Germany was not nearly as ready to go to war in 1938 as it was in 1939.

RickyP said the comments by Susan Rice could be true. Apparently the Washington Post would disagree with him. Susan Rice was given 4 Pinocchios for her Syrian comments.

And 4 years later they have made more... Or, at the time of the deal, the Russians, who were the players responsible for removing the weapons played everyone.
Both possible.
The deal and the execution of the deal depended upon the Russians.

Faced with attempting the deal, or going to war with Syria, and their partners (Iran and Russia) what would you have done? Wasn't the deal worth a try? There were no chemical weapons attacks in Syria for 3 years after the deal. (Barrel bombs and other monstrous acts yes....)

rickyp wrote:Yes. Was he wrong to try and gain support for a foreign war?
He was also following the constitution in doing so...

Fate

A POTUS can take short-term action in defense of American interests. So, I disagree with Rand Paul here.

What American interest is served in this strike?
How different is the situation on the ground today than in 2013 when Congress and Trump were opposed?

Fate

Was that the deal? Was Syria allowed to keep some? Did Kerry/Rice/Obama tell us ALL of the chemical weapons were gone? What was the verification regime?

The deal wasn't kept, by the Syrians or the Russians. Ultimately it failed but it kept chemical weapons out of play for almost three years. And it did deeply degrade Assads chemical stockpile...

It hasn't worked ultimately. But it was a worthwhile attempt.
How is one missile strike stacking up against this attempt?

Fate

That's not what the Obama team promised.

Promised? Hoped for, more like.

Again, a worthwhile attempt that has saved lives perhaps. And certainly served to keep the US from being sucked into the Syrian quagmire for 4 years. You in favor of sending in 100,000 troops?

Fate

If the US wanted to wipe out those air strips, we would have wiped them out. As for the long-term effect, it's hard to tell after two days.

Destroying all the air strips was Hillary's plan... You support her foreign policy?
And its not hard to tell after two days. The Syrians are already flying bombers out of the same air field to bomb the same town that they attacked with chemical weapons.

Fate

So what? If he prays before Putin's statue every morning, that does not prove collusion.

Putin is guilty of many of the same war crimes that Assad is committing. (See Czechnya).
He murders journalists.
And yet Trump admires him....

What does that prove? You've elected an idiot.

And on an apparent whim he's spent at least $60 million to dust up a Syrian airfield because he got emotional. Something he apparently managed to avoid in 2013. (Maybe Fox news didn't show pictures of the gas victims in 2013?)

Fate

Based on what information?

Who knows what Mr. Comey is finding. I suspect financial records and dealings will come to bear. Intercepted communications too.

And eventually someone will decide to cooperate with his investigators rather than take the fall for lying to the FBI. (A crime in and of itself.) And then who knows how many of Trumps team are indicted? I have 8, in the office pool.
Why do you think Trump is wagging the dog right now?

Fate

Some of it is "self-inspection." I'm sure the Iranians will be ruthless on themselves

Bull.
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/f ... ess-by-any

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You are not providing context. What did Obama ask for? How long did it take him to ask for it? Obama is the man who took months to announce a slight change in policy in Afghanistan. He was a ditherer of the first order.

The context is that Congress didn't support action in Syria. Meaning he couldn't back up his "red line" in any meaningful way. His mistake was expecting Congress to care about the fate of hundreds of Syrians being gassed in 2013.

Let’s look at the timeline:

August 20, 2012. “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”

August 21, 2013. Major chemical attack on Ghouta, Syria. Approximately 3,600 people killed or injured.

August 22, 2013. Crickets.

August 31, 2013. Obama says he will ask Congress to authorize him to do nothing in Syria. He says inaction “risks making a mockery of the global prohibition on the use of chemicals weapons” and that it put U.S. regional allies that share a border with Syria in danger.” Pay attention to this:

Yet, while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.

September 3, 2013. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee holds a hearing. Committee passes resolution by 10-7. Please note that the Senate was Democrat controlled.

Democrats:
Bob Menendez, New Jersey Chairman – yes
Tom Udall, New Mexico – no
Chris Murphy, Connecticut – no
Ed Markey, Massachusetts – present
Barbara Boxer, California – yes
Ben Cardin, Maryland – yes
Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire – yes
Chris Coons, Delaware – yes
Dick Durbin, Illinois – yes
Tim Kaine, Virginia – yes

Republicans:
Bob Corker, Tennessee Ranking Member – yes
John McCain, Arizona – yes
Rand Paul, Kentucky – no
Jim Risch, Idaho – no
Marco Rubio, Florida – no
John Barrasso, Wyoming – no
Ron Johnson, Wisconsin – no
Jeff Flake, Arizona – yes

September 4, 2013. “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world’s population said the use of chemical weapons are abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use even when countries are engaged in war.”

September 6, 2013. Harry Reid files the resolution. Whip counts indicate senators were lukewarm-to-negative about the resolution.

House schedules testimony from John Kerry. Initial whip counts show the resolution is not a huge favorite with anyone. Even among Democrats who had decided on how to vote the resolution would fail by a 2:1 margin.

September 10, 2013. Syria agrees to give up its chemical weapons. Obama does a victory dance. No further action is taken on the resolution.

Let’s review the bidding: Obama waited ten days to decide to punt the decision to the Congress. When he did punt, he said he didn’t need to ask them but he was going to be a nice fella and do it anyway to make the little people feel involved. It was almost as if Obama consciously tried to poison the well with the House. Afterward, how did he react?

Early in the Syrian civil war, Obama publicly drew a red line concerning Assad’s behavior, but later decided to forgo military strikes, even after being presented with near-definitive proof that Assad had crossed the red line in grotesque fashion. Obama was widely criticized at home and abroad—particularly by the leaders of many U.S.-allied nations—for behavior interpreted as feckless and weak, but he later told me, in one of the interviews I conducted with him for a 2016 article on his worldview, that he was “very proud of this moment.”

“The perception was that my credibility was at stake, that America’s credibility was at stake,” Obama explained. “And so for me to press the pause button at that moment, I knew, would cost me politically. And the fact that I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures and think through in my own mind what was in America’s interest, not only with respect to Syria but also with respect to our democracy, was as tough a decision as I’ve made—and I believe ultimately it was the right decision to make.”

The “immediate pressures” he successfully “pull[ed] back from” was the pressure to attack Syria. He never intended to strike Syria and cynically used the US Congress to give him cover for his decision.

Fate

How many have died between then and now?

Plenty. Would you have landed 100,000 troops in Syria to intervene?

Congress didn't approve of any action..... so his hands were tied weren't they?
By Congress. (Mostly republicans)

Fate

Who all but invited the Russians in?

Congress?

The White House said Thursday that Russia had “further isolated itself” by carrying out airstrikes in Syria and was putting itself in jeopardy.

“The fact is that carrying out indiscriminate military operations against the Syrian opposition is dangerous for Russia,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

He said Russian interference would prolong the sectarian conflict inside Syria. “It also risks Russia being drawn even more deeply into that conflict,” he said, pointing out that Russia already had acknowledged there could be no military solution in Syria.

Earnest also said that what he called Russia’s “indiscriminate” strikes would drive moderate elements of the Syrian opposition toward extremism, and ultimately exacerbate extremism inside Russia.

Russia's actions in Syria have not led to a "broad re-evaluation" of the U.S. strategy there, Earnest said.

In August 2015, Russia began to send Russian-operated warplanes, T-90 tanks and artillery, as well as combat troops to an airbase near the port city of Latakia in Syria.[128][129]

On 26 August 2015, a treaty was signed between Russia and Syria that stipulated terms and conditions of use by Russia of Syria's Hmeimim airport, free of charge and with no time limit.[130] The treaty, ratified by Russia′s parliament in October 2016, grants Russia′s personnel and their family members jurisdictional immunity and other privileges as envisaged by Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.[131]

Fate

Who cut a nuclear deal with Iran while allowing Iran to continue to support Assad with troops?

Germany, Britain, France, the EU, China, Russia and the US cut the deal.
Would you rather Iran had nuclear weapons now?

I'm sorry but if Obama had stopped Assad in 2013, there are 70+ Syrians who would still be alive today and hundreds of others who wouldn't be crippled. That's what happens when you think talking saves lives.

On 19 March 2011, a multi-state NATO-led coalition began a military intervention in Libya, ostensibly to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The United Nations Intent and Voting was to have "an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians, which it said might constitute crimes against humanity" ... "imposing a ban on all flights in the country's airspace – a no-fly zone – and tightened sanctions on the Qadhafi regime and its supporters." The resolution was taken in response to events during the Libyan Civil War,[19] and military operations began, with American and British naval forces firing over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles,[20] the French Air Force, British Royal Air Force, and Royal Canadian Air Force[21] undertaking sorties across Libya and a naval blockade by Coalition forces.[2

Are you saying that the use of WMD means the same to you as a bombing? Wow. I would think that a WMD usage would be a step up of hostility.

The reactions to anything done internationally by Obama had little to do with conditions on the ground.... only the domestic need for republicans (conservatives) to take an opposing position to what Obama wanted to do. Often changing their positions when Obama did. (see newt)

Its the usual pretzel of hypocricy. And it continues with Trump...

More have died from the bombings. And as far as I'm concerned a war crime is a war crime. I see no difference between the act of killing children with barrel bombs or sarin.
How do you parse the difference?

So you supported the Libyan intervention?

Which was organized and conducted because of crimes against humanity?

A sobering article on the potential costs of the Trump Administratiin not having a clear foreign policy.

I was pointing out your lack of concern over Sarin. Yes, Barrel bombs are bad. They are flying IEDs for goodness sakes! I put gassing your own people above that. You apparently don't.

Welcome to politics 101, buddy. (btw: was Newt still in Congress at this time? He certainly wasn't speaker anymore.)

Gingrich knows that consistency no longer matters: The only explanation for Gingrich's "obvious and public U-turn," says Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, is that he just doesn't think such inconsistencies matter. And he may be right. "The media doesn't really care" anymore, and the GOP base "doesn't read ThinkProgress," so Gingrich has learned that he might as well be "really brazen about your flip-flops." That must be "pretty damn liberating."
"The new media rules"

Sure, Gingrich is consistent — about opposing Obama: Gingrich is simply letting us know that "he thinks whatever Obama isn't doing is the right thing to do," says Brian Doherty at Reason. He's certainly not the first politician to flip-flop like this — Joe Biden threatened to impeach George W. Bush for waging war without Congress' green light, which Obama essentially just did. But it does make Gingrich "an absolutely 100 percent shoo-in to be one of the guys dropping out of the GOP presidential race in 2012 early."

Blind partisanship.