilly and made some good comments and background material on the myth of the living Constitution. As anyone who really can read knows it has it’s own built in system of evolving. Only takes the couch potatoes to get off their butts and do something instead of just talking about it.

  10. Yet it’s entirely legal and the current version was put into use by the previous administration representing a poltical party which NEVER obeyed the War Powers Act. Only Bush I and Bush II did that.

    Did you ever stop to notice how much every use of Obamanesque Powers by Trump is being contested?

    Did you ever stop to think if it was that important why wasn’t it sorted out, debated and put in place in the last eight, sixteen, twenty or twenty four years?

    It was and completely in accordance with the Constitution. The failure to obey the WP Act when it was the law of the land is the fault of it’s originators.

    Along with the other items such as immigration and electoral college it’s kind of nice to have an outsider come in kick over the bucket and spill all the problems then start doing something about them.

    You’ll find most of them have the same start point. Secular Progressivism.

  11. Yes, Jonathan Turley, I agree.

    So much for the constitution.

  12. The question is: if we are bombing people over our moral outrage at their actions do we have to do it every time we are morally outraged? China? N.Korea? Russia? What are the parameters and what are the criteria for moral outrage attacks? Personally, I’d only attack if America’s interests are in direct jeopardy. But silly me, I’m an America First kinda guy.

    1. Excellent point. I think we would get better decisions on these issues if debated in Congress.

      2. Yes, nothing to leverage there. As of yet. Beware when our government goes on “humanitarian missions.” They are none of the kind, they are steps to take control. You don’t see our government racing to help the poor people in Michigan who can’t even get clean water. ????? Presents a bit of problem for a consistent argument.

        1. You don’t see our government racing to help the poor people in Michigan who can’t even get clean water.

          There are local governments in Michigan whose business it is to provide clean water and they do as a matter of routine. Flint’s problems are anomalous and require no federal intervention.

    3. That’s the slippery slope mespo. Since we are apparently without sin, I guess we just need to keep bombing the entire world until they get it right.

      1. We’re not with all sin either. We act in our own self defense and interests. There’s no apology necessary for doing that.

    4. My father told me something similar. He was in the military and worked at the Pentagon. I believe that there was some bloody civil war going on in one of the African countries, and I was frustrated why we just sat here and didn’t help.

      He explained to me that every time we play policeman, it costs the lives of some of our men and women. And we have to take other’s lives. And it costs millions of dollars, and can have far reaching geopolitical consequences. Some view us as protectors while others will view us as conquerers, regardless that we neither colonize nor seize resources. We use our own blood and treasure and leave the wealth of the country we defeat alone. So every decision we make to intervene means the death of some of our people, and a great deal of debt. So we owe it to our country to restrict our involvement to when our own national interests are at stake. He said that most other countries are run by despots who abuse their people. Were we to get involved for every heinous abuse, we would have to either conquer and take control of the world, or constantly be at war, both of which we will not do. So instead, we restrict our involvement in most cases to either charitable giving, or participating in poorly executed UN missions. We cannot send our people to their deaths unless it is vital to us.

      That said, I believe that the use of chemical WMD, Russia’s backing, and the creche of ISIS make Syria poised to have a great impact on our own security. My heart wants to go save little boys like Omran, the tiny dirty, bloody boy who sat in shock in a hard plastic chair after his brother was killed by Assad’s bombs. I want to plow those who deliberately hurt those kids into the ground. But sending our men and women to fight someone who uses Sarin gas against his own people is going to cost us lives. I hate war and I hate fighting. But I do not think we can afford to let a maniac with chemical WMD go unchecked. NOR can we allow any gap in leadership to be filled by ISIS or extremists. Which means we play king breaker and maker again, which means that the country may oppose our meddling. If we are unwilling to back up a threat, we should not draw a red line in the sand in the first place regarding WMD.

      That said, can someone explain to me what the procedure was outlined for that red line that Obama drew but failed to enforce? Is punishment considered an act of war? And does any military action require to be given Congressional approval? I support following the Constitution, and safeguards that offer us some protection from the rise of a dictator. Many of those safeguards eroded under Obama, and I do not want that trend to continue. So can anyone explain to me what the process is when a President warns a country that force will meet the use of WMD? Is that an act of war that goes through Congress, or can we do a brief bombing on POTUS approval alone?

      2. He explained to me that every time we play policeman, it costs the lives of some of our men and women. And we have to take other’s lives. And it costs millions of dollars, and can have far reaching geopolitical consequences.

        There has been no civil war in Africa the resolution of which would have had ‘far reaching geopolitical consequences”. There were some Cold War conflicts that had some potential consequences abroad. It’s a reasonable wager we declined to intervene in an obtrusive way because we did not wish to be blasting away at Red Army surrogates in order to stake a claim to being the patron of a fairly unimportant country.

        So every decision we make to intervene means the death of some of our people, and a great deal of debt.

        Madam, our participation in Dag Hammarskjold’s project in the Congo amounted to a shot glass in Lake Ontario as far as our accumulation of debt is concerned. Who are you trying to kid?

        1. DSS – The only way we would have been able to completely stop the tribal warfare between Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda, the civil wars in Liberia, defeated the Tonton Macoute of Haiti and ended their Voo Doo leader, stop modern day slavery in Somalia, and end Child Soldiers in the Sudan, would be to conquer and colonize all of the countries in Africa.

          All of the above have deeply troubled me for years (although the Tonton Macoute were broken up.) I recall reading how one of the Child Soldiers was afraid of women because he was worried they would find out what he’d done to them when he was 9 and had drugs sewn up into his skin to make him more aggressive.

          A mere shock and awe training exercise would cause damage, but it would not fix the problem. All that would end up happening is we would go kill a bunch of people, be called colonists, and then either the same problems would persist after we left or we’d have to run the various countries ourselves, at massive cost, and under the reprobation of the rest of the world, who would call us colonists.

          My issue is that I really do want the world to be a better place. I find the Western way of life superior. Obviously…I’m a female. But even though there are many other beautiful cultures out there, there is also a great many dictatorships, violence, and the subjugation of millions of people. So how can we actually make a difference without taking over the world? We can vote with our wallets. But it’s a hard decision to withhold aid from a starving region because of severe human rights abuses. Plus we can engage in humanitarian efforts, such as bringing clean drinking water to drought stricken nations, which may help ease the land disputes, if not the treatment of women. But we are no good at nation building, and thus far our efforts to export democracy and Western values have been dismal failures.

          So we make little forays, building pacts with unfriendly nations like Saudi Arabia. We improve our relations with such nations, but do we really affect any positive change?

          As for Hammarskjold, didn’t I mention that UN missions were poorly executed? Plus they are rather constrained, and often directed to be non combative. But his assassination was a tragedy.

          1. Correction – I think Haiti is part of the Caribbean, so we’d have to include conquering that region, as well. Plus they are out of toilet paper in Venezuela, so we should add that, and North Korean toddlers are literally dying of starvation, so I want to add them, and we all know my position on the plight of women in the neurotic ME which has too much time on its hands obsessing over what women wear, think, say, and do, so let’s add that region, and Jamaica was a little sketchy when I was there, so add that, as well as Dominica, and so many people killed in Nicaragua…See the problem?

      3. We can pinpoint all kinds of stuff. Why can’t we pinpoint Assad’s palace and drop a mammoth bomb at night? He OK’s all these horrors. How many would be better off if we had done that to Saddam. So he would have died earlier, so what? We are a peaceful, moral people. Just forget that for 24 hours and get rid of them all. Did you see the Chinese President smiling? He may request Asylum so he can live in this wonderful country with great food.

  13. I am haunted by the photos of the all the dead kids from Assad’s latest Sarin gas attack on civilians. What is this? The third or fourth time he’s used chemical WMD in defiance of having promised to destroy all his stockpiles in 2013?

    Here are the complications in Syria:
    1) Assad is a maniac killing kids with chemical WMD
    2) ISIS wants to supplant Assad. Extremists appear to be the most organized to fill the gap in the case of a leadership vacuum.
    3) Assad obviously lied about having destroyed his chemical WMD stockpile in the joint agreement he made with Russia and Obama. (Kerry can now please stop gloating about disarming Syrian chemical weapons.)
    4) The US has lost its taste for long, drawn out wars
    5) Nation building has been a failure. We cannot forcibly export Western values. What ends up happening is that extremist countries remain extremist, but they have better roads and bridges.
    6) We drew a red line in the sand years ago warning against the use of chemical WMD. Does that line mean anything? Should we not have said anything at all and stood by silently as hundreds of thousands of people are killed and refugees destabilize Europe, bringing extremism and violence with them? My God. Sweden is now a major supplier of ISIS fighters.

    So, what’s to do? My admittedly uneducated instinct is to bomb the snot out of them as a punitive measure, after having gone through Congress, and not engage in full on war. Forcibly remove WMD from this maniac. But no more long drawn out wars and certainly no nation building. Now, what will the consequences be? Will ISIS topple Assad and assume control? Russia was part of the 2013 agreement but clearly is backing Assad in its oil interests. So this will further strain our relations with Putin after the events of the past year.

    The US needs to rebuild its reputation of a nation with which one does not mess. It also needs to get out of the nation building business. And there are so many intricacies in the fight agains the spread of extremism. We have been long heavily involved in king making and breaking. Ignoring chemical attacks on kids is unethical. But, again, we need to respect Congress, and we need to make an effective, productive decision. Wiser military minds than mine will hopefully prevail. Politicians tend to muck things up when they want to play general. Provide a goal and then let the military do their job and come home.

    And God help our military, and their families, as we embark on yet another grim game of thrones.

  14. Pingback: VIDEO WW III, Syria’s Reichstag,Neocon Win – What We’re Not Being Told – Knockout Punch for Trump, USA | Reclaim Our Republic

  15. Interesting POV: “Since many seem to have trouble understanding the meaning of the above (“fireworks display”) I’ll help you: Contemplate the circumstances. The strike came while the Chinese head-of-state was having dinner with Trump. There is this little problem over in the South China Sea, and a military confrontation of any sort there would get messy — fast. The Chinese are not stupid, and knowing that Trump is willing to cook off nearly 60 cruise missiles while having dinner just might have been as much for Xinnie Boy’s consumption as Assad’s. Oh, and add to that the fact that the Russians are very interested in not having things get out of hand between Japan and China since both are in their back yard, never mind the little Korean issue so……. yeah.” Karl Denninger

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231970

  16. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard – who unlike the rest of these warmongers actually SERVED in combat is one of the few Dems with the guts to condemn the strikes. Naturally another reason for the Establishment Dems to undermine her…
    _______

    Man, you fools are a HOOT!

    TWO comments into a thread and right away, it’s…

    Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls!

    You just can’t help yourselves, can you?

    Republicans ‘control’ the WH, both chambers of Congress, and now the SCOTUS, and what’s your focus?

    Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls! Da Libruls!

    Hysterical!!!!!

    And what about that odor? Open a window, for Christ’s sake…

    1. How about your witch-like cult leader calling for strikes a day before? You Hilbots are truly pathetic and delusional. Yep, you sure do belong in the “republic of stupidity”

      1. Autumn,…
        “The witches casting spells on Trump say it’s working”- Pink News, April 6, 2017
        I know that your “witch-like cult” comment didn’t have this in mind, but you motivated me to get current on the activities of the real witches.☺

        1. TNash – LOL! So are we talking HRC, DWS, Rice, Brazile, Waters? There are also many witches in the Republican camp who may be casting spells like Linda Graham, Niki Haley and / or Paula McCain.

          BTW – how do y’all insert emoticons in your posts?

          1. Autumn,…
            We may also be talking about an ex-girlfriend….I’ve scanned photos of the witch/Trump curse crowds to see if she’s present.
            I access the emoticon key on my smartphone by tapping the icon in the lower left of my keyboard….it’s the same key (on my device) that switches over to numbers, exclamation points, commas, etc.

  17. Brooklin Bridge – you do not capture Assad and hold mini-Nuremberg trials. Justice should be swift and sure.

    1. Paul, I agree that Justice should be sure, otherwise it is just blind lynch mob reaction, not justice. Being swift usually comes after being sure.

  18. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard – who unlike the rest of these warmongers actually SERVED in combat is one of the few Dems with the guts to condemn the strikes. Naturally another reason for the Establishment Dems to undermine her – ethics are always a problems with the cult.

    ““It angers and saddens me that President Trump has taken the advice of war hawks and escalated our illegal regime change war to overthrow the Syrian government. This escalation is short-sighted and will lead to more dead civilians, more refugees, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and other terrorists, and a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia—which could lead to nuclear war.”

    Entire statement:

    https://gabbard.house.gov/news/press-releases/rep-tulsi-gabbard-trump-s-military-strikes-syria-are-reckless-and-short-sighted

    1. I think the last part of the statement is also very germaine;

      If President Assad is indeed guilty of this horrible chemical attack on innocent civilians, I will be the first to call for his prosecution and execution by the International Criminal Court. However, because of our attack on Syria, this investigation may now not even be possible. And without such evidence, a successful prosecution will be much harder. [emphasis mine]”

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