Awaiting Obama’s Climb-down

August 30, 2013

The parliament of the United Kingdom voted against a war on Syria. For now. I am certain there will be an attempt to reverse this decision. The propaganda onslaught for ssuch an attempt already started with new BBC claims (vid) of another “atrocity”. Several scenes in this video seem to me to be quite obvious fakes.

The U.S. Obama so far seems to continue to want to go it alone. But the “senior officials” quoted are probably all from the National Security Council and Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice is the one who drove this bus against the wall. Her utter mis-management of this incident – a rush to war then retreat, an attempt to block the UN observers thrn lrt them work, presenting dubious intelligence, bad management of potential allies – will end her career within the next few weeks.

Any claim of the U.S. would attack Syria in service of some “international community” is now proven to be utterly false. Let’s count who is against bombing Syria: The United Kingdom parliament, the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations Secretary General, NATO, the U.S. military, the U.S. intelligence community, the public in the United States, Israel, Turkey and about everywhere else. Even France’s gung-ho Hollande is wobbly.

The “intelligence” the U.S. claims to have that supposedly shows that the Syrian government used chemical weapons is so thin that its publishing had to be moved from yesterday to the Friday afternoon newsdump today. Even that thin intelligence is based on Israeli sources which lets one doubt its integrity.

Obama is now in a catch 22. The House Republicans demand answers to detailed questions about the war Obama wants to wage that he will not be able to give. 80% of U.S. citizens want Obama to go to Congress before waging war. But if he calls Congress back from vacations to vote on a war resolution he will risk, like Cameron, utter defeat. If he does not call back Congress and proceeds with a strike he may face impeachment. He can of course stand down on the issue but will then be damaged goods in international affairs and a lame duck at home.

It will be well deserved.

Posted by b on August 30, 2013 at 09:57 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Kerry today: The President has not made a decision and “we will continue talking to the US Congress.” It prompts me to repeat what ‘b’ indicated earlier:
Public opinion poll: 79% of Amercians says the US president should be required to receive Congressional approval before taking any military strike action against Syria. This includes 70% of self-identified Democrat voters and 90% of Republican voters. The poll also finds that only 21 percent think taking action against the Syrian government is in the national interest of the United States, while 33 percent disagree and 45 percent don’t know enough to have an opinion. Just 27 percent say that U.S. military force will improve the situation for Syrian civilians, versus 41 percent who say it won’t. Only 35 percent approve of Obama’s handling of the situation in Syria, and his overall approval rating on foreign affairs is at an alltime low. 50 percent of respondents are opposed to the United States taking any military action against Syria, compared with 42 percent who support a strike in punishment for Syria’s use of chemical weapons. http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/30/20256971-nbc-poll-nearly-80-percent-want-congressional-approval-on-syria?lite
What’s needed in the USA body politic now is an examination of the possibility that the rebels were the culprits. Unfortunately, the USA body politic is incompetent to do that. Hopefully, the UN investigators in Syria will find something that implicates the rebels as the culprits.

Posted by: Parviziyi | Aug 30 2013 17:48 utc | 101

Kerry’s main pitch is the old tired “Syria, Iran and North Korea will take it as a sign of weakness if we don’t do something” as if the efficacy of US military power has any credibility anywhere. That argument has little cachet any more. Primarily, it’s about Iran.

This matters also beyond the limits of Syria’s borders. It is about whether Iran, which itself has been a victim of chemical weapons’ attacks, will now feel emboldened in the absence of action to obtain nuclear weapons.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Aug 30 2013 17:52 utc | 102

Kerry transcript here.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Aug 30 2013 17:54 utc | 103

Don Bacon
Kerry’s main pitch is the old tired “Syria, Iran and North Korea will take it as a sign of weakness if we don’t do something
He have to mention North korea trying cover that this isnt about Israel. So obvious.
The sentence could have been written by Netanhau. It really expose where kerry get his information from…
This is what Israel repeteadly have said.
Elkin: Iran Watching US Response on Syria
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/news.aspx/167498

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 30 2013 17:57 utc | 104

The problem with putting credibility on the line as a marker is what comes later when it’s lost.

Posted by: Don Bacon | Aug 30 2013 18:09 utc | 105

Do schools really operate in rebel-held areas. Who pays the teachers salaries?
Petri at 63.
I can answer that from personal contacts.
Nobody.
Ppl who still eat go on doing their job. They want to, they see it as vital for the community and the future. Holding things together and hoping for a better life.
Think, similar to when the USSR collapsed.
Dimitri Orlov makes a big point of this: Teachers went unpaid, but continued to work, for years… (what else to do?), as they had enough to live, eat. – Gvmt. housing, that is safe, yet scrambling for food, etc. They kept a large part of society together, in conditions that were favorable for doing so.
Or WW2 when secret classes were held by teachers in occupied ccountries in all kinds of venues, for no pay. Or even secret schools for girls in Afgh.
In Syria, as usual, they may receive some payment in kind, food, and respect.

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 30 2013 18:11 utc | 106

sorry for not closing the tag.

Posted by: Noirette | Aug 30 2013 18:11 utc | 107

Even the Russians and Chinese would probably vote for a strike against the Syrian government in the event of crystal clear evidence that the Syrian government was the culprit and was lying about it. If Obama decides the evidence is inadequate (which it definitely is), it will be good for Obama’s standing going forward, among all reasonable people.
Posted by: Parviziyi | Aug 30, 2013 10:51:41 AM | 35
excuse me but NO….fortunately your case has no chance of being true….but US has no legal right to invade(they call it euphemistacally ‘intervention’)

Posted by: brian | Aug 30 2013 18:17 utc | 108

Posted by: Don Bacon | Aug 30, 2013 1:28:32 PM | 95
guess who has sarin?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gnq8mGTSkIQ
and guess what popular feeling is on this issue:
Recent publication by the Voice of Russia ‘Syrian rebels take responsibility for the chemical attack admitting the weapons were provided by Saudis’ received a strong outcry among the Internet users as some of them claiming that the company’s reports are more credible than allegations against Syrian government made by US authorities.
‘It’s more credible than the US saying we have real evidence of Assad using them [chemical weapons]. Assad doesn’t get weapons from Saudi Arabia. They don’t have ties. The US will use any reason it can to go to war. Even if it means creating one’, writesDylanJamesCo on Reddit.
Meanwhile, not everyone shares such this point of view.
KoreyYrvaI writes that ‘The Voice of Russia wants us to believe that the Rebels totally were responsible for the chemical attack, and it was an accident… because Russia has been impartial throughout all of this and I don’t think America(or anyone) needs another war, but this is hardly credible’.
But one thing unites the users: they believe the US government wants and needs another war in the Middle East.
‘America is just getting better at proxy wars. They have firm ties with the Saudis, and they would have no problem destabilizing Syria if it meant the US could eventually target Iran and its oil reserve’, writes NineteenEightyTwo.
Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_08_30/Voice-of-Russia-might-be-more-credible-than-US-government-Internet-users-0863/
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_08_30/Voice-of-Russia-might-be-more-credible-than-US-government-Internet-users-0863/

Posted by: brian | Aug 30 2013 18:20 utc | 109

48) I heard no sound of the Israel Lobby supporting a strike on Syria – have you?
Posted by: somebody | Aug 30, 2013 11:41:22 AM | 53

What a complete fucktard tosser.
One would have to be deaf and blind (or like you, a blatant liar) to miss it

Posted by: hmm | Aug 30 2013 18:25 utc | 110

mother agnes on Ghouta incident
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSCCBnnHgfs&feature=player_embedded&list=UUvtTGZEcS8mbWdB7prg4QNw#t=0
she also finds the presence of the children strange

Posted by: brian | Aug 30 2013 18:43 utc | 111

Dear zio-mouthpiece zomebody, kindly take your lying bullshit elsewhere – no body’s buying it here
The Zionist Plan for the Middle East.pdf – Information Clearing House

Oded Yinon’s article which appeared in Kivunim (Directions), the journal of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization. Oded Yinon is an Israeli journalist and was formerly attached to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. To our knowledge, this document is the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East. Furthermore, it stands as an accurate representation of the “vision” for the entire Middle East of the presently ruling Zionist regime of Begin, Sharon and Eitan. Its importance, hence, lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it presents.
The plan operates on two essential premises. To survive, Israel must 1) become an imperial regional power, and 2) must effect the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states. Small here will depend on the ethnic or sectarian composition of each state. Consequently, the Zionist hope is that sectarian-based states become Israel’s satellites and, ironically, its source of moral legitimation.

January 26, 1998 letter to Clinton (from a bunch of US mostly Jewish Zio-Nazis and Neo-cons
[Neo Cons are what Zio-Nazis call themselves as when they are trying to hide their Zio-nazi-ish-ness]
September 20, 2001 letter to Bush.
“~~Neocons~~ [Mostly Jewish Zio-Nazis] Push Obama to Go Beyond a Punitive Strike in Syria”

Posted by: hmm | Aug 30 2013 18:49 utc | 112

RE: – “~~Neocons~~ [Mostly Jewish Zio-Nazis] Push Obama to Go Beyond a Punitive Strike in Syria”
Out of the 1st 5 signatories of the letter mentioned above,, 2 are Unkle-Toms with vaguely ‘Araby/Muslim’ sounding names (who no one has ever heard of before) and the other 3 are seriously hard-core Jewish Supremacist Nazis.
Your pal and fellow-liar Elliot Abrams, an actual convicted liar, war monger and probable war criminal is there, fer instance . . . .

Ammar Abdulhamid
Dr. Robert Kagan
Elliott Abrams
Lawrence F. Kaplan
Dr. Fouad Ajami
Yet according to zomebody, the resident MOA-ZioNazi-mouthbreather, the Jewish/Israeli Lobby in the US has nothing to do with this . . . . .

Posted by: hmm | Aug 30 2013 19:02 utc | 113

113)
They are simply not the same.
From Wikipedia
“John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt state in their controversial bestseller, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, that the tone of the right-leaning component of the Israel lobby results from the influence of the leaders of the two top lobby groups: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. They go on to list, as right-leaning think tanks associated with the lobby, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Hudson Institute.[1] They also state that the media watchdog group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is part of the right-wing component of the lobby.[1]”
“Neoconservatism is an intellectual movement born in the 1960s inside the monthly review Commentary. Commentary is the journal of the American Jewish Committee, which replaced the Contemporary Jewish Record in 1945.[1][2] On the “theoretical” side of neoconservatism, most influential neoconservatives such as Norman Podhoretz and his son John, Irving Kristol and his son William, Donald Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, and Abram Schulsky, refer explicitly to the ideas in the philosophy of Leo Strauss.[3] They often describe themselves as “Straussians.”
Two conservatives, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, in their 2004 book, “America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order,[4]” provided a succinct introduction to neoconservatism at that time.
Today’s neo-conservatives unite around three common themes:
A belief deriving from religious conviction that the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil and that the true measure of political character is to be found in the willingness by the former (themselves) to confront the latter.
An assertion that the fundamental determinant of the relationship between states rests on military power and the willingness to use it.
A primary focus on the Middle East and global Islam as the principal theater for American overseas interests.
In putting these themes into practice, neo-conservatives:
Analyze international issues in black-and-white, absolute moral categories. They are fortified by a conviction that they alone hold the moral high ground and argue that disagreement is tantamount to defeatism.
Focus on the “unipolar” power of the United States, seeing the use of military force as the first, not the last, option of foreign policy. They repudiate the “lessons of Vietnam,” which they interpret as undermining American will toward the use of force, and embrace the “lessons of Munich,” interpreted as establishing the virtues of preemptive military action.
Disdain conventional diplomatic agencies such as the State Department and conventional country-specific, realist, and pragmatic, analysis. They are hostile toward nonmilitary multilateral institutions and instinctively antagonistic toward international treaties and agreements. “Global unilateralism” is their watchword. They are fortified by international criticism, believing that it confirms American virtue.
Look to the Reagan administration as the exemplar of all these virtues and seek to establish their version of Reagan’s legacy as the Republican and national orthodoxy.[4]:11
Neoconservatism is critical of the so-called welfare state as conceived by the New Left but supportive of the New Deal and moderate welfare statism,[5] offers lukewarm applause for free markets,[6] and advocates “assertive” promotion of democracy and American national interest in international affairs including by military means.[7][8] Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush had neoconservative advisors regarding military and foreign policies. During the George W. Bush administration, neoconservative officials of the Departments of Defense and State helped to plan and promote the Iraq War.[9]”

Posted by: somebody | Aug 30 2013 19:27 utc | 114

“113)
They are simply not the same.”
they are precisely the same.
your dishonest pretence that they are not is laughably pathetic
Quoting wikipedia just makes you look like an even bigger lying dick than you looked already

Posted by: hmm | Aug 30 2013 19:36 utc | 115

A group of powerful people, mainly Jewish, such as
William Kristol,
Marty Peretz,
Ellen Bork,
Elliot Abrams
Max Boot
Robert Kagan
And many others,
Anyone that would claim that these people do not constitute a part of the “Israel Lobby” is simply an asshole

Posted by: hmm | Aug 30 2013 19:56 utc | 116

Some of the zionists are crazier than others. On occasions, this can lead to strategic disagreements. The simplest example of a fundamental difference between zionist factions that I can offer you is this: there is a faction which insists, over and over again and on every relevant occasion, that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards plus Hezbollah axis actually works hand in glove with al Qaeda on certain covert offensives against Israel & ‘the West’ (which is of course nonsense, and they know it, too). This is a minority but it is an interesting one, because it contains some of the most hardcore zionist operatives in the secret services of both Israel & the US. Some of them were in the Bush 43 (George Dubya) administration. I’m not aware of any of them in the O’Bummer administration, but it could happen, because their generally republican views would not put him off employing them. When these people appear in foreign policy, especially nasty proposals get made.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 30 2013 20:08 utc | 117

Barack Obama, when campaigning for President on 20 Dec 2007, said: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation…. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent. History has shown us time and again, however, that military action is most successful when it is authorized and supported by the Legislative branch.” Source: ref. I got that link from ref, which also has this from Vice President Joe Biden in 2007: “The president has no constitutional authority … to take this nation to war … unless we’re attacked or unless there is proof we are about to be attacked. And if he does, if he does, I would move to impeach him.”
I’m not very knowledgeable about Washington politics and I intend to keep it that way. But I feel confident from reading a couple of very recent USA public opinion polls that if the Syria attack issue goes to the Congress for approval, it will lose. Like it did in UK. Furthermore the polls also show that the President cannot initiate an attack against Syria without getting Congress to approve it — see ref.
I’m breathing a sigh of relief this evening, after having been a bit ill-at-ease right before Kerry’s statement today. On the evening after Kerry’s belligerent statement on 26 Aug, I said on this board I was willing to bet that the USA and NATO would NOT attack Syria (ref) and now this evening it’s looking like I’m going to win that bet (inshallah).

Posted by: Parviziyi | Aug 30 2013 20:25 utc | 118

There should be arrest warrants made for obama (not that he hasnt commited warcrimes before this) in all of the world if he commit another warcrime by attacking Syria especially in europe so he cant travel there.

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 30 2013 21:58 utc | 119

BTW, b….
You’re dead wrong. Obama ain’t climbing down. He’s on the same side Cheney is on. We were sold a Trojan Horse.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Aug 30 2013 23:19 utc | 120

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=750_1377676435
check this video posted at syrian perspective.visit the site please.

Posted by: dagon | Aug 30 2013 23:21 utc | 121

@Gareth #92
The story about the 2kg of Sarin found in the possession of Jabhat al-Nusra in Turkey at the end of May is one I revisited some today and I found a Reuters and a BBC article both saying that the original sarin claim was retracted by the Turkish governnor of where the raid took place. The correction was made the same day the story came out.
BBC article
Reuters article
Annoyingly, I couldn’t find any continuing coverage of the story. The Western media seem to have found this incident totally uninteresting. I guess they wouldn’t want to tarnish al-Nusra’s reputation by even entertaining such possibilities.

Posted by: JBradley | Aug 31 2013 7:13 utc | 122

He’s already ‘damaged goods in international affairs’, everywhere but in this country, where the MSM just doesn’t want to give up their ‘little black president’:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/World/WOR-01-190813.html
Of course this is the fault of the Dems who had the outrageous idea of turning a community organizer into the commander and chief and ‘leader of the free world’. It would have been so much better to have the first black president be a success, but the Dems knew better.

Posted by: Andre | Aug 31 2013 11:40 utc | 123

“Of course this is the fault of the Dems who had the outrageous idea of turning a community organizer into the commander and chief and ‘leader of the free world’.
Wasn’t the dems
It was jewish Penny Pritzker who came up with the idea

Posted by: hmm | Aug 31 2013 11:49 utc | 124

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