President Obama will not insist on a United Nations resolution threatening the use of force against Syria if Damascus does not turn over its stockpile of chemical weapons, according to reports.
The White House telegraphed the president’s strategy Friday amid ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Russia over a proposal to disarm Syria strongman Bashar Assad’s chemical arsenal to avert a threatened American military strike.
According to the reports from the Associated Press and New York Times, Obama is not ruling out a military strike. The president though believes that any resolution including such language would be vetoed by Russia on the Security Council. The president will reserve the right to strike Assad without UN support if Syria fails to follow through and hand over its chemical weapons.
Administration officials would not directly confirm the reports to the Washington Examiner.
Instapundit , Washington Examiner
Kirk plays Fizbin
207 comments:
1 – 200 of 207 Newer› Newest»Neither of them is "playing."
Lavrov is just telling Kerry how it is going to be.
... the president’s strategy ...
Bwahahahahahaha.
Obama at the wheel.
Somehow I do not see this turning out well.
"Obama’s playing checkers. Putin’s playing Phizbin."
First rule of kibbitzing...shut up and watch. Your opinions are worthless when the players are grandmasters and you are a patzer.
So Obama is reserving the "right" to attack Syria without UN support. And more importantly the US Congress's support.
How's that for flexibility?
Now ehat was that guy's name from a few years ago that every leftie in the American universe still castigates at every single turn and bump in the road? Ummm. Something to do with grass ... no no, that's what Obama smoked, mmm ...
YOU know -- he just ran in and started wars because he had daddy issues ... Heck with Congress, that old UN and everybody else...
Ooops. Wrong narrative.
Heck, forget Phizbin.
Never play chess with a Russian.
Especially one who knows how to poison you with an umbrella tip in a crowded crosswalk in a civilized city.
They play for keeps, not a spot on The View.
I keep hearing the good Rev Wright talking about chickens.
Barry folds like wet cardboard...and now everybody knows it..
This will all work out for Obama, because that's the entire point of all efforts by our negotiators, the press and millions of Obama supporters. It's the goal of them all, and they will not stop giving things away, lying, pretending and denying until he is made good. The future of the country, the world or anybody else, are not even part of the equation.
I understand Obama threatened to hold his breath until he turned blue.
Now that's leadership!
Half the country would save Obama before their own child if they were both drowning. It's mass hysteria.
Insty's a Trekkie?
First rule of kibbitzing...shut up and watch. Your opinions are worthless when the players are grandmasters and you are a patzer.
That's like saying you can't judge two boxers, and have an opinion on them either. It's ridiculous.
Obama Phutzed up, and its obvious. He doesn't enough training, and that's obvious. Kerry Phutzed up and that's obvious too.
Half the country would save Obama before their own child if they were both drowning. It's mass hysteria.
I hope that's hyperbole. I think half the country doesn't know it is selling out their kids and grandkids.
Also, I think there is this affirmative action meme running around that there is something as "Good Enough," for any position of the powerful positions in congress, etc. Good enough as a supreme court justice. Good enough to be president.
The answer is you want the Best, not good enough, and it shows in this latest showdown.
Obama is David Dinkins.
Rand Paul could be Rudy Giuliani.
Bill Whittle via Crack Emcee
Umbrella Men
Zero experience, no management success, a record of voting present, not even a college transcript, and old failed ideas was never even close to "good enough".
Seriously, what would you hire Barack Obama to do besides guest host on The View?
Turning the letters on Wheel?
Bill Whittle via Crack - via Bagoh - thanks. Most excellent as always.
Liberal progressive democrat socialists better stay away. They wouldn't want to learn anything or expand their tiny minds.
Pat Sajak and Vanna White are very good at what they do. Call it a minor talent, but they work hard at it and have made "Wheel" a success.
You think you could do Vanna's job that well - and wearing those clothes?
I haven't seen rumormongering this intense since the 7th grade!
BTW, when an organization calling itself "pajamas media" invites pundits with foreign policy credentials as illustrious as those held by the commenters here, what sort of dress code is called for? Are long johns acceptable or can boxers be worn? What about people who sleep in the nude? If you wear a suit and tie do they throw you off the "set"? Does Glenn host a Google Chat hangout where everybody's heads are laid upon pillows? Is dozing off together part of the deal? Do the "experts'" mommies bring out trays of milk and cookies while they seriously debate all the issues and evidence? And what if these bull sessions end in conclusions other than "Obama's a weak little poopy pants!"? Would the group have to adjourn and meet again once they can agree, beforehand, that Obama's incompetence is the premised starting-point, after which all facts must be made to fit?
I just have questions, is all.
Don't worry about our foreign policy credentials. We aren't the ones handling your nation's future against a highly experienced, ruthless former KGB man hell-bent on making sure American interest are thwarted and Russia are strengthened. For that we hired a failed community organizer who you no doubt think is highly qualified for the task.
And forgive me if I correct you, but he's actually a weak little poopy mom jeans.
Your opinions are worthless when the players are grandmasters and you are a patzer.
Why would this be relevant when rather than a grandmaster one player's only skill is convincing people to hate their neighbors?
43% approve of Kerry's actions as SoS.
43% of Americans are
*dummkopfs
*too partisan to analyze properly
* too stupid to see
* are not really paying attention
* have no idea what they're opining about
* cannot tell the difference between good and bad statecraft
* would vote oppositely were the administration R
* honestly sincerely too stupid to talk to about politics
* aren't even trying to make sense
* have serious problems with uptake
* are sorely malinformed
* prefer reptile rulers, slow when not fully sunned, over human leaders always warm.
The two lefties on here are trying to make us feel better by reminding us that Obama is better at foreign policy than we are. That might even be true, but we're not the competition. The competition are cold-blooded killers who came to power through vicious machiavellian power tactics including murder, not via sharp pants creases and silly ideas about binders of women.
We aren't the ones handling your nation's future against a highly experienced, ruthless former KGB man hell-bent on making sure American interest are thwarted and Russia are strengthened.
No doubt you never conceived of such a thing as a "mutually beneficial" deal in you zero-sum world, but I'm wondering exactly how added leverage over Syria works against our interests and why we should give a rat's ass if Russia wants to see that as in their own interest as well.
I know you identify with tyrannical little girls like Putin on a personal level, when it comes to how to run a P.R. campaign and all that. I'm just wondering how the actual fact of what's changed strengthens them while weakening us.
For that we hired a failed community organizer who you no doubt think is highly qualified for the task.
Given your admiration for ruthlessness and the KGB, perhaps your ideal of credentials is not one many Americans prefer for a reason.
What happened to the W.-era assessment of Putin, as a "family man" with a good soul?
You'll just say whatever you want to fit your fleeting and incoherent emotions at the moment. Catering to your opportunistic instability is a mug's game, and would only weaken America. You can't even decide from day-to-day what you hate about Obama, or what he did wrong, and that makes you unqualified to judge his actions. Maybe resenting someone makes for an acceptable standard for hiring/firing in an industry based on manual labor, but serious people who actually make political decisions for a living have to judge based on sound criteria for assessing the outcomes of those decisions. Which is something of which you're simply not capable or even interested.
Remind me of Congress's post-Tea Party approval rating, Chip, or W.'s outgoing approval rating.
You don't care. The American people might be uninformed and disinterested, but they sure know who they hate more and who fucked up more.
Obama's like the guy in what could be a street brawl who keeps shouting "Let me at him!" while inwardly rejoicing that he's being restrained by his buddies.
Of course in this case his buddies happen to be Putin and Assad. They're saving Obama's bacon, which from Obama's standpoint far outweighs the fact that Putin is America's mortal enemy and has just been handed, thanks to Obama's mind-boggling stupidity, the chance to seriously weaken America's world standing. Which Putin of course has jumped on. "Hey, it's a win-win for me!" crows our traitorous leader, internally.
Mocking PJ Media for its name while the Titanic sinks. Good thinking.
Obama's like the guy in what could be a street brawl who keeps shouting "Let me at him!" while inwardly rejoicing that he's being restrained by his buddies.
This sounds like an analysis worthy of publication in Foreign Policy.
The impressive reduction of every idea on here to Street Fighter video game sessions is almost as helpful as the single line tweets from a guy in his pajamas regurgitating quotes from blatantly biased conservative rags like The Washington Examiner.
Lavorov in Mario Andretti; Kerry is Toonces the cat who could drive a car.
It's very rare for anyone to simultaneously achieve this level of incompetence and self righteousness. In modern times, it has only been exceeded by Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Conference......That said, I hope history reserves a certain amount of contempt for Assad, Putin, and the Mullahs who so vigilantly defend the right of dictators everywhere to use poison gas on the children. Obama may be clumsy and inept, but those people are evil.
That's like saying you can't judge two boxers, and have an opinion on them either. It's ridiculous.
No, it's like if you were trying to comment on Nakamura-Carlsen in St. Louis today. Very amusing.
Mocking PJ Media for its name while the Titanic sinks. Good thinking.
So which is the Titanic in all this? America? Our existence hinges on making sure we have less leverage over a tyrannical M.E. hold-out against the CWC?
Show me one thing you'd defend that the sleepwear media outlet has done which makes it as worthy of the seriousness that you attribute to sinking ships and your castigation over our added ability to hold more countries accountable to civilized norms.
*is* not in.
International diplomacy is not like boxing. It's more like chess.
Maybe, but chess only has two players, phx. Best not to confuse these cockfight gamblers by reminding them of the fact that we have 189 other countries to deal with who are a party to this developing, especially a certain one that is neither America nor Russia.
Their 2-dimensional minds need nurturing, not coddling.
This will all work out for Obama, because that's the entire point of all efforts by our negotiators, the press and millions of Obama supporters. It's the goal of them all, and they will not stop giving things away, lying, pretending and denying until he is made good. The future of the country, the world or anybody else, are not even part of the equation.
It's you and your idealogue friends who fixated on what this means to Obama. The rest of us are hoping and praying for a solution that benefits the US and doesn't squander human lives.
"No doubt you never conceived of such a thing as a "mutually beneficial" deal in you zero-sum world"
Yes, I know "peace in our time" Very nice.
That might even be true, but we're not the competition. The competition are cold-blooded killers who came to power through vicious machiavellian power tactics including murder, not via sharp pants creases and silly ideas about binders of women.
You're so worried and anxious! Relax, you don't understand the first thing about what's happening. Let's see what happens.
But phx, if Obama is the nexus of all evil in the world, isn't that all that matters?
" The rest of us are hoping and praying for a solution that benefits the US and doesn't squander human lives."
I'm sure that's all Obama cares about. Let's just hope a fund raiser in Vegas isn't on the schedule at the wrong time.
Yes, I know "peace in our time" Very nice.
Do you know any other one-liners in your soundbite-based policy experience?
Obama never claimed anything of the sort that Chamberlain did, but feel free to concoct analogies that have no application. We have to give you credit for remembering something historical, understand, no matter how crude, inapt or flat-out inapplicable to what's being considered. I'll take your quip as credit for trying, kind of like how the "everyone's a winner" mentality has won out in kiddie athletics.
"Let's see what happens."
"We have to pass it to find out what's in it."
Hey I have exactly the same credentials as Obama's most influential foreign policy advisors.
I don't have a PhD either. So there!
We don't all need 500 words to make a simple point.
We don't change what we hate Obama every day. We hate everything about him everyday.
What's to like?
Hey I have exactly the same credentials as Obama's most influential foreign policy advisors.
I don't have a PhD either. So there!
At the risk of feeding the trolls I think Obama's fp advisers are weak. I'm not impressed by Putin either though.
It's really another day at the office with a lot of Althouse-type wingers peeing themselves believing Obama will pay now for how he has treated them. I guess it was ill-advised when he called them "bitter clingers." These days they're just bitter.
"Obama never claimed anything of the sort that Chamberlain did, but feel free to concoct analogies that have no application"
Maybe you need more clues.
Hapless academic lets a ruthless dictator call the shots, and just trusts that it will all work out so he can avoid actually doing anything.
Anyone comparing today's world affairs to chess has never been in a gun fight. "Diplomacy" is getting the other guy(s) to blink while you find a big enough rock to kill them with. End of story.
You can want, wish, hope and dream it be intellectual, but in the end it is merely brutal.
Rhythm and Balls said...
You don't care.
You are correct. I do not. I care so little for Obama and most of his cabinet and administration that if I said how I really feel, I'd be arrested.
BTW fucking way, I didn't like the Bush and Clinton family of pucker asses any better.
We are now, and have been for decades, at the point where we promote shit-heads out of the way, and call them "good enough."
By the way, Nakamura-Carlsen just started for anyone wanting to comment.
http://www.uschesschamps.com/live
Phx ... why don't you explain the "President's strategy" to me in real terms. I will listen.
No vague analogy to chess or any other "game." Tell me what "moves" the President has made and is going to make to assure the best interests of the US of A.
Phx ... why don't you explain the "President's strategy" to me in real terms. I will listen.
Aridog I'm not an apologist for the President. I belong to the "watch and learn" camp. And I have no idea how this will play out and whether it will be to our benefit or not. I think it's too early to tell.
I think rather it's up to you to explain the President's strategy to me, in real terms, and explain how he's fucked up. I'll listen.
What is Phisbin? oic, fisbin, a game on original Star Trek, and something about shuffling cards. And this page, once I looked closely had my sides splitting. That elf is very familiar. We had those little things around the house at Chrismas but nothing so funny as these.
At the risk of feeding the trolls I think Obama's fp advisers are weak
Is it possible phx doesn't realize he is the troll?
Love Nakamura's sunglasses.
You are mistaken phx. Obama will never pay for anything. Not for any of his mistakes. Not even for the high crimes and misdemeanors that he and his corrupt administration commit daily. Not for exacerbating the racial divisions when he pretended to be a healer. He will walk away untouched and make millions upon millions on the lecture circuit.
He is the real Teflon President.
Amusing watching Ritmo and phx scramble trying to tell us we need to be good little patriots and support our government.
Kind of a Lefty version of, "Who's on first?".
"I think rather it's up to you to explain the President's strategy to me,.."
I think it started out trying to prevent Assad from winning his civil war including using chemical weapons, thus the "red line". Assad called the bluff. Since then the strategy has been to prevent the President from looking like a fool which included taking every possible position as each one looked sequentially foolish. Now he has no options except either look like a cold blooded war monger, or do what Putin wants. In other words, he has no strategy because he has no options. Checkmate.
Still the remaining effort is to save face at all costs, and Obama will get great assistance with that in the coming days and months from the press, Putin and even Assad, as they all pretend this disarming is actually happening. Then it will slip into the file cabinet of failures with Fast and Furious, Obamacare, the IRS, Bengahzi, etc. It's all about the memory hole. The President's strategy is to wait for the next mistake to eclipse this one. I have complete faith in his success with that.
Amusing watching Ritmo and phx scramble trying to tell us we need to be good little patriots and support our government.
I never said that. You can do what you want. Of course, this is why Republicans can't have nice things.
Obama's strategy is to favor the radical Muslim faction over the current established government. That is what he did in Egypt and Libya. The problem is that Assad is too wily an opponent and aided by Putin he is making Obama look foolish.
Obama got played.
phx - the president had no strategy. He shot his mouth off about red lines, confident that his bluff would never be called. He's being sprung from his own self-created trap by his equally unreflective Sec. State Kerry, who blundered into giving Putin the opening Putin has used to make a laughingstock of Obama & Co., not that that matters, what matters is that your socialist hero has radically weakened America's standing in the world, a world full of bad guys who now KNOW they don't have a thing to fear.
Since then the strategy has been to prevent the President from looking like a fool
he is making Obama look foolish.
You guys are so obsessed with the idea that Obama should look foolish you stopped caring about America. I hope it does you some good.
We care about America. We love America. Unlike President Obama.
That is why it pains us when the person occupying the Presidency looks like Mr. Magoo.
We don't all need 500 words to make a simple point.
All your points are simple. That's why they're wrong. Bumper stickers are great attention-getters, and convey horribly stupid advice.
What's to like?
Maybe the fact that he's intelligent enough to get Syria to do for free what Bush took $6 trillion to get Iraq to do, and Iraq didn't even have what we said we wanted him to give up.
But we're getting back to what Bag said. If it was as simple as the fist-banging evil declaring that W. made of Iraq, then that's the point entirely - consequences, all six trillion of them, be damned. If it's about simple stances and not caring about devastating consequences, W.'s your man. If you want better consequences and less simple stances, it's not W. It's Obama.
Maybe you need more clues.
Hapless academic lets a ruthless dictator call the shots, and just trusts that it will all work out so he can avoid actually doing anything.
No, you actually need to read a book and learn your history. Syria is not Nazi Germany, Assad is not Hitler, no one's "called any shots", (what does that even mean, BTW?) and no one's trusting anything. This is simply a better set of options and leverage than we had before, and if it isn't a dramatic enough development for you, go watch a telenovela. Not everything in the world works on the whims of drama queens. Most good progress is incremental.
Seriously Ritmo. Do you really think what is happening in Syria is due to Obama's plan. Or are Putin and Assad taking advantage of his flip flopping blunders to get an outcome that works for them.
Obama wanted to help the rebels overthrow Assad. That what he has done consistently in the middle east. Favor the most radical elements attempting to overthrow the established governments.
None of this was planned by Obama. He is just wandering from blunder to blunder like a drunk trying doorknobs to see if he can find his apartment.
Obama's strategy is to favor the radical Muslim faction over the current established government. That is what he did in Egypt and Libya. The problem is that Assad is too wily an opponent and aided by Putin he is making Obama look foolish.
Obama got played.
You can hate Muslims all you want. Continuing to dictate that we keep secular strong-man dictators in charge of other people's countries is a disastrous folly. On this Bush was right, even if he disagreed (or pretended to disagree) with you for ideological reasons. It's not going to be an easy road, but this nonsense of saying that we will rule over 23 other Arab countries (and however many other countries) by being arbiters over and deciding their leadership for them as Putin does his own regional Russian governors is ridiculous and an insane idea in micro-management. You can go ahead and figure out who should be getting to run which Middle Eastern hellhole day-to-day, the rest of us have a government to run without having 23 more little Iraqs with 23 more $6 trillion budget run-ups to oversee. No wonder the government's finances always go to hell under Republican administrations, they seriously want to rule the world like an empire and don't care at all about how much it costs.
I don't care "whose" plan it is Trooper (BTW, we were discussing this in secret a year ago), but just hating Muslims or the opposition in Syria isn't enough of a foreign policy. It's their fight, each side is pretty bad (if not equally bad), and making sure Assad stays in power isn't worth it. Just because Muslims are six centuries of civilization behind Christians doesn't mean they don't get to have their own sectarian wars and reformations on their own timeline. Dictating how that plays out for them is just impeding their own progress and getting us involved in something we don't need or want any part of. Let them figure that out on their own.
" the rest of us have a government to run..."
Thank you for your hard work. I hope you aren't using a White House computer right now on my dime.
bagoh20 said...
Thank you for your hard work. I hope you aren't using a White House computer right now on my dime.
Lighten up it's a Saturday.
Gee, they get testy when the Messiah gets shown up.
R & B, you keep talking about the added "leverage" out of this deal for the U.S. -- can you explain just how that works? I don't see it; it looks to me like we got nada. Other than a way out for you-know-who, of course.
And BTW, I'm not saying it was wrong to do Iraq or that some consequences weren't worth it, but we don't have to follow the same model each time. The neocons said precisely that this would kick off a chain of events. Maybe they were right or maybe their timing was just lucky, but Iraq came with some consequences for us, huge enough that we don't need to repeat what we did to them or how we treated them as a model for every one else over there. These other things can happen more cheaply. And not all of them require the attention to bad actors to the same degree as Assad does. We're not ridding Syria of him - or at least, we sure as shit shouldn't make that our priority - but there's nothing wrong with pressuring him to abide by civilized norms as long as he's there. He can fight rebels as much as he wants and I DON'T agree with hamstringing him in quelling his little rebellion by conventional means. This is another great reason for why simply addressing his WMDs is great, it pushes us back from focusing on military options.
Phx, you said ...
You guys are so obsessed with the idea that Obama should look foolish you stopped caring about America.
Obama needs no help looking foolish. He is a natural fool.
You aksed that I suggest where he has gone wrong: He has stocked his cabinet and administration with fools and grifters, in most cases, both....and the list from there is too long to type.
I have the right to be disgusted because I worked for the government, in one capacity or another, military and civilian, for decades. I know how their system works. My question is then, do you?
You only think it's nada Lydia if you think that signing up hostile countries to hugely influential treaties is a bad thing. Whether he abides by it or not, it puts added pressure on Assad to at least act more legitimately, which makes guys like Trooper happy because al Qaeda-affiliated rebels have less of a claim against the legitimacy of his rule.
I understand that the support of other countries and international norms means little to typical Americans who see it as their birthright to do whatever they have the power to do, but let me tell you, it sure does matter in building the alliances that lessen our burden and it sure as hell matters to a rinky-dink little dictator like Assad who runs a country vastly smaller than ours in a desert in the middle of nowhere. Stop thinking that everyone else in the world sees themselves the way Americans see ourselves. That's not realistic.
AReasonableMan said...
Reference: "bagoh20 said...
Thank you for your hard work. I hope you aren't using a White House computer right now on my dime."
Lighten up it's a Saturday.
Like that makes a difference with VPN and teleworking. My counterpart (who replaced me when I retired) is working today and tomorrow in the federal building, just like I used to on weekends when the "essential position" descriptor gets laid on you.
BTW...in all my time as a "Fed" I had two computers at home, one the government Dell Precision Laptop with VPN and my own Precision Desktop, side by side.
Not a minute of personal business was done on the government machine at home....and limited personal emails were used when in the field with the same laptop.
We had to be careful, everything written or spoken was read and heard. I even had to fire a young man for abusing his government computer repeatedly in his divorce matters...I was notified by IMO, the deputy commander, and the Office of Counsel of the malfeasance.
Oh, wait...all y'll think that kind of routine surveillance stuff was only discovered by pin dick Snowden? Right!
Bwahahahaha.
Ritno Iraq cost 6 trillion and 284 dollars. Don't forget that $284 or the Neocons will have won.
The delusion of display here is that the US has, or ever had, the ability to simply impose our preferred outcomes on any other country. This delusion has played out now in Indochina, South America and the now the middle east with predictable results. Even fucking New Zealand told us to take out nukes and shove it. And they are going to win the America's cup.
Ultimately diplomacy backed with our overwhelming, but strategically limited, military might can achieve some goals but it is undoubtedly a messy business. The thing to remember about Russia is that while they may not like us much they are terrified of their neighbor China. They need us a lot more than we need them. As noted by others, the Russians are idiots. They should have tied themselves into western Europe long ago, their economy would be in vastly better shape if they had taken a hard look in the mirror and acknowledged that they no longer have the power to stand alone. Now they will be lucky to avoid getting carved up by China over the next 30 years.
The limited goal that Obama set was to stop the use of chemical weapons. I fully agree with this goal, my grandfather was gassed in WWI (he obviously survived). They are an appalling way to conduct war and a constant proliferation and terrorism threat.
At the moment it seems like Obama will be successful in achieving this goal. I did not expect Assad to agree to join the ban on these weapons and give them up so easily. In addition Obama has continued to keep us out of any military engagement in Syria, which I strongly oppose. So, from my perspective things seem to be going quite well. It is an ugly process but not as ugly as trying to get a budget passed by the house.
You aksed that I suggest where he has gone wrong: He has stocked his cabinet and administration with fools and grifters, in most cases, both....and the list from there is too long to type.
As I said @1:54pm, I don't think he's done the best job of picking his foreign policy advisors.
I have the right to be disgusted because I worked for the government, in one capacity or another, military and civilian, for decades.
You have the right to be disgusted because you are an American. Just as I have my right to my opinion. Because you have worked for the government gives you no special wisdom on this affair, IMO. On the other hand you know that I deeply appreciate your military service. Or if you don't, you should know that I do.
"Lighten up it's a Saturday."
There is a certain density to the liberal mind that misses a lot.
Look, the President never really had any options once he blew it at the start and Putin jumped at the opportunity. There was no way Obama was going to strike with most of the country and the congress against it. Putin locked that out instantly by suggesting a peaceful otion. Then it was just a matter of working out the details with Assad and telling Obama what it was going to be. This game was over in two moves. What else could we do but accept? Now there will be a little fake disagreement followed by fake compromise followed by the memory hole.
Ritno go find me examples of idiots using the chicken hawk argument against wingers. I want to humiliate the fools with their own words and hopefully convince them to go to Syria and fight for their beliefs.
Thank you in advance.
The war will continue with Assad strengthened, and the opposition demoralized, and most of the chemical weapons will stay hidden.
bagoh20 said...
There is a certain density to the liberal mind that misses a lot.
Sticks and stones. You are better than this, as Trooper might say.
There is a certain density to the liberal mind...
I think they're called "neurons".
Look, the President never really had any options once he blew it at the start and Putin jumped at the opportunity.
Look, it's not about who gets to roll out a marketing campaign first. It's about the fact that this treaty works in our favor. Stop pretending that running presidential administrations is like a televised used car salesman's ad campaigns. When will you ever grow up and see that political leadership is not just about marketing P.R. Probably never.
You can be as demagogic as you want, unBuckley. Americans in general are quite assured of their own power and Republican Senate leaders aren't shy about voicing their contempt for Assad in military terms. But then, they have to take foreign affairs seriously and don't just irresponsibly run their mouths for free like the folks here do.
To a senator, they actually have to decide whether it's better to damage the president politically or to work towards his success - because unlike the cacklers here, there's consequences for them if a bad decision or a bad call is made - as they'll look bad too. The commenters here have the luxury of not caring about the consequences to their country of their carelessness - they're just talking. It's one endless filibuster of name-calling, as far as they're concerned. Anything Obama does is bad to them by definition. For Republicans serving on Senate committees, this is not the case as they have to actually judge actions and context instead of just political identity and party affiliation alone. Your friends here have the luxury to enjoy of not caring about any of that more important stuff.
How Assad Could Twist a Chemical Weapons Treaty to Keep His Poison Gas
"The problem is that the [Chemical Weapons Convention that Assad has now signed onto] wasn't designed to deal with situations like the current crisis in Syria. To succeed, it will require the full and ongoing cooperation of the Assad government, which is obviously far from guaranteed. If Assad changes his mind or is caught cheating, the treaty's sole enforcement mechanism is a referral back to the U.N. Security Council, where the chances of getting an agreement authorizing punitive measures against Damascus for its poor behavior are virtually non-existent. For all intents and purposes, the treaty is toothless.
'The Chemical Weapons Convention was created to deal with a very different type of set of circumstances,' said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association. 'It was designed to deal with a country that was willing to renounce its chemical weapons voluntarily and not under coercion, a country where there was no real chance of them being used again, and a country that was stable enough that they could be destroyed safely. None of those conditions exist in Syria'."
and
" 'It's not inconceivable that he adopts the Saddam Hussein playbook from the 1990s -- refusing access to facilities, having the inspectors run around the country chasing their own tails -- as a way of playing out the clock,' said Brian Finlay of the Stimson Center. 'The more time that passes, the more the shock of the chemical weapons attack will fade away and the more the momentum for a strike will begin to disappear. It's clearly in his favor for this stretch out as long as possible'."
And that, folks, is leverage Obama-style.
And Lydia demonstrates the Comments Home-style of getting others to do her arguing for her.
But she missed the point. Show me where in that article it says that signing Assad up is a bad thing and what the better option would have been.
Obama want Assad out. Putin wanted him in. Obama wanted the weapons destroyed, Assad does not, and wanted left alone to complete his killing spree.
Who is this treaty helping?
Lydia, like so many other conservatives, is so good at making enemies that she probably thought she could use that article to make the perfect the enemy of the good.
ARM ... 1.) How do you classify Napalm as a weapon? 2.) Yeah, those Congressional budgets just flew through when Pelosi was in charge. Harry is a demon for getting them passed, too, eh? The Senate has failed to pass any form of budget since 2009.
Understand, I hold both parties responsible for this utter emasculation of representative governance. Neither one gives a shit because they both get far more pork and ass suckling under Continuing Resolutions (CR's) than ever possible with a formal appropriated budget.
Both party's leadership knows Joe & Jane Sixpack isn't familiar with how CR's enable fund transfers, misappropriations, and expenditures without oversight, year after year.
You guys really think Assad is going to voluntarily give up his weapons because he signed a piece of paper. It has to be voluntary, because we can't bomb now. We won't bomb, and he knows it now.
Lydia said...
How Assad Could Twist a Chemical Weapons Treaty to Keep His Poison Gas
He could, but now the Russian's are on record as opposing this. It is a small step but an important one. It will be difficult for the Russians to back down from this position and, without their backing, for Assad to hang on to the weapons. Assad is not a complete idiot. For him, holding on to the weapons is a much lower priority than holding on to power. We should not give a shit whether or not he holds on to power.
Obama want Assad out.
Bullshit. Cite that.
Who is this treaty helping?
Probably the >180 countries, including ours and Russia's, who've signed it. It seems like they have something invested in it.
But I forgot the script: Treaties are meaningless in pursuing the global order. Being a rogue state and doing whatever you want and have the power to do is a great thing. This is how you think so of course you assume it's the only thing that matters to Assad.
But it's not reality.
Just admit that you find the existence and will of the rest of the world to be meaningless and that you advocate a P.R.-focused imperial presidency where all that matters is the amount of trillions we can spend making life hell in every country we want just so long as it makes us "look" good and powerful.
You are the Fonzie of Foreign Policy - still living at home and doing nothing more important than fixing up your motorcycle, washing your white wife-beater t-shirt, and making sure the comb in your back pocket is easily accessible when you want to run it through your greasy pompadour and impress the only crowd that takes you seriously: the local high school kids. Heeeeeeyy!
Well, you guys work this out. Keep the comments running, and find a solution to the evil of our time.
I got to go find someplace else for all these dogs to live. It's National Dog Adoption Weekend, so if you need a friend, go save a life at the pound today. You won't regret it.
And Lydia demonstrates the Comments Home-style of getting others to do her arguing for her.
But I thought you only valued the opinion of experts, R & B. And from those at Foreign Policy, no less. See your comment up-thread at 1:34 PM.
No pleasing you.
Oh, Vlad's given his word , so Assad can't wiggle out?
God, this gets funnier by the minute. Ritmo posing as the font of history to tell us why Choom won and Troll is telling us we can trust ghe Chekist because he said so.
If I'm Fonzie, that makes you Potsie. I can live with that.
Heeehhhh!
AReasonableMan said...
We should not give a shit whether or not he [Assad] holds on to power.
Hot damn. We agree on something.
Well, a little bit anyway. I rather favor leaving Assad in power because he has been the least offensive to various religious factions...and that is according to my Arab neighbors and friends. I have no reason to doubt them. Assad seems preferable to Salafists who will kill off their opposition...in fact are busy at it now.
PS: As for "treaties"...they are a form of written mutual "tolerance" which is merely grinning at your opposition until you find a rock big enough to slay them.
I am not pleased that you missed my request to find where in the article it says that this development is a negative one and worse than any other. Does it? Does it even compare it to other developments? Of course not. It just tells us the obvious, which is that it is not perfect. What in life is perfect? How is imperfection the same as failure? Why do none of you get this?
Well, Bag said it right out loud. Assad is evil and everyone knows that once we start throwing around words like evil everything becomes plain and simple. There is only perfection or failure. Pretty high standards to live up to, there. I'm glad my understanding of the world allows me to understand that "evil" and "perfect" are usually not very helpful concepts. They keep things more understandable to his simple mind, but there's an entire reality that exists outside of that, too. Let's learn to live in it.
Ari, we actually probably all agree on that.
edutcher said...
Oh, Vlad's given his word , so Assad can't wiggle out?
God, this gets funnier by the minute. Ritmo posing as the font of history to tell us why Choom won and Troll is telling us we can trust ghe Chekist because he said so.
Are you a productive member of society yet? Get back to me when you are.
Obama called Kanye a jackass and I have always respected and given credit to the POTUS for that.
phx said...
You guys are so obsessed with the idea that Obama should look foolish you stopped caring about America.
It's amazing how the trolls turn everything into an Obama discussion, then whine that it's an Obama discussion. Yesterday was a great conversation about what we should do, until the trolls showed up.
But you can't take the clownish claim that Obama's a foreign policy grandmaster seriously. He has no foreign policy experience, and his "team" was selected based on their common hatred of people who believe they should keep what they earn in free exchange.
Some poor President has to be rated as having the worst foreign policy ever. In my lifetime, Carter enjoyed that title for many years, probably relieving LBJ of the burden. Nixon did well in FP (did Ford have memorable foreign policy?). Reagan, despite his detractors, presided over the fall of the Soviet Union which overshadows whatever else he did overseas. Bush I was masterful, but incomplete. Clinton? I'm ambivalent, but he was better known as a domestic success -- a hit with the ladies as well.
Bush II? If we believe the lefties, he was the worse ever. I'm pretty certain the Ritmo, ARM, and phx would sign onto that. So he's their baseline for comparison.
Obama has a lot of time to play out yet but it's certainly possible that he could be another Carter. Time will tell, and it will be as harsh as it has been for the others. No one of us made any of Obama's predecessors have bad foreign policy because "we didn't believe in him" or "we didn't like him" or any of that bullshit. Presidents are supposed to be tough and not pussies who look for strokes.
Ritmo, you said ...
How is imperfection the same as failure? Why do none of you get this?
Please re-read my comment at 2:05 today. Both parties have been abject failures from Bush 41 forward. The degree of "imperfection" is what matters, and it remains way above 50%.
You guys are so obsessed with the idea that Obama should look foolish you stopped caring about America.
That's utter & complete crybaby bullshit. It's guilt-tripping is what it is.
That's bull, Marshall. Chuck Hagel was an example of signing up with Obama's "hatred" agenda? What malarkey. He's reached out for a politically diverse cabinet moreso than any Republican preceding him. Hagel and others illustrate that there was a time when Republicans could put some thought into policy beyond "GOOD AND EVIL" and not fear being drummed out of the party for not being simplistic enough, as successful as a less simplistic approach has nearly always proven.
Aridog said...
AReasonableMan said...
As for "treaties"...they are a form of written mutual "tolerance" which is merely grinning at your opposition until you find a rock big enough to slay them.
As bad as chemical weapons are they are nothing compared to the coming biological weapons, which are equal or possibly even greater than nuclear weapons in their potential to wipe out most of humanity. Strengthening the collective will to limit and/or eliminate these kinds of weapons through international treaties is very much in our long term best interests.
Well, Ari, the parties might have become failures, but I really don't think every action taken by each president since was.
The lefty dreck like Montana Urban Schmendrik think they win by a continual rain of talkee talkee. But you'll never do that walkee walkee across Harlem at midnight, you fabulous lover of humanity. Do it, you empty blast of hot air. I so want to look down at you in your much deserved pine box.
ricpic said...
But you'll never do that walkee walkee across Harlem
I have, but I couldn't afford a house there any more, so I have no choice.
As bad as chemical weapons are they are nothing compared to the coming biological weapons, which are equal or possibly even greater than nuclear weapons in their potential to wipe out most of humanity. Strengthening the collective will to limit and/or eliminate these kinds of weapons through international treaties is very much in our long term best interests.
Besides the H-Bomb, can you name a few unconventional weapons A, B, or C which haven't been used. I'm afraid that the world will have to see such new biological weapons deployed somewhere before they grasp the full horror.
I've walked through Harlem at night, too. How does that have anything to do with chemical weapons and containing our "strong-man" in Syria?
Oh, that's right. It doesn't. But rippie has trouble focusing and is upset by words.
Nice to see they still give Troll access to the liquor cabinet.
Maybe when he sobers up, he'll stop ducking the question.
PS For those who still think this is all according to Choom's plan.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601130916,00.html
I think most dictators are willing to starve, shoot, and torture children in order to get them to behave properly. Spare the rod and all that. Assad is the first dictator to use poison gas on them. Maybe quantum jump is a better figure of speech than red line. At any rate, Assad has done something significantly more malignant than the average dictator. It's difficult to see how Obama, despite his rhetoric, has done much to inhibit Assad. I'm not critical of Obama's lofty moral pronouncements but rather of his utter ineffectuality in giving them weight and velocity.......Assad is the villain in this drama, but Obama is Polonius, mouthing fine sentiments and hiding behind the curtain.....I don't claim to know what to do in Syria or even if there is anything we can usefully do, but, my goodness, Obama has a done a very poor job of masking his ignorance and confusion.
El Pollo,
Consider the AEF and the "Spanish flu"?
edutcher said...
Nice to see they still give Troll access to the liquor cabinet.
Got a job yet? Or still just wasting your life away whining about other people.
That seems to be your gig, whining.
I'm basking in the Recovery Summer.
edutcher said...
I'm basking in the Recovery Summer.
Well maybe you should get off your ass and get some gainful employment.
Even though R & B will ridicule me yet again for posting words not my own, the image of Kerry off the cliff begs to be shared:
"It’s obvious to even the dullest pundit that no new international process can bring about the safe collection and destruction of Syria’s sizeable CW stocks over any timescale that matters. ...
This outcome shows what happens when you enter a brutal neighbourhood proclaiming your unwillingness to fight: those who are prepared to fight crush you. The Obama administration knows that it is experiencing unprecedented humiliation. So it proclaims victory. John Kerry emits faux toughness to pretend that Washington is really driving things along. 'Words are not enough.' 'This is not a game.' 'There ought (sic) to be consequences' if Assad does not dismantle its CW arsenal. 'We do believe there is a way to get this done.' Such empty mock-heroic phrases are the sort of thing a cartoon character might say as he walks off the edge of the cliff, striding purposefully out into thin air before plummeting to his doom."
The rest of it is here.
AReasonableMan said...
The delusion of display here is that the US has, or ever had, the ability to simply impose our preferred outcomes on any other country
That is exactly right ARM. Please email the Jug Eared Jesus and let him know. Leave Syria to the Syria.
At least Assad doesn't murder Christians in the street like the Muslim brotherhood does in Egypt and these insurgents do in Syria.
Of course the murder of Christians means nothing to Obama. Never did and never will.
Ritmo said....
Dictating how that plays out for them is just impeding their own progress and getting us involved in something we don't need or want any part of. Let them figure that out on their own
Exactly right. We agree 100% Please email the Jug Eared Jesus to that effect. Tell him to stay out of Syria. In fact it would be best if he stayed out of foreign policy altogether. Let him stick with what he knows. Playing golf. Fund raising. Stoking racism against whites. Destroying the economy. You know. Doing things where his talent lies and his talent for lying won't get called by somebody like Putin.
That's the ticket.
Oh, ok Lydia. So you quote another conservative rag, owned by Conrad Black - newly released from prison for fraud, so that he can whisper in your ear: "All hope is lost!" Which is wonderful, as he has no strategy for what to do. This all serves the purpose of rallying conservative troops against the president, in their never-ending quest to weaken him and have something to stand for, while once again, offering nothing constructive for what to do about the current situation. Which I remind you again, Obama didn't make happen.
Thank you for your political strategy session in attacking U.S. presidents while avoiding the actual exercise of any leadership on how to address the issues actually facing them. It really sums up the conservative position quite nicely.
@Trooper: Don't forget that as a boy, Obama was deeply imbued with the Muslim call to worship as a beautiful sound. Some of his actions are deeply rooted in aesthetics.
Thank you for your political strategy session in attacking U.S. presidents while avoiding the actual exercise of any leadership on how to address the issues actually facing them.
FTR: We conservatives advocated more transparency on Benghazi. It didn't happen.
Now we are advocating more circumspection when it comes to off-the-cuff remarks in front of cameras.
Senator Barack Obama on the lead up to the Iraq War:
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics. Now let me be clear — I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity. He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaida. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.
So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with bin Laden and al-Qaida, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings. You want a fight, President Bush?
Let's fight to make sure that the U.N. inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe. You want a fight, President Bush?
Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.
You want a fight President Obama?
Now we are advocating more circumspection when it comes to off-the-cuff remarks in front of cameras.
Why? No one else is.
Trooper - Obama didn't make Bush's war unpopular. His rush to go in without any significant allies and less than 150,000 troops while lying to the nation about its causes and while shifting resources away from the hunt for bin Laden did. Kerry did nothing wrong by running against that priority. Neither did a meager state senator. There is currently no election. You are fighting for nothing, but maybe that's the point.
We are not fighting Ritmo. We are paying them back in kind. There is no ploy so low, no insult so vulgar, no curse so profane that we could hurl at the Jug Eared Jesus that would not be what had been thrown at Bush by the likes of Obama, Kerry, Pelosi and Biden.
Tit for tat. Fly the black flag so to speak. No quarter.
Oh and by the way Bush raised a significant coalition against Iraq.
Obama couldn't even get the Crips or the Bloods to have his back.
That about lame ass leaders.
Obama Pelosi Kerry and Biden are not and were not "enemies" of Bush. What are you saying? What "insults" and "curses" did they throw at him? All this revenge talk frankly sounds like the kind of jabber that you hear more often in that same Middle East that you sanely decide is too messed up to bother too much with doing anything about. They didn't "score" anything against a happy and happily retired former president that now suddenly needs to be settled. I doubt Bush wishes ill to the mission of any current or subsequent president or U.S. leader. Again, what is it you hope to regain? Bush's decisions are and were Bush's decisions and you should allow him to take the same responsibility for them that he would decide to take for them, himself.
Britain and Australia are good allies to have but the strength of the force coalition built during the first Iraq war really was much better.
What I mean was when President Bush was gathering support to depose a cruel dictator who used chemical weapons against his own people...these same people did everything they could to obstruct and demonize him and his policies. Don't try and dissemble. They continue to do it to this very day.
As a conservative I feel that the opposition party should do exactly to Obama what he did to Bush. No more and no less. Remember dissent is the greatest form of patriotism.
Remember all the bullshit platitudes that the libs used during the Bush Presidency to obstruct and derail him? Right back at ya son.
The timeline on the use of the weapons Rumsfeld and Reagan gave Hussein is a bit different (more than 15 years later) and the dissembling is Bush's pretension that the trumped-up suspicion of having them was a reason for his being deposed. It simply wasn't.
The role of opposition is not political score-settling and Arabian-style blood feuds, but to advocate policy they find sensible as an alternative, if one exists. The fact that no conservative can settle on any deliberate alternative course of action speaks to their failure in this regard. Every day the criticism changes, and they warp themselves into pretzels coming up with an idea that anyone can follow. The vengeance obsession proves that it's not Obama's policies that matter, but Obama himself. But he's only there because they lost. Where is the responsibility? You yourself even admit that it's all about score-settling, and America will only punish the Republicans further if that's the case. You have to stand for something positive, if a positive alternative exists, as they always say, no one votes for such high office simply because of negativity and hate, they have to be told that the person running has a positive reason of their own for doing so.
There were many crazy left-wing voices that materialized shortly before Bush inevitably took us into Iraq, if not before. They were crazy. I was not one of them. Trying to establish a right-wing equivalent to a typically insane left-wing crazy for reasons of vengeance is not a respectable strategy, but if you want to do that, I can't stop you. It shouldn't escape you that Democrats didn't win then, with the crazy voices, but only after the failures of Bush and the Republicans became evident in 2006 and sensible voices emerged to represent them. I would take a lesson from that instead of trying to fight long-ago crazy with an invention of equally intensified oppositional crazy. But if you want to, I can't stop you, man.
Why should we put a plan out? Our plan is to stop him. He must be stopped.( Referring to George W. Bush on Fox News) (March 17, 2005)
"I believe that the president's leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers."(Nancy Pelosi CNN March 21,2004)
I will just let Nancy answer you.
Tit for tat.
We don't have to play nice. We don't have to give a plan. We just have to do to Obama what the liberals did to Bush.
Obama has some natural advantages. His total support by the main stream media. But it is getting through to the low information voter. President Obama is a miserable failure in foreign policy. In economic policy. In leadership. In every way you measure a Presidents performance.
History will regard him as one of the five worst Presidents in American History.
At least Jimmy Carter was a patriot if woefully misguided.
Obama didn't make it happen.
That is his strongest argument.
That is his supporter's strongest argument.
The only rational conclusion is that him and his ilk covet power for crony purposes and the times when leadership is lacking don't involve crony purposes hence no responsibility.
Power mad.
But Trooper, the Iraq war was in fact a bad strategic decision. Pretty much the whole country agrees on this at this point. To complain about the people who were the first to reach this viewpoint seems a little unfair. There should be a premium on perspicacity not a penalty.
What was wrong with Nancy Pelosi saying what she said? Do you think every decision undertaken by Bush in how he handled Iraq was exemplary? Why did Democrats take the House a mere year later if that were the case and why did the long-drawn out slog in Iraq and all its costs become so damn unpopular? Pelosi wasn't wearing ridiculous masks and marching in the streets calling Bush a blood-lusting vampire or something crazy like that. She was just voicing what many people were coming to agree with once he'd had two years to demonstrate the results of the imploding "cakewalk" that wasn't.
I humbly submit that your assessment of not only Obama but what others think of him is biased. It's ok if your own assessment of him is biased. But transferring that onto an incorrect assessment of what the country thinks of him could be a politically fatal mistake. Don't end up the campaign equivalent of what Rove and Dick Morris did on election night at FOX headquarters. And even Bush doesn't believe that history is decided in the moment. I don't think it's right to attack his patriotism, either, and I'll put it to you this way - it really doesn't sound life a very confident attack.
Fair enough. I don't agree. But to intervene in Syria is even worse. There is much less at stake. Except for Obama's ego. So I would hope you would join me in telling Obama to shut up and cut it out.
Obama is Lebron.
According to Obama.
That is his strongest argument.
That is his supporter's strongest argument.
No, it's just the most meaningful rational response to an opposition so insane that it wants to hold Obama responsible for the voting decisions of a part of the world which has been in decline for 500 years and clinically insane for the last century.
That's what happens to unsuccessful empires. The answer is to avoid being and acting like one, if one can help it. Ron Paul's a bit off the wall, but you guys really need to take him more seriously on foreign policy. You're basically saying we need to be an empire that runs for free. Not going to happen.
Obama has a gift.
According to Obama.
Obama won.
According to Obama.
"A bad strategic decision"?
According to whom, that great strategist, Lurch?
No, going into Iraq was seen by anyone with a clue as a way to press Iran from both sides, which Choom , of course, couldn't wait to throw away.
BTW, anyone care to speculate how Troll hasctime to sit around the blogosphere shilling for the Choom Gang and whining with the She Devil of the SS about how all the nasty old Conservatives are mean to him?
PS Anybody want to conjure on the significance of the fact the abject and complete humiliation of the Choom Gang happened a year exactly after Benghazi?
I wonder if Doherty and Woods, Stevens and Smith are smiling.
.
I agree with Ron Paul. We should pull back from foreign entanglements and people like Obama and the Neocons and McCain that want us to intervene all over the world. Let them kill each other.
Tell that to Obama. He is the one pushing this.
Yes, unBuckley how unfair is that given the Romney landslide that Rove and Morris were insisting occurred on the election night when Megan Kelly asked about the math they did "as Republican(s) to feel better".
Obama lowered the sea level.
Literally.
According to Obama.
The white (and other than white too) cops acted stupidly.
According to Obama.
Ron Paul has a lot of good things to say about our civil liberties and the right of Americans to no be subject to government surveillance.
After the way Obama's IRS targeted his political opponents it is time that the Congress get involved and that they protect Americans and their personal information.
I don't think Obama is pushing an attack. He must not be so stupid as to understand that it will not fly. He might be threatening, but the push toward getting Syria to behave according to the CWC is a step away from intervention of a more disastrous sort. It's not a bad result to have. Why is everyone so against one of the only sensible outcomes that could have resulted? I just don't get it, other than what's being openly stated here about political vengeance, which serves no national interest.
Joe Biden is the top person to assume the Office of POTUS.
According to Obama.
Bullshit. Obama sought congressional approval for an air strike and couldn't even get the black caucus to go along no matter how many Obama phones he gave them. So he had to back off and pretend that it was all in his plan that everyone but everyone said no to him.
What Mitt Romney says Just Isn't True.
According to Obama.
Obama is the Rex Ryan of Presidents.
I'm not holding Obama responsible for "the voting decisions of a part of the world which has been in decline for 500 years and clinically insane for the last century," but I do hold him responsible for drawing a "red line" and then doing the inept dance he's been doing for the last several weeks. Which has had the effect now of diminishing the U.S. and empowering Putin.
Alan Keyes suggestion Obama wanted sex Ed in Kindergarten is mock worthy and laughable.
But it's the right thing to do.
According to Obama.
Chicago is better off because of his hard work and determination to affect change for justice.
According to Obama.
Bullshit. Obama sought congressional approval for an air strike and couldn't even get the black caucus to go along no matter how many Obama phones he gave them. So he had to back off and pretend that it was all in his plan that everyone but everyone said no to him.
Which is exactly what conservative David Cameron did also. It was to demonstrate administrative resolve. Obama is not like Bush and the imperialists and decide that no one else in the world in the other branches of government matter. What is so dishonorable about asking for a vote on something important?
The world respects America more today than yesterday because of Obama.
According to Obama.
Obama tried to make White embrace what is right.
According to Obama's choice to usher him into office.
Dude Bush got Congressional approval on the Iraq war. Or did you forget?
Obama asked and was told no.
That is the difference.
Even his homies told him to take a walk.
Oh God. The result is the same, Lydia. We got a concession from the same Syria that gassed its people. No one in the world cares about Putin. If you want to say he won a beauty pageant in the optics of global leadership, zip-a-dee doo da. His country still sucks and isn't admired a fig more for having implicated himself into the result that benefits us as well as it benefits him. You are getting distracted. This is not a Russia versus America moment. I'm sure there will be plenty of time in the future to agitate against them, if a future Republican imperial president decides that dictating the fate of the Middle East isn't enough and that dictating terms to Moscow is just the cool thing necessary for reviving our national prestige.
Churchill belongs not in the White House.
According to Obama.
Obama did not lie about what was going on in Syria, or trump up the evidence about it while threatening to implicate its leader as a terrorist threat to us. I am talking about the here and now. No one feels that Bush's scaring of Congress in 2002-3 was a victory for him, it's just part of the democratic process, as it is currently. I was responding to Lydia, anyway.
Obama speeches on DVD meant for American players belongs with the Queen in the UK.
According to Obama.
Was Churchill born or naturalized in the U.S.?
Can anyone stick to the topic?
The Olympics should be held in Illinios.
According to Obama.
Solyndra should get half a billion in loans because they are a worthy investment like any other free market corporation.
According to Obama.
Mexicans should die by American guns.
According to Obama.
It is disgusting to even consider the IRS is targeting groups for any reason.
And it done good so shall continue unabated.
According to Obama.
It's not just a "beauty pageant" Putin's won. Russia is now once again a central player in the Middle East. That's no small thing.
Nobody is reading anybody's email, let it be known clearly.
According to Obama.
Opposition to Obama isn't, necessarily by definition, racism unto itself.
According to Obama.
Mitt Romney is a man you can't trust.
According to Obama.
Tony Rezko.
Obama.
Bill Ayers.
Obama.
Oh I know, Lydia. Russia never played an important role in the Middle East. Ever. Until now.
I mean, that war they financed in 1973? Totally uninfluenced by Russia. All the Arab states they chose as proxy vassals to finance against our support for Israel? Totally uninfluential.
Is this where Republican ignorance on the matter lies...? That they didn't even understand the whole M.E. conflict was a series of Cold War proxy conflicts with the USSR funding various arab states that they could play off of us while directing hostilities at Israel? They seriously never knew this, that these secular autocratic Arab regimes were Soviet Russia's little friends in the great communist struggle against history?
Astounding.
Racism is cool; if you are a Wise Latina.
According to Obama.
Someone tell Ritmo the Soviet Union played a big role in the Middle East.
Russia hasn't.
Until now.
Vlad has been looking for a way for Russia to regain that role.
Choom has obliged him.
So ed...
You think it would be a good idea to find a way for Syria to remain one of 4 countries holding out against the Chemical Weapons Convention just so that we can hope that doing so would make Russia look bad?
Is that seriously how delusional you are?
We would rather find a way for a brutal midEast tyrant to find a way to hold on to WWI-style corrosive gases to use against his civilians than risk that the country of Russia could work with us to prevent that in the future.
Welcome to hell - a.k.a. Republicanism's utterly retarded foreign policy priorities.
Permitting Syria's use of poison against his own people will make us look better than Russia! Let's all fight for the right of one country to gas their own people so that Russia doesn't look good!
/total leadership and intelligence fail/
No, it's like if you were trying to comment on Nakamura-Carlsen in St. Louis today. Very amusing.
So you know all about it. That's also amusing. So, Genius, why did President Obama say he was going to bomb Syria?
Why did the Genius in Chief not bother to make sure he had the support before doing it?
And the answer I want is how this is good for the US. If it's just "good for the children," we can have that obviously stupid discussion.
Gotta admit its pretty pathetic that Obama is asking us to help the same guys that flew two planes into the Twin Towers in 2001.
But go on, tell me how wonderful and 6-level chess this all is.
Funny, the people telling us we shouldn't critique our leaders because our rulers know better didn't seem to have that attitude when the other party was in charge.
Also, phx, when Kramnik (best player born in the 1970s) walked into a mate in one a few years back, I think it was justifiable even for patzers to say that moved sucked.
Ritmo thinks Vlad is going to leap into action and force Pencil Neck to give up his WMDs the way he did with Saddam.
This, of course, includes the ones in the hands of the rebels.
Keep flailing, dude.
R & B -- I wrote: “Russia is now once again a central player in the Middle East.” Please note that “once again.”
Reading comprehension is a valuable skill.
Did you know that Tim Tebow is going to play football in Russia.
Because it is safe to be a Christian there.
The world has truly turned upside down.
Gotta admit its pretty pathetic that Obama is asking us to help the same guys that flew two planes into the Twin Towers in 2001.
Pretty impressive to hear that they survived death like that. Usually when people fly planes into buildings that explode in a fuel fire they don't survive. But those 19 hijackers must be tricky like that.
Ritmo thinks he's witty.
Too bad what he said is how he really thinks.
Or tries to.
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