I wish that I was able to believe anyone on this Syria thing, but the truth is that I trust no one anymore. Who has credibility?
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, added a new level of complexity to the issue on Wednesday, announcing that he had submitted evidence of three previously unreported instances of chemical weapons use in Syria, which he asserted had been carried out by Syrian insurgents. Mr. Jaafari said the Syrian government had requested that the United Nations investigators expand their inquiry to include those events as well, which could lengthen their stay in the country.
Mr. Jaafari said the new instances occurred on Aug. 22, 24 and 25, and were also in the Damascus suburbs. He said Syrian soldiers were the targets. The ambassador did not explain why he was only now bringing forth the allegations, which critics were likely to view as a stalling exercise.
Mr. Jaafari repeated the Syrian government’s denials that it had ever used chemical weapons in the conflict and said the accusations were a conspiracy by Western nations acting on Israel’s behalf. He rejected assertions by the United States, Britain and other Western allies that there was persuasive evidence of Syrian government culpability in the use of the banned weapons.
“We are not warmongers,” he told reporters outside the Security Council chambers. “We are a peaceful nation seeking stability. The Syria government is totally innocent of these accusations.”
I don’t believe Mr. Jaafari. But I don’t believe my own government either.
That’s a sad state of affairs.
UN Inspectors.
Joshua Landis thinks the US should respond without getting sucked in:
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/should-the-use-of-chemical-weapons-prompt-a-us-attack-in-syria/
Respond to what? And against whom? How do they know what to respond to or whom to bomb the crap out of without any evidence as to who is responsible?
Hurria, with her high-level security clearance, can say with quite a bit of certainty that the administration doesn’t have solid evidence of who carried out the attacks.
Right?
If there is solid evidence, which there isn`t as far as anyone knows, what would be the reasons to not use it to make the case for or against taking action?
Probably all information they have is less solid than desired, and it seems that there are great efforts to sway opinion from all sides.
So to point out that they dont know who to respond to seems a valid point, even if hurria means the US administration, but then you may be talking about the joshualandis.com administration, Oh wait, hmmm, -no i still dont see it making sense.
as far as anyone knows
You mean, “as far as I know.” You don’t know what evidence the administration has.
Well, if you’ve been reading today, you know about the intercepted messages.
what would be the reasons to not use it to make the case for or against taking action?
You mean, yet. Why haven’t they had the media event yet.
So to point out that they dont know who to respond to seems a valid point
Well, no. You’re taking the fact that they haven’t rolled out the presentation yet, on your timetable, and making the assertion that they are lying when they say they have evidence and a high level of certainty.
Good i will be waiting, perhaps when the sludge solidifies we will see if it will be hard or more jelly-like.
What do we have to make of that? I read about it but if true still no solids, unless there is more information that i haven`t seen.
From where i stand there is not much trust in the solidness of it all so far and people aren`t waiting to rally behind your president.
What i expect is that we get more salesmenship than anything solid, it will be enough to make a few allies go on an adventure, but hesitantly.
Unless i am wrong and there really is something solid that will show the world how wrong assad is and that we have to take him out and all that.
I actually hope that you are completely right, unfortunatly past evens do nothing to give me hope .
You dont know anything more than anyone else, somehow you are hopefull though, good for you, but it doesnt do anything for me.
“I actually hope that you are completely right…“
I don’t understand why anyone would hope such a thing. How would it help anything or anyone if the Asad regime were the perpetrator, and the US “took him out”? How does more violence and more killing, and more chaos and destabilization help anyone anywhere, let alone Syrians?
You’ve confused me.
If there is no way to stop a attack, i hope joe is right and that there is solid evidence, that will convince the rest of the world that the action is justified.
I dont believe there will be such evidence, and i worry that there will be action with a very narrow coalition.
I dont hope for chaos and destabilization, if you think that you really are confused, what i hope for is that somehow there is a way out without it.
But that seems unlikely, it seems that the mighty war machine will have to run its course, with or without decent justification. It seems more and more like the US will ignore any objections and strike against Assad.
What i would like to see is that all people will come together and live happily together, unfortunately thats not going to happen, we are assholes that hate other assholes, and sometimes we have to show who is the biggest asshole to scare the rest of the assholes into screwing the rightful order up, i know its cynical and perhaps there are nicer interpretations but for me this works best to explain all the stupid shit.
So… I hope i am wrong and that its better than i expect, maybe the administration has some risky plan to put maximum pressure on Assad to come to a solution and they will succeed, but i think things are in motion and swinging a bat that big will hit something.
So there better be good evidence,like joe suggests.
“You don’t know what evidence the administration has.“
Yeah, funny, but that was one of the top five standard arguments put forward ad nauseum by the rahrah team for attacking Iraq, and we all know how credible the administration was in THAT situation, and how well THAT whole thing turned out, don’t we?
So you think that John Kerry is pretty much as reliable as Dick Cheney.
Bully for you.
How the heck does that work?
Joshua Landis does no always show sound judgment, even when he is armed with solid information.
UN deadlocked
Well, THAT is good news. Let’s hope they remain deadlocked until someone comes to their senses, or something more compelling takes the place of this mess.
I DO love this, though: “The three countries were said to be considering a military strike over the alleged use of chemical weapons.“
Considering a military strike over ALLEGED use of chemical weapons. Since when is an allegation enough to justify an act of war against a country that has never threatened the United States?
Well, I would not consider the Syrian Ambassador, or any ambassador from any country, to be a credible source on much of anything. It is the job of an ambassador to be the mouthpiece of the government that employs him, and as such they all have professional liar on their resumes.
On the other hand, the inspectors who went in to Iraq in 2003 checked all the bogus WMD sites specified by the Bush liars, and found nothing. So, they ought to do the same in this case.
And I support any action that will delay the Obama administration’s plan to conduct “humanitarian violence” anywhere in the world.
And I support any action that will delay the Obama administration’s plan to conduct “humanitarian violence” anywhere in the world.
Would that include lying?
Would you lie in your comments here if you thought it would help delay an attack on Syria?
A little personal there, joe.
Rebel use of poison gas has been reported over the last year in the half of the world press that doesn’t include the US. And just this a.m. some Mideast expert from Britain actually said it was more likely that the rebels did it than Assad’s forces. After all, the cult in Japan deployed sarin gas in the Tokyo subway without using artillery.
And, as Pepe Escobar says:
“The Obama administration has ruled that Assad allowed UN chemical weapons inspectors into Syria, and to celebrate their arrival unleashed a chemical weapons attack mostly against women and children only 15 kilometers away from the inspectors’ hotel. If you don’t believe it, you subscribe to a conspiracy theory.
“Evidence? Who cares about evidence? Assad’s offer of access for the inspectors came ”too late”. Anyway, the UN team is only mandated to determine whether chemical weapons were deployed – but not by who, according to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman.
“As far as the Obama administration and UK Prime Minister David ”of Arabia” Cameron are concerned – supported by a barrage of corporate media missiles – that’s irrelevant; Obama’s ”red line” has been crossed by Assad, period. Washington and London are in no-holds-barred mode to dismiss any facts contradicting the decision. Newspeak – of the R2A kind – rules. If this all looks like Iraq 2.0 that’s because it is. Time to fix the facts around the policy – all over again. Time for weapons of mass deception – all over again.”
Personal? I don’t understand why that’s personal.
Here, me first: I would not lie to push my politics. If I thought I had to lie in order to push my politics, I would have to reexamine my politics.
I have never written a single word on this site I didn’t believe to be 100% true at the time I wrote it.
This is not a hard question to answer. It’s not a hard question for me to answer, anyway.
I notice that, like Hurria, you didn’t answer the question about whether or not you would lie. Instead, you sort of went into a sales pitch for your policy position.
Would I lie to advance my agenda? No.
However, like you, I hold out the possibility that I am given bad information.
Bob, to add a bit to what you said, the UN did not request access for the inspectors until last Saturday, and access was granted right away – I can’t give you the reference off the top of my head, but can get it if you would like. So, it is not the regime in Syria that is responsible for any real or perceived delay, it is the UN.
Agree with you that this is Iraq 2.0, Obama edition, only scarier because 1) it is taking very, very little time and effort, and extrenely flimsy reasoning to sell it, and 2) the American people are, if possible, even less skeptical now than they were in 2001-2003 during the marketing of the aggression against Iraq, 3) the fact that this is Obama and not some Republican seems to be blinding a lot of liberals who would be screaming bloody murder if it were, say, Jeb Bush n the White House now.
A timeline from Think Progress proves useful Reports are showing that the UN request came on Thursday and the govt permission lagged.
The UN request was not presented to the Syrian government until Saturday when Angela Kane, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, arrived in Damascus. This information was revealed by Farhan Haq, Ban Ki Moon’s spokesman on Tuesday in a briefing in New York.
Yes, governments spy and ferret through information they come across or pry loose. They will bend the truth and even lie to suit their own purposes. And the purposes of government and its agencies may not align with the people who elected them to office. The variation within and between governments, however, means it’s important to tread cautiously in one direction or another based on those suspicious activities and pronouncements.
Yes, some citizens are paranoids, convinced that there is a Grand Conspiracy whose aims and purposes can shift from regime to regime, year to year, even day to day or hour to hour. Suspicion about government activities and pronouncements should not automatically relegate the skeptic to the realm of the looniest of the paranoids.
But it matters when our government tortures and punishes those who expose its misdeeds. It matters when that government admits, however obliquely, that it is indeed indulging in the very criminal activity it denied yesterday, last week, or 60 years ago. It matters when the government through its military wants to fire off a bunch of rockets and missiles on civilian populations of other countries absent a declaration of war.
It is indeed a sad state of affairs, and trying to change that should be every citizen’s priority. Ask questions, demand explanations, refuse to settle for “trust us” as the official version of events. And if that’s too much for any person to commit to as a citizen, at the very least don’t get in the way of someone who is pushing for the truth.
Call me a fool. I trust Barack Obama’s gov’t. Obama is not Bush or Cheney. He isn’t holding grudges nor does he have some long held dream of going to war with a certain villain.
I can’t live with knowing people are being murdered and outside countries, rich countries are just doing nothing. I can’t.
So, in your mind it’s OK to bomb a country based on mere allegations of wrong-doing by its government?
And how will you feel if, after you have supported the use of “humanitarian bombings” it turns out that the allegations were false, and it was one of the non-Syrian “opposition” parties that did it, or someone else trying to stir things up – you know, like a false flag opperation? Are you really OK with the U.S. committing an act of war based on an allegation?
And I don’t trust Barack Obama any more than I trust any other politician anywhere. A politician is a politician is a politician.
And by the way, meh, how is adding massively to the violence in Syria really going to help Syrians? Have you EVER seen a case in which Americans coming in with humanitarian bombs and guns blazing has caused a DECREASE in violence, or has actually reduced the casualty rate?
And why do people insist on focusing only on the violence and human rights violations committed by the Syrian government. What part of there are no good guys in this situation has failed to sink home for people?
The United States will bomb, the overall violence will increase, and the pundits and TV talking heads will exclaim with surprise that the violence in Syria has increased since the U.S. escalation began. That’s the pattern that has been repeated over and over and over again in Iraq, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and everywhere else the U.S. has “intervened militarily”.
Go two or three layers down in the organization chart in the foreign policy, national security, and intelligence community organization charts and you find folks who were “Yes” men and women during the Bush administration. And sometimes you don’t have to go that far down the organization chart. Alexander, Clapper, and Brennan have proven to be untrustworthy and imprudent. And all three were up to their earlobes in actions of the Bush administration.
I have difficulty living knowing people in the cities of the US continue to be murdered under the color of law enforcement.
And I still remember that the Vietnam War murdered 3 million Vietnamese, dropped more ordnance than was dropped in World War II, and defoliated large sections of what had been lush jungle. And Richard Nixon’s precipitate action in overthrowing Prince Sihanouk and replacing him with Lon Nol opened the way to victory of the Khmer Rouge and the genocide of millions.
But we have to live with that powerlessness.
It is worse when you don’t have grudges. Because it is so very calculated. Lyndon Johnson did not hate the Vietnamese people–and yet look at the devastation. The same with Eisenhower and the Iranians and Guatemalans. That calculation was very true of Cheney, Bush pere, and likely Bush fils himself.
But in this case of Obama’s decision with regard to Syria, he still can decide differently. But the national security institutions have put a rush on the march to war before Congress returns. And that means ensuring that the UN inspectors do not complet their work.
We have a character flaw as a nation and it and hubris have brought tragedy after tragedy.
Well, Obama is the only elected official in DC. Everyone else is on vacation. Only Pelosi has made it public that she spoke to Obama about Syria. Everyone else is MIA. Where is Boehner?
At the bottom of an empty bottle somewhere…
Doctors without Borders?
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=7029&cat=press-release
You mean this?
“MSF can neither scientifically confirm the cause of these symptoms nor establish who is responsible for the attack“
Yes, it seems extremely likely, probably to a virtual certainty, that some sort of neurotoxin whas released. But it is equally unclear specifically what that neurotoxin was, where it came from, and how or by whom it was released.
Until that can be established, even thinking about attacking anyone is foolish in the extreme, and possibly criminal.
There are still people debating if there was even an attack. We can move past that now? Good.
Next: We can know it was in fact the regime who did it if we hear the phone calls where the Syrian regime itself is desperately asking why it’s left hand gassed those folks while the right hand is trying to present the regime as victims of a terrorist insurrection. This is supposedly going to happen tomorrow.
If we never hear those calls, then we can never truly know if it was a rogue element of the Syrian military or not who’s done this. Unfortunately, there is some motivation for this if we wish to pin responsibility squarely on Assad himself. I think that would be a mistake as we need a single, central entity to be able to surrender. If the regime fractures, so will the country and we’ll have decades of fighting. I think we will hear those calls.
Lastly, if the previous point is proven, we’ll see an attempt to punish those elements of the regime who ‘did it’ specifically. As the regime would appear to not have central control over WMD and it’s ruling coalition may be crumbling, Assad will be quietly thanking us if that is the full extent of our response. Such a proportional ‘punishment’ will actually help him return central control over this sort of thing. We need that if there is any hope to avoid a repeat gassing while the regime falls.
The firing of rockets makes sense to me given the above assumptions of fact.
Arming the Free Syrian Army makes far less sense to me.
We are starting to see some photographic evidence of the actual warheads and a video which shows what appears to be the same weapon purportedly in the hands of what looks like the Republican Guard. Hardly definitive but perhaps another brick in the wall.
Interesting that a guy is standing around a chemical weapon delivery device with no ill effects. That excludes a lot of chemical agents right there.
Are you referring to the stills or the video? If the stills it has been suggested that sarin, for example, disperses pretty quickly at least as far as toxicity is concerned. Given these were taken in daylight in must be at least a few hours later. But that’s a good point.
As I posted below the UN seemed interested in a different warhead at another site but for now these are the only apparent warhead remains we seem to have in this affected location.
“Dan Kastesza, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and a former adviser to the White House on chemical and biological weapons proliferation, told IPS the team will not be looking for traces of the nerve gas sarin in blood samples but rather chemicals produced when sarin degrades.“
Between the persistence of sarin as a lethal agent and the persistence of detectable decomposed products. You can read more about it here, here, here and here. The first link is an interview with the guy you’re quoting.
From the same guy (Dan Kaszeta) who wrote the PDF thought piece which was linked to recently:
He suggests that sarin is about as persistent as vodka.
Please see above, Sarin produces certain chemicals when it degrades, and those chemicals can be detected.
It was lethality over time, not detection, which was in question:
Quite a detailed discussion of lethality, persistence and detection at the cited link if you are interested.
Perhaps I misread, but I thought the point was to determine whether the agent used in the attacks was Sarin. If that is the case, then the presence of degradation products would tell the story.
It would. If it were sarin, however, the civilians posing, the following morning, in close proximity to wreckage of the alleged warheads, as shown in the linked images, would apparently be unlikely to be in physical peril, which I took to be my interlocutor’s concern.
Yeah, I reread the preceding comments and realized I had remembered the conversation wrong – sorry about that. Too much multitasking leads to things like that.
The inspection on-site seems to concentrate on what appears to be a Soviet-era BM-14 warhead, right down to the stencilling on the body:
More here. One of the original payloads of this model was a 2.2kg sarin warhead. Hate to say it but that is roughly the weight of the “cylinder” that the Turkish police claim they confiscated from al-Nusra in Adana in May.
Assuming that this is correct the ubiquitous ex-Soviet rocket and mobile launcher doesn’t help us narrow down the perpetrators at all, in fact it does the opposite pretty much widening the field to all comers. Very messy.
You can definitely trust the Military-backed government of the US, and its political wing, the Democratic and Republican parties, when they tell you that they are telling a(n) (oil rich) country to SUCK ON THIS and bomb them back to the stone age because of the international crime of using of chemical weapons.
It’s not like the Pentagovernment would ever use any of its own (many times larger than any other military government’s) stockpile of chemical weapons. Especially against a country that they had invaded and occupied for that explicit reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah,_The_Hidden_Massacre
When it comes to war, NO country in the world is more hypocritical than our nation of warmongers.
A sad state of affairs indeed.
You find the Syrian Ambassador to the UN, high-level Baathist Bashar Jaafari, to be just about as credible as John Kerry and Barack Obama. Maybe a little less, but in your estimation, pretty much equivalent.
That is a sad state of affairs.
Well it’s either that or Obama and Kerry are patsies manipulated by the military industrial complex. I don’t know which would be worse.
I don’t think Obama is necessarily going to do the right thing with regard to Syria (mostly because there doesn’t seem to be a right thing). However, call me an Obot but when he says chemical weapons were used by the Assad regime, I trust that he isn’t blatantly lying and that chemical weapons were indeed used by the Assad regime. The question is what to do with that fact.
Let’s say that the rebels were the ones deploying the sarin, if it was sarin? Can we expect the US and Britain to use their air power to strike the rebels? If not, why not?
Why bomb?
Because at least since the Great
OilGame began in the pre-WWI maneuverings of Great Britain…see T. E. Lawrence’s “Seven Pillars Of Wisdom” for all you need to know on that account…the west has sought to keep the Middle East/North Africa in as unstable a state as possible, allowing only western-approved military dictators to rule and leaving the hated Israelis right smack in the middle of things to keep the pots on a good hard boil. Any signs of independence from the west and/or dependence on other powers have been met with massive force. The “We will fuck your shit up if you try anything that we do not like” tactic. It works, too. Or at least…it used to.That’s why.
Assad is on the Do Not Approve” list. He threatens the stasis with his actions…including cozying up to Russia and China…and the stasis favors NATO. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (and before that the falling apart of Mubarak’s rule) also threatened that stasis, and eventually both were taken down by U.S.-approved actions as well.
Why?
Like dat.
Kissinger’s Realpolitik still at work.
Thanks a lot, Henry.
Who loves ya?
Nobody, you old mass murderer you.
Nobody. That’s who.
Bet on it.
AG
Bob, I have asked the same question, only not as well as you did.
I doubt it. The government line for the last ~2 years is that Al-Asad must go. They have taken sides in this civil war. Since we’re entertaining this hypothetical it should be clear that it is far more difficult to attack rebel targets than Syrian military targets. The rebels are often mixed in with the population whereas we already have a comprehensive list of military targets. Anything we do in response to this alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime conveniently aligns with the overall objective.
And which “rebel” targets should they hit? And how will they know they have hit the right ones?
I think you know fairly well how our collateral damage logic goes.
How about we enforce the Geneva Conventions after everyone connected to Extraordinary Rendition is prosecuted under the Geneva Conventions. Or the folks who hurled white phosphorus into Fallujah? Or Dubya et al who were lying us into two wars about a decade ago?
And if trials take too much time how about we send a drone to shoot a missile into Judith Miller’s living room?
Is white phosphorus even on the Chemical Weapons Convention schedules?
Not the part we signed:
No. Nor does it meet the definition provided therein:
1. “Chemical Weapons” means the following, together or separately:
(a) Toxic chemicals and their precursors, except where intended for purposes not prohibited under this Convention, as long as the types and quantities are consistent with such purposes;
(b) Munitions and devices, specifically designed to cause death or other harm through the toxic properties of those toxic chemicals specified in subparagraph (a), which would be released as a result of the employment of such munitions and devices;
(c) Any equipment specifically designed for use directly in connection with the employment of munitions and devices specified in subparagraph (b).
White phosphorus is not used to kill or harm through toxic properties.
Schedule 2 or Schedule 3 listing?
White phosphorus is four phosphorus atoms shaped like a four-sided Dungeons and Dragons die, with no other elements in the compound.
All of the phosphorus compounds on the Schedules are compounds with other elements.
We helped Saddam gas the Iranian army:
When did we get so self-righteous? This will have unintended consequences like every military intervention and they won’t be good.
When I think about all the racist things I’ve read about Texas law enforcement, so when I read about the James Byrd case, my reaction was to say, “Who is the State of Texas to try anybody for a hate crime?” They just don’t have the moral standing.
You also “helped” Saddam gas the Kurds of Halabja by providing the helicopters that were used to commit that crime. When, in response to this information, there was an attempt in Congress to ban further such sales to Iraq it was quietly squashed by the White House.
Seems that it is an incendiary weapon, not a chemical weapon. It does not fall under any international convention.
So we can rid ourselves of the notion that white phosphorus is a banned chemical weapon.
And we can also rid ourselves of the notion that depleted uranium is a nuclear weapon.
After fifty years of this crap you’d think more people would have caught on to the military-industrial hustle.
One of the most alarming things about this current debacle is that it appears to be getting easier and easier to get more and more people to go along without questioning anything. I am stunned at how many people – good Americans all – in my Middle East peace group are eagerly grabbing this hook, line, and sinker, and refuse to be swayed by any presentation of facts or reason. It’s extremely scary.
The Orange-Man weighs in
Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic: How an Insular Beltway Elite Makes Wars of Choice More Likely
You all do realize that “nerve gas” and the organophosphate insecticides used in agriculture are birds of a feather, right? The symptoms of insecticide poisoning and sarin poisoning are virtually identical, with even the same remedies in the ER. The stuff is diluted down here in the US before being sprayed on crops, but in undiluted form they are the cause of fatal poisonings in third world countries all the time. My point is, can you load shells with concentrated insecticide and achieve the same results we have seen here? Has anyone researched this, before we plunge headlong into another quagmire?
Just askin’ …
Check out Schedules 1, 2, and 3 of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Schedule 3 covers dual use chemicals like insecticide precursors, among others.
You know, irrespective of this Obama should go before congress and ask for a declaration of war (well ideally, realistically he’d ask for authorization) and say unless it’s pre-authorized he will not act.
Force the congress to make the decision, and the president to execute.
Watch Boehner ask for spending offsets for the cost of the war, preferably from the Obamacare budget.
That sounds like a win win. No cuts, no war.
And Cruz, with his 21st century ‘Cross of Gold’ speech in hand, romps to victory in 2016 on a platform of populist economics and isolationism.
If Cruz wins, we deserve what happens to us as a country.
Oh also, we truly need a platform of populist economics. Cruz won’t be providing it, but we do need it.
My concern, and I was kind of joking, is that some smart Republican will beat us to it. And Cruz is no dummy.
US CIA:
Terrorist CBRN: Materials and Effects
Juan Cole, the respected Middle East expert, makes an interesting point about the “rebel false flag” conspiracy theory: the Nusra Front isn’t anywhere near the area where the chemical attack took place. The rebel group in the area consists of “local boys” (Cole’s term).
If they carried out a mass-casualty chemical weapons attack, they carried it out against their neighbors and cousins.
I am reinvigorated by your, um, “empirical attitude.”
I heard President Obama on the news ten minutes ago saying that we have to punish Assad before he “uses chemical weapons on this country”. It eerily reminded me of Condeleeza Rice and the mushroom cloud.
If he ever had any desire to help the ordinary citizens of this country, it is gone. He has gone completely to the dark side.
Do not trust anything this man says!
True!
FWIW:
Pepe Escobar, rt.com: `War on chemical weapons’: Obama traps himself into Syrian combat
Unlike US “unnamed government officials”, this article has links to open source material. Any US intelligence report must be as specific in order to have credibility with the international community and to survive historical scrutiny.
Boehner’s letter at least had questions about what comes next. There has been little discussion of the potential results of any strike or what comes next relative to Syria. So far, it’s been:
or
or
Leave it to the people who have known better than you for 68 years and have made the world safer than ever. Leave it to the professionals; they know what they are doing.
Somehow none of those are terribly encouraging responses in a democracy that depends for success on an informed population.
KIMBERLY DOZIER and MATT APUZZO, AP: AP sources: Intelligence on weapons no ‘slam dunk’
If O tries to get congressional auth he won’t get it.
If he does something without auth he will be impeached and deserve it.
He needs to climb down.
Name the last President who was impeached for using military force without Congressional approval.
Name the last black President who was impeached for using military force without Congressional approval. That’s what makes him vulnerable. It ain’t fair, but it’s how the Republican mind works.
Name the last Democratic president who wasn’t impeached.
Al Gore?
Jean-Philippe Rémy, Le Monde: Chemical warfare in Syria