Pic Of The Moment: Current Events Quiz: Understanding President Obama's Syria Speech
Full transcript of President Obama's speech on Syria
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He's too busy killing social security. 
Just asking
...to pass muster on today's DU, you authoritarian apologist, you! 
Just a few days ago, we saw THIS:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec13/charlierose_09-09.html
Charlie Rose: 'Calm' Assad Denied Possession of Chemical Weapons
A few people here took that murdering bastard at his word! Look at him, he makes so much SENSE....Obama must be lying, the chinless wonder with the soulful eyes and the cute accent is the one telling the TRUTH!!!
But then....there was THIS!
Pay no attention to the Lebanese papers...they're only the next-door neighbor, what do they know?
http://www.yalibnan.com/2013/09/10/syria-admits-it-has-chemical-weapons/
Syria Admits It Has Chemical Weapons
And then, this (Oh, but they're all a buncha LIARS, doncha know--only Pootie and Assad are honest brokers, here! )
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57602150/human-rights-watch-says-evidence-strongly-suggests-assad-used-chemical-weapons/
Human Rights Watch says "evidence strongly suggests" Assad used chemical weapons
And---best for last-- this:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57602275/syria-will-stop-producing-chemical-weapons-foreign-minister-walid-al-moallem-says/
Syria will stop producing chemical weapons, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem says
Amazing, how they've come round to a) destroying and b) stopping production of, weapons they initially claimed they never had.
But Obama's the "liar?"
Personally I'd much rather be me than you 
Aren't you late for your workout?
and so appropriate.
Get thee to the gym, your arguments (Waaah, you're bloodthirsty, waaaah!) are terribly flabby....
Is Israel's largest newspaper anti-semitic also? 
You know, people have been tossed from this site for making asinine comments like the one you just made. Care to elaborate your feeling more?
Oh and his alert against your post failed, 5-1.
The Syrian government did it. We can't prove Assad personally ordered it - it may have been one of his generals.
And if Assad was on trial, that would be important. He isn't.
The strike would be against the Syrian government. Not against Assad. As such it doesn't matter who ordered it. The strike would be against the responsible party.
The people who are against a strike are spinning the "We can't prove Assad personally ordered it" as not knowing if the Syrians government did it. That's false. Only the Syrian government has the artillery and rockets used in the attack. The artillery and rockets were fired from Syrian government territory. And so on.
Yeah, chemical weapons are nothing important. It's not like they're virtually useless against soldiers and great for slaughtering large quantities of civilians. Clearly, we should just ignore chemical weapons strikes so that everyone else with chemical weapons learns they can gas their people without any repercussions.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if POTUS told Putin he was entirely prepared to "Fuck Congress." Even if, in his heart of hearts, he didn't mean it. And if Pootie didn't believe it, he could check American history for the past half century.
Here's what you do not quite "get, " so long as YOU brought up "critical thinking" or "beginner's (you forgot the apostrophe) analysis." This is more like "intermediate analysis"--simplified so you can follow along--so pay close attention, now. Putin needs Tartus for a lot of reasons, either short-term or long. Obama has the ability to fuck that up for him but good with one strike from a variety of weaponry and sources (including allies), and Putin knows it. Pootie--who is the ONLY "PTB" over in his lovely land, also needs his customer, al-Assad of Syria, to keep HIS "MIC" (Y'all just love that term, too) pumping along. He's not operating on that old Soviet "flush money down the toilet, labor is cheap" paradigm--in case you hadn't noticed. He's got to make sales--even an ex-KGB strongman has to live in the 21st Century like everyone else.
Putin isn't a "nice guy." He's not 'helping out' for the good of the world. He didn't "aid" Obama. Anyone who thinks that doesn't understand how the world works. He doesn't have friends, he has INTERESTS. One of his interests is the revitalization of the Russian Navy. Another is keeping his arms sector vital and in production. A third is keeping a finger of influence on his neighbors in the Middle East.
He was pushed into a corner he tried to create for Obama, because Obama recognized HIS weakness. When you start doing target analysis, all becomes clear. See, your hero Pootie is IN Syria--he has many, many thousands of his citizens on the ground there, working with the al-Assad regime, who will be in grave danger with limited escape routes (one being Tartus) if al-Assad fails. We don't have those kinds of problems....see? It's not rocket science.
Your last paragraph, I can't help but notice, is both unseemly in a rather immature way, and absurdly angry. People who are "right" don't need to be so snarky--the force of their argument, not their insult, will carry them through. You're going on about kool aid drinkers, but you are the one sounding like your quarterback got unfairly sacked and are lashing out at all and sundry in a slightly drunken post-game "hyper fan" interview color piece.
I think the one in need of a (perhaps "Pootie-poot"
detox is you.
Check yourself. You are the one who is lacking both critical thinking AND the all-important regional knowledge and country history to present a cogent and reasonable argument. And, you're getting furious and insulting, so there's that, too....
This needs to be cross posted to you-know-where.
the guy who poisons and bombs and tortures his own people, will give up a thousand tons of chemical weapons on his own?
HAHAHAHAHA
Yeah, that'll work.
DAMN....Obama averted war with a carrot/stick approach.
He was REASONABLE!
He was ADULT!
He was clear about his hopes, and he was realistic about his GOALS!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!!!!
A massive dose of for the irony-impaired.
I don't understand why some have such a hard time accepting things. Do they really think that Assad is a "nice" guy so the president doesn't need to "motivate" him by using the threat of strikes?
I guess the anti-Obama crowd will never be pleased with anything this president does.
After all, there's no such thing as a "good king" anymore.
They couldn't care less about bad PR.
Syria admits to having WMD and yet Obama is still pursuing a diplomatic solution to have the weapons placed under international control.
I'm sorry, but Bush was a piece of shit.
GD with thread after thread after thread about our "war-mongering" president whose "bumbling" has made "America look bad" and "helped Putin become a world hero" over the last few weeks and days.
Putin.
Even the admins said something about it.
and addled brains to boot.
To make clear your point, reread post 140 below, "uncle Vlad is the adult in the room"! Ouch, I forgot I was not suppose to do that anymore.
Not only is this the best news site on the web, but I don't think I would have survived the past three elections (especially 2004 ) without the sanity, sympathy and kindred spirits I've found on DU. So glad you decided to join us! 
Response to EarlG (Original post)
Perhaps the Back-Stabbing that followed his moment of globalist-acceptance has a little something to do with why Assad is a bit more hesitant to give up his only means of deterring an invasion. Granted, he is winning on the ground, and has Zero reason to use them now, as the rebels refuse, again and again, to attend peace negotiations - specifically because they are loosing and want nothing less than "total victory" - A Jihadi State under Sharia Law. No more of that nasty "Arab Secularist" stuff where people get benefits from their oil and everyone has religious freedom; "we" (sic) in the West always oppose those leaders.
But it gets worse. The USA Created the Syrian War with the help of our "Saudi Headchopper Allies," whom we are in the process of selling Cluster Bombs. As these Syrian War-Starter Operatives acted Under Our Name and with Our Tax Dollars, You and I bear more than a smidgen of responsibility for the 100K Dead Syrians that came as the planned result of their efforts - this IS exactly what they sought to make happen.
But then, the Council on Foreign Relations, curiously absent from the pretend-reality cartoon-panel, above, to spite their magazine's "Two Cheers for Islamicists in Syria piece" don't care a whit about snuffing-out Millions of Lives to Steal Resources like Lybia's Oil and Pipeline Routes for Rockefeller (founder), Cheney (former director - remove the space to fix the link), and their ilk. Little has changed since Carnegie's Homestead Strike and Rockefeller's Ludlow Massacre - except the invention of modern-day "Public Relations" techniques, and the taxpayer-supported International-Pinkerton-Army they get to use - every time we are fooled, again with the, "Pipelines? Oil? Golan-Heights Gas? Where? (map)" routine. Just like Libya (oil map) and Iraq (oil map). No, no, it is just humanitarian concerns. Nevermind those Leaked Emails revealing the real motivations for all this.
If we Just Forget who is the aggressor in the region - with military bases everywhere (except Iran and Syria ... yet) to Enforce Our Rule over the people who actually live there, it may even seem like we are the "good guys." Granted, we will have to amnesiatically-ignore the last 50 years of history - coup'd democracies (remove the space to fix the link), and other toppled leaders who who use Oil-Sales to provide better standards of living for their people.
Let's just pretend it is all different now, with a new face, to spite never holding the American Criminals who carried out these crimes responsible (Look Forward - like we didn't at Nuremberg - and, yes, the CIA's death tolls are in the millions like the Nazis) - and to spite preserving the bloodthirsty "National Security" chain of command including Henry Kissinger the Butcher, himself.
What is consistent, is that democracies are only "good" when they are Western-Transnational-Compliant democracies. Otherwise, they are "run by thugs and dictators" and must be coup-ed out of existence. Nevermind "our" (sic) allies which really are run by brutal thugs - including the Saudis who are the primary benefactor to the Syrian "rebels."
The UN claims 1/3 of all homes in Syria have been destroyed. So it appears we have wrecked another nation because they wouldn't be a Tool of Western Transnationals - just like in Afghanistan, below. It was a nice place with a bright future before the USA, and War Criminal Brzezenski, with his "Arc of Crisis" strategy of fundimentalist-terrorist proxy-armies, put the Taliban-Terrorists in Charge of the place:
... just like this:
According to then-candidate Obama, Brzezinski is "... one of our most outstanding thinkers." Never mind the hundreds of thousands of Dead People, the creation of the Taliban (fast-forward 9-11?), and those North Korean and Pakistani Nukes he helped bring into our world.
Time to Wake Up People - this isn't about whether "Obama is Better than Romney" or "Our Team"; that is a juvenille perspective (not accidental, I should add) leading to a myopic worldview. Americans' Outrage and poll results, combined with the British Parliament and other nations' unwillingness to play "vials of anthrax" again, combined with Kerry's offhand remark (which the State Dept first dismissed), are the reasons diplomacy is on the table at all.
What changed?
Did Russia suddenly decide that chemical weapons use was bad? Well, Putin wrote an op-ed today explaining that there's no proof Assad did it and that the rebels had more to gain. So there's that.
The only thing that changed is the US pointed its guns at Assad.
And Russia was compelled to do something because it has a military base in Syria, its Gazprom has a literal monopoly on EU gas (of which Syria plays a pivotal role with its pipelines). Russia can't afford to let the US strike for geopolitical reasons. It has nothing to do with "image." This has a real economic impact on Russia.
Diplomacy was nowhere on the map until it was clear the house vote was following parliament. Suddenly it was the mission all along.
"The Obama administration is dusting off another sales pitch for bombing Syria, one that ironically was last used by President George W. Bush to dupe then-Sen. John Kerry into voting for the Iraq War, the claim that a war authorization is needed to create pressure for a diplomatic settlement.
On Monday, after the Russian government followed up an offhand suggestion from Secretary of State Kerry about Syria surrendering its chemical weapons, deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken was immediately spinning the Russian initiative as another reason to vote for war.
“It’s very important to note that it’s clear that this proposal comes in the context of the threat of U.S. action and the pressure that the President is exerting,” Blinken said. “So it’s even more important that we don’t take the pressure off and that Congress give the President the authority he’s requested.”
President Barack Obama struck a similar note during an interview with Fox News in which he urged Congress to press ahead with votes on a limited war resolution. “I think it is important for us not to let the pedal off the metal when it comes to making sure they understand we mean what we say,” he said.
In other words, the Obama administration’s lobbying for its Syria war plan now will include the argument that a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Syria requires a war resolution from Congress.
The irony of this retread argument should be not lost on Kerry and other congressional Democrats who bought it as a reason to give Bush the authority to go to war against Iraq in 2002. Later – after Bush pocketed the congressional approval and made a mockery of any diplomatic strategy to avoid war with Iraq – Kerry complained that he had been tricked."
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/09/10/recycling-a-bush-iraq-ploy-on-syria/
Obama's speech on Tuesday was incoherent and full of holes...like the only choices are missiles and killing, or nothing...pathetic. Sorry 
once again!
Response to EarlG (Original post)
right on 
