Adolf, Thanks For the Memories

Trey Smith

Without Hitler, the U.S. military would collapse.

For 68 years, wars on poor countries have been justified by the pretended discovery of Hitler’s reincarnation. Each time it has turned out to be a false alarm. Every post-WWII war looks disastrous or at least dubious in retrospect to most people. And yet, the justification of the next war is always ready to hand, because the real, original Hitler remains alive in our memories, and he just might come back — who’s to say?

Actually, I think anyone vaguely aware of basic facts about the current world ought to be able to say that Hitler is gone for good.

How do I justify not going to war with Hitler, beyond explaining that Assad isn’t Hitler, Gadaffi isn’t Hitler, Hussein isn’t Hitler, and so on?

Increasingly, I believe we must start with the fact that we live in a different world. Colonization is gone. Empires of the old model are gone. No powerful nation is plotting that sort of global conquest. In fact, no powerful nation is seriously considering war with other powerful nations.

During these past 68 years of misidentifying new Hitler after new Hitler, there has in fact been no World War III. We haven’t just made it 25 years. We’ll hit the 75-year mark during the next U.S. presidency. Nuclear weapons, awareness of the costs, understanding of the lack of benefits, established norms against the seizure of territory, the utter unacceptability of colonialism, and the vast increase in understanding of the power of nonviolent action all work against the waging of wars among the wealthy, armed nations. Instead, we have proxy wars, wars of exploitation, and poor-on-poor warfare. And even those wars fail miserably on their own terms. Occupations collapse. Puppets grow legs and wander off.
~ from If Hitler Didn't Exist by David Swanson ~

In order for the leader of any nation to convince the people that a war is justified, a bogeyman needs to be created. It has been this way since the dawn of human civilization. As Swanson so aptly points out, the default bogeyman for the US is Adolf Hitler. Since World War II, almost any time the US Commander-in-Chief wants to sell the American public on a rationale to invade another country, the ghost of Adolf Hitler is dragged out of mothballs.

It was the same thing several weeks ago. Before the Russians pressed for a diplomatic solution, we were told by Team Obama and the war hawks in Congress that Assad was this generation's Hitler and that the US simply couldn't stand by and do nothing. We had a moral duty to bomb Syria to save the Syrians from their own brand of the Third Reich.

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The other point made by Swanson above should cause you to take pause. The major powers don't fight each other militarily anymore. No, the major powers find weaker nations to attack. This allows the major powers to exercise their bloodlust without incurring very much damage or injuries to themselves. Of the major powers, the biggest bully of all is the US. These days we only pick fights (invade) nations that have no hope of adequately defending themselves.

That fact -- in and of itself -- is sad. It shows that, no matter how our leaders try to spin it, we are about as far away from the moral high ground as a nation could be!

Interventions That Only a Mugger Could Love

Trey Smith

Libya marks the second anniversary of the death of Muammar Gaddafi with the country on the brink of a new civil war and fighting raging in the eastern city of Benghazi, birthplace of its Arab spring revolution.

Violence between radical militias and regular forces broke out on Friday night and continued yesterday, while the capital Tripoli is braced for fallout from the kidnapping earlier this month of prime minister Ali Zaidan. Federalists in Cyrenaica, home to most of Libya's oil, open their own independent parliament in Benghazi this week, in a step that may herald the breakup of the country.

For months, radical militias and regular forces in Benghazi have fought a tit-for-tat war. Last week two soldiers had their throats slit as they slept in an army base. But Friday's killing of Libya's military police commander, Ahmed al-Barghathi, shot as he left a mosque, has became the trigger for wider violence. Hours after an assassination branded a "heinous act" by US ambassador Deborah Jones, armed units stormed the Benghazi home of a prominent militia commander, Wissam Ben Hamid, with guns and rockets.
~ from Assassination Pushes Libya Toward Civil War Two Years After Gaddafi Death by Chris Stephen ~

Hmm. The US doesn't seem to be building a very good track record when it comes to interventions in predominantly Muslim countries. We attacked Iraq to bring democracy, freedom and peace -- that hasn't turned out so well. Ever since the US intervention, Iraq has been on the precipice of a civil war. According to the above news report, the very same thing is happening in Libya. Owing to this track record, one should anticipate about the same result when we pull out of Afghanistan.

This is not an argument to stay in Afghanistan. Far from it. It is just to point out that when a US Commander-in-Chief -- be it a Republican OR a Democrat -- tells the world that the US must intervene for humanitarian reasons, it is a lie. Is it humanitarian to bat at a hornet's nest, then leave when the hornets come swarming out?

Defenders of these so-called humanitarian interventions will say, It's not our fault. Our aims were pure. You can't blame us if the people we liberate mess up the peace and democracy we so graciously provided them.

Even in that deluded reality, the US still is to blame. It shows that we are very poor teachers who, utilizing the corporate model of education, should be fired because our "students" perform so abysmally.

DN - U.S. Eases Rules on Exporting Military Technology to Secure Role as World's Leading Arms Dealer

Counting on You, Not Me

Trey Smith

Dressed in a hazardous materials suit, full-face mask and hard hat, Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, left his audience in no doubt: "The future of Japan," he said, "rests on your shoulders. I am counting on you."

Abe's exhortation, delivered during a recent visit to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, was only heard by a small group of men inside the plant's emergency control room. But it was directed at almost 6,000 more: the technicians and engineers, truck drivers and builders who, almost three years after the plant suffered a triple meltdown, remain on the frontline of the world's most dangerous industrial cleanup.

Yet as the scale of the challenge has become clearer with every new accident and radiation leak, the men working inside the plant are suffering from plummeting morale, health problems and anxiety about the future, according to insiders interviewed by the Guardian.
~ from Plummeting Morale at Fukushima Daiichi as Nuclear Cleanup Takes Its Toll by Justin McCurry ~

What Abe said to the men risking life and limb to cleanup this horrific nuclear disaster is not that alike what many leaders say to their brave men and women sent off to war. Just like in a war, many of the circumstances at the Fukushima Daiichi plant were set in motion by politicians and corporate bigwigs. In other words, the calamity was intensified by those driven by greed and power, but the work required to clean up the mess is borne by the powerless.

It has been this way all throughout human history. Even back in the days of Laozi and Zhuangzi, the rulers drew up the plans for conquest, but it was mainly poor conscripts who did the fighting...and dying.

It has often been noted that if the rich and powerful had to fight their own battles, they would be few and far between. If George W. Bush and Dick Cheney personally had led the troops into Iraq or Afghanistan, do you think these "wars" would have lasted so long or even taken place at all? If Barack Obama had to put his boot on the ground, do you think we would have bombed Libya?

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If truth be known, Shinzo Abe is incorrect. The future of Japan (or the world) does NOT rest on the shoulders of the workers cleaning up Fukushima. No, it rests on the shoulders of leaders like Shinzo Abe. If they continue to put their lust for ever more power and profit before anything else, it merely sets the stage for future disasters. It is leaders like Abe and corporate CEOs who hold the cards!

A Major Case of Oops!

Trey Smith

A secret document, published in declassified form for the first time by the Guardian today, reveals that the US Air Force came dramatically close to detonating an atom bomb over North Carolina that would have been 260 times more powerful than the device that devastated Hiroshima.

The document, obtained by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser under the Freedom of Information Act, gives the first conclusive evidence that the US was narrowly spared a disaster of monumental proportions when two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs were accidentally dropped over Goldsboro, North Carolina on 23 January 1961. The bombs fell to earth after a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air, and one of the devices behaved precisely as a nuclear weapon was designed to behave in warfare: its parachute opened, its trigger mechanisms engaged, and only one low-voltage switch prevented untold carnage.

Each bomb carried a payload of 4 megatons – the equivalent of 4 million tons of TNT explosive. Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York city – putting millions of lives at risk.

Though there has been persistent speculation about how narrow the Goldsboro escape was, the US government has repeatedly publicly denied that its nuclear arsenal has ever put Americans' lives in jeopardy through safety flaws. But in the newly-published document, a senior engineer in the Sandia national laboratories responsible for the mechanical safety of nuclear weapons concludes that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".
~ from US Nearly Detonated Atomic Bomb Over North Carolina -- Secret Document by Ed Pilkington ~

Setting aside the issue of so-called nuclear safety for a moment, if this bomb had indeed detonated, what do you think the American public -- those who were still alive -- would have been told at the time? Remember that this would have occurred at the height of the Cold War, only 1.5 years ahead of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

While no one can know for sure what would have been declared, my guess is that President Kennedy would have gone on TV to announce that we had been attacked by Russia and that American nuclear warheads were on the way to Russia as he spoke. Because of an inopportune accident of mammoth proportions, the world as we know it today would not exist. No, it would be a giant nuclear wasteland!

This is why nuclear weapons -- just like chemical and biological ones -- should be outlawed and ANY nation that processes them should destroy them safely at breakneck speed. While conventional weaponry is bad enough, one inadvertent oops involving a nuclear warhead could alter life on this planet for everyone, not just the hapless victims of where the munition exploded. Since most governments are reluctant to admit their own mistakes, the enemy -- whoever that happens to be at the time -- would get blamed and this one accident most likely would set off a chain reaction that humanity would never recover from.

For Barack Obama, the Politics of Death Trumps the Politics of Life

Trey Smith

Short of an ongoing hot war, the imbroglio over the proposed bombing of Syria has occupied the precious time of President Obama, and therefore the mass media, unlike anything else on his plate. Moreover, it portends absorbing much more of his time and political capital in the coming weeks.

Our country’s misguided foreign policy has caused our president to spend enormous time and influence enlisting allies, members of Congress, and figuring out the many risks of another protracted unlawful war-quagmire in the Middle East. Imagine how much time our president could spend on our country’s many domestic problems.

Let’s take the easy ones first. Mr. Obama was scheduled to fly to California to address the largest annual convention of the AFL-CIO and its member unions. Chief Labor Leader Richard Trumka – an Obama loyalist – was unveiling a bold new plan to expand labor’s big tent to include groups such as Working America (representing non-union workers), the Sierra Club, the NAACP, La Raza and student groups. Keynoter Barack Obama had to cancel his appearance. Reason: Absorption with Syria.

After waiting for months for a meeting with their President, the Congressional Black Caucus finally got their White House Invitation. Did their political hero engage them over the domestic issues Caucus members wanted to discuss?

As noted by a disappointed Rep. André Carson (D-Indiana), Black Caucus members wanted to focus on programs targeted for the African-American community – “summer jobs,” “helping to empower small business, women-owned businesses,” helping to “improve the health of our public school systems,” along with the civil rights and voting issues in the news. Sorry. Barack Obama spent his hour trying to persuade them to support bombing Syria!

Taking Mr. Obama at his often repeated words that “the safety of the American people” is his top priority, the trajectory of that commitment is strangely skewed. Drone attacks or other techniques of wiping out stateless terrorists overseas, alleged suspects, and an occasional American citizen, produce blowback and in the long run force our country to spend more on “guns than butter.”

But whether campaigning or presiding, candidate and President Barack Obama seems to seriously undervalue policies that would prevent over 300,000 American lives lost each year, and many more injuries and illnesses, from having a prominent place on his timetable.
~ from Obama's Perverse Priorities by Ralph Nader ~

One of the hallmarks of the presidency of Barack Obama -- the guy who won a Nobel Peace Prize of all things -- is that, when it comes to military aggression, he has all the time in the world, but, when it comes to talking about ways to promote life, he never has the time to do it justice. War means big profits for his corporate benefactors. Alleviating poverty, promoting education, and dealing with climate change, not so much.

If only working to better people's lives -- not kill them -- was more lucrative for Wall Street! If that were the case, I'm guessing Obama would clear the table and talk about it until the cows came home.

An Interesting Historical Tidbit About Syria and Chemical Weapons

Trey Smith

Journalists are trained to write utilizing the pyramid style (e.g., the most important info at the top). The reason for this is that studies show that most readers rarely make it past the 3rd or 4th paragraph! If a reporter does not include the critical who/what/when/where at the top of the article, most readers will walk away not knowing this pertinent information.

One reason why I like to read or, at least, scan the entirety of an article is that you can often find critical tidbits of information below the fold or in the continued story on page 6. It is sad to say -- in today's modern mainstream journalism -- that often some of the most critical facts and observations are near or at the end of an article, not the beginning. This tack tends to expose the reporter's, editor's and/or publication's biases.

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One thing I have been wondering about lately is: Why does Syria possess chemical weapons in the first place? I found the answer in an article at CounterPunch written by an Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery.

It should be remembered why [Assad's] father produced this gas in the first place. He believed that Israel was developing nuclear weapons. Not being able to aspire to such expensive and technically advanced devices himself, he settled for much cheaper chemical and biological weapons as a deterrent. According to a secret 1982 CIA report, Israel was producing such weapons itself.

It turns out that the previous Syrian leader's suspicions were correct. Israel -- with the aid of the US -- indeed possesses nuclear weapons. So, in a manner of speaking, Israel and the US are responsible for the chemical weapons we now say must be destroyed! Had Israel not gotten into the nuclear weapons biz, then, maybe, the current situation in Syria might never have occurred. There would have been no need to speak about a "red line."

It is the omission by the US government and the mainstream media of this particular chain of events that amounts to a disservice to the American people. While the vast majority of Americans opposed US missile strikes on Syria, their opposition was based on other concerns. Had they known that one of the primary reasons that Syria possesses chemical weapons in the first place leads back to this nation, they may have opposed military aggression on that basis alone.

At least, I hope a significant number of Americans would have the capability of connecting the obvious dots!

In Dollars and Cents, How Much Is Your Life Worth?

Trey Smith

With the crisis in Syria averted -- for now -- the Obama administration and Congress have turned their attention once again to "furthering their plans to attack the social programs on which tens of millions of working people in the United States depend on for their health and livelihood." We have proposals to cut Food Stamps, postpone the implementation of Obamacare for one year, extend the sequester and, of course, to take another run at privatizing Social Security.

All of these proposed cuts and so many more have got me to thinking about the economic value of the average American life. How much in dollars and cents, does the government spend on each American? I don't have the answer to that question, but I'm fairly certain it is not worth nearly as much al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan!

As reported by Paul Craig Roberts,

At the Marine Corps War College, Jim Lacey calculated that the annual cost of the Afghan war was $1.5 billion for each al-Qaeda member in Afghanistan.

Do you think that the federal government spends an average of $1.5 billion on our puny lives? Me either!

Why is it that our government leaders are more than willing to spend egregious amounts of money on ending life, while spending so little on promoting life?

Somebody Is Not Happy

Trey Smith

As it always happens whenever there is a ceasefire or an agreement to avert war/military aggression, somebody is not happy. In the case of Syria, it seems that two somebodies are not very pleased. The war hawks in the US aren't enthralled with the agreement brokered by their own government and Russia because war -- even if you don't call it that -- is good for business! When the bottom line is ALL that matters, you don't take kindly to anyone who seeks to take money that was earmarked for your pocketbook.

There is another group that is none too pleased: various factions of the Syrian rebels. They were counting on a US aerial assault to shift the tide in their ongoing civil war -- one they are losing -- and so now they face the prospect of a long stalemate, at best, or a defeat, at worst. The current agreement with the Assad government re their chemical weapons is the last thing in the world they wanted.

If you don't think so, one rebel commander made his thoughts well known when he said, "Let the Kerry-Lavrov plan go to hell. We reject it and we will not protect the inspectors."

While understandable in the context of war, his statement is troublesome, nonetheless. It should make one wonder if the rebels will undermine the agreement in order to coax the US war hawks to act. The worst possible outcome for the people of Syria is, if the Assad government tries to live up to the agreement, but the rebels themselves make it impossible for Syria's chemical weapons to be placed under foreign control and subsequently destroyed. It begs the question: If Assad complies, but the rebels don't, will the US take the unilateral action to "punish" Syria with missile strikes?

If that option is on the table, then logic dictates that is precisely what the rebels will do. They will mess up the agreement and then blame the Assad regime for their own sins. The military-industrial complex and the lapdog mainstream media will play along. Before we know it, the "war" that few want will be given a green light.

No one will be happy...except for the war hawks and the Syrian rebels.

TYT - Biblical End Times? Fox News Guest Says Syria Is A Sign

Handing Over Chemical Weapons: What Does This Really Mean?

Trey Smith

By now, I'm sure most of you know about how Secretary of State John Kerry's rhetorical comment at a London press conference -- Jonathan Freedland termed it a gaffe -- has changed the calculus on Syria. Kerry said rather flippantly that, if Syria would turn over control of their nuclear weapons, then maybe war wouldn't be in the offing. Russia seized on this idea and, before you knew it, Syria agreed to the idea.

Look, I'm all for ANY strategy put forth to avoid US military intervention, but this whole concept begs a question or two. For starters, how exactly would the UN and/or other nations take control of chemical weapons inside of Syria? This is a nation involved in a civil war, you know. Does France, Australia, the US or Ghana want to send personnel to babysit these arsenals while Syrians and associated forces are shooting and bombing each other? I can tell you that I have no interest whatsoever in signing up for such an assignment!

Another aspect of this preliminary agreement is that Syria's chemical weapons will be destroyed. How soon? Who will do it? How will it be done?

These aren't nitpicking questions, particularly when we take a look at how difficult it has been for the US to get rid of our share of sarin, VX and mustard gas.  As reported by Greg Kocher of the Lexington Herald-Leader,

The alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria thrusts the international spotlight onto the same deadly "nerve agents" stored at Blue Grass Army Depot in Madison County [Kentucky].

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Both sarin and VX are internationally banned, both are stored in Madison County and both are scheduled to be destroyed there by a massive plant that is 72 percent complete. The plant is supposed to be finished in 2015, but it will take until 2020 for it to become operational. Then, according to the current timeline, it will take from 2020 to 2023 to destroy the weapons, said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Berea-based citizens group that monitors the remaining weapons in Kentucky and Pueblo, Colo.

You see, a lot of people may have the idea that turning over these chemical weapons to outside countries would mean moving them out of Syria. Most likely, that would neither be prudent nor safe. Here, in the US, we aren't moving our stores of chemical weapons; we are building facilities where these weapons are currently housed.

As you can see from the timeline above, it will be 10 fricking years -- IF we keep to the schedule -- before our tonnage of chemical weapons are destroyed completely. I don't know how much chemical weapons are in Syria, but since they haven't even drawn up plans to begin building facilities to destroy them, their arsenals probably will still be there 15 years from now.

If the US demands that Syria's weapons be destroyed sooner AND if the technology to accomplish that exists, then why don't we avail ourselves of it as well? It would certainly go a long way toward being a good faith gesture since our destruction of these vile weapons has been preceding along at as snail's pace.

A(n) Ironclad, Water-Tight Case

Trey Smith

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry say they have the evidence that President Assad of Syria is responsible for a chemical weapons attack on his own people. The Prime Minister of the UK agrees. So do the French. I think I read that the Australian government agrees to. So, it must be an ironclad, water-tight case, right?

Not so fast.

According to a report in the German Press,

President Bashar al-Assad did not personally order last month's chemical weapons attack near Damascus that has triggered calls for US military intervention, and blocked numerous requests from his military commanders to use chemical weapons against regime opponents in recent months, a German newspaper has reported, citing unidentified, high-level national security sources.

The intelligence findings were based on phone calls intercepted by a German surveillance ship operated by the BND, the German intelligence service, and deployed off the Syrian coast, Bild am Sonntag said. The intercepted communications suggested Assad, who is accused of war crimes by the west, including [British] foreign secretary William Hague, was not himself involved in last month's attack or in other instances when government forces have allegedly used chemical weapons.

Okay, so the Germans disagree. But who pays that much attention to the Germans anyway?

As we see with the American mainstream media, intelligence people in this country unanimously accept the notion that Assad is personally responsible. Well, it turns out that's not really true either. In an open letter to President Obama, 12 members of the Steering Committee for Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) are saying they don't have all that much confidence in the US government's assessment.

We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this. In writing this brief report, we choose to assume that you have not been fully informed because your advisers decided to afford you the opportunity for what is commonly known as “plausible denial.”

We have been down this road before – with President George W. Bush, to whom we addressed our first VIPS memorandum immediately after Colin Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech, in which he peddled fraudulent “intelligence” to support attacking Iraq. Then, also, we chose to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was being misled – or, at the least, very poorly advised.

The fraudulent nature of Powell’s speech was a no-brainer. And so, that very afternoon we strongly urged your predecessor to “widen the discussion beyond … the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” We offer you the same advice today.

Our sources confirm that a chemical incident of some sort did cause fatalities and injuries on August 21 in a suburb of Damascus. They insist, however, that the incident was not the result of an attack by the Syrian Army using military-grade chemical weapons from its arsenal. That is the most salient fact, according to CIA officers working on the Syria issue. They tell us that CIA Director John Brennan is perpetrating a pre-Iraq-War-type fraud on members of Congress, the media, the public – and perhaps even you.

As with previous posts of this nature, I am not saying that these two reports mean that the US assessment is categorically wrong. What they do suggest, however, is that it should make you wonder if the "high confidence" level of the current assessment is more driven by politics than facts. If nothing else, with different people arriving at different conclusions, you should ask if that is enough to go charging off into another war.

Which Team Is Which?

Trey Smith

I just had two discussions with neighbors in my suburb of Philadelphia that offer both a hope that the Republican-run House may block President Obama’s war on Syria, and a warning that liberal Democrats could hand him the narrow majority he needs to claim Congressional backing for his war.

The first conversation was with a neighbor whose family is fundamentalist Christian. Each national or statewide election, they enthusiastically back, including with roadside signs on their property, the Republican candidate, including McCain/Palin and Romney/Ryan.

We are friends with this family. The parents are very much do-it-yourselfers, home-schooling their three kids with the help of a religious-based home-schooling association in the area that helps organize some group activities, cutting their own firewood, raising chickens, etc. The kids are all very smart and open-minded, though both boys are attending religious colleges. But while we all get along well and like each other, we never talk politics.

That is, until yesterday, when the mother and I got onto the issue of the looming war on Syria. “This is terrible,” she said. “I thought at least that Obama was against this kind of thing. Didn’t he say he thought the war on Iraq was wrong? What’s going on?”

She wants to know what the US has to do with a civil war in Syria, and how bombing and killing Syrians is going to make anything any better in that country, or this one. And she said she thinks there are more important things to spend money on in the US, noting the terrible condition of education in neighboring Philadelphia, where class size in elementary schools is now 37, “with no teachers’ aides,” and where the school district is bankrupt.

I found myself thinking this woman sounded like me, and we parted casting shared aspersions on both political parties, which we agreed are not responding to the public’s views.

Then it was lunch with a several liberal friends. We very quickly found ourselves discussing what looks to be the next in this country’s unending string of wars, which have been a national constant at least since Pearl Harbor--and for all of our lives.

I was expecting to have a four-man rant about the insanity of a bombing attack on Syria, but was stunned when one of the men at the table, a sweet retired guy who I’m sure wouldn’t harm a fly, and who spent his life in the health care field, said, “I hope we go in and bomb Syria, and I hope we ‘take out’ Assad and his wife.”

Shocked, I asked, “What about his kids?”

He said, “Kids too. Kill ‘em all!”

A second guy, also a mellow fellow who has been very opposed to the wars, wasn’t quite so bloodthirsty in his sentiments, but said he was for bombing Syria too. “We can’t allow a country to use poison gas,” he said.

When I pointed out that it is not at all clear that President Bashar al-Assad’s government and military was responsible for the gas attack in Damascus, and that the administration’s case for blaming Assad and for going to war is full of lies, half-truths and conjecture, with no verifiable facts to support it, he scoffed. After all the government’s lies about Iraq, and lies about Afghanistan, and after a more than a decade of two wars that accomplished nothing except to destroy two countries with a combined population of almost 50 million people, he refused to believe that we are being lied to yet again.

“We have to do something,” he said plaintively, clearly either unaware or unwilling to acknowledge that there’s something obscene about a nation that poisoned millions of Vietnamese with the defoliant Agent Orange, that has strewn depleted uranium all across the cities of Iraq, that uses child-shredding anti-personnel weapons all the time and sells them on the global arms market, refusing to sign onto a global ban, and that continues to use napalm, a prohibited weapon, by simply changing an ingredient so it can claim it is something else, trying to claim it has the moral authority to punish another nation for allegedly using poison gas.

Only the third member of this group of friends, a retired Philadelphia teacher, agreed with me that an attack on Syria was nuts and will just lead to another disaster and another destroyed country.
~ from Anti-War Conservatives and War-Monger Liberals by Dave Lindorff ~

Some astute readers surely will note that some of the anti-war conservatives have taken that position solely because it is the opposite of Obama's position. I am confident that is the case for many, but I am also confident that several conservatives are anti-war for other reasons. What really gets me are the war-monger liberals. What is liberal about choosing war over diplomacy?

As I have pointed out many times before, this situation serves to underscore how the Obama presidency has destroyed the foundations of the Democratic Party. On issue after issue, Democrats are advocating and defending what once were Republican positions only a generation ago. It is weird to think that Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan are to the left of today's Democratic Party! If one of them sprang back to life to run in the 2016 Democratic Presidential Primary, he would lose for not being conservative enough.

That is truly mind blowing.

TYT - Syria Attack Resolution Approved By Senate Committee

Severely Wounded, But Not Crippled

Trey Smith

In an increasingly phantasmagorical world, here’s my present fantasy of choice: someone from General Keith Alexander’s outfit, the National Security Agency, tracks down H.G. Wells’s time machine in the attic of an old house in London. Britain’s subservient Government Communications Headquarters, its version of the NSA, is paid off and the contraption is flown to Fort Meade, Maryland, where it’s put back in working order. Alexander then revs it up and heads not into the future like Wells to see how our world ends, but into the past to offer a warning to Americans about what’s to come.

He arrives in Washington on October 23, 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a day after President Kennedy has addressed the American people on national television to tell them that this planet might not be theirs -- or anyone else’s -- for long. ("We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth, but neither will we shrink from the risk at any time it must be faced.") Greeted with amazement by the Washington elite, Alexander, too, goes on television and informs the same public that, in 2013, the major enemy of the United States will no longer be the Soviet Union, but an outfit called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and that the headquarters of our country’s preeminent foe will be found somewhere in the rural backlands of... Yemen.

Yes, Yemen, a place most Americans, then and now, would be challenged to find on a world map. I guarantee you one thing: had such an announcement actually been made that day, most Americans would undoubtedly have dropped to their knees and thanked God for His blessings on the American nation. Though even then a nonbeliever, I would undoubtedly have been among them. After all, the 18-year-old Tom Engelhardt, on hearing Kennedy’s address, genuinely feared that he and the few pathetic dreams of a future he had been able to conjure up were toast.

Had Alexander added that, in the face of AQAP and similar minor jihadist enemies scattered in the back lands of parts of the planet, the U.S. had built up its military, intelligence, and surveillance powers beyond anything ever conceived of in the Cold War or possibly in the history of the planet, Americans of that time would undoubtedly have considered him delusional and committed him to an asylum.

Such, however, is our world more than two decades after Eastern Europe was liberated, the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War definitively ended, and the Soviet Union disappeared.
~ from And Then There Was One by Tom Engelhardt ~

It amazes me that, no matter how frequently we're told that al-Qaeda has been seriously wounded, it continues to be such a supposedly feared enemy. It is like the cat with nine lives. No matter how many higher ups we neutralize, the threat never diminishes.

Think about the number of reports within the last decade. We took out the head -- one bin Laden -- and several operational commanders and yet the War on Terror hasn't skipped a beat. This represents a weird paradox for the US Commander-in-Chief (Bush or Obama). To prove that our military might is needed and capable, the president must announce successes in our continuous war against the Axis of Evil. He must show that we are wounding our supposed adversary. But he can't tell us that we've crippled them...because if al-Qaeda was said to be crippled, then the rationale for our continued militarization and increased mass surveillance would be greatly lessened.

Accordingly, he must straddle the line between saying that we are winning this war, BUT the war itself is far from over. Yes, we hold the upper hand, but our hand must remain on the throttle, lest we lose our superior position.

So, we continue to build the largest military and mass surveillance system the world has ever known in order to combat ragtag outfits skulking around in caves and other out of the way locales. It seems a bit surreal, doesn't it?

Why Is a Short-Term Agonizing Death More Heinous Than a Long-Term One?

Trey Smith

On a recent episode of The Young Turks, comedian Jimmy Dore made what I think is a great point. 

US leaders are all up in a tizzy because they allege that President Assad used chemical weapons on his own people in Syria. President Obama has termed this usage as crossing a "red line." Secretary of State John Kerry has stated repeatedly that the vast majority of the world has decided that the use of chemical weapons is not acceptable. Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction.

But what about depleted uranium?

In a manner of speaking, depleted uranium could be considered a chemical weapon as well. It is the chemical properties of this vile substance that often leads to long-term health issues and agonizing deaths. The chief difference between a poisonous gas versus depleted uranium is that the former tends to kill more quickly, while the latter can take years or, sometimes, decades.

Of course, there IS another important difference: The US regularly uses depleted uranium on the battlefield. Since whatever the US does is right and just, no one can criticize us for utilizing a weapon that leads to agonizing deaths.

Dore's point is that we are in no position to be the final arbiter on this issue. IF the Syrian government is guilty of this crime against humanity, then we are guilty 100 times over! If the Syrian government is guilty of killing hundreds of people with gas, then we are even more guilty of compromising the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as well as tens of thousands of our own troops!

If people believe that it is okay to bomb Syria for their crime, would you feel the same way if another nation decided to punish the US for our crimes against humanity?

Obama Debates Himself in Real Time

Trey Smith

When I was in high school, I was on the Debate Team (though, surprisingly, I wasn't very good at it at the time). The chosen topic for that year was the Electoral College. Before the debate competition season commenced, debaters would research the pros and cons of the subject matter and create huge "index card" databases of arguments on either side of the question. At a debate event, each team would draw to see if they would be arguing pro or con for each match.

And that's the thing. As you squared off against your opponents, you had one position to argue. Based upon your opponents strategy, you would alter your team's strategy accordingly. The best debate teams were those who were best able to counter the opposing team's arguments. It is a really straightforward concept.

After reading what President Obama said in Stockholm yesterday at a gathering of world leaders, I am guessing that Barack has never been on a debate team. In the course of a few minutes, he argued both sides of the same issue! At one moment, he said,

It is important for us to get out of the habit of just saying we'll let the president stretch the boundaries of his authority as far as he can and Congress will sit on the sidelines and snipe.

However, in the same set of remarks, he also said,

As commander-in-chief I always preserve the right and the responsibility to act on behalf of America's national security. I do not believe that I was required to take this to Congress but I did not take this to Congress just because it's an empty exercise. I think it is important to have Congress's support.

So, on the one hand, he agrees with his critics by saying that a president shouldn't be allowed to "stretch the boundaries of his authority." On the other hand, he submits that he has the [constitutional] right to stretch those boundaries as far as he sees fit!

Obviously, quote #1 was a throwaway position, a meager attempt to satisfy those who believe in constitutional safeguards. What he really believes is contained in quote #2. Phrased a different way, he is taking this matter -- attacking Syria -- before Congress to give them the opportunity to agree with him! If they don't, then he's going to do what he believes he is empowered to do anyway.

TYT - On Syria: What's The Difference Between Chemical & Conventional Weapons?

Two Reports -- Starkly Different Conclusions

Trey Smith

At this juncture, there seems to be agreement from many sources that chemical weapons exploded in a Damascus suburb last month. The major question that remains is: Who is responsible? 

President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have stated loudly that it was the Assad government and they point to a report released by the White House that is strong on assertions, but lacks any hard documentation.  It basically says that the US intelligence community thinks it happened this way and, as long as they are fairly sure, that's close enough.

But there is another report that paints a completely different picture.  MintPress News -- an organization I have never heard of -- has posted an article, Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack, that states the "attack" was not the result of Syrian government forces.  Unlike the White House report, they actually quote people on the ground in Syria and provide other analysis.

My point is not that the MintPress News reports PROVES that the White House report is wrong, only that it goes to show that the question of responsibility remains up in the air.  In fact, each "report" may be nothing more than two bits of slanted propaganda:  One side pushing for US military action and the other pushing against the same.

As readers know, I tend to be highly skeptical of government pronouncements and I am highly skeptical of their conclusions in terms of Syria.  However, as noted above, I am completely unfamiliar with the MintPress, so I don't know how much credence to give to their report.  For all I know, they could have made up their "interviews" with local people.

But looking at these two reports, at least MintPress provides some rationale for their conclusions, while the White House simply makes a slew of assertions without providing any actual evidence to back them up.

People as Throwaway Pawns

Trey Smith

The reason a missile attack on Syria is proving so unpopular on both sides of the Atlantic has nothing to do with neoimperial hubris. The reason is that it is a bad idea. "Punishing" a dictator for killing his own people by simply killing more of his own people seems beyond cruel. It seems stupid. It leads nowhere.

Public opinion may be a poor guide to the minutiae of state policy. But that opinion has been saddled with two long wars, both failures. As a result, leaders in London and Washington (and possibly Paris) have been sufficiently nervous to pass decision to their national assemblies. In British the result was a rebuff. In Washington, President Obama has decided to refer Syria to Congress and France's president, François Hollande, may do likewise.

In the attacks on Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the goal of western intervention was at least clear. It was to topple a regime. Since the UN forbids such overt aggression against member states, action must be dressed up as humanitarian or to enforce UN resolutions. But everyone knows what is the intended outcome.

In Syria, an attack would be in retaliation for a proven breach of international law on chemical weapons. No one has the will to topple the Assad regime. Action is described as merely punitive and a "deterrent", directed purely at a past incident of a chemical massacre. This is gesture war. It will not punish the guilty, such as members of the Assad regime, who should be arraigned before a war crimes court. It will merely destroy buildings and kill people. It seems peculiarly pointless.
~ from The West's Threat to Attack Syria Is an Idiotic Gesture by Simon Jenkins ~

If revelations about the US drone program have taught us anything, it is that missiles or bullets shot from drones aren't half as precise as government leaders pretend they are. Drone operators frequently have no clue who they have just killed and injured.

And that's why it is beyond idiotic to think that missiles fired into Syria will help their situation in any way, shape or form. Personally, I wouldn't term this strategy as idiotic; inhumane is the word I would choose.

In order to "punish" the Assad regime for something no one is even sure they are responsible for, the US wants to kill innocent Syrians. And let's be clear about this. If the US employs missiles, innocent citizen WILL be killed and maimed. It is the nature of the beast.

Basically, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are advocating a strategy that treats the people of Syria -- mainly the poor who don't the wherewithal to get out of harm's way -- as throwaway pawns on the geopolitical chess board. To score some sort of political points, both men are willing to sacrifice some "faceless" people. And I'm sure they will try to browbeat members of Congress to allow them to play this deadly game.