On Fox News’ Special Report, tonight, Dr. K psychoanalyzed our narcissistic Commander in Chump who likes to claim ownership for everything he thinks will benefit him and is quick to shift the blame/responsibility onto others when it doesn’t.
“Now he wants to imply that it isn’t him who’s made this ultimatum essentially, it’s the Congress and they need to live up to its obligations, Krauthammer noted. This is the way the president who narcissistically always speaks about “me” and “my” –in fact a week ago he spoke about “my military” (an astonishing formulation) – who when it suits him, decides it’s not “me” or “my” but this is a responsibility that belongs to Congress… I don’t think it’s going to work – everybody understands it’s about him- he’ll be the one who’s damaged if it doesn’t pass in Congress.
(Oh, I wouldn’t underestimate the power of the MFM in protecting their SCOAMF.)
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Ann Coulter: COMMUNITY ORGANIZER GOES TO WAR:
Oh, how I long for the days when liberals wailed that “the rest of the world” hated America, rather than now, when the rest of the world laughs at us.
With the vast majority of Americans opposing a strike against Syria, President Obama has requested that Congress vote on his powers as commander in chief under the Constitution. The president doesn’t need congressional approval to shoot a few missiles into Syria, nor — amazingly — has he said he’ll abide by such a vote, anyway.Why is Congress even having a vote? This is nothing but a fig leaf to cover Obama’s own idiotic “red line” ultimatum to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on chemical weapons. The Nobel Peace Prize winner needs to get Congress on the record so that whatever happens, the media can blame Republicans.No Republican who thinks seriously about America’s national security interests — by which I mean to exclude John McCain and Lindsey Graham — can support Obama’s “plan” to shoot blindly into this hornet’s nest.It would be completely different if we knew with absolute certainty that Assad was responsible for chemical attacks on his own people. (I’m still waiting to see if it was a Syrian upset about a YouTube video.)
In response to Re: False Flags:
Another skeptic of the Obama administration’s “slam dunk” case on Syria has emerged.
Writing at PJ Media, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy details Al-Qaeda’s ceaseless endeavors over the years to acquire, manufacture, and eventually use chemical weapons, and links to a report in the Long War Journal about an al Qaeda chemical weapons cell recently broken up in Iraq.
He concludes:
I believe the concentration on chemical weapons, including President Obama’s credibility-crippling recklessness in labeling their use a “red line,” misses the point — at best. It diverts attention from the issue the interventionists do not want to discuss: the fact that al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood would be the chief beneficiaries of U.S. attacks against Assad’s regime, the fact that the toppling of Assad could very well be even worse for American national security than Assad himself has been.
But if we are going to make this a debate about chemical weapons, is it not worth factoring in that Assad’s opposition includes elements that have been seeking to use chemical weapons against the United States for more than two decades? That al-Qaeda recently and repeatedly used chemical weapons in Iraq? And that — as Bill Roggio notes — al Nusrah, an al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is suspected of using chemical weapons in Syria just six months ago?
And he links to Bryan Preston’s piece, also penned at PJ Media yesterday: Yossef Bodansky: ‘Did the White House Help Plan the Syrian Chemical Attack?’
The Conversation: Putin: Kerry’s Lying About The Syrian Rebels And He Knows It (Video):
Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t mince words today at a meeting of his human rights council in the Kremlin regarding the use of US force against the Syrian regime.Reuters reports that he declared “anything that is outside the U.N. Security Council is aggression, except self-defense. Now what Congress and the U.S. Senate are doing in essence is legitimizing aggression. This is inadmissible in principle.”
And he also accused US Secretary of State John Kerry of outright lying to Congress about al Qaeda’s role fighting on the rebel side of the Syrian civil war.
He said, “they lie beautifully, of course. I saw debates in Congress. A congressman asks Mr Kerry: ‘Is al Qaeda there?’ He says: ‘No, I am telling you responsibly that it is not,'”“Al Qaeda units are the main military echelon, and they know this,” he said, referring to the United States. “It was unpleasant and surprising for me – we talk to them, we proceed from the assumption that they are decent people. But he is lying and knows he is lying. It’s sad.”
The Washington Post called Senator Ron Johnson’s question about the Syrian rebels, and Kerry’s answer (which Vladimir Putin called a huge lie) one of the 10 most interesting moments in Tuesday’s Senate hearing on Syria.
SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-Wis.): What — what do we know about the opposition? … It seems like, initially, the opposition was maybe more Western-leaning, more moderate, more democratic. You know, as time has gone by, it’s degraded, become more infiltrated by Al Qaida. …
KERRY: No, that is actually basically not true. It is basically incorrect. The opposition has increasingly become more defined by its moderation, more defined by the breadth of its membership and more defined by its adherence to some, you know, democratic process and to an all-inclusive, minority-protecting constitution, which will be broad-based and secular with respect to the future of Syria.
From what I’ve been hearing – contra what Kerry said – the Syrian opposition hasbecome increasingly defined by its extremism, which is why many conservatives have been lamenting that we didn’t help the rebels years ago – before the foreign jihadis flowed in. What I hear is that they have infested most of the rebel groups – (7 out of the 9 largest according to Ted Cruz.)
Maybe the numbers seem distorted because stories about the moderate rebels just aren’t as sensational as ones about al Qaeda affiliated rebels (who do things like raid Christian villages, behead all the passengers on a train including a mother and her baby, and cut out and eat the hearts out of Regime soldiers.)
So I’ve been doing a little research of my own to see if the reports of al Qaeda’s involvement in Syria have been overblown. From what I can see – they have not.
On Tuesday, The Guardian’s Middle East editor Ian Black answered readers’ questions about Syria. Here is his answer (in part) to the following questions; “how many different opposition parties exist in Syria? Which party is representing which interests, what goals do they have, and who are the supporting parties? To what extent are they infiltrated by al-Qaida or not?”
Nowadays the main political grouping is the Syrian National Coalition, set up in Qatar in 2012, again with Gulf backing. The main legal internal opposition is the Damascus-based National Co-ordination Body, which calls for a negotiated settlement with the Assad regime.
There are now hundreds and perhaps thousands of armed rebel groups. More moderate outfits such as Liwa al-Tawhid answer to the Supreme Military Command, headed by Selim Idriss, a senior army defector. The SMC is used to channel Gulf, especially Saudi, funds and is thought to have received US and British training in Jordan.
Islamist groups have become stronger and tend to be better armed and financed than others. Two of the strongest are Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Iraq, both of them linked to al-Qaida. JAN insists on a future Syria becoming an Islamic state under sharia law, and has openly pledged its allegiance to the al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Another important group is Ahrar al-Sham. Sectarianism is also becoming more pronounced, with foreign Arab Shia fighters (including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah) arriving to fight Sunni extremists. Large numbers of liberal and secular opposition figures have left the country. Important work is still done on the ground by the Local Co-ordination Committees.
More at link…
Last year the AP reported the Syrian regime had threatened to use their chemical weapons if attacked by a foreign power:The Syrian regime threatened Monday to use its chemical and biological weapons in case of a foreign attack, in its first ever acknowledgement that it possesses weapons of mass destruction.
[…]
“No chemical or biological weapons will ever be used, and I repeat, will never be used, during the crisis in Syria no matter what the developments inside Syria,” Makdissi said in news conference broadcast on Syrian state TV. “All of these types of weapons are in storage and under security and the direct supervision of the Syrian armed forces and will never be used unless Syria is exposed to external aggression.”
Peter Wehner, Commentary: In Stockholm, Obama Loses Touch with Reality:
…literally everyone else in the world is to blame except the president.
Mr. Obama appears to be suffering from a variation of what psychiatrists refer to as dissociation, which is characterized by everything from mild to severe detachment from reality and one’s immediate surroundings.
In this particular case, the president seems to have dissociative amnesia, apparently having forgotten that a year ago last month he did, in fact, draw a red line. (Note the use of the first-person pronouns by the president — “That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”) The president may have forgotten, too, that he promised that crossing this red line would be a “game changer” (it was not). That Assad had to go (Assad is still in power, stronger than before). That he promised to arm Syrian rebels (he hasn’t). That his “coalition of the willing” may include, if we’re lucky, one other country besides America. And that on the matter of the Use of Force Resolution he was against going to Congress before he was for going to Congress.
The cause of Mr. Obama’s dissociation appears to be the psychological trauma induced by his multi-year fiasco in Syria. And in order to cope, we are seeing signs of anger, petulance, and hero syndrome and, as is always the case with this president, blame shifting.
On a slightly more serious note, Mr. Obama’s presidency is being wrecked by reality. He’s being exposed at every turn, and in every crisis, as inept. He can’t handle that truth so he’s trying to distort it.
There’s something poignant and painful in watching Obama’s presidency collapse and seeing what it’s doing to the man who promised to repair the world and slow the rise of the oceans.
Hot Air: House whip count: 46 votes in favor of Syria attack right now — and 169 against:
The big caveat: Many of the yays and nays aren’t firm. TP’s trying to divine intent from casual statements made by House members about how they’re likely to vote, which is especially dicey in the case of Democrats who might be whipped by the White House and Pelosi later to come through for O in a pinch. If the tally’s right, though, then opponents of intervention are already within 50 votes of winning with more than 200 representatives (and nearly 100 Republicans) still undecided.
Time to panic in the West Wing?
As members of Congress consider President Obama’s request to authorize military force in Syria, following evidence that President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons killed over 1,400 people, a ThinkProgress analysis of the public statements of 289 Representatives found that 169 lawmakers have either decisively ruled out supporting the measure or say they are unlikely to back it.
Just 46 of the 289 members of the House of Representatives said they will definitely or likely vote in favor or the resolution. Seventy-four are undecided.
Of the 169 nays, 124 come from the GOP and 45 come from liberal Democrats.
Hahahaha!
Bryan Preston, PJ Media: Obama’s Syria Hail Mary: Another Speech. By Bill Clinton.
Former (?) President Bill Clinton is set to deliver a speech in Little Rock, AR today. The topic was supposed to be another Obamacare sales pitch, but Syria erupted, so now former (?) President Clinton will pitch Barack Obama’s limited, mostly pointless military strike on Syria.
Bill “I loathe the military” Clinton will join John “Winter Soldier” Kerry in selling a war –sorry, kinetic activity — that Barack “I didn’t set no stinkin’ red line” Obama cannot sell himself. Bill “let’s launch missiles at tents and pharma factories” Clinton is Barack “really, it won’t be a war, I swear!” Obama’s go-to guy, his elder statesman, his fail safe. Bill “that woman” Clinton must now save Barack “it was a movie!” Obama.
Remember how W diminished our standing in the world, and everyone hated us? No, I don’t either. The left made all that up. All of the world’s bad actors hated (and feared) us, (that’s what we want) and sometimes effete Euroweenies groused about our “cowboy president”, but they didn’t abandon him in a pinch like they are President Pinprick. President Bush was sometimes resented, but always respected. Unlike the current teleprompter dependent chump. They’ve got his number. Most of them have figured out that Obama’s a weasel and chump.
Weasel Zippers: Al-Qaeda Promises To Slaughter Christians After Obama Helps Topple Assad…
Arabic news agency Al Hadath gives more information concerning this latest terror attack on Syria’s Christians, specifically how the al-Qaeda linked rebels “terrorized the Christians, threatening to avenge themselves on them after the triumph of the revolution.”
Nice Deb 