National Review:
Krauthammer’s Take: ‘My Jaw Dropped’ at Obama’s Syria Plan
Charles Krauthammer’s “jaw dropped” on hearing that President Obama announced plans to “discuss [what to do about Syria] with allies next week at the G8 summit.” U.S. officials confirmed today that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebel forces. But despite having long ago declared that use a “red line,” the Obama administration is apparently unprepared to act, says Krauthammer.
“The red line is officially crossed. You would think they would have actually considered what you do on the day the red line is crossed. You don’t think it anew on the morning of the announcement.”
On Obama’s apparent timetable? “In a week? In a week Hezbollah is amassing outside of Aleppo.”
And on Obama’s assurance that the U.S. would be increasing “aid” to those opposing the Assad government: “What’s he going to do? Add chicken to the tuna we’re giving them in the food aid?”
“This is astonishing,” said Krauthammer.
So now we’re supposed to go to war because Assad killed 100-150 people with nerve gas. Seriously? Does it really matter how they were killed? Bombs, bullets and bayonets are okay, but poison gas is a crime?
I keep seeing all kinds of reasons being given for why we need to intervene in Syria, and do it sooner rather than later, but I haven’t seen a single reason that is worth the life of one American serviceman or servicewoman.
Here’s a thought: Back in 1940 FDR thought we should intervene in World War II which was then being fought in Europe. Public opinion was strongly opposed to us getting involved. But what if we had?
Up until June 1941 the Germans and the USSR had a non-aggression pact. What broke the pact was the German invasion of the Soviet Union. If the U.S had joined the war in 1940 then Germany probably would not have launched that invasion. Let’s assume that the USSR had stayed out of the war.
75% of all German casualties took place on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945. This included most of their armored divisions. Imagine the Normandy Invasion with all of those Nazi troops available to fight us in the west. Japan was an Axis partner with Germany and might have entered the war a year sooner.
Waiting paid off for us. Hitler’s military was severely degraded from fighting the Soviets by the time we had to face them.
Having said all that, here is my prediction: We are going to get involved in Syria far more deeply than we did in Libya. I’m guessing ground troop will eventually be involved. It will not end well for us. The Syrians have anti-aircraft missiles and they will use them. The Russians and Iran will be satisfied if they can at least lure us into a long bloody stalemate.
Worst of all, our involvement will create more America-hating jihadis.
General, you don’t have a war plan! All you have is a kind of horrible spasm! – Robert S. McNamara
The Crawdad Hole 
Sorry to OT, but WTH?
From Sharyl Attkisson’s Twitter feed:
I guess PRISM info wasn’t enough – they needed all her stuff eh?
Wow! It’s a good thing the US doesn’t hsve any “sophisticated methods” of extracting data from computers. Must have been a foreign squirrel.
If there are any reporters still left out there who want to retain a free press, they had better wake the fuck up.
This is being seriously discussed in the House now…..
No offence intended, but lol thinking of Pelosi holding a “serious discussion”. That implies she listens to others. Really?
Did you watch the video ? I was being sarcastic 😉
MC Will watch later on PC. Slo-loader on smartphone. 😦
remember this
” I haven’t seen a single reason that is worth the life of one American serviceman or servicewoman.”
That is because you and the rest of us here are the class of people who serve the country in the military. The Ivy indoctrinated elitists who run this country and pontificate at us in the media are not the class of citizens who serve in the military and they don’t give a rats ass if any of us die.
Oogah!
you are right
The hypocrisy of the left too. Non-veteran Republicans (chickhawks!) were sending us into Bush’s war, yet the even bigger chickenhawk Obama administration has doubled down on the Boooosh Wars. No outrage?
It is very instructive lately how all the warmongers left and right are coming out of the woodwork. Also instructive how many ordinary people who are *appalled* exist on both the left and the right.
Labels are useless anymore. It’s the power-hungry vs. the rest of us.
I agree with your “power hungry vs the rest of us” observation. The people pushing war (or intervention or whatever pc speak they are using) probably have investments in the military industrial complex and/or they want an excuse to kill the best and brightest of the regular people class.
You know you want to caption this
Dog It’s what’s for dinner
Bo’s body language is not that of a dog happy to see his human. And Big BO’s hand clentched like that looks like he’s trying to keep Little Bo’s head away from his crotch.
Photo op #fail 😉
{{slamdesk}}
Someone else trained that dog, and has put him in a sit-stay for that photo. The trainer is off-camera, and the dog is (good dog) obeying.
I have 5 dogs. I know dogs. That’s an obedience photo, not a love photo.
Interesting too, the tail is absolutely still. You’d think an owner’s touch and voice would cause a blur of happy-happy wag. 🙂
Dogs don’t understand “owner”, they only know “master” and that’s the person that feeds them and spends time with them.
I totally agree, wmcb. LOL, a love pose usually involves you pinned to the ground with slobber all over. Then, as if to apologize for knocking you over, they slobber on you some more.
“What do I get out of this photo-op torture? Some wag-gu beef would be nice.”
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55906
Am I a traitor?
And in the meantime , who in the fuck in Maryland sold 60,000 acres to the Muslims? http://www.worldbulletin.net/index.php?aType=haber&ArticleID=110986&q=Turkish+village
They don’t even say where in Maryland this is, I am tying to think where they found 60,000 acres , Maryland is not a big state .. and anyone who actually believes this “village” is being created for peaceful educational purposes , I have a bridge for sale ,
Near Camp David ? Heh.
Evidently , it is being built in Lanham , Maryland , close to the route 50 and I95 intersection , which would be a great spot from which to attack DC . And being on #50 , will give them easy access to the Eastern Shore too . I am so not happy about this .
That’s a prime real estate area too. I wonder who paid for those 60,000 acres ?
I’ve been doing a curious turkish village maryland search for more info and all that comes up is your link and restaurant reviews 🙂 Something funny about this, even the uk daily mail or al jazeera doesn’t have a story.
Close to Ft. Meade Army base too, home of the NSA. Isn’t that convenient 😀
Lanham is right outside D.C. , 60,000 acres is 90 square miles , this cannot be right . Here is another link http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/maryland-govt-of-turkey-building-massive-100m-mosque-complex/ which says 66 acres .
You don’t see many spreads that big east of the Mississippi. There are some places out west where you need that much land to feed a small herd of cattle.
http://www.ataa.org/press/ATAA-Congratulates-the-Turkish-American-Community-Center-of-Lanham-MD.html
This says 15 acres, but I’m not clear if that’s just part of a bigger area?
also, website of this TACC project is http://taccenter.org/
Not too sure of my east coast geography, but isn’t MD within commuting distance of DC? Probably not.
I would consider it a DC suburb …. here’s Lanham
Yep.
it comes up “Forbidden” when I try to link.
From the Bare Naked article:
maybe they’ll call the Village *CORDOBA?*
This takes the cake!
(btw, they should just laminate it or something – cake boss cakes don’t taste that great)
When in NYC the Trump Tower atrium is one of my favorite pit stops for a recharging snack and sit next to his gold waterfall wall.
From Greenwald’s article today
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-partisanship-propaganda-prism
(4) As we were about to begin publishing these NSA stories, a veteran journalist friend warned me that the tactic used by Democratic partisans would be to cling to and then endlessly harp on any alleged inaccuracy in any one of the stories we publish as a means of distracting attention away from the revelations and discrediting the entire project. That proved quite prescient, as that is exactly what they are attempting to do.
“You said direct access to servers, but it was direct access to trunk lines (or hubs, or whatever the fuck they are called). Therefore your entire argument is invalid.”
“He said he got $200,000 a year and they said he only got $120,000 so he is lying and everything else he said if false too.”
“He said he broke his legs in Special Forces training but he only got as far as jump school and the army said he was never accepted into SF training so he’s lying and everything else he said if false too.”
These are all arguments from ace of spades hq so ha! joke’s on you Greenwald – it’s the rightwingers who do this! /irony
Snowden only has a GED and isn’t Ivy Indoctrinated so he is a non person. Don’t worry about anything he says or does it doesn’t penetrate the Elitist version of reality.
In today’s SunTimes, Roger Simon wrote that Snowden dropped out of high school and out of the Army. I asked the group (That I facilitate on Friday afternoons) if they had ever known anyone who “dropped out of the Army”. They had at first read the piece and offered comments about Snowden’s character, intelligence and ability (as the piece indicated he was only qualified to be a security guard). they then began to question what they were reading — some had dropped out of high school and didn’t consider themselves”dumber than a box of hair”. Then they questioned how a person “drops out of the army”. Finally we had a discussion about why the paper might want to persuade people that Snowden was a worthless, shiftless, traitor. By the end of the group, they began questioning why the gov’t wants to spy on them and everyone they know.
Here is Kirsten Power’s article that GG praises
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/14/the-sickening-snowden-backlash.html
The Sickening Snowden Backlash
by Kirsten Powers Jun 14, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
It’s appalling to hear the Washington bureaucrats and their media allies trash Edward Snowden as a traitor, when it’s our leaders and the NSA who have betrayed us, writes Kirsten Powers.
Hell hath no fury like the Washington establishment scorned.
Since Edward Snowden came forward to identify himself as the leaker of the National Security Agency spying programs, the D.C. mandarins have been working overtime to discredit the man many view as a hero for revealing crucial information the government had wrongfully kept secret. Apparently, if you think hiding information about spying on Americans is bad, you are misguided. The real problem is that Snowden didn’t understand that his role is to sit and be quiet while the “best and the brightest” keep Americans in the dark about government snooping on private citizens.
…
Stumbled on this conversation in my TL
https://twitter.com/CritterPatti/status/345304216740429824
https://twitter.com/CritterPatti/status/345305512608399360
https://twitter.com/CritterPatti/status/345309998626242560
To recap – Secret Service showed up at a Civics teacher’s home because the Principal reported her after she refused to stop mentioning Obama in class.
This is Omerika.
First Amendment? What First Amendment?
*headdesk*
As Myiq has pointed out, I’m probably the closest to being a “tribal” liberal one can find here, and this offends me. Unless that luckless woman was actually threatening Obummer (and I would assume she was NOT), she broke no law.
Well, at least her students are getting a lesson in how the United States of Fubarica really works these days. 👿
If she was getting too partisan in her class (and I have no idea if she was), the principal should have followed procedure and handled it administratively.
Calling the SS, and then them actually showing up is nothing less than Stasi intimidation tactics. A cursory examination would have shown there was no threat. They showed up anyway. Not to charge her with a damn thing – just to frighten her.
How come they are never “too partisan” when they are pro-O?
Talking honestly about Obama and his policies is a threat to him.
Still angry and worried and pissed off, but here’s a comedic interlude.
RT’d ! Love it 😀
National Review:
citing her right to privacy as protected by federal law. 😆 😆
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/06/07/307672/us-marines-deployed-near-syria-border/
earlier this month US marines were deployed to Jordan along the Syrian border.
Now the Syrian regime is accepting Russian peacekeepers in the Golan Heights.
everybody getting in place?
http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&ArticleID=111137
link to Russians in Golan heights
just because
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2341675/Passenger-jet-pilot-photographs-worlds-beautiful-views-cockpit-35-000-feet.html?ITO=socialnet-facebook-dailymail
The Electronic Privacy Information Center posted a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain words and phrases that act as triggers for DHS monitoring of social media. When the documents weren’t turned over, they sued and DHS was forced to turn over the manuals. You can find one of them in the links below, but here is a list of some of the words that will get you monitored while using social media.
http://tavernkeepers.com/dhs-releases-list-of-trigger-words/
Iowa Hawk is going ballistic on this. Check out his TL
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/06/14/chart-7-of-9-main-fighting-groups-in-syria-are-islamist/
a who’s who of the syrian rebels
Our genius warmongers in both major parties want to arm these barbarians.
Never mind that arming the same kinds of characters in Afghanistan in the 1980s gave birth to Al-Qaida.
Take it away, Captain…
I know. We all bitched about Reagan arming Al Qaida coming back to bite us in the ass, and he arguably at least had a sane reason to do it, what with the cold war and the USSR there and all. It still had blowback that was bad, regardless of reasons.
But there is not even a compelling reason to arm these fuckers. None.
Actually that started in the 70’s under Carter. Ronnie Raygun just amped it up.
One more reason why I like my senator, Ted Cruz. He supported Gillibrand on a separate reporting process for rapes in the military.
Go Ted!
One of the things I am noticing about both him and Rand Paul, is their tendency to do what they think is right, and screw the party interests and politics. And I respect that. It’s rare in DC.
I’m sure I’ll be yelling at both of them at some point, when they do something I disagree with. But I’ll be yelling over an honest disagreement, I think, not just party games and manuevering.
I put no one on a pedestal. Not saying he’s pure as the driven snow with no political ambition. You don’t run for Senate and win unless you’re a pol with a taste for it. But comparatively, in terms of the rest of Congress, he and Rand Paul seem pretty damn straightforward and independent-minded.
I respect that Too :).
I didn’t get knocked out.But the next time I WILL. 🙂
The stupidity that was OWS in a nutshell.
perfect
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/13/new-pakistani-regime-turns-back-on-hero-doctor-who-helped-get-bin-laden/
he helped us and is in jail, while backtrack dined out and fundraised on the story
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/19648
interesting article on what happened to the democratic party
Jeb Bush evidently said something asinine about immigrants being “more fertile”??
Can’t stand Jeb but he obviously meant immigrants have a higher birthrate – true all over the western world.
Typical progs. Peeps in CO are trying to recall a Dem CO state senator because of her gun vote.
Anti-recall protestors have been physically blocking the tables and harrassing people who try to sign the petition.
Turns out they are being paid. And the senator denied all knowledge. Except they caught her on video with the guy passing out the money.
http://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2013/06/14/undercover-sting-more-videos-of-senator-girons-police-interaction-and-mysterious-bag-man-released/
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/14/Boxer-Redirect-Border-Funds-for-Immigrant-Health-Care
Isn’t just peachy.
redirect border security funds to immigrant health care
this woman needs to be voted out or recalled