TexasCHLforum.com

philip964 wrote:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/17/2 ... jm70D9JaKY

Case you had any doubts on which side the rebels were on.

Beat me to it. I was going to post this story this morning....

suthdj wrote:http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/12/politics/ ... ng-rebels/

Gee..... I wonder if some of the weapons they are transferring are the same weapons the State Department would not allow to be re-imported to the U.S........

Dadtodabone wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Putin's direct response: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opini ... syria.html.

It's self-serving, but it makes some sense too. Never thought I'd say that.

Under the KGB thug exterior, beats the heart of a Statesman? Nah.

I'm not saying he's a statesman. Not at all. Witness my past statements about him: search.php?keywords=Putin&terms=all&aut ... mit=Search" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What I AM saying is that he has got the measure of Obama, and in that regard, what he says makes sense:

Vladimir Putin wrote:Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. [This is absolutely correct. ~TAM] There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. [This is also absolutely correct. ~TAM] The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. [THIS is also absolutely correct. ~TAM] This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.

Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all. [This is also absolutely possible. ~TAM]

That is why I previously said: "It's self-serving, but it makes some sense too. Never thought I'd say that."

I don't think Putin is some kind of elder statesman, but neither does someone get to his office without being very intelligent. (I do not conflate intelligence with morality. Satan is intelligent, but he is not moral.) But there is one thing that I will give Putin, he absolutely advances Russia's interests at all times.....unlike Obama and the U.S.'s interests. And sometimes, Russia's interests ought to be our own. For example: during the Cold War, Mutually Assured Destruction was in both of our interests. When the USSR collapsed, it was in OUR interests to help responsible former soviet leaders maintain control over the former USSR's nuclear arsenal so that it did not fall into the hands of the Russian mafia and Chechen terrorists. I can think of other examples where their interests and ours cross, if you'd like, but I think I've made my point. In the above two paragraphs of Putin's that I quoted, he IS right:

1. Syria's civil war is NOT a battle for democracy. It is a battle to depose a hated dictator. Does anyone think, given the middle-east's propensity to elevate strongmen, that Syria would become a democratic nation in the absence of Assad? Does anybody seriously think that if there were an attempt to establish a democracy, that the radicalized factions in Syria would allow that democracy to continue to exist?.
2. Our own State Department HAS designated "Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations." What in tarnation are we doing proposing to place U.S. military might behind their efforts? It does not matter that there are pro-democracy rebels in the fight. The terrorists.......and they ARE terrorists.......are operating under the principle that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," and as soon as the rebels win (IF they win), the terrorists will start operating under the principle that "the friend of my enemy is my enemy." If we aid them now, and that aid is successful, we merely temporarily delay the inevitable.
3. In the second paragraph, Putin states Russia's case, and he's right. Chechen (Russian) radicals will go to syria to fight......just like they did in Iraq, and in Afghanistan......and when they return, they will bring back everything they learned in Syria to further terorrize Russia. That may not be OUR fight, but it is a legitimate concern for whomever is the president of Russia. And even though this threatens Russia more than it does us, it DOES threaten us. We have proof positive of radicalized American muslims, either fighting in the middle east, or like Nidal Hasan, taking their encouragement and inspiration from the middle east to terrorize Americans at home. Tell me this: with a demonstrably porous southern border, the administration's total unwillingness to defend it, and radicalized Americans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki) who might potentially survive Syria to sneak back into the U.S. across that southern border, how long will it be before they carry out more terrorist missions inside our borders?

There isn't a single thing that Putin wrote in those two paragraphs that isn't absolutely true. No, he's not a statesman. Yes, he is, as I previously alluded in this thread, a pig and a thug. But no, he is far from stupid, and sometimes, whether or not we want to admit it, Russia's interests are our own..........or, as they were in the day of MAD, they ought to be. I don't like Putin anymore than anybody else, but only a fool would discount 100% of what he says, just because we don't like him.

Putin's direct response: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opini ... syria.html.

It's self-serving, but it makes some sense too. Never thought I'd say that.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/s ... assad-bild
Syria chemical weapons attack not ordered by Assad, says German press
Bild am Sonntag cites high-level German surveillance source suggesting Syrian president was not personally behind attacks

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 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.

Beiruty wrote:So, "The Great Britan" of US Revolution is Iran. Check with 1) above.
Any other cause or "humanitarian" cause is just Bulls.

Thank you for the clarification. I thought about the possibility it was Iran too, but I still just don't know if it is worth U.S. treasury or lives. There's only one way to put the crazy Ayatollahs out of commission in Iran, and nobody is willing to nuke them. We lack the capability, treasury, size of military, or national will to fight another ground war on a third front in the middle east, and our allies are not interested either. Iran will be Iran, no matter what we do. Sanctions don't work against them, and they absolutely don't care about getting along with the rest of the world because they are governed by religious radicals who are demon-possessed. No amount of reasoning with them will ever accomplish anything except frustrate the party trying to be reasonable..........and they are fueling the civil war in Syria.

That country is nothing but a proverbial death trap for America. It will bleed us slowly while Russia and China grow stronger. Getting involved in that part of the world is just plain unwise. Let them start blaming someone else for all their problems.

Beiruty wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:

philip964 wrote:My assumption has been that neither side made the nerve agents. Saddam transported the nerve agents to Syria right before we invaded. Assad has the ability to deliver nerve agents to the rebels, the rebels have no way of delivering the nerve agents to Assad. However they have the ability to use them on themselves.

If I remember my WW2 history correctly, German soldier posing as Polish soldiers attacked Germany, prior to Germany's invasion of Poland. It was called the Gleiwitz incident.

But if stopping a dictator from using nerve agents was so critical to Obama, why was he uninterested in stopping Saddam when he repeatedly used nerve agents against his people (the Kurds) and Iran?

If you watch the videos linked on the blog I quoted previously in this thread, it SHOWS rebels firing what appears to be a sort of cross between a howitzer and a giant spigot mortar on wheels, and the projectile has a large gas weapon in the warhead. They are firing it across what appears to be at least several hundred meters. They have the means of battlefield delivery, just not larger artillery or aerial delivery assets.

This device is launching a propane gas tank, (the same you can buy from Walmart), with welded impact fuze and a small explosive. Kind of an incendiary explosive device. A cheap imitation of thermobaric explosive round.

So Beiruty, let me ask you......

1. What about the other video of the purported Muslim Brotherhood guy bragging about A) having poison gas weapons, and B) being willing to use them against the families of the government's supporters?

2. What do you think about (former Assad ally) Hezbollah's claim that Assad used chemical weapons and called it a big mistake for Assad? (http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebano ... z2eKF3f1Ua)

3. What about the other video showing allegedly captured rebel chemical weapons labeled from a chemical plant in Saudi Arabia (which supports the rebels)? ........and.......

4. If you had to pick sides, who would you support.......or do you agree with some of us who think we should stay the heck out of it?

Not a challenge, just genuinely curious. You're perspective is at least partly informed by having lived in the region and having dealt with Assad's past support of Hezbollah in Lebanon, so you bring something to the table that the rest of us have not experienced.

For me, there are just too many unknowns, and I can't see America's national interest in any of this. I think it would be extremely unwise to get involved any further in the middle east's problems. They don't like us. They certainly don't respect us. Getting involved......on ether side.......merely creates new enemies from the other side. They will hates if we bomb them. They will hate us if we don't bomb them. Their hatred of us and of the west is generational and will last 200 years or more. The moderates there are afraid to criticize or resist the radicals because the radicals will kill everyone in sight and not give it a moment's thought. The radicals have an interpretation of Quranic scripture which permits them to perform ANY excess in pursuit of their goals, without any spiritual consequences. Indeed, the radicals believe they will actually be rewarded for being murderous. Too often, political loyalties boil down to tribal/clan ties and have nothing to do with patriotism or nationalistic fervor. And culturally, the region seems to respect the rule of men more than they do the rule of law. Leaders who are strong enough to be national leaders are more like warlords than democratically elected public servants.

I have had normally rational people tell me that we should be willing to help the Syrian rebels for the same reasons that the French help us during our revolution. But that is an entirely different kettle of fish. The French didn't help us because they wanted to do the right thing. They helped us because they were in a perpetual and ongoing state of war with Great Britain, and helping us was one field on which to fight that war. Before our revolution, there was the French and Indian War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_War), and THAT was a war between the British American colonies, and the French territory of New France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_France). I repeat, when France "helped" us in our revolution, the outcome was good for us, but we were also merely the pawns in a much bigger story of the ongoing hostilities around the world between France and Great Britain. But one thing is for absolute certain: King Louis of France KNEW why he was being asked to finance and support the aid to the American colonies before he authorized the Marquis de Lafayette to help us.

So if we should help Syria for the same reasons that France helped us, then who is the "Great Britain" in this story? Is it Russia? China? Iran? The administration has failed to give a clear explanation, or to make a case here for that kind of intervention......other than the "you can't let a boogyman get away with being a boogyman, or other boogymen will act like boogymen........." .....and that is just not cutting it.

philip964 wrote:My assumption has been that neither side made the nerve agents. Saddam transported the nerve agents to Syria right before we invaded. Assad has the ability to deliver nerve agents to the rebels, the rebels have no way of delivering the nerve agents to Assad. However they have the ability to use them on themselves.

If I remember my WW2 history correctly, German soldier posing as Polish soldiers attacked Germany, prior to Germany's invasion of Poland. It was called the Gleiwitz incident.

But if stopping a dictator from using nerve agents was so critical to Obama, why was he uninterested in stopping Saddam when he repeatedly used nerve agents against his people (the Kurds) and Iran?

If you watch the videos linked on the blog I quoted previously in this thread, it SHOWS rebels firing what appears to be a sort of cross between a howitzer and a giant spigot mortar on wheels, and the projectile has a large gas weapon in the warhead. They are firing it across what appears to be at least several hundred meters. They have the means of battlefield delivery, just not larger artillery or aerial delivery assets.

Abraham wrote:At this point, I'd love Biden to become POTUS - He's more laughable than most comedians.

His spectacular gaucherie is a joy to behold.

Biden's our political Yogi Berra.

Heck he's even funny looking.

His hair plugs have a certain "please don't look at me" quality that's quite comic...

Unfortunately, if handing the "football" to Obama is like giving a gun to a 10 year old, handing the "football" to Biden is like handing that gun to a monkey. Neither can be trusted with command authority over the military.

Syrian rebel admits on camera to possessing AND USING chemical weapons:

[youtube][/youtube]

We do NOT want to get sucked into that moshpit. As Ted Cruz said, we are NOT Al Qaeda's Air Force.

Carville blames Bush: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/ ... _iraq.html

mamabearCali wrote:

Oldgringo wrote:TAM for POTUS!

Amen....can we draft you?

You don't want me. I probably smoked as much dope as Bill and Barry combined back in the day.

Further complicating matters, this post which does make some kind of sense....I don't know if it is true or not, but it is worth reading: http://shoebat.com/2013/08/27/evidence- ... not-assad/. The author is a former member of Muslim Brotherhood, turned peace activist, who says that MB is fighting on the side of the rebels, and he makes a compelling case for MB being the source of the gas attacks:

1. Assad is winning this civil war and has been for several months now after the rebels had initially made some gains.

2. Which side has the bigger motivation to use WMD, the less desperate or the more desperate side?

3. There is actually some video evidence to suggest that rebels might be using Sarin gas, and Chlorine gas.

This could all be a pack of lies too. The point is, WE DON'T KNOW, AND WE CANNOT KNOW!!! Neither can the administration. The absolute fact that 1,000 rebel men, women, and children were gassed is incontrovertible. Just WHO gassed them is unknowable, since both sides apparently possess WMD. Then the author finishes with:

Lying, bearing false witness, blood libel, and murder.

Yeah, that smells like the Brotherhood.

**UPDATE at 8:40am EST on August 31, 2013**
Associated Press reporter Dale Gavlak reports in MintPress news that firsthand accounts indicate that the Chemical weapons attack was the result of the rebels’ mishandling of them. According to Gavlak, the weapons came from Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan and were given to rebels who did not know what the weapons were or how to store them, nor were they trained how to use them. If these accounts are correct, the Obama administration – along with more than a handful of Republican congressmen – may be complicit in a blood libel.

**UPDATE at 4:25pm EST on September 3, 2013**
An explosive article by Yossef Bodansky was published on September 1st implies that it is possible – or even likely – based on “a growing volume of new evidence” that the August 21st Chemical attack was carried out by the rebels against themselves in order to push an agenda that would involve getting the U.S. to attack Assad. Worse than this, however, is that Bodansky makes the case for the likelihood that the Obama administration knew about the attack in advance. While Bodansky’s findings differ from those of Gavlak, both seem to reach the conclusion that the rebels were the ones responsible for the attack.

Not to mention that the rebels simply execute their prisoners: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/05/world ... ml?hp&_r=0.

Has anyone noticed, that since Syria brewed up, nobody in the media has said bupkis about the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, Immigration scandals, "assault weapons" bans, Fast & Furious, the federal persecution of Texas in the wake of the SCOTUS voting rights act decision, the looming debt ceiling crisis, etc., etc., etc., etc. EVERYTHING has been swept under the rug.

Who stands the most to gain by our getting militarily involved in Syria?

Obama. That's who.

He's counting on the country rallying behind the president in a war. But it is a war that nobody wants......least of all the men and women who will be ordered to prosecute it. But Obama is willing to prosecute it and sacrifice the national good, what little is left of our moral capital, the burden it will put on our treasury and on our taxpayers to make good for it, all for the sake of his own ambitions. I can think of another national leader just like that.....who threatens wars to take his subjects' minds off their own miseries.......

.........Kim Jong-un of North Korea........

Need I say more?

mayor wrote:May I post a link to this on another website?

Sure, if you think it will do any good. It probably won't. Most people who remain convinced that Obama is a great leader are in a denial so deep their minds cannot be changed. We just have to wait for one of two things to happen to them in order to change them: 1) they get so badly and criminally ravaged by somebody that they become conservative when they find out that their liberal politics prevent them from doing anything about it; or 2) they die off.

There is ONE positive outcome if the chump in chief orders our military into a war that nobody from either party wants: the next president will not be a democrat. And not having another democrat in office is imperative to stopping the country's slide into irrelevance. No, it's not worth aiding and abetting the start of another war to achieve it, but it is the one light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel that would come out of this.

Obama ran hard on being the one to restore the nation's image to the rest of the world. His very first day in office, he offended a long-time ally, Great Britain. He has courted those who hate us and chastised those who look to us. He has on microphone and camera promised future concessions to a foreign leader who does not respect us. Furthermore, he is deliberately obtuse when it comes to acknowledging how global politics works in the real world. About a quarter of the world's nations have liked us, and the rest have hated us for varying reasons. Those reasons run the gamut from virulent politically philosophical differences, cultural differences, religious differences, economic differences, and yes, even something as venal as military genital envy. It's been that way for at least the last 113 years. It takes a blind megalomaniac on the order of Obama to believe that he can change it.

Vladimir Putin is a pig. A self-aggrandizing pig with no regard for human rights and the absolute cynicism of a practiced dictator. In those things, he and Obama are exactly alike. But there is ONE thing that Putin NEVER does, but which Obama ALWAYS does, and it is that Putin never puts the interests of other nations ahead of his own nation's interests. I don't love either man, but I can tell you which of the two I respect more, and it ain't Obama. And neither does most of the rest of the world now. One of the things that Putin is but not Obama, is being a realist. Compare their backgrounds.........

1. On the hand, a hardened KGB colonel with his fingers deep into both the domestic and foreign pies during his career, and a LONG experience of confronting the U.S., so he is not only not afraid of us, but his experience with Obama teaches him not to respect us much either. How can you possibly respect the leader of a foreign nation who promises you concessions after he is reelected? Isn't the job of that leader to represent his nation's interests, not your own nation's interests? So now Putin knows that he controls Obama.
2. On the other hand, a charlatan national political neophyte whose primary qualification is a drug addled community organizer who "knows about the world because I once lived abroad and have muslims in my family." A man who consorts with KNOWN domestic terrorists and is as unrepentant about it as are the terrorists themselves; who deliberately hides his birth certificate because—legal issues aside—he knows it will be problematic if the public finds out; who deliberately hides his academic records because he knows it will be problematic if the public finds out (possibly from a citizenship perspective too); who sat at the feet of a virulently racist pastor for 20 years and claims not to have seen the racism (because he fundamentally agreed with it, and therefore it's not racism); who served a few terms in the Illinois legislature, and just 2 years of one senatorial term, and THAT resumé is supposed to make him qualified to direct America's foreign affairs.

It's not even a close comparison. Obama is the mouse to Putin's Siberian tiger. The problem is that this mouse has been given ultimate command authority over the greatest military might the world has ever known, and he is likely to use it inappropriately to back up his poor foreign-affairs decision-making. Under Bush and other previous presidents, we at least had the respect of that part of the world which did not like us. Not any longer. What's worse is that we have lost a large measure of respect from that part of the world which did like us. Globally, we are less safe because of it. Globally, our interests no longer carry water with anybody.

We have Obama to thank for all of those things, and he is dragging us down with him. I have a deep and abiding lack of respect or any felicitous feelings for the man. He is almost single-handedly finishing off what's left of America. Yes, the other democrats are aiding and abetting him in it, and those that are unrepentant at this point are just as treasonous as he is........ but without his vaunted "leadership," they would not be nearly so effective at it.

Here is what the world sees when they look at the U.S.: a massively powerful nation that cannot make up its mind. THAT makes us dangerous in their eyes because they cannot predict which way we are likely to jump. They cannot count on either our alliance or our enmity. THAT is directly attributable to Obama's presidency, and that is why his presidency is one foreign policy disaster after another.

Whether one agrees with Bush's decisions regarding the invasion of Iraq, he certainly had the good sense to make his case to Congress and to seek congressional support.......and he got it. Obama is NOT seeking congressional support because he knows darn well that he won't get it. I don't want another war. Let all those people kill each other off until there aren't enough of them left to cause any trouble to anyone else. They have descended into some kind of multigenerational cultural insanity, and they have to have their own "come to Jesus" moment before they voluntarily turn themselves around. And as long as their religion of peace becomes increasingly under the sway of people who don't want peace with anybody, or whose definition of peace is world domination, they will continue to kill one another. It's not our problem. We can't fix it, and even if we could fix it, we don't have the right to impose ourselves on another people without there being A) preexisting alliances and B) and overt invitation.

Add to that that our own policy implementation is so dysfunctional that we now have a reputation for encouraging rebellion and then leaving the rebels to twist in the wind at great personal expense to them. The only reason we should be involved in there is if Syria's civil war poses an existential threat to our own survival. It does not. They will produce terrorists no matter who is in power, and the only way to stop that is to do the one thing that nobody (rightly) wants to do, and that is to turn Syria into a sea of melted glass, and then tell the rest of those tinpot dictators "that's what happens if you mess with us." But we can't do that, and we shouldn't do that. Therefore, we have one option: continue to provide support to the one democracy in the area with our values—Israel—and let the rest of them go to hades.