The "Mushroom Shaped Cloud" is called Sarin this time

 
 

"The White House acknowledged Thursday the Syrian government has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale a number of times, according to a statement. The administration also indicated it will increase the "scope and scale of assistance" to rebels in Syria following its acknowledgment that the Bashar al-Assad government has used chemical weapons in the civil war, according to the statement. "  CNN

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Ho hum.  I guess this means that the warhawks have won the argument inside the BHO Administration.

I thought it would take longer for the influence of Susan Rice and Samantha Power to take effect, and then, there is the pitiful spectacle of John McCain.  pl 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/13/politics/syria-us-chemical-weapons/

Comments

[Alba Etie]

Col Lang
Until proven wrong I still believe that that this is Kabuki theater - perhaps to get the FSA to the peace conference .
I just cannot see us militarily involving ourselves in Syria .
The verbage scope & scale can mean lots of things. imo - but not a no fly zone or boots on the ground .

[Peter C]

My guess is a no fly with a squadron of Drone on the side, coupled with tons eastern block Berdan with up-to-date RPGs.

[Harry]

Utterly predictable. Utterly evil. And strikingly banal. Same old, same old. Give it 2 years and they will admit that "errors were made" but no one could have done better.

[Tyler]

Lying to Americans, spying on citizens, 'unitary Executive' power grab...

Man history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure rhymes. If the ramifications weren't so damn dire, I'd laugh my head off at the hypocrisy of the media. Its carrying Obama's water in a way that it never did for Bush II.

[optimax]

Obama has to divert attention from various scandals he has accumulated.Clinton, the beloved of the Left, put pressure on Obama by calling him a chicken.

[Booby]

Here we go again. The needed intel appeared just in time. Years ago I was in a flag office at a combatant command. The red phone rang and the flag ushered me out saying, "Excuse me for a moment while I authorize the bombing of another sovereign country that we're not at war with."
I don't think that taking the Syrian Air Force out of the equation will have a major impact. Assad has plenty of arty & short range missiles for support of the ground forces. I just hope that we don't pass out Stingers again. We should already be concerned about the Lybian SA-7's that the rebels currently have.

[VietnamVet]

Colonel,

I am dumbfounded.

What is America’s goal?

The authorities know well what was needed to pacify Watertown after the shootout. Shut down Boston and flood the area with cops and militia to get one shooter.

Yes, the majority of Muslims are Sunni but there are estimated up to 200 million Shias. America has started giving ground to air and anti-tank missiles to one side of a religious standoff that gone on for a millennium; longer than the Protestant Catholic Troubles in Ireland. The Free Syrian Army cannot overthrow Assad now that he has Shiite Iran and Hezbollah supporting him. The Syrian civil war will escalate. A no fly zone won’t end it like it did with Kaddafi. This is a religious war with unified and powerful adversaries. Hezbollah fought the Israeli Army to a standstill.

Israel doesn’t want Hezbollah in the Golan Heights and the Elite want to make war profits. But, this is spinning out of control. The only way to pacify the Levant is to flood Syria and Iraq, again, with a million boots on the ground.

Next stop Tehran and World War III.

[Jerry C.]

Every American president owes Israel at least 1 war for each term he is in office. BHO now needs to deliver his war dues for this term, so Syria must be attacked. The good news is that he'll be done after this and can relax until his term ends.

Next president will be required to attack Iran in 2016-2020 term. So the same debate will occur in 4 years again.

[fanto]

I was shocked myself when I heard this; but on reflexion I think this is half-hearted gesture of the President to save face and to satisfy the mushroomers/sariners. The Sarin story is IMHO similar to the Gleiwitz radio station attack story on Sept.1st, 1939.(not that I do not believe that there were real victims of such attack, but who did it is the question, no matter what the President's usually reliable sources now say). Will see what will actually happen - and what the Russians and Chinese will do.

[The Twisted Genius]

"The White House said Washington would provide "direct military support" to the opposition but did not specify whether it would include lethal aid, which would mark a reversal of Obama's resistance to arming the rebels." (Reuters)

How is this not providing material support to terrorism?

[Bill H]

I absolutely love the headline. Brilliant.

[kao_hsien_chih]

If anything, this is a creative way to cancel the planned talks in Geneva and keep the conflict going. Do we have the wherewithal, both material and political, to escalate the conflict (much) further, though?

[confusedponderer]

I read today that Bill Clinton said something to the effect that Obama looks like a wuss if he doesn't intervene in Syria - usually that is being more gently put as Americas credibility being at stake.

Now, before Obama loses face, quite naturally he has to smash Syria against the wall to show how tough he is, how tough America is I meant.

That aptly shows the essential idiocy of formulating regime change as a policy goal. Such a policy is per se dysfunctional: In the end, as this case shows quite clearly, there is no alternative but to double down or lose face. Since the latter is never acceptable in the age of attack ads and lunatics like McCain and Liebermann, escalation is guaranteed.

Declaring regime change as a goal is America's gradual surrogate for a formal declaration of war.

Now, US expanded support for the rebels won't do much more than guaranteeing that Assad will get killed eventually, but since America personalises its conflict (Iraq = Saddam, Iran = Ahmadinejad; Libya = Ghaddafi; Lebanon = Nasrallah, etc pp) Assad's head on a spike will do just fine as "victory" in America - with little consideration to who a US intervention will put into power afterwards.

After all - there is no time to waste! Red lines have been crossed (or not, but who cares)! Speed is of the essence! Bombs away!

There is this alien the idea that Syria's Christian and Alawite minorities may object to that outcome, may want a word in their destiny, something that the Sunni nutters will certainly deny them ... but doubt begone! Fuck'em if they can't take a joke - since they're obviously regime holdouts and sore losers. And the end of weakening Iran (or not, but who cares) overrides such trivial concerns anyway.

For Grand Strategists of the neo-con, neo-wilsonian persuasions, the Syrians are not more than ants to stomp in order to weaken Iran's and strengthen Israel's position - and, quite weirdly, for the R2Pers also - who willingly sacrifice them on the altar of finally having their sovereignty corroding precedent.

The irony is, and I bet that it will come that way, no matter what, because the one sovereignty they don't dare corrode by setting precedent is the American one. The US will not invoke R2P as a mandate except in rhetoric. They will not use it legally. They'd be idiots to do so. The R2Pers won't get their legal precedent, just what they will probably call a moral one.

[MartinJ]

And when the Christians and Allawites start to be ethnically cleansed and slaughtered, what will this administration do? What will the chicken hawks of R2P at Obama's right hand have to say? Will they then arm them because they have become victims? Perhaps they will "urge all sides to show restraint."

[jonst]

Spotlight on.....begin tap dancing this away Alba Etie...so we were not going to get involved because the "American people" did not want to. So much for their/our wants. Tap dance away...

Bloodthirsty dogooders.....who will NOT be sending their kids. Make no mistake...despite St John McCain and Sen Huckelberry....at heart this is R2P intervention. The GOP neocons might be happy too...but this is a Democratic Party intervention.

[Pan]

Show us the evidence! Why all the secrecy about the evidence of Sarin use if we're going to yell at the rooftops about it. The LeMonde report on that was a joke. The Syrian rebels they showed in the article had absolutely no MOPP protection, only gas masks. If it were sarin, they'd all be dead.

[Matthew]

Tyler: And don't forget the greatest insult: Handling over a great Christian community in the Middle East to salafist head-choppers under the guise of "humanitarianism."

[Matthew]

jonst: It's a profanity to call this a "R2P intervention." We are actually fueling a fire and I expect that we will predictably disclaim responsibility for the subsequent inferno. This is world-class evil.

[jonst]

sooth yourself with this song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q

[Peter C]

Israel To Seek US-Backed Loan for Mega Arms Deal
Hopes to Repay With Future Military Aid
"TEL AVIV — Israel’s Defense Ministry is asking the US government to guarantee billions of dollars in low-interest bridge loans for a Pentagon-proposed package of V-22 Ospreys, F-15 radars and precision-strike weaponry that it ultimately intends to fund with future military aid from the US." Over at Defense News, we are going to give billions to the Israel in advanced weapons technology. What the U.S. is giving a ton of stuff that in theory will be paid back by U.S. Military aid in the future. We should just get it over with and add a 51st state.

What the U. S. gets in return is the privilege of some small arms and a few obsolete Red Eyes into Syria.

[Edward Amame]

Good luck with those midterms, Dems with the pres out there furiously screwing the pooch (specifically referring to PRISM and Syria).

[linda]

the double teaming by mccain and clinton was repulsive; and contemptible is obama's cowardly response. christ, this country can't even govern itself.

[Rd.]

confusedponderer said...

"I read today that Bill Clinton said something to the effect that Obama looks like a wuss "

This is mr obama's monica lewinsky moment.

mr obama has been caught with his pants down re NSA and his intercourse with the Chinese not going well.. so here comes the diversion.

Clinton's lil' diversion (missile firing) did a great deal of harm to US in the long run..

[kao_hsien_chih]

They'll do what they did when Serbs in Croatia were ethnically cleansed: cheer on the ethnic cleansers, who were doing the ethnic cleansing for peace and human rights.

[kao_hsien_chih]

After all, those inscrutable Ay-rabs (or, will it just be Syrians?) don't know peace, democracy, and human rights.. Tut, tut. It'll be all their fault that things are going to blow up. Ancient hatreds and all that jazz...