9/5/2013

The woman whose opinion lawmakers are relying on to go to war in Syria is also a paid advocate for the war-torn country’s rebels.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry encouraged members of the House of Representatives to read a Wall Street Journal op-ed by 26-year-old Elizabeth O’Bagy — an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War — who asserted that concerns about extremists dominating among the Syrian rebels are unfounded.

“Contrary to many media accounts, the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and al-Qaida die-hards,” O’Bagy wrote for the Journal on Aug. 30. “Moderate opposition groups make up the majority of actual fighting forces,” she wrote.

But in addition to her work for the Institute for the Study of War, O’Bagy is also the political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a group that advocates within the United States for Syria’s rebels — a fact that the Journal did not disclose in O’Bagy’s piece.

O’Bagy portrays herself as a “paid contractor acting in an advisory role” and insists that she is not a lobbyist. I don’t care. This is a black eye for the WSJ and for anyone relying on this woman.

The New York Times has a story about the brutality of some of the rebels Obama wants to help out.

The Syrian rebels posed casually, standing over their prisoners with firearms pointed down at the shirtless and terrified men.

The prisoners, seven in all, were captured Syrian soldiers. Five were trussed, their backs marked with red welts. They kept their faces pressed to the dirt as the rebels’ commander recited a bitter revolutionary verse.

“For fifty years, they are companions to corruption,” he said. “We swear to the Lord of the Throne, that this is our oath: We will take revenge.”

The moment the poem ended, the commander, known as “the Uncle,” fired a bullet into the back of the first prisoner’s head. His gunmen followed suit, promptly killing all the men at their feet.

This accompanying video, portrayed by sensationalistic news organizations as brutal, depicts the poem reading (while the execution is not actually shown on the supposedly brutal and supposedly uncensored video):

Meanwhile, the vote is not looking good for Obama, as whips do their counting.

I don’t understand why Perry, Kman, Mahalia Cab, David Ehrenstein, and the rest of the Noam Chomsky Fan Club are not here to berate us all for hating Syrians so much that we’re actually against bombing them.
Or whatever.

Because bombing Syria is obviously an expression of love and peace and harmony. Or something !

I’m particularly surprised that Kman is not commenting since Patterico wrote a post about that convicted terrorist, Brett Kimberlin.

Pelosi doesn’t think there is a majority of Dems willing to support this rush into a war of choice.
Grayson claims intelligence is being doctored.
Biden holding special briefing with Heitkamp, Kennedy, and Franken.
Obomby cancels fundraiser for vote that effects his destroyed credibility.

I’ve been wondering the same thing. All the voices of the left seem to be silent from entertainment to Occupy.

I will give credit to Code Pink, though. They are in there doing whatever it is they do with Kerry cheering them along.

All I can assume is the left considers their real enemies as their neighbors rather than the people who actually want to kill them.

Really, if you think about it, the left is nothing but a kumbya society of old hippies, the media, incoherent tenured college professors, entitled young people and minorities that have bought into the notion that the government has the answer to whatever affliction is popular today.

When their side starts acting as the people they used to hate, it’s really, really hard. Especially when their great-granddaddy Chris Matthews starts sounding like Rumsfield channeling McNamara.

Syria’s like a landscape out of Hieronymous Bosch, who would like pierce his own eyeballs, this is before we get involved, West Ghouta, and other villages, were sites of heavy fighting from last fall through today.

I don’t think McCain is a traitor. I think he is everything we say about Obama — a narcissistic, selfish, self-centered, not at all competent, a**hole. Except that he does not carry it off as well as Obama. Who in this instance thinks he should be President and who thinks he should run foreign and military policy.

Here everything is laid bare. The Syrians have moved their assets into civilian areas. Our backup forces that cannot be used in the opening attacks are in range of retaliation: Nimitz in the Red Sea, 4 missile destroyers, B-52s, etc., are there for WWIII not punishing Syria.

Russians will have two missile cruisers and an antisubmarine ship messing with any ship launch and Port Sudan is an Iranian base. Good luck sailors.

Obama may not want boots on the ground, but events could easily take over if Iran bombs our embassy. We are looking more and more like a hapless and helpless target. The public doesn’t support a war. We can’t afford a ground war. We are isolated. Our enemies know this. Our auspices are very bad. So why do we seem to be blustering into one?

We need to keep our heads regardless of what Putin says. He sees an advantage and he’s playing it. Let’s not play into his hands by reacting unreasonably or emotionally a la the Ems Dispatch. Kerry is playing with the big boys now. It’s about time for him to grow up.

The really good thing about being a detached loner narcissist is that when only Biden, Pelosi, Kerry, Boehner and Cantor among the moderates are standing with you while the whole world is yelling “Your butt smells awful”, you can just put your head down and forge ahead.

The disaster grows every day. The savages in the ME are all jumping on the propaganda bandwagon. I’m sure they’re lining up their civilian human shields as we speak and combing the morgues for dead bodies of children to display.

For those who usually do not read Peggy Noonan’s columns, her offering today is a gem start to finish and you really should read the whole thing.

I have been thinking of the iconic image of American military leadership, Emanuel Leutze’s painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” There Washington stands, sturdy and resolute, looking toward the enemy on the opposite shore. If you imagine Mr. Obama in that moment he is turned, gesturing toward those in the back. “It’s not my fault we’re in this boat!” That’s what “I didn’t set a red line” and “My credibility is not at stake” sounded like.

And looked like.

***
A point on how quickly public opinion has jelled (against the strike). There is something going on here, a new distance between Washington and America that the Syria debate has forced into focus. The Syria debate isn’t, really, a struggle between libertarians and neoconservatives, or left and right, or Democrats and Republicans. That’s not its shape. It looks more like a fight between the country and Washington, between the broad American public and Washington’s central governing assumptions.

I’ve been thinking of the “wise men,” the foreign policy mandarins of the 1950s and ’60s, who so often and frustratingly counseled moderation, while a more passionate public, on right and left, was looking for action. “Ban the Bomb!” “Get Castro Out of Cuba.”

In the Syria argument, the moderating influence is the public, which doesn’t seem to have even basic confidence in Washington’s higher wisdom. That would be a comment on more than Iraq. That would be a comment on the past five years, too.

I couldn’t imagine a worse situation than Obama at the G-20 summit today. So he surprises me by telling people there “You’re not getting a direct answer” on the question of whether he would defy congress.

It has been said that a special Providence watches over children, drunkards, and the United States. Perhaps that providence has run out.

Gary, the House should vote and I hope they do — chips fall where they may. The President has asked the Congress for authorization,which is proper, and now it is thier duty to vote, which is also proper. So why is that a mistake (I’m just curious about your opinion)? Thanks.

I thought you were joking about threats to rape Sasha, Haiku. F**k it. We have no shortage of camel-molesting, sand-monkeys in the world. Bomb them all. Then bomb them again. I’d start with Qum and carpet bomb a 1,000-mile wide cross in all four directions but anywhere there’s a raghead is fine with me, now.

Bloomberg mentions allegations of extravagance and corruption at the G20 summit in Russia, concluding:

Syria aside, Obama and Harper have the same problem with Putin and his regime that many Russians do: It is transparently corrupt, Byzantine and self-serving. That, however, does not prevent it from organizing impressive international events and scoring diplomatic victories.

Obama should feel right at home because that sounds a lot like Chicago and the Obama Administration to me.

He is not only the shallow and stupid President who “jokingly” threatened to use drones to oversee his daughters’ dates, but he would probably do it. So when someone really does threaten his daughters, the scene is set for him to carry through on his inclination.

So if Obama targets someone for a non-military reason (e.g., someone who made him mad or who threatened his daughters), then Iran will be waiting to capitalize in the press. And since they are perfectly willing to sacrifice their people, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Iran’s claim involve the bodies of small, dead children.

What’s sad is that our enemies are so unafraid of American resolve that they are willing to do these kinds of things. It’s not surprising that they don’t fear Obama but the absolute shame of this is that they don’t fear us, the American public, and what can do if we decide to act.

Obama has no real understanding of what it means to protect America’s national interests, apparently because he personalizes every decision. Instead of “What’s best for America?”, Obama asks “What’s best for me and my family? and assumes that’s also what’s best for the rest of us.

In a sense, that works domestically because Obama can share his feelings and spur others to identify with his feelings. We can empathize with what he says even if we don’t agree. But it doesn’t work at all in the foreign policy area.

I wonder if Obama’s willingness to personalize everything is part of why he’s so popular with some of the public. Letting people into his life helps them identify with Obama, and he becomes part of their circle/interests so they are more likely to defend his decisions. It reminds me of the Kardashians and something Kanye West said about his child — that she wasn’t going to be America’s baby. Love them or hate them, many people feel like they know the Kardashians because they are so pervasive in today’s media and culture. Multiply that by a thousand or a million and you begin to touch on how some feel about Obama.

I used to feel that way but I’ve changed my mind, primarily because so few people get their news from the MSM anymore — especially young people who are some of Obama’s biggest fans.

The Democrats and the media demonized Bush so it was rare for any but his biggest supporters to see him as a person who cared about people. It was easy for the public to think of Bush as mean or stupid, so they ascribed everything he did to that and then blamed him for any bad results.

On the other hand, people empathize with Obama and even his harshest critics tend to call him a good man because he’s a good father/husband and because we’re afraid of being labeled racists. As a result, people see Obama as a friend, mentor, or someone likeable. We don’t like to blame people we like.

However, I would agree the pervasive cultural bias in favor of Obama makes a big difference. The media is part of that bias but I’m not sure it’s that meaningful anymore. It’s the cultural bias that makes it politically incorrect to criticize Obama.

DRJ–Do you not acknowledge that pointed questions, direct criticism, and analysis of President Obama’s’ foreign policy and his personal leadership failures and general ineptness have been far far greater and more universal in the past two weeks than at any time in his presidency? I’m sure most of the mainstream media will revert to type when/if this crisis passes. But what if it doesn’t? What if a regional war or WWIII erupts, or terrorist attacks inside America or on American interests abroad bloom from this diplomatic catastrophe which is clearly of Obama’s making?

The feeling I am getting is that it is becoming much more OK, “safer” if you will, for regular people/reporters/political cartoonists, lefty bloggers, etc. to confront the president’s weaknesses and his policy lies and waffles without much fear of being called racists. Foreign leaders and the foreign press (who were never bound by the political correctness thing with him) are laughing and have no misgivings about exposing the American messiah’s foibles either.

If one believes that Obama’s mindset is that American Imperialism has been part of the world’s problems and that the world would be a better place if America had no more world influence than other countries, then it puts a different perspective on Obama’s and the DC Dems current behavior.

Either they were disingenuous all along before when the were criticizing Bush, are disingenuous now as they make similar arguments that Bush did for intervention (but with much less effectiveness and clarity of mission), or just disingenuous all of the time (in which case, what would they be if they were being genuine???).

I don’t know if the position they voice now is what they really believe, and they believed it before, but undermining Repubs was more important to them
or
they really don’t believe what they are saying now, but believe it is the politically popular thing to say (or a great “wag the dog” trick from all of the “make-believe” scandals)
or
they really believed what they said before, and now that they are in the middle of it they changed their views (I doubt this, at least if this is what happened, they are not acknowledging it).

I think the MSM covering for Obama still is very important. It’s the air in which we exist.
I think that the fact that a majority of people still blame Bush for the bad economy shows that the never ceasing complaints about the economy under Bush is the last thing people remember, irregardless of what the numbers really say that no one in the MSM is honest about.

I agree with what you say but I’m not convinced it would make a big difference because Obama’s supporters are culturally invested in believing in him. Criticism might make some supporters believe in him more.

I think this is a side effect of how polarized we are. Instead of undermining our beliefs, everything that happens reinforces what we already believed. You and I know that the facts support our judgment of Obama’s ineptness, but I suspect his supporters see the world as not giving a black leader an honest chance to succeed.

True.
As stated before, there are at least two versions of this:
1) people, having itching ears, will look for people who tell them what they want to hear (Paul the Apostle)
2) people hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest (Paul the Simon)

Despite Democratic claims to the contrary, Republicans don’t hesitate to criticize other Republicans and, in general, they also don’t hesitate to ultimately support the GOP nominee.

Similarly, I think it’s possible Democrats’ willingness to disagree with or criticize Obama now could ultimately make their future support stronger. It’s like making up after a fight. The bonds can actually be strengthened. Of course, that won’t happen if the American public puts the pressure on its elected officials to oppose Obama the way they are doing now about Syria. I wish they would but I’m not convinced they will.

Can you imagine a war over the Keystone pipeline?
With Qatar and the Saudis collectively spending over 3 billion in arming the rebels of Syria one can imagine a war over a pipeline that would enable the largest export of Liquid Natural Gas to reach Turkey, and then Europe. Huge score for the rug head crowd. If the Assad regime holds court, Russia and Gazdrom benefit.
President pretend to be should leave strategic geopolitical conflicts about natural resources, money and religion to the people of the region. The chemical weapons fiasco is the detour to nowhere.

Samantha Power said:
——-
Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, hoped that a team of UN investigators — many of whom, presumably, have a longstanding relationship with Iranian leaders — could write a report that would convince Iran to abandon its ally at the behest of the United States.

“We worked with the UN to create a group of inspectors and then worked for more than six months to get them access to the country on the logic that perhaps the presence of an investigative team in the country might deter future attacks,” Power said at the Center for American Progress as she made the case for intervening in Syria.

“Or, if not, at a minimum, we thought perhaps a shared evidentiary base could convince Russia or Iran — itself a victim of Saddam Hussein’s monstrous chemical weapons attacks in 1987-1988 — to cast loose a regime that was gassing it’s people,” she said.
———
This is the blithering idiot Obama appointed to the UN. Someone who thought Iran would be upset by chemical weapons use. That’s how stupid Obama’s advisors are.

No doubt that contingency planning is an important element of preparedness for conflict, but game theory is more along the lines of assessing the environment and your adversary, then defining the conflict and intuiting the likely reaction of your adversary. Game theory is very helpful at the strategic and tactical levels.

The policy of mutually assured destruction was the result of game theory. It depended upon the presence of rational decision makers on both sides and credibility that they each would act. It yielded a tense but stable environment for 40 years that saw many regional conflicts and proxy wars but none escalated to direct confrontation between the super powers.

Today, the sole remaining super power has shown an unwillingness to act resolutely in its own interest and to act when our national interest is not at stake. The indecisiveness of Obama weakens any deterrent effect of our stated policy (whatever THAT might be).

Telegraphing the limits of your commitment to act is just plain stupid and all the bluster in the world just embarrasses you further.

After the way was paved in Vietnam in that regard, aren’t there any grown ups in DC that remember that the VC and NVA just outwaited us. Guess who in the ME learned that lesson? Obama once again (like with the surge in Afghanistan) explicitly lays out the duration, scope and targets of our non-decisive attack and a promise to then just walk away smug in the belief that a lesson was taught. Tell me again why he is always the smartest guy in any room?

This is the blithering idiot Obama appointed to the UN. Someone who thought Iran would be upset by chemical weapons use. That’s how stupid Obama’s advisors are.

That is stupid, plus (unlike some Presidents) Obama picked them because he agrees with them. We’ve had Presidents who picked advisers with a range of opinions, so they could consider all options. Not this one.

“Santino, come here. What’s the matter with you? I think your brain is going soft with all that comedy you are playing with that young girl. Never tell anyone outside the Family what you are thinking again”

108- In intelligence we did much of that as part of contingency planning – we could have hundreds of streams going at once as they diverged and converged upon each other – but that was a different era and probably the only ones using the term “game theory” were academic pin-heads.
And they only computer we had was an IBM main-frame that we had to feed punch cards.
Ah, the fun days.

One recalls, back in the eighties, when certain reporters like Chris Dickey, found one eccentric figure in the Contras, a commander Suicida, they wrote a whole book about it, and intimated this represented the entire antiSandinista

aren’t there any grown ups in DC that remember that the VC and NVA just outwaited us.
Comment by in_awe (7c859a) — 9/6/2013 @ 3:45 pm

Unfortunately, too many think that the lesson from Vietnam was simply that we should not have been there in the first place. It is the rest of the world that learned, as you said, the US can not be trusted to stay firm until the job is done.

And no matter what we do in Syria, that observation has now been duplicated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is the blithering idiot Obama appointed to the UN. Someone who thought Iran would be upset by chemical weapons use. That’s how stupid Obama’s advisors are.

I once watched a couple of socialist acquaintances try to convince a billionaire arch-capitalist to invest in Castro’s Cuba. The guy was trying to be polite — it was a banquet setting in which he was kinda trapped — but you could tell he wanted to be gone.

This is the same kind of ideological blindness that is so far removed from reality that you can only stand in awe.

Over at PowerLine is what I think is a very good point at why Obama might have cooled his jets about attacking Syria and going to Congress.
They say that in true terrorist style the Iranians put out the word to kidnap children of US officials from Embassy posts around the world and broadcast the videos of their dismemberment.
Including one of Obama’s children.
Remember, usual precautions are not effective against the suicide types.

The idea of negative consequences of an action does make one take second thoughts.

I fashionable accessorized with a double barrel 20 gauge Howdah pistol. And quickly learned that while you might maybe kill hawgs with it you look and feel like a complete dumbass hiking around in 100 degree heat with that thing whomping you in the derriere.

Over at PowerLine is what I think is a very good point at why Obama might have cooled his jets about attacking Syria and going to Congress.

I remain totally baffled why someone like a leftist Obama, of all recent presidents/politicians, would be the very one who I would have to worry about for being trigger happy in using the US military. The whole scenario reads like a hokey, bad plot out of a Hollywood movie.

Then again, I’d never have predicted that a character along the lines of Barry Obama — with his excess baggage and disreputable, extremist qualities — would ever have gotten into the White House to begin with.

Robert Graves wrote well and his fiction was accepted as history. Caligula was the son of Germanicus the son of Drussus, from an even longer line of putting Germans down and keeping them down. He grew up campaigning alongside his father and he knew war. Plutarch spoke well of him.

Ed Asner adds more fuels to the fire that if you oppose President Obama you are a raaaaacist because liberals project their shallow, intolerant mode of thinking onto others. What matters most to them is the race, ethnicity, gender, religion or sexual identity of the person promoting a policy rather than the merits of the policy itself. They are unable to conceive of people evaluating policy on its own merits.

The Mazda Miata lends itself quite nicely to the torture of a torque monster V8 transplant. The overall structure of the car is more than strong enough to handle the wrenching stress of 400 ft.lbs. From “clutch dumping” to auto crossing and track events, my personal V8 Miata sees unrelenting abuse. Driving 400 miles to Laguna Seca Raceway to flog my car around the track for two days and feeling confident the car will hold together and get me back home, speaks well for the conversion.

I bought my oldest son a ’92 Miata for his HS graduation in 2000. He still has it. Great car, but with a V8 tucked in there we’d be talkin’ Sunbeam Tiger territory.

Speed is fun, but not required to have fun in a car. Before I bought my Abarth last year, I was driving an ’07 350Z. That was a fast car, but I had (and still have) much more fun in my ’81 Fiat X1/9, that’s modded up to about 95 HP. The old “more fun driving a slow car fast…” adage.

Well come on all of you big strong men, uncle Bo needs your help again,
He got himself up in a terrible hysteria, way down yander in Islamofascist Syria.
Put down your books and pick up a gun, we’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.

And it’s 1, 2, 3 what are we fightin for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give it the least, the next stop is the middle East,
And it’s 5, 6, 7 open up the pearly gates. Well there ain’t no time to wonder why… WHOO we’re all gunna die.

Now come on K street don’t be slow, why man this war’s a-go-go,
There’s plenty good money to be made, supplyin’ the Obama with the tools of his tirade
Just hope and pray that when they aim the bomb sight, it’ll be on the Right

And it’s 1, 2, 3 what are we fightin for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give it the least, the next stop is the middle East,
And it’s 5, 6, 7 open up the pearly gates. Well there ain’t no time to wonder why… WHOO we’re all gunna die.

Well come on Valerie let’s move fast, Your big chance is come at last,
Gotta go out and get those reds, ’Cause The only good Conservative is one that’s dead,
And you know that peace can only be won, When you blow them all to kingdom come

And it’s 1, 2, 3 what are we fightin for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give it the least, the next stop is the middle East,
And it’s 5, 6, 7 open up the pearly gates. Well there ain’t no time to wonder why… WHOO we’re all gunna die.

Now come on mothers throughout the Northeast, pack your boys off to the middle East
Come on fathers don’t hesitate, send your sons off before it’s too late,
Be the first one on your block, to have your boy come home in a box

And it’s 1, 2, 3 what are we fightin for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give it the least, the next stop is the middle East,
And it’s 5, 6, 7 open up the pearly gates. Well there ain’t no time to wonder why… WHOO we’re all gunna die.

It’s also clear that the military commander who executed seven captured prisoners (and really far more than seven – these are just those on that video) was acting independently. This group is actually pretty small – about 300 fighters.

You should note that the pictures were taken “by a former rebel who grew disgusted by the killings” (I wouldn’t know that they guy is a “former” rebel – just a former member of his group)

There seem to be other former members as well, who became sources for the New York Times. He won’t prevail, and he isn’t typical if any ability to avoid bad guys is present.

You know I don’t really think the leader, Abdul Samad Issa, used his own money. There’s a lot of money from bad sources pouring into Syria.

The article even says he got weapons from “relatives and Arab businessmen he knew from his work as a trader.” (That probably means internationally connected trade.)

Also, one time at least, from the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army.

The association with the Free Syrian Army may even be partially due to the United States which has been pressing all along, for unity. Now the FSA refused to comment. It’s probably very embarassing.

Basically the Obama Administration tends to want to exclude only the the Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — which are real al Qaeda – but there are other bad groups too.

This one definitely was one of them. It called itself Jund al-Sham, which the New York Times says it shares with three international terrorist groups. As well as one in Syria. And the leader, Abdul Samad Issa, is also known as “the uncle” because he has two nephews serving under him as deputy commanders, and because he uses a lot of names and he wishes to avoid his name becoming widely known.

The New York Times story about the executed captured soldiers tends to prove it is true, because this guy IUssa has had defectors.

It’s just that Islamcists have a way of splitting up into numerous different groups, so that if Group A and Group B get too much opposition, there’s always Group C and Group D and Group E who have avoided committing certain acts. There’s a whole range of good cops and bad cops with them.

Over at PowerLine is what I think is a very good point at why Obama might have cooled his jets about attacking Syria and going to Congress.

They say that in true terrorist style the Iranians put out the word to kidnap children of US officials from Embassy posts around the world and broadcast the videos of their dismemberment.

Easier said than done. Probably not the reason.

Including one of Obama’s children.

That shows you how ridiculous it is.

What it also shows you, is that Assad and Iran are pulling out all the stops, and they will probably believe it’s one of those threats that worked. (Assad has also threateed to attack Israel, and Turkey, and Cyprus, and U.S. naval ships, and , just in case we think it wouldn’t actually make sense for him, said that things could get out anyone’s control – and Iran has issued instructions to its proxies in Iraq to attack American targets including the U.S. Embassy. (and not wait till they get attacked themselves?)

By the way Obama is managing to lose two won wars – Iraq and Afghanistan – by pulling out troops when the enemy is not vanquished.

And relying on other forces who can’t do the job, who don’t have good enough intelligence.

They’re even losing control of the one province in northern Afghanistan that was not controlled by the Taliban on September 11, 2001. Not because people there want the Taliban. But because all the U.S. military intelligence was withdrawn.

What did Billary say about Obama dring the 2008 primaries? He’d be the waiter at the White House dinner?

Do you think that Russians are politically correct? Do you think that Putin could afford to seem to back down to a негр (transliterated negr)? Or Assad or Khameini to a zanzhi (same meaning) whose ancestors their ancestors sold for beads?

Look at the G20 too. How many share our political correctness, or blindness of Obama’s dubious antecedents? How many do you think would let the bastard son of a Muslim Kenyan and a dippy-headed hippie roundheels lead them to war? They’ll pet him on the head, give him a Nobel Peace Prize to play with, tell him he’s adorable, but now they have serious business to discuss among themselves. Obama is a rabble-rouser, he is not a leader. He never will be.

Estimates of what percent are al-Qaeda or like al Qaeda range from 20 to 50%, but like she said, this is different geographically. The one thing the article has wrong is too quick assurances they are not mixed in in certain places.

But whatever the percentage is, it doesn’t have to stay that way.

The fact of the matter is, the wrong people were being given support. And if the U.S. supported the right army commanders, they would grow.

President Obama promised more aid, then diudn’t deliver. It seems like they are having a whole process vetting them. That does not mean a lot of the candidates are jihasdists. The government just doesn’t know how to vet people. On the one hand their too easy and on the other hand too hard. But really, all they have to do is avoid someone getting endorsed by eople with a bad record.

Deciding who to trust is a big problem. It doesn’t need to be one. The vetting process is so bad they wouldn’t quickly approve for immigration Iraqis who worked for the United States who were endorsed by U.S troops. They were taking so much time vetting them. That destroys the whole process.

190. A lot of little points wrong in that overview, especially the idea that al Qaeda would win if he caused assad to fall. They’re not the only opposition. Why would we let Al Qaeda win?

It’s true this is starting to happen in Afghanistan, but that’s only because Obama is not paying attention to facts on the ground. In ySyria he would pay attention.

Al Qaeda has never succeeded in taking over any country with a countervailing military force, nly arts of counties. They would no more rule Syria than they rule Yemen. They would have more freedom and less opposition if Assad didn’
t fall.

Remember, Saddam Hussein made peace with al Qaedda, and let them have asmall patch of territory in the north.

Sammy, it’s what happened in Afghanistan, Massoud won the battle, but between Hekmatyar, and Khalis and Haqquani, the Afghan Arabs, and the Taliban, ultimately forced him out of power in ’96, correlation of forces, In Libya, a somewhat moderate government under Jibril took power, but he was toppled by the Watan faction, headed by Bel Hadj who is loyal to Qatar who are in turn tied to Ansar Al Sharia.

Russia probably told Assad to use the chemical weapons on August 21. Bashir Assad (or unit 450)seems to have used it because of a misreading of the military situation, which surprised both Hezbollah and the Syrian General Staff, which was bypassed. (the Adminsitration apparently is still confused about this)

Bashir Assad probably didn’t misread the military situation all by himself.

The same thing actually happened in 1966. There’s probably an old Checkist or two involved. ANd in any case, Putin has all the KGB records.

In November 1966, Egypt and Syria signed a defense pact whereby each country would support the other if it were attacked. According to Indar Jit Rikhye, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad told him that the Soviet Union had persuaded Egypt to enter the pact with two ideas in mind: to reduce the chances of a punitive attack on Syria by Israel, and to bring the Syrians under Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s moderating influence…..It was later revealed that on May 13 a Soviet intelligence report given by Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny to Egyptian Vice President Anwar Sadat claimed falsely that Israeli troops were massing along the Syrian border.

In May 1967, Nasser received false intelligence reports from the Soviet Union that an Israeli attack on Syria was imminent.[50][51][52][53][54] These false reports followed Israeli officials threatening military action against Syria if the Syrian authorities did not stop Palestinian guerrillas from crossing the border into Israel.[55] Egyptian intelligence later confirmed that the Soviet reports of Israeli force concentrations were in fact groundless,[56][57][58] but Nasser had by then already started his buildup and he feared that since a large portion of his army was already in the Sinai, a sudden callback of those forces would result in humiliation at a time when Nasser could ill afford being humiliated.[59]

Soviet behavior in the fall of 1966 set the pattern for the subsequent performance in the spring of 1967. On 12 October Israel received a note from the Soviet Union charging that a concentration of Israeli troops had formed along the Syrian border and that the Israelis were preparing for an air attack which would be followed by the penetration of Israeli troops deep into Syria. Soviet Ambassador Fedorenko repeated the charge two days later at the UN. A UN investigation failed to support the Soviet charges. Meanwhile, on 14 and 15 October, Moscow sought to disabuse the Arabs of any thought of responding in an adventurist manner. Thus, Moscow simultaneously urged the Syrian and Egyptian governments to stay calm and avoid giving Israel a pretext for aggression.

On 8 November 1966, some three weeks after the Soviets pressed their allegation of an imminent Israeli invasion of Syria, the UAR signed a mutual
defense pact with Syria. The timing suggests that the Soviet-sponsored report of a threatened Israeli attack may have encouraged the two Arab regimes to sign the pact. Certainly the Soviet report must have given the Syrian government added incentive to seek the protection of an alliance with Nasir, and Nasir may have hoped to acquire some control over the Syrians in
exchange. The Soviet objective of Egyptian-Syrian rapprochement had been well served by the false report of Israeli mobilization. A similar false report, disseminated in May 1967, backfired and helped to precipitate the chain of events that led to war.

The CIA is assuming bad results are unintentional. Maybe the Soviet Union thought in 1966, and especially in 1967, after fuull mobilization, that the Arab side would win that war? Maybe they actually wanted that war? Is that so unthinkable for the CIA to contemplate?

It seems like even in 1970, the U.S> government had its own unique spellings. Nasir, not Nasser, just like Usama bin Laden, not Osama.

I corrected an apparent mistake by the Windows character recognition software. It is 15 not IS October. Cut and paste changed the 15 to IS.

It’s true this is starting to happen in Afghanistan, but that’s only because Obama is not paying attention to facts on the ground. In ySyria he would pay attention.

Sammy, when you say things like that — along with your previously alluding to Obama’s ideological extremism not being an innate facet of the way his mind works but due more to outside leftist influences around him (his advisers, his friends, his wife, his parents, etc?) — your credibility goes straight down the drain. Moreover, to claim he isn’t an anti-war leftist flies in the face of the nonsensical approach he took previously. Simply put, one has to be both the most idiotic of “peaceniks” and also — most crucially and at the same time — the epitome of an ultra-liberal (ie, a person with generally an absurd lack of common sense) to have reacted like this in the past:

frontpagemag.com, Sept 5, 2013: All of Obama’s major opponents — Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C. and then-Sen. Clinton, D-N.Y. — had voted for authorization for war. Obama, then an Illinois state senator and a candidate for the U.S. Senate gave a speech in October 2002. He called it “a rash war…based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.” Sen. Obama pre-emptively criticized President George W. Bush in 2007 for possibly taking military action against Iran’s suspected nuclear sites — should he do so without congressional approval. Such an action, Obama said then, would be in violation of the Constitution unless the President obtained congressional approval.

Obama opposed the Iraq War because “even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Still Obama called Iraq a “dumb war” orchestrated as “the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in (the Bush) administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats.”

^ The irony is so thick that it can’t be cut with even the sharpest of knives.

It’s Sunday and my minister’s sermon was superb today, so maybe I’m being an optimist, but …

Is it possible that Obama’s position on Syria will weaken his public support? I argued the other day to elissa that it wouldn’t, but now I’m reconsidering. Obama is known for the expiration date on his promises or, as he would describe it, for changing his mind. my initial feeling was that this would be another in a long line of broken promises.

But of all Obama’s promises, I think the one absolute promise he made to the American public was not to get them out of Bush’s wars. I wonder if getting us into a new war will be a bridge too far for his core supporters.

The conspiracy theorists, in terms of how they perceived the behavior of the US government, originally were a voice I either waved off, overlooked or sort of snickered at. I used to think they were a collection of mainly paranoids on the far left and far right. Now — and even more so in light of the scandals involving the IRS, NSA, Benghazi, etc — I’m beginning to understand why such “grassy knoll” theorists have often pointed to Dwight Eisenhower’s famous speech where he warned about the long reach of the “military-industrial complex.”

thedailysheeple.com, Sept 7: Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI) has been a very outspoken opponent of any military intervention in Syria. He has been all over the media warning that we as a nation should not strike Syria, and he has even used social media sites to warn his fellow Congress members that if they vote for military action next week, they might as well clean out their desks because of unprecedented public opposition against it.

Now Rep. Amash has taken to Twitter to inform the American people that if we could read the classified documents touted by our White House to justify strikes in Syria, we’d be “even more against Syria action”.

The Tweet followed his admission that he was even more skeptical following another Syria briefing and a call for the Obama Administration to correct public statements that he claims are inconsistent with the information he received at the briefings because the “public must have facts”.

Come by where I’m staying, daleyrocks. Every day is slutwalk, but the best times are after 10:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday. Today, it may start at noon. Sports bar. Do you like motorcycle mamas in hot pants and knee boots or pickup-truck queens in microminis and six inch heels?

I’m truly enjoying the design and layout of your site.
It’s a very easy on the eyes which makes it much more pleasant for me to
come here and visit more often. Did you hire out a designer to create your theme?

Sammy, it’s what happened in Afghanistan, Massoud won the battle, but between Hekmatyar, and Khalis and Haqquani, the Afghan Arabs, and the Taliban, ultimately forced him out of power in ’96, correlation of forces,

Because Pakistan’s rogue military intelligence agency was backing these kind of people. All this took Banazir Bhutto by surprise.

In Libya, a somewhat moderate government under Jibril took power, but he was toppled by the Watan faction, headed by Bel Hadj who is loyal to Qatar who are in turn tied to Ansar Al Sharia.

The United States has a long record of winning the war but losing the peace.

I suppose another example was chasing Japan out of China in 1945, only to have the Chinese Communists take over in 1949.

“In fact saying something is a “red line” and “change his calculus” is a way of being vague.”

“The interesting here is, though, that no move Obama can make is really bad. Anything he does can work out. There’s a way to play it.”

Sammy – Those are very interesting rationalizations. Most people understand red lines to be very bright line tests, not something vague as you somehow have the temerity to suggest. Yet Obama hesitated to act, repeatedly downplayed evidence of chemical weapons use and as Dennis Miller suggested sent Syria a “Save the Date” card for a future cruise missile attack.

All of his moves here have been incredibly bad, including telegraphing the limited scope of his intended action, lack of discernible goals, failure to assemble a coalition of support, and sending that buffoon Kerry out to try to make a case for the attack.

Clearly, suggesting that anyone aside from Assad gave the final order to launch a massive chemical weapons attack in the center of his own capital is tantamount to suggesting that Assad is no longer in charge of his regime—a suggestion for which there is no evidence. But the chain of military command inside Syria doesn’t end with the country’s president. The idea that Assad gave the order to carry out such a massive and politically dangerous attack without the approval of his Russian and Iranian advisers is also absurd. The most illuminating way of understanding why Putin would greenlight a nerve-gas attack that would cross America’s “red lines” in Syria is therefore to ask how the Russian president understands U.S. policy toward the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—a policy whose real focus is not Syria but Iran…

and as Dennis Miller suggested sent Syria a “Save the Date” card for a future cruise missile attack.

The date was called off. The senate will vote this week and probably pass a resolution by a narrow margin, the House may vote next week or the week after (it won’t vote next week if the resolution is going to fail. The UN inspectors will make ther report either next week or the week after, and then France ay be ready to act.

I think nothing can happen until at least Wed. Sept. 25, but after that, whenever anything happens, it will be unexpected.

All of his moves here have been incredibly bad, including telegraphing the limited scope of his intended action, lack of discernible goals, failure to assemble a coalition of support, and sending that buffoon Kerry out to try to make a case for the attack.

The way I see it now, there’s one plan if nothing more happens in the way of chrmical weapoons use – that’s the “shot across the bow” – and there’s another plan, constantly getting bigger , if he does. I think the failure to assemble a coalition matters, but thinking you will and not succeeding does. It’s a lot of mistakes, but none that foredoom anything. The situation can be salvaged if he realizes what’s going on or somebody forces him to face up to it.

In the meantime Assad’s military is in complete disorder with all these protective measures he is taking.

Latest new is that Assad and Putin have gotten a little bit bolder in their absolute denial that any chemical attack was done by Syrian government forces.

Kerry says Saudi Arabia endorses military action but Saudi Arabia refuses to say. The new Egyptian government seems to be against it.

Kerry and others seem to be affected by the fact of having alittle bit more personal knowledge of the fact of the killings than they usually do.

“I never assumed Obama had anything specific in mind and when he said “change my calculus” he was very explicitly being vague.

The “red line” only meant he would revisit the question of what to do about Syria.”

Sammy – What you originally said was saying something is a red line is a way of being vague. Most rational people would not understand a red line this way. Most rational people would understand that crossing a red line would have negative consequences for the entity crossing the it.

Now you appear to be attempting to redefine what you wrote to mean that the consequences of crossing the red line were vague, as if any nation’s leader would be foolish enough to spell them out in great detail in advance.

Sometimes it seems like it would just be wiser to think about what you intend to write before pressing submit.

Nixon explained the strategy to his White House Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman:

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, “for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button” and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.[1]

I think the idea came from Kissinger, and there’s some source for that.

The point here is that a lot of things that are worth threatening aren’t worth doing, so only the idea that the president is maybe a little bit crazy can make the threat sound realistic.

Most presidents would say they wouldn’t discuss a hypothetical situation.

Obama did discuss a hypothetical situation and was more explicit.

He didn’t say Syria using chemical weapons was a hypothetical situation.

“We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region, that that’s a red line for us, and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front, or the use of chemical weapons. That would change my calculations significantly.”

But note, he didn’t say what his algorithm was, or even if he had one.

He didn’t say how much but only that it would be significant, and that even to start seeing something happen would have “enormous” consequences.

He would discuss it, but would not reveal what he would do, or even if he had any thoughts as to what he would do, except that to say the odds would tilt (he implied against) the Syrian government.

He said it would change his calculus.

Some people took it as meaning something stronger.

You gotta go to Harvard for that.

Harvard Law School. But actually I doon’t think he learned it there. He learned that in Chicago.

What this was was basically a politicisn promising to think about something.

Let me be perfectly clear, I am being opaque. I know exactly what I am going to do and I am weighing a number of different strategies and alternative based on contingencies. I have come to my decision and the only thing that will change my course is if I think I should do something else.

Moreover, to claim he isn’t an anti-war leftist flies in the face of the nonsensical approach he took previously….. Obama, then an Illinois state senator and a candidate for the U.S. Senate gave a speech in October 2002. He called it “a rash war…based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.”

Obama adhered to what he had to adhere to in order to be a leftist in good standing.

With regard to Iraq he above all claimed it was an unwise war.

With regard to other wars, or wars in general, he complained they lasted a long time (which is not his plan now and it’s impossible to creep into it also.)

Obama opposed the Iraq War because “even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Obama was not instinctively anti war (especially if the war was of short duration, and preferably was over in less than 24 hours.)

Also OK was if it had previously been authorized by Congress, as the pursuit of bin Laden was.

Sen. Obama pre-emptively criticized President George W. Bush in 2007 for possibly taking military action against Iran’s suspected nuclear sites — should he do so without congressional approval. Such an action, Obama said then, would be in violation of the Constitution unless the President obtained congressional approval.

He did seem to go against that, but now – you can’t say he returned to that position, because he didn’t, but that’s what he is doing now anyway, so where is the irony?

Let me be perfectly clear, I am being opaque. I know exactly what I am going to do and I am weighing a number of different strategies and alternative based on contingencies. I have come to my decision and the only thing that will change my course is if I think I should do something else.

Something like that, Sammy?

No, vaguer. You have to leave out “I know exactly what I am going to do” More like this:

Let me be perfectly clear. The use of chemical weapons, or maybe even movement on the chemical weapons front, would be a red line.

I am being opaque but I say in no uncertain terms there would be enormous consequences. Enormous because it would change my calculations significantly as to what to do.

Right now I am doing nothing, but who knows what could happen in that event? I may have some ideas, but I’m not telling but bear in mind, something could change. And then again, it might not. But you don’t know what how close I am to doing something or other. And you don’t know what I’m thinking, do you? So don’t take the chance of my coming up with a different policy than what I’ve got now with regard to intervention in the Syrian war.

You never know what the result could be when you multiply some factor in an equation by the square root of five. That’s more than double. And you don’t even know what weight I would assign to any particular use of chemical weapons, so keep it small.

If one believes that Obama’s mindset is that American Imperialism has been part of the world’s problems and that the world would be a better place if America had no more world influence than other countries, then it puts a different perspective on Obama’s and the DC Dems current behavior.

Either they were disingenuous all along before when the were criticizing Bush, are disingenuous now as they make similar arguments that Bush did for intervention (but with much less effectiveness and clarity of mission), or just disingenuous all of the time (in which case, what would they be if they were being genuine???).

The adherence to that by Obama was really because he was supposed to sign on to that, and was what he was taught in school, but he’s coming to see or maybe is being forced by experience to admit it’s wrong.

Still, he found it necessary to say it”s the world’s red line. And seemed to say that if the world just did nothing, then he’d have to accept it. But he would make sure the world understood what it was doing.

A really, really, big miscalculation by Iran is possinly being set up.

But does a leader, when asked “Sir, what are we going to do?” say, “I don’t know, just follow me”?

As a practical matter, yes. Because he can’t know.

What we’re seeing now is Obama is winging it.

But we can’t substitute somebody else as Commander-in-Chief. He probably can’t make the situation worse. At most it’s the sdsme as doing nothing.

Exceot for one thing he’s done already. There are few better ways to make the situation worse than by Congress voting this down. So what will probably happen is, if they do, they’ll come up with something else that maintains the pressure.

An ultimatum rather than an outright authorization maybe. At least that’ll be the next thing attempted.

I think there will be, sooner or later, airplanes of ours making strikes in Syria, to be met by SAM-300V defense systems themselves defended by Russian (not Syrian) airplanes from airstrikes. And that’s when we’ll be really SCOAMFed.

the Manchin-Heitkamp draft resolution gives Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad 45 days to make Syria a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention and take “concrete steps” to comply with it.

Obviously, he could cheat, and if that is passed a lot of votes will come from members of Congress who believe Assad won’t fail to at least pretend to comply – except that Assad will try to make clear that he won’t.

If Assad doesn’t sign the treaty (and take steps to comply, with I guess Obama being he judge) it then requires President Barack Obama to submit to Congress a “long-term strategy for Syria”

First Publish: 9/8/2013, 11:59 AM An intelligence report prepared by a European country has found that Syrian President Bashar Assad has handed control of missile installations over to foreign fighters, Lebanon’s A-Nahar reports.

Assad has reportedly put control into the hands of Hezbollah and Iranian units.

Those two groups would be in charge of leading a counter-attack if the United States or other Western nations attack in Syria in response to recent chemical weapons use within the country.

There are not too many reliable Syrian troops.

The air defense system won’t be attacked by airplanes but by cruise missiles. Only later do airplanes come in. Russian airplanes might be a surprise interference – what happens then? Most likely, they stay out of range.

July 30, 1970: A large-scale dogfight occurs between Israeli and Soviet aircraft, codenamed Rimon 20, involving twelve to twenty-four Soviet MiG-21s (besides the initial twelve, other MiGs are “scrambled”, but it is unclear if they reach the battle in time), and twelve Israeli Dassault Mirage IIIs and four F-4 Phantom II jets. The engagement takes place west of the Suez Canal. Ambushing their opponents, the Israelis shoot down four of the Soviet-piloted MiGs. A fifth is possibly hit and later crashes en route back to base. Four Soviet pilots are killed, while the IAF suffers no losses except a damaged Mirage.[39] Following the Soviets’ direct intervention, known as “Operation Kavkaz”,[39] Washington fears an escalation and redoubles efforts toward a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

And that’s when we’ll be really SCOAMFed.

I don’t think this would lead to anythng else. It didn’t when the Isralies fought Soviet piloted planes.

It depends on how far Putin wants to go.

Putin is probably of the opinion that Khruschev and Brezhnev were a little bit too cautious.

We’re not good at long term strategies. Our strength is total war. That’s a term of art for pounding the enemy into the ground so hard he comes out in China. It worked in WWII, and in both Gulf Wars recently. When we have gone in half-assed, we have had our heads handed to us. Viet Nam is an example and Afghanistan is turning out to be another.

Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 9/8/2013 @ 10:14 pm No, Obama repeatedly stepped in it and now were seeing his usual routine of pointing the fingers of blame elsewhere so he can come up smelling clean.

More like:

Obama repeatedly stepped in it and now were seeing him telling everybody else whom he wants to go along wih some response that they stepped in it.

Obama repeatedly stepped in it and now were seeing him telling everybody else whom he wants to go along wih some response that they stepped in it. ”

Sammy – No more like what I originally said with the added bonus of racism accusations against those who don’t see the wisdom of agreeing to support his limited duration, no regime change, no balance of power tipping, no support from the international community (except some secret 34 nations we will see at a later date if ever), no lasting benefit to America, cruise missile and guided bomb extravaganza!

Priorities, people! RFK’ Jr’s sex diary. If you ever needed more proof that the Kennedy’s as a whole are not very smart–this is it.

God, it’s America’s lead white trash family again. But hey, it’s not RFK Jr’s fault that his wife killed herself, right? It couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that everything that family touches turns to turds, could it?

286. …Sammy – No more like what I originally said with the added bonus of racism accusations against those who don’t see the wisdom of agreeing to support his limited duration, no regime change, no balance of power tipping, no support from the international community (except some secret 34 nations we will see at a later date if ever), no lasting benefit to America, cruise missile and guided bomb extravaganza!

Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 9/8/2013 @ 11:26 pm

Ironic, no? Mrs. “You’ll-eat-your-veggies-or-else” Obama’s hubbie is giving us the cotton candy of a war.

I’m not making any accusations here–just want to be clear about that. But it’s at least possible that the president is always so petulant and cranky and spends so much time out on the golf course because of Mrs. Obama and/or her food selections in the White House private quarters.

But it’s at least possible that the president is always so petulant and cranky and spends so much time out on the golf course because of Mrs. Obama and/or her food selections in the White House private quarters.

If he’s petulant and cranky and spends extra time away from the White House because of something Mrs. Obama does, it’s most likely because she forced him to quit smoking, and maybe doesn’t like E-cigarettes as well. (and they’re not safe, just better. It still retains most of the bad health effects of smoking, except for the effects on the lungs)

I lost both volumes of mine. Volume A: Thinking About It and Volume Volume B: Talking About It.

It’s not a sex diary. It’s a regular Standard Diary “Daily Reminder” from At-A-Glance with a separate recording of sexual encounters at the back where the pages say Cash Account for each month.

I don’t know if you’d want to be RFK Jr. in the year 2001. Finding it almost impossible to avoid having sex with different women every day. He speaks about being “mugged” by women. Like:

I narrowly escaped being mugged by a double team…It was tempting, but I prayed, and God gave me the strength to say no.” </blockquote Or:

“got mugged on my way home”

He also rates what they were: a 10, a 3, a 2 etc. (Nov. 13, 2001, when he had three)
The woman who mugged him on May 21 was a 10.

He writes it was a good thing he was locked up in jail in Puerto Rico for a month (because of a political protest about the U S Navy’s bombing exercises in Vieques) because he didn’t meet any women during that time.

I am so content here. I have to say it. There’s no women. I’m happy! Everybody here seems happy. It’s not misogyny. It’s the opposite! I love them too much. I love my wife and tell it to her every day, and I never tire of it and write her tender letters.

(Apparently it was also good for Al Sharpton, because he finally lost weight, but I don’t know that RFK Jr. mentions that).

He says he can’t even talk to a woman without trying to seduce her.

For days when it didn’t happen, he writes down in the back: Victory! (But he falls off the wagon after a couple of days.)

He comes up with a 3-point plan for fixing his greatest defect, his lust demons, although, unfortunately for the reader, he doesn’t write it out.

Within a short time he’s back at it again.

He says he has everything and he persists in trying to ruin his life. He says he is like Adam in the Garden of Eden, only one thing forbidden to him, and that’s the thing he wants.

Obama repeatedly stepped in it and now were seeing him telling everybody else whom he wants to go along wih some response that they stepped in it. ”

Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 9/8/2013 @ 11:26 pm

Sammy – No, More like what I originally said

Obama repeatedly stepped in it and now were seeing his usual routine of pointing the fingers of blame elsewhere so he can come up smelling clean

with the added bonus of racism accusations against those who don’t see the wisdom of agreeing to support his limited duration, no regime change, no balance of power tipping, no support from the international community (except some secret 34 nations we will see at a later date if ever), no lasting benefit to America, cruise missile and guided bomb extravaganza! I don’t think he can come out smelling clean. He is, or will be it seems, predicting terrible things if the resolution fails. I don’t think there’s any accusations of racism and he’s having trouble getting he blck caucus (of Democrats), who all profess loyalty to him – to back him.

We’ve certainly got no balance of power tipping and no regime change in his proposal, but, nevertheless, Putin may be blinking.

Oh Sammy, “Sex Diary” is a term of art. Everybody here knows what we’re talking about and that it’s the fact that he documented his own sexual encounters–not that he may have recorded having his car washed one afternoon–that is the news.

Do you think maybe you sometimes take words or phrases a little too literally for blog work?

Oh Sammy, “Sex Diary” is a term of art. Everybody here knows what we’re talking about and that it’s the fact that he documented his own sexual encounters–not that he may have recorded having his car washed one afternoon–that is the news.

There’s a lot more in the diary, and the New York Post has a followup article today. The rest of the diary is not just about getting his car washed or having dinner with Leonard Decaprio.

He writes about Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson (really tough political criticism) and Andre Cuomo, and there’s also a rather funny actually statement from Andrew Cuomo that he gave to the New York Post on Sunday. I wanted to link it but I had trouble and I also lost what I typed out.

He also writes (badly) about George W. Bush, but when he met him he wrote he was charming. On September 11, 2001 he writes “Armageddon!!” He writes about Giuliani. He mentions how he really scorns Ed Meese (but we don’t get the background here) He writes about how he called or met (NYPost isn’t clear) with Mark Green to encouyrage him to reject the idea of extending Giuliani’s term. He hasd both bad and good to erote about Mario Cuomo (who was his lawyer in the Vieques case – RFK Jr did not wanta special deal for himself)

Do you think maybe you sometimes take words or phrases a little too literally for blog work?

well, actually it was the New York Post in its frst artuicle that was misleading people. It avoiding describing what this was. It’s quite familiar.

I made one mistake. the numbers 2 3 and 10, may not refer to the women’s beauty, but to what happened. That’s what MAry Kennedy thought. She found that diary, maybe shortly befre she committed suicide in 2012 or maybe it’s after that that somebody else got ahold of it.

Somebdy should link to and wuote what he says about Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Although the New York Post tries to play it up, there’s nothing really bad about Andre Cuomo.

Yes Daleyrocks. And if a prominent Republican said what he said about Sharpton and Jesse there’d be media bleating to the highest racist heavens. But it’s a Democrat from America’s royal family. So the only explanation that I can come up with is that the diary must be a fake.