News Commentary

Syria and the Albright Syndrome

"Much like the person with a hammer, to whom everything looks like a nail—we continue to believe that every problem can be solved by the military. Sadly—regardless of the administration’s overall political views—we continue to suffer from Madeleine Albright syndrome. As Secretary of State, Albright challenged then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell’s view that the United States should restrict its military interventions to situations in which vital U.S. interests were threatened, quipping: 'What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?'" Continue reading →

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Is the U.S. the World’s Moral Authority as Obama Thinks?

"A U.S. bombing of Syria is an aggression because it cannot be justified by claiming defense or national interests. The U.S. cannot claim that it is acting for the world or the world’s good, surely not when it is being warned outright by other nations that the results may well be catastrophic. The U.S. cannot claim it is enforcing a treaty because Syria has not agreed to a chemical weapons treaty. Furthermore, the existing agreement among states did not include a provision that declares non-signers as outlaws and then authorizes the U.S. to be the policeman. The U.S. is acting unilaterally and outside the bounds of international law." Continue reading →

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Can Obama Control Syrian Outcomes?

"Obama is speaking of a 'limited, narrow act'. The fact is, however, that he has no control over the short-term and long-term responses of the Syrians, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Russians, Israel, and the Iranians. He has no control over current and future terrorists. He may imagine that he is executing a tit for tat or a surgical strike, but the other players need not accept that way of looking at a cruise missile attack. In all probability, their memories and histories suggest that they are not going to consider this attack an isolated event. They will surely connect it to the entire history of U.S. actions in the past, especially those of the past 10 years. I have to wonder who is advising the President at this juncture." Continue reading →

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I Am Curious About Why Vital Information Was Not Publicized

"The government’s intelligence statement says that they had information three days before the gas event. I am curious. Did Obama privately warn the Syrian government not to make a gas attack? Did he reveal to them that he had intelligence of their activities so as to stop them? Why didn’t Obama make this intelligence fully public prior to the attack? Wouldn’t that publicity have made it very difficult for an attack to have been ordered? Even if the intelligence was not 100% able to nail down an impending attack, why was it not made public? How can we be sure that this intelligence is meaningful if, prior to the event, the U.S. government didn’t consider it reliable enough so as to issue a warning?" Continue reading →

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The U.S. Will Regret Intervention in Syria

"One argument for U.S. intervention in Syria is as a message to Iran to take seriously U.S. threats toward its nuclear program—on which Obama has also painted himself into a corner by saying he will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. Yet military options to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons or a nuclear capability have never been very credible—bombing likely will not get all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and will likely only spur Iran to accelerate the program to deter further attacks. In fact, limited U.S. intervention in Syria may not only fail to intimidate Iran, but act as a similar nuclear accelerant." Continue reading →

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The Return of the Dodgy Dossier

"How about consulting the open source record of serial hoaxes by the Syrian rebel propaganda team? First they did a replay of the old 'incubator babies' hoax, only this time instead of Saddam Hussein being cast in the role of baby-killing mad dictator it’s Assad. When that didn’t fly, they claimed the village of Houla had been the site of a massacre by government forces: the evidence they offered turned out to be a photo of taken in Iraq during the US invasion. They fooled the BBC – which ran it over stories about the alleged 'massacre' – until the photographer took umbrage at his work being misused in the service of war propaganda and angrily exposed the fraud." Continue reading →

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Hollande Undeterred By UK: “France Will Participate. It Is Ready” For Syria

"After France refused to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, but was quickly aided by the US in the military intervention against Islamist militants in Mali earlier this year, Hollande is vehement of the need to 'punish' Damascus, 'France will participate. It is ready.' Sounds like a resounding 'we're in,' right? It seems Hollande is dead set on lower French unemployment... by making every jobless person a soldier in Syria (packing at least one backup white flag of surrender). But, don't get too excited since, with lukewarm public support, Hollande has said he will summon the French parliament to vote on the debate... on September 4th." Continue reading →

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The US Uses Gas To Kill Civilians

"The US government itself has used similar weapons openly as recently as the FBI/ATF attack on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco Texas in the spring of 1993. While domestic and world reaction to the Davidian massacre ranged from shock to horror, in 1993 there were no bellicose calls for military attack on the US by other nations for this blatant violation of the rules of war, the Geneva Conventions, and legal due process. France, Britain, China and Russia did not propose UN authorization for military retaliation. Nor did the US government ever apologize but instead gave medals and honors to the government killers responsible for these horrific deaths." Continue reading →

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Paul Craig Roberts: America Totally Discredited

"Tthe United States government has lost its credibility throughout the world and will never regain it, unless the Bush and Obama regimes are arrested and put on trial for their war crimes. Obama’s destruction of US credibility goes far beyond diplomacy. It is likely that this autumn or winter, and almost certainly in 2014, the US will face severe economic crisis. When the proverbial hits the fan, the incompetent and corrupt Federal Reserve and the incompetent and corrupt US Treasury will have no more credibility than Obama and John Kerry. How long will it be before American citizens are shot down in their streets by 'their' government as occurs frequently in Washington’s close allies in Egypt, Turkey, Bahrain?" Continue reading →

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